The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Today we will develop the different notes we touched on,—the notes which we were striking yesterday. From the material at our disposal, consisting as it does in the last resort of things observed, the true aspect of which we seek to divine,—from this observed material we shall try to gain ideas, to lead us into the inner structure of the celestial phenomena. I will first point to something that will naturally follow on the more historical reflections of yesterday.

We realise that in the last resort both the Ptolemaic system and that used by modern Astronomy are attempts to synthesise in one way or another, what is observed. The Ptolemaic system and the Copernican are attempts to put together in certain mathematical or kindred figures what has in fact been perceived. (I say “perceived”, for in the light of yesterday's lecture it would not be enough to say “seen”.) All our geometry in this case, all of our measuring and mathematizing, must take its start from things perceived, observed. The only question is, are we conceiving the observed facts truly? We must really take it to heart—we must take knowledge of the fact—that in the scientific life and practice of our time what is observed, what is perceivable, is taken far to easily, too cursorily for a true conception to be gained.

Here for example is a question we cannot escape; it springs directly from the observable facts—(In the shortness of time these lectures have to be in bare outline and I have not been able to discuss or even to bring forward all the details. I could do little more than indicate directions.) Now among other things I have tried to show that the movements of heavenly bodies in celestial space must in some way be co-ordinated with what is formed in the living human body, and in the animal too in the last resort, we should by now perceive from the whole way the facts have been presented. And I assure you, the more deeply you go into the facts, the more of the connection you will see. Nevertheless, I have not done nor claimed to do any more than indicate the pathway (let me say again), the pathway along which you will be led to the result: The human living body, also the animal and plant body, are so formed that if we recognise the characteristic lines of form (as for example we did in tracing the Lemniscate in various directions though the human body) we find in them a certain likeness to the line-systems which we are able to draw amid the movements of the celestial bodies. Granted it is so, the question still remains however: What is it due to? How does it come about? What prospect is there for us not merely to ascertain it but to find it cogent and transparent, inherent in the very nature of things?

To get nearer to this question we must once more compare the kind of outlook which under-lay the Ptolemaic system and the kind that underlies the Copernican world-system of today.

What are we doing when we set to working the spirit of the latter system, and by dint of thinking, calculating and geometrising, figure out a world-system? What do we do in the first place? We observe. Out in celestial space we observe bodies which, from the simple appearance of them, we regard as identical. I express myself with caution, as you see. We have no right to say more than this . From the appearance of them to our eye, we regard these bodies (in their successive appearance) as identical. A few simple experiments will soon oblige you to be thus cautious in relating what you see in the outer world. I draw your attention to this little experiment; of no value in itself, it has significance in teaching us to be careful in the way we form our human thoughts.

Suppose it trained a horse to trot very regularly,—which, incidentally, a horse will do in any case. Say now I photograph the animal in twelve successive positions. I get twelve pictures of the horse. I put them in a circle, at a certain distance from myself, the onlooker. Over it all I put a drum with an aperture, and make the drum rotate so that I first see one picture of the horse, then, when the drum has totalled, a second picture, and so on. I get the appearance of a running horse, I should imagine a little horse to be running round in a circle. Yet the fact is not so. No horse is running round; I have only been looking in a certain way at twelve distinct pictures of a horse, each of which stays where it is.

You can therefore evoke an appearance of movement not only by perspective but in purely qualitative ways. It does not follow that what appears to be a movement is really a movement. He then who wants to speak with care, who wants to reach the truth by scrupulous investigation, must begin by saying, whimsical as this may seem to our learned contemporaries: I look at three successive positions of what I call a heavenly body, and assume what underlies them to be identical. So for example I follow the Moon in its path, with the underlying hypothesis that it is always the same Moon. (That may be right without question, with such a “Standard” phenomenon, keeping so very regular a time-table!) What do we do then? We see what we take to be the identical heavenly body, in movement as we call it; we draw lines to unite what we thus see at different places, and we then try to interpret the lines. This is what gives the Copernican system. The school from which the Ptolemaic system derived did not proceed in this way, not originally. At that time the whole human being still lived in his perceiving, as I said yesterday. And inasmuch as man was thus alive and aware, perceiving with all his human being, the idea he then had of a heavenly body was essentially different from what it afterwards became.

A man who still lived thus perceivingly amid the Ptolemaic system did not say. There is the Moon up yonder. No, he did not; the people of today only attribute that idea to him, nor does it do the system justice. If he had simply said, "Up yonder is the Moon", he would have been relating the phenomenon to his whole human being, and in so doing the following was his idea:—Here am I standing on the Earth. Now, even as I am on the Earth, so too am I in the Moon,—for the Moon is here (Figure 1, lightly shaded area).

This (the small central circle in the Figure) is the Earth, whilst the whole of that is the Moon,—far greater than the Earth. The diameter (or semi-diameter) of the Moon is as great as what we now call the distance of the Moon (I must not say, of the Moon's centre) from the centre of the Earth. So large is the Moon, in the original meaning of the Ptolemaic system. Elsewhere invisible, this cosmic body at one end of it develops a certain process by virtue of which a tiny fragment of it (small outer circle in the Figure) becomes visible. They rest is invisible, and moreover of such substance that one can live in it and me permeated by it. Only at this one end of it does it grow visible. Moreover, in relation to the Earth the entire sphere is turning, (Incidentally it is not a perfect sphere, but a spheroid or ellipsoid-of-rotation. The whole of it is turning and with it turns the tiny reagent that is visible, i.e. the visible Moon. The visible Moon is only part of the full reality of it.

The idea thus illustrated really lived in olden time. The form at least, the picture it presents, will not seem so entirely remote if you think of an analogy,—that of the human or animal germ-cell in its development (Fig. 2).

You know what happens at a certain stage. While the rest of the germinal vesicle is well-nigh transparent, at one place it develops the germinative area, so called, and from this area the further development of the embryo proceeds. Eccentrically therefore, near the periphery, a centre forms, from which the rest proceeds. Compare the tiny body of the embryo with this idea of the Moon which underlay the Ptolemaic system and you will have a notion of how they conceived it for it was analogous to this.

In the Ptolemaic conception of the Universe, we may truly say, quite another reality was ‘Moon’—mot only what is contained in the Moon's picture, the illuminated orb we see. This, then, is what happened to man after the time when the Ptolemaic system was felt as a reality. The inner experience, the bodily organic feelings of being immersed in the Moon was lost. Today man has the mere picture before him, the illuminated orb out yonder. Man of the Fifth post-Atlantean Epoch cannot say, for he no longer knows it: “I am in the Moon,—the Moon pervades me”. In his experience the Moon is only the little illuminated disc or sphere which he beholds.

It was from inner perceptions such as these that the Ptolemaic system of the Universe was made: These perceptions we can henceforth regain if we begin by looking at it all in the proper light: we can re-conquer the faculty whereby the whole Moon is experienced. We must admit however, it is understandable that those who take their start from the current idea of ‘the Moon’ find it hard to see any such inner relation between this “Moon” and life inside them. Nay, it is surely better for them to reject the statement that there are influences from the Moon affecting man than to indulge in so many fantastic and unfounded notions.

All this is changed if in a genuine way we come again to the idea that we are always living in the Moon, so that what truly deserves the name of 'Moon' is in reality a realm of force, a complex of forces that pervades us all the time. Then it will no longer be a cause of blank astonishment that this complex of forces should help form both man and beast. That forces working in and permeating us should have to do with the forming and configuration of our body, is intelligible. Such then are the ideas we must regain. We have to realise that what is visible in the heavens is nor more than a fragmentary manifestation of cosmic space, which in reality is ever filled with substance. Develop this idea: you live immersed in substance—substances manifold, inter-related. Then you will get a feeling of how very real a thing it is. The accepted astronomical outlook of our time has replaced this 'real' by something merely thought-out, namely by 'gravitation' as we call it. We only think there is a mutual force of attraction between what we imagine to be the body of the moon and the body of the Earth respectively. This gravitational line of force from the one to the other—we may imagine it as it turns to get a pretty fair picture of what was called the 'sphere' in ancient astronomical conceptions—the Lunar sphere or that of any planet. This, then, has happened: What was once felt to be substantial and can henceforth be experienced in this way once more, has in the meantime been supplanted by mere lines, constructed and thought-out.

We must then think of the whole configuration of cosmic space—manifoldly filled and differentiated in itself—in quite another way than we are wont to do. Today we go by the idea of universal gravitation. We say for instance that the tides are somehow due to gravitational forces from the Moon. We speak of gravitational force proceeding from a heavenly body, lifting the water of the sea. The other way of thought would make us say: The Moon pervades the Earth, including the Earth's hydrosphere. In the Moon's sphere, something is going on which at one place it manifests in a phenomenon of light. We need not think of any extra force of attraction. All we need think is that this Moon-sphere, permeating the Earth, is one with it, one organism all together , an organic whole. In the two kinds of phenomenon we see two aspects of a single process.

In yesterday's more historical lecture my object was to lead you up to certain notions,—essential concepts. I could equally well have tried to present them without recourse to the ideas of olden time, but to do so we should have had to take our start from premises of Spiritual Science. This would have led us to the very same essential concepts.

Imagine now (Fig. 3): Here is the Earth-sphere,—the solid sphere of Earth. And now the Lunar sphere: I must imagine this, of course, of very different consistency and kind of substance. And now I can go further. The space that is permeated by these two spheres,—I can imagine it permeated by a third sphere and a fourth. Thus in one way or another I imagine it to be permeated by a third sphere. It might for instance be the Sun-sphere,—qualitatively different form the Moon-sphere.

I then say I, am permeated—I, man, am permeated by the sun—and by the Moon-sphere. Moreover naturally there is a constant interplay between them. Permeating each other as they do, they are in mutual relation. Some element of form and figure in the human body is then an outcome of the mutual relation. Now you will recognise how rational it is to see the two things together: On the one hand, these different cosmic substantialities permeating the living body; and on the other hand the organic forms in which you can well imagine that they find expression. Form and formation of the body is then the outcome of this permeation. And what we see in the heavens—the movement of heavenly bodies—is like the visible sign. Certain conditions prevailing, the boundaries of the several spheres become visible to us in phenomena of movement.

What I have now put before you is essential for the regaining of more real conceptions of the inner structure of our cosmic system. Now you can make something of the idea that the human organisation is related to the structure of the cosmic system. You never gain a clear notion of it if you conceive the heavenly bodies as being far away yonder in space. You do gain a clear notion, the moment you see it as it really is. Though, I admit, it gets a little uncanny to feel yourself permeated by so many spheres,—just a little confusing!

And there is worse to come, for the mathematician at least. In effect, we are also permeated by the Earth-sphere itself, in a wider sense. For to the Earth belongs not only the solid ball on which we stand but all the volume of water; also the air,—this is a sphere in which we know ourselves to be immersed. Only the air is still very coarse, compared to the effects of heavenly phenomena. Think then of this: Here we are in the Earth-sphere, in the Sun sphere, in the Moon-sphere, and in others too. But let us single out the three, and we shall say to ourselves: Something in us is the outcome of the substantialities of these three spheres. Here then is qualitatively, what in its quantitative form is the mathematician's bugbear—the “problem of three bodies”, as it is called! It is working in us. In us is the outcome of it, in all reality. We must face the truth: to read the hieroglyphic of reality is not so simple. That we are wont to take it simply and think it so convenient of access, springs after all from our fond comfort,—human indolence of thought. How many things, held to be "scientific", have their origin in this! Let go the springs of comfortableness, and you must set to work with all the care which we have tried to use in these lectures. If now and then, they do not seem careful enough, it is again because they are given in barest outline; so we have often had to jump from one point to another and you yourselves must look for the connecting links. The links are surely there.

Now you must set to work with equal care to tackle the same problem from another aspect to which I have referred before, namely the body of man compared to the creatures of the remaining Nature-kingdoms. We can imagine, I said, a line that forks out on either hand from an ideal starting-point. Along the one branch we put the plant-world, along the other the animal. If we imagine the evolution of the plant-world carried further in a real Kingdom of Nature, we find it tending towards the mineral. How real a process it is, we may recall by the most obvious example. In the mineral coal, we recognised a mineralised plant-substance. What should detain us from turning attention to the analogous processes which have undoubtedly taken hold of other realms of vegetable matter? Can we not also derive the siliceous and other mineral substances of the Earth in the same way, recognising in them the mineralisation of an erstwhile plant-life?

Not in the same way (I went on to say) can we proceed if we are seeking the relation of the animal to the human kingdom. Here on the contrary we must imagine it somewhat as follows. Evolution moves onward through the animal kingdom; then however it bends back, returns upon itself, and finds physical realisation upon a higher than animal level. We may perhaps put it this way: Animal and human evolution begin from a common starting—point, but the animal goes farther before reaching outward physical reality. Man on the other hand keeps at an earlier stage, man makes himself physically real at an earlier stage. It is precisely by virtue of this that he remains capable of further evolution after birth, incomparably more so then the animal. (For, once again, the processes of which we speak relate to embryo-development.) That man retains the power to evolve, is due to his not carrying the animal-forming process to extremes. Whilst in the mineral, the plant-forming process has overreached itself; in man on the contrary the animal-forming process has stopped short of the extreme. It has withheld, kept back, and taken shape at an earlier stage amid external Nature.

We have then this ideal point from which it branches (Fig. 6). There is the shorter branch and the longer. The longer is of undetermined length; the other, we may say, no less so, but negatively speaking. So then we have the mineral and plant kingdoms, and animal and human.

Now we must seek to gain a more precise idea: What is it that really happens, in this formation of man as compared to the animal? The process of development, once more, is kept back in man. It does not go so far; that which is tending to realisation is, as it were, made real before its time. Now think how it must be imagined according to what I have told you in these lectures. Study the share of the Solar entity in the forming of the animal body,—via the embryo-development, of course. You then know that the direct sunshine (so to describe it) has to do with the configuration of the animal head, whilst the indirect aspect of the sunlight, as it were the Sun's shadow by relation to the Earth, has in some way to do with the opposite pole of the creature. Strictly envisage this permeation of animal form and development with cosmic Sun-substantiality. Look at the forms as they are. Then you will gain a certain idea, which I shall try to indicate as follows.

Assume to begin with,—assume that in some way the forming of the animal is really brought about by relation to the Sun. And now, apart from the constellation that will be effective in each case as between Sun and animal, let us ask, quite in the sense of the Sun's light in the cosmos, not so immediately connected with the Sun itself? There is indeed. For every time the Full Moon, or the Moon at all, shines down upon us, the light is sunlight. The cosmic opportunity is being made then, so to speak, for the Sun's light to ray down upon us. It is so of course also when the human being comes into life—in the germinal and embyonal period. In earlier stages of Earth-evolution the influence was most direct; today it is a kind of echo, inherited from then. Here then again we have an influence, in the other it is indirect, through the raying back of the Sun's light by the Moon.

Now think the following. I will again draw it diagrammatically. Suppose the development of the animal were such that it comes into being under the Sun's influence according to this diagram (Fig. 4).

This then, to put it simply, would be the ordinary influence of day and night—head and the opposite pole of the creature. This, for the animal, would be the ordinary working of the Sun. Now take that other working of the Sun's light which occurs when the Moon is in opposition, i.e. when it is Full Moon,—when the Sun's light, so to speak works from the opposite side and by reflection counteracts itself. If we conceive this downward arrow (Fig. 5).

to represent the direction of the direct Sun-rays, animal formations, we must imagine animal-formation going ever farther in the sense of this direct Sun-ray. The animal would become animal, the more the Sun was working on it. If on the other hand the Moon is counteracting from the opposite direction—or if the Sun itself is doing so via the Moon,—something is taken away again from the animal-becoming process. It is withdrawn, drawn back into itself (Fig. 5a).

Precisely this withdrawal corresponds to the shortening of the second branch in Figure 6. We have found a true cosmic counterpart of the characteristic difference between man and animal of which we spoke before.

What I have just been telling you can be perceived directly by anyone who gains the faculty for such perception. Man really owes it to the counteracting of the Sunlight via the Moon.—owes it to this that his organisation is withheld from becoming animal. The influence of the Sun-light is weakened in its very own quality (for it is Sun-light in either case), in that the Sun places its own counterpart over against itself, namely the Moon and the Moon's influence. Were it not for the Sun meeting and countering itself in the Moonlight—influences, the tendency that is in us would give us animal form and figure. But the Sun's influence reflected by the Moon counteracts, it. The forming process is held in check, the negative of it is working; the human form and figure is the outcome.

Now, on the other branch of the diagram, let us follow up the plant and the plant-formative process. That the Sun is working in the plant, is palpably evident. Let us imagine the Sun's effect in the plant, not to be able to unfold during a certain time. During the Winter, in fact, the springing and sprouting life in the plant cannot unfold. Nay, you can even see the difference in the unfolding of the plant by day and night. Now think of this effect in oft-repeated rhythm, repeated endless times,—what have we then? We have the influence of the Sun and the influence of the Earth itself; the latter when the Sun cannot work directly but is hidden by the Earth. At one time the Sun is working, at another it is not the Sun but the Earth, for the Sun is working from below and the Earth is in the way. We have the rhythmic alternation: Sun-influence predominant, Earth-influence predominant in turn. Plant-nature therefore is alternately exposed to the Sun, and then withdrawn, figuratively speaking, into the Earth—drawn by the earthly, as it were, into itself. This is quite different from what we had before. For in this case the Sun-quality, working in the plant, is potently enhanced. The solar quality is actually enhanced by the earthly, and this enhancement finds expression in that the plant gradually falls into mineralization.

Such then is the divergence of two ways, as indicated once again in Figure 6. In the plant we have to recognize the Sun's effect, carried still further by the Earth, to the point of mineralization. In the animal we have to recognize the Sun's effect, which then in man is drawn back again, withdrawn into itself, by virtue of the Moon's effect. I might also draw the figure rather differently, like this (Fig. 6a),

—here receding to become human, here on the other hand advancing to become mineral, which of course ought to be shown in some other form. It is no more than a symbolic figure, but this symbolic figure, tends to express more clearly than the first, made of mere lines, the bifurcation—as again I like to call it—with the mineral and plant kingdoms upon the one hand, the human and animal upon the other.

We never do justice to the true system of Nature with all her creatures and kingdoms if we imagine them in a straight line. We have to take our start from this other picture. In the last resort, all systems of Nature which begin with the mineral kingdom and thence going on to the plant, thence to the animal and thence to man as if in a straight line, will fail to satisfy. In this quaternary of Nature we are face to face with a more complex inner relationship than a mere rectilinear stream of evolution, or the like, could possibly imply. If one the other hand we take our start from this, the true conception, then we are led, not to a generatic aequivoca or primal generation of life, but to the ideal centre somewhere between animal and plant—a centre not to be found within the physical at all, yet without doubt connected with the problem of three bodies, Earth, Sun and Moon. Though perhaps mathematically you cannot quite lay hold on it, yet you may well conceive a kind of ideal centre-of-gravity of the three bodies—Sun, Moon and Earth. Though this will not precisely solve you the 'problem of three bodies', yet it is solved, namely in Man. When man assimilates in his own nature what is mineral and animal and plant, there is created in him in all reality a kind of ideal point-of-intersection of the three influences. It is inscribed in man, and that is where it is beyond all doubt. Moreover inasmuch as it is so, we must accept the fact that what is thus in man will be empirically at many places at once, for it is there in every human being,—every individual one. Yes, it is there in all men, scattered as they are over the Earth; all of them must be in some relation to Sun and Moon and Earth. If we somehow succeeded in finding an ideal point-of-intersection of the effects of Sun and Moon and Earth, if we could ascertain the movement of this point for every individual human being, it would lead us far indeed towards an understanding of what we may, perhaps, describe as movement, speaking of Sun and Moon and Earth.

As I said just now, the problem grows only the more involved, for we have so many points,—as many as there are men on Earth,—for all of which points we have to seek the movement. Yet it might be, might it not, that for the different human beings the movements only seemed to differ, one from another ...

We will pursue our conversations on these lines tomorrow.

The view of history forming the basis of these lectures may be called symptomatological What takes place in the depths of human evolution sends out waves, and these waves are the symptoms that we will try to describe and interpret. In any serious study of history, this must be the case. The processes and events occurring at any given time in the depths of evolution are so manifold and so significant that we can never do more than hint at what is going on the depths. This we do by describing the waves that are flung up. They are symptoms of what is actually taking place.

I mention this because, in order to characterize the birth of the scientific form of thinking and research I described two men, Meister Eckhart and Nicholas Cusanus, in my last lecture. What can be historically observed in the soul and appearance of such men I consider to be symptoms of what goes on in the depths of general human development; this is why I give such descriptions. There are in any given case only a couple of images cast up to the surface that we can intercept by looking into one or another soul. Yet, by doing this, we can describe the basic nature of successive time periods.

When I described Cusanus yesterday, my intention was to suggest how all that happened in the early fifteenth century in mankind's spiritual development, which was pressing forward to the scientific method of perception, is symptomatically revealed in his soul. Neither the knowledge that the mind can gather through the study of theology nor the precise perceptions of mathematics can lead any longer to a grasp of the spiritual world. The wealth of human knowledge, its concepts and ideas, come to a halt before that realm. The fact that one can do no more than write a “docta ignorantia” in the face of the spiritual world comes to expression in Cusanus in a remarkable way. He could go no further with the form of knowledge that, up to his time, was prevalent in human development.

As I pointed out, this soul mood was already present in Meister Eckhart. He was well versed in medieval theological knowledge. With it, he attempted to look into this own soul and to find therein the way to the divine spiritual foundations. Meister Eckhart arrived at a soul mood that I illustrated with one his sentences. He said—and he made many similar statements—“I sink myself into the naught of the divine, and out of nothing become an I in eternity.” He felt himself arriving at nothingness with traditional knowledge. Out of this nothingness, after the ancient wisdom's loss of all persuasive power he had to produce out of his own soul the assurance of his own I, and he did it by this statement.

Looking into this matter more closely, we see how a man like Meister Eckhart points to an older knowledge that has come down to him through the course of evolution. It is knowledge that still gave man something of which he could say: This lives in me, it is something divine in me, it is something. But now, in Meister Eckhart's own time, the most profound thinkers had been reduced to the admission: When I seek this something here or there, all knowledge of this something does not suffice to bring me certainty of my own being. I must proceed from the Something to the Nothing and then, in an act of creation, kindle to life the consciousness of self out of naught.

Now, I want to place another man over against these two. This other man lived 2,000 years earlier and for his time he was as characteristic as Cusanus (who followed in Meister Eckhart's footsteps) was for the fifteenth century. This backward glance into ancient times is necessary so that we can better understand the quest for knowledge that surfaced in the Fifteenth Century from the depths of the human soul. The man whom I want to speak about today is not mentioned in any history book or historical document, for these do not go back as far as the Eighth Century B.C. Yet, we can only gain information concerning the origin of science if, through spiritual science, through purely spiritual observation, we go farther back than external historical documents can take us. The man I have in mind lived about 2,000 years prior to the present period (the starting point of which I have assigned to the first half of the fifteenth century.) This man of pre-Christian times was accepted into a so-called mystery school of Southeastern Europe. There he heard everything that the teachers of the mysteries could communicate to their pupils concerning spiritual wisdom, truths concerning the spiritual beings that lived and still live in the cosmos. But the wisdom that this man received from his teachers was already more or less traditional. It was a recollection of far older visions, a recapitulation of what wise men of a much more ancient age had beheld when they directed their clairvoyant sight into the cosmic spaces whence the motions and constellations of the stars had spoken to them. To the sages of old, the universe was not the machine, the mechanical contraption that it is for men of today when they look out into space to the wise men of ancient times. The cosmic spaces were like living beings, permeating everything with spirit and speaking to them in cosmic language. They experienced themselves within the spirit of world being. They felt how this, in which they lived and moved, spoke to them, how they could direct their questions concerning the riddles of the universe to the universe itself and how, out of the widths of space, the cosmic phenomena replied to them. This is how they experienced what we, in a weak and abstract way, call “spirit” in our language. Spirit was experienced as the element that is everywhere and can be perceived from anywhere. Men perceived things that even the Greeks no longer beheld with the eye of the soul, things that had faded into a nothingness for the Greeks.

This nothingness of the Greeks, which had been filled with living content for the earliest wise men of the Post-Atlantean age,¹⁹ was named by means of words customary for that time. Translated into our language, though weakened and abstract, those words would signify “spirit.” What later became the unknown, the hidden god, was called spirit in those ages when he was known. This is the first thing to know about those ancient times.

The second thing to know is that when a man looked with his soul and spirit vision into himself, he beheld his soul. He experienced it as originating from the spirit that later on became the unknown god. The experience of the ancient sage was such that he designated the human soul with a term that would translate in our language into “spirit messenger” or simply “messenger.”

If we put into a diagram what was actually seen in those earliest times, we can say: The spirit was considered the world-embracing element, apart from which there was nothing and by which everything was permeated. This spirit, which was directly perceptible in its archetypal form, was sought and found in the human soul, inasmuch as the latter recognized itself as the messenger of this spirit. Thus the soul was referred to as the “messenger.”

If we put into a diagram what was actually seen in those earliest times, we can say: The spirit was considered the world-embracing element, apart from which there was nothing and by which everything was permeated. This spirit, which was directly perceptible in its archetypal form, was sought and found in the human soul, inasmuch as the latter recognized itself as the messenger of this spirit. Thus the soul was referred to as the “messenger.”

A third aspect was external nature with all that today is called the world of physical matter, of bodies. I said above that apart from spirit there was nothing, because spirit was perceived by direct vision everywhere in its archetypal form. It was seen in the soul, which realized the spirit's message in its own life. But the spirit was likewise recognized in what we call nature today, the world of corporeal things. Even his bodily world was looked upon as an image of the spirit.

In those ancient times, people did not have the conceptions that we have today of the physical world. Wherever they looked, at whatever thing or form of nature, they beheld an image of the spirit, because they were still capable of seeing the spirit, a fragment of nature. Inasmuch as all other phenomena of nature were images of the spirit, the body of man too was an image of the spirit. So when this ancient man looked at himself, he recognized himself as a threefold being. In the first place, the spirit lived in him as in one of its many mansions. Man knew himself as spirit. Secondly, man experienced himself within the world as a messenger of this spirit, hence as a soul being. Thirdly, man experienced his corporeality; and by means of this body he felt himself to be an image of the spirit.²⁰ Hence, when man looked upon his own being, he perceived himself as a threefold entity of spirit, soul, and body: as spirit in his archetypal form; as soul, the messenger of god; as body, the image of the spirit.

This ancient wisdom contained no contradiction between body and soul or between nature and spirit; because one knew: Spirit is in man in its archetypal form; the soul is none other than the message transmitted by spirit; the body is the image of spirit. Likewise, no contract was felt between man and surrounding nature because one bore an image of spirit in one's own body, and the same was true of every body in external nature. Hence, an inner kinship was experienced between one's own body and those in outer nature, and nature was not felt to be different from oneself. Man felt himself at one with the whole world. He could feel this because he could behold the archetype of spirit and because the cosmic expanses spoke to him. In consequence of the universe speaking to man, science simply could not exist. Just as we today cannot build a science of external nature out of what lives in our memory, ancient man could not develop one because, whether he looked into himself or outward at nature, he beheld the same image of spirit. No contrast existed between man himself and nature, and there was none between soul and body. The correspondence of soul and body was such that, in a manner of speaking, the body was only the vessel, the artistic reproduction, of the spiritual archetype, while the soul was the mediating messenger between the two. Everything as in a state of intimate union. There could be no question of comprehending anything. We grasp and comprehend what is outside our own life. Anything that we carry within ourselves is directly experienced and need not be first comprehended.

Prior to Roman and Greek times, this wisdom born of direct perception still lived in the mysteries. The man I referred to above heard about his wisdom, but he realized that the teachers in his mystery school were speaking to him only out of a tradition preserved from earlier ages. He no longer heard anything original, anything gained by listening to the secrets of the cosmos. This man undertook long journeys and visited other mystery centers, but it was the same wherever he went. Already in the Eight Century B.C., only traditions of the ancient wisdom were preserved everywhere. The pupils learned them from the teachers, but the teachers could no longer see them, at least not in the vividness of ancient times.

But this man whom I have in mind had an unappeasable urge for certainty and knowledge. From the communications passed on to him, he gathered that once upon a time men had indeed been able to hear the harmony of the spheres from which resounded the Logos that was identical with the spiritual archetype of all things. Now, however, it was all tradition. Just as 2,000 years later Meister Eckhart, working out the traditions of his age, withdrew into his quiet monastic cell in search of the inner power source of soul and self, and at length came to say, “I sink myself into the nothingness of God, and experience in eternity, in naught, the ‘I’,”—just so, the lonely disciple of the late mysteries said to himself: “I listen to the silent universe and fetch²¹ the Logos-bearing soul out of the silence. I love the Logos because the Logos brings tidings of an unknown god.”

This was an ancient parallel to the admission of Meister Eckhart. Just as the latter immersed himself into the naught of the divine that Medieval theology had proclaimed to him and, out of this void, brought out the “I,” so that ancient sage listened to a dumb and silent world; for he could no longer hear what traditional wisdom taught him. The spirit-saturated soul had one drawn the ancient wisdom from the universe. This had not turned silent, but still he had a Logos-bearing soul. And he loved the Logos even though it was no longer the godhead of former ages, but only an image of the divine. In other words, already then, the spirit had vanished from the soul's sight. Just as Meister Eckhart later had to seek the “I” in nothingness, so at that time the soul had to be sought in the dispirited world.

Indeed, in former times the souls had the inner firmness needed to say to themselves: In the inward perception of the spirit indwelling me, I myself am something divine. But now, for direct perception, the spirit no longer inhabited the soul. No longer did the soul experience itself as the spirit's messenger, for one must know something in order to be its messenger. Now, the soul only felt itself as the bearer of the Logos, the spirit image; though this spirit image was vivid in the soul. It expressed itself in the love for this god who thus still lived in his image in the soul. But the soul no longer felt like the messenger, only the carrier, of an image of the divine spirit. One can say that a different form of knowledge arose when man looked into his inner being. The soul declined from messenger to bearer.

Soul: Bearer

Body: Force

Since the living spirit had been lost to human perception, the body no longer appeared as the image of spirit. To recognize it as such an image, one would have had to perceive the archetype. Therefore, for this later age, the body changed into something that I would like to call “force.” The concept of force emerged. The body was pictured as a complex of forces, no longer as a reproduction, an image, that bore within itself the essence of what it reproduced. The human body became a force which no longer bore the substance of the source from which it originated.

Not only the human body, but in all of nature, too, forces had to be pictured everywhere. Whereas formerly, nature in all its aspects had been an image of spirit, now it had become forces flowing out of the spirit. This, however, implied that nature began to be something more or less foreign to man. One could say that the soul had lost something since it no longer contained direct spirit awareness. Speaking crudely, I would have to say that the soul had inwardly become more tenuous, while the body, the external corporeal world, had gained in robustness. Earlier, as an image, it still possessed some resemblance to the spirit. Now it became permeated by the element of force. The complex of forces is more robust than the image in which the spiritual element is still recognizable. Hence, again speaking crudely, the corporeal world became denser while the soul became more tenuous. This is what arose in the consciousness of the men among whom lived the ancient wise man mentioned above, who listened to the silent universe and from its silence, derived the awareness that at least his soul was a Logos-bearer.

Now, a contrast that had not existed before arose between the soul, grown more tenuous, and the increased density of the corporeal world. Earlier, the unity of spirit had been perceived in all things. Now, there arose the contrast between body and soul, man and nature. Now appeared a chasm between body and soul that had not been present at all prior to the time of this old sage. Man now felt himself divided as well from nature, something that also had not been the case in the ancient times. This contrast is the central trait of all thinking in the span of time between the old sage I have mentioned and Nicholas Cusanus.

Men now struggle to comprehend the connection between, on one hand, the soul, that lacks spirit reality, and on the other hand, the body that has become dense, has turned into force, into a complex of forces.

And men struggle to feel and experience the relationship between man and nature. But everywhere, nature is force. In that time, no conception at all existed as yet of what we call today “the laws of nature.” People did not think in terms of natural laws; everywhere and in everything they felt the forces of nature. When a man looked into his own being, he did not experience a soul that—as was the case later one—bore within itself a dim will, an almost equally dim feeling, and an abstract thinking. Instead, he experienced the soul as the bearer of the living Logos, something that was not abstract and dead, but a divine living image of God.

We must be able to picture this contrast, which remained acute until the eleventh or Twelfth century. It was quite different from the contrasts that we feel today. If we cannot vividly grasp this contrast, which was experienced by everyone in that earlier epoch, we make the same mistake as all those historians of philosophy who regard the old Greek thinker Democritus²² of the fifth century B.C. as an atomist in the modern sense, because he spoke of “atoms.” The words suggest a resemblance, but no real resemblance exists. There is great difference between modern-day atomists and Democritus. His utterances were based on the awareness of the contrast described above between man and nature, soul and body. His atoms were complexes of force and as such were contrasted with space, something a modern atomist cannot do in that manner. How could the modern atomist say what Democritus said: “Existence is not more than nothingness, fullness is not more than emptiness?” It implies that Democritus assumed empty space to possess an affinity with atom-filled space. This has meaning only within a consciousness that as yet has no idea of the modern concept of body. Therefore, it cannot speak of the atoms of a body, but only of centers of force, which, in that case, have an inner relationship to what surrounds man externally. Today's atomist cannot equate emptiness with fullness. If Democritus had viewed emptiness the way we do today, he could not have equated it with the state of being. He could do so because in this emptiness he sought the soul that was the bearer of the Logos. And though he conceived his Logos in a form of necessity, it was the Greek form of necessity, not our modern physical necessity. If we are to comprehend what goes on today, we must be able to look in the right way into the nuances of ideas and feelings of former times.

There came the time, described in the last lecture, of Meister Eckhart and Nicholas Cusanus, when even awareness of the Logos indwelling the soul was lost. The ancient sage, in listening to the universe, only had to mourn the silence, but Meister Eckhart and Cusanus found the naught and had to seek the I out of nothingness. Only now, at this point, does the modern era of thinking begin. The soul now no longer contains the living Logos. Instead, when it looks into itself, it finds ideas and concepts, which finally lead to abstractions. The soul has become even more tenuous. A third phase begins. Once upon a time, in the first phase, the soul experienced the spirit's archetype within itself. It saw itself as the messenger of spirit. In the second phase, the soul inwardly experienced the living image of God in the Logos, it became the bearer of the Logos.

Now, in the third phase, the soul becomes, as it were, a vessel for ideas and concepts. These may have the certainty of mathematics, but they are only ideas and concepts. The soul experiences itself at its most tenuous, if I may put it so. Again the corporeal world increases in robustness. This is the third way in which man experiences himself. He cannot as yet give up his soul element completely, but he experiences it as the vessel for the realm of ideas. He experiences his body, on the other hand, not only as a force but as a spatial body.

Soul: Realm of Ideas

Body: Spatial Corporeality

The body has become still more robust. Man now denies the spirit altogether. Here we come to the “body” that Hobbes, Bacon,²³ and Locke spoke of. Here, we meet “body” at its densest. The soul no longer feels a kinship to it, only an abstract connection that gets worse in the course of time.

In place of the earlier concrete contrast of soul and body, man and nature, another contrast arises that leads further and further into abstraction. The soul that formerly appeared to itself as something concrete—because it experienced in itself the Logos-image of the divine—gradually transforms itself to a mere vessel of ideas. Whereas before, in the ancient spiritual age, it had felt akin to everything, it now sees itself as subject and regards everything else as object, feeling no further kinship with anything.

The earlier contrast of soul and body, man and nature, increasingly became the merely theoretical epistemological contrast between the subject that is within a person and the object without. Nature changed into the object of knowledge. It is not surprising that out of its own needs knowledge henceforth strove for the “purely objective.”

But what is this purely objective? It is no longer what nature was to the Greeks. The objective is external corporeality in which no spirit is any longer perceived. It is nature devoid of spirit, to be comprehended from without by the subject.

Precisely because man had lost the connection with nature, he now sought a science of nature from outside. Here, we have once again reached the point where I concluded yesterday. Cusanus looked upon what should have been the divine world to him and declared that man with his knowledge must stop short before it and, if he must write about the divine world, he must write a docta ignorantia. And only faintly, in symbols taken from mathematics, did Cusanus want to retain something of what appeared thus to him as the spiritual realms.

About a hundred years after the Docta Ignorantia appeared in 1440, the De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium appeared in 1543. one century later, Copernicus, with his mathematical mind, took hold of the other side, the external side of what Cusanus could not fully grasp, not even symbolically, with mathematics. Today, we see how in fact the application of this mathematical mind to nature becomes possible the moment that nature vanishes from man's immediate experience. This can be traced even in the history of language since “Nature” refers to something that is related to “being born,” whereas what we consider as nature today is only the corporeal world in which everything is dead. I mean that it is dead for us since, of course, nature contains life and spirit. But it has become lifeless for us and the most certain of conceptual systems, namely, the mathematical, is regarded as the best way to grasp it.

Thus we have before us a development that proceeds with inward regularity. In the first epoch, man beheld god and world, but god in the world and the world in god: the one-ness, unity. In the second epoch, man in fact beheld soul and body, man and nature; the soul as bearer of the living Logos, the bearer of what is not born and does not die; nature as what is born and dies. In the third phase man has ascended to the abstract contrast of subject (himself) and object ( the external world.) The object is something so robust that man no longer even attempts to throw light on it with concepts. It is experienced as something alien to man, something that is examined from outside with mathematics although mathematics cannot penetrate into the inner essence. For this reason, Cusanus applied mathematics only symbolically, and timidly at that.

The striving to develop science must therefore be pictured as emerging from earlier faculties of mankind. A time had to come when this science would appear. It had to develop the way it did. We can follow this if we focus clearly on the three phases of development that I have just described.

We see how the first phase extends to the Eighth Century B.C. to the ancient sage of Southern Europe whom I have described today. The second extends from him to Nicholas Cusanus. We find ourselves in the third phase now. The first is pneumatological, directed to the spirit in its primeval form. The second is mystical, taking the world in the broadest sense possible. The third is mathematical. Considering the significant characteristics, therefore, we trace the first phase—ancient pneumatology—as far as the ancient Southern wise man. Magical mysticism extends from there to Meister Eckhart and Nicholas Cusanus. The age of mathematizing natural science proceeds from Cusanus into our own time and continues further. More on this tomorrow.

• 19. Post-Atlantean Age: cf. Rudolf Steiner, An Outline Of Occult Science (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1984).
• 20. A literal translation of the transcript would read: “As body; and as body, as an image of the spirit.”
• 21. I listen to the silent universe: cf. Rudolf Steiner, Truth-Wrought Words. (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1979).
• 22. Democritus: c. 460–360 B.C. From his numerous writings about philosophy, mathematics, physics, medicine, psychology, and technology, only some fragments and an index remain. The remark mentioned is a report from Aristotle, Metaphysics 1:4: “That is why they (Leucippus and Democritus) say that the non-existent exists just as much as the existent, just as emptiness is just as good as fullness, and they posit these as material causes.”
• 23. Francis Bacon: (also Francis Bacon of Verulam), London 1561–1626 Highgate. Lawyer, doctor, politician, diplomat, essayist, philosopher and humanist. The leading English government liberal, successful during 1603–1621. In these years his main work was developed. The philosophy of his age he found stuck in hopeless experiments to solve insolvable problems with Aristotelian logic. The only source of sure knowledge and abilities for him was natural science. He saw a renewal of the spiritual and economic life in this science. Principal works: Novum Organum (an inductive logic contradicting that of Aristotle (the old Organum); De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum; a Critical Encyclopedia of all Science; Sylva Sylvarum: Preliminary Announcement of Procedure and Method (this remained in preparation). His literary success was astonishing, and it greatly furthered the materialistic world view. cf. Riddles of Philosophy.

Before education can be helpful, teachers and educators must gain the right perspective, one that allows them to fully understand the source and the formation of a child’s organism. For the sake of clarity in this area I would like to begin with a comparison.

Let’s take reading—the ordinary reading of adults. If we wanted to describe what we gain from our usual reading of a book, we would not say, “the letter B is shaped like this, the letter C like that” and so on. If I read Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, it wouldn’t occur to me to describe the individual letters as a result of my reading, since the real substance assimilated is not on the paper at all, it’s not even contained within the covers of the book. Nevertheless, if I want to comprehend in any way the content of Wilhelm Meister, I would have had to have learned how to read the letters and their relationships—I must be able to recognize the forms of the letters.

The Ability to Read the Human Being

A teacher’s relationship with children is similar; it must constitute a reading of the human being. What a teacher gets from a strictly physical understanding of the physiology and anatomy of the organs and their functions amounts to no more than learning the letters. As teachers and educators, it is not enough to understand that the lungs or heart have this or that appearance and function in the physical realm; that kind of an understanding of the human being is similar an to illiterate person who can only describe the forms of letters but not the book’s meaning.

Now in the course of modern civilization, humankind has gradually lost the habit of reading nature and, most of all, human nature. Our natural science is not reading but mere spelling. As long as we fail to recognize this specifically, we can never develop a true art of education that arises from real knowledge of the human being. This requires knowledge that truly reads, not one that only spells. People are obviously unhappy at first when they hear such a statement, and it is left at that. They argue: Isn’t the human race supposed to be making continual progress? How can it be, then, that during our time of momentous progress in the natural sciences (which philosophical anthroposophists are the first to acknowledge) we are moving backward in terms of penetrating the world more deeply?

We must answer: Until the fourteenth or fifteenth century, human beings were unable to “spell out” nature. They saw natural phenomena and received instinctive, intuitive impressions, primarily from other human beings. They did not get as far as describing separate organs, but their culture was spiritual and sensible, and they had an instinctive impression of the human being as a totality. This kind of impression only arises when one is not completely free in one’s inner being, since it is an involuntary impression and not subject to inner control.

Thus, beginning with the fourteenth or fifteenth century, a time had to come in the historical evolution of humanity—an epoch of world history that is about to end—when human beings would forgot their earlier, instinctive knowledge, and become more concerned with learning the “alphabet” of human nature. Consequently, in the last third of the nineteenth century and, in effect, until the present period of the twentieth century, as human beings we were faced with a larger culture whose worldview is void of spirit. This is similar to the way we would face a spiritual void if we could not read, but only perceived the forms of the letters. In this age, human nature in general has been strengthened, just because the involuntary life and being of the spirit within it were absent, especially among the educated.

We must have the capacity to observe world history in depth, since otherwise we would be incapable of forming a correct assessment of our position as human beings in the sequence of eras. In many ways, modern people will be averse to this, because we are endowed, as I have already indicated, with a certain cultural pride, especially when we think we have learned something. We place an intrinsically higher value on a “letter” reading of nature than we do on what existed in earlier periods of earthly evolution. Of course, anatomists today think they know more about the heart and liver than those of earlier times. Nevertheless, people then had a picture of the heart and liver, and their perception included a spiritual element.

We must be able to empathize with the way the modern anatomist views the heart, for example. It is seen as something like a first-rate machine—a more highly developed pump that drives the blood through the body. If we say that an anatomist is looking at a corpse, the response would be denial, which from that viewpoint is appropriate, since an anatomist wouldn’t see the point of such a distinction. Ancient anatomists, however, saw a kind of spiritual entity in the heart, working in a spiritual and psychic sense. The sensory content of perception was permeated and simultaneous with a spiritual aspect. Such perception of the spiritual could not be fully clear and conscious, but was involuntary. If humankind had been forced to continue to experience a simultaneous revelation of spirit in sense perception, complete moral freedom could not have been attained. Nevertheless, at some point it had to enter historical evolution.

When we go back over the whole course of history since the fourteenth century, we find a universal struggle toward freedom, which was ultimately exprEssentialEd in the revolutionary movements of the eighteenth century (particularly in the widespread fermentation in the more developed regions, beginning with the Bohemian-Magyar brotherhoods in Central Europe, where a definite pedagogic impulse was trying to make itself felt) and onward to Wycliffe, Huss, and the so-called Reformation. This struggle of humanity for the inner experience of freedom still continues.

None of this could have happened while the old perceptual mode persisted. Human beings had to be liberated for a while from the spirit working involuntarily within them so that they could freely assume that spirit itself. An unbiased observation of the activity of spiritual culture leads one to say: It is of primary importance that educators develop full awareness of the process of human evolution on Earth. Whereas there used to be an unconscious bond between teacher and student—which was true of ancient times—they must now develop a conscious bond. This is not possible if culture arises from mere spelling, which is the way of all science and human cognition today. Such a conscious relationship can arise only if we learn to progress consciously from spelling to reading. In other words, in the same way we grasp the letters in a book but get something very different from what the letters say (indeed, the letters themselves are innocent in terms of the meaning of Wilhelm Meister), so we must also get from human nature something that modern natural science cannot express by itself; it is acquired only when we understand the statements of natural science as though they were letters of an alphabet, and thus we learn to read the human being.

This explains why it is not correct to say that anthroposophic knowledge disregards natural science. This is not true. Anthroposophic knowledge gives a great deal of credit to natural science, but like someone who respects a book through the desire to read it, rather than one who merely wants to photograph the forms of the letters. When we try to truly describe the culture of our time, many interesting things can be said of it. If I give someone a copy of Wilhelm Meister, there is a difference between someone wanting to quickly get a camera to photograph every page, not bothering at all about the content of the book, and someone else who longs to know what the book is about. If I can be content with only natural science to help me understand the human being, I am like the first person—all I really want is photographs of the external forms, since the available concepts allow no more than a mere photograph of the forms.

We are forced to use radical expressions to describe the relationship that people today have with one another and with the world. This relationship is completely misunderstood. The belief is that human beings really have something higher today than was available before the fourteenth century; but this is not true. We must develop to the degree that we learn to manipulate consciously, freely, and deliberately what we have, just as in earlier times we gained our concepts of human nature through instinctive intuition. This development in modern culture should pass through teacher training education like a magic breath and become a habit of the soul in the teachers, since only it can place the teachers at the center of that horizon of worldview, which they should perceive and survey.

Thus, today it is not as necessary that people take up a scientific study of memory, will, and intelligence. It is more important that pedagogical and didactic training be directed toward evoking the attitude I described within the teachers’ souls. The primary focus of a teacher’s training should be the very heart of human nature itself. When this is the situation, every experience of a teacher’s development will be more than lifeless pedagogical rules; they will not need to ponder the application of one rule or another to a child standing in front of them, which would be fundamentally wrong.

An intense impression of the child as a whole being must arise within the whole human nature of the teacher, and what is perceived in the child must awaken joy and vitality. This same joyful and enlivening spirit in the teacher must be able to grow and develop until it becomes direct inspiration in answer to the question: What must I do with this child? We must progress from reading human nature in general to reading an individual human being. Everywhere education must learn to manipulate (pardon this rather materialistic expression) what is needed by the human being. When we read, what we have learned about the relationships between the letters is applied. A similar relationship must exist between teacher and pupils. Teachers will not place too much nor too little value on the material development of the bodily nature; they will adopt the appropriate attitude toward bodily nature and then learn to apply what physiology and experimental psychology have to say about children. Most of all, they will be able to rise from a perception of details to a complete understanding of the growing human being.

The Implications of the Change of Teeth

A deeper perception reveals that, at the elementary school age, children are fundamentally different after their change of teeth. Let’s look into the nature of the human being before the change of teeth. The teeth are the outer expression of something developing within the human organism as a whole (as I described yesterday). There is a “shooting up” into form—the human soul is working on the second bodily nature, like a sculptor working at shaping the material. An inner, unconscious shaping process is in fact happening. The only way this can be influenced externally is to allow children to imitate what we do. Anything I do—any movement I make with my own hand—passes into the children’s soul building processes when they perceive it, and my hand movement causes an unconscious shaping activity that “shoots up” into the form.

This process depends completely on the element of movement in the child. Children make movements, their will impulses change from chaotic irregularity into inner order, and they work on themselves sculpturally from without. This plastic activity largely moves toward the inner being. When we meet children at the elementary age, we should realize that in the development of their spirit, soul, and body, the process that initially lived only in the movements passes into a very different region. Until the change of teeth, blood formation in the child depends on the system in the head. Think of a human being during the embryonic period, how the head formation dominates, while the rest of the organic structuring depends on external processes; regardless of what takes place in the mother’s body, everything that proceeds from the baby itself begins with the formation of the head. This is still true, though less so, during the first period of life until the change of teeth. The head formation plays an essential role in all that happens within the human organism. The forces coming from the head, nerves, and sensory system all work into the motor system and the shaping activity. After the child passes through the change of teeth, the activities of the head move to the background. What works in the limbs now depends less on the head and more on the substances and forces passing into the human organism through nourishment from outside.

I would like you to consider this carefully. Suppose that, before the change of teeth, we eat some cabbage, for example. The cabbage contains certain forces intrinsic to cabbages, which play an important part in the way it grows in the field. Now, in the child those forces are driven out of the cabbage as quickly as possible by the process of digestion being carried on by forces that flow down from the child’s head. Those forces flow from the head of the child and immediately plunge into the forces contained in the vegetable. After the change of teeth, the vegetable retains its own forces for a much longer time on its way through the human organism; the first transformation does not occur in the digestive system at all, but only where the digestive system enters the circulatory system. The transformation takes place later, and consequently, a completely different inner life is evoked within the organism. During the first years before the change of teeth, everything really depends on the head formation and its forces; the important thing for the second life stage from the change of teeth until puberty is the breathing process and meeting between its rhythm and the blood circulation. The transformation of these forces at the boundary between the breathing process and the circulatory system is particularly important. The essential thing, therefore, during the elementary school age, is that there should always be a certain harmony—a harmony that must be furthered by the education—between the rhythm developed in the breathing system and the rhythm it encounters in the interior of the organism. This rhythm within the circulatory system springs from the nourishment taken in. This balance—the harmonization of the blood system and the breathing system—is brought about in the stage between the change of teeth and puberty.

In an adult, the pulse averages four times as many beats as breaths per minute. This normal relationship in the human organism between the breathing and the blood rhythms is established during the time between the change of teeth and puberty. All education at that time must be arranged so that the relationship between the breathing and blood rhythms may be established in a way appropriate to the majesty and development of the human organism.

This relationship between pulse and breath always differs somewhat among people. It depends in each individual on the person’s size, or whether one is thin or fat; it is influenced by the inner growth forces and by the shaping forces that still emanate from hereditary conditions during the early years of childhood. Everything depends on each human being having a relationship between the breathing and the blood rhythms suited to one’s size and proportions. When I see a child who is inclined to grow up thin, I recognize the presence of a breathing system that, in a certain sense, affects the blood system more feebly than in some fat little child before me. In the thin child, I must strengthen and quicken the imprint of the breathing rhythm to establish the proper relationship. All these things, however, must work naturally and unconsciously in the teacher, just as perception of individual letters is unconscious once we know how to read. We must acquire a feeling of what should be done with a fat child or with a thin child, and so on. It is, for example, extremely important to know whether a child’s head is large or small in proportion to the rest of the body. All this follows naturally, however, when we stand in the class with an inner joy toward education as a true educational individual, and when we can read the individual children committed to our care.

It is essential, therefore, that we take hold, as it were, of the continual shaping process—a kind of further development of what takes place until the change of teeth—and meet it with something that proceeds from the breathing rhythm. This can be done with various music and speech activities. The way we teach the child to speak and the way we introduce a child to the music—whether listening, singing, or playing music—all serve, in terms of teaching, to form the breathing rhythm. Thus, when it meets the rhythm of the pulse, it can increasingly harmonize with it.

It is wonderful when the teacher can observe the changing facial expressions of a child while learning to speak and sing—regardless of the delicacy and subtlety of those changes, which may not be so obvious. We should learn to observe, in children between the change of teeth and puberty, their efforts at learning to speak and sing, their gaze, physiognomy, finger movements, stance and gait; with reverence, we should observe, growing from the very center of very small children, unformed facial features that assume a beautiful form; we should observe how our actions around small children are translated into their developing expressions and body gestures. When we can see all this with inner reverence, as teachers we attain something that continually springs from uncharted depths, an answer in feeling to a feeling question.

The question that arises—which need not come into the conscious intellect—is this: What happens to all that I do while teaching a child to speak or sing? The child’s answer is: “I receive it,” or, “I reject it.” In body gestures, physiognomy, and facial expressions we see whether what we do enters and affects the child, or if it disappears into thin air, passing through the child as though nothing were assimilated. Much more important than knowing all the rules of teaching—that this or that must be done in a certain way—is acquiring this sensitivity toward the child’s reflexes, and an ability to observe the child’s reactions to what we do. It is, therefore, an essential intuitive quality that must develop in the teacher’s relationship with the children. Teachers must also learn to read the effects of their own activity. Once this is fully appreciated, people will recognize the tremendous importance of introducing music in the right way into education during the elementary years and truly understand what music is for the human being.

Understanding the Fourfold Human Being

Anthroposophy describes the human physical body, a coarse, material principle, and the more delicate body, which is still material but without gravity—in fact, its tendency is to fly against gravity into cosmic space. The human being has a heavy physical body, which can fall to the ground when not held upright. We also have a finer etheric body, which tends to escape gravity into cosmic space. Just as the physical body falls if it is unsupported, so the etheric body must be controlled by inner forces of the human organism to prevent it from flying away. Therefore, we speak of the physical body, the etheric body, and then the astral body, which is no longer material but spiritual; and we speak of the I-being, which alone is completely spirit. If we want to gain a real knowledge of these four members of the human being—a true understanding of the human being—we might say: The methods of modern anatomy and physiology allow for an understanding of the physical organism, but not the etheric human being and certainly not the astral human being.

How can we understand the etheric body? This requires a much better preparation than is usual for understanding the human being today. We understand the etheric body when we enter the shaping process, when we know how a curve or angle grows from inner forces. We cannot understand the etheric body in terms of ordinary natural laws, but through our experience of the hand—the spirit permeated hand. Thus, there should be no teacher training without activities in the areas of modeling or sculpture, an activity that arises from the inner human being. When this element is absent, it is much more harmful to education than not knowing the capital city of Romania or Turkey, or the name of some mountain; those things can always be researched in a dictionary. It is not at all necessary to know the masses of matter required for exams; what is the harm in referring to a dictionary? However, no dictionary can give us the flexibility, the capable knowledge, and knowing capacity necessary to understand the etheric body, because the etheric body does not arise according to natural laws; it permeates the human being in the activity of shaping.

And we shall never understand the astral body simply by knowing Gay-Lussac’s law or the laws of acoustics and optics. The astral body is not accessible to such abstract, empirical laws; what lives and weaves within it cannot be perceived by such methods. If we have an inner understanding, however, of the intervals of the third or the fifth, for example—an inner musical experience of the scale that depends on inner musical perception and not on acoustics—then we experience what lives in the astral human being.

The astral body is not natural history, natural science, or physics; it is music. This is true to the extent that, in the forming activity within the human organism, it is possible to trace how the astral body has a musical formative effect in the human being. This formative activity flows from the center between the shoulder blades, first into the tonic of the scale; as it flows on into the second, it builds the upper arm, and into the third, the lower arm. When we come to the third we arrive at the difference between major and minor; we find two bones in the lower arm—not just one—the radius and ulna, which represent minor and major. One who studies the outer human organization, insofar as it depends on the astral body, must approach physiology not as a physicist, but as a musician. We must recognize the inner, formative music within the human organism.

No matter how you trace the course of the nerves in the human organism, you will never understand what it means. But when you follow the course of the nerves musically—understanding the musical relationships (everything is audible here, though not physically)—and when you perceive with spiritual musical perception how these nerves run from the limbs toward the spine and then turn upward and continue toward the brain, you experience the most wonderful musical instrument, which is the human being, built by the astral body and played by the I-being.

As we ascend from there, we learn how the human being forms speech through understanding the inner configuration of speech—something that is no longer learned in our advanced civilization; it has discarded everything intuitive. Through the structure of speech, we recognize the I-being itself if we understand what happens when a person speaks the sound “ah” or “ee”—how in “ah” there is wonder, in “ee” there is a consolidation of the inner being; and if we learn how the speech element shoots, as it were, into the inner structure; and if we learn to perceive a word inwardly, not just saying, for example, that a rolling ball is “rolling,” but understand what moves inwardly like a rolling ball when one says “r o l l i n g.” We learn through inner perception—a perception really informed by the spirit of speech—to recognize what is active in speech.

These days, information about the human organism must come from physiologists and anatomists, and information about what lives in language comes from philologists. There is no relationship, however, between what they can say to each other. It is necessary to look for an inner spiritual connection; we must recognize that a genius of speech lives and works in language, a genius of speech that can be investigated. When we study the genius of speech, we recognize the human I-being.

We have now made eurythmy part of our Waldorf education. What are we doing with eurythmy? We divide it into tone eurythmy and speech eurythmy. In tone eurythmy, we evoke in the child movements that correspond to the form of the astral body; in speech eurythmy we evoke movements that correspond to the child’s I-being. We thus work consciously to develop the soul by bringing physical elements into play in tone eurythmy; and we work consciously to develop the spirit aspect by activating the corresponding physical elements in speech eurythmy.

Such activity, however, only arises from a complete understanding of the human organization. Those who think they can get close to the human being through external physiology and experimental psychology (which is really only another kind of physiology) would not recognize the difference between beating on a wooden tray and making music in trying to evoke a certain mood in someone. Similarly, knowledge must not remain stuck in abstract, logical rules, but rise to view human life as more than grasping lifeless nature—the living that has died—or thinking of the living in a lifeless way. When we rise from abstract principles to formative qualities and understand how every natural law molds itself sculpturally, we come to understand the human etheric body. When we begin to “hear” (in an inner, spiritual sense) the cosmic rhythm expressing itself in that most wonderful musical instrument that the astral body makes of the human being, we come to understand the astral nature of the human being.

What we must become aware of may be exprEssentialEd this way: First, we come to know the physical body in an abstract, logical sense. Then we turn to the sculptural formative activity with intuitive cognition and begin to understand the etheric body. Third, as a physiologist, one becomes a musician and views the human being the way one would look at a musical instrument—an organ or violin—where one sees music realized. Thus, we understand the astral human being. And when we come to know the genius of speech as it works creatively in words—not merely connecting it with words through the external memory—we gain knowledge of the human I-being.

These days, we would become a laughing stock if in the name of university reform—medical studies, for example—we said that such knowledge must arise from the study of sculpture, music, and speech. People would say: Sure, but how long would such training take? It certainly lasts long enough without these things. Nevertheless, the training would in fact be shorter, since its length today is due primarily to the fact that people don’t move beyond abstract, logical, empirical sense perception. It’s true that they begin by studying the physical body, but this cannot be understood by those methods. There is no end to it. One can study all kinds of things throughout life—there’s no end to it—whereas study has its own inner limits when it is organically built up as a study of the organism in body, soul and spirit.

The point is not to map out a new chapter with the help of anthroposophy, adding to what we already have. Indeed, we can be satisfied with what ordinary science offers; we are not opposed to that. We are grateful to science in the sense that we are grateful to the violin maker for providing a violin. What we need in our culture is to get hold of all of this modern culture and permeate it with soul and permeate it with spirit, just as human beings themselves are permeated with soul and spirit. The artistic must not be allowed to exist in civilization as a pleasant luxury next to serious life, a luxury we consider an indulgence, even though we may have a spiritual approach to life in other ways. The artistic element must be made to permeate the world and the human being as a divine spiritual harmony of law.

We must understand how, in facing the world, we first approach it with logical concepts and ideas. The being of the universe, however, gives human nature something that emanates from the cosmic formative activity working down from the spheres, just as earthly gravity works up from the central point of the Earth. And cosmic music, working from the periphery, is also a part of this. Just as the shaping activity works from above, and physical activity works from below through gravity, so cosmic music works in the movements of the starry constellations at the periphery.

The principle that really gives humanity to the human being was divined in ancient times when words were spoken—words such as “In the primal beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and a God was the Word.” That Cosmic Word, Cosmic Speech, is the principle that also permeates the human being, and that being becomes the I-being. In order to educate, we must acquire knowledge of the human being from knowledge of the cosmos, and learn to shape it artistically.

Dear friends,

Today I would like to insert into our studies a chapter of anthroposophy that we need for our examination of healthy responsibility and pathological irresponsibility as the physician and the priest must know them.

First of all it is important that we look into the question: What is really inherited by a human being? What is not inherited and must come to the human being in some other way? In evaluating healthy and sick individuals, a great deal depends upon whether one can differentiate between these two ingredients. Human beings come out of the spiritual, super-sensible worlds into the sense world: that means, they combine what is given them by heredity with what they bring from earlier earth lives and from life between death and the new birth. Then we see how they develop as a children, from day to day, from week to week. But if one does not perceive that they are four-membered beings, with physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego organization, one is not in a position to understand their development, for one does not see what part each member is playing in this development. They have different origins; they come from different worlds.

First, human beings have their physical organism. The most striking phenomenon in the physical organism is that in the first period of life they have what we call “first teeth,” which last until the time we call “change of teeth.” The teeth are only the most obvious thing that is changed at this time. For the fact is that human beings only keep the physical substance they received at birth until the change of teeth. They are constantly stripping that physical material from their form.

The process is, of course, more complicated than is implied in the brief statement that in the course of every seven or eight years a person pushes off all physical substance and replaces it. The truth is near to that, but one need only look at the change of teeth itself to realize that this picture must be modified somewhat. For if this abstract assertion were correct, we would have new teeth every seven years. We get new teeth only once. The teeth are changed once and do not undergo any other renewal. They belong in this category in the most extreme sense. As a matter of fact, the course of human life is such that the older one becomes, the more one retains of old physical substance. A replacement of by far the greatest part of the substance does indeed take place in seven- to eight-year periods; but we must distinguish what remains behind. At the seventh year it is only the adult teeth that remain. After each subsequent period there remain also certain parts of the substance that are not replaced, although the greater part is indeed replaced in the course of seven or eight years. Thus a basic statement can be made for the first seven years. Human beings strip away all the physical substance they had when they were born, keeping none of it, keeping only the forces that have lived and worked in it during those years. These forces have so appropriated the fresh new substance that was constantly being aquired that at seven the physical body has been completely renewed, even to the teeth. And from that statement the understanding must follow that the principle of heredity as our current natural science conceives of it really holds good only for the first seven years of life. Only for those first seven years is it true that a person's characteristics come from parents and grandparents. The physical body of those first seven years provides, in a certain sense, a kind of model from which the artist working in the human being (who consists now in these years of etheric body, astral body, and ego) fashions a new physical body. We see how what we bring down from spiritual worlds—our individuality, our own being—and what we receive from heredity work together in artistic reciprocal activity. If a human being is an inwardly strong individual and brings an intensely strong inner astrality and ego nature, which in turn makes the etheric body strong, then we will see a young person shooting up who from inner strength keeps very little to the model, only copies it for the general form. Naturally, the universal human model must be preserved, and therefore an affinity is already there for the inherited human form; features of it definitely remain beyond the change of teeth. Still, to thoughtful observation it will be apparent that in the case of inwardly strong individuals important changes come after the change of teeth because such individuals follow only slightly the model they inherited.

If we investigate such an individual as St. Teresa, we find that these particularly strong individualities resemble their parents very closely in the first seven years, but then in the ninth and tenth years they develop in surprising ways. Then the real individual is emerging. In the strongest sense of the word, heredity only holds good for the first life period. What seems to appear later as heredity is not really heredity but must be recognized as a copy of the inherited model. The copy may be more or less exact; even so, it is not heredity; it is a copy of the inherited characteristics. The ordinary natural scientist considers this to be simply the principle of heredity carried further. But someone who really studies the nature of humanity will perceive that there is a complete qualitative difference between the resemblance to parents before the change of teeth and the resemblance after the change of teeth. Before, the forces of heredity are active. After, the forces that copy the model are active. To be exact, one can no more say that a human being has inherited what is carried between change of teeth and puberty than one can say of an artist copying the Sistine Madonna in the Dresden Gallery that the painting has caught the qualities of the Madonna through heredity!

You can see the particular kind of work the etheric body has to do. For in the years up to the change of teeth, the astral body and ego organization participate very little. The etheric body forms a new physical human body in accordance with the model. Why? Because, like the child during the first seven years, it is not yet able to receive other than a very special kind of impression from the outer world. Here we come upon an important secret of human evolution, a secret that answers the question: What does a child really perceive? The answer lies far away from present-day ideas.

We live, shall we say, between death and a new birth (or conception) in the spiritual world. In the spiritual world we are surrounded by realities very different from those found here in the physical world. We come out of that world into the physical world and continue our life in a physical body that we receive. Now in this physical world the same forces work further, although they are hidden from human sense perception. If you look at a tree, the same spiritual forces are working in it as those you encounter between death and new birth, only they are covered over, veiled, by the physical material of the tree. Everywhere in the physical world in which we live between birth and death, spiritual forces are active behind the sense-perceptible physical entities. We can think of the activities of the spiritual world continuing into this world in which we live between birth and death.

Now in the first seven years of life the child's whole being cannot unite with anything except this spiritual reality in all the colors, all the forms, all warmth, all cold. The child is fully aware when entering this physical world of the continuing spiritual activity. This awareness gradually diminishes up to the change of teeth. A sense impression is quite different to a child than to an adult. This fact is never recognized. To a child the sense impression is something entirely spiritual. For this reason if a child's father has a fit of anger, the child is not conscious of the angry gestures but of the moral state behind the gestures. It is this that passes into the child's body. During this time, therefore, the child is working with the forces that build a physical body in accordance with the child's own model—the body that will now be the child's own—and during this time is turned entirely toward spiritual foundations and works out of spiritual forces.

What does that mean? What is really working when spiritual forces are working? Obviously colors, forms, warmth, cold, roughness, smoothness work upon the sense perceptions. But behind all that, what is the fundamental force that is working? In reality, whatever has to do with an ego nature. Only invisible spiritual beings make an impression on the child, beings who have something to do with an ego nature, above all, beings of the spiritual hierarchies higher than human beings, but also the animal group-souls, and the group-souls of the elemental beings. In reality, all this is working upon the child. And out of these spiritual forces, out of these mighty spiritual dynamics the child forms a second body from the original model. It grows and is finally present as a complete second body when the change of teeth takes place. This is the body that the human being has built for itself since birth, the first body that is it's very own, a physical body built out of the spiritual world.

Thus we have in this first life period very special laws working within all that activates the child, in all the awkwardness and uncertainty that are in the soul and with which it moves. They come from the fact that constant adjustment is having to be made to the physical world, since the child is still dreamily and half-consciously immersed in the other surrounding world: the spiritual world. Someday when medicine reaches a proper spiritual outlook, this interplay between the spiritual and physical worlds during the first seven years of life will be seen as the true cause of the so-called “children's diseases.” Then we will have the explanation for a problem that today is solved in the medical books by empty words and formal elucidations that do not lead to any reality.

The etheric body has a great deal to do in these first seven years of life. It works quietly and steadily to develop the faculties that it will possess in the second seven-year period: independent faculties of memory leading toward the intellect. Whoever has an eye for it can see the greatest transformation in the child's soul-life when the first life period goes over into the second. The etheric body is now relieved of the work it had to accomplish—in the full sense of the word—to build the second body. It is relieved, freed. How it is freed, one can only realize if one perceives that at fourteen years not only the teeth remain but still more that had to be renewed, like the teeth, in the first life period. This now remains in the physical-material substance. What remains frees the etheric body—itself becomes free in the etheric body. Quantitatively it is a small thing, but qualitatively it is something of tremendous importance. It is what now becomes tremendously active as soul attributes, soul characteristics. What the human being saves by not having to create a third set of teeth (and much else that is taken care of by evolution in the same way as the teeth) enables something of the etheric body to be “left over.” What flowed during the first seven years into the physical development and is now “left over” from the physical development works now purely in the realm of soul, its nature depending upon the individual. With the faculties upon which you call as a teacher in school, the faculties you train, the child accomplished the great change from milk teeth to second teeth, and much else. With the forces that are saved by not having to form a third set of teeth, the child begins to develop soul faculties. This takes place in the depths of human nature. During the first seven years these soul forces had been entirely embedded in the physical development. We have to comprehend physical development as a soul-spiritual activity just as much as a physical activity. We see a spiritual entity active in the body in the first seven years of the human being, in the fullest sense of the word.

How does this relate to general human evolution? Those forces with which the human soul works in the first seven years of life are in the cosmos; they are sun forces. It is not only physical-etheric rays that stream down from the sun: in those physical-etheric sun rays, forces are streaming down from the sun that are identical with the forces by which our etheric body renews our physical body in the first seven years of life. It is the Sun Being (Sonnenentität) that works there. Look at the child—how the child works at a second physical body, copying from the model! The child is absorbing pure forces from the sunshine. One must understand that—how humanity stands within the cosmos! And when the child has certain etheric forces released at the change of teeth, they then work back upon the astral organization and ego organization. Then in the second life period human beings have access to what could not reach them at all in the first period. They now have access to the moon forces.

The etheric forces in the first seven years of life are sun forces. At the change of teeth we have access to the moon forces; these are identical with the forces of our astral body. Thus at the change of teeth human beings move from the sun sphere—in which, however, we also still remain, for it remains active in us—into the moon sphere. And now between change of teeth and puberty we work on ourselves with the moon forces. With the moon forces we now build our second own body (the third earthly body), in which not so much is replaced as in the first life period, but even so a great deal. Again forces remain behind, but they are now of an astral nature, and they are now transforming the soul. They were freed from their work on the body when we reached puberty. We have now reached a period in which we manifest certain forces that are now free in the soul, forces that had to work in the physical body between the ages of seven and fourteen.

So we work entirely in the first life period with what comes to us from the sun. And with the school child between change of teeth and puberty, it is sun forces that have now become free for soul activity. That is the great powerful fact we find in human evolution, that if one is educating a child's soul between change of teeth and puberty, one has to do purely with sun forces. The child-soul is so intimately related to what lives in the sunshine! One's heart can rejoice in such knowledge. The knowledge really sheds light on the relation between humanity and cosmos.

Moon forces are active in this second life period in the bodily development; they are not yet freed for the soul-life. They become free at puberty, and then they join the work on the soul. The change that takes place in the soul-life at puberty is caused by the fact that moon forces are now impressing themselves into the soul-life. So what a young person does in all kinds of behavior after the onset of puberty is a working together of sun and moon forces.

Thus we see into the depths of human evolution. We will stay clear of speaking of heredity in the crude sense in which natural science speaks of it. We will look in the opposite direction, to see what lives in the human activity of the child. It is the sun that lives in all the human activity of the child, and in the child's human thinking.

It is the sun that streams to us from the stone—for a stone has no light of its own, it can only reflect the sun's light to us. The natural researcher grants you that fact—but that is the very smallest, the most abstract detail! The child also reflects the sun forces back to us, between the seventh and fourteenth years. Just as we can designate the light reflected from the stone as sunlight streamed back to us, so we can designate what the child does in the second life period as “sun.” Sun is not merely there where it seems to be concentrated. This physical notion, that the sun is only there is like the notion of someone who looks at the soup in a soup bowl and sees a blob of fat floating on the top of it and thinks that the blob of fat is the soup.

Yes, our physical ideas are often very childish, and if one uncovers them and shows them for what they are, then people laugh. One could wish there were the same reaction to much that is happening today in the name of science, because it is pretty laughable. When someone takes the blob of fat to be the soup itself, that's the same as when that gold ball up there above us is regarded as the entire sun. In reality the sun fills the whole world.

Now let us look into the connection between the moon forces and the forces of reproduction. The forces of reproduction now gradually form the child's own second body that is built up between the seventh and fourteenth years and is finished when puberty begins. The human being takes in the reproductive forces during this time; this is plainly moon activity. These forces relate entirely to moon activity. They are the result of moon activity.

And now we reach the life period in which we must form our own third body (the fourth when counted from an external view), the time from puberty to the beginning of the twenties. The division of time in the later years is no longer so exact as the time between change of teeth and puberty. Now there is always more physical substance remaining behind; it stays fixed in the human being, it becomes permanent structure. Gradually a great deal of permanent structure accumulates. The older a person becomes, the less material is stripped away from the bones and replaced. Also in the rest of the organism certain parts need a longer time to separate off. And one can see a simple fact in connection with the teeth: that once one has got one's second set of teeth, whether one still has them later depends upon how long they last—just as with a knife, one only has it as long as it lasts. The knife can't renew itself. Teeth can't renew themselves either, really.

Obviously everything is in flow: there is renewal in the first place, but then it goes over into the state of nonrenewal. The teeth maintain their life process at a much slower tempo than the rest of the organism, so far as intensity is concerned. But therefore in reverse, the tempo is faster so far as quality is concerned, for they actually become bad before the other parts of the organism—for the reason that the other parts can always renew themselves. If the teeth were subject to the same laws as many other parts of the human organism, there wouldn't have to be any dentists. On the other hand, if the other parts of the organism were subject to the same laws as the teeth, we would all die young in this modern civilization of ours.

But now to go on. We are active in our organism in the first seven years of life with the forces of the sun, in the second seven years with the forces of the moon. In this second period the sun forces remain and the moon forces combine with them. In the third seven-year period, from puberty into the twenties, much more delicate forces are taken in, coming from the other planets. These other planetary forces appear in the human growth process, and because they work much less strongly than the sun or moon, their influence is outwardly much less visible. They had been working in the body between the fourteenth and the twenty-first years. Now at twenty-one, although it is hardly noticeable, they begin to work in the area of soul and spirit. Whoever has insight can see this remarkable change. Up to that moment only sun and moon have spoken out of human deeds. Now planetary forces modify that sun and moon activity. Actually people's coarse methods of observation afford very little capacity for grasping this change. But it is there.

Knowledge of these connections is necessary for someone concerned with the human being in health and in illness. For what do we really know of a human being, shall we say in the eleventh or twelfth year, if we don't know that the moon forces are working there? After that period, even though there are continually fewer parts to be renewed, the person must still renew them. Up to the twenty-first or twenty-second year, the sun, moon, and planets are working in succession into human growth. Then from the twenty-first to the twenty-eighth year the constellations of the fixed stars work. To be sure, this escapes ordinary observation. Only mystery wisdom tells of the entire zodiac playing into the human being between the beginning and the end of the twenties. Then the world becomes severe. It no longer wants to work into a person; it becomes harsh. Of this strange new relation of the human being to the world in the twenty-eighth, twenty-ninth year—that the world hardens toward us—of this, today's science hardly knows anything. Aristotle taught it to Alexander when he told him that we push against the crystal heaven and find it hard. Thus “the crystal heaven,” beyond the sphere of the fixed stars, acquires meaning for human comprehension. And one begins to realize that when we come to the end of our twenties, we find no more forces in the cosmos for our own renewal. Why do we not die, then, at twenty-eight years? Well, the surrounding world does in fact let us die at twenty-eight. It is true. Whoever sees humanity's relation to the world, whoever looks consciously out into the world, must say, “O world, in reality you sustain me only until my twenty-eighth year!” Only when one realizes this does one finally begin to understand the real nature of the human being.

For now what happens when the world withdraws its formative forces—forces that previously we had always been free to use to build ourself up? At this remarkable moment, when in the twenty-eighth year we begin to show clearly that the earlier forces of growth are now completely gone, some people begin to die off. Some hold on a little longer to the forces of growth that are flowing away. But even Goethe had grown smaller when he measured himself carefully. This was when he began to work again on the second part of Faust. Earlier he had already begun to fade. From the moment when the world deserts us, we have to manage our renewal ourselves, out of forces we have received up to that moment. Certainly when the parts of our organism that can be renewed are becoming fewer and fewer, we cannot work to give ourselves a new body in the same glorious measure that children use up to the change of teeth, when they are forming their first very own body from the model. But we have collected many, many forces from sun and moon and stars which we are carrying within us and which we need when at twenty-eight we have to begin to renew our physical-material body ourselves. This is the moment in earth-life when we find that we are now given complete responsibility for our human form. This moment of our life when we are put entirely on our own is the point of time toward which we have been striving, and from which we must go on. (Plate III, middle) We strive from childhood when we are receiving many cosmic forces, strive more and more toward a point lying at the end of our twenties, when we no longer build our growth out of cosmic forces. Whatever we do after that moment, we do from forces out of our own body. In the middle is the point at which we stop working with cosmic forces and begin to develop forces out of our own body.

We often find a premature activity happening in some child from forces out of the child's own body. We become aware of it from certain pathological symptoms the child shows from the bones, for instance, becoming brittle, and particularly from becoming fat. But the connection between these things is not easily seen. In every moment of life a person is either striving toward this twenty-eighth-year point or away from it. You must realize that it is a kind of zero point, a kind of hypomochlion, a zero moment in time when we stand between ourselves and the world. Always in our inner dynamics we are striving toward it or from it. Whatever is happening in us is a striving toward a zero or away from a zero, something we do toward or away from nothingness. We are striving toward the point where the world is no longer active and we are not yet active. Between the two conditions is a kind of zero. There is something in us that is oriented toward nothingness. It is this that makes us free beings; that is why we can hold responsibility. It is rooted in the human constitution that we are responsible free beings, because at the moment of transfer from the world to ourselves we go through a point of zero. Just as the beam of a pair of scales goes through a point of zero from right to left, from left to right, and that point does not follow the laws to which the rest of the scales is subject. You can think when you have a pair of scales, (Plate III, right) here the mechanical laws you have learned are in force; this gives the scales an exact form—either this above and that below or the opposite. That is the law of scales, the law of leverage. You can carry the scales around; their relation remains the same everywhere, subject always to those mechanical laws wherever you take them—except at this point. This point is free. You can carry the point around as if it were not connected to a pair of scales: the scales remain unchanged. And so it is, when you take hold of yourself in your soul experiences at that point toward which first you strive, from which afterward you strive away: first the world is active, afterward you yourself, and here nothing is active. With the tendency toward and the tendency from, here where a hypomochlion sits, here can live freely that human capacity which is determined neither by nature nor by the world. Here is the point of origin of human freedom. Here is where responsibility is born.

If, therefore, one wants to be able to judge the degree of responsibility in, for instance, a person thirty-five years old—and I mean professionally, not merely a layman's opinion, or that of a dilettante—then one must ask oneself, has too much, perhaps, worked over from this person's abnormal development up to the point at the end of the twenties? Is the point moved more toward youth or more toward age? A person is properly responsible if the point is normal, if judging the whole individual from external life one can decide that the point is normal. If it lies too far back toward youth—that is, if the world ceased too soon to give its forces to some person—one may perhaps find that the person suffers easily, even though to a small degree, from compulsive ideas. The soul is becoming rigid and cannot be held fully accountable for its deeds.

If the point comes late, the question will be whether that person is hindered by his or her inner nature from developing complete freedom of soul and is too rigid physically, and for that reason cannot be held fully responsible. The physician and the priest are the ones who are competent to form this judgment, in the finest sense of the word. They will know that they can judge pretty accurately from people's appearance what their development has been, whether they are in balance, whether their life-hypomochlion is at the right spot, that is, at the right point of time, or is too early or too late. We will discuss physical appearance later, for even an intensive study of physiognomy belongs to pastoral medicine.

These are things that in the old mystery wisdom were regarded as very important for judgments of human life. They are things that have been forgotten and that must be brought again into our knowledge of the human being if that knowledge is to have any beneficial influence, if it is to be active in the right sense in medical and pastoral activity.

More about this tomorrow.

Up to this point we have, at least to some extent, derived the eurhythmic gestures from the actual sounds of speech. Now we must realize that everything which may be expressed through the medium of these gestures—and which is therefore in a certain sense the revelation of man himself, just as the spoken word is also a revelation of man himself—we must realize that all this is based upon the possibilities of form and movement inherent in the human organism. For this reason we may choose yet another starting-point; we may, that is to say, take the nature of man himself and develop from this the various possibilities of form and movement. We may see what manner of movement can proceed out of the human organism; and then, carrying this further, we may eventually discover how the individual movement can take on the character of the visible sound.

Today, in the first place, we will take our start from the actual being of man, and we will endeavour to discover the forms and movements that may arise in this way. Then, proceeding somewhat further, we shall ask ourselves: Which sound is to be regarded as related to this or that particular movement?

For this purpose I shall need quite a number of eurhythmists, and I will therefore ask them to come on to the stage.

Will you place yourselves in a circle in such a way as to have equal distances between each point?

I. Raise both arms upwards, the palms of the hands turned outwards and all the fingers widely spread.

II. Hold the right arm closely to the body, the left hand being lightly supported against the side.

III. Both arms stretched forwards, the one laid over the other.

IV. The arms held to the sides, the left arm at some distance from the body.

V. One foot placed forwards, the left hand grasping the right elbow.

VI. Close the left hand into a fist and place it against the forehead; with the other hand, which is held
more in a forward direction make this gesture. (See diagram VI.)

VII. Both hands forwards, the left hand below, the right above.

VIII. Stand with the weight on the left foot, holding the right foot slightly raised, the right hand upwards in a vertical position, and the left arm bent somewhat sideways.

IX. Bend the head forwards and downwards, touching the chin with the right hand, and allowing the left hand to hang at the side.

X. Clasp the right arm over the head, covering the larynx with the left hand.

XI. Place the feet so that they are turned inwards and cross the arms.

XII. Left arm placed against the breast, the right arm against the back.

Here you see a series of gestures. These gestures in their totality represent the entire human being—the human being split up, as it were, into twelve separate elements, but still the entire human being.

You might also imagine these gestures being carried out by a single person, one after the other. If you picture them being made one after the other by the same person, you would see still more clearly how in this way, when one individual makes all the movements, the whole being of man is revealed and expressed with quite remarkable force and clarity.

Let us now pass through these several aspects of the human being. We will begin here: (gesture IV - Scorpio):

Try to imagine that we here have represented that element in the human being, which we call the intellect, the mind. We must realize that this gesture is the expression of the understanding, the intellect.

Now let us look at this: (gesture I -Leo):

From this gesture, there streams out with a sunny radiance that element which may be described as enthusiasm, which has its source in the breast. Thus we may say: gesture IV—the head: gesture I—the breast, enthusiasm.

Now let us pass to this point: (gesture X)

Here, the head is enfolded by the right arm, while the left hand covers the larynx. In this gesture we have represented that part of the human being that is the expression of the will. (The Word is silenced). We have man as the representative of the will, of all that can lead to action, to deed. Thus we may say: the limb system, will, deed.

Fundamentally speaking we now really have before us the threefold organism of human nature: understanding, feeling, will.

Then we still have that gesture which synthesizes all these elements in itself. You can see how here, in this gesture, there is the striving after balance: (gesture VII - Aquarius):

A state of balance is sought between these various aspects. One may imagine that the arms move in this way (with an upward and downward movement) and that by this means one is endeavouring to experience this state of balance. Here we feel the whole human being seeking to obtain equilibrium; it is the representation of the human being who finds the perfect balance between his three forces—thinking, feeling and willing. I will only write ‘the human being in a state of balance’ (see diagram). You must take these descriptions which I am writing here as matters of the greatest significance.

Now we will go one stage further; when you pass over from the thinking human being to the human being as he seeks for equilibrium you have, lying between these two aspects, that element which follows after thought, which is the consequence of thinking. Where does thinking lead us? To resolve. Thus gesture V is the resolve, the thought that wishes to transfer itself into reality: Resolve (gesture V - Sagittarius):

Now we reach this point (gesture VI) [Capricorn - L]

We see from the very nature of this gesture that something exceedingly significant lies here. This gesture (IV) represents thought. Thought may be very clever, but it does not necessarily enter into reality; it does not necessarily reach the point of resolve. Here we have thought; but thought may always miscarry when it comes to a question of external matters. At this point (gesture VI) thought struggles with the conditions of the outer world: the bringing of thought into connection with the external world (see diagram). This connection of thought with the outer world must actually become part of the complete human being; for the man who has reached a state of balance can, as he goes his way through the world, only bring his deeds to fulfilment when he has first entered into a relationship with the outer world.

And now, starting from the understanding, we will take the other direction. What really happens before one formulates a thought? Something must lead over to the state of understanding and now, starting from the understanding, we will take the other direction. What is really standing before a thought is actually formulated, we have the state of hypothesis; we have a weighing, as it were, of the pros and cons of the matter. Thus here, in this gesture (gesture III), you see the weighing process in its relation to thought (see diagram): [Libra - TS]

But how does this weighing, balancing process come about? In this connection we must make an accurate study of gesture II. What lies behind this gesture? You will remember that we take as our starting-point, feeling, enthusiasm (gesture I). This is a ‘burning enthusiasm’ (the enthusiasm which we lack so greatly in our Society, but which at least is represented here). Now, passing from gesture I to gesture III, before we reach that quiet feeling of weighing or balancing, a reasonable soberness must first make its appearance (see diagram). Gesture II—Soberness. [Virgo - B]

You will be able to feel this quite easily if you enter into the gesture correctly and without prejudice.

We have, then, that enthusiasm which has its seat in the, breast (gesture I). Now we come to this point: (gesture XII): [Cancer - F]

Here we have not yet reached enthusiasm, or rather, let us say, enthusiasm does not on this side pass over into a weighing, thoughtful process; it passes over into action, into the expression of will. On the path from enthusiasm to will, we find the first stage to be initiative, the going out of oneself, the impulse towards action. Enthusiasm burns with a fire that cannot endure. But when an action is to be accomplished there must be initiative, there must be the impulse towards action. Here then (gesture XII), we see the impulse towards action.

Now we must pass still further; let us observe the next stage. Here the whole human being is filled with the conviction that he will succeed in accomplishing the action: (gesture XI): [Gemini—H]

We can almost see Napoleon before us. Special attention, too, must here be paid to the use of the legs and feet; the eurhythmist must not stand as in the other positions, but with a firm hold on the ground. You will notice that admirals on board ship always stand in this way. (And let me here advise you, when you are on a ship, always to walk in this way; then you will not so easily feel the motion of the vessel, nor so easily become sea-sick.) This, then, is not merely initiative, but it is the capacity for action. Here (see diagram) we have already reached the capacity for action.

And now, with gesture X we have the action itself (see drawing R)

Then we go one stage further. When the action has been accomplished, what has been brought about by its means in the world outside man? We see the human being living in the world. He observes what has been brought about through his action. It is no longer a question of the action only. The human being has already passed beyond this; he can observe it; action has already become event—an event that has been brought about by his action, by his deed.

Thus in gesture IX we have the event (see diagram): [Aries V]

And now we pass on to gesture VIII: [Pisces - N]

In this gesture you can see that the event has made its impression upon the human being. He has caused something to happen and this happening has left its impression upon him; it has become destiny. Thus we may say (see diagram): Event has become destiny.

In this circle, then, we have the human being divided up into his component elements. We can picture this human being as containing within himself twelve elements and we can also discover the twelve corresponding gestures.

And now I need seven more eurhythmists. Let us start here in the centre: Stretch out the arms, the right arm forwards and the left arm backwards; and now you must move both arms simultaneously in a circular direction. (You need, however, only actually make this gesture when all the others have been told what to do.)

With this first gesture, which I have described, we have no longer merely the gesture which is held, but one which is in movement. And when we take this gesture, this movement, we find that it is the expression of the human being in his entirety.

Now the second: left arm backwards, right arm forwards; you must move the left arm in a circle, the right arm remaining quiescent.

Here we have shown you the second movement. It is the expression for all the loving, sacrificing qualities in the human being. Thus: the human being in his aspect of loving sacrifice (see diagram).

Now comes the third movement: right arm forwards, left arm backwards, the right arm moving in a circle. This is the extreme opposite of the preceding movement. It is the anti-thesis of the loving, sacrificing qualities. This is the aspect of egoism.

The fourth: stretch out the arms in front of you, with the lower arms crossed one above the other. This gesture is in the sphere of the spiritual; for this reason it may remain quiescent. Here we have everything in the human being that is creative; it is the capacity for creation.

Now we come to the fifth: you must hold the arms forwards with the fingers drawn inwards, and the movement is made by means of a rocking of the body, upwards and downwards. This represents the aggressive quality in the human being, thus the aggressive element.

The sixth: you must hold the left arm still (bent inwards) while the right makes a circular movement around it. In this way we show clearly that we are not now expressing the aggressive element but the activity arising out of wisdom.

And now we have the last movement: Here the hands are laced against the forehead, the one somewhat over the other; now allow them to move smoothly up and down—and again, up and down. Make this gesture, this movement. Here we have the expression of everything that is most profound, the contemplative, meditative element. The human being is here turned in upon himself; I will describe it as deep contemplation (Tiefsinn).

Thus we have formed a large circle and also a small circle. In the outer and larger circle we have the twelve outer gestures, which are static, which express form; here in the inner circle we have seven figures which express movement, with one exception, that is to say. This gesture expresses a different aspect, namely movement that is brought to quiescence.

Now you will soon see what a harmonious effect is produced when all these postures and gestures are combined: those in the inner circle carry out the movements belonging to them, while those in the outer circle take up their postures.

We must, however, go still further: those in the inner circle make their movements; the outer figures move slowly in a circle from left to right, always holding their postures. During the whole time the others also must make their movements. Here, you see, it is as though the human being were observing the world from all sides, and bringing all his faculties and capacities into movement.

Will you once again take up your postures and form the outer circle? I must just mention that in eurhythmy the direction from left to right is really reversed (that is to say it is taken from the point of view of the audience); this also applies to the direction from right to left. The outer circle moves at a moderate pace from left to right; those in the inner circle, still making their gestures, move round somewhat more rapidly. Thus the inner circle dances round at a rapid pace, the outer circle dances round more slowly. Now add all the movements and gestures. See what a harmonious effect is produced! This is one possibility. Here we have a first attempt at drawing forth from the organism its inherent possibilities of movement and gesture; and we can do this when at the same time we bear in mind the human being in his entirety. And we can indeed see how, in the future, further possibilities of form and movement will gradually be able to develop from out of this element.

In very truth the human being has not grown up simply from those forces known and recognized by present day science. He has grown up out of the whole cosmos and his nature may only be understood when the whole cosmos is taken into consideration.

When we have taken all that we have just seen and really observe it closely, then we may say that we have before us the human being divided up into all his different faculties, into the various qualities and forces of his being.

But, in the outer world, the human being is always divided up into the various members of his being. This is to be seen in the animals. The human being bears within him all the faculties of the principal animals. These are gathered together in him, synthesized and raised to a higher level.

Thus we have in the first place the four main animal types. Here we have enthusiasm, the breast element—Leo, the lion (see diagram). The lion has as its dominant characteristic what we have here in this, its corresponding gesture (I).

Further: Here (X) is that element which is manifested in the outer world in everything standing under the sign of external action, under the sign of the will: Taurus, the bull (see diagram).

Then here (VII), you have that which seeks to blend in the human being as a whole all the elements of experience, of action: you saw this in the way the movement was shown. Here we have that which welds together all the separated qualities, just as the etheric body welds together all the different members of the physical body. At one time the etheric man was also called the ‘Water Man’. Here (see diagram) one really ought to write: The Etheric Man. According to ancient designation however, this is also the ‘Water Man’—so here I may justifiably write: Aquarius, the Water Man. You now know that this signifies the etheric man.

Then we have the fascinating quality of cleverness, of brains, that which creates an impression (IV). And it is just here that tradition has brought about a gross error. In reality this has to do with all that is connected with the innermost organization of the head. So that I ought really to write: the eagle. This confusion between the eagle and the scorpion seems, however, only to have arisen in comparatively recent times. Here then, we must picture the eagle (see diagram). But everywhere today we shall find this sign designated as Scorpio. (I do not necessarily mean to imply that people have gradually learned to regard the understanding as something that stings them!)

Now we have here the four main characteristics of the human being. The others lie in the intervening spaces; enthusiasm does not immediately pass over into action; something lies between; At this point we have initiative. This impulse, which leads us over from enthusiasm to activity, which takes us out of ourselves, is incorporated in the feeling system, in that part of the human being that is enclosed by the ribs. In the ancient language of physiology this part of the organism was designated as ‘the crab’. Here also, then, I may call this point Cancer, the crab (see diagram). In the zoology of earlier times the word ‘crab’ did not merely signify that animal which we today call the crab; it signified all those animals possessing a specially strongly developed rib-organization. This is what was originally meant by the word ‘crab’. Everything, which had a special development of the ribs, was ‘a crab’.

Now when the human being wishes to pass over into the sphere of action he must be able to move properly; he must bring both sides of his organism into a properly balanced movement. Thus the element of left and right in the human being must be brought into action in a harmonious manner. Here we must observe that type of animal that is so organized that it has continually to bring the left and right sides of its organism into a synthetic and harmonious movement. Some animals, when walking or running, have to do this to a very marked degree: Gemini, the twins (XI) (see diagram).

As I said, from here we pass on to the action, and from the action to the event. When we examine this transition from the action to the event we find, in the animal kingdom, that it is best symbolized by those animals having curved horns. This brings us to the event: Aries, the ram (IX). Naturally, I should have to speak at considerable length if I wished fully to justify this statement.

Then we go further and reach the point where the human being is merged in the external world, where he gives himself up to the external world; we come to the point where his action becomes destiny. Here the human being lives in the moral element as the fish lives in water. As the fish is merged in the water in which it swims, almost becoming one with it, so does the human being live with his destiny in a moral outer world. Thus: Pisces, the fish (VIII).

Now I have already said that one must find a gradual transition from enthusiasm to quiet thought. We find this transition when the burning enthusiasm becomes sobered. The cooling element, that element which has not yet caught fire, when embodied in the animal kingdom, was called in ancient times: Virgo (II) (see diagram).

And after this soberness comes the quiet, weighing process, the balancing: Libra, the balances. Those animals that seem to consider everything were, in the dim past, designated as the balances (see diagram).

Now we pass from IV to VII, from Scorpio, or more properly the eagle, to Aquarius, to the etheric man. First we have the resolve, where thought determines to make itself felt in the outer world. It is easy to see why certain animals which dart from place to place from a certain nervousness of disposition - as for instance, certain woodland animals - it is easy to see why in ancient times such animals were named ‘Archers’. This is something different from what was later supposed; it is simply a characteristic of certain animals: Sagittarius, the archer (V) (see diagram). (Today, even, I believe that in certain dialects the expression ‘Schutze’ (archers) is used for those wretched little insects that dart about in the kitchen regions.)

And now we come to the bringing of thought into relationship with the world. At this stage, where one butts at everything - where one has not yet achieved the blending of all the human qualities nor reached as yet the sphere of destiny - at this stage we have the goat. Thus here I must write (VI): Capricorn, the goat. Man in his entirety is summed up in the circle of the Zodiac. But all this must be regarded as expressing human qualities and faculties, and these human qualities again make their appearance in the postures we have been studying.

Now in the inner circle we have had the expression of the human being as a whole: Sun. Next we passed over to the human being in his aspect of loving sacrifice: Venus; then to the more egotistical aspect: Mercury; to the creative, productive aspect: Moon; to the aggressive aspect: Mars; and then to the aspect of wisdom in the human being, that which radiates wisdom: Jupiter. And finally, we have that which passes over into a certain melancholy, into an inner contemplation, into a profound inwardness: Saturn (see diagram).

As we enter the sphere that reveals the human being to us in the way I have just described, we pass over from the postures that are held, to the gestures which are in movement. And if we now wish to synthesize all this, to gather it together into a single whole, we can do so in the way I have shown you, by bringing the circle into movement. By so doing we externalise all that which together makes up the complete human being, that is to say, the synthesis of all the animal qualities, the animal characteristics.

A certain experiment is given in the ‘Colour Teaching’ of Goethe: here one paints a disc in sections according to the seven colours—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, etc., then one brings the whole thing into movement, whirling it ever faster and faster until the whole impression is grey. The physicists assert: white—it is however, not white, but grey. The separate colours can no longer be distinguished; everything appears as grey.

Now if the eurhythmists had moved with such rapidity that the separate gestures were no more to be seen, but all were whirled together into a whole, then you would have seen some-thing of extraordinary interest: the picture of the human being expressed through his own movements.

Here (in the inner planetary circle) you have all those qualities in the human being which tend outwards, those possibilities of inner activity whereby the animal nature is gradually led over into the human. Thus, in the outer circle we have: all the animals as man; and here, in the inner circle, we have: a synthesis of the animal qualities transmuted into the human by means of the sevenfold planetary influence.

And now I must ask you (the details I shall give you next time) to bear in mind the sounds: a, e, i, o, u, ei, au—seven vowels. When we take the consonants really according to their innermost nature, grouping those letters together that are somewhat similar in sound, we get the twelve consonants. Thus we have twelve consonants and seven vowels. We arrive at the nineteen possibilities of sound when we see the consonantal element in the Zodiac, and the vowel element in the moving circle of the planets. This is the language of the heavens; whenever a planet stands between two signs of the Zodiac, in reality a vowel is standing between two consonants. The constellations arising through the motions of the planets are indeed a heavenly utterance that sounds forth with infinite variety. And that which is here uttered is the being of man. Small wonder, then, that in the possibilities of gesture and movement the cosmos itself is brought to expression.

Such thoughts as these enable us to realize that in eurhythmy we are really reviving the temple dancing of the ancient Mysteries, the reflection of the dance of the stars, the reflection of the utterances of the gods in heaven to human beings below upon the earth. It is only necessary, by means of spiritual perception, to find once again in our age the possibility of discovering the inner meaning of the gestures in question.

Today, then, we have discovered nineteen gestures; twelve static, and seven permeated with movement—of which latter one is quiescent only because rest is the antithesis of movement. (In the Moon we have movement annulled by its very velocity.)

Thus we have learned to know these gestures, and I have also been able to indicate how they lead over into the realm of sound.

Here we have taken the human being as our starting point and have travelled the opposite path. Previously we started from the sounds; now we take our start from the possibilities of movement and follow this path till it leads to man, to a visible language, to the sounds themselves.

All of our medieval stories—Parsifal, the Round Table, Hartmann von Aue—reveal mystical truths in esoteric form, even though they are usually only understood in their outward aspect. Where do we search for their origin? We must look to a time before the spread of Christianity. Into Christianity was blended what had lived in Ireland, Scotland ... [Gap in the notes.] We are led to a particular centre whence this spiritual life was disseminated. The spiritual life [of Europe] emanated from a mother lodge in Scandinavia, ‘Drottes’ Lodge. Druids = Oak. For this reason the Germanic peoples were said to receive their instructions beneath oak trees.

‘Drottes’, or Druids, were ancient Germanic initiates. They still existed in England till Elizabethan times. All that we read in the Edda or can find in the ancient German sagas refers back to the temples of the ‘Drottes’ or Druids. The author of these tales was always an initiate. The sagas not only have a symbolical or allegorical meaning, but something else as well.

Example: We know the saga of Baldur. We know that he is the hope of the gods, that he is killed by the god Loki with a branch of mistletoe. The God of Light is killed. This whole story has a deep mystery content which all who underwent initiation not only had to learn, but had to experience.

The Mysteries. Initiation: the first deed was called the search for the body of Baldur. It was supposed that Baldur was always alive. The search consisted of a complete enlightenment about the nature of man. For Baldur was the human being who has gone astray. Once upon a time the human being was not as he is today, he was undifferentiated, not bowed down by passionate experiences, but composed of finer ephemeral substance. Baldur, the radiant human being. When truly understood, all things which appear to us in the form of symbols must be understood in a higher sense. This human being who has not descended into what today we call matter, is Baldur. He lives in each one of us. The Druid priest had to search for the higher self within him. He had to become clear about where this differentiation took place, between the higher and the lower ... [Gap]

The secret of all initiation is to give birth to the higher human being within oneself. What the priest accomplishes more quickly, the rest of mankind must undergo in long stages of development. To become leaders of the rest of mankind, the Druids had to receive this initiation.

Man who had descended deeper now had to overcome matter and regain his former higher level. This birth of the higher human being takes place in all the Mysteries in a similar sort of way. The man who had become submerged in matter had to be reawakened. One had to make a series of experiences—real experiences—which were unlike any sense experiences one can have on the physical plane.

The stages. The first step was that one was led before the ‘Throne of Necessity’. One stood in front of the abyss: really experienced through one's own body what lived in the lower kingdoms of nature. Man is both mineral and plant, but the man of today is unable to experience what is undergone by the elementary substances and yet the enduring, the constraining things in the world are due to the fact that we are also mineral and plant in our nature.

The next step led the human being to all that lived in the animal kingdom. Everything which existed in the form of passions and desires was beheld in swirling and interweaving movement- All this had to be observed by the candidate for initiation so that his eyes would be opened to what lay behind the veil of the senses. Man is not aware that what swirls around in astral space is hidden behind the physical sheath. The veil of maya is really a sheath which must be penetrated by him who is to be initiated—the sheaths drop away, the human being sees clearly. That is a very special moment: the priest becomes aware that the sheaths had dammed back the impulses which would have been frightful if they had been let loose.

The third step led to a vision of the elemental nature forces. That is a step which man finds difficult to comprehend without previous preparation. That powerful occult forces are residing in these nature forces and through them express elemental passions, is something which makes man aware that there are powers quite outside the scope of anything he can experience as his own suffering.

The next trial is called the ‘Handing over of the Serpent’ by the hierophant. One can only explain it by means of the effects which it brings about. It is elucidated in the Tantalus saga. The privilege of being allowed to sit in the Council of the Gods can be abused. It signifies a reality which certainly raises man above himself, but dangers accompany it which are not exaggerated in the story of the Tantalus curse. As a rule man says he is powerless in face of the laws of nature. These are thoughts. With that kind of thinking, which is only a shadowy brain-thinking, nothing can be achieved. In creative thinking, which builds and constructs things of the world, which is productive and fruitful, the passive kind of thinking is replaced by a thinking permeated by spiritual force. The blown skin of a caterpillar is the empty sheath of the caterpillar; when filled with [productive] thinking it is the living caterpillar. Into the sheath-thoughts, living active power is poured so that the priest is enabled, not only to see the world in vision, but to work in it through magic. The danger is that this power can be abused. He can ... [Gap]

At this stage the occultist acquires a certain power, whereby he is enabled to deceive even the higher beings. He must not only repeat truths but experience them and decide whether a thing is true or false. That is what is called ‘The Handing over of the Serpent by the Hierophant’. [it denotes the same thing on a spiritual level that the rudimentary stages in the formation of the spinal cord signify on the physical level. In the animal kingdom we pass through the fishes, amphibians and so on till we reach the brain of the vertebrates and man. See notes.] We have a spiritual backbone, too, which determines whether we are to develop a spiritual brain. Man goes through this process at this stage of his development. He is lifted out of Kama (feelings, passions, desires) and endowed with a spiritual backbone so that he can be raised up into the spiraling of the spiritual brain. On a spiritual level, the windings of the labyrinth are the same as the convolutions of the brain on the physical level. Man gains access to the labyrinth, to the windings within the spiritual realm.

Then he had to take the oath of silence. A naked sword was presented to him and he was obliged to swear the most binding oath. This was that he would henceforth keep silence about his experiences where it concerned people who had not been initiated as he had. It is quite impossible to reveal the true content of these secrets without preparation. He, [the initiate] however, could create these sagas so that they became the expression of the eternal. One who could give utterance to things in this way of course had great power over his fellow men. The creator of a saga of this kind imprinted something into the human spirit. What is thus spoken is then forgotten and only the merest vestige of it survives death. Eternal truths remain longest after death. Of less elevated scientific thought hardly anything remains. The eternal does so and appears again in a new incarnation.

The Druid priest spoke out of the higher plane. His words, though simple, being the expression of higher truths, sank into the souls of his hearers. He spoke to simple folk but the truth sank into their souls and something was incorporated into them which would be reborn in a new incarnation. At that time men experienced the truth through fairy stories; thus today our spirit bodies have been prepared and if we are able to grasp higher truths today it is because we have been prepared.

Thus this time, which came to an end in 60 A.D., had prepared the spiritual life of Europe, had provided the soil on which Christianity could build. These teachings have been preserved and whoever searches will be able to find access to what was taught in these Lodges.

After he [the Druid] had given his oath on the sword he had to drink a certain draught—and this he did from a human skull. The meaning of this was that he had transcended what was human. That was the feeling which the Druid priest had to develop concerning his lower bodily nature. He had to look upon all that lived within his body with the same objective, cool attitude as he felt towards a containing vessel. Then he was initiated into the higher secrets and shown the path to higher worlds. Baldur ... [Gap] He was led into an immense palace which was roofed by flashing shields. He encountered a man who cast forth seven flowers. Cosmic Space, Cherubim, Demi-urge [Maker of the World]. Thus he became truly a Priest of the Sun.

Many people read the Edda and are unaware that it is an account of what really took place in the ancient ‘Drottes’ mysteries. An immense power lay at the disposal of the ancient ‘Drottes’ priests, a power over life and death. It is true that everything becomes corrupt in time. It was once the highest, the holiest of things. At the time when Christianity was spreading, much had degenerated and there were many black magicians, so that Christianity came as a redemption.

The study of these old truths alone is able to give an almost complete survey of the whole of occultism.

Unlike our present practice, not one stone was laid upon another in the building of a Druid temple without the use of exact astronomical measurement. Doorways were built according to astronomical measurement. The Druid priests were the builders of humanity. A faint reflection of this is preserved today in the views which the Freemasons hold.

Learning to penetrate astral substance, viewing the sun at midnight: First initiation.

Handing over of the Serpent by the Hierophant: Second Initiation.

The journey into the Labyrinth: Third Initiation.

Note on Lecture III

The only source for this lecture was the short notes of Marie Steiner von Sivers. Sentences enclosed in square brackets are the amendments of the editor, where the text seemed insufficiently clear.

Further source material has been appended below, gleaned from the writings of Charles William Heckethorn on the subject of the Druids and the Scandinavian Mysteries. A copy of Heckethorn's book in German translation was in Rudolf Steiner's private library, and from marginal notes in Rudolf Steiner's handwriting it appears to have been used by him in connection with this lecture and other lectures included in this volume. (Charles William Heckethorn Geheime Gesellschaften, Geheimbünde und Geheimlehren, Leipzig, 1900. Original English edition: The Secret Societies of all Ages and Countries, London,1875.)

From Charles William Heckethorn
The Secret Societies of all Ages and Countries
Chapter VIII. The Druids.

The Druids, the Magi of the West.
The secret doctrines of the Druids were much the same as those of the Gymnosophists and Brahmins of India, the Magi of Persia, the priests of Egypt, and of all other priests of antiquity. Like them they had two sets of religious doctrines, exoteric and esoteric. Their rites were practised in Britain and Gaul, though they were brought to a much greater perfection in the former country, where the Isle of Anglesey was considered their chief seat. The word Druid is generally supposed to be derived from “an oak,” which tree was particularly sacred among them, though its etymology may also be found in the Gaelic word Druidh, “a wise man” or “magician.”

Temples.
Their temples, wherein the sacred fire was preserved, were generally situate on eminences and in dense groves of oaks, and assumed various forms—circular, because a circle was an emblem of the universe; oval, in allusion to the mundane egg, from which, according to the traditions of many nations, the universe, or according to others, our first parents, issued; serpentine, because a serpent was the symbol of Hu, the Druidic Osiris; cruciform, because a cross is an emblem of regeneration; or winged, to represent the motion of the divine spirit. Their only canopy was the sky, and they were constructed of unhewn stones, their numbers having reference to astronomical calculations. In the centre was placed a stone of larger dimensions than the others, and worshipped as the representative of the Deity. The three principal temples of this description in Britain were undoubtedly those of Stonehenge and Avebury in the south, and that of Shap in Cumbria. Where stone was scarce, rude banks of earth were substituted, and the temple was formed of a high vallum and ditch. The most Herculean labours were performed in their construction; Stukeley says that it would cost, at the present time, £20,000 to throw up such a mound as Silbury Hill.

Places of Initiation.
The adytum or ark of the mysteries was called a cromlech, and was used as the sacred pastos, or place of regeneration. It consisted of three upright stones, as supporters of a broad, flat stone laid across them on the top, so as to form a small cell. Kit Cotey's House, in Kent, was such a pastos. Considerable space, however, was necessary for the machinery of initiation in its largest and most comprehensive scale. Therefore, the Coer Sidi, where the mysteries of Druidism were performed, consisted of a range of buildings, adjoining the temple, containing apartments of all sizes, cells, vaults, baths, and long and artfully contrived passages, with all the apparatus of terror used on these occasions. Most frequently these places were subterranean; and many of the caverns in this country were the scenes of Druidical initiation. The stupendous grotto at Castleton, in Derbyshire [Peak Cavern], called by Stukeley the Stygian Cave, as well as the “Giants Caves” between Luckington and Badminton [in Wilts.], certainly were used for this purpose.

Rites.
The system of Druidism embraced every religious and philosophical pursuit then known in these islands. The rites bore an undoubted reference to astronomical facts. Their chief deities are reducible to two,—a male and a female, the great father and mother, Hu and Ceridwen, distinguished by the same characteristics as belonged to Osiris and Isis, Bacchus and Ceres, or any other supreme god and goddess representing the two principles of all being. The grand periods of initiation were quarterly, and determined by the course of the sun, and his arrival at the equinoctial and solstitial points. But the time of annual celebration was May-eve, when fires were kindled on all the cairns and cromlechs throughout the island, which burned all night to introduce the sports of May-day, whence all the national sports formerly or still practised date their origin. Round these fires choral dances were performed in honour of the sun, who, at this season was figuratively said to rise from his tomb. The festival was licentious, and continued till the luminary had attained his meridian height, when priests and attendants retired to the woods, where the most disgraceful orgies were perpetrated. But the solemn initiations were performed at midnight, and contained three degrees, the first or lowest being the Eubates, the second the Bards, and the third the Druids. The candidate was first placed in the pastos bed, or coffin, where his symbolical death represented the death of Hu, or the sun; and his restoration in the third degree symbolized the resurrection of the sun. He had to undergo trials and tests of courage similar to those practised in the mysteries of other countries, and which therefore need not be detailed here.

The festival of the 25th of December was celebrated with great fires lighted on the tops of the hills, to announce the birth-day of the god Sol. This was the moment when, after the supposed winter solstice, he began to increase, and gradually to ascend. This festival indeed was kept not by the Druids only, but throughout the ancient world, from India to Ultima Thule. The fires, of course, were typical of the power and ardour of the sun, whilst the evergreens used on the occasion foreshadowed the results of the sun's renewed action on vegetation. The festival of the summer solstice was kept on the 24th of June. Both days are still kept as festivals in the Christian church, the former as Christmas, the latter as St. John's Day; because the early Christians judiciously adopted not only the festival days of the pagans, but also, so far as this could be done with propriety, their mode of keeping them; substituting, however, a theological meaning for astronomical allusions. The use of evergreens in churches at Christmas time is the Christian perpetuation of an ancient Druidic custom.

Doctrines.
The Druids taught the doctrine of one supreme being, a future state of rewards and punishments, the immortality of the soul and a metempsychosis. It was a maxim with them that water was the first principle of all things, and existed before the creation in unsullied purity, which seems a contradiction to their other doctrine that day was the offspring of night, because night or chaos was in existence before day was created. They taught that time was only an intercepted fragment of eternity, and that there was an endless succession of worlds. In fact, their doctrines were chiefly those of Pythagoras. They entertained great veneration for the numbers three, seven, nineteen (the Metonic cycle), and one hundred and forty-seven, produced by multiplying the square of seven by three. They also practised vaticination [prophecy], pretending to predict future events from the flights of birds, human sacrifices, by white horses, the agitation of water, and lots. They seem, however, to have possessed considerable scientific knowledge.

Political and Judicial Power.
Their authority in many cases exceeded that of the monarch. They were, of course, the sole interpreters of religion, and consequently superintended all sacrifices; for no private person was allowed to offer a sacrifice without their sanction. They possessed the power of excommunication, which was the most horrible punishment that could be inflicted next to that of death, and from the effects of which the highest magistrate was not exempt. The great council of the realm was not competent to declare war or conclude peace without their concurrence. They determined all disputes by a final and unalterable decision, and had the power of inflicting the punishment of death. And, indeed, their altars streamed with the blood of human victims. Holocausts of men, women, and children, inclosed in large towers of wicker-work, were sometimes sacrificed as a burnt offering to their superstitions, which were, at the same time, intended to enhance the consideration of the priests, who were an ambitious race delighting in blood. The Druids, it is said, preferred such as had been guilty of theft, robbery, or other crimes, as most acceptable to their gods; but when there was a scarcity of criminals, they made no scruple to supply their place with innocent persons. These dreadful sacrifices were offered by the Druids, for the public, on the eve of a dangerous war, or in the time of any national calamity; and also for particular persons of high rank, when they were afflicted with any dangerous disease.

Priestesses.
The priestesses, clothed in white, and wearing a metal girdle, foretold the future from the observation of natural phenomena, but more especially from human sacrifices. For them was reserved the frightful task of putting to death the prisoners taken in war, and individuals condemned by the Druids; and their auguries were drawn from the manner in which the blood issued from the many wounds inflicted, and also from the smoking entrails. Many of these priestesses maintained a perpetual virginity, others gave themselves up to the most luxurious excesses. They dwelt on lonely rocks, beaten by the waves of the ocean which the mariners looked upon as temples surrounded with unspeakable prodigies. Thus the island of Sena or Liambis, The Saints, near Ushant, was the residence of certain of these priestesses, who delivered oracles to sailors; and there was no power that was not attributed to them. Others, living near the mouth of the Loire, once a year destroyed their temple, scattered its materials, and, having collected others, built a new one—of course a symbolical ceremony; and if one of the priestesses dropped any of the sacred materials, the others fell upon her with fierce yells, tore her to pieces, and scattered her bleeding limbs.

Abolition.
As the Romans gained ground in these islands the power of the Druids gradually declined; and the were finally assailed by Suetonius Paulinus, governor of Britain under Nero, A.D. 61, in their stronghold, the Isle of Anglesey, and entirely defeated, the conqueror consuming many of them in the fires which they had kindled for burning the Roman prisoners they had expected to make—a very just retaliation upon these sanguinary priests. But though their dominion was thus destroyed, many of their religious practices continued much longer; and so late as the eleventh century, in the reign of Canute, it was necessary to forbid the people to worship the sun, moon, fires, etc. Certainly many of the practices of the Druids are still adhered to in Freemasonry; and some writers on this Order endeavour to show that it was established soon after the edict of Canute, and that as thereby the Druidical worship was prohibited in toto, the strongest oaths were required to bind the initiated to secrecy.

Chapter IX. Scandinavian Mysteries

Drottes.
The priests of Scandinavia were named Drottes, and instituted by Sigge, a Scythian prince, who is said afterwards to have assumed the name of Odin. Their number was twelve, who were alike priests and judges; and from this order proceeded the establishment of British juries. Their power was extended to its utmost limits, by being allowed a discretionary privilege of determining on the choice of human victims for sacrifice, from which even the monarch was not exempt—hence arose the necessity of cultivating the goodwill of these sovereign pontiffs; and as this order, like the Israelitish priesthood, was restricted to one family, they became possessed of unbounded wealth, and at last became so tyrannical as to be objects of terror to the whole community. Christianity, promising to relieve it from this yoke, was hailed with enthusiasm; and the inhabitants of Scandinavia, inspired with a thirst for vengeance on account of accumulated and long-continued suffering, retaliated with dreadful severity on their persecutors, overthrowing the palaces and temples, the statues of their gods, and all the paraphernalia of Gothic superstition. Of this nothing remains but a few cromlechs; some stupendous monuments of rough stone, which human fury could not destroy; certain ranges of caverns hewn out of the solid rock; and some natural grottos used for the purpose of initiation.

Rituals.
The whole ritual had an astronomical bearing. The places of initiation, as in other mysteries, were in caverns, natural or artificial, and the candidate had to undergo trials as frightful as the priests could render them. But instead of having to pass through seven caves or passages, as in the Mithraic and other mysteries, he descended through nine—the square of the mystic number three—subterranean passages, and he was instructed to search for the body of Baldur, the Scandinavian Osiris, slain by Loki, the principle of darkness, and to use his utmost endeavours to raise him to life. To enter into particulars of the process of initiation would involve the repetition of what has been said before; it may therefore suffice to observe that the candidate on arriving at the sacellum had a solemn oath administered to him on a naked sword, and ratified it by drinking mead out of a human skull. The sacred sign of the cross was impressed upon him, and a ring of magic virtues, the gift of Baldur the Good, delivered to him.

Astronomical Meaning Demonstrated.
The first canto of the Edda, which apparently contains a description of the ceremonies performed on the initiation of an aspirant, says that he seeks to know the sciences possessed by the Aesas or gods. He discovers a palace, whose roof of boundless dimensions is covered with golden shields. He encounters a man engaged in launching upwards seven flowers. Here we easily discover the astronomical meaning: the palace is the world, the roof the sky; the golden shields are the stars, the seven flowers the seven planets. The candidate is asked what is his name, and replies Gangler, that is, the wanderer, he that performs a revolution, distributing necessaries to mankind; for the candidate personates the sun. The palace is that of the king, the epithet the ancient Mystagogues gave to the head of the planetary system. Then he discovers three seats; on the lowest is the king called Har, sublime; on the central one, Jafuhar, the equal of the sublime; on the highest Tredie, the number three. These personages are those the neophyte beheld in the Eleusinian initiation, the hierophant, the daduchus or torchbearer, and the epibomite or attendant on the altar; those he sees in Freemasonry, the master, and the senior and junior wardens, symbolical personifications of the sun, moon, and Demiurgus, or grand architect of the universe. But the Scandinavian triad is usually represented by Odin, the chief deity; Thor, his first-born, the reputed mediator between god and man, possessing unlimited power over the universe, wherefore his head was surrounded by a circle of twelve stars; and Freya, a hermaphrodite, adorned with a variety of symbols significant of dominion over love and marriage. In the instructions given to the neophyte, he is told that the greatest and most ancient of gods is called Alfader (the father of all), and has twelve epithets, which recall the twelve attributes of the sun, the twelve constellations, the twelve superior gods of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Among the gods of the Scandinavian theogony there is Baldur the Good, whose story, as already hinted above, formed the object of the initiatory ceremonies. Baldur is Mithras, the sun's love. He foresees the danger that threatens him; he dreams of it at night. The other gods of Valhalla, the Scandinavian Olympus, to whom he reveals his sad fore-bodings, reassure him, and to guard against any harm befalling him, exact an oath from every thing in nature on his behalf, except from the mistletoe, which was omitted on account of its apparently inoffensive qualities. For an experiment, and in sport, the gods cast at Baldur all kinds of missiles, without wounding him. Hoder the blind [that is, Fate], takes no part in the diversion; but Loki [the principle of evil, darkness, the season of winter] places a sprig in the hands of Hoder, and persuades him to cast it at the devoted victim, who falls pierced with mortal wounds. For this reason it was that this plant was gathered at the winter solstice by the Druids of Scandinavia, Gaul, and Britain, with a curved knife, whose form symbolised the segment of the zodiacal circle during which the murder of Baldur took place. In the Edda of Snorro we have another legend of Odin and Freya, the Scandinavian Isis or Venus, giving an account of the wanderings of the latter in search of the former, which, of course, have the same astronomical meaning as the search of Isis for Osiris, of Ceres for Proserpine, etc. One of the chief festivals in the year, as with the Druids, was the winter solstice; and this being the longest night in the year, the Scandinavians assigned to it the formation of the world from primeval darkness, and called it “Mother Night.” This festival was denominated “Yule,” and was a season of universal festivity.

Today, we want to talk about some things that might be outside the normal sphere of deliberation but that will clarify, from a different perspective, some of the material that we have heard about in earlier lectures. The overall message discussed today is meant to shed light on much of what we’ve heard before and will hear in the future. Today, we will talk about the hierarchy of beings that exist in the world and are above the human being. We have occasionally mentioned such beings in the context of the Earth’s evolution. Now we will look at them in a different context, namely from the perspective of those beings’ characteristics, their purpose, and their work.

Nowadays there is a certain convenience in terms of world-view, as many people do not want to put any other beings between themselves and the Godhead. It is so incredibly comfortable to imagine a mineral kingdom, a plant kingdom, an animal kingdom, and a human kingdom, and then, without much ado, to climb up to the all-pervading God, about whom one believes to have a more or less correct consciousness or feeling. For the real Science of the Spirit it is not that convenient—between humans and the entity, about which we have a presentiment that it might be the Godhead of the world, it needed to insert beings at the most diverse stages of perfection. This hierarchy has been repeatedly hinted at. In Christian Esotericism¹/6^th Century, probably by Severus, the Patriarch of Antioch. Compare the introduction in the referenced volume, pages 13-14. they have the following names: Angels, Archangels, Primordial Forces, Powers, Virtues, Dominions, Thrones, Cherubims, Seraphims. These are nine different kinds of beings, to which man is connected right at the bottom of the hierarchy. Only if we look upwards beyond the realm of the Seraphim can we divine what we address as the Godhead.

Do not believe that it is insubstantial and meaningless if it is said that it is a convenience of the worldview to simply ascend from the human being to the Godhead without involving these beings. If human beings had not forgotten to study and acknowledge them, then the aberrations of materialism would not have occurred. Although it is possible to combine some sort of religious feeling, a kind of dark religious sentiment, with the immediate ascent from human being to deity, but it is never possible to arrive in this way at a real understanding of the world; a true picture of the evolution of the world can never be combined with this. For this reason, humanity has now lost its understanding of the world. There is an aspect in religion that is based only on feelings and vague emotions that will always allow itself to be denied in the face of materialistic ideas. The Theosophical world-view re-opens an understanding of the world by teaching mankind again about these beings. In this way, a reference point is created in order to counter the denial of a higher world. People who today struggle against acknowledging this world are increasingly preparing the ground for the most banal, disastrous materialism. The materialists themselves are really the victims—the real perpetrators are those who, out of convenience, do not want to know anything about what exists between mankind and the Godhead.

Now that you know the reason why we must talk about these higher beings today, we will look at their characteristics in a free aphoristic way. First, we will examine the angels, the Angeloi, the divine messengers, who stand closest to human beings. They differ from human beings mostly through their faculties of perception and recognition. A human being perceives and acts out his deeds within a world that consists of the four realms of nature; namely among the minerals, plants, animals and human beings. This is the nature of his perception; these are his acts of will.

The angels, who stand one stage above the human beings, differ from them in that the mineral realm does not exist for their perception. Their perceptive faculty begins with the plant kingdom and then progresses further to the animal, the human, and to their own angel kingdom. Within these four kingdoms the life of the angels takes place. What the human being perceives as a mineral filling a spatial area is for these beings empty space, blank space. If you remember how in my book Theosophy I’ve described how, in Devachan, man perceives the mineral world, namely as empty space, then you roughly understand the kind of perception these beings have, who live permanently in such a world. The minerals do not present an obstacle for them—they are able to walk through them; they are not interested in them. The mineral realm is too far beneath them. Their awareness only begins with the plant kingdom and extends to their own realm.

AAs angelic beings, they call themselves “I”. By being so constituted they will, through their actions, make something clear to us that we already know. When the human being goes through the portal of death, he will first encounter the curious experience of the memory picture. It presents itself thus: When the human being dies, he first gets the feeling that he will grow and grow increasingly, and this enlargement is accompanied by the appearance of the memory picture. Once the picture ends, something like a kind of extract—like a fruit of life—remains. This will create a type of germinal force for the construction of the human being in his next incarnation. This is a kind of etheric, internally structured essence that remains with him as the essence of all his experiences in the etheric body and will accompany him through the eternities. If we also remember that the human being, after having passed through the Kamaloka, takes this essence with him to Devachan, and that he is not passive there but has his essential tasks to fulfil, then the deeds of those beings who are standing one level above us will become quite clear. The human being only reincarnates once he can experience something new, once he can take a new fruit into himself. The Earth goes through many transformations. Therefore, it is wrong that it is not necessary to come repeatedly as some people believe. A human being can always experience something new that he will take with him into eternity.

What is causing the transformation of the Earth’s surface? Who is working on the transformation of the Earth? How does it happen that a completely different picture of the plant world emerges in a particular area, with completely different living conditions? Just imagine, for example, how the area where Munich is located now must have looked 3,000 years ago and how human beings on the physical plane continuously change the face of the Earth with their physical powers. But because man only changes the mineral kingdom, you can imagine that other changes have to arise from Devachan. And from there, once again, it is the human beings who, coming from the spiritual, consistently transform the Earth. But they could not do it by themselves. They would not know what the face of the Earth should look like, or what condition it should be in. They are only able to do this under the leadership of higher beings. Those higher beings who guide and lead them are the beings that we call angels. They deal with what exists in a human being during the presence in Devachan in a different form. They guide and lead the eternal Ego of man. And because they, due to their nature are able to reach down into the world of plants, they can achieve the transformation of the Earth.

Now it will be easy to comprehend that these beings are always leading, guiding beings for the human Ego. They do not even interrupt their leadership when the Ego gets incarnated again. The Ego is regulated and led by such entities. Therefore, the naive belief that a protective being exists for the higher Ego is not unfounded. We know however, that the entities we call angels were still human beings when they were on the Moon. From human beings, they have evolved higher. Knowing this it is easy to understand that man also is on the way to becoming such a higher being himself and will be one on Jupiter. Thus, there is something in man, that works today towards a higher existence and is on the way to become such a being. He will then be of a nature similar to such angelic beings. Here we are looking deeply into the spiritual development of the world. However, what we have in front of us as a list of names, these should not be considered to be something permanent—but a description only of hierarchical levels.

When we now focus higher up on the archangels, we arrive at beings that once again have a different faculty of perception and a different type of activity. For them, even the plant world is not of interest, as it is not perceptible. Their perception only begins with the animal world. This is their lowest realm—followed by the human, angel and archangel realms—these are the four realms of these beings. Thus, we can say we are looking up to such sublime beings who reach down with their deeds only as far as the animal kingdom. They live in the animal and human kingdoms and so on, but their deeds do not reach down into the plant kingdom.

These facts were known to the earlier consciousness of human beings. We are allowed here to look deeply into the emotional life of earlier peoples and times. Just as our ancestors still felt aware of the deeds of angels in plants, they felt aware of the deeds of archangels in animals. For this reason, ancient people, such as the Egyptians, worshipped certain animals. This was an expression of the knowledge of mankind. Whoever looks at the curious figures, the subject of Egyptian animal worship, will stand in awe of the deep wisdom of those people. Not without reason did they connect these animals with higher beings and mankind. Let us keep in mind how the life of humans was always connected to the life of animals, how progress on Earth is connected to animals—certain aspects of man’s development depend on animals—then we will comprehend the deep foundation of animal worship.

What is the responsibility of the archangels? Nowadays, some people are still saying that something like a Folk Spirit exists. But for most people, this has become just empty talk, something abstract. Most people do not know a lot about the fact that a nation is actually led by a real Folk Spirit. This Folk Spirit is an archangel, for whom the whole nation is one body, just as a human body is for the human spirit. The Folk Spirits are the tribal spirits. Whilst the angels guide and lead individual people through their incarnations, the archangels lead the lives of whole groups, entire nations. Now we will understand why the Egyptians felt that the deity gave them certain animals as companions. It is because the lives of whole groups of people are deeply connected to the lives of certain animal species. They correctly saw the deeds of the Folk Spirit in this. They worshipped the power of the Folk Spirit, who had sent the animal companion to them.

You might ask me, if one could imagine a being that perceives all the separate organs of a human being but is unable to perceive him as a whole entity; such being would be unable to comprehend that these organs form a whole. So you could say, certainly, maybe today with his current perception man does not directly perceive the angels and archangels, but he might perceive what their organs, their ears, and their eyes are. Or, we might imagine that angels perceive plants, animals, humans and angels. What then are their sense organs? Maybe people could even perceive the sense organs of angels? Where are these? They exist and they can be perceived by human beings. Man just doesn’t know this.

The sense organs of the angelic beings will become understandable when I tell you that man himself has two eyes to see the mineral world with, but can not see the his eyes directly on himself. The sense organs are made for perception, but they do not perceive themselves. Thus, it is with the angels in the mineral world. Their sense organs can be found in the mineral physical world, but they do not perceive that world themselves. The sense organs of the angels are our precious gemstones. These are mysterious tools for angelic beings to perceive with. Thus, these organs lie within the mineral world. In the same way that the human being has his sense of feeling and his sense of touch, these beings possess their sense of feeling, which expresses itself in the carnelian; and their facial sense in the chrysolite. They simply do not perceive within the mineral world because their sense organs are in it. Even in this regard, we can find some dim consciousness amongst the ancient people who ascribe particular properties to certain precious stones. These properties derive from the presence of angels in them.

Therefore, what we mean by Folk Spirit is a very real presence within the beings who we call archangels. Let us now focus on the Primordial Forces, who are even one level higher. What is their responsibility with regard to the evolution of mankind? When looking at their faculties of perception, we have to say that the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms are non-existent for them. The lowest realm that they perceive is the human realm. Including this, their perception stretches over four kingdoms—the human realm, the angel realm, the realm of the archangels, and their own realm. They reach down only as far as the level of human beings. Let us visit their activities. Again, we find an expression to which man has no real connection: the Spirit of an Epoch, of a Time. Each epoch has its own unique characteristics. For example, think of our post-Atlantean time. In five Epochs, the Spirit of Time has changed. Among the Indians, the Zeitgeist (the Spirit of Time) did not want to acknowledge the physical world, considering it to be Maya. This was immediately after a dawning clairvoyance had sunk in and the human being had stepped into the physical world. From then onwards, we see how man conquers the world bit by bit.

During the second epoch, amongst the Persians, man becomes aware that the Earth is a field of his work. He realises that he has to imprint his spirit on the material world. He confronts the benevolent spirit Ormuzd as a servant—time overcomes the evil Ahriman.

Then follows the third epoch, the Egyptian-Chaldaean-Babylonian time, where the spirit continues to work. The sciences appear. The human being not only understands the world as his working field, but he searches for its laws. The Egyptians discover geometry. The Chaldean is searching in outer space for a pattern of the movement of the stars, the world in its material substantiality, is thought to be pervaded by laws, that is, by spirit.

In the fourth epoch, the Greek era, man conquers one more piece of this other world through art. Greek art is something special because here the human being imprints his own “I-form” onto the material matter. Then, once again, a new epoch followed. We can continue to move on step by step, and would see how the Spirit of the Time changes itself. Just like the face of the Earth is transformed by the angels who are guiding the human “I”, and the archangels are leading the people of nations, so the consecutive epochs are determined by the Primordial Forces. Those beings that are standing behind the processes are incredibly important to observe. Separate human individuality is something different—and its work under the influence of the Spirits of the Epoch is something else again. Think of Giordano Bruno.² What has happened through him, has not been done by him alone. Had he incarnated three centuries earlier or later, he would have been an equally gifted individual, but he would have had to do something quite different, led by the Spirit of his Time. The Spirits of Time, who are an expression of the Primordial Forces that reach down into the human being, are positioning these people in the places where they belong. If you look at the individual human being as a tool of the Primordial Forces, as material of these Spirits, then you will understand their work. Wherever man appears in a large or small position, they have to be judged accordingly, for man is to the Primordial Forces what the minerals are to us. For all those concerned with the Science of the Spirit, the question always arises to what extent this or that personality is the material of the Spirits of the Epoch. One can gain deep insight into the workings and weaving of evolution when one observes how people are placed in the appropriate positions in the world.

Let us now ascent to the Powers, for whom man as such is no longer there at all. We can then imagine in a different way what is involved in the development of the forces of nature. The lowest realm that would possibly be accessible by the Powers’ perception is that of the angels. Angels are to these highly sublime beings what the mineral kingdom is to us. On other occasions, we have already pointed out the workings of these Powers: Everything that goes beyond the individual human being, that is connected to the affairs of the whole planet, are the deeds of these Powers. If we trace our Earth back to the time when it, and with it the human being, emerged as a gradually forming entity, then we return to the Primordial Forces.

But if we wish to look at the life and emergence of the Earth itself, then we have to return to the Powers. They have nothing to do with individual human beings, but rather with the planetary genesis. We find these Powers in the Sun and Moon forces within ourselves. We know that humanity as such stands under the influence of these Sun and Moon forces. If the Sun forces only would work, the warm, fiery, light-giving Sun forces, then the human being would develop very fast—he would rush through one life. The delaying force is the force of the Moon, compelling him to take on form. If only these forces were at work, man would live only once, have only one incarnation, then he would die and mummify in his form. Earth would be covered by statues. If solely the Sun forces were at work, man would also go through only one incarnation, but in this incarnation he would live through all that he would otherwise go through in countless incarnations.

The collaboration of both forces establishes the right balance so that the human being can develop the way he does. The Moon on its own would cause mummification. Now the Moon rules the one incarnation; the Sun rules the subsequent incarnations from the outside, whilst the angels work from the inside. The nature and weaving of the Powers is revealed to us here. They are quite correctly described in the Bible as the Spirits of Light or Elohim, who existed before the Earth was created. One of them is Yahweh, who forces the human beings into form. In the working and weaving of the Powers, we see what is connected to the life of the whole planet. Here we have an opportunity to gain deep insight into the foundation of our world’s evolution.

However, we have also already heard that certain beings always remain behind in their development. The current Powers were previously Primordial Forces on the Moon. But there are Primordial Forces of the Moon that did not complete their set tasks and who came onto the Earth as Primordial Forces. They had not developed fast enough, although they were candidates to become Powers. The most outstanding of these Primordial Forces, who could actually be at the level of the Powers, is the entity commonly called Satan. Thus, he is at the rank of the Primordial Forces and could even be a Power. Amongst the Spirits that move the world forward, this Epochal Spirit works against the others. He is such a force on Earth as would have fitted on the old Moon, and he is still intimately connected with the forces of the old Moon. He is the Master of all obstacles and inhibitions that are placed in the path of the progressive Epochal Spirits. You will comprehend what it means when it was said that, in his life, Jesus Christ had to first overcome Satan, the Opponent of Progress, just at the moment of the greatest progress. Christ wanted to lead mankind in a mighty step forward, but first he had to overcome this adversary as the inhibitor and disruptor of this development, who wanted to prevent the Primordial Forces of our Earth from advancing further. Christian Esotericism calls these unlawful Primordial Forces Satanic Powers.

What is often called Providence presents itself quite definitively in detail as a group of beings. If man would once again be able to research the connection between sensory appearances and spiritual beings, he would understand many things better. Everything that appears to us in this world is an expression of spiritual beings.

You know, for example, that the planets, the celestial bodies, perform certain movements around themselves and around others. Why does this happen? The movement of the Earth around its axis was not always there. Why did it come about? The reason is that the human being at its present stage of development needs the alternation between day and night, between sleeping and waking. The macrocosm is most intimately connected to the microcosm—through the division of time, life is being regulated. During the time of the old Moon, it was quite different. There was a completely different time allocation, a quite different alternation between day and night, because the old Moon moved entirely differently. Those beings who nowadays direct these movements, have prepared these already in their own lives. Spiritual beings are behind those movements which are their deeds. In the future, mankind will recognise a deep wisdom in those movements.

A deep wisdom lies in the so-called “orbit” of the Earth around the Sun. Man will one day realise that something incredibly significant is happening there. Aren’t you surprised that I am saying “so-called” orbit. What is today taught in schools about the way the Earth moves around the Sun, is only the result of a mathematical example. It is not absolutely true. One day this explanation will also take on quite different forms. Even from a historical perspective people could inform themselves that it is not like that. It is quite a strange issue with the system of Copernicus.³ He founded his beliefs on three basic principles, of which only two were adopted by today’s science, and the third one was dropped under the table. In reality, the Sun races with high speed through space towards the constellation of Hercules. A movement, as it is usually described, is only feigned by the fact that the planets also move along. The true path of the Earth forms a corkscrew line⁴ . What is called theobliquity of the ecliptic is the gravity line between Sun and Earth. One has forgotten that the Earth turns once a year around the axis of the ecliptic, and this rotation combines itself with the corkscrew turn. Copernicus still differentiated between those two things, but nowadays it is not done anymore. The movement with the ecliptic was dropped. Therefore, it is not compatible with the facts when one says that the Earth turns around the sun. In reality, it is a corkscrew movement.

If the corkscrew line were a straight line, then progress would be immensely faster—Earth would have to travel along its path with incredible speed, and that would be exactly what the human being couldn’t cope with.

If the Earth would really pass through those spaces in a straight line, then man would become old immediately. As it is, the movement was amended in a wise way by the leading Spirits. The absolute progress is being delayed through a different way of movement. As you can see, there lies deep wisdom in the cosmos—this wisdom is the expression of the leading Spirits. We have been given angels and archangels as governors of our evolution. The forces that are working from incarnation to incarnation, that push man further, so that he will not become mummified, these are the governors of the future rotation times of Jupiter. Such Spirits that are standing above the human being and regulate his life, are therefore called the “Spirits of the Rotation of Time”, because their deeds will find expression later in the rotation times of the celestial bodies. The way the stars move today can be seen as the results of what higher beings have done in former times. In today’s humanity you can already recognise the future times of rotation. With this a tremendous spiritual life enters the celestial space, when we learn to look at it in this way.

Today, we only wanted to look at the characteristics of beings up to the Powers. We can imagine how the external is the expression of something internal. When what is said here fills humanity again, then much will change. We have now an immense low in academic education. The external progress is incompatible with the spiritual life. This would lead to a tremendous low if such truths were not made known and used to enlighten the science. People no longer know where to go with their materialistic science. Recently, a psychology book⁵ was published—one should not think that such a book has no effect just because the author is still unknown. The book explains that the law of the conservation of forces also applies to the soul, and that the inner manifestations of the soul consist only of a transformation of food. He roughly says, “For 10 years, it has been known with certainty that the so-called law of the conservation of forces is identical with the effects of the nervous system. One can prove that all that man absorbs in the form of energy from the consumption of food, is completely identical to that which he produces in work. Since one can prove exactly the same thing happens inside man as elsewhere in the world, there can, therefore, be no soul being. We are only dealing with the conversion of food into energy, which is given off again to the outside.”

This is a very smart conclusion. Just as well one could say: In front of a Bank are two people counting money that is carried in and out. The amounts are equal, therefore inside the bank there are no staff. But is not staff needed to manage everything? This example is on the same level as the psychologist’s opinion and a large part of what figures as science today. Everyone who even somehow considers this matter can imagine what a spiritual culture that thinks so little would lead to. It is necessary to possess spiritual knowledge, for only here the single real impulse is given to the development of humanity. If the human being does not find out what is behind the manifestations, then the world cannot be understood. One must arrive at the great, far-reaching, all-embracing laws, at the relationships of beings and worlds.

• 1. Refer to Dionysius Areopagita: The Hierarchies of the Angels and the Church, Barth Publishing House, Munich 1955. Dionysius Areopagita was a student of the Apostle Paul, by whom he was initiated into Christian esoteric. Initially his teachings were conveyed only verbally, and were written down only in the 5^th 1
• 2. Giordano Bruno, 1548-1600, Italian Philosopher.
• 3. Nicolaus Copernicus, 1473-1543, astronomer, founder of the modern heliocentric view of the cosmos.
• 4. See also to the more detailed description, of later years, of this topic inCorrespondences between Microcosm and Macrocosm. Man—Hieroglyph of the Universe, GA 201, and in The Relation of the different Branches of Natural Science to Astronomy, GA 323. 4
• 5. em>Outline of Psychology, Leipzig, 1908, by Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909), Professor of Philosophy in Halle, Leipzig. Ebbinghaus’ views, that Rudolf Steiner summarised, can be found in his book, page 37, in the section headed Interaction and Parallelism. He says there, “Since about one decade.... the preservation of energy in higher beings, for example in dogs, yes, recently also in humans, has been proven by experiments..... the source of the energy flow lies in the food consumed”. Ebbinghaus’ presentation culminates in the sentence, “Also in the organism of the human being there is consequently no space for the free activity of independent souls”.

If we recall what we have learnt so far about our earth's beginnings, we find many things which still need to be explained. What we have so far learnt does, however, make clear that we have to look for much more reality—many more Beings—in Genesis than the usual translations convey.

We pointed out yesterday that the word yom does not indicate the abstract period of time which is what the word “day” means now, but refers to the Beings whom we call Spirits of Personality, Time-Spirits, Archai. This discovery enables us to enter more deeply into what I have already repeated several times: that behind the weaving life of elementary existence described in the Bible account of the creation, soul-spiritual Beings are everywhere to be seen. We may now see Being instead of empty abstractions behind much else that comes before us in the Genesis account. Of course it is easy to see Being when the Bible is referring to the Spirit of the Elohim—Ruach Elohim¹—but if we wish to grasp the sense of the ancient tradition we have to look for Being not only in those expressions where probably even modern minds would be prepared to recognise it; we must be prepared to find it everywhere. For example we should be quite justified in raising the question in connection with such expressions (to use my own words) as “The inner activity was tohu wabohu” and “And darkness was upon the elementary material existence.” Have we not perhaps also to see something of the nature of Being behind what is described as “darkness”? We cannot understand the Genesis account unless we can answer such questions. Just as we have to see manifestations of the spirit behind all that appears in the positive direction, such as light, air, water, earth, warmth, so we shall perhaps have to see manifestations of a deeper spiritual nature in the more negative expressions.

To get to the bottom of this, we must again go back to the earliest point we can reach in the development of our planet. As we have often said, we must think of the ancient Saturn existence as a condition of pure warmth, and that with the transition to the Sun there then took place on the one hand a densification to air or gas, on the other hand a rarefaction in the direction of the etheric, to light-ether. We have said that the passage in which the words ring forth And God (the Elohim) said, Let there be light; and there was light is describing a kind of repetition of this coming into existence of the light-ether.

Now we may ask: Was the darkness there of itself; or does spiritual Being lie behind this also? If you read the relevant passages in my Occult Science you will come across something extremely important for the understanding of all development—the fact that at each stage of evolution certain Beings remain behind. Only a certain number of Beings reach their goal. I have often used a singularly bald illustration, pointing out that not only are some schoolboys backward, to the sorrow of their parents, but in the cosmic process, too, certain Beings do in fact lag behind, do not attain their appropriate goal. Thus we may say that during the ancient Saturn evolution certain Beings did not reach their proper goal, they lagged behind. During the Sun evolution they still remained at the Saturn stage.

How could one recognise on the Sun the Beings who were still really Saturn Beings? By the fact that they had not acquired the light nature, which was of the very essence of the Sun state. But because these Beings were nevertheless there, the Sun, which I have described as an inweaving of light, warmth and air, had darkness as well as light in it. And this darkness was the mark of the Beings remaining at the Saturn stage, just as the weaving light indicated the Beings who had progressed regularly to the Sun stage. Thus, there was an interweaving of Beings who were still at the Saturn stage of development with Beings who had progressed normally to the Sun stage. From the inner aspect these Beings moved in and out among one another; and outwardly they manifested themselves as an interplay of light and darkness. We can call the manifestation of the more advanced Beings, light, and the manifestation of the Beings remaining behind at the Saturn stage, darkness.

If we know this, we shall expect the relationship between advanced and backward Beings to reappear during the recapitulation of the Saturn and Sun epochs in earth evolution. And because the backward Saturn Beings represent an earlier stage of evolution, they will appear earlier than the light in the recapitulation also. Thus, quite rightly, in the first verse of Genesis we are told that darkness prevailed over the elementary substances. That is the recapitulation of the Saturn existence, now a backward one. The Sun existence has to wait; it comes later, it comes at the point where the Bible says: Let there be light.

Thus we see that the Genesis story is in complete accordance with the recapitulation described in my Occult Science.

If we would understand existence, we must be clear that what emerged at an earlier stage does not just go on for a time and then disappear. Something new is continually arising, but the old remains actual alongside the new and continues to work within it. And so even today we have co-existing the two stages of evolution which we can call light and darkness. Light and darkness permeate our existence.

Here we come to a rather thorny subject. Possibly some of you may know that for the last thirty years or so I have been trying at intervals to show the deep significance and value of Goethe's Theory of Colour. Of course, anyone who supports this theory today must make up his mind that he will not gain the ear of his contemporaries. For those whose knowledge of physics would qualify them to understand its significance are today wholly unprepared for it. Modern physics, with its fantastic nonsense about ether vibrations and so on, is utterly incapable of penetrating to the real heart of Goethe's Theory of Colour. For this we shall still have to wait for several decades. Anyone who treats of the subject knows that. And the others—forgive me for saying this—those whose knowledge of occultism would perhaps equip them to understand the essential nature of the Goethean theory, know too little about physics for me to be able to discuss the subject in detail. Thus there is today no proper basis for such a discussion. The fundamental content of Goethe's theory of colour is the mystery of light and darkness, working together as two real polaric entities in the world. The concept of matter which is put forward today is simply a fantasy; it is an illusion. Matter is in reality a soul-spiritual being, which is to be traced everywhere where the polaric contrast of light and darkness is effective. The physical notion of matter which is generally accepted is, in truth, a chimera. In the regions of space where, according to physics, we are to look for a sort of apparition called “matter,” there is in actual fact nothing else but a certain degree of darkness. And this dark content of space is filled out with something of a soul-spiritual nature, something akin to what is intended in Genesis in the passage where “darkness” (the word used to denote the collective whole of this soul-spiritual entity) is described as weaving over the elementary existence. All these things are much more profound than modern natural science dreams! Thus when Genesis speaks of darkness, it is speaking of the manifestation of the backward Saturn Beings. And when it speaks of light, it is referring to the advanced Beings. They interact and interweave with one another.

We said yesterday that the main lines, the main features, of evolution were laid down by Beings at the stage of the Exusiai, the Spirits of Form, so that these Beings plan the general direction of the activities of light. And further, we have seen that they make use of the Spirits of Personality as their servants, and that behind the expression yom, day, we have to see a Being of the rank of the Archai, appointed under the Elohim. We may also assume that, just as on the positive side these servants of the Elohim, these Spirits of Personality indicated by yom, are active, so also the backward spiritual Beings, who work in opposition to them in darkness, play their part. Indeed we may say that darkness is something that the Elohim find already there. Light is something they bring into being through their musing, their meditation. When they think out the two complexes from what has remained over from the earlier existence, it comes about that darkness is interwoven therein as the expression of the backward Beings. They themselves bestow the light. But just as out of the light the Elohim appoint the Beings represented by yom, day, so out of the darkness come Beings who are of the same rank as these, but Beings who have lagged behind at an earlier stage. Thus we can say that all that manifests itself as darkness stands together on one side in opposition to the Elohim And now we have to ask, who are the Beings who oppose the Archai, servants of the Elohim, the Beings indicated by the word yom? Who are the corresponding backward Beings in opposition to them?

To avoid misunderstanding, it would be as well to clear up first another point—whether we have always to look upon these backward Beings as evil, as something wrong in the world-context. It is easy for the abstract man, the man who is concerned only with concepts, to feel something like indignation over the backward Beings; or he can make the mistake of being sorry for the poor things! We should not harbour feelings and ideas of such a kind as regards these tremendous realities of the universe. That would lead us completely astray. On the contrary we should remind ourselves that everything happens out of cosmic wisdom, and that whenever Beings remain behind at a particular stage of development, it means something; it has significance for the whole for Beings to remain behind, just as it has for them to attain their goal; in other words, there are certain functions which cannot be carried out by the advanced Beings, functions for which Beings are needed who remain at an earlier stage. They are in their proper place in their backwardness. What would become of the world if all those who ought to be teachers of young children were to become university professors? Those who do not become professors are much better where they are than the professors would be. Those who occupy academic chairs would probably turn out to be very badly suited for the instruction of seven-, eight-, nine- and ten-year-olds! Something of the same kind is true in cosmic relationships. There are certain tasks for which those who attain their goal would be little fitted. For certain tasks those who have remained behind—we could equally well say those who have renounced progress—must take their place. And just as the advanced Spirits of Personality, the Yamim, were given their task by the Elohim, so the backward Archai also, those Spirits of Personality who reveal themselves not through light, but through darkness, are made use of in order to evoke the laws of earthly development. They are allotted their proper place, so that they may make their contribution to the orderly development of our existence.

How important that is we can see from an illustration borrowed from everyday life. The light of which Genesis speaks is not the light which we can see with our physical eyes—that is a subsequent form of light. In the same way what we designate as physical darkness, what surrounds us at night, is a later form of what is called darkness in Genesis. None of you will doubt that the physical daylight which we see nowadays is important both for man and for other living things. Take for example the plants! If you remove them from the light they deteriorate, become stunted in their growth. Light is an element of life for every living thing, and, so far as their external physical existence is concerned, it is a necessity for men too.

But something else is also necessary as well as light. To understand what this is, we have to consider the rhythmic alternation of sleeping and waking. What does it really mean to be awake? All the activity of our souls, all that we develop in our thinking and feeling, all the ebb and flow of our passions—in short, all that happens through the fluctuating energies of our astral bodies and our egos, constitutes a continual using up of our physical bodies during day life. That is a very ancient occult truth, a truth to which even modern physiology comes if it knows how to interpret its own findings properly. What the soul unfolds as its inner life in the waking state continuously uses up the forces of the external physical body, the first rudiments of which were bestowed during the Saturn existence. The life of the physical body is quite different in sleep, when the astral body with its fluctuant inner life is outside it. Whereas in waking life there is a continuous consumption, or even a continuous destruction, of the forces of the physical body, in sleep these forces are being restored, being renewed and built up again all the time. So that in our physical and etheric bodies we have to distinguish destructive processes and processes of renewal—destructive processes which take place during waking life, processes of renewal which take place during sleep. But nothing which happens anywhere in space is isolated, it is always related to existence as a whole. And we must not think of those processes of destruction, which take place in our physical bodies from the time we awaken to the time we go to sleep again, as being confined within the limits of our skin. They are closely bound up with cosmic processes. They are merely a continuation of what flows into us from outside, so that during the waking life of day we are connected with the destructive forces of the universe, and during sleep with the forces of renewal.

This destruction of our physical bodies which goes on during the waking life of day could not have happened during the Saturn evolution, otherwise the first rudiments of our physical body could never have been formed. For obviously one can build up nothing if one starts to destroy it. The Saturnian operation on our bodies had to be a constructive one. The destructive process takes place in the daytime under the influence of light, but on Saturn there was no light. Therefore the Saturn activity on our physical bodies was an up-building one, and had to be maintained at least for a time, even into the later period, when on the Sun light appeared. Then the up-building activity could only be maintained through Saturn Beings remaining behind to care for it.

It was necessary for the Saturn Beings to be kept back in cosmic evolution, so that they could undertake the rebuilding of the physical body during sleep, while there was no light. Thus the backward Saturn Beings have their part to play in our existence; without them we should be exposed to nothing but destruction. There has to be an alternation, a co-operation, of Sun Beings and Saturn Beings, of light and darkness. Thus if the activity of the light Beings is to be rightly guided by the Elohim, they must inweave into their own work in an orderly fashion the work of the Beings of darkness. There can be no stability in cosmic activity unless the force of darkness is everywhere interwoven with the force of light. And in this complication of the forces of light and darkness lies one of the secrets of cosmic existence, of cosmic alchemy. This secret is touched upon in the seventh scene of my first Mystery Play, where Johannes Thomasius enters Devachan, and where one of Maria's companions, Astrid, is given the task of weaving the dark into the light. Throughout the conversation between Maria and her three companions you will find many cosmic mysteries concealed, which can well be pondered for a long, long time.

Thus we must never forget that the interplay between the forces of sun-light and Saturn-darkness is a necessity of our existence. When therefore the Elohim placed the Spirits of Personality as their deputies in charge of the weaving of the light forces, of the work which is performed upon us men and upon other earthly beings while the light is affecting us, they had also to appoint the backward Saturn Beings as fellow-workers; they had to see that the whole work of the universe was carried on by the normally advanced and the backward Archai together. The backward Archai are active in the darkness. Hence the Elohim employ not only the Beings designated by yom, day, but they set in opposition to them Beings who weave in the darkness. And the Bible says with a wonderfully realistic description of the facts: And God called the light Day (yom), and the darkness He called Night (lay'lah).² And lay'lah does not mean our abstract night, but lay'lah are the Saturn Archai, who at that time had not advanced to the Sun stage. And to this day it is they who are active in us during sleep, when they work upon our physical and etheric bodies, building them up. This mysterious expression lay'lah, which has given rise to all kinds of myths, is neither our abstract “night” nor is it anything which need lead to myth-making. It is simply the name of the backward Archai, who unite their activity with that of the advanced Archai.

Thus we have paraphrased the appropriate words in Genesis somewhat as follows: The Elohim planned the main lines of existence; they deputed the advanced Archai to work under them, and appointed to help them those Archai who in resignation had remained in darkness at the Saturn stage, in order that existence could come about. Thus we have yom and lay'lah as two contrasted groups of Beings, who help the Elohim and who are at the stage of the Time-Spirits, the Spirits of Personality. We see existence being woven out of the Spirits of Form and the Spirits of Personality, out of advanced Beings and the backward Beings of these two hierarchies.

Now that we have found an answer to these questions which satisfies us up to a certain point (there is of course much more behind all these things), another question will be on the tip of all your tongues. What of the other hierarchies? We distinguish among the hierarchies in descending order from the Spirits of Form, first the Archai, the Spirits of Personality, then the Archangeloi, the Archangels, or Fire-Spirits. Does Genesis say nothing of these? Let us look more closely to find out what the position is with regard to the Fire-Spirits. We know that they reached their human stage during the Sun evolution. They have advanced through the Moon stage to that of earth. They are the Beings who are inwardly connected with everything of a sun nature, for it was during the Sun evolution that they reached their human stage. And when during the Moon evolution it became necessary for the Sun to separate from the earth, which was at that time of a Moon nature, then these Beings, who had gone through their most important stage of development on the Sun, who were, so to say, by their very nature associated with the Sun, naturally remained united with the Sun. When therefore the Moon (later to become earth) separated from the Sun, these Beings remained, not with the separating Earth-Moon, but with the Sun. They are the principal Beings who work upon the earth from without.

I have already indicated that in the evolution from Saturn to Sun, the highest form of life which could be reached on the Sun was the plant species. Before an animal nature with an inner life could come about there had to be a separation, a cleavage. Thus it was not until the Moon evolution that anything of an animal nature could arise. An influence from without was needed. Now in Genesis we are not told of anything being active from without up to the end of the third day of creation. The transition from the third to the fourth day is an important one, for we are told that on the fourth day light forces, Beings of light, began to be active from without. So that, just as in the Moon period the sun shone upon the Moon from without, so now both the sun and the moon shone upon the earth from without. It amounts to no less than this—up to this point all those forces which were themselves within the earth element could take effect. Up to this point it was possible for there to be a recapitulation of earlier stages of evolution, and for forces centralised in the earth itself to arise anew. Thus we saw yesterday how in the Spirit of the Elohim who brooded over the waters the warmth state was recapitulated; how in the moment designated by the words Let there be light the entry of light was recapitulated; how at the point where the forces of the sound-ether broke in and separated the upper from the lower, the sound-ether stage was recapitulated. That was on the second day of creation. Then we saw how the life-ether intervened on the third day, when out of the earth element, out of the new condition, there came forth all that can be brought about by the life-ether—the sprouting green. But in order for anything animal to find a place on the earth there has to be a repetition of the “being shone upon” (if I may use the expression), an influence of forces acting from without. Hence it is quite in accordance with the facts that there should be no mention in Genesis of anything of an animal nature until after we have been told of forces working upon the earth from cosmic space. Up to that time Genesis speaks only of the plant nature; all the beings on the earth were at the plant stage. The animal nature could not begin until light Beings were influencing the earth from its environment.

What then came about is described in Genesis in words of which various translations exist. [The English Authorised Version is: And God said, ... let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years.]

Now there are some commentators, some exegetists, who have begun to think. But at the present day, when people scorn to penetrate to fundamental realities, it is the wretched lot of commentators that they begin to think, but cannot think anything through to the end. I have known some of these commentators who have reached the point of acknowledging that the usual rendering is nonsense. I should like to meet the man who can really make any sense of these words. What really lies behind them?

If we wish to render this passage faithfully with a real sense of the associations which the words would have had for the ancient Hebrew sage, and with philological thoroughness, we shall have to say that once more it is not a question of signs, but of the activity of living Beings making themselves known in the form of successive events in time. A correct translation would be: And the Elohim appointed Beings to regulate the course of time for the beings on earth, to regulate specific divisions of time (the word “day” is not mentioned at all), larger or smaller periods (usually given as “year” and “day”). Thus the reference is to those Beings who stand next below the rank of the Archai and who regulate life. The tasks performed by the Time-Spirits, the Archai, lie a stage lower than the tasks of the Elohim. Then come the regulators, the sign-fixers, for what has to be regulated, grouped, within the activity of the Archai. But these are none other than the Archangels. Thus we may venture to say that in the moment to which Genesis refers, when not only is something taking place in the body of the earth, but when forces are working into the earth from without, it becomes possible for Beings who are already united with the sun existence—the regulating Archangels, who are one stage lower than the Archai—to intervene. While the Archai themselves are still active as Aeons, for the deployment of their forces they make use of the Archangels, the light-bearers, who act from the circumference. That means that through the constellations of the light-Beings surrounding the earth, the Archangels work out of cosmic space in such a way that the great ordinances laid down by the Archai may be carried into effect.

Those who were present at the course of lectures I gave in Christiania will remember that even today the Archai are still behind what we are accustomed to call the Spirit of the Age. If we look around at the way our own world has been organised, we find that each age has a number of peoples over whom for a specific period a Time-Spirit holds sway. Side by side with him and subordinated to him work the several Folk-Spirits. And just as today the Spirits of the Age or Time-Spirits are in control, and behind them are the Archai—I described that in my Christiania lectures³—so behind the Folk-Spirits are the Archangels; in a certain way they are the Folk-Spirits. Genesis points to the fact that even in times when man himself was really not yet there, these spiritual Beings were the organising powers.

Thus we must say that it was the Elohim who brought light into existence; they manifested themselves through light. But for lesser activities within the light they appointed the Archai, who are indicated in Genesis by the word yom, and who ranked next below them among the hierarchies; and they placed beside the Archai the Beings who must of necessity be woven into the web of existence, in order that the requisite activity of darkness can come into association with the activity of light. Side by side with yom they placed lay'lah, which is usually translated “night.” Then it became a question of how to progress further and into greater detail. For this, other Beings from the ranks of the hierarchies are chosen. Thus when it has been said that the Elohim or Spirits of Form manifested themselves through light, and placed the affairs of light and darkness in charge of the Archai, one has to add that now they took another step and, specialising further, appointed the Archangels to activities which not only call an external plant life into existence, but which are now to call forth an inner life, an inner life capable of reflecting the outer; they entrusted to the Archangels the activity which has to stream upon our earth from without, so that not only can the plant species shoot up, but also the animal nature, weaving its inward life of image and sensation.

Thus we see how, when we know how to interpret it, the Genesis account refers to Archangels too, quite in accordance with the facts. When you turn to the exegesis of the general run of commentators you will always feel dissatisfied. But if you turn for help to the same source from which the Genesis account came, if you turn to Occult Science, a flood of light will be thrown upon that account. It will all appear to you in a new light. And this ancient document, which otherwise would inevitably remain incomprehensible, because of the impossibility of translating the ancient living words into our language, will endure as a document which speaks to mankind for all time.

• 1. According to the Authorised Version: and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
• 2. The “y” is consonantal, as in the word yellow.
• 3. The Mission of Folk-Souls in connection with Germanic and Scandinavian Mythology. Eleven lectures by Rudolf Steiner given at Oslo in June, 1910. (English translation, 1929, out of print.

If we recall what we have learnt so far about our earth's beginnings, we find many things which still need to be explained. What we have so far learnt does, however, make clear that we have to look for much more reality—many more Beings—in Genesis than the usual translations convey.

We pointed out yesterday that the word yom does not indicate the abstract period of time which is what the word “day” means now, but refers to the Beings whom we call Spirits of Personality, Time-Spirits, Archai. This discovery enables us to enter more deeply into what I have already repeated several times: that behind the weaving life of elementary existence described in the Bible account of the creation, soul-spiritual Beings are everywhere to be seen. We may now see Being instead of empty abstractions behind much else that comes before us in the Genesis account. Of course it is easy to see Being when the Bible is referring to the Spirit of the Elohim—Ruach Elohim—but if we wish to grasp the sense of the ancient tradition we have to look for Being not only in those expressions where probably even modern minds would be prepared to recognise it; we must be prepared to find it everywhere. For example we should be quite justified in raising the question in connection with such expressions (to use my own words) as “The inner activity was tohu wabohu” and “And darkness was upon the elementary material existence.” Have we not perhaps also to see something of the nature of Being behind what is described as “darkness”? We cannot understand the Genesis account unless we can answer such questions. Just as we have to see manifestations of the spirit behind all that appears in the positive direction, such as light, air, water, earth, warmth, so we shall perhaps have to see manifestations of a deeper spiritual nature in the more negative expressions.

To get to the bottom of this, we must again go back to the earliest point we can reach in the development of our planet. As we have often said, we must think of the ancient Saturn existence as a condition of pure warmth, and that with the transition to the Sun there then took place on the one hand a densification to air or gas, on the other hand a rarefaction in the direction of the etheric, to light-ether. We have said that the passage in which the words ring forth And God (the Elohim) said, Let there be light; and there was light is describing a kind of repetition of this coming into existence of the light-ether.

Now we may ask: Was the darkness there of itself; or does spiritual Being lie behind this also? If you read the relevant passages in my >Occult Science you will come across something extremely important for the understanding of all development—the fact that at each stage of evolution certain Beings remain behind. Only a certain number of Beings reach their goal. I have often used a singularly bald illustration, pointing out that not only are some schoolboys backward, to the sorrow of their parents, but in the cosmic process, too, certain Beings do in fact lag behind, do not attain their appropriate goal. Thus we may say that during the ancient Saturn evolution certain Beings did not reach their proper goal, they lagged behind. During the Sun evolution they still remained at the Saturn stage.

How could one recognise on the Sun the Beings who were still really Saturn Beings? By the fact that they had not acquired the light nature, which was of the very essence of the Sun state. But because these Beings were nevertheless there, the Sun, which I have described as an inweaving of light, warmth and air, had darkness as well as light in it. And this darkness was the mark of the Beings remaining at the Saturn stage, just as the weaving light indicated the Beings who had progressed regularly to the Sun stage. Thus, there was an interweaving of Beings who were still at the Saturn stage of development with Beings who had progressed normally to the Sun stage. From the inner aspect these Beings moved in and out among one another; and outwardly they manifested themselves as an interplay of light and darkness. We can call the manifestation of the more advanced Beings, light, and the manifestation of the Beings remaining behind at the Saturn stage, darkness.

If we know this, we shall expect the relationship between advanced and backward Beings to reappear during the recapitulation of the Saturn and Sun epochs in earth evolution. And because the backward Saturn Beings represent an earlier stage of evolution, they will appear earlier than the light in the recapitulation also. Thus, quite rightly, in the first verse of Genesis we are told that darkness prevailed over the elementary substances. That is the recapitulation of the Saturn existence, now a backward one. The Sun existence has to wait; it comes later, it comes at the point where the Bible says: Let there be light.

Thus we see that the Genesis story is in complete accordance with the recapitulation described in my Occult Science.

If we would understand existence, we must be clear that what emerged at an earlier stage does not just go on for a time and then disappear. Something new is continually arising, but the old remains actual alongside the new and continues to work within it. And so even today we have co-existing the two stages of evolution which we can call light and darkness. Light and darkness permeate our existence.

Here we come to a rather thorny subject. Possibly some of you may know that for the last thirty years or so I have been trying at intervals to show the deep significance and value of Goethe's Theory of Colour. Of course, anyone who supports this theory today must make up his mind that he will not gain the ear of his contemporaries. For those whose knowledge of physics would qualify them to understand its significance are today wholly unprepared for it. Modern physics, with its fantastic nonsense about ether vibrations and so on, is utterly incapable of penetrating to the real heart of Goethe's Theory of Colour. For this we shall still have to wait for several decades. Anyone who treats of the subject knows that. And the others—forgive me for saying this—those whose knowledge of occultism would perhaps equip them to understand the essential nature of the Goethean theory, know too little about physics for me to be able to discuss the subject in detail. Thus there is today no proper basis for such a discussion. The fundamental content of Goethe's theory of colour is the mystery of light and darkness, working together as two real polaric entities in the world. The concept of matter which is put forward today is simply a fantasy; it is an illusion. Matter is in reality a soul-spiritual being, which is to be traced everywhere where the polaric contrast of light and darkness is effective. The physical notion of matter which is generally accepted is, in truth, a chimera. In the regions of space where, according to physics, we are to look for a sort of apparition called “matter,” there is in actual fact nothing else but a certain degree of darkness. And this dark content of space is filled out with something of a soul-spiritual nature, something akin to what is intended in Genesis in the passage where “darkness” (the word used to denote the collective whole of this soul-spiritual entity) is described as weaving over the elementary existence.¹ All these things are much more profound than modern natural science dreams! Thus when Genesis speaks of darkness, it is speaking of the manifestation of the backward Saturn Beings. And when it speaks of light, it is referring to the advanced Beings. They interact and interweave with one another.

We said yesterday that the main lines, the main features, of evolution were laid down by Beings at the stage of the Exusiai, the Spirits of Form, so that these Beings plan the general direction of the activities of light. And further, we have seen that they make use of the Spirits of Personality as their servants, and that behind the expression yom, day, we have to see a Being of the rank of the Archai, appointed under the Elohim. We may also assume that, just as on the positive side these servants of the Elohim, these Spirits of Personality indicated by yom, are active, so also the backward spiritual Beings, who work in opposition to them in darkness, play their part. Indeed we may say that darkness is something that the Elohim find already there. Light is something they bring into being through their musing, their meditation. When they think out the two complexes from what has remained over from the earlier existence, it comes about that darkness is interwoven therein as the expression of the backward Beings. They themselves bestow the light. But just as out of the light the Elohim appoint the Beings represented by yom, day, so out of the darkness come Beings who are of the same rank as these, but Beings who have lagged behind at an earlier stage. Thus we can say that all that manifests itself as darkness stands together on one side in opposition to the Elohim And now we have to ask, who are the Beings who oppose the Archai, servants of the Elohim, the Beings indicated by the word yom? Who are the corresponding backward Beings in opposition to them?

To avoid misunderstanding, it would be as well to clear up first another point—whether we have always to look upon these backward Beings as evil, as something wrong in the world-context. It is easy for the abstract man, the man who is concerned only with concepts, to feel something like indignation over the backward Beings; or he can make the mistake of being sorry for the poor things! We should not harbour feelings and ideas of such a kind as regards these tremendous realities of the universe. That would lead us completely astray. On the contrary we should remind ourselves that everything happens out of cosmic wisdom, and that whenever Beings remain behind at a particular stage of development, it means something; it has significance for the whole for Beings to remain behind, just as it has for them to attain their goal; in other words, there are certain functions which cannot be carried out by the advanced Beings, functions for which Beings are needed who remain at an earlier stage. They are in their proper place in their backwardness. What would become of the world if all those who ought to be teachers of young children were to become university professors? Those who do not become professors are much better where they are than the professors would be. Those who occupy academic chairs would probably turn out to be very badly suited for the instruction of seven-, eight-, nine- and ten-year-olds! Something of the same kind is true in cosmic relationships. There are certain tasks for which those who attain their goal would be little fitted. For certain tasks those who have remained behind—we could equally well say those who have renounced progress—must take their place. And just as the advanced Spirits of Personality, the Yamim, were given their task by the Elohim, so the backward Archai also, those Spirits of Personality who reveal themselves not through light, but through darkness, are made use of in order to evoke the laws of earthly development. They are allotted their proper place, so that they may make their contribution to the orderly development of our existence.

How important that is we can see from an illustration borrowed from everyday life. The light of which Genesis speaks is not the light which we can see with our physical eyes—that is a subsequent form of light. In the same way what we designate as physical darkness, what surrounds us at night, is a later form of what is called darkness in Genesis. None of you will doubt that the physical daylight which we see nowadays is important both for man and for other living things. Take for example the plants! If you remove them from the light they deteriorate, become stunted in their growth. Light is an element of life for every living thing, and, so far as their external physical existence is concerned, it is a necessity for men too.

But something else is also necessary as well as light. To understand what this is, we have to consider the rhythmic alternation of sleeping and waking. What does it really mean to be awake? All the activity of our souls, all that we develop in our thinking and feeling, all the ebb and flow of our passions—in short, all that happens through the fluctuating energies of our astral bodies and our egos, constitutes a continual using up of our physical bodies during day life. That is a very ancient occult truth, a truth to which even modern physiology comes if it knows how to interpret its own findings properly. What the soul unfolds as its inner life in the waking state continuously uses up the forces of the external physical body, the first rudiments of which were bestowed during the Saturn existence. The life of the physical body is quite different in sleep, when the astral body with its fluctuant inner life is outside it. Whereas in waking life there is a continuous consumption, or even a continuous destruction, of the forces of the physical body, in sleep these forces are being restored, being renewed and built up again all the time. So that in our physical and etheric bodies we have to distinguish destructive processes and processes of renewal—destructive processes which take place during waking life, processes of renewal which take place during sleep. But nothing which happens anywhere in space is isolated, it is always related to existence as a whole. And we must not think of those processes of destruction, which take place in our physical bodies from the time we awaken to the time we go to sleep again, as being confined within the limits of our skin. They are closely bound up with cosmic processes. They are merely a continuation of what flows into us from outside, so that during the waking life of day we are connected with the destructive forces of the universe, and during sleep with the forces of renewal.

This destruction of our physical bodies which goes on during the waking life of day could not have happened during the Saturn evolution, otherwise the first rudiments of our physical body could never have been formed. For obviously one can build up nothing if one starts to destroy it. The Saturnian operation on our bodies had to be a constructive one. The destructive process takes place in the daytime under the influence of light, but on Saturn there was no light. Therefore the Saturn activity on our physical bodies was an up-building one, and had to be maintained at least for a time, even into the later period, when on the Sun light appeared. Then the up-building activity could only be maintained through Saturn Beings remaining behind to care for it.

It was necessary for the Saturn Beings to be kept back in cosmic evolution, so that they could undertake the rebuilding of the physical body during sleep, while there was no light. Thus the backward Saturn Beings have their part to play in our existence; without them we should be exposed to nothing but destruction. There has to be an alternation, a co-operation, of Sun Beings and Saturn Beings, of light and darkness. Thus if the activity of the light Beings is to be rightly guided by the Elohim, they must inweave into their own work in an orderly fashion the work of the Beings of darkness. There can be no stability in cosmic activity unless the force of darkness is everywhere interwoven with the force of light. And in this complication of the forces of light and darkness lies one of the secrets of cosmic existence, of cosmic alchemy. This secret is touched upon in the seventh scene of my first Mystery Play, where Johannes Thomasius enters Devachan, and where one of Maria's companions, Astrid, is given the task of weaving the dark into the light. Throughout the conversation between Maria and her three companions you will find many cosmic mysteries concealed, which can well be pondered for a long, long time.

Thus we must never forget that the interplay between the forces of sun-light and Saturn-darkness is a necessity of our existence. When therefore the Elohim placed the Spirits of Personality as their deputies in charge of the weaving of the light forces, of the work which is performed upon us men and upon other earthly beings while the light is affecting us, they had also to appoint the backward Saturn Beings as fellow-workers; they had to see that the whole work of the universe was carried on by the normally advanced and the backward Archai together. The backward Archai are active in the darkness. Hence the Elohim employ not only the Beings designated by yom, day, but they set in opposition to them Beings who weave in the darkness. And the Bible says with a wonderfully realistic description of the facts: And God called the light Day (yom), and the darkness He called Night (lay'lah).² And lay'lah does not mean our abstract night, but lay'lah are the Saturn Archai, who at that time had not advanced to the Sun stage. And to this day it is they who are active in us during sleep, when they work upon our physical and etheric bodies, building them up. This mysterious expression lay'lah, which has given rise to all kinds of myths, is neither our abstract “night” nor is it anything which need lead to myth-making. It is simply the name of the backward Archai, who unite their activity with that of the advanced Archai.

The “y” is consonantal, as in the word yellow.

Thus we have paraphrased the appropriate words in Genesis somewhat as follows: The Elohim planned the main lines of existence; they deputed the advanced Archai to work under them, and appointed to help them those Archai who in resignation had remained in darkness at the Saturn stage, in order that existence could come about. Thus we have yom and lay'lah as two contrasted groups of Beings, who help the Elohim and who are at the stage of the Time-Spirits, the Spirits of Persönality. We see existence being woven out of the Spirits of Form and the Spirits of Personality, out of advanced Beings and the backward Beings of these two hierarchies.

Now that we have found an answer to these questions which satisfies us up to a certain point (there is of course much more behind all these things), another question will be on the tip of all your tongues. What of the other hierarchies? We distinguish among the hierarchies in descending order from the Spirits of Form, first the Archai, the Spirits of Personality, then the Archangeloi, the Archangels, or Fire-Spirits. Does Genesis say nothing of these? Let us look more closely to find out what the position is with regard to the Fire-Spirits. We know that they reached their human stage during the Sun evolution. They have advanced through the Moon stage to that of earth. They are the Beings who are inwardly connected with everything of a sun nature, for it was during the Sun evolution that they reached their human stage. And when during the Moon evolution it became necessary for the Sun to separate from the earth, which was at that time of a Moon nature, then these Beings, who had gone through their most important stage of development on the Sun, who were, so to say, by their very nature associated with the Sun, naturally remained united with the Sun. When therefore the Moon (later to become earth) separated from the Sun, these Beings remained, not with the separating Earth-Moon, but with the Sun. They are the principal Beings who work upon the earth from without.

I have already indicated that in the evolution from Saturn to Sun, the highest form of life which could be reached on the Sun was the plant species. Before an animal nature with an inner life could come about there had to be a separation, a cleavage. Thus it was not until the Moon evolution that anything of an animal nature could arise. An influence from without was needed. Now in Genesis we are not told of anything being active from without up to the end of the third day of creation. The transition from the third to the fourth day is an important one, for we are told that on the fourth day light forces, Beings of light, began to be active from without. So that, just as in the Moon period the sun shone upon the Moon from without, so now both the sun and the moon shone upon the earth from without. It amounts to no less than this—up to this point all those forces which were themselves within the earth element could take effect. Up to this point it was possible for there to be a recapitulation of earlier stages of evolution, and for forces centralised in the earth itself to arise anew. Thus we saw yesterday how in the Spirit of the Elohim who brooded over the waters the warmth state was recapitulated; how in the moment designated by the words Let there be light the entry of light was recapitulated; how at the point where the forces of the sound-ether broke in and separated the upper from the lower, the sound-ether stage was recapitulated. That was on the second day of creation. Then we saw how the life-ether intervened on the third day, when out of the earth element, out of the new condition, there came forth all that can be brought about by the life-ether—the sprouting green. But in order for anything animal to find a place on the earth there has to be a repetition of the “being shone upon” (if I may use the expression), an influence of forces acting from without. Hence it is quite in accordance with the facts that there should be no mention in Genesis of anything of an animal nature until after we have been told of forces working upon the earth from cosmic space. Up to that time Genesis speaks only of the plant nature; all the beings on the earth were at the plant stage. The animal nature could not begin until light Beings were influencing the earth from its environment.

What then came about is described in Genesis in words of which various translations exist. [The English Authorised Version is: And God said, ... let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years.]

Now there are some commentators, some exegetists, who have begun to think. But at the present day, when people scorn to penetrate to fundamental realities, it is the wretched lot of commentators that they begin to think, but cannot think anything through to the end. I have known some of these commentators who have reached the point of acknowledging that the usual rendering is nonsense. I should like to meet the man who can really make any sense of these words. What really lies behind them?

If we wish to render this passage faithfully with a real sense of the associations which the words would have had for the ancient Hebrew sage, and with philological thoroughness, we shall have to say that once more it is not a question of signs, but of the activity of living Beings making themselves known in the form of successive events in time. A correct translation would be: And the Elohim appointed Beings to regulate the course of time for the beings on earth, to regulate specific divisions of time (the word “day” is not mentioned at all), larger or smaller periods (usually given as “year” and “day”). Thus the reference is to those Beings who stand next below the rank of the Archai and who regulate life. The tasks performed by the Time-Spirits, the Archai, lie a stage lower than the tasks of the Elohim. Then come the regulators, the sign-fixers, for what has to be regulated, grouped, within the activity of the Archai. But these are none other than the Archangels. Thus we may venture to say that in the moment to which Genesis refers, when not only is something taking place in the body of the earth, but when forces are working into the earth from without, it becomes possible for Beings who are already united with the sun existence—the regulating Archangels, who are one stage lower than the Archai—to intervene. While the Archai themselves are still active as Aeons, for the deployment of their forces they make use of the Archangels, the light-bearers, who act from the circumference. That means that through the constellations of the light-Beings surrounding the earth, the Archangels work out of cosmic space in such a way that the great ordinances laid down by the Archai may be carried into effect.

Those who were present at the course of lectures I gave in Christiania will remember that even today the Archai are still behind what we are accustomed to call the Spirit of the Age. If we look around at the way our own world has been organised, we find that each age has a number of peoples over whom for a specific period a Time-Spirit holds sway. Side by side with him and subordinated to him work the several Folk-Spirits. And just as today the Spirits of the Age or Time-Spirits are in control, and behind them are the Archai—I described that in my Christiania lectures—so behind the Folk-Spirits are the Archangels; in a certain way they are the Folk-Spirits. Genesis points to the fact that even in times when man himself was really not yet there, these spiritual Beings were the organising powers.

Thus we must say that it was the Elohim who brought light into existence; they manifested themselves through light. But for lesser activities within the light they appointed the Archai, who are indicated in Genesis by the word yom, and who ranked next below them among the hierarchies; and they placed beside the Archai the Beings who must of necessity be woven into the web of existence, in order that the requisite activity of darkness can come into association with the activity of light. Side by side with yom they placed lay'lah, which is usually translated “night.” Then it became a question of how to progress further and into greater detail. For this, other Beings from the ranks of the hierarchies are chosen. Thus when it has been said that the Elohim or Spirits of Form manifested themselves through light, and placed the affairs of light and darkness in charge of the Archai, one has to add that now they took another step and, specialising further, appointed the Archangels to activities which not only call an external plant life into existence, but which are now to call forth an inner life, an inner life capable of reflecting the outer; they entrusted to the Archangels the activity which has to stream upon our earth from without, so that not only can the plant species shoot up, but also the animal nature, weaving its inward life of image and sensation.

Thus we see how, when we know how to interpret it, the Genesis account refers to Archangels too, quite in accordance with the facts. When you turn to the exegesis of the general run of commentators you will always feel dissatisfied. But if you turn for help to the same source from which the Genesis account came, if you turn to Occult Science, a flood of light will be thrown upon that account. It will all appear to you in a new light. And this ancient document, which otherwise would inevitably remain incomprehensible, because of the impossibility of translating the ancient living words into our language, will endure as a document which speaks to mankind for all time.

• 1. According to the Authorised Version: and darkness was upon the face of the deep
• 2. See Figure 10b, below.

Jesus ben Pandira and Initiation among the Essenes. The secret of numbers. Reflection of cosmic conditions in human evolution. The secret of the blood in the line of descent, and the secret of cosmic space

Ww have to realize that Jesus ben Pandira was in no way related to the personality or individuality of either the Jesus of the Gospel of Matthew or of the Gospel of Luke, or any other Gospel; he lived a hundred years before the Christ Event, and was stoned and hanged upon a tree. It is most important that he should not be confused with the Jesus of the Gospels.

Of Jesus ben Pandira it need only be stated that neither occult knowledge nor any clairvoyant faculties are necessary to prove his existence, for information in regard to this can be had from the Hebrew Talmud. Confusion with the actual Jesus has occurred at various times, even as early as the second century of the Christian era. Having stated emphatically that Jesus ben Pandira is not to be identified with the Jesus of the Evangelists, it is nevertheless necessary to establish the real historical connection of these two personalities. This is only possible by means of occult investigation; the connection between them only emerges after a study of the evolution of mankind and those who guide it.

Gazing upwards to those beings who lead human development, we come at last to a group of high individualities who, according to Eastern terminology, are called Bodhisattvas—for it is in the East where knowledge of them has been established. There are many Bodhisattvas; they are the great teachers of mankind. From the spiritual worlds they infuse into humanity through the Mystery schools what according to the degree of human ripeness is appropriate to each epoch. Bodhisattvas succeed one another throughout the ages. Two of them are of special interest to present humanity, one, who as son of King Sudhodana became Buddha; and the other, his successor in this dignity, who is still a Bodhisattva. Both Oriental wisdom and clairvoyant investigation agree that the latter's mission will extend over the next two thousand five hundred years, when this Bodhisattva will rise to the higher rank of Buddha as did his predecessor. This, the present Bodhisattva will then be exalted to the dignity of Maitreya Buddha. In the long line of Bodhisattvas we have to recognize the great guiding teachers of evolution, but they should not be confused with the source of their teaching, the source from which they themselves draw what they bestow upon humanity. Rather we have to picture a collegium of Bodhisattvas, and the centre of this collegium is the living source whence this teaching is derived. This living source is none other than He Whom we call the Christ, from Whom all Bodhisattvas receive what in due course they hand on to humanity. A Bodhisattva devotes himself principally to teaching, but upon attaining Buddha-hood he ceases to descend into incarnation, and his mission becomes different. In accordance with all Eastern philosophy it can be said that Gautama Buddha, who, in his last incarnation, was the son of King Sudhodana, has since then only experienced incorporation as far as the etheric body. In the course of lectures on the Gospel of Luke we explained what the next task of this Buddha was.

When the Jesus of the Gospel of Luke was born—the Nathan Jesus of whom Luke tells, and who is not to be confused with the Jesus of the Gospel of Matthew—the Being of the Buddha, who was then incorporated as far as the etheric body, entered into the astral body of the Nathan Jesus. It is therefore possible to say that having incarnated as Gautama Buddha, this Being did not come again as a teacher, but was henceforth present as a living force. He had become an actual force working from the spiritual world into our physical world.

To teach is one thing; to work as a living force with the forces of growth is something quite different. A Bodhisattva is a teacher up to the moment he attains Buddha-hood, from then onwards he becomes a vital force, filling with constructive power everything with which he is concerned. In this way the Buddha entered the organism of the Nathan Jesus as described by Luke. From the sixth century B.C. it is to the Buddha's successor, the coming Maitreya Buddha, that humanity must look for its teacher. His chosen instrument was the circle of the Therapeutæ and Essenes, and he poured down his inspiration especially through his disciple, Jesus, the son of Pandira, the purest, the most noted, the most exalted of them all. Thus we have to realize that the content of this Bodhisattva-teaching streamed forth into humanity through the Essenes.

The actual sect of the Essenes, as regards its profounder teaching, disappeared comparatively soon after the Christ Event, as external history testifies. Hence it need not sound improbable when I say that they were employed as a means for bringing down from the spheres of the Bodhisattvas what was necessary to prepare humanity to grasp the mighty event of the coming of Christ. The most important teaching man had received to aid him in the understanding of the Christ Event had its source in these communities. Jesus ben Pandira was chosen to receive inspiration from that Bodhisattva who was destined to become the Maitreya Buddha, and whose influence was active among the Essenes; he was inspired to impart a teaching that was to make comprehensible the Mystery of Palestine—the Mystery of Christ. External history knows little of the Essenes, more exact information regarding them is only possible with the aid of occult investigation; hence in a society like this I can speak without hesitation of secrets known to the Essenes and Therapeutæ that are needful to an understanding of the Gospel of Matthew.

These communities flourished a hundred years before the Christ Event, and taught how preparation was to be made for it. Their most important feature was the manner of their initiation. It was specially adapted to evoke an understanding, through clairvoyant perception, of the significance of Hebraism and Abrahamism as connected with the Christ Event. This was a mystery peculiar to these communities. The very purpose of their initiation was to impart clairvoyant perception in this connection. A follower of the Essenes had in the first place to attain full appreciation of the significance of what had come to pass in the Hebrew race through Abraham. Through his own individual vision, an Essene had to see in Abraham a true forefather of the race, one in whom a seed had been implanted which then, by means of the blood, percolated from generation to generation, as explained in the last lecture.

To understand how something of such great importance in human evolution could take place through a personality like Abraham, we must keep in mind a most important saying. This saying shows that whenever a man is destined to be a special instrument for human evolution he must be in direct contact with some divine spiritual being.

Those who attended the performance of the Rosicrucian Mystery Play, given at Munich, and those who have read it, know that one of the most important dramatic manifestations occurs where the hierophant informs Maria that her mission will only be possible after such an influx from a higher being has taken place. This was actually accomplished in her. What then took place may be called a separation of the higher from the lower principles, which made it possible for the latter to be possessed by a subordinate spirit. All this is to be found in the Rosicrucian Mystery Play, and if allowed to act on the soul, and not accepted lightly, it directs our attention to mighty secrets of human evolution.

Abraham having been selected for his great mission, the Spirit that had been recognized in early Atlantis as the Spirit who moved and lived in all the surrounding world had to enter into his inner organism. This happened for the first time in the case of Abraham, and therefore a change in man's spiritual perception then became possible for the first time. A divine Being implanted as it were a germ in Abraham's organism that was to enter all the other organisms descending from him in the direct line.

An Essene of that time would have said: The seed which actually formed the Hebrew people so as to fit them to be the vehicle for the mission of Christ, was first implanted in them by the mysterious Being only to be discovered when they looked back through the generations to Abraham. This Being worked as a kind of Folk-spirit from out the inner organism of Abraham in the blood of the Hebrew people. To reach some understanding of the crowning mystery of human evolution, it is necessary to rise to the Spirit who implanted this seed, and seek him where he was before he had entered into Abraham's organization. In order to rise to this Spirit who had organized and inspired the Hebrew people, to know him in his purity, the Essenes felt it to be necessary to pass through a certain training; they felt they must purify themselves from all that had come to human souls from the physical world since the time of Abraham. And further, an Essene would declare: The spiritual being which man bears within him, and all the other spiritual beings concerned with his development, are only to be seen in their purity in the spiritual world. As found in man, they have become defiled by the forces of the physical world.

From the point of view of the Essenes (which in a certain sphere of knowledge is absolutely correct), every single person then living had impurities in his soul from early times which disturbed his free vision of the Spiritual Being who had implanted the attribute in Abraham which has been described. Every Essene sought in his soul to be purified from what had entered him in this way, and which dimmed his vision of the Being who dwelt in the blood passing through the generations, the Being who could only be rightly seen after much purification. All the methods of their training were directed towards freeing the soul from its inherited tendencies and influences that clouded its vision and hid the spiritual inspirer of Abraham. Not only had man a spiritual being within him, but this being had been sullied through these inherited tendencies.

There is a law in Spiritual Science which was perceived by the Essenes through their clairvoyant investigation and spiritual vision: that hereditary influences only cease to be active when a man has passed through forty-two stages in the line of descent; only then has he purged his soul of inherited influences. What is inherited by man from father and mother, from grandfather and grandmother, and so on, becomes feebler the farther back the line is traced; beyond forty-two generations nothing more of this could be found, which means that the influence of inheritance is then lost. By careful training and inner exercises, the Essenes directed their attention towards eliminating the impurities of the forty-two generations. This meant a severe training on a mystical path of forty-two clearly defined degrees or stages. Once these were passed, the Essene knew he was freed from the influences of the world of sense, and had reached the point where he experienced his inner self; where he felt the centre of his being to be united with Divinity. Therefore said he: ‘In going through these forty-two stages I ascend to God—to the God with whom I am concerned.’

The Essenes and the Therapeutæ had a clear vision of man's path to a divine Being who had not as yet descended into matter; they alone knew the truth of the fact which can be described as the ‘Event of Abraham’ they knew it at least in so far as it was concerned with inheritance. They also knew that if a man was to rise to a Being who was to enter the line of inheritance he must reach a place where he was no longer steeped in matter he must pass through forty-two stages of development corresponding to the forty-two generations; then he would find that Being. The Essene knew something more; he knew just as man has to rise through these forty-two stages to reach Divinity, so this Divine Being must descend, in the reverse direction, through forty-two generations if He was to enter into physical humanity. If man required to rise through forty-two stages before attaining to God, God had to descend through forty-two stages in order to become a man among men. So taught the Essenes, and so taught above all Jesus ben Pandira, who was inspired by the Bodhisattva. Having learnt this we know the source whence flowed the knowledge given out by the writer of the Gospel of Matthew, and exactly why he traces back these forty-two generations.

Jesus ben Pandira, who instructed the Essenes in these matters, lived a century before these forty-two generations could be completed. He taught them that advance beyond a certain point on their journey through the forty-two stages was only possible if an historical event were connected with it, that any further achievement could only come by grace from above. A time, however, would come, he told them, when this would be a natural event; a man would be born who, through the power in his own blood, would be able to rise so high that divine Spiritual Forces could descend into him, which he had need of in order that he might make fully manifest the Spirit of the Race—the Spirit of Jahve—in the blood of the Hebrew people. Jesus ben Pandira taught them further; that if Zarathustra, he who would bring Ahura Mazdao, were to incarnate in human form, this could only come to pass if this human form had been so prepared that the Divine Spirit ensouling it had passed down through forty-two generations.

It is now apparent that the teaching concerning the descent through the generations with which the Gospel of Matthew begins had its origin among the sect of the Essenes. If these facts are to be fully understood we must refer to something still deeper in this whole connection.

Everything concerned with human evolution confronts us, as it were, from two sides, for the simple reason that man is a two-fold being. Seen during waking consciousness, when the four members of his being are united, the reason for man's dual nature is not at first discernible. But it is easily seen at night when one part, consisting of physical body and etheric body, remains in the physical world, and the other, composed of the astral body and ego, leaves it. Man is made up of these two parts. The human qualities and attributes of the physical world belong to the physical and etheric bodies alone, although the other members have a share in them during the waking state. When awake, man functions by means of his astral body and ego in the other two members; when asleep he leaves them to themselves. The moment that he falls asleep, however, the beings and forces of the cosmos begin to function in, and to permeate, the forsaken members, so that there is a constant influx from the cosmos into the physical and etheric bodies of man. That part of him, however, which is left sleeping in bed, is actually limited to the forty-two generations, during which time it is under the law of inheritance. Beginning with the first generation and taking all that then belonged to physical nature, we shall find at the end, if we trace this through forty-two generations, nothing of what was the most essential in the first case. Thus in six times seven generations are comprised all the active characteristics of the physical and etheric bodies of a man. The inherited tendencies found in these two bodies must be sought for among his ancestors, but only in the forty-two preceding generations; beyond that time they cannot be traced, all belonging to an earlier generation has disappeared.

Human evolution in time is based on a certain numerical relationship. If we consider this more closely we find everything concerning the physical body is limited to forty-two generations, because everything connected with evolution in time is connected with the number seven. The Essenes knew this. An Essene said to himself: ‘Thou must pass through six times seven stages—that is forty-two—thou wilt then have arrived at the last seven which complete the sevenfold count, making forty-nine stages in all.’ What lies beyond the forty-two stages cannot be attributed to the forces and beings active in the physical and etheric body. The whole evolution of these bodies is finished—in accordance with the sevenfold law—after seven times seven generations, but during the last seven of these a complete change has taken place, and nothing of the first generation remains. What we are now concerned with is something entirely new in the realm into which man enters after the forty-two generations. We are now no longer concerned with a human existence but with a superhuman one. The six times seven generations, therefore, are connected entirely with the earth, and the seven times seven that follows is connected with what is beyond the earth; that is fruit for the spiritual world.

Hence the people from among whom the Gospel of Matthew had its origin, expressed their thoughts somewhat in this way: ‘The physical body used by Zarathustra had to be so ripe at the end of forty-two generations that it was already on the verge of becoming spiritualized; it was at the point where deification could take place.’ This could have taken place at the beginning of the forty-third generation, but it did not; this body allowed itself to be used by another being, who, as the spirit of Zarathustra, incarnated on earth as Jesus of Nazareth. In the events capable of providing a fitting body and fitting blood for the soul of Zarathustra, in Jesus of Nazareth, everything was fulfilled in accordance with this mystery of numbers. Everything relating to the physical and etheric body in human evolution has been prepared in this way.

Now, however, there are in man—and hence too in him who was to be the bearer of the Christ-being—not only a physical and an etheric body, but also an astral body and ego. Preparation therefore had to be made not only for a suitable physical and etheric body, but what was needful had also to be done to prepare a suitable astral body and ego. For such a mighty Event not one, but two personalities were necessary. The physical and etheric bodies were prepared in the case of the personality described in the Gospel of Matthew; the astral body and ego were prepared in another personality—the Nathan Jesus, of whom the Gospel of Luke relates. For the early years this was another personality. While the Matthew Jesus received a suitable physical and etheric organism, the Luke Jesus received the appropriate astral-body and bearer of the ego.

How could this come to pass? We have seen that the forces of the forty-two generations had to be prepared in order that the sheaths might come about which were necessary for the Jesus of the Matthew gospel. The astral body and ego had also to be prepared in order to appear later in the appropriate manner. How this happened we shall now explain.

As an introduction to the understanding of the Jesus of the Gospel of Luke, for whom special preparation had also to be made, let us consider the nature of sleep. The notion, derived from the assertions of lower clairvoyance, that the whole astral and ego-nature of man is contained within the nebulous appearance seen near the body of a sleeping man, is entirely erroneous. For it is a fact that during sleep, when man forsakes his physical and etheric sheaths, he expands, and is spread abroad through the whole cosmos. The mystery of the sleeping state is contained in the fact that the astral body expands through the whole stellar world, attracting towards it the purest cosmic forces; and these forces man brings with him when at the moment of awakening he plunges once more into his physical and etheric bodies. Hence he emerges from sleep strengthened by what he has derived from the whole cosmos.

If man were clairvoyant to-day in the highest sense—and this was the same at the time of Christ Jesus—what must then take place in him? Modern man is normally unconscious during sleep when with his astral body and ego he goes forth from his physical and etheric bodies; clairvoyant consciousness must, however, become capable of perception by means of the astral body and ego, without the aid of the physical and etheric bodies. It will then belong to the world the stars, and will not only perceive this world but actually enter into it. Just as the consciousness of the Essene had to rise through successive stages (at the root of which lay the number seven), so man must surmount the stages which enable him to perceive universal space clairvoyantly.

The dangers attending both courses of development I have often pointed out.

The development of the Essenes was fundamentally a penetration into the physical body and etheric body, that they might find their God. With them it was as if a man on awakening did not see the world around him, but plunged into his physical and etheric bodies in order to realize their forces; therefore to see what was external from within. Man's descent into his physical vehicles on awakening is not a conscious act, for at that moment consciousness is attracted to the environment, and is not directed to the forces within his physical and etheric bodies. The essential fact for the Essene was, that, disregarding his environment, he should dip down into his own physical vehicles and perceive all the forces that in the sense of occult science had their rise in the mystery of the six times seven generations.

Similar and even mightier exertions are necessary if a man is to ascend into the cosmos and discover its secrets. In penetrating into his own inner being he is only exposed to the danger of being overcome by the forces of this being, the desires and passions of its depths, of which he is ordinarily unaware and of which he does not dream. Ordinary training usually prevents knowledge of these forces—his attention being attracted to the emergence of the outer world on awakening, so that he should not be overcome by this. Another danger meets him when he experiences ‘expansion over the whole cosmos.’ He who experiences this moment, by retaining his consciousness during sleep, he who is able to perceive the spiritual world through the instrumentality of his astral body and ego, is confronted by a great danger. Like a man attempting to gaze at the sun, he is blinded and bewildered by the overwhelming grandeur of his experiences.

Just as the different stages of wisdom striven for by the Essenes, in order to learn of the hereditary tendencies in the physical and etheric bodies, were connected with the mystery of numbers (six x seven), so there was a secret number in the Mysteries of the Great World, showing how knowledge of these could be acquired. The best approach to these mysteries is through the stars themselves which, in their movements and groupings into constellations, provide a form of expression—a language. As, by passing through six times seven stages man attains the key to the mysteries of his own inner being; twelve times seven or eighty-four stages are necessary before he can rise to the spiritual mysteries of universal space. When we have surmounted the eighty-four stages we are no longer blinded by the complexity of these spiritual cosmic forces. Beyond these eighty-four stages we have attained that calm wherein a way may be found through the mighty labyrinth.

This was taught to a certain extent among the Essenes. A person having attained clairvoyance during sleep, as just described, could pour his being forth into something that is expressed in the mystery of numbers as twelve times seven. Anyone who has attained to the ‘twelve times seven’ degree is already in spiritual realms, for when he has completed the eleven times seven, he has already reached the verge of the Mysteries. As in the other, the seven times seven, he is already in the spiritual realm; so he is in the twelve times seven. On the latter path the spiritual realm is beyond the eleven times seven stage. Such are the number of the stages to be passed through by the astral body and ego. All this is imprinted in the starry script, seven is the number derived from the planets; they are seven in number; what man has to pass through in cosmic space is derived from the number twelve, the number of the Signs of the Zodiac.

As the seven planets group themselves within, and pass through the twelve signs, so if man is to live into cosmic space he must pass through seven times twelve, or rather seven times eleven stages, to attain spirituality. The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac may be pictured as forming a spiritual periphery in the centre of which is man himself. Now man does not reach the spiritual realm spread around him simply by advancing from a centre outwards; he must expand in spiral form; he must advance, as it were, in seven spiral movements. Each time he completes one spiral turn he has passed through all the twelve signs; he has in this way to pass through seven times twelve points. Man gradually expands in spiral form through the cosmos—this is naturally only an image for what man experiences—and in circling thus, on the seventh journey through the twelve signs, spirituality is reached. Then instead of regarding the cosmos from the central point of his own self; he regards it from the spiritual circumference—from twelve points of view—and from these different aspects he views the external world. It is not enough to see things from one point only, they must be considered from twelve aspects.

He who is in quest of what is divinely spiritual must guide his astral body and ego in this way through eleven times seven stages, and at the twelfth he is in the spiritual world.

If Divinity wished to descend and assume a human ego, it would likewise have to pass down through eleven times seven stages. So when the Gospel of Luke wished to describe the spiritual forces that prepared a human astral body and ego to be the bearer of the Christ, it had to relate how the divine force descended through eleven times seven stages. This is truly told in the Gospel of Luke. Because this Gospel tells of the personality for whom the astral body and ego were prepared, it is not concerned, like the Gospel of Matthew, with six times seven generations, but with eleven times seven successive stages through which is traced down, from God Himself; that which dwelt in the individuality of the Luke-Jesus. These seventy-seven different human stages can be counted in the Gospel of Luke.

Because the Gospel of Matthew describes the mystery of the descent of the divine force which worked constructively within the physical and etheric bodies, the ruling number in it must be six times seven. In the Gospel of Luke, because it describes the descent of the divine force which built the astral body and ego, the number must be eleven times seven. Such is the infinite depth of the origin of these facts as related in the Gospels. These Gospels of Luke and Matthew reveal the secrets of initiation; the descent by certain stages of the Divine Spirit into a human individuality, and correspondingly the successive stages by which an individual can reach forth into the cosmos.

It will be explained in the next lecture how a table of descent is also found in the Gospel of Luke; and why, in an age when the Mystery of Christ was imparted only to a few, it should have been demonstrated that there were seventy-seven generations from God and from Adam, down to the Jesus of this Gospel.