Self-Knowledge and God-Knowledge I

GA 90a — 11 November 1904, Berlin

LXVIII. The Seven Post-Atlantean Sub-Races

Today we will deal with a paraphrase of the sentence that the whole world is meaningful, that the whole world is thought. By seeing creative thoughts in the world, we can find the thought. The mystics never arranged things in an arbitrary way, but in such a way that human institutions are also an image of world thoughts.

The names of the days of the week have a regular pattern. The days of the week are named after the planets. We want to learn to recognize how the names of the days of the week were established by the Chaldean magicians. The ancient Chaldean magicians said: Each day has four parts - forenoon, afternoon, before midnight, after midnight. They had to see these four parts of the day as the first element in time, as the next time period. They related the four-part day to the seven known planets.

[Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn = daily cycle Sun, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn = weekday names]

They had the seven planetary cycles described through the four-part day until they returned to the starting point, a number of days in a row. The ancient Chaldean magicians let the planetary cycles run through the four-part day. They dedicated the first morning to the moon. The end of a cycle coincided with the seventh day. Each planet had completed a four-fold cycle by the end of the week. They named each day of the week after the planet to which the morning was dedicated.

Morning – Moon = Monday
Afternoon – Mercury
Before midnight – Venus
After midnight – Sun Morning – Mars = Mars Day = Tuesday – Tin
Afternoon – Jupiter
Before midnight – Saturn
After midnight – Moon Morning – Mercury = Wednesday, Mercury day, Wednesday – Wotan
Afternoon – Venus
midnight – Sun
After midnight – Mars Morning – Jupiter = Thursday – Donar, Jupiter day
Afternoon – Saturn
Before midnight — moon
After midnight — Mercury Morning — Venus = Friday, Venus day
Afternoon — sun
Before midnight — Mars
After midnight — Jupiter Morning – Saturn = Saturday, Saturn Day, Saturday
Afternoon – Moon
Before midnight – Mercury
after midnight – Venus Morning – Sun = Sunday
Afternoon – Mars
Before midnight – Jupiter
After midnight – Saturn

Commercial culture no longer understood the naming of the days of the week after the stars. It is namely a very specific relationship, namely of four to seven, the fourfold related to the seven principles. The naming of the days of the week is a human institution. However, it was not done arbitrarily, but in the way it was prescribed by the circumstances. The people of that time allowed the cosmic conditions to resonate from everything and allowed the institutions to relate to each other in the same way that the microcosm relates to the macrocosm.

If you look at the environment properly, you will see that it is based on a very specific view of the world and life. It is a kama-manasic view that belongs to the lower mental plan. If people wanted to move on to such determinations, which contain measure and number, they would have to be inspired by the rupa plan of the mental.

Let us note that the time when such a thing could happen had to be inspired by the Rupaplan of the mental. So these labels came from a time when people were inspired by the Rupaplan of the mental.

The next plan they are inspired by is the astral plan. The relation of inspiration to the various plans, as it expresses itself in the various sub-races of the five root races, is as follows.

Let us assume that inspiration emanates from the astral plane and that kama is thus ordered. From the mental plane, inspiration also came about in terms of spatial relationships - for example, the inspiration for the construction of pyramids, whose proportions are based on the orbits of the stars. Kama can be ordered from the astral plane by permeating it with the idea of justice; ordering human instincts and feelings according to justice.

If we descend to a lower level, we come to the physical plane. There, human actions can no longer be ordered according to the idea of justice. There, the principle of action must be placed within each individual person. What used to be justice on the astral plane and measure and number on the mental plane must be placed in the heart of the human being on the physical plane.

The Arupaplan lies above the Rupaplan, measure and number cease; the determination according to very specific relationships and forms ceases; there is only the direct inflow of the divine. Thus, in the time of the Arupaplan, when the mind still allowed itself to be inspired by the Arupaplan - in the first sub-race, the Indian race - there was direct inspiration of the divine. At that time the Rishi culture existed. The Vedas emerged with incredible speed. Afterwards, the influence slowed down to the physical plane and became slower and slower. What was the principle of love in detail on the physical plane is now rising again to take hold of a majority. On the next Rupaplan, community life is now being organized according to measure and number. The peoples themselves determine races and classes according to their own reason. On the Arupaplan, a fully collective consciousness then follows.

These seven periods are in fact spread over the seven sub-races of the fifth root race.

The first sub-race, the Indian, belongs to the inspiration of the Arupa plan, the Rishikultur.

The peoples who allowed themselves to be inspired by the Rupaplan are the Persian and Chaldean Magi, the Persian race.

Inspired by the astral plan are all those who correspond to the same principle, the principle of justice. They were the peoples who gave commandments, the ancient Israelites, all those who prepared Christianity in the time before Christianity, the Semitic-Celtic sub-race.

The Greco-Latin race, which in its end developed the principle of love in Christianity.

The gradual development of the communal is reserved for our race. But it will only achieve this at the end, the Germanic sub-race.

The sixth

and seventh sub-races are races of the future, which have to develop socialism out of the spiritual. The nations will give themselves their organization.

In order to bring order into oneself, one must understand something like this. We were embodied in all the races. In the second sub-race, measure and number were involved in us. In the next incarnation, we had to develop measure and number. This will be fruitful as karma of the sixth sub-race, in which man will make arrangements according to measure and number. Likewise, inspiration will emerge on the Arupaplan in the seventh sub-race. We, in the fifth sub-race, live out what was taught in the third sub-race: justice.

The fourth sub-race is a special phenomenon: love. It has an effect in everything, but only expresses its own nature in the sixth root race. True Christianity will only be expressed in the sixth root race. In the sixth sub-race, the forms will be created into which the life of the sixth root race will be poured. Our sub-race has not progressed further than a sufficient sense of right and wrong; this was laid down in the third sub-race. The principle of justice.

The Theosophical Society is to prepare the communal life of the fifth sub-race. This can only come into its own in the second half of the sixth sub-race. The Theosophical Society upholds the principle of love throughout this development. Communal life must be created; that is a physical necessity. But love must be maintained - through the cultivation of humanity.

In the Slavic race live on those who have learned their activity in the second sub-race, in which measure and number were. Personalities like Robespierre were also present in the third sub-race.

In the sixth sub-race, the magicians from the second sub-race live again.

Those in the seventh sub-race will be those who have worked in secret – adepts or masters – during the other sub-races. After the first sub-race, they remain in secret.

That which is being must first have been activity. The activity of the third sub-race becomes being in the fifth sub-race. The activity of the fourth sub-race is complete in itself.

Laocoon is the representative of the old priesthood of justice, which is taken by surprise by Odysseus, whose snake - cunning - is taken by surprise, like Troy by the Greeks, like the third by the fourth sub-race. The saga of the wooden horse was written by an initiate. This is the great karmic question that determines the cyclical nature of human life.

The development through the races proceeded at an ever slower pace until the physical state, but then ever faster. The future events will not be long in coming; a certain number of people will be saved, who will bring culture from the fifth [root race] to the sixth [root race].

From the Question and Answer session

During evolution, man gradually discarded the various lower kingdoms, which then continued to exist alongside him as the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms - cold- and warm-blooded animals. The forces from which these kingdoms developed were previously necessary for man himself to develop. But then there came gradual times when these forces would have hindered his development. Therefore, they were stripped away, distilled out of human nature. When this happened, the corresponding faculties looked quite different from the present mineral, plant and animal forms. By stripping away certain natures, man has gradually attained certain higher powers. That is why the other realms, and especially the animal realm, have a very specific relationship with him, which can be traced back to the individual animal species. The horse symbolizes such a connection. In the time of the second race, the Hyperboreans, man acquired the ability to receive intellectual activity by shedding what later developed into the horse in the animal kingdom. He had to shed it, otherwise he would not have been able to receive Manas later. He was ready to receive Manas in the third race, in the middle of the Lemurian period. The horse only developed in the way we know it in the fourth race, in the Atlantean period.

Thus, the development of the mind in humans is in some ways related to the horse, to the nature of the horse. That is why the horse was considered sacred by all ancient peoples and often used as a symbol, for example in the Apocalypse. The ancient peoples, especially the Atlanteans, were aware of these connections without knowing them directly. One figure from the saga, the centaur, actually existed in the transition period when man gradually shed what became the horse nature. The mind was now what enabled man to rise to the higher, divine. Therefore, a horse was given as a symbol to those who had overcome their lower nature, who understood how to fully carry out the elevation, who had become an initiate into the essence of the higher nature.