XVII. The Relationship of Occultism to the Theosophical Movement
GA 90b/1905-10-22/p025
·1905-10-22
·
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: «Frühe Vortragsreihen und Einzelvorträge für Mitglieder in Berlin 1905–1906 nach ausführlichen und z.T. fragmentarischen Mitschriften.» (Early lecture series and single lectures for members in Berlin 1905-1906, from detailed and in part fragmentary listeners' transcripts.). The publisher's description of the volume, as mirrored on AnthroWiki (GA 90b); the description calls them "Hörermitschriften", and the served text carries the note-taker's gap marker "[Lücke in der Mitschrift]". The translation is the maintainer's, not a published one.
Today, when basically all of humanity is looking longingly to the higher worlds, without finding the ways to get there, today an even greater part of occult knowledge must be popularized accordingly. And this task has been given to occultism within the Theosophical Society. Spiritual movements have always had a fruitful effect on the development of culture on the physical plane as well. Their external expression is nothing other than the earthly realization of what has been prepared spiritually. What is it, then, when we consider the works of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, for example? In these works, they have conjured up something spiritual on the wall in colors and forms: the picture is permeated by that which first lived in the soul of the artist as a spiritual being. The spiritual precedes that which later appears as its expression in the material world.
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