nd the Father are one.")

In the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries after Christ, the era in which
we are still living was being prepared in Europe. It was gradually to
replace the fourth, or Greco-Roman civilization. It is the fifth
post-Atlantean period. The races which, after many wanderings and varied
fortunes, became the vehicles of this new civilization were descendants of
those Atlanteans who had remained less affected than others by what had
been going on meanwhile during the four preceding periods of civilization.
They had not penetrated into the countries in which those respective
civilizations took root. On the contrary, they had, in their way, handed
on Atlantean forms of civilization. There were many among them who had
retained in a high degree the inheritance of the ancient dim clairvoyance,
the state described above as intermediate between sleeping and waking.
Such people knew the spiritual world from their own experience, and could
reveal to their fellow-men what takes place there. Thus there sprang up a
great number of narratives of spiritual beings and events, and the
national treasures of legends and sagas had their origin in spiritual
experiences of this kind. For the dim clairvoyance lasted on, in many
people, into times not far removed from the present. There were other
people who, although they had lost clairvoyance, nevertheless developed
the faculties they acquired for use in the physical sense-world in
accordance with feelings and emotions which corresponded to clairvoyant
experiences. And even the Atlantean oracles had their successors in the
new civilization.

There were everywhere Mysteries, but in them that Mystery of Initiation
was most cultivated, which leads to the unveiling of that part of the
spirit-world which Ahriman keeps hidden. The spiritual powers existing
behind the forces of nature were here revealed. In the mythologies of
European nations are contained the remnants of what the Initiates of these
Mysteries were able to disclose to men. It is true that these mythologies
also contain the other kind of mystery, although in a more imperfect form
than that possessed by the Southern and Eastern Mysteries. Superhuman
beings were also known in Europe, but they were seen to be in perpetual
conflict with the associates of Lucifer. And the Light-God too was
proclaimed, but in such a form that it was doubtful whether he would
overcome Lucifer. On the other hand, these Mysteries were illumi