The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Tenth Lecture

[ 1 ] We have seen how the author of the Book of Revelation points out that, in the fifth period following the war of all against all, people will appear in white garments; how the sixth period will be characterized by the earth undergoing great upheavals as a result of materialism; and how, in that period, the spiritual people will be the sealed ones.

[ 2 ] We must point out that just as the angels, or Angeloi, passed through their human stage in earlier planetary conditions, so too will human beings ascend through their own evolution. Today, what we encounter as nature is the work of the gods; in the future, human beings, too, will perform divine-spiritual deeds. At that point in time of which we speak, humanity will already have attained the ability to perform magical acts, working from beyond the Earth’s sphere, from the invisible realm. But there will also be people who have bound themselves to matter, in contrast to those who are sealed. These materialistic people will have been cast down. This is why the apocalyptic writer sees the spiritualized human beings hovering above existence and the others bound to matter. He sees this very clearly at the moment when the seventh seal is unsealed as a vision of the future.

[ 3 ] But then comes the epoch of the next seven periods, when the apocalyptic seer beholds Devachan and hears the proclamation of what is to come as the sound of trumpets. The Earth itself, upon which human beings look down, becomes increasingly material; only the coarsest elements remain on it. These coarsest elements manifest in a chaotic state; down there, the tumult of the passions of materialistic human beings—which has been building up over two times seven periods—becomes visible.

[ 4 ] During the first period of this last great earthly civilization, while the first trumpet sounds, our earth will become desolate, just as it is described in the seventh verse of the eighth chapter. At the second trumpet, a burning mountain plunges into the sea. At the third trumpet, a great star, burning like a torch, will fall from the sky and make life on Earth bitter. The senses of the people living there will grow weaker; the sun, moon, and stars will be darkened. Three cries of woe will be heard, and then the last three physical conditions will come. A star falls from the sky, and the earth is now in such tumultuous upheaval that it will become desolate, a place of punishment for those who have become one with it. When the sixth trumpet sounds, an angel calls down from heaven: “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.” (Rev. 9:14) This refers to that which lives on Earth and has not developed toward spirituality. Those people who have received Yahweh-Christ within themselves will accept one another in their individuality; each of them will rise above what will remain as the group soul. What will still exist as a group will form streams and seas in the astral realm; that is, the astral body will shine and gleam, just as even today the masses of people with little individuality form streams of group-soul-like existence in the astral realm. The teaching of Christ will flow toward the Euphrates: the teaching of human individuality, which, through the light impulse of Christ, has illuminated the astral bodies of human beings. The image of the book that the Apocalyptic figure devours and absorbs—we see this in the fourth Rosicrucian seal.

[ 5 ] Such recurrences, as we have already seen in the Earth’s evolution, occur time and again. Spiritualized and elevated, the Atlantean culture will be reborn in the Age of the Seals, when humanity will have consciously regained its clairvoyance. In the Age of the Trumpets, the Lemurian era will be reborn; human beings will be close to the Divine and will have become completely spiritualized. During the Lemurian era, the Earth was still entirely within the element of fire. Just as human beings lived in fire before they descended into dense physicality, so too will this be repeated in a spiritual state. When the seventh trumpet sounds, a kind of state of bliss will come over humanity. This brings us to a repetition of the moment when the Sun separated from the Earth: humanity will have reached a point with the Earth where it can reunite with the Sun. The Earth will transition into what is called the astral state. Those who are then capable of living in the astral realm will extract the subtle part of the Earth and unite with the Sun. The part of the Earth that has remained gross will unite with the Moon and form a kind of new Moon. A state similar to that of the Hyperborean era will return, but at a higher stage of development. This is symbolized by the woman clothed with the sun, who has the moon at her feet. The animals rising from the sea or falling from the sky—this entire current of evolution now appears, as if frozen in a single moment, in the following image. (Rev. 12:1–13:10)

[ 6 ] Zarathustra also pointed to the Christ Being, which, from the time of the event at Golgotha onward, has been working from the central orbit of the Earth, united with the Earth planet, after having previously worked upon the Earth from the Sun. Thus, the Christ has become the planetary spirit. It is the Christ Force that descended from the Sun, reclaiming the most worthy portion of humanity on Earth and reuniting it with the Sun. But he has an adversary—every such being has an adversary. Christ is the good spirit, the intelligence of the Sun, and the adversary is the demon of the Sun. Certain forces that constantly act upon the human astral body emanate from the demonic nature of the Sun. This solar demon is the adversary of the Christ Spirit and is called Sorat. In the past, in Kabbalistic branches of occultism, it was customary to write letters as numbers, and the letters of the name Sorat—the solar demon—add up to the numerical value 666. In the following passage (Rev. 13:11–18), the solar demon now becomes visible.

[ 7 ] It has two horns like a lamb; the author of the Apocalypse describes the mark of the beast. He had already made it clear at the beginning of the Apocalypse that he describes everything in symbols, and he adds: To unravel this, “wisdom is necessary.” In this way, the number of the beast has been explained in occult schools by true experts who do not interpret this number in materialistic terms. Thus, we hear how the worst and coarsest elements are cast out, and how the noblest, spiritualized human substance remains united with the sun. Now the new, spiritualized human body can once again be a temple of the soul.