with the great
changes in the universe, with changes in the constellation of the earth,
sun and so forth. These are changes in which certain repetitions take
place, in connection with new conditions. They find an external expression
in the fact, for example, that the point in the vault of heaven at which
the sun rises at the beginning of spring makes a complete circuit in the
course of about twenty-six thousand years. Hence this vernal point, in the
course of the period mentioned, moves from one region of the heavens to
another. In the course of the twelfth part of that time, that is to say,
in about twenty-one hundred years, conditions on the earth have changed
sufficiently for the human soul to experience something new upon it since
its previous incarnation. However, since the experiences of an individual
vary according to whether he is incarnated as a woman or as a man, there
are, as a rule, two incarnations within the time stated, one as a man and
one as a woman. But these things are also dependent upon the nature of the
forces which man carries with him from his earthly existence through
death. Therefore all the statements given here are to be taken only in a
general sense, but can be subject to the greatest variations in special
cases.

The Course Of Human Life

Man's life, as it manifests itself in the sequence of events between birth
and death, can be fully understood only by taking into account both the
physical body with its senses and the changes undergone by man's
supersensible principles. Occult science views those changes in the
following manner. Physical birth is seen to be the detachment of the human
being from its maternal covering. Forces which before birth the embryo
shared in common with its mother's body, are present independently in the
child after birth. But in later life supersensible events, similar to
those of the sense-world at physical birth, become perceptible to
supersensible observation. That is, the etheric body of the human being up
to the change of teeth (the sixth or seventh year) is still enveloped in
an etheric sheath. The etheric sheath falls away at that period, and then
the "birth" of the etheric body occurs. But man is still surrounded by an
astral sheath, which falls away between its twelfth and sixteenth year (at
the time of puberty). This is the "birth" of the astral body; and at a
still later period the real ego is born.(33)

Now after the birth of the ego, man lives in suc