Ringing down to us from the ancient mysteries, this phrase declares that nothing has ever existed in all of creation that was not first prefigured in the patterns of the spiritual world. All phenomena are but shadows of higher reality. Not even so much as a fleeting thought comes into being otherwise. Until this insight is absorbed into the very fabric of the soul, ascribing all creation to the Word of God, to Christ, while ultimately correct (Jn 1,3; 1 Cor 8,6; Col 1,16; Heb 1,2), reveals no depth of comprehension.

"As Above, So Below" is an abridgement of the longer expression, "That which is above is like to that which is below, and that which is below is like to that which is above." The Corpus Hermeticum of Hermes Trismegistus began with these words.¹ In keeping with the practices of the mysteries, it was not reduced to writing until much later, but clearly it purports to reflect what came down from the Egyptian Hermes of far earlier times. Steiner tells us that Hermes was the seminal, spiritually perceptive personality of the Chaldo-Egyptian Cultural Age, for which destiny the astral body of the prehistoric Zarathustra had been imparted to him.²

The substance of fundamentalism in religious persuasions is that it professes to take its sacred organic writings (e.g., the Bible, Torah or Quran) literally. Moreover, in doing so it places upon such words its own interpretation to the exclusion of all other. While interpretation normally requires going outside the bounds of a word itself, the fundamentalist asserts that anything outside the bounds of the literal word, as so interpreted, is subject to error and thus not to be considered. It is interesting, in passing, that Steiner also insists that the Bible is literally true word for word. However, he points out that we have no translations today that are accurate, word for word.³ And even then we must first understand what the words mean before we ascribe literal truth to them. A metaphor or allegory can be just as "literally" true as pedestrian prose. And then there is the fact that the nature of scripture is to have different levels of meaning, the higher almost always throwing quite different, and more resplendent, light than the lower.

The irony of all this is that, at least in the case of Christians, Jews and Muslims, what we call literalism actually blinks at those parts of their scripture that gnaw away its very foundations. Consider the second commandment given to Moses on Mount Sinai:

"You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above." (Ex 20,4; Deut 5,8)

In "Blood" we will see how the commandment, "Thou shall not kill" (Ex 20,13; Deut 5,17) is to change in meaning over time as human consciousness evolves. In his highest teachings, those from the spiritual mountain (Mt 5,21-48), Christ himself demonstrated this convincingly. The same could be said with respect to essentially all the commandments of Moses, including specifically this one about graven images.⁴ Moses was an initiate of the ancient mysteries (of both Egypt and Midian). Initiates taught and governed, but did not write. We have seen that the commandments that were graven (cf. Ex 32,16) upon the "tables of stone" were perceptions in the mineralized brain of Moses, and that these were not even given to the people until much later when they were in the Plains of Moab.⁵ Even then they were probably not written down, as we know it, for centuries (cf. Ex 24,4a).

Ask yourself what the Bible means by the fact that Moses, seeing the disinclination of the people to spirituality, was unable to deliver to them the message written by the hand of God, thus breaking it at the foot of the mountain (Ex 32,19). These first tablets were the revelation to Moses of divine insight (Ex 31,18 and 32,15-16). When he saw the people were not yet ready for this, he had to write it into his memory so as to deliver it to them (orally) much later on the Plains of Moab (Ex 34,27-28) in what would eventually become the "second law," or Deuteronomy.

In the preceding footnote, we saw that the giving of the law by God was threefold. If we look back and consider it carefully, we can see that the first giving was in the mental perception of it by Moses, a function of the astral body; the second was in his committing it to memory, a function of the etheric body; and the third was in the stone tablets written by the "finger of God," its implantation in the physical body ("ark") of the people. This can be an awesome recognition.⁶

That the "tablets of stone" were not external to the human brain is made clear by the meaning of the "finger of God" that wrote them (Ex 31,18). The phrase "finger of God" is used sparingly, but significantly, in both the Old and New Testaments, and can be seen especially in the light of Philo's teachings, to be something other than the cutting of ordinary rock such as is done on tombstones.⁷

How clearly Paul points out the fact that the written word itself becomes a graven image when Christ is understood in the human heart. Paul's words clearly show an evolving human consciousness in understanding what was given to Moses on the mountain. See 2 Cor 3; also Jer 31,33 and Jn 16,12.

That "the Word of God" is higher than the words of the Bible need hardly be pointed out (Jn 1,1), and that "the law" of God is higher than the words of the Torah Paul also makes clear (Heb 10,1). That the second commandment, against making any "likeness of anything that is in heaven above," applies to "the Word of God" seems eminently clear. To claim the written word, the Bible itself, as "the Word of God" must be seen as blasphemy.⁸ As much as we cherish it, we cannot lose sight of the essential point. Even the Bible has the mark of Ahriman (Satan) impressed upon it, not upon its essential message (for it tells us these things itself), but rather upon the vehicle by which it had to be delivered to humanity due to the hardened and materialized condition of humanity in the post-Atlantean Epoch.⁹