Images of Occult Seals and Columns

The fourteen plates presented here are reproductions of the “seals and symbols” used to line the interior of the building where the Congress of the “Federation of European Sections of the Theosophical Society” took place on May 18, 19, 20 and 21, 1907 (in Munich). They are not arbitrary “symbols” that can be interpreted rationally, but spiritual-scientific “characters” that must be taken as befits true spiritual science. These do not invent such “signs” out of their own minds or arbitrary imagination, but only reflect in them what is really present as a vision to the spiritual perception in the supersensible worlds. No speculation, no intellectual explanation, however ingenious, is appropriate in the presence of such signs, because they are not invented, but merely provide a description of what the so-called “seer” perceives in the invisible worlds. The signs reproduced here are a description of experiences in the “astral” and “spiritual” (devachanic) worlds. The “seals” of the first seven tablets represent such real facts of the astral world and the seven “columns” represent similar facts of the spiritual world. However, while the seals directly reflect the experiences of “spiritual vision”, this is not the case with the seven columns. For the perceptions of the spiritual world cannot be compared to “seeing”, but rather to “spiritual hearing”. In this, it must be borne in mind that one should not think of it as too similar to “hearing” in the physical world, for although it can be compared to it, it is nevertheless very unlike it. The experiences of this spiritual hearing can only be expressed in an image if they are translated from “sounding” into form. This has been done with these “columns”, but their essence can only be understood if the forms are thought of as plastic (not painterly).