16. The Mysteries
Most amazing is the subtle role of nature spirits or elementals in the
rites of modern Freemasonry. Much of the lore about the hierarchies
and their elementals has been available through what are known as the
ancient mysteries on which the rites of Masonry are based. Such rites,
according to Steiner, go back to Antlantean times and were revived in
what he calls the second post-Atlantean epoch by Zarathustra, a highly
evolved initiate reborn about 6400 B.C.E. when the sun moved from
Cancer to Gemini, a sage who claimed to have received his wisdom di-
rectly from the Lord Ahura Mazdao, the great sun being known in
India asvishvakarma, in Egypt as Osiris, and in the modern world as
the Christ.
Steiner describes how the great Atlantean initiate Manu established
the post-Atlantean cultures in Asia by weaving into the physical bodies
of seven sufficiently advanced Indians the etheric bodies of seven for-
mer Atlantean sages whose bodies "had been preserved and permeated
by Angels." In India these sages became the Holy Rishis. "Wearing
within their sheaths the etheric bodies of the great Atlantean leaders,
who in turn had received them from Archangelic beings, these Holy
Rishis were able to look back into their former incarnations and pass
on, in a new form, their recollection of the ancient Atlantean civiliza-
tion." In still earlier Lemurian times, according to Steiner, archai spoke
through human beings; in Atlantean times it was archangels. In post-
Atlantean times it was angels. Beings ensouled down to their physical
body by an archai were known as dhyani-buddhas; beings ensouled
down to the etheric body by an archangel as bodhisattvas; beings en-
souled by an angel down to their astral bodies were known as human
buddhas.