The Rudolf Steiner Archive

You will have been able to see from the one lecture given here on more complicated questions of reincarnation that, with further progress in the spiritual-scientific world-view, what we could give in the beginning as elementary truths becomes modified—we gradually rise to higher and higher truths. Still it was right to present the general cosmic truths at first in as simple and elementary a form as possible. It is, however, necessary also to advance slowly step by step from the abc to the higher truths, for only through these higher truths will that gradually be attained which, among other things, spiritual science is intended to give: namely, the possibility of understanding and penetrating the world which surrounds us in the physical, sense-perceptible sphere. Now it is true that we have a long way to go before we shall be able to coordinate the spiritual lines and forces existing behind the sense world. But because of much that has been said in recent lectures various phenomena of our existence will already have become clearer, more understandable. Today we shall proceed a little farther in this regard, and here also we shall speak again about more complicated questions of reincarnation, of re-embodiment.

To that end we must today clearly realize first of all that differences exist among the beings who occupy a leading place in the earth's human evolution. We have to distinguish in the course of our earth evolution those leading individualities who from the beginning, so to speak, have developed with the humanity of our earth just as it is—only that they have made more rapid progress. We might put it this way: If we go back into the past to the very remote Lemurian time, we find among the human beings then incarnated the most varied stages of development. All the souls embodied at that time have again and again experienced reincarnations, re-embodiments, during the succeeding Atlantean and our post-Atlantean periods. These souls have developed with varying rapidity. Some have made relatively slow progress through the various incarnations, and still have long distances to travel in the future; but there are also souls who have developed rapidly, who, one might say, have utilized their incarnations to better advantage, and are therefore at a stage of soul-spiritual development which will be attained by the normal man only in a very, very distant future. But, continuing to speak of this soul sphere, we may say nevertheless that however advanced these individual souls may be, however far they may tower above the normal man, still they have followed the same path in our earth evolution as the rest of humanity; they have merely advanced more rapidly. Besides these leading individualities, who in this sense are like the rest of humanity, only at a higher stage, there are also in the course of human evolution other individualities, other beings, who have by no means gone through various incarnations just as other men have. We can perhaps illustrate what lies at the bottom of this by saying: There were beings in that very time of the Lemurian evolution to which we have alluded who no longer needed to descend so deeply into physical embodiment as other men, as all the beings who have just been described—there were beings who could have accomplished their development in higher, more spiritual regions, who, in other words, did not need for their own further progress to descend into bodies of flesh. It is nevertheless possible for these beings, in order to intervene in the course of human evolution, to descend vicariously, so to speak, into just such human bodies as ours. At any time therefore a being may appear of whom, if we make the clairvoyant test, we cannot say, as we can of other human beings, that we trace the soul back in time and find it in a previous fleshly incarnation, trace it farther back and find it again in another incarnation, and so on—but we must say instead: If we trace the soul of such a being back through the course of time, perhaps we do not find it at all in any former fleshly incarnation; but if we do, it is only because the being in question is able to descend repeatedly, at intervals, and incarnate vicariously in a human body. A spiritual being who descends thus into a human body in order to intervene in evolution as a human being, without gaining anything from this embodiment for himself, so to speak, without experiencing anything here in the world of special significance for himself—such a being is called in oriental wisdom an Avatar. And this is the distinction between a leading being who has sprung from human evolution itself and one called an Avatar: namely, that an Avatar-being reaps no benefits for himself from his physical embodiments, or from the one physical embodiment to which he subjects himself, for he enters into a physical body for the blessing and advancement of mankind. Therefore, as we have said, such an Avatar-being can either enter into a human body just once, or several times in succession; and he is then something entirely different from other human beings.

The greatest Avatar-Being Who has lived on earth, as you can gather from the spirit of all the lectures given here, is the Christ—that Being Whom we designate as the Christ, Who took possession of the bodies of Jesus of Nazareth in the 30th year of his life. This Being, Who first came in contact with our earth at the beginning of our era, Who was incarnated for three years in a body of flesh, and Who since that time has been connected with the astral sphere, that is, with the spiritual sphere of our super-sensible world—this Being is of unique significance as an Avatar-Being. We should seek the Christ-Being quite in vain in an earlier human embodiment, whereas other, lower Avatar-beings could be embodied more than once. They incarnate repeatedly, but they obtain for themselves no benefit from the earthly embodiments. They only give; they take nothing from the earth. But if you wish to understand these things perfectly, you must distinguish between such a lofty Avatar-Being as the Christ and lower Avatar-beings. The latter can have the most varied missions on our earth, but we can speak first of one such mission; and in order not to flounder about in speculation, we shall at once give a concrete instance to illustrate this kind of mission.

You all know from the story of which Noah is the center that in the ancient Hebrew narrative a great part of the post-Noah humanity derives from the three ancestors, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Today we shall not go into what Noah and these three tribal ancestors are intended to represent in another respect; we shall simply realize clearly that the Hebrew literature which speaks of Shem, one of the sons of Noah, traces back the whole tribe of the Semites to Shem as its ancestor. A genuinely occult view of such a matter is always based upon the deeper truths. Those who are able to carry on occult research into such things know the following facts concerning Shem, the ancestor of the Semites.

In case of such a personality, who is destined to be the ancestor of an entire tribe, care must be taken from the very time of his birth to make it possible for him to be just this ancestor. Now in what way will care be taken that a personality—like Shem, for example—can be the ancestor of a whole people, or of a tribal community? In the case of Shem it was brought about through his receiving a quite specially prepared etheric body. We know that when the human being is born into this world he fashions about his individuality his etheric or life body, with the other members of his being. For such a tribal ancestor a special etheric body must be prepared which is the model etheric body for all the descendants in the following generations; so that we have in such a tribal progenitor a typical etheric body, a model etheric body; and then through blood relationship this passes through the generations so that in a certain sense the etheric bodies of all the descendants who belong to the same tribe are copies of the etheric body of the ancestor. Thus in all the etheric bodies of the Semitic people there was inwoven something like a copy of Shem's etheric body. Now by what means is such a thing brought about in the course of human evolution?

If we observe this man Shem a little more closely, we find that his etheric body received its archetypal form because into this very etheric body an Avatar had woven himself. Although he was not so exalted as certain other Avatar-beings, still it was a lofty Avatar-being who descended into his etheric body. This being was not united with Shem's astral body nor with his ego, but was woven, as it were, into his etheric body alone. In this very example we are able to study what the exact significance is when an Avatar-being participates in the constitution, the composition, of a human being. What does it mean, then, that a man like Shem, who has the mission to be the ancestor of a whole people, should have an Avatar-being woven into his body? It means that whenever an Avatar-being is woven into a fleshly human body, some one member, or even several members, of the super-sensible constitution of this human being are capable of being multiplied, of being split into many parts.

It was really because an Avatar-being was interwoven with Shem's etheric body that it became possible for numberless copies of the original to be formed; and these many copies could be woven into all the descendants of the tribal ancestor in the successive generations. Thus, the descent to earth of an Avatar-being has the significance, among other things, that it contributes to the multiplication of one or several members of the person in question who is animated by the Avatar. There existed in Shem, as you can see from this, an especially precious etheric body, an archetypal etheric body, prepared by an exalted Avatar, and then woven into Shem, so that it could then descend in many copies to all those who were ordained to be related by blood to this ancestor.

Now we have already said in the lecture mentioned at the beginning that there is also a spiritual economy consisting in the fact that anything of especial value is preserved and carried over into the future. We have heard that not only is the ego re-embodied, but that also the astral body and the etheric body can be re-embodied. Aside from the fact that numberless copies of Shem's etheric body were formed, his own etheric body was also preserved in the spiritual world; for it could later be very useful in the mission of the Hebrew people. In this etheric body all the peculiarities of the Hebrew people had originally come to expression; and if at any time something of very especial importance was to occur for the ancient Hebrew people, if a special task, a special mission, was to be assigned to some one, it could best be accomplished by one who bore the etheric body of the ancestor. At a later time a man who played an important role in the history of the Hebrew people actually did bear the etheric body of the tribal ancestor. In fact, we have here one of those wonderful complications in human evolution which can explain a great deal to us. We have to do with a very exalted individuality who was compelled to condescend, as it were, in order to speak to the Hebrew people in an appropriate manner, and to give them the strength for a special mission—in somewhat the way a spiritually advanced person would have to speak to a lowly tribe. He would of course be compelled to learn the language of this tribe; but no one should maintain on this account that the language is something which would serve to advance him personally, for the one concerned need only take the trouble to learn the language. In the same way a lofty individuality had to make the effort to use Shem's etheric body, in order to be able to give a very definite impulse to the ancient Hebrew people. This personality is the one you find in the Biblical history named Melchizedek. He took upon himself, as it were, the etheric body of Shem, in order later to give to Abraham the impulse which you find so beautifully described in the Bible. And so, aside from the fact that what was contained in the individuality of Shem was multiplied, because an Avatar-being was embodied in it, and then became woven into all the other etheric bodies belonging to the Hebrew people, Shem's own etheric body was preserved in the spiritual world, so that it could be borne at a later time by Melchizedek, who was to give to the Hebrew people an important impulse through Abraham.

Thus delicately interwoven are the facts existing behind the physical world which alone make explicable to us what occurs in that world. We come to understand history only when we are able to point to such facts: to facts of a spiritual nature which lie behind the physical ones. History can never be explained out of itself, if we consider physical facts alone.

What we have just been discussing becomes especially significant: namely, that through the descent of an Avatar-being the essential soul-spiritual members of the personality who is the bearer of this Avatar-being are multiplied and transmitted to other human beings, and appear in copies of the original. This fact assumes very special significance through the appearance of the Christ on earth. Because the Avatar-Being of Christ dwelt in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, it became possible for the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth to be multiplied innumerable times, as well as the astral body, and even the ego,—that is, the ego as an impulse, as it was kindled in the astral body when the Christ entered into the threefold sheath of Jesus of Nazareth. But first we will take into account the fact that through the Avatar-Being the etheric body and the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth could be multiplied.

Now just through the appearance of the Christ Principle in the earth evolution, there occurred in humanity one of the most significant phenomena. What I have told you about Shem is fundamentally typical and characteristic for the pre-Christian time. When in this way an etheric body or an astral body is multiplied, the copies of it are transmitted as a rule to those people who are related by blood to the one who had the original; hence, the copies of Shem's etheric body were transmitted to the members of the Hebrew tribe. That was changed by the appearance of the Christ Avatar-Being. The etheric body and the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth were multiplied, and these copies were preserved as such until, in the course of human development, they could be used. They were not, however, limited to any one nationality nor to any particular people; but when in the course of time a human being appeared who—irrespective of nationality—was ripe, was fitted to have interwoven with his own astral body an astral copy of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth, or an etheric copy of his etheric body, these could be woven into his being. Thus we see how it became possible in the course of time—let us say—for all sorts of people to have woven into them copies of the astral body or of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth.

The intimate history of Christian development is connected with this fact. What is ordinarily described as the history of Christian development is a sum of entirely external occurrences; and therefore far too little consideration is given to a fact of very great importance: namely, to the distinction of actual periods in Christian development. Anyone who can look more deeply into the evolutionary progress of Christianity will easily perceive that in the early centuries of the Christian era the manner in which Christianity was spread was entirely different from that of later centuries. In the first Christian centuries the spread of Christianity was connected, as it were, with everything that could be procured from the physical plane. We need only to take a look at the early teachers of Christianity to see how at that time physical recollections, physical relationships, and physical relics are emphasized. Just consider what great importance was given by Irenæus, who in the first century contributed much to the spread of Christian teaching in various lands, to the fact that recollections extended back to those who had themselves listened to the pupils of the Apostles. Great value was set upon being able to prove by means of such physical recollections that Christ Himself had taught in Palestine. It was especially emphasized, for example, that Papias himself had sat at the feet of the Apostles' pupils; even the places were pointed out and described where those personalities had sat who were still eyewitnesses of the fact that Christ had lived in Palestine. The physical continuance of remembrance is what was especially emphasized in the early Christian centuries.

What great prominence was given to everything of a physical nature that still existed can be seen in the words of the ancient Augustine, who says: “Why do I believe in the truths of Christianity? Because the authority of the Catholic Church compels me to.” The physical authority for the existence of something in the physical world is to him the important and essential thing: that a corporate body has been maintained which, linking personality with personality, reaches up to one who was a companion of the Christ—such as Peter. For him that is the determining factor. Thus we can see that in the spread of Christianity during the early centuries it was the documents, the impressions of the physical plane, to which the greatest importance was attached.

Now the situation changes after the time of Augustine up to, let us say, the 10th, 11th, or 12th century. During that period of time it was no longer possible to appeal to the living remembrance, nor to draw upon the documents of the physical plane, for they lay too far in the past. At that time also something entirely different came into existence in the whole mood and disposition of the humanity which was then embracing Christianity ; and especially was this the case among European peoples. During that time there was actually something like a direct knowledge that a Christ exists, that a Christ died on the cross, and that He continues to live. From the 4th or 5th century up to the 10th or 12th there were a large number of people who would have considered it the greatest folly had they been told that the events of Palestine could even be doubted, for they knew better. They had always been able to experience inwardly a kind of Pauline revelation in miniature—what Paul, who up to that time was a Saul, experienced on the road to Damascus, and through which he became a Paul. How did it happen that in those centuries a number of people were able to receive revelations which were in a certain sense clairvoyant concerning the events in Palestine ? It was possible because in those centuries the multiplied copies of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth, which had been preserved, had been woven into a great number of people; because it was granted to them to wear these as a garment, so to speak. There was inwoven with their etheric bodies, not Jesus' own etheric body, but only a copy of the inborn original one of Jesus of Nazareth. In these centuries there were those who could possess such an etheric body, and who could thereby have a direct knowledge of Jesus of Nazareth, and also of the Christ. This was the reason also that the Christ picture became dissociated from external, historical, physical existence. And the most extreme dissociation is shown to us in that wonderful poem of the 9th century, known as the Heliand poem, which originated in the time of Ludwig the Pious, who reigned from 814–840, and which was written down by an outwardly simple man of Saxony. His astral body and his ego could by no means equal what his etheric body contained, for into his etheric body was woven a copy of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth. The simple Saxon pastor who wrote this poem had the certainty through direct clairvoyant vision that the Christ exists on the astral plane, and that He is the same as He who was crucified on Golgotha! And because this was a direct certainty for him, he no longer needed to cling to the historical documents. He no longer needed the physical mediation to assure him that the Christ existed. He described Him, therefore, as detached from the whole Palestinian setting. He described Him as something like a leader of a Middle-European or Germanic tribe; and those who surrounded Him as His followers, the Apostles, he described as vassals of a Germanic prince. All the external scenery was changed; only the actually essential, the eternal, in the Christ Figure remained,—only what constitutes the structure of the events. Having such a direct knowledge, built upon such an important foundation as the copy of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth, it was not necessary to hold himself rigidly to the immediate historical events when he was speaking of the Christ. He invested what was for him direct knowledge with a different external setting. And just as in the case of this writer of the Heliand poem we have been able to describe one of the strange personalities who had a copy of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth interwoven with his etheric body, so we could find other personalities in this period who had similar copies. Thus we see how the most important occurrences of all, which are able to explain history to us in an intimate way, take place behind the physical events.

If we now follow Christian development farther, we come, let us say, into the period between the 11th or 12th century and the 15th. Here there was an entirely different mystery, which now carried the whole evolution forward. First it was, so to speak, the memory of what had taken place on the physical plane; then it was the etheric element which was directly inwoven with the etheric bodies of the bearers of Christianity in Middle-Europe. In the later centuries, from the 12th to the 15th, it was especially the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth which in numerous copies was woven into the astral bodies of the most important bearers of Christianity. Such people then had an ego which as ego was capable of forming very false notions of all sorts of things; but in their astral bodies there existed immediate sources of strength, of devotion, a direct certainty of sacred truths. There existed in such people deep fervor, absolutely direct conviction, and also in some circumstances the ability to prove this conviction. What must sometimes seem so strange to us in these very personalities is that in their ego their development by no means equalled what their astral body contained, because the latter had a copy of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth woven into it. What their ego did often seemed grotesque; but the world of their moods and feelings, of their fervor, was grand and exalted. Such a personality, for example, was Francis of Assisi. And when we, as people of the present time, study Francis of Assisi and are not able to understand his conscious ego, but are nevertheless compelled to have the deepest possible reverence for the entire world of his feelings and for all that he did,—that fact becomes explicable from such a point of view. He was one of those who had a copy of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth inwoven. Because of this he was able to accomplish just what he did accomplish, and many of his adherents from the Order of Franciscans, with its servants and minorites, had similarly such copies interwoven with their astral bodies.

All the strange and otherwise mysterious phenomena of that time will become luminous and clear to you, if you bring properly before the eyes of your soul this mediation in world evolution between past and future. The important question was whether what was woven into these people of the Middle Ages from the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth was more what we call the sentient soul, or more the intellectual soul, or more what we call the consciousness soul. For the astral body of man must of course be considered in a certain sense as something containing all this; that is, it must be thought of as enclosing the ego, and containing sentient soul, intellectual soul, and consciousness soul. All that was in Francis of Assisi was wholly sentient soul of Jesus of Nazareth, so to speak. Wholly sentient soul of Jesus of Nazareth was contained in that remarkable personality whom you will follow biographically with the soul when you know the secret of her life: Elizabeth of Thüringen, born in 1207. Here we have a personality who had a copy of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth woven into the sentient soul. The riddle of the human being is solved for us by means of just such knowledge.

Above all, one phenomenon will be understandable when you know that during this time the most diverse personalities had sentient soul, intellectual soul, or consciousness soul woven into them as copies of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth. You will be able to understand that science, otherwise so little understood, which we ordinarily designate as scholasticism. What kind of a task did the scholastics set for themselves? The task of finding, on the basis of judgment and intellect, verifications, proofs, for that with which there was no historical connecting link, and concerning which there was no direct clairvoyant certainty, such as existed in previous centuries because of the interwoven etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth. These people had to set themselves the task in this way: They said to themselves: It has been communicated to us through tradition that in history that Being appeared Who is known as Christ Jesus; that other spiritual beings of whom the religious documents bear witness have intervened in human evolution.—From their intellectual soul, from the intellect element of the copy of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth, they set themselves the task of proving with subtle and clearly developed concepts all that existed in their literature as mystery truths. Thus arose that strange science which tried to achieve what was perhaps the ultimate in sagacity, in intellect, that has ever been reached by humanity. One may think of the content of scholasticism as one wishes, but through several centuries, simply by means of this very delicate discrimination and exact outlining of concepts, the capacity for human reflection was developed and impressed upon the culture of the period. It was between the 13th and 15th centuries that humanity had implanted into it through scholasticism the capacity to think with acute and searching logic.

Among those who, in turn, were more imbued with the consciousness soul—that is, the copy of what had constituted the consciousness soul of Jesus of Nazareth—there appeared the special conviction—because the ego functions in the consciousness soul—that the Christ can be found in the ego. And because they themselves had within them the element of the consciousness soul from the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth, the inner Christ rose resplendent in their souls. These are the individuals whom you know as Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, and all the bearers of mediæval mysticism.

Thus you see how the very diversified phases of the astral body were multiplied because the exalted Avatar-Being of Christ had entered into the body of Jesus of Nazareth; and they worked on in the following age and brought about the real development of Christianity. In other respects also this was an important transition. We see how in the course of its development humanity is dependent in other ways also upon having incorporated within it these fragments of the Jesus of Nazareth being. In the early centuries there were people who were entirely dependent upon the physical plane; then in the following centuries came those who were accessible to the interweaving with their etheric bodies of the element of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth. Later people tended more, so to speak, toward the astral body; hence the copy of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth could now likewise be incorporated in them. The astral body is the bearer of the power of judgment, which awakened particularly between the 12th and the 14th centuries. You could observe this from another phenomenon also.

Up to that time it was especially well understood what depths of mystery the Holy Communion contained. At most there was only slight discussion about it, but it was accepted in a manner that enabled one to feel all that lay in the words : This is My body and this is My blood,—because the Christ indicated that He would be united with the earth, would be the planetary Spirit of the Earth. And because the most precious thing coming out of the physical earth is grain, bread became for man the body of Christ; and the sap which flows through the plants became for him something from the blood of Christ. Through this knowledge the value of the Lord's Supper was not diminished, but was on the contrary heightened. Something of these limitless depths was felt in these centuries, up to the time when the power of judgment awakened in the astral body. It was only from then on that disputes began about the Lord's Supper. Just consider how among the Hussites, among the Lutherans and the dissenting Zwinglians and Calvinists, there was discussion as to what the Lord's Supper is intended to be. Such discussion would not have been possible earlier, because there was still a direct knowledge of the Lord's Supper. But we see verified here a great historical law which should be of special importance for spiritual scientists: namely, that as long as people knew what the Lord's Supper was they did not discuss it. In general you can consider it a sign that people really have no knowledge of a certain matter .when they begin to discuss it. Where there is knowledge, knowledge is imparted, and no particular desire for discussion exists. Where there is desire for discussion, there is as a rule no knowledge of the truth. Discussion begins only when there is a lack of knowledge, and it is always and everywhere the sign of a decline as regards the seriousness of a subject when discussion begins. Disintegration of a particular trend is always proclaimed by discussions. It is very important that in the spiritual-scientific field we come to understand more and more that the wish for discussion may really be taken as a sign of ignorance; on the other hand, that which is the opposite of discussion, the will to learn, the will gradually to comprehend what is in question, should be cultivated.

Here we see a great historical fact verified by the development of Christianity itself. But we can learn something else besides, if we see how in these centuries of Christendom just described the power of judgment—which resides in the astral body—this acute intellectual wisdom, is developed. Indeed, if we fix our attention upon realities, not dogmas, we can learn how much Christianity has accomplished in the course of its progress. What has become of scholasticism, if we consider it, not as to its content, but as a means of cultivating and disciplining the faculties? Do you know what became of it? It became modern natural science. Modern natural science is entirely unthinkable without the Christian natural science of the Middle Ages. It is not only that Copernicus was a canon, and Giordano Bruno a Dominican, but that all the thought-forms employed in the natural sciences since the 15th and 16th centuries are nothing but what was developed and nurtured by the scholastic science of the Middle Ages. Those people do not live in reality, but in abstractions, who look up passages in the books of the scholastics, compare them with the statements of more recent natural science, and then say: Haeckel and others maintain something entirely different. Realities are what matter!

A Haeckel, a Darwin, a DuBois-Reymond, a Huxley, and others, would all have been impossible if the Christian scholastic science of the Middle ages had not preceded them. For the very fact that these modern scientists were able to think as they did they owe to the Christianized science of the scholastics of the Middle Ages. That is the reality. By this means humanity has learned to think in the true sense of the word.—The matter goes further still. Read David Friedrich Strauss. Try to observe the mode of his thinking; try to analyze his thought pictures: How he insists upon representing the whole life of Jesus of Nazareth as a myth. Do you know whence he has the keenness of his thinking? He gets it from the Christian scholasticism of the Middle Ages. Everything by means of which Christianity is so radically combated today has been learned from the Christian scholastic science of the Middle Ages. Actually there could not be today an opponent of Christianity concerning whom it could not easily be pointed out that he would not be able to think as he thinks at all, had he not learned the thought-forms from the scholastic science of the Middle Ages. This, indeed, would mean to observe world history in its reality.

What then has happened since the 16th century? Since the 16th century the ego itself has come more and more into prominence, and with it human egotism also, and with egotism, materialism. What the ego had acquired as content has been unlearned and forgotten. It was therefore necessary for man to limit himself to that which the ego can observe—to that which the physical sense-instrument is able to give to the ordinary intelligence—and that alone could it take into the inner sanctuary. The civilization since the 16th century is a civilization of egotism. What must now enter into this ego? Christian evolution has passed through a development in the external physical body, a development in the etheric body, and also in the astral body, and has penetrated as far as the ego. Now it must take into this ego the mysteries and secrets of Christianity itself. Following a time when the ego learned to think through Christianity, and applied the thoughts to the outer world, it must now be possible for the ego to be made into a Christ-receptive organ. This ego must now rediscover the wisdom which is the primordial wisdom of the Great Avatar, of Christ Himself. And by what means must this come to pass? By a profounder understanding of Christianity through spiritual science. Carefully prepared through the three stages of physical, etheric, and astral development, the matter of concern should now be that the organ within man be opened, so that he may henceforth see into his spiritual environment with that eye which the Christ can open for him. As the greatest Avatar-Being, the Christ descended to earth. Let us get a perspective view of this; let us try to look at the world as we shall be able to see it when we shall have received the Christ into ourselves. We then find the whole process of our world-becoming illuminated and pervaded by the Christ-Being. That is to say, we describe how upon Saturn man's physical body gradually came into existence, how on the Sun the etheric body made its appearance, on the Moon the astral body, and then on the Earth the ego is added; and we find how everything tends toward the goal of becoming ever more independent and individual, in order to incorporate in the Earth evolution that wisdom which passes over from the Sun to the Earth. In other words : for the liberated ego of modern times the Christ and Christianity must become the perspective center of the cosmic view.

Thus you see how Christianity gradually prepared itself for what it is to become. In the early centuries the Christian received Christianity with his physical capacity for knowledge; then later with his etheric capacity; and throughout the Middle Ages with his astral capacity for knowledge. Then for a time Christianity in its true form was repressed, until the ego had been trained by the three bodies in the course of Christian development. But since this ego has learned to think and to direct its vision to the objective world, it is now capable also of seeing in all phenomena in this objective world spiritual facts which are intimately connected with the Central Being, with the Christ Being: it is capable of beholding the Christ everywhere in the most various forms as the foundation.

With this fact we stand at the starting point of spiritual-scientific comprehension and knowledge of Christianity. We begin to understand what task, what mission, has been assigned to this Movement for Spiritual Knowledge, and we realize at the same time the reality of this mission. Just as the individual human being has physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego, and gradually rises to ever more lofty heights, so is it also in the historical development of Christianity. We might say that Christianity has also a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, and an ego—an ego which can even deny its origin, as in our time, since the ego can in any case become egotistic—but still an ego which can at the same time receive the true Christ Being into itself, and can gradually rise to ever higher stages of existence. What the human being is in particular, the great world is in its totality, as well as in its course of historical development. If we observe the matter in this light, there opens before us from the spiritual-scientific viewpoint a perspective far into the future. And we know how this can lay hold upon our heart and fill it with meaning. We comprehend more and more what we have to do, and we know also that we are not groping in the dark; for we have not devised any ideas which we intend arbitrarily to project into the future, but we intend to harbor and to follow only those ideas which have been gradually prepared through the centuries. Just as it is true that the ego must first appear and be developed little by little up to Spirit Self, Life Spirit, and Spirit Man, after the physical body, the etheric body, and astral body were already in existence, so is it true that the modern man with his ego-form, with his present-day thinking, could only be developed out of the astral, the etheric, and the physical form of Christianity. Christianity has become Ego. As it is true that this was the development in the past, just so true is it that the ego-form of humanity can appear only after the astral and etheric form of Christianity has been developed. Christianity will develop on into the future; it will offer humanity far greater things, and the Christian development and the Christian standard of life will arise in new form: the transformed astral body will appear as the Christian Spirit Self; the transformed etheric body as the Christian Life Spirit. And in a radiant perspective of the future of Christianity, Spirit Man gleams forth before our souls like a star toward which we strive, illuminated and glowing through and through with the spirit of Christianity.

Automated Translation

When words are to be spoken at the dedication of an Anthroposophical Group, it is of greater importance to make clear the object and the aim of spiritual scientific work than to give important revelations concerning mysteries of the higher worlds. If we wish to visualize the significance of the spiritual scientific world-conception for the human soul, we must cast our eye over many different realms.

Picture to yourselves a person living in the 13th or 14th century! Such a person lived at a time when the art of printing had not yet been invented—an art by means of which such a powerful influence has been exercised upon the human soul in modern times. Picture to yourselves a person living at that time and ask yourselves what took place within his soul when for instance he looked up at the sky. This person whose way of viewing the world was not yet influenced by accumulated knowledge and materialistic learning as is the case with those living to-day, saw space resplendent with the brilliant light of the sun in the day-time, and at night agleam with shimmering stars, and at such a time his soul felt cosmic space to be pervaded by spiritual forces and spiritual beings. He felt them. Through the culture of those times, images of divine-spiritual facts arose within him, and he felt them directly. And so it was also in the spring-time when he saw the plants springing up out of the earth; his soul felt Nature to be illumined and imbued by the forces of divine, spiritual beings.

Such a feeling, such direct experience of the living spiritual forces diminishes the more we approach our present time. This statement is not meant as an adverse criticism of our time, for the diminishing of this feeling has been accompanied by the rise of another way of approaching Nature, by a more intellectual, external way of regarding the world; and it is only right that hereby mankind has gradually gained control ever the forces of Nature, has learned to investigate the world in detail with the aid of the microscope and to follow the stars in their courses through space with the telescope. It is right that in a certain sense men are proud that they are able to increase their mastery of the forces of Nature more and more, but at the same time we must make clear to ourselves that hereby all human impulses have become different.

When a human being looked up to the stars in former times, he said to himself, “I feel something divine and spiritual in the stars”. To-day, however, he only sees them as physical objects, and it is difficult for any one living in our day to picture to himself the divine and the spiritual. Humanity has really lost its understanding of this divine-spiritual vision. In spite of this fact it is true that even to-day there are many souls which are wonderfully stirred by their understanding of that which is divine and spiritual. Oh, the soul thirsts to imagine how space is filled with divine spiritual beings, filled with a spiritual power, and it feels the need of learning to know this power. Now the materialistic development here described has come to such a pass that just the most earnest and most ardent seekers after truth have gradually begun to think of late that it can be only a childish point of view to feel something divine in the world, and that mankind has now matured far enough to do away with such antiquated ideas. Even our school-children have to experience a discord which leads to the profoundest consequences in life. On the one hand the child is given lessons in natural science in a purely materialistic way, on the other, lessons in religion. Between them there is no bridge, no connecting link. What is the result in later life? We can say that the whole of humanity is divided into two camps, according to the consequences arising from this discord. On one hand there are those who have become indifferent and no longer care about anything, and on the other hand those who take things tragically, who brood, but still do not gain clear insight, and at last despair of solving the riddles of life. Thinking humanity is really divided into these two camps. Perhaps it is, in the end, only the simple souls who have kept a certain feeling for the spiritual. He who does not regard everything from the outside only, knows that just in the middle of the 19th century the danger that humanity would sink completely into materialistic life was at its greatest. The whole disposition and frame of mind of man tended towards materialistic feeling and experience. Therein lay a dreadful danger for humanity. Do you know what would have happened if spiritual science had not intervened? Man's manner of thinking would have become submerged ever deeper in the materialistic element; the forms of thought would have become gradually harder and more rigid; their outlines would have become ever sharper and more unalterable, instead of adapting themselves in constant active flow. No one would have been able to feel for anyone else, or sympathise with anyone else; but everyone would have felt that he alone was in the right and would have despised and hated all those that [who] thought or felt differently. Quite rigid in form, devoid of all love, our thinking would have become; and the spirit would finally have been pushed back so far into the background that all contact with it would have been made forever impossible, and the way into the spiritual world have been lost. The earth would have become a moon. For this reason, those who have insight into the higher spiritual worlds have brought spiritual science to mankind.

But from what sources does the science flow which is destined to save humanity from this great danger?

Precisely on a day like this, when a newly-founded Group is to be dedicated, it is indeed appropriate to speak about these things.

These sources are still concealed to most people, but gradually they will be revealed more and more. And from out these sources spiritual science was created. Now what does spiritual science say? It speaks of many things which the ordinary human being, with his ordinary senses, does not perceive. It says, for instance, that man does not only consist of the externally visible body, but that he has a fourfold nature. Besides the visible body he has also a life, or etheric body, not visible for ordinary man, a sentient or astral body, and, as a fourth member, he possesses the Ego, which passes from incarnation to incarnation, in order, throughout a long period of time, to complete its course of evolution. And spiritual science tells us still more. It tells us, for example, that the earth itself also goes through an evolution from one incarnation to the other, an evolution of a cosmic nature. It shows us further how the sun and the planets play the most important parts in this process of evolution, and how the existence and development of all these celestial bodies are connected with the existence of spiritual beings.

But what then is all this? Where are the sources of these truths? They come from the initiates. And who are the initiates? They are those whose spiritual eyes have been opened, and who can therefore speak of the spiritual world because they know this world. They are like those who can see among the blind. Fichte has already alluded to this relationship, and in truth for him “who can see”, spiritual things are just as real as the physical ones,—yes, even more real, for the latter are for him only an outward expression of the former.

It is true that when the seer speaks of the etheric body, the sentient body, etc., and of other revelations of a spiritual nature, many people will say that he is a dreamer and a fantast and takes theories and mere hypotheses for realities. The seer understands perfectly that those who do not see should raise such objections. Among a group of physically blind people we may speak as much and as exactly as we please about colours and light, yet for the blind this remains mere theory; and one who can see physically will be unable to disclose the concept, the actual reality-laden, concept, of colour and light to one who is physically blind. For to grasp this concept, the blind would have to be able to see for themselves; and only when a blind person has undergone a successful operation can the world of light dawn upon him.

Let us try to picture this relationship in still another way. Let us imagine that we had a large receptacle full of water before us, and let us suppose that there were a person who could neither see nor feel water with his senses, nor perceive it in any way. For this person the receptacle would be empty. Now let us suppose further that, in some way, cold currents could be made to pass through the water, causing it to freeze. At first ice-crystals, like needles, would form here and there, and as they continued to form they would accumulate into large clumps. But as ice is a solid substance, this person, who is unable to perceive water, would nevertheless be able to perceive the particles of ice as they formed. And what is it that he now perceives? He perceives that ice is forming. But out of what does it seem to him to be forming? Out of nothing!

This is the situation in which the initiate finds himself in his relation to other men. Where they see nothing, he sees. But now people say, “How can I believe that which I cannot verify for myself? And inasmuch as I cannot do so, what object is there in occupying myself with such things or in entering into them at all?” In this respect it is especially the dogmatists of monistic philosophy who make the following demands—firstly, that everything be admitted which they themselves assert, and secondly, that no one may know more than they know themselves. They set themselves up as infallible and as able to determine the limits of knowledge.

The true initiate will never deny the facts found by scientific investigation, but will whole-heartedly acknowledge the truths and merits of science. He must refuse, however, to admit that the scientific dogmatist is capable of determining the limits of knowledge. The scientist is proud of understanding, in contrast to believing. But if it is here a question of believing and not believing, and the scientist is of the opinion that belief plays no part in the results of his researches, he is mistaken. It is simply impossible to investigate or to teach anything without believing. Consider, for example, the cellular theory. In books we have very fine representations of cells, the division of the cells, the life of the cells, and so forth, clear and exact in every detail. But who among us has ever really seen this for himself with such distinctness? We all simply believe that it is so. Even the university professors, who teach these things, have in the rarest cases seen all this with their own eyes, and yet they lecture on it. They have not been able to see it for themselves, because things of this kind are both so difficult and so rarely possible to observe that only a few single individuals have succeeded in seeing them, and also because in reality they are by no means so clear and distinct as they appear in the pictures. Let us also consider embryology, for instance. Scientists believe that they know exactly how the embryo looks at every moment throughout pregnancy. But how extremely seldom is a scientist in the position, perhaps through a sudden case of death occurring at a particular moment of pregnancy, to have insight into these things! How many of these scientists have never seen the things which they teach! But until he is able to see for himself, the scientist is obliged to believe, and the others with him. Yet he demands of spiritual science that no one shall believe, and that no one shall know more than himself.

The essential character of the initiate lies in the fact that he is able to see into the spiritual world. For him the sources are spiritual scientific knowledge.

Yes, but of what use is this to those who do not possess this knowledge? A comparison will show us this.

Look for a moment at this stove! And now imagine that someone were to stand before this stove and say to it: “Thou stove, thou hast been created to spread warmth! Bethink thee of thy mission and warm this room!” Would it do so? Would these words have any effect? No, the stove would not stir. But if instead of speaking, we get wood and coal and light the fire, then it will fulfill its mission.

So it is with the communications of spiritual-scientific truths. They are fuel for the human soul. For thousands of years morality has been preached and people have been told, “Be good and love one another”. But do they really then do so? Do not matters look rather sad in spite of all Christian doctrines? In a town in southern Germany, a preacher once said to me, “I can make no objection whatever to all that you say of the Gospels, but what is the use of founding little conventicles for spiritual science here and there, when the church carries on practical education on a large scale?” Yes, if this preacher were right, then it would indeed be of no use. But he is not right, for if the church really performed its task in full measure, from whence do so many evil deeds still continually arise? And does everyone really go to church? In truth the church does not teach practical morality, but “stove morality”. In our day there are no longer many people who grow better simply upon urgent request. And indeed it is just the most able and gifted people who have turned away from the church. And were this to go on, the adherents of the church would become scarcer and scarcer, and materialism would become greater and greater, until one day not very much would be left of the church. And this is just the reason why spiritual science has come; it has become necessary, in order to supply the “fuel”! It is itself fuel in this sense, for the simple communication of truths from out the spiritual world animates and furthers the spiritual development of the individual, helping it forward not only in the sphere of morals, but also in spiritual vision.

Even among students of spiritual science there are those who are of the opinion that we need only be good and noble and strive to attain perfection, and then in the end our spiritual eyes will open of their own accord. At the same time they think that the communication of higher truths is of no great significance, and that we should only wait till we can see for ourselves, till the veil is of itself withdrawn from before our eyes. Those who think in this way are mistaken. They fail to recognise the character of these communications which act as fuel. The essential point it to stimulate active inner motion within the soul which would not come about in any other way, nor develop of its own accord.

But what is it that can shine forth within man, that will indeed shine forth within him, if he understands and pursues his development aright, which is the task of spiritual science? To explain this we shall have to go far back in history.

We must go back as far as the ancient Indian culture, which we call the age of the Seven Rishis. These Seven Rishis were the initiates of this age and guided the development of humanity. When, out of their spiritual vision, they bore witness of the highest mysteries, they said, “High above all that exists there is a Cause, a Being, which we call Vishva-Karman. We can neither know nor fathom it, it can only be divined. It lies too distant, as it were, to be known by us. Later on however, long after our time, it will draw nearer to humanity.”

Then in a much later period another initiate spoke about this Being. It was Zarathustra; not the historical Zarathustra, but one who preceded him. When he spoke to the people in his old, holy Persian language, the splendour of which can scarcely be described to-day, he said, “I see the Highest Being in the sun, round about the sun. It is, indeed, in the atmosphere of the sun.” And that is why he called it Ahura Mazdao—the great Aura—in contrast to man, the small aura. In the great Aura he saw an image or a model for the small aura, man. Ahura Mazdao is the same as Ormuzd. And Zarathustra taught that in days to come Ahura Mazdao would manifest himself in man. This was what he foresaw. But he saw also that there are forces in man which hold him back and prevent the manifestation of the Highest Being within him. These forces he called Ahriman—the Evil.

Still later, in another period, we again meet with a great initiate. Knowledge had, we might say, drawn still closer to him. In the case of the Rishis the Highest Being was concealed within universal space, as it were, immensely tar away. For Zarathustra it had approached as far as the sun. But for Moses knowledge was already close enough to be actually grasped. In the burning thorn-bush which spoke to Moses, the Aura had become part of the earthly elements. Moses knew that the Highest Being was present in the earth. For the initiate, this Being had descended first to the sun and then to the earth. Here it now lived within the elements. And when Moses asked this Being what he was to tell the people, the answer was—“I am the I am, Jahve.” With these words it becomes clear that this Being has come in order to unfold its life more and more within the human Ego. This was, however, not yet the case at that time. Man had not yet brought to birth a consciousness of the Highest Being within his inmost self. Moses, however, knew that this would come to pass.

And later still another man appears upon whom spiritual vision was bestowed, namely, Paul. He knew that this Highest Being was embodied in Jesus Christ. But he could not believe, could not comprehend, that this Being had to die upon the cross. Then he was initiated. That this was possible was due to the peculiar circumstance that he had been born too early. One who is born prematurely, a child that has not been carried in the womb for nine months, has not descended quite so far into the world of matter. For this reason it will be easier for such a person to attain insight into the spiritual world. And when Paul became clairvoyant, he saw that the Highest Being lived in Christ. Now it had actually come to life in man. Therefore Christ said at the Last. Supper—The bread is My body, the wine is My blood. Bread—earth; wine, or the juice of the plant—Spirit.

I wanted to lead you thus far to-day, so that you might feel what it signifies that such a Being has approached the earth, has descended into the earth. And this is what took place at Golgotha.

Did this Being really stream out over the earth at Golgotha? In order to answer this let us examine and compare a time 600 years before the birth of Christ, let us say, with a time 600 years after the birth of Christ. What has happened here—wherein does the difference consist?

600 years before Christ, Buddha lived. He lived in a king's palace. Then he went out into the world and learned to know old age, sickness, poverty, death, and the corpse. He saw that the whole life of man is suffering. Old age is suffering, sickness is suffering, poverty is suffering, birth is suffering, death is suffering, to be parted from those whom we love is suffering; in short, the whole of existence is suffering. So he said to himself, and taught the people, that they must lose, must learn to forget, their craving for existence. Here we have the hopeless renunciation of all creation

But 600 years later came the Mystery of Golgotha. As a symbol we see a cross erected, and upon the cross a human corpse. And the people look up to the corpse and are filled with a sense that all suffering can be healed. Herein lies a great difference. In death human beings no longer see the token of suffering, but the token of the healing of suffering. They can become victors over all that their life here on earth brings them. And this means that a fruit will be carried over into the other life.

If man now understands that birth and life are not suffering, but afford the possibility of emerging from it, inasmuch as life gives him the opportunity to develop the Spiritual which leads out beyond all suffering—if man understands this, old age is no longer suffering, but a drawing nearer to the fruit of life. Death is no longer suffering, but redemption; not to be united with those he loves is no longer suffering, if he has united himself with the Christ-Being, the Being of infinite Love, and thus envelops with his love all beings and all worlds.

All this was felt 600 years after Christ, and since that time it has been possible for man to feel united with the Christ, the Spirit of the Sun, Who is also the Spirit of the Earth—Who, even as he permeates the earth, permeates also each one of us, and calls forth mildness, warmth and love within our souls—Who awakens infinite love and transforms the earth.

Because spiritual science, in communicating spiritual truths, does not teach morals, but gives a basis for practical morality, it will build a bridge leading into the spiritual world for the man of to-day. It may well be that those who stand at the apex of our present culture, the leading personalities in industry and learning, those who have the greatest influence, will smile at these small conventicles of spiritual science, and also at all that is investigated here. But let them think what they like! At one time there was also a mighty world of Roman culture—that ancient, imperial Rome, the ruins of which we still admire. In the ancient gigantic Coliseum incense was burned to drown the smell of flesh which arose where the Christians had been torn to pieces by wild beasts. That was ancient Rome, above, in the daylight. And below? Let us descend into the catacombs! There we find the first followers of Christianity, of the Mystery of Golgotha, persecuted and despised. There below, hidden away, they worship Christ; there they perform their symbolic rituals. Down there the first Christian communities are founded. Although small in number and despised, they never doubt. Down below a little flock, despised and outcast; up above, a mighty throng who have great influence. Yet a few centuries later ancient Rome has disappeared; and those who were there below, in the under-world, have ascended. In the same way spiritual science will ascend in a few centuries, will rise above industry, learning, and the various concerns of humanity to-day. Yet if, in your little conventicles, you compare yourselves with those of subterranean Rome, do so, not with a feeling of pride, but with humility. And if you picture to yourselves how the brilliant science of our present day will melt away before spiritual science, then picture this to yourselves in humility only. If you take this feeling with you and carry it with you from this hour, so that it always remains alive within your souls, you will help to spread universal human love, and you will enter into a new culture.

I call upon all the good spiritual forces that they may watch over this newly-founded Group, and may help you to attain your goal and facilitate your work.

[ 1 ] This course of lectures will take us into the high spiritual regions we shall be led from the earth, where we live, not only into the wide physical spaces of our universe, but also be uplifted to those spiritual worlds, from which this whole physical universe has derived its origin.

Such a course will show us, that the fundamental object of all knowledge and all wisdom is to solve the greatest problem of all — the problem of humanity. In order to make the human being understandable, explanatory facts have to be brought from far away. Above all it is necessary that those who wish to follow this course should be acquainted with the fundamental conceptions of Anthroposophy; although it is true that all Anthroposophists are acquainted with them in a general way. In these lectures we may rise in spirit to very exalted spheres, but we shall always endeavour to bring those facts which lie so far afield near to you and make them as comprehensible as possible.

[ 2 ] When we have to speak of what we call the Spiritual Hierarchies, it means that our souls' gaze must rise to those beings who, in the sphere of our earth, have a higher existence than man. In the visible world we can only progress to beings that represent four degrees of one hierarchy, i.e., the mineral world, the plant world, the animal world and the human world. Above man begins a world of invisible beings, through the knowledge of the super-sensible world, and man is able (as far as it is possible for him) to rise a certain distance towards those beings and powers, which are the continuation in the invisible world of the four grades found within the realm of the earth. The knowledge and investigation which lead us into those regions has not, as you all know, come into existence only at our present time in evolution. There is what we may call a primeval world-wisdom; — all that man can fathom, all that he can know and realise, all that he has gained in ideas and conceptions, all that he has attained through clairvoyant imagination, inspiration, and intuition, — all has been lived before, and known before, by those Beings who are higher than he. He only follows so to say, in their track. To make use of a trivial example: the watchmaker has first the idea, then he makes the watch according to the idea. A watch is made after the maker's ideas which preceded the watch; afterwards everyone can study and observe for himself from what ideas the watch was made, he can follow up the thoughts of the watchmaker. At the present point of evolution it is indeed only this kind of connection that man can have with primeval world-wisdom and with the spiritual beings that stand above him. Spiritual beings had first those imaginations, inspirations, intuitions, those ideas and thoughts according to which the world, as we see it, was formed. Man finds these thoughts and ideas in the world again; when he rises to clairvoyant vision, he finds the imaginations, inspirations, and intuitions, by the help of which he can penetrate into the world of those spiritual beings. We can, therefore, say that before our world came into being there already existed the wisdom of which we are going to speak: it is the Plan of the World.

[ 3 ] How far must we go back, while still remaining within the limits of reality, if we want to come into touch with that primeval world-wisdom? Must we go back to some time or other in the historical past, when some great teacher was teaching? We can certainly learn a great deal if we do; but to come into touch with true primeval world-wisdom we must go back to the time when there was no outwardly visible earth, when no world visible to the outer senses was as yet in existence. It was from out [of] that wisdom itself that the world came forth. But this wisdom, out of which spiritual beings formed our world, was imparted to man later. Man with his thoughts could see behind those thoughts, could realise the thoughts according to which spiritual beings have built the world. After this primeval wisdom, this wisdom of the creators of the world had worked through many forms, it appeared in a form known to many of you: after the great Atlantean period it appeared in those ancient, holy Rishis, the great teachers of India, during our first epoch of civilisation. [ 4 ] With these sublime Rishis the primeval wisdom expressed itself in a form which the man of the present day can but little understand. The human capacities of feeling and thinking have greatly changed since the times when the great teachers of India taught man in the first epoch of civilisation after Atlantis; and if the words which came from the Rishis were simply repeated as they were said, there would be hardly one soul in the whole earth who could hear anything more in them nowadays than just words and again words. One has need of other capabilities of feeling than those at present existing, in order to understand the wisdom which was given to humanity in the first epoch after Atlantis. For all that is found in the best books regarding primeval world-wisdom, is but a faint echo of what this really is which in many ways is but a deceptive, obscured wisdom. However grand and sublime the Vedas appear to us, however beautiful the songs of Zarathustra sound, and however magnificent the language in which the ancient wisdom of Egypt speaks, so that we can never sufficiently admire it; still, all that has been written down gives us but a dim, dull reflection of the wisdom of Hermes, of the grand teaching of Zarathustra, or of the sublime knowledge which the Ancient Rishis proclaimed. This sublime wisdom has been preserved and guarded for humanity; it was always to be found in certain very limited circles of people who watched over what is called the knowledge of the Mysteries. In the Mysteries of India, Persia, Chaldea, Egypt, and in the Christian Mysteries, all the primeval wisdom of humanity has been safely preserved up to our times. Up to a short time ago it was only in those narrow circles, that not book-wisdom, but living wisdom, could be found. For certain reasons which will be made clear in this course of lectures, our time has been chosen for extending to larger masses of people that which has been kept alive by those little groups. The original wisdom of the Rishis, for instance, has never lost life. It permeated, like the fountain of youth, the age which we regard as the beginning of our era. The very holy wisdom which the Rishis gave to man was continued through Zarathustra and his pupils, through the Chaldean and Egyptian teachers. It also flowed in the words of Moses, and it came forth again with. an altogether new impulse, as from the fountain of life, with the appearance of the Christ upon earth. It then became so deep, so intrinsically internal, that it could only gradually flow again into humanity. Thus we see that since the outward declaration of Christianity, the primeval world wisdom has penetrated but slowly and gradually into humanity from most elementary beginnings. [ 5 ] Its messages are there, they are to be found in the Gospels and in other Christian writings which include the wisdom of the holy Rishis, in a new form; like a new birth out of a new fountain. But how could these messages be understood at the beginning of the era for whose purification Christianity had been created? Through the Gospels it was least of all understood; they only attained very gradually to further comprehension and in many ways to a still further obscuration, and to-day the Gospels are, in truth, the most sealed of all books for the larger part of humanity — books which will only be first understood by a future age which will have refreshed itself at the source of the original world-wisdom. But the treasures hidden in the Christian revelation have been preserved, treasures no other than those of the Eastern wisdom, but renewed by means of fresh forces They have been guarded in narrow circles which were the continuation of Mystery Societies, like the Brotherhood of the Holy Grail, and finally in the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross. These treasures of truth have been kept well hidden and have been accessible only to those who through severe trials had prepared themselves for the living wisdom. Thus the treasures of the Eastern and Western wisdom, through all the centuries of evolution from the beginning of our era, were made almost inaccessible to the larger mass of humanity.

[ 1 ] Only a little trickled through here and there to the outer world: the most part remained a secret of the new Mysteries. [ 6 ] Then came a time when some of the contents of primeval wisdom, treasured in narrow circles, was allowed to be given out to larger masses of humanity in a language comprehensible to them. Since the last third of the nineteenth century or thereabouts one can speak of this world wisdom in a more or less unveiled form. It is only because certain things have taken place in the spiritual worlds that the Guardians of the Mysteries received permission to allow some of the ancient wisdom to penetrate to the outer world. All of you, my dear friends, know the course of development of the Anthroposophical Society. You know how the ice in which its development was bound was, so to say, broken by those words of wisdom, revealed in a way which I am not going to enter into now — the stanzas of Dzyan. Those stanzas of Dzyan, of the secret teaching, contain in truth some of the deepest and most important wisdom; they have in them much of that which coming from the teaching of the holy Rishis has flowed through the sanctuaries of the East. They contain also much of what has streamed into Western Europe since the Christian rejuvenation. For the stanzas of Dzyan do not include only the wisdom which had to be kept exclusively for the East, but also a great deal of that which streamed as a clear light through the centuries of our time, through the Middle Ages into the Mystery Schools of the West. Much that is to be found in the stanzas of Dzyan will only be gradually understood in all its depth. It may well be said here that the wisdom of the stanzas of Dzyan is of such a kind that it cannot yet be understood in the widest anthroposophical circles, or fathomed with the exoteric capabilities of the present day.

[ 7 ] After the first ice had been broken in this way, the time came when one could speak more openly from the sources of Western occultism, which is no other than the occultism of the East transplanted and continued in a way that has adapted itself to new circumstances and conditions of physical and spiritual life.

The time has come when one can speak from those ever living sources of occultism which have been faithfully treasured in the Mysteries of the Rosy Cross. There is no wisdom of the East which has not streamed into Western occultism and into the teaching and investigations of the Rosy Cross; in them is to be found absolutely all that the great teachers of the East ever had in their keeping. Nothing, nothing whatever of that which is to be found in the Eastern wisdom is lacking in the wisdom of the West. The only difference — if it can be called a difference — is that Western occultism has to include the whole of the Eastern wisdom and teaching and, without losing anything, to blend it with the light which has been kindled in humanity through the Christ Impulse. When one speaks of Western occultism, of that which has its derivation from the hidden Western Rishis (whom certainly no eye hath seen) it is impossible to say that in it is wanting one single iota, one single shred of the Eastern wisdom. Only it had all to be brought forth again fresh and new from the fountain-head of the Christ Impulse. All the great treasures of wisdom which were first revealed by the holy Rishis regarding superhuman worlds and super-sensible existence, resound in the description we have to give of the spiritual hierarchies and their reflection in the physical world. Just as the geometry of Euclid has not become something different from what it used to be, because one teaches and learns it with new human capabilities, just as little has the wisdom of the holy Rishis changed because we learn and teach it with the new capabilities which have been kindled in us by the Christ Impulse. Therefore much of what we have to say about the spiritual worlds can be called Eastern wisdom. There must not be any misunderstanding in these things — and misunderstandings happen so easily. [ 8 ] Those who will not free themselves of a misconception, in order to come to understanding, can very easily misinterpret what, for instance, was said yesterday at the Easter lecture. They might assert about the so-called truths of Buddha, that I had said that the Buddha had taught and revealed the truths about life and life's pain as follows: ‘birth is pain, illness is pain, old age is pain, death is pain; to be separated from those one loves is pain, not to be united with what one loves is pain, not to have what one desires is pain’ and that I said: ‘Let us look at those who, in the times after Christ, really understood the Christ Impulse; for all the holy truths of the Buddha about the pain of life have no more their full importance; something has been created by the Christ Impulse that is like a cure for the pain of life.’ The Buddha taught: ‘Birth is pain’; but those who understood the Christ would answer that through birth we enter into a life shared with the Christ, and through the Christ's share in it the pain of life will be extinguished. Illness will also be extinguished through the healing power of the Christ Impulse, and there is no more pain in illness for one who understands Christ, and death also has no more pain for him who understands Christ. Yet someone might reply to this ‘Yes, but I could point to the Gospels to show that also there you will find it said that illness is pain, life is pain’: and one might superficially come to the conclusion: ‘We have those modern religious documents, but what they contain can also be found in Buddhism, therefore religions are not making progress, there is no evolution in them. All religions say the same things, but you have spoken of a progress, you expounded to us how, with the help of Christianity, the old truths of Buddhism would not be true any more.’ If anyone were to say this he would be guilty of a very serious misunderstanding. For that was not said: everything indeed was said with the exception of the last sentence. It is very important that this very subtle question should be rightly understood. A fanatic can never understand with precision, but a man who is objective can. [ 9 ] No one who speaks with knowledge of Rosicrucian wisdom will ever expound anything that would be against any of the writings of the great Buddha, or say that anything in them is untrue. Every man who speaks from the sources of Rosicrucian wisdom shares the conviction of Buddha, no one denies it. ‘Yes,’ such a man says, ‘what thou, great Buddha, through thy inner illumination, hast seen of the great truths about pain and life is exactly true, it is true to its last iota.’ Nothing, absolutely nothing will be taken away from it. All of it remains as it was. And it is just because all of it remains as it was, because all is true of what the Buddha said about the pain of life, of illness, of old age and of death, just because of this, the Christ Impulse is such a powerful and important saving help to us, for it is just this which lifts the pain, because it is true that pain would be there, if the world could not be lifted beyond and above it through that great Impulse. Why could the Christ work effectively? Because the Buddha had spoken the truth. Humanity had to be brought down out of the spiritual heights where the primeval world wisdom is active in its purest form; man had to be led to independence, through physical existence with which life's pain and illness are bound up, and the great healing help had to oppose those unavoidable facts in the course of further evolution. Does that man deny the reality of facts who, while declaring that these realities exist, holds at the same time that remedy has been given us by which the facts, about which those truths have been said, can be brought to a salutary development; does he who says this deny any existing reality? Oh! in those heights of existence where we must look for the spheres of the spiritual hierarchies — there Buddhism is not opposed to Christianity, nor Christianity to Buddhism; there the Buddha gives his hand to the Christ, and the Christ to the Buddha. But every misconception regarding human evolution, every misconception as to its ascending development, is a misconception also of that spiritual act in our earthly evolution which is the Act of Christ.

Thus nothing is denied. of the wisdom of the East, the wisdom which has brought down to us the teaching of the holy Rishis, and with it the primeval world-wisdom, which through such long epochs of time has ever been streaming into humanity. But, all through those very long epochs, large masses of humanity could not penetrate to the sources of that wisdom, could only understand it with great difficulty; it was precisely the understanding of it which came with such difficulty. [ 10 ] In ancient Atlantean times, before the great catastrophe, when the masses of humanity were still clairvoyant with the thin ancient clairvoyance, they beheld something quite different when they looked upwards to the spaces of heaven, to the spiritual hierarchies, from what they saw in the times after Atlantis when the larger part of humanity had lost its clairvoyance and so could gaze only with its physical eyes into the physical distances of the heavens. Therefore, in the times before the Atlantean catastrophe, it would have been quite senseless to speak to them of the heavenly bodies spread out in space as they are to-day. The clairvoyant human eye gazed into heavenly distance and saw the spiritual worlds. In those times there would have been no sense in speaking of Mercury or of Neptune or of Saturn, etc., as our astronomy speaks. The way astronomy speaks of the spaces of the world and what they contain is merely a reflection of what is seen by our own physical sight when it looks into depths of the sky. This did not exist for the ancient clairvoyant humanity of Atlantis; when they looked upwards, they did not see physically-limited stars, what the physical eye sees to-day is but the outer physical expression of the spiritual realities which people then beheld. When looking to-day with one's physical eye through a telescope at the place where Jupiter is, one perceives a physical globe surrounded by moons. What was seen by the man of Atlantis when he lifted his clairvoyant gaze to that same point which we look at to-day with our physical eyes? The Atlantean's eyes would have seen as little of what our sight sees to-day, as we should if we looked at a light through a thick autumn fog. The eye of the Atlantean would not have seen the physical star Jupiter, but he would have seen that which is also united with Jupiter to-day, which the man of the present day does not see: the aura of Jupiter, a totality of spiritual beings, of which the physical Jupiter is only the external expression. Thus did the gaze of man, before the Atlantean catastrophe, sweep round the spaces of the world seeing everywhere its spiritual content. He could speak only of the spiritual, for it would have had no meaning to speak of physical stars, when the physical eye was not yet opened as it is to-day. Looking into the spaces of the universe man saw spiritual beings — the spiritual hierarchies. He actually saw beings. [ 11 ] We can compare the changes that took place with further evolution in this way: let us suppose that we are going out into a thick fog; we do not see separate lights, everything is surrounded by aura or fog. The fog lifts and disperses, the separate lights are visible, but their aura becomes invisible ... This is only a physical process which must serve for an example. But the ancient eye saw the aura of Jupiter, it saw spiritual beings in that aura which at certain points of their evolution were united to Jupiter. Humanity then developed further, to the attainment of physical sight. The aura remained: men could no longer see it, but the physical body in the centre became ever clearer and clearer, spiritually it was lost to sight as its corporeal part became visible. But the knowledge of the spiritual, the knowledge of the beings surrounding the star was kept and guarded in the holy Mysteries.

All the holy Rishis speak of that knowledge. In the times when men already saw only in a physical way, the Rishis spoke to them of the spiritual atmospheres, of the spiritual inhabitants of those spheres which are spread out in the spaces of the world.

[ 12 ] Consider what the situation then was. In the centres of knowledge, spiritual beings were spoken of which surround the spheres of the universe. Outside where the physical eye was growing always sharper, physical matter was spoken of more and more. When the Ancient Rishis said the word Mercury (they did not use that word, but we take it as an example), did they mean by it the physical orb of that name? No! — even the ancient Greeks did not use it in that sense; what they meant was the totality of spiritual beings belonging to that planet. Spiritual world and spiritual beings were spoken of when, in the centres of secret knowledge for instance, the word Mercury was pronounced. When the disciples of that sacred knowledge spoke of the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn pronouncing these words in their different languages, they expressed the gradations of spiritual beings. When those names are used to-day, only the coarsest part is meant of that which was originally understood by Moon, Mercury, Venus. The principal part is just what is omitted to-day; the ancient teacher of wisdom said the word Moon and with that word he evoked the idea of a great spiritual world. When he, pronouncing the word ‘Moon’, pointed to the place in heaven where the moon was, he felt in his consciousness that it was the lowest stage of the spiritual hierarchies, but the man to whom he was showing it, who was getting ever further from that spiritual sight because humanity was growing more and more physical, saw only the physical moon, and called it ‘Moon.’

One single word for two things which, though they certainly belong to each other, call forth quite different ideas in man. It was the same when the sages of the sacred knowledge pointed to Mercury, Sun, or Mars. [ 13 ] Thus we see that the two currents grew always further apart in humanity, the spiritual one describing something quite different from the material current. In the sacred Mysteries these words — which later became the mere names of physical planets — were always understood as descriptions of spiritual worlds and gradations of spiritual realms. The outer world always understood it materially up to the time of modern Mythology — I use the word purposely — which is called Astronomy. And as Anthroposophy has recognised the full worth of all the other Mythologies, it has also, as you will understand, given full value to that Mythology which is called modern Astronomy, which sees only space and in it, the physical world-spheres as physical orbs. But to him who knows, modern Mythology is only a special phase of all Mythologies. What the ancient inhabitants of Europe said in their myths about gods and stars, what the Romans gave in their Mythologies, and what appeared as the obscured Mythology of the Middle Ages, lead up in a straight line to the wonderful and admirable discoveries of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo. A future will come when modern Mythology will be spoken of somewhat in this way: ‘There was a time when people found it right to place a material sun as the middle point of an ellipse and let the planets rotate within it, and spin round themselves on their own axes in different ways; they arranged a world system in that way, as people of earlier times also did. To-day’ — so will that future age think — ‘all that is only legend and fairy tale.’ Yes, that future age will come, although the man of the present who laughs at former Mythologies thinks it impossible that one could ever speak of Copernican Mythology. But this consideration will make clear to us how through the same words something ever more different may be meant. In spite of this the true primeval wisdom has always been cultivated and has always continued; it has however always been less understood exoterically and its spiritual side less seen, the more it has been materially explained.

In the beginning of our era, when there was a rejuvenescence of primeval wisdom, (in order that humanity should not lose all touch with that ancient wisdom), it was said. in sharp, clear words, that when man looks at the outer space of the world and his physical eye sees only what is physical, the space is filled with spirit. It was the most intimate pupil of St. Paul, Dionysius the Areopagite, who said in clear-cut words: ‘There is not only matter out there in space; there is, for the soul which rises consciously into the spaces of universal existence, the spiritual part which stands above man in the evolution of existence.’ And he used words which sounded different from the old ones, for if he had used the old words everybody would have understood them in the material sense. The Rishis spoke of the spiritual hierarchies, they expressed in their language what the Greek and Roman wisdom still described when speaking of the ascending scale of worlds: of the Moon, of Mercury, Mars and Venus, Jupiter and Saturn. Dionysius, the pupil of the Apostle Paul had the same worlds in his mind as the Rishis, he repeated in clear cut words that here one had to do with spiritual realms, and he used words which he could be certain would be understood in their spiritual sense: he spoke of Angels, Archangels, Archai, Powers, Mights, Dominions, Thrones, Cherubim, and Seraphim. For now humanity had completely forgot what it once knew. Had it still been able to understand the connection between what Dionysius and the Rishis had seen, it would have grasped, while hearing on the one side of the Moon, and on the other side of the Mysteries of the Angels, that these were one and the same thing. It would have heard the word Mercury on the one hand and Archangel on the other, and would have known they were the same. The word ‘Archai’ spoken by the one, and ‘Venus’ by the other, were the same. And men. would have understood that with the words ‘Sun’ and ‘Powers’ the same worlds were meant. With the name ‘Mars’ they would have felt that they had to rise to the Mights (Dynamis). When they heard Jupiter mentioned, they would have known that it was the same as when in the school of Dionysius, Dominions were described. Saturn corresponds to ‘Thrones’; [ 14 ] but in wider circles this was not known any more, it could not be known. Thus there was on the one side a science of matter, which became ever more material, and the old names which once signified spiritual forces, were now used in a material sense. And on the other side, there was a spiritual life which spoke of Angels and Archangels, etc. which had lost its connection with the physical designations of these spiritual beings.

Thus we see how the primeval wisdom enters through Dionysius into the school which Paul had inaugurated, and how this new inauguration had to be penetrated by the ancient spirit. It is the task of modern Spiritual Science, or anthroposophy to form once more the bond which must unite the physical to the spiritual, the bond between the earth and the spiritual hierarchies. It is impossible for those who do not know where their ideas about the outer world of the senses come from, to realise the other, the spiritual side of knowledge. [ 15 ] This will be particularly noticeable when we have to deal with those writings which, although they are but a faint echo of the primeval cosmic wisdom, can still be understood in the light of that wisdom.

Let me show you an example of the difficulty there is in understanding writings which come down to us from that primeval wisdom. It is an example out of the Song Celestial, the Bhagavad Gita, where a sentence throws a very significant light on the connection between human life and the hierarchies. It is the following: (8th Chap. beginning with 23rd verse) ‘I will explain unto thee, oh man seeking for truth’ (it is thus generally translated) ‘under what circumstances those who know the Eternal leave the earth through the gate of death, to be later reborn or not. I will tell thee: Behold the fire, behold the day, behold the time of the waning moon, behold the half year when the sun is high — those who die at that time, who die in fire, in the day, in the time of the waxing moon, those enter through the gates of death into Brahma, but those who die in the sign of the smoke, in the night, when the moon is waning, in the half year when the sun stands low, these when they leave the world and pass through the gates of death enter only into the light of the moon, and return again to the world.’ [ 16 ] Here you have, my dear anthroposophical friends, a sentence from the Bhagavad Gita, in which it says that the condition of man's progress and of his reincarnation depends on whether he dies in the sign of the light, by day, with the waxing moon, during the half year when the sun stands high, or whether he dies in the sign of the smoke, by night, when the moon wanes and when the sun is low. It is said that this refers to the material sun. Of those who die in the sign of the fire by day, with the moon waxing, and during that half of the year when the sun is high, it is said that they do not need to return. Those who die in the sign of the smoke, by night, with the moon waning, and when the sun is low, must return into the world. This sentence out of the divine song of the East presents the greatest difficulty to all those who want to explain it within the limits of exoteric life. It can be explained only when it is illuminated by the light of spiritual knowledge, by the light in which it was received and written, the light which streams out of the Mystery schools, which can be increased. which has known its rejuvenescence through Christianity and which shows us how to find the link which binds the names Moon to Angels, Mercury to Archangels, Venus to the Archai and so on. With its help we shall find the key to such sentences as the one we gave as an example. Our course of studies will start from the explanation of this sentence in the Bhagavad Gita, a thing which is impossible in exoteric life; and after we have found the key to it, we shall pass on to further explanations of the spiritual hierarchies.

[ 1 ] The teaching which came from the holy Rishis, during the first post-Atlantean period of civilisation was a knowledge that sprang from purely spiritual sources of existence. What is so important in that teaching and in the investigations of those times is that it entered so deeply into the processes of nature and realised so well the activity of the spirit in those processes. In reality we are always surrounded by spiritual activities and by spiritual entities. When during the time of that ancient holy teaching, mention was made of the phenomena of the world surrounding us, one was always referred to as being the most significant, the most important of all these, this was considered (by that ancient spiritual science) to be the phenomenon of fire. In all explanations of what exists and happens upon the earth, the central point of importance was always given to the spiritual investigation of fire. If we want to understand what we may call the Eastern teaching about fire, which was of such far-reaching importance in those ancient times for the acquisition of the knowledge and understanding of all life, then we must look around us at the other phenomena and occurrences of nature and see how these were considered by that very ancient teaching, which can still be useful nowadays for the purposes of spiritual science. [ 2 ] All that surrounds man in the world was then referred back to the so-called four elements. These four elements are respected no longer by the materialistic science of to-day. You all know that these four elements are called Earth, Water, Air, Fire. But where spiritual science flourished the word ‘earth’ had not the same meaning as it has nowadays. It stood for a certain state in the material realm: the state or condition of solidity. All that is solid was called ‘earthy’ by the spiritual science of those times. So whether we take the solid earth of a field, or a piece of crystal, or lead, or gold, anything that is solid was then called earth. Everything liquid, not only the water of to-day, was characterised as watery, or as water. If for instance you take iron, pass it through heat to the point of melting so that it can flow, then that liquid iron would have been called water by spiritual science. All metals when liquid were described as water. Everything that has the character of air for us to day, no matter whether it was the condition we call gas, or oxygen, or hydrogen, or other gases, was called air. [ 3 ] Fire was considered the fourth element. Those of you who remember elementary physics will know that modern science does not see in fire anything that could be compared with either earth, water or air: the physical science of to day sees in it only a certain condition of movement. Spiritual science sees in warmth or fire something which has in it a still finer substance than air. Just as earth or solidity changes into liquid, So does all air-substance change gradually into the condition of fire — according to spiritual science — and fire is so fine an element that it interpenetrates all other elements. Fire interpenetrates the air and makes it warm, the same with water and earth. The other three elements are, so to speak, separated from each other, but we see the element of fire interpenetrating them all.

[ 4 ] Both ancient and modern spiritual science agree that there is yet another still more remarkable difference between what we call Earth, Water, Air, and what we call Fire or Warmth. How do we come to the cognisance of earth or solidity? Through touching it. We realise the solid through touching it and feeling its resistance. It is the same with watery substance. This gives way, it is not so resistant, still we realize it as something external that offers resistance. And it is the same with the element of air. We recognise it also as something external. With warmth it is different. Here we find something which modern science does not consider important, but which must become important for us if we want to study the real problems of existence.

We can realise warmth without coming in contact with it externally. What is essential is that we can realise warmth by touching a body which has a certain degree of warmth: we can perceive it externally in the same way as we realise the three other elements, but we also feel it in our inward conditions. Therefore ancient science says (and did so already at the time of the old Indians), that earth, water, air, can be realised only in the outer world, but warmth is the first element which can also be felt within oneself. Thus, fire or warmth has, so to speak, two sides to it. An outer, which it shows when we take cognisance of it in the outer world and an inner when we feel that we ourselves are in a certain state of warmth. Man feels his own condition of warmth; he is hot, or he freezes; but consciously he is not much concerned with the gaseous or liquid or solid substances — the air, water, or earth — which are in him. He begins to ‘feel’ himself in the element of warmth. The element of warmth has an inner and an outward side. Therefore both ancient and modern spiritual science agree that warmth or fire is that wherein matter begins to become soul. And so in the true sense of the word — we may speak of an outer fire which we realise in the other elements, and of an inner psychic fire within our soul.

[ 5 ] In this way, spiritual science always considered fire as the link between the outer material world on the one side, and the realm of the soul on the other, which can be known by man within his inner being. Fire or warmth was placed in the centre of all observations of nature, because fire is, so to speak, the portal through which we may pass from the outer into the inner. In all truth, fire is like a door in front of which one stands. One sees it from outside, one opens it and can observe it from within. Such is fire amongst the objects of nature. One touches some object and becomes acquainted with fire, which streams towards us from outside like the three other elements: one realises one's own inner warmth and feels it as something belonging to oneself; one stands inside the portal, one has entered into the realm of the soul. Thus was the science of fire described. In fire was seen the interplay of soul and matter. We have now placed before our souls an elementary lesson of primeval human wisdom.

[ 6 ] The ancient teachers may have spoken thus: ‘Look at that burning object. See how the fire destroys it. Thou seest two things in that burning object.’ In those ancient times one was called smoke, and it may still be so called nowadays, and the other was called light, and the spiritual scientist saw the fire in the middle between light and smoke. The teacher said: ‘Out of the flame are born simultaneously light on the one side, smoke on the other.’ [ 7 ] Now we must for once put very clearly before us a very simple but very far-reaching fact, which has to do with the light, which is born of fire. It is most probable that many people when asked whether they see the light would answer: ‘Yes, of course.’ And yet this answer is as false as possible; for, in truth, no physical eye can see light. Through light one sees objects which are solid, liquid, or gaseous, but the light itself one does not see. Imagine the whole of universal space illuminated by a light the source of which was somewhere behind you, where you could not see it and you were to look into the world spaces illuminated through and through by that light. Would you see the light? You would see absolutely nothing. You would first see something when some object was placed within that illuminated space. One does not see the light, one sees the solid, the watery, the gaseous, by means of the light. One does not see physical light with the physical eye. This is something which comes before the spiritual eye with particular clearness. Spiritual science says therefore: light makes everything visible, but is itself invisible. This sentence is important: light is imperceptible. It cannot be perceived by the outer senses: one call perceive what is solid, liquid, or gaseous, finally one can perceive warmth or fire outwardly. This one can also begin to feel inwardly, but light itself one can no longer perceive outwardly. If you believe that when you see the sun you see light you are mistaken: you see a flaming body, a burning substance out of which the light streams. It could be proved to you that you have there gaseous, liquid, and earthy substances. You do not see light, you see that which is burning. [ 8 ] But spiritual science says we pass in ascending order from earth to water, from air to fire, and then to light, we pass thus from the outwardly recognisable world, from the visible world into the invisible, into the etheric-spiritual world. Fire stands on the border between the outwardly visible, material world, and that which is etheric and spiritual, which is no more outwardly visible or recognisable. What happens to a body that is destroyed through fire? What happens when something burns? When something burns, we see on one side light appear, which is outwardly imperceptible and which is operative in the spiritual world. Something that is not merely outer material gives forth the warmth and when it is strong enough to become a source of light it yields something invisible, something which cannot be recognised any more through the outer senses, but it must pay for this in smoke. From what was formerly translucent and transparent it has to bring forth something not transparent — something of the nature of smoke. Thus you see how warmth or fire becomes differentiated, how it divides. On one side it divides itself into light, with which it opens a way into the super-sensible world, and in payment for that which it sends up as light into the super-sensible world, it must send something down into the material world, into the world of non-transparent, visible things. Nothing one-sided comes forth in the world. Everything that exists has two sides to it. When light is produced through warmth, then turbid, dark matter appears on the other side. That is the teaching of primeval spiritual science.

[ 9 ] But the process we have just described is only the outer side, the physical, material process. At the foundation of this physically material process there lies something essentially different. When you have only warmth in some object which as yet does not shine, then this warmth which you perceive is itself the outer physical part but within it is something spiritual. When this warmth grows so strong that it begins to shine and smoke is formed, then some of the spirit which was in the warmth must go into the smoke. That spiritual part which was in the warmth and has passed into the smoke, which being gaseous and belonging to air is a lower element than warmth, that spiritual part is transmuted, bewitched, as it were, into smoke. Thus with everything which like a turbid extract or a materialisation is deposited by the warmth, there is also associated what might be called the bewitching of some spiritual being. We can explain it still more simply. Let us imagine that we reduce air to a watery condition. Air itself is nothing but solidified warmth, densified warmth in which smoke has been formed. The spiritual part which really wanted to be in the fire has been bewitched into smoke. Spiritual beings, which are also called elementals, are bewitched in all air, and will even be bewitched, banished, so to speak, to a lower existence, when air is changed into water. Hence spiritual science sees in everything that is outwardly perceptible something that has proceeded from an original condition of fire or warmth and which has turned into air, smoke, or gas, when the warmth began to condense into gas, gas into liquid, liquid into solid. ‘Look backwards,’ says the spiritual scientist, look at any solid substance. That solidity was once liquid, it is only in the course of evolution that it has become solid and the liquid was once upon a time gaseous and the gaseous formed itself as smoke, out of the fire. But a transmutation, a bewitching of spiritual being is always connected with these processes of condensation and with the formation of gases and solids.

[ 10 ] Let us now look around at our world: we see solid rocks, flowing streams of water, we see the water changing into rising mist: we see the air, we see all the solid, liquid, gaseous things and we see fire, so that at the foundation of all things we have nothing but fire. All is fire — solidified fire: gold, silver, copper, are solidified fire. All things were once upon a time fire; everything has been born out of fire. But in all that solidified realm, some bewitched spirits are dwelling.

[ 11 ] How are those spiritual, divine beings who surround us able to produce solid matter as it is on our planet — to produce liquids, and air substances? They send down their elemental spirits, those which live in the fire: they imprison them in air, in water and in earth. These are the emissaries, the elemental emissaries of the spiritual, creative, building beings. The elemental spirits first enter into fire. In fire they still feel comfortable — if we care to express it by images — and then they are condemned to a life of bewitchment. We can say looking around us: ‘These beings, whom we have to thank for all the things that surround us, had to come down out of the fire-element; they are bewitched in those things.’

[ 12 ] Can we as men do anything to help those elemental spirits? This is the great question which was put by the Holy Rishis. Can we do anything to release, to redeem, all that is here, bewitched? Yes! We can help them. Because what we men do here in the physical world is nothing else than an outward expression of spiritual processes. All we do is also of importance for the spiritual world. Let us consider the following. A man stands in front of a crystal, or a lump of gold, or anything of that kind. He looks at it. What happens when a man simply gazes, simply stares with his physical eye upon some outer object? A continual interplay occurs between the man and the bewitched elemental spirits. The man and that which is bewitched in the substance have something to do with each other. Let us suppose that the man only stares at the object and takes in only what is impressed on his physical eye. Something is always passing from the elemental being into the man. Something from those bewitched elementals passes continually into the man, from morning till night. While you are thus regarding objects, hosts of these elemental beings, who were and are being continually bewitched through the world-processes of condensation, are continually entering from your surroundings into you. Let us take it that the man staring at the objects has no inclination whatever to think about those objects, no inclination to let the spirit of things live in his soul. He lives comfortably, merely passes through the world, but he does not work on it spiritually, with his ideas or feelings or in any such way. He remains simply a spectator of the material things he meets with in the world. Then these elemental spirits pass into him and remain there, having gained nothing from the world's process, but the fact of having passed from the outer world into man. Let us take another kind of man, one who works spiritually on the impressions he receives from the outer world, who with his understanding and ideas forms conceptions regarding the spiritual foundations of the world, one who does not simply stare at a metal, but ponders over its nature and feels the beauty which inspires and spiritualises his impressions. What does such a man do? Through his own spiritual process, he releases the elemental being which has streamed into him from the outer world; he raises it to what it was before, he frees the elemental from its state of enchantment. Thus, through our own spiritual life, we can, without changing them, either imprison within us those spirits which are bewitched in air, water and earth, or else through our own increasing spirituality, free them and lead them back to their own element. During the whole of his earthly life, man lets those elemental spirits stream into him from the outer world. In the same measure in which he only stares at things, in the same measure in which he simply lets the spirit dwell in him without transforming them, so, in like measure as he tries with his ideas, conceptions and feeling for beauty to work out spiritually what he sees in the outer world, does he release and redeem those spiritual elemental beings.

[ 13 ] Now what happens to those elemental beings which, having come out of things, enter into man? They remain at first within him. Also those which are released at first remain, but they stay only until his death. When the man passes through death a differentiation takes place between those elemental beings which have simply passed into him and which he had not led back to their higher element, and those whom he has through his own spiritualisation led back to their former condition. Those whom the man has not changed have not gained anything from their passage from the outer world into him, but others have gained the possibility of returning to their own original world with the man's death. During his life man is a place of transition for these elemental beings. When he has passed through the spiritual world and returns to earth in his next incarnation, all the elemental beings which he has not released during his former life flock into him again when he passes through the portals of his new birth, they return with him into the physical world; but those he has released he does not bring back with him for they have returned into their original element.

[ 14 ] Thus we see how man has it in his power, by the way he acts and feels towards outer nature, either to release those elemental spirits which have been necessarily bewitched through the coming into existence of our earth, or to bind them to the earth still more strongly than they were before. What does a man do when, in looking at some outer object he releases from it an elemental being by elucidating it? He spiritually does the opposite of what has been done before. Previously, smoke had been brought forth out of fire, but man spiritually forms fire again out of that smoke; only after death does he release this fire. Now think for a moment of the endless depth and spirituality of the ancient ceremonies of sacrifice, as seen in the light of primeval spiritual science! Imagine to yourselves the Priest at the sacrificial altar in those times when religion was built on the real knowledge of spiritual laws; think of the Priest lighting the flame, and the rising of the smoke, and as the smoke rises a real sacrifice is offered, for it is followed upwards by prayers — What happens then? What happens during such a sacrifice? The Priest stands at the altar where the smoke is produced. Where something solid comes out of the warmth, a spirit is being transmuted, bewitched. But because the man follows the whole procedure with prayers, he at the same time receives that spirit into himself in such a way that after death it rises again into the higher world. What did the teacher of ancient wisdom say to those who had to understand this? He said: ‘If thou lookest upon the outer world in such a way that thy spiritual process does not stop at the smoke, but rises to the element of fire, then after thy death thou dost free the spirit which is bewitched in the smoke.’ Yes! The teacher who knew the fate of the spirit, which after being bewitched in the smoke had passed into man, spoke thus: ‘If thou leavest that spirit as it was when it was in the smoke, then it must be reborn with thee and cannot rise into the spiritual world after thy death; but if thou hast released it and restored it to the fire, then after thy death it will rise again into the spiritual worlds and will not need to return to the earth at thy rebirth.’

[ 15 ] Now we have explained one part of that profound sentence from the Bhagavad Gita of which I spoke in my last lecture. It does not speak here at all of the human Ego, it speaks of those nature spirits, of these elemental beings which enter into man from the outer world, and it says there: ‘Behold the fire, behold the smoke, that which man through his spiritual processes turns into fire are spirits which he liberates with his death.’ That which he leaves as it is, in the smoke, must remain united to him at his death and must be reborn with him when he returns to earth. It is the destiny of the elemental spirits that is here described; through the wisdom which man develops, he continually liberates at his death these elemental spirits; through lack of wisdom, through the materialistic attachment to the mere things of the senses, he ties those elemental spirits to himself and forces them to follow him into this world, ever to be born again with him.

[ 16 ] But these elemental beings are not only associated with fire and with what is connected with fire, they are the emissaries of higher spiritual divine beings in all that takes place in the outer sense world. There never could have been that interplay of forces in the world that produce the day and the night, for instance, if numbers of such elemental being had not worked suitably at the rotation of the planet through the universe, so that precisely this interchange of day and night could come about. All that takes place is the result of the activity of hosts of lower and higher spiritual entities belonging to the spiritual hierarchies. We have been speaking of the lowest order, of the messengers. When night becomes day and day night, elemental beings live also in that process, and so it is that man stands in an intimate relationship with the beings of the elemental world which have to take part in working at the day and the night. When man is idle and lets himself go, he affects those elementals who have to do with the day and the night quite differently, than when he has creative force, when he is active, diligent, and productive. When a man is lazy for instance, he unites himself with a certain kind of elemental and he also does so when he is active, but in a particular way. Those elementals of the second class, just named, who are active during the day, are then in their higher element. As fire elementals, those of the first class, are bound in air water and earth, so certain elemental being are also tied to darkness; and day could not turn into night, day could not be divided from night, if these elementals were not so to speak imprisoned in night. That man is able to enjoy daylight, he has to thank divine spiritual beings who have driven forth elemental spirits and have chained them to the night-time. When man is lazy these elementals flow into him continually, but he leaves them as they are, unchanged. Those elemental spirits which at night are chained to darkness, he let through his idleness remain in the same state; those elemental who enter into him when he is active and industrious and filled with working power, he leads back into daylight. Thus he continually releases these elementals of the second class. Throughout the whole of our lifetime we bear within us all those elemental spirits which have entered into us either during our hours of idleness or during those of active work. When we pass through the gates of death those beings whom we have led towards daylight can now return into the spirit world; those we have left chained to the night through our idleness, must return with us in our new incarnation. With this we arrive at the second point in the Bhagavad Gita. Again it is not the human self, but those elemental beings which are indicated with the words: ‘Behold the day and the night. That which thou hast thyself released by turning it from a being of the night into a being of the day through thy diligence; that which comes forth out of the day enters when thou diest, into the higher world; that which thou takest with thee as beings of the night, thou forcest to reincarnate with thee again.’

[ 17 ] And now you will see clearly how the matter proceeds. As it is with the phenomena of which we have just spoken, so it is on a larger scale with our month of 28 days, with the changes of the waxing and waning moon. Whole flocks of elemental beings have to come into activity to direct the motions of the moon so that our lunar periods can come about as they do with all the influences they bring with them upon our visible earth. For this purpose certain of the higher beings had again to be bewitched, doomed, chained. Clairvoyant vision sees how, with the waxing moon, spiritual beings of a lower kingdom ever rise into a higher. But, so that order should exist, other spiritual elemental beings must again be transformed into those of lower realms. There are also those elementals of a third realm who stand in relationship with men. When man is serene and bright, when he is pleased with the world, when he has feelings of gladness towards all things, he continually releases those beings which are chained to the waning moon. These beings enter into him and are continually set free, through his soul's peaceful attitude, through his inner contentment, through his harmonious feelings and ideas towards the whole world. The beings which enter into man when he is sullen, peevish, morose, discontented with anything, when everything depresses him — when he is pessimistic — these spirits remain in the condition of bewitchment they were in at the time of the waning moon. Oh! There are men who through the harmonious condition of their soul, through the bright way they look upon the world, release and set free great numbers of these bewitched elemental beings. The man of harmonious and optimistic feelings and who feels inner satisfaction with the world, is a deliverer of elemental spiritual beings. The pessimist, he who is morose, sullen and discontented, becomes through his depression the gaoler of elemental spirits which could have been released by his cheerfulness. Thus you see that the conditions of mind and soul have not only a personal importance for this man, but also that he works either at the liberation or the imprisonment of spiritual beings; either deliverance or fetters proceed from him. The conditions of soul that a man experiences go out in all directions into the spiritual world. We have here the third point of that important teaching in the Bhagavad Gita: ‘Behold what man does through the feelings and conditions of his soul, how he sets spirits free, as they are set free by the growing moon.’ When the man dies, these released spirits can return to the spiritual world. If through his depression and hypochondriacal moods, he calls to him the elemental spirits which are around him, and then leaves them as they are, as they have to be in order to bring about the orderly courses of the moon, then these spirits remain chained to him and must reincarnate with him into this world.

[ 18 ] And last of all we have a fourth degree of elemental spirits, those who have to work at the annual course of the sun, so that the summer sun may shine upon the earth to awaken and fructify it, so that spring can appear and be succeeded by autumn. In order that this may come to pass certain spirits must be fettered to winter-time, must be bewitched during the time of the winter sun. And man acts upon these spirits in the same way as we have described his acting on the other grades of spirits. Let us take man who at the beginning of winter says to himself: ‘The nights are getting longer, the days shorter, we come to that time of the sun's yearly course when the sun withdraws his fructifying forces from the earth. The outer earth dies, but with this deadening of the earth I feel it my duty to be all the more spiritually awake. I must now take more and more of the spirit within me.’ Let us take a man who acquires a more and more religious mood appropriate to the season as Christmas comes on, who learns to know the significance of Christmas and to know also that when the outer world of the senses is dead the life of the spirit must now grow stronger. This man lives through winter until Easter. He remembers that with the awakening of the outer world is combined the death of the spiritual: he lives through the Easter festival comprehending its meaning. Such a man has not only an outer religion; he has religious understanding of the processes of nature, of the spirit which rules it; and through his piety, his spirituality, he releases numbers of that fourth class of elemental beings which continually stream in and out of him, which are connected with the course of the sun. But the man who is not pious in this sense, who denies or does not understand the spirit and is always muddling through a materialistic chaos, into him these elementals of the fourth class flow, but remain unchanged. At death it happens again: that these elemental spirits of the fourth degree are either set free in their own element, or else are bound to the man and have to return with him at his next incarnation. Thus, the man, who uniting with the winter spirits does not change them into summer spirits, does not redeem them through his spirituality, dooms them to rebirth, whereas they might have been freed and not have had to return with him. [ 19 ] Behold the fire and the smoke! If you so unite with the outer world that the activity of your soul and spirit is like that of fire, from which smoke comes forth, so that you spiritualise things, through knowledge and through right feeling, you help certain spiritual elemental beings to rise; but if you unite with the smoke you condemn them to rebirth. If you associate yourself with the day, you then set free the corresponding spirits of day and so on. Behold the light! Behold the day! Behold the waxing of the moon and the sunny half of the year! If you act so that you lead the elemental spirits back to the light, to the day, to the waxing moon, to the summer-time of the year, you then at your death release these elementary spirits which are so necessary to you. They rise to the spiritual world. If you associate yourself with the smoke, if you only gaze at the solid things of the earth, if through laziness you unite yourself with the night and with the spirits of the waning moon, and if through your depression you unite yourself with those spirits who are chained to the winter sun, then through your lack of spirit, your godlessness, you condemn these elementary beings to be reincarnated with you again!

[ 20 ] Now we know for the first time what this passage in the Bhagavad Gita really means. If anyone thinks that man is here spoken of, he does not understand the Bhagavad Gita; but those who know that all human life is a continual interplay between man and the spirits who live bewitched into our surroundings and who must be released again — those know that these sentences speak of the ascension or of the reincarnation of four groups of elemental beings. The mystery of this lowest kind of hierarchy has been preserved for us in these sentences in the Bhagavad Gita. Yes! When one has to bring forth out of primeval wisdom what is presented to us in the documents of ancient religion, one sees how grand these are and how wrong it is to understand them superficially and not in all their profundity. They are only considered in the right way when one says to oneself: ‘No wisdom is exalted enough to discover the mysteries herein contained.’ Only when these ancient documents are interpenetrated by the magic of real devotional feeling, do they become what in the true sense of the word they must be — self-ennobling and purifying forces for human evolution. They point frequently to fathomless abysses of human wisdom, and only when that which springs from the sources of the occult schools and the mysteries, streams forth from now on to all mankind, only then, will these reflections of the primeval wisdom (for they are but reflections) be seen in all their greatness. [ 21 ] We have had to show, by means of a comparatively difficult example, how in the times of primeval wisdom the co-operation of all those spirits which are everywhere around us was well known, how it was also known that the deeds of men represent an interchanging activity between the spiritual world and the world of man's own inner being. The problem of humanity first becomes important for us, when we know that in all we do, even in our moods, we influence a whole Cosmos, and that this small world of ours is of infinitely far-reaching importance for all that comes to pass in the macrocosm. An increase in our feeling of responsibility is the finest and most important of all the things we gain from spiritual science. It teaches us to grasp the true meaning of life and to realise its importance, so that this life which we cast on the stream of evolution may not enter that stream void of meaning.

[ 1 ] Some questions may have arisen in many souls towards the end of yesterday's lecture about the so-called lowest realm of the hierarchies. And this is only natural, for according to modern ideas, much of what has been said must appear doubtful and inexplicable, but the following lectures will throw light on many points. One thing must be made clear to-day to enable you to gain the proper orientation of mind to deal appropriately with the subject. Someone might ask for instance: ‘Even if through thinking and concentrating over a stone, you really do raise a bewitched spirit out of it, after having set that spirit free, what remains in the stone? Is the being still in it, and what happens to the stone?’ Another may follow me and go through the same process, what comes of it? This question might arise in many minds. As I have said before; some of these questions will be answered in these lectures; but if the understanding of them has to depend only upon such qualifications for thinking as the Earth gives to man, these questions cannot really be grasped at all. For everything is veiled upon earth, everything is covered by Maya, and human thought sees things quite differently from what they are in reality, but it is not the fault of the facts, that these questions remain unanswered. The questions are put in the wrong way, but in time we shall find the standard by which we can put our questions correctly. Things change essentially for us when the whole matter does not remain so veiled in illusion. Upon the earth all things are, so to speak, jumbled together, and through this the thoughts of man are continually led astray. We get a clearer idea of things when we go back into more ancient times. [ 2 ] Just as man passes from one incarnation to another, one metamorphosis to another, so all the beings in the universe pass through reincarnations, from the smallest to the greatest, even such a being as our earth — a planetary being — passes through reincarnation. Our earth did not appear at first as earth; it passed through a different condition. This has always been much spoken of in anthroposophical circles. Just as man in this life is the reincarnation of a previous life, so the earth is also the reincarnation of another planet which was its forerunner. We call that former planet Moon, but we do not mean by it our present moon which is only a part, a residue of the ancient moon, we mean a former condition of the earth, which existed once upon a time and then passed through a spiritual state called Pralaya, in the same way as man passes through a spiritual condition after death. Just as man reincarnates, so this lunar planet is a reincarnation. That which we have characterised as the lunar planetary condition, was the reincarnation of a still earlier planetary condition, which we call Sun. This is not the sun of to-day, but quite a different being; it was the reincarnation of the first planet to which we look back when speaking of incarnations of our Earth, — the very ancient Saturn. Thus we have four successive incarnations; Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth.

[ 3 ] We have also often said that each planetary condition has a special task. What is the task of our earth? It is to make human existence possible for man as man. All the activities of the earth are such that through them man may become an I-being, an Ego being. This was not the case in the former conditions it has passed through. Man has only become human, in the present sense of the word, on earth. The former planetary conditions, which the earth has passed through had a similar task. Other beings became human on those other planets, and now stand at a higher stage than man. Perhaps you will remember in my book Christianity as Mystical Fact that an Egyptian Sage gave to Solon the Greek a remarkable hint regarding the truth of the Mysteries; he told him, that it was a truth of very great importance, that the gods were once men. This was one of those truths which the pupil of the Mysteries had to accept in ancient times, that the gods who to-day are above in the spiritual height, were not always gods, but that they had risen to those heights, and also that they were once men and had once passed through the human stage. A dangerous truth, because as a natural consequence the pupil of the Mysteries drew the inference that he too would become a god some day. It was also possible for man to say to himself: ‘A man can only become a god when he is ripe for it and if he imagines for one moment that he is a god before he is ready for it, he will not be a god, but a fool.’ And. so two roads are open to man; to live in patience, as Dionysius says, till the time of his deification, or else to imagine himself already a god before the time. The one road leads in truth to deification, the other one leads to folly, to madness. [ 4 ] Misunderstandings often arise about the sayings of the ancients, for at the present day one differentiates no longer between the various degrees of divine beings. The Egyptian Sage who spoke of the gods did not mean only one degree of the gods, but he meant the whole sequence of spiritual divine beings. Dionysius the Areopagite and the Western sages have always differentiated between those different degrees of divine spiritual beings. It is the same thing whether to speak of angels or of Dhyan-Chohans, for those who realise the unity of cosmic wisdom knew that these were merely different names for one and the same thing, but in this realm we must also know how to differentiate. The beings, who are the first to be invisible and who stand immediately above man, are called Angels in Christian esotericism, Angeloi, messengers of the divine spirit-world. Those who stand yet one degree higher, therefore two stages higher than man, are called Archangels, Archangeloi, also spirits of fire. Those who stand still higher than the Archangels, when they pass through their normal development, are called the Spirits of Personality, Archai, or Primeval Beginnings. Thus we have three degrees of beings who stand above man. These three degrees of spiritual beings have all passed through the human stage; once they were all men. The beings who are Angels to-day, if one considers it from the point of view of universal time, were human not so very long ago, for they were men upon the old Moon; and just as you, because of earthly conditions, inhabit the earth as men, so did the Angels inhabit the Moon during their human stage. The Archangels passed through their human stage on the Sun, and the Archai, or spirits of personality did the same on ancient Saturn. These beings have risen by degrees from their human stage, they are higher beings to-day, in higher grades of hierarchies than man. If we reckon the sequence of degrees in the kingdoms of the world in a spiritual sense we arrive at the following: On the Earth we have the visible mineral kingdom, the vegetable and animal kingdom, the human kingdom, and then we pass into the invisible, into the kingdom of Angels, the Archangels or Spirits of Fire, the Archai or Spirits of Personality. Whilst these beings in accordance with their own inner nature were progressing and developing, rising from man to divinity, or to messengers of the divine (the correct description of those beings), whilst they were thus rising in their evolution, the conditions of the planet, on which and for the sake of which they lived, gradually changed. If we look back at ancient Saturn on which the Archai or Spirits of Personality passed through their human stage, we find it very different from our earth.

[ 5 ] Yesterday, we spoke of the four elements which we distinguished on earth, as earth, water, air, fire. The three first elements did not exist as yet upon ancient Saturn. Of the four there was only fire, or warmth, on Saturn. The materialistic philosopher of to-day will say: ‘But warmth can only come about, only be perceived by means of external objects; there are warm bodies, warm water etc., but warmth cannot exist of itself.’ That is the materialistic philosopher's belief but it is not true. If you could have observed ancient Saturn with your present-day senses what would you have found?

Let us take it as an hypothesis that you might have flown through universal space to ancient Saturn. You would have seen nothing where the ancient Saturn used to be; one thing only you would have felt and that was warmth.

If you had flown through the body of ancient Saturn, you would have felt as if you had flown through a heated baking oven. You could not have drawn a breath of air, you could not have swum, for there was neither air nor water, you could not have stood, for there was no earth. Your hand could not have touched anything, for there was a mere ball of warmth. The whole of ancient Saturn consisted only of warmth. In its first metamorphosis our earth's existence began as a planet of warmth, and thus you can see how right ancient Herakleitos of Ephesus was when he said: ‘Everything has come from fire.’ Yes, indeed! As the earth is nothing but ancient Saturn transmuted, so everything on earth has been created out of fire. Herakleitos knew of this truth from the ancient Mysteries, and he hints at this when he says that the book in which he wrote of this was dedicated to the Goddess of Ephesus and that he placed it on the altar there, meaning that he was conscious of owing the knowledge of this truth to the Mysteries of Ephesus where the teaching of primeval Saturnian fire was proclaimed in all its purity. You can see now that those beings we call Archai, Primal-Beings or Spirits of Personality, passed through their human stage in quite different conditions from the man of to-day. Man can at present receive into the bodily constitution of his bone and blood system, solids, liquids and gases. The man of Saturn, the Spirit of Personality, had to build his body out of warmth.

[ 6 ] I told you yesterday that warmth has, so to speak, two sides to it. One side is what we can feel inwardly, as inner warmth; we feel that we are either cold or warm without having to touch our surroundings, as in the case when we contact the solid element; but we can also feel warmth outwardly, when we grasp a warm object. The peculiarity of the Saturn evolution is that it gradually passed from this inner warmth, which could be felt only inwardly, to the external warmth, to a warmth which, towards the end of its evolution, became more and more external, more realisable from outside. If you had undertaken your voyage through space during the first stage of the Saturn evolution, you would not have felt any warmth on your skin, but you would have felt yourself warm inside; you would have said, ‘I feel comfortably warm.’ Something resembling what you would call soul's warmth to-day, could have been felt by you if you had made this voyage during the very first stages of ancient Saturn. You can imagine the experience you would have had, if you consider the following: You know that there is a difference for you when you look at something red or at something blue. Red gives a warm feeling; and blue gives you a feeling of cold. Imagine that the feeling, which is liberated in the human soul by the impression of something red, did not exist as yet, but you might have felt something warm and comfortable. Towards the end of the Saturn evolution you would have felt not only inner warmth, but also as if warmth came towards you from outside. The inner warmth would have gradually changed to warmth which was outwardly realised. This is the way Saturn has developed; from an inner soul's warmth it changed to a warmth which was realised outwardly, to that which we call external warmth, or fire. One might say: ‘Just as a child grows up to manhood and has many different experiences so did the Spirits of Personality grow up on ancient Saturn; first they felt themselves inwardly warm, comfortably warm, then gradually they felt this warmth being exteriorised, made real, yes, we might even say incarnated.’ What happened then? If you want to imagine it you must represent it to yourselves thus: At first we have the inner warming process of the globe of Saturn. It is then first possible for the Spirits of Personality to incarnate. Whilst they are incarnating that which we call external warmth is produced. If you had undertaken your voyage during the later stages of Saturn you could have differentiated outer impressions of warmth and also of cold. And if you made a drawing of the self contained bodies of warmth you would find nothing but eggs of warmth clustering on the surface of Saturn, forming its outer crust. If you could have seen it from outside, it would have looked like a blackberry or raspberry. What were these eggs? They were the bodies of the Spirits of Personality, and it was precisely through their inner warmth that the Spirits of Personality built the external warmth of these Saturn eggs. It might be truly said of this condition: The Spirits brooded over the warmth, they actually brought forth the first fire bodies. If we may so express it: within that region of warmth, the external eggs of warmth coagulated from out their inner warmth. Out of universal space the first fire bodies were hatched. The Spirits of Personality, or Archai (they are also called Asuras) were incarnated in these fire bodies. Saturn only consisted of that element of fire.

[ 7 ] During the Saturn evolution it was possible for the Spirits of Personality to transmute external warmth into inner warmth. The process was not stiff or hard, but was one of inner movement. In fact, the Spirits of Personality were continually producing these eggs of warmth and letting them dissolve again. And now we shall be able to imagine the process more exactly. Let us suppose that you made that journey over and over again; you would have noticed that there were times when there was no outer warmth to be felt, only that inner feeling of comfort; then again times when those eggs of warmth appeared. You would have realised something like a breathing of the whole being of ancient Saturn, but it was a breathing of fire. You would have thought: ‘Sometimes I am within this ancient Saturn in such a way that I feel that all external warmth has turned inward, has withdrawn and I experience only that feeling of inner comfort.’ And you would have said: ‘Now Saturn has in-breathed all the warmth.’ And coming back another time and finding all those eggs of warmth you would have said: ‘Now Saturn has breathed out his inner warmth, all is external fire.’ [ 8 ] You must understand that the ancient Holy Rishis gave this idea to their pupils; they transported themselves in spirit back to the times of ancient Saturn, and made their pupils realise how a whole planet was able to produce something that resembled an expansion and contraction in breathing. They evoked in their pupils the conception that fire when it flows out forms countless bodies of warmth and when the fire is sucked in, it becomes the inner Self, an Ego, of the Spirits of Personality. Therefore, they compared the life of this planet to an in and out-breathing, but on ancient Saturn it was only a breathing of fire. Air as yet did not exist.

Now let us suppose that all those Spirits of Personality on ancient Saturn had remained at the stage of their normal evolution and had continually inhaled and exhaled warmth. They would have accomplished their regular Saturn evolution and the consequence would have been that in the course of time all would have been withdrawn again into inner warmth, and Saturn as an external planet of fire would have been received again into the spiritual realms of the World. This might have happened. We should then never have had the Sun, Moon, and Earth conditions, for then all that had been breathed forth would have returned to inner warmth, would have been received again into the spiritual world. I shall now make use of a trivial expression which will make this more comprehensible. It pleased certain of those Spirits of Personality better to draw in again only a part of that exhaled warmth; it pleased them to leave some of it behind, so that when inhaling, some of those Saturn eggs did not disappear completely, but remained. Thus two states or conditions developed gradually on Saturn: inner warmth, and along side of it outer warmth incarnated in the Saturn eggs. Not all of it was drawn in. The Spirits of Personality left some of that out-breathed warmth to take care of itself, as it were; they left it outside. Now why did they do that? They had to do it; if they had not they would never have become men on Saturn. [ 9 ] What does it mean to become men? It means to attain consciousness of self. You cannot do this unless you can differentiate yourself as ‘I’ from what is outside you. Only through this are you an ‘I,’ an ego: there, you say, is the flowering branch, here am I. I differentiate myself as ‘I’ from the objects around me. The Spirits of Personality would have allowed their ‘I’ merely to dream out eternally if they had not left something outside that could offer resistance to them. ‘There is another outside of me, I differentiate myself from the element of warmth which has been made objective.’ The Spirit of Personality, became Egos, attained consciousness of self, through having pushed a part of the Saturn essence outside into an existence of merely outer warmth. They said to themselves: I must allow something to stream out of me, and leave it outside, so that I am able to differentiate myself, so that my self-consciousness may be lit by that external element. Thus they created another kingdom near to them, created a mirrored image of their inner life in that outward life. Thus it came about that when the life of Saturn had run its course, the Spirits of Personality were not in a position to allow Saturn to disappear. This would have happened if they had inhaled all the fire; but they could not breathe in again that which they had exhaled out of themselves. The field which had offered them the possibility of gaining consciousness of self had to be left to itself. [ 10 ] No condition of Pralaya could have arisen for Saturn through the Spirits of Personality alone. Higher spirits had to come into action in order to dissolve Saturn so that a Pralaya, or state of transition, of disappearance and of sleep might take place. Higher spirits, the Thrones, of which we will only give the name at present, had to dissolve all this, so that, as the life of Saturn reached its end, the following process was carried out. The Spirits of Personality had attained self-consciousness, had breathed in again a part of the warmth, had realised the Self as the centre of their being, and left behind them a lower kingdom. Now entered the kingdom of the Thrones and dissolved that which had been left behind, and Saturn entered into a sort of planetary night. Then arose the planetary morning. Everything had to wake up again through laws which we shall learn later. If the whole of Saturn had disappeared through the inbreathing of the whole warmth, there could have been no awakening, for the whole of Saturn would have been taken up into the spiritual world. The Thrones could now for a season dissolve that which the Spirits of Personality had left behind, those eggs of warmth, but they could do so only for a time. These had to be given over as it were to a lower existence for their further development. Through this a planetary morning dawned; the second metamorphosis of Saturn — the Sun condition!

What was it that actually came to life in this new Sun-condition? The Spirits of Personality having now self-consciousness passed to it from ancient Saturn after the planetary condition of sleep; they were no longer required to pass through any similar condition to that which they had already passed through: they had breathed out certain eggs of warmth which had emerged again gradually, and differentiated themselves from the general mass; the consequence was that the Spirits of Personality were bound to that part of themselves which they had formerly left behind. If they had taken everything with them into the spiritual world they would not have been tied to the Sun, they would not have needed to come down again but they had to do so, because they had left behind them a part of their own essence, their own being. They had to concern themselves with it; it drew them downwards into a new planetary existence. [ 11 ] This was the Destiny of Saturn, world-Karma, cosmic Karma. Because the Spirits of Personality on ancient Saturn had not taken everything into themselves, they had prepared that Karma for themselves which obliged them to return. They found down below as an heirloom from ancient Saturn what they themselves had brought to pass. What happened when the Spirits of Personality now took up the Karma which they had created? That happened which I explained yesterday. The warmth divided itself, into light on one side, and into smoke on the other. In the reborn Saturn (the Sun) the eggs of warmth reappeared as gas air, or smoke, as we have called it on one side; and on the other side appeared light, because the warmth returned, so to speak, in a higher condition. Inwardly in the transformed Saturn there was smoke, gas, air, and on the other side light! If traveling through space you had now reached the place where this ancient Sun was, you would have perceived from afar that which had formed itself into light, because behind it was smoke. If not the light itself, you would yet have perceived a shining ball, just a you perceived a ball of warmth on Saturn. You would have encountered a shining ball and if you had come in touch with its surface, if you had penetrated that ball, you would have felt not only warmth but wind, air, gas, streaming from all sides.

Thus your ball of warmth has transformed itself into a shining orb; a sun has come into being. One is fully justified in calling it a sun; the orbs that are suns to-day are now passing through this same process, inwardly they are masses of streaming gas, and on the other side they cause that gas to turn into light; they shed abroad light through space. Thus, light was really first formed in the transmutations of our earth, light appeared then for the first time. In the warmth of ancient Saturn, the Spirits of Personality had first the possibility of becoming human; in the light which now streamed from the Sun those beings of the spiritual hierarchies, whom we call Archangels, or Archangeloi could become human. In fact, if you could have approached the Sun then, not only as a man of to-day but as a clairvoyant man, you would not only have perceived light streaming from it — not light only — but also the actions of the Archangels would have streamed towards you with the light. [ 12 ] But the Archangels had brought with them something in exchange as it were. The ancient Spirits of Personality had found on Saturn, pure warmth. The Archangels, who were first able to become human on the Sun, found there gas or smoke, also. What had they to do in order to secure a footing on the Sun, to establish a dwelling-place there? They formed their own souls, they wove their inner being, their soul-bodies out of warmth into light, and they joined to these soul-bodies the gas that was there, an external body. As you have to-day a body and a soul, so the Archangels as men had an inner life of warmth which rayed forth light, and an outer physical body which consisted of gas and air. As the man of to-day has a body consisting of earth, water, air and fire, so did those Archangels consist of air, and inwardly they consisted of light. The fire element they, of course, brought over with them: for this was the element which developed into smoke and light. The whole of their being consisted of light, warmth or fire and smoke or air. By means of the light they let their shining force stream out into universal space; by means of fire they lived their inner life, they experienced the comfort of warmth. Through the life they led in their gas bodies they lived in the Sun planet itself. They could now differentiate their own body of gas from the general substance of the Sun planet. They jostled against each other, and through this contact developed a kind of consciousness of self. This self-consciousness Archangels could develop further and further only because it pleased the Archangels better, if one may so express it, to dwell in their bodies of gas and smoke, or at any rate to leave them in the general Sun substance. For these Archangels during alternating conditions of the ancient Sun, had inhaled all the gas, all the smoke which was around them, they had taken it into themselves. We have now a process of real breathing. You would have felt those currents of gas on the ancient Sun as a process of breathing. You would have found there certain conditions, when there was an absolute stillness and you would have thought that the Archangels had now breathed in all the gas. Then the Archangels began to breathe it out again, inner currents began to flow and at the same time light came forth. The interchange of conditions on the Sun was as follows: the Archangels inhaled gas and stillness followed, darkness also — it was the Suns night ... They exhaled and the Sun was filled with streams of smoke, at the same time it sent forth its light outwards — it was the Sun's day. Thus there was a process of real breathing of the whole body of the Sun. Exhalation: — the Sun's day, illumination of the surrounding world. Inhalation: — the Sun's night, oncoming darkness in the world. [ 13 ] You have here the description also of the difference between the ancient Sun and the sun of to-day. Our present sun shines always, and darkness is produced only when some object is placed in front of its light. This was different with the ancient Sun. It had in itself the power to produce the interchanges of light and darkness, illumination and obscurity, for that was its process of exhalation and inhalation. Let us now vividly imagine how one would see those happenings externally. [ 14 ] Let us take the condition of exhalation. Light is then shed around, but at the same time the Sun is filled with smoke. These forms and currents of smoke are like regularly recurrent pictures, they are imprinted on the substance of the Sun with every exhalation. That which formerly was only egg-shaped, the eggs of warmth, changed into all sorts of regular images. Quite distinct smoke pictures with an inner life and inner regularity were produced. If I may use the expression: the eggs were hatched. That was really to what this solidifying process might be compared. Just as the chicken comes out of the eggs, so were those eggs of warmth split in two, and regular forms came out of them, figures of smoke which were the densest bodies of the Archangels. They inhabited the Sun in bodies of gas, smoke, and air. Thus they moved about as men on the Sun. We have now the spiritual idea of a fixed star, of a sun world, which is a sun through its own power, which can produce the interchange of day and night by its own power. Like an exhalation and inhalation it produces the interchange of light and darkness. For at that time the Sun was a sort of fixed star. Everything in our universal space that shines of itself sends out into that space together with light the life of spiritual messengers, the Archangels. [ 15 ] What, then, have the primal Archai, the Spirits of Personality, accomplished through their own evolution, what have they established? It is mainly through them that the Sun appeared. While otherwise only a Saturn existence would have appeared in evolution», while otherwise only the Archai, who had filled Saturn with warmth, would have existed, now, because the Archai had surrendered the external eggs of warmth, Saturn was transformed into Sun, on which the Archangels found it possible to pass through their human stage. They were the heralds who announced to the world: ‘The Primal Beginnings or the Spirits of Personality, were our forerunners. As messengers, we proclaim to the universe in rays of light, the former existence of Saturn, of warmth-filled Saturn. We are the messengers, the heralds of the Archai.’ Angel means Messenger, Archai means the Beginnings. The Archangels were nothing else than the heralds of the deeds of the Primal Beginnings or Archai of former times. Therefore, they are called Angels of the Beginnings, ‘Archai-Angels’ which, in English, has become Archangels. These Archangels were the men of the Sun.

[ 1 ] When considering the conditions of Saturn which are still transparent and less immersed in Maya, we glance back a little at what was said this morning, we shall be able to understand in what way the liberation or imprisonment of certain beings can be brought about — the liberation of those beings of which we spoke yesterday in relation to that most significant and incisive passage of the divine Gita. Remember it has been said that if the Spirits of Personality in ancient Saturn had each time absorbed those egg-shaped bodies of warmth without leaving anything behind, then at the end of its evolution the whole of Saturn would have been reabsorbed into the spiritual world. As was stated, this did not happen, but the Spirits of Personality impressed their mark on the whole of Saturn in a much more intense way than they would otherwise have done; they impressed it through those remnants they left on Saturn, for they did not take everything away with them; they left those outwardly perceptible bodies of warmth behind them.

[ 2 ] What is the power that rules in the Spirits of Personality on ancient Saturn? It is no other than that which we know in modern man as the power of thought. For in reality, the Spirits of Personality did nothing else on ancient Saturn but exercise the power of their thoughts. They brought about the formation of these eggs of warmth, because they conceived the idea of them. Thus it is the power of conception in the Spirits of Personality which has, however, a much stronger potentiality than is the case with modern humanity. What is the power behind the force of ideas, or concepts, in modern humanity? When one formulates an idea to-day, it is formed only in the astral; the conception penetrates only a far as the astral. And so the permanence of that form cannot be distinguished in the outer physical world. On ancient Saturn the Spirits of Personality were powerful magicians. They formed those eggs of warmth on Saturn by the force of their thoughts, and through that same force they also left them behind. So in reality it was the power of those Spirits of Personality which caused the residue of ancient Saturn to be left behind, and this appears again and again, and still appeared even during the Sun evolution.

[ 3 ] It is perfectly comprehensible that an entity, who is really human should take on form from his surroundings, (for the eggs that were formed there were constructed out of the surroundings of Saturn) and those eggs were bewitched, or chained to a further existence. To day, this is presented to you in a more general sense, for the conditions we spoke of yesterday had not as yet become so complicated.

[ 4 ] At this point we might say: Behold the Saturn fire, behold that which is always spiritualised anew by that ancient fire, that which is ever withdrawn again as inner soul's fire, as comfortable warmth which rises upwards into higher worlds. But if only this had been there, Saturn would have disappeared into higher worlds. That which is perceptible as outer warmth, which has condensed into external warmth must be born again, must appear again, and does appear next on the Sun, as has been described.

[ 5 ] Now let us glance at the other things we have described in the previous lecture. We have made it clear that those beings of the spiritual hierarchies whom we call Archangels, or Fire Spirits, passed through their human stage on the ancient Sun; that there the element of warmth condensed on the one side to smoke, or to gas, so that the sun became a ball of gas, and that on the other side the gas burned in such a way that light streamed out into the world; and it is the Archangels or Fire Spirits who lived in the outstreaming light, who inhaled it and poured it forth and had their being in the light. As I have already said, if you could have then taken a voyage through the universe to the Sun, you would have seen that ancient Sun shining before you in the distance. In the interior you would have seen various streams and currents of gas; you would have perceived it as the breathing process of the whole body of the Sun.

[ 6 ] Let us now call up once more before our minds this ancient Saturn and ancient Sun. We have seen that in both of these planetary bodies life and activity reigned, that something was happening there. We have been able to describe ancient Saturn, the egg formations, which were always built up there anew and again dissolved, with the exception of those remnants which remained behind. Anyone observing this inner activity of Saturn would have said to himself: ‘Saturn is really a living being. It is in truth exactly as if it were a living being. It lives: it lives in itself; it continually builds up forms out of its own life and so on.’ In a still higher degree is this the case with the ancient Sun. It presents itself as an unit, as a totality in the changing conditions of its Sun's night and Sun's day, of the inhalation and the exhalation of light. If it could have been observed it would have given the impression of a heavenly body which was not dead, but was full of life.

[ 7 ] Now everything that lives, that has that sort of activity, is inwardly living and inwardly in motion because spiritual beings govern and guide that motion. We have indeed said, that the Spirits of Personality built those egg forms through their thought power. Yes, but first something must exist, out of which the substance of those eggs can be taken. The Spirits of Personality, those primeval ‘beginners’ or Archai cannot produce that substance. That is the first, principle thing we must put before our minds, that something must be there which provides the substance, that is the undifferentiated warmth, the fire itself. The spirits of Personality are only those who mould that substance. But the warmth — they must receive from elsewhere. Whence does the total world of Saturn, and whence, before all others do the Spirits of Personality, get that warmth substance, that warmth or fire element?

It comes from Spirits essentially higher, Spiritual Beings who have passed through their human evolution so very long ago, that on the ancient Saturn they were already far beyond that stage.

In order to form an idea of such sublime Beings, and why they were necessary to the out-giving of the fiery warmth of ancient Saturn, we must by way of a comparison, recall to our minds the development of man himself, for man will also, some day, become a divine being.

[ 8 ] We know that the man of to-day, as he stands before us, consists in his human nature of four parts which are the key to all spiritual science — that the man consists of the physical, etheric and astral bodies, and of the ‘I.’ We know how a man develops these further, that the ‘I’ works from within outwards, that in the first place the astral body is changed in such a way as to bring it completely under the dominion of the ‘I.’ Now when the astral body is so far transmuted that the ‘I’ has complete power over it, we say: this astral body has become of such a nature that it can contain the Spirit-self or Manas. It is the same with the etheric body. When the work of the ‘I’ becomes still more effective, it masters also the resisting forces of the etheric body, and the transmuted etheric body is the Life-spirit or Budhi. And last of all, when the ‘I’ becomes ruler of the physical body, when it overcomes the strongest of the resisting forces, the forces of the physical body, then the man has in him the Spirit-man or Atma. So he should be a seven-membered man when he had transmuted his physical body to Atma or Spirit-man. Externally, the physical body is seen just as a physical body, but internally, it is completely dominated by the ‘I,’ it glows with the ‘I;’ such is the body which is physical body and Atma at the same time. The etheric body is at the same time etheric body and Life-Spirit or Budhi, the astral is astral body and Spirit-self or Manas; the ‘I’ has now become the general Ruler. Thus man pushes onwards to higher stages of development, thus he transforms himself, and works at his own godliness, at his deification, as is said by Dionysius, the Areopagite, the friend and pupil of the Apostle Paul. But arriving at this point, development is not yet finished. When the man is so far advanced that he has completely conquered and absolutely dominated the physical body, he has still higher stages of development before him. This rises ever higher and higher, and we gaze upwards into spiritual heights, to super-human beings, and these become ever mightier and mightier. In what really does the continual increase in the power of those Beings consist, how is it expressed? It consists in this, that in the first place they are in need of something, they want something, they demand something from the world, and that later on they develop to the point, when they themselves have something to give. Fundamentally, the whole meaning and spirit of evolution rests on the fact, that we pass from taking, to giving. You have an analogy for this in human evolution in our life here between birth and death: the child is helpless, it must receive the help of those about it. It grows more and more out of this helplessness, and at last itself become a helper in its turn. So too in the great universal evolution of the human race.

[ 9 ] On ancient Saturn, man existed only as the earliest human physical germ. There he had to content himself with receiving the first foundations of his humanity; and so it continued all through the Sun and Moon period. On the Earth he acquired his ego, and now he is gradually preparing himself to let his Ego act upon his astral and etheric bodies and his physical body. Through this he will gradually grow into a Being who will be able to give, cosmically. This Being grows gradually in cosmic, universal giving; from taking he grows to giving.

You have an example of this indeed in those beings of whom we have spoken already, in the Archangels or Archangeloi. In a certain sense they already developed on the Sun to the point when they could give out light to universal space.

Thus, evolution progresses from taking to giving. In the case of giving, the thing goes very far indeed. Let us take some being who can give only his thoughts; that speaking truly, is not as yet much to give; for he who gives thoughts — even if he has given ever so many thoughts, when he goes away things remain as they were. He has not given anything visible or tangible, in the higher sense. But a time comes when Beings do not only give thoughts and the like, a time when they are able to give much more, when for instance, they will be able to give just that which the Spirits of Personality had need of on ancient Saturn: the substance of the warmth-fire.

[ 10 ] Who was at such a high stage of development that they could then let that warmth of ancient Saturn stream out of their own bodies? They were the Beings whom we call Thrones or Spirits of Will.

[ 11 ] Thus we see that ancient Saturn took form through the fact, that from the surrounding universe the Thrones concentrated on one point in space. They did in great measure what in a lower sphere of existence is done by the silkworms, when they spin threads of silk out of their bodies. The Thrones spun the substance of warmth out of themselves, sacrificed themselves on the altar of Saturn.

We have to regard the life of the Spirits of Personality on Saturn in such a way, that these Spirits of Personality or Archai actually imparted personality, Ego-consciousness to the warmth. The substance of the fire-warmth streamed together from out [of] the universe, — the Cosmos, it streamed forth from highly exalted Beings — the Thrones.

We now know of what those eggs of warmth, that arose on Saturn, consisted. They were spun out of the bodies which the Thrones offered up as a sacrifice.

[ 12 ] But that would not have sufficed; the co operation of the Spirits of Personality had the power to give form to the substance of warmth, but they could not do it alone. To produce that inner life and activity, other spiritual beings were necessary who had also had to inhabit ancient Saturn, beings inferior to the Thrones, but higher than the Archai or Spirits of Personality. To their share fell the task of helping the Spirits of Personality. We can form an idea of that help if we think of the Angels who are the first immediately above us, then of the Archangels, then of the primeval Beginnings, or Spirits of Personality — Archai. These Beings belong to the Hierarchy which stands next above us. The Thrones do not come immediately above the Spirits of Personality. There are intermediate stages between the Spirits of Personality, and the Thrones, and it is there that those Beings stand, whom we call Powers or Exusiai, according to Dionysius the Areopagite; Powers is the name in English (also Spirits of Form). The Powers are one stage higher than the Spirits of Personality. They hold the same relation to the Spirits of Personality which the Angels do towards us. Yet a stage higher than these Powers are those Beings we call Mights — Spirits of Motion — Dynamis. These were related to the Spirits of Personality on ancient Saturn in the same way as the Archangels are to us to-day. A stage higher still than the Spirits of Motion are those beings we call Spirits of Wisdom — Dominions, Kyriotetes. They were to the Spirits of Personality on ancient Saturn, what the Spirits of Personality or Archai are to us now. Then, after these come the Thrones or Spirits of Will.

[ 13 ] Thus on ancient Saturn we have an ascending scale of Beings: the Spirits of Personality who awaken and bring about the ‘I’ consciousness; we have the Thrones, Spirits of Will, who stand four stages higher than the Spirits of Personality, and who give out the fire substance; and in between, to order and guide all the life on ancient Saturn, we have, naming them from below upwards: the Powers, or Spirits of Form; the Might or Spirits of Motion; the Dominions, or Spirits of Wisdom; in Greek Exusiai; Dynamis and Kyriotetes. These were, if one may so call them, the inhabitants of ancient Saturn.

[ 14 ] Whilst the ancient Saturn is evolving into the Sun — as we have described in the last lecture — those Beings who have just been named are also evolving each one stage higher, and the Archangels enter upon the human stage. Externally — we might say physically — the warmth condenses into gas. The Sun is a gaseous body. While ancient Saturn was a dark warmth-body, the Sun now begins to shine outwardly; but it alternates, so to speak, from Sun-days to Sun nights. It is particularly important to take notice of those interchanges from Sun-days to Sun-nights. For an enormous difference between the life of the days and the nights obtains on ancient Sun. If nothing else had intervened but what has been described in the Third Lecture, the Archangels, who are the men of the ancient Sun, would during the Sun-days hurry with the rays of light out into the Universe, would expand to the Universe and would have to return to the Sun during the Sun's nights. It would be an inhaling and exhaling of the light, together with all the creatures weaving their existence within it. But it is not so.

I should like once more to describe these Archangels, in a simple, I might also say trivial, way. It pleased them too much, when they soared out into the Universe; the flowing outwards, the soaring up to the Spirits of the universe, pleased them more than the contracting, or drawing of themselves together again. The latter seemed a narrowing, inferior existence. Life in the light-ether pleased them better. But they never could have extended this life in the light-ether further than a certain limit, if something had not come to their help. If those Beings on the ancient Sun had been left to themselves, it would have been quite impossible for them to do anything else than bravely to return to the Sun, in the Sun-night. Yet they did not do it, they lengthened the time of their stay outside in the Universe always more and more, they remained longer and longer in the Spiritual World. Who helped them to do this?

[ 15 ] Let us imagine that the small circle is the ball of the Ancient Sun; the Archangels strive to get out into the spaces of the world from all sides of that ancient Sun ball, they spread out their presence, spiritually into the Universe. The Archangels were helped in this out-spreading by the fact that there were Beings out in the Universe who came to meet them. Just as earlier, the fire elements of the Thrones, streamed towards ancient Saturn, so now other Beings come to meet the out-streaming Archangels, Beings who are still higher than the Thrones, and these help them to stay longer out in the Universe than they otherwise could have done.

[ 16 ] Those Beings who came out of spiritual space to meet the Archangels, we call Cherubim (The Spirits of Harmony). They are Beings of an exceptionally sublime nature; they have power to receive the Archangels, so to speak, with open arms. When the Archangels spread outwards, the Cherubim came to meet them, out of the Universal All. Thus, all round the globe of the ancient Sun, we have the approaching Cherubim. If I may use the comparison — just as our earth is surrounded by its atmosphere, so was the ancient Sun surrounded by the realm of the Cherubim, for the benefit of the Archangels. When the Archangels went out into the Universal spaces, they beheld their great helpers.

[ 17 ] In what way did those great helpers meet them, and what appearance had they? This can naturally only be stated by clairvoyant consciousness as read in the Akasha Chronicles. These great Universal Helpers revealed themselves in quite definite etheric shapes or figures. Our forefathers who, through their traditions, were still conscious of these most important facts, represented the Cherubim as those strangely winged animals with differently formed heads — the winged Lion, winged Eagle, winged Bull, winged Man. The fact is, that the Cherubim made their approach from four sides, in forms afterwards represented in the way the Cherubim are known to us. In the schools of the first post-Atlantean Initiates, these Cherubim, approaching the Ancient Sun on four sides, were given names, which later became the names, Bull, Lion, Eagle, Man.

[ 18 ] The aspect presented by the Ancient Sun, was that of its human inhabitants, otherwise called Archangels, passing out into Universal space, and the four kinds of Cherubim, coming from four sides to meet them. On account of this, the Archangels were enabled to stay in the spiritual region which surrounded the ancient Sun longer than they otherwise could have done. For the influence of those Cherubim upon the Archangels was vivifying in the highest degree, in the spiritual sense. But as the Cherubim came into the vicinity of the Sun, their influence was active also in another way. They acted in the way described, on those Sun-beings who had evolved up to the element of light, who knew how to live in that element. But this element of light could be influenced only during the Sun-days, when light streamed out into Universal space. But there were also the Sun-nights when light did not stream out. The Cherubim were then also in the skies. During this time, when the Sun-planet was darkened, only warmth-gas was there, the illuminated warm gases streamed within the Sun-ball. Round about it were the Cherubim sending down their influence, which was active now within the dark gas. When the Cherubim could not act in a normal way upon the Archangels, they sent their influence into the dark smoke and gas of the Sun. Whilst on ancient Saturn influences were exercised upon the warmth, influences were now exerted out of cosmic space on the condensed warmth, or gas, of the ancient Sun. To this action we must ascribe the fact, that out of that Sun-mist was built the first foundation or germ of what we call to-day the animal kingdom. Just as the earliest foundations of the human kingdom arose in the physical human body on Ancient Saturn, so on the Sun, out of its smoke and gas was formed the first germ of the animal kingdom. Out of the warmth of Ancient Saturn was formed the first germ of the human body; on the Ancient Sun was formed the first germ of the smoke-like changing animal bodies, created through the mirroring of the forms of the Cherubim in this Sun-gas.

[ 19 ] Thus, we find, spread abroad in space surrounding the Sun — that totality of exalted Beings, the Cherubim who receive the Archangels, as it were, with open arms — and we find also, evoked as by magic out of the Sun-gas during the Sun's nights, the earliest germinal beginnings of the animal kingdom. The animal kingdom in its first physical foundation grew out of the Sun mist. Therefore those of our forefathers who from the Mysteries had knowledge of these deeply important things out of spiritual Cosmology, called the Beings, who, acted upon the Ancient Sun, from all sides of Space: the Zodiac or Animal Circle. That is the primeval significance of the Zodiac. On Ancient Saturn the germinal beginnings of humanity were first laid down, and the substance which to-day is in the physical body was poured out, sacrificed, by the Thrones.

On the Sun was laid down the earliest beginnings of the Animal Kingdom, through the forms of the Cherubim being mirrored in, and conjured forth from, the gas which had condensed from the warmth substance of the earlier planet.

Thus the animals were in the first place reflected Sun-images of the Zodiac. There is a real inner relation between the Zodiac and the animals which were coming into existence upon the Sun. Truly it is not for nothing, that such names have been given to those things. One must never think that in those ancient times names were chosen at random. To-day, when a new planet is discovered out of the planetary chain, what does the Astronomer do who has had the luck to discover it? He opens a Lexicon, finds a Greek mythological name which is still unappropriated and sticks it upon the star. In the times when in names people looked for the expression of the things represented; in the times when the Mysteries were still powerful, names were not given in that way; but in the names then given you could always find the deeper meaning of the thing itself.

[ 20 ] The forms of our animals, even although to-day they are degenerated into caricatures, have been brought down from the encircling Universe, from the figures of the Zodiac, as they then existed.

It may strike you that we have mentioned only four names of the Zodiac. These are the principal expressions for the Cherubim; for in reality each of those Cherubic forms has to left and to right a sort of follower or companion. Think of the form of each Cherubim having two companions and you will have twelve forces and powers encircling the Sun, certain indications of which already existed on the Ancient Saturn. We have twelve such powers, belonging to the kingdom of the Cherubim, who have to perform their task in the Universe in the way we have just described.

[ 21 ] You may now ask: What relation has this to the ordinary names of the animal circle or Zodiac? We shall say a word about this during the next few days. For the sequence of the names has somewhat changed. One generally begins to count with Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo. Then comes Virgo the Virgin and Libra the Scales or Balance. The Eagle, through a later transformation, has had to be named Scorpio, for a definite reason. And then the two companions: Sagittarius, Capricornus. The Man, for reasons which we will hear later, is called Aquarius the Water-man. Then Pisces the Fishes. You still see the true form, out of which the Zodiac originated, in the Bull (Taurus), in the Lion and a little in the Man, which in the ordinary exoteric nomenclature is called the Waterman. We shall explain in the next few days why the Zodiac has passed through this transformation. [ 22 ] High spiritual Beings, high Hierarchies, the Thrones gave out of their own substance the fire of Ancient Saturn. Still higher Beings, whom we characterise as Cherubim, took into themselves the light which sprang from the fire and glorified its existence, uplifted it. But each time that an uplifting process happens in the Universe, a lowering process must also step in to create the relative balance or adjustment. In order that the Archangels should have the opportunity of extending their spiritual existence during daytime, the Cherubim were obliged to continue their activity by night, and bring forth the animal beings which are lower than humanity, forms evoked out of that warmth-substance which had condensed into mist, gas and smoke.

[ 23 ] You have thus been given the first idea, in the sense of the primeval wisdom, of the way in which certain Spiritual Beings of the Universe act in unison with our own planetary body; and at the same time you have been shown how in the outward, physical world everything can always be traced back to spiritual Beings. That which we call so materially the Zodiac to-day (from the Greek word which implies figures), animals, and living beings originated in the kingdoms of the Cherubim, who, from the encircling Universe, sent down their influence upon the Ancient Sun and allowed their forces to stream forth into this Universe as a force of light.

[ 24 ] With this we have introduced an important conception of the Animal circle or Zodiac, and we shall continue this study tomorrow; we shall gradually be able to rise to the comprehension of other universal bodies, and have more and more light thrown upon their relationship with the spiritual Hierarchies.

[ 1 ] We have had the activity of higher spiritual Beings within our Cosmos, brought before our souls by means of two examples, that on ancient Saturn and that on the ancient Sun, which is the reincarnation, or the production of Saturn. It will now be necessary to explore the spiritual realm itself in which these higher spiritual Beings are, and consider their action and influence from still another point of view. During the first half of these lectures some things will have to be said which many of you have already heard. But even apart from the fact that there are many listeners here who have not yet heard some of the things which may be called introductory, it is necessary to repeat them, because we have to rise in these lectures to very high regions of spiritual life.

[ 2 ] From what has been said you will have seen that spiritual Beings of the most different kinds have to be active within a cosmic system which is in process of development. What in reality, is this ancient Saturn? Let us make a precise image of it. Of course ancient Saturn has nothing to do with the Saturn of the present day. You can easily imagine that in ancient Saturn were already included the germs of all that belongs to-day to the whole of our solar system; our Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and so on, all these bodies were within ancient Saturn and have evolved out of it. Imagine to yourselves a globe, or heavenly body which would have the sun as its central point and would reach so far outwards that the Saturn of to-day was contained in it, this globe, larger than our present solar system, would give you a correct idea of ancient Saturn. Our whole solar system came forth, out of ancient Saturn. One might even compare it — not exactly but approximately — with the general Kant-Laplace universal primeval mist, out of which, according to the opinion of many modern people, our solar system has formed itself. But the comparison is not quite accurate, for the majority imagine that a sort of gas was the starting point of our solar system, whereas we have seen that it was a body of warmth, not of gas. Ancient Saturn was a giant body of warmth.

[ 3 ] And so we heard yesterday, that when that ancient Saturn had transformed itself into the later Sun, the Cherubim began to be active from the surrounding circumference of the Universe. You have now to realise that those Cherubim, who were active, in the periphery of the Sun, were also already present in the periphery of ancient Saturn. Only they were not as yet called on to play their part — to put it trivially, they had not yet reached the stage when they could undertake something important, but they were present in the environment of Saturn. Still other Beings were around ancient Saturn, Beings of a degree still higher and still more sublime than the Cherubim, namely, the Seraphim, (Spirits of Love). The Thrones also came from the same region. But the Thrones, who are one grade lower than the Cherubim, let their substance flow downwards to form the warmth-substance of Saturn, as we have already shown. Thus we can imagine Saturn as a giant globe of warmth, surrounded by circles of spiritual Beings who are of a supremely high, sublime nature. Christian Esotericism calls them Thrones, Cherubim, Seraphim. They are the Dhyanic Beings of the Eastern Teaching.

[ 4 ] Whence do these circles of sublime Beings come? Everything in the world, everything in the Universe has evolved. And if we want to form an idea of the place whence come the Cherubim, the Seraphim and the Thrones, we shall do well to turn our thought into our own solar system and to ask ourselves: What will some day become of our solar system? We wish now to give you a short sketch of the development of our solar system.

We know that it has come forth out of ancient Saturn, Saturn transformed itself into the ancient Sun, which again changed into the ancient Moon. In the time when the ancient Sun was Moon, a particular development began. This Moon for the time went forth out of the Sun. In the ancient Moon we have the first heavenly body, which is outside and separate from the Sun. The Sun was able to evolve higher, because it cast from it the coarser substances. The whole system then developed towards our present earth. Our earth came into being because, along with all the remaining Moon and Earth, it divided from the Sun the coarser substances and beings belonging to it. But evolution goes further. The beings who have now to dwell upon the Earth, separated from the Sun, and who have been thrown out of the Sun, although excluded from it are developing ever higher and higher. They have to pass through yet another condition, that of Jupiter. But through all this, they are gradually maturing towards re-union with the Sun. And when the condition of the Venus-development will have come, all the beings who now live and move upon our earth will be re-absorbed into the Sun, and the Sun itself will have reached a higher stage of development, just because it will have again redeemed all the beings it had formerly excluded. Then will come the Vulcan development, the highest state in the development of our system. These are the seven stages of evolution of our system: Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan. In the Vulcan development, all those Beings who have evolved out of the small beginnings of the Saturn existence, will be spiritualised in the highest degree, they will have grown not only as far as the Sun, but even higher than the Sun. Vulcan is more than Sun, and with this it has reached the maturity of sacrifice, the maturity necessary to self disintegration.

[ 5 ] The course of evolution is this: a Sun, which from the beginning is included in such a system, has at first to throw off its planets, being too weak to develop further without excluding them. It grows strong, absorbs its planets again, and grows into a Vulcan. Then the whole is dissolved, and from the Vulcan globe is formed a hollow globe which is something like the circles of Thrones, Cherubim, Seraphim, etc. The Sun will thus dissolve in space, sacrifice itself, send forth its Being into the Universe, and through this will itself become a circle of Beings like the Thrones, Cherubim, Seraphim, which will then advance towards new creation.

[ 6 ] Why are the Thrones enabled. to give out of their substance what Saturn needs? Because they have prepared themselves in an earlier system, through seven conditions like those our solar system is now going through. Before a system of Thrones, Cherubim, Seraphim can be evolved, it must have been a solar system at an earlier stage; which means, that when the Sun has got so far as to be reunited with its planets, it becomes itself a circle — a Zodiacal circle. That which we have come to know in the Zodiac, those great, sublime Beings, are the results that have come over to us from an earlier solar system. That which has formerly evolved within a solar system can now send down its influence out of universal space, and produce a new solar system, created out of itself. The Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones are for us the highest Hierarchy among divine Beings, because they have already passed through their solar system evolution and have risen to mighty cosmic deeds of sacrifice.

[ 7 ] Hence it is that these Beings have come into the actual direct vicinity of the highest Godhead of which we can speak at all: the Trinity, the three-fold Divinity. Beyond the Seraphim we have to see that highest Divinity of which we find mention by almost all nations as the threefold Divinity — as Brahma, Shiva, Vishnu, as Father, Word, and Holy Ghost. From out [of] this highest Godhead, this most exalted Trinity, stream forth the plans for a new cosmic system. Glancing back at ancient Saturn we say to ourselves: before any of this ancient Saturn came into Being, the plan of it had grown within the divine threefold Unity. But the threefold Unity has need of Beings to execute its plan. These Beings must first prepare themselves for the task. The Beings who, are so to speak, nearest God Himself, who, as is beautifully expressed in Christian Western Esotericism, ‘bask in the light of God's countenance,’ are the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones. These take up the plans of a new cosmic system streaming from the divine threefold Unity. This is naturally expressed more figuratively than it really is, for we have to express in human words such sublime activities, for which, in truth, this human language has not been created. No human words exist to express such sublime activity as that, for instance, when the Seraphim, in the beginning of our solar system received the highest plans of the divine Threefold Unity containing the evolution which our solar system has to pass through, namely Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan. Seraphim is a name which for those who understand it in its true sense, even in that of ancient Hebrew Esotericism, has always signified that the task of the Seraphim was to receive from the Trinity the highest ideas and aims for a system of worlds. The Cherubim, the next lower rank of the Hierarchies, had the task of building up in wisdom the aims and ideas which they received from the higher gods. Thus the Cherubim are spirits of highest wisdom, who understood how to transpose into workable plans, the inspirations given to them by the Seraphim. And the Thrones, the third grade of the Hierarchies, counting from above, had the task — naturally very figuratively expressed. — of putting things into action, so that what had been thought out in Wisdom — these lofty cosmic thoughts which the Seraphim had received from the Gods, and which the Cherubim had pondered over, should be transformed into active reality.

[ 8 ] We actually see, if we do but try to see with the soul, how the first realisation of the divine plan occurs with the down-flow of the fire-substance of the Thrones. Thus the Thrones appear to us as those Beings who have the power to transform into a primary reality that which has been first thought out by the Cherubim. This takes place because the Thrones allowed their own substance to flow from them, the substance of the primeval original world-fire, into the space, which had been chosen for the new world-system. If we speak very figuratively we can express it thus: An old solar system disappeared and died away. Within that ancient solar system the ranks of Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones had evolved to the highest perfection. They then sought out, according to the inspiration received by them from the highest Threefold Unity, a Sphere within Universal space and said: ‘We will begin here.’ When the Seraphim took up the aims of the new world-system, the Cherubim worked out these aims, and the Thrones poured out of their own Being the primeval fire into that space. Thus we grasp the beginnings of our world-system.

[ 9 ] Other Beings, however, were also present in a certain way, in the former solar system, of which ours is the successor. But these Beings did not rise so high as the Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones; they stopped on lower Stages, they had come over in a condition when they still had to pass through a certain development, before they could be creatively active, before they could offer sacrifice. These Beings are those of the Second threefold Hierarchy. The First threefold Hierarchy we have just been considering. The Beings of the Second threefold Hierarchy are: the Kyriotetes or Dominions or Spirits of Wisdom; then the so-called Mights, Dynamis (or, as Dionysius, the Areopagite, and after him the Teachers of the West call them, Virtutes, Virtues), or Spirits of Motion, and the Spirits of Form, who are also called by the Teachers of the West — Potentates, which mean Powers.

[ 10 ] We must now ask ourselves: When we glance back at ancient Saturn and see the first threefold Hierarchy surrounding it, where then are the Beings of that second threefold Hierarchy? Where can we search for the Dominions, Mights, and Potentates? We must look for them inside ancient Saturn. If the Thrones have reached, so to speak, to its boundary, we must look for the Dominions, Mights and Potentates, or the Spirits of Wisdom, Motion and Form, inside Saturn. Inside ancient Saturn, within the mass of it, again three ranks of Beings are active, — the Dominions, Mights and Potentates. They are spiritual Beings operating inside the Saturn substance.

[ 11 ] Now we must for once come to an understanding with the extraordinary fantastic modern theory of the origin of the world, and turn our minds again to the Kant-Laplace theory. It has put a mass of fog as a starting point for our solar system, and then has imagined that the whole of this giant mass of gas has begun to revolve. It finds it extraordinarily simple that with the rotation the outer planets gradually split off. At first there are rings. These then contract. The Sun remains in the middle, and the others rotate around it. They picture it quite mechanically. A very nice experiment is shown in the schools to make the thing clearer. It is shown how a solar system is formed in a small way, by taking a vessel full of water, throwing in a large drop of oil, then cutting a piece of paper, representing the equator, and putting a pin into it from above. Then the drop of oil is set into rotation. Small drops of oil split asunder and circle round, and the demonstrator shows it to pupils — sometimes quite old pupils — saying: ‘Now, you have here in small the formation of a world system.’ And the whole thing is made most illuminating. For what can illuminate one more than when one sees with one's own eyes how such a solar system is formed. Why should one not see that there was once upon a time a gigantic cosmic fog which in its rotation loosened the Planets around it, like those little drops, and made the miniature Mercury and Saturn loosen themselves from the large drop of oil. One must marvel at such a naive proceeding. For the man who tries to make the Kant-Laplace System so clear forgets one thing — sometimes it is very good to forget, only in this case it wont do — he forgets himself, he forgets he stood by and made the thing rotate. This is incredibly naive, but the simple-mindedness of modern, materialistic mythology is very great, greater than that of any other mythology. This will be realised in future times. There is someone who starts the whole thing, who makes it rotate. It is necessary if one can think at all, if one has not been forsaken by all the good Spirits of Logic, it is necessary to presume that spiritual powers are occupied out there with the rotation of the universal globes. Apart from the error in placing a primeval gas instead of a primeval fire at the outset, one cannot assume that that mass of gas began to whirl round of itself. One must ask: Where are the forces and powers which put movement into that mass which for us is of primeval fire, so that something begins to happen inside it? We have just enumerated them.

Spiritual forces work from without and from within our system. Those Beings who surround it, and who acquired their faculties in earlier systems, work from outside. Inside are Beings of less maturity, who differentiate the internal mass, who bring about what we had in our minds when we spoke of the shapes of warmth formed inside Saturn. They are Beings of highest intelligence who regulate all that happens there.

[ 12 ] What then is the task of the first Beings of the second threefold Hierarchy? The Spirits of Wisdom or Dominions, or Kyriotetes take that which the Thrones or Spirits of Will bring down out of Universal space, and regulate it so that a harmonious co-relation can come about between the single globe which is originating — between Saturn and the whole Universe. In the interior of Saturn everything has to be so regulated that it corresponds with what is outside. What the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones, bring down to Saturn from the hand of God, must be so appointed that within Saturn these commands can be carried out, and these impulses become realities. The Spirits of Wisdom or Kyriotetes receive from the circumference of Saturn that which comes down through the mediation of the highest Hierarchy, so that they may transform it and make it harmonise with what is in the interior of Saturn.

[ 13 ] What is received by the Spirits of Wisdom, is further worked on and elaborated by Mights or the Spirits of Motion. And while the former inside Saturn hold, as it were, the highest command, the latter undertake the carrying out of these directions. Then the Powers or Spirits of Form — later we shall explain this more in detail, now we are characterising it only in a general way — provide that what is being formed according to the intentions of the Universe, should have duration, so long as it is needed, that it should not be destroyed again at once. These Powers or Spirits of Form are the maintainers — the supporters.

Thus the Dominions or Spirits of Wisdom are the directors inside Saturn; the Mights or Spirits of Motion are those who execute their directions; and the Powers or Spirits of Form are the supporters, the upholders of that which the Mights have built.

[ 14 ] Today, we shall omit how the third threefold Hierarchy works, (we have spoken of them before) the Spirits of Personality, the Archangels or Fire Spirits and the Angels. We shall turn our attention to-day, with our newly acquired knowledge, to the transition from ancient Saturn to ancient Sun. The most essential proceedings were explained at the last lecture. What happens when ancient Saturn becomes Sun, is that the primeval fire changes into a condition of gas or air, so that the ancient Sun consists of what is called the residue of the primeval fire. The primeval fire is intermingled with, and forms the basis of, what has thickened into gas or smoke. Thus two substances are to be found there: primeval fire and a part of that fire which has condensed to gas or smoke — call it what you will. This is the essential characteristic of the old Sun. We shall see that our Sun has grown into something different, through transitory conditions up to the present day; it has developed into something different, although there are people who imagine that the interior of our Sun to-day is also merely a sort of gas.

[ 15 ] If you enter into all the various theories at which our materialistic natural science arrives, you will, if you think, certainly be astounded. There is, for instance, a popular little book, which is much bought because of its cheapness, which claims that our present Sun has in its centre nothing solid, but only gas. Only, this gas — one could not believe it really, but it stands there in a little popular writing — this gas is as thick as honey or tar. The man who soars to such ideas that gas under conditions of pressure can become like honey or tar, I will willingly allow to wander about in such a sluggish land where the air is of the consistency of honey, but I would not wish him to have to move in an air that is a thick as tar! Materialistic theories have such excrescences as these.

[ 16 ] We are not speaking now of our present Sun, but of that ancient Sun which really consists of primeval fire and of what is called fire-mist or fire-air. You find this expression used in Faust, for Goethe knew it well, and you find the expression fire-mist also used in theosophical literature. We must think of the ancient sun as of a mixture of these two substances. This did not, however, happen of itself. Universal bodies do not condense of themselves; spiritual Beings have to bring about this process of condensation.

Which are the Spiritual Beings who carried over the condensation of the substance of ancient Saturn to the ancient Sun? These Beings whom we call the Dominions, or Spirit of Wisdom. It is they who now press inwards from outside and who originally pressed together the mighty mass of Saturn so that it grew smaller. The Dominions brought pressure to bear upon it, until the ancient Sun became the size of a globe, the mass of which, if you place the Sun in its centre, you must imagine as reaching out to Jupiter. Thus Saturn was a gigantic world-globe, which having our Sun in its centre would have reached as far as to the present Saturn, an enormous globe, as large as our present solar system. The Sun of which we have just spoken was a world-globe which stretched a far as the Jupiter of to-day. This point marks the boundary of the ancient Sun-world. You will do well if you picture those outer planets as boundary marks for the limits of the ancient Worlds. [ 17 ] You see that we are gradually approaching the theory of the planets, being led thereto through the activity of the hierarchies,

Let us go further. We know that the next condition is again one of condensation. The third condition of our World system is that of the Ancient Moon. Those of you who have given attention to the communications from the Akashic Record know that the ancient Moon had come into being because the Sun substance had condensed still more, as far as to the condition of water. The Moon contained no solid earth as yet, but was composed of fire, air and water. It had so coordinated the watery element. Gas or air was condensed in it to the element of water. Who effected this? That Hierarchy of spiritual Beings brought this about, whom we call Mights, Virtutes, or Spirits of Motion. Thus it happened through the Virtutes, that the mass of the ancient Moon contracted to the limits of the orbit of the present Mars. Mars is thus the boundary showing the size of the Moon. If you imagine a globe with the present Sun for its centre, and for its limit the orbit of the present Mars, you have the size of the ancient Moon. [ 18 ] We have reached the point when we must remember that when the ancient Moon was formed out of Saturn and Sun, something quite new took place. A part of the dense substance was now thrown out, and two globes came into being. One of the two took up the finer substances and Beings and became a finer Sun, the second became a denser Moon. This third condition of our planetary system developed in such a way that, for a time, it remained one single planet; then it threw off a planet from itself, which remained in its vicinity. At first, so long as it formed one single body, the Moon extended to the orbit of the present Mars; then the Sun contracted, and was encircled by another body; approximately in the place where the present Mars has its orbit, was more or less the periphery of the original single body.

[ 19 ] Through what did this division take place? Through what influence did a single globe split in two? It happened in the time of the domination of the Spirits of Motion, Mights, or Dynamis. For those who have already followed me in this domain, it is not new to hear that [in] the Cosmos things happen very much in the way they happen in ordinary human life. Where beings are evolving there are some who advance and others who remain behind, as many a father knows, who complains that his son in college lags behind whilst others are making good progress. We are concerned, therefore, with a difference in the ‘tempo’ of development. It is the same in the Cosmos. And through certain causes, which we shall learn later, now that the Mights or Virtutes have entered on their Mission, something came into play which is called in all Esotericism, and in all Mysteries, the ‘fight in Heaven.’ This ‘fight in Heaven’ forms an essential, and integral part of all Mysteries; it contains also the primeval Mystery regarding the origin of Evil. At a certain point of the Moon evolution the Mights or Virtutes had reached very different degrees of maturity. Some of them aspired to rise spiritually as high as possible; others again had remained behind, or at least had progressed normally in their development. Some of the Mights on the ancient Moon had progressed much further than their companions. The result of this was that these two classes of Mights divided. The more advanced ones drew out with the body of the Sun, and the others formed the Moon revolving around it.

We have now given a sketchy description of the fight in Heaven, the rending asunder of the ancient Moon, so that the planet accompanying the ancient Moon comes under the domination of those spirits of Motion or Might or Virtutes which had remained behind, and the ancient Sun under the domination of the advanced Virtutes.

[ 20 ] Something of this fight in Heaven still sounds in the first sentences of the divine Gita, where symbolically at the beginning of the battle can still be heard echoes of that mighty fight of the heavens. O, it was a mighty field of battle! From the time when the Dominions or Kyriotetes brought about the formation of the ancient Sun, up to the time of that of the ancient Moon, when the Mights or Dynamis took up their mission, all was a mighty field of battle; a gigantic fight reigned in Heaven. The Dominions had contracted the whole mass of our solar systems to the boundary of Jupiter, then the Virtutes or Mights contracted it to the boundary of the Mars of to-day. Between these two planetary frontiers in the heavens lies the great battlefield of the fight of Heaven. Look at that heavenly battlefield! Only in the nineteenth century has the physical eye discovered again, so to speak, the devastations produced by the Fight in Heaven. You have a host of small Planetoids scattered in between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. These are the wreckage of the battlefield of the fight in Heaven which was fought between the two points of Cosmic time when our Solar System was contracted first as far as Jupiter, then to Mars. And when our Astronomers direct their telescopes towards the heavenly spaces and still discover other planetoids, these are still the wreckage of that great battlefield, of that fight in Heaven between the advanced Virtutes and those who were less advanced, and which also brought about the severing of the Moon from the Sun.

[ 21 ] Thus, we see, when we consider the actions of the divine spiritual beings, how external things appear to us as the expression, the outward physiognomy of those divine spiritual beings.

[ 1 ] We saw yesterday how the facts of the Cosmos proceed from the spiritual life of Beings who stand above man. Especially such a phenomenon as the one we introduced towards the end of our last lecture, the fight in heaven, which has left, so to speak, so many ‘corpses’ on the field of battle between Jupiter and Mars, which as planetoids are still being discovered by physical science in ever-increasing numbers; such a phenomenon must be of particular importance to us, and we shall have to return to it again: We shall see how this event is also reflected in certain processes of the earth's evolution, and how precisely in the beginning of the Bhagavad Gita we find the earthly reflection of this fight in heaven.

[ 2 ] But to-day we shall continue our studies so as to describe, though in a sketchy way, those other beings of the spiritual Hierarchies, whom we have indicated already, but whom yesterday we omitted. These are the Beings who, counting upwards, stand nearest to man, and are called in Christian Esotericism: Angels, Archangels, Primeval Beginnings or Primeval Forces; also Angeloi, Archangeloi, and Archai. In theosophical literature the Archangels are also called Spirits of Fire, and the primeval Beginnings, spirits of Personality.

[ 3 ] These Beings who stand, as it were, in between man and those others to whom we referred yesterday as reaching up to Jupiter, Mars, etc., naturally stand in a nearer relation to man on the earth itself. First we have the Angels or Angeloi. They passed through their human stage during the evolution of the ancient Moon, and are fundamentally speaking, only as far on during our present earth evolution as man will be during the Jupiter evolution. They stand one stage higher than man. What is the task of these Beings? Their task can be realised when we take into account the development of man upon earth.

[ 4 ] Man develops from incarnation to incarnation. Our human evolution as it is now, reaches back through the ancient Atlantean time, through the Lemurian time and really begins in the ancient Lemurian time. This evolution through all these incarnations will continue for a long time yet, till towards the end of earthly evolution when other forms of human development will have come in. Now you know that what we call the eternal nucleus or kernel of the human being, the individuality, continues from incarnation to incarnation. But you also know that the greater number of people have to-day no recollection, no consciousness, as yet of their incarnations, and men do not as yet remember what happened to them during their former incarnations. Only those who have developed a certain degree of clairvoyance can look at their past incarnations.

[ 5 ] What sequence would there be between a man's incarnations upon earth when he cannot remember his former incarnations, if certain beings were not there to connect the separate incarnations, and watch the progress of the individual from one incarnation to the other? We have to assign one of these Beings to each man, a being who, being one stage higher, can lead the individuality over from one incarnation to the other. These are not the beings who rule Karma [but] preserve the memory from one incarnation to the other, so long as the man is not himself aware of it. These Beings are the Angels. Each man is a personality in each incarnation, and over each man a being watches, who has a consciousness which passes from one incarnation to the other. This makes it possible that in certain inferior grades of initiation, man is able, even if he does not himself know anything about his past incarnations, to ask his Angel about them. This is quite possible for certain lower degrees of initiation. The Beings who, as Angels, are one stage higher than men, have to keep watch over the whole human thread of life, which is spun for each single individuality from one incarnation to another.

Now, we pass on to the next group of Beings, to the Archangels — Archangeloi or Fire Spirits. These do not occupy themselves with separate men, with the single individual, but have a wider task; they bring single lives into harmonious order with the life of larger human groups, as, for instance, nations, races, etc. Within our earth's evolution the Archangels’ task is to bring into certain harmonious relationship each single soul with the national or race-soul. For those who penetrate into spiritual knowledge, the souls of races are something quite different from what they are for the lovers of the abstract in the science of to-day, or for present day culture in general. On a certain territory, (let us take Germany, France or Italy) live so and so many people, and because the physical eye sees only so many external human forms, such lovers of the abstract can imagine what is called the Soul of a nation or Spirit of a nation only as a comprehensive general idea of a nation. For the lover of abstractions the separate man only is real, not the soul of the nation, not the spirit of the nation. For one who truly sees into the inner working of spiritual life, that which is called the nation's soul or spirit, is a reality. In the soul of a nation there lives and weaves what we call a fire-spirit or an Archangel; he regulates, so to speak, the relation between separate men and the nation or races as a whole

[ 6 ] Then we rise to those beings whom we designate the Spirits of Personality, primeval beginnings, primeval forces, or Archai. These are still loftier Beings, who have a still higher task in the continuity of human existence. Fundamentally speaking, they regulate the earthly relations of whole human generations on earth, and they live in such a way that, on the waves of time, from epoch to epoch, they transform themselves at certain definite periods, they assume other spiritual bodies. Here again, you all know something of that which for the lovers of the abstract, is merely an idea, but which is a reality for those who can look into actual spiritual existence; it is that which is given a truly ugly name — the spirit of the time. You have here to do with that which represents the meaning and the mission of an epoch of humanity; picture to yourselves that we could describe the meaning and the mission of, for instance, the first thousands of years immediately after the Atlantean catastrophe. This ‘Spirit of the Age’ comprises something which reaches beyond single nations, beyond single races. Such a spirit is not limited to this or that nation, it goes beyond the limits of nations. That which one really calls a ‘Zeitgeist’ or Spirit of an epoch is the spiritual body of the Archai or the Primeval Beginnings or Spirits of Personality. It is to these Spirits of Personality that one has to ascribe the fact that within certain epochs, certain definite personalities appear on our earth. You understand, do you not, that earthly tasks have to be solved by earthly personalities; in a definite epoch, some epoch-making personality has had to appear. A strange muddle would come into the evolution of the earth if it were all left to chance, and Luther or Charlemagne were placed within any epoch, no matter which. This must be thought out first, the connexion with the whole evolution of humanity over the whole earth, has to be thought out; the right soul has to appear in harmony with the meaning of the whole earth's development. This is regulated by the Spirits of Personality, the Archai or primeval origins.

[ 7 ] And when we get beyond the Archai, we reach to those Beings whom we touched on yesterday, the so called Powers, — Exusiai, whom we also call the Spirits of Form. Here we have to do with tasks that reach beyond the earth. We differentiate in the course of human development a Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan evolution. We have now seen how all that happens within the earth itself is regulated by the Angels as regards the individual men, by Archangels as regards the relation between individuals and the large masses of humanity, and by the Spirits of Personality for the whole development of man, from the Lemurian period up to the period when man will again be so largely spiritualised that he will hardly belong to the earth. But something else has yet to be regulated. Humanity will have to be guided from one planetary condition to another. Spiritual Beings must also exist, whose care it is during the whole earth evolution to see that when that evolution will have come to an end, humanity may pass in the right manner through a Pralaya and find its way to the next goal, to the Jupiter goal. These are the Powers or Spirits of Form; yesterday we characterised their task from above downwards, now we characterise them from below upwards. The spirits whose care it is to see that the whole of humanity should be led from one planetary condition to another, are the Powers, Exusiai or Spirits of Form.

[ 8 ] We must now make a certain disclosure about the Cosmic position of these Beings. In spiritual science, in that which it is desired to continue to-day in Anthroposophy, and which is at bottom [of] the Wisdom of the Mysteries, these different Beings of the heavenly Hierarchies have always been spoken of as we have spoken of them to-day. We heard yesterday that the present Saturn represents the limit up to which reached the action of the Thrones or Spirits of Will; Jupiter, the limit up to which the Dominions, Spirits of Wisdom, acted; and Mars, the boundary line up to which reached the influence of the Mights, Dynamis or Virtutes, or Spirits of Motion.

[ 9 ] We may now characterise in a similar way how the Beings we named to-day divided specially the realms over which they held sway within our solar system. We must here touch on something which will perhaps call forth a certain amazement, even in you, who are already in a certain way schooled Anthroposophists, but which is absolutely in accordance with the truth. In the school curriculum of the present day, it is indicated that once upon a time, in grey antiquity, before Copernicus, there had been a conception of our Solar system which is known as the Ptolemaic System. People then believed that the earth stood in the centre of our system, and that the planets coursed round it, as they appear to do to our ordinary physical sight. Since Copernicus one knows — at least so people say — what people did not know formerly, that the Sun stands in the middle and that the planets circle around it, in their respective ellipses. But that which ought to be made quite clear and precise to people by such a description of our solar system, if one sincerely and honestly expounds it in the present day sense, is still something quite different. One ought to say: up to Copernicus, people knew only certain forms of movement in Universal space, and according to these, they judged how it could be with our solar system. What Copernicus did is not that he, so to speak, took a chair and gazed into space to see how the sun stands in some point of a circle or ellipse and how the planets turn around it; but he made a calculation, and this calculation explains what is seen in a simpler way than the former calculation did. The Copernican world system is nothing but the result, the product, of thought. [ 10 ] Let us look at it once from the point of view of the Ptolemaic. Let us consider that the Sun stands in the middle, let us calculate where the places of the planets must be, and then search whether it coincides with experience. Certainly, for mere physical observation, it coincides at first completely. Certainly one has built upon it all sorts of world systems, the Kant-Laplace system, for instance; but there one reaches a point where there were continual discoveries, a point which is no more scientifically quite honest. For later on, by purely physical observation, two planets have been added to it — we have not touched on them yet, but later we will show what they signify for our system — these are Uranus and Neptune. When one describes this world system one certainly should turn people's attention to the fact that in reality these two planets Uranus and Neptune, very much impair the truth of the calculation. [ 11 ] If one accepts the Kant-Laplace system, then, according to it, Uranus and Neptune should move with their moons as the other moons move around the other planets. But they do not; we even have among those outer planets, these two lately discovered planets, one which behaves in a very strange way. In reality, if the Kant-Laplace system is correct, somebody must, after having split off the rest of the planets, [have] turned the axis in such a way that it revolved at 90°, for its course is different from that of the other planets. These two differ greatly from the other planets of our solar systems. We shall see later how it is with them, but now we simply call attention to the fact that with the Copernican system we have only to do with a calculation, with something established as an hypothesis, as an assumption, at a time when man had gone completely adrift from the perception of spiritual co-relations and of what lies spiritually at the foundation of external happenings. But the old Ptolemaic system is not merely a physical system, it is one which was still derived from spiritual observation, when one knew that planets are boundary marks for certain realms where the higher Beings held sway. We must design our whole solar planetary system in a different way if we are to characterise these realms of control correctly. I shall draw this planetary system for you as it was expounded in the Mystery Schools of Zarathustra. We could just as well turn to other Mysteries for counsel, but we shall specially select this system for the explanation of our solar system with its planets, in respect of the spiritual Beings who are active within.

[ 12 ] In the System of Zarathustra something was accepted which differs from our observation of the heavens. You know that one can observe a certain progress of the Sun—call it apparent or otherwise: through the Zodiac during the course of long years. It is generally said—and it is correct—that from about the year 270 B.C. the sun in spring rose at the first point of spring in the Zodiacal sign of Pisces. But every year the sun advanced a little further, so that in the course of long, long epochs of time, it traverses, as regards its point of rising through the whole of one Zodiacal sign. Before 270 B.C. it did not rise in Pisces but in Aries, with its rising point in spring-time, it travelled through the whole sign of Aries during 2150 years. Before that, Taurus had been the Zodiacal constellation in the spring during the previous period of 2150 years. So, if we go back to five or six thousand years B.C., we find the spring-point in the Zodiacal sign of Gemini. That was the time in which the Mystery Schools of Zarathustra flourished.¹

Far back into hoary antiquity these Schools flourished and, when speaking of the appearance of the heavens, they calculated everything according to the constellation of Gemini, so that if we wanted to draw the Zodiac in the way we characterised it yesterday, we should have to place the constellation of Gemini here at the top. Then one would have to draw, in direct connection with the Zodiac, that which bounds the realm of the Thrones or Spirits of Will, the boundary of which is Saturn. Then we come to the boundary limit of the realm of those spiritual Beings whom we call the Spirits of Wisdom — the utmost boundary being Jupiter. Then we reach the limit of the realm of the Spirits of Motion of which the limit is Mars. We have seen that between these lies the battlefield which the fight in Heaven has left behind. Now if we want to divide the realms of power correctly, we must draw the boundary line of the Sun. Thus, just as we draw Mars as the boundary point up to which is the domain ruled by the Mights and Spirits of Motion, we must draw the Sun itself as marking the limit to which the Lordship of the Powers or the Spirits of Form extends. And then we come to the boundary which we designate with the sign of Venus. The realm of the Spirits of Personality or Archai reaches to Venus. Next we come to the boundary of the realm, the limit of which is marked by the sign of Mercury, and is the realm of those Beings, whom we call Archangels or Fire Spirits. And now we come very near the earth. We can now designate the realm which has the Moon for a landmark, and here we draw the earth.

[ 13 ] You must look on the earth as the Starting Point surrounded by a region under the dominion of certain Beings which reaches to the Moon. Then comes a region extending as far as Mercury, then one extending to Venus, and then one to the Sun.

You may be astonished at the sequence in which I have placed the planets. When the earth is here, and the Sun there, you would have thought that I should draw Mercury in the vicinity of the Sun, and Venus here. But no! For these Planets have had their names interchanged, in later Astronomy. That which is called Mercury to-day was called Venus in all ancient teachings, and that which is called Venus was called Mercury. Thus, note it well, one does not understand the ancient writings when one takes that which in them is called Venus or Mercury for the Venus or Mercury of the present day. That which is said about Venus has to be applied to the Mercury of to-day, and what is said about Mercury to Venus. For those two designations were later interchanged. On the occasion when man turned the world system topsy-turvy, when the earth was deprived of its central position, the perspective was not only changed, but the designations of Mercury and Venus were also changed.

[ 14 ] Now you will very easily bring into harmony what is drawn here with the physical or Copernican theory. You need only think: here is , the Sun; around it turns Venus; further around it circles Mercury. Then the Moon turns round the earth. Then Jupiter revolves around it, then Saturn. You must think of the physical movements of each planet revolving round the Sun; but you can imagine such a position when the earth , so to say, stands here and the other planets have revolved so, that on their way they find themselves behind the Sun. Thus if I drew it, it would be so; we draw our usual physical system, we draw the Sun as the one burning point, and let Venus, Mercury and the Earth with her Moon revolve round it. These are Earth, Venus, Mercury, according to the ancient designation. The next following is Mars, then after the Planetoids comes Jupiter, then Saturn. Now imagine it so that whilst , the earth stands below, and Mercury and Venus follow, that then Mars , stands there above, Jupiter , there, and so on. Now you have the Sun, and Mercury, and the Venus of to-day , here. It is plausible, that if those planets can take all sort of positions towards each other, they might also have once stood thus. This is how the Copernican system is drawn, only a point of time is chosen, when the Earth, Mercury and Venus are on the one side of the Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, the other planets, on its other side.

This is what I have drawn, and nothing else. Here are Earth, Mercury, Venus, on the one side, and on the other side, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. Thus, we have to do only with a change of perspective. This system is quite possible but only when this constellation was there. It is a fact that it was there at a certain epoch, when Gemini was above Saturn. Then one could observe clairvoyantly with particular exactness the connections between the regions in which the Spiritual Hierarchies hold sway. It was then revealed that around the Earth, up to the Moon, was the sphere of the Angels. In fact when one does not use the physical system as a foundation, one gets around the earth up to the Moon, the sphere of the Angels, up to Mercury the sphere of the Archangels, up to Venus that of the Archai or Spirits of Personality, and lastly up to the Sun is the realm of the Exusiai or Spirits of Form. Then comes the sphere — as I characterised it yesterday — of the Virtutes or Mights, then the sphere of the Dominions, and then that of the Thrones.

[ 15 ] When one speaks of the Copernican and of the Ptolemaic systems, one must have it clear in one's mind that in the Ptolemaic system something still remains of the constellation of ruling Spirits, and there the Earth must be taken as the starting point of the perspective. A future will come when this world system will again be the correct one; because Man will again know about the Spiritual World. It is to be hoped that men will be then less fanatical than they are to-day

To day, it is said: ‘Before Copernicus, people all talked nonsense, they all had a primitive world system. Since Copernicus we at last know what is right. All else is false, and because the Copernican system is the right one it will be taught in all ages, even if it were for millions of years.’ This is more or less the talk of the day. There hardly ever existed such superstitious folk as are the modern astronomical theorists; and there hardly ever was such fanaticism as there is in this domain of science. It is to be hoped that future generations will be more tolerant and that they will say: ‘From the fifteenth or sixteenth century men ceased to be conscious of the existence of the spiritual world, and that one must have other perspectives in the spiritual worlds, that there, one must arrange the heavenly bodies into a different order than when one observes in a merely physical way.’ Formerly that was done, but the time came when men considered the order and regulation of the heavenly bodies only from the physical point of view. ‘We can do this also,’ will cry the men of the future, and from the sixteenth century onwards it was quite correct. ‘Men had for a time to overlook the spiritual world but then people bethought themselves again and recollected that there was a spiritual world, they then returned to the original spiritual perspective.’ It is to be hoped that the men of the future will comprehend that there also was once an astronomical Mythology, and will not look upon our times with the same disdain with which the men of the modern superstitions look upon their forefathers.

[ 16 ] We see that the Copernican system became different, simply because merely physical standpoints were taken into account in relation to it. Before that, in the Ptolemaic system, there were still remnants of a spiritual point of view. Only through taking into consideration the other system, can one form any idea of the rulership and the action of the spiritual Beings within our solar-planetary-system. We keep to physical conditions when we say: Up to the Moon the Angels exercise their power, up to Mercury the Archangels, to Venus the Spirits of Personality, up to the Sun the Powers, as far as to Mars the Mights. Then come the Beings we call the Dominions, and here lastly the Thrones. We need only draw in other lines to designate the physical system, then we have in these lines the limits of the realms of power of the Hierarchies. As regards spiritual activities it is not our Sun at all which stands in the centre of the system, but the earth. Therefore, all the ages which have regarded spiritual development as the most essential part, have said: Certainly the Sun is a far nobler heavenly body, Beings have evolved upon it who stand higher than man; but that with which evolution is concerned is man, who lives upon the earth. And when the Sun withdrew from the Earth, it did so in order that man should develop in the right way. If the Sun had remained united to the earth man could never have been able to progress at the right tempo. This was possible only because the Sun withdrew along with those Beings who could bear quite different conditions. It left the earth to itself, so to speak, so that man might find his tempo for his own development. [ 17 ] A world system grows into this or that according to the point of departure — the perspective chosen. If one asks, where is the centre of our world system, seeing in it only what the purely physical senses can observe, then it is found in the Copernican system. If one asks about the arrangement of our solar system as it depends on the regions ruled over by the spiritual Hierarchies, we must place the earth as its centre, we then get other boundary lines; the planets then become something quite different, they become limits for the region over which each spiritual Hierarchy holds sway.

[ 18 ] And now you will easily be able to see the correspondence between what has been just said about the spacial distribution of each sphere of influence, with that which has been said about the task and mission of each group of Beings.

The Beings who are nearest to the earth, who hold sway in the immediate surroundings of the earth up to the Moon, are the Angels. From that region they guide the life of each single Individual as it progresses from incarnation to incarnation.

But something more is needed in order that whole masses of nations may be distributed in accordance with their mission upon earth. A little thought will reveal that co-operation with the cosmos is here necessary. It really depends on cosmic, not earthly conditions, whether a nation has one sort of character or another. Only think how a race with different qualities, for instance in hair and in skin, acts otherwise than another race would do; here we have the interactions of conditions which must be regulated from heavenly spaces. This is done from a region whose lordship extends up to Mercury, to the boundary of the Archangel's sphere of action.

Further, when the whole of humanity as it develops upon earth has to be guided and led, this has to be effected from still wider heavenly spaces, from that which extends as far as to Venus by the Archai.

When further, the task of the earth itself has to be led and guided, this must be done from the centre of the whole system. [ 19 ] I have said that our humanity evolves through Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan. The Beings of the spiritual Hierarchies, who direct the mission of humanity carrying it on from one planet to another, are the Powers, the Spirits of Form. They must dwell in a very special place, they are of such a nature that their sphere of power reaches up to the Sun. The Sun already existed as a special, a particular globe alongside the ancient Moon; it is now near the earth, in the future it will be near Jupiter. Its realm of power extends beyond the single planets. Therefore the existence of the Sun must be bound up with those spiritual Beings whose realm of action also extends beyond the single planets. The Sun is a very special and perfect globe for this reason, that up to it extends that realm of power which stretches beyond the single planets.

Thus you see that in reality we do not find the outer spheres or dwelling places of the Hierarchies so much on the single planets as in the regions which are limited by the orbits of the planets. If you think of the whole surrounding space from the earth up to the Moon, it is filled with Angel-activities; and if you think of the spheres from the earth to Mercury, it is filled by the activities of the Archangels, and so on.

[ 20 ] Thus we have to do with the spheres of space; and the planets are the landmarks for realms of the spacial activities of the higher Beings. We see that a continual, progressive line of perfection is to be sought from man upwards. Man himself is chained to the earth. That eternal part of him which goes from incarnation to incarnation is guided by Beings who are not bound only to the earth, but who traverse the surrounding air and that which lies beyond it up to the Moon. And so on further.

[ 21 ] Now, man has been engaged on his evolution upon earth since primeval times, and his relationship towards his whole evolution upon earth, is exactly similar to the relationship between the small child and the grown-up person. The latter teaches the small child. It is the same as regards the Hierarchies in the cosmos. Man, who is chained to the earth, only gradually struggles through to the knowledge he needs, to the cleverness which is necessary to him upon earth. Higher Beings must teach him. What must happen so that this object can be gained? In the beginnings of the earth's existence, Beings who were otherwise not bound to the earth, had to come down from higher spheres. And that really happened. Beings who otherwise needed only to live in the surroundings of the earth had to come down so as to communicate to men what they already knew as the older, more perfect members of the Hierarchies. They had to incarnate into human bodies, not for their own development, for they did not need it, just as a grown-up man does not study the A.B.C. for his own progress, but so as to teach it to these small children. Hence, we look back into old Atlantean and old Lemurian times, when Beings descended from the surrounding realms of the earth to which they belonged and incarnated in human bodies and became the teachers of mankind. These are Beings who belonged to higher Hierarchies, to Mercury and Venus. The sons of Venus and of Mercury descended from above and became the teachers of young humanity, so that these men, wandering in the midst of that young humanity, really represented Maya or illusion. There have been such men. Let us suppose, in order to explain it more precisely: some normally developed man of the Lemurian times met such a man. Externally he did not appear very different from others, but a spirit had entered into him whose realm extended as far as Mercury or Venus. Thus, the exterior of such a man represented in reality Maya, an illusion. He looked like other men, but he was something quite different: he was a son of Mercury, or of Venus. In the early dawn of humanity there were such apparitions. The sons of Mercury or of Venus came down and wandered among men, so that they now received within them the character of the Beings of Mercury and Venus. We have said that the Beings of Venus are the Spirits of Personality. Such Beings walked the earth as men, being outwardly limited to narrow human personalities, but who with their mighty power guided humanity. These were the great conditions of lordship in Lemurian times, when sons of Venus guided the whole of humanity. The sons of Mercury guided parts of humanity. They were as powerful as those are now whom we call spirits of nations or of race.

[ 22 ] Maya or illusion does not only exist in the world but also as regards men. A man as he stands before us can have an external appearance which is a truth, which corresponds precisely to his soul; or else it may be a Maya; he has in reality a task, which corresponds to the task of the sons of Mercury or of the sons of Venus. This is what is meant, when it is said, that fundamentally the great guiding individualities of ancient times as they walked the earth with their ordinary names, represented a Maya, and that was what H. P. Blavatsky meant when she pointed out that the Buddhas represented Maya. You can find this very word in the Secret Doctrine. These things are derived in every respect from the teachings of the holy Mysteries: we have only to understand them.

[ 23 ] We are now obliged to ask: How does it happen then that such a son of Venus descends to us? How does it happen that a Bodhisattva can live upon earth? The Being of a Bodhisattva, the Being of a son of Mercury, forms an important chapter in the evolution of our earth which has to do with its connexion to the Cosmos itself. Therefore, tomorrow we shall have to consider the nature of the sons of Mercury and of Venus, of the Bodhisattva or Dhyani-buddhas.

• 1. The following tabulation is not Steiner’s chronology, but common chronology as accepted by the astrologers.
  In order to make this paragraph of use to the ordinary student it has been necessary to depart from the version as it stood in the reported text. The difference lies in the calculation of the dates. The conclusion to be drawn is approximately the same. We know Christ came during Pisces, which began 270 B.C. Add 2150 years and we get the following:
  2420 B.C. as the beginning of Aries,
  4570 B.C. as the beginning of Taurus,
  6720 B C. as the beginning of Gemini.
  Since our year 1881 we are under Aquarius. In other words:
  Gemini begins 6720 B.C. down to 4570 B.C.
  Taurus begins 4570 B.C. down to 2420 B.C.
  Aries begins 2420 B.C. down to 270 B.C.
  Pisces begins 270 B.C. down to 1881 A.D.

[ 1 ] I should like to make an observation to-day at the beginning of this lecture in connection with the end of yesterday's lecture. I have seen that some of our respected listeners have given a certain importance to the fact — and one can very well understand it — that, in the sketch which I made each planet stood in a line with the Sun, that a sort of general relationship had been drawn, but I must expressly observe to you that this has no importance, and has nothing to do with that which concerns us here. It will be considered later on. We must not get wrong ideas.

[ 2 ] First, we draw the Sun, in accordance with the Copernican system; then, that which is called Mercury to-day — but which is esoterically called Venus; then Venus — which is Mercury in the esoteric sense. Then (according to the Copernican system), comes the earth, with its moon. Then comes the orbit of Mars, of Jupiter, ending up with the orbit of Saturn.

[ 1 ] This then would be the world system of Copernicus. Now, as I have said, I should like to put the thing before you as it was taught in a school of Zarathustra. Zarathustra however was not always himself the teacher; these are elementary truths which were taught in the Zarathustra schools. [ 3 ] If we suppose that here is the constellation Gemini, we take these points which simply lie in this line (from x or Gemini, to the Sun), and join the Sun with the constellation of Gemini, whether there is such a conjunction or not does not matter. I have drawn this here only to show the orbits of the planets, not the points where they stand. These are the boundary marks for the different Hierarchies. [ 4 ] Now, if we want, for instance, to designate the realm of Saturn, we must think of the earth and not the Sun as the centre, and we must draw a sort of circle — which in reality is not circular but egg-shaped, so that the earth becomes the centre point. We must do the same with the other heavenly bodies. I beg you not to take the things of secondary importance in this drawing for the chief thing. The chief thing consists in getting into your minds the figures, which agree with the corresponding realms of power, of the Hierarchies.

[ 5 ] To-day we shall consider more in detail the nature of those members of the Hierarchies, standing immediately above man. It is good to study this and to begin for once with man. For only if we have quite clearly in our minds all that has been repeatedly said about the nature of man and of his developments, can we rise to the consideration of the nature of the members of the higher Hierarchies.

[ 6 ] We know that man, as he first appeared upon earth, and as he has developed, consists essentially of four parts. These four members are the physical, the etheric, the astral body and the ‘I.’ We will draw these schematically to-day, as we have need. First we draw the human physical body as a circle, the same with the etheric body, the astral and lastly the ‘I’ or Ego as a small circle. You know how the development of man proceeds. During the course of his earthly evolution man begins to work on his astral body, with his Ego.

Generally speaking we may say: as much of his astral body as man has developed by the help of his ‘I’, so that this refashioned part of his astral body is completely ruled by the ‘I’, so much of it is called Manas or Spirit self, this — as has been often said — must not be looked upon as something new that has entered man, but simply as a transformed product of the astral body. It must be carefully noted that all that has just been said applies to man only. It is important that we should not generalise, but make it clear to ourselves that the Beings of the universe differ very much from each other. [ 7 ] Let us then draw the fifth part of man the transformed astral body, that is to say Manas, as a separate circle: in reality it ought to have been drawn inside the astral body. In the same way we must draw above it the transformed etheric body. The transformed part of the etheric body, we designate Budhi or life spirit: when the whole of it is transformed it becomes completely Budhi. In the same way the physical body is transformed into Atma, when we consider man in his perfected state, which he will attain in the course of his development through Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan. Thus when man will have reached his highest perfection in the Vulcan condition, we might make a schematic drawing of him in the following way: we could say that we have here his Atma, Budhi, Manas, the ‘I’ or Ego, the astral body, the etheric and the physical body. And we would see in Diagram I that the most characteristic thing we have to observe in man is, that with his seven principles he is an entire being, that these seven principles are all within each other. This is the most important thing.

[ 8 ] When we now turn to the members of the next Hierarchy, the Angels, the case is different. This scheme applies to man, but not to the angels.

Here, in Diagram II, we must say that the Angel has developed physical body (1) etheric (2) and astral body (3). But now the Ego (4) must be drawn as separated from these, then come Manas (5) Budhi (6) and Atma (7). If you want to be clear about the nature of an Angel you must think that his higher parts to which he seeks to develop himself float above that part of him which is in the physical world; at first he has really only Manas completely developed, the other two parts he will develop later. If one wanted therefore to study the nature of an Angel one would have to say that the Angel has not an Ego which dwells on earth as the man has. Nor is he developing his Manas present stage of evolution upon earth. Therefore, that which there is of him upon earth, does not look as if it belonged to a spiritual Being. When you meet a man and you look at him, you see he has his principles in him, therefore all his parts are organised within him. If you want to look for an Angel, you must keep in mind that his physical part is something like a mirrored reflection of his spiritual principles, which are to be found only in the spiritual world. In flowing and running water, in mists dissolving into water, also in the winds and the lightning flashing through the air, in all these, you have to look for the physical body of Angelic beings. The difficulty for man consists in his fixed idea that a physical body must necessarily have a definite outline. It is difficult for a man to say to himself: I see fog rising, I see a stream of water dissolving into spray, I stand in the blowing wind, I see lightning dart from the clouds, and I know that all these are revelations of Angels; behind this physical body, which is by no means so limited as the human one I have to recognise the spirit. [ 9 ] Man has to develop all his principles enclosed within him; because of this he cannot realise that a physical body can be so liquid and evanescent that it does not even have to be enclosed or outlined with precision. You must realise that eighty Angels may be associated with and have the most solid part of their physical body in some one sheet of water. The physical body of an Angel need not be understood as having any boundary; one piece of water may belong to it here, and far away another piece. In short, all that surrounds us as the water, fire, and air of the earth, we have to imagine as containing the bodies of the Hierarchy which stands next above man. One has to look clairvoyantly into the astral world in order to perceive the Angel's Ego and his Manas that gazes down on us from the higher world.

The realm of the solar system which we must investigate when we seek the Angels, is that whose limits are marked by the Moon. With the Angels, investigation is still comparatively easy, for their condition is such, that if for instance, we have an Angel's physical body in a piece of water or the like, and we consider that water or that wind clairvoyantly, we find within it an etheric or astral body. Hence, in the drawing these three are represented together. Of course, we must not only see the material image in the rushing wind, the flowing or broken water, which common perception sees; the etheric and astral parts of the Angels live in the most varied way in water, air, and fire. But if you want to look for the spiritual being, the soul of the Angel, you must seek it in the astral realm, you must seek it clairvoyantly.

[ 10 ] The next stage, that of the Archangels, is again different. That which we have drawn here as the astral body is, in the case of the Archangels, not at all united with the etheric and physical bodies. The lowest part of them which we can find, we must draw like this: physical body, etheric body (Diagram III – 1,2); this they have separated off, and all the higher principles are above in the higher worlds, so that we can only have a complete image of the Archangel when we look for it in two places, and realise, that it is not the same as with man who unites all in one being. The spiritual part is above, and at the same time it mirrors itself below. A physical and etheric body can only unite when the physical consists of air or fire. For instance you could not perceive the physical bodies of these Archangels rushing along in the water; you could recognise them only in air and in fire, and you would have to find clairvoyantly, and only in the spiritual world, the spiritual counter-part of that rushing wind and that fire. This is joined neither to his physical, nor to his etheric body.

[ 11 ] And then we come to those Beings whom we designate as Archai, Primeval Beginnings or Spirits of Personality. Here below, we can draw only the physical body (Diagram IV); all the rest is above in the spiritual world. Such a physical Body can live only in fire; only in flames of fire can you recognise the physical body of the Archai. Whenever you see the flashing fire of the lightning you may say to yourselves: in it is contained something of the Archai; but in the spiritual world above I shall find the spiritual counter-part which, in this case is separated from its physical body.

It is specially in the Archai or Spirits or Personality that the clairvoyant can accomplish this with comparative ease.

These Spirits of Personality have a realm which reaches up to the astronomical Venus (Mercury in the occult sense of the Mysteries). Let us imagine that someone has progressed so far that he is able to observe what is evolving up there on Venus. (Occult Mercury). There he can recognise these highly evolved Beings, the Spirits of Personality. When he directs his clairvoyant vision to Venus so as there to observe the assembly of the spirits of Personality, and then sees the lightning flash through the clouds, he sees in that flash of lightning the reflection of the Spirits of Personality, for in it they have their physical body.

[ 12 ] Now we come to yet higher spiritual Beings, to those who reach up to the Sun. These Powers, these Exusiai, or Spirits of Form interest us less at the present time; only it must be kept in view that the beings of Venus and of Mercury are their organs of execution, the beings of Venus who have their physical body in fire, and those of Mercury who have it in air. Translate this so that you say: the Beings who live in the Sun make use of the spirits of Venus (occult Mercury) in the fire flames, and the spirits of Mercury (occult Venus) in the rushing wind as their executive. ‘And God makes flames of fire into his servants and winds into his messengers.’ Sayings such as these found in ancient religious documents are taken absolutely from spiritual facts, and correspond with what the clairvoyant is able to observe.

[ 13 ] Thus we see that the three hierarchies who stand next above us are closely attached to our own existence. Man is the being he is, because he has partaken of solidity from the earth. This separates him from other Beings, it makes him into a self-contained being composed of separate organs. On the Moon, man was still a being like others; there he passed through transformations, just as the masses of water do which have a body that is ever in a state of transformation. On the earth man was for the first time imprisoned, as it were, within his skin; and became a self-contained being, so that it is possible to say, man is composed of a physical, etheric, astral body and an Ego. This isolation really originated not so very long ago. If we return to the first epoch of old Atlantean times, we find a man who did not yet feel his Ego completely within him, who was still waiting to receive his Ego. And if we go still further back in earthly evolution we find that what there is of man down on earth consists as yet only of a physical, etheric and astral body. And if we go back to Lemurian times, we find a man who in his way has no more of a physical, etheric and astral body down here upon earth than the Angels have. From this point of time, with the growth of the Ego the union begins, and continues through post-Atlantean times. In Lemurian times men walked the earth who had only a physical, and etheric and an astral body. But these were not men who could think, in the sense of to-day, or who could develop humanly — in the sense of to-day.

[ 14 ] And now something very remarkable happened upon earth. Those men of Lemuria who had only physical, etheric and astral bodies were helpless, they could not help themselves, they did not know what they had to do on earth. From heavenly regions the inhabitants of astronomical Venus first came down to the earth, to these helpless beings; because they had a certain relationship, to the physical body, they were enabled to send their light through, and ensoul the physical body of the first inhabitants of the earth. Thus, we find some among the Lemurians, who passed among the mass of humanity in quite a remarkable way; they had a different physical body to the others. A man, so particularly graced, had not an ordinary physical body, but a body ensouled by a spirit of Venus, a Spirit of Personality. Because that man of ancient Lemuria moved about with a spirit of Venus within his physical body, he had a powerful influence on all his surroundings. Such Lemurians did not appear different from their companions externally; but because a Spirit of Personality was translated into their bodies, these selected individuals acted suggestively, in the highest sense of the word, upon their surroundings. To-day, there is nothing to compare to the obedience, the reverence and awe that was felt for them. All the attempts at colonisation which were undertaken, to people the different regions of the earth, were led by such Beings, into whom a Spirit of Personality had descended. No speech was needed — for there was no speech then — no signs were needed, but the fact alone that such a Spirit of Personality was there, sufficed. And when it was held necessary that large masses of people should be led from one place to another, those masses simply followed without thinking about it. Thought did not exist, it only developed later.

[ 15 ] Thus the Spirits of Personality came down to earth, as Spirits of Venus, in ancient Lemurian times. And we can say, that the distinctive features of these messengers from Venus — such as the human countenances of that time could wear — signified something quite new with regard to the whole Universe. If we take their cosmic significance, it reaches as far as Venus, and their actions had a meaning, an influence on the whole concatinations of the Solar System. They could lead the people from one place to another, for they knew the connections that can only be known by those, who are acquainted with the surroundings of the earth, and not only with the Earth itself.

[ 16 ] The development of humanity progressed further. The necessity arose that Archangels, spirits of astronomical Mercury, should act upon the human development. These were now obliged to ensoul and give life to that which dwelt below upon earth. This was principally in Atlantean times. At that time the Archangels, or Spirits of Mercury descended upon earth, and inspired the physical and etheric bodies of the men of that period. So in Atlantis there were also men who were not outwardly very different from the others, but whose physical and etheric bodies were ensouled by an archangel. And if you remember what was said yesterday, that the Archangels have the task of directing whole nations, you will understand that a man who had an Archangel within him could actually give to the whole Atlantean race those laws which he received directly from heaven. [ 17 ] The great leaders of old Lemurian times, when it was still necessary to act much more generally, were ensouled by Spirits from Venus. Those who, in Atlantean times had to direct smaller masses of people, were ensouled by Archangels. Those who are called the priest-kings of Atlantis, were in truth — Maya. They were not at all what they outwardly appeared to be. An Archangel lived in their physical and etheric bodies, he was the real active agent..

If we go back to Atlantean times, we can seek out the secret stations of these leaders of mankind. From these hidden centres they worked, there they investigated the mysteries of Space One might ascribe the name of ‘Oracle’ to what was investigated, and commanded from those ancient Atlantean places of the Mysteries, even though this word originated in later times. The name ‘Place of the Oracles’ is quite suitable to these centres of instruction, and government. From them the great teachers worked, so that others might there be trained to become priests and servants of men.

[ 18 ] It is important that one should know that there were men in ancient Atlantis who in reality were Archangels, bearing an Archangel incarnated within their physical and etheric bodies. If such a man had been seen by someone endowed with clairvoyance, the latter would in fact have seen a physical man and behind him an enormous figure, rising high above him, and losing itself in indefinite regions — the figure of the inspiring Archangel. Such a personality was of a two-fold nature, as if behind the physical man, growing out of indefinite Space, was the inspiring Archangel. When such men died, the physical body was destroyed according to the laws of Atlantis. That physical body, which had been naturally ensouled by the Archangel, dissolved, but the etheric body did not dissolve. There is a spiritual economy which demands exceptions to the general truths expounded by Anthroposophy. We say — and in general it is correct — that when a man dies, he lays aside his physical body and after a certain time also his etheric body, which dissolves with the exception of an extract. But this is only generally the case. There is an enormous difference between an etheric body like that of the Initiates of the Atlantean Oracles, which was permeated by an Archangel, and an ordinary etheric body. Such a precious etheric body is not lost, but is preserved in the spiritual world. In the first place, the great leader of the Atlantean Oracles preserved the seven most important etheric bodies of the seven great initiators of these Oracles. These ether bodies were originally built up through being inhabited by Archangels, who, at their death, naturally returned to the higher worlds. Such things are certainly not preserved in boxes, but according to spiritual laws. The Atlantean Initiate of the Sun-Oracle is no other than Manu, who has been often mentioned, and who guided the remnant of the Atlantean nation over to Asia to establish the new post-Atlantean civilisation. He took his little handful of people with him and led them over to Asia. He trained the people through generations, and when the seven most adaptable ones had been bred and educated sufficiently, he wove into their individual etheric bodies the substance of the seven preserved etheric bodies, which had been woven by Archangels in ancient Atlantis. Those seven, who were sent down by the great Leader, to lay the foundation of the first Post-Atlantean civilisation, were the seven holy Rishis of ancient India; they bore within their etheric garment, the etheric bodies of the great Atlantean Leaders, who had themselves acquired these bodies through the Archangels. Thus the past, the present, and the future acted in harmony. Those seven men who are called the holy Rishis would have appeared to you as simple people, for with their astral body and their Ego, they had not reached the height of their etheric bodies.

All that they were capable of was interwoven with their etheric bodies. There were certain hours during which inspiration acted within their etheric bodies, and then they spoke of things which they themselves could never have known. Then from their lips flowed that which had been inspired into their etheric bodies. Thus they were simple, plain people when they were left to their own understanding; but in their hours of inspiration, when the etheric body was active, they spoke of the greatest mysteries of our solar system and of the whole universe.

[ 19 ] In the post-Atlantean times men had not yet advanced so far that they could do without help from above, inspiration was still necessary; and a sort of ensouling still took place from above. We have seen how such ensouling occurred in Lemurian times, because a spirit of Personality ensouled the physical. body; in the Atlantean times the physical and the etheric bodies were ensouled by Archangels, and now the great leaders of the post-Atlantean times were ensouled through an Angel descending into their physical, etheric and astral bodies. The great leaders of humanity in the post-Atlantean times did not possess merely a physical, etheric and astral body, but an Angel also lived within them. Therefore, these great leaders could look back into their former incarnations. The ordinary man cannot do so as yet, because he has not yet developed. his Manas; he must himself first become an Angel. These leaders, who were born out of the ordinary inhabitants, carried an Angelic Being within their physical, etheric and astral bodies, who ensouled and, interpenetrated them. This is again Maya, again we have Beings who are something different from what they appear to be on earth. The great leaders of humanity of grey antiquity were quite different from what they outwardly seemed to be. They were personalities in whom an Angel dwelt and gave what they needed, so that they might become Teachers and Leaders of men. The great founders of religions were men possessed by Angels. Angels spoke through them. [ 20 ] The affairs of the world have to be described indeed as entirely regular, but the processes of development always slide one within the other, they overlap. That which we describe as exhibiting complete regularity does not work itself out with such regularity. It is certainly true that, as a general principle, Spirits of Personality did speak through human entities in the Lemurian times, Archangels in the Atlantean, and Angels in the post-Atlantean times. But such beings arose, also even in the post Atlantean times, who were penetrated by a Spirit of Personality down to their physical body, who, therefore, were in the same position, although they lived in the post Atlantean times, as were those beings through whom in Lemuria the Spirits of Personality spoke. Thus it was possible to have men also in the post-Atlantean times, who bore externally all the characteristics of their nation, but who, because humanity still needed such great leaders, carried within them a Spirit of Personality — and who were the external incarnation of such a Spirit. Then there were also men in the post Atlantean times who had an Archangel, a Spirit of Mercury, within them, who ensouled their physical and etheric bodies. And lastly, a third category of men was ensouled, inspired in their physical, etheric and astral bodies by an Angel Being, one through whom an Angel spoke. [ 21 ] In the spirit of the Eastern Teaching such personalities received particular names. Thus a personality who outwardly resembles a man of our post-Atlantean times, but who really is the bearer of a Spirit of Personality, who is ensouled by that Spirit down to his physical body, is called Dhyani-Buddha in the Eastern Teaching. Dhyani-Buddha is a generic name for human individualities in whom the Spirits of Personality are active, even as far as their physical body.

Those personalities who are ensouled down to their etheric body, who were bearers of Archangels in the post-Atlantean times, are called Bodhi-Sattva And those who are the bearers of an Angel, who are, therefore, ensouled in their physical, etheric and astral bodies, are called human Buddhas

Thus we have three degrees: that of the Dhyani-Buddha, the Bodhi-Sattva and the human Buddha. This is the true teaching of the Buddhas, of the classes and categories of Buddhas, which we have to recognise in connexion with the whole manner and means by which the Hierarchies fulfil their ends. [ 22 ] This is the marvel which meets us, when we look back to earlier undeveloped men, that among these men we find those, through whom the Hierarchies speak The great Hierarchies speak out of the Cosmos downwards into the Planets, and only by degrees do these Spirits of the higher Hierarchies, who were active before the appearance of our earth, emancipate the planetary men who live down here, when they have reached the necessary degree of ripeness. Here we gaze into unfathomable depths of wisdom. And what is of extraordinary importance is, that we understand this wisdom exactly as it was taught in all the ages, when primeval wisdom was taught to men.

[ 23 ] Thus, when you hear of the Buddhas, for they do not speak of the one Buddha only in the Eastern teaching, but of many, among whom there are naturally different grades of perfection — give attention to the fact: a Buddha walks on earth, but behind the Buddha, was the Bodhi-Sattva and even the Dhyani-Buddha.

Matters, however, might be so, that the Dhyani-Buddha or the Bodhi-Sattva did not reach so far as to ensoul the physical body, but that the Bodhi-Sattva descended only as far as to be able to ensoul the etheric body, so that you can imagine a Being who does not reach so far as to ensoul and inspire the mans physical body, but only the etheric body. It can, however, happen when such a Bodhi-Sattva is not physically visible (for when he appears only in an etheric body he is not physically visible, and there were such Bodhi-Sattva who were physically invisible) that he can, as a higher Being, inspire quite exceptionally the human Buddha. So that we have the human Buddha, who is already inspired by an Angelic Being, being further inspired in his etheric body by an Archangel Being. [ 24 ] It is essential that we should look into this wonderful complexity of the human nature. Many Individualities to whom we look back into former times can only be understood, when we accept them as the meeting point of different higher Beings, who proclaim and express themselves through the man. For, in truth, many periods do not possess a sufficient number of great men to be inspired by the Spirits who have to be active. Thus sometimes one single personality has to be ensouled by different individualities of the higher Hierarchies. And sometimes it is not only the inhabitants of Mercury who speak with us, when we have a certain personality standing before us, but the inhabitants of Venus also.

Such ideas lead us to the understanding of human evolution, so that we may recognise the true nature of those personalities who, when met as physical men, represent merely Maya. [ 25 ] To-morrow we shall begin by trying to comprehend the origin of each individual planet, which up to now we have considered only as boundary marks, and then we shall gain an idea of them as the dwelling-places of the corresponding spiritual Beings.²

• 2. EDITORIAL NOTES —
  A Spirit of Personality enters the Physical and the entity is called a Dyani-Buddha in Post-Atlantis.
  An Archangel enters the Physical and Etheric and the entity is called a Bodhi-Sattva in Post-Atlantis.
  An Angel enters the Physical, Etheric and Astral and the entity is called a human Buddha in Post-Atlantis
  But there are different degrees of each, and it is possible for a being to be inspired by all three Spiritual Beings. The student should avoid making hard and fast rules. There is much overlapping and also some departure from diagrams.