Lecture I

Once upon a time the mummies were the homes of Gods, dwelling places of Moon-Beings who were now Luciferic Beings. In the Greco-Roman epoch, the fourth Post-Atlantean epoch, conditions were somewhat different. The process of inbreathing now ceased to play the predominating part. In-breathing retained its significance, certainly, but it was no longer as important as it had once been. Inbreathing and out-breathing were now of equal significance for the human being. The Greek Initiates were well aware of this fact and the wonderful balance between inbreathing and out-breathing, which was characteristic of the Greeks, enabled their art to become the model to which history always points. It would not have been in keeping with the nature of the Greeks to receive the Moon Beings specifically by way of the inbreathing. Through the work of their Initiates, the Greek people were able to make effective those Beings who hovered—half flying, half floating in the air, and who liked best to be cradled in the condition of balance between inbreathing and out-breathing. Looking back to those ancient times of Greek development when the real inspiration was given for what manifested, later on, in a more external form—looking back to the times when forms of primitive grandeur were the source and wellspring of plastic art, of the Greek art of tragedy and of philosophy, we find that the Priest-Initiates of the Mysteries in their guidance of humanity, were able to make use primarily of those Beings who cradled themselves in the condition of balance between man's inbreathing and out-breathing. We can have no real knowledge of the Apollonian art, or of Orphic wisdom, unless we realise that their inspiration came from dæmonic Beings moving within this condition of balance between inbreathing and out-breathing. The strings of Apollo's lyre were tuned in accordance with what could be observed of those Beings who lived between the moon-sphere and the earth-sphere, who liked best to hover, to dance, as it were, on the strings of the cosmos which had been woven into the balance between inbreathing and out-breathing. The dance of the daemons of the air—this was mirrored in the tuning of the strings of Apollo's lyre.