The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixth Lecture

[ 1 ] You can imagine that it is a very complicated matter when the spirits of the various hierarchies must work together with their powers in such a way that the mission on Earth can be fulfilled—that is to say, they must act in such a way that a state of equilibrium ultimately emerges. Therefore, you will also understand that statements such as those made yesterday can only ever be made when one focuses on a very specific point in development, and that the entire picture changes immediately when one views evolution from a different perspective. Therefore, if you wish to arrive at a comprehensive understanding of this very complex matter, you will always have to consider one lecture series in conjunction with another.

[ 2 ] I just want to highlight one point, and what I am saying right now is meant to be a kind of comment. In our earthly equilibrium, the entire interplay of the hierarchies presents itself in such a way that we must regard what we yesterday called the third hierarchy—the spirits of will, the cherubim and seraphim—as something that, in relation to this state of equilibrium, works from within the Earth. Of course, you must imagine that this hierarchy originally unfolds its forces from the cosmos toward the center of the Earth, and that the way human beings perceive these forces does not correspond to their direct direction, but to the opposite direction, which they experience as the forces are reflected back. Therefore, for example, you will only be able to form a coherent picture of the very innermost nature of the processes taking place there when you compare what was said yesterday with much of what was said about the hierarchies in my lecture series in Düsseldorf, where the heavenly aspect of the work of the three hierarchies was presented in a coherent manner. These things are simply not easy, and in order to make the Earth mission comprehensible, it is necessary to choose a perspective such that we perceive the reflections of the spirits of these hierarchies in what we call the elements of earthly existence.

[ 3 ] If you take this into account, however, you will also begin to sense the infinite wisdom that lies within the entire interplay of the forces of the universe, the forces of the cosmos. You will also, in a sense, come to feel that our understanding must go ever further, that it has no limits, since things are so complex that, just when we think we have grasped one point of view, we are immediately compelled to move on to another, which causes the matter to appear illuminated from yet another angle. We can only advance in our understanding step by step, but you will nevertheless, from the hints that were given yesterday—particularly at the end of the presentation—have become somewhat more familiar with what one might call: the interaction of the abnormal and normal spirits of form, so that within our earthly life there arises not merely a uniform, homogeneous humanity spreading across the entire Earth, but rather a humanity that can express itself in the diversity of the individual races. For that unified humanity, which humankind can only attain again in the course of Earth’s evolution, the pure activity of the normal spirits of form would have been necessary. These are the same spiritual beings who are named the Elohim in Genesis, and in fact, throughout the entire universe that surrounds the Earth and together with it forms a whole, seven such Spirits of Form can be recognized in their normal development. There are thus seven Spirits of Form or seven Elohim. If we wish to imagine these seven Elohim with their various missions and their calling to establish balance or love within the entire Earth mission, then we must be clear that these seven Spirits of Form interact throughout the entire universe in such a way that what we characterized in one of the lectures as “the human being in the second third of his life” would truly come to pass. That is where the true I-human being would emerge if all these seven spirits of form could act in the manner they have resolved upon for themselves through their own communion. But because other spiritual beings are involved and multiply this unified humanity, a very special arrangement was necessary in the cosmos. If you wish to seek today the location in the cosmos from which the normal spirits of form are active—that is, those beings who, as I characterized them yesterday, ultimately shine toward us in the light within our present cosmos—then you must seek them in the Sun. You must always seek, in the direction of the Sun, that cosmic lodge, that community in the universe, where these spirits of form hold their deliberations to establish earthly balance and fulfill the earthly mission. Only one thing was necessary to prevent the abnormal spirits of form from causing too great a disturbance with regard to humanity through their activity: it was necessary for one of the spirits of form to separate from the community, so that you actually need only seek six of these spirits of form, or Elohim, in the direction of the sun. One of these spirits had to separate himself so that the simultaneous activity of the abnormal spirits of form—which are actually spirits of movement—would not bring complete disorder into the balance. That was the one who is called Yahweh or Jehovah in the Bible, in Genesis. If you wish to seek its activity in the cosmos, you must not look in the direction where the Sun stands, but in the direction where the Moon happens to be. This is also hinted at in my *Secret Science*, though viewed from a different angle, in that it is shown that the spirits of form depart with the separation from the Sun, but that it is only through the special arrangement brought about by the separation from the Moon that the precondition for the further development of humanity is created. For if the Moon had remained united with the Earth, the evolution of humanity could not have taken place. This further evolution of humanity was only possible because one of the Elohim, Yahweh, stepped out with the Moon—while the other six spirits remained in the Sun—only because Yahweh cooperated in opposition with his six other companions.

[ 4 ] You may now ask: Why was this sun split off in the first place? This was necessary for the following reasons. Once the older spirits of the movement—who possess greater power than the spirits of form, since they rank higher in the hierarchy—had decided to remain behind, the normal spirits of form had to reduce their influence by separating one of them. Otherwise, they would not have been able to bring about the balance necessary for further development.

[ 5 ] If we wish to gain a sufficient understanding of the workings of these normal spirits of form, it is best to tell ourselves: They shine toward us in the sunlight. But if we wish to gain an understanding of the abnormal spirits of form and how they interact with the normal spirits of form, which are, as it were, centered in the Sun—for it is only so that balance may be established that Jehovah has separated himself in the direction of the Moon— then we must imagine that a certain solar force flowing toward us through the normal spirits of form is modified by the force flowing toward us from the abnormal spirits of form, which are actually spirits of motion. These find their center in the other five planets, to speak in the old planetary terminology. There you must seek the center for these others, for the abnormal spirits of form, that is, in Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and Mercury.

[ 6 ] Now, when you look out into the cosmos, you see a kind of distribution of the normal and abnormal spirits of form. The normal spirits of form are centered in the Sun in groups of six; the One—Yahweh or Jehovah—maintains the balance of the latter from the Moon by governing and guiding them. The effects of these spirits of form are influenced by the effects emanating from Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and Mercury. These forces radiate down to Earth, are held back, and radiate back up from Earth in the manner described yesterday at the end of the lecture. So if you have a section of the Earth’s surface, and a certain effect is exerted upon it from the Sun through the Elohim or normal spirits of form, then nothing other than the entirely normal ego would arise at that point on the Earth’s surface. What would arise is that which gives human beings their normal existence, on average their entire humanity. Now, the forces of the Spirits of Form—which would otherwise dance here on the surface in a state of equilibrium—are intermingled with, for example, the forces of Mercury. Consequently, what unfolds here as the power of the spirits of form is not only the normal, but also that which intermingles with the normal forces of the Elohim, with the normal forces of the spirits of form—namely, that which comes from these abnormal spirits of form centered in the midpoints of the individual planets. It follows from this that five centers of influence are possible through these abnormal spirits of form, and these five centers of influence, in their reflection from the center of the Earth back onto humanity, do indeed constitute what we recognize as the five basic races in earthly existence.

[ 7 ] If we now characterize more precisely the point we identified a few days ago in our discussions on Africa—namely, that the Negro race arises because the normal spirits of form interact with those abnormal spirits of form centered in Mercury—then, from an occult perspective, we correctly designate what emerges in the black race as the Mercury race.

[ 8 ] Now let us continue along this line that we drew back then through the centers of the individual racial emanations. This brings us to Asia, where we find the Venus race, or the Malay race. We then travel across the vast expanse of Asia and find the Mars race in the Mongolian race. We then move over to European territory and find, in the European people, in their original character, in their racial character, the Jupiter people. If we cross the sea to America, where the point, the place, is where races or cultures die out, we find the race of dark Saturn, the original Native American race, the American race. The Native American race is thus the Saturn race. In this way, as you visualize the matter more and more precisely from an occult perspective, you perceive the forces that have found their outer material manifestation in these world points, these five planets.

[ 9 ] As you form an increasingly clear and concrete picture of this, you will gain an inner understanding of these distinctive racial characteristics spread across the Earth—an understanding of this unique interplay between the normal and abnormal spirits of form. With this, we have, as it were, sketched the picture as we can capture it at a specific point in time. But what I have said applies to the various regions of the Earth, again only for a very specific stage of development. It applies to the point in time when, at a specific moment in the ancient Atlantean development, the migratory movements of peoples set out from a point in Atlantis and journey to where they can receive the corresponding racial formation at that particular location. That is why you will also find in my *Secret Science* a reference to the fact that in ancient Atlantis, at very specific mystery sites—known there as the Atlantean oracles—the direction of this distribution of humanity across the Earth was taken into hand, so that indeed that equilibrium, that state of balance, could be brought about which led to the corresponding racial distribution. In such a Mystery Oracle, the truths we are now recounting were always explored, and originally, people guided themselves entirely by them. In this way, what took place on Earth was directed from such centers in an appropriate manner.

[ 10 ] We must therefore look, as it were, within the flow of peoples that swept across Africa and crystallized into the Ethiopian race, for an impulse that could have been given by the Mercury Oracle, where one observed very precisely how the normal spirits of form—the six Elohim with Yahweh or Jehovah—interacted, and how the abnormal spirits of form, acting from the center of Mercury, influenced it. Based on the astrological interaction of these various points of force, the point of equilibrium was selected on our Earth, and thereafter this point of equilibrium was adopted as the point of radiation for the race in question.

[ 11 ] The formation of the other races was guided in a similar manner. Afterward, the great map is drawn, onto which the influences are recorded with reference to peoples, races, and so on. This is the great map that is a reflection of the heavenly forces, which arise from the fact that the forces of the heavenly realm radiate into the earth, reflect back from it, and determine human beings.

[ 12 ] How, then, can we view a member of the Mercury race, the Ethiopian race? We can view him in such a way that we say: This human being was originally destined by the Elohim, and predisposed, to express the entirety of humanity in its totality within himself. But then, from the Mercury center, the abnormal spirits of form acted with great force and varied humanity in such a way that the form of the Ethiopian race emerged. And the situation is similar with every single race. However, it is precisely because the currents of peoples were directed in a very specific way from the original center that this line, which I drew for you a few days ago, came into being. You must therefore imagine that the spirits of form radiated from a central point. We must assume this central point to have existed at a specific point in time in ancient Atlantis. There we have what descended into the Atlantean continent and shaped it in such a way that the human spirits were brought under the dominion of the corresponding abnormal spirits of form.

[ 13 ] Thus was the great foundation of humanity established, and when man looks up into the infinite expanses of the heavens, he seeks there the forces that constitute him. But they constituted him in their reflection from the Earth. By looking up to the normal spirits of form, to the Elohim, he looks up to what actually makes him human, and by looking up to what is centered in the individual planetary spirits—apart from the Sun and the Moon—he sees what makes him a member of a particular race.

[ 14 ] How, then, do these racial spirits work within and upon human beings? They work in a very peculiar way, so that one might say they first “boil” their forces right down into the physical body. Now you know that what we call the four fundamental parts of the human being are projected and reflected in the respective parts of the physical body, so that we can say: That which is the I is reflected in the blood; that which is the astral body in the nervous system; that which is the etheric or life body in the glandular system; and only the physical body is a self-being, a reflection of its own nature, which for modern human beings has its own closed laws within itself. The ego is thus reflected in the blood, the astral body in the nervous system, and the etheric body in the glandular system.

[ 15 ] At first, the spiritual beings that are at work within the human being to shape his racial character cannot immediately influence the higher parts. They first work within these reflections of the higher members in the physical body. They cannot really enter the physical body, but they are at work in the three other members: in what is the image of the ego, in the blood; in what is the image of the astral body, in the nervous system; and in what is the image of the etheric body, in the glandular system. In these three systems, which belong to the physical body but are images of the higher members, the racial spirits—the abnormal spirits of form—simmer.

[ 16 ] Here you can see that the human physical body is determined from within, determined in such a way that these various spiritual entities intervene in the limbs of the physical body, which are the projections, the shadow images of the higher limbs. Where, for example, does Mercury intervene? — I say Mercury to summarize what exists as abnormal spirits of form within Mercury. It intervenes by interacting with others, specifically within the glandular system. It boils within the glandular system, and there the forces that arise from that preponderance of Mercury forces acting in the Ethiopian race play themselves out. Everything that gives the Ethiopian race its distinctive characteristics stems from the fact that the Mercury forces boil and seethe in the glandular system of the people in question. This is because they are boiling down what transforms the general, uniform human form into the specific form of the Ethiopian race, with its black skin color, woolly hair, and so on. This modification of the general human form thus originates from these forces.

[ 17 ] If you now move on to Asia, you will find, in a similar way, something that could be described as “Venus forces”—an abnormal manifestation of the spirits of form. These Venus forces, in turn, exert their influence primarily on what we call the “image of the astral body” within the nervous system. But they act on the nervous system in a particular way, and not directly as Venus spirits. For they can act on the nervous system via two indirect routes. One route is through breathing. For by acting specifically on the breathing, these effects become established within the human being in the respiratory and nervous systems and give him a certain form. The abnormal spirits of form, whom we may call Venus beings, choose this indirect route precisely in the Malay race, in the yellow-hued races of South Asia, and extending to the islands of the Malay region. There, just as the glandular humanity is spread across the Ethiopian region, so too is this humanity spread across this area, in which the abnormal spirits of form act upon the nervous system via the detour through the respiratory system. The nervous system is affected indirectly via the respiratory system. Within the nervous system, what gives rise to the more or less yellow-hued humanity—with its specific modifications—is processed. The transformation that takes place there is, however, expressed more in that part of the nervous system we summarize with the term solar plexus—that is, not actually in the higher nervous system, but in that mysterious part of the nervous system that runs in two strands parallel to the spinal cord and spreads out in the most varied ways. Thus, in this part of the nervous system, the effect is brought about indirectly through the respiratory system, which, in our sense, does not yet belong to higher spiritual activity. Deep within the subconscious organism, these Venusian forces are at work, which operate in this racial group of humanity.

[ 18 ] Now we are moving across the vast Mongolian plains. These are the regions where the spirits of form—those that have taken the detour through the blood—primarily exert their influence. It is there, within the blood, that the very modification of humanity, the fundamental character of the race, is forged. However, there is something highly peculiar about this Mongolian race. The spirits of Mars enter the blood there. But they work in the blood in a very specific way, so that they can counteract the six Elohim who are centered in the Sun. They thus counteract these six Elohim in the Mongolian race. In doing so, they launch a very special attack on the other side, on Yahweh or Jehovah, who has separated his sphere of influence from that of the six Elohim. But besides this interaction of the Mars spirits with the six Elohim and Yahweh, which gives rise to the Mongolian race, there is something else distinctive. If we wish to describe the nature of this special influence, we must say: Just as the six Elohim from the Sun, Yahweh from the Moon, and the Mars spirits working against them influence the Mongolian race, so must we assume in another case that the forces of Yahweh converge again from the direction of the Moon and interact with the Mars spirits, thereby giving rise to a special modification. Here you have, explained from the most occult background, a special modification of humanity, namely that which belongs to Semitism. In Semitism you have a modification of the whole of humanity, such that Yahweh or Jehovah excludes himself from the other Elohim and endows this people with a special character by cooperating with the spirits of Mars to bring about the special modification of this people. Now you will also understand the special nature of the Semitic people and their mission. In a certain, deep occult sense, the writer of the Bible could say that Yahweh or Jehovah had made this people his own, and if you now add to this the fact that there is an interaction here with the spirits of Mars, and that the spirits of Mars direct their attacks primarily at the blood, then you will also understand why the ongoing effect of the blood from generation to generation is of very special importance for the Semitic-Hebrew people, and why, among the Semitic people, the God Yahweh designates himself as the God who flows down through the blood of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and so on. This is the way the blood flows through all these generations. By describing himself as “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” Yahweh says: I work within your blood. — Whatever works within the blood, whatever must be fought out within the blood, the interaction with the Mars spirits—this is one of the mysteries that leads us deep into the wise guidance of all humanity on Earth.

[ 19 ] So you see that the blood of humanity is affected in two ways, that two racial formations arise, so to speak, as a result of this influence on the blood of humanity. On the one hand, we have everything we call the Mongolian race; on the other hand, what we can describe as belonging to the Semitic race. This is a great polarity within humanity, and we will have to attribute infinitely significant meaning to this polarity if we are to understand the depths of the national souls.

[ 20 ] We must continue to examine how the spirits and beings centered in Jupiter seethe and bubble within the human being. They now choose a second point of attack to act directly on the nervous system; this point of attack passes through all the human senses; the other point of attack, which acts upon the nervous system, takes a detour through the respiratory system into the solar plexus. The attack emanating from Jupiter takes a detour through sensory impressions and flows from there to the parts of the nervous system centered in the brain and spinal cord. Thus, in the races belonging to the Jupiter humanity, the forces that particularly shape the racial character flow into these centers. This is more or less the case with the Aryan, Near Eastern, and European peoples, including those we classify as Caucasians. The modification of general humanity, which stems from the abnormal spirits of form, occurs through the abnormal spirits—which we may call Jupiter spirits—acting upon the senses. Thus, the Caucasians are determined through the senses.

[ 21 ] Now you will also understand that a people such as the Greeks—who are eminently and consciously under the influence of Jupiter or Zeus and who regard themselves as the focal point of that influence—are profoundly shaped by what flows into their nervous system through the senses. Of course, the Greeks are also influenced by the Elohim streaming in from the Sun. But the way things unfolded was such that, for the Greeks, everything that acts upon the senses was devoted to the influence of Jupiter or Zeus, and this is how this people attained its greatness. In all that the Greeks perceive as external form and external life, there is an important meaning for them. They perceive the spiritual in sensory perceptions and thereby become the foundational people of all sculpture, the foundational people of all external form-giving. We have thus already pointed to a very special mission of the Greek people, who are in an excellent way the people of Jupiter or Zeus, and who, even in the time when—particularly through the incoming constellation—the interaction of the Zeus or Jupiter forces with the general Elohim forces took place, felt themselves to be the people of Zeus.

[ 22 ] Modifications of this Jupiter influence are, in essence, all the peoples of the Near East and, in particular, Europe, and you can already surmise—since human beings have many senses—that many variations can occur and that, in the formation of the individual peoples within this basic race—which is shaped by the influence of the senses on the nervous system—one sense or another may come to dominate. As a result, the various peoples can take on the most diverse forms. Depending on whether the eye or the ear or one of the other senses holds sway, the various peoples are predisposed in this or that direction toward a particular national character within the racial character. This gives rise to very specific tasks for them. One task that falls particularly to the Caucasian race is this: it is to pave the way through the senses to the spiritual, for it is organized toward the senses.

[ 23 ] Here lies something that also leads into the deeper foundations of occultism and will show you that, for those peoples whose character is, so to speak, of a Venusian nature, the primary starting point—even in occult training—must be taken where breathing is the most important factor. In contrast, for everything that lies more to the west, the starting point must be taken from a deepening and spiritualization of what lies in the sensory world. This is found in the higher levels of knowledge—in imagination, inspiration, and intuition—precisely in the sense that the Jupiter spirit originally modifies the character, among those peoples who are situated to the west. That is why there have always been these two centers in human evolution: that center which was, so to speak, governed more by the spirits of Venus, and that center which was governed more by the spirits of Jupiter. The spirits of Jupiter were particularly observed in those mysteries in which—as those who attended my lecture series in Munich last year will know—the three individualities, the three spiritual beings of the Buddha, of Zarathustra or Zarathas in his later incarnation, and of that great leader of humanity whom we designate by the name Skythianos, have most recently come together. This is the college which, under the leadership of an even greater being, has set itself the task of investigating the mysterious forces that must be developed for the evolution of humanity, the starting point of which has been taken from that point originally connected with the Jupiter forces and predetermined in the aforementioned map of the Earth.

[ 24 ] Finally, the glandular system—though only indirectly, through all the other systems—is influenced by what we might call the abnormal spirits of form, which have their center in Saturn. There, in everything we must designate as the Saturn race, in everything to which we must attribute the Saturn character, we must seek something that, so to speak, brings together and unites that which leads humanity back to twilight, bringing its development to a certain conclusion—namely, to a true conclusion, to a dying away. We see how this influence manifests in the glandular system in the Indian race. This is the basis of their mortality, their disappearance. The Saturn influence acts through all other systems to ultimately affect the glandular system. This separates out the hardest parts of the human being, and one can therefore say that this dying consists in a kind of ossification, as is clearly revealed in the outward appearance. Just look at the images of the ancient Native Americans, and you will be able to grasp, as it were, the process described in the decline of this race. In such a race, everything that was present in the Saturn evolution has become present—in a special way; but then it withdrew into itself and left the human being alone with his hard skeletal system, causing him to wither away. One senses something of this truly occult influence when, even in the nineteenth century, one sees a representative of these ancient Native Americans speaking of how what once was great and mighty for humanity lives within him, yet could not keep pace with further development. There is a description of a beautiful scene in which a leader of the vanishing Native Americans stands face to face with a European intruder. Imagine what is felt heart to heart when two such people stand facing each other: people who came over from Europe, and people who, in the earliest times, when the races were distributed, went over to the West. There, the Indians took with them to the West everything that was great in the Atlantean culture. What was the greatest thing for the Native American? It was that he could still sense something of the ancient grandeur and glory of an age that existed in the old Atlantean era, when racial division had not yet taken hold, when people could look up at the sun and perceive the spirits of form penetrating through the sea of mist. Through a sea of mist, the Atlantean looked up to that which, for him, did not divide into a six- or sevenfold unity, but worked together. That which worked together from the seven spirits of form, the Atlantean called the Great Spirit, which revealed itself to humanity in ancient Atlantis. Consequently, he did not take in what the spirits of Venus, Mercury, Mars, and Jupiter had brought about in the East. Through this, all the cultures that flourished in Europe in the mid-nineteenth century were formed. He, the son of the brown race, did not participate in any of this. He held fast to the Great Spirit of the distant past. What the others had done—those who, in the distant past, had also taken in the Great Spirit—became clear to him when a sheet of paper with many small symbols, the letters of which he did not understand, was presented to him. All of this was foreign to him, but he still had the Great Spirit within his soul. His speech has been preserved for us; it is significant because it points to what has been hinted at, and it goes something like this: “In the soil where the conquerors of our land tread, the bones of my brothers are buried. Why are the feet of our conquerors allowed to tread upon the graves of my brothers? Because they possess that which makes the white man great. Something else makes the brown man great. He is made great by the Great Spirit, who speaks to him in the rustling of the wind, in the murmur of the forest, the surging of the water, in the trickling of the spring, in lightning and thunder. That is the Spirit who speaks truth to us. Oh, the Great Spirit speaks truth! “Your spirits, which you have here on paper, and which express what is great to you, do not speak the truth.” So said the Indian chief from his standpoint. To the Great Spirit belongs the brown man; the pale man belongs to the spirits who, in black form as small, dwarfish beings—he meant the letters—hop about on the paper; they do not speak the truth. — This is a world-historical dialogue that took place between the conquerors and the last of the great chiefs of the brown men. Here we see what belongs to Saturn through his activity and what arises on Earth from the interaction with other spirits at such a moment when two directions meet.

[ 25 ] Thus we have seen how, on the surface of our Earth, the general human race is brought into being by the Elohim or the normal spirits of form, and how, from the entire human mass, from the entire human flood, what constitutes the five main races of human development, and how these are connected to the leading spirits in the series of abnormal spirits of form, whom we must name using the names we derive from the five planets, while the normal spirits of form are to be found in the Sun and the Moon. From there we will move on to something that will be easier for us, because we will be able to build upon what is familiar—tribes and peoples.