Myths and Legends, Occult Signs and Symbols

GA 101 — 28 October 1907, Berlin

III. Germanic and Persian Mythology

During the last evenings of our study group, we dealt with the occult explanation of Central European legends and myths and saw the deep truths and insights contained in these legends and myths. Just two weeks ago today, when we were able to draw attention to the very deepest and most important of such truths, we were able to take a look at a related mythology, the Persian one, which originated over in Asia and which is quite similar to what we have on European soil as Germanic or similar mythologies. We have seen what is hidden behind the name of the Persian Amshaspands and behind the name of the twenty-eight to thirty-one Izards. We have rediscovered the forces emanating from these spirits of the astral realm in the twelve pairs of nerves that emanate from our head and in the twenty-eight to thirty-one pairs of nerves that emanate from our spine.

In Germanic and European mythology, we are told that the three gods Wotan, Wili and We - who also sometimes appear under other names - created man. As they once walked on the seashore, they found two trees there, and from these trees, Ask and Embla, they created the first human couple. Wotan gave these first humans spirit and the general soul life, Wili gave form, understanding and movement, and We gave countenance, speech, hearing and sight. If we hear this in European myth and have already been able to convince ourselves of the deep meaning of the other myths, then we may certainly also seek something deeper in this triad and in the endowment of man with various characteristics through the triad of gods. But we would do well to link the story of the creation of man as told in the Central European myth with the way in which the creation of man appears in the related Persian mythology. There it appears in a much larger context. At the same time, something very special can unfold for us about the spiritual power of human beings that forms myths and about the essence and nature of the human being and his connection to the earth. We know, of course, that myths and legends must not be interpreted through speculation, that their meaning must not be sought through speculation, but that we must try to clarify the origins of human knowledge and insight for ourselves, as they appear to us in the legends, in the original creative folk spirit on the one hand and in the gifts of the initiated priests on the other.

Legends and myths are nothing other than astral, spiritual perceptions. We have seen how the ancient Teuton or member of the old European population really saw the world ash tree, Yggdrasil, on the astral plane, how he heard the twelve currents that entered his head as forces and formed his twelve main nerves. We have come to know all of this as astral influences and not through some fantastic, ingenious speculation.

Now, let us first briefly and sketchily visualize the Persian myth of the origin of the world and the destiny of man. But let us bear in mind that the ancient Persian people – not the people you have met in history, but the ones from whom these legends of the gods actually originated – belonged to the most advanced part of the masses of peoples who migrated eastward from ancient Atlantis. When the old Atlantis was swept down, it was the peoples who later moved down to India and mixed with the peoples living there, and those who settled on the soil of present-day Persia, Bactria, Media, who moved furthest east; the other peoples had remained on the soil of present-day Europe.

In all these peoples, myths and legends took shape in the most diverse forms and guises, and in all of them, what was told in the images of their mythologies was nothing more than what individuals could see, either permanently or in special states, with their weak but still present clairvoyant abilities. People saw what the myths and legends tell. From this astral point of view, the members of this part of the population, which extended over the area of present-day Persia, told what they saw and what the great religious founder Zarathustra then clothed in a certain form and rounded off. Let us briefly sketch out what the people told. They traced everything that exists back to a unified cosmic ground, which they called “Zaruana Akarana”. This was a common source from which, according to this view, everything has arisen, everything that is mineral, plant, animal and human, but also everything that is higher spiritual, insofar as it is perceptible to humans. If one wanted to translate this expression “Zaruana Akarana”, one would have to do it with “luminous source” or “luminous background”. Now out of this “luminous source” emerged a deity with qualities of goodness, with qualities of intellectual spiritual perfection, a wise, good, spiritual being, Ormuzd, and another being that was opposed to this good spirit Ormuzd. This other spiritual entity is usually called Ahriman. So within the Persian myths and legends we have these two spiritual entities: Ormuzd and Ahriman; a good deity and an evil opposing deity. Ahriman could be translated into English with the term 'the resistive' or 'the opposing-minded'; that would be the sense of this term.

If we now want to relate the Amshaspands and the Izards to these spiritual beings, then we have to imagine that the higher spiritual beings, which we have come to know as Amshaspands and Izards, radiated and emanated from Ormuzd. They are the hosts through whom Ormuzd works, so that he is the supreme ruler who assigns them their places, dividing them according to the twelve months of the year and the twenty-eight or thirty-one days of the month, after which they change their dominion. But now the Persian myth of Ahriman tells us: He also descends from the general “illuminated source”, but from the very beginning he showed himself unruly and rebelled, opposing the six Amshaspands with his six evil spirits, the Devas or Devs, lower and higher. So you have to imagine that each of the Amshaspands has an adversary, and just as the Amshaspands belong to the regent Ormuzd, so these Devas, in the sense of the Persian myth, belong to the following of Ahriman. He has set up his hosts so that they may constantly confront the good hosts of the Amshaspands in a long-lasting battle. And likewise he has arrayed his countless hosts of the lower devas against the hosts of the Izards.

This Persian myth thus shows us all the events of the world in a certain way entangled in a long-lasting struggle. Everything that happens today is to be seen in the sense of this Persian myth in such a way that it is the outflow of this struggle. What is happening should actually be presented in such a way that in such an event in the world, on the one hand, the forces of good emanating from the Amshaspands and the Izards are on one side, and on the other hand, the forces of evil emanating from the Devas are on the other. Only when we understand the interaction of good and evil forces will we understand, according to the Persian myth, the events and facts of the present world.

We must now ask ourselves: Are the stories that confront us in these images also astral perceptions? We will see that they are, down to the last detail. To understand this fact, you will be helped by the circumstance that a certain role in ancient Persian worship is played by what could be called the worship of fire. This worship of fire should not be imagined as worship of physical fire; that is not the case. It is not worshiped, nor is there any special cult associated with physical fire. For Persian myth and Persian cult, physical fire is nothing more than a symbol, an outward expression of a certain spiritual power that reigns in fire. For the spirit of fire, the external, physical fire is the expression.

Now let us see where this fire worship comes from. It has a deep occult origin. Let us recall how, in our theosophical world view, the origin of the world is told. We know that our Earth was once united with what now accompanies it as the Moon, and that the Moon only separated from it after a certain time. We know that in even earlier times, our Earth was united with what is now the Sun. These were the two important cosmic events that preceded the evolution of man. These three cosmic bodies – the sun, moon and earth – once formed only one single body, which we can imagine as if we mixed the sun, moon and earth together and formed a single large cosmic body out of them. First the sun separated out, and while it had previously given its light to the beings from inside the earth, it now sent it to the earth and its beings from the outside. That was at the time when the earth still had the moon within it. It was the moon that had the bad forces within it, and these bad forces had to come out. If the moon had remained inside, the earth would never have been able to undergo the development that allowed it to become the setting for present-day humanity.

When the moon had separated, man was not yet on earth in his present form; he was not yet endowed with a soul, insofar as he existed at all as a physical being. Immediately after the moon had separated from the earth, this human form still led a plant-like existence. In this human form, which was present on the earth that had been abandoned by the moon, there was nothing more than the potential for today's physical body and today's etheric body. That which is present in man today as the astral body was not yet united with the earthly. Just as clouds float in the air today, so the astral bodies floated around in those days, and later sank into the physical human bodies. And the human bodies that walked around as the physical ancestors of today's man were in a state of perpetual sleep. Just as plants are in a perpetual state of sleep, so man at that time was in a kind of sleep state, he was endowed only with the physical and etheric bodies. Up to that time there was no being on earth at all that had the most important quality for today's humanity and higher animal world, the quality of red, warm blood: inner warmth.

If you would go back in time with me and examine the creatures of the old moon, you would find that all these creatures of the old moon, on which the ancestors of present-day man were already present, still had the warmth of their surroundings, just as the lower animals that have retained this stage still have today. They had, as one says, body fluids that could change their temperature, they had the warmth of their surroundings. What occurs as internal warmth in humans and higher animals, and what belongs to it, the red blood, was by no means present in the beings of that time.

But now we have heard that at the same time as the separation of the Sun and the Moon from the Earth, another cosmic event took place: the passage of Mars through the Earth. The substances of the two cosmic bodies, Mars and Earth, were so thin at that time that Mars was able to pass through the Earth's body in terms of its substance. It left behind a substance that the Earth had not had before: iron. The Earth only incorporated iron after the passage of Mars, and this iron was the necessary precondition for the formation of red blood. What was the consequence? When the Moon moved away from the Earth and the Earth remained alone, the Earth was in a kind of fiery state; it was surrounded by a warm atmosphere. And now we come to an idea that I ask you to grasp very precisely. Imagine all the warmth that is inside the bodies of the millions of warm-blooded humans and animals that inhabit the earth today, imagine that it lived as a warm atmosphere around the earth: then you have approximately the state in which the earth was immediately after the moon had gone.

The beings did not yet have the inner warmth; the warmth immediately surrounded the entire globe, it was still outside. So we can imagine the earth at that time as a still liquid body, in which the metals were dissolved in the most diverse ways, and which was surrounded by this sea of fire or warmth. Into this sea of warmth the sun, which was outside, sent its rays of light. For the occultist, light is by no means merely physical light. Rather, this physical light is the bodily expression of spirit. Thus, with the sun's rays, the essence of the spirits of the sun streamed down to earth. Light as an expression of the spirituality of light streamed into the fiery atmosphere, into the warm atmosphere of the earth. Imagine this vividly. You have the Earth, it is surrounded by the atmosphere of warmth, and falling into it are the rays of the sun, which for us are rays of spirit. Through the fact that these sun spirits in the sun's rays fall into the warmth of the Earth, the collective soul was formed first, the collective astral body of all humanity and of the higher animals. Down on the ground, there were these sleeping human plants, which had an etheric body and a physical body. And just as it would be today if all of you sitting here were to suddenly fall asleep – which, of course, is not desirable! -, then all your astral bodies would leave your physical bodies and mix with each other, so it was in those days; only then they mixed even more, they were an undifferentiated mass when they had the common warmth, into which the light of the sun, which was the expression of the spirit, shone. As is well known, the astral body of modern man is also called an aura because to the modern seer it appears as a halo of light surrounding the human being, somewhat like an oval, egg-shaped form of light radiating from all sides of the human being. In those days, the human being's astral body was contained in this warm atmosphere of the earth; it was not yet divided into the individual astral bodies; and the light of the sun, which was the bearer of the spirituality of the sun, shone into them.

Now imagine your own cosmic-universal development at that time. What is today your physical and etheric body, was then a plant existence, and grew, as it were, out of the earth. And what lives in you today as soul and spirit came from the atmosphere surrounding the earth, and was gradually absorbed by your physical and etheric body. And this had been prepared in the common aura of the earth, which must be conceived in physical terms as a common warmth, permeated and suffused by the sunlight filled with spirit. Thus you have absorbed the warmth that once enveloped the earth. What lives today in your warm blood is part of this primeval fire that flows around the earth. If it were possible today to draw all this warmth out of the bodies of animals and human beings, it would be possible to restore the ancient state of the primeval fire. The warmth that lives within us today is the divided warmth that once surrounded the earth as a sea of warmth, and the light flowed into this common blood body. This light, too, has been divided, little by little, and has created man's higher spirituality. Naturally, only dull, lower spirituality was present in the merely physical-etheric bodies. What is rooted in the human mind today, the higher spirituality, that which has been formed by the influx of the Amshaspands, comes from the spiritual forces of the sun.

And now imagine yourself in the astral vision of the clairvoyant. What does he see? He sees how the earth is formed, how the moon separates; the earth is surrounded by fire mist, by the collective warmth, into which radiates, wonderfully illuminating it from within, the wisdom of the world. The wisdom of the world, which comes from the sun, transforms the sun-drenched earth into the earth aura. This is seen by the astral clairvoyant. And the old Persian clairvoyant called this “Aura Mazda”, the great aura, Ahura Mazdao, the great aura of wisdom from which the individual auras of human beings have emerged. Ormuzd is only a transformed expression for Ahura Mazdao, the great aura.

Now let us go a little further. How could this state, which the astral clairvoyant must perceive in such a great and powerful way when he transports himself back to this time, this state that is described in the Persian myth, which is, after all, a retelling of the results of astral clairvoyance? This condition is brought about by the fact that spiritual entities are also linked to the sun. For the materialist, only physical rays stream forth from the sun. But for the one who sees things occultly, it is the case that with the sunlight, the forces of the spiritual inhabitants of the sun stream down to the earth. Just as the earth is inhabited by people, the sun is also inhabited by mighty beings, who differ from the earthly beings in that they are much, much more developed than people. The Genesis, the Old Testament, calls these sun dwellers the Elohim, light beings. Just as people have a body of flesh, so these sun dwellers have a body of light. They are light beings. And their powers are not limited to a confined space; they can radiate out to the Earth. The deeds of the sun spirits, the Elohim, flow to all earthly beings with the sunlight. In every ray of light, in every ray of sunshine, we see the deeds of the sun dwellers. Human beings will only reach this level when the Earth has reached the state of Vulcan. You know that the evolution of the Earth proceeds from Saturn via the Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter and Venus to Vulcan, which we indicate as the last embodiment of the Earth. When the Earth has developed to the state of Vulcan, then human beings will have reached the stage that the present inhabitants of the Sun have reached in their evolutionary process today. This is also where we find the Amshaspands living today. Their actual home is in the sun, and from there they send us their deeds through the sunlight.

This is how the deeds of the Amshaspands could come into being in humans, as I have described to you. They sent their twelve currents into the human head and thus brought about the development of thinking and spirituality in humans. On the moon, the Izards had worked on the human being first and developed the twenty-eight spinal nerves. Then came the endowment of the human being with the twelve nerves of the head, which came from the Amshaspands, the hosts of Ahura Mazdao. But each time, certain entities were left behind in the evolutionary process of a world body. They do not come along. Not only high school students are left behind, but also world beings remain at a level that the others have already surpassed. During the moon phase of the earth, the Elohim, the sun-light spirits, have risen to the level that allows them to live in the sun and send their deeds to the earth and to earth humanity. Other spirits, who were already on the same level as the Elohim at that time, remained behind, “stayed seated”; they were unable to bring their development on the old moon so far that they could begin a higher existence with the sun as their arena. It was therefore not initially destined for these lagging spirits to work in the sun's rays, to work from the outside in. Rather, in their further development, they had to seek what they had not yet experienced on the moon in a lower existence, one connected with the earth itself, with the earthly sphere.

What was the new condition that now emerged on earth, giving the beings new characteristics? It showed itself in the fact that the warm atmosphere, the warm environment, now entered into the blood. Warm blood was created. In this state, the retarded spirit hosts sought to make up in their development what they had previously been unable to achieve. They sought to carry the deeds that they could not place in the sun's rays into the warmth, which was transformed into inner life.

Let us visualize this vividly, as it can be seen with clairvoyant vision. [During the following explanations, a drawing was made on the blackboard, but the scribes did not record it.] We see that the deeds of the Amshaspands and the Izards, which emanate from Ahura Mazdao, flow into the head and spine of man, while the inside of man is filled with warm blood. The human body, as it were, absorbs the warm blood; it is conducted from all sides from the outside into the interior of the body. And if we examine the occult anatomy of man, we find that each such stream, sent from the regions of Ahura Mazdao, of Ormuzd, was accompanied by another stream of warmth flowing in from without, and this accompanied the nerve current. With this incoming warm blood, the forces of those spirits who had been left behind entered the human being; these were the hosts of Ahriman, who now, with warmth, sent their forces into the human being just as the Amshaspands sent their light force. So it is that we have sent a blood stream in the opposite direction to each of the currents of the Amshaspands. In this red blood stream, which flows parallel to the nerve currents, the opposing forces of the devas also flow. In the red blood flowing to the Amshaspands, what comes from the opponents of the Amshaspands and Izards, from the devas, the hosts of Ahriman, flows in the opposite direction. And now we feel pulsating in the blood that which came from the hosts of Ahriman.

That which the clairvoyant can see flowing into the physical body on the astral plane is reflected in a profound and inspired way in the Persian myth. We see the interaction of the great light of Ahura Mazdao with the incoming warmth that makes blood the power in man that it is. Now we know that blood is the expression of the I. And so we see how everything that flows out of the great wisdom, out of Ahura Mazdao, is accompanied by egoism, because it is confronted by the currents of Ahriman in the blood. Egoism flows into all of the spiritual activity of the human being. We see it flowing in properly when we devote ourselves to this imagination. In this way, you must work your way up to a true visualization of what has happened on our earth.

And now we remember that these spirits, who had remained behind from the lunar existence and did not make it to the solar existence, that these spirits on the moon were the same kind of beings as the sun spirits, the hosts of Ahura Mazdao, who had reached beyond the lunar existence. On the moon they had reached the stage of the I; they only remained behind and just preserved this stage. As long as they were on the moon, the spirits of Ahura Mazdao, of Ormuzd, and the spirits of Ahriman were on the same level, of the same kind, they were of an ego-like nature. This ego, the original ego, Zaruana Akarana, is the divine ego that has not yet entered the body, that still rests in the bosom of the deity. Where this ego had developed to the point that it could have a solar existence, it formed an astral body that is under the rule of Ormuzd. But a lower power is incorporated into this, the power of the retarded hosts of Ahriman.

So you have now seen the emergence of this fourth link of human nature, the I, and the third link of the human being, the astral body, which is spiritualized by two entities. Incorporated into it are the good powers of Ormuzd and the powers of the egoistic nature, of Ahriman. The ego is placed in the struggle raging in one's own astral body between the good and the evil forces; it is the original entity Zaruana Akarana that splits into the good, true forces of the astral body and the opposing forces that are the forces of Ahriman. Ahriiman or Angramainyu means something like the one who resists or the spirit of opposition. Thus we understand how such a myth is actually nothing more than the retelling of what the ancient astral clairvoyants have seen.

Now let us take a closer look at these forces radiating from the Sun to the Earth and to man. What the Persian myth calls Ormuzd or Ahura Mazdao is actually an expression for “great soul”; it is the same as what the Hellenes call Psyche; and what we understand by the human astral body is the “little soul”. The human soul is composed of thinking, feeling and willing. These are the three basic powers of the soul, which for the occultist are actually three independent entities; we will learn more about this later. Just as the human soul is divided into these three parts, so is the great soul, the great aura, divided into three parts. This same trait can be found in Persian as well as in Central European myths. The Central European myth now calls these three basic forces Wotan, Wili and We, with Wotan representing the thinking, Wili the willing and We the feeling force.

We can immerse ourselves deeply in the whole astral contemplation of these ancient times when we see how the syllable “We” resonates with an original designation for the feeling force. In fact, all higher feeling, even when it is full of relish, has emerged from sorrow and pain. And why? Imagine once more the original human form, which, as it were, sprang out of the earth, the plant-human being with a physical body and an etheric body. Just as it sprang out at that time, the senses were only present as an inclination, just as a blossom is already contained in the plant germ. Man could not yet see. Eyes such as we have today only arose after a long, long process of development. These eyes, which today see the glory of sunlight, how did they arise according to occult physiology? Originally, when only the physical body and the etheric body were present, there was nothing here in these places where the eyes are now. However, these places proved to be particularly sensitive to the sun's rays sent to the earth. And what the sun first caused as an impression was pain. Two suffering points arose on the human body at these points, pain points that were constantly being injured. It was exactly the same as if you cut yourself and a scab formed at that point. So too, scabs formed at those sensitive points, and from these scabs the magnificent miracle of the eye gradually formed; albeit after a long, long development. What pain had torn out of the body became the glorious eye.

Nothing can arise in the world as enjoyment, as pleasure, that does not have pain as its basis. Just as satiety, with its enjoyment, has hunger as a prerequisite, so all knowledge and also all joy has pain as its basis. That is also the reason why, in tragedy, pain satisfies us like the presentiment of an expected release. Everything that will achieve perfection in the future undergoes a state of pain and suffering in the present. But this offers us consolation because we know that what is pain and suffering today will be states of perfection in the future. Overcome pain will become perfection in the future. The perfect eyes of today owe their existence to the earlier painful points on the human body; pain that has been overcome. This is what the initiate Paul meant when he uttered the mighty word: “All creatures groan in pain, awaiting adoption as children,” or “All creatures are afraid in the pain of existence and await adoption as children,” which expresses nothing other than the longing for a relationship of childship to God that will one day be attained again. He who comprehends existence sees pain flooding through all existence.

Now let us imagine the good spirits, whether we call them Ormuzd, as in the Persian myth, or Wotan, Wili and We, as in the Germanic myth, and see how these solar powers stream towards us. When the waters of Atlantis had been lost and the sun had been released, they worked in the sun's rays and permeated the air. That is why the light spirits are also air spirits, which were described as Wotan's wild army; these spirits were felt in the three parts Wotan, Wili and We. We want to get an idea of how it presents itself to the astral clairvoyant. Take the human being; when he was still a plant-human being, consisting of a physical and etheric body. The sun's power was at work through Wotan in thinking, through Wili, who gives everything will-like, and through We, who gives everything feeling-like; everything feeling-like rests in Weh, we feel this from the name.

How must this now be told if it is to be told appropriately? Wotan, Wilii and We were walking on the seashore; they found plants there and endowed these plants with their powers: Wotan with spirit and the general soul life, Wili with form, mind and movement, with everything rooted in the will, We with countenance and color, with speech, hearing and sight, with everything rooted in the feelings. Thus the first humans came into being. In these pictures of the Central European myth of the walk of the three gods on the seashore, of the finding of the trees and the bestowing of the divine powers and qualities upon them, we recognize how these spirits living in the sun gave their powers from their great aura and let them flow into the individual human aura. Through occultism we can take things literally again. We see how the images of mythology are based on real facts; and we look deep into the clairvoyant visions of the wise man who taught in the mystery schools and who, through his astral perception, was able to tell the people, who still had a certain degree of clairvoyance, about these visions in imaginative images. He gave the people truths that he experienced in a half-awake, clairvoyant intermediate state. He knew that he could count on understanding from those people who still had a certain degree of clairvoyance. If we immerse ourselves in the soul of such ancestors from the point of view of occultism, our view expands. Never can the arrogance and conceit of the Age of Enlightenment come over us, saying: How have we come so gloriously far! Is it not a terrible arrogance, the conceit of the people of the 19th century, that in the face of the truths that the 19th century has found, everything that people knew before is only childish fantasy, and that what is found today must apply for all time? Is it not a terrible arrogance when those who preach today from the lecterns of the universities and courtrooms, and those who tinker around, claim that the only form of truth is that which the last decades have produced? They consider themselves humble, but there is the worst kind of arrogance in this attitude. Beyond this attitude, the spirit-seeker is brought to the realization – which must seize his heart, his thoughts and his soul – that other times have also possessed the truth, only in a different form, that there are many forms of truth. And he also overcomes the other pride, that what is said by today's scholars should apply for all eternity. Just as the forms of knowledge have changed since our ancestors, as they told stories in pictures, which we today proclaim in a different form, in the form of occultism, so future times will proclaim the truth not in our forms, but in other forms that will have grown far beyond our own. We know that truth is eternal, but we also know that it flows through human souls in the most diverse forms.

One thing is that our view broadens; and the other is how such insights must flow into our inner being in a living way. We will realize this when we consider the following: What actually is this astral body that we carry within us? It is a part of that great wisdom aura, a part of the aura of Mazda, which is the body of wisdom of the whole earth, and to which forces flow from the sun. Thus we walk about on the earth and feel that we are the bearers of the sun's forces, which have been absorbed into the earth's aura. Our feeling grows for something that we have to develop: that this human body and these human bodies have been given to us by the great wisdom of the world, the great spirit of the world. In occultism, the human body is also called a temple. And we are responsible for bringing back to the radiant source what we have received, back in a corresponding refinement, purification and perfection. In this way we learn to feel at one with the existence of the world. Not in a fantastic way, but bit by bit we learn to be a note in the great orchestral music that resounds through the cosmos and which we call the music of the spheres. Our sense of responsibility grows, along with a certain elation, but combined with feelings of humility in the right balance. This is what theosophy teaches us: it teaches us in a precise way, not just that we are human beings and what kind of human beings we are, but it makes us spiritual people who know our place in the spiritual and cosmic existence. This is the ethics, the moral teaching, that flows from knowledge. When we grasp this, then moral feelings pulsate through us that have nothing of sentimentality and philistinism. A natural moral teaching passes through us when we perceive the moral teaching as a direct consequence of knowledge. Theosophy, when properly understood, cannot help but bring people the highest moral concepts, because it brings knowledge, the realization of how man is placed in the whole context of the world. Theosophy will never stoop to admonishing or preaching. No one becomes better when admonished: Be good! or: Do this, for it is good! - because that leads people to sentimentality and philistinism under all circumstances. Theosophy shows us what man is and how he is connected with the whole world, and it regards it as somewhat unseemly to approach man with moral principles, because man is so constituted that he follows the right morality all by himself out of knowledge - when he knows himself. Not in the lower, but in the higher sense, the occultist feels it as a violation of spiritual shame if he were to address himself directly and immediately to the feelings of men. He addresses himself directly to the intellect, but he presents the knowledge in such a way that the feelings attach themselves to it. He presents the objective facts to man, and then the feelings come of themselves. He does not approach man because he has the greatest respect for man, and because he has the sense that in every man the perfecting man is to be respected and esteemed. When a person learns the truth, he becomes good, because the soul of truth is kindness. When a person absorbs the knowledge of the truth, he absorbs kindness with it. This kindness does not follow from lower knowledge, but it follows from higher knowledge. Therefore, basically, the will to knowledge should flow into people through the theosophical current, because that is the sure path to perfection, to goodness.

And so we have seen at the same time how a directly practical question of life arises for us from such considerations, and how spiritual wisdom is incorporated into our culture and into our whole life.