The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fifth Lecture

[ 1 ] Yesterday we saw how the human race will develop once our present cycle of time has come to an end; how it will, so to speak, split into two streams, the good and the evil races, and how the secrets of this future will be revealed to us through the seven seals that are figuratively broken in the Apocalypse of John. After this general discussion of the emergence in the outer physiognomy of what is being prepared in the souls of men during our cycle of time, one might easily ask: How is it that the apocalyptic writer discusses the first of the seals in such terrible images? We can best answer this question by inserting an interim consideration into our apocalyptic discussion today.

[ 2 ] So far, we have tried to substantiate the statement that the Apocalypse of John represents an initiation, the Christian initiation, and that through this Christian initiation the future of humanity is revealed. We will now best bring everything else before our souls by looking back today and once again bringing the times of past human evolution before our souls. And we will do this to the extent that we need it to explain the Apocalypse. You already know the basic features involved. You know that our Earth, as it is today the dwelling place of human beings, once began in the distant past, but that as Earth it was the reincarnation of another planetary entity, which is usually called the old Moon, or also the Cosmos or the Planet of Wisdom, in contrast to our present Earth, which we call the Cosmos or the Planet of Love. But even this cosmos of wisdom, or the old moon, is only the reincarnation of an even earlier state, which we call the sun planet, not the fixed star sun, but the sun planet. And this sun planet is the reincarnation of the old Saturn. Thus, we have to distinguish between four successive states of our planetary existence, which we call Saturn, Sun, Moon, and Earth.

[ 3 ] Now, insofar as we need it for the explanation of the Apocalypse of John, we will describe these four states of our planetary existence. If you go back clairvoyantly to the old Saturn existence, you come to a strange planet. This old Saturn is a world body on which nothing can be found of what we today call minerals, solid, earthy substances. Nothing exists of our present animal and plant world, nothing of what we today call water or liquid substances, nothing of what we know as air currents or gases. If you imagine that you were somewhere in space with your present eyes—which did not yet exist at that time—and you approached this Saturn, you would not be able to see anything in its initial state, because it does not yet shine. So with your eyes, you would not yet be able to see this Saturn from the outside in the first half of its existence. If you approached it and entered the space it filled, you would perceive something, if you could already use your present senses, as if you were crawling into a heated oven. You would only be able to distinguish this space from the rest by the fact that this spherical space is warmer than its surroundings. Heat is the only thing we encounter in ancient Saturn that we are familiar with in our present state. But it is a strange kind of heat. This heat would not seem to you to be uniform in all places. You might find that it is warmer in some places and colder in others, so that if you connected the same warm spots with lines, figures would emerge that are only perceptible through the difference in heat states. Everything is heat, but organized, differentiated heat. If you were to fly through the whole Saturn in this way, you would say to yourself: There is something there, but something that I can only perceive through the different states of heat.

[ 4 ] These differentiated states of heat are the only thing that already existed from the present characteristics of our Earth, and in such heat the first formation of the physical human body was expressed at that time. What was present there is still within you today, only it has withdrawn from external spatial existence into your inner being. It is your blood warmth. If you were to form figures out of your blood warmth, you would have the echoes of what was present in your physical body on ancient Saturn. The warmth you carry in your blood today is the first element of the physical body, the oldest part of it, so that you can also say: The whole Saturn consisted of blood warmth. — But you would also be able to find something similar to figures that could be drawn today if you followed the different paths of your blood according to the different states of warmth. That is the physical existence of this old Saturn. It has only the warmth of our present material conditions. Of all the beings that populate the earth today, only the human being existed, and of him only this beginning of the physical body. Saturn consisted only of such beginnings of physical human bodies that were formed from warmth. Just as a blackberry today is composed of individual berries, so Saturn was composed at that time, but of such human beings as have now been described. On the other hand, it was initially surrounded by spiritual beings. Just as the Earth is surrounded by air today, Saturn was enveloped by a spiritual atmosphere. Beings lived there who had different degrees of development, but who all needed Saturn's dwelling place for their stage of existence at that time. It was necessary for them. Without this dwelling place, these beings could not have survived. There were, for example, those who also had seven principles, but not like the human beings of today. Human beings have their seven principles, which we call the seven spirits of God, starting with the physical body. These beings were not like that. For example, there were beings whose lowest principle was an etheric body. They had a physical body because they anchored themselves with their etheric body in the physical bodies of Saturn and thus used them. So Saturn, in relation to today's Earth, is a substantially very fine world body. It did not even have the fine air, the gases, of our substances. These were already too coarse for it. It had only warmth, and spiritual beings in the environment of the warmth.

[ 5 ] Now, as the beings in its environment continued to develop, this Saturn underwent various transformations. One of these transformations is easy to describe in that, in the middle of its development, it actually begins to glow on the outside. So that, if one follows him, he appears at first as a dark body of heat, but then begins to glow and, towards the end, emits a faint light into the world. This spiritual atmosphere around Saturn, which contains various beings, also contains, among others, a very specific type of being that is of particular interest to us. Around the middle of Saturn's development, these beings go through the stage that humans are now going through on Earth. These are the spirits of personality. On this old Saturn, they are about halfway to becoming human beings. Of course, you will not make the mistake of asking: Did they have bodies like those of human beings today? It would be a tremendous mistake to imagine that these human beings had human flesh and bodies. The human stage can be passed through in many different forms. And these spirits of personality went through their human stage on Saturn in such a way that they first used as their physical body what was available down there on Saturn as heat, that they used as their etheric body — for they did not yet have that either — what was in the atmosphere, and finally they also used what was available as astral substance. They did not yet have any of this themselves. At that time, they essentially had an ego carrier, an ego, and this ego, which stood on the human stage and lived just as the human ego does today on Earth, went through these various stages of humanity on Saturn in a different form, in a different way. So, roughly in the middle of Saturn's development, we have the spirits of personality, the primal forces as human beings. If you count like this, what I have just listed is the middle stage of Saturn's development. Three others precede it and three others follow it. They are called Saturn cycles or Saturn epochs. If you imagine the whole of Saturn in its development, you can think of it like this:

[ 6 ] In the middle (X) stand the spirits of personality. On each of the three preceding and three following stages — just as our Earth can be divided into epochs according to the number seven, so too can this Saturnian development — in each of these epochs, corresponding beings become human beings, on each stage certain beings, and always when the time has come for them when they can use what is found on Saturn to go through the experiences of human beings. Thus, we have seven kinds of creatures on Saturn who have gone through their human stage there, who have advanced to the human stage, who therefore no longer need to come up to the human stage in the following stages. Today's human beings are not yet human beings on Saturn. Those beings who became human beings here on Saturn, whose representatives are the spirits of personality, these beings move on and are now exalted above human beings; they have, so to speak, human beings within themselves. They carry them within themselves as a stage of development that is past for them.

[ 7 ] After Saturn had undergone its development for a time, the whole evolution passed into a spiritual sphere, into a state that was not perceptible to senses such as those of human beings today, and then the second embodiment of our Earth planet, the Sun planet, emerged. It was distinguished by the fact that relatively early in its development it had already progressed to the point where it radiated light. This was because it did not consist solely of heat, but because the heat matter had already condensed into gaseous, air-like matter. It had no water yet, nothing solid; it consisted of air and gas. But this also enabled it to be a luminous body. Seen from today's perspective, it was already a planet radiating out into space. Now that this planet had developed to this stage, it was possible for the etheric body to be incorporated into the first rudiment of the human physical body. So now the human being consisted of the physical and etheric bodies, whereas on Saturn it had only the first beginnings of the physical body. However, the human being was not yet ready to have its own astral body. The forms of human beings therefore looked very different from today. The human being had the form of a plant. They possessed a physical and etheric body like plants, but looked very different on the Sun than plants do today.

[ 8 ] This progression of development was connected with the appearance of a second type of being on the Sun. On Saturn there were only human beings, no other beings. It consisted only of humans, just as the blackberry consists of small berries. However, some of these human beings remained behind on the Saturn stage; they had not achieved everything that could be achieved. These beings who remained behind, who come from Saturn, cannot therefore acquire an etheric body and must still be endowed with only a physical body on the Sun. They are therefore only as far along as the humans on Saturn. These beings, who have only a physical body on the Sun, are the first seeds of our present-day animals. Thus, on the Sun, we have human seeds with physical and etheric bodies, and animal seeds with only physical bodies.

[ 9 ] Again, in the middle of the Sun's existence, certain beings go through the human stage. Today's human beings have not yet been able to do this. We call the spiritual beings from the Sun's surroundings who are now going through the human stage fire spirits, archangels. Today they are two stages above human beings. They carry human beings within themselves. They have experienced in a different form what human beings experience today in their earthly existence. But the sun also goes through seven epochs, and at each stage there are beings that have reached the level of humanity, so that we again have seven phases of development during the sun's existence. When they look back into their own past, they see, as it were, a cosmic age of life, of which they can say: Even though there was no solid ground beneath me and no liquid earth, I nevertheless experienced what human beings experience today. So I can empathize and experience what human beings experience on Earth. — That is what these beings can say today. They understand this because they have also experienced within themselves what human beings experience today in their earthly existence.

[ 10 ] Now comes another kind of intermediate state in which the luminous planet gradually fades away from external observation — if this could already be there — and also disappears from certain clairvoyant observation, remaining only for the highest forms of clairvoyant observation. Then it emerges again into a new form of existence, into a third state, which we call the lunar state. This is the third embodiment of our planet, the old moon. It has now progressed so far in its substance development that it has condensed what was formerly merely gas on the sun into water. Because the watery element has been incorporated, the astral body can be integrated into the human being, who gradually develops again like a plant from a seed, so that the human being now consists of three parts: the physical, the etheric, and the astral bodies. He is not yet actually human, because he has not yet integrated an I into these three bodies.

[ 11 ] Certain beings always remain behind at all stages. The beings that remained behind on the sun, that could not reach the moon stage and only passed through their sun stage on the moon, therefore have no possibility of integrating the astral body into themselves at this point; they consist only of a physical and etheric body on the moon. These are namely those who had already remained behind on the sun, but who had meanwhile developed so far that they were able to integrate an etheric body. These are in turn the ancestors of today's animals. However, the beings who were not yet far enough along on the moon to integrate an etheric body are the ancestors of even lower beings: of today's plant world. So we have three kingdoms on the moon: the human kingdom, consisting of the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body; the animal kingdom, consisting of the physical body and the etheric body; and the plant kingdom, consisting only of the physical body.

[ 12 ] Again, there are certain beings who pass through their human stage approximately in the middle of the Moon's existence. These are the spirits who are usually called the spirits of twilight, the angels, in spiritual scientific literature. They too carry the memory of human beings within themselves. And again, the Moon has seven such stages. At each stage there are beings who are just passing through human existence. It is always the case that some beings rush ahead and others lag behind. So we also have seven stages of being on the moon who had passed through humanity when the moon's development came to an end.

[ 13 ] Now, however, in order to understand the moon completely, we must mention something important that took place in the development of the old moon. When this old moon began its development, it was, at least soon after its beginning, a liquid sphere. If it had continued to develop in this way through its seven stages, it would not have been able to provide humans with the right foundation for their further development. It only became suitable as a precursor to Earth humanity because it first split into two world bodies. One of these was the precursor of the present sun, and the other, which separated, was the precursor of the present earth, but in such a way that you must imagine the present moon mixed with this earth, so that the earth and moon of today were then one. So imagine these two bodies, Earth plus Moon on the one hand and the Sun on the other, now separated from each other, the old Moon as a watery body and the old Sun on its way to becoming a fixed star. Something very essential was connected with this division. Above all, it was the sun that carried out the separation and took with it the finest parts, the most ethereal matter, while the coarsest matter remained in the moon, that is, in today's Earth plus today's moon. Therefore, the sun is endowed with immensely fine matter, while the moon becomes a much denser body, a watery mass. Because the sun took the finest and most spiritual forces with it, it could now also be the scene for much more highly developed beings. In fact, many of those high beings who could still endure the Saturn existence would have been hindered in their development if they had remained bound to the moon any longer. They needed a scene with the finest substances; only there could they develop. Thus they had chosen the suitable scene and continued their development on the sun. On the other hand, those human elements consisting of the physical body, etheric body, and astral body, as well as animal and plant elements, remained connected to the moon, which had undergone a thickening due to the departure of the finer matter.

[ 14 ] This old moon now looks very strange. Even though it was already orbiting its sun, you would not find anything like rocks or farmland there. There were no minerals yet. The main mass of this moon, on which these beings were hopping around, so to speak, was a kind of porridge, a real kind of porridge, something like cooked lettuce or cooked spinach. Such a porridge was the basic substance of this moon, just as the basic substance of our earth is soil. It contained masses similar to, say, wood and tree bark. When you climb a mountain today, you walk on rocks. Back then, you would have walked on a ground that, when solid, was like wood, like a wooden plateau. Instead of granite, you would have found stumps that were comparable to wood. This is, of course, only a comparison. That was the basic mass, and out of it, growths continually sprouted. This was the lowest kingdom, today's mineral kingdom, which at that time stood in the middle between today's mineral and plant kingdoms. It lived in a certain way. There were constant growths. It was not like today. When farmland lies there, you have to carry it away externally if you want to get rid of it. This mass of the old moon died off—but not like individual plants—and formed itself anew. It was constantly in inner living motion and movement. The basic substance of the old moon was in constant dying and constant growth. And out of this basic ground grew another kingdom. For the emergence of the moon from the sun had changed the earlier kingdoms. On the sun, they corresponded roughly to our realms. When the moon emerged, the old plant realm was pushed down half a step, and so were the other realms, so that the next realm was a kind of animal-plant realm. However, it grew out of the ground; such animal-plants grew out of it. They were plant-shaped, but when attacked, they had sensations, they squeaked and the like. They were actually half animal and half plant, plant insofar as they grew on the ground, largely rooted in the soil, and animals insofar as they had some capacity for sensation. And the realm that preceded ours was populated by human-animals, beings that stood midway between today's humans and today's animals, higher than today's apes but not yet as high as today's humans. That was roughly the form of the human ancestors on the moon.

[ 15 ] Legends and myths in particular have preserved these things wonderfully. Just think how a German legend has preserved the secret that lies behind all this. Certain beings always remain behind. These beings, which stood in the middle between today's plants and animals, which could only take root in a plant-like soil, such as the soil of the moon, have remained behind and are therefore unable to thrive on mineral soil in our present-day Earth. Our present-day plants can grow there, but those that stood in the middle between plants and animals, which needed a living soil, cannot grow in the mineral realm if they have remained behind. Mistletoe is such a plant. It must therefore parasitize in the present-day plant world because it is a being that has remained behind. It no longer has any feelings, although the astral body surrounding mistletoe is completely different from that of other plants. And German legend sensed that mistletoe does not really belong in our earthly existence, that it is foreign to it. The legend celebrates Baldur, the god of the earth sun, the earth's power. No creature on earth can approach him with hostility. Therefore, the god whom the German legend perceived as such a straggler, Loki, cannot kill Baldur with any creature of the earth. He must let him be killed with the mistletoe branch, because it is foreign among the creatures of the earth and can therefore serve the straggler Loki, who is not related to the earth gods. Deep wisdom is hidden behind such legends. In this Baldur-Loki legend, we sense this ancient wisdom everywhere, even in the customs associated with mistletoe. If you studied them, you would find that what is said about them comes from ancient wisdom.

[ 16 ] Then, in the second half of the moon's development, the time came when the beings developing on both the sun and the moon had achieved what they were supposed to achieve during the old moon period. And then they united again. The sun and moon once again traveled together as one body in their development.

[ 17 ] Then the state of development darkened, passed through the purely spiritual state that some are accustomed to calling Pralaya, and now our Earth's development dawned. In the beginning, the dawning world body contained not only our present-day earthly substance, but also what you would obtain if you took the substance of the present-day sun, the present-day earth, and the present-day moon, put them together in a huge pot, and stirred them all together. This is roughly how you can imagine the state of development of our earth at its beginning. This state of development is initially a kind of repetition of the Saturn state, then of the Sun and Moon states. What is now most important for us is that human beings only become human in the present sense in the middle of Earth's development. We must also distinguish between seven states in our Earth's development. We are in the fourth. Three have preceded it, three will follow. The fourth main cycle was the one in which our present human race was to become human. Just as certain beings reached the human stage in all these cycles on Saturn, on the Sun, and on the Moon—on Saturn the Asuras or primordial forces, on the Sun the archangels, on the Moon the angels—so too were there always beings who remained behind. And so there were also beings who could no longer reach the human stage on the moon, such as angels who had been left behind, who were only now able to catch up with the human stage on the Earth planet during the first three Earth periods. Man arrived at this stage in the fourth period. Before man, three other beings had already passed through the human stage on Earth. And the fourth of the beings that are going through the human stage on Earth is man himself. At the moment of cosmic development when man is just about to become human, you have all the beings that have been able to go through the human stage through Saturn, the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth, as beings that have more or less advanced beyond man. But all of them are such that they can look back and remember the stage at which they themselves went through the human stage. They could look down upon the human being in the making and say to themselves: He is now becoming something that we already have been, something we understand, even though we were it under different circumstances. They were therefore able to guide and regulate his development from the spiritual world.

[ 18 ] Let us count how many such beings there are who can look back on the human stage, who can understand the human being in the making: seven from the Saturn evolution, plus seven from the Sun stage, plus seven from the Moon stage, plus three from the Earth evolution, that makes twenty-four beings. Twenty-four “human beings” look down upon human beings today. These are the beings whom we have called, with good reason, the regulators of evolution, the regulators of time. Time is connected with evolution. They are the twenty-four elders whom we encounter in the Apocalypse of John. These are the same beings that are described to us when we approach the mystery of the seven seals. They are described to us as the actual guides of destiny, the actual Alpha and Omega. So we have found the twenty-four elders here again, and you see how the apocalyptic writer who wrote this important document has wonderfully hidden in his images what we can find ourselves by contemplating the spiritual evolution of the world.

[ 19 ] Now, however, certain beings had remained behind at each stage, so that the Saturn beings who remained behind on the sun emerged as the first rudiments of the present animal kingdom, and the sun beings who remained behind on the moon stage emerged as the first rudiments of the present plant kingdom. It was not until the earth that a stage of development emerged as the mineral kingdom. We have emphasized that there was no mineral kingdom on the moon. It would not have been possible to walk around on rocks on the moon. At the time when today's human beings began to go through their human stage, the mineral masses, the first crystals, emerged from the world body that now stood between the substance of the moon and the substance of today. That was the moment when the mineral kingdom sprang forth. And you find this springing forth described in a very unique way in the Apocalypse of John, where he says: “And around the throne was something like a sea of glass.” This “sea of glass” is meant to indicate to us the springing forth, the germination of the mineral kingdom in its first form. Thus we also see this secret of cosmic development hinted at in the Apocalypse of John. And we have also learned to understand that, up to this point, the apocalyptic writer wants to show us nothing else in his powerful images than what we can recognize from spiritual life in the development of the earth itself. Thus, right at the beginning of his book, the apocalyptic writer has led us up to the heights where human beings can see the images of future stages of development.

[ 20 ] And now we have a good foundation on which to build what we have already learned about the first epochs of future human development. As an interim observation, we have now looked back into the past to the point where human beings are ready to become human beings, where the mineral kingdom bursts forth. And now we will see how things continue up to our time, and from there into the future. We will find the connection to the mystery of the seven seals and their unsealing until the pouring out of the bowls of wrath.