Ancient Myths And Evolution Part 4

physical descent in the centre. For the idea of heredity plays far the greatest role in the theory of evolution. It is a onesidedness. Men are thoroughly satisfied with such onesidedness, for people think nowadays that in this way one can be very learned. So one can, with quite arbitrary explanations of things, drawn apparently from deep logic, but in reality from misty vagueness.

Yesterday we saw an example of how whole literatures are written because men have lost the connection of a concept with the original experience from which the concept proceeded: the Cross-symbol. A whole literature has been written about it, the cross has been related to everything imaginable. We saw yesterday to what it must be related. The same has been done in regard to many other things and people think themselves very profound when they do it.

I will remind you of one case, my dear friends.

Just think how infinitely important many men think themselves nowadays when they believe that they are speaking as we have spoken here today!

There are a fair number of people who say - in

fact they very frequently use the words - Oh, one can read it any moment in the papers (with respect be it spoken) - 'the Letter kills, but the Spirit gives life'. And with this, one thinks one has said something most profound. But one should inquire about the origin of such a saying. It goes back to those times when one had living concepts which indeed still had a connection with what had been undergone and experienced. When one talks today there is little connection - especially between the word and its place of origin. If you want to have a right connection between words and sentences and their origins, then I advise you to read the little book in which 'Swiss-German Proverbs' have now been collected. For one still finds in these popular proverbs an original harmonizing of what is said with the direct experience. The letter ... by this is meant, as you know, the letter-script in contradistinction to the ancient kind which the Imaginative life drew out of the spirit, as we described yesterday. This ancient spirit gave life, and the livingness in that epoch of human evolution resulted in the Imaginative atavistic clairvoyance. But there was a consciousness that

this epoch must in turn be succeeded by another, that the letter must come which kills the ancient livingness.

And now bring that into connection with all that I have said about the actual nature of consciousness in connection with death. For it is the letter that kills but that also brings the consciousness which must be overcome again through another consciousness. The sort of disdainful rejection that modern journalistic folly attaches to the proverb 'the letter kills but the spirit gives life' is not what is meant, but the sentence is connected with impulses of man's evolution. It implies approximately: In ancient times, Imaginative times, Osiris times, the spirit kept the human soul in a state of dulled livingness, in later times the letter called forth consciousness. That is the interpretation of the sentence, that is what it originally meant. And in many instances, Just as in this one, men today are very ready with opinions, with arbitrary explanations, because they do not connect anything with them.

This does not prove that it is false what the modern profound scientific method has to say about the idea of heredity, it is only that the other pole must be added when one speaks of heredity.

If man points to his childhood, and back from childhood to birth, if he asks himself 'What do I carry within me?' - then the answer is: what parents and ancestors have carried within them and transmitted to me! There is, however, another way of looking at the human being which present- day man does not as yet practise, which the man of the future must practise, and which must be put in the centre of pedagogy, the art of Education. This is not the looking back at having been younger, but the right consideration of the fact that with every day in life one becomes older. As a matter of fact modern mankind only understands that one has once been young. It does not really understand how to grasp realistically that one gets older with every day. For they do not know the word that must be added to the word heredity when one sets the becoming-older opposite the having-been- young. If one looks to one's childhood one speaks of what one has inherited; in the same way, when

one looks towards the getting-older one can speak of the other pole; as of the Gate of Birth, so one can speak of the Gate of Death. There arises the one question: What have we gained through our forefathers by entering this life through the Gate of Birth? There arises the other question: What perhaps do we lose, what becomes different in us through the fact that we are approaching coming times, that we get older with every day? What is it like when we consciously experience the becoming-older-with-every day?

That, however, is a demand on our age. Humanity must learn to become older consciously with every day. For if man learns consciously to become older with every day, then this really means a meeting with spiritual beings, just as it means a descent from physical beings, that one is born and possesses inherited qualities.

I will speak next of how these things are connected: of that important inner impulse which must draw near the human soul, if the soul is to find what is so necessary for the future, what alone can round out and complete the one-sided

teachings of Natural Science.

Then you will see why the new Isis Myth can stand beside the old Osiris-Isis Myth, why both together are necessary for the men of today; why other words must be combined with the words which resound from the Statue of Isis at Sais in ancient Egypt: 'I am the All; I am the Past, the Present, the Future; no mortal has lifted my veil' ...

Other words must sound into these; they may no longer echo one-sidedly into the human soul today but in addition must resound the words: 'I am Man, I am the Past, the Present and the Future.

Every mortal should lift my veil.'

Today I have set before you more riddles than solutions. We will, however, speak of them further and the riddles will then be solved in manifold ways.

Lecture IV 8th January, 1918.

We will try to go more fundamentally into those matters connected with the question which has just been raised. The question was: What impulses of human life must enter especially into the consciousness of man today so that a counterweight may be created to the principle of heredity that prevails almost exclusively - whether in science or in general life? This extraordinarily important question, however, can only be approached slowly and gradually. It is, in fact, most deeply connected with the contrast that I wished to bring before your spiritual eyes in showing how one can look towards the old Egyptian inscription of Isis: 'I am the All. I am the Past, the Present, the Future; no mortal has yet lifted my veil' - and how on the other hand one

can take into one's consciousness the words which from the present on into the future must be the complementary saying: 'I am Man. I am the Past, I am the Present, I am the Future. Every mortal should lift my veil.'

Now above all one must realize that in the age when that saying arose in the Egyptian culture, it was still plain and clear that when one spoke of 'immortal' one spoke actually of man himself. In the Egyptian culture, however, the mystery as a principle of the Mysteries, was a deeply rooted principle. The Egyptian who was acquainted with his civilization knew that what lives as 'immortal'

within the soul, must be awakened. Yes, contrary to our custom of today, the Egyptian, as too the Greek, at least the Greek thinking in the sense of Plato, really only considered a man to be a partaker of immortality, who had consciously grasped the spiritual world. You can read the proof of this in my 'Christianity as Mystical Fact' where I quoted the often harsh-sounding expressions of Plato for the difference between men who seek to grasp in the soul the impulse of the immortal, the

spiritual impulse, and those men who disdain this, who neglect to do so. If you think this over, you will easily see that the saying on the Statue at Sais actually meant: He who will never seek to grasp the spiritual life of the soul cannot lift the veil of Isis; he however can lift it, who grasps the spiritual life, who therefore (in the Egyptian sense, today it sounds rather different) as 'mortal' makes himself 'immortal'. There was no intention of saying that the human being as such cannot lift the veil of Isis, but only that one who binds himself exclusively to the mortal element, one who will not approach the immortal element, cannot lift the veil. Later on when the Egyptian culture fell more into decadence the saying drifted into quite a wrong interpretation. As the priests transformed the Mystery-principle into a power-principle, they actually sought to instill into the laity - not the priesthood - that they, the priests, were the 'immortals' and those who were not priests were the 'mortals'. That is to say, all those standing outside the priesthood cannot raise the veil of Isis.

One might say that in the decadent age of Egyptian culture this was the interpretation: 'I am

the All; I am the Past, the Present, the Future; only a priest can lift my veil.' And the priests moreover called themselves the 'immortals' in that age of decadence.

The use of this expression then came to an end for men living on the physical plane; it is only still in use in the French Academy where, following the Egyptian priest principle, specially important persons are made 'immortals'. (One is reminded of it at this time because Bergson, the Sch.e.l.ling and Schopenhauer plagiarist, is about to be raised to the rank of Immortal by the French Academy.

Such things are left over from ages in which they were understood, and flow into times where the words, concepts and ideas are far removed from their source.) There are many things that must be said in the course of these observations and it might easily be thought that their purpose is merely to blame our times. I have often emphasized that that is not the case. What is said here is said to characterize the times not to criticize them. Where, however, truth is to be spoken it cannot be expected that no

mention will be made of things that have simply got to be seen through, whether for their emptiness or for their harmfulness. In fact one is fully justified in saying: ought it then to deserve censure if one follows a certain example - naturally at a great distance - an example that cannot be sufficiently followed? It is not related in the Gospel that Christ-Jesus went into the Temple and flattered the merchants; it is something else that we are told - that he overthrew the tables and so on! In order really to promote what must be promoted it is essential to indicate what, in accordance with the facts, must be censured if the age is to progress. The sentimentality of painting everything in glowing colours must not find entry into the human soul, nor even be blazoned forth as universal human love.

If one takes this properly into consideration, it can be said on the one hand that we are now living in the materialistic age, to which is added abstraction in the sense we have come to know it, namely estrangement from reality; furthermore, all that must break into our age catastrophically is

connected with this divorce from reality. On the other hand, however, it may also be said that compared with the various periods of post- Atlantean times - if we keep to these - our fifth period is in a certain respect and from certain aspects the greatest age, one that brings most of all to humanity, one that harbours within it immense possibilities for the evolution and existence of mankind. And precisely through what man develops very specially in this age as shadow-side of the spiritual life, he takes the way, and can, if he proceeds rightly, find the way into the spiritual world. In particular he can find the way to his true, his highest human goal. Evolutionary possibilities are in our time very great, greater from a certain aspect than they were in former phases of post- Atlantean evolution. In point of fact, something of immense significance occurred with the entry of this fifth post-Atlantean-period. We must transplant ourselves in a new way, my dear friends, into the connection of man with the whole universe, if we wish to give the right colouring, the right nuance of feeling to something we have often brought forward from various viewpoints.

The clever ones in Philisterium, to be sure, call it 'superst.i.tion' if one speaks of a certain connection of man with concrete constellations of the cosmos.

One must only understand this connection rightly.

Superst.i.tion - what is superst.i.tion? The belief that the physical human being must in a certain way take his direction from the universe? We go by the clock, which we regulate from the position of the sun; every time we look at the clock we practise astrology. We have subconscious members of our human nature which take their direction from other constellations than those we go by when in physical life we set our clock by them. If things are understood rightly, talking of superst.i.tion has not the slightest sense, and so by way of ill.u.s.tration a portion of this World-Clock shall now be set before your soul. We will use it as a means of further studying the riddle that was first propounded.

Now when the time of the flooding of Atlantis, the submergence of Atlantis, which separates our post- Atlantean culture from the Atlantean culture, had pa.s.sed by, the first post-Atlantean culture-epoch

arose. This was a time which received its macrocosmic influence in such a way that the force which flowed through earthly life was the one which corresponds to the rising of the sun at the vernal equinox in the sign of Cancer. Thus we can say: when the sun entered the sign of Cancer at the vernal equinox the first post-Atlantean civilization began. We can actually call it the 'Cancer-civilization' - if the expression is not misunderstood. If we grasp things in their true light then we can say: when the sun rose in the Spring it stood in the sign of Cancer.

We have spoken in these observations of how there is always something in man which corresponds to what is out in the macrocosm.

Cancer, the Crab, corresponds in man to the thorax. So that, speaking macrocosmically one can characterize this first, ancient Indian culture by saying that it took its course while the vernal equinox of the Sun was in Cancer. If one would characterize it microcosmically one can say: it took its course when man for his knowledge, perception and view of the world stood under the

influence of those forces which are connected with what comes to expression in the Crab, in the envelopment of his chest, in his chest-cuira.s.s. As physical human beings today we are not able to enter into a perceptive and sensitive relation with the world through the forces that are in our 'crab'.

We have no possibilities of this today. If man can develop the forces that have an intimate relationship to his thorax, if, as regards the forces of his thorax he is sensitive to all that goes on in nature and in human life, then it is as if he came into direct touch with the outer world, with all that approaches him as elemental world. If we only take the relation of man to man - in this we touch upon what underlay the original Indian culture - in that early time a man who met another felt through the sensitivity of his thorax, as it were, what was the nature of the other. He felt how the other man could be sympathetic to him, or more or less antipathetic. He met the other man and learnt to know him. As he breathed the air in his neighbourhood, he learnt to know him. Yes, indeed, my dear friends, in many respects to its advantage, modern mankind knows nothing of

this! But in the neighbourhood of every human being man naturally breathes differently. For in every man's neighbourhood one shares the air out- breathed by the other. Modern men have become very insusceptible to these things. During the first post-Atlantean culture, the Cancer-culture, this insensitivity did not exist. A human being could be sympathetic, antipathetic through his breathing.

The thorax moved differently when the person was sympathetic or antipathetic. And the thorax was sensitive enough to be aware of its own movements.

Think, my dear friends, how one then actually perceived! One was aware of the others, but one was aware of them through something that took place in oneself. One perceived the inner nature through a process that one experienced inwardly as something bodily. That was during the 'Cancer- culture'; I have used the ill.u.s.tration of one human being meeting with another. But the whole world was regarded in the same way. Thus arose the world-conception of this first post-Atlantean culture-epoch. A man breathed differently when he

beheld the sun, when he beheld the dawn, the spring, the autumn, and he formed his concepts accordingly. And as modern humanity forms its abstract, its straw-like abstract, not even straw, but paper-abstract concepts of sun, moon and stars, growth and thriving, of everything imaginable, so, in the first post-Atlantean period, the Cancer- culture, mankind formed concepts which were felt in this direct way, as a co-vibrating of one's own 'Cancer', one's own thorax.

One can therefore say: if this represents the path of the sun and here the sun in spring stands in Cancer, then this is the time when the human being too is in the Cancer-culture. In a special way every such Zodiacal constellation is related to a particular planet, is to be regarded as belonging to it. (This arises from reasons which we can perhaps mention presently but which are indeed known to most of you.) Cancer is to be regarded as belonging particularly to the moon. Since the

forces of the moon work in quite a special way when it stands in Cancer, one says: the moon has its home, its house, in Cancer, its forces are there, and there they come to development very particularly.

Now just as in the human being the thorax corresponds to Cancer, so does the s.e.xual sphere correspond to the planetary moon. In fact one can say that whereas on the one hand man was so susceptible, so receptive and sensitive in the first post-Atlantean epoch, all intimate concepts of the post-Atlantean world-conception which have come to light are concerned, precisely in the first post- Atlantean epoch, with the s.e.xual sphere. At that time this was right, for a naivete then existed which in later, corrupt ages was no longer there.

Then the sun entered the Sign of Gemini, the Twins, at the Vernal Equinox. And then as long as the Vernal Equinox continued to be in Gemini, we have to do with the second post-Atlantean culture- epoch, the original Persian. A relation with the macrocosmic Gemini is shown microcosmically in all that concerns man's symmetry, especially the

symmetric relationship of the right hand and the left. There are of course other instances of our being symmetrical, for instance we see things only singly, with our two eyes. This state of symmetry, this co-operation of the left and the right, which is shown in particular in the two hands and arms, this corresponds in the macrocosm to the Twins, to Gemini.

Now, that which man takes into his life through the forces of the Gemini-sphere, the forces of his symmetry, to make into his world-conception - just as what I earlier characterized was taken in through the thorax in the first post-Atlantean time - is less closely connected with the immediate surroundings. The fact of being symmetrical connects man more with what lies distant from the earth, with what is not terrestrial, but celestial, cosmic. Hence in this second post-Atlantean age the close connection with the direct elemental surroundings of earth withdraws, there appears the Zarathustra culture. This Zarathustra culture turned towards the cosmos and what is to be found there of the Gemini nature - on the one hand to

the Light-nature, on the other hand to the Darkness nature; the Twins-nature, this is connected with the forces which man expresses through his symmetry.

Just as the Moon has its house in Cancer, so has Mercury its house in Gemini (see Diagram 2). And just as in the first post-Atlantean epoch the force of the s.e.x-sphere helped man, as it were, to reach that intimate relation with the surrounding world of which we have spoken, so in this second post- Atlantean epoch help was given from the Mercury-sphere, the sphere connected with the forces of the lower body. On the one hand man's forces pa.s.s away from the earth into the outer universe, but in this, as it were, man is helped by something still much tinged with atavistic forces, namely, by what is connected with the forces of his vascular, his digestive system. Man has not really a digestive system just for digesting, it is at the same time an instrument of knowledge. These things have only been forgotten. And real judgment - not the sagacity I have discussed lately - real discernment, the really deeper gift of

combination which stands in connection with the objects, this does not proceed from the head, but from the lower body, and was of service to this second post-Atlantean period.

Then came the third; this was the age when the sun at the Vernal Equinox entered Taurus, the Bull.

The forces which descend from the universe when the Sun at the Spring equinox stands in Taurus are connected microcosmically in man with all that concerns the region of the larynx, the forces of the larynx. Hence in this third post-Atlantean epoch the Egypto-Chaldean, the human being developed, as his special organ of knowledge, all that concerned the forces of the larynx. The feeling of relationship between the word and the object, particularly the things out in the universe, was an especially strong one in the third post-Atlantean time. Today in the age of abstractions one cannot form much idea of the intimate relation of what men knew of the cosmos through his larynx.

Again, the force which corresponds to Taurus was a.s.sisted through Venus, which has its house in the Bull (see Diagram 2). This corresponds in the

microcosm, in man, to forces which lie between the regions of the heart and the stomach. In this way, however, what the third post-Atlantean epoch knew as the Cosmic-word, was intimately linked with man, inasmuch as he understood it through the Venus-forces which were in his own being.

Then came the Greco-Latin time, the fourth post- Atlantean epoch. The sun entered Aries, the Ram, at the Vernal Equinox. This corresponds to the head-region in man, the region of the brow, the upper head, the actual head-region. The time began in which man mainly sought to grasp the world through understanding and this relationship to the world brought him thoughts. Head-knowing is quite different from the earlier forms of knowing. In this epoch head-knowledge came to especial prominence. But in spite of the fact that the human head is a true copy of the macrocosm, precisely because in a physical sense it is this true copy, in a spiritual sense it is really of very little value. Forgive the remark - as physical head, the human head is not of very much value. And when man depends upon his head, he can really arrive at

nothing else than a Thought-Culture. And so the Greco-Latin time, which as we have seen from other aspects laid special stress on the head, and brought man thus into a special relation with the universe, gradually evolved into an actual Head- and Thought-Civilization which ran its course and came to its end. So that from the 15th century onwards, as I pointed out yesterday, people no longer knew how to connect thinking with reality.

This head-civilization, this Aries-culture, however, meant that observation of the universe was taken into the human being. And as regards the physical world it was the most perfected and complete. It is only what developed from it as a decadent condition that became materialistic. Man in this Aries-civilization formed a special relation to the surrounding world precisely through his head. It is particularly difficult today to understand the Greek culture - that of the Romans became more philistine and commonplace - when one does not realize, for instance, that the Greek had a different perception of concepts and ideas. I have dealt with this in my The Riddles of Philosophy.

It was full of significance for this age that Mars has its house in Aries. The forces of Mars are those again, but in a different way, that are connected with man's head-nature. So that Mars, who at the same time gives man aggressive forces, particularly offered support to all that he developed as a relation to the surrounding world through his head-nature. In the fourth post- Atlantean epoch, which begins in the 8th century B.C. and ends in the 15th century A.D., those conditions were developed which one can describe as a Mars-civilization. The configuration of the different social structures spread over the earth arose in this age essentially through a Mars- culture, a warlike culture. Wars nowadays are behind the times. Although they may be more terrible than formerly, yet they are stragglers, out of date. We shall be speaking of this immediately.

Now the head of man with all its forces, purely as physical thinking-instrument, as instrument for physical thoughts, is an image of the starry heavens. Therefore thoughts in this fourth post- Atlantean time had still something macrocosmic in

them, thoughts were not yet bound up with the earth. But think of the great revolution that now comes with the 15th century when the Aries- culture pa.s.ses over to the Pisces (the Fishes) Culture. What the Pisces forces have become in the macrocosm are the forces in man that are connected with the feet. There is a transition from head to feet; the swing-over is an immense one. I was therefore able to say that if you went back with understanding into the time before the 14th century and read the alchemical and other writings so much despised today, you would see what deep, what vast insight there then existed into cosmic mysteries. But the whole human culture - human forces too - made a complete revolution. What man had formerly received from the heavens, he now received from the earth. This is what is shown us from the celestial constellations as the great swing-over that had been accomplished for man.

And this is connected with the beginning of the material, the materialistic age. Thoughts lose their power, thoughts can easily become empty phrase in these times.

But now consider something else that is remarkable. As Venus has her house in Taurus, Mars his house in Aries, so in Pisces Jupiter has his house. And Jupiter is connected with the development of the human brow, forehead. Man can become great with this earth-culture in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch, precisely because in an independent human manner he can enn.o.ble and grasp through the forces of his head that which was brought to him from the opposite side in earlier post-Atlantean periods. Hence Jupiter has to perform the same service to man in the fifth epoch as Mars had to perform in the fourth. And one could say that in a certain respect Mars was the rightful King of this world in the fourth post- Atlantean age. In the fifth he is not the rightful king of this world because nothing can really be attained through his forces in the fifth post- Atlantean epoch - in the sense of this fifth epoch.

On the other hand what can make this epoch great must be brought about from the forces of the spiritual life, world-knowledge, world-conception.

Man is shut off from the heavenly forces, he is confined in the materialistic period. But in this

fifth post-Atlantean age he has the greatest possibility of making himself spiritual. No age has been so favourable to spirituality as this fifth epoch. Courage must only be found to drive the money-changers out of the Temple. Courage must be found to confront with the real, abstractions and things estranged from reality, to set against them full reality and therewith the spiritual reality.

Those who have read the constellations of the stars have also always known that certain help comes from particular planets for the various sections in the path of the sun. With a certain justification to each of these constellations - Moon-Cancer, Mercury-Gemini, Venus-Taurus, Mars-Aries, Jupiter-Pisces - have been a.s.signed three decanates, as they are called. These three decanates represent those planets which have the mission, during a particular constellation, of very especially intervening in destiny, while the others are less active. Thus the decanates of the first post- Atlantean age, the Cancer-age, are Venus, Mercury, Moon; the decanates during the Gemini- age: Jupiter, Mars, Sun; the decanates during the