8. The Nature of the Luciferic Influence in History

Those familiar with my ‘Outline of Occult Science,’ will know that human evolution in the post-Atlantean era is divided into the Old Indian, the Old Persian, the Chaldean-Egyptian, the Graeco-Latin, and the present cultural epochs; in the Graeco-Latin period came the Christ Event. Our culture epoch will be followed by another and this in its turn by the last, after which the earth will again undergo a change somewhat as it did at the time of the Atlantean catastrophe. We have therefore seven epochs of civilisation. In these seven we have a central one standing alone, the Graeco-Latin epoch of civilisation with the Christ Event. The other epochs of civilisation bear a certain relationship to one another. The Chaldean-Egyptian civilisation repeats itself in certain phenomena of the fifth, i.e. of our own epoch. Certain phenomena, facts and conceptions apparent in the Chaldean-Egyptian epoch reappear, but wearing of course a somewhat different form, because they are permeated by the intervening Christ impulse. This is not a simple repetition of the Chaldean-Egyptian civilisation, but a repetition wherein everything is steeped in what the Christ brought to the earth. It is in one sense a repetition and yet in another it is not. Men who have had a deeper understanding for the course of human evolution, and who have taken part in it with their souls have always felt something of the kind. Many such persons even if they have not advanced to occult knowledge, are pervaded by something like a recollection of old Egyptian experiences. The wonderful knowledge of the stars in their courses which the wise men of Egypt brought through into their Hermetic science has revived in our fifth epoch of civilisation in another and more material form. And those who participated in the revival felt this with special emphasis. Let me give one example only.