LECTURE 6
We saw yesterday how the facts of the Cosmos proceed from the
spiritual life of Beings who stand above man. Especially such a
phenomenon as the one we introduced towards the end of our last
lecture, the fight in heaven, which has left, so to speak, so many
‘corpses’ on the field of battle between Jupiter and
Mars, which as planetoids are still being discovered by physical
science in ever-increasing numbers; such a phenomenon must be of
particular importance to us, and we shall have to return to it again:
We shall see how this event is also reflected in certain processes of
the earth's evolution, and how precisely in the beginning of
the Bhagavad Gita we find the earthly reflection of this fight in
heaven.
But to-day we shall continue our studies so as to describe, though in
a sketchy way, those other beings of the spiritual Hierarchies, whom
we have indicated already, but whom yesterday we omitted. These are
the Beings who, counting upwards, stand nearest to man, and are
called in Christian Esotericism: Angels, Archangels, Primeval
Beginnings or Primeval Forces; also Angeloi, Archangeloi, and Archai.
In theosophical literature the Archangels are also called Spirits of
Fire, and the primeval Beginnings, spirits of Personality.
These Beings who stand, as it were, in between man and those others
to whom we referred yesterday as reaching up to Jupiter, Mars, etc.,
naturally stand in a nearer relation to man on the earth itself.
First we have the Angels or Angeloi. They passed through their human
stage during the evolution of the ancient Moon, and are fundamentally
speaking, only as far on during our present earth evolution as man
will be during the Jupiter evolution. They stand one stage higher
than man. What is the task of these Beings? Their task can be
realised when we take into account the development of man upon earth.
Man develops from incarnation to incarnation. Our human evolution as
it is now, reaches back through the ancient Atlantean time, through
the Lemurian time and really begins in the ancient Lemurian time.
This evolution through all these incarnations will continue for a
long time yet, till towards the end of earthly evolution when other
forms of human development will have come in. Now you know that what
we call the eternal nucleus or kernel of the human being, the
individuality, continues from incarnation to incarnation. But you
also know that the greater number of people have to-day no
recollection, no consciousness, as yet of their incarnations, and men
do not as yet remember what happened to them during their former
incarnations. Only those who have developed a certain degree of
clairvoyance can look at their past incarnations.
What sequence would there be between a man's incarnations upon
earth when he cannot remember his former incarnations, if certain
beings were not there to connect the separate incarnations, and watch
the progress of the individual from one incarnation to the other? We
have to assign one of these Beings to each man, a being who,
being one stage higher, can lead the individuality over from one
incarnation to the other. These are not the beings who rule Karma
[but] preserve the memory from one incarnation to the other, so long
as the man is not himself aware of it. These Beings are the Angels.
Each man is a personality in each incarnation, and over each man a
being watches, who has a consciousness which passes from one
incarnation to the other. This makes it possible that in certain
inferior grades of initiation, man is able, even if he does not
himself know anything about his past incarnations, to ask his Angel
about them. This is quite possible for certain lower degrees of
initiation. The Beings who, as Angels, are one stage higher than men,
have to keep watch over the whole human thread of life, which is spun
for each single individuality from one incarnation to another.
Now, we pass on to the next group of Beings, to the Archangels —
Archangeloi or Fire Spirits. These do not occupy themselves with
separate men, with the single individual, but have a wider task; they
bring single lives into harmonious order with the life of larger
human groups, as, for instance, nations, races, etc. Within our
earth's evolution the Archangels’ task is to bring into
certain harmonious relationship each single soul with the national or
race-soul. For those who penetrate into spiritual knowledge, the
souls of races are something quite different from what they are for
the lovers of the abstract in the science of to-day, or for present
day culture in general. On a certain territory, (let us take Germany,
France or Italy) live so and so many people, and because the physical
eye sees only so many external human forms, such lovers of the
abstract can imagine what is called the Soul of a nation or Spirit of
a nation only as a comprehensive general idea of a nation. For the
lover of abstractions the separate man only is real, not the soul of
the nation, not the spirit of the nation. For one who truly sees into
the inner working of spiritual life, that which is called the
nation's soul or spirit, is a reality. In the soul of a nation
there lives and weaves what we call a fire-spirit or an Archangel; he
regulates, so to speak, the relation between separate men and the
nation or races as a whole
Then we rise to those beings whom we designate the Spirits of
Personality, primeval beginnings, primeval forces, or Archai. These
are still loftier Beings, who have a still higher task in the
continuity of human existence. Fundamentally speaking, they regulate
the earthly relations of whole human generations on earth, and they
live in such a way that, on the waves of time, from epoch to epoch,
they transform themselves at certain definite periods, they assume
other spiritual bodies. Here again, you all know something of that
which for the lovers of the abstract, is merely an idea, but which is
a reality for those who can look into actual spiritual existence; it
is that which is given a truly ugly name — the spirit of the
time. You have here to do with that which represents the meaning and
the mission of an epoch of humanity; picture to yourselves that we
could describe the meaning and the mission of, for instance, the
first thousands of years immediately after the Atlantean catastrophe.
This ‘Spirit of the Age’ comprises something which
reaches beyond single nations, beyond single races. Such a spirit is
not limited to this or that nation, it goes beyond the limits of
nations. That which one really calls a ‘Zeit geist’ or
Spirit of an epoch is the spiritual body of the Archai or the
Primeval Beginnings or Spirits of Personality. It is to these Spirits
of Personality that one has to ascribe the fact that within certain
epochs, certain definite personalities appear on our earth. You
understand, do you not, that earthly tasks have to be solved by
earthly personalities; in a definite epoch, some epoch-making
personality has had to appear. A strange muddle would come into the
evolution of the earth if it were all left to chance, and Luther or
Charlemagne were placed within any epoch, no matter which. This must
be thought out first, the connexion with the whole evolution of
humanity over the whole earth, has to be thought out; the right soul
has to appear in harmony with the meaning of the whole earth's
development. This is regulated by the Spirits of Personality, the
Archai or primeval origins.
And when we get beyond the Archai, we reach to those Beings whom we
touched on yesterday, the so called Powers, — Exusiai, whom we
also call the Spirits of Form. Here we have to do with tasks that
reach beyond the earth. We differentiate in the course of human
development a Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan
evolution. We have now seen how all that happens within the earth
itself is regulated by the Angels as regards the individual men, by
Archangels as regards the relation between individuals and the large
masses of humanity, and by the Spirits of Personality for the whole
development of man, from the Lemurian period up to the period when
man will again be so largely spiritualised that he will hardly belong
to the earth. But something else has yet to be regulated. Humanity
will have to be guided from one planetary condition to another.
Spiritual Beings must also exist, whose care it is during the whole
earth evolution to see that when that evolution will have come to an
end, humanity may pass in the right manner through a Pralaya and find
its way to the next goal, to the Jupiter goal. These are the Powers
or Spirits of Form; yesterday we characterised their task from above
downwards, now we characterise them from below upwards. The spirits
whose care it is to see that the whole of humanity should be led from
one planetary condition to another, are the Powers, Exusiai or
Spirits of Form.
We must now make a certain disclosure about the Cosmic position of
these Beings. In spiritual science, in that which it is desired to
continue to-day in Anthroposophy, and which is at bottom [of] the
Wisdom of the Mysteries, these different Beings of the heavenly
Hierarchies have always been spoken of as we have spoken of them
to-day. We heard yesterday that the present Saturn represents the
limit up to which reached the action of the Thrones or Spirits of
Will; Jupiter, the limit up to which the Dominions, Spirits of
Wisdom, acted; and Mars, the boundary line up to which reached the
influence of the Mights, Dynamis or Virtutes, or Spirits of Motion.
We may now characterise in a similar way how the Beings we named
to-day divided specially the realms over which they held sway within
our solar system. We must here touch on something which will perhaps
call forth a certain amazement, even in you, who are already in a
certain way schooled Anthroposophists, but which is absolutely in
accordance with the truth. In the school curriculum of the present
day, it is indicated that once upon a time, in grey antiquity, before
Copernicus, there had been a conception of our Solar system which is
known as the Ptolemaic System. People then believed that the earth
stood in the centre of our system, and that the planets coursed round
it, as they appear to do to our ordinary physical sight. Since
Copernicus one knows — at least so people say — what
people did not know formerly, that the Sun stands in the middle and
that the planets circle around it, in their respective ellipses. But
that which ought to be made quite clear and precise to people by such
a description of our solar system, if one sincerely and honestly
expounds it in the present day sense, is still something quite
different. One ought to say: up to Copernicus, people knew only
certain forms of movement in Universal space, and according to these,
they judged how it could be with our solar system. What Copernicus
did is not that he, so to speak, took a chair and gazed into space to
see how the sun stands in some point of a circle or ellipse and how
the planets turn around it; but he made a calculation, and this
calculation explains what is seen in a simpler way than the former
calculation did. The Copernican world system is nothing but the
result, the product, of thought. Let us look at it once from the
point of view of the Ptolemaic. Let us consider that the Sun stands
in the middle, let us calculate where the places of the planets must
be, and then search whether it coincides with experience. Certainly,
for mere physical observation, it coincides at first completely.
Certainly one has built upon it all sorts of world systems, the
Kant-Laplace system, for instance; but there one reaches a point
where there were continual discoveries, a point which is no more
scientifically quite honest. For later on, by purely physical
observation, two planets have been added to it —
we have not touched on them yet, but later we will show what they
signify for our system — these are Uranus and Neptune. When one
describes this world system one certainly should turn people's
attention to the fact that in reality these two planets Uranus and
Neptune, very much impair the truth of the calculation. If one
accepts the Kant-Laplace system, then, according to it, Uranus and
Neptune should move with their moons as the other moons move around
the other planets. But they do not; we even have among those outer
planets, these two lately discovered planets, one which behaves in a
very strange way. In reality, if the Kant-Laplace system is correct,
somebody must, after having split off the rest of the planets, [have]
turned the axis in such a way that it revolved at 90°, for its
course is different from that of the other planets. These two differ
greatly from the other planets of our solar systems. We shall see
later how it is with them, but now we simply call attention to the
fact that with the Copernican system we have only to do with a
calculation, with something established as an hypothesis, as an
assumption, at a time when man had gone completely adrift from the
perception of spiritual co-relations and of what lies spiritually at
the foundation of external happenings. But the old Ptolemaic system
is not merely a physical system, it is one which was still derived
from spiritual observation, when one knew that planets are boundary
marks for certain realms where the higher Beings held sway. We must
design our whole solar planetary system in a different way if we are
to characterise these realms of control correctly. I shall draw this
planetary system for you as it was expounded in the Mystery Schools
of Zarathustra. We could just as well turn to other Mysteries for
counsel, but we shall specially select this system for the
explanation of our solar system with its planets, in respect of the
spiritual Beings who are active within.
[In order to make this paragraph of use to the ordinary student it
has been necessary to depart from the version as it stood in the
reported text. The difference lies in the calculation of the dates.
The conclusion to be drawn is approximately the same. We know Christ
came during Pisces, which began 270 B.C. Add 2150 years and we get
the following: —
2420 B.C. as the beginning of Aries,
4570 B.C. as the beginning of Taurus,
6720 B C. as the beginning of Gemini.
Since our year 1881 we are under Aquarius. In other words:
Gemini begins 6720 B.C. down to 4570 B.C.
Taurus begins 4570 B.C. down to 2420 B.C.
Aries begins 2420 B.C. down to 270 B.C.
Pisces begins 270 B.C. down to 1881 A.D.
In the System of Zarathustra something was accepted which differs
from our observation of the heavens. You know that one can observe a
certain progress of the Sun — call it apparent or otherwise: —
through the Zodiac during the course of long years. It is generally
said — and it is correct — that from about the year 270
B.C. the sun in spring rose at the first point of spring in the
Zodiacal sign of Pisces. But every year the sun advanced a little
further, so that in the course of long, long epochs of time, it
traverses, as regards its point of rising through the whole of one
Zodiacal sign. Before 270 B.C. it did not rise in Pisces but in
Aries, with its rising point in spring-time, it travelled through the
whole sign of Aries during 2150 years. Before that, Taurus had been
the Zodiacal constellation in the spring during the previous period
of 2150 years. And if we go back to five or six thousand years B.C.,
we find the spring-point in the Zodiacal sign of Gemini. That was the
time in which the Mystery Schools of Zarathustra flourished.
Far back into hoary antiquity these Schools flourished and, when
speaking of the appearance of the heavens, they calculated everything
according to the constellation of Gemini, so that if we wanted to
draw the Zodiac in the way we characterised it yesterday, we should
have to place the constellation of Gemini here at the top. Then one
would have to draw, in direct connection with the Zodiac, that which
bounds the realm of the Thrones or Spirits of Will, the boundary of
which is Saturn. Then we come to the boundary limit of the realm of
those spiritual Beings whom we call the Spirits of Wisdom — the
utmost boundary being Jupiter. Then we reach the limit of the realm
of the Spirits of Motion of which the limit is Mars. We have seen
that between these lies the battlefield which the fight in Heaven has
left behind. Now if we want to divide the realms
of power correctly, we must draw the boundary line of the Sun. Thus,
just as we draw Mars as the boundary point up to which is the domain
ruled by the Mights and Spirits of Motion, we must draw the Sun
itself as marking the
| Image 4 Click image for large view | |
limit to which the Lordship of the Powers or the Spirits of Form
extends. And then we come to the boundary which we designate with the
sign of Venus. The realm of the Spirits of Personality or Archai
reaches to Venus. Next we come to the boundary of the realm, the
limit of which is marked by the sign of Mercury, and is the realm of
those Beings, whom we call Archangels or Fire Spirits. And now we
come very near the earth. We can now designate the realm which has
the Moon for a landmark, and here we draw the earth.
You must look on the earth as the Starting Point surrounded by a
region under the dominion of certain Beings which reaches to the
Moon. Then comes a region extending as far as Mercury, then one
extending to Venus, and then one to the Sun.
You may be astonished at the sequence in which I have placed the
planets. When the earth is here, and the Sun there, you would have
thought that I should draw Mercury in the vicinity of the Sun, and
Venus here. But no! For these Planets have had their names
interchanged, in later Astronomy. That which is called Mercury to-day
was called Venus in all ancient teachings, and that which is called
Venus was called Mercury. Thus, note it well, one does not understand
the ancient writings when one takes that which in them is called
Venus or Mercury for the Venus or Mercury of the present day. That
which is said about Venus has to be applied to the Mercury of to-day,
and what is said about Mercury to Venus. For those two designations
were later interchanged. On the occasion when man turned the world
system topsy-turvy, when the earth was deprived of its central
position, the perspective was not only changed, but the designations
of Mercury and Venus were also changed.
Now you will very easily bring into harmony what
is drawn here with the physical or Copernican theory. You need only
think: here is
(),
the Sun; around it turns Venus; further
around it circles Mercury. Then the Moon turns round the earth. Then
Jupiter revolves around it, then Saturn. You must think of the
physical movements of each planet revolving round the Sun; but you
can imagine such a position when the earth
(),
so to say, stands here and the other planets have revolved so, that
on their way they find themselves behind the Sun. Thus if I drew it,
it would be so; we draw our usual physical system, we draw the Sun as
the one burning point, and let Venus, Mercury and the Earth with her
Moon revolve round it. These are Earth, Venus, Mercury, according to
the ancient designation. The next following is Mars, then after the
Planetoids comes Jupiter, then Saturn. Now imagine it so that whilst
(),
the earth stands below, and Mercury and Venus follow, that then Mars
(),
stands there above, Jupiter
(),
there, and so on. Now you have the Sun, and Mercury, and the Venus of to-day
(),
here. It is plausible, that if those planets can take all sort of
positions towards each other, they might also have once stood thus.
This is how the Copernican system is drawn, only a point of time is
chosen, when the Earth, Mercury and Venus are on the one side of the
Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, the other planets, on its other side.
This is what I have drawn, and nothing else. Here are Earth, Mercury,
Venus, on the one side, and on the other side, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn.
Thus, we have to do only with a change of perspective. This system is
quite possible but only when this constellation was there. It is a
fact that it was there at a certain epoch, when Gemini was above
Saturn. Then one could observe clairvoyantly with particular
exactness the connections between the regions in which the Spiritual
Hierarchies hold sway. It was then revealed that around the Earth, up
to the Moon, was the sphere of the Angels. In fact when one does not
use the physical system as a foundation, one gets around the earth up
to the Moon, the sphere of the Angels, up to Mercury the sphere of
the Archangels, up to Venus that of the Archai or Spirits of
Personality, and lastly up to the Sun is the realm of the Exusiai or
Spirits of Form. Then comes the sphere — as I characterised it
yesterday — of the Virtutes or Mights, then the sphere of the
Dominions, and then that of the Thrones.
When one speaks of the Copernican and of the Ptolemaic systems, one
must have it clear in one's mind that in the Ptolemaic system
something still remains of the constellation of ruling Spirits, and
there the Earth must be taken as the starting point of the
perspective. A future will come when this world system will again be
the correct one; because Man will again know about the Spiritual
World. It is to be hoped that men will be then less fanatical than
they are to-day
To day, it is said: ‘Before Copernicus, people all talked
nonsense, they all had a primitive world system. Since Copernicus we
at last know what is right. All else is false, and because the
Copernican system is the right one it will be taught in all ages,
even if it were for millions of years.’ This is more or less
the talk of the day. There hardly ever existed such superstitious
folk as are the modern astronomical theorists; and there hardly ever
was such fanaticism as there is in this domain of science. It is to
be hoped that future generations will be more tolerant and that they
will say: ‘From the fifteenth or sixteenth century men ceased
to be conscious of the existence of the spiritual world, and that one
must have other perspectives in the spiritual worlds, that there, one
must arrange the heavenly bodies into a different order than when one
observes in a merely physical way.’ Formerly that was done, but
the time came when men considered the order and regulation of the
heavenly bodies only from the physical point of view. ‘We can
do this also,’ will cry the men of the future, and from the
sixteenth century onwards it was quite correct. ‘Men had for a
time to overlook the spiritual world but then people bethought
themselves again and recollected that there was a spiritual world,
they then returned to the original spiritual perspective.’ It
is to be hoped that the men of the future will comprehend that there
also was once an astronomical Mythology, and will not look upon our
times with the same disdain with which the men of the modern
superstitions look upon their forefathers.
We see that the Copernican system became different, simply because
merely physical standpoints were taken into account in relation to
it. Before that, in the Ptolemaic system, there were still remnants
of a spiritual point of view. Only through taking into consideration
the other system, can one form any idea of the rulership and the
action of the spiritual Beings within our solar-planetary-system. We
keep to physical conditions when we say: Up to the Moon the Angels
exercise their power, up to Mercury the Archangels, to Venus the
Spirits of Personality, up to the Sun the Powers, as far as to Mars
the Mights. Then come the Beings we call the Dominions, and here
lastly the Thrones. We need only draw in other lines to designate the
physical system, then we have in these lines the limits of the realms
of power of the Hierarchies. As regards spiritual activities it is not
our Sun at all which stands in the centre of the system, but the
earth. Therefore, all the ages which have regarded spiritual
development as the most essential part, have said: Certainly the Sun
is a far nobler heavenly body, Beings have evolved upon it who stand
higher than man; but that with which evolution is concerned is man,
who lives upon the earth. And when the Sun withdrew from the Earth,
it did so in order that man should develop in the right way. If the
Sun had remained united to the earth man could never have been able
to progress at the right tempo. This was possible only because the
Sun withdrew along with those Beings who could bear quite different
conditions. It left the earth to itself, so to speak, so that man
might find his tempo for his own development. A world system grows
into this or that according to the point of departure — the
perspective chosen. If one asks, where is the centre of our world
system, seeing in it only what the purely physical senses can
observe, then it is found in the Copernican system. If one asks about
the arrangement of our solar system as it depends on the regions
ruled over by the spiritual Hierarchies, we must place the earth as
its centre, we then get other boundary lines; the planets then become
something quite different, they become limits for the region over
which each spiritual Hierarchy holds sway.
And now you will easily be able to see the correspondence between
what has been just said about the spacial distribution of each sphere
of influence, with that which has been said about the task and
mission of each group of Beings.
The Beings who are nearest to the earth, who hold sway in the
immediate surroundings of the earth up to the Moon, are the Angels.
From that region they guide the life of each single Individual as it
progresses from incarnation to incarnation.
But something more is needed in order that whole masses of nations
may be distributed in accordance with their mission upon earth. A
little thought will reveal that co-operation with the cosmos is here
necessary. It really depends on cosmic, not earthly conditions,
whether a nation has one sort of character or another. Only think how
a race with different qualities, for instance in hair and in skin,
acts otherwise than another race would do; here we have the
interactions of conditions which must be regulated from heavenly
spaces. This is done from a region whose lordship extends up to
Mercury, to the boundary of the Archangel's sphere of action.
Further, when the whole of humanity as it develops upon earth has to
be guided and led, this has to be effected from still wider heavenly
spaces, from that which extends as far as to Venus by the Archai.
When further, the task of the earth itself has to be led and guided,
this must be done from the centre of the whole system. I have said
that our humanity evolves through Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter,
Venus, and Vulcan. The Beings of the spiritual Hierarchies, who
direct the mission of humanity carrying it on from one planet to
another, are the Powers, the Spirits of Form. They must dwell in a
very special place, they are of such a nature that their sphere of
power reaches up to the Sun. The Sun already existed as a special, a
particular globe alongside the ancient Moon; it is now near the
earth, in the future it will be near Jupiter. Its realm of power
extends beyond the single planets. Therefore the existence of the
Sun must be bound up with those spiritual Beings whose realm of
action also extends beyond the single planets. The Sun is a very
special and perfect globe for this reason, that up to it extends that
realm of power which stretches beyond the single planets.
Thus you see that in reality we do not find the outer spheres or
dwelling places of the Hierarchies so much on the single planets as
in the regions which are limited by the orbits of the planets. If you
think of the whole surrounding space from the earth up to the Moon,
it is filled with Angel-activities; and if you think of the spheres
from the earth to Mercury, it is filled by the activities of the
Archangels, and so on.
Thus we have to do with the spheres of space; and the planets are the
landmarks for realms of the spacial activities of the higher Beings.
We see that a continual, progressive line of perfection is to be
sought from man upwards. Man himself is chained to the earth. That
eternal part of him which goes from incarnation to incarnation is
guided by Beings who are not bound only to the earth, but who
traverse the surrounding air and that which lies beyond it up to the
Moon. And so on further.
Now, man has been engaged on his evolution upon earth since primeval
times, and his relationship towards his whole evolution upon earth,
is exactly similar to the relationship between the small child and
the grown-up person. The latter teaches the small child. It is the
same as regards the Hierarchies in the cosmos. Man, who is chained to
the earth, only gradually struggles through to the knowledge he
needs, to the cleverness which is necessary to him upon earth. Higher
Beings must teach him. What must happen so that this object can be
gained? In the beginnings of the earth's existence, Beings who
were otherwise not bound to the earth, had to come down from higher
spheres. And that really happened. Beings who otherwise needed only
to live in the surroundings of the earth had to come down so as to
communicate to men what they already knew as the older, more perfect
members of the Hierarchies. They had to incarnate into human bodies,
not for their own development, for they did not need it, just as a
grown-up man does not study the A.B.C. for his own progress, but so
as to teach it to these small children. Hence, we look back into old
Atlantean and old Lemurian times, when Beings descended from the
surrounding realms of the earth to which they belonged and incarnated
in human bodies and became the teachers of mankind. These are Beings
who belonged to higher Hierarchies, to Mercury and Venus. The sons of
Venus and of Mercury descended from above and became the teachers of
young humanity, so that these men, wandering in the midst of that
young humanity, really represented Maya or illusion. There have been
such men. Let us suppose, in order to explain it more precisely: some
normally developed man of the Lemurian times met such a man.
Externally he did not appear very different from others, but a spirit
had entered into him whose realm extended as far as Mercury or Venus.
Thus, the exterior of such a man represented in reality Maya, an
illusion. He looked like other men, but he was something quite
different: he was a son of Mercury, or of Venus.
In the early dawn of humanity there were such apparitions. The sons
of Mercury or of Venus came down and wandered among men, so that they
now received within them the character of the Beings of Mercury and
Venus. We have said that the Beings of Venus are the Spirits of
Personality. Such Beings walked the earth as men, being outwardly
limited to narrow human personalities, but who with their mighty
power guided humanity. These were the great conditions of lordship in
Lemurian times, when sons of Venus guided the whole of humanity. The
sons of Mercury guided parts of humanity. They were as powerful as
those are now whom we call spirits of nations or of race.
Maya or illusion does not only exist in the world but also as regards
men. A man as he stands before us can have an external appearance
which is a truth, which corresponds precisely to his soul; or else it
may be a Maya; he has in reality a task, which corresponds to the
task of the sons of Mercury or of the sons of Venus. This is what is
meant, when it is said, that fundamentally the great guiding
individualities of ancient times as they walked the earth with their
ordinary names, represented a Maya, and that was what H. P. Blavatsky
meant when she pointed out that the Buddhas represented Maya. You can
find this very word in the Secret Doctrine. These things are derived
in every respect from the teachings of the holy Mysteries: we have
only to understand them.
We are now obliged to ask: How does it happen then that such a son of
Venus descends to us? How does it happen that a Bodhisattva can live
upon earth? The Being of a Bodhisattva, the Being of a son of
Mercury, forms an important chapter in the evolution of our earth
which has to do with its connexion to the Cosmos itself. Therefore,
to-morrow we shall have to consider the nature of the sons of Mercury
and of Venus, of the Bodhisattva or Dhyani-buddhas.
|