The History of the Esoteric School 1904–1914, Volume Two

GA 265 — Hildesheim

Meditation for the Beginning of the Temple Legend

Text from a duplicated template entitled “On Penetrating the First Degree”

It is necessary to appropriate the Temple Legend as an imaginative impulse for knowledge. This legend is arranged in such a way that, through the penetration of the soul with its images, an independent view of the evolution of humanity is formed through the continued meditation of the legend, independent of the physical apparatus of knowledge. In the following, the legend is to be given as it should form the basis of meditation if the desired effect is to be achieved.

At the beginning of the earth's evolution, one of the light-spirits or Elohim descended from spiritual heights and united with Eve, the earth mother. From this union arose Cain, the first earth man, living essentially in such a way that his breathing consisted of absorbing and emitting warmth substance.

Eve, the Earth Mother, lived as a being weaving in the element of air. Meditation should focus on the extent to which

air in combination with light produces the breath of warmth.

Then another of the spirits of light, Jahve, descended from spiritual heights and formed Adam from the atomized element of the earth (earth dust). From the union of Adam and Eve, Abel was born, Cain's stepbrother.

The meditation should focus on the question of how the human being of the element of earth, in connection with the air being Eve, gives birth to Abel, whose material element is atomized water.

A dispute arose between Cain, the fire being, and Abel, the water being. And Cain killed Abel.

The fire element creature withdrew the water element creature from the earth planet.

Cain had a realization that originally penetrated things as a fire element; this was clairvoyant knowledge. Through the contact with Abel - the water-human-being - Cain's clairvoyance darkened. From him come the earth-men, who must work their way up out of darkness into the light in progressive evolution.

Yahweh gave Seth to Adam and Eve as a replacement. Abel-Seth is now the progenitor of the priestly lineages, who are indeed earthmen, but breathe in the element of air. In these patriarchs of humanity, the breathing of the air spiritualizes through the indwelling of Yahweh into a primitive kind of clairvoyance. In dreams, the divine secrets are revealed.

The content of this evolution of mankind is to be meditated upon by means of the following occult symbol.

1. Upper breathing process, spiritual part
2. Breathing
3. Lower breathing process, material part

The spiritualized breathing process, which enters the space of the head as an ascending current of breathing, comes to the consciousness of the primal fathers as an imaginative process of knowledge.

These images contain in mystery form all the processes by which the two evolutionary currents of mankind developed. The cognitive apparatus of the sons of Cain, formed more from the element of fire, took in sensory perceptions and processed them intellectually. The clairvoyant apparatus of the sons of Abel-Seth, formed from the element of water, was less attuned to sensory perception. Their cognitive apparatus expressed itself in visions, which were able to bring spiritual experiences to consciousness without direct sensory perception.

The following diagram provides an insight into these processes:

The original processes sketched here for imaginative knowledge live on within the human being. They cannot be fully explained in abstract terms because these are rough and incomplete in relation to the complexity of the real processes. But as the presentation is given here, it can be vividly brought to life in the soul. Then the pictures work in the soul. And since the soul contains the elements that give the truth, the images gradually awaken the living intuition. In this way one gains direct knowledge of what has happened.

It is good to take the given images as a basis for joint discussion at F.M. meetings. The group then first familiarizes itself with the images. In the meantime, until the next meeting, each member meditates on the images. Then, in the next meeting, the results gained through meditation are shared and discussed. In this way one can gain a more exact and extended insight into the content of the images. With this extension one then meditates again in the meantime until the next meeting. This process is continued. One will only gain a satisfactory result after a larger series of meetings.

This is one of the ways – and a very sure one – to approach imaginative knowledge. This has been attained when the images have become so identified with the inner activity of the soul that one perceives these images in the soul as an inner element of life and knowledge.

One should actually begin with this small piece of the Temple Legend and thus initiate the imaginative process of knowledge.

Then one can meditate on the following occult character, which can become an important basis for knowledge in the soul:

Another copy of the text reproduces the drawing like this:

(numbers and arrows not reliably accurate!)