5. Atlantean Impulses in the Mexican Mysteries. The Problem of Natural Urges and Impulses, The Problem of Death

In order to execute the ahrimanic part of this task, it was necessary for the priests of those ahrimanic Atlantean mysteries to acquire faculties possessing the highest degrees of control and mastery over all the forces of death in earthly working. These forces would have made the earth; together with physical man—for the souls were to depart—into a purely mechanistic realm, a great dead realm in which no ego could have a place. These faculties would have had to be connected also with mastery of the mechanistic element in everything living, of the mechanistic elements in all life. For this reason these mysteries had to be instituted in a truly devilish form because such forces as would have been needed for the powerful aims of Ahriman can only arise when initiations of a special kind are attained. Such were these initiations of the ahrimanic post-Atlantean era in America. Everyone who was to attain a certain degree of knowledge was made to realize that this knowledge is acquired through certain faculties of perception that can only be engendered through an act of murder. Thus nobody whom had not committed murder was admitted to a certain degree of this initiation. The murder was performed under special circumstances. Steps led up to a kind of catafalque, a scaffold-like structure. The one to be murdered was tied to this and his body bent in such a way that his stomach could be excised with a single cut. This operation, the excision of the stomach, had to be performed with great dexterity. Certain experiences arose from the act of having cut into the living organism with such consummate skill, and under such special conditions. These experiences had to be acquired and through them a certain degree of knowledge concerning the mechanization of the earth could then be attained. Every time higher stages of initiation were to be reached, further murders had to be committed.