The Rudolf Steiner Archive

9. Occult Signs and Symbols II

in Relation to the Astral and Spiritual Worlds

[ 1 ] We stopped yesterday at a reference to Noah's ark, and we noticed that the proportions of height, width and length expressed the proportions of the human body. In order to understand the significance of this ark in the religious documents of the Bible, we must consider two things. Not only must we realize the meaning of the fact that a vehicle through which man is to be saved has certain dimensions which are reminiscent of the dimensions of the human body, but it will also be necessary to delve into that period of human development in which the real events took place which are referred to in the story of Noah.

[ 2 ] Whenever people who understood something about occultism created some object in the outer world, it had a very specific purpose, a very specific meaning for human souls. Remember the Gothic churches and cathedrals, the very special characteristics of these buildings, which were built in the early Middle Ages and spread from the West to Central Europe. These churches have a very specific architectural style, which is expressed in the fact that the peculiar type of arch, which consists of two parts ending in a point at the top, pours over the whole as a mood, that the whole strives upwards, that the pillars have a certain shape and so on. It would be quite wrong to claim that such a Gothic cathedral arose merely from external needs, for example from a certain longing to create a place of worship that should express or signify this or that. Oh no! Gothic is based on something much deeper. Those who gave the first ideas for the emergence of Gothic buildings in the world were connoisseurs of occultism, they were initiates to a certain degree. The great leaders of mankind associated very specific intentions with the emergence of such buildings, such architectural styles. The Gothic style, the Gothic cathedrals and churches, trigger very specific spiritual impressions in those who enter them. It is as if you step into a kind of grove in this high vaulted cathedral with its soaring columns. Being there has a completely different effect on the soul than, for example, when you enter an ordinary house or a building with a Renaissance dome or a Romanesque-style dome. The forms have very specific effects. The ordinary person is not aware of this, for him it all lives in the unconscious, in his subconscious. Intellectually, man does not realize what is going on in his soul when he has such forms around him. And what goes on there varies greatly depending on the nature of his surroundings. Many people believe that the materialism of our modern age stems from the fact that so many materialistic writings are read. But the occultist knows that this has only a small influence. What the eye sees is of far greater importance, for it has an influence on processes of the soul which take place more or less in the unconscious. This has eminent practical significance. And when spiritual science will one day truly take hold of the soul, then this practical effect will also become noticeable in public life. I have often pointed out that walking through the streets in the Middle Ages was different from walking through the streets today. To the right and left, on every house front, everything bore the mark of the person who had made it. Every object, everything that surrounded people, every door lock, every key, was made of something in which the soul of the maker embodied its feelings. Everything was made with love. Just realize how the individual craftsman took pleasure in each piece, how he worked his soul into it. There was a piece of his soul in every thing. And where there is soul in the outer form, the soul forces also flow over to those who see and look at it. Compare that with a city today. Where is there still soul in things today? There's a shoe store, a knife store, a butcher's store, a beer house and so on. Just take our poster art; what kind of products does it produce? We have terrible poster art! Old and young wander through a sea of such hideous products, which trigger the worst forces of the soul in the subconscious. Theosophical education will point out that what the eye sees deeply influences the human being. And just look at our modern funny papers, what is offered there! This is not meant to be a criticism, but merely a reference to facts. For all this pours a stream of forces into the human soul which steer man in a certain direction, which determine the times. The spiritual scientist knows how much depends on whether man lives in this or that world of forms.

[ 3 ] Around the middle of the Middle Ages, a strange religious movement called German mysticism arose along the Rhine. A tremendous deepening and internalization emanated from the leading spirits of Christian mysticism, from Meister Eckhart, Tauler, Suso, Ruysbroek and others, who were called “priests”. In the 13th and 14th centuries, the name “priest” did not yet have the meaning it has today; it was still something worthy of reverence. Back then, the Rhine was known as the “great Pfaffengasse of Europe”. And do you know where this great deepening and internalization of the human mind, these pious feelings that sought an intimate union with the divine forces of nature, were generated? They were brought up in the Gothic cathedrals with their pointed arches, pillars and columns. That is what educated these souls. So strong is the effect of what is seen. What a person sees, what is poured into his soul from his surroundings, becomes a force in him. He then shapes himself - until his next incarnation.

[ 4 ] We want to present this schematically from the development of the human being in front of the soul. An architectural style is not invented, it is born out of the great thoughts of the initiates; they allow it to flow into the world. The buildings come into being, they have an effect on people; the human souls absorb something of the spiritual power living in these forms. That which the soul has absorbed by looking at the architectural forms - for example the Gothic - emerges in the mood of the souls: fervent souls will arise who look up to the High. A few centuries ago, people absorbed what lived in the Gothic style. And now we follow these people a few centuries further, who have absorbed the power of these architectural forms in their souls - in their next incarnation they now show the expression of this inner state of mind in their physiognomy, in their countenances. The souls of men have formed the faces. Thus one recognizes why such arts are practiced. The initiates see far, far into the distant future of mankind. That is why they form external art forms, external architectural styles on a large scale at a certain time. In this way, the seed for future human epochs is laid in the human soul.

[ 5 ] If you keep this in mind, you will also understand what happened at the end of the Atlantean era. Let's go back to the time when the end, the demise of Atlantis came. At that time there was no air as there is today, the distribution of air and water was completely different; masses of fog surrounded Atlantis. The fog condensed into clouds and the deluge poured over the land as torrential rain. The sinking of Atlantis must be imagined as a very gradual process. This did not take place in short periods of time, it was a process that lasted thousands of years. With the change in external living conditions, man himself also changed. Previously, people perceived things through a kind of clairvoyance. And when the streams of rain appeared, people gradually had to get used to a completely new way of life, a new way of seeing, a new way of perceiving. People's bodies had to change. You would be amazed if you were to see the Atlantean people recorded, how different they were from people today. But don't think that this transformation happened by itself. The human body with its sensory organs only developed gradually. The forces of the human soul had to work on these human bodies for a long time and act in the way I described earlier using a simple example. First man sees the structural forms, they affect his mind, and the mind in turn affects the physiognomy, the countenance of man in a later life.

[ 6 ] As the Atlantean period passed into the post-Atlantean period, the soul of man first reshaped itself and then remodeled his body. Let us delve further into this. Let us imagine a rather old Atlantean; he still had clairvoyant consciousness, and this was connected with the environment in which he lived, with the fog-filled atmosphere. As a result, things did not appear to him in clearly defined boundaries. They were more like color images that appeared before him, floods of colors that swirled together and showed him the states of people's souls. Instead of the object that approached him, the Atlantean man perceived a form of light, a blue one for love, a red one for passion, anger and so on. The soul forces of all people spread out around him. If this state had continued, man could never have attained his present body. When the air was freed from the water and the objects became clearer and clearer and acquired their present boundaries, the time had come when the soul of man had to receive new impressions. And it formed its body according to these impressions. For you form your body according to what you think and feel. What did the human soul have to experience when it rescued itself from the Atlantean water landscape into the new air landscape so that the body could form its present shape? The human soul had to be surrounded by a form of a certain length, a certain width and a certain depth in order for the body to form itself accordingly. This form was actually given to it by what the Bible calls Noah's Ark. Just as the mood of mysticism was formed from the shape of the Gothic cathedrals and the clairvoyant could prove which faces were formed afterwards, so the bodies of the people of ancient Atlantis were gradually transformed because people actually lived in vehicles which they had built under the influence of great initiates according to the dimensions as the Bible describes Noah's Ark. Life in the time of ancient Atlantis was a kind of water or sea life, where people lived for the most part in vehicles on the water and only gradually became accustomed to life on land. For the ancient Atlantis was not only surrounded by a water fog, a large part of the Atlantis was covered by the sea. Man lived in these vehicles so that his body could be built as it is today. This is the deep mystery of Noah's Ark. If one understands the depth of its mysterious scientific meaning from the Bible, then a glow of wisdom and infinite grandeur spreads over this document. Man lived on vehicles, because he had to have the impression of seclusion in his skin. This is how the initiates worked on the education of man through the millennia. What you encounter in the religious documents is taken from the depths of occult reality.

[ 7 ] We find another symbol in the first chapter of the Bible, in Genesis: the symbol of the serpent. And in the Roman catacombs we often encounter the symbol of the fish. It is said that this fish, which recurs again and again as an image, signifies the Christian or Christ himself. If someone wanted to reflect on these symbols, he could probably unearth much that is spiritual, but that would only be speculation; and we only want to deal with realities. These images are also given from the spiritual world. If you will follow me for a few minutes in the history of the development of mankind, you will see what truths are contained in these symbols of the serpent and the fish.

[ 8 ] Let us remember once more that the earth has gone through as many different embodiments as man. You know that it was once Saturn, Sun, Moon before it became Earth. The human body was already present in the various planetary states, but the human being only took on his ego on earth. Let us now look a little at what this earth looked like when it was still in its first embodiment, when it was still Saturn. There was no such thing as rock and soil back then. The human physical body did exist, but it was very fine; only gradually did it condense into today's carnal form.

[ 9 ] When we look at the substances around us today, we find that they have different states, solid, liquid, gaseous. In occultism all solid bodies are called “earth”, “water” is understood to mean all liquid substances, and “air” everything aeriform, gaseous. Even more subtle than the other states is “fire”, or heat. Of course, today's physicists will not accept this. But the occultist knows that “fire” is indeed something that can be compared with earth, water and air, it is just an even finer state. Where you feel warmth, there is something even finer than air. Nothing of what we call earth, water and air in the occult sense was present on Saturn. These solid, corporeal states only came into being on the sun, the moon and the earth. The densest state on Saturn was heat or “fire”. The human body lived in it, and the ring that surrounded Saturn - for every Saturn has a ring - are actually reflected mirror images, separations from the fire. To go into this in more detail today would take us too far away from our topic.

[ 10 ] Let us now move on from Saturn to the sun; there the air is added to the fire. On the sun the densest state was air. It was a kind of airy sun. Man on the sun was an air being and was then impregnated with the etheric body. There were no other than air beings. One could have passed through these air beings, for they were “penetrable”, as the air is. You could compare them to a mirage, they were so light, so fleeting. Admittedly, the air on the old sun was denser than that of today. - On the old moon the watery state arose first, and everything that lived on this moon was formed by a condensation of water. Jellyfish and slime animals, as they can still be seen today, give us an idea of these water creatures. At that time all physical bodies were of this nature, and only physical bodies of this kind were capable of absorbing an astral body. The development now went on gradually. Thus these things are connected, man and the earth, for man belongs to his planet. And now let us consider the meaning of this planetary development. On Saturn there was first the germ, the plant for the physical body. On the sun the etheric body was added, on the moon the astral body. But something else happened on the moon. The old moon split into two bodies, into a kind of refined old sun and the actual old moon. The man who remained on the old moon at that time was basically a much worse being than the man of today, he was much lower in his development, for the astral body on the old moon was full of raging passions. Only much later, when the ego was added, did the purification of the astral body begin.

[ 11 ] Further development was necessary for this: The moon had again to coincide with the sun; the two bodies, old moon and sun, had to become one body again. [The high beings who lived on the separated sun had had to separate from the moon in order to be able to progress in their own development. Now, however, these beings who had remained behind on the moon, who had further solidified there, had to be rescued; therefore the sun had to reunite with the moon.

[ 12 ] Let us now ask ourselves what would have happened if the sun and moon had not reunited, if they had evolved separately. Then man could never have attained his present form. If the old moon had gone its own way, if it had not been able to draw new strength from its reunion with the sun, then the highest being it could ever have produced would have been like today's snakes. The solar beings, on the other hand, if they had remained alone, could have attained the highest form of the fish. The fish form is the outward expression of beings that are much higher than man. The fish group soul is indeed also very high today; but the outer form is something quite different from the soul. So where did those beings of the old moon get the power to rise above the serpent? This power came to them from the beings of the sun. And the purity of the solar state of those high beings expresses itself materially in the form of the fish, for that is the highest material form that can be attained by the beings of the old sun.

[ 13 ] Christ, the solar hero, who transplanted all the power of the sun to the earth, is symbolized by the sign of the fish. Now you will understand with what deep intuition esoteric Christianity has grasped the significance of the fish form; it is for it the outer symbol of the sun's power, the power of Christ. The fish is indeed outwardly an imperfect being, but it has not descended so deeply into matter; it is only slightly permeated by egoism.

[ 14 ] For the occultist, the serpent is the symbol of the earth as it has developed from the old moon, and the fish is the symbol of the spiritual being of the old sun. Our earth with its solid substances has symbolized in the serpent its deepest essence, the earth being. That which has separated itself as a watery substance is symbolized in the fish. To the occultist, the fish appears like something born out of water. What is born out of the air, what out of the fire? These are areas that are difficult to follow. At least a few hints shall be given here.

[ 15 ] What did it look like when the earth had just evolved from the Saturnian state to the solar state? Man was a kind of aerial being; he did not know death and dying in the modern sense. He transformed himself. Let us make clear to ourselves in a schematic drawing how man came into the present consciousness of death and dying. When the earth had evolved from the Saturnian to the solar state, the soul of man still lived in the atmosphere surrounding the sun, but it was related to what was below as a body. Just as today, during sleep at night, the astral body of man belongs to the physical body, even if it has slipped out, so it was on the old Saturn and the old sun, only then the soul never slipped into the physical body. It is true that a soul with a spiritual consciousness already belonged to a certain body, but it directed the body from outside. You have to imagine it like this: Something “external” was the soul. This body was not yet subject to the law of death. People were not yet aware of death. Growth and death took place differently than is the case today. The body lost certain parts, but new parts grew again. Just as hunger and nutrition are connected today, this relationship of destruction and reattachment of the physical body took place at that time. The soul lived on for a long time while the body transformed. There was no dying, no death at that time. However, from a certain point in time in the state of the sun, the human soul began to form a certain body first, that is, it transformed it into ever different, various forms. First a body of a certain form was formed, then it transformed this form into another, again into another and into a fourth; and then it returned to the first state. Man retained the same consciousness for so long. The forms changed; and when the human soul returned to the first form after having lived through the three other states, it felt newly embodied. You can see this process of development in the butterfly, which changes into four forms: Egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, butterfly. The butterfly is the hieroglyph, the sign for the aerial state of man on the ancient sun. Today's butterfly, which lives under completely different conditions, is of course a decadent form of these conditions. The butterfly is a symbol of the aerial state beyond which man has progressed. That is why it is called an air creature in occultism, just as the snake is called an earth creature and the fish a water creature. Why birds are not referred to as air beings will be explained later.

[ 16 ] Now let us go back to the first Saturn state, where man was a spiritual-soul being that always had the same body, knew itself to be immortal at a low level and continually transformed its body. This state still remains with a being that has a very peculiar communal life and that, if regarded as a group soul, stands in some respects higher than man. I am referring to the bee. The whole beehive must be considered differently from the individual bee. The beehive - not the individual bee - has a spiritual being that corresponds in some respects to the being of the human being on the former Saturn at a lower level, which the human being will in turn reach at a higher level on Venus. The bee's body has remained at the old Saturn level. We must distinguish between the beehive and the individual bee. The soul of the beehive is no ordinary group soul, but a special being in itself. The individual bee has preserved in form what the human body has gone through on Saturn. The spirit of the beehive is higher than the spirit of the individual human being; it already has a Venus consciousness today. The bee is the symbol of the spiritual man who knows nothing of mortality. The spirituality that man had when the planet was still in a fiery state [Saturn] he will reach again at a higher level when the planet as Venus will be fiery again. That is why the bee is referred to in occultism as a warmth or fire being.

[ 17 ] It is very interesting to observe a parallelism that physical science cannot explain. What does the modern human being still have of the Saturn state? Warmth! Blood warmth. What was once distributed throughout Saturn – warmth – has separated out and today forms the warm blood of humans and animals. If you examine the temperature of a beehive, you will find approximately the same temperature as human blood. The entire beehive develops a temperature that corresponds to the blood temperature of humans and goes back to the same stage of development as human blood. This is why the occultist refers to the bee as born out of warmth, as a warmth being, just as he refers to the butterfly as born out of air, as an air being, the fish as a water being and the snake as an earth being.

[ 18 ] From these explanations, you can also see how deeply what occult symbols and signs want to express is connected with the developmental history of the planet and of humans.