The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Theosophy and Rosicrucianism IX

[ 1 ] Today, in the execution of the sketch given yesterday about planetary evolution, we will make further observations. It was said that our Earth had previously passed through a state of Saturn, Sun and Moon. Today, as is customary in occultism, I would like to describe these successive states to you. When we speak about the development of the soul on the path of knowledge, you will see how some of what is presented hypothetically today is meant. If we now go straight into the Saturn condition, that is, the condition of our Earth millions and millions of years before our time, it appears quite different from what is assumed according to our present-day physical conditions. Above all, we must be clear about the fact that the most perfect being we know, man himself, has the longest series of development behind him. So you will hear a story of development that could be said to differ greatly from the Haeckelian-Darwinian story of development. You will see the advantages of this purely materialistic theory in my book.

[ 2 ] First of all, it is important to understand that the most perfect has the longest development behind it. The most perfect being is now man, and first of all the physical human body. All the 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 insight, we find the first rudiments of the physical body already present in the state of Saturn. The entire cosmic space, with all the beings and things in it, have had an effect on the first state of the earth. They still have within them all the organs that were formed at that time as the most perfect of our physical bodies; these are the sense organs, the apparatuses that can be understood purely physically, which first arose in the beginning. You must not imagine, however, that the eye was already present as it is today. But the first rudiments of the eye, the ear, all the sense organs and all the other purely physical human organs arose on Saturn. Only those effects were present on Saturn that are still emerging today in the mineral kingdom. Man was present at that time in the first form of his physical body; everything else, blood, tissue and so on, was not there. The first physical apparatus was present in the human body. Just as emeralds, mica and so on arise through physical laws and develop as cubes, hexahedrons and so on, apparatus-like forms developed, which were present on the body of Saturn just as crystals are present in the body of the earth today. And the mode of operation of the surface of Saturn was essentially that of a kind of reflection into space. The beings that surrounded Saturn, scattered in space, cast their effects downwards. In particular, what is called the aroma of the world was also strongly developed at that time. Today, you can only get a sense of what was happening on Saturn at that time through certain phenomena: if you hear an echo in nature outside, you would have something in the tone of the echo that was poured out on Saturn from the impressions that had an effect on it. These devices, which reflected such images back into space, are the first rudiment of what later developed into the eye, for example. And in this way we could trace everything individually. What you carry in your body today was then a physical realm of Saturn, which reflected the whole world view 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 still borrowed from the Eleusinian Mysteries, preserves something in the image of the interaction between Kronos and Rhea, whereby only a great distortion of the facts occurred due to the way the world was thought of at that time. We are told that Kronos throws down his beam and it returns to him in the most diverse ways; hence that image: he devours his children.

[ 4 ] Now you must not imagine that the mass of Saturn was something solid like today's physical bodies; even if you took water or air, you would still not get an idea of the basic substance of Saturn. In occultism, when one speaks of bodies, one speaks of solid, watery, and airy bodies. When one speaks of elements in the old sense, these correspond to what is called in chemistry today the aggregate states. You must not believe that the ancients meant the same thing by elements as we do. But then there is still a higher aggregate state, which in ancient occultism was called “fire”; one would better capture the meaning with “heat”. Physics, too, will be forced to recognize that what is called heat can really be compared to a kind of fourth aggregate state, a different kind of matter than air and water. So Saturn's mass was not even condensed into air; it was refined heat. It had a similar effect to the warmth in your blood today, and it was linked to inner life processes, because these physical processes were real life processes. Saturn consisted of heat matter, an extremely fine mass that could be called neutral in relation to our substances.

[ 5 ] If we now want to consider the beings that inhabited Saturn, we must first realize that what walks around on Earth today was there itself the first germ of the physical body; there was no ego or astral body in it. Other beings, however, who are much higher today than man, inhabited Saturn, only they did not walk around there in physical bodies either: they were embodied in the heat substance, and they worked like a heat current that moved along. Such heat currents formed the deeds of the beings that inhabited Saturn. Just as you shape a table today, so these beings did their work by creating heat currents. Otherwise, nothing was noticeable about them. Just as when two heat currents moved back and forth and exchanged information, so people greeted each other, so to speak, on Saturn. The beings who passed through their stage of humanity on Saturn did not have a physical body as their lowest link; they did not descend so far into matter that they needed a physical body. Their lowest link was the I, just as you today have the physical body as your lowest link; then came their spiritual self or Manas, their life spirit or Buddhi, the spirit man or Atma. But for this they had developed an eighth, ninth and tenth link, which we must therefore include in our list.

[ 6 ] Theosophical literature calls these links, which humans today have not yet developed, the “three Logoi”; in Christianity they are called: the Holy Ghost, the Son or the Word, and the Father. Thus we can say: Just as the human being today consists of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body and an ego, a spirit self, a life spirit and a spiritual being, so did these beings that inhabited Saturn, which we can compare to today's human being in his relationship to the earth, consist of the ego, spirit self, life spirit, spiritual being, the Holy Spirit, the Word or the Son, and the Father. Theosophical language calls them “Asuras”. They are the ones who, from the very beginning, have implanted independence, self-awareness and sense of self into the physical makeup of the human body. They could not use their eye in the service of the self if their makeup had not already been prepared in such a way that they could be placed in the service of the self. So these members have been prepared by the spirits of the ego — also called the spirits of selfishness. You have given us what is wisest if it is properly trained. But everything that is highest is perverted into its opposite, has the most harmful and corrupting effect if it is not properly trained. Man could never have attained that high level which we call independent human dignity if these spirits had not implanted in him the sense of self. There have always been beings who have taken the evil path. Therefore, it must be said: These entities, who were the implanters of the ego, who today are far above human beings, to whom we look up as the most exalted that can exist, they have placed the ego in the service of self-denial, of sacrifice; the others have pursued their ego selfishly.

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

[ 8 ] Just as you encounter other forms of existence after death, so does such a world body, before it enters into a new state , a kind of intermediate state, a kind of state of sleep, a pralaya, in contrast to a manvantara, so that between the Saturn and the sun state there is a kind of dormancy, latency of the planet. Then, out of this sleeping state, which is a spiritual state and not a state of rest, the whole planet emerges in a new form. Saturn, then, emerged again as the sun. A considerable change was now taking place. A large number of the abilities that had already developed on Saturn and that are now developing in us were now permeated by an etheric body on the sun. During such a planetary transition, something happens that can be compared to taking a fruit from a plant and placing it in the ground: it decays, but the potential for a new plant is formed. Thus, everything that had formed on Saturn emerged on the Sun as a new potential and permeated itself with an etheric body. Not everything — some remained behind in the way that what used to be the basis for the human body split into two realms. One part ascended to a kind of plant-human; just as the plant today has its etheric and physical body, so the sun-humans of that time had a physical and an etheric body. And on the mineral-physical level, other entities remained that could be compared to today's mineral kingdom. This included the sun as a subordinate natural kingdom, and it had pushed up another as a plant-human kingdom. You get a correct idea of the solar air when you imagine a chemically dense gas that no longer represents a mere reflecting body, but has now absorbed everything that it receives, and only after it has changed that within itself, throws it back again, as it is today with the color of the plant. The plant forms its green pigment and other things, and returns what it has formed to outer space.

[ 9 ] We can no longer compare what lived in the body of the sun with an echo or mirror image as in the case of Saturn, but a peculiar phenomenon for the beings that were embodied on the sun, which can only be compared to a kind of mirage, to aerial phenomena that are a kind of colored images. Such appearances, which today can only be perceived in certain areas of our earth's surface, would enable you to sense how the plant bodies became visible at that time. You must imagine that your own bodies had mirage-like predecessors, through which a present-day body can simply pass. They were as fine as mirages, but it was not just a light mirage, but at the same time there were sound and smell effects that swirled through the sun gas ball. While all the entities that were on the sun were luminous, like everything that is a fixed star today, the old Saturn realm of those entities that had remained behind seemed like a dark inclusion, like dark spots in contrast to the light, like dull caves within the body of the sun, disturbing its harmony. In particular, the retarded entities introduced perceptions regarding the aroma of the world, which spread all kinds of unpleasant odors. Our myth has retained this by saying that the devil stinks and leaves an evil odor behind him. A dark inclusion has indeed been left behind with the progress of the sun, and today's sunspots are really the stragglers of the old Saturn realm on the sun. But hypothetically, they can be explained exactly as they are today; all this applies.

[ 10 ] Thus we have sketched the Earth's existence on the Sun, so to speak, in a small sketch of its material side. We now want to see which entities had reached the stage of human beings at that time. We should describe them as having their lowest body in the astral body, then came their I, spiritual 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 have, something that was only developed in the Saturn age. These spirits have since risen higher and are far above man today. And the leader of the sun spirits, insofar as he has exercised the highest influence on earth, the representative of these spirits, who had the Son or the Word as the highest, is the Christ in the esoteric sense of Christianity, the actual ruler of the earth, insofar as the earth has the solar existence as a prerequisite. Not on the sun would one have called him Christ. In ancient Christianity this was always taught in this way, and the difference between true Christianity and exoteric Christianity, which is based on many misunderstandings, is that ancient Christianity wanted to apply all thinking and all views in order to comprehend the nature of the exalted Being who at that time had taken on human form in Jesus of Nazareth. Old Christianity wanted to have an idea of what was actually at the basis of it, and for this no wisdom was too abstruse and too complicated for it, and so it described the essence of the Christ in Jesus of Nazareth. Many a word in the Gospel of St. John can only be understood by you when you grasp it from this point of view. We need only point out one thing: if you take the saying, “I am the light of the world” literally, then it implies that He is the great solar hero, that the light that belongs to the sun is part of His nature. We call the entire host of spirits, of which Christ is the leader, the “fire spirits”, and we say: At the human level, during the time of Saturn, there were the asuras or ego-spirits; during the solar existence, there were the fire spirits or the logoi, whose highest representatives are referred to as Logos or Word. Therefore, the Christ Himself is referred to as the “Word” that was at the beginning, in the primeval beginning; in the Bible, “primeval beginning” refers to a very specific starting point in cosmic evolution.

[ 11 ] Then there comes an intermediate state, a kind of sleep state of the entire cosmic body, then it lights up as the old moon. You must imagine that in the beginning, the present Earth and the present Moon formed one body with the Sun. Only when the Sun shone anew did a part of the entities separate from a part of the surrounding area, so that two world bodies were formed. One of them, 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 developed substance remained behind on the sun, and what was less perfect was cast out, so that what used to follow one 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 that which formed on the body of the sun; the moon formed its own world. You would get the old moon if you were to stir today's Earth together with the Moon; from this you can already draw a conclusion about the nature of the Moon. The present Moon is, in its entire quality, standing far below the Earth, both physically and spiritually, and the Earth separated from the Moon precisely in order to have better conditions for its beings. The Earth has already developed further than it was in its lunar state. The best remained on the Sun.

[ 12 ] What did the Moon look like? Those beings who had prepared themselves on Saturn by means of the physical structure of the sense organs had so transformed these on the Sun that an etheric body had been incorporated into them; thus the sense organs had become centralized, and the first rudiment of all the growth organs up to the glands had been able to develop on the old Sun under the influence of the etheric body. This was the last product of the solar state. In a similar way, the astral body was integrated on the moon. All that was astral was first present in the environment – the fire spirits had developed the astral body as the lowest link; therefore these beings really formed a kind of plant; for example, they had a fixed location. Although the entire body of the sun was gaseous, you have to imagine denser layers of air that were bodies for the human plants. Now the astral body of man was integrated: this is how the first rudiment of a nervous system came about. The realm that had developed through the plant state of the sun became more animal-like. Thus the physical human ancestors of the Moon had the three bodies: physical body, etheric body and astral body, but they were a good degree higher than today's highest monkeys; they were human animals that no biology can prove to you anymore, 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 plants and animals: plants that had a half-sensitivity, that actually squeaked when they were touched. These plant animals could never have grown on such a mineral soil as the earth's soil is today; but that did not exist either. The moon did not consist of the same mineral as it does today, nor was there anything like arable soil. The moon's soil consisted, comparatively speaking, of something like when you cook lettuce or spinach and make a puree out of it; there was a kind of mineral plant in it, and so the whole moon's soil was a plant-like being. If you think of peat bogs today, it resembles what was then a natural realm between our plants and minerals. There were no rocks either; anyone who walked on the earth would have walked on such a peat bog or plant soil, and for the rocks you can think of lignified deposits as an analogy. For this reason, the plant animals grew, and above them moved the entities that were human animals, in the environment of the moon, which is called “fire air”. Imagine the whole air filled with nitric, carbonic and sulfuric acid vapors; the moon people lived in this fiery air. The occultist always knew this fire-air; and under the old earth conditions there was even the possibility of chemically producing such fire-air, which today can only be done in a very small way. The knowledge of this has been preserved in genuine alchemy. Therefore, when you read in Faust: “I will make a little fire-air,” it is an echo of the depths of occultism. Fire-air enveloped the moon; that was its atmosphere.

[ 13 ] We may gain a better understanding of this lunar existence if we mention something else. We had a realm of plant minerals, of animal plants that grew out of the plant-mineral soil, and then animal-men that moved around on it. At every stage, however, there are beings that are left behind; call it sitting still if you like. Not only in school, but also in the great evolution, there is such a thing as being left behind, where a student has to go through the same class again. Such left-behinds appear in very strange circumstances in the later stages of development. We have the left-behind stragglers of the animal plants in the parasites, for example in the mistletoe. It cannot grow in mineral soil because it was used to growing in plant-mineral soil. It is a testimony to what something like a left-behind student represents; only the beings who lag behind in world evolution fare much worse. This, in turn, has been expressed in myths, especially in northern regions. You know the story of Baldur and his death at the hands of Loki in Nordic mythology.

[ 14 ] Once the gods were celebrating in the home of the Aesir, and they were throwing around the most diverse objects in the sky. But Baldur had dreams that pointed to his imminent demise; so the gods were afraid that they would lose him. The mother of the gods had then taken an oath from all beings that they would never harm Baldur; for the gods had made fun of throwing all sorts of things at Baldur. Loki, who was the enemy of the gods, had learned that a being who was thought to be harmless had not taken this oath, the mistletoe, which was hidden far away somewhere. So he procured the mistletoe and gave it to the blind god Hödur, who threw it at Baldur; the mistletoe wounded Baldur, since it had not been sworn to secrecy, and so Baldur died. This myth is intended to suggest that that which is inviolable on earth can be harmed by nothing but that which has been left over from another existence as something bad. Something was sensed in the mistletoe that had been brought into the present existence from an earlier one. All the beings that are on earth today have a relationship to Baldur. On the moon it was different; therefore the being that remained from the moon is able to kill Baldur. The various customs associated with mistletoe also originated from this.

[ 15 ] We must still look at this existence on the moon from a different, more spiritual point of view. We must describe its essences, which were then at the human stage, as beings that had the etheric body as the lowest link, the astral body as the second, then the I, spiritual self, life spirit, spiritual man or atma, and then they still had the Holy Spirit. They no longer had the ninth link, which was only inherent in the solar fire spirits. The highest of these spirits of the moon, which at that time had the level of a human, is called the Holy Spirit in Christian esotericism. Thus, in original Christianity, the three-tiered divine presence is brought into an inner connection with earthly development, and the Holy Spirit is the spirit that stands above man, who can inspire him directly.

[ 16 ] Thus you see that the spirits of the moon are above man today. They are also called “lunar Pitris,” moon fathers, and spirits of the twilight. But the whole host that belonged to the Holy Spirit is called the host of angels in Christian esotericism. The angels are nothing more than those spirits who stand directly above humans and who had their human existence on the moon.

[ 17 ] The life of the animal-men and the plant-animals on the moon was different from the life of the entities that developed from them on Earth. The motion of the moon, which was already cut off from the sun, was quite different from the motion of today's Earth around the sun. That moon revolved around the sun in such a way that it always turned the same side towards it, just as the moon still does today towards the earth, so that the moon only turned around itself once while it revolved around the sun. Therefore, all beings were dependent on the solar existence in a completely different way than they are today on earth. During the entire time it took the moon to orbit around the sun, it was always day on one side and a kind of night on the other. The beings that were already able to leave their place at that time wandered around the moon in a kind of circle, 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. Even then there was reproduction. The moon people did not yet have the possibility of expressing their pain and pleasure through sounds; what they expressed had a more cosmic meaning. The time of the sun was the time of the heat, but when it was experienced, it was associated with a terrible screaming of the beings, and that has been preserved even today among animals.

[ 18 ] Many other things of this kind have been left behind. You know how to investigate the reason for the migration of birds, which also circle the globe in a certain way. Many of the things that are mysteriously hidden today will be understood when we consider the whole development of our existence on earth. There was a time when the beings only prepared for reproduction when they migrated towards the sun; this can be called the period of sexual life. General processes of lunar life were expressed in sounds that occurred at certain times of the year; at other times of the year the moon was silent.

[ 19 ] Thus we have come to know the transition of the Earth through its three previous states: Saturn, Sun and Moon.