“Suffered under Pontius Pilate”

Antonio Ciseri

The saga of the Trojan War is a representation of the spread of Hellenism; it is the mythical presentation of an esoteric truth: the efflorescence of the fourth sub-race of the fifth root-race, and the replacement of the priestly rulership, now in its last stage, by the purely worldly rulership.

That is very subtly indicated at the beginning of the Trojan saga. You probably know that matter is always represented by water. I need only call attention to the familiar Nicene Creed, which says “suffered under Pontius Pilate”.

As the esotericist knows, this is an incorrect rendering. What it really says is “suffered in pontoi pilatoi”, which means merely “in compressed water” and signifies “descended in order to suffer in matter.” This sentence in the Creed which is said all over Christendom has come about through the word “pontoi” having become “Pontius.” 

When Thales states that everything has originated from water, he is referring to the comprehensive physical matter of which alone we can treat when we would speak of physical things. He is using the term ‘water’ for physical matter. Physical matter is to be the all-important thing for those who now take over guidance. The predominance of physical matter then led to there being worldly kings. 

Previously there had only been kings who stood in relationship with the Divine. Peleus is the king who is to rule on the physical plane, deriving his strength from the physical plane. This is represented by his marriage with the goddess Thetis — the marriage of the leader of mankind with the matter of the physical plane, with the goddess of water, the goddess of the sea.

And from this union sprang Achilles. He is the first initiate of this kind. Hence he is invulnerable except in the heel. All those who were initiated in the fourth sub-race were vulnerable in some spot. It is only in the fifth sub-race that there will be initiates so advanced as not to be vulnerable anywhere. Achilles is plunged into the Styx. That means to be dead to the earthly and withdrawn to a higher plane of vision.

-Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, October 28, 1904:

Greek and Germanic Mythology in the Light of Esotericism, Lecture 4