The Rudolf Steiner Archive

18. The Mosaic Account of Creation and the Circles

[ 1 ] I have attempted to reconcile the theosophical view of cycles and races, as set forth in Ancient Wisdom, with the Bible, and have suggested that Genesis—the account of the Mosaic creation—should be taken in a truly literal sense, and that doing so yields the complete theosophical understanding. It should be noted, in general, that the true, great religious texts regain their original and true meaning through Theosophy.

[ 2 ] To give an idea of what the Mosaic account of creation means, I would like to repeat once more: We must distinguish between seven cycles, and within each cycle, seven races. In the first round, we have the archetypes of the mineral kingdom; in the second round, the archetypes of the plant kingdom; in the third round, the archetypes of the animal kingdom; and in the fourth round, the archetypes of humankind. When our current fourth round comes to an end, the archetypes of humankind will have been formed. We have not even reached the archetypes yet. When our cycle comes to an end, we will have brought the human archetypes to expression. The mineral kingdom will already have reached its completion in this cycle. It will dissolve again and regress. In the next cycle—the fifth—the plant kingdom will find its completion; in the sixth, the animal kingdom; and in the seventh cycle, the human kingdom.

[ 3 ] In the seventh cycle, humanity will be the perfect image of the Deity in its earthly evolution. What the Deity was at the beginning, humanity will be at the end of the seventh cycle. The Deity will have completed its task and will then rest. Nirvana will have been attained. The Deity will be able to hand over its task to the Masters and the Master Lodges, to the brotherhoods, which will by then have developed into the complete image of the Deity. This is what the biblical account of creation describes to us.

[ 4 ] In an esoteric sense, the seven days of creation represent seven cycles; thus, the first chapter should be understood as follows.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep; and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters—and God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. Then God separated the light from the darkness and called the light “day” and the darkness “night.” And there was evening and there was morning—the first day. [Genesis 1:1–5]

[ 5 ] I ask you to visualize exactly what I have described—what the first round was like. At first, it was a reddish, brightly glowing sphere, which then passed through various stages of development until it became a violet sphere; it then disappeared into Pralaya, only to reemerge as a red sphere. Thus, the first day is complete. During this cycle, the archetypes of the mineral kingdom were formed.

[ 6 ] Now the second round begins.

And God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, to separate the waters one from another.” So God made the firmament and separated the water under the firmament from the water above the firmament. And it was so. And God called the firmament “heaven.” And there was evening and there was morning—the second day. [Genesis 1:6–8]

[ 7 ] God said, “Let there be a firmament between the waters, and let this be a division between the waters.” Since there was no mineral kingdom yet, there could be no firmament either. The waters signify spiritual substances. They did not separate from one another until the archetypes of the mineral kingdom had been formed, so that clumps now appeared within them. Then God made the firmament and separated the waters beneath the firmament from the waters above it. God called them heaven and earth. Only the mineral kingdom had been forced into the earthly realm; the rest was still heavenly.

And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, so that the dry land may appear,” and it was so. And God called the dry land “earth,” and the gathering of the waters He called “seas.” And God saw that it was good. And God said, “Let the earth bring forth grass, plants bearing seed, and fruit trees, each bearing fruit according to its kind, with its own seed within it.” And so it was. The earth brought forth grass and plants bearing seed, each according to its kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and morning—the third day.

And God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons, days, and years; and let them be lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And so it was. God made two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. And God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth, to rule over the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day. [Genesis 1:9–19]

[ 8 ] Here it is emphasized that the fourth day marks the completion of the mineral kingdom. In the fifth cycle, the plant kingdom will reach its completion. That is yet to come. Now the mineral kingdom will reach its completion. In the fifth cycle, the plant kingdom will reach its completion. This is expressed by saying: The plant idea will reach its completion. Everything that is now connected with the unique life found in the mineral kingdom will be completely gone by the fifth round. In the fifth round, the mineral kingdom will gradually dissolve, and human beings will have an entirely different relationship to their environment. The plant idea will have been realized. The connection to the mineral kingdom will no longer exist, so that instead of being surrounded by a mineral world, in the fifth round we will be surrounded by a plant world. Everything that humans excrete today will then be a plant product. There will no longer be anything mineral; then humans will live in the plant realm, just as they now live in the mineral realm. Humans will be masters of the plant kingdom; they will rule over the plant kingdom. Genesis expresses this as follows:

And God said, “Let the waters teem with creatures—living beings—and let birds fly above the earth under the vault of the heavens.” So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters teem, each according to its kind, and every winged creature, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let the birds multiply on the earth.” And there was evening and morning—the fifth day. [Genesis 1:20–25]

[ 9 ] In the sixth round, we are dealing with the complete dissolution of the plant kingdom. A higher, living animal consciousness is realized there, so that a distinction between the living and the non-living will no longer exist. We will live only among living beings. There will be no element whatsoever serving as a medium; there will be only animal-like, living beings. By the sixth round, everything pertaining to sexual reproduction will have long since disappeared; we will deal only with living beings in the sixth round. Reincarnation ceases in the middle of the fifth round.

And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures, each according to its kind: livestock, creeping things, and wild animals of the field, each according to its kind.” And so it was. God made the wild animals of the field, each according to its kind, and the livestock according to their kinds, and every kind of creeping thing on the earth according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness, to rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, all the earth, and every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”

And God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every living creature that moves on the earth.” And God said, “Behold, I give you every plant bearing seed that is on the face of the whole earth, and every fruit tree bearing seed. These shall serve as food for you. And to every animal on the earth, to every bird under the heavens, and to every creature that moves on the earth, I give every green plant for food.” And so it was. And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning—the sixth day. [Genesis 1:24–31]

[ 10 ] Everything has evolved into animal existence. After the fourth round came the mineral realm; after the fifth, the plant realm; and after the sixth, the animal realm as well. In the seventh round, everything transitioned into human existence. God created human beings as male and female—no longer of two sexes, but of one sex—and so God rested on the seventh day.

[ 11 ] This is the story of the seven rounds. The first three days are over; the fourth day is the current cycle; and the last three are yet to come. The second chapter presents the story of the fourth cycle as such. Specifically, the fourth cycle describes how heaven and earth came into being—that they were created by God, who made heaven and earth, and so on. Humans did not yet exist when plants were created.

[ 12 ] Then came the description of the fourth round. First we had the red sphere, which then turned orange, then yellow, dissolved into a mist, and now the mist is transforming into the physical realm. After God had formed man from the dust of the earth, He breathed into him a living soul—the first two races. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden and placed there the man whom He had made. This is the human being who is still asexual. We are still very much within the first two races.

[ 13 ] In the past, the plant kingdom and the animal kingdom were not so strictly separated. Human beings had an extension that merged into the plant realm. Then the plant realm and, subsequently, the animal kingdom branched off. There was a time during our fourth round—right at the very beginning, when the first animals had split off—when humans were still connected to the center of the Earth, much like certain aquatic plants that hang from a long stem. Originally, humans were plants, back when they had not yet descended into the animal realm. At that time, they were still more like plant-people—humans who had not yet separated the plant kingdom from themselves.

[ 14 ] Such a human being was called Adam Kadmon. The human being who still contains within himself the plant and animal kingdoms, only to expel them later—that is Adam Kadmon. Then, in a new verse, we have, on the one hand, the Tree of Life and, on the other, an elevation of consciousness: the Tree of Knowledge.

The Lord God formed man—Adam—from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Thus, man became a living soul.

And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, toward the east, and placed there the man whom He had created. And the Lord God caused all kinds of trees to grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food—and the tree of life in the middle of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden. From there it divided into four rivers. [...] And the Lord God took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate and care for it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may eat from any of the trees in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; for on the day you eat from it, you will surely die.” [Genesis 2:7–17]

[ 15 ] Verse 16: You may eat from every tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for if you do, you will surely die. Now the incarnation begins. The moment Kama-Manas enters, the incarnation begins. This occurred in the middle of the third race, and it ends in the middle of the fourth race of the fifth round. The text then goes on to describe the individual races. However, it describes the fourth race in particular detail.

[ 16 ] Among the primordial Uranian people, a kind of betrayal of the deeper mysteries took place. The priests allowed themselves to teach the people what were once priestly mysteries. The human soul is expressed there as the feminine. The incarnated will is the masculine. The soul, the feminine. The initiated priests have now united with the human soul and have imparted the mysteries to it. This took place during the fourth race of the Atlanteans. This betrayal is described in the sixth chapter of the First Book of Moses.

But as people began to multiply, the sons of God saw the daughters of men, and they saw how beautiful they were [Gen. 6:1-2]...

[ 17 ] ... for they are flesh. Now God decrees destruction—the Flood, the downfall of Atlantis. The fact that Noah took a pair of every animal into the ark is based on a real event. This shows just how infinitely relevant theosophy is to our culture today. Not long ago, Darwinism and the creation story were viewed from a different perspective than they are today. In recent years, the natural sciences have undergone significant upheavals. It was once thought that animals evolved through the struggle for existence and natural selection—the imperfect ones perish, the perfect ones survive. Natural scientists are already speaking of the impotence of the struggle for existence. De Vries, the Dutch naturalist, has demonstrated that so-called mutation plays the greatest role in the descent of living beings. It has been found that when living beings are placed in different living conditions, they rapidly transform into entirely different forms. They must be placed in entirely different living conditions; that is the only real method of producing new species. It is mutation that gives rise to new races. This does not happen gradually, but in leaps and bounds. The tomato, for example, arose rapidly from a plant that did not bear red fruit. It originated in one place and then spread throughout the entire world. All other modes of reproduction and development pale in comparison to mutation.

[ 18 ] Now, science asks: How could mutation have once played such a major role? The Atlanteans knew the secrets of the germinative power of seeds well enough to accumulate them and even to [use] them as a driving force. But they also knew how to cross-breed animal species and bring forth new forms. What now lives on Earth has come into being through conscious crossbreeding methods, through true breeding, so that humans have, in fact, created the animal species. From the few animal species, the Atlanteans created the entire living animal world. It is inherent in human nature that those who possess power are inclined to abuse it.

[ 19 ] A few specimens of the animals were set apart and taken to the Gobi Desert—the Ark. The rest perished. This, then, is the basis of the Flood narrative: the waywardness of the Atlanteans, the selection of the animals—which arose from the Atlanteans’ errors—and their rescue, along with the pure priests, in the Gobi Desert. We must now ask: Who bred the races? Theosophy answers: the Atlanteans. But time is also pressing in that direction. Wheat, for example, came directly from a celestial body—from Venus. We must therefore establish a connection here between science and theosophy. [...]

[ 20 ] After man had enjoyed knowledge, he had to die; he could no longer live, nor could he simultaneously enjoy the side of life.