Self-Knowledge and God-Knowledge I

GA 90a — 31 December 1904, Berlin

LXXXI. Separation into Male and Female

This separation into male and female must be understood in such a way that it had much more significance at the beginning of the Lemurian race than later, when the characters of the male and female were more neutralized. The matter is more profound and is connected with the whole evolution. The two sexes are preceded by a bisexual humanity, in which each individual has both within himself; a hermaphroditic humanity. The oldest gods were always described as having two sexes. We still find it with the ancient Greeks. In the mystery temples there were only hermaphroditic figures. Even the Bible itself still contains a certain awareness of this, in that it suggests the separation of the sexes as the emergence of the two sexes from the bisexual. This is even more evident in the Persian myth.

At the time of the separation, all the powers of the human being were still more magical and direct than they are now, so that after the separation we find in the being two powers, separated into man and woman, still magical powers of soul. Those of the masculine must be described as powers more related to the will, and those of the feminine as powers related to the mind and memory. Thus mankind is divided. In Sanskrit, Iccha Shakti is the power more akin to the masculine; Kriya Shakti, that more akin to the feminine. Both powers are not present at all in the original form, in that in further development the female emotional power has become more similar to the male willpower.

The hermaphroditic humanity was the vehicle of the very first and most highly evolved Pitris, who were not yet able to incarnate into these gendered races, and therefore had the forces in physical bodies to express the human being in a dual way. These are the great Sons of the Fire Nebula, the Arhats. The best known is Hermes Trismegistus, the Egyptian. You see that these first Arhats grasped the moment when they had a humanity that could achieve the highest, because with the division into male and female, only a one-sided incarnation was possible, and this one-sided incarnation also had the effect that at first a part of the incarnating mature dhyanic natures did not incarnate at all. Only a part – but this was from the outset thrust into a strong one-sided development of humanity, because they could only see half of humanity – was dependent on the leading world powers. It is therefore not surprising that the advanced Pitris refused to incarnate. The consequence was a lower level of humanity next to the Arhats. Now the separation of the human animal and the animal human also arose. The difference was not very great, and the consequence was that humans and animals lived together, that they had sexual intercourse. Thus a certain stretch was continued, which would have come if no manasic fertilization had occurred.

What essentially occurred was a deterioration of the low human nature. Thus there was no karma for the Arhats.

Only now, because human nature has developed further, was it necessary to bring it higher again. Only in the middle of the sixth root race will humanity be as highly developed as the arhats were at that time, but with the passage through karma. What will be the difference? That the great hermaphrodites were perfect when these human beings reached the summit. But perfect under the direct guidance of God, led by the gods themselves. What comes from these arhats is therefore sacred. What they lack, however, is freedom. It is impossible for them to do evil. The purely humanly created arhats, without the intervention of supernatural powers, have overcome the freedom to do evil through their own strength.

What has humanity achieved then? It has absorbed the remaining individuals from the moon, redeemed the luciferic beings. And from this follows that great truth of the kinship of the higher nature of Lucifer with the lower nature of humanity.

This truth, that the development of humanity through karma has to be redeemed with the help of humanity, is the basis of Manichaeism, from which sects have always developed since then. These know that people now have to overcome evil through good in order to redeem it. There were sects of Cathars and Waldensians who directly called themselves . The sects are often systematic foundations of initiates, after they can work in the next incarnation in a much more conscious way among people.

That is the whole purpose of the development through the Lemurian, Atlantean and Aryan root races. Nothing else is karma than humanity's descent by a step lower than foreseen in the plan of human destiny - to redeem Lucifer, who therefore gave freedom to people.

In the male, the will was developed preferentially; it was more of a natural force in the soul. This was initially under the influence of the great hermaphrodites; and it was strictly forbidden for the feminine to participate in cultic acts. By contrast, the soul power developed in the feminine, and if we consider that Lucifer works on the soul through the detour of the humanly inferior, then woman was called upon to absorb the influence of the Luciferian principle.

And so humanity is divided between the male nature, which tends towards the strengthening of willpower, and the female nature, which tends towards the thoughtful contemplation of the soul. Through the cruel education of boys, the carnal was killed and the iccha-shakti power was released, which is akin to the rhythmic movements of the universe. Of all this, the calendar is now only a decadent memory.

The female education was more concerned with absorbing the whole meaning of the surrounding nature with the soul. Man was almost systematically made into a microcosm at that time. In a kind of somnambulistic dreams, she absorbed nature, all the plastic power, Kriya-Shakti, was there and had an immense effect on the offspring. The masculine and feminine gradually neutralized each other.

Thus we see that what religion is, namely a free worship of the divine, came into being under the influence of woman. The men seemed more like divine powers. [...]

Cain went into foreign lands and took a wife. This is meant to indicate that he took a female from the bisexual being at all. Cain mixed with something that was already a foreign sex. Adam “recognized his femininity, not another being, self-fertilization, that is how Abel came into being - and of course, Cain as well. Gradually, a contrast emerged between the general human race and that small group that was destined to merge into the Atlantean race. This was, of course, under the influence of women with a tendency towards free religious practice, singing, dancing - a kind of Dionysian cult. The men were fertilized by this soul element of the woman, while the soul element is fertilized by the will element of the man and thus neutralized; hence the striving of human nature towards something higher is always symbolized as a woman.

This is how humanity lived at the beginning of the Atlantean race. Only then was the Luciferic principle so strong that in the fourth sub-race it became seduction through black magic, and we have a kind of derailment of humanity.