LECTURES TO PRIESTS: THE APOCALYPSE

GA 346

John's Book of Revelation ‘the Apocalypse’ has been subjected to countless interpretations by
theologians over the years, mostly based on theory and speculation. In contrast, Rudolf Steiner spoke
from his own direct experience and knowledge of the spiritual truths contained in St. John's
mysterious pictures.
These 18 lectures were given by Rudolf Steiner at Dornach in September of 1924. They make up the
entirety of the lecture series entitled, The Apocalypse, published in German as, Apokalypse und
Priesterwirken.

LECTURES TO PRIESTS: THE APOCALYPSE

GA 346
Lecture I
Dornach, 5 September 1924
We will begin by pointing to a great thing in our time, namely, to that great thing which must
consist of an entirely new attitude of the human soul to what works its way through priests'
activities. For as long as mankind has existed on earth, people have always been attracted to
what is present in the activities of priests when an act of consecration of man was performed.
However, if we want to understand how the act of consecration of man must appear to the
priest who celebrates it and to the layman who participates in it, we must take a look at what
the act of consecration of man was in the course of man's development on earth, what it is
and what it must become.
Looked at from another angle what the act of consecration of man is when it is celebrated, is
a permeation of this religious service with the real content of what John, who had been
initiated by Christ, wanted to give to the later Christian world with his Apocalypse. The right
spirit when one is celebrating an act of consecration of man and the right consciousness
when one is permeated with the substance of the Apocalypse are two things which really
belong together. Let's disregard the particular form and connotations which the Apocalypse
has for Christians, and let's call all the occult truths which have been and are being given in
order to assure a right continuation of the priestly impulse “apocalypse.” The apocalypse
concept covers a great deal, and it is concentrated and summarized in John's Apocalypse,
which is attuned to the Christ. People who have striven towards an apocalypse have always
been aware that one can only arrive at the complete and profound significance of the
reception of apocalyptic things through an immersion in an act of consecration of man.
We will be able to explain many things if we tell ourselves that mysteries once existed,
which I want to call the ancient mysteries. We don't want to take up time in this introduction
with the giving of dates, so we will only describe four successive stages. There were ancient
mysteries, semi-ancient mysteries, half new mysteries, and we are now at the beginning of a
new mystery impulse. Therewith we have four stages before us, four stages in the
development of man's understanding of apocalypses and acts of consecration of man. If we
look at the ancient mysteries which existed among men at the dawn of human evolution on
earth and which had to bring holy, true and beautiful things to human beings, we can say that
their importance derived from the fact that dignified priests in the mysteries worked with the
gods on a being to being basis. Just as human beings relate to each other on a being to being
basis today, so gods associated with men and men with gods in those ancient times in the
mysteries.
However, just as there are laws of nature which are valid during certain periods of time, so
there are eternal laws which don't interfere with man's freedom, even though they exist.
Among these eternal laws are some which refer to associations between gods and human
beings. These eternal laws had to be taken into consideration when the gods associated with
men in the holy mysteries in the far distant past, when everything that is connected with
human instruction was occurring between divine teachers and human beings, and when what
took place in the cults occurred in such a way that supersensible and powerfully active gods
walked among the celebrants of the religious ceremonies. People in these ancient mysteries
did the things which had always given the act of consecration of man its meaning when
transubstantiations were being carried out. But what was transubstantiation in the ancient
mysteries? Transubstantiation in the ancient mysteries was something which gods regarded
as the last thing through which they were still entering into relations with human beings. The
eternal laws which I mentioned determined the way a path is made from gods to men and
from men to the gods during certain constellations of the stars and planets which one became
familiar with in genuine ancient astrology, when conditions for finding out things from the
stars were favorable.
You will be able to perceive one thing everywhere: if you look at the way people calculated
time in the old/days, you will see that there are chronologies where they assume the
existence of 35° days and others where they have 365 days. They interpose leap days and
intercalary months in order to correct the discrepancies between human calculations and the
true course of cosmic events. What human beings can calculate never coincides with the true
course of cosmic events. A small remainder is always left over, that is, human calculations
always have a small remnant in them. Priests in the ancient mysteries, were particularly
interested in these small remainders where human calculations of time don't agree with the
cosmic course of events. One could say that this non-coincidence became particularly
noticeable at certain times, for after they divided the year into weeks and lunar months, extra
days and weeks remained between the end of one year and the beginning of the next.
Anyone who wants to find his way into the course of human evolution has good reason to
look at the times where men — when they interpolated weeks — expressed the non-
coincidence of human calculations with the course of cosmic events, ind where priests
looked upon such weeks as holy weeks. These holy weeks made it very clear that the ways
gods and men think are different, but if one places the heart of the gods alongside the heart of
man, one sees the difference between the two, and one can then find the way from the gods
to men and from men to the gods.
The people who really understood this and who were conversant with ancient astrology were
able to observe when gods visited their mysteries. There were always holy times at the end of
each year or at the end of a lunar cycle of 18 years or of other periods of time which
indicated the difference or boundary between human intelligence and divine intelligence, and
during which the priests in the mysteries could tell that gods can find the way to them and
that men can find their way to the gods.
At such times priests tried to capture the activities of the sun and the moon in the substances
with which they celebrated the act of consecration of man, so that they could extend what
they had received during sacred times to the other times in which they had to celebrate. They
preserved what the gods had made out of earthly substances and forces during the sacred
times. They kept the water and its mercurial element, etc., from those times in order to
celebrate the act of consecration of man during the rest of the year in such a way that it had a
transubstantiation which was done in the same way it had been done by the gods in the
services which had taken place during so-called dead times which, however, were sacred
times.
During these times when cosmic language was more important than human language, the
men in the ancient mysteries wanted to connect themselves with the gods who descended
into the mysteries and who consecrated each religious service anew. The gods gave the
human beings who carried, out or participated in these acts of consecration of man an
understanding of apocalyptic things. This is how great truths were taught in ancient times,
when an immersion in an act of consecration of man meant that one was permeated with
apocalyptic substance. The act of consecration of man is a path of knowledge, and
apocalypse is the object of this holy knowledge.
Then we come to the semi-ancient mysteries, of which there is a slight reflection in the
literature, unlike the ones which I called the ancient mysteries, for the latter can only be
investigated by occult science. During this time the gods withdrew from men and sent their
forces down into the mysteries, and no longer appeared there as beings. It was the time in
which the act of consecration of man acquired that radiance or divine glow which should
always radiate above acts which consecrate human beings.
The secret behind transubstantiations was now sought in a different way. The substances and
forces which were supposed to flow into the celebration of a transubstantiation were no
longer determined by an astrological investigation of cosmic processes. Instead, one tried to
arrive at an understanding of the inner nature of what ancient alchemists called ferments. A
ferment is a substance which has attained a certain maturity, that is, it has passed through all
of the preparatory stages of its material existence and activity. To take a trivial example, just
think of how one bakes bread, for this occurs according to the same principle. One saves the
yeast in a small part of the dough and adds it to the new dough. Try to imagine how ancient
materials which had undergone inner events or a transubstantiation in the course of time
were preserved in sacred vessels, which were greatly esteemed in the ancient and semi-
ancient mysteries, and how they were taken out of these vessels after they had been
transformed by very ancient and sacred processes.
Ferments were taken out of sacred vessels and they were used to transform substances
through ancient and still sacred alchemical processes. The priest was an initiate who saw
how the preserved substances and forces shone in the sacred crystalline vessels, and so he
knew how the transubstantiation occurred. One looked upon these substances and forces as a
cognitional organ for the people who were celebrating rituals, which enabled them to receive
apocalyptic things.
The following state of affairs existed at the time of these semi-ancient mysteries. A priest
passed his entrance exams, as it were, the moment he could stand before the sacred place or
structure, and the old, fermenting substances in the sacred crystalline vessels became
transformed for him in such a way that he saw a small sun or a natural small monstrance in
the crystalline vessel, as the substances spread sunshine around them. This was something
holy, and it can only be reproduced externally today. The moment he saw this he became a
priest in an inner sense.
Today everyone who goes into a Catholic church sees a monstrance, but it is only a symbol
for what it once was. In ancient times the only one who saw it was a true priest who saw a
radiant sun appear in the preserved substances. At that moment his soul gained knowledge of
apocalyptic things.
Then came the mysteries which are reflected in the modern mass. The Catholic mass, the
Armenian mass and other masses arose from the half new mysteries in a very complicated
way, and even though they have become externalized, they still contain the complete
initiation principle. What man can perceive when magical words awaken within him began to
be present in these half new mysteries, instead of the god's presence in the ancient mysteries
and the presence of forces which the gods sent in the semi-ancient mysteries. These words
enable one to acquire very profound knowledge of the inner nature of sound, and intense
feelings resound in them.
During the time of the half new mysteries human language and cultic language were two
different things, and remnants of the latter are still present in individual religious
confessions. Ln this cultic language everything depends upon rhythm, a deep understanding
of sounds and an understanding of the way that sounds from the priest's mouth penetrate
human hearts. The intonation of magical cultic words in sacred places enabled people to
ascend to the forces of the gods for the first time.
1. The first human period — ancient mysteries — the gods descend.
2. Second human period — semi-ancient mysteries — the gods send their forces
down.
3. Third human period — half new mysteries — man learns a magical language
and begins to ascend to the forces of the divine world through the intonation of
magical words.
This is why words were intoned during the third period of acts of consecration of man. The
Kabiri element lived in all religious cults which arose during this third period. For the Kabiri
services and sacrifices which were celebrated in Samothrace were brought into all of the half
way new ceremonies in the act of consecration of man and into all the ceremonies which
belong to This. Let's place the Kabiri altar at Samothrace before our souls. The Kabirs who
stood upon it as external relics were sacrificial urns that contained no ferments, but
substances which men find if they can penetrate the inner spiritual aspect of matter. The
sacrificial urns contained such substances. The sacrificial substances in the urns were ignited,
and smoke ascended. The magical language created an Imagination of the intoned words in
the rising smoke. Thus the way up to divine forces was outwardly visible in the sacrificial
smoke. The priests who were surrounded by this smoke knew that they were in the right
atmosphere for carrying out a transubstantiation.
As Aristotle explained to Alexander, the substances were mixed in such a way that a sacred
Imagination emerged from the sacrificial smoke, and this showed one the way to the, gods. If
people found this way, the priest's transubstantiation was a right one and the act of
consecration of man was executed correctly. Those who celebrated and participated in it
knew that it was an organ of cognition. For when the ceremonially shaped, magical words
and prayers flamed up in the sacrificial smoke and streamed up to the gods, an apocalyptic
revelation came down from above as a gift of grace. This was the third stage in the
development of apocalyptic things and of an act of consecration of man.
These stages have deteriorated somewhat. Only their external features are still real today. A
new period for the act of consecration of man and for apocalyptic things began when we
inaugurated the new priesthood and a Christian renewal here at the Goetheanum. Tomorrow
we will go into what the act of consecration of man must bring about in you and what should
stream through your hearts in order for you to carry it out in the right way during this fourth
stage.

Diagram 1

LECTURES TO PRIESTS: THE APOCALYPSE

GA 346
Lecture II
Dornach, 6 September 1924
We will now take a closer look at the connection between the act of consecration of man and
apocalyptic things, so that we will then be able to approach the Apocalypse and to see its
significance for the present and future activities of priests.
Yesterday we had to point to three past epochs of the mysteries, in so far as these mysteries
tried to give each priest experiences which put him into an apocalyptic mood. We pointed
out that there was a very ancient mystery period during which the gods descended into the
mystery centers in order to work with human beings, and a semi-ancient mystery period
when the gods sent down their forces, so that the men who lived in this sphere of forces were
able to work with the gods in the cosmos.
One could say that the path was completely reversed during the third epoch when the
mysteries were partly renovated. At that time man shaped and developed forces so that they
could lead him up to the gods. We saw that man looked for a way up to the world's divine,
spiritual forces through the intonation of magical words in cultic ceremonies. These words
either worked directly upon the auditor's whole soul mood, so that he became aware of the
spiritual activities of the gods in the words, or else magical words were spoken into the
smoke in the way which was indicated yesterday, and the smoke drew Imaginations out of
the words.
This development of a certain religious feeling, which one can really only describe
separately, always went parallel with a certain condition or a certain kind of
transubstantiation which was the center of the holy act of consecration of man. Priests are
now being called upon to experience this transubstantiation and everything else that is
connected with their activities in a new way. They will not be able to do this very well
without an understanding of what transubstantiations and apocalypses were really like in
each of these four successive periods of human evolution.
One thing we have already seen is that the act of consecration of man and its
transubstantiation process involves a working together of human beings and the gods in the
süiritual world. Priests cannot really work properly unless they're aware that men and the
gods can work together.
If we take another look at the oldest form of transubstantiations and acts of consecration of
man we find that the gods found the way to men at certain times that are really differences
between what one can calculate in the course of time and what the cosmos does. The gods
descended during such blank or holy times when men must add something to the times they
calculated because their calculations are incorrect. In these times men had to expose
themselves to cosmic influences directly in order to carry our transubstantiations, and they
saved what had occurred in the substances during such times in order to carry out
transubstantiations with the preserved things that had been transformed by forces from the
cosmos.
The right place for priests and lay brothers to be in for these transubstantiations at that time
was a cave or a grotto. And in fact, wherever people were fully aware of the presence of the
gods and of the significance of transubstantiations in the ancient mysteries, we see that they
tried to carry out the sacred rites in subterranean rock temples or caves.
The fact that they tried to do this is connected with the experiences which priests had during
the transubstantiations. A transubstantiation consists of a transformation of the given earthly
materials. If one wants to understand the process completely one should add the communion
or the ingestion of the transformed substances by the human being to it, so that actually the
two last parts of the act of consecration of man, transubstantiation and communion,
constitute a unity, whereas the gospel reading and the offering are a preparation for them.
Taking transubstantiation and communion as a unified priestly or cultic act, let's look at a
view which the initiates we call fathers had in the oldest mysteries.
The “fathers” refers to the father grade of initiation, and this name is still given to priests in
many confessions today, — pater. Now when a priest carried out a transubstantiation in his
earth or rock temple, he experienced the union of his physical organism with the whole earth.
This is why they had the temple underground or in a rock. Today we can also feel united
with the surrounding cosmos in our ordinary earthly consciousness as we live between birth
and death, and this has been the case during the whole time that mankind has been evolving
on earth.
The air which is in your body now was outside it a moment ago, and it will soon be outside
again. The air which is outside your body and the air inside your body constitute a whole.
The real state of affairs is that there is an aery ocean, and when man inhales, one part of this
aery ocean becomes transformed in the human being. The air is absorbed, and it penetrates
and fills man and thereby assumes a human form. Then this form immediately dissolves
again in the ocean of air. An aeriform man is continually being created and destroyed,
although one is usually unaware of it.
However, Indian yogis knew about it whenever they did their conscious breathing exercises.
They didn't feel separate from the earth's ocean of air; they felt that they were united with it,
and they felt this creation and destruction at each systole and diastole. One can easily
experience this by doing these breathing exercises, although they are no longer appropriate
for men today.
However, man is not just a man in connection with physical, earthly things. Although he is
an earthly man where the so-called physical, body is mainly active, he is also a fluidic man.
The whole human being is filled with circulating fluids which work upon each other. This
fluidic man is mainly dependent upon the ethers. For the forces in the etheric body work
more upon fluids and not so much upon solids.
We also bear an aery man and a warmth man in us. This aery man, which takes care of
respiration, is controlled by the forces of the astral body. And the warmth man: you need
only recall that if you measure some place on the surface of your body or inside it with a
thermometer, you get different temperatures. This crude procedure already shows one that
man is a differentiated warmth organism. The latter is mainly under the influence of the ego
— organization or ego.
Thus, we find four elements in man. Earth is under the influence of the physical body, water
is influenced by the etheric body, air is under the influence of the astral body, and warmth or
fire is under the influence of the ego.
The transubstantiations and communions which the ancient fathers carried out made them
feel that their physical body was connected with the earth, when they had gone into their
rock temple or earth temple, in order to unite themselves with these earthly developments.
What actually happened here? Alan's supposedly scientific view of himself today is really
wrong; it is really complete nonsense. We must rethink all of our ideas about human beings.
The ancient fathers received the right ideas about man through direct perception when they
carried out transubstantiations during sacrificial rites which consecrate human beings.
They knew that we don't just breathe air in through our respiratory organs, but that we are
continually taking in all kinds of substances from the cosmos through our sense organs. All
kinds of substances are continuously being taken in through our hair and skin. Just as
someone who is watching his breathing feels that air is entering his respiratory organs, so the
ancient priest felt that substances passed over from the siliceous environment of the
consecrated subterranean temple and penetrated his nerve-senses system just as aery man
feels the air which is going through him, for when he breathes in a conscious way he can feel
that these substances permeate his entire organism. The priests knew that none of the
substances in the metabolic-limb man come from what we eat. Nothing of what one eats
becomes part of the metabolic-limb man. One takes in substances from the cosmos. The
whole modern nutritional theory is really wrong. The celebrating father felt that what is eaten
and then transformed by the digestive system passes over from the metabolic man to the
nerve-senses man and especially to the head. He knew that what you eat is transformed into
the substances of your head and what is connected with it. But the substances which become
the organs that take care of your metabolic functions are taken in from the cosmos by a finer
breathing. Thus he felt that his metabolic-limb man consisted of cosmic substances which are
taken in from all sides through the senses and nerves. And he felt that the food that one eats
and transforms goes the opposite way and becomes the upper man.
When a father carried out a transubstantiation he had a current in him which flowed upwards
and another one which flowed downwards. Then when he took communion he knew that he
was connected with the cosmos, because he had become aware of his physical body by
means of these streams. He had become united with the earth and he united what he had
prepared at the altar with his body, with currents that belong to both the earth and his body,
and with divine things on the earth which are a reflection of the universe.
He knew that he was united with the outside universe. He knew that the meal which he had
taken in in this way was a meal which his cosmic man had completed. He felt that his divine
man arose through what streamed into the current which went upwards and the one which
went downwards, and that it could be a companion of the gods who had descended. He felt
that the gods had transformed him into a divine human being in his physical body, that is, he
felt that he had been transubstantiated. And at this moment he could say from the depths of
his heart: Now I am not the one who walks around in the physical world; I am he in whom
the descended god lives; I am he whose name includes all sounds and who was at the
beginning, is in the middle and will be at the end. I am alpha and omega.
The extent to which he could really participate in the secrets of the cosmos, in the divine
working and creating in the cosmos, and in the manifestation of forces, substances and
beings there while divine, spiritual work was being done, depended on the way his inner life
was shaped by this feeling. This is the way priests worked in the ancient mysteries.
If we go on to the semi-ancient mysteries we find that holy water and washing and sacrificial
actions which are connected with water had become very important, and also that the temples
had been moved aboveground. They were no longer put into subterranean caves out of the
same longings as before, or if they were placed there it occurred through tradition and it was
no longer understood in a living way, and it was precisely for this reason that the tradition
lived on, even though it had lost its living content.
Such traditions also remained with regard to the dipping of people into the dew, as it were.
What the priest did at baptisms was less dependent upon the actual watery element than upon
the Inner force which he applied during the sacrificial action in order to unite the fluidic man
in whom the forces of the etheric body were active with the universe.
When a transubstantiation was being carried out and one observed things which involved the
fluidic element before or after it in the act of consecration, one felt that the etheric
organization was working in a temporal way. While the transubstantiation was being carried
out one felt that one's growth since childhood had occurred under the influence of the fluidic
element in one, and that the etheric body was active in this streaming from the past through
the present and into the future.
In ancient times priests felt that their physical body was connected with the earthly element,
and during the less ancient mysteries the one who performed transubstantiations felt united
with the watery element which exists in the whole universe. He felt the growth forces of all
creatures sprouting, germinating, growing and unfolding in him into fully developed
organisms and then contracting into seeds again. He felt this sprouting, shooting living and
dying activity whenever he carried out a transubstantiation.
At every moment he could say to himself: Now I know how creatures come into being in the
world and how they die. For both ascending and descending etheric forces were active in
him. He could, as it were, feel eternity in the sacred transubstantiation.
The priest who was performing a communion in conjunction with a sacred act of
transubstantiation knew that the substances which were transformed in the way we described
yesterday were absorbed by his etheric, fluidic man. He felt that he was united with
everything which preserves immortality in the universe and with everything which is created
and born or is killed and destroyed. Birth and death wafted over the altar and from there into
the faithful who were assembled. The priest became permeated with feelings of eternity. This
permeation with feelings of eternity had replaced the previous feeling of being united with
the whole cosmos through the earth.
Then when the third epoch of holy acts of consecration arose, man was to experience his
union with the aery element and thereby with the cosmos. Oriental yogis could become
aware of the streaming of divine, supersensible world forces in inhalation and exhalation in a
different way and for their own personal development. They took hold of breathing in a
direct way.
People intoned magical words into their breath in Europe, and to a lesser extent in Asia
Minor, but they didn't take hold of the undifferentiated breath directly. Thereby the breath or
the air streaming in and out of them was taken hold of by magical, cultic words. The striving
up of magical forces towards divine ones became manifest indirectly in what was spoken
into the sacrificial smoke, or directly in what was experienced in the intonation of the
magical, cultic words. Whenever someone prays, he is basically trying to ascend to divine,
spiritual regions with his forces, and these people felt that when they intoned magical, cultic
or prayerful words they were ascending to a region where they met the gods. When someone
intones things, the godhead becomes manifest and speaks in the cultic words, so that it's not
he who is speaking anymore. The godhead was now revealing itself in the aery element. Man
felt that he was in something which controls the forces in the air from his own astral body.
The transition from the second, semi-ancient mystery epoch to the third, partly new mystery
epoch was a large one. In ancient times fathers experienced things in their physical body.
This involved an intensification of its activities. The sun priests of the second epoch
experienced an enhancement of their etheric or fluidic body. When a priest intoned cultic
words in the third epoch he experienced the streaming of divine spiritual forces in his astral
body. The astral body of the average person was only a mediator of consciousness to a very
slight extent. At the beginning of the third epoch a priest could still say: when I speak
magical cultic words, a god is speaking in me. However later on this awareness diminished.
The new consciousness which arose was unaware of the astral body's activities. Today,
ordinary consciousness is completely oblivious to the latter. The verbal content of the ritual
gradually became something which made qualified people aware of the gods' presence,
whereas unqualified people were unaware of what was connected with the intoned words.
The latter was increasingly the case for a large number of priests who were active in
Catholicism.
Hence it gradually came about that the act of consecration of man or mass became something
that the priest celebrated, although he himself was not present in it. However, one cannot
celebrate with words or intone words which have aery beings incorporated in them in such a
way that there is no spirituality there. Spiritual things immediately appear whenever
something material is being shaped. And so if an act of consecration is celebrated with real
cultic words by even the most unworthy priest, his soul, may be absent but something
spiritual is present. So the fact is that if the liturgy is correct, the believers who are listening
to it are participating in a spiritual event under all circumstances.
While things were developing like this at the end of the third epoch, some of the Protestant
confessions which were working in a more rationalistic way thought that they could throw
the mass out altogether. They were no longer aware of the significance of cultic rites or of a
real collaboration between gods and men.
This inner circumstance then led to the time in which we are living. There was less and less
understanding for the act of consecration of man which brings the divine, spiritual life right
down to earth. People no longer understood the apocalyptic things which the rites were
supposed to take one experience. This is basically the experience you had when you came
one day and said: A Christian renewal must occur. You felt that the religious life of all the
confessions and other things that exist in our civilization had become separated from real
spiritual things in the real spiritual world. You were looking for the path to the real spiritual
world again. This impulse can show us the way and can lead us into the depths of the
mysteries, which are connected with apocalyptic things.
So we saw that in the first epoch transubstantiation was connected with experiences with the
physical body, in the second epoch the connection was through experiences with the etheric
body and in the third epoch through experiences with the astral body. The grasping of
apocalyptic things and of the act of consecration by the ego of mankind depends upon you
and your inner experience of the working and weaving of spirituality in the world. Therewith
we only have a right view of what should be done by this movement for religious renewal if
we look upon what is to be done as the carrying out of a task which has been given us by the
supersensible world and as a task which places what one does at the service of supersensible
powers. For if you don't take your task seriously enough, what you do will come to nothing
in the present evolution of the world, and it will only have been a kind of disturbance. Or
else you will see how deep and profound your task is and you will Immediately feel that this
task is connected with the activity of the gods throughout earth evolution, and not just with
human activities. In that case you can say: we are called upon to help with the shaping of the
fourth mystery epoch in human earth evolution. This task will only be placed in the service
of the powers in the spiritual world from whom the content of the ritual flowed two years ago
when we were assembled here, if you have the courage, strength, seriousness and
perseverance to find your way into your task in this way. Only then will what you took upon
yourselves through the content of this ritual, which is a revelation from the spiritual world
and which radiated down upon you as such, become real.
Then you will increasingly sense and feel: it's really the case that Christ came into earth life
in a real cosmic and tellurian ritual. The Mystery of Golgotha is present as a real ritual. In
our time man must first unite this ritual with his ego; for the first commemorations of the
Lord's Supper were still immersed in the third mystery epoch, when the astral body took in
and controlled the cultic activities which occurred in the aery element. But now it's a
question of connecting one's innermost core with the Christ so that each human being can
begin to understand apocalyptic things in a new way.
How did one look upon apocalyptic things in the first mystery epoch? One experienced them
as the presence of the gods, which are the beginning, the middle and the end, alpha and
omega.
How did one look upon the presence of divine forces in the second mystery epoch? One
experienced them as something which resounds through the world as the music of the
spheres, and which lives in the cosmic word that created everything and that creates in
everything, and which streams from the heavens to the earth. One experienced what is at the
beginning, in the middle and at the end of time simultaneously, as it were. One experienced
the alpha and the omega in the cosmic, world word. Whenever the subject of the Greek alpha
and omega, the first and the last, came up in this or that epoch, people always tried to find
out what the first and last letters of various alphabets really contain.
And how did one understand apocalyptic things during the third mystery epoch? One
understood apocalyptic things in such a way that people were developing cultic words which
were still half conscious. Apocalyptic things were perceived during the third epoch when
these half-conscious cultic words transubstantiated themselves as they were being intoned
and when things were as follows. Most of you have probably heard some music on a day
when your soul and senses could be entirely receptive to the impressions of the outer world,
and then you fell asleep and woke up in the middle of your sleep. It was as if you lived in a
surging back and forth, but in a transformed surging of the symphony you heard during the
day. This is the way it was for priests in the third mystery epoch.
What happened to them is comparable to the trivial thing I just mentioned. They celebrated
the act of consecration with cultic words, and they experienced that the godhead appeared in
them. They had sent the cultic words up and the godhead had streamed into them. Then they
left the sacred ritual in an appropriate mood. They not only experienced the presence of
divine spirituality in human, cultic words during the act of consecration of man, but
afterwards, they experienced a supersensible echo of what they had spoken in the liturgy of
the mass. These transubstantiated, transformed words streamed towards them and revealed
apocalyptic things.
The god revealed apocalyptic things as a counter present for an appropriately celebrated
sacrificial rite. This is how one experienced apocalyptic things during the third mystery
epoch.
The one who felt that he had been made into a priest, by Christ Jesus himself, namely, the
author of the book which we want to study, the Apocalypse, was more or less the first to feel
that an apocalyptic content merged with his ego, — and only very few people have
experienced this since. For it was the astral body which received the echo that. I mentioned,
where the god gave apocalyptic things as a counter present for words. However, the one who
wrote John's Apocalypse felt that his fully conscious ego was united with the content which
he had given the Apocalypse.
The priest who wrote the Apocalypse and who felt that he had been anointed by Christ Jesus
himself, was inspired by the afterglow of ancient Ephesian rituals, and he felt as if he were
continuing frequent celebrations of this ancient act of consecration up to an advanced age.
One day he felt that the ego which had been completely filled with the significance of the
sacred ritual was now also completely filled with an apocalyptic content.
Hence John expressed his Apocalypse in the same way that one says the single word “I” in
one's ordinary consciousness. When a human being says “I” he is expressing his inner nature
with a single sound. The only thing which can be meant by this is what the individual human
being is. But this one thing has a large content. This large content is the content of
apocalyptic things.
If everything which religious feeling can give a meditating soul and if all the enlightenment
which is gained by energetic effort and by a striving towards an understanding of the
supersensible can work in men's spirits, — if all of this is oriented in the way it can be
oriented and if we let ourselves be stimulated by everything that can stimulate us through a
contemplation of the three past mystery epochs which can become the inspirer of the fourth
one, and if we let ourselves be stimulated by what was outlined in an introductory way
yesterday and today, that is, by what lived in the first, second and third mystery epoch which
was the living inspirer of the fourth, and if we let the power of the Spirit God — which is
possible again today work in our souls — we will be able to experience that there is not just
one Apocalypse but that there are numerically just as many apocalypses as there are human,
God-fearing, priest's egos in the priest-renewal who speak to the Christ who is to be found
again through this Christian renewal.
There is only one apocalypse from a qualitative point of view, but from a numerical
viewpoint it can become the content of the soul of each individual priest. Conversely, every
single soul that undergoes the act of consecration of man, so that it prepares the ego to
become identified with the content of the apocalypse, can become a proper priestly soul. We
are egos as human beings. We become priests in the modern sense of the word if the ego
becomes aware that it is creating a copy of the Apocalypse at every moment in life, so that it
isn't just something which is finished and printed in the bible, and it isn't just memorized by
heart. Take the following analogy. Someone gives the content of a book. It is sent to the
printers. This might seem like a pedantic, philistine analogy, but it's useful nevertheless. The
book is printed and a large number of copies go through the world which are different,
although they all have the same content. What you are referred to right at the beginning of
the Apocalypse is a single thing and what Christ revealed to John is a single thing. For this is
“The revelation of Jesus Christ” which was received by “his servant John.” There is only one
content, but it is multiplied by those who recreate this content in themselves after they have
been prepared through the wisdom of supersensible worlds.
This is an understanding of John's apocalyptic things. In the deeper sense of the word, this
also amounts to an understanding of the words: Christ has ordained us to be priests. You
have felt how the Apocalypticer says that Christ Jesus anointed him to be a priest; one
becomes anointed as soon as one feels how the content of the Apocalypse arose in John and
as soon as one feels that people want to become priests today by creating the Apocalypse in
themselves so that they experience that their ego is in the Apocalypse. If the ego becomes
apocalyptic, the ego is priestly. We will take this up again tomorrow.
 LECTURES TO PRIESTS: THE APOCALYPSE
GA 346
Lecture III
Dornach, 7 September 1924
Yesterday we referred to the important turning point in human evolution at the beginning of
the third mystery epoch, when man's participation in the cosmic things in transubstantiation
and in the act of consecration of man began to occur in the astral body. This is that member
of the human being which leaves the physical body as far as ordinary consciousness is
concerned, and which is unreceptive for percepts from the environment during the time of
the separation.
Let's try to get a clear idea of how this astral body functions in present-day man. It is the
member which transmits the thoughts which enable us to understand the world. For thoughts
about one's environment disappear as soon as one's astral body leaves the physical and
etheric bodies.
We can round out this idea if we realize that the ego-organization — the actual ego in man as
he is today — is the receiver of sense impressions. However, the latter are obliterated when
the ego-organization leaves the physical and etheric bodies.
So that we can say: here are the physical and etheric bodies of the human being, and during
sleep the astral body and ego-organization are outside. The ego-organization gives us our
sense percepts and sensations when we are awake. There is no sense perception during sleep,
because the ego-organization is not in the physical and etheric bodies and because the ego is
not receptive for impressions from the environment during that time. Likewise, the astral
body gives us thoughts when it is in the physical and etheric bodies, but when it is outside it
is not sensitive to things in the world and it gives us no impressions.
However, it was this astral body which became receptive for what I described to you, during
the third mystery epoch when man was to connect himself with divine, spiritual beings
through cultic words and through everything the priest did in the way of preparatory
exercises. It became receptive for the elaboration of the transubstantiation in itself during
communion, and after the transubstantiation was elaborated it became receptive for
apocalyptic things.
The same kind of thing has to happen in the ego-organizations of people from the present
epoch on. Even though this ego-organization can only experience sense impressions in
ordinary consciousness, it must be constituted in such a way that it experiences
transubstantiations and in such a way that it can participate in apocalyptic things through the
latter.
People can really become receptive for these things today, that is, someone can really
become a priest if he takes in ideas which are true spiritual copies of the supersensible world.
Therewith we have described the esoteric or inner connection between the esotericism which
rightfully exists today and what must live in a priest's soul. We have described what can
make the Christian Community a bearer of an important part of the new mysteries. We must
only consider how the Anthroposophy which is approaching human beings today is really
constituted.
I have often used an analogy. I said that people are inclined to accept things which are
supported by outer perceptions and experiments today, but they don't want to accept things
which are not supported in this way. However, anyone who has this attitude is like a person
who says: every rock on earth must be supported so that it won't fall down and therefore the
planets in the universe must also be supported so that they won't fall down. Of course, since
it's taught in a traditional and authoritative way, people believe that the planets in the
universe mutually carry each other without supports. However, many people doubt that
Anthroposophical truths support and carry each other, and that they don't have to be
supported by outer observations and experiments.
As soon as one sees that Anthroposophical truths are valid because they all support each
other, so that the truths mutually support each other, in that moment one will stop saying: I
can't see anything in the spiritual world yet and therefore I can't understand the content of
Anthroposophy. Instead one will begin to understand Anthroposophy through the fact that its
truths mutually support each other, and one will then work one's way further into it.
The main thing which can and must put this body of priests on its inner path today is the task
of penetrating what is given about the spiritual world. If it does tread this path, we should
make it clear to ourselves that the attitude of soul which someone gets into if he takes
possession of Anthroposophy in an honest way enables him to approach the Apocalypse. It
enables one to approach it in such a way that one can say: It's true that the Apocalypse exists,
but if I let it work upon me, each one of its images or Imaginations becomes united with my
own ego. And then comes the moment where this Apocalypse can be a creation of the human
ego and not just a personal experience. However, we must try to approach the Apocalypse in
an Anthroposophical way. There's no other context which leads to it today.
We will now try to grasp a few of the main points in the Apocalypse in a spiritual way, if I
may put it that way. “I am Alpha and Omega.” Expressed in an ancient form: one only
understands alpha or A if one knows that a sound or letter as a component of a word was not
the abstract, separate and meaningless thing back then, that we experience today. A sound
was something which deserved to have a name. Mankind has treated The sounds of language
which really enclose a great mystery in a peculiar way.
Mankind has treated the sounds of language in the way that a policeman treats a criminal. A
long time ago it numbered the letters in the way that we give numbers to criminals when they
are put into their cells, so that they lose their names and get numbers. Sounds have lost their
identity through the numbering process. This is a pictorial way of putting it, but a true one
nevertheless.
For if we go back before the late Hebraic period when they first gave numbers to the sounds,
we find that mankind was fully aware that it is quite right for a sound to have a name, and
that one can say alpha to it because it is a divine, supersensible being. If we want to find out
what this first letter alpha of the so-called alphabet really is, we will have to go through a
kind of spiritual development or conceptual development.
You know that Anthroposophy goes back in earth evolution through Moon, Sun to Saturn. It
tries to dig up things in the world which are connected with the evolution of man. We find
the first cosmic human germ on Saturn, which became the present human body after
manifold transformations during Sun, Moon and earth. Man was present on Saturn in his
first, germinal form.
For anyone who honestly and seriously wants to see the true state of affairs in this area, it's
no doubt quite important to ask what men really experienced on old Saturn. Man experienced
successive conditions of warmth. Man absorbed various states of warmth and cold. He
existed in states which really only told him something about warmth conditions in the
cosmos, for although they also told him many spiritual things, they only disclosed a limited
region of the spirit through differentiated warmth and cold.
If we go on from Saturn to Sun, we find that man's organism has become differentiated.
During Sun existence man lives in a physical body which is differentiated into warmth ether
and air. Differentiation also occurs within as man becomes filled with a richer content. He
not only perceives the differentiated warmth like on old Saturn, but something like an inner
life emerges. Man perceives the warmth on the Sun with his old perception and he also
perceives an inner breathing rhythm in himself which in turn is an expression and a reflection
of cosmic secrets.
Just look at how the human being becomes richer as he evolves from Saturn to Sun. He also
gets richer as he evolves from Sun to Moon and from Moon to Earth. And he will continue to
get richer as he develops on Jupiter and up to Vulcan.
Let's ask ourselves what the relation of man to the world is on ancient Saturn. On old Saturn
man's relation to the world is such that he perceives a very large number of different
warmths, but qualitatively he perceives very little. Not much of the world is in man. Man is
present as man and he is just a man, as it were; not much of the world is in him yet. As he
moves forward through Sun, Moon, earth and on to Jupiter his inner life becomes filled with
the world more and more, and therefore it is richer. We already have a large part of the world
in us here on earth. And when the earth gets to the stage where it will pass away again, man
will have elaborated a large part of the macrocosm and he will bear it in him as earthly
copies.
We bear it within us already, but people are not usually aware of this. When a human being
moves upwards through Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition to a knowledge of the spirit,
his inner soul life becomes ever more magnificent. Look at how little man knows about the
human eye in his ordinary consciousness. But this eye is a whole cosmos, and like the
macrocosm all of its details are marvelous and great. Every single organ in man becomes
unveiled in a wonderful way in his physical body already. So that when an initiate looks
around him he sees a world with the elements down below and its sun, moon and stars up
above. If he looks into himself he sees that the eye, ear, lung, liver and every other organ is a
world in itself, and that man's physical body is a marvelous interaction of worlds. Some of
these worlds are finished, others are just beginning, some are sensory, others are half
supersensible or entirely supersensible. Man really bears ever more worlds in himself as he
works his way through one evolution after another.
Thus we can distinguish man at the start of old Saturn evolution, where he is just beginning,
where he is man, although he doesn't bear the world in himself yet. The first thing which man
acquired during old Saturn evolution was a perception of the circumference of the warmth
body which he felt that he was. So that in a schematic way we can say that man feels that he
is warmth on old Saturn, but after he has felt that he is a warmth mollusk he gradually feels
something like an accumulation of warmth, like an outer skin, a warmth skin, a somewhat
cooler sheath than the warmth which is in him. He feels manifold degrees or intensities of
warmth within him, and the warmth skin is the coolest.
We express this in our present language, but this language is abstract and it doesn't conjure
up the greatness of such a mental image before our soul, if we look into the course of time
and we want to go back to old Saturn. However, people who are moved by a perception of
these things at all are also moved by the awe with which such things were looked upon in the
ancient mysteries. In the ancient Greek chthonic mysteries, they still spoke of Saturn men
who didn't have a warmth skin yet, and then of men who had taken the first part of the world
into their warmth skins; for the latter had a certain structure and form which imitated the
world. This was the first thing from the world.
What do man's experiences which he had while he was still a warmth man look like from a
subjective, psychic viewpoint? They are like absolute amazement about the world. If one
wants to describe them, one has to call them complete amazement. For one cannot grasp
warmth in any other way than as sheer amazement. Outwardly it is/warmth and inwardly it is
complete astonishment. It's only because people have become as blockheaded as old Kant
was, that they speak of a thing in itself which can't be explained. The thing in itself of
warmth is astonishment;' and Saturn man is astonishment just as much as he is warmth. He
lived in amazement or astonishment about his own existence, for he was just entering into
this existence. This is alpha; the Saturn warmth man who is living in amazement. And the
first thing which man experiences as the housing of the world, namely his skin, is beta, —
building, this building or house. Man was a man in his house, and the house or temple or skin
was the first thing from the world: beta.
If we go through the alphabet like this, we go through the whole world. When man gradually
absorbs everything which the world was and unites it with his being, until by Vulcan he will
become united with the whole wide world to which he belongs, he will be the one he was at
the beginning of Saturn evolution plus the whole world. He will be alpha and everything else
too. But everything else amounts to the whole world. This is omega — man and everything
in him which is the world. The “I am alpha and omega” describes what man will be at the
end of the Vulcan period. At the end of Vulcan evolution, man will be able to say: I am alpha
and omega. Let's look at the Mystery of Golgotha from the vantage point of what we have
placed before ourselves as the beginning, middle and end of human evolution. At the
Mystery of Golgotha or approximately the halfway point in world evolution, we have the
being who dwelt in Jesus' body at the stage of development that man will be in at the end of
Vulcan evolution. We have a being as god which man will be at the end of Vulcan evolution.
What is the difference between God's existence and man's existence? The difference between
a god's existence and a man's existence is that the god already is what the human being will
be later on in time. Don't say that this brings the god down to the human level and makes him
into a human being. It doesn't. Because for supersensible perception, time is a simultaneous
reality, if you'll permit me to use this paradoxical expression. The difference between man
and God is the one which existed at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. One shouldn't
relate different times or beings from different times when one looks at these things.
A great deal of what is in writings like the Apocalypse is expressed in the language which
was used in the mysteries, and it can only be understood if it is deciphered. On the other
hand, one shouldn't blame the author of the Apocalypse for speaking in mystery language,
for it was customary for people to do this at that time. People still knew that sounds are
supersensible beings and that alpha is the supersensible human being when he was first
created, and that when one goes from alpha to beta one is turning away from man and
towards the world, including the divine world, and that if one goes through all the sounds to
omega one has the entire divine world in omega.
It's rather shocking that we're surrounded by experiences today which we consider to be
trivialities. For instance, all the sounds are basically trivialities for us. Someone who only
knows the alphabet doesn't know very much. The ABCs are trivialities. However, these
trivialities point to divine, spiritual beings at the starting point, and our trivial letters are the
descendents of what were once divine, spiritual beings for mankind. The whole alphabet was
a number of such divine spiritual beings. Sounds were gods who assailed men from all sides
with their din. The sounds AB were man in his house, and so on. Man with the whole world
was alpha to omega. When someone uttered a sound he felt that it permeated him with
spirituality.
A last remnant of this life of a divine, spiritual element in sounds still existed in the
intonation of cultic language during the third mystery epoch. They still understood this
completely in very ancient times. When someone successively intoned what has now become
our abstract, traditional alphabet, he was intoning the cosmic word. He intoned everything
which exists and he connected himself with all the gods: In the beginning was the word. And
when Christ says “I am alpha and omega,” he could say “I am the word” and mean the same
thing.
You can see that the Apocalypse is written in a mystery language, and it uses terms which
remind us of the long period during which man felt that the macrocosm was a speaking
universe. We have obscured the sounds of our language and made them trivial, whereas men
used to know that they were something very spiritual. We must be able to feel what
happened there. What happened? The sounds exist, but the gods are no longer in them as far
as men are concerned. The gods have left the sounds. Our sounds contain Ahrimanic beings
in a demonic way. The popular idea that the fixed sounds of our language are connected with
black magic is not entirely unfounded. This idea of the people is a healthy one. For our
sounds are now Ahrimanic gods. The gods who were once in them left, and Ahrimanic
beings moved in. People will permeate language with more and more Ahrimanic powers if
they don't find their way back to the gods in this sphere.
We must approach the Apocalypse with such feelings about, language. This is the only way
that the real greatness and power of what is placed, before our souls in the Apocalypse can
become manifest to us. For what does the author of the Apocalypse want to do? He wants to
do the same thing that all those who speak out of a true knowledge of the Christ want to do.
He wants to place the Christ before mankind. He draws attention to the fact that he is there.
He begins by saying that he exists. For if one takes the first words of the Apocalypse and
translates them into our language in accordance with their real meaning, they read: Look at
the manifestation of Christ Jesus: Look over there; I want to show you the vision of Jesus
Christ which God has given.
Thus the first thing which is pointed out is that the author of the Apocalypse wants to let
Christ appear to humanity in an apocalyptic way. But he also points out that he doesn't just
want to report about the appearance or the Imagination of Jesus Christ, which presupposes
vision, but he also wants to indicate that the divine world power which placed this
phenomenon into the world and made it visible also expressed it in words.
God has sent these words by his angel unto his servant John, and they are like an
interpretation of the vision of Jesus Christ. This is how we must read the beginning of the
Apocalypse.
Two things are really being said here. An Imaginative element in Christ is mentioned, and
something is said about what Christ's tidings are. And what John affirms and testifies to in
his second sentence is the vision of Christ and the interpretation of this vision. The Christ in
a picture and the Christ in words. The author of the Apocalypse wants to place the Christ
before human beings in a picture and in words.
Therewith we are also made aware of something which was quite obvious to people at that
time, although most people today have lost sight of it completely. Our impoverished
psychologists speak of sense percepts and ideas. To make the thing as poor as possible,
people let the sense percepts arise through the senses and they say that ideas are created
within. Everything is subjective and there is nothing cosmic there at all; they make a Kantian
world out of a rich one, and they completely forget that man is standing in the whole world.
The intuitive element in our words has shriveled into impoverished ideas: the second thing or
so-called supersensible percept which John affirms, testifies to and tells us about is what the
Apocalypticer places there as the manifestation of Christ. So that we have to say “Behold the
manifestation of Jesus Christ which is given by God, for this is how God must be shown to
you (I will interpret this later). He has put it into words and has sent it to his servant John via
his angel. John has affirmed God's words and the manifestation of Jesus Christ in the way
that he saw it. He wants to give mankind what he has seen and a letter he received from
God.”
We must approach Christian writings in this concrete way again. If you really want to
become priests out of the deepest and most honest impulses in your heart you will have to
see to it that these writings become concrete. For the fact is that people are basically
dishonest when they say they understand the gospels the way they are translated today. The
Apocalypse begins in the way that I said. One translation of the beginning of the Apocalypse
reads, “This is the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him to show his servants,
and he has interpreted it and sent it to his servant John by his angel;” this is how it reads.
And then the whole world is told that this is what the Apocalypse says. But no one can really
make any sense out of these words. The same goes for most of the gospels, because one
wants to explain things to people with wording which doesn't tell one what's really there
anymore. This is why the idea gradually arose that one shouldn't penetrate very deeply into
the gospels. For how can one really do that? No matter what modern language one reads the
gospels in, one can't really read them if one is honest about it. For the modern versions tell
one nothing.
One has to go back to what is really there, just as we did this for the first two sentences and
as we will continue to do it. Or some people might say that one has to go back to the Greek
for certain parts of the gospels. Now, with all due respect to our contemporaries, who take
great pains to understand Greek, the fact is that no one understands Greek any more today,
because we don't have the same things in us which the Greeks had when they spoke or
listened.
We're basically like sacks of flour when we listen to someone or when we speak ourselves.
We remain just as quiet inwardly as flour in a sack should, if it is packed properly. This was
not the case with the Greeks. The consciousness of a Greek vibrated when he listened to
someone. He became alive inwardly and he spoke out of this vitality. The words which he
heard and spoke were alive; they were still living bodies. Not to speak of oriental people.
The latter are decadent today but unlike European people they can still perceive and
understand things inwardly in a vital way when they speak or hear.
Just listen to an ordinary oriental like Rabindranath Tagore and watch how he presents the
inner weaving and life which can exist in language.
Today one has language in such a way that one even thinks one has it if one takes a
dictionary and a German word stands on one side and the English word on the other. People
very calmly place the English words where the German words are. They are blissfully
unaware that one steps over an abyss here and that one comes into an entirely different
world, and that one really has to treat what lives in language as something which is divine.
People have to become aware of this again. Then they will decide to go back to what vibrates
out of writings like the Apocalypse, which conjures up a vision of Jesus Christ before our
soul. If we can see this mighty vision it's as if the clouds, which could give us wonderful
things, suddenly became concentrated and took on human and angelic forms, and the past,
present and future welled out of the clouds' substances as they go past and revealed the
world's content of spiritual substances, which includes human beings. This is how the
manifestation of Jesus Christ is presented.
The vision is there and we fall silent before it, so that we become united with the world and
are no longer conscious of ourselves, and so that we confront the vision until nothing but the
vision remains, while we become insignificant.
Then when we perceive the Father God who has given the vision we find that he holds back
the inspiring words behind the vision. The words are the interpretation of the vision and they
are his secret; but the time is at hand and God gives the secret to an angel, and he brings it
down to men as an epistolary message from God on the path on which Inspirations from God
generally come down.
As soon as a man becomes quiet and disappears and becomes immersed in the vision and
begins to be not in himself, and he takes in God's letter, which he first has to open, which is
sealed with seven seals, which he takes in as a letter with seven seals which has been sent to
him by the godhead — as soon as he does this he becomes the letter, because he gets to the
point where he looks upon the contents of the letter as his own ego-being. Then he stands
before the vision with God's ideas and concepts and with spiritual mental images.
If you imagine John the priest in this way, with the vision of Jesus Christ before him,
disappearing selflessly, if you see him receiving the letter of God that is sealed with seven
seals from the angels there, and if you see the resolve arising in him to unseal God's letter
and to communicate its contents to mankind — you have the picture or Imagination which
stands at the beginning of the Apocalypse. For we must interpret the words which stand there
in what we receive in such a way that it is like the Imagination I described. This is what the
author of the Apocalypse wants to say. That is why he says, “Blessed is he that reads and
hears the words in the macrocosm and who takes in and preserves what is written in the
book, when he understands it. For the time for this has come.”
It has come. It is not just chance that we're discussing the Apocalypse in this context; it lies
in the karma of the community for Christian renewal.
 Di
agram 1

LECTURES TO PRIESTS: THE APOCALYPSE

GA 346
Lecture IV
Dornach, 8 September 1924
We placed the image or Imagination of the author of the Apocalypse before our souls
yesterday, and I pointed out that it is a vision of Christ which was given by God. Then I
pointed out that the letter which was sent to John must be looked upon as an explanation of
the Imagination or as something which will help us to understand it.
The way in which the writer of the Apocalypse is then also looked upon as the writer of the
letter is in line with the nature of the Mystery and with the way one speaks and thinks out of
the Mystery. For it was in keeping with the nature of the Mystery that the writer of such a
document did not consider himself to be the author in the way that we look upon the author
of a work today, but he felt that he was the instrument of the spiritual writer. He felt that the
act of writing the content down was no longer of much importance. This is why John treats
the matter as if he were writing down the message of a god by order of the latter. This
proceeds from everything that follows in a way that is really oriented in accordance with the
Mystery.
One can say that our contemporary world needs an understanding of transitions like the one
from the first vision in the Apocalypse to the following seven letters to the individual
churches again. For present-day people have completely forgotten how to understand the
things which everyone knew about in the mysteries and during the early years of
Christianity.
This is another thing which you priests should really develop further. Just consider that what
is written down in an inspired way in the Apocalypse is directed to the angel of the church in
Ephesus, the church in Thyatira, the church in Sardis, etc. These letters were to be sent to
angels. This is something over which modern intellects must stumble right away. But the
important thing here is to consider the following.
A man once came to me near the end of his life who was trying very hard to really
understand the Anthroposophical or spiritual view of things. You should really know about
such things in your priestly work, for they are typical phenomena today. The important thing
becomes evident in a striking way in this particular case, but it is something that you will
often encounter on your priestly paths. And after all, it's the work on your priest's path which
is the important thing. He said to me, “It looks as if Anthroposophists are trying to take the
Bible literally.” I said, yes. Then he gave me all kinds of examples to show why he didn't
think that the Bible should be taken literally. I said to him, “It's true that there are a great
many so-called mystics, Theosophists, etc., who see all kinds of symbols and the like in the
Bible and who break it up into a lot of symbols. Anthroposophy doesn't do this. It only tries
to understand what the original text is really saying, and it can sometimes do this by
proceeding from the symbolic language. And here,” I said “I have never found that one
couldn't take the original text of the Bible literally, even though one often runs into
misunderstandings which have arisen in the course of time in later translations.”
A literal reading of the Bible is a goal which can be attained. One can really say that anyone
who cannot take a particular passage in the Bible literally yet, hasn't understood it yet, either.
Of course this is also true of a lot of other things today.
We have come to such a passage here. We're touching upon something here which is'
probably a little bit more esoteric than what we've encountered so far; but at some point it
should really pass before your meditative eye's. Sometimes things in this or that confession
which have remained behind from the old mysteries shoot and spray like volcanic fires from
below, I can't say like lightning flashes, because they come from above.
I have often mentioned the pastoral letter of an archbishop which said no less than the
following. The question was raised: who is greater, man or God? And although the language
which was used was indirect, it nevertheless stated quite bluntly that priests are greater and
more powerful than God, because when a priest — this doesn't apply to other people —
stands at the altar he can force God to assume an earthly form, in the bread and wine. When a
priest consecrates them and carries out a transubstantiation, the god must be present at the
altar.
This is an explanation which goes far back to the ancient mystery culture, but it is also an
explanation which is still common in esoteric Brahmanism in the orient today, to the extent
that this is based on mystery knowledge. The idea that man is a being who includes the
godhead is frequently used there, and this agrees with all mystery wisdom. Actually the idea
is that man is higher than God. The Brahmanic priests from those times knew that they were
the super-personal bearers of the Godhead, as it were, when their soul was in this mood.
This idea which shines in from the ancient mystery culture is a weighty one. But it is one of
the things which every priest should meditate on at some point. However, it contradicts
everything which has gradually arisen in the consciousness of Protestants. Protestants would
say that this pastoral message is foolishness. We will come back to this letter in the course of
our explanations of the Apocalypse. The idea here is just an exaggerated version of the idea
which we encounter in the Apocalypse at the place I'm referring to.
John writes to the angels of the seven churches on orders from the gods or with divine
inspiration. He is in such a state when he writes that he feels that he is the one who should
give advice, warnings, a mission, etc to the angels of the seven churches. What is the
concrete idea here? To whom does one have to point when the angel of the Christian
community in Ephesus or Sardis or Philadelphia is mentioned? Although people can't really
understand this today, there were certain individuals at that time, whom we would call
educated Christians, who understood what it means when one says that when a prophetic
person like John was writing to the angels of the churches while he was in a particular soul
mood, he was higher than an angel.
However, the people who understood this would not have been referring to something
supersensible when they said “angel.” They knew that Christian communities had been
founded and continued to exist. The writer of the Apocalypse directed his letters to future
times, when what he has to say about each community will come to pass. He is definitely not
speaking about present conditions. He is speaking about future conditions. But those who
were conversant with traditional views from the ancient mysteries would have had to point to
the leading bishops in the communities who were the recipients of the letters.
On the one hand they were quite aware that the real leader of the community is the
supersensible angel. On the other hand, they would have pointed to the bishop or the
canonical administrator of the community. For they had the idea that the ranking
administrator of a church in Sardis or Ephesus or Philadelphia was the earthly vehicle of a
supersensible, angelic being. So that as John writes he actually feels that he is taken hold of
by a being who is higher than an angel. He writes to the bishops of the seven churches as
people who are permeated by the leading angel of a community, and not just by their own
guardian angel — for everyone has one of the latter.
Then he mentions what he wants to tell these churches. And he's definitely pointing to the
future. We have to ask: Why were seven letters directed to seven communities? Of course,
these seven communities represent the various nuances of heathenism and Judaism from
which Christ proceeded. One had a much greater understanding for concrete things in those
times than one did later. For instance, there was the church in Ephesus, which had once given
birth to the great Ephesian mysteries, and people knew quite well that the latter pointed to the
future appearance of Christ in a way that was customary and necessary. The cultic rituals in
Ephesus were supposed to mediate between the sacrificing priest, his congregation and
divine, spiritual powers, including the coming Christ. The heathen community and cult in
Ephesus foretold the coming of Christianity and therefore they stood quite close to it.
This is why the letter to the angel of the Ephesian church refers to the seven candlesticks.
The candlesticks are the churches. This is explicitly, stated in the Apocalypse. Precisely the
community in Ephesus is and must be taken the way it stands there, for this is its true form.
The indication is that the church in Ephesus was more actively involved with Christianity
than the other churches, and that this was its first love. For we're told that it left its first love.
The Apocalypticer wants to speak about this coming time in his letter. We can see from this
warning letter to the church in Ephesus that the Apocalypticer thinks that he should describe
the development of the various churches in connection with what the communities
experienced in ancient times.
In fact, the individual churches under discussion here represent various nuances of heathen
or Jewish peoples, and they had various cults, whereby they approached the divine worlds in
different ways. The way each letter begins shows one that the Christianity in each of the
communities developed out of heathen rites in a special way.
One should realize that the attitude of soul which people had in the early days of Christianity
was quite different from that of present-day Europeans, although this doesn't apply to the
Orient as much. However, our view of religious things in a conceptual context or content
which one can describe in a logical way was still very foreign to the ancient mystery type of
thinking in the first Christian centuries, very foreign indeed. They told themselves: the Christ
is one of the manifestations of the mighty sun being. However, the church in Ephesus, the
church in Sardis, in Thyatira, etc., must each strive towards him from its cult in its own
special way; each one can approach this being in a way which has a particular nuance. And
one can find indications everywhere that they acknowledged this. Just consider the
following.
Take a church like the one in Ephesus, which had to replace the ancient and profound
Ephesian mysteries; it must be different than, say, the church in Sardis. The church in
Ephesus had a cult which was completely permeated by the presence of divine, spiritual
substances in earthly life. A priest who walked around in Ephesus could have called himself
a god just as well as he could call himself a human being. He knew that he was a bearer of a
god. The entire religious consciousness in Ephesus was really anchored in theophany or in
the visible manifestation of a god in a human being. Each priest in Ephesus represented a
particular god. And it was even one of their special tasks to really bring this theophanic
element or this physical presence of a god into people's souls.
Let's suppose that the living, human elaboration of Artemis or Diana the moon goddess
walked around among the Ephesian priestesses as they celebrated their cultic rites. The
priests expected their followers to see the goddess in the earthly, human manifestation, so
that they made no distinction between the earthly phenomena and the goddess. The people in
public processions and in other ancient events in the mysteries represented gods. Just as one
must learn to have adequate concepts about things today, so one had to acquire mental
images and feelings in one's soul in order to see the god in the male or female priests.
Hence it is not surprising that after the Apocalypticer took it into his head to speak in the
language of the mysteries — as I mentioned before — he turned to the community in
Ephesus, where this particular way of thinking, feeling and sensing things was developed
most strongly. It was only natural for the community in Ephesus to look upon the seven
candlesticks as the most important symbol of its cult. They represented the light which lives
upon earth, which however is divine light.
The situation was quite different in a community like the one in Sardis. This church was the
Christian continuation, of an ancient, astrological star worship, where one really knew how
the movements of the stars and planets are connected with earthly affairs. Where everything
which greater or lesser leaders commanded or which happened on earth was read from the
stars. The church in Sardis had developed from a mystery culture which really considered the
investigation of life secrets and life impulses in the starry skies at night to be important.
Before one could speak of the community in Sardis as a Christian one, one had to speak of it
as the one which clung to an ancient, dreamy state of clairvoyance the most, for the secrets of
the nocturnal macrocosm were disclosed to this clairvoyance; The people, who preserved and
made a tradition out of this dreamy clairvoyance didn't think that what the day gives is very
important.
The differences between the solar services and teachings in Ephesus and Sardis are really
quite interesting to the extent that one can really speak of ancient wisdom in connection with
these two places. The sciences were not separated from the mysteries at that time, and what
was taught at these centers went out to laymen. The solar teachings in Ephesus separated the
five planets Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Mercury from the sun. and the moon. One set
the sun — which we call a fixed star — apart in Ephesus: and one revered it from the time it
rose to the time it set because one looked upon the sun as a principle which gives life.
This was not the case in Sardis. There one received its daily radiations rather indifferently,
and one was mainly interested in what people in the ancient mysteries called the midnight
sun. The nightly sun and the moon were considered to have the same value as the rest of the
planets. The sun was really looked upon as a planet which was on an equal footing with the
others. In Sardis one enumerated Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury, sun moon. But in
Ephesus they had Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Mercury on the one side, and the gods of
the day and the night, sun and moon, which are closely connected with life on earth, on the
other. That is the big difference. And all the cultic rites in Sardis were based on this.
Thus in these first Christian times an old heathen cult which was only oriented towards
Christian principles lived on in the church in Ephesus, whereas an old heathen cult which
was oriented towards the kind of astrology which I just mentioned lived on in Sardis.
Therefore, it is only natural that the Apocalypticer writes of the one who speaks to the
community in Sardis, that he has seven spirits and seven stars; now the featured thing is not
the candle sticks which stand on the altar and the light which is connected with the earth, but
what stands up there in the macrocosm.
You can see how deeply the writer of the Apocalypse is still involved with the ancient
mystery culture if you answer the question: What does the writer of the Apocalypse reproach
the community in Sardis with, or what does he tell them to watch out for? He mainly tells
them that they should be watchful, and that they should make the transition to the diurnal sun
from which Christ came.
One has to take what stands there in a literal sense and to really press forward to the original
meaning. The writer of the Apocalypse was just about the last one to speak about and deal
with religious life like this on a large scale. Before that Alexander the Great dealt with it in
this way when he spread religious life in a model way, and so did all the other people who
spread religions in ancient times. No one used dogmas to talk people into things. They let
people keep their cults and convictions and they only added as much to them as could be
assimilated.
For instance, Buddha's messengers went over to Babylonia and Egypt. After they had done
their work there one could hardly distinguish the later time from the earlier one as far as the
external cultic rites and the use of words went. But there was certainly a tremendous
difference inwardly after they had poured in what the existing cults, sacrificial services and
convictions could hold. Something similar occurred in European regions in ancient times.
Spreaders of religions connected them with the existing ancient mystery culture, and they
didn't try to overpower people with a lot of dogmas.
These are the kind of building blocks one needs in order to be able to read something like the
Apocalypse correctly, and to avoid the absurd ideas which people have often come up with in
connection with it. For instance, this tolerant addition to existing things led the writer of the
Apocalypse to refer several times to “them which say they are Jews, and are not,” which is
something that the members of these two communities were thinking in their hearts. This
kind of thing has led some people to think that the Apocalypse is a Jewish document and not
a Christian one. However, one has to understand how these things proceeded from the way
people used to think in ancient times. We will have to go into some of these details more
exactly later.
However, we will have to touch upon one of these ideas now. I'm referring to the following.
The one who was inspired to write at that time knew that any given reality is only connected
with a certain number of typical phenomena or types. Now just look at the wonderfully
individual way in which the seven churches were described in the Apocalypse. It's really
wonderful; they're all described in such a way that they're clearly distinguished from each
other and they each have a special quality. But the writer of the Apocalypse knew that if one
had described an eighth community, he would have been describing things which were
similar to those which were connected with one of the others: and the same would apply to a
ninth one. All of the possible things were already described in these seven nuances. This is
something he was well aware of.
This is another wonderful idea which surfaces from the far distant past. I ran into it again
recently in a very graphic way when we had our summer course in Torquay, England, and we
drove out to where the castle of King Arthur and his twelve brothers once stood. One can
still see how important this place was from the vital life that exists there. If one looks at these
promontories which still have a few ruins from the old Arthurian castles on them, one sees a
large hill in the middle with the ocean on either side. One sees that the ocean ensouls the
region in a very peculiar way, for the view is continuously changing.
During the relatively short time we were there, sunshine and rain alternated rapidly with each
other. Of course this was also the case in past times, and as a matter of fact, things have
quieted down somewhat today in this respect, for the climate there has changed. Now one
looks at this wonderful interplay of elemental light spirits, which relate to the water spirits
that stream up from below. Other quite special spiritual phenomena exist there when the
ocean surges onto the land and then wrests itself loose and is thrown back again, and when
the ocean curls up. This is actually the only place on earth where one finds this peculiar
living and weaving of elemental, world beings.
What I had the privilege of seeing there was the vehicle for the inspiration of the participants
in Arthur's work. They received the impulses for what they did from what was said to them
with the help of these ocean beings and air beings. Here again, one could only have twelve
people. This struck me there at the time, because one can still perceive what this
establishment of the number twelve is based on. When one has to do with world percepts
which have been created by elemental beings in this way, one finds that there are twelve
nuances or kinds of perception. However, if any one person wants to grasp all 12, they all
become blurred. The knights at Arthur's round table arranged things in such a way that each
of them grasped one of these 12 nuances. But they were convinced that this gave each of
them a sharply differentiated feeling for the universe and for the tasks that it presented them.
But there couldn't have been a thirteenth, for this would have had to be similar to one of the
12.
The idea which obviously underlies this is that if people want to share their tasks in the
world, there must be 12 people. They form a whole and represent 12 nuances. Whereas if
people confront each other in communities or communes one gets the number seven. People
knew about these things in those days. The Apocalypticer still had this supersensible
knowledge of numbers, and he gives us other indications of this in the Apocalypse. Today I
only want to speak about the way one reads the Apocalypse. One of the things that he sees is
the seat of Christ or the transfigured son of man, surrounded by 24 elders. Here we have a
numerical nuancing which is based on 24. What does this quartoduodeca shading mean?
Communities have a nuancing which is based on 7 and incarnated human beings have a
shading which is based on 12. However, we arrive at a different number when it's a question
of looking upon man as a representative of human evolution in super-terrestrial life. There
were leaders of mankind who had to disclose the things which are written into the world
ether or Akashic record to men from one epoch to the next, to the extent that they were ready
to receive them. If we take the successive, great revealers of evolving humanity, we can find
what they had to give inscribed in supersensible regions.
One should really not just look for Moses's individuality, for instance, for the Moses as he
was on earth and not even just in biblical documents as they were on earth, since these have
already been entered into the Akashic record; one should look for the individuality who is
sitting on Christ's seat. The eternal part of Moses's earth existence, his permanent sub specie
aeterni is firmly engraved in the world ether and is sitting there. However only 24 such
human activities can be chosen for eternity. For a 25th would be a repetition of one of the
previous ones. This is something people knew in ancient times.
If people want to work together on earth, there must be 12 of them. If human communities
want to work together there has to be 7. An eighth one would be a repetition of one of the
others. However, if the essential and eternal natures of those people who have spiritualized
themselves in the course of human evolution and who each represent one human stage, work
together, there must be 24 of them. These are the 24 elders.
We have these 24 elders around Christ's seat like the synthesis of all human revelations,
although some of these revelations have already become manifest and some of them have yet
to come. However, we also have man as a whole before Christ's seat in contrast to the
individual human stages. One could say that man as such, as one must understand him, is
represented among the four beasts.
A grand Imagination stands before us here. The transfigured son of man in the center, the
individual stages of humanity throughout the course of time in the 24 directors of the 24
hours of the great world day on the seat, and spread out over all of this, man himself,
amongst the picture of the four beasts, who has to include all the individual stages.
Something rather important becomes manifest here.
What happens before the gaze of the Apocalypticer, who gives God's message to the angels
of the communities and therewith to all mankind? When the four beasts go into action, that
is, as man discovers his relation to the godhead, the 24 directors of the 24 hours of the great
world day fall down with their faces to the ground. Here they are worshipping the entire
human being or man as something that is higher than the individual stages of humanity
which they represent. One really saw this Imagination in very ancient times, and the
Apocalypticer placed it before humanity; however, in those ancient times they said that the
one who is sitting on the seat will come, whereas the Apocalypticer says: He who sits on the
seat has already been here. However, we can only learn to read the Apocalypse correctly and
this is what I wanted to speak about today if we can learn to read things by proceeding from
the ancient mysteries. We will keep on trying to find our way into the Apocalypse. There are
profound secrets in it which you shouldn't just become familiar with, for some of them are
secrets which you should carry out, which you should do.
Diagram 1

LECTURES TO PRIESTS: THE APOCALYPSE

GA 346
Lecture V
Dornach, 9 September 1924
The most important thing we must do here is to read the Apocalypse in the way it should be
read today. Already for the reason that we must become fully conscious of what is guiding
spiritual life today, since spiritual development is now taking place under the sign of the
consciousness soul. Hence it will be a matter of orienting ourselves to what the
Apocalypticer tells us and of absorbing it in a fully conscious way.
The communications of the Apocalypticer have meant nothing to ordinary priests so far, and
at most they meant something to the highest initiates, although there have been ever fewer of
them in recent times. Priests must now become aware of the real contents of the Apocalypse.
We pointed to the seven churches from a particular point of view, for the world is very
complex and one can look at things from many different viewpoints; so that we can describe
the community in Ephesus in the way that we did yesterday. We then find that the
Christianity there developed out of certain heathen conditions.
However, we can also point out that much of the basic structure of the first post Atlantean
epoch was contained in these impulses — in fact, to an even greater extent than it was
contained in the later phases of Indian civilization. So that in a way one can look upon the
Christianity which developed in Ephesus as a Christian continuation of the first world view
and view of life after the Atlantean epoch, whereas the original Persian culture lived more in
the second community — Smyrna — and passed over into Christianity.
Then again, Pergamos is described as a community which cultivated the third post Atlantean
culture. If we let the message to Pergamos work upon us, we find a more or less clear
reference to the words of Hermes, which lived in this cultural milieu.
Then in Thyatira we are referred to the fourth post Atlantean culture, in which the Mystery of
Golgotha took place. If we let this important message work upon us, we are constantly
reminded of the direct way in which the message of the Mystery of Golgotha worked.
And then comes the church in Sardis, which we discussed yesterday. I showed you that this
church in Sardis was somewhat astrologically oriented, and that it was oriented towards
astronomical work. Therewith this community bears a lot of the past in it — which of course
every community does from a historical viewpoint. But precisely this community in Sardis
also bears a lot of the future in it.
And now take what we're trying to bring into our spiritual view of the present. We are living
in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. If one looks at Sardis' past one sees that there was still
something germinal there which hadn't been taken to completion at the time when John
wrote the Apocalypse. The whole tone of this fifth epistle is different. It points to the future.
The future to which he pointed at that time, which is as it were germinally contained in
Sardis is our future; it is the time in which we're living.
So the development of the successive post Atlantean periods is hidden in the developing
Christian churches, and the same thing is indicated from another side in the seven seals.
We have another indication, as it were, of what the secret of the seven churches is in the
seven seals. We will describe the other meaning of the seven seals later, but when the fourth
seal is opened, it corresponds to a secret of the fourth post Atlantean epoch, for a pale horse
appears, and there is talk about the death which has come into the world. This touches upon
one of the most important secrets of the Apocalypse — at least, it is very important for our
time. In a way, death really entered into humanity during the fourth Post Atlantean epoch.
You should make this clear to yourselves. One finds out what human nature is if one
contemplates something like this; one can really get to know it quite well.
If we go back to the first, second and third post Atlantean epochs we find that the way man
felt about himself, and his whole frame of mind was different in these early times than it
became later. Man had a distinct inner feeling that he was growing into his earthly abode.
Even though this consciousness had dimmed considerably by the time of the Mystery of
Golgotha, men had a distinct memory in their ordinary consciousness that they had lived up
in the spiritual world before their life on earth. In the first, second and third post Atlantean
epochs, everyone knew that they had been a spiritual being before they had become a child.
One doesn't find this, in external documents very much, but the fact is that people, took the
continuation of their stay upon earth backwards into the spiritual world for granted. Human
beings only began to feel that their life on earth was closed off by the two portals of
conception or birth and death in the fourth post Atlantean epoch, which coincided with the
Mystery of Golgotha.
This consciousness or attitude of soul first arose in the fourth post Atlantean epoch, so that
this consciousness of being strictly enclosed by the boundaries of earthly life developed from
about the eighth century before Christ up to the 15th century after the Mystery of Golgotha.
A new consciousness is being prepared in the present epoch, but we're only at the beginning
of it. Only about five centuries have elapsed since then, and this corresponds to about the
third pre-Christian century with respect to the preparation of the fourth post Atlantean
consciousness. The consciousness which they had then was quite different from the one they
had when the fourth post Atlantean consciousness was fully developed. Likewise, most men
today are not wearing the clothes of the new consciousness yet, but they are still wearing the
consciousness of the fourth post Atlantean epoch. Our whole civilization tends to create this
situation.
Just think of how much has been carried over from the fourth post Atlantean epoch and of
how much people are living in the fourth post Atlantean epoch in a matter of fact or
coquettish way. The fourth post Atlantean epoch is still working on in our entire high school
education. Scholars who use Latin are still back in the fourth post Atlantean epoch. People in
public life still think in the way that they thought in the fourth post Atlantean epoch. We
haven't arrived at full humanity with respect to the development of our consciousness soul, as
it were, in the fifth post Atlantean epoch. And this is why men of the present still think that
their earth life is closed off by the two portals of birth and death.
The consciousness soul is being developed, but this development only becomes evident in
people who have a special talent for it. I have met quite a few talented people like this during
my lifetime; but one usually doesn't notice them. There is an awareness that a man with this
fifth post Atlantean consciousness doesn't completely fit into the period between birth and
death, that death plays into earthly life, that one really dies a little bit every day, that we're
dying continuously all the time and that death exists. Some people are very much afraid of
death, because they feel that it is undermining their ability to be human on earth. On the
other hand, I have also known people who loved death because it always accompanied them,
and they were really longing for it.
This is something which will arise evermore during the fifth post Atlantean epoch, namely,
people will see death walking alongside them. To put it even more concretely: men will
perceive an intimate fire process in themselves which is connected with the development of
the consciousness soul. They will experience this development of waking consciousness like
a kind of fire process which consumes them, especially at the moments when they pass over
from sleeping to waking consciousness. The consciousness soul is a very spiritual thing, and
spiritual things always consume material ones. The consciousness soul consumes material
and etheric things in human beings through a kind of intimate fire process or transformation
process.
This is something which men will perceive more and more in the course of this fifth post
Atlantean epoch. Except that you shouldn't think that it's like a burning candle flame; one
shouldn't think of it in such a physical way. Rather he will incorporate this proximity of
death into his moral soul.
The situation with most people today is as follows. If you see how the good resolves and
firm intentions which they have disappear in the next moment, hour, day or month, then in
accordance with the prevailing, materialistic world view, one considers this to be something
which simply occurs. But one will gradually begin to feel differently about this. One will
begin to feel that a good intention which one was too weak to carry out weakens one's life
and reduces one's moral value, and one will see that one becomes morally lighter and less
significant in the universe thereby.
People today generally feel that what is present here is a weakness in their soul, and not
something which works on in the universe. But this will change. Likewise, there will be
certain intellectual qualities which people will increasingly feel are weakening them, as if a
fire in their soul were consuming them. These phenomena are already here, and some of
them exist on a large scale. But they are not being felt in an honest way.
There is a way to find one's way into the spiritual world where one goes step by step and
where one also takes what is given in How Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds?
and in other books into account; thereby one arrives at a harmony between spirit, soul and
body. But through the way in which most people cultivate a spiritual life today without these
exercises, namely, through the way in which people in various confessions pursue a religious
life, the latter is active in them in such a manner that it reduces their moral value and makes
them lighter.
These are things which people are becoming aware of more and more. People in this fifth
post Atlantean epoch are changing a great deal. For it is a significant change if one feels that
one's whole manhood is strengthened or weakened by what one is in one's soul. It's quite a
change if one feels that destiny is not only a matter of circumstances which work upon one
and which are present around one outside, but that it is something which makes one morally
lighter or heavier. It's not as if one's physical body were protected against this, for one feels
that one becomes lighter or heavier as a whole human being.
You see, this is the consciousness which is being prepared, and one can see externally and
empirically that it is being prepared. The time is beginning today when the priesthood will
have to think of these things, when the faithful are standing before them. For it's a question
of dealing with what is rising in men's consciousness in such a way that a man is comforted
and strengthened. These things are not fully conscious yet, and they are coming up together
with all kinds of unrest, nervousness and disharmonious emotional contents.
You priests will find that it's becoming increasingly impossible to treat individual people in
accordance with the general ideas which you have formed. Don't be offended by this, but in a
certain sense clichés have been the decisive thing in the past and in many respects they still
are today. If you ask what a priest did with someone who came to him with some kind of
delusive ideas, one will hear that he tried to make him feel aware that he was a sinner, and
that he did the same with a second case, and so on. Thus everything is pervaded by clichés.
I once went to three burials in one day, and I noticed that the same priest began each burial
with the statement, “As high as the heavens are above the earth, so much higher are my
thoughts than your thoughts.” Here we have another cliché, which was relatively justified in
the fourth post Atlantean epoch. Like the other things that I mentioned, this has reached over
into the fifth and it rules our thinking, whereas a finer observation shows that all things must
be transformed in our cultural epoch. Priests must begin to be able to look into the hearts of
other human beings again.
Very few people can do this today. Human beings know terribly little about other human
beings today. For you see, if one reads the passage about the white raiment which people
who have fulfilled the task of the fifth cultural epoch will have to wear, and if one does this
with a certain reverence — because one can't really read the Apocalypse without reverence
— one gets the impression that here it's a question of looking deeply into the special kind of
consciousness which each human being has with the eye of a priest. It's a question of their
becoming acquainted with the people who appear before them in the fifth post Atlantean age.
We are being admonished to become acquainted with each human being in his soul garment,
and not just in the clothes which he wears through what he is in the outer world. This
admonishment of the Apocalypticer is addressed to our present time through this letter.
Today's priests must penetrate the souls of human beings as they momentarily disregard all
the external things into which men are placed. Priests must really begin to look at human
beings in the way I described, namely, in the way one must look at them if one wants to
investigate their karma. The day before yesterday I said that if one wants to investigate
someone's karma one has to immerse oneself in his soul and in the qualities which can come
to expression in any profession and basically in any capacity, and one shouldn't look at
people from the viewpoint of their vocation, social ties, and ability or non-ability. For one
has to look at what a human being was in his past earth life. Now priests don't have to go
quite that far, but they must begin to see through external things and to look at man's inner
life and his purely human side, and at what gives each inner human being an individual
constitution. It's really the case that if we read up to this Book of Revelation we feel that
what is written in it is like a direct exhortation to present-day humanity. And if we read on
we can get an even deeper impression.
Just consider the following. We're going through the fifth post Atlantean epoch; during this
fifth post Atlantean age man is changing his consciousness in such a way that he sees
through the work and activity of death itself. He will understand it. He will not learn to see
through it in such a way that he knows how much longer he has to live; but he will see the
working of death itself; he will have it as a constant companion. Of course he will have to
have a soul content which will make this standing next to him of death seem natural, and this
is something which will have to be created in the various spheres of life. If one's soul forces
are constantly alert one will be able to have death next to one as a good friend and a constant
companion.
You should realize that when you look out into your environment today, you are still seeing
things like a man of the fourth post Atlantean epoch. You're basically looking at life which
has death in it in every plant and rock, but you don't see the death, because you still don't see
it in yourself. People will soon begin to see death all the time. This is what one will
increasingly have to say to present-day men. People's whole perception will change as they
see death more and more.
If one sees death one sees many things which are completely hidden in the phenomena. We
see nature in a rather stable way today because we don't look into certain fine, intimate things
in nature at all. We walk through the countryside, and we see signs which say that there is a
lot of foot and mouth disease in this area. However, in reality something happened in the
more intimate things above such a place — if one can see it — which can be compared with
an ocean which is roiled by a storm or with a volcanic eruption. This is what will approach
mankind in the sixth post Atlantean epoch.
Today people can observe the eruption of a Vesuvius or a great earthquake by means of a
seismograph, but because they don't see death yet they don't see the tensions in the etheric
which become manifest in all kinds of things, such as when a significant genius lives
somewhere or is born there. People can see the tremendous working and weaving of the
spirit behind the planets and stars and their configurations just as little; the latter are just an
external manifestation of the former.
People will see all of this in a certain way during the sixth post Atlantean epoch. The sun and
the stars and planets in their present form will have fallen down from the heavens. One will
see the working and weaving of spirit where the materially abstract stars shine today. Thus
the way that men see themselves will change a great deal in the course of the fifth post
Atlantean age and the way they see the whole world around them will change greatly in the
course of the sixth. For example, don't think that an initiate sees the world like a non-initiate
does. Something similar applies to successive stages of consciousness. Human beings see the
world differently in successive epochs.
The fact that we are living at a time when man and the way the world looks are being
transformed is indicated in a number of ways but also by the fact that there is a relative
uniformity in the description of the first four letters. The first letter is unsealed and a horse
appears, a white horse. The second letter is unsealed and a red horse appears, but it's a horse.
The third letter is unsealed and a black horse appears, but it's a horse. The fourth letter is
unsealed and a pale horse appears, but again it is a horse.
The fifth letter is unsealed and no horse appears; there is no mention of horses anymore. The
decisive thing here is indicated in an entirely different way. If we go on reading the letters,
we find that a very important transformation which is occurring during our age is pointed to
in this way.
We can only say that we must prepare ourselves to become the new, transformed community
of Sardis. This new and transformed community in Sardis must realize that it's rather trivial
to know plants, animals and rocks, for one only really knows these things if one finds the
activities of the stars and planets in every stone and in every plant. The stars must fall down
from heaven in a spiritual way. One can already begin to perceive this.
I would just like to give a particular example of this. People accept the outer forms of such
things. One doesn't pay much attention to the way in which something like this is present in
the whole spiritual evolution of mankind. Each person can only do something at the place
where he stands. Before I went on my last trip to England, the following thing happened.
You may know that when I'm here I give the people who are working on our building one or
two hours a week during their working time, where I talk to them about scientific and
spiritual things. I let the workers give me the themes, and they really like to do this. The
workers like it if they can choose the themes. Now they wanted to know about things which
are possible in present-day spiritual life. This is one of the things which priests should really
understand.
When I walked into the classroom before I went on my trip to England, a worker had a
prepared question: Why is it that only certain rocks and plants have an odor? Where does the
fragrance of flowers come from? Now these workers were educated by the lectures which
have been given for years to such an extent that they're not particularly interested in chemical
explanations, where one tells them that one has this or that substance which is giving off this
or that aroma, along the lines of explanations which tell one that destitution comes from
poverty. The workers want real explanations.
Now you see, I had to tell them the following. I will briefly repeat what I explained to them
for about an hour. Things which smell refer us to our sense organs; we perceive the aroma
through our organ of smell. But let's ask ourselves whether we have developed our organ of
smell to the point where we can compete with a police dog. You will have to admit that we
can't. On the contrary, you will have to admit that man has a rather crude organ of smell and
that one runs into more sensitive organs of smell if one goes down to certain lower forms in
nature.
One can see this from the following. Take a dog, which has this sensitive organ of smell, so
that it can become a police, dog. You will see that it has a receded forehead which follows
the olfactory nerves that bear smells into its system. All of this is puffed up into a forehead in
us; our intellectual apparatus and especially our ability to recognize things is a transformed
organ of smell. This explains why we find more sensitive organs of perception when we
descend to lower creatures.
Now spiritual science teaches us that the fragrant flowers of a large number of plants are
really organs of smell; they're vegetable organs of smell which are extraordinarily sensitive.
And what do they smell? They smell the omnipresent, world's aroma. The worldly smell
which is emitted by Venus is different from the ones which are given off by Mars or Saturn.
For instance, violet smells are the aromatic echo of the cosmic smell which violets perceive.
Such pleasant smelling plants perceive the elements of the world's smell which come from
Venus, Mercury and Mars. Stinky asafetida smells Saturn odors and reproduces them.
Here one has to explain to people how the stars fall down, because they want to know this;
for the things of the world are basically nothing else than what they give out or radiate down.
If one wants to talk about things in a realistic way, one has to say that the stars are really
falling down already, because they are in the plants. Plants are aromatic and they are also
olfactory organs. This morning I let the workers give me some more questions. One of the
questions was: If what was said about smells is correct and plants are sensitive organs of
smell, where do plant colors come from?
I had to explain that although plant aromas come from the planets, plant colors come from
the power of the sun. I gave an example to make this seem plausible. However, one of the
workers wasn't entirely satisfied with this answer, and he said: this doesn't explain why rocks
have colors; I can understand why plants have colors, for if there's a plant growing in the
cellar where there's no sunlight, it has a form which has an aroma, because the world's aroma
passes through the walls of the cellar; but the sun doesn't shine through the walls and so
plants remain pale or even white; but how do rocks become colored? Then I had explain[ed]
that we have the course of the day, with a revolution with respect to the sun in hours, and we
have the course of the year which brings about the seasons during which the sun goes up
towards the zenith and back down again; but we also have something else. I had to explain
the Platonic year, and I explained that although the sun is now in Pisces at the vernal equinox
it was previously in Aries, Taurus and Gemini, and that it takes 25.920 years for it to go all
the way around. So that the sun is connected with the course of a day, the course of a year
and the course of a world year; and whereas plants get their colors from the sun in the course
of a year, rocks get their colors in the course of a world year.
The power which the sun develops in its movement through a Platonic year lives in the
colors of green emeralds, wine yellow topaz and red rubies. And so you see that if one begins
to speak about the spiritual world people are no longer satisfied if one explains their
questions about earthly things with the trivialities which come out of our laboratories and
dissecting rooms. They want to know things, and they feel very satisfied if they know them
in a Sardisian way or in a way where one brings in the stars and planets and their activities.
After all, by placing Sardis into the present time, one is doing the same thing that the
Apocalypse is doing.
You see, this is an example, but on the other hand, one has to begin to carry this sensing of
the stars and their beings into the present People will have to begin to see that the Christ is a
sun being again. But this is what they fight most of all. But if I tell you such things, namely,
if I tell you that our modern, fifth post Atlantean epoch must be the resurrected Sardis, in the
way that this is concisely and wonderfully described in the fifth community and in the fifth
seal, when these things are unsealed, if I say this to you, you will feel that one of our tasks is
to develop this particular understanding of the Apocalypse today, namely, to be able to
understand the tasks which are demanding our heartfelt attention every day. It doesn't do any
good to merely interpret the Apocalypse today. We must put the Apocalypse into practice in
everything we do, otherwise we might just as well forget about it. A desire to interpret it in
order to satisfy one's curiosity doesn't have much value.
Thus I have tried to show you the second thing which belongs to a reading of the
Apocalypse. Yesterday I tried to indicate the formal aspect to you; today I tried to indicate
that it takes will power to read it. But this is only natural. For apocalypses have always arisen
through inspirations of the will, and here we touch upon a really apocalyptic point, because it
is an apocalyptic point which is full of life.
Diagram 1
We already have people today who are being trained in an apocalyptic way; but they are
being apocalyptically trained so that they receive their training of the will in a way which is
oriented specifically towards the Roman catholic church; these are the Jesuits. There is
something very apocalyptic about the Jesuits' training and exercises. The Jesuits' exercises
involve a training of the will, which always underlies the perception of apocalyptic things.
Hence anyone who takes a real priesthood in the sense of a Christian renewal seriously today
has to keep this training of the Jesuits in mind.
He must understand the Apocalypse so that he can find the right impulse for his will in it,
whereas although the impulse for the will which was given by Ignatius of Loyola was
wonderful, it was very one-sided, and it has become Ahrimanically hardened today. For
Ignatius of Loyola is a good example of how wrongly we can look at the world if we don't
gain knowledge of it in a spiritual scientific way.
People ascribe the present development of the Jesuits to Ignatius of Loyola. But it no longer
has anything to do with him. Ignatius of Loyola reincarnated a long time ago, and of course
he has separated himself from the movement completely, for he lived as Emanuel
Swedenborg; and so the Jesuitic movement has become completely Ahrimanic since then. It
is no longer connected with Ignatius and it is active in an Ahrimanic way. Here you have a
kind of shadowy counter image of what you must train yourself to do, when you take
apocalyptic things into your ego in the way I mentioned, so that your ego becomes' a sum of
active forces which are also apocalyptic.

LECTURES TO PRIESTS: THE APOCALYPSE

GA 346
Lecture VI
Dornach, 10 September 1924
When someone became initiated in the ancient mysteries, one of the first things he
experienced there was that his thoughts and his whole human soul mood were directed
towards the significance of the cycles of world civilization which are based on the number
seven. And we see a clear reflection of what arises from this initiation principle in the
Apocalypse. The number seven is present in the construction, composition and content of the
Apocalypse in a great variety of ways.
Now of course what is connected with this number seven was not connected with it in the
external way that one usually imagines today, but one initiated the person concerned into the
working and weaving of numbers in general. Now I would like to draw your attention to
something which I explained over there in a quite different course on speech formation.
There I had to explain how an experience of speech sounds is possible, and that mankind has
lost its ability to experience them. Just place the way elements of the creative word are given
through these experiences of speech sounds and the way that the most manifold and
wonderful content and even a whole world content can be given through combinations of
about 32 sound elements before your souls. Now try to imagine what things were like at such
a time — and there were times when something like this was a reality for mankind — a time
that lived with these 32 elements in a very active way and which felt how wonderful it was to
be able to shape a world out of this experience of 32 speech sounds. One really felt that
something spiritual was weaving in speech formation and in the pictorial shaping of words
when one spoke; one experienced that gods were living in the speech sounds.
If you take our 32 speech sounds, it will be easy for you to see that about 24 of them are
consonants and that about 7 of them are vowels. Of course these things are always
approximate, but you can now let some light from the beginning of John's gospel “In the
beginning was the word” fall on that Apocalyptic Imagination of an Alpha and Omega
surrounded by seven angels or vowels, and by 24 elders or consonants. One felt that the
secret of the universe weaved and lived in what one intoned in holy cultic language in the
way that I already explained to you. And when one celebrated a religious rite one felt the
presence of the world's content which lived powerfully in this symbolic picture.
Mankind must again get a feeling for where the gods were located from the viewpoint of
mystery wisdom. They weren't sought in the remote transcendental places one thinks of
today. One sought their bodies in things like speech sounds; and when people spoke about
the cosmic, word, they were speaking about the things which really weave through the world
and which men participate in with their speech.
The same applies to numbers. Our present idea about numbers is very abstract, by
comparison with the kind of thinking which still holds sway in the Apocalypse. Now you
see, if one goes back to the first Christian centuries one finds that a few people have a certain
understanding for something like the Apocalypse, because they still felt what the secret of
numbers is and because they still experienced the peculiar proportions which are connected
with a division into a series of numbers.
People definitely did not look upon a series of numbers as a kind of joining of one more unit
to the previous number, but one experienced what is present in three and in four, namely, the
closed nature of three, the open nature of four, and the five which is related to the human
being. One felt something divine in numbers, just as one found something divine in speech
sounds and letters.
When someone in the ancient mysteries had reached the point where he was initiated into
this secret of numbers, it was his duty to think, feel and sense in accordance with this secret
of numbers. Just think what this means. In music we have an octave of seven tones — for the
eighth is the same as the first, in the rainbow 7 colors, and the number 7 is also present in
other things in nature. Just suppose that it would occur to Nature to have a different
arrangement in the rainbow, — the whole universe would be thrown into confusion; or
suppose one would divide up the musical scale in a different way, — the music would
become unbearable, and so on.
However, since this secret of numbers is also in man's soul being — there where the
lawfulness is right —, just as the course of nature is in it, the candidate for initiation was told
that he shouldn't toss his thoughts back and forth arbitrarily anymore after his initiation, but
that it was his duty to think inwardly in numbers, just as Nature thinks in numbers; he was
told to experience how the mystery of numbers weaves and lives in all beings and processes.
Now the Apocalypse was written at a time when such an insertion of man into the cosmic
secret of a 7 or 12 or 24 or 3 was absolutely valid. Since the beginning of our consciousness
soul age, that is, since the first third of the 15th century, we are running into things which are
similar to those which took place before the time in which the number 7 was strictly valid, so
that displacements in the number 7 are gradually appearing. We are no longer in the fortunate
position of experiencing an evolution which occurs exactly according to the number 7 We
are already in that evolutionary stage of the earth where irregularities are beginning with
respect to the secret of numbers, so that the secret of numbers has acquired a new
significance for us. If we enlighten ourselves through the secret of numbers which exists in
documents like the Apocalypse, we find that we gradually become able to grasp what is
increasingly occurring outside the secret of numbers with our senses. And so in a certain
sense, we're living our way out of the secret of numbers. But we have to find out what it is,
so that we can use it in the forms which are suitable for the earthly human events which are
to be guided by the priesthood in the religious sphere.
Although I'm assuming this, I can nevertheless speak about certain phenomena as if they
were occurring in accordance with the secret of numbers, because world events will probably
only emerge from the secret of numbers slowly, as they move into a mode which is not in
accordance with numbers. In any case, in the ancient mysteries people thought in terms of
larger, smaller and very, small cycles of seven.
Thus we have seen the continuation of old cultures and the beginning of new cultural periods
in the 7 communities or churches, which were also real, concrete formations on earth. On the
other hand, we have a smaller cycle, and the Apocalypse helps us to understand this in a
certain way. Just consider what this smaller cycle consists of.
If we look back to the time in which the Mystery of Golgotha took place upon earth, we see
that Oriphiel, the archangel who gets most of his impulses from Saturn, was ruling human
spiritual development. Then we come into an age where Anael is the ruling archangel, then
to the age of Zachariel, then we come to the age of Raphael, then of Samael, of Gabriel and
into the present Michael age; we have the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh
ages; so that we're in the seventh age of this smaller cycle within our fifth larger cycle.
If we wanted to write what they wrote in ancient times in a modern form, we would have to
say that we are living in the 5/7 age, that is, we're in a larger, fifth cycle, and we're also in a
seventh cycle which intersects this. A seventh cycle signifies an end condition. It was
preceded by the sixth Gabriel cycle. A great deal is always decided in a sixth cycle; the end
is prepared, and the previous age still works into this sixth cycle. The Michael cycle begins
about 1879, the Gabriel cycle begins about 1471. Before that was the fifth Samael cycle, and
this archangel gets his impulses from Mars.
The archangel of the fifth smaller cycle was reigning when the fifth post Atlantean epoch
began. However, he had already been reigning for 3 to 4 centuries in this fifth archangel
cycle when he ushered in the fifth post Atlantean cycle. Thus the small cycle overleaps the
beginning of the large cycle. However, this means that the large cycles are brought about by
spirits in the middle hierarchies; the third hierarchy, which includes the archangels, are the
servants of the higher hierarchies. But the law of numbers works in such a way that the fifth
archangel's main activity coincides with that of a being from a higher hierarchy who is also
connected with the number five at the beginning of the fifth cycle.
It's been a relatively long time since anyone has spoken about these things, but they were
discussed over a period which is longer than most people think. These secrets were discussed
in places like the School of Chartres in the 12th century. They still had an apocalyptic
language then, for the latter is always one which looks upon the universe from the
perspective or point of view of numbers, and also from other viewpoints.
When Plato says that God geometrizes and mathematizes he doesn't mean our rather abstract
geometry or mathematics, but that deep experience which people in ancient times had in
connection with forms and numbers. And although it is ridiculed by materialism, one can see
everywhere that the law of seven also applies to organic life. One will find that the law of
seven is at work in the time it takes for larvae and butterflies to develop and crawl out, and in
the development of certain diseases, and in many other things. These initiates were told that
numbers are something which arise out of the nature of things, and this helped them to see
the way things really are.
For one really becomes attentive to things if one has to tell oneself that the archangel who
stands in the number five spot helps to begin the fifth post Atlantean age with Mars forces.
Everyone knows that there is something warlike about Mars. If we look at the successive
cultural periods, we see that they are separated by important events.
If we look back at the last big event which separates the Atlantean age from the present age
which is now in its fifth cultural period, we have what is known as the ice age or flood
between the two the sinking of Atlantis and the rising of new continents.
We are living in the fifth post Atlantean period, a sixth one will follow and a seventh one
will follow. The catastrophe which then separates us from the next large period which will
come the fifth from the sixth period will not just be an external event in nature like the ice
age or flood was. This separation of the fifth from the sixth period will become manifest in a
more moral way. As I have often mentioned, a war of all against all or a moral catastrophe
will separate the fifth from the large sixth earth period.
Of course, this will also be connected with events in nature, but the latter will be less
important. It is introduced by what comes from Mars through Samael, the spirit of conflict,
when warlike elements for initiation were brought from the spiritual world. At the beginning
of our fifth, smaller consciousness soul age we have a preview of the way our larger age will
end after our fifth cultural epoch has been followed by the sixth and seventh ones.
If we listen to what people who still knew something about the secret events which stand
behind the public ones said around the beginning of the 15th century when Samael was
reigning under the influence of Mars we will get an inkling of the way our large epoch will
end. One finds one's way into apocalyptic thinking if one connects numbers with events. If
one learns to look at the world in an apocalyptic way, one will, as it were, be able to read the
apocalyptic universe, and one will find that countless secrets are revealed to one.
Now consider the fact that the small Michael cycle is in our fifth post Atlantean cultural
epoch and in the larger fifth earth period. Let's take a look at what this means.
We are living in the post Atlantean epoch or in the fifth large earth period. This fifth epoch
has in a way strongly separated men from the world of the gods. Atlantean men still felt that
they were permeated by God; they felt that they were like a covering for the godhead, and
not like individual human beings. Atlantean men felt that the godhead existed, but not
individual human beings.
The main thing that our epoch is for is to make men independent and to separate him from
the godhead, and this has been happening slowly and gradually for four cultural periods. It
was happening slowly in the ancient Indian cultural epoch, and one could still see the after
effects of this in the Ephesian mysteries. During, the ancient Indian cultural age men felt that
they were still almost entirely embedded in the godhead. They separated themselves from it
considerably during the ancient Persian period. They were relatively independent in the third,
so that they already felt death approaching from a distance. Death was felt to such an extent
during the Græco-Roman cultural period that it gave rise to that well known saying, “It's
better to be a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of the shades.”
Now that we're gradually supposed to have death beside us as a companion in the fifth post
Atlantean cultural age, as I said yesterday, we will need moral strength in order to bear this
continual presence of death. In the immediate present and in the age where the consciousness
soul and the accompaniment by death are beginning for us, it is important that this coincides
with the time of Michael's reign — a reign that signifies an end in a certain sense and a kind
of an attainment of perfection; or decadence and perfection at the same time.
At the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, Michael, who lived in the sun and who was the most
important servant of the Christ spirit in the sun, experienced this event from the other side.
Humanity on earth experienced the Mystery of Golgotha in such a way that it saw the Christ
approaching, whereas Michael and his hosts, who were still in the sun at that time
experienced it in such a way that they had to say farewell to the Christ.
One must let the two poles of this event which surpassed everything else which was
happening in the cosmos work upon one's soul, — the hosanna on earth when Christ arrived
there, and his departure from Michael's hosts up above, for they belong together.
But Michael has undergone a great metamorphosis in our age, and the beginning of his reign
signifies a following of Christ down to the earth, and in the future it will signify a walking
before Christ's deeds upon earth. And then one will begin to understand again what “Michael
walks before the Lord” means.
In the Old Testament the initiates of Asia said that Michael went before Jehova, just as a
man's face precedes him as his foremost part; for there was a Michael reign before Oriphiel's.
They spoke of Michael as the countenance of Jehova. We must learn to speak of Michael as
the countenance of Christ, but we're in a different age now. Certain things must attain the
greatest perfection; we must, as it were, learn to make things productive which couldn't be
productive before.
Let's take the seven churches. If we assign one of them which we can do to the period which
went parallel with the Christ event and the beginnings of Christianity, which was still
underway when the Apocalypse was being written — if we take this first time period, it is
represented by the church in Ephesus. And then we see that the people in this Ephesian
community were the ones whose first love united them with Christianity around the time the
Apocalypse was written and also afterwards. All of this should be understood out of the
secret of numbers.
After this we find the age of Anael, who draws his forces from Venus. We find the great
deeds of love which spread Christianity during this age, countless deeds of love, namely
those deeds of love which live in the footsteps of the Irish monks as they spread Christianity
in Europe. And we find that love is also the predominant thing in the rest of Christian life
during this reign of Anael.
The reign of Zachariel follows; he draws his forces from Jupiter, mainly forces of wisdom,
but forces which could be but little understood during this age. Instead of a real Jupiter reign,
the reign of the archangels began to retire more into the background at this time. In a way
humanity no longer reached up to the region of Jupiter, and they denied the Jupiter spirit.
The significant eighth Council of Constantinople, which took away a great deal from the
evolution of humanity and which eliminated the trichotomy, took place during this period.
Then comes the age in which events occur that are more or less ignored in outer history.
After the age of Zachariel is over, humanity's soul is basically sick. Humanity is very sick,
and pathogenic substances spread from east to west. Terrible pathogenic substances exist
which are dangerous to Christianity, because the period of Jupiter wisdom has ended. These
pathogenic substances came from materialism, for it was this which pressed into Christianity,
and it thereby took hold of the whole Christian culture.
However, something strange stands behind all of what is only present on earth as a
projection. The age of Raphael, the doctor among the archangels, stands behind the sick
things which were left behind from the age of Zachariel. This was the age which began in the
10th and 11th centuries, where things were healed behind the scenes not in an outwardly
manifest way but mostly within. Namely, much was healed in connection with the rescue of
certain moral qualities which were on the verge of being ruined; a great deal was healed in
this way. But in contrast to the pathological substances which were brought to Europe by
Mohammedanism, something was summoned which was permeated by the Christian
principle and which had to come from the Orient in a different form. One must become
aware of the great will impulse which was behind the crusades. One of the causes of the
crusades was the principle to heal mankind, to cure it of the materialism which was
threatening it from both Mohammedanism and Roman Catholicism. And Raphael, the doctor
among the archangels, is basically the inspirer of those who prepared mankind, to look for
the part of the Orient towards which the crusades were directed. However, the crusades are in
the fourth small cycle in the fourth post Atlantean age which was almost over. Here we are in
the fourth smaller cycle in the fourth larger one which is the fourth Græco-Roman age. But
this fourth, larger period was the one which was chosen to include the Mystery of Golgotha.
The fourth, smaller cycle or Raphael cycle is closely connected with the basic structure, of
the fourth, larger one. For we see how Raphael the archangel implements Christ's impulses
as he inspires people to go on the crusades and to look fervently towards the Orient in order
to find Christ's mystery there, and we see that a kind of spiritual atmosphere floats above the
ground and above all the events. The people who could look behind the scenes at all at the
time were really only separated by a thin spider's web from a directly adjacent world, just as
we were only separated from it by a spider's web in the last third of the 19th century, when
Michael became visibly active on earth.
Joachim of Floris, Alanus ab Insulis and other outstanding spirits in the Raphael age could
see this activity of Raphael and this healing of humanity which was going on behind the
scenes. This was the background for the age of pathogenic spiritual materials, which is
confirmed by the fact that people began to really understand Luke's gospel of healing in this
age. Thus if one looks at periods from a numerical point of view, one finds important things
which can help one to interpret events.
This was followed by the Samael age, which gets its main impulses from Mars. Quarrelsome
forces arise and mankind is inoculated with them. Five becomes opposed to four. This is the
strange thing in transitions from four to five, that the five always becomes opposed to the
four. If we go back to the ancient mysteries, where pupils or adepts were initiated into the
secrets of numbers for a long time, we find that after a while pupils left their classes with a
deep conviction which they formulated as follows: Now I know that five is the number
which represents evil.
According to the secret of numbers, wherever five is at work in the universe, one has to do
with the evil sphere; it opposes four and this gives rise to great decisions which enable one to
go up to six in either a good or an evil way. Tomorrow we will dis cuss the extent to which
this leads to concrete things, such as to the wisdom of the heart and of the human soul. I
wanted to show you how one becomes able to describe events if one lets one's thoughts be
guided by the thread of numbers.

LECTURES TO PRIESTS: THE APOCALYPSE

GA 346
Lecture VII
Dornach, 11 September 1924
Before we go any further in our study of the Apocalypse we must add one more method to
read it properly, which however is taken more from outside. Then the main thing is to apply
what we read in the Apocalypse to our present time. In order to do this, we must first look at
the spiritual foundations from which this Apocalypse arose. But I don't mean that one should
do this by trying to explain a book through one's times in a trivial historical sense. This is not
really applicable to writings like the Apocalypse which are conceived out of the spiritual
world in the way I described. Nevertheless, it was created in the way that it could be created
in its time in accordance with the spiritual conditions — not in accordance with external
historical conditions, but in accordance with spiritual conditions. Let's take a look at this
time.
Let's connect this time of the first Christian centuries with general world evolution in a
spiritual way. The year 333 A.D. is an important year if we look at the evolution which
occurs behind outer events. This year 333 is the point in time in which the ego shot into the
intellectual or mind soul, which developed between the year 747 before the Mystery of
Golgotha and the beginning of the age of the consciousness soul in the 15th century. This
year 333 stands right in the middle. The intellectual and mind soul developed during this
epoch and it played an important role in the development of the Greek mentality. It
continued to work until the age of the consciousness soul began. The Mystery of Golgotha
took place in this age of the development of the intellectual soul or hearty feelings soul.
Now we must realize that this shooting in of the ego into the intellectual and mind soul is
something which is very important. One has to tell oneself that one understands things with
the intellectual and feeling soul. But this bursting in of the ego which occurred around the
year 333 nevertheless shook up the humanity which comes into consideration for the
reception of spiritual influences; it really shook them up right down into the depths of their
soul. Anyone who wants to participate in the spiritual life and to work along spiritual lines
must see the outer facts of historical developments on their spiritual backgrounds.
Which major events must be looked at in the light of this ego-entry into man's soul at the
time when it was occurring behind the illusions of outer events, as it were? It was here that
the whole relation off divine beings to men started tó become uncertain, contested and
misunderstood.
At this point vie have the significant dispute between Arius and Athanasius. Men started to
become unsure of how they should think about the relation of the gods to the world and to
human beings, etc., at the time when a somewhat unconscious question about how the divine
ego lives in human nature arose from a lack of clarity which was present when the ego shot
into the soul. The two views of Arius and Athanasius were sharply opposed to each other,
and we see that Äthanasius' view gained the upper hand in western Europe whereas the view
of Arius gradually lost favor.
Let's look at this contrast from a spiritual standpoint, because it is important that we do so if
we really want to understand the inner meaning and the inner spirit of something like the
Apocalypse. On the one hand Arius sees that man is climbing higher and higher, and that he's
supposed to get ever closer to the divine, and on the other hand he sees the divine being. In
addition to these great world principles he must also understand the Mystery of Golgotha and
the nature of Christ. He wants to answer the question: How is the human or the divine nature
contained in Christ? Should one look upon the Christ as a really divine being or not? And he
basically answered this question with a no. He basically took the position that became the
general position of a large part of the European population, namely, he put up a boundary
between man and God, that is, he didn't really want to admit that God dwells in man, so he
placed an abyss between God and man.
We must go back to the time of the first Christian developments in an unbiased way, which
basically had nothing in common with the things that happened later when Christianity
became decadent within Roman Catholicism. And this is why we should realize that it
became necessary for the further evolution of mankind to decide the whole question in the
way that Athanasius does, who sees a directly divine being in the Christ and who sees a
really divine sun-spirit in Christ, even though this later receded into the background because
of a disinclination to think of the Christ in a cosmological way. But it lay in Athanasius'
whole mentality to look upon the Christ as a god who is really equal to the Father God.
This view continued to work on, although it lost its entire evolutionary thrust at the eighth
council in Constantinople in 869 which basically cancelled the doctrine of this first council
in Nicaea, because it declared that trichotomy is heretical. Therewith things began to
degenerate. For this definitely cut off any possibility of growth into spirituality for the
catholic church in later centuries.
It was definitely that shock which occurred within when the ego broke into the intellectual
and feeling soul which colored this outer event and which gives the latter its real inner
meaning. And if we continue to look at things in a historical way we, have to tell ourselves:
After this year 333 came those times which broke away from the ancient Roman culture,
especially in Europe. We see that the old Roman culture could basically not absorb
Christianity, because öf what it had become. It is a marvelous picture which unrolls before us
if we direct our gaze at this year 333.
This year also indicates the period in which Romanism was moved away from Rome and
further over to the east. The Roman emperor who wants to appropriate Christianity flees
from Rome and goes further east. We shouldn't look so much at the detrimental things and
bad side-effects which arose in the council of Constantinople, — we should pay more
attention to the fact that when Christianity hit Rome one had to flee from west to east. This is
tremendously significant. When such an event is looked at from the spiritual world its
importance is so obvious that the harmful effects which were caused by Byzantinism were
relatively minor.
One would like to say that it is of tremendous importance that when Christianity or its outer
form was touched by Romanism, it had to flee. Of course something then rises from the
ground — from which Constantine fled towards the east with Christianity which was
prepared for a long time in Roman territory, but which forces Christianity into outer, worldly
forms when it matures. One should just think how significant it is that the Apocalypticer's
prophetic eye sees that Christianity begins to assume ancient Roman forms at the moment
when Rome decides to make Christianity its official religion. This is really the thing which
becomes manifest.
On the one hand we have the spiritual dispute between Arius and Athanasius. On the other
hand, we have ancient Rome which converts to Christianity but moves towards the east,
while the form which remains behind in Rome takes on the shape of the Roman state and
becomes the continuation of ancient Rome, even in its outer activities.
Now let's ignore certain things for a while for which we will have to give a deeper spiritual
explanation later, and let's look at some historical things. The Apocalypticer's perception of
this historical element is great and tremendous. He doesn't express it clearly, but he has it in
his feelings and it's in the way his writing is composed, that is, he points out that the growth
of what occurs in mankind and outside in history took 333 years from the Mystery of
Golgotha, and that a strange, illusory development of Christianity then sets in. Christian
Romanism is uprooted and goes over to the east, and Roman Christianity adapts itself
completely to Roman forms. This is the soil which prepares something which again takes
333 years or until the year 666.
If you place what we said yesterday about the things which the Apocalypticer and other
people who were inspired by the ancient mysteries gained from a contemplation of numbers
before your soul, you will have to tell yourselves: this Apocalypticer looks at the additional
333 years during which Christianity has a deceptive outer appearance, so that it must develop
in murky fogs in two directions; — it is driven eastward and it preserves the old element in
the west which is like an Ahrimanic thing.
Something which had remained from the non-Christian, ancient Romanism prepares itself in
the womb of earth evolution. What does this nonChristian Romanism consist of?
Now if we look into the mysteries we find that trichotomy or the holy number three had a
profound significance in all of the greatest and most advanced ones. Let's take a look at what
this meaning was. One thought about how a human being is born in the physical stream of
heredity, approximately in the way that esoteric Hebraic teachings conceive of this. One
imagined how this human being brings characteristics and capacities with him through
heredity. One described the life of a human being as something which proceeds in a straight
line and in which nothing important enters except what is oriented by hereditary impulses.
The fathers in the ancient mysteries said: You originate from the physical forces of your
parents, and the spiritual impulses of your physical parents are also at work in you. And
these ideas continued to be taught in Hebraic esotericism and by the proponents of other
esoteric doctrines.
However other people added something to this. In the mysteries which must be called the
most advanced ones, one spoke of how the man who bears hereditary impulses and develops
accordingly can also take in another impulse during his physical existence between birth and
death, an impulse through which he lifts himself out of hereditary conditions, so that his soul
finds its way out of them, namely, the Son impulse or Christ impulse. And one said: The
impulses of heredity are in man and they constitute his straight line evolution between birth
and death. They are from the Father, the Father who underlies everything. The impulses of
the Son do not enter into hereditary forces, they must be taken up into the soul and
elaborated by the soul; they must be able to expand the soul to such an extent that it can free
itself from bodily and hereditary forces. They enter the freedom of man, in the way that one
understood freedom in those times; they go into the freedom of the soul, where the latter is
free from hereditary forces. They are the ones which permit man to be psychically reborn.
They are the impulses which enable man to control himself during the life which is given
him by the Father. And so one saw the father-man in all of these mysteries, the man who is
the son of the Father and the brother of Christ and who controls himself. He gains control
over that part of him which is free from the body in a certain respect, and he must bear a new
realm in him which knows nothing about nature and which is a different order than nature is
the realm of the Spirit.
If one were to talk about the Father God, not in the external, materialistic way in which one
does this today but more like they do in Hebraic doctrine, one would be justified in speaking
of effects of nature which are also spiritual effects, for spiritual activities are present in all
activities of nature. The natural science which arose a while back and which is active today is
merely a one-sided science of the Father. The science of the Son or the Christ is added to
this; this is connected with the way man takes hold of himself and with the way man receives
an impulse which he can only take in through the soul, and not through hereditary forces.
The way he works his way into this is chaotic at first, without the activity and the power of
laws. This activity is brought into him by the Spirit, so that according to the ancient
mysteries we basically have two kingdoms the kingdom of nature or the kingdom of the
Father, and the kingdom of the Spirit, and man is carried out of the kingdom of nature and
into the kingdom of the Spirit by the Son or Christ.
If we become aware that such views were still present in the Apocalypticer and in the souls
of all the men of his time, it will enable us to look into his prophetic soul, which could
survey the future in such broad strokes, in order to look at the way he looked at what poured
over the Christianity which had become a semblance of itself in two directions around the
year 666.
Here his prophetic eye fell upon that doctrine which had already arisen in the east in 666, and
which goes back to that Muhammedanian mystery culture which knows nothing about the
Son. This Islamic mystery culture doesn't know anything about the world structure to which I
referred; it doesn't know about the two kingdoms, the realm of the Father and the realm of
the Spirit; it only knows one rigid thing; only the Father exists for it, there is only one God.
And everything else is his prophet — mainly Muhammed. This point of view makes Islam
the polar opposite of Christianity. This viewpoint leads to the will to eliminate all freedom
for all times to come, to the will for determinism, and this cannot be otherwise if one only
thinks of the world in connection with the Father God.
However, the Apocalypticer feels that man cannot find himself like that. Man cannot be
permeated by the Christ like that; he can't grasp his humanity if he only grasps this ancient
teaching about the Father. The outer human form becomes Maya for a world conception
which is so strongly closed off within; for man becomes man by taking hold of himself, by
making Christ alive in himself and through the fact that he can fit himself into the spiritual
order of things and into the realm of the spirit which is entirely free of nature. Thereby he
becomes a man; but he doesn't become a man if he falls back into the view which only
reckons with the Father God.
The Apocalypticer is basically saying that after the ego broke in mankind is in danger of
going astray in the permeation of this ego which is pressing into humanity from 333 on, —
that humanity is in danger of being confused in its permeation of this ego with the Son God
or Christ. What threatens to keep man at the animal stage rises up after a period of time
which is just as long as the first period after the Mystery of Golgotha, — 666 is the number
of the beast.
The Apocalypticer had a decisive, inner vision of what threatens men. Christianity was made
into a semblance of itself in two directions, or it would be better to say that it became
obscured by fog. The year 666 marks the time of this inundation which threatens him. It is
that significant year in the spiritual world when what exists in Arabism is introduced
everywhere. He points to: this year 666 very clearly. People who can read in an apocalyptic
way understand this quite well. For he foresaw the effect that the thing which was breaking
in would have, and he called the number 666, the number of the beast.
Thus he basically anticipates everything which follows in an apocalyptic way. What follows
is the streaming of Arabism towards Europe, whereupon Christianity becomes permeated by
a teaching; which could only make men fail to see the humanity within them; where the
Father dogma is converted into naturalism; whereby the latest view on evolution arose,
which says that one must explain man by just following the sequence of animals down to the
human being.
Wasn't the beast whose number is 666 still rising in Darwinism, where man couldn't
comprehend that he is a human being but could only look upon himself as a beast? Don't we
see these Ahrimanic resistances which are working against the Son God working further in
the impregnation of Christianity with a materialistic form of the Father dogma? Isn't this still
working into our time? As I have often pointed out, just take something out of recent
theological developments such as Harnack's book about the nature of Christianity. One can
put “Father” wherever he has the word Christ, for it is only a teaching about God and not a
concrete Christ teaching. It is a denial of Christ's teaching, for a general Father God is put in
the place of Christ; and no attempt is made to arrive at anything which is connected with
Christology. The Apocalypticer sees this coming.
And when he sees this approaching it is already basically connected with something else
which weighs upon his soul, namely, the difficulties with what one calls the
transubstantiation for lack of a better word, although it doesn't really cover the spiritual
elements which are involved. Now this difficulty, my dear friends you know yourselves how
your souls struggled with the difficulties which are connected with transubstantiation when
this Christian renewal was inaugurated; and many of you are still struggling with the
difficulties which are involved in the understanding of this transubstantiation. Just think of
how many hours we spent over there in that room where the Goetheanum fire started on
discussions about transubstantiation; for the whole question of Son and Father is contained in
transubstantiation. And one could say that some of that oppression which mankind felt in the
dispute between Arianism and Athanasianism is also present in the dispute about
transubstantiation which arose in the Middle Ages.
In fact, transubstantiation can only have a meaning if it is based on a real spiritual
understanding of a Christology which tells one how Christ is connected with humanity and
the earth. However, due to the breaking in of Arianism, the transubstantiation theory was
always in danger of getting too close to the Father dogma, and it made people think that the
metamorphosis of the substances which come into consideration for transubstantiation must
be placed in the series of nature processes, that is, in the spiritual part of nature processes.
And all the questions which are connected with communion arise because one really says to
oneself: How can what takes place in transubstantiation be grasped so that one can unite it
with what one has in the way of a Father evolution of the world or of a working of the spirit
through the laws of nature. This is not a matter of miracles here; this is mainly a matter of
sacramentalism, which is not at all connected with the trivial question about miracles which
gave people so much trouble in the 19th and already in the 18th century. The important thing
here is to realize that one has the order of the Father and the order of the Spirit in the world.
In between stands the Son, who raises the kingdom of nature to the kingdom of the spirit
within the human sphere. If we place this before our soul, transubstantiation appears to us as
something which we shouldn't look for in the wide order of nature, although it is nevertheless
equipped with a reality, with a really spiritual reality, which one can speak of just as well as
one can speak about a natural order. However, the Apocalypticer foresaw how difficult it
would be for men to say that there is another order, a spiritual order besides the order of
nature, since 666 plays into human evolution with such force.
One could say that Anthroposophy comes to the rescue here in a very modern way, and sheds
light on precisely such a thing as transubstantiation. For Anthroposophy can help us to make
the way man lives through repeated earth lives alive in us again, and also the way man has
the impulses which lie in the hereditary line and which are connected with heredity, and with
the Father force when he stands in the outer physical world with his actions. There man
stands. There are the hereditary forces in the way he lives his life. There is a great deal in
these hereditary forces which is connected with human destiny — if we only look at it in an
external way — and which occurs through the Father forces that have been secreted into
nature. The results of the previous earth life continuously play into man when he acts, so that
as he acts he brings up the spirit into the physical corporeality which he has acquired in his
present existence. The result of the previous earth life works in him; there are forces
underlying this.
Imagine some human action. It can be looked at from two sides; from the point of view of
the human being who is born from a mother, father, grandfather, grandmother, etc. But now
look at the action from the other aspect. Forces are working in it which are an aftereffect of
previous earth-lives. We have a completely different order here. This is why it can't be
understood by any natural science, that is, by any Father science.
But it's possible to look at two things here which are essentially the same, even though they
are accidentally different. On the one hand we see how karma or destiny as the result of
previous earth lives develops out of the human being; we have a lawfulness there which is
not a nature lawfulness at all, although it exists; and we look at the altar and at the way that
transubstantiation takes place as a spiritual reality and in a way which is also not outwardly
visible in the physical substances. The same laws hold sway in them. We can bring two
things together here: the way that karma works and the way that transubstantiation takes
place. Whoever understands the one can understand the other.
This is one of the mysteries which you must grasp in your new priesthood. This is one of the
mysteries under whose light this priestly community must develop itself out of
Anthroposophy. It is one of the inner reasons for this.
This also points to the tremendous difficulty which existed for an understanding of
transubstantiation, because one couldn't understand the kind of a lawfulness which is present
in human karma and which underlies transubstantiation. The ego which acquires freedom in
physical life, which entered in 333 which wrapped Christianity in a fog in two directions, and
made it flee towards the east on the one hand and into the ancient Romanism which could
never be entirely Christian on the other, this year 333 and the entrance of the ego threw a
shadow or a darkness over the connections between successive earth lives, and it had to
throw it, because this lies within the evolution of mankind. What would have happened if
this ego had not entered? Julian the Apostate would have won, although from the viewpoint
of the ancient mysteries one should really call him the Confessor and not the Apostate. Of
course the following is only a nebulous hypothesis, but it indicates what could have
happened; if Julian had introduced teachings from the old mysteries, humanity might have
received the ego which came in from spiritual worlds in such a way that one could have also
understood the karma teaching with it. Mankind had to climb over higher walls in order to
arrive at an understanding of Christianity, and not arrive at it as easily as they would have if
Julian the Apostate had been victorious.
Thus humanity was exposed to the rising of the beast and to the consequences and results of
666. As I said, we will go into more of the inner details in the next few days. This is how the
karma teaching was withheld from mankind and this is the way the transubstantiation dogma
was placed into mankind, so that there is nothing analogous to it in men's world conceptions,
for the closest analog for an understanding of the transubstantiation teaching is an
understanding of the karma teaching. The force with which the destiny of a human being, is
created in a next life out of successive lives is no force of nature, is no Father force, — it is a
force of the Spirit which is mediated by the Son. It is the same force which is at work at the
altar when the holy bread and wine are transformed.
And we must inscribe this deep into our souls; If we can understand this rightly, if we can lift
our soul and mind and hearty feelings to the kind of spiritual impulses which work from one
earth life to the next, we also understand what happens at the altar in transubstantiation. For
when someone looks at the holy bread and wine with his ordinary understanding and doesn't
see what's happening at all, it's no different than when someone with a materialistic mind
doesn't see anything in the destiny of a human being besides what proceeds from the forces
of his muscles and his blood — I'm speaking of the spiritual forces of the muscles and blood
and from hereditary statistics.
These are the connections which one must understand in order to arrive at a true
understanding of the Apocalypse and the Apocalypticer. These connections lead directly into
the present, from the impulses which one can read quite clearly in the Apocalypse.
 LECTURES TO PRIESTS: THE APOCALYPSE
GA 346
Lecture VIII
Dornach, 12 September 1924
If, as it were, we place the main centers in which the Apocalypticer lets the description of his
views culminate before our souls, as we have already done with a few things, the whole
composition and the ongoing content of the Apocalypse will become disclosed to us in a very
short time. Therefore, we will have to continue our contemplation of its main points and
centers today, and tomorrow we will begin to explain its other contents.
Yesterday I pointed out that the Apocalypticer sees something which is breaking in upon
what he feels is the real Christianity, something which wants to make Christians renounce
Christianity and lead them back to the Father principle that can only take on materilistic and
naturalistic forms if it wins through in this epoch.
The Apocalypticer sees and feels the secrets which are connected with a number like 666
more or less consciously, for he sees things and processes in accordance with the secret of
numbers, or it would be better to say that he feels them like a musician feels the connection
between tones in accordance with the secret of numbers, but who at most only becomes
aware of this at certain places. What we'll have to do is to look into the cosmos so that we
can get more secrets about 666 from it.
We should consider that the entire Christian revelation is really a sun revelation, and that
Christ is a being who comes from the sun. Christ sends Michael and his hosts before him, as
Jehova used to send Michael before him in a different way. If we consider that we are living
in a Michael age, it will be possible to place the sun mystery which is connected with the
Christ impulse before our souls in a very profound way.
The main thing for something deep down in human souls which are combatting Christianity
will always be to oppose the idea that the really spiritual part of Christianity is connected
with the sun. The opponents of Christianity would like nothing better than if people would
completely lose their view about the sun as a spiritual being and only retained the view about
the sun's physical existence, as I said in a previous lecture. And in fact the breaking in of
Arabism gave rise to the great danger that the secret of the sun as the secret of Christ himself
would be forgotten and that the whole evolution of humanity would be deflected away from
the Michael direction which should always only as it were prepare for men's Christ-evolution
and give them their human understanding.
What happens outwardly in the world order occurs on the background of supersensible
processes for the Apocalypticer, who sees behind the scenes of outer historical
developments. And so we will try to get an idea of what these supersensible processes which
the Apocalypticer sees behind the outer events look like.
If we look at the planets and the sun in our solar system, we have a gathering of beings in
each of them. Evolving human beings are assembled upon the earth, and if we want to make
a mental image about men on earth which goes deep into our soul, we can, for example,
place the Vulcan evolution which will follow earth evolution before our souls, since there is
an evolution in time and since we can look at a later point in time when mankind will have
reached a much higher stage just as well as we can look at the present one.
You can imagine the spiritual idea someone would have to get of the earth as a world body
with a gathering of Vulcan men in it if he had it before him, and yet it would only be the
earth with its men at a different stage. It is very important for the human soul to think of the
earth as a whole in this way, so that it doesn't take the present stage of humanity upon earth,
but what is already contained in this present state in a germinal way, namely, the Vulcan
condition which man bears within him, and therefore also is. If we look at the other planets
we will find such gatherings of beings everywhere. We have to say that the earth is meant to
be the place where human beings evolve, and that's why it's located at the center. We have
other planets like present-day Jupiter which shows us that it has an entirely different kind of
beings. We meet these beings when we work out our karma between death and a new birth.
The same applies to each of the other planets, including the sun. If we think of the totality of
beings which are at work in connection with the individual planets we get what is conceived
of as the present-day spirituality of each one of these planets, which the teachers in the
catholic church called the intelligence of the planet up till the 14th century. We can definitely
speak about the intelligence of a planet as a reality, just as we can speak of earth men as a
whole as the intelligence of the earth. And up till the 14th, 15th centuries the church teachers
knew that each one of these planets not only has an intelligence but also a demon. The
totality of the opponents of the intelligences on planets are demons. This also applies to the
sun.
Now if we mainly have to look upon Christianity as an evolution which is in accordance with
the impulses of the sun genius or sun intelligence, we have to see the sun demon in what
opposes the evolution of Christianity. And this is what the Apocalypticer saw. He saw the
mighty counter principle of Arabism breaking in behind the scenes of the Christianity which
was threatened by maya in two directions as Christianity fled from Rome towards the east
and as Christianity had taken on other cognitional forms. But when he looked behind the
scenes of the outer Arabian and Islamic deeds it was obvious to him that the sun demon was
working there against the sun genius or sun intelligence. Hence he had to present the sun
demon as something which works against the actual Christian principle in man, so that if he
yields to the sun demon he will not want to make the connection with the divinity of Christ,
but he will want to remain in the subhuman element. If the Apocalypticer had been asked
what kind of human souls were devoted to the sun demon, he would have pointed to the
supporters of Arabism in Europe. It was clear to him that everything which brings men in the
direction of bestiality in their views and also gradually in their will impulses has arisen from
Arabism. And this is obviously, in them.
The things which happen in the world in a very real way are such that one doesn't always see
cause and effect side by side, — the object and that which has the object in view. Therefore,
one can ask oneself: What would happen if Arabism or the teachings of the sun demon
would gain a complete victory? Mankind would then be unable to have an experience of the
conditions which have to be experienced if the working of karma from previous incarnations
are to be grasped. When it comes right down to it, everything which flowed out of Arabism
was directed against an understanding of transubstantiation. To be sure, it doesn't look like it
from an outer point of view, but the sun demon only acknowledges the old Father principle
and natural connections, and he wants to make men forget about the kinds of connections
that are particularly active in a sacrament like transubstantiation.
And so the Apocalypticer sensed that the sun demon was particularly active around the year
666. He describes him in such a way that every initiate can recognize him. For each of these
spiritual beings which one calls the intelligences of the planets, the intelligences of the sun,
the demons of the planets and of the sun has a key symbol in the mysteries, and they are also
actually present in the latter on special occasions. The sun demon has this sign: The
Apocalypticer describes him as the two horned beast. The kind of reading which interprets
numbers had become somewhat externalized during the Latin period where one combined
Greek and Latin in the mystery language, but it could still interpret them.
The Apocalypticer uses the special kind of reading which was customary at his time. He
writes the number 666 = 400, 200, 60, 6. He writes it with the Hebraic letters:

He writes these letters with their numerical values and one reads them from right to left.
After one adds the corresponding vowels to the consonants they give the name of the demon
who has this sign, the sun demon: S o r a d t. At that time Soradt was the name of the sun
demon, and he describes this sign and we know it very well. The Apocalypticer looks upon
everything which works against Christianity in the way that Arabism does as an emanation
from those spiritual forces which are represented by Soradt the sun demon.
However, 666 was there once at the time when Arabism shot into Christianity in order to
press the seal of materialism upon western culture. It is there a second time after another 666
went by as 1332 in the 14th century. There we have another rising of the beast from the
waters of world events. To someone who sees like the Apocalypticer does, world events
seem like a continual surging of the 666 epoch. It rises and threatens Christianity's search for
true humanity, asserting beast-hood against manhood; Soradt makes his move. In the 14th
century we see Soradt the adversary rising up again.
It is the time when the Templar order in Europe wanted to establish a solar view of
Christianity which came from the depths of their souls than from orientalism. They wanted to
found a view of Christianity which looked upon the Christ as a sun being and a cosmic being
again, a view which knew something about the spirituality of planets and stars and of how
the intelligences of worlds which are far apart, and not just the beings on one planet, work
together in world events. This view knew something about the mighty oppositions which
arise through such disobedient beings like the sun demon Soradt, one of the mightiest
demons in our solar system. It is basically possession by sun demons which is at work in the
materialism of human beings. Of course from a certain point of view it is justified to speak
about what would have become of European civilization if the inwardly and outwardly
powerful Templar order — although they took their treasures away from them — had been
able to carry out its intentions. During the destruction of this order Soradt came to life again
in the hearts and souls of those who were the adversaries of the cosmic Christ or of the Christ
who looks out into the cosmos, and they weren't satisfied until Jacques de Molay went to his
death in 1312.
Soradt mainly came to life again in such a way that he used the views of the Roman church
to exterminate the Templars. The emergence of this Soradt at that time was already more
visible, for an overwhelming secret hovers around the downfall of this Templar order. If one
looks at what went on in these human beings and Templars as they were being tortured
before they were executed, one gets an idea of how what had been instigated by Soradt lived
in the visions of the tortured Templars, so that they denied their beliefs and so that one had a
reasonable accusation from their own mouths. Mankind witnessed a terrible spectacle; the
people who advocated something quite different were unable to speak about it while they
were being tortured, for various spirits from the hosts of Soradt spoke out of them instead
and said the most disgraceful things about the order out of its own members. 666 was
fulfilled a second time. It was a time during which all preparations were being made in the
spiritual world by Soradt and other recalcitrant demons to prevent the sun principle from
coming to the earth. They were at war with Michael and his hosts as Michael prepared for his
new reign. He was the earth regent before the Mystery of Golgotha during the time of
Alexander and was then relieved by the other archangels, — by Oriphiel, Anael, Zachariel,
Raphael, Gabriel, and he is now reigning on earth again since the last third of the 19th
century in order to go on working for the Christ, in his own particular way. He had worked
for the Christ until the end of his previous reign until about the end of Alexander's reign. One
could say that Michael is now on the earth, but this time in order to become of use in the
preparation for Christianity and for the deeper Christian impulse.
I have described how this Michael impulse was introduced from a spiritual viewpoint at
various times and places. I mentioned some of this recently in a lecture, where I pointed out
that a really Christian impulsivity was introduced by the individualities of Alexander and
Aristotle in 869 under the regency of Michael. And this continued. We have a marvelous
spectacle at the beginning of the new age when the consciousness soul took hold, as I
mentioned before. If we look up at spiritual events which belong to earth humanity and
which go parallel with physical events, we find a supersensible school with Michael as a
teacher. Those beings who are supposed to be active for a real further development of
Christianity, whether they be souls who weren't incarnated at the time or whether they be
other spiritual beings, are gathered around Michael in large numbers in a great, supersensible
school in the 14th to 16th centuries, where souls are being prepared who are then supposed to
appear on earth at the beginning of the 20th century during Michael's reign. If one looks at
what was prepared there, one can see that the Anthroposophical world conception wants to
work along the lines of this evolution.
When one looks at ancient mystery wisdom, it follows from what was and is mystery
teaching for the prophetic vision of future wisdom that the human beings who as it were
accept inner Christianity and spiritualized Christianity and who look towards the sun genius
in connection with Christianity will accelerate their evolution and reappear at the end of the
20tn century. For everything we can do now in this age is of great importance if we look at it
from the viewpoint of eternity; it is of great importance if we grasp spirituality for the
teachings and deeds of human beings in this age; it is a preparation for the great, extensive
and intensive spiritual deeds which should be done at the end of the century. After a great
deal will have come before, which will be contrary to the spiritualization of modern
civilization — after the second 666 stood in the sign of that great upheaval in Europe which
was begun by the crusades and which had its outer fact in the appearance and destruction of
the Templar knights, everything from the sun genius which is trying to create true
Christianity works on, as does everything from Soradt which is trying to work against it. And
we have the age of the third 666:1998. We are coming to the end of this century, when
Soradt will again lift his head from the waters of evolution very strongly, where he will be
the adversary of that vision of the Christ which prepared human beings will already have in
the first half of the 20th century through the appearance of the etheric Christ. It will then take
almost two thirds of a century until Soradt raises his_ head in a mighty way.
When the first 666 went by Soradt was still hidden in the evolutionary course of events; one
didn't see him in an external form; he lived in the deeds of Arabism, although initiates could
see him. When the second 666 came he already showed himself in the thinking and feeling of
the tortured Templars. He will show himself before the end of this century already, and he
will appear in a great many people as a being by whom they will be possessed. One will see
people coming up to one and one will not be able to believe that they are really human
beings. They will develop in a very strange way even outwardly. They will be intensive,
strong natures outwardly with fierce features and a destructive rage in their emotions; they
will have a face in which one will see a kind of a beast's face outwardly. Soradt men will also
be recognizable outwardly; they will be those who not only ridicule spiritual things, — they
will fight it in the most terrible way and they will want to thrust it down into a cesspool. One
will see that what is concentrated in a small region in present-day Russian communism will
be inserted into the whole earth evolution of humanity.
This is why it is so important that everything which can strive towards spirituality should
really do so. Everything which opposes spirituality will be there, for this does not work in
accordance with freedom but in accordance with determinism. This determinism is moving
in the direction where Soradt will be loose again at the end of this century, when a striving to
sweep away everything spiritual will be present in the intentions of a large number of earth
souls, whom the Apocalypticer prophetically sees with their bestial faces and their strength
of a tiger with respect to the execution of their adversarial deeds against the spiritual.
Outbursts of rage against the spiritual are already here today: but they are only the first seeds.
And so we see, if the Apocalypticer saw all of that, and he did see it, for he saw that the true
unfolding of Christianity is a sun event, and he saw the development of this abominable
possession by sun demons. That hovered before him. And the entry of Michael into the
spiritual evolution of humanity at the end of the 19th century and the appearance of the
etheric Christ in the first half of the 20th century, will be followed by the appearance of the
sun demon before the end of this century. We are living in the Michael age, and if we want to
work in the theological field, in religion, we have every reason to learn how to think and feel
in an apocalyptic way, especially from the Apocalypse, and not to remain stuck to the mere
outer facts but to raise ourselves to the spiritual impulses which stand behind them.
The path is being prepared for the entry of demons who are the followers of the great Soradt
demon. For instance, one only has to speak to intelligent people who know, something about
the starting point of the world war. No one will object if one says that almost all of the 40 or
so people who were responsible for the outbreak of this world war had a dulled
consciousness at the moment when it broke out. However, this is always a portal for
Ahrimanic, demonic powers to enter. One of the greatest of these is Soradt. These are the
attempts from Soradt's side to at least temporarily penetrate human consciousnesses and to
wreak havoc and confusion. What is striven for by the Soradtic spirits who are pressing into
the soul of humanity is not the world war, but what followed it; this is terrible and will
become ever more terrible, for instance, look at the present condition of Russia.
We must know that this is the case, for what has the work of priests signified during the ages
when true spirituality was on the earth? Never anything else than a standing in the spiritual
world with full consciousness and a dealing with the world of gods, and not just a working
within earth events. This was the spirit in which the Apocalypticer wrote his Apocalypse.
Anyone who wants to lead men into the spiritual must see into the spiritual. Every age must
do this in its own way. We only have to look at the inner lawfulness — which no doubt in a
somewhat externalized way — makes the succession of Egyptian pharaohs look so logical,
and we will see that these pharaohs didn't follow each other in an accidental way, but that
each one in the line had his task spelled out for him in ancient writings, and that the impulse
for the formulation of his task proceeded from what was later called the revelation of
Hermes, although this distorts the Egyptian nomenclature somewhat. This Hermetic
revelation was not the one we know today, for this wisdom belongs to the great mysteries
where one could speak of revelation as a threefold, holy one — a revelation from the Father,
a revelation from the Son and a revelation from the Holy Spirit. All of this points to the fact
that it was always a question for the priesthood everywhere of working out of the spirit and
into the material world, and this was also the way everyone looked upon the priesthood.
This must become an impulse for priests again, after work out of the spiritual world could
not be felt as a reality for a while. People were very far removed from being able to grasp
something like the mystery of transubstantiation and therewith the spiritual secrets of
Christianity through the education and culture which had gradually been accepted by
humanity in the consciousness soul age, and which had taken on such materialistic forms in
all fields. For individuals who had to work in a priestly way it was really a kind of a lie with
respect to this culture of the age to speak about the deep mystery contents which are
connected with something like the transubstantiation. This resulted in the rationalistic
discussions about transubstantiation which began during the second Soradtic attack and
which continued until the third Soradtic attack. It's pointless to just give commentaries on the
Apocalypse and to make remarks about it. It only makes sense if one becomes an
Apocalypticer oneself through this Apocalypse and if one begins to understand one's age
through this process of becoming an Apocalypticer to such an extent that one can make the
impulses of this age into impulses for one's own work.
However here present-day human beings, including people who are active as priests, must
look at the rise of Michael in the seventies of the last century, at the appearance of Christ in
the first half of the 20th century and at the threatening rise of Soradt and the Soradtians at the
end of the 20th century. Let us arrange our lives in accordance with these three mysteries of
our time, the Michael mystery, the Christ mystery and the Soradt mystery as understanding
human beings who know how to interpret the signs of our time, and we will be able to work
in the right way in the field into which karma has led us, as for instance, the priest in his
priestly field. We will go on from here tomorrow.
 LECTURES TO PRIESTS: THE APOCALYPSE
GA 346
Lecture IX
Dornach, 13 September 1924
Now that we have gathered together a number of elements in order to get at the essence of
the Apocalypse, we will have to look more at the Apocalypse itself, and we will have to
arrange things in such a way that we begin with several questions which are connected with
the goal or end of what the Apocalypticer sees and what he wants to communicate to
mankind; later on we will see why this particular choice of study materials is appropriate.
If we look at what he gives, one could say that it is a communication to human beings, a
revelation to human beings, but a revelation which differs considerably from what arises
when other communications which don't proceed from clairvoyance are brought to men. The
Apocalypticer points out that it was a special event, a mighty enlightenment which enabled
him to make his statement to humanity. However, thereby the Apocalypse appears as
something which arises as a fact and an event which belongs to the continuation of Christian
evolution.
We can say that of course the Mystery of Golgotha is the great starting point of Christian
evolution upon earth which towers over everything else and which could only be anticipated
and hoped for before; but then come the individual facts which must occur in order that
Christian evolution continues from the Mystery of Golgotha through all the cycles of time to
come. And the revelation which occurred through the Apocalypse is such an event. The
author of the Apocalypse is fully aware that he's thereby not only putting what he
experienced and is communicating to people into present-day evolution, but that what lies in
the reception and further elaboration of the Apocalypse is a reality.
You see, the important, difference between Christianity and other religious confessions is
that one has teachings in the ancient religious confessions, whereas the deed of Golgotha is
the important thing in Christian evolution, and more deeds must be added to this important
one. Therefore, the important thing for Christianity to do is to look for a real connection with
the Mystery of Golgotha, and it's not of primary and fundamental importance to have the
gospels interpreted for one. In recent times Christianity has taken on intellectualistic forms
through the influence of intellectualism. One could, say that this is why that famous
statement could be made: Jesus doesn't belong in the gospels. In other words, one can take
the content of the gospels as teachings, but one doesn't have to: take the teacher who stands,
behind them into account; he's not important. This means that, only the Father belongs in the
gospels. It's as if the main thing about the Mystery of Golgotha was that Christ Jesus has
appeared and has given a teaching from the Father. That is not the important thing. The
important thing is that a deed was done on Golgotha — that Christ Jesus lived on earth and
did the deed on Golgotha. The teaching is an incidental, accessory thing. Christianity must
struggle through to, a recognition of this again, but it must also do it.
And so the Apocalypticer is aware that he receives this revelation and that this fact has taken
place and that he works on through this fact; this is the important thing for him. For what is
continually happening as a result of this? You know that from a formal viewpoint present-
day man is living in such a way that he wears his three garments, physical body, etheric body
and astral body which is connected with a certain normality. When he is in a sleeping
condition the astral body and ego are outside the physical and etheric body and are in the
earthly environment, in the spiritual region of the earthly environment, which is behind
sensory, physical phenomena. They are not equipped for perceptibility in people today, they
only become equipped through initiation. Man lives a dull existence during sleep, and only
retains a general feeling about this on awaking, or he sees things in dreams, which emerge
from sleep in the way which has often been described. Now if we don't think anything else
than this; we have man's astral body and ego in the spiritual world, and they stand in that
world in such a way that they can receive no direct impressions of Christ and his real nature.
Thus if we would think nothing else than what I just mentioned, the ego and astral body
would enter the spiritual world every night and would have no direct connection with the
Christ, would come back again to this earthly, physical garment, and since the Mystery of
Golgotha has taken place in the course of earth evolution, they would have an impression of
Christ, for the Christ is in the earth's aura, but this impression would remain dull. Just as
other nocturnal impressions remain dull for day consciousness, so this impression that the
Christ dwells in the physical and etheric bodies which lie there during sleep would only be
perceived in the way that the sleeping condition is perceived by someone when he is waking
up, and no distinct, clear experience could be there.
Let's suppose that right after the Mystery of Golgotha was accomplished, human beings were
there who experienced what happened and who could communicate their direct impressions
of the Mystery of Golgotha to others. And in fact Christ gave his apostles an esoteric training
and a number of important teachings after his resurrection. All of this was handed on and it
continued in the first decades after the Mystery of Golgotha had been accomplished. At a
certain point this had to come to an end. And we can see how it gradually died down in
certain circles. It's correct to say that there were tremendous esoteric teachings about
Christianity in the writings which were denounced for being gnostic and in other writings of
old church teachers who were apostolic students or pupils of apostolic students, which were
then eradicated by the church, because the church wanted to get rid of the cosmic elements
which were always connected with these teachings. The church destroyed very important
things. They were destroyed; a reading of the akashic records will restore them to the last dot
on the “i” when the time has come to restore them again.
Nevertheless, the great impressions which were there would have faded for outer historical
evolution. The Apocalypse appeared the moment these things were in danger of dying out.
And if the Apocalypse is taken in properly — and various people have made this attempt in
the second epoch after the Mystery of Golgotha — if the Apocalypse is taken in, if this grand
picture, this prophetic picture of evolution penetrates man's astral body and ego, then the ego
and astral body bear a revelation which comes directly from the spiritual world — as I told
you in the first lecture — which is really a kind of a letter, a direct verbal revelation from the
spiritual world which is connected with visions. If this is taken into the astral body, and
namely into the ego-organization and carried out into the sphere of the earth's aura during
sleep, it means that all those who had taken in this Apocalypse; with inner understanding
were gradually inscribing its content into the ether of the earth's aura. So that one can say:
the presence of Christ gives the fundamental tone in the earth's aura, and he continues to
work in it.
This Christ impulse has a strong influence upon man's etheric body every night when the
astral body and ego are outside of the physical and etheric body, except that the average
person is usually not able to find the Christ impulse which is contained in the etheric body
when he returns to the physical body in the morning with his ego and astral body. But when
John's pupils in the wider sense of the word take in the content of the Apocalypse, it becomes
inscribed in the ether of the earth's aura. What is inscribed there then works upon the human
etheric body between the times of going to sleep and waking up. It was inscribed there
already through the great, significant impressions which the author of the Apocalypse, or
better said, the receiver of it, got from divine, spiritual beings, so that people who have an
inclination to relate themselves to the Mystery of Golgotha can expose their etheric body to
the content of the Apocalypse during their sleeping condition. This is a real thing. Through
the necessary Christ sentiments one can bring about such a condition of sleep that what is as
it were brought about in the earth's ether by the content of the Apocalypse and what lies in
the direction of Christ-evolution is inscribed in man's etheric body. This is the way it really
happens. This is what was present as the deed of the Apocalypse revelation which continued
to have an effect.
And in one's work as a priest one can quietly say to those souls who are entrusted to one's
care: the Christ has entered earth evolution through the Mystery of Golgotha. He inspired the
writing of the gospels to serve as a preparation, so that their content can pass over into men's
astral body and ego — one has to use suitable terminology here — and so that they are
prepared to receive the Christ impulse in their etheric body when they wake up. Through the
fact that the Apocalypticer is focusing on Christian evolution and is describing it through the
various epochs of evolution and into the future, what is present in this evolution is
incorporated into man's etheric body in a concrete way.
You see, therewith we have something in earth evolution which is quite new with respect to
the ancient mystery teachings. For what did the ancient mysteries really convey to initiates?
They gave them what one can see if one surveys the real spiritual nature of what was laid
down an eternally long time ago, as it were, and if one finds the divine being who has been
working along certain lines all the way back to eternity in outer physical activities. So that
the initiates in the ancient mysteries didn't expect to get anything else into their etheric body
than what gets into one's etheric body through the results of initiation.
A Christian initiate gets past this point. He wants to take what has come into earth evolution
in the course of time, namely, everything which is connected with the Mystery of Golgotha
and with Christ, into his etheric body. So that in fact the revelation of the Apocalypse is the
beginning of a kind of an initiation for the whole Christian world, and not for individuals; but
individuals can prepare themselves to participate in it.
One could say that it's only this which opens up a path to get beyond the Father-nature
principle. According to its form, all ancient initiation is basically a Father initiation. One
sought nature and the spirit in nature and one could be satisfied with that. For man stood in
the world. Now the Christ has been there in the earth. Now he remains there; he did his deed
and he remains there now. One cannot take in what has taken place through the Mystery of
Golgotha through an ancient initiation. One has to raise oneself into a world of the, spirit
which is not the one that streams through the ancient mysteries. What streams through the
old mysteries only hoped that the Mystery of Golgotha would stream through the new
mysteries at some point. However, man now connects himself with the spirit directly through
the spirit and not through nature. In ancient times initiates always chose the detour, through
nature. New initiates, that is, many half or partly initiated people in the later centuries after
the Mystery of: Golgotha — not in the first ones — thought that they connected themselves
with the spiritual nature of the world through what has flowed into it through Christ and
through what has been built upon Christ. This is the way such an initiate looked upon the
Apocalypse; this is the way it was looked, upon at that time. Thus he looked upon it as
something, which he spoke about as follows: Nature is one way to get into the spiritual
world, and the marvelous knowledge which is revealed through the Apocalypses is the other
way. It is a perplexing, felicific thing when the spiritual investigator encounters people in the
second to sixth centuries — but not before — who. Say: “Nature is great,” — they meant
what one knew about nature in antiquity — “but what is disclosed in a supersensible way by,
the Apocalypticer or other apocalypticers is just as great or greater.” For nature leads to the
Father, and what is opened up by the Apocalypticer leads through the Son to the Spirit. One
was looking for a path to pure, unmediated spiritual things through something like the
Apocalypse.
At the: same time this pointed to a real change which must and will come about when men
make themselves worthy of it. In ancient times one had the strong feeling that man comes out
of the spiritual world but that he has a development which connects itself strongly with what
comes to meet him in the physical, sensory world. One felt this connection with the physical
sense world ' very strongly and one was of the opinion that man has become a sinful,
iniquitous being because he connects himself with the matter which is present in the earth.
By contrast with this another time was to be prepared, and it was foreseen by the
Apocalypticer and announced in advance. He looked for an image or the right Imagination in
order to place what is behind these secrets before the soul in imaginative pictures. And so he
renewed and summarized an idea which was commonplace in esoteric Hebraic teachings.
But only there. One pointed out the following there. Souls come out of the spiritual world.
These souls which come out of the spiritual world clothe themselves in what comes out of
the earth, and when they build houses for the most external work of the spirit, cities arise.
But when they ensheathe the inner activity of the human soul, the human body arises out of
the earth's building blocks. Thereby the concept of the construction of outer dwelling places
merged with the concept of the building of one's own body. That was a beautiful and
wonderful image, because it has such a factual foundation, namely, that one looked upon a
house as a sheathe for the more extensive and extended part of one's deeds, soul processes
and soul functions that — one saw the sheathe for this in the outer house. However, one had
the beautiful and wonderful idea: If I do an outer deed in a house which is built for me out of
earthly matter, and I use the house walls and the whole house as a sheathe, this is just the
hardened, scleroticized extension of what is there when I do the inner deeds of the soul.
Whereas man's body is the first house which man builds for the innermost deeds of the soul.
Then when he has his body and he extends what he has, he builds himself a second house;
this second house is built out of the earth's ingredients. That was a very common idea, that
one really looked upon one's body as a house, and that one looked upon a house as the
outermost garment which man puts on here in the physical earth world.
Therefore, one looked upon man's housebuilding activity as something which proceeds from
the soul's creative activity. In past times man was very much grown together with his house
and the like, namely when he could think: O.K., he certainly has this body and this skin
(drawing). And now if he would get another skin in the course of his life for the more
extensive activity of his soul, it would be a tent; except that this doesn't grow, he has to make
it himself.
Now one feature of the Hebraic esoteric doctrine was that one looked upon the absorption of
earthly ingredients for human development and the flowing together and control of earthly
things in a quite particular way. You see, with respect to the physical, one will always admit:
The earth is arranged in such a way that it has a north pole where cold accumulates, as it
were. And one will describe this north pole from the nature of the earth in a physical,
geographic way, and one will consider it to be an important part of the earth. Hebraic esoteric
doctrine also did this with the soul activities which are contained in the earth's forces and in a
way which was the opposite of the situation with the north pole on the earth it looked upon
Jerusalem, the very concrete Jerusalem, as the place where cultures run together and the most
perfect houses are collected. This was a pole for the concentration of outer culture around the
human soul, and its culmination was Solomon's temple.
Now one felt that this was exhausted in the evolution of the earth, and the people who knew
something about the Hebraic esoteric teaching looked upon the destruction of Jerusalem after
the Mystery of Golgotha as something which was not an outer event that was brought about
by the Romans; they thought that the Romans were the puppets of spiritual powers and that
they only carried out the plan of the spiritual powers. For they thought that this method of
looking for ingredients from the earth in order to build human bodies and houses was no
longer usable. When Jerusalem became great all the substances and materials from the earth
which were to be used in order to build human bodies and houses had become exhausted.
If one translates this Hebraic esoteric teaching into the Christian one, it means that: If the
Mystery of Golgotha had not taken place, Jerusalem would have been destroyed anyway. But
what can be a new construction by men who create with the aid of the earth would not have
been inserted into this destruction. A kind of a seed of a completely new structure was laid
into what was destined to be destroyed in Jerusalem. Mother earth dies in Jerusalem.
Daughter earth is expectant or lives in the expectation of another seed. Bodies and houses are
not built from the earth here through the gathering together of ingredients as in the old
Jerusalem which stands there as the culmination of what occurs on the earth, but the earth
rises as a spiritual pole of the old Jerusalem. One will no longer be able to or it will be
increasingly difficult to make something like the old Jerusalem from the earth's ingredients.
Another time arises instead which was laid down as a seed by the Mystery of Golgotha. Men
receive something from above which envelopes them, more on the outside, or more on the
inside. The new city sinks down from above and pours over the earth — the new Jerusalem.
The old Jerusalem was made out of the earth and its substances: the new Jerusalem is made
out of spiritual ingredients from heaven.
You will think that such an idea is rather strange by comparison with everything which is
thought in our time and compared with what you could learn from what is thought in our
time. How does one picture man's development from an anatomical, physiological viewpoint
today? Man eats, stuffs food into his stomach, digests it, throws off certain substances and
replaces what has to be replaced by the substances he assimilates.
However, this is not what happens, for man is a three-membered being who consists of a
nerve-senses man, a rhythmic man and a metabolic limb man. None of the substances in food
go into the actual metabolic limb man — they all go into the nerve-senses man. The nerve-
senses man absorbs the salts and other substances which are needed and which are always
finely distributed in air and light, and it guides them into the metabolic-limb man. The latter
is fed entirely from above. It's not true that it gets its substances from physical foods.
Diseases arise if substances from the earth, enter the metabolic limb man. All of the food
which is taken in and digested only supplies the organs of the nerve-senses man. The head is
formed by substances, from the earth. The organs of the metabolic-limb man are formed by
things from the heavens. What is in the rhythmic man is only a coarser indication which goes
in two directions. Man doesn't eat the oxygen in the air — he inhales it. This is coarser than
the way that man assimilates things for the metabolic-limb man. Man takes in what he needs
for the metabolic-limb man through a very much finer breathing. Respiration is something
which is coarser. And what nan does with oxygen to produce carbonic acid is something
which is finer than what happens so that the food stuffs which go through the stomach can
supply the head. This is the transition in the rhythmic man.
This is the real story about man's building and its processes. The truth of the matter is that
what is created by the materialistic view and is taught by anatomy and physiology is
nonsense. The moment one knows this one knows that what builds up the human body
doesn't only come from below upwards from the earth's plant, mineral and animal kingdoms,
and one knows that what supplies the organs which are often considered to be the coarsest
ones comes from above. Then one will be able to see that there was a kind of a surplus in
nourishment from below until Jerusalem was destroyed. A surplus of what comes from
above gradually begins to be important after the Mystery of Golgotha.
Even though we saw that people have twisted the facts around, things are developing in such
a way today that nourishment from above is becoming more important than the one from
below. Thereby man is being transformed. Our head is no longer like the heads people had in
ancient times. They used to have foreheads which receded more. (Drawing.) Present-day
foreheads protrude more; the outer brain has: become more important. This is the thing
which has changed. What is becoming more important in the brain is more like digestive
organs than what is at the center. The peripheral brain is more like man's digestive organs
than the delicate tissues in the whiter brain, that is, in the continuation of the sensory nerves
into the center of the head. And metabolic organs are nourished from above.
One can understand these things right down to the smallest details if one has the will to speak
about certain things in the way that the Apocalypticer does when he says: Here is wisdom.
Except that what is in the ordinary knowledge which is living and weaving among people
today is not wisdom, but darkness. What one calls “scientific results” today is definitely the
result of Kali Yuga; it is a total eclipse of the human mind. One should look upon this as a
secret and not blare it out in the streets. Something is esoteric if it remains in a certain circle.
You see, the growing of the new Jerusalem has already begun, has begun since the Mystery
of Golgotha.
When man's earth period will be completely fulfilled he will not only be able to work
heavenly substances into his body through his senses but he will also extend this heavenly
substance to what will then be an outer city through what one calls spiritual knowledge and
art — an extension of the body in the way that I explained. The old Jerusalem was built from
below upwards, the new Jerusalem will really be built from above downwards. This is the
tremendous perspective which arose from a vision, a super-colossal vision of the
Apocalypticer. He became aware of this mighty thing: Everything arises here which men
could build out of the earth upwards, as it were, and becomes concentrated in the old
Jerusalem. This came to an end. He saw this rising up and this melting away in the old
Jerusalem and he saw the approach of the human-being city, the new Jerusalem from above,
from the spiritual worlds.
This is the goal, the last tendency of the revelation in the Apocalypse. In this respect it really
contains Christian paths of humanity and Christian goals of humanity. If we try to understand
them, we arrive at a certain peculiarity concerning the Apocalypse which some people have
an inkling of although they can't quite understand it. Anyone who makes a serious effort to
understand the Apocalypse cannot help asking himself: How do I do this? How do I get into
this, how do I get into the idea about the old and new Jerusalem, what do I have to do in
order to understand it? Anyone who seriously wants to understand the Apocalypse cannot
help telling himself: I have to get into its content and I can't just continue to talk about
images which have no content for me. In order to get into the content one needs a cosmology
and a view of humanity which can only be given by a new Anthroposophy and by a real
perception of' the spiritual world. One comes to Anthroposophy through the Apocalypse
because one is using the means to understand the Apocalypse and because one notices: John
received the Apocalypse from regions where Anthroposophy was before it came to human
beings.
This is why one needs the transition; one has to understand the Apocalypse in an
Anthroposophical way if one wants to understand it in an honest and serious way. You notice
this most of all in something like the final goal, the new Jerusalem. However, you have to
know the secrets about the building up of man from above and below better than science
knows them. Then you can extend these ideas to the overall activity of men on earth, which
is also from below upwards and which changes into one from above downwards. The
building of the old Jerusalem will change into the spiritual building of the new Jerusalem
from above downwards. People should grow into what is being built in a spiritual way not
just in the exegetes' symbolical, theoretical, pictorial way but in such a way that the spirit
becomes just as real for us as the material and physical was for thousands of years.
To the extent that you are worthy of it you will look upon the new Jerusalem as something
which hangs down from above in just as real a way as the old Jerusalem stood on its
foundations from below upwards, and you won't just take this in a pictorial way or in the way
that the exegetes present it. This is something which one has to remember the Apocalypse
contains no symbols, but references to quite concrete facts and to what happens, and not to
something which just wants to indicate the events through symbols. That is the important
thing. This is the way we have to feel and find our way into the Apocalypse. We will take
this up again tomorrow.

LECTURES TO PRIESTS: THE APOCALYPSE

GA 346
Lecture X
Dornach, 14 September 1924
We have placed the Apocalypticer's concluding perspective before our souls. If we
understand it correctly we see that this last perspective is described in a way which is in
complete agreement with everything one can say about evolution from the viewpoint of the
most exact spiritual science. We saw that the building of cultural phenomena and of the
human body changed from a below upwards mode to an above downwards mode, and that
this is reflected in the Apocalypse. At the end of the last lecture I pointed out that if one
honestly tries to understand the Apocalypse one must become acquainted with the things
which can be said about world evolution from the viewpoint of spiritual research.
However, we see that a meaning is incorporated in certain places in the Apocalypse which
one will find one can only grasp if one goes into the knowledge of the human being which is
found in Anthroposophy. This is definitely the case when one has to do with a revelation
which is based on experiences of the spiritual world. Of course one has to be able to see that
the images which are presented in the Apocalypse are revelations from the spiritual world.
Here one will disregard the question as to whether the Apocalypticer would really have been
able to present all of the details which we rediscover in his work in an intellectualistic way,
that is, whether he understood them to that extent. For that is not important at all. The only
important thing is whether he is a real seer. He looks into the things in the spiritual world,
but it's not he who makes them true, they are true through their own content, and they have
this content and reveal it through themselves and not through him. So that even outer,
rationalistic experts could come and could prove: The one who gave us the Apocalypse had
this or that amount of education, and one cannot really expect him to have had these wide
perspectives of things through his own soul. I don't want to discuss whether the writer of the
Apocalypse had them here; I: just want to point out that this is not important. We must place
the Apocalypticer's pictures which are revelations of the spiritual world before; our soul and
we must let their content work upon us.
Now we have the magnificent concluding picture of the new Jerusalem before us, which has
the experiential backgrounds of which I spoke. We will do well to go backwards from this
picture a little bit. Here we have the important passage where another magnificent picture
appears before our soul, namely, that magnificent picture where the Apocalypticer sees what
he calls heaven open, and where a power approaches him on a white horse of whom he
speaks in such a way that we become aware: he doesn't just have the trichotomy or the
threefoldedness of the Godhead in his intellectuality — he has it in his whole I human being.
He speaks in such a way that he is really still aware with I his whole soul that one has the
three forms of the one God before one, and that if one places oneself outside of the physical
world one can alternately speak of the one or the other of them, because they intermingle.
Of course, when they're put into the physical World one gets a picture of three persons, so
that one has to distinguish between the Father God who underlies all facts of nature,
including the ones which work into human nature, the Son God who has to do with
everything which leads to freedom in the soul's experience and the Spirit God who lives in a
spiritual, cosmic order which is far away from nature and foreign to nature. This is how
sharply contoured the three persons of the Godhead appear here upon the physical plane.
Now when man crosses the threshold to the spiritual world, he gets into the condition which I
described in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds? where he splits
up into three beings, so that thinking, feeling and willing become somewhat independent.
However, if we go to higher worlds from the physical plane we see the triune Godhead
approaching us ever more as a unity. And so of course, the Apocalypse must be read in this
light. One shouldn't distinguish between the Father God, the Son God and the Spirit God as
directly as one would do this in the physical world.
Thus the one who approaches us on a white horse in that magnificent Imagination is none
other than the unified God. And in the form in which he is' the Son of God, we have to see
Him more in the free soul development of human beings on earth. But now something very
strange occurs, which is what makes the picture that comes before the concluding one seem
very magnificent. It is quite natural and a matter of course that John sees heaven open — I
will call the one who wrote the Apocalypse John — for the new thing which is descending
from the spiritual world. The whole culture must be arranged in such a way that it comes
down from the spiritual world to the physical world. Now if we place this before our soul
correctly, then of course the condition which must precede this is that John looks into the
spiritual world. But this means: heaven is opened for him. However, he wants to indicate a
future situation which will exist for human beings. He's actually saying nothing less than the
following.
Before that state of affairs will arise on earth where the spiritual ingredients for the building
up of the new Jerusalem will sink down from the spiritual world and will be received by men
— just as men previously raised material ingredients from the earth upwards — before this
state will come, before men become aware that they must build from above downwards — as
I said recently, he considers this state to be a real one — before this will come, the state of
affairs where man is mainly engaged with his will will be replaced by another one where he
is only concerned with knowledge and where he has to look into the spiritual world: heaven
is opened. The one who underlies the beings of the world in a radiating and creative and
sanctifying way appears. And now the significant reason which makes the picture so
magnificent: He has a name written on him which is known to no one besides himself. That
is very significant. When one comes to the place in the Apocalypse where this is written, one
sees another clear sign that one is dealing with one of the greatest spiritual revelations. The
name which is given to the ego varies considerably in various languages, but I have pointed
to the spiritually trivial fact that the name for the ego can never be spoken by someone in
such a way that it can be given to someone else. I cannot say I to someone else; this
distinguishes the name of the self from all other names. They are given to objects, to either
inner or outer objects. But when I say “I” in any language I can only say it to myself; I can
only say it to another person if I have slipped into him — which must be a real spiritual
process; but there is no need to speak about that now.
Now let's imagine the things which describe the self in various languages the self was not
given a name in the older languages; it was in the verb. The ego was not a direct designation.
One described oneself through what one did in a kind of demonstrative way, but no name for
the self-existed. This name for the self of one's human being only began to be used later; it's
a significant symbolic fact that the German word for I — “ich” — contains the initials of
Jesus Christ. But now let's think of an enhancement of this fact that we have a name in our
languages which every one can only say in connection with himself. The enhancement
consists in what is now said in the Apocalypse — that He who comes down from the
supersensible world has a name written on Himself where He not only is the only one who
can use it to refer to Himself, but where He is the only one who understands it; no one else
understands it.
Now just think that this Revealer approaches John showing him in a prophetic picture what
will later occur for humanity. There He comes down in future times the one who has the
name which He alone understands. What can all of this really mean? If one honestly wants to
understand it, the whole thing seems to be meaningless at first. Why does He come, the one
who is to bring the salvation of the world, the justice of the world all of this is written in the
Apocalypse —, “who shall make faith and knowledge true;” not what the (King James
version has: “was called Faithful and True”) but “who shall make faith and knowledge true.”
This is really like hide-and-seek, for if He has an inscribed name which only He understands,
what is that supposed to mean? It makes us ask a question which goes deeper. What is this
really all about?
Imagine it quite vividly: He has a name which only He understands. How can we relate to
this name? It should really acquire a significance for us; this name should really be able to
live in us. How can this occur? It can occur if the being who understands this name becomes
united with us and enters our own self, then this being in us will understand the name and we
will understand it also. We will have Him in us and we will continually have the awareness
of Christ in us. He is the only one who understands the things, which are connected with His
being; but He understands them in us, and the Christ-insight of the Christ being in us gives
the light which is rayed out in us, because He becomes this light in us, in our own being. It
will be an insight which dwells in men.
You see, something has occurred thereby. The first thing which has occurred is an intended,
necessary consequence of the Mystery of Golgotha. This being who went through the
Mystery of Golgotha, this being who must enter us, so that we comprehend the world with
his understanding and not with our understanding, this being wears a garment which is
sprinkled with blood, the blood of Golgotha. And we take in this picture. However, John the
Apocalypticer tells us that this garment which is sprinkled with the blood of Golgotha has a
name. This is not the same name he was talking about before; this is the name of the garment
which is sprinkled with blood. And the name of this vesture dipped in blood is the logos of
God, the Logos, God, the word of God. Thus the one who should live in us and should give
the light in us through his own understanding fills us with the word of God.
The pagans read the word of God in natural phenomena. They had to receive it through outer
manifestations. Christians must receive the word of God or the Creative word by taking the
Christ into themselves. The time will come when all human beings who take Christianity into
their souls in an honest way will know through the course of the events that the word of God
is with Christ, and that this word of God has its seed in the understanding of the Mystery of
Golgotha and of the garment which is sprinkled with blood. Thus we have the Christ,
enclosed in the Mystery of Golgotha in the language of the Apocalypticer.
However, a third thing appears. Christ in three forms: firstly, through himself, secondly
through his garment, and thirdly through the deeds which he does for men on earth. Here
again a condition is described which must set in, and which will of course not begin in such a
way that one can point to a particular year but Christian development must move in that
direction.
The third thing that our attention is drawn to is the sword with which he works, which is the
sword of his will, the sword of his deeds, the sword of what he has done among human
beings upon earth by living in them. But what he's doing now, what he does in his comings
and goings, as it were, bears the third name: King of all Kings, Lord of all Lords. That is the
third form. What is the nature of a king or the nature of a lord? If we go into the real inner
meaning of the Latin word dominus, we arrive at what linguistic usage indicates in this case,
quite independently of spiritual investigation: A lord is someone who is designated to give
guidance to some other being on earth or in the whole world. 3ut how long will external
lords be necessary upon earth? How long will one need the commands of outer lords upon
earth and even the commands of external spiritual lords above the earth? Until that point in
time when Christ lives in men with the name which only he understands. Then everyone will
be able to follow Christ in his own being and in his own soul. Then everyone will try to
realize in himself what man's will wants to realize out of inner love. Then the Lord of lords
and King of kings will live in each individual.
Seen from an inner spiritual viewpoint, this is really the time in which we're living now. The
fact that we're living in it is concealed by the fact that men are continuing to live in their old
ruts, and they're really denying this indwelling of the Christ as much as possible, denying it
as much as possible, they're denying it as much as possible in all fields. One can certainly say
that a great deal exists in a large number of people today which is preparing in the right way
for the etheric appearance of the Christ, who is a being that came down from the divine
world. But men must prepare themselves by finding the source of their actions and deeds in
themselves.
Therewith we really touch upon a difficulty with the present-day activities of priests out of
the spirit of the Apocalypse. A priest should guide and direct in a certain sense. A priest has
the faithful before him, and his priestly dignity presupposes that he, the leader, is a king over
the ones he is to lead' in a certain way. He is the giver of the sacraments; he is the minister.
On the other hand, we live in a time where men have the potential to take in the Christ to
such an extent that they can become their own leaders ever more.
You see, this is the situation which the one who wants to become a priest gets into today.
And yet the ordination of priests is fully justified today, completely justified. It's fully
justified because although men really do bear something in them as an essence, it must be
brought out of them, it must really be brought out of them. And one really needs everything
which lies behind priestly dignity in order to bring out what is in human beings today. For
we live in a time which really requires something quite definite. The outer world cannot
really completely confront what is required here. For the outer world must deal with men
insofar as they are bearers of a physical body. But it would be a terrible prospect if men —
the way they are through our civilization, which hasn't arrived at the standpoint on which
man is standing — would live over into the next earth life in this form.
We know that one tries to avoid this in the Anthroposophical sphere. Human souls are
offered something whereby they are supposed to live over into the next incarnation with the
things men are supposed to take in today. But this must become universally human. Men
must develop an ego or an individuality with which they can live over into the next
incarnation. This is only possible if what is given through the grace of sacrifice, through the
grace of a sacrament is added to men's experiences. This doesn't separate men from their
karma but it does separate them from what is clinging to them in a very intensive way today.
Human beings are walking around with masks on. They're going around masked. And it can
lead to tragic conflicts if the need arises at some point to really see human beings and their
individualities.
Such a tragic conflict arises with Hölderlin, who once said: when he looks around in the
world he sees Germans, Frenchmen, Turks and Englishmen, but no human beings, young,
mature and old people but no human beings. And he enumerates more types. Men bear an
extra-human stamp, as it were.
We need a priestly activity today which speaks to human beings as human beings and which
cultivates humanity. Of course none of the present-day confessions can really do this. Just
consider how dependent the confessions are. The community for Christian renewal must get
beyond the dependency of these confessions. It must do this through its own destiny. No one
who grows out of Anthroposophy is in the same position that priests are. That is a quite
special position. And it is perhaps quite right to point to what is present here out of the spirit
of the Apocalypse. Just consider that in every other activity which grows out of
Anthroposophy today, people become dependent upon the outer world in some way through
the powers that be.
If someone becomes a teacher out of Anthroposophy, one can see the tremendous obstacles
which are put in their way. People deceive themselves about this. But we won't get a second
Waldorf school, because they will set up the condition everywhere that all the teachers one
hires must be approved by the state in some way. The Waldorf School could only come into
existence because we started at a time when no such school law existed in Württemberg yet.
Take doctors: we cannot make doctors out of people in the Anthroposophical movement
from scratch without further ado. To be sure, we could make doctors. But they wouldn't be
recognized, they would not be accredited. To some extent we even have this difficulty in
artistic things. It won't be very long before things will tend in the direction of what is
happening in Russia, and people will demand a stamp from the state. A priest who grows out
of the Anthroposophical Society is the only one who can strip everything off, as it were. It's
all right if he learned something, but he throws off everything in his work. He's really laying
the first foundation stone of the new Jerusalem in the theology which he supports; for he
represents a theology which doesn't have to be recognized by anyone besides himself. That is
the important thing.
You are the only ones who are in this position. You should also feel that you are in this
position, and you will feel the specific quality of your priestly dignity. If one is dealing with
a country like Russia they can drive out certain kinds of priests, but people in such a country
will never do anything which would make it necessary for priests to get an official stamp of
approval. For one will either leave priests the way they are, or one will not want them, which
has already been realized in Russia as far as the tendency goes. Thus priests are the first ones
who will be able to feel the approach of the new Jerusalem, the approach of the indwelling
Christ, the Christ who becomes the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords.
Hence it is very good for a priest to dwell on this passage \in the Apocalypse, to dwell on it
with an ardent heart and to develop the entire enthusiasm of his priestly soul which he should
develop at this place in the Apocalypse. For the Apocalypse should not be a teaching; the
Apocalypse should be life which works in each of our souls. We should feel that we are
united with the Apocalypse. We should be able to place what we're working and living with
into the stream of prophetic things in the Apocalypse. Here we see ourselves gathered around
John the Apocalypticer, who has the vision Heaven has been opened, the one who only
understands his name himself comes, the one whose garment bears the name the “word of
God,” the one who is King of Kings and Lord of Lords — he comes. The priesthood which
gathers around the John who sees this, the priesthood that unites itself with the cultic rite
which has been drawn from the spiritual world, that raises up the transubstantiation in the
sense of the Holy Spirit again, that has the new act of, consecration of man, the transformed
old one which has taken the valid things from the old one, but which has taken on the form
which flows out of the spiritual world today — this priesthood may gather around John the
Apocalypticer, who looks up into the opened heaven.
For we are permitted to look at the inauguration which took placed in the room which the fire
then took hold of —, we should look at it in the light which rays out here when heaven opens
— the white horse comes out with the one who sits upon it and who only knows his name
himself, who must be incorporated into us if this name is to mean something to us, and who
has the other characteristics which are mentioned. This is how one should understand the
Apocalypse, for the Apocalypse must be understood in a living way and not just with the top
of one's head.
However, I would like to say that very deep wisdom is connected with the magnificent
Imagination that appears here. Just consider what appears in close proximity to this
significant vision, as it were. The reader is told how active the beast that I described is — the
beast which induces human beings to go down from the spiritual to the physical, which the
Apocalypticer divided into three stages; the beast whose one form is a materialistic way of
living and not just a materialistic view of life. However, the Apocalypticer refers to two
points in time. He tells us how the beast is overcome, and on the other hand he tells us that
the adversary of mankind, the stronger adversary of mankind, is bound for a thousand years
and is then released again for a short time. Thus we really have to do with two adversaries of
the good principle, with the beast and with what is traditionally referred to as Satan.
Now the beast is overcome with respect to the outer physical world, in the sense that a
spiritual world view can always be opposed to materialism. And Satan is chained at the
present time in a certain way. But he will be released again. Satan is fettered, and anyone
who sees through the important things in evolution knows that he is fettered. For if Satan was
not chained at the present time and if everything which could really pour out the vials of
wrath would appear — if Satan was not bound, — the connection between the materialistic
way of living and the materialistic view of life which is present on earth today would show
up in the outer world in a ghastly way. Then the people who proclaim materialism as a truth
with the deepest inner cynicism today would arouse such a desire in the unbound Satan that
one would see this extraction of the materialistic view and a materialistic way of living and
their acquisition by Ahrimanic powers, one would see this as the most horrible and most
terrible diseases.
If Satan was not bound one would not only have to speak of materialism as a view and a way
of living, one would have to speak of materialism as the worst kind of a disease. Instead of
this people go through the world with the cynicism and frivolity of materialism and even
with religious materialism, and nothing happens to them. But the only reason nothing
happens to them is because Satan is bound and the Godhead still makes it possible for one to
come to spiritual things without succumbing to Satan. If Satan was here, many a teacher who
is standing in some confession and is infected by materialism would be a terrible, gruesome
sight for mankind. The idea which arises when one points to the possible disease of
materialism, to the leprosy of materialism which would really be there if Satan were not
bound, if one points to this, it certainly gives rise to a terrible mental image.
However, anyone who is aware of his spiritual responsibility towards knowledge today will
not make use of such an idea within any other context than the context of the Apocalypse. I
myself would not speak of the leprosy of materialism in any other context than in the one I'm
speaking of it here, where I have to connect things with the Apocalypse and where the one
who becomes familiar with the ideas of the Apocalypse has these gruesome pictures before
him, which however definitely correspond to the real state of the spiritual affairs.
The Apocalypse should not only permeate, our life, it should also permeate our words. If we
take in the Apocalypse it is not only an enlivening element in priests' work, it is something
that, permits us to point to things which we otherwise point to in exoteric life. The
Apocalypse should not only live with our ego, if we want to understand it, the Apocalypse
also wants to speak in our words: and if you are real priests there will be some things which
you will say to each other when you are in a room with other priests so that they will live in
you and remain amongst yourselves. Then you will gain the strength to say the right words
when you are standing before your faithful followers.
Priests are priests today because they are the first ones who may speak about the Apocalypse
freely amongst themselves. This Apocalypse is a priestly thing, that is, it is a priests' book
which is appended to the Gospels. You will become priests all the more, the more you find
your way into the inner spirit of the Apocalypse. We will speak about this some more
tomorrow.

LECTURES TO PRIESTS: THE APOCALYPSE

GA 346
Lecture XI
Dornach, 15 September 1924
Let's imagine that we are in the world into which the Apocalypticer wants to translate men
during the next earthly period. He describes his visions of the breaking in of spiritual worlds
and of how they will take possession of earthly human beings. He precedes this by three
stages which we must become familiar with; three stages, — in a certain sense each of these
represents something which must fall before mankind will become worthy and capable of
obtaining the spiritual world in a pure form for their working, thinking and feeling.
The first stage is the fall of Babylon; we will call it this to begin with. The second stage is the
fall of the beast and his companion the false prophet who spreads the teaching of the beast.
The third stage is the fall of the divine counter powers which are usually called Satan. These
three stages become quite objective and real in connection with the spiritual perception of
future human evolution.
A great deal concerning human evolution will be decided in our century, and one has good
reason to direct the eye of one's soul upon these three falls'. For they will break in upon us in
a certain form; they will occur after the first appearance of Christ on earth in his etheric
body, which is really his second appearance upon earth. And mankind will have to prepare
itself and make itself strong enough in order to go through this threefold fall of the
adversaries of the Christ impulse without endangering their soul development. We shouldn't
forget how precise the Apocalypticer really is, for each time such a fall occurs he lets an
angel come down from the spiritual worlds, and we notice something which can give
someone who hasn't acquired a spiritual conception of the world a rather strange feeling. He
lets the angel who comes down rejoice about the great suffering and terrible things which
accompany this terrible fall, and it will be necessary for us to understand this rejoicing. But
before we do that let's take a look at the three stages of the fall of the powers who oppose the
Christ.
First comes what is called the fall of Babylon. Here we can place the sum of all the errors
which men and mankind can fall into through their human nature before our souls.
Everything which tends to drag human beings down below the spiritual level at which they
really belong is included in what the Apocalypticer calls the Babylonian temptation.
Man is really only a human being — although of course he has to acquire this humanness
first, and he can't just have it at every moment in his evolution — man is only truly human if
there is a complete harmony between the material and spiritual principles in him, that is, if
the material doesn't play up into emotions which are not controlled by the spiritual. This is
the important thing and we must understand it quite well, for even the Apocalypticer could
not speak the way he does if he assumed that passions, desires and everything which comes
from the will sphere was quite unjustified right from the beginning. To say that this is
unjustified — this ascetic striving in a false sense — also arises from the sphere of passions
and desires, for someone who doesn't feel strong enough to permeate his passions from the
spiritual side in such a way, that he places them in the service of good world evolution is
indulgencing his weak emotions. He wants the good evolution, but he wants to impoverish it
in this way and he wants to indulge his weakness. For the Apocalypticer it's not a question of
tearing out emotions or of tearing out passions and desires, it's a question of their not
remaining uncontrolled by the spiritual world.
Babylon is the city in which a falling away from spirituality through passions held sway in
an almost stereotyped way at a certain period in its mystery development, and everything
which represents emotions in human life, which remain out of control on a smaller or larger
scale is summarized by this city. Here we should translate the strong, coarse expressions
which were used at that time (they weren't coarse then) into our language. The people in
ancient times didn't form abstract concepts, they always referred to concrete things, always
pointed to something characteristic and looked at concrete things. And so the Apocalypticer
speaks of Babylon. Why of Babylon?
Really deep mysteries existed in Babylon or in the mystery centers of Babylon in which one
could be initiated into the secrets of the super-earthly cosmos, far out into star worlds, and in
which one could learn about starry secrets concerning the star worlds and their spiritual
content. The earliest priests in ancient Babylon used human powers of clairvoyance and
dreams in a way which we would call mediumistic today; this was the case in ancient
Babylon. A wonderful, ancient Babylonian teaching developed in this somewhat
mediumistic way. However, as one can also see today, mediums — even though they are
suited for spiritual mediations, and they are often used in this way, although the process must
be controlled by discerning initiates — have very questionable moral characteristics.
Mediums become morally degenerate, and because there is a certain discrepancy between
what they reveal and what they are, they can eventually no longer distinguish between truth
and lies. Here one gets into a region where morality and immorality are no longer distinct.
You must understand how mediums get into this condition. Someone is a medium if his ego
and astral body are pulled out of his physical and etheric bodies by an external force, and this
was also what happened at the time of the Babylonian priests. However, another power sits
in this ego and astral body as soon as they have been pulled out of the medium's physical and
etheric body. Depending on whether the initiate who brings this about has good or bad
intentions and belongs to the left or the right, this can be a good power or an evil one.
Excellent things came to light in this way in ancient Babylonian times, but the problem was
with what occurred when the medium returned to his physical body. You see, one cannot get
by in the spiritual world with the logic and discrimination between lies and truth which one
has in the physical world. It is a complete error to think that one can use the concepts of lies
and truth which one rightly uses in the physical world, in the spiritual world. There is
nothing there which one could distinguish in such a way. Some of the beings there are good
and others are evil. One has to know them through themselves, and in fact, they tell one the
kind of being they are. Even the evil ones are truthful in their own way. Of course this is
difficult to understand, just as it is difficult to understand what happens in the spiritual world
as soon as one enters it. For instance, here in the physical world we say that a straight line is
the shortest path between two points. However, in the spiritual world it is the longest
distance between two points and every other one is shorter. So that we cannot apply anything
which we have to use in the physical world to the spiritual world.
Hence a true initiate must have the right attitude of soul for the spiritual world, but he must
also feel fully responsible for the fact that the moment he returns to the physical world he has
to work with physical concepts. A medium cannot do this because he doesn't leave his body
consciously. When he comes back again his ego and astral body fill the physical and etheric
bodies with a line of thought which is no doubt appropriate for the spiritual world, but it
corrupts all moral feelings in the physical world. Hence mediums become corrupted, and the
corruption with respect to truth and lies then' extends to other forms of corruption. Hence the
fact is that Babylon went through this development from the greatest revelations of spiritual
worlds to a terrible corruption; first with respect to the principle of spiritual revelation, and
then also with respect to human life in general, so that the previous corruption in the spiritual
sphere extended to the latter. This spiritual corruption is very powerful; so that someone
becomes more immoral if he becomes corrupt after he has gone into spiritual realms than he
did before with his ordinary human tendencies. This is why Babylon was considered to be a
representative of moral corruption.
The expressions for corruption which we find here are ones which were in common use. The
whole of humanity over the entire earth imitated the Babylonians and thereby became a kind
of city of Babylon. And this is what the Apocalypticer means. The city of Babylon is to be
found among mankind on earth; it exists wherever human beings have succumbed to the
Babylonian temptation. It is this human attitude which must fall before that fin— al
condition of which the Apocalypticer speaks can come. And if we investigate what is active
in the Babylonian corruption, we find that the Ahrimanic principle is active in it everywhere.
Ahriman is sitting in men, and he is a power who stands close to them in the whole world, as
it were. He is in our emotions, which thereby degenerate. The Ahrimanic and Luciferic
principles are opposite poles. The Ahrimanic element is present in what falls here, as for
instance when Babylon falls, and it is opposed to the Luciferic element. What kind of an
image must the Apocalypticer use when he sees this? The image of jubilating Luciferic,
angelic sentiments. We must be aware of this.
It's a big mistake to look upon the worst world conceptions as the best ones, as for instance
the idea about the evil principle being down below and the good principle being in
everything which comes to meet it from above. This is not the actual state of affairs. The
Ahrimanic principle is down below and one has the Luciferic principle above where the
angels are rejoicing about the falls. The rejoicing one hears is the voice of Lucifer which
accompanies the diving angels, for the actual Christ principle is the balance between the two.
One can only understand something like what the Apocalypticer is presenting if one
understands this threefoldedness in the world's makeup in the right way. For anyone with
ordinary human feelings it is completely incomprehensible why pure and good spirits would
begin to scream for joy when the misery which is described here befalls other beings. This is
of course immediately comprehensible if one sees it as the jubilant cries of those who were
basically opposed to the creation of the world in which man experiences his spiritual
development. They want to keep his whole evolution on a very different spiritual level. They
didn't want that connection or marriage of the spirit with matter which took place in earthly
existence. So that when what is grasped by Ahriman is eliminated from earthly existence,
what they're really feeling in their souls is: we now have the satisfaction that one part of
earth-existence will no longer be continued; it is falling during earth evolution he world view
which speaks out of the images which the Apocalypticer describes for each fall is
wonderfully honest in this respect.
Now the first one, the fall of Babylon, is all the errors men can fall into when they are also
influenced by the initiation principle, it is human perversions. When. Babylon falls the
remaining human, aberrations will be eliminated from further world evolution, at a point in
time which we will discuss later. To begin with we will place coming events before our soul
in a qualitative way.
The second thing is where man is no longer just involved by himself. The beings who fall
with Babylon are men; it is human aberration. However, in the case of the fall of the beast;
and; the false prophet who supports the teaching of the beast, what falls is something
spiritual and superhuman, and not something human.
Something which is outside of the human kingdom falls, namely, the beast who breaks in
upon human communities, and the one who proclaims the teaching of this beast. Hence one
is dealing with something which can take possession of' human beings where something
superhuman is working directly in men with an evil impulse, and it's not a matter of a weak
nature working, as in the case of a medium. We can add the following to make the
Imagination even clearer. All those who will participate in the fall of Babylon will have
become degenerate through the fact that they tried to do things which their organization
couldn't stand; their organization became weak with respect to these things, and therefore
they became corrupt. In the fall of Babylon man's organization acts out of weakness. In the
fall of the beast and the false prophet it's not as if a medium became corrupt because he got
weak, but it's as if the spirit which overpowers the ego and astral body of the medium during
hypnosis would then go into his physical and etheric body and make use of the physical body
in order to wreak havoc on earth through the human being.
This is exactly the idea which we encounter here in the Apocalypticer. He wants to say that a
time will come when we will see human beings walking around on earth who couldn't stand
what really, lay in the Christian annunciation who took the Christ into their souls, but who
didn't get to the level of the Christ with their etheric and physical bodies, and therefore
became corrupt and devoted to other spirits; but they didn't devote themselves to them with
full consciousness, so that they became corrupt. These are the first ones, who are included in
the fall of Babylon.
The other ones walk around like men, but their fate is that their human ego is not in them, so
that one can no longer speak of them as human beings, for they are possessed by the beast
and the false prophet. This will come after the fall of Babylon. There will be people walking
around on earth who will be demons, for Ahrimanic powers will act in them directly.
Many of the preliminary conditions for all of these things already exist today; one could say
that all of this is already present in a germinal form. After all we already have the terrible
case where Ahriman appeared amongst us as an author, perhaps not through a human being
entirely, but at least through the temporary weakness of a human being. Nietzsche was a
wonderful and brilliant writer, but the Nietzsche individuality was not in him when he wrote
the AntiChrist and Ecce Homo. I know this individuality in Nietzsche, and I even described
it in my autobiography; but Ahriman becomes a direct author here, and Ahriman is a much
more brilliant writer than Nietzsche.
Ahrimanic powers will intervene more and more and Ahrimanic spirits will also use human
bodies for other things. A time will come when Christians will have to ask themselves
seriously when they meet this or that human being: Is that really a human being or is it a very
loose mantle for Ahrimanic spirits? In the future one will have to make this distinction in
addition to the other ones one has to make today. This will be the second fall, and the beast
and his herald will take possession of human bodies. Thereby these demons will have fallen.
So first we have the fall of corrupt human beings and then the fall of certain corrupt spirits,
who are close to men. These spirits take a tumble in the second fall.
Then we have the third fall, which is the fall of Satan in the Apocalypse. Here we have a
very high being who does a different kind of work than the one which can be done on earth.
The beast and the false prophet are powers who lead mankind astray; they want to steer men
in the wrong direction in a moral and intellectual respect. However, the power which is
meant in the fall of Satan wants something quite different. It wants to throw the whole earth
off its course, and not just mankind. Seen from a human, earthly standpoint, this power is a
terrible adversary of the Godhead.
One can only ask the following in a hypothetical way, and one can't look at it from the
viewpoint of human or earthly evolution, if one doesn't want to commit an intellectual or
spiritual sin. If one looks at it from other viewpoints, how does this satanic power in the
universe compare with other spirits?
Now Michael has a different standpoint than human beings do, and it's no wonder that his
opinion about Satan is quite different from that of men. Human beings tend to be rather
abstract, and they think that Satan is an evil power. But he is also a great power from the
viewpoints which are important for the earth, a great power that has gone astray. And
archangel Michael does not have the rank of Satan, who is at the level of a principality or an
archai; Michael is only an archangel. Satan is a very terrifying power from Michael's
standpoint and not a despicable one, because he thinks that this power who belongs to the
Archai is higher than he is. Except that Michael holds views which are in line with earth
evolution.
With respect to everything which is connected with the orbits of the planets, Michael decided
a long time ago to travel in the orbits which are prescribed by the sun's existence. Satan is a
power who is continually lurking around in our cosmos. There is something sinister about
this lurking of Satan. One can perceive this at the moments when one sees a comet shooting
through our cosmos, with its different orbit (drawing).
If one draws it according to Copernicus which is not quite correct, although it doesn't make
much difference here one has sun, Mercury, Venus, earth, Mars; those are the inner planets:
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune — one can see that such comets have very irregular orbits
with respect to these regular orbits. The view that these comets describe long ellipses is
nonsense, but we don't have to go into that now. But in any case, the segments of the
cometary orbits which lie within our planetary system do not agree with the planetary orbits
at all.
And so this Satan lies in wait in order to catch every comet that comes along, and to use its
momental inertia so that — when he has collected enough comets — he can throw the
planets out of their orbits, and the earth with them. This situation exists in the universe;
Satanic powers are continually lying in wait so that they can transform the entire planetary
system. Thereby this planetary system would be taken away from the divine, spiritual powers
in whose footsteps men should be walking, and it would be taken into quite different
directions of world evolution. This intention is a terrible mistake from Michael's point of
view, but an intention about which Michael would have to say: I couldn't even do it, for it
would be impossible for a being who is in the archangel class to do something like that. Only
beings who are in the archai class might have enough forces to carry out something along
these lines. Michael — who decided to move in the sun's orbit a long time ago, and who
therefore (in the sense of the Ptolemaic system) has become what is known in occultism as
an archangel of the rotation of time for the planets and has decided to remain entirely within
the orbital periods.
The angels had to decide to remain in these scheduled orbits at some point. In a certain epoch
of Atlantean evolution the gods descended into the mystery centers, and one could really
perceive that the hosts of archangels which include Oriphiel, Anael, Zachariel and so on,
resolved to move within the prescribed planetary orbits. So this came about at a certain time.
However, the mighty hosts which are led by Satan have not made this decision up to the
present time and they're still trying to use every cometary orbit in order to give a different
configuration to the entire planetary system. Here one is dealing with an adversary of Christ
who not only wants to corrupt individual human beings, and who doesn't just want to corrupt
groups of human beings like the beast and the false prophet, but we have to do with Satan
and his hosts and with direct attacks upon the earth's connection with the planetary system,
as it were. This will have to be the third fall. In both of these last two falls we again have the
rejoicing of the Luciferic kind of spiritual beings.
One must foresee these things. For the first stage, the Babylonian stage, will have straying
human beings who have drawn an aberration into themselves through their physical
constitution, so that there is no hope that anything particularly good will become of these
walking human bodies over which the ego and astral body have entirely lost control. These
bodies must be given up for lost although perhaps not the ego and astral body which belong
to them. The former will then go on as such along the karmic paths of humanity. At a
particular point in time we see certain men walking around in their bodies, who are men who
have succumbed to the Babylonian temptation and whose bodies and what is in them fall out
of evolution: the fall of Babylon.
The second thing is that human beings will walk around — one will be able to see this — of
whom one will have to say that Ahrimanic power's, are living in them. Here Ahriman is
acting directly; this is the beast; the fall of the beast and of the false prophet of the beast, who
is a superhuman being and not a man.
The third thing is that one will notice that something about the laws of nature is becoming
unexplainable. This will be the greatest and most important experience that people will be
able to have, when they notice that something is becoming unexplainable about natural laws
and that phenomena are not taking place in accordance with the laws of nature. It will often
happen that one will have something which is not merely an erroneous calculation, but is
calculated correctly, let's say that a planet should be in a certain place, but it doesn't get there.
Satan will make some first successful attempts to bring disorder into the planetary system.
Mankind will have to develop a very strong spirituality in order to counteract this. For the
disorder that can be brought about in this way will and can only be harmonized through the
strong spirituality of human beings. These are the things which we can foresee today if we
place future stages of human and earth evolution before our soul. This is what we see again
when the Apocalypticer speaks to us. You should try to feel your way into this coincidence'•;
with what can really be gained from Anthroposophy or can gradually be disclosed through
Anthroposophy.
For one will be able to speak of comets and one can already speak about them today to the
effect that Satan is lying in wait for them in the cosmos, and that he wants to use their orbits
to replace cosmos with chaos. For if you take what can be gained through Anthroposophic
understanding into yourself and you can discover it again in the Apocalypse, there is
something important about this rediscovery. A kind of soul encounter with the Apocalypse
and therewith the Apocalypticer himself is present in this; that is important, — thereby with
the Apocalypticer himself. For this will be very important, that the priest who is living into
the future should increasingly get the longing to meet the Apocalypticer who looked into the
future in this way after the Mystery of Golgotha, — the Apocalypticer at any time, regardless
of whether he is living on earth or not.
For priests must get the feeling that the help that can come from John, the creator of the
Apocalypse, to the one who wants to work in a Christian way that this help is an extremely
important one, and one that one needs. However, we will only really be able to accompany
John the Apocalypticer if we approach the Apocalypse with the attitude of soul that I
described. Then John becomes our ally, and after all he is closely connected with Christ
Jesus, he was initiated by Christ Jesus himself, he is an initiate of Christ Jesus. Therefore, he
is an important ally. It is tremendously important to come to the Christ through him.
It is really true that a real understanding of the Apocalypse leads deep down into the region
where one has the greatest imaginable prospects of meeting John and then the Christ himself.
There is a deep truth connected with this and a truth which one can hope will have a very
deep aftereffect upon your thinking and feeling, for it is a real priests' truth, that is, a truth
which draws a priest into the spiritual realm in a legitimate way. We will continue with this
tomorrow.
 LECTURES TO PRIESTS: THE APOCALYPSE
GA 346
Lecture XII
Dornach, 16 September 1924
Of course today we can remember that it is a favorable karmic situation that we are together
again on the day when the first act of consecration of man could be performed here two years
ago. We have a rather strange order in the main points in the development of the spiritual life
here, as it were. The act of consecration of man two years ago, the burning of the
Goetheanum, the laying of the foundation stone of the Anthroposophical society a year later
and now after the second year we have gathered together here in order to look at the
Apocalypse in accordance with your needs.
As I mentioned at the, beginning, a study of the Apocalypse is very closely connected with
what is contained in the act of consecration of man; and therefore every day that we spend on
the Apocalypse is really a memorial festival for what we permitted to live amongst us two
years ago in order to bring what wanted to reveal itself from the spiritual world into this life
as the present, modern cultic ritual.
With respect to the coincidence of events, it will perhaps be appropriate today that we will
have a point in the Apocalypse before us which is very difficult to understand, but which
really leads into the whole heart of the Apocalypse and which is connected most closely with
the mystery of the act of consecration of man, because it is objectively connected with the
being of Christ. It is really only possible to speak about this point in connection with the
Apocalypse. For the Apocalypse bears the fundamental Christian character on its forehead to
such an extent that there is no doubt that we cannot get anything out of what is connected
with this Apocalypse in a natural way which deviates from the Christian viewpoint. And you
may be assured that what I will have to say about this point which we want to discuss today
arises in a very striking way from the views of the Apocalypticer.
We look around us at the turning point of our era and we find ourselves in the fifth post
Atlantean period since the beginning of the 15th century, and in this period we have the
beginning of a renewed battle which Michael will have to fight in connection with
everything which has to happen in the near future, and we look back from there to the fourth
post Atlantean period which immediately preceded our present one.
We know that this fourth post Atlantean age began about the year 747 before the Mystery of
Golgotha, that the Mystery of Golgotha fell in this fourth post Atlantean age and that it can
be placed approximately in the center of this age, if we take the slight displacements which
always occur in world evolution into account. Thus we can make a schematic sketch of what
is connected with our spiritual development as follows (drawing). So that we can say, the 5th
post Atlantean age is here, and it was preceded by the fourth, third, second, first back to the
Atlantean catastrophe, which as we know essentially transformed the shape of the earth's
surface, and which gave a new face to our earth, as it were.
Now let's take a look at what this fourth Atlantean epoch is. It was preceded by what I have
often called the Lemurian epoch in earth evolution, and then by what we can call the second
and the first epochs in earth evolution. These first three epochs up to the Atlantean one are
repetitions of the Saturn, Sun and Moon periods of evolution, respectively, whereas the
fourth, Atlantean epoch is something new. The first three are definitely repetitions; it's true
that they are repetitions on a higher level, but they are repetitions nevertheless.
The fourth or Atlantean epoch is something new. What happened during the Atlantean epoch
occurred while the earth had forms which were quite different from the later ones. The
earth's crust wasn't nearly as solid in the middle of the Atlantean epoch as it is today. The
long geological periods of time which were presumably necessary for these events are
illusions. The earth solidified from a relatively fluidic condition during the Atlantean epoch.
The human race was quite different during the Atlantean period. It didn't have the present
solid skeleton yet in the middle of the Atlantean epoch. As far as their material makeup is
concerned men were more or less similar to lower animals. This doesn't apply to their form,
for their forms were magnificent, but the substances were soft and cartilaginous and similar
to those in jelly fish. Thus we can say that all physical conditions on earth have changed
since that time and that the radical transformations which were still possible on the physical
plane in the middle of the Atlantean epoch no longer occur.
It was even possible for men to make rapid metamorphoses, since the materials in their
physical bodies were soft; so that depending on their inner soul life they became larger or
smaller with various shapes; for every emotion immediately became imprinted in the
physical body. In the middle of the Atlantean epoch, if someone wanted to grab something
that was a little distance away, his will worked into his gelatinous organs so that they became
quite long; so the way that shorter and longer range physical events and processes occurred
was different then than it is today. There was an image of the real spiritual events in all
physical processes, transformations and metamorphoses. This is not the case today. When we
look outside today we don't perceive the working of the spirit in the course of the seasons or
in other events anymore. When these rapid transformations occurred in the ancient Atlantean
period men did not doubt that this world contained divine, spiritual things. Although the
Atlantean continent was still quite mobile, it was beginning to get a fairly constant shape. It
was enclosed by a kind of woven, dense fluid, and yet one can't call it semi-fluidic. It
consisted of a viscous material which could support soft bodies and soft, mobile plants which
floated or glided in this substance and were not yet attached to the ground. So the physical
conditions were quite different.
One can say that sea and land were not as distinct then as they were later, that is, one passed
over into the other. The people who saw the conditions at that time could say that the gods
were working harder in the bordering ocean, where what was being transformed became
more manifest than in the solid, fluidic land. One saw the gods at work all around Atlantis;
no one doubted that these gods were at work; one perceived the spiritual and psychical
everywhere, even in a physical way. One saw psychical and spiritual things in the physical
world.
The peculiar thing about the earlier, Greek part of the fourth post Atlantean epoch was that
one could clearly see the gods working in everything which goes on in the air; this became
more indistinct in the centuries just before the fifth post Atlantean period. In ancient Atlantis
one saw the gods at work in fluidic solids, and in the fourth post Atlantean age one saw them
at work in the aeriform fluids in cloud formations, in the formation of twilight conditions,
etc.
We don't find any descriptions of these things that are like definitions, for people's
consciousness wasn't as clear yet, but they were there, because I'd like to know how an open-
minded person can understand those wonderful paintings of clouds up to the early
Renaissance where something spiritual is born out of the clouds in any other way than that
one feels that there is a divine, spiritual activity in the aery cloud beings or in the aery,
watery beings. You see, at that time men were constituted in such a way that they didn't look
at the physical part of cloud formation, but they felt that something was being revealed
through the clouds. This is a very beautiful feeling but it is very difficult to reconstruct for
modern consciousness. When someone from even as late as the 8th and 9th centuries looked
at the morning sky and saw how the twilight or the glimmering cloud formations at twilight
stood before his soul, he really felt that the aurora or red dawn was alive; and he had the
same feeling at dusk. The same applied to other things.
So that we can say that people saw the spirit in a physical way in ancient Atlantis. After
Atlantis came the post Atlantean epoch with its seven ages. A repetition of the physical
happenings in Atlantis at a soul level really occurred in the fourth post Atlantean age. The
mighty upheavals of which I spoke: 333, 666, which are soul shocks in the evolution of
mankind, definitely correspond to physical upheavals in the Atlantean epoch. And the seers
in the Græco-Roman period definitely felt that when they saw something like soul
revelations in fluidic, aeriform things, there was something in their souls which was a
repetition of earlier earth conditions that occurred in the physical world. Only a dim
awareness of this was present, for all consciousness was dimmer at that time.
As I recently mentioned in Anthroposophical lectures, the teachers at the school of Chartres
and in other schools showed that the soul experiences of this Græco-Latin age were a
psychical repetition of more condensed physical experiences and events in the Atlantean
epoch.
And now we are in the consciousness age. The direct soul experiences in aeriform fluids
have disappeared. One could say that the fifth post Atlantean age began through a kind of a
catastrophe, and that this was a preparation for the further development of the consciousness
soul of humanity. We're still in the chaos of this development of the consciousness soul to
some extent with respect to our outer civilization. But the dawn of the Michael age will bring
perception into this chaos.
This perception will consist of something like memories or Fata-Morgana mental formations
which will arise in men in an entirely spiritual way — no longer in a physical way as in the
Atlantean epoch, or in a psychical way as in the Græco-Roman age, but in a completely
spiritual way — and this will begin after the appearance of the etheric Christ. Human
thoughts will have a visionary character and will be like inner mirages, but they will be
completely conscious in the age of the consciousness soul. Just as one sees a mirage in the
desert which is brought about by the warm air, so men's thoughts will be carried by warmth
and they will help men to understand aeriform-fiery and aeriform-warm things.
We can say that man perceives divine things in solids and fluids during the Atlantean epoch
(of course this is more in outer, physical matter), that in the fourth post Atlantean or Græco-
Roman age man perceives spiritual things in wonderful aeriform, fluidic formations, and that
now in the fifth post Atlantean age men's consciousness souls will become aware of
aeriform, fiery things and aeriform, warm things which will appear more and more. This will
permit something to arise before men in mighty pictures which the Greeks experienced in a
soul way and the inhabitants of Atlantis experienced in a physical way.
Thus a time is approaching in human evolution when visions which have the clarity of
thought will arise concerning past times on earth and thereby concerning the origin of man
and everything which is connected with this. The appearance of the Darwinistic view which
gave man a lowly origin on the basis of mere inferences precedes the inner perception of
evolution, the wonderful Imaginations which will arise from the inner warmth which is
connected with man's breathing process; they will arise like concrete, significant, colored
visionary thoughts. Man will know what he was when he looks into a kind of a reflection of
the Græco-Roman age and then behind this into what existed in Atlantis. This perception that
is of considerable interest for us because it will begin soon is something where we look right
into the Apocalypticer's heart, because it is so close to us. For this kind of perception which
is almost upon us is what he indicates in a picture: a woman clothed with the sun, a dragon
under her feet, giving birth to a baby boy.
And in fact the eyes of many human beings will be opened by this Imagination during the
course of this century. Much understanding will radiate from this picture, and it is one which
shines back into the Græco-Roman age where it was prepared at the soul level and brought
into the shape in which it will appear in the near future, and where it took on a great variety
of forms. There was Isis with the Horus child, and metamorphoses of this as the Christ-
bearer with the Christ child, that lived in a wonderfully profound way precisely in the
Græco-Roman age. They have been handed down through traditions.
In the near future men will look back at the way in which people saw such things in the
clouds, that is, in aeriform-fluidic things during the fourth post Atlantean age. And they will
also look back even further to what lived in physical, Atlantean events. It will be as if this
picture of a sun-clad woman who gives birth to a little boy and who has a dragon under her
feet was like the eyepiece of a spiritual telescope which points to something physical lying
far back in the past which occurred between the earth and the planets and the sun sphere;
earthly, physical things were connected much more closely with cosmic things at that time.
For you see, we know that when the ancient Saturn period was repeated, many of the events
which were peculiar to ancient Saturn evolution occurred again during earth evolution, albeit
in a condensed form. During the repetition of ancient Sun evolution in the second period, the
sun separated from the earth with all the beings who belong to the sun, whereas it was still
connected with the earth during the repetition of Saturn evolution. During the third,
Lemurian period of earth evolution the moon separated also, so that the next earthly-reality is
a •;trinity of earth, sun and moon. You will find a description of the way the planets were
added to this in Occult Science. You can also find all the events which I described there
which are connected with the return of human souls during the Atlantean period. These are
earthly events which are seen from an earthly perspective.
Now let's add something else to this. Someone who grasps the world's secrets since the
Mystery of Golgotha with initiation science will look upon the Christ as the sun being who
was united with the sun before the Mystery of Golgotha. When the priests in the mysteries
wanted to connect themselves with the Christ in pre-Christian times they looked up to the
sun. Christ has become an earth spirit since the Mystery of Golgotha. We must look for
Christ the sun spirit in earthly life and in earthly activities. Those who wanted to see him and
commune with him before the Mystery of Golgotha had to raise themselves up to the sun.
However, this sun spirit which we must look upon as a male being when it came down to
earth, is described in a brilliant way in the Apocalypticer s vision, through a vision that
stands before us in an almost material form; similar events in earlier ages can also be
described in this way, and I have often done so. It stands there as a splendid physical vision
in the middle of the Atlantean epoch. After this point in time the wise men in the mysteries
looked up to the sun, and they saw the Christ developing and becoming mature in the sun
until he could go through the Mystery of Golgotha. However, when they looked back to this
point in Atlantean evolution they saw a birth taking place outside in the cosmos in the sun.
For the priests who saw the Christ as a male being in the sun after his birth in the middle of
the Atlantean period saw a female being in the sun before that. This is the important change
that occurred in the middle of the Atlantean period. Before the middle of the Atlantean epoch
one saw a cosmic woman in the sun's spiritual aura, the woman who was clothed with the
sun. This woman who was clothed with the sun corresponded to what was happening in the
heavens above the earth at that time, and as the Apocalypticer rightly describes it, she gives
birth to a little boy, who is the same being that went through the Mystery, although it went
through other forms beforehand. A kind of a birth which was really just a complicated
metamorphosis took place at that time in the Atlantean period. One could see how the female
sun gave birth to something that was male — to her son. Now what does this mean for the
earth? Of course in the middle of the Atlantean period one felt much differently about
something like the sun existence than one did later.
Today one looks upon the sun as if it were a collection of craters and burning masses; the
present-day descriptions of this by physicists are really horrible. But at that time one saw
something like what I just described: a real sun-woman with a dragon at her feet, giving birth
to a little boy. The ones who saw something like this and understood it said: For the heavens
this is the birth of Christ, and for us it is the birth of our ego.
Even though this ego only entered man's inner nature much later; since this point in the
middle of Atlantis evolution occurred in such a way that although men were not as conscious
of their ego in an elemental way as they are today, they became ever more conscious of it
because the mysteries drew their attention to it. The sun enkindled the ego in man. And the
sun's action continually enkindled the ego from outside through the birth which had
happened along the lines of this Imagination, until the fourth post Atlantean age, when the
ego entered into man. People felt this and they felt that man really belongs to the sun; this
was a feeling which made a deep impression upon the human soul.
Now that we have become such delicate souls with respect to our inner experiences, we have
no idea how stormy and wild soul experiences, were in earlier times. The fact that man's ego
was given to him from the cosmos made him feel that his nature had changed completely.
Before that he had mainly been dependent upon what was in his astral body. What was in his
astrality worked into his soul and spirit, so that during this ancient time man had the idea:
He's standing here (drawing), the sun is up there, the ego is not there yet, but the astral works
down from the sun. Man has his astral body from the sun, the astral body which is not
controlled by the ego and which has somewhat refined emotions but nevertheless animalized
ones in it. The man who had become an ego and who had previously had nothing but an
astral body bubbling through him had become an entirely different human being. However,
all of this came from the sun.
Let's place the picture of the sun as it was at the beginning of the Atlantean period before us
in a somewhat schematic way. It was permeated by a lively luster, which bubbled through
the lower half of the sun being. Something was born out of this above, and one felt that there
was an indistinct face here. Man felt that the emotions that seethed in his own astral body
and everything that gave him his spiritual and soul nature originated in the lower part of the
sun being. In the next stage men saw the sun like this (drawing). Things develop more
clearly here, the face becomes more distinct, the figure begins to look something like a
woman, who is to bring man control through the ego. The space down here where the animal
elements are wriggling becomes ever smaller. Finally, the time comes when the woman is
present in the sun and gives birth to a little boy and now has what was previously further up
here under her feet, where the ego-bearing woman in the picture on the sun demonstrates
how one controls the dragon — the astral world of the previous epoch — which is now under
her feet. The battle of Michael and the dragon began in the sun at that time, and in fact this
brought it about — one saw this as a physical phenomenon — that everything which was in
the sun slowly moved towards the earth and became an ingredient of the earth. It became an
earth content which thereby controlled man in his sub-consciousness, whereas the ego
entered ever more into his consciousness.
These cosmic, meteorological things that took place during the Atlantean epoch had their
counter image in the Græco-Roman age when Isis with the Horus child became the Virgin
with her Jesus boy. This will appear in a vision to those who look back in the next age which
is almost upon us.
Man will see the sun-clad woman in this picture, who has the dragon under her feet that was
thrown down to the earth by Michael, so that it cannot be found in the heavens anymore.
This Imagination will appear in the age which will be followed by the one where the dragon
is turned loose and where what I described to you yesterday will begin. It's a fact that
deepened and extensive perception of past times on earth, man's origins and of the Christ
being will soon arise in this Michael age. For Michael will concern himself with what the
Apocalypticer points to and which will begin again in the Michaelic age, he will concern
himself again with that draconic beast in human nature and in human evolution which he
threw down.
Let's imagine what happens here in a vivid way. One will look back into the Atlantean epoch
— the Apocalypticer does it in advance: he has the vision of the sun-clad woman who gives
birth to the little Jesus boy and who has the dragon at her feet —, but this becomes fainter
and fainter the closer we get to the end of Atlantean evolution. New continents rise out of the
ocean at the end of Atlantean evolution the continents which now contain the forces through
which the post Atlantean epoch entered into its various aberrations. The beast with the seven
heads rises up from the sea. Sevenfold land rises up from the sea and pulls men down
through the spiritual elements which evaporate from the earth into their emotions.
The Atlantean catastrophe appears to the Apocalypticer in the form of this seven headed
beast which rises from the sea, and it will appear in the future when what the Apocalypticer
is pointing to will begin again in the Michaelic age. The Apocalypticer is speaking of very
real events which concern us a great deal, in connection with the spiritual life of humanity.
And the content of this Imagination is connected with the being of Christ.
An age will soon come when men's souls will again see how the spirit lives in earthly things
and therefore the spiritual processes in transubstantiation will also be visible to them. Then
the earthly reflection of what has happened in heavenly regions will appear in
transubstantiation so that what has occurred since the middle of the Atlantean epoch is a
small section of everything which is connected with the being of Christ. One will understand
how the kind of metamorphosis which takes place in transubstantiation is possible when one
will see that the transubstantiation in what is physical and chemical at the moment — which
is only a passing episode — is connected with something that is quite different than things
which are apparently material.
Thus we can deepen our remembrance of the first act of consecration of man two years ago,
this remembrance of the Christ who shone down from the heavens and really descended from
the heavens during the Atlantean epoch, who appeared in the clouds in the Græco-Roman
age and walked on earth, and who was understood by men in their visions, who is now
walking on earth in an etheric form in our age, and is understood by men through visions and
Imaginations. The Christ is present in transubstantiation and will be present for human
beings more and more. The ways in which the Christ will gradually live in events during
earth evolution are connected with the events that I described today. Let's take this in as a
kind of festive idea today in memory of the first act of consecration of man which was
celebrated in the Goetheanum two years ago.

LECTURES TO PRIESTS: THE APOCALYPSE

GA 346
Lecture XIII
Dornach, 17 September 1924
I have already shown that the Apocalypse is built up on the number principle — one of the
occult principles — from a certain view point. Prom my explanations about the fundamental
rhythmic numbers in the universe and in man earlier today you may have seen how deeply
numbers are grounded in the universe, to the extent that they can disclose rhythmical things.
The buildup in accordance with numbers is quite natural with occult revelations which are
written in the way that the Apocalypse of John is. According to the modern principle of
initiation the visions that the Apocalypticer speaks about arise if one has Imaginations before
one and Inspiration speaks into them. Then one sees the Imaginations spread out before one
in a pictorial way and Inspirations speak through them. However, when this occurs one has a
number principle whereby the number 7 is always the most perfect one for all occultists. This
is practically a tenet of occultism: 7 is the most perfect number. The number principle
enables one to follow things up. You shouldn't think that this number 7 has much content or
that its content is very important for one. But it is of very great importance when one is
listening to Inspirations. If one lives in the number seven one can understand Inspirations in
many different ways. I will give you an example. Let's suppose someone feels that there are
important spiritual backgrounds behind his own age. Of course most people around the world
feel the spiritual backgrounds in their own time; this is only natural from a human point of
view, but it is rather arbitrary nevertheless. For if I am an observer in 1924, the observation
year is 1924, whereas if someone else is an observer in the year 1905, that is the observation
year, and so on. However, if I am the observer at any time and I know what I'm observing,
and I'm able to go 7 impressions back from any given impression, then according to the laws
of the spiritual world whatever makes the seventh impression explains the first one, and the
fourteenth one explains both of these. So this is really a methodic principle to find one's way
into what something can tell one. Just as one has to know the language which someone is
speaking in order to understand him, so the main thing is to be able to live in this number
seven.
This is the way one has to look at these things. For this revelation of the number seven is
very complicated. All kinds of things in the universe are arranged in accordance with the
number seven, and to a lesser extent according to twelve and other numbers. One can follow
up the events which explain things from every point through multiples of 7.
We can do this precisely in connection with the fact that we indicate such an important point
yesterday, which really seems to be extremely important in our age where Michael is
regulating things in the world. We pointed out that John's significant vision of the woman
clothed with the sun, the dragon under her feet, giving birth to a little boy will appear to men
in a particular form in the near future. Therewith we have gained an extremely important
point of departure; and from this point of view an apocalypse, every apocalypse and
especially John's Apocalypse is the most impressive if one grasps what one is standing in in
this way.
When I tried to interpret the Apocalypse in Nuremberg in 1908 it was an entirely different
time in the entire Anthroposophical movement. The main thing then was to interpret
Anthroposophy by means of the Apocalypse, as it were. One can interpret a great deal
through the Apocalypse, and the events in the world which it was important to mention at
that time could already be seen in the Apocalypse. However, as I already mentioned a
number of times, you should identify yourselves with the Apocalypse and realize that the
Apocalypse describes a large number of events which proceed in accordance with multiples
of seven. Since I pointed to the events which are connected with the woman clothed with the
sun and the dragon under her feet, you will be able to tell in which Apocalyptic point of time
we're living from the point of view of the experiences of the consciousness soul.
My lectures in 1908 dealt more with the evolution of mankind in general, and with the
evolution of the astral body, but with respect to the consciousness soul which doesn't rim
parallel with the other evolutionary processes, but pushes into them we're really living in the
age of the trumpet sounds today.
We're standing at the beginning of the development of the consciousness soul, and we only
hear the trumpet sounds if this consciousness soul elevates itself to the point where it can
have supersensible visions, because people do not interpret what goes on down below in a
supersensible way to day. The significant thing today is that people accept things
indifferently and that they do not interpret them in a supersensible way. In Anthroposophical
lectures I have often referred to a particular point in the 19th century in this connection,
namely to the beginning of the 1840s. I said that the beginning of the forties is a significant
incision into the development of the civilized world, from a spiritual viewpoint. It is the
culmination of materialism, as it were. Everything that is connected with materialism was
already decided in 1843/44. What happened after this until now is basically only an after
effect of this, and everything that happens in the future will also be an after effect. This point
in time at the beginning of the forties is really extremely important for what has happened to
the civilized population of Europe and its American appendage, for the breaking in of
Ahrimanic powers into human affairs was a tremendously intensive one. You can say: yes,
but there were even worse events after the years 1843/44. However, this only seems to be the
case. You have to remember that Ahriman is smarter than human beings. Ahriman did his
most important work in 1843/44, and he arranged things in the way that he does this in
accordance with his intelligence. This is the low point in the materialistic path, or the
summit, if you prefer. Then men continued to go about their business, and the things they did
later on are sometimes seemingly nastier, but they are not as terrible for the totality of human
evolution. If one looks at them from a spiritual viewpoint, they are the after effects of what
was projected at the beginning of the forties. The sixth angel began to blow his trumpet at the
beginning of the forties and he will continue to sound until the events of which I spoke
yesterday will begin at the end of the 20th century, when the seventh trumpet will begin to
sound.
We are definitely in the midst pf the three woes. This is the second woe that civilized
humanity is going through in the age of the consciousness soul, which was precede by the
fifth trumpet back to 150 years earlier. And if we follow the trumpets back with respect to
the seven-foldness of the consciousness soul, we arrive at a somewhat earlier point in time.
The consciousness age begins in 1413 down below here on earth; but things have shifted,
and earlier times work into them. The trumpet sounds go back to about the age of the
Crusades. In real occult centers one always looked upon this time of the Crusades up to our
time as the age of the trumpet sounds, in ä certain sense. You will be able to connect the
stages which are described in the Apocalypse' with outer events. For instance, when
Copernicanism takes hold and when materialism sets in one third of the human beings are
killed, that is, they stop developing their full spirituality. And the plague of locusts which is
described in the Apocalypse is really very shocking.
Here one comes to something which one doesn't like to talk about, although of course it
belongs to the things that priests must deal with. This plague of locusts is with us in a very
prominent way from a purely consciousness standpoint. Of course such things should not be
discussed when we speak in a theoretical way or when we speak to humanity in general,
where cures for sick conditions can always occur. But if it's a question of priestly activities,
then of course one must know with whom one is dealing, just as one has to know this for
normal humanity.
As a rule, the people who call themselves liberals or democrats are very glad if they can
point to evidence that the number of people in a particular region on earth is increasing
tremendously. An increase in the population is something which is very much desired,
especially by politically minded democratic and liberal people, and also by people who think
that they are free thinkers and intellectuals.
Now first of all this is not quite correct, because the statistics are based on errors; people
usually look at one part of the earth and they don't realize that the other parts of the earth
were more densely populated in previous times than they are today. It is not quite correct;
however, on the whole it is correct in the sense that there is a kind of a surplus of human
beings who are already appearing in our time who have no egos, who are not really human.
This is a terrible truth. They walk around and are not incarnations of an ego; they enter into
the physical line of heredity and receive an etheric body and an astral body. In a certain way
they are equipped with an Ahrimanic consciousness, and they look human if one doesn't look
too closely, but they are not human beings in the full sense of the word.
This is a terrible truth, which is present, it's a truth, and when the Apocalypticer speaks about
the plague of locusts during the trumpets epoch he is referring directly to human beings.
Here again one can see how good the Apocalypticer's vision is, for such men in their astral
body look exactly the way the Apocalypticer describes them — like etheric locusts with
human faces. One definitely has to think about such supersensible things in this way, and
priests must know about such things. For a priest is a minister. Hence he must also be able to
find words for everything that happens in such a soul. They're not always bad souls; they can
just be souls who get to the soul stage but are lacking an ego.
One will certainly realize this when one runs into these human beings. A priest has to know
this, for after all there is fellowship among men with regard to such matters. People with
normal souls suffer through their association with such persons who really go through the
world like human locusts. The question can and must arise: How should one behave towards
such human beings? It is often very difficult to relate to such people because they feel things
deeply, they can feel things very deeply, but one notices that there is no real individuality in
them. However, one must of course take care to keep the fact that they have no
individualities from them, otherwise insanity will necessarily result. But even though one has
to conceal this from them, it's a question of arranging things for such souls — after all they
are souls, even though they're not spirits — in such a way that these people can develop in
the company of others, that they can make connections with others and go along with them,
as it were. These human beings display the nature and essence of human beings fairly closely
until their 20th year. The intellectual or mind soul only emerges around age 20, and this
makes it possible for the ego to live out its life on earth.
Anyone who says that one shouldn't act in a sympathetic way to such ego-less, individuality-
less people, since they won't incarnate again and because they have no individuality — is
very much mistaken. He would also have to say that one shouldn't behave in a sympathetic
way towards children. One must decide what is really inside such men in each individual
case. Sometimes such men contain posthumous souls, that is, posthumous with respect to the
actual or normal human souls that arose at a particular time in evolution and which incarnate
repeatedly as men. These are souls which remained behind, or they are souls which returned
belatedly from other planets, to which almost all human beings went during a certain age.
Such souls may be present in such human bodies. Thus we must consciously educate such
men like permanent children.
All of this is really secreted in the Apocalypse. And if one takes these ideas in the
Apocalypse that are given as Imaginations, they sometimes cut into one's heart in a terrible
way. It's really horrible the way he talks about all kinds of suffering that will befall mankind
on earth with regard to our age we can only say that a great deal of this is already here as far
as the spiritual aspects go.
Then of course there are mildly grand ideas like the angels who come down with incense and
a censer. There's a reference to the smoke of incense. Then our gaze immediately falls upon a
great deal which happened at the time of the Crusades. The trumpets go back to the
Crusades. What we see in the sphere of the consciousness soul enters the consciousness soul
of humanity during the Crusades epoch.
Here one finds that consciousnesses of individual personalities arise during the time of the
Crusades and what is connected with this, who really had tremendously strong impressions
from their experiences of the spiritual world. Here we really meet what I would like to call
geniuses of piety. It's very important for us to realize that we meet geniuses of, religiousness
there.
If we go further back, we find that for the consciousness sphere the period between the
Mystery of Golgotha and the time of the Crusades and everything that is connected with this
is a smaller epoch that corresponds to the opening of the seven seals. One can only
understand this completely if one realizes the following. Just think of how many
personalities arise during the time of the Crusades who direct almost all of their religiousness
into their depths, into their intensity of feeling, into an inner mystical experience. This begins
at that time, whereas previously one looked up into the whole universe when one wanted to
perceive the divine world; the previous state of affairs also existed in tone-setting places,
although there was a continual battle with the stream that proceeded from Rome. They had
an understanding for the God who lives, weaves and works in the sensory phenomena to
which they looked up. However, at some point everything was more or less directed within.
The great geniuses of mysticism appear. Previously one received divine revelations through
the perception of the universe; afterwards we have a feeling of the, inner kindling of light
which the human heart can feel, so that divine things can be illuminated from within men.
The stages which the Apocalypse describes are also present here. We have the first, quiet,
victorious advance, where the spreading out of Christianity depends on the victorious spirit
and word, where Christianity spreads out in the sub-depths of the social life at that time.
Then we have a second epoch, where the spread of, Christianity takes away a lot of what one
could call peace from the world. Christianity participates quite a bit in the wars which take
place in a second epoch. Then we see an epoch where a gradual dying out of the inner
impulse of Christianity occurs, where Christianity becomes the state religion, which of
course is a dying of the real Christian impulse. Then we have the period which corresponds
to the fourth seal, when Islam breaks in in the way I described. And so it goes; seal after seal
is opened, and then what occurs under the influence of significant religious geniuses and
under the influence of the Crusades is something that one can observe if one follows up what
really happened more exactly. In this respect all the history books are really a falsification of
history.
Up till the Crusades the spread of Christianity in a good sense through the repeated efforts of
countless members of monastic orders and also in a more external and bad sense, occurred
through the direct inspiration of the Palestinian stories. Of course, the gospels were only
referred to by priests and not by laymen, but the things that happened were definitely
influenced by what the priests learned from the gospels. The priests had the gospels and the
cultic rites; the cult gradually became something that reflected the supersensible world in a
sensory way. The priests looked upon the sacrifice in the mass as a direct portal to the
supersensible world, and therefore they looked up to the starry heavens less and less for their
divine, spiritual inspiration. All of the wonderful prophecies and wisdom which I mentioned
this morning in connection with ancient astrology and astrosophy disappeared almost entirely
by the time of the Crusades.
During the time of the Crusades we suddenly see people appearing who travelled from east
to west. Some of them are coming back from the Crusades, and others who came a little later
had taken a deep interest in the secrets of the Orient. A large number of writings were
brought from the east that were later lost or destroyed. They were definitely brought, but not
many of them survived because people didn't watch their literary possessions as vigilantly
then as one does today. However, the cosmic Christianity which they contained was handed
down by word of mouth from about the time of the Crusades. People began to develop a
deep interest in this at the time of the Crusades.
A kind of 7th seal is opened here. And one could say that things have really changed with
regard to people's respect for written things. For instance, it's still uncertain at the moment,
but if this Italian professor really did find handwritten things by Livius, you can imagine
what a storm the Italian state will kick up in order to acquire them. And yet you wouldn't
have to go back too far to get to a time when the state would have been quite indifferent to
whether or not this or that had been found. This is something which has only developed
rather recently.
I once witnessed a find like this. When I was at the Goethe and Schiller archives we received
a letter by Goethe which looked rather odd; it was dirty and terribly torn. To us this was a
real crime; that was no way to treat Goethe's letters. We tried to find out what was behind
this. And we discovered that the letter had once been in the possession of Kuno Fischer, and
he had simply sent Goethe's original letters to the printers with his notes and comments in the
margins, without bothering to copy them. It was a bit miraculous that this letter had survived,
since one generally doesn't keep manuscripts.
Thus it's not too surprising that the Christianity that was still alive in the Orient, or the
orientalism that helped to explain Christianity were spread by the Crusades. What we would
call cabalistic truths spread and a few people who might have known much more than Jakob
Boehme lived at a time when no one thought that this was strange, whereas during Jakob
Boehme's time the fact that someone like him existed created a sensation.
It is the time of the Crusades, where we want to point to what was going on in men's
consciousnesses, and not so much to the outer events that are described in history books, —
it's the time when the seal age gave way to the trumpet age. People with a little depth to them
have always had a feeling about the time of the Crusades which made them say: Ah yes, the
trumpet sounds; if I look at the thing from supersensible viewpoints it's really terrible what is
going on there with respect to human souls. However, men on earth don't hear the trumpets,
even though they're there.
A great many people should be aware of this trumpet period, since we're living at the time of
the 6th trumpet, and you know what the most important effects and characteristics of this
trumpet are. We're told that a third part of the men are killed, as I mentioned. Of course this
doesn't happen all at once. But this killing refers to the absence of an ego in those men who
had already been prepared previously through their locust forms.
These are things which force priests to look more deeply into the structure of what actually
occurs. After all, priests are supposed to be dealing with supersensible things. We are
surrounded by supersensible things in all directions, and what one can observe in human
beings through the fact that they have a physical body is only one segment of human life. As
soon as we press into the supersensible world we see that people do things of which they are
often not aware. It could be that it's in someone's karma to behave in a particular way
towards another human being in this earth life; and one can sometimes not know what it does
to the other person's life if he goes by him without paying any attention to him. Of course
later on karma will exert much more force and the thing will be adjusted; but maybe it could
have been adjusted in this lifetime already. Someone who should have had something to do
with another human being in this life cannot be moved to do it and he passes him by. One
doesn't necessarily have to notice this in outer life on the physical plane. No real objections
to this can be made, since the person concerned has done all of his duties, from a
conventional outer viewpoint, but perhaps he did something that can strike terribly deep
wounds into something which is connected with world evolution. Then one cannot say that
one is dealing with super-terrestrial things, but with supersensible things, for supersensible
things are constantly happening on earth.
It will be necessary to understand the Apocalypse in a serious way, to the extent that the one
whom I called the etheric Christ will make himself visible within humanity. Therefore, it was
due to a very healthy feeling which came up out of your deepest sub-consciousness that you
wanted to make the Apocalypse into the object of these studies. Perhaps you initially had a
different idea about what I can give about the Apocalypse at this time, but that you wanted to
hear something about the Apocalypse from me was definitely the voice of the times in your
hearts. And one can say that the fact that the need arose in you to understand the Apocalypse
shows that you have a certain relationship with John the Apocalypticer, since you priests
belong together and have become united in such tendencies. Since this permeation with the
spirit of the Apocalypse is very necessary for you, you will not find any contradiction in the
fact that one can find various sevenfold epochs, that one can really begin them anywhere and
that one then discovers how things proceed; but if one cannot look upon the number principle
as the methodic thing one won't find any connections in world evolution at all. Therewith we
have really touched upon the productive side of the Apocalypse for our time.
Now we usually find other events sprinkled into the Apocalypse at the places where one set
of seven goes over into the next one. that we run into here is very much in need of an
explanation. If one only reads the Apocalypse in an external way one might think that there
are so and so many numbers of human beings who have the seal of God on their foreheads in
a particular epoch, so that they are among the fortunate ones who are rescued, or saved, or,
however one wants to put it, whereas the others cannot be saved. This, is something which
can be depressing if one reads the Apocalypse in a thoughtful way.
However, one should realize that there is always a difference between racial development
and individual development in ancient writings. One should realize that no one felt at all
depressed in earlier times when one said that so and so many will be saved in a particular
race, whereas the others will be destroyed. No one included himself among these because
one thought in a realistic way. It's just like today, where everyone is anxious to have his life
insured.
Here one calculates how long one will probably live. Insurance companies don't accept
people who will probably die soon because if they insured a lot of people who will soon die,
their cash boxes would soon be empty. They want to have people who live a long time and
make a lot of payments. Hence one must calculate the insured's probable life expectancy on
the basis of past experience through probability calculus, which is a very interesting method
of calculation. I have never found that anyone felt that he had to die at the moment he was
supposed to according to the no doubt correct methods of the insurance companies. There's
no such thing. One doesn't feel obliged to die. And this is based on a reality. As soon as one
gets into numbers one is not grasping the stage of spiritüality at which a particular human
individuality is.
When one says such things, one is touching upon a certain mystery and an occult secret. This
is based on the fact that one thinks that if one has 1,2,3,4,5 individualities and one counts
them and then uses the number — already in counting them — that this must also be of
importance for the spiritual world. But it is not important in the same way. Numbers enter in
at the moment when the spiritual world breaks through and becomes manifest. As for
instance when it becomes manifest in the world year or in breathing, or wherever the
spiritual world breaks through. So that if one ascends to a spiritual consciousness, one needs
the number at the boundary or threshold into the spiritual world. One doesn't get further there
if one doesn't have a number or something similar to a number. But once on has crossed the
threshold and one wants to do something with numbers, nothing fits. Therefore, when an
occult writer like the Apocalypticer speaks of racial development which takes place on earth,
he can very well say that there are so and so many people in this category — and we v/ill see
next time what these numbers mean — but a single human individuality cannot feel that he is
affected by this, because these numbers refer to the development of races and not to human
individualities. We will go into how all of this is possible the next time.

LECTURES TO PRIESTS: THE APOCALYPSE

GA 346
Lecture XIV
Dornach, 18 September 1924
I will try to answer your prepared questions during the course of this lecture. Except that I
would like to answer some of them in a special session with the arch-rulers even if they were
asked by others. This could be done in the next few days, and the answers could then be
passed on.
I would especially like to draw your attention to a seal in the Apocalypse which is an
Imagination of the Apocalypticer and which has often been depicted by artists in connection
with the Apocalypse. One cannot always say that these pictorial renderings of what is in the
Apocalypse are very felicitous. However, one can hardly fail to recognize the individual
parts of the seal that is involved here and which will be realized in our time, as we saw
yesterday, for they come to meet one in the Apocalypse in a quite characteristic way.
However, in order to understand this seal, we will have to discuss something which goes
parallel with it, which is very important for our time, and has already been touched upon in
an Anthroposophical connection and which we find illuminated in a particular way at this
point in the Apocalyptic discussion.
If one looks at the development of man and notices how he becomes a being who is split into
three parts, as his consciousness makes the transition from the physical, sensory world to a
perception of the spiritual world, as I described in my book How Does One Attain
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?, — if one looks at this one will say to oneself, a triad and
a monad are united in men through the integration of these into the form of a physical being.
This union is really quite obvious. One can see it if one studies the opinion about the division
of the human being that is expressed in Anthroposophy.
Let's look at man and his spirit, soul and body. The way this division is related to the others
that are given in Anthroposophy should be clear without further ado. Now, thoughts live in
the spirit which man has today. These thoughts are like I the ones which I refer to in
my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, for instance, where one has pure thoughts that are freely
created in man's consciousness, and not the kind that are permeated by sense perceptions.
Here, thoughts are almost completely illusory from a qualitative viewpoint; they are a full
reality to such a small extent that we don't have quite enough inner force because we don't
have a mirror image, and so we can't quite, compare them with mirror images, and yet in a
certain sense we can. The image that appears in a mirror doesn't unfold any forces along the
directions of its lines, it is completely passive. Human thoughts have some force when they
are developed, so that we can catch this force and we can permeate it with will — as I said
yesterday in the esoteric class. But the ordinary thoughts that man has during his lifetime are
really like mirror images in comparison with the universe's existence and its full content. So
that although we hear spirit in our human being, it's a mirror image of the spirit.
What we bear within us there comes from a world which I called spiritland in my Theosophy.
So when we think on earth we're really bringing the ingredients of the spiritland down to the
earth as an illusory reflection. When we think we carry what Theosophy calls devachan down
into the earth sphere, even though this is only a faint reflection of it. We bear these contents
in us on earth; we bear a faint reflection of heavenly splendors in us.
If we pass on to the soul element we mainly find feeling there. It exists as feeling during the
waking state, and as pictorial dreams while we're asleep. The only difference between
dreams and feelings is that one is the content of the soul during the waking state and the
other is its content during sleep. What we experience in our feelings as men on earth between
birth and death comes from another world that I described from a certain viewpoint in
my Theosophy. It comes from the soul world which we experience in its real form after
death. Cur feeling life is not a mirror image of this real form but an image of it which is
maintained in our soul by creative elemental powers. We only dream of this soul world in
our feelings and there is no reality in our image of it.
What constitutes men's bodies on earth today does not develop any consciousness of
archetypes, but it contains the strongest realities of existence. We are real in our body, but we
are only active in the physical, terrestrial world in it. Thus the three members of man's being
belong to different worlds.
You must develop a correct view about these things, since you want to work upon the being
of man, and therefore you must have something in your feelings that points to what exists in
man's being. Quite good philosophers have failed to understand my division of man's being
altogether. They have expressed one misunderstanding after another about it, which shows
how difficult it is even for good thinkers of the present time to really get into
Anthroposophy.
One philosopher spoke about this division of man as if it were an arbitrary one that had been
made with the intellect and which amounted to a formal schematism. Of course one can also
divide a table into legs, top, etc., even though the whole thing is made of wood. One could
also divide it from left to right, but the division of the human being has nothing to do with
such an arbitrary classification. One could put it like this: if one has real hydrogen and real
oxygen and one combines them one gets water. They are realities and not just artificial
schemata. Likewise, man's members are not separated in an arbitrary way; they are integrated
into the reality of human nature, so that one can say that the spirit comes from spirit land, the
soul from the soul world and the physical body from the physical world. These members of
the human being come from three different worlds and they are integrated in man. And when
man leaves the physical world with his consciousness, his inner elements split up, and the
one becomes three. However, what happens in individual men in this way takes place in the
whole of humanity throughout its various racial and national evolutions, although not
everyone has to participate in it. One can say that the evolving humanity which is present in
the sub-consciousness of every single human being and which doesn't become noticeable to
ordinary consciousness, goes through stages of development that are similar to the ones
individual men go through.
Something like a splitting into three and a crossing of the threshold by mankind is taking
place in our time. In our consciousness age individual men have to acquire something which
constitutes a going past' the Guardian of the Threshold, if they want to do it. However,
mankind is going past the Guardian of the Threshold in our time, although, individual men
are unaware of this. The whole of humanity is crossing the threshold. Whereas the physical
body still gave something to men on earth up to the end of the 18th century because of the
elemental beings which are living in it, men must now get their virtues and everything
productive that they will find inwardly from the spiritual world; this is mankind as a whole,
not individual human beings. So that a crossing of the threshold is occurring in the evolution
of mankind as a whole, which appears to the Apocalypticer before he has his vision of the
sun-illuminated woman with the dragon under her feet, because it actually precedes it in
time. Here the Apocalypticer has another vision that clearly reflects what he wants to say:
The time is coming when the whole of humanity, or at least its civilized parts will have to
cross the threshold. And a triad appears which is the cosmic Imagination of what mankind is
going through. There will be ever more men who will have the feeling: My thoughts want to
run away from me, and my feet are being pulled down by the earth's gravity; this is in
addition to other feelings that men can develop when these things become more pathological.
Many people today have the strong feeling that their thoughts are running away from them
and that their feet are being pulled down to the earth too much. Except that our present-day
civilization talks people out of something like this, just as children are talked out of visions
they have which are nevertheless based on a real foundation.
However, what lives strongly in our time appears before the clairvoyant eye of the
Apocalypticer as a figure that forms out of the clouds, has a face like a sun, goes over into a
rainbow, and has fiery feet, of which one is planted on the ocean and the other on the earth.
One could say that this is really the most significant vision that the present-day human soul
should look at. For the thoughts that belong to spirit land are in the face which is born out of
the clouds above. The rainbow is the feeling world in man's soul which belongs to the soul
world. What is contained in the bodies of men who belong to the physical world is in the
fiery feet that get their strength from the power of the earth Which is covered by the ocean.
One could say that this points to a real cultural secret of the present, which is that there are
three kinds of men, and not that each man is split into three parts. One can see this very
clearly today. We have cloud men who can only think, whereas the two other parts —
rainbow and fiery feet — remain stunted. We have rainbow men where the main
development is in the feelings. They can only grasp Anthroposophy with their feelings and
not with their minds. However, this type is also present in the outside world and not just in
the Anthroposophical Society. They can only grasp the world with their feelings. These
people's feelings are well developed but their thinking and will are stunted. Then there are
people today who act as if they only had a hypertrophically developed will; their thinking
and feeling are stunted; they charge like bulls and act in accordance with direct, outer
impulses, — they're the fiery footed men.
The vision of John the Apocalypticer depicts these three kinds of men which we meet in life.
We should become aware of this secret of our present-day civilization so that we can look at
human beings in the right way. One can also discover them if one looks at larger world
events.
Just look at what is, happening in Russia. We have the influence of the cloud man, of the
man who mainly thinks, in whom feeling and will are neglected. They would like to
surrender their will to a social mechanism, and their feelings are used by Ahrimanic powers
because they don't have any control over them. They are thinkers, but since man on earth is
organized in an Ahrimanic and Luciferic way, their thinking is like - - I will use an analogy
that will seem like a perfectly natural one to anyone who knows spiritual science; it will only
scare such people away who haven't worked their way into this kind of thing yet. If one takes
the thoughts of Lenin and the others and one looks at these thoughts, that is, if one tries to
imagine what the combined thoughts of Lenin, Trotsky, Lunacharski, etc., looks like, if one
imagines what is growling and raging in the heads of leading Russians today, one gets what
one calls a system of forces in physics. If one was a gigantic elemental spirit one could form
clouds and arouse thunder and lightning up in the sky over a large territory with these forces.
But they don't belong on earth. This image might surprise you, but anyone who can look into
the occult depths of existence must say that the same forces that weave and live in the heads
of leading Russians are also in the lightning that is formed in the clouds over our heads and
that they flash the lightning down to the earth and roll the thunders. This is where these
forces belong. Their action in leading Bolsheviks is out of place.
So you see that the Apocalypticer clearly foresaw many things that are present in our time.
And he knew that such an epochal period of time can be indicated with a number. I myself
have indicated the approximate number of years which the development of the consciousness
soul, intellectual or mind soul, etc., covers. I said that such a period lasts one twelfth of
25.920 years.
Now the place in the Apocalypse to which I'm referring gave me quite a bit of trouble for a
while. For the Apocalypticer supposedly prophesies about things that will take one thousand
two hundred and threescore days. They used to speak of days when they meant years.
Anyway, the Apocalypticer mentions the number 1260. It took a lot of intensive research to
discover that the 1260 days is really a printing error, as it were, in the Apocalypse that was
handed down. It should say 2160 days. Then it agrees with what one can see today. It's quite
possible that an un-clarity arose in some school where the things were handed down, because
many numbers look like their mirror images to seers. However, this is something that is not
too important when one feels one's way into the Apocalypse.
Now the people who stand within their race in such a way that they're really cloud men are
confronted by others who are rainbow men. Their thinking is relatively inactive, they mainly
like to use traditional thoughts and they are rather timid about approaching the spiritual
world with their thoughts. One meets a large number of such rainbow men in central
European regions.
Thinking and feeling get increasingly stunted the further we go west, where we find a
pathological development of fiery footed men. One finds large numbers of such fiery footed
human beings in the western part of Europe and presumably in America. So that we can
divide the earth along these lines: In the east there are many cloud men, in the center many
rainbow men, and in the west many fiery footed men.
If we take racial developments into account, one could say that something like a picture of
the figure which we encounter here in the Apocalypticer is spread out over the earth, if one
looks at it, spiritually from outside. One can't do this in a balloon or airplane, but if one
would raise oneself up spiritually into the heights from a point in Westphalen and would look
down at the earth, Asia would have a kind of a cloud form face with solar shapes, and one
would see rainbow colors spread out over Europe, and further over would be the fiery feet,
with one planted on the Andes in South America and the other in the Pacific Ocean. And
then one has the earth underneath this image.
This is one of the most incisive prophecies that the Apocalypticer has for our time. This is
something that is very important for priestly activities, for the great riddle of our time that
developed with Napoleon consists of this. This striving of men into races and nations that has
come to expression so incomprehensibly throúgh Wilsonianism today really only arose in a
distinct way under the influence of Napoleonism, of the first Napoleon. The way that men
are striving towards races and nations and the way that they basically want to bury all
cosmopolitanism today is really quite terrible. But the reason for this is that this passage
through the threshold, place is occurring.
Just as a human being splits up in the spiritual world when he develops further, so men on
earth split up into regions that individual human beings remain unaware of, namely, into
cloud men, rainbow men and fiery footed men. This splitting of men into three parts —
which I described for individuals in How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher
Worlds?, has occurred for humanity on earth; it's here. The powerful sign which the
Apocalypticer sketches is there in Asia, Europe, and the Americas. People cannot find the
harmony between the three parts at first, and so they look for things in the split rather than in
the union; which sometimes leads to rather strange results.
For instance, through this whole external way of thinking that takes hold of people, one can
see that people don't find their way together with inner understanding, that is, they often
unite for superficial reasons. For instance, we can see that the Czechs whose land is between
the Krusnehory and Fichtel mountains, the Bohemian Forest and down to the Morave River
and over to Bratislava (formerly Pressburg), and up to the Ceskyles and Sumava Mountains
as the southern boundary, — that these Czechs are cloud people in the most eminent sense of
the word, who have only developed their thinking. They were welded together with the
Slovaks in a way that shows a lack of inner understanding, for the Slovaks are definitely a
rainbow people who are not the thinking type at all. On the other hand, we see that another
quite external relationship which had been formed shortly before is dissolved. All of these
human, earthly activities are not very sensible, because they want to exclude the spirit.
We see that the whole of Slovakia was recently separated from Bohemia, Moravia and
Silesia, which is the territory which I just indicated. We see that all of this Slovakia was
previously united with Magyar country and with real Magyars. You must distinguish the real
Magyars from the immigrated ones, and you can do this just by looking at their names. A
real Magyar has a name one can't even pronounce in the west, especially if he's an older type.
But he's called Hirschfeld, if he's one of those agitative and screaming Magyars of today.
One has to go back to the genuine Magyars who are all fiery-footed men, and they were
briefly welded together with the rainbow Slovaks. The non-spirit in the world today throws
the dice in such a way that the Slovaks are first thrown together with the Magyars and then
with the Czechs.
That is the way the dice are being thrown in general today. This comes to expression in
deeper symptoms, such as the fact that a really significant person like Masaryk who is
standing at the helm in the Czechoslovakian Republic, is a Slovak, and not a Czech. Anyone
who knows Masaryk knows that he is a rainbow man who can't think at all. If you read his
books you will see that our age is speaking in them. He is a rainbow man, a real Slovak.
One has to be able to look at contemporary human beings in accordance with these
categories in order to see the kind of crap game that is being played, although of course this
is based on world karma. Here we must look at the age — which is really ours — which can
say of itself that it is entering ever more into men's consciousness and into the consciousness
soul. People previously saw the starry script written outside; they saw the contents of old
traditions and old wisdom written outside. There is a kind of a memory of this man who is
split into three in ancient books. Everything which the wise men proclaimed about the world
in the mystery centers in Macedonia, Greece, Ephesus, Samothrace, Delphi and in other
places in Asia Minor and elsewhere is the book which is preserved from ancient times, which
is in the hand of the angel whose face is fashioned out of clouds, his chest out of a rainbow,
and his feet out of fire, and he stands firmly in America with the rest of his body spread out
over Europe and Asia. However, as consciousness men we can only keep this active and
alive for ourselves if we have to look within ourselves for the source which enables us to
learn how to see spiritual things. We must devour the book, which could previously only be
brought from outside, and bring it into ourselves. This book which contains the world's
secrets is sweet in the mouths of some people at first. People like to come to things which
can give them spiritual views; so that they taste like honey to them. But as soon as one has to
fulfill the exacting conditions in life which are connected with a spiritual comprehension of
the world then what the Apocalypticer says is sweet as honey becomes a stomach ache,
especially to the people who have become so materialistic today. These people find that the
digestion of the spiritual nourishment that is so necessary for them is painful.
If we look at this, we have to admit that all of this dice throwing and confusion indicates that
a force which can measure everything in a new way must come from the spiritual power that
can be seen in threefold man. A reed, or really a measuring rod, is sent down from heaven,
with which everything is to be measured in a new way. Just look at our time. Doesn't
everything have to be measured anew? Shouldn't we add something like a cloud shape to that
abstract Asian shape that we find on our maps, rainbow colors to Europe and fiery feet to the
Americas? Don't we have to measure everything anew from the viewpoint of the spiritual
life? After all, we're right m the midst of what the Apocalypse is showing us here.
If we grasp what we must stand in in a fully conscious way, we will get away from the
layman's attitude that is often present in the depths of our sub-consciousness today and we
will acquire a non-rationalistic grasp of the tasks of our time through what is to be a new
priesthood. This is something that should be said in connection with this particular chapter of
the Apocalypse. The things agree in every detail. Vie will have more to say about racial and
individual evolution tomorrow.
 LECTURES TO PRIESTS: THE APOCALYPSE
GA 346
Lecture XV
Dornach, 19 September 1924
We will now try to imagine how what is said about the woes, etc., in the Apocalypse often
plays into our time, and how the consciousness soul can be taken hold of by this and how it
of course points back to previous experiences on earth at a certain level, — germinally
indicating tremendous upheavals in advance. We should realize that what I interpreted for
you yesterday has an important influence on the overall shaping of human evolution.
We should consider that although the things that take place in the spiritual sphere are not
taken into account very much by our contemporaries and by our age in general, they
nevertheless have a very strong and much more extensive effect upon things than people
think; people generally think that the effects of spiritual events are restricted to the spiritual
sphere. For instance, when I said yesterday that certain leading personalities in eastern
Europe are developing thoughts which really represent a force that should only be active in
cloud formations, it indicates that what is going on in the heads of Russian leaders will
someday be something that will appear as events in the clouds after it develops out of its
present germinal condition. So that one can say that the current upheavals in Russia will later
be tremendous stormy revolutions that will occur above the heads of men.
We're now coming to another secret of Apocalyptic vision that should explain a certain
passage. Thereby we're getting ever closer to a real interpretation of the mighty visions in the
Apocalypse. We're coming to what we with our present way of experiencing things should
make clear to ourselves. If we look at life over the short span of time that people usually
consider today without going back to the starting condition of the earth or to its final one
through daring and usually foolish hypotheses, — if one surveys this without the aid of
spiritual observations, one can say: Nature's processes take their course in the outer world;
we see lesser natural events that occur over the years and we see greater events in nature
such as earthquakes, floods and volcanic eruptions.
However, what we call historical events such as the 30 years' war, Louis XIV, etc., run
alongside these, although we don't feel the need to connect the two series because we only
have a limited overview of these events. They follow each other, and they occur
simultaneously, and no one feels an urge to make a connection between the two series,
because one thinks that they run parallel. However, one only has to look at a longer span of
time and one will see that this parallel idea leads one astray. For if one looks back from the
present life on earth to a previous one — which must of course be understood in a theoretical
way as long as it is not grasped by the Imaginations which the spiritual investigator gives —
if one brings repeated earth lives into one's real experience one gets the impression. One
looks over a meadow and into the woods and one notices how different these things are from
what they were during one's past incarnation on earth. One notices this even if one is far
away from the place where one was last time. For everything on earth is changing
continuously, and no matter where one was before, the plants and animals have taken on a
very different character.
One feels this as soon as one becomes aware of, something from the previous incarnation
and one then looks out into nature again in a free way. One feels that this is very astonishing
and bewildering. One gets the inner feeling that what one sees in one's environment didn't
come from what was there at the time of the previous incarnation, but that the main part of it
originated elsewhere. It's like this: someone, with the customary scientific world view looks
upon what happens in nature as a straight line. For instance, one has the years 343, 895,
1260, 1924. Then one thinks that what is growing on the meadow today came from the seeds
of what grew before and so on back to 1260, 895, etc. One follows the generations of seeds
from one to the next and one thinks of this as a straight line. But this is not so. At the
moment I mentioned one discovers that this is not so. I have often pointed out that the body
which one carries around today is not the same as the one, one had 7 to 8 years ago, with the
exception of a few inclusions. Some things harden during the course of one's life as I
mentioned in the other course but in any case none of the substances that are in your body
now were in it when you were a three-year-old child; all of the physical matter has been
exchanged.
Likewise, nothing of what was present in former ages is present, in the meadow with all its
flowers. Instead one gets the idea that the present meadow came down from spiritual worlds,
and that what was a meadow in previous times also came down from spiritual worlds, etc.,
and that what was a meadow centuries ago has perished completely. Spiritual seeds that
come down from the upper regions are continuously replacing what existed previously, and
it's not just a matter of physical seeds that are handed down by heredity.
Once one has grasped that what is a meadow today was not a meadow in, say, the 13th
century, but that there was another meadow there which has perished in the meantime, one
gets an idea of the mission of snow: It is I the bearer of a continual dying process. One gets
more snow every year, and ice is continually renewed from above, as nature dies into this
whole, elementary shaping process that is present in the dynamics of snow and ice formation.
This is the way things are in our time. However, this state of affairs will eventually change.
We will say more about this shortly. However, I would first like to mention the following.
As soon as one notices that the meadow out there came down from super-terrestrial spheres
via snow and ice — and it makes no difference which region one was previously incarnated
in — one knows: you helped to create this meadow in the time between your last incarnation
and now. You helped to build up everything in nature that is around you in your present
incarnation. That is something one notices. And then one also becomes aware that this is
only a temporary state of affairs.
Scientists are always saying that the processes you find out in nature are something
permanent. But this is really nonsense. In reality nothing out there remains. The fact is that
everything changes including the laws of nature. That is why today's scientists have gotten to
the point where they only look upon the most abstract laws of nature as permanent ones.
Generalities like: Every effect has a cause. Matter is constant — that really say nothing are
considered to be eternal laws of nature.
This alternation on earth between the greening summer which dissipates moisture into
warmth and the withering winter that solidifies moisture into ice and snow, did not always
exist, and a time is coming when it will no longer exist. Instead a condition will arise in
which there will be something that doesn't exist today.
You see, we have the alternating states today — I would like to emphasize this and I would
like it if you grasp this quite clearly — we have the present state of affairs: Firstly, summer,
which evaporates watery things through warmth, and secondly winter, which uses cold to
harden the same watery things into ice and snow. Fall and spring is a condition that oscillates
between these two. All of this will gradually become evened out. Summer will no longer
evaporate aqueous things as much, and winter won't harden them into ice and snow as much.
Instead there'll be an intermediate condition where watery things will have a different
consistency, namely a considerably thicker one than in the summer time, where it remains
and doesn't just pass over into another one. Snow and ice will not look like they do today;
they will look like a reflective, transparent mass that will remain in both summer and winter.
This is the emergence of the “glassy sea” which the Apocalypticer refers to.
We have pointed to a natural phenomenon which we grasped through an observation of
events in nature and we have placed it in time. Now since we know that everything that is
done around us really comes from us, and that we help to make the meadows on which our
karma places us when we incarnate, we should also be able to extend this to the great
transformation of the earth. And it is quite correct to say that men will contribute ever more
towards the creation of the glassy sea through their inner dynamic qualities and through the
intellectuality that they experience and develop in the consciousness soul age, so that men
will work together on the great events of the future. Here you have a unified working of what
occurs in men and of what takes place outside in nature and not just a parallelism.
Now you will also be able to understand something else, and that is the following. We should
realize that when we come into the divine element that is connected with human evolution
and into the state of equilibrium between the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces that is
continually being maintained, — if we grasp the real essence of this, then whenever we rim
into this, when we rightly perceive what is not an influence from Lucifer and what is not an
influence from Ahriman, that is, when we perceive what comes from this progressive, divine
spirituality that is really connected with human evolution, — if we approach the divine
element that keeps a balance between the realms where Luciferic elements are continuously
flowing in and Ahrimanic things are continuously flowing in, we find that the basic force in
everything that is streaming through here and which forms men outwardly, and which
inwardly ensouls them and permeates them with spirit — is pure love. This fundamental
force is pure love.
The universe consists of pure love, as far as its inner substance and being is concerned and in
so far as it relates to human beings. It is nothing else; we don't find anything besides pure
love in the divine things that are assigned to men. However, this love is an inner element and
it can be experienced by souls in an inner way. It would never become outwardly manifest if
it didn't create its body from the etheric elements that we know as light. If we really look at
the world in an occult way, we get to the point where we tell ourselves: the fundamental
essence of the world is inner love substantiality that becomes manifest outwardly as light.
That is not an opinion or a belief for someone who has an insight into these things; it is
knowledge that was gained in a quite objective way. To the extent that man Is rooted in the
universe, the latter is essentially love that becomes manifest outwardly as light. Essentially,
because we have to do with all the essences or beings of the higher hierarchies who are
carried by this love and who experience this love inwardly, which however becomes
manifest as love, if we want to use an abstract idea. The outer sheen of beings is love and the
outer sheen of love is light. That is something that one repeatedly emphasized in all the
mysteries, and which is real knowledge that has been acquired by every true occultist, and it
is not just an opinion or a belief.
Now the fact is that this is one stream in the universe, and it is important to us as human
beings, but it is only one stream. If we look at the age of materialism since the 15th, 16th,
17th centuries, at the climax of materialism during the 40's of the 19th century and at the
development of materialism afterwards with everything that people think and do and with all
the terribly destructive forces that have been raging in humanity since the middle of the 19th
century, although many people haven't even really noticed them yet, — we can well imagine
that divine love which unfolds in light weaves above all of this.
However, if you take some very clean water, some absolutely crystal clear water and dip a
dirty sponge in it and squeeze it, and let the water run out again, you will see that it is cloudy
and dirty. You have let the dirty sponge suck up the crystal clear water and you have
squeezed it out again and it has become dirty water. The crystal clear, pure water can't help it
that it flows out as dirty water when one squeezes the sponge. And the divine love that is
springing up in pure light can't help it that it is being absorbed by the age of materialism, by
a sponge that is permeated by impurities and that it thereby becomes something quite
different when it reemerges. So when crystal clear water is absorbed by a dirty sponge it
becomes cloudy, undrinkable water, and by analogy we can imagine that when divine love
that appears in light is sucked up by all the evil ingredients that are latently or openly raging
in humanity, it becomes divine wrath.
The secret of the next age is that divine love will appear in the form of divine wrath through
what happens in humanity. It will appear in the form of the divine wrath that will stop the
harmful effects of the materialistic arrangements that are arising in our materialistic,
consciousness age by destroying them. Proceeding from what appears to the Apocalypticer in
pictures, he speaks of the pouring out of the vials of wrath in the next age. That is something
that was expressed in the mysteries in a sentence that had a terribly shocking effect upon the
neophytes: Divine love appears in the form of divine wrath in the sphere of human illusions.
That is a statement that was handed down in the mysteries many millennia ago and it lives in
a prophetic way in John's visions in the Apocalypse. He describes how divine love becomes
sullied through the preceding events and what will have to happen as the necessary
fulfillment of the preceding, namely, the pouring out of divine wrath in an age when men's
actions will have a much greater effect upon events in nature than they do today. For the
parallelism that gives men the illusory idea that nature and man's soul and spirit run side by
side, only applies in the middle parts of evolutionary periods. Even in the smaller evolutions
such as the present period between the Atlantean catastrophe and the war of all against all,
men had a greater influence upon events in nature at the beginning and end of these periods
through what went on in them. Hence it is not just a fable that a large part of humanity was
using black magic on a large scale near the end of the Atlantean period of evolution. The
consequence of the crimes that men committed through their dealings with black magic was
the events in nature that brought about the Atlantean catastrophe.
Therefore, many things that are happening now will give rise to later events in nature. One of
these is the Russian revolution, which also had many occult causes; its storms of thunder and
lightning will pour out over the heads of men all summer long for years to come. Other
world elements that are gathering in our time are clouding the gods' love, and will appear as
events in nature that we can only look upon as a transformation of divine love into divine
wrath through the illusions of men.
Looked at from a real and true point of view, the divine wrath that is poured out over men is
still a manifestation of divine love, and that is why the sentence was formulated in the way
that I gave it. If divine love would become weak and if it would seemingly take pity on men
in this age, it would be no real compassion, for it would ignore the necessary consequences
of human thoughts and actions. That would be very loveless, for then humanity would
become corrupt. The deleterious things that men did and that would have an unspeakably
harmful effect on further human evolution can only be eliminated by the outpouring of
divine wrath, which is a metamorphosis of divine love. This sentence in the manuscripts is so
old that it is often stated in its oriental form in Europe, so that one says: In the region of
mayadivine love becomes manifest as divine wrath. Here again one can see how completely
the Apocalypse is taken from the really active ingredients in the world. The deeper one goes
into it the more one realizes that one can really rely on this Apocalypse; although that is a
rather trivial way of putting it. It is basically something that tells priests what is happening in
the course of human and world evolution. It was originally given to priests as the really
esoteric part of Christianity in addition to the other part that was exoteric.

LECTURES TO PRIESTS: THE APOCALYPSE

GA 346
Lecture XVI
Dornach, 20 September 1924
I would now like to go back to something so that we can proceed from there in our
deliberations. I pointed out that one sees something strange today, namely, there is a strong
longing for spirituality in the subconscious wishes of the human soul. What is experienced
on the physical plane today in a superficial and external way is basically quite different from
what is really present in the souls of present-day men.
Something rather surprising happened today that confirms this. A few days ago I told you
about the strange form my lectures to the workmen is taking in terms of their content due to
the questions that are being asked. As I mentioned, one can see from the desires which are
developing there that one can speak to people out of the spirit of the Apocalypse today if one
finds a suitable tone. Sven though one doesn't talk to them about the Apocalypse right away,
one can speak out of its spirit just as we're doing here.
Now the rather surprising thing that happened is that I arrived at something that I had to tell
you today, because it arises out of the whole context of our studies here. This morning when
I gave my lecture to the workmen, when everything which we will now have to discuss stood
before me quite clearly, a question was asked that made it necessary to present scientific
things that I had intended to present to you today. Here one can see the presence of
subterranean influences and one can see that what is happening here in a real, spiritual way
through the fact that these lectures are being given, arouses longings over there that would
otherwise not exist. That lecture over there would never have been given today if we had not
been talking about the Apocalypse here. And yet the lecture over there was given in response
to a question that I didn't know outwardly, but which was asked.
This shows that our time is being taken hold of by a spiritual life that is still present in most
people's sub-consciousness, and this especially concerns priests who must investigate the
extent to which an inclination to enter into spiritual things is emerging from souls. Now we
will have to contemplate our topics here in the spirit of the Apocalypse. That is what we
intended to do today, but I had to indicate a number of things this morning about the same
matter from quite different viewpoints in response to a question. One has to take such things
seriously, for they are important.
We should point out how much more intimate the terminology of the Apocalypticer is, for if
you take everything that has been said so far you will realize that when the Apocalypticer
how man stands in the whole world he basically looks upon the stars and the earth as a unity.
He connects man's real nature with both the stars and the earth. We will now have to point to
the real thing that the Apocalypticer is referring to when he speaks about the seven-headed
beast, the two-horned beast and about beasts in general. Up till now we have looked for these
real things by pointing to what man can experience inwardly. However, you will find that
whenever the Apocalypticer speaks about fixed stars he is talking about the divine spirit, as
people continued to do during the whole Middle Ages. Whenever he speaks about planets
he's speaking of angelic intelligences or intelligences which, have a hierarchical, angelic
character. But when he speaks about beasts he's also referring to something concrete like
this. He lets human beings participate in the crystal heavens, fixed stars and planets but also
in the whole development that underlies the beasts that are continuously being mentioned in
the Apocalypse. Now what outer physical reality do these beasts correspond to?
Whenever the Apocalypticer refers to beasts, he's really speaking about the forces and
activities of comets. Once you know about this terminology you will begin to understand a
number of things that the Apocalypticer knew about the nature of comets, although mankind
in general then forgot about these things. So let's take a look at the nature of comets in
connection with the Apocalypse. I would like to present this as follows.
If one takes the Copernican solar system that one learns in school with its sun, Mercury,
Venus, earth, Mars, asteroids, Jupiter, Saturn and also Uranus and Neptune, one finds that it
has a calculable regularity. If one doesn't make serious errors in one's calculations and if one
makes the appropriate corrections, one finds that all one has to do is to turn the telescope to
the calculated spot, and one will find the body in one's instrument. These are calculable
things. Then one also has the orbits of various comets in there. One can calculate the orbits
of many comets and the calculation gives rather strange results that can almost drive one
crazy if one simply takes them as they stand.
I will just give one example. It was 1773 and a famous astronomer by the name of Lalande
said that he would give a lecture about comets at the Paris Academy. The rumor spread that
he was going to prove that there would be a collision between a comet and the earth that very
same year. According to his calculations the orbits of the comet and the earth would intersect
and a collision was inevitable. Just imagine the atmosphere at the time; this rumor was going
around in Paris in 1773 and there was a big surge in the number of miscarriages, premature
births, and deaths among severely ill people, who were shocked by this rumor. Catholic
priests were getting rich because everyone was running to confession, and they all wanted to
have last rites because the world was coming to an end. This report caused a terrible panic in
Paris in 1773, so that the police, who after all do have a mission, forbade this lecture,
because it was too dangerous. Since the lecture could not be given and since it turned out that
all the miscarriages and premature births were unnecessary, it's not clear how Lalande would
have explained the absence of destructive effects, for the calculation was correct as far as the
collision of the comet and the earth was concerned, but in effect it also predicted that the
collision would displace large quantities of ocean water at the equator and produce
tremendous floods on the masses of land between the north and south poles. This catastrophe
did not occur, even though the calculation was correct.
We can understand what happened here if we connect this incident with what happened to
another comet, namely, the famous Biela comet. If one connects these two one arrives at the
following. People were quite right to be very interested in the orbit of Biela's comet in 1832
and in all that can be predicted from calculations of the same. The appearance of this comet
confirmed the calculations. The comet came so close to the earth that people said: this could
get dangerous; for each time it comes back it's getting closer to the earth. And since Biela's
comet came back every 6 or 7 years, people were particularly interested in its appearance in
the mid 40's, for according to the calculations the comet was going to pass at a distance of
thirteen times the radius of the moon's orbit around the earth, which is too close for comfort.
The comet continued to get closer each time, although observers noted that it was getting
fainter and fainter the closer it came. The 1860s were unfavorable for observations for the
closer it got the fainter it got. However, when it was getting dangerously near the earth one
discovered that it had split in two. And people were very curious about the decisive thing that
was supposed to happen in 1872, because if the calculations were as accurate as for that other
comet in 1773 something terrible would happen to the earth.
I was only a little boy in 1872, but I still remember quite well that pamphlets were
distributed everywhere which said that the end of the world was at hand. A great deal was
said and written about the earth's destruction at that time. I can't quote any statistics about the
number of miscarriages and deaths and absolutions, but people certainly awaited this event
with considerable anxiety. The big day came and I still remember how excited and expectant
everyone was but 10 and behold the only thing that appeared was a very beautiful and
magnificent meteor shower the comet didn't come back at all. It was a wonderful shower of
meteors; as if a nocturnal fire in the sky was falling down to earth in many scintillating
sparks. The comet had split up even more into a lot of small fragments which could be
absorbed by the earth's atmosphere and which became connected with the earth; it had taken
a course whereby it could be absorbed by the earth.
Now an astronomer by the name of Littrow wrote a very interesting paper back then; you
should really read it, it is very interesting. He made very nice calculations, and taking
everything into consideration he said that nothing too serious could happen through the near
miss in 1872, but that if the comet stayed together his calculations showed that a real
catastrophe would occur in 1933. That's right: 1933. That's right.
That is, if the comet had remained the way it was, there would have been a real catastrophe
in 1933, for all the oceans would have flooded the earth in such a way that all creatures on
earth would have perished. But it broke up into particles before then and was absorbed by the
earth; the earth feeds on this world substance. So there will be no collision in 1933 — it's not
too far away; but what the earth has absorbed will come up from the earth then as a spiritual
reflection. What the earth has absorbed becomes spiritualized by other substances, and the
spiritual elements rise up. The earth digests the comets and the spiritual elements rise up.
That is why spiritualized, cometary things in the earth rise up from time to time.
Now this has a deep significance in the world context. I have often mentioned the odd things
that transpired when railroad trains were first introduced. When people suggested that the
post master in Berlin should have a railroad built, he said that he was already dispatching two
coaches a week, and they were practically empty, so why bother building a railroad. And
when people asked the medical board in Nuremberg whether it would be all right to build a
railroad from Nuremberg to Fuerth, they said that this would not be advisable, because
people's nerves would suffer terribly from it; people shouldn't be exposed to this for their
body and soul would be deleteriously affected. However, if people did feel compelled to give
in to this foolishness, the medical advisory board said, they should at least put up high
wooden partitions on either side of the tracks so that the farmers would not get brain
concussions.
That was the verdiet of the learned board in Nuremberg at that time. One laughs about that
today because one thinks: people were really narrow-minded back then. However, as I've
often mentioned, I can't get too mirthful about this because the learned board was right, if
one goes by the state of scientific knowledge at the time. Although people don't go by what
science knows too much. However, given the state of the art at that time, the experts had to
say: people will ruin their nerves if they ride in railroad trains. That is even true to a' certain
extent. If you compare present-day human nerves with earlier ones, you will see that the
Nuremberg doctors were not entirely wrong. For I have always heard that people from
Nuremberg never hang anyone until they get their hands on him. And Dr. Rittelmeyer will
agree that they won't use a science that they don't already have.
So those scientists were only saying what they knew, and they would have been right — if
comets didn't exist. People wouldn't be able to endure the demands that are made upon their
physical bodies by their astral bodies, if these astral bodies which constitute the bestial
element in man weren't being continuously corrected and healed by the absorbed cometary
substances that are radiated back to the surface of the earth, and that have an equilibrating
effect upon human capacities. So you see that man is placed into the universe in a strange
way in this respect.
Let's look at Biela's comet of 1872. Fire falls from heaven; the earth absorbs it, so that
someone who can percelve these things spiritually sees that something comes up again and
influences man's astral body in a favorable or unfavorable way. Some comets have a
therapeutic effect upon men's nerves, and others which the earth absorbs unleash wild astral
forces in man when, they press upwards again.
Thus the Apocalypticer looks at cometary phenomena and he lets them run parallel with the
descriptions of his beasts. He compares them with seven-headed beasts because at that time
the latter were much more closely connected with physical conditions, and a comet that was
split into seven parts was a heavenly expression of what occurred on the earth. Likewise, the
two-horned beast referred to a comet with two tails.
Wild superstitions were connected with comets, and they prevented people from knowing
much about them, except that one calculated their orbits and one was bothered by their
erratic manifestations, etc. Once in a while someone with a good head like Hegel pointed to
other connections between cometary things and earthly things. Hegel occasionally treated
himself to a bubbly glass of wine, and he quite rightly observed that good and bad wine years
are connected with comets. Now just consider the matter in its large, cosmic connections.
Just consider that the earth consumes cometary substances and ejects them again in a
spiritualized form. This becomes united with human astral bodies in a good way or a bad
one. The cometary essence that we see in the sky at a certain time is up there. Where is it
after this particular time?
In a lecture in Paris in 1906, I pointed out that cometary substances contain compounds of
carbon and nitrogen or cyanogen. This was before anyone else had mentioned anything about
it, although scientists later confirmed it through spectral analysis. That is rather significant,
because the cyanides that are distributed in the earth in trace amounts are used to purify
astral bodies. An indispensable cosmic doctor is at work in the cosmos and he carries out
such therapies more or less continuously.
Just consider that a comet that one sees at a particular time becomes atomized in the way that
I described and comes down from the heavens as a rain of fire; later it is in the ground, still
later it goes from the soil into the roots, stems, leaves and flowers of plants. We eat the
cometary bolts and the ferments that are given to the earth by the cosmos in our daily bread.
The Apocalypticer looks at the phenomena and he sees that favorable spiritual effects arise
from one comet and unfavorable ones from another. A beast, or a comet in a cosmic sense,
frees itself from its imprisonment in the earth. The beast gets out» this means something for
human evolution. And so one will point to very intense realities if one wants to indicate
large, important points in the evolution of the earth and mankind.
The earth and everything that exists on it might I have perished in 1933 if another wise
arrangement weren't there that can't be calculated, so that the calculations may not always be
correct if the comets have taken on the other form. From the Apocalypticer s viewpoint one
would say: Before men can grasp the etheric Christ in the right way, mankind must first meet
and deal with the beast who will rise up in1933.
That is spoken from an Apocalyptic viewpoint. Here a spiritual view is united with an
observation of nature. The basic spiritual character of what is present in the universe
becomes clear here. If you consider the farmers in 1872 who stood outdoors and observed
this rain of light and you add the spiritual knowledge that is available about this, which I
have outlined here, and if you compare this with some of the descriptions in the Apocalypse
you will see that it agrees word for word and that the Apocalypse refers to real events in
nature.
This justifies one in saying that the Apocalypse is a book with seven seals. One has to unseal
it in this way so that one finds out what is meant. It doesn't seem much wiser to me to ask
why the Apocalypticer wrote something that has seals than to ask why we seal our letters
when we mail them. We seal them so that people for whom they weren't intended will not
read them. The same goes for the Apocalypticer. He wanted the Apocalypse to be read by
people who are qualified to do so and who know how to open the seals. No one knows how
to open them if he isn't competent in a certain sense, that is, if he doesn't, as it were, get a
knife from the spiritual powers to cut the scroll open.
So this shower of light was there in the 1870s. The comet's activity was much more spiritual
in 1872 when it was supposed to came back, than in its previous appearance's; it was almost
entirely a Spiritual activity. The comet has poured down upon the earth as a shower of
luminous meteors ever since, and the earth absorbs them. And Michael approached the earth
and began to rule it in a shower of golden light at the end of the seventies. Here you have
events in nature that are really spiritual events, or spiritual events that are strong enough to
be nature events. You will only arrive at a real insight into the way that the world is designed
if you see that all natural events become spiritual events, and that all spiritual occurrences
have the intensity of natural occurrences. Then you will connect moral things with natural
things in evolution and you will no longer say that faith should be the only content of
religious life and you will be more inclined to make knowledge the content of religious life.
That is something you can gain through a more intensive study of the Apocalypse.
We will probably be able to conclude these studies tomorrow or the day after.

LECTURES TO PRIESTS: THE APOCALYPSE

GA 346
Lecture XVII
Dornach, 21 September 1924
Aside from the more obvious content of the Apocalypse which we have discussed, it is also
an initiation book. We can definitely look upon the Apocalypse as an initiation book through
the way that the successive stages of evolution are presented — through the inner nature of
the thing —, the stages that can be experienced by those who have eyes to see and ears to
hear, whereas they will of course pass people by who have no eyes or ears.
We should realize that when we enter the world with our cognition that increasingly becomes
a perception, that content of Jour soul life which is basically a kind of a reflection of outer
nature disappears. In other words, the physical sense world disappears and the spiritual world
gradually appears from the other side as if out of the background. The Apocalypticer clearly
shows that he has a very intense, correct idea of this way of entering into a relation with the
spiritual world. This enabled him to find the things in his imaginative visions as objectively
as he found them.
It is simply a fact that one can arrive at a view of the world in two ways. The one way is to
lovingly devote oneself to the physical sense world and to become familiar with all its
aspects; thereby one increasingly becomes familiar with the work of the gods. If one looks at
nature in an inner, spiritual way and not just in an external mechanical one, one then has
what one could call nature in the widest sense of the word. However, one could also imagine
— and the idea is a correct one — that one can get the same world content in a purely
spiritual way from within through one's own soul. So that someone with sufficient inner
force will be able to see that some natural phenomenon is involved at a particular point in
world events, even if he has no access to any historical reports about it. One can definitely
say that it's possible to arrive inwardly at the knowledge that earthquakes or something else
occurred in some year when something was going on in mankind. Many people have the
more or less clear feeling that they can know concrete details about the world from within,
and it is a perfectly correct one. Now one can ask what is actually involved when a man gets
into the spiritual world in this Imaginative way.
We can definitely discuss what is involved here in connection with the Apocalypse, for we
encounter a number of series of stages where the Apocalypticer sees something that leads
into the spiritual world in each case, first he presents the letters, then the seals, then he passes
on to what can only be expressed in auditory terms in our human language, namely, to the
trumpets, and then he goes on to what I described yesterday as divine love, whose
counterpart is divine wrath.
If we understand the Apocalypticer rightly, he's saying that wherever he gives the content of
the Apocalypse through the letters he was inspired to write, it refers to the physical world.
The moment he goes over to the seals and treats them seriously, what he has to say with
these seals refers to the astral, Imaginative world or to what one can call the soul world.
When he passes over to the trumpet sounds we get into spirit land, and when we exnerlenee
divine love and divine wrath in accordance with their content we really get into the interior
regions of spirit land.
Now one should consider that while man treads this Imaginative path, he's basically standing
in the world with his experiences, so that his experience of things is the world's experience.
However, he doesn't notice this at first. During the course of his esoteric training he
gradually becomes aware that everything that happens to him, through him and in him is a
world event at the same time. He increasingly feels that he is poured out into the objective
world content, and the Apocalypticer makes this very clear. So that we can say: physical
world = the content of the letters.
Now let's take a look at the way the physical world appears to us. This physical world is
more than it seems to be. This physical world would not present us with its manifold nuances
of color and warmth and all the rest of what inundates us from all parts of our environment if
it weren't permeated by spirit. We should realize that what we think of as a physical content
in our present age is really spiritual.
One could say that one has to learn the soul language of someone like the Apocalypticer if
one wants to try to imagine what his soul is like. And when we adopt this soul language for
our own personal, spiritual use we must become so united with it that it passes over into our
flesh and blood, to use a rather trivial expression.
I would like to give you a few examples of the inner soul language of an initiate, which he
doesn't always use outwardly or exoterically, but inwardly in order to form his ideas about
his particular experience of the spiritual world. For instance, he might say: Dampen lightning
and you will understand color. That is initiates' language. What does it mean? An initiate
sees flashes of lightning; he sees something flaming up as it comes out of the universe; he
looks upon it as a flickering up of the spirit in world space, and he imagines that when this
lightning becomes ever dimmer or milder he gets a dampened or mild development of colors.
Lightning spreads out, as it were, and becomes a colored surface. This is the way initiates
think of it.
Or an initiate says: Let thunder become quieter and ever more quiet; then listen to its
modulation — and musical things will arise. Thus initiates look upon the sensory tapestry
that is spread out before us as one side of revelation, and it is a real idea for them to think the
following: One has the colored manifold world content; — what I'm drawing here could be
sounds just as well as colors. It could be like the world content that approaches our senses,
that is, like the sensory, physical veil that is spread out before us as our world of perceptions,
into which we weave our abstract, unreal thoughts.
If you imagine that this blackboard is a tapestry that is spread out everywhere and that it
consists of sounds, colors and warmth, an initiate sees lightning flashes behind it. The real
flashes of lightning that are sometimes visible simply break through this sensory tapestry
from behind and from the spiritual world. Wherever lightning appears there is a radiating in
of the spiritual world. And if we look at the way this lightning is dampened and toned down
to an even display of colors in nature we have our colorful earth before us.
If we look up to the heavens and its stars, we have points that also appear to us out of the
spirit, except that they are an enduring, living revelation of flashing lightning. However, an
initiate looks upon all of this as the outer I manifestation of what is behind it. He tells
himself: You should really see — and he does see it, as his soul becomes increasingly active
— you should really see the red in a rose begin to spray out above and below as tiny flashes
of lightning, and whereas the front part becomes dulled, the red in the rear interacts with the
sphere of the Seraphim, and all sounds are linked with the sphere of the Cherubim, and
everything that we touch I is connected with the sphere of the Thrones. When one sees nature
around one in the physical world it is really all an illusion, for in reality it is the toned down
work of the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones.
If we look out into the colorful world and at the way it appears, — it is only the evenly toned
down lightning flashes and action of the Seraphim. People in ancient times used to speak
about the Maya character of the sensory, physical world, but that was only because they
didn't know that there are Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones everywhere in it. Now let's go a
little further on the path of initiation. Let's go to where the Apocalypticer emphasizes the
opening of the seals. What is going on there? Here color and warmth separate off from the
world and increasingly spiritual effects appear which become similar to the true shapes of the
lightning-like things which form. Instead of the spiritual world breaking through the sensory
tapestry in a zig zag way, we see more gentle lightning flashes, etc., behind it (drawing). We
know that the beings who live in them are the servants of the Seraphim, Cherubim and
Thrones. Something similar applies to sounds, warmth and barely perceptible touches.
Now just as the earthly, sensory tapestry fades away and such lightning-like and enclosed
figures behind it form out of the astral fire and expand ever more, so the stars begin to shine
down and their threads of light enable us to see what they are. Starry threads, starry
radiations or lights mingle with things that work in an elemental way. Earthly and heavenly
things become connected, and we realize that we are in a second world — that was the first
one —, and we arrive at the first condition of the second world, where everything is still
shining in a natural way, and where we have an inkling that there are beings behind it. At
most we perceive elemental beings here, but we know that these beings are the agents of
powerful, important and sublime beings; we get to the first precinct, as it were, of the
Kyriotetes, Dynamis and Exusiai. They are still behind this, as it were, but they mingle with
these beings. The real nature of the Kyriotetes, Dynamis and Exusiai is gradually revealed,
the further we go on the path of initiation. This is connected with the emergence of the
harmony of the spheres that resounds through the world. The Apocalypticer presents the
individual sounds of this world harmony as trumpet sounds, although they really only
combine into harmonies and melodies during the course of long periods of time, when time
becomes a unity. So we have the pure life of the second hierarchy in the clear sounds of the
trumpets, whereas the very powerful beings in the first hierarchy underlie actual sense
experiences. This is a world in which one could say that all the sensory effects have become
flowing, grand and majestic, so that they're not just located around the things and processes
of the physical world, but they have become the expression of beings who work in and with
the second hierarchy and through elemental beings. Then we eventually arrive at a third
region where we no longer perceive anything natural, or any natural things that have been
broken up into elemental things, for if we want to perceive something there we have to
perceive it in a spiritual way.
We arrive at a region of the spiritual world which we have to describe as follows. When you
went through what is like a dissolving and a reshaping of earthly sense perceptions, that are
taken hold of by the expanding sense perception of the stars, you were able to see everything
that is working in the universe in Kyriotetes, Exusiai and Dynamis as if it were in the last
residues of sense perception — in such a way that these beings are as if inwardly bound to
the real substantiality of the stars.
The starry world has become transformed into the beings of the hierarchies for us; instead of
looking up to the stars' sensory semblance we live in the world of the hierarchies. Here the
hierarchies are still saturated with what I would like to call sprayed and dissolved sensory
knowledge. We now get to the third region where we no longer perceive earthly things in a
sensory way and where we must perceive souls and supersensible things without sensory
inclusions. We arrive in the actual spiritual world, and we become acquainted with its angels,
archangels and Archai.
We get to know the spiritual aspects of these beings, and when we depict them in paintings
and the like we should realize that they only have the sensory forms we give them because
they are woven into the soul, spiritual elements and essences of the higher hierarchies. For
instance, the wings we paint on them get their substantiality from the beings of the second
hierarchy, and the shape and contents of their heads are derived from the first hierarchy. We
should realize that we can only see what is within the third hierarchy of angels, archangels
and Archai in a spiritual; way.
What. I'm telling you here is of very great historical importance, because you won't be able
to read books that are basedon ancient ideas, and which deal with these spiritual worlds in an
intimate way unless you are aware of the fact that when we investigate the spiritual world we
perceive the lowest hierarchy in a spiritual way, as it were, whereas the higher hierarchies
that we perceive still contain the ingredients of the sense world. This is why quite a few
misunderstandings gradually arose when spiritual life became decadent, concerning the
descriptions that are found in the ancient initiation wisdom.
We find that the more worldly initiates in the Middle Ages always describe the matter in
such a way that the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones stand close to the earth, as the lowest
hierarchy, and that one ascends through Dynamis, Kyriotetes and Exusiai to the angels,
archangels and Principalities. If you look at illustrated books from the Middle Ages you will
be confused about what you're seeing and you will ask yourself why the angels are sitting
above the Seraphim. This came about because one no longer knew the exact details that are
connected with these processes and one didn't imagine these things in a very organic way
anymore. The error first arose during the Jews' Babylonian captivity in B.C. times when the
whole doctrine became contaminated with Babylonian symbols through the contact of the
Jews with the Babylonians, and this error in the order of precedence of the spiritual
hierarchies was perpetuated by the Jewish cabala in the Middle Ages.
However, one must be familiar with such matters if one wants to understand the development
of ideas about spiritual things in the course of human evolution, and this is the right place in
our clarification of the Apocalypse to discuss these things. So we get out to the spiritual
world, and the first beings we meet there are those in the third hierarchy. The Apocalypticer
shows how well acquainted he is with all of these things whenever he describes something
now, because he increasingly tries to let angels appear, and they carry the events. The
phenomenal thing is that earth regions can reflect something that angels bring in as the
messengers of higher hierarchies; and namely these angel appearances bring us into a region
where we see that divine love is the real ingredient of the world to which we human beings
belong. For we become aware that the as it were normal angels, archangels and Archai are r
something like the embodiments of higher hierarchies, just as we look at|_ the hands, arms,
feet, legs and the rest of a person's body and we have the feeling that this is a body for the
soul and spirit.
Thus as one ascends into the world of the third hierarchy one gets the impression: these are
angels, but they are like the limbs of higher, divine spirits. They are really the soul, spiritual
corporeality of higher divine spirits. So that one feels that one is in a pure spirituality and in
God's corporeality at the same time. That is something to which one ascends; one has to
occupy oneself with such an idea, and that is something which anyone who really wants to
get to know the occultism that underlies spiritual life must do.
If you look at a human being on earth in his physical body, one cannot really think of this
body's structure in terms of mere growth or in terms of the shooting and sprouting that goes
on in it. You must add some degradative processes to the organism, that lead to excretions.
They represent degradation and they show that the physical body is in a continual process of
destruction which, however, is destined to absorb spiritual things, since it is degradation at
the physical level; so that the spirit can then live in the physical, degradative processes. We
know that spiritual things don't live in a human organism's anabolic processes. Spiritual
things are suppressed and not promoted when man grows and when physical processes are
becoming more active. Materialists are very silly when they say that man only has to purify
the shooting and sprouting life in his brain, and that a continuation of biological processes
becomes refined and transformed there — and that this amounts to thinking. If the brain
would only be a continuation of digestive processes it would have dull, vegetative inner
experiences. Spiritual things only enter the brain because it is continuously punctured by
physical processes, as it were, so that it decomposes and falls apart. Spiritual things intervene
in physical things in a creative way via degradation. The physical body absorbs degradative
processes. We see that an inhibition and a holding back is built into the growth.
It is extremely interesting to take a look at the details of this phenomenon with one's spiritual
perception. For instance, when Fichte's individuality descends into its physical body in that
tiny village one sees how the boy grows. One sees that hindrances which are slightly greater
than normal are mixed into his growth a little at a time; it's really very little, but it's there. So
this little boy Fichte gets bigger and bigger, but he could have grown faster if something
wasn't continuously holding back his growth very slightly. Fichte's particular philosophical
talent was connected with this inhibition of his growth; he remained small throughout his
lifetime. Here the spiritual becomes active within the physical so that one has to look upon
degradation in a sympathetic way and not just in an antipathetic one. One can comfort
oneself about degradation in a loving way, for hindrances to growing, sprouting life must
exist.
When one realizes that the world of angels, archangels and Archai is really the corporeality
of the divine spirit, and when one sees the weaving and moving and working of the angels,
archangels and Archai and when one sees how individual soul lives are taken care of by their
angel, groups of men by an archangel, and how streams of world events are pushed on from
age to age by Archai, if one takes this whole weaving of this wonderful garment that is
woven there, which is so nicely described in the Proserpina saga —, if one takes this whole
garment of the world, one sees that divine love flows in it like the red blood in our bodies,
and that this is necessarily accompanied by a stream of divine wrath. The latter is always
formed from hindrances to world events by beings who feel things in a really moral way and
who must first harmonize their moral characteristics with the course of world events.
We see the sprouting and shooting of the divine corporeality in divine love, as it were, and
through its connection with the weak creatures which nevertheless characterize the ways that
the gods want to direct the world we see that this spiritual body is permeated by something
which is like the secretory products in man's physical body. Something like human glandular
secretions become exuded here; the secretory centers appear as the divine vials of wrath
which are woven into the course of world events.
We see the connection between divine love and divine wrath within these three worlds, and
this gives rise to the idea, which must be accompanied by inner reverence; What happens
when the vials of wrath are poured out? Here divine spiritual beings are stimulated by the
misdeeds of weak creatures, and they think of how they can keep world events going and of
how they can transform the hindrances into a vehicle for spirit-filled events that are pressing
forwards, just as a man can make soul and spiritual progress in his body through the
degradative processes that occur in it, so that he doesn't just vegetate. The Apocalypticer
imagines all of this in accordance with the paths of initiation. As we saw yesterday and also
earlier, the Apocalypse acquaints us with concrete physical things that are happening in the
world, and it also makes us familiar with the path of initiation in a marvelous way.
If one looks at the Apocalypse in this way it firstly enables us to get an insight into the
course of world events, so that we're looking into things in the future that we need and which
we can add to our ideas, and it also becomes a meditation book, and it can be used as a
meditation book in a wonderful way; it is really marvelous in this respect. If you come to a
place in the Apocalypse that seems to be paradoxical or difficult to understand, stop thinking
about it and start to meditate on it; for it is always accompanied by a passage where you can
become spiritual, as you inwardly absorb and elaborate what you can't grasp intellectually
anymore.
For instance, if one runs into a passage that refers to a bad gland, then of course intellectual
types will say that glands can only be in men and animals, so what is that supposed to mean,
it must be a poetic image — and they race on; but they're wrong about this. The
Apocalypticer uses the word gland because he knows that it's just as justified to think of this
real thing in the microcosm, as it is to think about the corresponding thing in the macrocosm.
You begin to realize that the introduction of such a glandular thing that has to do with
secretions leads over to the functions of divine wrath. Thus seemingly paradoxical things in
the Apocalypse enable one to pass over from a merely intellectual course of the soul life,
which is so common today, to a spiritual one.
Here we come to a point where it is very necessary to see things clearly and accurately,
especially for priestly activity. People feel that our age intellectualizes souls completely, and
that's why they react, and they long for hearty feelings in all fields. Just look at how religious
confessions are resisting the widespread intellectualism; they don't want salvational truths to
be preached in intellectual forms anymore; they want them to be shaped out of feelings and
irrational things. No doubt this longing is partly justified, but one is in danger of losing the
religious element altogether if one only wants to feel religious contents.
Priests should note the strange course which pedagogy has taken. Pedagogy proceeded from
the life of instincts, and it was most effective when one did things instinctively, so that one
didn't think in a pedagogical way at all. People were not really pedagogically active in
ancient times, they just followed their instincts. Teachers only began to talk a lot about
pedagogy after they had forgotten how to teach in an instinctive way. All our talk about it
proves that we are the worst teachers in the whole of evolution. People begin to talk a lot
about something when they don't know much about it anymore. Like one began to talk about
transubstantiation when one no longer knew its secret. Whenever one notices predominantly
intellectual contents of discussion in a particular age one has to ask: what are these people
lacking? At the time when there was a lot of discussion about the labor question, all that this
really meant was that they knew very little about it. Of course this applies to an even greater
extent to the time when the printing press replaced writing. That was a time when people
gradually lost their understanding for the divine script that speaks out of the sun, wind and
stars.
It was not at all necessary to write things down at the time when the knights around King
Arthur's table could still read the script which arose from the spouting ocean, the waves that
sprayed up against the rocks along the shore, and the mingling of spraying billows with air
currents that were saturated with light. Thus one basically has to deduce the dying out of
spiritual and invisible things from the luster of visible things, and on the other hand one has
to perceive how sensory, physical outer symbolism died down during the time when spiritual
things became particularly prominent.
This is what makes us realize that we shouldn't react to intellectualism by denying it or by
developing a dark, nebulous feeling life, but we should sublimate this feeling life by letting
intellectual things run into a metamorphosis of the spiritual life more and more. Then we will
find that we can ennoble our feeling life with the spiritual content of revelations that are
really objective and no longer subjective.

LECTURES TO PRIESTS: THE APOCALYPSE

GA 346
Lecture XVIII
Dornach, 22 September 1924
We have looked at the Apocalypse with respect to its inner spirit and we have looked at it in
connection with your work as priests. One could of course say a great deal more in
connection with the Apocalypse; for instance, one could unroll the whole composition of the
Apocalypse, but it seems to me that this conference in Dornach will get its best content if
what was said in connection with the Apocalypse will show up in priestly activity in a really
practical way.
We'll only have to add one more thing today. We should consider that we're living in the
consciousness soul age or at that stage of man's overall evolution where he has to gain
control over his intellectuality, as it were, so that it's integrated into his individuality. Of
course to begin with this age is still restricted to man's spirit or intellect, as it were, where the
things which are connected with the acquisition of intellectuality occur within human
thinking and reflection, although a time will come when the deeper forces of the human soul
will also be taken hold of by that which now occurs more within thinking, wishing and
reflecting.
At present man can only form ideas about how he should use the intellectuality that is
breaking into his individuality. However, before this age of consciousness soul development
is over souls will be taken hold of by intellectuality right down into their deepest emotions,
feelings and passions. And then what was still sought in the stars during the Middle Ages,
when one spoke of angelic intelligences in the stars and planets will live even more deeply
and pervasively in men.
All of this will be deposited in men, and later on when the Jupiter period comes even man's
corporeality will be taken hold of by intellectuality. However, at present, where the soul has
still not been taken hold of by intellectuality in its innermost structure and men can grasp the
important things in their thoughts and words, it is possible to orient priestly activities in such
a way that the world goals can really be attained.
So you see things are like this; when men grab intellectuality from the cosmos — and after
all, it is a wise arrangement of the world powers that he is taking possession of it — there are
always unguarded moments when it becomes possible for the Ahrimanic power who is called
Satan in Christian tradition to take hold of this intellectuality that men have. Satan must not
be confused with the ordinary devil, who is a lower power with different characteristics.
Satan has the rank of a Principality (Archai), and he took hold of this intellectuality in the
course of world evolution long before it approached men in the described manner, and one
could say that he possesses more intellectuality than any other being. He is trying to bind
human intellectuality to his own to such an extent that men can fall out of their evolution in
this way. In other words, this Ahrimanic power is trying to nullify the Mystery of Golgotha
and Christ's activity.
Now this Ahrimanic power who is called Satan in Christian tradition lacks the strength to
work up further than the human level of cosmic beings. So one shouldn't think that the
intelligence of an angel, for instance, could be taken hold of directly by this Satanic power;
this can only happen in certain exceptional cases. These exceptional cases that could occur in
the future, where it might not only be possible for the Satanic power to chain men to himself
through their intellects, but also to bind beings from the spheres of the angels and namely of
the archangels to himself — these things still belong to the higher secrets of occultism that
cannot be spoken about at present, and that can only be disclosed under certain conditions.
So we can only indicate that a temptation and a seduction of beings in the hierarchy of angels
and namely of archangels might be possible in the future, but we must reckon with the fact
that the power who is called Satan in Christian tradition has the ability to cling to something
in man's inner life that is as independent as his intellectuality. And then when the
intellectuality which men contain is taken hold of by the Ahrimanic power, a man can be torn
out of evolution and can be put on an entirely different course, simply because his being is
pulled along with the intelligence with which Satan is able to connect himself.
This is only possible with man's intellectuality, and not with any other psychical, spiritual or
bodily force in him. For a man's intelligence sits in him in such a way that it is the most
independent thing in him. Everything else is connected with certain divine powers, and so if
Satan were to do anything with men's feelings, sensations, desires and wishes he would still
have to deal with the superhuman forces that are in these soul-capacities. Intellectuality is the
first thing through which each human being can separate himself entirely from the beings
who bring about his personal evolution, and it is the first thing in which he must freely
connect himself through his own efforts with those powers who have accompanied his
evolution right from the beginning. So that he has to identify himself freely with the last
goals of the Apocalypse, where the Apocalypticer clearly indicates that the power who is the
Alpha and Omega of the creator beings who go through evolution will appear, and each
human being has to decide for himself to attach himself to the being who led him during the
time when he was becoming cosmically mature.
To be sure, Satan can use this great moment in the evolution of humanity and he can pull
men's intelligences and the men with it into his own realm. We can already see how the
Satanic power is trying to bring men into its evolution in this way. The way to do this is to
bring people together in the kind of associations that we see arising everywhere in a germinal
form today, where the old group souls end and a new group-soulness can begin.
That is why what is occurring in eastern Europe today, for instance, is so terribly Satanic
because it all tends very forcibly in the direction of putting people together in such a way that
group souls become necessary. If the most intelligent people are then taken over into the
lower Ahrimanic regions in this way, the groups that are formed here can only be assigned to
Ahrimanic powers as groups. That would be a way for the Satanic powers to tear mankind
out of earth evolution and to bring it into another planetary evolution. That kind of activity
with a group soul character can only succeed if the intellectual element becomes completely
emancipated in a certain way.
Very clever beginnings in this direction are being made in the east today, and priests should
understand these beginnings for their work, because they are becoming manifest in a very
forcible way in the east, but they're also present in central and western Europe.
For example, something that seems to be more or less harmless in exoteric life but which
must be discussed very seriously is the way that psychology is being allowed to pass over
into an experimental observation of human souls. This is one of the methods that will
eventually prevent the soul elements from working from man to man in the way that the old
divine powers intended, and psychical things will be determined in a numerical way or some
other way instead by the emancipated intellectuality.
These things in central Europe and in the West are still relatively harmless. However just
consider, for example, that a statistical, intellectualistic way of looking at things that is
emancipated from men's soul life has arisen in the west through William James and others.
They apply statistical methods to the inner conversion of human beings or to what one could
call a finding of one's inner religious bearings— which occurs in many people just before
they're 20 years old. Many people also experience an inner transformation after they're 20,
which is like a whirling up of the Godhead out of their own soul.
In the U.S. they determine the percentage of the population that undergoes such inner
conversions, and they treat things in a statistical manner. The Satanic thing about this is the
statistical treatment, the compilation of data, the emancipated intellect. All these conversions
are really the results of karma, but then one has to look at each particular case. You will find
that statistical methods are praised to the skies in all scientific fields today, if you follow
such things at all. People can't penetrate inner things anymore, and they try to arrive at laws
through statistics everywhere.
This is the hardest to combat in the medical field, where it has caught on in the most terrible
way, and where all clinical methods tend in this direction. One simply records whether
medicaments have a positive or negative effect, etc., in a statistical manner. This statistical
element is becoming established, but it is completely worthless in this field. For it really tells
one nothing to know how many cases went one way and how many went the other way. The
important thing is to have a really thorough understanding of the individual case, no matter
how it turns out. Only when all the cognitional methods have been pressed into the service of
a study of the individual cases and their individual forms, — only after one has everything
else through individual observations can one use statistics at the end and say that the thing
was favorable in so and so many cases and unfavorable in the rest. As you know, statistics
are very popular in social studies and social democracy.
The statistical approach has also produced some very nonsensical things in connection with
suicides and crazy people. One determines what percent of the people in particular
professions committed suicide or went crazy. But it has no real value to know this. Because
the important thing is to know why this individual committed suicide and why that individual
became insane. And so with regard to this statistical approach which scientists think is so
important today when they write about theories of knowledge, — it's really as if Satan were
loose: it's really quite terrible.
This approach has been successful for the Satanic power in central Europe and in the east. It
became a philosophy in Avenarius and Mach, who were studied by leading Bolshevik
philosophers, who then brought the thing to Russia and made it practical. Even good natured
people who want evolution to proceed in an orderly way don't pay much attention to the fact
that the seeds for Bolshevism were laid in central Europe decades ago and were carried over
to Russia; it's as if one takes a seedling and transports it to another place where it is supposed
to grow up.
Thus this Satanic power is working hard today and he turns to people everywhere and
appeals to their emancipated intellect that is disconnected with things in some way. This
applies to the soul, to the spirit, to inner conversions, etc. If Satan were to succeed in
bringing about what he wants to do within a certain time, what has to approach then would
occur in a harmful way for the evolution of humanity.
For the events of which the Apocalypticer speaks will come. It's just a question of how they
will occur. There's only two possibilities: either human evolution will proceed in accordance
with the intentions of the gods, or it will not. Intellectuality is breaking in now and men are
becoming more and more intelligent through their own efforts, and not through inspiration.
That is breaking in. But on the other hand mankind has been kept weak by influences that
come from the Luciferic side. Even though the individual element is the only salutary thing
for mankind in this age of the individuality, which is really a Christian age, groups will form,
but these group formations must be taken away from the danger that they're in.
Through the efforts that the Satanic power is making to acquire the intellectual forces of
humanity, a time will come when this Satanic power will be so strong that it will approach
all groups that will have formed. So that it will really come about that Satan's power will
work towards the four corners of the world, and these smaller and larger groups — Gog and
Magog — will be exposed to the temptation and the seduction of the Satanic power. What
will be decided then is whether or not those who have begun to work with spirituality have
developed such an intensity that human intellectuality can be led to where it belongs with the
aid of the Michael power, namely, to the starting powers who were connected with the
origins of human evolution, and who want to lead what men have become further, although
men are left free. A great deal will depend upon whether; men will get to the point where
they will fully understand real spirituality that has an inner order. In priestly work one must
already look at these affairs of humanity now, for only if one succeeds in directing
everything into channels that run along these lines will the great seduction scene that Satan
intends with Gog and Magog turn out in a way that is beneficial for human evolution.
Otherwise what men have experienced under the influence of their developing
individualities; since the year 666 after the beginning of Christian evolution will someday
have to be torn out of humanity. Darkness would be spread over all previous human
incarnations and a new world evolution would replace the earthly one. We can already see
the beginnings of this quite clearly, and we can also see the great danger that mankind is in
today. Ahrimanic powers possess an almost unbelievably large amount of intellectuality, and
they use men's vanity, untruthfulness and all of their other weaknesses in order to win them
over. For instance, it is really quite terrible how the Satanic powers used the vanities of men
at the beginning of the world war in order to create a tremendous turmoil in a few days —
after there had been a very deep state of sleep — which put people in a great uproar, so that
they're still not sure what really happened.
But it's only a phase. There are much worse phases in the purely intellectual so-called
spiritual battles of the present. For where can one find truth anymore? One sees that things
are being introduced everywhere in such a way that truth of action or a true way of working
is becoming less and less important for men today. Just think of how they're increasingly
trying to put the spiritual life under the control of the state. Just look at how much of our
spiritual life is under state control.
All of these things expose humanity to a great danger, but men are not inclined to develop a
real understanding along these lines. You could see this when the first attempt was made to
do something with the threefolding movement so that the seduction by Gog and Magog that
is to happen in the future can be brought into channels that are favorable for humanity. The
threefolding idea should have led mankind over the threshold of evolution, and also would
have had to lead it across, but the way it was received shows the tremendous dangers that
mankind is exposed to with respect to these things, and priests should take these things very
seriously.
There was an individual in the early Christian centuries who lived in the place where the
actual church battle occurred which then made preparations in Europe for the Christianity
that had been present in Rome throughout the centuries, who experienced the year 666 and
perceived what really went on there with a certain clairvoyant power. This particular
individual saw quite clearly and spiritually that the Satanic power was preparing itself for
such a mission. Like many other people, this individual later confused the Satanic power that
Michael knows is higher than he is, with the devil of the Middle Ages; he speaks of the devil,
but in such a way that one sees that he really means the Satanic power. He reincarnated in
Berlin in the first half of the 19th century; he was a high school teacher by the name of
Drandorf. He spoke about the devil, that is, about Satan, and he wrote an article Is the Devil a
Figment of the Imagination? You should also study his book on aesthetics some time.
Drandorf remained relatively unknown; the consistorial and supreme consistorial counselors
in Berlin were his enemies.
What all of this amounts to is: will you priests be able to represent the spiritual world in its
full reality and not just in the sentimental way in which this has occurred everywhere in the
last few centuries, so that one doesn't want to bring in the evil powers whenever one is
speaking about the spirit. In other words, the main question is whether there is enough
energy among you to really represent spirituality. The main thing is that such things like a
knowledge of karma or an honest look, at earlier earth lives presuppose the same attitude of
soul as the perception of the celebration of transubstantiation during an act of consecration of
man.
These ideas must become real for men again. Only if they become real will it become
possible to bring everything that is connected with the perspectives for humanity which the
Apocalypticer wanted so much to present, into the right channels. It should be emphasized
that the things that were discussed here in connection with the Apocalypse are truths which
one should not receive without uniting them with one's whole being, which one should not
receive without looking upon them as a kind of communion.
So one would like to say that a church is outwardly real, and it embraces the faithful
members of the congregation. And the priesthood must look upon itself as that group of
people in the church through whose activity a spiritual element flows into humanity. For this
they need the right understanding and a little chapel for the sacraments and the consecrated
bread and wine, which contains the secret of transubstantiation.
And one would like to say: If we imagine that we have a chalice, in which transubstantiation
takes place, then men look for a way to the Father through transubstantiation. They look for a
way to that creative power in the primal world which is present in there in a fully real way,
and which therefore cannot be found if one only goes towards the material or only towards
the spiritual. It can only be found if one discovers that the spiritual and the material are a
unity. An understanding of the world is only present today when a transubstantiation is
carried out at an altar. A sacred search for the Father really still occurs there, and here the
Son always shows men the way to the Father; the Son who now mediates the way to the
spirit.
And so when a man looks at what appears everywhere in the physical things during
transubstantiation he can find the completely hidden spirit and the working of the Seraphim,
Cherubim and Thrones in the physical things. Their concealed activity becomes manifest as
physical substances. If one wants to have the latter as something spiritual, one has to take the
path to the Father. The path to the Father is indicated by the Son, and he then brings it about
that the spiritual appears out of the physical.
Bread is bread, but one can look for the Father in it; this can also be shown for the wine.
Christ shows the way; the transubstantiation puts an aura around the bread; man experiences
the spirit in the aura. The wine reinforces what is present in the bread (drawing: sun). And so
one can say that the longing for the Father is present in the sensory aspect that conceals the
Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones. Christ leads each human being on the path, so that
Kyriotetes, Dynamis and Exusiai become active before him in the way ye indicated
yesterday, and he ascends into that region where he can only perceive the spirituality of the
spiritual world today in angels, archangels and Archai, who however have the Holy Spirit in
their midst.
To understand this and to draw the right conclusion from it today is written in the
Apocalypse. What does that mean? It means that the one who understands it finds his own
understanding already traced out in the Apocalypse. Hence one can say that whether or not
the Apocalypse is speaking about you depends upon you and upon whether you will it.
For if you take the impulses in the Apocalypse into your work as priests in a truly spiritual
way, you will be the ones who are spoken of in the Apocalypse, who will come and will
ward off the power of the beast, the false prophet and Satan. And then at least in your mind
you will always think that the book of the Apocalypse is placed underneath the chalice when
it is standing there for the transubstantiation. And as you imagine that the chalice is standing
on the apocalyptic book, you will be able to say to yourselves: My vocation is in the latter.
And what we do over it is the carrying out of my vocation.
And so I didn't want to give you a theoretical exposition during this conference. After the
justified wish arose in you to hear something about the Apocalypse I wanted to give you
what I did and therewith I wanted to place the Apocalypse underneath the chalice for you, at
least in your minds. That is the goal I had in mind for these lectures. You will definitely
succeed in attaining the things that are possible if you intensify the ideals of your work as
greatly as you can if you make these serious studies of the Apocalypse into the innermost
impulse of your own activity. That is what I wanted to place before you at the end of these
reflections. You can imagine that the most intensive thoughts about an intensive, forceful
activity that is worthy of your great task will accompany everything that you will do in
connection with these reflections.