The Rudolf Steiner Archive

21. Occult History II

[ 1 ] There are certain reasons why, at this particular time, I have been entrusted with the task of speaking in the branches of our Theosophical Society on a very specific topic—a topic intended to inform our dear members about certain facts underlying human evolution, certain facts that can actually be recognized only within the spiritual world—facts that relate to complex questions of reincarnation and world karma. It is quite true that, within our branches, we initially present the teachings of Theosophy in a more general way, so to speak. We already saw this during the last lecture here: that, so to speak, at the beginning of our work we must speak more generally about the processes between death and a new birth, and that we must then, in a certain way, adapt what lies behind this as even more mysterious matters. This is how we must work in general. For theosophic life is such that it allows us only gradually to ascend into the veiled sanctuaries of the becoming of the world and humanity.

[ 2 ] Today we will focus on hearing more specific details about these questions, which we usually can only answer by saying: there is reincarnation; there are repeated earthly lives; the innermost core of a human being’s being passes from life to life. — This is generally correct, but only in a vague sense, it is, so to speak, a rough generalization. We are gradually coming to know the finer truths, for we are only gradually growing beyond the ABCs of spiritual science; we are still at the ABCs. We must not entertain the notion that what we have managed to master so far means we have already gone very far beyond the ABCs. But we will continue to make progress if we have patience and energy.

[ 3 ] Today we will first cast our gaze a little further back into the course of human evolution. Once again, we look back to the ancient era of Atlantean development, to the time when our souls were incarnated in Atlantean bodies. All the souls that are now incarnated here in our bodies were once incarnated in Atlantean bodies. We have spoken about the way our souls perceived and understood things back then; today we want to speak about something else—namely, that even in Atlantis there were initiates who had advanced further than their contemporaries in relation to the world as our ancestors in Atlantis perceived it; they stood on a higher level of clairvoyance and, through the independent cultivation of their soul qualities, were able to ascend to high degrees of knowledge and action. These initiates worked in certain sacred sites. We can refer to these sacred sites by a name, though it could only come into use later. Because it was used by the later generations of ancient Atlantis, it best describes those unique places that stood, as it were, midway between places of worship or churches and schools. We can call these sacred sites “oracles.” What took place in such oracles at first? There were the highly advanced individuals of Atlantean humanity. They sought out disciples from among the Atlantean population who were ready to be trained. These disciples were admitted into the oracle sites and initiated into the mysteries of the evolution of the world and humanity. They came to know the truths pertaining to the spiritual backgrounds of the world, specifically the spiritual backgrounds of our solar system. There was an oracle of Mars. All the celestial bodies of our solar system interact with one another. Anyone who regards Mars merely as a physical body knows little about the true workings of the world. Only those who recognize the spiritual aspect of Mars—the spiritual beings of Mars—know what forces act down from Mars; they can glimpse a little into those realms that lie behind the scenes of ordinary existence. And one can already know a great deal about the mysterious forces that guide our Earth once one has, for example, become acquainted with the mysteries of Mars. The fact is that, well within the course of Atlantean development, certain initiates had to devote all the powers they possessed specifically to investigating the mysteries of Mars. They could not have investigated the mysteries of Saturn, Jupiter, and Venus at the same time; for that, there were other oracles. There was a Venus oracle, a Saturn oracle, a Jupiter oracle, a Mars oracle, a Mercury oracle, and a Vulcan oracle. And there was one great oracle—this was the most significant oracle of ancient Atlantis—which explored the mysteries of the Sun and that which acts upon the Earth as a spiritual being from the Sun. Equipped with the powers they had thus explored, the initiates were able to serve as leaders of the masses in Atlantis. And the supreme leader over all of them was the deepest initiate, the great leader of the Sun Oracle, who proclaimed what is the spiritual entity within the Sun—that which one might call “Christ.” This entity was already fully proclaimed in ancient Atlantis.

[ 4 ] This initiate of the Solar Oracle had now been entrusted with a very specific task at a very specific time. His task was to select, from among the masses of the Atlantean population, those individuals whose souls were particularly suited to laying the foundations for post-Atlantean culture. We must imagine what it was like in the ancient Atlantean era: arithmetic, counting, reasoning, judgment, and so on were not abilities that souls possessed at that time; these were abilities that humanity would only develop later. Back then, souls had the ability to develop a certain kind of twilight clairvoyance and certain magical powers. You know how the people of ancient Atlantis used the seed forces of plants in a manner similar to how we use the forces of coal today. Just as there are coal sheds at our train stations today where we store the coal we use to heat the engines that propel our trains forward, so too did the Atlanteans have sheds for large collections of all kinds of seeds. Let us consider a seed. It has the power to drive the stalk upward. The Atlanteans were able to draw out these powers, just as we can draw out the power contained within coal. And just as we today propel our locomotives forward with the power of coal, so the Atlanteans propelled their vehicles—which glided close to the ground over the earth and were equipped with a kind of upward and downward control system—using the powers of the seeds. The Atlanteans were different in every respect from people today. They were great inventors who were highly skilled in the use of these seed forces. They were comparable to our great scholars and engineers—those who, through dim clairvoyance, gained special insight into the nature of the seeds.

[ 5 ] These great bearers of Atlantic culture were, in fact, the least suited to be chosen to carry over what was necessary to lay the foundation for post-Atlantic culture. Rather, it was precisely the simplest people—those who developed the beginnings of calculation, counting, combinatorics, and so on—in whom the qualities that constituted the splendor of the Atlanteans were least developed. Let us take comfort in this fact when scholars look down on us today. Just as the great leader of old had to choose those who were simple folk, so today those who have a sense of the future implications of the Christ principle must be chosen, regardless of whether they march at the forefront of outward culture or not. Just as the call of the great Initiate Manu went out in those days to those who possessed the future qualities in their earliest form, so today the call from the spiritual realm goes out through the anthroposophical movement to prepare souls for the next cultural epoch. It is not among those who possess the brilliant qualities of today’s scholarship that we find the souls capable of carrying culture forward.

[ 6 ] These great initiates of the Solar Oracle gathered these simple people around them in a region west of present-day Ireland, while the other groups had long since set out from the west toward the east. [The postscript ends here.]