Lecture XI

But between the two sayings I have quoted there is another, intelligible only in the light of an ancient, yet ever, new Mystery-teaching: that man as he is on Earth—not only the individual but every community of men—is a mirror-image of processes in the Macrocosm. Mention was made of this when we were speaking of the genealogy of Jesus of Nazareth. It was explained that the meaning of the words spoken to Abraham was: ‘Thy descendants shall be an image of the order of the stars in heaven.’ The order of the twelve constellations and of the movement of the planets through the Zodiac was to be repeated in the twelve tribes and in the history of the Hebrew people through three times fourteen generations. Thus in the sequence of the generations and the special heredity resulting from the blood-ties in the twelve tribes, there was to be an image of macrocosmic conditions. Such was the declaration made to Abraham.