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The Testament of Astrology - © 2002, All Rights Reserved

The Testament of Astrology Introduction to Astrology as an Esoteric Science First Sequence: General Foundation of Astrology

Seven Esoteric Lectures by

Dr. Oskar Adler


June 4, 1875 – May 15, 1955




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The Testament of Astrology - © 2002, All Rights Reserved

The Testament of Astrology Introduction to Astrology as an Esoteric Science First Sequence: General Foundation of Astrology

First Electronic Edition, 2002

Copyright © 2002, Amy Shapiro All Rights Reserved

ISBN: Pending

Produced in the United States of America by ONLINE College of Astrology E-Publishing Division P.O. Box 85 Basye, Virginia 22810 http://www.astrocollege.org/

Translated from original German by Zdenka Orenstein Desktop publishing production and illustrations by Tuxedo Cat Enterprises, Las Vegas, NV Copyediting by Amy Shapiro

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IMPORTANT NOTICE TO PURCHASER

In addition to all rights granted under the copyright protection laws of the United States of America, and without limiting those rights in any way, the Purchaser of this electronic publication agrees to the following terms as a condition of the sale: 1) To make and keep only two electronic copies; one on hard disk and the other on a back-up disk 2) To make and keep only one printed copy The aforementioned copies, whether electronic or printed, are for the Purchaser’s exclusive, non-commercial, personal and private use only. The Purchaser agrees not to allow this publication or any portion of it to be reproduced in any way, shape or form, including storage in a retrieval system. In addition, the Purchaser agrees not to allow this publication to be transmitted or circulated in any form, including electronic, mechanical, audio or video recording, photocopying, or any other means, without prior written permission from the publisher, with the exception of brief passages which may be quoted in book reviews. Requests for such permissions should be addressed to: ONLINE College of Astrology E-Publishing Division P.O. Box 85 Basye, VA 22810 This publication is encoded and marked for identification purposes. Any copyright infringement will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

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The Testament of Astrology - © 2002, All Rights Reserved

Table of Contents Foreword .................................................................................. 06 Author’s Introduction ................................................................ 10 First Lecture ............................................................................. 14 General Idea of “Astrology as Esoteric Knowledge” What is Esoteric Knowledge? Natural Science and Esoteric Doctrine Man and the Universe The Human Body and Number as a Bridge to the Cosmos Astronomy and Astrology The “Self” as Key to Esoteric Knowledge Second Lecture ......................................................................... 26 Living Community Between Man and Universe Macrocosmos and Microcosmos One-ness and the Number One Suffering and Sorrow as a Further Link to the Cosmos The Idea of Fate Natural Law and Moral Law Third Lecture ........................................................................... 40 The Enigma of Evolution in the Light of Esoteric Wisdom The Zodiac Fourth Lecture .......................................................................... 50 Evolution and Alchemy The Four Elements Their Relationship to Inner Life and to the Road of Man’s Development The Riddle of the Sphinx

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Table of Contents continued Fifth Lecture ............................................................................ 60 Cosmic Numbers and Human Development The Numbers 4, 7 and 12 Zodiac and Planets Periodicity and the Law of Rhythm Planetary Symbols and Digit-Symbols Sixth Lecture ............................................................................ 77 The Three Cosmic Perspectives The Cosmic Importance of the Moment of Birth Heredity and Self-Development The “Second Birth” Seventh Lecture ........................................................................ 91 Zodiac-segments and Zodiac-symbols The Precession of the Vernal Point Eternity and Temporality The Road to the “Neighbor” Appendix ................................................................................. 104

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Foreword This publication of The Testament of Astrology is dedicated to Mrs. Zdenka Orenstein for her tireless and selfless translation in a ten year long labor of love, for which her sole rewards were spiritual in nature. Dr. Oskar Adler’s work in English would not exist without her devotion and steadfast attention to each detail. It is further dedicated to Oskar Adler’s wife, Paula, who served in every respect as Oskar’s “angel.” In the 25 years since Dr. Adler came into my life in 1977, my desire to publish his monumental treastise and my faith in this mission have steadily guided me forward, along with Dr. Adler’s bright Spirit at each turn in this jouney. Mrs. Orenstein transferred legal rights to this work to me in 1984, four years before her death. Zdenka wrote that, to Dr. Adler’s students in Vienna, his teachings “constituted a unique spiritual experience. Nobody left one of them without feeling uplifted and purified.” She viewed her translation efforts as the greatest blessing of her life. The following excerpts are from hundreds of Zdenka’s letters to me from 1978 to 1988. They express how she saw her role as Dr. Adler’s translator, her reverence for his teachings, her hopes for me and for my students at Cape Ann School of Astrology, to whom I taught Dr. Adler’s lectures. I offer her humble comments as a voice from beyond, to inspire new students as you embark upon a wonderful adventure of learning, which promises to expand new horizons for you. [1980] I have no regrets: the 10 years I worked on this translation may well have been the best in my life... I have never become an astrologer, but his teachings supported me in the greatest obstacles-----to this day. In our modern language, you would have called him our guru. [1981] Your description of your classes has lifted a weight of anxiety from me. You proceed very much like Dr. Adler himself did; he too started his classes with a group of more or less handpicked students, in his own home. Everyone felt privileged to attend those classes. Some of us were also invited to attend a regular Saturday afternoon chamber music program, where Dr. Adler played the first violin-----another highlight in our existence at that time. We did not quite realize how fortunate we were! Although we felt that certain lift after each meeting, as if you had been breathing in a pure, rarified atmosphere 6

The Testament of Astrology - © 2002, All Rights Reserved

with a cleansing spiritual result. Since then, great changes in my life, including the Hitler episode, which tore our circle apart, in many continents, to our great grief, taught me to realize how much I owed to Dr. Adler’s teachings. It gave me strength to cope with many difficulties-----and I am forever grateful. This realization, and this gratitude, and maybe, an impulse from the beyond, from Dr. Adler’s spirit, caused me to start the translation. I had hoped that somebody else, somebody better qualified, would make the attempt. But since nobody seemed willing, I started, I don’t remember when, but it must have been around 1959 or so. My husband was still alive, and rather skeptical. ‘You’ll never finish this’ was his opinion. I only interrupted when he became fatally ill, in 1961, when I spent my days in the hospital with him, and for some time after his final release. But the work on it was a wonderful experience, and I truly consider the time I spent with it the most valuable and rewarding time of my long life. I hope you will experience something similar! No money can buy anything like it. [1983] Dr. Adler insisted that we spend our lives as if in class, proceeding from lesson to lesson, and if we did not pass one of them, we had to repeat, until we finally solved our problem. That is why I consider it much more profitable to have to pass several severe tests than to lead a seemingly “happy” life which gives us no chance to advance spiritually. That my life seems to have been rich in such tests makes me feel sort of proud. I hoped I have worked off a lot of bad karma! Dr. Adler truly was an inspired person, although he never called himself initiated. [1984] As I look back over my long life, I find the ONE thing meritorious I did was the Adler preservation attempt. But it remains an unfinished labor without YOUR efforts. Thus we are truly intertwined in one of the most important matters-----the continued efforts to rescue Dr. Adler’s wisdom from becoming lost, contaminated or diluted. I can’t imagine a closer tie than this effort. I am aware that it means placing a heavy burden on you-----the responsibility towards the author is a demanding task. I have felt it strongly, and I believe, you too are sensible to it. Please, even when it should become truly burdensome, don’t desert it! Even in difficult circumstances! I firmly believe that your role in this did not come about by accident, that you are CHOSEN for this work-----your dedication has deep roots somewhere----maybe in Dr. Adler’s spirit? As I believe I was pushed and upheld in my long labor by inspirations from the beyond. I consider myself a mere tool, like the chisel in the sculptor’s hand. Something beyond my insignificant self has driven and sustained me through the years of my devoted efforts. The only reward I had hopes for was generously given me through your recognition of the special importance of Dr. Adler’s wisdom and your willingness to prevent it from falling into oblivion, to keep it alive and available to deserving students. If there will be a publication in book form or otherwise it will be due to your efficient efforts. It must have been Dr. Adler’s spirit who led to our thus meeting, and who inspired you, as I was inspired. 7

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[1987] Although I did not seem to profit by Dr. Adler’s lectures, never did I leave one of them without feeling a spiritual uplift. And I did not realize how deeply his teachings have influenced and developed me. Only many years later, was I able to recognize that. Owing to the political events our lives had to pass many severe tests; that we managed unharmed was due-----at least to a great part, to Dr. Adler’s teaching. Many times I felt a higher guidance in decisive moments. I hope you and your students will be spared such severe tests, but it may well be that you too are going to have such experiences, add I hope that you too will have the moral and spiritual strength gained by HIS teachings. It is not just astrology that is revealed in them, it is a guidance and support-----at least that is how I experienced it. I see them as a sort of moral armor against any evil influence. [1988] Looking back on these long years, I am sure that the one thing to my credit is the translation of Dr. Adler’s lectures. That was a gift bestowed on me-----I was only the vehicle, honored by this choice. I have been blessed with higher guidance several times-----always in precarious situations. For this I am deeply grateful. To you, dear Amy, my deepest gratitude! It is a great comfort to know Dr. Adler’s message is in your competent hands. I trust that you will finally succeed in your goal of publishing the MS; it may take longer than you wish, but be patient and don’t lose courage. A firm conviction that you will finally succeed may be a help. ...thanks again for your great help and affection. We may meet again in the future, don’t you think? After countless rejections in the next thirteen years, all hopes of finding a publisher had died. In 2001, I began the new century with renewed purpose, determined to self-publish these lectures and fulfill my promise to Zdenka. Within weeks of embarking on this mission, Ena Stanley of Online College of Astrology phoned by complete surprise and offered to publish this work. With gratitude and awe, I accepted. The larger story of this multifaceted journey is chronicled in my biography of Dr. Adler, Dr. Oskar Adler: A Complete Man 1875 -- 1955. Amy Shapiro, M.Ed.

May these remarks from the original German book jacket flaps of The Testament of Astrology, translated by Zdenka Orenstein, serve to prepare you for your journey: The entire secret of astrology’s role in ancient times, and of the path leading to it, lies in these words of one of the Hermetic Fragments (“The Divine Pymander”): Listen to your innermost core, and lift your eyes to the immensity of time and space; 8

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then you will hear the song of the stars, the voice of numbers and the harmony of the spheres. Each sun is a thought of God, and each planet a special expression of this thought. To perceive the divine thought, oh ye souls, did you descend, and with sufferings and pains do you regain the path of the seven planets and their seven heavens. What is the message of the stars, what do the numbers tell us, and what the circling spheres? Oh ye lost and ye saved souls! They talk, they sing, they circle----they weave your fate. This book originated in the longing to follow this path, to rediscover the interior in the exterior, and the exterior in the interior. For this reason the “staff of Hermes” (Caduceus), with the two intertwining ascending and descending ways, and the pentacle-pentagram with the mystery of reflection of the exterior in the interior, and vice versa, have been chosen to symbolize the path of the human soul, reaching for clarity in all humility. The author who speaks of himself as a seeker, attempts in the work here presentedwhich will comprise of 115 lectures-----to contribute, step by step, to the gaining of insight into the knowledge which was once an all-embracing wisdom, including not only the miracles of the universe, but also those of man . Starting from the general premise, traditionally inherent in the human mentality, Oskar Adler seeks to lead us on a path toward apperception, on which he is benignly accompanied by philosophers, poets, scientists and researchers of all periods. Drawing the circles forever closer around man and his close affinity to cosmic relations, he follows the artist’s and the scientist’s path. This route leads thorugh all the high and low points of the human soul, but also through the long history of exertions to gain spiritual insights, and of all the moral and psychological problems, as well as the evolution of the single individual and of humanity. Thus the author arrives at a poetical presentation of the astrological worldpicture, which tries to satisfy the demands of logical and scientific, but also of artistic thinking. But beyond this, something more exalted results, which shall here only be hinted at in the words of Goethe: “He who has science and art, He also has religion.”

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Author’s Introduction Author’s Introduction These lectures were first given in Vienna during the years 1930 -- 1938 to an intimate circle of interested people. As they are about to be presented to a wider public in seven sequences, this introduction is meant to prepare you, my friendly reader, for what to expect when you become engaged in the study of this “Testament of Astrology.” It is the work of a searcher, and is intended for all who are likewise searchers, who are filled with a pressing desire for knowledge regarding the meaning of their existence within the immeasurable and unimaginable greatness of this universe. Overawed by a sense of our own inessentiality and by our short-termed existence on this grain of sand, “Earth,” as searchers we are nevertheless elated at the thought of being witnesses of the eternal riddle. It may be that in this conflict we experience the nucleus of all that has guided the human spirit since the light of Reason was first kindled within. Perhaps the words of the Eighth Psalm express this conflict within heart and soul most clearly: When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained: What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that Thou visitest him? For Thou hast made him little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Out of such sentiments and thoughts may have been born the attempt to find access to the very ancient wisdom, long in human possession. Fragments of this knowledge, embracing the inner relationships between world and humankind, have been passed on to us today under the name of “astrology.” Established in a variety of theories, these fragments of knowledge are presented as old wisdom, yet also claiming acceptance as a modern science. It is not my intention in this introduction to anticipate the contents of the following studies. The first sequence, “General Foundation,” shall clarify the kind of “knowledge” we are seeking. Let me caution all those who are about to delve into this “Testament of Astrology” to leave both friendly and hostile prejudices behind, and to remember that those who are 10

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willing to plunge deeply into very ancient wisdom must first fulfill two conditions. The first condition is reverence for the thinkers of former times and for their pure search for truth. The second is to understand that the words in which these thinkers expressed their wisdom cannot be interpreted as by today’s standards. This difference in word usage must be borne in mind to avoid misjudging them as nonsensical, or as errors due to past ignorance. As an example, according to tradition, Thales of Milet, (625 -- 548 BC), taught that everything originated in water. But Anaximenes, 6th century, put the origin of everything into air; Anaximander spoke of the “apeiron,” i.e., the uncognizable, out of which the cognizable is formed: Hieraclitus spoke of fire, the eternal flame, as basis of all world occurrences. This is the old tenet of the four elements! In the opinion of modern chemistry, that would be pure nonsense since we know that neither “earth,” nor “fire,” nor “water,” nor “air” is an “element.” But the significance of the word “element” in those days was completely different from its meaning in today’s chemistry. The Bible offers another example. Light was created on the first day of creation, yet the sun was not created until the fourth day. If we believe that the biblical expression “AUR” actually stands for “light” by today’s physics, it becomes difficult for us to understand what was meant. A similar problem applies to the use of the words “day” and “night.” We shall go into this in more detail in the course of the following lectures. Physical science’s recent history ought to alert us to not think of the current state of knowledge as being so much truer than that of preceding eras. Scientific theories change from generation to generation. As an example: According to Aristotle, colors originated from a mixture of light and dark, or white and black, but according to Newton, all colors are contained in the white sunlight, emerging from it by splitting. From there, the difference in theories continued: Goethe, Schopenhauer, Hering and Helmholtz all indicated the road of ever-changing tests to get to the core of the problem, while each successive attempt at a solution fought against its predecessor’s attempts as erroneous. There are thousands of examples that mark the road of human struggle for truth like tombstones, whether in physics, medicine, philosophy or theology. According to Schopenhauer, each doctrine considers its primary duty to behead all rivals, like the African despots, including their families. If the fate of all those striving for truth should be to err again and again, to leave a legacy for no other future use than to learn its futility, and if all progress were nothing but substitution of new errors for old ones, must not reason despair of its own power? Would it not be tragic to have to realize over and over again that we cannot know anything? In addition, is it not 11

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miraculous that we do not despair in spite of this? Is there perhaps alive in all of us the incomprehensible but imperishable hope, that a spark of that light of the first day of creation is lighting our path, and that that light radiates through our inner core as well as through the universe? Perhaps the thought of seeing the history of human knowledge as nothing more than a chain of consecutive errors is in itself a great error. Perhaps hidden in all of those errors is the germ of an eternal truth, which we must first rediscover in order to understand how those who lived before us walked the same path of learning and bequeathed its fruit to us in their own language. If so, then there is really only one wisdom. That wisdom is simultaneously the one truth, one philosophy, one religion, and the one “knowledge” in which all errors and contradictions are dissolved. All sciences and philosophies with their continuous changes, all religions and moral systems, even all arts, are but broken and diffused rays of color of the original light, and the human ego is but a sound in the great world symphony, though essential to its very existence. By becoming ever more conscious of this, and by keeping ever alert to this consciousness, those who live in this conviction may secure a place in the testament of ancient wisdom, known today by the badly abused name of astrology. May these lectures now find a wider audience. I thank my friends, without whose help this could not have happened. First, it was the farsightedness of my friend Ernst Orenstein, now doing valuable work in the field of music in Honolulu, who, while we were all gathered in Vienna, insisted that my lectures be taken down, and so preserved. I am further grateful to a kind destiny, granting me the happiness to be active in three fields, which in their reciprocal supplementation prepared the soil from which my development grew: I was physician, musician, and teacher. As a member of the board of directors of the “Wiener Volksbildungshaus” and “Volksheim” (institutes for adult education), I found opportunity to develop the basic elements of my philosophy in my lectures. These were concerned with the boundary line between music and philosophy, which I put forth in a book entitled The Critique of Pure Music, 1 completed in 1918. It was the Baroness Hamar who interested me in the study of astrology before and during World War I, a study that I began at first as a cautious skeptic. Wishing to attain a clear understanding of the foundations of this doctrine, I soon went my own way. Thus I learned to explore the esoteric side of this study, of which astrology is a part. Without this esoteric foundation, it remains unsatisfactory. This esoteric foundation was the topic of a series of lectures, “Introduction to Esoteric Thinking,” concurrent with the ones you are about to read. _________________________________________________________________________ 1

Translator’s note: Analogous to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Editor’s note: Kritik... was due to be published in Austria in 1999, but financial, editorial and political problems halted the project. It is now being translated into English for future publication. 12

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I wish to wholeheartedly thank all those who have faithfully contributed to the publication of this work. First of all, Olga Novakovic, a lady, and a great artist, who loyally fortified me in the belief that I was on the right path. She no longer inhabits this earth, and to her pure soul, the “First Sequence” shall be dedicated. The whole work is dedicated to all the members of our circle, who since 1938 have been scattered throughout the world. Some stayed at home, many, I among them, emigrated-----to England, America, Australia, South Africa, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden... Of those remaining in Austria, my special thanks go to Mr. Ernst Forster and Professor Erwin Ratz, who took upon themselves the final proofreading of this work, to Mr. Felix Deutsch, now in New York, who critically reviewed the first sequences and made some of the drawings, and to the young artist Helene Grunwald, for her drawings. I remember with gratitude the aid of Professor Franz Strunz, court-councilor, and Mrs. Schmidt, widow of the late and revered Master Franz Schmidt, with whom I was privileged to spend never-to-berepeated hours of bliss in playing quartet together. And now another word to the reader... This work does not contain technical instructions for calculating or constructing a horoscope. This was not necessary since there are already many excellent works on the subject in existence to which the reader may refer.

London, September 1949

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First Lecture Were not the eye akin to Sun, The Sun it never could perceive. ~ Goethe, “Plotin”

We have come together to study one of humankind’s oldest sciences. Since the most remote of times, astrology has been surrounded by a halo of holiness. This is largely because this all-embracing subject emerged into being as revelation, and through experiment and careful observation. The nature of astrology’s suppositions were of a much more intimate nature than anything we today call scientific observation. As such, I must emphasize to the beginner that you are about to enter a realm whose essence is entirely founded in esoteric wisdom. To make this clear, let us first define “astrology.” Astrology is the doctrine of the absolute and inviolable cohesion of all occurrences on Earth, and especially the human occurrence. It is not only concerned with humanity in general, and the history of our development, but also with each individual’s existence and entire history. This includes external events as well as subjective experiences with pain and joy, fear and hope, love and hate, error and perception, with sickness and death-----in short-----with one’s fate! This tentative definition already indicates that the science of astrology cannot follow the path of today’s exact science, nor could it have originated in our time. For modern science follows the opposite path, stemming from single phenomena and individual observation, rather than from the concept of a general cosmic cohesion. It proceeds from the particular to the general, and verifies its results by experiments whenever possible. Today’s science seeks to prove the validity of its “insights,” gained by observation, of artificial material that has been arbitrarily freed from outside influence, as a substitute for the natural existing material of experience. Since its detailed and diversified research never comes to an end, we can understand why such a science could never concur with the basic idea of astrology as explained above; the experiment would encounter insurmountable obstacles. Ironically, however, we are confronted now with the odd fact that, today, this exact science shows an interest in the teachings of astrology. Exact researchers, filled with the spirit of modern science, are turning to this old doctrine, and include it in their circle of physical 14

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knowledge. Thus, we are witnessing at present the evolution of a “scientific” astrology which would absolutely deny its origin in sources of esoteric wisdom, and which consequently leads a sort of bastard existence within the science of our time. It can neither be fit into the framework of modern science nor in that of the old sacred teachings. The hitherto hostile attitude of strict and exact scientific research could only be shaken by overwhelming reasons. Actually exact natural science is currently finding itself in a critical stage of its development, one that I refer to as the causality crisis. As is well known, the catalyst to this crisis came from the English philosopher David Hume, who pointed out that causality, or the cause-effect relationship, could only be conjectured, but never recognized by objective observation. What we perceive are simply sequences of phenomena, never causal connections. It is we who add causal connections to the sequence of phenomena. Are we justified in maintaining that causal connections actually exist? This difficult philosophical problem originally only concerned philosophers. Nowadays it has found its way into natural science as well, and is the basis of what scientists proudly term “exactitude,” chiefly based on the total renunciation of causality. Yet, this very renunciation is responsible for creating that critical state. The ingenious expositions of Frenchman August Comte show what led to this critical state. According to Comte, the development of natural sciences occurred in three stages. The first or “theological” stage has its roots in childhood beliefs. Here people imagined that invisible spirits or demons, which reveal themselves through natural events, create all natural phenomena. Jupiter throws lightening; Jupiter “tonans” thunders; Jupiter “pluvius” rains; river deities move the waters; dryads cause life and tree growth; Aeolus blows the air; Vulcan forges ores in earth fires. Following this childhood stage (which Tyler called “animism”) was the second, adolescent, stage. August Comte termed this second stage in the development of natural scientific thought the “metaphysical” stage. Here, demons disappeared from the scene and were replaced by the “forces of nature.” However, what essentially had been gained by this? Only the names were changed; warmth, light, sound, electricity, magnetism, gravity, etc, are merely other names for what were formerly referred to as demons, and they remain equally as invisible. Thus, we carried our childhood faith into adolescence. However, for science to believe in such “forces” was still hidden theology, prohibited metaphysics. It took courage to sacrifice this last vestige of metaphysics as well. Thus, finally, humanity reached its third and most mature stage-----that of positive or exact science. This positive science with its highly esteemed claim to exactitude is characterized by the complete renunciation of all kinds of metaphysics, or of any remnant of anthropomorphism. Ideally, if we could only eliminate the observer, then we would 15

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achieve complete objectivity. Be that as it may, exact natural science is now concerned with “describing natural phenomena as simply and completely as possible” (Kirchhoff, Mach), and has thus become reduced to quantifying and classifying natural phenomena as statistics. All resultant theories, born out of the desire for cohesion of the statistical material, simply satisfy the suppressed need for causality and are valuable only as techniques of rote memory, for the sole purpose of mastering statistical material more easily. What we call natural law is a thought economizing concentration of the most numerous chains of phenomena possible by formulas of memory. It is the fate of all such statistics to never be really complete! We thus witness the odd spectacle, that natural science which regards astrology’s esoteric wisdom with condescension, will automatically accept astrology providing it relinquishes all claims of being anything more than pure statistics of cosmic events and their coincidence with earthy and human affairs. Nevertheless, the goal of our gatherings is not to study such astrology. Real astrology has never been a matter of statistics! What is close to our hearts, the penetration into the true cosmic cohesion with earthly events, can only be attained esoterically. What then is this “esoteric doctrine?” What does it signify and what can it offer us? “Esoteric doctrines” do not derive their names solely from the fact that their contents were kept strictly secret, to be revealed only to chosen people. It is the source of revelation that makes this knowledge esoteric-----for it can only emerge from where it lies deeply hidden in the mystery of the human core. Only when one succeeds in disclosing this source and in discovering its secret approach can such knowledge be perceived, step-by-step, revealing the truth of the one-ness of all beings. Thus, the essence of esoteric knowledge remains secret, since it is always immediate and incommunicable, and since as-“sur”-ance of this knowledge can only be obtained by one who can reproduce it out of one’s own source. Once communicated, esoteric teachings cease being esoteric. But can such knowledge, derived from the pure innermost core, claim to be scientific? What criterion could determine if esoteric teachings are pure “imag”-ination? Let us consider the essence and value of natural science and its method. According to Ernst Mach, scientific perception does not essentially differ from ordinary everyday perception, except that scientific perceptions are more highly systematized. Natural science is precisely arranged experience. In this respect, it is similar to esoteric wisdom. It too differs from an ordinary everyday occult knowledge, which is just as important, as universal and belongs as much to everyone as do ordinary sense perceptions. This common everyday esoteric knowledge is the revelation of the “self,” and can only rise out of the depth of our most 16

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intimate and secret inner core. Like all esoteric knowledge, this knowledge of the fact of our “person”-ality is direct and incommunicable! Everyone’s self, with all that moves and fills it, is one’s own secret! In contrast, and forever strange to this self within us, is the objective world, discernible only from the outside. Moreover, in it the “thou” too is forever strange and separated, without a possible entrance to our inner life. Into the core of nature no created spirit penetrates! Blessed is he to whom she merely shows her gates. teaches Albert Von Haller. Yet, if we could penetrate into the core of nature, as into our own “self,” then we would have an inner, esoteric knowledge of the outside as we have of ourselves. This has been the desire of all who sought the light since the beginning of time, the great longing of Goethe’s Faust: So that I may perceive whatever holds The world together in its inmost folds, See all its seeds, its working power, And cease word-threshing from this hour. Is there really no bridge between the inside and the outside? Is all esoteric wisdom but imagination? There is a bridge, a bridge whose nature is such that it is ever available for each of us in the same manner in which only our self is given us-----the human body. I see my body outside as one among many other bodies, obeying all the physical laws as revealed to natural scientists. Yet, at the same time, my body is ego-bound. While natural science is limited in knowing the body only as something contained outside, I know it further as something within, as something that lives in me emotionally and mentally. Therefore, I know my body in an esoteric way. If I could enlarge this body such that all of the strange things outside become part of my inwardly experienced body, then I would have the same secret knowledge of all the strange things outside, as I know myself; an esoteric knowledge that can be systematized as scientific knowledge. I would then be in possession of cosmic esoteric knowledge! Upon closer examination, this thought loses much of its initial fantastic quality. We see this transition in abundance in everyday life. Our common sensory perception is already full of this secret of how an outside becomes an inside and how an inside can show itself as an outside. As an example, consider the “thunderstorm fright.” Thunderstorm fear is not fear of the 17

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lightening and fire of the thunderstorm itself. The revolt in nature is concurrent with an emotional revolt within us, of the same elementary power. The thunderstorm is inside and outside simultaneously. Or, think of the fragrance of the rose! That which lives within the blossom of the rose becomes a fragrance experience within me. I have only to become deeply absorbed in this soul experience in order to experience the rose blossom’s essence. Or, think of commiseration, alien misery, which becomes our own-----the esoteric knowledge of another’s sorrow! One of the most impressive parables ever applied to the problem of perception comes from the Indian sage Rama Krishna. It carries this thought farther to a possible esoteric knowledge of the universe. Rama Krishna likens the esoteric process of perception to what happens when one throws a salt doll into water, in contrast to what happens when a stone is thrown into water. Water washes around the stone, touching only its surface. Unable to penetrate it, the water must remain foreign and outside of the stone; the stone cannot unite with it. This is a simile for natural science’s exact perception of outward matter. The salt doll dissolves in the water. It weds it, penetrating the water to its farthest extremes. Even if the whole ocean were involved, the salt doll would penetrate it completely, becoming one with it, so that it would be impossible to say whether the salt had been dissolved in the water, or the water in the salt. This wedding act is a simile for esoteric perception, whereupon the self has been wedded to the universe; it has been so widened that it now lives in the cosmos, as if in its own body. We then perceive this universe-body in the same manner as we perceive our body in everyday life, when inwardly we feel it as the emotional and mental fulfillment of our self. Let us clarify this concept using the geometrical figure (see Figure 1 on page 18) of the pentagram, also called the Druid’s foot. This is a very ancient mystical figure, built by extending the sides of a regular five-angled figure (pentagon), until they touch. When these points of juncture are connected by straight lines, a new five-angled figure is formed in an enlarged measure. This procedure can be continued indefinitely: the five-pointed star (Pentagram) grows towards the outside. The same procedure can be reversed toward the inside: drawing the diagonals in the original five-angled figure gives us a diminished fivepointed star, which again encloses a five-angled figure where the diagonals can be drawn again, and so forth, ad infinitum.

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Figure 1

The five-pointed star has the remarkable faculty of growing toward the outside as well as the inside, according to its own laws. It mirrors the outward growth in its interior. Let us now imagine that the original five-angled figure is our ordinary, everyday self. If it were possible to draw within us all that is spread around us by a mysterious act of opening our ego, as the salt doll in the simile of Rama Krishna allowed the water to enter into it, then we need merely to look into ourselves to find the immeasurably diminished image of the outside in ourselves. Or, to use the phrase of the ancients: the macrocosm in the microcosm, the great world outside in the inside world. Once the barriers that hold it imprisoned are broken, the self becomes the primary source of all esoteric perception. For this reason were these words inscribed above the entrance of the temple of Apollon in Delphi: “Know Thyself”-------and in the inner temple (readable only to those allowed to enter there, after fulfillment of the above commandment), the continuation of the sentence: “And Thou wilt know God! ”2 Some of you will interpret this as poetic imagination, or as eastern mysticism. Consider the thoughts of Gustav Theodor Fechner, a German philosopher who was also an eminent representative of the exact sciences. The main doctrines of his philosophy are contained in two works, the larger, more comprehensive of which is titled “Zend-Avesta,”----living word-----living perception-----the smaller one: “The Day View as Opposed to the Night View.” In ________________________________________________________________________________ 2

Leadbeater 19

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titling his main work, Zend-Avesta, he implies that he does not want to deal with “dead words” and notions, but to find knowledge in the immediate experience. Fechner starts from the fact that our body is composed of millions of tiny living beings known as cells. Each of these cells leads a comparatively independent life, experiencing all the life processes of digestion, food intake, elimination, growth, propagation and finally death. Moreover, connected with all these outward criteria of life we must imagine some kind of inward life, perhaps in the form of a vague feeling of consciousness, such as the primitive emotions of attraction and repulsion. No single cell in itself can have a clear perception of the life content of another cell in the same human body. Yet, we as human beings, in whose body all these cells are integral parts, have in our life experience the life experience of all our body’s cells----not as each separate cell, but as the sum of the life experience of all cells joined together. This sum is not merely the total of separate experiences, but of their higher unity: their concentration on a higher level, which is as much higher as the human consciousness is above the cell consciousness. The consciousness of all the cells is contained in the consciousness of the human being as a higher unit. The constant replacement of dying cells by their successors does not mean a rift in the consciousness of the entire human being; in the continuity of our emotional vitality, there is room for the vitality of all the millions of cells. Likewise, every change of vitality of the total ruling organism will, in reverse, somehow find its way to those individual cells. This includes our every upset or thought as it happens by contact with our surroundings, every mood of sentiment or mind: joy, anger, sorrow, love, contentment or restlessness, calm contemplation, healthy or sick feelings; in short, everything that human consciousness on its level, in a human manner, experiences. This will be expressed in the cell consciousness as a dimly felt alteration of the cell’s vitality-----as an increase of this vitality in the case of elevated human consciousness, as a lessening, if depressive emotions of the human being are involved. Now let us assume that such a cell had the critical thinking faculty of the human being of whose total organism it is only an infinitely small part. It would nevertheless have no conception of the entire human body, either its outward appearance, which it could never see, or its “interior.” It would also have no idea where its own vitality changes really came from. It could believe nothing else but that the cause of these variations should lie in itself, or result from contact with its immediate cell-neighbors. The conception that it is physically, emotionally and mentally contained within a higher organism together with millions of other cells would have to appear fantastic and unacceptable, as incompatible with its own exact thinking. What it had heretofore understood as its independent, individual life, was only a small part, owing existence and purpose only to its being built into a higher organism out of which, unknown to itself, all the impulses and energies of its supposedly independent life flow. But if this single cell could break through the limits of its cell-consciousness and rise to the higher human consciousness, then from this newly won perspective, it would learn to understand the law, which determines its cohesion with the totality of the person. This thought may be further enlarged. Humanity, too, is but a cell in a higher organism. As the 20

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single cells have been built into the human body, participating in our higher life in their own manner, we too are built into a higher organism. We participate in a human way in a higher life, even though we may never be able to see it or to recognize it.3 Where is this mighty organism, this higher being, in which we each represent merely a tiny cell? A single, perishable cell of its giant body! This giant organism, which comprises all humankind as part of its being, in which all thoughts, emotions, experiences, perceptions -----indeed in which the complete physical, emotional and mental life of all people on earth are contained-----is the Earth. Human life is contained in Earth not as a mere sum total, but as a higher unit of all these life contents. Earth’s level of consciousness supersedes that of humankind as our own consciousness supersedes the dull consciousness of our cells. Earth is an enormous living being, which not only contains all people, but also all fauna, all flora, all the mineral substances, the water, air and fire-----in short, everything we see around us. All this lives as an integral and organic part in Earth’s body, participating in its immense life. Inside Earth’s life, every person, with all thought and feeling, is just a fleeting thought, which burgeons in an incomprehensibly higher connection. All human wisdom and art inside of this life is but a letter in a higher word, which only Earth can think. We can extend this thought of the one great, united life, still further. Earth, to whom Fechner ascribes the rank of an archangel, is also only a cell in a still greater body. Together with other similar “cells”-----the other planets of our solar system-----Earth is built into the solar system from which all the planets with their moons receive the laws and meaning of their lives. And further...! All these millions of sun-worlds are again united in a highest being, in whose consciousness each single sun world is but a letter of the universal word, which has been since the beginning. Thus, we are all members of an immense organism, of the universe, or, if you want, of “GOD,” within whom we live, reciprocally. It is, therefore, a knowledge from the inside-----or, as we said, an esoteric knowledge of all which is outside-----possible only because it is an immersion in the knowledge of God. Full of such thoughts, the old mystic says: Were not the eye akin to Sun, The Sun it never could perceive; If not God’s power lived in us, How could the Divine delight us so? ~ Goethe, “Plotin” _________________________________________________________________________ 3

Editor’s note: Whereas this text predates the “Space Age” and “New Age,” it is interesting to pause at the thought of how our relatively new-found capacity to witness the Earth from beyond her physical limits is concomitant with our capcity to go beyond the boundaries of our limiting ego-separated selves. In this ideas, as in many others, Dr. Adler was well ahead of his time. 21

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To summarize, we have used Rama Krishna’s simile of the salt doll and the figure of the five-pointed star to indicate how the human body can be considered a bridge between the here and the beyond. Thus, we have an important starting point for the foundation of esoteric knowledge in general, and especially for astrology. This human body, which we now know as a physical link between the profane and the esoteric doctrines, is not the only bridge. There is still another bridge between the here and the beyond, one purely intellectual in nature. It too is a form of “knowledge” that is commonplace in one sense, but which, when perfected into a science, is considered the ultimate exactitude. This science, which in a way shows a double face-----a “secret” one, turned inward, and a “profane” one, turned outward-----is mathematics. Mathematics actually possesses all the criteria of secret wisdom since in complete purity, all its findings can only be inwardly won. Therefore, mathematical knowledge is immediate, not based on outward experience. Its truth is immediately witnessed by anyone in whose mind its findings are repeatedly reproduced autonomously. Like the fact of our self, mathematical perceptions need no outward proof. Now someone could get the idea that mathematical perceptions, in spite of their close inner connections, are mere products of the imagination. Nevertheless, we are faced with the fact that the results of this “imagination,” miraculous as it appears, can be applied not only to this strange outside world; they also disclose to us the lawfulness of exterior occurrences. These derive their scientific value through the quality of being expressible in mathematical formula. This fact gives to mathematics its merit as a bridge between the interior and the exterior. For, just as the crystal forms of the cube, tetrahedron, octahedron, etc. meet us in the outer world as natural forms, grown through exterior influence, so grow the geometrical idea forms on which the crystals are based, through a mental process by purely intellectual means in ourselves. Thereby, they indicate the secret connection between the outside and the inside, as by a common source. Mathematics is the living revelation of the secret life of numbers. All parts grown out of the oneness-----“partes”-----are born as the cell grows, through partition (partus = birth) out of the one. In this sense Lao-Tzu says of numbers: “The one begets the two, those two engender the three, and the three all the other numbers.” All mathematical perception is uniform living esoteric wisdom, born out of the One. Within the limits of this secret number knowledge, these numbers present themselves, not as measures of space and time, but as the natural system of the living organic cohesion between the original one and the parts grown from it, into which it is inwardly divided. What is thus lived inwardly through number is the consciousness of the harmony between the universe as the large, and the ego as the small, unit: the general form of the absolute cosmic connection, of which we spoke at the beginning: of the one and its parts. For this experience too there exists an everyday example, a semi profane earthly echo of that cosmic harmony: music. Music is the immediate inner experience of number. It is a message of the inner connection of the universe. In this sense the ancient sages spoke of the harmony of the spheres, and Goethe through the mouth of Raphael in “Faust”: 22

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The Sun intones, in ancient tourney, With brother spheres, a rival song. Now it is not surprising that the great Johannes Kepler arrived at a similar line of thought. In his main work, “Harmonices Mundi” (Harmony in the Universe), he, like Fechner, sought to demonstrate that the Earth is a huge, living being, with digestion, elimination, etc. Like Earth, the other planets are also living beings, with whom Earth is in continuous mutual relation, like each person to another within our environment. When, in a certain moment, a child is born on Earth, delivered out of the Earth’s womb, it then bears as a dowry the fundamental mood that permeated the planetary world in this moment. Whatever thought the Earth at this moment held in the dialogue with her cosmic surroundings is now carried within the newborn as the law that governs his or her future life. It is thus the permanent keynote of one’s life-----an expression of the law, according to which we each enter it. As on the day that gave thee to the world, The Sun did stand in greeting to the planets, Hast thou immediately and ever more been thriving, According to the law, obeying which thou started. ~ Goethe, “Orphisch” The above is presented to give a general conception of the basic idea of astrology as an esoteric doctrine. Now let us compare this with the attitude of exact natural science in relation to the cosmic world picture. Here again we may refer to Fechner. Without knowing it, in his Zend Avesta, this ingenious thinker disclosed to us the meaning of Rama Krishna’s parable of the salt doll. He also disclosed the simile of the stone in another main work: “The Day View as Opposed to the Night View.” As “day view,” Fechner understands the above-developed fundamental view of universal life, of which every single life is an organically integrated part, partaking in the totality of light that radiates through the cosmos and shines both outside and inside of us. The night-view conception of the world maintains that the total outside world can only be properly understood if its “appearance” is freed from all contributions of human experience (consciously or unconsciously applied). These contributions of our individuality-----with all that belongs to emotion, to joy and sorrow-----attempt to transform the apparent into “reality.” Also included in this individuality are the sense qualities, as functional expressions of the sense organs: light, sound, and heat, smell and taste. What then remains of this formerly so well known world? Nothing but the specter of a nightly world, freed of all individuality, in which we ourselves no longer exist. This world is dark and mute, without soul or spirit; no bridge leads to this dead world but illusion. Truly a world not worth living in, if it were not wisdom’s last comforting conclusion (resulting from this view of the world) that our own thoughts and feelings are but vain illusions----23

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unimportant, superfluous additions to the only real fact of a soulless occurrence of vibrations-----the eternal dance of atoms. There is then an antithesis between a purely objective, dark, soulless world, in which we ourselves are merely automatically swinging atom complexes, and the live world, which is flooded by warmth and light, of which we ourselves, with all that moves our innermost beings, are organically united parts. The abyss between this “night view” of materialism, which truly won an “objective” world but thereby lost its soul, and the esoteric world-picture appears as grotesque as the contrast between the astronomy of our day and astrology as an esoteric doctrine. A writer of popular science wrote the following sentences to demonstrate the triumph of modern thinking: “Formerly it was believed that the Sun was a divine being, but now we know that it is a glowing ball of gas.” Could not one say just as well: In former times it was believed that Beethoven’s symphonies were noble works of art, now we know that they are merely vibrating masses of air. Or: once I believed that you, writer, were a thinking being, but now I know that you are merely a chemical combination of hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and some other mineral salts! The grotesqueness of such science (which, as Goethe puts it, holds the parts in its hands, but lacks the courage to search their spiritual connections) goes even further: Look at this book! We follow here an example used by the occult writer Papus. In what does its essence consist and how would you investigate it? It has so and so many ounces; it contains so and so many letters of this or that size; the paper consists of so and so much carbon, oxygen, etc. Isn’t that wonderful science? Does this knowledge satisfy you? Now you know about this book? Have you never felt the urge to read this book? You have omitted this, because you took its contents to be metaphysical imagination. Take heart, try it, and you will experience something strange -----the dead book will talk to you as speaks one mind to another mind. Astronomy also teaches nothing more than the outward measurements of a giant book, which it defines most accurately. It knows the measurements of all planets and their courses along with the period of their revolutions, the substances of which the remotest suns are built. Is that science not wonderful? But, does this knowledge of the universe satisfy you? Do you know this universe now? Have you never had the desire to seek the meaning beyond all these measurements and numbers, the meaning by which astronomy became astrology so long ago? To reveal this meaning, we must have the courage to learn how to use the secret code key to this giant book, which we carry inside of us, never to be lost. It has been offered to us in two ways: as our human body, and as numbers. Out of these two fundamental elements, the sacred old wisdom of astrology may be rebuilt. Helped by these two auxiliary means, we shall seek to reconquer a knowledge which in ancient times was alive in human hearts as the knowledge “Kat’exochen”-----the knowledge of the vast cosmic interrelationships in which each of us in included. We are everlasting members of the immeasurable universe. Let Goethe’s answer to Albert von Haller, (who thought the road into “the core of nature” 24

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closed) accompany and encourage us: Nature has neither seed nor skin, She is everything at once. Examine thou thyself severely, Whether thou be seed or merely skin. and further: You follow the wrong trail, Don’t think we joke! Is not the core of nature In the heart of men? With this, we will close for today. Take with you as a fundamental mood the idea of the great living ONE (whose witness is everyone’s “ego,” immediate and forever united) as a guide to humanity’s oldest science-----astrology.

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Second Lecture Brethren – above the starry sky There must live a loving Father. ~ Schiller

In the last lecture, we formed a broad view picture of astrology’s essence as part of esoteric teachings and identified the source of those teachings, which flow from regions quite different from the sources of exoteric knowledge. As was demonstrated in the last lecture, these inner sources have never been completely blocked. They flow today as ever, except that they do not find general acceptance in regard to all that which today’s science holds in high esteem. The whole of astrology stems from that ALL-feeling, which even today shapes the tenor of life of “primitive” people who live in unison with nature both externally and internally. This concord with nature is based on an organic feeling of sharing life within its community, that is to say, upon the presentiment of the fact of being a part of the cosmic life of this universe, whose central parts are composed of the myriads of suns, planets and moons, like the organs of a gigantic outer body. Upon one of these gigantic cells-----the Earth -----a person who is close to nature also feels as a miniature cell, pulsing throughout with the life stream of the total body. While within each person’s narrow consciousness are thoughts, hopes, rejoicing, guiltiness and sorrow as well as a striving for faith and freedom, if you have even once felt like this at the sight of a starry sky, or have ever surrendered to such an allfeeling even as a mere presentiment, then you have awakened in yourself something which was once the source of the wisdom of the stars. A primitive stage of nature-perception corresponds to such a “presentiment,” a stage that had to be lost in the ascent to clear knowledge to enable that which had once been presentiment to be rediscovered later as consciously acquired, permanent knowledge. In our last lecture, we followed this ascending road through three stages, as per the ingenious statements of Auguste Comte. The first stage, the theological, is comparable to primitive peoples’ feeling of closeness to nature, and the third with the point of view of exact natural science. Beyond this, there is a fourth stage, which condenses all detailed and statistical knowledge into a picture of the world, one that is organically alive. This knowledge may be named the esoteric or secret knowledge, in contrast to the body of natural science, which we will call exoteric knowledge. These two terms, which we will use from now on, originated with Pythagoras who divided his disciples into two groups of students: the exoteroi, the external, and the esoteroi or internal 26

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or occult. To the “exoteroi” was taught everything which today constitutes the objective knowledge of systematic and practical science; the “esoteroi” learned to know the method of inner absorption or meditation whereby the “ego” becomes the medium through which universal knowledge flows. Before we continue the contemplations we began in the last lecture, let us quote one of Chuang-Tzu’ wonderful parables-----a conversation between a “positivist” and one who represents the fundamental cosmic idea-----the exoteric and the esoteric thinkers.

THE JOY OF THE FISH Chuang-Tzu and Hui-Tse stood on the bridge over the Hao. Chuang-Tzu said: “Look, how the carp dart around! That is the joy of the fish.” “You are no fish,” said Hui-Tse, “How can you know in what the joy of the fish consists?” “You are not I,” answered Chuang-Tzu, “How can you know that I know not in what the joy of the fish consists?” “I am not you,” acknowledged Hui-Tse, “And I know you not. But I know that you are no fish; so you cannot know fish.” Chuang-Tzu replied: “Let us return to your question. You asked: ‘How can you know what constitutes the joy of the fish?’ At heart, you know that I know, and yet you asked. Never mind. I know it out of my own joy over the water.” We have clearly shown the division in these two conceptions of the world. Let us direct our attention today to certain connections between them. In the last five or six decades, a thought has been emerging more and more clearly in spite of all modern science’s anti-metaphysical endeavors. It is the thought of ascendance from the imperfect to the perfect, or more simply, evolution. In our next lecture, we will consider the subject of evolution. For today, the hint may suffice -----that wherever the theory of evolution appears in natural science-----it is secretly thought of as being analogous to organic evolution. That is, as development from germs or germ-like states within which are carried all the conditions of the future, even though they are not yet recognizable since they are not yet realized-----as the plant is already contained in the seed, or the animal in the egg-----as ready, but not yet manifest in form. Insofar as these make their start from the germ-cell, and advance by cell-splitting and further differentiation to the completed organism, they offer us something which, in full visibility of external reality, is accomplished exactly as the mental origin of all numbers out of the unit, by constant differentiation and partition (“pars” – “Partus”). To be logical, therefore, the exact sciences should expunge the idea of evolution from their vocabulary, since its motives remain an eternal riddle to them. They should replace the word with the phrase, “succession of states,” whose value is outside their interest. If exact science should actually decide to see evolution as nothing but a succession of states, then this conception loses its meaning entirely.

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In spite of all these reflections, the idea of evolution continues to exist, and thereby demonstrates again and again what a deep, though unadmitted, connection really exists between the esoteric and the exoteric doctrines. For the astronomical idea of world development, as it had been pronounced by Kant and Laplace, as well as the development of this thought, (rather its transposition into the biological, by E. Haeckel), are esoteric occult findings, clad in the robe of exoteric knowledge. They both proclaim the unity of all life in this cosmos. The cosmogonical hypothesis by Kant and Laplace puts the common origin of the entire planetary system into one heavenly body, which originally contained the entire substance of the solar system; its present state is known to us the Sun. All planets have been born out of the Sun’s body, either by compression of single nodes in this substance, or by the hurling forth of their masses along the solar equator. Therefore, all the planets, as well as our Earth, are parts of the Sun, are of its body, and, in spite of the distance in space, are bound to it. They encircle it in narrower or wider orbits according to inviolable laws. As an inheritance, they carry the solar nature in their core. For exoteric science to admit this fact suggests that it could somehow be reconciled to the idea of astrology. Since the planets were “born”-----ejected-----by the Sun at varying epochs, they carry within them as an inheritance, various states of solar development, each of which represents their specific key note, determining their lives’ future direction. Thus, the aspect of the Sun at the time of Saturn’s birth will remain in this planet’s keynote the whole life of its existence. This is true also of Jupiter, Mars, and of all the planets, according to the epoch of their birth. Since they are all brothers and sisters, children of the same parent, the same life pulsates in all of them, only tuned to different keynotes, according to the Sun’s own evolutionary history. Placed among the planets like a man among his older and younger brothers, Earth receives the full sum of the influences of its planetary siblings. These influences upon Earth are the result of forces that remind it of events that are both of the past and of the future. They represent an infinite and orderly diversity of impulses in the continual change of their mutual positions or constellations. The totality of these impulses indicates the great line of Earth’s development, which is further transmitted to human beings and all that is part of the Earth. We have now arrived at a second connecting link between modern science and astrology: the conception of the constellations, or the reciprocal points of energy. In a brilliant lecture, the late Dr. Otto Bryck (also translator of Kepler’s works) pointed to the fact that this conception plays an important role in today’s chemistry. There are many chemical combinations whose elemental composition is identical along with their quantitative relations in the molecule, but which are nevertheless physically and chemically completely different. Such combinations are called isomer. For example, there are several different combinations of the formula: C6 H4 Cl2, according to the different mutual positions of the 28

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H (hydrogen) and the Cl (chlorine) atoms. However, the variety of possible positions between the Sun and the planets are inexhaustible, and though repeated in briefer or longer periods between single groups of planets, they are never repeated in their totality! Each horoscope, therefore, (consisting of the currently known planetary points of energy) presents somewhat of an “isomer” picture of constellations. Their peculiarities show uniqueness, unrepeated in the immeasurable abundance of constellation possibilities in the course of millennia. Each horoscope records a fleeting moment of Earth’s evolution, owning to the individuality of the person brought into existence at this moment as a lasting witness of Earth’s inner life. Music, which we spoke of previously as an earthly echo of cosmic unity, shows us also, quasi symbolically, how constellations and evolution present themselves to esoteric thinking in their living interrelationship. For, what takes place externally in music is the constant change of constellation pictures of its “atoms,” namely the twelve tones of the chromatic scale, and in simpler cases, only the seven tones of the diatonic scale. The meaning of a musical composition can only be recognized in its development. The theme, unfolded little by little, shines forth as the nucleus of the future, pregnant with yet unrealized pre-sentiments and hopes, and then returns to the goal, already contained in the nucleus. In every phase of this development, that which is already fulfilled combines with the yet unfulfilled, the past with the future. A tone is born as the fulfillment of past hopes and it ripens toward the future, while the meaning of its fleeting existence is determined by the presentiment that secures its existence and duration in the framework of the total composition. Today we shall go a step beyond the topic of our last lecture. We came to know two bridges, showing us the way to cosmic perception, the foundation of all astrology: the human body as the physical bridge, mathematics as the mental bridge. Now let us consider how we may enter these bridges. We will become acquainted with a esoteric fundamental experience, which, though placed at the beginning of all occult cosmology, appears childish to those unable to relive it. Let us try with a feeling directed inwardly, to touch along the contours of our body: we thus obtain the conception of our limitedness in space. Yet, try to imagine further that in our limitedness we are but a part of the universe, which contains us inside of it as we contain it outside of ourselves. Now let us transform this concept into a vivid feeling; then the exterior skin of our body, guarding our small self, becomes at the same time the common border, where the universe and my body touch. Like the pentagon of the pentacle, so reflects the skin’s surface back and forth. Just as we touch along the limits of our skin in our feeling, so the universe touches along this same skin. It is our common surface. Thus each one of us becomes a pore, filled with human substance, of an 29

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enormous giant’s body; the cosmos becomes the prototype of the human figure. Eye in eye, mouth in mouth, nose in nose, hand in hand, back in back, chest in chest, heart in heart... thus the large being, macrocosm, surrounds the small, microcosm. Thus lives the small human in the large, united by the common mirrored surface of the human-cosmic “skin.” And that which is inside this skin is as that which is outside of it, or as the ancient esoteric document, the Smaragdine Tablet, said: “id, quod superior est, est sicut id, quod inferius est”-----“as above, so below!” We thus arrive at the conception of human beings radiated from the universe, and therewith at an ancient astrological axiom, which we call the doctrine of the general and absolute correlation between humanity and the universe. At this point, let us consider the medical concept of the ancients regarding the origin of the human sperm, known in medical history as the pangenesis theory. They imagined the human sperm formed as the extract of all organs, thus actually representing kind of a vital focus of man, just as he himself represents a vital focus of the universe. The human body, with all its parts, is thus cut out from the universe, turning the same face to each other; therefore, everything that has become an organic particle of the human body has a cosmic archetype. Head and limbs, heart and intestines, liver and kidneys receive the law of their organization and formation into the human figure from the macrocosmic archetype. We ought to look upon the human body not with exoteric eyes only, but we ought to experience it inwardly as the ego-filled pore of the universe. That which embraces us, we can now feel as an “envelope.” It is called Holon or koilon in Greek; coelum in Latin; chol in Hebrew, hohl, All, in German. Accordingly, the human figure appears like the heavenly archetype, enclosing us as something complete in itself. Returning in itself like the line of a circle with the upright figure of a human, so to speak, as the rectified line of a circle, both “ends” being turned toward each other touching as headand-feet “ends” of the human form. The cosmic prototype of this circular human figure is called the Zodiac. We will talk of this in detail later. Now let us view this fundamental esoteric experience from another angle. Do not think of the separation of macro- and microcosm by the common borderline of the skin; instead, think of their being in constant union with each other, in spite of and beyond this separation. Constantly, without interruption, particles of the macrocosm enter into the microcosm man. Inversely, human substance pushes out again. If we observe this constant exchange of physical substances between macrocosm and microcosm, and surrender to this feeling, (experienced most directly through our breathing), then we no longer feel separated from the universe by our skin, but united with it by the very life function. This life function is, in fact, the constant renewal of the microcosm through the forces of the macrocosm, and vice versa. 30

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Through breathing and digestion, we directly experience our living incorporation into universal life. Just as the skin is the common touching surface between the universe and my self, so is my breathing the expression of the common life between the universe and myself. When I inhale, the universe exhales into me at the same time, and reciprocally. The rhythm of my life function thus becomes analogous to the mirror event of the borders of my body. Just as my body and its organization was the miniature picture of the cosmos, so is the rhythm of my life function the image of the large cosmic life and its absolute counterpart. Now we understand that what is in us-----the rhythm of pulse and breath-----is the great rhythm of the circling of the stars. Rising and setting and solstices, planetary epochs-----all of these manifest the rhythmic pulse of the cosmos, in which Earth herself takes part with the tides, the change of the seasons, with the rhythm of day and night, morning, noon and evening. The collection of all this in a deep inner feeling of vitality is the second form by which the human body becomes a bridge to the universe. The first form of the esoteric experience of the human body led us through the sensation of the organic correspondence to the vast projection of the human body, bent into a circle, onto the sky: the Zodiac. The second form of this experience, as the cosmic life sensation, leads us to the movement of the stars, and especially to the function of the planets, to the movement of the planets on the background of the Zodiac, along which their rhythmic wandering occurs. This suffices, for the moment, about one of the bridges. Now we will contemplate the other, mental, bridge, of which we spoke in the last lecture: mathematics. We recognized in mathematics a bridge between the here and the beyond, because mathematical knowledge can be developed entirely out of the pure idea of number. On the other hand, what is found by pure thought processes is proved to be the most general form of the lawfulness of physical experience-----the sole road to natural law. Thus is formed, now in the realm of the intellect, the idea of complete correspondence-----on the one side, between numbers and their functions, and on the other side, the lawfulness of exterior phenomena and happenings. Here an odd thought imposes itself upon us! If out of the one and its division, all of the other numbers can actually be developed, should there not also be a complete correspondence between mathematical evolution and cosmic evolution? May we not then believe that the development of numbers out of the one could give us the key to the comprehension of cosmogony?-----the key to the laws of the world’s origin and evolution?-----the esoteric key, which concerns the occult-scientific comprehension of world origin and evolution? Now I want to confront you with another esoteric experience-----a numerical experience. It leads us directly to what may be the inner meaning of numbers: their inner face. Before we go into this in more detail, let us look upon the attitude of exoteric science toward the problem of cosmogony-----the problem of world origin. The idea of the origin of the world presupposes an era when the world did not exist; therefore, the nought. 31

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However, reason cannot comprehend that the world was born of nothing. If it was a God who created the world, who then created God? All exoteric cosmogony, therefore, has to take its origin from something already existing. Dubois-Reymond renounced the solution of this problem in his famous inaugural speech with his “ignoramus, ignorabimus.” He cared less for this question than for the problem of the origin of life itself. His question, like that of exact natural science was: How did life grow out of the lifeless? How did consciousness form out of the unconscious, dead, material being? His answer was: This will remain an eternal riddle to the human mind. “Ignoramus, ignorabimus!” That is absolutely correct. Never will we be able to answer this question. Never-----because, from the beginning, the question was stated incorrectly! The history of the exact sciences shows how often problems were unsolvable because they were stated wrongly at the beginning; because suppositions had been tacitly made, born out of subtle and hindering mental habits. The famous astronomer and astrologer, Ptolemy, provides a classical example of the power of such mental habits to hinder perception. Ptolemy disputed the views of contemporary scientists, who held that day and night originated in Earth’s revolving around herself. Ptolemy argued that if Earth were to revolve from west to east around her axis, then there would have to arise such a terrific counterstorm of air and water from Earth’s oceans that everything found upon the surface of the Earth would be swept away. But, since this counterstorm does not exist-----ergo! Of course, since Ptolemy started with the tacit assumption of an immobile Earth, were it to suddenly begin rotating, Ptolemy’s arguments would then have been irrefutable. The immobile Earth as a given was Ptolemy’s mistaken notion. Again, a like assumption also lies at the base of the question of the origin of life, or consciousness from dead, lifeless matter; it is the assumption that this is the primary, and life and consciousness the secondary state. (The “ignorabimus” here is quite right.) Nevertheless, should this unspoken assumption be made at all? Couldn’t life be the primary state, and lifelessness, if it existed at all, the secondary state? Is lifeless existence, lifeless being, more understandable than living existence? The question of the origin of this universal arch-living existence ought to be stated differently! Rather than life originating from the lifeless “nought,” the problem should be the manifestation of life. How is the manifestation of life possible, i.e., how is a life possible, which experiences itself? This is the criterion of all life, that it is first of all (to use a technical phrase of philosophy) “given” to itself; life is self-manifestation. All cosmogony would therefore have to start from the moment of manifestation of life, heretofore hidden. 32

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If we comprehend the problem of cosmogony in this manner, we have understood it esoterically. The “beginning of the world” is the revelations of the world. This revelation of the great unit world is but the revelation of the number one. Just as the number one did not “originate” from zero, the world did not originate from “nought.” As the oneness is here for and by itself only, so also is the entirety of the cosmos. This al-one-ness for and by itself is called the revelation of the oneness. Its perception is of immense importance. As such, the oneness is here only if it recognizes itself. At the moment of this occurrence, the one has already become triune-----a threeness, which is revealed oneness. For the process by which oneness recognizes itself is like the reflection of the oneness in its own self-experience. The oneness appears as if split into two elements which correspond to each other like the viewer and that which is viewed. A subject that is its own object. The subject and object are present at the same time in this act of manifestation; “the one begets the two” (Lao-Tzu). However, the object is nothing else but the subject in the form in which it recognized, experienced, knew itself. Thus lies in the creation of the two simultaneously the creation of the three. The third phase is in the act of revelation, by which the identity of the one and the two is restored. At the moment the one is manifest, it is possible only in the form of threefold one-ness. The three-ness in the one-ness is the criterion of all manifestation. 1 2 3

= arch-being = being reflected in itself = reflection between two and one; identity

In primitive mythologies, we find this fundamental esoteric principle mostly in the form of a trinity composed of: 1 2 3

= father = mother = child, son

The third element is the expiatory element in the trinity, spanning the rift between one and two, reuniting them in the oneness. The tenet of the trinity forms the esoteric nucleus of all religions. It contains the essence of all revelation or manifestation. We shall call this trinity the threepolarity of everything that attained manifestation. 1 … positive polarity: force-radiating, disposing 2 … negative polarity: force-receiving, storing 3 … neutral polarity: force-using for integration, balancing The play of these forces among the three polarities represents the spring of the esoteric clockwork, whose movement is division and reunion, or differentiation and integration. The 33

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third, as the integration pole, plays a very special role, and one whose mathematical expression is the number three itself. Since its function is to reestablish the oneness again and again, what it does bears a resemblance to the process by which we move our attention. First, we apply our attention to bringing the identity of an object into our consciousness; then, by constant comparison with its mirror image, we thus reconcile the conflict between the original and its image. The three thus becomes the oscillation, which constantly reconciles the division of the two opposite phases. Three is the oscillation, the best-known form of which is the rotation around one or more axes. All oscillation and rotation is, therefore, actually a striving to regain and preserve the one-ness. The most common expression for this strife is the mathematical formula: Y = sinus; x = the sinus line - the serpentine Ovid describes this eternal strife in nature in magnificent words containing the mystery of the threeness: “Rerum concordia discors”-----“The twofold concord of all things.” (dichotomy) Now please remember three technical expressions, which, coming from the Sanskrit, designate the three principles described above, and which play an important role in astrology: RAJAS as the name for the active, positive principle TAMAS as the name for the passive, negative principle SATTWA as the name for the reconciling principle (oscillation) We have now won two important insights. From the bridge of the human body, we have won the insight of the cosmic correspondence of macro and microcosm, as well as the fact of rhythm as bearer of the life function and its all-permeating organizing power. From the bridge of mathematics, we have again found the fact of rhythm in another form, as the law of all manifestation. All this will be dealt with in more detail later. We will now turn our attention from these great cosmic perspectives toward the practical everyday life of everyday people. We are considering neither the esoterically initiated nor the man who is devoted to pure materialism, but the great mass of individuals. They are equipped with neither a sharp, critical mind, nor a profound esoteric intuition, but they have a natural inclination emotionally and mentally to devote themselves to the impressions of nature and life. We will now look at such an individual in an everyday role, fulfilling and enduring one’s fate, suffering and joyful, in want and in opulence, hoping and despairing, ambitious and resigned. In other words, the ordinary person, which means all of us in our everyday lives. Even in this state, we are inwardly connected with the universe and are not left alone. 34

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Rama Krishna, to whom we owe those two magnificent parables of stone and salt doll mentioned in our last lecture, has given us a further simile, describing this connection of the common person to the universe. It is the simile of a piece of cloth, thrown into water. The stone was shut off from the water; only its surface was washed around, while its insides remained untouched. The salt was dissolved; it penetrated the water completely and vice versa. The cloth does not shut itself off, nor does it dissolve; it only absorbs according to its capacity. Only part of the water can penetrate the cloth, and it can only absorb part of the water; it can only participate according to its capacity, in that which is represented by the water in the simile. As a tightened string can only vibrate with sounding around it attuned to its own tone, but remains unaffected by all others; as a red object is incapable of reflecting other than red rays; as the human eye is only able to see the colors in the spectrum between red and violet while the infrared and ultraviolet rays remain invisible to it; so also can each person only feel those universal forces which are suitable to his or her capacity. We see and experience everything that happens to us according to the limited measure of what is accessible to us. Thus, the path by which the forces of the universe find us is at the same time our connecting link with the universe. Viewed esoterically, this narrow path is what determines our individual appointed fate. Fate is the special color in which we must experience the fact of our unitedness with the cosmos, hourly and daily. The concept of fate is of such importance in astrology that we must have a clear perception of it even at this early stage in our lectures, where we are only concerned with a general foundation of astrological thinking. We cannot possibly explain or grasp what fate is by using the cold, critical intellect. Fate can only be experienced, i.e., not the “what” of the occurrence, but the “how”; its essence is not the objective content of event, but how I fare through them. When the cranes flew over the theater of Corinth, this event was fate to nobody but the murderers of Ibykus4. The emotional capacity of those two men caused the event of the cranes’ flight to come to them-----to have to come to them in a different way than to the other spectators. Fate has two components, one of which is the objective occurrence; the other is the reception of this occurrence by the subjective constitution. This we will call one’s “fate capacity.” What determines it? Where does the elective force come from, that which picks out of the multitude of occurrences special ones to modify and form a single fate-----saturated, as it were, with the particular color of the personality?

_______________________________________________________________________________ 4

In the Greek legend, two ruffians murdered the beloved poet, on his way to the Olympic competition that took place in Corinth. He appealed to a flight of cranes, passing overhead, for justice. In the theater, the murderers gave themselves away at the sight of them and were apprehended, and Ibykus revenged. Schiller wrote a famous and beautiful ballad about this story. 35

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Well, the purest form of this process of “soaking” with one’s subjectivity is the dream. In the dream, we also see ourselves placed in a subjective milieu, completely soaked with our personality, actually representing our subconscious creation. The dream is fate forming (in “Reinkultur”: = literally, pure culture) kat-exochen. The “outside” world of our dream is the pure projection of our “inside” and is symbolic of the state of our soul. It pitilessly bares the depths of our emotional life. Yet, while we are dreaming, we know nothing of all this. The city where we think of being may appear to be centuries old; the forest may have been standing for centuries; people and animals belonging to our dream’s environment may have their parents and brothers and sisters, their past. In reality, this city and this forest, these people and animals of our dream, exist only through us-----they have no history or past; they have no past of their own; they only have our past, out of which they came. It is our “past” with all its accumulated tres-“passes” which forms the cup with which we must draw our fate out of the stream of events. (In German, a word play: “schoepfen,” “drew,” also means “create.”) We now arrive at a third connection between our personality and the universe, to the connection with fate and guilt. An important consequence is derived from it. The dream events are mainly conditioned by the constitution of the dreamer’s soul and contain the unsettled remains of one’s entire past as an unfinished remnant, going as far back as one’s remotest ancestry. Heredity and personal destiny form an insoluble community of correspondence, which reaches deep into the cosmos. In a poem, Schiller coins the phrase: “World history is world judgment.” In this sense, we can say that each person’s fate is the cosmic or world judgment of his or her history. The dream-fate is our own judgment, which we pronounced on ourselves to explain our own pasts. There is no other way to master one’s fate, except by reducing heredity or the past by redemption of guilt. Astrology requires us to fulfill this most difficult demand; to change our constitution, as given by birth and heredity: it demands a purification of the sediment of the past. As we free ourselves from this sediment, we tear down obstacles, which repeatedly hinder our merging into the great oneness. Guilt, “the worst of all evils” (Schiller: “The Bride of Messine”) lies between the universe and us like a separating wall; it surrounds, as it were, the shining God-nucleus with dark sediment. This metamorphosis is the essential condition for our higher development. It is the metamorphosis of our capacity from the “cloth” into the “salt,” and thenceforth the higher development, through one’s own strength. With this, we have arrived at a thought beyond the realm of astrology, and concerned with humanity’s role in the universe. 36

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Let us return to the simile of the dream. Who among us has not had the experience of being disturbed by recurring horrible dreams! They are, after all, nothing but the actions of sediment accumulations of our physical constitution into the dream fate. We ourselves, unknown to the dreamer, prepare this fate. When awakened from the dream, and when freed to purify this sediment by self-analysis, we can change the dreams. Their terrors vanish. What we have thus brought about in ourselves is similar to the liquidation of guilt, the “making soluble” of an otherwise insoluble residue, (or as the chemist says, the “unlocking of a chemically resistant substance”) leading necessarily to a change and transmutation of fate. The inner, esoteric side of such a process of occult transmutation (without which no higher development is possible) forms the object of that part of occult sciences, which, in contrast to astrology, may be called the esoteric doctrine of evolution, or by its old venerable name, “alchemy.” The person who can work consciously on the desedimentation of his/her own being is already an alchemist in the same sense as Goethe once said of himself: “I have been an ‘alchemist’ all my life.” Only a few manage to be alchemists in this sense; most of us have to be kneaded by “fate,” by the sufferer’s path of fate. Astrology gives us just the key to recognize these weak spots of our constitutional character, which present the points of attack to fate, as the analysis of the dream leads to the dark points of our soul. This opens up a new perspective of the total cohesion, which we may now call, because of the insights just won, the moral cohesion between microcosm and macrocosm. For are not my pains and sufferings like an illness in the life of the total organism of which I am a small, insignificant cell? Is it not the highest moral duty to work on my own return to health for the sake of the totality of life, out of which the powers of universal life come not only to me, but also to those closest and farthest away?! Pains and sufferings of the individual are precursors of our awakening. Once we are awakened and we recognize our moral duty, we also recognize the cosmic meaning of this force of duty. With this cognizance, we win the power to intervene in a change of the cosmic cohesion itself! The forces at work in the universe are the expression of the same law that determines in us our moral power: the moral law of world development itself. Small as it may be, our moral share in the world occurrence places us thereby as a moving factor in the totality of the world. The exoteric doctrine of the use of this force-----the third and last part of occult sciences-----is called magic. Astrology is the doctrine of the integration of human beings in the totality of the universe. 37

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Alchemy is the doctrine of the transformation of the lower into the higher. Magic is the doctrine of the use and direction of the forces, which guide evolution. ASTROLOGY: Esoteric natural science. ALCHEMY: Esoteric doctrine of evolution. MAGIC: Esoteric ethics. To exoteric thinking, natural law and ethics seem without connection. They represent two forms of law between which no bridge can be found. There lies between both, a something alien and “senseless,” the path of suffering, of human “evolution,” without starting point or goal! Immanuel Kant, before whose prophetic eyes the evolution of the solar system was revealed, shrinks from the incompatibility of these contrasts, which mere critical reason cannot bridge. At the end of his powerful work, The Critique of Pure Reason, he writes the memorable words: Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above and the moral law within. I have not to search for them and conjecture them as though they were veiled in darkness or were in the transcendent region beyond my horizon; I see them before me and connect them directly with the consciousness of my existence. The former begins from the place I occupy in the external world of sense, and enlarges my connection therein to an unbound extent with worlds upon worlds and systems of systems, and moreover into limitless times of their periodic motion, its beginning and continuance. The second begins from my invisible self, my personality, and exhibits me in a world which has true infinity, but which is traceable only by the understanding, and with which I discern that I am not in a merely contingent, but in a necessary and universal, connection as I am also thereby with all those visible worlds. The former view of a countless multitude of worlds annihilates, as it were, my importance as an animal creature, which after it has been for a short time provided with vital power, one knows not how, must again give back the matter of which it was formed to the planet it inhabits, itself a mere speck in the universe. The second, on the contrary, infinitely elevates my worth as an intelligence by my personality, in which the moral law reveals to me a life independent on animality and even on the whole sensible world---at least so far as may be inferred from the destination assigned to my existence by this law, a destination not restricted to conditions and limits of this life, but reaching into the infinite.5 _______________________________________________________________________________ 5

Quoted from translation by Thomas Kingsmill Abbot, B.D., London, 1889. 38

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Kant had to stop at this duality, but esoteric science helps to bridge the abyss by which the two worlds, the “outward” and the “inward,” are separated. Only when the sources of inner knowledge have been disclosed, from which Kant also drank (but about which he wisely kept silent) is a road shown to that astrology, which is not a profane and superstitious “star interpretation.” It is an insight of the world, in which the starry heavens above and the moral law inside of me are united into One Whole. The moral law in me leads my glance to the heavens above me and gives me the presentiment of a connection. This turns into knowledge after I have recognized two things: The starry heavens inside of me and The moral law above me: both are only one.

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Third Lecture Where brutal forces hold their sway, No artful form will wee the day. ~ Schiller, “The Lay of the Bell”

We have come to know the human body and the mathematical function of numbers as essential communications with the universe. Once we can recognize them as such, they are open to our highest and last arcanum, our egos. Both paths lead us to the recognition that we are enclosed as parts in the totality of this manifest world, and that by this enclosure, we forever remain in complete and inviolable, inextricable connection with this totality. This connection must never be thought of as being causal in the sense of the older natural sciences, but as an organically alive relationship. Its prototype is the connection of our bodies’ living building blocks; the cells, or the mathematical relationship of numbers, born out of the One, for which music gives us the most moving testimony as the spiritual-sensual form. Through number become tone, humans have kept alive, consciously or unconsciously, the experience of this cosmic unity since remotest times. For the secret connection of the tones, through which music becomes possible at all, is the same kind as the unity of the cosmos itself, never a causal connection, but one born out of the oneness. Harmony, the law that ordains the connection of separate tones within the frame of the whole composition, seemed to the ancients, therefore, to be also the supreme law of the cosmic cohesion. It was in this sense that they spoke of the “harmony of the spheres.” In the last lecture, we learned to know this universal cohesion from another side-----from the everyday, ordinary side-----forced upon us daily and hourly in the form of our suffering the need of being installed in the whole, or, in short, in the form of individual fate. The painful path of fate shall lead us from disharmony to harmony with the universe; as illness leads us from a state of disturbed physical harmony to physical harmony, or as the ancient Greeks said, out of “dyskrasy” (the bad, unharmonious mixture of body fluids) to “eukrasy.” We, like the chord of a musical instrument impurely tuned, may be attuned by fate, and so changed in our being, that we are brought closer to accordance with the harmony of the cosmos. Thus, understood esoterically, the idea of fate led us to the demand for a transformation of 40

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our being, in the sense of a harmonious attuning. Transformation occurs through harmonization of the inharmonious, or ennobling of the ignoble, for the purpose of becoming ever more perfectly implanted in the higher life unit. The meaning of fate is transformation into the higher through conquest of the lower, or as previously explained, the alchemical transformation. Schiller magnificently explained this demand in the well-known quote: Ever aspire to the whole, and if you can’t be a whole, As a serving member, join yourself to a whole. Exoteric science also knows this transformation as a rise from the less to the more perfect, under the name of “evolution.” We have shown this concept to be a link between exoteric and esoteric thinking. Today we will occupy ourselves with a new aspect of this concept of evolution; the absolute connection of every being, and especially of humankind, with the entire cosmos. Before we think of individual human higher development, we will think of the rise of all humankind from the lower stages of life. In other words, the whole scale of organic life on Earth, which actually forms the main object of the scientific theory of evolution. According to it, humanity now represents the last link in a chain of development many millions of years old, which has carried humanity up from the fiery-liquid condition of earth matter, through numerous intermediate stages. From mineral condition, over primitive vegetal and later animal, life forms evolved to the present human stage of organization. Wherever natural science has tried to see the actual motivating forces of this evolution, there was never a doubt in its thinking that they must lie only in earthly conditions. Only these motivating powers themselves remained absolute riddles, as we indicated previously. The scientifically sounding word “heredity” does not help to answer even the simplest question, e.g. how it happened that a chicken emerged out of an egg. Had it not previously existed, the egg would never have become a chicken: the finished chicken already existed as idea, to be realized only by the egg’s development. The finished form already hovered, invisibly, as inspiring genius of the species chicken over the egg. (Aristotle) In a marvelous intuition, comparable only to Kant’s vision of the planets’ birth out of the Sun, Ernst Haeckel recognized this development of the chicken out of the egg. He expressed it as the ontogenetic evolution, a condensed repetition of the long history of the racial development of the species (in this case the species “chicken”)-----or its gradual rise over millions of years out of formerly lower forms of life to the organizational level of the species chicken. Haeckel maintains that the ontogenetic evolution of all creatures, their development from egg to birth-----is a compressed repetition of the phylogenetic evolution. Now to the naturalist, it might seem more plausible that the egg becomes a chicken, since even though spanning enormous periods of time, this evolutionary path had already existed since the finished form of the chicken had already been worked out previously. Only a 41

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small further step is needed to recognize that somewhere the polygenetic evolution must also have a prototype. Its prototype could also be the materialization of something already existing, projected in time, and there condensed and compressed: it even must be, if only Haeckel’s idea of the forming forces of heredity had been worked out correctly. Then the total evolution of life and all life forms, to human beings, could and must be a sort of ontogenesis, the repetition or copy of something already existing outside of the earthly development-----of something that had been, before it came to be materialized here on Earth. Herewith we have arrived at the door to the esoteric, occult side of the theory of evolution, which as we said in the last lecture is somewhat of a connecting link between exoteric and esoteric wisdom. Let us remember from the last lecture that we understood the human figure as a sort of pangenesis radiating out of the universe, and especially the Zodiac. Then we will be able to understand that what was called the “zodiac” from earliest times is the cosmic matrix of human development on Earth. Earth, or earth matter, would actually be a kind of cosmic womb of the spiritual human germ, received out of the heavenly sphere, whose prototype had already been resting in the zodiac as a celestial idea of humanity. Thus the sacred ancient name of Zodiac suddenly receives a new meaning: out of the Zodiac operate the forces of world-heredity, materializing the idea of humanity on Earth, serving to transform us from animal6 to human in our latest evolutionary cycle. Humanity is thus the latest link in the chain of evolution, which shall lead us further and higher. The human stage is merely an intermediate stage in the course of the cosmic ontogenesis of humanity, at the end of which would stand the unimaginable height of last perfection in the All-Godhead-self, as hinted in the Bible in the words: “man was created in God’s image.” Let us try to come closer to this idea of evolution as we have propounded it. In a new light, it will show us the living connection of the divine human embryo with the totality of the universe, and especially with the zodiac. We shall particularly try to gain insight into the “How” of this connection, out of which evolution receives its motivating power. Before this happens, we must briefly consider the position of today’s natural science toward the problem of evolution. As already mentioned, science recognizes the rise of the human species from lower life forms. It also ascribes our origin to primitive unicellular organisms and a sort of Arch-jelly with primitive life expressions of growth, digestion and propagation. Finally, it ascribes the origin of life to the mineral pre-stage of life with the well-known “ignoramus – ignorabimus,” with which Dubois Reymond capitulated before the cardinal question, “How could life ever develop out of lifeless mineral substance?” This “ignoramus – ignorabimus” should logically be extended further to the total problem of evolution. For

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The German word for “zodiac,” translated literally, is “animal circle.” 42

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natural science is not in a position to answer the question regarding the motivating powers, or to put it more clearly, the elevating powers of organic development. It is almost frightening to see that the great Charles Darwin, when faced with this question, finally named chance or accident as the decisive power that guides the rise in the line of evolution. The “Struggle for Existence,” the fight of all against all, the immense competition of life everywhere on this Earth makes the accidentally better-equipped being the conqueror, the survivor-----the weaker, less well-equipped, eventually disappears. The stronger, better equipped is more perfect, better fit to live. It bequeaths its more perfect constitution to its progeny, and so on. The accident that such better and more perfectly organized beings exist is thus raised to the actual motor of evolution. Who could be satisfied with such an explanation of the fact of evolution, once one realizes that it can never be an accident that the egg becomes a chicken, and not perhaps an earthworm? Yet Darwin could not think otherwise, since he wanted----like all other scientists-----to find the motivating powers of evolution in earthly conditions only. None of the known physical and chemical laws seemed applicable to him. “Chance” only hides the escape to unknown energies outside of the realm of physical and chemical activities, which include heredity as well. To settle this with the word accident or chance is almost a sin against logical thinking. Darwin’s basic idea has therefore found unanimous rejection from his contemporary philosophers and philosophically inclined naturalists, as, for instance, in Germany by K.E. von Baer. Schopenhauer calls Darwin’s life work “plain empirism.” However, Schiller, although he lived long before Darwin, finds the profoundest refutation of such thinking: Where brutal forces senseless sway No artful form sees the light of day. Darwin also places next to these brutal forces a power that does not seem accidental to him. It stands in his thinking like a message from another world: this heredity, the power to bring forth organization of progeny from something, which ought to be alien to materialistic thinking, actually appears as a sort of memory function of matter, a kind of organic-creative heredity memory. Yet even this heredity memory never could lead evolution beyond the stage that the ancestor had already reached, were it not for the aid of this odd “accident.” Just where “accident” or “chance” should disguise the lack of a possible explanation of the riddle of evolution from the formulas of scientific thinking, the insight flowing from esoteric thinking sets in. This will bring us closer today to understanding the problem of evolution in general, and to the arcanum of the Zodiac itself. It has already been said that the archetype of humanity lies in the zodiac. It must further be demonstrated that the zodiac also sends out to Earth the powers through which became possible humanity’s rise from the lowest realms of the mineral, vegetal and animal stages up to the human level. For that purpose, it is necessary that we differentiate between what we call the three realms of minerals, plants and animals, and that which is taught by profane natural science. What 43

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we have before us in these three realms I can only express, from the point of view of esoteric thinking, by a mystical sounding sentence, which may suggest that the dark should be explained by something even darker. Nevertheless, it was necessary to choose these dark words to bring to life the vast contrast between the brutal forces, through which the rise of humanity is supposed to have been affected and the teaching of esoteric thinking. We see in these three realms the imprints of high and highest intelligent beings in the sands of this Earth. That sounds strange at first, and yet the thought expressed in this sentence lived in the imagination of peoples of antiquity in a symbolic picture, also known to the Bible. The highest Deity is presented with his head resting in the sky, the arms spread through space and the feet touching the Earth, of which the Bible says, “The Earth is the footstool of His feet.” The meaning of this sentence can be brought out of the depths of the human consciousness itself. We have become capable of impressing a print in the sands of this Earth-----capable of leaving an imprint of our activities, which can be embodied in the cosmic heredity memory of the Earth-----an imprint in miniature. To understand this, it is necessary to regard the human being not with profane eyes, not to see the outward forms as sciences sees it, nor as described by the anatomist, nor with the eyes of the zoologist, like Linnaeus. Linnaeus incorporated the human species in the animal realm, placing us in the highest order of the animal kingdom, together with the ape of the old world as “primates,” with the honorable title of Homo sapiens, in contrast to the Homo satyrus (orangutan). This can be done only by violating the human figure, forcefully stripping it of an enormous number of characteristics in order to reach a human image, which then indeed shows a certain resemblance to a gorilla or chimpanzee. One must overlook what widely distinguishes this man, as we see him, from even the most highly developed animals. For the form in which such a human appears to the view of the profane anatomist is not a true form at all. Humans have a number of organs, which animals do not possess, which reach far beyond our physical bodies. We have created these organs ourselves out of earth’s matter, and our minds live and act in them. They belong to us inseparably and almost organically, as a sort of extension of our biological bodies, reaching out into earth-matter: our imprints in the sands of the Earth. But where are these organs to be found? Well, anyone whose eyes are unprejudiced enough to keep an unconfused view can see them: We put garments over our bare skin, a self-made second cover. But, over this second skin, we put another cover, a third skin: the houses we have built for ourselves, the cottages7 that protect us like our original skins received from the legacy of the universe. Around this skin, we build a fourth skin, the public organizations of our communal life and its laws. Not only have we clad ourselves in these covers, we have further equipped ourselves with a series of organs through which we manifest ourselves in the world, though not built into our physical bodies: our tools and machines. Through these, the human mind and spirit actually work into earthly matter, so that we may say we thereby press our imprints into it. For through _______________________________________________________________________________ 7

In German, “Huette” (cottage) is also the equivalent of “be-huet-en,” to protect. 44

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them we transform our earthly surroundings, which we would be unable to do through the animal nature of our beings. We change the direction of the natural forces and their manner of operating; we construct machines, transforming natural forces according to our plan, which we could not do with the organs given to us by nature. Thus, our will and thought live in these machines, far beyond the physical possibilities of our bodies. In a short essay8 in the 1880s, the technician Ernst Kapp tried to prove that all human technical inventions are born out of the human body, modeled after our body-organization, mostly unconsciously, by a process he calls “organ-projection.” For example, the hammer is a projection of the forearm with the fist closed; the tongs or pliers, the grasping hand; scissors, our cutting teeth; the photographic camera, the eyes and so forth. Be that as it may, by means of tools, we are capable of consciously projecting that which lives inside of us further into matter, and of developing and directing the body organization given us by nature. If we thus regard our machines, then they all become our organs, belonging to us, yet outside of our physical bodies. They form, in our sphere of activity, a projection of our interior to the outside, a sort of pangenetic radiation of our interiors to the outside, a conscious extension carrying farther world heredity in a spiritual way, or our imprints in earthly matter. Now let’s take a closer look at our machine organs, with respect to what “lives” or rather “seems to live” in them. For example, think of the watch. What lives and works in the watch is the human endeavor for an accurate measurement of time, the longing for something to inform us in every desired moment of the stand of the Sun, in order to know the time. The watch relieves us of this necessity, and is much more accurate and perfect. Or consider the telephone. What lives and works in the telephone is our human endeavor to speak to another far away, beyond the reach of hearing. We have created an acoustic messenger, hastening with the speed of light, and delivering our words incomparably faster than could the speediest human messenger, faster than even the movement of sound. Or consider a book. What lives and works in books is the effort to create an extremely accurate chronicle of all that has already been thought; to create a reservoir of memory in the outward world, to make it into a lasting archive of human thought. Or let us consider the phonograph record. What lives and works in the record has similarity to what has been put down in our books, with the difference that from it sounds directly the sensual and sensually discernible archive of the human voice. Or let us consider the safety measure, with which we have outfitted our electrical apparatus, presenting an equipment of self-protection by which those contrivances are able to defend themselves against destructive influences, issuing from the same forces that direct them. What lives and works in these safety measures is the image of the self-preservation instinct, which humans imprint into their apparatus. These examples could be multiplied immeasurably. _______________________________________________________________________________ 8

“Principles of a Philosophy of Technology” 45

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Let us now assume that a being, alien to Earth, knowing nothing of human beings or culture, would be placed on Earth. This being would hear the human voice sounding from the record, observe a locomotive transporting huge freights from one place to another and see the ticking watch as its hands rotate according to the Sun’s course. Let us assume that he would furthermore see how infinitely complicated machines are able to manufacture useful objects out of raw, unformed material. If this being did not know that it was the human spirit which worked in all these objects-----what could he think but that he had before him living organisms, knowing how to act on well conceived, ingenious principles? These seemingly living beings, these pseudo-organisms are what we have termed humanity’s “imprint in the sands of Earth.” We have implanted in these phantoms a mere semblance of life; the implanted abilities are mere semblances of abilities. They are the lowest stage of what we find in the living organisms of nature as abilities. They actually do not belong to these beings either, because they have not been earned by their own endeavor. We therefore call them instincts. We have just tried to reveal what humans can do. At present, our abilities extend to the implanting of instinct-semblances into matter. What we cannot do is to impart to matter a consciousness of what we have put into it. The record does not understand anything of the song etched into it, the watch, nothing of time.9 Drunk with the progress of technical science, the materialistic thinking of the eighteenth century had the strange idea that all the really living organisms on Earth, humans included, are merely machines. The most outspoken advocate of this trend of thought was Lamettrie, whose classical work is titled: “L’Homme machine,” (“Man – a Machine,” 1748). Now, when man and animals and plants, and even minerals, are to be regarded as machines, then that which lives in such machines is something more than that living in the watch. For in animals and plants not the semblance of instincts works but real instincts. It is said that the French philosopher, Malebranche10 once was found by his friends, sticking a long needle into the body of an animal. To his reproaching friends, the philosopher answered with a mild smile: “Do you believe that I would do this if I did not know that the animal is a senseless machine?” He also once explained his theory to the Queen Christina of Sweden, but she replied: “That is very nice and I will also believe it if your machines will mate like animals and then bring forth infant machines, who then will grow and reproduce.” No, human wisdom would never have been capable of implanting that which lives as instinct in animals, plants and yes, even minerals. If we actually want to envision machines in living beings as analogous to the machines produced by humans, then we must recognize the imprints of beings infinitely higher than us in that which gave to plants, animals, and minerals __________________________________________________________________________________ 9

Editor’s note: One can only imagine how Dr. Adler might perceive the capacities of computers!

10

Malebranche’s activities occurred in the 17th Century; he is absolutely removed from materialistic thinking. His view of the soullessness of the animal has nothing to do with materialism. 46

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the law of their organizational stage. These superior beings have created their organs in the scale of these earthly beings in the same way as we humans, in our stage, have accomplished in our machines. Such imprints of the highest intelligent beings are the physical and chemical laws in the mineral realm, which represent the arch-instinct of today’s matter, the law of their life as mirror of the highest mathematical truths and geometrical laws, as they are materialized in the form of crystals. In the vegetal realm, such imprints are the abilities to digest, to grow, and to propagate-----the ability to keep alive in spite of, or perhaps because of steadily changing matter. Finally, the germination of a primitive sensation of life, even the joy of life itself-----the sensual life as arch-instinct of the vegetal realm. In the animal realm, such an imprint is, in addition to all this, the ability to consciously experience the motives of activity-----in other words, to interpret motives, to attain discriminative powers in consciousness, and to thereby gain that form of instinct, which we may call animal reason. Lastly, in human beings, we may feel the imprint of highest divine beings in what we may call the ego-instinct, the selfnucleus, in which the human criterion lies. For it is the self-nucleus through which humanity received the ability to consciously participate in the work of creation, and the moral power of determination. We now return to the starting point of our investigation. We wanted to make plausible to logical thinking, what was already immediately contained in the basic esoteric experience described in the last lecture. It is the presentiment of the fact that human development out of lower forms of life, and especially our rise from the animal stage, is only an expression of our arch-unitedness with the cosmic powers of the zodiac, out of which we are radiated by a kind of cosmic pangenesis. Now we already understand what otherwise would remain obscure: that the nations of old became addicted to the service of “animals,” not the animal itself, but the deity which had implanted its earthly print in the animal. It was this living, divine imprint before which humans reverently bowed. The service of the animal was a devout kissing of the imprint of these divine beings. Those of antiquity recognized the total effect of these divine beings as powers radiating from the zodiac. If people from these archaic times, many millennia ago, called the various regions of the heavenly zodiac by animal names, then we should understand that these names were expressions of their feeling of the same divine powers coming to them out of these regions. They surmised their activities. Human beings installed on Earth as their immediate heir, life-heir and accomplisher of what had lived in mineral, plant and animal, as human precursors of those three realms. We humans must unify these realms within ourselves in order to lead them into a fourth realm, to humanity’s present evolution stage of the God-embryo on this Earth. Let us now compare this with what realistic thinking does with these animal names, indeed with the whole zodiac. We then get explanations such as those given by Volney, for instance, in his theological-philosophical work: “The Ruins.” 47

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In this manner, the Ethiopians of Thebes called the stars, under which the flood started, stars of the flood, or Aquarius; those under which it was time to start ploughing, ox or Taurus; stars of the Lion when this animal, driven out of the desert by thirst, appeared at the river shores; stars of the ears of corn or of Virgo (reaper) those of harvest time; stars of the Lamb or Goat those under which these useful animals were born… As this Ethiopian had observed that the recurrence of the flood always took place when a beautiful star was visible, showing itself around this time at the source of the Nile, and appearing to warn the farmer against surprise by the waters: so he compared this action with that of the animal whose bark informs of danger, and called this star the dog or barker-----Sirius; in a similar manner he called those stars Cancer, when the Sun, arrived at the rim of the tropic, returns and walks backwards and sideways like the crab; stars of the Capricorn, when the Sun, risen to the zenith, copies the animal which likes to climb the rocky summits; stars of Libra those when day and night are equally long and seem to stand in equilibrium, as the scales do; Scorpio those, when certain irregular winds bring on an unhealthy fog, similar to the scorpion’s poison … It is easily demonstrated that this attempt at an interpretation, apart from its applicability to certain geographical parts only (here Egypt), can be applied only to this period of historical time during which the solar position actually occurred in the orbit of these constellations at the corresponding seasons. However, since the vernal equinox of the Sun on the fixed-starsky wanders throughout the whole zodiac in a period of about 25,000 to 26,000 years, 3,000 years ago Sirius (the Barker) did not herald the flood. Moreover, 12,000 years ago, it was winter when the Sun stood in the constellation of Cancer and the autumn equinox took place in the constellation of the Ram (Aries). No, such interpretations of the basic astrological secrets, as attempted by Volney, only too clearly disclose the abyss parting exoteric thinking from esoteric insights. With wonderfully penetrating words, put into the mouth of Wallenstein, Schiller has presented this contrast regarding the astrological fundamental idea of cosmic evolution, this contrast between rational and esoteric thinking. “Thou speakst, as thou understands it,” he makes him address Illo. Thou speakst, as thou understandst it. How often Did I explain it to thee. For thee Jupiter Descended at thy birth, the bright god; Thou canst not look into these secrets. Only inside the earth darkly mayest thou rummage, Blind, as the subterraneous, who with pale, 48

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Lead-colored light into life has shown thee. The earthly, the profane, thou mayest envision, Smartly unite the close and closest things; Therein I trust and do believe in thee. But that which meaningful mysteriously works And forms in nature’s holy depths, The sprit-scale, which out of this world of dust With thousand rungs into the world of starts Builds itself up, on which the heavenly powers Walk up and down in constant activity… Those are seen only by the unsealed eye Of light-born, serene children of Jupiter. I believe that one cannot speak more clearly about this scale of beings, which reaches from Earth’s dust into the distant world of the stars. We will close for today. The insights won today will serve us as preparation for more intensive absorption in the mystery of the zodiac and its human connection.

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Fourth Lecture I too have once been a tree or shrub A youth or a virgin, And a mute fish in the ocean. ~ Empedocles

Today we continue to contemplate the Zodiac, the highest arcanum of astrology. In the last lecture, we recognized the Zodiac as the seat of those powers that guide our development on Earth and especially our rise from the animal level to the actual human stage, the fourth stage in the organic scale of life on Earth. We learned to understand the Zodiac as a center of spiritual energy, from which radiates the concerted action of the highest beings to Earth. A kind of divine “organ-projection” is thus expressed in all physical and organic life, including human beings, on Earth. Before we go deeper into the “how” of this cosmic cohesion between us and the Zodiac, which affects not only our evolution in general, but also the development of each individual human being, I would like to insert a brief remark. It will demonstrate how, even in materialistic thinking, conclusions are drawn which make the existence of beings that far surpass our organizational level almost a certainty. According to Schiller, they are visible only to the “unsealed eye.” One could almost speak of a materialistic evidence of the existence of God. For if, according to the teachings of natural science, it is to be considered definite that through immense periods, we have risen from one-cell beings to our present height, so it can hardly be supposed that this rise should have come to an end now for all time. Rather, it must be surmised that the impulses to this development still exist. Earth having hardly passed its “middle-age” could continue for several hundred million years, since our organic rise to today’s level may have already persisted many millions of years. Should it not then be assumed that after additional millions of years our development will reach a point where our organization will have been developed to a stage equally high above our present one, just as the one-cell “monere” of Haeckel is surpassed by humankind today? What power of perception would such beings possess? Whose imagination is able to 50

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follow this thought to its conclusion? If such a being should suddenly appear among us, who could recognize it, who could see it? Probably we today could not see or recognize it with our sensory organs, just as the “monere” could not see the whole human figure. It would be incomprehensible and inaccessible. When we add to this that we already have knowledge, though incomplete, which enables us to interfere in the organic course of the life process, and therewith to cooperate consciously with evolution, what gigantic perspectives are then open to us! Perhaps by then we will have learned to change bodily matter, or even to leave Earth at will. Compared to our modern state of being, we could not call such beings anything other than gods. Why should there not be such beings in far away worlds, in far away solar systems, many millions of years older than Earth! In truth, to deny such a possibility, materialistic thinking would have to disavow itself, if it would not consider it a thousand times more plausible that the idea that evolution should stop at the stage of humanity for all times! We will now go an important step beyond the topic of the last lecture. Today we will acquaint ourselves not with the moving powers of evolution, but with the process of evolution itself, and its relationship to the Zodiac. We will strive to understand evolution as transformation into the higher, or in other words, to regard the phases of this progressing evolution in the alchemistic sense. Let us remember that we carry within us, as an heirloom of the life stream of the three realms below us, the essence of those realms: the mineral, the vegetal and the animal. We are to unite this inheritance with that which lifts us beyond the last of these stages of life to the “human” unit. We will then understand that this four-fold structure must be contained in the Zodiac, as perceived by the esoteric eye. It is this four-fold structure, which appears in the alchemistic teachings as the tenet of the four elements, or the four stages of Earthly existence. We recognize them outside and at the same time, we feel them within us. Thus, a very old tradition explains the twelve areas of the Zodiac are in a certain order, according to a thrice-repeated scale, given by the alchemists’ four elements: Fire, Earth, Air and Water. Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces They represent three rows of four, each starting with Fire (Aries, Leo Sagittarius) and leading through Earth (Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn) and Air (Gemini, Libra, Aquarius) to Water (Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces).11 This division as well as the partition of the Zodiac into twelve sections may appear to be an artificial system to the rationalist of Volney’s trend of thinking. In reality, the order of the ________________________________________________________________________________ 11

See Figure 3 on page 64. 51

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sectors of the Zodiac is as little artificial as is the order of the rainbow’s colors in the solar spectrum. Just as the order of the spectral colors gives us a feeling of a deeper lying law, so too does the order of the Zodiac sections veil a law. To the esoteric consciousness, this law first appears as the scale of a spectrum although instead of color impressions, it represents a scale of life impressions. None less than Goethe expressed the opinion that all colors are nothing but a dimming of the uniform arch-light, which, were it not thus dimmed, we could neither envision nor comprehend. The heavenly light is broken in the prism of earthly matter. So, also, what radiates to Earth from the Zodiac forms a sort of arch-light in spirit, comprehensible to us only through a scale of darkening, originating in its breaking in earth-matter. It is only recognizable in the mirror of human consciousness through the prism of our level of organization. This prism is the constitution of our inner life, as we carry within us the representatives of those four realms in a four-membered receiving apparatus of the heavenly Zodiac’s rays. We too carry in ourselves four elements: in the alchemistic terms, fire, earth, air and water. We have now arrived at the threshold of the alchemistic mystery. Alchemy is popularly called the art of making gold. But, to the ancients, gold-----AURum-----was only the earthy, material symbol for what the Bible, in the very first chapter, calls the AUR, the arch-light. This is visible to the human eye only when dimmed, and discernible inwardly only through the still dull medium of the human level. The true art of making gold would be the changing of this dullness, so that it would become ever brighter and clearer, until it is able to receive the one spiritual ray of the arch-light in absolute purity, and to reflect it back. In this sense we will now attempt to explain how those four elements of alchemy, and their metamorphosis, are to be understood. What is the difference between alchemy and modern chemistry, which additionally represents a doctrine of elements and their changes? What distinguishes chemistry essentially from alchemy is that it does not classify the elements and their combinations into higher or lower ones. The thought of transformation of the lower into the higher, and with it the idea of development, seems strange to it and unacceptable. There are simpler and more complicated combinations; the chemical elements can be arranged into an order, showing a certain lawfulness, but this order does not represent a random order in the sense of higher and lower. The chemical substance is neither high nor low. Always present in the same manner, it does not have a development-----much less a higher development. The substance forming the plant is no other than that which is extant in “lifeless” organisms. The chemistry of the vegetal, animal and human substance is the same as that of the mineral substance. Therefore, there is no transformation of the substances, only changes in combinations. Perhaps the essential difference between alchemy and chemistry (which are as related as astrology and astronomy) can be clarified by a simple example. Think of the life of a plant; it builds its body out of chemical elements, which it takes from soil and atmosphere, and so 52

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transforms “lifeless” mineral substances into the living substance of its body. Chemistry is unable to explain this transformation; it is a procedure understandable only alchemistically -----and all the energies taught by chemistry are insufficient to explain this miracle. If only the chemical energies were working here, then it would never be possible for the plant-organism to build its body out of mineral matter, with the help of such energies alone. Instead, the plantbody would, reversely, as the higher organized stage of material existence, transform itself back into the simpler mineral matter! The alchemistic transformation leads upwards-----chemical changes along-----never! The alchemistic occurrence just viewed has its model in the general fact of digestion. It teaches us to understand the transformation in the universe in general, as outward from of appearance of the organic rise in the scale of life. Its simplest example is the intake of food. As the plant transforms mineral into vegetal substance through intake of nourishment, so does the animal transform mineral and vegetal substance into animal substance; and man: mineral, vegetal and animal substance into humanly tinted substance, into matter adorned with the coloring of the human level. After the decay of vegetal, animal and human bodies, if matter be returned to Earth, then the molecule of matter, or the atom that once inhabited a plant-body, carries something inside of it as a result of the transformation. It is not of chemical but of alchemistic value, and it cannot be lost. Let us call it the fragrance of the vegetal stage; an atom of matter once inhabiting an animal body-----the fragrance of the animal stage; and the chemical atom formerly a part of the human body: a fragrance of the human stage, which can never be taken away from it. That which we see active in matter are the uplifting powers of alchemistic energies, which pass through the universe. We see their everyday activities around us everywhere in nature. Biology terms the occurrences thus affected: assimilation, (the making similar): the conversion of foreign, or as we may say, lower organized substance, into the level of the human being. Thus, from a new angle, we become acquainted with what we termed in the last lecture the impression of the imprint, only in a much more elemental form-----as an imprint of the second order, as an imprint of the imprint, as the mechanism or the “how” of the event of evolution, in the purely physical form of digestion, or better, as the transformation of matter in its most primitive form. However, that which applies to physical “digestion” also has, esoterically, its inner, spiritual side. We shall now speak of this, for only through it can we advance to understand what alchemy actually wanted to specify with the four transformational stages of Earth, Water, Air and Fire. They represent at the same time a kind of classifying principle in the constitution of the Zodiac itself, as it is unveiled to human knowledge. The history of philosophy calls Empedocles of Agrigent12 the man who first professed the theory of the four elements as building blocks of the universe. It would be a great mistake ______________________________________________________________________________ 12

About 500 B.C. 53

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to think that Empedocles understood these elements to be something similar to modern chemistry’s “elements.” That is already evident in the fact that Empedocles adds two more elements to these four, and calls them Eris and Philia: Fight and Friendship, Hatred and Love. Together with the other elements, they enact all of the world’s occurrences. No! Empedocles saw in what he termed the four elements, four states of existence, which, regarded purely externally, are represented as the four aggregate states of matter, as: EARTH WATER AIR FIRE

-

the solid the liquid the gaseous the ethereal state

We would then have before us, first of all, four different degrees of density of the world substance. Eris and Philia are occupied with the construction of different combinations of these states, and their eventual separation. If we attempt to understand the meaning of these four degrees of density of world substance-----to raise from the depth of human consciousness what may be the meaning of this four-membered scale of density-----then we realize that we are led again to these four aggregate states in our own psycho-spiritual depths: as the heirloom of the mineral, Earth, firm; of the vegetal, Water, liquid; of the animal, Air, aeriform; and at last Fire-----God, God-embryo, humankind! The solid state symbolizes that which represents our firm, external vesture-----the living body, through which we belong to our material surroundings. The liquid state----Water-----corresponds to the inner, less firmly constructed, emotional and instinctive life. The aeriform state----Air-----to an even more mobile state, of the free flexibility of mental activity. Lastly, Fire, to that which reaches still further beyond the bodily, instinctive and even thought-----our willpower. We shall now see what had, at first, only symbolic value: a truly gigantic picture of what has just been indicated, revealed in cosmic dimensions: the cosmic picture of the state of Earth. If we regard Earth as a whole in the same external manner in which we would regard a distant star, we would see something very strange. First, the Earth’s firm crust, which we will call “earth”; above it the waters of oceans and rivers, that we will call “water”; the surrounding “higher” space, the “air”; and finally, at the border of the stratosphere, those cosmic rays of the universe (whose most powerful ones emanate from the solar sphere), we will call “fire.” That is, externally viewed, a certain stratification, or order of the elements above the surface of the Earth. Now let us enlarge this picture to penetrate into the depths of Earth, beneath the surface of the Earth, to its core. There we find something strange, too: below the Earth’s crust, we again find water. Below the water, gas (air), and below, as innermost core of the Earth, fir, the so-called “heliotic” (sun-like) core. If we now imagine that this inside of the Earth, with the fourfold stratification of the elements, corresponding to the external, belongs to the “inner life” of the Earth, i.e., something in Earth’s psychic, “internal” space, then the four 54

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strata of matter would become the four stages of internal life. Concentrating on this impression gives rise to an esoteric vision similar to the one described in a previous lecture, when we talked about the relationship of macrocosm and microcosm, but with this relationship illumined from a different perspective. The relationship between the four elements of our interior experience and of the four elements beyond Earth’s crust reveals that Earth’s crust, similar to our skin in that former vision, forms a kind of borderline and at the same time a uniting link between the interior and the exterior of these four elements-----just as the physical human body as a whole has been the bridge between exoteric and esoteric perceptions. Applied to humankind, Earth thus becomes the material of the human body-----the representative of the mineral realm, inasmuch as it is physically built into us. Earth is our body as material phenomenon. But, what is the water beneath Earth’s crust? What is water, internally experienced? As Earth represents the mineral or substantial, so Water represents the second level of life -----the vegetal realm, that level of existence that lies above the earthly realm of mineral. Thus, Water is the internally experienced vegetable realm. Air is the internally experienced animal realm and, lastly, Fire is the internally experienced human realm of self-revelation. When we seek to penetrate the depth of the human essence aided by this cosmic picture of Earth’s construction, we thus pass through these different levels, and thus humanity’s history of evolution. Now this passing-through is not a mere historical remembrance of the many millions of years’ of our evolutionary path and our rise from the lower realms. It now resembles the alchemistic process of assimilation, which views modern human beings as if, with the help of Fire, we had digested, absorbed and assimilated into our bodies what had been passed through in those previous stages. Thus, we are able to bestow the fragrance of the human level to the Earth of the mineral realm, the Water of the vegetal realm and the Air of the animal realm. Was merely able? No-----more than that-----was obliged! Herewith we receive from the Zodiac the deepest mystery of our human incarnation. It now becomes humankind’s conscious evolutionary duty to use the Fire we carry inside of us as the divine spark, “ego,” similar to the heliotic core of Earth, to work with its power to consciously transform the lower into the higher, to reform lower matter into higher and to thus transform through conscious effort what in nature and her creatures had been the unconscious digestive, metabolism process. In other words, to become conscious of the nutritious powers, come to us through the history of Earth’s enclosure of the lower realms into our bodies, whose actual vitamins are the heavenly rays of the high beings of the Zodiac, whose imprint is active in mineral, plant and animal, as the essence of their being and life. It is really heavenly food, which is now our task to transform into human values, to devour it through the fire of Athanor, the alchemistic hearth, delivered to us with our ego-----and 55

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whereby we are to transform ourselves. Mythology has always regarded the great leaders of humanity as administrants of such heavenly fare, destined to accomplish the alchemistic miracle, to implant into us an evolutionary impulse (e.g. the miracle of feeding the 5000 from the Bible). What has been called the sacred duty of our development is thus represented to us as the task to humanize mineral, vegetal and animal substance; to press the human seal-----the Fire Seal---onto all that we find as heirloom of those levels, and to thus solve a problem which the ancients used to represent as the riddle of the Sphinx, which was actually supposed to hide the mystery of the Zodiac. In the image of the sphinx, the ancients represented a kind of symbolic extract of the four elements of the Zodiac in the form of a being who combined four sections of the Zodiac, each of which represented an element. The body of the sphinx The wings of the sphinx The claws of the sphinx The head of the sphinx

- Taurus or bull - Scorpio or eagle - Leo or lion - Aquarius or man

- Earth - Water - Fire - Air

Expressed in this image is the demand to overcome our animal nature, our last but one evolution level, through our awareness (the human head). The content of all human life and strife is now directed toward the fulfillment of this demand. In its fulfillment we satisfy not only the obligation to work ourselves higher, but also to take part consciously in the great alchemistic miracle of world evolution, as the first being in the scale from below, by transmitting the Fire-element built into our level, into the lower elemental-inheritance of our being-----by impressing our mark! Four great spheres of activity thus open themselves to us, in which we have to impress our print like the signet of human dignity. In the last lecture, we viewed the first of these spheres, the sphere of earth. Humans have pressed their prints into the sands of Earth by the creation of machines and tools. However, the fruit we reap in our own ennobling of this alchemistic activity is the perception of the natural laws laid into matter by the high beings of the Zodiac-----our science and technology. This alchemistic process is not only one of assimilation, but also of partition. We learn through science and technology to discern the useful from the harmful, to propagate the one and to diminish the other in free choice, conscious of our responsibility. We are helped in this work by the forces that radiate down from the Earth signs: Capricorn, Taurus, and Virgo. Animal, plant and mineral live under the same physical laws-----must live under them-----but only humans are able to recognize them and to thus build a rung for our ascent out of the animal world. We now push forward to the second field of activity in our wandering to the inner human core, the field of Water. This great realm lifts plants above minerals, as the realm of impulses, growth and positive vitality. In the animal realm, Water becomes passionate vitality, sensual search and flight, pain and joy. In humans, Water is the whole vital content 56

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of our desires and covetousness, with all the intermediate stages between heavenly happiness and hellish anguish, of love and hatred. Our transformational task here, alchemistically, is the creation of a conscious power out of what already lives in the animal as impulse to love and hatred. The animal also has in its passionate vitality a kind of love and hatred instinct, but these forms of passion must be transformed by humans in such a way that they no longer present a mere suffering, but that “misery” is raised to a force, out of which sprouts what is to become the healing of this suffering. Healing acts through a “com-miser-ation,” helping, and willing-to-sacrifice love, beyond passion and the flesh-----that love which conquers and eliminates hatred as dross in the alchemistic process of such ennobling. The powers helping us in this work of transformation are those of the Water signs: Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces. With their aid, we build a second rung for our rise from the animal realm. The third field of activity is that of Air; the great realm of that which is still alien to the plant, lives in the animal as the instinct of reason, and constitutes in human beings the realm of our thoughts-----our intellectual life. If we had only animal reason, that is, only the faculty to be led by motives, consisting of pictures connected with memories of satisfaction and dissatisfaction, then we would not have a “human” mind. The peculiarity of human “reason” is to make the mental process independent of instincts, to free it from passion. But strangely enough, the human conscious alchemistic work in the realm of Air consists in the power to give autonomy to the mental pictures. It lifts them completely out of instinctive life and overreaches them in a self-created connection. It brings them into a system beyond all lust and passionate life, whose systematizing lawfulness represents an image of the lawfulness of nature, which shone from the ennobling work in the mineral realm. It consists in the power to crystallize mental perceptions and to give them an intellectual body, into which we press the imprint of the human organization. What thus originated is first of all the “conception,” then the script, the spoken word, and lastly the work of art in stone, sound, work and picture -----art as the highest mark of the human mind in this third field of activity. At this work, too, we learn to separate, reject and discern between truth and error, and thus build our third rung in the rise from the animal stage. The powers helping us hereby radiate from the signs of Air: Libra, Gemini and Aquarius. The fourth sphere of work is the sphere of Fire. After humans won from the three spheres of Earth, Water and Air the nourishment for growth and for our rise from animal, we now win what becomes our task here, only out of the depth of our self-revelation, the actual human attribute, out of sensing what in the depth of ourselves represents our inmost core -----that which (to use Kant’s phrase) reveals itself as “the moral law inside of me,” or, what wills in me as a mirror of the highest, eternal will, to whom it is to be assimilated and likened, by elimination of all that is contrary to it. That is: transformation of the inmost human core from the egotistically willing to a being that by a constant sacrifice of the “ego”istic will, eventually learns to develop the true “ego.” This is according to the principle, not as my sham-self wills, not as I think to will, but as I must will, if the highest moral law shall, by this will, lead to the self-determination of my ego, to freedom of my will, to perfection. From this strife, we derive the perfection of the human stage, through the attainment of complete inner freedom. Only through it can we become the fully qualified heir of the lower realms, 57

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their master installed on Earth. The powers helping us hereby radiate from the Fire signs: Aries, Leo and Sagittarius. Through them, we learn to make the most important distinction of our entire development. On it depends whether our way leads up to perfection, or down, back to the animal realm: the discrimination between good and evil. Goethe represented this alchemistic wonder of human development in the poem “The Divine,” in a wonderful manner: Noble be man, Helpful and good! For this alone Distinguishes him From all beings That we know. Hail to the unknown Higher beings, Whom we surmise! To their likeness May man aspire! His example shall teach us Belief in these. (The alchemistic assimilation) And further: According to eternal, iron Great laws, We all have to Fulfill our existence’s Cycles. Only man Can do the impossible; He discerns, Chooses and judges; He can give duration To the moment... (the Air signs) He alone may Reward the good Punish the bad (Fire signs) Heal and save, (Water signs) Useful unite All the errant and restless. (Earth signs) 58

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Now we perhaps understand the meaning of the old riddle of the sphinx whose popular form has been handed down to us from antiquity in an almost simple dress: What kind of being is this? In the morning it moves on four, At noon on two, In the evening on three. The solution is: Man. As a child he crawls on earth As man he walks erect As oldster he supports himself with a cane. But the secret meaning of this riddle leads us to another solution: to walk on four means to belong to Earth, to matter, the mineral, whose occult symbol was the rectangle. In the evening, when he has finished, he is risen to fire, whose symbol has been the triangle with vertex on top. And the long way of development in between, the alchemistic double way of assimilation and elimination, of tying and untying-----the way of separation and discrimination: The way of two. Herewith we will close for today.

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Fifth Lecture And God said: Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens, To divide the day from the night; And let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years. ~ Genesis 1:14

In the last lectures, we were concerned with the idea of evolution. We recognized therein a special kind of cosmic cohesion of humankind, which is the most important hypothesis of astrological teaching. Today we will examine how this cohesion presents itself using number as a starting point, the second auxiliary means of esoteric perception, instead of the human body. We will examine how the progression of the four elemental stages-----the way from one to four-----and the incorporation of these four links of evolution into the human unit, can be understood as a process, which results in mathematical logic out of the function of numbers. Numbers and their secret inner connection form the basis of an occult doctrine that has been developed especially by cabalistic scholars. Today we will discuss this only as far as is necessary in order to understand that in astrology we are always faced with certain numbers and numerical relations, which prove to be functions of the first four numbers. The meaning of the first three numbers (1 – 3) has already been presented in the second lecture. We realized then, that “3” is the number of the manifest or revealed one-ness. “2” is the expression of the split in subject (1) and object (2). “3” is the expression of the oneness, ever composed anew-----the arch-oscillation or rotation, the foundation of all that is to become manifest-----the rhythm of becoming, whose cycle is: splitting and reuniting, splitting and reuniting… We found the number four to be the number of mediation between two worlds. One of the worlds formed the outside, the other the inside-----as the bridgehead between two great realms-----outside the realm of the elements: Water, Air, Fire-----inside the realm of emotions, thoughts, and self-revelation, as the material body-----Earth: the self-permeated human body. 60

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There are two trinities, joined together through a common link (4) having a corresponding relationship to each other. If we arrange, what now presents itself, in a row:

We find seven members, the middle one representing the center for commutation from outside to inside, and inversely: the ego-permeated body. The following figure makes this plain: “God” shall be the name for the unit of all beings above the organization of man, “Nature” their imprint in the outside world.

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Figure 2

Human rise, or development, is always as the interlacing of one and seven, two and six, three and five, with four as mediator. 1 + 7, 2 + 6, 3 + 5, and 4 + 4 actually make eight; but the old cipher for the number eight, two squares set upon each other by a common vertex, demonstrates the deeper meaning of this eight-ness, which clearly shows the relationship to the seven: 62

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Thus, we arrive at the number seven, which can be looked upon, in the above figure as perfection of humankind. It originates in a kind of bi-partition by the binding link four, the human body itself, in which the creative deity is mirrored. The derivation of the number seven, thus conceived, is of the greatest importance for the understanding of the construction of our solar system. Besides the number seven, we find a second essential, the number twelve. The connection of the number with the human development and its nature, especially in connection with the seven planets of antiquity will be discussed in detail later. An apparently mere external relationship may be found between the two numbers 7 and 12 in that both may be constructed using the numbers 3 and 4; 7 = 3 + 4, 12 = 3 x 4. A further relation between the numbers 7 and 12 is revealed in the above figure of the number 8 = 7. If we total the two crossing lines, we find the sum of the numbers 2 + 4 + 6 and 3 + 4 + 5, to be 12, as well as the sum of the numbers from tip to bottom: 1 + 4 + 7 = 12. We will see later that this is actually a very deep relationship. In our last lecture, it was pointed out that in the zodiac a kind of spectrum of the divine unity is revealed, as the four-membered scale of refraction or darkening, corresponding to the four elements. Inasmuch as each of these four elements as a unit shows three poles, Rajas, Tamas, Sattwa, so a 12-membered circle is formed. 63

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Here the number 12 is actually the result of 3 x 4.

Figure 3

What then is the inner relationship between the numbers 7 and 12? Is it not remarkable that music, whose cosmically symbolic importance we could repeatedly demonstrate also shows the relationship of 7 and 12? The entire sound-material of music is offered to the musician in a twelve-toned scale, called the chromatic scale. It represents the total of the acoustic material -----in the form of a twelve-membered tone-spectrum.13 Between this spectral tone circle, which returns to itself (the thirteenth member of this succession of notes is once more the first), and the human being who builds music out of this material, is inserted, like a sieve or filter of one’s receptive capacity, the diatonic scale with its seven steps. This, if I may say so, makes possible the organic construction of all musical form and its lawfulness in regard to acoustics. Thus, the seven steps of the diatonic scale in music is a kind of “mediator” between the totality of the material and its human reception. _____________________________________________________________________________ 13

Compare Joseph Matthias Hauer: “The Tone-Color.” 64

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At first, this may be looked upon as nothing but a comparison, but it is a comparison which must really go rather deep, if one considers that the ancients brought these seven steps of the diatonic scale into immediate relation with the names of the seven old sacred planets: C Mars

D Moon

E Mercury

F Saturn

G Jupiter

A Venus

B Sun

And herewith we approach one of the fundamental teachings of old astrology, which put the seven then-known planets into a special order, again in such a relation with the twelve sections of the zodiac that to each of the twelve sections a special planet was coordinated:

Figure 4

It seems as if a perception should be expressed in this co-ordination. It grows out of the fundamentally cosmic feeling that the seven planets of the solar system act as a kind of seven-stepped mediator-scale between the totality of the powers of the zodiac and our human receptive faculty for those powers. Therefore, the 7-number of these planets was in a secret connection with the seven members of the road of evolution of humanity itself, whose impulses radiate down from the sphere of the zodiac. 65

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Even more than that: with the exception of Sun and Moon, who each occupy only one sign of the zodiac, each of the other five planets occupies two sections of the zodiac in a strict and symmetrical order, reminiscent of the number seven in its construction. There the Sun and Moon on one side and the Saturn-pair on the other side form a sort of nucleus of the system. Around this nucleus, the remaining four planets group themselves in two symmetrical sequences, as around the nucleus 4 the two threefold development-stages of the sevenstepped scale of human constitution itself. Here a comparison becomes evident, coming directly from one of the latest achievements of human technology. Human ingenuity has been able to make high frequency electrical waves transmit the finest modulations of human verbal, musical and signal language. But in order to make what had thus been committed to electrical transmission audible, an interposition of filters, fitted to the capacity of the human ear, was necessary. It is the task of those filters to transform the high frequency waves of the electrical radiation in such a way that they are brought into the sphere of audibility by the human sensory organ, and can be tuned down. Technicians call these filters detectors, low frequency transformers. Imagine that the planets represent such low frequency transformers whose task is to translate the humanly unintelligible language of the zodiac radiation to make it audible to the present level of human organization. What else could the seven-stepped scale of this transformation represent, by what law could it be built, except the law of the scale of sensitive readiness built into the human being-----the sevenfold scale of human-----God-embryo-----the twofold sequence of the four elements whose middle part, Earth, represents the link between, and belongs to, both sequences. Following these thoughts further, to test the justification of what up to now was mere conjecture, by copying by way of the inner experience all that which, seen externally, had given surmise and hint to such conjecture, we arrive once more at that previously described esoteric vision. We feel ourselves to be the pore, filled with human “ego”-substance, of a giant body, which turns the same face to us on its inside as we to it outwardly. The common surface of contact was the skin or cover of our body, which was the symbol for the total of our body as a common bridge from the here to the beyond: It was the first esoteric contact with the Zodiac as arch-type of the human figure. We then turned our attention away from the experience of this formal correspondence between macrocosm and microcosm, and concentrated on the functional correspondence-----on the fact of the exchange of life between macrocosm and microcosm. Thus, we arrived at the perception of our arch-unitedness through the one-ness, which continuously reestablishes itself out of the two-ness, to the experience of the cosmic breathing. The exterior manifestation of this breathing represents as well the two phases of in- and ex-spiration as the physical phenomenon of life, as well as the swinging and circling of the planets in space. We thus arrived at the recognition of the swinging or rhythm as the arch-form in which is experienced all integration of the part into the whole. And inasmuch as a number function hereby placed itself before our inner experience at the same time, we recognize in that contemplation of the life-unitedness of the part with the whole the confirmation of the number axiom 3 = (1 + 2) = 1, which returns to itself. What represented itself externally in the 66

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circling and swinging of the planets appeared to us as the inner breathing become visible of the giant body cosmos, of which our body is only a small part. Equipped with this fundamental idea, we now contemplate the relation between Zodiac and planets as it appears to humanity. We can now see in the function of the planets an image of the cosmic breathing, uniting us as the microcosm with the zodiac as representative of the macrocosm. The planets serve as rhythmical pulsating ribbons, like a super-dimensional umbilical cord, for the exchange of nourishment between God-embryo-human and the heavenly placenta that feeds our development. Today our task is to get a clearer picture of the deeper meaning of this pulsation, by which our small human life is bound to the world of the stars----of the two-phase swinging, by which the living oneness is ever reestablished in this manifest world. We realize that the seven-ness is also such a two-phase swinging between two three-part opposing phases:

Earth is the common member that accomplishes their union. A very great man beheld this primary cause of all the circling movements of the planets in a spiritual revelation-----a revelation that is comparable in importance to Kant’s cosmogony and Haeckel’s biogenetic basic law. It was Isaac Newton who recognized this circling movement as the result of a balancing of two opposite impulses: one aimed at the center-----centripetal force, and one fleeing the center-----centrifugal force: “Rerum concordia discors.” As our point of departure, we will try to clarify the meaning of all this rotation, revolving, swinging of the cosmic pulsation, which very simple facts, encountered in everyday life. We will try to become acquainted with the two-phase current of our everyday life, to understand it against the background of our cosmic life. We will become absorbed in the pulsation of the cosmic umbilical cord, which brings the lifestream and the law of the cosmos to us, as nourishment to the embryo. When we impartially give ourselves up to the impression received from the passing of the life-event in this exterior form, we can not escape the fact that a rhythmic order is revealed in it, equaling an even, periodical change of greater or lesser frequency, similar to the longer or shorter wave-lengths of different sounds. The most impressive and perhaps most elementary periodical change is probably the daily alternation between wakefulness and sleep, corresponding to the change of day and night; another analogy being the alternation between summer and winter. 67

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Both rhythms mirror two phases of the terrestrial rhythms, two circling moves of the Earth. The short one mirrors one Earth rotation around the axis, the long one, one Earth revolution around the Sun. Day and year being the basic measurements in the cycle of life, spring and summer together correspond to the day phase, autumn and winter to the night phase. The day phase of our ordinary day starts with sunrise and lasts until sundown. The night phase begins when the sun disappears below the horizon and ends with its return. The day phase of the year begins at the vernal equinox, when days become longer than nights; the night phase of the year starts when, after the autumnal equinox, the nights gain in the ascendancy in time. Let us now try to understand how these two Earth-rhythms are transposed to the current of human life, how we experience this pulsation of the Earth, how the periodical change of these two phases, day and night, takes effect emotionally and mentally in the human psyche. Then we will realize with the intensity of a vision, the fact of a dual nature of our being. Our parts are in proportion to each other as the one to the two, as the arch-numbers that separate the act of revelation, and face each other as Rajas, Tamas, as active and passive, as male and female. During the day we live toward the outside-----radiating vigor, acting, working, creating, intermingling with our surroundings. At night we live only toward the inside, unable to radiate vigor, unable to act, work, create or intermingle with the surroundings, now submerged, extinguished. Our consciousness, entirely turned inwards, lives only in an inner world, into which everything that constitutes our outward world during the day-phase finds admission only in the form, which our memory is able to give it-----now living in the fantastic reminiscence of the past-----of our past. In the day phase, we are turned toward the future, carried forward in time, augmenting the funds of our experiences, acquiring new things, creating new things, and experiencing new things. During the night phase, we are turned toward the past. New things find no way to us; only old things are gathered, put in order, classified and sifted. Even if apparent matters of the future occupy us, they do so only in the way in which they had been longed for or feared during the day. Though the so-called true- or warning-dreams represent “future” events, they don’t for the sleeper; to the sleeper they represent the “present” in which one suffers defenselessly. It is the essence of the warning dream to present as already having happened that which will be realized only later. The day is like a stepping out of ourselves, as a giving-away, a walking away from oneself; night is like coming home. In his “Faust,” Goethe describes the solemn feeling with which we prepare ourselves for this homecoming in the evening: 68

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Meadow and field have I forsaken, That deep of night from sight enroll; A solemn awe the deeps awaken, Rousing in us the better soul. No longer can wild desire win me, No stormy lust to dare and do: The love of all mankind stirs in me, The love of God is stirred anew. Ah, when the friendly lamp is glowing Again within our narrow cell, Through heart and bosom light comes flowing If but the heart knows itself well. With these words, Goethe describes the mood at the end of the day-phase, in the evening. Between night and day stands the transition, the awakening in the morning like spring fever, the expectant premonition of a possibility to give oneself away once more, to be allowed to expend oneself fully for the outside world with all the new entanglement resulting from it. And, before the return into the inside, the evening sentiment, the joyful feeling of work’s end, the premonition of the coming dive into the phase of remembrance. Just as the hibernating animals and plants cannot take any nourishment from their environment during this inner, nightly phase and are only able to use the matter they have amassed during the day-phase, so this nightly human condition corresponds to an inner feast on the stores of our memory-life. However, this feasting on stores, filling the night phase, is of immense importance to all that which makes up our daily task on the following day. For, through this feasting, a renewal of the usability of the amassed impressions of the past day and their incorporation in the totality of our inner constitution is being born. As such, we mature toward the young day better organized inwardly, more collected and thereby richer, because of this nightly digestive work: its fruit presents the dowry14 for the next day. It is like a wedding present, donated for the marriage that took place between our yesterday’s self with the one of the day before yesterday, who had to present his or her day’s work to the one of the day before, and so on, back to the remotest past. We thus produce by this continued wedding act the future individual, ever newer, ever younger and purer. Thus, we are daily born anew, as descendants and heirs of our yesterday’s ancestor, to die again every evening.

_________________________________________________________________________________ 14 Dowry, in German, is “Morgengabe”--a gift of the morning. 69

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Sleep and death, falling asleep and dying, correspond to each other as wakefulness and life, as awakening and being born. Sleep and death, to be born and to die, are also two phases and their alternation in a large-waved sequence of periods: life the male phase, and the female phase that which may lie between death and renewed return to life. Similar to the correspondence between morning and evening is also the correspondence between spring and fall, while the equinoxes, as well as noon and midnight, represent moments in which a sort of conversion for the following phase is inwardly prepared. The entrance of the Sun into the equinox points of the Zodiac makes them signal points of the rebirth and resurrection on the one hand (spring), death or the entering to the great judgment and preparation to a new awakening on the other hand (fall). These signal points play an immense part in the life of primitive people; owing to their closeness to nature, they directly experience the meaning of this great vital rhythm and the alternation of the two phases. These signal points thus become the life measurements of humankind, as on the other hand of cosmic life-----like the signs on the dial of an enormous clock, whose course is taken according to the “same, eternal, iron law,” according to which we all have to compete “our existence’s cycles.” How ever this two-phase experience is inwardly revealed to us, there is exposed in it that which corresponds to the two counterpoles in the act of revelation itself, which appears in the first two numbers of one and two. Rajas and Tamas united through Sattwa (periodicity): three, the male and female archquality and their union. Equipped with this reflection, we now turn to the question of which role the seven planets fulfill as mediators between zodiac and humanity. We can understand that they are somehow connected with the inner meaning of these numbers, as revealed in the experience of periodicity, as an act of revelation repeatedly reestablished in consciousness. What we call self-revelation in ourselves is like a mirror of the arch-revelation, which we, becoming conscious of our self, re-live over and over again in such a form that those numbers and their functions become the norm of our consciousness-function, whose life-law is the same as that of numbers. Thus, the universe and its self-revelation becomes the sole and true teacher of all that can be apprehended in truth. Mathematics and its law is the sole source out of which true wisdom flows, and humanity, able to drink from the source, the true disciple who always awakens in new youth: the “mathetes,” as the Greeks called him, who is being fed with cosmic knowledge. No wonder, that the ancients derived their numerical symbols directly from this realization of the arch-revelation: three equals one-----and represented them by symbols, which were the graphically geometrical symbols of world revelation. It is no wonder that these numerical symbols served as a means to an understanding of the function of the planets.

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The number symbols, which we meet, are:

Out of these four graphic symbols, which are numerical values, astrology combined the function values of the seven old planets as follows:

It cannot be our task at this point in our lectures to study the function of the single planets. What is important to us now is to penetrate into the general meaning of these graphic symbols that show us how the connection between number and planetary function on the one hand, and number and the event of evolution on the other hand, presented themselves to esoteric thinking. The empty circle has always symbolized the unrevealed state of the world-----its night phase, out of which it entered into life only through the threefold act of revelation (“en sof” in the 71

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cabala). One cannot say anything about this phase, neither that it existed nor that it did not exist. Nothing of what could be said or thought or imagined applies to it. Merely to think it is already a mistake, for then it would at least exist in thought-----it is simply beyond all possible imagination and understanding. The Indians call this phase “Brahma’s Night” (Para-Brahman), and “Brahma’s Day” is the revealed phase of the world. The empty circle or the zero-ness may therefore be taken retrospectively, i.e., as afterwards added, first in the row of numbers, to which the following trinity of manifestation corresponds as in the act of revelation itself the two to one, or the female to the male. The second symbol, the circle with the central point, designates the beginning of the act of manifestation, the flaring up of the self, i.e., the self-not-self and yet self again, or the start of the self-meeting. The central point symbolizes the self-revelation, the perimeter the self-reflex. If the point grows into the diameter, the third symbol is formed, the expression of the complete split. The total complex of the circle now falls into two parts and points to the cleavage into male and female, and puts the last into contrast to the first. Circle and semicircle face each other like day and night. The fourth symbol, the cross in the circle-----the secret symbol for Earth-----presents itself as the expression of the reunion of the contrasting polarities by ever recurring union and partition in the form of the periodicity of the swinging, which now is manifest in matter: swinging become reality. It corresponds to the degree of Earth density, as the symbol of the semi-circle corresponds to Water and the circle with central point to Air.

The sevenfold scale, which we mentioned today, would now look something like this:

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Let us compare with this the words of the old Gnostic, Valentinos (second century AD): How all does hand, I in my mind perceive How all is carried, I do see in mind. The flesh I watch hanging onto the soul, The soul be carried by the air, The air hangs onto the firmament, Out of the abyss I see fruit grow up, Out of the mother’s womb a child. We thus arrive at signs that actually resemble the planetary symbols, and are even partly identical to them. It is not our present task to delve more deeply into the meaning of these arch-symbols, which, spread all over the Earth, belong to the store of knowledge of all people. Deepest wisdom lies hidden in them, and their study is like reading in the book of the world itself. Only through deep absorption into the meaning of these symbols will the road to understanding of the planet-functions be disclosed. These symbols are the sacred print, which the world-spirit has pressed into human thought as cosmic hieroglyphs. They are like the seal of nobility by which “He” might recognize himself in “Man.” In this lecture, let it suffice that the secret of this function of the planets is closely connected with the meaning of the first four numbers. These, in connection with the developmental scale of humankind, and the alchemical transformation of the four elements, leads us to the number seven, which we receive from the planets. Let us now bring the insights won today to a preliminary close. We have recognized that the planets actually present a link between humanity and the Zodiac, and that the world of the planets is our mediator and helper in the struggle for higher development, for the perfection of the human stage. An outward image of the circling and turning, it brings to us the 73

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heavenly nourishment, like the pulsating umbilical cord to the embryo. We have understood the meaning of the periodicity, expressed in this circling and turning, out of the arch-fact of world-revelation self, whose third polarity member it is. Circling, swinging and turning and, therewith, the steady rhythmic alternations of day and night, are represented by the arch symbols of these two phases: the circle with the central point, and the semi-circle, which are the symbols for the Sun and Moon. It is they who make us conscious of the inner meaning of the double change of phases, and everything becoming the cosmic scale of outward and inward life is tied to their function. And God said: Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens, to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years. ~ Genesis 1:14 When a person is born on this Earth and, as it is said, sees the light of this world, then he (or she) stands with his ego between two phases. One phase is the past, whose inheritance he receives (night-phase) and the other is the future, which will receive his own activities on the planet Earth. And between these two now stands the always present self, whose development presents itself like the already described wedding act between the impulses of the past (Earth heredity) and the impulses of the future (heaven heredity). Half-child of Earth, half-child of God, we are each composed of female-earthly and male-Godly substance. The balance found between the two becomes our development yield, our own blessing or curse on our further road. About this, we will talk next time. Now we can understand why all the planets must have two places for their activities within the zodiac (see Figure 3); that Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn can bring to us their powers in a double sense, binding us to our earthly as well as to our heavenly inheritance. Humanity’s twofold path is thus placed between morning and evening, as in the old riddle of the Sphinx. To unify those opposites becomes his sacred life task. Just as the periodical cycle of those seven planets along the twelve regions of the zodiac with longer or shorter phase-alternations do not, in the course of many hundred thousand years, lead over back to the exactly same patterns, so everyone’s life task is unique, a never repeatable event in the universe, the absolute definition of the individual meaning of our existence. Now we will return once more to the starting point of our contemplations. We have tried to understand how the interplay between the numbers three and four as seven (3 + 4) and twelve (3 x 4) is revealed in the mutual relation of the planets on the one hand, and their relationship to the zodiac on the other hand. For a long time it was known to astronomers that in a peculiar way the purely external measurements of the structure of the solar system, the same numbers recur as measures. Thus, Titius-Bode teaches that the 74

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distances between the planets and the Sun may be presented in a way that actually reflects those numerical relations: Mercury: Venus: Earth: Mars: --: Jupiter: Saturn:

4 4+3 4+2x3x1 4+2x3x2 4+2x3x4 4+2x3x8 4 + 2 x 3 x 16

The distance between Sun and Moon was assumed to be 100, which resulted in the abovecited numbers of distances. Between Mars and Jupiter, a link in the row was missing: actually the so-called asteroids were discovered there (several hundred small heavenly bodies, perhaps fragments of a former planet, destroyed by a catastrophe). No wonder the human mind was attracted to seek deeper inner connections in these number relations. Out of such efforts, Kepler’s life’s work resulted: Harmonices Mundi (Harmony of the Universe). The age-old doctrine of the music of the spheres, rejuvenated by Kepler’s spirit, resounds the secret of creation. Out of the fundamental numbers of the world-revelation and its connection re-lived in the human heart, and reborn in it, the presentiment of the great, living one-ness was given to him as an aid to spiritual growth, coming as a messenger from God and as a guide back to Him. Later we will explore these number-rhythms. We have merely indicated them now. Let us now close with the magnificent words of Goethe, in which the archangels proclaim the wonders of the world-revelation: RAPHAEL: The Sun intones, in ancient tourney With brother-spheres, a rival song, Fulfilling its predestined journey, With march of thunder moves along. Its aspect gives the angels power, Though none can ever solve its ways; The lofty works beyond us tower, Sublime, as on the first of days.

(WORLD MUSIC) (THE COSMIC NUMBERS)

(DISCIPLESHIP)

GABRIEL: And swift, beyond where knowledge ranges Earth’s splendor whirls in circling flight; (ROTATION) A paradise of brightness changes (TWO-PHASE-CURRENT) 75

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To awful shuddering depths of night. (DAY AND NIGHT) The sea foams up, widespread and surging Against the rock’s deep-sunken base, And rock and sea sweep onward, merging In rushing spheres’ eternal race. (EARTH AND WATER) MICHAEL: And rival tempests roar and shatter, From sea to land, from land to sea, (AIR AND FIRE) And, raging, form a circling fetter Of deep, effective energy. (TOGETHER WITH EARTH AND WATER) There flames destruction, flashing, searing, Before the crashing thunder’s way; Yet, Lord, Thy angels are revering (THE HIGHER BEINGS BEYOND EARTH) The gentle progress of Thy day.

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Sixth Lecture When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, The Moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained; What is man, that Thou art mindful of him And the son of man, that Thou visitest him? ~ The 8th Psalm

Up to this point, we have tried to get a picture of the relationship between human beings and the world of the stars. We have won an insight into a cohesion, which we may well call an organic life cohesion. Today we will go a step beyond this general perception: we will turn to the single individual. Let us contemplate that individual topographical point on the surface of Earth, on which in an individual and unique moment in time, a certain distinct individual human is born. As through a convex, condensing lens, this contemplation is directed to unite in one single fixed point in time and space, that which radiates down to Earth, partly from fixed star distances and partly from the realm of the planetary world, so that it flares up as in a focal point. This luminous focal point presents the single individual’s astrological constitution. To become conscious of this astrological constitution, to recreate it in one’s mind, means to perceive which cosmic influences flow together in this fleeting moment, on this particular surface point of Earth, whereupon this human being entered into existence. The individual’s entrance into life is destined to give individual permanence to this fleeting moment. It puts as his or her “now” a living borderline between the general past and the individual’s future, starting at this moment. It is this borderline of one’s “now” which separates, like the geographical horizon of one’s place of birth, the invisible half of the sky from the visible one. It contains the individual destiny of this “just-then-born” person. To comprehend it, the horoscope of one’s birth is cast, mentally reproducing the focal point of the cosmic radiation, created in the convex lens of the newly born ego. Before we pursue this thought any further, let me briefly review the matters already understood. The two essential elements of the cosmic-organic cohesion of humanity have been revealed to us. I would like to call them two perspectives, in which we may contemplate this cohesion. The first perspective-----the highest and largest—--was the fixed star and Zodiac perspective; the world of the fixed stars—--the abundance of all the many millions and 77

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millions of farthest suns, called fixed constellations, because its members seem to us fixed and unmoving since they are at such an incomprehensible and gigantic distance from us. It represents, in its calm and stability, the eternal background of the cosmos. If we could look down upon Earth to see ourselves from this world of eternity, only that which represents the “eternal” in us, relatively unchangeable, would be visible from such a perspective. We would not see the single mortal, but the totality of humanity in the form of a single human representing the idea of humanity-----our spiritual archetype. In the fixed star sky rests the idea of the human figure, of the human life-stage, as whose representatives the millions of single individuals appear on this Earth, who are born partly simultaneously, partly successively, in their totality: “humankind.” The second perspective shows us the world of the planets: the Sun with the planets encircling it, as well as the Moon of our Earth, a seven-membered unit, whose members swing and circle along the Zodiac in longer or shorter periods of time. Let us compare this rhythm of swinging and circling with the “eternal” calm of the fixed-starsky and let us try to see humans from this closer-to-earth, temporal perspective. Then the eternal of the human idea no longer appears to us, but its temporal nflection in the great two-phase struggle of life; here we look into the periodicity of human life. We see birth, aging and dying. We see the single generations relieve each other in turn. We see the reverse of this swinging and circling transmitted to us, perhaps as Goethe expresses it through the Earth-Spirit: In the tides of life, In actions storm, Up and down I weave. To and fro weave free, Birth and the grave, An infinite sea... We do not yet see the individual in this perspective. We see only typical life rhythms. That, which becomes the destiny of the individual within the general destiny of the species relative to the world of the stars, is not yet visible. This is revealed to us only in the third perspective, which we will contemplate today-----the earthly perspective. When we talk of this earthly perspective, we talk of the most natural perspective to Earthbound humans. It is even the first, from which we experience the world-----from Earth (itself a rotating, swinging planet). Since we are inextricably bound to Earth, we transmit-----inescapably-----what is really the movement of the Earth, to planet-----and fixed-star-world, and view the heavenly globe as if turning around Earth. Thus, all three perspectives are for us united into a single, humanityperspective! Only gradually do we learn to separate the three elements from each other, do 78

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we learn to understand what essentially belongs to eternity, to time and to Earth! It is this third perspective, which also can be called the individual person’s natural perspective, from which the horoscope is cast. Astronomers term it the geocentric viewpoint, which is the oldest in the human history: Earth as stable center of the universe. On this stable Earth, around which Sun, Moon and all the stars are circling according to eternal laws, I find myself a center also-----an “ego” reposing in the imperishable “now” of my consciousness. Around it a continuum of happenings spring from the inexhaustible fountain of the future: of my future, and flow into the well of the past, event after event. It had been for one, incomprehensible fleeting moment, the present content of my eternal, immovable “now.” Content of the present, tomorrow still a thing of the future, yesterday belonging to my past. Today’s extant happening was eternally future for those who preceded me and eternally past for those coming after me! It is such a fleeting moment, the moment of the constellation of the stars at the time of my birth, which the horoscope seeks to retain. It is my individual “now” in the all-present of Earth, which forms my part of the temporalities within the eternities, the fixed point around which all my experiences rotate, as the sky around the Earth-----the viewpoint of my ego-centric perspective, born with me. What then gives such an importance to this nativity that all astrological judgment starts from it? What in the current of time, and what in cosmic life, does human birth on Earth signify? From the exoteric viewpoint, everything for the individual, nothing for the universe. We will now try to answer this question, according to the insights we have gained. Earlier we outlined that, in the cosmic life of Earth, an individual is equivalent to what, within oneself, is a thought at a certain moment as a transitory part of one’s emotional and mental life. The moment of one’s birth corresponds in the mental life of Earth to that process in an individual’s mental life, by which one arrives at the point of uttering the thought, which was hitherto carried in one’s mind. We arrive at the realization of the intention, (which had lived and worked in us for a considerable time), thereby making it a reality. What happens in such a moment is actually of enormous importance. As long as the thought remained unspoken, it rested within us, belonging to us alone, as one of our organs. Before the act was done, it lived in us still as an intention, a part of life’s inexhaustible fountain of the future. However, once the word has “fled the enclosure of the lips,” and the intention has been acted upon, then what had been within us now went outside, receiving an independent existence. In addition, as it does not belong to us alone, it starts opposing us, entangling us in complications, which could not have existed before. It begins to attain power over us. 79

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A different face before it is done, A different one shows the deed when done. ~ Schiller, “The Bride of Messina” Another face also shows the thought expressed. Up to the moment of their birth, thought and deed had our face; they had, as content of our “now,” our present and our past, like the objects of our dream world. After their birth, they are able to unite with the other, alien matters outside-----to make their own connections, to disengage their future from ours. So also is the moment in which we are each born, a moment in which Earth discharges a thought from the boundary of her inner subjectivity. It is a moment of colossal importance, not only for the individual who gains freedom and deliverance into an independent life, but for Earth herself as well. We will turn first to the question of what the fact of this liberation of Earth’s thought means for this thought. Finding its way to the thinking of others, the spoken word can join them and become established in the world of thoughts, common to all. When unspoken, it was connected with the common world of thoughts merely through the person who carried it mentally. Thus, the newborn human being enters into an independent connection with the sister planets of Earth, and through them, with the entire world of the stars. To this world we have no prior access except through the medium of the mother, who carries us within her the mother who hedges and protects. The newborn is being dismissed from Earth, whose last outpost was the mother’s womb, and is suddenly delivered up to the radiation of the stars’ free admittance. Upon our birth, we enter into closer relationship with the stars than when we were still sheltered, and the beginning of this correlation is expressed in the first breath. The first “cry” of the infant informs us that this correlation is now established; the immersion into the cosmic life rhythm has started. Therefore, the first cry is accepted as the accurate time of birth. Now we must not believe that this immersion in the universal life rhythm just happens accidentally in the current of time, just as we should not believe that the moment when the intention became action, when the thought was uttered, depended on an accident. If the thought thus spoken shall not vanish again immediately, if it is to vitally join the general world of human thoughts, if the action shall remain effective-----then they must be born at the right time; in the right moment, that moment when they fill a gap of necessity! Applied to an individual’s birth, this means that we can only be born fit to live at a moment when our inherited constitution enables us to resound inwardly what radiates down from the farthest stars in the immense world symphony, as the tone fitting into it. It must be the right moment, when the impulses of the future that lie in readiness for us meet the exactly attuned phase of the past. 80

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The old Egyptians were in possession of an astrological law that provides an insight into the manner in which they saw the cosmic moment of the child’s birth in relation to Earthly conditions at the conception. This law, known as the “Rule of Hermes,” says: That point of the Zodiac in which the Moon stands at the moment of conception will be at the child’s birth exactly in the east or west horizon; and that point of the Zodiac, where the Moon is standing at the child’s birth, lay exactly on the horizon; that is, it was either ascending or descending, at the moment of conception. Thus, the Moon actually became a kind of birth regulator. Artemis, the ancient Greeks’ Moon goddess was also the goddess of birth! We understand that there are deep perceptions heralded in this law, with which we will occupy ourselves in the course of later lectures. As we hinted in the last lecture, the Moon principle, the semi-circle, was for us the female principle in general, the principle of passivity, conservation, the function of memory, which turns toward the past, the reproductive principle turned toward the night side. The horizon, or the borderline between day and night, stands as it were in the intersection between past and future. It is the principle of hereditary memory that lies as it were below the horizon, in the realm of the night. By birth, it is lifted out of this realm and enters the realm beyond the border separating past and future; it is delivered up to the day! Thus, we are not allowed to consider the moment of birth an accident. Neither does exoteric science consider it an accidental moment. Therefore natural science asks: why does astrology consider just the moment of birth so important that it takes it for the starting point for the astrological summation of the human individual, considering that the moment of birth is actually only the end of the pre-natal life phase, and therefore in no way the moment in which a human being originates? In a certain sense, we have already answered this question, but not sufficiently. For a further question follows, revealing the difficulty and depth of this problem to us. This additional question is: if we do not begin at the moment of our birth, why isn’t the moment of conception taken instead as basis for the horoscope? This question is also immediately refuted by the same counterargument. Do we really begin at the moment of conception? Ovum and sperm cell, uniting at the conception, already existed before the conception, and their history, the history of the embryo plasma of this person, reaches back into the remotest past, up to Adam. It reaches so far back that no imagination can think its end. Thus, if we want to go back to our “beginning,” we would come to realize that actually we are all of the same age! None of us enters life without an immense past, reaching back into remotest times, presenting our prehistory, until it reaches that section of our history which begins with the moment of our birth. Let us explore this thought further, as presented to us by natural science. Viewed scientifically, the history of the individual can actually be traced back to a certain degree, by following the branches of one’s family tree. It thus becomes family and tribal history, finally ending in the darkness of the historical past that can no more be penetrated. 81

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Every one of us carries something out of this past that we can recognize as the legacy of this ancestral line. We carry our good and bad predisposed abilities with us physically as well as emotionally and mentally. We carry them as an inheritance, received from our parents. But they were only the last ones who delivered to us, modified by their own additions, what stems from ancient historical past and converges in the body and its special traits, as one find them at birth, corresponding to the stellar picture at the moment of birth. This too has its history, its supposition: that all the stars united in your horoscope have come to that point where they now stand “on the day which gave you to the world,” in century, millennium, millions of years’ wanderings through space. These stars have wandered through space for millions of years, to create your horoscope! They have patiently waited for the moment when you appeared to offer themselves now in a constellation which did not exist before, nor will it ever occur again. Uncounted millions of people have lived before you, forming the chain of your ancestors, have lived and loved and made it possible through their lives that you appeared on this Earth-----that you had to appear. If I think this thought for the first time, and recognize myself for the first time in my horoscope, I experience a strange, and strangely contradictory, feeling. On the one hand, I am confronted with the importance of my existence, and on the other hand, my insignificance is revealed, as a passing phase of the world’s history, which will go on beyond me, as if I had never been. In the most favorable circumstance, I will be a link in the ancestral chain of later heirs, who will find themselves in the same purposeless position as me. What then am I really? What does it mean that I have been thus placed at the preliminary end of a line of development? Starting from mankind’s earliest beginning, it has taken me, in this moment, as a goal. Am I so especially ennobled through this ancient line of descent, so ennobled by the circumstance that all the many links in the chain, who were here and are gone, look upon me as the fulfillment of the meaning of their lives, as the heir, installed by the universe? Or, am I a nothing in the sight of these myriads of sun worlds who look upon me, in spite of my apparent dignity? For if I imagine myself to be the goal of such a very ancient line of evolution, which gave me this body with all its faculties, a body in which congregate the cosmic rays in the above described, never repeated form, so will the same forces, which brought me into existence, continue to work inside of me, according to the same laws. Is it not irrelevant whether I can watch this working of the cosmic powers inside of me consciously-----or whether this little spark of consciousness has never been lit? For, at best, what can my life add to the inflexible cosmic laws, to which I am subjected? What else can be the content of this life than just the compulsory fulfillment of those necessities to which I am destined to be a helpless spectator for the short time of my existence? In other words, is the course of our further life not written in our horoscope at the moment of birth? Yes, this horoscope with everything that makes up its 82

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content-----preordained, inescapable, every event, every thought, every sentiment, yes, even the action-----and I myself only a helpless slave, delivered up to this iron necessity, whose highest wisdom can only be to accept this fact? It is very important that we face this question today. For if it remains unanswered, then what sense would the study of astrology have at all? Perhaps this feeling of discord between cosmic importance and earthly insignificance of the human individual has never been pronounced more touchingly than in the eighth Psalm of David, where it is said: When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, The moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained: What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? And the son of man, that Thou visitest him? For Thou hast made him little lower Than the angels, and hast crowned him With glory and honor. These verses are of abysmal depth. To begin with, we will disregard the fact that the psalmist does not mention the Sun. However, notice the distinction that is made here between “man” and the “son of man.” This will give us a key to the answer of our question. Let me attempt to express what may be hidden behind these words. Man, as he appears here on Earth, is not born for the first time; his birth through his mother is not his first birth, nor his last. He is born here as the child of man. Man, born of the mother as the child of man, adheres with all the other millions of men to the first man, to Adam-----“which was the son of God” (Luke 3:38)-----as his true ancestor in the eternal idea of “man.” Adam’s image lies in the Zodiac, according to the first, the eternity perspective. In Adam, the heavenly archetype of man, lays man’s first, extra-terrestrial origin. Earthly birth then does not really reveal his true origin, as we have already expounded today. What then does it reveal? It reveals the stage of maturity of the God-embryo-man in that stellar phase, during which he is released, and is delivered from the womb of Earth. But it does not reveal man even in this sense completely; it does not expose him absolutely naked and uncovered to the radiation of the cosmos, against which he had until then been shielded in the body of the mother. This shield is taken from him; he now receives the radiation of the stars. He sees now, as it is commonly expressed, the light of the world. However, he sees only half of this light. Between himself and the other half of the light, a cover is interjected, which accompanies him through his whole life. 83

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This cover, hiding half the starry sky is the Earth’s globe itself, interposing itself between him and that part of the sky, which at the moment of his birth lay “under” the horizon. Before his birth, when Earth had not yet “spoken” him, the whole sky was hidden to him. Earth could not let him be completely free. He is not yet born whole, not for the last time; all those rays coming from that part of the universe which lies under the horizon have to first penetrate Earth before they can reach him-----have to, so to speak, be filtered through Earth before they come to him. What is the meaning of this process of filtration, of this shielding of man from the “sub-terraneous” part of the sky? That the shield does not allow the rays from this part of the sky to reach man freely means that the history of man, his ancestry, through which he is rooted in Earth, loads him with the whole heaviness of the Earth’s burden, the mass of heredity, which contains the legacy of all his earthly ancestors. Earth places herself like a filter against the heavenly influences below the horizon, letting pass through it only what corresponds to the filter’s own color. It makes man conscious that he is the son of man -----the son of Earth-----and thus determines the measure of his constraint-----determines what belongs to Earth in his nature, according to his terrestrial history. That which radiates down from the heavenly regions above the horizon can talk to him freely. It brings to him what has not been disturbed or influenced by a filter of the past; it is not directed to Earth’s son, but to that which does not belong to Earth in our constitution; to that which shall detach itself from Earth and thereby give man (as a result of this process) his freedom. What lives under the horizon touches the night side of our nature, while what lies above the horizon, the day side. We now understand what the birth of man in this sense really means-----not only for the man born, but also for Earth herself, and further, even to the cosmos! When, through his birth, man emerges from the Earth’s womb and from the past, when he is delivered to the “light” of the world, then the task awaits him to connect the above and the below through his life, the task which nobody but he as the “elected of the stars” can do. This is the task to carry a little farther the ontogenesis of the God-embryo-man during the short span of his life, and hereby to assist at his level in the work of world revelation. This task, small as it may be, can only be fulfilled by him. Earth alone cannot do it, nor can heaven. In this consists our mission and importance. Were we merely the heir of that which comes to us out of the night, the subterranean sky, we could add nothing to the history of humanity, the “light” of the world would have reached us in vain. Unable to receive it, our lives would be wasted, and we would be in eternal night. An absolute slave of the past, we would actually be less than nothing in the cosmos. What then is the “light” of the world, which alone can deliver us from the past and its compulsion; the light through which alone we may attain freedom? 84

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A little better would he live, poor wight, Had you not given him that gleam of heavenly light. He calls it Reason, only to pollute Its use by being brutaler than any brute!” Thus scoffs Mephisto in Goethe’s “Faust.” No, not in the gleam of heavenly light, but in light itself can we participate, when we do something whereby we are enlightened from within. Only then has day entered us, who up until then belonged to night; only then is the inner sun awakened. We already know from earlier probing that the symbol of the Moon was used especially to represent the nightly, past phase; the Sun’s symbol signified the active, future-oriented day phase. Herewith the “light” of the world suddenly receives yet another meaning-----it is the appearance of the light of the world, actually like the emergence of the Sun-principle in the act of world revelation. It is the bringing about of “self”-revelation, and with it the attainment of what raises our true “self” above what was transmitted to us by heredity, the freeing of that half of our nature, which is neither “born of woman” nor is the son of man, but of God. Work is needed in order for this heliotic or solar nucleus (as expressed in astrological terms) to detach from what is Moon-like in ourselves. We spoke of this urgent work in the last lecture: the steadily renewed wedding act between that which flows to us from the day and night spheres. By this continual synthesis, we attempt to get ever closer to the penetration of the last cover separating us from heaven. In the language of the mystics, this penetration of the last cover is called the second birth of man on Earth, by which we free ourselves from the past and then achieve the dissolution of the hereditary sediment, without which there is no freedom. The Earth-globe thus becomes forever lighter and more transparent until the light of the whole sky reaches us without interference: the heavenly Adam, Biblically speaking, is restored. Herewith we touch one of the most important questions of astrology, the question of the meaning of the horoscope. If a person’s horoscope has any meaning at all, it can only be that it represents one’s life task: to progress, by way of transformation from Earth’s child into the pure mirror of the universe-----free from all hereditary sediment, and thereby to fulfill one’s cosmic duty. A few more words about this must be said. Let me use a simple illustration that may clarify what humans ought to achieve by this task. Let us think of a plant, growing from seed in the soil. Compressed into a tiny grain, it contains the biological mass of memories of the entire tribal history of the species-----the subterranean, turned-toward-the-past part of the plant. Out of the seed, the plant grows into the light of day toward the Sun, receives the sunlight and works the heavenly rays into its body. With their help, it builds its body up out of Earth matter, serving Earth’s evolution as well, by its alchemistic exchange of lower organized matter into a higher organized one. 85

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If we apply this picture of the plant to humans, we might think at first that the plant grows “of itself,” can add nothing of its own to its growth. Thus, we also grow by ourselves; we age, to return after death to the firm matter of Earth, changed alchemistically, as the “humus,” into which the plant’s body is transformed, after life has ceased in it. One has not lived the life of a person, but has merely “vegetated,” as we say. One may regard the life of a plant in yet another way. By trying to care for this plant, as the gardener does, not as a commercial gardener, but as the gardener who is the sire of all humankind: Adam, according to the Bible, was assigned the task of gardener, “to till the soil in the sweat of his brow.” This work in the arable Earth from now on becomes the sole and most important task of man. Every work, whatever it may be, means to till the soil, to plough, to work on the dark cover which lies between the archetype of perfect man in the Zodiac, and Earth’s son, the human child. (The Greeks called “paradeisos” that heavenly nutritious soil of man) The work in the arable land of Earth from which we have to dig for the bread without which we would not be able to live-----isn’t it strange, that the expression for this is the same in most languages? To till the soil is “agere,” to do. Our primary action is “agere,” to act, to work consciously on the part of our being, which is our earthly inheritance. What is the result of our labor, bread, that we shall reap in order to live our proper lives as humans, not of a plant? It is what through “agere” alone can be wrought from Earth, the harvest, and the fruit of the “agree”-----the “ego.” The “self,” now newly born through our conscious toil. Moon was the seed, given to us through the Earth; Sun is the cone-to-light, lighted within us, once-more-born, freed-from-the-past, freed “self.” Now let us return to the question, revealed to us in all its implications today: am I in the sight of the starry sky, of the vast expanse of the universe, irrelevant, or am I important? Whether I am the one or the other lies within me, from the moment I begin to understand my task. We started with the idea that the moment of birth can be compared to the moment when a thought is spoken, or an intention is realized. Reverse the thought: how would it have been if the thought had never been spoken, the intention never been enacted? How would it have been had Mozart carried his compositions in his head only, had never given them to the world? Would it not be sufficient, if all those who have taken a creative part in the cultural life of humankind-----for good or evil-----had simply carried their thoughts in their heads? Every artist knows that this is not sufficient, that only after one creates a work does it become a rung on which to step higher; knowing that it is the price owed the world spirit for one’s vocation. 86

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Thus, when Earth releases the thought called “human” from her womb, she takes a step further toward perfection. And as the thought, released from one’s mind, becomes something that will return, hindering or helping, thus also do we, released from Earth, return to her, installing new forces in her, hindering or helpful. While we work at our development, we work at the same time at the development of Earth, and the degree to which we are able to do this determines the measure of our importance, determines the measure of our freedom. Herein we touch upon one of the main problems of philosophy. It now becomes clear to us what light esoteric thinking may cast upon the confusion that non-esoteric thinking falls into when confronted with this problem. The key to it can only be found in the depth of self-revelation-----that we mature toward freedom only when we, joyfully aware of our goal, start to work on our perfection. The conscious struggle for freeing ourselves from the fetters of Earth-heredity is itself the content of human freedom. It may be interesting to cast a glance at the position of philosophical thought regarding the problem of freedom. Is it not odd that this problem was practically unknown to the thinking of antiquity, when people did not feel a contradiction between the conviction of inner freedom on the one hand, and the inevitability of fate on the other, because in fate was seen only the objective content of the event into which humans become entangled. No one will doubt the freedom of one’s will because one is unable to move a huge rock, nor has antiquity doubted that freedom (despite the belief in the inevitability of all happenings which has to be simply accepted, like natural law and movement of the stars). Only the Middle Ages, placing the center of gravity of all occurrences in the inner, emotional world, had to face the problem of freedom in its entire, staggering force, because of the inner, unconquerable rock of the burden of heredity, or what was looked upon as the burden of original sin. This became humankind’s inheritance by the fall of the heavenly man, inherited from time immemorial. The burden of destiny, which those of antiquity deemed outside the self, medieval people saw within the self, as the arch-source of sin, from which all evil flows. Therefore, medieval thinking had to deny human freedom, because it could not see a liberation from this original sin, unless through God’s grace. This grace makes clear how the work of humanity in our terrestrial acre gives us as a reward our true ego, whose attainment delivers us from the earthly heredity mass. Let us now return to the individual’s fate. We will contemplate our way to liberation, also termed our second birth. This toilsome and gradual way to the illumination of the lunar region by the forces of the solar region, until all darkness is consumed in the fire of the inwardly lit Sun, continues until the Earth cover is made transparent. We may call this the threefold way of liberation. Gautama Buddha characterized this threefold path with incomparable words in that sermon wherein the so-called “medium collection” starts. In it he said: 87

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There is he, you monks, who, learned in nothing, an ordinary man, without feeling for what is holy, inaccessible to holy teachings, without feeling for what is noble, inaccessible to noble teachings, who take earth as earth; and when he has taken earth as earth, thinks earth, and enjoys earth: and why? Because he does not know her... Earth perspective But he who, you monks, as a struggling monk, with a fighting spirit, tries to gain the incomparable security, to him also earth means earth, and has earth meant earth to him, then he shall not think earth, not think of earth, not think about earth, not think: “mine is earth,” not enjoy earth: and why not? The he may learn to know her... Change perspective But he who, you monks, as holy monk, as conqueror of delusion, ender of acted action, freed from burden, attained his goal, has destroyed the fetters of existence, is redeemed in perfect wisdom, to whom also earth is earth; and once it has been earth as earth to him, he does not think earth, he does not think of earth, he does not think about earth, he does not think: “mine is the earth” and he does not enjoy earth: and why not? Because he is freed from her... The first perspective Three paths are described here. The first we will call the path of the fool. The third we will call the path of the sage. The middle one is the path of struggle for liberation. The path of the fool! Strindberg has written a book, titled Confessions of a Fool. Most of us could thus entitle our autobiographies. Perhaps each one of us may experience that this confession begins to take another shape in a moment of life, when astrological perceptions are made attainable. What is won by them dawns upon us in other insights, when we realize out of what necessities all that had to happen which we have to confess; how our desire to confess developed at all. We all know that confession can be the beginning of an act of liberation, but that it does not have to be one. Confession of a Fool describes, in essence, that his life had been nothing but an unresisting obedience to all desires and temptations, originating in his inherited predisposition. There was no evil impulse to which he did not succumb, no act too stupid, silly or bad to not commit, all of which brought suffering upon him. We have hurt ourselves repeatedly for so long, that we have ever again experienced 88

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the same pain, until powers of resistance awakened in us. That is the path of the fool: that he forever lives only earth. He only expresses what corresponds to the night side of his being; he has to experience the same sufferings again and again, until the mounting pain teaches him to beware of it, until he learns to know the weak points of his personality. Only when this moment arrives can he leave the path of the fool. Then begins the path of the struggle for liberation. When we have perceived that there is something in us, which resists the fetters with which Earth is binding us, then it is no longer possible to pursue the path of the fool with the former naiveté. For now, we know that the painful path of destiny can only be changed when we start to wrestle with ourselves. When we start to remember our other origin! The moment in which this memory slips promisingly into our consciousness is the moment in which our liberation begins. When this moment has arrived, we will usually notice something strange: our outward fate starts to change. The more energetically this struggle is carried out, the more distinct becomes the change of fate. Fate starts, as Gustav Meyrinck expresses it, to “gallop.” At the moment of the struggle’s start, everything in our horoscope capable of teaching us in our folly changes: so that what had formerly been an outward misfortune now becomes an inner experience. The outward life no longer works with catastrophes as before. Instead, we feel within ourselves all the labor pains that accompany the slow detachment of our true “self” from its enclosure; but also all the happiness, which is the mark of the awakening feeling of freedom beyond pain. I do not want to talk about the sage in detail; it is the stage of one who already has conquered; who, earth-liberated, has become one’s own self. Nobody may wantonly claim to have attained to this state! However, if we look back from our perspective of struggler to our former state, only then do we recognize with full clarity that what we had formerly taken for our will had not been our will at all. “If the thrown stone had consciousness, it would believe it flew because it willed it so,” says Spinoza, to characterize this sort of will. In this manner, the stone, the plant, and the animal may “will”; it is not worthy any more for us to thus will once we have started on the path of the self’s liberation. Will can only be called “true” when it flows from the changeless archetype of humanity. This does not belong to the Earth-perspective, but to the eternal perspective of the Zodiac. As we confessed before, earthly freedom is nothing but the struggle for loosening the fetters of the past. Free will is nothing but the effort for the juncture of our temporary will to the unchangeable will of the highest law: “the moral law above me -----in me.” Let us call it the will of God. Whosoever achieves this would have become detached absolutely from Earth, with no earthly horoscope any more, standing beyond fate. Until this achievement, there is an incomprehensibly long way. But the knowledge of our 89

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horoscope will help us to leave the path of the fool, for it shows us the sore spots in our inherited disposition; it shows us where our work is to start: the work in the acres of “earth,” which is the most important of our life! Although what is done by this work may seem ever so fruitless in the face of eternity, it is of irreplaceable importance, because it can be done only by ourselves. It is our part in the work of creation. “Struggle without ceasing!” was Buddha’s request of his disciples. But, Schiller speaks of: Activity, which never tires, Which to the structure of eternities But grain of sand for grain of sand does add, But from the huge debt of the times Cancels minutes, days, and years. Herewith we will close today’s contemplation of the cosmic importance of the moment of birth, as seen from the Earth-perspective.

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Seventh Lecture Is not the whole eternity mine? ~ Lessing: “The Education of Mankind”

Thus far, we have sufficiently developed a picture of our position in the universe, in order to reveal the way to esoteric astrological knowledge. Unlike the empirical, this knowledge is not based merely upon statistically ordered experience, but results with forceful logic from organic life-communion with the universe, which occurs as soon as this life-communion has itself become an inner conception. What has been stated to this point should serve to deepen this perception. As we conclude this introduction, we will try to understand the task before us, to develop a plan for our future work. For this purpose, we will place astrology, rather than human beings, in the focus of today’s contemplations. We shall clarify astrology’s task by means of the so-called “horoscope,” by which we understand the exact notation of the planetary positions, as they present themselves in the moment of birth. The casting of the horoscope resembles a sort of snapshot, which retains one moment of the ever-moving picture of the sky. Its calculation is purely an astronomical matter, not at all difficult with the many resources that are available today. In this stellar picture or horoscope, we shall learn to perceive the native’s talents, fundamental character and the fate that awaits him-----in short-----the living individual and his part in the cosmic event, as it echoes in one’s soul. This is truly an immense and difficult task, to which the following sequences shall be devoted. As we now begin to demonstrate the stellar picture, it is necessary to keep in mind the part that the three elements have in this picture, which have developed our three perspectives. They are the eternally immovable fixed-star sky on one side; Earth, imagined as static on the other; and the swinging, circling world of the planets in between, to which we have to count all that moves or seems to move between the fixed stars. We know, however, that Earth actually does move unceasingly in its rotation, circling such 91

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that, when seen from Earth, the entire stellar world seems to take part in this movement. In perspective, we transmit the three different manners of Earth’s movement to the stellar world, which strangely interlock like the wheels of clockwork. The first of these rotations is that of Earth around its axis. By this rotation, Earth’s two poles are formed, and between them, in equal distance from them, is Earth’s equator. We call the duration of this axial rotation of Earth a day. We call the projection of the Earth’s equator onto the firmament the celestial equator. The second movement of Earth is its rotation around the Sun; Earth circles the Sun in an orbit in the form of an ellipse, an elongated circle. The duration of one such an encircling, we call a year. Both movements, viewed geocentrically, join to a resultant, whose two elements are comparatively easy to separate. Because of the Earth’s rotation on its axis, the celestial orb seems to turn around the Earth once daily. Because of the Earth’s second movement, the Sun seems to trace a circle along the celestial orb over the course of a year, traveling around the Earth daily. The circular path of the Sun returns to its starting position after a year. We call this orbit, which is actually the Earth’s orbit projected onto the background of the fixed star sky, the ecliptic. The other planets seem to wander in almost the same orbit, and this orbit also defines the position of the Zodiac on the sky. The Zodiac is, in reality, that which the astronomers call the ecliptic. If the Earth’s axis were perpendicular to its plane of orbit, then the ecliptic and the celestial equator would coincide. However, the Earth’s axis stands obliquely to its orbit around the Sun, at an angle of about 66 degrees, 33 minutes. This circumstance, which is of an immense importance for human life, causes the ecliptic to intersect the equator at an angle of 23 degrees, 27 minutes. Thereby, two points of intersection are formed, about which we have already spoken. These two marking points have brought to our consciousness the cyclicity and periodicity of life since remotest times. When the Sun in its wanderings crosses the celestial equator traveling from south to north, for the inhabitants of the northern hemisphere it is the vernal equinox; since antiquity this point has been called the Vernal Point. Half a year later, when the Sun reaches the opposite point of intersection, there is the second equinox; the Sun passes the Autumnal Point and the nights begin to lengthen. To both Earth rhythms mentioned above, a third is added, whose periodical duration is estimated to be about 25,600 years. It is formed by a strangely slow rotation, that of the position of the Earth’s axis itself. While keeping its inclination toward the ecliptic, it executes an exceedingly slow circling movement along the celestial sphere. The combination of all three Earth movements now leads to consequences, which will show us the three perspectives mentioned in the last lecture in a new light. 92

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This circling of the Earth’s axis forces the intersection points between ecliptic and equator -----the vernal and autumnal points-----to follow it and therefore, to wander inside the plane of the Zodiac. In the cycle of approximately 25,600 years, it travels the whole circumference of the Zodiac, to return to the starting point after the expiration of this long period, and this is known as the “Platonic Year.” This fact, known in astronomy as the progression, or the precession of the vernal equinox point (precession because the movement of the point of the vernal equinox is opposed to the apparent solar movement), will occupy us intensely later. Today we will face this fact only insofar as it is apt to clarify how we are to imagine the interlocking of the three perspectives. Let us first consider that for us the Zodiac in its division into twelve parts was the essence of the macrocosmic arch-human-picture, from which microcosmic humanity received its vital forces. Interposed between macro- and microcosmic beings as a cosmic umbilical cord, the planetary world supplies us with these forces. By esoteric absorption, what had been the last, barely surmised background of our “self’s” life and being in the far distance of the fixed stars, gets access to the human being only through this interposition of the planetary world, whose center is represented by our Sun. What then flows down to us from the archetype of the heavenly human being is initially handed down to us by the Sun itself, reaching us only according to the forms which correspond to the degree of our Sun’s evolution. As Earth itself is placed as a filter between the night sky and the newborn, thus the Sun places itself as filter between the entire macrocosm and humanity. What becomes first accessible to us out of the Zodiac reaches us only indirectly via the Sun; the Sun is heaven’s interpreter for humankind, or, referring to our former explications, the general detector of the heavenly forces-----the “mediator.” The other planets also take part in this mediation, but only the Sun turns the heavenly radiation directly to humanity’s essence, our “self.” A very important consequence for us results therefrom. The Zodiac, with which we are at first concerned astrologically, is not really that which was called, there in the fixed-stardistance, the eternity background, but is that which the Sun transmits to us thereof. It is a sort of image of this arch-Zodiac, a secondary Zodiac, its transposition into the Sun-like sphere that wanders with the Sun its celestial tract, and which it follows year after year around the sky: a solar dynamo-belt packed with energy, which it receives out of the fixedstar-distance. This belt, whose marking points are the equinox and solstice points, turns itself around once in the course of a Platonic year on the stable fixed star sky. Therefore, when we speak of the twelve signs of the Zodiac-----Aries, Taurus, Gemini and so on-----we do not speak of the fixed stars thus named, which represent for us the arch-Zodiac, but we speak of the twelve sections of the solar orbit, which concur with the actual regions of the signs only once in the course of 25,600 years. Thus it happens that, for instance in our times, the point of the vernal equinox, from which we count the twelve sections of the Zodiac, has already reached the beginning of the sign of Pisces and is about to enter the 93

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region of Aquarius. To avoid confusion, it has been agreed to distinguish that section of the Zodiac, which wanders with the Sun, from that portion which bears the identical names of the constellations; and to call the first the signs of the Zodiac, the latter the Zodiac images. Nevertheless, what is the effect of this strange displacement of signs and images of the Zodiac? One cannot possibly experience this effect on one’s self; actually it does not concern the individual life of the single person, but the life of humanity, into which the life of the single individual is built just as the cell is built into the higher organism. By the inflection of the primary Zodiac into the secondary, something happens in the life of humankind, similar to the transposition of a composition from one key to another. Nothing is changed in the relationship between the single tones, only the general mood. The composition remains the same, yet its basic mood is different. Thus, by a cosmic transposition of the Zodiac sections, there also occurs a change of mood in the general structure of the cultural foundations of humankind, from which single eras derive their special color. Thus began, about 2,000 years ago, the so-called “age of Pisces” when the vernal equinox entered the sign of Pisces; about 2,000 years before the birth of Christ, the “age of Aries”; and thus we are now about to enter the “age of Aquarius,” which has been forecasting its shadow for some time. The East Indians claim that about every 2,000 years a leader appears on Earth who conveys new impulses to humanity, attunes our evolution to the new section of the celestial Zodiac, and thus bestows upon humanity the new fundamental mood, in which the solar Zodiac will supply its power to humanity for the next 2,000 years. More about this later... Therefore, we can see in the Zodiac, as we will call the solar Zodiac from now on, a sort of projection of the arch-Zodiac. Its beginning always lies at the point of intersection of the equator and ecliptic which the Sun reaches in the beginning of spring-----the point of the vernal equinox. We have already mentioned its immense importance in the cult life of primitive people on an earlier occasion. This Zodiac too has its further projection in the third, the Earth perspective. According to this Earth perspective, while the fixed star sky revolves around the Earth, the solar Zodiac slowly changes its position inside of this fixed star sky. This second projection of the Zodiac onto the Earth creates a twelve-membered circle, which, seen geocentrically, stems from the immovable point on Earth’s surface of one’s birthplace, which seems at first to be the center of one’s world! In this third, Earth perspective, we find the correspondences to the solar Zodiac once again. As the equator divides the northern and the southern hemispheres of Earth, so the horizon 94

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parts the above and the below for the individual human’s birthplace. What the points of intersection between equator and ecliptic-----the points of the vernal and autumnal equinoxes-----mean to the whole Earth is, for the individual human, the intersection between horizon and ecliptic. The point of the Zodiac just rising is called the ascendant, and corresponds to the point of the vernal equinox; the point of the Zodiac just sinking below the horizon is called the descendent and corresponds to the autumnal equinox. On the other hand, the two intersections between the meridian of the birthplace-----or of its projection onto the heavenly orb-----and the ecliptic correspond to the solstices. Through these four “earthly” marking points are now formed four quadrants of the ecliptic at the moment of one’s birth, two of which are below and two of which are above the horizon, each of which-----to complete the projection of the constitution of the Zodiac as one of twelve members-----has to once more be divided into three subdivisions. We thus arrive at a third type of ecliptical partition of twelve, which starts from the eastern horizon of the birthplace. Since this partition is done from the Earth perspective, it is determined by geometrical viewpoints gained through the Earth’s rotation on its axis, so that the actual key to locating the sections can only be obtained from the position of the equator to the horizon of the birthplace. For the present, it may suffice to say that, by this partition, twelve more regions of the firmament are formed, six of which remain below the surface of the Earth, while the other six belong to the sky above. We call these twelve regions, representing in their entirety the earthly projection of the Zodiac or its transposition into the color of Earth matter, the astrological houses, and we count them, starting from the eastern horizon below Earth, from one to six; then starting above the Earth at the western horizon, from seven to twelve. Recalling what we spoke of in the last lecture, we are now able to recognize in those twelve houses a sort of earthly attuned sounding board for the heavenly rays, which supplies a sort of “timbre” to the heavenly music resulting from the harmony of the total constellation, by which that heavenly music, until then only perceptible to the spiritual ear, receives its earthly material sound. This earthly material echo of the music of the spheres, as if allotting to each of the twelve tones of the Zodiac scale an earthly equivalent, is given to the individual in its entirety according to the position of one’s birthplace. Continuing to use the language of music, we may call this one’s individual tonality perception. In music, we refer the total life of a composition and its events to one keynote, or generally speaking, to one mentally sensual center of gravity, which is the starting point for evaluating all tonal relations. Just so, this twelve-membered belt of houses encompasses everything that gives the center of gravity to a cosmically heavenly music in the individual’s life. This is the analogy of the tonality perception, or what we called at the beginning of our probing, the fate-capacity: the individual’s integration in the world event. We recognize in the distribution of the Zodiac signs and of the planets in the region of the houses that what extends to the six subterranean houses (1 – 6) is bound to the heredity mass, as the realm of the past ties; and of the houses above the horizon (7 – 12), all that belongs to the 95

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realm of hope and freedom. Further, we recognize in which particular form they occur. And herewith we gain one more argument for the importance of the moment of birth: the constellation of the houses, as it is now presented from the Earth’s perspective, unveils to us a picture of the cosmic situation of the arch apperception of a person, according to which one lives through all later events. All the later events? Well, just as they were not standing still at the moment when this person was born, the stars continue to wander. For the individual who has actually become the keeper and protector of Earth’s thought, freed at birth, one’s earthly horoscope signifies the heavenly doctrine-----the key to the future; whatever may come later can only grow in the soil of the nativity. This soil, in which we must work whether good or bad, is the only one we own. We can learn about the condition of this soil, of our arch-apperception, from the constitution of the horoscope. To understand this, it is necessary to look again at the planetary world: at those seven planets which connect, like a sort of pulsating umbilical cord, the arch idea of macrocosmic being with the human being on Earth. The nativity of the individual leads us to the special phase moment in the pulsation of that sevenfold umbilical cord in harmony with these seven elements among each other, according to the single intervals of its keynotes. In astrology, these intervals between the separate planets are called “aspects.” Their measure is the angle, expressed in grades of arc under which they are seen from Earth. Since Pythagoras, it has become general scientific knowledge that the relationship of the tonal heights, or intervals between two tones, depends upon the length of the oscillating string or, as we may better say, upon the measures of the wave-lengths of the tone vibrations; if they are simply related, as perhaps 1 : 2, 2 : 3, 3 : 4, 4: 5, or 5 : 6, then we obtain simple harmonious, easily discernible, agreeable consonances. However, if the wave-lengths are in less simple number-relations, perhaps 8 : 9 or 9 : 10 , we obtain less discernible, dissatisfying, disquieting dissonant relations demanding continuity. Lastly, numerical relationships still more complicated result in an impossibility to grasp the resulting relationship ( 3 : 13 or 12 : 17, and so on); such intervals remain alien to music. It is similar with the angle-position or aspects of the planets, presented from a geocentric viewpoint. Here the only angles of importance are those that result from the cosmically given partition of the circle by twelve; in other words, angles whose largest common 96

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measure is a twelfth of the circle. Only these aspects result in planetary relationships understandable to us, whether they are harmonious or not. These aspects are those that will make the work in the acreage of Earth easier or harder, prepare a more gratifying or less gratifying soil for one’s activities, and thereby place before us lighter or more difficult tasks. Therefore, the total chord, resulting from the combination of the planetary aspects, will be co-determinative for the fundamental cosmic mood with which the native is born. It forecasts what the echo will be in the continuation of a steadily changing celestial picture; in which moments the possibilities of one’s nativity will be called to fulfillment; when what had been merely potential previously can become actuality during one’s life; when the hours of reaping and harvesting arrive. The heavenly stars not only make Merely day and night, spring and summer— To the sower they not merely indicate the times For sowing and harvest. Man’s actions too Are a sowing of fateful events, Spread in the dark soil of the future, And hopefully offered to the powers of destiny. Then it is meet to find the proper time, To choose the most propitious starry hour, Questioningly explore the heaven’s houses, Whether not in their cusps were hidden The enemy of growth and of fertility. ~ Schiller, “Wallenstein” The study of astrology, therefore, consists of two parts, the first: the constitution of the individual human. By it we must try to comprehend a person’s uniqueness in virtue of the heavenly constellations at the time of birth, with consideration of the three perspectives; or more simply, to seek to understand one’s character in connection with the fatecapacity, and to perceive through it further the special cosmic task which the person was born to fulfill. For this fulfillment, we must strive-----if our lives are not to be lived in vain. Beyond that, as the second part of this study, the duty evolves to watch over the life progress of the individual, so as to ease for him the perception that shall help him leave the path of the fool in those moments when the necessity of fate matures to fulfillment---either to his joy or sorrow; to not be attached to passing desires, nor to fear passing pains, but to work indefatigably on the perfection and desedimentation of his being-----on toward his second birth. Rueckert speaks in magnificent words of this second birth in his great didactic poem “The Wisdom of the Brahmin”:

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The sacred Sanskrit, for long ’lorn To human speech, calls three things as twice born. First the bird, as egg appearing well, And for the second time, emerging from the shell. Then it so calls the tooth, in man’s mouth first growing In weaker form, and then, more firmness showing. As third it names the sage, first being born By the mother, but by spirit is reborn. The bird, not twice-born, stays in the nest; Tooth, not born twice, will not be best. The sage will not in wisdom soar, nor stand fast, If he has not the other birth surpassed. Before we end this introduction, which is intended to attune us to our future work, let us return to the beginning. Astrology teaches us the incorruptible cosmic cohesion in which the human being is enclosed. We sought to become conscious of this cohesion as an organic life community, and we strove to understand it in the light of natural science as well as of occult science. Now, when we are to build on the foundation of the insights won, piece by piece of astrological knowledge, it is as if a strange feeling would attempt to overcome us, difficult to put into words. It may not be very different from that expressed in the eighth Psalm, yet, in contrast to it, it almost seems to possess the character of revolt. For it is not the question of my futility nor my importance which is now at stake. It is not the doubt of the soul, which seeks to emerge from the depths of the unconscious, but something we might perhaps express in these words: Why has it been just I, who has been assigned to this task by the law of the stars, why just my ego-----why not another one? This question may not exactly belong to the realm of astrology, but it does relate to my interest in astrological knowledge-----my practical interest. For even if I have learned to understand that my allotted task can only be done by that ego that came into being at the moment of my birth, why was it assigned to me-----why did I have to take upon myself the lot to come to life here in that moment-----why not in a more auspicious hour, as for instance, my happier neighbor? His acre prospers without special care, while mine is hard, rocky soil, bearing fruit only sparingly. And, when my work is done and I must go, who rewards me, when my self sinks into the great ocean of nothingness forever? And my second birth, could it perhaps be a pious illusion? Or does it promise-----what I hardly dare to think-----a higher existence after my days on Earth? If I were allowed to trust in such a promise, then I could devote myself with a freed soul to the study of the wisdom of the stars. May nobody be ashamed of such thoughts! Even Schiller, in a dark moment of his life, wrote the poem “Resignation” that ends in the disconsolate words: 98

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Your faith has been the luck allotted you. The minute’s portion you declined, Will no eternity restore to you! May nobody be ashamed of such thoughts, but may everybody take pains to rid himself of their oppressive power! We are told that such questions were once posed to Gautama Buddha, if not in the same form. Why is it, he was asked, that among men one is born as the child of rich, the other of poor parents; one with handsome, the other with ugly features; one with high mental or physical gifts, the other stupid and weak; one for all his life a child of good fortune, the other unhappy all his days? Buddha answered-----it is all Karma, that is the reaction or fruit of past, previous lives of the individual. It may be a comforting thought to many people that their present existence on Earth is only one of a many-linked chain of such lives, in each of which life, up to a certain degree, what had been previously spoiled can be amended. Our succeeding lives correspond to the twophase life-swinging current, whereby our day phase is life between birth and death and our night phase is between death and rebirth. Must not the periodical oscillation of my being lead further, according to the same law, beyond my present life into a new future existence? Would I not be able to work consciously on this future now, from the moment in which this thought would almost become a certainty, based on my knowledge of the cosmic laws? Have not the greatest minds, those who were allowed to become leaders of mankind, walked along the path of these thoughts? ...for I have the firm conviction that our spirit is something of an absolutely indestructible nature; it is something progressing from eternity to eternity, like the sun, which seems to set only to our earthly eyes, yet actually never sets, but shines forth incessantly. says Goethe (Eckermann). But Lessing goes even further! Let us remember the words with which he closes his essay about the education of mankind: Why should not each individual man have been in this world more than once? Is this hypothesis so ridiculous because it is the oldest; because human reason found it right away, before it had been distracted and weakened by the sophistication of school? Why should I not have taken before all these steps toward my perfection, 99

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which only temporeal punishments and rewards can bring to man? And why not another time those steps, which the prospect of eternal reward help me so mightily make? Why should I not come back as often as I am able to attain new knowledge, new accomplishments? Have I accomplished so much at one time that it would not be worth the trouble to come back again? Not because of this: or, because I forget it! The memory of my former experience would only allow me to make a bad use of the present ones. And what I must forget now — have I forgotten it for all times? Or because so much time would be lost to me? ---Lost!---And what then do I have to miss? Is not the whole eternity mine? The whole eternity! Mine! It is wonderful comfort that we find in such words-----but does it really stand so totally outside of all astrology? Does no path lead from that which we have already perceived as the spiritual foundation of astrology that allows me to realize why just I in my present life have received this share in the work of evolution of this world, and why it happened for my own salvation? For the present, let us forget those words of Goethe and Lessing. Let us try once more to feel around us the waves of that world consciousness which stands at the beginning of all esoteric perception. Let us direct our gaze up to the firmament with the thousands, the myriads of stars above us-----alone in the empty landscape! In the view of the immensity of the universe, we share the longing of the salt-doll in Rama Krishna’s simile -----to plunge into the ocean of the cosmos! Moreover, there may perhaps arise the following thought: Am I the only one in the infinite world who feels like this at this moment? If there were beings not only on Earth in this moment, but also out there in the depths of space, beings who feel as I do; if they were ever so far, would I not have to meet them, to unite with them, in this vast ocean of existence? To unite with beings living so far from me, that light, which covers 186,000 miles per second, would need centuries, millennia, hundreds of thousands of years, to come from there to Earth! If my physical eyes were ever so keen, so keen that they could, even at such a distance, see the being that would want to unite with me in thought, I could not see it; I would have to wait centuries, millennia, before his physical appearance would become visible here, and at that time I would be no more, and the other being would be no more! What I could now see out there at present, that really has lived thousands of years ago, has long since become dust; if I wanted to wink at that being, or if it wanted to wink back, my greeting could not reach it, nor could I receive a greeting meant for me; immeasurable spatial-times, immeasurable time-spaces separate me from it, even if I were directly touched by his presence! And just as I assume that things are close in time which, in reality, are in 100

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an incomprehensibly long vanished past, so I see myself close in space, without any dependable measure for space, to these farthest worlds to which even the naive child tries to reach with his little hands. Moon and stars seem to be equally far, equally near. However, what is the true measure of the actual distance? If I really meet one of these beings in the same thought, can I measure his closeness in light years? Or, to put it another way: in what time does this far being actually live, who belongs to my optical present; and in what time does the being actually live who mentally belongs to my present? Isn’t it absurd that contemporary beings should be separated by the space between them for hundreds of thousands of years? Does it make any sense in this case to speak of co-existence? And, is it not equally absurd that the being to whom I am very close in spirit should, in reality, be separated from me my incomprehensible space and time? Does it then make any sense to talk about spiritual closeness? Why follow such thoughts leading us beyond the limits of our logical thinking into worlds whose perception is closed to us? Yet, such thoughts are not quite as futile as they perhaps seem to be at first. For what we now said of the inhabitants of far stars must also be valid of the inhabitants of Earth among each other. I cannot measure their closeness to me in light-years, or in light-seconds, or in particles thereof-----not with spatial or temporal measure. As the inhabitant of Sirius may have his time in the framework of his eternity, incomprehensibly, each of my fellow-creatures has, likewise, around himself, like the atmospheric belt, his time, his eternity. Who could say whether the people who believe themselves to be contemporaries are that in reality? Has anybody ever asked how many light years he is apart from his fellow men? This question, however foolish it may sound, will lead us in the direction we must now follow. Let us remember a comparison we have previously applied in order to develop the idea of human fate-capacity or fate-entanglement-----the comparison with the world of dreams. When we dream, we are not outside of time and space, but each dreamer’s time is outside of the general time; in the same way is his dream space outside the general space; but not completely, only insofar as we are detached from the dream; but we are completely detached only if we detach ourselves from Earth and fate, beyond our identity. As long as that does not happen I carry, awake, like an atmospheric belt of my individuality, a piece of my own space and my own time around me, which separates me from my fellow man, who walks beside me, similarly covered. If matters stand like this-----what then is the true measure for the closeness between people? It is no other than the cosmic measure, which determines our relation to the seemingly farthest or nearest stars or solar systems! Let us remember that the person next to me has a horoscope as well as I; that he or she walks beside me as an equal resonator of the cosmic mood at the moment of his birth; that he has become, like me, a small planetary cosmos by his birth on Earth. Then his way to me and my way to him is determined by a measure that lies between 101

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the two of us, based on our common “imbeddedness” in the unity of the solar cosmos. The “closer” or “remoter” relationship between two tones is determined by their common overtones, according to a definition by Helmholtz. Inner closeness or distance between two people is determined by the common constellations in their horoscopes. Thus, we arrive at the concept of an astrological connection between two or more people according to the degree of their astrological relationship. This astrological relationship is not merely a theoretical classification of the similarity; but, like the chemical relationship, it is a force which helps to bring about an attraction to like; in the one case, the approximation of matter; in the other, of men. Herewith our main question presents itself in another light. If my self would really have no other connection with my ancestors than that of physical descent, then I would really have a right to complain that I did not receive the “better” or more agreeable horoscope of my neighbor. But if what made me come to my parents was based on cosmic necessity and had to obey a law of astrological relationship (as we already saw in the “rule of Hermes”); then we would perhaps have found a way to answer our question, out of the spirit of astrological perception. For what is really the inner meaning of this relationship? Wherein lies the compulsion of its power? The compulsion? Rather the detachment, the redeeming. For he who enters upon the road to the other self because of astrological affinity can now offer his horoscope to the other person, wed his to that of the other’s, as two tones join in an accord, which now is more than the mere simultaneousness of their sound. He who thus offers his horoscope to another helps him to accomplish that which he alone could not do, helps him to attain the most essential goal of existence. And what would that be? We asked how far the road was to the heart of the other person. Let us now ask ourselves-----how far is the road to our self, to our true ego! “Everyone is closest to himself,” says an adage. That is true only in space, but completely senseless in other dimensions. No, to my self, which has yet to be earned in the acre of Earth, there is a long way, up to the limits of the Zodiac, in which my arch-self rests. On the way there, I must free myself step by step from all the conditions of my individual temporality. I must strive after eternity from temporality. One horoscope is certainly not sufficient for this. It needs more possibilities that this one horoscope can grant, if it were entirely dependent on itself. Should we not, like Ibsen’s poor Oswald asking his mother for the “sun,” be allowed to ask for this gift of everyone whom we call “fellow-man,” but which we only deserve if we are willing to bring the same sacrifice; to flood with the light of our sun the horoscope of our fellow-man as if it were our own----whereby he becomes in the true sense our close neighbor, and we his. The commandment: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” (Matthew 22:39) thus becomes the key to the answer of our last question. The way to our own self leads only over the love of others! Practical astrology is full of examples proving that one person, bound in love to another, is able to intercept his ordeals to a high degree. 102

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It is this love which shortens distances, brings close what is far in time and space, which teaches me to understand what could not be grasped by reason alone; why just my “self” had to come to these parents who had found themselves in love, led by a sacred law; because in that mystical moment of conception when their horoscopes interlaced which destined me, as an enduring witness of this blending of two Earth-thoughts, to existence; the road which my parents and ancestors traveled has also been my road in a certain sense. They had come to the same crossroads where I was waiting, until a human couple appeared on Earth, which loaned me their “Sun.” When I had traveled the road to this point, is it then not the most probable assumption that I went down it on the same Earth on which I was now being born, and is it not likewise probable that the preliminary goal that I shall reach at the end of my life on Earth will then also determine my next parents? Those parents who will help me take possession of the inheritance that I left here, whose legitimate heir I alone can be! Now we will close. Two theorems have been bestowed upon us by the wisdom of past epochs: Know thyself-----and thou wilt know God! and – Love thy neighbor as thyself. Astrology shows us the road to knowledge of ourselves. How actually to walk the road is taught us by love. He who can unite both will alone find redemption through the study of astrology. Is not Earth’s road in space also a double track in which we can recognize those two fundamental elements? The rotation of Earth around its axis creates a center lying in Earth self; but its path around the Sun creates another center, around which its first is circling incessantly-----seeking it, and yet so far from it. The Sun and the heliotic Earth-core are correspondences belonging to each other. The time for the re-union of Sun and Earth has not yet come. However, we, living on Earth, united to it in the closest way, included in its swinging and circling, will learn to become conscious of our way as far as we can. Herewith we will bring to a close this introduction to astrology as an esoteric science. Perhaps I have succeeded in proving to you that true astrology is only possible as an esoteric science.

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Appendix

Volumes Two through Five of The Testament of Astrology can be ordered through Online College of Astrology at http://www.astrocollege.org. Dr. Oskar Adler: A Complete Man 1875 -- 1955 by Amy Shapiro is also available through Online College of Astrology. This fascinating eBook presents the author’s personal correspondence with those who knew Dr. Adler intimately and includes rare letters detailing his-----and Paula (Freud) Adler’s-----experiences after fleeing Austria. This unusual biography is a perfect companion to Oskar Adler’s esoteric lecture series, The Testament of Astrology. It makes a wonderful gift for anyone wanting a deeper understanding of the history of the first half of the 20th Century, as seen through the eyes of many who witnessed it.

 The Testament of Astrology Table of Contents Volume One: First Sequence General Foundation of Astrology -- (Seven Lectures) Lecture 1: General Idea of “Astrology as Esoteric Knowledge”... What is Esoteric Knowledge? Natural Science and Esoteric Doctrine; Man and the Universe... The Human Body and Number as a Bridge to the Cosmos... Astronomy and Astrology... The “Self” as Key to Esoteric Knowledge. Lecture 2: Living Community between Man and Universe... Macrocosmos and Microcosmos... One-ness and the Number One... Suffering and Sorrow as a Further Link to the Cosmos... The Idea of Fate... Natural Law and Moral Law. Lecture 3: The Enigma of Evolution in the Light of Esoteric Wisdom... The Zodiac. 104

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Lecture 4: Evolution and Alchemy... The Four Elements... Their Relationship to Inner Life and to the Road of Development of Man... The Riddle of the Sphinx. Lecture 5: Cosmic Numbers and Human Development... The Numbers 4, 7 and 12... Zodiac and Planets... Periodicity and the Law of Rhythm... Planetary Symbols and Digit-symbols. Lecture 6: The Three Cosmic Perspectives... The Cosmic Importance of the Moment of Birth... Heredity and Self-development... The “Second Birth”. Lecture 7: Zodiac-segments and Zodiac-symbols... The Precession of the Vernal Point... Eternity and Temporality... The Road to the “Neighbor”... The Road to One’s Own Self.

Second Sequence Zodiac and Man -- (Seven Lectures) Lecture 1: The Problem of Character... Psychologic and Astrologic Teachings... The Zodiac as Spectrum of Life... The “Experience of the Circle”... Vernal Point and Human Sacrifice... Life and Death. Lecture 2: The Arrangements of the Zodiac, Its Structure, the Twelve Segments, the Four Elementary Worlds. Lecture 3: The Four Human Types: “Earth”-man, “Water”-man, “Air”-man and “Fire”-man... “Earth”-man in general... Capricorn-, Taurus- and Virgo-man in particular. Lecture 4: “Water”-man in general... Cancer-, Scorpio- and Pisces-man in particular. Lecture 5: “Air”-man in general... Libra-, Aquarius- and Gemini-man in particular. Lecture 6: “Fire”-man in general... Aries-, Leo- and Sagittarius-man in particular. Lecture 7: The Precession of the Vernal Point and Human Development (An Expedition into the Last 6000 Years)

Volume Two: Third Sequence Part One: The World of the Planets and Man -- (Ten Lectures) Lecture 1: The Experience of World Rhythm as Messenger between Time and Eternity... The Women of Radak... The Planets as Mediators between Zodiac and Man... Planetary Clockwork and Cosmic Building Plan... The Pythagorean Triangle and Music of the Spheres... The Doctrine of the Music of the Spheres from Pythagoras to Schopenhauer. Lecture 2: World-memory... Between Non-being and Being... Overtones of God’s Word... The Numbers 3, 7 and 12... The Curtain before the Inner Sanctum... Caduceus and Rosicrucian Cosmogony... Geo-centric and Helio-centric Viewpoints... Polarity and Sexuality in the World of the Planets and in Music... Zodiac-places of the Planets, their Dignities and Weaknesses... Exaltation of the Sun and Moon. Lecture 3: Planets and Cosmic Sense-organs... 1 = 3 = 1... Polarity and Relativity... Definition of the Functions of the Seven Holy Planets... The Phoenix-bird Lecture 4: The Teachings of Ptolemy... The Planetary Symbols... Essence and Value of the Symbols... 105

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Man’s Wandering through Time... The Planetary Experience as Gradation Experience... For here we have no Continuing City. Lecture 5: The Individual in the Concert of the Stars... Sun and Moon as Representatives of the Two Poles of the Self... Conception and Birth... New-Moon- and Full-Moon-man... Solar and Lunar Eclipses... Maja -- Maria. Lecture 6: The Moon Phases... The 24 Quarter-Moon Positions and their Importance... The Burden of the Cross. Lecture 7: Moon in the 3 Fire-signs in relation to Sun. Lecture 8: Moon in the 3 Air-signs in relation to Sun. Lecture 9: Moon in the 3 Water-signs in relation to Sun. Lecture 10: Moon in the 3 Earth-signs in relation to Sun.

Third Sequence Part Two: The World of the Planets and Man -- (Eleven Lectures) Lecture 1: The Ancient Scheme of Planetary Rulerships... “Elevations” and “Falls” Critically Examined... The Recently Discovered Planets, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, and the Ancient System, comprising only seven Planets... General Remarks about the Functions of Uranus and Neptune... Transcending and Imminent Planets... The Theory of Forster. Lecture 2: The Planets and Tones... Once more the Problem of Uranus and Neptune... Uranus and the School of Life... The Seven Year Periods of Human Development... The Cosmic or Eternity-background of Everything Transitory (Neptune)... Self-concentration and Self-immolation. Lecture 3: Analysis of the Function of Mercury... Mercury as Copula between Subject and Object... The Function of Perception... Hermes Trismegistos and the Smaragdine Tablet... As Above, So Below... Logos and Human Logic... Four Ways of Logical Thinking: Inductive, Deductive, Artistic (Creative) and Moral and in relation to the Sun... Dignities and Weaknesses of Mercury... Aspects between Mercury and the Moon. Lecture 4: Analysis of the Function of Venus... Venus, one of the poles of the MarsVenus Polarity... Empedokles’ Doctrine of Friendship and Quarrel as Poles of World-sexuality... Eris and Eros... Creative Impulse and the Instrument... Bliss to be Chosen an Instrument... Scale of Love and the Sacrifice-idea... Taurus and Libra as locations of Venus’ Power, Pisces as Place of Exaltations... Venus in the Four Categories and the Twelve Signs in relation to the Sun... Aspects between Venus and Moon, Venus and Mercury. Lecture 5: Analysis of the Mars-function... The Male Form of Energy... The Moment of Decision... The Drawn Sword and the Shot Arrow... Sword and Plough... Puberty and Mars-development... Circumcision Bow and Lyre... Aries and Scorpio as Site of Mars’ Strength, Capricorn as Site of Exaltation... Mars in the Separate Categories and Signs in Relation to the Sun... Mars-aspects with Moon, Mercury and Venus. Lecture 6: Analysic of the Jupiter-function... Polarity between Jupiter and Saturn... Wordless Perception and Those Bound to the Word... Faith and Knowledge... Faith as Inspiration of Knowledge... Excursion into the Realm of Music... Planets and Sounds, the Polarity between Major and Minor (Zarlino)... Hexagram and the Tonal System... Dominant and Subdominant... 106

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Again Jupiter and Saturn as contrasts... The Above and Below of the Smaragdine Tablet... The Below a Reflection of the Above... Law and Order... Justice and Mercy... Hybris... Sagittarius and Pisces as Locale for Jupiter’s Strength, Cancer as Place of its Exaltation... Jupiter in the Signs... Aspects with Sun, Moon, Venus and Mars. Lecture 7: Analysis of the Saturn Function... Ptolemy and the Planets’ Cycles... Polarity between Sun, Moon and Saturn... Moon the Geometric Medium between Sun and Saturn... Between Past and Future... Saturn according to the Teachings of the Rosicrucians... The Publican at the Bridge-head of the Future... The Formation of Necessity into Freedom... The Struggle with Adversary... The Anti-Ego... The Borderline between Capricorn and Aquarius as the Regions of Saturn... The Burden of Past and Vice... Overcoming the Burden... Saturn in the Separate Categories and Signs... Aspects with Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter. Lecture 8: Analysis of the Uranus-function... The Uranus-problem... On the Border between the “Here” and the “Beyond”... The Stability of the Total Horoscope and Test of its Inner Compactness... Self-relation... Ego-logistic Attitude... Know thy Self... Uranus and the Old System of Astrology; this not shaken... Index of Dangers of the Uranus-function for People not yet awakened to Uranus-maturity... Uranus in the Separate Categories and Signs... Aspects with the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Lecture 9: Analysis of the Neptune-function... History of the Discovery of Neptune... Beyond the Limit of Saturn’s Orbit... The Reflected Jupiter, as Uranus is the Reflected Saturn... The Cosmic and Transcendental Experience of the Self... Self-immolation... The Planet of “Meta” =: Metaphysics, Meta-psychics, Meta-logics Meta-ethics... Four Forms of Meta-logics... Ego-logic and Cosmologic Attitude... Neptune in the Separate Categories and Signs... Aspects with Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus. Lecture 10: The Uranus-Neptune Aspects as Significators of the Temporary “Weltanschquungen” in the Respective Generations... Characteristics of the Generations from 1860 to 2000, according to the Relative Position of Uranus and Neptune. Lecture 11: The Pluto-problem... Esoteric Remarks about the Pluto Function... Pluto, the Reflected Mars... The Planet of Conscious, Purposive Self-development... Past and Future in Changing Relation... Decision of Man... Janus... Pluto in the Separate Categories and Signs... Aspects with the Rest of the Planets.

Volume Three: Fourth Sequence: Man and Earth Part One: Twelve Legends of Man’s Wanderings on Earth Rising Signs -- (Six Lectures) Lecture 1: Earth as Human Habitat... Earth and Heaven’s “Geography”... The Zodiac’s Projection upon Earth... The Horizon as Equator... The 12 so-called “Houses”... Above and Below the Horizon... Celestial and Terrestrial Heredity... Old Traditions in the Light of Modern Thinking... Interpretation of the Individual Houses according to our Theory... Man’s Wanderings on Earth. 107

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Lecture 2: The General Legend of Human Life... Another Analysis of the Separate Houses in Analogy to the Analysis of the Signs of the Zodiac... The Points of Intersection between Zodiac and Horizon... The Meaning of the Ascending Sign... The “Ascendant” Position of the Houses in relation to the Zodiac... Esoteric Significance of the Ascendant. Lecture 3: The General “Formula” of Earthly Life, according to the Position of the Ascendant... Twelve Images of Life... The Ascendants: Aries, Leo, Sagittarius. Lecture 4: The Ascendants Libra, Aquarius and Gemini. Lecture 5: The Ascendants Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces. Lecture 6: The Ascendants Capricorn, Taurus and Virgo.

Fourth Sequence: Man and Earth Part Two: Between the World of the Planets and Earth The Planets in the Houses -- (Fifteen Lectures) Lecture 1: The Three Perspectives once more... First, Second and Third Zodiac... Mutual Relations... Hierarchic Rulership of the Zodiac... New Explanation of the Houses in regard to the Second Zodiac... The Four Elements in the Third Zodiac. Lecture 2: Continuation... Psychological Meaning of the Houses... Human Roots in Earth... Man’s Attitude concerning his Terrestrial World-field. Lecture 3: The Functions of the Planets, experienced from Earth-perspective... The “Earthcoefficient” of the Separate Planets... The Aspects in the Light of the Earth-perspective... Mundane Aspects... Opposed House-groups and their Meaning. Lecture 4: The First House... Planets in the First House. Lectures 5 -- 15: Houses Two to Twelve and the Planets in them.

Fourth Sequence: Man and Earth Part Three: Fate and Destination -- (Eleven Lectures) Lecture 1: Essential Association between Fate and Destination... Readiness for Fate and External Occurrences... Fate-involvement Dream Experiences... Connection between Certain Areas of Life (Houses) in the Individual Horoscope... The Problem of the “Accidental”... What is Accidental... The Rulers of the Houses... The “Ruler of the Horoscope”... General Remarks about the Rulers of the Twelve Houses. Lecture 2: Causality and Fatality... Three Conditions of the Soul, as: Hammer, Anvil and Submission... Their Coloration in the Four Elements... “Genius” of Fate... “Paracelsus’ and Schopenhauer’s Views about this Genius... The Meaning of the Hour of Death. Lecture 3: Intelligible and Empiric Character... The Ruler of the Horoscope as Master of Personality... The Individual Planets as Rulers of the Horoscope, in general... Function of the Ruler of the Horoscope in the Houses One to Six. Lecture 4: Its Function in the Houses Seven to Twelve. Lecture 5: The Ruler of the Descendant and its General Meaning... Hammer, Anvil and Submission with regard to Descendant... The Four Elements once more... The Function of the Ruler of the Descendant in the Houses One to Six. 108

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Lecture 6: Its Function in Houses Seven to Twelve. Lecture 7: The Ruler of the Tenth House and its General Importance. Lecture 8: Its Function in the Houses. Lecture 9: The Ruler of the Fourth House and its General Importance. Lecture 10: Its Function in the Houses Lecture 11: The Rulers of the Remaining Houses in the Four Edge Houses.

Volume Four: Fifth Sequence: Man in the Concert of the Stars The Tenet of the Aspects -- (Twenty-five Lectures) Lecture 1: Construction and Constitution of the Horoscope... Constitution of the Human Organism... Eukrasy and Dyskrasy... Astrological Constitution... “Good” and “Evil” Aspects... Order of the Aspects... Theory of Kepler... Aspects and Musical Intervals... Concave-mirror Theory... Isolation and Forming of Complexes. Lecture 2: Individual Psychology and Astrological Theory of the Aspects... The Essence of the Individual Aspects... Secret Aspects... Parallel Aspects... Three Special Parallel Aspects. Lecture 3: The Conjunction... Conjunction Sun/Moon in every Individual Sign. Lecture 4: Sun/Jupiter Conjunction in the Individual Signs... Sun/Saturn Conjunction in the Individual Signs... Sun/Mercury Conjunction the Individual Signs. Lecture 5: Sun/Venus and Sun/Mars. Lecture 6: Sun/Uranus and Sun/Neptune. Lecture 7: General Remarks about the Moon Conjunctions... Moon/Mars... Moon/Venus. Lecture 8: Moon/Mercury... Moon/Saturn. Lecture 9: Moon/Jupiter... Moon/Uranus... Moon/Neptune. Lecture 10: General Remarks about the Conjunctions of Mercury. Lecture 11: Mercury/Jupiter... Mercury/Saturn. Lecture 12: Mercury/Uranus... Mercury/Neptune. Lecture 13: The Conjunctions of Venus... Venus/Neptune. Lecture 14: Venus/Jupiter... Venus/Saturn. Lecture 15: Venus/Uranus... Venus/Neptune. Lecture 16: The Conjunctions of Mars... Mars/Jupiter... Mars/Saturn. Lecture 17: Mars/Uranus... Mars/Neptune. Lecture 18: The Conjunctions of Jupiter with Saturn and Uranus... The so-called “Great” (Platonic) Conjunctions”... Jupiter/Saturn in general... The Last Jupiter/Saturn Conjunctions since 1861... Jupiter/Uranus since 1872. Lecture 19: Jupiter/Neptune Conjunctions since 1868... Saturn/Uranus 1896 -- 1898 and 1914 -- 1943... Saturn/Neptune 1881/1882 and 1917/1918. Lecture 20: The Aspect of Opposition... The Opposing Zodiac-signs... Six Groups and their Meaning... Above and Below the Horizon... Individual Oppositions... Mars-Venus, Jupiter-Mercury, Sun-Moon, Sun-Uranus, Moon-Saturn, Moon-Uranus. 109

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Lecture 21: Continuations... The Oppositions between Mars and Saturn, Mars and Jupiter Mercury-Neptune, Mars-Uranus, Venus-Jupiter, Sun-Jupiter, Moon-Venus, Venus-Saturn, Moon-Jupiter, Venus-Neptune... The “Big” Oppositions: Jupiter-Saturn 1852 -- 1930... Uranus-Jupiter 1865 -- 1933/34. Lecture 22: Square, Trine, Sextile... Complementary Aspects: Semi-square and Sequare, Half-sextile and Quincunx. Lecture 23: The Parallel Aspects. Lecture 24: The Moon Nodes... The so-called “Hyleg.” Lecture 25: Sex and the Horoscope.

Volume Five: Sixth Sequence Movement of the Stars and Course of Life -- (Thirteen Lectures) Lecture 1: Possiblity of Prediction of Fate based on the Rhythm of the Stars?... The Problem of Prophecy... Three kinds of Prophesies: that based on Mathematics, Natural-scientific Prophesy and Moral Prophesy... Astrological Prophesy, a Combination of these Three Ways... Ancient and Modern Concept of the Fate Idea... Superstition and Science.. On the Border between Both. Lecture 2: The Three Ways of Prophesy once more: their Astrological Translation into the Doctrine of Transits and Directions, the Doctrine of Consecutive Natural Periods of Life in connection with the Stellar Rhythm, Man’s Fate-maturity as Expression of his Moral Development... Individual-and-mass-fate... General Remarks about the Essence of Transits; Four Different Forms of Transits... Review of some Older Teachings about the Planetary Rhythms. Lecture 3: The Fourth Form of Transit... The Daily Transitof the Sun through the Twelve Houses... The Sun’s Yearly Orbit through the Zodiac... Solstituces and Equinoxes... Ascendant and Individual Vernal Point... The Sun Reveals... The Yearly Travel of the Sun through the Twelve Houses... The Monthly Rhythm of the Moon and its Way through the Twelve Houses... New Moon and Full Moon. Lecture 4: The Old Theory of the so-called Planetary Houses... The Solar Transits of the Individual Planetary Locations... Mercury’s Wanderings through the Twelve Houses and over the Places of the Planets. Lecture 5: Wanderings of Venus and Mars through the Twelve Houses... Transits of Venus over Planetary Places... Transits by Mars... Jupiter Transits. Lecture 6: Saturn Transits... Special Importance of its Transit over the Sun... Wanderings through the Twelve Houses and Above the Places of the Planets. Lecture 7: The Planet Uranus treated in a Similar Fashion. Lecture 8: Transits of Neptune through the Houses and above Planet-locations... Ascending and Descending Moon-nodes... Their Interdependence... Wandering through the Twelve Houses. Lecture 9: Transits over Aspect-places... Critical Periods, Critical Days and Critical Points... Demonstration on a Special Horoscope... Warning regarding False Conclusions... Reverence to a Higher Law of Maturing, of Fate-preparedness. 110

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Lecture 10: The Doctrine of the so-called Progressions... A Day equals a Year... Astronomical Reasons for this Key... Progressive Wanderings of the Ascendant through the Elements following that of Birth... Wanderings of the Ascendant through the Three Modii following the Modus of Birth... Three Tables of Human Development... Uranus-table of the Twelve times 7-year Period Change of Elements, Change of Modality... Progressive Movement of the Ascendant through Houses 1 to 4, and the Places of the Planets there located: Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars treated similarly. Lecture 11: The Ascendant moving through Houses 1 to 4 and over the places of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune... Movement of the Medium Coeli (Mid-Heaven) through the Elements and Modalities... Movement of the Medium Coeli through Houses 10 to 1 and Accidental Planetary Locations. Lecture 12: Similar Treatment of the Immum Coeli (Lowest Heaven or Nadir) regarding its Movement through Houses 4 to 7 and the Planets located there... Movement of the Descendant through Houses 7 to 10 and over the Planetary Locations therein. Lecture 13: Continuation... Progressive Transits of Ascendant and Medium Coeli over the Moon’s Nodes.

Seventh Sequence Work on One’s Own Horoscope -- (Ten Lectures) Lecture 1: The Treasure Hidden in the Vineyard... Value and VAnity of the Knowledge of One’s Own Horoscope... Wandering and Transformation of Man through the School of Life... World Development and Individual Development... At the Crossroads Hermes, Master of Change... The Four Falling Houses: 3, 6, 9 and 12... Ways of Man’s Rising above his Birth Constellation. Lecture 2: The Rulers of the Falling Houses in general... The Progression of the Houses and Man’s Natural Change in the Course of Life... Plan of the Following Examination. Lecture 3: Correspondence between Houses and Signs of the Zodiac... Transformation of the Sun; the Relations between the Solar Position of the Nativity and Ascendant... Analysis of the Sixteen Possible Cases. Lecture 4: Moon-transformation... Relation of the Moon-position in the Nativity and the Second House... Sixteen Cases. Lecture 5: The Sixteen Cases of Mercury Transformation. Lecture 6: Venus-transformations. Lecture 7: Mars-transformations. Lecture 8: Jupiter-transformations. Lecture 9: Saturn-transformations. Lecture 10: Supplement.

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