[Kosmische Gewalten und geistige Kräfte]
Translation from the German by Robert Hütwohl[1]
Everyone remembers the terrible catastrophe of the steamship Titanic, which was destroyed by an iceberg. An iceberg floats above the water: but one does not realize that a large part of it is hidden below the surface. So it is with every cosmic force. You only perceive a part. But behind her she goes into the immeasurable.
That is why the theologians also say that the primal power of God resides fully in every drop of rain and underlies everything and everyone. But “the thing-in-itself” which exists behind visible nature and which modern philosophers seek and think they know by various names, is that invisible part of the whole of nature which our modern occultists are investigating. After all, we only see a small part of the cosmos: What lies beyond is usually only guessed at by mortals who are not clairvoyant.
How short-sighted, therefore, it is for men of science to imagine that with their little knowledge of nature they can establish laws valid for all time! That would be tantamount to abdicating the concept of God! But we are actually only at the beginning of a deeper knowledge of the world. We are only now beginning to see that everything which takes place in the visible creation also belongs to our own inner being. We are hardly so far as to be able to even begin to understand the Indians, who recognized thousands of years ago that we and this, i.e., the world, and that, i.e., God are one.
And yet it is so. We now know that the whole zodiac, is also in our body and that there are wonderful correspondences between the two phenomena. We therefore also understand that through astrology one can obtain undreamt-of information about the nature, the character, the fate of a human individual. Of course, we are still in the very humble beginnings. One must be theosophically trained in order to be able to draw firm conclusions. For this training alone awakens the inner senses, and only through intuition does one come to the truth.
Within us are two powerful principles, life and thought. Life enters us through breathing. Life means the involution, the coming of the cosmic thought, it establishes the form of all things, but thought determines their character, their essence. Thought is the necessary complement to “life” and leads to “individuality” when it dominates life and leads to higher development. It is the gateway to the kingdom of the inner senses.
If the lower ego (“the personality”) is to develop to a higher level, to “individuality,” then this is indicated by the fact that the lower ego stops breathing. This is called “the mystical death.” Then the higher spiritual breath begins, the “individual breath” (as “Mazdaznan” says) and involution gives way to evolution. The I becomes the consciousness soul and can say: “I am.”
The “soul” is represented by that part of the spine which sits between the shoulders. When the spark of consciousness rises to that height, one abandons all thoughts of selfishness, loneliness and difference. One becomes wise and good.
This is why prayer and meditation are so useful, because they strengthen the power of thought necessary to transform “life,” “nature” (“woman”) through “grace.” Only when the two are united is a higher type of human being born which comes from the spirit and not from the blood. Life then becomes a Christ life! That’s real life, says the Bible, that they recognize you as God and whom you sent, Jesus Christ.
A great spiritual-teacher, Nizier Philippe of Lyons said: “If there are two persons, one of whom prays and the other does not, the one who prays creates a great benefit in the unseen, because that one nourishes certain spiritual beings who only of live human prayers.”
One can change one’s destiny (karma) through prayer. Pious prayer is the higher will of the soul united with that of a higher power in the cosmos. The deeper, more heartfelt the prayer, the higher the power that is called upon-up to the power of God.
Destiny was represented by the number 5 in the ancients (Pythagoras, who got it from the Chinese), human will by 4, and divine providence by 3. This is the basis of the mathematical theorem that the square over the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the two legs: the square of 3 is 9, of 4 is 16, gives 25, and the square of 5 is also 25. This means that karma can be canceled through the will with grace.
In astronomy, life is called Leo, the lion. This is also the name for Christ, just as Buddha was called the man-lion. The sun god Christ entered the cosmos completely after his earthly death, and so one can also say: “The lion of the tribe of Judah has triumphed.” The eternal male (the sun, Christ, the son) is thus connected (through “Shakti”) with the eternal female (Mary, the sea star, Isis, the Virgin of the World, the primordial matter). Life (“the woman)” is the form of God and therefore the only possible object of knowledge, while the Spirit (“the man”) is the content. Both are one in God. It is called being, essence. God is Mind-Subject and Mind-Object, or as Aristotle defined God, the knowledge of knowledge, the synthesis of all concepts, the idea of all ideas.
If modern science is concerned with laws, i.e., She wants to explain the form, the revelation of the original principle, but the essence is still hidden from her. This is revealed only through mysticism. Therefore there can also basically be no science about God. After all, science has to do with appearances. Theology is nothing more than a summary of various branches of science which deal with how people have tried to make the incomprehensible comprehensible, connected with the visions of great clairvoyants, prophets, founders of religions, etc.
In Christ alone, according to the occult view, there is full unity: He is the only appearance which at the same time has full essence. He is person and thing at the same time, i.e., an absolutely spiritual and, in the best sense of the word, an absolutely real-objective being, a cosmic force and an eminently spiritual power, something eternally male and eternally female. That is why the study of his person, Christology, is so necessary, even if we can never fully exhaust the subject. The body of Christ was the most perfect product in the world, all cosmic powers and all spiritual powers had united to attain the ideal of perfection. In him person and thing were one.
And this is how the cosmic forces work on each of us. The life, the breath, the form (gender) connects with the intellect. Life is top-down, mind is bottom-up. Spirit draws matter up, and we have the opportunity gradually to take in the Christ Spirit, so that we may hold within us the fullness of His glory, the Word.
The great breath, the breath (as it is called in the Upanishads and Purānas) causes the movement, it comes from the Ākāsha which produces the sound. Sound is created by the movement of matter. Every movement in the cosmos corresponds to a sound, which is why the Pythagoreans spoke of the “music of the spheres.”
One understands, therefore, how the deity manifested in space can be called Logos Word. In every human being lies hidden “the Word” as well as in the cosmos, and his rebirth is brought about only by its application. Sound causes the form and also destroys it again. The Hindu has the holy word Aum for this, which may only be pronounced with devotion and purity of soul. The vibrations which come from above are themselves pure; but when they encounter impurity, disharmony arises.
That is why the ancient gods had secret names known only to the initiated and kept strictly hidden from profane ears. Even cities and persons used to have occult names. If they became known, disaster threatened. The name had to be changed. One remembers from folk tales what a great role secret names play there. There is a magical power attached to the lute. That’s why a passage in the “Our Father” says: “Hallowed be thy name!”
Every occultist knows the power of mantras when properly intoned. Some of this has survived in today’s military command language. One can also easily observe who is a “lord of the tone,” a master of the sound and who is not. The tone of the voice always indicates the soul. Many a person only finds the strength, a thought which makes an impression at a decisive moment in order to attain his goal, he makes use of the Ākāsha stored up in himself and in the world.
Appropriate breathing exercises support the power because the breath comes from the primordial tone and harmonizes the body properly. Certain rhythmically produced vocal exercises bring about a change of mood in the soul. They were used especially in the Mithraic mysteries of the ancient Persians, and now feature again in “Mazdaznan.” “Breath is life,” says Mazdaznan. The sound, the word, the breath of breath, the spirit (pneuma) is originally one and the same: it is the will of the deity. Therefore, whoever absorbs the will of God changes his physical body through Ātmā, which is one of the great divine primal principles. It is the divine man born of the spirit, who gradually forms in the individual (Jīva) by absorbing the eternal laws of the universe, the individual Monad becomes the divine all Monad.
Brahma then sits in the human soul like dew on the lotus flower. The lotus is the symbol of the creative fire from which the world arises. Its leaves denote the flames. In their midst is the Logos (Mahat), the world intelligence. The Ātmā, the primordial fire, underlies every atom, the Ākāsha forms its form. Jīva is called Ātmā in reference to its individualization in each soul.
Many of the flames of fire emanating from the Logos, licking through the cosmos like a hissing great serpent, are devas, nature deities, spiritual personalities, “gods,” angels charged with building and maintaining the cosmos. When the Indians spoke of their gods, Indra, Agni, etc., they meant such spiritual forces. They are by no means “personifications of the natural forces,” as we are used to saying. Rather, the Devas are, so to speak, the invisible core of the great natural forces that we see. The things of the the world of the senses are only the condensed spiritual beings of the upper world. If you penetrate higher regions as a clairvoyant, you can see the archetypes of things, the Platonic Ideas. They are real beings, not schemes, mere concepts or shadows. If you recognize anything at all, it is only possible by getting a certain intuition from these Archetypes.
They are also in us through the various flames of fire of the sun. It is assumed that there are seven great rays of the sun, denoting different colors. Each of the seven principles of the body is represented by a flame of fire, which is a great Ātmā in the heart. In this way one can understand how the basic parts (principles, body) of man are related to the spiritual world. They are condensed archetypes of the spiritual land. Beings which form the mineral nature work on the physical body. The etheric body is formed by beings who are active in the plant kingdom, the sentient soul body by those who rule the animal kingdom. All worlds work together to form the organic conglomerate we call “man.”
One could also say that each individual represents a certain rhythm in the cosmos or a number. As is well known, the Pythagoreans based everything on the number system. But if the cosmos is the breath of the Holy Spirit, then the individual human being is an organism made up of different vibrations, which come from the individual kingdoms of nature.
Each personality and its individuality (lower and higher manifestations of the soul) are to be imagined as a very complicated rhythm vibrating in all the smallest particles of this matter. The rhythm is uniform, but it is more fully expressed in the finer states of matter than in the denser ones. The different states of consciousness and soul activities are movements in these different states of matter. Desires and needs are activities of the individual rhythm through the psychic and physical ethers. Thoughts are movements in the finer mental ether.
In each of these ether types, the rhythm has its own force field. These force fields affect each other in the same way that the magnetic force field affects the masses of other magnets or iron or steel—and vice versa, how these affect the force field. (Hübbe-Schleiden, Serve the Eternal! P. 131.)
If the ego is in contact with higher vibrations, then it harmoniously participates in the great world concert. But if it follows the retarding movements which emanate from certain forces that we call “evil” because they initially create a discord, then there is a disturbance that emanates from many at the same time, which quarrel, war or a natural disaster (earthquakes, floods etc.) can cause.
The tones or discords, however, are converted into light phenomena, so that a clairvoyant can immediately determine the rhythm of a person. I myself saw in London in 1895 how beautiful combinations of colors were triggered by music in a large hall. In an artificially darkened room, veritable buildings arose, formal domes of bright colors to the sound of Beethoven’s music. And my friend, the brilliant Frater Desiderius, the well-known artist from Monte Gassino, once pointed out to me that the sounds of the Pilgrim Choir in Tannhäuser correspond to the rhythm of a four-sided pyramid. Number, vibration, tone, color, spirit: that is the nature of man.
One must be filled with wonder and awe when one considers how much effort it takes to create and educate a single human being. Only through the unanimous cooperation of all forces of the cosmos does this miracle come about.
The zeitgeist and “national spirit” are also only possible because angels transfer their being, their character to a time or a nation. The individual is unconsciously determined by such beings, peoples and periods of history are guided and monitored by them. If there is war, everything has long since been decided in higher regions and lower cosmic powers run through the world as an “angry army” to fan passions. The will of the individual is limited as long as he cannot make himself master of himself. Only after defeating the “dragon” does one become the master of fate.
The astral body appears occultly as a dragon. Therefore even the low-ranking peoples, who only take their own desires as a guide for their actions, rightly have a dragon as a symbol. When they gain insight into the beyond, they see the air filled with dragons: They see their own counter-images, just as higher-ranking nations have noble animals, such as the sun-eagle or the sun-lion, or the sun’s steed for their coat of arms, or how then Christian communities put the cross on their flag.
It marks a milestone in history that Emperor Constantine affixed the holy cross and the sign of Christ to the “labarum” 1600 years ago. With this deed a new era began. Thor’s old hammer, the sign of a bygone era of worldly egoistic energy was thus transformed into the male-female symbol, the redemption of the individual by the God-man within us.
We are still in that period today. You just have to be serious about the symbol. We are to develop the mind, manas, and expand it to intuition. Complete health of the body is necessary for this. There must have been many mystics who had inner visions. But their souls suffered from a sick body and their visions were often of a dubious nature. Without permeating all inner bodies with the currents of the three Logoi, man cannot attain full spiritual power. Mysticism must become magic, i.e., the inner vision must be turned into a saving act through the moral will. “In the beginning was the deed,” says Faust: One could perhaps say better: In the end there was the deed. It is the crowning glory of the building, it is the sparkling jewel in the golden crown of man.
In Bulwer’s occult novel “The Coming Race” the coming generation is described. There we find in it a spiritual power that emanates from the body: The Vril. With it everyone can protect themselves against all dangers moral supremacy accumulated fuel, which is taken from the ether and stored within man’s interior, it must be obtained, then one is a “white magician.”
It is the same that is expressed in a prayer of the Catholic Church borrowed from the Psalms by the mantram: spiritu principali confirma me! “Fix me in the princely spirit,” perhaps better in German: “strengthen me through the sovereignty of the soul,” i.e., give me heroic power from above, which penetrates my soul in such a way that I become master over all my enemies, above all that I can thereby let a king rule over my lower self! The Persians had the word Querenao for it, majesty, glory, divine power, holy spirit.
In her highly interesting book on strange tribes in India (published by Jaeger in Leipzig), Blavatsky reports that there is a primeval race there that can kill people at a distance through the terrible magnetism that emanates from their bodies. Anyone who insults a savage from this wicked dwarf people usually languishes and dies soon afterwards. This happens through “black magic,” namely through the fact that the vibrations of power which come down from above are transformed into poison through the bad will of the people.
The witchcraft of the Middle Ages is also based on this. This is the basis of the magic of the “mal occhio,” the evil eye. Even today, many people suffer from such unconsciously produced poison (through anger, hatred and suppressed anger) and become “nervous” as a result. But “the old serpent” must be cast out or transformed into a “serpent of wisdom.”
One must become a “pure fool,” Parsifal. One should see the spark of the divine flame in everything. As long as one cannot be impersonal, act impersonally, love impersonally, one is still in “the hall of learning.” The best means of attaining this impersonal, spiritual center of power, which exceeds the interest of the little ego, consists in having a reverence for a supernatural object, preferably a holy being like Christ.
Many theosophists today think they can do without it: But I fear that one day they will be so cornered that they will either have to profess such worship, or that their spiritual pride will make them use “the left path” to choose. It is better to stick to a religion and follow its ceremonies like a child, your heart set on God—than you think you are too high for it.
“It is preferable to sacrifice a flower or a simple leaf to a village deity (in India) than the poorest of the ignorant,” says Annie Besant, than to be a great intellectual genius, who is world-worshipping but too haughty to care for bow before something higher and greater than his mind—too taken up with his mind to bow the knee before spiritual life. The spirit, however, is as much above the intellect as the intellect is above the senses. The spiritual life is higher than all others, and we can all live it, for the spirit resides in the innermost shrine of the heart of each of us, and no one can deny its presence in every human being.”
It is also foolish to mock someone for still clinging to religious practices that one has previously transcended. The Catholic peasant kneeling before the Madonna is quite right. He would not understand the scholarly lecture of a Theosophist. But a statue, through the continued prayers of a devout populace or of crowds of pilgrims, may be so filled with spirit matter as to be beneficial to the soul. Nobody needs to let the “modern” superficial material lying spirit suggest away spiritual feelings that arise within. Ceremonies have a magical power because they address the higher sides of man in a symbolic way. Symbolism is a higher truth. The Vibrations generated by a well celebrated Catholic Mass can be felt by anyone who has still kept their spirit intact from the world spirit.
Natura non facit saltus, “nature makes no leaps;” Also in the spiritual life one should not want to jump over several stages. If you go slowly, you go safely. If you keep your mind focused on the highest, you can also do trivial things in life, so you don’t become trivial yourself. The saints have come to the point of being gathered in God in even the most seemingly outward pursuits.
I once saw brothers in a Benedictine monastery cutting asparagus while saying “Hail Mary.” Yes, with some monastery saints the “Vril” was already developed in such a way that they managed to carry water in a sieve. When the divine powers develop, man is lord of nature as he is lord of the Sabbath.
“When we, says the great Flemish mystic Ruysbroeck, go beyond all things in love and die to all observation in ignorance and darkness, then we are completed and shaped by the eternal Word, which is an image of the Father. And in this bareness of our spirit received like the incomprehensible clarity that surrounds and pervades us, as the air is pervaded by the clarity of the sun.”
“The shadow of God lights up our inner desert; but on the high mountain, in the land of promise, there is no shadow, although there is a sun which lights up our desert and also the high mountains. As long as we wander like shadows, we cannot see the sun as such, rather our knowledge is in parables and riddles, says St. Paul. Yet the shadow is sufficiently lightened by the gleam of the sun, that we may learn the difference in all virtues, and all truth useful to our mortal condition.
“If we are to become one with clarity, we must follow the sun, abandoning ourselves unwisely, and then the sun will draw us with our blind eyes into the clarity of itself, where we have unity with God.”
What that means is that we should give up the foolish strivings of the small personality, the lower ego, and reach the greater impersonal through the spiritual darkness that then surrounds us like a tunnel. Then the highest conceivable spiritual power, the Spirit of Christ, pours into us. We then find “the shining stone” that John speaks of in Revelation and the name that no one knows but the recipient.
This secret name is “the higher I,” the divine being who waits in higher spheres until we unite with her in order to be “deified,” to attain the lumen gloriae. We started from the “Father” and to him we return. Life is like the odyssey of Odysseus, who is driven about and has to endure all kinds of adventures until he lands back on his home shores, or like the experiences of the seeker of the Grail, Parzival, who wanders astray until he has scaled the Castle of the Grail.
But Master Klingsor tries to draw every soul into his nets. Cosmic powers also serve him and spiritual powers sustain him. But he uses his power for evil. He tries to turn the wheel differently. He wants to convert “the good law” into the law of contradiction. He is “a part of that power which always wants evil—but always creates good.” Above all, he seeks to win over those people who are noble in disposition. No one is spared from severe temptations who wants to go up. But no one is lost if not through their own fault. High beings are at the helm. The ship may wobble, but it does not sink: fluctuat nec mergitur.
When the Buddha found salvation, he said: “I have turned the wheel of the law.” Until then the world was going a certain way; But the Buddha changed course. The same can be said to a greater degree of Christ. He turned the spiritual axis of the whole world. The “victorious made perfect” was its forerunner, but Christ brought the perfection. Through him became the incomprehensible event.
Therefore one can also say: since Christianity there has been the possibility of reconciling soul and spirit through the fact that the Christ spirit and the Christ power take over the leadership. According to the apostle Paul, soul is the middle between the body and the immortal spirit. It is, as the Gothic word saivala expresses, like the sea, which is restless and therefore unreliable. But Christ walked on water and held up Peter who was sinking.
He still stands in the boat of our souls and calms the waves when we turn to him. “Anything you ask the Father for in my name, He will give you,” he said. It’s just the right execution.
Through recent occult research, we have uncovered great laws of the spirit which have been kept secret for thousands of years. It is up to us to turn the wheel of the good law so that we may make progress. We must all become white magicians. Even greater miracles should we do than Christ did, he himself said.
It is not just a question of beautiful idealistic phrases or sentimentalism, but of realities. We must bring the unity of God into ourselves. All religions, all philosophies, all sciences provide us with the material for this. But the ego must choose for itself what suits it. Everyone has to do their own “Dharma.” What others say and do must become indifferent to him. He is his own legislator and must learn to stand on his own two feet. Every human being is a species in itself.
Christ speaks of a new birth. It is achieved by transforming the three lower principles (physical body, etheric body, astral body) into Ātmā, buddhi, manas, the three divine principles, through the conscious action of the ego. This is the higher alchemy.
The old English occultist Robert Fludd (de Fluctibus, † 1637) thinks according to the old traditions of the Middle Ages: The macrocosm is divided into three main regions: Empyreum, the “upper region” (Ātmā-Buddhi-Manas), Aethereum (astral region), the middle and elemental regions, each filled with celestial fire and permeated with myriad oceans of astral light, the quality and quantity of which diminishes the farther the region is from the central sun.
These light forces, which permeate the entire space and form the inner core of the individual natural products, are all accumulated in the human being. But only the “adept” is able to make proper use of it.
In the “aura” of each individual one recognizes the influence of certain stars, as well as the sun as astral matter and prāṇa. Every human being has a certain astral type from birth, so that there are sun people, sons of Mars, moon people, etc., who depending on the relevant star is dominant in them, determine their character. A moon person, for example, will have something soft, dreamy, superstitious, sentimental, feminine, moody in them—in contrast to the materialistic earth person, etc. Everyone must first live according to their abilities. But perfection is attained only by defying the natural disposition with one’s highest intellect—with the aid of “grace.”
Today’s Theosophists tend to reject the old “theism” because they look at everything too much from below, i.e. mechanistically. However, behind the mechanism there is obviously still a completely free influence from above through spirit love. This should not be forgotten. Where Love is freedom.
We are approaching a new phase of theosophical life, namely a religious theosophy. “The old God is still alive.” And the saying still applies today: The first will be the last. Whoever returns to the supernatural view of life instead of the mechanistic view of life will awaken the spark of divine love with wisdom. “Only that is true love, which in all its phases is a powerful striving for perfection and which not only ennobles and perfects the joy of existence, but which in a certain sense can even be called the lust purified by suffering, the lust of wisdom—a striving also for existence, for something transfigured and peaceful existence until finally the “unity” is realized as the absolute being.”
(Hübbe-Schleiden: Lust, Leid u. Liebe. Ein Beitrag zum Darwinismus. Braunschweig 1891.)[2]
Being is the synthesis of life, lust and love. Therefore one could also say of every imperfect human being: he lives, but he is not.
There are many methods today that are used to expand and elevate the soul. “New Thought,” “Mazdaznan” and whatever they are called, are ideal for making people healthy. Perhaps I may also make a small contribution to practical application here at the end, which may be worth trying.
One fasts and then takes a “harmony bath,” that is, a warm bath (in a hip tub) according to Voigt’s method (in Westheim near Augsburg), which consists of gradually making the water hotter and then cooler again by scooping it up (from another). After massaging the lower abdomen and rubbing in the excellent green skin function oil from Gottlieb (in Heidelberg), one lies down to rest, switches off all thoughts and then falls into a healthy deep sleep (sushupti). If you wake up strengthened, then you direct your highest feelings towards an entity from whom you expect salvation, e.g., on Christ. Christ is imagined in spirit as bodily and as entering our highest principle (“the auric egg,” “the causal body”); then imagine it passing through all of our inner bodies and finally penetrating the physical body completely. Be firmly convinced that the cosmic Christ lives fully in us and think heartily: “I live, but no longer I, but Christ lives in me.” Then you look at the worst mistake you want to get rid of and think: I don’t want it anymore. “I can do everything in him who strengthens me.” I overcame him. . . . I have the spirit of Christ, I have the love of Christ, I have the power of Christ, I have the will of Christ.
In this way one can gradually destroy everything that is imperfect, gradually washing away all the ugly stains. With every victory over the lower self, however, the higher Self becomes more powerful. Through the path of purification one arrives at that of enlightenment and finally unification. Unity is the ultimate goal. Through the “crucifixion” of personality, then through the sacrifice of “individuality” one arrives at true “Self,” at completion.
Young Parzival’s doubts and stupidity become the real “freedom of the children of God.” But then [the Grail Queen] Repanse de Schoye, the royal giver of heavenly joys, the priestess of the Grail, appears with the holy chalice. Joy and peace will come then. The Grail Brotherhood is filled with the good news: For they have attained inner vision.
However, each of the brothers has been given their own occult name, written in the stars—and only readable by the initiated.
This name is in the book of life. A wonderful tone sounds in it, as if from paradise lost. Sometimes in deep sleep the soul thinks it can hear him faintly. But the dreary day scares him away again.
But the Knight of the Grail follows the mysterious sound which seems to come from far away, he rides and rides, driven by longing—until he hears it closer and closer. Once you hear the call, you forget everything. He gets up, listens and listens and follows him. No one knows the hour when he will see the Grail: but when it strikes, the hour of fate, then one also hears the call to the Grail service—the lost word.
Notes:
[1] Cosmic Forces and Spiritual Powers. [Kosmische Gewalten und geistige Kräfte. Franz Hartmann, M.D. Neue Lotusblüten 6, no. 3-4 (March-April 1913), 83-112] {This article was reformatted from the original, but with the content unchanged other than fixing minor typos. Translation from the German by Robert Hütwohl, ©2025}
[2] {R.H.—Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden, Das Dasein als Lust, Leid und Liebe als die altindische Weltanschauung in neuzeitlicher Darstellung. Ein Beitrag zum Darwinismus (Braunschweig: C.A. Schwetschke, & Sohn. (Uppelhans & Pfenningstorff.) 1891.) [Lust, Suffering and Love. A Contribution to Darwinism.]}