SHORTLY BEFORE THE END OF THE FOURTH millennium Krishna was born. The year was 3228 BC. This shepherd and prophet was in some ways a forerunner of Jesus Christ. (We shall see shortly how Krishna, Osiris and Zarathustra are depicted attending the Nativity, albeit in disguise, in famous Renaissance paintings.)
He is not, of course, to be confused with the war god Krishna, the earlier Atlantean Krishna who fought in an epic battle to defeat the Luciferic forces of desire and delusion. Now these forces had sunk deeper into human nature, and degenerated into a desire for gold and for the spilling of blood.
His mother-to-be, the virgin Devaki, had been increasingly beset by strange visions. One day she fell into a deep ecstasy. She heard a heavenly music of harps and voices, and in the midst of a bright flashing of myriad lights saw the Sun god appear to her in human form. Overshadowed by him, she lost consciousness altogether.
In time Krishna was born. Devaki was later warned by an angel that her brother, Kansa, would try to murder the boy, so she fled the court to live among shepherds at the foot of Mount Meru.
Kansa was a child-killer, hunting down the children of the poor. He’d even done it while still a child himself. Now he sent a giant red-crested snake to kill his nephew, but Krishna was able to kill the snake by stamping on it. A female demon called Putana, whose breasts were full of poison, pulled him to her, but Krishna sucked on her breast with such force that she crumpled and fell down dead.
Kansa continued to persecute his nephew, trying to hunt him down like a wild animal, but as Krishna grew to manhood he was protected by shepherds and hid in the hills and the forests, where he preached a gospel of non- violence and love for all humanity: ‘Return good for evil, forget your own suffering for another’s’, and ‘Renounce the fruit of your works — let your work be its own reward’. Krishna was saying things no one had ever said before.
When these teachings reached Kansa, they enraged him further, tortured him in the very depths of his spirit.
Among Krishna’s many titles are ‘The Cowherd’ and ‘The Lord of the Milkmaids’. He enjoyed a simple country life, preaching but avoiding direct confrontation with Kansa. The local milkmaids were all madly in love with the slender youth. He liked to play the flute and dance the dance of love with them. On one occasion he watched them as they went to bathe in the Yumana River, then stole their clothes and climbed up a tree where they could not reach him. On another he was dancing with many milkmaids who all wanted to hold his hand, so he multiplied himself into many forms so that each could believe she held the hand of the true Krishna.
One day he and his brother entered Kansa’s city of Mathura, disguised as poor country people, in order to take part in an athletics festival. They met a deformed girl called Kubja, carrying ointments and perfumes to the palace. When asked by Krishna she readily gave him some, though she could by no means afford it, and he cured her of her deformity and made her beautiful.
But Kansa had not been fooled by the brothers’ disguise, and when they entered the wrestling competition he had primed two giants to kill them. If they failed, an enormous elephant was set to trample them to death. In the event Krishna and his brother turned the tables on all of them and escaped.
Finally Krishna decided to discard all disguise, to come out of hiding to confront Kansa. When he re-entered Mathura, Krishna was acclaimed as its saviour by a populace that showered him with flowers and garlands. Kansa was waiting with his retinue in the main square. ‘You have stolen my kingdom,’ said Kansa, ‘Kill me!’ When Krishna refused, Kansa had his soldiers seize him and tie him to a cedar tree. He was martyred by Kansa’s archers.
With the death of Krishna in the year 3102 BC, the Kali Yuga — the Dark Age — began. A
In both Eastern and Western traditions, this great cosmic shift began in 3102 BC and it ended in 1899. As we shall see in Chapter 24, Freemasons commemorated the approaching end of the Kali Yuga by erecting gigantic monuments in the centre of every great city in the Western world. Most people pass by these familiar constructions unaware that they are beacons for the history and philosophy proposed in this book.
IN THE GATHERING DARKNESS A LIGHT appeared. As Krishna died another great personage was growing to adulthood, a light-bearer, who incarnated, just as three thousand years later Jesus Christ would incarnate.
We shall examine the life and times of the incarnated Lucifer in the next chapter.
11. GETTING TO GRIPS WITH MATTER
AS LONG AS SOCIETY HAS EXISTED THERE have been small groups within it which have practised secret techniques to work themselves into alternative states of consciousness. They have done this in the belief that this alternative state of consciousness lends the power to perceive things inaccessible to ordinary, everyday consciousness.
The problem is that from the point of view of
But what if they can be shown to yield results?
We have begun to see how these states have inspired some of history’s greatest art, literature and music, but all of that might be dismissed by someone minded to do so as merely a matter of the life of the imagination, something without any relevance to life’s practical aspects. A lot of art, even great art, has an element of fantasy, after all.
Our modern mind-set prefers to see more concrete results. What about great feats of engineering or great scientific discoveries? In this chapter we will be following the development of an age when great initiates of the Mystery schools led humanity to some unequalled feats of engineering, from the temple of Baalbeck in Lebanon, which includes in its construction a block of carved granite weighing about a thousand tons that even today’s strongest crane could not lift, to the Great Pyramid at Giza and other lesser known pyramids in China.
At the start of this age the first great civilizations seemed suddenly to spring from nowhere — in the Sumerian civilization dominated by the bull hero Gilgamesh, in the Egypt of the bull cult of Osiris and in bull-running Crete. The age of these civilizations is the Age of Taurus, beginning early in the third millennium BC. For no very good reason conventional history can determine, vast numbers of people now began to live together in highly organized cities of extraordinary size, technical brilliance and complexity.
A SHADOWY BUT MOMENTOUS EVENT took place in China. It is shrouded in mystery. Even great initiates are unable to see it with anything approaching total clarity.
In the third millennium BC the people of China lived a tribal, nomadic existence and, according to Rudolf Steiner, it was into one of their encampments that an extraordinary individual was born. Just as thousands of years later another exalted heavenly being would descend to earth in order to incarnate as Jesus Christ, so now Lucifer incarnated too.
The birth of Lucifer was the beginning of wisdom.
Of course I’m using ‘wisdom’ in a particular sense — in fact the same sense academic, biblical scholars use it when they talk about ‘the wisdom books of the Bible’. The wisdom contained, for example, in the Book of Proverbs or Ecclesiastes, is a collection of rules for a happy and successful life, but unlike the teachings contained in other biblical books there is no moral or religious dimension here. This wisdom is entirely prudential and practical, advising you what you must do to look after your own best interests. There is no suggestion, for example, that good behaviour is likely to be rewarded or bad behaviour punished, except by human agency. There is no notion either of a providential order.
