A Lecture bv Dr. Ehrenfried Pfeiffer about Mexico. 
Unrevised notes from a recording of poor quality, c. 1956. During some portions, not transcribed, the tape recorder was turned off at Dr. Pfeiffer’s request.
First, Dr. Pfeiffer described his reason for being in Mexico in connection with work done for a life Insurance Company, who were going to set up a laboratory in Mexico City with interest in the anthroposophical medicines and the licenses to use them in Mexico. Then he continued: 
While being there, I thought I would take a few days off and go to Yucatan and visit some of the Mayan ruins, in which evidence has been left of the Mayan civilization because that fits very well into what I have to say to complete these lectures (about the configuration of the earth). In order to save as much time in Yucatan as possible, travelling around in the jungle, I needed a guide who could lead the way. By sheer accident I found a guide who was not only a trained archeologist, graduated from the University of Merida, but who was at the same time a Mayan by descent who understood and spoke Mayan fluently, and also understood many things that you can not find in books. These things coincided very much with what concerned us in our work in the laboratory in Mexico. He was also very much interested in Herb Medicine. He knew what we would call a "witch doctor", that is a herb doctor who lives quite isolated in the jungle and who has knowledge of about 1,000 medicinal herbs which grow in Yucatan. Since we were there in Yucatan during the rainy season, the place where he lived was inaccessible, but this guide promised to establish contact with this Indian medicine man in order to extract as much knowledge as possible of the herbs that have come down in the memory of these Indians over the hundreds or maybe thousands of years. I hope that one day I will be able to make available this knowledge to Dr. Knauer. 
During the last three lectures I talked about the problems of our Earth as a physical configuration, the geological development, the time development end the formation of Continents. That there must have been a continent between Europe and America, even the geologists admit: that is, the most orthodox of them talk about a "land-bridge". If we study the plant growth and distribution, then we must by necessity come to the conclusion of a land-bridge. Nevertheless, the orthodox geologist does not like to acknowledge that this land bridge was a continent called "Atlantis".  As soon as you talk to them about Atlantis, then they throw up their hands immediately and say: this is humbug, this is hearsay and mysticism, etc., etc. While all the data of the migration of species points to the existence of a land bridge, they do not want to accept this. That there was another continent called "Lemuria" is even less acceptable to the orthodox geologists. So in that which I am telling you, I have to bypass for the sake of time all the arguments which could be brought forward in order to shake up even the geologists a little bit; I shall just proceed on the premise that the existence of Atlantis and Lemuria are generally accepted. They can be accepted especially if we look upon them in terms of animal and plant migrations. Whether the continents move around as such, this question we will withdraw for the moment. If, however, we look into the field of Mythology and the migrations of the races, then we will find plenty of information and data which will force us to accept the existence of Atlantis and Lemuria. The Mexican civilizations, inasmuch as is taught about their relics; the archeology of the relics, in the University of Merida for instance, have no difficulty whatsoever to accept Atlantis as a reality. It is just the stubborn intellectual minds in this country and some German and Swiss mainly, who refuse the idea. In Yucatan, the Atlantean overflow is so clear that you cannot avoid hitting upon it with every step.

Now I would like you to form a simple picture on this map (not attached). It is apparent that the Atlantean continent was in here, consisting of rather flat islands. No high mountains, for they were actually formed on earth after the submergence of Atlantis and the previous Lemuria, which was also rather flat. The Rocky Mountains, Alps, etc., are rather young mountains and have formed only since the submergence of Atlantis. There are other mountains in central Asia, north Africa and North America which were formed with the disappearance of Lemuria. However, the Appalachian Mountains are much older and date back before Lemurian times, in fact to the earliest formation of mountains on earth. We have certain areas where we have leftovers of the Atlantean continent, especially in the plains of Portugal, a few stretches in Ireland and Wales where we find left-overs that were not broken off the Atlantean shelf. 
The Lemurian shelf, which is also called Osanaland, can also be found. There are some islands (Madagascar) which have an absolutely Lemurian vegetation, which does not exist in that purity anywhere else. The Lemurian continent has to do with the separation of the moon. The Atlantean continent is the continent in which we have other events which even extend into our time, namely in the plant realm. First of all, the higher mammals developed here in this Lemurian period. Man descended on earth during the Lemurian period in these areas (Lemuria), but these areas became uninhabitable because the tendency of nature, i.e. the formative principle, has been overshot and the body which formed at that time was too much hardened, covered with horny substance, like the Dinosaur, Ichthyosaur and other animals of which the lizard is the reminder. 
In Yucatan we could see giant lizards, and if you would magnify them about ten times, then you would have one of these prehistoric animals before you. As I said, Man could not then live in that time; he degenerated so much that there was no further progress in development, so he died out but for a few advanced human beings who survived the Lemurian period. The other human beings went to other planets and survived these catastrophes on other planets. Rudolf Steiner describes this in his Occult Science. From these other planets they then repopulated this earth. As Man returned from Saturn, Jupiter, Venus, Mercury, Mars, etc., he developed his body; however, this body was not as it is today, with bones and hair, and, therefore, one cannot find any remnants today. One can, however, find the memories of these Atlantean times, in mythologies in Greece, Egypt and Babylonia. One finds also parts of these mythologies in Polynesia and one finds-here in Central America so-called Indians who had remnants of the mythologies which are exact descriptions of that which took place in Atlantis. 	
Now I will have to kill the term "American Indian". This term is wrong. Of the American Indians there are so many tribes as there are of all the other races together. They are of such different origin that they should not be pushed together under the same name. There were periods of very high civilizations. If we think of the Inca period in Peru, for instance, we have one of the highest civilizations with a complete and perfect social order - I think a social order which only could serve as a model for that which one ever wants to achieve here on earth. Now you should realize that today's human beings, even you as you are sitting here in this room, are of different origins. Not only that many of you had European ancestors, but much more important is the fact that many different impulses, "Incarnation Egos” It as Rudolf Steiner calls it, are incorporated in these human beings. So, if you would be able to look back to incarnations far back into the Atlantean period, you would discover that during this Atlantean period you were assigned to some very definite mystery centre, and the impulse which came forth from the mysteries formed the particular pattern of individuality of Ego, an eternal pattern, eternal intellect which is incorporated in every human being. so we might find human beings which belong to the Sun Mystery, others to the Mercury Mystery or Venus Mystery, etc. This in a way influences even to this day the pattern of personality of every human being and we cannot think in terms of Reincarnation of the Ego and understand the Ego, if we do not understand at the same time this specific pattern of performance or tinge the individual human being has. As body, of course, we are the product of inheritance, of that which we inherit from our ancestors, way back through the generations. In these bodies in which we live today, we have a terrific mixture of various influences. About this I will now speak, illustrating it on the American Indians. 
There are two migrations to the American continent. One migration came over Alaska, migrated south and stopped in Peru, to form the first Inca empire. This is generally acknowledged. These migrations brought with them the knowledge, the mythology, the religion, or as the German astrologer Keppler called it with regard to the Egyptian ancestry, the "Golden Vessels of the Temple". This migration can be traced back to Tibet and farther to the lost Lemuria. From this lost Lemuria people migrated into Africa and Tibet before the continent was destroyed. I call this the 'overflow' of the to be destroyed continent. This overflow which migrated to India and Africa directly, formed a kind of 'pariah' as the Hindus called it, meaning a kind of inferior human being, underdeveloped, crude, no culture, no civilization: the scums of civilization. A similar event took place in the submerging continent of Atlantis. From there also flowed an 'overflow' to the West and the East. Egypt's native population are really the descendents of the overflow from Atlantis, which belonged to the lowest level at that time. Another stream from that same time flowed over to Central America. Now, while the influx from Lemuria brought with it the highest tradition of a Sun cult or the other cults, i.e. of the spiritual memories of Man from the area from which he descended upon earth, and found earthly location here (Mexico), this I would call' a spiritualized, civilized overflow from Lemuria. The other masses formed the masses of the people. So we have now on the one side a Priest-King and his generation, and on the other side the uneducated crude people. This situation prevailed over the entire earth. We have everywhere people who have grown up from the earth, that is the scum of the earth, who have been gradually raised to a higher level, and we have other streams of people who escaped from certain submerged continents and are superimposed as immigrants, as Rulers. Egypt never produced its own rulers; it was always dominated by immigrants, Turks, Arabs, Persians and other people who formed the superstructure or upper layer. 
This we can also see here in Mexico. From Atlantis the migration goes westward to Santiago, Guatemala, then to Yucatan. Then another element develops here in Central America, which are the Toltecs. Between Mayan and Toltecs there are such differences as between two ancient worlds. It is for this reason that it is not correct to speak in the general term of American Indians. 
We have then within the American Indians a migration going north. The more north they go, the coarser their original tradition, their clairvoyance, the insight into the metaphysical, and we have here a certain inflow from Atlantis, especially the so-called 'Mound Builders'. They are Atlanteans. We have now three things: two old streams, the Lemurian and Atlantean masses, and three streams of the original Lemurian Mysteries. We then have a further melting pot, in that there also came initiates of the seven Atlantean periods into Central America who gave that which the Mayas, as the true descendents of the original impulse, had developed an entirely new turn. The Toltecs' influence brings in new crafts, new mythologies, new habits, which come out of the seventh Atlantean period. 
It is very difficult, if you read modern literature on the American Indians or the Mexican Indians, to split this apart. Once you see the pottery, or the temples or ruins which are left, it is very easy to see which is of original Lemurian impulse and which is of the original pariah impulse, and that which is of the original Atlantean impulse. This guide I had was absolutely versed in that he could read in these lintels and other examples; it was simply marvelous. I would say, one could not have any better explanation of that; it was pure Anthroposophy what he read from these things. At another time I will go more deeply into this subject. At this moment I only want to point out what originated here. 
We have what is called archeologically a 'Pre-Mayan Culture' which started maybe 800 B.C. and went on until 400 A.D. Then we have the first Mayan culture which is still pure. (400 - 600 A.D.) Then we have the second Mayan culture which is already influenced by the Toltecs, i.e., by the Atlantean remnant which by then began to show up. Then we have the third Mayan culture, thus we have a truly Mexican culture. 
A similar process as in Mexico took place in Europe. In the latter we have mainly immigration of the overflow from Atlantis, the seventh period, into Western, Central and Eastern Europe and around the Mediterranean into Africa. So we have the masses of the people, then we have the rulership who more or less came by an entirely different route. The rulership of Europe has come from the East. We have in the messes a chunk of clay and we have the artist who farms this chunk of clay; the chunk of clay being the average human being (this is not a derogatory remark) and the artist being the spiritual leaders, or as the times change, political or other leaders. This again takes place by migration. Nowadays we have this much immigration into the U.S. Of course, there is just as much immigration into Mexico and Canada. Much could be said about immigration into South America. Mainly the Portuguese and Spaniards go there, while the Northern European prefers to come to North America, Germans, English, French, Italians Scandinavians and Russians. 
This then all melts together, so we can understand why we must have all the conflicts we have.  
We have heard about our own being, the need for adjustment of our Ego to our body. This body being inherited, coming from somewhere as we have said before, we have already quite a mixed body. Then the Ego having been influenced by its ancestry as Ego either on the oldest part of humanity itself, or having survived on some other planet, with different impulses, with different mysteries. Then comes the question: Did we participate already in American cultures, or have we come down on earth in Atlantean cultures? In which part of the Atlantean culture have we left Atlantis; have we survived Atlantis? 
This in our Ego inheritance forms a very definite pattern of which modern psychologists know nothing at all. They cannot give any answers to any human problems. This, from an anthroposophical point of view, we have to foresee. Then we have the Ego in its metamorphosis due to the karma of the individual; so this is a very complicated matter.
This Ego lives together with others, connected by family bonds, national bonds, racial bonds, by friendships of free choice, (Goethe called these Wahlverwandtschaften); and this all complicates matters. We have all those historical developments of blending together or not blending together of these various people and that results in our present chaos. This present chaos is the result of the past. Out of this present chaos there is at the moment no possibility of what I would call "a horizontal escape"; that is, we cannot migrate from one place of earth to another in order to escape this chaos; it is impossible because it is everywhere. The only escape that is possible is an escape into one's own self, one's own inner self. Therefore, it is an escape into a higher realm, into a new concept. Actually, what we human beings have as a task at present would be: to form a new continent on which to live. This new continent is not an earthly continent in the sense of Lemuria, Atlantis, America, Europe or Asia, but it is a spiritual continent. If it is a spiritual continent that we have to form, then it is this continent which in the Apocalypse is sketched with just a few sentences: this continent of which it says that Christ is coming in the clouds. It is this "Cloud Continent". Today I cannot say more about this, but I would like to add just a tiny bit of spiritual insight into our spiritual environment, i.e. into that which is around us. I think, I can see quite a bit of this new continent forming, the one on which we are to live in a future time when this present earth will become uninhabitable. It is a necessity for human beings who do not want to be a chunk of clay, but who want to be the ones who form this clay, it is a necessity for these human beings to make themselves familiar with the principles to come, to rule, to form, to organize and to develop. It is, therefore, an interesting exercise to go back into the past and to study these principles as they worked. 

I have still to tell more about the Mayans. You see, I went to Mexico because I had a very specific question raised in my mind when reading a lecture by Dr. Steiner in 1922 which was given in 1916 about the Mexican mythology and the influence of it. Ever since that time a question was in my mind which nobody could answer me. This question is related to the Mayan civilization and I have been searching for the answer ever since. Now I have found the answer, right there last week, mainly through the intermediary of this guide. While we visited these temples and remnants in the midst of the jungle; the guide said: You must understand that this tribe which built these temples is different from all the other Indian tribes, because they said that the uppermost religious principle is: “You can find God only in your own Self" This tribe when it developed its civilization about 300 B.C., flourishing until about 400 A.D., is called the Itza, and is the only one which has this saying. "You can find God only in your own self.  Now this is something we are very familiar with as Anthroposophists, because I would say, it is our belief too that one has to find God in one's own heart or ether. This tribe lived originally at a place in the highlands of Guatemala on the border of Guatemala and Yucatan, a place which is called Uaxuctan. For this place I have been searching all these years. At this place lived a personality called Itzamna. This personality lived about the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. He was a divine Being who appeared in a physical body and he gave the directives for what later on developed into this Mayan culture. 
The other surrounding cultures here in Central America were very bloody cultures, because they all had the blood sacrifices; at first only one victim was sacrificed, but at the time of the arrival of the Spaniards up to 10,000 people were killed in one festival. Then the blood of the victims was disposed and drank by the priests who tried to become clairvoyant. This goes back through the Aztec culture. The native Mayan cultures, through the Toltec influences, were decadent too. Before that, there was a pure culture, we could say: a Sun culture. The change from the original pureness into the cruel, bloody ritual murders came about when the seventh Atlantean leftover migrated into Mexico and became dominant. The decadent Atlanteans have brought the blood sacrifice to the pure remnant of the original Lemurian continent which established itself here. Dr. Steiner speaks about the bloody, decadent black magic impulses which have dwelled there and brought about all the cruelty and torturing of the Aztecs and Toltecs that had to be stopped otherwise the whole world would have perished in a mutual bloodshed. He also explained that the civilization which radiated out from here in Central America during the first 1,000 years of our post-Christian time, had brought about a specific materialism which we have today in this world. That we have today in America as it is, a specific materialistic impulse, seeing in money, so to speak, the God to be worshipped in ownership and possession, that is the direct outcome of that which emanated from Mexico. So Dr. Steiner says: "That which today has developed as a specific modern world, is the result of the blending together of the overflow from Lemuria and Atlantis." The Mysteries which were the remnants of Atlantean Mysteries and flowed over to Mexico, were Saturn Mysteries. Saturn Mysteries make people very clever in the handling of matter, of material; make them very inventive to build machines. That in America we are able to build such beautiful machines on the assembly line, as is done today with all the organization that stands behind it, is a result of this event here in Mexico. The mass production of machines today is, according to Rudolf Steiner (and for many years he forbade to make this public) the direct result of the cultic, ritualistic mass murder in Mexico. You will understand, if you are conscious, that as the rather mixed, composite Being he is today, Man wants to prepare the exodus to a new continent, to free it from these influences. You have to look at the steps which have been taken by the spiritual leadership of Man to prevent such evils. There we have the set course at the 5th Atlantean period: the great spiritual leaders of the Sun Temple migrated into Central Asia. The great spiritual leader Skythianos under the guidance of Uriel, sent out the seven holy Rishis, sent out the Persian Zarathustra, sent out the initiates of Babylonia, Chaldea, Egypt and Greece. This developed as the Eastern civilization.  Try to raise the level, and always out of this, the black principle dropped down again and degeneration and decay always seemingly get the upper hand, i.e. the spiritual leaders survive, but the masses time and again fall back into the land, and so we have, of course, in Egypt the terrific fight between the Sun Cult and the Moon Cult of the other priesthood. You just have to read The Spiritual Guidance of Mankind, one of the most important books, and you will find it very clearly described by Dr. Steiner how the influences alter our modern world. So you see, we have to put together these two things: this which develops from the East and that which is in the West. We cannot understand America and we can never build up a better America, unless we understand how these all come together in a culminating point here, and this flows back to the old world. 
This tribe of the Itza under the leadership of Itzamna had the idea that you can find God only in yourself. The Toltecs had a God, a serpent "Quetzalcoatl" of whom Rudolf Steiner at one point said it was a kind of Mercurial spirit, and at another time he said, it is a kind of mixture of Lucifer and Ahriman, a mephistophelian figure. That this is definitely so, you can see in the change of the first and second Mayan cultures in the way they build their temples. You have the monuments, you can see haw the very element moved in. Before the time that the mephistophelian element moved in, we had a pure Mayan culture under Itzamna.
This culture was mainly astronomical. There is an observation tower which is preserved; we saw it, and you can still see it. There you can line up the orientation points. The guide explained this to me. We measured it out and it appears that the tower had an orientation astronomically so that you find the line of the summer and winter solstices and of the spring and fall equinox. The shadows of certain pillars are cast into the gate and other parts just at the very exact constellation. Today, all this is 4 degrees out and if we calculate back 4 degrees, we arrive at a time 8,000 years ago, when this orientation was correct. This is the time when a Mayan memory of the Itza begins, because that is the time when they started out after the submersion of Atlantis. 
This Itzamna is pictured as the God of the Goat. This God of the Goat had magic powers and he conquered the magician, the God of the Evil. At the time of his lecture in 19l6 Dr. Steiner said that it would not be possible to find anything in the physical world; one has to have spiritual insight to find anything about the fact that this God was a divine Being in human form, and at the time when Christ was crucified in Palestine, this divine Being crucified this black magician somewhere in Mexico, in order to create a counterforce, so that the dark, destructive power of Lemuria and Atlantis would not get the upper hand permanently on the American continent. So we have here the crucifixion of the Evil by the white magician to overcome him. This was the problem which was in my mind, that I would like to find the place and would like to find the traditions which point to this fact. Well, this I did. There is a very peculiar ceremony in the Itzanitza, which is already a later creation, but still of the first Mayan culture and the subsequent one. It is what they call a Ball Court. Two walls at a distance of about 150 ft. High walls of about 20 or 30 ft high. In the centre of each of the walls a Temple, on the end another temple of great beauty. There a high priest sat all alone by himself. The people who watched the ball game were not the masses, but selected people, who were sitting up there. The game was with a little rubber ball of fist size and to be thrown through a ring in the centre of the wall. The ball could not be touched by the hand, but either by the shoulder, head, hip, knee or elbow. This game went on sometimes for weeks and months. It was a ritual game, and the ritual game was such that some men of the nobility, the best of the youth, were selected to play, by lot or by the priest's decision. It was decided that the one group represented the forces of evil and the other the forces of good. Then they were fighting against each other to win the game. It was the idea, already in the time when the original clairvoyance had died down and the Gods could not be found, that the answer of the Gods was to be achieved. You can see that our baseball game is a very crude, decrepit remnant of this truly ancient cultic game. So, the game went on and eventually one party won, either the party of the light or the party of the darkness. The high priest could then say whether in the coming year the light or the dark forces would dominate. 
Now comes the influence of the Atlantean decadent mysteries, the mephistophelian influence. The winner or captain of the winning team was to kill the captain of the losing team by beheading him. The blood of the beheaded man was sacrificed, it was put into cups. Beautiful little cups are all around the corner of the ball court. (I might mention that in this court there is a very peculiar phenomenon -if you speak with a normal voice from underneath the ring, this voice comes back to you as an echo 7 to 10 times, if it is noisy during the day. However at night, when it is quiet, the echo comes back up to 47 times. It is the most perfect acoustic ever created here on earth; a high concentration of chemical ether.) Itzamna sometimes is pictured with a spear and a shield, and a serpent coming up to him. There is absolutely no doubt. It is also interesting that Itzamna is portrayed in the stoneworks with a pure human face, without a mask. The guide explained to me that it is their Mayan belief that the human being is not able to stand either the greatness and beauty or the darkness of a spiritual being. Therefore, a mask has to be shown. Only that Being which is a true Representative of Man can be seen shown with a pure human face, without a mask. That is the case with Itzamna on the stoneworks. 
When we have been taught by Rudolf Steiner, taking us from here to the East to the Centre of Anthroposophy, he mentioned about this in just one lecture, without going into details; very hesitantly he spoke about it. I think, at the same time when we have here in Palestine the mysteries to save the world, we have here in Mexico the other mystery to save the Western world and protect it against the unruly, destructive element which had come over from Lemuria and Atlantis. 
This has preserved this country for a task which is still to come and has not yet been accomplished, because all this has to be continued.  Now we have a Michael age and, therefore, these things have come into the open. Before, we did not have the insight into the Mayan period and, therefore, the orthodox representative documentation did not have these facts, and it was difficult to discover this. 

	- This transcript courtesy Dean Rachel, of Ladner, B. C., Canada.