The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Ninth Lecture

[ 1 ] One of the criticisms leveled at our spiritual science by certain theologians and by those who believe they stand on Christian ground but do not truly understand it is that our spiritual science asserts truths about a greater number of hierarchies—hierarchies that comprise beings who stand above human beings and who exist in the spiritual world. As you know, we speak of spiritual hierarchies that include the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, Exusiai, and so on; just as we speak of these realms of the higher, supersensible worlds, so do we speak of the animal kingdom, the plant kingdom, the mineral kingdom, the elemental kingdom, and so on, within the earthly world. We are also aware that human life is divided into two phases. One phase extends from birth to death. During this life—or through this life—the human being descends from the supersensible world into the realms that then constitute his physical environment: the human kingdom, the animal kingdom, the plant kingdom, the mineral kingdom, and so on. When a human being passes through the gate of death, the other phase of their life begins. They ascend to the higher realms—realms that are structured from the bottom up, just as the other realms are structured from the top down—ascending into the realms of the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, and so on. Those who today believe, yet do not understand, that they stand on the ground of Christianity, particularly challenge this view of the beings who are placed between human beings and the actual Deity—which lies far, far above human beings, and also far above the angels, archangels, and so on—and who are situated within this supersensible realm. In particular, those who believe themselves to be especially advanced in their Christian outlook will readily claim that this knowledge of the spiritual hierarchies and their beings is a relapse into an ancient polytheism, or, as they say, into a kind of paganism. For, so it is said, it is precisely the task of modern man not to place anything between himself and the Deity, but to live in the world, to direct his eyes toward what presents itself to the senses, and then to find the path directly to the Deity, without mediation by angels, archangels, and so on. And some believe this to be particularly sublime—to stand, as they say, before their own God without any mediation.

[ 2 ] Today, one hears this objection raised against spiritual science from many quarters. This objection testifies to the fact that, precisely in those circles where it is raised, there is absolutely no understanding of what the spiritual needs of our time actually are. For it truly does not depend on whether a person imagines that he can find the path from himself to his God, but on whether he can actually do so. It really does not matter whether a person imagines that he is visualizing his God; what matters is whether he actually visualizes Him. And from our point of view, we must ask: What, in fact, do those people visualize when they say they are visualizing their God: “We do not want mediation through other spirits, but rather to ascend directly from our soul to our God”—what do such people actually imagine? When they think or speak of God, do they truly imagine God? Do they imagine that which must be meant by “God” when a person rightly speaks of his God?

[ 3 ] That is not what they imagine; rather, they imagine something entirely different. If you go through all the concepts that such people form of their God—what is actually described in those concepts? Nothing other than the nature of an angel, an angelos, and all those people who speak of looking up directly from their soul to God are looking up only at an angel. And if you look up all the descriptions—no matter how exalted they may sound—given by such people, you will find that they describe nothing other than an angel, and what these people are saying is nothing other than the claim that one should not conceive of anything higher than an angel when thinking of God. For example, what is today called the modern Protestant God—and about whom so much is spoken, especially from the Protestant side—is an Angelos; it is nothing else. For what matters is not whether one imagines one is finding the path to the highest God, but rather what one actually finds the path to. And in this way, one finds only the path to one’s Angelos. I say: to one’s Angelos, for that is important. For if we consider, to begin with, the beings of the lowest hierarchies—Archai (spirits of personality, as we have also called them), Archangeloi (archangels), Angeloi (angels)—then comes the human being, then the animal kingdom, then the plant kingdom, then the mineral kingdom.

Archai = Spirits of Personality
Archangeloi = Archangels
Angeloi = Angels
Human
Animal
Plant
Mineral

[ 4 ] When we consider these relatively lowly beings, we need only recall some of what we have discussed earlier to realize that the Archai, the spirits of personality, are also spirits of the age. They are the ruling powers for the entire period of time—that which lives as a spirit throughout the entire period. We live today in a different spiritual context than the ancient Greeks or the ancient Romans, because we are governed by a different spirit of the age. Such a spirit of the age is indeed a very exalted being. Then, in turn, we have those beings whom we call Archangeloi. They are called upon to establish harmony among human beings on earth. Therefore, they are also, in a certain sense, the guides and leaders of the tribes. The Angeloi—the beings who stand immediately above humankind—guide people through the gate of death, so that, in a sense, they have their Angelos at their side, from death to new birth, and they in turn introduce them into the new life. The Angeloi are called upon to guide the individual human soul through its repeated earthly lives.

[ 5 ] Then we come down to human beings themselves. Human beings, as they are on Earth today, remember only their earthly lives here in the physical body. The memory of the angels extends much further, for it is only because it extends so far that they can guide and direct the repeated earthly lives of human beings. But even the modern theologian does not conceive of the angel correctly, because the modern theologian already omits this very characteristic of the angel: that it guides human individuality through repeated earthly lives. If we consider that, when we face the archangels, it is only with the archangels that we are dealing with beings who govern human relationships, and with the spirits of the ages, with beings who govern human relationships over long periods of time; and that with the angels we are dealing with beings who essentially govern the life of the individual human being, then, if we keep this in mind, we will not fail to recognize that it is a hidden form of selfishness on the part of human beings to want to rise directly to God, for in truth—although they do not admit it—they wish only to rise to their God, to their own angel.

[ 6 ] This has great practical significance; it is of great importance, for it contains a certain seed within it. It contains the seed that people speak of the one God, but that their speaking of the one God is merely a fantasy. For in truth, as people indulge in this fantasy, each speaks of his own God—namely, his own angel. And the consequence of this must be that, over time, every person worships his own God—namely, his own angel. And we can already see how strong the human urge is for everyone to worship their own God. The unification of people around those gods that are common to all has become very rare in recent times. Each person’s insistence on their own God has emerged as something particularly striking. The human race is becoming atomized. In a sense, only the word “God” remains—a word that is the same for people of a single language—but under this one word, everyone imagines something different: namely, their own angel. And they do not even rise to the level of the archangel who guides human communities.

[ 7 ] This is rooted in a certain hidden selfishness that people are unwilling to admit. But it is a weighty statement when we keep this in mind, for a person actually lives in a state of untruth when they do not admit to themselves: “I look up to my angel”—but instead tell themselves: “I look up to the one and only God.”—They live in a nebulous conception, that is, in an inner delusion, in an inner Maya. And this has important consequences, for when a person thus surrenders to this inner delusion, something very specific occurs. For by indulging in fanciful notions, we do not alter the spiritual realities, which—as a result of what we imagine, whether correctly or incorrectly—actually do come to pass. By looking up, in fact, only to his angel—but not admitting this to himself, instead believing he is looking up to God—while he is not even looking up to an archangel—he numbs his soul, in a certain sense, through this false notion. And this numbing of the soul is, after all, widespread today. But when the soul is numbed, this is extraordinarily disastrous for the development of humanity today. For through the numbing of the soul, the “I” is suppressed and clouded, and then the other forces—which are not meant to act within the soul—creep into it. That is to say, the Luciferic Angelos creeps in to take the place of the angel whom one initially wished to worship, but whom one has renamed “God,” and one gradually comes to worship not the angel, but the Luciferic Angelos. Then, however, the slippery slope that leads a person downward is very close at hand; then it is very close at hand that one will deny God altogether—that is, deny one’s angel—which is always connected with the denial of the true human “I,” as I have shown you in Leblais’s book Matérialisme et Spiritualisme, where it is claimed that a cat has an “I” just as a human does, and where there is mention of the “grand-prêtre du chien.”

[ 8 ] Thus, we must certainly recognize that in many respects, the answer that must be given to the question “Who is to blame for the materialism of our time?” — [is:] The religions are to blame, the religious creeds, in that they cloud people’s consciousness and replace God with an angel, who is then supplanted by the Luciferic angel, who corresponds to him. And this Luciferic angel will soon lead people into materialism. This is the mysterious connection between the arrogant, egotistical religious creeds, which refuse to hear anything about what stands above an angel, but in boundless arrogance claim to speak of “God,” while in fact they speak only of an angel—and not even of him in his entirety. It is this boundless arrogance—which is often mistakenly referred to as humility—that has ultimately given rise to materialism. When we consider this, we see a significant connection: through the erroneous reinterpretation of an angel as God, a tendency toward materialism arises in the human soul. And underlying this is an unconscious selfishness, which manifests itself in the fact that human beings spurn the ascent to knowledge of the spiritual world, and which also manifests itself in the fact that human beings believe, so to speak, that they can find a direct connection with their God solely from within themselves. If you consider what I have indicated here, you will gain insight into much of what is happening in the present. There is only one remedy for the misinterpretation of God, and that is the recognition of the spiritual hierarchies. For then one also knows that present-day religious creeds do not rise higher than to the hierarchy of the Angeloi.

[ 9 ] When we consider this, we find ourselves more or less within what human beings develop as their life of consciousness; but much also lives within human beings unconsciously, or with only a vague sense of consciousness. And we might now say to ourselves: The connection between a human being and their angel is indeed a real one, but so too is the connection between a human being and the Archangel Hierarchy, and the Archai Hierarchy. — The misinterpretation of the angel, which takes place more or less consciously, also leads more or less consciously to a materialistic worldview; not in the individual human being, but it gradually leads in that direction over the course of an age. Here we are still, so to speak, firmly within what is consciously taking place in the soul. But when it comes to the human being’s relationship to the hierarchy of the archangels, we are no longer at all in a place where the human being knows much; a place where, although they sometimes speak a great deal about it now, they actually know very little. Today, of course, we do have a certain devotion—not to the hierarchy of the archangels, but very often to a particular archangel—not explicitly stated professions of faith, but a tendency, an emotional inclination toward one archangel or another. In the 19th century, this bore particularly strong fruit in at least one area: in the rise of nationalist ideas, which are unconsciously based on overlooking the interplay of the archangels and on an inclination always toward just one archangel. Underlying this is something similarly egoistic—only a form of social egoism—just as in the inclination toward a single angel.

[ 10 ] Now, one might also wish to describe what joins this tendency—this socially egoistic tendency toward the archangel—in a similar way to how materialism consciously contributes to the misinterpretation of the angel. But to do so today is to tread on thin ice, and that is not exactly something that can be discussed in our time.

[ 11 ] Even more obscure are human beings’ relationships to the Archai, the spirits of the ages. In a sense, these lie very, very deep underground. As for the angels, human beings—even if they do not admit it—are at least connected to them in a certain way, for when they say: ‘I believe in God,’ they are, in the manner implied, falsely acknowledging this connection. People at least wish to establish a relationship with the angels. With regard to the archangels, they stand in a connection—which is false today—through their feelings and sensibilities, by professing this or that connection through their blood or the like. This leads to errors which, as I said, I do not wish to describe today—nor can I. Similar errors arise in relation to the spirits of the age. But here, too, people generally cling to the spirit of the age that presents itself to them as the very spirit of their time. Just consider how we try, through spiritual science, to counteract these egoistic, these time-egoistic representations by describing the successive periods of time with their distinctive characteristics and allowing them to take effect upon us, so that, as it were, we may expand our hearts and souls to encompass the entire development of the Earth—indeed, the entire cosmic development—and thereby, at least initially in thought, establish a connection to the various spirits of the age. But that is precisely what people do not want today. And one would have to describe much of what was hinted at yesterday if one were to describe the wrong paths by which people, through this egoism, arrive at the spirit of the age. From a poet’s work, I was able to present to you a bleak picture of the immediate present, which is described quite excellently. Such deviations, as they are depicted there, are connected to this false relationship to the spirit of the age. But here, as we turn to the aberrations in relation to the spirit of the age, we are already entering very significant realms. When a person, by renaming his angel “God,” turns to the Luciferic angel, this is a deviation of faith, of creed, of worldview—a deviation that is, in a sense, individual. The next stage may be a deviation affecting entire peoples; but it always remains, in a sense, a deviation among human beings, and the consequences that arise are precisely the consequences of these deviations among human beings. But when we advance toward the spirit of the age and stray from it, our deviations already come into conflict with the cosmos. And there is a mysterious connection between these deviations from the spirit of the age and the beginnings of what human beings, in a cosmic sense, take upon themselves. One cannot see this connection if one refuses to look up beyond the Angelos at all. Let everyone take what I am saying now as best they can. It is spoken from the perspective of spiritual science, based on in-depth research, but I would have to speak for months if I were to cite all these investigations in detail.

[ 12 ] The errors that human beings commit in relation to the spirit of the age clash with cosmic events, and the cosmic events strike back. And the consequence of cosmic events—or, initially, the beginnings of cosmic events—now being introduced into human life is decadence, which extends even to the physical body; in other words: illness, mortality, and everything associated with them. And perhaps, in the not-too-distant future, humanity will come to realize that, through many of the actions it carries out on the physical plane—if these are capable of penetrating as far as the spirit of the age—it invokes destructive forces into the Earth’s evolution, forces whose effects extend all the way to illness and death. If you then ask yourself, in light of the insights you have gained, perhaps some of what is happening especially in recent times might be a deviation from the spirit of the age, you will be able to answer for yourselves regarding profound connections that extend into illness and death, through which a balance will then be brought about in relation to the various sins that humanity commits against the spirit of the age.

[ 13 ] It’s quite clear that today’s highly intelligent people will, of course, simply laugh when someone says something like what I just mentioned. For they know, based on their scientific worldview, that it is—as they say—nonsense to believe that what a person does, or what people do in their various contexts, could bring about fundamental events. But the time is not far off when people will believe this, for the simple reason that they will then see it.

[ 14 ] What is lacking in our present age is a genuine worldview capable of sustaining human life—a sense of seriousness. Therefore, one of the first requirements for anyone entering the field of spiritual science is to develop this seriousness of worldview and to truly delve a little deeper into the course of human evolution. We have often emphasized that Earth’s evolution only truly makes sense through the Mystery of Golgotha, and we have already cited various examples that shed meaningful light on the Mystery of Golgotha. But one must characterize it with ever greater precision if one wishes to grasp the full significance of this Mystery of Golgotha. A person today might ask: “Yes, but how does the human soul actually come to Christ?” — And one can say that, since Christ is of course a higher being than all the Archai, the path to Christ must be found. For on the path followed by ordinary religious denominations today, Christ is not found, but at most an Angelos, as we have seen. In the name of the various angels, and even of some archangels—if the Luciferic ones have taken the place of the progressive ones—one can behave as people do today, but one cannot do so in the name of Christ. For it is an absolute impossibility, a factual impossibility, that two people who are hostile toward one another could each profess faith in Christ. I mean: It is not difficult to see this, for it is, so to speak, self-evident. One can do so on the condition that when one speaks the name “Christ, Christ” or “Lord, Lord”—as Christ himself has already indicated—one means only one’s own angel; but one cannot do so when one is truly speaking of Christ. So the question may arise: How, then, does the soul find a path to Christ at all? — To gain insight into this question, one can take various approaches. Today we will take a path that arises naturally from various considerations.

[ 15 ] People today know very little about the past. Above all, people do not know why certain things have been handed down. At best, they know that they have been handed down, but why they have been handed down—that is something people today hardly know. For example—and this can be read today in all sorts of exoteric books, particularly in Masonic books—it has been handed down that there were mysteries in ancient times, that the mysteries were, so to speak, a secret institution, and that within the mysteries, as the word itself implies, there were secrets that were truly secrets even in the outward sense. That is to say: to those who had gained access to the Mysteries, certain things were imparted, which they were obligated to share only with those who, in turn, were fellow participants in these Mysteries, and in those ancient times it was a strict rule not to betray these mysteries. This rule was stated so clearly that it was considered one of the most serious offenses, it was said, for anyone to reveal a mystery to an uninitiated ear; but it was equally considered one of the most serious offenses for an uninvited person to listen to a mystery. And this view, which had been upheld in the Mysteries, was enforced in the strictest sense when the Mysteries existed in their ancient form. Why was that? Why did this happen?

[ 16 ] You see, there is a lot of talk about the mysteries these days, especially among those who want to show off a little with what they say about the mysteries, who want to use all sorts of fancy words. Especially where, as is often the case in modern Freemasonry, people talk about these things with words without even having the will to understand much, a great deal of nonsense is spread by talking superficially about these matters without really knowing much. One cannot even tell whether these matters are being discussed correctly, based on the substance of the matter, or whether people are merely speaking in empty words. In these matters, one can indeed have the most remarkable experiences, which I do not wish to criticize or condemn at all; but the matter is too serious not to at least be alluded to. You see, one can experience the following today, for example: A certain person is a member of a community that today goes by all sorts of names—calling itself “brotherhoods” or “keepers of mysteries”; such a person—I am recounting facts—comes to you and inquires specifically about the very thing that apparently interests him, that is, according to his words; but he cannot understand much of it. After some time, one then hears that he has been talking about these things here and there and that he has been spouting rather worthless nonsense. It is, in a certain sense, almost the most futile thing to speak to “those who are being led astray and corrupted today by certain occult brotherhoods”; for they do not engage with what is really at stake. This is the only way it could have come to pass that, for example, a book has recently been published by a much-cited free-thinking speaker and writer on the secrets of Freemasonry—a book that, of course, contains nothing but shallow nonsense—and that this shallow nonsense is taken seriously even by people who belong to occult brotherhoods.

[ 17 ] Today, let us reflect on a genuine characteristic that emerged from the evolution of humanity and shaped the mystery rituals. As I have often emphasized to you: Humanity has changed in the course of Earth’s evolution, and a major turning point in that development occurred at the time when Christ underwent the Mystery of Golgotha. If one were to cite a most essential feature of this evolution, alongside others we have already mentioned, one must say: If we were to go back through the Greco-Latin period—specifically, if we move beyond the 4th century B.C. to the 5th, 6th, and 7th centuries—we could even remain within the Greco-Latin period, but we would find even more if we moved on to the Egyptian-Chaldean period or even the Persian period— we find everywhere that what was spoken by one person had a completely different meaning for others than it did later on—for example, as early as the 7th and 8th centuries following the Mystery of Golgotha. The word spoken by one person to another had a completely different meaning in the time when the old atavistic qualities of the soul were still present—qualities that even led to atavistic clairvoyance—than it did later, or than it does today. Back then, if I may put it this way, the word possessed a kind of suggestive power through its own inner strength, for there was much of an inherited divine-spiritual power within the word. When a person spoke, the angel from the higher hierarchies, so to speak, always spoke along with them through their words.

[ 18 ] You can imagine that communication in those ancient times, which took place through words, was something entirely different from what it is today. After all, we have no way of speaking with words in that manner—even if we know all these secrets of how people spoke in ancient times—because we must speak with words through what language has made of them. After all, words are now conventional symbols. Today we can no longer approach a person and, with the same power with which people spoke in the 3rd, 4th, and 5th centuries B.C., send a gentle shiver through their soul with the words “Your angel loves you”—a shiver that was a healing force. That is no longer possible today; words have been stripped of their old suggestive value, their power. In ancient times, a human power of communion flowed from soul to soul as people spoke to one another. Just as we, when we are together in a room, breathe the same air, so too did a spiritual power of communion live within what people said to one another in ancient times. This has been lost in the ongoing evolution of humanity. The word has become increasingly de-divinized.

[ 19 ] If you visualize this in your mind’s eye, you will be able to see that there could indeed be very specific words, word combinations, and word formulas that had a greater effect than other words commonly spoken. And such word formulas, which had an effect far beyond the ordinary, were handed down in the Mysteries. Now you can understand that they were not to be revealed, because the fact that a person knew these formulas gave him a great power over other people—a power that was not to be abused. It is an absolutely real truth that when the ancient Hebrew temple priest uttered what in ordinary life was simply called “the Word”—but which in fact had a specific combination of sounds—then, when he uttered it in the correct manner — because in those ancient times the power lay in that specific combination of sounds — what actually happened to the people to whom he spoke was that a different world surrounded them, a spiritual one, but this spirituality was very real.

[ 20 ] And so you can understand that it was not only criminal to recite the mystery formulas to someone to whom they were not meant—since this exerted an unjustified power over that person—but that it was also frowned upon to eavesdrop, for one thereby exposed oneself to the danger of placing oneself entirely under the other’s power. Things are not as abstract as certain people today would have us believe; rather, they are concrete and real, and times have changed—and we must heed this change in the times. Since the Mystery of Golgotha, words have no longer held this meaning, for you can see: true freedom could not have arisen among human beings if words had retained this meaning; for, in a spiritual sense, human beings would have remained, so to speak, merely the product of language. Words had to lose this inner power. But another power entered into Earth’s evolution, which—if it found the right relationship to humanity—could gradually restore to people what had previously come from words. The people of old learned to think from their words, and in ancient times there were no thoughts other than those that arose from words. But the power of thought could arise from words only when the words were as I have described them. This power was no longer present in the period that followed. But then came the Being who, when these thoughts are fulfilled through him, could once again impart this power to thought—the Being who could say, “I am the Word”—and that is the Christ. Yet people must first find the way to bring the Christ to life within their souls. The Christ is here. We know that he has been a real power since the Mystery of Golgotha. And now, as we speak of karma, let us also show how he relates to karma, how the angel relates only to a single human being, whereas Christ can have a much higher significance than the archangels, because he not only connects human beings here on earth in accordance with the spirit of the age, but because he connects the living and the dead—those souls who are organized here in the body, and those who have passed through the gate of death. But to do this, we must learn to understand a little better how Christ can be found within the spirit of our time—or rather, how a path to Christ can be found. For this is precisely the question from which we began: How can people today find a path to Christ?

[ 21 ] Above all, it is necessary for human beings to once again transcend the selfish life that exists solely within their own souls. For a true word—oh, so many words in the Gospels are not taken at face value because they do not suit people!—a true word of the Gospels is: “Where two are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” — The spirit of vain mysticism, which says, “I will give birth to Christ within my soul”—that is not the spirit of Christianity, but rather the spirit that says, “Where two are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” — But in order to explain to you the full spirit of this saying—in connection with repeated earthly lives, as we intend to do in these present reflections—and to characterize it for our time in relation to the whole of life into which human beings are placed today through their vocations, I must address certain characteristics specific to our time; for it is necessary to learn how to transcend the egoistic narrowness within human beings. In the spirit of our time, this transcendence must certainly be achieved by once again coming to know the cosmos—with which human beings are, after all, connected and from which they are born—and by learning to conceive of the cosmos in relation to human beings.

[ 22 ] Do you believe that modern science is capable of conceiving of the cosmos in relation to human beings? Do you recall the statement by Herman Grimm—which I have also quoted in public lectures—that “Science conceives of a kind of mechanism in which human beings cannot possibly be included”? — The scientific worldview today cannot conceive of humanity in relation to the cosmos, for to do so, one must first look at things concretely. Today, someone builds a machine; that is precisely what he does, and he believes that, in building this machine, nothing actually happens other than his building the machine—or rather, what happens through the machine. But to indulge in such a belief would be to justify what is so widespread today, what one might call “negative superstition.” Superstition is the belief in spirits where there are none; but one cannot believe in spirits where there are some either—that is negative superstition. Humanity today indulges in this negative superstition in abundance, without even realizing it at first, because we have not yet become accustomed to considering the events that occur in human development—which we currently view solely from a mechanistic perspective—within the broader context of the world and from a moral standpoint.

[ 23 ] Let’s single out one thing—but one that is, first and foremost, characteristic of our time and similar to many other things that dominate our external lives in so many ways today: the steam engine. What a role the steam engine plays today! How much of our lives is dominated by the steam engine! Just think for a moment about all the things that wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the steam engine. I’m not saying that everything people have today must have been brought about by the steam engine, but in keeping with the spirit of the times, much of what we have today is indeed brought about by the steam engine.

[ 24 ] The steam engine wasn’t really invented until the 18th century, because what existed before were, in essence, merely unusable experiments. So what is commonplace today, what is of immense importance today, is the steam engine, which—one might say—first became practical—the earlier attempts were only made practical—in 1719 by Newcomen, and then later, in 1762, by Watt. In fact, it is only these two who can be considered the inventors of the steam engine, at least to the extent that we speak of steam engines today and everything associated with them.

[ 25 ] Well, what is the basis for this possibility of having steam engines, which isn’t even that old? What is the basis for this, really? You see, in 1769—and I’m about to say something terribly curious to anyone with a scientific mindset—that’s when Watt, so to speak, first brought the steam engine up to the proper level; that year is not at all far removed from the conception of Goethe’s Faust. Perhaps, for the purposes of our discussion, some strange connections might yet emerge between this steam engine and the conception of Goethe’s Faust, even though these things are very far apart. To do this, however, we must first bring to mind various aspects related to the advent of the steam engine in human evolution. What, then, is the steam engine actually based on? The steam engine is actually based on the ability to create a vacuum or a space with rarefied air. The entire possibility of building steam engines rests on creating a vacuum and utilizing it effectively. In ancient times, which are now long past, people spoke of horror vacui, the fear of the void. They meant this in an objective sense. It meant that space always seeks to be filled with something, that a true void could not actually be created, and that nature itself has a kind of horror of the void. First, humanity’s belief in the horror vacui had to disappear, and the ability to create spaces with rarefied air—nearly vacuum-like—had to be established before steam engines could be developed. The air had to be removed from certain spaces. A purely mechanical perspective will not lead us to gain, so to speak, a new cosmic and moral conception in place of the old cosmic and moral conception of horror vacui. But what actually happens when we create a vacuum or an air-depleted space with the intention of putting the resulting effects to work in the service of human development on Earth?

[ 26 ] The biblical text states that Yahweh breathed the living breath—the air—into man, and thereby he became a living soul. The air had to be created within man so that he could become what he is meant to be as an earthly human being. For many centuries, indeed for millennia, man used only those forms of air dilution and condensation that arose naturally within the cosmic context. Then came modern times. Then human beings set about thinning the air themselves, removing what Yahweh had created, and acting in opposition to the way Yahweh can act by placing human beings on Earth. So what actually happens when human beings use a space where the air has been thinned—that is, when they drive the air out of that space? Opposition to Yahweh arises. You can easily imagine this now: While Yahweh flows into human beings through the air, human beings drive Yahweh away when they create this air-depleted space! Ahriman gains the opportunity to establish himself as a demon right down into the physical realm through the construction of the steam engine in this way. When one constructs the steam engine, one provides an opportunity for the embodiment of demons. One need not believe in them if one does not wish to: that is negative superstition; positive superstition is seeing spirits where there are none; but negative superstition is denying spirits where they are. In steam engines, however, Ahrimanic demons have truly been brought down even to the level of the physical body. This means: While the cosmos, with its spiritual essence, has descended through what has been infused into human evolution, the spirit of the cosmos is being driven out by the very demons that are being created there. In other words: The recent great and admirable progress has brought not only a demonology but also a demon-magic, and modern technology is, in many ways, demon-magic.

[ 27 ] Some things—and here I’m going to say something paradoxical again—become apparent when you can correctly interpret what people usually consider to be something utterly insignificant. After all, you see (an “i” is drawn on the board), that (the “i” without a dot) is, in essence, the main thing, but it is the little dot that actually makes it an “i.” And consider how much less that—what we call a “little dot”—contains than the rest of it, and yet it is that little dot that makes it an “i.” Those who, in the evolution of humanity, cling only to the material will sometimes see in the material only that which naturally contains a hundred times more than the little dot, and will not see the little dot at all. But a keen observer—one who does not merely stare at appearances but can read them—will learn to interpret many things, where something subtle is sometimes hinted at, in just the right way. A curious fact: If you read a biography of James Watt, you will find this fact—which I am now about to allude to in a way that seems downright crazy to any modern, intelligent person—hinted at, but of course you must first understand the interpretation for yourself. Watt could not immediately put into practice what he intended with his invention, his steam engine. As you can see, the story spans from 1712 to 1769. Once someone makes an invention, many others imitate it, over and over again, don’t they? Many things were constructed during those years. And when Watt had designed his machine to be practical by incorporating other features, he included a device in it for which someone else already held a patent, and so he could not implement it because another person already had a patent, and he had to come up with something else. And then, in a remarkable way, he discovered what he now had to devise. He lived, after all, in an age when the Copernican worldview—which I have described to you as something that is, of course, merely a product of our zeitgeist—had long since been established; he lived in a time when the Copernican worldview had long been accepted. And indeed, he came up with the idea of designing his entire system—the mechanism of motion—in such a way that he could call this system: the motion of the Sun and the planets. He called it the motion of the Sun and the planets because he was truly guided by the way one imagines the planets’ orbits around the Sun in the Copernican system. He truly brought down and incorporated into the steam engine what had been recognized in more recent times as the motion of the heavens!

[ 28 ] Now think about what I explained to you the other day—that it will happen, but is only just beginning: that subtle vibrations will accumulate and produce great effects. This has not yet been achieved on Earth, thank God! But the beginning is already there: the motion of the Sun and the planets is being imitated. Do you believe that now, since the movements of the sun and the planets are of such great significance for our Earth when they radiate in, it has no significance when we imitate them here on a small scale and in turn allow them to radiate out into outer space? What happens there is of great significance for the cosmos. There you can see directly how vibrations are added to the demon, through which it can unfold its activity out into cosmic space. Of course, no one should now believe that what I have just said means we should abolish the steam engine. We would have to do away with many things, for steam engines are not even the most demonic. Everywhere electricity is used—and in many other areas as well—there is far more demonic magic, because it operates with entirely different forces that have yet another significance for the cosmos. Of course, anyone who understands spiritual science will realize that these things are not to be abolished, that we cannot be reactionary or conservative in the sense of rebelling against progress. Oh, demon-magic means progress, and the Earth will make more and more such advances! We will even succeed in developing great, great effects out into the universe. It is not a matter of abolishing them, nor of criticizing them, for of course these things are justified. But the point is that, while on the one hand these things must occur in the course of human progress, on the other hand counterforces must be created that will in turn bring about balance. Counterforces must be created. These counterforces, which bring about balance, can only be created if humanity once again comes to understand the Christ principle, if humanity finds the path to Christ. For a time, humanity has been led away from Christ. Even those who officially call themselves representatives of Christ seek only an angel instead of Christ. But the path that the soul must take to Christ will have to be found. For just as we act out into the cosmos toward the physical stars through the demons of the machines, so must we find the path spiritually into the worlds where the human being is between death and a new birth, where the beings of the higher hierarchies dwell. And what I am now hinting at is connected to what I have already explained: just as people are becoming increasingly entangled in a professional karma on the one hand, as I have described, so on the other hand, this professional karma must be counteracted by an understanding of the spiritual world, which in turn can also pave the way for finding a path to Christ.

[ 29 ] We'll talk more about these things tomorrow.