The Rudolf Steiner Archive

First Lecture

[ 1 ] In spiritual science, the further one descends from general conditions to specific, concrete details, the more difficult the truths and insights become. You may have already noticed this when various working groups attempted to speak in historical detail, for example, about the reincarnations of the great leader of the Persian religion, Zarathustra—when the connection between Zarathustra and Moses, Hermes, and also Jesus of Nazareth was discussed. Concrete historical questions have, of course, been touched upon on other occasions as well. One descends from matters regarding which the human heart still accepts this or that improbable element with relative ease into realms full of improbabilities as soon as one descends from the great truths about the world’s spiritual permeation and interweaving, from the great laws of the world to the spiritual nature of a single individuality, a single personality. And for those who are not yet sufficiently prepared, disbelief generally begins at this abyss between general and particular truths.

[ 2 ] Now, in the lectures—to which today’s reflection is intended to serve as a kind of introduction—that are devoted to occult history and deal with historical facts and figures in the light of spiritual science, I have many strange things to say. You will hear many strange things that will have to rely on your goodwill—that goodwill which has been cultivated by all the spiritual-scientific insights that have passed through your soul over the years. For that is indeed the most beautiful, the most significant fruit we gain from the spiritual worldview: that, however complex, however elaborately developed in detail the insights we gain may be, in the end we do not merely have before us a sum of dogmas, but that through this spiritual-scientific approach we possess within ourselves, in our hearts, in our minds, something that lifts us beyond the perspective we might otherwise gain through any other worldview. We do not take in dogmas, doctrines, or mere knowledge, but through our insights we become different people. In a certain sense, such branches of spiritual science as those we are now about to consider require an understanding of the soul, not an intellectual understanding—an understanding of the soul that in many places may even have to be open to hearing and accepting hints that would become crude or brutal if one were to force them into overly sharp contours. What I would like to help you envision is that throughout the entire, including historical, process of human development across the various millennia up to the present day, behind all human becoming and human events stand spiritual beings, spiritual individualities, as guides, as leaders, and that for the greatest, for the most important facts of the historical course, this or that human being, with his whole soul, with his whole being, appears as an instrument of the individualities standing behind him, working with a plan. But we must acquire various concepts that are not part of ordinary life if we are to understand the remarkable, mysterious connections between the earlier and later phases of historical development.

[ 3 ] If you recall some of what has been said over the years, it may occur to you that in ancient times—including the era of post-Atlantean cultural development—if we go back just a few millennia before what we usually call “historical times,” people experienced more or less abnormal clairvoyant states; that between what we today call sober wakefulness—limited solely to the physical world—and the unconscious state of sleep with its dubious realm of dreams, there was a realm of consciousness through which human beings plunged into a spiritual reality. And what is today interpreted by scholars—who scientifically fabricate so many myths and legends—as the poetic imagination of the people, we know that it in truth leads back to ancient clairvoyance, to clairvoyant states of the human soul, which in those times saw beyond physical existence and expressed what was thus seen in the images of myth, as well as in fairy tales and legends. So that truly, when we have before us ancient—and I mean truly ancient—myths, fairy tales, and legends, we can find more insight, more wisdom, and more truth in them than in our present-day abstract scholarship and science. So, to speak, we look back upon a clairvoyant human being when we turn our gaze to very ancient times, and we know that this clairvoyance has been diminishing more and more among the various peoples of different eras. Today, during the lecture at the Christmas celebration, I was even able to point out how, in Europe, remnants of the old clairvoyance were still present to a relatively great extent until quite late. The extinction of clairvoyance and the emergence of consciousness limited to the physical plane took place at different times among different peoples.

[ 4 ] You can now imagine that throughout the cultural epochs we have listed following the great Atlantean catastrophe—through the ancient Indian, ancient Persian, Egyptian-Chaldean, Greek-Latin, and our own cultural epochs—human beings had to act, so to speak, in the most diverse ways on the stage of world history, because they were connected to the spiritual world in various ways. If we go back to the Persian, and even to the Egyptian-Chaldean, era, what the human being felt and experienced in his soul, so to speak, reached up into the spiritual worlds, and spiritual forces played a part in his soul. What was then a living connection between the human soul and the spiritual worlds essentially ceases only in the fourth, the Greco-Roman period, and it has only completely disappeared in our time. In our time, this connection exists in external history only where, using the means available to people today, a conscious effort is made to reestablish the link between what lives in the human soul and the spiritual and spiritual worlds. Thus, in ancient times, when a person looked into their soul, that soul contained not only what it had learned from the physical world, what it had conceived based on the things of the physical world, but what we have described, for example, as spiritual hierarchies rising above humanity into the spiritual worlds lived directly within it. This worked down through the instrument of the human soul onto the physical plane, and people knew themselves to be in connection with these individualities of the higher hierarchies. If we look back, for my sake, to the Egyptian-Chaldean era—though we must take the earlier periods there—we have human beings who are, so to speak, historical figures; but we do not understand them if we regard them as historical figures in the sense we do today.

[ 5 ] When we speak today of historical figures, we—as people of the materialistic age—are convinced that it is only the impulses and intentions of those figures that have an impact throughout history. Thus, we can essentially only understand people from the past three millennia—that is, at best, the people of the millennium that ends with the birth of Jesus Christ, and then the people of the first and second Christian millennia, in which we ourselves live. Plato, Socrates, perhaps also Thales and Pericles—these are people whom we can, at best, still understand as being similar to us. But if we go further back, the possibility of understanding people ceases if we seek to understand them solely through analogy with people of the present. Thus, for example, the Egyptian Hermes, the great teacher of Egyptian culture, can no longer be understood, nor can Zarathustra, nor even Moses. If we go back beyond the millennium preceding the Christian era, we must expect that wherever we are dealing with historical figures, higher individualities and higher hierarchies stand behind them, so to speak, taking possession of these figures—in the best sense of the word, however. Now a peculiar phenomenon presents itself, without knowledge of which we cannot understand the historical course of events.

[ 6 ] We have identified five distinct periods up to the present day. So we have the first post-Atlantean cultural epoch, stretching far back through the millennia, the Indian epoch; we have the second, the ancient Persian; the third, the Egyptian-Chaldean; the fourth, the Greco-Latin; and the fifth, our own epoch. Even when we move back from the Greco-Latin character to the Egyptian, we must make this transition in our historical perspective: instead of a purely human perspective—which can at best still serve us when considering the figures of the Greek world up to the Heroic Age—we must apply a different standard, so that we begin to seek behind the individual personalities the spiritual forces that represent the superpersonal and that work through the personalities as their instruments. We must perceive these spiritual individualities with the soul’s eye, so that we might literally see a human being standing on the physical plane, and behind him, actively at work, a being of the higher hierarchies who, as it were, holds this human being from behind and places him in the position he is meant to occupy within the development of humanity.

[ 7 ] Now, it is interesting enough in itself to examine, from this perspective, the connections between the truly significant events—the historically defining events of the Egyptian-Chaldean era and the Greek-Latin era. These are two successive cultural epochs, and we will first go back, let us say, to the years 2800, 3200, and 3500 B.C., which is not very far back at all, relatively speaking. Nevertheless, we will not understand what happened there—what ancient history already reveals to some extent even today; we will only understand it when we see the higher individualities behind the historical figures. Then, however, it becomes further apparent to us that we have a kind of repetition of all the important things that happened in the third epoch in the fourth, the Greek-Latin epoch. It is almost as if, so to speak, what can be explained by higher laws for the preceding epoch can be explained by laws of the physical world for the following one; as if it had descended, coarsened by one degree, become more physical: a kind of reflection in the physical world reveals itself to us for the great events of the preceding epochs.

[ 8 ] I would like to offer you an introduction today and would therefore like to point out how a significant myth presents us with one of the most important facts of the Egyptian-Chaldean period; and how this event is then reflected, though on a lower level, in the Greco-Latin period. So I would like to present two parallel facts that are connected in an occult relationship; one standing, as it were, half a plane higher, and the other standing entirely on the physical earth, but as a kind of physicalized shadow image of a spiritual event from the earlier epoch. Externally, humanity has always been able to recount such events—where powers of the higher hierarchies stand behind them—only through myths. But we shall see what lies precisely behind the myth that describes to us the most significant event extending from the Chaldean era. Let us simply consider the main features of the myth.

[ 9 ] This myth tells the following story: Once upon a time, there was a great king named Gilgamesh. But even from the name alone, anyone capable of judging such names can see that we are not dealing merely with a physical king, but with a deity behind him, with a spiritual individuality behind him, by which the king of Erek was possessed and through which it worked. So we are dealing with what we must call, in the real sense, a god-man. He oppresses the city of Erek, we are told. The city of Erek turns to its deity Aruru, and this deity brings forth a helper: this hero springs forth from the earth. These, then, are the images of the myth; we shall see what depths of historical events lie behind this myth. The deity brings forth from the earth Eabani, a kind of human being who, in comparison to Gilgamesh, appears as a lower being, for it is told that he wore animal skins, that he was covered with hair, that he was like a savage; but in his savagery lived a divine spirit, ancient clairvoyance, clear knowledge, ancient insight.

[ 10 ] Eabani meets a woman from Erek, and this draws him to the city. He becomes friends with Gilgamesh, and as a result, peace comes to the city. Now they both rule together, Gilgamesh and Eabani. Then the city goddess Ishtar is stolen from the city of Eabani and Gilgamesh by a neighboring city. They both launch a military campaign against the raiding city. They defeat the king and win back the city goddess. Now the city goddess has returned to Erech; Gilgamesh lives opposite her, and here we encounter the peculiarity that Gilgamesh has no understanding of the city goddess’s unique nature. A scene now unfolds that immediately brings to mind a biblical scene from the Gospel of John. Gilgamesh stands before Ishtar. He behaves differently, however, from Jesus Christ; he reproaches the city goddess for having loved many other men before she stood before him. In particular, he reproaches her for her relationship with the last one. Thereupon she goes to complain to the deity, to the being of the higher hierarchies, to whom she, the city goddess, is assigned: she goes to Anu. And now Anu sends a bull down to earth; Gilgamesh must fight this bull. Anyone who recalls Mithras fighting the bull will find an echo of that here, where the bull sent down by Anu must be fought by Gilgamesh. All these events have—and we shall see, when we explain the myth, what depths lie within them—now led to the point where Eabani has since died. Gilgamesh is now alone. A thought occurs to him that terribly gnaws at his soul. Under the impression of what he has just experienced, he first becomes aware of the fact that man is, after all, mortal. A thought he had not considered before now confronts his soul in all its horror. And then he hears of the only human on Earth who has remained immortal, while all other humans in the post-Atlantean era have attained the awareness of mortality: he hears of the immortal Xisuthros far away in the West. Now, because he wishes to explore the mysteries of life and death, he undertakes the arduous journey to the West. — Even today I can say: This journey to the West is none other than the journey to the mysteries of ancient Atlantis, to the events that lie before the great Atlantean catastrophe.

[ 11 ] Gilgamesh sets out on his journey there. It is very interesting that he must pass through a gate guarded by giant scorpions, that the spirit leads him into the realm of death, that he enters the realm of Xisuthros, and that in this realm of Xisuthros he learns that all human beings must become increasingly imbued with the awareness of death in the post-Atlantean era. Now he asks Xisuthros where he has gained knowledge of his eternal core, why he is imbued with the consciousness of immortality. Then Xisuthros says to him: You can become that too, but you must relive what I had to go through—all the overcoming of fear, anxiety, and loneliness that I had to endure. When the god Ea had decided—in what we call the Atlantean catastrophe—to let perish that which was not to live on from humanity, he instructed me to withdraw into a kind of ship. I was to take aboard the animals that were to remain, and those individualities who are truly called the Masters. With this ship I survived the great catastrophe. Thus Xisuthros told Gilgamesh, and said: What has been endured there, you can only experience within yourself. Through this, however, you can attain the consciousness of immortality if you do not sleep for seven nights and six days. — Gilgamesh wishes to undergo this trial, but falls asleep very soon. Then Xisuthros’s wife bakes seven mystical loaves of bread; by eating them, they are meant to replace what should have been achieved during the seven nights and six days. Now Gilgamesh continues on his way with this kind of elixir of life and undergoes something like a bath in the Fountain of Youth, and returns to the coast of his homeland, which lies near the Euphrates and Tigris. There, the power of the elixir of life is taken from him by a serpent, and so he returns to his land without the elixir, yet with the awareness that immortality exists and filled with a longing to at least see the spirit of Eabani. Eabani now actually appears to him, and from the conversation that ensues, we learn how, so to speak, the awareness of the connection with the spiritual world could emerge for the culture of the Egyptian-Chaldean era. This relationship between Gilgamesh and Eabani is important.

[ 12 ] I have now, so to speak, presented you with images from a myth—the significant Gilgamesh myth—the myth that, as we shall see, will lead us into the spiritual depths that lie beyond the Chaldean-Babylonian cultural period. I wanted to present these images to you, which will show you that there are, so to speak, two individualities: the individuality of a being who has a divine-spiritual being within him: Gilgamesh—and one that is more human, but in such a way that we might call it a young soul that has undergone only a few incarnations and has therefore carried ancient clairvoyance into later times: Eabani.

[ 13 ] Externally, this Eabani is depicted as being clad in animal skins. This suggests his wildness; but it is precisely through this wildness that he is still endowed with ancient clairvoyance on the one hand, and on the other hand, he is a young soul who has lived through far fewer incarnations than other souls at the same stage of development. Thus Gilgamesh presents himself to us as a being who was ripe for initiation, but who could no longer attain this initiation, for the journey westward is the journey toward an initiation that has not been brought to completion. On the one hand, we see in Gilgamesh the actual inauguration of Chaldean-Babylonian culture, with a divine-spiritual being—a kind of fire spirit—acting behind him; and then, alongside him, another individuality, a young soul, Eabani, an individuality that only came down to Earth for incarnation at a later time. If you read *Outlines of Esoteric Science*, you will see that the individualities only gradually descended from the planets again. — The Babylonian-Chaldean culture depends on the exchange of what these two know, and we shall see that the entire Babylonian-Chaldean culture is a result of what stems from Gilgamesh and Eabani. Thus, the clairvoyance of the God-man Gilgamesh and the clairvoyance of the young soul Eabani extend into the Chaldean-Babylonian culture. This process of two working side by side, each of whom is necessary to the other, is now reflected in the later fourth cultural epoch, the Greco-Latin one, specifically on the physical plane. We will, however, only gradually come to a full understanding of such a reflection. Thus, a more spiritual process is reflected on the physical plane at a time when humanity has descended very far, when it no longer feels the connection of the human personality with the spiritual-divine world.

[ 14 ] These mysteries of the spiritual-divine world have been preserved in the mystery sites. For example, much of the ancient, sacred mysteries that spoke of the connection between the human soul and the divine-spiritual worlds had been preserved in the mystery of Diana of Ephesus and in the temple at Ephesus. There was much within it that was no longer comprehensible to an age that had turned toward the human personality. And as a symbol of the limited understanding of the merely outer personality for that which has remained spiritual, we have the semi-mythical figure of Herostratus, who looks only at the outermost aspect of the personality; Herostratus, who throws the torch into the temple of the sanctuary of Ephesus. This act appears to us as a symbol of the clash between the personality and what remains from ancient spiritual times. And on the very same day that a man, merely to ensure his name lives on for posterity, throws the flaming torch into the temple of the sanctuary of Ephesus, on that very same day is born the man who has done the very most for the culture of personality on the very soil where the culture of mere personality is to be overcome: Herostratus throws the torch on the day Alexander the Great is born, the man who is personality through and through. Thus Alexander the Great stands there as the shadow image of Gilgamesh.

[ 15 ] There is a profound truth behind this. Like the shadow of Gilgamesh, Alexander the Great stands in the fourth, the Greco-Latin period, as the projection of a spiritual being onto the physical plane. And Eabani, who is projected onto the physical plane, is Aristotle, the teacher of Alexander the Great. Strange as it may seem: Alexander and Aristotle stand side by side like Gilgamesh and Eabani. And we see, so to speak, how in the first third of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, what had been given by Gilgamesh to the Chaldean-Babylonian culture is carried over from Alexander the Great—translated only into the laws of the physical plane. This is wonderfully expressed in the fact that, as an aftereffect of Alexander the Great’s deeds, Alexandria was founded at the site of the Egyptian-Chaldean cultural scene, to place it, as in a center, precisely where the third epoch—the Egyptian-Babylonian-Chaldean one—had so powerfully reached. And everything was to come together in this Alexandrian cultural center. There, little by little, all the cultural currents that were to meet from the post-Atlantean era truly came together. As if in a center, they met precisely in Alexandria, at the site that had been established on the stage of the third cultural epoch, with the character of the fourth epoch. And Alexandria outlasted the emergence of Christianity. Indeed, it was in Alexandria that the most important elements of the fourth cultural epoch first developed, even after Christianity had already taken root. There the great scholars were at work; there, in particular, the three most essential cultural currents had converged: the ancient pagan-Greek, the Christian, and the Mosaic-Hebrew. These were all present in Alexandria, interacting and intertwining there. And it is inconceivable that the culture of Alexandria, which was built entirely on personality, could have been inaugurated by anything other than a being inspired by personality, such as Alexander the Great. For it was precisely through Alexandria, through this cultural center, that everything which had previously been superpersonal—everything that had previously soared upward from the human personality into the higher spiritual worlds—took on a personal character. The personalities standing before us, so to speak, contain everything within themselves; we now see very little of the powers that guide them from higher hierarchies and place them in their rightful positions. All the various sages and philosophers who worked in Alexandria are ancient wisdom fully transformed into the human-personal; the personal speaks from them everywhere. That is the peculiar thing: everything that in ancient paganism could only be explained by pointing out how gods descended and united with human daughters to produce heroes—all of that is transformed into the personal energy of the people in Alexandria. And we can see the forms that Judaism, the Mosaic culture, took in Alexandria from what the very times in which Christianity was already present reveal to us. There is nothing left of those profound conceptions of a connection between the human world and the spiritual world, as they were at least present in the time of the prophets, as they could still be found even in the last two centuries before the beginning of our era: there, too, in Judaism, everything has become a matter of personality. There are capable people there, with extraordinary insight into the mysteries of the ancient esoteric teachings, but everything has become personal; personalities are at work in Alexandria. And Christianity first appears in Alexandria, one might say, as if in its degenerate infancy.

[ 16 ] Christianity, which is called to continually elevate the personal aspect of human beings toward the impersonal, was particularly prominent in Alexandria. In particular, Christian figures acted in such a way that we often have the impression: their deeds already foreshadow the later actions of bishops and archbishops who acted purely on a personal level. This was the case with Archbishop Theophilos in the 4th century, and with his successor and relative, Saint Cyril. We can, so to speak, judge them only in terms of their human weaknesses. Christianity, which is meant to give humanity the greatest gift, first reveals itself in its greatest weaknesses and from its personal side. But in Alexandria, a landmark was to be set before the entire development of humanity.

[ 17 ] Here again we have such a projection of earlier spiritual elements onto the outer physical plane. There was a wonderful personality in the ancient Orphic Mysteries; she underwent the initiations of these Mysteries; she was among the most sympathetic, among the most interesting disciples of the ancient Greek Orphic Mysteries. She was well prepared, particularly through a certain Celtic secret training she had undergone in earlier incarnations. This individual sought the secrets of the Orphic Mysteries with deep fervor. For the disciples of the Orphic Mysteries, what is contained in the myth of Dionysus Zagreus—who is dismembered by the Titans, but whose body Zeus raises to a higher life—was to be lived through in their own souls. It was precisely this—as an individual human experience—that the Orphics were to re-enact: how, by undergoing a certain path of mystery, a person, so to speak, lives out their life in the outer world, is dismembered with their whole being, and ceases to find themselves within themselves.

[ 18 ] While it is usually an abstract understanding when we recognize animals, plants, and minerals in the usual way—because we remain outside of them—so must the one who wishes to attain true knowledge in the occult sense train himself as if he were within the animals, plants, and minerals, within the air and water, within springs and mountains, within the stones and stars, and within other human beings, as if he were one with them. And yet he must develop the strong inner soul power of an Orphic to triumph, restored as a self-contained individuality, over the fragmentation of the outer world. In a certain sense, it belonged to the highest of what one could experience in the mysteries of initiation when what I have just indicated to you had become a human experience. And many students of the Orphic mysteries have undergone such experiences, have in this way experienced their fragmentation in the world, and have thereby undergone the highest experience that could be had in pre-Christian times as a kind of preparation for Christianity.

[ 19 ] Among the initiates of the Orphic mysteries is, among others, a likable figure who has not been handed down to posterity by name, but who clearly emerges as a disciple of the Orphic mysteries, and to whom I now refer. Even as a young man, and for many years thereafter, this figure was closely connected with all the Greek Orphic traditions. He was active in the period that preceded Greek philosophy and which is no longer recorded in the history books of philosophy; for what is recorded concerning Thales and Heraclitus is an echo of what the mystery students had previously accomplished in their own way. And among these mystery students is the one of whom I am now speaking to you as a student of the Orphic mysteries, who in turn had as his student that Pherecydes of Syros, who was mentioned in last year’s Munich lecture series “The Orient in the Light of the Occident.”

[ 20 ] You see, this individuality that was present in that student of the Orphic mysteries—through research in the Akashic Records, we find it reincarnated in the 4th century A.D. We find it, in its reincarnation, placed right in the midst of the activity of the circles of Alexandria, where the Orphic mysteries are transformed into personal experiences, albeit of the highest order. It is remarkable how all of this was transformed into personal experiences upon reincarnation. At the end of the 4th century AD, as the daughter of a great mathematician, Theon, we see this individuality reborn. We see how everything that could be experienced through the Orphic Mysteries—the contemplation of the world’s great, mathematical, luminous interconnections—comes alive in her soul. All of this was now personal talent, personal ability. Now even this individuality needed a mathematician for a father in order to receive something by inheritance; so personal these abilities had to be.

[ 21 ] Thus, when we look back on times when human beings were still connected to the spiritual worlds, as was the case with that Orphic figure, we see her shadow among those who taught in Alexandria at the turn of the 4th and 5th centuries. And this individuality had not yet absorbed anything of what, one might say, caused people at that time to overlook the dark sides of the early Christian era; for in this soul, all that was an echo of the Orphic mysteries was still too great, too great to have been illuminated by that other light, the new Christ event. What appeared as Christianity all around, for example in Theophilus and Cyril, was truly such that that Orphic individuality, which had now taken on a personal character, had greater and wiser things to say and to offer than those who represented Christianity in Alexandria at that time.

[ 22 ] Both Theophilos and Cyril were filled with the deepest hatred for anything that was not Christian or ecclesiastical in the narrow sense as understood by these two archbishops. Christianity had taken on a very personal character there, such a personal character that these two archbishops recruited personal mercenaries. Everywhere, people were rounded up to form, so to speak, the archbishops’ protective forces. What mattered to them was power in the most personal sense. And what truly animated them was hatred for that which stemmed from ancient times and yet was so much greater than the new, which appeared as a distorted image. The deepest hatred lived within the Christian dignitaries of Alexandria, particularly against the individuality of the reborn Orphic. And so we need not be surprised that the reincarnated Orphic individuality was slandered as a black magician. And that was enough to incite the entire mob, which had been recruited as mercenaries, against the noble, unique figure of the reincarnated disciple of Orpheus. And this figure was still young, and despite her youth, even though she had to endure many things that, even in those days, posed great difficulties for a woman pursuing long studies, she had ascended to the light that could shine upon all wisdom, upon all knowledge of those times. And it was a marvel how, in the lecture halls of Hypatia—for that was the name of the reincarnated Orphic—how the purest, most luminous wisdom reached the enthusiastic listeners in Alexandria. She compelled not only the ancient pagans to sit at her feet, but also such discerning, profound Christians as Synesius. She exerted a significant influence, and one could witness in Hypatia in Alexandria the revival of the ancient pagan wisdom of Orpheus, embodied in her very person.

[ 23 ] And the karma of the world truly had a symbolic effect. The essence of the mystery of their initiation seemed to be projected and cast as a shadow onto the physical plane. And with this, we touch upon an event that is symbolically significant and meaningful for many things that unfold in historical times. We are touching upon one of those events that is seemingly only a martyr’s death, but which is a symbol in which spiritual forces and meanings are expressed.

[ 24 ] On a day in March of the year 415, Hypatia fell victim to the fury of those surrounding the Archbishop of Alexandria. They sought to rid themselves of her power—her intellectual power. The most uneducated, savage hordes had been incited from the surrounding areas of Alexandria as well, and under false pretenses, the virgin orphan was taken away. She climbed into the cart, and at a signal, the incited mob pounced on her, tore her clothes from her body, dragged her into a church, and literally tore the flesh from her bones. They tore her apart and dismembered her, and the pieces of her body were dragged around the city by the masses, who had been completely dehumanized by their greedy passions. Such was the fate of the great philosopher Hypatia.

[ 25 ] Symbolically, I would say, there is a hint here of something deeply connected to the founding of Alexandria by Alexander the Great, even though it takes place much later, after Alexandria had already been established. This event reflects important mysteries of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, which held within it something so great and significant, and which also presented to the world, in such a paradoxically magnificent way, that which it had to reveal as the dissolution of the Old, as the sweeping away of the Old, in a symbol as significant as the slaughter—one cannot call it anything else — of the most significant woman of the turn of the 4th to the 5th century, Hypatia.