Human beings, so said the Greeks, and their priests of the Mysteries also said so, for the mysteries of Salt, Mercury and Sulphur are ancient; human beings, through their evolution have overcome atavism, making use of sulphur atavistically. But Zeus and his circle have withdrawn into the super-sensible and avail themselves of the Sulphur processes: hence Zeus can hurl his lightning. If man, like Zeus, could hurl lightning, that is, if he could transform the sulphur through Imagination into reality,
if he could inwardly and consciously hurl lightning, then he would use Imagination atavistically. That is what the Greeks wished to say when they said of Zeus that he could hurl lightning.
It was known, even by Saint Martin, that with the Sulphur of the Alchemists something different is meant from the ordinary earthly sulphur, of which one could at most say — excuse the plain speaking — it is the excrement of that which was understood by Saint Martin and those before him as the real sulphur, which they also called the ‘philosophical sulphur’.
And Saint Martin still speaks of how thunder and lightning are really connected with the processes of the macrocosmic, or one could say the cosmic sulphur. Today, indeed, many a physical-natural scientific explanation creeps into science, which is also a sulphur, [See former note. Trans.] but not exactly a ‘philosophical sulphur’.
Yet, remember that the really clever people of today are, of course, far beyond talking of sulphur processes in the cosmos when thunder and lightning arise; for lightning and thunder arise, as you can read in elementary books on physics, through some sort of friction processes in the clouds — don't they? Anything really rational one cannot find in what is said about lightning and thunder; for the wet clouds in their mutual action are supposed to create the electricity which comes about through thunder and lightning! But if an electrical experiment is made in the schoolroom each apparatus is most carefully dried, for the least dampness prevents any electricity from arising. The clouds up there, however, are apparently not wet! The teacher can do nothing with an electric machine which is damp, which indeed is not completely dry, but at the same time he explains that the wet clouds are supposed to be connected with the creation of electricity. Yes, indeed such things get thoroughly mixed up, don't they! I wanted,
however, only to say that in Saint Martin there was still a consciousness that this element of which the Greeks dreamt when they spoke of Hera and Zeus, had something to do with lightning and thunder.Ancient Myths:
Their Meaning and Connection with Evolutionhttps://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA180/English/SBC1971/19180104p01.html