The Pentagram, Etheric Currents, and Occult Power

GA 266I — 1 December 1906, Cologne

Esoteric Lesson

One of the most important guiding principles of esotericism, as communicated by the masters of wisdom and harmony of feelings to their students through their teachers, is as follows:

Learn silence, and you will gain power;
Surrender to power, and you will gain will;
Surrender your will and you will gain feeling;
Surrender your feeling and you will gain knowledge.

The student of the esoteric school must keep this occult sentence before his soul in all his actions and deeds, then one day he will experience the truth of the four verses for himself. However, it should be noted that these different powers can only be attained one after the other; thus, one can never first attain knowledge, then feeling, then will, and then power; rather, from surrendering power arises will, etc.

An example may be taken from the life of a rich Englishman, Oliphant, who lived in England in the middle of the last century and possessed a very large fortune. He was inspired by a noble love for his fellow men in need, and out of this feeling, he and his wife, who was moved by the same sentiments, distributed their entire fortune among the poor and emigrated to America with only a few pennies to their name. There they worked with their hands to build up a modest fortune, and with this they moved to Mount Tabor. Here, a remarkable phenomenon came to light. Inspired by his wife's spiritual insights, Oliphant began to write some highly interesting and remarkable books on Genesis, which, from a purely occult point of view, represent the most remarkable thing that was written about the Bible at that time. But it was only with his wife's help that he was able to conceive these ideas. After an intense life of spiritual insight, his wife died first. Only a short time after her death, Oliphant was able to continue his work; then his ability to write ceased completely, as the inspiration of his deceased wife no longer reached the physical plane. This is therefore an example of the truth of the second verse of the above stanza.

In the world around us, everywhere on Earth, we are constantly surrounded by five etheric currents. The etheric currents are described as follows in the Rosicrucian schools: earth ether, water ether, fire ether, air ether, and thought ether. The corresponding Indian terms are: Prithivi Tattwa, Apas Tattwa, Tejas or Agni Tattwa, Vaju Tattwa, and Akasha Tattwa. Just as these ether currents are always present in the nature surrounding us, so too are these ether currents active in human beings in a very specific way, namely, the earth ether flows from the head to the right foot, from there the water ether to the left hand, then from the left hand the fire ether to the right hand, from there the air ether to the left foot, and from there the thought ether back to the head. This creates the following figure:

This is the pentagram of the occultists, the sacred pentagon, “the sign of man.” Its point is directed upward, indicating that the spiritual flows down from above toward man. The pentagram is found everywhere in nature where there is a symmetrical arrangement based on the number five, for example in flowers, etc.

If we now turn the pentagram upside down so that its tip points downward, we call this “the sign of black magic.”

Black magic uses the tip to draw the lower, evil forces of the earth to itself, and through the two upper horns, the black magician uses his evil will to send these evil influences out into the environment in order to make the forces of nature and the soul serve his evil purposes in a selfish manner.¹

Below are some particularly noteworthy properties and relationships of ether currents listed in tabular form. We find the intersections of the five different currents, their relationships to taste, color, etc.

Through betrayal, some of these special properties have been made public, but people have heard the bells ringing without seeing them strike. The cross-section figure of the thought ether, Akasha Tattwa, has been communicated in a completely false and misleading way. It has been said that this figure resembles an ear. In fact, this is not the case, but rather it is a dark blue vortex into which another less visible vortex reaches. Since this second vortex is not clearly visible, the opinion arose that the cross-section of the Akasha Tattwa forms the figure of an ear. But this is the real shape: