Seven secrets of life

The figure Abyssi Duplicatae or «Des doppelt flüchtig und fixen Abgrundes» from the Aurea catena Homeri (1723). The following saying serves as an explanation:

One abyss the other calls out,
Together they make a hard strife:
The fleeting shall become quite fixed,
Water and vapour turn to earth.
Heaven itself must be earthly,
Or else no life will enter the earth.
The highest shall be the lowest,
The lowest shall become the highest fine.
That which is fixed shall become quite fleeting,
The earth shall be water and vapour.
The earth must fly up to the sky,
Heaven must crawl into the centre of the earth.
Thus heaven and earth must be reversed,
Let the lowest become the highest.
The fleeting dragon kills the fixed one,
The fixed one kills the fleeting one.
So it must come to be revealed in the day,
The quintessence, and what it can do.

There are Seven Secrets of Life. Rudolf Steiner often discussed individual ones, but rarely presented all seven in context. In the Paris lecture of 13.6.1906 it is said:

„There are seven secrets of life which have never yet been spoken of outside the occult brotherhoods. Only in the present epoch is it possible to speak of them exoterically. They are also called the seven "inexpressible" or "unspeakable" secrets.

These are the secrets:

1. The Secret of the Abyss.
2. The Secret of the Number. (One can study it in Pythagorean philosophy).
3. The Secret of Alchemy. (This can be understood through the works of Paracelsus and Jakob Böhme).
4. The Secret of Birth and Death.
5. The Secret of Evil, which the Apocalypse deals with.
6. The Secret of the Word, the Logos.
7. The Secret of Godliness; it is the most profoundly hidden.” (Lit.: GA 246, p. 253/GA 094, p. 111)

Literature

• Rudolf Steiner: Zur Geschichte und aus den Inhalten der ersten Abteilung der Esoterischen Schule 1904 - 1914, GA 264 (1984) English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Kosmogonie, GA 94 (1979), Paris, 13. Juni 1906 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Bewußtsein Leben Form, GA 89 (2001), Berlin, 29. Oktober 1904 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org

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