The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourth Lecture

[ 1 ] You will be able to gather from the remarks of the past few days that Greco-Roman culture, in a certain sense, occupies a central position within the entire post-Atlantean culture. The three preceding cultural epochs are, as it were, the preparation for that work of the human soul—the “I within the I”—as we have indicated in relation to Greek culture. Just as there was a descent from clairvoyant perceptions to purely human perception in Greek culture, so too do the ancient Indian, Persian, and Egyptian cultures stand out. What begins with our own era and what must be achieved for humanity to an ever-increasing extent in the coming centuries and millennia must appear to us as a return to, a re-attainment of, clairvoyant cultures. Thus we must say: In the Egyptian-Babylonian-Chaldean cultural period, we have, so to speak, the final preparation for purely human Greek culture. At that time, in the third post-Atlantean epoch, humanity descends, as it were, from the ancient clairvoyant states through which it could still participate directly in the spiritual world, and prepares the way for the purely personal, the purely human culture, which can be characterized by a work of the soul that can be called “I within the I.” Hence it also became clear to us how the looking back into earlier incarnations associated with clairvoyant culture first became unclear and blurred for Gilgamesh, the inaugurator of Babylonian culture; how he no longer recognized himself there, where Eabani had, as it were, bequeathed certain abilities to him to look back into earlier incarnations. And entirely in keeping with this fall from a spiritual height and the withdrawal into the merely personal realm of the individual human being, entirely in keeping with this peculiarity of the Babylonian soul, all that we see perpetuated for posterity through the work of these Babylonian souls takes effect.

[ 2 ] If we wish to view history from an occult perspective, we must acknowledge that it is becoming increasingly clear to us that the peoples, through their labor and their cultural achievements, are by no means isolated in the development of the world or in the progress of humanity. Every people has its spiritual task; it has a very specific contribution to make to what we call human progress. Our culture is already quite complex today, and it has become so complex because many individual cultural currents have converged. In our spiritual life today and in our external life, we have a confluence of the most diverse national cultures, which were contributed by the individual peoples more or less unilaterally, in accordance with their mission, and which then flowed into the common stream. That is why all individual peoples differ from one another; that is why we can speak of each people’s particular mission. And we may ask: What can we—who have, after all, incorporated the cultural work of our ancestors into our own culture—what can we point to today that shows us what this or that people had to offer for the common progress of humanity?

[ 3 ] It is quite interesting, then, to take a closer look at the cultural legacy of the Babylonian people. Oh, this Babylonian people—even to the external historian, they have presented strange enigmas over the past century through the decipherment of cuneiform. And even what has only been possible to explore superficially is already highly remarkable. For the external researcher can say today: What was formerly called history has almost doubled in terms of time span due to what has been learned through the decipherment of cuneiform. Even external historical research, based on external documents, can formally trace back five to six thousand years before the Christian era and can say: Throughout this entire period, a powerful, significant culture existed in the regions where the Babylonians and Assyrians later flourished. There we find, above all in the most ancient times, a highly remarkable people, called the Sumerians in history, whose home was in the regions of the Euphrates and Tigris, more in the upper reaches, but also toward the lower course. Since we do not have the time for this, we cannot go into the external historical records in great detail here; we must focus more on what occult history can teach us.

[ 4 ] This people, with all that it was capable of thinking and creating intellectually, as well as with its outward manifestations, belonged to a relatively early cultural stage of post-Atlantean development. And the further back we go in the history of the Sumerians—whom we might call the pre-Babylonians—the clearer it becomes to us that highly significant spiritual traditions lived within this people, that a profound spiritual wisdom existed, a wisdom we might characterize by saying: The entire way of life, the entire way not only of thinking but of living in the soul and spirit, was quite different among this people than among the later peoples of world history. For people of later world history, for example, it became evident everywhere that there is a certain distance between what is thought and what is spoken. Who today would not know that thinking and speaking are, after all, two quite different things, that language, in a certain sense, consists of conventional means of expression for what people think. This is already evident from the fact that we have many languages and yet, fundamentally, express a large number of common ideas in these various languages of the earth. So there is a certain gap between thinking and speaking. This was not actually the case with this ancient people; rather, they had a language that, in essence, stood in a completely different relationship to the soul than all older languages. Especially when we go back to very ancient times, we do indeed find something there—albeit no longer preserved in its pure form—that resembles a kind of proto-language of humanity. True, we find the languages of the individual tribes and races across the broadest regions of Europe, Asia, and Africa already differentiated in a certain way; but a kind of common linguistic element, which could be understood throughout the then-known world, particularly by the more spiritually attuned people, was present precisely among the Sumerians. Where did this come from? Because the soul of these people felt something very specific in the tone, in the sound, and had to express unambiguously what can be felt in any thought and at the same time in a sound.

[ 5 ] You see, what has been said here is something I would first like to express in this way: even in those names I had to mention to you when discussing the Epic of Gilgamesh, even there, there are still striking sounds: Ishtar, Ishulan, and the like. If one pronounces these sounds and knows their phonetic value in an occult context, then one knows that, fundamentally, these are names that cannot contain any other sounds if they are to designate the entities in question, because a U, an I, or an A can only unambiguously refer to something very specific. This, in fact, has been the progression of language: that people have lost the sense of how these things—the sounds, consonants and vowels—can refer unambiguously to something, so that in those ancient times one could not designate a thing in any other way than with a very specific combination of sounds. Just as we cannot, in essence, have a different thought about a thing in England or Germany today when we mean the same thing, so too in those days—because people still had that immediate, spiritual, ancient sense of the sound—one could not designate any thing or being other than with a specific combination of sounds. So that language in ancient times—and the ancient Sumerian language had precisely an echo of these ancient times—was a very specific one, which was simply comprehensible to the listener through the nature of the soul. When we speak of language in this way, we must look back to the very earliest times of the post-Atlantean cultures.

[ 6 ] But then it fell to the Babylonian people, in particular, to bring this living spiritual connection between human beings and the spiritual world down into the personal realm, where the individual is left to its own devices in its particularity, in its uniqueness. That was the task of the Babylonians: to bring the spiritual world down into the physical plane. And connected to this is the fact that this living feeling, this spiritual feeling for language, ceases, and language becomes shaped by climate, geographical location, the ethnic group, and the like. That is why the Bible, which tells us more accurately about these things than the fantasies of Mr. Fritz Mauthner, who calls himself a linguist, describes this important fact to us in the story of the Tower of Babel, where all the people of the earth who spoke a common language were scattered. We can also understand this Tower of Babel spiritually if we know how buildings were constructed in ancient times. Such structures, which were built for the purpose of performing certain acts dedicated to sacred wisdom, or which were intended to be symbols of sacred truths, were built in ancient times according to dimensions derived either from the heavens or from human measurement. And this is essentially the same thing; for man, as a microcosm, is a replica of the macrocosm, so that the dimensions enshrined in the pyramid are derived from heaven and from man.

[ 7 ] If we could go back to ancient times, to relatively early times, we would find symbolic imitations of human or celestial proportions everywhere in sacred buildings. Length, width, and depth—the way the interior was architecturally designed—all of this was modeled after the dimensions of the heavens or those of the human body. But that is precisely how it happened: Where there was a living awareness of the connection between humanity and the spiritual world, the dimensions were brought down from the spiritual world. What, then, was to become of the time in which human knowledge was to be brought down, so to speak, from heaven to earth? From the general spiritual-human to the human-personal? There, the dimensions could only be taken from the human being itself, from the human personality, insofar as it is an expression of the individual self. But this was to become the Tower of Babel, the place of worship for those who were to derive their measures solely from the personality. Yet at the same time, it had to be shown that the personality must first gradually mature in order to ascend once more into the spiritual worlds. We have seen that one first had to pass through the fourth and fifth epochs in order to ascend once more. At that time, it had not been possible to simply ascend again into the world of the spiritual regions. This means that the building of the Tower of Babel was bound to be a failed endeavor, that heaven could not yet be reached with what could be derived from the human personality. There lies something immensely profound in this world symbol, in the building of the Tower of Babel, through which human beings have been confined to their individual human personality, to what the personality could become in any given people under specific circumstances.

[ 8 ] Thus the Babylonians were sent down from the spiritual world to our Earth; there lay their mission, there lay their task. But, as I have already mentioned, the outer Babylonian culture was founded upon a Chaldean mystery culture that remained esoteric, yet still flowed into the outer culture in a very specific way. And so we still see the ancient wisdom shining through everywhere in the measures the Babylonians were able to take. But they had to do so in such a way that it did not ascend with them into the spiritual regions, but rather that they applied it to our Earth. And what lay in this way within the Babylonians’ mission has been incorporated into our culture and has come down to our own times. We can demonstrate this. We need only gain a little respect for that still great, mighty gaze into the spiritual worlds, which still cherished the ancient traditions in the soul and had only just reached twilight. We must gain respect for the Babylonians’ profound knowledge of the heavens and for their mighty mission, which consisted in drawing out of what was known to humanity through the spiritual world—from the measurements of the heavens—everything that, for the sake of practical life, needed to be incorporated into human culture. But at the same time, they had the mission to relate everything to human beings. And it is interesting that certain ideas have survived into our own times, which were, as it were, an echo of those peculiar feelings that the Babylonians still experienced vividly: feelings of the entire macrocosm flowing into the human being, of a human lawfulness of the earthly, personal human being, who mirrors the great celestial order.

[ 9 ] Thus, in ancient Babylonia, there was a saying that goes: “Look at the man walking there—not like an old man and not like a child, walking as a healthy person and not as a sick one, neither running too fast nor walking too slowly—and you will see the measure of the sun’s course. ” A curious saying, yet one that can give us a deep, deep insight into the souls of the ancient Babylonians. For they imagined that a person with a good, healthy stride, a person who maintains a pace in their walking that springs from the health of life—that such a person, if they were to walk around the earth neither too fast nor too slow, would need 3651/i days for such a circuit—and that is roughly correct, provided that he walked day and night without interruption. And so they said to themselves: This is the time in which a healthy person could circle the Earth, and also the same time—for they believed, after all, in the apparent movement of the Sun around the Earth—in which the Sun circles the Earth. So if you, as a healthy person, walk around the Earth—neither too fast nor too slow—you maintain the pace of the Sun’s journey around the Earth. That is to say: “Man, it is inherent in your health to follow the Sun’s path around the Earth.”

[ 10 ] This, however, is something that can inspire awe in us regarding the vast cosmic perspective of this Babylonian people. For, based on this, they then devised a system for measuring the human journey around the Earth. They calculated according to certain proportions and arrived at a figure that roughly corresponds to the distance a person covers when walking for two hours; this, however, is equivalent to a mile. They derived this measure from a normal walking pace and adopted it as a standard unit for measuring the land on a larger scale. And this measure, my dear friends, has remained in use until recently—when everything in human development has turned abstract—in the German mile, which can be covered in about two hours. Thus, something has been preserved right into the 19th century that originates from the mission of the ancient Babylonians, who derived it from the cosmos and calculated it based on the course of the sun.

[ 11 ] It was only in our time that it became necessary to trace these human-derived measures back to abstract measures derived from something inanimate. For, as is well known, the current measure is an abstract one in contrast to the concrete measures directly linked to human beings and celestial phenomena, which, in essence, all trace back to the mission of the ancient Babylonian people. The same applies to other measures, such as the “foot”—which was derived from a human limb—or the “cubit”—which was measured against the human hand and arm—everywhere we could find that there lies at the foundation something that was discovered in humanity, in the microcosm, as a law. And, in essence, until quite recently, the entire way of thinking of the ancient Babylonians underlay our system of measurement. The twelve zodiac signs and the five planets gave them five times twelve = sixty; that is a fundamental number. The ancient Babylonians counted up to sixty. At sixty, they started over again. In everything they counted in everyday life, they based their calculations on the number twelve, which, because it stems from the laws of the cosmos, actually fits much more concretely with all external concrete relationships. For the number has twelve parts. Twelve was, after all, the dozen, and the dozen is nothing other than a gift from the mission of the Babylonians. We have the number ten as our basis everywhere, a number that causes us great difficulty when we want to break it down into parts, whereas the dozen, both in its relationship to sixty and in its various divisibilities, fits very concretely into these relationships as the foundation of a system of numbers and measures.

[ 12 ] This is not meant to be a criticism of our time when it is said that humanity has turned toward the abstract, even in matters of arithmetic and counting, for one epoch cannot do the same as the one that preceded it. If we wish to trace the course of culture from the Atlantean catastrophe through to the Greek era and from there onward into our own time, we can say: Indian, Persian, and Egyptian cultures are descending; in Greek culture lies the point where pure humanity is developed on the physical plane, and then the ascent begins anew. But this ascent is such that it represents, so to speak, only one branch of true development, and that, indeed, a continuous descent into materialism exists on the other side. Therefore, in our time, alongside the vigorous spiritual striving upward, we have the most blatant materialism, which penetrates deeply into matter. These things naturally coexist. Just as resistance must be overcome to develop a higher power, so must this materialistic current exist. In the spirit of this current, however, the aim is to make everything abstract; for the entire decimal system is an abstract system. This is not a criticism, but merely a characterization. And so one seeks to overcome the concrete in other ways as well. What all sorts of proposals have been made—for example, to move Easter to a fixed day in April so that the inconveniences for commerce and industry might be avoided! No one takes into account that we still have something here that reaches back from ancient times in its alignment with the starry sky. Everything is to flow into the abstract, and only like a thin stream does the concrete—which in turn flows toward the spiritual—initially find its way into our culture.

[ 13 ] It is extraordinarily interesting how, not only within the humanities but also outside of them, humanity is instinctively driven to make its way upward, to ascend once more, so to speak, toward a similar attachment to measure, number, and form as was the case with the ancient Babylonians and Egyptians. For indeed, in our time there is a kind of repetition of Babylonian and Egyptian culture; the periods of antiquity do repeat themselves, the Egyptian period in ours, the Persian in the sixth, the Indian in the seventh. The first corresponds to the seventh, the second to the sixth, the third to our fifth, while the fourth stands on its own, forming the middle. That is why so much of what was the worldview of the ancient Egyptians repeats itself instinctively. Strange things can happen here. People may be completely immersed in primal materialistic ideas and concepts, and yet they can be led into spiritual life through the power of facts—not through scientific theories, for those are all materialistic today.

[ 14 ] You see, there is, for example, an interesting doctor in Berlin who made a curious observation. I’d like to demonstrate this to you here on the board; this is, in other words, a purely factual observation that has been made, setting aside all theory. Let’s assume that we are given, schematically, the date of death of a certain woman—I am not recording something that has been invented, but rather something that has been observed—this woman is the grandmother of a family. A certain number of days before the death of this family’s grandmother, a grandchild is born; the number of days is 1,428. Strangely enough, 1,428 days after the grandmother’s death, another grandchild is born, and a great-grandchild is born 9,996 days after the grandmother’s death. Divide 9,996 by 1,428: You get 7. That is, a great-grandchild is born in a period of time that is seven times the period between the grandchild’s birth and the grandmother’s death. And now the same doctor shows that this is not an isolated case, but that entire families can be examined, and one always encounters absolutely specific numerical ratios with regard to death and birth. And the most interesting thing is: if you take, for example, the number 1428, you find seven as a number contained within it. In short, the facts today compel people to rediscover certain regularities and periodicities, connected with the ancient sacred numbers, in the sequence of external events. And today, the sheer number of findings compiled in this direction by von Fließ—that is the name of the Berlin physician—and his students already serves as proof that very specific numbers are the regulatory factors governing the lawful course of such events. These compiled figures are already available in overwhelming quantities today. The interpretation is thoroughly materialistic, but the power of the facts compels one to believe in the influence of numbers on world events. I expressly note that the way von Fließ and his students still apply this principle is extremely flawed. The way he uses his key numbers—namely 23 and 28, which he also finds again—28=4×7—the way he employs these numbers will require many improvements. Nevertheless, in such a consideration, we see something like an instinctive emergence of the ancient Babylonian culture during the ascent of humanity. Of course, the vast majority of people have no feeling, no sense for such things; they remain isolated within narrower circles. But it must strike us as remarkable when we see that those people, such as the students of Fließ, who discover such things, then develop peculiar thoughts and feelings. One of these disciples of Fließ says: “What if these things had been known in earlier times”—they were, in fact, known!—“what would the people concerned say?” And the following passage seems to me to be particularly characteristic.

[ 15 ] After compiling much of this material in this manner, von Fließ’s student remarks: “Periods of the clearest mathematical structure are drawn from nature here, and such things have always been beyond the reach of gifted minds accustomed to far more difficult matters. With what religious fervor the calculating Babylonians must have researched this, and with what magic the questions must have been shrouded.” So how far have we already come in sensing what is truly happening! How the human instinct works toward the spiritual life! But precisely where the conventional science of our time usually passes by blindly, precisely there is often to be found that which brings deep enlightenment regarding the occult power of which people are not at all aware. For those who point to this peculiar law of numbers here explain it in a wholly materialistic way. But the power of facts is already compelling people today to recognize the spiritual, mathematical regularity in things. Thus we see, in fact, how profoundly true it is that, fundamentally, everything that later expresses itself in a personal way in the course of human development is like a shadow image of what previously existed in elemental, primordial grandeur, precisely because the connection with the spiritual world still existed. I would like to emphasize this so that it may be inscribed in your souls: that it was the Babylonians, in their transition to the fourth cultural epoch, who had to bring heaven down to earth, so to speak, who still had to enshrine the heavenly in measure, number, and weight; and that we have felt the echoes of this right up to the present day, that we will return to this system of measures, that it must assert itself more and more again, even though in other areas of life an abstract system of measures and numbers is, of course, the right approach. Thus, here too we can see how, in the descent, a certain point was reached in the Greco-Latin culture of pure humanity, of the development of the personality on the physical plane, and how an ascent then takes place anew. So that, in fact, even with regard to the course of post-Atlantean culture, Hellenism stands at the center. Now we must bear in mind that during this Greek epoch the impulse of Christianity broke in, which is meant to lead humanity ever higher into other regions. But we have already seen how, in the early stages of its development, Christianity did not immediately emerge with all its significance and spiritual content. We have seen, in the behavior of the Alexandrians toward Hypatia, the weaknesses and dark sides with which Christianity was initially burdened. Indeed, we have often emphasized that the times when Christianity will be understood in all its depth are only just to come, that Christianity still possesses infinite depths within itself, and that it belongs, so to speak, more to the future than to the present, let alone to humanity’s past. Thus we see how something that was only just beginning to take shape in Christianity has come to embody what has, in essence, inherited the wisdom and spirituality of a primordial world. For what Greek civilization had received, what it carried within itself, was truly something like a genetic legacy of what humanity had acquired through countless incarnations by virtue of its living connection with the spiritual world. The entire spirituality that had been experienced in ancient times had sunk into the souls and hearts of the Greeks and lived itself out within them. Therefore, we can understand that there could have been people who, with the establishment of Christianity—especially in view of what had become of the Christian impulse in the first centuries—could not value this event as highly as that which, with overwhelming grandeur and overwhelming spirituality, had been bequeathed to Greek culture as an ancient heritage spanning millennia. And there was one particularly characteristic figure who, so to speak, experienced this struggle between the old and the new within his own breast—this struggle between the most ancient treasures of wisdom and the most ancient spiritual treasures, and that which was only just beginning and trickling in weakly: this figure from the Greco-Latin period of the 4th century, who experienced such things on the stage of his soul, was Julian the Apostate.

[ 16 ] Oh, it is interesting to follow the life of Julian, the Roman emperor. Born as the nephew of the ambitious and vengeful Emperor Constantine, Julian was actually destined to be killed along with his brother even as a child. Only because it was believed that his killing would cause too much of a stir, and because it was hoped that whatever harm he might cause could be prevented later, was he allowed to live. And amid various wanderings among this and that community, Julianus had to undergo his upbringing. And great care was taken to ensure that he absorbed into his soul what was at that time in Rome and from Rome, from the Roman Empire, adopted as Christian development for reasons of expediency. But this was a colorful mixture of what was gradually emerging as the Catholic Church and what existed as Arianism; one did not want to spoil it, so to speak, with either of them. And so, precisely at that time, the old Hellenistic-pagan ideal, the old gods, and the old mysteries had been vigorously opposed in every way. Everything, as I said, was mobilized to make Julian—in whom one could still hope would one day ascend to the throne of the Caesars—a good Christian, so to speak.

[ 17 ] Yet a strange urge made itself felt in this soul. This soul was never able to gain a truly deep understanding of Christianity. Wherever this child was taken, and wherever remnants remained—not only of ancient paganism but also of ancient spirituality—the boy’s heart opened up. He absorbed what lived on in the culture of the fourth epoch in the form of ancient, sacred traditions and institutions. And so it came to pass that during his various wanderings—to which the persecutions by his uncle, the Emperor, drove him—he nevertheless came into contact with teachers of the so-called Neoplatonic school and with the Alexandrian scholars who had received the ancient traditions from Alexandria. There, Julian’s heart was nourished all the more by that for which he felt such a deep longing. And then he came to know what remained of such ancient treasures of wisdom in Greece itself. And with all that Greece gave him, with all the wisdom the ancient world bestowed upon him, Julianus had to combine a living sense of the language of the starry sky, of the mysteries that speak down to us from the cosmos through the script of the starry sky. And then came the time when he was initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries by one of the last hierophants. And in Julianus we have the peculiar spectacle of an inspired figure of the ancient mysteries, one who is fully immersed in what can be attained when spiritual life becomes reality through the mysteries; we have the spectacle of such an initiate sitting on the throne of the Roman Caesars. And however much misunderstandings may have crept into the treatise against the Christians by Julian that has come down to us, we nevertheless know what greatness lived in Julian’s worldview, there where he speaks from the greatness of his initiation.

[ 18 ] But as a student of the Mysteries, which were already in their twilight, he did not quite know how to place himself within the times; therefore, he headed toward the martyrdom of an inspired soul who no longer quite knows which secrets must be kept hidden and which may be revealed. From the zeal and enthusiasm Julianus had absorbed through his Hellenistic education and through his initiation, from the magnificent experiences he had been able to have under the guidance of his hierophant, the will developed within him to restore what he saw as the living life and weaving of the ancient spirituality. And so we see how, through many measures, he attempted to reintroduce the ancient gods into the culture into which Christianity had established itself. He went too far both in revealing the secrets of the mysteries and in his stance toward Christianity. Thus it came to pass that in the year 363, when he had to undertake a military campaign against the Persians, his fate overtook him there. Just as everyone who has spoken without authorization what must not be spoken has met his fate, so it happened to Julian, and it can be historically proven that Julian fell at the hands of Christians on this campaign against the Persians. For not only did this news spread very soon afterward and was never disavowed by any of the significant Christian writers: it would also be highly conspicuous if the Persians had brought about the death of their arch-enemy and had not boasted of this death. But even among them, the view arose immediately afterward that he had fallen at the hands of Christians. It was truly something like a storm that emanated from this inspired soul, from the enthusiasm that Julian the Apostate had gained from his initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries, which were already approaching their twilight. Such was the fate of a man from the 4th century, a very personal man, whose worldly karma essentially consisted in living out, in personal anger, personal resentment, and personal enthusiasm, what he had received as an inheritance. That was the fundamental law of his life.

[ 19 ] It is now interesting to examine this very life, this very individual, in the context of an occult historical analysis later on. In the 16th century, in the year 1546, a remarkable individual was born into a noble family of northern Europe; he was, so to speak, born with everything that could have led him to high office in the sense of the traditional way of life of that time, even born into a wealthy family. Because, in keeping with family tradition, he was meant to become a person in an outstanding government or other high position, he was naturally destined for a legal career and had been sent with a private tutor to the University of Leipzig to study law. The tutor tormented the boy—for he was still a boy when he was supposed to study law—he tormented the boy as long as it was day. But when the tutor slept the sleep of the righteous and dreamed of legal theories, the boy would slip out of his bed and observe the stars at night with the very simple instruments he had constructed himself. And he very soon came to know more about the secrets of the starry sky, not only than any teacher, but even more than what was written in all the books at the time. For example, he very soon noticed a very specific position of Saturn and Jupiter in the constellation Leo, looked it up in the books, and found that it was recorded there quite incorrectly. This sparked in him a longing to understand this celestial script as precisely as possible, and to chart the paths of the stars with the greatest accuracy. And is it any wonder that this man very soon, despite all opposition from his family, secured permission to become a naturalist and astronomer and not to waste his life poring over legal books and doctrines? And since he was able to raise significant funds, he was able to establish an entire institute.

[ 20 ] This institute was strangely arranged; its upper floors housed instruments designed to observe the mysteries of the starry sky, while its basement contained apparatus for creating the various mixtures and separations of substances and materials. And there he worked, dividing his time between observations on the upper floors and the cooking, boiling, mixing, and weighing down in the cellars. There this spirit worked to show, little by little, how the laws written in the stars—the laws of the planets and fixed stars, the macrocosmic laws—are reflected microcosmically in the mathematical numbers underlying the mixtures and separations of substances. And what he found to be a living relationship between the heavenly and the earthly, he applied to the art of medicine and sought to produce remedies that caused such harm around him precisely because he gave them away for free to those he wanted to help. For those who, at that time, were intent on charging high prices as doctors, raged against this man who brought about such “horrific” effects with what he sought to bring down from heaven to earth.

[ 21 ] Fortunately, due to a certain event, this man had won the favor of the Danish King Frederick II, and as long as he remained in that favor, things went well; indeed, tremendous progress was made in understanding the spiritual workings of the laws of the world in the sense I have just described. Yes, this man knew something of the spiritual course of the laws of the world. He astonished the world with things that, admittedly, would no longer be met with quite such belief today. For once, when he was in Rostock, he prophesied the death of Sultan Suleiman based on the constellations, and it came to pass within a few days—news that made the name Tycho Brahe famous throughout Europe. Today, the world knows little more about that Tycho Brahe, whose life is actually so recently behind us, than that he was still somewhat simple-minded, that he had not yet fully adopted the highly materialistic standpoint of our time. He did, admittedly, chart a thousand new stars on the celestial map, and he also made that epoch-making discovery of a star that flared up and then vanished again, describing it as the Nova Stella, but these things are mostly kept quiet. The world actually knows nothing else but that he was still so foolish as to devise a cosmological system in which the Earth stands still and the Sun, along with the planets, revolves around the Earth; that is what the world knows today. That we are dealing with a significant figure of the 16th century, a figure who accomplished an infinite amount—much of which is still useful to astronomy today—and that a vast amount of profound wisdom lies in what he contributed, is usually not recorded, simply because Tycho Brahe, in establishing the precise system based on his own profound knowledge, saw difficulties that Copernicus did not. And if I may say so, it may seem paradoxical: but the Copernican system of the world is not yet the final word. And the dispute between the two systems will continue to occupy future generations. But that is only by the way, because it is too paradoxical for the present day.

[ 22 ] It was only under the successor to his well-disposed king that Tycho Brahe’s opponents—who had emerged from all sides—including the physicians of the time and the professors at the University of Copenhagen—succeeded in turning his patron’s successor against him. And so Tycho Brahe was driven from his homeland and had to move south once again. He had already set up his first large planisphere in Augsburg and the gilded globe on which he repeatedly marked the new stars he discovered, the number of which eventually reached a thousand. It was in exile, in Prague, that this man met his end. Even today, if we do not rely on standard textbooks but go to the sources and study Kepler, for example, we can still see how Kepler arrived at his laws precisely because Tycho Brahe had laid the groundwork for him through such meticulous astronomical observations. He was a personality who, in turn—but on a grand scale—bore the full imprint of what was great and significant in wisdom before his time; who could not yet find his way into what soon afterward became popular in the materialistic worldview. Isn’t that a peculiar fate, this Tycho Brahe!

[ 23 ] And now just think about it: when you compare these two personal destinies side by side, how infinitely instructive it is to know from the Akashic Records that the individuality of Julian the Apostate reappears in Tycho Brahe, that Tycho Brahe is, in a sense, the reincarnation of Julian the Apostate. So strange, so paradoxical is the law of reincarnation when the karmic connections of the individual human being are modified by what is world-historical karma, when the world powers themselves seize human individuality in order to use it as a tool.

[ 24 ] I would like to expressly note, however, that I do not mention such things as the connection between Julianus and Tycho Brahe so that they might be shouted from the rooftops tomorrow and discussed at every dinner and coffee table, but rather so that they may sink in here as a lesson in occult wisdom into many souls, and so that we may learn to understand more and more what the supersensible truly underlies the sensory-physical realm of human beings.