Lecture III

Later still, in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, we can see in Hellenism a reflection of planetary spirits who had as it were come into existence because the Being who had been permeated by the Christ journeyed from planet to planet and on each planet became one or other of these spirits. On Jupiter he became the one whom the Greeks later called Zeus; on Mars, the one later called Ares; on Mercury, the one later called Hermes. In the Greek planetary gods there was this later reflection of what Christ Jesus in the super-sensible worlds had made of the planetary beings who were imbued with the Luciferic and Ahrimanic principles. When a Greek looked up to his heaven of the gods, he came into touch with the adumbrations, the reflections, of the activity of Christ Jesus on the individual planets, together with much else that I have described.