The Rudolf Steiner Archive

11. On the Lost and Reconstructed Temple in connection with the Legend of the Holy Cross or Golden Legend

[ 1 ] Today we will examine a great allegory and deal with a subject that is usually referred to in the secret teachings as the image or teaching of the lost temple to be rebuilt. In earlier lectures, I have explained why the secret teachings start from such images; today we will see what a vast amount of ideas are abbreviated by this image. In doing so, I will also have to touch on a subject that is greatly misunderstood by those who know little or nothing about theosophy. There are people who do not understand that theosophy and practice belong together, that they must work together throughout life. I will therefore have to speak about the relationship between Theosophy and the whole practice of life. For, when it comes down to it, when we talk about the lost temple that needs to be rebuilt, we must also talk about the most everyday work.

[ 2 ] In doing so, I will be in the position of a professor who wants to prepare his students for tunnel construction. If you want to build a tunnel, that is something eminently practical. Someone might say that a tunnel is easy to build. You simply start digging into the mountain on one side, chisel out the hole until you come out on the other side. Everyone can see that it would be foolish to believe such a thing. But in other areas of life, people do not always want to see this. If you want to build a tunnel, you must first master advanced mathematics. Then you learn how to do it technically. Without practical engineering, without the art of leveling, you would not be able to maintain a direction when digging into the mountain. Then you have to know the basic concepts of geology, the different layers of rock, the direction of water and metal veins in the mountain, and so on. It would be foolish to believe that you could build a tunnel without this prior knowledge and that an ordinary bricklayer could build an entire tunnel.

[ 3 ] It would be just as foolish to believe, from the standpoint of ordinary life, that one could approach the construction of human society. This folly is committed not only by many people, but also in countless books. Today, everyone believes they are called upon to know and determine how social order should be established and how the state can best be reformed. Those who have learned hardly anything write detailed books on how the best form of society should be structured and then feel called upon to launch reform movements. Thus, there are reform movements in all possible areas. But everything that is done there is exactly like someone trying to dig a tunnel with a hammer and chisel. All this comes from ignorance of the fact that there are great laws that govern the world and arise from the life of the spirit. The real misfortune of our time is this ignorance that there are laws for the construction of the human state and social organism that are just as great as those for tunnel construction, which must first be known in order to accomplish the most necessary, the most everyday things in the social organism. Just as one must first know the interaction of all natural forces in tunnel construction, so must anyone who even thinks of embarking on social reforms know the laws of social interaction. He must concern himself with the working of soul upon soul and approach the spirit. Therefore, theosophy is what must underlie every practical activity in life. Theosophy is the actual practice of life; and only those who start from theosophical principles and from there move on to the practice of life can feel called upon to work in social life.

[ 4 ] Therefore, Theosophy should penetrate all branches of life. Statesmen, social reformers, and so on are nothing without the Theosophical foundations, without the Theosophical principles. That is why all work in this field today, everything that is being built on the social body, is extremely piecemeal, complete chaos for those who have an overview of things. To someone who understands the matter, what social reformers are doing today looks like someone cutting stones, piling them on top of each other, and then believing that a house will automatically arise from them. First, a plan must be made for the house. It is the same when one claims that things in social life take shape by themselves. One cannot reform society without knowing the laws of Theosophy.

[ 5 ] This attitude, which works in accordance with a plan, is called Freemasonry. The medieval Freemasons, who negotiated with the clergy and concluded agreements on how to build, wanted nothing else than to shape external life in such a way that it—together with the Gothic cathedral—was a reflection of the great spiritual structure of the world. Take the Gothic cathedral. It displays a wealth of thousands upon thousands of details, but it is built according to an idea that is much more comprehensive than the cathedral itself. To achieve complete unity, divine life must flow into it, just as sunlight penetrates the room through the colored windows. And when the medieval preacher spoke from the pulpit in such a way that God's light penetrated the hearts of his listeners, just as light penetrates the church through the colored windows, then the vibrations created by the preacher's words were in harmony with the great divine life. And in the cathedral itself, the life of such a sermon, born of spiritual life, continued. In the same way, the whole outer life should be transformed into a temple of the earth, into an image of the entire spiritual structure of the world.

[ 6 ] If we go back even further, we find that this way of thinking and feeling is the most ancient of the human race. Let me give an example to show what I mean by this way of thinking. Our time is a time of chaotic interaction between people. Everyone wants what they have in mind. This time was preceded by another, that of the ancient priestly states. I have often spoken of the sub-races of our fifth root race. The first was the ancient Indian culture, the second the Persian-Median, the third the Babylonian-Assyrian-Chaldean-Egyptian-Semitic, and the fourth the Greek-Latin. We are now in the fifth.

[ 7 ] Only the fourth and fifth sub-races are built on the intelligence of the individual human being. We have a great monument to the overcoming of the old priestly culture through the wisdom of the individual human being in art: in the Laocoön group. In the priest Laocoön, entwined by snakes—the snakes as a symbol of wisdom—it is depicted how worldly wisdom overcomes the old priestly culture, in which people had different views of truth and wisdom and of what should happen. It was the overcoming of the third by the fourth subrace. This is depicted in yet another symbol: in the legend of the Trojan horse. The wisdom of Odysseus built the Trojan horse, which brought down the Trojan priestly culture.

[ 8 ] The emergence of the ancient Roman state from the ancient Trojan priestly culture is described in the legend of Aeneas. He was one of the most distinguished defenders of Troy, who then came to Italy. There, his descendants laid the foundations for ancient Rome. His son Ascanius founded Alba Longa, and history lists fourteen kings up to Numitor and Amulius. Numitor is robbed of the throne by his brother Amulius, his son is killed, and his daughter Rhea Silvia is designated a priestess of Vesta so that Numitor's line may die out. And when Rhea Silvia gives birth to the twins Romulus and Remus, Amulius orders them to be thrown into the Tiber. The children are saved, suckled by a she-wolf, and raised by the royal shepherd Faustulus.

[ 9 ] The story then tells of seven kings of Rome: Romulus, Numa Pompilius, Tullus Hostilius, Ancus Martius, Tarquinius Priscus, Servius Tullius, and Tarquinius Superbus.

[ 10 ] According to Livy's account, these first seven kings of Rome were once believed to have been real individuals. Today, historians know that these seven kings never existed. It is therefore a legend, but historians have no idea what it is based on. The legend is based on the following:

[ 11 ] The priestly state of Troy founded a colony, the priestly colony of Alba Longa (Alba = priestly robe). It was a colony for a priestly state, and Amulius was its last priestly dynasty. From there, a younger priestly culture emerged, which was then replaced by a culture of worldly wisdom. History makes no further mention of this priestly culture. The veil that spreads over the priestly culture of early Roman history is lifted by theosophy. The seven Roman kings represent nothing other than the seven principles as we know them from theosophy. Just as the human organism consists of seven members—Sthula-Sharira, Linga-Sharira, Kama-Rupa, Kama-Manas, higher Manas, Buddhi, Atma—so too was the social organism conceived as developing over time in a sevenfold sequence. And only when it is structured according to the law of seven, which underlies all of nature, can it flourish. The rainbow also has seven colors: red, orange, yellow, violet, green, blue, and indigo. Likewise, there are seven tones: prime, second, third, fourth, fifth, and so on, and even the atomic weights in chemistry follow the regularity of the number seven. And this applies throughout the entire world. Therefore, it was self-evident to the guardians of ancient wisdom that the structure of human society must also be governed by such a law. Seven stages, seven links, these seven Roman kings according to a very precise plan. In those days, a historical epoch could not have been inaugurated in any other way. A plan was drawn up because the opposite would have been considered nonsense, and a law was written about it. This plan really existed at the beginning. Everyone knew that world history was governed by a very precise plan. Everyone knew: if I am in the third section of the fourth epoch, then I must act according to this and that. — In ancient Rome, for example, there was initially a priestly state with a plan as the basic idea of culture, which was recorded in books called the Sibylline Books. These are nothing other than the original plan on which the law of the sevenfold epoch is based, and which was still consulted at the beginning of the Roman Empire when necessary.

[ 12 ] The physical body was taken as the model for the basic structure. This is not so unreasonable. Today, people tend to regard the physical body as something subordinate. They look down on the physical with a certain contempt. But this is not justified, for our physical body is the most sublime thing about us. Take a single piece of bone. Just look closely at a thigh bone and you can see how wonderfully it is put together. The best engineer, the greatest technician, could not produce anything so perfect if he were asked to achieve the greatest possible load-bearing capacity with the least amount of material. And so the entire human body is composed in the most perfect way. This physical body is truly the most perfect thing imaginable. Anatomists always speak with the greatest admiration of the human heart, which functions in a wonderful way, even though humans spend their entire lives doing little else but consuming substances that are poisonous to the heart. Alcohol, tea, coffee, and so on, in particular, attack the heart in an incredible way. But the heart is so wonderfully constructed that it can withstand this until old age.

[ 13 ] The physical body, this lowest body, therefore has the greatest degree of perfection. More imperfect, on the other hand, are the higher bodies, which have not yet reached this stage of perfection in their development: the etheric body and the astral body, which constantly attack our physical body through the attacks of our desires, passions, and wishes. Then comes the fourth, the actual baby, the human I, which, as a wandering will-o'-the-wisp, must first await the future to receive within itself the laws that will provide it with a guiding principle, as the physical body has long since had.

[ 14 ] When we structure a social edifice, there must be something that holds the foundation together. That is why the legend has Romulus, the first Roman king, who represents the first principle, raised to heaven as the god Quirinus. The second king, Numa Pompilius, the second principle, corresponds to the social order; he brought laws for general life. The third king, Tullus Hostilius, corresponds to the passions. Under him began that which directs attacks against divine nature, which causes discord, strife, and war, through which Rome became great. Under the fourth king, Ancus Martius, the arts began, that which arises from Kama-Manas.

[ 15 ] Now, the four lower principles cannot produce the higher ones, the fifth, sixth, and seventh principles, out of themselves. This is also depicted in Roman history. The fifth Roman king, Tarquinius Priscus, was not born out of the Roman structure, but was transferred into Roman culture as something higher from the culture of the Etruscans. The sixth king, Servius Tullius, corresponds to the sixth member of the human cycle law, the Buddhi. He is able to regulate Kama, the sensual-physical correlate of Buddhi. He represents the canon of law. The seventh king, Tarquinius Superbus, the most exalted principle, is the one who must fall because it is not possible to maintain the sublimity and momentum of the social order.

[ 16 ] In Roman history, we find it expressed that the construction of the state must be based on a plan, just like every other construction in the world. That the world is a temple, that social life must be structured and organized in the same way, that it must also have pillars like a temple, and that the great sages must be the pillars of this temple: this is the attitude that permeates ancient wisdom. This is not wisdom that is merely learned, but wisdom that is built into human society. The seven principles were correctly applied. Only those who absorb all knowledge, all wisdom, can work on building society. As theosophists, we would achieve very little if we did not go beyond observing how human beings are composed of this or that limb. No, we only fulfill our duty when we ourselves carry out the principles of theosophy [in everyday life]. We must apply them so that every movement of the hand, every movement of the fingers, every step in life is an expression, a seal of the spirit. Then we are building the temple that has been lost.

[ 17 ] But this requires that we become aware of what I said recently, how necessary it is to take something of the greatness and comprehensiveness of the world laws into ourselves. The wisdom that leads us from the great to the particular must live in our habits of thinking, just as in building a house, one stone is not placed on top of another until the entire plan of the house is complete. This demand must be made if our world is not to be chaos. As theosophists, we will recognize that law must reign in the world when we realize that every step, every action is an imprint of the spiritual world. Then we will build the temple. That is the meaning of temple building: what we set out to do must be lawful.

[ 18 ] Humanity has increasingly lost the knowledge that human beings are to build themselves into the great temple of the world. People today can be born and die without having any idea that laws are at work within us, that everything we do is governed by the laws of the world. Our entire present time is a lost time because people do not know that they have to live according to laws. Therefore, the priestly sages of ancient times devised means to carry something of the great laws of the spiritual world over into the new culture. It was, so to speak, a trick of the great sages that they concealed the lawful order in many branches of life, even in games, which people use for recreation after the burdens of the day. In cards, in the pieces of chess, and in the rules of the game, we find a reflection, albeit a faint one, of what I have called the lawful order. If you want to sit down with someone to play cards, it will not work if you do not know the rules, the way the game is played. And this is truly a reflection of the great laws of the world. What is called the Sephirot in Kabbalah, what we call the seven principles in their various forms, can also be found in the way the cards must be laid down when playing. The wise men understood how to incorporate the great laws into the charms of the game so that people could at least have a reflection of wisdom while playing. For those who can at least play cards, their present incarnations are not completely lost. These are secrets of how the great wise men intervene in the wheels of time. If you tell people that they should follow the great laws, they will not do so. But if you put the laws into things where they do not notice them, you can sometimes instill a drop of this attitude in them. If you have this attitude, you will get an idea of what is symbolized in the great allegory of the lost temple.

[ 19 ] In the secret orders, to which the Masonic Order also belongs, something has been created in the temple legend that is connected with this lost temple that must be rebuilt. The temple legend is very profound, but even today's Freemasons usually have no idea about it. Even a Freemason today is not very different from the majority of people; he too usually does not take much with him into the new life. But if he allows the temple legend to live within him, it is already of great benefit. For whoever accepts the temple legend takes in something that shapes his thinking in a certain lawful way. And it is lawful thinking that matters. This temple legend is as follows:

[ 20 ] Once upon a time, one of the Elohim married Eve, and from this union Cain was born. Another Elohim, Adonai or Jehovah-Yahweh, then created Adam. Adam in turn married Eve, and from this marriage Abel was born. Adonai sowed discord between those who belonged to Cain's family and those who belonged to Abel's family, with the result that Cain killed Abel. But from the new union of Adam and Eve, the Seth lineage came into being.

[ 21 ] So we have two kinds of human beings. One are the original descendants of the Elohim, the sons of Cain, also called the sons of fire. They are the ones who cultivate the earth, create out of the lifeless earth, and transform it through the arts of man. Enoch, one of Cain's descendants, taught people the art of cutting stones, building houses, organizing society, and founding civil societies. Another of Cain's descendants is Tubal-Cain, who worked with metals. The master builder Hiram-Abiff also came from this lineage.

[ 22 ] Abel was a shepherd. He held fast to what he found and accepted the world as it was. This has always been the contrast between human beings. Some hold fast to the world as it is, while others want to use art to shape something new and living out of the lifeless. Other peoples have placed the ancestor of these sons of fire in the Prometheus myth. It is the sons of fire who are to build wisdom, beauty, and goodness into the world from the comprehensive world idea in order to transform the world into a temple.

[ 23 ] King Solomon was a descendant of the line of Abel. He could not build the temple himself; he lacked the art. Therefore, he called upon the master builder Hiram-Abiff, a descendant of the line of Cain. Solomon was of divine beauty. And when the Queen of Sheba came to him, she believed she was seeing an image of gold and ivory. She came to marry him.

[ 24 ] Jehovah is also called the God of form, the God who created living beings as living power, in contrast to the other Elohim, who creates in order to conjure living beings out of lifeless matter. To whom does the future belong? — that is the great question of the temple legend. If human beings were to develop according to the religion of Jehovah, all life in form would die. In occult science, this is called the transition to the eighth sphere. But now the time has come when man himself must bring the dead to life. This is done by the sons of Cain, by those who do not rely on what is already there, but create forms themselves. The sons of Cain themselves shape the construction of the world.

[ 25 ] When the Queen of Sheba sees the temple and asks who the architect is, she is told that it is Hiram. And when she sees him, he immediately appears to her as the one who is actually destined for her. Now King Solomon becomes jealous; indeed, he joins forces with three journeymen who were incapable of becoming masters in order to thwart Hiram's greatest masterpiece, the “Bronze Sea.” A single casting was to produce this, his greatest masterpiece. Human spirit was to be combined with metal. Of the three journeymen, one was a Syrian builder, the second a Phoenician carpenter, and the third a Hebrew miner. The conspiracy succeeds: they ruin the casting by pouring water into it. Everything sprays apart. In desperation, the master builder now wants to throw himself into the flames. Then he hears a voice from the center of the earth. It comes from Cain himself, who calls out to him: here he has the hammer of divine world wisdom, with which the whole thing can be restored. And Cain gave him the hammer. The spirit of man is that which man builds into the astral body when he does not keep it as he received it. Hiram is now to erect this building. But his life is in danger. We will continue this story next time.

[ 26 ] I wanted to take the legend this far to show how the idea lived in the original occult brotherhoods that man has a task: the task of building up the lifeless world and not being satisfied with what already exists. Wisdom, by flowing into the lifeless world, has become action, so that the world may be a reflection of eternal spirituality.

[ 27 ] Wisdom, beauty, and strength are the three fundamental words of all Freemasonry. The task is to transform the outer world so that it is a garment of the spiritual. Even the masons no longer understand this today and believe that man should work on his own ego. They consider themselves particularly clever when they say that in the Middle Ages, the master masons were not the free masons. But it was precisely the master masons who had always been the free masons, because the external building was supposed to be a reflection of the spiritual, the temple of the world, which was to be built from intuitive wisdom. This idea was once the basis of great buildings and was pursued down to the smallest detail.

[ 28 ] Let me give you an example to show you the superiority of wisdom over reason. Take an old Gothic cathedral and consider its wonderful acoustics. Today, it is impossible to replicate because the deep knowledge required to do so has been lost.

[ 29 ] The famous Lake Marmara in Egypt was also a marvel of the human spirit. It was not a natural lake, but was artificially created according to the intuitions of the wise, so that when water flowed abundantly, it could be stored and sent throughout the country when there was a shortage. This was a marvel of canalization.

[ 30 ] When human beings create with the same wisdom with which the divine forces created nature when they built the physical world in a wise manner, then the 'Tempel' will be built. It is not important how much we are able to create from our wisdom in detail, but we must have the attitude that knows that only from wisdom can the temple of humanity be built.

[ 31 ] When we walk through cities today, we see a shoe store next to a pharmacy, next to that a cheese shop, and next to the cheese shop a store selling walking sticks. If we don't want to buy anything, what does it matter to us? How little does the outer life of such a city reflect what we feel, think, and sense! How different it was in the Middle Ages. When people walked through the streets, they saw the facades of the houses built in the style of the disposition and character of their inhabitants. Every door lock expressed what people had lovingly created in accordance with their spirit. Take a walk through a city like Nuremberg, for example: there you will still find the foundations of how it used to be, and then contrast that with the modern abstraction that no longer concerns people. This is the materialistic age and its chaotic creativity, into which we gradually transitioned from an earlier spiritualistic age.

[ 32 ] Man was born out of a nature that was once shaped by the gods, so that everything fitted into the great structure of the world, into the great temple. There was once a time when you could not look at any part of this earth without saying to yourself: Divine beings built this temple to the point where the physical body of man was completed. Then the higher principles (the psychic forces) took possession of it, and through this disorder and chaos entered the world. Desires, cravings, and passions brought disorder into the temple of the world. Only when the will of man once again speaks through lawfulness, in a higher and more beautiful way than the gods once created nature, only when man allows God to arise within himself so that he can build the temple like a god, will he regain the lost temple.

[ 33 ] If we thought that only those who can build should build, that would not be right. No, it is the attitude that matters, even if one knows a great deal. But if one has the attitude to think in this direction and then undertakes social, technical, and legal reforms, then one is building the temple that has been lost and must be rebuilt. But if one begins reforms, however well-intentioned they may be, without this attitude, one only causes further chaos. For the individual stone is of no use if it does not fit into the whole plan. Reform the judiciary, religion, or anything else, as long as one only sees the individual without having the attitude toward the whole, it is only demolition.

[ 34 ] That is why theosophy is not just theory, but practice, the most practical thing in the world. To believe that theosophists are hermits who do not build the world is a mistake. If we could get people to approach social reform on a theosophical basis, many would achieve everything they want more quickly and more surely. For without saying anything against individual movements, when pursued in isolation they lead to nothing but fanaticism. All individual reform efforts—peace apostles, teetotalers, vegetarians, animal rights activists, and so on—are only useful when they all work together. They can only truly achieve their ideal in a large general movement that leads to union in the universal temple.

[ 35 ] This is the idea underlying the allegory of the lost temple that must be rebuilt.

Notes from the question and answer session

Question: What was that about the sons of Cain and the sons of Abel?

[ 36 ] Answer: The sons of Cain are the immature ones; the sons of Abel are the overripe ones. The sons of Abel turn to the higher spheres when they have passed through these incarnations. The sons of Abel are the solar pitris; the sons of Cain are the most mature lunar pitris.

Question: Why have so many mystical and Masonic associations been formed?

[ 37 ] Answer: All higher work can only be accomplished in a society. The Round Table of Arthur usually consisted of twelve members.

Question: Are you familiar with the work of Albert Schäffle?

[ 38 ] Answer: Albert Schäffle wrote a work on sociology, and his presentation is much more Masonic than what emerges from the Masonic lodges.