Esoteric Lesson

We find the counter-image of this in the fatherless Christ or Christ Jesus. Already in the third post-Atlantean epoch, which preceded that of the Christ appearance, we find the figure of Isis, who is reminiscent of the Madonna appearance, but is nevertheless different. She is the veiled Isis, about whom the Egyptians felt tragically: No mortal has ever lifted her veil, that is, during life no human being can attain what Isis expressed. She represented the spiritual forces that had not descended to earth and could only be found in the spiritual worlds. The Egyptians saw these heavenly forces at work in the natural world around them—hence, for example, their veneration of animals—but they knew that these forces only became active in human beings after death. Only then can human beings participate in these heavenly forces. In the fourth post-Atlantean period, the forces that had never before worked in a human being on Earth descend into humanity — and although one cannot say that Sophia-Maria, the mother of Christ Jesus, was Isis, she nevertheless represents Isis, since it was in her that those heavenly forces first worked on earth, and then in other human beings, and since that time, with the help of the maternal organism, they have united with the father forces coming from the earth. Thus, since that time, what the Egyptians felt could only be attained after death has come to earth. Thus the kingdom of heaven has come to earth, and here on earth the veil of Isis can be lifted by those who have the Christ force within them. This is the resurrection of the third period in the fifth.