After the third seal is opened, the horseman on the black horse appears with a balance in his hand. The horseman on the black horse is Ninurta-Saturnus, the keeper of the south. The balance is the symbol of Saturn. In the zodiac sign Libra, where summer passes into winter and the day into night, Saturn stands exalted (Schult, p.116). Justice, moderation and self- limitation are characteristics of Saturn. In Sumerian-Babylonian culture black is the color of Ninurta-Saturn and of the south. The element earth belongs to the south and to the mineral world and death.

The sun stands at noon in the south. At that moment man is, as a result of the strong sunlight, completely screened from the starlight of the spiritual world. He is entirely wrapped up in the darkness of the earth.

The third or Egyptian-Babylonian cultural period of the Post-Atlantean epoch resonates with this picture, in which science rises by the use of measure and number and the discovery of the laws of nature. This appears in the Seal epoch as man making the world to a market place.

In the first horseman the spirit descended. The second horseman showed the acting of the human soul. In the case of the third horseman all color disappears and only material proportions are the measure of things. Material profit becomes the measure for all activities. Inspirations of the counterforce Ahriman dominate society as a whole. For the second horseman on the red horse, inspirations from Lucifer to follow the human desire were dominating. In the case of the horseman on the black horse the luciferian desire is joined by the calculating mind, unanimated smartness that awakens darkness. At the same time the word power of justice, inspired by Christianity, starts to manifest itself (Steiner, GA 8, p.121).