The Rudolf Steiner Archive

9. Zarathustra

[ 1 ] Among the findings of spiritual science that have been referred to in the lectures of this series thus far, the most prominent is the idea of repeated earthly lives—that is, the idea, which is indeed little appreciated or understood today, that the human individuality must live out its existence again and again in a single human personality throughout the course of humanity’s development on Earth. We have seen, and will continue to see, how various questions arise in connection with this idea. Among these questions, however, there will be one that relates to the significance of these repeated earthly lives. One might indeed ask: What significance does it have that the human individuality does not pass through this life between birth and death just once, but over and over again? But if, on the other hand, one considers human development on Earth from the perspective of spiritual science and finds that this human development contains a progressive meaning—that every epoch, every new age, in a certain sense offers a different content, and that human development follows an ascending trajectory— — then it seems significant that these manifold possibilities of life, these many aspects of life that can flow toward us in the course of human evolution, are indeed taken in again and again by the core of the human being. But this is only possible if human beings, with all that they essentially are, are linked not just once, but many times, to the living stream of Earth’s evolution. When we thus view the entire human development of Earth’s humanity as a meaningful progression that brings forth ever-new content, only then do those spiritual figures appear to us in their true significance—those who, in the various epochs, are to be regarded as the tone-setters, as the true leaders, as those from whom, in a certain sense, new content and new impulses for the progressive development of humanity emanate. In this winter cycle, we shall examine a number of such leading figures in human development in connection with other questions. Today, let us set ourselves the task of pointing to one such leading human individuality who, in a certain sense, appears particularly enigmatic to external historical research and who, for that research, is lost in a distant antiquity no longer accessible through external documents: the much-discussed but still little-recognized figure of Zarathustra.

[ 2 ] It is precisely in a figure such as Zarathustra—whose contributions to humanity, and what has been preserved of them, already seem so alien to our present age—that we can see just how great the differences become with regard to the entire human being when we consider the various ages of humanity. A short-sighted view might easily assume: just as human beings are today—how they think, feel, imagine, and perceive morality—so have they essentially felt ever since they became human. Spiritual science, however, shows us—as is already evident from the lectures given so far and will also become evident from those to follow—that it is precisely human soul life, the nature of sensation, feeling, and volition, that has undergone great and significant changes in the course of human evolution; that human consciousness was quite different in ancient times, and that we have reason to believe that in the future, different stages of this consciousness will be reached than the one at which normal humanity lives today.

[ 3 ] If we now turn our attention to Zarathustra, we must, in essence, look back over a vast, vast span of time from our present moment. However, while certain recent studies place Zarathustra as a contemporary of the Buddha—meaning he would have lived on earth roughly six or six and a half centuries before the emergence of Christianity— Yet here it is worth noting the remarkable fact that even in recent years, as researchers have carefully examined all existing traditions concerning Zarathustra, they have been compelled to point out that the actual figure behind the name of Zarathustra—the ancient Persian founder of a religion—must be placed many, many centuries before the Buddha. Greek historians point out time and again that Zarathustra must be placed far back in time—some five to six thousand years before the Trojan War. One can already draw the conclusion from what external research has uncovered in many fields: although external historical research will find it difficult to come to this conclusion, it will ultimately—not least because of the documents—be compelled to acknowledge what Greek scholarship and the Greek tradition have preserved regarding the great antiquity of the age of Zarathustra. Based on its own premises, spiritual science must in fact also place the life of the Persian founder of religion, Zarathustra, as far back in time as Greek writers did in antiquity. But then we are justified in pointing out how Zarathustra, having lived millennia before the advent of Christianity in the world, may have faced an entirely different kind of human consciousness.

[ 4 ] It has often been pointed out—and will be discussed further—that the development of human consciousness has proceeded in such a way that dreamlike, clairvoyant states—the term should not be misused here as it is in many fields today — were the normal states of consciousness for the average person in ancient times, so that people did not view the world in terms of concepts and ideas, or through strictly delimited sensory perceptions, as they do today. The best way to get a picture of how people in primeval times took in the world around them into their consciousness is to think of the last remnants of that ancient, primordial consciousness: dream consciousness. Everyone is familiar with the ebbing and flowing dream images—which today are for the most part meaningless to human consciousness—that are often merely reminiscences of the external world, although higher forms of consciousness may also intrude into them; yet modern humans find it difficult to interpret them. Dream consciousness—we might say—unfolds pictorially, in rapidly changing images, yet at the same time symbolically. Who has not experienced how the impression, the entire event of a fire, reveals itself symbolically in a dream? Turn your gaze for a moment to this different kind of consciousness, to this different horizon of consciousness as it exists in dreams; just as it exists there, it is merely the last remnant of an ancient human consciousness. But this ancient consciousness was such that human beings did indeed live within a kind of imagery. These images did not refer to something indefinite or to nothing, but to a real external world. In the states of consciousness of ancient humanity, there were intermediate states between waking and sleeping, and in these intermediate states, human beings lived in relation to the spiritual world. This spiritual world entered their consciousness. Today, the gateway to the spiritual world is closed to normal human consciousness. In ancient times, this was not the case. Back then, human beings experienced the intermediate states between waking and sleeping; and in these states they saw images that, while similar to dream images, unambiguously depicted spiritual beings and spiritual processes as they exist beyond the physical-sensory world. Thus, in ancient times, human beings truly had—albeit already quite indistinctly and vaguely by the time of Zarathustra—a direct observation and experience of the spiritual world and could say: Just as I see the outer physical world and sensory life, so too do I know that there are experiences and observations of another state of consciousness, that another world—a spiritual one—underlies the sensory world.

[ 5 ] The purpose of human evolution is that, from one epoch to the next, humanity’s ability to glimpse into the spiritual world has become smaller and smaller, because our abilities develop in such a way that one must always be gained at the expense of another. Our modern analytical thinking, our imagination, our logic—everything we regard as the most important driving forces of our culture—did not exist back then. Humanity first had to acquire these in the very epoch that is now our own, at the expense of the old clairvoyant state of consciousness. This is what humanity must cultivate today. And in the future development of humanity, the old clairvoyant state will once again be added to purely physical consciousness, alongside intellectuality and logic. A descent and an ascent must therefore be distinguished with regard to human consciousness. There is a deeper meaning in this development when we say: Human beings first lived with their entire soul life within a spiritual world, then descended into the physical world and, in order to do so, had to give up the old clairvoyant consciousness so that, by drawing on the physical world—and educated by the purely physical world — he could acquire intellectuality and logic, so that he might then ascend again into the spiritual world in the future.

[ 6 ] However, what human beings historically experienced within their ancient state of consciousness—as just described—predates the periods for which external historical records exist. But Zarathustra also belongs to a time that predates the availability of historical records, and Zarathustra is one of the great leading figures who provided the inspiration for humanity’s great cultural advances. Such leading figures must always—regardless of whether normal human consciousness is at this or that stage—draw upon what can be called enlightenment, the initiation into the higher mysteries of the world. And Zarathustra now belongs among those figures we will consider in the course of these lectures—Hermes, Buddha, Moses. He certainly stands at least eight thousand years ahead of our present point in human development, and the great and powerful contributions he made to humanity from an enlightened spirit have long been clearly discernible among humanity’s most influential cultural assets. Even today, anyone who pays attention to the more hidden currents in the entire course of human development can perceive this. In essence, Zarathustra belongs to those who, in their souls, experienced truths, wisdom, and insights that went far beyond the normal human consciousness of their time. Thus, Zarathustra had to proclaim to his fellow human beings—in that land where the Persian Empire later spread—truths from the supersensible worlds, from those realms of the supersensible worlds that lie far beyond anything that the normal human consciousness of his time could perceive.

[ 7 ] If one wishes to understand what Zarathustra means for humanity, one must be clear that he was meant to impart a certain kind of worldview, a certain way of understanding the world, to a specific segment of humanity—a very particular fraction of people—while, in fact, other human currents, other peoples, other regions of humanity had to contribute a different kind of worldview, so to speak, to the entire realm of human culture. And Zarathustra’s personality is so interesting to us precisely because he lived within a cultural sphere that bordered directly to the south on another cultural sphere, which had spiritual gifts and spiritual currents to offer humanity in a completely different way. There, as we look back to those ancient times, we find on the soil of ancient India those peoples whose descendants later recognized the Vedic singers among themselves. And to the north of this region, where the great Brahmanic teaching had spread, we must seek the region of peoples that was permeated by the powerful impulse of Zarathustra. But in a certain sense, what Zarathustra had to offer the world was fundamentally different from what the teachers—the great leading figures—had to offer the ancient Indians, which has been preserved in the enchanting chants of the Vedas, in the profound philosophy of Vedanta, and which still resonates, as in a final great flash of light, in the revelation of the great Buddha.

[ 8 ] One can only understand the difference between what arose from the tradition of ancient India and what arose from the tradition of Zoroastrianism by recognizing that human beings can enter the realm of the supersensible world from two different directions. In the course of these lectures, we have discussed the question of how a person enters a spiritual world. There are two ways in which a person can elevate the powers of their soul and the capacities of their inner being beyond the normal state, so that they can ascend from the sensory world into the supersensory world. One path can be described as the one through which a person delves deeper and deeper into their own soul, immersing themselves in it; the other can be described as leading a person beyond what is spread out around us like a carpet of the physical-sensory world, leading them behind this carpet of the physical world. Both paths lead into the supersensible realm. When, in an intimate inner experience, we deepen everything we possess in our soul—inner emotional values, imaginative and conceptual values, in short, the impulses within our soul—slipping, so to speak, deeper and deeper into ourselves, so that the forces within us grow stronger and stronger— then we can, as it were, immerse ourselves mystically within and, through that which within ourselves belongs to the physical world, penetrate to what is our true spiritual-soul core, which passes from incarnation to incarnation and is imperishable in contrast to the transitory. We then penetrate into the spiritual world of our own inner being. By penetrating the veil of our own inner being—by penetrating those desires, passions, and inner soul experiences that live within us and are ours only because we are embodied in a physical body in this physical world—and by immersing ourselves in our Eternal Self, we enter a spiritual world. But even when we develop, on the other hand, those powers that do not merely look toward the external world and see colors, hear sounds, or receive external impressions of warmth or cold—but rather when we make our spiritual powers so potent that they can penetrate beyond the colors, beyond sound, beyond warmth and cold, and beyond the other sensory impressions that spread out around us like a carpet— then the powers that have been strengthened within our soul penetrate beyond the veil of the external world into the supersensible realm, which extends into infinity—one might say, into infinite distances.

[ 9 ] Thus, there is a path that we might call the mystical, and there is a path that pierces through the veil of the sensory realm into the vastness of the cosmos, which we might call the path of true spiritual science. It was through these two paths that all the great spiritual personalities arrived at the truths and revelations they were to instill in humanity as cultural advances. However, in ancient times, human development was such that the great revelations could always reach a particular people only through one of these paths. It was not until the era in which the Greeks lived—an era that also encompassed the rise and emergence of Christianity—that the two currents, as it were, converged and increasingly became a single cultural current. When we speak today of entering the higher worlds, we mean that the person who wishes to ascend to the supersensible worlds develops, as it were, both kinds of forces within their soul: both the forces for the mystical path into their own inner being and those for the spiritual-scientific path into the outer world. Today, the two paths are no longer strictly separated from one another, for it is in the nature of human development that, around the epoch marked by the Greek people, these two currents converge: the one who receives his revelations through mystical immersion into his own inner self, and the one who receives his revelations by strengthening the spiritual forces that lead outward into the great cosmos. In pre-Greek or pre-Christian times, however, these two possibilities were distributed among different peoples, and we encounter them—geographically close together—in ancient pre-Greek and pre-Christian times in Indian culture, which found its expression in the Vedas, and in the Zarathustrian culture further to the north. For everything we admire in Indian culture—which also found expression in the Buddha—is attained through inner contemplation, by turning one’s gaze away from the outer world, by deaden ing the eye to sensory colors, the ear to sensual sounds, and the external organs to the tapestry of the senses as a whole—and by strengthening the inner powers of the soul in order to penetrate down to Brahman, in which the human being feels at one with that which weaves for all time as the inner essence of the world. From this sprang the teachings of the ancient holy Rishis, which live on poetically in the Vedas and continue in Vedanta philosophy and Buddhism. Zoroastrianism arose from the other path.

[ 10 ] Zarathustra had specifically imparted to his disciples the secret of how to strengthen the powers of human knowledge so that they might penetrate the veil of the external sensory world. Zarathustra did not teach as the teachers of India did: “Turn your gaze away from colors, from sounds, from external sensory impressions, and seek the path to the spiritual solely through contemplation within your own soul!”—but rather he said: “Strengthen your powers of cognition so that you may look out upon all that lives as plants and animals, in the air and in the water, on mountain peaks and in valley depths! Look upon this world! — As we know, for the disciple of Indian mysticism, this world was merely Maya, a means of turning one’s gaze toward where Brahman is found. Zarathustra taught his disciples not to turn their gaze away from this world, but to penetrate it, to say to themselves: Wherever we see sensory-physical manifestations in the outer world, behind them—apart from ourselves—the spiritual is at work and weaving! — That is the other path. Remarkably, these two paths converge in the Greek era. And because in that era’s understanding—which truly delved deeper into the spiritual than in our own time, which claims to have advanced so magnificently far— everything is expressed through images that have passed into myth, we also find how the two currents—one, the mystical, turning inward toward one’s own inner self, and the other reaching outward into the cosmos—converged in Greek culture, met, and were cultivated simultaneously. This is expressed in the way one path was named after Dionysus, the mysterious god, who can be found when a person delves deeper and deeper into their inner self and discovers there that questionable subhuman aspect which they did not possess before, from which they first evolved into a human being. It is that which is still unrefined, still half-animal, named after Dionysus. But that which confronts us when we look through the world—when we view spiritually what physically confronts us through the senses—is named after Apollo. Thus, within the Apollonian current, the teachings of Zarathustra stand side by side with the teachings of mystical contemplation in ancient Greek culture, which belong to the Dionysian current. There they unite; there they flow together—Zarathustrianism and the mystical teachings that meet us at their heights in ancient Indian culture. Thus, the ancient times were destined, so to speak, to allow two currents to flow side by side, and within the Apollonian and Dionysian circles of faith in Greece, both flowed together to then continue flowing as one, so that in our culture, when we rise to the spiritual, they live on as one.

[ 11 ] It is quite remarkable—and this is one of the many puzzles posed to the thinker—that Nietzsche had a hunch about this—though nothing more—and in his first work *The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music*, he argued that these Dionysian and Apollonian spheres of belief in Greece converge as the philosophical and mystical currents.

[ 12 ] Now it is interesting to see how Zarathustra, in fact, taught his disciples—and thus the entire culture that took its starting point from him—in every detail to see the spirit behind all that is sensory. The point is that it is not enough to say: The sensory world spreads out before us, and behind it the spiritual-divine weaves its web. One might feel particularly significant in doing so, but in doing so one is merely working toward a general pantheism. One thinks one has already accomplished something by saying, “Behind all the sensory lies a divine”—that is, by generally acknowledging a vague, nebulous spiritual realm behind all physical phenomena. A man like Zarathustra, who had truly ascended into a spiritual world, did not speak to his disciples and his people in such an abstract, vague, and nebulous manner; rather, he pointed out: just as individual sensory phenomena differ—with some being more significant and others less so—so too is the spiritual reality behind them, varying in significance from one phenomenon to another. He then pointed out that behind the physical reality of the sun—which, purely in terms of our physical perception of the solar system, contains, for example, the origin of all life, all phenomena, and all activities—lies hidden the center of spiritual life, insofar as this spiritual life concerns us for the time being.

[ 13 ] As Zarathustra said—if we were to put into simple words what he sought to make clear to his disciples through his forceful teachings: Behold how the human being standing before us is not merely the physical body, for that is only the outward expression of the spirit. But just as the physical body is merely the manifestation, the crystallization, of the spiritual human being, so too is the sun—which appears to us as a physical body of light—insofar as it is such a physical body of light, merely the outer body of a spiritual being, as it were, a spiritual sun. — And just as what the spiritual human being is in relation to the physical human being can be called his aura—or “Ahura,” to use the ancient term— so one can describe what lies behind the physical sun as the “great aura,” as an all-encompassing aura, whereas what lies behind the physical human being as a spiritual entity is the “small aura”! That is why Zarathustra called what lies behind the physical sun the “Great Aura,” Auramazda or Ahura Mazdao. This was the spiritual reality behind the sun, that which concerns us in relation to all spiritual events and all spiritual states of being just as much as the physical sun concerns us in relation to the flourishing of plants, animals, and all life on Earth. Behind the physical sun stands the spiritual Lord and Creator, Ahura Mazdao, Auramazda! From this came the name Ormuzd, or “Spirit of Light” . So while the Indians looked mystically inward to reach Brahman, the Eternal One, which shines forth from within the human being as if from a single point, Zarathustra directed his disciples toward the vast periphery of existence and showed how the great Spirit of the Sun, Ahura Mazdao, the Spirit of Light, is present within the body of the Sun. And just as within the human being the true spiritual self strives upward toward perfection, yet faces within itself the lower passions and desires, and the possibility of being exposed to the illusions of lies and untruth—just as the human being thus harbors within itself the adversary of its own impulses toward perfection—so too does Ahura Mazdao have as his adversary the Spirit of Darkness: Angro-Mainyush, Ahriman.

[ 14 ] Here we see how the great Zarathustra’s philosophy could also be transformed from a doctrine into a source of sensation and emotion. This enabled him to guide his disciples to the point where he could make it clear to them: Here you stand as human beings with a principle of perfection within you that tells you: no matter how I may be at this moment—the principle of perfection within me will work in such a way that the human being can rise higher and higher. But within this inner self, the inclinations and drives that lead to imperfection—lies and deceit—are at work. What is thus within the human being is spread out and expanded as the principle of perfection, which must bring ever higher and higher, ever wiser and wiser states of perfection into the world: the principle of Ahura Mazdao. This principle is initially opposed everywhere in the outer world by that which brings imperfection, evil, and shadow into the light: by Angro-Mainyush, by Ahriman!—Thus the disciples of Zarathustra truly saw and felt in each individual human being a reflection of what the outer world represents. We need not seek the true significance of such a teaching in its theories, nor in its concepts and ideas, but rather in the living feeling and sensibility that permeates it, when, through it, a person relates to the universe in such a way that he says to himself: I stand here, I am a small world, but as a small world I am like an imprint of a great world. Just as we, as human beings, have within us a principle of good and something that works against it, so too do Ormuzd and Ahriman stand opposed to one another in the great world. The entire world is, as it were, a human being spread out, and the best forces are those we call Ahura Mazda, opposed by the forces of Angro-Mainyush.

[ 15 ] Just as a person who focuses solely on the sensory realm finds himself, through his physical processes, immersed in the entire process of the world and—even if he thinks materialistically but is just beginning to feel—may experience a sacred awe when, for example, he learns through spectral analysis: the same substances that exist here on Earth also exist on the most distant stars—so, in the spirit of Zarathustrianism, a person felt their spiritual part immersed in the spirit of the entire world, felt born from it. And therein lies the significance of such a spiritual teaching.

[ 16 ] However, this teaching was by no means something abstract; on the contrary, it became something quite concrete. Even in today’s age, when people have a certain sense of the spiritual realm that lies behind the sensory world, it is still quite difficult to make them understand how a truly spiritual-scientific worldview requires more than just a single, central spiritual force. But just as we must distinguish between the individual forces of nature—heat, light, chemical forces, and so on—so too, in the spiritual world, we must distinguish not merely a unified Spirit—which is by no means denied—but spiritual sub-forces, spiritual “auxiliary forces,” whose sphere is more narrowly defined than that of the all-encompassing Spirit. Thus Zarathustra also distinguished, so to speak, from this all-encompassing Ormuzd the servants, the serving spiritual entities of Ormuzd. But before we descend to these serving spiritual entities, let us draw attention to one more point, namely, that this Zarathustrian view is not merely a dualism, a mere doctrine of two worlds—a doctrine of the world of Ormuzd and the world of Ahriman; but rather it is a doctrine that these two world currents are based on something unified—a unified power from which both the realm of light and the realm of shadow, the realm of Ormuzd and that of Ahriman, emerge. It is now very difficult to form a concept of what Zarathustra regarded as the unifying force behind Ormuzd and Ahriman—which the Greek writers already told us the ancient Persians worshipped as that which lives in unity—and what Zarathustra called “Zeruane akarene,” that is, what lies behind the light. How can we form a concept of what Zarathustra and the Zarathustrian doctrine mean by “Zeruane akarene” or “Zaruana akarana”?

[ 17 ] Let us consider the course of evolution. We must imagine that evolution proceeds toward the future in such a way that beings become ever more and more perfect, so that when we look into the future, we see more and more of the radiance of the Realm of Light, of Ormuzd. When we turn our gaze to the past, we see the forces that must eventually cease to exist, the forces that must be overcome, so that we are looking into the forces opposed to Ormuzd—the Ahrimanic forces. Now one must imagine that this gaze leads to the same point, whether looking into the future or into the past. This is a concept that is extraordinarily difficult for people today to grasp. Let us imagine a circle: if we move from the lowest point to one side, we arrive at the opposite point at the top; if we move to the other side, we likewise arrive at the same point. If we make the circle larger, we must travel a greater distance, and the arc becomes flatter and flatter as a result. Now we can make the circle larger and larger; eventually, the circumference becomes a straight line: then the path to one side extends into infinity, and the path to the other side does as well. But just before that—if we do not go that far, if we do not make the circle that large—then, whether we walk toward one side or the other, we would arrive at one and the same point. Why, then, should the same not hold true when the circle becomes so flat that its circumference becomes a straight line? In that case, the point at infinity must be the same as the one on the other side. And if one could only hold one’s breath long enough, one would be able to go to one side and return from the other. That is to say: underlying a conception that encompasses infinity is a line that extends into infinity on both sides, but which is actually a circular arc.

[ 18 ] What I have now presented to you as an abstraction lies, in Zarathustra’s view, at the root of what he meant by “Zaruana akarana.” On the one hand—in terms of time—we look into the future; on the other hand, into the past; but time closes into a circle, only this closure lies within infinity. And woven into this self-encircling serpent of eternity—which can be represented by the serpent biting its own tail—is both the power of light, which shines ever brighter and brighter to us when we look in one direction, and the power of darkness, which seems ever darker and darker to us when we look in the other direction. And when we stand right in the middle of it, we ourselves have light and shadow—Ormuzd and Ahriman—intermingled. Everything is interwoven into the self-unfolding, infinite stream of time: Zaruana akarana.

[ 19 ] Another characteristic of such an ancient worldview is that it took the matter from which it proceeded seriously; it did not merely present a nebulous notion—that beyond the things of the sensory world, which make an impression on our eyes, ears, and other senses, there is Spirit—but rather that it actually perceived, in what it saw, something like the written characters of the Spirit or of the spiritual worlds. Take, for example, any sheet of paper; we see the letters on it and put them together to form words; but to do that, we must first have learned something—namely, to read. Anyone who cannot do this can never read Zarathustra, but sees only certain signs that they can follow with their eyes. Yet they can only read Zarathustra once they understand how to connect these signs in accordance with what they carry within their soul. Now Zarathustra saw such a system of symbols behind what exists in the sensory world—particularly in the way the stars come together in groups within the cosmos. Just as we have letters on paper, so he saw in what surrounds us in space as the world of the stars something like the letters of the spiritual worlds speaking to us. And there was an art to penetrating the spiritual world and reading and interpreting the signs given to us through the arrangement of the stars—to decipher, from the movement and arrangement of the stellar worlds, the way in which the spirits out there inscribe their acts of spiritual creation into space. This became, for Zarathustra and his disciples, the very thing that mattered most to them. Thus, one symbol was particularly important to them: that Ahura Mazdao accomplishes his creations, his revelations in the world, by seemingly tracing a circle in the celestial space, in the sense of our astronomy. This tracing of a circle became the symbol that Ahura Mazdao, or Ormuzd, reveals to humanity to show how he works, how he places his deeds within the context of the entire cosmos. It was therefore important that Zarathustra could point out: It is the zodiac, a line returning upon itself, an expression of time returning upon itself. In the highest sense of the word, one branch of time extends into the future, moving forward, while the other extends into the past, moving backward. What later became the zodiac is Zaruana akarana: the timeline that finds its way back to itself, described by Ormuzd, the Spirit of Light. This is the expression of Ormuzd’s spiritual activity. The Sun’s path through the signs of the zodiac is the expression of Ormuzd’s activity, and Zaruana akarana finds its symbol in the zodiac. Essentially, “Zaruana akarana” and “Zodiakus” are the same word, just as “Ormuzd” and “Ahura Mazdao” are. Two aspects are interwoven in the “journey through the zodiac”: on the one hand, a certain path of the sun in the light, where it sends its full powers as forces of light to the earth in summer—but it also sends us its spiritual powers from the realm of light of Ormuzd. Thus, the part of the zodiac that Ormuzd traverses during the day or during the summer shows us how Ormuzd acts unhindered by Ahriman; in contrast, those zodiac signs that lie below the horizon symbolize the realm of shadow, which Ahriman, so to speak, traverses. How, then, do both Ormuzd—who is conceived as the light part of the zodiac, the Zaruana akarana—and Ahriman—the dark part of the zodiac—express the nature of their influence on Earth?

[ 20 ] The morning sun has a different effect than the midday sun. As it rises from Aries to Taurus and then descends again, its rays always have a different effect; they have a different effect in winter than in summer, and vary depending on the constellation. Thus, for Zarathustra, the effects of Ormuzd from the various directions—symbolized by the sun’s position in the different constellations, that is, the various directions of Ormuzd’s effects—are expressed through those spiritual beings who are, as it were, the servants, the sons of Ormuzd, who carry out what he commands: these are the “Amshaspands” or “Amesha-Spentas,” who, as it were, stand below Ormuzd and have their own specific duties. While Ormuzd encompasses the entire activity of the realm of light, the Amshaspands have specific duties that are expressed through the radiance of the sun in Aries, Taurus, Cancer, and so on. Ormuzd’s power is expressed through the full radiance of the sun as it passes through all the luminous signs of the zodiac—from Aries to Libra or Scorpio. Thus, we can further say, in the spirit of Zarathustra: Ahriman acts, as it were, from the darkness through the earth and has there his servants, his Amshaspands, who are the adversaries of the good spirits that stand by Ormuzd’s side. Zarathustra did indeed distinguish twelve different spiritual beings who serve as servants—on the one hand, six or seven of Ormuzd, and on the other, six or five of Ahriman, who are then symbolized as good or evil genies or lower spirits, Amesha-Spentas, depending on whether the sun shines through the bright or the dark signs of the zodiac. Goethe, for example, was also referring to these serving spirits of Ormuzd when, at the beginning of *Faust*, in the “Prologue in Heaven,” he said:

But you, the true sons of the gods,
Rejoice in the beauty that is rich with life!
That which is becoming, which eternally acts and lives,
May it enfold you within the sweet bounds of love,
And whatever hovers in a wavering form,
Strengthen it with enduring thoughts.

[ 21 ] Goethe was thinking of the very same thing that Zarathustra had in mind with his Amshaspands when he spoke of his “true sons of the gods,” who are the servants of the highest divine power. We have twelve such genii to record, whom we must call the Amshaspands. Beneath these stand yet other spiritual powers or forces; in Zoroastrianism, twenty-eight are usually distinguished as standing beneath them. But the number is never entirely fixed; one could say twenty-four to twenty-eight or thirty-one “Yazatas” or “Izeds.” What are these entities? If we conceive of the great forces acting throughout space as the twelve Amshaspands, then the serving forces behind the lower natural phenomena—the forces of the Izeds—number approximately twenty-eight to thirty-one. And as a third category of such spiritual forces or powers, Zoroastrianism names the “Fravashis.” These forces are, so to speak, those that, in our sense, intervene least in the physical world. While we must imagine that the twelve forces, behind which stand the Amshaspands, are at work in all physical light phenomena on our Earth, and that behind the Izeds we must conceive of forces that act within the animal kingdom, we must imagine the Fravashis as only those spiritual beings that guide the group souls of animals. Thus, Zoroastrianism views a specialized realm beyond the sensory world as a supersensory realm.

[ 22 ] What Zarathustra conceives of—not in a general, abstract way, but quite concretely—as the organizing principle of the world: Ormuzd and Ahriman, behind them Zaruana akarana, then the Amshaspands, the good and the evil, then the Izeds, the Fravashis—what are they? They are that which imbues the great world, the macrocosm, with spirit; that which lies behind all sensory-physical phenomena; that which is the essential reality behind what appears to us merely as external sensory experience. But human beings, as they stand in the world, are a reflection of this great world. And therefore everything that permeates the great world must be found within him. Just as we have found in the forces striving toward perfection the expression of Ormuzd in human beings, and in the unpurified forces the expression of Ahriman in human beings, so too will we find the expression of the other spiritual beings—the sub-genii, as it were. Now, however, I must say something that, given the current state of our worldviews, is likely to cause immense offense in our time. But even for external science, it will become evident in the not-too-distant future that behind everything physical lies the supersensible, and behind everything sensory lies the spiritual. Then it will also become evident that the grossest parts of the human physical body are an imprint of that which interweaves and permeates the entire world and flows into the human physical body to condense, as it were, within the human being. And if we now refer to the Zarathustrian conception, which is very close to that of spiritual science, we can say: Out there, Ormuzd and Ahriman are at work; they work their way into the human being—Ormuzd as the impulses toward perfection, Ahriman as everything that hinders these. But the Amshaspands, too, work their way in, sending their spiritual influence inward. If we imagine these forces condensed within the human being, so to speak, they ought to be demonstrable right down into the realm of physical activity.

[ 23 ] In Zarathustra’s time, anatomy as we understand it today did not yet exist. Through their spiritual insight, Zarathustra and his disciples truly saw the currents we have spoken of today—the twelve currents that flow from the great world toward human beings and continue within them—so that the human head indeed appears to us as the expression of the fact that the forces of the seven good and the five evil Amshaspand currents flow into human beings. There, within the human being, are the continuations of the Amshaspand currents. How do they manifest themselves today, in a much later age? Today, the anatomist identifies twelve main pairs of cranial nerves that extend from the brain into the body. These are the physical counterparts, as it were, of the twelve “frozen” currents of the Amshaspands—twelve pairs of nerves for the highest human activity, through which human beings can attain the highest perfections as well as the worst evil. Here we see how, in our age—transformed by materialism—what Zarathustra told his disciples from the spiritual world reappears. This is the irritating part, and it is easy for a person today to say: “Here spiritual science is preaching something completely fantastical—that Zarathustra, with the twelve Amshaspands, meant something that is supposed to be connected to the twelve pairs of nerves in the human head!” But the world will yet experience something quite different: it will experience how what permeates and animates the entire world continues within human beings. In our physiology, the ancient Zarathustrian teaching is rising again! And just as the twenty-eight to thirty-one Izeds stand beneath the Amshaspands, so do the twenty-eight pairs of spinal nerves stand beneath the cranial nerves. In the spinal nerves, which stimulate the lower soul life of the human being, the Izeds—which exist externally as spiritual currents—take shape; they work their way into us, crystallizing, as it were, in the twenty-eight pairs of spinal nerves, for it is in these that we find the condensed Izeds currents. And in that which is no longer nerve—that which rounds out our personality—we find what no longer expresses itself in an external current or in an external direction: what the Fravashis are is, within us, the thoughts that rise above mere mental and cerebral life.

[ 24 ] In this way, our time is indeed linked in a very peculiar way to what Zarathustra—albeit in his spiritual archetype—was able to give to humanity as a current pointing toward what lies spread out behind the veil of the sensory world. This is the truly significant aspect of the teaching of Zarathustra. After it had, over a long period of time, poured out again and again into those striving to advance through this or that cultural ferment, and then receded for a while, it has come to pass that—just as one always, after the two paths into the spiritual world had united in Greek culture, there was a preference for either the mystical or the spiritual-scientific current—there is once again a preference for a mystical current. Hence the preference of some for Indian spiritual science or deeper study. This fact has meant that the most essential, the most profoundly significant aspect of Zoroastrianism—its very lifeblood—is scarcely noticed today in our entire spiritual life. Much of the Zoroastrian worldview and Zoroastrian thought can indeed still be found in our spiritual life today. But something that lies at its very core—the healthiest element within it—has, in a certain sense, been lost to our age. And when we come to understand once more how Zarathustrianism is the spiritual archetype for everything we rediscover in the realm of physical research—countless examples could be cited—and for what will continue to take root, then a fundamental tone in our culture will be happily superseded by another, one that is found precisely in Zarathustrianism.

[ 25 ] It is curious how, in Zarathustrianism, due to its devotion to the great manifestations of the macrocosm—the external world—something recedes into the background that plays a significant role in almost all other cultural currents more closely associated with mysticism, including our own materialism. People interpreted the great opposition that has always been present in the world by taking the opposition of the sexes—the masculine and the feminine—as a symbol of it: for example, in the ancient religious systems rooted in mysticism, gods were set against goddesses to represent the opposing force that flows through the world. In Zoroastrianism, we find the marvelous fact that it rises above this view to conceive of the primordial foundations of spiritual activity in a different image: in the image of the Good, the Luminous, and the Evil, the Shadow. Hence the immense purity of Zoroastrianism, its sublimity, its transcendence of all those notions and views that once again play such an ugly role in our time, when people believe they can deepen humanity’s understanding of spiritual life. Even though the Greek writers themselves say: the supreme deity, in order to create Ormuzd, also had to create Ahriman so that he might have an opposite, yet in Ahriman’s opposition to Ormuzd, something is given—namely, how one primal force opposes another; this is even expressed in Hebrew tradition, in which evil entered the world through the woman—through Eve. Nothing of what the world experiences as the evil that enters the world through a sexual opposition is to be found in Zoroastrianism. What today so hideously permeates our entire thinking and feeling, even in popular literature—what so distorts our view of the primary value in matters of illness and health, and yet fails to capture the essentials of life—will be overcome when the opposition between Ormuzd and Ahriman, which is a wholly different — a heroic one as opposed to a petty-bourgeois one — takes root in our culture as a catalyst through the words of Zoroastrianism. Things in the world follow their own course—and nothing will halt the triumphant advance of the Zoroastrian worldview, which will, after all, gradually take root as well.

[ 26 ] When we view Zarathustra in this way, we do indeed see in him a spirit who provided powerful impulses to human culture in a time long past. For one need only trace what was experienced in the Near East during the later periods of the Assyrian and Babylonian peoples, through the Egyptian era, and indeed up to the time when Christianity spread: everywhere one will find certain ideas that can be traced back and shown to have their origin in the great lights that Zarathustra kindled for humanity. We will find it understandable when the Greek writer, who sought to express how individual leaders have always provided their peoples with the later contributions these peoples need for their culture, pointed out: when Pythagoras learned from his ancestors what could be passed down to him—geometry from the Egyptians, arithmetic from the Phoenicians, astronomy from the Chaldeans—he had to turn to the followers of Zarathustra to learn from them the mysterious teachings concerning humanity’s relationship to the spiritual world and a true way of life. Thus, the writer who tells us this about Pythagoras asserts that the Zarathustrian way of life transcends all other opposites and causes all other opposites to culminate in the single opposition of good and evil—an opposition that finds its resolution only in purification from evil, from lies and deceit. For example, the one designated by the name “slander” is regarded as Ormuzd’s worst adversary: this is one of Ahriman’s most important characteristics. In this way, the Greek writer points out how Pythagoras could find neither the purest moral ideal—the ideal for the moral purification of humankind—among the Egyptians, from whom he learned geometry, nor among the Phoenicians, from whom he learned arithmetic, nor among the Chaldeans, from whom he learned astronomy; rather, he had to turn to the followers of Zarathustra to find a heroic worldview that seriously acknowledges the overcoming of evil through purification. Thus, the lofty nobility and uniqueness of Zarathustrianism were already recognized in antiquity

[ 27 ] Everything that has been said so far could also be substantiated by statements from external history. People should therefore consider whether what the representatives of external science say is true—for example, when Plutarch mentions that it is in keeping with Zoroastrianism to regard light as the physical manifestation of the highest being conceivable on Earth, and that its spiritual aspect appears as truth. One of the ancient writers offers a definition that corresponds exactly to what has just been expressed. But the historical phenomena will also become clear when we take into account what has just been characterized.

[ 28 ] Let us take another look at the ancient Vedic view. It was based on a mystical descent into one’s own inner self. Before a person reaches the inner light of Brahman, they encounter what lies within—desires, passions, and wild, semi-human impulses—that stand in the way of deepening into the true spiritual-soul realm, into the eternal inner self. A person must pass through this. The Indians came to the view that one can only reach the inner light if, in mystical contemplation, one truly succeeds in extinguishing—together with Brahman—everything experienced in the sensory world, everything that stimulates us through colors and sounds and arouses sensual desires. As long as these elements still intrude upon our meditation, we carry within us the enemy of our mystical perfection. Cast out everything—as the Indian teacher would have said—that can enter the soul from external forces; immerse yourselves only in the innermost depths of the soul; descend to the Devas; there, even if you must overcome the lower Devas, you will find Brahman in the realm of the Devas. But avoid the realm of the Asuras, those beings that press upon you from the world of Maya, the outer world. This must be avoided at all costs! — Zarathustra, on the other hand, had to tell his disciples: A people cannot make progress along the path on which, in the south, the followers of another culture seek the spiritual through their different form of organization—a people that is called not merely to supersensory brooding and dreaming, but to life in a world that abundantly provides everything necessary for sustenance, — a people called to give humanity the arts of agriculture and the conquest of uncivilization. You must not merely regard the external as Maya; rather, you must pass through the tapestry that spreads out around us in colors, tones, and so on! Therefore, avoid everything within you that seeks to keep you bound in your egoism, everything that has a Deva character! You must push your way through the realm of the lower Asuras up to the highest Asuras. And since you are organized to pass through the lower Asuras to reach the higher Asuras, you must avoid the realm of the Devas! — In India, on the other hand, the teaching of the Rishis was: “You are not organized to seek what is in the realms of the Asuras; avoid the realm of the Asuras; you must descend into the realm of the Devas!” Such is the contrast between Indian and Persian culture: among the Indians, the emphasis was on how to avoid the Asuras, describing them as evil spirits, for, due to the nature of Indian organization, only the lower Asuras were known. Among the Persian people, on the other hand, where only the lower Devas could be found in the realm of the Devas, it was said: “Go into the realm of the Asuras.” You are organized in such a way that you can find the highest of the Asuras! — It was inherent in what Zarathustra gave as an impulse to humanity, the sentiment: I have something to give to humanity that must continue to work through all ages, that paves the way upward for humanity and overcomes all false teachings that are an obstacle and divert people from the pursuit of perfection! — Therefore, Zarathustra saw himself as the servant of Ahura Mazdao and, as such a servant of Ahura Mazdao, felt the opposition of Ahriman. His teaching, however, was intended to serve humanity in achieving the heroic overcoming of the entire Ahrimanic principle. Zarathustra expressed this with the meaningful words that we also find in his later writings—for, after all, everything written was recorded only later—though what spiritual science has to say is drawn from other sources—he expressed it with that beautiful phrase from which the entire inner impulse of his mission resounds; but the full passion with which he felt himself to be an opponent of the Ahrimanic or dark principle also resounds there, when he says: “I will speak! Now come and listen to me, you who are far away—you who are near and long for this—and take everything carefully to heart. For no longer shall he, the evil enemy and false teacher, triumph over the good spirit; for so long has he already permeated the human voice and speech with his wicked breath. But I will speak against him in accordance with what the Highest, the First, tells me—what Ahura Mazdao tells me. And whoever does not wish to hear my words as I speak them, as I mean them, will suffer evil before the end of the earth’s cycles has come!”

[ 29 ] Thus Spoke Zarathustra. And let us sense in it that he was able to say something to humanity that can truly be felt and experienced throughout all subsequent cultural epochs. And anyone who has the sensibility to listen to what is alive in our time—even if it is only faintly perceptible—anyone who listens to our culture with spiritual sensitivity, will still be able to perceive the echo of what Zarathustra said to humanity millennia ago. And so he will be one of those for whom what we can say—including much more that we will yet hear about Hermes, Buddha, Moses, and other great leaders—regarding the gifts these great leaders have bestowed upon humanity and their place within humanity can be summed up in the words:

They shine like stars
In the sky of eternal being
The spirits sent by God.
May all human souls succeed,
In the realm of earthly existence
In beholding the light of their flames!