The Rudolf Steiner Archive

10. Occult Signs and Symbols III

in Relation to the Astral and Spiritual Worlds

[ 1 ] The first thing we shall deal with today is a consideration of what is called number symbolism. When talking about occult signs and symbols, one must at least also briefly mention those symbols that express themselves in numbers. You will recall my remarks from the day before yesterday, when we talked about the numerical ratios in the universe, about the speeds at which the individual planets move. We saw that these numbers and numerical ratios express themselves in the harmony of the spheres that undulates through space, and that they have a certain significance for the whole world and for the contemplation of the world.

[ 2 ] Today we will deal with a more intimate symbolism of numbers, a symbolism that we can only touch on in its meaning, because to really delve into it, many other things would be necessary that we would have to engage with in more detail. At least you will get an idea of what is meant when, for example, it was said in the old Pythagorean secret school that one must delve into numbers and their nature in order to gain insight into the world. It may seem dry and dull to some that they should reflect on numbers. Above all, it will seem like a game to those people who have been affected by the materialistic education of our time, if one believes that one can fathom something about the essence of things by observing numbers. Nevertheless, there are profound reasons for the fact that the great Pythagoras said to his disciples that knowledge about the nature of numbers leads deep into the essence of things. One must not believe that it is enough to reflect on the number 1 or 3 or 7. The real secret doctrine has nothing to do with witchcraft or magic, nor with a superstition about the meaning of any number; its knowledge is based on much deeper things. From the brief sketch that I want you to receive today, you will see that the number can provide a certain point of reference for deepening, which is also called meditation, if you have the key to really delve into the number.

[ 3 ] We must start from the number One, from unity. The extent to which this number One really symbolizes what I am about to say will become even clearer later when we look at the other numbers. In all occultism, the number One has always been used to denote the inseparable unity of God in the world. The One is used to refer to God. However, one should not think that simply delving into the One as a number will help one to understand the world. You will see how this delving should be done. But we consider it far more fruitful to move on to the other numbers.

[ 4 ] The two is called the number of revelation in occultism. With the number two, we already get something solid under our feet, so to speak, while with the number one we are still groping around in the abyss. When we say that two is the number of revelation, we mean nothing other than that everything we encounter in the world, everything that is not hidden in some relationship but emerges into the world, exists somehow in duality. You will find the number two everywhere in nature. Nothing can reveal itself without touching the number two. Light can never reveal itself alone as a unit. When light reveals itself, there must also be shadow or darkness, so there must be a duality. There could never be a world filled with revealed light if there were no corresponding shadows. And so it is with all things. Good could never reveal itself if it did not have evil as its shadow. The duality of good and evil is a necessity in the revealed world. There are an infinite number of such dualities; they fill the whole world, we only have to look for them in the right place.

[ 5 ] An important duality, which man can reflect on a great deal in life, is the following: Yesterday we looked at the various conditions that man went through before he became an inhabitant of our present Earth. We saw that he had a certain immortality on Saturn and the Sun in that he directed his body from the outside, that pieces of this body crumbled away and new ones formed again, so that man felt nothing of death and decay. But his consciousness was not then like his present consciousness, it was a dull, dusky consciousness. It was only on our Earth that man has gained an awareness that is connected to self-awareness. Only here did he become a being that knew something about itself and could distinguish itself from objects. To do this, he not only had to direct the body from the outside, but he also had to slip into this body - alternately -, feel himself in it, say “I” to it. Only by being completely enclosed in his body has man been able to attain full consciousness. But now he also shares the fate of this body. In the past, when he was still above it, he did not. It is only by man having attained this degree of consciousness that he has entered into a relationship with death. At the moment when his body decays, he feels that his ego ceases to exist because he has identified it with his body. Only gradually, through spiritual development, will he regain the old immortality, and the body is there as a school to consciously gain it. Man would never be able to achieve immortality at a higher level if he did not pay for it with death, if he did not recognize the duality of life and death. As long as man had not made acquaintance with death, the world was not yet revealed to him, because duality of life and death belongs to the revealed world. And so we could prove dualities in life at every turn. You find positive and negative electricity in physics, attractive and repulsive force in magnetism, everything appears in duality. Two is the number of manifestation, of revelation.

[ 6 ] But there is no manifestation without the Divine behind it. Therefore, behind every duality there is still a unity hidden. The number three is therefore nothing other than the two and the one, namely the manifestation and the divinity behind it. One is the number of the unity of God, three is the number of the manifesting divinity. There is a sentence in occultism that reads: “The two can never be a number for divinity.” The one is a number for the divine, and the three is a number for the divine, because when it reveals itself, it reveals itself in duality, and behind it is unity. Man, who sees the world in duality, sees it only in the manifest. Therefore, anyone who says that there is duality in outer appearances is right. But anyone who says that this duality is the whole is always wrong. Let us try to understand this with the help of a few examples. Even where theosophy is concerned, this sentence from true occultism is often violated: the number two is only the number of revelation, but not the number of abundance, of completeness. In popular occultism, you can often hear people who do not really know it say that all development takes place in involution and evolution. We will see how this actually is. But first let us examine what involution and evolution mean. Let us look at a plant, a fully developed plant with roots, leaves, stems, flowers, fruit, in short, with all the parts that a plant can have. That is one thing. And now look at the small seed from which the plant can arise again. If you look at the seed, you see only a small grain, but the whole plant is already contained in this small grain; it is, so to speak, enclosed in it. Why is it enclosed in it? Because the grain is taken from the plant, because the plant has put all its powers into the seed. That is why in occultism we distinguish between the two processes: one consists of the seed rolling up and unfolding into the whole plant – evolution; the other of the plant folding up so that its form, as it were, creeps into the seed – involution. So when any being that has many organs develops in such a way that none of these organs is visible anymore, that they have shrunk together into a small part, this is called an involution, and the spreading apart, the unfolding, an evolution. This duality changes everywhere in life, but always only in the manifest. You can observe this not only in plants, but also in the higher realms of life.

[ 7 ] For example, follow in your mind the development of European intellectual life from Augustine to Calvin to beyond the Middle Ages. If you let your gaze wander over the intellectual life of this time, you will see a certain mystical intimacy in Augustine himself. No one will read his writings, especially his “Confessions”, without feeling how deeply intimate this person's emotional life was. And if we then go further back in time, we find such a wonderful figure as Scotus Erigena, a monk who came from Scotland and was therefore also called the Scottish John, who lived at the court of Charles the Bald. He did poorly in the church; legend has it that his fellow monks martyred him to death with pins. This is not to be taken literally, of course; but it is true that he was martyred to death. He wrote a magnificent book: “De devisione naturae ‘On the Division of Nature’, which shows tremendous depth. Furthermore, we find the mystics of the so-called German Pfaffengasse, where this emotional intimacy took hold of entire masses of people. It was not only the clergy, but also the people; the people who worked in the fields or in the smithies, they were all seized by this emotional sentimentality, which, as a feature of the time, was expressed in this way. Further up we find Nicolaus Cusanus, who lived from 1400 to 1464. And so we can follow the trend upward through time to the end of the Middle Ages; always we find the same depth of feeling, the same intimacy, spreading throughout all circles. If we now compare this time with the later one that replaced it, with the one that begins in the 16th century and extends up to us, then we notice an enormous difference. At the starting point we see Copernicus, who, through a comprehensive idea, brings about a renewal of intellectual life; who incorporates this idea into humanity in such a way that today anyone who believes otherwise is considered a fool. We see Galileo discovering the laws of the pendulum by swinging a church lamp in Pisa. Step by step, we can follow the course of time and everywhere we would find the strict opposite of the Middle Ages. The feeling decreases more and more, the intimacy fades away; the mind, the intellectuality comes out more and more, people become ever wiser and cleverer. Two eras follow one another, which have exactly opposite characters. Spiritual science gives us the explanation of both eras. There is an occult law that says it must be so. The period from Augustine to Calvin was one of mystical evolution and intellectual involution, and since then we have been living in a time of intellectual evolution and mystical involution. What does that mean? From Augustine to the 16th century, there was a time of external development of the mystical life; it was external. But something else was only just beginning to take shape: the intellectual life. It was hidden like a seed in the spiritual soil, so to speak, in order to unfold little by little after the 16th century. So the intellectual life was in involution in those days, just as the plant is in the seed. Nothing in the world can come into being unless it has first been in such an involution. Since the 16th century, intellectuality has been in evolution; the mystical life has receded, it is in involution. And now the time has come when this mystical life must emerge again, when it must be brought to development, to evolution, again, through the theosophical movement.

[ 8 ] Thus in nature, as everywhere, evolution alternates with involution in manifestation. But he who stops at this, considers only the outer aspect. If one wishes to see the whole, a third factor must be added, which stands behind these two. What is this third factor? Imagine for a moment that you are standing before an appearance in the outer world and are thinking about it. You are there, the external world is there, and your thoughts arise within you. These thoughts were not there before. For example, when you form the thought of the rose, it arises only at the moment when you enter into relation to the rose; you were there, the rose was there; and when the thought, the image of the rose, now arises within you, something completely new, something that has not yet existed, arises. This is also the case in other areas of life. Imagine the creative Michelangelo. Michelangelo almost never worked from models. But let us imagine that he has put together a group of models. Michelangelo was there, the models were there. But the image that Michelangelo now has of this group in his soul is new, it is a completely new creation. It has nothing to do with involution and evolution. It is something completely new, which arises from the interaction of a being that can receive with a being that can give. Such new creations always arise from the interaction of beings with beings. Such new creations are a beginning. Do you remember what we looked at here yesterday, how thoughts are creative, how they can ennoble the soul, and later even work on forming the body? Whatever any being thinks at some point, the creation of thought, the creation of imagination, that continues to work and has an effect. It is a new creation and a beginning at the same time, but it has consequences. If you have good thoughts today, they will bear fruit in the most distant future, for your soul goes its own way in the spiritual world. Your body will disintegrate again into the elements. But even if everything that gave rise to the thought disintegrates, the effect of the thought remains, the thought continues to have an effect. Let us take the example of Michelangelo again. His magnificent paintings have had an uplifting effect on millions of people. But these pictures will one day crumble to dust, and there will be generations that will no longer see his creations. What lived in Michelangelo's soul before his pictures took on external form, what was first as a new creation in his soul, that lives on, that remains, and that will emerge in future stages of development and gain form. Do you know why we encounter clouds and stars today? Because in the distant past there were beings who had the thought of clouds and stars. Everything comes from thought-creations, and thought is a new creation. Everything has come into being from thoughts, and the greatest things in the world have emerged from the thoughts of the Godhead.

[ 9 ] There you have the third. In the manifested, things alternate between evolution and involution. But behind this, deeply hidden, is the third, which alone gives abundance, a creation that is a complete new creation, that has emerged from nothing. So three things belong together: the creation out of nothing, and then, when it becomes manifest and proceeds in time, it takes on the forms of the manifest: evolution and involution.

[ 10 ] This is what is meant when certain religious systems speak of the world being created out of nothing. And if people today scoff at this, it is because they do not understand what is written in these records. In the revealed, to summarize once again, everything alternates between involution and evolution. The basis for this is a hidden creation out of nothing, which unites with this duality to form a trinity. The trinity is the connection of the divine with the revealed.

[ 11 ] So you see how one can reflect on the number three, one must not just quibble over it pedantically. One must seek the trinity behind the dyad, which one can encounter everywhere. Then one regards the number symbol in the right way in the Pythagorean sense, when one seeks the three behind the two. The hidden third can be found for all dyads. |

[ 12 ] We now come to the number four. Four is the sign of Cosmos or Creation. You will understand why four is called the number of Creation if you remember what was said earlier, that our Earth is in its fourth embodiment, as far as we can tell. Everything we encounter on Earth, including the fourth principle in man, presupposes that this Creation is in the fourth state of its planetary development. This is only one particular example of all emerging creations. Every creation is under the sign of the four. In occultism it is said: Man is in the mineral kingdom today. - What does that mean? Man today only understands the mineral kingdom, and he can only rule over this. He can build a house by combining minerals, construct a clock and other things, because these things are subject to the laws of the mineral world. But he is not yet able to do anything else. For example, he cannot yet create a plant out of his own reflection; to do that, he would have to stand in the plant kingdom himself. That will be the case one day. Today, man is a creator in the mineral kingdom. This was preceded by three other kingdoms, which are called the three elemental kingdoms; the mineral kingdom is the fourth. In all there are seven such kingdoms of nature. Thus man stands today in his fourth kingdom; there he attains his true consciousness outwardly. On the Moon he still worked in the third elemental kingdom, on the Sun in the second and on Saturn in the first. On Jupiter, man will be able to work in the plant kingdom; he will be able to create plants just as he can make a watch today. Everything that visibly emerges in creation is under the sign of the four. There are many planets that you cannot see with your physical eyes; those planets that are in the first, second and third elemental realms are not visible to physical eyes. Only when a planet enters the fourth realm, the mineral realm, can you see it. Therefore, four is the number of the cosmos or creation. Only when it enters its fourth state does a being become fully visible to eyes that can see the outside world.

[ 13 ] Five is the number of evil. We can best realize this if we again consider the human being. Man has developed into a fourfold being, into a creature of creation, but on earth the fifth link, the spiritual self, joins him. If man had remained only a tetrad, he would always have been directed from above, by the gods, to do good; he would never have developed independence. He has become free through receiving on earth the germ of the fifth element, the spirit-self. Through this he has gained the possibility of doing evil, but through this also he has become independent. No being that does not appear in the pentad can do evil, and wherever we encounter evil that can actually have a corrupting effect of its own, a pentad is at work. This is the case everywhere, even out in the world. Man just does not observe this, and today's materialistic world view has no concept of the fact that one can look at the world in this way. We can see from the following example how, wherever we encounter the number five, there is justification for speaking of evil in some sense. How beneficial it would be if medicine were to make use of this and study the course of diseases according to how an illness develops from the onset to the fifth day, or how it develops on the individual days in the fifth hour after midnight or in the fifth week. For the number five always dominates where the doctor can intervene most fruitfully. Before that, he cannot do much except let nature take its course; but he can intervene to help if he observes the law of the number five, because that is where the principle of the number five flows into the world of facts, which can justifiably be called damaging or evil. Thus, we can show in many areas how the number five has a great significance for external events.

[ 14 ] There are seven periods in the life of a human being: the first is before he is born, the second lasts until the change of teeth, the third until sexual maturity, the fourth for about seven to eight years, the fifth until about the age of thirty, and so on. Once people know what needs to be taken into account during these periods and what should best be approached or avoided by people during the fifth period, they will also know a great deal about how to prepare for a good old age. Good or bad can be done for the rest of one's life. During the first periods, much can be done through education according to these laws. But then there is a turning point in the fifth period of a person's life, which is decisive for the whole of their future life. This turning point in the fifth period of a person's life must at least be crossed before the person can be let loose into life with complete security, so to speak. The prevailing principle today of sending people out into life very early on is very bad. It is of great importance to observe such old occult principles. That is why in the past, on the orders of those who knew something about it, one had to complete the so-called apprenticeship and traveling time before one could be called a master.

[ 15 ] The seven is the number of perfection. Again, you can see this in the human being himself. He is a creature in the number four, and he is in the number five, insofar as he can be a good or an evil being. When he has developed everything that is in him in the germ, then he will be a seven-membered being, perfect in his way. The number seven reigns in the world of colors, in the rainbow, it reigns in the world of sounds, in the scale. Everywhere, in all areas of life, you can represent the number seven as a kind of perfect number. There is neither superstition nor magic behind it.

[ 16 ] Now let us look back at unity again. The fact that we have looked at other numbers will help to put what needs to be said about unity in perspective. The essence of unity is indivisibility. In reality, however, unity can also be divided, for example into 1/3 and 2/3. But there is something very significant and important that you can do in your mind: In the spiritual world, when you take away two-thirds, the third remains part of it. God is a unified being. When something is taken out of God as a revelation, all the rest remains as something that belongs to it. In the Pythagorean sense: divide the unity, but never divide the unity in such a way that you do not have the rest in the subordinate thought.

[ 17 ] What does it actually mean to divide the unit? Take a gold plate, for example, and look through it, then the world appears green to you. This is because gold has the property of reflecting the yellow rays when white light falls on it. But what happens to the other colors that are also contained in white? They go into the object and permeate it. A red object is red because it reflects the red rays and absorbs the rest. You cannot extract the red from the white without the rest remaining behind. This brings us to the edge of a great world secret. You can look at things in a certain way. For example, when light falls on a red tablecloth spread over a table, we perceive the color red. The other colors contained in sunlight are “absorbed”; the green color, for example, is absorbed by the tablecloth and not reflected. If we now try to include the color green in our consciousness at the same time as the color red, we have restored the unity. We have divided the unity in the Pythagorean sense, so that the remainder remains. If one meditates on this, so that one always reconnects the divided to the unity, then this is a meaningful work, through which one can rise high in the development. There is an expression for this in mathematics, which applies everywhere in the occult schools:

$$1 = (2 + x) - (1 + x)$$

[ 18 ] This is an occult formula that is supposed to express how to divide one and how to represent the parts so that they add up to one again. The occultist should think of the division of the unit in such a way that he always reassembles the parts into the unit.

[ 19 ] Thus, today we have subjected to a consideration what is called number symbolism and have seen from it that if one meditatively shifts the world from the point of view of numbers, one can penetrate deeply into the secrets of the world. To complete the picture, it should be said once more: in the fifth week, on the fifth day or in the fifth hour, it is important to be aware that something can be missed or made good. In the seventh week, on the seventh day or in the seventh hour or in a certain corresponding numerical proportion, for example 3 1/2, because seven is also included, something always happens through the thing itself, for example, the fever on the seventh day of an illness will take on a certain character or also on the fourteenth day. There are always numerical proportions at the basis that indicate the structure of the world.

[ 20 ] Those who properly immerse themselves in what it means in the Pythagorean sense to study numbers will learn to understand life and the world from this numerical symbolism. Today's remarks should give you a sketchy idea of this.