The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Today I wish to make a brief survey of the Rites and Orders of Freemasonry, as I agreed to do. Of course I can only impart to you the main essentials, as the whole subject is so comprehensive, and so many inessential things are connected with it.

The basis for the whole of Freemasonry is to be found in the Temple Legend concerning Hiram-Abiff or Adonhiram about whom I have already spoken in connection with the Rosicrucian Order.¹ Everything to do with what is called the secret of Freemasonry and its tendency is expressed in this Temple Legend.² We are led to a kind of Genesis or theory of evolution of the human race. Let us therefore recall to mind the essentials of this Temple Legend.

One of the Elohim united himself with Eve and out of this union of a divine creative spirit with Eve, Cain was born. Then another of the Elohim, Jehovah or Adonai, created Adam, who is to be regarded as the primal man of the third Root Race. This Adam then united himself with Eve, and from this union Abel was born. Thus at the outset of human evolution there are two starting points: Cain, the direct descendant of one of the Elohim with Eve, and Abel, who, with the help of a divinely created human being, Adam, is the true representative of Jehovah.

The whole conception underlying the creation story according to the Temple Legend is based upon the fact that there is a kind of enmity between Jehovah and everything which is derived from the other Elohim and their descendants, the ‘Sons of Fire’—this being the designation of the descendants of Cain according to the Temple Legend. Jehovah creates enmity between Cain and his race, and Abel and his race. The outcome of this was that Cain slew Abel. That is the arch-enmity which exists between those who receive their existence from the divine worlds, and those who work out everything for themselves. The fact that Abel makes the sacrifice of an animal to Jehovah, while Cain brings the fruits of the earth, is an illustration, which the Bible gives too, of this contrast between the race of Cain and the race of Abel. Cain has to wrest from the earth with hard labour the fruits which are necessary for the sustenance of mankind; Abel takes what is already living, what has been prepared for his livelihood. The race of Cain creates, as it were, the living out of the lifeless. Abel takes up what is already alive, what is already imbued with the breath of life. Abel's sacrifice is pleasing to God, but Cain's is not.

Thus we find two kinds of human being characterised in Cain and Abel. The one consists of those who accept what God has prepared for them. The others—the free humanity—are those who till the soil and labour to win living products out of what is lifeless. Those who regard themselves as Sons of Cain are they who understand the Temple Legend and wish to live by it. Out of the race of Cain spring all those who are the creators of the arts and sciences of mankind: Tubal-Cain who is the first true architect and the God of smithies and working tools; and also Hiram-Abiff, or Adonhiram, who is the hero of the Temple Legend. This Hiram is sent for by King Solomon, famous for his wisdom, who belongs to the race of Abel, those who receive their wisdom from God. Thus this contrast appears once more at the court of Solomon—Solomon the wise, and Hiram the independent worker, who has achieved his wisdom through human striving.

Solomon called to his court Balkis, the Queen of Sheba, and when she arrived her impression of him was as of a statue made of gold and precious stones; it was as though she were looking at a monument bestowed on mankind by the gods. As she gazed in wonderment at the great Temple of Solomon, her desire was to meet the architect of this wonderful building, and her wish was fulfilled. Merely through a single glance which the architect cast on her, she was able to appreciate his true worth. Solomon was immediately seized by a kind of jealousy of Hiram. This grew as Balkis demanded that all the workers engaged in the building of the Temple should be presented to her. Solomon declared that this was impossible, but Hiram conceded to her wishes. He climbed onto a slight eminence, made the mystical sign of the Tau and, behold, all the workers streamed towards him. The will of the Queen had been fulfilled.

Because of this, Solomon is disinclined to oppose the enemies of Hiram and to stand out against them. A Syrian stonemason, a Phoenician carpenter and a Jewish miner were antagonistic towards Hiram. These three fellow craftsmen had been totally denied the Master Word by Hiram-Abiff. The Master Word is that which would have enabled them to work independently as master builders. The Master Word is a secret which is imparted only to those who have made the grade. Therefore they came to the decision to do Hiram some harm.

The opportunity for this came about as Hiram-Abiff was about to fulfil his masterpiece, the casting of the Molten Sea. The movement of the waters was to be held fast in Form. The surging sea was to be preserved alive artistically in a rigid form. That is the point. The three apprentices conspired to make the casting in such a way that instead of flowing into the mould it would flow out over the surroundings. Hiram tried to arrest the flow of the fiery mass by throwing water over it, but this caused the metal to spray up into the air and descend again with great force in a rain of fire. Hiram was powerless to do anything. But suddenly a voice called out to him: ‘Hiram! Hiram! Hiram!’ He was ordered by the voice to plunge into the sea of fire. This he did and he sank down ever deeper until he reached the centre of the earth where fire has its origin. There he met two figures, his ancestor Tubal-Cain, and Cain himself. Cain was irradiated with the brightness of Lucifer, the angel of light. Then Tubal-Cain gave Hiram his hammer which had the magical property of restoring all things to their proper order and he said to him: You will beget a son who will gather about him a race of wise folk, and you will be the progenitor of those who have been born out of fire which brings wisdom and makes man thoughtful. The Molten Sea was now restored by means of the hammer.

Hiram and Queen Balkis then met again outside the city. She became his wife, but Hiram was unable to avert the jealousy of Solomon and the revenge of the three fellow craftsmen. He was slain by them. The only thing he was able to save was the Triangle with the Master Word engraved upon it, which he threw into a deep well. Then Hiram was buried and a branch of acacia was planted on his grave. The acacia branch betrayed the whereabouts of the grave to Solomon, and the Triangle was also discovered. It was sealed up and buried in a place known to only a few people—twenty-seven in all. [It was agreed that] the new Master Word should be the word first uttered after the finding of the corpse—it is the word which is used by the Freemasons. The Freemasons trace back their origin, with some justification, to the Temple Legend and to the old days in which the Temple was built by Solomon as a lasting memorial to the secret of the fifth Root Race.

And now we have to learn to understand how mankind can benefit by Freemasonry. That is not so easy. A person who gets to know something of the complicated initiation ceremonies of Freemasonry might be inclined to ask: is what takes place in such ceremonies very trivial and petty?

I will now describe to you the initiation ceremony of an apprentice wishing to join the Order of Craft Masonry.³ Just imagine someone has decided that he wants to become a member of the Craft Masonry. It consists of three degrees: Apprentice, Fellow Craftsman and Master Mason. After these three degrees come higher degrees which lead the candidate into occult knowledge. I will now describe what happens to a novice about to be initiated into the first degree,⁴ that is the degree of apprentice. When he is brought into the Lodge building for the first time, he is led into a remote chamber by the Brother Warden and left for some minutes to his own thoughts. Then he is deprived of all metal he has about him, such as gold, silver and other metals, his clothes are rent at the knee and the heel of his left shoe is trodden down. In this condition he is led into the midst of the brethren who are assembled in another room, a cord is passed round his neck and a sword is pointed at his naked breast. In this state he is confronted by the Worshipful Master, who asks him if he is still determined to undergo initiation. Then he is cautioned very seriously and during the further procedures the meaning of the treading down of the heel and other procedures are explained to him. There are three things which he is obliged to forego. If he is unable to forswear these three things he will never be accepted as a Freemason. He is told: If you retain the slightest curiosity about anything, then you must leave this house immediately. Secondly, he is told: If you should hesitate to acknowledge every one of your failings and mistakes, then you must leave this house immediately. Thirdly: If you are unable to rise in spirit above all things which differentiate one human being from another, then you must leave this house immediately. These three things are most strictly required from every candidate for initiation.

Then a kind of frame is held in front of the candidate. through which he is thrown, while at the same time an unpleasant noise is produced, so that he flies through the frame with the worst of feelings. In addition to this they shout to him that he is being thrown into Hell. At that same instant, a trapdoor is closed with a bang, and he is given the impression of being in very peculiar surroundings. His skin is then scratched slightly, so that blood is made to flow, and at the same time a gurgling sound is made by those around him, giving him the impression that he is losing a great deal of blood. After that three hammer blows are struck by the Worshipful Master. What is said thereafter in the Lodge must be treated in the strictest secrecy. Were the candidate to reveal it, his connection with Freemasonry, would be changed, just as the drink he is offered also changes: sweet from the one side, bitter from the other. This drink is handed to him in an artfully constructed vessel, so that the drink is sweet from one side, but when turned around it changes to bitter. That is to symbolise how it will be for the candidate if he betrays the secrets.

After these proceedings he is led to a flight of stairs in a room which is very dimly lit. This staircase is so constructed that it moves and thereby gives the impression that one has descended a long way, whereas one has really only descended a short distance. It is the same when the candidate falls. When he thinks he has fallen into a deep well, he has in reality only fallen a very short way. At this point it is explained to him that he has arrived at a decisive moment. In addition to this he is blindfolded again when he is by the staircase. Then the Brother Warden is asked: ‘Brother Senior Warden, deem you the candidate worthy of forming part of our Society?’ If the answer is ‘Yes’ he is then further asked: ‘What do you ask for him?’ He is obliged to answer: ‘Light’. Then the bandage is removed from the candidate's eyes and he sees himself in an illuminated chamber. Then follows the basic question: ‘Do you recognise who is your Master?’ He makes answer: ‘Yes, it is he who is wearing a yellow jacket and blue trousers.’ The blue trousers refer to the rank he possesses. Then he receives the three attributes of apprenticeship: Sign, Grip and Word. The Sign is a symbol of the same kind as occult symbols ... [Gap] The Grip is a special kind of handclasp to be used when shaking hands. These handclasps are different in the case of an apprentice and in the case of a Master. The Word changes according to degree, It does not behove me to reveal what the Words are.

After that, the person concerned can be admitted to his apprenticeship. On admission he is asked: ‘How old are you?’ He makes answer: ‘Not yet seven years.’ He has to serve seven years as an apprentice before he can progress to become a journeyman.

When someone has progressed so far that he is eligible for his Master I s degree, the initiation ceremony is somewhat more difficult. The main thing is, however, that what is contained in the Temple Legend is actually carried out in practice on the candidate himself. He who wishes to attain to the Master's degree is led into one of the rooms in the Lodge building and has to lie in a coffin and to undergo the same fate as the Master-builder Hiram suffered. Then the new Sign, Grip and Word are revealed to him. The Word is the same as the Master Word which was uttered at the finding of Hiram's body. The signs by which a Master is known are extremely complicated. Recognition is achieved with the help of many forms and gestures.

The Freemasonry Masters call themselves ‘Children of the Widow’. Thus the Company of the Masters is directly derived from the Manicheans. I shall still speak about the connection between Manicheism and Freemasonry.⁵

The task of Freemasonry is connected with that belonging to the whole of the fifth Root Race. You could, of course, from the point of view of modern rationalist thinking, dismiss all I have told you about the initiation of an apprentice and the various ceremonies connected therewith as mere tomfoolery and play acting. But that is not what it is. All the things I have mentioned are the outward symbolical enactment of ancient occult practices which once took place on the astral plane through the mystery schools. Such proceedings, therefore, which take place symbolically among Freemasons, are carried out on the astral plane in the mystery temples. The initiation into the degree of a Master, the lying in the coffin and so on, is actually something which takes place on a higher level. However, in Freemasonry, it only takes place symbolically.

One could now ask: Where does all this lead? A Freemason should be conscious of the fact that one should act on the physical plane in a way which will maintain a connection with the spiritual worlds. It makes a difference whether one is a member of a community which believes in symbols which help to create a higher community, or whether ... [Gap] A Freemason need not necessarily have different thoughts from the man in the street, but his feelings are quite different. Feelings are connected with symbolical enactments, and it is not a matter of indifference whether or no a feeling of this kind is aroused, because it corresponds with a certain rhythm on the astral plane.

The meaning behind the first part of the ceremony—the taking away of metal objects—is that the candidate should not retain about his person anything which he has not produced by his own labours. A feeling for this is necessary for anyone who has had his attention drawn to the significance of symbols. He should also retain an enduring memory of the tearing of the trousers at the knee. He should think upon the fact that he ought to present himself in life as if he were appearing completely naked in the eyes of his fellow men. In like manner, the treading down of the heel should act as a constant reminder that—even though he may be strong as far as Freemasonry is concerned—he nevertheless is made vulnerable through his heel of Achilles. All subsequent parts of the ceremony have basically a meaning of this kind—particularly in the case of the eerie feeling which is engendered when a cold, sharp-edged sword is laid against his breast. That is a feeling which persists for a long time and becomes focussed in a suggestion which returns to his mind at important moments and reminds him that he should develop a kind of cold-blooded attitude. Cold-bloodedness should be the suggestion he receives. Complete responsibility for his own actions is what is symbolised by the cord laid about his neck which can be drawn tight at any moment. Presence of mind is suggested by the procedures connected with trapdoors, moving stairways, etc. Those are procedures which take place quite differently in the mysteries because they are performed on the astral plane.

The candidate must then take the oath. Everything about him is horrible, dark, the room only lit by one or two tiny flames. I want you to consider this oath in its full portent: ‘I hereby swear that by Word, Sign and Grip I shall never disclose anything which is henceforth revealed to me within this Lodge. Should I betray any of the secrets, I will allow any of the Brethren who may get to know about it, to slit my throat and wrench out my tongue.’ That is the oath of the apprentice. Still more dreadful is the oath of the journeyman, who consents to having his breast cut open and his heart torn out and thrown to the birds. The oath which the Master has to swear is so terrible that it cannot be repeated here.

These things are used as a means of evoking a certain kind of rhythm in the sensations of the astral body. The result of this is that the spirit is influenced intuitively. This influencing of the spirit was the main purpose of the masonic initiation in ancient times—Freemasonry is really very ancient.

The Freemasons of old were actually stonemasons. They performed all the duties of a mason. They were the builders of temples and public buildings in ancient Greece, where they were known as Dionysiacs.⁶ The building work was carried out in the service of the temple of Dionysus. In Egypt they were the builders of the pyramids, in ancient Rome, the builders of cities, and during the Middle Ages they built cathedrals and churches. After the thirteenth century they also began to build independently of the authority of the Church. At this time the expression ‘Freemason’ came into use. Before that they were under the authority of the religious communities and were the recognised architects.

Let us take our start from the fact that the Freemasons were the builders of the pyramids, of the mystery temples, and of the churches. You will easily gain the conviction—especially by reading Vitruvius⁷ —that the manner in which architecture was formerly studied is quite different from our present method. One did not study it at that time by making calculations, but instead, definite intuitions were imparted by means of symbols.

If you read in Luzifer⁸ how the Lemurians developed their building capacity you will get an inkling of the way in which this art was then practised. It is not possible today to build in that manner. With amazement and wonder we behold the buildings of the ancient Chinese and of the Babylonians and Assyrians, and know that they were constructed without a knowledge of our present-day mathematics. We behold the wonderful engineering feat of Lake Moeris in Egypt; a lake which was constructed to collect water which could be diverted into irrigation channels in times of need. It was not built with our modern engineering technique. The wonderful acoustic effects produced in old buildings were achieved in a way which modern architects are not yet able to imitate. At that time men were able to build by means of intuitive faculties, not through rational understanding.

The whole of this kind of architecture stood in relationship to a knowledge of the universe. If you take the Egyptian pyramids, for instance, their measurements correspond to certain measurements in heavenly space, to the distances of the stars in space. The whole configuration of stellar space was depicted in these buildings. There was a connection between the individual building and the dome of heaven. The mysterious rhythm presented to our gaze when we behold the starry heavens—not just with our outer sense, but with an intuitive gaze which penetrates to higher relationships, to rhythmical relationships—that was what the original architects included in their building, because they were building out of the universe.

This art of building was taught in a fashion as different from our own as the teaching of the art of medicine among certain primitive tribes today differs from our own. Our teaching today stems from the intellect. In primitive tribes the doctor is not trained like our doctors, but has certain occult forces developed in him. He has to undergo a bodily training which would be horrible for anybody of a nervous or weak disposition living in our modern culture. This training teaches him indifference to joy and pain and he who is indifferent to these is already in possession of occult powers. The extent to which the astral body could originally be trained was so great that it led to the development of powers which were designated as the Royal Art, which is an art derived from the mighty symbols of heavenly proportions.

Now you will have an idea of what Freemasonry used to be and you will realise that it had to outgrow its real task. It was bound to lose its significance as the world became rationalistic. It had its meaning when the fourth cultural epoch was still being developed. The fifth epoch brought about the loss of its importance. Today, Freemasons are no longer masons. Anybody can become a member. For occultists, symbols have a real meaning. A symbol that is merely a symbol, merely a copy or image, has no meaning; there is only significance in what can become a reality, in what can become a living force. If a symbol acts upon the spirit of humanity in such a way that intuitive forces are set free, then we are dealing with a true symbol. Today, Freemasons say they have symbols which mean this or that. An occult symbol, however, is one which takes hold of the will and leads over into the astral body. Inasmuch as our culture has become an intellectual culture, Freemasonry has lost its meaning.

Regarding connections with Manicheism ... [Gap]⁹ And after that come the high degrees, which extend as far as the ninetieth, indeed the ninety-sixth degree, and start at the fourth degree. The importance of the first three degrees has gradually been transferred to the high degrees. There is a kind of residue still remaining in what is called the ‘Royal Arch’,¹⁰ which is still extant in Freemasonry today. About these lighter sides and some of the darker sides of Freemasonry we shall have to speak again.

• 1 . Lecture 5 of 4th November 1904.
• 2 . See note 3 to lecture 5 of 4th November 1904.
• 3 . Craft Masonry covers the three degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craftsman and Master Mason. It is referred to by Heckethorn as ‘Blue Masonry’ and by Rudolf Steiner as ‘Johannesmaurerei.’ See notes 2 and 11 to the succeeding lecture (lecture 8, 9th December 1904).
• 4 . For this description Rudolf Steiner again drew on the account given in Charles William Heckethorn's Secret Societies, (pp. 267–271) some passages of which were marked by him accordingly.
• 5 . It is not known whether this intention was carried out.
• 6 . Dionysiacs are mentioned by Heckethorn pp. 79 and 250.
• 7 . Vitruvius Poflio, royal architect under Caesar Augustus, wrote his ten-volume work, De Architectura, between 16 and 13 B.C., drawing from Greek sources and from his own experiences.
• 8 . Rudolf Steiner refers here to articles which he at that time contributed to his periodical Luzifer, later known under the title Luzifer Gnosis, which were then published in book form and are available in English under the title Cosmic Memory, (Rudolf Steiner Publications, Chapter ‘Lemuria’).
• 9 . See note 5.
• 10. Since the Tolerance Agreement of 1813 the ‘Royal Arch Degree’ has passed as the Fourth Degree. See note 16 to the succeeding lecture, also the notes about ‘Goethe's relationship to Rosicrucianism’ which appear as an appendix to these lectures.

Last time I spoke about Freemasonry, and today I wish to add something to that. I should like you to consider that I am in a different position with regard to Freemasonry than to the other subjects we have spoken about, or which we still intend to discuss, as I usually only speak about things of which I have personal experience. In the present instance I should stress to you that I am speaking to you as a non-mason¹ and only from a theosophical point of view, whereas to do full justice to the subject of what Freemasonry really is, it should be treated by one who is himself a Freemason. He would not do this, but this is for other reasons which it is best not to discuss. At the same time I would request that you treat what I have to say with reserve.

When I said to you that only a Freemason himself could speak about what it really represents in its innermost core, so I would beg you to take into account that, in spite of that, there is probably no such Freemason in existence in the whole of Europe. This may strike you as odd, but it is so. Since the eighteenth century Freemasonry has been in a very peculiar stage of its development, and I would ask you to regard everything I told you about it last time as being applicable to what it probably would have been like if it had remained as it was in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. As this is not the case, Freemasonry is, so to speak, only a kind of husk devoid of its true content. It can be compared to a petrified plant which is no longer the same as what the plant formed, but is a crust or shell made up by something else.

The ordinary craft masonry does not come into consideration where the things we are going to discuss are concerned, for this craft masonry, with its three degrees of apprentice, journeyman and master, took its start from the Charter of Cologne in 1535.² Today it is not really anything more than a union for mutual stimulation with regard to higher education and schooling, a union for the purpose of mutual support andstimulation among its members. It is true that these first three degrees are, as it were, only the last remaining vestiges of the original Three Degrees of Freemasonry, and if the ceremonies were to take place as in former times—which they do not—then apprentice, journeyman and master would be initiated in the way I described last time. The regulations are certainly that they should take place in this way, but only a few people know that these regulations exist, and still fewer know the meaning of these things. Everything I have told you about the effect of these ceremonies on the astral plane is something of which craft masonry has no clear understanding.

Now both the British and also the St. John Lodges in Germany possess these three degrees which I have named. And they are actually all in the same state as I have just described. But the possibility is there, within these three degrees, through the very fact that the symbols exist, of penetrating through them to the deeper wisdom which underlies them. A proof of this is provided by the fact that a mason whom you all know well by name has addressed his brother masons in such a way that the germ of his theosophical awareness is thereby revealed; that he was able, in a certain sense, to speak in theosophical terms to an audience of masons. The Freemason of whom I speak is Goethe.³

As theosophists you will immediately find something very familiar when I read to you two verses of his Freemasonry poem⁴ which he intended for his brethren of the Lodge.

Yet call from beyond
The voices of spirits,
The voices of masters:
Omit not to practise
The powers of the good.

Crowns here are woven
In quiet eternal
Rewarding with plenty
Those who are active!
We beg you, have hope.

Goethe speaks here of the masters and he speaks of them within the precincts of the Lodge—in spite of the fact that he knows that those sitting around him have no inkling of the profundity of his words—because he is also aware of the fact that through the atmosphere which surrounds a Freemasonry Lodge, through the presence of symbols, vibrations are set in motion which influence the astral body and thereby bring about a certain result. That is something which scarcely enters into the consciousness of Freemasons but upon which those who know can still build today.

Those who are led beyond the first three degrees to the higher degrees possess rather more consciousness. The first of these higher degrees is the Royal Arch degree,⁵ the degree of royal art. This degree is distinguished by the fact that its ‘chapter’ or ‘union’ has a special organisation, which is filled with deeper meaning. In their gatherings—especially in those in which a new member is to be initiated into the secrets—never more than twelve fellow members are allowed to be present, so that—after the manner of occult brotherhoods—they really represent something other than themselves, something which lives among them in a mysterious fashion. They are not regarded just as persons, but as the personification of particular qualities.

The first, who represents the most important in the circle of twelve, is called Zerubbabel.⁶ He is a leader, the sun from whom radiates the light which is to illuminate the others. He must needs be the cleverest and has to have a certain knowledge of the essence and meaning of the secret sciences. That is seldom the case with present fashions in the Royal Arch degree. I am talking about an ideal situation, in fact, which only very rarely arises when suitable people happen to be present.⁷

The next officer is Jeshua, the high priest;⁸ the third, Haggai the prophet. Together with Zerubbabel these three compose the Grand Council. The first and second Principals come next, then the two scribes, Esra and Nehemia and the Janitor or Tyler without the Door. After that come the so-called lesser companions. Not more than twelve people may be present at any time. These twelve represent the twelve signs of the zodiac. The whole is a portrayal of the sun's passage through the twelve signs of the zodiac. That reminds us of what I have told you about the masons having taken their start in reproducing astronomical laws in particular buildings, in churches, cathedrals, etc.

The arrangement of the Lodge—though this is not always the case—is a large square hall with a vaulted ceiling,⁹ painted blue and covered with golden stars to represent the heavens. The positions taken up by the participants is closely prescribed by ceremony. The novices, who are last to enter, take their places in the North, as they are not yet able to endure warmth. In the East stands Zerubbabel. In the West is the High Priest Jeshua, and the Prophet Haggai. And those who take their places in the South are roped together. Each of them has the rope wound around him three times, uniting him with his fellows at a distance of three or four decimeters.¹⁰

He who is initiated into this Fourth Degree, the first of the higher degrees, which in certain regions still provides an inkling of the significance of the Temple Legend, has to pass three veils.¹¹ At each passing of a veil one of the secrets is imparted to him. He is told the secret meaning of a particular verse from the Pentateuch. After this the secret of the Tau sign is explained, and the Holy Word, the Master Word, is given him, which is the word by which masons of the Fourth Degree recognise one another. And then, before all else, it is made clear to him in his first instruction how ancient Freemasonry is. The craft masons do not usually get to know that, or if they do hear it, they have not the slightest understanding of these matters. The history of Freemasonry is related to them in the following way: The first true mason was Adam,¹² the first man, who had an extraordinary knowledge of geometry at the time of his expulsion from Paradise. He was recognised as the first mason because, being the first man, he was a direct descendant of the Light. The true, deeper origin of Freemasonry, however, pre-dates humanity entirely. It resides in Light itself which existed before mankind.

That is most profound and reveals, for those who can understand it, what theosophical wisdom has again made public through its description of the formation of the earth through the first two Root Races and into the third (the time of Lemuria). Whoever can apprehend this through Freemasonry has received into himself something of tremendous importance. But that takes place in only the rarest cases because Freemasonry is, as it were, degenerate today. This has come about because, since the sixteenth century, man has had little understanding of the true meaning of Freemasonry, namely that a temple has to be built in such a way that its proportions are a reflection of the great cosmic proportions, that a cathedral has to be built in such a way that its acoustics reproduce something of the harmony of the spheres, which is the source of all acoustics in the outer world.

A knowledge of this original insight was gradually lost. Thus it came about that when Desaguliers¹³ reunited Freemasonry in England during the first half of the eighteenth century, no one had any proper understanding of the fact that the word Freemasonry had to be taken literally; that it really did concern the work of the practising mason and that the mason was one who built churches and temples and other great buildings according to cosmic laws and incorporated into them heavenly and not earthly proportions.

This original insight and its reflection in Freemasonry was lost; there was no longer any conscious appreciation of the transformation wrought by a proper use of acoustics in a building where the speaker's words are thrown back and are thereby changed in their effect. Those who built the great cathedrals of medieval times were the great Freemasons. They were aware of the importance of the fact that what was spoken by the priest should be reflected back from the individual walls and the whole congregation immersed in a sea of sound, breathing and fluctuating in significant vibration which would exercise still greater effect on the astral body than on the physical ear. That has all been lost and it was inevitable that this should be so in the new age. That is what I meant when I told you that what is left of Freemasonry is only the husk of what it was in former times.

Apart from these three degrees there are also the higher degrees. And those are possessed in a fairly complete form by the larger communities of Great Britain, America, Italy, Egypt, and also by eastern Freemasonry—especially that known as Oriental or Memphis Masonry.¹⁴ In Germany, where there is a branch of the Memphis-Misraim Freemasonry with world-wide masonic connections,¹⁵ the higher degrees are also functioning. But in Germany, within the St. John Freemasonry, there is so little understanding of the real significance of the higher degrees that the St. John masons there generally look upon the higher degrees as nonsense. The Grand Orient of Germany is obliged, for this reason, merely to let the St. John masons in general pass properly as masons.

In this respect there are great differences between the masonry practised in Germany and that of England or Great Britain. In British masonry a kind of reconciliation has been achieved through the Articles of Union of 1813 between craft masonry with its three degrees and those branches of masonry which recognise the higher degrees.¹⁶ Thus, as an apprentice in craft masonry one is allowed to enter and also graduate into the fourth, fifth and sixth degrees, that is, into the higher degrees. The degrees pertaining to craft masonry are credited to one in England; that is not the case in Germany. The German Grand Orient of the Memphis and Misraim Order undertakes the working of the three lowest degrees itself. The Orient Freemason must therefore have passed the first three degrees at the outset. He must furthermore commit himself to rising at least to the eighteenth degree. He may not rest until he has done so. A German mason of the St. John's Order is therefore never admitted to the higher degrees of Orient masonry [without having attained the three lesser degrees]. The Orient masonry consists of a graded instruction in occultism. As I said last time, it gives a picture of the teaching given in the higher degrees, those which succeed the Royal Arch degree: these provide a kind of astral training which leads up to the eighteenth or twentieth degrees. Then comes that which provides a kind of mental training, a training which leads to a kind of life on the mental plane, and advances to the sixtieth or seventieth degree. Lastly comes the highest training of all, the most profound occult instruction, which can be undertaken in the Grand Orient up to the ninety-sixth degree.

There are only very few in Germany who have advanced to the ninety-sixth degree. But in spite of everything there is something in all this which will presently prove to you how little is left in present-day masonry of what it formerly encompassed. The most interesting point is that those who have progressed to the ninety-sixth degree have not always been through a masonic training, and that there is scarcely anyone at all who has completed the whole gamut of the training. There are indeed a few who have higher degrees. They have been invested with the third or the thirty-third or the ninety-sixth degree, but those who possess these distinctions have not gained them through masonic training but through other occult institutions, and they have allowed their knowledge to be used to bring about the redemption of Freemasonry. If someone has attained to the ninety-sixth degree, it has not been achieved through masonic training. Bluntly, it is considered that in this respect Freemasonry is indebted to the occult training of other schools.

In this sense we have to interpret the manifesto which has been given by the Grand Orient of the Memphis and Misraim rite¹⁷ as a kind of ideal document. I will read it to you with one or two explanations. What is given here must not be construed as though it could be put into practice in the present day. It must be pointed out today that no Freemason—not even one who has the ninety-sixth degree—would take responsibility for taking another Freemason through these prescriptions, since he himself has not undergone them.

‘Concerning the Secrets of the Higher Occult Degrees of our Order. A Manifesto of the Grand Orient.

‘One of the secrets belonging to the highest degree of our Order consists in providing the appropriately conditioned Brother with the practical means of erecting the true Temple of Solomon within Man; of restoring the ‘Lost Word’, that is, our Order provides the initiated and selected Brother with practical means enabling him to gain proof of pure immortality during his present earthly life.’

That is one of the points which are of utmost importance. The next point is one which exists in all centres of occult training: no calling-up of spirits or spiritualistic activities. Anyone who practises spiritualism is strictly excluded.

‘This secret is one of the true masonic secrets and rests solely in the possession of the higher occult degrees of our Order. It has been handed down by word of mouth in our Order from the ancestors of all true Freemasons, “the Wise Men of the East”, and will only be transmitted by us in like manner.’

That is the practice in occult societies.

‘Naturally, however, the success of this practical instruction for the attainment of this secret again depends entirely on the candidate himself.

‘For of what use are the best and most tested and detailed instructions given to a candidate wishing to learn to swim if he is not himself prepared to move hands and feet when he comes into contact with the water? Or of what use is the most comprehensive guidance in learning to paint, or the exposition of the most vivid colours by way of example, if the candidate to whom painting is being taught will not take the paintbrush into his own hand and seek to mix the colours himself? He will never become an artist unless he does so.

‘Those brothers, the discoverers of this secret, guarded it as a rare, self-acquired possession and, in order not to be misjudged or even derided by the man in the street, they concealed it by means of symbols, as we do to this day.’

These symbols are no longer decipherable for the Freemason of the present day. Such symbols are not arbitrarily chosen. These are not things by means of which someone can portray something, like a professor who says: I will illustrate this graphically. These symbols have been taken from the objects themselves, which have been engraved by Nature. He who recognises them for what they are, who can really read what they contain, comes into contact with their innermost being, he is led by them into their inner nature. These symbols portray the thing itself and do not have a merely symbolical meaning. Within Freemasonry there is no one who is able to give guidance which would enable a person to arrive at the object itself.

‘These symbols are, however, no arbitrarily chosen pictures and they do not rest upon any chance occurrence, but are founded on the attributes of God and of man, and must be regarded as archetypal. But we will never take the form, the vessel, the ritual, the symbols for their content, but will seek the spiritual content within the form’

These words show [Gap] for the symbol itself portrays the object.

‘and when we have found this the spiritual content—and have absorbed it into ourselves, we shall recognise through this spiritual content the absolute necessity of the form, the ritual, the symbolism.

‘Our higher degrees themselves provide the brother with certain proof of the immortality of man.’

This they would do if they were worked.

‘That is and has been the great longing of mankind ever since human beings who could reason existed. Mankind needs to have this assurance of a life after death in order to be truly happy in this present life. Therefore all the mysteries contained in the religions and centres of hidden wisdom have occupied themselves with this question as their highest and principal task. The Church has naturally also occupied itself with this question of the “Lost Word”; the “Lost Immortality”, but it directs the candidate along the path of grace and portrays it as a gift from above and not as something to be achieved by personal effort. Our Order, however, places it within the power of each individual seeker, by practical means, to unite himself consciously and voluntarily with the World Consciousness, with the ultimate forces of Creation.’

That means, therefore, to provide insight into and union with that world which otherwise is only accessible through the portal of death.

From all this you may draw the conclusion that what belongs to the world's profundities was once found in Freemasonry, but is no longer there in the empty husk which it presents today. You must ask yourselves why. Now, the meaning of the Temple Legend, the meaning of operative masonry, like all intuitive knowledge, had to be lost to humanity, because the fifth cultural epoch is actually the epoch of understanding. Intuition had for a time to lie dormant in the world and Freemasonry is intuitive in its whole attitude and manner. I would like to draw your attention to Vitruvius¹⁸ and to the true symbolical building instructions which he gave. Only those, however, who have the right intuition for it can follow these instructions. Today these symbolical instructions have been replaced by intellectual, rational ones. Reason had to become the keynote of man's development for a while, because everything which has meanwhile come to us through great conquests of nature must be incorporated in the whole organism of human activity.

Understand what it means: the whole of the mineral kingdom will be included in the progress of the world during the present Round of evolution. It will be included in such a way that man will gradually transform the whole of nature through his own spirituality. That is the meaning of the Molten Sea, that the whole of mineral nature will effectively be transformed.

Man works in industry, so as to weave Organisation [his own spirituality?] into mineral nature. If you consider a machine ... [Gap]

In this way man thus works the whole mineral kingdom back and forth with his own spirit. This re-casting of Nature, this re-casting of what is mineral, will be perfected when our present Round of evolution has come to an end. The whole of mineral nature will then have been changed. Man will have put his stamp on it, just as he imprints his stamp on a quantity of metal when, for example, he fashions a watch. Thus, when a new Round of evolution begins, the mineral kingdom can be sucked in, absorbed.

In order completely to finish the development in this sphere, the whole way of thinking which has gripped man since the sixteenth century, must be carried right into the atom. Thus, only when reasoned thinking can grasp the atom can Freemasonry again revive. In the first stage, the outer form will be grasped. The next step will be when man has learned to think right into the mineral atom, when he has an understanding of how to make use of what lives in the atom and place it in the service of the whole. It is true that only now—and perhaps only during the last five years—human thinking has turned to tracing natural forces as far as the atom, and indeed, he who would understand this precisely must follow the latest phase of the various developments in electricity. The speech which the English Prime Minister Balfour has made¹⁹ on the subject of our contemporary world outlook is interesting in this connection, albeit only in its outward implications. What he said there [about new electrical theory] is something of enormous importance. He hints at the critical turning point in the development of man's thinking. He is to a certain extent conscious of this and mentions it in one part of his speech. Thus we see how something is dawning in the consciousness of natural science which plays into the future. This has been known to occultists since 1879. I emphasise this, although I cannot prove it.²⁰ The occultist knows that this will come about: a new point of departure from the atom into the mineral-physical world. That will be what will enter into the world in the sixth cultural epoch, and through this Freemasonry will also be regenerated. In Freemasonry the occultist has something very remarkable, something unprecedented, for it has something primeval in its foundation. It belongs to the most ancient of traditions, which has preserved almost a hundred degrees, in a precisely specialised structure, in spite of the fact that it has lost nearly all of its content, and that none of those belonging to it in Europe are able to form an adequate conception of it. But still: the thing is there and one will only need to fill the whole outer husk with new content. The thing is there, waiting to be brought to life again.

Points from the subsequent discussion.

Rites of Memphis, Oriental Rites and Grand Orient Rites. A conference of occultists discussed whether the occult doctrine could be made public or not. From that it became clear that there are two tendencies, a left and a right tendency,²¹ one which is free-thinking and one which is conservative.

• 1 . Rudolf Steiner entered later (1906) into a purely formal relationship with the Memphis-Misraim Freemasonry, cf. The Course of My Life,Chapter 36.
• 2 . According to a work by Friedrich Heldmann, contained in Rudolf Steiner's private library: Die drei ältesten geschichtlichen Denkmäler der teutschen Freymaurerbrüderschaft, (‘The three oldest historical documents of the German Freemasonry Brotherhood’). The Charter of Cologne of 1535, together with the oldest statutes of the Strasbourg Lodge of 1459 and its revision of 1563, form the oldest documents of German Freemasonry, Heckethorn, however, among others, holds it to be apocryphal, otherwise spurious. (See also note 11 of this lecture).
• 3 . Goethe became a member of the ‘Amalia’ Lodge in Weimar. See also the commentary on Goethe's relationship to Rosicrucianism at the end of this volume.
• 4 . The last two verses of his Freemasonry poem, Symbolum.
• 5 . In his description of this degree Rudolf Steiner is again basing himself on Heckethorn: Secret Societies, Book 8, Chapter 7.
• 6 . According to Heckethorn, p. 180, the name Zerubbabel is ‘a compound word, meaning: “the bright Lord, the Sun”. He rebuilds the temple and therefore represents the sun, risen again.’ It supposedly is connected with the Zerubbabel of the Old Testament, a noble from the family of David, who, on return from captivity in Babylon, completed the building of the Temple of Jerusalem.
• 7 . At the end of this sentence a very unclear statement follows, which could be rendered as follows: ‘Only a kind of memory is there, an indication of a memory of it, but the effect is missing.’
• 8 . According to Heckethorn, p. 180: ‘The next officer is Jeshua, the high priest; the third, Haggai, the prophet. These three compose the grand council. Principals and senior and junior sojourners form the base; Ezra and Nehemiah, senior and junior scribes, one on each side; janitor or tyler without the door.’
• 9 . According to Heckethorn, p. 260: ‘The Lodge must have a vaulted ceiling, painted blue and covered with golden stars, to represent the heavens.’ ‘... the brethren take their places according to their rank; the grandmaster in the Last, the master in the south, and the novices at the north.’
• 10. According to Heckethorn, p. 281: ‘Nine companions must be present at the opening of a Royal Arch Chapter; not more nor less than these three are permitted to take this degree at the same time, the two numbers making up the twelve, the number of zodiacal signs. The candidates are prepared by tying a bandage over their eyes, and coiling a rope seven times round the body of each, which unites them together, with three feet of slack rope between them.’
• 11. According to Heckethorn, p. 265: ‘Without the Royal Arch Degree Blue Masonry is incomplete.’ The ‘Blue Masonry’ of Heckethorn is what Rudolf Steiner calls ‘Johannesmaurerei’ (St. John Masonry) and is usually known simply as Craft Masonry in this country. This Order got its name ‘St. John Masonry’ from the Charter of Cologne, 1535 (see note 2). Heckethorn, Book 8, Chapter 2 (end), says: ‘The Freemasons have also frequently been said to be descended from the Knights Templars, and thus to have for their object to avenge the destruction of that Order, and so to be dangerous to Church and State; yet this assertion was repudiated as early as 1535 in the “Charter of Cologne”, wherein the Masons call themselves the Brethren of St. John, because St. John the Baptist was the forerunner of the Light.’ To continue the quotation from Heckethorn regarding ‘Blue Masonry:’ ‘Without the Royal Arch Degree Blue Masonry is incomplete, for we have seen in the Legend of the Temple that, through the murder of Hiram, the Master's word was lost; that word is not recovered in the Master's Degree, its substitute only being given; hence the lost word is recovered in the Royal Arch Degree. Blue Masonry, in fact, answers to the lesser mysteries of the ancients wherein, in reality nothing but the exoteric doctrines were revealed: whilst “spurious Masonry”, or all subsequent degrees—for no one can be initiated into them who has not passed through the first three degrees—answers to the greater mysteries.’
• 12. According to Heckethorn, p. 248, Freemasons claim to be not contemporary with the creation of man, but with that of the world; because light was before man, and prepared for him a suitable habitation, and light is the scope and symbol of Freemasonry.’ Edward Spratt, an Irish author, described Adam as the first Freemason, who, even after his expulsion from Paradise, possessed great knowledge, especially in the field of geometry. Edward Spratt: Konstitutionenbuch für irländische Logen, (1751).
• 13. John Theophilus Desaguliers, 1683–1744. From 1719 he was the Grand Master of the first English Grand Lodge. Desaguliers passes for the strongest personality of the so-called ‘Revival’ movement in Freemasonry. As a renowned scientist (pupil of Isaac Newton) he is numbered among those who prepared the way for the founding of the theory of electricity.
• 14. See note 1 to next lecture (lecture 9, 16th December).
• 15. Rudolf Steiner bases his statement here on an assertion in the Historische Ausgabe der Oriflamme. Der Schottische, Memphisund Misraim-Ritus der Freimaurerei, A.D. 1904, Berlin, according to which, at that time, friendly relationships existed between the twelve Grand Orients and Supreme Grand Councils of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite and the Sovereign Sanctuaries of America, Egypt, Rumania, Spain, Cuba, Naples and Palermo. In Germany, however, the Memphis and Misraim Freemasonry was at that time considered ‘irregular’ and was not recognised.
• 16. In the last Article of 1st December 1813, it is stated that: ‘It is explained and expressed that the pure and ancient, Freemasonry shall consist of only three Degrees and no more, namely, the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craftsman and Master Mason, with the addition of the High Grades of the Holy Royal Arch. But this Article shall not bind any Lodge or any Chapter to hold a gathering in accordance with the constitution of the said Order.’ (History of Freemasonry, by Heinrich Boos. From Rudolf Steiner's own library).
• 17. Rudolf Steiner read out the whole of the manifesto in the present lecture.
• 18. See note 7 to lecture 7 (2nd December 1904).
• 19. The speech made by Balfour to the British Association on 17th August 1904, appeared the same year in translation under the title: Unsere heutige Weltanschauung (‘Our present outlook’), Leipzig 1904. At the time of the present lecture this speech had already been discussed in the November issue of Luzifer-Gnosis, under the heading: ‘Present-day culture as reflected in Theosophy,’ in which the relevant passages from Balfour and Blavatsky are set over against one another. This discussion has been published in German in the complete edition of Rudolf Steiner's works as Volume 34, Luzifer-Gnosis. (For text of Balfour's speech, see note 22 to the next lecture, 16th December 1904).
• 20. At a later date Rudolf Steiner has often spoken in greater detail about the decisive importance of the year 1879, as, for instance in: ‘Fall of the Spirits of Darkness’ (typescript translation).
• 21. See in this connection Rudolf Steiner's detailed description in: The Occult Movement in the Nineteenth Century. For this statement Rudolf Steiner apparently made use of the publication by the Englishman, C.G. Harrison: The Transcendental Universe.

It is important that we should speak about the higher degrees of Freemasonry, because this manner of instruction sets itself special tasks, certain aspects of which will be discussed in the near future. We are dealing, in the main, with a special rite, that is called the combined rite of Memphis and Misraim.¹ I have already mentioned that the Memphis and Misraim rite possesses a great number of degrees, that ninety-five degrees must be undertaken, and that usually the Supreme Leaders of the Grand Orients—i.e. those of Germany, Great Britain and America possess the ninety-sixth degree. These degrees are so arranged that up to the end of about the eightieth to eighty-ninth degree they are divided up in the way I shall presently describe to you.

From about the eight-seventh degree onwards start the real occult degrees into which no one can be initiated who has not made a thorough study of the subject. I always make the reservation that in Europe there is nobody who has undertaken all these degrees or who has really undergone an occult Freemasonry training. But that is of no particular concern as far as Freemasonry goes, because its renewed task still awaits it in the future, and, when the time comes, the Organisation will be available; the vessel will be there which is needed to carry out what has to be achieved.

Now I must mention the various branches of Freemasonry and their tendencies, even if I am only to indicate some thing briefly. First of all, it is to be borne in mind that the whole of the masonic higher degrees trace back to a personality often spoken about but equally very much misunderstood. He was particularly misunderstood by nineteenth century historians, who have no idea of the difficult situations an occultist can meet in life. This personality is the ill-famed and little understood Cagliostro. The so-called Count Cagliostro,² in whom an individuality concealed itself which was recognised in its true nature only by the highest initiates, attempted originally to bring Freemasonry in London to a higher stage. For during the last third of the eighteenth century, Freemasonry had fairly well reached the state that I have described. He did not succeed in London at that time. He then tried in Russia, and also at The Hague. Everywhere he was unsuccessful, for very definite reasons.

Then, however, he was successful in Lyons, forming an occult masonic lodge of the Philalethes [Searchers after Truth] out of a group of local masons, which was called the Lodge of Triumphing Wisdom. The purpose of this Lodge was specified by Cagliostro. What you can read about it is, however, nothing but the work of ignorant people. What can be said about it is only an indication. Cagliostro was concerned with two things: firstly, with instructions enabling one to produce the so-called Philosopher's Stone; secondly, with creating an understanding of the mystic pentagram. I can only give you a hint of the meaning of these two things. They may be treated with a deal of scorn, but they are not to be taken merely symbolically, they are based on real facts.

The Philosopher's Stone has a specific purpose, which was stated by Cagliostro; it is meant to prolong human life to a span of 5,527 years.³ To a freethinker that appears laughable. In fact, however, it is possible, by means of special training, to prolong life indefinitely by learning to live outside the physical body. Anyone, however, who imagined that no death, in the conventional sense of the word, could strike down an adept, would have quite a false view of the matter. So, whoever imagined that an adept could not be hit and killed by a falling roof slate, would also be wrong. To be sure, that would usually only occur if the adept allowed it. We are not dealing here with physical death, but with the following. Physical death is only an apparent occurrence for him who has understood the Philosopher's Stone for himself, and has learned to separate it. For other people it is a real happening, which signifies a great division in their life. For he who understands how to use the Philosopher's Stone in the way that Cagliostro intended his pupils to do, death is only an apparent occurrence. It does not even constitute a decisive turning point in life; it is, in fact, something which is only there for the others who can observe the adept and say that he is dying. He himself, however, does not really die. It is much more the case that the person concerned has learned to live without his physical body; that he has learned during the course of life to let all those things take place in him gradually, which happen suddenly in the physical body at the moment of death. Everything has already taken place in the body of the person concerned, which otherwise takes place at death. Death is then no longer possible, for the said person has long ago learned to live without the physical body. He lays aside the physical body in the same way that one takes off a raincoat, and he puts a new body on just as one puts a new raincoat on.

Now that will give you an inkling. That is one lesson which Cagliostro taught—the Philosopher's Stone—which allows physical death to become a matter of small importance.

The second lesson was the knowledge of the Pentagram. That is the ability to distinguish the five bodies of man one from another. When someone says: physical body, etheric body, astral body, Kama-Manas body, causal body, [higher Manas or spirit self] these are mere words, or at best, abstract ideas. Nothing, however, is achieved by that. A person living today as a rule hardly knows the physical body; only one who knows the Pentagram learns to know the five bodies. One does not know a body by living in it, but by having it as an object. That is what distinguishes an average person from one who has gone through such a schooling that the five bodies have become objects. The ordinary person does indeed live in these five bodies: however, he lives in them, he cannot step outside [of himself] and look at them. At best he can view his physical body when he looks down at his torso, or sees it in a mirror. Those pupils of Cagliostro who had followed his methods would thereby have achieved what some Rosicrucians achieved, who had basically undergone a training with the same orientation. They were in a school of the great European adepts, who taught that the five bodies were realities, and not to remain as mere concepts. That is called ‘Knowing the Pentagram’ and ‘Moral Rebirth’.

I will not say that the pupils of Cagliostro never achieved anything. In general they went as far as comprehending the astral body. Cagliostro was extremely skilful in imparting a view of the astral body. Long before the catastrophe broke over him, he had succeeded in starting schools in Paris, Belgium, St. Petersburg and a few other places in Europe, in addition to the one in Lyons, out of which later emerged at least a few people who had the basis for some to proceed to the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth higher degrees of Freemasonry. Thus, Count Cagliostro at least had an important influence on occult masonry in Europe before ending his days in the prison in Rome. The world should not actually pronounce judgment on Cagliostro. As I have already indicated, when people speak about Cagliostro, it is as though Hottentots were to speak about the erection of an overhead railway, because the relationship of apparently immoral outward acts to world happenings is not understood.

I remarked earlier that the French Revolution arose out of the secret societies⁴ of the occultists, and if these currents were investigated further, they would lead back to the school of the adepts.

It may be that what Mabel Collins depicted in her novel Flita⁵ is hard to understand. In it she describes, rather grotesquely, how an adept has the World Chessboard in front of him in a secret place, and lets the pieces play, and how he, so to speak, controls the Karma of a continent upon one very simple little board. It does not quite take place as it is described there, but something on a much greater scale than that does actually happen, of which what is described in Flita gives only a distorted picture.

Now the French Revolution certainly proceeded from such things as this. There is a well-known story contained in the writings of the Countess d'Adhémar. It related that, before the outbreak of the French Revolution, the Countess d’Adhémar, one of the ladies-in-waiting to Marie-Antoinette, received a visit from the Count of St. Germain.⁶ He wanted to be presented to the Queen and to beg audience of the King. Louis XVI's minister, however, was the enemy of the Count of St. Germain, who therefore was not allowed into the King's presence. But he described to the Queen with great accuracy and detail the major perils which were looming ahead. Regrettably, however, his warnings were ignored. It was on that occasion that he uttered the great saying which was based on truth: ‘They who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind’⁷ and he added that he had uttered this saying millenia previously, and it had been repeated by Christ. Those were words which were unintelligible to the ordinary person.

But the Count of St. Germain was right. I will only add a few more touches which are quite correct. In books about the Count of St. Germain you can read that he died in 1784⁸ at the court of the Landgrave of Hessen,⁹ who later became one of the most advanced German Freemasons. The Landgrave nursed him until the end. But the Countess d'Adhémar recounts in her memoirs¹⁰ that he appeared to her long after the year 1784, and that she saw him six more times long after that. In reality he was at that time, in 1790, with some Rosicrucians in Vienna¹¹ and said, which is perfectly true, that he was obliged to retire to the Orient for the span of 85 years, and that after that time people would again become aware of his activity in Europe. 1875 is the year of the founding of the Theosophical Society. These things are all connected to ether in a certain way.

In the school founded by the Landgrave of Hessen, also, there were two main concerns: the Philosopher's Stone and the Knowledge of the Pentagram. The Freemasonry founded by the Landgrave of Hessen at that time continued to exist in a rather diluted form. In fact, the whole of Freemasonry, as I have described it, is called the Egyptian rite, the rite of Memphis and Misraim. The latter traces its origin back to King Misraim who came from Assyria—from the Orient—and, after the conquest of Egypt, was initiated into the Egyptian mysteries. These are indeed the mysteries which originate from ancient Atlantis. An unbroken tradition exists from that time. Modern Freemasonry is only a continuation of what was established then in Egypt.

Before I go into details I would like to say that Freemasonry which extends to the higher degrees is something which, in its more intimate aspect, is quite different from the normal craft masonry. The ordinary craft masonry rests on a kind of democratic principle, and if the democratic principle is to be applied to matters of knowledge, it is obvious that it will lead to a state of affairs in which the brothers who have congregated together will mainly do nothing but bring forward their own views. Truth, however, is something about which one cannot hold one's own views. One either knows a truth or one is ignorant of it. No one can say that the three angles of a triangle add up to 725 degrees instead of to 180 degrees.

When people sit together and have a discussion they talk about their own views, sometimes also about the most elevated things. But all of this exists on the level of illusion, and is just as irrelevant as what a person says who is ignorant of the true sum of the angles of a triangle and only gives his own opinion about it. Just as one is unable to discuss whether the sum of the angles of a triangle have this or that many degrees, so one is also unable to have a discussion about higher truths. That is why the democratic principle is not applicable to matters of knowledge, for there is no basis of argument on which to discuss them. What distinguishes masonry of the higher degrees from craft masonry is that one learns to know the truth step by step. Whoever has recognised a thing can no longer hold more than one opinion about it. One has either recognised it, or one has not done so. The ninety-six degrees have, therefore, a certain justification

At the head is the so-called Sovereign Sanctuary, who is identical with what is known as the Grand Orient in Freemasonry, and is in possession of the real occult knowledge.¹² He knows the path and the speech of that which can be picked out in the masonic manifesto,¹³ and which makes it possible to hear the voice of the Wise Men of the East. When he has reached this step, he is certainly in a position to hear the voice of the Wise Masters. So far, however, must one have worked one's way up, that one is in possession of very definite knowledge, and also of definite inner qualities and inner capacities which by no means purely cover themselves with the conventional bourgeois virtues, but are something more meaningful and intimate. I would note that [compared with] what we have been speaking about here, what theosophical literature reveals of a theoretical or practical nature forms only an elementary part. So that the theoretical side of the higher degrees of Freemasonry far surpasses what can be divulged in popular theosophy. What can be disclosed there is dependent upon the permission given by the adepts to allow these things to be popularised up to a certain grade. But it is not possible to make all knowledge public.

It is correct to say that humanity will be astonished by some of the discoveries which will be made in the near future. But they will be rather premature discoveries and will thereby cause some havoc. The task of the Theosophical Society consists mainly in preparing people for such things. For instance, what I described at the beginning as the knowledge of the Philosopher's Stone was formerly much more universally known than it is today and, indeed, it was known already during a certain period of the Atlantean Epoch. At that time the possibility of conquering death was really something which was commonly known. I only wish to remark that I was not very happy about allowing this truth to appear in print recently. Therefore where this should have come in the discussion about Atlantean times in the Luzifer article, a row of dots was printed in place of those things which may not yet be communicated.¹⁴ It cannot even yet be communicated in its entirety. There is a very similar piece of information recorded by a very advanced medium, which appeared in the Theosophical Review¹⁵ dealing with exactly the same thing in a rather different form. The overcoming of death in Atlantean times is naturally preserved in the memories of the individuals concerned without their being aware of it. There are many people reincarnated today who passed through that period in their former lives and who are led to such revelations through their own memories. That will first of all lead to a kind of overrating of certain medical discoveries. People will imagine that medical science was the discoverer of such things. In reality people will have been led to them through their own memories of Atlantean times.

Certain things will mature in the near future and therefore we shall speak about them. This makes it necessary to see the need of a step by step advance in the gaining of knowledge. This step by step advance is therefore rightly emphasised by those who wish to revive the Misraim and Memphis Rite at the present time. Even if this does not succeed during the next year or two, one must not think that failure in such things is of any significance There is a man at the head of the American Misraim movement, whose significant character constitutes a sure guarantee of constancy in the advance. This is the excellent Freemason, John Yarker.¹⁶

It is difficult to say at the moment what form the matter will take in Great Britain and Germany. You will perceive that one must reckon with the human material concerned, and that the German movement, therefore—if it is to concern itself with such matters -will also have to reckon with what is available in this direction. If genuine occultists are to take part in such things they must needs be active in one or other direction. They will not always be able to take part in such things. Even the Masters, when they prescribe something of this kind, have to take their cue from great universal laws.

If, therefore, you hear something concerning the German Misraim-Memphis tendency, you should not imagine that this now has significance for the future. It is only the frame into which a good picture may later be put. This German Misraim Order stands under the overall guidance of a certain Reuss,¹⁷ who holds the actual leadership in Great Britain and Germany today. Then, the well-known Carl Kellner¹⁸ also works in this direction. The actual literary work is in the hands of Dr. Franz Hartmann,¹⁹ who serves the Misraim Rite with his pen to the very utmost. That is as much as I can impart to you in this or that fragment from here or there, concerning this movement.

Now I can only characterise what is involved here in general terms. There are four kinds of instruction given in the- Misraim Rite.²⁰ The ninety-six degrees can therefore be achieved through four different kinds of instruction or disciplines. These four disciplines, by means of which one advances, are the following: First, the so-called symbolic instruction or discipline. By means of this, certain symbols can be recognised as facts. The person concerned is instructed in the occult laws of nature, through which quite definite effects are produced through cyclic movements in humanity.

The second kind of instruction or discipline is the so-called philosophic one. It is the Egyptian hermetic discipline. It consists of a more theoretical kind of instruction. The third kind of instruction is the so-called mystical discipline, which is based more upon inner development, and which, if rightly applied, would lead above all else to the appropriate manipulation of the Philosopher's Stone, that is, to the overcoming of death. That is essentially expressed in one of the sentences which I read out to you which stated that by means of Freemasonry everyone is able to convince himself of the fact of immortality. It depends, however, as the Cabbala says, whether this is requested or not. The fourth kind of instruction is the Cabbalistic one. It consists in the recognition of the principles of world harmony in their truth and reality, the ten basic ... [Gap]

By means of each of the four paths one can rise to a higher perception through the Misraim Rite. But there is actually no one within the ranks of Freemasonry today who would accept the responsibility of giving practical guidance to anyone, because those concerned have not undergone these things themselves, and the whole affair is a provisional arrangement and only intended to provide a framework for something which is still to come. It is possible that this framework will be filled with occult knowledge. Occult knowledge has to be cast in existing moulds. The important thing is that such moulds exist in the world. If there is molten metal and no mould into which to pour it, you are unable to do anything but let it run out in one lump. So it is also with spiritual currents. It is important that moulds exist into which can be poured the spiritual metal. That is symbolised by the Molten Sea. That will become recognised when what is now seemingly only vegetating receives form for outward manifestation.

Last time I read to you from a speech by the English Prime Minister Balfour.²¹ From that, then, it is already noticeable that certain things are physical truths today, that are in primeval occult perceptions. If you read Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine, you will find there a passage relating to electricity, which expresses word for word what physicists are now gradually arriving at. What is written there is, however, only a hint at what is actually involved. It is the physical atom which is in question. This was misunderstood by all outward—but not occult—science until four or five years ago. It was taken to be [body having] mass in space. Nowadays one is beginning to recognise that this physical atom bears the same relationship to the force of electricity that a lump of ice bears to the water from which it has been frozen. If you conceive of water becoming frozen to ice, so is the ice also water, and in like manner the atom of physics is nothing else but frozen electricity. If you can grasp this point completely and were to go through the statements about the atom contained in all the scientific journals until a year or two ago, and were to regard them as rubbish, you will have more or less the right idea. It is only very recently that science has been able to form a conception of what the atom is. It stands [in the same relationship to electricity] as ice does to water out of which it has been frozen. The physical atom is condensed electricity. I regard Balfour's speech as something of extreme importance.²²

It is ... [Gap] something which has been published since 1875 [1879?].²³ The fact has been known to occultists for millenia. Now one is beginning to realise that the physical atom is condensed electricity. But there is still a second thing to be considered: what electricity itself is. That is still unknown. They are ignorant of one thing: namely, where the real nature of electricity must be sought. This nature of electricity cannot be discovered by means of any outer experiments or through outer observation. The secret which will be discovered is that electricity—when one learns to view it from a particular level—is exactly the same as what human thought is. Human thought is the same thing as electricity, viewed one time from the inside, another time from the outside.

Whoever is now aware of what electricity is, knows that there is something living within him which, in a frozen state, forms the atom. Here is the bridge from human thought to the atom. One will learn to know the building stones of the physical world; they are tiny condensed monads, condensed electricity. In that moment when human beings realise this elementary occult truth about thought, electricity and the atom, in that same moment they will have understood something which is of the utmost importance for the future and for the whole of the sixth post-Atlantean epoch. They will have learned how to build with atoms through the power of thinking.

This will be the spiritual current which will again have to be cast in the moulds which have been prepared for it by occultists over millenia. But because the human race had to pass through the era of the development of understanding and to look away from the true inner work, the moulds have become mere shells. But they still retain their function as moulds, and the right kind of knowledge will have to be poured into them.

The occult investigator obtains his truth from the one side, the physical scientist from the other. Just as Freemasonry has developed out of working masonry, out of the building of cathedrals and temples, so one will in future learn to build with the smallest of building blocks, with entities of condensed electricity. That will call for a new kind of masonry. Then industry will not be able to carry on any more as it does today. It will become so chaotic and will only be able to work purely out of the struggle for existence per se, as long as man does not know ... [Gap] Then it would be possible for someone in Berlin to drive into the city in a cab, while in Moscow a disaster which he had caused was taking place. And nobody at all would have any inkling that he had been the cause of it. Wireless telegraphy is the beginning of this. What I have portrayed is in the future. There are only two possibilities available: Either things go on chaotically, as industry and technology have done until now, in which case it will lead to whoever has the possession of these things being able to cause havoc, or else it will be cast in the moral mould of Freemasonry. *This last sentence appears as follows in the notes of Marie Steiner-von Sivers: ‘These things will either continue chaotically, as industry and technology have done until now, or harmoniously, as is the aim of Freemasonry; then the highest development will be achieved.’

Question: Why is the Catholic Church so antagonistic towards Freemasonry?

Answer: The Catholic Church does not want what is coming in the future. Pius IX was initiated into Freemasonry. He tried, through the Chapter of Clermont, to bring about a connection between the Jesuits and the Freemasons. That did not succeed, and therefore the old enmity between these two remained. Our Jesuits know little about these things, and the clergy are also unaware of what is involved. The actual clergy ... [Large gap]

The Trappists have to keep silent, for it is known that by doing so an important faculty of inspired speech in the next life is implanted. That is indeed only to be understood through a knowledge of reincarnation.

• 1 . According to legend the Memphis Rite is supposed to have originated with a man called Ormus, who was converted to Christianity by St. Mark in the year 46. It is said that the Crusaders carried this masonic knowledge with them from the Holy Land and founded a Grand Lodge in Scotland in the twelfth century. The legend derives the name Misraim from Mizraim, one of the sons of Ham. He came to Egypt, possessed himself of the country and called it after his name (Misraim or Mizraim—an old name for Egypt). The teaching about Isis, Osiris, Typhon, etc., is supposed to have come from him, cf. Schuster: Die geheimen Gessellschaften, Verbindungen und Orden (Volume 2, Leipzig 1906). According to Heckethorn: (Secret Societies, Book 8, Chapter 20), the Egyptian masonry was founded by Cagliostro. The Rite of Misraim is attributed (Heckethorn, Book 8, Chapter 10) to a foundation in Milan of 1805, i.e., ten years after the supposed death of Cagliostro, which foundation was laid by several masons ‘who had been refused admission into the Supreme Grand Council.’ The Rite of Memphis is said to be a copy of the Rite of Misraim and was founded in Paris in 1839. It is supposed to have been combined with the Misraim Rite towards the end of the nineteenth century, since when it has been known as the ‘Memphis-Misraim Rite.’ John Yarker (see note 16), the ‘Absolute Sovereign Grand Master in and for Great Britain and Ireland of the Combined Scottish, Memphis and Misraim Rite,’ established a Grand Orient (Grand Lodge) for Germany in 1902.
• 2 . Count Alexander Cagliostro, allegedly identical with the Sicilian Joseph Balsamo—a fact which he himself, however, always vigorously denied—died in the Vatican prison in 1795. He is regarded, along with the Count of St. Germain, as one of the most controversial figures of the eighteenth century. In an account of his life by Francois Ribadeau Dumas: (Cagliostro, Allen and Unwin 1967) the attempt was made to put the record straight. For instance, it was quoted out of the Protocol of the trial by the Inquisition that ‘it has not been possible to find a single witness among Cagliostro's accusers who had known Balsamo.’ Furthermore, a passage is quoted from the book by Cagliostro's ‘learned historian,’ Dr. Marc Haven, Le Maitre inconnu Cagliostro: ‘No one has proved that Balsamo and Cagliostro are one and the same person; neither Morands, nor Goethe, not the Commissary Fontaine, nor even the trial of the Holy Inquisition have produced a document which precludes all doubt.’
• 3 . In the notes of Marie Steiner von Sivers it is said to be 5,530 years. According to Heckethorn (Book 8, Chapter 20), 5,557 years (see note 13). Ribadeau Dumas (in the work quoted above) states that Cagliostro left many works behind him, among which is one entitled: The Art of prolonging Life. All of them, apart from his Egyptian Ritual, have disappeared. As Ribadeau Dumas says: ‘If they haven't been burned, they must reside in the Vatican archives. Let us hope that, in the light of the new ideas of the occumenical movement and reconciliation with the “separated Brethren”, the Vatican library will one day release these curious documents to which Cagliostro so often referred and through which he might be vindicated.’
• 4 . This almost certainly happened during lecture 5 given on the 4th November 1904, though it is not recorded in the notes.
• 5 . Mabel Collins (pseudonym for Mrs Kenningdale-Cook), 1851–1927, was one of the best authors of the Theosophical Society. Rudolf Steiner wrote an appreciation of her novel Flita, True Story of a Black Enchantress, when it first appeared in German translation. This was published March 1905 in the periodical Luzifer-Gnosis and is recorded in the complete edition in German of Rudolf Steiner's works in Volume 34, Luzifer-Gnosis.
• 6 . See note 4 to lecture 5 given on 4th November 1904.
• 7 . According to the account of Madame d'Adhemar, the Count said to her: ‘Madame, they who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind; this is what Jesus said in the Gospels, perhaps not before I did but, anyway, his words have been preserved in writing, only mine could have been made use of.’ Quoted from Heyer: Aus dem Jahrhundert der Französischen Revolution, (Edition 1956). These words, however, do not appear in the New Testament, but in the Old Testament, Hosea, Chapter 8, verse 7. (See also the statement in lecture 5 of the 4th November 1904).
• 8 . He is reputed to have died in Eckernfoerde on 27th February 1784. As proof of this is the death register of the St. Nicholas Church in Eckernfoerde, according to which he was ‘quietly interred’ on 2nd March 1784.
• 9 . Prince Karl, 1744–1836, son of the ruling Landgrave Frederick II, Danish General and Governor of the Dukedoms of Schleswig and Holstein. His Freemasonry writing: La Pierre Zodiacale du temple de Denderah, appeared in 1824. His memoires, which were dictated 1816/17, appeared in Copenhagen in 1861 and, in German translation, in Cassel in 1866. In the latter is to be found a report concerning the Count of St. Germain.
• 10. See Karl Heyer's: Aus dem jahrhundert der Französischen Revolution.
• 11. Rudolf Steiner apparently bases his statements on an article by Isabel Cooper-Oakley in the periodical Gnosis, of 15th December 1903, the pertinent passage of which reads (Quoted from: The Count of Saint-Germain, by Isabel Cooper-Oakley, Rudolf Steiner Publications, p. 145 and p. 140 et seq.):
  
  ‘Franz Graeffer left us the curious account of a journey by Saint Germain to Vienna. Unfortunately this description is not quite satisfactory. Graeffer himself confesses that it was written on 15th June, long after the event. He says: “A peculiar irresistible feeling has compelled me to set down these transactions in writing once more, after so long a time, just today June 15th 1843.” Further, I make this remark, that these events have not been hitherto reported.’
  
  ‘One day the report was spread that the Comte de St. Germain, the most enigmatical of all incomprehensibles, was in Vienna. An electric shock passed through all who knew his name. Our Adept circle was thrilled through and through: St. Germain was in Vienna!
  
  ‘Barely had Graeffer, his brother Rudolf, recovered from the surprising news, than he flies to Hiniberg, his country seat, where he has his papers. Among these is to be found a letter of recommendation from Casanova, the genial adventurer whom he got to know in Amsterdam, addressed to St. Germain.
  
  ‘He hurries back to his house of business; there he is informed by the clerk: “An hour ago a gentleman has been here whose appearance has astonished us all. This gentleman was neither tall nor short, his build was strikingly proportionate, everything about him had the stamp of nobility ... He said in French, as it were to himself, not troubling about anyone's presence, the words: ‘I live in Fedalhofe, the room in which Leibnitz lodged in 1713.’ We were about to speak, when he was already gone. This last hour we have been, as you see, Sir, petrified ...”
  
  ‘In five minutes Fedalhofe is reached. Leibnitz's room is empty. Nobody knows when “the American gentleman” will return home. As to luggage, nothing is to be seen but a small iron chest. It is almost dinner time. But who would think of dining! Graeffer is mechanically urged to go and find Baron Linden; he finds him at the “Ente”. They drive to the Landstrasse, whither a certain something, an obscure presentiment, impels them to drive post-haste.
  
  ‘The laboratory is unlocked; a simultaneous cry of astonishment escapes both; at a table is seated St. Germain, calmly reading a folio, which is a work of Paracelsus. They stand dumb at the threshold; the mysterious intruder slowly closes the book, and slowly rises. Well know the two perplexed men that this apparition can be no other in the world than the man of wonders. The description of the clerk was a shadow against reality. It was as if a bright splendour enveloped his whole form. Dignity and sovereignty declared themselves. The men were speechless. The Count steps forward to meet them; they enter. In measured tones, without formality, but in an indescribably ringing tenor, charming the innermost soul, he says in French to Graeffer: “You have a letter of introduction from Herr von Seingalt; but it is not needed. This gentleman is Baron Linden. I knew that you would both be here at this moment. You have another letter for me from Bruehl. But the painter is not to be saved; his lung is gone, he will die July 8th 1805.
  
  ‘St. Germain then gradually passed into a solemn mood. For a few seconds he became rigid as a statue, his eyes, which were always expressive beyond words, became dull and colourless. Presently, however, his whole being became reanimated. He made a movement with his hand as if in signal of his departure, then said: “I am leaving (ich scheide); do not visit me. Once again will you see me. Tomorrow night I am off; I am much needed in Constantinople; then in England, there to prepare two inventions which you will have in the next century—trains and steamboats. These will be needed in Germany. The seasons will gradually change—first the spring, then the summer. It is the gradual cessation of time itself, as the announcement of the end of the cycle. I see it all; astrologers and meteorologists know nothing, believe me; one needs to have studied in the Pyramids as I have studied. Towards the end of this century I shall disappear out of Europe, and betake myself to the region of the Himalayas. I will rest; I must rest. In exactly 85 years people will again set eyes on me. Farewell, I love you”. [Said in 1790. Exactly 85 years later (1875) the Theosophical Society was founded.] After these solemnly uttered words, tie Count repeated the sign with his hand. The two adepts, overpowered by the force of such unprecedented impressions, left the room in a condition of complete stupefaction. In the same moment there fell a sudden heavy shower, accompanied by a peal of thunder. Instinctively they return to the laboratory for shelter. They open the door. St. Germain is no more there ...’
• 12. It would seem that a person, rather than a body of people, is here meant. Heckethorn, in talking about the Order of Memphis, says that: ‘it works 33 degrees and embraces a far more extensive ritual of workable degrees than any other rite, every one of its 33 degrees having its appropriate and elaborate ceremonial easily arranged for conferment and its titles are purged of ridiculous pretensions. Its government is strictly representative, as in our own political constitution. The 32 and 31 are the first, second, third and fourth Officers of the Chapter, Senate and Council and form the Mystic Temple and judicial Tribunal, the presiding Officer, or Grand Master of Light, having the 33rd degree to enable him to represent the Province in the Sovereign Sanctuary (33–95) or ruling body.’
  
  Dr. Steiner speaks at the beginning of this lecture about the Combined Rite of Memphis and Misraim having a great number of degrees, that 95 out of the 96 Degrees have to be undertaken by its members and that the Supreme Leaders of the Grand Orients usually possess the 96th Degree. It seems likely that it is this Supreme Leader who is in possession of the actual occult knowledge and knows the path and the language of the Freemasonry manifesto, through which is revealed the voice of the ‘Wise Men of the East.’
• 13. See preceding lecture of 9th December in which the text of the manifesto is given in full.
• 14. This relates to the articles which appeared in the periodical Luzifer-Gnosis, in December 1904 under the title ‘From the Akashic Records.’ See Cosmic Memory, Chapter 4, ‘Transition of the Fourth into the Fifth Root Race,’ p.66 (Rudolf Steiner Publications Inc., New York, 1961).
• 15. The article in question appeared in the December issue of the Theosophical Review of 1904 signed only ‘E.’ Its contents were the result of a combined exercise undertaken by ‘E,’ the interrogator, ‘T,’ the medium employed to transmit by automatic means the communications of ‘F,’ the spirit guide. What follows comprises only a few extracts of the original article.
  
  ‘F,’ though a politician and a man of the world, is an enthusiastic humanitarian ... He added that he felt very anxious, for soon an important discovery would be made which would give the doctors a greater power than they had even now, and that it would lead to more cruelty in experiments on animals, for the man who found it out would think he had learned it by vivisection. “But remember, it is not so, it is not a discovery, only a remembrance; for the man who will find it out was an Atlantean, and the Atlanteans were far more learned in medicine than we are; indeed the body had no secrets for them”. I then began to question him about Atlantis ...
  
  They commanded the elements, made fine weather or storm as it pleased them. There were no children, for by an effort of unnatural power they attained to the great secret of causing life without material union of the two forces. The soul returned and reincarnated by an effort of will, taking its form from the natural elements without any other medium. This was what ultimately ended their power, for it could not be allowed to continue. It is dimly figured in a late Hebrew legend by the “tree of life”. There was nothing left of progression, and therefore a cataclysm had to overtake this civilisation, and destroy even its memory.
  
  ‘They overset the balance of creation, and so ruined their civilisation. The material cause was that they withdrew the life-force of the earth, and exhausted all the supplies of the life-current. This caused convulsions of nature, and the storm broke, irremediable, terrible, and swamped them. The Titans vied with the gods but were defeated. All religions tell this tale as a note of warning.
  
  ‘Your earth is a living creature, and if you can tap its life-current you can work all miracles. The Atlanteans are the souls of today in some cases, but they have been discrowned ... They had to return into ordinary life by the simple way of being born as an ordinary infant.
  
  ‘I will now tell you a little more about the wonderful power of Atlantis, so as to make you realise what man has been, and will be in the future ages; for to tell the truth Atlantis was material perfection, to this man can never return, but to perfection he will come in future time.
  
  ‘The ways of life of the highest classes were most simple, for nourishment was obtained almost from the air alone. Like orchids, the rulers, and more especially the priests, drew all their sustenance from the substance contained in the atmosphere. Consult any botanist you like and you will see that I am right. You cannot do this, for you are not self-materialised; you are creatures born, and not made by your own will ...
  
  ‘It was only the discovery of the great secret, that of the “tree of life”, which simplified matters, and that you will never regain until you cease to care for the power for its own sake. I mean the secret of death and birth. There is no need for men to die. There is no reason for men to be born. I know the secret in part, but not fully, for I am not good enough to be permitted to recall the wonderful power. If I could do this I should at once be tempted to reveal it to you, for it would be, God willing, an eternity of happiness.
  
  ‘I will, however, try and define somewhat and give you an example. A man is entirely renewed each seven years; after a while, however, he deteriorates and slowly decomposes. This is owing to ignorance, for if he knew how to regulate the inflow of new particles, he would never choose worse but rather better particles, and the atoms would remain permanently polarised by his will. Man is really held in a single cell; this cell is immortal and descends from generation to generation, creating ever new forms in which a human spirit can manifest. If this cell is retained in the body, and there is no procreation or waste of conservative power, then there is no reason why man should not exist for ever, during the cycle. By his children, however, man reproduces himself, and so destroys his material self. To an adept, to marry is to become a lower creature subject to death. This is truth. Every man or woman who creates can only do so by handing on his immortality. Man is a spirit, and the spirit is the central point of the materialised form. The whole of mankind accepts death as a necessity, and therefore hypnotise themselves into a belief that they must, die, but there is no reason for it if the cell is still intact in them.
  
  ‘Think it over and understand that this is one of the chief Christian teachings that has been corrupted. Christ rose from the dead to be the first fruits of life.
  
  ‘I want to refer to the new discovery which will be made, and of which I have previously spoken. It was well known once, and will return to the fated man's memory, and he will be hailed as a benefactor of humanity. In the old days of Atlantis when the secrets of the body were entirely unveiled to the caste of rulers and priests, they learnt it in a far more terrible way even than that of vivisection, namely by the stultification of the soul, thus destroying or distorting the power of evolution in a creature. You do not know this, thank God! or the earth would be once more a land of devils ...’
• 16. Yarker, 1833–1913, was an Englishman who was active within English Freemasonry. When it is here said that he was at the head of the ‘American’ Misraim movement, this is on the grounds of a statement made in the Historical Edition of the Oriflamme, Berlin 1904, co-edited by him, to the effect that only America possessed a legitimate Charter and that Yarker had been appointed in New York in 1872 ‘by S.G.C. 33° as “Chief Representative” and “Guarantor of Friendly Relationships” with the Manchester Grand Orient of the Scottish Rite and Sovereign Sanctuary of the Memphis and Misraim Rite.’ As significant masonic author he had obtained high Degrees in many different connections. (See end of note 1 to this lecture).
• 17. Theodore Reuss, 1855–1923. Authorised by Yarker to inaugurate the setting up of the Memphis-Misraim Rite in Germany. Rudolf Steiner did not know Reuss at that time. An account of this is going to appear in the documentation of the history of Rudolf Steiner's ‘Esoteric School’ (untranslated).
• 18. Carl Kellner, 1851–1905, Austrian inventor and big businessman. According to Hugo Göring in the January issue, 1895, of the periodical Sphinx (Official organ of the German Theosophical Society, edited by Hübbe-Schleiden), he invented the process for the manufacture of cellulose and worked together with the medical doctor, Franz Hartmann. Kellner was the Sovereign Honorary General Grand Master for the Memphis and Misraim Rite in Great Britain and Germany and signed himself as such for the Historical Edition of the Great Oriflamme of 1904.
• 19. Franz Hartmann, 1838–1912. After an adventurous life and personal acquaintance with H.P. Blavatsky, he founded the so-called ‘Leipzig’ Theosophical Society. He was the editor of the theosophical periodical Lotusblüten. He is mentioned by Rudolf Steiner in his autobiography: The Course of My Life and in the second volume of Rudolf Steiner's letters.
• 20. The four kinds of instruction described by Rudolf Steiner are enumerated by Heckethorn (p. 299), where he deals with the ‘Organisation of the Rite of Misraim.’ He says: ‘Then arose the Rite of Misraim with ninety degrees arranged in four sections, viz. 1. Symbolic, 2. Philosophic, 3. Mystical, 4. Cabbalistic; which were divided into seventeen classes.’ ‘The Rite of Memphis,’ he says (p. 301), ‘is a copy of the Rite of Misraim and was founded in Paris in 1839. It was composed of ninety-one degrees, arranged in three sections and seven classes.’ Where Heckethorn speaks of the ‘Ancient and Primitive Rite of Masonry or Order of Memphis’ (pp. 253–256), he states: ‘The Ancient and Primitive Rite of Masonry works thirty-three degrees, divided into three sections, embracing modern, chivalric and Egyptian Masonry, as the latter was worked on the continent last century ... It embraces a far more extensive ritual of workable degrees than any other rite, every one of its thirty-three degrees having its appropriate and elaborate ceremonial easily arranged for conferment, and its titles are purged of ridiculous pretensions.’
  
  On the other hand, when speaking about the Egyptian Rite in connection with Cagliostro, Heckethorn says, (p. 352): ‘The Egyptian Rite invented by Cagliostro is a mixture of the sacred and profane, of the serious and laughable; charlatanism is its prevailing feature.’
  
  From this it appears that the ‘Memphis and Misraim Rite,’ referred to by Rudolf Steiner, is a complex mixture of those rites which confer the Higher Degrees. Heckethorn refers to these as ‘spurious masonry’ (p. 265), in contradistinction to ‘Blue’ or ‘Symbolic’ Masonry, which restricts itself to the three lowest degrees only.
• 21. This has not been recorded in the notes at our disposal. In connection with the speech itself, see note 19 to the previous lecture and the succeeding note to this.
• 22. The following extract of Balfour's speech is the part referred to. Under the heading: ‘Reflections suggested by the New Theory of Matter.’
  
  ‘But today there are those who regard gross matter, the matter of everyday experience, as the mere appearance of which electricity is the physical basis; who think that the elementary atom of the chemist, itself far beyond the limits of direct perception, is but a connected system of monads or sub-atoms which are not electrified matter, but are electricity itself; that these systems differ in the number of monads which they contain, in their arrangement, and in their motion relative to each other and to the ether; that on these differences, and on these differences alone, depend the various qualities of what have hitherto been regarded as indivisible and elementary atoms; and that while in most cases these atomic systems may maintain their equilibrium for periods which, compared with such astronomical processes as the cooling of a sun, may seem almost eternal, they are not less obedient to the law of change than the everlasting heavens themselves.
  
  ‘But if gross matter be a grouping of atoms, and if atoms be systems of electrical monads, what are these electrical monads? It may be that, as Professor Larmor has suggested, they are but a modification of the universal ether, a modification roughly comparable to a knot in a medium which is inextensible, incompressible and continuous. But whether this final unification be accepted or not, it is certain that these monads cannot be considered apart from the ether. It is on their interaction with the ether that their qualities depend; and without the ether an electric theory of matter is impossible.
  
  ‘Surely we have here a very extraordinary revolution.’
  
  It is interesting to note that Balfour does not use the term ‘frozen’ electricity or ‘coagulated’ electricity as the German translation does. He merely states that matter is the ‘mere appearance of which electricity is the physical basis.’
• 23. See note 20 to the preceding lecture.

In my former series of lectures I have been speaking about occult schools and secret societies, and I think it right today to bring this whole course of lectures to a close before we pass on to a different subject next time. A week from now I shall speak about the meaning of the days connected in the Church Calendar with the Christmas Festival—most especially about Epiphany, which follows on the less important New Year Festival.¹ The lecture today, therefore, will be more in the nature of a conclusion.

The question might be asked: What is the deeper meaning of such secret societies, and what is their whole purpose in world evolution? To such a question, my answer would be that they have a real connection with the way in which beings in this world evolve and make progress. If you wish to develop yourself, you know that different kinds of exercises are necessary towards this end and that they are available. You have heard of Hatha Yoga, Rajah Yoga and other exercises of different kinds by means of which societies and brotherhoods connected with occult science have initiated their members.

Somebody might say: All this, surely, could be attained without these secret societies. But I can tell you—and in the course of the lecture you will realise it—that the world cannot do without such societies. To put it bluntly, it is quite unjustifiable to speak in public in the style of the Manifesto of the Freemasons which I read to you a fortnight ago.²

One cannot attain to what is usually known as immortality unless one is to some extent familiar with the occult sciences. The fruits of occult science do, of course, find their way out into the world along many different channels. A great deal of occult knowledge exists in the various religions, and all those who participate deeply and sincerely in the life of a religious community have some share in this knowledge and are preparing themselves for the attainment of immortality in the real sense. But it is still something different, to subsist on the knowledge of this immortality and the feeling of belonging in the spiritual world in concrete experience and with full awareness.

All of you have lived many times; but not all of you are conscious that you have lived through these many lives. However, you will gradually attain this consciousness, and without it, man's life is lived through with incomplete consciousness. It has never been the aim of occult science to inculcate into man a dim feeling of survival, but to impart a clear, fully conscious knowledge of onflowing life in the spiritual world. And there is a certain great law which governs the progressive development of consciousness in all future stages of life. Namely, it is what man works at to help others attain such consciousness which contributes the most to its development. It is an apparently paradoxical proposition: Everything a being works at without aiming at developing its own consciousness, helps to maintain that being's consciousness.

Take as an example the building of a house. An architect builds a house; he does not build this house for himself, but undertakes the task of building it for reasons which have nothing at all to do with him himself. You know well that this is very seldom the case. There are many people who, to all appearances, are not working for themselves; and yet, in reality, they are.

A lawyer, for example, is to all intents and purposes working for his clients. Part of his work may well be selfless, but the real question is one of earning his living. Whatever men do in business merely for the sake of their own livelihood, to the extent that their business only serves that end, just so much is lost in the way of spiritual gain. On the other hand, everything that is introduced into the work for an objective end, everything that is connected with the interests of another, helps to conserve our consciousness for future evolution. So that is quite clear.

Now, think of the Freemasons. In the original arrangement, they gave this injunction to their members: Build such buildings as make no contribution at all to, or have nothing to do with, your own subsistence. All that has survived of the good old Freemasonry, are certain charitable institutions. And although the lodges have lost their living roots in the ancient wisdom and occult knowledge once in their possession, these charitable institutions are evidence of a humanitarianism which, while it is empty [of real substance] still persists and is cultivated as a tradition. Selfless activity is something that belongs to Freemasonry. Freemasonry did originally urge its members to work in the service of humanity, to build into the objective world.

We are living now in the epoch of evolution that may be called the mineral epoch; and our task is to permeate this mineral world through and through with our own spirit. Grasp exactly what this means. You are building a house. You fetch the stones from some quarry. You hew them into the shapes needed for the house, and so on. What are you joining this raw material, obtained from the mineral kingdom, with? You are joining raw material with human spirit. When you make a machine, you have introduced your spirit into that machine. The actual machine does, of course, perish and become dust; it will be broken up. Not a trace of it will survive. But what it has done does not vanish without a trace, but passes into the very atoms. Every atom bears a trace of your spirit and will carry this trace with it. It is not a matter of indifference whether or not an atom has at some time been in a machine. The atom itself has undergone change as a result of having once been in a machine, and this change that you have wrought in the atom will never again be lost to it. Moreover, through your having changed the atom, through your having united your spirit with the mineral world, a permanent stamp has been made upon the general consciousness [of mankind]. Just so much will be taken from us into the other world.

It is a fact that all occult science consists of knowing how a man can act selflessly in order to attain the greatest enhancement of his own consciousness. Consider how certain men who have known this very clearly, have been so selfless that they took steps to prevent their names from going down to posterity. An example of this is the Theologia Deutsch.³ Nobody knows who wrote it. Outwardly, there is only ‘The man from Frankfurt’. He therefore took care that his name could not even be guessed. He worked in such a way that he merely added something to the objective world without asking for honour or for the preservation of his name. By way of comparison, let it be mentioned that the Masters, as a rule, are not personages known to history;⁴ they sometimes incarnate [embody] themselves, when it is necessary, in historical personalities, but this is in a certain respect a sacrifice. The level of their consciousness is no longer compatible with any work for themselves—and preservation of a name does after all involve work for oneself.

It is difficult to understand this rule. However, you will now grasp that the Freemasons aim in this, as far as possible, to do their work in the world in such a way that it is concealed in the cathedrals, in social institutions and organisations, in charitable foundations. For selfless deeds are the real foundations of immortality: this is the reflex of selfless deeds in the outer world. They need not be of great account. If someone gives a coin to someone in a selfless way, then that is an action that is to be understood in that way; but only to the extent that it was selfless does it come into immortality. And very few [deeds] are selfless. A good deed may be very egotistical when, for instance, it creates a feeling of comfort. Good deeds spring extremely often from selfish motives. If a poor man living among us has no roast meat at Christmas, and I feel the need to give him some in order that I may feel justified in [eating] my own roast meat, that, after all, is egoistic.

In the Middle Ages no one could say who had built many of the cathedrals or painted many of the pictures. It is only in our epoch that people have begun to attach such value to an individual human name. In earlier epochs, more spiritual than our own, the individual name had less importance. Spirituality in those days was directed at reality; whereas our epoch adheres to the delusion that what is merely transient should be preserved.

I have said this only in order to indicate to you the principle on which these secret societies depended. It mattered to them to efface themselves altogether as personalities, and to allow what they did to live only in its effects. And this brings us to the heart of the secrets. The fact that some particular thing is kept secret is of less importance than keeping one's own share in the work secret. Everyone who keeps his own part secret thereby secures immortality for himself. The rule is therefore clear and unambiguous: As much as you yourself put into the world, that much consciousness the world will give you back. That is connected with the greatest universal laws.

You all have a soul and you all have a spirit. This soul and spirit are called upon to reach one day the highest stages of perfection. But you were already there before your first physical incarnation. You were first physically incarnated in the preceding races after the time of the Hyperborean and Polarian epochs.⁵ Before that you were purely beings of soul. But as beings of soul you were a part of the world soul, and as spirit you were part of the general world spirit. The world soul and the world spirit were spread around you as Nature is spread around you today. Just as the mineral world, the plant world and the animal world are around you today, so were the worlds of soul and spirit spread around you then. And what was once outside you is now your soul; you have made inward what to begin with was outside. What today is your inward part was once spread about outside. This has now become your soul. The spirit, too, was once spread around you. And what is now spread around you will become your inner life. You will take into yourself what is now the mineral kingdom, and it will become your inner part. The plant kingdom will become your inner part. What surrounds you in Nature will become your inner being.

You will understand now how this is connected with the first example given: you build a church for others, not for yourself. You can take into [yourself] a world full of majesty, beauty and splendour if you make the world majestic, beautiful and splendid. To do something for the higher self is not selfish because it is not done only for the self. This higher self will be united with all other higher selves, so that it is [done] for all at the same time.

It is this that the Freemasons knew. The Freemason knew, when he helped [by] building with the spiritualisation of the mineral world, that this would one day become the content of his soul—and to build means nothing else than to spiritualise the mineral world. That is the significant thing: God once gave us the Nature that surrounds us, as mineral, plant and animal nature. We take these in [to ourselves]. It is not due to us that it is there; all we can do is to appropriate it for ourselves. But what we ourselves create in the world—that is what will, through ourselves, constitute our future being.

The mineral world, as such, we perceive; what we make out of it we will, in the future, be. What we make of the plant world, of the animal world and of the world of men, that too we will be, in the future. If you found a charitable institution or have contributed something to it, what you have contributed, you will be. If a man does nothing which he can draw back in this way into his soul from outside, he will remain empty. It must be possible for man to spiritualise as much as he can of the three kingdoms of nature—four, for mankind also belongs thereto. To bring spirit into the whole external world—that has been the task of the secret societies of every age.

You understand that that must be so. Take a child who is just learning to read and write. To begin with, all the equipment is around him. Today, the child begins to learn to read. Nothing is in him yet, but the teacher, the primers and so forth are there. So it continues until what was outside the child has been instilled into him. And the child acquires the capacity to read. And so it is with Nature, too. In times to come we shall have within us what is now spread around us. We are souls, we spring from the world soul, and we drew it in, when it was spread around us. The spirit was likewise drawn in, and Nature, too, will be drawn in by us, in order to stay within us as an active ability.

That is the great thought at the basis of these secret societies, that all progress is the result of involution and evolution. Involution is the drawing in, evolution is the giving out. All situations in the universe alternate between these two processes. When you see, hear, smell or taste Nature, you breathe it in. What you see does not pass away without leaving a trace on you. The eye itself perishes, the object perishes, but [the fact] that you have seen something remains. You will understand now that at certain times it can be necessary that an understanding of these things be available. We are going forward to an age when, as I recently indicated, understanding will reach right into the atom. It will be realised—by the popular mind too that the atom is nothing else than congealed electricity. Thought itself is composed of the same substance.

Before the end of our present cultural epoch one will in fact have come so far that people will be able to penetrate into the atom itself. When one is able to grasp the materiality between the thought and the atom, then one will soon be able to understand the penetration of the atom. And then nothing will be inaccessible to certain methods of working. A man standing here, let us say, will be able, by pressing a button concealed in his pocket, to [explode] some object at a great distance, let us say in Hamburg, just as wireless telegraphy is possible, by setting up a wave movement and causing it to take a particular form at some other place. This will be within man's power when the occult truth, that thought and atom consist of the same substance, is applied to practical life.

It is impossible to conceive what might happen in such circumstances if mankind has not by then reached selflessness. Only through the attainment of selflessness will it be possible to preserve mankind from the brink of destruction. The downfall of post-Atlantean culture will be caused by the lack of morality. The Lemurian race was destroyed by fire, the Atlantean by water; ours will be destroyed by the War of All against All, [by?] evil, through the struggle of men with one another. Humanity will destroy itself in mutual strife. And the despairing thing—more desperately tragic than other catastrophes—will be that the blame will lie with human beings themselves.

A tiny handful of men will save themselves and pass over into the sixth epoch. This tiny handful will have developed complete selflessness. The others will make use of every [imaginable] skill and subtlety in the penetration and conquest of the physical forces of Nature, but without attaining the essential degree of selflessness . They will start the War of All against All, and that will be the cause of the destruction of our civilisation.

In the seventh post-Atlantean cultural epoch, to be precise, this War of All against All will break out, in the most terrible way. Great and mighty forces will ensue from discoveries that will turn the entire globe into a kind of self-functioning electrical apparatus. The tiny handful will be protected in a way that cannot be discussed.

Now you will be able to picture more clearly than was possible when I spoke of these things last time, why the Good [and Proper] Form must be sought and in what sense Freemasonry became aware that it must build a building [dedicated to] selfless [ends]. It is easier to survive and pass over into the future, to the tiny handful of new humanity, with the good old forms, than in chaos.

It is easy to jeer at empty forms, but they have however a deep significance. They are adapted to the structure of our [period of] evolution. After all, they are connected with necessary stages in human nature and the development of the human soul. Just think of it: we are living in the fifth period of the fifth great post-Atlantean epoch;⁶ we have still to live through two more periods of this great epoch. Then the seven periods of the sixth great epoch will follow and then the seven periods of the seventh great epoch. This makes sixteen stages of evolution in the future. Humanity has still to pass through these sixteen stages. A man who can experience something of the conditions [of existence] that are possible there, is to a certain degree initiated. There is a certain correspondence between the degrees of initiation and the secrets of the epochs still to come.

In the ‘form-state’ of our planet there are seven great epochs and each of these epochs has seven sub-periods (cultural epochs)—forty-nine conditions, therefore, in all. In the next ‘form-state’ of our planet there are again forty-nine conditions. Thus there are definite stages for the investigation of the secrets of future phases of evolution. The higher degrees of Freemasonry had no other aim or purpose, originally, than to be an expression of each one of the future stages of the evolution of humanity. Thus in Freemasonry we actually have something which has been very good, namely, that a man who had attained a certain degree knew how he must work his way into the future, so that he could be a kind of pioneer. He knew, too, that one who had reached a higher degree could accomplish more. This arrangement according to degrees can very well be made, for it corresponds with the facts.

If, therefore, it were again possible to pour a new content, together with a new knowledge, into these forms, much good would accrue. Freemasonry would then be imbued with real spirit once again. But content and form belong to the Whole. The state of affairs today is, as I have said: the degrees are there, but nobody has really worked through them. In spite of this, however, they are not there for nothing. They will be brought to life again in the future.

The fifth cultural epoch is a purely intellectual one, an epoch of egoism. We are now at the high point of egoism. The intellect is egoistical in the highest degree, and it is the hallmark of our time. And so we must make our way upwards through intellect to spirituality, which was once there ...[Gap]

The secret of secrets is this, therefore: the human being must learn how to keep silence about the paths along which his ego unfolds, and to regard his deeds, not his ego, as the criterion. The real heart of the secret lies in his deeds and the overcoming of the ego through action. The ego must remain concealed within the deed. Elimination of the interests of the ego from the on-streaming flow of karma—this belongs to the first degree. Whatever karma the ego incurs is thereby wiped out from karma. Nation, race, sex, position, religion—all these work upon human egoism. Only when mankind has overcome all these things will it be freed from egoism.

You can identify, in the astral body, a particular colour for every nation, every race, every epoch. You will always find a base-colour there, that the person has as a member of one of these classifications or categories. This [specific colour] must be eliminated. The Theosophical Society works to level out the colours of the astral bodies of its adherents. They must be of like colour, like in respect of the base-colour. This base colour gives rise to a certain substance ... [Gap] ... [called kundalini, which holds together, within the human being, the forces which lead eventually to the spirit.]⁷

Bringing this levelling-out about will actually entail bloody war, and through such things as economic strife among nations, wars of exploitation, financial and industrial enterprises, conquests, etc., and through the adoption of certain measures, it will be more and more possible to set masses of people in motion and simply to compel them. The individual will acquire more and more power over certain masses of people. For the drift of this development is not that we will become democratic, but that we will become brutally oligarchic, in that the individual will gain more and more power. If the ennobling of morals is not achieved, then the most brutal forces will lead. This will happen, just as catastrophe by water happened to the Atlanteans.

• 1 . The German text, as handed down, reads: an Weihnachten, vor allen Dingen an das minder bedeutende Fest Neujahr anschliessen, das Fest der Epiphanie,’ which could be rendered as follows: ‘... about Christmas, most especially about the less important New Year's Festival the Festival of Epiphany.’ One must assume that the shorthand copy of Seiler intended the following: ‘... das minder bedeutende Fest Neujahr anschliessende Fest der Epiphanie's, which would give the rendering as in the text of the lecture above. The said lecture was held on 30th December 1904 and its subject was the “Three Kings” Festival.’
• 2 . In the lecture given on 9th December 1904 (lecture 8 in this volume). Regarding the style of speaking appropriate to lecturing in public, see The Course of My Life,Chapter 32.
• 3 . Written about 1380. First published by Luther (fragmentary edition) Wittenberg, 1516. Complete edition 1518. First German translation by Johannes Arndt, 1597. Translation into modern German by Franz Pfeiffer, Giitersloh, 1875.
• 4 . See note 21 to the lecture given on 23rd May 1904. (Lecture 1 in this volume).
• 5 . The word nach (‘after’) is missing from the German edition, but to leave it out would be to negate the sense given in lecture I of this series: ‘Whitsuntide,’ given on the 23rd o May 1904, which reads: ‘It is a wrong conception when theosophists believe that reincarnations had no beginning and will have no ending. Reincarnation started in the Lemurian Age and will cease again at the beginning of the sixth Root Race or Age.‘ (See diagram opposite). The German would then read: ‘In physischer Inkarnation waren Sie in den vorhergehenden Rassen erst zur Zeit nach der hyperboraischen und polarischen Rasse vorhanden.’
• 6 . See diagram at the bottom of the page.
• 7 . called Kundalini, which holds together, within the human being, the forces which lead eventually to the spirit.] The latter part of this sentence (within square brackets) was a correction made for the earlier edition of this lecture, published on 23rd November 1947, in the members' newsletter of the German Anthroposophical Society, No. 47.

Today we will explain a great allegory, and deal with an object which is known to occult science as the image or teaching of the lost temple which has to be rebuilt. I have explained in earlier lectures¹ why in occult science one starts from such images; today we shall see what an enormous number of ideas are contained in essence in this image. Thereby I will also have to touch upon a theme which is much misunderstood by those who know little or nothing about theosophy. There are some people who do not understand that theosophy and practical [everyday things] go hand in hand, that they must work together throughout the whole of life. Therefore I shall have to speak about the connection between theosophy and the practical things of life. For, basically, when we take up the theme of the lost temple which has to be rebuilt, we are speaking about everyday work.

I shall, indeed, thereby be in the position of a teacher who prepares his pupils for building a tunnel. The building of a tunnel is something eminently practical. Someone might well say: building a tunnel is simple; one only has to start digging into a hill from one side and to excavate away until one emerges at the other side. Everyone can see that it would be foolish to think in this way. But in other realms of life that is not always perceived. Whoever wishes to build a tunnel must, of course, first of all have a command of higher mathematics. Then he will have to learn how it is to be made, technically. Without practical engineering knowledge, without the art of ascertaining the right level, one would not be able to keep on course in excavating the mountain. Then one must know the basic concepts of geology, of the various rock strata, the direction of the water courses and the metallic lodes in the mountain, and so on.. It would be foolish to think that someone would be able to build a tunnel without all this prior knowledge, or that an ordinary stone mason could construct a whole tunnel.

It would be just as foolish if one were to believe that one could begin building human society from the point of view of ordinary life. However, this folly is perpetrated not merely by many people, but also in countless books. Even one today supposes himself called upon to know and decide how best to reform social life and the state. People who have hardly learnt anything write detailed books about how society should best be shaped, and feel themselves called to found reform movements. Thus there are movements for reform in all spheres of life. But everything done in this way is just the same as if someone were to try to cut a tunnel with hammer and chisel. That is all a result of not knowing that great laws exist which rule the world and spring forth out of the life of the spirit. The real problem of our day consists in this ignorance [of the fact] that there are great laws for the building of the state and of the social organism, just as there are for building a tunnel, and that one must know these laws in order to carry out the most necessary and everyday tasks in the social organism. Just as in building a tunnel, one has to know about the interaction of all the forces of nature, so must anyone wishing to start reforming society know the laws [which interweave between one person and the next] . One must study the effect of one soul on another, and draw near to the spirit. That is why theosophy must lie at the basis of every practical activity in life. Theosophy is the real practical principle of life; and only he who starts from theosophical principles and carries them over into practical life can feel himself called as able to be active in social life.

That is why theosophy should penetrate all spheres of life. Statesmen, social reformers and the like are nothing without a theosophical basis, without theosophical principles. That is why, for those who study these things, all work in this field, everything done today to build up the social structure, is external patchwork and complete chaos. For one who understands the matter, what the social reformer is doing today is like somebody cutting stones and piling them one on top of another in the belief that a house will thereby come into being of its own accord. First of all a plan of the house must be drawn up. It is just the same if one asserts that, in social life, things will take shape of their own accord. One cannot reform society without knowing the laws of theosophy.

This way of thinking, which works according to a plan, is called Freemasonry. The medieval Freemasons, who dealt with and made contracts with the clergy, about how they should build, wanted nothing else than to shape outer life in such a way that—along with the Gothic cathedral—it could become an image of the great spiritual structure of the universe. Take the Gothic cathedral. Though composed of thousands of individual parts, it is built according to a single idea, much more comprehensive than the cathedral itself. To become complete in itself, divine life must flow into it, just as light shines into the church through the multi-coloured windows. And when the medieval priest spoke from the pulpit, so that the divine light shone in his listener's hearts just like the light shining through the coloured panes, then the vibrations set up through the preacher's word were in harmony with the great life of God. And the life of just such a sermon, born out of the life of the spirit, set itself forth in the cathedral itself. In like manner, the whole of outer life should be transformed into the Temple of the Earth, into an image of the whole spiritual structure of the universe.

If we go still further back in time, we find that it is just this way of thinking which was mankind's from the very earliest times. Let me explain what I mean by way of an example. Our epoch is the time of the chaotic interaction of one human being with another. Each individual pursues his own aims. This epoch was preceded by another one, the age of the ancient priestly states. I have often spoken about the cultural epochs of our fifth Great Epoch. The first of these was the ancient Indian epoch, the second, that of the Medes and the Persians, the third, that of the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, the Egyptians and the Semites, and the fourth was the Graeco-Roman period. We are now in the fifth epoch.

The fourth and fifth cultural epochs were the first ones to be based on the intelligence of men, of individual men.

We have a great monument to the conquest of the old priestly culture by the intelligence of men in art, in the Laocoon.² The Laocoon priest entwined with serpents—the symbol of subtlety—symbolises the conquest, by the civilisation of intelligence, of the old priestly culture, which held other views about truth and wisdom, and about what should happen. It is the overcoming of the third cultural epoch by the fourth. That is represented in still another symbol, in the saga of the Trojan Horse. The intelligence of Odysseus created the Trojan Horse, by means of which the Trojan priestly culture was overthrown.

The development of the old Roman State out of the ancient Trojan priestly culture is described in the saga of Aeneas. The latter was one of the outstanding defenders of Troy, who afterwards came over to Italy. There it was that his descendants laid the foundation of ancient Rome. His son Ascanius founded Alba Longa and history now enumerates fourteen kings up to the time of Numitor and Amulius. Numitor was robbed of his throne by his brother Amulius, his son was killed and his daughter, Rhea Silvia, was made to become a vestal virgin, so that the lineage of Numitor should die out. And when Rhea gave birth to the twins, Romulus and Remus, Amulius ordered them to be thrown in the Tiber. The children were rescued, suckled by a she-wolf, and brought up by the royal shepherd Faustulus.

Now history speaks about seven Roman kings: Romulus, Numa Pompilius, Tuflus Hostilius, Ancus Martius, Tarquinius Pliscus, Servius Tullius and Tarquinius Superbus.

Following Livy's account³ it used to be believed that the first seven kings of Rome were real personalities. Today, historians know that these first seven kings never existed.

We are therefore dealing with a saga, but the historians have no inkling of what lies behind it. The basis of the saga is what follows:

The priestly state of Troy founded a colony, the priestly colony of Alba Longa (Alba, an alb, or priest's vestment).⁴ It was a colony of a priestly state and Amulius belonged to the last priestly dynasty. A junior priestly culture sprang from this, which was then cut off by a civilisation based on cleverness. History tells us no more about this priestly culture. The veil which was spread over the priestly culture of the earliest Roman history, is lifted by theosophy. The seven Roman kings represent nothing else than the seven principles as we know them from theosophy. Just as the human organism consists of seven parts—Sthula-Sharira [physical body], Linga-Sharira [etheric], Kama-Rupa [astral], Kama-Manas [ego], higher Manas [spirit-self], Buddhi [life-spirit] and Atma [spirit-man]—so the social organism was conceived, as it formed itself at the time, as a sequence in seven stages. And only if it was developed according to the law of the number seven, which lies at the base of all nature, was it able to prosper. Thus the rainbow has seven colours; red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Likewise there are seven [intervals in the scale]: first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and so on; likewise the atomic weights in chemistry follow the rule of the number seven. And that permeates the whole of creation. Hence it was self-evident to the Guardians of the Ancient Wisdom that the structure of human society must also be regulated by such a law. According to a precisely worked out plan, these seven kings are seven stages, seven [integral] parts. This was the usual way of inaugurating a new epoch in history at that time. A plan was devised, since this was considered a means of preventing any stupidities, and a law was written for it. This plan was actually there at the beginning. Everyone knew that world history was guided according to a fixed plan. Everyone knew: When I am in the third phase of the fourth epoch, I must be guided by this and that. And so, at first, in ancient Rome, one still had a priestly state with a plan at the basis of its culture, which was written down in books, called the Sibylline Books. These are nothing else than the original plan underlying the law of the sevenfold epoch, and they were still consulted when needed in the earliest days of the Roman Empire.

The physical body was taken as a model for the foundations. That is not so unreasonable. Today people are inclined to treat the physical body as something subordinate. People look down on the physical with a kind of disdain. However, that is not justified, because our physical body is our most exalted part. Take a single bone. Take a good look at the upper part of a thigh bone and you will see how wonderfully it is constructed. The best engineer, the greatest technician, could not produce anything so perfect, if he were set the task of attaining the greatest possible strength using the least amount of material. And so the whole human body is constructed in the most perfect way. This physical body is really the most perfect thing imaginable. An anatomist will always speak with the utmost admiration of the human heart, which functions in a wonderful way, even though human beings do little else throughout life than imbibe what is poison for it. Alcohol, tea, coffee and so on attack the heart in the most incredible fashion. But so wonderfully has this organ been built that it can withstand all this into ripe old age.

The physical body, the lowest of the bodies, therefore possesses the greatest perfection. Less perfect, on the other hand, are the higher bodies, which have not yet gained such perfection in their development: the etheric body and the astral body continually offend against our physical body through the attacks of our lust, desires and wishes. Then follows, as the fourth [principle], the real baby [of them all], the human ego, which like a wandering will-o’-the-wisp, must still wait for the future to offer it those rules which will act as a guide for its conduct, just as the physical body has long since had.

When we develop a social structure, we must have that which will make the foundations firm. Thus the saga allows Romulus, the first Roman king, who represents the first principle, to be raised to heaven as the god Quirinus. The second king, Numa Pompilius, the second principle. embodies social order; he brought laws for ordinary living. The third king, Tullus Hostilius, represents the passions. Under him, the attacks against divine nature begin, causing discord, struggle and war, through which Rome became great. Under the fourth king, Ancus Martius, the arts develop, those things which spring out of Kama-Manas, [the human ego].

Now the four lower principles of man are not able to give birth to the three higher principles, the fifth, sixth andc seventh. This is also symbolised in Roman history. The fifth-Roman king, Tarquinius Priscus, was not engendered out of the Roman organism, but was introduced into Roman culture from the Etruscan culture as something higher. The sixth king, Servius Tullus, represents the sixth member of the human cyclic law, Buddhi. He is able to rule over Kama [the astral body], the physical-sensual counterpart of Buddhi. He represents the canon of the law. The seventh king, Tarquinius Superbus, the most exalted principle, is he who must be overthrown, since it is not possible to maintain the high level, the impulse, of the social system.

We see it demonstrated in Roman history that there must be a plan underlying the building of the state, just as for any other building in the world. That the world is a temple, that social life must be structured and organised, and must have pillars like a temple, and that the great sages must be these pillars—it is this intention which is permeated with the ancient wisdom. That is not a kind of wisdom which is merely learned, but one which has to be built into human society. The seven principles were correctly applied. The only person able to work towards the building up of society is he who has absorbed all this knowledge, all this wisdom, into himself. We would not achieve much as theosophists if we were to restrict ourselves to contemplating how the human being is built up from its different members. No, we are only able to fulfil our task if we carry the principles of theosophy into everyday life. We must learn to put them to use in such a way that every turn of the hand, every movement of a finger, every step we take, bears the impress, is an expression of the spirit. In that case we shall be engaged in building the lost temple.

Along with that, however, goes the fact which I mentioned recently—that we should take into ourselves something of the greatness and all embracing comprehensiveness of the universal laws. Our habits of thought must be permeated by that kind of wisdom which leads from great conceptions into the details—just in the same way as house construction starts from the finished and complete plan and not by laying one stone upon another. This demand must be made if our world is not to turn into chaos. As theosophists we should recognise the fact that law is bound to rule in the world as soon as we realise that every step we make, every action of ours, is like an impression stamped in wax by the spiritual world. Then we shall be engaged in the building of the temple. That is the meaning of the temple building: whatever we set ourselves to do must be in conformity to law.

The knowledge that man has to include himself in the construction of the great world temple has become increasingly forgotten. A person can be born and die today without having any inkling of the fact that laws are working themselves out in us, and that everything we do is governed by the laws of the universe The whole of present-day life is wasted, because people do not know that they have to live according to laws. Therefore the priestly sages of ancient times devised means of rescuing, for the new culture, something of the great laws of the spiritual world. It was, so to speak, a stratagem of the great sages, to have hidden this order and harmony in many branches of life—yes, even so far as in the games which men use for their recreation at the end of the day. In playing cards, in the figures of chess, in the sense of rule by which one plays, we find a hint, if only a faint one, of the order and harmony which I have described. When you sit down with someone to a game of cards, it will not do if you do not know the rules, the manner of playing. And this really conveys a hint of the great laws of the universe. What is known as the sephirot of the Cabbala, what we know as the seven principles in their various forms, that is recognised again in the way in which the cards are laid down, one after the other, in the course of the game. Even in the allurements of playing, the adepts have known how to introduce the great cosmic laws, so that, even in play, people have at least a smack of wisdom. At least for those who can play cards, their present incarnation is not quite wasted. These are secrets, how the great Adepts intervene in the wheel of existence. If one told people to be guided by the great cosmic laws, they would not do so. However, if the laws are introduced unnoticed into things, it is often possible to inject a drop of this attitude into them. If you have this attitude, then you will have a notion of what it is which is symbolised in the mighty allegory of the lost temple.

In the secret societies, among which Freemasonry belongs, something connected with the lost temple and its future reconstruction has been described in the Temple Legend. The Temple Legend is very profound, but even the present-day Freemasons usually have no notion of it. A Freemason isnot even very easy to distinguish from the majority of people, and he does not carry much of importance with him in new life. But if he lets the Temple Legend work upon him, it is a great help. For whoever absorbs the Temple Legend receives something which, in a specific way, shapes his thinking in an orderly fashion. And it [all] depends on ordered thinking. This Temple Legend is as follows:

Once one of the Elohim united with Eve, and out of that Cain was born. Another of the Elohim, Adonai or Jehovah-Yahveh, thereupon created Adam. The latter, for his part, united with Eve, and out of this marriage Abel was born. Adonai caused trouble between those belonging to Cain's family and those belonging to Abel's family, and the result of this was that Cain slew Abel. But out of the renewed union of Adam with Eve the race of Seth was founded.

Thus we have two different races of mankind. The one consists of the original descendants of the Elohim, the sons of Cain, who are called the Sons of Fire. They are those who till the earth and create from inanimate nature and transform it through the arts of man. Enoch, one of the descendants of Cain, taught mankind the art of hewing stone, of building houses, of organising society of founding civilised communities. Another of Cain's descendants was Tubal-Cain, who worked in metal. The architect Hiram-Abiff was descended from the same race.

Abel was a shepherd. He held firmly to what he found, he took the world as it was. There is always this antithesis between people. One sticks to things as they are, the other wants to create new life from the inanimate, through art. Other nations have portrayed the ancestor of these Sons of Fire in the Prometheus saga⁵ It is the Sons of Fire who have to work into the world the wisdom, beauty and goodness from the all-embracing universal thought, in order to transform the world into a temple.

King Solomon was a descendant of the lineage of Abel. He could not build the temple himself; he lacked the art. Hence he appointed the architect Hiram-Abiff, the descendant of the lineage of Cain. Solomon was divinely handsome. When the Queen of Sheba met him, she thought she saw an image of gold and ivory. She came to unite herself with him.

Jehovah is also called the God of created form,⁶ the God who turns what is living into a living force, in contrast with that other Elohim who creates by charming life out of what is lifeless. To which of these does the future belong? That is the great question of the Temple Legend. If mankind were to develop under the religion of Jehovah all life would expire in form. In occult science, that is called the Transition to the Eighth Sphere.⁷ But the point in time has now arrived when man himself must awaken the dead to life. That will happen through the Sons of Cain, through those who do not rely on the things around them, but are themselves the creators of new forms. The Sons of Cain themselves frame the building of the world.

When the Queen of Sheba saw the temple and asked who the architect was, she was told it was Hiram. And as soon as she saw him, he seemed to her to be the one who was predestined for her. King Solomon now became jealous; and indeed, he entered into league with three apprentices who had failed to achieve their master's degree, in order to undermine Hiram's great masterpiece, the Molten Sea. This great masterpiece was to be made by casting it. Human spirit was to have been united with the metal. Of the three apprentices, one was a Syrian mason, the second was a Phoenician carpenter, and the third was a Hebrew miner. The plot succeeded: the casting was destroyed by pouring water over it. It all blew apart. In despair the architect was about to throw himself into the heat of the flames. Then he heard a voice from the centre of the earth. This came from Cain himself, who called out to him: ‘Take here the hammer of the world's divine wisdom, with which you must put it all right again.’ And Cain gave him the hammer. Now it is the spirit of man which man builds into his astral body, if he is not to let it remain in the condition in which he received it. This is the work which Hiram now had to do. But there was a plot against his life. We shall proceed from there next time.

I wanted to recount the legend up to this point, to show how, in the original occult brotherhoods, the thought lived, that man has a task to fulfil; the task of restructuring the inanimate world, of not being satisfied with what is already there. Wisdom thus becomes deed through its penetration of the inanimate world, so that the world should become a reflection of the original and eternal spirituality.

Wisdom, Beauty, Strength are the three fundamental words of all Freemasonry. So to change the outer world, that it becomes a garment for the spiritual—that is its task. Today, the Freemasons themselves no longer understand this, and believe that man should work on his own ego.⁸ They regard themselves as particularly clever when they say that the working masons of the Middle Ages were not Freemasons. But the working masons were precisely those who have always been Freemasons, because outward structure was to become the replica of the spiritual, of the temple of the world, which is to be constructed out of intuitive wisdom. This is the thought which formerly under lay the great works of architecture, and was carried through into every detail.

I will illustrate by an example the superiority of wisdom over mere intellect. Let us take an old Gothic cathedral, and consider the wonderful acoustics, which cannot be matched today, because this profound knowledge has been lost.

The famous Lake Moeris in Egypt is just such a wonder-work of the human spirit. It was not a natural lake, but was constructed through the intuition of the wise men, so that water could be stored in time of flood, for distribution over the whole country in time of drought. That was a great feat of irrigation.

When man learns to create with the same wisdom with which the divine powers have created Nature and made physical things, then will the temple be built [on earth]. It does not depend upon how many separate things we have the power to create out of our own wisdom; we must however just have the attitude of mind that knows that only by means of wisdom can the temple of humanity be created.

When, today, we go about the cities, here there is a shoe shop, there a chemist, further on a cheese-monger and a shop selling walking sticks. If just now we do not want anything, why should that concern us? How little does the outward life of such a city reflect what we feel, think and perceive! How very different it was in the Middle Ages. If a person walked through the streets then, he saw the house fronts built in the resident's style, manner and character. Every door knob expressed what the man had lovingly shaped to suit his spirit. Go, for instance, through a town such as Nuremberg: there you will still find the basis of how it used to be. And then, by contrast, take the fashionable abstraction that no longer has anything to do with people. That is the age of materialism and its chaotic productions, to which one has step by step come from an earlier spiritual epoch.

Man was born from a nature which was once so formed by the gods that everything within it fitted the great scheme of the world, the great temple. There was once a time when there was nothing on this earth upon which you could gaze without having to say to oneself: Divine beings have built this temple to the stage in which the human physical body was perfected. Then the higher principles (the psychic forces) [of man's nature] took possession of it, and through this disarray and chaos came into the world. Wishes, desires and emotions brought disarray into the temple of the world. Only when, out of man's own will, law and order once again shall speak in a loftier and more beautiful way than the gods once did in creating Nature, only when man allows the god within him to arise, so that like a god he can build towards the temple—only then will the lost temple be regained.

It would not be right if we were to think that only those who are able to build should do so. No, it depends upon the attitude of mind, even if one knows a great deal. If one has the right direction to one's thinking, and then one engages in social, technical and juristic reform, then one is building the lost temple which is to be rebuilt. But should one start reforms—however well-intended they may be—lacking this attitude of mind, then one is only bringing about more chaos. For the individual stone is useless, if it does not fit into the overall plan [of the building]. Reform the law, religion, or anything else—as long as you only take account of the particular item, without having an understanding of the whole, it only results in a demolition.

Theosophy is thus not just theory, but practice, the most practical thing in the world. It is a fallacy to suppose that theosophists are recluses, not engaged in shaping the world. If we could bring people to engage in social reform from a theosophical basis,⁹ they would achieve much of what they want swiftly and surely. For, without needing to say anything against particular movements, they only lead to fanaticism if pursued in isolation. All separate reform movements—emancipators, abstainers, vegetarians, animal protectors and so forth—are only useful if they all work together. Their ideal can only be properly realised in a great universal movement that leads in unity to the universal world temple.

That is the idea that lies behind the allegory of the lost temple which has to be rebuilt.

Notes from replies to questions

Question: What is the difference between the sons of Cain and the sons of Abel?

Answer: The sons, of Cain are the unripe ones; the sons of Abel are the over-ripe ones. The sons of Abel turn to the higher spheres when they have finished with these incarnations. The sons of Abel are the Solar Pitris [those who underwent their human stage on the Old Sun]; the sons of Cain are the most mature of the Lunar Pitris [those who passed their human stage on the Old Moon].

Question: Why have so many mystical and masonic associations developed?

Answer: All higher work is only to be undertaken in an association. The Knights of the Round Table generally numbered twelve.

Question: Are you acquainted with the work of Albert Schaffle?¹⁰

Answer: Albert Schaffle wrote a work about sociology, and the account he gives is much more masonic than what emanates from the lodges of Freemasonry.

• 1 . e.g., lectures 3 and 5 of 30th September and 4th November 1904.
• 2 . In this connection see lecture held in Munich, 14th March 1910, published in: Metamorphoses of the Soul.
• 3 . Titus Livius (59 B.C.—A.D. 17), Roman historian; author of a history of Rome (Annales) from the foundation of the city to the death of Drusus (9 B.C.); of the 142 books of this history, 35 of them and epitomes of most of the rest are extant.
• 4 . A white vestment reaching to the feet, worn by the celebrant at Mass over the cassock and having long pointed sleeves. The oldest type of vestment derived from Egyptian and Hebrew times.
• 5 . See lecture 4 of 7th October 1904 in the present volume.
• 6 . See lecture of 25th October 1905 in: Foundations of Esotericism, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1983.
• 7 . See note 26 to lecture 6 given on 11th November 1904.
• 8 . At this point the texts diverge: according to Seiler it is ‘egoistical’ egos; according to Vegelahn and Reebstein ‘spiritual’ egos, which might have resulted from a mis-hearing or mistake in writing and could have been ‘own’ egos—(geistigen = eigenen).
• 9 . Rudolf Steiner was working towards establishing a reform of the social life soon after the end of the Great War. See: ‘The Threefold Order of the Body Social.’ RSE 252, 253 and 254.
• 10. Albert Eberhard Friedrich Schäffle, 1831–1903, sociologist, wrote much on this subject. In another connection Rudolf Steiner mentions his work: Bau und Leben des sozialen Körpers (‘Construction and Life of the Body-Social’), a four volume work published in Tübingen, 1875–78.

A few more reflections on the lost temple. We must regard Solomon's temple as the greatest symbol. Now the point is to understand this symbol. You know the course of events from the Bible, how it began. In this case, we are not dealing with mere symbols, but in fact with outward realities, in which, however, a profound world-historic symbolism finds its expression at the same time. And those who built the temple were aware what it was meant to express.

Let us consider why the temple was built. And you will see that each word in the Bible's account of it¹ is a deeply significant symbol. In this you need only consider in what period the building was erected. Let us particularly recall the Biblical explanation for what the temple was to be. Yahveh addressed this explanation to David: ‘A house for My Name’—that is, a house for the name Yahveh. And now let us make clear what the name Yahveh signifies.

Ancient Judaism became quite clear, at a particular time, about the holiness of the name Yahveh. What does it mean? A child learns, at a certain moment in its life, to use the word ‘I’. Before that, it regards itself as a thing. Just as it gives names to other things, so it even calls itself by an objective name. Only later does it learn to use the word ‘I’. The moment in the lives of great personalities when they first experience their own ‘I’, when they first become aware of themselves, is charged with significance. Jean Paul recounts the following incident:² as a small boy he was once standing in a barn in a farmyard: at that moment he first experienced his own ‘I.’ And so serene and solemn was this instant for him, that he said of it: ‘I then looked into my innermost soul as into the Holy of Holies.’

Mankind has developed through many epochs and everyone conceived themselves in this objective way up to Atlantean times; only during the Atlantean epoch did man develop to the stage where he could say ‘I’ to himself. The ancient Hebrews included this in their doctrines.

Man has passed through the kingdoms of Nature. Ego consciousness rose in him last of all. The astral, etheric and physical bodies and the ego together form the Pythagorean square. And Judaism added thereto the divine ego which descends from above, in contrast with the ego from below. Thus, a pentagon has been made out of the square. This was how Judaism experienced the Lord God of its people, and it was therefore a sacred thing to utter the ‘Name’. Whereas other names, such as ‘Elohim’ or ‘Adonai’, came increasingly into use, only the anointed priest in the Holy of Holies was allowed to utter the name ‘Yahveh.’³ It was in the time of Solomon that ancient Judaism came to the holiness of the name Yahveh, to this ‘I’ which can dwell in man. We must take Jehovah's challenge to man as something that sought to have man himself made into a temple of the most holy God. Now we have gained a new conception of the Godhead, namely this: the God which is hidden in man's breast, in the deepest holiness of man's self, must be changed into a moral God. The human body is thus turned into a great symbol of the Inner Sanctuary.

And now an outward symbol had to be erected, as man is God's temple. The temple had to be a symbol,illustrating man's own body. Therefore, builders were sent for—Hiram-Abiff—who understood the practical arts that could transform man himself into a god. Two images in the Bible relate to this: one is Noah's Ark, and the other is the Temple of Solomon.⁴ In one way both are the same, yet they also have to be distinguished.

Noah's Ark was built to preserve mankind for the present stage of human existence. Before Noah, man lived in the Atlantean and Lemurian epochs. At that time he had not built the ship which was to carry him across the waters of the astral world into earthly existence. Man came by the waters of the astral world, and Noah's Ark carried him over. The Ark represents the construction built by unconscious divine forces. From the measurements given, its proportions correspond to those of the human body, and also with those of Solomon's Temple.⁵

Man has developed beyond Noah's Ark, and now he has to surround his higher self with a house created by his own spirit, by his own wisdom, by the wisdom of Solomon.

We enter the Temple of Solomon. The door itself is characteristic. The square used to function as an old symbol. Mankind has now progressed from the stage of four-foldness to that of five-foldness, as five-membered man who has become conscious of his own higher self. The inner divine Temple is so formed as to enclose the five-fold human being. The square is holy. The door, the roof and the side pillars together form a pentagon.^{6, 7} When man awakens from his fourfold state, that is, when he enters his inner being—the inner sanctuary is the most important part of the temple—he sees a kind of altar; we perceive two cherubim which hover, like two guardian spirits, over the Ark of the Covenant, the Holy of Holies; for the fifth principle [of man's being], which has not yet descended to earth, must be guarded by the two higher beings—Buddhi and Manas. Thus man enters the stage of Manas development.

The whole inner sanctuary is covered in gold, because gold has always been the symbol of wisdom. Now wisdom enters the Manas stage. We find palm leaves as the symbol of peace. That represents a particular epoch of humanity, and is inserted here as something which only came to expression later, in Christianity. The temple leaders guarded this for itself, in this way suggesting something to do with later developments.

Later, in the Middle Ages, the idea of Solomon's Temple was revived again in the Knights Templars,⁸ who sought to introduce the Temple thinking in the West. But the Knights Templars were misunderstood at that time (e.g. trial of Jacques Molay, their Grand Master). If we wish to understand the Templars, we must look deeply into human history. What the Templars were reproached with in their trial rests entirely on a major misunderstanding. The Knights Templars said at the time: ‘Everything we have experienced so far is a preparation for what the Redeemer has wished for. For,’ they continued, ‘Christianity has a future, a new task. And we have the task of preparing the various sects of the Middle Ages, and humanity generally, for a future in which Christianity will emerge into a new clarity, as the Redeemer actually intended that it should. We saw Christianity rise in the fourth cultural epoch; it will develop further in the fifth, but only in the sixth is it to celebrate the Glory of its resurrection. We have to prepare for that. We must guide human souls in such a way that a genuine, true and pure Christianity may come to expression, in which the Name of the Most High may find its dwelling place.’

Jerusalem was to be the centre and from there the secret concerning the relationship of man to the Christ should stream out all over the world. What was represented symbolically by the temple should become a living reality. It was said of the Templars, and this was a reproach to them, that they had instituted a kind of star-worship, or, similarly, a sun-worship . However, a great mystery lies behind this. The sacrifice of the Mass was originally nothing else but a great mystery. Mass fell into two parts; the so-called Minor Mass, in which all were allowed to take part; and, when that had ended, and the main body [of the congregation] had gone away, there followed the High Mass, which was intended only for those who wished to undergo occult training, to embark on the ‘Path’. In this High Mass the reciting of the Apostolic Creed took place first; then was expounded the development of Christianity throughout the world, and how it was connected with the great march of world evolution.

The conditions on earth were not always the same as today. The earth was once joined to the sun and the moon. The sun separated itself, as it were, and then shone upon the earth from outside. Later, the moon split away. Thus, in earlier times, the earth was quite a different kind of dwelling place for man. Man was quite different physically, at that time. But when the sun and the moon split off from the earth, the whole of man's life underwent a change. Birth and death took place for the first time, man reincarnated for the first time, and for the first time the ego of man, the individuality, descended into the physical body, to reincarnate itself in continuous succession. One day that will cease again. The earth will again become joined to the sun, and then man will be able to pass through his further evolution on the sun. Thus we have a specific series of steps, according to which the sun and man move together. Such things are connected with the progress of the sun across the vault of heaven.

Now everything that happens in the world is briefly recapitulated in the following stages. Everything has been repeated, including the evolution of the global stages in the first, second and third Great Epochs. *See scheme at the end of the notes to lecture 10. It came about, then, that man descended into reincarnation. The sun split away [from the earth] during the time of transition from the second to the third Great Epoch, the moon during the third epoch [Lemuria]. Now the earth develops from the third to the sixth epoch, when the sun will again be joined to the earth. Then a new epoch will start in which man will have attained a much higher stage and will no longer incarnate.

This teaching concerning the course of evolution came into the world through religion in the shape of the story of Noah's Ark. In this teaching, what was to happen in the future was foreshadowed. The union of the sun with the earth is foreshadowed in the appearance of Christ on earth. It is always so with such teachings. For a time what happens is a repetition of the past, then the teaching begins to be a prefiguring of the future. Each individual cultural epoch, as it relates to the evolution of consciousness for each nation, is connected with the progression of the sun through the zodiac.

You know that the time of transition from the third to the fourth cultural epoch was represented by the sign of the Ram or Lamb. The Babylonian-Assyrian epoch gathered together in the sign of the Bull all that was important for its time. The previous Persian age was designated in the constellation by the sign of the Twins. And if we go still further into the past we would come to the sign of the Crab for the Sanskrit culture. This epoch, in which the sun was in Cancer at the time of the spring equinox, was a turning point for humanity. Atlantis had been submerged and the first Sub-Race [cultural epoch] of the fifth Great Epoch had begun. This turning point was denoted by the Crab. The next cultural epoch similarly begins with the transition of the sun into the sign of the Twins. A further stage of history leads us over into the culture of Asia Minor and Egypt, as the sun passes into the sign of the Bull. And as the sun continues its course through the zodiac, the fourth cultural epoch begins, which is connected in Greek legend with the Ram or Lamb (the saga of Jason and the search for the Golden Fleece). And Christ Himself was, later on in early Christian times, represented by the Lamb. He called Himself the Lamb.

We have traced the time from the first to the fourth-cultural epoch.⁹ The sun proceeds through the heavens, and now we enter the sign of the Fishes, where we are ourselves at a critical point. Then, [in the future], in the time of the sixth epoch, the time will arrive when man will have become so inwardly purified that he himself becomes a temple for the divine. At that time the sun will enter the sign of the Water Carrier. Thus the sun, which is really only the external expression of our spiritual life, progresses in heavenly space. When the sun enters the sign of the Water Carrier at the spring equinox, it will then be understood completely clearly for the first time.

Thus proceeded the High Mass, from which all the uninitiated were excluded. It was made clear to those who remained that Christianity, which began as a seed, would in the future bear something quite different as fruit, and that by the name Water Carrier was meant John [the Baptist] who scatters Christianity as a seed, as if with a grain of mustard seed. Aquarius or the Water Carrier means the same person as John who baptised with water in order to prepare mankind to receive the Christian baptism of fire. The coming of a ‘John/Aquarius’ who would first confirm the old John and announce a Christ who would renew the Temple, once the great point of time should have arrived when Christ will again speak to humanity—this was taught in the depths of the Templar Mysteries, so that the event should be understood.

Moreover, the Templars said: Today we live at a point in time when men are not yet ripe for understanding the great teachings; we still have to prepare them for the Baptist, John, who baptises with water. The Cross was held up before the would-be Templar and he was told: You must deny the Cross now, so as to understand it later; first become a Peter, first deny the scriptures, like Peter the Rock who denied the Lord. That was imparted to the aspirant Templar as a preliminary training.

People generally understand so little of all this that even the letters on the Cross are not interpreted aright. Plato said of it that the world soul would be crucified on the world body.¹⁰ The Cross symbolises the four elements. The plant, animal and human kingdoms are built out of these four elements. On the Cross stands: JAM= water = James; NOUR = fire, which refers to Jesus himself; RUACH = air, the symbol for John; and the fourth JABESCHAH = earth or rock, for Peter.

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Thus there stands on the Cross what is expressed in the names of the [three] Apostles [and Jesus]. While the one name J.N.R.I. denotes Christ himself. ‘Earth’ is the place where Christianity itself must at first be brought, to that Temple to which man himself has brought himself so as to be a sheath for what is higher. But this Temple [Gap in text]¹¹

The cock, which is the symbol for both man's higher and lower selves, ‘crows twice’ [Mark 14:30]. The cock crows for the first time when man descends [to earth] and materialises himself in physical substance; it crows for the second time when man rises again, when he has learnt to understand Christ, when the Water Carrier appears. That will be in the sixth cultural epoch. Then man will understand spiritually what he should become. The ego will have attained a certain stage then, when what Solomon's Temple stands for will be reality in the highest sense, when man himself is a temple for Yahveh.

Before that, however, man still has to undergo three stages of purification. The ego is in a threefold sheath: firstly, in the astral body, secondly, in the etheric body, thirdly in the physical body.

As we are in the astral body, we deny the divine ego for the first time, for the second time in the etheric body, and for the third time in the physical body. The first crow of the cock is threefold denial through the threefold sheath of man. And when he has then passed through the three bodies, when the ego discovers in Christ its greatest symbolical realisation, then the cock crows for the second time.

This struggle to raise oneself up to a proper understanding of Christ, first passing through the stage of Peter none of the Templars found it possible, under torture, to make clear to the judges.

At the outset, the Templars put themselves in a position, as if they had abjured the Cross. After all of this had been made clear to the Templar, he was shown a symbolical figure of the Divine Being in the form of a venerable man with a long beard (symbolising the Father). When men have developed themselves, and have come to receive in the Master a leader from amongst themselves, when those are there who are able to lead humanity, then, as the Word of the guiding Father, there will stand before men the Master who leads men to the comprehension of Christ.

And then it was said to the Templars: When you have understood all this, you will be ripe for joining in building the great Temple of the Earth; you must so co-operate, so arrange everything, that this great building becomes a dwelling place for our true deeper selves, for our inner Ark of the Covenant.

If we survey all this, we find images having great significance. And he in whose soul these images come alive, will become more and more fit to become a disciple of those great Masters who are preparing the building of the Temple of Mankind. For such great concepts work powerfully in our souls, so that we thereby undergo purification, so that we are led to abounding life in the spirit.

We find the same medieval tendency as manifested in the Knights Templars, in two Round Tables as well, that of King Arthur, and that of the Holy Grail. In King Arthur's Round Table can be found the ancient universality, whereas the spirituality proper to Christian knighthood had to be prepared in those who guarded the Mystery of the Holy Grail. It is remarkable how calmly and tranquilly medieval people contemplated the developing power (fruit) and outward form of Christianity.

When you follow the teaching of the Templars, there at the heart of it is a kind of reverence for something of a feminine nature. This femininity was known as the Divine Sophia, the Heavenly Wisdom. Manas is the fifth principle. the spiritual self of man, that must be developed, for which a temple must be built. And, just as the pentagon at the entrance to Solomon's Temple characterises the fivefold human being, this female principle similarly typifies the wisdom of the Middle Ages, This wisdom is exactly what Dante sought to personify in his Beatrice. Only from this viewpoint can Dante's Divine Comedy be understood. Hence you find Dante, too, using the same symbols as those which find expression in the Templars, the Christian knights, the Knights of the Grail, and so on. Everything which is to happen [in the future] was indeed long since prepared for by the great initiates, who foretell future events, in the same way as in the Apocalypse, so that souls will be prepared for these events.

According to legend we have two different currents when humanity came to the Earth: the children of Cain, whom one of the Elohim begat through Eve, the children of the Earth, in whom we find the great arts and external sciences. That is one of the currents; it was banished, but is however to be sanctified by Christianity, when the fifth principle comes into the world. The other current is that of the children of God, who have led man towards an understanding of the fifth principle. They are the ones that Adam created. Now the sons of Cain were called upon to create an outer sheath, to contain what the sons of God, the Abel-Seth children, created.

In the Ark of the Covenant lies concealed the Holy Name of Yahveh. However, what is needed to transform the world, to create the sheath for the Holy of Holies, must be accomplished again through the sons of Cain. God created man's physical body, into which man's ego works, at first destroying this temple. Man can only rescue himself if he first builds the house to carry him across the waters of the emotions, if he builds Noah's Ark for himself. This house must set man on his feet again. Now those who came into the world as the children of Cain are building the outward part, and what the children of God have given is building the inner part.

These two streams were already current when our race began ... [Gap]¹²

So we shall only understand theosophy when we look upon it as a testament laying the ground for what the Temple of Solomon denotes, and for what the, future holds in store. We have to prepare for the New Covenant, in place of the Old Covenant. The old one is the Covenant of the creating God, in which God is at work on the Temple of Mankind. The New Covenant is the one in which man himself surrounds the divine with the Temple of Wisdom, when he restores it, so that this ‘I’ will find a sanctuary on this earth when it is resurrected out of matter, set free.

So profound are the symbols, and so was the instruction, that the Templars wanted to be allowed to confer upon mankind. The Rosicrucians are none other than the successors to the Order of the Templars, wanting nothing else than the Templars did, which is also what theosophy desires: they are all at work on the great Temple of Humanity.

• 1 . First Book of Kings, Chapters 5–7. Second Book of Chronicles, Chapters 3–4. Ezekiel, Chapters 40–42.
• 2 . Jean Paul (pseudonym for Jean Paul Friedrich Richter) 1763–1825, poet, writer of novels, and thinker. The episode here related was recorded in his childhood reminiscences.
• 3 . This took place once a year on the Day of Atonement. Leviticus, Chapter 16, verses 29–34: ‘And this shall be an everlasting statute unto you, to make an atonement for the children of Israel, for all their sins, once a year.’
• 4 . According to notes of a lecture by Rudolf Steiner given in Cologne on 28th December 1907 (not yet published in German, but intended for inclusion in Volume 101 of the complete edition) he there states:
  
  ‘Were we to take millennia into account rather than centuries, we would observe how the form of the human body undergoes change according to the thoughts, feelings, and conceptual criteria of previous millennia; and the mighty leading powers of evolution give to man the right concepts at the right time, so that even the human form becomes transformed ...
  
  ‘How did the whole length, breadth and height of the physical body of today actually evolve? It is a result of what was at first contained in the astral and etheric bodies. That was where the thoughts, pictures, feelings, etc., at first resided. You will better be able to understand what I have to say if you call to mind a process which takes place immediately after physical death. It happens then that the physical body is at first forsaken by the etheric and astral bodies. Sleep consists in the fact that the astral body and ego withdraw leaving the physical body and ether body lying in bed. Death is differentiated from sleep through the fact that in the former state the physical body alone remains behind on the bed and the ether body withdraws along with the other two members of man's being. A strange phenomenon then takes place which could be described as a sensation, but which is connected with a kind of concept: the person feels as if he were expanding and then the memory-tableau occurs; but before that happens he feels himself expanding in all directions—he gains dimension on all sides.
  
  ‘This viewing of his ether body in huge dimensions is a very important concept; for it had to be induced into Atlantean man at a time when his etheric body was not so closely knit up with his physical body as it was to be in post-Atlantean times. This concept which occurs in man at death today had first to be aroused in him at that time. If a person were to visualise the approximate dimensions which are experienced by man today when he expands at death, then he has built up the motive, the thought form, which is able to bring his physical body into approximately its present form. If, therefore, the true measurements were held up in front of a person whose etheric body was at times separated from his physical body, they would take on the form that the physical body has today. And this form would have been induced into man primarily by those who are leaders of mankind's development. The exact account of this is contained in the various stories of the flood, particularly the Biblical account. If you were to visualise man more or less surrounded by those forms which the etheric body must have in order that the physical body can be built up according to its proper dimensions, then you would have the same dimensions as Noah's Ark.
  
  ‘Why are the exact measurements of Noah's Ark given in the Bible? So that man, who was to be the bridge from Atlantean times to post-Atlantean times, would have a structure—300 cubits long, 50 cubits broad, 30 cubits high—which he must have around him in order to build up the proper thought form, to develop the right motive, out of length, breadth and height, to build up the post-Atlantean body in the right way. There you have a symbol from which the dimensions of your present-day body have been taken and which are the result of the thought form which Noah experienced in the Ark. It is not for nothing that Noah was placed in the Ark and that the Ark was described in this way. The Ark was built thus so that the human body could be properly formed in post-Atlantean times. The whole of mankind was reared in the use of effective symbols. Man carries with him at the present day the measurements of Noah's Ark. When man stretches his hands upwards the measurements of the Ark come to expression in the measurements of man's present-day body. Now man has evolved from Atlantis to post-Atlantis. In the epoch which will follow ours, the sixth epoch, man's body will again be quite differently formed; and today, too, man must experience those thought forms which will enable him to create for the next epoch the motives to provide the proper measurements for the bodies. That must be presented to man. Today the measurements of man's body are in the proportion 300 to 50 to 30. In the future his body will be built up quite differently. What will supply present-day man with the thought form for building up his future body? That is also told us. It is the measurements of the Salomonic Temple. And these measurements of the Salonionic Temple, when realised in physical form, represent, with profound symbolical significance, the whole physical Organisation of the man of the next epoch, the sixth great epoch.
  
  ‘Everything which is effective in mankind takes its start from inside the human being, not from outside. What appears as thought and feeling at one period is outward form in the next. And the individualities who guide mankind must implant the thought forms into him many thousands of years in advance, if they are to become outward reality later. There you have the working of the thought forms which are activated by such symbolical figures. They have a very real meaning.’
• 5 . It has not been possible to identify the literary source to which Rudolf Steiner here refers.
  
  In the Cabbala of Agrippa von Nettesheim (Scheible edition, Stuttgart, 1855), it is stated in the chapter concerning ‘The Measurement, Relationship and Harmony of the Human Body:’
  
  Yes, God himself instructed Noah in the building of the Ark according to the measurements of the human body, just as he himself incorporated into the whole world-mechanism the symmetry of man; and therefore the latter is called the macrocosm, the former the microcosm. With reference to the above some microcosmologists determine the measurements of the human body as being six foot, the foot being ten degrees and the degree being five minutes; this amounts to sixty degrees or 300 minutes, the same number of geometrical cubits as, according to the description of Moses, were contained in the length of the Ark. just as the human body, however, has a length of 300 minutes, a breadth of 50 and a thickness of 30, so had the Ark of Noah not only a length of 300 cubits, but also a width of 50 and a depth (or height) of 30, from which it will be seen that there is a relationship of 6 to 1 of the length to the breadth, 10 to 1 of the length to the depth and 5 to 3 of the breadth to the depth.’
  
  Further to this, Franz Coci in his work: Detailed Calculation of the Three Dimensions of Noah's Ark from the Standpoint of Geometry and Mechanics, (translated from Polish into German by Wenzel Bauernopl, Bilin, 1899), demonstrated mathematically that: ‘The only fitting and possible relationship of width to height of a four-sided hollow body, which combines the use of the least amount of material with the greatest stability, would be to take 5 (more exactly 5.322232) for the width and for the height 3 (more exactly 2.967768) equal parts. And this is the ratio in which the Ark actually was built.’
• 6, . The version here translated is the version from the notes of Berta Reebstein-Lehmann. Walter Vegelahn's version is only fragmentary. It is rendered thus: ‘The ... Temple is so formed that it encloses the fivefold human being. That ... is the most important thing about the Temple. The square is holy, the roof, the roof-covering and the side pillars together form ... In front of the altar stood two cherubim.’
• 7. First Book of Kings, Chapter 6, verse 31: ‘And for the entering of the oracle he made doors of olive tree: the lintel and side posts were a fifth part of the wall.’ The gloss referring to ‘fifth part’ gives the alternative ‘five-square.’
  
  Emil Bock in his Old Testament History, Volume 3, in speaking about the Temple of Solomon says:
  
  ‘The third, inmost chamber in the west, the Holy of Holies (Debir), was screened by a wooden partition containing a pentagonal doorway and covered by a curtain of four colours.’
• 8 . See in this connection Rudolf Steiner's later and more detailed accounts of the Templars, e.g., lecture of 2nd October 1916 in Dornach (‘The Templars,’ copy Z 156), also: lecture of 25th September 1916, (sixth lecture of the series R. 45): Inner Impulses working in the Evolution of Mankind.
• 9 . The text is quite plainly only preserved in an incomplete form. In connection with the cultural epochs and the course of the sun through the zodiac see Rudolf Steiner's lecture given in Dornach, 8th January 1918, in the lecture course entitled: ‘Ancient Myths,’ (RSE 564).
• 10. Rudolf Steiner often quotes this passage from Timaeus, but he gives it in the formulation which Vincenz Knauer uses, a Viennese philosopher personally known to him, whose book: Die Hauptprobleme der Philosophic ... etc: (‘The Development and Partial Solution to the Main Philosophical Problems from The time of Thales to Robert Hamerling’), formed part of his personal library. In this particular version the passage here quoted has the following wording: ‘God laid this soul in cross-formation through the universe and spread out over it the world body.’ In the English translation of this passage (Penguin Classics, 1971, p. 48) it reads as follows: ‘He then took the whole fabric and cut it down the middle into two strips, which he placed crosswise at their middle points to form a shape like the letter X; he then bent the ends round in a circle and fastened them to each other opposite the point at which the strips crossed, to make two circles, one inner and one outer.’
  
  In the opinion of the Ancients there were two circles of greatest significance in the universe: the heavenly equator and the ecliptic. The translator of the copy which was in the possession of Rudolf Steiner, (Vincenz Knauer), makes a comment on the passage in question which reads as follows: ‘And so, in the arguments of Plato it is the soul itself which, as a result of a mysterious process, spreads itself out in the spatial image of the ecliptic and the equator. If the position of these two largest circles to one another is visualised in the form of the Greek letter X (Chi—thought of as lying horizontally) then that would be a very appropriate comparison. For these two circles cut one another at an angle of 23 1/2 degrees. The motion of the equator is in the direction from east to west (when the observer faces north), but the motion of the ecliptic is from west to east.’ In addition to this it may be said that the Church Father Justin the Martyr, C 100—C 165, in the first of his Apologies, points to the fact that the source of Plato's teaching regarding—world creation was, in all probability, the account of the raising of the brazen serpent in the wilderness by Moses (Chapter 21, verses 4–9).
• 11. This passage is very incomplete. In the Vegelahn text there are only the words as given above. In the text given by Reebstein it continues: ‘But the Temple is not yet understood by man,’ perhaps the correct rendering should be: ‘But the building of the Temple is not yet understood by man.’
• 12. In the Vegelahn text this sentence finds an incomplete continuation: ‘These two streams already made themselves felt at the beginning of our race—the old stream which entered evolution at a time when the gods were still engaged in creating the world, and the second ... which must always continue to build in this Temple of Wisdom ...’

Since we have spoken several times about Christianity and its present and future development, we have reached the point where today we have also to consider the meaning of the Cross symbol—not so much historically as factually.

You know, of course, what an all-embracing and symbolical meaning the emblem of the Cross has had for Christianity; and today I would like just to shed light on the connection between the Cross symbol and the significance of Solomon's Temple for world history.

Indeed there exists a so-called holy legend about the whole development of the Cross; in it we are dealing less with the Cross sign or its universal symbolical meaning, than with that very special and particular Cross of which Christ speaks, the very Cross on which Christ Jesus was crucified. Now you know too that the Cross is a symbol for all men, and it is found not only in Christianity, but in the religious beliefs and symbolism of all peoples, so that it must have the same common significance for all mankind. However, what particularly interests us today is how the Cross symbol acquired its basic significance for Christianity.

The Christian legend about the Cross¹ is as follows: we shall begin with it.

The wood or tree from which the Cross had been taken is not ordinary wood, but—so the legend relates—was, in the beginning, a scion of the Tree of Life, which had been cut for Adam, the first man. This scion was planted in the earth by Adam's son, Seth, and the young tree developed three trunks which grew together. The famous rod of Moses² was later cut from this wood. Then, in the legend, the same wood plays a role in connection with King Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem. That is, it was to have been used as a main pillar, in building the Temple. But then something peculiar came to light. It appeared that it would not fit in any way. It would not let itself be inserted in the Temple, and so it was laid across a brook, as a bridge. Here it was little valued until the Queen of Sheba came; as she was crossing it, she saw what the point about this piece of wood was. Here indeed she had for the first time met again with the meaning of the wood [used for this] bridge, which lay there between the two spheres, between the bank on this side and the bank on the other side, for crossing over the stream. So then, the Cross on which the Redeemer hung was made out of this [same] wood, after which it set out upon its various further travels.

Thus you see that the point of this legend is to do with the origin and evolution of the human race. Adam's son Seth is supposed to have taken this scion from the Tree of Life, and it then grew three trunks. These three trunks symbolise the three principles, the three underlying forces of nature, Atma, Buddhi and Manas, which have grown together and form the trinity which is the foundation of all growth and all development. It is apt that Seth—the son of Adam who took the place of Abel, murdered by Cain should have planted the scion in the earth.

You know that on the one hand we are dealing with the Cain current [of evolution] and on the other hand with the descendants of Abel and Seth. The sons of Cain, who work upon the outer world, cultivate the sciences and arts in particular. They are the ones who bring in the stones from the outer world to build the Temple. It is through their art that the Temple is to be built. The descendants of the line of Abel/Seth are the so-called Sons of God, who cultivate the true spiritual part of man's nature. These two currents were always somewhat in antithesis. On the one hand we have the worldly activity of man, the development of those sciences which serve man's comfort and outward life in general; on the other hand we have the Sons of God, occupied with the development of man's higher attributes.

We must make ourselves clear about it: the viewpoint from which the Legend of the True Cross springs, makes a firm distinction between the mere outward building of the World Temple through science and technology, and what as religious warp and woof works towards the sanctification of the whole Temple of Humanity., Only because this Temple of Humanity is given a higher task—only because the outer building, so to speak, serving as it does only our convenience, makes itself into an expression of the House of God—can it become a receptacle for the spiritual inner part in which the higher tasks of humanity are nurtured. Only because strength is transformed into striving for heavenly virtue outward form into beauty, the words of man's ordinary intercourse into the words that serve divine wisdom, and thus only because the worldly is remodelled into the divine, can it attain its perfection. When the three virtues, Wisdom, Beauty and Strength, become the receptacle of the divine, then will the Temple of Humanity be perfected. That is how the viewpoint underlying this legend looks at the matter.

We must therefore picture—quite in the sense of this legend—that up to the appearance of Christ Jesus on earth, there were two tendencies: the one, that built the earthly temple, that had its impact on the doings of men, so that at a later time the Divine Word that had come to earth through the Christ Jesus, could be received. A dwelling had to be prepared for the appearance of the Divine Word on earth. Next, the Divine itself should for a while develop itself upwards over the course of time as a kind of parallel tendency to the second current. Hence a distinction is made between the sons of men, the descendants of Cain, who were to prepare the worldly aspect, and the sons Abel/Seth, who cultivated the divine aspect, until the two streams could be united with each other, Christ Jesus united these two streams. The Temple had first to be built outwardly, therefore, until, in the shape of Christ Jesus, He should arrive Who was able to raise it up again in three days. On the one hand, then, we have the current of the Sons of Cain, and on the other that of the Abel/Seth line, both of which are preparing the development of mankind, so that the Son of God can then unite the two sides, and make the two streams into one. This finds expression in the holy legend in a profound way.

Seth himself is the one who planted the scion that he had taken for Adam from the Tree of Life, and raised a tree with three trunks. What is the meaning of this triple stemmed tree? Nothing else at all than the trinity, Atma, Buddhi and Manas, the threefold higher nature of man which will be implanted in his lower principles. But within man this is veiled at first. Through his three bodies—physical, etheric and astral—man is at first like an outer covering for the real divine trinity, Atma, Buddhi and Manas. You must imagine, therefore, that the trinity of physical, etheric and astral body are like an outer representation of the higher forces of Atma, Buddhi and Manas. And just as the artist fashions outer forms or expresses a certain idea in colours, so these three coverings also express a work of art. If you conceive these higher principles as the idea of a work of art, you will have come half way to grasping how the life of these three bodies is made up.

Now man is indeed living in his physical, etheric and astral sheaths, together with his ‘I’, through which he will so transform his threefold nature that the three higher principles find their appropriate dwelling place and feel at home here on earth. That had to be provided for by the Old Covenant. Through the arts of the race of Cain, it had to bring Sons of Men into the world, and through these Sons of Men were to be produced all the outward things that would serve the physical, etheric and astral bodies. What outward things were these?

The things which serve the physical body are firstly all that is contrived by technology to satisfy the physical body and provide for its comfort. Then, what we have in the way of the social and political institutions which [regulate] men's living together, what relates to nourishment and reproduction [of the race], all serve the development of the etheric body. And working upon the astral body we have the sphere of moral codes and ethics, bringing the instincts and emotions under control, which regulate and raise up the astral nature to a higher stage.

Thus, during the Old Covenant, the Sons of Cain were building the Three-tiered Temple. In all this, since it is made up of our outer institutions—in which you can includeour dwellings and tools, the social and political organs, the system of morals—is the building of the Sons of Cain, that serves the lower members of man's nature.

The other tendency worked alongside, presided over by the Sons of God, their pupils and followers. From this stream come the servants of the divine world order, the attendants of the Ark of the Covenant. In them we find something which, as a separate current, runs parallel to [that of] those who serve the external world. They occupied a special position. Only after Solomon's Temple hadbeen erected was the Ark of the Covenant to be placed inside it; that is to say, everything else had to be made subservient to the Ark of the Covenant, to be arranged around it. Everything which was formerly of a worldly nature was to become an external expression, an outer covering, for what the Ark of the Covenant meant for mankind. The meaning of the Temple of Solomon will best be understood by whoever visualises it as something which expresses outwardly in its physiognomy what the Ark of the Covenant should be, in its soul nature.

What has given life to man's outward three bodies, has been taken by the Sons of God from the Tree of Life. That is symbolically expressed in that building wood later used for Christ's Cross. It was first given to the Sons of God. What did they do with it? What is the deeper meaning of the wood of the Cross? In this holy legend about the wood of the Cross lies a very deep meaning.

For what in general is the task of the human being in his earthly evolution? He has to raise the present three bodies with which he is endowed to a higher stage. Thus, he must raise his physical body to a higher realm and likewise his etheric and astral bodies. This development is incumbent upon humanity. That is the real sense of it: to transform our three bodies into the three higher members of the whole divine plan of creation.

There is another kingdom above that which man has immediately and physically around him. But to which kingdom does man in his physical nature belong? At the present stage of his evolution, he belongs with his physical nature to the mineral kingdom. Physical, chemical and mineral laws hold sway over man's physical body. Yet even as far as his spiritual nature is concerned, he belongs to the mineral kingdom, since he understands through his intellect only what is mineral, Life, as such, he is only gradually learning to comprehend. Precisely for this reason, official science disowns life, being still at that stage of development in which it can only grasp the dead, the mineral. It is in the process of learning to understand this in very intricate detail. Hence it understands the human body only in so far as it is a dead, mineral thing. It treats the human body basically as something dead with which one works, as if with a substance in a chemical laboratory. Other substances are introduced into [the body], in the same way that substances are poured into a retort. Even when the doctor, who nowadays is brought up entirely on mineral science, sets about working on the human body, it is as though the latter were only an artificial product.

Hence we are dealing with man's body at the stage of the mineral kingdom in two ways: man has acquired reality in the mineral kingdom through having a physical body, and with his intellect is only able to grasp facts relating to the mineral kingdom. This is a necessary transitional stage for man. However, when man no longer relies only on the intellect but also upon intuition and spiritual powers, we will then be aware we are moving into a future in which our dead mineral body will work towards becoming one that is alive. And our science must lead the way, must prepare for what has to happen with the bodily essence in the future. In the near future, it must itself develop into something which has life in itself,recognise the life inherent in the earth for what it is. For in a deeper sense it is true, it is the thoughts of man that prepare the future. As an old Indian aphorism rightly says: What you think today, that you will be tomorrow.

The very being of the world springs out of living thought; not from dead matter. What outward matter is, is a consequence of living thought, just as ice is a consequence of water; the material world is, as it were, frozen thoughts. We must dissolve it back again into its higher elements, because we grasp life in thought. If we are able to lead the mineral up into life, if we transform [it into] the thoughts of the whole of human nature, then we will have succeeded, our science will have become a science of the living and not of dead matter. We shall raise thereby the lowest principle [of man]—at first in our understanding, and later also in reality—into the next sphere. And thus we shall raise each member of man's nature—the etheric and the astral included—one stage higher.

What man formerly used to be, we call, in theosophical terminology, the three Elementary Kingdoms [See the chart at the end of the notes to Lecture 10]. These preceded the Mineral Kingdom in which we live today; that is, the Kingdom to which our science restricts itself, and in which our physical body lives. The three Elementary Kingdoms are bygone stages [of evolution]. The three Higher Kingdoms—the Plant Kingdom, the Animal Kingdom and the Human Kingdom—which will develop themselves out of the Mineral Kingdom, are as yet only at a rudimentary stage.

The lowest principle in man, [the physical body,] must indeed still pass through these three kingdoms, just as it is at present passing through the Mineral Kingdom. Just as today man lives in the Mineral Kingdom with his physical nature, so in the future he will live in the Plant Kingdom, and then rise to still higher Kingdoms. Today with our physical nature we are in a transitional stage between the Mineral and Plant Kingdoms, with our etheric nature in transition from the Plant Kingdom to the Animal Kingdom, and with our astral nature in transition from the Animal Kingdom to the Human Kingdom. And finally, we extend beyond the three Kingdoms into the Divine Kingdom, with that part which we have in the Sphere of Wisdom, where we extend in our own nature beyond the astral.

Thus man is engaged in an ascent. But this is not brought about by any outer contrivance or construction, but by the living self which is awakened in us; which does not use mere outward building stones, but works in a creative and growing way. This force of life must enter into evolution and must first take hold of man's innermost being; his religious life must be gripped by living forces. Therefore what the Sons of Cain did for the lower members of man's nature during the Old Covenant was a kind of preparation, and what the prophets, the guardians of the Ark of the Covenant, did was like a prophetic forecast of the future. The Divine should now descend into the Ark of the Covenant, into the soul, so that it may itself dwell in the Temple as Holy of Holies.

Adam, the first man, was already endowed, from the Tree of Life, with these living forces of metamorphosis and transformation, the creatively working forces that re-shape Nature. But [these forces] were entrusted to those not engaged in the work of outward building, to the Sons of God, the sons of Abel and Seth. Through Christianity, these forces should now become common property; the two streams should unite together. And it is basically a Christian attitude today which holds that nothing external, no temple, no house, no social institution, ought to be created, that is not red hot with inner life, with the life-giving force rather than the mineral force that can only manipulate things.

The first attempt which was made to guide the lower nature of man to a higher stage was Solomon's Temple, as we have seen. The pentagon was to be seen at the entrance as the great symbol, for man was to strive towards the fifth principle [of his nature]; that is to say, human nature had to raise itself up from the lower principles to the higher, each member [of man's being] was to be ennobled.

And here we come to the Cross's real meaning, which has led it to acquire such basic and real significance as a symbol of Christianity. What is the Cross? There are three Kingdoms towards which mankind is striving—the Plant Kingdom, the Animal Kingdom and the Human Kingdom. Today man finds his reality in the Mineral Kingdom, to which plants, animals and man belong. You should see it as it is meant in all creeds of wisdom, that man as a being of soul and spirit is a part of the universal soul, the world soul as Giordano Bruno, for example, called it.³ Perhaps the individual soul is like a drop in the world soul which we can imagine as a great ocean. Now Plato said about this, that the world soul has been crucified on the world body.⁴

The world soul, as it expresses itself in man, is spread out over the Mineral Kingdom. It must raise itself above this, and evolve upwards to the three higher Kingdoms. Hence it must become incorporated in the Plant, Animal and Human Kingdoms during the next three Rounds. The fourth Round is nothing else than the incorporation of the human soul into the Mineral Kingdom, the fifth Round into the Plant Kingdom, the sixth into the Animal Kingdom, and finally the seventh Round is the embodiment of man into the Human Kingdom proper, in which man will become wholly an image of the Godhead. Until then man has to take the world body as his sheath three times.

If we take a look at mankind's future, it presents itself to us as threefold materiality—vegetable, animal and human. This human [substance] is not the same, however, as the substantiality we have today; for the latter is mineral, since man has indeed so far only arrived at the mineral cycle [in his evolution]. Only when the lowest Kingdom has [become] the Human Kingdom, when there are no more lower beings, when all beings have been redeemed by man through the force of his own life, then he will have arrived in the seventh Round, where God rests, because man himself creates. Then will have come the seventh Day of Creation, in which man will have taken on the likeness of God. These are the stages in the story of creation.

Now plant, animal and man, as they stand before us today, are only the germ of what they are to become. The plant of today is only a symbolical indication of something which is to appear in the next human evolutionary cycle in greater glory and clarity. And when man has overcome and stripped off animality, he will have become something of which today he is only a hint. Thus the Plant, Animal and Human Kingdoms are the three material kingdoms through which man has to pass; they are to be world body, and the soul has to be crucified on this world body.

Be clear from now on about the respective positions of plant, animal and man. The plant is the precise counterpart of man. There is a very deep and significant meaning in our conceiving the plant as the exact counterpart of man, and man as the inverse of plant nature. Outer science does not concern itself with such matters; it takes things as they present themselves to the outer senses. Science connected with theosophy, however, considers the meaning of things in their connection with all the rest of evolution. For, as Goethe says,⁵ each thing must be seen only as a parable.

The plant has its roots in the earth and unfolds its leaves and blooms to the sun. At present the sun has in itself the force which was once united with the earth. The sun has of course separated itself from our earth. Thus the entire sun forces are something with which our earth was at one time permeated; the sun forces then lived in the earth. Today the plant is still searching for those times when the sun forces were still united with the earth, by exposing its flowering system to those forces. The sun forces are the [same as those which work as] etheric forces in the plants. By presenting its reproductive organs to the sun, the plant shows its deep affinity with it; its reproductive principle is occultly linked with the sun forces. The head of the plant, [the root] which is embedded in the darkness of the earth,is on the other hand similarly akin to the earth. Earth and sun are the two polar opposites in evolution.

Man is the inverse of the plant; [the plant] has its generative organs turned towards the sun and its head pointing downwards. With man it is exactly the opposite; he carries his head on high, orientated towards the higher worlds in order to receive the spirit—his generative organs are directed downwards. The animal stands halfway between plant and man. It has made a half turn, forming, so to speak, a crosspiece to the line of direction of both plant and man. The animal carries its backbone horizontally, thus cutting across the line formed by plant and man, to make a cross. Imagine to yourselves the Plant Kingdom growing downward, the Human Kingdom upward, and the Animal Kingdom thus horizontally; then you have formed the Cross from the Plant, Animal and Human Kingdoms.

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That is the symbol of the Cross.

It represents the three Kingdoms of Life, into which man has to enter. The Plant, Animal and Human Kingdoms are the next three material Kingdoms [to be entered by man]. The whole evolves out of the Mineral Kingdom; this is the basis today- The Animal Kingdom forms a kind of dam between the Plant and Human Kingdoms, and the plant is a kind of mirror image of man. This ties up with human life—what lives in man physically—finding its closest kinship with what lives in the plant. It would take many lectures to confirm that thoroughly; today I can only hint at it. When man wants to maintain his physical life activity, he can best do so with a plant diet, since he would then be consuming what originally had an affinity with the physical life activity of the earth. The sun is the bearer of the life forces, and the plant is what grows in response to the sun forces. And man must unite what lives in the plant with his own life forces. Thus his food-stuffs are, occultly, the same as the plant. The Animal Kingdom acts as a dam, a drawing back, thereby interposing itself crosswise against the development process, in order to begin a new flow.

Man and plant, while set against each other, are mutually akin; whereas the animal—and all that comes to expression in the astral body is the animal—is a crossing of the two principles of life. The human etheric body will provide the basis, at a higher stage, for the immortal man, who will no longer be subject to death. The etheric body at present still dissolves with the death of the human being. But the more man perfects and purifies himself from within, the nearer will he get to permanence, the less will he perish. Every labour undertaken for the etheric body contributes towards; man's immortality. In this sense it is true that man will gain more mastery of immortality, the more evolution takes place naturally, the more it is directed towards the forces of life—which does not mean towards animal sexuality and passion.

Animality is a current which breaks across human life it was a retardation, necessary for a turning point in the stream of life. Man had to combine with animality for a while, because this turning point had to take place. But he must free himself from it again and return again to the stream of life.

At the beginning of our human incarnations on earth we were endowed with the force of life. That is symbolically expressed in the legend, where Adam's son, Seth, took the scion from the Tree of Life; this was then further cultivated by the Sons of God, [which expressed] that threefold human nature, which had to be ennobled.

After that, Moses cut his rod from this wood of life. This rod of Moses is nothing else than the external law. But what is external law?

External law is present when someone who has to erect An external building has a plan—that is, a systematic scheme on paper—so that the outward building stones can be shaped and fitted together according to the plan. Thus, the law underlying the plan of a state is external law. Mankind is under Moses' rod. And anyone who follows a moral code out of fear or in hope of reward, is only following the external law. Moreover, whoever looks at science only in an external way, is only following external law; for what else can there [then] be in it but external laws! All the laws we are acquainted with in science are such external laws; through them, however, we will never find that way through to higher human nature, but will only follow the law of the Old Covenant, which is the Rod of Moses. However, this external law should be a model for the inner law. Man must learn inwardly to follow law. This inner law must become for man the impulse of life; out of the inner law he must learn to follow external law. One does not make the inner law reality by concocting a plan; instead one has to build the Temple out of inner impulse, so that the soul streams forth in the work of joining the stones together. He who lives in the inner law is not the one who merely follows the laws of the state, but he to whom they are the impulse of his life, because his soul is immersed in them. And it is not he who follows a moral code out of fear or because of reward who is a moral person, but he who follows it because he loves it.

As long as mankind was not ripe for following the law inwardly, as long as man was under a yoke, and the Rod of Moses was present, in the law, so long would the law lie in the Ark of the Covenant; until the Pauline principle, the principle of grace came to man, giving him the possibility of becoming free from the law. The profundity of the Pauline doctrine lies in its making a distinction between law and grace. When law becomes inflamed with love, when love has united with the law, that then is grace. That is how the Pauline distinction between law and grace is to be understood.

Now we can follow the legend of the Cross still further. The wood was used as a bridge between two riverbanks. because it did not suit as a pillar in Solomon's Temple. This was a preparation. The Ark of the Covenant was in the Temple, but the Word-become-Flesh was not yet there. The wood of the Cross was laid as a bridge across a stream; only the Queen of Sheba recognised the worth of the wood for the temple, which should live in the consciousness of the soul of all humanity. Now the same wood was used for the construction of the Cross on which the Redeemer hung. He who unites the two earlier currents [of evolution], who allows the worldly and the spiritual to flow into each other, the Christ, is Himself joined to the living Cross. That is how He can carry the wood of the Cross as something [external] which He carries on His back. He is Himself united with the wood of the bridge, and can therefore take the dead wood upon Himself.

Man is today drawn into higher nature. Formerly he lived in lower nature. In the Christian sense he now lives in higher nature, and the Cross—the lower nature—he carries forward as something alien, through his inner living forces. Religion now becomes the living force in the world, now the life in external nature ceases, the Cross becomes entirely wood. The outer body [of man] now becomes a vehicle for the inner living force. There the great mystery consummates itself: the Cross is taken on [man's] back.

Our great poet Goethe presented the idea of the bridge in a beautiful and significant way in his ‘Fairy Story of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily,’⁶ where he has a bridge being built, by the snake laying itself across the river as a living bridge. All the more advanced initiates use this same symbol for one and the same thing.

Thus we have become acquainted with the deep inner meaning of the holy legend of the Cross. We have seen how the revolution was prepared for, which Christianity brought about, and which must fulfil itself more and more as time goes on by Christianising the world. We have seen how the Cross, inasmuch as it is the image of the three external bodies, dies; how it is only able to form an external union between the three lower and the three higher Kingdoms, between the two banks divided by the stream—the wood of the Cross could not become a pillar in Solomon's Temple—until man recognises it as his own particular symbol. Only then, when he sacrifices himself, makes his own body into the Temple, and becomes able to carry the Cross, will the merging of the two streams be made possible.

That is why the Christian churches have the symbol of the Cross in their foundations; thereby expressing the secretion of the living Cross in the outward edifice of the Temple. However, these two streams, the living divine stream on the one hand, and the worldly mineral stream on the other, have become united in the Redeemer hanging on the Cross, where the higher principles are in the Redeemer Himself, and the lower ones in the Cross. And henceforth this connection must now become organic and living, as the Apostle Paul expressed particularly deeply. Without [a knowledge of] what has been discussed today, the writings of the Apostle Paul cannot be understood. It was clear to him that the Old Covenant, which creates an antithesis between man and the law, must come to an end. Only when man unites himself with the law, takes it upon his back, carries it, will there no longer be any contradiction between man's inner nature and the external law. Then that which Christianity seeks to achieve, is achieved.

‘With the law sin came into the world.’⁷ That is a profound saying of Paul's. When is there sin in the world? Only when there is a law which can be broken. But when the law becomes so united with human nature that man only does good, then there can be no [more] sin. Man only contradicts the law of the Cross as long as it does not live within him, but is something external. Therefore Paid sees the Christ on the Cross as the conquest of law and the conquest of sin. To hang on the Cross means to be subjected to the law—and that is a curse. Sin and the law belong together in the Old Covenant, the law and love belong together in the New Covenant. It is a negative law which is involved in the Old Covenant; but the law of the New Covenant is a living positive law. He who united the Old Covenant with His own life is the One who has overcome it. He has at the same time sanctified it.

That is what is meant by those words of Paul which are to be found in the Epistle to the Galatians, Chapter 3:11–13.: ‘But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, is evident, for the just shall live by faith and the law is not of faith, but the man that doeth them shall live in them. Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us, for it is written: Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.’

With the word ‘tree’ [literally ‘wood’ in the German Bible] Paul connects the concept with which we have been dealing today. We must indeed keep penetrating deeper into what the great initiates have said. We do not come closer to Christianity by adapting it to what might be termed our demands, by adapting it to the contemporary materialist judgments that deny anything higher—but by continually raising ourselves further into spiritual heights. For Christianity was born of initiation and we shall only understand it and be able to believe that it contains infinite depths, if we abandon the view that we have to bring Christianity nearer to contemporary ideas; but instead raise our anti-spiritual materialist thinking back again to Christianity. The contemporary view must raise itself from what is mineral and dead to what is living and spiritual, if it is to understand Christianity.

I have presented these views so as to arrive at a conception of the New Jerusalem.

Answer to a question^†

Question: Is the legend very old?

Answer (1): This legend existed at the time of the mysteries, but it was not written down. The mysteries of Antioch were Adonis mysteries. In them was celebrated the Crucifixion, the Entombment and the Resurrection as an outer image of initiation. The mourning of the women at the Cross already appeared there; this appeared to us again in [the persons] of Mary and Mary Magdalen. This links up with a version, similar to that in [this] legend, which is also to be found in the Apis and Mithras mysteries and again in the Osiris mysteries. What was still apocalyptic there, is fulfilled in Christianity. The old apocalypses change into new legends, in the same way that John portrays the future in his Revelations.

Answer (2): The legend is historically medieval, but was previously recorded in all its completeness by the Gnostics. The further course of the Cross is given there. Moreover, the medieval version also contains indications of this; the medieval legends indicate the way to the mysteries less clearly; but we can trace them all back. This legend is connected with the Adonis mysteries, with the Antioch legend, in which the Crucifixion, Entombment and Resurrection become an outward image of inner initiation. The mourning women also appear there, and there is a connected version which is very similar to the Osiris legend. Everything that is apocalyptic in these legends is fulfilled Christianity. The Queen of Sheba sees deeper and is versed in the true wisdom.

• 1 . Parts of this legend are to be found in The Golden Legend or Lives of the Saints, a collection of legends from the thirteenth century by Jacobus de Voragine, translated into English by William Caxton (edited by F.S. Ellis, Temple Classics, 1939). In this the death of Adam is described and how he sent ‘Seth his son into Paradise for to fetch the oil of mercy, where he received certain grains of the fruit of the tree of mercy by an angel ...
  
  ‘And then he laid the grains or kernels under his father's tongue and buried him in the vale of Hebron; and out of his mouth grew three trees of the three grains, of which trees the cross that our Lord suffered his passion on was made ...’ In another place in the same work we are told more about the history of the wood of the cross. Under the section headed ‘The Invention of the Holy Cross’ it is stated:
  
  ‘... it is read in the Gospel of Nicodemus that, when Adam waxed sick, Seth his son went to the gate of Paradise terrestrial for to get the oil of mercy for to anoint withal his father's body ...
  
  ‘In another place it is read that the angel brought him a branch, and commanded him to plant it in the Mount of Lebanon. Yet find we in another place that he gave him of the tree that Adam ate of, and said to him that when that bare fruit he should be guerished and all whole. When Seth came again lie found his father dead and planted this tree upon his grave, and it endured there unto the time of Solomon. And because he saw that it was fair, he did hew it down and set it in his house named Saltus. And when the Queen of Sheba came to visit Solomon she worshipped this tree, because she said the Saviour of all the world should be hanged thereon ...
  
  ‘Then, after this history, the cross by which we be saved came of the tree by which we were damned.’
  
  This extract of The Golden Legend by William Caxton differs from the German version in that some details given by Caxton are omitted in the German and vice versa. The fact that the tree was not found suitable for the building and was used as a bridge over which the Queen of Sheba was to pass is not mentioned in the English text.
  
  In Bilder Okkulter Siegel und Säulen. Der Munchner Kongress, Pfingsten 1907, und seine Auswirkungen, Bibl. 284, there is a comprehensive note dealing with the source of the Temple Legend. It is there said that, according to the research of Otto Zockler (Das Kreuz Christi, chapter headed: ‘Medieval Legends concerning the Wood of the Cross,’ Gutersloh 1875—preserved in the University Library, Basle) the legend about the three seeds from the Tree of Life forms part of a complicated series of legends from the twelfth century onwards. The earliest literary mention of Adam being buried on Golgotha is quoted by the Alexandrian Church Father, Origen, from a tradition out of the second century, to which was added the tradition of Seth's journey to Paradise which is recorded in the third century in the Nicodemus Gospel, which originally contained an account of the fetching of the Oil of Mercy for the healing of Seth's sick father, Adam. It was only in later centuries that the genealogical connection between the wood of the Tree of Paradise and the Cross of Christ was established in its various forms.
  
  This legend, including the elaborations concerning Seth's journey to Paradise for the three seeds, was freely quoted by Rudolf Steiner on many occasions including: The present lecture on 29th May 1905, lectures in Leipzig on 15th December 1906 (Bibl. 97), in Berlin on 17th December 1906 (Bibl. 96), in Munich on 21st May 1907 (Bibl. 284), in Cassel on 29th June 1907 and in Basle on 25th November 1907 (both in Bibl. 100) and in Dornach on 19th December 1915 (Bibl. 165).
  
  In his lecture in Cassel, The Golden Legend was characterised as having provided a subject for occult instruction since the most ancient times and, referring to Seth, it interprets his mission as of one who could see ‘into the end times, when the harmony between the two principles of mankind would be re-established.’ By the two principles is meant the two trees pertaining to the red and purple blood which are represented in the two pillars of the Temple.
  
  As is evident from the interpretation of the legend by spiritual science the pictures which it presents are symbolic of the Fourth Degree in the Rosicrucian initiation, which is characterised by the ‘Finding of the Philosopher's Stone’ and is also known as the guldene, or ‘golden degree.’ This gives us an esoteric explanation of why it was usually referred to by Rudolf Steiner as The Golden Legend.
  
  There is a much longer and more detailed version of this legend in an old Cornish legend (The Ancient Cornish Drama, edited and translated by Edwin Norris, Oxford University, 1859).
  
  In this version there is not only the account of the fetching of the Oil of Mercy by Seth, but also of the attempt by Solomon to incorporate the wood from this tree into the Temple and its final rejection.
  
  The portion of this drama relating to the Oil of Mercy is also to be found in Lyra Celtica, an anthology of Celtic poetry edited by E. A. Sharp and J. Matthay Oohn Grant, Edinburgh, 1932).
• 2 . Also, according to a mystic Hebrew source, the rod of Moses inscribed with the unutterable name of God is nothing else than the Tree of Life. In the Midrasch Wojoscha (the smaller Midrasch commentary on the later legends of the Old Testament) it is said: ‘I (Moses) asked her (Zippora) where he (Jithro) obtained this tree? She answered: It is the rod which the Holy One, Blessed may He be! created on the sabbath eve after having created His world. The Holy One, Blessed may He be! handed it to the first man, who handed it to Chanoch, who handed it to Noa, who handed it to Sem, who handed it to Abraham, who handed it to Jacob, who brought it with him to Egypt and gave it to Joseph his son. When Joseph died, the Egyptians plundered his house and brought this roc to Pharoah's palace. My father Jithro was one of Pharoah's great astrologers, he saw the rod, conceived a desire for it, stole it and brought it to his own house. On this rod was inscribed the unutterable name of God and the ten plagues which the Holy One, Blessed may He be! would one day cause to fall on the Egyptians in the land of Egypt ... And how many days and how many years did this rod lie already in my father's house until the day when he took it in his hand, went out into the garden and planted it in the ground. When he returned to the garden to fetch it he found that it had already sprouted and grown blossoms.’ (Quoted from Hans Ludwig Held: ‘Von Golem und Shem.’ from the periodical: Das Reich, January 1917).
• 3 . Philotheus Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) De rerum Principiis Elementis et Causis, Dialogue: ‘Universal reasoning is the most inward, real and individual faculty and a potential part of the World Soul.’
• 4 . See note 10 to the preceding lecture.
• 5 . Second part of Faust, end chorus: ‘All things transitory are but a likeness.’
• 6 . Goethe: Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily, Floris Books, 1979. See also Goethe's Standard of the Soul as illustrated in Faust and in the Fairy Story of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily, Anthroposophical Publishing Company, London, 1925; and Goethe's Secret Revelation and the Riddle of Faust, Rudolf Steiner Publishing Company, London, 1933.
• 7 . ‘With the law sin came into the world.’
  The Epistle of Paul to the Romans, Chapter 5, verse 13 and Chapter 8, verse 2.
• †. Text (1) is taken from Seiler's notes, text (2) from those of Reebstein.

It is to be taken into account that the notes are in part very deficient and may not be regarded as being verbatim reports.

The Allegory of the Lost Word and its Quest in connection with the Whitsuntide Festival

Among the allegories and symbols we wished to discuss in these lectures, there is also the symbol of the so-called Lost Word, which is to be found again. We have spoken about the Temple which was lost and is to be restored; we can all the more appropriately add to that a brief account of the Lost Word and its quest, since this theme has some connection with the symbolic meaning of the Whitsuntide Festival. I did speak about some of the things to be mentioned today, a year ago.¹ But there are some amongst us who may not have heard last year's lecture; so it may not be superfluous to refer to these things again. Moreover, we are in a position to consider such matters annually, and treat them fundamentally and exhaustively; we have added somewhat to our knowledge, so that several things can now perhaps be discussed which could not yet be mentioned last year.

Pentecost is connected with just that symbol which is known both in the Church and in Freemasonry as the symbol of the Lost Word which is to be found again. But with it we touch on Christian mysteries of a real and extraordinary profundity. With it we touch again—and more thoroughly than could be the case last week—upon the purpose and mission of Solomon the Wise, and upon the whole future meaning of Christian truths.

Pentecost is connected with that perception of man's inmost being which was present in early Christianity, but which has been gradually lost in Christianity as it has survived in the various western Churches. Pentecost is the festival which should freshly remind man of his liberation, every year—of what we call the freedom of the human soul.

How has man really come to what we call his freedom—that is to say, to his ability to distinguish between good and evil, and in freedom to do either good or evil? You know that man has passed through a long sequence of evolution before arriving at the stage where he stands today, and that we have passed the mid-point of this evolution. The midpoint of the whole of human evolution lies roughly in the middle of the Atlantean epoch, which preceded our own epoch. Now we have already gone past this mid-point. Because of that we are the first missionaries of the second half [of evolution], the first apostles of an ascending arc: whereas man was in a descending arc until the time of Atlantis, was involved in a kind of descending evolution until he had submerged himself in the uttermost depths of material life. Now he is climbing back again towards spiritual development.

What we human beings did not possess before the midpoint of our earth evolution was freedom of choice between good and evil. Now we cannot talk about good and evil in the subordinate kingdoms of nature. It would be ridiculous to discuss whether a mineral wanted to crystallise or not; it crystallises if the appropriate conditions are present. It would be equally ridiculous to ask whether the lily wants to blossom or not; or to ask the lion to abstain voluntarily from killing and devouring other animals. Only with man, only in our phase of evolution, do we speak about what we call freedom of choice. Only to human beings do we ascribe the capacity to distinguish between good and evil. How man got this capacity is described in the Bible, in the great symbol of the Fall, in the scene of the temptation, where the Devil or Lucifer appears to Eve and persuades her to eat of the Tree of Knowledge. Through that, man obtained free will; with it he began the second part of his evolutionary path. We can no more inquire into freedom, good and evil for man prior to that evolutionary mid-point, than we can for minerals, plants and animals. Something else is connected with that.

In all esoteric [teaching] our contemporary world and everything connected with it signifies the Cosmos of Love. And the Cosmos or Universe of Wisdom preceded this Universe of Love. We want to look at this in a rather deeper meaning.

You know that our earth evolution was cosmologically preceded by the Moon evolution.² A still more distant precursor of our earth was the Sun; earlier still was Saturn. Man has passed through these three evolutionary stages: Saturn, Sun and Moon. Our earth has passed through three cycles already, in which the Saturn development was repeated in the first Round, the Sun development in the second Round, and the Moon development in the third Round. Each of these Rounds commences thus: the planet forms itself as an exceptionally fine substance, as mind-substance. The earth was present as such a substance when it began its fourth Round, that is, the contemporary Cycle. Then it began to reiterate the three previous Rounds: the Saturn Cycle in Arupa, the Sun Cycle in Rupa and the Moon Cycle or Round in the astral. [See diagram at the end of the notes for lecture 10.]

Thus our earth passed once more through earlier material conditions before arriving at its present physical density. Before our present condition, it was astral. We denote the astral Globe as a kind of Cosmos of Wisdom. Each Cosmos or Globe is again divided into seven epochs. Thus we have seven Race-cycles [or Great Epochs] in our present Globe: the Polarian, the Hyperborean, the Lemurian, the Atlantean and now the Aryan Race [or Epoch] in which we live. The sixth and seventh Races are still to come. After that the earth will return to the astral condition. These Race-cycles constitute seven successive periods of our physical evolution on earth. The astral predecessor presents itself to us in like manner, in seven consecutive Periods, corresponding to seven Races. However, it is not quite correct to speak of Races here; the forms which then lived cannot properly be called Races. It stretches the analogy too far, to keep speaking of Races. There were other forms that manifested themselves. In esoteric language these previous astral periods are called the Kingdom of Wisdom, and their forms are called the seven Periods of Wisdom, in which the seven Kings of Wisdom, the seven Kings of the Dynasty of Solomon, were ruling. For in each of these periods lived a being of similar kind to the soul of Solomon, to the soul which incarnated in Solomon. This Cosmos of Wisdom was superseded by the earthly Cosmos proper, the Cosmos of Love.

Now let us be clear about what took place during, the formation of the earth, from our standpoint. As the earth began to form itself, it was still united with the sun and with that which we now call the moon. Together with these two bodies the earth formed a single whole. First of all the sun separated itself from the earth. The whole of earth life thereby became different. At this point death made its entry, somewhat in the form in which we know it in the cell-bearing plants; whereas before there could be no question of death, because there was continuous material life. So long as the plant consists of a single Cell, no decay sets in when the next cell is born. It is different when a whole organism is built up [out of many cells]; this [organism] decays into its parts, and the individual part is no longer the whole living [process]. This kind of death came in for the first time when the sun separated from the earth. The schism between the sexes began in the middle of the Lemurian Race, as a result of the splitting-off of the moon. The separation of the moon brought about the partition of the [being that is both] male and female into [beings that are either] only male or only female. Thus humanity took the shape that it now has in the world.

What then happened during these weighty cosmic events as first the sun and then the moon separated from the earth? If we want to become clear about that, it would be well to point out that at that time the earth was changing from a very thin but already physical matter into something continually getting thicker. The first physical substance was etheric substance, which was present in all human beings on earth, and which was a very fine substance, finer than our gas.

At present we distinguish three forms of matter on our earth—solid, liquid and gaseous bodies, the latter formerly known as air. Moreover we esoterically distinguish four forms of ether: firstly fire [or warmth] ether which makes all bodies capable of being permeated by warmth; secondly, light ether; thirdly, chemical ether, in which atoms are made to mingle according to certain laws of number (the ‘elective affinity’ of atoms); and fourthly the physical or life ether; in all, four kinds of ether bringing life to the earth. Next, the earth, essentially speaking, developed itself in these four types of ether. Then it condensed itself-put of these ethers. This densification took place for the first time during the Lemurian epoch. Before that, one has to think of an etheric earth, which was accessible to quite different forces than is our present physical earth. I wanted to clarify this to you.

When I say that this etheric earth was accessible to quite different forces, then be clear that all living beings, whether plant, animal or man, were indeed accessible to these forces, in their inmost being. The ether is accessible to what is called in esoteric language the ‘Word,’ the ‘Cosmic Word.’ I can also make clear to you how the etheric relates to what we call the ‘Word,’ in a preparation for initiation. As you know, man consists of physical, etheric and astral bodies, and then of the ‘I’ proper. The etheric body becomes visible if one [can bring oneself out of] the physical body. But man as he is today can in no way act upon his physical body; he is unable to move the tiniest blood corpuscle. The physical body is controlled by high cosmic forces; it is higher beings who can exercise power here today—later on man will have this ability. When he is able to control the forces of his own physical body—which the materialist speaks of as nature forces—then man will have become a God. To ascribe these powers to him today would be idolatry, for in truth we have to do with high beings who can influence the physical body.

When man is able to control the substance of fire ether, he will be able to control all that is physical. When he is able to control the physical in man, then he will also be able to control the rest of what is physical as well. This force is designated the Father Force, or simply the ‘Father’—everything through which a being joins with our earth, everything by which that being can control physical matter. When a person can penetrate into the physical body with such Father Forces, that is called Atma; this is how Atma can be assigned to the physical.

The second member of [man's] being is the etheric body, which corresponds to the Son principle, or the Logos, the ‘Word.’ The etheric body can be moved and inwardly shaped by Buddhi, set in vibration by the Son principle, just as the physical [body can be] by Atma.

The third member is the astral body. This we cannot at first control; only very few people at present have any significant control over their astral bodies. We say a man is endowed with Manas, to the extent that man can control his astral body from within.

Man began to work on his astral body during the middle of Lemurian times. If you could have observed a man at the stage he had attained when the Lemurian Race began, that is, when he was bisexual, you would have found that his body was built from elsewhere; but in the middle of Lemurian times, man then began to work on his astral body himself. Everything which man weaves into himself out of his ego, which he does out of duty or by command, to overcome the unwrought appetites and passions, helps to refine the astral body; when it has become completely permeated by the work of man's own ego, then we can no longer call it astral body, it has become Manas. When the whole astral body has been transformed into Manas, man can then begin to work upon his etheric body to transform it into Buddhi. What he weaves in there is nothing else than the individualised Word; Christian esotericism calls this the ‘Son’ or ‘Logos,’ and calls the astral body, when it has become Manas, the ‘Holy Spirit,’ and the physical body that has become Atma, ‘Father.’

What happens here on a small scale within man happens also on a large scale in the world at large. These world secrets were carried out in the mysteries, in initiation; thereby something was done which for most human beings would ordy happen in a distant future. Already, in the Egyptian mysteries one could only be initiated if one hac worked one's way through one's entire astral body, so that the astral body could be completely managed by the ego. Now such a person would stand before the initiating priest: he had no influence on his physical body, nor yet on his etheric body; but his astral body was of his own making. Now it was indicated to him how he could act on his etheric body and on his physical body. The physical body was brought into a lethargic condition—it had to remain in this state for three nights an three days—and during this time the etheric body was raised out of it. And since the initiate had become powerful in respect of the astral body, he could therefore now gain the power to act on the etheric body. He could learn to let what he had in the astral work on the etheric body. Those were the three days of the Entombment and the Resurrection in an etheric body that was completely permeated by what one calls the Holy Spirit. Such an initiate was called a man endowed with the Logos, with the ‘Word’. This ‘Word’ is nothing else than the Wisdom, Manas, which has been worked into the astral body. This wisdom can never enter the etheric body unless the astral body has first been permeated by it.

It was just the same for the earth. Not until the whole earth had been brought this far into the astral, could such an event occur. The condition which the neophyte in the Egyptian mysteries had to be in, corresponds to this time of the Astral Globe which I have spoken of as the immediate precursor of our earth; that is the Globe of Wisdom. All wisdom was worked into it by the cosmic powers. And this transfer of wisdom into the Earth Globe itself made it possible that after the separation of sun and moon from the earth, something could again be incorporated from above, from higher spheres [into the earth] just as this happened on a small scale in the initiation.

Seven times the Astral Globe [stage] of earth [see the chart at the end of the notes to lecture 10] came under the rule of the Wise, after the manner of Solomon. Then the earth clothed itself with an etheric body, and earthly matter was crystallised or formed. The ‘Word’ was laid into that; this Word is thus, as it were, entombed in earthly matter, but it must be resurrected. This is also the beautiful meaning of the myth of the God Dionysus. The Holy Wisdom of our earth's precursor is laid into all the earth beings of our earthly world. Take this as deeply as you are able. Take the human etheric body as every human has it. If you look at it clairvoyantly it has nearly the same form as the physical body. At death man's physical body dissolves, and the etheric body too; the physical body dissolves in the physical world, and the etheric body in the general cosmic ether. But this etheric body has been very elaborately created for man by the wisdom which first implanted it from out of the Astral Globe. This etheric body disperses after death. Only that etheric body which has been built up from within is a living body, that stays eternally. This is the etheric body of the Chela [the candidate for initiation]—and that does not dissolve after death. If you see a modern civilised man die, you may see the etheric body for a while, but then it dissolves. With the Chela it remains. The renunciation of Devachan by the Chela consists in the fact that the Chela stays on the astral plane and there makes use of his etheric body. With ordinary human beings a new etheric body has to be formed at each rebirth; the ability to create a new one is attained in Devachan. The etheric body which the Chela has built up from within will never be lost again; whereas that which is made by cosmic wisdom from elsewhere indeed dissolves itself again. It is the same with the etheric bodies of plants and animals. What is now etheric body still, came to be built up out of cosmic forces which flowed into it out of the Astral Globe [state] of our earth. This wisdom which you find in the astral earth is expressed in the legend of Dionysus.

Now in the Lemurian epoch the denser [state] had to form itself. Then the Father principle had to be worked in. That is the last [principle] to take possession of our earthly matter. What has been worked in, in this way, is deeply hidden in the physical world. First the Holy Spirit worked itself into the astral material. Then the Spirit allied to the astral matter—that is the Son—worked itself into the etheric substance; and then came the Father, who controls physical density. Thus the macrocosm was built up in a threefold progression—Spirit, Son and Father; and man, as he progresses further upwards, goes from the Spirit, through the Son, to the Father. All of this takes place under guidance in the evolution of the earth.

Up to Lemurian times the only evolution was outward. Then this Trinity was drawn into our physical evolution. In the Aryan epoch, what had taken place in an earlier epoch was introduced into man's thinking as religion, making a stage by stage recapitulation.

We are in the fifth Sub-Race of the Aryan Root-Race (the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch]. Four other Sub-Races have gone before. The first Sub-Race is that of ancient India. This venerable ancient race was led by the ancient Rishis. We can only form a hazy conception of them. We are acquainted with their religion from the accounts which have come down to us in the Vedas. The teaching of the Rishis was far greater and mightier than our present traditions about it. Only during the third Sub-Race were records made, that are preserved for us in the Vedas. The original religion of the Rishis had great traditions from the divine predecessors of men, the astral initiates of the Dynasty of Solomon. Living in the spirit of the ancient Indian Rishis were archetypal forms; the great intuitions derive intelligence and knowledge not only from the laws of earth, but also from the archetypal forms, who themselves created the said wisdoms. This was the first religion, that of the Holy Spirit.

The second religion was fostered in the Near East; in it the Second Principle [of the Trinity] was revered as a recapitulation of the first time that the Son made His influence felt on earth. The thrusting down of certain beings accompanied the [coming in of] the Son Principle; there is no higher development without other [development] being thrust down into the depths. The mineral, plant and animal kingdoms were thrust down in this way. Whoever develops himself upwards, takes upon himself a tremendous responsibility, that is the great tragedy; the corollary of every saint is that a great number of beings are thrust down. There would be no development if this kind of thrusting down did not take place. A man must continually thrust others down, as he develops himself upwards. That is why all development which takes place out of self-interest is evil and reprehensible; it is only justifiable if done for the development of other beings. Only he who would raise up those who have been thrust down is fit for development. Thus, the evolution which manifested itself on earth and which had already been prepared on other cosmic bodies, the evolution aiming at endowing the etheric body with the Logos, with the Word, has been accompanied by the thrusting down of other beings connected with the earth's development. These [beings] were conceived as adversaries, as Luciferic principle. Thus we have precisely this duality—the principle of Evil accompanying the principle of Good—in the Persian religion. It is good if a man or indeed any being works Manasically into himself; but he is always confronted by evil. Ormuzd and Ahriman are the names for Good and Evil in the Persian religion.

We encounter the third stage with the Chaldeans, the Babylonians, the Assyrians and the Egyptians; through [all of] these a recapitulation of the third stage of the Godhead takes place. Thus, from that time onwards, with all peoples, we encounter-the Trinity, the Three-in-Oneness of the Godhead. The second Sub-Race had no Triune Godhead, still less the first. [But] now, in this three-foldness, the ascent is gradually prepared for the whole of humanity. The initiates tread the path in advance ... [Gap ]³

In the first three Sub-Races there was a mirroring in the religious [sphere] of what had been active in macrocosmic processes. Now a new structure is formed: first Wisdom, then Son, then Father. The first gleam of wisdom came during the fourth Sub-Race, through the Semitic people, who arose during the third Sub-Race and continued into the fourth. From them Christianity derives. In the initiates of the Jewish people we find the whole course of past events on earth—all the events that had taken place in the heavenly sphere being repeated in the element of the intellect. Kama-Manas, which we call lower spirit, developed itself there; which has to be endowed with other forces. This endowment, this weft, is Christ Himself, the Word made Flesh, who points to the future Word, by which all human beings will be in a position to control their etheric bodies with their astral bodies, if they so work the Word into the etheric body that it wakens to life therein. The possibility of this development in the future is foreshadowed in the appearance of the Word made Flesh in the fourth Sub-Race. The whole of mankind must have attained control over the etheric, before the Logos can be incarnated in the etheric body. This, as an originating impulse, has proceeded from the Christ incarnated in the Flesh. When man, through the power of the Son, has gone through [this], he will then come to the Father.

Now the ascent must be re-enacted of the stages through which the whole of mankind gradually attains to what was achieved by Christ's appearance in the flesh. In the spirit which developed itself in Judaism, the higher Manas had to be kindled. Therefore, the new era begins with the descent of the Holy Spirit which will lead mankind through to the point in the sixth epoch when the Christ Principle, which is only hinted at in Christianity today, finds its fulfilment. ‘No man cometh to the Father save through Me,’ says the Son. He sent the Spirit to mankind so that it should be prepared for the time in the sixth epoch when Good and Evil will be separated. Man would never have developed this impulse without that other weft, which we have named as the so-called Evil Principle. Man had to receive free will so that his understanding could be called into play in deciding between Good and Evil. This weft of the Spirit's descent is consummated at Pentecost.

Spirit, Son and Father are as though entombed in the earth: the Father in the physical body, the Son in the etheric body and the Spirit in the astral body. However, man has developed his ego and has become self-aware. Now he must learn to work right down into the physical. That will be in the future. At present man is working into his astral body.. The symbol for that is the descent of the Holy Spirit into those who are to become the leaders of humanity. It is something in man which is akin to this Spirit which has taken it up.

Before the Son could become effective—which was in Hyperborean times—a part of the universal Principle of Spirit had to break away, be thrust down, and wander other paths. This is expressed in the Serpent, the symbol of knowledge, the Luciferic principle. It was this spark from the Spirit which made man into a free being and enabled him to desire the Good out of his own impulse. This Spirit which has come down to man through the great Whitsuntide Festival is akin to that Spirit which was thrust down, which is indeed embodied in Prometheus, which has blown the spark into a flame, so that our ego can make up its mind to follow the Spirit, just as it will later follow the Son and still later the Father. Man was certainly able to become evil, but on the other hand this potentiality for evil was the price of being guided back to the World of Gods from which he originated. That is the connection between Pentecost and the Luciferic principle. Thus the Whitsuntide Festival is also the festival of Prometheus and of freedom.

Now you will understand the connection between the Sons of Cain and the seven Salomonic Kings of pre-earthly times—of whom the King Solomon of the Bible appears as a descendant. Wisdom was first transmitted to man from outside. Later it had to spring up from within. Solomon built the Temple but only with the help of Hiram-Abiff; in association with this Son of Cain he appropriated the arts needed for erecting the Temple. Thus the streams run together again, that were flowing apart [from each other] in the world.

When the sun separated itself from the earth, the Word became entombed in the earth. It will be resurrected again when the earth has advanced as far as the sixth Root Race. Man will raise this Word from the dead, out of the earth; but first the spirit must live in him that will enable the Word to strike a chord in him. This was attained by the apostles at Pentecost. In Light on the Path⁴ we find the words: ‘Acquire knowledge and you will have speech.’ Speech comes with true knowledge, which descends like the tongues of fire on the apostles at holy Pentecost. When the inner Word comes, that is akin to the holy divine Word, and that sinks down into everything etheric, so as to make it come alive, then man will no longer speak out of himself but out of the divine Spirit. He is then the messenger of the Godhead and proclaims the inner Word of Godhead of his own free will.

Thus did the inner Word become alive in the apostles; thus did it spread its influence outwards from them. They proclaimed the fiery Word and were aware of their role as the messengers of the Godhead. Therefore the Holy Spirit hovered over them in the form of fiery tongues. They prepare humanity to receive the Logos. The great initiate, Christ Jesus, went on in advance. The Holy Spirit followed, fertilising the astral bodies so that they would become ripe for making their etheric bodies immortal. Once this has happened, then the Christ Principle will be drawn into humanity. This is what the initiates too had in mind when they said, somewhat as Heraclitus did: If, in escaping from the earthly,⁵ you ascend to free ether, with faith in immortality, you become an immortal spirit, free of death and of the physical.

Every single person will reach this point in the middle of the sixth Root Race. Now, however, man is still vulnerable to death, in that his etheric body has still not attained immortality. Christianity contains the secret of how man can gradually develop himself towards the resurrection of the etheric body. This is where the third great festival is connected with the other two Christian festivals.

I wanted to come to the conclusion here, that the Whitsuntide festival has infinite depths, and to show how man gradually develops a living awareness of the world around him, and that he is related to all the things around him, to everything which happens around him. In the names of the days of the week you will find what has transpired around us set forth.

Man celebrates Pentecost best by making it clear to himself what deep truths have been implanted in this festival by the wise. And to celebrate a festival really means to unite oneself in spirit with the Cosmic Spirit.

• 1 . In his lecture of 23rd May 1904 (lecture 1).
• 2 . In connection with the following descriptions see the fundamental works of Rudolf Steiner: Cosmic Memory, Rudolf Steiner Publications, New York, 1971, and Occult Science, An Outline, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1969.
• 3 . [Gap] A few very inadequately recorded sentences follow this in all texts. In Vegelahn's text it is as follows: ‘Then the astral body was permeated by Manas, Buddhi appeared in the etheric body and the Father-Principle in the physical body. This working went so far that a brain could be formed, up to the point where the being learned to say “I”. That was the case with the Ur-Semites.’
• 4 . Light on the Path, by Mabel Collins (1851–1927) a theosophical writer acknowledged by Rudolf Steiner by an exegesis to the work in question. (Printed in his: Guidance in Esoteric Training, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1972).
• 5 . Rudolf Steiner here draws his Heraclitus quotation from a work on philosophy by Vincent Knauer.

If we want to appreciate theosophy at its true value, then we need to be imbued with the fundamental perception that in the theosophical stream we receive a widening of the soul, we feel the heart broadened and uplifted for higher tasks, for participating in the affairs of the universe. No one can have an inkling of this who does not know something about occultism.

The great purpose is often discussed, of leading humanity, through the theosophical movement, towards that point when, in the future, a new race of human beings will arise, when our intellectuality, as it now is, will no longer play the leading role in the world, but will be made fertile by Buddhi. We have to work together with this great world current, and therefore we have a great responsibility towards the theosophical movement. The task of the theosophist extends into the distant future. In this we do not withdraw into some cloud-cuckoo-land; for what we learn about so distant a future is invigorating for us, is something productive for us, that is useful also in everyday things. Anyone who allows these great world perspectives to occupy his mind for even only ten minutes a day, will behave differently from someone who is immersed in everyday matters. He can bring something to contemporary life which is new, productive and original. All progress depends on bringing originality into humanity.

We want to start with something which belongs with the influence of the Devas.¹ Devas are beings who are at a higher stage than man and are able to work on higher levels of existence. Thus we find Devas when we enter the higher planes clairvoyantly. We find Devas on the astral plane, on the Rupa plane, on the Arupa plane, and higher still. What does the influence of the Devas mean for the world in which we ourselves are? We will answer this question by asking another: What is the purpose of our human existence, of this continuing reincarnation? Man would come into this world quite purposelessly, if he learnt no particular lesson, fulfilled no particular task at each coming. Every time [man incarnates] the earth must have changed so much that he meets a situation that he has not encountered before in his earlier incarnations.

A male and female incarnation [together] are occultly reckoned as one incarnation. Between two such connected incarnations lie 2,600 to 3,000 years. The experience, which men undergo during this present stage of earthly evolution are so different in man and woman that it is most necessary for this to be so.

The changes which are brought about in the world between two incarnations of a person are really rather incomprehensible for people outside the theosophical world. Actually, however, people find quite different situations, not only morally, but physically as well. For anyone who looks back occultly, the physical circumstances have fundamentally altered as well, in the last three thousand years. On average, we would encounter our previous incarnations in the time of the ancient Greeks, the Homeric Greeks, 800 B.C. At that time there were quite different geographical and climatic conditions, a basically different plant life and even a different animal world. In these kingdoms, [continual] change is taking place. An outer expression of these changes is the progress of the sun across the vault of heaven. We have twelve signs of the zodiac, and the sun continually moves on from one to another at the vernal equinox. Eight thousand years ago the sun entered the constellation of the Crab for the first time. The time during which the sun traverses a constellation, this time that then elapses, lasts some two thousand six hundred years.² That is also the time between two human incarnations. At about the turn of the 18th to the 19th century, the sun left the constellation of the Ram for that of the Fishes, so that it now stands in the constellation of the Fishes at the spring [equinox].

Those who still had a feeling for occultism knew something about the connection in man's life with these changes in the firmament. Earlier, before the sun entered the constellation of the Ram, the cult of the Bull (Mithras, Apis) prevailed in Asia. Then began the worship of the Ram, which began when the legend of Jason and the Golden Fleece originated. Christ is called the ’Lamb of God.’ Still earlier one finds the Persian symbol of the Twins. That is connected with the [Persian] culture of that time [and its view] of Good and Evil.

If the sun shines on the earth from a different aspect, then the situation there changes too. Hence the entry of the sun into a new constellation also leads each time to a new incarnation. Above, in the heavens, is the progression of the sun, below, on earth, an alteration in climatic conditions in vegetation and so forth.

Who causes this? The theosophist has to ask this because for him there can be no miracles. There are facts on a higher level, but no miracles. Faced with the question of the connection of the human being to the manifestations of the earth, one must adopt a higher vantage point.

After death, man is in Kamaloka. We do not ask: Do the animals and plants have [any] consciousness? Instead we ask: Where is their consciousness located? We know that the animals have their consciousness in Kamaloka, on the astral plane, the plants on the Rupa Plane, and the minerals on the Arupa Plane. Man has his consciousness on the physical plane. Let us suppose that man now comes to Kamaloka. He will then be in the same place as the consciousness of the animals. He then ascends to Devachan, where the plants have their consciousness. At the present stage of evolution, man is not in a position to exercise any influence on the animal kingdom or plant kingdom. However, he does have such an influence in the lower regions of the Devachanic plane, His companions there are all those who possess a Devachanic consciousness; these are powers, beings, who work out of Devachan to promote the growth and welfare of the plant world. The whole life of the plants is controlled from the Devachanic plane. There, man helps create and transform the plants. Powers develop in him there, so that he can really develop an influence on the vegetation. But the Devas are still there to manage this activity. He is guided by them so that he can help in the transformation of the plant world. He makes use in Devachan of the powers he has gathered in incarnation to reshape the plant world. As the life forces alter during man's time in Devachan, so he [helps to] change the vegetation on earth. From Devachan, man actually changes the surroundings that grow about him.

By remaining a long time in Devachan, [man] also helps transform the physical forces. If one goes back a million years in Germany,³ one finds volcanic mountains still there, and the Alps as low undulating hills. The subsequent changes were brought about by man [working] from the Arupa Plane, so that he would meet with suitable physical configurations in Europe, later on. The activity of man in the universe is the inner aspect of what we see outwardly in the environment.

Now we come to what will influence transformation in the world from a still higher plane and in another form.

One often reads about the Logos streaming down from above, and asks oneself how this is [to be conceived], how one can come to a conception of the Logos, to a conception that is something more than a mere word. We will now examine the connection between the Logos and the smallest [particles]. I will give you a description—not speculations—of the results of very ancient occult research, as they have been handed down and worked upon specifically in the occult schools of Germany especially from the fourteenth century onward.

If we meditate on the atom, what strikes us is that it is a very tiny thing. Everyone knows that this small thing called the atom has never been seen through any kind of microscope, no matter how sophisticated. Yet occult books give descriptions and pictures of the atom.⁴ Where were these pictures obtained? How can one, as an occultist, now know anything about the atom?

Now just imagine it to be possible to make an atom grow continually bigger and bigger until it was as big as the earth; one would then discover a very complicated world. One would perceive many movements, different kinds of phenomena, within this small thing. Keep in mind this analogy of the atom being enlarged to the size of the earth. If it were actually possible to enlarge the atom to that extent, we would be able to observe every single process in it. Only the occultist is in a position to enlarge the atom so much and to contemplate its interior.

Let us next look at the range of human motives on earth, beginning with the lowest human levels of development, with the instincts and passions, rising to moral ideals and religious communities, and so on; we will then see that human beings are, as it were, spinning threads between each other, that weave from person to person, forming continually higher associations: the family, the tribe and further ethnic and political groups, finally religious communities. In this, the activity of higher individualities comes indeed to expression. Such associations have sprung up out of the springs and wells of pure universal wisdom, through a religious founder. All religions agree [in the deeper sense], because they have founders who belong to the great Lodge [of the Masters].

There is a particular White Lodge which has twelve members, of whom seven have a special influence, and this seven indeed founded religious groupings. Such were Buddha, Hermes, Pythagoras, and so on. The great plan for the whole of human evolution has actually been spiritually devised in the White Lodge, which is as old as humanity itself. A coordinated plan for the guidance of all human progress confronts us here. All other associations are only subordinate branches; even family groupings, etc, are all linked up in the great plan which leads us up to the Lodge of the Masters. There the plan according to which all mankind develops is spun and woven.

Let us follow all that subsequently happens. Now we must first become acquainted with a particular plan, namely the plan for our earth. Let us contemplate the fourth Round of the earth in which we now are. It is intended to humanise the mineral kingdom. Think how human understanding has already transformed the mineral world, for example, Cologne Cathedral and modern technology. Our humanity has the task of transforming the whole mineral world into a pure work of art. Electricity already points for us into the occult depths of matter.

When, out of his inner being, man has restructured the mineral world, the end of our earth will then have arrived; the earth is then at the end of its physical evolution. The particular plan by which the mineral world will be reshaped exists in the Lodge of the Masters. This plan is already finished; so that if one studies it one can see what is yet to come by way of wonderful buildings, wonderful machines, and so on. When the earth has reached the end of the physical Globe [state] the whole earth will have an inner structure, an inner articulation, given to it by man himself, so that it will have become a work of art, as planned by the Masters of the White Lodge. That accomplished, then the whole earth will pass over into its astral state. That is something like when a plant begins to fade; the physical vanishes, everything goes into the astral. In passing into the astral world, the physical gradually contracts, becomes a shrinking kernel encircled by the astral, going over into the Rupa state and then the Arupa state, until it vanishes in a sleeplike condition.

What then is left of the physical? When the earth has passed over into the Arupa state, there is then still a quite condensed tiny imprint of the whole physical evolution of what was devised in the Masters' plan; like a tiny miniature version of what the mineral earth once was. That is what goes across [from the physical]; the physical is there only as this tiny miniature version of previous evolution, but the Arupa is large. When it passes over out of the Devachan state, it multiplies itself outwardly into innumerable similar things. And when the earth again passes back into the physical state it is then composed of countless tiny globules, each of which is a print of what the earth previously was. All these globules are however differently arranged, although sharing a common derivation. Thus the new physical earth of the fifth Round⁵ will consist of innumerable tiny parts, each of which contains the purpose of the mineral world which the Masters have in plan form in their Lodge. Every atom of the fifth Round [of earth evolution] will contain the whole plan of the Masters. Today the Masters are working on the atom of the fifth Round. Everything which precedes, in humanity, is compressed into a result, that is the atom of the fifth Round.

Therefore, if we examine the atom in its present form and then go back in the Akashic Record, we will then see that today's atom is undergoing a process of growth. It is growing more and more, it is becoming more and more separated [Gap in text] ... and contains the interweaving forces of mankind from the third Round of evolution. In that we can consider the plan of the Masters for the third Earth Round. What is at first entirely external becomes quite inward, and in the smallest atom we see mirrored the plans of the Masters. These tiny particular plans are nothing else than a piece of the whole plan for humanity. If one thus considers that the plan of one Round is the atom of the next Round, then one can see the pattern of the great universal plan. The great universal plan develops in continually higher stages, to beings who have continually higher plans for world development. When we contemplate this plan we arrive at the third Logos. The Logos is thus continually slipping into the atom; first it is outside, and becomes the blueprint for the atom, and then the atom becomes an image of this plan. The occultist simply notes the plan from the Akashic Record for the earlier rounds and so studies the atom.

Now from where do the higher beings obtain this plan? We find an answer to this if we consider that there are still higher stages of evolution where the plans are devised. That is where world evolution is worked out. These higher stages are indicated to us by the Ancients, for instance by Dionysius, the pupil of the Apostle Paul⁶ and also by Nicolaus Cusanus.⁷ His perception was: Higher than all knowledge and perception is the Unperception. But this Unknowing is a higher knowing, and this Unperception is a higher perceiving.

When we stop looking at what we hold in our thinking and concepts of the world, and turn ourselves to what wells up, to our inner powers, then we find something still higher. The Masters can weave the [third] Logos because they have ascended still higher than the nature of thinking. When the higher powers are developed, then, in such beings, thought appears as something different. It is then like a spoken word with us. The thought which constitutes the innermost being for the Masters, can itself be the expression of a higher being, just as the word is the expression of thought [with us]. If we ourselves consider thought as the word of a still higher being, then we come near to the concept of the Logos. Knowledge taken out from thought stands on a still higher level.

When we behold the world we find the atom at the one extreme. It is an image of the plan that proceeded out of the depths of the spirit of the Masters, which is the Logos.

If we now look for the transformation of man himself during the great world epoch- then we are led back again into the world.

Just as man has descended, has plunged down to the physical plane, so is it also with the world as a whole. What man's self has developed lies around him in the world.

But then we are led down to the lower planes, which however, themselves contain the higher planes the Lodge of the Masters.

The Spirit of the Earth is living with the Masters today and this Spirit of the Earth will be the physical clothing of the next planet [the future Jupiter]. The slightest thing we do will affect the smallest atom of the next planet. This feeling gives us first a full connection with the Lodge of the Masters. That should provide a central focus for the Theosophical Society, since we know what the Wise Ones know.

When Goethe speaks of the Spirit of the Earth⁸ he is expressing a truth. The Spirit of the Earth is weaving the clothing of the next planet. ’In life's floods, in the storm of action’ [In Lebensfluten—im Tatensturm] the Spirit [of the Earth] weaves the clothing for the next planetary Godhead.

Supplement: Two years later, on 21st October 1907, again at the time of the General Meeting, Rudolf Steiner spoke once more—in an as yet unpublished lecture—about the atom in the context of how spiritual influence passes from one planet to another, how therefore this will be ’between the [Old] Moon and the Earth and again between the Earth and its successor, the [future] Jupiter.’ This lecture is to be published in German in Volume 101 of Rudolf Steiner's complete works.

The relevant extract runs as follows:

You all know that the earth is guided in a particular way by the so-called White Lodge in which highly developed human individualities and individualities of a still higher kind are combined. What do they do there? They work; they lead the evolution of the earth; while leading this evolution, they are devising a quite specific plan. It is really the case that during the evolution of each planet, a specific plan is worked out by the guiding powers. While the earth is evolving, plans for the atom for the evolution of Jupiter—which succeeds the earth—are drawn up in the so-called White Lodge of the Earth. The plan is worked out in full detail. Therein lies the blessing and salvation of progress—in that it is undertaken in harmony with this plan.

Now, when a planetary evolution comes to its end, thus, when our earth has completed its [present] planetary cycle, then the Masters of Wisdom who harmonise perceptions will be ready with the plan that they have to work out for the Jupiter [cycle]. And now, at the end of such an evolution of planets something very special occurs.

This plan will, through a procedure, be endlessly reduced in size, and endlessly multiplied in number; so that in numerable copies of the whole plan for jupiter are to hand, albeit very much miniaturised. Thus it was on the [Old] Moon, too: the plan of earth evolution existed there. infinitely multiplied and miniaturised. And do you know what they are, these miniaturised plans that have been spiritually developed there? They are the actual atoms which underlie the earth's structure. And the atoms which will underlie the Jupiter [planet] will also be the plan, reproduced in the smallest possible unit—the plan which is now being worked out in the guiding White Lodge. Only he who is aware of this plan can indeed know what an atom is.

If you want to develop your knowledge of this atom, which underlies the earth, you will then, to explore the atom, encounter precisely those mysteries which come from the great Magi of the world.

Naturally, we can now only speak indicatively about these things, but we can at least give something which will impart a concept of what is involved.

The earth is composed of these, its atoms, in a specific way. Everything that is, yourselves included, is composed of these atoms. Hence you exist in harmony with the whole earth evolution, since you carry in you an infinite number of miniaturised [copies] of the plan for earth which was worked out in the past. This plan for the earth could only be evolved in the previous planetary condition of our earth, the [Old] Moon; the guiding beings worked it out in harmony with the whole planetary development through [Old] Saturn, [Old] Sun and [Old] Moon. Now the point in question was to introduce something into this infinite number of atoms which would bring them into the right relationship [with one another], which would arrange them in the right way. To introduce this was only possible for the guiding spirits of the Moon, if, as I have often already said, they managed the evolution of the earth according to a very specific plan.

The way the earth appeared again after the Moon evolution, it was not at first really ’Earth’ but ’Earth plus Sun plus Moon;’ a body such as you would have if you mixed the Earth and the Sun and the Moon together to make one single [heavenly] body. Thus the earth was, at first. Then first the Sun separated itself, taking with it all those forces which were too thin, too spiritual for man, under whose influence he would have spiritualised himself far too quickly. If man had merely stayed under the influence of the forces which were contained in the joint Sun-Moon-Earth body, then he would not have evolved downwards towards physical materiality, and he would not have been able to attain to that consciousness of self, of ego, which he had to attain ...

• 1 . The gods of Devachan, or the heavenly world.
• 2 . Later Rudolf Steiner gave more precise figures for this, according to which the precession of the equinox through the whole zodiac takes 12 x 2 x 160 = 25,920 years, which is a Platonic or world year. Human incarnations are generally connected with these epochs of 2,160 years.
• 3 . It is unusual for Rudolf Steiner to give specific figures for such distant events. If we go back in time beyond the end of the Ice Age (10,000 years ago), there is a great discrepancy between the figures given by modern science and those of spiritual science. For instance, modern science sets the date of the commencement of the Ice Age at one million years ago. Spiritual science, on the other hand, puts the commencement of the Ice Age into the middle of Atlantis—‘The cosmos became calculable for the first time around 13,500 B.C. At that time most of Atlantis was already submerged’ (Blavatsky). The trouble with chronology is that modern science still takes present-day conditions as its norm for calculating (e.g., rate of disintegration of matter) and projects it into the past. Spiritual science, on the other hand, calculates according to cosmic rhythms (progression of the sun through the zodiac).
• 4 . Rudolf Steiner obviously refers here to the representations of atomic structures as they appeared in theosophical literature. Just at the time of these lectures a new edition of Occult Chemistry, written in 1895 by C.W. Leadbeater and Annie Besant had appeared with illustrations. Many of the latter were also depicted in Annie Besant's most popular work: The Ancient Wisdom, 1899. The first to represent atomic forms in this way was the American, Babbit, in his work: The Principle of Light and Colour, 1878, which was referred to in the Besant-Leadbeater study.
• 5 . In explanation of the terms ‘Round,’ ‘Globe,’ etc., see diagram at end of lecture 10, 23rd December 1904.
• 6 . Dionysius is mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 17, verse 34. Two works appeared under his name at the end of the fifth century in Syria: Concerning the Heavenly Hierarchy and Concerning the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, which were translated from Greek into Latin in the ninth century by John Scotus Erigena.
• 7 . Nicholas of Cusa, 1401–1464, German mystic. Compare: Die Mystik im Aufgange des neuzeitlichen Geisteslebens und ihr Verhaltnis zur modernen Weltanschauung, translated variously as: ‘Mysticism and Modern Thought,’ ‘Mystics of the Renaissance’ and ‘Eleven European Mystics.’
• 8 . In the first part of Faust, Scene I.

(Given at the conclusion of the General Meeting of the German Section of the Theosophical Society)

May I once more make it known¹ that I intend to hold a lecture tomorrow morning about certain contemporary occult questions connected with Freemasonry. And that will take place, following an ancient occult practice, separately for men and for women. The lecture for men will take place at ten o'clock; for women at half past eleven. Perhaps you may ask why this custom is retained, since—only through the theosophical view of things—it will become superseded. That will become clear through the content of the lecture. I would also like to say that the Besant Branch² will have its regular meeting tomorrow evening at eight o'clock.

Now I would like to speak about the relationship of occultism to the theosophical movement and about a few other connected questions. On that topic, it is very often debated whether the theosophical movement, and the Theosophical Society in particular, should be an occult movement, or whether it must be kept distinct from all occultism.

The theosophical movement as such, in so far as it expressed in the Theosophical Society, cannot be an occult movement. An occult movement is based on different assumptions from those which can find expression in the Theosophical Society. There have been occult societies in all periods. One thing above all else has been necessary for them; namely, that, on account of the whole manner of their endeavours, they have some kind of hierarchy in their Organisation. That means that the members of such a society, of such a brotherhood, were ranked by degree. Every degree, from the first up to the ninetieth, had its quite specific task. In each degree there were quite specific tasks. Nobody could be promoted to a higher degree until he had fulfilled the tasks of the lower one.

I can only indicate very broadly why that is so. We must then speak only generally about the tasks of such occult brotherhoods. The honoured friends will understand me all the better today, who have so often heard me speak about such things. Occult brotherhoods are the guiding brotherhoods of mankind. They have the task of preparing the things of the future. Everything which is to happen in the future is indeed preparing itself now, is finding its expression now, as an idea, as a plan, and will then be realised in the future. Even when you consider the development of the human race on the outward physical plane, you would then find that things which later find fulfillment were much earlier in the bud as ideas, bursting to find expression in the minds and souls of leading personalities and individualities. Take the steam engine for example: you will find, if you trace the matter back, how the steam engine developed itself from the simplest facts; how the pan filled with boiling water already contained the idea of the steam engine, which then developed itself from this simplest form to the most complicated mechanism.

These are however trifles compared with the great structure of humanity that we confront. The most important matters are based on much greater and more significant perspectives. They presuppose that what is to happen in the far distant future is already, in a specific way, being prepared today. How can anything happen in this way? Through it being in one's grasp today already to introduce forces into the world which will take effect in the future. Whatever is going to take place here on the physical plane in the future has prepared itself on the astral and Devachanic plane, long before its physical manifestation; so that the forces bringing about really distant future events can be identified in the higher planes and worlds. However, man cannot satisfactorily influence the future unless he prepares the effect in the light of a knowledge of the influencing forces. Man is a self-aware creature, and has to take his destiny into his own hands. Therefore, there have always been advanced Brothers of our human race, who can see not only on the physical plane but also on higher planes.

Let us seek to conceive what it means to have foresight on higher planes. Let us suppose you have water in a pond. You can foresee that the pond will become frozen if the temperature falls, so that skating and so on will be possible. In a similar way do we have [foresight] with the relationship of the so-called astral plane to the physical plane, that is to the world in which we are involved. If therefore one follows events on the astral plane one could then in fact see what will be, in a later period, with the help of astral happenings, as if it were a thickening of them. And so one can watch those astral events which subsequently step forth, solidified, on the physical plane. Physical events are nothing else than such thickened occurrences which have already taken place in the higher worlds.

An example: throughout antiquity there were mysteries. These had the task of receiving individual men and initiating them into the secrets of existence, or—as John of the Apocalypse says—showing what must ‘shortly,’ that is to say in the future, come to pass. In the precincts of such temples, the pupils who were to be received into the first degree were instructed. Now there was a further instruction for each successively higher level of development in the pupils. The first stage was for the candidates to purify their astral bodies. This meant that they did not merely embrace the ordinary bourgeois ethic; the bourgeois ethic was the preliminary requirement, what was then involved had to be followed in the strictest performance of duty. For, as the pupil progressively advanced to higher ideals, passing beyond the passions and instincts of ordinary life to yearnings above human pettiness, so purifying his sympathies and antipathies that the great world-embracing affairs of the human race became his own—as he reached out beyond himself in his feelings and perceptions, then he was on the way to completing what one calls the purification of the astral body. Then he was allowed to work upon the denser bodies. He was allowed to work upon his etheric body, and was no longer restricted to reshaping the soft, flexible and compliant astral substance of his soul and spirit bodies, but was allowed to work on his etheric body. He was then what is called a Chela. Such a Chela is one who acknowledges not only higher duties, who has undertaken not only enough purification to make humanity's duties his own, but is so advanced that he has outgrown the lower and higher affairs of individual nations and even of individual creeds. His gaze is now addressed to the life of the whole of humanity. And through his by now thoroughly structured etheric body he becomes a participant in the great affairs of the building of the earth. To do all this, the following must happen.

The Chela has to immobilise all the forces which hinder his work on his etheric body. If you have a human being before you, he has indeed a physical body, an etheric body and an astral body. The Chela has refined his astral body, and is allowed to work upon his etheric body. What happens when the astral body has been purified? What then penetrates the etheric body?—that which is organised in the astral body. The things which live in the astral body stamp themselves on the etheric body. The more you work at your astral body, the more you can redress its defects; the astral substance is thin and soft, you can always bring it back into balance again. However, if a person has begun to develop his etheric body as a Chela, then these qualities stamp themselves on the etheric body, and that is much more permanent. The man who made his earthly defects permanent would thereby become dangerous as a member of humanity. Hence the constant stress on necessary purification. The etheric body is stamped by the forces that work on it. Think of it separated from the physical body, it would then have quite a different elasticity. If it is fixed in [the physical body] this is held in by the form; but so long as it remains there, it is at first too weak to stamp into itself what has undergone catharsis as astrality.

Therefore throughout ancient times the following had to be done. One had to set aside those forces which impeded the elasticity of the etheric body. That was achieved by bringing the whole physical body into a lethargic condition. The human being lay down, and the etheric body was drawn out of the physical body. While the physical body lay as if dead, the astral body came to be formed by its autonomous forces. That is the entombment, the [body] concerned being kept in a lethargic state for three to three and a half days. And then he could work on the etheric body. And then, after he had formed his etheric body in conformity with his astral body, he returned into his physical body. He had thus awakened an inner life in himself; he was one of the resurrected and was given a new name.

This was a transaction on the astral plane. Everything which I have described took place on the astral plane; the physical body had nothing to do with it. This event repeated itself in all the ancient mysteries. Every initiate knew it. Now imagine it densified, translated down into the physical plane, so that something [physical] has happened, through this event, which had previously only happened astrally; analogous to, for example, your having a piece of ice where you had water before. Many such astral events must combine, must flow together, for the physical thickening eventually to become possible. Through this means the Mystery of Golgotha became historically possible, it could be translated down on to the physical plane, in that, through the appearance of Christ, things happened on the physical plane which previously had happened over and over again on the astral plane. We learn to conceive, through this example, how the future is actually prepared in the occult brotherhoods.

If we were now to ask ourselves: what then is really happening here?—then we should answer: One can certainly comprehend a great deal in thought, in ideas. But ideas have no real existence. An idea is nothing more than what has been brought down from higher planes to the physical plane. What man thinks about [something] is however the most ineffectual aspect, since this is only extant on the physical plane. It is different when such an idea is brought face to face with something which also originates from the higher spheres. Take as an example Pythagoras's teaching about the music of the spheres³ as he imparted it to his pupils. Philosophers try to make the occult music of Pythagoras out to be quite a simple notion. Reason could easily grasp it. But what was important [for Pythagoras] was that the pupil only approached this [subject] when his soul, his disposition had been prepared for it. Thus it is impossible to explain the deeper meaning of Raphael's Sistine Madonna to anyone who has no feeling for pictures which originate in the astral. One has to raise heart and soul up to it. What leaves one cold as an idea, appears in the picture as artistically full of life, as divine universal thinking, as something the divine forces followed in creating the world—and a simple line becomes something holy! Thought, by twining itself around a divine element, is brought face to face with divine influence. Thus, what matters in this sort of training is to prepare man step by step, as he is able to approach the great world thoughts, as he receives them. Then he will gradually combine with that influencing but otherwise occult power that penetrates these great world thoughts and which is already preparing, on the astral plane, the future of the physical plane. If the leading brother of mankind perhaps has pupils who follow such spirit-filled ideas, then these will be a force which also helps him forward in his work for the outward world; great centres of spiritual activity will spring up. You see, therefore, that what I have called occultism really has very much to do with the progress of humanity. And in our times we have a quite particularly important task. Let us seek just to indicate, in a few words, how we have come to this our task.

We are within the great Root Race of humanity, which has peopled the earth, since the land on which we now live rose up out of the inundations of the ocean. Ever since the Atlantean Race began slowly to disappear, the great Aryan Race has been the dominant one on earth. If we contemplate ourselves, we here in Europe are thus the fifth Sub-Race of the great Aryan Root Race. The first Sub-Race lived in the distant past in Ancient India. And the present-day Indians are descendants of that first Sub-Race, whose spiritual life is still extant in the ancient Indian Vedas.⁴ The Vedas are indeed only echoes of the ancient culture of the Rishis. At that time there was of course no writing yet—there was only tradition. Then came the second, third and fourth Sub-Races. The fourth Sub-Race adopted Christianity. Then, halfway through the Middle Ages, we see that the fifth Sub-Race formed itself, to which we and the neighbouring nations belong.

The ancient Indians of the first Sub-Race lived under conditions different from ours, and were also basically organised differently. Even the modern descendants, the Indians of today, are essentially differently organised from our European races. He who, as an occultist, investigates the difference finds that, in the ancient Indian people, the etheric body was much less closely fettered to the physical body, had not so totally submerged itself in the physical body, and that it was much easier to influence it from the astral body. The corollary of that is that the Indian race can easily transfer something from the astral to the etheric body, can easily work on the etheric body. That signifies no less than that the Indian can more easily attain to certain higher perceptions through occult training. The easier it is for the etheric body to be influenced through the astral body, the easier it is to work into the etheric body with pictures, without abstract concepts. And the easier it will be for someone who undergoes yoga training in the astral to come into contact with higher realms through pictorial concepts. These work into the etheric body, which is still pliable. One does not have to work with harsh concepts, since one can work upon the soul of an Indian person with very straightforward pictorial images; and he will [thereby] be able to arrive at very high stages of development.

The human race has undergone change through the various Sub-Races. Our etheric body is today much more strongly under the influence of the physical body than was the case with the ancient Indians. And thus it comes about that we have to work much harder and more inwardly in order to influence the etheric body. We cannot grasp half-dreamlike concepts. We must subject everything to rigorous concentration, we must work upon our inner being by strongly concentrating our soul in the purely super-sensible, not merely by means of imaginative concepts. Such a concept which brings about a strong concentration of our inner being, can then influence the etheric body fettered to the physical body much more strongly. For the astral body to be able to work upon the etheric body, it had in earlier times to be drawn out of the etheric [physical?] body. Nowadays, however, the etheric body can be influenced by the astral body even inside the physical body. Were we to make the same experiment that was customary in the ancient Mysteries, and induce a state of lethargy, we would then be in a position to influence the etheric body. But when the earthly consciousness, the mobility of thought, returned, what the astral body had imprinted on to the etheric body would immediately be erased again. We have to influence the etheric body very strongly if we want it to retain what we have impressed upon it. The occult task has become different today and is now more inward.

Thus you see also how great differences arise in the course of time in the successive occult schools. The yoga system of the Indians is something different from the instruction of the Rosicrucians. The Rosicrucian teaching takes into account what I have just explained. But something else still crops up. For such a step forward to be able to occur at all, the reasoning power had to be influenced. The reason was exerted much more than hitherto, and could then develop its process of transference towards comprehending the super-sensible. In more recent times, therefore, much more was learnt in concepts; more importance was ascribed to the development of reason and to the ability to conceptualise abstractly.

Just compare the transubstantiation in culture between the ancient Indian age and our own. In ancient India you have high intuition and very little outward expression of civilisation; nowadays, in our time, it is the other way round. The consequence is that even the position of occultism has become something quite different; the consequence is that much of what was formerly kept secret has today become a matter of common knowledge. Many, many such perceptions and concepts were formerly guarded within the occult brotherhoods, and people only came near to these things if their whole hearts had been transformed. Today this no longer lies in the hands of the occultist. Much of what was formerly reserved for the later stages of instruction must now be acknowledged as having been revealed in the culture of the outward world. The initiate in the mysteries must reckon with that. And so many of the truths which had been taught in the occult schools were perforce gradually disseminated on the physical plane.

Even what is taught in present-day elementary schools would deflect us from the spiritual, if occult backgrounds did not come into play from another side. In earlier times the pupil knew that behind what he received in school and in the academic world as precepts, there was something still higher, and that he himself might perhaps one day attain this higher knowledge. He knew that he was a cell in a spiritual organism. Today, in the democratic world, one receives many concepts which do not lead to such an insight. Therefore to the structure of outer democratic knowledge the apex of the pyramid has, as it were, to be added. The elementary knowledge of the powers hidden in the world had now been imparted; the apex was missing still, which would lead to a spiritual view of the world. To provide this, a world-embracing movement had to be founded. The theosophical movement was conceived as such. Hence, in certain brotherhoods, it was resolved, as the popularisation of the hitherto secret knowledge went still further and further, to share with the world as much as was necessary of the underlying secrets, in order to bring the knowledge of the outer world into harmony with the all-embracing occult knowledge of the brotherhoods.

We have here arrived at the point where we can see the connection of the theosophical movement and the Theosophical Society with occultism. The theosophical movement is no occult movement, no occult brotherhood, for it is formed on a democratic basis by which each member is as worthy as the next. Nevertheless, it is another matter if one is to understand the Theosophical Society's task. The Society's task is on the physical plane. If one wishes to grasp it fully one must be able to see into the higher worlds. But the point is not that the theosophist is already able to see into higher worlds, but that, within the movement, occult forces are indeed being developed, so that the Theosophical Society can be a place from which occultism can emanate and come to be discussed. It is a different question, whether a society is an occult brotherhood, or whether it says to itself: We are, indeed, no occult brotherhood, but, in our society, occultism comes to be discussed.

Today, when basically the whole of mankind longingly gazes towards the higher worlds without finding the way there, yet another installment of occult knowledge must be popularised in a form appropriate for them. And the occultism within the Theosophical Society has this task. Spiritual movements have always had a fruitful influence on cultural development, even on the physical plane. Its outward expression is nothing else than the realisation on earth of what has been spiritually prepared. What difference is there, if we contemplate, for example, the works of Michaelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci? In these works you have something spiritual conjured up on to the wall in colour and form; the picture is permeated with what first lived in the soul of the artist as something spiritual. The spiritual preceded its subsequent expression as a manifestation in the material world.

And the materialistic external culture is only the copy of the materialistic tendency in mankind's inner convictions. The purely materialistic urban culture has spread itself throughout civilised countries since 1850. We can see the great things that it has achieved on the physical plane, but we also see what it has been unable to achieve. In the realm of art, for instance, no really new style has been evolved, with one exception, and that is the style of the department store. This is something which, in relation to our outward civilisation, is inwardly real. All else, what has been inherited from the past, has no relation to the present. Only if we have formed a society whose members are seized by a spiritual power such as that which used to live in Christianity, and as it still lives as a longing in the best Christian souls, and can be won back again, then we will again have a spiritual culture. And such a culture will again produce artists in all spheres of life. Only let theosophy live in the souls of men and it will flow out of those souls again as style, as art, it will be visibly and audibly there. The world can again be an outward expression of the spiritual, if this can already be brought to life in such a society today.

In this sense the Theosophical Society could help to shape the culture of the distant [future]. If we are together, we must be clear that we are the cells that have to combine to create a future culture. In our souls, those powers will be prepared which will so transform the future world that it will be a physical copy of our present state of mind and outlook on life. Everything which is now revealed and manifest, was once occult. Just as electricity is a revealed force today, so it once used to be an occult force. And what is still occult today is destined to become a motive force for the future. Exactly as our human body has been prepared in advance millions of years ago by forces which are all around us, so a higher body is preparing itself in us today, a body of the future; however, this body of the future will only become ours in a far-off time.

Let us briefly trace the path of our evolution. What used to be there? A dim dream-like human consciousness, mirroring a world very different from our own; men had a dreaming awareness. And even when their communal existence developed, they had no parliament for the exchange of opinions; they had nothing of that kind. Everything was merely mirrored in the consciousness which was developing in man. As for present-day bodily organs, how did they originate? Through those forces having worked upon man. Just as the animals in the dark caves of Kentucky lost their ability to see⁵ because they did not use it, so too, what we possess in the way of eyes and ears was organised by outward forces. These were formed by the forces of sound and of light, and evolved out of our organism. Our spiritual organism of the future will be evolved out of what lives in us today. Those things which stand before us as the expression of our spiritual culture, the churches and so on, the works of culture which bring beauty and truth to us, these will impress themselves in the higher members of our being. And when one day these unfold themselves towards a self-developing life, then what lives in the outward culture as beauty and truth will rise up in our inner being. What eyes and ears perceive now, these will be the stones for building and organising a higher future. If we contemplate the world from this point of view, then man's inner being takes on a totally different meaning.

Here we are confronted with a fact that can explain in a simple way what is called yoga, or inner training. From the words I have spoken, you will be able to gather that the forces which have created the world, that are working and creating in the world, were formerly taken from our inner being. What is in me today was formerly outside me: that is the fundamental thought in occult training. Before our physical body existed, our etheric body was already there. Again, our etheric body is a structure which has been formed by our astral body. And that is the starting point of the yoga training. Whoever engages in yoga training descends into his etheric body, and knows that he will find forces in it which constructed it once, millions of years ago. The physical body slowly developed itself out from the basis of the etheric body.

I can only describe broadly how the descent into the etheric body takes place. Certain currents exist in the etheric body which are the precursors of the physical bodily organs. The nervous system, the nerves themselves, the sympathetic [nervous] system which extends into the back, the ganglia of the sympathetic nervous system, these are parts which were developed etherically in primeval times. That is a process which took place in the remote past. Then, after man had progressed further and further, there came a time when, within his body—which already contained within it the potentiality to develop the physical nervous system—a structure developed which gave man the ability to develop his inner bodily warmth, which prepared him for warm blood. That, again, is a later structure from the etheric body, which then was already strongly influenced by the forces of the astral body. And out of what we subsequently find to be the basic structure of the brain, the spinal column formed itself, again out of the etheric body, as the other pole of the etheric body, which on the one hand developed towards the brain, and on the other hand towards the inner warm blood. That happened in the past. It was not only natural forces that worked on this development of man, but also higher spiritual beings.

When the yogi descends step by step into his etheric body he penetrates into the times gone by in which his spiritual archetypal form was influenced by these forces and beings, times when what lives in us today was produced. When a person thus descends into life, he can then reach that point once again in his descent. He descends from the head down into the lower parts of the body, which were formed in the most ancient times, and then goes back into the head. That is a description, if only a sketchy one, of the path of occult perception. More can be imparted in the occult schools. The pupil of mystery wisdom thus developed the ability to look back into past epochs; so the time comes when he is able to undertake his occult pilgrimage. He attains to this by means of a special exercise through which he overcomes his own personal self and thereby ceases to be a small fettered ego. Only then can he accomplish his ascent into the universe. Once again he descends into the ocean of the past, taking the world forces with him. Then, taking the ascending curve, he can slowly retrace point by point the way that he has thus traveled. Slowly, gradually, the person learns to proceed [further] down into the ocean of his formative forces, and at length he arrives at a point near to [his] origin. Thus must it have been for the person in whom an eye first evolved, with which to direct his gaze into the universe. Then, for the pupil, the flowing together of his ego with the great universal ego blossoms. And now he must learn to say to the little ego: I am not thou.

It is an important moment when he realises what this means: I am not thou. That is a moment when a person begins to understand that in nature there are higher forces than thought, that there is something outside of him, which cannot be expressed in contemporary thought, but which brings it about that two people, both able to speak on the same thing, can in the case of one of them talk clearly but be dull, whereas the other's speech is vibrant with the warm light that will create the future.

When the pupil is this far, he can learn now in another way than has hitherto been possible for him. He thereby experiences something very special. A spiritual being confronts him in the super-sensible world: he meets that individuality with whom he was once, formerly, very close. It is a great and significant mystery, when particular stages of our existence recapitulate themselves. We rise consciously from Manas to the higher forces; we once descended from spiritual worlds, and at that time this same being implanted something in us, whom we now meet again at the level corresponding to that point in the past at which he was with us. It is the teacher, the so-called guru. Long ago we met him for the first time; we now meet him again, when we can grasp consciously what he implanted into us at that time, and was received by us unconsciously. And if we descend still further we meet with the spirits who shared in our creation aeons ago. We meet with the Twelve Spirits: the Spirits of Will, the Spirits of Wisdom, the Spirits of Form, the Spirits of Movement, the Spirits of Personality or of Egoism, the Spirits of Warmth or Fire, the Spirits of Dusk or Twilight, and so on. All of this offers itself to our spiritual sense through this descent into the universe, through this pilgrimage. And this alone makes it possible for us to gaze into the future, makes it possible to anticipate what ‘shortly’—as the writer of the Apocalypse puts it—will happen.

That is the task of occultism. It is to be discharged, because that discharge is necessary. There are movements in plenty which are idealistic, which are ethical. But the movement called theosophy distinguishes itself from the others, in that occultism consciously comes to expression in this movement.

With that, the connection between occultism and theosophy is made clear. The Theosophical Society can never want to be an occult brotherhood. What must give it the strength to fulfil its task, what must give it life, can only be the things that emanate from occultism. Therefore the Theosophical Society will thrive if the cultivation of occult teaching and occult life is understood. That is stiff not a demand that the members themselves should be occultists. But if the Theosophical Society were to forget that this blood pulses in it, then it might remain an interesting society, but what was intended for it by the sublime powers who assisted at its birth would not be achieved.

Whoever understands this will never want to take away the Theosophical Society's occult character. All the same, whoever thus belongs to the Theosophical Society will be brought into a two-sided situation. He must necessarily give an ear to the side whence flow the occult truths, on the other hand he must turn his attention to the exoteric life of the Society. These aspects must be kept strictly apart; they must never be mixed together. When one talks about the outward Theosophical Society, one must never, however, even mention the occult personalities who stood over its inception. The powers who live on the higher planes and who live for the sake of mankind's evolution, outside of the physical body, never interfere in these affairs. They never impart anything other than impulses. Whenever we are engaged, in a practical way, in extending the Theosophical Society, the great individualities whom we call the Masters are standing at our side; we may turn ourselves to them and allow them to speak through us. When it concerns the propagation of occult life, it is the Masters who speak. When it only concerns the Organisation of the Society then they leave it to those who are living on the physical plane. That is the distinction between the occult current and the framework of the theosophical organisation. Allow me to express the difference between what flows as inward spiritual stream and what manifests through individual personalities, as it can perhaps best be expressed: When it concerns spiritual life, then the Masters speak; when it only concerns Organisation, since error is possible, the Masters are then silent.

• 1 . The first announcement was most probably given during the General Meeting of the German Section which had taken place beforehand.
• 2 . The then name of the Berlin Branch which held its usual evening meetings.
• 3 . The principle teaching of Pythagoras (ca. 580–500 B.C.) was that the universe was conceived in the form of a harmoniously ordered whole (the harmony of the spheres).
• 4 . Veda (Sanskrit word for ‘sacred knowledge’). The Vedas are the complete collection of the oldest religious documents of the Hindus, written in Sanskrit, to which a supersensible origin has been attributed. They contain a comprehensive literature which was handed on by word of mouth for many ages. The Vedic manuscripts are divided mainly into the following: 1. the Sanhitas; 2. the Brahmanas; 3. the Aranyakas and Upanishads. The Sanhitas are the anthologies of songs, sacrificial formulae and magical incantations. Four such anthologies are distinguished, usually referred to simply as ‘the four Vedas.’
• 5 . This example is often cited by Rudolf Steiner. The phenomenon of the rudimentary organs was first observed in the American caves. See: Darwin's Origin of Species, Chapter 5, ‘The Laws of Mutation.’