Self-Knowledge and God-Knowledge I

GA 90a — 29 June 1904, Berlin

XXXIX. The Fifth Root Race: Fire

We know that the matter of our globe has gradually condensed and that the substances we have today are not the real ones. The conditions that have arisen over time through differentiation are different from the earlier ones. During the first race there was a state of matter that was much thinner than our present-day air and which is called ether in the occult language; during the second race we get a state that already corresponds to our present-day earth in that it is similar to what we call steam; during the third race, a state arises that lies somewhere between the solid and the liquid; it resembles coagulated egg white; it is a swelling matter, as we find it today in lower animal forms. The substance during the fourth root race is somewhat denser and more difficult to describe because it has since undergone a much greater condensation. However, everything else is latent in every condensed substance. During this time, the seed power, with which the Atlanteans could do everything, and which they called “Tao”, was such a latent power. But with the degree of condensation achieved during the fifth root race, another force came into play that could not have been harnessed before, namely fire. Therefore, for the fifth race, the most important invention is that of fire, and that is why the Prometheus saga says that Prometheus stole fire from the gods, that he revealed the occult fire. This is the light that is shed upon the fundamental structure of the civilization of the Fifth Race. The captured natural fire was regarded as more effective and more sacred than the fire drawn from the mineral world. This view led to the Fire Service of Zarathustra, to the Vestal Service. This fire, as is well known, was never allowed to go out once it had been lit. The secret of the fourth race, the application of the power of the seed, also called vril power, was lost with the ended culture of the Atlanteans. The surviving initiates chose a particular sex from the fifth sub-race, the ancient Hebrews, and, under the leadership of the Manu, brought them to the Gobi Desert. They initially worked on the refinement of the body, which had to become capable of absorbing the mental. But in order for the thought to have the character of the spiritual, pure bodies had to be cultivated by eradicating everything from the kamic power that was directly connected with the life force. Nothing that was related to sexuality could be consumed as food. All those substances were selected that were only living nutrients and that did not produce any waste products. Only those nutrients were taken that did not produce any excretion: in the animal kingdom, nothing at all; in the plant kingdom, only that which had a building effect.

Only an external primitive culture was created at that time, since it only had to produce the little that people enjoyed. Today, unspeakable mental, soul and physical strength is used to nourish people. As slag and a used-up product, it is thrown off into what is called the eighth sphere. The strongest mental power is put into the service of the slags. The urge of the tribal race was directed towards developing the spiritual. To supply the physical means: to draw power from the spiritual. But so much power was accumulated for spiritual life, and it still flowed completely in the Indo-Aryan sub-race. It was not yet necessary for it to draw fire from the densified matter, and it revered the spirit spiritually. Now, in such a state, man has a particularly high regard for the power of vril and knows that he should, at least psychically, generate the forces associated with the power of vril.

It is now an important occult law: You withdraw as much vril power from yourself as you destroy vril power. With every being killed, no matter whether it is the most miserable insect, man deprives himself of as much vril power as he kills. Therefore, in the fifth race, the destruction of life is just as much a means of attaining black magic as the cultivation of vril power is in the Turanian. Pain increases the vital force in others and dulls it in oneself. Therefore, the black magician kills the life vril force in himself: he withdraws so much from the Tao that the opposite is awakened in him. By withdrawing the light vril force, I relate myself to the lower power of fire that slumbers in dense matter. This is an occult process in the fifth root race, that by killing - as with the hunting peoples - it makes itself lower and awakens the power of fire. For this occult fact, religions have created a symbol, the animal sacrifice; a symbol of the truth that the fire that is kindled on the altar burns what was the prevailing force in the fourth race, namely life. The black magician will use the still deeper forces of fire to carry out his arts. From this we can understand why a certain kind of ceremonial magic tempts people to commit suicide.

Because all this was known to the original Manu, he strictly forbade the first sub-race all killing, as they were destined to live the spiritual life. Later on, it was only possible to achieve the sanctification of the whole race by some abstaining and leaving the physical life to others. This underlies the division into castes.

The Indian race is therefore the religious one, and Brahmanism is the main religion of the fifth root race - the rest are variations.

The second sub-race had to begin to conquer the physical plane, had to live where cultivation of the soil was necessary, and branches migrate to the areas between the Euphrates and Tigris and to Egypt, where they establish the Egyptian culture of the fifth race and the Babylonian-Medes-Persian culture. To conquer the material plane, fire becomes the external means of culture. The Indian did not yet need it. But it was necessary to make disappear the art which fire could inwardly bring forth out of direct nature. Wherever something in its reverse aspect can lead to evil arts, it becomes necessary to banish it into religion. Fire was placed at the center of religious cult. The fire service means: “Fire is given to you, but the moment you do not worship it, you will not get into the right relationship with it.” Therefore, the first Zoroaster introduced the fire service, the Ahura Mazdao service. If man needs the week for his service, he must worship kneeling on one day: hence the Sabbath day. For the Persians, fire was the object of direct worship; for the Jews, God appeared in a pillar of fire; Christianity calls God a consuming fire.

The word “magician” is used for all those who worship fire, whether right or left. All magism leads its origin to fire. With it, the soil was given from which the culture of the fifth race could spring.

The Gobi race originated from the Ursemites, and now the time had come to use the original Semitic foundation of culture. The idea could be expressed, and the next sub-race was chosen for this purpose.

The thought, directly expressed on the physical plane, is the commandment. The commandment, the conceptualization of life in thoughts, is the mission of the Israelite people. Before that, life was habit; now it appears in mental form, as a commandment. Hammurabi is a proclaimer of the commandment, then Moses. It is the mission of the Semitic tribe, of which the Israelite people is the main expression. Before that, the psychic was more developed; now they began to regulate life mentally. Hence the peculiar characteristic of the Jewish people.

In the Indo-Aryan race, thought was present, but initially in a spiritual form. The Vedas are spiritual and intuitive.

In the Persian-Chaldean peoples, we encounter thought as a feeling, as a nature service. The third is thought in its most direct form, as a commandment. Thus, we distinguish three things:

The Indians worship thought as a spirit.
The Persians worship it as a force of nature.
The Jews worship thought itself.

But thought on the physical plane must be ascribed to a being, must have a vehicle. The Indian recognizes it as spirit; the Jew does not know the cosmic thought, but only the human thought, and therefore must anthropomorphize his God, Yahweh.

Everything that is temporal passes over to a humanization of the divine principle, as do the Greeks and other peoples. Thus we see, as everywhere in the third sub-race, spiritualistic pantheism and naturalistic pantheism pass over into anthropomorphic religion.

Now it is also a matter of getting to know the other type of civilization. The state appears as a theocracy among the Jews, with God as king. Hence the ethical character of the Jewish state organism. The principle of sin permeates life; everything is punished.

Gradually, man becomes so at home on the physical plane that he gains the same great understanding that we see in the Greek, for example, who works out the artistic. The existence between birth and death now becomes the essential for him. Achill, for example, says: “Better a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of shadows.” Man now respects what is beyond the physical plane, as a land of shadows. For the Greek, the real lies in the spiritual beautiful form: in art.

Now we come to the fact that this physical plan must be sanctified. The Indian has looked up to the spiritual plane. The Persian has recognized it as a sensation. The Jew has already permeated it with Kama; he has a passionate God. The Greek gods are full of passions. What has not yet been deified is the immediate physical plane. The biblical word tells us: Three begat on earth: the Spirit, the Water and the Blood.

We know that in biblical language, water refers to the astral, the kamic, and blood to the earthly, the carnal. All passions had already been given divine expression: Kama was deified. Now the flesh, the expression of the physical, was to be conquered. In Christianity, which is the responsibility of the fourth, the Latin race, the truth becomes the purification of the flesh. The Word is embodied in the flesh; the body is transfigured; in the transfigured body the Divine then walks.

The new element is the sanctification of the flesh, which sees its task in the resurrection of the flesh. If material life is to be purified in order to begin the ascending line, the flesh must be sanctified.

To worship God incarnate in the flesh was the task of the Latin race, as to worship God incarnate in the passions was the task of the Jewish race.

When thought was poured out into the material, the original form was increasingly lost. The Christian worships the personalized God; a personal affiliation develops in him. He adheres to the blood. Through this affiliation, thought itself had to be lost. But the Jewish people, who had first brought thought into the physical plane, had to revive it once more, and in the principle that besides the One there can be no other God; others are only His prophets. From the cognate Moresque people, as a Semitic replenishment, the principle of abstract science arises and is propagated into the Germanic race.

In the Copernican-Galilean era, it becomes real. The mighty flowering of the Germanic-English races occurs within the abstract science.

Now thought, having conquered the physical plane, can move up again to the spiritual.