The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourth Lecture

[ 1 ] If we now look back at what was said this morning, then, with the even more transparent and less maja or illusionary conditions of Saturn, we can see more clearly how the redemption or further enslavement of certain entities takes place, which we recognized yesterday in connection with that deeply significant passage in the Divine Gita. Remember what was said: If the spirits of personality on old Saturn were to absorb these egg-shaped heat bodies every time and leave nothing behind, then the whole of Saturn, when it has completed its evolution, would actually have to be absorbed into the spiritual world. But this does not happen, as has been explained. Instead, the spirits of the personality on the old Saturn, as it were, impress their stamp on the whole of Saturn more intensely than they should, by leaving something of themselves behind, by not absorbing everything back into themselves; by leaving behind the externally perceptible heat bodies.

[ 2 ] What then is the power that actually rules in the spirits of personality on old Saturn? It is no other power than that which we know today in man as the power of thought. For basically the spirits of personality on old Saturn do nothing but exercise the power of their thoughts. They cause these warm eggs to form by evoking the image of these warm eggs within themselves. So it is the power of imagination that the spirits of personality have, only much more strongly than is the case with today's human beings. What power does the imagination have in today's human beings? When you form an image today, my dear friends, a form is merely formed in the astral; the image merely continues into the astral. Therefore, the persistence of this form cannot be observed externally and physically. On ancient Saturn, the spirits of personality were powerful magicians. They formed these Saturn-warmth-eggs through their power of thought and also left them through their power of thought. So it was basically the power of these spirits of personality themselves that left the remains of old Saturn, and these remains now appear again and again and finally even during the development of the sun.

[ 3 ] So here we have it very clearly: a being that is actually human takes forms from the environment – because what is formed as eggs is formed from the environment of Saturn – and that these eggs are enchanted, bound until the next existence.

[ 4 ] So here we can see more comprehensively what we said yesterday, because the circumstances are not yet so complicated. Here we could say: Behold the fire of Saturn, behold that which is spiritualized again and again from the old Saturn fire, which is always taken back again as inner fire, as soul fire, as warmth comfort, that rises into higher worlds. And if only that were there, Saturn would disappear into higher worlds. That which is perceptible external warmth, which condenses into external heat, must be reborn, reappear, and appears first, as has been described, on the sun.

[ 5 ] Now let us look back at the rest that we have described today. We realized that on this old sun those entities of the spiritual hierarchies that we call archangels, archangeloi or fire spirits are going through their stage of humanity, that the warmth element is already condensing into smoke, into gas, on one side, so that the sun is already a ball of gas, and that on the other side this gas is burning in such a way that light streams out into the universe. And it is precisely the archangels or fire spirits who live in this outpouring of light, who absorb light and radiate it and have their life in it. And I have already told you that if you had been able to undertake a journey through space at that time, you would have seen the old sun shining from afar. Inside the old sun, you would have perceived the various gas currents as a breathing process of the entire solar body.

[ 6 ] Now let us once more place ourselves before the soul of this old Saturn, this old sun. We have seen that life and activity prevail in these two planetary bodies, that something is happening there. We have indeed been able to describe the old Saturn in such a way that these egg formations reform and dissolve again on it, with the exception of the remains that remain. Therefore, someone who observed this inner activity of the old Saturn would say to himself: Actually, this Saturn is a single living being. It is really as if it were completely a living being. It lives; it lives within itself, it continually forms out of its own life, forms and so on. And to an even greater extent this is the case with the old sun. It presents itself as a totality in the changing states of solar day and solar night, of inhalation and exhalation of light. All this, if it could be observed, would give the impression of not dead, but living world bodies.

[ 7 ] Now, everything that is alive, that is in any kind of activity, is internally animated and moved because spiritual beings direct and guide this movement. We have said that the spirits of personality form these egg-forms by their power of thought. Yes, but first, as you will find understandable, something must be there from which the material for these eggs can be taken. The spirits of personality, the primeval beginnings or archai, cannot create the material. That is the first thing we must bear in mind: that something must be present that provides the material, that is, undifferentiated warmth, fire itself. The spirits of personality are only those that shape it, but they must first receive the warmth from elsewhere. From where does the entire world of Saturn receive this warmth, this element of fire? This comes from much higher spirits, from spiritual beings who have passed through their stage of humanity so far back that they were already long past this stage of humanity on ancient Saturn. To get an idea of the exalted nature of the beings that were necessary to provide the warmth-fire of ancient Saturn, we must, comparatively speaking, bring the development of the human being a little closer to our minds, for the human being will one day also become a divine being.

[ 8 ] We know that the human being, as he stands before us today, consists of the four elements of human nature, which we have often mentioned but which are the key to all spiritual science: that the human being consists of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body and an I. We then know how man develops further; that the I works from within, that it first transforms the astral body in order to bring it completely under the control of the I. When this astral body is so transformed that the I has full control over it, then we say: This astral body has become such that it contains the spirit self or manas within it. An astral body ruled by the I is therefore spirit-self or manas. It is the same with the etheric body. When the I works even more significantly, it also overcomes the opposing forces of the etheric body, and the transformed etheric body is the life spirit or budhi. And finally, when the I becomes master of the physical body, when it overcomes the most strongly opposing forces, those of the physical body, then the human being also has within him the spiritual man or Atma. So that we then have a seven-part human being who has transformed his physical body into Atma or spiritual man. Outwardly, the physical body appears as a physical body; inwardly, it is completely dominated and aglow with the I; the physical body is at the same time physical body and Atma. The etheric body is at the same time etheric body and life spirit or Budhi, and the astral body is at the same time astral body and spirit self or Manas, and the I has now become the ruler in all of them. Thus man advances to higher stages of his development, thus he transforms himself, thus he works towards his deification, as Dionysius the Areopagite, the friend and disciple of the Apostle Paul, says. But with this point the development is not yet complete. When man has advanced so far that he has completely conquered himself, that he has completely brought this physical body under his rule, then he still has higher stages of development ahead of him. It goes higher and higher, and there we look up to spiritual heights, to superhuman entities, and these entities become more and more powerful, more and more powerful. And what is it actually that makes entities more and more powerful? It is that they are at first, so to speak, needy and in need of something; that they must demand something from the world and that later they develop the ability to give. This is basically the spirit and meaning of development, that one progresses from taking to giving. There is an analogy to human development here between birth and death: the child is helpless, must take the help of those around it. More and more, it grows out of this awkwardness and finally becomes a helper in its circle. This is also the case with the great development of humanity in the universe.

[ 9 ] The human being was present on ancient Saturn as the first physical human disposition. There he still had to be given, so to speak, the first disposition for humanity. But it was the same during the solar and lunar periods. On Earth, he acquired his ego, and now he is gradually preparing to let his ego work in the astral body, etheric body and physical body. In this way it gradually becomes a being that can give cosmically. The being gradually grows into cosmic, into universal giving, out of taking into giving. You have an example of this in the beings we spoke of today, the archangels or archangeloi. They have already developed on the sun to the point where they can give light to the universe. So, the development goes from taking to giving. But in terms of giving, the matter goes very far. If any entities, let us assume, can only give their thoughts, then basically that is not much of giving, because whoever gives thoughts - well, when he has given so many thoughts and he passes away, it is as it was before. He has, so to speak, given nothing visible, nothing substantial in the higher sense. But there comes a time when beings can give not only something like thoughts or the like, but much more, for example, they can give what the spirits of the personality needed on old Saturn: the substance of the warmth-fire.

[ 10 ] Who then was at such a high level of development that he could pour out of his own body this warmth-fire substance of old Saturn? These were the beings we call the Thrones.

[ 11 ] So we see that old Saturn is formed when the thrones contract from the periphery of the universe to a point in the universe and, I would say, do on a large scale what the silk moth does on a lower level when it spins its own body into a silk thread. They spin out the warmth, and sacrifice it at the altar of the old Saturn, the thrones. We have to look at the life of the spirits of the personality on old Saturn in such a way that these spirits of the personality or archai basically just give the personality, the sense of self, to this warmth. The substance of the warmth-fire streams together out of the universe, out of the cosmos, it flows out of the high, exalted spiritual beings, the thrones. So we already know, so to speak, what these eggs consist of, which are present on Saturn. They are spun out of the self-sacrificing body of the thrones.

[ 12 ] But that would not be enough; Saturn would still not have that inner vitality and activity if only the Spirits of Personality and the Thrones were working together. The Spirits of Personality have the power to form the warmth-giving substance, but they cannot do it alone. For this inner activity, this inner vitality of old Saturn to come about, old Saturn must still be inhabited by other spiritual beings that are lower than the Thrones, but higher than the Spirits of Personality or Archai. These have the task of helping the Spirits of Personality. We can also form an idea of this help if we remember that we have, above us, first of all angelic beings or Angeloi, archangelic beings or Archangeloi and Primordial Beings or Spirits of Personality, Archai. These entities belong to the Hierarchy, which is above us. The Thrones are not the nearest above the Spirits of Personality. Between the Spirits of Personality and the Thrones there are intermediate levels, and these are the entities we call the Powers or Exusiai according to Dionysius the Areopagite. Powers, then, is the name we may use in English. The Powers are one level higher than the Spirits of Personality. They related to these spirits of personality in the same way that the angels relate to us.Again, one step higher than these forces are those entities that we call the powers, Dynamis. They related to the spirits of personality on ancient Saturn in the same way that the archangels relate to us today. And a step higher than the powers are those entities that we call dominions, kyriotetes. They related to the spirits of personality on ancient Saturn as the archpowers or spirits of personality relate to us. Only then do the thrones come.

[ 13 ] Thus, on ancient Saturn we have a hierarchy of beings: the Spirits of Personality, which stimulate and carry out the ego consciousness. We have the Thrones, which stand four levels higher than the Spirits of Personality, which provide the fire element. And in order that all life on Saturn may be regulated and directed, we have, from bottom to top, the Powers, the Authorities, and the Forces—Exusiai, Dynamis, and Kyriotetes. That is, if one may say so, the population of old Saturn.

[ 14 ] Now, as has been described this morning, as old Saturn develops into the sun, these entities, which have now been enumerated, develop one step higher, and the archangels enter the stage of humanity. Outwardly, we could say physically, the warmth condenses into gas. The sun is a gaseous body. And while the old Saturn was a dark body of warmth, the sun begins to shine outwards, but it alternates, so to speak, between solar days and solar nights. And to note that it alternates between solar days and solar nights is of very special importance. Because there is a huge difference in life on this old sun between sunny days and sunny nights. If nothing else were to happen than what I have described in the last lecture and now, then the archangels, who are human beings on the old sun, would rush out into the universe with the rays of light on sunny days, would spread throughout the universe, and they would have to return to the sun on sunny nights. It would seem as if the light and the creatures that live and move in the light were breathing out and breathing in. But that is not the case. And now, in a simple way, I would like to give an almost trivial description of the nature of these archangels or archangeloi. They enjoy floating out into the universe so much; they enjoy floating out and merging into the spirit of the universe more than contracting back together. That is like a constricting existence for them, a lower existence. They therefore prefer life in the light ether. Now they could never expand this life in the light ether beyond a certain limit if something did not come to their aid. If these entities were left to their own resources on the old sun, they would have no choice but to return obediently to the sun during the solar nights. Nevertheless, they did not do so, but rather extended the time of their sojourn in the world outside more and more, and remained more and more in the spiritual world. What came to their aid?

[ 15 ] If we imagine this circle to be the old ball of fire, the archangels are striving outwards from this old ball of fire into space on all sides; the spiritual nature of the archangels spreads out into the universe. In this expansion, the archangels were helped by the fact that beings from the universe came to meet them. Just as the fire elements of the thrones had previously flowed in from the universe at the time of ancient Saturn, so now other entities, even higher than the thrones, come to meet the archangels who go out there; and they help them so that they can stay out there in the spiritual world longer than they would otherwise have been able to.

[ 16 ] These entities, who have met the archangels from the spiritual realm and have received the archangels, we call cherubs. This is a particularly exalted kind of spiritual entities, because they have the power to receive, so to speak, with open arms, the archangelic beings. When these archangelic beings spread out, the cherubs come to meet them from the universe. So we have the approaching cherubim all around the old sun ball. Just as, if I may use the comparison, our Earth is surrounded by its atmosphere, so the old sun was surrounded by the realm of cherubim for the benefit of the archangels. So these archangels looked, when they went out into space, they looked at their great helpers.

[ 17 ] And how did these great helpers look when they came to meet them? Of course, only the clairvoyant consciousness reading in the Akasha Chronicle can state this. These great universal helpers presented themselves in very specific ethereal forms. And our ancestors, who still had an awareness of this significant fact through their tradition, depicted the cherubs as those peculiarly winged animals with the variously shaped heads: the winged lion, the winged eagle, the winged bull, the winged man. For indeed, the cherubs approached from four sides. And they approached in such forms that they could indeed be depicted afterwards as they have become known to us as the forms of the cherubim. And that is why the schools of the first initiates of the post-Atlantean time gave names to these cherubim approaching the old sun from four sides, which then became the names of the bull, the lion, the eagle, and the man.

[ 18 ] We will hear more about this in detail; today let us consider these four types of cherubim, who go out to meet the archangels. So that was the sight on the old sun, that when the humans actually animating the sun, namely the archangels, went out into space, that the cherubim, and four kinds of cherubim, came to meet them from four sides. Thus it was possible for the archangelic beings to remain longer in the realm of the spirit surrounding the old sun than would otherwise have been possible for them. For the influence of these cherubim had a reviving effect on the old archangels in the highest degree, in the spiritual sense. But since these cherubim came near the sun, their effect, the effect of these cherubim, had to be felt in other ways as well. It is not true that something which is somewhere only asserts itself in one relationship. Let us say there are two people in a room; one of them wishes to have it very hot, but the second person, who does not wish this, must also be inside: the other person also gets warm. It was the same with these cherubim radiating in from the universe. On those entities of the old sun, which had, so to speak, risen to the light element, which knew how to live in the light element, they had an effect in the manner described. But this light element could only be affected during a solar day, while light streamed out into space. But there were also solar nights when light did not stream out, and the cherubim were also in the sky. During this time, when the sun planet was in eclipse, it was just a ball of warm, non-luminous gas, with warm gases flowing within it. The cherubim were all around it, sending their influence down: Now they worked into the dark gas. So when these cherubs could not influence the archangels in the normal way, they worked into the dark smoke of the sun, into the dark gas. So while effects were being exerted on the warmth on the old Saturn, effects were now being exerted from space on the condensed warmth, on the gas of the old sun. It is to this effect that on the old sun, out of the solar nebula, the first rudiment was formed for that which we today call the animal kingdom. Just as on the old Saturn the first rudiment of the human kingdom arose in the physical human body, so on the sun out of the smoke, out of the gas, the first rudiment of the animal kingdom is formed. From the warmth, the first structure of the human body formed on the old Saturn; on the old sun, the first physical animal body structures, moving like smoke, are formed by the cherubic figures reflecting in these solar gases.

[19] So what is spreading out around the sun as cherubic figures is that totality of high beings, which on the one hand, so to speak, comes to meet the archangels with open arms and on the other hand, during the nights of the sun, conjures up the first physical predispositions for the animal kingdom out of the solar gas. The animal kingdom grows out of the solar nebula in its first physical form. That is why those of our ancestors who, through the mysteries, were familiar with these deeply significant matters of spiritual cosmology called these entities, which from the different sides of space influenced the ancient sun, the zodiac. That is the original meaning of the zodiac. On the ancient Saturn, humanity is first assessed by the substance that it has in its physical body today being poured out from the thrones and sacrificed. On the sun, the first disposition to the animal kingdom is formed by the first animal forms being conjured out of the heat substance condensed into gas through the mirroring forms of the cherubim. And so the animals initially become solar images of the zodiac. There is a real inner relationship between the zodiac and the animals evolving on the sun. Our animals are caricature-like descendants of the animals evolving on the sun. Truly, it is not without reason that things have been given such names. We must never believe that in those ancient times names were thought up in an arbitrary manner. Today, when a new star is discovered among the chain of planetoids, what does the astronomer who has had the good fortune to spot it do? He opens a dictionary and picks a name from Greek mythology that is still available, and attaches it to the star. So in the times when people were looking for the expression for the thing in the name, in the times when the mysteries were powerful, they never gave names; but in the names that were given then, you can find the deep meaning of the thing in them everywhere.

[ 20 ] The forms of our animals, even if they are distorted into caricatures today, were taken from the circumference of the universe, from the shape of the zodiac that existed at that time. You may have noticed that only four names of the zodiac are written here. These are only the most important expressions for the cherubim, because basically each of these cherubim figures has a kind of offspring or companion on the left and right. If you imagine each of the four cherubim figures with two companions, then you have twelve powers and authorities in the vicinity of the Sun, which were already present to a certain extent in the old Saturn. We have twelve such authorities that belong to the realm of the cherubim and that have their task, their mission in the universe to fulfill as we have just said.

[ 21 ] Now you might still ask, but what about the usual zodiac names? We will say a few words about that in the next few days. Because some things have changed in the order of the names. We usually start counting with Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, then comes Virgo, Libra. The eagle had to accept the name scorpion due to a later transformation — for very specific reasons. And then there are the two companions sagittarius and capricorn. The human being is called aquarius or waterman for certain reasons, which we will also get to know. And then Pisces. — So you see, so to speak, the real form from which the zodiac originated, only in Taurus, in Leo, and to a lesser extent in man, who in the ordinary exoteric naming is called the water man or Aquarius. Why the zodiac has undergone the transformation will be discussed in the next few days.

[ 22 ] So you see that high spiritual beings, high hierarchies, the thrones themselves, separate fire-matter from their own substance on old Saturn. And you see how still higher spirits, which we call cherubim, can take up into themselves that which arises as light from this fire-matter, and can glorify and uplift its existence as light. But every time there is an exaltation in the universe, there must also be a degradation to create the corresponding balance. So that by day the archangels find the opportunity to expand their spiritual existence, the cherubim must continue to work by night and express the animal entities, animal forms in the warmth condensed into mist, smoke, gas, among mankind.

[ 23 ] Thus, in the sense of the wisdom of the primeval world, we have gained the first idea, so to speak, of the interaction of certain spiritual entities of the universe with our own world body, and at the same time we have seen how what appears to us externally physically can always be traced back to spiritual entities. What is today so materially called the zodiac can be traced back to the dance of the cherubim, which worked down from the circumference of the world onto the old sun, which radiated its power into this universe as a luminous force.

[ 24 ] So we have derived the one important concept, the concept of the zodiac, and we will continue with this reflection tomorrow. We will be able to gradually ascend to the other concepts of the cosmic bodies and shed more and more light on the connection with the spiritual hierarchies.