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

GA 265

The Coffin Ceremony in the Initiation Ritual for the Third Degree

Instruction lesson in Cologne, May 12, 1913

Those who were present at the ceremony of the coffin when they were initiated into the third degree cannot absorb its meaning within themselves if they imagine the temple in which we find ourselves as if it were an ordinary temple on earth and the symbols as if they were made of earthly objects. We should form a mental image of the temple as being, as it were, separate from the earth, just as a vacuum is created in a glass container when we pump all the air out of the container from below with an air pump; there is air all around, but all the air has been sucked out of the glass container. Or we can also say that it is as if a piece were taken out of the earth and this were completely isolated from the rest of the earth - meant symbolically, of course. So too the east, west and south in our temple are meant spiritually. Everything that belongs to our temple is supernatural, and the activities in it must be regarded as supersensible.

What is the meaning of the death we undergo during the recording? When the Elohim decided to create man at the beginning of the evolution of the Earth, it was their intention to make man entirely in their own image, so that each member of the human nature would correspond to one of the Elohim. They wanted to see their own reflection in humanity. This did not happen on Earth as we know it, however, but in a sphere that we would now have to draw around the Earth, like the ring of Saturn around Saturn. From outer space, the Elohim acted on this sphere and mirrored themselves in the humanity they had created. And the humans, in turn, looked down to a point in the center of the sphere and saw themselves mirrored there. That's you - they could say to themselves. If Lucifer had not appeared, it would have remained so forever. Human beings would have experienced eternal youth, and the consciousness they would have had of themselves would have been the consciousness of what they saw of themselves on earth as the “You are.”

But when Lucifer emerged with his activity, he also wanted to be reflected in humanity, and he did so by entering into the innermost being of man and radiating himself from there. Instead of the beautiful and sublime in which man had hitherto seen himself, now emerged the ugly and the shapeless. Like the snake coiled around the tree in the story of paradise, so was the reflection of Lucifer. To prevent man from seeing himself in the ugliness of Lucifer, the Elohim compressed the sphere and threw the humans onto the earth.

The human being would have remained an infant forever, for the constructive powers of the Elohim are still active in the infant. Man would have taken in nourishment by absorbing the substance of plants and animals, which were very different then than they are now. Man would never have progressed beyond the consciousness of an infant.

To enable human self-awareness, the Elohim have placed death in all earthly processes. Everything on earth has thus been subjected to death, and now these forces work in such a way that through the destruction they carry within them, they also give the strength to overcome that destruction and thus to attain a higher state. Our concept of death, like almost everything on the physical plane, is the opposite of the true concept. Only through death is it possible for us to return to the relationship we once had with the gods and the spiritual world. Something in us must die before we can find the right connection again. And the symbol of the coffin can only be understood if we grasp it in this sense.

Through our thinking, we continually kill certain parts of our brain. Thus, everything a person does after infancy involves a killing. The symbol of the coffin means that we should be mindful that all life is connected with death. Even our food is not a process of building up our body, but a process of destruction, because none of the nutrients are absorbed into the body, but they only have a healing effect when the forces of death act on them and destroy the food we eat. If this does not happen, then our organism suffers; in this way, the whole purpose of nutrition is contrary to what science thinks about it. It serves to stimulate those forces that destroy the nutrients and thus build up the human being. It is the same with healing herbs: only when they are able to invoke the destructive powers of death, when these can thus destroy the remedy, can it work as a remedy. And it is precisely because of this that chemical, metallic remedies work so powerfully, because they bring about the process of destruction most quickly and most easily.

And how would it have been with the Mystery of Golgotha if man had not descended to earth and had not had to learn death there? The mystery would have taken place all the same, and that on earth, and man would have watched from his sphere, and that which would have come to destruction there, that would have given man the consciousness of himself. He would no longer have said: You are, but: I am, and so man would have come to his self-consciousness in a supersensible way. Through the effect of Lucifer, the descent of the Christ and the Mystery of Golgotha were delayed by a whole period of development (from the fourth to the fifth age), and it will therefore take us just as long before we have gained the right understanding for it (namely in the middle of the sixth age).

We know that a new possibility has opened up for people for about three decades with the appearance of Michael. Before that, from the 15th century onwards, the archangel Gabriel was at work, and he worked on our brains in such a way that we were enabled to form mental images about nature, which we could transform into science. Our minds were guided to form mental images of nature, and based on these, we constructed laws that we believed to be the true laws. Gabriel is the archangel who acts on the reproductive powers and on the infant. His influence in the 15th and 16th centuries consisted in the fact that part of these powers seized the brain and built an organ in it through which the laws of nature could be absorbed by humans - not formed from within, as one believes, but absorbed from without. Just as the infant cries, so man has cried the laws of nature out into the world, with just as little awareness of their actual inner nature as the infant is aware when it cries.

Now Gabriel has been replaced by Michael, and his task is to give us mental images of the supersensible that carry within them the true and the eternal. And theosophy is the tool that helps us to transform our thinking so that we can find these mental images within us and use them to rise above the earth again. Michael's powers are connected to the powers of the sun; they transform the organ in the brain so that flashes of light can arise in a person, showing him the deeper meaning behind natural laws. This experience can come to a person at any time. The age in which we live is an age of waiting. We should adopt the attitude that we can wait for the higher mental images to come to us, which will bring us the knowledge of the eternal.

From the lecture in Stuttgart, June 14, 1921

You see, in his temporal life between birth and death, the human being is constituted in such a way that he has within him the forces that continually kill him. These are the forces that solidify him, that are effective in the development of the bone system, and that in their morbid development lead to sclerosis, gout, diabetes, and so on. Man has these forces within him, I would say, as the forces of solidification. That is one thing; the other system of forces that man has within him is that which continually rejuvenates him. It is the system of forces that is particularly expressed when one falls prey to pleurisy, to feverish illness, to everything that burns man. In the anthroposophical worldview, I have called the solidifying forces Ahrimanic forces, and the forces that lead to fever, which are therefore warming forces, Luciferic forces. Both forces must be kept in perpetual equilibrium in the human being. If they are not kept in balance, they will lead the person to some kind of destructive extreme, physically, mentally and spiritually. If the feverish forces are not kept in constant physiological balance by the solidifying (salting) forces, the person will inevitably develop a sclerosis or fever. If a person only develops the powers of understanding, if he tends towards intellectualism, he falls prey to the Ahrimanic; if he only develops the fiery elements, the passionate, the emotional, then he falls prey to the Luciferic. And so the human being is always caught between two polarities and must maintain his balance.

But think how difficult it is to maintain this balance. The pendulum that should be in balance always tends to swing in one direction or the other. There are these three tendencies in man: the tendency towards balance, the tendency towards warmth and the tendency towards solidification. He must maintain himself upright; so that one can symbolically see man as a being who is constantly seeking to maintain himself upright against the three forces that are constantly endangering his life.

This is represented by the third degree of Freemasonry, in which man is represented as being threatened by three unruly powers which approach him, which threaten his life; and in the contemplation of this threefold danger, in which man stands - which is symbolically represented in such a way that the Mason to be initiated into the third degree (it is done in various ways, the simplest form is as follows: a man is paraded in a coffin, three assassins creep up who want to kill him) is taught an awareness that man is in danger of death at every moment and must rise up - in this investiture, in a real cultic act, in a real ceremony, man experiences symbolically something important that is connected with life. And so it really is that one must try to get to know life, then the symbols arise out of life. Freemasonry actually has its dark sides in the fact that these symbols are used, cultic acts are performed - in the Blue Masonry in the first three degrees, in the high-grade Masonry there are many other things - and that this ceremonial is drawn from ancient traditions but is no longer understood. There is no longer any connection with the origins, which I wanted to explain to you in a brief sketch. People only look at the ceremony and that is what is dangerous: they get stuck on the ceremony, they are not guided into the ceremony in order to arrive at the spiritual through the ceremony.