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Old Soul (Silver Variant) by digital2019 + Marco Polo by Satoshi Face 

PHARAOH

Something special was connected with this, as we shall learn as we penetrate further. The mysteries of the ancient Egyptians strove for something special. Today we may smile when we are told how the Pharaoh was at a certain time a kind of initiate, and how the Egyptian stood in relation to the Pharaoh and to his state institutions. For the modern European scholar it is particularly comical when the Pharaoh gives himself the name, “Son of Horus,” or even “Horus.” It seems singular to us that a man should be venerated as a god; nothing more abstruse could be thought of. But the man of today does not understand the Pharaoh and his mission. He does not know what the Pharaoh-initiation really was. Today we see in a people, only a group of persons who can be counted. To the man of today a people 2 is a meaningless abstraction. The reality is simply a certain number of persons filling a certain area. But this is not a people for one who accepts the standpoint of occultism. 3 As a single member such as the finger belongs to the whole body, so do the single persons within the people belong to the folk-soul. They are as it were embedded in it, but the folk-soul is not physical; it is real only as an etheric form. It is an absolute reality; the initiate can commune with this soul. It is even much more real for him than are single individualities among the people, far more so than a single person. For the occultist spiritual experiences are entirely valid, and there the folk-soul is something thoroughly real. ... Now let us again consider the Pharaoh, remembering that this was a reality for him. Each Pharaoh received certain instructions before his initiation, to the end that he should not grasp this with his intellect only, but that it should become truth and reality for him. He had to be brought to the point where he could say to himself, “If I am to rule this people, I must sacrifice a portion of my spirituality, I must extinguish a part of my astral and etheric bodies. The Osiris and Isis principles must work in me. I must will nothing personally; if I say something, Osiris must speak; if I do something, Osiris must do it; if I move my hand, Osiris and Isis must be active. I must represent Horus, the son of Isis and Osiris.”

Initiation is not erudition. But to be able to do something like this, to be able to make such a sacrifice, pertains to initiation. What the Pharaoh sacrificed of himself could be filled up with portions of the folk-soul. The part of himself that the Pharaoh relinquished was just what gave him power. For justified power does not arise through a man's raising his own personality; it arises through his taking into himself something that transcends the boundaries of personality, a higher spiritual power. The Pharaoh took such a power into himself, and this was externally portrayed through the Uraeus-serpent.

—Rudolf Steiner, Egyptian Myths and Mysteries: Lecture XII

MARCO POLO

A successor of Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan, had settled in China as a ruler after the Mongols had stormed over to Europe. To Kublai Khan in China there came from Europe a Venetian, Marco Polo. At the court of Kublai Khan, who was himself under the influence of the initiation I have previously described, Marco Polo was deeply and fundamentally influenced. He wrote a book of just such a kind as to excite the imagination of the Europeans concerning the Western Hemisphere. Marco Polo's Travels spoke of a magic land in the West, which stirred up longings to discover it. It was this book that induced Christopher Columbus to set out on his voyage to America. So you see how greed was guided into a world of fantasy. Things work together with extraordinarily clever foresight. You must realize that there is a plan in world history in which the evil powers also come into the picture, and that the methods with which history is studied today enable us merely to observe historical life from the external aspect. The only possibility of acquiring real knowledge is to connect the right facts in the light of the science of the spirit, such as the discovery of America at a definite point of time, and the stirrings of desire for a land of fantasy, this desire being, in its turn, an impulse capable of attracting souls away from the earth.

The fitting mood for discovering America at a definite epoch is created by the description of this land of fantasy associated with the stirring up of desire. It is a mood that worked especially upon the subconscious forces in the souls of men, and it was able to work on further in the cultural life. We must think of Marco Polo and his book as being definitely connected with what instigated Christopher Columbus to travel to the West. It is well known that his wish was to discover the magic land; indeed, this is mentioned in ordinary history.

—Rudolf Steiner, Inner Impulses of Evolution: Lecture V

See more on this individuality: Artabazus II & Livia