The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Tenth Lecture

[ 1 ] The insights we gained yesterday into the background of karma can be deepened considerably. We have seen how, behind what we call human destiny, there are worlds in relation to which what is usually perceived of human destiny stands out like the knowledge of the letters inherent in a language compared to what, let us say, emerges in a work such as Goethe’s Faust from the various combinations of these letters. We can truly perceive the life and activity of higher worlds and their beings behind a human destiny. But this perception, as I said, can be deepened even further. We have already mentioned this: When a human being passes through what we have called the lunar sphere, he lives in communion with the primordial teachers of humanity who now reside in that sphere. Throughout the entire period between death and a new birth, they live together with those human souls who have also passed through the gate of death and find their further spiritual life in the existence between death and a new birth—namely, with those human souls with whom they are karmically connected in some way. But even in the lunar sphere, the human being lives with the beings we then call Angeloi, Archangeloi, and Archai, and continues to live as he passes through the subsequent spheres, together with ever higher and higher beings. It is not entirely correct to draw such clear boundaries as to assign a specific hierarchy to each stellar sphere. That is not how it is in reality. But on the whole, we can still say that Archai, Archangeloi, Angels join us before we enter the solar sphere; that we then immerse ourselves in all that we have to accomplish between death and new birth together with the beings of the hierarchy of Exusiai, Dynamis, and Kyriotetes; and that we gradually, though in an indefinite way, continue to immerse ourselves in the sphere of the Thrones, Cherubim, and Seraphim as we move toward Mars and Jupiter. It is not exactly the case that any one hierarchy corresponds to a planetary formation or a planetary sphere. But another principle applies, one that will also be important to us when we delve into the details of karmic connections.

[ 2 ] We simply need to adopt a very specific concept, one that may seem a bit strange at first if we come from the habits of thinking and feeling we have on Earth. When we stand on Earth as human beings and immerse ourselves in our existence, we think that the earthly realm is immediately around us—on the Earth’s surface, beneath it, a little above it, and in the surrounding area—and we likely cast our gaze beyond ourselves, driven by a certain feeling, when we wish to look toward what is called the “supernatural.” We then perceive the “super-earthly” in our minds as something that lies above us. Now it is strange, but nevertheless true: when we ourselves are in those spheres toward which we look up from Earth as the “super-earthly,” then the exact opposite occurs for us. Then we look down from those super-earthly worlds upon the earthly realm, and in a certain sense we look down upon the earthly realm throughout our entire existence between death and a new birth. You may ask: Do we not already experience the earthly realm sufficiently here on Earth to look down upon it from the supernatural—as it were, from a subterranean heaven—during the life between death and a new birth? — But if one wishes to understand this, one must consider something entirely different. What we behold here on Earth—when we live within the skin of our physical body between birth and death—what we see around us and across the vastness of the worlds—is certainly magnificent and majestic; it uplifts our senses, heart, and spirit; it places us in tragically sorrowful, pain-filled situations; it is a rich life. And standing here on Earth, a person will easily say to themselves: Compared to the majesty and grandeur of all this—namely, the starry sky—which he can thus survey as his outer world, what lives within our skin, what we are as physical human beings here on Earth between birth and death, is merely insignificant. —Yet this is precisely not the case for the perception we have between death and a new birth. There, everything that is the external world for us here on Earth becomes our inner world. We gradually expand into the spheres of the world. That which we perceive as ourselves grows ever larger and larger. And if we were to express what we experience there in earthly terms, we would have to say the following:

[ 3 ] Here on Earth, we say “my heart” and mean something that is inside our skin. When we are in that stage of life between death and new birth, we do not say “my heart,” but rather “my sun.” For the sun is then at a certain stage between death and a new birth, after we have grown out into the universe—within us, just as our heart is within us here on Earth, and likewise the other stellar worlds in their spiritual nature, as I have described them. In contrast, the outer world for us becomes everything that lies within the human skin. You must not imagine that it then looks the way it appears when a medical student dissects a corpse. It does not look like that; rather, it looks more majestic and vaster than the entire cosmic structure that we can survey from Earth as this outer world. In what appears to the physical senses merely as the heart, lungs, liver, and so on—in all of this—a magnificent, vast world reveals itself from the perspective we adopt between death and a new birth, a world greater than the one we can survey from our earthly vantage point here.

[ 4 ] And another peculiar phenomenon arises. You might say: Well, yes, but every person does have this world, and as many worlds are carried over by death as there are people who die. So, after death, one would actually have to see as many worlds as there are people one sees after death. — But the mystery lies in the fact that, first of all, one sees all those people with whom one is karmically connected in any way as a single entity, as a unified world. And joining these people with whom one is karmically connected are the others who, to a greater or lesser extent—though not quite as strictly—also unite into a single entity and, in turn, connect with us to form a unity with us. For everything changes when one passes from the physical-sensory world into the spiritual world. Certainly, much of this may seem paradoxical to those unaccustomed to perceiving such concepts. But here and there one should nevertheless point out the peculiarities of the spiritual world as they are revealed by the wisdom of initiation. You see, here in the physical-sensory world one can count: one, two, three; one can even—though not right now—count money in the physical-sensory world; but counting does not really make sense in the spiritual world. There, numbers have no special significance; there, everything is more or less a unity, and that distinction one must make between things when counting them—where one must be next to the other—does not exist in the spiritual world. Many things must indeed be described quite differently for the spiritual world than for the physical-sensory world. And so what is actually the human inner being here in the physical realm is, from the perspective of the spiritual world, quite different from how it appears here. The human structure is magnificent and mighty, more magnificent and mighty than the celestial structure that can be surveyed from Earth. And what we work out in communion with the higher hierarchies for the next earthly life—the one that follows the life between death and a new birth—must, of course, fit into the human structure; it must be a soul-spiritual element that permeates the human structure and animates it profoundly. For how does this human life on Earth develop?

[ 5 ] When we are born into earthly life from our pre-earthly existence, we seem to receive our physical body entirely from our parents. And it might appear—though this is not actually the case—as if we were descending from the supersensible world, from our pre-earthly existence, with a soul-spiritual being, and were merely connecting ourselves externally to what our parents prepare for us in the physical world—that which develops in the womb. But that is not the case; in reality, it is as follows: What we have in our physical body in the form of physical substance is constantly changing. It is continually being shed and replaced with new matter. You need only think of your fingernails and your hair. You cut your fingernails, and they always grow back. But that is only the outward aspect; in reality, a person is constantly shedding outward and replacing from within—from the inner center—what is shed outward. They are constantly pushing matter outward, repelling it. And after seven to eight years, we have shed and replaced everything we had within us as physical substance seven years ago. You see, it is indeed true: I had the pleasure of speaking to some of you here in Breslau seven years ago. My friends were also sitting in chairs in front of me. But of that physical matter that was in those chairs back then, none remains today: everything is gone, everything has been replaced by other physical matter, and what has remained is the spiritual-soul individuality. That individuality, of course, was already there before she was born, in her pre-earthly existence. It was present in earlier earthly lives; it is, so to speak, constant. But the substance of the physical body that sat on those chairs back then has long since vanished into the winds and into other regions of the universe.

[ 6 ] Well, this process of renewal, which takes place every seven to eight years, begins at birth. In fact, we receive the essential substance and its form from our parents only until the time of the first set of teeth. What we then shape in terms of substance, we do so based on our own individuality. This transition to the first set of teeth is something very important. Up until the change of teeth, we have inherited a model from our parents; this model resembles our parents, and it contains the inherited characteristics. Based on this model, our spiritual-soul individuality slowly shapes the second body, which exists from the change of teeth until sexual maturity and is then shed; then the third body begins. But what we actually inherit—so that the inherited characteristics remain—stems from the fact that we replicate them in our second body according to the model. What we have later replicated according to the model, we organize in accordance with what we acquire in our pre-earthly existence as an unconscious art of shaping the human organism from its innermost secrets. Until the change of teeth, the first body serves no other purpose than to make us resemble our parents in accordance with our karma. The true mysteries—the deep, all-encompassing mysteries according to which the human organism is structured as the wondrous reflection of the outer celestial edifice—we must learn in their innermost essence during the life between death and a new birth. And we must learn to live our way back into that realm after we have passed through half of our solar existence. We must learn to live our way into the second half, which prompts us to develop the impulses of our karma. There we look once more into a wondrous process that unfolds between us and the beings of the higher hierarchies in the life between death and a new birth.

[ 7 ] Just as we interact here on Earth with minerals, plants, animals, and other human beings, so too, between death and rebirth, we do not interact with minerals, but with other human souls in the manner described—only now, instead of with minerals, plants, and animals, we interact with Archai, Archangeloi, and Angeloi, and together with them we shape our karma. And throughout this entire time, we gaze longingly upon the lower earthly realm here—where our karma must play out—as something toward which all our emotional forces and longings are directed, just as we gaze longingly upward toward the heavenly realm within our emotional forces between birth and death here on Earth. And now it is the case that, as we ascend into the lunar sphere, the Mercury sphere, and the Venus sphere, we grow into the beings of the hierarchy of the Archai, Archangels, and Angels. In them we find the judges of our good and evil, and in the sense that I have explained in previous lectures, also of our mutilation. For we are spiritually and psychically maimed by evil. There we find the judges; there we first stand within the cosmic judgment. When we arrive in the solar existence, we come to the Exusiai, Dynamis, and Kyriotetes. We stand within the ranks of the beings who are not merely judges but workers upon our karma.

[ 8 ] These beings—Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes—are primarily inhabitants of the sun, but are, of course, also inhabitants of the entire universe. By their very nature, they belong to the spiritual worlds. But mediators are needed between the spiritual worlds and the physical-sensory worlds, and these mediators are the Thrones, Cherubim, and Seraphim. They hold a higher rank in the spiritual cosmos because they are the more powerful ones—not merely spiritually in their spiritual experience, but because they then actualize in the physical realm what they experience spiritually. When we are between death and new birth and, as I have described, gaze longingly down upon the earth, then—being conscious that we are looking down upon the earthly realm—we actually see the wondrous experiences that Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones share with one another. So we look down and see experiences of mutual actions taking place between Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones—actions that deeply move us. We gradually learn to understand these actions—actions that take place between seraphim and seraphim, cherubim and cherubim, thrones and thrones, and again between thrones and seraphim, thrones and cherubim, and so on. They are doing something there—something that restores a just balance—and as we gradually come to understand it, we feel that it concerns us in some way. What is this? It is the picture that emerges in world events from what we were in our previous earthly life, in both good and evil. Good must have good consequences; evil must have evil consequences. The Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones work out among themselves the consequences of what we have sown on Earth. What we have committed as evil deeds has evil consequences in the cosmos. We see the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones engaged in an activity that is the consequence of our evil deeds. And we gradually come to recognize that, in the evolution of the worlds, what takes place among the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones is the heavenly outworking of our karma before we can live it out on Earth. The shock is intensified by the fact that “we now tell ourselves, with all the strength we can muster in the spiritual life we spend between death and a new birth: What the Cherubim, Seraphim, and Thrones experience in their divine existence finds its proper balance when we experience it of our own accord in our next earthly life.”

[ 9 ] Our karma is thus first exemplified in the supernatural realm by the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones. Indeed, in their spiritual nature, the gods are the creators of all that is earthly. They must first experience everything themselves. They experience it in the spiritual sphere; then it is realized down here in the sensory-physical sphere. Even what we experience as our karma is first experienced by the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones in their divine existence, and thus the sum of the forces that shapes our karma is created. Thus we experience the existence of the planetary spheres; thus we experience what happens on Mercury as the judgment, first and foremost, of the Archai, Archangeloi, and Angeloi. But here, too, the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones intervene to exemplify our karma for us. And so we experience within ourselves what we have become indebted to the world through our past deeds; we experience in the divine model what is to come to pass through our lives. This is a complex experience, but one that indeed underlies earthly life as the super-earthly life. And then, when we gain a sense of how rich this life is between death and new birth, and when we combine its content with that of earthly life, only then do we gain a valid, a true understanding of what actually happens in the world through human beings, to human beings, and within human beings. Only then, however, is our human self-knowledge truly deepened, imbued with soul, and spiritualized. And only when we view what happens in the course of human life on earth against the backdrop of what takes place in the spiritual world do we truly perceive this life in its truth.

[ 10 ] Well, here on Earth we see people coming into being. Through birth, they become children; they grow up; they emerge with this or that destiny, enjoying life, creating, working, and possessing this or that ability. The historical life of humankind over the course of time is, after all, composed of people’s abilities, their deeds, and their thoughts and feelings. But all the people who enter an earthly life in this way—a life that flows between birth and death—all these people have lived through previous earthly lives in which they experienced the earthly realm in a somewhat different way and shaped it differently. In all subsequent earthly lives, the effects of earlier earthly lives make themselves felt. But we can only understand this entire context if we also look into the epochs of life between death and a new birth.

[ 11 ] Then we will also arrive at a correct understanding of historical life. For then everything will immediately become clear to us, so that we say to ourselves: What occurs through human beings in one epoch of Earth history is linked to an earlier epoch of Earth history. But how does what happens in earlier Earth epochs carry over into the later ones? — Historians have long described this by simply recording the facts that follow one another in history. It was impossible to see how the later events followed from the earlier ones. Then some people came along who said: Ideas are at work in history, and ideas do indeed come to fruition. Anyone who thinks realistically cannot conceive of ideas actually coming to fruition. Then came the others—the materialist historians—who said: “Ideas are just wishful thinking! Only economic relationships come to fruition, and everything arises from them.” — Thus emerged the mechanistic, materialist view of history.

[ 12 ] All of this is really just splashing about on the surface. In reality, what happened in earlier historical eras is carried over into later ones by human beings themselves. The people sitting here—they all lived in earlier historical eras. What you yourselves do is the consequence of what you have done in past lives. This is true of everything—both great and small—that happens in the course of history. It is through human souls themselves that the past is carried over into the future. It is only through this that our understanding of human life is deepened, so that we can view human beings as the bearers of historical development as well. One can view humanity in this way, but this is only possible once one arrives, in human life, at that which takes place in the stellar spheres between death and a new birth—through the beings of the higher hierarchies in collaboration with human beings.

[ 13 ] Let us illustrate this with an example. In a relatively early period—roughly around the time of the founding of Christianity—there was an Initiate incarnated in the East, in an Indian life. Because this individual, in his earthly incarnation in Indian life, had poor eyesight—one must go into such details when discussing karmic connections—he had, for the most part, viewed everything more or less superficially. He was immersed in the mystical Indian view of life, then passed through other incarnations that were of lesser significance. Then, however, it passed through a life between death and rebirth, in which everything that had accumulated on this individual’s soul during its superficial Indian experience was now developed in the sphere of Mercury, partly in the sphere of Venus, and partly in the sphere of Mars. There it worked together with beings of the higher hierarchies to shape this in a certain way. Now, for most people, karma is primarily shaped by a particular stellar sphere. But in this case, this interaction gave rise to an individuality in which the Mercury, Venus, and Mars spheres worked almost equally on the shaping of the inner faculties and on the karmic transformation of the faculties that had once emerged from an Indian experience. This individuality emerged in the nineteenth century as a personality and, as such, became Fleinrich Feine.

[ 14 ] Well, let’s look at an example of this kind, one that has been brought to the surface from the depths of spiritual life through particularly meticulous spiritual research. The rigid, superficial philistine would say: “That strips away the whole essence of the personality; I want to see it in its most basic characteristics.” — Let the rigid philistine say that; he, too, has his human rights, and even according to his karma, he has the right to be a rigid philistine. But he only reaches a certain degree of truth. If one looks deeper into the facts, then the underlying and hidden aspects of truth and reality come to light. And there one must say: Life—even the life of the individual human being—does not become poorer in its significance, but infinitely richer, when viewed against such a backdrop; when one truly sees shining through this problematic, fragmentary Heine life of the nineteenth century that which was once an Indian incarnation and which was then shaped by all the influences resulting from a previous existence on Mercury, Venus, and Mars: in the Mars existence, where a certain aggressive sense is developed for the subsequent Earth existence—where, in other words, what had been acquired in an earlier Earth life developed into a specific ability as a certain aggressive sense; in the Mercury existence, where the soul can acquire this ability, since it is karmically developed particularly in the Mercury existence, a fluttering through sensations and concepts, and in the Venusic existence, where, in turn, a certain spiritual-erotic quality could enter into the human powers of imagination.

[ 15 ] So, when we survey a human life in this way, we are at the same time looking into the existence of the world, and what we see in the human being in this way is truly no less than what we find in so-called “immediate elemental” observation—which is nothing more than a philistine perspective. It is indeed the case that one sees how earlier historical events are carried over into later ones, and how the starry worlds, with their beings, serve as mediators. It is through this that history first becomes a reality; otherwise, it remains mere letters—thirty-two letters. But then we begin to read history when we see how, behind the individual destinies of human beings, lie the deeds of entire worlds of gods—only even more grandiose and vast in scope than the unfolding of human history, into which we always find the individual human destinies interwoven.

[ 16 ] Let’s take another example. There was an individual who had received a thorough education for that time, during the period when Islam was spreading across the Earth through North Africa into Spain. At that time, there were still schools in North Africa similar to the one where St. Augustine had been educated; but this was already in a later period, and the school was in decline. This individual learned much that was characteristic of these schools—much that still contained elements of the ancient mysteries, though in a state of decline. This individuality was then transported to Spain, where it came into contact not with the later but with the earlier Jewish Kabbalistic school; it absorbed much from early—not late—Kabbalah and became a spirit that possessed something Manichaean-Kabbalistic within its soul with great inner fluency. This individuality now found its further development in a life between death and a new birth, and there, in particular, in communion with the beings associated with the Mars existence. In the Mars existence, she acquired a certain aggressive streak, but beyond this aggressive streak, she also gained a lightness of speech—a downright seductive quality in her eloquence—and an ease in addressing all manner of problems through language, problems she carried within her from her earlier earthly life. Thus, she incarnated in the eighteenth century and became Voltaire.

[ 17 ] You see, to know that Voltaire’s existence can be traced back to experiences that were even similar to those of Augustine in his youth—which were similar to the later Kabbalistic experiences, with all the irony present in early Kabbalah—to know that all of this is there, to grasp the connection in this way, and to look back through the interconnection of the two earthly lives into that which lies in between—between death and new birth—is what makes the world whole; that is what leads us into reality. When we survey the earthly lives, we initially see things that are completely disjointed across the successive earthly lives. One does not see how one life extends into the next. But these are, after all, only fragments. What lies in between is not seen; yet reality encompasses all of this together. And it is indeed true that one can only truly approach reality by considering not only nature but also the human being in light of its spiritual background.

[ 18 ] In this regard, it must certainly be the case that, from now on, a new impetus will enter our movement. When the German Section of the Theosophical Society was founded in Berlin in 1902, I announced that my first lecture, which I intended to give at that time, would be titled “Practical Karma Exercises.” Well, the lecture was announced, but it could not be given for the simple reason that the circumstances at the time were what they were. There were the various long-standing members of the Theosophical Movement, who had their own ideas about what could and could not be said; the entire milieu, the entire atmosphere, had been shaped accordingly. Those who were in leadership positions would have been flabbergasted if, back then, we had begun to speak about practical karma exercises. The Theosophical Movement was simply not ready for it. Much had to be prepared first. And in fact, that preparation took two decades—even longer. But at the Christmas Conference, the impulse was unleashed: to reveal without reservation not only what can be explored regarding the natural realms of the spiritual, but also, without reservation, what can be explored regarding the human realms of the spirit. Therefore, in the future, there will be unreserved discussion within the Anthroposophical Society about what was, after all, intended from the very beginning, but for which this Anthroposophical Society first had to gradually mature. This is also something that entered the Anthroposophical Society as an esoteric element through the Christmas Conference. The Christmas Conference was truly no mere trifle, but rather the assumption of new responsibilities—precisely from the spiritual realm—for the anthroposophical movement.

[ 19 ] You see, if one can look at what lies between death and new birth, it is precisely through this that one can come to realize how diverse and multifaceted the world is. For while it is said, on the one hand, that the Mars sphere stimulates the aggressive instinct, linguistic skill, and eloquence for one’s later earthly life—that is only one aspect; other aspects are also stimulated within the Mars life. And so it is, for example, with Jupiter as well. One experiences the Jupiter sphere and its beings when, with the insight of initiation, one looks back upon what one perceives between the ages of forty-nine and fifty-six and erases self-observation. One can already be somewhat shaken by the sight of what happens on Jupiter. For these Jupiter beings are, after all, quite different from human beings. Let us take just one human characteristic—one that is, after all, more or less common—namely, wisdom. People say: “We are wise.” — But how difficult it is for a human being to attain this wisdom! Even if it is only a little wisdom, it is something hard-won. One must struggle through much internally just to acquire a little wisdom in a single field. The Jupiter beings have no need for any of this. They are endowed with wisdom—I cannot say “born,” for the way Jupiter beings come into being is not like the way human beings develop from an embryo on Earth. You must imagine that in the vicinity of Jupiter there is something like the cloud formations around the Earth. If you now imagine that human bodies were formed from these clouds and then flew down to Earth, that would be the way in which, on Jupiter, new beings take shape from a kind of cloud—but in such a way that these beings, who would, as it were, fly out of the clouds, would have wisdom as their fundamental characteristic. Just as we have blood circulation, so do they have wisdom. But it is not a merit, nor something they have achieved; they simply possess it. As a result, they also think quite differently from human beings. This may seem unsettling at first, but one must gradually grow accustomed to this sight. And everything on Jupiter is permeated and interwoven with wisdom, just as we on Earth are permeated by air. Wisdom is substantial there; it flows about on Jupiter in wind and weather, pours down upon Jupiter, and rises upward as a mist. But these are, in turn, beings who ascend within a mist of wisdom. It is primarily the cherubim who live within this, who, in this context, shape human karma together with human beings. But other impulses also live within it. However, this is absolutely true: What a human being has gone through in a previous earthly life is karmically shaped by the forces of wisdom—natural wisdom. The person then comes down to Earth bearing the imprint of what results from having shaped their earlier earthly experiences into natural wisdom, which then expresses itself in the most diverse ways. Here is an example of this as well.

[ 20 ] There is an individuality that takes us back to ancient Greece, into a kind of Platonic yet at the same time sculptural atmosphere. This individuality experienced one of its most significant incarnations during this sculptural period of Greek history as a sculptor. What it experienced there it carried into later, less significant incarnations. This is an individuality that worked out its karma for its provisional final earthly incarnation, particularly in the sphere of Jupiter’s wisdom.

[ 21 ] Another individuality takes us back to the times before America was settled by Europeans—to Central America, to Mexico. There she lived amid the fading mysteries of the ancient Mexican indigenous peoples. There, when the connections between the people there—the initiates into the mysteries—and the spiritual beings were still alive, it came to know that which lived there as the Mexican gods. Today, learned people speak once again—a special karma, though not a particularly fortunate one for humanity—of these gods: Quetzalcoatl, Tezcatlipoca, and Taotl; yet these descriptions offer little more than the names themselves. But the individuality of which I speak to you was alive and well within them, even amidst the decaying mysteries. For them, a god like Taotl or Quetzalcoatl was something living. They were, in fact, enchanting, living beings. And there, within the decaying mysteries of Quetzalcoatl, this individuality also lived itself into what was by then already a thoroughly superstitious, magical context—into a being such as Tetzkatlipoka—Tetzkatlipoka was a kind of serpent god with whom one felt an astral connection—and this became intensely alive for her. This individuality did not then undergo further incarnations after experiencing life between death and a new birth, unlike that other one who still went through intermediate incarnations, having lived as a man in Greece and then passing through female incarnations. This individuality lived as a man within the Mexican mysteries, passed through the Jupiter sphere of wisdom during the life between death and rebirth, and then lived specifically in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The individual who had lived in Greece also passed through the sphere of Jupiter—as one might do if one were a sculptor and had at the same time experienced, in the Greek manner, this plastic mode of imagination, which “was truly alive back then.” It shaped this plastic quality, which could be experienced in Greece through the form of the human being, and developed into a formative perception of the entire world within the sphere of Jupiter’s wisdom—where all this wisdom is substantially present—and then entered a human body with its Greek character, shaped by Jupiter, and was reborn as Goethe.

[ 22 ] The other individuality also passed through the sphere of Jupiter, shaping what could be experienced in the Mexican mysteries, and then also within the sphere of Jupiter. But the same thing could not arise in the sphere of Jupiter from an earthly life experienced in Greece as I have described it, and from an earthly life experienced in Mexico as I have described it. Both passed through the sphere of Jupiter’s wisdom, but both became what they had to become in accordance with the formative forces of their previous lives. The individuality that passed through the Mexican mysteries passed through the sphere of Jupiter and was reborn as Eliphas Levi. There, in a remarkable way, magical-ritual acts and magical cults were transformed into wisdom. It is, after all, inferior Jupiter karma, yet extraordinarily spirited and full of wisdom. This shows how what a person has experienced in earthly life interacts with what they will become between death and a new birth. The later life is certainly shaped by the previous one, but in manifold ways, what a person has gone through in earthly life can be reshaped in their karma through the same sphere. When one views the shaping of human life in a karmic sense in this way, one truly begins to deepen one’s understanding of this human life. Then it becomes enriched; then it appears in all its reality; then one truly comes to know the human being and human life.