V. The Seven Degrees of Initiation

The Christ came in order to spiritualize this love; in order, on the one hand, to loosen the bonds in which love had been entangled through the blood-relationship and on the other hand to give force and intensity to spiritual Love. Among the followers of the Old Testament we still see expressed most completely what we may call membership in the group-soul acting as the foundation of the individual ego within the Universal Ego. We have seen that the expression “I and Father Abraham are one” had a definite meaning for the adherents of the Old Testament. It meant that they felt themselves safe in the consciousness that that blood which ran through the veins of Father Abraham flowed on down even to themselves. Therefore they felt themselves secure within the whole and only those were considered members of the whole who came into being through human propagation maintained by means of this blood relationship. In the very beginning of human evolution upon the earth, marriage took place only within very narrow circles, within families related by blood. Endogamy, (marriage within the tribe) was closely adhered to. Then the narrow blood-circle gradually widened and men began to marry outside the family, but not yet within other peoples or folk. The folk of the Old Testament held fast to the idea that the folk blood relationship should be maintained. One is a “Jew” who in his blood is a Jew.