Sacred, Inspired and Foundational Texts

A curated index of the sources of spiritual science. Each stream is a continuous wisdom-current; works are placed in the epoch when they were written down. (Writing emerged in epochs 4–5; earlier streams reach forward as oral tradition and surface in textual form later.)

Selection principle

Any one of three criteria qualifies a work: (1) sacred text or foundational work of one of the five wisdom-streams (a continuous spiritual current — Indian, Persian, Egyptian-Hebrew, Greco-Christian, Western-European); (2) cited or engaged with extensively by Steiner as a source; (3) identified by Steiner as a direct inspiration from a Master or being of the higher spiritual hierarchies. Excluded: works without a recognised wisdom-lineage, scientific contemporaries Steiner cites only as footnotes, and figures mentioned in passing.

Explicitly not authoritative

These later esoteric authors are outside the original Theosophical-anthroposophical impulse and are not treated as authoritative sources here.

• C.W. Leadbeater — later Theosophical Society leader; deviates from the original Theosophical impulse
• Alice Bailey — post-Steiner esoteric author
• Dion Fortune — Anglo-esotericist
• Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov (1900-1986) — post-Steiner spiritual teacher