The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Theosophy and Rosicrucianism IX

[ 1 ] Today, as a continuation of the outline given yesterday on planetary evolution, we will make further observations. It was stated that our Earth previously went through a Saturn, Sun, and Moon phase. Today I would like to describe these successive phases to you, as is customary in occultism. When we speak of the development of the soul on the path of knowledge, you will then see the meaning behind much of what is presented hypothetically today. If we now proceed directly to the Saturn state—that is, the state of our Earth millions and millions of years before our time—it appears quite different from what is assumed according to our current physical conditions. Above all, we must be clear that the most perfect being we know, the human being itself, has the longest series of development behind it. You will therefore hear a history of development of which one could say that it deviates very far from the Haeckel-Darwinian history of development. You will, of course, see the advantages over this purely materialistic theory in my book.

[ 2 ] First and foremost, we must understand that the most perfect beings have undergone the longest process of development. The most perfect being is the human being, and specifically the physical human body. All other beings around us are less perfect than the physical human body, which took the longest time to develop. Therefore, when we look back with spiritual vision, we find the first seeds of this already present in the Saturn state. The entire cosmos, with all the beings and things within it, influenced the Earth’s earliest state. They still possess within themselves all the organs that were formed back then as the most perfect aspects of our physical body; these are the sense organs, the apparatus that can be understood purely in physical terms, which first arose in embryonic form at that time. You must not form a mental image of the eye back then as it does today. But the first rudiments of the eye, the ear, all the sense organs, and all other purely physical apparatus in the human being arose on Saturn. Only those forces existed on Saturn that still manifest in the mineral kingdom today. The human being existed at that time in the first rudiments of his physical body; everything else—blood, tissue, and so on—was not present. The first rudiments of the human body existed as physical apparatuses. Just as emerald, mica, and so on arise through physical laws and form as cubes, hexahedrons, and so on, so apparatus-like forms took shape that existed on the body of Saturn just as crystals exist today in the Earth’s body. And the mode of action of the surface of Saturn was essentially that of a kind of reflection into outer space. The beings surrounding Saturn, scattered throughout outer space, cast their effects downward. In particular, what is called the world aroma was also strongly developed at that time. You can only get a sense of what happened on Saturn back then through certain phenomena today: when you hear an echo in nature outdoors, you would find in the tone of the echo something that flowed out from Saturn in response to the impressions that had acted upon it. These organs, which cast such images back into outer space, are the first rudiments of what later developed, for example, into the eye. And so we could trace every single detail. What you carry within your body today was, back then, a physical realm of Saturn that cast the entire world picture back into space in manifold ways.

[ 3 ] Myths and legends have preserved this phenomenon much more clearly than one might suspect. For example, the Greek myth, which is itself derived from the Eleusinian Mysteries, has preserved something of this in the image of the interaction between Cronus and Rhea, although there has been a significant shift in the facts due to the way the structure of the universe was conceived at that time. We are told there that Cronus casts down his ray, and it returns to him in the most manifold ways; hence that image: he devours his children.

[ 4 ] Now, you must not imagine that the mass of Saturn was something as solid as today’s physical bodies; even if you were to think of water or air, you would still not have a proper mental image of the fundamental substance of Saturn. In occultism, when speaking of bodies, one speaks of solid, watery, and airy bodies. When speaking of elements in the old sense, these correspond to what is today called states of matter in chemistry; you must not believe that the ancients meant the same thing by elements as we do. But then there is also a higher state of matter, which in ancient occultism was called “fire”; the term “heat” would better capture its meaning. Physics, too, will be compelled to acknowledge that what we call heat can truly be compared to a kind of fourth state of matter, a different kind of matter than air and water. Thus, the Saturn mass was not even condensed into air; it was purified warmth. It acted similarly to how warmth acts in your blood today, and it was linked to inner life processes, for these physical processes were actual life processes. Saturn consisted of warmth-substance, an immensely fine mass that could be called neutral in relation to our substances.

[ 5 ] If we now wish to consider the beings who inhabited Saturn, we must first realize that what walks the earth today was itself the earliest rudiment of a physical body there; it did not contain an ego or an astral body. Other beings, however, who are much higher than humans today, animated Saturn; yet they did not walk about there in physical bodies either: they were embodied in the heat substance, and they acted like a stream of heat moving along. Such heat currents constituted the actions of the beings who animated Saturn. Just as you shape a table today, so these beings did their work by causing heat currents. Otherwise, nothing of them was to be perceived. Just as when two heat currents moved back and forth and exchanged with one another, so did they greet one another, so to speak, on Saturn. The beings who passed through their human stage on Saturn did not have a physical body as their lowest member; they did not descend so far into matter that they would have needed a physical body. Their lowest member was the I, just as you today have the physical body as your lowest member; then came their Spirit-Self or Manas, their Life-Spirit or Buddhi, the Spirit-Man or Atma. But in addition, they had developed an eighth, ninth, and tenth member, which we must therefore include in our account of them.

[ 6 ] Theosophical literature refers to these aspects, which humans have not yet developed, as the “three Logoi”; in Christianity, they are called the Holy Spirit, the Son or the Word, and the Father. Thus, one can say: Just as human beings today consist of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, and the I, the Spirit-Self, the Life-Spirit, and the Spirit-Man, so did these beings who inhabited Saturn—whom we can compare to modern human beings in their relationship to the Earth—consist of the I, the Spirit-Self, the Life-Spirit, the Spirit-Man, the Holy Spirit, the Word or the Son, and the Father. Theosophical terminology calls them “Asuras.” They are the ones who, from the very beginning, implanted into this physical constitution of the human body the independence, the ego-consciousness, and the sense of self. You would not be able to use your eye in the service of the ego at all if your constitution had not already been prepared back then in such a way that you could place it in the service of the ego. Thus, these faculties have been prepared by the spirits of the “I”—also called the spirits of egoism. They have given us what is wisest, when properly developed. But everything highest is turned into its opposite, becomes most harmful and destructive, if it is not properly developed. Humanity could never have reached that high level we call independent human dignity if these spirits had not implanted the sense of the ego within them. There have always been beings who have taken the path of evil. Therefore, it must be said: These beings, who were the instillers of the sense of self, who today are far above humanity, whom we look up to as the most exalted that can exist, have placed the sense of self in the service of self-denial and sacrifice; the others have selfishly pursued their sense of self.

[ 7 ] We carry within us the effects of those spirits of the ego that have taken the right path in the pursuit of freedom and human dignity, and we carry the seed of evil within us because the beings who fell away at that time have continued to exert their influence. This contrast has always been felt. Christianity itself distinguishes between the Father God, whom Christianity regards as the highest ascended spirit of Saturn, and his adversary, the spirit of all evil egos and all that is radically immoral, who fell away on Saturn at that time. These are the two representatives of Saturn.

[ 8 ] Just as you encounter other forms of existence after death, so too does such a world body, before entering a new state, pass through a kind of intermediate state, a kind of dormant state—a Pralaya, in contrast to a Manvantara—so that between the Saturn and the Solar states there lies a kind of rest, a latency of the planet. Then, from this state of sleep—which is, however, a spiritual state and not merely a state of rest—the entire planet re-emerges in a new form. Saturn thus re-emerged as the Sun. A considerable change now took place. A large number of those capacities that had already developed on Saturn and are now growing within us were now permeated by an etheric body on the Sun. During such a planetary transition, something happens that can be compared to taking the fruit of a plant and placing it in the soil: it rots, but the seed for a new plant forms. Thus, everything that had developed on Saturn sprouted anew on the Sun and became permeated with an etheric body. Not everything—some things remained behind in such a way that what had previously been the germ of the human body split into two realms. One part ascended to become a kind of plant-human; just as the plant today has its etheric and physical bodies, so the Sun-people of that time had a physical and etheric body. And on the mineral-physical level, other beings remained behind that could be compared to today’s mineral kingdom. The Sun encompassed this as a subordinate natural kingdom within itself, and another it had elevated as a plant-human kingdom. You can get a proper mental image of the solar atmosphere by imagining a chemically dense gas that no longer merely reflects light, but has now absorbed everything that has been radiated upon it and only reflects it back after transforming it within itself, just as is the case today with the color of the plant. The plant forms its green pigment and other substances, and returns what it has formed back to the cosmos.

[ 9 ] We can no longer compare what lived within the solar body to an echo or a reflection, as in the case of Saturn; rather, a peculiar phenomenon arises for the beings embodied in the Sun, one that can only be compared to a kind of mirage—to mirages that are a sort of colored image. Such phenomena, which today can only be perceived in certain regions of our Earth’s surface, could help you visualize how the plant bodies became visible back then. You must create a mental image of your own bodies having mirage-like predecessors through which a present-day body can simply pass. They were as fine as mirages, but it was not merely a light mirage; at the same time, there were sound and odor effects that swirled through the gaseous ball of the Sun. While all the beings that were on the Sun were luminous, just as today everything that is a fixed star is, the ancient Saturn realm of those beings who had remained behind appeared as a dark inclusion, like dark spots in contrast to the light, like gloomy caves within the body of the Sun that disturbed its harmony. Particularly with regard to the world’s aroma, sensations from the entities that had remained behind mingled in, spreading all manner of foul odors. Our myth has preserved this by saying that the devil stinks and leaves behind a foul odor. As the Sun progressed, a dark inclusion did indeed remain behind, and today’s sunspots are truly the stragglers of the old Saturn realm on the Sun. That is why, hypothetically, they must be explained exactly as they are today; all of this holds true.

[ 10 ] We have thus, so to speak, sketched the Earth’s solar existence from its material perspective. Let us now see which beings had by then ascended to the human level. We would have to describe them as follows: Their lowest body is the astral body, then came their I, Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, their Spirit-Man or Atma, then, in the Christian sense, the Holy Spirit, and then the Son or the Word. The Father was something they did not possess, something that had only been developed during the Saturnic epoch. These spirits have since ascended higher and now stand far above humanity. And the leader of the solar spirits, insofar as he has exerted the highest influence on Earth, the representative of these spirits who had the Son or the Word as their highest being, is the Christ in the esoteric sense of Christianity, the actual ruler of the Earth, insofar as the Earth requires a solar existence as a prerequisite. One would not have called him Christ on the Sun itself. In early Christianity, this was always taught in this way, and the very difference between true Christianity and exoteric Christianity—which is often based on misunderstandings—is that early Christianity sought to apply all thought and all perspectives to understand what that high being was who had taken human form at that time in Jesus of Nazareth. Ancient Christianity sought to gain an understanding of what actually lay at the foundation of this, and for this purpose no wisdom was too lofty or too intricate for it; and thus it described the essence of the Christ in Jesus of Nazareth. Many a word in the Gospel of John can only become comprehensible to you if you view it from this perspective. One need only point out one thing: If you take the saying “I am the light of the world” literally, it implies that He is the great Sun Hero, that He has as His essence the light that belongs to the Sun. We call the entire host of spirits, whose leader is the Christ, the “fire spirits,” and we say: On the human level, during the Saturn era, there were the Asuras or I-spirits, while during the Sun era there were the Fire Spirits or Logoi, whose highest representative is called the Logos or Word. Therefore, Christ Himself is called the “Word” that was in the beginning, in the Primordial Beginning; “Primordial Beginning” denotes in the Bible a very specific starting point in cosmic evolution.

[ 11 ] Once again, an intermediate state occurs—a sort of dormant state of the entire world body—and then it glows as the old moon. You must imagine that in the beginning, the Earth and the Moon of today, together with the Sun, formed a single body. Only when the Sun shone anew did a portion of the beings separate themselves from a portion of the surrounding environment, so that two celestial bodies came into being. One, the Sun, begins to become a fixed star and is orbited by that which has split off. Thus the old Sun divided into two parts; the more highly evolved material remained on the Sun, and the less perfect was cast off, so that what had previously followed a single path—because there was only one body—now followed two paths: the path of the Sun and the path of the Moon. The path of the Sun was the one that developed on the solar body; the Moon formed its own world. You would obtain the ancient Moon if you were to mix today’s Earth with the Moon; from this you can already draw a conclusion about the nature of the Moon. The present-day Moon, in all its qualities, stands far below the Earth physically and spiritually, and the Earth separated from the Moon precisely in order to have better conditions of existence for its beings. The Earth has already developed further than it was back then in its lunar state. The best, after all, remained behind on the Sun.

[ 12 ] What was the situation on the Moon? Those beings who had prepared themselves on Saturn through the physical structure of the sense organs had transformed these on the Sun in such a way that an etheric body had been incorporated into them; as a result, the sense organs had become centralized, and the first rudiments of all growth organs, including the glands, had been able to develop on the ancient Sun under the influence of the etheric body. This was the final product of the solar state. — On the Moon, the astral body was incorporated in a similar manner. Everything astral was, after all, initially present in the surroundings—the fire spirits had formed the astral body as the lowest link; therefore, these beings truly constituted a kind of plant; they had, for example, a fixed location. Although the entire solar body was gaseous, you must imagine denser layers of air there, which served as bodies for the human plants. Now the astral body of the human being became integrated: this gave rise to the first rudiments of a nervous system. The realm that had developed upward through the plant state of the Sun transitioned into an animal-like state. Thus, the physical human ancestors of the Moon possessed the three bodies: physical body, etheric body, and astral body, but they were a good degree higher than today’s highest apes; they were human-animals that modern biology can no longer prove to you, an intermediate realm between human and animal. Our present-day plant, animal, and mineral kingdoms only developed later. But just as there were human-animals, we must also assume an intermediate realm between plant and animal: plants that possessed a half-sensory capacity, that actually squeaked when touched. These plant-animals could never have grown on mineral soil such as that of the Earth today; but such soil did not exist either. The Moon, in terms of its mass, did not consist of today’s minerals; not even something like topsoil was present. The surface of the Moon consisted, to speak comparatively, of something like what you would get if you cooked lettuce or spinach and made a porridge out of it; within it was a kind of mineral plant, and so the entire surface of the Moon was a plant-like entity. If you think of a peat bog today, it resembles what was then a natural realm between our plants and minerals. There were no rocks either; anyone walking across the surface would have walked over such peat bog or plant soil, and as an analogy for the rocks, you can imagine lignified deposits. From this entire ground grew the plant-animals, and above them moved the beings that were human-animals, within the sphere of the Moon known as “fire-air.” Imagine the entire air filled with vapors of nitric, carbonic, and sulfuric acids; in this fiery air, which you would thus obtain, the lunar beings lived. The occultist has always known this fiery air; and under the ancient conditions of the Earth, it was even possible to produce such fiery air chemically, something that today can only be done in very small circles. True alchemy has preserved this knowledge. Therefore, when you read in *Faust*: “I will make a little fiery air,” this is an allusion to the depths of occultism. Fiery air enveloped the Moon; that was its atmosphere.

[ 13 ] We may come to understand this lunar existence even better if we add a few more details. We had a realm of plant-minerals, of animal-plants that grew out of the plant-mineral soil, and then animal-humans that moved about upon it. At every stage, however, there are beings who lag behind; call it repeating a grade, if you will. Not only in school, but also in the great process of evolution, there is something akin to repeating a grade, where a student must go through the same class again. Such laggards appear in quite remarkable circumstances in the later stages of evolution. We find the held-back stragglers of the animal-plants in the parasites, for example in mistletoe. It cannot grow in mineral soil because it was accustomed to growing in the plant-mineral soil. It is a testament to what constitutes something like a held-back student; only, the beings that lag behind in the world’s evolution fare much worse. This, in turn, has found expression in the myths, particularly in the northern regions. In Norse mythology, you are familiar with the tale of Baldur and his death at the hands of Loki.

[ 14 ] Once upon a time, the gods were reveling in Asgard, and they were playfully tossing all sorts of objects about in the sky. But beforehand, Baldur had had dreams that foreshadowed his imminent demise; therefore, the gods were afraid that they might lose him. The mother of the gods had then made all beings swear an oath that they would never harm Baldur; for the gods had amused themselves by throwing all manner of things at Baldur. Loki, who was the enemy of the gods, had learned that this oath had not been taken from one being considered harmless: the mistletoe, which was hidden far away. So he obtained the mistletoe and gave it to the blind god Hödur, who threw it at Baldur; the mistletoe wounded Baldur, since the oath had not been taken from it, and thus Baldur died. — This myth is meant to suggest that that which is invulnerable on Earth can be harmed by nothing other than that which has been left behind from another existence as something now evil. In the mistletoe, something was sensed that had been brought into the present existence from a former one. All beings on Earth today have a connection to Baldur. On the Moon, things were different; therefore, the being that remained from the Moon is capable of killing Baldur. The various customs associated with the mistletoe also originated from this.

[ 15 ] We must also consider this lunar existence from another perspective—the spiritual one. We must describe its beings, who at that time were at the human level, as beings who had the etheric body as their lowest member, the astral body as the second, then the I, the Spirit-Self, the Life-Spirit, the Spirit-Man, or Atma, and then they also had the Holy Spirit. They no longer had the ninth member, which was unique to the solar fire spirits. The highest of these spirits of the Moon, who at that time had attained the human stage, is called the Holy Spirit in Christian esotericism. Thus, in early Christianity, the threefold divine being is brought into an inner connection with the development of the Earth, and the Holy Spirit is the spirit standing above humanity, capable of directly inspiring it.

[ 16 ] Thus you see that the spirits of the moon stand above human beings today. They are also called “lunar Pitris,” moon fathers, or spirits of twilight. However, the entire host that belonged to the Holy Spirit is called the host of angels in Christian esotericism. The angels are nothing other than those spirits who stand directly above humanity and who lived their human lives on the moon.

[ 17 ] The life of the animal-men and plant-animals on the Moon was different from that of the beings that evolved from them on Earth. The Moon’s motion—since it had already been separated from the Sun—was quite different from the Earth’s current motion around the Sun. That Moon revolved around the Sun in such a way that it always presented the same side to it, just as the Moon still does today with respect to the Earth, so that the Moon rotated on its own axis only once while orbiting the Sun. Consequently, all beings were dependent on the Sun’s presence in a completely different way than they are today on Earth. Throughout the entire period of the Moon’s orbit around the Sun, it was always day on one side and a kind of night on the other. The beings who were already able to leave their dwelling at that time wandered in a sort of circle around the Moon, so that they had a time when they came under the influence of the Moon. The time when they were under the influence of the Sun was the time when they reproduced. Reproduction already existed back then. The moon people did not yet have the ability to express their pain or pleasure through sounds; what they expressed had a more cosmic significance. The sun period was the time of mating, which, however, when experienced, was accompanied by a terrible cry from the beings, and this has been preserved to this day among animals.

[ 18 ] Many other such things have been left behind. You know how to investigate the reason behind the migration of birds, which in a certain sense circle the globe. We can understand many of the things that are mysteriously hidden today when we consider the entire course of our existence on Earth. There was a time when beings only set out to reproduce when they migrated toward the sun; one might call this the period of sexual life. General processes of lunar life expressed themselves in sounds that occurred at certain times of the year; during the other times of the year, the moon was silent.

[ 19 ] This is how we came to understand the Earth’s passage through its three earlier states: Saturn, Sun, and Moon.