Cultural epochs

The post-Atlantean age (7227 BC - 7893 AD) is the fifth main age of the physical evolution of the earth. Initially it was also called the fifth root race according to the now obsolete theosophical usage of Rudolf Steiner. It began after the sinking of Atlantis and will end with the war of all against all. It is divided into seven cultural epochs, each lasting about 2160 years, and serves above all the development of the human soul. At present we are living in the 5th post-Atlantean cultural epoch, the consciousness soul age.

When, in the course of the initiation, the spiritual researcher begins to survey the development of the world, the first thing that opens up to him is the view of the seven cultural epochs into which the post-Atlantean period is divided. This is how Rudolf Steiner describes it, for example, in his lectures on the Apocalypse of St. John:

„We think of man as having just reached that stage of initiation where that has happened to him which was described at the end of the last lecture. We think of him just at the border where, between the finest entities of our physical world and the next higher, the astral world, he is allowed to stand as on a peak and look down. What can man behold on this first summit of initiation?

The subdivision of the post-Atlantean age into seven cultural epochs (original drawing from GA 104, p. 67).

There he sees in his spirit everything that has happened, according to his inner being, since the Atlantic flood destroyed the old Atlantis and the post-Atlantean man came into existence. There he sees how the cycles of culture follow each other until the time when also our age will take a downfall in order to bring up a new one. By the water of the Atlantic flood the old Atlantis has perished. Through what we call the war of all against all, through terribly devastating moral entanglements, our age will find its downfall. And this great age from the Atlantean flood to the mighty war of all against all, we divide again into seven successive main cultural epochs, into seven cultural periods, as can be seen from the above scheme. At one end we think of the great Atlantic flood, at the opposite end the great world war, and this we divide into seven sub-ages, into seven cultural epochs. The whole epoch containing these seven sub-ages is again the seventh part of a longer age, so that you have to imagine seven such links as our age between flood and war, two forward, after the great war, and four backward before the Atlantic flood. Our age, the post-Atlantean, is thus the fifth great age.

One must again ascend to an even higher peak of initiation, then one overlooks these seven times seven ages. They are to be overlooked when one has reached the border of the astral and the spiritual, the devachanic world. And so it goes up step by step. We will see which are the still higher stages.

Now we must note that first of all one can reach a summit on which, as from a mountain, the vast plain, the seven cultural ages of the post-Atlantean time become visible to us. We all know them already, these cultural ages. We know that when the Atlantean flood washed away the ancient Atlantis, the first to blossom was the ancient Indian culture and that it was replaced by the ancient Persian culture. We know that the Assyrian-Babylonian-Chaldean-Egyptian-Jewish culture followed it, and that the fourth cultural age, the Greek-Latin, followed it, and that the fifth, ours, in which we live, followed it. In the sixth, which will follow ours, what we have to build in spiritual culture will have to come to fruition in a certain respect. The seventh cultural age will take place before the war of all against all. There we see this terrible devastation of culture approaching, and we see the small group of people who have understood to take up the spiritual principle in themselves and who will save themselves from the general destruction by egoism.“ (Lit.:GA 104, p. 67f)

Literature

• Rudolf Steiner: Die Apokalypse des Johannes, GA 104 (1985), ISBN 3-7274-1040-X English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Die tieferen Geheimnisse des Menschheitswerdens im Lichte der Evangelien, GA 117 (1986) English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Mysterienwahrheiten und Weihnachtsimpulse. Alte Mythen und ihre Bedeutung., GA 180 (1980), English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Das Verhältnis der verschiedenen naturwissenschaftlichen Gebiete zur Astronomie, GA 323 (1997), ISBN 3-7274-3230-6 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org

References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated. Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com. Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English. Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA) Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.