The Heindel-Steiner Connection

 

By Charles Weber

 

Web version compiled from original text and graphics  April 19, 2005

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SECTION 2

 

Steiner and Heindel Texts Compared

 

In this section we collate a selection of passages drawn from Steiner books and lectures with their counterparts in the Cosmo and other Heindel books.  No Steiner texts will be cited that are dated later than 1907, the year Heindel visited Steiner. (In his dedication withdrawal statement—see page 87 of this study—Heindel informs us that he assimilated Steiner material from November 1907 through March 1908.) This comparison traces the patrimony of Western Wisdom Teachings. These Teachings are the inheritance of humanity. Essentially it is the Message we are interested in, not the messenger. There has been no attempt to make this collation inclusive. Such an undertaking would entail a study many times the size of this presentation. Also, for practical purposes, we have, with a few exceptions, omitted collating longer passages, but they are numerous. In fact, what Heindel often refers to in a paragraph or page, Steiner may elaborate in full lecture cycles or books.

 

Steiner

“Under certain circumstances you must exclude all that you have experienced hitherto, so that you can meet every new experience with new faith. The occultist must do this quite consciously....The occultist must always leave a way open to believe”—At the Gates of Spiritual Science (Gates), fourteen lectures, 1906, p 113

Cosmo

“In all occult schools the pupil is first taught to forget all else when a new teaching is being given....he must cultivate an attitude of mind which ‘believeth all things’ as possible.”—p 6

 

Steiner

“Whence does man come? Whither is he going? What is his destiny?”—The History of Spiritism, Hypnotism and Somnambulism (hereafter HS), two lectures given in Berlin, 1904, p 24

Cosmo

“The life that came...Whence came it? Why was it here? and Whither has it gone?”—p 19

 

Steiner

“Lying is, from the astral standpoint, murder and at the same time suicide.”—Foundations of Esotericism (hereafter FE), thirty-one lectures held in Berlin, 1905, p 146

Cosmo

“A lie is both murder and suicide in the Desire World.”—p 43

 

Steiner

“[There] is a Persian legend told of Jesus. One day Christ Jesus saw a dead dog lying by the wayside; he stopped to look at the animal while those around him turned away in disgust. Then Jesus said: ‘What beautiful teeth the dog has!’ In that hideous corpse he saw not what was ugly or evil but the beauty of the white teeth. If you can acquire this mood, you will look everywhere for the good and the positive, and you will find it everywhere. This  has a effect on the physical and etheric bodies.”—At the Gates of Spiritual Science  (hereafter Gates. This book has been retitled Founding of a Science of the Spirit, with slightly different pagination. We will cite the original title and page numbers.), fourteen lectures given in Stuttgart, 1906, p 113

Cosmo

“There is a story of Christ which illustrates this point [of ‘looking for the good in all things’]. Once when walking with His disciples they passed the  carcass of a dog. The disciples turned in disgust, commenting upon the nauseating nature of the sight; but Christ looked at the dead body and said ‘Pearls are not whiter than its teeth.’ He was determined to find the good, because He knew the beneficial effect which would result in the Desire World from giving it expression.”—p 44

 

Steiner

“Antipathy produces self-seeking self-assertion”—Theosophy: An Introduction to the Supersensible Knowledge of the World and the Destination of Man (hereafter Theosophy), 1904, p 83

Cosmo

“the main-spring in this force of Repulsion is self-assertion.”—p 45

 

Steiner

“The essential nature of this region [of “Soul Light, Active Soul Forces and Soul Life”] is quite rightly described as ‘outraying’”—Theosophy, 1904, p 85

Cosmo

“The names of the three upper Regions of the Desire World are ‘Region of Soul-Life,’ ‘Region of Soul-Light,’ and ‘Region of Soul-Power.’....we think of these Regions as radiating the qualities indicated by their names...”—p 47

 

Steiner

“Devachan [the World of Concrete Thought] has four divisions: (1) the continents. (2) the rivers and oceans, (3) the airy region, (4) the region of spiritual archetypes....At the second stage...life pulsates as a reality, as though in rivers and streams....At the third stage...a man is surrounded by all the passions and feelings of his past life...as clouds, thunder and lightening.”—At the Gates of Spiritual Science, 1906, pp 39-41

Cosmo

“Taking a more detailed view of the several divisions of the Region of Concrete Thought we find....the Continental Region...the Oceanic Region...[which] is best described as flowing pulsing vitality...The Aerial Region....[where] we find the archetype of desires, passions, wishes, feelings, and emotions...like flashes of lightning [are]the passions of warring nations....The Region of Archetypal Forces is the fourth division.”—pp 49-50

 

Steiner

“Often innumerable archetypes work together in order that this or that being...may arise”—Theosophy, p 104

Cosmo

“...often many [archetypes] work together to form one certain species.”—p 50

 

Steiner

“The longings of the human soul appear here as a gentle zephyr...flashing lightning and rolling thunder [signify]...passions of a battle waged on earth.”—Theosophy, 1904, p 108

Cosmo

“The sighing of the wind in the tree-tops seems the longing of the soul and like flashes of lightning the passions of warring nations.”—p 50

 

Steiner

“The archetypes of the fourth region...govern the archetypes of the three lower regions.”—Theosophy, 1904, p 108

Cosmo

“...this [fourth] Region is the home of the Archetypal Forces which direct the activity of the archetypes in the Region of Concrete Thought.”—p 51

 

Steiner

“The etheric body is the architect of the physical body. The latter has crystallized out of the ether body much as ice crystallizes out of water.”—Supersensible Knowledge (SSK), thirteen lectures, Berlin, 1906, p 92

Cosmo

“As the lines of force in freezing water are the avenues of formation for ice crystals, so the lines of force in the vital body determine the shape of the dense body.”—p 60

 

Steiner

The etheric body glows “with a radiance a little darker than young peach blossom.”—Gates, 1906, p 13

Cosmo

“[T]he vital body...is very luminous and about the color of a new-blown  peach blossom.”—p 60

 

Steiner

“The ice is water, only the water has hardened and the forms of the ice-blocks were within the water as lines of force. Thus is the physical heart formed out of the etheric heart.”—TR, 1907, p 22

Cosmo

“As the lines of force in freezing water are the avenues of formation for ice crystals, so the lines of force in the vital body determine the shape of the dense body...Were it not for the etheric heart he dense heart would break quickly under the constant strain put upon it.”— p 60

 

Steiner

“The etheric body in the male is female and in the female, male”—TR, 1907, p 23

Cosmo

“...the vital body of a man is female or negative, while that of a woman is male or positive.”—p 60

 

Steiner

“[A] man who is drowning, or falling from a great height, when death seems imminent, may see his whole life before him.”—At the Gates of Spiritual Science, fourteen lectures, 1906, p 146

Cosmo

“When a person is drowning, or falling from a height, or freezing, the vital body leaves the dense body.”—p 61

 

Steiner

“Partial separations of the etheric body also occur when a limb has ‘gone to sleep’ as we say. If a hand, for instance, has gone to sleep, the Seer can perceive the etheric part of the hand protruding like a glove...Because the etheric body is woven in the physical body in tiny, pin-point formations, there arises in the physical body the well-known sensation of prickling in a limb that has gone to sleep.”—TR, 1907, p 34

Cosmo

“...when a hand ‘goes to sleep.’ Then the etheric hand of the vital body may be seen hanging below the dense arm like a glove and the points cause the peculiar pricking sensation felt when the etheric hand re-enters the dense hand.”—p 62

 

Steiner

“Herein also lies the danger of hypnotism....The clairvoyant can see the loosened etheric body hanging like a pair of bags or sacks on either side of the head”—At The Gates of Spiritual Science, 1906, p 29

Cosmo

“Sometimes in hypnosis the head of the vital body divides and hangs outside the dense head, one half over each shoulder, or lies around the neck like the collar of a sweater.” p 62

 

Steiner

Regarding terminology: “That is why we also call his astral body his body of desires.”—FE, 1905, p 10

Steiner

“In ancient times this lotus flower turned from right to left—that is to say, in the opposite direction to the hands of a clock...In the clairvoyant seer it begins to move in the opposite direction—from left to right.” An Esoteric Cosmology (hereafter EC), eighteen lectures, Paris, 1906, p 69

Cosmo

“In the involuntary clairvoyant developed along improper, negative lines, these vortices turn from right to left, or in the opposite direction to the hands of a clock—counterclockwise. In the desire body of the properly trained voluntary clairvoyant, they turn in the same direction as the hands of a clock—clockwise.”—p 67

 

Steiner

“Were a man merely a member of a species, no biography could exist. A lion or a dove are interesting insofar as they belong to the lion or the dove species. The separate being in all its essentials has been understood when the species has been described...what they have of interest in them, father, son and grandson have in common.”—Theosophy of the Rosicrucian, 1907, p 50

Cosmo

“When we learn the characteristics of one animal, we know the characteristics of the species to which it belongs. All members of the same animal tribe are alike. That is the point. A lion, or its father, or its son, all look alike....We may write the biography of a man, but an animal can have no biography.”—pp 71-72

 

Steiner

 

                                   Man        Animal       Plant       Mineral

[Abstract thought] Upper Devachan                                  Ego

[Concrete Thought] Lower Devachan                       Ego         Astral Body

[Desire World]     Astral Plane              Ego         Astral Body Etheric Body

                   Physical Plane  Ego                                 

                                   Astral Body Astral Body

                                   Etheric    Etheric    Etheric Body        

                                   Physical    Physical    Physical    Physical Body

 

Above table from At the Gates of Spiritual Science, 1906, p 46

 

     á

Compare    à

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Diagram 3

Page 73

 


Steiner

 

1)      The consciousness of the mineral - corresponding to deep sleep.

2)      The consciousness of the plant - ordinary sleep

3)      Animal consciousness - dream life.

4)      Physical, objective consciousness - the normal waking state.

 

Esoteric Cosmology, 1906, p 99

 

     á

Compare 

à

 

 

 

Diagram 4

Page 74

see also page 85

 

 

Steiner

“Even superficial thought will make us realize that the physical body is the most perfect part of our nature. Take, for example, a part of the thigh-bone. This is not simply a compact, solid bone, but full of artistry, constructed as it were of intersecting beams. Anyone who studies this bone not only with the intellect but also with feeling will marvel at the wisdom which, in its creation, has used no more material than is essential to support the upper body with the smallest possible amount of power. No engineering art applied to the building of a bridge is equal to the wisdom that has brought such a bone into existence!”—Theosophy of the Rosicrucian, 1907, pp 77-78

Cosmo

“The dense body is a wonderfully constructed instrument and should be recognized as such by everyone pretending to have any knowledge of the constitution of man. Observe the femur, for instance. This bone carries the entire weight of the body. On the outside it is built of a thin layer of compact bone, strengthened on the inside by beams and cross-beams of cancellated bone, in such a marvelous manner that the most skilled bridge or construction engineer could never accomplish the feat of building a pillar of equal strength with so little weight.”—p 76

 

Steiner

“On the physical plane animals have only a physical, an etheric and an astral [desire] body; they have no Ego there, for their Ego is to be found on the astral plane. Just as your ten fingers have a common soul, all animals of one species have their common soul on the astral plane.”—Gates, 1906, pp 45-46

 

Cosmo

“There are, however, ten holes in the curtain and the man who is in the division representing the Desire World can put his ten fingers through these holes into the other division, representing the Physical World. He now furnishes an excellent representation of the group-spirit which is in the Desire World. The fingers represent the animals belonging to one species.”—p 78

 

Steiner

1. Plato in the Timaeus says “the soul of the world is stretched upon it [‘the body of the world’] in the form of a cross.”—Christianity as Mystical Fact, thirteen lectures, 1902, p 86

2. “Plato said in the language of the old mysteries: The World-Soul is crucified on the Cross of the World-Body.”—At the Gates of Spiritual Science, 1906, p 84

Cosmo

“Plato, who was Initiate, often gave out occult truths. He said ‘The World-Soul is crucified.’”—p 85

 

Steiner

1. “The symbol for these three kingdoms is the Cross. The lower beam symbolizes the Plant Kingdom, the middle or cross beam, the Animal Kingdom, and the upper beam, the Human Kingdom.”—The Temple Legend (TL), twenty lectures, Berlin, 1904-1906, pp 296-297

2. “The plant as an inverted man...In all innocence it stretches its reproductive organs to the Sun...The root is really the head of the plant...[which] is attracted by the center of the earth. Man is the opposite of this: his head is at the top of his body, and below are the organs which the plant spreads out to the Sun. The animal comes in between: its body is horizontal...the old occult science gave expression to this in the ancient symbol of the Cross....”—At the Gates of Spiritual Science, 1906, pp 83-84

Cosmo

“The relations of plant, animal and man to the life currents in the Earth’s atmosphere are symbolically represented by the cross...The lower limb of the cross indicates the plant...Man is represented by the upper limb; he is the inverted plant...The plant stretches its generative organs towards the sun. Man, the inverted plant, turns his towards the center of the earth...The animal, which is symbolized by the horizontal limb of the cross, is between the plant and the man.”—pp 85-86

 

Steiner

“[B]lood is the expression of the ‘I’ or Ego.”—Lecture, Berlin, 10/25/06

Cosmo

“The blood is...the direct vehicle of the Ego.”—p 91

 

Steiner

1. “Do not imagine that the astral body is inactive and has no work to do during the night.”—TR, p 31

2. “Every night the astral body renews its harmony with the cosmic astral ocean and reveals itself to the clairvoyant as anything but inactive.”—Theosophy of the Rosicrucian, 1907, p 33

Cosmo

“Sleep, however, is not by any means an inactive state, as people generally suppose.”—p 93

 

Steiner

“Cremation provides correctly for the dissolution of the physical body into cosmic space.”—Gates, 1906, p 141

 

 

Cosmo

“...the more rational method of cremation...restores the elements to their primordial condition.”—p 103

 

Steiner

In the lower desire world, the soul released from earth still retains “his craving for outer objects...the desire remains but the organs are lacking.”—Foundations of Esotericism, 1905, p 87

Cosmo

“Most people, especially if they die in the prime of life, have many ties and much interest in life on earth. They have not altered their desires because they have lost their physical bodies.”—p 103

 

Steiner

1. The suicide’s “longing for the physical body is all the more intense. It seems to him that he is like a hollow tree, like someone who has lost his ego.”—Foundations of Esotericism, 1905, p 87

2. “In the case of suicide there are, in addition to the torment caused by the feeling of having been suddenly emptied out, the unsatisfied desires.”—Theosophy of the Rosicrucian, 1907, p 97

Cosmo

“The suicide, who tries to get away from life, only to find that he is as much alive as ever, is in the most pitiable plight....he has an unspeakable feeling of being ‘hollowed out’....that awful feeling of ‘emptiness’ remains [until the archetype for his body dissolves].”—p 104

 

Steiner

1. Time spent in lower desire world is “about one-third of the length of the past life.”—Gates, 1906, p 33

2. “The journey backwards begins with the last event before death and proceeds at triple speed, to birth.”—Theosophy of the Rosicrucian, 1907, p 36

Cosmo

“In the Desire World life is lived about three times as rapidly as in the Physical World.”—p 107.

 

Steiner

Upon release from the physical body “He feels his etheric body growing and expanding as if it embraced the whole sphere of the earth, as far as the sun...The individual feels as though with one part of his being he were in Munich, with another part of his being in Mainz, with a third in Basel....He feels as though he were dismembered.”—Theosophy of the Rosicrucian, 1907, p 71

Cosmo

“When a man dies, he at once seems to swell out in his vital body; he appears to himself to grow into immense proportions....The man seems to be present with all the people with whom on earth he had relations of a nature which require correction. If he has injured one man in San Francisco and another in New York, he will feel as if part of him were in each place. This gives him a peculiar feeling of being cut to pieces.”—p 108

 

Steiner

“Spend 4-5 minutes looking backward over the events of the day [just before going to sleep]....let these events of the day pass quickly before your mind’s eye, and make yourself aware of what your attitude is toward them. In this way one observes oneself and asks if and to what extent one is satisfied with what one has done, what experiences should have been made and what could have been done better....We should merely learn from our own life and take it as a lesson...we learn, above all, for that time lying beyond death. After completing the retrospect of the day in this way, one then goes to sleep with thoughts about the people one loves or would like to help.”—Letter (example of one of hundreds of letters Steiner sent to people giving personal esoteric instructions), Berlin, 1904, from History and Contents of First Esoteric School (also referred to hereafter as H&C), p 67

Cosmo

“An exercise...the object of which is purification as an aid to the development of spiritual sight...consists of thinking over the happenings of the day after retiring at night. We review each incident of the day, in reverse order, taking particular note of the moral aspect, considering whether we acted rightly or wrongly in each particular case regarding  actions, mental attitude and habits.”—p 111

 

Steiner

“This harmony is a manifestation of reality; it was called by Plato and Pythagoras the harmony of the spheres. This is not a poetic metaphor but a reality experienced by the soul as a vibration emanating from the soul of the world. Goethe, who was initiated...knew of the harmony of the spheres. He expressed it at the beginning of Faust in words spoken by the Archangel Raphael:

 

The sun-orb sings, in emulation

Mid brother-spheres, his ancient round

His path predestined through Creation

He ends with step of thunder-sound.

 

Esoteric Cosmology, 1906, p 45

 

Cosmo

“Celestial music is a fact and not a mere figure of speech. Pythagoras was not romancing when he spoke of the music of the spheres....Goethe also mentions [this celestial symphony] in the prologue to his Faust, where the scene is laid in heaven. The Archangel Raphael says,

 

 

The Sun intones his ancient song

‘Mid rival chant of brother spheres.

His prescribed course he speeds along

Is thund’rous way throughout the years

 

—p 119; see also Christianity Lectures, p 102

 

Steiner

1. “Everything physical is condensed, transformed spirit.”—Supersensible Knowledge (hereafter SSK), thirteen lectures, Berlin, 1906, p 204

2. “Where does matter come from? For spiritual research matter has sprung from Spirit, is nothing but densified spirit.”—The Origin of Suffering, Evil, Illness and Death, three lectures, Berlin, 1906, p 7

Cosmo

“Matter is crystallized spirit.”—p 120

 

Steiner

The soul in the physical body “may be compared with that of a snail secreting its own shell and then shrinking back inside it.”—Esoteric Cosmology, 1906, p 93

Cosmo

“...the dense vehicles of all kingdoms correspond to the shell of the snail, which is crystallized from its juices, the snail representing the spirit.”—p 73. “Matter...corresponds to the snail’s house, which is crystallized snail.....That which is now the snail [spirit] will in time become the house [body].”—p 121

 

Steiner

“When you spread a fine powder as evenly as possible on a thin brass plate and then stroke its edge with a fiddler’s bow the powder moves into a definite line pattern....These are called chladny figures. When the spiritual tone of the celestial harmony sounded forth into the universe it organized the planets into their relationship.”—Occult Signs and Symbols, 1907, p 11

Cosmo

“As geometrical figures are created by drawing a violin bow over the edge of a glass plate containing sand, so the forms we see around us are the crystallized sound-figures of the archetypal forces which play into the archetypes in the Heaven World.”—p 123

 

Steiner

“What is the human being doing in the period between death and a new birth? He himself is working from out of the spiritual worlds, under the guidance of higher Beings, at the transformation of the earth.”—TR, p 44

Cosmo

“[A]ll the denizens of the Heaven World work upon the models of the Earth. Climate, flora, and fauna are altered by man under the direction of higher Beings”—pp 124-125

 

Steiner

“Mathematical talent also needs...a special development of the three semi-circular canals in the ear which lie in the three directions of space. Special development of these canals determines mathematical talent.” Theosophy of the Rosicrucian, 1907, p 74

Cosmo

“[T]he faculty for space perception is connected with the delicate adjustment of the three semi-circular canals which are situated inside the ear, each pointing in one of the three dimensions in space. Logical thought and mathematical ability are in proportion to the accuracy of the adjustment of these semi-circular canals.”—p 126

 

Steiner

“At about the third week [after conception] the astral and etheric bodies take hold, as it were, of the germ-cell and now begin to participate in the work on the embryo.”—Theosophy of the Rosicrucian, 1907, pp 52-53

Cosmo

“The advanced pupil of an occult school sometimes commences to build [his physical body] for himself as soon as the work during the first three weeks...has been completed.”— p 128

 

Steiner

“[H]e [the Ego] has a prevision of his coming life, not in all its details but only as a survey”—TR, 1907, p 47

Cosmo

The incoming soul has “a panorama of the new life in store for it. But, mark this well—this panorama contains only the principal events.”—p 129

 

Steiner

The Spirit readying for rebirth “now has to gather round him new ‘astral substance’ rather as scattered iron filings are brought into order by the pull of a magnet.”—At the Gates of Spiritual Science, 1906, p 48

Cosmo

“This [mind seed-atom] begins to attract to itself materials from the highest subdivision of the Region of Concrete Thought, in a manner similar to that in which a magnet draws to itself iron filings.”—p 133

 

Steiner

“The bell-shaped forms are made up of the causal [mental] body, the forces of the earlier astral body and the new astral body.”—At the Gates of Spiritual Science, 1906, p 48

Cosmo

“The material selected by the threefold spirit forms itself into a great bell-shaped figure.”—p 134

 

Steiner

“Just as immediately after death the whole memory of a man’s past life appears like a tableau before his soul, so is a kind of preview of the coming life given to the soul immediately before it incarnates. Not all the details are seen...a shock from the glimpse of the new circumstances and destiny now in prospect... [may cause the ego to hold back] the soul from complete incarnation. Only a part of the soul then enters the body, and this will result in the birth of an epileptic or an idiot.”—At the Gates of Spiritual Science, 1906, p 49

Cosmo

(1) ‘[T]he Recording Angels....impress the reflecting ether of the vital body in such a way that the pictures of the coming life are reflected in it.”—p 135.

(2) “[W]hen a particularly hard life reveals itself to the vision of the returning Ego at the moment of entering the womb, it sometimes happens that the Ego is so startled and frightened that it seeks to rush out again....[I]nstead of the vital body being concentric with the dense body, the head of the vital body may be above the head of the dense body. Then we have a congenital idiot.”—Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures, p 116. See also 1 Questions and Answers, pp 93-96

 

Steiner

“If new creations did not arise [from the fourth region of concrete thought] in the world, humanity would make no progress....something original arises in the inner being.”—Theosophy of the Rosicrucian, 1907, p 32

Cosmo

“There is an influx of new and original causes all the time. That is the real backbone of evolution.”—p 135

 

Steiner

“We shall close the subject of Rosicrucianism...[with] words also expressed by Goethe, which as watchword belong above the cross wreathed in roses symbolizing sevenfold man:

 

The power that holds constrained all humankind,

The victor o’er himself no more can bind.

 

                   Supersensible Knowledge, 1906, p 168

 

Cosmo

“That [ordering our lives] is the key to emancipation; as Goethe says;

 

From every power that all the world enchains

Man frees himself when self-control he gains.

 

                        —p 137; see also Christianity Lectures, p 60

 

Steiner

“In feelings of shame...the blood is pushed up towards the surface of the body, to its periphery. In feelings of anxiety...the blood flows back toward the heart....This power of the ‘I’, which affects the blood, must become ever stronger and more conscious.”—Lecture, Jan 16, 1908, Guidance in Esoteric Training, pp 106-107

Cosmo

“To further show the connection of the Ego with the blood we may mention the blush of shame, which is an evidence of the manner in which the blood is driven to the head....[In fear the Ego] drives the blood to the center and grows pale, because the blood has left the periphery of the body.”—p 145

 

Steiner

(1)“This passage [from Goethe’s Faust] is based on a remarkable insight, namely that he who wins power over a man’s blood wins power over the man himself. Blood is ‘a very singular fluid’ because whenever there is a struggle between good and evil in a man’s life, it is really his blood that is being fought for.”—Lecture, “The Occult Significance of the Blood”, Berlin, 1906, p 4

(2)“Faust, representing striving man, enters into a pact with evil powers, represented by the emissary from hell, Mephistopheles. At first he regards it as a joke, but Goethe undoubtedly means the words spoken by Mephistopheles at this point to be taken seriously: ‘Blood is a very special fluid.’”—SSK, 1906, p 21

Cosmo

“The Blood the Vehicle of the Ego....Goethe, who was an Initiate, also showed this [knowledge] in his Faust. Faust is about to sign the compact with Mephistopheles and asks, “Why not sign with ordinary ink? Why use blood?” Mephisto answers, “Blood is a most peculiar essence. He knows that who has the blood has the man; that without the warm blood, no Ego can find expression.”—p 145

 

Steiner

“Both the old Moon-consciousness and the new Jupiter-consciousness are to be found in the human being of today; the former in feelings of shame, the latter in feelings of fear and anxiety. In feelings of shame, in which the blood is pushed up towards the surface of the body....In feelings of anxiety, in which the blood flows back towards the heart....Imagine, my brothers and sisters, that suddenly, one day, such a Moon-person began to feel: ‘I am an I’.....The shame such a Moon-person would have felt would have burned in him overpoweringly.”—Guidance in Esoteric Training, 1907, p 106

Cosmo

“To further show the connection of the Ego with the blood we may mention the burning blush of shame, which is an evidence of the manner in which the blood is driven to the head, thus over-heating the brain and paralyzing thought. Fear is the state when the Ego wants to barricade himself against some outside danger. He then drives the blood to the center and grows pale, because the blood has left the periphery of the body.”—p 145

 

Steiner

“The substances of which the physical body is composed are perpetually changing; after about seven years, every particle has been renewed”—Theosophy of the Rosicrucian, 1907, p 53

Cosmo

“[T]he particles of our bodies are constantly changing...at least once in seven years there is a change in every atom of matter composing them.”—p 149

 

Steiner

“Within a period of 250 years, twenty-nine musicians were born in the Bach family....A good musician needs not only the inner musical faculty but also a well-formed physical ear...and these forms are transmitted by heredity.”—Theosophy of the Rosicrucian, 1907, p 74

Cosmo

“In cases where the expression of genius depends upon the possession of specially constructed organs, requiring ages of development, the Ego naturally is reborn in a family the Egos of which have, for generations, labored to build a similar organism. That is why twenty-nine musicians of more or less genius were born in the Bach family during a period of two hundred and fifty years.”—p 155

 

Steiner

1. “2,160 years is approximately the time needed for the accomplishment of a male and female incarnation, that is to say, for the two aspects under which the human being gathers all the experiences of one epoch.”—Esoteric Cosmology, 1906, p 78

2. “The period required by the sun for its passage through one zodiacal constellation is the period within which the human being is twice incarnated, once as a man and once as a woman.”—TR, 1907, p 56

Cosmo

“[E]very Ego is born twice during the time the Sun is passing through one sign of the Zodiac; and, as the soul itself is necessarily double-sexed, in order to obtain all experience, it is reborn alternately in a male and a female body.”—p 160

 

Steiner

“This feeding on what is dead is rightly connected with the desire for the ego. Man became independent through eating what is dead....Atlanteans...began for the first time to eat food that was not taken from what is living.”—Foundations of Esotericism, 1906, pp 244-45

 

Cosmo

“In the Fourth Epoch man had evolved beyond the animal—he had mind. Thought breaks down breaks down nerve cells; kills, destroys and causes decay. Therefore the food of the Atlantean was, by analogy, carcasses.”—p 166

 

Steiner

1. “In the old Mysteries only water was distributed, but in the Christian mysteries, wine. For in the priesthood, through the partaking of wine, knowledge of reincarnation was blotted out.”—FE, p 53

2. “Christianity therefore made the absolutely right compromise and for a period of time did not teach reincarnation and karma [cause and effect], but the importance of the single human existence, in order that man should learn to love the earth.”—Foundations of Esotericism, 1906, p 246

 

Cosmo

“[T]he time has now come when it was no longer conducive to man’s advancement that he should know this doctrine [of Rebirth] and ignorance concerning it came to be regarded as a sign of progress. This one single life was to be made paramount. Therefore we find that the Christian Religion, as publicly taught, does not embody the laws of Consequence and Rebirth.”—p 168

 

Steiner

“Therefore the Bible tells us that Noah, the original ancestor of the post-diluvian [post-Atlantean] race, became intoxicated by wine.”—Foundations of Esotericism, 1906, p 246

Cosmo

“[T]hose who escaped destruction [of Atlantis] began to cultivate the vine and make wine, as we find narrated in the Bible story of Noah. Noah symbolizes the remnant of the Atlantean Epoch, which became the nucleus of the Fifth Race—therefore our progenitors.”—p 168

 

Steiner

“As the era of Christianity drew near, man was destined to enter upon an epoch of concentration upon earthly efforts; he was to work towards the amelioration of earthly existence, the development of intellect, of logical and scientific understanding of Nature. The knowledge of reincarnation, therefore, was to be lost for two thousand years and wine was the means to this. Such is the profound background of the cult of Bacchus, the God of Wine and Intoxication.”—Esoteric Cosmology, 1906, p 51

Cosmo

Alcohol “acts upon the spirit of the Fifth Epoch man, temporarily paralyzing it, that it may know, esteem and conquer the physical world and value it at its proper worth....now...‘Bacchus,’ a god of wine, appears and under his sway the most advanced nations forget that there is a higher life.”—p 169

 

Steiner

1. “Thus they [Peter, James and John coming down from the Mount of Transfiguration] spoke to him as though reincarnation was taken as a matter of course, as also in many of other passages in the Gospels... ‘Say it unto no man until I come again.’ Here we have the general, religious, profound truth of reincarnation uttered in the intimate conversation between the Master and his disciples.”—Gospel of St. John, three lectures, Berlin, 1906, p 25

2. “Jesus taught reincarnation. For instance one can only make sense of the ninth chapter (the healing on the Sabbath of the man born blind) if one bases it on the idea of reincarnation....Neither had he sinned in his physical body, nor had his parents...But the works of God in man shall be made manifest, i.e., the self in man that passes through all his incarnations.”—ibid., pp 23-24

Cosmo

“In private He [Christ] taught Rebirth to His disciples....[but] He commanded them to ‘tell no man.’...This was to be, for thousands of years, an esoteric teaching, to be known only among the few pioneers who fitted themselves for the knowledge....That Christ taught Rebirth and also the law of Consequence is perhaps shown in no other place as clearly as in the case of the man who had been born blind....He is not surprised at the question....He explains, ‘Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents; but that the works of (the) God should be made manifest in him.’...Christ differentiates between the physically blind body of the man and the God within, which is the Higher Self.”—pp 169-171

 

Steiner

“Esoteric training begins in earnest only when we learn to work into the etheric (life) body.”—Lecture, “The World-Historical Significance of the Blood that Flowed on the Cross,” The Christian Mystery, 1907, p 73

Cosmo

“The object of all esoteric training is to so work on the vital body that the life spirit is built up and quickened.”—p 381 Also see Letters to Students: “The Western Wisdom School teaches as its fundamental maxim that ‘all occult development begins with the vital body.’”—p 182

 

Steiner

“All that has entered into us without our conscious will under the influence of divine wisdom—that is Involution. All that we must bring out of ourselves by dint of will—that is Evolution.”—EC, 1906, p 33

Cosmo

“The period of time devoted to the attainment of self-consciousness and to the building of the vehicles through which the spirit in man manifests, is called Involution. The subsequent period of existence, during which the individual human being develops self-consciousness into divine omniscience, is called Evolution.”—p 185

Steiner

1. “The astral earth consisted of human astral bodies joined together like a great blackberry.”—Foundations of Esotericism, 1905, p 166

2. “On Saturn the uniform substance differentiated...the organs became rounded into cell-like balls—as if you took a mulberry.”—Theosophy of the Rosicrucian, 1907, p 95

Cosmo

“[T]he whole Globe was composed of virgin spirits, as a raspberry is made of a great number of small raspberries.”—p 205

 

Steiner

“What was present in the former Sun-body as relics of Saturn are still to be found in the present Sun, as the so-called sun-spots. They are the last vestige of Saturn.”—Theosophy of the Rosicrucian, 1907, p 101

Cosmo

“These stragglers and the newly arrived life wave formed dark spots in the otherwise glowing gas sphere which was the densest Globe of the Sun Period, and our present Sun-spots are an atavistic remainder of that condition.”—p 225

 

Steiner

1. “This air permeated by watery substances (one calls it fire-air, or fire-mist) was breathed by the beings of the Moon. They had no lungs, even the highest beings breathed through something akin to gills, as present-day fishes do.”—Theosophy of the Rosicrucian, 1907, p 111.

2. “The human body on the Moon hung on a kind of strand which extended into the atmosphere, as today the child in the maternal body hangs on the navel cord. It was like a cosmic navel-cord.”—Theosophy of the Rosicrucian, 1907, p 112

Cosmo

“They did not touch the surface of the planet, but floated suspended by umbilical-like cords. Instead of lungs they had a gill-like apparatus through which they breathed the hot steamy ‘fire-fog.’ These features of the Moon existence are still recapitulated by the embryo during the period of gestation.”— p 228

 

Steiner

“[M]ediuimship is a relapse to an earlier age.”—Foundations of Esotericism, Berlin, 1905, p 66

Cosmo

“[M]ediums...have retrograded.”—p 241

 

Steiner

“As ice swims in water out of which it has condensed, so does matter swim in a sea of spirit out of which it has condensed. Everything physical is condensed, transformed Spirit.”—SSK, 1906, p 204

Cosmo

“To the Rosicrucians....space is Spirit in its attenuated form; while matter is crystallized space or Spirit.”—p 247

Steiner

“These words can be spoken...from the moment that ‘the cross wreathed in roses’—what this expresses—has become one’s ideal, one’s watchword. It stands as the symbol for a human being’s overcoming the lower self. He will then understand Goethe’s words in the poem: West-East Divan:

 

And until thou truly hast

This dying and becoming,

Thou art but a troubled guest

O’er the dark earth roaming.

 

Supersensible Knowledge, 1906, p 167

 

Cosmo

“It is axiomatic that ‘The oftener we die, the better we live.’ The Poet-Initiate, Goethe, says:

 

Who has not this—

Ever dying and bringing to birth—

Will aye remain a sorry guest

Upon this dismal earth.

                                                                  — p 249

 

Steiner

The “ground-color [of the etheric body] is different from any of the seven colors contained in the rainbow....[It] is actually non-existent for sense-perception but to which the color of young peach blossom may be comparable.”—Knowledge of Higher Worlds, 1904, p 164

Cosmo

“Four of these colors [of the invisible spectrum] are quite indescribable, but the fifth—the middle one of the five—is similar to the tint of a new-blown peach blossom. It is in fact the color of the vital body....a color that has no equivalent in the physical world.”—p 253

 

Steiner

Early humanity “had an organ for orienting himself, which is now only present in vestigial form. This so-called pineal gland...enabled the primeval human being to perceive whether he was approaching something helpful or harmful. Above all, though, it was an organ for perceiving warmth and cold.”—Guidance in Esoteric Training, 1907, p 97

Cosmo

“This organ has now degenerated into what is called the pineal gland. Sometimes it is called ‘the third eye,’ but that is a misnomer, because it never was an eye, but rather the localized organ for the sensing of heat and cold.”—p 262

 

Steiner

“[W]hen the Fire-mist forces were still present in the environment, he needed a kind of swimming bladder...as is the case with the fishes of present day...from a gill-breather man became a lung breather....And God breathes into his nostrils”—Theosophy of the Rosicrucian, 1907, p 120

Cosmo

“At that time Earth was in a condition of fire...seething, boiling water...[man] had a bladder like fishes have now...[and] gill-clefts, and he was breathing more as the fish do....In the middle third of Atlantis all that is changed....Therefore Jehovah...breathes into man’s nostrils.”—pp 262-63

 

Steiner

1) “Mankind must go through these seven spheres....Beside these there is an Eighth Sphere to which everything goes that cannot make any connection with this continuous evolution.” FE, 1905, p 105

2) “The astral sphere of the Moon...[is] the so-called eighth sphere. The Moon actually provides shelter for astral beings which have come into existence though the fact that man has thrown something off.”— Foundations of Esotericism, 1905, p 137

Cosmo

“The Moon—The Eighth Sphere—The seven Globes, A to G, inclusive, are the field of Evolution. The Moon is the field of Disintegration.”—p 264

 

 

Steiner

1. “If man stood only under the influence of the Sun he would dissolve in an immeasurably rapid process of growth. It is for this reason that...he has to leave the Sun....But if he had remained permanently connected with the latter [the old Moon], this retarding of his growth would have hardened him in a rigid form. Therefore he advanced to the development of earth, within which the two influences counterbalance each other.”—Cosmic Memory (hereafter also noted as CM), 1904, pp 236-7.

2. “Jehovah wished to make of them [mankind] beautiful statues.”—Foundations of Esotericism, 1905, p 181

Cosmo

“If Earth had not segregated from the original Globe which is now the Sun, the rapidity of the vibrations would have disintegrated man’s vehicles....He would have become old before he had time to pass through youth....On the other hand had the Moon remained with the Earth, man would have crystallized into a statue. The separation of the Earth from the Sun...enables man to live at the proper rate of vibration....The Moon-forces reach him from the exact distance necessary to enable him to build a body of the proper density.”—pp 264-265

Steiner

The “‘Spirits of Darkness’ are also called ‘Spirits of Personality’ or of ‘Selfhood’ (Egoism)....The degeneration of selfhood into selfishness must be ascribed to their activity, while on the other hand they are the originators of all of man’s independence.”—Cosmic Memory, 1904, p 178-179

Cosmo

“In the Earth Period the Lords of Mind reached the Creator-stage....They are called ‘Powers of Darkness’ by Paul.”—p. 222 “We owe to the Lords of Mind the separate personality, with all the possibilities for experience and growth thus afforded. And this point marks the birth of the individual.”—p 266

 

Steiner

The soul’s “male element is related to what is called will, its female element to what is called imagination.”—Cosmic Memory, 1904, p 88

Cosmo

“The sex of the Ego....manifests...as two distinct qualities—Will and Imagination. The Will is the male power...Imagination is the female power.”—p 267

 

Steiner

“Mars left this iron in the Earth in a vaporous form. But for this occurrence....he [man] would never have acquired warm blood, for there is iron in the blood.”—At the Gates of Spiritual Science, 1906, p 86

Cosmo

“[I]ron is essential to the production of warm red blood....[T]he influence of Mars over the iron in the Earth....has ceased and iron has become available for use on our planet.”—p 268

 

Steiner

“In days of yore, the sexual organs (the procreative forces) and the organ of the voice (the word creative) were united. Two poles have appeared in man’s being, where formerly there was but one single organ”—An Esoteric Cosmology, 1906, p 71

Cosmo

The larynx “was originally a part of the creative organ. The larynx was built while the dense body was yet bent together....As the dense body straightened and became upright, part of the creative organ remained with the upper part of the dense body and later became the larynx.”—p 269

 

Steiner

“The force by which mankind forms a thinking brain for itself is the same by which mankind impregnated himself in ancient times. The price of thought is single-sexedness.  By no longer impregnating themselves, but rather by impregnating each other, human beings can turn a part of their productive energy within, and so become thinking creatures—Cosmic Memory, 1904, p 90

Cosmo

“As a result of this change only one part of the force essential in the creation of another being was available to one individual, hence it became necessary for each individual to seek the co-operation of another, who possessed that part of the procreative force which the seeker lacked. Thus did the evolving entity obtain brain consciousness of the outside world at the cost of half its creative power....however, it has evolved the power to create and express thought.”—pp 269-270

 

Steiner

“Ordinary theosophical literature has caused much confusion. This has especially been done by Sinnett’s Esoteric Buddhism, the book which, on the other hand, has the great merit of having been the first to popularize the theosophical world-outlook in recent times.” Cosmic Memory, 1904, p 222

Cosmo

“The writer...simply sets forth in the next few paragraphs what he has received, which shows how the differing (and seemingly contradictory) teaching of two such valuable works as The Secret Doctrine, by H.P. Blavatsky, and Esoteric Buddhism, by A.P. Sinnett, may be reconciled.”—p 270

 

Steiner

“In occultism therefore, we speak of the Mars half of Earth evolution and of the Mercury half. Whereas the other names describe a whole planet, Earth evolution is spoken of as ‘Mars-Mercury.’”—TR, 1907, p 80

Cosmo

“During the first three and one-half Revolutions Mars held sway....During the last three and one-half Revolutions Mercury will operate....Therefore occult science speaks of the Earth Period as Mars-Mercury.”—p 274

 

Steiner

The Earth “had formerly been surrounded by fire-mists, as in a seething steaming vessel, and then by degrees the dense watery vapors withdrew. The Earth was now covered by a very thin hardened crust, beneath which lay a bubbling churning sea of fire, the remains of the fire-mist of the former atmosphere. Then gradually tiny islands emerged, the first beginnings of our present mineral kingdom.”—TR, 1907, p 121

Cosmo

“The crust of the Earth was just starting to become quite hard and solid in some places, while in others it was still fiery, and between islands of crust was a sea of boiling, seething water.”—p 275

 

Steiner

“Goethe says: ‘The eye is formed by the light for the light.’ He means that light is the creator of the eye, and this is perfectly true. We see how true it is if we observe how the eye degenerates in the absence of light. For example, in Kentucky caves certain creatures did not need eyes. Gradually they lost the light of the eyes, and their eyes atrophied...Thus, if there were no light, there would be no eyes.”—Gates, 1906, p 40

Cosmo

“In an analogous manner, the perception of light called forth the eye. The light itself built the eye and maintains it. Where there is no light there can be no eye. In cases where animals have withdrawn and dwelt in caves—keeping away from the light—the eyes have degenerated and atrophied because there were no light rays to maintain them and no eyes were needed in the dark caves.”—p 276

 

Steiner

“The eye has been formed out of the physical organization by light. Light is the progenitor of the eye.”—Theosophy of the Rosicrucian (hereafter TR), fourteen lectures given in Munich, May-June, 1907, p 43

Cosmo

“As surely as the pre-existing light created the eye whereby the light is seen....”(p 18). “[T]he perception of light called forth the eye. The light itself built the eye and maintains it.”—p 276

 

Steiner

“What the Akasha Chronicle [Memory of Nature] shows with respect to this raising of [Lemurian] children surpasses everything contemporary man can picture to himself in his boldest imagining. The bearing of heat, even of a searing fire, the piercing of the body with pointed objects were quite common procedures....[The men] could lift enormous loads merely by using their will....The female...was directed toward developing a strong imagination. For example she was exposed to the storm....She had to witness the combats of the men.”—Cosmic Memory, 1904, pp 73-74

Cosmo

The Lemurian methods of education seem shocking to our more refined sensibilities....The education of the boys was designed especially to develop the quality of Will. They were made to fight one another, and these fights were extremely brutal. They were impaled upon spits. They learned...to carry immense burdens by the exercise of the Will. The education of the girls was intended to promote the development of the imaginative faculty...They were put out in the great forests...to listen to the furious outbursts of flood and tempest....and to perceive...the grandeur of the warring elements.”—p 279

 

Steiner

“They took the forces of nature into themselves, where they had an after effect in the soul. Thus the germs of memory were formed. With memory was also born the capacity to form the first and simplest moral concepts....It was from the manner of life of the women that the first ideas of ‘good and evil’ arose.”—Cosmic Memory, 1904, p 78

Cosmo

“The above mentioned strenuous experiences were for the purpose of developing memory....The education of the girls developed the first germinal, flickering memory. The first idea of Good and Evil was formulated by them because of their experiences, which worked chiefly on the imagination.”—p 280

 

Steiner

The Lemurian “was—the expression should not be misinterpreted—a born magician.”—CM, 1904, p 73

Cosmo

“The Lemurian was a born magician.”—p 281

 

Steiner

The institutions “which served for the cultivation of ‘divine wisdom and divine art’...were educational and scientific. He who was found fit was here initiated into the science of the universal laws....If the Lemurian was a born magician, this talent was here developed into art and insight....Here one learned to know and control the forces of nature through direct contemplation of them....If one were to use an expression for these institutions...one could call them ‘colleges of will power and of the clairvoyant power of the imagination.’” —Cosmic Memory, 1904, p 75

Cosmo

“[A]t the School of Initiation he was taught art, the laws of Nature and facts relating to the physical universe....Thus the Temples of Initiation in the Lemurian times were High Schools for the cultivation of Will-power and Imagination, with ‘post-graduate courses’ in Art and Science. Yet, though the Lemurian was a born magician...his forces were directed toward the moulding of forms in the animal and the plant worlds.”— p 281

 

Steiner

“Now that force by means of which one human being turns toward the outside in order to act together with another is love. The superhuman beings directed all their love outward in order to let universal wisdom flow into their soul. ‘Man’ however can only direct a part of it outward. Man became sensual, and therefore his love became sensual. He draws away from the outer world that part of his nature which he directs toward his inner development. And thus that arises which one calls selfishness....He became selfish. And his action toward the outside became selfish; his striving after inner development also became selfish. He loved because he desired, and likewise he thought because he desired wisdom.” Cosmic Memory, 1904, p 99

Cosmo

“The force that goes outward for the purpose of creating another being is Love. The Angels sent their whole love, without selfishness or desire, and in return, Cosmic Wisdom flowed into them. Man sends out only part of his love; the residue he selfishly keeps and uses to build his inner organs of expression, to improve himself; thus does his love become selfish and sensual. With one part of his creative soul-power he selfishly loves another being because he desires co-operation in propagation. With the other part of his creative soul-power he thinks (also for selfish reasons) because he desires knowledge.”—p 285

 

Steiner

“By half-superhuman beings [Lucifers] man was brought to the point of directing his inner nature toward the sensuous external world....Now he began to follow the impulses and enticements of his conceptions. Therewith free choice became possible for man. This was the beginning of ‘good and evil.’” Cosmic Memory, 1904, p 107

Cosmo

The Lucifers told man how he “could become his own master and [be] like unto the gods, ‘Knowing good and evil.’ All of which knowledge was given with the one purpose of turning his consciousness outward for the acquirement of knowledge.”—p 287

 

Steiner

“Without these Luciferic beings, everything would have come to man as a gift from the gods. Man would have been wise, but not independent; enlightened, but not free. Because of these beings...man not only became wise, but could be fired with enthusiasm for wisdom and ideas.”—At the Gates of Spiritual Science, 1906, p 94

Cosmo

The Lucifers “brought him [mankind] the inestimable blessing of emancipation from outside influence and guidance, thereby starting him on the road to the evolution of his own spiritual powers—an evolution which will eventually enable him to upbuild himself with wisdom such as that of the Angels and other Beings who guided him before he first exercised free will.”—p 287

 

Steiner

“Lucifer is the name given to the Moon Adepts; they are the bestowers of human intellectuality....By the intervention of the Luciferic principle human independence and spirituality were saved.”—FE, 1905, p 182

Cosmo

Man’s “brain-consciousness and independence...resulted from his enlightenment by the Lucifer Spirits, the ‘light-givers,’ who opened the eyes of his understanding...[T]hey are the instigators of all mental activity.”—p 288

 

Steiner

“It was through the activity of this volcanic fire that the destruction of the Lemurian land came about.”— Cosmic Memory, 1904, p 83

Cosmo

“Volcanic cataclysms destroyed the greater part of the Lemurian continent.”—p 291

 

Steiner

“In the old Atlantean the etheric head projected far out beyond the physical head....Now we must think of a point in the physical brain in the place between the eyebrows, only about a centimeter lower, and a second point in the etheric head which would correspond to this. In the Atlantean these points were still far apart and evolution consisted precisely in the fact that they continually approached each other.”—Theosophy of the Rosicrucian, 1907, p 131

Cosmo

“The higher vehicles of the early Atlanteans were not drawn into a concentric position in relation to the dense body, as are ours....The head of the vital body was outside of and held a position far above the physical head. There is a point between the eyebrows and about half an inch below the surface of the skin, which has a corresponding point in the vital body....It might be called ‘the root of the nose.’ Finally, in the last third of the Atlantean Epoch, the point in the vital body was united to the corresponding point in the dense body.”—pp 292-294

 

Steiner

“Just as the empty center of a flame appears blue when seen through the light around it, so this empty space [‘shaped like a somewhat elongated blue oval, situated at the base of the nose, behind the brow’] appears blue because of the auric light streaming around it. This is the outer form of expression of the ‘I’.”—At the Gates of Spiritual Science, 1906, p 14

Cosmo

“When these two points in the dense and vital bodies come into correspondence, as they do in man today, the trained clairvoyant sees them as a black spot, or rather as a vacant space, like the invisible core of a gas flame. This is the seat of the...indwelling human Ego whose home it is.”—p 293

 

Steiner

“Today, man’s etheric head just fits the physical one. This is still not so with the horse.”—Occult Signs and Symbols, 1907, p 13

Cosmo

“The head of the horse’s vital body is far outside the head of its dense body.”—p 293

 

Steiner

“[T]he first subrace of the Atlanteans [was] that of the Rmoahals...Colors [and]...sounds...had a long after-effect in the soul....The Rmoahals developed feelings which their Lemurian ancestors did not yet know....The Atlantean period, therefore, is the one in which the development of language took place....They [the Rmoahals] not only named things, but in their words was a power over things....For them language was something especially sacred.” Cosmic Memory, 1904, pp 50-51

Cosmo

“The Rmoahals were the first of the Atlantean Races....They remembered colors and tones, and thus to some extent they evolved Feeling. The Lemurian had entirely lacked Feeling....The Rmoahals began to give names to things....in their words was power over the things they named....To them language was holy.”—pp 294-295

 

Steiner

“[T]he second subrace, the so-called Tlavatli peoples...began to feel their own personal value. Ambition...made itself felt among them....He demanded that his works be preserved in memory. Based upon this memory of deeds, a group of men who belonged together elected one as leader. A kind of regal rank developed....The memory, the remembrance of the ancestors of those who had acquired merit in life, developed. From this there emerged...religious veneration of the deceased, an ancestor cult.”—Cosmic Memory, 1904, p 52

Cosmo

“The Tlavatlis were the second atlantean Race. Already they began to feel their worth as separate human beings. They became ambitious, they demanded that their works be remembered. Memory became a factor in the life of the community. The remembrance of the deeds done by certain ones would cause a group of people to chose as their leader one who had done great deeds. This was the germ of royalty. This remembrance of the meritorious deeds of great men was carried even beyond the time when such leaders died. Mankind began to honor the memory of ancestors and to worship them and others who had show great merit.”—p 295

 

Steiner

“This kind of social communal life became fully developed only among the third subrace, the Toltecs....The deeds of the ancestors were not to be forgotten by their whole line of descendants....[I]n those times men actually had the power to transmit their gifts to their descendants....Through such a system of education the capacities of the father were generally transmitted to the son. Education, after all was calculated to mold the life through vivid images....[T]he educator...did not sharpen the power of thought, but in fact, developed those gifts which were of a more instinctive kind....In this way initiated kings and leaders of the Atlantean came into being. Enormous power was in their hands and they were greatly venerated....The greater the power became, the more he wanted to exploit it for himself. The ambition...turned into marked selfishness. Thus the misuse of powers arose.”—Cosmic Memory, 1904, p 53-54

Cosmo

“The Toltecs were the third Atlantean Race. They carried still further the ideas of their predecessors, inaugurating Monarchy and Hereditary Succession. The Toltecs originated the custom of honoring men for the deeds done by their ancestors...The father had the power to bestow his qualities upon his son....The education consisted of calling up before the soul of the child pictures of the different phases of life....The instinct and not the reason was appealed to and aroused....The Leaders of mankind initiated great Kings at that time to rule the people, over whom they were given great power. The masses honored these Kings with all the reverence due to those who were thus truly Kings ‘by the grace of God’....[I]n time the Kings became intoxicated with power....Ambition and selfishness ruled them.”—pp 296-297

 

Steiner

“[T]he fourth subrace, the Primal Turanians...used them [their powers over nature] in order to satisfy their selfish wishes and desires.” Cosmic Memory, 1904, p 55

Cosmo

“The Original Turanians were the fourth Atlantean Race. They were especially vile in their abominable selfishness.”—p 297

 

Steiner

“The origin of logical thinking must be sought among the fifth subrace, the Primal Semites.”—CM, 1906 p 55

Cosmo

The Original Semites were the fifth and most important of the seven Atlantean races, because in them we find the first germ of the corrective quality of Thought.”—p 297

 

Steiner

(1) “[T]he entire spiritual configuration of our planet Earth was changed with the appearance of Jesus Christ.”—Lecture, “The World-Historical Significance of the Blood that Flowed on the Cross,” 1907, p 79

(2) “A being who could observe the Earth from a distant star would see the physical Earth permeated and surrounded by an etheric and an astral body....would see a change in the colors at the moment when the blood flowed from Christ’s wounds....the entire astral body of the Earth had been changed.”—Lecture, 1907, p 260; both (1) and (2) from The Christian Mystery

Cosmo

“When the blood flowed [at the crucifixion, Christ] diffused His own desire body over the planet....At that moment a tremendous wave or spiritual sunlight flooded the Earth.”—406-407

 

Steiner

“The fifth subrace therefore developed thought at the expense of control of the life force....[It could] no longer give direct orders to nature....[It] formed the germ of the fifth, the Aryan race, whose mission is the complete development of the thinking faculty.”—Cosmic Memory, 1904, p 56

Cosmo

“[T]he Original Semitic Race became the ‘seed-race’ for the seven Races of the present Aryan Epoch....This faculty of Thought and of forming Ideas was gained by man at the expense of loss of control over the vital forces—i.e., power over Nature.”—p 298

 

Steiner

“Jacob gains his inheritance by employing ruse and cunning...the overcoming of physical force [Esau] through intelligence is here inaugurated.”—Foundations of Esotericism, 1905, p 259

Cosmo

“The Original Semites regulated their desires to some extent by the mind, and instead of mere desire, came cunning and craftiness....They were the first to discover that ‘brain’ is superior to ‘brawn.’”—p 299

 

Steiner

“Most of the people [surviving Atlanteans] migrated eastward toward Europe and Asia....The[ir] Leader was a high Initiate...[who] picked out the best of them to accompany him to a distant part of Asia...now known as the Gobi Desert.”—At the Gates of Spiritual Science, 1906, p 96

Cosmo

“Under the guidance of a great Entity, the Original Semitic Race was led eastward from the continent of Atlantis, over Europe, to the great waste in Central Asia which is known as the Gobi Desert.”—p 301

 

Steiner

“Mighty were the words which again and again he impressed upon his followers: ‘Until now you have seen those who led you; but there are higher leaders whom you do not see. It is these leaders to whom you are subject...and you shall obey one of whom you can make no image to yourselves.’”—Cosmic Memory, pp 64-65

Cosmo

“Their Leader therefore called the people together and delivered a soul-stirring oration, which might be thus expressed: ‘Hitherto you have seen Those who led you, but there are Leaders of varying grades of splendor, higher than They, Whom you have not seen....Exalted above all these glorious Beings stands the invisible God....This invisible God only, must you worship...and not make any graven image of him, nor use any likeness to picture him.”—pp 301-2

 

Steiner

“The men of the sixth subrace, the Akkadians, developed the faculty of thought even further.”—CM, p 56

Cosmo

“They [the Akkadians] evolved the faculty of thought still further.”—p 303

 

Steiner

The Mongols...reached the conviction that what is oldest is also what is most sensible and can best defend itself.”—Cosmic Memory, 1904, p 58

Cosmo

“The Chinese Mongolians maintain to this day that the old ways are the best.”—p 303

 

Steiner

1. “The human initiates, the sacred teachers, became leaders of the rest of mankind in the beginning of the fifth root race [Aryan Epoch].”—Cosmic Memory, 1904, p 69

2. “The higher divine messengers retired from earth more and more and left the leadership to these human initiates.”—Cosmic Memory, 1904, p 70

Cosmo

“The most advanced among humanity at the beginning of the Aryan Epoch were given the higher Initiations, that they might take the place of the messengers of God....Such human Initiates were from this time forth the only mediators between God and man.”—p 304

 

Steiner

“It is to the original Semite civilization that we owe everything that has existed up till the present time. But now there begins a new impact with the Slavonic Peoples which will lead into the future... This is working as hidden spirituality out of the Russian peasantry.”—Foundations of Esotericism, 1905, p 250

Cosmo

“From the Slavs will descend a people which will form the last of the seven Races of the Aryan Epoch.”—p 306

 

Steiner

“Haeckel approached me. Two weeks later he wrote an article...in which he publicly supported my point of view....[T]here is no better scientific foundation to esotericism than Haeckel’s teaching.... Thinking in the 19th Century [one of Steiner’s early books]...is dedicated to Haeckel. At present, German spiritual life really exists only in Haeckel’s phylogeny [which incorporates the concept of epigenesis].”—Letter to Edouard Schuré‚ 1907, Correspondence and Documents, p 13

Cosmo

“Haeckel (that great and fearless student of nature as he sees it, and very near to knowledge of the complete truth regarding evolution) says of the Theoreia Generationis [Caspar Wolff’s 1759 treatise that advances the evolutionary concept of epigenesis]...‘it is one of the most valuable works in the whole literature of biology.’ Haeckel’s own views we find thus stated in his Anthropogenie: ‘Nowadays we are hardly justified in calling Epigenesis an hypothesis, as we have fully convinced ourselves of its being a FACT and are able at any moment to demonstrate it...’”—p 339

 

Steiner

“All our present mammals are relics of the Moon animal-men who stayed behind...the present Ape species. They too, however, were never actual ancestors of mankind, but beings which had degenerated.”—Theosophy of the Rosicrucian, 1907, p 122

Cosmo

“The lower monkeys, instead of being the progenitors of the higher species, are stragglers occupying the most degenerated specimens of what was once the human form. Instead of man having ascended from the anthropoids, the reverse is true—the anthropoids have degenerated from man.”—p 342

 

Steiner

“And because [prehistoric] man was possessed of this [picture] consciousness...in naming himself he included in that name everyone belonging to his ancestral line. Father, son, grandson, etc. designated by one name that which passed through them all.” The Occult Significance of the Blood, 1906, p 27

Cosmo

 “[F]or ages he did not think of himself primarily as an individual, but as belonging to a tribe or a family. The affix ‘son’ to many present day surnames is a remnant of this feeling.”—p 351

 

Steiner

“A person could remember not only his own childhood, but his ancestors’ lives, because they were contained in the pictures absorbed by his blood....A son would feel at one with his father, and grandfather, as if they were sharing the same ‘I.’ This was also the reason he did not give himself a personal name but one that included past generations.”—Supersensible Knowledge, 1906, p 41

Cosmo

“When the same unmixed strain of blood flows in the veins of a family for generations, the same mental pictures made by great-grandfather, grandfather and father are reproduced in the son by the family-spirit....He sees himself as the continuation of a long line of ancestors who live in him. He sees all the events of the past lives of the family as though he had been present.”—pp 353-54

 

Steiner

“Endogamy preserves the blood of the generations....Exogamy inoculates man with new blood, and this breaking down of the tribal principle, this mixing of blood...signifies the birth of intellect.”—Occult Significance of the Blood, 1906, p 28

Cosmo

“The former ‘common’ consciousness, the involuntary clairvoyance...caused him to feel most closely identified with the tribe or family, was to be replaced for a time by a strictly individual consciousness confined to the material world.”—p 355

 

Steiner

“When, through marriage, blood is mingled with strange blood...the result is the extinction of the original kind of clairvoyance and the birth in evolution of a new consciousness....In the human kingdom strange blood kills the hazy clairvoyance that is based on kindred blood.”—Supersensible Knowledge, 1906, p 44

Cosmo

“In order to accomplish this separation of nations into individuals, laws were given which prohibited endo- gamy or marriage in the family....Strange blood has thus been introduced into all the families of the Earth and it has gradually wiped out the involuntary clairvoyance which promoted the clannish feeling.”—p 355

 

Steiner

“Modern science has discovered recently that if blood from one animal is mixed with that of another not akin to it, the two types of blood prove fatal to one another. This is something that has been known to spiritual knowledge for a long time....Our modern intellectual life is entirely the outcome of the mingling of blood.”—Supersensible Knowledge, 1906, p 44

Cosmo

“Science has lately discovered that haemolysis results from the inoculation of the blood of one individual into the veins of another of a different species, causing the death of the lower of the two.”— p 356

 

Steiner

“If you mingle the blood of human beings with that of the lower apes, the result is destructive to the species, since the one is too far removed from the other. Whereas, if you mingle the blood of man with that of the higher apes, death does not ensue.”—Occult Significance of the Blood, 1906, p 30

Cosmo

“When the blood of a higher animal is inoculated into the veins of one from a lower species, the spirit in the blood of the higher animal is of course stronger than the spirit of the less evolved; hence when it endeavors to assert itself it kills the imprisoning form and liberates itself. When, on the other hand, the blood of a lower species is inoculated into the veins of a higher animal, the higher spirit is capable of ousting the less evolved spirit in the strange blood and assimilating the blood to its own purposes, therefore no visible catastrophe ensues.”—p 356

 

Steiner

The first public use of the term “Mystery of Golgotha” was in Steiner’s book Christianity as Mystical Fact, 1902. Example: “The initiation of Lazarus was intended to prepare the way for an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha.”—p 142. For an in-depth study of this Event the reader is directed to the book Building Stones for Understanding the Mystery of Golgotha, ten lectures given in Berlin, 1917

Cosmo

See “the Great Mystery of Golgotha”, p 374 and the section “The Mystery of Golgotha”, p 400

 

Steiner

1. “We have designated the outstanding leader of these spirits [Angels] as the ‘Holy Spirit’ or the ‘Holy Ghost,’ The Regent of the Fire Spirits as the ‘Christ,’ that of Saturn as the ‘Father God.’ Thus the last who had been at work with His hosts was the Spirit named in Christianity ‘the Holy Spirit,’ the Regent of the Moon-evolution, the Spirit....Who now was Leader, Jehovah.”—Theosophy of the Rosicrucian, 1907, p 124

2. “As the highest Regent of Saturn, the Ego Spirit appears to us as the Father God, the highest God of the Sun, the Sun-God, as Christ, so will the Regent of the Moon-stage of the Earth appear as the Holy Spirit with His Hosts—the Angels.”—Theosophy of the Rosicrucian, p 103

Cosmo

“The Father is the highest Initiate among the humanity of the Saturn Period....The Son (Christ) is the highest Initiate of the Sun Period....The Holy Spirit (Jehovah) is the highest Initiate of the Mood Period.”—p 376

 

Steiner

“Anatomy shows that in their structure the muscles of the human body are of two kinds...smooth muscles [which] in general are those independent of human volition...on the other hand, those muscles are striated which mediate movements under the influence of human volition....The heart...constitutes an exception....the heart is not subject to volition in its movements, yet it is a ‘transversely striated’ muscle.... It is on its way to becoming a voluntary muscle. In the future it will execute movements which will be the effects of the inner soul impulses of man.”—Cosmic Memory, 1904, p 239

Cosmo

“We have previously spoken of the two kinds of muscles—voluntary and involuntary. The latter are formed in lengthwise stripes and are connected with functions not under the control of the will....The voluntary muscles are those which are controlled by the will....[But] the heart is cross-striped like a voluntary muscle....as the Ego [has] gained more and more control over the heart, the cross-stripes have gradually developed. [A]s the altruistic principles of love and brotherhood increase...these cross-stripes become more numerous and more marked.”—p 396

 

Steiner

“The death of Buddha corresponds with the transfiguration of Jesus....Buddha’s earthly life ends at this point, but it is here that the most important part of the life of Jesus begins—His suffering, death, and resurrection.”—Christianity as Mystical Fact, 1902, pp 112-113

Cosmo

“When death came Moses’ face shone and Buddha’s body became alight. They all reached the stage when the spirit begins to shine from within—but then they died. Christ Jesus reached that state on the Mount of Transfiguration. It is of the very highest significance that His real work took place subsequent to that event. He suffered; was killed—and resurrected.”—p 406

 

Steiner

“Christian Esotericism knows that there was incarnated in the body of flesh and blood of Christ-Jesus precisely such a Sun-Fire Spirit, and indeed the highest, the Regent of the Sun Spirits....He forms thus the highest planetary Spirit of the Earth. The Earth today is His Body.”—Theosophy of the Rosicrucian, 1907, p 100

Cosmo

“[Christ entered] the hampering conditions of [human] physical existence; nor is His present limitation as Regent of the Earth much less painful. True, He is also Regent of the Sun...yet the limitations set by the crampingly slow vibrations of our dense planet must be almost unendurable.”—p 408

 

Steiner

“In Scandinavia and Russia, there were the Trotten Mysteries, corresponding to the Druidic Mysteries. ‘Trotte’ is the same word as ‘Druid’.”—“Parsifal and Lohengrin,” lecture in Cologne, 1905

Cosmo

“The Druids of Ireland and the Trottes of Northern Russia were esoteric schools through which the Master Jesus worked during the so-called ‘Dark Ages.’”—409

 

Steiner

“Not much can be publicly communicated about the life on this planet [Vulcan]....only the mystery students of the higher order, who may leave their physical body and can acquire supersensible knowledge outside of it, can learn something about Vulcan.” Cosmic Memory, 1904, p 172

Cosmo

“Very little can be said about the high spiritual consciousness which will be attained at the close of the Vulcan Period; it would be quite beyond our present comprehension.”—p 420

 

Steiner

“The days of the week are an image of planetary evolution. The sequence of the planets is inscribed in a wonderful way in the days of the week:

 

       Saturn                                                  Samstag                       Saturday

       Sun                                                      Sonntag                        Sunday

       Moon                                                   Montag                        Monday

       Mars                (Tiu)                             Dienstag                       Tuesday, Mardi

       Mercury           (Wotan)                       Mittwoch                      Wednesday, Mercredi

       Jupiter              (Donar)                        Donnerstag                   Thursday, Jeudi

       Venus               (Freya)                         Frietag                          Friday, Vendredi

       Vulcan              (the octave of Saturn)   Samstag                       Saturday”        

        

Foundations of Esotericism, 1905, pp 207-8

 

Cosmo

“The great creative Day of Manifestation is embodied in the names of the days of the week....”—p 411

                                                                                                                               —p 411

 

 

Steiner

“There are thus seven planets, each going through seven Rounds [Revolutions] and each Round through seven Form-conditions, expressed as 777 in occult script. In that script, 7 in the unit position means globes, in the tens, the Rounds, and in the hundreds, Planets [Periods]. We therefore have to multiply the figures, and so we find that our planetary system has to pass through 7 by 7 by 7, or 343 transformations.”—At the Gates of Spiritual Science, 1906, p 82

Cosmo

“Occult science teaches that there are 777 [actually 343] incarnations, but that does not mean that the Earth undergoes 777 metamorphoses. It means that evolving life makes 7 Revolutions around the 7 Globes of the 7 World Periods.”—p 412; see also Diagram 8 on p 197 (“The 777 [343] Incarnations”)

 

Steiner

1. “An even more important spiritual current than Rosicrucianism was Manicheism.”—The Temple Legend, 1904-06, p 60

2 “The members of the Manichean Order are already learning how to transform quite radically those who by nature are wholly evil.”—At the Gates of Spiritual Science, 1906, p 73

Cosmo

“The Manichees, an Order of still higher spirituality than the Rosicrucians, are at present studying that very problem [of how to deal with evil]....evil...must be punished with good....and in this way the evil is in time overcome. Hate which will not submit to hate, must succumb to Love.”—pp 418-19

 

Steiner

“Not much can be publicly communicated about the life on this planet [Vulcan]....only the mystery students of the higher order, who may leave their physical body and can acquire supersensible knowledge outside of it, can learn something about Vulcan.” Cosmic Memory, 1904, p 172

Cosmo

“Very little can be said about the high spiritual consciousness which will be attained at the close of the Vulcan Period; it would be quite beyond our present comprehension.”—p 420

 

Steiner

1.      Old Saturn                                Deep trance-consciousness

2.      Old Sun                                    Dreamless sleep-consciousness

3.      Old Moon                                Dreaming sleep or picture consciousness

4.      Earth                                        Waking consciousness or awareness of objects

5.      (Future) Jupiter             Conscious picture consciousness

6.      (Future) Venus             Super-conscious life consciousness

7.      (Future) Vulcan                        Spiritual or self-conscious universal consciousness

 

                                                                                      Foundations of Esotericism, 1905, p 194

Cosmo

Period                                     Corresponding consciousness

Saturn.............................Unconsciousness corresponding to deep trance

Sun.................................Unconsciousness resembling dreamless sleep

Moon..............................Picture consciousness corresponding to dream state

Earth...............................Waking, objective consciousness

Jupiter.............................Self-conscious picture consciousness

Venus..............................Objective, Self-consciousness, Creative consciousness

Vulcan............................Highest Spiritual Consciousness

                                                                                                                          —p 421

 

Steiner

“It is for man to make the Earth into a temple of truth, beauty and goodness....Having transformed the mineral world, man will....be able to create and give shape to plant life....At a still higher stage, he will give form not only to living beings but to conscious beings. He will have power over animal life. When he has reached the stage of being able to reproduce his like by an act of conscious will, he will accomplish, at a higher level, what he accomplishes today in the mineral world.”—An Esoteric Cosmology, 1906, p 103

Cosmo

“Our present humanity...now ensouls the minerals....In the Jupiter Period....we shall have the ability...to endow these [plant] forms with vitality. In the Venus Period ...we shall be...giving them [animals] living and feeling forms. Lastly, in the Vulcan Period, it will be our privilege to give them a germinal mind, as the Lords of Mind did to us.”—pp 427-428

 

Steiner

“What is right for Indian people is not right for Europe....everything on occult teaching that today is brought into the open was also possessed by the Rosicrucians in the Middle Ages.”—FE, 1905, p 109

Cosmo

“In India, certain methods under different systems of Yoga are used....[They are] unsuitable for the people of the West....That is why ‘Mysteries’ were established in different parts of Europe during the Middle Ages.—pp 437-438

 

Steiner

“[T]here is one thing that must surely destroy the necessary link between teacher and pupil. This happens if the pupil loses confidence in the teacher.”—Higher Stages of Knowledge, 1905, p 31

Cosmo

“[U]nwavering confidence in the teacher is absolutely necessary.”—p 440

“[I]t is absolutely essential that loyalty to the Teacher” follow “indubitable proof of his superior knowledge and ability....[U]nless that faith is there, there is no use in continuing.”—Mystery of the Great Operas, pp 164-165

 

Steiner

“The Stone of the Wise...is something which everyone holds in his hands for part of almost every day, but without knowing it is the Philosopher’s Stone.”—At the Gates of Spiritual Science, 1906, p 122

Cosmo

“The statement that the Rosicrucians were a society devoted to the discovery and use of the formula for the making of the ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ was and is true. It is also true that most people have handled and do often handle this wondrous stone.”—p 438

 

Steiner

“The occultist calls milk: the Moon-food. Sons of the Moon are those who nourish themselves on milk. The Moon [Period] brought about milk. It has been verified that [original earth forces which]...brought mankind into existence...must also be health bringing, so we ourselves gain the power to further health when we only take milk.”—Foundations of Esotericism, 1905, pp 243-44

Cosmo

“During the Moon Period man was fed on the milk of Nature. Universal food was absorbed by him and the use of milk has a tendency to put him in touch with the Cosmic forces and enable him to heal others.”—p 447

Steiner

“There are certain muscles near the ear which nowadays seem purposeless. Earlier they had their significance; they served to move the ears at will; there are few persons who can do this today.”—TR, 1907, p 86

Cosmo

“[T]he muscles which animals use to move the ears are present in man also, but as they are atrophying, few people can use them.”—p 473

 

Steiner

“These two organs, the pineal gland and the pituitary gland as active organs, must develop into the organ of vision (eye) and the organ of warmth (heart).”—Foundations of Esotericism, 1905, p 36

Cosmo

“To regain contact with the inner Worlds, all that remains to be done is the reawakening of the pituitary body and the pineal gland.”—p 477

 

Steiner

“We must think of the Earth as consisting of a series of layers, not completely separated from one another like the skins of an onion.”—At the Gates of Spiritual Science, 1906, p 138

Cosmo

“To the trained clairvoyant sight...the Earth appears built in strata, something like an onion.”—p 499

 

Steiner

(1) “[W]hat makes the human being egoistic is incarnated in Judas Iscariot”—Lecture, Berlin, 1907, p 101

(2) “Then he said, ‘one of you will betray me’ (John 13:21). The betrayer is egoism, the lower desires.”—Lecture, “The Mystery of Golgotha,” Cologne, 1906, p 56. Both quotes from The Christian Mystery

Cosmo

“Judas Iscariot is the traitorous propensities of the lower nature of the neophyte.”—p 502

 

Steiner

“What does the occultist say about the interior of the Earth?...

1)      [R]elated to the interior as an eggshell is to the egg. This topmost layer is called the Mineral Earth.

2)      ...the Fluid Earth....is not really like any of the fluids we know....as soon as it is brought into contact with something living, it strives to expel and destroy this life...

3)      The Air-Earth. This is a substance which annuls feelings; for instance, if it is brought into contact with any pain, the pain is converted into pleasure, and vice versa...

4)      The Water-Earth or Form Earth. “It produces in the material realm the effects that occur spiritually in Devachan [the Thought World]. Thus we have the negative pictures of physical things....

5)      The Fruit-Earth. This substance is full of exuberant energy....It is the underlying life which serves the forms of the layers above it.

6)      Fire-Earth. Its substance is essentially feeling and will. It is sensitive to pain and would cry out if it were trodden on. It consists, as it were, entirely of passions.

7)      Earth-mirror or Earth-reflector. This layer...changes all the characteristics of the Earth into their opposites. A polaric reflection arises, a reversal of the original....

8)      Divisive layer...[anything in] this layer appears to be multiplied....

9)      Earth Core                                                          

                                                                        At the Gates of Spiritual Science, 1906, pp 138-139

 

 

 

Cosmo

‘[T]he arrangement of the Earth’s strata....

1)      The Mineral Earth: This is the stony crust of the Earth....

2)      The Fluid Stratum....It has the quality of expansion....

3)      Vapor Stratum....in this stratum there is an ever-flowing and pulsating life....

4)      Water Stratum....here are...the archetypal forces of the minerals

5)      Seed Stratum....is the primordial fount of life...that built all the forms on earth ....

6)      Fiery Stratum...is possessed of sensation. Pleasure and pain, sympathy and antipathy have here their effect on the Earth.

7)      Refracting Stratum...[is] an exact reflection of the existing moral status of mankind....

8)      Atomistic Stratum....It seems to have the property of multiplying many fold the things in it....

9)      Material Expression of the Earth Spirit....lemniscate currents....

10)  Center of Being of the Earth Spirit...ultimate seek ground     

                                                                                                             —pp 503-507

 

Steiner

“Fire Earth...forces its way through channels in the upper layers and even flows up into and violently shakes the solid earth: the result is an earthquake. If this passion from the fire-earth thrusts up some of the Earth’s substance, a volcano erupts. All this is closely connected with man...Through their passions the Lemurian made the Fire-Earth rebellious...and they brought the whole Lemurian continent to destruction.”—At the Gates of Spiritual Science, 1906, p 103

Cosmo

“When the Nature forces in the seventh stratum are unleashed so that they can express themselves through a volcanic outburst, they set the (sixth) fiery stratum in motion and the agitation spreads outward through the mouth of the crater....[It] is the reflected immorality and anti-spiritual tendencies of mankind which arouse the Nature-forces in the seventh stratum to destructive activity.”—pp 507-08

 

Steiner

“The Ptolemaic system holds good for the astral plane, the Copernican for the physical.”—At the Gates of Spiritual Science, 1906, p 103

Cosmo

“The Copernican theory is not altogether correct....The Ptolemaic system is correct from the standpoint of the Desire World...”—p 514

Steiner

(1) “Religion, art and science were united in the ancient primordial drama; then came the division and three separate currents began to flow out of the one source contained in the Greek mysteries. Each current owes its development to the fact that it went its own separate way. In the course of time a ‘religious’ element arose for the soul, an ‘artistic’ one for the sense, and a ‘scientific’ one for the understanding. This was inevitable, for perfection could be reached only if man unfolded every one of his capacities separately until they attained the highest level of development....If religion is led toward the highest form of Christianity, it is willing to become united with art and science. Art...will reach the summit if it becomes permeated with true religion. And science, which has reached its full development in the modern period, has really given the impulse for the reunion of these three currents.”—“Richard Wagner in the Light of Spiritual Science,” lecture in Berlin, 1905

(2) “[I]n ancient Greece...Knowledge, art and religion were a unity.”—Supersensible Knowledge, p 174

Cosmo

“There was a time, even as late as Greece, when Religion, Art, and Science were taught unitedly in Mystery temples. But it was necessary to the better development of each that they should separate for a time....It was a detriment to the world when Religion shackled Science....It is infinitely more disastrous that Science is killing Religion....Such a state cannot continue....To avert a calamity Religion, Science and Art must reunite in a higher expression of the Good, the True and the Beautiful than obtained before the separation.”—p 517

 

Steiner

“[The] great Founder [of the Rosicrucians], who since its inception has been constantly on the physical plane...to all appearances [withdrew during]....the first half and also during a large part of the second half of the nineteenth century.”—Theosophy of the Rosicrucian, 1907, p 10, italics added

Cosmo

“That particular Ego [Christian Rosenkreutz] has also been in continuous physical existence ever since [the thirteenth century], in one or another of the European Countries.”—p. 518

 

Steiner

“Everything published, written, or printed [about Rosicrucianism] is nothing but fragments, lost through betrayal into public hands. Not only are these fragments inaccurate, they have undergone all kinds of distortions through charlatanry, fraud, incomprehension and sheer stupidity. As long as it has existed, genuine Rosicrucianism has been passed on by word of mouth to members sworn to secrecy. That is why nothing of great importance has found its way into public literature.”—Supersensible Knowledge, 1906, p 145

Cosmo

“In the past these [Rosicrucian Mysteries] have been kept secret from all but a few Initiates, and even today they are among the most mysterious and secret in the Western World. All so-called ‘discoveries’ of the past which have professed to reveal the Rosicrucian secrets, have been either fraudulent, or the result of treachery upon the part of some outsider who may, accidentally or otherwise, have overheard fragments of conversation, unintelligible to all but those who have the key.”—p 521

 

Steiner

If “these lectures on Rosicrucian Theosophy....[have] been understood, not only abstractly, but so that feelings have been evoked through knowledge of the facts, then it can work directly into life. When this knowledge flows into all our members, from head to heart and thence into the hand, into all that we do and create, then we have grasped the foundation of spiritual science”—Theosophy of the Rosicrucian, 1907, pp 167-168

Cosmo

“But, and this is a very important “But,” the Rosicrucians do not regard an intellectual understanding of God and the Universe as an end in itself, far from it! The greater the intellect, the greater the danger of its misuse. Therefore, this scientific, logical and exhaustive teaching is given in order that man may believe in his heart that which his head has sanctioned and start to live the religious life.”—p 530

 

Steiner

“Those who belong to the [Esoteric] School complete their probationary time and eventually arrive at direct intercourse with the exalted ones themselves.”—Letter, 1905, History and Contents, p 74

Cosmo

“When the Probationer has complied with the necessary requirements and completed the term of probation, he may send request for individual instruction by the Elder Brothers...”—p 532

 

Steiner

“The link between the organ of speech and gender is sexuality. Therefore the man changes when he reaches puberty. The change [of voice] is nothing else than the expression of the former connection between the organs of speech and of sexuality...only the male form of the larynx is in a position to say, to know, what can be regained through the Lost Word.”—The Temple Legend, 1904-06, p 243

Cosmo

“[T]he present larynx was part of the creative organ....The connection of the two is seen even today in the fact that the body...changes his voice at puberty.”—p 536

 

Steiner

“The organ that is already preparing to become the future organ of generation is the human larynx. [I]n the future man’s inner being, his own likeness, which today is in his word, will issue from the larynx ...man will speak forth man.”—Theosophy of the Rosicrucian, 1907, p 148

Cosmo

 “Neither will he use his present organs of generation, but the larynx will speak the creative word as directed by the spirit through the coordinating mechanism of the brain.”—p 537

 

 

 

 

 

 

Collation of other Heindel books and corresponding Steiner texts:

 

Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures:

Parallels between Max Heindel’s book of twenty lectures and Steiner teachings made public and in print no later than 1907

 

Steiner

“The overpowering of a human being by means of hypnotism is a still stronger killing [than killing animals to obtain power in black magic rituals—intentional vivisection], for it destroys the will. The occultist therefore never intrudes into a person’s freedom; he only relates facts.”—Foundations of Esotericism, 31 Lectures, Berlin, 1905, p 146

Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures

“To control others by the exercise of will power is mental assault, and is even more reprehensible than assault on the physical plane of action. It is this mental assault which is called ‘hypnotism,” and it is graded in its effect just as physical assault is.”—pp 68-69

 

Steiner

Goethe “knew of the harmony of the spheres. He expressed it at the beginning of Faust in words spoken by the Archangel Raphael:

The Sun makes music as of old

Amid the sister-spheres of heaven.

On its predestined circle rolls

With roar of thunder.

 

Esoteric Cosmology (EC), eighteen lectures, Paris, 1906, p 45

 

Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures

“Goethe was an initiate, and in his Faust emphasizes twice the fact that in the heavenly realms all things are reducible to terms of sound. The opening scene is laid in heaven, and the Archangel Raphael is represented as saying:

“The sun intones his ancient song,

‘Mid rival chant of brother-spheres,

His prescribed course he speeds along,

In thunderous way throughout the years.

                                                                                                                                        —p 102

 

Steiner

“If iron filings are scattered on a piece of paper and a magnet is moved about underneath, the filings arrange themselves into forms and lines, following the forces of the magnet. In exactly the same way, the irregularly distributed astral [desire] substance is attracted and arranged according to the forces which are in the soul and correspond with what the soul has achieved in the previous life. These astral beings in the making...appear to the eye of the seer like bell-forms opening downward.”—Theosophy of the Rosicrucian (TR), fourteen lectures, Munich, 1907, p 46

Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures

“[T]he Ego...begins to draw to itself the material for a new mind, as a magnet draws iron filings around its poles....So with the seed-atom, it can attract in each region only such materials as it has affinity for, and only a certain definite quantity. This material then forms itself into a great bell-shaped thing, open at  the bottom and with the seed-atom at the top.”—p 114

 

Steiner

“When the human being passes into his etheric body...he has a prevision of his coming life...[With] an unhappy life in front of him, it may happen...that he now gets a shock and is hesitant to enter into the physical body. The result of this may be that he does not come right down into the physical body and so the connection between the several bodies is not fully established. This produces idiocy in the coming life...whereas in other circumstances the etheric body extends only slightly beyond the physical body, in the case of idiots portions of the etheric body are often to be seen as an etheric sheen extending far beyond the head.”—Theosophy of the Rosicrucian, 1907, pp 47-48

Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures

“[T]he incoming Ego sees...again the panorama of the coming life....and when a particularly hard life reveals itself to the vision of the returning Ego at the moment of entering the womb, it sometimes happens that the Ego is so startled and frightened that it seeks to rush out again....so that instead of the vital body being concentric with the dense body, the head of the vital body may be above the head of the dense body. Then we have the congenital idiot.”—pp 115-116

 

Steiner

“It is a false idea on the part of certain mystics to disparage the value of the physical body It has just as much value as the astral [desire] body; its mission is to become the temple of the soul.”—EC, 1906, p 33

Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures

“[T]he dense body has had much the longest evolution, and is by far the most perfect and valuable instrument we possess. When people who have sometimes but recently come to a knowledge of the existence of higher vehicles are constantly talking and thinking of how nice it would be to fly off in the desire body and leave the ‘low’ and ‘vile’ physical, it shows that they have not yet learned to appreciate the difference between ‘higher’ and ‘perfect.’ The dense body is a marvel of perfection.”—p 117 

 

Steiner

“Think of the marvelous structure of the femur, of the bone which bears the whole body. Its construction is such that the maximum amount of strength is produced with the minimum amount of substance. No engineer could create such a wonder-structure.”—Esoteric Cosmology, 1906, p 33

Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures

“[T]ake for instance the large bone of the thigh, the femur, and examine the thick ends. If we split it open we shall see that only a thin outside shell is made of compact bone. This is stiffened by beams and cross-beams of thin cancellated bone, making it of prodigious strength, coupled with a lightness as far beyond the skill of the greatest living structural engineer as differential calculus is beyond an ant.”—p 117

 

Steiner

“At this age [up to seven] nothing is achieved by admonition; commands and prohibitions have no effect whatever. But of the greatest significance is the example...Thus it is vital that during these years the educator is an exemplary example, that he or she only does what is worthy of imitation.”—Supersensible Knowledge, p 96

Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures

“[W]e ought never to do anything in the presence of the child which we would not be perfectly willing to have it imitate. It is no use to teach it to mind, or to moralize at this period; example is the only teacher the child needs or heeds.”—p 120

 

Steiner

“The essential aspect of this period can be summed up in two significant words: imitation and example.”—Supersensible Knowledge, p 96

Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures

“There are two magic words which denote the manner in which the child comes into contact with the formative influences of its environment—EXAMPLE and IMITATION.”—p 120

 

Steiner

“The child should not be given toys that are too finished and perfect...A doll made out of an old table napkin...is far better...because it stirs its imagination, and that induces movement of the inner organs and produces in the child a feeling of well-being.”—Supersensible Knowledge, 1906, p 97

Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures

“The child should be given playthings on which it may exercise its imitative faculty....Never give them anything finished, where they have nothing to do but look at it. That leaves the brain no chance for development, and it must ever be the care and aim of the educator at this time to furnish the means of developing the physical organs harmoniously.”—p 121

 

Steiner

“Happiness and joy build sound organs, and lay the foundation for future truth.”—SSK, 1906, p 97

Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures

“[R]hythm...builds the organs in a harmony not realized...this, and a cheerful atmosphere are the greatest of all means of education.”—p 121

 

Steiner

“If a child is inclined to be too earnest and too quiet, it will benefit from having in its surroundings rather somber, bluish, greenish colors, while the lively, too active child should have yellow, reddish colors....[because] through its inherent nature the sense of sight calls up the opposite color. The bluish shades have an invigorating effect, while in the lively child the yellowish-reddish shades call up the opposite color.”—SSK, 1906, p 97

Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures

“[C]omplementary colors...do the work in the organism of the child. If we have to do with a boisterous, hot-tempered nature, it is soothes and softened by an environment of red. Rooms, furniture and clothing of red will produce in the child a cooling green effect and calm its nerves. One who is of a melancholy and lethargic nature will be roused to action and life by an environment of blue or blue green, which creates in the child’s organs the warm, rousing red or orange.”—p 122

 

Steiner

“Great initiates created them [legends] out of their wisdom and imparted them to humanity. All myths, legends and folk-poetry help toward the solution of the riddle of the world and are founded on the inspiration of Initiates.”—At the Gates of Spiritual Science, fourteen lectures, Stuttgart, 1906, p 20

Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures

(1) “[T]hese [cosmological] truths were given to man as myths by divine leaders.”—p 150

 

 

 

 

Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures

“The four letters said to have been on the cross of Christ...go to show the cosmic character of the occurrence; these letters, I. N. R. I., are commonly supposed to have meant Jesus Nazarenus Rex Judaeorum, but they are also the initial letters of the Hebrew names of the four elements: Iam (water), Nour (fire), Ruach (air or spirit), Iabeshah (earth).”—p 155

 

Steiner

“To reach a meditative experience one must make oneself blind and deaf to all sense impressions. Nothing must be able to disturb one. Cannons can go off without one’s being aware of it.”—Gospel of St. John, p 6

Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures

“By eliminating from our mind for the time being all other subjects, our whole thought power is available for use in attaining the object or solving the problem on which we are concentrating; we may become so absorbed in our subject that if a cannon were fired above our heads we would not hear it.”—p 186

 

Steiner

“The formula he [John] used for meditation stands at the beginning of his Gospel...[I]n these five sentences lie the eternal verities which loosed the spell in John’s soul and brought forth the great visions.... The first five sentences must be taken as a formula of meditation.”—Gospel of St. John, 1906, p 6

Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures

“The subject of concentration may be any high and lofty ideal, but should preferably be of such a nature that it takes the aspirant out of the ordinary things of sense, beyond time and space; and there is no better formula than the first five verses of St. John’s Gospel.”—p 186

 

Steiner

“One discovers that myths and fables, far from containing naive views, are filled with primordial wisdom. A thorough study of myths and fables yields infinitely more insight than today’s intellectual, experimental sciences.”—Supersensible Knowledge, 13 Lectures, various cities, 1906-1907, p 23

Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures

“It is an erroneous idea when we think that a myth is a figment of human fancy, having no foundation in fact. On the contrary, a myth is a casket containing at times the deepest and most precious jewels of spiritual truth....[T]he Great Teachers who guide our evolution, unseen but potent, gave these spiritual truths to nascent man.”—p 195

 

Steiner

“The Holy Grail is the cup which was used by Jesus Christ at the Lord’s Supper, the cup in which he offered the bread and the wine and in which Joseph of Arimathea caught up the blood streaming out of the Christ’s wound....The spear which caused this wound and the chalice were born up by angels....[w]ho held it...until Titurel found them and built Monsalvat (which means: the Mountain of Salvation), a castle in which he could guard these treasures. Twelve knights gathered to serve the Holy Grail....Whenever they looked upon it they acquired new spiritual strength....Klingsor is the man who has mutilated himself in order not to fall a prey to the senses. But he has not overcome his desires, he has only taken away the possibility to satisfy them....Kundry is the real temptress in this kingdom: she attracts everyone who approaches Klingsor into the sphere of sensual love. Klingsor has not destroyed desire, but only the organ of desire.”—lecture, “Richard Wagner in the Light of Spiritual Science,” Berlin, 1905

Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures

(1) “On the night when our Lord and Savior Christ-Jesus ate the last supper with His disciples He drank the wine from a certain chalice and that was later used by Joseph of Arimathea to catch the life-blood which flowed from the wound in the Redeemer’s side. He also kept the bloody lance wherewith the wound was inflicted....At last they [these holy relics] were taken in charge by angels, who guarded them until ...Titurel, Amfortas’ father, [was told to] build a Castle for the[m]....Thus the Castle of Monsalvat was built on a high mountain, and the relics lodged there under the guardianship of Titurel with a band of holy and chaste knights whom he had drawn around him, and it became a center whence mighty spiritual influences went forth. But there lived in yonder heathen vale a black knight who was not chaste, yet he desired to become a knight of the Grail, and to that end he mutilated himself. He deprived himself of the ability to gratify his passion, but the passion remained.”—pp 198-199

(2) “Kundry.... is the unwilling slave of the magician Klingsor and is forced by him to tempt and harass the Grail-knights.”—ibid., pp 196-197; see also Mysteries of the Great Operas, pp 56-57

 

Steiner

“Every truth has seven meanings.”—Gospel of St. John, three lectures, Berlin, 1906

Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures

“Truth is many sided. There are at least seven valid interpretations to each myth, one for each World”—p 200

 

Steiner

1. The Asuras “were only twofold in their nature....They, too, possessed what we call soul, but the soul organ was enclosed within a physical body developed in sublime and titanic fashion....[W]hoever acknowledges purely materialistic principles can be sure that he has something of the Asuras in his nature.”—The Temple Legend, 1904-1906, p 9

2. The Asuras “are those powers which...represent the intellectual and spiritual side of human nature....[They] are the gods of the Secret Wisdom.”—Berlin, October 10, 1904 (unpublished lecture)

Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures

“The Lords of Mind reached the human stage in the Saturn Period. They were not ‘gods’ come here from an earlier evolution like the Cherubim and Seraphim, hence the eastern tradition calls them ‘A-suras,’ ‘Not-gods,’ and the Bible calls them ‘Powers of Darkness’....They became experts in the use of this “mind stuff,” and also set up an exceedingly intimate connection with us.”—p 222

 

Steiner

“To recognize that the human being is the plant inverted is basic to Rosicrucianism, as indeed to all esoteric knowledge. Human beings turn their reproductive organs toward the center of the earth; in the plant they turn toward the sun.”—Supersensible Knowledge, 1906, p 156

Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures

“It [the plant] stretches its creative organ, the flower, chastely and unashamed toward the Sun...man is the inversion of the chaste plant...for he is passionate and turns his creative organ toward the earth.”—p 228

 

Steiner

“At definite seasons there took place on the Moon [and its recapitulation during the Lemurian Epoch] what one could call a development of the propagation impulses.”—Theosophy of the Rosicrucian, p 112

Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures

“At stated times of the year the Archangels, withdrew their restraining influence on the desire body and the Angels marshaled humanity to great temples where the generative act was performed....”—p 230

 

Steiner

”Spiritual Science recognizes in wisdom something like crystallized pain; pain transformed into its opposite.”— Supersensible Knowledge, 1906, p 25

Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures

“Wisdom is crystallized pain.”—p 236

 

Steiner

If Christ were born in Bethlehem a thousand times

And not in thee thyself; then art thou lost eternally

 

—Angelus Silesius quote from The Gospel of St. John, three lectures, Berlin, 1906, p. 3.

 

Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures

Compare quoted verse on pp 241, 274

 

Steiner

“Jesus Christ was a Native of Galilee....‘Galilean’ means: ‘The Stranger.’”—FE, 1905, p 261

Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures

“[T]he body of Jesus....came from the strongest mixture in the Jewish nation, the Galileans.”—p 252

 

Steiner

“Everywhere in the inner sanctuaries of Egypt, in the “Eleusinian Mysteries and the Orphic cult in Greece, in the Near East among the Babylonians and Chaldeans, in the Mithras cult of the Persians, and in the Mysteries of the Indians, the holy night was celebrated in the same way....What was presented was a prophetic indication of the birth of Christ in the human being.”—Lecture, “The Significance of Christmas from the Perspective of Spiritual Science,” 1906, Leipzig, from The Christian Mystery, p 29

Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures

“All race religions—every one of them without exception—are looking for some one to come. The Egyptian religion looked forward to Osiris the bright Sun-Spirit; the Persian look to Mithras; and the Babylonian to Tammuz....[E]ven in the Christian religion we find them looking forward to a Sun-Spirit....then a ray from the Cosmic Christ came here, and incarnated here in the body of our Elder Brother Jesus.”—pp 266-268

 

Steiner

“Christ is the Spirit of the Earth, and the Earth is His body....Consequently, Christ had to hold up the Bread and say, ‘This is my body.’ And concerning the juice of the grapes (fermented wine was not part of the Last Supper) he had to say, ‘This is my blood.’ Thus, humanity necessarily appeared to Him as beings walking around on His body. Therefore, He also said ‘those who eat my bread tread on me with their feet.’ (John 13:18) These words may be taken literally, because the Earth is Christ’s body.”—Lecture, “The Mystery of Golgotha,” 1906, Cologne, from The Christian Mystery, p 52

Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures

“[A]fter the death of the [Jesus] body that he [Christ] had occupied, he drew himself into the Earth. Take his own words for this. In no other way can we account for that saying, ‘This is my body.’ He showed the bread, it is the Earth Spirit that brings forth that bread. ‘This is my blood.’ The juices that are in the plant made the wine....In John 13:18...it says: ‘He that eats my bread hath lifted up his heel against me.’ We do trample, at every step we take, upon the Earth Spirit.”—pp 268-269

 

Steiner

“[T]hose who participated in this [Holy Night] celebration had ‘seen the sun at midnight’....Those whose spiritual eyes were opened experienced all matter as transparent; they saw through the Earth. They actually saw the Sun at midnight.”—Lecture, “The Significance of Christmas from the Perspective of Spiritual Science,” 1906, Leipzig, from The Christian Mystery, p 28

Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures

On Holy Night candidates for Initiation were taken into the Temple. “When the spiritual perception was awakened in them, they could look through the Earth...the Earth became transparent, as it were—and they saw the Star at midnight, the spiritual Sun.”—p 271

 

Steiner

“‘Druid’ is really the same as ‘oak.’ When it is said that the Germanic people celebrated their divine service under ‘oak trees’, this is not only to be taken in the literal sense but it means they were under the guidance of the Druids. When we read that Boniface ‘felled the oak,’ this means that the old Druidic worship was superseded by Christianity.”—“Parsifal and Lohengrin,” lecture, Cologne, 1905

Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures

“Where we are told our forefathers worshiped under the oak tree, that implies the direction of the Druids, for Druid means oak, and when we are told that Boniface felled the oak, we may infer that Boniface put an end to the instruction of the Druids.”—p 275

 

Steiner

“Plato speaks of the symbol of the Cross, saying that the soul of the world is bound to the body of the world as it were on a cross....It is an image of the soul passing through the kingdoms of nature. In contrast to the human being, the plant has its root beneath and its organs of generation above, turned toward the Sun. The animal is at an intermediate stage, its organism lying, generally speaking, in the horizontal direction. Man and the plants stand vertically upright and with the animal form a cross...the Cross of the World.”—Esoteric Cosmology, p 79

Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures

“Plato gave this occult view when he said the World Soul is crucified. The horizontal limb of the cross represents the lines of influence of the animal group spirits...manifesting through the horizontal spine of the animals—they are between the plants and the human kingdom. The plants are represented by the lower limb of the cross, and man by the upper limb.”—p 284

 

Steiner

“He will retain the carbon dioxide and will consciously build up his body with it as a plant now builds up its own body unconsciously. He will prepare the necessary oxygen in his organs....thus he will be able to build up his bodily structure....Now we know that carbon and diamond are the same substance; diamond is more thoroughly crystallized and a more transparent form of carbon....[In the] future people[’s bodies]...will consist of soft, transparent carbon. At that stage man will have found the Philosopher’s Stone.”—At the Gates of Spiritual Science, p 123

Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures

The tree is almost purely carbon. Where did it get the carbon? From the carbon dioxide exhaled by animal and man. In other words, we are in every breath throwing away that which would build a stable body if kept. What becomes of that wood? In millenniums it is transmuted to coal—black carbon. The hardest and most durable substance on Earth is white carbon—the diamond. If we could find a way of retaining that carbon we could become what the Hindu calls the Diamond Soul—the perfect immortal body. We should be manufacturing what the Rosicrucian calls the Philosopher’s Stone....”—p 290

 

 

                                                   

The above diagram is from the lecture on “The Lord’s Prayer,” Berlin, January 8, 1907. Steiner devoted entire lectures to the esoteric and devotional study of this prayer. Especially notable are Karlsruhe, February 4, 1907, Cologne, March 6, 1907, and February 18, 1907. He prayed the Lord’s Prayer daily, standing upright, and speaking aloud, to the end of his life. The form he used is the following:

“Father, you who were, are, and will be in our inmost being, may your name be glorified and praised in us. May your kingdom grow in our deeds and inmost lives. May we perform your will as you, Father, lay it down in our inmost being. You give us spiritual nourishment, the bread of life, superabundantly in all the changing conditions of our lives. Let our mercy towards others make up for the sins done to our being. You do not allow the tempter to work in us beyond the capacity of our strength. For no temptation can live in your being, Father, and the tempter is only appearance and delusion, from which you lead us, Father, through the light of knowledge. May your power and glory work in us through all periods and ages of time. Amen.”

The verse form of this prayer has been omitted.

Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures

Compare #18 “The Lord’s Prayer,”—pp 292-308, diagram p 306, and Cosmo diagram p. 464

 

 

 

Steiner

“The Seven petitions of The Lord’s Prayer are thus seen to express the fact that the human soul, when it aspires rightly, implores the Divine Will for a development of the seven elements in human nature that will enable a man to find his right course of life in the universe....the Great Initiate Who founded Christianity—Christ Jesus—had in mind the seven principles of human nature when he taught His prayer.”—Ibid, pp 23-24

Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures

“In the Lord’s Prayer there are seven prayers; or, rather, there are three sets of two prayers and one single supplication. Each of the three sets has reference to the needs of one of the aspects of the threefold spirit and its counterpart in the threefold body”—p 301

 

Steiner

“I have told you where such great control over inanimate nature leads—wireless telegraphy [as an example]. A similar force to that by which wireless telegraphy works will be at man’s disposal in a future age.”—The Temple Legend, 1904-1906, p 312

Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures

“The latest advancement is the transmission of energy from a central source to various points without visible material connection as in wireless telegraphy....[I]t must be evident that...a yet finer energy transmissible with still greater facility than either of the forces yet known [will be discovered].”—p 313

 

Steiner

“This power, which is described by those who know something of the Rosicrucian mysteries—as for example did Bulwer Lytton in his futuristic novel Vril—is at present still in an elementary, germinal, stage.”—The Temple Legend (TL), twenty lectures, Berlin, 1904-1906, p 307

Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures

“In his Coming Race, Bulwer Lytton gave us an inkling of what that coming force will be....[W]e are forced to recognize the fact that a power having vast possibilities is there—Thought-power.”—pp 314-316, from the lecture: “The Coming Force—Vril! or What?”

 

Steiner

“Materialistic periods are mostly accompanied and followed by natural cataclysms, earthquakes, etc.” “[W]hen the human will is devoid of egoism, it is able to appease this fire.”—An Esoteric Cosmology, p 114

Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures

“Materialism causes volcanic eruptions and the more spiritual conditions prevail, the more such cataclysmic events will cease to startle the world.”—p 323

 

Further Comparisons between Steiner Printed Material (through 1907)

and Heindel Books

 

Steiner

“[P]atriarchs in the Old Testament people always married within their own tribes. The same blood always flowed in the veins and the memory of the descendants....Nine hundred years after Adam, his descendants could still remember what Adam had experienced. This explains the great ages of those mentioned in the Bible....A common “I” lived in the tribe through the blood.”—Lecture, Cologne, 1907, The Christian Mystery, p 63

Rosicrucian Philosophy in Questions and Answers, Volume 1

“When we read in the fifth chapter of Genesis that Adam lived for 900 years and all the patriarchs lived for centuries, it [means that]...the blood which coursed in their veins was transmitted directly to their descendants and this blood contained the pictures of the family...for blood is the storehouse of all experiences.”—p 49; see also Cosmo, p 355

 

Steiner

“The Spirit itself is always healthy; it cannot be ill....The various forms of insanity are the distorted reflections of the Spirit in the physical.”—Supersensible Knowledge, 1906, p 117

Rosicrucian Philosophy in Questions and Answers, Volume 1

 “[T]he Ego, of course, is at no time insane. What appears as insanity arises from the fact that the Ego has no control over its vehicles.”—p 96

 

Steiner

“Bulwer Lytton’s Zanoni contains in novel form a description of the Guardian of the Threshold.... However horrible the form assumed by the guardian, it is only the effect of the student’s own past life, his own character risen out of him into independent existence....[L]iberated from all physical bonds, [the student] is now confronted by the second Guardian of the Threshold who speaks as follows:...‘union [with me] will not be possible until all the powers afforded by this world are applied to the task of its liberation and redemption.’”—Knowledge of Higher Worlds, 1904, pp 238-256

Rosicrucian Philosophy in Questions and Answers, Volume 1

 “[T]his Dweller on the Threshold is not seen by man, but it is the embodiment of all our past evil deeds, that must first be passed by one who wishes to enter the inner worlds consciously...but there is also another Dweller, which is the embodiment of all our good deeds, and that one may be said to be our Guardian Angel.”—p 137

 

Steiner

“Truth is one, but it can be reached along different paths, just as at the foot of a mountain there are various paths, but they all meet at the Summit.”—At the Gates of Spiritual Science, 1906, p 130

Rosicrucian Philosophy in Questions and Answers, Volume 1

 “We may liken truth to a mountain, and the various interpretations of that truth to different paths leading up to the summit.”—pp 149-50

 

Steiner

“During the early centuries of our era, the Redeemer Himself, Christ Jesus, was depicted by the symbol of the Cross and underneath it the Lamb. Not until the sixth century A.D. was the Redeemer portrayed on the Cross....[When] the Sun was passing through the constellation Taurus [by precession], in Egypt we find the veneration of the Apis the Bull, in Persia the veneration of Mithras the Bull. Earlier still, the sun was passing through the constellation Gemini, the Twins; in Indian and Germanic mythology we find definite indication of the Twins; the twin goats drawing the Chariot of the God Donar are a last remnant of this. Then, finally, we come back to the epoch of Cancer, which brings us near to the time of the Atlantean Flood.”—Theosophy of the Rosicrucian, 1907, p 55

Rosicrucian Philosophy in Questions and Answers, Volume 1

 “[I]t was not until the sixth century that the crucified Christ was shown in pictures. Previous to that time the symbol of the Christ was a cross and a lamb resting at its foot...At the time when the sun by precession crossed the vernal equinox in the sign Taurus, the Bull, a religion was founded in Egypt where they worshiped the Bull Apis...At a much earlier date, we hear of the Norse God Thor driving his twin goats across the sky. That was at the time when the vernal equinox was in the sign Gemini, the Twins.”—p 203

 

Steiner

“We are led back to the Round Table of King Arthur. The members of the Round Table were Great Initiates, and it survived in Wales up to the time of Queen Elizabeth of England. It was nothing else than the Great White Lodge which in the Siegfried initiation proclaimed to the people what it had to say to the world.”—“Parsifal and Lohengrin,” lecture, Cologne, 1905

Rosicrucian Philosophy in Questions and Answers, Volume 1

 “The stories of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table are not fables, they are facts. There was such a Mystery in Wales as late as the time of Queen Elizabeth.”—p 252

 

Steiner

“On Good Friday, 1857 he [Wagner] was sitting in the Retreat...looking out over the fields, watching the plants come to life, sprouting from the earth, an inkling arose in him of the power of the germinating force emerging from the earth in response to the rays of the sun...that permeates the whole world and lives in all beings, a force that must evolve, that cannot remain as it is; a force that, to reach higher stages, must pass through death....Wagner sensed the connection between life, death and immortality....between the sprouting life of spring and the Good Friday belief in Redemption....This thought is the same as that contained in the Quest for the Holy Grail, where the chaste plant blossom, striving toward the sun, is contrasted with human desire-filled nature....Looking towards the Cross, Wagner saw the blood flowing from the Redeemer...being caught in the Grail Chalice....As an ideal this [‘Path of the Holy Grail’] is depicted as a pure holy Chalice whose image is the plant calyx’s chaste fructification to a new creation by the sunbeam, the holy lance of love....Only he who is pure in heart, unworldly, untouched by temptation, so that he approaches the Holy Grail as an ‘innocent fool’ filled with questions of its secrets, can discover the path. Wagner’s Parsifal is born out of this mystical feeling for the Holy Grail.”—Supersensible Knowledge, 1906, pp 191-193

Rosicrucian Philosophy in Questions and Answers, Volume 1

 “On Good Friday morning, 1857, Richard Wagner sat at the Villa Wesendonck by the Zurich Sea, and as he looked about him the sun was shining, all nature was smiling and from the millions of seeds buried in the ground around him, innumerable plants and flowers were sprouting. The thought struck Wagner, ‘What is the connection between the death of the Savior at this time of the year and this manifold sprouting life?’ And in that thought he came very near to the key to the mystery of the Grail....which we may express as follows....The pod of the plant which holds the seed is the grail cup, and the spear which brings that seed forth from the flower is the ray of the sun....Your blood is red and filled with passion, but in the regeneration that blood must be cleansed by the spiritual force which will come to you from the spiritual sun [Christ], as the forces from the physical sun bring forth the juice of the plant. And having become thus regenerated, you will die as a man to be resurrected a God.”—p 352-354

 

Steiner

“The wisdom, therefore, that reaches out beyond the sensible and reveals to him his own being and with it his final goal, may well be called ‘divine wisdom’ or ‘theosophy.’”—Theosophy, 1904, p xxii

Rosicrucian Philosophy in Questions and Answers, Volume 1

 “If we take theosophy as meaning Theo Sophia (Divine Wisdom), then, of course, the Rosicrucian philosophy is only a part of that Divine Wisdom.”—p 358

 

Steiner

“It can happen that a man who meets his end by violence is filled with a terrible rage against those who have caused his death. Then in the murdered man the blow is changed into a counter blow.”—FE, 1905, p 87 

Rosicrucian Philosophy in Questions and Answers, Volume 1

 “To kill him [a homicidal man], however, does not restrain him; death liberates him in the Desire World, and as the Desire World is all about us, he is at perfect liberty to go among people and instill into them thoughts of hatred and vengeance against society. Therefore murder is multiplied.”—p 368

 

Steiner

“It can happen that through special circumstances a man returns [to a new birth] soon and find his astral corpse still present. The corpse is then strongly drawn to him and slips into his new astral body...and he has to drag both of them along throughout his life....The old astral body comes before him as a second Ego, playing tricks on him, harassing and tormenting him. This is the false, counterfeit Guardian of the Threshold...it appears as a Double, a Doppelgänger.”—At the Gates of Spiritual Science, 1906, pp 47-48

Rosicrucian Philosophy in Questions and Answers, Volume 1

“It sometimes happens, however, that an individual passes out at death with a desire nature so extremely strong that after he has expiated the deeds in contained in Purgatory, and has entered the Second Heaven, this shell holds together and lasts until he is reborn. It is then drawn to him by magnetic attraction and he possesses, as it were, a double desire body. The desire body of the old life may then at times make itself felt and cause him to lead a double life.”—p 374

 

Steiner

“A vivisectionist has a particularly terrible life in Kamaloka [“The place of desire”]....[He] has to endure exactly the same pains that he inflicted on animals.”—At the Gates of Spiritual Science, 1906, p 33

Rosicrucian Philosophy in Questions and Answers, Volume 2

“The vivisectionist’s purgatory...[experiences] the agonies of the tortured animals contained in his life panorama reacting upon him with threefold intensity.”—pp 80-81

 

Steiner

“At the head of our Western School there are two masters: the Master Jesus and the Master Christian Rosenkreutz. And they lead us along two paths: the Christian and the Christian-Rosicrucian way.”—History and Contents of the First Section of the Esoteric School 1904-1914 (H&C), Lecture in Munich, June, 1907, p 312

Rosicrucian Philosophy in Questions and Answers, Volume 2

“Christian Rosenkreuz [is] the head of the Western Wisdom School, and co-worker with Jesus.”—p 237

 

Steiner

“[F]ermented wine was not part of the last supper.”—Lecture, 1906, The Christian Mystery, p 52

Rosicrucian Philosophy in Questions and Answers, Volume 2

“[N]one of the Evangelists say the cup [at the Last Supper] contained wine. Furthermore, research in the Memory of Nature shows water was used.”—p 292

 

Steiner

“The best way to influence the child during the first seven years is by means of example and imitation.”—At the Gates of Spiritual Science, 1906, p 52

Rosicrucian Mysteries

“There are two mottos which apply to this period [birth to age seven]....example and imitation.”—p 145

 

Steiner

“Feelings like these had to be attained by the disciple of the Grail, and by the Rosicrucian. The Teacher would say: Behold the flower chalice which receives the ray of the sun, the sun calls forth the pure productive forces which slumber in the plant....Look now at man; he stands higher than the plant, he has the same organs within him, but all that the plant harbors in itself, perfectly pure and chaste, is in him steeped in lust and impure desire....in chastity he must develop that which forms the Holy Grail of the future—TR, 1907, p 162-163

Ancient and Modern Initiation

“Let us compare man with a flower that we may know the great import and significance of this emblem....Man is passionate in love....The plant knows no passion, fertilization is accomplished in the most pure and chaste manner imaginable, there it projects its generative organ, the flower, toward the sun....This was the mystery of the Grail Cup; this is the emblematic significance of the Cup of Communion....[and] brings to him who truly drinks thereof eternal life.”—pp 51-52

 

Steiner

1. “Christ washes the feet of the Apostles. That is a symbol of the humility of the Initiate in the face of his inferiors. The Initiate owes his existence to those who are not initiated. Hence the deep humility of those who truly know in face of those who do not.”—Esoteric Cosmology, 1906, p 24

2. “The plant grows from the soil...nevertheless the plant needs it. The higher could not exist without the lower....Likewise must the animal bear itself to the plant, for it could not exist without plant life, and even so must the human being bear himself with regard to the animal....No creature in the world could subsist without the lower, to which it must feel gratitude. So even Christ, the very highest, could not exist without the twelve....He, the highest of all [in gratitude and acknowledgment of this principle] washes his disciple’s feet.”—Theosophy of the Rosicrucian, 1907, p 156

3. “Christ Jesus...bows down in meekness before the Apostles and says ‘You are my ground, and to you I fulfill the saying ‘He who would be first must be last, and he who would be Lord must be the servant of all.’ The washing of the feet betokens this willingness to serve, this bowing down in perfect humility.”—At the Gates of Spiritual Science, 1906, p 127

Ancient and Modern Initiation

“[T]he Master washes the feet of His disciples, symbolically performing for them the menial service as a recognition of the fact that they have served Him as stepping stones to something higher....If there were no minerals...plant life would be an impossibility....If there were no plants, animals would be an impossibility....The teacher....owes them [his pupils] a debt of gratitude, which is symbolically acknowledged and liquidated by the foot washing—an act of humble service to those who have served him.”—pp 19, 102-103

 

Steiner

 “In the future a person will be able to transform within his own being carbonic acid into oxygen.... The purity and chastity of the plant nature will pass over into human nature....Humans will learn to create ordinary coal...which also is what diamonds consist of...and from it build their body....The human body itself is the retort.”—Supersensible Knowledge, 1906, pp 162-3

Ancient and Modern Initiation

“The great majority of mankind inhale during every moment of life the vitalizing oxygen contained in the surrounding atmosphere. At every expiration we exhale a charge of carbon dioxide which is a deadly poison and which would certainly vitiate the air in time if the pure and chaste plant did not inhale this poison......We find them [plants] today as coal, the perishable Philosopher’s Stone made by natural means in nature’s laboratory....but the alchemist himself becomes the Philosopher’s Stone.”—pp 105-106

 

Steiner

“A yogi...will retire into a cave and as far as possible will breathe the air he has himself exhaled....A yogi has learnt the art of contaminating the air as little as possible....The secret has always been known to the European occult schools, where it is called the finding of the Stone of the Wise, the Philosopher’s Stone.”—At the Gates of Spiritual Science, 1906, p 122

Ancient and Modern Initiation

“[T]he Philosopher’s Stone may also be made artificially by man from his own body....The Hindu Yogi makes a practice of sealing up the candidate for a certain grade of Initiation in a cave which is not much larger than his body. There he must live for a number of weeks breathing the same air over and over again to demonstrate practically that he has ceased exhaling the death-dealing carbon dioxide and is beginning to build his body therefrom....The Philosopher’s Stone is a soft diamond or ruby.”—p 107

 

Steiner

1. “Goethe has a marvelous description of this stage [of identifying himself with the Spirit of the Earth] at the beginning of Faust. The Spirit of the Earth to whom Faust aspires, appears before him and speaks these words:

In the tides of Life, in Action’s storm

A fluctuant wave,

A shuttle free,

Berth of the grave,

An eternal sea,

A weaving, flowing

Life, all-glowing;

Thus at Time’s humming loom ‘tis my hand prepares

The garment of Life which the Divinity weaves.”

 

Esoteric Cosmology, 1906, p 58

 

2. “[Goethe] meant that the Earth possesses a soul, of which we are the members....he let the Earth Spirit speak the following words: [above verse followed].” Lecture, Berlin, January 29, 1906

Mysteries of the Great Operas

“The words of the Earth Spirit to Faust, as given by Goethe, offer splendid material for meditation, for they represent mystically what the candidate feels when he first realizes the reality of the Earth Spirit as a living presence, ever actively laboring for our uplift:

 

In the currents of life, in the action of storm

I float and wave with billowy motion

Birth and the grave, a limitless ocean;

A constant weaving, with change still rife,

A restless heaving, a glowing life,

Time’s whizzing loom I’ve unceasingly trod;

Thus weave I the living garment of God.

—p 21

 

Steiner’s fondness for alluding to Goethe’s scientific work and citing his poetry and drama can be attributed in part to the fact that he was chosen to serve as an editor of two German editions of Goethe’s complete works. He therefore spent almost seven years (1883-1890) at the Goethe-Schiller archives in Weimar fulfilling this assignment, with emphasis on the natural science section. It is clear that Heindel has shared in this material inasmuch as Goethe and his writings are disproportionately referred to and drawn upon in Heindel’s books, and the quoted passages are the same as those which had already been highlighted by Steiner in his books and public lectures.

 

Steiner

“[D]ependence upon the teacher...is relatively greatest in the method...followed by oriental occultists.... This dependence is already proportionately less in the so-called Christian initiation, and, properly speaking its complete omission comes on the path of knowledge that, since the fourteenth century, has come to be advanced by the so-called Rosicrucian occult schools. On this path...all dependence on him [the teacher] ceases.”—Stages of Higher Knowledge, 1904, p 32

Mysteries of the Great Operas

“‘If thou art Christ help thyself,’ is the universal rule, and self-reliance is the cardinal virtue which aspirants are required to cultivate in the Western Mystery School. No one is allowed to lean on Masters, nor to blindly follow Leaders. The Brothers of the Rose Cross aim to emancipate the souls that come to them ....and whoever looks to a Teacher to do more than point the way, will meet disappointment.”—p 23

 

Steiner

“If we think of man standing in the position just described, with outstretched arms, then the streaming [of etheric forces] has the form of a pentagram. It would be bad for man if the stream did not enter him through the head but through the feet. The black magicians make use of this.”—The Foundations of Esoteric Training, Berlin, November 14, 1906

Mysteries of the Great Operas

The Black Magician “leaves and enters his body by way of the feet....Therefore, the pentagram with two points upward is the symbol of black magic.”—p 25

 

Steiner

“In Goethe’s Faust it [the ‘higher order’ which is always depicted in myths and sagas as a female figure] is indicated in the words of the Chorus Mysticus: ‘The external feminine draws us upward and on.’”—Supersensible Knowledge, 1906, p 187

Mysteries of the Great Operas

“The Eternal Feminine [in the Faust myth]...draws us along the path of evolution.”—p 46

 

Steiner

“He who does not travel the way of Parsifal carried sorrow (Leid) in his heart (Herz)....Herzeleide is the condition of consciousness from which Parsifal issues [and]...learns to know the one who is invulnerable.”—Parsifal and Lohengrin, lecture, Cologne, 1905

Mysteries of the Great Operas

“Gamuret...became wedded to Herzleide, heart affliction, in other words. He meets sorrow and dies to the world....[W]hen the billows of adversity roar around us...then we have wedded heart affliction and become men of sorrows, and are ready to be born as Parsifal, the pure fool....So sorrow dies when it has given birth to the aspiring soul that flees from the world.”—p 60

 

Steiner

“These legends and myths are the expressions of a profound wisdom....[W]ith primitive mentality, unsophisticated men were able to picture the enigmas of the universe in the imagery of these legends and fairy tales.”—Lecture,  The Occult Significance of the Blood,” Berlin, 1906, p 5

Mysteries of the Great Operas

“All myths are vehicles of spiritual truths veiled under allegory, symbol, and picture....As fairy stories are a means of enlightenment to children, so these great myths were used to convey spiritual truths to infant humanity.”—p 72

 

Steiner

“The Rhine was regarded as a remnant of the Atlantean ‘Being of Mist’ that once covered most of the countries. The water of the Rhine was thought to have originated in Nibelungenheim or Nebelheim (Nebel means “mist”), to have come from the dense mist of ancient Atlantis. Through a dreamlike consciousness, full of premonition, all this is told in sagas and myths wherein is described how conditions caused the people to abandon the area and how, as they wandered eastwards, their dull consciousness grew ever more lucid while egoism increased....Selfless, love-filled wisdom flowed with the water into the Rhine and reposed beneath it as wisdom, as gold....Alberich is representative of the Nibelungs, who have become egoistic, of the human being that forswears the love through which he is a member of a unity....When the Ring closes around man’s ‘I’, the individual too is taken hold of by greed for gold.”—Supersensible Knowledge, 1906, pp 184-185

Mysteries of the Great Operas

1. “The Rhine maidens represent primitive humanity during the time when we dwelt at the bottom of the ocean in the dense, foggy atmosphere of Atlantis. The gold...is a representation of the Universal Spirit which then brooded over mankind....[The] separative principle had not entered into the child men of early Atlantis....In  the Teutonic myth we are told that Alberich, one of these children of the Mist (Niebel is mist, ung is child—they were thus called because they lived in the foggy atmosphere of Atlantis), coveted the gold which shone with such luster in the Rhine.”—pp 74-76

2. “The early Atlantean Epoch, when mankind lived as guileless ‘Children of the Mist’ (Niebelung) in the foggy basins of the Earth, is represented in the Rhinegold. The later Atlantean time is an age of savagery, where mankind has forsworn love, as Alberich did, and forms ‘the Ring’ of egoism, where it devotes its energies to material acquisition symbolized by the hoard of the Niebelung.”—p 118

 

Steiner

“Siegfried is always pictured as being invulnerable. Achilles, the Greek initiate, remained vulnerable in the heel. Siegfried, after the Conquest of the Dragon, was invulnerable except at one spot between the shoulder-blades, the place where the cross is laid....This symbol was a profound and significant feature in the ancient mysteries.”—“Parsifal and Lohengrin,” 1905, p 4

Mysteries of the Great Operas

“Every place is thus protected save one point on the back between the shoulders. Here we have a case analogous to that of Achilles, whose body was made invulnerable in all places save one of his heels. There is a great significance in this fact.”—p 103

 

Steiner

“The Initiate who has attained to this degree [3rd Heaven-5th Initiation] is called the ‘Swan.’ He hears the sounds through which the master speaks and then communicates them to the world.”—EC, 1906, p 86

Mysteries of the Great Operas

“The swan is an apt symbol of the initiate.”—p 161

 

Steiner

Lohengrin “is the messenger of the Initiate and is borne by the symbolic swan....None may ask his true name nor whence he comes. His authority may not be doubted. By his words he must be believed, by the truth shining in his countenance he must be recognized. He who has not this faith is incapable of understanding, unworthy to listen. That is why Lohengrin forbids Elsa to ask his name and whence he comes.”—Esoteric Cosmology, 1906, p 87

Mysteries of the Great Operas

“[H]aving come in answer to prayer....[t]he indubitable, unquestionable proof is given of the power and ability of the Teacher to teach, to guide, and to help; and then the requirement is made that henceforth there must be absolute faith in him, otherwise it becomes impossible for him to work with the aspirant. That is the great lesson that is taught by Lohengrin.”—p 163

 

Steiner

“There is one thing that must surely destroy the necessary link between teacher and pupil. This happens if the pupil loses confidence in the teacher.”—Higher Stages of Knowledge, 1904, p 31

Mysteries of the Great Operas

“[I]t is absolutely essential that loyalty to the teacher must follow...for unless that faith is there, there is no use in continuing the relationship.”—p 165

 

Steiner

“But what is a poison? Water, if taken by the bucketful all at once, is a strong poison”—SSK, 1906, p 86

Occult Principles of Health and Healing

“Water...taken at the wrong time...and in excess...becomes a poison.”—p 181

 

Steiner

“[T]he shock [of ‘a dreadful fall’ or drowning] causes a kind of loosening of the etheric body from the physical body...[as a result of which] the previous life stands before the soul like a memory picture.”—TR, 1907, p 34

Occult Principles of Health and Healing

“It is the partial loosening of the vital body which causes a drowning person to see his whole past life...[in] a flash.”—p 224

 

Steiner

1. “The link between the organ of speech and gender is sexuality. Therefore the man changes when he reaches puberty. The change [of voice] is nothing else than the expression of the former connections between the organs of speech and of sexuality.”—The Temple Legend, 1904-1906, p 243

2. “The sexual organs of today are only half of the then [procreative] force. The power in the larynx is indeed the other half”—Ibid., p 241

Freemasonry and Catholicism

“The intimate connection between the organs, brain, larynx and genitals is evident to anyone upon the slightest examination of the facts. The boy’s voice changing at puberty” etc.—p 14

 

Steiner

“[O]nly if he separated it into two sexes could Jehovah sustain the human race. Two opposing factions resulted, Freemasonry and priestly rule, which were symbolized by Cain and Abel....Freemasonry thus created the Temple Legend as an answer to the Bible legend. This was to be the sword of battle against the priesthood....In the beginning one of the Elohim created Cain by uniting himself with Eve. Another Elohim, Yahveh, countered by creating Adam, who united with Eve, as a result of which Abel was born.... [T]he descendants of Cain conquered the world....Music, arts and sciences were cultivated by them....Tubal-Cain...Jubal...and Hiram, the builder of Solomon’s Temple, are numbered among the descendants of Cain....Solomon’s power was not sustained by work done on the physical plane, but was the manifestation of God’s grace....Three of Hiram’s apprentices are discontented because he did not promote them to the Master’s Degree. They conspire to hurt him. They want to spoil his masterpiece. Now he intends to make the Molten Sea....Hiram is led to the center of the earth by....Tubal-Cain [who]...gave him a hammer with which he can complete the casting of the Molten Sea....So we have two modern currents...one order having a cross without roses, and the other, which reveres the roses on a new cross, which must come. These are the Rosicrucians.”—The Temple Legend, Berlin, 1904-1906, pp 246-263

Freemasonry and Catholicism

“The Masonic legend....states that Jehovah created Eve, that the Lucifer Spirit Samael united with her...[resulting in] the birth of her son Cain....Then Jehovah created Adam, to be the husband of Eve, and from their union Abel was born. Thus from the beginning there were two kinds of people in the world....[T]he temple legend....states that from Cain descended...Tubal Cain...and Jubal.... In short, the Sons of Cain are the originators of the arts and crafts. Therefore, when Jehovah chose Solomon, the scion of the race of Seth, to build a house for his name,, the sublime spirituality of a long line of divinely guided ancestors flowered into conception of the magnificent temple called Solomon’s Temple....But he was unable to execute the divine design in a material manner....Hiram Abiff became then Grand Master of the army of construction...Hiram Abiff made ready to cast the ‘molten sea’....There were some among the workmen on the Temple who thought they ought to be promoted to a higher degree....[They] entered into a conspiracy to spoil his great masterpiece....[F]rom the center of raging fire he heard the call of Tubal Cain bidding him to jump into the Molten Sea....Hiram obeyed and...was conducted successfully through the nine-arch-like layers of the earth to the Center, where he found himself in the presence of Cain...who gave him instructions relative to blending Water and Fire, and furnished him with a New Hammer and a new Word....When the hammer was found, it had the shape of a cross, and the disc had become a rose. Therefore Hiram took...the symbolical name Christian Rosenkreutz.”—pp 17-44

 

Steiner

“The Queen of Sheba is the soul of humanity”—The Temple Legend, 1904-1906, p 58

Freemasonry and Catholicism

“The Queen of Sheba is the composite soul of humanity.”—p 24

 

Steiner

1. “[T]he renewed Christianity of the sixth cultural epoch....is being prepared by the Rosicrucians and then what is symbolized by the Molten Sea will be united with a knowledge of reincarnation and karma. That is the new occult teaching which will be united again with Christianity....[W]hat was disseminated by Christian Rosenkreutz in the Temple Legend through the [Masonic] Brotherhood, the Rosicrucians have made into their task: to teach not merely religious piety, but also science in an external way; not merely knowledge of the outer world, but knowledge of [objective] spiritual forces too.”—The Temple Legend, 1904-1906, p 59

2. “Out of Seth’s line came Solomon, who excelled in everything which came from Yahveh...but it is unable to produce anything tangible of a technical nature, in art or science....That would be the wisdom pertaining to the sons of Cain, a legacy of the other Elohim, not Yahveh. They are the hardworking industrious ones who seek to accomplish everything through their own efforts.”—ibid., p 51

3. “This Christianity has another symbol...no longer that of the crucified Son of God, but the cross encircled by roses that will become the symbol of the new Christianity....[O]ut of the mystery of the Brotherhood of the Rose Cross will arise the Christianity of the sixth cultural epoch.”—ibid., 58

4. “[T]here is a kind of enmity between Jehovah and...the other Elohim [Lucifer] and their descendants, the ‘Sons of Fire’—This being the designation of the descendants of Cain....those who receive their existence from the divine worlds and those who work everything out for themselves....Cain creates, as it were, the living out of the lifeless. Abel takes up what is already alive....The one [kind of human being] consists of those who accept what God has prepared for them. The other—the free humanity—are those who till the soil and labor to win living products out of what is lifeless.”—ibid., p 74

 

Quotes 1-4 from The Temple Legend have their counterparts in Freemasonry and Catholicism.

 

Steiner

“When the Queen of Sheba saw the temple and asked who the architect was, she was told it was Hiram. And as soon as she saw him, he seemed to her to be the one predestined for her. King Solomon now became jealous,” etc.—The Temple Legend, p 143

Freemasonry and Catholicism

“[T]he Queen of Sheba...asked also to be shown the great Temple....And she therefore requested Solomon to call the workmen that she might see who had wrought this wonder....When Hiram Abiff appeared, and Solomon saw the lovelight kindle in the eyes of the Queen of Sheba, jealousy and hatred took root in his heart.”—pp 25, 30

Steiner

“The Rosicrucians are...the successors to the Order of the Templars...[and are] at work on the Great Temple of Humanity.”—The Temple Legend, p 160

Freemasonry and Catholicism

“Christian Rosenkreutz founded the Order of Temple-Builders which bears his name.”—p 41

 

Steiner

“The Philosopher’s Stone has a specific purpose, which was stated by Cagliostro; it is meant to prolong human life....For him who understands how to use the Philosopher’s Stone in the way that Cagliostro intended his pupils to do, death is only an apparent occurrence....the adept....does not really die.”—The Temple Legend, p 103

Freemasonry and Catholicism

“[T]he Adept...build[s] a body ready to wear before he leaves the old one....It is by reason of this fact that we hear of men like Cagliostro, Saint Germain and others who one day appeared in a certain environment, took up an important work and then disappeared.....[T]he Adept [has passed] from the dominion of death to the realm of immortality.”—p 65

 

Steiner

“The western occultist [Freemason and Rosicrucian] said to himself....‘Just as the ego has been formed through these other kingdoms [mineral, plant and animal], so must it now itself develop the Kingdoms of Wisdom, Beauty and Strength, in order by their means to mount still higher to a complete transformation of our etheric, astral and ego bodies. These three Kingdoms are the Kingdoms of Science, Art and inner Strength.”—Foundations of Esotericism, 1905, p 111

Teachings of An Initiate

“Any movement that is to endure must possess three divine qualities: Wisdom, Beauty and Strength. Science, art, and religion each possess one of these attributes in a measure.”—p 136

 

Steiner

“The continent of Atlantis was destroyed by a series of deluges, as a consequence of which the terrestrial atmosphere cleared. Then and only then [appeared] the blue sky, the storm, rain, the rainbow. That is why the Bible says that when Noah’s Ark had come to rest, the rainbow, the ‘bow in the cloud,’ was a new token of alliance between God and Man”—Esoteric Cosmology, 1906, p 23

Teachings of an Initiate

(1) Beginning with “the Noachian Age, comprising the periods of later Atlantis and our present Aryana, the rainbow, which could not have existed under previous atmospheric conditions, stood painted upon the cloud as a mystic scroll.”—p 138

(2) “He [the leader] pointed to the rainbow...and said...for so long as that bow stands in the cloud, so long shall the seasons come one after another in unbroken succession.” “The Bow in the Cloud”, p 175

 

Steiner

“The pineal gland and the pituitary gland organize a second spinal column which later unites with the first. The second spinal column will descend in front from the head.”—Foundations of Esotericism, 1905, p 28

Message of the Stars

“The ray of Uranus [ruler of the pituitary body] is gradually forging a second spinal cord....This work has been completely accomplished by the Adepts.”—p 345

 

Steiner

“The true, deeper origin of Freemasonry—resides in Light itself which existed before mankind.”—The Temple Legend, 1904-1906, p 91

Letters to Students

“The word Freemason is derived from the Egyptian phree messen, ‘Children of Light.’”—p 75

 

Steiner

“This soul body of the National Spirit is like a cloud in which the members of a nation live.”—Theosophy of the Rosicrucian, 1907, p 38.

Letters to Students

“When seen by the spiritual vision the Race Spirit appears like a cloud brooding over a country.”—p 144

 

Christocentrism

The following list of books can only partially convey an idea of the extent to which Steiner’s Rosicrucian wisdom teachings are informed by the cosmic impact of the Christ Being on and the Christ-giving to human evolution. To compile anything approaching a complete list of relevant texts would entail citing most of Steiner’s public offerings, as they all are ensouled and conditioned by Christ-consciousness.

 

The New Spirituality and The Christ Experience of the 20th Century, 7 Lectures, Dornach, 1920

Christ at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha and Christ in the 20th Century, 1 Lecture, London, 1913

The Need for Understanding the Christ, 1 Lecture, Prague, 1913

Jesus and Christ, 1 Lecture, Hamburg, 1913

The Lord’s Prayer, 1 Lecture, Berlin, January, 1907

Esoteric Christianity and the Mission of Christian Rosenkreutz, 13 Lectures, Various Cities, 1911-12

Christ in the 20th Century, 1 Lecture, Cologne, 1912

Pre-Earthly Deeds of Christ, 1 Lecture, Pforzheim, 1914

The Ten Commands, 1 Lecture, Munich, 1910 

The Sermon on the Mount, 1 Lecture, Berlin, 1908

Christianity in Human Evolution, 1 Lecture, Berlin, 1909

The Gospel of St. John, 12 Lectures, Hamburg, 1909

How Can Mankind find The Christ Again, 8 Lectures, Dornach, 1919

From Jesus to Christ, 10 Lectures, Karlsruhe, 1911

The Christian Mystery, 27 Lectures (or portions thereof), various cities, 1905-1908

The Mysteries of the East and of Christianity, 4 Lectures, Berlin, 1913

The Gospel of St. John, 3 Lectures, Berlin, 1906

Building Stones for Understanding the Mystery of Golgotha, 10 Lectures, Berlin, 1917

The Gospel of St. Matthew, 12 Lectures, Bern, 1910

The Gospel of St. Luke, 10 Lectures, Basel, 1909

The True Nature of the Second Coming, Carlsruhe and Stuttgart, 1910

The Gospel of St. Mark, 10 Lectures, Basel, 1912

Background to the Gospel of St. Mark, 13 Lectures, Berlin, Munich, Hanover, Coblenz, 1910-11

Christ and the Spiritual World, 6 Lectures, Leipzig, 1913-14

Christian Relation to Lucifer and Ahriman, 1 Lecture, Linz, 1915

The Fifth Gospel, 7 Lectures, Oslo, 191

Christianity as Mystical Fact, 13 Lectures, 1902

The Mystery of the Trinity and the Mission of the Spirit, 8 Lectures, Dornach, Oxford and London, 1922

Self-Knowledge and the Christ Experience, 1 Lecture, Dornach, 1923

The Four Sacrifices of Christ, 1 Lecture, Basel, 1914

Exoteric and Esoteric Christianity, 1 Lecture, Dornach, 1922

Christ and the Human Soul, 4 Lectures, Norrköping, 1914

The Apocalypse of St. John, 12 Lectures, Nuremburg, 1908

Deeper Secrets of Human History in the Light of the Gospel of St. Matthew, 3 Lectures, Berlin, 1909

Philosophy, Cosmology, and Religion, 10 Lectures, Dornach, 1922

The Entry of the Etheric Christ into the Evolution of the World, 1 Lecture, Basel, 1911

Anthroposophy and Christianity, 1 Lecture, Norrköping, 1914