Steiner Online Library Spiritual Science for Human Evolution

The Karma of Vocation
GA 172

Table of Contents

  • Title Page
  • Colophon
  • About the Publication of Rudolf Steiner's Lectures
  • Lecture I
    • Goethe's life as spiritual phenomenon and his relationship to our age.
  • Lecture II
    • The rhythm in Goethe's life.
  • Lecture III
    • The connection of the soul-spiritual with the physical during sleeping and waking. The involvement of the animal in the wisdom of the world. The relationship of man's creative activity and vocational work to the total evolution of the earth. Jakob Bohme.
  • Lecture IV
    • The transformation of vocational life in the beginning of the modern age. Vocational work as a seed for the continuing evolution of the world.
  • Lecture V
    • Vocation and official position. Psychoanalysis. The destiny-like formation of life in relation to repeated earthly lives. Aspects of man's essence and their significance for vocational karma.
  • Lecture VI
    • Symptomatic study of linkages with destiny: Friedrich Theodor Vischer, Max Eyth, Hofrath Eysenhardt by Alfred von Berger.
  • Lecture VII
    • Hereditary impulses and impulses from previous earthly lives. John Stuart Mill and Alexander Herzen. The activities of occult brotherhoods. Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society. Ku Hung-Ming. The encyclicals of 1864.
  • Lecture VIII
    • The life of Galileo in the light of the problem of destiny. Der rechte Liebhaber des Schicksals [The True Lover of Destiny] by Albert Steffen.
  • Lecture IX
    • The relationship of the human being to the hierarchies. The conjury of destructive forces from the cosmos by the aberrations of human beings. The removal of divine substance from the word. How can the human being of our time find his way to Christ? James Watt. Modern technology as demonic magic.
  • Lecture X
    • Ancestor-worship, polytheism, monotheism, and the Mystery of Golgotha. Lucifer and the mystery of the moon. Mithras and Christ.
  • A Note on the Transcription of Lectures

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Quotes

"You can see from this, my dear friends, what mischief will be set on foot if the truths of Spiritual Science are withheld. For man will be exposed to the forces of evil, and he will only be protected from it by giving himself up to the spiritual life of the good. To withhold the spiritual life of goodness from men is to be no friend to humanity. Whoever does this, be he Freemason or Jesuit, is no friend to humanity. For it means handing men over to the forces of evil. And there may be a purpose in doing so. This purpose may be to confine goodness to a small circle, in order by the help of this goodness to dominate the helpless humanity who are thus led by evil into the follies of life."

—Rudolf Steiner,
Spiritual Science Notes On Goethe's Faust, Vol. II, No. 273-8.

Spiritual Exercises

Calendar of the Soul

In 1912 Rudolf Steiner offered a “calendar of the soul” with weekly verses that express how the changing seasons in both the outer natural world and our inner lives help humanity evolve. Download and read the verses in four translations with commentary by Eloise Krivosheia of the Los Angeles Branch of the Anthroposophical Society.

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2022-2023 Calendar Dates