https://anthroposophy.eu/Gender_and_sexuality
In this page you mention:
"In the current process of incarnation, the choice of gender comes quite late in the descent from the spiritual world before physical incarnation. Whereas the new incarnation ('I'-identity) has been worked and crafted in the spirit world, and further developed in the descent in the planetary spheres, it is only in the Moon or lunar sphere that the gender is choosen (1922-11-05-GA218). This is also where the karma is recorded after death (eg 1924-01-28-GA240) and again taken on at descent. A soul has to have the strength to take on that karma, and the gender choice is related to this."
Could you please eloborate on how the gender choice relates to the picked up karma package?
I've also read "MANIFESTATIONS OF KARMA GA 120 9. Karmic Effects Of Our Experiences As Men and Women. Death and Birth In Relationship to Karma"
https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA120/English/RSP1984/19100526p01.html
Here Steiner described how a "Man is a Woman's karma" and vice versa.
"“It is not so easy to believe that intellectuality remains external and affects the inner being of man but slightly. And a materialistic mind affects the soul life even less. The consequence of this is that the being on quitting an incarnation in which he has lived but little in the soul, carries with him the tendency between birth and death to penetrate less deeply into the organism in the next incarnation. He has but little power to do this, and that is why in the next incarnation the organism is less impregnated. So comes the inclination to build up a female body in the next incarnation, and it is therefore correct when occultism says that ‘Woman is man's karma.’”"
Here Steiner mentions how the materalistic man has no strength to deeply penetrate into matter again in the next incarnation and thus is forced to become female. is This what you meant?
A couple of other interesting quotes you mention in the wiki page:
"the soul is not tied to a particular sex: he souls of the female gender work themselves through [this] until they can live equally with men in the bodies the latter have made out of and for themselves, and there will [then] be one sex on Earth." (1905-10-23-GA093)
"the female sex was there originally, and follows a falling curve, whereas the male sex is in a rising curve, and is seeking in itself the procreative force which the female already has" (1905-10-23-GA093)
Do I understand it correctly that as a female you develop more spiritually on average throughout life and you can then utilize these fruits in your next incarnation as a male? We know that karma exists so that there's a greater guarantee that each incarnation there will improvement over the last one. So can we see the gender alternation as a fail safe aside from just being a different experience?
I'm personally a male with a very flexible brain (in fact part of the brain is thus feminine), if I'm understanding Rudolf Steiner, there would be no point for me to reincarnate as a female in the next incarnation. Especially not during the Oriphiel Age?
Modern young men are more boyish looking and androgynous especially compared to a 100 years ago. Can we view these traits as having penetrated less deeply into matter as well? Is this again another karmic fail safe? Making men more childish making them more in touch with their underdeveloped pure self before the fall?
the 'childlike' part and luciferic 'grown' part of men:
"Man is a twofold being. Whatever consciousness he has developed hitherto is permeated by the Luciferic forces. It is only the unconscious part of man's being, the last remnant of his evolution through the Saturn, Sun and Moon periods when no Luciferic forces were at work — it is only this that streams into him to-day as a virginal element of his nature; but it cannot unite with him without the qualities and forces he is able to develop in himself through the Christ-principle."
“Hence there is a ‘childlike’ part and also a ‘grown’ part in man. It is the latter part of his being that is permeated by the Luciferic forces but its influence asserts itself from the very earliest embryonic stage onwards. The Luciferic forces also permeate the child, so that in ordinary life what was already implanted in the human being before the Luciferic influence, cannot make itself manifest. The Christ-power must re-awaken this, must unite with the best forces of the child-nature in man. The Christ-power may not link itself with the faculties that man has corrupted, with what derives merely from the intellect; the link must be with that which has remained from the child-nature of primeval times. That is what must be reinvigorated and must thereafter fructify the other part (of man's nature).
“But there arose a reasoning among them, which of them should be the greatest,” that is, which of them was most fitted to receive the Christ-principle into his own being.
"But Jesus, perceiving the thought of their heart, took a child and set it by them and said unto them. Whosoever shall receive this child in my name" — that is, whosoever is united in Christ's name with what has remained from the times before the onset of the Luciferic influence “receiveth me; and whosoever shall receive me receiveth him that sent me” (Luke IX, 46–48) — that is, He who sent this (childlike) part of the human being to the Earth. Emphasis is there laid upon the great significance of what has remained ‘childlike’ in man and should be fostered and nurtured in human nature.”
https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA114/English/RSP1964/19090926p01.html
To be hyper masculine also comes with huge risks of sexual sin today with excessive access to females which would only foster the Luciferic ego. You cannot be one with the harlot and with Christ at the same time.
It's only natural to me that karma would see to it that a large segment of the population is protected somehow from the sexual immortality. On dating apps, 80% of women chase the top 20% of men. This kind of hard competition will help the average modern young feminine man to turn more inward and develop their soul.
There are also huge risks today as a hyper feminine female in terms of Luciferic infection with regards to Social Media and internet in general.
In our modern times, it's no longer a fail safe for spiritual development when incarnating as a female. Could we thus repharse/modernize the occult saying to "Feminine man is a masculine man's karma" and vice versa? The feminine modern man of today would not have been able to survive in the past. The modern feminine man will also not be able to survive during the future Oriphiel age. We are thus living in exceptional times.
As you've noted in your frequency of incarnations wiki, with the degree of materialism and the pace that society develops/grows/changes thanks to technology, we're looking at much more frequent incarnations for a significant subset of the population. If we're looking at least double the frequency for this subset, then it would not be out of ordinary to reincarnate in the same gender. It's only out of ordinary when you only reincarnate in one gender across a whole cultural age.
