The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eighth Lecture

[ 1 ] Today I would like to talk to you about something that, in part, falls outside the ongoing framework of the lectures, but in other respects forms a supplement, in that some of what we have said in the past lectures will be repeated, but can also be better illuminated in a certain respect.

[ 2 ] We know that man, as he is now, has only become so through a long evolution, that he has developed through planetary conditions to his present level. We also know that in the future he will rise to higher levels of development. Now, we have already familiarized ourselves with the idea that at the time when man on the old Saturn was still in a very dull state of consciousness, there were already beings present who were as high as man stands today; there were also entities then that were far higher than man stands today. We know that even today there are entities that have attained a level of development in the present that will only be attained by humans in the future. Thus we can raise our gaze to what is called in occultism a hierarchy of beings superior to man, who are always one step higher than man. This next step of beings that stand above man, we call in the esoteric-Christian term “angel”, “angelos”. Thus, angels are entities that attained human consciousness on the moon, the planetary predecessor of our Earth, and that today stand one step higher than man. Man himself will, at the stage of existence on Jupiter, have the consciousness that is today the consciousness of these entities, which we call angels, angeloi. Thus we have already envisaged the first step of the beings that stand above man. We already know the following steps from certain other contexts. We know that from the Angels upwards we have the 'Archangels', 'Archangeloi'; then we have the order of the 'Primal Forces', which we also call 'Archai'; then we know the 'Revelations' or “powers”, ‘exusiai’; then we have the so-called ‘forces’, ‘dynamis’, the ‘dominions’, ‘kyriotetes’; then the ‘thrones’, the ‘cherubim’ and the ‘seraphim’. Only then, beyond the seraphim, would we speak of what in the Christian sense is called the actual ‘deity’. For the real occultist, the real spiritual science or occultism cannot share the common, trivial idea that man could look directly up to the highest deity; but we have the whole ladder of beings, which we called angels, archangels and so on in the Christian sense, standing in between. And in a certain respect, it must be considered a spiritual convenience when one can often hear today: Oh, what need have we of the whole hierarchy of beings, when man can come into direct relationship with the Godhead! The theosophist and occultist cannot go along with this complacency; for the beings are absolutely real, and today we want to talk a little about the task, the work of these beings for world evolution and about the peculiarities and qualities of these beings.

[ 3 ] First, let us try to form an idea of what are called the beings of the angels. We will most easily be able to form an idea of the consciousness of these entities by bearing in mind that in his external physical consciousness, man today encompasses four natural kingdoms that he can, so to speak, perceive : mineral entities, vegetable entities, animal entities and the human kingdom itself; so that we can describe human consciousness in terms of its content as encompassing these four kingdoms that are perceptible to the external senses. Everything that a person perceives through his senses, whatever it may be, belongs to one of these four kingdoms. If we now ask ourselves: What is the consciousness of the angelic beings? we receive the answer: in a certain respect it is a higher consciousness, and it is characterized as a higher consciousness in that it does not extend down to the mineral kingdom. Angelic consciousness does not extend down to the stones, the minerals. On the other hand, in this angelic consciousness there are plant entities, animal entities, human entities and the own realm of the angels, which plays the same role there as the realm of humans plays for us. Therefore we can say: these angels also perceive four realms with their consciousness, the realm of plants, the realm of animals, the realm of human beings and the realm of angels.

[ 4 ] That is the peculiarity of angelic beings: they have no physical body, and for that reason also no organs of the physical body, no eyes and ears and so on. Therefore they do not perceive the physical realm. They have their etheric body as their lowest entity. In this way they have a certain affinity with plants. They can therefore descend with their consciousness to the plants; they can still perceive plants. On the other hand, where there is a mineral, they perceive a hollow space, just as we have described it for man during the state of Devachan, where man will also perceive the space that a mineral fills here on the physical plane as a hollow space. So these angels perceive a cavity everywhere there is a physical realm. By contrast, their consciousness extends to a point where the consciousness of man does not yet extend.

[ 5 ] But we know that even today people already have a certain. relationship to one another as those who lead and those who are led. I am alluding here to nothing other than the children and the adult educators: the children must be led until they are as mature as the adult educators. In their current development, people are growing into Jupiter consciousness. This will be the same as that which the angels already have today. Because the consciousness of the angels is such, the angels are actually the guides of people today, their leaders, preparing them, and there is an intimate connection between what is gradually developing in man and what the task of these angelic beings is. What is developing in man for the rest of his earthly existence? We have discussed this often. We have said that man has a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body and an ego, and that he is now in the process of transforming his astral body in such a way that, little by little, he will become completely his spirit self. It is true that man is also already working on his other limbs; but the essence of earthly development is that the spirit self be fully developed. The angels have already developed the spirit self; they had already developed it when their earthly existence began. Therefore, in the hierarchy of development, the angels are the spirits that guide this work of transforming the astral body into the spirit self in man.

[ 6 ] Now we ask ourselves: How do they do that? - Here we recall what we said earlier, namely that when a person dies, after death he initially has what we have called the long memory tableau of the past life. This remains for two to three days; it varies somewhat for different people. As a rule, it remains for about as long as the person in question could endure without sleep during life. Different people are very different in this respect. One is accustomed to sleeping for twelve hours at a time, and then his eyes close; others, on the other hand, can stay awake for four to five days. The longer a person can stay awake without sleeping, the longer his memory tableau will last. Then the etheric body dissolves and only an extract of it remains, the fruit of the past life. This is taken along for all subsequent times and incorporated into one's being, and forms the basis for the construction of one's physical body in the next incarnation. This time, the human being is able to construct his next body more perfectly because he can use the fruits of his past life for this purpose. Thus, the human being has this essence of life and uses it to construct his next body in the following life.

[ 7 ] Now we know something else. We know that man not only forms this body of his, but that he is not inactive at all in devachan. It is a wrong idea if we believe that man only has to deal with himself. The world is not built on egoism at all. It is constructed in such a way that man has to work with the earth in every situation; and in that time in devachan he works on the transformation of the earth's surface. We know ourselves that, for example, the ground on which we are standing here today looked quite different a few centuries ago than it does today. The earth is constantly being transformed. At the time when Christ Jesus still walked the earth, there were mighty forests here; completely different plants and animals were there. Thus, the face of the earth is constantly being changed. Just as human beings, by working on the physical plane, by building cities and so on, are constantly working with the forces that are active in the physical world, so too, from the devachan, they work with the forces that are reshaping the physiognomy of the earth, including the plant and animal kingdoms. Therefore, in a new incarnation, man once more encounters a world that presents a completely different picture, so that he always experiences something new. For one is not born into a new incarnation in vain, but in order to experience something new. Man himself contributes to the transformation of this earth; but he cannot do so without guidance. He cannot determine the following incarnations, because then he would not need to experience what is to happen in the future. And the next guiding entities, who instruct man from the forces of Devachan to work on the transformation of the earth, who create the harmony between the individual human individualities and the evolution of the earth, as it corresponds to these individual individualities, these spiritual entities are the angels. They cannot work with the stones, with the solid earth's crust, for their consciousness does not extend down to the stones. But it does extend down to the plant kingdom that the earth carries. There they cannot work creatively, but they can work to transform it.

[ 8 ] And it is indeed the case that with every human individuality there is such an angelic being at work, guiding and directing the human being in his work of educating the spirit-self in the astral body until he has educated it. This is why in one part of the Christian teaching we speak of human guardian angels. This is a conception that corresponds perfectly to the lawful reality. These are the beings that create the harmony between the individual human individuality and the course of earthly evolution, until at the end of earthly evolution the human being himself will have progressed so far that he can replace his angel, because then he himself will have the same consciousness as an angel.

[ 9 ] Now you will easily understand that the archangels have a consciousness that no longer extends down to the plant kingdom, but only to the animal kingdom. The plants are, so to speak, no longer there for them; they are too subordinate and insignificant a kingdom for them. In the animal kingdom they still have points of contact; they perceive the animal kingdom. They have no etheric body, but their astral body is the lowest link in their being. The animal also has an astral body; therefore the archangels definitely have an effect on the astral bodies of the animals. Then they perceive the human realm, the realm of angels and their own realm. That to which they say “I”, which is the same as the human “I”, that is the realm of the archangels. These beings also have an essential mission, and you can already understand that this mission can be a very high one because they have a consciousness that is two levels higher than that of humans. For the consciousness of the archangels is so highly developed that they have fully developed the buddhi, the spirit of life, and can therefore guide and direct the evolution on earth with such insight that corresponds to the spirit of life, the buddhi. This is expressed in the fact that these archangels are first of all the guides and leaders of entire tribes. What is called the spirit of a nation, that is, the common spirit of the nations, is in fact one of the archangels. Now you will also find it understandable that those nations that still had some awareness of such a spiritual connection did not immediately look up to the highest entity, but rather that they considered, so to speak, the nearest entities that guided and directed them.

[ 10 ] Take the ancient Hebrew people. They worshipped Yahweh or Jehovah God Himself as the supreme God. But for them, this Yahweh God belonged to the order of “revelations”. It was an exalted entity that they recognized as their god. But they said: He who guides us and leads us on behalf of the actual arch messenger of Jehovah, that is “Michael”, one of the archangels – his name means “he who stands before God” in German. In ancient Hebrew, he was also called the “face of God” because the members of the old covenant, when they looked up to God, felt that Michael stood before God and expressed his being as the human face expresses the human being. Therefore, he was literally called the face of God.

[ 11 ] When one speaks of the “spirit of a nation”, one does not speak in the sense of occultism of an intangible conceptual entity. When one speaks of the spirit of a nation in our materialistic age, one actually means nothing; for one means an abstract external summary of the peculiarities of the people. In truth, there is a spiritual representative, called the archangel, who guides and directs the whole nation as a whole. This entity extends down to the animal world. The nations felt that too. For it is indeed easy to feel, one might say, from the instinct of the people. One nation lives here, the other there. Depending on the different areas in which the nations live, they had to make use of certain animals, and that, the nations instinctively felt, was granted to them by their national spirit. This influence extended even to the animal world, so that the ancient Egyptians, who were well aware of this, said: 'When we consider the evolution of plants, we see that angels are at work in them; when we consider animals, we see that they are allotted to us by the guiding spirit of the whole nation! Therefore, they regarded the power that led the animals to them as a sacred power, and the way they related to the animals was an expression of this consciousness. They did not speak of archangels; but they had the same feeling. That is the actual feeling which the Egyptians associated with animal worship; and the basis for this is that where there was an awareness of this whole spiritual context, these spirits were depicted not with the images of earthly animals, but with images of animals such as the sphinx, winged animals and so on, which you find in the various illustrations of peoples. It was as if the guiding archangels appeared in them. You can therefore see the esoteric expression of the ruling archangels reproduced in the various animal groups, and many of the Egyptian idols went back to this idea that the archangel, the guiding spirit of the people, reaches down to the animals. This is essentially the task of the archangels; but there is another.

[ 12 ] To the present-day consciousness, Uriel, Gabriel, Raphael and Michael are still known as a saga from a distant primeval time; but you only need to look in the Book of Enoch to find the names of still other archangels. For instance, one of the archangels was Phanuel; this is an important archangel who had not only the task of guiding a particular tribe, but also another. We know that initiation consists in man's striving to ascend to an ever higher consciousness, and that even now, in the course of earthly evolution, he is ascending to an ever higher consciousness. Now the people in the places of initiation knew very well that this also requires guiding and directing forces. Therefore, they placed those who were to be initiated under the protection of the archangel called Phanuel. He was the protector invoked by those who aspired to initiation.

[ 13 ] Other spiritual entities at this level have different tasks. For example, the entire process of world evolution is based on a sum of forces that is guided by certain beings. There is an archangel, formerly called Surakiel, whose task it is to eradicate particularly extensive vices in a city or an entire area and to transform them into virtues. Those who know this context can see how what is called “providence” with a general, abstract word is actually guided. Once one is eager to get to know the spiritual worlds, one should not be satisfied with general abstractions, but should delve into these details. For the highest beings, which man can still intuitively imagine, guide the course of world evolution through such intermediary beings, as we have just come to know them. That is what can be described as the various tasks of the archangels.

[ 14 ] Now we come to the order of the elemental forces. These are even more exalted entities, whose consciousness no longer extends even to the animals. When the initiate rises to communion with the elemental forces, he does not communicate to them from his human consciousness the forms of the 'animals on earth'. For they themselves reach down only to the level of human beings. They know the realm of the angels, the realm of the archangels and their own realm; they say 'I' to themselves, and human beings are the last thing they perceive. What the mineral kingdom is for man, man is for the elemental forces: the lowest kingdom. This already indicates that they guide the course of humanity from a very high level. People sense here and there that there is something like a 'spirit of the times', which is so different depending on the various epochs. People sense that there is a 'spirit of the epochs'. We have often spoken here of the spirit of the epochs. We have said, for example, that in the first culture of the post-Atlantic period, in the ancient Indian people, the spirit of the epoch consisted in the fact that people were aware that they longed to return to the old Atlantic times, when they dimly perceived higher realms around them. This developed into the yoga system, through which they wanted to ascend again into the higher worlds. Linked to this ancient consciousness was the fact that people thought little of the external reality, of the physical plane. Maja, illusion, becomes the physical plane for people. The ancient Indian culture had, so to speak, very little interest in the physical plane. It may seem strange to you, but it is really true: if the ancient Indian culture had remained, there would never have been railways, telephones and such things on the physical plane as exist today; for it would not have seemed so important to deal so intensively with the laws of the physical world in order to populate this physical world with all the things that we today consider to be cultural achievements.

[ 15 ] Then came the spirit of the Persian epoch. Through him, man came to know matter as a reluctant element that he had to work with. He joined forces with the good spirit Ormuzd against the spirit of matter, Ahriman. But the Persians were already interested in the physical plan. Then comes the spirit of that epoch, which on the one hand lives out itself in the Babylonian-Assyrian-Chaldean culture, and on the other hand in the Egyptian culture. Human science is established. Geometry was used to try to make the earth more suitable for humans. The meaning of the movement of the stars was sought in astrology and astronomy, and what happens on earth is arranged according to the movement of the stars. Especially in social life, the ancient Egyptians were very much guided by the movement of the stars. What was discovered as the secrets of the stars were used as a guide. When the ancient Indian tried to eavesdrop on the way to the gods by completely diverting attention from the external reality, the Egyptian studied the laws that prevail in the external reality to examine how the will and spirit of the gods express themselves in the laws of external nature. That was another epoch. So you have a certain spirit for each epoch, and the development on earth comes about because one spirit of the epoch replaces another spirit of the epoch. This is the case in detail. Men rise to the level of the views of the age, but they do not know that behind the whole course of the ages stand the spirits of the epochs; and men do not know that here on earth, in order to express the spirit of their epoch, they are only the instruments, so to speak, of the spirits of the epochs standing behind them. Think for a moment of Giordano Bruno. If Giordano Bruno had been born as such in the 8th century, he would not have become who he became in the age in which the epochal spirit reigned, of which he then became the expression. He was the tool of the Zeitgeist, and it is the same with other spirits. And the reverse is also possible: if Giordano Bruno had been born in the 8th century, it would have been impossible for the epochal spirit to have found such an expression as it found in Giordano Bruno. From these things we see how human beings are the tools of the spirits of the epochs, who are the directing entities of the great epochs and also of the “spirits of opinion and belief” of the smaller epochs. These are the elemental forces. They extend down to man. They do not direct anything that brings people together with other realms of nature; for their consciousness no longer extends to the animal kingdom. The orders according to which human beings prepare their lives, found states, found sciences, till their fields - everything that comes from human beings - out of the spirits of the times, this course of culture from beginning to end is under the direction of the primal forces. They guide people insofar as people have to deal with people themselves.

[ 16 ] I have also been able to point out at various times how certain entities remain from each hierarchy of spirits that have not ascended as far as the others, who, so to speak, remained in the world's beginning. Now you can easily imagine that there are entities that should have ascended, so to speak, during the development of the moon to the order of revelations or powers, and which only came to the primal forces. These are different primal forces than those that have ascended to primal forces in the proper course of development. So there are such primal forces that are actually hidden forces on earth. We are now learning from a different aspect many things that we have already learned from a different side. Thus, hidden behind the elemental forces are also those that could actually be forces of violence; and among the elemental forces that are actually there unlawfully, one belongs — but only to those who look at it from the point of view of spiritual science -- the being rightly called 'Satan', Satan, the usurped prince of this world, for the rightful prince is a 'power': Jahve or Jehovah; the usurper belongs to the order of elemental forces. He expresses himself by continually bringing confusion into the spirit of the age, by inducing men to constantly contradict the spirit of the epoch. That is the real essence of the spirit, which is also called the 'spirit of darkness' or the unlawful prince of this earth of ours, who lays claim to actually directing and guiding human beings. And now you will understand the deep meaning of the appearance of the Christ, who, through his mission, shed light on the entire subsequent evolution and had to fight this unlawful prince of this world. Behind all this lies the most profound wisdom, which is expressed in this wonderful part of the Gospel.

[ 17 ] It is fair to say what you hear about Satan today not only among materialistically minded people, but also among those who still have certain old ideas, but misunderstand such ideas; because for a long time now, Satan has been spoken of rather scornfully. And even people who readily acknowledge the existence of other spiritual beings do not want to concede that Satan has any reality; they deny him. This stems from the fact that even in the Middle Ages, people had very strange ideas about Satan and said: He is actually a retarded spirit in terms of the hierarchy of powers; if he is a spirit in terms of the hierarchy of powers, then he is retarded. Where are the spirits of power? They express themselves in the spirits that reveal themselves in the world. Satan was called a spirit of darkness, but it was said that darkness is only a negation of light. The light is real, but the darkness is not real. They also thought of this in spiritual terms. Thus, they attributed reality to the spirits that manifest themselves in the light, but they denied reality to Satan, who manifests himself in darkness. This is about as clever as if someone who has listened to a physicist were to say: Cold is only a lack of warmth, it is not really something real. If we make the warmth less and less, it will become colder and colder, but if we also take away more and more warmth, the cold is not real; so we don't think of winter! But even though cold is only a negation of warmth, it can still be felt when there is no heating. So Satan is very real, even if he is only the negation of light.

[ 18 ] Thus we have risen to very high spirits, which are called “Revelations” or “Exusiai”. Among them, for example, is the entity we have come to know in another context as Jahve or Jehovah, and also his companions, the Elohim. The spirits of light belong to the order of powers or revelations. We know that Jahve had six companions who separated the sun for themselves. Yahweh himself walked with the moon, which reflects the light of the sun to the earth; but he is a companion of the other Elohim. If you now try to construct the consciousness of these revelations according to the analogy of the previous ones, you will say to yourself: These spirits no longer concern themselves with individual human beings. The individual human being is guided by the spirits we have called angels, archangels, elemental forces, up to what we have called epochal spirits. The whole picture in which the human being is embedded, the guidance and direction of the planet and what happens on it, is now a matter of revelations or powers. For we have said that the whole development of man today could not have taken place if it had not been for the surging solar forces on the one hand and the inhibiting lunar forces on the other. The revelations or forces are no longer concerned with the individual human being, but with groups of people. They direct the external powers and entities that configure the planet and which man needs in order to undergo his development on this planet. And so we see at last that there is a high Entity, going far beyond anything we have just discussed, the Christ Entity Itself, which brings something to the Earth that has nothing to do with the individual human being, but with the guidance of all humanity. And to the Christ, man must find his own way, for he is only compelled to let himself be led by the elemental forces.

[ 19 ] Thus we have formed a view, at least of the lowest levels of the hierarchies that are superordinate to man, of the angels, archangels and, to some extent, of the elemental forces and powers. Only with a sense of awe are we able to look up to an even higher being, to the Christ. We can use another opportunity to consider what can be said about the 'thrones' and so on. Today I wanted to tell you something about the spiritual structure in which man is interwoven, insofar as angels, archangels, elemental forces and powers are involved.