Spiritual Economy, Page 3

Some of that wisdom began to be revealed in the Ancient Persian Cultural Age (see I-1, I-2, I-3). As Steiner tells us in SE, Lect. 3, the founder of that culture, the great ancient Zarathustra, was “the most important disciple of the Great Initiate of the Sun Oracle” and hence able to see radiating from the Sun the “Great Aura,” or “Ahura Mazdao,” by which the flow of evolution was made possible. Zarathustra initiated his close disciples into the great Mysteries of the world, and two of these disciples are of special significance. To the first, Zarathustra transmitted the wisdom of “clairvoyance in the astral body, as well as the ability to perceive in one’s present time frame simultaneously everything that is happening and all the mysteries spread out in both physical and spiritual space.” To the second, Zarathustra transmitted “the power to read the Akashic Chronicle, and this is nothing less than the clairvoyant power of the etheric body, enabling the human being to perceive the successive phases of evolution in time.” The first disciple was reincarnated as Hermes, or Hermes Trismegistos, the founder of Egyptian culture, and, through the process of spiritual economy, “the astral body of Zarathustra was transmitted to Hermes so that he could proclaim the message of higher worlds and their mysteries and incorporate them into Egyptian culture.. . . Hermes wore Zarathustra’s astral body as if it were a garment.” The other disciple was reincarnated as Moses, and he received the etheric body of Zarathustra, but a special event had to occur to make this possible.

The forces of Zarathustra’s etheric body had to be awakened in this reborn disciple when he was a very small child, that is before his own individual development could come into play. For this reason, the child was placed into an ark of bulrushes that was then put into the water [Ex 2,1-10], so that he was completely cut off from the restof the world and was unable to interact with it. That is when the forces of Zarathustra’s etheric body that had been woven into him germinated and . . . became illuminated.

The Ego of Zarathustra also had many reincarnations,⁴ including as Zarathas (Zoroaster) in Babylon where, according to Steiner ( The Gospel of St. Matthew [GSMt], Lect. 2), he was the teacher of Pythagoras and the “middle period prophets.”⁵ And we know from “The Nativity” above that all of these higher elements of Zarathustra returned again into the Solomon Jesus child of Matthew’s Gospel.

So far, we have seen how the principle of spiritual economy works in the individual from one incarnation to the next, and how it works between great initiate leaders and others who come later. In Lect. 3 Steiner goes on to tell us how it also works in a third way, from higher spiritual beings into humanity. The primary example he gives is that of Noah’s son Shem (Gen 6,10; see also BFS, Chap. 11). Here it might be well first to note that in I-43 the fifth “sub-race” of the Atlantean “root race” is the original “Semites,” and to be aware that Steiner tells us (e.g., The Apocalypse of St. John [ASJ], Lect. 8) that it was this sub-race, that of Manu (Noah), that carried (i.e., preserved the good from) the Atlantean Epoch’s culture to the present Aryan (post-Atlantean) Epoch. In like manner, the sixth (Slavic) sub-race of the Aryan root race will carry Aryan culture over to the Sixth Epoch and the seventh sub-race of that Epoch will carry humanity’s accomplishments over to the Seventh Epochwhence, as the final fruit of the Physical Condition of Form at the last “Trumpet,” it will lead humanity toward that heavenly condition which becomes the “Seed” for the Jupiter state after the end of Earth evolution (see I-1, I-2 and I-3).