The Rudolf Steiner Archive

With our study of the Apocalypse we have reached the point that leads us to the so-called third letter. This third letter portrays to us—entirely in keeping with what we have seen in the first two letters—the evolutionary secrets, so to speak, of a certain geographical territory. In order to find our way into the following train of thought we must once again briefly call to mind the basic tendency and goal of the Apocalypse.

We have seen that the Apocalypse is a book of initiation. It describes the steps to be taken by a candidate for initiation in order to develop the highest vision of the spiritual world. We have seen that acquiring knowledge of all aspects of the physical plane is the first step. Those to be initiated must raise themselves to the astral plane, and then to the devachanic plane. It has become clear to us that human beings who raise themselves to the astral plane are surrounded by a world of pictures, which are much more real than anything we call pictures in our poor language. These astral pictures are much more real than what exists here. These pictures experienced by the seer are the fundamental forces of the physical world. The physical world is formed out of this world of pictures. When human beings have worked through to the astral plane, then they raise themselves to the devachanic plane; this plane's world of pictures resounds with the so-called music of the spheres, which constitutes the inner being of all things. Progressing then from the astral plane to the devachanic the seer hears for the first time what the Pythagorean school characterized as “the music of the spheres.” The music of the spheres finds only an abstract expression in what we call the higher numbers. But what are ordinary numbers and measure? What are the numbers physicists speak about when they discover wave motion, when they speak of oscillations? What are these numbers compared with what our ears hear when they hear the sounds themselves? What we find in the philosophical books concerning the “mysticism of numbers” is nothing more than a babbling. But what Pythagoras described is what the seer perceives after the spiritual ear has been opened, when it hears the sounds that make the wave movement or hears what is expressed in such wave movement. The devachanic world is nowhere else. You can remain standing in the same location and experience the physical world fading away. The world is enlivened with colors and forms—and then you can experience that this world of light is penetrated by tones.

In the Apocalypse you will find a description of how Christian mysticism describes the devachanic world. If you raise yourself to that elevated condition as the servant of the Lord did, then you first experience what is taking place on the physical plane. This is described to us in a certain way in the seven letters to the seven communities. Then the enlightenment achieved through knowledge of the physical plane is put into signs in the seven seals. When human beings raise themselves to the astral plane they experience a world flooded with light, pictures, and forms. That is described to us in the picture of the man surrounded by the four living creatures, of the lamb receiving from his hand the book with the seven seals. As these picture-seals are unsealed the astral world comes to meet us, and the trumpeting angels signify the harmony of the spheres on the plane of devachan.

With the Apocalypse we are confronted by a book of initiation. Such a book is, at the same time, always a prophetic book. One who experiences the events of the astral and devachanic planes also, at the same time, experiences the events of the future—a profound mystery of the future is present here. What is found today on a higher plane will appear in the future on the physical plane. Place yourself with a seer presently on the astral plane; the seer can only rise to this world if his or her spiritual eye is opened. Think of everything that you experience on the astral plane condensed, grown solid like water to ice; then you have the condition of your own physical world in the near future. The present, today, in the astral world, is the future in the physical, so that the seer can see today the future state of humankind on the astral plane. Initiation means, at the same time, penetrating the secrets of future events. Hence, the Apocalypse is first of all a book of initiation and secondly, a prophetic book. This prophetic wisdom we want now to illuminate a little more closely; we want to see how this wisdom encompasses the meaning of the evolution of our humankind.

You have heard that the Apocalypse speaks of very bad conditions of our earth, devastating conditions. We have just studied the task of Theosophy within our human evolution. Let us look at the future: There will he terrible conditions, conditions that devastate the earth. Human beings will be in a moral state that will allow egotism to attain heights compared with which our present-day state is mere child's play. One might ask how will it be in the future with souls of the present day? Must they be condemned to incarnate in a morally degenerate humanity, in an evil race? We must answer with a decisive “no.”

A wonderful legend describes to us the state of development of the soul. The soul is in a different line of evolution than the body of the human being. The difference between soul and racial development can be seen if we look into the past. Souls were incarnated many times in the Atlantean race; all of you were Atlanteans at that time. The souls worked themselves out of that situation and the remaining human bodies belonged to the races that had become decadent and were falling into decline. The souls left the bodies of the races and rose up to higher races. Human bodies afflicted with fundamental evil will not have souls within them that are striving to rise above their present state to a higher one. Souls that proceed with their development, who rise above themselves, will have, through their work, achieved different kinds of bodies in the sixth root race. But there is also something in Christian esotericism called the melting of human beings with their race. There is a great difference between a human being who says: I will raise myself above what I am capable of giving today to something higher; and another who says: I will stay in the life that surrounds me today. Those who do not strive to go beyond the present-day configuration, who fuse with their race, will be condemned to lead further lives in the bodies of the later races that are left behind.

When we look to the great leaders of humankind who are our pathfinders, we look to them as leaders who will show us how to go beyond the evolution of races in order to dwell in bodies that are more perfect in the future. The fact that a human being can say: I want to stay where I am! is expressed in a legend that has lived for a long time and found various explanations. However, it is really only explained by Theosophy. Think of the pathfinder whom we call Christ Jesus, the one who points to the passage in the Apocalypse we have just discussed. It is the passage he most often refers to—the place where he speaks of the overcoming of death. When you find human souls sitting along the way who are not interested in evolving—what do they experience? They must again and again be born in the same race because they have rejected the signal from the redeemer. This tragedy is expressed in the Ahasuerus legend;¹ Ahasuerus, “the wandering Jew,” created his own destiny because he had pushed the redeemer away from himself.

We must, then, distinguish between the evolution of the soul and the evolution of races; and we are shown how souls climb ever higher. But we are also shown how races sink deeper and deeper in a terrible way. We have now explained how present day evolution is described in the seven letters. We think of the letters as directed to the seven communities of our earth.

If we divide the earth into seven zones geographically, a letter is directed to each. The first territory is one where human beings, particularly today, work to perfect their physical bodies into a higher form. In the second region etheric bodies are the focus and in the third astral bodies are especially cultivated. So you will find one aspect emphasized in one territory, and another aspect in another. Think of these regions spread over the earth. What we refer to as the various peoples or folk groups cultivate particular parts of the human constitution: one folk especially develops the physical human being, another folk cultivates another aspect. But we have mentioned that it is not true to say that at one location only the astral body, at another only the physical body, is cultivated. In our various incarnations our souls must learn the lesson of each individual region. The seven letters are directed to every human being because every human being must pass through the seven stages of evolutionary development. The letter to the community in Ephesus is directed to a territory where the physical body is especially cultivated. The individual words characterize wonderfully just this kind of development. The third letter, to the Pergamonians, goes to the region where the astral body is particularly developed.

Let us keep together all the different facts we have discovered in the course of time. The evolution of the human being proceeds in such a way that the I works into the astral body, spiritualizing it. That part of the astral body transformed by the I is designated by the term “spirit self” or “manas.” Cultivating the astral body means, then, to work manas into the astral body. As much as you have cultivated your astral body—to that extent have you worked manas into it. In Christian esotericism the word “manna” means the same as manas; what is indicated as manna in the Bible is what we mean when we speak of the manasic nature flowing into the human being.

In the third letter we read: “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches (communities). To him who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna.” (Rev. 2:17) That is clearly stated; and with this letter the other side of the issue is also indicated, that those who do not undergo this development bring their bodies down, bring them into decline. In Christian esotericism the degeneration of the astral body is indicated in a very radical way.

In the Lemurian age the higher part of the human soul descended into the three human members. Remember, at that time the external human being was at a stage just somewhat higher than today's highest animals. From that time onward human beings have been working to form and develop their astral body because the soul is dependent on it. The soul is dependent on the astral body which, when the soul first entered it, was almost at the stage of animality. The progress of humankind consists just in this, that we work on the astral body, that we purify the animalistic emotions and instincts.

Assume for a moment the opposite; the consequence is not that the astral body remains unchanged but rather that it sinks down into a condition lower than it was in during Lemuria. Such neglect is portrayed as the temptations of Satan. For a Christian esotericist, “Satan” is a being who seduces human beings into bringing their astral bodies into decline rather than into ascent. When the writer of the Apocalypse wants to describe the other side, he says: If you develop your astral body then you will enjoy the heavenly manna. But there are regions where people do not develop the astral body—they experience the temptations of Satan. He describes this pull downward on the astral body: “I know where you dwell, where Satan's throne is ...” (Rev. 2:13)

The fourth letter—to the community in Thyatira—is addressed to the region where humanity's sense of personality finds expression. This I plays a large role with all those wanting to lead human nature into a descent. Especially in middle European esotericism, the I is presented altogether as the middle point, as what is actually active and at work within the human being. The human being is like a flowing together of forces, forces that flow together in the astral body, etheric body, and physical body; and the I is presented as what is at work on these three members. In Germanic mythology this is portrayed by the tree, the world-ash, the symbol for threefold human nature. The middle point for this threefold human nature is the I; through its incorporation in the three members it carries the entire tree of human growth and evolution. “Ygg” is the ancient form for growth and evolution. You will find that in the ancient forms of speech as a characterization for what has been incorporated, the world-ash is called “Yggdrasil.” Yggdrasil means, “the carrying I”; and the name of the god who is connected with the formation of the I is also derived from it.

In the course of evolution the human being first learned how to inhale; in Hebrew that is connected with the word “Jehovah.” In old High German that corresponds to Odin, who is a god of the wind and races around in storms. “Jach” (Jahweh) is the “blower,” and when we speak of Wotan, and his army that rushes here and there, then we are speaking of the Odem, who was necessary for the growth of the I. In Christian esotericism a very special value is placed on this word altogether. It is seen as the name for the eternal in the human being and is, therefore, portrayed as what carries the other bodies, as what forms their middle point. Consider only this passage: “... and he shall rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received power from my Father; and I will give him the morning star.” (Rev. 2:27,28) This I means the same thing as the actual name of Christ Jesus. Here, in almost every sentence, the word I appears again to tell us that it is the eternal in the human being. You will find this meaning expressed again and again by the words in the Apocalypse.

I will cite only a very special passage. The sixth letter must be addressed to a community where budhi is especially cultivated. What does that mean? If manas is especially cultivated, and if the human being has become a knower, then what we previously knew will pass over into our living feelings; it becomes for us a natural, given, feeling. It becomes a passion for us. If you realize that justice should prevail, that justice should live, if you realize that humankind cannot live without the beautiful and the good, then you are on the way to develop budhi. If higher things have become your second nature, if your soul is fully permeated with enthusiasm for the beautiful and the true, then you are on the path to budhi. Budhi takes its substance from the realm of feelings; and atma from the realm of the will. And when humankind finally reaches the point where it has made enthusiasm for the good into a reality, then what is called the Christian ideal of brotherhood will have appeared. This sixth territory can receive its name only from the ideal of brotherhood, and “Philadelphia” is the city of brotherly love. If you read the relevant passage you will see the city described this way: “I know your works. Behold, I set before you an open door, which no one is able to shut; I know that you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.” (Rev. 3:8) They did not deny the name that comes from fraternal duty.

The seventh letter is taken from the realm of atma, the atma or breath of the human being. When we have come as far as the physical breath we take in, when the I has worked down into the physical body—perhaps you know that in Christian esotericism this is designated by the word “amen”—then the esotericist, when speaking of this, will refer to the “amen,” and to the Angel of the Church (community) in Laodicea write: “The words of the amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God's creation.” (Rev. 3:14)

I have been able to select only some of the passages. If we could discuss everything, then you would see that we have messages for regions in our own time in these seven letters.

Let us now go from the past into the future. What does the writer of the Apocalypse think of the future? He speaks entirely in the following way: What you can see today on the astral plane is nothing other than the formation of the physical future of human beings. Look at what is on the astral plane and you will experience the future of humankind. There is no future that does not result from the present.

You know that the human being is enveloped in an astral body that permeates the physical body. You know, too, that there are sense organs in the astral body that are entirely different from the sense organs in the physical body. We speak of the lotus blossoms or wheels. What the human being can develop today in terms of such astral senses, the human physical body will have in the future as physical senses. The astral is on the way to becoming physical. How do human beings form these organs of the future, which today are still astral? Through what we achieve today in terms of the true, the beautiful, and the good. Work and deeds of today form the foundation for organs in the future. There was a time when human beings did not have eyes—they couldn't perceive light and color. Human beings acquired eyes through their actions at that time. They had other organs previously—by turning to the light they developed eyes. Present deed is future destiny; the deeds of the past were such that eyes could be created, and from your deeds in the present day, your sense organs of the future will be created.

Human beings who are active in terms of the true, the beautiful, and the good will have normal organs in the future. If they strive against the true, the beautiful, and the good then they will have crippled organs in the future. It is impossible to erase what we do in the present. A deed laid down in the present in order that it emerge in the future is termed “sealed” in Christian esotericism. In terms of Christian esotericism one says: Today you have eyes that were nonexistent in the past but you did this or that. Your eyes were “sealed,” now they are “unsealed.” Your eyes are the “unsealing” of your past deeds. We have now the sealing of what will be unsealed on the physical plane in the future. For anyone who looks only at the physical plane, evolution is a book with seven seals. Anyone who looks at the astral plane can see all future organs already laid out. The organs reveal themselves as pictures. An esotericist would say: If you look to the middle point, which is characterized as the lamb, then the lamb will put the book into your hand; and the book is unsealed in such a way that what will have form in the future can only be expressed in pictures. Therefore, what can occur is expressed through pictures, piece by piece. In the first seal a future condition is portrayed pictorially by a horse, a further condition is revealed in the second seal through another horse and so forth. In order to discern the meaning we will consider one image, let us say, the third horse. This is the picture that appears when the third seal is broken. It is presented in the following way: “When he opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, ‘Come!’ And I saw, and behold, a black horse, and its rider had a balance in its hand.” (Rev. 6:5)

What does this mean? A future condition of the human being is here portrayed, a condition that proceeds from the evolution of the third member of the human being, the astral body, which has been worked on and purified by the I. An unpurified astral body is one that knows only itself, that finds everything that does not belong to it to be antipathetic. A purified astral body is one that receives everything coming to it weighed out with a just balance. If we rightly purify the astral body, an organ is created that can be expressed pictorially by a rider with a balance. An organ in the astral body arises for the human being out of just deeds in the present. This is expressed here pictorially. We could explain the other pictures in the same way. Then we would see the inadequacy of the usual explanations that are given.

When the fifth seal is opened we are told something very significant: “When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne ...” (Rev. 6:9) What happens to a soul that develops itself up to the fifth step? It is strangled in its lower soul; the impurities that cling to it are done away with, and the soul thereby appears clothed in innocence: “And they were each given a white robe ...” (Rev. 6:11) The soul is white; it has become innocent when it has developed to the fifth step.

If we ascend higher we arrive at the place where the astral pictures go over into the devachanic, to the sounding of the trumpets. The Ahasuerus human beings form one group of humanity; the others will be those who can enter into other beings. Now, it will appear obvious to us that what has fallen behind must be described with pictures that can only be described as repulsive. While the souls that have developed further are hearing the trumpets, the others will have achieved the peak of egotistical development. Those who have advanced, who have developed their souls, will live like lofty initiates today.

I have told you that initiates progress through various stages. They must transform not only something of their astral body, but also something of their etheric body, and even something of their physical body. In earlier times initiates were kept in a state such that their etheric body existed outside their physical body for three and one-half days while the physical body lay there as if dead. Meanwhile, the hierophant lead the etheric body through higher worlds.

The writer of the Apocalypse describes to us what a present-day initiate experiences. He describes it as something similar to the initiation process of three and one-half days. Remember that there is actually a passage in the Apocalypse that says two witnesses of God appear, who lie as if dead for three and one-half days and then again become alive: “... and those who dwell on the earth will rejoice over them and make merry and exchange gifts, because these two prophets had been a torment to those who dwell on the earth. But after three and one-half days a breath of life from God entered them, and they stood up on their feet, and great fear fell on those who saw them.” (Rev. 11:10,11) The Apocalypse speaks of these two prophets in addition to the leader of humankind, whom the people could see. You have here a description of a process of initiation. You see how everything fits together.

There is something else that will show you how deeply the writer of the Apocalypse has penetrated into the mysteries of the world. I can best explain this if I relate to you the Golden Legend,² which has played an especially large role in Christian esotericism.

We are told that Seth was able to journey to Paradise, that the cherub with the flaming sword permitted him to pass and actually enter Paradise. He encountered there a vision: The crowns of the two trees, the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge, had grown together. Seth took a seed from this tree that had grown together; this seed he placed in the mouth of his deceased father, Adam. From this seed then grew a tree with three trunks, which provided wood for various things. It was especially important that Seth could see how a kind of flaming script was formed in the branches of this tree. The following words appeared: “Ejeh, Ascher, Ejeh,” which mean, “I am he who was, he who is and he who will be. The wood from this tree was used to make the staff with which Moses performed his miraculous deeds; the wood was used to build Solomon's temple; then it was used for a bridge over the Bethesda pool, which Jesus walked over. Finally, the wood was used to make the cross on which Christ Jesus was crucified. What do these two symbols mean, the tree of life and the tree of knowledge? What does it mean that they have grown together? And what does the tree signify, the tree that provided the wood even for the cross?

The fact that Seth could enter Paradise means nothing other than that he had become an initiate, that he could penetrate into mysteries that were closed to others. Now let us ask ourselves: What do the trees that he saw signify? That is something found in every human being, something present in every individual.

How did the human being become a knower? The answer is connected with the inhalation of air through the lungs, where the “used” blue blood is transformed into red blood. In this way the human being could take up the Odem, the breath of God. This is the becoming of the individual human I: through the infiowing of the Odem of God through which the human being became a knowing soul. A real tree is actually incorporated in the human being, a tree you can still see today if you study the human body. This is the tree created by the main arteries, which branch off into smaller and smaller capillaries throughout the entire body. There is no being in the world that can become a knowing being if it cannot, like a human being, take up the oxygen from the air—the oxygen that is so necessary to create red blood—so that human beings can take into themselves the tree of knowledge through the red blood.

The other tree, the tree of blue veins, has been taken away from the human being in terms of human mastery over it. It contains the used, blue blood which is a poison, filled with death. Before the human being descended from the bosom of God, it was the tree of life. By becoming earthly, the human being was divided into two parts, comprising the veinal and arterial, the blue and the red blood vessel systems. The blue blood streams up to the heart and must unite with what the plants give. The human being breathes out carbon dioxide; plants breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen. In this way human breathing, which expresses itself in our actual “I-ness,” is an intertwining of the red and blue “blood trees.” This is, however, only possible if the human being has a tool, and that is the plant, without which the human being cannot live. The plant is what allows us to intertwine the blue and the red “blood trees.”

The alchemy of the human being is this: what the plants do for us today, human beings in the future will be able to accomplish within and through their consciousness. What is outside the human being today will be intertwined within the physical body when we have taken in the entire plant world, when we have expanded our consciousness to include the entire world of plants. That is the future condition of humanity. Then, what exists outside in the natural world surrounding us will be entirely different.

Our entire cosmos will be changed with us. Earlier conditions will return at a higher level. There was a time when the earth and the sun were united with one another. At that time the human being existed within the being of the sun. But by entering into a physical body, the human being actually left the Mars state—and it is this state that someday humankind will once again attain. At that time the tree of life and the tree of knowledge were intertwined; at that time the human being did not need any external tool. That will be the case again in the future. What humankind will have then attained has always been indicated symbolically by drawing the sun, and then indicating the earth at a higher stage of development—with the human being also more highly developed. What will bring human beings to that point is the union of the red and blue bloodstreams by means of an expanded consciousness. This is indicated with two metal pillars—those are the two bloodstreams—and the sun is what will be ... [omission in manuscript]. Then the blue blood tree will no longer be a tree of death.

The seer must see this condition in astral signs. To describe this condition the writer of the Apocalypse must indicate it with pictures. “Then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven wrapped in a cloud, with a rainbow over his head, and his face was like the sun and his feet were like pillars of fire.” (Rev. 10:1) We have here a picture of this condition. In the same way the entire Apocalypse is composed with occult signs.

Christian esotericism sees the earth as the body of Christ. When Christian esotericism speaks of the body of Christ, it is speaking of the planetary body of the earth. Therefore, you must take words such as the following seriously: “He who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me.” (John 13:18) When we eat the bread of the earth we are treading on it with our feet.

If so, the writer of the Apocalypse can say even something more. We have seen that Seth was an initiate. Abel was a man of God who voluntarily lived from what was given to him. Cain was a farmer who himself built whatever he needed. Two lines of development are spoken of. One could be called the Seth or Abel direction, while the other included those who themselves had to change the form of everything. They will have to work for a long time; therefore tilling the soil, the work of the farmer has always been a symbol for those who transform the earth. The children of Abel or Seth stand over against the servants of Cain, who are the successors of Cain or the people of Cain. Those who have received revelations from the beginning have seen from the beginning, but also those who diligently work and strive will become initiates and behold the one who is the spirit of the earth, the planetary spirit of the earth. If the writer of the Apocalypse wants to indicate that the spirit of the planet will be seen by those who themselves transform the earth, then he will say: “All eyes will see Christ Jesus, also those who have pierced him.” Therefore, the writer of the Apocalypse says, right at the beginning, “Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, everyone who pierced him.” (Rev. 1:7) Those are, at the same time, words that describe the goal, the essence, the leitmotif of the Apocalypse. Precisely these profound words show us that the Apocalypse is really a prophetic book, that we can read from it the future that is here portrayed in pictures. It is our task as Theosophists to see things that Christ Jesus could not speak about in those days because the people could not yet understand. But he did point to them with signs.

What Christ Jesus has poured into these signs must become clear to us for the sake of the stream of Theosophy in the world. It must stand before our eyes symbolically during the next days of our Congress through the seven seals of the Apocalypse, through the motifs on the pillar capitals, and through the five planetary seals that we find as vignettes in the program. These five vignettes were not invented; they are rather five vignettes from the occult script.

If we learn to understand every line, all the curves and marks, then we have understood something of how human evolution has been written in the occult language of signs. Theosophy must point out this language of occult signs.

We meet together in order to work for knowledge. Everything else will come by itself through this work for knowledge. Therefore, the moral admonition, “You should love your brother” is just like saying to a stove: Your task is to heat the room! Saying so does not make the room warm. But when you put wood in the stove then it will warm the room by itself without having to be told.

By striving for knowledge, by accomplishing the work of knowing, you heat the human soul and this leads to the great work of the brotherhood of humankind. The Theosophical Society must be a society that promotes work toward esoteric knowledge, otherwise it will not thrive. If we absorb something from these ideas, then we will be able to do some of what the Theosophical Society must do, also on the occasion of this Congress.³ If Theosophy is also connected with what is described in the book of wonders, the Apocalypse, then we must also do something in order to break the seals ourselves. Only when within our society we open the seals of the books that have been given to us by great individuals, only then are we striving toward that which the Theosophical Society should be, if it wants to be a real influence on our modern culture.

• 1. Ahasuerus is a figure in Christian legend fraught with mystery and ambiguity. A reference in John 18, 20–22 to an officer who struck Jesus is sometimes seen as the origin of the story. Another possible source, the English Flores Historiarum (1228) describes a man in Armenia, Cartaphilus, who later converted to Christianity. Cartaphilus had been Pontius Pilate's doorkeeper. He had struck Jesus on the road to Calvary and Jesus responded: “I go, and you will wait until I return.” This legend was revived in Germany in 1602 in a pamphlet entitled, “A brief description and narration regarding a Jew named Ahasuerus.” Since then the tale has been the subject of many plays, poems, novels, and paintings. Rudolf Steiner's acquaintance, the Austrian poet Robert Hamerling, for example, wrote an epic Ahasver in Rom (1862), while Edgar Quinet in Ahasverus (1833) used the legend to symbolize the progress of humanity.
• 2. Compare the lectures in part II of The Temple Legend (GA 93) “Concerning the Lost Temple and How It Is to Be Restored in Connection with the Legend of the True Cross, or Golden Legend” (London:Rudolf Steiner Press, 1985)
• 3. IV Annual Congress of the Federation of European Sections of the Theosophical Society, May 18 – 21, 1907.

We have often said that Theosophy should not be regarded as something new. Other, external approaches of knowledge often want to see something new. But Theosophy wants to be, and should be, an expression of the striving for wisdom appropriate for our time, a manifestation of the striving that has existed through all time. Theosophy sees in all the temporal manifestations the various forms of a primal wisdom that has been flowing through all ages.

The Apocalypse, which belongs among the oldest ancient documents of Christianity, has been explained in the most various ways during every age of Christianity. These explanations always carry a subjective imprint of the understanding characteristic of different epochs.

On the whole, if we quickly survey the centuries of Christian development, we see, even in the earlier ages, a dawning materialistic interpretation brought to bear on this book. We find the mistake soon made of seeing in the pictures of the Apocalypse certain events in the evolution of the earth and humanity, for example, the descent of the Messiah who had been proclaimed, or even the establishment of a heavenly kingdom in the physical sense in this world. When the subsequent ages neither fulfilled nor revealed any of this, people in the various regions of the Occident believed that a mistake had been made in calculation; the date for the fulfillment of these prophesies was pushed more and more into the future. Around the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Apocalypse began to be interpreted in a more inner way. At that time people began to see the kingdom of the Antichrist in the externalization of Christianity. For many, the Roman church itself became the expression of this kingdom of the Antichrist; the Roman church, on the other hand, saw the same thing in Protestantism.

In more recent times, times entirely permeated with a materialistic attitude, it has been said that, of course, the writer of the Apocalypse could not have known anything about the future; he was describing events that lie in the past. It was thought, for example, that he saw in the beast with two horns an opponent of Christianity as great as Nero. When the descriptions then went on to include earthquakes, swarms of locusts, and so forth, it was not hard to prove that such events did occur in those regions at that time. That is what is called “objective research”; nevertheless, it is wholly prejudiced by subjective understanding.

Theosophy should become an instrument for us to spiritually comprehend the Apocalypse again and thereby penetrate its meaning. One could also think that the explanation given by Theosophy is as subjectively colored as all the other explanations. In a certain sense it is, but there is a difference between it and the other explanations. Those who describe history externally want to be objective, but they can only be subjective. We, however, want to explain subjectively in the sense that we are aware, in all modesty, that the wisdom of the world is always in harmony with advancing evolution, with the advance of time. When we do what is right for our time it is a force that works into all of the future. Theosophy must not become a dogmatism. What we teach today as Theosophy will not change in its essence but in its form. When the souls of the present age are born again in future times, they will be mature enough to take up other, higher, future forms of the spiritual life. Our explanation of the Apocalypse will age; future ages will go beyond it. But the Apocalypse itself will not, therefore, age. It is much greater than our explanations and will find even higher, even loftier explanations.

Let us place before our souls the first lines of the Apocalypse as they are read in truth. We are told that the mystery of Jesus Christ is given to us in signs, that these signs are to be interpreted and that the writer is attempting to explain—to the best of his ability—as much of the signs as possible. The Apocalypse was written with a different intention than John's Gospel. We are dealing with a personal experience when the writer tells us that he is describing the revelation of Jesus Christ, the appearance of Christ. It is something similar to Paul's experience on the way to Damascus, similar to the mystery of Paul.

Paul is the one who did the most to proclaim and spread Christianity despite his not being one of the disciples who experienced the events in Palestine with Jesus. Neither did he experience the tragic ending of those events: the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Through the descriptions in the Gospels we know how all of this entered into the hearts of humankind at that time. Paul had heard about all that is described in the Gospels. Paul knew exactly what had happened in Palestine; nevertheless, he simply could not imagine that the one who had ended up on the cross was the promised Messiah, the redeemer. The Messiah, Paul said to himself, could not end up like a common criminal. Paul is not well understood unless we look deeply into his soul, unless we look at what lived in him as the knowledge of a Jewish initiate. He knew that the savior, the Messiah, had proclaimed himself ahead of time in the burning bush, in the fire of Mount Sinai. Christ points to this when he says, “But if you do not believe his [Moses'] writings, how will you believe my words?” (John 5:47) With these words Christ is saying that he had announced himself earlier through external means, through the power of the elements, and that he then, however, went on to reveal himself through life, suffering and dwelling in a human body—that he had descended, so to speak, from the fire of Sinai. Certainly the Jewish initiate, Paul, knew of the Christ who had been previously announced; for behind the mystery of Moses lay the following.

During the time of the Old Testament and in ancient Jewish occult teaching there were, as in all ages, mysteries and initiates. Let us bear in mind the fundamental principle, that initiation must adapt to the conditions prevailing during any given age. If we consider initiation according to that principle, then we must begin by thinking of the human being as the human being presented by Theosophy or spiritual science. We must think of the human as a four-fold being, a being with four members—as endowed with a physical body in common with the mineral world; an etheric body in common with the plant kingdom; an astral body in common with the animal kingdom; and finally with an I or I-bearer. Standing before us, the human being consists of these four members. During the day they are bound together with one another but at night the I and the astral body are in the spiritual world. During the night the present-day human being perceives nothing. When human beings develop to a higher spiritual vision, they must apply certain methods of inner development to themselves. Anyone wishing to ascend to higher worlds must allow meditations and concentration to work on their soul. They must immerse their souls in certain things; one example among hundreds is the Rose Cross.

When human beings of the present day are asleep what they experience during the day does not make a strong enough impression on their astral body for it to continue working at night. When a normal person of the present day falls asleep in the evening, day life is as if extinguished. With students of initiation it is different, even if they do not notice the transformation of their astral body for a long time. In a meditant who has begun and practices the exercises prescribed in occult schools, a clairvoyant sees entirely different streams, other forms and organs than those unorganized and chaotic forms seen in ordinary people. This shows itself as the results of the exercises even if the students themselves have not noticed any results for a long time. The astral body changes, it becomes a different being even if the meditation is very short. The astral body was chaotic before and everything the human being did was drowned out by the impressions of the day. Only the prescriptions from the occult school provide something that drowns out the impressions from everyday life. Therefore, this transformation of the soul is called purification or catharsis. The student is purified while the astral body continues to be chaotic and unordered in an ordinary person.

Now, the teacher must also make the student aware of the nature of the surrounding spiritual world. For what happens in the astral body to carry over into the etheric body, the following steps were undertaken with the student in earlier times. When the students were ready, at the peak of their initiation, so to speak, they had to spend some time, usually three and a half days, lying down, during which time the initiator brought them to a state of complete lethargy or torpor. The etheric body was then lifted out of the physical body and the astral body impressed into the etheric body all that had been prepared in the astral through occult exercises. Otherwise the physical body is a hindrance to bringing to consciousness what the person experiences in the spiritual world. In this moment, when the initiator led the etheric body out of the physical body, enlightenment occurred and the enlightened one experienced the spiritual world; after three and a half days the student was an initiate who could tell others about the spiritual world.

We can find the same process in the mysteries of various ancient peoples. But initiation was different with the initiates of the Old Testament, for they experienced yet again what Moses had experienced at Sinai. In this way they were able to tell the people that the Messiah would appear, that the Messiah would come forth from the nation itself, that he would incarnate the principles of development for all human evolution in a body of flesh. That was the supreme moment of the initiation—when the enlightened Hebrew was allowed to experience that the Christ would arise in the future. Paul, as a Jewish initiate, knew all of this; nevertheless, before the Damascus event he could never have believed that the one who died on the cross was the same one as the Messiah.

Paul said of himself that he was a “premature birth,” that is, an initiate through grace. He stresses that he did not receive initiation through a training that required a sequence of steps. But he stood closer to the spiritual world than those people who had descended deeper into matter. He was able to experience the “crown of life,” the last act in Old Testament initiation. This was the crowning through the appearance of Christ. What the Old Testament initiates always experienced appeared to them in a glorious light. What they had experienced as a future event, he now saw as a vision that told him this being was the same one who had lived and died in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Now he knew that the Messiah, the Christ, is already here.

The greatest element of the old initiation had been the knowledge that the Messiah was to come, that he had died and yet still lived, now united with earthly existence—and continues to work in the evolution of humankind—this we see from all the letters Paul wrote. He saw this event as something that had already become present.

Let us put ourselves in the place of all the other initiates who were not ancient Hebrews and not Christian. They knew that in the ancient Atlantean times we come to a form of the human being entirely different from that of the present. The etheric body creates and forms the physical body, of course, and through initiation they could always see the etheric body that formed the basis for the physical body. In the spiritual world they had to do without a picture of the physical human body; they saw only the etheric body of the human being.

But the ancient Hebrew initiates always saw the physical human being spiritualized and placed in the spiritual world as its crowning, and such people understood the Christ to be the first real human form that could be seen in the spiritual world from the point of view provided by the physical world. In this way those receiving the Hebrew initiation saw how, in the distant future, the “Son of Man,” the Christ, would heal and purify the physical form. For this reason Paul knew that what appeared to him before Damascus in human form could be none other than the Christ.

The writer of the Apocalypse describes the same thing to us when he speaks of the “Son of Man.” He calls the seven communities the “seven stars,” and he saw the “Son of Man” as the spiritualized, purified form of the physical body, not only the etheric body, but the spiritual-physical form of “Man,” the human being, now purified and sanctified.

In this way he places before us the same being that Paul beheld outside Damascus. Then he details what the impulse behind this Christ event should mean for all humanity. He speaks to us of the seven communities in seven letters to the communities. They are messages concerning the tasks of the seven post-Atlantean cultures. In the seven seals, he portrays the seven cultures following our fifth main epoch. [This fifth main epoch is called the post-Atlantean. It consists of seven cultures of which we are now in the fifth with two more to pass before the start of the next main epoch.] And in the seven trumpets, he portrays the seven cultures of the seventh great main epoch.

What takes place in our present-day culture we can see in the physical world. But what will take place in the sixth great main epoch can be seen ahead of time in the pictures of the astral world. The seventh great main epoch, on the other hand, can be experienced in the sounds heard in the harmony of the spheres, in the devachanic world. They are experienced as a result of an impulse given by Christ.

In this way, the Apocalypse is a portrayal of what the Christian initiate experienced. It is a description of Christian initiation, a picture of the experiences of a man initiated in the Christian sense who has understood what has come into the world through Christ.

Now that we have seen what Theosophy has to say concerning the historical evolution of humanity, we will consider what the Apocalypse can tell us about it.

To understand this we must go beyond our culture back to the Greco-Latin cultural epoch, the fourth in our great post-Atlantean epoch. In spiritual science we calculate it to have begun in the eighth or ninth century of the pre-Christian age. Further back in the past we arrive at the Egypto-Chaldean cultural epoch, then the most ancient Persian age, concerning which the historical research of our day knows only the last faint echoes. Then we go further back to the primal holy age of the ancient Indian culture. In this way we finally arrive back at the time of the great Atlantean culture which is reported to us by all ancient religious writings. Before the great Atlantean water catastrophe, between Europe and America there existed the ancient Atlantean continent. That is where the precursors of humanity lived, those whom we call the Atlanteans.

We want to consider now the spiritual life of the Atlanteans; for, of course, the same souls who are present today lived there, but they were equipped with other soul abilities or states of consciousness that are of interest now to the spiritual researcher.

During the fullest blossoming of the Atlantean culture, we find the modern human being's capacity for perception present only in its first rudiments. The ancient Atlanteans did not see external objects as we do today, with sharply defined contours; they saw them rather surrounded by an aura. When they fell asleep at night, the external picture disappeared for them but they were conscious in the spiritual world. They had a dim form of clairvoyance. But they did not have any of what we today call counting and computation, the power of judgment or logical thinking. They had none of the mental abilities that our present-day culture has created; for example, they did not know about the power hidden in coal. Instead, they had magical abilities with which they could awaken the powers hidden in plant seeds and then put these powers in their service. In this way they possessed clairvoyant and magical powers. Those people in Atlantis best able to make use of their magical powers were the best technicians and engineers. What our present-day scholars and natural scientists represent, we can compare to the people most highly gifted with powers of clairvoyance in Atlantean times.

There were great mystery centers at that time. Our present-day mystery and occult schools work much more secretly than theirs did. The mystery centers of Atlantean times were generally known as both school and church. Piety and wisdom were cultivated at the same time. The leaders of that time can be called the great teachers of the mysteries. They taught in these Atlantean oracles of which there were seven. Students who had become sufficiently mature were initiated into the mastery of magical powers and into a conscious vision of the spiritual world. Unlike our culture, which is limited to the three lower kingdoms, Atlantean wisdom stretched over the physical earth and beyond to spiritual realities. Present-day science limits itself to the three kingdoms that do not go beyond the earth. However, through clairvoyant development, the Atlantean initiate also achieved a vision and experience of higher spiritual beings that work beyond the earth, even up to the region of the stars.

During those times there were mystery centers that were especially concerned with the various planets in our solar system and the spiritual powers standing behind them. For this reason there were Mars, Venus, Sun, Jupiter, Mercury, Saturn, and Moon oracles. However, the greatest and loftiest was the ancient sun oracle. The initiates of this sun oracle could survey all the other oracles and watch over them. The great sun initiate of the sun oracle stood at the top; he saw prophetically the water catastrophe of Atlantis. Therefore, he had the task of seeing to it that the culture was guided through and beyond the catastrophe.

Now those human beings who had possessed the best talent for clairvoyance were of no use at all for the post-Atlantean cultures. These new cultures required the selection of people who had nothing left of the ancient magic. Like a sunrise over the great post-Atlantean culture, they developed the individual spiritual capacities of thinking and judgment in their first primitive forms. The simplest people were precisely those best suited for the future.

They were led by the great sun initiate to a colony near present-day Ireland; later they were led to the middle of Asia. Those were the people whose consciousness was already then closest to our present-day consciousness. Furthermore, for the sake of this advanced population copies of etheric bodies of the greatest initiates of the Atlantean oracle were incorporated into those individuals who came from the various oracles with the best aptitude for present-day culture. This was necessary for the future.

It is a law of spiritual economy that what has once been achieved for humankind is not lost. If we were to survey the various oracles we would find everywhere what is achieved through occult training; the etheric body is transformed and organized through and through by the I. The etheric body of ordinary people who have not undergone this transformation dissolves at death into the world ether. However, with the highest initiate something different happens. An etheric body transformed in this way is preserved for the blessing and healing of humankind. The great sun initiate preserved the etheric bodies of the seven great Atlantean initiates as spiritual treasure and took them along to Asia. These were then imprinted into seven of the very best individuals so that they grew up endowed with the etheric bodies of the greatest initiates of ancient Atlantis. Through many generations the great sun initiate exercised his educational skills on the health and spiritual discipline of the people so that he developed, so to speak, the very best human material.

These seven individuals were in external life simple people; they had their I and their astral body for themselves, but in certain states of consciousness their speaking was inspired by higher powers. They were then sent by the great sun initiate down to ancient India, to those still longing to return to the true primal home of humanity and who characterized everything external as maya or illusion. That was the chorus of the seven holy Rishis. What this chorus harmonized together as a spiritual symphony was the primal wisdom of the pre-Vedantic age. We are looking into an age much more ancient than the Vedas. What is written in the Vedas is nothing more than an echo; it reaches us only in broken rays through the wisdom of the holy Rishis.

Now we come to the ancient Persian culture. In place of the seven Indian teachers came the first Zarathustra. He was himself an initiated student of the great sun initiate, who stood behind the Rishis. Because of this he could proclaim the great teaching concerning the spiritual being of the sun, concerning Ahura Mazdao. We see here how the great teachers of humanity guided the evolution of human development in wisdom.

From the beginning the ancient Indians were protected from falling into materialism. Their longing for clairvoyance, for the spiritual, for the feeling of connectedness with God was still too great. The Persians, on the other hand, were farmers and fighters. Therefore, in order not to fall into materialism, they had to receive the teaching concerning the great Ahura Mazdao, the spirit of the sun, the highest being. Zarathustra initiated one of his students in such a way that he brought the student's astral body to a higher stage of development. With another student he developed the etheric body to the highest stage of clairvoyant consciousness so that the student became able to read the Akashic chronicle by means of this etheric body which is, of course, always the vehicle for our memory.

Now, the first of these two students was reborn as Hermes, the great impulse giver for the Egyptian culture; his astral body was especially well developed. When he was reborn as the Egyptian Hermes, he bore within himself the astral body of the great Zarathustra and was therefore able to work with the intentions of Zarathustra.

The other student also became one of the most important personalities of post-Atlantean culture when he was born again as Moses. That is why Moses already as a child had to be brought to the point where his etheric body and I could be wholly influenced by Zarathustra's etheric body. For this reason he had to be placed in a basket deep in the water at a tender age;¹ this is a symbol for his calling. And so he became the great Akashic visionary who could write down the pictures he perceived in the Akashic chronicle. These are the majestic images found in Genesis. In these ways events of the past are led over into the future—behind the scenes of the physical, external development of humankind.

Zarathustra was also able to become the greatest teacher of the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch. Living in the Near East in the sixth century before Christ's birth he was known as Zarathos or Nazarathos. He was the teacher of the most important Greek teachers and initiates—Pythagoras, for example, was his student.

These four post-Atlantean cultures were inspired by the great sun oracle of ancient Atlantis, and the culture of the ancient Hebrew nation continued to develop uninterupted on a parallel course—a subgroup of this Hebrew nation always living contemporaneously with one of the named cultural epochs. The ancient Indian culture was initiated in the secrets of the spiritual world and the planetary states; the ancient Hebrew ... [gap in the manuscript.] Then, living contemporaneously with the Persian culture of Zarathustra, the Hebrew ancestors developed a teaching much like that in Persia concerning Ormuzd and Ahriman, a teaching concerning good and evil. The third, the Egypto-Chaldean culture, then followed. The exodus out of Egypt under Moses' leadership took place at the same time. Then the Greco-Latin culture developed during the time of the great Hebrew initiate-prophets, Elijah, Jeremiah, and so forth. Already in primal ancient times these prophets had been given the idea of the great being, Ahura Mazdao, announced to them by Melchizedek. In this way, the same nuances were at work simultaneously in the Hebrew culture as in the other nations through the epochs.

Now, such cultures always had their second blossoming. That of Hermes soon encountered a decline. It had contained deep mysteries for the ancient Egyptian culture but had fallen in the worst way and entered into the most terrible decadence as black magic. The ancient Indian culture had fallen into decadence the least.

So we see how all that had appeared successively was still maintained in the ancient Hebrew nation. In various groups they preserved the feeling and the states of consciousness of various other cultures. These groups could be addressed with the names of the ancient cultures, according to how their states of consciousness had been maintained.

When the writer of the Apocalypse speaks of the “community at Ephesus” he means the representative of the first, the Indian culture; the Persian finds its representative in the “community at Smyrna”; the Egypto-Chaldean in the name of the “community at Pergamon”; and finally, the fourth, the Greco-Latin culture in the “community of Thyatira.” He was able to address the representatives of the four ancient cultural epochs in concurrently existing groups.

Then he looked further into the future and saw our cultural blossoming in the “community at Sardes.” The “community” following ours—for which we are consciously preparing through the theosophical movement—he characterizes with the name “Philadelphia.” After that, humanity will finally reach the “community at Laodicea,” where new impulses can no longer be brought forward. When we work and act in the fifth epoch as conscious representatives of the theosophical spiritual life we are introducing the age of Philadelphia or brotherhood.

The seven spirits of God, the seven stars, are what we find in theosophical teachings concerning the evolution of the earth through the planetary states. These teachings should lead us up to an understanding of the secrets of the stars and their spirits. In this way we enter consciously the community of Philadelphia when we absorb the teachings of spiritual science.

• 1. In Exodus 2:3 we read: “And when she could hide him no longer she took for him a basket made of bulrushes, and daubed it with bitumen and pitch; and she put the child in it and placed it among the reeds at the river's brink.” RSV.

We have seen that the writer of the Apocalypse intended the seven letters in the first chapters of the Apocalypse as messages for the seven representatives of the seven cultural epochs of the post-Atlantean age; that is, the age that followed the great water catastrophe also known as the Flood. The age that will come after the seven post-Atlantean epochs reveals itself to the initiate in seven seals as the seven epochs like those of our post-Atlantean age.

We must realize that the soul development of humankind in the future still has many and manifold changes to go through. The more we imagine ourselves back into the state of consciousness in the ancient past when the human being's feeling for self was just a dim dawning, the more we also find a dim clairvoyance; the further back we go the less people appear as individuals. If we go far back into Atlantean times we no longer see people as individual beings but rather united with one another into group souls. But even in historical times, in the last centuries before Christ, we still find group souls. At that time the people in middle Europe felt themselves to be members of an organism, members of a tribe. Tacitus tells us how the individual Cheruscans experienced themselves, not as individuals, but as members of the tribal I.¹

We find in early Atlantean times that human beings over wide, wide geographical regions were very similar in appearance. They broke down into groups of striking similarity. In the middle of the Atlantean age humankind still fell into four main groups. In the first stages of Atlantean development the members of the individual groups still resembled one another in a very pronounced way: only the groups were sharply distinguished. The clairvoyant today can see very little of what constituted the physical body at that time. It was still completely made up of a very soft material, much like certain fish in the ocean today that can barely be distinguished from the rest of the water. The air then was entirely permeated by the watery element and the human physical body was still very difficult to distinguish from the watery element surrounding it. However, the bones and nervous system were also already present as forces at that time. The human being only became a real earthly human being through a process of hardening.

If we wish to characterize the various human beings, borrowing, as it were, present-day images, then we can consider first those who had developed and condensed their physical nature the most. The occultist refers to them as the bull people. The people whose etheric body was developed the most, the aggressive people, the powerful ones, were called the lion people. A third group had an astral body that strongly ruled over the other members; that is the group referred to as actual human beings. Then there were the people who could be called the eagles, who had already developed a strong I. In this way they ruled over the others. We can speak of these four group souls, and a clairvoyant perceives them by looking back into those ancient times.

These four groups of people were characterized by whatever aspect had been most formed in them on the earth below. The bull people at that time had developed their digestive system the most; the lion people their heart and blood circulation ... [gap in the manuscript]. The clairvoyant can see four such group souls. That is what appears with initiation in the astral world. What then presents itself to the clairvoyant can be compared approximately with what those four animals are today. One who sees the evolution of humankind today with the view of an occultist sees this picture of the four human groups symbolized in these four animals.

The war of all against all will be an expression of the egotism that is always growing stronger, the egotism conjured forth by humanity today as the I is and will always become, stronger and stronger. That will be the end of the last post-Atlantean culture. This catastrophe will also have its mission, its usefulness in the ascent of the entire human race. However, the great war of all against all will be something much worse than war of the present-day with weapons. It will be a war of souls, of souls who no longer understand one another, a war of the classes. This future catastrophe is difficult for present-day consciousness to understand.

The Atlanteans were magicians. As we today use the powers asleep in coal, so the Atlantean used the forces in plant seeds. The forces in the seeds served them in their technology, in their industry.

There is a mysterious connection between these forces. As long as the Atlanteans used the seed forces properly, they were in harmony with the working of the forces of the air and water. However, from the middle of the Atlantean age onward, the Atlantean magicians increasingly approached their moral fall; and in the mysteries of the black occult schools these magical forces were misused in a terrible way. They were placed in the service of the most horrible egotism. In this way the powers of air and water were increasingly excited which finally had to result in the mighty Atlantean water catastrophe. Today, those who know the secret of the use of these forces know full well that the use of such forces in our time means that powers of black magic are at work. Magic must never be made to serve when selfish purposes are involved. Hence, the employment of seed forces is not permitted today even to serve white magic. On the other hand, in Lemurian times the seed forces of the animals were used. But everywhere that the growth forces of animals are misused, horrendous forces of fire, the vulcanic element, are awakened.

Today these things are not so obvious. Today the feeling for one's self, the overwhelming egohood of people has brought about the drying up, the desolation of those regions of the earth that have developed this egotism to the greatest extent. It is absolutely true that this war of all against all is being prepared on the surface of the earth because a connection exists between the egotistical withering of the soul's forces and the paralyzation of the earth's productive powers. The Nordic myth of the Twilight of the Gods also tells us this.

We must understand the difference between the evolution of souls and the evolution of bodies. From epoch to epoch human souls find themselves again and again in different bodies. These souls will one day see the strife that will reign among the human souls who will be born in the last post-Atlantean age. This experience will be a lesson for them and will help to free them from egotism. Then they will be able to grow into an era where they will have the fruits of selfhood but without its disadvantages. An age will come with clairvoyant conditions similar to those prevailing in ancient Atlantis, but with this difference: human beings will have a free consciousness of self. We will then have learned, in these seven cultures of the post-Atlantean age, what can be achieved in the physical world. This self-perception or consciousness of self can only awaken in a physical body; but the human being must again subjugate the physical body. After the war of all against all, we will have achieved a stage of evolution where we live in a bodily nature in such a way that we are no longer slaves of our physical bodies.

The impulse for this development comes from the Christ principle. Christ even falls right in the middle between the age of the Atlantean catastrophe and the war of all against all. On the one hand we can thank the descent into matter for our consciousness of self within our physical bodily nature. On the other hand, we thank the Christ event for our ability to ascend with the achievements of the physical world. We thank the Christ principle for our ability to ascend to universal brotherly love, to the universal love of humanity, since we will again unite in groups with love for one another.

If we look back to the time of the original group souls of Atlantis and then into the future we see these four group souls appearing again. The lamb will stand in the middle as a sign for the love that will unite people who will then be living in a bodily nature that is less dense.

But this state must be prepared today through the setting aside of a small group that will carry brotherly love into the future. Therefore, a stream has arisen in our time that will lead to brotherly love through real spiritual knowledge. Humankind will not attain brotherly love through preaching but rather through knowledge. Preachers who constantly speak of love achieve nothing. But if people are given wisdom, knowledge of evolution, in such a way that it becomes life in the soul, then humanity will arrive at love. The soul can attain this when it is warmed by wisdom. Then it can radiate love.

For this reason the masters of wisdom and harmony of feelings have formed this stream for the raying forth of love into humanity and for the influx of wisdom into humanity. Humankind, rushing toward the war of all against all, will then find the fruit of the theosophical movement in an understanding of peace—while all around it, the nature of humankind will have everywhere led into strife those who have not heard the call of the master of wisdom and harmony of feelings on the basis of the Christ impulse in the fourth age.

Let us look back again to the first epoch of our culture, to the holy Rishis who pointed to the Vishva Karman, whom, as clairvoyants, they saw by means of the etheric bodies of the Atlantean initiates they carried within them. The writer of the Apocalypse directed his spiritual gaze toward him and saw how he holds the seven star oracles, through the seven Rishis, in his hand. These holy, simple men wanted to awaken the spiritual senses of humanity by saying to human beings that the world surrounding them is just maya or illusion. Only the spirit standing behind the surrounding world could be called truth. The seven holy Rishis pointed to this spirit. Human beings had to descend into physical life; but in order to preserve them from a descent into matter that would be too deep. they first had to absorb the teaching concerning maya or illusion. The souls that are now living in our bodies have also lived in Indian bodies, and at that time learned to see matter as an illusion. But all around there were the souls of many human beings who were locked in the fetters of matter. For those souls incarnated again today it means that they are theoretical materialists. Among materialists those are the least harmful, for their materialistic thoughts will be driven out of them in the future when the earth will become devastated and only the soul will remain alive, the soul that they no longer believe in today.

What is even worse is practical materialism. But this form of materialism was even more dangerous in ancient times because the memory of magic powers was still present; then this materialism always led to the practice of black magic. Therefore, at that time this materialism always signified the fall into the decadence of black magic. The writer of the Apocalypse always spoke of these people as Nicolaitans who have lost the first, the glorious love of the spirit. Therefore, when he wanted to praise he said that the Nicolaitans were hated.

We find the least amount of black magic in the ancient Indian culture. We find the greatest misuse in Egypt because the lofty teachings of Hermes went over into the art of black magic. Balaam is intended as a black magician. The writer of the Apocalypse directs his admonishment to the community in Pergamon in the verse: “But I have a few things against you: you have some there who hold the teachings of Balaam.” (Rev. 2:14) Common immorality is not meant here but rather the development of the powers in matter, black magic.

In the occult schools of the first age after Christ the Apocalypse was a favored book. The ancient mysteries founded the primal wisdom, the wisdom of the Atlanteans. The Christian mysteries, on the other hand, strive to direct their view to the future. They did this not only in order to know but also in order to stimulate their wills so that, with this spiritual treasure, humanity could pass through increasingly higher incarnations.

• 1. Publius Cornelius Tacitus (ca. 55 – 120 A.D.), the Roman historian, in his book “De origin et situ Germanorum,” generally known as “Germania.”

In the seven letters to the churches found in the Apocalypse we find a portrayal of the great main epoch of the seven post-Atlantean ages, from the mighty Atlantean water catastrophe to the event that is called the war of all against all.

We will now consider some important passages from the letters in order to show the compass of John's overview. He came from a cultural era when much was still taken for granted, much that, today, could appear to ordinary consciousness as forced.

The leading power behind these cultural epochs is presented with the seven stars in his hand. Looking at the cultural epoch that saw the outer world as maya or illusion, we find there the chorus of seven holy Rishis, who point to Vishva Karman. The writer of the Apocalypse sees him as the being who has the wisdom of the seven stars in his hand. Above all the writer of the Apocalypse must look into the future. Because he is speaking to the descendants of the Atlantean cultural epoch he refers to what lives in their memories. So he calls the Nicolaitans the representatives of black magic, who are excluded from the community that preserved the “first love.” Therefore, he says of those who have continued to keep themselves from becoming entangled in matter, that they will develop into the future. Those who hear this admonishment will easily find their way back into the spiritual world.

Then he speaks to the people of the second cultural epoch, the age of Zarathustra. He speaks to the followers of the great Zarathustra who have recorded their wisdom in the teachings of Hermes, who have preserved for us an echo of Zarathustra's teaching. Indications are given everywhere in these writings that people should not develop a love for dreamy wandering, that they should get to like life in the physical, sensible world. They are to see the sun as the expression of a being, the spirit of the sun, and they should look upon the stars as the bodies of the spirits who populate space. For this reason it was the concern of Zarathustra to show the physical-material world as the expression of the spirit. In this way the cultivation of the earth's fields should be like a cultivation of the physical body of God, who stands behind the physical world. The ancient Hebrew nation that existed parallel to the ancient Persian culture also looked up to this God. They also had a religious service to Zarathustra, which is indicated in Abraham's encounter with Melchizedek.

From this we see that remnants of the second cultural epoch remained. We know how mightily the great Zarathustra admonished the people to work with the earth but not to become slaves of matter. The power that wants to mislead people into thinking there is nothing but physical matter he calls Ahriman, the ahrimanic power. The danger arises through Ahriman that the human being may come to like physical life too much.

In the ancient Hebrew wisdom, Ahriman was given a name made up of two parts: Mephiz-Tophel, Mephistopheles. This is he who called to Faust, who believed in the spirit and went to the “Mothers,” that is, entered the spiritual world: “You are coming to nothing!” Like Faust, those who are seeking the spirit call back to the materialists: “In your nothing I know how to find all.”¹ So the writer of the Apocalypse had to say: “Have no fear ... Some of you Tophel will weave into the prison of matter.” (Rev. 2:10) These are the ones who have become too wrapped up in matter.

We know that human beings must descend into various incarnations on the earth where they live their lives in physical, sensible bodies. Every life on earth is followed by a life in the spiritual world. One day this ring of reincarnations will be closed. The profound meaning of these reincarnations, if we understand well the second letter of the Apocalypse, is this: human beings should struggle through to a consciousness of self, to their I consciousness.

The soul saw the world so very differently in the ancient Indian epoch, and how much has the soul seen since then in other incarnations! Today we perceive in a way entirely different from earlier incarnations. As the soul ascends from stage to stage we acquire the concept of history. A thinking human being must say: There is a history of life in the spiritual world. Because in elementary theosophical teaching we cannot describe the life between death and a new birth in more detail we usually describe the life in devachan and kamaloca only in general terms. But it is different during each of the various cultural epochs; for souls always have something different to experience. We can describe this history only in separate characteristic features.

Let us look back to ancient Atlantis; human beings were still in their soul and spiritual home during life on earth. During the ancient Indian age human beings were still in the spiritual world at night and after they passed through the gate of death. In this original home it became light and bright around them. To the extent that people came increasingly to like this physical world, to that extent they lost their vision into the spiritual world; it became darker and darker for them.

During the Egyptian culture human beings already stood so firmly in the physical world that they had to be taught to live in such a way that they could find Osiris in the other world. Only in this way could the students still feel the light between death and a new birth. The teaching of The Book of the Dead and the “judges of the dead” should be understood in this way: Only by uniting with the Light of Osiris, the Osiris impulse, could human beings hope that the spiritual world would be filled with light and brightness for them.

Let us now look at the Greco-Latin age when people had become so fond of physical matter that they created physical forms incorporating ideals in the physical world. That is why a human being of that time could say, “Rather a beggar on earth than a king in the kingdom of shadows.”² It is not merely a legend that people went into darkness when they descended into Hades. Humankind is in danger of losing itself in the world of the senses. That is why God had to descend into this sense perceptible world, this sense existence, and save it.

Zarathustra proclaimed Ahura Mazdao through the veil of the sensible-sensual world. Yahweh was proclaimed to Moses in the burning bush through the veil of the sensible-sensual world. Then the same power proclaimed himself as Christ in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. What then occurred had significance not only for the physical world but also for the spiritual world.

In the same moment when the blood flowed from the wounds of the redeemer, Christ appeared in the underworld to the souls who stood between death and a new birth. Below in the realm of matter the blood is flowing and while it is flowing, the kingdom of the dead begins to become brighter and brighter. To the extent that our culture now begins to climb upward to a spiritual understanding of the fact of Golgotha, the brightness grows.

History is everywhere, in the physical and in the spiritual. The whole of our post-Atlantean cultural evolution has as its meaning the goal of leading humanity through the physical world while, at the same time, keeping awake faith in the spirit. It is always the same principle that manifests in the successive cultural epochs.

The writer of the Apocalypse turns his clairvoyant vision to the fact that these are people who are becoming one with matter, who are using up the spiritual forces they possess like an old inheritance without joining company with Christ. Such people would gradually lose devachan; kamaloca would last longer and longer and they would be captured, united with the gravity of earth.

Today only black magicians do this; ordinary human beings cannot yet close themselves off from all wisdom. The writer of the Apocalypse, however, must place everything in perspective in order to point out that the impulse of Christ is what saves human beings. For this reason the second letter says that it would be the “second death”—the “spiritual death” as Paul refers to it. The admonishment had to come in the second letter because this letter refers to the second cultural epoch. In the first post-Atlantean epoch this admonishment did not need to be directed to humankind.

In the second letter the leading spirit characterizes himself as “the alpha and the omega.” (Rev. 1:8) In all of occultism there are certain symbols that dominate and always mean the same thing. In ancient Egyptian times value was placed on the formation of wisdom through the word; wisdom appeared then for the first time in rigorously delineated words. The Indian world did not yet place any value on knowledge; the culture of Zarathustra just as little. For this reason the divine power of the word in the mouths of human beings is everywhere signified by the “sword.”

Everywhere we find the sword employed as a symbol of the humanization of divine power. “And to the angel of the community in Pergamon wrote: ‘The words of him who has the sharp two-edged sword.’” (Rev. 2:12) But through knowledge the human being can also most be misled into black magic.

In the Bible human beings experience the power of God that flows to them as “manna.” Let us now consider the full character of this age. Yahweh reveals himself in the burning bush on Sinai. “Then Yahweh spoke to Moses: ‘I am the I am.’ And he spoke: ‘You should say to the sons of Israel: ‘The I am has sent me to you!’” (Exodus 3:13) With these words the people were told: The I am has sent me to you! Yahweh is the unpronounceable name of God. The name “I” can never be spoken to a human being from outside. It is the intimate name of God that human beings are only permitted to receive, sanctified in their hearts. It was written on the altar of the tabernacle. Therefore, we read: “To him who overcomes I will give some of the hidden manna and I will give him a white stone with a new name written on the white stone ... (Rev. 2:17) Those who received the I learned through an inner power of the spirit to recognize the name with the hidden manna. Through the fact that Christ revealed himself in a physical body on the earth, human beings are to learn not to disdain the earth like the ascetics, but to recognize that this earth has something to give them. And so, the thirst for existence should not be extinguished but we should purify our desires. The westerner should say: “Here work is done; here hands are in motion and what is achieved here is taken through the gate of death.” It is not our intention to tell of miracles but, through legends, to come to realize what humanity has been given as wisdom.

We hear that Buddha had an important pupil, Cassapa.³ He was the one whose task it was to spread the teaching of Buddha. We are told in a legend that Cassapa did not die but disappeared into a cave. There his physical body is being preserved until the day when the Maitreya Buddha appears. Then the mortal remains of Cassapa will be touched by the fire of heaven and dissolved.

Let us think our way into this teaching. How will there be people in the future who can understand the teaching of the Maitreya Buddha? Through the fact that the redeemer himself carried his own mortal remains to heaven after three and a half days.⁴ That means that those human beings who unite themselves with the impulse of Christ will take what they have achieved as the fruit of their lives with them and carry it into the spiritual world. We will see how, by means of the connection with the principle of Christ, all the fruits of earthly existence can be carried into the spiritual world. The teachings of the Orient have always proclaimed the future coming of the Christ, even in their legends. Because we are to learn in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch how the earthly-physical element directly goes over into the spiritual world, this is presented to us with the phrase “he has eyes like a flame of fire” (Rev. 1:14) and we are told: “His feet were like burnished bronze, refined as in a furnace.—(Rev. 1:15) Later we read, “And all the communities shall know that I am he who searches mind and heart ...” (Rev. 2:23) Here we are told that Christ is the one who brings the “I am.” This inconspicuous little word must merely be read. The meaning is that the principle behind the “I am” will become the savior who leads us out of the material world. Word for word, line for line the text can be explained in this way.

The contents of the fifth letter (Rev. 3:1–6) are especially important for us. We read there that we have received the secret of the name through the teaching concerning the development of the earth, which is given to us by the “masters of wisdom and the harmony of feeling.”⁵

• 1. Faust II (Act 1, Royal Palatinate, Dark Gallery, line 6255).
• 2. Homer in the 11th book of the Odyssey.
• 3. This disciple of Buddha was also called Maha-Cassapa, because he was a chief support for the buddhistic brotherhood. After his conversion he immediately assumed a very high rank among Buddha's followers. According to the legend he called together the first gathering after Buddha's death and functioned as the leader. He is considered the collector of the canon and is the first buddhistic patriarch.
• 4. Compare the lecture cycle held in Karlsruhe, From Jesus to Christ (GA 131) (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1973), lectures held on 11, 12, 14 of October 1911.
• 5. Compare: Zur Geschichte und aus den Inhalten der ersten Abteilung der Esoterischen Schule 1904—1914 (GA 264), chapter titled: “Aus dem Lehrgut der Meister der Welshed ...” [Concerning the History of and from the Content of the First Section of the Esoteric School 1904—1914, chapter entitled: “From the Teachings of the Masters of Wisdom ...”], pp. 199–240, and the appendix, pp. 241–259.

The age of human evolution that counts as the fourth and is characterized by the letter to the community in Thyatira began in the seventh or eighth century before Christ and lasted until the thirteenth or fourteenth century after Christ's birth. Only then do we begin to count our fifth age, the Germanic cultural epoch. The fourth age stands in the middle. In manifold ways it brought to expression the life between birth and death and developed a love for the material world. It had its greatest blossoming in the beauty of Greek art.

The soul would have had to experience a darkening if the event of Golgotha had not occurred, if the light coming forth from this event had not had its effect. After human beings came to full consciousness of their earthly I, when they had fully entered into the physical world, there appears, among other things, for the first time the concept of the “last will and testament” as a sign that the human will had become so important that it survived death. This first appears only in ancient Rome, not yet in Greece. Greece did not yet have the concept of the single man or woman standing firmly anchored on the earth. Only gradually did the feeling arise that the human being was not only a member of a community but an individual. Before this the concept of personality, the concept of the divine-spiritual anchored in the human being, would not have been understood. In ancient Greece they could only understand the divine-spiritual residing in the spiritual world. But Greek culture could, in the fullest sense, feel what it meant to know with human consciousness that the I lives. Nevertheless, it did not recognize that the I is divine. In the Orient it was proclaimed by Moses. For the Greeks, between birth and death it was not present as something spiritual. And there was a deeply tragic feeling that went through all the souls ... [gap in manuscript]. The Greeks said to themselves that the human being has descended from the divine spiritual world. But they did not know that human beings could work themselves back up into that world again, that they could return in the future to the spiritual world.

This is expressed in the myth of Prometheus;¹ it is expressed so tragically in the drama of Aeschylus² when Io, who has become insane, appears to Prometheus. Io represents the old clairvoyant consciousness that, in this fourth epoch, could no longer appear in normal states of consciousness but only in a state of madness. Science in the modern sense did not yet exist in the earliest times of our culture. Only gradually did the human being become a seeker in that science which can independently research the external world independently. For this reason something like science has only existed since Thales.³ It is an abstraction to speak of “oriental philosophy.” Those who began science with Thales were right: before them science was always inspired, born out of the mysteries. That was the case with Heraclitus,⁴ who was still inspired by ancient mystery wisdom. We are told that he placed his book on the altar of the goddess of Ephesus.

To the extent that external natural science increases in humanity, to that extent true wisdom will be obstructed. We are told in the fourth letter of the Apocalypse how people must find the connection to true wisdom. Let us assume that the Christ principle, the revelation of Golgotha would not have come. Then, in terms of external science, outstanding people such as Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and so forth,⁵ would have been present, but the science would have remained merely intellectual and none of it would have contributed to a new ascent to the spiritual. Celsus,⁶ the contemporary of Marcus Aurelius, wrote only external historical gossip about the event of Golgotha. But in terms of scientific, logical thinking these people all stood at the highest level.

What is called skepticism came into this stream. We find in Roman culture a complete skepticism existing alongside a highly refined approach to knowledge concerning all things intellectual. Let us consider, on the other hand, a personality like Augustine's. He was not in a position to arrive at anything other than doubt concerning what he had learned of Greek and Roman science. Then he encountered Manicheism, which he came to know only in a false form. He became acquainted with a teaching that took into account everything that Zarathustra taught. However, his soul was not inclined to take in all of this because the souls of the people living at that time were not meant to undertake such lofty flights of the spirit and see the spirit everywhere behind the physical world. The science that had penetrated all the way to the stars deteriorated; and even if this science had reached the Europeans no one could have understood it. The soul had to remain attached to what could be seen in the external world of the senses.

Science only reawakened during the time of the Renaissance. What Greece and Rome had started became Arabic wisdom; it became the spirit of Mohammedanism. Arabism then spread from Spain into Europe. This science is outstanding with regard to everything directly relating to the sensible-sensual world. The science that became a powerful stimulus for European science, that influenced Bacon and Spinoza,⁷ arises from Spanish Arabism. It comes from Spain. However, it cannot rise above a pantheism that is unable to reach concrete spiritual beings. Arabism did not arrive at the concrete. It ascended to the sensible human being but what was seen beyond that was only an abstract divine unity. It was not known what this unity is. A poor and comfortable world view! There is no knowledge of the spirit if it is summed up in a unity. Therein lies the poverty of pantheism.

As a result, we entered the fifth age with a science of the external world that began its great rise to ascendancy in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. We see this, for example, with the Scholastics. We experience in their thought the dawning of a new science that is, however, wholly chained to the sense world, that is unable to go even a step beyond the sense world. Thus we see how the split appears between faith and knowledge. Augustine was not able to understand a reference to something spiritual standing behind the sun. He did not understand Manicheism because it speaks of the veil of the senses spread over the spiritual. He could believe in Christ who had descended into a physical man. But faith and knowledge had entirely split apart at that time. All believers who stood on medieval science wanted faith and knowledge entirely separated.

We can illustrate schematically how what began in the Greco-Latin age still lives today, only on the external, physical level. The evolution of humankind takes place in such a way that what was cultivated in the Egypto-Chaldean age we experience again today—but we experience it as knowledge, and now it is illuminated and spiritualized by the Christ impulse. Everywhere in Europe we see the ancient wisdom of Egypt appearing again, but illuminated by the principle of Christ. In our time the human being will only be able to take this in consciously through the Rosicrucian teaching.

When the ancient Egyptians spoke of the stars they meant the spiritual aspect of the stars, which they still knew. A wonderful consciousness of ancient knowledge penetrated the science of Copernicus and Kepler. As a result, what the ancient Egyptians knew we now see appearing in a physical form. In the past they had seen beings moving through space, now only spheres were seen, moving in elliptical circles.

The fifth epoch is called to find again the spiritual world behind sense existence; and Theosophy must reach the point where it can lead people increasingly to permeate all knowledge with the principle of Christ.

If a clairvoyant being had been in a position to observe the earth through millennia then, it would have appeared that the entire aura of the earth suddenly changed color, radiated with different colors when the redeemer died on Golgotha. Ahura Mazdao, who had been proclaimed by Zarathustra, became at that time the elemental spirit of the earth. Christ expressed this when, at the Last Supper, he said: “This is my body” (Matt. 26:26) and, for the grape juice, found the expression, “This is my blood.” (Matt. 26:28)

If we really studied the earth we would have to see members of the spirit of Christ in everything that lives and grows, even in the smallest thing we look at. Human beings of the future will not speak of atoms; they will scientifically understand the earth as the expression of Christ.

We are standing only at the beginning of this development. Christ must first be understood in the simplest way. In the future all science will find Christ, even though it finds today nothing but a dead corpse-like existence in the sensible world. The fifth epoch can feel, to begin with, only as a perspective, that this new science is approaching, that humanity will understand in a new way what Zarathustra meant when he spoke of Ahura Mazdao.

The ancient wisdom of Zarathustra will appear again in a new form in the sixth age. Finally, the age of the holy Rishis will come again in a new form. There may be only a small band of people who understand Theosophy in our age; there may be only the smallest of groups present to hear the reenlivened wisdom of Zarathustra in the sixth age; and, finally there may be only a fraction remaining for the seventh age. The further course of human evolution will be such that more and more people will gather together who will understand what Zarathustra proclaimed.

Then an age will come upon the earth when the victors will be those who lead the war of all against all. But the souls who will have been preserved from the sixth age must found a new culture after the war of all against all. The seventh age will have neither people who glow with enthusiasm for the spiritual, nor those who glow with enthusiasm for sense existence; even for that these people will be too blase. Very little of the Indian, the first culture, will be perceptible on the earth in the seventh age. But these souls from the sixth age when earned up into the spiritual world, purified and “Christened, will walk as it were etherically, no longer touching the earth, while humanity then will be able to master what the entire culture of earth has to offer. The seventh age will be such that here below on the earth, people living in increasingly dense and hardened bodies will make the greatest discoveries and inventions. In the seventh age, human beings wholly entangled in matter will no longer have to fear much from Theosophy, for on earth there will no longer be much to find of those transformed human beings who will have increasingly spiritualized themselves in the sixth age by absorbing Theosophy. The people who have understood the call of the master today will be carried over into a distant future. The key will be turned in the sixth cultural epoch. Those who have heard the call will be the founders of a new humanity. If only a few people are entangled with matter, the community of Laodicea will not last long. It lies within the free will of every human being to belong to either the community of Philadelphia or the community of Laodicea.

• 1. Compare the Berlin lecture of October 7, 1904 on “The Prometheus Saga,” in The Temple Legend (GA 93) (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1985).
• 2. Aeschylus (525 – 456 s.e.) was the most important founder of Attic tragedy and the oldest of the three great Greek writers of Greek tragedy. Quote comes from his trilogy “Prometheia.”
• 3. Thales of Miletus, (ca. 625 – ca. 545 B.C.) was a Greek philosopher, one of the “seven wise men,” and one of the founders of philosophy
• 4. Heraclitus of Ephesus, (ca. 540 {544} – 480 {483 s.c.} was a Greek philosopher.
• 5. Marcus Aurelius: (121 – 180 A.D.) also know as Marcus Aurelius, the Philosopher. was the Roman caesar from 161 A.D.; Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 B.C. – 65 A.D.) was a Roman politician, philosopher, and poet.
• 6. Celsus: was a Greek philosopher of the second century. Around 180 he wrote “True Discourse” which was the first polemic against Christianity. It has been lost but the essence of its content is contained in Origen's response, Contra Celrum.
• 7. Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626) was an English Renaissance philosopher. Benedictus Spinoza (1632 – 1677) was a Dutch philosopher.

In order to place the task of our time and our future evolution before our souls we must look at the facts we already know. When we speak of the earth we mean, of course, all of the spiritual beings that belong to it. At the beginning of our evolution the earth was not yet separated from the other bodies in our solar system. We include in our solar system everything up to Saturn; and just as physical science speaks of a large ancient earth, from which the other heavenly bodies have come, so also spiritual science speaks of a large, ancient body called Saturn that reached far out beyond the present earth and encompassed the entire solar system.¹ Old Saturn consisted of interweaving, surging warmth. There was no air; the space in which this primal sphere existed was permeated with regular streams of warmth. These streams were the predecessors of human beings. At that time our body consisted of streams of flowing warmth.

We can imagine what this was like if we think away the bones, nerves, and muscles from the human being and keep only the warmth of our blood. Only the human being's warmth substance was present at that time; there was no mineral kingdom, but the human being existed within the lawfulness of the physical, mineral world. That is what we today must clearly feel as the first epoch of our earth evolution.

Then there was a time when the earth had shed old Saturn but the sun, moon, and earth remained together as one body. At that time human beings were present in their bodily nature as forms made of air. All the power that comes from the sun came forth at that time from within the earth. Everything came from within outward. Only after the sun had separated from the earth did it begin to shine upon it from outside. Therefore, we have a second epoch in human evolution when the human being had an existence as a form made of air as well as a plantlike form. [Here there is a big gap in the manuscript. The Moon condition and the Polarian and Hyperborean ages are described.]

Then the third age comes, the Lemurian age, when the moon leaves the earth and the beings of the moon work into the earth from outside it. It would be impossible to think of the carpet of vegetation covering the earth without the forces of the sun and the moon working alternately from outside. If the moon had remained within the earth, then the earth would have become so rigid that the human being would have been hardened in body and soul. Only because the moon was separated from the earth could the earth be placed between the sun and the moon. Otherwise the earth, solely under the forces of the sun, would have entered into a rate of development that was much too fast. We thank our position between sun and moon for the proper tempo of evolution. We have, then, a third stage when the moon is already outside the earth.

These three stages are reflected in the post-Atlantean evolution of humankind. What took place on a grand scale during the evolution of the earth (old Saturn, old Sun, old Moon) is reflected on a smaller scale in the post-Atlantean age. We see how the external, cosmic processes of the so-called Polarian age are reflected in the first post-Atlantean culture, in the ancient Indian epoch. During the Polarian age everything was inward, was within the warmth body of the earth; and we see how the ancient Indians felt all of that in their inner lives. Therefore, their feeling life did not look out into cosmic spaces. They felt themselves rather as one with Brahman.

The Polarian age was followed by the Hyperborean age, with a race of human beings who had airlike bodies. The sun had separated from the earth and now worked from outside. This separation was reflected in the ancient Persian cultural epoch when Zarathustra proclaimed Ahura Mazdao the spirit of the sun. The sun spirit was the guiding and leading principle of the ancient Persian cultural epoch.

The third, the Lemurian age, was reflected during the Egyptian age in the mood of its religion. The teaching of Osiris and Isis can be characterized from the most varied sides and points of view. But what is characteristic of this teaching is the following: In the ancient Lemurian age birth and death did not yet exist. At first, human beings repeated the condition in which they had been when the sun had not yet separated from the earth. At that time they were in a spiritual body. Then, when the sun was no longer united with the earth, they came to the point of having an airlike body; and then the human body was filled with a watery mist. Before the Lemurian age the human being was present only as mist and steam, barely distinguishable from what was flowing all around as mist or fog—changeable like the clouds, constantly changing forms in a way similar to the clouds of today. In these ancient times the human being was not yet altogether on the earth, but rather hovered above it. Pieces of this fine matter were constantly separating off and going away from human beings, welling up and flowing away from them. The condensation of human bodies into solid forms only occurred in the Lemurian age. What we call the succession of incarnations only began to appear with this condensation or “densification” of the human being. Only now are the bodily and soul aspects separated to such an extent that one can say human beings begin to regard the external as opposed to their inner life. Today we distinguish our inner and our outer being as the contradiction between our life of soul and the external world. In the age of the sun, human beings perceived the spiritual beings surrounding them as their external world. Then came the age of the separation of the moon. The external began to separate from the internal. In this way the difference between waking and sleeping arose. Human beings alternated between states when they were exposed to the sun and then were turned away from it. Then the time approached when the human being began to perceive objects on which the sun shone. At night the forces of the moon continually stimulated the life of the soul so that human beings distinguished a time when they perceived the external world and a state when they felt forces that worked through the moon and made them clairvoyant. Human beings said to themselves that through the spirituality that lived in the moon, they could perceive the spiritual world that was inwardly flowing into them through the forces of the moon. The forces of the moon were reflected sun forces that the spiritual world mediated to human beings, while the external world became increasingly perceptible to them during the day.

This was reflected in the ancient Egyptian's feeling life. The sun spirit was characterized as Osiris and the soul that seeks the sun spirit was seen as Isis. Thus, all we have been describing was reflected in the worship of Isis in the ancient Egyptian culture. Hence, the religious life was a worship of the moon. Osiris was a sun spirit residing on the moon. He could be seen clairvoyantly by the souls that sought him. But as the human being descended more and more into the physical bodily nature this bodily nature became like a box to Osiris. As human beings increasingly came to be earth beings in the strict sense, Osiris withdrew more and more.

The Lemurian age was followed by the Atlantean age—which was reflected in the fourth, the Greco-Latin culture. This era had an aspect of the world that had already presented itself cosmically in the Atlantean age. The human being became denser and denser. At the beginning of the human being's evolution the bones were present only as lines of force within. Then the human being became a being of air, and later a gelatinous being. The forms of the skeletal system are increasingly formed. On the other hand the powers of soul were in equal measure greater at that time. The Lemurians, who lived in viscous bodies in ancient times, had powers of soul much greater than those of the following races. It was much the same with the Atlanteans. If cannon balls had existed at that time, for example, such an Atlantean could have simply deflected any cannon ball through the power in his soul even though his physical body was not as dense as bodies are today. In terms of their physical bodily nature, Atlanteans were much thinner than we are today.

There were beings among the Atlanteans for whom it was not necessary to evolve into our dense bodily nature. They were similar to human beings but more highly developed. These beings could pass through their full stage of human existence already in those thin Atlantean bodies. They stand one degree higher than we human beings, for we must descend all the way down into a dense physical bodily nature in order to develop our I consciousness.

A memory of all these beings is reflected in the world of ancient Greek gods and in every aspect of the thinking and feeling of that epoch.

The gods of the European north are, in a similar way, former companions of humankind—but they were not as “densified” as the Greek gods. The ancient Norse bards and singers still knew of them when they allowed what lived within them to speak. In ancient times, the Edda was not needed in order to prove that something like this existed. But if God had not come down to us in the fourth epoch, then human beings would have forgotten their old companions who had been so well remembered by many even into the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

Now we come into our own age. Human beings no longer have any memory of an earlier age. We now have nothing to repeat. We have seen how ancient cultures were always reflected in the previous repetitions. But now in the fifth epoch there is nothing more for humankind to repeat. The world would have become empty if, in the fourth epoch, the Yahweh-Christ-God² had not come and lived in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. The fifth epoch would have become the godless epoch if Christ had not descended into Jesus of Nazareth's body of flesh.

We see the Polarian age reflected in the ancient Indian age, the Hyperborean in the ancient Persian, the Lemurian in the Egypto-Chaldean, and the Atlantean in the Greco-Latin age. And now we will see the important processes that take place in the etheric and astral bodies of human beings who take into themselves the knowledge of Christ Jesus in our age.

• 1. Compare Rudolf Steiner's descriptions in An Outline of Occult Science (GA 13) (Hudson, N.Y.: Anthroposophic Press, 1972), page 114—134.
• 2. Compare the following lecture excerpt: “Who did Moses see on Sinai in the burning bush and in the fire? Christ! But, just as we do not see the light of the sun directly on the moon but only reflected sunlight. so ton Moses saw a reflection of Christ. And just as we call sunlight that has been reflected by the moon, moonlight, so Christ, at that time was called Yahveh. Therefore, Yahveh is nothing other than the reflection of Christ before he appeared on the earth. So Christ was announced to the human being, who was not yet able to see him in his fundamental, essential being, just as sunlight announces itself through the rays of moonlight at night when, were it not for the full moon, the sky would he dark. Yahveh is Christ, but not seen directly, but rather as reflected light.” Lecture of September 21, 1909, Basel, in The Gospel of St. Luke (GA 114) (Hudson, N.Y.: Anthroposophic Press, 1964).

Today we will consider a more occult side of yesterday's observations. The first four post-Atlantean cultures had the task of reflecting in human souls the great cosmic processes that had taken place in the course of time. In our cultural period, on the other hand, from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries onward, we no longer incorporate such a reflection. For what takes place externally in the evolution of humankind can be traced back to deeper causes.

We know that the etheric bodies of the great Atlantean initiates were preserved for the seven holy Rishis; we also know that the etheric body and astral body of Zarathustra were woven into Moses and Hermes. The possibility has always existed for etheric bodies, which have been transformed and prepared by initiates, to be used further in the spiritual economy of the world.¹ Other things have also happened. Special etheric bodies are formed in higher worlds for especially important individuals. When someone was essential for a special mission to humanity, such a special etheric body or astral body was woven in higher worlds and then imprinted into him or her.

This is what happened to Sem, who actually had something to do with the entire tribe of the Semites. A special etheric body was formed for such a progenitor of a tribe. Because of this Sem was a kind of double personality. As incredible as it may sound to modern thinking, to a clairvoyant a personality such as Sem appeared, with his aura, like an ordinary man whose etheric body was filled by a higher being reaching down from higher worlds. In this way the man's aura became a mediator between his personality and higher worlds. When dwelling in a human being such a divine being has a very special power. He can reproduce a particular etheric body, and these reproduced etheric bodies then form a fabric that is again and again woven into the descendants. In this way the descendants of Sem were endowed with copies of his etheric body. But the etheric body of Sem himself, not only the reproduced copies, was also preserved in the mysteries. Then, any special individual who had been assigned a special mission had to use this etheric body in order to make himself understood to the Semitic people, just as highly educated Europeans would have to learn the language of the Hottentots in order to make themselves understood to them. The individuals given a special mission therefore had to carry within them the real etheric body of Sem in order to make themselves understood to the Semitic people. An example of such a personality would be Melchizedek,² who could only show himself to Abraham in the etheric body of Sem.

We must now ask ourselves the question: If only now, in the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch, an understanding for Christianity can be developed, then what was the understanding in the rest of the Greek and Latin age that lasted until the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries?

There is a mysterious occult process taking place here. Christ lived, of course, for only three years in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus was such a highly developed individuality that he could leave the physical world in the thirtieth year of his life in order to enter the spiritual world just as the dove appeared over his head. The three highly developed bodies, physical, etheric, and astral, left behind by Jesus were then filled by the individuality of Christ through the fact that he lived in the physical human body. These bodies of Jesus of Nazareth, invisible to the physical eye, were then replicated in a way similar to what happened to the etheric body of Sem. As a result, since the death on the cross, there exist copies of the etheric and astral bodies of Jesus of Nazareth. This has nothing to do with his I, which went on into the spiritual world and later continued incarnating.

In the first centuries after the Christ event we see how Christian writers were still working on the basis of a tradition passed on orally from the disciples of the Apostles. They placed value on tradition passed on through physical means. But later centuries could not have built upon these alone. Especially from the sixth and seventh centuries onward, great proclaimers of Christianity had a copy of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth woven into them. Augustine was such a man. In his youth he had to go through mighty battles. Then the impulse of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth became active in him in a very significant way; only then did he begin to generate Christian mysticism out of himself. His writings can only be understood in this light.

Many personalities have walked on the earth bearing such a copy within themselves. Columba, Gallus, Patrick³—they all carried such a copy of the etheric body within them and for just this reason were in a position to spread Christianity. In this way a bridge was built from the Christ event to succeeding times.

In the eleventh and twelfth centuries we then see people who received into their own astral bodies the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth. Francis of Assisi was one such special person. When we follow his life we will find much that is not understandable. But we can understand especially his humility, his Christian devotion if we realize that such a mystery lived in him. Around the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries such people became proclaimers of Christianity through this interweaving of astral bodies. They received Christianity through grace.

The I of Jesus of Nazareth left the three sheaths at the baptism in the Jordan. Nevertheless, an image of this I, like the imprint of a seal, remained in the three sheaths. The Christ being took possession of these three bodies but he also took possession of something else, something that remained behind like an imprint of the I of Jesus. From the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries on, something like a copy of Jesus' I⁴ was woven into those men who then began to speak of an “inner Christ.” Meister Eckhart and Johannes Tauler were speaking out of their inner experience of something like an imprint of the I of Jesus of Nazareth.

Although there are still many people present today carrying something like a copy of the various bodies of Jesus of Nazareth, they no longer become leading personalities. More and more we see how in our fifth age there are people who must rely on themselves, on their own I. Such inspired people will become increasingly rare. Therefore, steps were taken to provide for the future so that a particular spiritual stream could arise in our time, a spiritual stream with the task of insuring that spiritual knowledge will still reach humanity. Those individuals who could see into the future had to provide for human beings who are wholly dependent on their merely human I. We are told in a legend that the vessel used by Christ Jesus with his disciples at the Last Supper was preserved. This is the legend of the Holy Grail. We see in the story of Parzival an expression of a pupil's typical path of development in our fifth post-Atlantean age. Parzival neglected to do one thing. He had been told that he should not ask questions. That is the important transition from the old age to the new. In ancient India, a devotion as passive as possible was necessary for the pupil; this was also true in Augustine's time and in the time of Francis of Assisi. All of these humble people let themselves be inspired by what lived in them, what had been woven into them. But now the I must carry the question in itself. Every soul today that passively receives what is given to it cannot go beyond itself. It can only observe what is going on in the physical world around it. Today the soul must ask questions, must lift itself above itself; it must grow out of itself. The soul today must ask questions as Parzival had to ask about the secrets of the Grail castle.⁵

Therefore, today spiritual research only begins when there are questions. The souls that are stimulated today by external science to question, to ask, and to seek—those are the Parzival souls. Therefore, a mystery stream was introduced that has been much persecuted, the Rosicrucian training that does not rely on any handed-down wisdom even if it gratefully accepts the old traditions. What constitutes the Rosicrucian approach to the spirit today has been researched directly in higher worlds with spiritual eyes—and with the means that the student himself has received as instructions. Today wisdom is proclaimed through the Rosicrucian approach to the spirit not because this or that is found in old books, not because these or those have believed this or that, but because it was researched. This was gradually prepared in the Rosicrucian schools founded in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries by the individuality named Christian Rosenkreuz.

Today this wisdom can be proclaimed as Theosophy. Those people simply no longer exist who, without their own involvement, are implanted with wisdom that inwardly inspires them. Today only those people who feel that Theosophy speaks to their hearts should come to it. We should not use propaganda and agitate for Theosophy. Only through their own free initiative should anyone come to Theosophy. This can occur when individuals are deeply affected in a living way by spiritual knowledge.

Then, through this Theosophical-Rosicrucian spiritual stream, we draw toward us what is available from the copies of the I of Jesus of Nazareth. In this way, those who prepare themselves for it draw into their souls the image of the I of Jesus of Nazareth. Then, through the fact that their inner soul life is like the imprint of a seal of the I of Christ, through this, such human beings take into their souls the principle of Christ. In this way Rosicrucianism prepares something positive. Theosophy should become life, so that any soul that truly absorbs Theosophy is gradually transformed. Absorbing Theosophy means that a soul is transformed such that it can arrive at an understanding of Christ.

Theosophists make themselves into living recipients of what Moses and Paul were given in the revelation of Yahweh-Christ. Therefore, we read in the fifth letter in the Apocalypse how the people of the fifth cultural epoch are those who truly take into themselves what will later be self-evident for the cultural epoch of the community of Philadelphia. The wisdom of the fifth cultural age will blossom forth as a flower of love in the sixth cultural age.

Humankind is called today to take in something new, something divine, and thereby to undertake again an ascent into the spiritual world. The theosophical teaching concerning evolution is imparted; it should not be believed but rather humankind should come to the point of understanding it through its own power of judgment. It is proclaimed to those who bear within themselves a seed of the essence of Parzival. And it is not proclaimed only to a particular people or place. Those who hear the call of spiritual wisdom will come together from all parts of humanity.

• 1. Compare the lectures found in The Principle of Spiritual Economy (GA 109) (Fludson, N.Y.: Anthroposophic Press, 1986).
• 2. Melchizedek: Compare, among others, the lecture of September 4, 1910 in The Gospel of St. Matthew (GA 123) (Hudson, N.Y.: Anthroposophic Press, 1965).
• 3. The great Irish missionaries.
• 4. Compare the descriptions found in the lecture “More Intimate Aspects of Reincarnation” in The Principle of Spiritual Economy (GA 109).
• 5. Compare lecture cycle Christ and the Spiritual World and the Search for the Holy Grail (GA 149) (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1963) and Chretien de Troyes, Perceval, or the History of the Grail.

A seer such as the writer of the Apocalypse can already see the future evolution of humanity in the astral world. What will enter into evolution after the war of all against all is already being prepared. Those human beings called to carry evolution into the future, beyond the war of all against all, are already being prepared through the wisdom taught in Theosophy. In far-reaching ways, the spiritual stream of wisdom will become increasingly effective.

When the clairvoyant can observe the modern human being, it sees the etheric body extending a little bit beyond the upper part of the physical body. The etheric body of a man is feminine and the etheric body of a woman is masculine. The astral body, on the other hand, is a flowing structure, variable in terms of color and form, changeable according to the inner life. If we raise our hand the impulse to do so comes from the astral body. When we walk, when we cry or laugh—that is caused by an impulse in the astral body having influence over the physical body. However, what has the most essential influence on human beings is their I. The I works in an altogether roundabout way through the astral body.

In ancient Atlantean times and in the Lemurian age, human beings were not only able to stretch out their different bodies, but they could also extend and “puff” them up. At that time the physical body was only a very small inclusion; on the other hand, the etheric and astral bodies were gigantic. The astral body might look like one kind of animal but was constantly changing and soon resembled another. Human beings constantly changed their physical form according to the desires and impulses living within them. The air then was filled with thick foggy mists much thicker and water-filled than our mountain fog. The human physical body had the most varied colorings and forms; one could already see in its gelatinous substance indications of the physical organization, for example the blood system and the skeleton. Toward the end of Atlantis the air was cleared of thick watery masses. Only then could human beings become the creatures of air and earth that we are today. Atlanteans did not see the sun at all the way it is seen today; it was seen as the mighty ring of the sun. Because the air was never free of water, there were never any rainbows. Only after the separation of water and air were rainbows possible. The entire process of the Atlantean flood is portrayed in the story of Noah and the rainbow. (Genesis 9:12–17)

It was also necessary for the beings on the earth to pass through their stages of evolution at very different times. If a portion of humanity in the early stages of Atlantis had not wanted to descend into a “densified” physical body, then the human form would have remained as it was—with all the instincts, desires, and passions still expressed in the physical form. However, there were beings that became solid, hardened at that time. Animals are nothing more than beings that entered into a hardened, dense condition too early. What the human being carries in the astral body today in terms of desires and passions has come to expression in the physical body of the various animals. Each of the groups of animals developed a particular instinct, and is “congealed” or solidified in it. During the Lemurian age it was the mammals; they are human passions that have congealed into a rigid form. What we carry within ourselves presents itself as a picture in the various animals. With human beings, the instincts have been gradually refined and we can hide them in our heart. The lowest instincts of the human being were first to fall into the physical world during eruptions of natural forces in the earlier times of Lemuria. The apes represent, so to speak, the last lower instincts to fall or be pushed into physical matter before the soul of the human being was itself hardened in matter. With some animals, horses for example, we still find today as a peculiarity the etheric body of the head extending beyond the physical head. That was the case with Atlantean human beings. A certain point in the human etheric body moved into the corresponding part of the physical body only in the last third of the Atlantean age. Only then were human beings able to develop a physical form appropriate for the spirit.

There are sixteen groups of human instincts and passions and so too, are there sixteen groups of animals. Zoology will one day understand how these sixteen groups were gradually “precipitated out” of the spiritual world. We can easily say how the various parts of the mammal groups were created. The formation of hoofs, for example, occurred when, in a very special way, animal nature closed off from the outer world. Claws were created through aggression. The hoofed animals express a very different stage of evolution than animals with claws. We see just such a contradiction expressed in the forms of the centaur and the sphinx.

This is portrayed in the second part of Faust, a very important book from the occult point of view. The Sphinx encounters Mephistopheles and laughs at him because of his horse hooves, which are a sign of a hardened nature, a nature that has egotistically closed itself off from the world.

If we cut our finger we feel pain; this shows us the bearer of feelings, the astral body. Earlier, when the human being's entire nature was still soft, the hair growth was also permeated by astral forces. We are told of Esau that he was covered with hair; he was still retarded in his development and in his power of judgment. For this reason Jacob could trick him, because Jacob had already come further in the development of his power of judgment, of his I. There are forces again working outward in human beings today. The more the I has mastery over the astral body, the more the physical body can also be molded and transformed. Today we have our karma within us like a life account, with a balance of everything we have prepared in our various incarnations. But because the human being's physical nature expresses very little of the I, we carry our karma inwardly and unmediated. But later it will show itself on the human face. Humankind will evolve in the future so that its karma is carried on the countenance. No longer will the fact that a human being is born into a specific race or in a specific climate be decisive for external appearances. There will be rather a class of good people and a class of evil people. Let us understand Paul correctly, who said: “I live, but it is no longer I who live, but Christ in me.” (Gal. 2:20) What is called “receiving the Yahweh-Christ being” will later show itself in human beings externally. Today it is still possible to be a rogue and yet hide it; but in the future, human beings will carry the mark of their inner life on their foreheads.

Let us look at the human being after the war of all against all. We can think of him or her as someone with radiant, good features and a noble benevolent expression. This will become the fate of those who have taken in spiritual impulses at the right time. All moral, intellectual, and spiritual forces will, in the future, confront us visibly in the external features of a human being. What is taken in today will be sealed into souls. After the seventh age, after the war of all against all, they will be unsealed.

That is what the writer of the Apocalypse sees in the seven seals that will gradually be broken. The book with the seven seals is not intended to be like our books or like ancient scrolls. What is intended is a succession of events. The succession of epochs is the concept of the Apocalyptic “books” as, for example, the Evangelist Matthew speaks of the succession of generations, of the lineage of Jesus of Nazareth. Orders of succession are created in this way. The book tells us that the power of the lamb can break the seals.

That gives us an idea of what is intended with the seven seals.

We have seen that in our age we can write into our souls what will later appear in the human being externally. Just as seven successive cultural epochs can be listed in our time, so too, the seven ages of human evolution that will follow the war of all against all are portrayed to the writer of the Apocalypse, who can see into the future. He sees these seven ages in the seven seals. But he distinguishes clearly the first four ages. Every time a seal is opened one of the four horses with its rider appears to him.

The Apocalypse presents a clairvoyant vision of seven future ages. They are astral pictures of what one day will be. Human beings who will have taken in something of spiritual culture will have overcome their lower nature. They will then rule over the human instinctive nature. What human beings have overcome is expressed in the seal in the form of a horse. They will be victors over their lower nature through what they will have made of their souls. They will master their lower natures just as a rider masters a horse.

Everything we have experienced since the time of ancient India will appear again after the war of all against all. As epochs are repeated, the ancient Indian age will reappear first. Back then everything in the physical world appeared to the human being as illusion, as maya. At that time the soul became mature enough to achieve victory over everything in the sensible world. The fruit of this Indian age appears to the writer of the Apocalypse in the picture of the white horse. It is characteristic of the soul of the ancient Indian that the external world, material culture, appears as yet untouched by human hands. The rider with a bow is as innocent as bright sunlight. Like a conqueror he has earned the right, after the war of all against all, to be conqueror over his lower nature. But the lower nature is still present. The human being has grown together with it. This is portrayed in the second seal as the red rider. Here the soul no longer appears in a white garment of innocence. Thus, the victorious rider cannot serve as a picture of the human being in this age. He appears to us as one bringing the fruits of egotism. After the war of all against all he no longer appears in a white garment. Once again he takes peace away from the earth; once again he shows himself with a sword in the battle for existence.

Then we are shown the fruit of the third age, the Egypto-Chaldean culture, during which humankind learned to count and to calculate. The human being continued to descend deeper and deeper into matter, into the darkness of the lower nature. This is seen in the black horse with a rider holding scales. Weighing, measuring, and counting are expressed to the writer of the Apocalypse as a black horse, and the human soul is the rider with the scales. State institutions for the allocation of property according to intelligent social laws did not exist among human beings in the Persian culture. There were no such institutions in ancient India or ancient Persia. In ancient India, people still had faith in their Atlantean incarnations. In ancient Indian times, people saw their position in life as the consequence of what they had prepared in ancient Atlantis. They told themselves that they were in a certain caste because of the karma of humankind; they looked up to the higher castes and considered this to be a just arrangement according to the karma of individuals. But this division into castes was made increasingly impossible by the evolution of the human I. Distribution of property and goods began to be calculated chiefly through the use of intelligence in the Egypto-Chaldean age. Therefore, the fruit of this third age appears as the black horse and the rider with the scales, with which all thinking and human intelligence are weighed. In this way, what will appear as the fruit of our seven cultures after the war of all against all appears symbolically to the writer of the Apocalypse.

In the Greco-Latin culture, the fourth age conquered the beauty of the physical world. The Greeks idealized nature in their art; they beautified existence. How beautiful Greek sculpture and architecture appear to us in comparison to Egyptian art, to the Sphinx, to the Pyramids. But the Greeks became so fond of physical-sensible existence that the spiritual world became dark for them. Only through the event of Golgotha did light again penetrate into what for them had become absolute shadows. The soul had been completely thrown into chains in this fourth age. But the lower nature experienced a beautification; it received, so to speak, a cover of beauty and art. That is quite properly what is characteristic for the souls of this most beautiful age of the kingdom of earth. But for the souls themselves the fruit of this age means the same thing as death. From this age, which has given them mastery over external physical nature, the souls of human beings will reap the fewest fruits.

Then we come to the fifth age, when the Yahweh-Christ principle also illuminates souls between death and a new birth. Here souls become more alive. What happens in this fifth age? Through what a soul can assimilate through the Christ impulse, the astral body becomes brighter and more filled with light. We can imagine how an astral body that is permeated by the light of the I, that is totally illuminated by the I, appears when seen clairvoyantly. It appears to the writer of the Apocalypse after the war of all against all as a white garment. In the fifth age after the war of all against all, the soul will appear with an aura that is already illuminated by the light of Christ. [Gap in manuscript]

Those who already took up the Christ principle in the first era of Christianity suffered a great deal in terms of external physical martyrdom. But things are coming to a head in this fifth age. Through the Rosicrucian-Theosophical spiritual stream, the Christ impulse will be taken into selves that are increasingly selfless—and taken in with increasing understanding. Its followers will achieve, through spiritual development, ever higher stages of spiritual life.

But another stream sharply opposed to this is working, through a certain cultivation of the I, to drive the I constantly deeper into materialism. Its goal is that materialism should finally conquer the human personality. A result of this impulse is that all external, practical life is detached from the individual, becomes materialized. This happens, for example, through the activity of capital in joint stock companies, which is increasingly detached from any individual human personality. The personal diligence and hard work of individual human beings will become increasingly unimportant. Stocks or shares in companies are the path to materialization in this branch of practical human life.

We see materialism increasingly getting the upper hand. More and more the tendency will be that the spiritualized human personality will have to contradict the prevailing materialism. At the end of our age, this sharp opposition to materialism will appear as a humanity that has been outwardly vanquished. The people who will be put to death for the sake of the Word will have to suffer much. But they will be the most important cultural force after the war of all against all.

With the community at Philadelphia the sixth age will begin. Except for these spiritual human beings the rest of humankind will be entirely wrapped up in the social life, submerged in the materialism that will be constantly growing stronger. People will master the forces of nature to a high degree, as we have seen with wireless telegraphy and aeronautics. It is not without consequences whether the air is filled with spiritual thoughts or with thoughts of material needs. This will engulf our entire planet. We are looking into an age when humanity will intrude in large measure into air and light-filled space. What will be the fruits of this age? Seen in their true form it can be said that these electromagnetic waves will work back into the forces of the earth during a certain age. Then, according to good and evil, earthquakes and earth tremors will appear as the effects of human deeds. “When he opened the sixth seal I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth ...” (Rev. 6:12) When the feelings of human beings are carried into the air, they change all of nature and something like a meteor shower appears. In this way human beings unleash the forces of nature, but their achievements do not go unpunished. When we see this, it appears at the same time that humanity finds its own destruction within these unleashed forces of nature. But those who unite themselves with the spirit appear as the sealed human beings. Such people must take into themselves the teachings that concern the spirit and can reach humanity.

What human beings take into themselves as spiritual substance and teaching will be their soul and spiritual life blood in the future. It will be the light that will ray forth from them as spirit. The human being stands firmly as on two feet—one foot on the Atlantean, the other on the post-Atlantean culture, as it were: on water and on earth. But humankind must take in wisdom, like swallowing a book. This figure points toward the spiritual world, he gives the book to the writer of the Apocalypse. He is supposed to swallow it. It will be indigestible for the lower human being but like honey for the higher, when it is not read but swallowed. Human beings equipped with modern logical thinking who have also become clairvoyant through occult training can also experience what the writer of the Apocalypse described. They can see the visions of the writer of the Apocalypse in the Rosicrucian seals. The seal with the two pillars is portrayed in the tenth chapter of the Apocalypse.