III
AT the close of our
last lecture we were able to point out what the specifically
Christian and the later Christian-Rosicrucian initiation first
gives us in a great and significant symbol. We have indicated
the meaning of this symbol, this initiation picture which is
also described as the Son of Man who has the seven stars in his
right hand and the sharp two-edged sword in his mouth. We saw
that this initiation enables a person to have a certain high
degree of vision while within his “I” and astral
body and outside the physical and etheric bodies. We shall
now consider all this still more closely.
Initiation
enables a person to attain that which can only be observed
with spiritual vision, with spiritual eyes, which is only
clear to super-sensible perception, and only in this way can
this be really seen and known. Now one of the first and most
important things a candidate for the Christian initiation has
to know is the development of humanity in our period, so that
he may understand the tasks of man to a higher degree. All
that higher knowledge and higher perfection gives to man is
connected with the question: What am I and what is my task
in this age? The answering of this question is of great
importance.
Every stage
of initiation leads to a higher standpoint of human
observation. Even in the first lecture we were able to point
out that man progresses step by step, first to what we call
the imaginative world, where in the Christian sense he comes
to know the seven seals, then to what we call inspired
knowledge, when he hears the “trumpets.” and
finally to a still higher stage where he is able to
understand the true significance and nature of the spiritual
beings, the stage of the so-called vials of wrath. But let us
now turn our attention to one particular stage of initiation.
Let us imagine that the pupil has reached the stage of
initiation where he experiences what was described at the
close of our last lecture. We shall imagine him just on the
border, between the most ethereal beings of our physical
world and the one above it, the astral world, where he is
permitted to stand as if on a high peak and look down. What
can the pupil see from this first pinnacle of initiation?
In spirit he
sees all that has happened since the Atlantean flood
destroyed ancient Atlantis and the post-Atlantean man came
into existence. He sees how cultural periods follow one
another up to the time when our epoch also will come to an
end and give place to a new one. Ancient Atlantis came to an
end through the waters of the Atlantean flood. Our epoch will
come to an end through what we call the War of All against
All, by frightful devastating moral entanglements.
We divide
this fifth epoch, from the Atlantean flood to the mighty war
of All against All, into seven consecutive ages of
civilization, as shown in the diagram below.
At one end we
imagine the great Atlantean Flood, at the other the great
world war, and we divide this into seven sub-ages, seven
periods of civilization. The whole epoch containing these
seven sub-ages is again the seventh part of a longer period;
so that you have to imagine seven such parts as our epoch
between Flood and War, two after the great war and four
before the flood. Our epoch, the post-Atlantean, is then the
fifth great epoch.
When the
pupil rises to a still higher pinnacle of initiation he
surveys these seven epochs, each with its seven
sub-divisions; he sees them when he arrives at the boundary
of the astral and of the spiritual or devachanic world. And
so it goes on step by step; we shall see later what the still
higher stages are.
Now we must
bear in mind that the pupil is first able to rise to a peak
at which the wide plain of the seven ages of civilization of
the post-Atlantean epoch became visible as if from a
mountain-top. We all know these seven cultural ages. We know
that when the Atlantean flood had swept Atlantis away, the
ancient Indian civilization came as the first, and that it
was succeeded by the ancient Persian civilization. This was
followed by the Assyrian-Babylonian-Chaldaic-Egyptian-Hebrew
civilization, this by the fourth age of civilization, the
Graeco-Latin, which was followed by the fifth, the one in
which we are now living. The sixth, which will follow ours,
will be in a certain sense the fruit of what we have to
develop in the way of spiritual civilization. The seventh age
of civilization will run its course before the War of All
against All. Here we see this terrible devastation of
civilization approaching, we see also the small group of
people who have succeeded in taking the spiritual principle
into themselves, and are rescued from the general destruction
which comes through egoism.
As we have
said, we are now living in the fifth of the sub-ages. Just as
from the summit of a mountain, towns, villages and woods
appear, so do the results of these ages of civilization
appear from the pinnacle of initiation described. We perceive
their significance. They represent what has taken place in
our physical world as human civilization. For this reason we
speak of ages of civilization, in contradistinction to races.
All that is connected with the idea of race is still the
remains of the epoch preceding our own, namely, the
Atlantean. We are now living in the age of cultural epochs.
Atlantis was the age in which seven great races developed one
after another. Of course the fruits of this race development
extend into our epoch, and for this reason races are still
spoken of today, but they are really mixtures and are quite
unlike those distinct races of the Atlantean epoch. To-day
the idea of civilization has already superseded the idea of
race. Hence we speak of the ancient Indian civilization, of
which the civilization announced to us in the Vedas is only
an echo. The ancient and sacred Indian civilization was the
first dawn of the post-Atlantean civilization; it followed
immediately upon the Atlantean epoch.
Let us recall
once more how man lived at a time which now lies more than
eight or nine thousand years behind us. If we speak of the
actual periods of time, then these figures hold good. The
civilization of which we are now speaking was directly under
the influence of the Atlantean flood, or the great glacial
epoch, as it is called in modern science. The engulfing of
Atlantis by the flood was a gradual process, and there then
lived upon the earth a race of men of which a part had worked
up to the highest stage of development possible to be
attained. This was the ancient Indian people, a race which
then dwelt in distant Asia, and lived more in the memory of
the ancient past than in the present. The greatness and power
of the civilization of which written descriptions such as the
Vedas and Bhagavad Gita are only echoes, lies in the fact
that the people lived in the memory of what they themselves
had experienced in the Atlantean epoch. You will remember
that in the first lecture of this course we said that most
human beings of that epoch were capable of developing a
certain dim kind of clairvoyance. They were not limited to
the physical sense world; they lived among divine spiritual
beings; they saw these divine spiritual beings around them.
In the transition from the Atlantean to the post-Atlantean
epoch man's vision was cut off from the spiritual, astral and
etheric worlds and limited to this physical world. In the
first post-Atlantean age of civilization men were possessed
by a great longing for what their ancestors had seen in
ancient Atlantis, on which, however, the door had closed. Our
ancestors saw the ancient wisdom with their own spiritual
eyes, though dimly. They lived among spirits, they had
intercourse with gods and spirits. Such was the feeling of
those who belonged to that ancient sacred Indian
civilization; they longed with all their might to look back
and see what their forefathers had seen, and of which the
ancient wisdom spoke. And thus the land which had just
appeared before the physical vision of man — the rocks
of the earth, which had just become visible, which previously
had been seen spiritually — all this external world
seemed of less value to them than that which they could
remember. All that the physical eyes could see was called
Maya, the great illusion, the great deception, from which
they longed to escape. And the most advanced souls in that
first age could be raised to the stage of their ancestors by
the method of initiation of which a few remnants remain in
Yoga. From this proceeded a fundamental religious mood which
may be expressed in the words, “That which surrounds us
here in external sense-appearance is a worthless and vain
deception, the real and true is above in the spiritual world
which we have left.” The spiritual leaders of the
people were those who could transpose themselves into the
regions in which man formerly lived.
That was the
first age of the post-Atlantean epoch. And all the ages of
this epoch are characterized by the fact that man learned to
understand the outer sensible reality more and more, so that
he came to say: “What surrounds as here and is
perceptible to our outer senses, is not to be considered as a
mere appearance, it is a gift of the spiritual beings, and
the gods have not given us senses to no purpose. That which
forms the foundations on earth of a material world culture
must gradually be recognized.”
What the
ancient Indian looked upon as Maya, from which he fled, from
which he longed to escape, was looked upon by those who
belonged to the second age as their field of action, as
some-thing upon which they had to work. Thus we pass to the
ancient Persian age, which lies about five thousand years
back, that age of civilization in which the earth around man
at first seemed something hostile, but no longer — as
formerly — an illusion from which he had to flee; he
looked upon it as a field of work upon which he had to
imprint his own spirit. The Persian considered the earth
ruled in its material character by evil, by a power opposed
to the good, by the god Ahriman. He controls it but the good
god Ormuzd helps man, when man puts himself in his service.
When he fulfils the will of Ormuzd he changes this world into
arable land of the upper spiritual world, he imprints into
the sensibly real world what he himself knows in the spirit.
In the second age of civilization the physically real world,
the sensibly real world, was a field of work. To the Indian
the sense world was still an illusion or Maya; to the Persian
it was indeed ruled by evil demons, but it was nevertheless a
world out of which man had to drive the evil and bring in the
good spiritual beings, the servants of Ormuzd, the god of
Light.
In the third
age man comes still nearer to the external sensible reality.
It is no longer merely a hostile power which he has to
overcome. The Indian looked up to the stars and said:
“All that is there, all that I can see with external
eyes, is only Maya, illusion.” The Chaldean priests saw
the orbits and positions of the stars and said: “When I
observe the positions of the stars and follow their courses
it becomes to me a script from which I know the will of the
divine spiritual beings. From what I there see I recognize
what the gods intend.” To them the physically sensible
world was no longer Maya but, as the writing of a human being
is the expression of his will, so that which was visible in
the stars of heaven, which lived in the forces of nature, was
to them a divine script. And with love they began to decipher
nature. Thus arose the wonderful star-lore of which mankind
to-day no longer has knowledge; for what is known as
astrology has originated through a misunderstanding of the
facts. In the writing of the stars a deep wisdom was revealed
to the ancient Chaldean priest as Astrology, as secrets of
what his eyes beheld. He considered this as the revelation of
something inward and spiritual.
And what was
the earth to the Egyptians? We need only point to the
discovery of Geometry, when man learnt to divide the earth
according to the laws of space, according to the rules of
Geometry. The laws within Maya were investigated. In the
ancient Persian civilization they ploughed up the earth, the
Egyptians learnt to divide it according to the laws of space,
they began to investigate the laws. Still more; they said:
“The Gods have not left us a writing in the stars to no
purpose, not for nothing have they announced their will to us
in the laws of nature. If we wish to accomplish salvation
through our own work, then in the arrangements we make here
we must produce a copy of what we can discover from the
stars.” If you could look back into the laboratories of
the Egyptian initiates, you would find a different kind of
work from that in the realm of science to-day. At that time
the initiates were the scientists. They investigated the
courses of the stars, they understood the laws of the
position and the orbits of the stars and the influence of
their aspects upon what took place below on the earth. They
said: “When this or that constellation appears in the
heavens, this or that must take place below in the life of
the State, and when a different constellation arises,
something else must take place. In a hundred years' time
certain constellations of a different kind will
appear,” so they said, “and then something
corresponding to these must take place.” It was
predetermined for thousands of years in advance what was to
happen. In this way originated what are called the Sibylline
books. That which is contained in them is not foolishness;
after careful observations the initiates wrote down what was
to happen for thousands of years, and their successors knew
that this should be carried out, they did nothing which was
not indicated in these books for thousands of years according
to the courses of the stars. Let us say some law was to be
made. They did not at that time vote, as is the case with us;
they consulted the sacred books in which was written what
should happen here on the earth, so that it might be a mirror
of what is written in the stars. They carried out what was
written in the books. When the Egyptian priest wrote those
books he knew that his successors would carry into effect
what was written, for they were convinced of the necessity of
law.
Out of this
third epoch of civilization developed the fourth. But a few
remnants of this prophetic art of the Egyptians have been
preserved, such a remnant can still be seen. When they wished
to exercise this prophetic art in ancient Egypt, they divided
the next age into seven parts and said: “The first must
contain this, the second that, the third that,” etc.,
and this was the plan which succeeding generations carried
out. That was the chief characteristic of the third age of
civilization.
The fourth
contained but faint echoes of it. You may still recognize
these in the story of the origin of the ancient Roman
civilization. Aeneas, the son of Anchises of Troy, a city
which flourished in the third age, set out on his wanderings
and came at length to Alba-longa. This name indicates a place
where an ancient sacred priestly culture flourished;
Alba-longa or the long Alba, the place from which a priestly
culture, the culture of Rome was to proceed. We still see the
remains of this in the vesture worn by a Catholic priest
during the celebration of the Mass. A sevenfold age of
culture was sketched out in advance by the priests. The
reigns of the seven Roman kings were outlined beforehand. The
historians of the nineteenth century have been the victims of
a bad joke as regards these seven reigns. They came indeed to
the idea that in the secular material sense there is no truth
in the story of these Roman kings; but they were unable to
discover what lay behind, namely, that this is really a
sketch taken from the Sibylline books, of a civilization
prophetically drawn out in advance according to the sacred
number seven.
This is not
the place to go into details regarding the several kings. You
would be able to see how the several kings, Romulus, Numa
Pompilius, Tullus Hostilius, etc., correspond exactly to the
consecutive cultural epochs according to the seven principles
which present themselves in such different domains.
In the third
age man had been able gradually to penetrate Maya with the
human mind. This was completed in the fourth age of
civilization, the Graeco-Latin, when in the wonderful works
of art man produced a perfect image of himself in the outer
material world, and portrayed in the drama of Aeschylus,
pictures of human fate. Observe on the other hand how in the
Egyptian civilization men still sought the will of the Gods.
The conquest of matter such as we see in the Greek age
signifies another stage, in which man made a step further in
love of material existence; and finally in the Roman age he
completely entered into the physical world. One who
understands this knows also that in this age we must
recognize the full appearance of the principle of
personality. Hence in Rome first appears what we call the
conception of justice, and man as “a citizen.”
Only a confused science is able to trace jurisprudence back
to all sorts of previous ages. What was previously understood
as equity was something quite different. The old law is much
more correctly described in the Old Testament in the Ten
Commandments. What God commanded belonged to the ancient idea
of law. It is absurd in our age to try to trace back the
ideas of law to Hamurabi, etc. True equity and the idea of
man as a citizen, was first actualized in Rome. In Greece the
citizen was still a member of the municipal body. An Athenian
or a Spartan counted for much more as an Athenian or a
Spartan than as an individual. He felt himself part of the
municipality. It was in Rome that the individual first
became a citizen; only then had he reached this stage. This
could be proved in detail. What we now call a testament or
will did not exist in this sense before Roman times. A will
or testament in its present meaning first originated at that
time, because only then did the separate human being become
determinative in his egoistic will, so as to impose his will
upon his successors. Previously other impulses than the
personal will were present which held the whole together.
Thus it could be shown by many examples how man then entered
into the physical world as an individual being.
We are now
living in the fifth age, when culture has descended even
below the level of man. We are living in an age when man is
actually the slave of outer conditions., In Greece the mind
was employed to spiritualize matter; we see spiritualized
matter in the form of an Apollo or a figure of Zeus, in the
dramas of a Sophocles, etc.; there man has emerged as far as
to the physical plane but has not yet descended below the
level of man. Even in Rome this was still the case. The deep
descent below the sphere of the human has only just come
about. In our age the mind has become the slave of matter. An
enormous amount of mental energy has been used in our age to
penetrate the natural forces in the outer world for the
purpose of making this outer world as comfortable a place as
possible for man. Let us compare our age with former ones. In
those ancient times man beheld the vast writing of the gods
in the stars; but with what primitive means were the
attainments of the civilization of that age, the Pyramids,
the Sphinxes, produced? How did man in those days procure his
food? Think of all the conveniences of civilization man has
achieved up to the present day. What an enormous amount of
spiritual energy has been expended to invent and build the
steam engine, to think out the railway, the telegraph,
telephone, etc.! An enormous force of intellect had to be
used to invent and construct these purely material
conveniences of civilization — and to what end are they
used? Does it make any essential difference to the spiritual
life, where in an ancient civilization a man crushed his
grain between two stones, for which naturally very little
mental power was needed, or whether to-day we are able to
telegraph to America and obtain thence great quantities of
grain and to grand it into flour by means of ingeniously
constructed machinery? The whole apparatus is set into motion
simply for the stomach. Try to realize what an enormous
amount of spiritual life-force is put into purely material
culture. Spiritual culture has not yet been advanced very
much by these external means. For example, the telegraph is
very seldom used in anthroposophical affairs. If you were to
make a statistical comparison between that which is used for
the material culture and that which benefits the spiritual
life, you would understand that the spirit has plunged below
the human level and has become the slave of the material
life. Thus we have a decidedly descending path of culture, up
to our age, the fifth age of civilization, and it would have
descended ever more and more deeply. For this reason humanity
had to be preserved by a new impulse from slipping completely
into matter. The earth-being has never before descended so
deeply. A stronger impulse, in fact, the strongest, had to
come to the earth. This was the appearance of Christ Jesus,
who gave the impulse to new spiritual life. We owe to the
mighty impulse which came through Christ Jesus such upward
impelling forces as existed in the spiritual life during the
descent. There were always spiritual impulses present in this
descent into matter. Christian life is only now gradually
beginning to develop. In the future it will rise to a
transcendent glory, because only then will humanity
understand the Gospels. When these are fully understood it
will be seen what an enormous amount of spiritual life they
contain. The more they are disseminated in their true form,
the more will it be possible for humanity, in spite of all
material culture, to develop a spiritual life and rise again
into spiritual worlds.
Now that
which develops from age to age in the post-Atlantean epoch is
represented by the writer of the Apocalypse as being
expressed in small communities. These small communities,
divided in space in the external world, represent to him
these cultural epochs. When he speaks of the community or
Church at Ephesus he intends the following: “I assume that at
Ephesus there was a community which accepted Christianity in
a certain sense; but as everything develops only gradually,
there is always something remaining from each cultural epoch.
In Ephesus we have indeed a school of initiates, but the
Christian teaching is there coloured in such a way that we
can still recognize every-where the ancient Indian
civilization.” He wishes to show us the First Post-Atlantean
Age. Hence this first age he represented by the community at
Ephesus, and that which is to be announced is to be
communicated by letter to the community at Ephesus. We must
represent it approximately thus: The character of that remote
Indian age of civilization of course remained; it continued
in various streams of culture. We find something of this
character in the community at Ephesus, which comprehended
Christianity in such a way that it was still determined by the
typical character of the ancient Indian civilization.
Thus in each
of these letters we have a representative of one of the seven
post-Atlantean ages of civilization. In each letter it is
said: “Ye are so and so. This and that side of your nature
is in accordance with Christianity, but the rest must become
different.” The writer of the Apocalypse says to each
cultural epoch what may be retained, and what no longer
harmonizes and should become different.
Let us see
whether the seven consecutive letters really contain
something corresponding with the character of the seven
consecutive cultural epochs. Let us try to understand what
the tenor of these letters would have to be if they were to
correspond with what has just been said. The writer thinks:
In Ephesus is a community, a church; it has accepted
Christianity but colours it with the tone of the first
cultural epoch — strange to external_ life, not filled
with love for that which is the real task of post-Atlantean
humanity. The one who directs this letter to the community is
satisfied that they had put away the worship of gross
sensuality and turned to the spiritual life. We know what the
writer of the Apocalypse means from the circumstance that
Ephesus was the place where the Mysteries of the chaste Diana
were cultivated; he indicates that the turning away from
matter specially flourished there, the renunciation of the
sensual life and the turning to the spiritual; but, “I have
this against thee, that thou hast left thy first love,” the
love which the first post-Atlantean site should have, which
expresses itself in looking upon the earth as the field in
which the divine seed must be sown.
How, then,
does he who dictates this letter characterize him-self? He
describes himself as the forerunner of Christ Jesus, as the
leader of the first cultural epoch. Christ Jesus speaks as if
through this leader or master of the first age of
civilization, that age when the initiates looked up to the
spiritual world. He says of himself that he holds the seven
stars in his right hand and the seven golden candlesticks.
The seven stars are nothing else than symbols for the seven
higher spiritual beings who are the leaders of the great ages
of civilization. And of the seven candle-sticks we are
expressly told that they are spiritual beings who cannot be
seen in the sense world. Reference is also made to these in
clear words in the Yoga initiation; but he also shows that
man never works according to evolution if he hates external
works, if he ceases to love external works. The community at
Ephesus forsook the love for external works. So it is quite
rightly said in the Apocalypse, “Thou hatest the works of
the Nicolaitanes.” “Nicolaitanes” is nothing else than a
designation for those who express life merely in a material
sense. In the time referred to in this letter there was a
sect called the Nicolaitanes, who considered the external
fleshly sensual life of primary importance. “This you shall
not do,” says the one who inspires the first letter. “But do
not forsake the first love,” says he also, “for inasmuch as
you love the external world you vivify it, you exalt it to
spiritual life.” “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear;
to him that overcometh will I give to eat not merely of the
perishable tree, but of the tree of life.” That is, he will
be able to spiritualize the life of the senses and so elevate
it to the altar of the spiritual life.
The
representative of the second age of civilization is the
community or church at Smyrna. The leader of humanity
addresses this one through his second ancestor, the inspirer
and master of the ancient Persian civilization. The mental
attitude of the ancient Persian was as follows: “There was
once the God of Light who had an enemy, external matter, the
dark Ahriman. At first I was united with the Spirit of Light,
who first was there. Then I was membered into the world of
matter, into which the backward and hostile power, Ahriman,
instilled himself; and now, in conjunction with the Spirit of
Light, I shall work upon matter and embody the spirit in it.
Then, after the evil Deity has been conquered, the good
Deity, the Spirit of Light, will reappear.” “I am the first
and the last, who is killed in material life and made alive
again in the spiritual resurrection.” So we read in the
second letter, “I am the First and the Last, Which is, and
Which was, and Which is to come, He who has become alive
again”
(Rev. I, 8).
It would lead too far to go through
every sentence in this way, but we must consider more closely
the sentence which describes minutely how a person stands as
a member of the community at Smyrna when he transforms it
into the Christian principle. There we read that man gives
life to dead matter, that he spiritualizes it. He is not
destroyed by it. If he were, then death would be an event
loading him to a spiritual life in which the results of this
earthly life could have no place. Let us take a
person who has not lived his life in such a way that he can
gather its true fruits. He takes no fruits with him into the
spiritual life. But only from these fruits can he live in the
spiritual world. If, therefore, he brought with him no fruits
he would experience the “second death.” By working
in this earthly field he is saved from the “second death.”
“He who hath an ear, let him hear what the spirit saith. He that
overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death”
(Rev. ii. 11).
Now we shall
pass on to the community at Pergamos. It is the
representative of the age when humanity came down more and
more to the physical plane, when man saw in the starry script
something that his spirit could understand, something that
was given him in the third age of civilization. Man works by
means of that which is within him. Through his having an
inner being he can investigate the outer world. Only because
he was gifted with a soul could he investigate the courses of
the stars and invent geometry. This was called “exploration
by the word,” and is expressed in the Apocalypse by the “
sword of my mouth.” Hence the one who caused this letter to
be written, points out that the power of this age is an
incisive word, a sharp two-edged sword. It is the Hermes word
of the old priests, the word by which the powers of nature
and the stars were explored in the old sense. That was the
civilization gained primarily by means of the inner astral
soul-forces of man in the physical world. If it were still
achieved in that old form, it would verily be a two-edged
sword, for then wisdom would be perilously near the edge
between white and black magic, between that which leads to
blessedness and that which ends in destruction. Therefore he
says he well knows that where the representatives of this
age dwell, there also is Satan's seat. This indicates all
that could lead astray from the really great purposes of
evolution; and the teaching of Balaam is none other than the
teaching of the black magicians. For that is the teaching of
the devourers of the people. The devourers of the people, the
destroyers of the people, are the black magicians who work
only in the service of their own personality and therefore
destroy all brotherhood, they devour everything which lives
in the people. But the good side in this civilization
consists in man's beginning to purify and transform his
astral body. This is called the “hidden manna.”
That which is merely for the world, transformed into the food
of the gods, that which is only for the egotistical man
transformed into the divine, is called the “hidden
manna.” All the symbols here indicate that man purifies
his soul so as to make himself into the pure vehicle of Manas
or the Spirit Self. To this end, however, it is still
necessary to pass through the fourth age of civilization, for
then the Saviour appears, Christ Jesus himself.
The community
at Thyatira. Here he announces himself as the “Son of
God,” who has “eyes like flames of fire and feet
like brass.” He now announces himself as the Son of
God. He is now the leader of the fourth age of civilization,
when man has descended to the physical plane, when he has
created his image even in the media of external culture. The
period has now come when the Deity himself becomes man,
becomes flesh, becomes person; the age in which man descended
to the stage of personality, where in the sculptures of the
Greeks the individualized Deity appears as personality, where
in the Roman citizen personality comes into the world. At the
same time this age had to receive an impulse through the
Divine appearing in human form. Man, who had descended,
could only be saved through God Himself appearing as man. The
“I Am” or the “I” in the astral body
had to receive the impulse of Christ Jesus. That which
previously only existed as a germ, the “I” or the
“I Am,” was to appear in history in the outer
world. The Son of God may therefore, as the leader of the
future, say, “And all the churches shall know the
‘I Am,’ which searches the minds and
hearts”
(Rev. ii. 23).
Stress is here laid upon the
“I Am,” upon the fourth principle of the human
being. “As I have received from my Father; and I will
give him the morning star”
(Rev. ii. 28).
What does the
morning star mean? We know that the earth passes through the
conditions of Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus and
Vulcan. That is the way it is usually expressed, and it is
quite correct. But I have already pointed out that the
Earth-evolution is divided into the Mars period and the
Mercury period on account of the mysterious connection
existing in the first half of the earth-evolution between the
earth and Mars, and in the second half between the earth and
Mercury, so that in the place of Earth (the fourth period of
evolution) we some-times put Mars and Mercury. We say that
the earth in its evolution passes through Saturn, Sun, Moon,
Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus. And the most potent stellar
force in the second half of the earth is seen in Mercury.
Mercury is the star representing the directional force, the
upward tendency in which man must be enveloped. Here I come
to a point where a little secret, so to say, must be
unveiled, one which may only be divulged at this point. The
teachers of spiritual wisdom have always had what might be
called a mask for those who would only have misused it,
especially in bygone times. They did not express themselves
directly, but presented something which was intended to
conceal the true state of affairs. Now the esotericism of the
Middle Ages resorted to drastic measures and called Mercury
Venus, and Venus Mercury. In truth if we wish to speak
esoteric-ally, as the writer of the Apocalypse has done, we
must speak of Mercury as the morning star. By the morning
star he meant Mercury. “I have given the direction
upwards to thine ‘I’ or ego, to the morning star,
to Mercury.” You may still find in certain books of the
Middle Ages which describe the true state of affairs, that
the outer stars of our planetary system are enumerated thus:
Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Earth, and then comes, not as it is
now, Venus, Mercury, but the reverse, Mercury, Venus.
Therefore it says here, “Even as I received of my
Father. And I will give him the morning star”
(Rev. ii. 27, 28).
And now we
have come to our own epoch, the one to which we belong and
have to ask: Is this Revelation fulfilled right into our own
age? Were it to be fulfilled, he who has spoken through the
four preceding ages would have to speak to us, and we should
have to learn to understand his voice and become familiar
with our task for the spiritual life. If there is to be a
spiritual movement and if it is to understand the mysteries
of the universe, then, in so far as it is to agree with the
Revelation of John, it must fulfil what the speaker, this
great Inspirer, demands of this age. What does he demand and
who is he? Can we know him? Let us try.
(Rev. iii. 1):
“And unto the Angel of the Church in Sardis
write.” (We must feel that we ourselves are spoken to
here.) “These things saith he that hath the seven
Spirits of God, and the seven stars.” What are the
seven Spirits and the seven stars?
In accordance
with the concept of the writer of the Apocalypse, man as we
know him is an outer expression of the seven human principles
we have enumerated. These are the principle of the physical
body, of which the external physical body is the expression,
the principle of the life body whose expression is the
etheric body, the principle of the astral body. This last
when transformed yields Spirit Self, the transformed etheric
body, Life Spirit, and the transformed physical body, Spirit
Man; in the centre is the “I”-principle. These
are the seven spiritual constituents in which the divine
nature of man is displayed as in the members of a leader.
According to the technical expression used in occultism these
seven principles are called the seven Spirits of God in man.
And the seven stars are those from which we understand what
man is to-day and what he is to become in the future. The
consecutive stars of the incarnations of the earth, Saturn,
Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan, are the seven
stars which make the evolution of man comprehensible. Saturn
gave to man the plan for his physical body, the Sun that of
his etheric body, the Moon that of his astral body, and the
Earth has given him the “I” or Ego. The next
three — Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan — develop the
spiritual being of man. If we understand the call of the
spirit who has these seven stars and the seven Spirits of
God, the sevenfold nature of man in his hand, then we shall
be studying Anthroposophy in the sense of the writer of the
Apocalypse. To study Anthroposophy is to know that the writer
is here referring to the fifth age of human evolution in the
post-Atlantean epoch, to know that in our age, when man has
descended most deeply into matter, we are again to ascend to
spiritual life by following the great individuality who gives
for our guidance the seven Spirits of God and the seven
stars, in order that we may rightly proceed on our path.
And if we
follow this path we shall bring into the sixth age the true
spiritual life of wisdom and of love. The spiritual wisdom we
have acquired will become the impulse of love in the sixth
age, which is represented by the community expressing itself
even in its name, the community of brotherly love, or
Philadelphia. All these names are carefully chosen. Man will
develop his “I” to the necessary height, so that
he will become independent and in freedom show love towards
all other beings in the sixth age, which is represented by
the community at Philadelphia. In this way the spiritual life
of the sixth age will be prepared. We shall then have found
the individual “I” within us in a higher degree,
so that no external power can any longer play upon us if we
do not wish it; so that we can close and no one without our
will can open, and if we open no opposing power can close.
These are the Keys of David. For this reason he who inspires
the letter says that he has the key of David: And to the
Angel of the community in Philadelphia write: These things
saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key
of David, he that openeth, and no man shutteth; and shutteth
and no man openeth. ... Behold, I have set before thee an open
door, and no man can shut it”
(Rev. iii. 7)
— the “I” that has found itself within itself.
In the
seventh age those who have found this spiritual life will
flock around the great Leader; it will unite them around this
great Leader. They will already belong so far to the
spiritual life that they will be distinguished from those who
have fallen away, who are lukewarm, “neither cold nor
hot.” The little flock which has found spirituality
will understand him who may then say, when he makes himself
known, “I am he who contains in himself the true final
Being towards which everything is steering.” For this
final Being is described by the word, Amen. “And unto
the Angel of the church of Laodicea write: Thus saith the
Amen, he who in his being presents the nature of the
end”
(Rev. iii. 14).
So we see
that in the Apocalypse of John is presented the contents of
an initiation. Even the first stage of this initiation, where
we see the inner progress of the seven post-Atlantean ages,
where we still see the spirit of the physical plane, shows us
that we are dealing with an initiation of the Will. For this
book can inspire our will at the present time when we know
that we ought to listen to the inspirers who teach us, when
we learn to under-stand what the seven stars and the seven
Spirits of God signify, when we learn that we ought to carry
the spiritual knowledge into the future.
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