The Rudolf Steiner Archive

18. Freemasonry and Human Development II

[ 1 ] The things we want to discuss today have not been discussed in front of women before. Therefore, it is actually quite bold of me to speak to you about them today. But certain occult currents make it necessary.

[ 2 ] Within these currents, there are some things of an intimate nature that until recently could not be discussed in front of women because the occult brotherhoods—whose purpose was to cultivate these intimate things—had a strict rule against admitting female members. What they had to do in the world was not to be done with the cooperation of the female element. Until recently, this rule was strictly observed. Today, the only possibility of achieving a balance between the two sexes is in the Theosophical Society. This is also the only place where these things are discussed in front of women.

[ 3 ] We now ask: Why did this separation of the sexes take place, which has found such grotesque expression in the Masonic lodges? If one wants to understand why this division was actually established, one must express it with a somewhat grotesque comparison: if two powers are at war, it would be very foolish for one commander to reveal his campaign plan to the other, enemy commander before the war begins. It would be the same as handing over weapons to the enemy if women had been allowed to join Freemasonry. For the Freemasons are waging a war, namely a war against the female spirit, a fierce opposition to the female spirit as such. This struggle was necessary; indeed, occult Freemasonry was founded precisely for this purpose. Therefore, it was customary to speak about occult matters separately to the sexes. A form must first be found in which these matters can be spoken about to women.

[ 4 ] The founding of Freemasonry goes back to the distant past. It originated at the beginning of the fourth subrace of our present fifth root race. At the same time, the Old Testament was written down, which gives us information about these matters. It is said that higher spirits gave Moses the revelations, which he then wrote down. However, knowledge of the higher truths already existed much earlier and was passed down orally from generation to generation, from priest to priest, until it was documented in writing by Ezra, who is credited with writing these things down. When the Old Testament began to become a power through the priesthood, a powerful opposition to this priestly book, the Bible, arose in the brotherhood of Freemasons for a specific reason. It has certainly always been there, and it was necessary. We must ask ourselves why.

[ 5 ] Let us agree that everything that happens on the physical plane must first repeat earlier events in a certain way. There is always a repetition of events from earlier times on Earth. Before birth, humans must go through the stages they previously experienced in their dull animal consciousness. For example, the Renaissance period of the Middle Ages was a repetition of the ancient Greek period. We also find such repetitions in planetary processes. Before the Earth became what it is today, it first had to go through a repetition of earlier states before it became an independent planet, our Earth, in the fourth round. Thus, when new facts are to appear in the world, the earlier stages always repeat themselves in a new form. Thus, the spirit of human beings in the fifth root race underwent a repetition of the Lemurian race, where human beings were still unisexual and then became bisexual, which had a great influence on their spiritual development. In the third sub-race of the fifth root race, the Babylonian-Egyptian period, what happened to physical man in the Lemurian period was gradually repeated in the realm of spiritual life.

[ 6 ] Before there was male and female, both were united, then the two sexes separated. We see the same thing in the fifth root race in relation to spiritual development.

[ 7 ] III. Root race: division of physical development into male and female, into two sexes.

[ 8 ] V. Root race: division of spiritual development into male spirit and female spirit; into the service of Jehovah or priesthood and Freemasonry.

[ 9 ] In the first sub-race, in Indian culture, everything is still elevated above the physical plane. The ancient Indian wisdom that originates from the first sub-race of the fifth root race is spiritually connected above all not with the physical plane of today, but with the conditions of earlier times, when human beings were still male-female. Therefore, no reference is made there to the fact of the sexes. There is no mention of a dualistic principle; this only appeared in the following subrace. The Vedas are from a much later period. In the second sub-race, a tremendous division already occurs. The Old Testament presents us with a wonderful image of what this division expresses. It is stated very beautifully and clearly in Genesis: Before Yahweh created man, he created fruits, animals, and so on on earth, and finally he created man, Adam, and then divided him into two sexes.

[ 10 ] This description is based on occult knowledge of physical facts. Now, of course, all occult wisdom shows a connection between physical facts and later spiritual wisdom. For physical facts have emerged from divine wisdom, and wisdom later emerges again from physical life, from human beings. There is a connection between wisdom, knowledge, and physical life.

[ 11 ] The entire fertilizing and fruitful power that brings forth a new human being was formerly united in one sex. Then the human being is divided into male and female. Which sex has the actual claim to the power of procreation? It is the female. That is why in the oldest Greek mythology, Zeus, who was revered as the father of mankind, is depicted with a female bust. Zeus, as a superhuman being, was closer to the female gender. The female gender was therefore the first, the earlier one, and at that time had within itself the power to bring forth the whole human individual. This creative power was present in the unisexual human being, who in his physical outer form was closer to the form of the female. In this unisexual human being, the fertilizing element was wisdom, the spiritual itself, and a later repetition of this is the fertilization of the female spirit with inspired wisdom. This human being of the unisexual era was the result of the substance present in the woman and the fertilization with the divine spirit.

[ 12 ] Now you must realize what it was that enabled the woman to bring forth human beings. Physically, we first have the woman who is fertilized from above. What fertilized her was the divine spirit in the woman. When the division of the sexes took place, differentiation occurred in such a way that, for the female sex, the spiritual organs of fertilization were transformed into organs of wisdom. The male power that the woman had within her transformed the creative power into the organs of wisdom. Thus, the woman retained half of the creative power; the man retained the creative physical power. This separation gave rise to the spinal cord and the brain with its nerve strands, represented in the tree of life and the tree of knowledge. The organ of wisdom is formed in the vertebral rings with the spinal cord and its extension into the brain. From then on, there is a duality in human beings: these are the two trees in the biblical record, the tree of knowledge and the tree of life.

[ 13 ] Now the new beings are adapting to this transformation. Not all former female individuals have subsequently taken on the female form. In one part, the female side, the ability to produce human beings, receded, and what remains as a substitute is the power of fertilization in a completely different way. Physical nature had split into a fertilizing and a fertilized. The spiritual nature also split in the same way. In female individuals, the spirit has a masculine character and coloring; in men, the spiritual has a feminine character. This is still the woman in man.

[ 14 ] The biblical legend depicts this very accurately. As is well known, the two-sex human being is forbidden to eat from the tree of knowledge. The power that Jehovah had placed in man was to allow his wisdom to work in woman. “Thou shalt not eat of the tree of knowledge” means: Thou shalt not separate the fertilizing power and make it independent. For by doing so, woman loses the power of Jahve, the fertilizing power. When the woman ate from the tree of knowledge, she laid the foundation for becoming independent in wisdom and thus ceasing to be an independent tool of Jehovah, as he had planned. But in doing so, she lost the power to fertilize herself with wisdom along with the power of Jehovah. She exercised this power by eating [from the tree of knowledge] and giving the apple to the man. Thus, the woman became dependent on the man. It was Lucifer who led man down this path in order to make him independent. Jehovah opposed this and therefore issued the prohibition against eating from the tree of knowledge. But the woman eats and gives to the man. He also eats, and then the punishment imposed by Jehovah follows. New bodies must be created to carry out the karma of the previous life, and death and birth come into the world. The woman is now no longer fertile by herself, but has become infertile. And with the fact that fertilization comes from outside, the possibility of such a death has also come into the world.

[ 15 ] This profound connection is presented to us in the image of the biblical story of Paradise. Ancient priestly traditions had become the content of these images, and ancient priestly wisdom was vividly embodied in them. Woman then became infertile in relation to spiritual wisdom by longing for physical knowledge. She gave it to man, he also ate it, they became guilty and were driven out of paradise, which they had done nothing to create. This is the ancient priestly tradition about the origin of the sexes. It contains a deep knowledge of the connection between the actual events.

[ 16 ] What happened as a result of the female separating from the male? In which gender has the shadow of productive spiritual wisdom been preserved more, in the male or in the female? We have seen that female wisdom actually has a masculine character: it is creative, productive, intuitive, original, and productive. The same divine power that previously worked in the woman to bring forth the physical human being now works to bring forth the knowledge of the divine core of the human being. To promote this process, religions work through words and images.

[ 17 ] The female being becomes physically infertile, that is, it can no longer produce offspring from itself as before. The male, passive spirit is the one that is spiritually infertile, but the man is the one who can physically fertilize. Spiritually, he can now be fertilized by everything that is in the world. He is now spiritually fertilized so that he himself can physically fertilize. The whole world first penetrates him. He is fertilized spiritually, the woman physically. The woman, on the other hand, is spiritually self-fertilizing; the man is spiritually fertilized. By gathering and combining everything outside, male wisdom was fertilized. This gave rise to male wisdom, which was concerned with gathering worldly wisdom. This was not really present at first, like the wisdom that used to flow in from above. It first had to be gathered from the knowledge of the physical world. Female wisdom, on the other hand, was effectively transferred to the priesthood. Priestly wisdom became the asset that originally stemmed from ancient female wisdom. Jehovah could only preserve the human race by dividing it into two sexes. Two opposites emerged: Freemasonry and priestly rule, symbolized by Cain and Abel.

[ 18 ] Now there is a difference between female priestly wisdom and male striving. This is illustrated in the legend of Cain and Abel. Abel was a shepherd; he was concerned with the life that already existed: he is the symbol of the ancestral divine power that works in man as wisdom, which he does not acquire himself, but which flows into him. Cain creates something new from what the environment offers: he represents passive male wisdom, which must first be fertilized from outside; which goes out into the world to gather and create from the wisdom gathered. Cain killed Abel; that is, male wisdom defends itself against female wisdom, because it feels that it must conquer and transform physical wisdom.

[ 19 ] The ancient Freemasons set themselves the ideal of taking up this opposition. They wanted to counteract the female wisdom that had passed to the priesthood with male wisdom. The Bible, in its great images, was to be seen as the intuitive female wisdom transferred to the priesthood; they wanted to counteract this with the wisdom acquired by men themselves. This struggle against priestly wisdom was the expression of the opposition of the Freemasons. Those who participated in it had to be kept free from any influence of feminine wisdom. This struggle had to do with physical development, and it was therefore necessary for the Freemasons to keep away from any contact with the female sex in relation to their work. They knew that their opposition to the female spirit could only be carried out if they were not disturbed by female thoughts. They had to establish the positive and avoid any disturbing elements coming between them.

[ 20 ] Freemasonry now created the temple legend as a counterpoint to the biblical legend. This was to represent the sword of battle against the priesthood. Let us now consider this temple legend. It has the following content:

[ 21 ] Originally, one of the Elohim created Cain by uniting himself with Eve. Contrary to the Elohim, Yahweh set Adam against him. Adam united with Eve, and Abel was born. Cain killed Abel, and Jehovah then made Cain's lineage subject to Abel's lineage.

[ 22 ] This means that originally, worldly wisdom turned against priestly wisdom and was defeated, because the Abel principle was continued in Seth, and all worldly wisdom was subjected to priestly wisdom.

[ 23 ] Now it is told how the descendants of Cain conquered the earth and developed the arts. Music, arts, and sciences were cultivated by them. Tubal-Cain (Genesis 4:21-22), the master of metalworking and ironworking, Jubal, from whom the pipers and fiddlers came, Hiram, the builder of Solomon's Temple (1 Kings 7:13), were among Cain's descendants.

[ 24 ] With Hiram, we would have reached the boundary between the third and fourth sub-races, where priestly rule gave way to royal rule. The kingship by divine right arose, represented by King Solomon. Solomon did not obtain his power through work on the physical plane, but through what came from God's grace. Priestly wisdom passed over to the kingship. Thus, the latter is regarded as the successor to the priestly rule, which was incapable of doing what was necessary for the progress of humanity on earth out of itself. The one who was to build the temple had to be chosen from among the descendants of Cain because he possessed self-developed thoughts.

[ 25 ] The legend goes on to say that the Queen of Sheba, Balkis, was betrothed to King Solomon. She came to him and marveled at the temple, and he marveled at her wisdom. She asked to see the master builder himself, for she could not comprehend that human wisdom could have created such a wonderful building. Hiram came and made a powerful impression on her with his gaze alone. Now she also wanted to see the workers at the temple. When Solomon said that this was not possible, Hiram made the mystical sign of the tau in the air, and immediately the workers flocked to him. The mystical sign of the tau contains the powers through which the sons of Cain work on the physical plane.

[ 26 ] Three of Hiram's journeymen are dissatisfied because he has not promoted them to the master's degree. They decide to harm Hiram. They want to destroy his masterpiece. He wants to make the bronze sea, which is a great work of art to be cast from a liquid element, from molten ore. This is a symbol of the great work of art into which the entire mineral kingdom is to be transformed: the task of our Manvantara. The three journeymen do the following: they disrupt the casting of the Sea of Bronze. Hiram tries to restore order by pouring water on the casting, but everything is scattered in a fiery spray. When Hiram despairs and believes himself lost, he is led to the center of the earth by a figure whom he recognizes as Tubal-Cain. There he is told: Jehovah or Adonai is nothing other than an enemy of the fire spirits. He wants to destroy the fire spirits. But a son will be born to you, whom you will not see yourself, but who will bring a new race to earth.” Now Tubal-Cain gives him a hammer with which he can finish casting the bronze sea. But the three journeymen murder him. Before his death, he utters one last word, which he writes on a golden triangle and sinks it. No one understands the word. This word is the lost word of the Freemasons. Hiram is buried, and an acacia branch is planted on his grave. The triangle is dug up again, but no one knows how to appreciate it. It is sunk again and a cube is placed on top of it, on which the Ten Commandments are written.

[ 27 ] What does it mean that Jehovah hates the sons of fire? They are those people who were brought forth on the path of unisexuality (Cain). Wisdom is mixed in them with Kama, the earthly carnal fire. Those who have turned to the female priesthood are the sons of Abel. Hiram is promised: You will have a son who will found a new race. You will not know him. This new race will come into being when the lost word regains its power, when it arises in a new form. The occult tradition embodied in Freemasonry is working to bring this word back into being. It is working to ensure that the active element can join the passive element in the male element, that it regains its fertilizing power in the spirit in order to transform the passive into the active, so that the sons of Cain can bring forth something from themselves.

[ 28 ] The following tradition developed: The female was the original force. She gave the world all the wisdom that was in the world. However, she lost part of her physical productive power and transferred it to the male. Now everything is becoming spiritual again, and in this spiritualization, the male force seeks to seize power for itself. The male element of thinking seeks to outlast the female. However, a time will come when genderlessness will return, and the struggle is about which of the two sexes will conquer this genderlessness first. Freemasonry strives for the male sex, or rather the male spirit, to outlast the female, to conquer genderlessness.

[ 29 ] There is an occult connection between the power of language and the power of sexual reproduction. The “word” brought everything into being. It originally lived in man. Then man lost it. He can no longer create independently because he lacks the word. Only those who were present at creation can know this. Tubal-Cain knew it and gave it to Hiram. This word must be seized by those who want to regain their creative power. The real productive power must unite with the word. The word will bring forth the people of the future. Then the son of Hiram will truly be seen. Fire, the divine power, will then arise in a new way. A new gender will replace the old. In the ancient Hebrew language there is a word, a mantra, which is said to bring forth the world when spoken with sufficient force. Thus, when the word is sufficiently intensified, man will bring forth the spiritual man through language itself. Now we understand what is represented in the tree of knowledge: the serpent is that which winds its way up the spine as the spinal cord. Knowledge in the physical realm is that which springs from the nervous system. “There shall be enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed”: this refers to the enmity between the seed of the physical, physical knowledge, and the seed of the spiritual, spiritual knowledge. The spiritual, the woman, crushes the serpent's head, but only after it has bitten her heel. It is that which penetrates from the center of the earth to the feet.

[ 30 ] At the age of maturity, the power of speech changes. This was seen as a harbinger of the new son of Hiram (2 Chronicles 2:13). To work toward producing this son from the male sex, who was to come into being through the power of the larynx, was the ideal that the Freemasons had set for themselves. Everything that later came into being on earth in the physical realm has its origin in the spiritual realm. In the beginning, only that which came from the divine spirit on earth was active. Then, on the one hand, the female wisdom of images and priests arose, and on the other hand, the imageless wisdom of Cain. And it is interesting that when a pictorial content was sought for the wisdom of Cain, the male wisdom borrowed from the female wisdom: the temple legend and the entire content of Freemasonry originate from the ancient priestly wisdom, the revelation from above. This was cloaked in symbols. But little by little, the symbols were no longer understood. Everything occult gradually disappeared from Freemasonry. The three degrees of St. John are calculated entirely on the physical plane.

[ 31 ] Now that we have seen why these spiritual currents ran parallel to each other, we will also understand the significance of the theosophical movement. It prepares in the spiritual realm what will later happen on the physical plane: the reunification of the sexes. The divided wisdom must also flow back into the one divine wisdom. Through theosophical wisdom, a balance must be found in the human being between religious priestly wisdom and Masonic wisdom. The wisdom of the future must be drawn from the higher human being who lives equally in both human beings, the female and the male. To develop what is important, what the physical plane no longer has any influence on, is the purpose of the theosophical movement.

[ 32 ] Theosophy is in fact the male-female wisdom, the wisdom that is equally valid for both sexes. Through the teaching of reincarnation, we recognize that what is expressed in each new incarnation is not the personality of the respective earthly life, but that the causal body, the entelechy, builds itself up in a genderless form. When we become aware of this, that which stands above the sexual, that which is independent of that on which the opposition of the two currents is based, lives spiritually within us. Thus, theosophy is the balancing movement, and it alone can bring about balance. Only in theosophy can one speak of an occultism that addresses both sexes equally. Only from this point can one conceive of a real balance between the two sexes. Only the theosophical movement can accomplish this. Everything else is an aftereffect of the earlier duality of the sexes.

[ 33 ] Freemasonry sets itself the task of preparing for the future. That is why, as early as the 18th century, the earlier principle of complete exclusion was abandoned. And in 1775, the first so-called “adoption lodge” was founded: a women's lodge, because the law of gender balance was recognized. And so a connection was established between men and women by founding a women's lodge. However, every member of a women's lodge had to be adopted by a man in a men's lodge. H. P. Blavatsky also belonged to such an adoption lodge. Theosophy was therefore an experiment that originated within Freemasonry itself. This shows you that what is right is always preceded by an experiment; only the reason why such an experiment is carried out cannot be understood immediately. But one cannot expect that what is a fundamental force in the world will always be understood immediately: it may be that one prefers one current or the other. That is why the two currents will probably continue to flow side by side for a long time. In order to bring about a peaceful balance, it may be necessary to pour into Freemasonry what will lead it over to the theosophical movement.

[ 34 ] Now you will also understand why the Church had to develop a very specific ideal in the Middle Ages. Freemasonry created its ideal of the future, the Church created its ideal of the future. It had nothing to do with Freemasonry. The ideal that lived in the Church was Christ, a masculine ideal. This masculine ideal could not satisfy the occult current within the Church. In addition to the passive, man also needed the active; he had to think into himself what he lacked. He needed something to complement him as a means of concentration. He was already a man; he had to think into himself the woman. The occultist who understood something of these things and who was not a Freemason had to think of the woman. Thus, the cult of Mary arose consciously from monasticism. This became the third current in the Church, that is, in addition to the priesthood and Freemasonry.

[ 35 ] All three currents had basically the same goal: to make people independent of the sexes. But the way they worked to achieve this goal was different. The Christian occultist looked for the male principle in the woman in order to incorporate it into himself.

[ 36 ] You have to be clear that the true inner human being is independent of the gender that separates; that he therefore passes through both genders in different incarnations. And now you must consider that in Freemasonry the struggle was waged on the outer physical plane so that all individualities incarnating in female bodies would gradually be led over to the masculine, so that the masculine would outlast the feminine. The feminine was to outlast the masculine because it was the earlier. This was the ideal of Freemasonry, but it was one-sided.

[ 37 ] What is the ideal of Theosophy? The ideal of Theosophy is to bring about, through the wisdom that comes from the higher planes, a human race on the physical plane that is above sexuality. Therefore, theosophy is also a wisdom that is not differentiated into religions, does not rely on a particular religion, but draws on the ancient wisdom that created the world and replaces the wisdom that is differentiated as priestly wisdom in the various religions. It had to do this because priestly wisdom has fulfilled a task that was completed over time. Theosophy, however, wants to conquer the future, that which is yet to come as opposed to that which was in the past. In a certain sense, it is a continuation of the ancient priestly wisdom, the mysteries, and yet it stands in a certain contrast to it.

[ 38 ] Opponents of the theosophical movement would be those who want to cling rigidly to the old priestly wisdom, who would try to preserve it, to embalm it, so to speak, in its old form. The higher plan for world development is to carry it over into the modern spirit that has to create the future. The very first dawn of the formation of a new wisdom that is to come arose at a time when modern spiritual life was brought into human evolution in the 15th century by the Rosicrucians. It was a matter of a new impact coming into the world. Its theme was that the old priestly wisdom must pass into something new.

[ 39 ] There were also forces that wanted to recapture the world for the old priestly wisdom. Therefore, an order was founded for the purpose of winning back the earth for the old priestly wisdom. This order [the Jesuit order], in contrast to the cult of Mary, chose the male ideal. It used occult powers to erect something like a wall to suppress all independently emanating life, to hold back what wants to climb up the cross. It represents the masculine principle: it represents the cross alone without the roses. Another order, however, added roses to the cross, from which new life sprouts.

[ 40 ] So we have two modern currents. One has brought the old into the present and thereby wants to hinder progress with all its might. The other has surrounded the old cross with roses and planted a new shoot in it: the cross entwined with roses. These two currents existed side by side: one order with the cross without roses; the other, which venerates the roses on the cross – a new order that is to come. These are the Rosicrucians. The theosophical movement is based on this current; it originates from the new, green shoot of the rose that is to grow into the future.

[ 41 ] Thus we have seen how this struggle arose, to which women were not admitted. Our task is to bridge the gap between the Freemasons and the Rosicrucians. The work is difficult, but it must be done. It consists in attaining knowledge of the higher, supra-sexual human being. It is difficult to bring oneself to do this, but it is possible, and it will succeed; it will become reality.