Theosophy of the Rosicrucian
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Cover sheet Theosophy of the Rosicrucian by RUDOLF STEINER A Course of Fourteen lectures by Rudolf Steiner: given between the 22nd of May and the 6th of June 1907, at Munich LONDON RUDOLF STEINER PRESS 1966 First Edition 1954 Second Edition 1966 Translated by M. Cotterell and D. S. Osmond from shorthand reports unrevised by the lecturer. The volume in the Complete Centenary Edition of the works of Rudolf Steiner in the original German in which the text of this lecture-course is contained, is entitled: Die Theosophie des Rosenkreuzers (No. 99 in the Bibliographical Survey, 1961) This English edition is printed by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Switzerland. All rights reserved © Rudolf Steiner Press, London MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY THE GARDEN CITY PRESS LIMITED LETCHWORTH, HERTFORDSHIRE 2 Table of contents Cover sheet..............................................................................................................................1 Contents...................................................................................................................................4 Title Notes................................................................................................................................5 I: The New Form of Wisdom...................................................................................................6 II: The Ninefold Constitution of Man.....................................................................................13 III: The Elemental World and the Heaven World. Waking Life, Sleep and Death..................20 IV: The Descent to a New Birth.............................................................................................26 V: Man’s Communal Life Between Death and a New Birth. Birth into the Physical World...32 VI: The Law of Destiny.........................................................................................................38 VII: The Technique of Karma................................................................................................46 VIII: Human Consciousness in the Seven Planetary Conditions............................................53 IX: Planetary Evolution I.......................................................................................................59 X: Planetary Evolution II.......................................................................................................67 XI: Evolution of Mankind on the Earth. I..............................................................................74 XII: Evolution of Mankind on the Earth. II............................................................................81 XIII: The Future of Man.........................................................................................................88 XIV: The Nature of Initiation.................................................................................................96 3 Contents I: The New Form of Wisdom May 22, 1907 II: The Ninefold Constitution of Man May 25, 1907 III: The Elemental World and the Heaven World. Waking May 26, 1907 Life, Sleep and Death. IV: The Descent to a New Birth May 28, 1907 V: Mans Communal Life Between Death and a New Birth. May 29, 1907 Birth into the Physical World. VI: The Law of Destiny May 30, 1907 VII: The Technique of Karma May 31, 1907 VIII: Human Consciousness in the Seven Planetary June 01, 1907 Conditions IX: Planetary Evolution I June 02, 1907 X: Planetary Evolution II June 03, 1907 XI: Evolution of Mankind on the Earth. I June 04, 1907 XII: Evolution of Mankind on the Earth. II June 04, 1907 XIII: The Future of Man June 05, 1907 XIV: The Nature of Initiation June 06, 1907 4 Title Notes AT first glance the title of this book may be somewhat misleading for the British reader. It may suggest to him associations with Anglo-Indian Theosophy and the Theosophical Society founded by H. P. Blavatsky. Rudolf Steiner, however, uses the term independently and with different and much wider connotation. In earlier centuries, particularly in Central Europe, “Theosophy” was a recognised section of Philosophy and even of Theology. Jacob Boehme was known as the great “theosopher”. In English the term goes back to the seventeenth century. Ultimately it leads us back to St. Paul who says (I Cor. ii, 6-7): “Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect: yet not the wisdom of this world ... But we speak the wisdom of God (Greek ‘Theosophia’) in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world unto our glory.” All “theosophy” implies a knowledge of the spiritual world, and such knowledge has been attained in different ways at different epochs of man's history. The Rosicrucian way referred to in the title is the way suited to modern man in this age of world knowledge and individual freedom. 5 I: The New Form of Wisdom May 22, 1907 THE TITLE of this course of lectures has been announced as “Theosophy according to the Rosicrucian Method.” By this is meant the wisdom that is primeval, yet ever new, expressed in a form suitable for the present age. The mode of thought we are about to study has existed since the fourteenth century, A.D. in these lectures; however, it is not my intention to speak of the history of Rosicrucianism. As you know, a certain kind of geometry, which includes, for instance, the Pythagorean Theorem, is taught in elementary schools of the present day. The rudiments of geometry are learnt quite independently of how geometry itself actually came into being, for what does the pupil who is learning the rudiments of geometry today know about Euclid? Nevertheless it is Euclid's geometry that is being taught. Only much later, when the substance has been mastered, do students discover, perhaps from a history of the sciences, something about the form in which the teaching that is accessible even in elementary schools today originally found its way into the evolution of humanity. As little as the pupil who learns elementary geometry today is concerned with the form in which it was originally given to mankind by Euclid, as little need we concern ourselves with the question of how Rosicrucianism developed in the course of history. Just as the pupil learns geometry from its actual tenets, so shall we learn to know the nature of this Rosicrucian wisdom from its intrinsic principles. Those who are acquainted merely with the outer history of Rosicrucianism as recorded in literature know very little about the real content of Rosicrucian Theosophy. Rosicrucian Theosophy has existed since the fourteenth century as something that is true, quite apart from its history, Just as geometrical truths exist independently of history. Only a fleeting reference, therefore, will here be made to certain matters connected with the history of Rosicrucianism. In the year 1459, a lofty, spiritual Individuality, incarnate in the human personality who bears in the world the name of Christian Rosenkreuz, appeared as the teacher, to begin with of a small circle of initiated pupils. In the year 1459, within a strictly secluded spiritual Brotherhood, the Fraternitas Roseae Crucis, Christian Rosenkreuz was raised to the rank of Eques lapidis aurei, Knight of the Golden Stone. What this means will become clearer to us in the course of these lectures. The exalted Individuality who lived on the physical plane in the personality of Christian Rosenkreuz worked as leader and teacher of the Rosicrucian stream again and again in the same body, as occultism puts it. The meaning of the expression “again and again in the same body” will also be explained when we come to speak of the destiny of the human being after death. Until far into the eighteenth century, the wisdom of which we are here speaking was preserved within a strictly secret Brotherhood, bound by inviolate rules which separated its members from the exoteric world. In the eighteenth century it was the mission of this Brotherhood to allow certain esoteric truths to flow, by spiritual ways, into the culture of Middle Europe; and thus we see flashing up in an exoteric 6 culture many things that are clothed, it is true, in an exoteric form, but which are, in reality, nothing else than outer expressions of esoteric wisdom. In the course of the centuries many people have endeavoured, in one way or another, to discover the Rosicrucian wisdom, but they did not succeed. Leibnitz tried in vain to get at the source of Rosicrucian wisdom. But this Rosicrucian wisdom lit up like a flash of lightning in an exoteric work which appeared when Lessing was approaching the close of his life. I refer to Lessing's Education of the Human Race. If we do but read it between the lines, then (but only if we are esotericists) we shall recognise in its unusual utterances that it is an external expression of Rosicrucian wisdom. This wisdom lit up in outstanding grandeur in the man in whom European culture and, indeed international culture, was reflected at the turn of the eighteenth century — in Goethe. In comparatively early years Goethe had come into contact with a source of Rosicrucianism and he then experienced, in some degree, a very remarkable and lofty Initiation. To speak of Initiation in connection with Goethe may easily be misleading; at this point therefore it will be well to indicate something of what happened to Goethe during the period after he had left the Leipzig University and before he went to Strassburg. He passed through an experience which penetrated very deeply into his soul and expressed itself outwardly in the