The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eighth Lecture

[ 1 ] In our discussion so far of those beings we classify as belonging to the realm of Christ or the realm of Lucifer, we have focused primarily on how human beings, in the course of their development, approach these beings through their own souls and how they experience them. We have thus emphasized, for example, how the human being’s path to those cosmic beings—among whom Christ stood in pre-Christian times—extended outward from the human being through cognition, whereas the path into the realm of Lucifer led inward into the soul, so that the human being might penetrate the veil that shrouds his own soul. And we have emphasized how this changed so much through the appearance of the Christ on Earth that the two realms have overlapped, and humanity is hastening toward a time when the Christ will be to be sought within, and Lucifer without. Today, in order to bring harmony to some of what most of you have already heard about the Luciferic beings, we must return once more with a few words to the nature of the Luciferic principle. The affairs of the world are, after all, complex, and one can view everything from a wide variety of perspectives. Consequently, it may sometimes seem—because one must sometimes illuminate a matter from one side and at other times from the other—that things are not entirely in harmony. Yet they are, in fact, in harmony with one another. Just as one describes a sheet of paper correctly by describing it first from the front and then from the back—and yet it is still the very same sheet—so too does one describe the Luciferic principle correctly by, as we have done in the past few hours, tracing the paths the soul must take to reach this Luciferic principle. But of course, one can also, so to speak, view the development of our Earth and the world in general from a more “extraterrestrial” standpoint and then characterize the position of the Luciferic beings in the course of world history from a different perspective. Let us do that in a few words.

[ 2 ] If you recall once more that our Earth, together with the Sun and the Moon, was once a single entity; that the Sun separated from the Earth to serve as a dwelling place for more highly developed beings who were then to influence our Earth from the outside; and that even higher beings remained united with the Earth after the Sun’s separation in order to bring forth the Moon, and if you consider that these beings who separated the Moon were the very same ones who, from within, now stirred a new life—a spiritual life—within the human being and preserved him from mummification, then you will soon be able to find harmony between what you have heard here and there in the lectures and what you have heard in the past few hours. You will then say to yourselves: Of those beings who separated from the Earth along with the Sun, it is only natural that humankind, in the course of its further development, would first have to find them by directing its gaze toward where these beings went with the Sun. Humanity will therefore have had to seek out the solar beings—in their activity and in their realm, along with all their subordinate beings—on the path leading outward from itself into the world beyond the veil of the sensory world. But those beings who, in a certain sense, were still higher benefactors of humanity—who, through the separation of the Moon, stimulated humanity’s inner soul life—he would have had to seek by first descending into his own inner being, by delving into an underground region of the soul to find that which is hidden from outward view—the underground gods, who are the ones who separated the Moon from the Earth and stimulated the life of the soul. Within the life of the soul, one had to seek the paths to those gods who were connected to this beneficent process of the Moon’s separation. If we look first merely at these two realms—the realms of the sun gods and the moon gods, so to speak—we find a distinction that we can describe as: gods located out in the heavens and gods located beneath the soul; and we designate the path outward as the solar path and the path inward into the soul—for the sake of having a name—as the Luciferic path. And the beings of Lucifer are then those who did not participate in the separation of the Sun from the Earth back then, when the Sun separated from the Earth. And certain other beings, who are humanity’s greatest benefactors but who had to remain hidden at first and did not participate in this separation of the Sun, did not truly belong to either of these realms. These were the beings who had been left behind during the ancient lunar evolution and had not reached the level that they—as spiritual beings who at that time stood much higher than the people on the Moon—could have attained. What did these beings fail to do back then? They missed the opportunity to participate in the separation of the Sun from the Earth during the subsequent Earth evolution. In a certain sense, they would have been called upon, like the sun spirits, to leave the Earth and work down from the Sun. They failed to do so. What happened to these beings was that, while they did attempt in a certain way to separate from the Earth along with the Sun, they were then unable to endure the conditions of the Sun’s development and fell back to Earth. These beings, therefore, were not among those who had remained behind with the Earth from the very beginning when the Sun separated; rather, they were those who could not keep pace with the Sun’s development and had fallen back; they remained connected to Earth’s development thereafter. What, then, did these beings do as Earth’s evolution progressed? They—who were thus in a very special situation—now sought to continue their own evolution on Earth with the aid of human evolution. They could not approach the human “I”; they had not elevated themselves to that level during the ancient lunar evolution. The beings who had drawn out of the Earth along with the Sun were able to approach the human “I.” And those beings who had separated the Moon from within were also able to approach it. The beings who had fallen behind from the Sun were the ones who approached the human soul when it was not yet ripe to receive the revelation of those higher benefactors who had separated the Moon. These beings approached the human soul too early. If, so to speak, the human being had waited patiently for the beneficent influence of those spiritual beings who were working from the Moon—that is, into the innermost depths of his soul—then what occurred so early would have occurred later. These Moon gods would have slowly matured the human soul until a corresponding development of the “I” had become possible. Instead, however, the other beings approached humanity and poured out their influences—not into the “I,” but into the human astral body from within, just as the Moon gods do—so that these beings sought the same path through the innermost depths of the soul along which the actual Moon gods would later also work; that is to say, these beings joined the Luciferic realm. And it is they who are symbolized by the serpent in the biblical account. They are the beings who approached the human astral body too early and who worked in exactly the same way as all other beings that work from within. And if we designate the beings acting from within as Luciferic beings, we must also designate these backward beings as such. They are, however, the ones who approached the human being when he was still immature for such influences—those who, on the one hand, became his tempters, but who also granted him the freedom—the possibility—to become independent in the astral body from those divine beings who would have taken his “I” under their protection, who would have poured into him from the very beginning whatever can be poured into the “I” from the divine spheres. Instead, these Luciferic beings set about influencing the human astral body, imbuing it with everything that could inspire enthusiasm for all that is higher and spiritual; thus they acted upon his soul and, as higher beings, became, in a certain sense, the human being’s seducers. And we must address this type of Luciferic being as humanity’s tempter; we must therefore say: That which approached humanity in the course of Earth’s evolution and brought him, on the one hand, freedom, and on the other, the possibility of evil—that came from within, that came from Lucifer’s realm. For these beings could not make themselves known from the outside; they had to creep into the innermost depths of the soul; from the outside, only that which approaches the human being’s “I”—not merely their astral body—can reach them. So you see that within the vast realm of the bearers of light—the Luciferic beings—there are sub-categories of which we can very well understand that they could become the tempters of humankind. But we can also very well understand that it was precisely because of these beings that strict measures were taken wherever humans could be introduced into the realms beyond the veil of the soul world; for those human beings who were guided along this path into the innermost depths of the soul encountered there not only the good Luciferic beings who enlightened humanity from within, but they first encountered those Luciferic beings who then acted as their tempters, specifically stirring up pride, ambition, and vanity in the soul.

[ 3 ] Yes, we must certainly come to terms with the fact that we should never attempt to encompass the worlds that lie beyond the sensory world and beyond the world of the soul with the intellectual concepts developed by our present-day culture.

[ 4 ] When we speak of Luciferic beings, we would need to become familiar with the full scope of the realm of these beings—all their genera, varieties, and species. Then we would see that not everywhere where the danger of a certain type of Luciferic being is discussed is there an awareness of the full scope of the corresponding realm; that one can be correct when speaking of certain genera of the Luciferic realm in the way that this or that document does; but that one must at the same time take into account that reality is vaster—infinitely vaster—than human beings can usually know. In a time when the outward gaze and the inward gaze were still very keen for those belonging to a certain cultural epoch, when a person took the path outward toward “That is you” and inward toward “I am the universe,” they sensed that the outward path and the inward path both led to the same thing—to the unified “I.” In this first cultural epoch of the post-Atlantean era, however, people were able to think and feel very differently about the foundations of the spiritual realms than they did later on. Therefore, it is immensely difficult for the ordinary consciousness to immerse itself in that wondrous first post-Atlantean cultural epoch and to identify with a soul that lived at that time.

[ 5 ] Yesterday we saw how feelings were of a completely different nature back then, how people felt the soul of light streaming in from all sides, as if through their skin, and were thus able to gain experience from the environment that is now closed off to human beings. But there was something else connected to all of this as well.

[ 6 ] It is known from my Secret Science that the following epochs can be distinguished in the course of human development during the post-Atlantean era: the ancient Indian culture, the primordial Persian culture, the Chaldean-Egyptian culture, the Greco-Latin culture—into which the Christ event occurred—and then our own culture. This will be followed by another, and that in turn by the last; and then the Earth will once again undergo a transformation such as it did at the time of the Atlantean catastrophe. Thus, we have seven cultural epochs. Among these seven cultural epochs, there is a central one that stands apart: the Greco-Latin epoch, which includes the Christ event. The other cultural epochs, however, stand in a certain relationship to one another. The Chaldean-Egyptian cultural epoch is repeated in certain manifestations of the fifth epoch—that is, in our own—so that in our time certain manifestations, certain facts, and certain views that were alive in the ancient Chaldean-Egyptian culture must be revived. Only they are revived in a different form—namely, in such a way that they are imbued with what came about through the Christ impulse. We do not have a mere repetition of Chaldean-Egyptian culture, but rather, in our time, we have a repetition of this cultural epoch in which everything is steeped in what Christ brought to Earth. This is a repetition, and yet it is not quite the same. Those people who have felt more deeply into the course of human development and have participated in it with their souls have always sensed something of this kind. In such people, even if they had not yet advanced to occult knowledge, something has emerged like a memory of ancient Egyptian experiences. What the Egyptian sages, in their marvelous understanding of celestial processes, had penetrated in their own way through their Hermetic science is reviving in our fifth cultural epoch, in our own time, in a more materialistic form. Those who were directly involved in this revival have felt it most keenly. Let me cite just one example.

[ 7 ] When, in the fifth epoch, that individuality reappeared who had once, in the secret sanctuaries of Egypt, raised the soul’s gaze to the stars and sought to fathom their mysteries in the cosmos in the manner of that time under the guidance of the Egyptian sages—and who then became Kepler— then what had existed in the Egyptian soul in a different form emerged once more in a new form—in Kepler’s great laws, which are such an important part of our astrophysics today. And so it came to pass that something arose in the soul of this individual, which then compelled him to utter the words—you can read them in Kepler’s writings—: “I have gone and brought the sacred vessels from the sacred sites of Egypt and placed them here in the present, so that people may now understand something that can continue to have an effect far into the future.” — This is one example; we could cite many such examples that might make it clear to you how what existed in the Chaldean-Egyptian cultural epoch is being revived in a new form.

[ 8 ] We are in the fifth cultural period of the post-Atlantean era. It will be succeeded by the sixth, which will be a significant one. This sixth cultural period will be both a repetition and, at the same time, an elevation of the primordial Persian Zoroastrian culture. Zoroaster looked up at the sun to see, beyond the physical sunlight, the Christ Spirit—whom he called Ahura Mazda—and to draw people’s attention to him. This Christ has since descended to Earth; this Christ must penetrate so deeply into the innermost being of those souls who prepare themselves for this during the course of the sixth cultural epoch that, through a gaze into their own innermost being, a number of people may then experience those powerful sensations that Zarathustra was able to evoke when he pointed to Ahura Mazdao. For in the sixth epoch, through the gaze into their own inner being and through the recognition of the solar wisdom—that which was revealed in the ancient Persian tradition—something like a repetition is to arise in a great number of people, but on a much higher, more internalized, and more spiritualized level. I have already mentioned to you that when the Greeks spoke of Ahura Mazdao in their own way and according to their own understanding, they called him Apollo. In their mysteries, they enabled people to recognize the deeper essence of this Apollo. Above all, they saw in Apollo the spirit who not only directed the physical forces of the sun but also guided the spiritual forces of the sun and channeled them to the earth, And when the teachers in the Apollonian mysteries wished to speak to their students about the spiritual-moral influences of Apollo, they spoke of how Apollo resounds throughout the entire Earth with the sacred music of the spheres—that is, how he sends down rays from the spiritual world. And they saw in Apollo a being accompanied by the Muses, his helpers. There is a wonderfully profound wisdom in this Apollo, who is accompanied by the nine Muses. If you recall that the human being consists of various members of his being—the physical body, the etheric body, the sensory body, the sensory soul, the intellectual soul, the conscious soul, and so on—then you can say: The human being is an “I” as the center, and this “I” unites around itself seven or nine parts that constitute the elements of his being. If we ascend from the human being to a divine being, then we must conceive of what the “I” is as this spiritual being, and what the parts are—for the divine being—is what the Muses are to him: individual personalities. Just as the human being’s individual members—the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and so on—compose the human being and group themselves around his “I,” so the Muses grouped themselves around Apollo. And what was said to the initiates of the Apollonian mystery circle in connection with such matters is also of profound significance. They were entrusted with a secret: that the god who had spoken in such a special way to Zarathustra in the second epoch would once again speak to humanity in a special way in the sixth epoch. This was explained by saying: “In the sixth epoch, Apollo’s song will have reached its destination on Earth.” — This statement, which was commonplace among the students of the Apollonian Mysteries—that in the sixth epoch Apollo’s song would have reached its destination—expressed the repetition of the second epoch of Earth’s evolution in the sixth, on a higher level.

[ 9 ] The first period will reappear at a higher level in the seventh.

[ 10 ] The Christ-imbued perception of the first post-Atlantean epoch stands before present-day human beings as a lofty ideal; to return to such a way of feeling, to such a way of perceiving, as existed at a lower level during the first post-Atlantean epoch. Again, at the end of our post-Atlantean era, in a certain sense, when a person walks the path out into the outer sensory world and works what has been revealed into their own soul world, they should recognize that these two paths lead them to unity. That is why it is good to immerse oneself a little in this ancient Indian way of feeling and thinking, which is quite distant from the feelings of today—for we are, after all, in the interim epoch. Even if one picks out only a few features, one senses something of the entirely different nature of feeling and thinking, of the entirely different attitude toward wisdom and life, that existed in human beings at that time, whose sense of self was not yet so fully awakened. What was then written down in the Vedas is the teaching of the first great teachers of ancient India, the holy Rishis. It must be pointed out here that the holy Rishis received their inspiration from that exalted individuality who led the peoples of ancient Atlantis across what is now Europe into Asia. In a certain sense, the holy Rishis were the disciples of this exalted individuality, Manu. And what did Manu impart to them? He imparted to them the way in which they had, at that time, attained the first post-Atlantean wisdom and knowledge. Attaining knowledge—as is the case today—by observing the external natural world or by immersing oneself in the innermost depths of one’s soul, as has only recently become possible, would have made no sense at that time.

[ 11 ] In the first cultural epoch of the post-Atlantean era, among the ancient Indian people, the etheric body was still far more separate from the physical body than it is today. The ancient Indian could still make use of this etheric body and its organs of that time if he did not become absorbed in the life of the physical body but instead devoted himself to the etheric body—if, so to speak, he forgot that he was inhabiting the physical body. When they did this, they felt as if they had been lifted out of themselves; as if, so to speak, they had been drawn from their sheath like a sword. As he felt this, he also sensed something that can be described as follows: one does not see through the eyes, one does not hear through the ears, one does not think through the physical apparatus of the intellect; rather, one makes use of the organs of the etheric body. That is what he did. But then the living wisdom appeared before him; not thoughts that human beings can think or have thought, but the thoughts according to which the gods out there have shaped the world. What we today call thoughts—what we fabricate as thoughts using the brain as an instrument—the Indian who truly lived in the spiritual life did not know at all. He did not at all “spun out,” “devise,” or “reason out” anything in this way; rather, he would step out of his physical body and look through his etheric body. Surrounding him, like a momentary gift from the divine world, was the entire cosmic sum of the gods’ thoughts, from which the world had sprung forth. How the gods had conceived all things in their archetypes—this stood before his etheric sense organ; this is what he beheld. He had no need to think logically. Why must we think logically? We must do so because it is only through logical thinking that we are to find the truth, because we can err when we connect our thoughts. If we were organized in such a way that the right thought followed the right thought in immediate intuition, then we would have no need for logic. The ancient Indian had no need for logic; he beheld the thoughts of the gods, and these were already correct in and of themselves. Thus he had woven around himself an etheric-cosmic web, woven from the thoughts of the gods. At the same time, within this web of thought—which appeared to him as a light of the soul weaving through the world—he beheld the eternal wisdom. Indeed, only the holy Rishis could attain this highest perfection, as I have just described to you, and from this vision they were able to proclaim the great world beings. What, then, was their experience? They had the experience that, within this cosmic fabric of wisdom—in which everything was inscribed in living archetypes, the whole interwoven and permeated by the soul of light—truth and knowledge flowed into them. Just as modern humans have the feeling that something flows into them when they inhale the air they breathe, so the ancient Indians had the feeling that the gods sent them wisdom, and that they inhaled it, just as the air we breathe is sent to us, which we then inhale. The ancient holy Rishis drew in the light of the soul—a light imbued with wisdom—and they were able to teach what they had thus absorbed to those who became their followers. In return, they could also say: everything they proclaim is breathed forth by Brahman itself. This is, in fact, the profound and literally accurate expression: “It is breathed out by Brahman and inhaled by human beings.” This was the stance of the holy Rishis toward the wisdom of the world, toward what they proclaimed—which is then recorded in the various parts of the Vedas, one might say, only in faint images. For what the holy Rishis taught is recorded in the Vedas only as faint reflections. And when the Vedas are read today, people should be aware that these are faint reflections of the original sacred wisdom of the Rishis. Nevertheless, we must see something different in the Vedas than what we otherwise find in written works. We can find the most diverse written works in the world; we can take this or that standpoint; we can say: An inner, spiritual, Christ-imbued life is presented to us, for example, in the Gospel of John; but if we take the expression given to us there—the outward expression of the Gospel of John—it stands farther removed from its content than what is written in the Vedas stands from its content. There is a more intimate connection between the expression and the content of the Vedas, because what was breathed in has, so to speak, been directly infused into and reflected in the words of the Vedas; whereas the writer of the Gospel of John recorded these profound teachings in such a way that he first received them and then wrote them down afterward, and the expression stands further removed from the content.

[ 12 ] We must be clear about these things if we truly want to understand the development of the world. Therefore, we must recognize that it is a natural feeling when a Christian says, “I value the Gospel of John above all else,” but also when that Christian feels the need not to stop at the words of this Gospel, but to penetrate—as spiritual knowledge does—to the spiritual content of the Gospel of John, when he says: “It only becomes what it is meant to be for me when I penetrate to that which is given in the outer expression.” But the one who wishes to approach the Vedas in the right way must do so as the ancient Indian did; that is, he must say: “What is written in the Vedas themselves was not merely transcribed by any human being afterward as an expression of divine wisdom, but is a direct reflection of what is breathed-in wisdom.” Therefore, the Vedic word—and the parts of the Vedas, particularly the Rig Veda—are not merely records of the sacred, but are themselves sacred to those who sensed the nature of this connection. And this explains the infinite veneration of the Veda itself as a divine being in ancient times. We need only understand this. And we must understand it from the perspective of the ancient Indian soul. And we must learn many things, for we are, after all, moving toward an ideal—the ideal of rediscovering the first cultural epoch in a heightened form, that is, of reestablishing it. We must learn something of what is said, for example, regarding the Vedic account that Baravaja studied the Veda for three centuries. People today would believe that if they studied the Veda for three centuries, they would know an immense amount; they would already believe, even after studying it for a much shorter time, that they know a great deal. Then, so we are told, one day the god Indra came to Baravaja and said to him: “You have now studied the Veda for three centuries; look, there are three high mountains there—mighty high mountains! One represents the first part of the Vedas, the Rig Veda; the second mountain represents the second part of the Vedas, the Sama Veda; and the third mountain represents the third part of the Vedas, the Yajur Veda. You have studied these three parts of the Vedas for three centuries.” Then Indra took three small clumps of earth—just enough to hold in one hand—from these mountains and said: “Look at these clumps! You now know as much about the Vedas as these clumps relate to the great, mighty mountains.” Try to transform what has been said here into a feeling; then it means: approach the highest wisdom, be it in this or that form, even in the form in which it confronts us today, where we are called—not from books, but from what exists in the world—to seek wisdom once more through the message of the Rosicrucians, and apply this to what is given to us as spiritual knowledge; and if you feel this way and adopt the right attitude toward it, you will hardly be able to say of yourself that you have heard as much about spiritual knowledge as Baravaja did back then about the Vedas; but everyone should take Baravaja’s parable to heart; then they will intuitively place themselves in the proper relationship to the all-encompassing wisdom of the world. And this feeling will be of such a nature that we sense an Infinite, of which we can ever possess only a small fragment. Through this, we also gain the proper longing to proceed in the right way and to have patience until another small fragment is added. This sense of the Infinite belongs to the most beneficial feelings of the human soul. Much can be learned from the ancient wisdom of the East; among the most valuable things that can be learned from this light are those that relate to our feelings and sensibilities; and this is part of what the god Indra gave to Baravaja as a kind of guidance on how to approach the Vedas in the right way. We must regain such feelings of sacred awe and reverence if we wish to move toward an era in which we may look into what the proclamation of the newer mysteries is, in which we may once again look into that tapestry of wisdom woven from divine thoughts and not from human thoughts. This is also the very best we can learn in terms of feelings. But we must not believe that we already possess these feelings in our ordinary consciousness; rather, we must be clear that the path to the highest feelings lies precisely through knowledge. And if one wishes to bypass thought—if one is too complacent to seek feelings through the etheric heights of thought—one will remain with ordinary, trivial feelings and merely confuse them with what is the soul’s inner immersion in the divine. Such feelings, as were found in ancient India, were a fundamental feature of the entire wisdom of the first post-Atlantean epoch, enabling people at that time to relate to the world in the right way and to experience a unity in the spiritual worlds—a unity found when one seeks the path outward or inward. In all subsequent cultures, a different path must emerge.

[ 13 ] While in ancient India there is a union of the two paths, the subsequent periods—the Proto-Persian period, the Chaldean-Egyptian period, and the Greek-Latin period—follow, with regard to the two revelations from within and without, paths that we might describe as a fork in the road. On the one hand, we have the revelation from without; on the other, the revelation from within. This is already the case in the second epoch of post-Atlantean cultures. There, on the one hand, we have not only the path of the people but also the path of the mysteries—both outward into the realm of Ahura Mazda and inward, What was still vividly perceived within the ancient Indian way of thinking—that which lies unified behind the two spiritual worlds—was, for the second post-Atlantean epoch, something that had, as it were, already vanished from view, something that was already in an impenetrable depths of existence, of which one still had a faint inkling, but which could no longer live in the soul. The ancient Indian felt: “There I go out; on the other side I go in and come to unity.” The Persian took the path outward and said, when he followed the teaching of Zarathustra: “I come to Ormuzd!” and when he took the path inward: “I come to the essence of Mithras!” But these two paths no longer converged for him. He could only sense that they must come together somewhere. Therefore, he spoke of the Being as the Unknown in the darkness, which one can only sense—the unknown primordial God. This was now merely a primordial spiritual Being, of whom one knew that He must exist, but whom one could no longer find. Zaruana akarana—that was the name for this Persian god who dwelt in the darkness but could no longer be reached by either of the two paths. What could be reached was that which lay beyond the veil of the outer sensory world. There was, first of all, that to which Zarathustra pointed. In other words, something that was already a descendant of Zaruana akarana. It was the god Ahura Mazdao, the ruler of the realm of the sun spirits, the realm from which the beneficent effects descended—effects that, in contrast to the physical effects of the sun, must be described as spiritual—the spirit from which, for example, the ancient Persians derived their moral codes and laws, which the initiate — for it was he who, through initiation, ascended to the moral precepts and laws — brought down as moral laws, as laws governing human action, human activities, and so on. So that was one path; and one saw, so to speak, this Spirit—which is the Spirit of the Sun—reigning in the highest region; there one saw its servants, the Amshaspands, those who stood, as it were, around its throne, who were its messengers. While it ruled the entire realm, they guided the individual parts. Beings of a lower order, who in turn are subordinate to the Amshaspands, are those commonly called the Izets or Izarats. Thus, the ancient Persian looked out into the realm beyond the veil of the sensory world and saw a supreme spiritual being: Ahura Mazda—and beneath him a corps of Amshaspands; then, in turn, subordinate beings, the Izets or Izarats; and there were still other beings of whom we can say that they are to the spiritual world what human thoughts are to the soul. These thoughts in the human soul are, after all, only shadows of their realities; out in the spiritual world, certain spiritual beings correspond to our thoughts. According to the ancient Persian conception, these beings, called Fravashis, were those who stood, so to speak, immediately above human beings. Thus, within the course of Persian development, the realm beyond the veil of the sensory world was conceived as a series of levels of spiritual beings extending all the way up to Ormuzd. But the moment one fails to see complete harmony between the spiritual realm found on the path outward and the spiritual realm found on the path inward, it depends to a great extent on the individual how he or she perceives, in particular, the inner realm. Now, however, the entire natural world had also become different for the Persian people than it had been for the ancient Indians. This characteristic—of having the etheric body still so far outside—was no longer present in the members of the ancient Persian people; there, the etheric body had already slipped much further into the physical body. Consequently, the members of the ancient Persian people could no longer make use of the organs of the etheric body in the same way that the members of the ancient Indian people could. The organs used by the members of the ancient Persian people were those that had originally been integrated into what we today call the sensory body. As you know, in the complete human being we must distinguish between the physical body, the etheric body, the sensory body, the sensory soul, the intellectual soul, the conscious soul, then what is called the spiritual self, then the life spirit, and finally the actual spiritual human being.

Spirit Being
Life Spirit
Spirit Self

Consciousness Soul
Intellect Soul
Feeling Soul

Sensitive Body
Etheric Body
Physical Body

[ 14 ] The ancient Indian, so to speak, made use of his etheric body in the manner described when he wished to rise to the highest levels of knowledge. The Persians could no longer do this; however, they could make use of the feeling body. They thus ascended to their highest insights through the feeling body. Because they could no longer see with the etheric body, the highest unity remained veiled from them. With the sensory body, he could still look out and, in a certain sense, see astral forms. This was still the case for many members of the Persian people: they could see Ahura Mazda and his servants astral forms because they could still make use of the sensory body. Now, as you know from the description in my Theosophy, the sensory body is bound to the sensory soul. So at the moment when a member of the ancient Persian people made use of the sensory body, the sensory soul was, so to speak, present; but he had not yet reached the point of being able to make use of it, for it was not yet developed—it first had to be developed. Therefore, the member of the ancient Persian people was in a very special situation. He made use of his sensory body. The sensory soul is always at work there. But he first had to accept it as it was at that time. Therefore, he had to realize: When the sensory body, which is now already developed, rises up to Ahura Mazdao, then the sensory soul is present. But the feeling soul is in a certain danger, and when it reveals its feelings, it will send them right into the feeling body; it will not express what remains of the old Luciferic temptations as such—for it does not yet have the capacity to do so—but it will send their effects into the feeling body. — Thus, in ancient Persia, one perceived the effects of the soul of sensation on the body of sensation, which represented, as it were, a reflection shining in from the outside world of what had been at work in the soul of sensation since ancient times. This is, viewed from within, what is called the effects of Ahriman, the effects of Mephistopheles. Consequently, people felt they were facing two powers. If one looks at what a human being can attain by turning one’s gaze outward, one beholds the mysteries of Ahura Mazda; if one turns one’s gaze inward, then—through the sensory body and by virtue of what Lucifer had wrought—one stands before the adversary of Ahura Mazda, before Ahriman. There was only one thing that protected against the temptations of the Ahrimanic figure, and this became evident: when one took the lead in the initiation of humanity, when one developed the feeling soul. If one developed and purified this, and thus went ahead of humanity, then one walked the path inward, a path that led to something other than Ahura Mazda; then one walked the path to the luminous realms of Lucifer. And that which permeated the human soul on the path inward was later called the god Mithras. Therefore, the Persian mysteries, which cultivated the inner life, are the Mithraic mysteries. Thus, on the one hand, we have the god Mithras when a person took the path inward; and what they encountered on the path outward were the realms of Ahura Mazdao.

[ 15 ] And now we move on to the next post-Atlantean cultural epoch, the Chaldean-Egyptian era. There is a curious phenomenon in this Chaldean-Egyptian era. It is not without reason that we refer to it by two names. For on the one hand, during this cultural epoch over in Asia, we have members of the northern stream of peoples—that is, the Chaldean element; and _ the Egyptian element belongs to the other stream, the stream of peoples that traveled along the southern route. Here we have an epoch in which two streams of peoples collide. And if you recall that the northern movement primarily developed an outward gaze—the search for those beings that lay behind the veil of the sensory world—and that the Egyptian people sought those spirits found on the path inward, you will understand how these two movements interacted here. So here the outward path of the Chaldeans and the inward path of the Egyptians converge. The Greeks also perceived this quite correctly when they compared the Chaldean gods with their Apollonian realm. They sought what they had received from the Chaldeans in their own way within their Apollonian mysteries. But when they spoke of Osiris and all that pertained to him, they sought the corresponding elements within their own Dionysian mysteries. In those days, people had a premonitory awareness of how spiritual connections truly work.

[ 16 ] But humanity continues to advance through time; it keeps moving forward, developing new aspects. During the ancient Indian period, the etheric body and its organs were developed; in the proto-Persian period, the sensory body was utilized and developed, and in the Chaldean-Egyptian period, the sensory soul—that is, a primarily inner constituent—was developed. While the sensory body is still directed outward, the sensory soul is already directed inward. Thus, one moves even further away than before from the divine-spiritual worlds. One lives an inner life in the soul and must limit this life—in relation to what is not within the human being—to what the senses perceive. Thus, on the one hand, the realm of the sensory world has become increasingly prominent, and on the other hand, the life of the soul has become more and more independent. The culture of the feeling soul is the culture of the third epoch. But what shapes the feeling soul is no longer wisdom perceived as if read from a tapestry of the environment. This already resembles what modern humans conceive, although—because modern humans have already advanced to the level of the conscious soul—it was much more vivid back then. The thoughts are, so to speak, even more vibrant; they are more vivid than today’s thoughts—thoughts as vivid as the sensation of “red” is for us today. Today, people no longer experience their thoughts with the same intensity as they experience a taste or a smell. Back then, during the Egyptian era when the sensory soul was primarily developed, thoughts were so vivid that they lived in the soul as vividly as the sensation of the color red, a smell, or a taste does today. Today, thoughts have faded and become abstract. Back then, they were concrete. They were even more like thoughts one could actually see—not thoughts that one perceived as extending outward into the physical world, but thoughts of which one felt: one had not devised them, but rather they were thoughts that arose in the soul like inspirations that welled up and were simply there. One no longer said, “One breathes in wisdom”—but one is vividly permeated by these thoughts; they spring up in the soul; they are driven up from the spiritual world into our soul.

[ 17 ] Thus, everything changes over time. Consequently, the person living in the Chaldean-Egyptian epoch no longer had the awareness of the wisdom of the world as anything other than a vast world of light that he breathed in; rather, he had the awareness that he had thoughts—though these were thoughts that arose as inspiration. And the content of this knowledge rising within them is Chaldean astrotheology and Egyptian Hermetic wisdom. This is how they came into being. What lived in the stars and moved them, what pulsed within things—human beings could no longer read this, but it manifested within them as the ancient wisdom of the Chaldean-Egyptian period. In the case of the Chaldeans, people had the awareness that: What we know here is not merely our inner self; it is a reflection of what is happening outside. Among the Egyptians, they were aware that what rises up is a reflection of the hidden gods, whom human beings encounter not between birth and death, but between death and a new birth. — Thus the Egyptians and Chaldeans differed from one another in that, in their wisdom, the former perceived what lies beyond the world in which we live between birth and death, while the latter, the Egyptians, in their inspired wisdom, perceived what lives between death and a new birth. Necessarily, however—as you can see from the overall meaning of this development—these inner inspirations, these rising, inspired masses of thought, were distant from the actual primordial being in its unity. One no longer penetrated, so to speak, as far as one had been able to penetrate while still possessing the sensory body in the pre-Persian era. Everything had already faded somewhat; there was no longer as much of the outer world within; it had already withdrawn to a greater extent. Thus, one had experienced a wisdom of the outer world within oneself, rather than the wisdom in the outer world itself. Nevertheless, those who came to know it with the right feelings held the greatest conceivable respect for the wisdom of the primordial Persian period. If one wishes to express in a single word the paradigmatic wisdom that the Chaldeans perceived concerning the spiritual world underlying the physical world, one might say: these are the Chaldean proverbs; and the collection of Chaldean proverbs constituted a highly revered treasure trove of wisdom in ancient times. These maxims contain infinitely important insights into the mysteries of the world. They were valued just as highly as the revelations experienced between “death and a new birth”; they were regarded as Egyptian sources of wisdom.

[ 18 ] But even darker and more shadowy had become that being which, during the ancient Indian cultural epoch, was still fully present in human consciousness and had now, in its deeper essence, withdrawn from view. Even more shadowy than Zaruana akarana is this highest, unified being of Chaldean-Egyptian wisdom. The Chaldeans call it Anu, and it denotes that which is the unity of the two worlds, yet which lies far, far above that which can be known. And even into those regions toward which the followers of Zarathustra still looked up, the Chaldeans no longer dare to look; instead, they look up into those regions that are already very close to human thought. There, they say, everything is to be found—for the highest is also found in the lowest—but there they find something they describe as a being that is a shadow of the highest. They called this Apason. Then they saw something that appeared to them as a shadow of what we today might conceive of as standing substantially below the spiritual human being—something we might imagine to be formed from the life spirit. They called this—to approximate their word—Tauthe. Then they had a being they called Moymis. Moymis was roughly what spiritual science today is accustomed to calling a world spirit—a being in which the lowest member is the spiritual self. Thus they perceived a Trinity that stood above them. They were aware, however, that this Trinity revealed its true form to them only in relation to its lowest members, and that the higher members were shadows of the Higher, which had withdrawn from their sight. And just as a descendant of this entity—which might be called Moymis—resides in the realm of the “I” or the fiery being, so too must Bel—the god who, as the creator of the worlds, was also the god of the people—be regarded as such.

[ 19 ] Thus we see how what has developed within the entire national character is also expressed in the naming of the gods. When a member of this Chaldean world then embarked on the path inward, he said he was passing through the veil of the soul’s life into a world of subhuman or subterranean gods. Adonis, for example, is a later name for those beings they encountered on the path inward. Only for the initiates was this path passable, for it was fraught with great dangers for the uninitiated. But in return, the initiate—when he walked this path, when he developed in such a way that he reached the world lying beneath the veil of soul life—experienced something comparable to the experiences of initiation today. For we are already approaching the characteristics that are increasingly taking shape as the characteristics of our time. The one who was initiated in ancient Chaldean tradition underwent two experiences, and care was taken to ensure that these two experiences occurred as closely as possible in time—that is, that they coincided—so that he might embark on the path outward into the spiritual world and inward into the spiritual world, thereby gaining at least a sense of the interweaving and living unity of the spiritual realm both outside and within. And then, on the path inward, he experienced an encounter with that spiritual being whom the Chaldeans called Ishtar and who was known to belong to the benevolent moon deities. Ishtar stood there at the threshold that otherwise bars human beings from the spirituality that lies beyond the life of the soul. And on the other side, where one finds the gateway to the spiritual world through the tapestry of the outer sensory world, there stood the other guardian: Merodach or Marduk. Merodach stood there with Ishtar. Merodach, whom we can compare to the Guardian of the Threshold, to Michael—it was Merodach and Ishtar who made the innermost part of the soul clairvoyant and introduced human beings into the spiritual world from both sides. Thus, through this encounter, human beings experienced what is still symbolically felt today: The radiant chalice is presented to the human being; that is, the human being tentatively begins to learn the very first use of his or her lotus flowers. — Then he or she gradually proceeds further. Thus you see how, even at this stage, _crossing a certain threshold_ is necessary in this epoch. In Egypt, it is somewhat different, yet similar.

[ 20 ] Thus humanity continued on its path of evolution into our time. But then the moment approached that was to prepare for the descent of the cosmic Sun Spirit to Earth. The Spirit, which had previously been external, was now to enter the human soul so that it could be found within—just as the Luciferic deities had once been found, just as Osiris was found within. The two paths, which were clearly in contrast among the Chaldeans and the Egyptians, were to enrich one another. This had to happen. How could this happen? It could happen through the creation of a connecting link. This connecting link originates with Ur in Chaldea, as the Bible so accurately recounts regarding the Hebrew people. There it takes up those revelations that come from without. Then it proceeds to Egypt, absorbs what comes from within, and unites the two, so that for the first time in Yahweh a being appears, shining forth as a forerunner of Christ, who unites the two paths. What the earlier gods were is now revealed to humanity from two sides. Just as Christ is later illuminated from within, so too is that which formerly appeared in the darkness as certain gods illuminated, at least from the outside. Thus we see that in Yahweh or Jehovah a deity emerges who is found on the path inward but is not yet visible in and of itself—who becomes visible only when illuminated from the outside. The reflected light of Christ is present in Jehovah. There we clearly see these two directions—which have now occupied us so much—standing side by side and mutually enriching one another. With this, however, something entirely new begins in the course of human development. Now the outer and the inner begin to enrich one another; now begins the process whereby the inner becomes the outer, whereby that which previously existed only inwardly in time extends out into space to exist side by side. Examine your inner life for a moment. It is not spread out in space; it unfolds in time. Individual thoughts and feelings follow one after another. What is outside is spread out in space; it exists side by side. Therefore, what must now occur is what is called the “outflow” of something that until now has existed only in time, into space, to exist side by side. It also happens that something which has existed only in time now exists side by side in space. This brings about something significant, and it expresses itself in a particularly profound way.

[ 21 ] Everything that was once the development of the human spirit—that which led beyond the outer world of space—also led outward into time. Now, everything that is arranged in time is arranged according to the measure and nature of the number seven. We can grasp the course of world evolution by taking the number seven as our foundation, saying: Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth—Mars, Mercury—Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan; for example, we have seven time periods here. We can find our way in everything subject to time by applying the number seven. Therefore, wherever we are led into time, we will be guided to the number seven. All the colleges and lodges that lead from the realm of space into the realm of time—when they lead to the supernatural—are governed precisely by the number seven. The holy Rishis are governed by the number seven, as are the other holy teachers of the peoples, right down to the seven sages of Greece. The fundamental number of space is twelve. And as time flows out into space, it becomes a revelation through the number twelve. Therefore, the number twelve reigns where time flows out into space. We have twelve tribes in Israel, twelve apostles at the moment when Christ—who had previously revealed Himself in time—flows out into space. What is in time is sequential. Therefore, whatever leads from space into time toward the gods of the Luciferic realm leads into the number seven. If we wish to characterize something according to its essence in this realm, we find this essence when we trace what we are investigating back to its fatherhood. We recognize that which develops in time when we ascend from the later to the earlier, as from the child to the father. As we enter the world of time, which is governed by the number seven, we speak of the children and their origin, of the children of the spiritual beings, of the children of Lucifer. When we extend time into space, we speak of those beings who stand side by side, in whom the act of standing side by side—and thus also the flow of soul impulses from one to the other in space—comes into consideration. Where the number seven is transformed into the number twelve as time flows out into space, the concept of the “child” ceases to have the same supersensible meaning; there the concept of “brotherhood” emerges; those who live side by side are brothers. Thus we ascend in the development of humanity by transforming the important concept of the “sons of the gods” into the concept of “brothers” who live side by side. Brothers and sisters live side by side. Those who are descended from one another live one after the other. Here, at a crucial juncture, we see the transition from the sons or children of the Luciferic realm and its being to the brothers of Christ—a transition we will discuss further tomorrow.