The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] It will be necessary for some of what has already been said in the initial lectures of this series to be repeated in the lectures that follow. After all, certain events in the life of Jesus Christ can only be understood by comparing these two Gospels to some extent.

[ 2 ] What is of primary importance for an inner understanding of the Gospel of Matthew is that the individuality of which this Gospel first tells us, in terms of its physicality, descends from Abraham and, through heredity across three times fourteen generations, carries, so to speak, an essence of the entire cultural heritage of the Abrahamites, the Hebrews, and that for the person engaged in Spiritual Science, this individuality is the very same one we refer to as that of Zoroaster or Zarathustra. Yesterday we described, as it were, the external environment into which that Zoroaster or Zarathustra exerted his influence. It will also be necessary to mention something about the worldviews and ideas that dominated Zarathustra’s circles. For it must be said that in the region within which Zoroaster or Zarathustra worked in ancient times, a worldview flourished that, in its broad outlines, contains something deeply significant. One need only utter a few sentences about what may, after all, be regarded as the teachings of the earliest Zarathustra to point to the deep foundations of the entire post-Atlantean worldview.

[ 3 ] Even from an external historical perspective, we are told that the doctrine within which Zarathustra also worked is based on two principles, which we refer to as the principle of Ormuzd, the good, luminous being, and the principle of Ahriman, the dark, evil being. But at the same time, even in the external presentation of this religious system, it is emphasized that these two principles—Ormuzd or Ahura Mazdao and Ahriman—ultimately trace back to a common principle: Zeruane Akarene.

[ 4 ] What is this unified, so to speak, primordial principle from which the other two principles—which are in conflict with one another in the world—originate? Zeruane Akarene is usually translated as “uncreated time.” One can therefore say: The teachings of Zarathustra ultimately trace back to the primordial principle, in which we must see time itself—calmly flowing along in the course of the world. Yet it is already inherent in the very meaning of the term that one cannot, in turn, ask about the origin of this time, of this cycle of time. - It is important, in particular, to bring this idea clearly to mind: that one can speak of something within the context of the world without being internally justified in, for example, asking again about the causes of such a first principle. After all, people’s external, abstract thinking will hardly ever allow them, whenever a cause is pointed out, to stop asking again and again about the cause of that cause—and thus, as it were, to trace concepts back into eternity. If one truly wishes to stand firm on the ground of Spiritual Science, one must, through thorough meditation, make it clear to oneself that the question of origin, of cause, must come to a halt somewhere, must end somewhere, and that, if one continues to ask about causes beyond a certain point, one is merely engaging in a mental game.

[ 5 ] I pointed out this epistemological fact in my Outline of Esoteric Science. I said: One might well ask, when seeing ruts on a road, where the ruts come from. One can answer: From the wheels of a wagon. One might ask further: Where are the wheels located on the wagon? One might ask, “Why were the ruts made by the wagon?” and receive the answer: “Because it drove down the road.” One might further ask, “Why did it drive down the road?” and receive the answer: “Because it was supposed to carry a person down the road.” - However, by asking these questions, one ultimately arrives at the decisions that led that person to use the car. And if one does not pause to consider that the person had this intention—if one continues to ask about the causes of this intention—then one misses what is truly substantial and gets stuck in a game of questions.

[ 6 ] The same is true of the great questions of worldview. One must anchor oneself somewhere. According to the teachings of Zarathustrianism, one must anchor oneself in time, which flows calmly by. Now, Zoroastrianism divides time itself into two principles—or rather, it derives two principles from it: a good principle, a principle of light, which I was able to describe to you quite concretely yesterday as the Ormuzd principle, and an evil principle, a principle of darkness, the Ahriman principle. Underlying this ancient Persian conception is something truly profoundly significant, namely that all evil, all that is bad in the world—everything that, in its physical form, must be described as dark or gloomy—is not originally evil, dark, or bad. I drew attention precisely to the fact that ancient Persian thought, for example, views the wolf—which in a certain sense represents something wild, something terrible, something upon which the Ahriman principle is at work— views it as having degenerated when it was left to its own devices and the Ahrimanic principle was able to take effect within it—that is, in this sense, the wolf originally descended from a being whose goodness we must not deny. According to the ancient Persian and ancient Aryan view, this lies at the foundation of all becoming: that the bad, the evil, and the wicked arise when something that was good in its former form at an earlier time has retained that form into a later period—that is, instead of changing or progressing, it has preserved the form that was appropriate for an earlier time. The ancient Persian view simply derives all that is bad, dark, and evil from the fact that the form of a being—which was good at an earlier time—has remained as it was into a later period, instead of changing accordingly. And from the clash of such a form of being—carried over from an earlier period into a later one—with that which has progressed, the struggle between good and evil arises. Thus, according to the ancient Persian view, the conflict between good and evil is nothing other than the conflict between that which has its proper form in the present and that which carries its old form into the present. Evil, therefore, is not an absolute evil, but merely a displaced good—something that was good in an earlier time. Thus, evil, which intrudes into the present, appears as an event that preserves an earlier time within the present. Where the earlier and the later have not yet entered into conflict with one another, time still flows undivided, not yet truly separated into its individual moments.

[ 7 ] This is a profoundly significant view that we find here at the root of the first post-Atlantean peoples in Zoroastrianism. And this view—which we can in fact regard as the fundamental principle of Zoroastrianism—encompasses, when considered properly, precisely what we were able to characterize yesterday from a certain perspective, and what we see so strongly evident precisely among those peoples who drew upon the teachings of Zoroaster. We see everywhere among these peoples an understanding of the necessity that these two moments—which have, as it were, grown out of the uniform flow of time—stand opposed to one another within time itself and are overcome only in the course of time. We see the necessity for the new to arise and for the old to be preserved, and that through the balance between the old and the new, the goal of the world—especially the goal of the Earth—will gradually be attained. However, as we have now characterized it, this perspective also underlies all higher development as it emerged within what stems from Zoroastrianism. After Zoroastrianism had established its foothold in those regions during the periods characterized yesterday, it exerted its influence wherever it appeared. And we shall soon see how immeasurably strongly it influenced all subsequent eras. It exerted its influence in such a way that it infused the contrast between the old and the new into everything it brought about. And it exerted a profound influence.

[ 8 ] Zarathustra was able to exert such a profound influence on all subsequent generations because, at the time he had ascended to the highest initiation attainable in his day, he had taken on two disciples. I have already mentioned them. To one he taught everything pertaining to the mysteries of space, which spreads out sensually around us—that is, everything that constitutes the mysteries of simultaneity; then he taught the other disciple everything pertaining to the mysteries of time as it flows by—the mysteries of evolution and development. I have also already pointed out that at a certain point in the relationship between a teacher and such disciples—as existed between these two great disciples and Zarathustra—something very special occurs: that the teacher is able to sacrifice something of his own being for his disciples. And Zarathustra, as he was in his Zarathustra period, sacrificed his own astral body and his own etheric body from his own being for his two disciples. The individuality of Zarathustra—his innermost being—remained preserved within itself for ever-recurring incarnations. “But what was, as it were, Zarathustra’s astral garment—the astral body in which he lived as Zarathustra in the ancient times of post-Atlantean evolution—this astral garment was so perfect, so thoroughly imbued with Zarathustra’s entire being, that it did not disintegrate like other human astral garments, but remained intact. In the course of world-becoming, such human sheaths—held together by the depth of the individuality that bore them—can be preserved. And the astral body of Zarathustra was preserved. And one of the disciples, who had received from Zarathustra the doctrine of space and the mysteries of all that simultaneously permeates our sensory perception—this disciple was reborn into the personality known in history as Thoth or Hermes the Egyptian. This reincarnated disciple of Zarathustra, who was destined—as occult research teaches—to become that Egyptian Hermes or ‘Thoth,’ was not only to consolidate within himself all that he had received from Zarathustra in a previous incarnation, but also to bring it to stability by having the preserved astral body of Zarathustra himself incorporated, infused, and filtered into him in the manner made possible by the sacred mysteries. Thus the individuality of this disciple of Zarathustra was reborn as the inaugurator of Egyptian culture, and the astral body of Zarathustra himself was incorporated into this Hermes or Thoth. We thus have a direct link to the Zarathustra being in the Egyptian Hermes. And through this link, and through what he had brought with him from his time as a disciple of Zarathustra, Hermes brought about everything that is great and significant in Egyptian culture.

[ 9 ] For something like this—what happened through this missionary, this messenger of Zarathustra—to occur, a corresponding cultural tradition naturally had to be in place. Only among these peoples—where there were people who had migrated from the Atlantic regions via the more southerly route and settled in East Africa, and who had preserved much of their Atlantic form of clairvoyance—only there could what Hermes, the disciple of Zarathustra, was able to plant find fertile ground. There, the nature of the soul among the Egyptian people converged with what Hermes had to offer, and thus Egyptian culture took shape.

[ 10 ] This was indeed a very special kind of culture. Just think of all that had been handed down to Hermes by his teacher Zarathustra as a precious treasure: the mysteries of simultaneous coexistence in space. Through this, Hermes possessed, in his very essence, the very most important thing that Zarathustra had mastered. We have often pointed out that one of the most characteristic features of Zarathustra’s teaching was that he directed his followers’ attention to the body of the sun—to the outer light and the outer physical light body of the sun—and showed them how this solar body is merely the outer shell of a high spiritual being. Thus, what lies at the foundation of all nature as a being throughout the realms—what exists simultaneously yet, through time, continually progresses from epoch to epoch and manifests anew in each specific epoch—this is what Zarathustra had entrusted to Hermes in connection with his mysteries. Hermes mastered that which emanates from the Sun and continues to develop from the Sun. He was able to implant this into the souls of those who had come over from the Atlantean population, because these souls, as if by natural gifts, had once themselves delved into the mysteries of the Sun and had preserved some of this in their memory. After all, everything was developing in a progressive line. Both the souls of those who were to receive the wisdom of Hermes developed in a progressive manner, just as Hermes himself did. The situation was different for Zarathustra’s second disciple. He had received those mysteries that pertain to the course of time, and he therefore had to receive as well what stands within them as the convergence of the old and the young—as something contradictory and polarizing in evolution. But Zarathustra had also sacrificed a part of his own being for this disciple, so that this second disciple, too, could receive Zarathustra’s sacrifice at the time of his rebirth. Thus, while Zarathustra’s individuality was preserved, his physical forms were separated from him; yet because they were held together by such a powerful individuality, they remained intact and did not disintegrate. This second disciple, who had received the wisdom of time—as opposed to the wisdom of space—received, at a certain point in his reincarnation, the etheric body of Zarathustra, which Zarathustra had sacrificed just as he had sacrificed his astral body. This reborn disciple of Zarathustra is none other than Moses. In very early childhood, Moses received the preserved etheric body of Zarathustra, which was incorporated into him. In a mysterious way, the religious texts that are truly grounded in occultism contain everything that can point us toward such mysteries as occult research teaches us. If Moses was the reincarnated disciple of Zarathustra and was to receive Zarathustra’s preserved etheric body, then something very special had to happen to him. Before he could receive the corresponding impressions from his surroundings like any other human being—before the impressions of the external world could descend into his individuality—what he was to receive as a miraculous heirloom from Zarathustra had to be infused into his being. This is recounted in that symbolism: that he was placed in a small box and cast into the river, which appears to be a strange kind of initiation. An initiation, after all, consists in a person being cut off from the outside world for a certain time, during which what he is to receive is infused into him. So at that time, when Moses was thus isolated, the preserved etheric body of Zarathustra could be incorporated into him at a specific moment. Then that wondrous wisdom of the ages—which Zarathustra had once imparted to him, with which he was now endowed, and which he was able to bring forth by depicting, one after another, the wisdom of the times in images suited once more to his people—could blossom within him. Thus, in Moses, the great images of Genesis can appear to us as outward manifestations of the wisdom of the ages that originated with Zarathustra. They were the reborn knowledge, the reborn wisdom, that he had received from Zarathustra. This was now firmly established within him because he himself had received Zarathustra’s etheric body.

[ 11 ] But in a process so significant for the development of humanity, it is not only necessary that an Initiate be present as the inaugurator of a cultural movement; it is also necessary that what such a great individuality has to plant as a cultural seed be able to take root in the appropriate—that is, suitable—national soil. And if we wish to consider the national seed, the national foundation, into which Moses was able to plant what had been entrusted to him by Zarathustra, it is helpful for us to examine a certain distinctive feature of the wisdom of Moses itself.

[ 12 ] Moses was thus a disciple of Zarathustra in a previous incarnation. At that time, he received the wisdom of the ages and that mystery which we have alluded to—namely, that in every age, something earlier clashes with something later, thereby giving rise to a contrast. If Moses were to step into the course of human evolution with this wisdom, then he himself would have to step into that evolution as a counterpoint with a wisdom of a different kind than the wisdom of Hermes. That is what happened. We can say: Hermes received direct wisdom from Zarathustra—so to speak, the wisdom of the Sun—that is, the knowledge of what lives mysteriously and essentially within the outer physical shell of light and the solar body; in other words, that which follows a direct path. Moses was different. Moses had received the kind of wisdom that human beings preserve more in the denser etheric body than in the astral body. He had received the wisdom that not only looks up to the sun and asks what flows forth from the solar being, but also comprehends what stands in opposition to the sunlight, to the sun’s radiance; which processes within itself—though it does not allow itself to be corrupted by it—that which has become earthly, that which has become dense, that which rises out of the earth as the aged, as the solidified: earthly wisdom, then, which though it lives within solar wisdom, is nonetheless earthly wisdom. Moses had received the mysteries of becoming earthly—of the way in which human beings develop on Earth and how earthly substance evolved when the Sun separated from the Earth. But this is precisely what explains—when we now consider the matter not externally but internally—why we encounter in the Hermetic teachings something that appears to be a stark contrast to the wisdom of Moses.

[ 13 ] There are, however, certain contemporary views that approach such matters according to the principle: “All cows are gray at night!” They then see only the same thing everywhere and are quite delighted when, for example, they find the same thing in Hermestum as in Mosestum: a trinity here, a trinity there, a quaternity here, and a quaternity there. But that doesn’t get us very far. For that would be roughly the same as if someone wanted to train another person to be a botanist and did not teach them the differences—such as what distinguishes the rose from the carnation—but merely pointed out what is the same in both. That won’t get us anywhere. We must know how the essences differ, and likewise the forms of wisdom. And so we must also know that the wisdom of Moses was entirely different from the wisdom of Hermes. Both did indeed originate with Zarathustra; but just as unity divides and manifests itself in various ways, so too did Zarathustra give two of his disciples revelations that were so different from one another.

[ 14 ] When we allow the wisdom of Hermes to take effect within us, we find everything that brings light to our world, everything that shows us the origin of the world and how light works within it. But we do not find in Hermetic wisdom the concepts that simultaneously show us how, in all becoming, an earlier stage influences a later one, how the past thereby comes into conflict with the present, and how darkness opposes the light. Earth wisdom, which enables us to understand how the Earth has developed alongside humanity since its separation from the Sun—this is, in essence, not at all contained within Hermetic wisdom. Yet this, in particular, should be the mission of Mosaic wisdom: to make the Earth’s development following its separation from the Sun comprehensible to humanity. Earth wisdom is what Moses was to bring; solar wisdom, what Hermes was to bring. Thus, in Moses—as he recalls all that he received from Zarathustra—the process of becoming earthly, the earthly evolution of humankind, is illuminated. He proceeds, as it were, from the earthly. But this earthly realm is, after all, separated from the Sun; it contains, in a certain sense, a shadowed aspect of the solar. The earthly comes to meet him and encounters the solar. Therefore, the earthly wisdom of Moses and the solar wisdom of Hermes indeed had to meet in concrete existence. These two currents had to collide. This is wonderfully illustrated to us in its reality, even outwardly, in the clash between Moses and his initiation with the wisdom of Hermes. In his birth in Egypt, in the migration of his people to Egypt, and in the clash between the people of Moses and the Egyptian people of Hermes lies the outward reflection of the clash between solar wisdom and earthly wisdom—as both originate from Zarathustra, yet flow across the Earth in entirely different currents of evolution, and must interact and converge.

[ 15 ] Now, a certain wisdom—which is connected to the methods of the Mysteries—always expresses itself in a very special way regarding the deepest mysteries of human life and of all other events. I already pointed this out in Munich during the lectures on the “Secrets of the Biblical Creation Story”: when it comes to these great truths—which encompass not only human beings in their deepest mysteries but also the facts of the world in general—it is extraordinarily difficult to express such things in any common, external language. Our words are truly often a shackle to us, for they have their own concise meaning, which has been established for them over long periods of time. And when we approach language with the great wisdom that reveals itself to us in our soul and seek to pour into words what is revealed to us inwardly, a struggle arises against this feeble instrument of language, which is truly, in a certain sense, enormously inadequate.

[ 16 ] The greatest triviality ever uttered in the course of the 19th century—and indeed in modern culture as a whole—but which has been repeated countless times in the age of blotting paper, is this: that every real truth must be capable of being expressed in a simple manner, and that language, with its forms of expression, is virtually a yardstick for determining whether someone possesses any truth at all. But this statement is merely an expression of the fact that those who utter it are not in possession of the actual truth, but only of those truths that have been conveyed to them through language over the course of centuries, and which they merely reshape slightly. For such people, language is sufficient, and they do not feel the struggle that one must sometimes wage with language. Yet this struggle confronts us all too vividly whenever something great and powerful needs to be said.

[ 17 ] I already pointed out in Munich how, in the Rosicrucian mystery play The Gate of Initiation, the end of the first scene in the “Meditation Room” presented a difficult struggle with language. What the Hierophant was meant to say to the disciple there is something that could only be poured into the feeble instrument of language to the very slightest degree.

[ 18 ] Yet it was precisely the deepest mysteries that were expressed in the sacred mysteries. Therefore, in the mysteries, people have always felt how feeble a tool language is, and how unsuitable it is for conveying images of what one actually wants to say. Hence the age-old quest within the Mysteries for means of expression for what the soul experienced inwardly. And the means of expression that proved to be the weakest were those that human beings had preserved for centuries for external use and social interaction. In contrast, the images that arose when one cast one’s gaze out into the vastness of space proved to be suitable: the constellations, the rising of a particular star at a certain moment, the occultation of one star by another at a specific moment. In short, the images that arose in this way could be put to good use to express what takes place in a certain way within the human soul. I will briefly characterize this.

[ 19 ] Let us suppose that, at a certain point in time, a great event was to take place because a human soul had, at that moment, matured enough to experience something great and to convey this to the peoples; or, to put it another way, that the people in question—or even a whole segment of humanity—had attained a special state of maturity and had risen to a certain stage in evolution, and to show how an individuality emerged within this people, perhaps from an entirely different perspective. Thus, the culmination of this individuality’s development coincided with the culmination of the Folk-souls’ development, and it was this coincidence that one wished to express in all its uniqueness. Nothing that could be said in such a case through language seemed grand enough to convey the significance of such an event to our sense of feeling. Therefore, it was expressed in this way: The coincidence of the highest strength of a single individual with the highest strength of a single Folk-soul is like when the sun stands in the constellation of Leo and shines its light upon us from there. The image of the lion was taken to depict, in a figurative expression, what was to be indicated in terms of its strength in the evolution of humanity. What presented itself outwardly in the cosmos became a means of expressing what is taking place within humanity. From this source sprang the expressions used in human history, which were drawn from the course of the stars. These were means of expressing the spiritual realities within humanity.

[ 20 ] When people speak of such things—for example, that the sun is in the sign of Leo, and that a celestial event, such as the sun’s alignment with a particular constellation, symbolically represents an event in human evolution— then it may well be that the trivial-minded reverse this and believe that all events relating to human history were once mythically cloaked in occurrences derived from the stars, whereas in truth, what was taking place within humanity was expressed by drawing upon images from the constellations. In truth, the correct view is always the opposite of what the trivial-minded love.

[ 21 ] This connection with the cosmos is something that should fill us with a certain sense of awe toward everything we are told about the great events of human evolution, and toward what is expressed in the images drawn from cosmic existence. Yet there is indeed a secret connection between the entire cosmic existence and what takes place in human life. What happens on Earth is a reflection of what happens in the cosmos.

[ 22 ] Thus, the contrast between the solar wisdom of Hermes and the earthly wisdom of Moses, as expressed in Egypt, is in a certain sense a reflection, a mirror image, of the workings of the cosmos outside. Imagine certain effects radiating from the sun toward the earth and other effects radiating back from the earth into outer space; it will not be irrelevant where these two effects meet in space; rather, depending on whether they meet closer or farther apart, the effect of the collision of the emitted and reflected rays will also be different. Now, in ancient Egypt, the collision of Hermes’ wisdom with Moses’ wisdom was depicted in the mysteries in such a way that it could be compared to something that, according to our Spiritual Science cosmology, had essentially already existed in the cosmos. We know that originally a separation took place between the Sun and the Earth, that the Earth was then connected to the Moon for a time, and that a part of the Earth then moved out into space and returned to us as our present-day Moon. Thus, the Earth sent a part of itself back into outer space as the Moon, toward the Sun. Just as this “radiation” from the Earth toward the Sun, so too was the unique process that occurred when the Earth-wisdom of Moses encountered the Sun-wisdom of Hermes in Egyptian culture.

[ 23 ] In its further development, the wisdom of Moses was something that can be said to have evolved as the science of the Earth and of humanity—that is, as Earth wisdom—following the separation from solar wisdom; yet it did so in such a way that it grew toward the Sun and absorbed what came from the Sun as direct wisdom, which now permeated it. But it was only to be imbued with direct solar wisdom to a certain degree; then it was to proceed on its own and develop independently. Therefore, the wisdom of Moses remained in Egypt only until it had sufficiently absorbed what it needed; then the “Exodus of the Children of Moses from Egypt” took place, so that what had been absorbed from solar wisdom into Earth wisdom could be assimilated and now carried forward independently.

[ 24 ] We must therefore distinguish two phases within the Wisdom of Moses: a phase in which the Wisdom of Moses develops within the bosom of the Wisdom of Hermes, as it were, surrounded by it on all sides and constantly absorbing the Wisdom of Hermes; then it separates from it and develops independently of it after the Exodus from Egypt, further developing the Hermetic wisdom within its own bosom and reaching three stages in this further development. Where is the wisdom of Moses to develop? What is its task?—Its task is to find its way back to the Sun. It has become earthly wisdom. Moses is born with what Zarathustra has given him as an earthly sage. He is to find his way back. And he seeks it again through his various stages, first imbuing himself with the wisdom of Hermes; then he continues to develop. What he experiences on this path can best be illustrated through images of cosmic processes. When what happens on Earth radiates back into space, it first encounters Mercury on its way to the Sun. We know, of course, that what is called Venus in ordinary astronomy is called Mercury in occult terminology, and likewise, what is ordinarily called Mercury is Venus in the occult sense. Thus, when one travels from Earth toward the Sun, one first encounters the Mercury-like, then, further along the path, the Venus-like, and finally the Sun-like. Therefore, in his inner soul processes, Moses had to develop what he had inherited from Zarathustra in such a way that, upon retreating, it could once again find the Sun-like. It therefore had to develop to a certain degree. What he planted as wisdom in worldly culture had to develop in the way that was given to his people. Therefore, his path was such that he redeveloped what Hermes had brought directly—as if in rays emanating from the Sun—on the return journey, in reverse, after he had first absorbed something of Hermes’ wisdom.

[ 25 ] Now we are told that Hermes—who was later called Mercury and Thoth—brought art and science to his people: knowledge of the external world and the arts of the material world, in a form that his people could use. In a different way, as it were, the opposite, Moses himself was to advance to this Hermes-Mercury stage, developing the wisdom of Hermes in a retrograde manner. This is illustrated in the progression of the Hebrew people up to the era and reign of David, who appears to us as the royal psalmist, as a divine prophet who acted as a man of God, as a sword-bearer, and also as a “player of musical instruments.” David, the Hermes, the Mercury of the Hebrew people—this is how he is portrayed to us. The current of Hebrew folk tradition has now progressed so far that it has produced an independent Hermetic or Mercurial tradition. The absorbed Hermetic wisdom had thus reached the realm of Mercury by the Davidic era.

[ 26 ] The wisdom of Moses was to proceed along the retrograde path to the point where the Venus region is, if one may put it that way. The Venus region came into play for Hebrew culture at that time when the wisdom of Moses—that is, what had flowed down through the centuries as this wisdom of Moses—had to unite with a completely different element, with a stream of wisdom that had, as it were, radiated from the other side. Just as what radiates back from the Earth into space meets Venus at a certain point on its path toward the Sun, so the wisdom of Moses converged with what had radiated over from the other side of Asia during the Babylonian captivity. The wisdom of the Hebrew people, in its particular development, converged during the Babylonian Exile with what manifested itself, as it were, in a weakened form in the mysteries of Babylon and Chaldea. Just as if a traveler, having set out from the Earth and knowing what is on Earth, had passed through the region of Mercury and arrived in the region of Venus to receive the sunlight falling upon Venus, so too did the wisdom of Moses receive that which had emanated directly from the sanctuaries of Zoroastrianism and had been perpetuated in a diminished form in the mysteries and wisdom traditions of the Chaldeans and Babylonians. This is what the wisdom of Moses received during the Babylonian Exile. There, the wisdom of Moses united with that which had spread as far as the regions of the Euphrates and Tigris.

[ 27 ] Then something else happened. In fact, Moses had encountered that which had once emanated from the sun. Moses—not he himself, but what he had bequeathed to his people through his wisdom—converged in the places where Hebrew wisdom had to take root during the Babylonian captivity; it converged directly with the solar aspect of that wisdom. For during that time, in the mystery schools along the Euphrates and Tigris—with which the Hebrew sages had become acquainted—the reincarnated Zarathustra taught. Around the time of the Babylonian Captivity, Zarathustra himself was incarnated, and there he taught, having given up a part of his wisdom in order to receive a part of it back. He himself incarnated time and again, and thus, in his incarnation as Zarathas or Nazarathos, became the teacher of the Jews who had been led into the Babylonian Captivity and who became acquainted with the sanctuaries of those regions.

[ 28 ] Thus, the Wisdom of Moses, in its continuous flow and stream, came together with what Zarathustra himself had become after he had been drawn from the more remote mystery sites to the sites of the Near East. For there he became the teacher of the initiated disciples of Chaldea—both individual initiated teachers and the teachers of those who now received the enrichment of their Mosaic wisdom through that stream which could meet them by enabling them to from Zarathustra himself in his incarnation as Zarathas or Nazarathos. Such were the vicissitudes the wisdom of Moses had endured. It had, in fact, originated with Zarathustra; it had been transplanted into a foreign land. It was as if a solar being, blindfolded, had been carried down to Earth and now, on the return journey, had to search once more for everything it had lost.

[ 29 ] Thus Moses was the disciple of Zarathustra. He found himself, in his existence within Egyptian culture, in such a way that everything Zarathustra had once given him shone forth within him. But it was as if he did not know where it was coming from, shining upon him as he stood apart on the island of the Earth. And he set out to meet that which had once been the Sun. Within Egypt, he set out to meet the wisdom of Hermes, which conveyed the wisdom of Zarathustra directly, not through the reflective path that Moses had taken. And after he had absorbed enough of it, the stream of Moses’ wisdom continued to develop directly. And by establishing, in the Davidic age, a direct Hermetic tradition—a science and art of its own—he moved toward the sun from which he had originated, in a form in which he first had to appear veiled.

[ 30 ] In the ancient Babylonian schools, where he was also Pythagoras’s teacher, Zarathustra could teach only as it is possible to teach within a particular body, since one is dependent on the tools of that body. If Zarathustra was to express the full solar nature—which he had once expressed and transmitted to Hermes and Moses—in a new form appropriate to the progress of the times, then he had to have a physical form that was a worthy instrument, one appropriate to the advanced age. Only in a form conditioned by a body, such as had been brought forth in ancient Babylon, could Zarathustra once again bring forth all that he was able to impart to Pythagoras, to the Hebrew scholars, and to the Chaldean and Babylonian sages who, back in the 6th century B.C., were capable of hearing him. What Zarathustra could teach was truly like sunlight that is first reflected by Venus and cannot reach the Earth directly; it was as if the wisdom of Zarathustra could not manifest itself in its most authentic form, but only in a diminished form. For the wisdom of Zarathustra to be effective in its true form, Zarathustra first had to surround himself with a suitable body. This suitable body could only come into being in a very unique way, which might be characterized as follows:

[ 31 ] Yesterday we said that there were three different types of national souls in Asia: the Indian in the south, the Iranian, and the North Asian-Turanian. We pointed out that these three types of national souls arose as a result of the northern stream of the Atlantean population moving into Asia and radiating out from there. Another stream, however, passed through Africa and sent its final offshoots all the way into the Turanian element. And where the northern stream, which moved from Atlantis to Asia, and the other current, which spread from Atlantis through Africa, converged, a peculiar mixture arose; there a national character took shape from which the later Hebrew people emerged. Something quite extraordinary happened with this national character. Everything we have described—that which, as a form of astral-etheric clairvoyance, had been left behind in a state of decline among certain peoples and had become a source of harm by manifesting as external clairvoyance in a final phase—all of this turned inward within those people who became the Hebrew nation. It took a completely different direction. Instead of manifesting externally as the remnants of the old Atlantean clairvoyance in the form of a lower astral clairvoyance, it appeared among this people in such a way that it exerted an organizing influence within the body. What was outwardly somewhat decadent—what, precisely because it had remained conservative, had become a decadent element of clairvoyance, something permeated by an Ahrimanic element—had, in the true sense, progressed by becoming a force active within the human being, a force that organized from within. Among the Hebrew people, it did not play itself out in a backward form of clairvoyance, but rather reorganized physicality and thereby consciously made it more perfect. Everything that was decadent in Turanian culture had a progressive and transforming effect on the Hebrew people.

[ 32 ] That is why we may say: In the physicality of the Hebrew people—which had been passed down through heredity in blood kinship from generation to generation—everything was at work that had fulfilled its time as external perception, that was no longer to be external perception, and that was to move to a different arena in order to be in its proper element. What had given the Atlanteans the power to gaze spiritually into space and into spiritual realms—and what had become atavistic among the Turanians as a remnant of clairvoyance—all of this worked within this small Hebrew people in such a way that it turned inward. Everything that was divine and spiritual in Atlantean culture worked within the Hebrew people, forming organs, shaping the physical body, and was thus able to flash forth within the blood of the Hebrew people as the divine consciousness within. It was as if, for the Hebrew people, everything that the Atlantean had seen when he cast his clairvoyant gaze in all directions of space—as if that had occurred—had turned entirely inward, into the innermost core as the organ consciousness of the Hebrew people, as the Yahweh or Jehovah consciousness, as the consciousness of God within. United with its blood, this people found the God who was spread out in space; it found itself permeated, imbued with the God who was spread out in space, and it knew that this God lives within it, in the pulsation of its blood.

[ 33 ] Thus, by contrasting Iranian culture and Turanian culture on the one hand—as we characterized them yesterday—and by now contrasting Turanian culture and Hebrew culture on the other, we see that which is decadent in the Turanians pulsating in the blood of the Hebrew people, in its progress and in its very essence, as it was destined to be later. Thus, felt inwardly, everything that the Atlantean saw comes to life. And it is summed up in a single word: the word Yahweh or Jehovah. As if compressed into a single point, as if into a single center of divine consciousness, it lives on through the generations of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and so on, in the blood of the generations—invisible but inwardly felt—the God who had revealed Himself behind all beings to Atlantean clairvoyance, who was now the God in the blood of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and guided these generations from destiny to destiny. In this way, the external had become internal; it was experienced, no longer beheld, and it was no longer designated by various individual names, but by a single name: “I am the I-Am!” It had taken on an entirely different form. Whereas in the Atlantean era, human beings found it everywhere it was not—out there in the world—they now found it where their center lay, within their own “I,” and felt it in the blood flowing through the generations. That God of the Hebrew people—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who flows through the blood across the generations—has now become the great God of the world.

[ 34 ] This is how that national character is founded, which we will examine tomorrow in terms of its unique inner mission for human evolution. Today we have been able to hint only at the very first aspect of this people’s blood constitution, in which is condensed within everything that humanity once allowed to penetrate from the outside during the Atlantean era. We will see what mysteries are unfolding in what has thus been merely touched upon, and we will come to know the unique nature of that people from whom Zarathustra was able to take his physical form to become the being we call Jesus of Nazareth.