The Temple Legend: Freemasonry and Related Occult Movements from the Contents of the Esoteric School

by Rudolf Steiner, John M. Wood (Translator)

In these unique lectures, given to members of his Esoteric School (1904-14), Rudolf Steiner's main intention is to throw light on the hidden content of the picture-language of myths, sagas and legends. Pictures, he explains, are the real origin of all things - the primeval spiritual causes. In order to work in a healthy way with pictures or symbols today, however, it is necessary that one should first become acquainted with their esoteric content - to understand them. At the time of these lectures Steiner was planning to inaugurate the second section of the Esoteric School, which was to deal in a direct way with a renewal - out of his own spiritual research - of ritual and symbolism. He gave these lectures as a necessary preparation, to clarify the history and nature of the cultic tradition. He thus discusses principally Freemasonry and its background, but also the Rosicrucians, Manichaeism, the Druids, the Prometheus Saga, the Lost Temple, Cain and Abel - and much else besides.

Genres: Spirituality

410 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 30, 1984

About the author

Author also wrote under the name Rudolph Steiner.

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...


Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner was an Austrian occultist, social reformer, architect, esotericist, and claimed clairvoyant. Steiner gained initial recognition at the end of the nineteenth century as a literary critic and published works including The Philosophy of Freedom. At the beginning of the twentieth century he founded an esoteric spiritual movement, anthroposophy, with roots in German idealist philosophy and theosophy. His teachings are influenced by Christian Gnosticism or neognosticism. Many of his ideas are pseudoscientific. He was also prone to pseudohistory.
In the first, more philosophically oriented phase of this movement, Steiner attempted to find a synthesis between science and spirituality. His philosophical work of these years, which he termed "spiritual science", sought to apply what he saw as the clarity of thinking characteristic of Western philosophy to spiritual questions,  differentiating this approach from what he considered to be vaguer approaches to mysticism. In a second phase, beginning around 1907, he began working collaboratively in a variety of artistic media, including drama, dance and architecture, culminating in the building of the Goetheanum, a cultural centre to house all the arts. In the third phase of his work, beginning after World War I, Steiner worked on various ostensibly applied projects, including Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, and anthroposophical medicine.
Steiner advocated a form of ethical individualism, to which he later brought a more explicitly spiritual approach. He based his epistemology on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's world view in which "thinking…is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas." A consistent thread that runs through his work is the goal of demonstrating that there are no limits to human knowledge.

Reviews

[Monique · Rating 5 out of 5]

About the Temple Legend, which is at the basis of Freemasonry. Has to do with The Temple of King Solomon. Hiram is the master builder, and the Queen of Sheba has to choose between Solomon (detached piety unconcerned with worldly or the Son of Cain, Hiram, who is engaged in the building of the temple. She is the Soul of Humanity and chooses Hiram.

Steiner then goes into how masons in the past built masterful buildings (pyramids, irrigation channels, cathedrals) that integrated the cosmos in that they were built in relation to certain stars and solstices, etc, as well as engineering acoustical effects within the buildings, without the mathematical knowledge we have today. Modern architects are not yet able to replicate the acoustical effects of the buildings of yore. In earlier times, men were able to build by means of intuitive faculties, not through rational understanding (78).

The measurements of the Egyptian pyramids correspond to certain measurements in heavenly space. The whole configuration of stellar space was depicted in these buildings (78).

Towards the end, Steiner then addresses how the Masters of the White Lodge weave their master plan into the atom. Our current atom is an image of the master plan from the previous round (the 3rd round--Old Moon). Today, the masters are working and weaving the atom that will exist in the 5th round--the Jupiter phase (187).

Lec. 19 is one of the most amazing Steiner lectures I have read.

[Roger Buck]

Nearly 90 years after Rudolf Steiner's death, we behold the powerful ascent of the steely cold forces of materialism he called “Ahrimanic”. We see that the Anthroposophical movement which he hoped would be helping millions by now is like a damp squib compared to his hopes.

Faced by this ascending cold as steel dehumanised society, what does one do. My answer involves what Steiner says here:

http://corjesusacratissimum.org/2011/...

These are very strange things indeed. That what he was so opposed to was the only wakeful consciousness within our sleeping civilization …
For reasons indicated at the above link that I do not wish to rate this book.
I simply want to say I have read it and that whilst Steiner served to free me from Eastern Theosophy and the New Age scene I found at Findhorn, Valentin Tomberg, in turn, provided me with a very different hermeneutic with which to engage Steiner.

I hope the above link however can contribute a little to the tangled issues involving Steiner and Tomberg - and why I believe this "very different hermeneutic" is necessary for a world plunging into a dark, mechanised society ...

[Gud Wizley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deep and advanced Steiner material. Illuminating!

[Sea Foam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential occult literature

[Ezra Hodgson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Remarkable book

Rudolf Steiner had quite the esoteric knowledge relating to the revelation of the essence of the Ancient mythical Legend of the Temple, Freemasonry, and the Ancient Mysteries.
This is an enlightening book for Master Masons, although others will also enjoy the Theosophical insights who are interested in that vein of understanding.