Lecture 18:
FREEMASONRY
AND HUMAN EVOLUTION II
(Only for women)
Berlin 23rd October 1905
[See the
Notes for this Lecture]
The
things which we wish to discuss today have not hitherto been
discussed in front of women. Therefore, it is a rather bold step I am
taking to speak about these things to you. However, particular occult
currents make it necessary.
Within
these currents there are some things of an intimate nature which, up
to a short while ago, could not be mentioned in the presence of
women, because the occult brotherhood, whose task it was to nurture
these intimate things, had a strict rule, to admit no women members.
What they had to do in the world might not be done in cooperation
with the female element. Until just recently, this rule has been
strictly adhered to. Nowadays, the sole possibility of creating a
balance between the two sexes exists only in the Theosophical
Society. Here is indeed the only place where these things are
discussed in front of women.
Now we
ask: Why has this separation of the sexes come about — which has
taken such a grotesque form in the Lodges of Freemasonry? If one
wants to understand why this segregation really became habitual, one
has to use a rather grotesque metaphor: When two powers are at war
with each other, it would be very foolish if the general of one side
were to reveal his plan of campaign to the enemy general, before the
battle started. It would be the same as handing over one's weapons to
the enemy, if one were to enlist women in the Freemasons. For it is a
matter of war for the Freemasons, a war indeed against the female
spirit, a matter of sharp opposition to the female spirit as such.
This way was necessary, yes, occult Freemasonry was founded precisely
for this purpose. Therefore it was the custom to speak about occult
matters to the two sexes separately. First, a form must be found, in
which these things can be spoken of to women.
The
founding of Freemasonry lies far back in the past. It took place at
the beginning of the fourth Cultural Epoch of our present fifth
[Post-Atlantean] Root Race. The Old Testament, which gives us an
explanation of these things, was written down at that same time. We
are told that higher spirits made revelations to Moses, which he then
wrote down. The knowledge of higher things was already there,
however, much earlier on, and was handed on from generation to
generation, from priestly mouth to priestly mouth, until it was put
into documentary form by Ezra
(Note 1)
to whom the writing of these
things is ascribed. When the Old Testament began to gain power
through the priests, a tremendous opposition to this priestly book
arose in the Freemasonry brotherhoods, for a particular reason. To be
sure, this opposition has always been there, and it was necessary. We
must be clear about why.
Let us
agree that everything which happens on the physical plane has to
recapitulate earlier stages in a particular way. On earth there is
always a recapitulation of the events of earlier times. [In his life]
before birth man has to go through the stages which he once
experienced with his dull animal consciousness [in earlier times].
So, for instance, the Renaissance period of the Middle Ages was a
recapitulation of ancient Greek times. We also find such
recapitulation in planetary events. Before the present earth became
what it is today, it had to recapitulate earlier conditions before it
could become an independent planet, our earth in fact, in the Fourth
Round [or recapitulation]. Thus, whenever anything new has to appear
on earth, the earlier stages must always be recapitulated in a new
form. So the human spirit in the fifth Root Race [our present Race]
has worked through a recapitulation of the [happenings of] the
Lemurian Root Race [the third Race], when humanity was still of one
sex only, and then became two-sexed. That had a great influence on
its spiritual development. In the third Sub-Race of the fifth Root
Race, the Egypto-Babylonian period, there was a progressive
recapitulation in the realm of spiritual life of what had happened
physically to man of Lemurian times.
Before
there was [separate] male and female, the two were combined; so then
the two sexes separated from each other. As regards spiritual
development, we have this happening in the fifth Root Race:
Third Root
Race: Lemuria: division of physical evolution into two sexes, male and
female.
Fifth Root
Race: Division of spiritual evolution into male and female spirit, into
Jehovah worship, or priesthood, and Freemasonry.
In the
first Post-Atlantean epoch, in the [ancient] Indian culture,
everything was still at a higher level than the physical plane. The
original Indian wisdom, which stems from the first Post-Atlantean
culture, is, spiritually speaking, primarily connected, not with the
present physical plane, but with the conditions of that earlier time
when humanity was still [combined] male-female. Therefore, at that
time, little regard was paid to the existence of [separate] sexes.
There was no question of a dualistic principle in this; that comes
only in the following Sub-Race. The Vedas belong to a much later
time. Already, in the second Sub-Race, there was a great schism. The
outward expression of this schism is depicted for us in the Old
Testament, quite wonderfully. Genesis has it very beautifully and
clearly: Before Yahveh created man, he made fruits and animals and so
on, on earth, and only then did he create man, Adam, whom he then
divided into two sexes.
This
account rests on occult perceptions of the physical facts. Now, of
course, all occult wisdom presents a relationship between physical
events and later spiritual wisdom; for physical events arise out of
Divine Wisdom and wisdom later re-emerges out of physical life, out
of man. There is a connection there between wisdom, perception and
physical life.
The whole
fertilising and fructifying force by which a new person is created,
used to be combined in one sex. Then the human being was separated
into male and female. Which sex can best lay claim to the generative
power? It is the female. Therefore Zeus, who was worshipped as the
progenitor of the human race, was portrayed in the oldest [versions
of] Greek mythology as having female breasts.
(Note 2)
Zeus as a superhuman being, was nearer to the female sex. The female sex
was thus the first, the earlier one, and at that time had the power in
itself of producing the complete human individual. This generative
power lay within a human being of undivided sex, who approximated, in
its outward physical form, more towards the female. In this
single-sexed human being, the fertilising [principle] was wisdom, the
spirit itself; and the fertilising of the female spirit by inspired
wisdom is a later recapitulation of this. This human being of the
single-sex era was the result of the fertilisation by the Divine
Spirit of the substance produced in the woman.
Now you
understand what it was by which a woman could give birth to a human
being. Physically, there is first of all a woman, who is fertilised
from above. It was the Divine Spirit in woman which was the
fertilising principle. When the separation of the sexes happened, the
differentiation started in the transformation of the female's
spiritual organs of fertilisation into organs of wisdom. The
masculine power that the woman had in herself turned the creative
force into organs of wisdom. So half the generative force stayed with
the woman; the creative physical forces stayed with the man. As a
result of this separation, the spinal cord and the brain with the
nerve branches appeared, as portrayed in the Tree of Life and the
Tree of Knowledge. The organ of wisdom is formed in the vertebrae by
the spinal cord and its extension into the brain. From that time on,
there is a duality. in man; namely, the two trees of the biblical
record, the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life.
And now
the new beings adapt themselves to the change. The individuals who
had previously been female did not all subsequently take on the
female form. The female side — the capacity to produce human beings —
withdrew from one section and left behind, in substitution, the power
to fertilise in a quite different way. Physical nature had divided
itself into what fertilised and what needed to be fertilised.
Spiritual nature, too, had similarly divided itself. In female
individuals the spirit acquired male character and colouring; in the
male the spirit had a female character. That is still the female
within man.
The
biblical legend shows this very clearly. As is known, the man having
two sexes was forbidden to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. The power
with which Jehovah had invested mankind was: to make his wisdom work
in the woman. ‘Thou shalt not eat of the Tree of Knowledge’ means the
same as ‘Thou shalt not separate off the force of fertilisation and
make it independent.’ For Jehovah's power, the fertilising power,
would thereby be lost to the woman. When woman ate from the Tree of
Knowledge, she thereby laid the basis for becoming independent in
respect of wisdom, thereby ceasing to remain a mere tool of Jehovah
as he had planned. But thus she lost, along with Jehovah's power, the
power to fertilise herself through wisdom as well. By eating [from
the Tree of Knowledge] and giving the apple to man, she wiped this
power out. Thus woman became dependent on man. It was Lucifer who led
mankind along this path in order to make him independent. Jehovah was
against this, and forbade man to eat from the Tree of Knowledge for
that reason. However the woman did eat and gave to the man. The man
ate too, so that the punishment decreed by Jehovah ensued. New bodies
have to come into existence, which will work out the Karma of
previous existence; death and [re-] birth come into the world. Woman
is now no longer fertile through herself, but has become barren. And
with fertilisation coming from outside, the possibility of this kind
of death enters the world.
The biblical story of Paradise reveals this deep
connection in images; ancient priestly traditions became the content
in these images, and ancient priestly wisdom was intuitively
[? or evidently: German anschaulich]
incorporated in them. Woman has, then,
become infertile in respect of spiritual wisdom, because she has
demanded physical perception. She gave to man and he ate as well;
they were guilty, and were driven out of Paradise, to the formation
of which they had made no contribution. That is the old priestly
tradition about the origin of the sexes; this contains a profound
insight into the connection between actual events.
What now
happened as the result of the female separating itself from the male?
Which of the sexes still possessed a shadow of that power of
productive spiritual wisdom, the male or the female? We have seen
that the wisdom of the female actually had a male character; this is
the creative, the productive, the intuitive, what is original, what
is fertile. The same divine power which formerly worked within woman
to fertilise, to produce the physical human being, now worked as
fertilising principle in the perception of the Divine centre in man's
being. The religions work through words and images to further this
process.
The
female being becomes physically infertile, in the sense that she
cannot produce offspring out of herself as she did before. The
masculine, passive spirit is the one which is spiritually infertile,
but the man is the one who can fertilise physically. Spiritually, he
now lets himself be fertilised by everything in the world; he now
becomes spiritually fertilised so that he himself can fertilise
physically. The whole world penetrates him first; he becomes
fertilised spiritually, the woman physically. Woman, by contrast, is
spiritually self-fertilising, whereas man is fertilised by the
spirit. The male wisdom is fertilised by everything external being
gathered and combined. Male wisdom thus resulted, which was
orientated towards assembling worldly wisdom. This [kind of wisdom]
was not actually there at first, as [against] that which flowed down
from above; it had first to be put together by perceiving the
physical world. Female wisdom, by contrast, was actually transferred
to the priesthood. The wisdom of the priests turns out to be a
property deriving originally from the ancient feminine wisdom.
Indeed, only if he separated it into two sexes could Jehovah sustain
the human race. Two opposing factions resulted, Freemasonry and
priestly rule, which were symbolised by Cain and Abel.
Now,
there is a difference between the female priestly wisdom and the male
aspiration. This is described to us in the legend of Cain and Abel.
Abel was a shepherd and occupied himself with the life that was
already there. He is the symbol of the inborn divine force which
works in man as the wisdom which he does not acquire for himself,
which flows into him. Cain creates something new out of what the
world offers. He represents the passive masculine wisdom, which must
at first be fertilised from outside, which goes out into the world to
gather wisdom and to create from what has been gathered. Cain killed
Abel; which means that male wisdom offers resistance against the
female wisdom, since it feels that it must subdue and remodel
physical wisdom.
The old
Freemasons set themselves the ideal, therefore, of taking up this
challenge. They wanted to use male wisdom to work against the female
wisdom that had been taken over by the priesthood. The great images
of the Bible were to be considered as intuitive female wisdom
transferred to the priests; to which they wished to counterpose the
wisdom self-acquired by the male. This battle against the wisdom of
the priests expressed the opposition of the Freemasons. Those who
took part in it had to be kept free of every influence of the female
wisdom. This battle was concerned with physical evolution, and it was
therefore necessary for the Freemasons to avoid any contact with the
female sex as far as their work was concerned. They knew that their
opposition to the female spirit could only be carried through if they
were undisturbed by female thinking. One had to affirm something
positive and generally prevent any disturbing element
interfering.
Freemasonry thus created the Temple Legend as an answer to the
Bible Legend. This was to be the sword of battle against the
priesthood. We therefore want to bring this Temple Legend before your
soul. It has the following content:
In the
beginning one of the Elohim created Cain by uniting himself with Eve.
Another Elohim, Yahveh, countered by creating Adam, who united with
Eve, as a result of which Abel was born. Cain killed Abel and Jehovah
therefore made the race of Cain subject to the race of
Abel.
That
means that originally the worldly wisdom rebelled against the
priestly wisdom and was defeated; for the Abel fine was continued in
Seth and all worldly wisdom was made subservient to the priestly
wisdom.
Next, it
is related how the descendants of Cain conquered the world, how they
developed the arts. Music, arts and sciences were cultivated by them.
Tubal-Cain
(Genesis 4:21–22),
the master of brass and ironwork, Jubal, from whom the pipers and
violinists descend, and Hiram, the builder of Solomon's Temple
(I Kings 7:13)
are numbered among the descendants of Cain.
So, with
Hiram, we have arrived at the transition from the third to the fourth
Post-Atlantean epoch,
(Note 3)
when priestly rule turned into rule by
kings. Kingship results from God's grace, as represented by King
Solomon. Solomon's power was not sustained by work done on the
physical plane, but was the manifestation of God's grace. Priestly
wisdom was turned into rule by kings. This was thus regarded as the
successor to priestly rule, which was [now] unable to do — from its
own resources — what was necessary for the progress of mankind on
earth. The one who was to build the Temple had to be enlisted from
among the descendants of Cain, because he would possess the
autonomously worked out thinking.
The
legend goes on to relate that Balkis, the Queen of Sheba, was
betrothed to King Solomon. She visited him and was [astounded] at the
Temple building — as he was at her wisdom. She wanted to see the
master builder himself, for she could not conceive how [such a]
wonderful building could result from human wisdom. Hiram came and
made a forceful impression on her, simply by his glance alone. Next
she asked to see those who worked on the Temple as well. When Solomon
said this was impossible, Hiram made the mystical Tau sign in the air
and all the workers streamed together immediately. In the mystical
Tau sign lie the forces which the Sons of Cain use to work on the
physical plane.
Three of
Hiram's apprentices are discontented because he did not promote them
to the Master's Degree. They conspire to hurt him. They want to spoil
his masterpiece. Now he intends to make the Molten Sea; this is a
major work of art, to be cast out of a fluid element, out of molten
brass. This is a symbol of the Great Work of Art for which the entire
mineral kingdom must be re-cast; [which is] the task of our Manvantara.
(Note 4)
The three apprentices do the following: they wreck
the casting of the Molten Sea. Hiram tries to put this right by
pouring water on the casting; everything then flies apart in a shower
of fiery rain. As Hiram, in despair, gives himself up for lost he is
led to the centre of the earth by a figure whom he recognises as
Tubal-Cain. There he is told that Jehovah, or Adonai, is nothing else
than an enemy of the Sons of Fire; he wants to destroy the Sons of
Fire. Hiram, however, would have a son, whom he would indeed never
see, but who would start a new race on earth. Tubal-Cain then gave
him a hammer with which he can complete the casting of the Molten
Sea. However, the three apprentices murder him. Before his death, he
breathes out a word, which he inscribes on a golden triangle, and
buries. No one understands the word; it is the Lost Word of the
Freemasons. Hiram is buried and an acacia twig is planted on his
grave. The triangle is dug up again, but no one knows its worth. It
is buried again and a cube set up, on which the Ten Commandments are
inscribed.
Now what
is meant by ‘Jehovah hates the Sons of Fire?’ These are the people
who were born by means of the single sex. In them wisdom is mingled
with Kama, the earthly kamic fire [- the astral body]. Those who have
devoted themselves to the female priesthood are the sons of Abel.
Hiram was promised: ‘You will have a son who will found a new race.
However, you will not know him.’ This new race must come when the
Lost Word regains its power, and is installed in a new way. The
occult tradition which is embodied in Freemasonry works to bring
about the re-establishment of the Lost Word. It works to enable the
introduction of the active into the passive male element; so that it
can regain the procreative [force] in the spirit, to turn what is
passive into something active, so that the Sons of Cain can produce
out of themselves.
The
following tradition developed: the female was the primeval force.
This gave the world everything that was in the world as wisdom.
However, [the female element] lost part of the physical power of
reproduction, which was transferred to the male. Now everything
re-spiritualises itself again, in which process the male power
attempts to grab control for itself. The male element in thinking
seeks to outlast the female. There will come a time, however, when
sexlessness will again be re-established and the struggle is about
which of the two sexes will first attain this state of sexlessness.
Hence Freemasonry endeavours to make the male sex — or, to express it
better, the male spirit — outlast the female and attain to the state
of sexlessness.
Now there
is an occult connection between the power of speech and the power of
sexual production. The Word has made everything. Originally it lived
in man. Then man lost it. He can no longer create independently
because he no longer has the Word. Only someone who was present at
the Creation can know it. Tubal-Cain knew it and gave it to Hiram.
Whoever wants to regain the power of procreation must gain possession
of the Word. The truly creative power must unite itself with the
Word. The Word will bring forth the man of the future; for the son of
Hiram really will be seen. Fire, the Divine Power, will then
establish itself in a new way. A new race will replace the old. In
the ancient Hebrew language there is a Word, a Mantram, which, it is
said, will create the world if uttered sufficiently strongly.
(Note 5)
Man will thus beget spiritual man by means of speech itself once the Word
has developed sufficiently. Now we grasp what is represented by the
Tree of Knowledge. The serpent is what winds itself upwards in the
backbone as spinal marrow. Perception in the physical is that [kind
of knowledge] which originates in the nervous system. ‘I will put
enmity between thee and the woman and between thy seed and her seed;’
(Note 6)
by that is meant enmity between the seed of the physical,
physical perception, and the seed of the spirit, spiritual
perception. The spiritual, the woman, indeed bruises the head of the
serpent, but only after it has wounded her in the heel. This is that
[power] which presses the foot [of man] from the centre of the
earth.
The power
of speech changes at man's puberty. This was regarded as a portent of
the new Son of Hiram
(II Chronicles 2:13).
The ideal which the Freemasons had set themselves was therefore to bring
about the procreation of this son from the male sex. which is to result
from the power of the larynx. Everything which subsequently appeared on
the earth in physical form had its origin in the spirit. In the very
beginning, the only things to work on earth were those which had
resulted from the Divine Spirit. There then appeared, on the one
hand, the female image-wisdom of the priests, and on the other, the
imageless wisdom of Cain. Now it is interesting that when an
image-content was sought for the wisdom of Cain, the male wisdom then
borrowed from the female wisdom; the Temple Legend and the entire
content of Freemasonry derives from the old priestly wisdom, from the
revelation from above. That was concealed in symbols. However, the
symbols gradually ceased to be understood. Gradually, everything
occult vanished from Freemasonry. The three Craft Masonry degrees are
orientated wholly towards the physical plane.
Because we have seen why these spiritual currents
run parallel to each other, we will now also understand the
significance of the theosophical movement. It is preparing, in the
spiritual realm, what will later happen on the physical plane — the
reunion of the sexes. The divided wisdom must likewise flow together
again in the one Divine wisdom.
Through
theosophical wisdom, a balance must be found in man, between the
religious priestly wisdom and the wisdom of Freemasonry. The wisdom
of the future must be brought out of the higher human, which lives
equally in both male and female. To develop what is needed, and what
is completely uninfluenced by things of the physical plane, is the
purpose of the theosophical movement.
Theosophy
is truly male-female wisdom, wisdom which is equally valid for both
sexes. Through the teaching of reincarnation one recognises that what
comes to expression in every new earth life is not the personality of
that particular earth life, but that the causal body, the entelechy,
creates itself asexually. When we become aware of this we are
spiritually quickened with what is higher than the sexual, with what
is independent of the causes of conflict between the two currents.
Thus theosophy is the balancing movement; and it alone can bring
about the balance. Only in theosophy can one speak about an occultism
which applies equally to both sexes; only from this source can one
think of a real balance between the two sexes. Everything else is an
after-effect of the previous dual sexuality.
Freemasonry sets itself the task of preparing for the future. So,
the wholly exclusive principle of former times was abandoned as early
as the eighteenth century. And in 1775 the first of the so-called
Adoption Lodges was founded; a lodge for women, since the law of the
balance of the sexes was recognised. And so the connection was
established between men and women through the founding of a lodge for
women. But every member of a women's lodge had to be adopted by a man
from a men's lodge.
Indeed,
H.P. Blavatsky belonged to such an Adoption Lodge.
(Note 7)
And so this theosophical experiment was made by Freemasonry itself. This
shows you that whatever is correct is always preceded by an experiment;
only the reason why such an experiment is made may not be understood
immediately. However, man can equally not expect that fundamental
forces in the world will always be understood right away. It may be
that one prefers one or the other current; therefore the two currents
will run parallel to each other for a long time yet. In order to
achieve a harmonious balance it may be necessary to pour into
Freemasonry what will lead it over towards the theosophical movement.
Now you
will also grasp why, in the Middle Ages, the Church had to evolve a
quite specific ideal. Freemasonry created its ideal for the future —
the Church created its ideal for the future. It had nothing to do
with Freemasonry. Christ lived in the Church as ideal — a male ideal,
indeed. This male ideal could not suffice for the occult current
within the Church. Man needed the active as well as the passive
[principle]; he had to think out what he lacked. He needed something
which would complete him, as a means of concentration. He was already
a man; he had to think out the woman. The occultist who understood
something about this, who was not a Freemason, must conceive the
woman. Thus did the Cult of Mary spring out of monasticism. This came
to the Church — to the priesthood, and to Freemasonry, that is — as a
third current.
All three
currents had basically the same aim — to make mankind independent of
the sexes. But the way of achieving this aim varied. The Christian
occultist sought the male principle in woman, to embody it in
himself.
One has
to be clear about the fact that the true inner man is independent of
the sexes, which are divisive; that is why one passes through both
sexes during different incarnations. And now you must consider that,
for Freemasonry, the battle on the outer physical plane is waged so
that all individualities which incarnate in female bodies are
gradually led towards the male, so that the male lasts longer than
the female. It should outlast the female, because the female was the
earlier one. This was in the back of the masonic mind, as an ideal;
but it was one-sided.
What
ideal does theosophy have in the back of its mind? The ideal of
theosophy is to use the wisdom that comes from higher planes to bring
about, on the physical plane itself, a human race that is above
sexuality. Therefore theosophy is indeed a wisdom that is not broken
up into [various] religions, that does not rely on any particular
religion but falls back on the primal wisdom that made the world,
that replaces that wisdom which, as priestly wisdom, differentiated
itself into the various wisdoms. It must do this; because, in the
course of time, the priestly wisdom has completed its task.
Theosophy, however, wants to conquer the future, to conquer what
still has to come rather than what has already been; it is in a
particular sense a continuation of the ancient priestly wisdom, of
the Mysteries, and nevertheless, in another sense, is in contrast
with them.
Opponents
of the theosophical movement would be those who want to stick rigidly
to the ancient priestly wisdom, who seek to retain it and, so to
speak, mummify it in its old form. The plan of the higher [worlds]
for world development is to guide evolution towards a modern
spiritual life which will forge the future. The very first blush of
the dawn of the development of a new wisdom — which has to come —
showed at the time when the Rosicrucians brought a new spiritual life
to human development, in the fifteenth century. This was a matter of
a new impulse coming into the world. The theme of this ran, that the
old priestly wisdom should be transformed into a new
[wisdom].
Forces
also existed which wanted to re-conquer the world for the ancient
priestly wisdom; an Order was thus founded with the aim of winning
the earth back for the old priestly wisdom. This Order [the Jesuit
Order] chose the ideal male in contrast to the Cult of Mary. It used
occult powers to erect something like a dam to hold back the whole
stream of independent life, and to conserve what seeks to cling to
the Cross. It championed the male principle, the Cross by itself,
without the roses. However another Order added roses to the Cross,
and new life sprang out of them.
So we
have two modern currents. The one has brought the old into the
present and seeks to check progress with all its might. The other has
surrounded the old Cross with roses. It has grafted a new shoot — the
Cross entwined with roses. These two currents run parallel with each
other, the one order having a Cross without roses, and the other,
which reveres the roses on a new Cross, which must come. These are
the Rosicrucians. The theosophical movement grew out of this current;
it springs from the newly flourishing scion of the rose, which must
mature in the future.
Thus we
have seen how this battle started, in which women were not allowed to
play a part. Our task is to bridge the gulf between the Freemasons
and the Rosicrucians. The work is difficult, but it must be done. It
involves reaching towards the awareness of the higher humanity beyond
sexuality. It is difficult to win through to that, but it is
possible, and this will succeed, this will become reality.
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