Reading the Pictures of the Apocalypse

GA 104a — 19 May 1909, Oslo

Lecture II-X

We have seen how the writer of the Apocalypse indicates that in the fifth age, after the war of all against all, people will appear in white garments, that the sixth age is characterized by the earth's enduring great tremors and earthquakes as the result of materialism, and that spiritual human beings will be the sealed ones.

We must point out that just as the angels or angeloi underwent their human stage in earlier planetary incarnations, humanity must also ascend through its development. What confronts us today as nature is the achievement of the gods. In the future, the human being will also accomplish divine spiritual deeds. We are speaking of the time when the human being will already have begun to work with magic from the periphery of the earth out of the realm of the invisible. However, in contrast to the sealed human beings there will also be those who have chained themselves to matter. These materialistic people will have been pushed down. This is why the writer of the Apocalypse sees the spiritualized people hovering above with the others bound to matter below. He sees this very clearly the moment the seventh seal is broken to reveal a vision of the future.

Then comes the next epoch of seven ages. Here the writer of the Apocalypse sees devachan and hears it prophetically proclaimed in the blowing of trumpets. Human beings will look down upon the earth itself as it becomes increasingly material; only the coarsest elements will remain behind on it. These coarse elements will be manifested in chaotic conditions. The passions of materialistic human beings will create a tumult visible on the earth below, a tumult prepared through twice seven ages.

In the first age of earth’s last great culture, during the first trumpet call, our earth will become desolate as described in the seventh verse of the eighth chapter. With the second trumpet call, a great mountain burning with fire was thrown into the sea. With the third trumpet call a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and made life on earth bitter. The senses of the people then will become weaker; sun, moon, and stars will be darkened. Three cries of woe will be heard, then the last three physical states will arise. A star falls from heaven and the earth is in such a tumultuous upset that it is devastated. The physical earth is a place of punishment for those who have grown together with it. When the sixth trumpet sounds an angel speaks down from heaven: “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.” (Rev. 9:14) What lives on the earth and has not developed itself spiritually is intended here. Those human beings who have taken Yahweh-Christ into themselves will allow one another to exist in their individuality. Each of them will have risen above what remains of group souls at that time. What will still be present as groups will create streams and seas in the astral world. In other words, the astral body will shine and sparkle in the same way the ethnic masses that are individualized only to a small extent today create streams of astral group-soul substance. The teaching of Christ will flow against the Euphrates River. This is the teaching concerning the individuality of the human being, a teaching that has, through the light-impulse of Christ, illuminated the astral bodies of human beings. We see in the fourth Rosicrucian seal the picture of the book swallowed and taken into himself by the writer of the Apocalypse.

Repetitions such as we have seen in the evolution of the earth come again and again. The Atlantean culture will resurrect, spiritualized and raised into the heights, in the age of the seals when humankind will have consciously reacquired clairvoyance. In the age of the trumpets the Lemurian age will resurrect; human beings will be close to God, they will have completely spiritualized themselves. In the Lemurian age the earth still existed entirely within the element of fire. Human beings lived in fire before descending into a dense bodily nature—this will be repeated in a spiritual state. When the seventh trumpet sounds forth a kind of blessed state will come upon humanity. Then we come to a repetition of the time when the sun was separated from the earth. The human being, together with the earth, will have advanced to the time when the sun again unites with the earth. The earth will pass over into what is called an astral state. Human beings able to live in the astral world will raise up the finer part of the earth and then be united with the sun. The portion of the earth that has remained coarse will be united with the moon to form a new kind of moon. The kind of conditions prevailing during the Hyperborean age will enter in again, but at a higher stage of evolution. This is characterized by the woman clothed with the sun and having the moon at her feet. The beasts that rise up out of the sea or fall from heaven also belong to this whole stream of evolution that is pictured, as if captured in a moment of time. (Rev. 12:1–13:10)

Zarathustra also referred to the Christ being, who has been working in the central regions of the earth from the event of Golgotha onward. After working on the earth from the sun in earlier times, he has united with the planet earth. It is the power of Christ that has descended from the sun and retrieved the useful part of earthly humanity, uniting it with the sun again. But he has an adversary—every such being has an adversary. Christ is the good spirit, the intelligence of the sun; the adversary is the demon of the sun. Certain forces that are constantly working on the human astral body come forth from the demon of the sun. This demon of the sun is the opponent of the Christ spirit and is called Sorat. Earlier, in cabalistic sections of occultism, the custom of writing letters with numbers prevailed. The letters of the name Sorat, the demon of the sun, have the value 666. In the picture found at Rev. 13:11 – 18 the sun demon becomes visible.

It has two horns like a lamb. The writer of the Apocalypse describes the sign of the beast. Already at the beginning of the Apocalypse he clearly stated he was describing everything in signs and then adds: Wisdom is necessary in order to solve this riddle. In this way, the number of the beast has been explained in occult schools by real experts who do not explain it materialistically. We hear how the worst and coarsest elements are thrown out and how the noblest, spiritualized portion of humanity remains united with the sun. The newly spiritualized human body can then again be a temple for the soul.