An Outline of Occult Science

by Rudolf Steiner

To the Egyptian, the earth was a field of work, given to him in a condition which he must, by his own powers of intelligence, so transform that it should bear the impress of human power. From Atlantis, oracle-sanctuaries, originating chiefly from the Mercury oracle, had been transplanted to Egypt. Yet there were others as well,—for example, Venus oracles.

In that which was fostered, in their oracle-sanctuaries, among the Egyptian peoples, the germ of a [pg 259] new culture was planted. This germ proceeded from a great leader who had received his training in the Persian Zarathustra Mysteries, who was the reincarnated individuality of a disciple of the great Zarathustra himself. Let us call him “Hermes.” Through acceptance of the Zarathustra Mysteries he was able to find the right way to guide the Egyptian people. This people had so turned its attention to the physical sense-world, during earthly life between birth and death that it was able only to a limited extent to directly behold the spiritual world behind the physical phenomena, although it recognized the spiritual laws of the world. Thus it could not think of the spiritual world as the one in which it could live while on earth, but on the other hand, it could be shown how man will live, in the disembodied state after death in the world of those spirits who, during earthly life, appear through their impressions upon the sense-world.

Hermes taught that man qualifies himself for union with spiritual forces after death, in proportion as he uses his powers on earth for furthering the purposes of those spiritual forces. Those especially, who had worked most zealously in this way between birth and death would be united with the lofty Sun-God Osiris. On the Chaldaic-Babylonian side of this stream of civilization the direction of the human mind toward the physical sense-world was more conspicuous than on the Egyptian side. The laws of that world were being investigated and from its reflection in the sense-world these people [pg 260] looked up to the corresponding spiritual prototypes. Yet in many respects the nation remained wedded to physical things. Instead of the star-spirit, the star was put first, and instead of other spiritual beings their earthly counterparts were made prominent. Only the leaders attained to really deep knowledge concerning the laws of the supersensible world and its connection with the physical. The contrast between the knowledge of the Initiates and the perverted beliefs of the people became more apparent in these nations than anywhere else.

Very different conditions existed in those parts of Southern Europe and western Asia where the fourth epoch of post-Atlantean civilization was unfolded. In occult science, it is called the Greco-Roman period. Descendants of peoples inhabiting widely distant parts of the older world had met together in these countries. Here were oracle-sanctuaries which conformed to the various Atlantean oracles; here were people with the heritage of ancient clairvoyance as a natural gift, and others who were able to acquire it, with comparative ease, by training. The traditions of the ancient Initiates were not only preserved in special places, but worthy successors to them arose, who attracted disciples capable of rising to lofty levels of spiritual vision. Moreover, these races had within them the impulse to create a domain within the sense-world which expresses the spiritual in perfect form through the physical.

Greek art is, among other things, a result of this impulse. It is only necessary to gaze with the eye [pg 261] of the spirit upon a Greek temple, in order to see that in this marvel of art, material substance is so worked upon by man that it appears in every detail as the expression of spirit. The Greek temple is the “House of the Spirit.” One sees in its form what otherwise only The Spiritual eye of the seer perceives. The temple of Zeus-(or Jupiter) is so constructed as to present to the physical eye a fitting shrine for what the guardian of the Zeus-(or Jupiter) Initiation saw with spiritual vision. And it is the same with all Greek art. The wisdom of the Initiates flowed in mysterious ways into poets, artists, and thinkers. The Mysteries of the Initiates are found again, in the form of conceptions and ideas, in the systems of thought by which ancient Greek philosophers interpreted the universe. The influences of the spiritual life, the Mysteries of the Asiatic and African sanctuaries of Initiation, flowed into these nations and to their leaders. The great Indian teachers, the associates of Zarathustra, and the followers of Hermes had attracted disciples. These, or their successors, thereupon founded sanctuaries for Initiation, in which the ancient wisdom was revived in a new form. These were the Mysteries of antiquity. Here disciples were prepared to be brought into the condition of consciousness through which they might attain vision of the spiritual world.[23] From these sanctuaries of Initiation [pg 262] the Mysteries flowed forth to those who cultivated Spiritual Mysteries in Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy. (Important centres of Initiation were formed in the Greek world in the Orphic and Eleusinian Mysteries. In the Pythagorean School of wisdom, lingered the effects of the great wisdom-teachings and methods of past ages. On his distant travels, Pythagoras had been initiated into the secrets of the most varied kinds of Mysteries.)

But human life between birth and death in the post-Atlantean period had also an influence on the disembodied state after death. The more man's interests were fixed on the physical sense-world, the greater was the possibility of Ahriman gaining a hold upon the soul during earthly life and retaining his power of it after death. This danger was least among the peoples of ancient India, for during earthly life they had felt the physical sense-world to be an illusion, and thus had eluded the power of Ahriman after death. The danger for the primitive Persian peoples, who between birth and death had fixed their attention, with great interest, upon the physical sense-world was much greater. They would have largely fallen a prey to Ahriman's wiles had not Zarathustra pointed out, emphatically through his teaching concerning the Light of God, that behind the physical sense-world there exists the world of the Spirits of Light. In proportion to the ability of the people of this civilization to receive something into their souls out of the world of thought thus created, were they able to escape Ahriman's clutches [pg 263] during earthly life, and thereby elude him in the life after death, during which they were to be prepared for a new earth-life. The power of Ahriman in earthly life tends to make the physical sense-existence appear to be the only one, and thus to bar the way to any vista of a spiritual world. His power in the spiritual world leads man to complete isolation, and to the concentration of all his interest upon himself. Those who, at the time of death, are in Ahriman's power, are born again as egoists.

It is now possible for occult science to describe life between death and a new birth as it is, provided the Ahrimanic influence has, to a certain degree, been overcome. It is in this sense that it has been described by the author in the first chapter of this book as well as in other writings. And it must be described in this way if that which can be experienced by man during this form of existence is to be visualized and if he has attained to purely spiritual perception for that which really exists. The degree to which the individual experiences this, depends upon the extent to which he has overcome the Ahrimanic influence.

Man is approaching nearer and nearer to what it is possible for him to become in the spiritual world. How this progress is thwarted by other influences must however be clearly brought out in our consideration of the course of human evolution.

During the Egyptian period Hermes taught the people to prepare themselves during earth-life, for communion with the Spirit of Light. But because [pg 264] at that time human interests, between birth and death, were already so constituted that it was only possible to a slight degree to see through the veil of the physical sense-world, therefore the spiritual vision of the soul after death was also clouded and the perception of the world of light remained dim.

The obscuration of the spiritual world after death reached a climax in the souls who passed into the disembodied state out of a body belonging to the Greco-Roman civilization. During their earthly life they had brought to perfection the cultivation of physical sense-existence, and had thus condemned themselves to a shadowy existence after death. Hence the Greek felt life after death to be a shadowy existence, and it is not mere rhetoric but the realization of truth when the hero of that time, who is given up to the life of the senses, says, “Better a beggar on earth than a king in the realm of shades.” All this was still more marked in those Asiatic peoples who had fixed their attention with veneration and worship on material images instead of on their spiritual archetypes. A large proportion of mankind was in this condition at the time of the Greco-Roman era of civilization. It can be seen how man's mission in post-Atlantean times, which consisted in the conquest of the physical sense-world, must necessarily lead to estrangement from the spiritual world. Thus greatness in one respect necessarily involves deterioration in another.