Table of Contents

• Introduction

• Illustrations

1. 1909-02-15-GA109
2. 1909-04-06-GA109
3. 1909-06-10-GA109
4. 1907-12-05-GA266
5. 1910-GA013 (OeS)
6. 1907-06-05-GA099
7. 1908-06-30-GA104
8. War of All Against All
9. The Sixth Epoch
10. Future Oriphiel Age
11. 1917-01-15: Karma of Untruthfulness

• Notes

• Additional Information

Introduction

Considering the population worldwide, the spiritual scientific worldview segment or cohort will always be a minority in an established dominant world which is very, totally different. Given how the two are tangential, diametrically opposed ... the dominant majority is bound to not understand and/or ridicule the other.

... in this [document] the lectures are in a non-chronological order for better sequential reading.

The top-level source of GA109 is Rosicrucian Esotericism.

Illustrations

The fifth and sixth cultural ages are decisive ( see 1910-GA013 quote on the Current Postatlantean epoch.)

The epochs and ages in evolution should not be seen as discretely outlining periods with start and end of a phase. Rather, evolutionary developments take place in overlapping fashion. This has to do with the evolution of all spiritual beings in the great cosmic fractal of evolution, their cosmic breathing pattern and eigenperiods, and how they interrelate and work together.

Schema FMC00.422 illustrates humanity as a statistical distribution of a population of souls, with different segments or cohorts. One can imagine the distribution pie chart to represent spiritual maturity and also the choice for the light or the darkness, good or evil.

On the right, the thin black line represents black magic, around it cohorts or segments that tend or gravitate towards it, that are in the zone or field of attraction of this extreme direction, so to speak.

On the left side, the thin yellow line represents the white stream, with similarly people in the field tending towards that, whereby spiritual science could be imagined to represent a certain segment or colour. To get closer to the yellow and white is to make the conscious choice to put oneself on the path of initiation.

The drawing makes explicit the responsibility that comes with the freedom of choice, and the development goal for the consciousness soul, to make the conscious choice on where we want to be on this chart, and use our life to further this. More background is given in the three excerpts below.

• Spiritual minority in a materialistic world#1907-06-05-GA099
• Evil#1908-06-30-GA104
• Spiritual minority in a materialistic world#1910-GA013 .28OeS.29 is the statement that the fifth and sixth cultural ages are the decisive ones, and that - at the end of the current epoch - approx. one third will attain its developmental goal, a second third not but will do so at a later stage, and a third one 'falls away completely'. These three thirds are represented in the Schema by colours yellow (left), white (middle), and grey (right).

1909-02-15-GA109

Source: Not Found

Atlantis time picture

We have often talked about the fact that humanity must consider its ancestors to have come from ancient Atlantis, a former geographical region situated between what is today Africa and Europe on the one hand and America on the other.

All the souls that are present today had already been incarnated in Atlantis, but in bodies that were in part considerably different from the ones we are accustomed to seeing.

The Atlantean humanity had its own special form of leadership, and the soul-forces — indeed all the faculties — of the Atlanteans differed greatly from those of human beings. Hence, leadership as we know it today was nonexistent. In Atlantis, for example, there were no churches, ceremonial centers, or schools in the modern sense, but there existed an intermediate institution between ceremonial center and school; that is what we call the mystery sanctuaries or centers.

Leadership of the Atlanteans with respect to learning and the conditions of external life was vested in these sanctuaries, and one could say that the spiritual leaders were at the same time kings of the Atlantean tribes. Initiates, whose mission can be circumscribed by a word of later coinage, by the word oracle, imported knowledge and exercised leadership in the mysteries. We therefore designate the great centers of Atlantean culture as the "Atlantean Oracles."

We have to get a clear understanding of the function of these oracles. They had to impart knowledge to human beings about the spiritual world behind the physical world. Knowledge such as this is different from ordinary knowledge in many ways; to stress only one difference, spiritual knowledge is not confined to space as is our present knowledge of the physical world. Anyone who, for example, knows about the mysteries of Mars also knows a great deal about the spiritual mysteries of the entire universe. All the heavenly bodies of our solar system are interconnected, and as such they are the exterior expression of spiritual beings. The individual who knows these spiritual beings also knows the forces that are at work from one planet to another as well as in the spiritual world during the time between death and rebirth.

And so it was the primary task of one oracle in Atlantis to transmit and proclaim to human beings the mysteries of Mars, whereas the primary task of another was to communicate the mysteries of Jupiter, and so on; and these compartmentalized insights made it possible to lead certain sections of the population.

The Atlanteans were divided into groups, and part of the whole developmental process was that one group of human beings had to be governed especially by the forces that could be acquired through the knowledge of Mars. Other groups had to be governed by the forces acquired through the knowledge of Venus, or Mercury, and so on. In ancient Atlantis there were actually human beings alive whom we could call "Jupiter People" or "Mars People," and there were seven oracle centers because the populace in ancient Atlantis was divided into seven groups according to racial characteristics. The names applicable to these oracle centers corresponded to the names of the planets, but they were assigned to the oracles at a later time.

The leadership of, and supreme sovereignty over, all other oracles was vested in what we may designate as the Atlantean Sun Oracle. Whatever oracles existed in the post-Atlantean periods — in Greece, Egypt, Asia, all were successors of the Sun Oracle in Atlantis. This is true also for the Apollo Oracle in Greece.

The initiate who headed this Sun Oracle was the guardian of the deepest mysteries of our solar system. Together with his subordinates, he was called upon to investigate the nature of the spiritual life on the sun itself. His role was to proclaim to Atlantean humanity the secrets of the whole planetary system and to exercise supreme authority over the other oracle centers.

Selecting material for cultivation

A very special task devolved on the Initiate of the Sun Oracle. It was to guide humanity in such a way that when the great catastrophe culminating in the submergence of Atlantis was over, the human race would be able to propagate and establish what we have often discussed as the postAtlantean cultures. Specifically, the task of the Great Initiate of the Sun Oracle was to prepare human beings during the Atlantean time in such a way that they could enter the ancient Indian, Persian, Egypto-Babylonian-Hebraic, and Graeco-Roman cultures. To put it differently, the Great Initiate had to see to it that enough suitable soul material was available for these cultural epochs.

We must now inform ourselves a little about the task of this Great Initiate of the Sun Oracle.

What were the essential features of Atlantean culture?

Certainly it was quite different from later cultures. In ancient Atlantis, an individual belonging to the highest level of cultural life — the levels at which today's great leaders in, say, scholarship, art, industry, or commerce can be found — was one who possessed extraordinary clairvoyant faculties and who was especially skilled in the use of magical powers.

The qualities usually attributed to a leader or to a scholar were nonexistent in those days, or they were known only in the most primitive form. But although modern arithmetic, counting, logical reasoning, and intellectual deduction were unknown to the Atlanteans, they did possess primitive clairvoyant faculties and powers with which they could pierce into the spiritual worlds. Without the modern ego-consciousness, the Atlanteans saw into the spiritual world, and those whose vision was the most penetrating became the pillars of Atlantean culture. We have already stressed that the Atlanteans were able to manipulate certain inner forces of nature, for example the seed forces of plants; they propelled their vehicles with them, just as we utilize coal to propel our vehicles.

To repeat, the leaders of the Atlantean culture were not the people who tried, as the leaders of our time try, to unlock the secrets of the universe with their intellectual powers; rather, the leading individuals in Atlantis were those who excelled as clairvoyants and magicians.

And those human beings who had the first rudimentary inkling about arithmetic, counting, logical reasoning, and intellectual deduction were in a certain sense despised because of their simplicity and were not considered as belonging to the aristocracy of cultural life.

But it was precisely those human beings who possessed the very first rudimentary knowledge of the aforementioned skills and who were the most lacking in clairvoyant and magical powers whom the Great Leader of the Sun Oracle gathered from all regions.

Yes, he assembled the most simple and, in a sense, the most despised people of ancient Atlantis — those who had first developed intellectual capacities.

But those who were then at the highest level of cultural life and who were the acknowledged masters of a dimmed clairvoyance were not suitable material to be led through and beyond the great Atlantean catastrophe. No, the call of the Initiate went out to the simple people.

Comparison with current epoch: a 'call' indeed

Incidentally, it may be said that we are living in an epoch today when a similar call is once again going out to humanity. To be sure, this appeal is what is appropriate for today, a time when humanity sees only what is in the physical world. The call to humanity issues from unknown depths of the spirit, depths that humanity will gradually become acquainted with, asking that humanity prepare itself for a new culture of the future, which will be permeated with clairvoyant powers. As with Atlantis, a catastrophe will occur, and afterwards a new culture imbued with spiritual capacities will arise, and it will be linked to what we call the idea of the universal brotherhood of humanity.

But today, as in Atlantean times, the call cannot go out to those who stand at the highest levels of cultural life because they will not understand. The Atlantean clairvoyants and magicians, who were in a way destined to die out with their culture, occupied a position similar to that of people in contemporary life who occupy the highest positions in the realms of scholarship and external industrial life—the great inventors and discoverers of our time.

No matter how much the present leaders feel there is still to be done, they nevertheless occupy the same position as their Atlantean counterparts.

Contemptuously they look down on those who are beginning to feel something of the spiritual life to come.

The consciousness of this fact must be awakened in the soul of anyone whose cooperative efforts in the anthroposophical workshops are to be strengthened. When leading representatives of modern culture look contemptuously down at these small circles, those who are participating diligently in the preparation of future conditions must say to themselves that the intellectual giants of today cannot be counted on to lead the way in this task.

It is precisely the people who are held in contempt because they are not considered to have reached the heights of contemporary erudition who are being assembled today, just as the leader of the Sun Oracle once gathered around him the simple of Atlantis. These disdained people are being assembled to prepare the dawn of a new culture whereas erudition of the modern form will bring about the twilight of our culture.

This is mentioned in passing to fortify those who have to endure and hold their own against the attacks of the people who consider themselves to be on the cutting edge of contemporary culture.

1909-04-06-GA109

Source: https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/19090406p01.html

Introduction

Wherever anthroposophical truth is proclaimed and where the spiritual element that pulsates through us is cultivated, there our message must be delivered in the light of sincerity, even when it is still surrounded by the thoughts of those who hate anthroposophy. However, in the midst of those who hate anthroposophy there are souls who, more or less consciously, long for the light of anthroposophy. And especially a strong contrast such as the one I have experienced during the past fourteen days can show us what a strong magnet anthroposophical life is.

The observation of our immediate present teaches us that this anthroposophical force is now strong enough to justify our joyful and satisfying hope that the small seedling planted today will in the future grow into a mighty tree.

As anthroposophists, we are today in the same position humanity was in during the ancient Atlantean time.

And just as life has become different since that time, so it will change again in the future, up to a time following a catastrophe. The wide perspective will now be made to appear before our souls.

Atlantean culture and technology – vehicles, navigation, ..

Let us call to memory a similar movement in the last third of the Atlantean epoch that started small just like ours. The Atlantean soul life, which in many ways was still clairvoyant, had reached a high point during that time, but it did not yet have the consciousness of self, the strong feeling of the "I."

Instead, Atlanteans had a certain ability of clairvoyance and also certain magical powers, and this enabled them to look into the spiritual world. Those who had progressed to be leaders of this civilization were the ones best able to gaze into the spiritual world in the old ways and to bring forth the most knowledge from the astral realms.

This clairvoyance disappeared little by little; in fact, mankind had to lose it completely in order to conquer for itself the consciousness of self in the physical world. But it is certain that clairvoyant knowledge in the last third of the Atlantean era had reached a special climax.

You will remember the technological achievement of the Atlanteans. They flew over the earth in small space vehicles — close to the earth because the atmosphere was saturated with thick fog formations. They propelled their small vehicles through this sea of air and water with energy derived from sprouting plants. The leading creators of this technology can be compared to today's industrial wizards who construct ingenious machines from lifeless forces. And those Atlanteans who could relate the most from the spiritual world can be compared to today's leading scholars and natural scientists.

A segment of the population developing

However, within this Atlantean humanity a segment of people began to evolve who had only minor clairvoyant faculties, but possessed the ability to regard the external world with affection. The first rudimentary beginnings of arithmetic and counting could be observed in these people, but their participation in the great advances of the Atlantean industry — the construction of ever mightier vehicles for this sea of water and air — was very limited.

And thus a small, insignificant group of people had developed in this last third of the Atlantean period who, in a certain sense, were despised for their comparative lack of clairvoyant power and their inability to participate in this great industry. However, this group of people prepared the way for seeing and knowing that is prevalent today, the way of seeing and knowing of which the external world today is so proud since it developed it in such a one-sided way.

Those leaders of the Atlantean civilization who had mastered everything that could be known from the vantage point of the Atlantean consciousness, including technology, conceived of a technical idea toward the end of the Atlantean era that has become fully productive in modern times. We can compare it to another measure of progress in our time that will carry over into the next catastrophe.

During their golden age, the Atlanteans had vehicles that moved through air that was heavily mixed with water.

Later, however, when their culture was already in a state of decline, it also became necessary to navigate the water, and this led the last cultural races of the Atlantean era first to embracing and then to realizing the idea of navigation and the conquest of the seas. This momentous idea in the Atlantean era not only of traversing the air but also of navigating the ocean water was quite a sensational idea that was put into reality by the last Atlantean races. After long experiments to navigate the waters, success came during the time when Atlantean culture was already in its decline.

Selection

Those responsible for this tremendous progress were not the ones who could be recruited for the task of transmitting the legacy of the actual spiritual life from the Atlantean era to our time. Rather, this task was reserved for the plain and simple people because they had been the first ones to be endowed with the ability to relate to the physical world. They were the ones whose clairvoyant faculties, though deteriorated the most among the several groups of people, were still adequate for those who were messengers from the spiritual world.

These people, despised by the great scholars and inventors, were gathered by an eminent initiate whom we call The Great Initiate of the Sun Oracle.

This small group was comprised of people who had least preserved their technical abilities and who were disdained by the leaders and by the great scholars and inventors. Yet it was precisely they whom the Great Initiate of the Sun Oracle led from the West to the East, through Europe and into Asia. And it is also this small group of people that made the foundation of the post-Atlantean cultures possible.

The best of what was subsequently developed by the various cultures, the mighty tree of post-Atlantean knowledge and wisdom, emanated from the descendants of the despised simple people from the Atlantean era. Above all, something else emanated from the midst of the descendants of this group of modest people. Let us place the external events side by side with the internal events of our evolution. Let us look at the great sensation of the Atlantean era when the secondary racial group, whose descendants were the Phoenicians, invented navigation.

What was accomplished by this invention?

We need only to remember the great events from the beginning of modern times, such as the great voyages of discovery by Columbus and other seafarers, which would have been impossible without navigation and the invention of ships, and we shall see how this sensational invention led to the gradual conquest of the physical plane on earth. PostAtlantean peoples were confined to a small radius of activities, but through the invention of ships the circle defining the earth became rounded out so that we now have a completed configuration of the physical plane. And thus, the sensational invention of the Atlantean world reaches into our time and promotes further progress on the physical plane.

However, the greatest conquest in the Atlantean era emanated from the descendants of that group of plain people gathered around the Great Initiate of the Sun Oracle. And when those descendants, through their own development, had prepared the Indian, Persian, Egyptian, GraecoLatin, and our cultures, the earth became capable of yielding the material into which the Christ could be born. Therefore, the greatest spiritual event and deed of the post-Atlantean era had its beginning in the people who belonged to the most despised human beings in the eyes of the leaders of the Atlantean civilization, and this event gave rise to the immense spiritual progress that supports and maintains all spiritual life in our time — weaves through it and makes it productive.

[Editor note: more on the Christ Impulse, Buddhi, and Love in this same lecture, after the end of this lecture extract]

Similarity with our times

The events in Atlantis are paralleled by those of our time.

Seeing that the germinal beginnings of man's ability to do arithmetic and to count were present in Atlantis, we can recognize how these capabilities are today furthered in a marvelous conquest of the physical plane and how they brought about all kinds of technical progress.

We also see how the great inventors and discoverers today have reached the culmination, in a sense, in applying those forces that first began to germinate with the small group of despised people in the Atlantean time.

And what was then clairvoyant knowledge is today knowledge of nature and of the physical world.

There is also a similarity between the spiritual leaders of the Atlantean civilization and today's natural scientists and scholars.

On the other hand, a class of plain people exists everywhere — irrespective of positions its members might hold in the world, whose hearts are filled with the mighty magnet that attracts us to spiritual life, just as people in Atlantis were attracted to a life in which the external faculties for the physical plane could be developed.

Differences between the two situations

Despite these similarities, there is also a certain difference between the modern and the ancient situation.

In the old days referred to, the last remnants of clairvoyance were still present in people so that they were able to behold the Great Initiate.

In a certain way, things today are more difficult for human beings when a call from the spiritual world issues to an equally small group of people, something we designate as the call from/of the Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feelings. But since people today are placed on the physical plane, these Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feelings are at first unknown to this small nucleus of human beings that has crystallized itself out of the mass of people.

As we can deduce from the facts of the present time, this small group feels in its hearts that there is such a thing as a new spiritual message that is meant to have an effect on the future just as the message in former ages has had an effect on the present. These human beings who today come from all walks of life and whom we can find everywhere are the true theosophists because they carry in their hearts a longing for a spiritual life that is meant to lay the foundation for future cultures. The true theosophists in our time are emerging — just as we now encounter a sensational discovery similar to the one in the Atlantean era.

In ancient times water was conquered through the highest technological progress; the same is true today in the case of air. This conquest will, of course, extend into a later epoch. But just as ships in our times have brought about mastery of the physical plane only, so the air ship that will lead human beings into the atmosphere and beyond will empower the pilots to find only matter — material things. Granted, new realms of the physical plane will be conquered, and this will be beneficial for the external world. However, the inner spiritual life is borne in the hearts of those who feel spiritually fulfilled by the promise of being able in the future to look into the spiritual world while being conscious of self

Look into life and you will find out there our leaders of civilization, the pillars of external culture, active as inventors and discoverers, as scholars and natural scientists. They look with scorn and contempt on a small group such as the one assembled here today that constitutes itself as a new bearer of culture and that unites its members with others in spiritual scientific associations. The events of the ancient Atlantean era repeat themselves.

However, when the spiritual life touches your hearts with such force that you can compare yourselves with dignity to those who were gathered around the Great Initiate of the Sun Oracle, then you will be the bearers of spiritual life in later ages. In addition to offering humanity the external, material, and corporeal realities, such a life would also make possible a renewed immersion in the spiritual world.

Although the Great Initiate gathered human beings around Himself in ancient times, today the Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feelings [editor: White Lodge] fulfill a similar function and issue their call to you.

If you feel your mission from a sense of history, then your hearts will become strong enough to withstand all the ridicule and disdain that the so-called pillars of civilization heap on Spiritual Science from the outside. And if you understand your mission in this spirit, then your thoughts will be strong and any doubt that may reverberate into your souls from the outside will be unable to shake you in your conviction. Your thoughts will be spiritually refined by the very force that can issue from such a knowledge of our mission.

Even if we have to review thousands of years and establish far-reaching ideals, it is worth the effort because where such ideals are established, life is transmuted, and where they are absent, life is dead. Ideals transform themselves into the force of a moment even if they have been taken from vast periods of time and may seem to make the person subscribing to them appear somewhat petty and despondent.

You will be strong for the most insignificant task if you are capable of extracting your ideal from the loftiest heights.

This will make you stand fast when those who govern the world with their erudition talk with disdain and contempt about the little spiritual scientific associations where those people sit who "do not want to go along with contemporary culture." Oh yes, they do want to go along, and they also know to appreciate the accomplishments of the external, physical world, but they also know that just as a body cannot be without a soul, no external culture can exist without spiritual life.

1909-06-10-GA109

Source: https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA/GA0109/19090610p01.html

We will now think once more of ancient Atlantean culture. In the earliest period man possessed strong magical powers. With these powers he controlled the seed forces, mastered the forces of nature and in a certain way was still able to see into the spiritual world. Clairvoyance then gradually faded. Men were destined to found the culture belonging to the earth; they were to descend to the earth in the real sense. Thus, at the end of Atlantis there were two kinds of human beings within the peoples and races.

Firstly, at the height of Atlantean culture there were seers, clairvoyants and powerful magicians who worked by means of magical forces and were able to see into the spiritual world.

Beside them were people who were preparing to be the founders of present humanity. They already had within them the rudiments of the faculties possessed by men today. They could emphatically no longer equal the achievements of the old Atlanteans but they were able to make preparation for intelligence, for the power of judgment. They possessed the elementary faculties of calculation, computation, analysis and so forth. They were the people who developed the rudiments of the intelligence of today and no longer made use of the magical forces applied by the Atlantean magicians at the time when their application was already fraught with danger on account of the powerful ahrimanic influence.

They were those 'others', the despised people, rather like the anthroposophists today who meet together in small groups, or like the first Christians in ancient Rome who gathered together in the catacombs.

1907-12-05-GA266

Source: https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/19071205e01.html

Our whole civilization has its origin in the spiritual world. That's where plans are made that govern our life on the physical plane. Down here we only see how one event after another takes place according to physical laws, but the great spiritual causes are hidden from us. It's events on higher planes of our existence that bring about physical events.

...

An especially important event took place on the astral plane in November 1879. Since then esoteric life has taken on a quite different direction. The esoteric stream that lived in mankind since the 14th century was replaced by a new one. Previously all occult life took place very quietly and hidden from the outer world under the direction of the archangel Gabriel ("annunciation").

Something quite similar to a birth took place on the astral plane in 1879. What had slowly ripened since the 14th century could now be carried into the world in a freer way, even though only for a few people. For Gabriel's rule was followed by that of the archangel Michael. He's the radiant sun that lets esoteric wisdom shine out into a small host of people.

Materialism is included in the divine plan of creation and it has a purpose in the whole world. But the time has now come for the esoteric sun to shine brightly under Michael's radiant direction. For materialism's dark forces are increasing.

Michael's radiant rule will be followed by a dark, terrible age that starts about 2300.

Together with Michael, a dark God has begun his rule — the God Mammon.

For occultism Mammon isn't just the God of money. He's the leader of all base, black forces. And his hosts attack men's bodies and souls to corrode and ruin them. There's a lot of talk about bacterial today, and they influence a lot of things. In future they'll increase in a terrifying way, and many human bodies will waste away from terrible diseases and plagues. The brand of sin will be stamped on men's bodies for all to see.

Another archangel — Oriphiel — will rule then. He must come to shake men up to their true vocation through terrible tortures.

So that this can happen in the right way a small group of people must be prepared today to spread esoteric life in the black age 400–600 years from now.

One under Michael's rule who feels the urge to participate in spiritual life is called upon to serve archangel Michael and to learn under him .. so that someday he'll be mature enough to also serve the terrible Oriphiel in the right way.

A sacrifice is demanded from those who want to dedicate themselves to a higher life. One should only want to receive spiritual life and experience an awakening if one later wants to use this to put oneself, one's will and everything one has in the service of mankind only.

In four to six centuries the small group of men who are being prepared today will serve the God Oriphiel so that mankind can be saved. If in that age men wanted to be spiritual leaders who hadn't been prepared to stand fast in all storms and to resist Mammon's hosts, they wouldn't be able to serve the God Oriphiel in the right way, and mankind would not be lifted out of their misery.

So in order to do it we must work very earnestly now to fulfill our tasks then.

But when dark powers rage most terribly, the brightest light also shines.

Oriphiel has ruled before. That was the time when Christ appeared on earth. Bad powers of degeneration and decadence were ruling everywhere on earth then. And the human race could only be shaken higher by terrible means. Oriphiel is called the archangel of wrath, who purifies mankind with a strong hand.

The story in the Bible where Christ swings a scourge to chase the money changers out of the temple has a deep meaning. Back when things were darkest on earth, Christ appeared as the savior of mankind.

Oriphiel's reign ended 109 years after Christ's appearance, and he was replaced by Anael. Then came Zachariel, then Raphael; Samael ruled during the Renaissance and Gabriel from the 16th century until 1879. Then Michael began to rule, and circa 2300 Oriphiel, the terrible archangel of wrath, will be ruling things.

And as once before, spiritual light will shine into darkness brightly and radiantly. Christ will appear again on earth, although in a different form than before. We're called upon to receive him and to serve him.

[Editor note: refer to Christ's appearance in the etheric, also referred to as the 'second coming']

Meditations

When you, my sisters and brothers, let the spiritual life that streams into your soul live in you so that it reverberates in your meditations, you then have the right fruit. You should let what's received echo in your meditations. While you do that the spiritual powers of the world stream into you.

The world is always flowed through by spiritual streams that proceed from the great Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feelings [editor, re: White Lodge]. The Masters continuously pour streams of love and wisdom over humanity, but men's souls aren't always ready and open to receive them.

But meditation words are magic words that open soul portals so that divine life can move in. That's why one shouldn't speculate with one's intellect about meditation words, but should open the soul for forces that are higher than merely intellectual ones. If one speculates about them with one's intellect then only forces that are already in one become active. But higher forces are supposed to awaken. One shouldn't want to solve riddles in one's meditation words, one should let them solve riddles, for they're much wiser than the intellect can ever be. That's why one should let them work on one and take in what they permit to flow into one's soul, let them live completely in one's soul.

1910-GA013

(OeS - Outline of Esoteric Science)

Source: https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA013/English/AP1972/GA013_index.html

[GA 013] contains [the following] to keep above our beds [so that we do not] waste the precious time of our life and use this incarnation to the full extent possible.

When the seventh cultural age (in the current postatlantean epoch) has run its course .. the Earth will be struck by an upheaval comparable to the one that took place between the Atlantean and Postatlantean ages.

After this, evolution will continue under transformed earthly circumstances through seven more time periods.

...

However, only human beings embodying souls that have become all that they could under the influence of the Greco-Latin cultural age and the subsequent fifth, sixth, and seventh cultural ages of Postatlantean evolution will be able to cope with these reconfigured earthly circumstances.

...

Other souls will have to remain behind at this stage, although earlier they could still have chosen to create the prerequisites for participation in it. The souls mature enough to face the conditions that will exist after the next great upheaval will be the ones who succeeded in imbuing supersensible knowledge with their own forces of intellect and feeling at the transition from the fifth to the sixth Postatlantean cultural age.

The fifth and sixth cultural ages are the decisive ones, so to speak.

In the seventh cultural age, although the souls who have achieved the goal of the sixth will continue to develop accordingly, the changed circumstances in their surroundings will provide little opportunity for the others to make up for lost time. The next opportunity will present itself only in the distant future.

...

Not all reach the goal. A third part (of humanity) falls away completely from evolution. We have therefore one third which will attain the goal, one third which lags behind, and one third which does not reach the goal and falls completely away.

One third attains its goal, a second third will only later attain its goal, making together two thirds; and at the end of the Fifth epoch, only one third of those who began evolution will have reached the necessary stage of development.

[Editor note: in the above quote, terminology was edited to be consistent with the nomenclature Steiner adopted throughout his decades of lecture cycles, namely: seven epochs (eg Lemuria, Atlantis, current Postatlantean, ..) and below that seven cultural ages in each epoch. In this book, as well as in other older texts, he uses 'root races' and 'periods' but these can give rise to confusion.]

1907-06-05-GA099

Source: https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA099/English/RSP1966/19070605p01.html

complements all the above, discussing 'two streams'. A related excerpt is Evil#1908-06-30-GA104.

What the materialistic mode of thought brings about has not yet been completed. We have two streams today,

• a great materialistic one which fills the earth,
• and the small spiritual stream which is restricted to but few human beings.

Distinguish between soul-evolution and race-evolution. Do not think that if races pass over to a grotesque form that the soul too does the same.

• All materialistically thinking souls work on the production of evil race-formations,
• and what is done of a spiritual nature causes the bringing forth of a good race.

Just as mankind has brought forth that which has retrogressed in the animals, plants and minerals, so will a portion split off and represent the evil part of humanity.

And in the body, which meanwhile will have grown soft, the inner badness of the soul will express itself externally. Just as older conditions which have degenerated to the ape species seem grotesque to us today, so do materialistic races remain at the standpoint of evil, and will people the Earth as evil races. It will lie entirely with humanity as to whether a soul will remain in the bad race or will ascend by spiritual culture to a good race.

These are things that we must know, if we would live into the future with real knowledge. Otherwise we go through the world with our eyes bound, for forces are working in humanity which we must recognise and to which we must pay attention. A Man would neglect his duty to mankind if he did not wish to become acquainted with the forces which work in the direction of right evolution or against it. Knowledge for the sake of knowledge would be egotism. He who wants to know in order to look into higher worlds acts egotistically. But one who tries to carry this knowledge into the direct practice of everyday life, furthers the advance of the coming evolution of humanity. It is extremely important for us to learn more and more to put into practice what exists as the conception of spiritual science.

So you see, the spiritual movement has a quite definite goal, namely, to mould future humanity in advance. And the goal can be reached in no other way than through the acceptance of spiritual wisdom. This is the thought that lives in the mind of one who conceives spiritual science as the great task of mankind. He thinks of it as inseparable from evolution and he regards it not as an object of desire but as a task and duty that is laid upon him. And the more we acknowledge this, the more rapidly do we approach the future form of humanity in the sixth epoch.

As at that time in ancient Atlantis, in the neighbourhood of modern Ireland, the advanced human beings were drawn to the East in order to found the new civilisations, so have we now the task of working towards the great moment in the sixth epoch, when humanity will undertake a great spiritual ascent.

We must endeavour to come out of materialism again, and societies with a spiritual aim must undertake to guide humanity, not from motives of arrogance and pride, but as a task and duty.

So a certain group of people must join together in order to prepare the future. But this union is not to be conceived of geographically. All ideas of locality have then lost their meaning because it is no longer a question of racial relationships. The point will be for people over the whole Earth to find each other spiritually, in order to fashion the future in, a positive way. For this reason, 400 years ago, when our epoch plunged the deepest into matter, the Rosicrucian Brotherhood emphasised that practical spiritual science which contains an answer to all problems of everyday life.

Here you have the ascending evolution following the descending. Just as old knowledge acts as a disintegrating force, as is shown in Mauthner's Criticism of Language, so the spiritual current of thought seeks the unifying bond of spiritual wisdom. Hence arises the new school of initiation which is directly concerned with leading humanity over into a new cycle of time.

Thus with the principle of human evolution is connected the concept of Initiation

1908-06-30-GA104 (SWCC)

Source: https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA104/English/APC1958/19080630p01.html (Specifically https://anthroposophy.eu/Evil#1908-06-30-GA104)

SWCC stands for 'shortened without contents change', for a full explanation see SWCC. In short: extracts are brought down to their essential contents by removing duplicates or spoken language. Not much is changed, nothing is re-written or re-formulated, but nevertheless this allows more densily written source or lecture extracts.

[Positioning evil and doom ... love requires true freedom, meaning true choice between good & bad]

A certain dread concerning the destiny of humanity in the future may come over one who enters with feelings into the thoughts which occupied us at the close of our last lecture.

• A picture of this future of humanity was brought before us which on the one hand was great and powerful, filling one with bliss, showing the future condition of the Man who has understood the mission of our present age upon the Earth, who has received the Christ-spirit and is thereby able to keep pace with the necessary spiritualization of our Earth, a glorious blessed picture of those men who are called in exoteric Christianity the 'redeemede, and, not quite appropriately, the 'electe.
• But the opposite picture had also to be put before you, the picture of the abyss in which is found a humanity which was not in a position to receive the Christ-spirit, which remained in matter, which excluded itself, so to speak, from the spiritualizing process leading into the future; and this portion of humanity which has fallen away from the spiritualized Earth, and, in a certain sense apart from it, advances towards a frightful fate.

When the beast with the seven heads and ten horns glowers at us from the abyss, the beast led astray by the other frightful being, the two-horned beast, this picture gives rise to fear and horror, and many aright ask:

"Is it not hard and unwise on the part of Providence to lead a number of men to such a frightful fate, and in a way, to condemn them to the abyss of evil?"

And the question might arise,

"Would it not have been more fitting for a wise Providence to have averted this frightful fate from the very beginning?"

In answer to these questions, we might, to begin with, say something abstract, theoretical — and it already signifies a great deal for one who can grasp this theoretical statement is his feeling: It is extremely wise that Providence has taken care that this terrible fate is possible for a number of men.

For if it were impossible for Man to sink into the abyss of evil, he would not have been able to attain what on the one hand we call love and on the other freedom; since .. freedom is inseparably connected with the idea of love. It would be impossible for Man to develop either love or freedom without the possibility of sailing down into the abyss. A Man unable, of his own free decision, to choose good or evil, would be a being who would only be led on a leading-string to a good which must be attained of necessity and who had no power to choose the good of his own fully purified will, by the love which springs from freedom.

If it were impossible for Man to follow in the trail of the monster with the two horns, it would also be impossible for him to follow God out of his own individual love. It was in accordance with a wise Providence to give the possibility of freedom to the humanity which has been developing through our planetary system, and this possibility of freedom could be given on no other condition than that man himself has to make the free choice between good and evil.

But this is only an empty theory, you might say, and Man rises but slowly to the point where he not only says this in words and accepts it in moments of speculation as a kind of explanation, but also experiences it in his feeling. Seldom does Man now rise to the thought,

"I thank thee, O wise Providence, that thou hast made it possible for me to bring thee a love which is not forced but springs up free in my own breast: that thou dost not force use to love thee, but that thou hast given me tine choice of following thee."

[Further qualification - different segments/cohorts]

Nevertheless, Man has to rise to this feeling if he wishes really to feel this theoretical explanation. We can offer additional comfort, or rather another quieting assurance, from a clairvoyant observation of the world.

• For it was stated in our last lecture that at the present day, he alone has an almost unalterable tendency to the abyss who is already entangled in some way in the prongs of the two-horned beast, which leads men to the practice of black magic. Even for such as now fall into the arts of black tragic it will still be possible to withdraw in the future.
• But those who do not come at all into any contact with black magic arts (and this is for the time being the case with most people), these may have nevertheless a certain tendency in the period following the War of All against All, towards final evil, but the possibility in the future of turning back again and following the good will be far greater than the compulsion unconditionally to follow evil.

• From these lectures it may be seen that for those who now turn to a spiritual conception of the world, in order to live beyond the great War into the sixth epoch (which is represented by the opening of the seals), there is the possibility to receive the Christ-principle. They will be able to receive the spiritual elements which are laid down in the age signified by the community at Philadelphia, and in the near future they will manifest a strong tendency towards becoming spiritual. Those who tarn today to a spiritual view receive a powerful disposition to enter upon the upward path. One must not fail to recognize how important it is even at the present time that a number of persons should not turn a deaf ear to the anthroposophical world conception, which is bringing to humanity in a fully conscious manner the first germs of spiritual life, whereas formerly this took place unconsciously. That is the important thing, that this portion of humanity should take with it the first conscious tendencies towards the upward movement. Through a group of people dedicating themselves to-day to the foundation of a great brotherhood which will live over into the epoch of the seven seals, help will be provided for those others, who to-day still turn a deaf ear to the teachings of Spiritual Science.

[again rephrased later in lecture:]

• Today it is what we call black magic into which men can, in a certain way, fall consciously or unconsciously.
• Those who are now living thoughtlessly, who are quite untouched by the spiritual conception of the world, who live un their comfortable everyday torpor and say, "What does it matter to me what these dreaming Anthroposophists say?" these have the least opportunity of coming into the circle of black magic. In their case they are now only neglecting the opportunity to help their fellow-men in the future in their efforts to attain the spiritual life. For themselves they have not yet lost touch.
• But those who today are beginning in an unjustifiable way to oppose the spiritual life, are really taking up into themselves in the very first beginnings the germs of some-thing one might call black magic.

[Future outlook]

For the present, we have still to go through many incarnations of the present souls before the great War of All against All, and again up to the decisive point after the great War. And afterwards in the [sixth] epoch (of the seals) we also have to go through many changes, and men will often have the opportunity to open their hearts to the spiritual world-conception, which is today flowing through the anthroposophical Movement.

There will be many opportunities, and you must not imagine that future opportunities will only be such as they are today.

The way in which we are able to make the spiritual view of the world known to others is still very feeble. Even if a Man were now to speak in such a way that his voice were to sound forth directly like the fire of the spirit, that would be feeble as compared with the possibilities which will exist in later and more developed bodies in order to direct our fellow-men to this spiritual movement. When humanity as a whole will have developed higher and higher in future ages, there will be very different means through which the spiritual conception of the world will be able to penetrate into men's hearts, and the most fiery word today is small and weak compared with what will work in the future to give all souls the possibility of the spiritual conception of the world — all the souls now living in bodies in which no heart beats for this spiritual conception of the world. We are at the beginning of the spiritual movement, and it will grow. It will require much obduracy and much hardness to close the heart and mind to the powerful impressions of the future.

The souls now living in bodies which have the heart to hear and feel Anthroposophy, are now preparing themselves to live in bodies in the future in which power will be given them to serve their fellow-creatures, who up to that time had been unable to feel this heart beat within them. We are only preparing for the preparers, as yet nothing more.

The spiritual movement is today but a very small flame; in the future it will develop into a mighty spiritual fire. When we bring this other picture before our minds, when we let it enter right into our feelings, then there will live in us a very different feeling and a very different possibility of knowledge concerning this fact.

War of All Against All

Source: https://anthroposophy.eu/War_of_all_against_all

The great 'War of all against all' is the term for the future catastrophy that will end the current Postatlantean epoch. The term comes from the Book of Revelation.

The 'War of all against all' will be caused by egotism, evil and mutual strife. Egotism is the fundamental power in the soul, and this line of evolution will descend ever deeper. When it arrives at the bottom everyone will rage against everyone else and the fifth race will find its destruction in conflict between selfish, egoistic powers.

In the seventh cultural age, mankind will make discoveries about the physical forces of nature, to take hold of 'great and mighty forces' that will in the end 'turn the whole earth-globe into a kind of [self-functioning] live electric mass'.

The war of all against all will be a war of classes of souls who no longer understand one another, a war much worse than war of the present-day with weapons and difficult for present-day consciousness to understand.

A small group of men will develop selflessness and the power of Budhi or Life-Spirit through the force of thought, in order to carry over Budhi into the new civilisation. In a way 'that cannot be discussed, the tiny handful will be protected and preserved'.

For humanity this catastrophy will mean the transition to the next great Sixth epoch, which will take place on a new continent and very different earthly conditions, see also Earthquakes and emergence continent sixth epoch.

Aspects

• the foundation of discord is the human 'I' that gives Man his independence and his inner freedom, it is a sharp two-edged sword that leads on the one hand to the highest and on the other hand to the lowest (1908-06-25-GA104)
• besides the above positioning of the war of all against all at the end of the current fifth epoch, Rudolf Steiner also uses the term for a much more short term projection at the end of the 20th century (1921-08-06-GA206)
• the term 'Bellum omnium contra omnes', Latin meaning 'the war of all against all', is used by Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) in his books De Cive (1642) and Leviathan (1651).

Lecture coverage and references

1904-12-23-GA093

We are going forward to an age when, as I indicated recently, men will understand what the atom is, in reality. It will be realised, and by the public mind too, that the atom is nothing but coagulated electricity. The thought itself is composed of the same substance. Before the end of the fifth epoch of culture, science will have reached the stage where man will be able to penetrate into the atom itself. When the similarity of substance between the thought and the atom is once comprehended, the way to get hold of the forces contained in the atom will soon be discovered and then nothing will be inaccessible to certain methods of working. A man standing here, let us say, will be able by pressing a button concealed in his pocket, to explode some object at a great distance, say in Hamburg. Just as by setting up a wave-movement here and causing it to take a particular form at some other place, wireless telegraphy is possible, so what I have just indicated will be within man's power when the occult truth that thought and atom consist of the same substance is put into practical application.

It is impossible to conceive what might happen in such circumstances if mankind has not, by then, reached selflessness. The attainment of selflessness alone will enable humanity to be kept from the brink of destruction. The downfall of our present epoch will be caused by lack of morality.

The Lemurian epoch was destroyed by fire, the Atlantean by water; our epoch and its civilisation will be destroyed by the War of All against All, by evil. Human beings will destroy each other in mutual strife. And the terrible thing — more desperately tragic than other catastrophes — will be that the blame will lie with human beings themselves.

A tiny handful of men will make good and thus insure their survival in the sixth epoch of civilisation. This tiny handful will have attained selflessness. The others will develop every imaginable skill and subtlety in the manipulation and use of the physical forces of nature, but without the essential degree of selflessness.

In the seventh epoch of civilisation, this War of All against All will break out in the most terrible form. Great and mighty forces will be let loose by the discoveries, turning the whole earth-globe into a kind of [self-functioning] live electric mass. In a way that cannot be discussed, the tiny handful will be protected and preserved.

and a second translation

It is impossible to conceive what might happen in such circumstances if mankind has not by then reached selflessness. Only through the attainment of selflessness will it be possible to preserve mankind from the brink of destruction. The downfall of post-Atlantean culture will be caused by the lack of morality. The Lemurian race was destroyed by fire, the Atlantean by water; ours will be destroyed by the War of All against All, [by?] evil, through the struggle of men with one another. Humanity will destroy itself in mutual strife. And the despairing thing — more desperately tragic than other catastrophes — will be that the blame will lie with human beings themselves.

A tiny handful of men will save themselves and pass over into the sixth epoch. This tiny handful will have developed complete selflessness. The others will make use of every [imaginable] skill and subtlety in the penetration and conquest of the physical forces of Nature, but without attaining the essential degree of selflessness . They will start the War of All against All, and that will be the cause of the destruction of our civilisation.

In the seventh post-Atlantean cultural epoch, to be precise, this War of All against All will break out, in the most terrible way. Great and mighty forces will ensue from discoveries that will turn the entire globe into a kind of self-functioning electrical apparatus. The tiny handful will be protected in a way that cannot be discussed.

1907-03-07-GA097

Mighty flames of fire destroyed ancient Lemuria, and mighty floods ancient Atlantis. Our civilisation will also perish, through the war of all against all. This is what we must face. Our fifth root-race will perish, because egoism will reach its highest pitch. But at the same time, a small group of men will develop the power of Budhi, of the Life-Spirit, through the force of thought, in order to carry over Budhi into the new civilisation. Everything that is productive in the striving human being will grow stronger and stronger, until his personality reaches the summit of freedom. At present, every individual must discover in himself a kind of guiding spirit in the soul's inner depths: — This is Budhi, the power of the Life spirit. Were we to approach the future by taking up the cultural impulses as in earlier epochs, we should face the disintegration of humanity.

What do we see now at the present time?

Everyone wants to be his own master: Egoism, selfishness have been pushed to the extreme. A time will come when no other authority will be recognised except one which men recognise freely, whose power is based upon free confidence.

• The Mysteries which were founded upon the power of the spirit, are called the MYSTERIES OF THE SPIRIT;
• the Mysteries of the future, which will have trust as their foundation, are called the MYSTERIES OF THE FATHER.

These will mark the end of our civilisation. The new impulse of the power of confidence must come, otherwise we approach human disintegration, a universal cult of the I and of egoism.

• In the times of the Mysteries of the Spirit, which were founded upon the rightful power, authority and might of the Spirit, there were certain wise men who possessed wisdom, and only the soul who passed through difficult probations could be initiated by them.
• In future, we approach the Mysteries of the Father, and we must strive more and more that each single human being should attain wisdom.

Will this counter-act egoism and the threatening disintegration? Yes! For only when we reach the highest wisdom, in which there are no differences, no personal opinion and no personal standpoint, but ONE VIEW only, will men agree. If they were to remain as they are at present, following their different standpoints, they would become more and more disunited. The highest wisdom always produces a unanimous view among all men. Real wisdom is ONE, and it unites men again, whilst leaving them as free as possible, without any coercive authority. Just as the members of the great White Brotherhood are always in harmony with one another and with humanity, so all men will one day be one, through this wisdom. Only this wisdom can establish the true idea of brotherhood. Spiritual science therefore has only one task: to bring this idea to men, by developing now the Spirit-Self and later on the Life-Spirit. The great goal of the spiritual-scientific movement is to make it possible for man to attain freedom and true wisdom; its mission is to let this truth and wisdom flow into men.

The modern movement of spiritual science began with the most elementary teachings. Many important things have been revealed in the years which have passed since the founding of this movement, and much that is even more important will be revealed. The work of the spiritual-scientific movement, is therefore to allow a gradual flowing out of wisdom of the great White Brotherhood that had its origin in Atlantis. Such work has always been prepared for through long periods of time. The whole activity of the great founders of religions was a preparation for the ONE great event, for the appearance of Christ-Jesus.

1907-05-08-GA104A

At that time there will be human beings who are Christ filled, who have been sealed; in the ages of future spirituality the opening up, the breaking of the seals of human souls will take place. That the five wise virgins have oil burning in their lamps, that the bridegroom finds illuminated souls, signifies that a portion of humanity will have revealed to it the mystery that is still today closed to humankind. The book with the seven seals will be deciphered for a portion of humankind. The writer of the Apocalypse, John, wants through signs to point to this time, wants to proclaim prophetically this age. In one sentence we read: "And a great sign appeared in heaven ..." (Rev. 12:1) That means we are dealing in the Apocalypse with signs representing the great phases of the evolution of humanity. We must then decipher these signs. We remember that our present fifth root race was preceded by the Atlantean race, which was destroyed by a flood. What will destroy the fifth race? The fifth race has a special task: the development of egotism. This egotism will, at the same time, create what causes the downfall of the fifth root race. A small part of humankind will live toward the sixth main race; a larger part will not yet have found the light within. Because egotism is the fundamental power in the soul, the war of all against all will rage within this larger part of humanity. As the Lemurian race found its end through the power of fire, the Atlantean through water, so will the fifth race find its destruction in conflict between selfish, egoistic powers in the war of all against all. This line of evolution will descend deeper and deeper; when it arrives at the bottom everyone will rage against everyone else. A small part of humankind will escape this, just as a small part escaped during the destruction of the Atlantean race. It is up to every individual to find a connection to the spiritual life in order to be one of those to go over into the sixth root race. Mighty revolutions stand before humankind; they are described in the Apocalypse

1908-08-14-GA105

The Lemurian epoch came to an end through great fire catastrophes; the Atlantean through mighty catastrophes of ice and water; our epoch will come to an end through other forces, through a mighty increase of egoism in human nature, and, on account of this, through the war of all against all.

.

Only those who turn to a spiritual life will survive the catastrophe, which, in this case, means the war of all against all, just as only a small group of people escaped from the catastrophes of Lemuria and Atlantis. The war of all against all will be still more terrible for those involved in it than were those of fire and water, however terrible we may picture them to have been. Those who are now turning towards a spiritual life should feel it their duty to do all that is possible to rescue the good seed of our age and carry it over into the sixth age, which will follow the present one. This age is made up of great subdivisions; the ancient Indian, the Persian, the Egyptian, the Greco-Latin, and the present one, which will be followed by the sixth and the seventh right on to the time of the war of all against all.

1908-06-25-GA104 quote A

We have said repeatedly that our epoch will end, when the seventh age has passed away, by the War of All against All, but this war must really be pictured quite differently from the way we have been accustomed to think of war. We must bear in mind the foundation, the real cause of this war. This foundation or cause is the increase of egoism, of self-seeking and selfishness on the part of Man. And we have now progressed so far in our considerations that we have seen what a sharp two-edged sword this 'I' of man is. He who does not fully realize that this I is a two-edged sword will scarcely be able to grasp the entire meaning of the evolution of humanity and the world. On the one hand this I is the cause that Man hardens within himself, and that he desires to draw into the service of his I his inner capacities and all the other objects at his disposal. This I is the cause of Man's directing all his wishes to the satisfaction of this I as such. Its striving to draw to itself as its own possession a part of the Earth which belongs to all, to drive away all the other I's from its realm, to fight them, to be at war with them, is one side of the I.

quote B

But on the other hand we must not forget that the I is at the same time that which gives man his independence and his inner freedom, which in the truest sense of the word elevates him. His dignity is founded in this I, it is the basis of the divine in Man.

.. Thus the I will be the pledge for the highest goal of Man. But at the same time, if it does not discover love, if it hardens within itself, it is the tempter that plunges him into the abyss.

For it is that which separates men from one another which brings them to the great War of All against All, not only to the war of nation against nation (for the conception of a nation will then no longer have the significance it possesses to-day) but to the war of each single person against every other person in every branch of life; to the war of class against class, of caste against caste and sex against sex.

Thus in every field of life the I will become the apple of discord; and hence we may say that it can lead on the one hand to the highest and on the other hand to the lowest. For this reason it is a sharp two-edged sword.

1909-05-11-GA104A

The war of all against all will be an expression of the egotism that is always growing stronger, the egotism conjured forth by humanity today as the I is and will always become, stronger and stronger. That will be the end of the last Postatlantean culture. This catastrophe will also have its mission, its usefulness in the ascent of the entire human race. However, the great war of all against all will be something much worse than war of the present-day with weapons. It will be a war of souls, of souls who no longer understand one another, a war of the classes. This future catastrophe is difficult for present-day consciousness to understand.

The Atlanteans were magicians. As we today use the powers asleep in coal, so the Atlantean used the forces in plant seeds. The forces in the seeds served them in their technology, in their industry.

There is a mysterious connection between these forces. As long as the Atlanteans used the seed forces properly, they were in harmony with the working of the forces of the air and water. However, from the middle of the Atlantean age onward, the Atlantean magicians increasingly approached their moral fall; and in the mysteries of the black occult schools these magical forces were misused in a terrible way. They were placed in the service of the most horrible egotism. In this way the powers of air and water were increasingly excited which finally had to result in the mighty Atlantean water catastrophe. Today, those who know the secret of the use of these forces know full well that the use of such forces in our time means that powers of black magic are at work. Magic must never be made to serve when selfish purposes are involved. Hence, the employment of seed forces is not permitted today even to serve white magic.

On the other hand, in Lemurian times the seed forces of the animals were used. But everywhere that the growth forces of animals are misused, horrendous forces of fire, the vulcanic element, are awakened.

Today these things are not so obvious. Today the feeling for one's self, the overwhelming egohood of people has brought about the drying up, the desolation of those regions of the earth that have developed this egotism to the greatest extent. It is absolutely true that this war of all against all is being prepared on the surface of the earth because a connection exists between the egotistical withering of the soul's forces and the paralyzation of the earth's productive powers. The Nordic myth of the Twilight of the Gods also tells us this.

We must understand the difference between the evolution of souls and the evolution of bodies. From epoch to epoch human souls find themselves again and again in different bodies. These souls will one day see the strife that will reign among the human souls who will be born in the last Postatlantean age. This experience will be a lesson for them and will help to free them from egotism. Then they will be able to grow into an era where they will have the fruits of selfhood but without its disadvantages.

An age will come with clairvoyant conditions similar to those prevailing in the Atlantean epoch, but with this difference: human beings will have a free consciousness of self. We will then have learned, in these seven cultures of the Postatlantean age, what can be achieved in the physical world. This self-perception or consciousness of self can only awaken in a physical body; but the human being must again subjugate the physical body. After the war of all against all, we will have achieved a stage of evolution where we live in a bodily nature in such a way that we are no longer slaves of our physical bodies.

The impulse for this development comes from the Christ principle. Christ even falls right in the middle between the age of the Atlantean catastrophe and the war of all against all. On the one hand we can thank the descent into matter for our consciousness of self within our physical bodily nature. On the other hand, we thank the Christ event for our ability to ascend with the achievements of the physical world. We thank the Christ principle for our ability to ascend to universal brotherly love, to the universal love of humanity, since we will again unite in groups with love for one another.

If we look back to the time of the original group souls of Atlantis and then into the future we see these four group souls appearing again. The lamb will stand in the middle as a sign for the love that will unite people who will then be living in a bodily nature that is less dense.

But this state must be prepared today through the setting aside of a small group that will carry brotherly love into the future. Therefore, a stream has arisen in our time that will lead to brotherly love through real spiritual knowledge. Humankind will not attain brotherly love through preaching but rather through knowledge. Preachers who constantly speak of love achieve nothing. But if people are given wisdom, knowledge of evolution, in such a way that it becomes life in the soul, then humanity will arrive at love. The soul can attain this when it is warmed by wisdom. Then it can radiate love.

For this reason the masters of wisdom and harmony of feelings have formed this stream for the raying forth of love into humanity and for the influx of wisdom into humanity. Humankind, rushing toward the war of all against all, will then find the fruit of the theosophical movement in an understanding of peace — while all around it, the nature of humankind will have everywhere led into strife those who have not heard the call of the master of wisdom and harmony of feelings on the basis of the Christ impulse in the fourth age.

1909-05-17-GA104A

A seer such as the writer of the apocalypse can already see the future evolution of humanity in the astral world. What will enter into evolution after the war of all against all is already being prepared. Those human beings called to carry evolution into the future, beyond the war of all against all, are already being prepared through the wisdom taught in Theosophy. In far-reaching ways, the spiritual stream of wisdom will become increasingly effective.

...

Let us look at the human being after the war of all against all. We can think of him or her as someone with radiant, good features and a noble benevolent expression. This will become the fate of those who have taken in spiritual impulses at the right time. All moral, intellectual, and spiritual forces will, in the future, confront us visibly in the external features of a human being. What is taken in today will be sealed into souls. After the seventh cultural age, after the war of all against all, they will be unsealed.

1921-08-06-GA206

as related to worldview or world conception, see also extract on: Worldview#1921-08-06-GA206

When this lecture is read in full, it connects to:

• Contemporary worldview war
• Fall and redemption - original sin and grace#Topic 1 - What is going on in the world today.3F

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.. as human beings, we may be soundly materialistic within our life of thoughts. This is possible, for the nineteenth century has proved it. The nineteenth century has also proved the justification of materialism; for it has led to a positive knowledge of the material world, which is an image of the spiritual world. We may be materialists with our head ... but in that case we do not control our dreaming life of feeling, nor our sleeping life of the will. These become spiritually inclined, particularly the life of the will.

It is interesting to observe, from a spiritual-scientific standpoint, what takes place in that case.

...

What lives in a corporeal form within the sentient part of man? Rhythm: the circulation of the blood, the breathing rhythm, and so forth. What lives within the volitive part of man? The metabolic processes.

Let us study, to begin with, these metabolic processes. While the head is skillfully engaged in elaborating material things and material phenomena into a materialistic science, the metabolic part of man, which takes hold of the complete human structure, works out the very opposite world-picture; it elaborates a thoroughly spiritualistic world-picture, which the materialists, in particular, bear within them unconsciously. But within the metabolic part of man, this influences the instincts and the passions. There it produces the very opposite of what it would produce if it were to claim the whole human being. When it permeates the instincts, ahrimanic powers get hold of it, and then it is not active in a divine-spiritual sense, but it is active in an ahrimanic-spiritual sense. It then leads the instincts to the highest degree of egoism. It develops the instincts in such a way that the human being then merely makes claims and demands; he is not led to social instincts, to social feelings, and so forth. Particularly the individual side becomes an egoistic element of the instincts.

This has been formed, if I may use this expression, below the surface of the materialistic civilisation; this has appeared in the world-historical events, and this is now evident. What has developed below the surface, as a germ, what has arisen in the depths of man's volitive part, where spirituality has seized the instincts, this now appears in the world-historical events. If the development were to continue in this consistent way, we would reach, at the end of the twentieth century, the war of all against all; particularly in that sphere of the evolution of the Earth in which the so-called civilisation has unfolded. We may already see what has thus developed, we may see it raying out from the East and asserting itself over a great part of the Earth. This is an inner connection. We should be able to see it. In an outward symptomatic form, it reflects itself in what I have already explained, in what others have also remarked.

...

In other words: If we allow things to take their course, in the manner in which they have taken their course under the influence of the world-conception which has arisen in the nineteenth century and in the form in which we can understand it, if we allow things to take this course, we shall face the war of all against all, at the end of the twentieth century.

No matter what beautiful speeches may be held, no matter how much science may progress, we would inevitably have to face this war of all against all. We would see the gradual development of a type of humanity devoid of every kind of social instinct, but which would talk all the more of social questions.

Discussion

[1] - About humanity turning the whole earth into 'a self functioning live electric mass or apparatus'

Regarding the statement in 1904-12-23-GA093 above

In the seventh epoch of civilisation, this War of All against All will break out in the most terrible form. Great and mighty forces will be let loose by the discoveries, turning the whole earth-globe into a kind of [self-functioning] live electric mass.

and a second translation

In the seventh post-Atlantean cultural epoch, to be precise, this War of All against All will break out, in the most terrible way. Great and mighty forces will ensue from discoveries that will turn the entire globe into a kind of self-functioning electrical apparatus.

.. it can be noted that Rudolf Steiner does go into this image in various other lectures, example of which below (when covering the 'Mothers', see more on Three mothers^*, and the forces such as electricity as an impulse remaining of Old Moon).

.

1917-11-02-GA273

Now you can imagine that all these premontions of mighty connections did not arise before Faust merely as theories, but he felt himself obliged to seek out — to enter right into these impulses. Knowledge of this force was first of all given to those being initiated into the Greek Mysteries, this force together with the two other Mothers. The Greeks held all that was connected with electricity in secret in the Mysteries. And herein is where lies the decadence of the future of the Earth — of which I have already spoken from another point of view — that these forces will be made public. One of these forces has already become so during the fifth post-Atlantean age: electricity. The others will be known about in the decadence of the sixth and seventh ages.

* The 'Mothers' is a term from the ancient Mysteries, that appears in Plutarch and Goethe's Faust.

The Sixth Epoch

Source: https://anthroposophy.eu/Sixth_epoch

Summary

The sixth epoch in the current Condition of Form and Life of the Earth planetary stage follows our Current Postatlantean epoch, and is the one that 'crowns' the whole period of the 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 cultural age, the 'russian' cultural age between approx. the years 3500 and 5000.

The sixth 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.

Overview

Man

• soul
  • Man will no longer make a distinction between his own well-being and the well-being of the whole, through a force that will live in his heart, a Kundalini force that will grow and developed in the next sixth cultural age of the current fifth epoch (1904-10-28-GA092)
  • memory: Man will have remembrance of previous life (and realize that Christ himself is present in the power of memory) see 1914-03-07-GA152 on Walking Speaking Thinking for the development of a new fourth faculty (o.a. Schema FMC00.092)
• spiritual faculties
  • Man will hear the sound of the spheres (1904-11-02-GA089, note: this maps to the clairvoyant faculty of Intuition into the higher spirit world)
  • It will become possible, and then only gradually, for the human body to receive into itself the Christ Principle from childhood onwards without years of preparation (1904-12-30)
• physiologically
  • good and evil will contrast very differently: the outer physiognomy will directly mirror one's karma (1904-11-11-GA093); and the rigidity of the etheric body will have a great influence upon the physical body. The physical body will become a faithful copy of the etheric and 'stamp' this to a moral physiognomy (1915-10-31-GA254 and 1915-11-07-GA254). This will lead to a division in good and evil races, in two 'subraces' (190X-XX-XX-GA097 and 1908-06-21-GA104 and 1910-GA013)
    • a noble and beautiful subrace: noble character also expressed in their gestures and the movements of their hands.
    • decadent men developing downwards "horribly ugly, animal-like, sensual, vicious, far more horror-provoking than our present humanity". and "They will show the evil passions, impulses and instincts hostile to the spiritual in an ugly, unintelligent, evil-looking countenance. In their gestures and hand-movements, in everything they do, they will present an outer image of the ugliness un their soul."
  • in the middle of the sixth epoch
    • in the middle of the sixth epoch, Man will not penetrate the physical world as deeply as currently and casts off the uni-sexuality and becomes hermaphrodite (1905-03-06-GA090B, 1905-03-30-GA053)
  • every single person will reach the point of becoming an immortal spirit through the resurrection of the etheric body, free of death and of the physical (1905-06-05-GA093)
  • for Man's future form in sixth and seventh epoch - formation of new organs and second spinal column, see Man past and future
  • Man will structurally function quite differently as today, as Man will:
    • acquire more influence over his physical corporeality (bring about the future form of his body) and 'live above his earthly portion'
    • will be able to draw his etheric body out of his physical body at will, and make sure of his denser part below on earth from outside like an instrument. Man will no longer bear his body about and live within it, but will float above it, the body will itself have become rarefied and finer. (1907-06-05-GA099)
    • humanity will be able to use the astral body independently with the faculty of astral travel (see 1903-12-29-GA088 on Out of Body experiences (OBE))

Culture, leadership, continent

• at the time of the sixth epoch, Christianity will be expressed in its most complete form (1904-11-11-GA093)
• how the Sixth epoch will run its course in the various subages
  • is expressed symbolically in the Book of Revelation, and commented upon explicitly by Rudolf Steiner in various lectures, see the Schema FMC00.401 on D00.004 - Book of Revelation
• the connection with Manicheism, currently a preparatory stream, preparing the form for true Christianity in the sixth epoch; the sixth epoch will have "the task of drawing evil back into the continuing stream of evolution through kindness" and "communities who foster peace, love and passive resistance" (1904-11-11-GA093)
• a sufficient numbers of human souls will possess enough inner strength to make fruitful use of the forces of the Moon after the Reunion of the Moon: the good part of humankind will learn to use these Moon forces to transform the evil part so that it can participate in further evolution as a distinct earthly kingdom (1910-GA013)
• leadership of mankind for the first time by a fully human Manu, "a Man, and the most advanced among men" whereas before they were and are supersensible Individualities who developed on other planets (1904-10-07-GA093, 1904-10-28-GA092)
• Men will sing the praises of a fleshless diet, for it will then be an ancient memory that the ancestors in olden days actually ate flesh. (1915-11-07-GA254)

Father impulse and spiritualization

• a key period in the Sixth epoch will be the fourth, fifth and sixth ages (1909-05-21-GA104A)
  • in the fourth age the new faculty of memory will be attained with the 16-petalled flower, in the fifth the Lion (Christ) comes to power) (see Schema FMC00.373A).
  • in the sixth age of the Sixth epoch, the Book of Revelation makes mention of a cohort of souls that will have spiritualized to the degree that they make up the new unified group soul of humanity, see Mystical Lamb (oa FMC00.384). This cohort is constituted from twelve subgroups and referred to in the Book of Revelation as the '144.000', as discussed on the discussion page D00.004 - Book of Revelation.
• Rudolf Steiner's drawing in Schema FMC00.185 (see below) talks about the important third impulse in Man's transformation and spiritualization
  • the nature of this Father impulse is discussed on Mysteries of the Spirit, the Son and the Father#.5B2.5D - About the Father impulse

Earth, kingdoms, continent

• transition to new emerging continent - see Earthquakes and emergence continent sixth epoch
• the outer face of the Earth itself will have changed much (1915-11-07-GA254)
• certain species of animals will have disappeared from the Earth: especially those which have acquired the most inflexible forms; also those animals which are nowadays consumed as food, will have died out. (1915-11-07-GA254)
• an important 'cosmic' event of meteorite rain that will have an effect on the spiritualization of the most advanced souls, see point c) in the Discussion section on Mysteries of the Spirit, the Son and the Father#.5B2.5D - About the Father impulse

Other

• how the world will look"What the materialistic world-conception [worldview of mineral science] describes regarding Man is not a fallacy only; it would/will become actual fact if this world-conception were to gain the day". (for an explanation see the lecture: 1915-11-07-GA254)
• festival of Pentecost as a pointer towards the sixth epoch
• the Reunion of Moon is timed approximately for the end of the current fifth epoch or the start of the Sixth epoch, and this will have a major impact (oa on procreation as birth will no longer take place in the ordinary way)
• although it can be suggested and speculated the Reunion of the Sun could already happen at the end of the Sixth epoch, the various sources on the topic page time it to the Seventh epoch

Inspirational quotes

1907-06-05-GA099

.. we now the task of working towards the great moment in the sixth epoch, when humanity will undertake a great spiritual ascent.

full quote: Spiritual minority in a materialistic world#1907-06-05-GA099

See also above aspects 'Father impulse and spiritualization'

Lecture coverage and references

1904-10-07-GA093

It is only during the fifth epoch that the development is beginning to take place of such Manus as are akin to ourselves; who have risen, as it were, from the ranks of humanity. We have men, therefore, who are already great masters and advanced leaders of humanity, and we have those who are striving to become such. In the fifth epoch we have chelas and masters who have experienced all that can be undergone by human beings only since the middle of the Lemurian epoch.

One of these great masters who are leaders of the fifth epoch is predestined to take over the leadership of the sixth epoch. The sixth epoch will be the first great epoch to have as its Manu one who is a brother to earthly man.

The earlier masters, the Manus from other worlds, are handing over their leadership to a fellow human being.

1904-10-28-GA092

(SWCC: Shortened without Contents Change)

In the course of our fifth epoch and the time between the end of the Atlantean and the beginning of the next Sixth epoch, an advance in human evolution of the highest importance will be made. The Leaders of mankind, their Manus, will arise in mankind itself.

None of the great leaders who brought men forward, who gave them their important impulses during the earlier epochs (or 'root races'), went through their own evolution entirely on the earth. They underwent it in part on other planets, and thus they brought from other worlds the great impulses they had to give to the earth. The Manus of the Lemurian and Atlantean epochs, as well as the Manu of our current fifth epoch, are supersensible individualities, who underwent the sublime schooling which enabled them to become the leaders of mankind, on other planets.

But during the current fifth epoch (and root race), highly developed human individualities have trained themselves so that from the sixth epoch onward, they will be capable of becoming the Leaders of mankind. The Leader of the Sixth Root Race, in particular, will be a man as we are, only one of the most advanced, indeed the most advanced among men.

He will be a being who began his development when incarnation started, approximately in the middle of Lemuria, one who has always been a man among men, only he was able to advance more rapidly, and one who has gone through every stage of human evolution. This will be the fundamental characteristic of the Manus of the sixth epochs. Such beings have to undergo all kinds of Initiation, to be initiated again and again. Hence the fifth epoch from its outset has always had Initiates, men who were so initiated as to enable them to walk their own freely willed path. This was not the case during the Lemurian nor even in Atlantean epoch. In both the Lemurian and Atlantean epochs, those who helped mankind forward, those who ruled and guided mankind, those who were political leaders and leaders of great religious communities, were under the influence of and directly dependent upon higher beings, beings who had gone through their own development on other planets.

It is not until the fifth root race that mankind is left free. Then we have Initiates who have a connection with higher beings, but to whom such comprehensive guidance is not given. More and more freedom is allowed to the Initiates of the fifth epoch in matters of detail. Guidance is given along general lines, not only to the Initiates but to those who are stimulated by them. Impulses are given to them but yet in such a way that it is out of their own spirituality that they have to carry things out.

...

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.

1904-11-02-GA089

[Man in the Polarian epoch] ... had only this one sense, to perceive the movement of the ether matter, just as later on, in the 6th epoch the human being will hear the 'trumpets' (re Book of Revelation), that is, the sounds of the spheres.

1904-11-11-GA093

makes the connection of Manicheism as a preparatory stream, preparing the form for true Christianity in the sixth epoch

What are Mani's intentions, what is the meaning of his statement that he is the Paraclete, the Spirit, the Son of the Widow? It means no less than that he intends to prepare for the time in which the men of the sixth Root Race will be guided out of their own being, by their own soul's light, to overcome outward forms and convert them to spirit.

Mani's intention is to create a spiritual current which goes beyond the Rosicrucian current, which leads further than Rosicrucianism. This current of Mani's will flow over to the sixth Root Race and has been in preparation since the founding of Christianity. It is just at the time of the sixth Root Race that Christianity will be expressed in its most complete form. Its time will truly have come. The inner Christian life, as such, overcomes every form, it is propagated by external Christianity and lives in all forms of the various confessions. Whoever seeks Christian life will always find it. It creates forms and destroys forms in various religious systems. It does not depend upon a search for conformity in the outward forms in which it is expressed, but it depends upon experiencing the inner life stream which is always current under the surface.

What is still waiting to be made is a form for the life of the sixth Root Race. That must be created beforehand, it has to be there so that Christian life can be poured into it. This form has to be prepared by human beings who create an Organisation, a form, so that the true Christian life of the sixth Root Race can find its place therein. And this external form of society must derive from the intention which Mani has fostered, from the small group whom Mani has prepared. That must be the outer form of Organisation, the congregation in which the spark of Christianity will first be truly kindled.

From this you will be able to conclude that Manicheism will endeavour, first and foremost, to preserve purity in outer life; for its aim is to produce human beings who will provide an adequate vessel in the future. That is why such great stress was laid on absolute purity of mind and of life.

The Cathars were a sect which rose like a meteor in the twelfth century. They called themselves Cathars because 'cathar' means 'pure one'. They strove for purity in their way of life and in their moral attitude. They had to seek catharsis (purification) both inwardly and outwardly in order to form a community which would provide a pure vessel. That is what Manicheism was striving for. It was less a question in Manicheism of the cultivation of the inner life — for life will flow onwards through other channels — but rather the cultivation of the external form of life.

What is to come about during the sixth Root Race: Good and evil will then contrast very differently from the way that they do today. What will be evident to all mankind in the fifth Round — that the outer physiognomy which each one acquires will directly mirror what Karma has made out of him — that will express itself spiritually in the sixth Root Race like a prelude to this event. Among those on whom Karma has bestowed an excess of evil, it will become particularly evident on a spiritual level. On the one hand there will be human beings possessing mighty inner forces of good, who will be gifted with great love and goodness; but, on the other hand, the opposite will also be seen. Evil will be present as a disposition without any disguise in a great many people, no longer cloaked or hidden from view. The evil ones will extol evil as something of particular worth. A glimmering of this delight in evil and the demonic pertaining to the sixth Root Race is already in evidence in certain men of genius. The unalloyed evil must be cast out of the stream of world evolution like dross. It will be relegated to the eighth sphere. Today we stand immediately at the threshold of a time when good must consciously come to terms with evil.

The sixth Root Race will have the task of drawing evil back into the continuing stream of evolution through kindness. Then a spiritual current will have been born which does not oppose evil, even though it manifests in the world in its demonic form. The consciousness will have been established in the successors to the 'Sons of the Widow' that evil must be included again in evolution and be overcome, not by strife, but only through charitableness. It is the task of the Manichean spiritual stream forcefully to prepare for this. This spiritual stream will not die out, it will make its appearance in many forms. It appears in forms which many can call to mind but which need not be mentioned today. If it were to function merely in the cultivation of an inner mood of soul, this current would not achieve what it should do. It must express itself in the founding of communities which, above all, will look upon peace, love and passive resistance to evil as their standard of behaviour and will seek to spread this view. For they must create a receptacle, a form, for the life which will continue to exist even without their presence.

1904-12-30

Not until the Sixth epoch will it become possible, and then only gradually, for the human body to receive into itself the Christ Principle from childhood onwards. Only then, in the Sixth Root Race, will mankind have reached such maturity that the body will not need years of preparation but will be able from the beginning, to receive the Christ Principle ..

.. In the Sixth Root Race it will be possible for a man to place his body at the disposal of a sublime Being, as did Jesus of Nazareth when Christianity was founded. ..

.. The task of Christianity is fulfilled in the Sixth Root Race, when material existence will be fraught with sacramentalism and sacramental deeds.

1905-03-06-GA090B

The sixth 'moral' root race will be developed from the spiritual sixth cultural age that will provide the foundation for the first age of the sixth epoch. In the middle of the sixth epoch a division will take place. Male and female gender will cease to exist.

1905-03-30-GA053

the principal race which follows ours has substantially different qualities. In the middle of that period it produces a human race which does not penetrate the physical world as deeply as ours and which casts off the uni-sexuality and becomes hermaphrodite

1905-06-05-GA093

makes the link with Pentecost

When the sun separated itself from the earth, the Word became entombed in the earth. It will be resurrected again when the earth has advanced as far as the Sixth epoch. Man will raise this Word from the dead, out of the earth; but first the spirit must live in him that will enable the Word to strike a chord in him. This was attained by the apostles at Pentecost.

In Light on the Path we find the words: 'Acquire knowledge and you will have speech.' Speech comes with true knowledge, which descends like the tongues of fire on the apostles at holy Pentecost.

When the inner Word comes, that is akin to the holy divine Word, and that sinks down into everything etheric, so as to make it come alive, then man will no longer speak out of himself but out of the divine Spirit. He is then the messenger of the Godhead and proclaims the inner Word of Godhead of his own free will.

Thus did the inner Word become alive in the apostles; thus did it spread its influence outwards from them. They proclaimed the fiery Word and were aware of their role as the messengers of the Godhead. Therefore the Holy Spirit hovered over them in the form of fiery tongues. They prepare humanity to receive the Logos. The great initiate, Christ Jesus, went on in advance. The Holy Spirit followed, fertilising the astral bodies so that they would become ripe for making their etheric bodies immortal. Once this has happened, then the Christ Principle will be drawn into humanity. This is what the initiates too had in mind when they said, somewhat as Heraclitus did: If, in escaping from the earthly, you ascend to free ether, with faith in immortality, you become an immortal spirit, free of death and of the physical.

Every single person will reach this point in the middle of the Sixth epoch. Today man is still vulnerable to death, in that his etheric body has still not attained immortality. Christianity contains the secret of how man can gradually develop himself towards the resurrection of the etheric body. This is where the third great festival is connected with the other two Christian festivals.

190X-XX-XX-GA097

(extract to be completed)

Source: https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/19070316p01.html

The Sixth epoch will see

• quite another race, noble and beautiful,
• in contrast to the thrown off [i.e., retrograde humans, bad souls], decadence which will be a race of men, horribly ugly, animal-like, sensual, vicious, far more horror-provoking than our present humanity, because these will go on developing downwards.

1907-06-05-GA099

contains an outlook which is not specifically timed but well relevant for the future races.

[referring to earlier epochs .. ] .. the effect of this influence was that the human being could work much more creatively on his body. At the same time the body was also more soft and yielding. There was a time when you could not merely stretch out your hand, when you could not only point with the finger, but when you could send your will into your hand, and so form it that you could thrust out the fingers as continuations. There was a time when the foot was not yet permanent but could be extended as a continuation when man needed it. Thus through the pictures which he received from the surrounding world man shaped his own body.

Today in our material age this moulding is unimaginably slow, but a time will come again when it will proceed more rapidly. In the future man will again acquire more influence over his physical corporeality. We shall see when we consider Initiation by what means he gains this influence; although he may not reach it in one life, yet he will be able to do much for the next incarnation.

Thus it is man himself who will bring about the future form of his body. Inasmuch as the human being becomes softer and softer, inasmuch as he separates himself from the hard parts, he is approaching his future. An age comes when man will live above his earthly portion as it were, as in time gone by.

This condition, which is comparable to your present sleep-condition, will then be replaced by another when the human being will be able to draw his etheric body out of his physical body at will. It will be as if the denser part of man were here below on earth and the human being will make use of it from outside like an instrument. Man will no longer bear his body about and live within it, but will float above it, the body will itself have become rarefied and finer. That seems a fantastic idea today, but one can be distinctly aware of it from spiritual laws just as one reckons future eclipses of the sun and moon from the laws of astronomy.

1908-06-21-GA104

presents a pre-look into the division in good and evil races on Future Jupiter

We must distinguish between soul-development and race-development. No soul is undeservedly obliged to remain in an old body, no soul will undeservedly remain in a body belonging to our age. Those who hear the voice which calls them to progress will survive the great period of destruction — the War of All against All — and appear in new bodies which will be quite different from those of the present day.

For it is very short-sighted if one thinks of the Atlantean bodies of men as being like the present bodies. In the course of thousands of years the external physiognomy changes and after the great War of All against All Man will have quite a different form. Today he is so formed that in a certain sense he can conceal the good and evil in his nature. The human physiognomy already betrays a good deal, it is true, and one who understands this will be able to read much from the features. But it is still possible today for a scoundrel to smile most graciously with the must innocent man and or taken for an honest man; the reverse is also possible; the good impulses in the soul may remain unrecognized. It is possible for all that exists in the soul as cleverness and stupidity, as beauty and ugliness, to hide itself behind the general physiognomy possessed by this or that rare. This will no longer be the case in the epoch following the great War of All against All. Upon the forehead and in the whole physiognomy it will be written whether the person is good or evil. He will show in his face what is contained in his inmost soul. What a roan has developed within himself, whether he has exercised good or evil impulses, will be written on his forehead.

After the great War of All against All there will be two kinds of human beings.

• Those who had previously tried to follow the call to the spiritual life, who cultivated the spiritualizing and ennobling of their inner spiritual life, will show this inward life on their faces and express it in their gestures and the movements of their hands.
• And those who have turned away from the spiritual life, represented by the community of Laodicea, who were lukewarm, neither warm nor cold, will pass into the following epoch as those who retard human evolution, who preserve the backward forces of evolution which have been left behind. They will show the evil passions, impulses and instincts hostile to the spiritual in an ugly, unintelligent, evil-looking countenance. In their gestures and hand-movements, in everything they do, they will present an outer image of the ugliness un their soul.

Just as humanity has separated into races and communities, in the future it will divide into two great streams, the good and the evil. And what is in their souls will be outwardly manifest, they will no longer be able to hide it.

1910-GA013

In OeS the Reunion of Moon with Earth and Sun is described but not timed explicitly

There will come a time when both the Earth and humanity have made such progress in evolution that the forces and beings that had to separate from the Earth during Lemurian times to enable earthly beings to continue to progress will be able to reunite with the Earth.

At that time, the Moon will reconnect with the Earth. This will happen because sufficient numbers of human souls possess enough inner strength to make these Moon forces fruitful for further evolution.

This will take place at a time when

• another development that has turned toward evil will be taking place
• alongside the high level of development reached by the appropriate number of human souls.

Souls whose development has been delayed will have accumulated so much error, ugliness, and evil in their karma that they temporarily form a distinct union of evil and aberrant human beings who vehemently oppose the community of good human beings.

In the course of its development, the good portion of humankind will learn to use the Moon forces to transform the evil part so that it can participate in further evolution as a distinct earthly kingdom.

Through the work of 'the good part of humanity', the Earth, then reunited with the Moon, will become able to reunite with the Sun after a certain period of evolution, and also with the other planets. After an interim stage that resembles a sojourn in a higher world, the Earth will transform itself into the Future Jupiter state.

1915-06-15-GA159

is about preparing for the sixth cultural age, it is added here because as the first sentence points out it is prepartion for the next great sixth epoch. The next cultural age will be the one to create the seeds for that next epoch. (SWCC)

Three characteristic traits we can carry in our hearts for the next sixth cultural age, as it is our task to prepare them for the sixth epoch.

1. There is lacking in human society nowadays a quality that, in the sixth cultural age, will be a characteristic of those men who reach the goal of that age, and have not fallen short of it. It is a quality that will not be found among those who will have still remained at the stage of savages or barbarians.

   One of the most significant characteristics of men living on the earth at the peak of culture in the sixth epoch, will be a certain moral quality. Little of this quality is perceptible in modern humanity. A man today must be delicately organized for his soul to feel pain when he sees other human beings in the world in less happy circumstances than his own. It is true that more delicately organized natures feel pain at the suffering that is so widespread in the world, but this can only be said of the people who are particularly sensitive.

   In the sixth age, 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. If they see a hungry man they will feel the hunger right down into the physical, so acutely indeed that the hunger of the other man will be unendurable to them.

   The moral characteristic indicated here is that in the sixth age the well-being of the individual will depend entirely upon the well-being of the whole. Just as nowadays the well-being of a single human limb depends upon the health of the whole body, and when the whole body is not healthy the single limb is not up to doing its work, so in the sixth age a common consciousness will lay hold of the then civilized humanity and in a far higher degree than a limb feels the health of the whole body, the individual will feel the suffering, the need, the poverty or the wealth of the whole. This is the first preeminently moral trait that will characterize the cultured humanity of the sixth epoch.

2. A second fundamental characteristic will be that everything we call the fruits of belief today will depend to a far, far higher degree than is the case today, upon the single individuality. Spiritual science expresses this by saying that in every sphere of religion in the sixth age, 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 in the sixth cultural age. Everyone will feel that complete freedom of thought in the domain of religion is a fundamental right of the human being.

3. The third characteristic will be that men in the sixth age 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.

   What is known as science today with its materialistic trend will certainly not be honored by the name of science in the sixth Postatlantean cultural age. It will be regarded as antiquated superstition, able to pass muster only among those who have remained behind at the stage of the superseded fifth cultural age.

   Today we regard it as superstition when, let us say, a savage holds the view that no limb ought to be separated from his body at death because this would make it impossible for him to enter the spiritual world as a whole man. Such a man still connects the idea of immortality with pure materialism, with the belief that an impress of his whole form must pass into the spiritual world. He thinks materialistically but believes in immortality. We, today, knowing from spiritual science that the spiritual has to be separated from the body and that only the spiritual passes into the supersensible world, regard such materialistic beliefs in immortality as superstition.  Similarly, in the sixth cultural age all materialistic beliefs including 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.

   The whole purpose of spiritual science is to prepare in this sense for the sixth cultural age. We try to cultivate spiritual science in order to overcome materialism, to prepare the kind of science that must exist in that age. We found communities of human beings within which there must be no dogmatic beliefs or any tendency to accept teaching simply because it emanates from one person or another. We found communities of human beings in which everything, without exception, must be built upon the soul's free assent to the teachings.

   Herein we prepare what spiritual science calls freedom of thought. By coming together in friendly associations for the purpose of cultivating spiritual science, we prepare the culture, the civilization of the sixth cultural age.

   But we must look still more deeply into the course of human evolution if we are fully to understand the real tasks of our associations and groups.

1915-10-31-GA254

During the sixth and seventh epochs, the rigidity of the etheric body will have a great influence upon the physical body and the physical body will become a faithful copy of the etheric. This will give rise to serious and important results. During the sixth cultural age of the Postatlantean evolution of the earth, the human beings will therefore be born with specially marked bodies, which will express their inner moral qualities. We shall then be meeting someone and we shall know what his moral constitution is like, for his outward appearance shall reveal it. In future, the MORAL physiognomy will be particularly conspicuous, whereas all those marks which now characterize the human physiognomy will be far less conspicuous.

1915-11-07-GA254

continues and complements the above description for the sixth and seventh cultural ages (SWCC)

the etheric body too will acquire firmer forms .. and as it passes with its fixed forms into the physical body, will assert itself very strongly.

.. in these sixth and seventh epochs, the etheric body with its inflexibility will exercise a very strong influence upon the physical, and will make the physical body into a faithful image of itself.

This has momentous consequences: in the sixth epoch of post-Atlantean evolution, men will be born with bodies quite definitely expressing their inner, moral qualities. A man's moral qualities will be recognised from his actual appearance. The moral physiognomy will then be very strongly in evidence ..

In its external aspect, the surrounding world too will be much changed in this sixth epoch. Particularly those animals which are nowadays consumed as food, will have died out. Men will sing the praises of a fleshless diet, for it will then be an ancient memory that the ancestors in olden days actually ate flesh. It is not the case that all animals will die out, but only certain species of animals — especially those which have acquired the most inflexible forms will have disappeared from the earth. — So the outer face of the earth itself will have changed.

and goes on to describe that

We are actually tending in the direction of bringing the theories of the materialistic world-conception to fulfilment. They are not reality as yet — but that is the direction towards which we are tending. ..

.. The materialistic world-conception may not be true, but for all that it contains an inner truth. Of this inner truth it can be said: What the materialistic world-conception describes regarding man would become actual fact if this world-conception were to gain the day. And it lies with men by means of a different world-conception, to prevent this materialism from being victorious. The matter is not so simple as to enable it to be said that the materialistic world-conception is false; the point is that it lies in the hands of men to gain the victory over it through deeds, not through feeble thoughts of refutation.

... This materialistic world-conception is not a fallacy only, it is conspiracy against the Spirit.

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.

Beinsa Douno's last prophecy (1944) on ascension

SWCC 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 millenia 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]

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.

Future Oriphiel Age

Source: https://anthroposophy.eu/Future_Oriphiel_age

Summary

"Oriphiel is the one who must come to shake humankind, to jolt it through terrifying suffering, awakening it to its true vocation."

The current Michael age [*] is timed approx. between the years 1881 and 2235. It is followed by the Oriphiel age between approx. 2235 and 2589.

Initiates like Rudolf Steiner and Beinsa Douno made very explicit warnings to humanity regarding this 'dark age' period of the 23th to 25th century.

Note [*]: For more on the archangel reigned time periods of approx. 354 years, as already described in the middle ages by d'Abano and Trithemius, see Spiritual hierarchies and their eigenperiods.

Overview

• divine love will appear in the form of divine wrath, and will
  • stop the harmful effects of the materialistic arrangements (that are in our materialistic consciousness age) by destroying them
  • produce a separation into good and evil races
• the dark age is described with oa:
  • a war in which over 500 million people will die, and all communications, railroads, telegraphs, telephones will be disrupted for over a 100 years causing complete isolation before the relations between peoples to be restored .. there will be famine, chill, pestilence (Beinsa Douno)
  • terrible epidemics and strange nervous diseases; children could be born with a ruined nervous system (Rudolf Steiner)
• from the middle of the Oriphiel age (2400) onwards, Christ will work from the physical plane into men and will reveal himself on the physical plane in etheric form (re: 1913-03-05-GA152). See further: Christ in the future cultural ages and next epochs
• preparation of a cohort or host of human beings for those difficult times; through the study of spiritual science and initiation - see link with Individuality of Christian Rosenkreutz, and Q00.006 - spiritual events at various points in life
• in terms of purification
  • the cleansing in the Oriphiel age can be regarded a forebode for the transition to the Sixth cultural age, see also: Sixth cultural age#.5B1.5D - Transition between the fifth and sixth cultural ages
  • for the later major transition towards the sixth epoch - see also Earthquakes and emergence continent sixth epoch
  • prophecies place a global disaster (and/or divine cleansing) as part of - and ending - the future great war between East and West (third world war) , see Three days of darkness

Lecture coverage and references

Rudolf Steiner:

Something quite similar to a birth took place on the astral plane in 1879. What had slowly ripened since the 14^th century could now be carried into the world in a freer way, even though only for a few people. For Gabriel's rule was followed by that of the archangel Michael. He's the radiant sun that lets esoteric wisdom shine out into a small host of people. Materialism is included in the divine plan of creation and it has a purpose in the whole world. But the time has now come for the esoteric sun to shine brightly under Michael's radiant direction. For materialism's dark forces are increasing.

Michael's radiant rule will be followed by a dark, terrible age that starts about 2300.

Together with Michael, a dark God has begun his rule — the God Mammon. For occultism Mammon isn't just the God of money. He's the leader of all base, black forces. And his hosts attack men's bodies and souls to corrode and ruin them. There's a lot of talk about bacterial today, and they influence a lot of things. In future they'll increase in a terrifying way, and many human bodies will waste away from terrible diseases and plagues. The brand of sin will be stamped on men's bodies for all to see. Another archangel — Oriphiel — will rule then. He must come to shake men up to their true vocation through terrible tortures. So that this can happen in the right way a small group of people must be prepared today to spread esoteric life in the black age 400–600 years from now. [DL editor: 2307-2507]

One under Michael's rule who feels the urge to participate in spiritual life is called upon to serve archangel Michael and to learn under him so that someday he'll be mature enough to also serve the terrible Oriphiel in the right way. A sacrifice is demanded from those who want to dedicate themselves to a higher life. One should only want to receive spiritual life and experience an awakening if one later wants to use this to put oneself, one's will and everything one has in the service of mankind only.

In four to six centuries the small group of men who are being prepared today will serve the God Oriphiel so that mankind can be saved. If in that age men wanted to be spiritual leaders who hadn't been prepared to stand fast in all storms and to resist Mammon's hosts, they wouldn't be able to serve the God Oriphiel in the right way, and mankind would not be lifted out of their misery. So in order to do it we must work very earnestly now to fulfill our tasks then.

But when dark powers rage most terribly, the brightest light also shines. Oriphiel has ruled before. That was the time when Christ appeared on earth. Bad powers of degeneration and decadence were ruling everywhere on earth then. And the human race could only be shaken higher by terrible means. Oriphiel is called the archangel of wrath, who purifies mankind with a strong hand.

The story in the Bible where Christ swings a scourge to chase the money changers out of the temple has a deep meaning. Back when things were darkest on earth, Christ appeared as the savior of mankind. Oriphiel's reign ended 109 years after Christ's appearance, and he was replaced by Anael. Then came Zachariel, then Raphael; Samael ruled during the Renaissance and Gabriel from the 16^th century until 1879. Then Michael began to rule, and circa 2300 Oriphiel, the terrible archangel of wrath, will be ruling things. And as once before, spiritual light will shine into darkness brightly and radiantly. Christ will appear again on earth, although in a different form than before. We're called upon to receive him and to serve him.

1906-11-01-GA266

• Asuras remain behind on Old Saturn.
• Satanic fire spirits on Old Sun. The regent of fire spirits is Christ.
• Luciferic spirits fell behind on Old Moon.

and

• Lucifer was at work in the Lemurian epoch, could be included in earth evolution, and worked as a liberator by giving men independence and enthusiasm for wisdom.
• Satanic Gods of hindrances began their work in the Atlantean epoch.
• Asuras are starting to work in the Postatlantean epoch. They're the worst of the three and they mainly work into sexual life in the physical body. The many sexual aberrations today are to be ascribed to this strong influx.

All forces of hindrances try to hold onto currently existing things that are still imperfect, carry them out and intensify them.

Lucifers gave independence, egoity with egoism. Egoism, error and animal love are the first expressions of egoity, wisdom and highest spiritual love. We must bring about the respective transformations.

The separation of the sexes took place in the third root race, it'll be overcome in the sixth root race; this must be prepared for in the sixth sub-race. Man's productive forces are becoming transformed. The productive force as such is the most sacred thing that we have, because it's directly divine. The more divine what we pull into the dirt is, the greater the sin. Later on the heart and larynx will be the productive organs in us.

Just as the Word became flesh in Christ Jesus, so the flesh must become word when Christendom becomes perfected. That's the mystery of the Holy Grail, the holy love lance, the fertilizing sunlight that'll unite with Eva again. Rosicrucians' occult brotherhood is the seminary in which a human material must be educated for the coming age.

A particularly bright light must always arise in especially dark times. Christ was born in the Oriphiel age. When Oriphiel rules again the spiritual light that was brought by Christian Rosenkreutz and is now being spread must have generated a host of clairvoyant men who are pioneers working consciously towards a goal. This will produce a separation into good and evil races.

The fifth root race will perish through evil. Good and evil are still relatively undifferentiated and it's hard to see who's evil or good behind the flesh. When the forces of the masters and of the men who join them with their whole strength and will, and when the forces of the Gods of hindrances, Mammon, Satan, Asuras and their human followers intervene ever more mightily into human life and earth evolution, then good will develop into a divine good, and evil into a terrible Antichrist. Then every one of us needs world helpers and all the strength that he can only gain through the overcoming of suffering and evil. It's the aim of Theosophy and Rosicrucianism to summon men to this battle via such knowledge and to give them peace in the battle.

1907-12-05-GA266

The Age of Michael began in 1879. After that comes the Age of Oriphiel, when great conflicts will rage among human beings. Therefore a tiny handful of human beings is now being prepared to keep the torch of spiritual knowledge alight in that sombre epoch

Anyone who feels an urge to participate in spiritual life under Michael's guidance is called to serve Michael and learn from him. This is the preparation for service under Oriphiel's terrifying rule. Sacrifice will be required of those who want to consecrate themselves to the spiritual life. The willingness to put oneself at the service of humanity is the necessary prerequisite from anyone who seeks to receive the spiritual life.

In four to six hundred years the handful of human beings who are now preparing themselves will be put in the service of Oriphiel, so that humanity can be saved. If the people who assume the leadership then have not prepared for it by holding their own against the troops of Mammon, they will not be able to play the role assigned them under Oriphiel. Then humanity will not be raised from its misery. Therefore, we must set to work now with the utmost seriousness.

But it is when the darkest forces are at their most violent that the brightest light also shines. Oriphiel has assumed the leadership in the past. The last time was when Christ appeared upon the earth, a period when the worst rottenness and decadence reigned all over the earth. It took terrible sufferings then for the human race to be jolted forward. Oriphiel has been called the Archangel of Anger, who purifies humanity with a strong hand.

The story of Christ's cracking his whip at the money-changers in the Temple has deep meaning in it. At this darkest of times in human history, Christ appeared to save humanity.

1908-08-09-GA266

And it's very necessary that we be instructed in this way. For since 1879 we've entered a new stage of human evolution. Gabriel worked on the development of a new organ in man's brain by regulating human births (1525–1879). A 16^th century man would not have understood our present theosophy.

It's up to archangel Michael to stimulate men to use their newly acquired organ, that degenerates if a man doesn't use it.

Such a man comes under the influence of Michael's opponent, Mammon or Beelzebub. This is the God of hindrances, who wants to prevent men from making progress. The bacteria that arise under his influence can give rise to terrible epidemics and strange nervous diseases; children could be born with a ruined nervous system. After Michael's reign comes Oriphiel who gives the divine wrath that should only be used by highly developed people. Jesus drives the merchants out of the temple.

1911-02-12-GA266

Since November, 1879, a few men have become mature enough to take in theosophical teachings, but it's only a small host, whereas other moderns are till unable to acquire the teachings, consider them to be fantastic ideas and dreams or even get angry about them.When people who prove to be receptive for theosophical teachings let the latter work upon them, their etheric body begins to oscillate slightly. .. For we only have another 400 years or so to give these teachings in a theosophical form to all men. So that everyone will have an opportunity those who resisted them now will be born again in the next four centuries. A suitable number of men must be present then who represent theosophy in the right way.

or a longer extract

Since November, 1879, a few men have become mature enough to take in theosophical teachings, but it's only a small host, whereas other moderns are till unable to acquire the teachings, consider them to be fantastic ideas and dreams or even get angry about them. When people who prove to be receptive for theosophical teachings let the latter work upon them, their etheric body begins to oscillate slightly. Whereas someone who loses himself in external things gets an expanded and rarified etheric body. When such a person hears some spiritual teachings it's as if the wind were blowing through a cleft in the etheric body, which announced itself in him as fear, but appears outwardly as doubt. Such a man only notices the doubts, but they're the expression of fear and anxiety that have moved into his rarified etheric body as into a vacuum and have become noticeable there as doubt. We can't help a man who behaves in a rejective manner. It's better not to bother him with theosophy. But wherever an opportunity rises we should quietly let theosophical ideas flow in according to the principle "steady dripping hollows the tone."

For we only have another 400 years or so to give these teachings in a theosophical form to all men. So that everyone will have an opportunity those who resisted them now will be born again in the next four centuries. A suitable number of men must be present then who represent theosophy in the right way.

Men could only tread the inner path for a long time before the event of Golgotha. Men who went out into the macrocosm in ancient India would have become lost in it as in darkness and emptiness, because their inner members had a different relationship to each other then. This kind of union with God existed until medieval times, because man changes but slowly. Mystics like Eckhart, Tauler and Molinos teach us the inner path an describe it exactly. Miguel de Molinos speaks of five stages of immersion He says that we must turn away from all creatures that corresponds to the forces of our etheric body, from our talents that correspond to the astral body, and from our ego that coincides with our fourth part and that we must merge with God.

But it gradually became necessary for men to tread the inner and outer paths simultaneously, and that's why the Rosicrucian, esoteric schools that taught both ways rose in the 11th and 12th centuries.

1924-08-08-GA237

- see more on Q00.006 - spiritual events at various points in life

.. that which goes on externally, which the astronomers describe, is after all only the outer side. You know that approximately every 11 years we have a period of Sun-spots, when in the shining of the Sun upon the earth certain places are darkened, covered with spots or blotches. This was not always so. In very ancient times the Sun shone down as a uniform disc of light. There were no Sun-spots. Moreover, after some thousands of years the Sun will have very many more spots than it has today. The Sun is growing ever more spotted. This again is the outer manifestation of the fact that the Michael Power, the Cosmic Power of Intelligence is still decreasing. In the increase of the Sun-spots in the course of Cosmic Evolution is revealed the Sun's decay; the Sun within the cosmos grows increasingly dim and old. And at the appearance of a sufficiently large number of Sun-spots, the other Planetary Intelligences recognised that they would now no longer be ruled by the Sun. They resolved no longer to allow the earth to be dependent on the Sun, but to make it dependent henceforth on the entire cosmos directly. This took place through the planetary Counsels of the Archangels. Notably under the leadership of Oriphiel, this emancipation of the Planetary Intelligences from the Sun-Intelligence took place. It was a complete separation of Cosmic Powers that had hitherto belonged together. The Sun-Intelligence of Michael and the Planetary Intelligences gradually came into cosmic opposition one with another.

1924-09-19-GA346

Pouring out of the vials of divine wrath

Now the fact is that this is one stream in the universe, and it is important to us as human beings, but it is only one stream. If we look at the age of materialism since the 15th, 16th, 17th centuries, at the climax of materialism during the 40's of the 19th century and at the development of materialism afterwards with everything that people think and do and with all the terribly destructive forces that have been raging in humanity since the middle of the 19th century, although many people haven't even really noticed them yet, — we can well imagine that divine love which unfolds in light weaves above all of this.

However, if you take some very clean water, some absolutely crystal clear water and dip a dirty sponge in it and squeeze it, and let the water run out again, you will see that it is cloudy and dirty. You have let the dirty sponge suck up the crystal clear water and you have squeezed it out again and it has become dirty water. The crystal clear, pure water can't help it that it flows out as dirty water when one squeezes the sponge. And the divine love that is springing up in pure light can't help it that it is being absorbed by the age of materialism, by a sponge that is permeated by impurities and that it thereby becomes something quite different when it reemerges. So when crystal clear water is absorbed by a dirty sponge it becomes cloudy, undrinkable water, and by analogy we can imagine that when divine love that appears in light is sucked up by all the evil ingredients that are latently or openly raging in humanity, it becomes divine wrath.

The secret of the next age is that divine love will appear in the form of divine wrath through what happens in humanity. It will appear in the form of the divine wrath that will stop the harmful effects of the materialistic arrangements that are arising in our materialistic, consciousness age by destroying them. Proceeding from what appears to the Apocalypticer in pictures, he speaks of the pouring out of the vials of wrath in the next age. That is something that was expressed in the mysteries in a sentence that had a terribly shocking effect upon the neophytes: Divine love appears in the form of divine wrath in the sphere of human illusions.

...

Looked at from a real and true point of view, the divine wrath that is poured out over men is still a manifestation of divine love, and that is why the sentence was formulated in the way that I gave it.

If divine love would become weak and if it would seemingly take pity on men in this age, it would be no real compassion, for it would ignore the necessary consequences of human thoughts and actions. That would be very loveless, for then humanity would become corrupt. The deleterious things that men did and that would have an unspeakably harmful effect on further human evolution can only be eliminated by the outpouring of divine wrath, which is a metamorphosis of divine love. This sentence in the manuscripts is so old that it is often stated in its oriental form in Europe, so that one says: In the region of maya divine love becomes manifest as divine wrath. Here again one can see how completely the Apocalypse is taken from the really active ingredients in the world. The deeper one goes into it the more one realizes that one can really rely on this Apocalypse; although that is a rather trivial way of putting it. It is basically something that tells priests what is happening in the course of human and world evolution. It was originally given to priests as the really esoteric part of Christianity in addition to the other part that was exoteric.

1933-01-15-BD (Beinsa Douno)

here follows a maybe not so good translation of Beinsa Douno in 1933

Christ came to Earth on a great mission. He wanted to show the European peoples of that day, what to do and how to behave. Everything the Christ preached during his time, referred to the current times. He said to all peoples: you will come to a great crisis. If you want to escape this crisis, the only solution is in what I am preaching. If you apply My doctrine, you will be redeemed from a great catastrophe, but if you fail to follow My doctrine, the catastrophe is unavoidable.

Now you're in trouble for the sole reason that you have left everything to Got and you're just saying: "When Christ comes, He'll fix everything". Christ came, but what did he fix? The way people perceive fixing things, He fixed nothing. He came and the Roman Empire crucified him. Then Christ came again in 1914, but 6 million people died. He said to them: "Do not fight!", But they did not listen to Him. [editor: WW1]. He will come again during the next war. People get ready and if there's a new war, about 50 million people will die. [WW2]. And if, even then does not force some sense into them, there will be another war, even more fierce, in which 550 million people will die. [WW3 to come]. This is not what I want, but I'm just saying that human thoughts, feelings and behavior, give rise to that war, in which at least 50 million people will die. [WW2]. And if that does not make them cleverer, a more vicious war will then start. [WW3].

After that there will be no wars, because it will result in such a wonder that people has never expected. All the communications, railroads, telegraphs, telephones will be disrupted and it will take at least 100 years, for the relations between peoples to be restored. Until then they will be completely isolated. This is not my prophecy, but of the prophets around the world – those in England, America, Germany, China, Japan, everywhere they prophesy what will happen.

If peoples do not humble themselves, there will be famine, chill, great earthquakes, pestilence and only after that they will humble themselves, i.e. such fearsome things will happen, that will make them humble themselves. But because of the chosen ones, the suffering will be discontinued. Those, who are chosen, support life.

Beinsa Douno also speaks of the great earthquake

Karma of Untruthfulness, Lecture Twenty

Dornach, 15 January 1917

I am presenting you with these things now because they show how human life is founded on processes which are not at all obvious to present-day science. It will be the task of the fifth post-Atlantean period to raise these processes to the level of true knowledge. During the course of th e fifth post-Atlantean period this realization must enter into everything we do — in teaching, in education generally and in the whole of external life. It must, in due course, be recognized that what is seen as scince in materialistic circles today will gradually have to disappear from the life of the earth, together with all the consequences it has for life. All the battles to be won in the fifth post-Atlantean period will be no more than an external expression of a spiritual battle, just as, in the final analysis, the present battle is an external expression of the confrontation between materialism and spiritual life. Hidden though these things are, behind today's infinitely sad events lies the battle of materialism against spiritual life. This battle will have to be fought to the end. It will take various forms, but it must be fought to the end because human beings must learn to bear everything they need to bearin order to achieve the spritual view necessary for the sixth post-Atlantean period. It may be said that there much be much suffering, but only out of pain and suffering can arise what truly binds knowledge to our self. For the other side of the coin that is connected with the materialistic view of the world, is the materialistic way of life, which is only beginning today but which will take on infinitely more terrible forms.

The materialistic way of life began when science became willing to recognize only what is material. It has already led to a stage at which people are prepared, in life, too, to accept only what is material. This will be taken much, much further and will become far more intense. For the fifth post-Atlantean period must be lived to the end. In all areas it must reach a kind of climax. For spirituality needs its opposite pole if it is to recognize itself with the intensity that will be needed if mankind is to step with maturity into the sixth post-Atlantean period.

So do not shy away from following the spiritual guidelines offered as a possibility for comprehending the external facts of the world. For it is the prime task and duty of all those who strive spiritually to comprehend the course of human evolution up to the present and also to understand the likely evolution of the future in spiritual directions. We have often spoken of our inheritance from the fourth post-Atlantean period which ended in the fifteenth century, and of the fact that it is the task of the fifth post-Atlantean period to develop to the full consciousness soul.

Now it is precisely the consciousness sould which will unite man intimately with all material events and everything belonging to materialism. We have seen how, in the fourth post-Atlantean period, from the eighth century BC right up to the fifteenth century AD, the Greco-Latin element gradually came to dominate the world, first in what is ususally called the Roman Empire and later in the Roman Papacy which reached the climax of its dominance during the thirteenth and the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean period. It coincided with the first breaking of the Roman Papal dominance. It is also the beginning of those impulses whose influence has brought about the present sad events. In the end no one can understand what is going on today without taking a wider view. For really all the peoples of Europe have contributed their share to the sad events of today's Europe. Those who want to understand things must necessarily turn their attention to impulses which have been in preparation for a long time and which today are being given a kind of first chance to show themselves.

...

Papal supremacy emanated from the South and reached its climax in the thirteenth century. In order to describe it in a way which is meaningful today and which fits the facts, we should have to say that this papal supremacy, which covered and dominated the whole of European culture, was essentially the ecclesiastical element of cultus and hierarchy. This ecclesiastical element of cultus and hierarchy, which was a transformation of ancient Rome into the Roman Catholicism which streamed into Europe, is one of the impulses which continue to work like retarded impulses throughout the whole fifth post-Atlantean period, but especially in its first third. You could, I might add, work out how long this is going to last. You know that one post-Atlantean period lasts approximately 2,160 years. One third of this is 720 years. So starting in the year 1415, this takes the main period to the year 2135. Therefore the last waves of hierarchical Romanism will last into the beginning of the the third millennium. These are echoes in which the impulses of the fourth post-Atlantean period assert themselves in the forms of the third post-Atlantean period. But any things work side by side at the same time, so there are other impulses working together with these. Roman Catholicism had its actual climax in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

Notes

For the Reader

This page is is dedicated to the loneliness that a human being may experience, the scorn from others because of the above differences.

You are not alone, many people worldwide are in this situation, but just in a minority and very dispersed and scattered, amongst the millions and billions of people driven less consciously by the materialistic worldview and certain powers, driving our world into another direction.

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