Table of Contents

• Editor's Notes

• Introduction

1. Ancient Indian Age: 7227 BC – 5067 BC
2. Ancient Persian Age: 5067 BC – 2970 BC
3. Ancient Babylonian-Chaldean-Egyptian Age: 2,970 BC – 747 BC
4. Ancient Greco-Roman Age: 747 BC – 1413 AD
5. Anglo-German Age: 1413 AD – 3573 AD
6. Russian-Slavic Age: 3573 AD – 5733 AD
7. American Age: 5733 AD – 7893 AD

• Appendix

  1. The Post-Atlantean Cultural Ages Review
  2. War of All Against All

• Notes

• Q & A

• Fair Use Notice

Editor's Notes

To the Unprejudiced Reader

This is a [limited] study of World and Human Evolution as elucidated by Rudolf Steiner (and others). It is a compilation from several sources, including, and especially, the Rudolf Steiner Archive and Free Man Creator (more specifically, this page). The general outline and content of the compiled information follows the transcription of a lecture given by Adriana Koulias to the Anthroposophical Society, Sydney 5^th March 2004. Material added to Koulias' notes is cited and linked to inline. For greater depth and detail follow the inline links. Minimal editing of the information has been except to correct misspellings or tense. Editing of presentation e.g. bullet points converted to paragraphs has been done to format the material conducive to this particular presentation.

Where any direct editing of content pulled from these sources might have occurred, the meaning has been preserved. Changes have been made only to make the material presented herein more readable for study and discussion.

-ed.

Terminology

Spiritual science uses an extensive 'jargon' with a myriad of spiritual scientific terms that describe concepts and realities not found in science or the description of our physical reality. It implies that many 'reserved words' are terms with a special and specific meaning, even if these terms are sometimes also used in our everyday use of language.

A complicating factor is that the concepts and realities have been described with different sets of terminology or nomenclature, eg terminology is different in anthroposophy than in theosophy, but similarly so another terminology is used in medieval alchemy, hermetics, esoteric christianity.

As a result, anthroposophy will use different terms than theosophy (eg Steiner and Blavatsky), and Bardon and Daskalos use still different terminology. Yet it is all about the same realities that we are to get to know and understand.

The problem is even broader:

• Rudolf Steiner also uses terminology used in previous cultural ages and their spiritual scientific teaching, eg those of Zarathustra in ancient Persia, the Holy Rishis in Ancient India, the terminology of Greek philosophers or the symbolism and terms used in Ancient Egypt, or the way of viewing in the middle-ages and/or rosecrucian teachings.
• the same goes for names of spiritual entities in the various cultures, and the Gods in myths and legends and various religious teachings
• furthermore, in Rudolf Steiner's twenty years of teaching, certain terms changed from theosophical terminology (where more Indian sanskrit terms are used) to more european terms.
• and last but not least, in the last century, dozens of translators and editors have made choices with regards to terms, eg 'Ego' versus 'I', the use of capitals for the planetary stages, planets and hierarchies (or not). Similarly so for authors of secondary literature.

As a result, there is no simple single set of terminology. The already complex subject matter is not simplified by the fact that the student has to master and bridge these different terminology sets, with various different labels for the same (or similar) concepts.

The above is gleaned directly from the Free Man Creator website. In this compilation study, I have strived to use a single set of terms and tenses in the descriptions and labels consistent with those decisions made for FMC. The following is also gleaned from FMC. -ed.

Evolution: Planetary Stages in the Chain of Evolution

• They are called planetary stages consistently and not phases or periods.
• Whereas one can encounter Old Saturn, Ancient Saturn, Saturn ... we consistently use the prefix Old and Future, as in Old Saturn and Future Jupiter, because it is important enough to avoid the potential confusion with the current physical planets. It is important to be consistent and consequently we use Future Jupiter and not just Jupiter as is most often done (though some text versions may still use bracketed prefixes with 'new' or 'future')

Planetary stage Earth: 'extrusion, separation or departure' of the Moon and Sun?

• Extrusion is the strangest term of the three. It used in geology for extrusion of volcanic lava flows that reach the surface, and eg salt extrusion in plants is the process to separate salt through filtration at the root (like excretion).

Separation and departure are the most commonly used terms, however their link to the process of what happened does not lie contained in how we use the words today.

• Departure is more like a ship or plane that is leaving, the 'moment of departure'. This does not seem appropriate.
• Separation is like people in a relationship that are separated. That may be more appropriate given the fact the Moon and Sun will re-unite with the Earth again.

Therefore, although 'extrusion' may speak most to our imagination, we choose for separation because it implicitly contains the possibility of re-union, which therefore gives us a terminology also for that later stage. Hence we use separation and reunion and not extrusion or departure.

Epochs and Cultural Ages

This site consistently uses the top level term epoch only for the periods such as the Lemurian or Atlantean epoch. In the early theosophical terminology often the term root-race was used to denote this evolutionary period. Rudolf Steiner explained that this term is no longer appropriate for the current epoch.

For the level below, the periods currently spanning some 2000 years, the term cultural age is used consistently, and not cultural epoch or sub-age.

General remark

Continuing on how Blavatsky had established terminology for 19th century theosophy, Rudolf Steiner took over most of these terms as well as naming for the epochs, like Lemurian etc. Initially this was coupled to the spiritual concept of races.

However with the years, as Steiner made anthroposophy into a more western european own body of knowledge, he left behind the races and sub-races notion for the current epoch, and also terms such as Aryan for the current epoch (all from theosophy). The term post-Atlantean was a replacement for Aryan, but an unfortunate one because it asks the question if nothing better can be found than to say it's the epoch after the Atlantean epoch!

The naming for cultural ages is also problematic, as shown below. Steiner choose to focus on the epi-center of human cultural and soul development for each cultural age. But of course the issue is that a cultural age is a time period, and the cultural and soul development impulse centers in a certain geography, but there are developments across the planet Earth during the same time period.

Also the naming does not take into account a balanced terminology for the Two streams of development (Northern and Southern - the concept of which is not covered here. -ed.) in the first ages, though Steiner does at one point explain he names the third age Egypto-Chaldean for this reason that there is a Southern and Northern aspect to it.

For these reasons it was considered to drop the geographical denomination from the name label of the cultural age, and just use the number sequence, like first, second, third cultural age. Assuming that the reader and student knows and is well aware. (I chose to retain the geographical denominations because I feel it brings forth in the imagination a picture the student can immediately relate to, given assumed prior knowledge – even cursory – of history. -ed.)

Naming the Epochs

From theosophy: Aryan .. became ... post-Atlantean, or Post-Atlantean or Postatlantean .. or Current Fifth Epoch.

Naming the Cultural Ages

• Ancient Indian, first ancient Indian, ...?
• Second Persian, Ancient Persian, ...?

• Egypto-Chaldean, Egyptian-Babylonian-Chaldean-Assyrian, Babylonian-Assyrian, Egyptian-Babylonian-Assyrian, Chaldean-Babylonian, Egypt-Chaldean-Babylonian, Chaldean-Babylonian-Assyrian ...?

  • This cultural age is most often described by Rudolf Steiner as the Egypto-Chaldean, however he also uses many variants, such as Babylonian-Assyrian and even Egyptian-Babylonian-Assyrian (1908-09-04-GA106). Sometimes he combines 'Egypto-Chaldean' and 'Chaldean-Babylonian' (1910-12-27-GA126). Note: the dual name Egypto-Chaldean of this cultural age is because it has parts of both the Northern and Southern streams of development.
• Greco-Roman, Greco-Latin ...?
• Fifth post-Atlantean, or Anglo-Saxon-Germanic, current fifth, Germanic-Anglo-Saxon, Germanic-Anglo-American, Anglo Germanic, ...?
• Sixth ... Slavic, Russian ...?
• Seventh ... American ...?

I have strived to be consistent with my chosen versions of the above in my naming conventions. The important thing to understand here is that these names emphasize the cultures that best exemplify the overall influences of the Age i.e. they do not necessarily mean the focus is one (or more) particular peoples existing within the Age. -ed.

Introduction

Cultures are born, become middle-aged grow old and die, only to be reborn again on a higher level. Will understanding our past help us to make sense of the present and show us a view to the future?

[We] will be drawing on the work of the great philosopher and Spiritual Scientist Rudolf Steiner in my exploration of the subject of the seven cultural epochs and their relationship to humanity's spiritual growth in the past, present and future.

What are the Seven Cultural Epochs?

To answer this question in Anthroposophical terms it is necessary to gain an understanding of world evolution as taught by Rudolf Steiner. Goethe in his theory of metamorphoses proposed that a seed evolves into a stem, a stem into a leaf, a leaf into a flower and a flower into fruit and finally the fruit drops a seed that begins the whole cycle once again. Rudolf Steiner as a spiritual pupil of Goethe applied this principle to his study of the development of our cosmos, higher beings, the planets, our earth, what lies behind the world beyond sensory existence and individual human beings, animals, plants and minerals. The bulk of this study can be found in Rudolf Steiner's book Occult Science. In this book, he recounts stages where transmutations have occurred in the evolution of our cosmos. This differs from the plant only in that at each stage of metamorphosis or transmutation there is a further step in development (an evolution – a stage of achieved perfection) so that when there is a repetition (RS used the term 'recapitulation') of all that has been it occurs at a higher level.

Recapitulation refers to the fact that a period of evolution repeats and passes through the evolutionary characteristics of earlier periods of evolution at a higher level. As a result, after recapitulating earlier stages (one level higher), there is always a new period of development which builds on the previous. The recapitulations prepare this new development so that 'the already existing' is adjusted and equipped so as to support the new development.

FreeManCreator: Recapitulation

Planetary Stages of Our World – The Macrocosm

[T]he world will altogether undergo seven planetary stages. We are presently at the fourth stage and still have three to go. They are described below for the sake of clarity.

The names below are not intended to point to present planets. They are only indications for the sake of the building up of mental pictures. What we see in the sky today are only memories, remnants of the past physical conditions of the earth.

1. The First stage was called Old Saturn. Here we are told that human beings first acquired a rudimentary form of the physical body – human beings have this physical body in common with the minerals of the earth and this is what constitutes the bony system.
2. The Second stage is called Old Sun where human beings are said to have first acquired an Etheric body or Life body, human beings have this in common with the plant kingdom of the earth and it is this Etheric force that has been integral in the building up of the seven main organs of the body and the blood.
3. The Third stage is the called Old Moon where human beings acquired the Astral body or body of feelings and sensations – human beings have this in common with the animal kingdom of the earth. The relevant organs here have to do with the nervous system and the brain.
4. The Fourth stage is our present Earth stage where human beings first acquired an Ego, that is, self-awareness or self-consciousness, the ability to realise separateness from the world. This is what Rudolf Steiner calls man's first spiritual member.
5. The Fifth stage will occur in what Rudolf Steiner Characterises as Jupiter. This phase of earthly evolution will enable human beings to acquire another spiritual member Manas or Spirit Self. For this to occur there must be a spiritualisation of the Astral body through the workings of the Ego consciousness. This will mean that the ego conscious will work on the purification of thoughts, feelings, desires and passions. This perfected Astral body will lead to a perception of the Astral world in the same way that the Astral or sentient body led to a perception of the physical world. It will be an addition to the perception of the physical world - the consciousness of Angels.
6. The Sixth stage will be the Venus stage of world evolution. Here humanity will have perfected the Etheric body through the workings of the Ego and transformed it into a vehicle for another spiritual member, Buddhi or Life Spirit. The habits and moral life will become transformed into all that is good, true and the beautiful and man's perception will extend into the lower regions of Devachan - the Consciousness of Archangels.
7. The Seventh stage will be the Vulcan stage where the physical body of human beings will become purified and resound with Light Life and Word. Humanity will be able to attain another spiritual member Spirit Man or Atma. With this new spiritual member humanity will reach with its consciousness all the way to the higher reaches of Devachan - the consciousness of the Archai (the source, origin or root of things that exist).

This is just a [brief] overview, since each stage also means a spiritualisation for the all the kingdoms of nature, as well as higher beings – they too will change and become further advanced. What was will die away and be reborn again after a period of Pralaya or 'rest' at every stage. This is an oversimplification but to go too deeply into this would be to diverge too far from our topic today.

In the diagram below we can see that Jupiter is a higher repetition of the Moon condition, that Venus is a higher repetition of the Sun condition and that the Vulcan condition will be a higher repetition of the Saturn one. The fourth condition is always the one that can stand by itself without needing a repetition.

The Present Earth Stage

At present humanity is passing through its fourth planetary condition Earth where as we have seen above man is undergoing the development of the Ego. The earthly condition is divided into seven divisions referred to as Epochs:

1. Polarian

   Man had a form similar to the one he has now, but his consciousness was extremely dim, comparable to that of a dreaming person. He dreamed his being in a kind of sleeping consciousness; the spirit was still lacking. The conditions at that stage makes them difficult to describe for current language and waking consciousness which is based on the mineral physical. (https://anthroposophy.eu/Polarian_epoch)

2. Hyperborean

   The major event that took place in the beginning of the epoch was the separation of the Sun from the Earth body (including the Moon). Mainstream humanity was still in the early phases of development as an air-being, preparatory stages before the great transformation in the Lemurian Epoch. (https://anthroposophy.eu/Hyperborean_epoch)

3. Lemurian

   In the Lemurian Epoch the Moon separated from the Earth, and from then onwards we find the Earth in a balance held between the Sun and Moon influences.

   The Lemurian Epoch is transformational and a most crucial phase in the development of Mankind, as the monad spirits (a unit or entity of the divine Logos) descended from the group souls 'above' into physical bodies 'below' to inhabit them with the infusion of manas (spirit-self). Man became an upright being, warm blooded, was split into two genders, with the start of I-consciousness and physical reincarnation. It was also the start of good and evil due to the 'fall' or Luciferic infection. Furthermore it was the start of the descent of souls incarnating on Earth to further their development^*. (https://anthroposophy.eu/Lemurian_epoch)

   ^* i.e. earthly death and reincarnation. -ed.

   

4. Atlantean

   A great culture had its base on the content of Atlantis in the Atlantean ocean, which perished with the flood. Many symbols as well as references can still be found in the Greek culture, e.g. with Plato. Humanity was characterized through still pliable bodies, not solid mineral like our current, hence no physical bodily remains such as bones are to be found. They had a strong memory and developed the power of thought in the Primal Semites, which was the foundation for the development of the thinking faculty. They also had control over the etheric life force, called Vril or later Tao.

   In the middle of the Atlantean epoch a great crisis took place by a 'seduction' that led to the betrayal of the Mysteries and secrets of the Vril force, which was then used for selfish and evil purposes. This was the origin of black magic. In a later period selected groups started migrations to develop further, and this was the basis for our current epoch. (https://anthroposophy.eu/Atlantean_epoch)

   Regarding the Fall of Atlantis:

   Man got control over divine powers and elemental spirits that govern growth and physiognomy of human beings. As Man was not yet very developed, this was used by individuals for selfish purposes and harming their fellow human beings (eg keeping them dwarf-sized in growth, making them into giants, letting the physical organism develop so the individual would be a cretin i.e. giants had intelligence inversely proportional to their size). This became ever worse in the last three or four ages so the Atlantean civilization was guided towards its own destruction. (1917-10-06-GA177)

   

   

   

5. 5^th Post Atlantean Epoch (Current)

   We are currently living in the Fifth Postatlantean Epoch following the demise of Atlantis. It consists of seven cultural ages [which form the core focus of this narrative. -ed.] The fifth epoch is the lowest point of Man's physical descent, and represents a turning point in Man's consciousness: From an atavistic clairvoyance and guidance by the spirits of the third hierarchy to a free human being, set free from that guidance, and able and expected to consciously develop based on free will. This is related to the development of the threefold 'I' consisting of sentient, intellectual and consciousness soul. (https://anthroposophy.eu/Current_Postatlantean_epoch)

6. 6^th Post Atlantean Epoch (Future)

   The Sixth Epoch in the current Earth planetary stage follows our Current Postatlantean epoch, and is the one that 'crowns' the whole period of the Earth's seven epochs. This epoch will be transformational for humanity, similar as the Lemurian epoch.

   Just as the Atlantean epoch had a very different Earth and humanity, so will this also be the case after the 'War of All against All' that will conclude the Fifth and Current Postatlantean epoch. Humanity will be spiritualized – see Man's transformation and spiritualization, as a division between the good and spiritualized and lower evil part of humanity becomes a reality. The 'sample' of humanity that will be used as the basis to form this next race and epoch will be taken from the next 'Russian' or Sixth Cultural Age between approx. the years 3500 and 5000 (see Chapter 6).

   The Sixth Post Atlantean Epoch will be characterized by brotherly love, the essence of the Christ Impulse which will have blossomed and come into fruition in that epoch. And just as the Sixth Cultural Age will contain a selected 'cohort', a small piece of the population that contains the characteristics for the next Sixth Epoch ... so too will the Sixth Epoch already give us a preliminary outlook on what is to come in the next planetary stage Future Jupiter. (https://anthroposophy.eu/Sixth_epoch) ^[1]

7. 7^th Post Atlantean Epoch (Future)

   The Seventh Epoch is even harder to imagine for contemporary consciousness than the Sixth Epoch, as in that [Seventh] epoch already Man will no longer reincarnate or have a physical body as today, and will have a totally different state of consciousness. In the Book of Revelation the seventh epoch corresponds to the epoch of the seven trumpets, which means that Man will attain the natural faculty and stage of clairvoyant consciousness of inspiration and hear the music of the spheres of the lower spirit world.

   A division between good and evil, between the higher spiritual future humanity and the lower material 'race' will have taken place. For the first, after the great Sixth epoch when Christianity will flourish, Christ will have become the group soul of humanity. The lower evil race will split off as part of a material globe, a process symbolized in the Book of Revelation by the pouring out of the bowls or vials of God's wrath [the Eighth Sphere? -ed.].

   The seventh epoch will be characterized by a moral impulse and active moral life, a firm resolve to do what is moral. Cleverness without morality will be non-existent. This is the merger of wisdom and morality that Rudolf Steiner often discusses as these two are separated in the Current Post Atlantean Epoch. This blending or fusion is a result of the Christ Impulse. (https://anthroposophy.eu/Seventh_epoch)

At present we are living in the 5^th Post Atlantean Epoch and this epoch is further divided into seven Cultural Ages as follows.

1. Indian 7227 BC – 5067 BC – Age of Cancer
2. Persian 5067 BC – 2970 BC – Age of Gemini
3. Egypto Chaldean 2,907 BC – 747 BC – Age of Taurus
4. Greco Roman 747 BC – 1413 AD – Age of Aries
5. Anglo German 1413 AD – 3573 AD – Age of Pisces
6. Russian 3573 AD – 5733 AD – Age of Aquarius
7. American 5733 AD – 7893 AD (end of 5^th post Atlantean Epoch) – Age of Capricorn

Each Age lasts for 2160 years and according to Rudolf Steiner has a definite evolutionary mission. Each Age in itself is a form of repetition at a higher stage of the previous earthly ages. The Indian is a repetition of the Polarian which is a repetition of the planetary condition of old Saturn, the Persian the Hyperborean which is a repetition of old Sun, the Egypto Chaldean repeats the Lemurian which is a repetition of old Moon, the Greco Roman the Atlantean a repetition of Earth, the Anglo German repeats once again the Lemurian, the Russian the Hyperborean and the American the Polarian once again repetitions of moon Sun and Saturn respectively.

One can ascertain from this that the Divine Evolutionary Plan is not linear but is much more complex i.e. a system of progress in which nothing is lost once gained, where future developmental or evolutionary advancement begins with a recapitulation of previous periods of development. -ed.

Human Beings – The Microcosm

The human being according to Rudolf Steiner is made up of a triune of members. There are three physical bodies: Physical Etheric Astral. Three soul bodies: Sentient Soul, Intellectual Soul, Consciousness Soul. And three spiritual bodies: Spirit Self, Life Spirit, Spirit Man. We have an Ego or that which gives us individual being or a sense that we are separate from the environment around us and which has worked and continues to work on all our members to perfect them.

Our Ego in so far as it works within our Astral body or our 'nervous system' brings about the development of the Sentient Soul, through which man 'feels and senses' the physical world around him. However man could not retain much of what he felt and observed if those impressions were allowed to remain in the Astral body for they would not be retained for long enough. These impressions would have to sink in deeper into the memory or Life body the Etheric body in order to be contemplated and remembered. When the Ego takes those impressions into the Etheric body it begins to think, it is using the Intellectual soul. When the Ego takes those thoughts and feelings further into the physical body it can be said that in so far as this causes a moral action to occur then the Ego is elaborating what Rudolf Steiner called the Consciousness or Spiritual Soul.

Let us take a potted rose as an example: when we look, smell, and touch the rose, the impressions we have received by way of the Astral body are directed to the Ego and it then elaborates the 'Sentient Soul'. When we think about the smell, feel and look of the rose this means that our Ego has taken these impressions down to the Etheric body and we are now elaborating what Steiner called the Intellectual aspect of our soul. If this were all that we did with regards to the rose then it would soon die, but the joy we experience in observing the rose and thinking about it will lead us to look after it, to water and nurture it and place it in a good light. When we are compelled to such a moral action this means that our Ego has taken those impressions and thoughts right down into the physical body and in so doing the Ego is cultivating the 'Consciousness, or Spiritual Soul'.

The full development of the Spiritual Soul or Consciousness soul means a transformation for the Astral body. When this transformation has reached a state of perfection through the working of the Ego then the Astral body becomes a spiritual member. Rudolf Steiner calls this first Spiritual Body, the Spirit Self. The Ego (self) indwelling this (spirit) body can now not only observe and sense the rose, think about it and morally act towards it but it can also sense with spiritual senses what lies behind the physical rose – there arises a picture or 'imaginative consciousness' or Imagination.

In the same way that we see with our physical eyes, we begin to see with our Astral or spiritual 'eyes'. In time this Ego residing within this new spiritual body the Spirit Self (Spirit) enters these spiritual impressions into the Etheric body or Life Body (Life) whose eventual perfection results in its transformation into another spiritual body the 'Life Spirit'. With our Life Spirit we can now communicate with the spirit of the rose and this is called Inspiration.

This communication and this 'seeing' compels the Ego residing within the Life Spirit to enter the physical body right down into its bony structure. The perfection of the Physical Body (Man) by this Ego working within the 'Life Spirit' results in the development of the third Spiritual body 'Spirit Man'. Now we are one with the rose and we understand its true essence this is called Intuition.

According to Rudolf Steiner, we have all incarnated in every Age. The period between one incarnation and the next is on average somewhere between 1000-1300 years epoch. Every 2,160 (that is during every Age) human beings incarnate once as a male and once as a female^* in order to encounter the varied experiences that are necessary for the normal development of the physical, soul and spiritual bodies.

^* This is not, according to RS, a hard and fast rule but in general this is the pattern. Nor is the time between incarnations restricted to the given range; much depends on the Individuality's own degree of development and other factors that need not be discussed here.

Each Age has a mission. The Mission of the Indian Age was to acquire knowledge through the Etheric Body. The Mission of the Persian Cultural Age was to acquire knowledge through the function of the Astral body. In Egypto Chaldean times human beings acquired knowledge through the Sentient soul. In Greco Roman times through the Intellectual Soul. Our age, the Anglo German, is the one in which man will acquire knowledge by way of the Consciousness soul. In the Sixth Cultural Age or the Russian Age it will be the mission of human beings to begin to take in knowledge through the Spirit Self. And finally in the Seventh and last Cultural Age human beings will begin to acquire knowledge through Life Spirit.

01Ancient Indian Age 7227 BC – 5067 BC

The Mission of the Indian Age is the attainment of Brahma – The acquisition of knowledge through the Etheric Body – The seed.

The term "ancient India" refers here to a time not recorded by human beings. The people now commonly known as Indians belong to a stage of historic evolution developed long afterwards. This is not to say that at this time there was no other civilization it is only that the first post-Atlantean period of the Earth was that time in which the civilization here described as Indian was dominant.

This Age stands under the sign of Cancer symbolising the end of an old world and the beginning of a new one. The Seven Holy Rishis, the great leaders of the Indian people were the ancestors of the Ancient Atlanteans who migrated from the continent before its downfall. They brought with them a memory of the ancient clairvoyance and could still communicate with the spiritual world. It was the case that at this time if a man wanted to work in the every day world he worked with the organs of his physical senses, but if he wanted to acquire knowledge he had to enter into a different state of consciousness, a state of consciousness acquired through the organs of the Etheric Body.

Through his Etheric body the ancient Indian could experience the spiritual world in the same way he could experience the physical world through his physical body. This gave him a feeling of spiritual 'oneness' with higher beings – a state that resembled the state of 'oneness' of the first earthly Epoch and the first planetary stage/condition. This spirit of 'oneness' was summed up by the Indian as Brahma. The Indian felt that the world he could see with his Etheric organs in its unity was his primeval home. In contrast the physical world was to the ancient Indian a fallacy of his perception an illusion. This led to the doctrine of Maya. The Indian person had no interest in the Earth except as a veil (Maya) of the supersensible, and sought to free himself from its bondage.

A faint echo of the spiritual wisdom of the Indians is contained in the Vedas, the Ramayana and the Bhagavad-Gita wherein there is an undertone of the longing for what the Indian man has lost; we can hear it even today in traditional Indian music. This was the beginning of the withdrawal of the spirit from humanity and was necessary so that the human being could develop a means to raise himself through his own efforts to the Gods.

From the site which lay in the neighborhood of present-day Ireland [the last remnant of Ancient Atlantis] certain peoples had already migrated to the East, settling as far as Asia. The most highly developed masses of peoples began to migrate to the East, and everywhere along their journey they formed colonies, the most powerful of these colonies, with the most highly developed culture, existed in the neighborhood of the present Gobi Desert.

Later on, a certain number of peoples travelled from there to many parts of the world: one group went to the present India; where they encountered an indigenous yellow-brown race, with whom they became partly united.

It was after the Atlantean flood, that this colony travelled South and founded the first culture of the Post-Atlantean epoch, the first culture of our own age. The most advanced teachers who went with this colony, the first great teachers of ancient India, are called the ancient Indian Rishis.

The Hindus of today are the descendants of that ancient population, but if we wish to discover traces of this culture we must go far back into times which are not known to history; the Vedas, for example, already belong to a later age, for nothing was recorded in those early days. (1907-06-26-GA100)

02Ancient Persian Age 5067 BC – 2970 BC

The Mission of the Persian Age: Ormuz and Ahriman – The battle of Light and Darkness – the Acquisition of knowledge through the Astral Body – The Root.

The Persian Age stands under the sign of Gemini and it is interesting to note that the ancient Persian did not long for unity and developed instead a sense for duality. He could look out to the world of the stars and saw it in all its clarity and brilliance. He was at once with the stars [and felt] he belonged to them, while at the same time the power to look outwards to the world through the vehicle of the Astral body gradually unfolded. The two aspects of 'seeing' coexisted together. Unlike the ancient Indian the Persian found that the world of Cosmic space held the same interest as the physical world.

The principles of light and darkness were observed by the great initiate Zarathustra as the opposition between two beings, one of which was personified in the sun and the other in the moon. Ahura Mazdao or Ormuzd, the Light-aura, is the being whom the Persians worshiped^[2] as the highest god and Ahriman the evil spirit who represented all the beings who belonged to earth-plus-moon. We can see how this Age is a further repetition of the Sun planetary condition and also the Hyperborean age when the Sun broke away from the earth so that there were now two bodies a Moon–Earth and an external Sun.

It is comprehensible then that the ancient Persian rarely built temples, altars, nor statues in their worship, but performed their sacrifices on the tops of mountains from whence they could gaze out at both the outer world of nature and the world of the stars, the worlds of the spirit.

Persian culture wished to transform nature by work .. learned that the outer world was not wholly Maya .. and found side by side with the world of spirit he found a real world in which work had to be done. In a struggle between two worlds, between the worlds of spirit and that of Earth, this was also represented as the world between the good (spirit Ormuzd [or] Ahura Mazda) and Ahriman (representing the world which has to be transformed). However no laws could be found in nature, Persian culture could not find the spiritual in nature. (1906-09-01-GA095).

In the period between 4000 BC and 2500 BC a key milestone happens when Man starts to write things down from his experiences: the start of the cuneiform script, pictorial languages, and the calendar. This timing correspondence can be compared and confirmed for various cultures (Sumerian, Chinese, Jewish). These earliest form of cuneiform script were only deciphered in the 19th century.

03Ancient Babylonian-Chaldean-
Egyptian Cultural Age 2,970 BC – 747 BC

The Mission of the Third Cultural Epoch – Babylonian-Chaldean-Egyptian – Acquisition of knowledge through the Sentient Soul – The Stem.

The Babylonian-Chaldean-Egyptian Age stands under the sign of the Bull or Taurus (we see this reflected in the Mithras Mysteries) and its mission was to provide humanity opportunities for acquiring knowledge through the Sentient soul. This means that the human being of that time could take the impressions received from the outer world and could make them more inwardly felt. Similarly, human beings could also bring their experiences of the spiritual worlds to intimate consciousness within. The Sentient or Feeling soul then did not experience merely light and darkness but something of the element of life that is present in sympathies and antipathies.

From their Temples the Egyptians could observe the world of stars and find their relationship to the physical world (Geometry, Architecture, Mathematics). And it was also in a Temple or pyramid that the acolyte or student of the mysteries would undergo an elaborate initiation rite called the "Temple Sleep" in order to see into the worlds of Spirit.

From this inward and outward observation there arose the veneration of a divine trinity, Osiris, Isis and Horus. We can see how this mirrors the Moon Planetary stage and the Lemurian age insofar as it was during the Moon stage firstly and the Lemurian age finally that the physical Moon and all beings related to it made their break from the earth leaving now three [cosmic] bodies to be observed by the human being – Sun, Moon and Earth – Osiris, the representative of the Sun the divine source of Life. Isis, the Goddess of the Moon the fertile mother who gave birth to Horus the Son who was connected to the Earth.

It was now the case that the physical world became more prominent in the consciousness of the Egyptian than ever before. The world of Spirit was receding from view.

04Ancient Greco-Roman Age 747 BC – 1413 AD

The Mission of the Fourth Cultural Age – Greco-Roman (or Latin) – Acquisition of knowledge through the Intellectual Soul – Hierarchy of the Gods – The Leaf.

The Greco-Roman Age stood under the sign of the Ram or Lamb and this was the age in which human beings began working on the mission of acquiring knowledge through the Intellectual soul.

During this Age we can see how the age of Atlantis is mirrored in the Hellenic hierarchy of the gods. It remembered the God-like figures of Atlantis. At the same time the Ego began to receive all its impressions from the outside world and very little now could be gained from the old clairvoyant sight into the worlds of Spirit. A door was shut so to speak on the worlds of Spirit and man had to learn to rely instead on the power of his own thinking e.g. through the rise of Philosophy and Theology.

The Greek saying 'better to be a beggar on earth than a king in the realm of shades' shows us the darkening of spiritual consciousness. The spiritual world had become nothing more than a realm of shades.

Seen through their sculptures, the Ancient Greek became preoccupied with the beauty of the human form. He sought to intellectualise it, to understand it. Roman statues reveal us a further descent of consciousness.

Another way to discern the gradual descent of human consciousness is to observe the manner in which the humanity of each Age chose to worship. The Indians withdrew into their own being to find the spirit we can see this in the Buddha whose gaze is turned inward, eyes always closed. Persians worshiped on the mountains gazing outward at the world making sacrificial offerings to the Sun God Ahura Mazdao. The Egyptians worshiped in their Pyramids or initiation Temples built with the knowledge that proceeded from the stars, from the position of the planets using laws of geometry, which were relevant to the earthly sphere. By way of contrast the Greek Temples were built so that the Gods could descend into them – the temples were [considered] the physical bodies of the Gods and needed no human beings in them [for ritual purposes]. Conversely, the [later] Latin human being who was losing his ability to reach the spirit built himself great vaulted churches that reached upwards to the heavens surrounded by windows of coloured glass through which they could observe light diffused as an image of the diversity of the universe. Wherein the voice of the priests bouncing from the great stonewalls brought them a memory of the music of the spheres.

This descent of consciousness into the material world spiralled even further. Further in fact than had been intended by the wise guidance of human evolution. Had something not intervened, humanity would not have been able to rise up out of matter through its own power. This 'forgetting' would have led humanity to become ever more hardened to the spirit and drawn to matter. What was it that intervened in this spiralling? It was the rise of Christianity through the Christ Event or the Mystery of Golgotha, the sacrificial act of a God on behalf of humanity that enabled human beings to rise once again from the depths of materialism.

Had Christ not died on the Cross and overcome death in this Age (the Age of the sacrificial Ram or Lamb) humanity would not have been able to overcome the darkening or death of consciousness of the spiritual world.^[3]

A Few Key Events and Their Impact on Humanity's Development

The Academy of Gondishapur was a center of highly developed intellectual science in Persia (current Iran) between approx. 600-900 and was the worldwide center of advanced intellectual thinking and new scientific impulses. It had a major impact on world history.

• Soratic impulse: the intention of Sorat for the year 666 was to deluge humanity with a knowledge and a culture which the gods had intended for men only during the third millennium, by bestowing the consciousness soul prematurely on Man around 666, thereby side-tracking normal development by mingling the intellectual soul's development with that of the consciousness soul. In case the impulse would have succeeded, geniuses would have arisen with inspired knowledge that mankind will only have around 2493, and delivered great advances to humanity's unbalanced immature soul moods of that period (1918-10-11-GA184).

• The impulse of Gondishapur resuscitated the neo-Persian influence and Zarathustra-impulse (see Persian Cultural Age), but although the original intentions of the Soratic impulse were shunted, still its effects remain as an influence in humanity today (1918-10-16-GA182).

• At the Academy of Gondishapur, all major works of the greek culture, both philosophical and scientific, were translated into arabic. Great spirits incarnated and brought major advances in many areas of science such as medicine, aritmethic, astrology, etc.

• Prophet Mohammed (approx. 570-632), founded the Islam and this countered the impulse of Gondishapur (1918-10-12-GA184). However the oriental spiritual stream thus created also did away with the spiritual and put a strong focus on the physical only (1904-06-24-GA092). Mohammed's clairvoyance saw the elemental world and led to a monotheistic and (ahrimanic) intellectual religion with a luciferic paradise that stands opposed to threefolded divinity (1924-04-24-GA316), christianity (1913-01-03-GA069), and spiritual science (1915-04-11-GA272, 1920-06-09-GA300). In the middle ages, around the 13th century, this oriental spiritual stream met, fructified and clashed with the european culture and christian religion (1911-03-13-GA124, 1924-09-10-GA346)

The year 869 in the fourth Greco-Latin cultural age is an important milestone for the contemporary worldview, because it made official – by decree – the abolition of the spirit on Earth by the fourth council of the catholic church, held in Constantinople. Trichotomy, the definition of Man as body, soul and spirit, was then declared heretical.

The impact was incisive and profound, given the predominant influence of the Roman catholic church in Europe and across the world for over more than 1100 years, this has influenced and changed the contemporary worldview and prepared the ground for the materialistic culture and worldview based on mineral science. The reason why so little inclination to spirituality is to be discerned in Christian civilization is that acknowledgment of the spirit was declared heretical by the 8th Ecumenical Council in the year 869.

This has had a major influence on how Man sees himself a physical being in a body on the planet Earth which is just a 'speck' in the huge universe, rather than Man as a spirit and the crown of creation and the central goal for the solar system evolution and Man's development into the Tenth spiritual hierarchy.

The Templars sought to purify Christianity. Referring to John the Baptist, they advocated an ascetic tendency. Their acts of worship were so hostile to the church out of resistance to the Roman secularization that it is not appropriate to speak about it publicly today. The order had become very inconvenient to the clergy and princes because of its power, it had to suffer severe persecutions and perished after its last Grand Master, Jacob of Molay, had suffered martyrdom with a number of brothers of the order in 1314.

1332 saw the burning of the knights of last of the Templars (1916-09-25-GA171), resulting in the eradication of the Templar Impulse orchestrated by king and pope through soratic counterforce impulses. (Incidentally, Steiner spoke of 1998 becoming under the same impulses: In 1998 the attack on the consciousness soul comes through internet technology e.g. smartphones, social media, gaming, etc.).

05(Current)
Anglo-German Age 1413 AD – 3573 AD

The Mission of the Fifth Cultural Age – Anglo-German – is to acquire Knowledge through the Consciousness Soul/Spirit Self – The Blossom.

Now we come to our present Age. The Anglo-German Age, which began in 1413, and stands under the sign of Pisces. This is the age that will provide humanity with the experiences necessary to enable it to rise up once more from out of the depths of matter to make its way back toward the Spirit. Now the Ego must acquire knowledge through the Consciousness or Spiritual Soul. We can see this as a kind of recapitulation of Egyptian times under the sign of the Bull – which is a recapitulation of the Lemurian age and the planetary stage of the Moon. In Lemuria man began to walk upright, this is reflected in Egypto Chaldean times by the Obelisk rising up towards the heavens and we can see this in our own more materialistic time in the skyscrapers that pierce the heavens around us and the desire to conquer the earth and explore the solar system – in particular the Moon. We see that our super cleanliness is a materialistic reflection of the ritual ablutions of the Egyptians. Also we continue to embalm and bury our dead. We even see a kind of materialistic Temple sleep in the world of Virtual reality.

However the Consciousness soul or Spiritual soul cultivated by humanity must find its way to the Spirit through the moral will forces set in motion by the spiritual by the being of Anthroposophia^[4] the renewed 'Isis'. This will enable the transformation of the soul or Astral body into Spirit Self. This fifth cultural Epoch will be the precursor of the future fifth condition of the earth, Jupiter, in which the Moon will once again be united with the Earth in the same way that in our Age humanity is united with materialism (Bull).

The primary task in this Age is for humanity to come to grips with evil^[5] as an impulse in world evolution. (1917-11-19-GA178) It is in the current fifth cultural age that humanity must wrestle with the powers of evil ... evil will approach the human being of this fifth cultural age in every conceivable form. We have to solve in the widest sense, in a living and energetic way, what we may call the problem of Evil, by addressing its nature and essence. This is an essential task of the fifth Post Atlantean Age. (1917-11-03-GA273)

There is/will be a rise of the the adverse powers of opposition: Ahrimanic (untruthfulness, lies, materialism, Mammon, etc. ), Asuric (black magic, preying on human desires, etc.) In this Age we are dealing with the Fall of the Spirits of Darkness after the battle with Michael in period 1840-1879^*.

There is/will be a rise in physical wars and conflicts during this Age. Conversely, there is/will be an increase of the spiritual guidance of mankind by angels (GA015), an intellectual age focused on thinking. (1911-11-10-GA130)

^* Losing the battle means they (the Spirits of Darkness) are no longer to be found in the heavens but on Earth: the late 1870s were a particular time when human souls became subject to ahrimanic powers with regard to certain powers of perception. Before this, these powers were active in the spiritual realms and therefore left human beings more in peace; when they were driven out of the spiritual realms they came upon human beings. The impact is the ahrimanic materialistic view with its personal bias. Materialism had reached its peak in the 1840s, but in those days its impulses were more instinctive in humans, for the crowd of ahrimanic spirits still sent their impulses from the spiritual world into human instincts. From autumn 1879 onwards, these ahrimanic impulses – powers of perception and will – became the personal property of human beings.

Chaos has arisen because the reality is considered in an unspiritual way and the world of the spirit cannot be ignored with impunity. You may think it is enough to live with thoughts and ideas that are wholly derived from the physical world. It is what people generally think today, though this does not make it true. The most completely and utterly wrong idea humanity has ever had is — to put it simply — that the spirits will put up with being ignored. You may consider it egotistical and selfish on their part, but the terminology is different in their world. Egotism or not, the spirits take their revenge if they are ignored here on earth. This is a law, an iron necessity. One way to characterize the present time is to say that the present human chaos is the revenge of the spirits who have been ignored for too long. (GA 177)

"Today intellectual development ceases before middle life. The majority of people one meets today, especially amongst the middle classes, do not mature after the age of twenty-seven; thereafter they are content to plough the same furrow. ... A Man who is prepared to continue his studies, to expand his knowledge, a Man who remains plastic and capable of transformation is a rarity today." and in terms of Man's inner psychic development: "The thread linking birth and death is broken to some extent between the ages of twenty-six to twenty-seven and thirty-seven to thirty-eight. In this decade of Man's evolution the forces of birth and death are not fully in harmony." (1918-10-25-GA185)

The Future in the Fifth Cultural Age

Whilst carrying out a historically necessary task, Western Europe committed countless acts of injustice against the Eastern cultures (and its occult secrets). It bears a weighty karmic debt, and cannot penetrate the secrets of existence without activating this. See also the 'necessity' of great conflict between West (Anglo) and East (China).

The period around 2200-2600 will hearken in the Future Oriphiel age a hefty cleansing period central to the Fifth Cultural Age followed by a transition period. Oriphiel is the one who must come to shake humankind, to jolt it through terrifying suffering, awakening it to its true vocation.

Around 2500: "will be a critical moment in the development of civilisation, for then a point will be reached when human nature will have progressed so far that it will be thrown back into decay unless it has acquired the vision of repeated earth-lives and karma .. It will not enter completely until the middle of the third millennium; but little by little it will make its presence felt, and humanity must now consciously be alive to and prepare for its inevitable advent." (1918-06-25-GA181)

Impulses at turn of millennia: "in the year 3000, one will again expect the end of the world, but the world will have become such that people will long for this end. One can say without sentimentality: European humankind is heading toward awful times". (1914-03-07-GA286)

The age of the consciousness soul demands that Man should stand on his own feet, be self-sufficient and, as personality, emancipate himself. He must abandon the old supports. He can no longer allow himself to be persuaded into what he should believe; he must work out for himself his own religious faith. (1918-10-19-GA185)

Only a genuine concern of each Man for his neighbour can bring salvation to mankind in the future - I mean to his community life. The characteristic feature of the age of the consciousness soul is Man's isolation. That he is inwardly isolated from his neighbour is the consequence of Individuality, of the development of Personality. But this separative tendency must have a reciprocal pole and this counterpole must consist in the cultivation of an active concern of every Man for his neighbour. (1918-10-25-GA185)

06Russian-Slavic Age 3573 AD – 5733 AD

The Mission of the Sixth Cultural Age – Russian-Slavic – is to acquire Knowledge through the Spirit Self – The Fruit.

This Cultural Age will stand under the sign of Aquarius and will have the task of nurturing knowledge through the beginnings of the Spirit Self i.e. the perfected Astral body. By this time humanity will have elaborated spiritual organs, which it will use to acquire knowledge of the Astral World in the same way that physical organs provide us with knowledge of the physical world.

The Spirit Self pre-supposes the existence in human souls of the following three characteristics of Social life:

1. Moral quality and social life in which brotherliness prevails;

   The most highly cultured will not only feel pain such as is caused today by the sight of poverty, suffering and misery in the world, but such individuals will experience the suffering of another human being as their own suffering .. the well-being of the individual will depend entirely upon the well-being of the whole.

2. Freedom of thought:

   Complete freedom of thought and a longing for it will so lay hold of men that what a Man likes to believe, what religious convictions he holds, will rest wholly within the power of his own Individuality. Collective beliefs that exist in so many forms today among the various communities will no longer influence those who constitute the civilized portion of humanity.

3. Pneumatology (forms of knowledge based upon the spiritual) will prevail:

   Men will only be considered to have real knowledge when they recognize the spiritual, when they know that the spiritual pervades the world and that human souls must unite with the spiritual. All materialistic beliefs including our current science will be regarded as antiquated superstition. Men as a matter of course will accept as science only such forms of knowledge as are based upon the spiritual, upon pneumatology. Scientific work and study will require "the ability to sense the spiritual world which brings everything into existence". One will qualify for admission to some scientific study only when they are shown to possess the right sentiments and sufficient emotion. (1911-11-04-GA130)

This will be a social time for man. Societies and communities will form not through race or nationality but out of freedom and brotherhood. Humanity will begin to see everywhere the spirit behind matter. This will be a renewal of the age of Zarathustra. The Maitreya Buddha will guide humanity towards the second coming of Christ in the Astral world as humanity was guided by Zarathustra to see Him in the Astral aura of the Sun. Another repetition becomes apparent. This is a repetition on a higher level of the Hyperborean age when the Sun broke away from the Earth, which was also a repetition of the old Sun condition of the Earth. This Age will once again experience duality in that human beings will more and more form into two factions: the good and the evil – the White Magic and the Black – and this will have a further repetition in the Sixth Post Atlantean Epoch and the future planetary condition of Venus when the Sun will once again unite with the Earth and those who have chosen to follow the evil path will not be able to follow and will have to remain behind, dropping out of evolution.

A seed cohort of souls of this Sixth Cultural Age will be the basis for the next great Sixth Epoch.

This Sixth Cultural Age will be radically different; as spiritual as our current fifth has been material, it will be an age that will see the development of brotherhood among men, clairvoyance and creative power (1906-06-14-GA094). One of the main characteristics of the Sixth Cultural Age will be that very definite feelings regarding what is moral and what is immoral will arise in the souls of men. Delicate feelings of sympathy will be aroused by compassionate, kindly deeds and feelings of antipathy toward malicious actions. Nobody living at the present time can have the faintest conception of the intensity of these feelings (1911-09-21-GA130). Human beings will understand better how to arrange their lives; concepts of race will no longer have validity. Men will no longer order their lives according to external, physical considerations but rather on a spiritual basis (1909-06-12-GA109).

"Not until the sixth cultural age will a sense of responsibility become general among mankind so that each individual feels responsible for what he does, not only toward himself but towards mankind as a whole." Whatever is done in connection with or by a part of mankind always effects the whole of human evolution (because of the way the spiritual forces behind the scenes of physical existence arrange things)." (1916-12-31-GA173B)

Work will be performed as an offering as the economic needs of existence will then be separated from work ... one will no longer work for one's personal existence, but will do everything as offering for humanity (1905-10-31-GA093A)

This age will know the true Christianity (not the one of the current or past cultural ages), centered around the sacred Golden Triangle (or Man's higher triad, consisting of spirit-man, life-spirit, spirit-self or atma, buddhi and manas) and the knowledge of reincarnation and karma will be united with Christianity once again (as it was in the beginning). The symbol of Christianity will no longer be the crucified Son of God, but the cross encircled by roses.

In the Book of Revelation, this cultural age maps to the church of Philadelphia. The church of Philadelphia was one of the two communities (the other was Smyrna) that was spared from criticism in the Book of Revelation.

o the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: These are the words of the One who is holy and true, who holds the key of David. What He opens no one can shut, and what He shuts no one can open. I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door, which no one can shut. For you have only a little strength, yet you have kept My word and have not denied My name. Look at those who belong to the synagogue of Satan, who claim to be Jews but are liars instead. I will make them come and bow down at your feet, and they will know that I love you. Because you have kept My command to persevere, I will also keep you from the hour of testing that is about to come upon the whole world, to test those who dwell on the earth. I am coming soon. Hold fast to what you have, so that no one will take your crown. The one who overcomes I will make a pillar in the temple of My God, and he will never again leave it. Upon him I will write the name of My God, and the name of the city of My God (the new Jerusalem that comes down out of heaven from My God), and My new name. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. (Revelation 3:7-13)

The developmental target for humanity in this evolutionary period will be to have developed the spirit-self, and a special relationship with the lower Spirit (Astral) World.

At the beginning of the sixth epoch an influence will have developed, not in higher spheres, but in the sphere of the present-day conscious mind; in the fifth epoch this influence is still in its infancy, but it is nevertheless already developing. It is something which emanates from the musical element. For the fifth epoch music will be not merely art, but the means of expression for quite other things than the purely artistic. Here is something that points to the influence of a specific principle on the physical plane.

The most significant impulse by those directly initiated in the fifth epoch will, to begin with, be given solely in the sphere of music. What has to flow in is not astral, but it is something of great significance in the sphere of the mental life of the fifth epoch. It is something that the human intelligence will come to recognise as important, something which has been called the Kundalini fire^*. It is a force which today still slumbers in man, but which will gradually gain more and more importance. Today it already has a great importance upon what we perceive through the sense of hearing.

During the further development in the sixth cultural age of the fifth epoch the Kundalini fire will acquire great influence on what lives in the human heart. The human heart will really have this fire. At first this seems to be mere symbolism but man will then really be permeated by a force which will live in his heart, so that during the sixth epoch he will no longer make a distinction between his own well-being and the well-being of the whole. So deeply will man be permeated by the Kundalini fire! He will follow the principle of love as his own innermost nature. (1904-10-28-GA092)

^* The expression 'Kundalini fire' is used by Rudolf Steiner in the first edition of his book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. In later editions he replaced the term by another term which is translated in the 1937 English edition as "the spiritual perceptive force in the organ of the heart".

Beinsa Douno is regarded as the herald of the great Sixth Epoch and the next slavic or russian cultural age. Read more about Beinsa Douno and his prophesies in the notes below.

07American Age 5733 AD – 7893 AD

(End of 5^th post Atlantean Epoch)

The Mission of the Seventh Cultural Age – American – is to acquire Knowledge through the Life Spirit – The seed falls from the decaying fruit.

This Age will stand under the sign of Capricorn and have the task of nurturing knowledge through the Life Spirit i.e. perfected Etheric body. This will mean a repetition of the Indian Cultural Age – a renewal of the Age of the 7 Holy Rishis of India as in the words of Rudolf Steiner "Thus in the seventh age the possibility will be given for all the marvelous wisdom proclaimed by the great Teachers of ancient India to be living once again in human souls. And it will now be their very own – the truth they live by." This 'Brahma' era of oneness with the spirit is also a repetition of the first age the Polarian stage where there was a unity of Sun, Moon and Earth which was in itself a repetition of the Saturn planetary phase of world evolution. At this time man will have developed organs to experience Lower Devachan or the Spiritual world as well as the Astral world and physical worlds. Man will once again walk with his primeval teachers and be in communication with them. Culture however will degenerate, and it will become a time of great upheaval. The duality of good and evil seen in the Sixth Age will find its culmination in the 'War of All Against All'. This finds its repetition in the future Seventh Post Atlantean Epoch when this Earth's evolutionary cycle will end in a cataclysm like that which ended the Atlantean age. Finally it will have its repetition in the seventh distant incarnation of the Earth Vulcan when we shall see what the Bible characterises as Armageddon.

Humanity will be divided according to differences in intellect and morals; on this basis a spiritualized caste system will again appear (1908-08-16-GA105). It will be a lagging culture and an age of chaos, with humanity near its collapse, and it will end the current epoch through the 'War of All Against All'. At the end of the age (and, thus, the end of the Epoch), only about a third of humanity will have attained its goal, a second third will be lagging behind and will only attain this later, and one third will completely fall away from evolution (1904-10-24-GA092). In the Seventh Cultural Age, the changed circumstances in their surroundings will provide little opportunity for the souls that have not developed in the decisive fifth and sixth cultural ages. The next opportunity will present itself only in the distant future.

This is the time of the anticipated reunion of Earth with the Moon, after the Separation of Moon in the Lemurian Epoch. (1921-05-13-GA204). The Earth will be changing dramatically, similar to what happened at the end of the Atlantean Epoch.

The transition towards the Sixth Epoch (at the end of the Seventh Cultural Age) can be seen to start in the Sixth Cultural Age, but a foreboding of what will come will already exist after the 'cleansing' in the Future Oriphiel age of the Current Fifth Cultural Age. Whereas Lemuria submerged due to fire, and Atlantis due to water, the current Post-Atlantean Epoch will be destroyed through the 'War of All Against All'. (see War of All Against All in the Appendix)

Notes

1. ◬ Beinsa Douno^*...

   ...lectured extensively on the Sixth Epoch

   The new era is that of the sixth race. Your predestination is to prepare yourself for it, to welcome it and to live it. The sixth race will build itself around the idea of Fraternity. There will be no more conflicts of personal interests; the single aspiration of each one will be to conform himself to the Law of Love. The sixth race will be that of Love. A new continent will be formed for it. It will emerge from the Pacific, so that the Most High can finally establish His place on this planet ..

   .. The wave of the sixth race is coming .. its members will be a transition between angels and humans .. they will be visionaries. It is the race of Love, which will impose the Kingdom of God on Earth. ..

   .. The main core of the sixth race will consist of the White Brothers who will come from above, but of course there will also be members also from today's people, but only the prepared ones. The elected people of all nations will get through to the sixth race and than we'll be able to speak of brotherhood and Love. ..

   .. So far man can only use 5 senses and the sixth race will have a sixth sense, and there are 6 more latent senses. When man fully completes his evolution, all his 12 senses will be developed to perfection.

   from another site, similar statement (excerpt taken from bb.beinsadouno.org/brief introduction of the teaching, authored by Vessela Nestorova)

   A specific feature of the sixth race will be that there will be no nationalism. There will be kindness, there will be one single language. There will also be other languages, but one language will be common for all.

   Writing in the white race is from left to right. The writing of the sixth race will be geometrical: circles, triangles, quadrangles, points, lines, squares etc.

   [body]

   In the future

   • the hairs on the human body will be very few. The entire body will be naked.

   Man is an excellent receiver. He receives through his body, a lot of things from the invisible intelligent world.

   • The head of the future Man will be bald, but beautifully shaped, with a given width and length of the skull, with a given height of the head, with beautiful lines, with well shaped forehead. It won't be low and narrow, but wide and high.
   • The faces of the future people will be elongated, and not moon-like.

   The people of Love, who are now starting to come, will have differently formed bodies. They will be able to see both in front of and behind themselves, as well as to the sides, without ever needing to turn or move their neck and ayes. They will know what will happen every single day and will gladly accept everything.

   They will not worry that sickness and poverty might come to them. They know how to get distress, sickness and death to work. They are their masters.

   The white race steps back to make room for the sixth race, which will have differently structured people.

   • The nose will be structured differently; the eyes will be structured differently.

   These people will see in front of them and behind, above and below, they'll see everywhere. Now we only see about 180 degrees. We can't see what happens behind us. We can't foresee what will happen in the future. Some have started foreseeing their future and call that intuition. In the future people will know what their future is. In the future people will see what is hiding in their brains, in their hearts, they will start processing their feelings. If someone of you wants proof, you'll see that it is enough for somebody who is nervous, who often quarrels, to stay in this school for only three months, and he will be calm.

   Beinsa Douno's last prophecy (1944) on ascension
   Note: there are many versions of this important statement online. In the below, for a better logical grouping into seven sections, the order of some phrases was changed, however no words, phrases or contents was changed.

   [1 - context]

   During the passage of time, the awareness of the human being went through a very long period of darkness. This phase which the Hindus call "Kali Yuga" is almost at the end. Today we find ourselves on the border between two epochs: that of Kali Yuga and that of the "New Era" in which we are entering.

   A gradual improvement in the thoughts and feelings of humans is already happening, but everyone will soon be subjugated by the Divine Fire which will purify and prepare everyone for the New Age. Thus the individual will rise to a higher degree of consciousness, which is indispensable for his entry into the New Life.

   This is what is meant by 'ascension'.

   [2 - wave of purifying divine fire]

   A few decades [editor: or maybe, this is to be read as millennia on the scale of cultural ages] will pass before this Fire arrives, and this will transform the world by bringing a new morality.

   This immense wave comes from outer space and will flood the whole Earth. All those who oppose it will be wiped out and transferred elsewhere. Even if the inhabitants of this planet are not all in the same degree of evolution, the new wave will be perceived by everyone. And this transformation will not only affect the Earth but the whole of the entire Cosmos.

   The Fire of which I speak, which accompanies the new conditions offered to our planet, will rejuvenate, purify, rebuild everything: matter will be refined, your hearts will be freed from anguish, problems, uncertainty and will become bright; everything will be improved, elevated. Negative feelings, thoughts and acts will be consumed and destroyed.

   The Earth will soon be swept by extraordinary and rapid waves of Cosmic Electricity. From here to a few decades [see note above], those who are wicked and will mislead others will not be able to withstand the intensity of these waves. They will be so absorbed by the Cosmic Fire that they will consume the evil they possess. So they will repent because it is written that "all the flesh will glorify God".

   Our Mother, Earth, will get rid of those who don't accept New Life. He will reject them as spoiled fruit. They will not be able to reincarnate on this planet soon, including criminals. Only those who have Love in them will remain. There is no place on Earth that is not dirty with human or animal blood, so it too must undergo Purification. And that's why some continents will be submerged while others will surface.

   [3 - cosmic perspective]

   Our solar system is now passing through a region of the Cosmos where a constellation that was destroyed left its dust. Going through this contaminated space is a source of poisoning, not only for the inhabitants of the Earth but for all the inhabitants of the other planets in our galaxy. Only the suns are not affected by this hostile environment. This region is called "the thirteenth zone", it is also called the 'zone of contradictions'. Our planet was included in this region for thousands of years, but we are finally approaching the exit from this space of darkness, and we are about to reach a more spiritual region where more evolved beings live.

   The Earth is now following an ascending movement and everyone should strive to harmonize with the currents of ascension. Those who refuse to be subjected to this orientation will lose the advantage of the good conditions that will be offered in the future to rise. They will lag behind in evolution and will have to wait tens of millions of years for a new ascending wave to come.

   The Earth, the solar system, the universe, all are inserted in a new direction under the impulse of Love. Most of you still consider Love as an irrelevant force, but in reality it is the greatest of all forces! Money and power continue to be revered as if the course of your life should depend on them. In the future, everyone will be submissive to and serve him.

   [4 - cleansing period - see also Future Oriphiel age but mainly Earthquakes and emergence continent sixth epoch and War of all against all] [see the Appendix]

   But it is through suffering and difficulties that human consciousness will be awakened. The terrible predictions of the prophet Daniel, written in the Bible, refer to the time that is opening.

   Everything around you will soon collapse and disappear. Nothing will remain of this civilization, not its perversion; the whole Earth will be shaken and no trace of this erroneous culture will be left that keeps men under the game of ignorance.

   There will be floods, hurricanes, giant fires and earthquakes that will sweep everything away. Blood will flow abundantly. There will be revolutions, terrible explosions will ring out in many regions of the earth. Where there is land, water will come, and where there is water, earth will come.

   Earthquakes are not just mechanical phenomena, their goal is also to awaken men's intellect and heart, so that they can free themselves from errors and their follies and because they understand that they do not exist only in the Universe.

   God is Love. However, here we are dealing with a response from Nature against the crimes perpetrated by man since the dawn of time, against his mother, the Earth.

   After these sufferings, those who will be saved will know the Golden Age, harmony and unlimited beauty.

   [5 - what to do]

   Your current life is a bondage, a hard prison. Understand your situation and get rid of it. I tell you this: get out of your prison! I am truly sorry to see so much confusion, so much suffering, so much inability to understand where true happiness lies.

   The best and only thing the individual can do now is to consciously turn to God and improve to raise one's vibrational level, so as to be in harmony with the powerful wave that will soon submerge him.

   So keep your pace, and your faith when the time of suffering and terror arrives, since it is written that … a hair will not fall from the head of the righteous. Don't be discouraged, just follow your personal perfection work. You have no idea of the great future that awaits you.

   [6 - descriptions sixth epoch]

   A new Earth will soon see the day. The New Era is that of the sixth race. You are predestined to prepare for it, to welcome it and to live it.

   The sixth race will be established on the date of the fraternity. There will be no more conflicts to defend personal interests. Individual personal aspirations will have to comply with the Law of Love.

   This is why a new continent will emerge that will emerge from the Pacific so that the Supreme will finally be able to establish its place on this planet.

   In a few decades [see note above], everyone will have time to devote themselves to activities of the spirit, intellect and art.

   A new culture will see the light of day, will rest on three fundamental principles: the elevation of women, the elevation of the submissive and humble and the protection of human rights.

   The question relating to the relationship between man and woman will finally be resolved in harmony, everyone will have the opportunity to follow their aspirations. Couple relationships will be based on mutual respect and esteem.

   Humans will travel between the different planes of space, breaking through the intergalactic space. They will study how they are structured and work, and will be able to quickly know the Divine world, to merge with the Head of the Universe.

   Religions should be purified. Each of them contains a particle of the Teaching of the Masters of Light, but obscured because it is incessantly supplied with human deviations. All believers will have to unite and unite in agreement on one main thing, that is, to put Love at the basis of all belief, whatever it is. Love and Fraternity is the common basis!

   [7 - a new race of mankind and the struggle with evil]

   I call the founders of this new civilization "Brothers of Humanity" or also "Sons of Love". They will be imperturbable for Good, and will represent a new type of human being.

   Men will form a family, a large body, and each will represent an organ of this body. In the new race, Love will manifest itself in perfect form and of this today's man can have only a very vague idea of it.

   Earth will remain a favorable terrain for the struggle, but the forces of darkness will eventually withdraw and Earth will be freed from it.

   The humans, seeing that there will be no other way, will commit themselves to the path of New Life, that of salvation. In their senseless pride, some will eventually hope to continue a life on earth that the Divine Order condemns, but then everyone will end up understanding that the direction of the world does not depend on them.

   Light, Good and Justice will triumph, it is only a matter of time.

   (https://anthroposophy.eu/Sixth_epoch)

   ^* Peter Deunov (1864-1944) is an incarnation of an important spiritual Individuality and was a spiritual teacher of esoteric Christianity. As a spiritual teacher he used the name Beinsa Douno and not his native name Peter Deunov. He gave thousands of lectures and talks, prayers, exercises, occult formulas, mantras and songs. He lectured a.o. on the second coming (of Christ in the etheric) and the Sixth epoch. He lived and worked mainly in Bulgaria, and his teachings show a connection with the Slavic people and culture in light of the next Sixth cultural age

   Rudolf Steiner said in a conversation with Boyan Boev, who would become one of the closest disciples of Beinsa Douno, in Munich in 1910, is recorded to have said, "The Slavonic people are destined to have a great mission. They, and particularly Bulgaria, will contribute a good deal to the elevation of humankind. Return to Bulgaria, there is a powerful spiritual movement in Bulgaria, headed by a great spiritual Initiate."

2. ◬ The Rituals of the Ancient Persians

   The ancient Persians, particularly under the Achaemenid Empire^*, practiced complex religious rituals that were centered around Zoroastrianism, one of the world's oldest monotheistic religions. Fire played a central role in their rituals, symbolizing purity and the presence of the divine.

   The Zoroastrians believed in the sacredness of fire, which was seen as a symbol of the divine light of Ahura Mazda, their supreme god. Temples dedicated to fire, known as Atash Behrams, housed eternal flames that were tended by priests. These flames were central to various religious ceremonies, including prayers for the prosperity of the land and the protection of the empire.

   Purification rituals were also a significant part of Zoroastrian practice, with the use of water and fire to cleanse both the body and the soul. These rituals were meant to align individuals with the divine order and promote harmony within the community.

   While Zoroastrians did not practice human sacrifice, offerings of animals and food were made in their fire temples. These sacrifices were seen as a way to maintain harmony with Ahura Mazda and the natural world.

   The rituals of ancient Persia were deeply intertwined with their Zoroastrian beliefs, emphasizing purity, divine presence, and the balance between good and evil. The importance of fire, as a symbol of divine light, remained central to their religious practices and ceremonies.

   Content from The Archaeologist (https://www.thearchaeologist.org/blog/the-rituals-of-the-ancient-persians)

   ^* c. 550 BC – long after the period of the Second Post-Atlantean Persian Cultural Age – though it could be ascertained that these rituals proceeded in some form or fashion from that earlier Age.

3. ◬ Main Event of the Greco-Roman Age

   The main event of this Age was the Mystery of Golgotha — the crucifixion, the death on the cross, the burial, the descent into hell and the resurrection of Christ, the central event of the entire development of the Earth and of humanity. With it, the actual birth of the human 'I' took place. (AnthroWiki)

   An understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha demands the highest powers of wisdom of which the human being is capable. It must be experienced by the deepest forces that can stir the soul of man. When he searches its depths for the light kindled by wisdom, when he does not merely speak of love but is enflamed by it through the union of his soul with the cosmic soul that streams and pulses through this turning point of time, only then does he acquire insight and understanding into the mysteries of existence. (1917-12-23-GA180)

   "Without the Mystery of Golgotha, sibylism (prophetesses or oracles in Ancient Greece), which is connected with the elementary forces of the Earth, which work in the subconscious of the soul and push themselves out in a passionate way, would have triumphed over the conscious I-forces, would have pushed back the I-forces. The I would have been lost to the development of humanity. As a force we see the Christ-impulse working in the course of humanity, even without human consciousness having taken it up." (GA 152)

   The actual significance of the Mystery of Golgotha lies not in the external events but in their spiritual backgrounds. It must be grasped as a supersensible mystical fact. Through death on Golgotha, the Christ united himself with the Earth and thereby gave it its meaning. (Anthro Wiki)

   "Just as life is inaccessible to human knowledge, so is this the case with death towards the true knowledge which is attained in the supersensible worlds. In the whole realm of the supersensible worlds there is no death. One can only die on earth, in the physical world or in the worlds which resemble our Earth in their development, and all the beings who are hierarchically higher than man have no knowledge of death, they only know different states of consciousness. Their consciousness can temporarily be so lowered that it is similar to our earthly state of sleep, but it can wake up again from this sleep. There is no death in the spiritual world, there are only changes of consciousness there, and the greatest fear that man has, the fear of death, cannot be felt by one who has ascended to the supersensible worlds after death. There is therefore no death for beings belonging to the higher Hierarchies, with only one exception, that of the Christ. But in order that a supersensible being like the Christ might pass through death, he had first to descend to Earth. And this is what is of such immeasurable importance in the Mystery of Golgotha, that a being which in its own realm could never have experienced death in the sphere of its will, had to descend to Earth in order to undergo an experience peculiar to man, namely, to experience death. A being, unique in its kind, which until then had only been cosmic, united itself with earth evolution through the Mystery of Golgotha, through the death of the Christ. Since then it has lived on Earth in such a way, is so bound to Earth, that it lives in the souls of men on Earth and experiences life on Earth with them. Therefore, the whole time before the Mystery of Golgotha was only a time of preparation in the evolution of the earth. The Mystery of Golgotha gave the Earth its meaning. When the Mystery of Golgotha took place, the earthly body of Jesus of Nazareth was given over to the elements of the Earth, and from that time the Christ was connected with the spiritual sphere of the Earth and lives in it." (GA 152)

4. ◬ Anthroposophia

   The ancients were allowed to become intoxicated by the breath. The moderns are not allowed to become intoxicated by words. Words must not be intoxicating for them, but must be held in the sense of Sophia, penetrating man with wisdom.

   These are the things through which anthroposophy also points to what is important in social relationships today. And it wants to express something of this in its name, this anthroposophy, anthroposophia, which is also a wisdom. During the Greek period, the human being was taken for granted. Sophia was already a human wisdom because the human being was still full of light and wisdom. Today, when one says Sophia, people only think of the ghost of Sophia, of science. Therefore, one must appeal to the human being one is calling upon, to the Anthropos: Anthroposophia. One must point out that this (Anthroposophia) is something that comes from the human being, that shines out of the human being, that blossoms out of the best forces of the human being. One must point this out. But it also makes anthroposophy something that enlivens human existence on earth. For it is something that is experienced by man in a more spiritual, but no less concrete way than the ancient Sophia was experienced, and which at the same time is meant to bring about that which was then in the whole human being, the content of faith, pistis. Anthroposophy is not a belief, but a real body of knowledge, but one that gives people a strength that in earlier times was contained only in faith. (GA 211)

   It is therefore my earnest desire that there may be many among you who will be stirred and quickened to work unremittingly for the time when this spirituality, in spite of all that is being done to misrepresent and obscure it, shall prevail in the world. That you feel an urge to do so will mean that you are awake to the fact of how urgently necessary this spirituality is for the further evolution of mankind.

   If, my dear friends, we have come a little nearer to one another in a common understanding of the inmost nature of the Being Anthroposophia, and of its importance for our age, then will this meeting for which we have had to wait for some years, have borne fruit, borne indeed what I for my part shall be ready to recognise as good and beautiful fruit. Carrying this hope in our hearts, let us then resolve to remain together in soul, even when in terms of space we are far apart. (GA 211)

5. ◬ The Challenge of Evil

   Evil was allowed into evolutionary current by Divine Providence to strengthen the development of Man, and hence came as a consequence or 'price to pay' for the unique development of freedom and love in Man, a first in the development of spiritual hierarchies.

   The task of evil is to promote the ascent of Man. The radical transmutation of the most fierce evil by the pure good will bring a special love and condition of moral holiness on Earth (1906-08-29-GA095). See also Manicheism in the Sixth epoch.

   Evil is the opposite of the good, and these are opposite polarities relative to a reference and 'judgement'. That objective reference is the normal evolutionary development with its intended goals, as per intentions of Creation by the three Logoi and the Cosmic Plan described under Occult Atom. The counterforces that oppose or side-track from the main evolutionary targets are denoted as evil, even if they appear in that cosmic plan and are part of it.

   Evil is 'good out-of-place', it are rightful developments in their own right (as all spiritual hierarchies are on their own evolutionary pathway), but in the 'wrong' place for others, hence causing counter-influences for their development.

   Certain spiritual influences are indeed part of the anticipated and allowed evolution because they offer humanity challenges that re-strengthening its development as the Tenth Spiritual Hierarchy 'under development'. That this is relative and not absolute is illustrated by the luciferic influences that represent such a challenge, but also brought Mankind freedom, as an absolute first in evolution. The luciferic influence arose because of certain spiritual beings were (in their own development scheme) 'out of place' versus the overall evolutionary scheme. More specifically for Man: these luciferic beings are pursuing their further development on Earth 'within Man', because they could not achieve this on Old Moon. Therefore on Earth they are somehow 'out of place' and bringing Mankind certain benefits (freedom) but also challenges.

   Free Man Creator: https://anthroposophy.eu/Evil

   The purpose of the forces of evil which are perverted by the social order is to enable Man to break through to the life of the spirit at the level of the consciousness soul. ... These forces of evil do not exist in the universe for the sole purpose of inducing Man to commit criminal acts any more than the forces of death exist simply to bring death to Man; their function is to awaken in Man, when he is called upon to develop the consciousness soul, the tendency to open himself to the life of the spirit. (1918-10-26-GA185)

   Since the middle of the fifteenth century, a gradual transformation of intelligence is taking place. Although it is still very much like that of the Greeks it is undergoing a transformation, and we are in the beginning of it. In the coming centuries and millennia this intelligence will become something very, very different. Even today it shows a tendency toward what will come in future, a tendency merely to grasp what is error, untruth, deception; a tendency to ponder only what is evil.

   The mystery pupils and especially the initiates had known for some time that human intelligence approaches its development toward evil, and that it becomes more and more impossible to recognize the good through mere intelligence. Mankind finds itself today within this transition. We may say, it is still barely possible, if men exert their intelligence and do not bear especially wild instincts in themselves, to look toward the light of what is good. But human intelligence will more and more develop the inclination to plan evil, to bring error into knowledge, and insert evil into man's moral life.

   This is one of the reasons initiates called themselves men of anxiety. Indeed, if one observes the evolution of mankind from this aspect as I have just done, it causes anxiety, precisely because of the way intelligence is developing. It is not for nothing that it fills modern man with pride and haughtiness. This is the pre-taste of intelligence becoming evil in the fifth post-Atlantean age, which is beginning now. If man were not to develop anything else but intelligence he would become an evil being on earth. If we want to think of a wholesome future for mankind, we must not count on the one-sided development of intelligence. In Egypt and Chaldea, it was good; later it entered into a relationship with the forces of death; and it will enter into a relationship with the forces of error, deception, and evil.

   This is something about which mankind should have no illusions. In an unbiased fashion humanity should reckon with the fact that it has to protect itself against this one-sided development of intelligence. It is not in vain that precisely through the anthroposophically oriented science of the spirit another element will be added by taking in what can be gained through a renewed perception of the spiritual world. This cannot be grasped by intelligence, but only if we take into ourselves what the science of initiation brings down from the spiritual world through vision.

   (GA 296)

Q & A

Questions raised during our initial discussion of this material. Answers were researched and recorded as supplemental to the core material in this document. -ed.

1. Question

   Answer...

2. Question

   Answer...

3. Question

   Answer...

4. Question

   Answer...

5. Question

   Answer...

6. Question

   Answer...

Fair Use

https://kennethmdouglass.com/ssdl/