The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixth Lecture

[ 1 ] Yesterday we saw how the facts of the cosmos arise from the spiritual life of the entities that stand above human beings. And in particular, an event such as the one we were able to cite yesterday at the end, the battle in the sky, which left so many corpses on the battlefield, so to speak, between Jupiter and Mars, that they are still found today in ever greater numbers as planetoids by physical science, precisely such an event must be of particular importance to us. And we will have to come back to it; we will see how this phenomenon in the sky is also reflected in certain processes of the evolution of the earth, and we will find the earthly reflection of this conflict in the sky right at the beginning of the Bhagavad Gita.

[ 2 ] Today, however, we want to continue our meditation by also briefly describing the other entities of the spiritual hierarchies, which we have already hinted at but left out yesterday. These are the entities that are actually closest to man when we ascend from man; they are called in Christian esotericism angels, archangels and primal beginnings or primal forces, thus angeloi, archangeloi, archai. The archangels are also called fire spirits according to the anthroposophical literature, and we can also call the primal beginnings spirits of personality.

[ 3 ] These entities, which, so to speak, stand between man and those spiritual entities, which we showed yesterday reaching in to Jupiter, Mars and so on, are of course also more closely related to man on earth itself. First of all, we have the Angeloi or angels. They passed through their stage of humanity during the ancient lunar evolution, and so, basically, during our present evolution on earth they have only progressed as far as man will during his Jupiter evolution. They stand one step above man. What then is the actual task of these spiritual beings? We will be able to visualize this task if we consider the evolution of man on earth.

[ 4 ] The human being develops from embodiment to embodiment. In the way human development is happening now, it goes back through the old Atlantean times, through the Lemurian times and actually begins in the old Lemurian times. And this development through incarnations will continue for a long time, until towards the end of the development of the earth, when other forms of human development will occur. Now you know that what we call the actual eternal core of the human being, the individuality, continues from incarnation to incarnation. But you also know that for the vast majority of people today there is still no awareness of life in previous embodiments, that people today do not remember what has happened to them in previous incarnations. Only those who have developed to a certain degree of clairvoyance look back on their previous incarnations.

[ 5 ] What kind of connection would there be between the incarnations of a person on earth who does not yet remember his previous embodiments, if it were not for certain entities that, so to speak, link the individual incarnations, watching over the further development from one incarnation to the next? For every human being we must assume the existence of an entity which, being one step higher than man, guides the individuality from one incarnation to another. Mind you, these are not the beings that regulate karma and to which we will return; these are simply watchful beings that preserve the memory from one incarnation to the next, so to speak, while the person himself cannot. And these beings are the angels or the archai. So we can say: Every person is a personality in every incarnation, but an entity watches over each person that has a consciousness that goes from incarnation to incarnation. That is also what makes it possible for a person to ask their angel for certain lower degrees of initiation, even if they themselves do not yet know about their previous embodiments. That is entirely possible for certain lower degrees of initiation. So we may say: the beings who, as angels, stand one step higher than man, they have to keep watch over the whole thread of humanity that is spun for the individual from embodiment to embodiment. Now we ascend to the next group of beings, to the archangels, archangeloi, to the fire spirits, as we also call them. These beings are not concerned with the individual human being, with the individual individuality, but have a more comprehensive task: they bring the life of the individual and the life of larger human contexts, such as peoples, races and so on, into a harmonious order. Within our earthly development, the archangels have the task, so to speak, of bringing the soul of the individual into a certain connection with what we call the soul of the people, the soul of the race. For someone who penetrates spiritual knowledge, national and racial souls are something quite different than for the abstractions of today's science or education in general. On any given territory, let's say in Germany or France or Italy, so and so many people live, and because the senses see only so and so many people as external forms, such abstractions can only imagine what is called the folk spirit or folk soul as a mere conceptual summary of the people. For them, only the individual human being is real, not the folk soul, not the folk spirit. For those who look into the real workings of spiritual life, what we call the soul or spirit of a people is a reality. There lives and moves in a national soul that which we call a fire spirit or an archangel. It regulates, so to speak, the relationship of the individual to the totality of a people or a race.

[ 6 ] And then we come up to the entities that we call spirits of personality, primordial beginnings, primordial forces, archai. These are even higher entities, they have an even higher task in the context of humanity. They basically regulate the earthly conditions of the whole human race on earth, and they live in such a way that they change from epoch to epoch in a very specific way through the waves of time, so to speak, taking on a different spiritual body. They all know something that is actually only a mere concept for the abstract people of our present-day education, but which is a reality for those who see into spiritual reality: it is what could be called the Zeitgeist, which is actually a rather ugly expression of our time. They have to do with the meaning and mission of an epoch of humanity. Just think, for example, that we can describe the meaning and mission of the first millennia immediately after the Atlantic catastrophe. These spirits of the age embrace something that goes beyond the individual people, beyond the individual race. The spirit of an epoch is not limited to this or that people, it crosses the borders of nations. That which is called the spirit of an epoch, the spirit of an epoch, is the spiritual body of the archai, the primal beginnings or spirits of personality. It is to be attributed to these spirits of personality, for example, that certain human personalities appear on our planet during certain epochs. You do understand, don't you, that earthly tasks must first be solved by earthly personalities. In a very specific epoch, this or that epoch-making personality had to appear. But there would be a strange confusion in the whole development of the earth if it were left to chance, if, for example, Luther or Charlemagne were placed in any epoch. This must be thought of in connection with the whole development of humanity over the earth; the right soul must arise, so to speak, out of the meaning of the whole development of the earth in a particular epoch. This is regulated by the spirits of personality, by the archai or primal beginnings.

[ 7 ] And then, when we go beyond the Primordial Beginnings, we come to the entities that we only just touched on yesterday, the so-called forces, exusiai, which we also call the spirits of form. Here we come to tasks that go beyond the earth. In the evolution of humanity, we distinguish between a Saturn evolution, a sun evolution, a moon, an earth, a Jupiter, a Venus and a Vulcan evolution. We have now seen that everything that happens within the earth itself is regulated by angels for the individual human being, and by archangels for the cohesion of the individual human being with large masses of people. For the development of humanity from the Lemurian period to the time when the human being will again be so spiritualized that he hardly belongs to the earth anymore, everything is regulated by the spirits of personality. But now something else has to be regulated: Humanity must be led from one planetary state to another. There must also be spiritual beings that, during the entire evolution of the Earth, ensure that when the evolution of the Earth is complete, humanity can pass through a pralaya in the right way and find the path to the next goal, the Jupiter goal. These are the Powers or Spirits of Form. Yesterday we characterized their task from above downwards, now we will characterize it from below upwards. Those spirits who ensure that, so to speak, all of humanity is led from one planetary state to another, these are the powers, exusiai or spirits of form.

[ 8 ] Now we need to gain some insight into the cosmic position of these beings. In spiritual science, in that which is to be continued today as anthroposophy, and which is basically the wisdom of the mysteries, these various beings of the spiritual hierarchies have always been spoken of in the same way as has been done here today. Yesterday we saw that Saturn signifies the point up to which the Thrones have had an effect, Jupiter signifies the point up to which the Lordships have had an effect, and Mars the point up to which the Powers or Dynamis or Virtues have had an effect.

[ 9 ] Now let us also characterize in a corresponding way how the domains of the entities mentioned today are spatially distributed in our solar system, so to speak. This will touch on a subject that may cause some consternation, even among those of you who are already prepared to a certain extent, but it is nevertheless entirely true. You see, in today's school teaching people are told that in gray antiquity, right up to Copernicus, there was a world view about our solar system that is known as the Ptolemaic system. At that time, it was believed that the Earth was at the center of our system, and that the planets moved around the Earth, as it appears to the eye. Since Copernicus, we finally know, so they say, what people earlier did not know, namely that the Sun is at the center and that the planets move in circles or in ellipses around the Sun. That's nice! But what should be made clear to people in particular in such a description of our solar system, when it is presented sincerely and honestly in today's sense, is something else. One should say: Up to Copernicus, people only knew certain forms of movement in space, and on that basis they calculated what our solar system might be like. What Copernicus did was not, so to speak, take a chair and into outer space to see how the sun is situated in some center of a circle or ellipse and the planets move around it, but he made a calculation, and this calculation explains more simply what is seen than previous calculations. The Copernican system is nothing more than a result of thought.

[ 10 ] Let us disregard Ptolemy's assumptions for a moment. Let us set up the calculation in such a way that the sun is at the center, calculate the locations of the individual planets, and then see if this calculation agrees with experience. Certainly, for purely physical observation, the calculation initially agrees with experience. Of course, all kinds of world systems, for example the Kant-Laplace system, were then built on this. But that was already the result of ongoing discoveries, which, in principle, is no longer entirely scientifically honest, because two planets were later added for purely sensory observation – we have not yet touched on them, but we will show later what they mean for our solar system, Uranus and Neptune. However, when describing this planetary system, one would have to point out to people that these two, Uranus and Neptune, actually throw a huge spanner in the works.

[ 11 ] If we want to accept the Kant-Laplacean system, then Uranus and Neptune would have to move with their moons in the same way as the other moons move around the other planets. But they do not, and among these outer planets, among these planets found later, we even have one that behaves quite strangely. For if the Kant-Laplace system is correct, then someone should have turned its axis by ninety degrees after all the planets had split off, because it makes a different orbit from the other planets. These two differ considerably from the other planets in our solar system. We shall see later what the situation is with them; for the moment we only want to point out that in the Copernican system we are dealing only with a calculation, with something that was hypothetically put forward as a premise at the time when people completely lost sight of an understanding of spiritual connections, of an observation of what underlies external events spiritually. But the old Ptolemaic system is not just a physical system; it is a system that goes back to spiritual observation, where it was known that the planets are markers for certain domains of the higher beings. And the whole system of our planet-sun system must be drawn differently if one now wants to characterize the domains in an appropriate way. I will draw this planetary system for you as it has been explained in the Mysteries of Zoroaster. We could just as easily consult other mysteries, but we want to pick out this system for the characteristics of our solar system with its planets in relation to the spiritual beings active within this system.

[ 12 ] In the system of Zarathustra, something was incorporated that differs from what our celestial observations are. You know, of course, that over the course of many years a certain progression of the sun through the zodiac can be observed. It is usually said, and correctly so, that since about the 8th century before our era the sun rises in spring at the vernal point in the zodiac sign ^{1Here and in the following, the signs are not meant in the usual sense, but the images.} of Aries; but every year the sun moves a little further, so that over long, long periods of time it passes through the whole of Aries with its point of rising. Before the year 800 BC, it did not rise in Aries, but in Taurus, and for 2200 years it rose in Taurus, passing through the whole sign of Taurus with its vernal point. Before that, it was in the sign of Gemini. Gemini was the spring zodiac constellation in the periods that lie 800 years before our era plus approximately 2200 years. If we go back to the 4th and 5th millennium BC, we find that the vernal point was in the sign of Gemini. But that was the time when the mysteries of Zarathustra flourished. They flourished far into the distant past, and when people spoke of celestial phenomena, they referred to everything in terms of the constellation of Gemini. So that if we were to draw the zodiac, as we already characterized it yesterday, we would have to draw the constellation of Gemini at the top here. It would then have to be drawn immediately following the zodiac, bordering the realm of the thrones, which thus has Saturn as its boundary mark. Then we come to the boundary of the domain of the spiritual beings called the Lords or Spirits of Wisdom; the outermost mark is Jupiter. We then come to the boundary of the domain of the Powers, also called the Spirits of Movement: this is the domain that has the mark of Mars. We have seen that the battlefield, which the conflict in the heavens has left behind, falls in between. But now, if we want to properly divide the domains, we have to draw what has the Sun as its boundary mark. So, just as we draw Mars as the boundary up to which the domain of the powers extends, we have to draw the Sun itself as the mark that denotes the boundary up to which the forces or spirits of form extend. And now we come to the boundary that we denote by the mark of Venus. The domain of the spirits of personality or archai extends as far as Venus. Then we come to the domain that we denote with the mark of Mercury. So the domain of the spirits of personality extends as far as Venus; the domain of those beings whom we call the archangels or fire spirits extends as far as Mercury. And now we are getting very close to the earth. We can now describe the dominion that has the moon as its mark, and now we come to draw the earth here.

[ 13 ] So you have to imagine the Earth as the starting point, then around the Earth a dominion that extends to the Moon; then comes a dominion that extends to Mercury, then a dominion to Venus, then one to the Sun. Now you will be amazed at the order of the individual planets, as I have given them. If the Earth is here and the Sun here, you would think that I should draw Mercury here in solar proximity and Venus here. But that is not correct, because the two planets were confused with regard to their names by later astronomy. What is called Mercury today is called Venus in all ancient teachings, and what is called Venus today is called Mercury in all ancient teachings. So, mind you: you don't understand the old scriptures and the old teachings if you relate what is said there about Venus or Mercury to what is meant by the same names today. What is said about Venus must be related to today's Mercury, and what is said about Mercury to Venus, because these two designations were later confused with each other. When the world system was turned upside down, when the Earth was stripped of its central position, not only was the perspective changed, but Mercury and Venus were made to collide in relation to the old designations.

[ 14 ] Now you will be able to easily reconcile what is recorded here with the physical world system. You just have to imagine: here is the sun ☉, around the sun revolves Venus ♀; further around the sun revolves Mercury ☿, then the earth ♁ with the moon ☾; Mars ♂, Jupiter ♃, then Saturn ♄. You have to imagine the physical movements in such a way that each planet moves around the sun. But you can imagine such a position that the earth is standing here, so to speak, and that the other planets have turned so that they are standing behind the sun on their path. So if I want to draw that, it would be like this: we draw our usual physical system. We draw the sun in one focus, and let Venus, Mercury, Earth with its moon go around the sun: that is the Earth, Mercury, Venus according to the old designation, the next one that follows is Mars, the next one after the planetoids is Jupiter, and then comes Saturn. You now imagine that while the Earth is at the bottom, Mercury and Venus come, then Mars is at the top, Jupiter is there and so on. Now you have the Sun, Mercury, Venus here. Isn't it so, that since these planets take up all possible positions in relation to each other, they can also be in this position (see drawing S5. 101, bottom). That will be plausible. Herewith the present physical system is drawn, only one point in time is chosen, where the Earth, Mercury and Venus are on one side of the Sun, the other planets Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are on the other side. That is drawn here, nothing more. Here is Earth, Mercury, Venus, and on the other side of the Sun Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. So it is only a change of perspective. This system is quite conceivable, but only when this constellation is present. It was actually present at a time when Gemini was above Saturn. With clairvoyance, one could particularly well observe the relationships of the spiritual hierarchies. It showed that around the Earth, all the way to the Moon, is the sphere of the angels. Truly, if one does not take the physical system as a basis, but rather this peculiar constellation, then around the Earth is the circle of the angels, all the way to the Moon; then, all the way to Mercury, is the circle of the archangels; then, all the way to Venus, is the circle of the spirits of the personality; then, as far as the Sun, first the circle of the Powers or Exusiai, or Spirits of Form; then comes the circle, as I characterized it yesterday, of the Virtues or Forces, then the circle of the Dominations, and then that of the Thrones (see diagram).

[ 15 ] So when we speak of the Copernican and Ptolemaic world systems, it is important to be clear about the fact that in the Ptolemaic system something of the constellation of ruling spirits has been left behind, and there we have to take the earth as the starting point of the perspective. A future will come when this world system will be correct again because man will know about the spiritual world again. Hopefully, people will be less fanatical than they are today. Our present age says: the people before Copernicus talked nonsense, they all had a primitive world system. Since Copernicus we finally know the truth, and everything else is wrong, and until the most infinite times, even if it takes millions of years, this will of course be taught because the Copernican system is the right one. That is more or less how people think and talk today. There has hardly ever been a population as superstitious as the present-day astronomical theorists, and there has hardly ever been such great fanaticism as in this field. Future generations will hopefully be more tolerant and will say: From the 15th, 16th century onwards, people had lost the awareness that there is a spiritual world and that one has different perspectives in the spiritual world, that one must arrange the heavenly bodies differently than when one observes them merely physically. This was present before, afterwards came the time when people only looked at the arrangement of the heavenly bodies physically. That's all very well, people of the future will say, from the 16th century onwards that was quite right. For a while, people had to let go of everything that exists in the spiritual world, but then they remembered again that there is a spiritual world, and then they returned to the original spiritual perspective. - Hopefully, people in the future will understand that astronomical mythology was once possible, not only other mythologies, and will not look at our time with the same disdain that people of the present look at their ancestors in their superstition.

[ 16 ] We see, then, that the Copernican system differs from all that went before simply because only physical conceptions were taken into account. Before that, spiritual conceptions still remained as remnants in the Ptolemaic system. But only by taking this other world system into consideration can we form any idea at all of the rule and activity of spiritual beings within our solar-planetary system. We express the spiritual conditions by saying: the Angels rule up to the Moon, the Archangels rule up to Mercury, the Spirits of Personality rule up to Venus, the Powers rule up to the Sun, and the Dominations rule up to Mars. Then come the entities that we call dominions, and finally the thrones. We therefore only need to draw other lines into the physical system, and then we have the domains of the hierarchies demarcated in these lines. For the spiritual activities, it is not our sun that is at the center of the system, but the earth. Therefore, all ages in which the essential thing was placed in spiritual development have said: Certainly, the sun is a more noble heavenly body for my sake; on it entities have developed that stand higher than man; but what matters in evolution is man, who lives on earth. And when the sun has separated, it has done so so that man can develop in the right way. If the sun had remained united with the earth, man would never have been able to advance at the right pace. This was only possible because the sun went away with those beings that can tolerate quite different conditions. You might say that the sun left the earth alone so that man could then set his pace of development.

[ 17 ] A world system becomes one way or the other, depending on the starting point, the perspective. If, within our world system, we ask where the center lies in relation to what can be seen in purely physical terms, then it is a Copernican world system! If we ask about the arrangement of our solar system, which emanates from the domains of the spiritual hierarchies, then we still have to place the earth in the center, then we get other boundary lines, then the planets are something completely different, namely boundary markers for the domains of the individual spiritual hierarchies.

[ 18 ] And now you will easily be able to relate what has just been said about the spatial distribution of the individual domains to what was said earlier about the task and mission of the individual entities. Those entities that are closest to the earth, that are active in the immediate vicinity of the earth, so to speak, up to the moon, are the angels. From this sphere they direct the life of the individual from incarnation to incarnation. On the other hand, it takes more to distribute entire masses of people on earth in an appropriate way and to assign them their mission. A simple consideration shows that the cosmos must also be involved. It really does depend not only on earthly but also on cosmic conditions whether the character of any population is inclined in one way or another. Just think of the fact that one race with different, let us say, skin and hair conditions works differently than another race - cosmic conditions are involved, conditions that have to be regulated from the heavens. This happens from a realm of power that extends to Mercury, to the boundary of the archangels' sphere of influence. And then, if all of humanity, as it develops on Earth, is to be guided and directed, then this must come from even further cosmic space, from a cosmic space that extends up to Venus. But if the task of the Earth itself is to be guided and directed, then this must come from the center of the entire system.

[ 19 ] I have told you: Our humanity develops through Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan. The beings of the spiritual hierarchy who direct the mission of humanity from one planet to another, these are the authorities, the spirits of form. They must be in a select place; their domain extends right up to the sun. The sun was already there as a special body alongside the old moon; it is now there again alongside the earth and will also be alongside Jupiter. Their domain extends beyond the individual planets. Therefore, the existence of the sun must be connected with those spiritual beings whose domain also extends beyond the individual planets. In this respect, the sun is indeed an exceptional body, in that it extends to the domain that extends beyond the individual planets. So you see that we actually find the outer circle of space, the outer dwelling place of the hierarchies, not so much on the individual planets as in the circles that are bounded by the planets as by marks. If you imagine the whole circumference from the earth to the moon, it is filled with the activity of angels, and the circumference from the earth to Mercury is filled with the activity of the archangels, and so on.

[ 20 ] So we are dealing with spheres of space, and the planets are the marks, the boundary stones for these spatial effects of the higher beings. We see, then, that we have to seek, as it were, a continuous line of perfection from man upwards. Man himself is chained to the earth; that which passes from one incarnation to another as an eternal entity is guided by beings who are not only chained to the earth, but who traverse the atmosphere and that which lies above it as far as the moon, and so on upwards.

[ 21 ] Now, human beings on our Earth have been evolving since time immemorial, and the relationship between humanity and its entire evolution on Earth is just like that between a small child and an adult: the latter teaches the small child. The same is true of the hierarchies in the universe. Human beings, who are bound to the Earth, can only gradually work their way up to the knowledge they need and the skills they require on Earth. The higher beings must teach them. What must happen for this purpose? In the early days of earthly existence, beings who are not otherwise bound to Earth must descend from the higher spheres. And this truly happens! Beings who would otherwise only need to live in the vicinity of Earth must descend in order to impart to humanity what they already know as the older, more perfect members of the hierarchy. They must incarnate in human bodies—not for their own development, for they have no need of that—just as an adult does not learn the ABCs for his own development, but so that he can teach them to children. Thus we look back to the Atlantean and Lemurian eras, when beings belonging to the sphere surrounding the Earth descend, incarnate in human bodies, and become teachers of humanity. These are beings who belong to the higher hierarchies, those of Mercury and Venus; the Sons of Venus and Mercury descend and become the teachers of young humanity. So that among this young humanity there are such people who actually represent Maya in their walk upon the Earth. Such people existed. Let us say, to characterize them clearly: A normally developed human being of the Lemurian era encountered such another human being. Outwardly, he did not look much different from the others, but a spirit had, as it were, entered into him, whose realm extended as far as Mercury or Venus. Thus, the outward appearance of such a human being actually represented a Maya, an illusion. He looked just like the other people, but was something entirely different: a son of Mercury or a son of Venus. This phenomenon certainly existed in the dawn of human evolution. The sons of Mercury and Venus descended and walked among humanity in such a way that they now also possessed, inwardly, the character of the beings of Mercury and Venus. We have said that the beings of Venus are the spirits of the personality. Such beings walked the earth as human beings who, outwardly, were strictly limited human personalities, but who, in their immense power, guided humanity. These were the great power structures of the Lemurian epoch, when the Sons of Venus guided all of humanity. The Sons of Mercury guided parts of humanity; they were as powerful as those we now call national or racial spirits.

[ 22 ] Maja, or illusion, is not only present in the world in general, but also in relation to man. Man, as he stands before us, can look in such a way that his appearance is a truth, that his outer appearance corresponds exactly to his soul, or else it is a maya: in truth he has a task that corresponds to the task of a Mercury or Venus son. This is meant when it is said that basically the leading individualities of ancient times, as they walked the earth, with their ordinary name, represent a maya, and this is what H. P. Blavatsky meant when she pointed out that the Buddhas represent a maya. You can find this word yourself in The Secret Doctrine. These things are definitely from the teachings of the Sacred Mysteries; one just has to understand them.

[ 23 ] Now it behooves us to ask: how does it happen that such a Venus Son descends? How is it possible for a Bodhisattva to live on earth? The entity of a Bodhisattva, the entity of Mercury and Venus Sons, forms an important chapter in the development of our earth in relation to the cosmos itself. Therefore, tomorrow we will consider the nature of Mercury and Venus Sons, the Bodhisattvas or Dhyani Buddhas.