Testament of Astrology 1

The Testament of Astrology - 2002, All Rights Reserved
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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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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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Table of Contents
Foreword.................................................................................. 06
Authors 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 Mans Development
The Riddle of the Sphinx
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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
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
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 Adlers work in English would not exist without her
devotion and steadfast attention to each detail. It is further dedicated to Oskar Adlers wife,
Paula, who served in every respect as Oskars 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. Adlers 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.
Adlers 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 Zdenkas
letters to me from 1978 to 1988. They express how she saw her role as Dr. Adlers
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. Adlers 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
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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. Adlers teachings. It gave me
strength to cope with many difficulties-----and I am forever grateful. This realiza-
tion, and this gratitude, and maybe, an impulse from the beyond, from Dr.
Adlers 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 dont remember when, but it must have been around 1959 or
so. My husband was still alive, and rather skeptical. Youll 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. Adlers wisdom from becoming lost, con-
taminated or diluted. I cant 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, dont
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. Adlers 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 sculptors 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. Adlers
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.
Adlers spirit who led to our thus meeting, and who inspired you, as I was inspired.
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[1987] Although I did not seem to profit by Dr. Adlers 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. Adlers 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. Adlers 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. Adlers 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 dont 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, dont 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 astrologys 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;
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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 artists and the scientists
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 world-
picture, 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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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
Authors Introduction
Authors Introduction
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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 todays 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 todays 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 todays 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 sciences 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 predecessors
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
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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,
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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.
_________________________________________________________________________
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Translators note: Analogous to Kants Critique of Pure Reason. Editors 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.
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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-be-
repeated 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 humankinds 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 astrologys 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 individuals 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 ones fate!
This tentative definition already indicates that the science of astrology cannot follow the
path of todays 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. Todays 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
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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
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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 astrologys 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 ones 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
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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! Everyones self, with all that moves and fills it,
is ones 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 Goethes
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
18
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 blossoms essence. Or, think of commiseration, alien
misery, which becomes our own-----the esoteric knowledge of anothers 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 sciences 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, where-
upon 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 Druids 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 five-
pointed star, which again encloses a five-angled figure where the diagonals can be drawn
again, and so forth, ad infinitum.
19
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
20
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 bodys 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 cells 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
21
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. Earths 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 Earths body, participating in its immense
life. Inside Earths 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 Gods power lived in us,
How could the Divine delight us so?
~ Goethe, Plotin
_________________________________________________________________________
3
Editors 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.
22
To summarize, we have used Rama Krishnas 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 out-
ward 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:
23
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 Earths 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 ones 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 Krishnas 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 wisdoms last comforting conclusion (resulting
from this view of the world) that our own thoughts and feelings are but vain illusions-----
24
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 Beethovens 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. Isnt 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 Katexochen-----the knowledge
of the vast cosmic interrelationships in which each of us in included. We are everlasting
members of the immeasurable universe.
Let Goethes answer to Albert von Haller, (who thought the road into the core of nature
25
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,
Dont 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 everyones ego, immediate and forever united) as a
guide to humanitys oldest science-----astrology.
26
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 astrologys 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 todays 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 persons 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 all-
feeling 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
27
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 sciences 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.
28
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 Suns 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 Saturns birth will remain in this planets 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 Suns 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 Earths
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 Keplers works) pointed to
the fact that this conception plays an important role in todays 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: C
6
H
4
Cl
2
, according to the different mutual positions of the
29
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 Earths evolution, owning to the
individuality of the person brought into existence at this moment as a lasting witness of
Earths 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 skins 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
30
enormous giants 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 head-
and-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.
31
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 worlds 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.
32
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
Earths 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 Earths 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,
Ptolemys arguments would then have been irrefutable. The immobile Earth as a given was
Ptolemys 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? Couldnt 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.
33
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
=
arch-being
2
=
being reflected in itself
3
= 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
=
father
2 = mother
3
=
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
34
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 ones 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.
35
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 indi-
vidual 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 Ibykus
4
. 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 ones 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.
36
Well, the purest form of this process of soaking with ones 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 dreams 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 dreamers soul and contain the
unsettled remains of ones entire past as an unfinished remnant, going as far back as ones
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 persons 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 ones 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 ones own strength.
With this, we have arrived at a thought beyond the realm of astrology, and concerned with
humanitys role in the universe.
37
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 sufferers 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.
38
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.
39
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 presenti-
ment 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.
40
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
41
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 cant 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 eggs 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 Kants 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
42
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
Haeckels 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 animal
6
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 Gods 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 todays 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
_______________________________________________________________________________
6
The German word for zodiac, translated literally, is animal circle.
43
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. Darwins 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 Darwins 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 humanitys 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
44
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 resem-
blance 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 earths 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 cottages
7
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.
45
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 essay
8
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 lets 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
46
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 Suns 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 humanitys 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: LHomme 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, Malebranche
10
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
Editors note: One can only imagine how Dr. Adler might perceive the capacities of computers!
10
Malebranches 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.
47
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 todays 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 self-
nucleus, 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 humanitys 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.
48
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 scorpions 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-star-
sky 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,
49
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 natures 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
Earths 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.
50
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 todays 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
51
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 Volneys trend of thinking. In reality, the order of the
________________________________________________________________________________
11
See Figure 3 on page 64.
52
sectors of the Zodiac is as little artificial as is the order of the rainbows 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 Zodiacs 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
53
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 plant-
body 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 Agrigent
12
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.
54
to think that Empedocles understood these elements to be something similar to modern
chemistrys 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 worlds 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 - the solid
WATER - the liquid
AIR - the gaseous
FIRE - 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 Earths 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 Earths 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 Earths psychic, internal space, then the four
55
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 Earths crust reveals that Earths 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 Earths 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
Earths construction, we thus pass through these different levels, and thus humanitys 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 humankinds 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 Earths 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
56
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 - Taurus or bull - Earth
The wings of the sphinx - Scorpio or eagle - Water
The claws of the sphinx - Leo or lion - Fire
The head of the sphinx - Aquarius or man - 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
57
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 Kants 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 egoistic
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,
58
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 existences
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)
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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 assimila-
tion 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 incorpo-
ration 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 one-
ness, 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.
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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:
63
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.
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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 succes-
sion 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 ones 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.
65
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 D E F G A B
Mars Moon Mercury Saturn Jupiter Venus 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 funda-
mentally 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.
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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 seven-
stepped 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
67
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 Kants cosmogony
and Haeckels 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.
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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, inter-
mingling 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 admis-
sion 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 dont 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:
69
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 works
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 dowry
14
for the next day. It is
like a wedding present, donated for the marriage that took place between our yesterdays
self with the one of the day before yesterday, who had to present his or her days 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 yesterdays ancestor, to die again
every evening.
_________________________________________________________________________________
14
Dowry, in German, is Morgengabe--a gift of the morning.
70
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 existences cycles. How ever this two-phase experience is in-
wardly revealed to us, there is exposed in it that which corresponds to the two counter-
poles 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 arch-
quality 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
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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 Brahmas Night
(Para-Brahman), and Brahmas 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 semi-
circle 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 mothers 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
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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.
Humanitys 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 everyones 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
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distances between the planets and the Sun may be presented in a way that actually reflects
those numerical relations:
Mercury: 4
Venus: 4 + 3
Earth: 4 + 2 x 3 x 1
Mars: 4 + 2 x 3 x 2
- - : 4 + 2 x 3 x 4
Jupiter: 4 + 2 x 3 x 8
Saturn: 4 + 2 x 3 x 16
The distance between Sun and Moon was assumed to be 100, which resulted in the above-
cited 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, Keplers lifes work resulted: Harmonices Mundi
(Harmony of the Universe). The age-old doctrine of the music of the spheres, rejuvenated
by Keplers 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, (WORLD MUSIC)
Fulfilling its predestined journey,
With march of thunder moves along. (THE COSMIC NUMBERS)
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. (DISCIPLESHIP)
GABRIEL:
And swift, beyond where knowledge ranges
Earths splendor whirls in circling flight; (ROTATION)
A paradise of brightness changes (TWO-PHASE-CURRENT)
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To awful shuddering depths of night. (DAY AND NIGHT)
The sea foams up, widespread and surging
Against the rocks 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 thunders way;
Yet, Lord, Thy angels are revering (THE HIGHER BEINGS BEYOND EARTH)
The gentle progress of Thy day.
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Sixth Lecture
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 individuals astrological constitution. To
become conscious of this astrological constitution, to recreate it in ones 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 individuals
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 individuals future,
starting at this moment. It is this borderline of ones now which separates, like the
geographical horizon of ones 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 ones 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
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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-star-
sky 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 Earth-
bound 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, humanity-
perspective! Only gradually do we learn to separate the three elements from each other, do
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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 persons 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.
Todays 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 ones emotional and
mental life. The moment of ones birth corresponds in the mental life of Earth to that
process in an individuals mental life, by which one arrives at the point of uttering the
thought, which was hitherto carried in ones 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 lifes
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.
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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 Earths 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 mothers 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 individuals 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.
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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 childs 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 childs
birth exactly in the east or west horizon; and that point of the Zodiac, where the Moon is
standing at the childs 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 isnt 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 ones family tree. It thus becomes family and tribal history, finally ending in the
darkness of the historical past that can no more be penetrated.
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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 worlds 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 mankinds 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 horo-
scope at the moment of birth? Yes, this horoscope with everything that makes up its
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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:
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.
Adams image lies in the Zodiac, according to the first, the eternity perspective. In Adam,
the heavenly archetype of man, lays mans 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.
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This cover, hiding half the starry sky is the Earths 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 Earths 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 filters 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 Earths 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 Earths 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?
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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 Goethes 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 Suns 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 persons horoscope has any meaning at all, it can only be that
it represents ones life task: to progress, by way of transformation from Earths child into the
pure mirror of the universe-----free from all hereditary sediment, and thereby to fulfill ones
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 Earths evolution as
well, by its alchemistic exchange of lower organized matter into a higher organized one.
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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 plants 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 Earths 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-----isnt 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
ones vocation.
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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 ones 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 ones 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 humankinds 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 Gods 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 individuals 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:
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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
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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 naivet. 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 struggles 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 ones 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 selfs 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
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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
Buddhas 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 todays 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 todays
contemplations. We shall clarify astrologys 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 natives 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 ones 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
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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 Earths 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, Earths two poles
are formed, and between them, in equal distance from them, is Earths equator. We call the
duration of this axial rotation of Earth a day. We call the projection of the Earths 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 Earths rotation on its axis, the celestial orb seems to turn around the Earth
once daily. Because of the Earths 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 Earths 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 Earths axis were perpendicular to its plane of orbit, then the ecliptic and the celestial
equator would coincide.
However, the Earths 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 Earths 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.
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This circling of the Earths 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 selfs 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 Suns 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 heavens
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 humanitys 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-star-
distance, 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 fixed-
star-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
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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 ones 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 Earths surface of ones birthplace, which seems at first to be the center
of ones 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
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parts the above and the below for the individual humans 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 ones 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 Earths 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 ones birthplace. Continuing to use the language of
music, we may call this ones 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 individuals life. This is
the analogy of the tonality perception, or what we called at the beginning of our probing,
the fate-capacity: the individuals 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
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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 Earths 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 Earths thought,
freed at birth, ones 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 impossi-
bility 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
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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 ones 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 ones nativity will be called to fulfillment; when what had been
merely potential previously can become actuality during ones 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.
Mans 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 heavens 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 persons 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 ones character in connection with the fate-
capacity, 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 mans 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:
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Your faith has been the luck allotted you.
The minutes 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 two-
phase 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,
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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 Krishnas 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
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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? Isnt 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 dreamers 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
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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 over-
tones, 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 others, 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 Ibsens 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.
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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 Earths 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 authors personal
correspondence with those who knew Dr. Adler intimately and includes rare letters
detailing his-----and Paula (Freud) Adlers-----experiences after fleeing Austria. This unusual
biography is a perfect companion to Oskar Adlers 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.

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.
105
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 Ones 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 Eter-
nity... The Women of Radak... The Planets as Mediators between Zodiac and Man... Plan-
etary 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 Gods 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...
106
Mans 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 Tab-
let... 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 Mars-
Venus 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...
107
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 Jupiters 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 be-
tween Sun, Moon and Saturn... Moon the Geometric Medium between Sun and Saturn... Be-
tween 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 Saturns 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 Mans Wanderings on Earth
Rising Signs -- (Six Lectures)
Lecture 1: Earth as Human Habitat... Earth and Heavens Geography... The Zodiacs
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...
Mans Wanderings on Earth.
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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.
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...
Mans Attitude concerning his Terrestrial World-field.
Lecture 3: The Functions of the Planets, experienced from Earth-perspective... The Earth-
coefficient 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.
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
Schopenhauers 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.
109
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.
110
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, Mans Fate-maturity as Expression of his Moral Develop-
ment... Individual-and-mass-fate... General Remarks about the Essence of Transits; Four Dif-
ferent 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 Suns 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... Mercurys 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.
111
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 Descen-
dant through Houses 7 to 10 and over the Planetary Locations therein.
Lecture 13: Continuation... Progressive Transits of Ascendant and Medium Coeli over
the Moons Nodes.
Seventh Sequence
Work on Ones Own Horoscope -- (Ten Lectures)
Lecture 1: The Treasure Hidden in the Vineyard... Value and VAnity of the Knowledge
of Ones 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 Mans Rising above his
Birth Constellation.
Lecture 2: The Rulers of the Falling Houses in general... The Progression of the Houses
and Mans 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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