A Reading Guide for Rudolph Steiner’s lecture: GA 106 Egyptian Myths and Mysteries
We explore the stages of Earth’s evolution, from primal origins to modern times.
ARTICLE CONTENTS
Within an epoch, there will always be seven periods that exist.
The following are the seven periods of Post-Atlantis:
- India period
- Persia/Zarathustra period
- Chaldean-Egyptian-Assyrian-Babylonian period
- Greco-Roman period
- Current period
- 6th period
- 7th period (a returning to the 1st)
Steiner places our modern era as the fifth Post-Atlantean period.
Each period will share similarities with another period of that timeline:
The 1st period (India) will always share a similar connection to the 7th period.
The 2nd period (Persia/Zarathustra) will share a connection to the 6th period.
The 3rd period (Egypt) shares a connection to the 5th period (modern times).
The 4th period (Greco-Roman period) will always stand in the middle as a singular age.
This means our current period will reawaken aspects of the Egyptian period (because the 5th period shares similarities with the 3rd period).
In addition to the Post-Atlantean epoch, there are four distinct epochs that have come before our current age:
- Earth+Sun+Moon (when Earth was united with the Sun and Moon)
- Earth+Moon (Earth was united with Moon, separated from Sun)
- Lemuria (Earth separated from Moon and Sun)
- Atlantis
- Post-Atlantis (current epoch)
Steiner goes into greater detail on the development of Earth in Lecture 5 | GA 106 Egyptian Myths and Mysteries).
During Lemuria, the etheric body of man was personified by 4 archetypes: bull, lion, eagle, & man.
These archetypes still ring true to us today.
The symbol of the fish is a special one, in the context of man’s evolutionary history.
The fish represents man’s physical state in pre-Lemuria (the 2nd Epoch, or Earth+Moon):
“Here we have a period during which only the sun was withdrawn, when the plant-man had to descend gradually into the water-earth. This stage, at which man had then arrived in his body, we see preserved today in a degenerated form in fishes. The fishes that we see in the water today are relics of those men, although naturally in a decadent form.”
There is something called the “Word”or “Vach” that is mentioned by Theosophers and thinkers in history. It is often used when describing the highest levels of universal consciousness.
“The pupil saw this — not only saw it, but heard it — when he raised himself into Devachan, into the Devachanic world, for this is a world of tones. There, he heard the harmony of the spheres, of the seven planets. In the astral world he saw the picture; in the Devachanic world he heard the tone; and in the highest world he experienced the word.”
“He heard this out of the primal word Vach. This was the designation of the primal tone of creation that the pupil heard. In it he heard the entire world-evolution. The word, split into seven members, the primal word of creation, worked in the soul of the pupil; this was the primal word, which he described to the uninitiated approximately as we today would describe our world evolution.”
“The true and original human germ, the primal Vach, however, already contained the three following members in itself. Man may still expect three higher members as well, and then only will he be a true image of the Word of creation, the primal Word”
Here, we have a prime example of how cycles of time repeat themselves like fractals or imprinted patterns of a larger story. What occurs within a period of history plays out as a greater narrative, one that has been repeating itself, age after age.
“Who was it that destroyed this consciousness? It was the air-breath that entered into man — Typhon. Typhon is the name of the air-breath. The Egyptian experienced the god who came from the sun and was still in harmony with his brother, as Osiris. Typhon was the air-breath that had brought mortality to man.”
“the facts of cosmic evolution repeat themselves in man’s inner knowledge.”
Additional reading: Cosmic Memory by Rudolf Steiner (RSArchive)
Steiner discusses the arrival of Christ in the collective consciousness, during the 5th period of the Post-Atlantean epoch.
What Christ’s incarnation represented was the integration of the sun, and a return of the ascended energies that the Earth used to be in when it was first united with the sun in the first epoch.
Christ’s arrival into the collective stream prevented man from further descending into materialism and self-destruction.
the inner muse 