Hermes
By
RUDOLF STEINER
A Lecture delivered by
Dr. Rudolf Steiner in the
Architektenhaus,
Berlin, February 16th, 1911, and published
by kind permission of Frau Marie Steiner from a shorthand report
unrevised by the lecturer. For the first lecture of the series on the
Great Teachers
(Zarathustra),
see Anthroposophy, Easter, 1927.
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WHILE it is of
vital importance in Spiritual Science to study the whole spiritual
life of humanity as it advances from one epoch to another, rising
slowly to the surface from hidden depths, it is perhaps of still
greater significance to study the culture and civilisation of ancient
Egypt. We realise this the more strongly when we try to penetrate
deeply into this ancient Egyptian spiritual life.
The echoes sounding to us across the ages seem
at first to be as full of mystery as the Sphinx itself, standing
there as a memorial of the civilisation of ancient Egypt. The mystery
grows deeper still when we find that even external research has
recently been compelled to go back to ages more and more remote in
order to explain the culture of later Egyptian times of which certain
physical evidence is still available. According to external research
the prime of Egyptian culture must be dated at least seven thousand
years before our era, perhaps even earlier still. This may be one
reason for the great interest evinced to-day in Egyptian culture, but
another is that man of the present day feels, whether he likes it or
not, that there is a mysterious connection between this ancient
civilisation and his own aims and purposes. It is not without
significance that Kepler, at the very dawn of the development of
modern Natural Science should have spoken of the achievements of
Science up to that time and his own contributions to knowledge, in
words like these: “When I have endeavoured to unravel some of
the mysteries of the course of the planets round the Sun, I have
tried to peer into the secrets of cosmic space. And it has often
seemed to me as though I have actually penetrated to the mysterious
sanctuaries of the Egyptians and brought their holy vessels into our
modern age. I have felt then that the significance of my message to
the world will only be understood in the future.” So strongly
did one of the greatest minds of modern times feel himself related to
ancient Egyptian culture that he could only express the keynote of
his knowledge by speaking of it as a renewal of the wisdom given to
the disciples in the secret sanctuaries and places of learning in
ancient Egypt, although it was clothed, naturally, in different
words. It must therefore be of great interest to us to understand how
these ancient Egyptians themselves conceived of their whole culture,
of their whole nature as human beings.
A certain very significant incident has been
preserved by Greek tradition. It indicates not only what the
Egyptians themselves felt but the way in which Egyptian culture was
regarded by the civilised world in general in olden times. An
Egyptian sage once said to Solon: “You Greeks are still
children. All you know is the outcome of your own contemplation and
vision; you have no ancient traditions, no wisdom hoary with age, and
children you will remain.”
Wisdom hoary with age —
the significance of this expression only dawns upon us when the light
of Spiritual Science is cast upon the whole mode and nature of
Egyptian thought and feeling.
In the successive epochs different forms of
consciousness have unfolded in humanity. Our consciousness to-day,
the way in which we grasp the outer world by means of our senses and
the combining of intellect and reason, in short, our scientific mode
of thought, has not always been in existence; consciousness has
ever been subject to the laws of evolution. Not only is the external
world of form subject to these laws but man's qualities of soul and
consciousness also. This is an indication of the fact that we can
only understand ancient centres of culture if we begin by
admitting what Spiritual Science tells us, namely, that in olden
times, in the place of our present intellectual consciousness, men
possessed a clairvoyant consciousness unlike our waking
consciousness and yet unlike the complete absence of consciousness
during sleep. Traces of this consciousness of prehistoric man are now
only retained atavistically as a waning heritage, in the picture
world of dreams. But whereas our dreams are chaotic and meaningless
in ordinary life, the picture consciousness of the Ancients was
“clairvoyant,” although, indeed, of a hazy, dreamlike
nature. The pictures referred not to the physical world but to the
spiritual world behind. In reality, all clairvoyant consciousness,
that of prehistoric man, as well as the clairvoyance acquired by true
discipline in this age, works in pictures and not in the concepts and
ideas of outer physical consciousness. The pictures must be related
to the spiritual realities lying behind the sense-realities of the
physical world.
The marvellous pictures that have come down to
us in the mythologies are not merely phantastic concepts of Nature,
as materialistic consciousness imagines to-day. On the contrary,
these pictures indicate an actual vision of the spiritual world. If
we study the old mythologies and legends — not with the
materialistic consciousness of to-day, but with a true feeling for
man's spiritual achievements — the strange stories related in
the mythologies will reveal a wonderful connection with cosmic laws
higher than our laws of physics, chemistry and biology. A note of
spiritual reality permeates the old mythologies and religious systems.
Now it must be clearly understood that the
several peoples built up this world of pictures in different ways,
according to their own nature, temperament and race. These
picture-worlds represented, to the several peoples, the higher forces
underlying the purely external forces of Nature. We must also realise
that in the course of evolution there have been many transitional
stages between the old clairvoyant consciousness and the objective
consciousness of modern man. The ancient clairvoyance grew dim and
gradually faded away. Clairvoyant powers decreased little by little
in the different peoples and the pictures arising before the souls of
those still able to gaze into the spiritual world contained less and
less of spiritual force. The higher worlds gradually closed their
doors until only the lowest stages of spiritual activity were
perceptible to lower clairvoyance. Then, so far as humanity in
general was concerned, the old clairvoyance died out entirely. Waking
consciousness was limited to the physical world around and to ideas
and conceptions of physical phenomena. Thus arose our modern science.
The old clairvoyant powers gradually faded as the development of
present-day consciousness proceeded — although of course the
process varied in the different peoples.
All that we know from olden times, even what
external documents have told us in recent Egyptian research (if we
understand aright) proves the truth of what Spiritual Science
asserts, namely, that the mission of the ancient Egyptian people was
to look back to still earlier times when their leading
Individualities were able, with their wonderful powers of
clairvoyance, to gaze into the spiritual worlds. In the people of
Egypt a somewhat feebler clairvoyant power was preserved on into
relatively late times. The later Egyptians — down to the last
millennia before the Christian era — knew from actual
experience of another mode of vision besides that of ordinary daily
life, a vision enabling man to see into the spiritual world. But they
only knew the lowest images of the realm of which this vision made
them aware, and they looked back to olden times when their
Priest-Sages were able, in the golden prime of Egyptian civilisation,
to gaze into the very depths of the spiritual world.
The mysteries of the spiritual worlds were
preserved, more especially by the earlier Egyptians, with great piety
and reverence for thousands of years. Those who lived in the later
Egyptian epoch could say: “Even now we can still perceive a
lower spiritual world; vision of the spiritual world is possible and
to doubt it would be as senseless as to doubt that our eyes can
behold the external world.” These later Egyptians had, it is
true, only a dim perception of the spiritual worlds, but they felt
that there had once been an age when their predecessors had gazed
more deeply into all that lies behind the physical world. And this
old Wisdom-teaching — of which the Egyptian Sage spoke to Solon
— was preserved in wonderful scripts in the Temples and on the
columns, bearing witness to deep and all-embracing clairvoyant powers
in days of hoary antiquity. The Being to whom the Egyptians looked up
as the embodiment of the primal glory of that old clairvoyant wisdom,
was called by the name of HERMES. And when in later times a man came
forth with a message which was to renew the ancient wisdom, he also
(according to the custom of Egyptian sages) called himself
“Hermes,” and his disciples, believing that he had
revived the primeval wisdom of the old Hermes, called this first
Being, “the Thrice-Greatest,”
“Hermes Trismegistos.”
(It was of course, only the Greeks who called him Hermes; among the
Egyptians he was known as Thoth).
We can only understand this primeval Being if we realise what the
Egyptians, under the influence of the later teachings of Hermes or
Thoth, took to be the true Mysteries of the Cosmos.
Such beliefs as have been handed down to us
from Egyptian times by external evidence seem very strange. Various
Gods, of whom the most important are Osiris and Isis, are represented
in forms not wholly human; we often find human bodies and animals
heads, or an amalgamation of human and animal forms. Wonderful
legends of this world of Gods have come down to us and there is
something very remarkable in the Egyptian animal-worship, the worship
of the cat and so forth. Certain animals were even recognised as
being sacred animals; deep veneration was paid to them for they were
regarded as the embodiment of higher beings. It is even said that
cries of lamentations were uttered at the death of cats. Again, we
are told that if an Egyptian saw a dead animal, he dared not approach
for fear of being accused of having killed it, in which case he would
have been severely punished. It is said too, that in the age when
Egypt was subject to Rome, any Roman who had killed a cat was in
danger of death, because his act aroused such fury among the
Egyptians. This animal-worship is an enigma in the sphere of Egyptian
thought and feeling. And again — what a curious impression is
made on modern man by the Pyramids, standing on their four-cornered
bases, with their triangular sides! Strange indeed are the Sphinxes
and everything that is being continually excavated and brought to our
knowledge from the depths of Egyptian civilisation. And now we will
ask ourselves: of what nature was the life of feeling and ideas among
the ancient Egyptians? What had Hermes taught them? How did they
acquire all these strange conceptions?
We must realise
that all these Legends, especially the more significant, contained a
deeper wisdom and their purpose was to convey in picture form,
knowledge of definite laws of spiritual life, laws higher than those
of external Nature. The Egyptian legend of the God and Goddess,
Osiris and Isis, is a case in point. According to the legend, Osiris
was a Being who lived in dim primeval times in regions later
inhabited by human beings. Osiris is represented in the legend as the
benefactor of humanity under whose wise guidance Hermes or Thoth gave
the Egyptians their ancient culture. Osiris had an enemy, for whom
the Greek name was Typhon. Typhon pursued Osiris, killed him,
dismembered the body, hid it in a coffin and threw it into the sea.
Isis, the sister and spouse of Osiris, sought unceasingly for him who
had been torn from her by Typhon or Seth, and when at length she
found the fragments of his dismembered body, she buried them in
different places in the land where Temples were then erected. Then,
after the death of Osiris, Isis gave birth to Horus. A spiritual ray
descended upon Isis from Osiris, who had meanwhile passed into
another world. The mission of Horus was to conquer Typhon and, in a
certain sense, to re-establish the dominion of a life, which,
proceeding from Osiris himself, was again to stream into mankind.
Such a legend
must not be analysed merely in the sense of allegory or symbol. It should
be used as a means whereby we are led into the whole world of feeling
and perception of the old Egyptians; for only so can our
understanding of such figures as Osiris and Isis become really
living. It is not right to state crudely that Osiris is the Sun, Isis
the Moon and so forth. An astronomical interpretation of this kind
leads men to believe that the legend only contains symbolical images
of certain occurrences in the Heavens. This is not the case. Rather
must we go back to the feelings living in the ancient Egyptians and
envisage the nature of their upturned gaze to super-sensible,
invisible Powers underlying the world of sense, and typified in the
figures of Osiris and Isis.
Let us try
to conceive what the names of Osiris and Isis conveyed to the ancient
Egyptian. He said to himself: “Behind man there is a higher
spiritual essence, which does not proceed from his material
existence. This spiritual essence has ‘condensed' into
material, human existence. The real evolution of man has proceeded
from a more spiritual existence. When I look into my own soul I
realise that I have a longing for the Spiritual, a yearning towards
the spiritual wellsprings of being from which I myself have
descended. The forces from which I came forth are still living within
me. My highest powers are inwardly related to these primordial
Osiris-powers within me, bearing witness that I was once a
super-sensible being dwelling in other worlds, in worlds of Spirit.
And although this being of Spirit has but a dim and instinctive life,
although it had perforce to be clothed with the physical body and its
organs in order to perceive the physical world, yet in days gone by
this being lived a purely spiritual existence.”
According to the ancient Egyptian conception,
human evolution must be regarded as a duality, consisting of the
Osiris-forces and the Isis-forces. “Osiris-Isis” —
this was the duality. Let us consider our own being, as we now exist.
The idea of a triangle, for instance, must have been preceded by
active thinking. After having been active in soul, we may then be
passive as regards the result of our
thinking and conceptual activity. Ultimately we perceive in our soul
the form that has been built up by our active thinking. Now the act
of thinking bears the same relation to the final thought, the
conceptual act to the final concept, the active principle to the
product of the active principle there before us, as Osiris to Isis.
In short, activity per se is a
Father-Principle, a masculine Principle. The Osiris-Principle is
male, active — filling the soul with thoughts and feelings. The
old Egyptian said to himself: “Man as he stands here to-day has
within him substances living in his blood or forming his bones, but
these substances were not always within his blood or bones, they were
spread over cosmic space. This physical body is a combination of
substances which have now passed into the human form, whereas they
once filled the Cosmos. The same is true of the powers of thought.
The active principle of thought has become the power of ideation in
man. Just as the substances in the blood now live in the human form
but were formerly spread over cosmic space — so the
Osiris-power now living within us as
the active principle of thought was once
spread over the spiritual universe as the Osiris-power that permeates
and weaves in the Cosmos, pouring into human beings, just as in the
case of the substances composing blood and bones in the bodily nature
of man. Into the thoughts and ideas there
flow, from out of the Cosmos, the living and
weaving Isis-Powers.” —
This is how we must envisage the attitude of soul in the
ancient Egyptians towards Osiris and Isis.
This old consciousness could find no
expression for such ideas in the world surrounding physical existence
on Earth; for everything here was known to be of the world of space
and it could offer no outer image of the super-sensible world. And so,
in search of some form of language, some kind of script in which to
clothe such conceptions as “the Osiris-Power is active within
me” — men reached out to the script placed by heavenly
bodies in cosmic space. They said: “The super-sensible power of
Osiris may be envisaged as the active power of light proceeding from
the Sun, living and moving through space. Isis may be seen in the
sunlight reflected by the dark Moon — just as the soul is dark
when the active principle of thought does not enter. The Moon awaits
the light of the Sun in order to reflect it, even as the soul awaits
the Osiris-Power to reflect it back as Isis-Power.” But when
the old Egyptian said — “The Sun and Moon out there show
me how I can best picture the activities of my soul,” —
he knew at the same time: there is no mere chance connection between
the Sun with its outpouring light and the reflecting Moon, but this
radiating and reflected light has some inner connection with the
super-sensible forces I feel within my soul.
Although we would not describe a clock as
something that drives its hands with the help of little demons,
but as a mechanical contrivance, we realise, nevertheless, that
the thought of the inventor, the thought proceeding from the soul of
a human being is at the back of the construction of the clock.
Something spiritual, therefore, is responsible for its mechanism.
Just as the hands of a clock are interrelated and dependent upon each
other, so did the Sun and Moon appear to the Egyptians as the
expressions of a mighty cosmic clock. When we gaze at this mighty
clock in space, it seems at first sight to be subject to mechanical
laws, yet in the last resort it is subject to those laws which a man
felt in his soul when he spoke of the powers of Osiris and Isis. The
old Egyptian did not merely say: “Sun and Moon are images of
the relation between Osiris and Isis.” He also felt: All that
lives in my being was once subject to the mysterious relationship
between light and the Sun and Moon.
Again, a relation similar to that between
Osiris and Isis and the Sun and Moon was seen to exist between the
stars and planets and the other Gods. The Egyptians saw in the
positions of the Heavenly Bodies, images of their own super-sensible
life, or of traditional experiences of ancient Seers, but in these
expressions of the mighty cosmic clock they saw a portrayal of forces
within their own souls. Thus the great cosmic clock, with the
movements of its stars and the relation of its moving stars to the
fixed stars, was a revelation of underlying spiritual, super-sensible
forces — forces which had determined the positions of all the
stars and had created in a cosmic script, an expression of
super-sensible activities.
Such were the feelings in regard to this
higher world, feelings which had been handed down to the Egyptians by
their traditions of ancient clairvoyance. They knew of the existence
of this spiritual world because they themselves still possessed the
last remnants of ancient clairvoyance. But now they said: “We
have descended from this spiritual world and we are now placed in a
world of matter manifesting in physical phenomena, physical
processes. We come from the world of Osiris and Isis; the highest
qualities within us, the qualities which make us strive towards
higher perfection, came forth from Osiris and Isis. These qualities
live invisibly within us as energy and power. The physical part of
man's being is derived from external circumstances, is taken from the
outer world. This physical part of man is but the vesture of
Osiris-Isis.”
Now this conception of primeval wisdom was the
one dominating feeling in the soul of the old Egyptian; it filled his
whole life of soul. A man may imbue his soul with abstract ideas and
yet remain untouched in his moral and ethical life; his sense of
destiny or his happiness may be quite unaffected. Abstract and
mathematical concepts of Natural Science may be so deeply absorbed
that a man can discuss electricity and other forces of a similar
nature without feeling any need to concern himself at the same time
with problems of destiny. Now the feeling of kinship with Osiris and
Isis, the vision of the spiritual world existing in ancient Egypt
— these things could not be conceived of apart from thoughts of
destiny, happiness and moral impulses. For the ancient Egyptian said
to himself: “I bear a higher Self within me, but since I have
entered into a physical body this higher Self withdraws to the
background and is at first not wholly manifest. Osiris and Isis are
the primal source of my being; but Osiris and Isis belong to the
archetypal worlds, to the golden, holy ages of long ago. The
Osiris-Isis nature is now subject to the forces which have condensed
outer physical substances into man's body. Osiris and Isis are
fettered within the corruptible body, and this body is subject to
decay even as the outer forces of Nature.”
The legend of Osiris and Isis must thus be
interpreted in terms of the inner life. Osiris,
the higher power in man, spread over cosmic space, is overcome by
forces which are subject to destruction in the realm of human nature.
The Osiris-power living in man is fettered by Typhon — fettered
within a form that is the “coffin” of the spiritual
nature of man. Into this coffin the Osiris-nature in man disappears
and is invisible to the outer world. The mysterious Isis-nature
remains, in order that in future ages, after it has been permeated by
the power of the intellect, it may again reach the well-springs of
man's being. Thus there lives in man a hidden quality which strives
to bring Osiris to life again. The Isis-power lives in the human soul
in order gradually to lead man back again to Osiris. So long as man
remains a physical being he cannot of course be separated from the
world of matter, yet it is the Isis-power which enables him, while he
remains a physical being in the outer physical world, to maintain in
his inner being a striving towards a higher Ego. And according to
every true thinker, this higher Ego is there, deeply concealed in all
the powers of man. This being — who is not the outer physical
man but the man who has an unceasing urge to rise to the light of
spirit, who is ever impelled by the hidden Isis-forces —
appears as the earthly son of One who did not arise in the
earthly world. He is the earthly son of Osiris who remained in the
spiritual worlds. This invisible being — the being who strives
to reach the Higher Self, was known by the name of Horus, the
posthumous son of Osiris.
Thus the old Egyptians looked up with a
certain sadness to the Osiris-origin of man, but at the same time
they gazed into their innermost being, saying: “The soul has
retained something of the Isis-power and this Isis-power gives birth
to Horus who has the urge to strive towards spiritual heights. In
these heights man finds Osiris.” Man can attain to Osiris in a
twofold way. The Egyptian said: “I came forth from Osiris and
to Osiris I shall again return. Osiris, my spiritual origin is within
me: Horus will lead me back to Osiris his Father; but Osiris can only
be attained in the spiritual world. He could not enter into the
physical nature of man. In the physical nature of man he was
vanquished by the Typhon-forces which are subject to decay because
they are forces of external Nature.”
Osiris can therefore only be reached along two paths. One is the path
leading through the Portal of Death; the
other is the path through the Portal leading not to physical death
but to Initiation. The
Egyptian therefore said: When man passes through the Portal of Death
and has passed the stages of preparation, he comes to Osiris. When he
is freed from the sheaths of his earthly body in the spiritual world,
the consciousness of his kinship with Osiris awakens within him. The
dead man feels that in the spiritual world he may himself be called
“Osiris.” And so, after death, everyone was an
“Osiris.”
The other path to Osiris — the other
path into the spiritual world — is through Initiation. To the
Egyptian this path was a means whereby man could learn to know the
Invisible, the Supersensible in human nature — Isis, or rather
the Isis-power. In the knowledge gleaned from everyday life man does
not penetrate to the depths of his soul, he does not reach the
Isis-power. Yet there is a means whereby he can pierce through to
this Isis-power, whereby he reaches the true Ego and realises that it
is enveloped in physical matter. If we follow this path we reach the
spiritual home of the Ego. This, then, was the teaching of ancient
Egypt: Man must descend into his own innermost being; there he first
understands his physical nature — the expression of his Ego. He
must force his way through this physical nature. He beholds the outer
world, the creation of spiritual, super-sensible Powers, in the three
kingdoms of Nature: in the stones with their forms based on
mathematical laws, in the plants with their life-filled forms which
are the dwelling place of Divine Powers, and in the animals. But when
he beholds Man he must penetrate through the outer form to the
Isis-powers of the soul.
Part of the Initiation into the
Isis-Mysteries, therefore, consisted in showing man how he was
clothed in matter. The processes enacted when a man thus plunged into
his own nature, were practically the same as occur at death but they
were enacted in a different way. The aspirant had to
pass in actual life through
the Portal of Death, to learn of the transition from physical to
super-physical vision, from the physical to the spiritual world
— in short the transition experienced in actual death. He had
to follow this path of descent into his own inner being, to learn
what can only be experienced there. And in this region he learnt, in
the first place, how the blood, the physical instrument of the Ego,
is formed from Nature. Now the system of nerves is the physical
instrument for the soul-activities of Feeling, Willing and Thinking
and the instrument of the Ego is the blood. If a man would descend
into his instruments — so thought the old Egyptians — he
must descend into his physical-etheric sheaths, into the etheric
qualities of soul. He must learn to be independent of the forces in
his blood upon which he otherwise depends, and, after having first
freed himself from these forces, he must then enter into the
marvellous processes of his blood. He must learn to know his higher
nature in its physical aspect. This he can only do when he is able to
contemplate himself as he contemplates an outer object. Now man can
only know an object as object if he
himself is outside it; thus if he wishes to perceive himself, he must
stand outside his own being. That is why Initiation develops forces
which enable the soul-powers to have real experiences without making
use of physical instruments. The physical instruments are there
objectively before man, just as after death his spiritual being looks
down at his physical body.
And so the pupil in the Isis-Mysteries was
first taught the secrets of his own blood. He passed through an
experience which may be described as an approach to
the Threshold of Death. This was
the first stage of Initiation into the Isis-Mysteries. The pupil had
to behold his own blood, to behold himself as object, to plunge down
into the sheath that is the instrument of his Isis-nature. In the
sanctuaries of Initiation he was led to two Portals, where he was
shown in picture form the processes taking place in his inner being.
Two doors stood before him, one open, the other closed. These
teachings, echoing down to us across the ages, harmonise most
wonderfully with what man believes at the present day, although he
now gives a materialistic interpretation to everything. The old Seers
of Egypt said: “When man is in the underworld he comes to two
doors; through two doors he enters into his blood and his inner
being.” The modern anatomist would speak of the two entrances
lying beside the valves of the heart. If the pupil wished to
penetrate into his body he would have to pass through the
“open” door, for the “closed” door is there
to prevent the blood stream from taking a wrong path. These
anatomical phenomena are material images of what the ancient sages
experienced in clairvoyant form. The forms were of course not so
exact as the structures confronting the modern anatomist, yet they
represented what clairvoyant consciousness perceived when it gazed at
the inner being of man from without.
The next stage of the Isis-Initiation may be
described as follows: The pupil was led through the tests of Fire,
Air and Water — that is to say he learnt to know the nature of
the sheaths around his Isis-nature. He learnt to know Fire as it
courses through his body, using the blood as its instrument; he
learnt to know how air enters the body in the form of oxygen; he
learnt to know his watery nature. Fire, Air and Water — the
warmth of the breath, the fluidity of the blood. And his knowledge of
the sheaths, of Fire, Air and Water purified him until he finally
attained to his Isis-nature. This again may be expressed by saying:
Only when the pupil reached this stage did he feel that he had really
“come to himself,” realising his spiritual existence, no
longer limited to the human faculties pertaining to the outer world
but able to gaze into the spiritual world. In the outer world we can
only see the physical Sun by day; at night it is hidden from us by
matter. In the spiritual world, however, it is not so; in the
spiritual world man beholds the spiritual Powers at the very time the
physical eyes are not functioning. In the Isis-Initiation it was
said: When a man is purified he beholds the spiritual beings face to
face; he can see the Sun at Midnight. That is to
say, when darkness prevails, the spiritual life and the primal
spiritual Powers behind the Sun are visible to those initiated in the
Isis-Mysteries.
Such was the path of the soul to the Isis-powers, the path which might
be traversed by those who while still living sought to
energise their deepest forces of soul. There were still higher
Mysteries — the true Osiris-Mysteries. In these Mysteries man
learnt how through the Isis-power he might find himself one with the
spiritual super-sensible Power whence he himself had come forth.
— He knew Osiris and Osiris arose within his soul.
Now when the
old Egyptian wished to depict the relation between Isis and Osiris, he
used a script drawn from the movements of the Sun and Moon in the
Heavens; he used the relationships of the other starry bodies to
express the activities of the other spiritual Powers. His script was
drawn from the Zodiac in its condition of comparative rest, and from
the Planets moving across the constellations. In all the mysteries
thus revealed, the ancient Egyptian saw a spiritual script. He knew:
Nothing that is on the Earth can help me to express what man
experiences if he goes forth to seek Osiris with the Isis-power
within him. The starry constellations themselves must be the script.
Hermes, or Thoth, the mighty Sage of
antiquity, was revered by the Egyptians as having had the most
profound insight into this relation of man to the Cosmos. It was
Hermes who expressed with the greatest sublimity the relation of the
stars to these spiritual Powers and to events in the Cosmos. The
language of Hermes was the language of the stars themselves. The
relation of Osiris to Isis, for instance, could be explained
exoterically to the people in the form of legends. Those who were
preparing for Initiation were taught in greater detail of the light
proceeding from the Sun, its reflection by the Moon, and the
marvellous processes enacted by the light passing from the new Moon
through different phases to the full Moon. The primal forms of
writing were derived from processes taking place in the Heavens.
Man little knows to-day that the consonants are images of the Zodiacal
constellations, of a cosmic element that is at rest; the relations of
the vowels to the consonants are images of the connections between
the moving Planets and the Zodiac. The earlier forms of the letters
of the alphabet were in this sense derived from the Heavens.
The ancient Egyptians felt that the great
Hermes had himself been taught by the Powers of the Heavens and that
he expressed, in his own being, the deepest soul life of man. All
that was expressed in the deeds of man, even in daily pursuits where
mathematical sciences, geometry (which Pythagoras afterwards learnt
from the Egyptians), land-surveying and the like, were needed —
all these things were traced back to the wisdom of Hermes who had
seen the processes and phenomena of Earth to be reflections of
heavenly activities as expressed in the stellar script. This script
was brought down by Hermes into mathematics and geometry and he
taught the Egyptians to find, in the stars, the counterpart of
earthly happenings.
Now we know that the whole life of Egypt was
deeply bound up with the floods of the Nile, with the deposits swept
down by the Nile from the mountainous lands in the South. And we can
realise how necessary it was for the Egyptians to know in advance
when these floods would occur. They reckoned time according to the
stellar script in the Heavens and when Sirius, the Dog Star, was
visible in the Sign of Cancer, they knew that the Sun would shortly
enter this Sign and that its rays would charm forth all that the
flooding of the Nile bestowed upon the soil. They said: “Sirius
is the Watcher; it is he who tell us what is to come.” And they
looked up in gratitude to the Dog Star, to Sirius, for it was he who
enabled them to cultivate their land aright and provide for the needs
of their daily life. They looked back to ages of hoary antiquity when
mankind had first been taught that the movement of the stars is the
expression of the mighty cosmic timepiece.
Thus did the Egyptians take counsel from the
stellar script. Hermes, or Thoth, was the great Spirit who, according
to the oldest traditions, had given the original script of the Cosmic
Wisdom and with the inspiration flowing into him from the stars, had
built up the alphabet, had taught men the principles of agriculture,
geometry, land-surveying — in short all they needed for their
physical life. Physical life, however, is but the body of a spiritual
life, a cosmic spiritual life whence Hermes drew his inspiration.
Thus all culture and civilisation came to be bound up with the name
of Hermes, and indeed the Egyptians felt themselves connected with
him in a still more intimate sense.
Suppose, for example, that an Egyptian living
in the year 1322 before our era, were looking up to the Heavens. He
would behold a certain constellation. The ancient Egyptians had a
convenient method of reckoning time-conditions, convenient, that is
to say, for purposes of calculation; twelve months of thirty days
each, with five additional days — making three hundred and
sixty-five days in the year. They had reckoned thus for centuries,
for the method was really a mathematical convenience. After three
hundred and sixty-five days a year had run its course. Now as we know
from Astronomy, this leaves a quarter of one day
unaccounted for; that is to
say, the Egyptian year fell a quarter of a day too early. If you
reckon it out, you will see that every successive year began a little
earlier than the last. So month by month the year receded until,
after a lapse of four times three hundred and sixty-five years it
returned to the beginning. Thus it always happened after a period of
one thousand, four hundred and sixty years that the heavenly
relationships were readjusted with the earthly calculation. In
the course of one thousand, four hundred and sixty years the year
receded through a complete cycle. If you reckon this back three times
from the year 1322 before our era, you have the epoch to which the
Egyptians ascribed their holy primal Wisdom. They said: “In
those ancient times men possessed the very highest clairvoyance. Each
of the great Solar Years denoted a stage in the waning of clairvoyant
power. We are now living in the fourth stage. Our culture has reached
a point where we have only traditions of the teaching of antiquity.
But we look back through three great Cosmic Years to an age when the
greatest of our Sages taught his pupils and successors what we to-day
possess — though in much changed form — in writing,
mathematics, geometry, the science of land-surveying and
astronomy.” At the same time the old Egyptians said: “Our
human calculations — which adhere to the convenient numbers of
twelve times thirty plus five supplementary days — bear witness
how the divine-spiritual world must correct our affairs, for our
intellect has estranged us from Osiris and Isis. We cannot reckon the
year accurately. But we look up to a hidden world where the Powers
guiding the stars correct us.”
Thus even in their Chronology the old
Egyptians looked up, as it were beyond the feeble quality of the
intellect, to spiritual Beings and Powers living in hidden worlds,
who in accordance with deeper laws, supervised protected and watched
over all that man has to experience on Earth. And in Hermes, or
Thoth, they revered the Being whose inspiration flowed from these
watchful Powers of Heaven. Hermes was not only a great Teacher, but a
Being to whom the old Egyptians looked up with feelings of deepest
gratitude and reverence, saying: “All that I possess comes from
Thee! Thou wert there in days of old and lo! Thy blessings stream
into the world for the healing of men through those who have been Thy
messengers.” Thus both the original source of Power —
Osiris — and Hermes, or Thoth, — the Guardian of that
Power — were not only known to the wisdom of the ancient
Egyptians, but their souls were filled with a deep moral feeling, a
feeling of reverence and gratitude. All external evidence shows that
the wisdom of the Egyptians (especially in very ancient times, and
later to a less and less degree) was permeated with religious
feeling. All human knowledge was bound up with feelings of holy awe,
all wisdom with piety, all science with religion. In the later
Egyptian epoch this no longer appears in its purest form. For just as
in the successive epochs it is the mission of the several peoples to
express the Spiritual in different forms, so do the several
civilisations begin to fall into decadence when their prime has been
reached. Most of what has been preserved from ancient Egyptian
culture belongs to the period of decadence and one can only surmise
what lies behind the marvellous pyramids, for instance, and the
strange animal cults. The Egyptians knew: The age when wisdom itself
was working was preceded by another, when all beings — not only
man — descended from divine-spiritual heights. If we would
understand the innermost nature of man we must not look at his outer
form, but penetrate to his inner being. What we see externally are
stages at which primordial creation has remained stationary; such
stages are to be seen in the three kingdoms of Nature. The first
stage is the world of the minerals and stones — the forms of
which are expressed in the Pyramids. The second stage is the world of
plants and the inner forces of this world are expressed in the Lotus
flower. The third stage is represented by the animal forms, strewn,
as it were, along the path to man. Divine forces which have not
attained to the human stage have poured and crystallised into the
different animal forms. Such were the feelings of the old Egyptian
when he beheld the retarded forces of the Gods. He looked back to
primeval ages when all creation sprang from Divine Powers. He felt
that Divine Powers had remained at an earlier stage of development in
the beings of the three lower kingdoms of Nature and had finally
risen to human form in his own being. We must always be mindful of
the feelings, the consciousness of
the old Egyptians, for then we shall realise that their wisdom had a
moral effect in their souls. Their conception of the Divine world and
Supersensible forces gave rise to a relation to the animals, which
only assumed a grotesque form when Egyptian culture entered upon its
period of decline. The imperfections of later Egyptian culture were
not there at the beginning when it was filled with spiritual
revelation. We must not — as is so often done to-day —
ascribe primitive and simple conditions to the early stages of
civilisations. On the contrary, primitive conditions belong
to periods of decadence which set
in after the original spiritual treasures have been lost. Barbaric
conditions are not to be regarded as the original states of
civilisation; they are in reality the result of the decadence of
civilisations which have fallen from their spiritual prime.
Such a
statement may be a cause of irritation to the science that describes
all civilisations as having originated from old primitive conditions
such as survive in savage tribes to-day.
Primitive states of culture still in existence are to be regarded
as stages of decadence; at the beginning of human life on Earth the
early civilisations were directly inspired from the spiritual world
by the Spiritual Beings standing behind external history.
This is what we are told by Spiritual Science.
Again it may be asked: Does the science of to-day, representing as it
does, the heights of modern culture, come into collision with this
statement of Spiritual Science? I should like here to quote from a
recent work by Alfred Jeremias,
The Influence of Babylon on the Understanding of the Old Testament,
which shows that outer research too has found its way back to an ancient
culture permeated with sublime and far-reaching conceptions and that
the so-called barbaric civilisations must be regarded as the outcome
of decadence. This point is clearly made in the book:
The oldest records, as indeed the whole
cultural life of the Euphratean civilisations, postulate the
existence of scientific and at the same time religious
conceptions not only in the secret lore of the Temples but
according to which the State organisation was regulated, justice
declared, property administered and protected. The further back we go
into ancient times, the more do we find the domination of these
conceptions; only when the ancient Euphratean culture enters on its
period of decadence do other forces make themselves felt.
External
science is here beginning to open up
paths which can unite with what Spiritual Science has to introduce
into modern civilisation. If it advances along these paths it will
gradually abandon the dead image of primitive
conditions at the starting-point of human civilisations and will come
instead to the Great Individualities. And they appear before us in
all sublimity because it was their task to transmit to men who still
possessed the power of clairvoyance, the greatest blessings in every
branch of culture. And so we look back to mighty figures — to
Zarathustra, to Hermes — who appear so sublime because they
were the first to give the great spiritual impulses to mankind in
those remote ages of which the Sage spoke to Solon. Hermes stands
there as a great Guide of mankind. As we contemplate these great
Individualities, we feel a strengthening of our own powers. We
realise that the Spirit not only lives in the Cosmos but flows into
cosmic deeds, into the evolution of man himself. Our own life is
fortified, we have greater confidence in our own actions, our hopes
and purposes are strengthened by the contemplation of these great
Individualities. We who are born in after ages look up to Them,
seeking the fulfilment of our own existence in Their mighty powers of
soul, understanding our own actions in the light of the eternal
Spirit pouring into humanity through Them.
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