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EGYPTIAN MYTHS AND
MYSTERIES
Lecture 2
The Reflection of Cosmic Events
in the Religious Views of Men
September 3, 1908
by
Rudolph Steiner
YESTERDAY we looked at certain connections in the spiritual relationships of the
so-called post-Atlantean time. We saw how the first cultural epoch of this
period will repeat itself in the last, the seventh; how the Persian culture will
repeat itself in the sixth; and how the Egyptian culture, which will occupy us
during the next few days, repeats itself in our own lives and destinies in the
fifth period. Of the fourth culture, the Greco-Latin, we were able to say that
it occupies an exceptional position in that it experiences no repetition. Thus
we could point in a sketchy way to the mysterious connections in the cultures of
the post-Atlantean time, which follows after the time of the Atlantis that
perished through powerful water-catastrophes. This age that follows Atlantis
will perish in turn. At the end of our fifth great epoch, the post-Atlantean,
there will be catastrophes that will work in a way similar to those at the close
of the Atlantean epoch. Through the War of All Against All, the seventh culture
of the fifth epoch will find its conclusion. These are interesting connections
that are indicated in certain repetitions, and when we follow them more closely
they will throw light into the depths of our soul life.
In order to lay a proper foundation, we must today allow still other repetitions
to pass before our mind's eye. We will let our glance rove far into the
evolution of our earth, and we will see that these wide horizons must have an
intimate interest for us.
But let us begin with an admonition, a warning against a mechanical approach to
the repetitions. When in the realm of occultism we speak of such repetitions,
saying that the first cultural epoch repeats itself in the seventh, the third in
the fifth, etc., it is easy to let a certain gift for combinations get the upper
hand, so that we try to apply such schemes or diagrams in other contexts also.
It is easy to believe that we can do this, and many books on theosophy actually
contain a good deal of rubbish of this sort. Hence there must be a strong
warning that such combinations are not controlling, but only perception,
spiritual vision, without which we go astray. Such combinations must be warned
against. What we can read in the spiritual world may be understood, but not
discovered, through logic. It can be discovered only through experience.
If we wish to understand the cultural epochs more clearly, we must achieve a
general view of the evolution of the earth as it presents itself to the seer who
can direct his spiritual gaze to the events of the most remote past. If we look
far back into the evolution of the earth, we can say that our earth has not
always appeared as it does today. It did not have the firm mineral base of
today; the mineral kingdom was not as it is today; the earth did not bear the
same plants and animals, and men were not in such a fleshly body as they have
today; men had no bony system. All that was formed later. The farther we look
back, the nearer we come to a condition which, if we could have observed it from
cosmic distances, we would have seen as a mist, as a fine etheric cloud. This
mist was much larger than our present earth, for it extended as far as the
outermost planets of our solar system and even farther. It included a
far-reaching nebular mass, wherein was contained all that went into the
formation of the earth, and also of the planets and even of the sun.
If we could have examined this mass of mist closely, if an observer could have
approached it, it would have seemed to be composed entirely of fine etheric
points. When we see a swarm of gnats from a distance, it looks to us like a
single cloud; close-up, however, we see the single insects. Thus, in the most
remote past, the mass of our earth would have appeared, although then it was not
material in our sense but was condensed only to an etheric condition. This
earth-formation consisted of single ether-points, but something special was
connected with these ether-points. Had the human eye been able to see these
points, it would not have seen what the clairvoyant would have seen or what he
actually sees now when he looks back. Let us make this clear by a comparison.
Take the seed of a wild rose, a fully developed seed. What does one see who
observes this? He sees a body that is very small, and if he did not know how a
rose seed looked he would never imagine that a rose could grow from it. He would
never derive this from the mere form of the seed. But a person who was endowed
with a certain clairvoyant capacity would experience the following. The seed
would gradually disappear from his sight, but to his clairvoyant eye would
appear a flower-like form growing spiritually out of the seed. It would stand
before his clairvoyant view, a real form, but one that could be seen only in the
spirit. This form is the archetype of what later grows out of the seed. We would
err if we believed that this form was exactly like the plant that grows from the
seed. It is not at all like it. It is a wonderful light-form, containing streams
and complicated formations. One could say that what later grows out of the seed
is only a shadow of this wonderful spiritual light-form beheld by the
clairvoyant.
Holding fast to this picture of how the clairvoyant sees the archetype of the
plant, let us now return to the primeval earth and the single etheric points. If
now, as in the previous example, the clairvoyant contemplated such an etheric
point in the primeval substance, there would arise for him from the point (as
from the seed in the previous example) a light-form, a beautiful form, which in
reality is not there but rests slumbering in the point. What is this form that
the seer perceives, looking back at the primal earth atom? What is it that
arises? It is a form that is different from physical man, as different as is the
archetype from the physical plant. It is the archetype of the present human
form. At that time the human form slumbered spiritually in the etheric point,
and the whole earth-evolution was necessary in order that what rested there
might develop into present-day man. Many, many things were necessary for this,
just as much is also necessary for the seed. This seed must be sunk in the
earth, and the sun must send its warming rays, before it can develop itself into
a plant. We will gradually understand how these points became men if we make
clear to ourselves all that has happened in the meanwhile.
In the primeval past all the planets were connected with our earth. However, we
will first consider the sun, moon, and earth because they are of special
interest to us. At that time our sun, our moon, and our earth were not separate,
but were all together. If we could stir these three bodies together like a broth
in a great world-kettle, and if we thought of this as one cosmic body, we would
have what the earth in its original condition was — sun plus earth plus moon.
Naturally, man could live there only in a spiritual condition. He could live
only in this condition because what is in the present sun was then united with
the earth. For a long, long time the cosmic body contained our earth, sun, and
moon within itself, as well as all the beings and forces connected with them. In
those times man was still only present spiritually in the primal human atom.
This changed only in a time when something important occurred in
world-evolution, when the sun split off and became a separate body, leaving
earth and moon behind. After this, what was formerly a unity appears as a
duality, as two cosmic bodies, the sun and the earth-plus-moon. Why did this
occur?
All that happens has, naturally, a deep meaning, and we understand this when,
looking backward, we find that there dwelt on earth at that time not only men
but also other beings of a spiritual nature who were connected with them. These
were not perceptible to the physical eye but were nevertheless present, as truly
present as men and the other physical beings. Thus, for example, there are
connected with our earth, living in its environs, beings whom Christian
esotericism calls angels, Angeloi. We can best conceive these beings if we
reflect that they stand at the stage at which man will be when the earth
completes its evolution. Today these beings are already as far along as man will
be at the end of his evolution on earth. A still higher stage is occupied by the
archangels, Archangeloi, or Spirits of Fire, beings whom we can perceive when we
direct our glance to what concerns entire peoples. Such concerns are guided by
the beings called archangels or Archangeloi. A still higher type of being is
called the Primal Beginnings or Archai or Spirits of Personality. We find these
when we look at whole epochs of time and at many peoples, with all their
connections and contrasts, contemplating what is usually called the Zeitgeist or
Spirit of the Time. When we examine our own time, for example, we find that it
is guided by higher beings called Archai or Primal Beginnings. Then there are
still higher beings called, in Christian esotericism, Powers or Exusiai or
Spirits of Form. Thus there are innumerable beings connected with our earth who
are related to man in a sort of ladder of successive stages.
If we begin with the mineral and rise from the mineral to the plant, from the
plant to the animal, and then to man, man is the highest physical being, but the
others are also there; they are among us and permeate us. In the beginning of
things, when the earth emerged from the womb of eternity as a sort of primeval
mist, all these beings were bound up with the earth, and the clairvoyant would
have seen how other beings pervade this picture at the same time as the human
form. These were the beings named above, and beings of still higher types such
as the Virtues, Dominions, Thrones, Cherubim, and finally the Seraphim. All of
these beings were intimately connected with that powerful etheric dust, but they
are at various stages of development. There are those whose sublimity man cannot
fathom, but others are closer to him.
Since these beings were at different stages, they could not go through their
evolution in the same way as man. A dwelling place had to be created for them.
Among these high beings there were some who would have been greatly handicapped
had they remained bound to lower beings. Therefore they split off. They took the
finest substances out of the mist and built their dwelling in the sun. They
created their heaven there, and there they found the proper tempo for their
evolution. Had they remained in the inferior substances that they left behind in
the earth, they would not have been able to continue their evolution. This would
have hindered their development like a lead weight. This shows how material
occurrences, such as the split in the cosmic substance, do not proceed from
merely physical causes but rather from the forces of beings who need a site for
their development. It happens because they must build their cosmic house. We
must emphasize that spiritual causes lie at the foundation.
Man remained behind on the earth-plus-moon, and with him higher beings of the
lowest hierarchy, such as angels and archangels, as well as beings who stood
lower than man. But a single mighty being, who was already ripe enough to
migrate to the sun, sacrificed himself and stayed with earth-plus-moon. This was
the being who was later named Yahweh or Jehovah. He left the sun and became the
leader of affairs on earth-plus-moon. Thus we have two dwelling-places: the sun
and earth-plus-moon. On the sun were the most exalted beings, under the
leadership of an especially high and sublime being whom the Gnostics attempted
to conceive under the name Pleroma. We must picture this being as the regent of
the sun. Yahweh is the leader of earth-plus-moon. We must make it especially
clear that the noblest loftiest spirits went out with the sun, leaving the earth
behind with the moon. The moon was not yet split off; it was still within the
earth.
How should one conceive this cosmic event of the separation of the sun from the
earth? Above all, one must feel the sun and its inhabitants to be the most
august, pure, and sublime element that was formerly connected with the earth,
whereas earth-plus-moon was the lower element. At that time its condition was
still lower than that of our present earth. The latter stands higher because
there came a later period during which the earth unburdened itself of the moon
and its grosser substances, in the presence of which man could not have
developed further. The earth had to expel the moon.
Just before this, however, was the darkest and most dreadful time for our earth.
Everything with a noble evolutionary disposition came under the control of bad
forces, so that man could progress further only by eliminating the worst
conditions of existence along with the moon.
We must realize that a sublime light-principle, that of the sun, was opposed to
the principle of darkness, that of the moon. Had one clairvoyantly observed the
sun, which had already withdrawn, one would have seen the beings who wished to
inhabit it, but also something else would have been perceived. What had
withdrawn itself as the sun would have shown itself not only as a cluster of
spiritual beings, nor would it have appeared as something etheric, for that
belongs to a coarser realm; it would have appeared as something astral, as a
mighty light-aura. What one would have sensed as a light-principle, one would
have seen as a shining aura in cosmic space. The earth, through allowing this
light to go forth, would suddenly have appeared densified, though not yet coming
to a firm mineral consistency. A good and an evil, a bright and a dark
principle, stood opposed to each other at that time.
Now let us see how the earth looked before it expelled the moon. It would be
entirely wrong to think of it as resembling our present earth. The core of the
earth was then a fiery seething mass. This core would have appeared as a nucleus
of fire surrounded by powerful water-forces, although these would not have been
like our water of today, for they contained the metals in fluid form. In the
middle of all this was man, but in entirely different form.
Thus the earth appeared when it expelled the moon. Air was not to be found on
the earth; it simply was not there. The beings then existing needed no air; they
had an entirely different breathing system. Man had become a sort of
fish-amphibian, but he consisted of soft fluid material. What he sucked into
himself was not air but what was contained in the water. This is approximately
the way the earth looked at that time. We must see that the earth at that time
was in a lower condition than at present. It had to be so. Otherwise man could
never have been able to find the right tempo and the means for his evolution, if
the sun and moon had not separated themselves from the earth. Had the sun
remained in the earth, everything would have gone too fast; whereas everything
would have gone too slowly with the forces that now work on the moon. As the
moon withdrew from the earth amid tremendous catastrophes, there prepared itself
slowly what we may call the separation of an air-sheath from the water-element.
Air was then entirely different from the air of today, for all kinds of vapors
were still contained in it. But the being that was then gradually preparing
itself was a sort of sketch of the man of today. We will describe all this more
fully later.
We have learned to know man in three relationships. First, as he lived in
earth-plus-sun-plus-moon with all the higher beings in a single cosmic body.
Here he presented himself to the clairvoyant eye in the way described above.
Next we see him under unfavorable conditions on earth-plus-moon. Had he remained
in this condition, he would have become a malicious and savage being. When the
sun had separated itself, there was the contrast of the sun on one side and
moon-plus-earth on the other side. The sun, in all its streaming glory,
glittered as a great sun-aura in space. On the other side remained
earth-plus-moon with all the sinister forces that drag down the nobler elements
in man. A twofoldness arises, which is followed by a threefoldness. The sun
remains as it is, but the earth separates itself from the moon. The grosser
substances withdraw and man remains behind upon the earth.
Looking at the third period, man feels the forces as a threefold principle. He
asks: Whence come these forces? In the first period man was still connected with
all the high forces of the sun. The forces that developed in the second period
then went out with the moon. Man felt this as a redemption, but he had a memory
of the first period in which he was still united with the sun-beings. He learned
to know what longing was; he felt himself to be a cast-off son. With the forces
that had gone out with sun and moon he could feel himself as a son of the sun
and of the moon.
So, our earth evolved from a unity to a duality to a trinity: sun, earth, and
moon.
The time when the moon split away, when man first received the possibility of
developing himself, is designated as the Lemurian epoch. After great
fire-catastrophes had terminated this Lemurian epoch, our earth gradually
entered a condition that could produce the relationships prevailing in ancient
Atlantis. The first beginnings of land emerged from the water-masses. This was
long after the moon broke away, yet it was only because of that breaking-away
that the earth was able to evolve as it did.
In Atlantis man was entirely different from today, but he had reached the point
where he could move about within the air-sheath as a soft, swimming, floating
mass. Only gradually did he develop a bony system. About the middle of Atlantis
he had progressed so far as somewhat to resemble our present form.
But in Atlantis man had a clairvoyant consciousness. Our present consciousness
developed only in much later times, and if we wish to understand the man of that
time we must bear this clairvoyant consciousness in mind. We can understand this
best through a comparison with the consciousness of today. Today man perceives
the world from morning to evening by means of his senses. Through his
sense-activity he continually receives impressions of sight, hearing, etc. But
at night this sense-world sinks into an ocean of unconsciousness. For the
occultist, this is really not so much a lack of consciousness as a lower grade
of consciousness.
At this point we must make it clear that today man has a double consciousness, a
bright day-consciousness and a sleep or dream consciousness. This was not at all
the case in the first Atlantean times. Let us examine the alternation between
waking and sleeping in those early times. During a certain period man dipped
down into his physical body, but he did not perceive objects in the same sharp
outlines as today. If we picture ourselves walking through a dense fog when the
street lamps seem surrounded by a light-aura, we will have a rough idea of the
Atlantean's object-consciousness. For the man of that time, everything was
surrounded by such a fog; everything was as though enveloped in mist. That was
the look of things by day. By night things looked entirely different, although
still not the same as today. When the Atlantean went out of his body, he did not
sink into unconsciousness but found himself in a world of divine spiritual
beings, ego-beings, whom he perceived around him as his companions. As truly as
man today does not see these beings at night, so truly did he in those times
plunge into an ocean of spirituality, in which he actually perceived the divine
beings. By day he was the companion of the lower kingdoms; by night he was the
companion of the higher beings. Man lived in a spiritual consciousness, though
this was dim; and, though he had no self-consciousness, he dwelt among these
divine spiritual beings.
Now let us recapitulate the four epochs in the evolution of our earth. First,
let us bring to mind the epoch in which sun and moon were still united with the
earth. We must say that the beings of this earth are pure ideal beings, while
man is present only as an etheric body, visible only to spiritual eyes. Then we
come to the second epoch. We see the sun as a separate body, visible as an aura,
and moon-plus-earth as a world of evil. Then we come to a third epoch, where the
moon separates itself and on earth there work the forces that are the result of
this threeness. Then we come to a fourth epoch. Here man is already a being in
the physical world, which seems misty to him, and in sleep he is still the
companion of divine beings. This is the epoch that closes with huge
water-catastrophes, the time of Atlantis.
Now let us go one step further, to the man of the post-Atlantean time. As stated
earlier, he has evolved through many thousands of years. We see him pass through
the cultural epochs of the post-Atlantean time; the ancient Indian, the ancient
Persian, the Egypto-Chaldean-Babylonian, the Greco-Latin culture, and our fifth
culture. What, above all things, had man lost? He had lost something that we can
conceive when we bear the description of Atlantis in mind.
Let us try to imagine the sleep-condition of the Atlantean. Man was then still
the companion of the gods; he actually perceived a world of the spirit. This he
had lost after the Atlantean catastrophe. The darkness of night surrounded him.
In recompense there came a brightening of the day-consciousness and the
development of the ego. All this man had achieved, but the old gods had vanished
from his sight; they were now only memories. In fact, during the first post-Atlantean
time all that his soul had experienced was merely a memory, a memory of his
earlier inter-course with these divine beings.
We know that souls endure, that they reincarnate. Just as in ancient Atlantean
times our souls were already present, were already living in bodies, so were
they also present at the separation of moon and sun from the earth, and also in
the earliest times of all. Man existed in the etheric dust or points, and the
five cultural periods of the post-Atlantean time, in their views of the world,
in their religions, are nothing else than memories of the ancient epochs of the
earth.
The first period, the primeval Indian, developed a religion that seems like an
inner lighting-up, an inner repetition, in ideas and feelings, of the very first
period, when sun and moon were still bound up with the earth, when the lofty
beings of the sun still dwelt on earth. We may imagine that this had to awaken a
sublime view. The spirit who, in the first condition of the earth, in the
primeval mist, connected himself with all angels, archangels, high gods, and
spiritual beings, was for Indian consciousness summed up as a single high
individuality under the name of
Brahm or Brahma.* This first post-Atlantean culture recapitulated in
the spirit what had happened earlier. It is a repetition of the first epoch of
the earth, in its inner aspect.
Now let us look at the second cultural period. In the principles of light and
darkness we have the religious consciousness of the primeval Persian period. The
great initiate saw an opposition between two beings, one of which was
personified in the sun and the other in the moon. Ahura Mazdao or Ormuzd, the
Light-aura, is the being whom the Persians venerated as the highest god. Ahriman
is the evil spirit, the representative of all the beings who belonged to
earth-plus-moon. The religion of the Persians is a remembrance of the second
epoch of the earth.
In the third cultural epoch, man had to say to himself, “In me are the forces of
the sun and of the moon; I am a son of the sun and a son of the moon. All the
forces of the sun and of the moon appear as my father and my mother.” Thus we
have unity in the primeval past as the attitude of the Indian; while the
duality that appeared with the separation of the sun is reflected in the
religion of the Persians; and in the religious views of the Egyptians, Chaldeans,
Assyrians, and Babylonians we find the trinity that appeared in the third
epoch, after the separation of sun and moon. Trinity appears in all the
religions of the third period, and in Egypt it is exemplified in Osiris, Isis,
and Horus.
But what man had experienced in his consciousness in the fourth earth-epoch, the
Atlantean, as a companion of the gods, emerges as a memory in the Greco-Latin
period. The gods of the Greeks are nothing other than memories of the gods whose
companion man was in Atlantis, the gods whom he saw clairvoyantly in etheric
forms when he had risen out of his physical body at night. As truly as man today
sees outer objects, so truly at that time did he see Zeus, Athena, etc. For him
these were real figures. What the Atlantean felt and experienced in his
clairvoyant condition reappeared, for the man of the fourth post-Atlantean
period, in the pantheon. As the Egyptian time was a memory of the trinity that
prevailed in the Lemurian epoch, the experience of Atlantis remained as a memory
in the Hellenic hierarchy of gods. In Greece and elsewhere in Europe these were
the same gods whom the Atlantean had seen, but under other names. These names
were not invented; they are names for the same forms that walked beside man in
the Atlantean time when he went out of his physical body.
So we see how the epochs of cosmic events find their symbolical expression in
the religious views of the different post-Atlantean cultural periods. What took
place during sleep in the Atlantean time lives again in the fourth period.
We are in the fifth post-Atlantean period. What can we remember? In the first
period the ancient Indians could conceive the first earth-epoch; in the second
period the Persians had the principles of good and evil; the ancient Egyptians
could picture the third epoch in its trinity. The period of the Greeks, the old
Germans, the Romans, had its Olympus. It remembered the godlike figures of
Atlantis. Then came the modern time, the fifth period. What can it remember?
It can remember nothing. This is the reason why in this period, godlessness has
been able to make headway in many respects. This is why the fifth period is
driven to look toward the future rather than the past. It must look toward the
future, when all the gods must arise again. This reunion with the gods was
prepared in the time of the bursting-in of the Christ-force, which worked so
powerfully that it could again endow man with a godly consciousness. The
god-pictures of the fifth period cannot be memories. Only if man looks forward
will life again become spiritual. In the fifth post-Atlantean period,
consciousness must become apocalyptic.
Yesterday we examined the relations of the single cultures of the Post-Atlantean
time. Today we have seen how cosmic events are reflected in the religious views
of these cultures.
Our fifth period stands at a central point in the world, hence it must look
forward. The Christ must for the first time be fully grasped in this period, for
our souls are deeply interwoven in mysterious connections. We shall see how the
repetition of the Egyptian time in our fifth period gives us a point of
departure, and how we can actually pass over into the future.
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*
It may occur to the reader that India, even in ancient times, was notable
for the multiplicity of its gods rather than for their unity. In this
connection the following passage from the Upanishads may be illuminating:
Then
Vidagda Sakayla questioned him: “How many gods are there,
Yajnavalkya?”
He answered: “As many as are mentioned in the Hymn to All the Gods,
namely three hundred and three, and three thousand and three.”
“Yes, but just how many gods are there, Yajnavalkya?”
“Thirty-three.”
“Yes, but just how many gods are there, Yajnavalkya?”
“Six.”
“Yes, but just how many gods are there, Yajnavalkya?”
“Two.”
“Yes, but just how many gods are there, Yajnavalkya?”
“One and a half.”
“Yes, but just how many gods are there, Yajnavalkya?”
“One.”
(Brih. Upan., ii, 2, iv, 4.) |
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