The Rudolf Steiner Archive

5. Germanic and Persian Mythology

[ 1 ] Over the past few evenings of our branch work, we have been exploring the occult interpretation of Central European legends and myths, and in doing so we have seen what profound truths and insights are contained within these legends and myths. Just two weeks ago, as we were drawing attention to the deepest and most important of these truths, we were able to take a look at a related mythology—the Persian one, which originated over in Asia and is quite closely related to what we have on European soil as Germanic or similar mythologies. We have seen what lies behind the name of the Persian Amshaspands and behind the name of the twenty-eight to thirty-one Izards. We have rediscovered the forces emanating from these spirits of the astral realm in the twelve pairs of nerves emanating from our head and in the twenty-eight to thirty-one pairs of nerves emanating from our spine.

[ 2 ] In German mythology, and indeed in European mythology in general, we are told that the three gods Wotan, Wili, and We—who sometimes appear under other names—created humankind. Once, while walking along the seashore, they found two trees there, and from these trees, Ask and Embla, they created the first human couple. Wotan gave these first humans the spirit and general spiritual life, Wili gave them form, intellect, and movement, and We gave them a face, speech, hearing, and sight. If we hear this in European mythology and have already been convinced of the deep meaning of other myths, we may certainly also seek something deeper in this triad and in the endowment of human beings with various qualities through the triad of gods. We would do well, however, to connect the Incarnation, as recounted in Central European mythology, with the form in which the Incarnation appears to us in the related Persian mythology. There it appears set within a larger context. At the same time, something quite special may dawn on us regarding the myth-forming spiritual power of human beings, as well as the essence and nature of the human being and their connection to the earth. We know, after all, that myths and legends must not be interpreted through speculation, nor must their meaning be sought through speculation, but that we must strive to clarify, on the one hand, within the original creative folk spirit and, on the other hand, within the gifts of the initiated priests, the origins of human knowledge and cognition as they appear to us in the legend

[ 3 ] Legends and myths are nothing other than astral, spiritual visions. We have seen how the ancient Germanic people or the members of the ancient European population truly perceived the World Tree Yggdrasil on the astral plane, how they sensed the twelve currents that entered their heads as forces and formed their twelve cranial nerves. We have come to know all of this as astral effects, and not through some fanciful, clever speculation.

[ 4 ] Let us first briefly and sketchily review the Persian myth of the creation of the world and the fate of humanity. In doing so, however, let us bear in mind that the primordial Persian people—the ancient Persian people, not the ones you have learned about in history, but those from whom these myths of the gods actually originate—belonged to the most advanced segment of the masses of people who migrated eastward from ancient Atlantis. When ancient Atlantis was swept away, it was the peoples who later migrated southward to India and intermingled with the local populations, and those who settled in the lands of present-day Persia, Bactria, and Media—who moved the farthest east—while the other peoples remained in the lands of present-day Europe.

[ 5 ] Among all these peoples, myths and legends took shape in the most diverse forms and manifestations, and for all of them, what their mythologies depicted in images was nothing other than what individuals could see—either constantly or in specific states—using their weak but still existing clairvoyant abilities. People saw what the myths and legends recount. Based on this astral vision, the members of this group of peoples, who were spread across the region of present-day Persia, recounted what they saw, and the great religious founder Zarathustra then clothed this in a certain form and brought it to completion. Let us briefly sketch out what the people there recounted. They trace everything that exists back to a unified cosmic foundation, which they called “Zaruana Akarana.” This was a communal primordial ground from which, according to this view, everything sprang—everything that is mineral, plant, animal, and human, but also everything that is higher spiritual, insofar as it is perceptible to humans. If one were to translate the expression “Zaruana Akarana,” one would have to do so as “luminous primordial ground” or “luminous foundation.” Now, from this “luminous primal source” emerged a deity with qualities of goodness, with qualities of intellectual and spiritual perfection—a wise, good, spiritual being, Ormuzd—and another being who opposed this good spirit, Ormuzd. This other spiritual being is usually called Ahriman. Thus, within Persian myths and legends, we have these two spiritual beings: Ormuzd and Ahriman; a good deity and an evil adversary deity. Ahriman could be translated into English with the expression “the one who offers resistance” or “the one of an adversarial disposition”; that would be the meaning of this term.

[ 6 ] If we now wish to relate the Amshaspands and the Izards to these spiritual beings, we must create a mental image of the higher spiritual beings we have come to know as Amshaspands and Izards that radiated and flowed forth from Ormuzd. They are the hosts through whom Ormuzd acts, so that he is the supreme ruler who assigns them their places, dividing them according to the twelve months of the year and the twenty-eight or thirty-one days of the month, according to which they alternate their rule. Now, however, the Persian myth tells of Ahriman: He too descends from the universal “luminous primal source,” but from the very beginning he has shown himself to be rebellious and has risen up in revolt; he has set against the six Amshaspands his six evil spirits, the Devas or Devs, both lower and higher. You must therefore create a mental image of each of the Amshaspands having an adversary, and just as the Amshaspands belong to the ruler Ormuzd, so these Devas, in the sense of the Persian myth, belong to the retinue of Ahriman. He has arrayed his hosts so that they may continually oppose the good hosts of the Amshaspands in a long-lasting battle. And likewise, he has arrayed his countless hosts of lower devas against the hosts of the Izards.

[ 7 ] This Persian myth thus shows us that all events in the world are, in a certain sense, entangled in a long-standing struggle. Everything that happens today must be viewed, in the sense of this Persian myth, as the outflow of this struggle. What happens should actually be portrayed in such a way that, in the face of such events in the world, on one side stand the forces of good, emanating from the Amshaspands and the Izards, and on the other side the forces of evil, emanating from the Devas. Only when we understand the interplay of the forces of good and evil will we, according to the Persian myth, understand the events and facts of the present world.

[ 8 ] We must now ask ourselves: Are the narratives that confront us in these images also astral visions; are they astral perceptions? We shall see that they are, down to the very smallest detail. To understand this fact, it will help you to know that what might be called the “worship of fire” plays a certain role in the ancient Persian cult. However, one must not form a mental image of this worship of fire that implies that physical fire was worshipped; that is not the case. Nor was it worshipped, nor is any particular cult associated with physical fire. For Persian mythology and for the Persian cult, this physical fire is nothing other than a symbol, an outward expression of a certain spiritual power that reigns in fire. The outer, physical fire is the expression of the spirit of fire.

[ 9 ] Now let us see where this worship of fire comes from. It has, in fact, a deep occult origin. Let us recall how our theosophical worldview describes the process of the world’s creation. We know that our Earth was once united with what now accompanies it as the Moon, that the Moon only separated from it at a certain point in time; we know that in even earlier times our Earth was united with what is now the Sun. These were the two important cosmic events that preceded the emergence of humanity. These three celestial bodies—the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth—once formed a single body, which we can imagine as if we were to mix the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth together and form a single great celestial body from them. First, the Sun separated itself, and whereas it had previously given its light to beings from within the Earth, it now sent it from the outside onto the Earth and its beings. This was at the time when the Earth still contained the Moon within itself. It was the Moon that held the evil forces within itself, and these evil forces had to be expelled. Had the Moon remained inside, the Earth would never have been able to undergo the development that made it the stage for present-day humanity.

[ 10 ] When the Moon had separated from the Earth, human beings did not yet exist on Earth in their present form; they had not yet been endowed with a soul, insofar as they existed at all as physical beings. Immediately after the Moon had separated from the Earth, this human form still led a plant-like existence. In this human form, which existed on the Earth abandoned by the Moon, there was nothing other than the potential for today’s physical body and today’s etheric body. What today exists in humans as the astral body was not yet united with the earthly at that time. Just as clouds float in the air today, so did the astral bodies float about back then, which later sank into the physical human bodies. And the human bodies that walked about as the physical ancestors of today’s human beings were in a state of perpetual sleep. Just as plants are in a state of perpetual sleep, so too was the human of that time in a kind of sleep; he was endowed only with the physical and etheric bodies. Up to that point, there was not a single being on Earth that possessed the most important characteristic for today’s humanity and the higher animal kingdom—the characteristic of red, warm blood: inner warmth.

[ 11 ] If you were to go back in time with me and examine the beings of the ancient Moon, you would find that all these beings of the ancient Moon—on which the ancestors of modern humans were already present—still possessed the warmth of their surroundings, just as lower animals that have retained this stage still do today. They had, as one says, cold-blooded bodily fluids; they possessed the warmth of their surroundings. What appears as internal warmth in humans and higher animals—and what belongs to it, namely red blood—was by no means present within the beings of that time.

[ 12 ] Now, however, we have heard that at the same time the Sun and the Moon separated from the Earth, another cosmic event took place: the passage of Mars through the Earth. The substances of the two celestial bodies, Mars and Earth, were so thin at that time that Mars, in terms of its substance, was able to pass through the Earth’s body. It left behind a substance that the Earth did not previously possess: iron. Iron was first incorporated into the Earth through the passage of Mars, and this iron was the necessary prerequisite for the formation of red blood. What was the result? When the Moon had departed from the Earth and the Earth was left on its own, the Earth was in a kind of fiery state; it was enveloped by a warm atmosphere. And now we come to a mental image that I ask you to grasp very precisely. Imagine all the heat that is contained today within the bodies of the millions of warm-blooded humans and animals inhabiting the Earth; imagine that it existed as a warm atmosphere surrounding the Earth: then you have roughly the state in which the Earth was immediately after the Moon had departed.

[ 13 ] The beings did not yet possess inner warmth; the heat directly enveloped the entire globe—it was still outside. We can therefore create a mental image of the Earth at that time as a still-molten body in which metals were dissolved in the most varied ways, and which was surrounded by this sea of fire or heat. The sun, which was outside, sent its rays of light into this sea of heat. For the occultist, light is by no means merely physical light; rather, this physical light is the corporeal, physical expression of spirit. Thus, with the sun’s rays, the essence of the spirits of the sun streamed down upon the Earth. Light, as an expression of the spirit of light, streamed into the fiery atmosphere, into the Earth’s atmosphere of heat. Just imagine this very vividly. You have the Earth, surrounded by the atmosphere of warmth, and falling into it are the sunbeams—which for us, however, are spiritual rays. Through the fact that these sun spirits fall into the Earth’s warmth within the sunbeams, the collective soul, the collective astral body of all humanity and the higher animals, first took shape. Down on the ground were these sleeping human plants, who had an etheric body and a physical body. And just as it would be today if all of you sitting here were to suddenly fall asleep—which, of course, would not be desirable! —, then all your astral bodies would emerge from your physical bodies and mingle with one another; so it was back then; only they mingled even more strongly at that time, they were an undifferentiated mass, as they possessed the collective warmth into which the light of the sun, which was the expression of the Spirit, shone. As is well known, the astral body of modern humans is also called the aura, because to the modern seer it appears as a luminous phenomenon that envelops the human being, much as if you were to imagine an oval, egg-shaped luminous form radiating from the human being on all sides. Thus, in those days, the astral body of the human being was contained within this warm atmosphere of the Earth; it had not yet been divided into individual astral bodies; and the light of the sun, which was the bearer of the sun’s spirituality, shone into them.

[ 14 ] Now create a mental image, on a cosmic and universal scale, of your own development during that time. What is now your physical and etheric body—which back then existed as a plant—grew, as it were, out of the earth; it was the earth’s very own creation. And what lives within you today as soul and spirit came from the atmosphere surrounding the Earth; your physical and etheric body gradually absorbed it. And this had been prepared in a collective aura of the Earth, which must be imagined as a collective warmth in your mental image, illuminated and radiated through by the spirit-filled sunlight. Thus you have absorbed the warmth that once enveloped the Earth. What lives today in your warm blood is a part of this primal fire flowing around the Earth. If one could today extract all the warmth from the bodies of animals and humans, one would be able to restore the ancient state of the primal fire. What lives today as warmth within is the divided warmth that once flowed around the Earth as a sea of warmth, and into these communal blood bodies the light flowed. This light, too, has been divided, little by little, and has created the higher spirituality of the human being. In the purely physical-etheric bodies, of course, only a dull, lower spirituality was present. What is rooted in the human head today—the higher spirituality, that which was formed by the inflow of the Amshaspands—originates from the spiritual forces of the Sun.

[ 15 ] And now try to imagine yourself in the astral vision of the clairvoyant. What does he see? He sees the Earth coming into being, the Moon separating from it; the Earth is surrounded by a fiery mist, by the collective warmth into which the wisdom of the worlds radiates, illuminating it from within in a wondrous way. The wisdom of the worlds, which comes from the Sun, transforms the sun-drenched Earth into the Earth’s aura. This is what the astral clairvoyant sees. And the ancient Persian clairvoyant called this “Aura Mazda,” the great aura, Ahura Mazdao, the great aura of wisdom from which the individual auras of human beings have emerged. Ormuzd is merely a transformed expression for Ahura Mazdao, the great aura.

[ 16 ] Now let us go a step further. What could have brought about this state, which the astral clairvoyant must perceive in such a grand, powerful way when he transports himself back to that time—this state described in the Persian myth, which is, after all, a retelling of the results of astral clairvoyance? This state was brought about by the fact that spiritual beings are also connected to the sun. For the materialist, only the physical rays of the sun stream forth from the sun. But for those who perceive things occultly, it is the case that along with the sunlight, the forces of the spiritual inhabitants of the sun stream down to Earth. Just as the Earth is inhabited by human beings, so too is the sun inhabited by powerful beings who differ from earthly beings in that they are far, far more highly developed than humans. Genesis, the Old Testament, calls these inhabitants of the sun the Elohim, beings of light. Just as humans have a body of flesh, so these inhabitants of the sun have a body of light. They are beings of light. And their powers are not confined to a narrow space; they can radiate down to the Earth. The deeds of the sun spirits, the Elohim, flow to all earthly beings with the sunlight. In every ray of light, in every ray of sunlight, we can see the deeds of the sun dwellers. Humans will only reach this stage once the Earth has attained the state of the Volcano. You know that the Earth’s evolution proceeds from Saturn through the Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, and Venus to the Volcano, which we designate as the Earth’s final incarnation. When the Earth has developed into the volcanic state, then humanity will be at the stage where the current inhabitants of the Sun are in their course of development today. Thus we also find where the Amshaspands dwell today. Their true home is in the Sun, and from there they send us their deeds through the sunlight.

[ 17 ] This is precisely what allowed that which I have described to you as the deeds of the Amshaspands to arise within human beings. They sent their twelve streams into the human head, thereby enabling human beings to develop thinking and to cultivate their spirituality. On the Moon, the Izards had first worked on humanity and formed the twenty-eight spinal nerves. Then came the endowment of humanity with the twelve cranial nerves, which originate from the Amshaspands, the hosts of Ahura Mazdao. But each time, certain beings were left behind during the developmental process of a world body. They do not come along. It is not only college students who fail a grade; world beings, too, remain behind at a stage that the others have already surpassed. During the Earth’s lunar existence, the Elohim, the sun’s light spirits, ascended to that level which enables them to live in the sun and send their deeds to the Earth and to Earth’s humanity. Other spirits, who were already on the same level as the Elohim at that time, have remained behind, “stuck”; they were unable to advance their development on the old Moon far enough to begin a higher existence with the Sun as its setting. It was therefore not initially destined for these spirits who had remained behind to work within the rays of the Sun, to work from the outside in. Rather, in their further development, they had to seek what they had not yet experienced on the Moon in a lower existence connected to the Earth itself, to the earthly realm.

[ 18 ] What was the nature of the new condition that now emerged on Earth, endowing beings with new qualities? It manifested itself in the fact that the warm atmosphere, the warm environment, now entered into the blood. Warm blood came into being. In this state, the backward-remaining hosts of spirits sought to make up for in their development what they had previously been unable to achieve. They sought to carry into the warmth—which was transforming into inner life—the deeds they had been unable to place within the sunbeams.

[ 19 ] Let us visualize this vividly, as the clairvoyant perception can see it. [During the following explanation, a drawing was made on the blackboard; however, the note-takers did not record the drawing.] We see that the deeds of the Amshaspands and the Izards, emanating from Ahura Mazdao, flow into the human head and spine, while the interior of the human being fills with warm blood. The human body, as it were, draws in the warm blood; it is channeled from all sides, from the outside into the interior of the body. And when we examine the occult anatomy of the human being, we find that every such stream sent forth from the regions of Ahura Mazdao, of Ormuzd, was accompanied by another stream that, together with the warmth flowing in from the outside, accompanied the nerve current; the nerve current was accompanied by the movement of the blood. With this inflowing warm blood, the forces of those spirits who had remained behind entered into human beings; these were the hosts of Ahriman, who now sent their forces into human beings with the warmth just as the Amshaspands sent their light force. It is thus the case that we have sent a stream of blood to meet each of the streams of the Amshaspands. In this red stream of blood, which flows parallel to the nerve currents, the opposing forces of the Devas also flow. Flowing toward the Amshaspands in the red blood is that which comes from the opponents of the Amshaspands and Izards, from the Devas, the hosts of Ahriman. And now we feel pulsating in the blood that which came from the hosts of Ahriman.

[ 20 ] What the clairvoyant can see flowing into the physical body on the astral plane is profoundly and spiritually reflected in the Persian myth. We see the interaction of the great light Ahura Mazda with the inflowing warmth that makes the blood the life-giving force in human beings that it is. Now we know that the blood is the expression of the ego. And so we see how everything that flows out of the great wisdom, out of Ahura Mazda—because it is opposed in the blood by the currents of Ahriman—is accompanied by egoism. Egoism flows into the entire spiritual activity of the human being. We see it flowing in clearly when we give ourselves over to this imagination. In this way, you must work your way up visually to a clear vision of what has happened on our Earth.

[ 21 ] And now let us recall that these spirits, who remained behind from the lunar existence and did not make it to the solar existence, were in fact the same kind of beings on the moon as the solar spirits—the hosts of Ahura Mazdao—who had transcended the lunar existence. They had reached the “I” stage on the Moon; they simply remained behind and preserved precisely this stage. As long as they were on the Moon, the spirits of Ahura Mazdao, of Ormuzd, and the spirits of Ahriman were on the same level, of the same kind; they were of an “I”-like nature. This I, the original I, Zaruana Akarana, is the divine I that has not yet entered the body, that still rests in the bosom of the Deity. Where this I had developed to the point of being able to attain a solar existence, there it formed an astral body that stands under the dominion of Ormuzd. But incorporated into this is a lower power, the power of the remnants of Ahriman.

[ 22 ] Thus you have now seen the emergence of this fourth element of human nature, the “I,” and the third element of the human being, the astral body, which is imbued with the spirit of two entities. Incorporated within it are the good forces of Ormuzd and the forces of the egoistic nature, Ahriman. The ego is placed in the midst of the struggle raging within one’s own astral body between the good forces and the evil forces; it is the original being Zaruana Akarana, which divides into the good, true forces of the astral body, and into their opposites, which are the forces of Ahriman. Ahriman or Angramainyu means “the one who offers resistance” or “the spirit of opposition.” Thus we understand how, in fact, such a myth is nothing other than the retelling of what the ancient astral clairvoyants saw.

[ 23 ] Let us now take a closer look at these forces that radiate down from the sun onto the earth and onto human beings. What the Persian myth calls Ormuzd or Ahura Mazda is actually an expression for “great soul”; it is the same as what the Greeks call Psyche; and what we understand as the human astral body is the “little soul.” The human soul is composed of thinking, feeling, and willing. These are the three fundamental forces of the soul, which for the occultist are actually three independent entities; we will explore this in greater detail later. Just as the human soul is divided into these three parts, so too is the great soul, the great aura, divided into three parts. This same feature can be found in both Persian and Central European mythology. Central European mythology refers to these three fundamental forces as Wotan, Wili, and We, with Wotan representing the thinking force, Wili the willing force, and We the feeling force.

[ 24 ] We can immerse ourselves particularly deeply in the astral vision of those ancient times when we see how the syllable “We” echoes an original designation for the power of feeling. In fact, all higher feeling—even when it is pleasurable—has emerged from sorrow, from pain. And why is that? Imagine once more the original human form that, as it were, sprouted from the earth—the plant-man with a physical body and an etheric body. Just as he sprouted back then, the senses were present only as potential, just as a flower is already contained within the plant seed. Human beings could not yet see. Eyes such as we have today only came into being through a long, long process of development. These eyes, which today behold the splendor of sunlight—how did they come into being according to occult physiology? Originally, when only the physical body and the etheric body existed, there was nothing here in these places where the eyes are now. These places, however, proved to be particularly sensitive to the sun’s rays sent to Earth. And what the sun first caused as an impression was pain. Thus, two points of suffering arose in these places on the human body—points of pain that were constantly injured. It was exactly as if you were to cut yourself and a scab were to form at that spot. In the same way, a scab formed at those sensitive spots, and from this scab the magnificent, wondrous structure of the eye gradually took shape—albeit after a long, long evolution. That which the pain had torn out of the body became the magnificent eye.

[ 25 ] Nothing in the world can arise as pleasure or delight that does not have pain as its foundation. Just as satiety, with its pleasure, requires hunger as a prerequisite, so all knowledge and all joy have pain as their foundation. This is also the reason why, in tragedy, pain satisfies us like the foreboding of an expected redemption. Everything that will attain perfection in the future must first undergo a state of pain and suffering in the present. But this offers us comfort, because we know that what is pain and suffering today will be states of perfection in the future. Overcome pain becomes perfection in the future. Today’s perfect eyes owe their existence to the earlier pain-filled points on the human body; pain that has been overcome. This is what the initiate Paul meant when he uttered the powerful words: “All creation groans in pain, awaiting adoption as children,” or “All creation is in anguish in the pain of existence and awaits adoption as children,” which expresses nothing other than the longing for a relationship of sonship with God to be regained one day. Whoever comprehends existence sees pain flooding through all of existence.

[ 26 ] Now let us create a mental image of the good spirits—whether we call them Ormuzd, as in the Persian myth, or Wotan, Wili, and We, as in the Germanic myth—and how these solar forces pour forth. When the waters of Atlantis had receded and the sun was set free, they worked within the sun’s rays and permeated the air. That is why the spirits of light are at the same time spirits of the air, described as Wotan’s wild host; these spirits were perceived in the three aspects of Wotan, Wili, and We. Let us form a picture of this as it appears to the astral clairvoyant. Take the human being; when he was still a plant-human, consisting of a physical and an etheric body. The sun exerted its power: through Wotan into thinking, through Wili, who gives everything related to the will, and through We, who gives everything related to feeling; everything related to feeling rests in Weh—we sense this from the name itself.

[ 27 ] How, then, should this be told if it is to be told properly? Wotan, Wilii, and We walked along the seashore; there they found plants, and they endowed these plants with their powers: Wotan with spirit and the general life of the soul, Wili with form, intellect, and movement, with everything rooted in the will, We with countenance and color, with speech, hearing, and sight, with everything rooted in the emotions. Thus the first human beings came into being. In these images from the Central European myth of the three gods walking along the seashore, of finding the trees and endowing them with divine powers and qualities, we recognize how these spirits living in the sun bestowed their powers from their great aura and allowed them to flow into the individual human aura. Through occultism, we can take these things literally once again. We see how the images of mythology are based on real facts; and we look deeply into the clairvoyant visions of the sage who taught in the mystery temples and who could recount what he perceived astral-ly to the people—who were still clairvoyant to a certain degree—in imaginative images. He gave the people truths that he experienced in a semi-awake, clairvoyant intermediate state. He knew that with those people who still possessed a certain degree of clairvoyance, he could count on their understanding. When we immerse ourselves in the souls of such ancestors from the perspective of occultism, our vision broadens. Then the arrogance and self-importance of the Enlightenment can never take hold of us, the arrogance that says: How wonderfully far we have come! — Is it not a terrible arrogance, the conceit of nineteenth-century people, to claim that, compared to the truths the nineteenth century has discovered, everything else that people knew before is merely childish fantasy, and that what is discovered today must apply for all time? Is it not a terrible arrogance when those who preach today from the lecterns of universities and courtrooms, and those who go about prescribing remedies, claim that the only form of truth is what the last few decades have produced? They consider themselves humble, but it is the worst kind of arrogance that lies in this attitude. Beyond this mindset, the seeker of truth is led by the insight—which must take hold of his heart, his thoughts, and his soul—that other times, too, have possessed the truth, only in a different form, that there are many forms of truth. And he also transcends the other form of arrogance, namely that what is said by today’s scholars is to apply for all eternity. Just as the forms of knowledge have changed since the time of our ancestors—just as they once expressed in images what we now proclaim in a different form, in the form of occultism—so too will future generations proclaim the truth not in our forms, but in other forms that will have far surpassed our own. We know that truth is eternal, but we also know that it flows through human souls in the most diverse forms.

[ 28 ] On the one hand, our perspective broadens; on the other, such insights must flow vividly into our inner being. We will come to understand this when we consider the following: What, in fact, is this astral body that we carry within us? It is a part of this great aura of wisdom, a part of the aura of Mazda, which is the body of wisdom of the entire Earth, and into which forces from the Sun flow. Thus we walk upon the Earth and feel that we are bearers of the solar forces that have flowed into the Earth’s aura. Thus our sense grows of something we must cultivate: that this human body and these human bodies have been entrusted to us by the great world wisdom, the great world spirit. In occultism, the human body is also called a temple. And we bear the responsibility for returning what we have received back to the luminous source, returning it through appropriate refinement, purification, and perfection. Thus we learn to feel at one with the existence of the world. Not in a fanciful way, but step by step we learn to be a note in the great orchestral music that resounds through the cosmos and which we call the music of the spheres. There our sense of responsibility grows, along with a certain elation, yet balanced with feelings of humility in the right proportion. This is what theosophy teaches us: It teaches us precisely, not merely that we are human beings and what kind of human beings we are, but it makes us spiritual human beings who know what their part is in spiritual-cosmic existence. This is the ethics, the moral teaching, that flows from knowledge. When we grasp this, moral feelings pulse through us that have nothing of sentimentality or philistinism about them. A natural moral teaching flows through us when we perceive moral teaching as a direct consequence of knowledge. Theosophy, when properly understood, cannot help but bring the highest moral concepts to humanity, because it brings the knowledge and understanding of how humanity is situated within the entire context of the world. Theosophy will never stoop to admonitions and moral lectures. No one becomes a better person by being told: “Be good!” or “Do this, for it is good!”—for that leads people, under all circumstances, to sentimentality and philistinism. Theosophy shows us what a human being is and what their relationship to the whole world is, and it regards it, in a certain sense, as not entirely improper to approach people with moral principles, because human nature is such that, through knowledge—when they come to know themselves—they follow the right morality quite of their own accord. Not in a base sense, but in a higher sense, the occultist perceives it as a violation of spiritual modesty if he were to address human feelings directly and immediately. He addresses knowledge directly, but he presents such knowledge in such a way that human feelings naturally attach themselves to it. He presents the objective facts to people, and then the feelings follow. He does not intrude upon people because he has the greatest respect for them, and because he understands that the human being striving toward perfection must be respected and valued in every person. When a person learns the truth, they become good, for the soul of truth is goodness. When a person takes in the knowledge of truth, they thereby take in goodness. This goodness does not follow from lower knowledge, but it does follow from higher knowledge. Therefore, fundamentally, the theosophical movement should instill in people the will to know, for that is the sure path to perfection, to goodness.

[ 29 ] And in doing so, we have seen how such reflections give rise to a directly practical question of life for us, and how spiritual wisdom becomes an integral part of our culture and our entire lives.