Before one can speak of a change of spir­itu­al era, there must first be a spir­itu­al era. An old one and a new one too, for trans­ition and change are pos­sible only when both are present: the old as well as the new. We may call an era spir­itu­al when spir­it rules over mat­ter, when in place of the mal­le­able, con­stantly replaced value sys­tem of tran­si­ence an endur­ing struc­ture of val­ues pre­vails, one whose change­less­ness is not its flaw but its very vir­tue.

A spir­itu­al age is value-ortho­dox, moral-con­ser­vat­ive and cul­ture-clas­sic­al – these are its three pil­lars. The endur­ing value sys­tem of the spir­itu­al age we call value-ortho­doxy. The old order is not some fusty, out­moded skel­et­on but a sys­tem that stands for uni­ver­sal val­ues. To this value sys­tem belong the holi­ness of life and its sub­lime call­ing, the soul's etern­al exist­ence and its belong­ing to God, the author­ity of light over dark­ness, the pos­sib­il­ity of sal­va­tion, and a host of other norms.

The spir­itu­al age is by its very nature moral-con­ser­vat­ive. The source of moral norms is not man but the cos­mic order, which must be reflec­ted in the earthly world as well. The high­er truth and mor­al­ity that des­cend from above need no reform; they need only be upheld, for they come not from the cor­rupt and lim­ited and rel­at­ive earthly-human level but are of super­hu­man ori­gin.

Finally, the spir­itu­al age is cul­ture-clas­sic­al, that is, in mat­ters of cul­ture it can best be com­pared with the clas­sic­al age. Even in its weak­est expres­sions clas­sic­al cul­ture ensures high qual­ity and strong focus – man accom­plishes hero­ic deeds and lives with almost the stand­ing of a demi­god. Cul­ture in some way reflects man's con­scious­ness, and set against the strong focus of the clas­sic­al age, mod­ern­ity reflects the loss of the centre and sig­ni­fies frag­ment­a­tion, lost­ness.

A change of spir­itu­al era, a shift of paradigm, usu­ally brings about com­plex move­ments of cul­tur­al mim­icry as well. Main­stream cul­tures van­ish, and at times sub­cul­tures come to play the defin­ing role. Espe­cially at a time of realign­ment it is worth remem­ber­ing the words of Rudolf Stein­er: ‘The man who believes in Spir­it can no more dis­reg­ard Mat­ter than the man who believes in Mat­ter can dis­reg­ard Spir­it.’

At the end of the third mil­len­ni­um BC, pro­found tec­ton­ic shifts took place on the sur­face of the Earth, sea levels rose, and the coastal cul­tures were forced to change. We may say that it was then, on human­ity's intel­lec­tu­al hori­zon, that the chapter began which lasts to this very day, and whose defin­ing thinkers appeared almost as one anoth­er's con­tem­por­ar­ies in the vari­ous great civil­isa­tions. The Eleat­ic philo­soph­ers in Hel­las, the magi in Chaldea, Zoroast­er in Per­sia, Buddha and the philo­soph­ers of the Upan­ishads in India, Lao Tzu in China are in effect rep­res­ent­at­ives of one and the same era, kindred to one anoth­er in spir­it. We may say that since then there has been noth­ing new under the Sun, we think vir­tu­ally the same thoughts, we strive to answer the same enig­mat­ic life-riddles: life, death, mor­al­ity, mean­ing, man, God, loneli­ness, love, call­ing. It is as if philo­sophies and reli­gions, and even present-day nat­ur­al sci­ence, were merely chan­ging forms of one and the same endeav­our, and for all the many robes in which the answer­ers are clothed, this is only intel­lec­tu­al-ideo­lo­gic­al mim­icry – in real­ity every­one is reflect­ing on the same ques­tions. This is the topos per­en­nis, the etern­al theme, the etern­al ques­tion, and the magus, the politi­cian, the nat­ur­al sci­ent­ist or the priest, and the com­mon mor­tal too, are all chan­ging forms of one and the same etern­al man, seek­ing the mean­ing of their own exist­ence as they adapt to the sur­round­ings of the moment. The more things change, the more they stay the same – so the French say­ing goes.