21. Gnosis and the Apocalypse
GA 87/1902-03-29/p025
·1902-03-29
·
English
HighHigh alignmentThis translation's paragraph count matches the German original — the locus maps cleanly to the same paragraph in DE.
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: «Auch wenn die Mitschrift noch nicht die später übliche Genauigkeit aufweist» (Even though the transcript does not yet have the accuracy usual later). The publisher's description of the volume, as mirrored on AnthroWiki (GA 87), which calls the cycle the earliest of which a listener's transcript exists. The translation is the maintainer's, not a published one.
We only need to look at the whole skeleton of the Apocalypse to see that it is nothing other than a popularization of the stages of the Gnostic view. The seven seals signify the return path of man. At the opening of the first seal we are symbolized: the overcoming of the material. At the opening of the second seal: how man develops the higher spiritual forces within himself. At the opening of the third seal: how the understanding of the measure, order and harmony of the universe arises in him, how the spirit-matter becomes clear to him, where the great mystery of the world reveals itself to him.
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