43. Blood is a Very Special Fluid

GA 68b/1907-01-11/p026 ·1907-01-11 · English High

Record: listeners' notes. Written from listeners' notes, summaries, or memory rather than a shorthand transcript. The wording is the note-taker's as much as Steiner's: weigh a single striking phrase here far more cautiously than the same phrase in a stenographic volume, and do not rest an argument on one word. Evidence: «Da keine professionellen Stenogramme vorliegen, handelt es sich oftmals um notizenhaft festgehaltene Zusammenfassungen oder Berichte.» (Since no professional shorthand transcripts exist, these are often summaries or reports kept in the form of notes.). The publisher's description of the volume, as mirrored on AnthroWiki (GA 68b). The translation is the maintainer's, not a published one.

I must mention a fact here that was an important event in the development of humanity: the transition from close marriage to distant marriage. In all peoples, there comes a time when this ancient law is broken. When this happens, something always takes place in spiritual development. In the case of close marriage, the ancestors lived on in memory to a much greater extent. Everyone retained the memory of what had been done generations before. The moment that distant marriage occurs, memory is limited to the time between birth and death. In the past, you would find a great cult of ancestors for a tribal leader, to whom the whole tribe can be traced back. As long as blood comes to blood, the individual remembers, and so long the same name remains. As long as the memory of Adam lasts, his name remains. So you see that blood is like a tablet; what is inherited is the inner structure of the body, which is written into the blood. The same ego remains wherever the same is written into the blood.

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Cite: GA 68b/1907-01-11/p026 · edition English