The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The kind of truths we passed in review before our souls yesterday cannot be absorbed with an abstract, theoretical understanding. It is not just a matter of knowing that things are like this or like that. All the human consequences of these things must be inwardly comprehended, for they are very significant. Today I will sketch just a few of them. There is, of course, very much more that could be said along these lines, but we have to begin somewhere. At the very least, we must consider the direction in which such factual, spiritual-scientific presuppositions lead our thinking and our will.

Let us review yesterday's conclusions. The zones of the twelve senses can be seen as a kind of human zodiac. Flowing through all these sense-zones are the seven life processes: breathing, warming, nourishing, secretion, maintenance, growth and reproduction. (See drawing, Lecture Seven.)

To understand these things in their entirety we must be clear that the actual truth is very different from what our materialistic sciences teach us. They believe, for example, that the sense of taste and the related sense of smell are confined to the narrow limits of the tongue and the nasal mucous membrane. But this is not how things really are. The physical organs associated with the senses are more like the capital cities governing the realms of those senses. The realms corresponding to the senses are much more extended. I think that anyone who has applied a little self-observation to the sense of hearing, for example, will know that hearing involves much more of the organism than just the ears. A tone lives in much more of the organism than just the ear, and the other senses occupy similarly extended territories. Liver and spleen, for example, are perceptibly involved in taste and the related sense of smell; so they involve a wider area than materialistic science recognises. This being the case, you will also see that the sense-zones are intimately connected with the vital organs and with the life forces they continuously send streaming through the entire organism. It follows that the relationship between the sense-zones and the vital organs has a manifold influence on a person's inner constitution, on his state of being as regards spirit, soul and body. So we are justified in speaking, let us say, of the forces of secretion being in the sphere of the sense of sight, or of their interacting with the sphere of sight, or of an interaction between the spheres of growth and hearing—just as we speak in astronomy of Saturn being in the Ram or of the Sun standing in the Lion. Furthermore, each sense-zone can come into a relationship with one or the other of the life spheres, since the regions of the senses and the regions of life are related differently in different people. So there really are circumstances in the inner human world that reflect how things are out there in the starry heavens of the macrocosm.

You will therefore be right in supposing that the activities called up in us by the senses are relatively static in comparison with what goes on in the life processes and their central organs. Remember how we described the sense regions as a comparatively stable part of the human being. They are stabilised through being organised around a particular physical organ: the sense of sight around the eyes—even though it involves more besides—the sense of hearing around the ears, and so on. And remember how mobile the life processes are as they circulate uninterruptedly through the whole body, reaching every part of it. The life processes move through us.

If we consider what was said yesterday about how our sense experiences on Old Moon were more like life processes, we must conclude that human existence on Old Moon was altogether more mobile than that of our present Earth era. Moon man was more mobile, more inwardly mobile. Earth man really does relate to what he consciously experiences in the way the relatively fixed constellations of the zodiac relate to one another. During the Earth era the outer surface of man has become motionless, still, as the constellations of the zodiac are still. During the Moon phase, the present-day human senses contained a life and mobility such as that displayed by the planets of our present-day cosmos; for our planets' relationship to one another is constantly changing.

Moon man was capable of transformation, of metamorphosis. Now, I have often drawn your attention to the fact that when a person of today achieves the level of initiation that gives him access to imaginative knowledge, his conscious life becomes more mobile than that afforded by normal, earth-bound sense experience. In such cases everything again becomes mobile, but the mobility is experienced through super-sensible consciousness. And this is how the knowledge obtained from this sphere must be understood. I have often put before you the necessity of making our concepts and ideas more mobile in order to be able to enter into what super-sensible consciousness reveals to us. Concepts appropriate to the sensible world are shut up in their own little boxes and everyone likes to have them arranged prettily beside one another. But for spiritual science we need mobile concepts, concepts that can be transformed and metamorphosed, one into the other. In this you can see one of the consequences of the facts we have been describing.

Another consequence is the following: you will be able to see that a sense life that is as unperturbed and still as the zodiac is only possible for a human being living in the Earth sphere. The twelve sense-zones only are meaningful in the context of life as it is lived between birth and death in an earthly body. When it comes to life between death and birth, things are quite different. One remarkable difference is that the senses that are seen as higher, as far as life on earth goes, lose their higher status when we pass over the threshold of death into spiritual spheres. Just recall what I said in Occult Science about how the relationships between people change during the time between death, and a new birth, and how they are mediated in a much more intimate manner than is the case here on earth. There we do not need the ego sense which is essential to us on earth, nor do we need the senses of thought and speech as we need them on earth. On the other hand, we do need the transformed sense of hearing, but in a form that has been genuinely spiritualised. A spiritualised sense of hearing gives us access to the harmony of the spheres. That it is spiritualised is, however, already evident from the fact that over there we hear without the presence of physical air, whereas here the physical medium of the air must be present in order for us to hear anything. Furthermore, everything is heard in reverse, proceeding backwards towards its beginning. It is precisely because our earthly sense of hearing is dependent on the air that it is particularly difficult for us to imagine what it is like to hear things backwards. We run into difficulties trying to imagine a melody backwards. For spiritual perception this presents no problems at all.

Now, the sense of hearing is the borderline sense; in its spiritualised form it is the sense that most resembles the senses of the physical world. When we come to the sense of warmth as it is in the spiritual world, we already have a sense that is very changed; sight is even more altered; and the senses of smell and taste even more so, for they play an important role in the spiritual world. The very senses that here we call lower, play an important role in the spiritual world. But that role has been very, very spiritualised. A significant role is also played by the senses of balance and movement. But then, when we come to the sense of life we find that it is less significant. And the sense of touch has no special role at all.

So we could say that when death leads us over into the spiritual world the sun sets in the region ruled by the sense of hearing. That sense is located on the horizon of the spiritual world. The sense of hearing is more or less bisected by that horizon. Over yonder, the sun rises in the sense of hearing and then proceeds through the spiritualised senses of warmth, sight, taste and smell—all these are especially important for spiritual perception over there. There, the sense of balance not only reveals to us our inner state of balance, it also shows us how we are balanced with regard to the beings of the higher hierarchies into whose realms we are ascending. Thus the sense of balance has an important role to play; it guides us through the expanses of the cosmos. Here, it is hidden away in our physical organism as one of the lesser senses, but over there it has the important role of enabling us to sense whether we are poised in a state of equilibrium between an Archangel and an Angel, or between a Spirit of Personality and an Archangel, or between a Spirit of Form and an Angel. This is the sense that shows us how we are balanced among the various beings of the spiritual world. And the spiritualised sense of movement, which is now directed outwards, mediates between us and our movements—for in the spiritual world we are in constant movement. The sense of life, however, is no longer necessary because we are, so to speak, swimming in the totality of life. Like a swimmer in water, the spirit moves in the element of life.

Just below the horizon are the lower senses, the senses that lead earthly perception to the internal world of the organism. But when we die, the sun of our life descends to the constellations that are below the horizon just as the setting sun enters the constellations below the horizon. And when we are born again, our sun rises in those constellations—in the senses of touch, life, speech, thought, ego—that stand over us now and allow as to perceive this physical world of earthly existence.

And the life processes are even more spiritualised than these lower senses. More than a few persons who claim to represent a particularly lofty mystical point of view speak of the life processes as something ‘lower’. To be sure, they are low here, but what here is low is high in the spiritual world, for what lives in our organism is a reflection of what lives in the spiritual world. This is a very noteworthy statement. Outside us in the spiritual world there are significant spiritual beings whose nature is reflected within us—within the bounds of the zodiac of our senses through which the planets of our life processes move. So we can say: the four life processes of secretion, maintenance, growth and reproduction are reflections of what exists in the spiritual world—as are the processes of breathing, warming and nourishing. The fourfold process of secretion, maintaining, growth and reproduction mirrors a lofty region of the spiritual world. That region receives us after death and there we live and weave, spiritually preparing our organism for the next earthly incarnation. Everything in our physical organism that is comparatively low corresponds to something that is high and can only be perceived through the faculty of Imagination. There is a whole world that can be perceived through Imagination, through imaginative knowledge. This world that is accessible to imagination is reflected from beyond the constellations of the zodiac into the senses of the human organism. To picture this, imagine that

Sun, Venus, Mercury and Moon are reflections of what exists beyond the limits of the zodiac: they have spiritual counterparts that exist there and the astronomical bodies we can observe within the bounds of the zodiac are only reflections of these counterparts.

And then there is yet another super-sensible region. It is beyond the limits of the human senses and perceptible only through the faculty of Inspiration. This is the world of Inspiration. The processes of breathing, warming and nourishing are a reflection of this world, just as Saturn, Jupiter and mars are reflections of their spiritual counterparts from beyond the limits of the zodiac. Moreover there is a profound relationship between what is out there in the cosmos and what, as lower nature, is present in man. These spiritual counterparts of the life processes actually exist. ...And this is how we should mark out the boundaries of the human senses and life processes.

Now we approach that which is higher than life, those true regions of the soul which are the home of human astrality and human egoity, of the I. We leave behind the world of the senses and the realms of space and time and really enter the spiritual world. Now on earth, because there is a certain connection between the twelve sense-zones and our I, it is possible for our I to live in the consciousness sustained by these sense-zones. Beneath this consciousness there is another, an astral consciousness which, in the present stage of human development, is intimately related to the human vital processes, to the sphere of life. The I is intimately related to the sphere of the senses; astral consciousness is intimately related to the sphere of life. Just as our knowledge of the zodiac comes through—or from within—our I, so knowledge of our life processes comes from astral consciousness. It is a form of awareness that is still subconscious in people of today: it is not apparent in normal circumstances, it still lies on the other side of the threshold. In physical existence such a knowing consists of an inner awareness of the life processes. Sometimes, in abnormal circumstances, the sphere of life is included in the sphere of consciousness; it is thrust up into normal consciousness. But for us this is a pathological state. It is an astonishing thing for our doctors and natural scientists to behold when the subconscious intrudes and allows what is normally hidden beneath our twelve-fold sense-awareness to emerge—when eruptions of the subconscious allow the planets to intrude their life into the sphere of the zodiac. Such a consciousness is appropriate when it has been cultivated and developed, really developed in the fashion that is described in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. But if it has not been developed properly, it is pathological.

Recently, a book written by a doctor who is interested in these things has been published. Since he is unaware of any of the contents of spiritual science, his thinking is still wholly materialistic. But he is so free in his investigations that, especially more recently, he has actually worked his way into this realm. I am referring to Carl Ludwig Schleich¹¹ and his book, The Mechanisms of Thought (Vom Schaltwerk der Gedanken.) There you will find some interesting accounts of his experiences as a doctor. Let us look at one of the simplest of these: it concerns a woman who comes to him for a medical consultation. He suggests she sit down to wait for him. Just at that moment the wheel in a ventilator cover moves. Immediately she exclaims. ‘Oh, that is a huge fly that is going to bite me!’ And almost immediately after she has said this, her eye begins to swell. Soon the swelling has grown to the size of a hen's egg. The doctor calms her, saying the injury is not so bad and can soon be healed.

It is not possible to reach so deeply into the life sphere that something there actually changes, not if one is employing the consciousness that is contained in the human zodiac of the twelve senses. But we do affect the life sphere when the subconscious erupts into our usual daytime consciousness. The concepts and ideas that occupy our normal consciousness do not yet sink deeply enough into us to reach the depths of the life processes. Now and then, however, the life processes are stirred up and occasionally the ensuing wave is very strong. But with today's proper and normal, externally-orientated consciousness it is not possible—thank God!—for a person to affect the life processes, for otherwise people would make a real mess of themselves with some of the thoughts they entertain. Human thoughts are not strong enough to have this kind of effect. But if some of the ideas people harbour today were to well up out of their unconscious into the sphere of life, as did the ideas of the woman we were describing, then you would see some people walking about with extremely swollen faces and some with much worse problems, too. Thus you see that beneath our surface, which is connected with the zodiac, there is a subconscious world that is intimately connected with the life processes and can profoundly affect them in abnormal circumstances. For example, Schleich reports a case in which a young woman comes to the doctor and tells him that she has gone astray. She continues to insist on this, even after the medical examination shows it could not have been so. She will not tell with whom she has gone astray. But in the next few months she begins to show all the external and internal signs of an expectant mother. Later on, at the appropriate time, when the quasi-expectant mother is examined, the heartbeat of a child is discernible alongside her own. Everything proceeds quite normally—except that no child arrives in the ninth month! The tenth month comes and finally it is realised that something else is going on. At last they decide they must operate. When they do, there is nothing there, nothing at all, and there never has been! It was a hysterical pregnancy with all the physical symptoms of a normal pregnancy. Today's doctors are already describing this kind of thing, and it is good that they are doing so, for such things will force people to think of the human being in different terms from those in which they are accustomed to think.

Here is another case: a man comes to Schleich saying that he has stuck himself with a pen while working in his office. There is a slight scratch. Schleich examines it and finds nothing to be concerned about. But the man says, ‘Yes, but I can already feel blood poisoning in my arm and I know I shall die of it unless my arm is amputated.’ Schleich replies, ‘I cannot remove your arm when there is no problem there. It is certain that you will not die of blood poisoning.’ As a precaution, he cleanses the wound and then he dismisses the man. But he was still in such a state that Schleich, who is a good-hearted man, decides to visit him that evening. He finds the man still filled with the thought that he is bound to die. When his blood is tested later, there still is no sign of blood poisoning. Again Schleich reassures him; but later that night the man dies. He really dies! A death from purely psychic causes!

Now, I can assure you that a man cannot die as a result of the thoughts he forms under the influence of his inner zodiac-one certainly cannot die of such thoughts. Thoughts do not penetrate so deeply into the life processes. And the other case I just mentioned—I mean the hysterical pregnancy—cannot be the result of mere thoughts, any more than it is possible to die of the mere thought that you have blood poisoning.

When it comes to this last case, where imagined, but untrue, circumstances seem to have led to death, our present-day science must look to spiritual science for clarification. Perhaps we can look a little at this case and consider what really happened. We have a man who scratches himself with his pen while he is writing and then dies as a result of what he imagines around this event. Actually, something quite different happened. That man had an etheric body, and death was already present in his etheric body before he scratched himself. Death, therefore, was already expressed in his etheric body when he went into his office that morning, In other words, his etheric body had begun to accept into itself the processes that lead to death. But these were only transmitted to his physical body very gradually. And the man would not have acted so strangely if death had not already taken up residence in him. He just happened to scratch himself while this was going on within him, and the scratch was insignificant in itself. But through it, the thought that he was going to die was able to well up out of his subconscious life sphere. The external events were only the trimmings, only the outer show. But because the outer show was there, the whole thing was able to well up into his waking consciousness. So his death had nothing to do with the usual processes of forming imaginations that are part of our day-time consciousness, absolutely nothing; death was already present in him.

Such things as these will gradually force our natural scientists to enter more and more deeply into the substance of spiritual science. We are already dealing with something complicated when we consider the relationship between the planetary spheres and the life processes, or the zodiac and the zones of the senses. But things get even more complicated when we move on to consider the processes of consciousness that relate in various ways to these spheres: the I relating to the zodiac and the astral body relating to the planetary spheres within man, that mobile life-sphere within the human being. But if we continue to think as we think in the everyday physical world, using the powers of the zodiac within us, we shall be unable to approach matters that concern the mobile human life-sphere., nor shall we be able to approach the relationship of the I to the zodiac. Those things can only be approached when we have taught ourselves to think in entirely new ways.

In Knowledge of the Higher Worlds you are advised to imagine things backwards from time to time, to review things backwards. A backwards review involves picturing events as if they proceeded in the opposite direction from that in which they proceed in our normal world. Among other things, this picturing backwards gradually builds the spiritual forces that make one capable of entering a world that is the wrong way round when compared with the physical world. That is how the spiritual world is. It reverses many aspects of the physical world. I have often pointed out to you that it is not simply a matter of abstractly turning around what is in the physical world; among the powers that one needs to develop are the powers connected with the ability to imagine backwards. What is the consequence of this? Those people who do not want to see human culture dry up and who are trying to achieve a spiritually illumined view of the world are eventually forced to imagine a world in reverse. For spiritual consciousness only begins when the life processes or the sense processes are reversed and run backwards. Therefore people need to prepare for the future by getting accustomed to thinking backwards. Then they will begin to take hold of the spiritual world through this thinking backwards, just as they take hold of the physical world by means of thinking forwards. Our ability to imagine the physical world is a result of the direction of our thinking.

So, now that I have guided you through the human zodiac of the twelve sense-zones and through the seven planetary life-spheres, I can only proceed further if I introduce a completely different way of looking at things: a way of thinking that proceeds backwards.

Now, you are aware that our contemporaries are not particularly inclined to devote themselves to spiritual science and really absorb it. They reject it because they are accustomed to materialistic thinking. But for someone who has gone only a little way beyond the threshold of the spiritual world, it is just as foolish to assert that the world only goes forward, never backward, as it is to say that the sun only goes in one direction and can never return! Of course it comes back along this apparent path on the other side. (Steiner illustrated this with a drawing.)

It is easy to imagine that someone who is well and truly frozen into contemporary modes of thought might shrink in horror from thinking backwards and from imagining the world turned backwards. And yet without this world turned backwards there would not be any consciousness at all. For consciousness is already a kind of spiritual science—even though the materialists deny the fact. Consequently, this imagining backwards particularly horrifies our contemporaries. We could picture one of them asking himself, ‘Is it illogical to picture the course of the world backwards as well as forwards?’ And he could also come to the conclusion that it is not really illogical to follow a drama backwards starting from its fifth act, and that it is not illogical to follow the drama of world development backwards, either. Nevertheless, this is a terrible thing with which to confront contemporary habits of thought. Someone who lives entirely in present-day habits of thought, believes it is a fact that one cannot think the world backwards, and that it is a fact that the world does not move backwards. As soon as such a person stumbles across this question he senses that there is something special in it. One can imagine a solitary thinker wrestling with the problem of thinking backwards and drawing particular philosophical conclusions from the impossibility of thinking backwards.

One can make a further assumption. I have already drawn your attention to the fact that thinking backwards is especially difficult to imagine in the constellation in which the sun goes down, in the sense of hearing. Over the course of time, the sense of hearing has undergone some changes, particularly in relation to music. Historians do not usually notice these subtle changes, but they are more important for the inner human life than the grosser changes described in historical accounts. For example, it is of great significance for the transformation of hearing—which is already a relatively spiritual sense as far as the physical world goes—that the octave was experienced as a uniquely pleasant, sympathetic combination of tones during the Greco-Roman period, and that the fifth was particularly loved during the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In those days it was called the ‘sweet tone.’ During the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries the fifth was experienced in the way people experience the third today. So you see how our inner constitution changes over relatively short periods of time.

On the physical plane, a musical ear listens with deep satisfaction to things going in the one direction. So someone with an especially musical ear might well be repelled by the thought of going backwards, for music is one of the most profound things we have on the physical plane. Of course this could only apply to a time when materialism is at its height. Those who are not so musical will not feel this conflict so readily. But a musical person whose thinking is fundamentally materialistic can easily come to the conclusion that thinking backwards is simply beyond the scope of our human head. In this fashion he will resist the spiritual world. So we can assume that somewhere or other there is bound to be such a thinker.

Strangely enough, a book has been published recently: Kosmogonie, by Christian von Ehrenfels.¹² Its first chapter is called, ‘The “reversion”, a paradox of knowledge’. There, looking at it from many sides, in the fashion of present-day philosophy, Ehrenfels asks what it would be like to see the course of world events backwards—from the other side, the asymmetrical side, so to speak. He actually comes up with the idea of thinking things backwards, really backwards. He tries to deal with this paradox. He attempts to think some particular cases backwards. I would like to show you one of these as an example. He starts with a series of events going forwards, rather than backwards:

In the vertical world of the high mountains, moisture and frost break loose a chunk from a compact mass of rock. When the ice thaws, the chunk breaks free. It falls from the overhanging cliff wall, crashes on to a stony surface and shatters into many pieces. Following one of these pieces, we see it go raging down a lower slope shedding further splinters of stone as it collides with other stones, until it finally comes to rest on a slope. At last it has given up the whole of its kinetic energy in the form of warmth conveyed to the places where it collided with earth and stone, and to the air that resisted its motion.—Now how would this certainly not uncommon event look in the backwards world?

A stone is lying on a slope. Suddenly it is struck by apparently chaotic bursts of warmth coming from the earth beneath it. These combine in such an extraordinary fashion that they propel the stone diagonally upwards. The air offers no resistance. On the contrary, there are a series of extraordinary transactions: the air transmits some of its own warmth to the stone and thus gives it free passage, making way for it and encouraging it, with its accumulation of small but well-aimed gifts of warmth, on its diagonally ascending pathway. The stone collides with an overhanging stone. But this neither causes it to lose any fragment of itself, nor does it cause it to lose any of its enthusiasm for movement. In fact, the contrary is the case. Another little stone happens to arrive at the same place of impact, propelled by a collection of gusts of warmth from the earth. And, behold!—always under the influence of impulses of warmth-this small stone collides with our original stone. Their-apparently accidentally formed—irregular surfaces fit together so perfectly, and they meet with such force, that the powers of cohesion take effect and the two grow together to form one compact mass. Further bursts of warmth from the overhanging mountain with which they have collided direct them further on their upward, diagonal path, which they pursue with increased speed.

The bits of stone that earlier were broken apart are joined together again. The whole stone comes together, lying on the mountain cliff. The energies are brought once more into balance, all goes back into its original place, and so forth. This he describes with great exactitude, thinking the whole event backwards. He describes further examples, which he also thinks through backwards. One can see that he really plagues himself with this; he really strains at the yoke:

On a sunny winter's day, a hare makes its way through the snow, leaving its tracks behind it. In many places the wind immediately blows them away, but they are preserved along southerly stretches of path where the snow thaws in the sunshine during the day and freezes again at night. There they remain visible for many weeks until they disappear in the spring thaw. In the ‘backwards world’ the hare's prints would be the first thing to appear, but only a bit at a time, not all at once. At first they would show up in the frozen snow (more accurately, in the ice which is thawing into snow again), and then, after weeks, during which the imprints gradually get deeper and change into more accurate copies of the hare's paws, the prints also begin to appear on the connecting parts of path as gusts of warmth chase loose flakes of snow together—and the whole track is complete. Then the hare himself appears, tail foremost, head facing behind, and he is not moving along the line of the path—rather he is being dragged along in a direction contrary to the impulses of his muscles by the impact of gusts of warmth (always it is through warmth) and this is done so artfully that his paws always fall into the waiting paw-prints of the tracks. Nor do the wonders cease here: each time a paw comes out of a print, well-directed gusts of warmth fill it with loose snow. So well is this accomplished that the filled print exactly merges with the surrounding snowfield, whose faultlessly smooth surface covers the former tracks of the hare as if it had never been otherwise.

You can see how Schleich exerts himself. Now he goes further, saying: if it is difficult with the hare, how much more difficult will it be with an entire hunt:

It is easy to see that the same sort of unbelievable things occur as in the example from inorganic nature, only intensified to the point of being grotesque and uncanny. And the present organic example of the hare's tracks is relatively simple. Just imagine the tracks left behind in the snow, not by a single hare, but by an entire winter hunting party with all its hunters, drivers, hounds, and numerous deer, foxes and elk—imagine how these tracks would criss-cross and cover one another, and how sometimes one would step in the print of another, leaving untrodden patches in between, and so on. Now one must turn these events around and observe how the same type of gusts of warmth seem to guide each living creature through this chaos of apparently fragmentary tracks so that every foot or paw or hoof falls into a print that exactly matches it—the deer into one, elk into another, every hunter's shoe finding an imprint that exactly matches, and always moved, slid, pressed into it by these extraordinary gusts of warmth that issue from the earth, the air and from within the creatures themselves, so that everything matches perfectly. After all this one begins to get some bare notion of the extent of our concept of ‘leaving tracks’, as it applies to our right-way-up, right-way-round world.

You see how hard the man tries to arrive at the concepts he needs. This effort drags up some things of which people today are not conscious. You can see how naturally spiritual science can come into being, for men are longing for it in their souls. Schleich really struggles to come to some degree of understanding of these processes that run backwards. He really sweats over the matter—spiritually speaking. There truly is a thinker in him, a thinker who will not be denied. He declares that it is entirely logical to picture things in this fashion—logical, but unbelievable. For us, this simply means that he is going against his own habitual thinking and, ultimately, that he is completely unable to conceive of the spiritual world.

Ehrenfels concludes, ‘Let us go even further. Imagine that a backward world is actually forced upon us—that the relentless force of our experience actually compels us to deal with a real situation like our “backwards world”!’ Thus he imagines that he might really see his hare or his hunting party proceeding backwards out there in the physical world—the world which, for him, is the only reality. We are asked to imagine that we have been forced to enter a physical world in which all is really backwards:

How would we respond to such a world, how could we try to interpret it? Even if our experience repeatedly forced us to think, as we tried to think in the preceding pages, of a world in which the shapes of the future are sucked backwards, we would have to reject it as absurd.

This, he says, would be terrible. We would be confronted with a world which we could not and ought not think about! And this terrible world is the world Ehrenfels really would have to see if he were to enter the spiritual world. He imagines that it would be terrible if such a thing were to be forced upon him in the physical world!

Forms would take shape with apparent spontaneity. But we would have no alternative but to view them as only apparently spontaneous—and as actually being the result of teleological, intentional, preconceived combinations of material particles and their movements. And the same would hold for the extraordinary interplay of their paths as they converge and leave us with ever fewer and ever diminishing phenomena.

Thus he thinks the whole thing back to the beginnings of the earth in a Darwinian state of unity.

What could the goal of this creative power that sees ahead and plans ahead, possibly be? Can the sudden appearance of a form and its gradual transition into formlessness be the ultimate goal? No, and no again! The very opposite of this is what the goal of the whole must be.

Then he asks himself, ‘How it would feel to be confronted with such a world, to see such a world?’ To which he answers, ‘This world of experience could only be the grotesque joke of a demonic, cosmic power to whom we must deliver up everything but knowledge.’

At this point he stops himself; he cannot go any deeper into the matter. For the knowledge to which he clings consists simply of his old habits of thought. He can go no further. He feels that a world that has to be seen in reverse must be the grotesque production of some cosmic demon, of the devil; it would be the world of the devil. And he is afraid when confronted with what inevitably must seem to him to be the work of the devil. Here you have an example of how one soul experiences something I have often described: fear is what holds us back from the spiritual world. And Ehrenfels expresses this overtly: if he were to see a physical world that is similar to the spiritual world, he would view it as the paradoxical work of some devilish being. So he shrinks back in fear.

There must be some other, comprehensive, universal law that transcends the bounds of our world of experience! In other words: even if the backward world existed, ultimately we would not use backward principles to understand it.

What would the good Ehrenfels do if he were transported into a backward world that contrived to manifest itself to him physically? He would say, ‘Nay, I do not believe this; I will not allow it to be; I will picture it the other way around.’ And this is just what people do with the spiritual world; they really do not want to admit the existence of things that look different from what is presently in front of them.

We would regard this as an exception, as a special enclave, as a counter-stream to the great stream of all cosmic evolution—and yet we would continue to attribute to the evolution of the world those physiognomic features that we find believable.

Thus one would put one's foot down and say, ‘Nay, even though this world conjures up a demon for us, we will not believe in it. We will think about it in the way in which we are accustomed to think.’ There you see the whole story—of how a philosopher resists what has to come. It is helpful to notice such moments in human evolution. What spiritual science shows us must come, and that, my dear friends, that will most assuredly come. And even though people today resist the spiritual in their normal consciousness, as we have often discussed here, at deeper levels of their consciousness they are beginning to turn toward the spiritual. It is only that people are still pretending; they still deny it is there. It will not be long before it is impossible to continue denying the spirit. Men's thoughts are turning with a virtual compulsion towards the sort of things one can observe in Christian von Ehrenfels' Kosmogonie.

I wanted to talk about this book because it has just appeared and is bound to be discussed frequently in the near future. Even though it is written in a philosophical language that is difficult to understand, it will be discussed frequently. The discussions are likely to be very grotesque because it is difficult to grasp the implications of the book. So I wanted to speak to you here about Christian von Ehrenfel's Kosmogonie in order that what needs to be said about it is spoken about accurately for once. We are dealing with a philosopher who is a university professor and who has lectured in philosophy at the University of Prague for many years. This book appeared in 1915. In the foreword he speaks of his own path of development, acknowledging points on which he is indebted to certain earlier philosophers with whom he is more or less in agreement. At the conclusion of this foreword, having cited his indebtedness for one thing and another to the earlier philosophers, Franz Brentano and Meinong, he says the following:

On the other hand, my greatest burden of thanks lies in a direction that is far removed from what is generally recognised as the domain of philosophy.—Throughout my life I have devoted far more physical energy to becoming inwardly acquainted with German music than I have devoted to assimilating philosophical literature. (As a philosophy professor he presents us with this confession!) Nor do I regret this, looking back from the middle of the sixth decade of my life, (So you see, he is far beyond his fiftieth year) rather I attribute to this one of the sources of my philosophical productivity. (And he has only been productive as a philosopher!) For, even though Schopenhauer's account of music as being a unique objectification of the world of the will must probably be rejected, it nevertheless seems to me that his fundamental intentions go to the heart of the matter. Of all mortal beings, the revelations of the truly productive musician bring him nearest to the spirit of the cosmos. Those other ‘mortals’ who claim to understand this metaphysical language of music experience it as a duty of the highest order to translate this received meaning into a conceptual form that is accessible to the understanding of their fellow men.

If one understands religion to be a spiritual possession that bequeaths trust in the world, moral strength and inner power to its possessor, then you must say that German music has been my religion in a time in which humanity has been beset by agnosticism, the loss of metaphysics, and the loss of belief. This applies from the day—in the year 1880—I definitively separated myself from the dogmas of Catholicism, to those weeks in the spring of 1911 when the metaphysical teachings expressed in this book first began to reveal themselves to me.

And this metaphysics takes as its starting point the paradox of reversibility, the impossibility of reversing our ideas.

Yes, today German music is still my religion in the sense that even if all the arguments of my work were proven false, I would not fall victim to despair. The trust in the world in which this work originated would not desert me and I would remain convinced that I am essentially on the right path. I would remain convinced because German music would still be there, and the world that can produce such a thing must surely be essentially good and worthy of respect.

The music of the B Minor Mass, of the statue's visit in Don Giovanni, the Third, Fifth, Seventh and Ninth symphonies, the music of Tristan, The Ring, Parsifal—this music cannot be proven false, for it is a reality, a wellspring of life. Thanks be to its creators! And a salute to all those who are appointed to quench the thirst for eternity from its wondrous springs! The best that I have been fortunate enough to create—and I hold this present work to be my best—is nothing more than insignificant small change out of the riches that I have ‘received’ from that source—from music.

And I am convinced, my dear friends, that this philosopher's special way of relating to the spiritual world could only be found in a person who has Ehrenfels' spiritual kinship with the music of our materialistic age. There are deep inner relationships between everything that goes on in the human soul, even between things that seem to lie in quite different areas. Here I wanted to give you an example of the special way in which someone who is a believer—not just a listener, but a true believer—in the elements of modern music must relate to the habits of materialistic thinking and how he must allow them to flow through his soul. It is different for someone who is not such a musical believer. For if we are to gradually approach the riddles of life and the human riddles, we must investigate those mysterious relationships in the human soul that introduce so many harmonies and disharmonies into its life.

• 11. Carl Ludwig Schleich (1859 – 1922): Doctor, philosopher and poet. Vom Schaltwerk der Gedanken, Berlin, 1916.
• 12. Christian von Ehrenfels (1859 – 1922): Philosopher. Kosmogonie, Jena, 1916. The cited passages are to be found on pages VII, VIII, 49-56.

In these lectures I have said many things which may, with some justification, be deemed strange and unfamiliar, in view of the materialism of our time. But it is the case that the knowledge which is gained from spheres beyond the Threshold has to do with a region of the universe other than that of the sense-perceptible facts to which science, so called, is alone willing to pay attention.

Let us remind ourselves at this point of the way in which the outer form and figure of man indicates his connection with the cosmos. The head, in its whole shape and form, is a structure which could not have come into being within Earth-existence as such, but is a product of the Moon-forces, and its individual form, in every case, is the outcome of a man's former incarnations. We have also heard that the human body (other than the head) is preparing to become head in the next incarnation. In the form of the human head, therefore, we have an indication of the previous incarnation; in the processes of the human body, we have indications of the next incarnation. In this way the human form is directly connected with the preceding and the following incarnations.

Study of the being of man in this light leads us to a knowledge of great cosmic connections.

It is well known to you that knowledge which is a remnant of the wisdom of ancient times relates the outer form of man to the twelve constellations of the Zodiac.¹ Without speaking the superficial language that is characteristic of most modern astrological lore, it is right to call attention to the fact that behind the connections which are said to exist between the human form and the universe, deeply significant mysteries lie hidden.

Astrology, as you know, relates the human head to Aries; the throat and larynx to Taurus; the shoulders, together with all that comes to expression in the arms and hands, to Gemini; the breast to Cancer, the heart to Leo; the lower part of the trunk to Virgo; the region of the loins to Libra; the sexual organs to Scorpio; the thigh to Sagittarius; the knee to Capricorn; the shank to Aquarius; the feet to Pisces.

There we have the relation of the body, with all its parts, including the head, to the forces reigning in the cosmos and which in a certain way can be pictured or symbolised in the fixed constellations of the Zodiac.

We have spoken of the head as being a transformation of the whole body, the body as it was in the previous incarnation. The organs of sight again are of a twelve-fold constitution.

The whole human body is related, as we have seen, to the twelve constellations but each part of it must also, in turn, be related to all these twelve constellations.

I must point out, too, a certain characteristic of all the great laws of the universe.—Whenever we have a “twelve-hood,” then one member of the twelve-hood, while it belongs to the whole, is at the same time an independent member. The head, for instance, is related to one constellation but is, in turn, derived from all the twelve. Hence in the next incarnation, what to-day is the whole head, will be represented by one sense-organ; what to-day is the larynx (including the neighbouring organs of speech) will be transformed, will undergo a metamorphosis, and in the next incarnation will serve another part of the organism; the arms, another, and so on.

As we stand in the world we may say that our whole body is transformed, metamorphosed to become head in the next incarnation, and in so orderly a way that the twelve-fold constitution of our present body appears again in the next incarnation in the twelve-fold constitution of the head.

It may be asked: where is there any indication that the head is really twelve-fold in its constitution? Most of you will know that twelve main nerves go out from the human head. If these twelve nerves were rightly explained—not in the miserably confused way in which they are mentioned by modern cerebral physiology—we should be able to recognise in them that which, in the previous incarnation, was contained in the whole body. It is not necessary to be puzzled by the strange dictum that, for example, the hands will be transformed into some part of the head. Even in a crude sense we may understand what is meant. Can we not observe in the hands something that points, in germ, to organs of speech? Do not the gestures of hands and arms speak an eloquent language in themselves? Is it then so impossible to imagine them changed into something different, some thing which, at another stage of existence, will appear as a sense-organ of the head? And the idea that what is physically expressed in the knee is preparing (when spread over the whole body) to become the sense of touch, will only be laughed to scorn by those who have no conception of the phenomenon of metamorphosis in life. It is not difficult to conceive that the marvellous structure of the human knee with its knee-cap and peculiar sensitiveness (a sensitiveness different from that of the organ of touch which is spread over the whole body) is preparing to become the organ for the sense of touch in the next incarnation.

The whole of our being undergoes metamorphosis and a study of this metamorphosis opens up deep mysteries before us. But if we are to penetrate these mysteries in the right way, we must not adopt the attitude of the science of to-day which is often that of cynicism. We must have true reverence for existence if we are ever to read its mysteries.

The physical organism of man and technical discoveries.

For some long time now, modern man has brought his dreadful pride and presumption into all his conceptions of the universe. When these qualities are expressed in an extreme form in individual characters, this is not a matter of surprise to those who realise that it is precisely in the intellectual and scientific life of humanity that pride and presumption are the ruling factors, albeit this is unobserved by the majority of men.

In the course of our studies in Spiritual Science it has often been necessary for me to draw attention to this canker that has made its appearance in the more modern phase of evolution. Think of the way in which men write and of what they write about the achievements of the human race. Think of what can be read in school-books or in other works about the genius of discovery, about the invention, let us say, of paper. Paper is something that may well be a cause of regret when we think of the kind of stuff that is printed on it nowadays! Much has been said in praise of that capacity in man which has reached such a zenith of achievement! But as I have said before, a wasp's nest is composed of a substance that is the same as paper. Millions of years ago, the elemental Beings who stand behind the preparation of a wasp's nest, had already forestalled man in this discovery. And the same could be said in a thousand other instances. Take the telescope which can be turned in two directions, upwards-downwards, backwards-forwards. Schmieg, a man who tried in many ways to draw attention to such things, pointed to this very example of the telescope. Just think what it is that man has really achieved here. The twofold movement of the telescope—upwards-downwards, backwards-forwards—is made possible by a double apparatus for rotation: an upper apparatus known in mechanics as a hinge-joint, and a lower apparatus known as a pivot-joint. In this way, provision is made for the double rotatory movement. Now it would be absurd, as can easily be proved in the case of the telescope, to construct it the other way round, putting the pivot in place of the hinge or the hinge below the pivot. This would be quite useless. That such an adjustment of movement has been achieved may be lauded as a deeply significant discovery on the part of man. But in a much more ingenious way—and I use the word ‘ingenious’ in the objective and not in the subjective sense—you all possess this apparatus in your own bodies at the place where the head is poised upon the cervical vertebrae: above—a hinge joint; below—a pivot joint. And because of this you are able to move your heads upwards and downwards and from side to side. You see, therefore, that in the human organism itself we have exactly the same thing.

In the human organism there is to be found everything that man, through his discoveries, has made, or will yet make in the way of mechanical appliances, everything, that is to say, that can really contribute to human evolution. Only such things as can contribute nothing to human evolution are not to be found in man, or are only to be found there inasmuch as they have been inserted into his being by forces quite outside the natural course of his evolution. If, therefore, we look back to very early times, we shall say that there must have been a time when these peculiar joint-mechanisms and a great deal more as well, came into being. They are now in actual existence. We can go further and further back in human evolution (that is to say to phases of evolution when man already possessed the form that is his to-day), and we shall never find these organic arrangements absent. If, moreover, they are said to be the outcome of purely mechanical forces, how can this possibly be explained? Just think how wonderfully suitable for its purpose this particular apparatus is—so much so, indeed that it is possible even to use it on a telescope. No other arrangement would be anything like so suitable. According to a well-known principle of superficial Darwinism (I say ‘superficial’ expressly) it is the fittest who survive. But in this case, of what is the less fit supposed to consist? The less fit would make it impossible for man as he now is, to live at all. He simply would not be able to exist in the way he now exists; it is quite unthinkable that this is a case of transition from the less fit to the fit. Those who know the real truth as opposed to the dicta of superficial students of Darwinism, have always called attention to these things.

How will man in the future gain enlightenment on the subject of his connection with the cosmos? On this matter too, I have already said things that will have seemed puzzling and strange. I spoke of the modern belief that the Heavens are to be explained by the Heavens, and said that this was a mere catchword. The truth is that the secrets of the Heavens which can be investigated—and which by the Copernican school are considered to yield their own explanation—these secrets can explain what exists on the Earth; the mysteries of the Earth in their turn, can explain the mysteries of the Heavens.

Strange as it may appear, in times to come, in order to understand the Heavens, men will study the embryo (as it develops out of the cell) and its environment, up to the point of the existence of man as a complete and finished being. And the observations made will serve to reveal the mysteries of the great universe. The revelations of the Heavens will be explanatory of processes which, on the Earth, take their course in animal, plant and man—above all in embryonic life. The truth is that the Heavens explain the Earth, and the Earth the Heavens. This still seems a paradox to the modern age but it is a principle of real knowledge for the future and one that must be amplified and developed in many directions.

Aberrations in Occultism

Let me now speak again of problems connected with Lucifer and Ahriman. With some justification we look for the manifestations and revelations of Lucifer in human emotions and in the passions and feelings of men. We regard the Luciferic influence as operating more from the inner being. That Eve could set about making herself fair to look upon, could become a being who realised her own beauty and through her beauty proceed to bring about the temptation—this necessitated the help of Lucifer. When the other influence was destined to appear in the course of earthly evolution, namely, that the Sons of the Gods should find the daughters of men fair, i.e., should find the objective world beautiful, the intervention of Ahriman was required. It was necessary for Lucifer to work through Eve in order that she might realise her beauty and through her beauty bring about the temptation. That the objective world should work as beauty and influence the human soul, Ahriman was needed.

The first event fell in the Lemurian epoch, the second in the age of Atlantis.

It behoves us to increase our knowledge and understanding of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences. I can, of course, only describe certain details, but these details must then be put together in order to build up a knowledge of the nature of the Ahrimanic and Luciferic influences as a whole.

Some of you are possibly familiar with strange things that are apt to take place in circles where occultism, pseudo-occultism, occult charlatanism and the like, are cultivated. These strange things happen again and again. Suppose, for example, that a Society which likes to call itself an ‘Occult Society,’ numbers among its adherents, certain celebrities. In these so-called ‘Occult Societies’ there are always celebrities whose word is taken for law. Something said or done by these celebrities is immediately laid down as dogma. Suppose it becomes a dogma that one or another of these persons is the reincarnation of some great individuality, has achieved something quite out of the common, has uttered sublime truths, thousands of printed copies of which are sent out into the world. The utterances are considered to be of a lofty order although they may be commonplace in the extreme. That, however, makes no difference! It happens again and again that the most superficial nonsense, if delivered with the necessary veneer of sentimentality, is accepted by thousands of people as the most profound truth.

When something of the kind happens—and I am not now speaking of a particular instance but of typical occurrences—a good many people will be roused, protesting vigorously that they will submit to no dogma that it is all nonsense, that they do not want it, and they will never believe in it. Opposition will immediately be set on foot against them. But then some celebrity comes along and meets one of these rebels. What happens? In a few hours the rebel is converted into the most rabid supporter! Sometimes, indeed, the conversion is effected in less than an hour. Such things happen again and again. People are puzzled, very naturally. They say ‘Yes, but he or she (and it is not by any means always a ‘she’ but quite often a ‘he’)—he or she used to think so clearly about these things. How could one short conversation suffice so completely to change them over that they now believe anything and everything?’

There are people sitting here who know that such things have actually happened. But can it really be said in such a case that true conviction has been brought about? No, indeed! There can be no question of what is known as conviction in ordinary waking life. The occurrence must be regarded in quite a different light and in order to understand it we must consider the character of Ahriman.

One of the main characteristics of Ahriman is that he absolutely ignores the unbiased relationship to truth which is a determining factor in the life of man on Earth. This unbiased relationship to truth, where we strive for truth as the accordance of idea with objective reality, is beyond Ahriman's ken. He neither knows nor is concerned with it. Ahriman's position in the universe makes it entirely a matter of indifference to him whether, in the forming of a concept, this concept agrees with reality. In everything which Ahriman conceives as truth (in the human sense, of course, one would not call it ‘truth’) he is concerned only with effects. What is said, is said not because it fits the facts, but in order to produce an effect. This or that is said in order that some particular effect may be produced. It would therefore be ‘Ahrimanic’ if I were to speak to someone about our Building, let us say, with entire indifference as to its truth, but merely for the sake of inducing the person in question to undertake this or that, knowing that he will acquiesce if I ask him to do so.

I am sure you realise that these things actually happen: that a man may think out some scheme, be utterly indifferent as to whether his ideas are in accordance with objective reality or not, and then make use of them in such a way that they will have a certain effect upon those who listen to him. On a small scale this happens every day and one can think of many examples. Just think of all the things match-making ladies say when they want to bring two young people together, of all they say of the doings of the future couple! The match-makers are quite unconcerned as to the truth of what they say. Their only aim is to bring off the match under the influence of what is said.

That, of course, is a very trivial example and Ahriman himself is above such trivialities. What I mean to convey is that in human life we can find analogies for everything. The point with Ahriman is always the effect that will be produced by what is said and he formulates his utterances in such a way that when it comes to the point of communicating them he can step in to help.

Now it would serve Ahriman's purposes well if there were to arise on Earth a number of human beings who hold such a definite belief as that of which I spoke just now. If a man has been initiated into the mysteries of corrupt occultism and as a result of the initiation he has received has no inclination to place himself in the ranks of true occultism, then he can enter into a pact with Ahriman and declare a truth which in the human sense, of course, is not truth at all but which will produce certain definite effects. There is always some element of this kind at work in events such as I have described: where in an incredibly short time an out-and-out rebel succumbs to suggestion practised by means of Ahrimanic arts. In league with Ahriman a man can easily induce another to believe that some personality is an incarnation of a great individuality. It is merely a question of knowing the art of sowing the seeds where they will find responsive soil—in this case the soil of humanity itself—in such a way that the effects alone, and not the fact of agreement with objective reality, are of importance.

Such things go on in many circles which like to consider themselves ‘Occult.’ In many such circles it is not a question of ideas which accord with reality but of saying things to serve a definite aim and produce definite effects in one direction or another. Certainly, there are people who are so dull-witted and simple-minded that they immediately respond to Ahrimanic impulses quite unconsciously and without any direct application of Ahrimanic arts. But it does actually happen that Ahrimanic arts, that is to say, arts practised in direct association with Ahriman, are applied in human life. In our times, things that are done as an outcome of alliance with Ahriman play a part of great significance. For much of what has been going on for a long time now in human affairs is only to be understood in the light of a knowledge of secrets which have been lightly touched upon here.

We find, therefore, that Ahriman is never concerned as to whether an idea fits the facts but only with the effects produced.

With Lucifer it is not quite the same. Lucifer has other characteristics of which we have often spoken. But one characteristic in particular shall be mentioned here in order to further our knowledge. Like Ahriman, Lucifer is never concerned with the agreement of an idea with actuality. Lucifer is out to cultivate such ideas as will generate in man the highest possible degree of consciousness. Understand me well: I mean by that, cultivation of the most enhanced consciousness, of the widest possible expansion of consciousness. This expanded consciousness in which Lucifer is interested is associated with a certain inner voluptuousness in man. This again is Lucifer’s sphere. You remember perhaps that in speaking of At1antean times I once said that all sexuality was then an unconscious process. Beautiful myths of the different people point to this unconsciousness of the sexual process in ancient times. Only in the course of time was it raised to the realm of consciousness. Lucifer plays an essential part in raising this unconsciousness greater and greater consciousness.Prematurely to induce consciousness in man, that is to say, to call forth consciousness whereas under proper conditions this particular degree of consciousness should unfold at another period of time—this is the aim of Lucifer. Lucifer does not want the attention of men to be directed altogether to externalities. He would like everything that works into the consciousness to work from within. Hence all visionary life—which is, as it were, an exudation of forces in the inner organs—is of a Luciferic nature.

When Lucifer is known—and he must be known because it is a question of keeping him in his rightful sphere and we are here concerned with spiritual forces in the universe—we realise with horror that he has not the very least understanding pf any harmless delight or amusement which a man may take in things of the outer world. Lucifer has not the remotest sympathy for harmless, amused delight aroused by something outside. What he does understand is any emotion that is kindled by the inner being of man. Lucifer well understands when a desire in man awakens voluptuousness and when some process that would otherwise remain unconscious is called in this way into the region of consciousness. But in spite of his wisdom—and Lucifer has, of course, sublime wisdom—he simply cannot understand a harmless joke occasioned by some outer event. This lies outside his province. And one can protect oneself against the attacks which Lucifer is so prone to make, precisely by taking innocent joy and delight in the world outside. Lucifer cannot bear this; it vexes him terribly, for instance, if we take delight in a good caricature.

Such are the connections which are disclosed when we pass from the world of sense to the region lying beyond the Threshold, the region where things are not as they are in the world of sense but where all is Being, living Being. Even in the world of the Elements everything is living.

It is therefore correct to say that both Ahriman and Lucifer are equally unconcerned as to whether ideas agree with actuality. Ahriman is concerned with the effects of what is said; Lucifer's aim is to bring about an enhanced consciousness in man of what, in a particular situation, should really not become conscious.

In these two ways it is possible to achieve ends which could not be achieved if care were taken to ensure absolute agreement between idea and objective reality. And just as an alliance with Ahriman is the aim of corrupt occult circles, for reasons already indicated, so too, attempts are made to enter into a pact with Lucifer, that is to say, efforts are made to influence human beings in such a way that vision is induced as the outcome of inner voluptuousness—vision that is kindled from the inner being.

What is consciously achieved in these corrupt occult circles, namely, a pact with Ahriman on the one side and with Lucifer on the other, enables Ahriman and Lucifer to work into the unconscious regions of man's being. And much of the criticism which must be directed against the character of the fifth Post-Atlantean epoch in the way it is expressing itself in the world, is to be traced to Ahrimanic and Luciferic impulses. That there is so much lying, direct and indirect, that so much is said with utter indifference as to whether it agrees with the objective reality or not but simply for the sake of satisfying some feeling or passion—all these things are directly traceable to the fact that Ahrimanic and Luciferic influences have gripped the world to-day and are causing chaos in human affairs. For at our present stage of evolution we should not be capable of making statements as the outcome of passion without any attempt to discover whether they are really in accordance with reality or not, if we only lent ourselves to the Powers of Good! During the Atlantean epoch and even afterwards—at any rate up to the middle of the fourth post-Atlantean period—the forces in man's own inner being enabled him to ensure agreement between his ideas and the corresponding objective realities. This faculty, as we know, has been lost. And our present phase of evolution is there precisely in order that men may learn to observe the outer world, to investigate it—not to make statements which are merely instigated by their own passions! To-day, when conclusions well up from the inner life and no attempt is made to ensure their agreement with objective reality, a Luciferic influence is mingling with an Ahrimanic influence, the one inducing misplaced consciousness, and the other, lying and untruthfulness. These things are very widespread at the present time. Many souls to-day ignore the necessity of ensuring that an idea shall absolutely accord with objective reality. Moreover, few enough efforts are made in this direction. When they are made they are not understood and cause, to say the least, a considerable amount of surprise! Least of all does one find understanding when one tries to give such characterisations of reality as are supported by what actually exists, simply taking the things of the world as they are and reproducing them in ideas. People do not understand that this is something radically different from things that are done and said as the outcome either of personal or national passion. Here lies the radical difference which is unobserved to-day. Statements are made and conclusions are formed by men in accordance with their own lines of thought and without regard as to whether such statements and conclusions agree with the facts or not. That statements should agree with objective facts—upon this the fate of our age depends. For only so can we hope to pass onwards to an epoch wherein the spiritual world can be perceived in its true nature. Unless we acquire the faculty for the perception of truth in this physical world we shall never be able to unfold it in regard to the spiritual world. The capacity to find our true bearings in the spiritual world must be developed here in the physical world. It is for this purpose that we are placed in the physical world, where it behoves us to seek agreement between idea and objective reality, in such a way that this may become natural to us, may become a habit and a faculty which we then carry with us into the spiritual world.

But in these days there are so many who make statements with utter disregard of their conformity with objective fact, simply out of their feelings and emotions! This tendency is the very reverse of what is needed for the onward progress of humanity. Thinking in accordance with reality has become terribly foreign to our materialistic age under the influences which have here been described. Thinking in accordance with reality is rare in the extreme and when it is honestly striven for it comes into clash with whole world of unreal thinking. A terrible example of this is afforded by the conflicts that arise between our Anthroposophical Movement and unreal thinking;—conflicts which must be spoken of, however unwelcome this may be, because the facts are there and because one cannot be silent about them if one is sincere in regard to the Movement.

These conflicts of thinking that is in accordance with reality with thinking that is inimical to reality (inimical in the sense explained above) are an example of what is at stake when efforts are made really to serve the interests of truth.

In every age the fight with the opposing powers has had to be waged but the particular form this fight assumes in every age and the metamorphosis it undergoes must be recognised and understood. The influence of the Scribes and Pharisees has not died out! It is still working to-day, in a different form. And we shall only make progress with the clarity that is essential when we really understand this difference between thinking that is in accordance with reality and thinking that is inimical to reality.

• 1. See also Cosmic Forces in Man. Christiania, Nov.–Dec., 1921 Anthroposophical Publishing Co.

The task that has been set here in these reflections over the past few weeks has been to place the human being in the universe in an understanding way. Yesterday I tried to indicate how, on the one hand, the human being is part of the cosmic world of thought, from which he is also formed in terms of his entire organization, so that, on the one hand, by looking at that which is not grasped by ordinary consciousness in his sensory perception, his ordinary experience of himself, the human being in relation to this organization of his, he must think of himself as belonging to the cosmos and only in relation to the ordinary life of thinking, which, as I have shown, is situated between, on the one hand, cosmic thinking and, on the other hand, thinking that can be perceived as an undercurrent of ordinary consciousness, must he think of himself as belonging to himself in the sense of his own self. The latter would now also belong to what man, as it were, has to regard as belonging to his own self. Yesterday we tried to throw some light on man in so far as he has a thought experience or is placed in the world of thought.

The more one rises to this view, the more one will learn to place the human being in all world-becoming, in all that makes him appear as a piece of cosmic becoming. And when we become so attentive to that part of the human being that is composed of the ordinary life of thought and of the undercurrent that I characterized yesterday, then we will also understand how the human being, through the possession of this part that has been so to speak set apart from the cosmos, is a free, self-reliant entity.

This consideration of the human being can be taken even further, and today we want to try to place the human being in the context of the other kingdoms of nature. I need only point out that I have said many times how wrong it is to consider the relationship of the human being to the animal kingdom, for example, merely in terms of today's anatomy and physiology. Of course, if we first consider the human being in terms of his overall form, and how this overall form is composed of the individual organs, then we will notice that the human being has roughly the same number of bones, muscles and so on as the higher animals, and that these organs or organ systems have been transformed, metamorphosed. We will be able to include the human being in the animal series. But something quite different arises – and I have often discussed this – when one considers what places the human being in a very special way in the cosmos. It must be noted that the column of the animal's back, the backbone, lies essentially horizontally, parallel to the earth's surface; the human backbone stands upright on the earth's surface. If one does not believe that everything is based on the coarse material, but if one comes to the view that what exists is based in its essence on the whole being placed in a coherent world system, then one will attach a corresponding importance to this special position of the human backbone. As a result, the human head is placed in a completely different position to the entire organization. And if one has only once risen to the view: The cosmos is interwoven and interwoven by thoughts - then, insofar as the cosmos is to be regarded as spatial, one will see in the currents of thought that go through the cosmos, an essential and one will be able to see that it makes a difference whether the current that runs along the spine in humans is aligned with the radial direction of the earth or whether, as in animals, it runs parallel to the surface of the earth.

This being placed of the human being in a certain way in the cosmos must then be looked at with regard to the overall organization, and thus also for the individual organs. Each organ and each organ system is located differently in relation to the cosmos in humans than in animals. This is not affected by the fact that someone might say that the human backbone is horizontal when sleeping. It does not depend on the individual position, but on how the whole growth is assessed, how an organ system is integrated into the whole organism. And if we bear in mind that we have the animal backbone parallel to the earth's surface and the human backbone perpendicular to it, then we shall be able to appreciate in the right way other processes that can be observed in man. And here I would first like to draw your attention to a different system of the soul than the one we looked at yesterday. Yesterday we looked at the thought system; today we want to look at the will system.

We can also look at this will system by becoming aware that the human being's life rhythmically breaks down into the states of sleeping and waking. During waking hours, the human being is completely devoted to his physicality; during sleep, the I and the astral body are outside of physicality, both the physical and the etheric physicality. When we wake up in the morning, I told you yesterday, we bring with us at most a faint memory from the thoughts of the universe. So that we can become aware: In the whole time from falling asleep to waking up, we were immersed in a surging sea of cosmic thoughts. But what we bring with us when we wake up and what then determines us throughout the day while we are awake is the will, that is, emerging from this nocturnal, or let us say, during our sleep, our element-forming thought-sea of the cosmos. We emerge with the will, which, as I have characterized it, introduces logic into our inner soul life. We may still notice, when we wake up, in the dreams that crowd in, what our soul life would be like if this will, which we bring with us when we wake up, did not penetrate it logically.

In a sense, then, this will strikes into what is surging and swirling in the human organism. Let us take a very close look at this impact of the will. Let us become aware of where the will is striking into: It is precisely the chaotic swirling of dream images and also of those dream textures that we have as undercurrents of our ordinary consciousness. So that we can say: While we sleep, this web of thoughts is released from the organic mechanism within us, completely drowned out by the web of thoughts interwoven with logic in the waking state, from waking to falling asleep. It is this chaotic jumble of dream images and dream ideas that the will strikes, which we bring into our organism from the cosmos when we wake up. Let us see what this will initially brings with it.

This will that strikes in initially has the effect that thoughts do not arise as they are in this dreamy chaos. We would get off badly in life if thoughts arose as they do in this dreamy chaos. What must thoughts be like when they arise in normal mental life? They must somehow be connected with our life. They must be able to remember in some way. That is, in a sense, the first thing that the will, which has made an impact, does with our thoughts. It organizes them in such a way that we carry the right memory image within us. We can therefore say: we have, as it were, the chaotic web of thoughts swirling up out of our organism (see drawing, red). It is something that is particularly strong in dreamy natures, who are often not satisfied with indulging in the normal memories of life, who take pleasure and delight when thoughts come together and separate again after allusions and similarities. Dreamy natures are overwhelmed by this chaotic web of thoughts. But even a person who is well aware of himself will always notice, if he lets himself go just a little during waking life, I would say, that this confusion of thoughts is present in the main, underlying current. The will, which strikes there when one wakes up, it strikes this web of thoughts. Where does it come from?

Now, in bed lay the physical body (blue) and the etheric body (yellow). What I have drawn schematically on the board here is basically what we leave in bed when we fall asleep and what we encounter again in the morning. We allow our will to be woven into it. I will characterize this will that is woven into it through these lines here (see drawing, arrows from above). So the first thing that the will has to do is to reshape this chaotic web of thoughts into our normal memory. We can therefore say that, initially, this will that is woven into it shapes the web of thoughts into normal memory. One might say: the etheric body, the physical body, that is what we encounter in the morning, is still very powerful in our memory. These thoughts are reflected back to us. But it is the will that strikes and really has something to do by striking. You can see that. Just try to remember how, when you wake up in the morning, everything swirls up like currents from the soul like an event you experienced at the age of five, at the age of seven, again at the age of six year, again in the fifteenth year, in the sixty-fifth year for all I care, then in the twenty-first, seventeenth year, again in the eighth year, how it all swirls and tumbles in a colorful mess. The will has to strike into this. Then, in a sense, it organizes it all again so that it is a proper memory, so that an event that took place in the ninth year does not get mixed up with what happened in the eighth year and the like. So the will strikes into it, and it forms memory out of this chaotic web of dreams. In memory, you still notice little of the will. Most people will not want to see the will at all in memory. But it is there, it is just that the impact of the will, in so far as it forms memory, is much more unconscious.

The second is something that a person can already recognize as their will. This is what this will, which we bring with us when we wake up, makes out of this surge of thoughts: this is the imagination, this is the fantasy (see drawing). That is the second element. There you can already see that you can move in it with your arbitrariness. While the memory is being formed, you still have to be constrained by your organism; the physical body and etheric body are very influential. In the imagination, this is less so, and you can move about in it with your will. But there is an enormous difference between a person who is imaginative and a person who dreams, who simply surrenders to the surge of arbitrary thought. A person who lets his imagination run wild knows how his will rules in these interweaving images, and he shapes them according to his will.

But now for the third. The third is something that, on the one hand, is really completely given over to the will and, on the other hand, is such that the will does not move as freely as in imagination. It is logical thinking, on which we depend in life and in science. There, in this logical thinking, our will is certainly active; but it surrenders its own freedom and submits to the laws of logic. Yet it is its doing that it submits to the law of logic. So that is the third thing: logical thinking.

Why is logical thinking, on the one hand, absolutely subject to the will? If we did not form our logical thinking out of our own will, it would be obsessive thoughts. We must form our logical thoughts out of our own will. But we form them in such a way that we orient ourselves to the external world, which, after all, is essentially the great teacher of logic in the first place. We imbue the chaotic world of images with the laws of logic. We thus surrender to these laws of logic through our will; in a sense, we surrender to the arbitrary workings of logic. On the one hand, the will is free in thought; on the other hand, it surrenders its freedom in favor of logic. But in these three stages – memory, imagination, logical thinking – the will is active; that will that from falling asleep to waking up does not work in the human physical and etheric organism and that in the morning when waking up into the physical and etheric organism, and which this, I would like to say, indeterminate fire of the etheric and physical body, kindled in the surge of thought, is divided into memory, imagination, logical thinking.

It is already the case in logical thinking that we are no longer completely in control with our will. We are not. When we let our imagination run free, in which we clearly notice our will, then we know how we are within ourselves; when we let our logical thinking run free, we are no longer completely within ourselves. We know that we adapt ourselves completely to the cosmos, but not only to the extra-human cosmos, but to the whole cosmos, which includes the human being. For it is self-evident that logic applies not only to the extra-human cosmos, but also to the cosmos plus the human being. Logic is neither subjective nor objective, but logic is both at the same time.

In a sense, we can see the part that what we bring with us from the world of sleep into our soul life in the morning plays. And we can also know approximately: when what has entered as will withdraws back into the cosmic world of thought, only what rises up from the physical body and etheric body rules in us again.

Now this is one aspect of the will that rules in us. It is, so to speak, the cosmic side of the will, the side that we take out of us in the evening and bring back into us again in the morning. But self-reflection will indeed teach people that not only this will is present in him, of which I have just spoken, because this will expresses itself essentially in the so-called soul life, in memory, in imagination, in logical thinking. But when we walk, when we grasp, when we somehow use an instrument, the will is also active. In these activities, the will is not only active in the soul, as I have just described it; in these activities, the will takes hold of our physical organization and our etheric organization. Therefore, I cannot characterize the will only in these arrows here, but I must also depict the will permeating the physical and etheric bodies (see drawing on page 157, arrows from below). So I have to say: The will is also present in that which remains in the bed during sleep. The will, which must be characterized in this latter sense, comes, as it were, towards the other will, which is not in the physical body of the person during sleep. And this latter will basically becomes an external activity. So this will, which lives in the organs, which lives in the physical and etheric organization, is called upon by the other will coming to meet it. But when we are active as an awake person, we can clearly distinguish these two spheres of will.

Please note that on the one hand there is a will that counteracts the will coming from the other side. We have, so to speak, the interaction of two currents of will. One of these currents of will swirls through the human organism and the whole context shows you that you have to look at it as swirling from bottom to top. The other current swirls from top to bottom. Here the directions in the cosmos come into play, and we notice that it must be different in animals, in that the main direction of their bodily organization is precisely perpendicular to the main direction of the bodily organization of humans. The directions of will are differently integrated into the cosmos. So, too, when we, I would like to say, go into the differentiations of the human being, when we realize how this human being is composed of individual currents, then we notice the importance of the human being's being placed in the cosmos.

Now let us take a closer look at these two currents of will. As with many things in spiritual science, you will not be able to proceed in such a way that you, I might say, derive one from the other as in mathematical derivation, but in spiritual science the way to arrive at the truths is as follows: one truth is juxtaposed with the other and one must then seek the connection. With superficial simpletons this very easily leads to the objection that one does not “prove”. It is just as if someone, when he sees a horse and a cow standing side by side in a field, and they are certainly standing side by side for some reason, were to demand that someone should prove to him from the horse that the cow is standing beside it. Of course, one cannot prove from the essence of the horse that the cow is standing next to it. This is roughly the content of the objection that many people raise with regard to proof in spiritual science.

I would now like to present you with another fact, in addition to the one I have just mentioned, which you must gradually try to put into the appropriate context, based on what I have just discussed.

Everything that is in the soul of a person is also expressed in the physical body, and is imprinted in the physical body. The human being is organized in such a way that he awakens memory, imagination, and logical thinking by waking up, and that he allows them to rest within him, so to speak, while sleeping. This is a kind of rhythm. This rhythm is juxtaposed with another: the stream of will, which I have indicated here as being located in the organs. What confronts each other as two currents, you can, I would like to say, find it depicted in the human being: you can find it by looking at the system that is given by the human breathing rhythm. A few days ago, I already pointed out how the breathing rhythm can really be thought of in connection with falling asleep and waking up. Even if breathing naturally outlasts sleep, one still recognizes the connection in everything that somehow impairs calm breathing during sleep, for example. This connection between breathing and the rhythm of waking up, falling asleep, waking up, falling asleep is not so obvious, but this connection, this relationship is there nevertheless. And when we consider the human being in relation to his upward striving, we have to consider the breathing rhythm as something essential that is connected with this upward striving, the whole respiratory system, also insofar as it is expressed in the speech system. We breathe, we speak as human beings essentially upwards, even if this is transformed by the position of our throat into speaking forwards. There we have one rhythm, a unified rhythm.

We have another rhythm, we have the rhythm of circulation, the rhythm that is given to us in the pulse, and we know that the pulse rhythm is roughly related to the respiratory rhythm as four to one. You need only reflect a little on the anatomical and physiological aspects to realize that the pulse rhythm, the rhythm of circulation, is intimately connected with the metabolic-limb system of the human being. The actual rhythmic system is, I would say, separated out in the respiratory system. The more one engages with a characteristic of the respiratory system on the one hand and a characteristic of the pulse system on the other, the more one notices that everything that is present as an organ for the formation of memory, imagination, logical and that everything else that is connected with the will that flows through the organs can be related to the pulse rhythm by expressing itself upwards. Just as the will that is in our organs coincides with the will that we bring with us from the cosmos when we wake up, so the respiratory rhythm coincides with the pulse rhythm, with the circulation rhythm. And there we have in the interaction of the respiratory rhythm and the pulse rhythm, in a very physical way, what comes up from below and what strikes down from above, but in such a way that what strikes down from above is four times slower than what comes up from below. If I were to take this stroke as the time consideration for the breathing rhythm, I would have to take four for the pulse rhythm.

In fact, everything that man develops in the way of art, of rhythmic art, is based on this relationship between the pulse rhythm and the respiratory rhythm. I have already said this on the occasion of the discussion about the art of recitation. You can go into more detail. You can think that if you base it more on the pulse rhythm, you get: short syllable, long syllable. If you combine the breathing rhythm with the pulse rhythm, you get, for example, the meter of the hexameter, and so on. All meters are based on these relationships of rhythms that are within the human being itself.

Now, when you look at the blood rhythm, you look, so to speak, more at the physical; when you look more at the breathing rhythm, you look at the soul. The breathing rhythm is much more closely related to the soul than the blood rhythm. The breathing rhythm also opens outwards, just as logic and logical thinking open outwards. Now, irregularities in these rhythms are the cause of irregularities in human life. You can well imagine that if there really is such a ratio of four to one or one to four, then it must mean something if, let us say, the breathing rhythm becomes too long or the pulse rhythm too short. And yet this can be the case with humans. It can even be the case in a very insignificant way; then it manifests itself immediately.

Now I will present the radical cases. Imagine a person gets excited. He begins to become passionate. He starts ranting about something. This can go as far as raving. Or a person gets into the state that is described as follows: the thoughts do not want to, they stand still; one cannot think properly, they stay away. Just as the raving was the most radical expression of the process, from becoming passionate through ranting to becoming raving, it is the same with thoughts standing still, gradually leading to a kind of unconsciousness. The former, becoming passionate, becoming emotional, is based on the pulse rhythm becoming too fast. The stopping of thought and the fainting are due to a slowing of the respiratory rhythm.

So you see, the human being is interwoven with the rhythms of the whole world. And how we are within this world rhythm determines how we appear to us physically and mentally. The emotional life also expresses itself physically: the current that flows through the organism from bottom to top becomes too fast, it shakes the organs, and when it comes to raging, you can see how the organs are shaken. The current that flows from top to bottom becomes too slow; thoughts do not want to go from top to bottom. Here again we see how important it is that we can form a picture of man's place in the whole cosmic context, how he fits into it, and how it is mere childishness to count the bones, muscles, etc., and say: Man is only a higher animal formation — and not to take into account that what matters is this placing in the whole cosmic context.

Now I will tell you something that seems very far removed from what I have just explained, but which, in tomorrow's lecture, will nevertheless be linked to what I have just explained to form a whole. Let us now move from human existence to human development. You know that we are now living in the so-called fifth post-Atlantic period, which began around 1415 or 1413 and will continue. It is preceded by the fourth, which began around 747 BC before the Mystery of Golgotha, and this in turn is preceded by the third, which goes back to the 4th millennium.

Now, if we consider these periods, we can form the following schematic picture of their succession. Please imagine that the Atlantean period was preceded by what I called the Lemurian period in my “Occult Science”. I will assume here only the last phases of this Lemurian period, and now draw the seven successive cultural conditions of the Atlantean period: and now we have, in succession, the primeval Indian, primeval Persian, Egyptian-Chaldean, Greek-Latin, and now our fifth period; that would be the last period. I have schematically presented the successive periods to you.

You now also know from my “Secret Science” and from other presentations that I have given that such a period lasts approximately until the vernal point of the sun has completed the entire passage through the zodiac. It is only approximate, but for what we want to consider now, this approximation will have its good meaning. In 747 BC, before the event of Golgotha, the vernal point entered the zodiacal sign of Aries. It remained in this zodiacal sign until the 15th century. Then it passed over and is now in the zodiacal picture of Pisces. Before 747 the vernal point was in the sign of Taurus, so throughout the entire Egyptian-Chaldean cultural period the sun rose in spring in the constellation of Taurus; hence the bull service. Then came the ancient Persian period; the sun rose in the constellation of Gemini. During the time of ancient India, the sun rose in the constellation of Cancer. Then we come back to the Atlantean time and have the seven cultural periods in the Atlantean time. Now I ask you to consider the following and to visualize it as a question that we are initially presenting today.

Let us draw the sequence of the zodiacal constellations. So we have: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces. We will now schematically draw here how it stands with the successive cultural periods. We know that we are now in the Pisces sign at the vernal equinox, and have the fifth post-Atlantic cultural period. We go back (see drawing, page 165, dark hatched): Aries fourth post-Atlantic cultural period, Taurus third post-Atlantic cultural period, Gemini second post-Atlantic cultural period, Cancer first post-Atlantic cultural period. We are now returning to the Atlantean period. The seven periods of the Atlantean period (light shading): Leo the seventh, Virgo the sixth, Libra the fifth, Scorpio the fourth, Sagittarius the third, Capricorn the second, Aquarius the first; and now we are returning to the Lemurian period and we are back to Pisces.

You see, when you consider the important time of the last culture, the last cultural epoch of the Lemurian period, and when you read about this important period of the development of the earth and humanity in my book “Occult Science”, you will be faced with a big question. If you take what I have presented in my “Occult Science in Outline”, especially in the presentations that appeared separately as “Our Atlantean Ancestors”, then you will see how one can actually speak of humanity, insofar as it is humanity today, only from this period onwards, and this period is the one in which the vernal point was in the same zodiacal constellation as it is now. We have, as humanity, gone through a complete cycle around the heavens and, in a certain sense, have arrived back at the starting point.

What I have just said relates to human becoming. We have often tried to show how the human soul life has changed in the time since the Atlantean period. We know how different this entire human soul life was in the time of the ancient Indians, and how it was still different in the Atlantean period. But if you read my writing about the Atlantean ancestors, you will see that we go back to a time in the Atlantean period when the human configuration manifests itself physically in the same way as the human soul was at that time. While in the post-Atlantean period the soul life works essentially differently, during the Atlantean period the whole body is metamorphosed. We thus come back more and more, I would say, from the region which I characterized above as the soul region, to what is here below the bodily region, which is permeated by the other stream of will. And as we go further back in Atlantis, we come back to the metamorphoses that relate to the shaping of the body. So that we can say that during the passage of the vernal point through Pisces, human beings were scarcely present in the bodily form as it is (light shading). Here it is taking on more and more of a bodily form. And here it is only just beginning to take on a soul form, in order to return to the point from which it once emerged in terms of its bodily form. So that you can say, the zodiac signs of Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, Sagittarius, Scorpio, Libra, up to Virgo (light shading) correspond to the transformation of the human physical form; and only these upper zodiac signs correspond to the transformation of the human soul for us.

These things must first be considered from the point of view of spiritual science, and it will be seen that only then can concepts and ideas be formed about the essence of the human being. On the other hand, however, it may at least cast a light on what I have often said here, that we live in an important age. For while we have developed as humanity on Earth, the vernal point of the Sun has gone around the whole universe and has returned again in our era. We must therefore fulfill tasks that are, so to speak, guided by the fact that humanity has returned to its starting point, that it must undertake something in its soul life that corresponds to this return to the starting point. Today I only wanted to hint at what can be derived from such a consideration of the importance of the present human period of time. What I have said applies to the most advanced members of civilized humanity; but in the end it is they who are actually important for the development of humanity.

We will continue our discussion tomorrow, and focus on how these things relate to the latter.

If we follow the entire development of man, we will remember that initially we are dealing with Pitris, who come from the lunar epoch, because the Pitris are the actual people who came over in the seed and form the disposition to the earth. They have already shed the three realms, and we are dealing with moon Pitris.

That is the first factor. The second is where the Pitri are to incarnate, which comes from the earth itself, because the lunar forms are gone. There is a second current that must connect with the first. And the third is the one that came during the Lemurian epoch as manasic fertilization.

The soul comes from the moon, the body from the earth, it is formed from the earth. And the spirit comes from above as a divine impact. Thus the three limbs are composed.

These three currents are the representatives of three entities:

1. Human entity
2. Superhuman entity
3. Subhuman entity. We call the superhuman “divine entities”; the mystic also calls them “heavenly gods”. The second current from which the souls come, we call “star gods” or “planetary or sidereal gods”.

[gap in transcript]

Three groups, from which the body is built, we call elemental spirits. Thus we may say that man is built according to his body from elemental, underground spirits. They have gradually formed the bodies of minerals, plants, animals and humans to the point where he is glowing from the planetary [gap in the transcript] spirit. Only at the end of his development will he be spirit or logos.

We must also understand other characteristic features. We can characterize the elemental beings by saying that they have will, mind and thought in a single center. If we study all the elemental spirits that create in our evolution and ask, “What do you want?” there is no sense in it. For the common spirit has the will, the elemental spirit is the doer. Likewise, it has a common consciousness - you cannot ask, “What do you feel?” Like the hand in humans. Therefore, the activity of the elemental spirits appears in the form of necessary natural laws. They appear to be without feeling and will as necessities because consciousness is at the center of the whole macrocosm.

Now we come to the sidereal entities. When they have reached the highest level, they have their feelings for themselves and their thoughts for themselves, but not yet their will for themselves. When man has arrived at the end of the earth's development as a planetary Logos, he will be able to think and feel everything, but not to will. That will only come when he has spiritualized the next three planets. Then we are all-feeling and all-willing beings, but not yet all-powerful beings. However, the human being is now gradually acquiring will. The will element is what gradually emerges and has been developing freedom since the middle of the Lemurian period. An elemental being is not free, neither in relation to [gap in the transcript] plan. The Logos is free in relation to his thoughts when he has reached the highest point, and in relation to feeling; and a divine spirit being is free in relation to thought, feeling and will. This also explains why Christian esotericism does not ascribe free will to man, only to man to a limited extent. Angels carry out the will of God, are messengers. They see that thought and feeling are in balance in the mid [gap in transcript] sidereal beings. The two are not yet mastered by the will, therefore still in conflict;

They will bring them into full harmony through the will on the next planet. So that these planetary spirits in particular, which enter our earth, maintain balance in thought and feeling, thus still fluctuating back and forth, are not yet stable – hence Kama-Manas.

The third degree of divine beings has stable equilibrium through the will that holds them in balance. If you follow this, you will say to yourself: At the beginning of the first planet, we only see elementary beings at work, because the Pitris are still children. Then, in the middle of planetary development, the influence of the sidereal beings begins and continues, and from the middle to the end, the influence of the divine beings sets in.

From the beginning, therefore, we have only one center consciousness for the planetary cosmos; then a sidereal consciousness begins to develop, and then a heavenly one. In the beginning one is conscious, and at the end all partake of the consciousness of the one; in the beginning unity consciousness, in the end multiplicity consciousness. Now, we call the end product of such a being, endowed with consciousness, “Atm”. And the unity consciousness in the beginning we call “Ishwar”, so that we have to imagine the whole evolution as a transition from the unity consciousness, the Ishwara, to the unity consciousness of the <“Atwar”. He keeps giving until symphony is achieved.

If you now imagine the development, you have to say to yourself: We are dealing with an undivided Ishwara consciousness at the beginning, which has divided somewhere until the dull ego consciousnesses emerge. This point is esoterically and astrologically referred to as Libra. So you can say: The esoteric meaning of the statue of Libra is the emergence of Atma from Ishwara.

And now an important moment in evolution occurs: that the being from which the I emerged is a duality; for it is, after all, a macrocosmic being. The microcosm is the Atma embryo and the macrocosm is what acts from the outside as Ishwara consciousness. So, after the constellation of Libra, where they then diverge, you have the duality: the virginal soul, Virgo, and what comes in from outside, the powerful. This can also be called will, Leo. And now we have already reached the point where Leo and Virgo, which previously only asserted themselves in the natural kingdoms, gradually come together in man, the hermaphroditic human being, Gemini. Of course, between Leo and Virgo and Gemini, the reversal must take place; what was on the outside must come inside, that is what Cancer means. We have now assessed it in the hermaphroditic human being, the duality that is now emerging on the other side. What used to be higher nature becomes lower nature: Taurus. And now the ascent begins again, it goes up to Aries. What was lower nature becomes the representative of justice - the Jason saga.

The next thing is that justice does not remain external, but takes hold of the inner being: Kama, the water. We have the constellation of Pisces. Present moment. The theosophical movement [gap in the transcript]

Then it continues. Future: Aquarius, Sagittarius, Scorpio, and then again Libra.

New cycle from God to man. That which takes place between Libra and Aries – Virgo, Leo, Cancer, Gemini, Taurus, Pisces – is the openly apparent human development of our Earth.

On the other hand, we have the hidden development in the deity. It lies between Libra and Pisces. So everything that lies on the other side, externally visible development, can be seen through G/gap in the transcript]. Everything else lies on the outer side when developing internally - night, southern half. The one, the visible, is in a comprehensive sense the content of science. The other half is the content of the mysteries. Of course, only the full science illuminates the whole. Therefore, the theosophical development is the unveiling of the other side, the actual night that becomes day for those who enter into it. Therefore, at Christmas, the sun rises in Virgo and rises higher and higher; at Easter, there is the rebirth from Taurus man to Aries ram; and then it goes through Pisces to the full height of the sun.

At the times when the great festivals of the year approach our souls, it is good ever and again to bring before our inner eye, out of spiritual cosmic connections, the meaning of the festival year. And I should like to do this by setting before you how, under the influence of spiritual insights and over long ages, the festival year has gradually evolved out of the whole constitution of the Earth. If we look at the Earth and its events from such an aspect, we must only make clear that we cannot conceive the Earth as a mere conglomeration of minerals and rocks, as is done by modern mineralogy and geology, but we must rather regard it as a living, ensouled organism, which brings forth the plants, the animals and the physical being of man out of its own inner forces. Then what I shall now set forth will be in agreement.

You know that the Earth, with all the beings belonging to it—consider only the plant covering of the Earth—completely changes its aspect in the course of the year, changes everything with which it looks out into cosmic space as with its physiognomy, so to speak. After a year the Earth has always arrived again at about the same point, as to its appearance, at which it stood a year before. You need only to think how almost everything related to weather conditions, to the budding of plants, to the appearance of animal creatures—how with regard to all this the Earth has arrived again in this March, 1923, at about the same point of development at which it stood in March of the year 1922.

Today we intend to consider this cycle of the Earth as a kind of mighty breathing which the Earth carries out in relation to the surrounding cosmos. We can consider still other processes which take place on the Earth and around it as breathing processes of a sort. We can even speak of a daily breathing of the Earth. But today we want to place before our inner eye the yearly cycle, in the large, as a mighty breathing process of the Earth, in which of course it is not air that is breathed in and out, but rather those forces which are at work for example in vegetation, those forces which push the plants out of the Earth in spring, and which withdraw again into the Earth in fall, letting the green plants fade and finally paralyzing plant growth.

To repeat, it is not a breathing of air of which we speak, but the in-and-out-breathing of forces, of which we can get a partial idea if we notice the plant-growth during the course of the year. We intend today to bring this annual breathing process of the Earth before our souls.

Let us first look at the Earth at the time of the winter solstice, in the last third of December, according to our present reckoning. At this time we may compare the Earth's breathing with the lung-breathing of a man when he has inhaled a breath of air and is working on it in himself, that is, when he is holding his breath within him. In the same way, the Earth has within it those forces which I spoke of as being inhaled and exhaled. At the end of December it is holding these forces. And what is happening then with the Earth I can sketch for you schematically in the following way:

Let us think of this (red) as representing the Earth. We can of course only consider one part of the Earth in connection with this breathing. We shall consider that part in which we ourselves dwell; the conditions are of course reversed on the opposite side of the Earth. We must picture (vorstellen) the breathing of the Earth in such a way that in one region there is out-breathing, and in the opposite region in-breathing; but this we need not consider today.

Let us picture in our minds the season of December. Let us imagine what I am drawing here in yellow to be the held breath in our region. At the end of December the Earth has fully in-breathed and is holding in herself the forces of which I just spoke. She has entirely sucked in her soul element, for the forces of which I have spoken are the soul element of the Earth. She has drawn it completely in, just as a man who has inhaled holds the air entirely in himself.

This is the time at which with good reason the birth of Jesus has been set, because Jesus is thus born out of an Earth force which contains the entire soul element of the Earth within it. At the time of the Mystery of Golgotha the initiates who were still worthy of the ancient initiation connected a deep meaning with the view which placed the birth of Jesus just at this point of the earthly in-breathing and holding of the breath.

These initiates said something like the following: “In the ancient days, when our places of initiation stood within the Chaldean and Egyptian cultures, when a wish arose to know what that Being who represents the lofty Sun-Being had to say to earthly humanity, an idea of his message was formed, not by looking at the sunlight directly in all its spirituality, but rather by observing the way in which the sunlight was rayed back from the Moon.” And when the gaze was turned toward the Moon, they saw—with the help of clairvoyant vision—along with the flooding moonlight the manifestation of the Spirit of the Universe. And the meaning of this manifestation was realized in a more external way when they regarded the constellation of the Moon in relation to the planets and fixed stars.

In this way the position of the stars, especially in relation to the down-streaming moonlight, was observed during the night hours in the Chaldean, and still more in the Egyptian mysteries. Just as a man now reads the meaning of letters on a sheet of paper, in those times meaning was read in the relation of Aries, or of Taurus, of Venus, or of the Sun itself, to the streaming moonlight. From the way in which the constellations and the stars stood in relation to one another, especially from the way they were oriented with the moonlight, there was read what the heavens had to say to the Earth. All this was put into words. And according to the meaning of what was thus put into words, the ancient initiates sought what that Being Who was later called the Christ had to say to earthly man. They sought to interpret what was conveyed by the stars in their relation to the Moon and apply it to the earthly life.

But now as the Mystery of Golgotha drew near, the whole nature of the Mysteries passed through what I might call a great soul-spiritual metamorphosis. Then the oldest of the initiates said to their pupils: “A time is at hand when the stellar constellations must no longer be related to the flooding moonlight. The universe will speak differently to earthly man in the future. The light of the Sun must be observed directly. The spiritual gaze of the knower must be turned away from the revelations of the Moon and toward the revelations of the Sun.”

The teachings given in the Mysteries made a profound impression upon those men who at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha still ranked as initiates of the old order. And it was from this point of view that these initiates formed their judgment of the Mystery of Golgotha. But at the same time they said, “Some Earth event must enter in, which can bring about this transition from a lunar to a solar orientation.”—It was in this way that the cosmic significance of the birth of Jesus dawned on them.

They saw the birth of Jesus as something which gave the impulse out of the very Earth itself, no longer to regard the Moon as the regent, so to speak, of celestial phenomena, but rather the Sun itself.—“The event that brings this about,” so they said to themselves, “must be of an extraordinary kind.” And the nature of this extraordinary event yielded its secret to them through the following: They began to understand the inner meaning of the Earth occurrence that took place in the last third of December, the occurrence which we now call Christmas. They said to themselves: “Everything must now be related to the Sun.”—But the Sun can exert its power on the Earth only when the Earth has exhaled its forces. At Christmas time it has breathed them in; its breath is being held. If Jesus is born at this time, He is born at a time when the Earth is in a certain way not speaking with the heavens, a time when the Earth with its being has entirely withdrawn into itself. Jesus is born, then, at a time when the Earth is rolling along through cosmic space quite alone, when it is not sending out its breath to be welled and woven through by the force of the Sun, by the light of the Sun. At this time the Earth has not offered its soul-being to the cosmos; it has withdrawn its soul being into itself, has sucked it in. Jesus is born on the Earth at a time when the Earth is alone with itself, is isolated as it were from the cosmos.

Try to feel for yourselves the cosmic perceiving-feeling (Empfinden) which lies at the basis of such a way of calculating!

Now let us follow the Earth further in its yearly course. Let us follow it up to the time in which we are just now, about the time of the spring equinox, the end of March. Then we shall have to picture the situation in this way:

The Earth (red) has just breathed out; the soul is still half within the Earth, but the Earth has breathed it out; the streaming soul-forces are pouring out into the cosmos. Whereas since December, the force of the Christ Impulse has been intimately bound up with the Earth, with the soul-element of the Earth, we find that now this Christ Impulse, together with the outward-streaming soul element, is beginning to radiate around the Earth (arrows). This which here as Christ-permeated Earth-soul is flowing out into spiritual cosmic space, must be met now by the force of the sunlight itself. And the mental picture arises: While in December the Christ withdrew the Earth-soul element into the interior of the Earth, in order to be insulated from cosmic influences, now with the out-breathing of the Earth, He begins to let His forces breathe out, to extend them to receive the forces of the Sun (das Sonnenhafte) which radiate toward Him. And our schematic drawing will be correct if we represent the Sun force (yellow) as uniting with the Christ force radiating from the Earth. The Christ begins to work together with the Sun forces at Easter time; hence Easter falls at the time of the out-breathing of the Earth. But what happens then must not be related to the light flowing back from the Moon; it must be related to the Sun.

This is the origin of fixing the time of Easter as the first Sunday after the full moon following the spring equinox. And anyone who is sensitive to such things would have to say to himself with regard to the Easter time: “If I have united myself with the Christ force, my soul also streams out into cosmic spaces along with the out-breathing force of the Earth-soul, and receives the Sun force, which the Christ now brings to human souls from the Earth, whereas before the Mystery of Golgotha He brought it to them from the cosmos.”

But here something else enters in. When festivals were established in those times in which whatever was important on Earth was referred to the flooding moonlight, it was done purely in accordance with what could be observed in space: how the Moon stood in relation to the stars. The intent of the Logos, which had been written into space by Him, was thus deciphered in order to determine the festivals. But if you consider the fixing of the Easter festival as we have it now, you will see that it has been established according to space only up to a certain point, that point at which we speak of the full moon after the beginning of spring. Thus far everything is spatial, but we depart from space when we refer to the Sunday after the spring full moon. This Sunday is determined, not spatially, but according to how it stands in the cycle of the year, how it stands in the cycle of the weekdays, where following Saturday come Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and again Saturday, always in periodical succession. We step out of space here, when we cross over from the spatial setting of the Moon constellation to the purely temporal course in the yearly cycle of Sundays.

Thus it was possible still in the old mysteries to perceive in feeling that the fixing of the festivals had formerly been related to cosmic space but that with the Mystery of Golgotha there was a progression out of cosmic space into time, which itself was no longer related to cosmic space. What related to the spirit was as it were torn away from the purely spatial. This was a powerful “jolt” of mankind toward the spirit.

If we carry further our view of the Earth's breathing process during the course of the year, we find the Earth in yet a third condition in June. At this place which we are observing, the Earth has completely exhaled. The entire soul-element of the Earth has been poured forth into cosmic space; it is yielded up to cosmic space and is saturating itself with the forces of the Sun and the stars. The Christ, Who is joined with this soul-element of the Earth, now unites His force also with the forces of the stars and the Sun, surging there in the Earth-soul that is given over to the cosmic All. It is St. John's Day—Mid-summer. The Earth has fully out-breathed. In her outer physiognomy, with which she looks out into the universe, she reveals not her own inherent force, as she did at the time of the winter solstice; instead, the Earth reveals on her surface the reflected forces of the stars, of the Sun, of all that is in the cosmos outside her.

The old initiates, particularly those in the northern regions of Europe, felt most livingly the inner meaning and spirit of this time that is our June. At this time they felt their own souls, along with the Earth soul, given over to the cosmic expanses. They felt themselves to be living, not within the earthly realm, but rather in the cosmic distances. Indeed they said the following to themselves: “We live with our soul in the cosmic expanses. We live with the Sun, we live with the stars. And when we direct our gaze back upon the Earth, which has filled herself with springing and sprouting plants, which has brought forth animals of all kinds, then we see in the springing and sprouting plants, in the gleaming, unfolding colors of the flowers; we see in the insects flitting and creeping hither and yon, in the birds with their multicolored feathers traversing the air; we see gleam back from the Earth as though mirrored, what we take up into our souls just when we abandon the Earth and unite ourselves with the out-flowing breath of the Earth in order to live with the cosmos rather than with the Earth. What appears in world space springing and sprouting from the Earth in thousandfold colors—this is of the same nature. Only it is a reflection, a raying-back force, whereas we bear in our human souls the original force itself.”

This was the feeling of those men who were inspired out of the Mystery places, those men who especially understood the festival of the summer solstice; and so we see the St. John's festival placed at the time of the Earth's great out-breathing into the cosmos.

If we follow this breathing-process still further we come finally to the stage that makes its entry at the end of September. The out-breathed forces begin their return movement; the Earth begins once more to inhale. The soul of the Earth which was poured out into the cosmos now draws back into the interior of the Earth again. Human souls perceive this in-breathing of the Earth-soul element, either in their subconscious or in their clairvoyant impressions, as processes of their own souls. Those men who were inspired by initiation knowledge of these things could say to themselves at the end of September: “What the cosmos has given us and what has united itself with our soul force through the Christ Impulse—this we now allow to flow back into the earthly realm, into that earthly sphere which throughout the summer has served only as a reflection, as a kind of mirror in relation to the extraterrestrial cosmos.”

But a mirror has the property of not permitting anything that is in front of it to pass through it. Because the Earth is a mirror of the cosmos in the summer, it is also opaque in its inner nature, impermeable by cosmic influences and therefore, during the summer time, impermeable by the Christ Impulse. (See drawing). At this time the Christ Impulse has to live in the exhaled breath. The Ahrimanic forces, however, establish themselves firmly in this Earth which has become impervious to the Christ Impulse. And when the human being returns once more with the forces which he has taken up into his own soul through the Earth's out-breathing—including the forces of the Christ—he plunges into an Earth which has been ahrimanized.

However, it is so, that in the present cycle of Earth evolution—since the last third of the nineteenth century—from spiritual heights there comes to the aid of the descending human soul the force of Michael, who, while the Earth's breath is flowing back into the Earth itself, contends with the Dragon, Ahriman.

This was already foreseen prophetically by those in the ancient Mysteries who understood the course of the year spiritually. They knew that for their time the Mystery had not yet approached which would reveal Michael coming to the help of descending human souls. But they knew that when the souls should have been reborn again and again, this Michael force would enter, would come to the aid of earthly human souls. This was the meaning they saw in the cycle of the year.

Hence it is out of ancient wisdom that you will find written in the calendar on September 29, a few days after the fall equinox—Michael's Day, Michaelmas. And Michaelmas is for simple country people an exceedingly important time. But because of its position in the cycle of the year, Michaelmas is an important time also for those who want to grasp the whole significance of our present earth epoch. If we want to take our place in the present time with the right consciousness, we need to understand that in the last third of the nineteenth century the Michael force took up the struggle with the Dragon, with the Ahrimanic powers, in just the way necessitated by our time. And we must insert ourselves into this intention of earthly and human evolution by taking part in the right way with our own consciousness in this cosmic-spiritual battle.¹

We may say that up until now Michaelmas has been a festival for peasants—you know the sense in which I use the word—a festival for simple folk. But once the significance of the yearly breathing process that takes place between the Earth and the cosmos is recognized, Michaelmas will be more and more called upon to form a very real supplement to Easter. For mankind, who will understand earthly life again also in a spiritual sense, will eventually have to think in this way.

While the summer out-breathing occurred, the Earth was ahrimanized. Woe if Jesus had been born into this ahrimanized Earth! Before the cycle is completed again and December approaches, which brings about the birth of the Christ Impulse in the ensouled Earth, the Earth must be purified by spiritual forces, from the Dragon, from the Ahrimanic forces. And the purifying force of Michael, which subdues the evil Ahrimanic forces, must unite itself, from September into December, with the in-flowing earth breath, so that the Christmas festival may approach in the right way, and the birth of the Christ Impulse take place in the right way, so that it will then mature up until the beginning of the out-breathing at Easter time.

We can therefore say: “At Christmas time the Earth has drawn its soul-element into itself, the Earth has taken its soul-being into itself in the great yearly respiration. In this Earth-soul element which has been drawn into the Earth, the Christ Impulse is born in the inwardness of the Earth. Toward spring it flows out into the cosmos with the out-breathing of the Earth. It views the star world and enters into reciprocal action with it, but in such a way that its relation to the stars is no longer spatial, but temporal, so that the temporal is withdrawn from the spatial.”

Easter is on the first Sunday after the spring full moon. Within the full out-going breath man rises up with his soul-being into the cosmic world, permeates and saturates himself with the quality of the stars, takes in the breath of the cosmos with his earthly breath, thus permeating himself with the Easter spirit, and by St. John's Day he is most strongly imbued with that with which he began to permeate himself at Easter. He must then return to the Earth, with the Earth soul and his own soul-being, but he depends upon Michael's standing by him, so that he may penetrate the earthly world in the right way after the Ahrimanic element has been overcome through the Michael forces.

And ever more and more, with the strength of the indrawn breath, does the soul-element of the Earth retire into the Earth itself, up to Christmas time. And today we celebrate Christmas time in the right way if we say to ourselves: “Michael has purified the Earth, so that the birth of the Christ Impulse can occur at Christmas time in the right way.”

Then the out-flowing into the cosmos begins again. In this outflowing Christ takes Michael with Him, in order that Michael may again gather to him out of the cosmos those forces which he has used up in his struggle with the earthly Ahrimanic forces. At Easter time Michael begins again to immerse himself in the cosmic world, and is most strongly interwoven with the cosmos at St. John's time.

And a man in the present who comprehends in the right sense what unites him as man with the earthly, says to himself: “The age is beginning for us in which we see the Christ Impulse aright when we know that it is accompanied by the force of Michael in the course of the year; when we see the Christ flowing down into the earthly and rising up into the cosmos, accompanied by Michael, who at one time is contending within the earthly, at another gathering strength for the fight in the cosmic spaces.” (See lemniscate)

In the Easter thought we have an image of utmost grandeur which has been implanted into earth existence in order to bring enlightenment; namely, the image of Christ arising out of the grave in victory over Death. We can grasp this Easter thought in the right way in our time only if we understand that we must add to it today the Being of Michael, at the right hand of Christ Jesus. For while the force of the Earth's breath is becoming woven through with the force of Christ during the breathing process of the Earth in the course of the year's cycle, Michael accompanies Christ.

If we as Earth men would understand how to make the Christ thought alive in ourselves at each of the four great festivals of the year, including Easter, as indeed we must do, we need to be able to place this thought in the right way and in full consciousness into the present time. The hope that was focused on the coming of the Michael force in the service of the Christ force animated those who understand the Christ Impulse in the right way up to our time.

The obligation arises for us, especially in the modern age, to permeate ourselves with the Christ Impulse in the sense of the Michael thought. We do this in the right way when we know how to link the Resurrection thought with the active Michael thought which has been implanted into human evolution, in the way I have often explained.

• 1. This is the first occasion on which Rudolf Steiner spoke in a broader sense of the importance of celebrating Michaelmas today. His first allusion to the subject at all had been in a brief reference three months earlier. (The Spiritual Communion of Mankind, December 24, 1922)

In recent discussions,¹ I pointed out that certain human functions appearing in early childhood are transformations of functions that man carries out in pre-earthly existence between death and a new birth. We see how, after birth, the child not fully adapted to the earth's gravity and equilibrium gradually develops to the point at which it becomes adjusted to this equilibrium, how it learns to stand and walk upright. The body's adaptation to the condition of equilibrium of earthly existence is something the human being acquires only after life on earth has begun. We know that the form of man's physical body is the result of a magnificent spiritual activity, which man, together with beings of the higher worlds, undertakes in the period between death and a new birth. What man forms in this way, however—that which becomes the spiritual seed, as it were, for his future physical earthly organism—does not yet contain the faculty of walking upright. That faculty is incorporated into the human being when he adapts himself after birth to the conditions of equilibrium and gravity of earthly existence.

In pre-earthly existence, orientation does not refer to walking and standing as it does here on earth. There, orientation refers to the relationship man has with angels and archangels and therefore to beings of the higher hierarchies. It is a relationship in which one finds oneself attracted more to one being, less to another; this is the state of equilibrium in the spiritual world. It is lost to a certain extent when man descends to earth. In the mother's womb, man is neither in the condition of equilibrium of his spiritual life nor yet in that of his earthly life. He has left the former and as yet has not entered the latter.

It is similar in the case of language; the language we speak here on earth is adjusted in every respect to earthly conditions, for this language is an expression of our earthly thoughts. These earthly thoughts contain earthly information and knowledge, and language is adapted to them during earthly existence. In pre-earthly existence, man has a language that does not actually emerge from within, that does not follow the exhalation. Instead, it follows spiritual inhalation, inspiration, something in pre-earthly existence that we can describe as corresponding to inhalation. It is a life within the Word of the universe, the universal language, from which all things are made.

As we descend to the earth, we lose this life within the universal language, and here we acquire the means that serve to express our thoughts, our earthly thoughts, and the human intellect, that is, the intellect among all human beings dwelling on earth. It is the same with the thoughts we have here as with the thinking. Thinking is adapted to earthly conditions. In pre-earthly existence we live within the weaving thoughts of the universe.

If we first focus on the mediating member of man, man's speaking, we can say that an essential part of the earth's culture and civilization lies in speaking. Through speaking, people come together here on earth; speaking is the bridge between two persons. Soul unites with soul. We feel that in speaking we have an essential aspect of life on earth; it is, after all, the earthly reflection of life in the Logos, in the Word of the universe. It is therefore particularly interesting to understand the connection between what man struggles to attain on earth as his language and the metamorphosis of this language found in pre-earthly life. The study of this relationship directs us to the inner organization of man, which stems from the elements of sound and tone. It is especially fitting that at this moment I can add the subject of man's expression through tone and word to the cosmological considerations we have been conducting for weeks. Today we have had the great pleasure of listening to a superb vocal recital here in our Goetheanum. As an expression of inner satisfaction over this gratifying artistic event, let me say something about the connection between man's life in that which corresponds to tone and sound in the spiritual.

If we observe the human organization as it is manifested on earth, it is a reflection of the spiritual through and through. Not only what man bears within himself but everything surrounding him in outer nature is a reflection of the spiritual. When man expresses himself in speech and song, he expresses his whole organization of body, soul and spirit as a revelation to the outside as well as to himself, to the inside. Man is completely contained, as it were, in what he reveals in sound and tone. How much he is contained within this is revealed when one goes into the details of what man is when he speaks or sings.

Let us begin by considering speech. In the course of humanity's historical evolution, speech has emerged from a primeval song element. The further we go back into prehistoric times, the more speech resembles recitation and finally singing. In very ancient times of man's earthly evolution, his sound and tone expressions were not differentiated into song and speech; instead, they were one. Man's primeval speech may be described as a primeval song. If we examine the present state of speech, which is already far removed from the pure singing element and has instead immersed itself in the prose element and the intellectual element, we have in speech essentially two elements: the elements of consonants and vowels. Everything brought out in speech is composed of the elements of consonants and vowels. The element of consonants is actually based on the delicate sculptural formation of our body [Körperplastik]. How we pronounce a B, a P, an L, or an M is based on something having a definite form in our body. In speaking of these forms, one is not always referring only to the apparatus of speech and song; they represent only the highest culmination. When a human being brings forth a tone or sound, his whole organism is actually involved, and what takes place in the song or speech organ is only the final culmination of what goes on within the entire human being. The form of the human organism could be considered in the following way. All consonants contained in a given language are always actually variations of twelve primeval consonants. In Finnish, for example, these twelve primeval consonants are preserved in a nearly pure state. Eleven are retained completely clearly; only the twelfth has become somewhat unclear. [Gap in transcript.] If the quality of these twelve primeval consonants is correctly comprehended, each one can be represented by a certain form. If they are combined, they in turn represent the complete sculptural form of the human organization. Not speaking symbolically at all, one can say that the human organism is expressed sculpturally through the twelve primeval consonants.

Actually, what is this human organization? Viewed from an artistic standpoint, it is really a musical instrument. Indeed, you can comprehend standard musical instruments, a violin or some other instrument, by looking at them fundamentally from the viewpoint of the consonants, by picturing how they are built, as it were, out of the consonants. When one speaks of consonants, one always feels something that is reminiscent of musical instruments, and the totality and harmony of all consonants represents the sculptural form of the human organism.

The vowel element is the soul playing on this musical instrument. When you observe the consonant and vowel element of speech, you actually discover a self-expression of the human being in each word and tone. Through the vowels, the soul of man plays on the “consonantism” of the human bodily instrument. If we examine the speech of modern-day civilization and culture, we notice that, to a large extent, the soul makes use of the brain, the head-nerve organism, when it utters vowels. This was not the case to such an extent in earlier times of human evolution. Let me sketch on the blackboard what takes place in the human head-nerve organism.

The red dotted lines indicate the head-nerve organism. They therefore represent the forces running along the nerve fibers of the head. This is a one-sided view of the whole matter, however. Another activity enters the one generated by the nerve fibers. This new activity is caused by our inhalation of air. Sketching it, we see that the air we inhale passes through the canal of the spinal cord, and the impact of the breathing process unites with the movements taking place along the nerve fibers. The stream of breath (yellow), which pushes upward through the spinal cord to the head, constantly encounters the nerve activity. Nerve activity and breathing activity are not isolated from each other. Instead, an interplay of both takes place in the head. Conditioned by everyday life, man has become prosaic, placing more value on the nerve forces, and he makes more use of his nervous system when he speaks. One could say that he “innergizes” [“innerviert,” makes inward] the instrument that forms the vowel streams in a consonantal direction. This was not the case in earlier epochs of human evolution. Man lived less in his nervous system; he dwelt more in the breathing system, and for this reason primeval speech was more like song. What man carries out in speech with the help of the “innergizing” of his nervous system he draws back into the stream of breathing when he sings today; he then consciously brings into activity this second stream (sketched in yellow), the stream of breathing. When vowel sounds are added to producing the tone, as in the case of singing, the element of breathing extends into the head and is directly activated from there; it no longer emerges from the breath. It is a return of prosaic speech into the poetic and artistic element of the rhythmic breathing process.

The poet still makes an effort to retain the rhythm of breathing in the way in which he formulates the language of his poems. A person who composes songs takes everything back into breathing, and therefore also into the head-breathing. When man shifts from speaking to singing, he undoes in a certain way what he had to undergo in adapting speech to earthly conditions. Indeed, song is an earthly means of recalling the experience of pre-earthly existence. We stand much closer to the spiritual world with our rhythmic system than with our thinking system. It is the thinking system that influences speech which has become prosaic.

When producing vowel sounds, we actually push what lives in the soul toward the body, which serves as the musical instrument only by adding the consonant element. Surely you can feel how a soul quality is alive in every vowel and how you can use the vowel element by itself. The consonants, on the other hand, tend to long continuously for the vowels. The sculptural instrument of the body is really dead unless the vowel or soul element touches it. Many details point to this: take, for instance, the word “mir” (“mine”; pronounced “meer” in high German), and look at how it is pronounced in some Central European dialects. When I was a little boy, I couldn't imagine that the word was spelled mir. I always spelled it mia, because in the r is contained the longing for the a.

If we see the human organism as the harmony of the consonants, everywhere we find it in the longing for vowels and therefore the soul element. Why is that? The human organism while here on earth must adapt its sculptural form to earthly conditions. Earthly equilibrium and the configuration of earthly forces determine its shape. Yet, it is really shaped out of the spiritual, and only through spiritual scientific research can one perceive what actually takes place. I shall try to make this clear for you with a diagram. The soul element (red), which expresses itself in vowels, pushes against the element of consonants (yellow). The element of consonants is shaped sculpturally according to earthly conditions.

If one ascends to the spiritual world in the way described in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, one first acquires imagination, imaginative cognition. Meanwhile, one has lost the consonants, though the vowels still remain. In the imaginative world, one has left one's physical body behind along with the consonants, and one no longer has comprehension for them. If one wishes to describe what is in this higher world adequately in words, one can say that it consists entirely of vowels. Lacking the bodily instrument, one enters a tonal world colored in a variety of ways with vowels. Here, all the earth's consonants are dissolved in vowels. This is why you will find in languages that were closer to the primeval languages that the words for things of the super-sensible world were actually vowel-like. The Hebrew word “Jahve” for example, did not have the J and the V; it actually consisted only of vowels and was rhythmically half-sung. Using mostly vowels, the words naturally were sung.

In passing from imaginative cognition to cognition through inspiration—where the direct revelations of the spiritual are received—all the consonants that are here on earth become something completely different. The consonants are lost. (See lower yellow lines in sketch below.) In the spiritual perception that can be gained through inspiration, a new element begins to express itself, namely the spiritual counterparts of the consonants. (See upper yellow lines in sketch below.)

These spiritual counterparts of the consonants, however, do not live between the vowels but in them. In languages on earth the consonants and vowels live side by side. The consonants are lost with the ascent into the spiritual world. You live in a singing worlds of vowels. You yourself actually stop singing; it sings. The world itself becomes universal song. The soul-spirited substance of this vowel element is colored by the spiritual counterparts of the consonants that dwell within the vowels. Here on earth, for example, there is an a tone and a c-sharp tone in a certain octave. As soon as one ascends to the spiritual world, there is not just one a or one c-sharp of a certain scale; instead, there are untold numbers of them, not just of different pitch but of different inward quality. It is one thing if a being of the hierarchy of angels utters an a, another when an archangel or yet another hierarchical being says it. Outwardly it is always the same revelation, but inwardly the revelation is ensouled. We thus can say that here on earth we have our body (sketch on left, white) and a vowel tone (red) pushes against it. Beyond, in the spiritual world, we have the vowel tone (sketch on right, red), and the soul penetrates into it and lives in it so that the tone becomes the soul's body.

You are now within the universal music, the song of the universe; you are within the creative tone, the creative world. Picture the tone here on earth, even the tone that reveals itself as sound: on earth it lives in the air. The scientific concept, however, that the vibration of the air is the tone is a naïve concept indeed. Imagine that here is the ground and that someone stands on the ground. Surely the ground is not the person, but it must be there so that the person can stand on it; otherwise he could not be there. You would not want to comprehend man, however, by the ground he stands on. Likewise, tone needs air for support. Just as man stands on the firm ground, so—in a somewhat more complicated way—tone has its ground, its resistance, in the air. Air has no more significance for tone than the ground for the person who stands on it. Tone rushes toward air, and the air makes is possible for tone to “stand.” Tone itself, however, is something spiritual. Just as the human being is different from the earthly ground on which he stands, so tone differs from the air on which it rises. Naturally it rises in complicated ways in manifold ways.

On earth, we can speak and sing only by means of air, and in the air formations of the tone element we have an earthly reflection of a soul-spiritual element. This soul-spiritual element of tone belongs in reality to the super-sensible world, and what lives here in the air is basically the body of tone. It is not surprising, therefore, that one rediscovers tone in the spiritual world, where it is stripped of its earthly garment, the earthly consonants. The vowel element, the spiritual content of tone as such, is taken along when one ascends into the spiritual world, but now it becomes inwardly filled with soul. Instead of being outwardly formed by the element of consonants, the tone is inwardly filled with soul. This runs parallel to one's becoming gradually accustomed to the spiritual world.

Picture how man passes through the portal of death. Soon he leaves the consonants behind, but he experiences the vowels, especially the intonation of vowels, to a greater degree. He no longer feels that singing is produced by his larynx but that singing is all around him, and he lives in each tone. This is already the case the very first few days after man passes through the portal of death. He dwells, in fact, in a musical element, which is an element of speech at the same time. More and more of the spiritual world reveals itself in this musical element, which is becoming imbued with soul.

As I have explained to you, when man has passed through the portal of death, he passes at the same time from the earthly world into the world of the stars. Though it appears that I am speaking figuratively, this description is a reality. Imagine the earth, surrounding it the planets, and beyond them the fixed stars, which are traditionally pictured, for good reason, as the Zodiac.

From earth, man views the planets and fixed stars in their reflections; we therefore say that earthly man sees them from the front. The Old Testament expresses this in a different way. When man moves away from the earth after death, he gradually begins to see the planets as well as the fixed stars from behind, as if were. He no longer sees these points or surfaces of light that are seen from the earth; instead, he sees the corresponding spiritual beings. Everywhere he sees a world of spiritual beings. Where he looks back at Saturn, Sun, Moon, Aries, or Taurus, he sees from the other side spiritual beings. Actually, this seeing is also a hearing; and just as one can say that one sees Moon, Venus, Aries, or Taurus from the other side, from behind, so one can say that one hears the beings who have their dwelling places in these heavenly bodies resound into cosmic space.

Picture this whole structure—it sounds as if I speak figuratively, but it is not so, this is a reality; imagine yourself out there in the cosmos: the planetary world further away, the Zodiac with its twelve constellations nearer to you. From all these heavenly bodies it sings to you in speaking, speaks in singing, and your perception is actually a hearing of this speaking-singing, singing-speaking. When you look toward the constellation of Aries you have a soul-consonant impression. Perhaps you behold Saturn behind Aries: now you hear a soul-vowel. In this soul-vowel element, which radiates from Saturn into cosmic space, there lives the soul-spiritual consonant element of Aries or Taurus. You therefore have the planetary sphere that sings in vowels into cosmic space, and you have the fixed stars that ensoul this song of the planetary sphere with consonant elements. Vividly picture the more serene sphere of the fixed stars and behind it the wandering planets. As a wandering planet passes a constellation of fixed stars, not just one tone but a whole world of tones resounds, and another tone world sounds forth as the planet moves from Aries to Taurus. Each planet, however, causes a constellation to resound differently. You have in the fixed stars a wonderful cosmic instrument, and the players of this instrument of the Zodiac and fixed stars are the gods of the planets beyond.

We can truly say that, just as man's walk was shaped for earthly conditions out of cosmic, spiritual orientation, so his speech was shaped for earthly conditions. When man takes speech back into song, he moves closer to the realm of pre-earthly existence, from whence he was born into earthy conditions. It is human destiny that man must adapt himself to earthly conditions with birth. In art, however, man takes a step back, he brings the earthly affairs surrounding him to a halt; once again he approaches the soul-spiritual element from which he emerged out of pre-earthly existence.

We do not understand art if we do not sense in it the longing to experience the spiritual at least in the revelation of beautiful appearance. Our fantasy, which give rise to the artistic, is basically nothing but the pre-earthly force of clairvoyance. Just as on earth tone lives in the air, so what is actually spiritual in pre-earthly existence lives for the soul element in the earthly reflection of the spiritual. When man speaks, he makes use of his body: the consonant element in him becomes the sculptural form of the body; and the stream of breath, which does not pass into solid, sculptural form, is used by the soul to play on this bodily instrument.

We can, however, direct toward the divine what we are as earthly, speaking human beings in two ways. Take the consonantal human organism; loosen it, as it were, from the solid imprint, which it has received from the earthly forces of gravity or the chemical forces of nutrients; loosen what permeates the human being in a consonantal way! We may indeed put it like that. When a human lung is dissected, one finds chemical substances that may be examined chemically. That is not the lung, however. What is the lung? It is a consonant, spoken out of the cosmos, that has taken on form. Put the human heart on a dissecting-table; it consists of cells that can be examined in relation to their chemical substances. That is not the heart, however; the heart is another consonant uttered out of the cosmos. If one pictures in essence the twelve consonants as they are spoken out of the cosmos, one has the human body. This means that if one has the necessary clairvoyant imagination to observe the consonants in their relationships, the complete shape of the human body's sculptural form will arise. If one therefore extracts from the human being the consonants, the art of sculpture arises; if one extracts from the human being the breath, which the soul makes use of in order to play on the instrument in song, if one extracts the vowel element, the art of music, of song, arises.

From the consonant element extracted from the human being, the form arises, which we must shape sculpturally. From the vowel element extracted from the human being arises the musical, the song element, which we must sing. Man, as he stands before us, on earth, is really the result of two cosmic arts. From one direction derives a cosmic art of sculpturing, from the other comes a musical and song-like cosmic art. Two types of spiritual beings fuse their activities. One brings forth and shapes the instrument, the other plays on the instrument.

No wonder that in ancient times, when people were still aware of such things, the greatest artist was called Orpheus. He actually possessed such mastery over the soul element that not only was he able to use the already formed human body as an instrument, but with his tones he could even mold unformed matter into forms that corresponded to the tones.

You will understand that when one describes something like this one has to use words somewhat differently from what is customary in today's prosaic age; nevertheless, I did not mean all this figuratively or symbolically but in a very real sense. The matters are indeed as I described them, though the language often needs to be more flexible than it is in today's usage.

The subject of today's lecture was intended by me as a greeting to our two artists² who have delighted us with their fine talents. We shall attend tomorrow's concert, my dear friends, with an attitude to which will be added an anthroposophical mood of soul, something that should inform all our endeavors.

• 1. Refers to Rudolf Steiner's lectures, Man and the World of the Stars/the Spiritual Communion of Man, Anthroposophic Press, Spring Valley, NY. 1982.
• 2. The two artists and the concert refer to the recital by the sisters Svardstrom in the Goetheanum at that time.

Let us take as a starting-point these words in St. Mark's Gospel: ‘Behold I send my Angel (messenger) before thee who shall prepare thy way before thee. The voice of one preaching (crying) in the wilderness.’ In the original text the words are: It is a voice of one crying in the solitude.

Anyone who reads these words with an open mind will at first be at a loss for an explanation. He will regard them more or less as a phrase or at most as allegorical. For what would be the point of preaching in a wilderness? It would be usual, surely, to go where there are plenty of people, not into a wilderness!

In the light of Spiritual Science the depth of the wisdom contained in every word of the Holy Scriptures is revealed in this passage. We shall find that every word in the original text is at its proper place, and moreover is only then intelligible.

What is meant by the words: ‘I send my Angel before thee, who shall prepare thy way before thee’? We know that the Bible is here referring to John the Baptist. But to understand why the word ‘Angel’ is used we must go back to conditions in an earlier period of our Earth's evolution and consider what ranks of Beings belonged to it. We know that on our physical Earth too there is a certain hierarchical order of which the mineral kingdom is the lowest stage; then come the plant and animal kingdoms and, at the highest stage, man. Beyond man is the hierarchy of the Angels, Archangels and Archai (Spirits of Personality, or Principalities); then the hierarchy of the Exousiai (Spirits of Form, or Powers), the Dynameis (Spirits of Movement, or Mights, also Virtues), and the Kyriotetes (Spirits of Wisdom, or Dominions); then the highest hierarchy of Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim.

All these hierarchies too are involved in a constant process of evolution. Just as we are nowadays passing through the human stage of evolution on the Earth, the Angels passed through the human stage (though in a different form from ours) during the Old Moon evolutionary period, the previous condition of our planet. They are therefore a stage ahead of us. Just as one of our tasks on Earth is to lead and guide our children, so the task of the Angels is to lead and guide humanity. But because it is impossible for them to incarnate in the forms of earthly existence, to be able to help us they must allow their wisdom to flow into the bodies of the purest, most highly developed men, in order that the divine truths may be proclaimed to humanity through their mouths. In such a case we may say: the Angels clothe themselves in maya.

This becomes still more intelligible if we go back to times of remote antiquity and picture the seven Rishis of India. If we had looked at their outer forms we should have seen simple men, perhaps peasants. The essential core of their being was concealed within them. Clairvoyantly, however, we should have seen them in flaming auras, from which warmth radiated into their surroundings. But in order that the greatest cosmic wisdom might penetrate into them it was necessary for all the seven to be together. Divinity played upon them as if they were a scale of seven tones. The language they spoke would have seemed to us nothing but unintelligible sounds.

It is hardly possible nowadays to form any idea of the nature of language in those ancient times because our own, by contrast, is a conglomeration of lifeless ideas which we employ to reach a logical conclusion. In the days of the Rishis it was the sound that caused pictures to rise up before the inner eye. What, then, was the original source of language? The wise men, the sages, of ancient times, brought it down from the stars. For them the Zodiac was the script of the Godhead in the heavens. The zodiacal constellations created the consonants, the planets created the vowels, and according to how the planets altered their courses in the Zodiac the sages interpreted the various meanings of the heavenly wisdom.

The bodies of the Rishis were maya, enshrining the inmost core of Divinity.

If we direct the light gained from Spiritual Science upon the words of the Bible, all the bleakness with which materialists are so prone to invest them, disappears. We understand the real meaning of the words which say that God sent an Angel in advance, to prepare the way of the one who was to come. The Angel is a more highly developed Being of the hierarchy of the rank immediately above man, a Being who sheathed his spirit in the maya of a human body—in this case in the body of John the Baptist, the reincarnated Elijah. If we are to understand the words of the Bible truly, it is only a matter of shedding the right light upon them and interpreting them literally.

Theologians are baffled by the words about the voice of a preacher in the wilderness, the voice of one crying in the wilderness. What can this mean?

John the Baptist baptised with water. In this baptism the whole body was plunged into the Jordan as part of the rites of Initiation. Why was this done? Because the etheric body of a spiritually developed man was to be loosened for a short time from the physical body; the man then experienced what one who is dying experiences when his etheric body is loosened from the physical. A picture of his present incarnation back to his birth is unrolled before him in all detail as a kind of panorama and he feels and knows that outside his body of flesh he is a spiritual being.

Anyone who had returned to his physical body after this experience during baptism was henceforth inwardly different from other men: he felt as if he were standing alone with this expansion of knowledge, separated from the rest of humanity; he felt that men could no longer understand him, that he was isolated, as it were in a ‘wilderness’, in solitude. And in this state of deepest inner isolation he became aware of the ‘voice of one crying’—his Angel. In this case the guiding Angel was clothed in the person of John the Baptist. That is the meaning of the passage in the Bible about the voice calling, or crying, in the wilderness.

Later in St. Mark's Gospel, where Christ is proclaiming the highest wisdom in the schools, the words are: ‘And they were astonished at His teaching: for He taught them as one that had authority, and not as the scribes.’ What does speaking ‘with authority’ mean? Just as Angels are the guides of individual men and Archangels of whole peoples, so there are other, still higher Beings who are the guides of the forces and powers of nature. These are the sources upon which men of genius draw to create their masterpieces. The works of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, give expression to the powers of nature.

To picture where these powers of nature are made manifest let us imagine that we are standing on the heights of a Swiss mountain. If we are fortunate enough to be there at sunrise, we shall be overwhelmed by the magic and sublimity of this spectacle of nature, and we shall feel pervaded through and through by the mighty forces radiating from it and revealing to us the power of Almighty God. We watch how from the glimmering grey of dawn the first delicate colours of the rising sun appear, how the peaks of the snowcapped mountains are suffused with rosy mauve, and our eyes are dazzled by this spectacle of greater and greater brilliance. We see how the rays call forth colours which seem to stream from every side, filling more and more of the space around us, until finally the sun appears in all its splendour, kindling life and radiating warmth into the lowest valleys. In this majestic manifestation of nature we are actually beholding the confluence of spiritual forces and these forces are the Beings of the Hierarchies we have learnt to know as the Exousiai, the Powers, or Spirits of Form. In the original text the words are: ‘He taught as the Exousiai teach.’ Christ spoke with the powers of these Beings. In John the Baptist it was the Angel, the Being of the rank immediately above man, who spoke. In Christ it was the Exousiai, who as I have said, speak through events of nature. It was their forces in the body of Christ which enabled Him to teach ‘with authority’.

John the Baptist had received the highest Initiation connected with the constellation of Aquarius. In old maps of the Zodiac the sign depicting Aquarius is a man stooping down with the arms held in a particular position. This illustrates the words in St. Mark's Gospel: ‘There cometh after me one mightier than I, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose.’

[ 1 ] In the spatial cosmos there stand in opposition to one another: World Expanse, and Earth-Centre. In the World-Expanse, strewn abroad as it were, are the Stars. From the Earth-Centre, forces radiate forth in all directions to the World-Expanse.

[ 2 ] As Man stands to-day in the world, in the present cosmic age, the Stars in their shining, and the Earth-forces in their working, can only appear to him collectively as the accomplished work of the divine spiritual beings, with whom his link is in the inner man.

[ 3 ] But there was once an age of cosmic history when this shining of the stars and these earth-forces were still a direct spiritual revelation of the divine spiritual beings actively at work within his own being.

[ 4 ] Then came another age. The Star-Heaven separated as a corporeal existence out of the divine spiritual tide of activity. There arose what may be called World-Spirit and World-Body. The World-Spirit is a multiplicity of divine Spirit-Beings. They send their influences, in the earlier age, from the places of the stars upon the earth within. What there rained down in light from the regions of the world-expanse, what radiated forth as forces from the earth-centre, was in actuality the Intelligence and the Will of those divine spirit-beings who were shaping Earth and Earth's Manhood.

[ 5 ] In the alter cosmic epoch—after the evolution of Saturn and Sun—this Intelligence and Will of the divine Spirit-Beings became ever more spiritually inward in its workings. What they had actively been present in, present with their very Being, became now the ‘World-Body,’ an harmonious ordering of the stars in cosmic space. Looking back upon these things in spirit, comprehending them in a spiritual world-conception, one may express it thus: Out of the original Spirit-Body of the world-creative Beings there arose World-Spirit and World-Body. The World-Body marks in stellar order the stellar movement the way in which the Gods were working, long long ago in their Intelligence and Will. For the present age of the Cosmos, what once lived in the stars as freely moving, freely shaping divine intelligence and will, is now set fast in them as fixed Law.

[ 6 ] What shines therefore from out of the star-worlds to-day, to Man upon earth within, is not the immediate expression of divine will and divine intelligence, but a sign, left stationary, to mark what this divine will and intelligence were long ago, even in the stars. In the marvelous star-configuration of the heavens, waking wonder in the human soul, we may behold therefore a past manifestation but not the present manifestation of the Gods.

[ 7] But what is thus ‘past’ in the glory of the shining of the stars, is ‘present’ in the world of the spirit. And Man lives with his own being in this ‘present’ world-spirit.

[ 8 ] In the evolving forms of the world, we must look back upon an ancient epoch of cosmic history, when world-spirit and world-body worked together as a unity. We must keep before our eyes the intermediate epoch, during which they develop as a duality. And we must think forward into the future—into the third epoch, when the world-spirit will once more absorb the world-body into its sphere of action.

[ 9 ] For the ancient epoch there could have been no ‘calculating’ the constellations and the courses of the stars, for they were an expression of the free intelligence and the free will of divine spiritual beings. In the future, there will again be no calculating them.

[ 10 ] ‘Calculation’ only has any meaning for the intermediate epoch of the Cosmos.

[ 11 ] This, which is true of the constellations and the courses of the stars, applies also to the action of the forces which radiate from the earth-centre into the world-expanse. What there spring forth ‘from the depths’ also becomes ‘calculable.’

[ 12 ] Everything tends from the earlier cosmic epoch towards the intermediate one, when the worlds of Time and space become ‘calculable,’ and when Divine Spirit, in its manifestations as Intelligence and will, must be sought ‘behind’ the ‘Calculable.’

[ 13 ] This intermediate epoch alone affords the conditions under which Mankind can progress from a dull, dim consciousness to a clear, free consciousness of Self—to free intelligence and free will of his own.

[ 14 ] There had to come the time when Copernicus and Kepler ‘calculated’ the world-body; for the cosmic forces that served to bring about this moment were necessary to that development of human Self-consciousness. The disposition for this Self-consciousness was laid in an older age; then came the time when it was advanced so far as to be able to calculate the distant world-expanses.

[ 15 ] ‘History’ begins to be played out upon earth. There would have been no History, had not the world-expanse with all its stars become set in ‘fixed’ constellations and orbits. In the ‘course of history’ upon earth, we have a reproduction—though a quite transformed one—of what, once on a time, was ‘heavenly history.’

[ 16 ] The peoples of olden time continued to carry this ‘heavenly history’ still in their consciousness, and turned their eyes rather upon this than upon ‘earthly history.’

[ 17 ] In Earthly History there lives the intelligence and will of Man, at first in connection with the cosmic, divine will and divine intelligence, and then independently.

[ 18 ] In Heavenly History there lived the intelligence and will of the divine spirit-beings connected with mankind.

[ 19 ] Looking back over the spiritual life of the various peoples one finds, in the far remote past, such a consciousness amongst men of their being together and willing together with the divine spirit-beings, that their own human history is still a heavenly history. In his narration of first ‘origins,’ man's tale is not of earthly proceedings but of cosmic. Indeed, even for his own times—the times in which he is presently concerned—that which goes on in his earthly surroundings seems to him so insignificant in comparison with what is going on in the Cosmos, that he disregards the former and only pays attention to the latter.

[ 20 ] There was an age when the consciousness of mankind beheld the Heaven's history in mighty impressions, in which the divine spirit-beings themselves stood before Man's soul. The divine Beings spoke, and Man heard their speech in dream-like Inspiration; they revealed their forms, and Man beheld them in dream-like Imagination.

[ 21 ] This Heavenly History, which for a long while filled men's souls, was followed by Mythical History, now for the most part regarded as old poetic fiction. This Mythical History links together heavenly doings and earthly doings. ‘Heroes’ for instance came upon the scene—super-human beings. These are beings who stand higher than men in their evolution. Men at a particular time, for instance, have only developed the different parts of Man's being as far as the Sentient Soul. The Hero however has already evolved what will one day take its place in Man as ‘Spirit-Self.’ The Hero cannot directly incarnate in a physical body under earthly conditions; but he can do so by going down into the physical body of a human being, and thus enabling himself to work as a man amongst men. In the ‘Initiates’ of earlier ages we have beings of this kind.

The actual fact, with regard to all these things which occurred in the course of the world, is not simply that mankind in the successive periods of history ‘pictured’ things in one way or another in their own minds. What actually took place between the more spiritual, ‘incalculable’ world and the corporeal ‘calculable’ one, itself underwent a change. Only this much may be said: long after the actual conditions had changed in the world, human consciousness, in one or another other of the peoples, still clung to a ‘view of the world’ which corresponded to a far earlier reality. At first it was so, that human consciousness—which does not keep pace with the progress of cosmic events—still really saw the things of old. Then came a time when spiritual sight grew dim, and the old things were only maintained by tradition. Thus in the Middle Ages people still traditionally ‘pictured in their minds’ an intervention of the heavenly in the earthly world, which was no longer seen, since the power of pictorial vision no longer existed.

[ 22 ] Moreover, the evolution of the various peoples in the earthly sphere is such that they retain one or other view of the world, with its corresponding picture, for varying lengths of time; so that there are living alongside one another, views of the world which by their essential character should be living after one another.

The different views of the world however, existing amongst the different peoples, did not proceed only from this, but also from the fact that these different peoples, according to their dispositions, saw different things. Thus the Egyptians saw that world in which there are beings who long ago stopped short on the road to human evolution and never became earth-men; and they saw Man, after his earth-life, in all that he had to do with beings of this kind. The Chaldean peoples saw rather, how spiritual beings—both good and evil—from beyond the earthly sphere entered into earth-life to influence its course.

[ 23 ] To the ancient Heavenly History, properly speaking, which extends over quite a long period of time, there then succeeds the Mythological History, which is shorter, but still long in comparison to the subsequent period of ‘history proper.’

[ 24 ] As I described, men in their consciousness leave go but reluctantly of the old views, in which gods and men are pictured as fellow-actors in a common field. Proper, earthly history had long been in existence—ever since the development of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul—whilst men were still ‘thinking’ in the sense of what had been in former times. Only with the first opening flower of the Spiritual Soul did men begin to turn their eyes upon ‘history’ in the proper sense.

[ 25 ] Now in the human spirit working in earthly history, loosed from its tie with the Divine Spirit, men have the possibility to realize within themselves free intelligence and free will.

[ 26 ] So the weaving of the world-process in which Man is interwoven moves on, between the altogether calculable and the workings of free intelligence and free will. Under the joint action of both, the world-process is manifested—in every variety of shade betwixt the two.

[ 27 ] In his life as he leads it between birth and death, Man has ready-laid for him in the Calculable, as a foundation, the bodily groundwork upon which to unfold the free Incalculable of his inner, spiritual soul-life. His life between death and new birth is passed in the Incalculable—yet in such a way that in his inner life of soul and spirit, the Calculable is revealed to him in thought. Thereby—out of this Calculable—he becomes the architect of his next earth-life.

[ 28 ] In ‘history,’ the Incalculable is played out on earth—an Incalculable with which however the Calculable is interwoven, if only in feeble measure.

[ 29 ] Against this order established between Calculable and Incalculable by the divine spiritual beings who have been associated with Man from the beginning of all things, against their harmonizing of the Cosmos through ‘Measure, Number and Weight,’ stands the opposition of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic Beings. Lucifer can combine with his own form of being, as he has made it, nothing calculable. His ideal is the cosmic unconditioned action of intelligence and will.

[ 30 ] This Luciferic tendency is one fitly suited to the world's order in those fields where freedom should rightly rule events. And there Lucifer is justly the spiritual helper of Mankind in their evolution. Without his aid, freedom would never make its way into Man's spiritual and soul life, built as it is upon a calculable, bodily basis. But Lucifer would like to extend this tendency to the whole Cosmos. And here his activity becomes a war against that divine spiritual order to which Man originally belongs.

[ 31 ] Here Michael intervenes. With his own being he stands in the Incalculable; but he dresses the balance between the Incalculable, and that Calculable which he bears within him as a World-thought received from his Gods.

[ 32 ] The Ahrimanic Powers stand otherwise in the world. They are the complete opposite of the divine spirit-beings with whom Man is originally connected. These latter are at the present day purely spiritual beings, who bear within themselves perfectly free intelligence and perfectly free will, but who create, in this their free intelligence and will, a wise insight into the necessity of the Calculable and Unfree, as a World-Thought from whose sheltering lap Man may grow up into a free being. And with all the Calculable, with this World-Thought of the cosmos, they are united in Love. This Love streams from them throughout all the universe.

[ 33 ] In complete opposition to all this is the grasping greed of the Ahrimanic powers, in which lives cold Hate of everything expanding in freedom. Ahriman's aim and endeavour, in all that he pours forth into world-space, is to make a cosmic machine. His ideal is, ‘simply and solely,’ Measure, Number and Weight. He was called into the Cosmos prepared for the service of human evolution, because it was necessary that this, his special department—Measure, Number and Weight—should be developed.

[ 34 ] He who comprehends the world as everywhere Spirit-in-body, he alone really comprehends it. This must be carried down into the world of Nature with regard to the powers at work there, such as the Divine Spiritual Powers who work in Love, and the Ahrimanic Powers who work in hate. In the natural, universal warmth, as it sets in with the spring and tends on into summer, we must behold the natural love of the Divine Spirit-Beings. In the freezing blasts of winter we must recognize the workings of Ahriman.

[ 35 ] In the height of midsummer, Lucifer mingles his power with the Love, the Warmth of Nature. At Christmas-tide, the Divine Spirit-Beings with whom Man is from his origin united turn their power against the frozen Hate of Ahriman. And ever more and more towards the springtime, Natural Divine Love is mildly at work, mitigating Natural Ahrimanic Hate.

[ 36 ] The yearly sign of this Divine Love, new-manifested as it is year by year, is the time of Remembrance, when we recall how with the Christ the free element of God entered into the calculable element of Earth. Christ works in perfect freedom within the Calculable. In so doing, He renders harmless that which craves the Calculable only—Ahriman and his forces.

[ 37 ] The unique Event of Golgotha is the free, cosmic act of Love within Earth's history. It is to be comprehended too only by the Love that Man brings to its comprehension.

Leading Thoughts

[ 38 ] The cosmic process with which the evolution of mankind is interwoven, and which reflects itself in human consciousness as History (in the most comprehensive sense,) may be distinguished into: a lengthy period of Heavenly History; a shorter one of Mythological History; and the comparatively short Earthly History.

[ 39 ] This cosmic process, at the present time, falls apart into: the ‘not-to-be-calculated’ working of divine spirit-beings, who freely create in free Intelligence and Will, and the ‘calculable’ processes or the world-body.

[ 40 ] To the Calculable of the world-body are opposed the Luciferic Powers; to the creating in free intelligence and free will, the Ahrimanic Powers.

[ 41 ] The unique Event of Golgotha is a free cosmic act, which originates in World-Love and can only be comprehended by Man's Love.

[ 1 ] In the spatial Cosmos we have the contrast of the Universal spaces and the Earthly centre. In the Universal spaces the stars, as it were, are scattered wide, while from the Earthly centre forces are streaming out in all directions into the far spread Universe.

[ 2 ] To man as he stands in the world in the present cosmic epoch, it is only as a great totality that the glory of the stars and the working of the earthly forces can represent the finished work of the Divine-Spiritual Beings with whom he in his inner being is connected.

[ 3 ] But there was once a cosmic epoch when the glory of the stars and the forces of the Earth were still a direct spiritual revelation of the Divine-Spiritual Beings. At that time, man in his dim consciousness felt the Divine-Spiritual Beings actively working in his own nature.

[ 4 ] Another epoch of time ensued. The starry heavens became severed, as a corporeal existence, from the Divine-Spiritual working. There originated what we may call the ‘World-spirit’ and the ‘World-body.’ The World-spirit is a multitude of Divine-Spiritual Beings. In the former epoch these Beings had worked from the starry places inward to the Earth. All that had shone forth from universal space, all that had radiated by way of forces from the earthly centre, was in reality Intelligence and Will of the Divine-Spiritual Beings, who were working creatively upon the Earth and Earth humanity.

[ 5 ] In the later cosmic epochs—after the Saturn and Sun evolutions—the working of the Intelligence and Will of the Divine-Spiritual Beings became more and more spiritually inward. That in which They had been actively present in the beginning became the ‘World-body’: the harmonious arrangement of stars in universal space. Looking back on these matters with a spiritual world-conception, we may express it thus: From the original spirit-body of the World-creative Beings, the World-spirit and the World-body were evolved. And in the ordering and movement of the stars, the World-body now shows what the Intelligent and Will-imbued working of the Gods once upon a time was like. For the cosmic present however, what was once the Divine Intelligence and Will living and moving freely in the stars, has become fastened in the fixed Laws of the starry universe.

[ 6 ] Today, therefore, that which shines inward from the starry worlds to man on Earth is no longer an immediate expression of Divine Will and Divine Intelligence, but it is a sign that has come to stand:—a sign of what the Divine Will and Intelligence was, once upon a time, even in the very stars. Potent as it is to call forth wonder in the human soul, we must recognise in the sublime formation of the starry heavens a revelation of the Gods which is of the past; we cannot perceive in it their present revelation.

[ 7 ] That, however, which in the shining of the stars is ‘of the past,’ is ‘present’ in the Spirit-world. And in this ‘present’ Spirit-world, man with his own true being dwells.

[ 8 ] Studying the formation of the world, we must look back to an ancient cosmic epoch when the World-spirit and the World-body still worked as an undivided unity. Then we must envisage the middle epoch, in which they unfold as a duality. And at length we must think into the future—into the third epoch when the World-spirit will once again take up the World-body into its active working.

[ 9 ] For the old epoch, it would have been impossible to ‘calculate’ the constellations and the courses of the stars; for these were then the expression of the free Intelligence and free Will of Divine-Spiritual Beings. Moreover, in the future they will once again become ‘incalculable.’

[ 10 ] ‘Calculation’ has a meaning only for the middle cosmic epoch.

[ 11 ] And this holds good, not only of the constellations and the movements of the stars, but of the working of the forces which radiate from the earthly centre to the far-spread Universe. That which works ‘out of the depths’ also becomes ‘calculable.’

[ 12 ] Everything strives from the older cosmic epoch towards the middle epoch, when the Spatial and Temporal becomes ‘calculable,’ and the Divine-Spiritual as manifestation of Intelligence and Will must be sought for ‘behind’ this ‘calculable’ world.

[ 13 ] Only in this middle epoch are the conditions given for man to progress from a dim state of consciousness to one of free and bright self-conscious being, with a free Intelligence and a free Will of his own.

[ 14 ] Thus there had to come the time when Copernicus and Kepler could ‘calculate’ the body of the world. For it was through the cosmic forces with which this moment was connected, that the self-consciousness of man had to take shape. The seed of man's self-consciousness had been laid in an older time; and now the time was come when it was far enough advanced to ‘calculate’ the far-spread Universe.

[ 15 ] On the Earth, ‘History’ takes place. What we call ‘History’ would never have come about if the far spaces of the Universe had not evolved into the ‘hard and fast’ constellations and starry courses. In ‘historic evolution’ on the Earth we have an image—albeit thoroughly transformed—of what was once upon a time ‘heavenly History.’ [ 16 ] Earlier peoples still had this ‘heavenly History’ in their consciousness, and were indeed far more aware of it than of the Earthly.

[ 17 ] In earthly History there lives the intelligence and will of men—in connection, to begin with, with the cosmic Will and Intelligence of the Gods; then, independent of them.

[ 18 ] In heavenly History, on the other hand, there lived the Intelligence and Will of the Divine-Spiritual Beings who are connected with mankind.

[ 19 ] When we look back into the spiritual life of nations, we come to an age of far-distant antiquity when there was present in man a consciousness of being and willing in communion with the Divine-Spiritual Beings—so much so that ,the History of men was heavenly History. The man of that age, when he came to speak of ‘origins,’ did not relate earthly events but cosmic. And even in relation to his own present time, that which was going on in his earthly environment seemed to him so insignificant beside the cosmic processes that he gave his attention to the latter only, not to the former.

[ 20 ] There was an epoch when humanity was conscious of beholding the history of the heavens in mighty and impressive revelations, wherein the Divine-Spiritual Beings themselves stood before the soul of man. They spoke, and man in Dream Inspiration hearkened to their speech; they revealed their forms, and in Dream-Imagination man saw them.

[ 21 ] This heavenly History, which for a long time filled the souls of men, was followed by the mythical History, generally regarded in our time as a poetic creation of the ancients. Mythical History combines heavenly events with earthly. ‘Heroes,’ for instance,—super-human beings—appear on the scene. They are beings at a higher stage in evolution than the human being. In a given epoch, for example, man had developed the members of human nature only so far as to the Sentient Soul, but the ‘Hero’ had already evolved what will one day appear in man as Spirit-Self. In the existing conditions of the Earth, the ‘Hero’ could not incarnate directly, but he could do so indirectly by diving down into the body of a human being, and thus becoming able to work as a man among men. Such beings are to be seen in the ‘Initiates’ of an earlier time.

[ 22 ] To understand the true position of the facts in this world process, we must not imagine that in the successive epochs mankind ‘conceived’ of the processes and events in just this way. But that which actually took place, as between the more spiritual, ‘incalculable’ and the corporeal, ‘calculable’ world, underwent a change. Long after the world-relationships had actually changed, human consciousness in this or that nation still held fast to a world-conception corresponding to a far earlier reality. To begin with, this was due to the fact that the consciousness of men, which does not keep pace exactly with the cosmic process, really continued to behold the old condition. Afterwards there came a time in which the vision faded, but men still held fast to the old by tradition. Thus in the Middle Ages an in-playing of the heavenly world into the earthly was still conceived out of tradition, but it was no longer seen, for the force of Imaginative picture-seeing was no longer present.

[ 23 ] In the earthly realm, the different peoples evolved in such a way as to hold fast to the content of one or other world conception for varying periods of time. Thus, world conceptions which by their nature follow one upon the other are found living side by side. Albeit, the variety of world conceptions is due not to this alone, but also to the fact that the different nations, according to their inner talents, did really see different spiritual things. Thus the Egyptians beheld the world in which beings dwell who have come to a premature standstill on the path of human evolution and have not become earthly Man. The Egyptians too saw man himself, after his earthly life, in the midst of all that he had to do with beings such as these. The Chaldaean peoples, on the other hand, saw more the way in which extra-earthly spiritual Beings, both good and evil, entered into the earthly life to work there.

[ 24 ] The ancient ‘Heavenly History’ properly speaking, which belonged to a very long epoch of time, was followed by the epoch of Mythological History, shorter, but, in comparison to the subsequent period of ‘History’ in the accepted sense, none the less very long.

[ 25 ] It is, as I explained above, only with difficulty that man in his consciousness takes leave of the old conceptions wherein the Gods and men are thought of in living interplay and co-operation. Thus the period of Earthly History in the proper sense has long been present; it has in fact been present since the unfolding of the Intellectual or Mind-soul. Nevertheless for a long time men continued to ‘think’ in the sense of what had been before. It was only when the first germs of the Spiritual Soul evolved, that they began therewith to pay attention to what is now called ‘History in the proper sense.’ And in this Human-Spiritual element, which, loosed from the Divine-Spiritual, becomes ‘History,’ the free Intelligence and the free Will can be experienced consciously by men.

[ 26 ] Thus the World-process in which man is interwoven, runs its course between the fully calculable and the working of the free Intelligence and the free Will. This World-process manifests itself in all conceivable intermediate shades of co-operation between these two.

[ 27 ] Man lives his life between birth and death in such a manner that in the ‘calculable’ the bodily foundation is created for the unfolding of his inner soul-and-spirit nature, which is free and incalculable. He goes through his life between death and new birth in the incalculable, but in such a way that the calculable there unfolds, in thought, ‘within’ his existence of soul and spirit. Out of this calculable element he thereby becomes the builder of his coming life on Earth.

[ 28 ] That which cannot be calculated is manifested forth on Earth in ‘History,’ but into it the calculable is incorporated, though only to a slight extent.

[ 29 ] The Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings oppose themselves to the order which is established between the incalculable and the calculable by the Divine-Spiritual Beings who have been united with man from the very beginning; they oppose the harmonising of the Cosmos by the Divine-Spiritual Beings through ‘measure, number and weight.’ Lucifer cannot unite anything calculable with the nature that he has given to his being. His ideal is a cosmic and unconditioned activity of Intelligence and Will.

[ 30 ] This Luciferic tendency is in keeping with the cosmic order in the realms in which there should be happenings that are free. And Lucifer is there the competent spiritual helper of the unfolding of humanity. Without his assistance freedom could not enter into the human life of spirit and soul which is built on the foundation of the calculable bodily nature. But Lucifer would like to extend this tendency to the whole Cosmos. And in this, his activity becomes a conflict against the Divine-Spiritual order to which man originally belongs.

[ 31 ] At this point Michael steps in. With his own being he stands within the incalculable; but he balances the incalculable with the calculable, which he bears within him as the cosmic Thought that he has received from his Gods.

[ 32 ] The position of the Ahrimanic Powers in the world is different. They are the exact opposite of the Divine-Spiritual Beings with whom man is originally united. At the present time these latter are purely spiritual Powers who possess absolutely free Intelligence and absolutely free Will, but in this Intelligence and Will they create the wise insight of the necessity of the calculable and the unfree—the cosmic Thought out of whose lap man is to unfold as a free being. And in the Cosmos they are united in love with all that is calculable—with the cosmic Thought. This love streams from them through the Universe.

[ 33 ] In complete contrast with this, there lives, in the greedy desire of the Ahrimanic powers, cold hatred against all that unfolds in freedom. Ahriman's efforts are directed towards making a cosmic machine out of that which he allows to stream forth from the Earth into universal space. His ideal is ‘measure, number and weight’ and nothing else than these. He was called into the Cosmos that serves the evolution of humanity, because ‘measure, number and weight,’ which is his sphere, had to be unfolded.

[ 34 ] The world is truly understood only by one who comprehends it everywhere with respect to spirit and body. This must be carried right into Nature, with respect to such Powers as the Divine-Spiritual who work in love and the Ahrimanic who work in hatred. In Nature's cosmic warmth which comes in spring and works more strongly towards summer, we must perceive the love of the Divine-Spiritual Beings working through Nature; in the icy blast of winter we must become aware of Ahriman's working.

[ 35 ] At midsummer, Lucifer's power weaves itself into the love that works in Nature:—into the warmth. At Christmas the power of the Divine-Spiritual Beings with whom man is originally united is directed against the frost-hatred of Ahriman. And towards spring the Divine Love working in Nature continually softens down the Ahriman-hatred there.

[ 36 ] The appearance of this Divine Love which comes each year is a time of remembrance, for with Christ the free element of God entered into the calculable element of Earth. Christ works in absolute freedom in the calculable element, and in this way He renders innocuous the Ahrimanic which craves for the calculable alone.

[ 37 ] The Event of Golgotha is the free cosmic deed of love within Earthly History, and it can only be grasped by the love which man develops for its comprehension.

(About Christmas, 1924)

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society (in connection with the foregoing on the subject of Heavenly History, Mythological History, Earthly History, the Mystery of Golgotha)

[ 38 ] 140. The cosmic process in which the evolution of mankind is interwoven—reflected, in the consciousness of man, as ‘History’ in the widest sense—reveals the following successive epochs: a long epoch of ‘Heavenly History’; a shorter epoch of ‘Mythological History’; and the epoch, relatively very short, of ‘Earthly History.’

[ 39 ] 141. Today, this cosmic process is divided, into the working of Divine-Spiritual Beings in free Intelligence and Will which none can calculate, and the ‘calculable’ process of the World-body.

[ 40 ] 142. Against the calculable order of the World-body the Luciferian Powers stand opposed; against all that creates in free Intelligence and Will, the Ahrimanic.

[ 41 ] 143. The Event of Golgotha is a cosmic deed, and free. Springing from the Universal love, it is intelligible only by the love in Man.

[ 1 ] We saw yesterday how the facts of the Cosmos proceed from the spiritual life of Beings who stand above man. Especially such a phenomenon as the one we introduced towards the end of our last lecture, the fight in heaven, which has left, so to speak, so many ‘corpses’ on the field of battle between Jupiter and Mars, which as planetoids are still being discovered by physical science in ever-increasing numbers; such a phenomenon must be of particular importance to us, and we shall have to return to it again: We shall see how this event is also reflected in certain processes of the earth's evolution, and how precisely in the beginning of the Bhagavad Gita we find the earthly reflection of this fight in heaven.

[ 2 ] But to-day we shall continue our studies so as to describe, though in a sketchy way, those other beings of the spiritual Hierarchies, whom we have indicated already, but whom yesterday we omitted. These are the Beings who, counting upwards, stand nearest to man, and are called in Christian Esotericism: Angels, Archangels, Primeval Beginnings or Primeval Forces; also Angeloi, Archangeloi, and Archai. In theosophical literature the Archangels are also called Spirits of Fire, and the primeval Beginnings, spirits of Personality.

[ 3 ] These Beings who stand, as it were, in between man and those others to whom we referred yesterday as reaching up to Jupiter, Mars, etc., naturally stand in a nearer relation to man on the earth itself. First we have the Angels or Angeloi. They passed through their human stage during the evolution of the ancient Moon, and are fundamentally speaking, only as far on during our present earth evolution as man will be during the Jupiter evolution. They stand one stage higher than man. What is the task of these Beings? Their task can be realised when we take into account the development of man upon earth.

[ 4 ] Man develops from incarnation to incarnation. Our human evolution as it is now, reaches back through the ancient Atlantean time, through the Lemurian time and really begins in the ancient Lemurian time. This evolution through all these incarnations will continue for a long time yet, till towards the end of earthly evolution when other forms of human development will have come in. Now you know that what we call the eternal nucleus or kernel of the human being, the individuality, continues from incarnation to incarnation. But you also know that the greater number of people have to-day no recollection, no consciousness, as yet of their incarnations, and men do not as yet remember what happened to them during their former incarnations. Only those who have developed a certain degree of clairvoyance can look at their past incarnations.

[ 5 ] What sequence would there be between a man's incarnations upon earth when he cannot remember his former incarnations, if certain beings were not there to connect the separate incarnations, and watch the progress of the individual from one incarnation to the other? We have to assign one of these Beings to each man, a being who, being one stage higher, can lead the individuality over from one incarnation to the other. These are not the beings who rule Karma [but] preserve the memory from one incarnation to the other, so long as the man is not himself aware of it. These Beings are the Angels. Each man is a personality in each incarnation, and over each man a being watches, who has a consciousness which passes from one incarnation to the other. This makes it possible that in certain inferior grades of initiation, man is able, even if he does not himself know anything about his past incarnations, to ask his Angel about them. This is quite possible for certain lower degrees of initiation. The Beings who, as Angels, are one stage higher than men, have to keep watch over the whole human thread of life, which is spun for each single individuality from one incarnation to another.

Now, we pass on to the next group of Beings, to the Archangels — Archangeloi or Fire Spirits. These do not occupy themselves with separate men, with the single individual, but have a wider task; they bring single lives into harmonious order with the life of larger human groups, as, for instance, nations, races, etc. Within our earth's evolution the Archangels’ task is to bring into certain harmonious relationship each single soul with the national or race-soul. For those who penetrate into spiritual knowledge, the souls of races are something quite different from what they are for the lovers of the abstract in the science of to-day, or for present day culture in general. On a certain territory, (let us take Germany, France or Italy) live so and so many people, and because the physical eye sees only so many external human forms, such lovers of the abstract can imagine what is called the Soul of a nation or Spirit of a nation only as a comprehensive general idea of a nation. For the lover of abstractions the separate man only is real, not the soul of the nation, not the spirit of the nation. For one who truly sees into the inner working of spiritual life, that which is called the nation's soul or spirit, is a reality. In the soul of a nation there lives and weaves what we call a fire-spirit or an Archangel; he regulates, so to speak, the relation between separate men and the nation or races as a whole

[ 6 ] Then we rise to those beings whom we designate the Spirits of Personality, primeval beginnings, primeval forces, or Archai. These are still loftier Beings, who have a still higher task in the continuity of human existence. Fundamentally speaking, they regulate the earthly relations of whole human generations on earth, and they live in such a way that, on the waves of time, from epoch to epoch, they transform themselves at certain definite periods, they assume other spiritual bodies. Here again, you all know something of that which for the lovers of the abstract, is merely an idea, but which is a reality for those who can look into actual spiritual existence; it is that which is given a truly ugly name — the spirit of the time. You have here to do with that which represents the meaning and the mission of an epoch of humanity; picture to yourselves that we could describe the meaning and the mission of, for instance, the first thousands of years immediately after the Atlantean catastrophe. This ‘Spirit of the Age’ comprises something which reaches beyond single nations, beyond single races. Such a spirit is not limited to this or that nation, it goes beyond the limits of nations. That which one really calls a ‘Zeitgeist’ or Spirit of an epoch is the spiritual body of the Archai or the Primeval Beginnings or Spirits of Personality. It is to these Spirits of Personality that one has to ascribe the fact that within certain epochs, certain definite personalities appear on our earth. You understand, do you not, that earthly tasks have to be solved by earthly personalities; in a definite epoch, some epoch-making personality has had to appear. A strange muddle would come into the evolution of the earth if it were all left to chance, and Luther or Charlemagne were placed within any epoch, no matter which. This must be thought out first, the connexion with the whole evolution of humanity over the whole earth, has to be thought out; the right soul has to appear in harmony with the meaning of the whole earth's development. This is regulated by the Spirits of Personality, the Archai or primeval origins.

[ 7 ] And when we get beyond the Archai, we reach to those Beings whom we touched on yesterday, the so called Powers, — Exusiai, whom we also call the Spirits of Form. Here we have to do with tasks that reach beyond the earth. We differentiate in the course of human development a Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan evolution. We have now seen how all that happens within the earth itself is regulated by the Angels as regards the individual men, by Archangels as regards the relation between individuals and the large masses of humanity, and by the Spirits of Personality for the whole development of man, from the Lemurian period up to the period when man will again be so largely spiritualised that he will hardly belong to the earth. But something else has yet to be regulated. Humanity will have to be guided from one planetary condition to another. Spiritual Beings must also exist, whose care it is during the whole earth evolution to see that when that evolution will have come to an end, humanity may pass in the right manner through a Pralaya and find its way to the next goal, to the Jupiter goal. These are the Powers or Spirits of Form; yesterday we characterised their task from above downwards, now we characterise them from below upwards. The spirits whose care it is to see that the whole of humanity should be led from one planetary condition to another, are the Powers, Exusiai or Spirits of Form.

[ 8 ] We must now make a certain disclosure about the Cosmic position of these Beings. In spiritual science, in that which it is desired to continue to-day in Anthroposophy, and which is at bottom [of] the Wisdom of the Mysteries, these different Beings of the heavenly Hierarchies have always been spoken of as we have spoken of them to-day. We heard yesterday that the present Saturn represents the limit up to which reached the action of the Thrones or Spirits of Will; Jupiter, the limit up to which the Dominions, Spirits of Wisdom, acted; and Mars, the boundary line up to which reached the influence of the Mights, Dynamis or Virtutes, or Spirits of Motion.

[ 9 ] We may now characterise in a similar way how the Beings we named to-day divided specially the realms over which they held sway within our solar system. We must here touch on something which will perhaps call forth a certain amazement, even in you, who are already in a certain way schooled Anthroposophists, but which is absolutely in accordance with the truth. In the school curriculum of the present day, it is indicated that once upon a time, in grey antiquity, before Copernicus, there had been a conception of our Solar system which is known as the Ptolemaic System. People then believed that the earth stood in the centre of our system, and that the planets coursed round it, as they appear to do to our ordinary physical sight. Since Copernicus one knows — at least so people say — what people did not know formerly, that the Sun stands in the middle and that the planets circle around it, in their respective ellipses. But that which ought to be made quite clear and precise to people by such a description of our solar system, if one sincerely and honestly expounds it in the present day sense, is still something quite different. One ought to say: up to Copernicus, people knew only certain forms of movement in Universal space, and according to these, they judged how it could be with our solar system. What Copernicus did is not that he, so to speak, took a chair and gazed into space to see how the sun stands in some point of a circle or ellipse and how the planets turn around it; but he made a calculation, and this calculation explains what is seen in a simpler way than the former calculation did. The Copernican world system is nothing but the result, the product, of thought. [ 10 ] Let us look at it once from the point of view of the Ptolemaic. Let us consider that the Sun stands in the middle, let us calculate where the places of the planets must be, and then search whether it coincides with experience. Certainly, for mere physical observation, it coincides at first completely. Certainly one has built upon it all sorts of world systems, the Kant-Laplace system, for instance; but there one reaches a point where there were continual discoveries, a point which is no more scientifically quite honest. For later on, by purely physical observation, two planets have been added to it — we have not touched on them yet, but later we will show what they signify for our system — these are Uranus and Neptune. When one describes this world system one certainly should turn people's attention to the fact that in reality these two planets Uranus and Neptune, very much impair the truth of the calculation. [ 11 ] If one accepts the Kant-Laplace system, then, according to it, Uranus and Neptune should move with their moons as the other moons move around the other planets. But they do not; we even have among those outer planets, these two lately discovered planets, one which behaves in a very strange way. In reality, if the Kant-Laplace system is correct, somebody must, after having split off the rest of the planets, [have] turned the axis in such a way that it revolved at 90°, for its course is different from that of the other planets. These two differ greatly from the other planets of our solar systems. We shall see later how it is with them, but now we simply call attention to the fact that with the Copernican system we have only to do with a calculation, with something established as an hypothesis, as an assumption, at a time when man had gone completely adrift from the perception of spiritual co-relations and of what lies spiritually at the foundation of external happenings. But the old Ptolemaic system is not merely a physical system, it is one which was still derived from spiritual observation, when one knew that planets are boundary marks for certain realms where the higher Beings held sway. We must design our whole solar planetary system in a different way if we are to characterise these realms of control correctly. I shall draw this planetary system for you as it was expounded in the Mystery Schools of Zarathustra. We could just as well turn to other Mysteries for counsel, but we shall specially select this system for the explanation of our solar system with its planets, in respect of the spiritual Beings who are active within.

[ 12 ] In the System of Zarathustra something was accepted which differs from our observation of the heavens. You know that one can observe a certain progress of the Sun—call it apparent or otherwise: through the Zodiac during the course of long years. It is generally said—and it is correct—that from about the year 270 B.C. the sun in spring rose at the first point of spring in the Zodiacal sign of Pisces. But every year the sun advanced a little further, so that in the course of long, long epochs of time, it traverses, as regards its point of rising through the whole of one Zodiacal sign. Before 270 B.C. it did not rise in Pisces but in Aries, with its rising point in spring-time, it travelled through the whole sign of Aries during 2150 years. Before that, Taurus had been the Zodiacal constellation in the spring during the previous period of 2150 years. So, if we go back to five or six thousand years B.C., we find the spring-point in the Zodiacal sign of Gemini. That was the time in which the Mystery Schools of Zarathustra flourished.¹

Far back into hoary antiquity these Schools flourished and, when speaking of the appearance of the heavens, they calculated everything according to the constellation of Gemini, so that if we wanted to draw the Zodiac in the way we characterised it yesterday, we should have to place the constellation of Gemini here at the top. Then one would have to draw, in direct connection with the Zodiac, that which bounds the realm of the Thrones or Spirits of Will, the boundary of which is Saturn. Then we come to the boundary limit of the realm of those spiritual Beings whom we call the Spirits of Wisdom — the utmost boundary being Jupiter. Then we reach the limit of the realm of the Spirits of Motion of which the limit is Mars. We have seen that between these lies the battlefield which the fight in Heaven has left behind. Now if we want to divide the realms of power correctly, we must draw the boundary line of the Sun. Thus, just as we draw Mars as the boundary point up to which is the domain ruled by the Mights and Spirits of Motion, we must draw the Sun itself as marking the limit to which the Lordship of the Powers or the Spirits of Form extends. And then we come to the boundary which we designate with the sign of Venus. The realm of the Spirits of Personality or Archai reaches to Venus. Next we come to the boundary of the realm, the limit of which is marked by the sign of Mercury, and is the realm of those Beings, whom we call Archangels or Fire Spirits. And now we come very near the earth. We can now designate the realm which has the Moon for a landmark, and here we draw the earth.

[ 13 ] You must look on the earth as the Starting Point surrounded by a region under the dominion of certain Beings which reaches to the Moon. Then comes a region extending as far as Mercury, then one extending to Venus, and then one to the Sun.

You may be astonished at the sequence in which I have placed the planets. When the earth is here, and the Sun there, you would have thought that I should draw Mercury in the vicinity of the Sun, and Venus here. But no! For these Planets have had their names interchanged, in later Astronomy. That which is called Mercury to-day was called Venus in all ancient teachings, and that which is called Venus was called Mercury. Thus, note it well, one does not understand the ancient writings when one takes that which in them is called Venus or Mercury for the Venus or Mercury of the present day. That which is said about Venus has to be applied to the Mercury of to-day, and what is said about Mercury to Venus. For those two designations were later interchanged. On the occasion when man turned the world system topsy-turvy, when the earth was deprived of its central position, the perspective was not only changed, but the designations of Mercury and Venus were also changed.

[ 14 ] Now you will very easily bring into harmony what is drawn here with the physical or Copernican theory. You need only think: here is , the Sun; around it turns Venus; further around it circles Mercury. Then the Moon turns round the earth. Then Jupiter revolves around it, then Saturn. You must think of the physical movements of each planet revolving round the Sun; but you can imagine such a position when the earth , so to say, stands here and the other planets have revolved so, that on their way they find themselves behind the Sun. Thus if I drew it, it would be so; we draw our usual physical system, we draw the Sun as the one burning point, and let Venus, Mercury and the Earth with her Moon revolve round it. These are Earth, Venus, Mercury, according to the ancient designation. The next following is Mars, then after the Planetoids comes Jupiter, then Saturn. Now imagine it so that whilst , the earth stands below, and Mercury and Venus follow, that then Mars , stands there above, Jupiter , there, and so on. Now you have the Sun, and Mercury, and the Venus of to-day , here. It is plausible, that if those planets can take all sort of positions towards each other, they might also have once stood thus. This is how the Copernican system is drawn, only a point of time is chosen, when the Earth, Mercury and Venus are on the one side of the Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, the other planets, on its other side.

This is what I have drawn, and nothing else. Here are Earth, Mercury, Venus, on the one side, and on the other side, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. Thus, we have to do only with a change of perspective. This system is quite possible but only when this constellation was there. It is a fact that it was there at a certain epoch, when Gemini was above Saturn. Then one could observe clairvoyantly with particular exactness the connections between the regions in which the Spiritual Hierarchies hold sway. It was then revealed that around the Earth, up to the Moon, was the sphere of the Angels. In fact when one does not use the physical system as a foundation, one gets around the earth up to the Moon, the sphere of the Angels, up to Mercury the sphere of the Archangels, up to Venus that of the Archai or Spirits of Personality, and lastly up to the Sun is the realm of the Exusiai or Spirits of Form. Then comes the sphere — as I characterised it yesterday — of the Virtutes or Mights, then the sphere of the Dominions, and then that of the Thrones.

[ 15 ] When one speaks of the Copernican and of the Ptolemaic systems, one must have it clear in one's mind that in the Ptolemaic system something still remains of the constellation of ruling Spirits, and there the Earth must be taken as the starting point of the perspective. A future will come when this world system will again be the correct one; because Man will again know about the Spiritual World. It is to be hoped that men will be then less fanatical than they are to-day

To day, it is said: ‘Before Copernicus, people all talked nonsense, they all had a primitive world system. Since Copernicus we at last know what is right. All else is false, and because the Copernican system is the right one it will be taught in all ages, even if it were for millions of years.’ This is more or less the talk of the day. There hardly ever existed such superstitious folk as are the modern astronomical theorists; and there hardly ever was such fanaticism as there is in this domain of science. It is to be hoped that future generations will be more tolerant and that they will say: ‘From the fifteenth or sixteenth century men ceased to be conscious of the existence of the spiritual world, and that one must have other perspectives in the spiritual worlds, that there, one must arrange the heavenly bodies into a different order than when one observes in a merely physical way.’ Formerly that was done, but the time came when men considered the order and regulation of the heavenly bodies only from the physical point of view. ‘We can do this also,’ will cry the men of the future, and from the sixteenth century onwards it was quite correct. ‘Men had for a time to overlook the spiritual world but then people bethought themselves again and recollected that there was a spiritual world, they then returned to the original spiritual perspective.’ It is to be hoped that the men of the future will comprehend that there also was once an astronomical Mythology, and will not look upon our times with the same disdain with which the men of the modern superstitions look upon their forefathers.

[ 16 ] We see that the Copernican system became different, simply because merely physical standpoints were taken into account in relation to it. Before that, in the Ptolemaic system, there were still remnants of a spiritual point of view. Only through taking into consideration the other system, can one form any idea of the rulership and the action of the spiritual Beings within our solar-planetary-system. We keep to physical conditions when we say: Up to the Moon the Angels exercise their power, up to Mercury the Archangels, to Venus the Spirits of Personality, up to the Sun the Powers, as far as to Mars the Mights. Then come the Beings we call the Dominions, and here lastly the Thrones. We need only draw in other lines to designate the physical system, then we have in these lines the limits of the realms of power of the Hierarchies. As regards spiritual activities it is not our Sun at all which stands in the centre of the system, but the earth. Therefore, all the ages which have regarded spiritual development as the most essential part, have said: Certainly the Sun is a far nobler heavenly body, Beings have evolved upon it who stand higher than man; but that with which evolution is concerned is man, who lives upon the earth. And when the Sun withdrew from the Earth, it did so in order that man should develop in the right way. If the Sun had remained united to the earth man could never have been able to progress at the right tempo. This was possible only because the Sun withdrew along with those Beings who could bear quite different conditions. It left the earth to itself, so to speak, so that man might find his tempo for his own development. [ 17 ] A world system grows into this or that according to the point of departure — the perspective chosen. If one asks, where is the centre of our world system, seeing in it only what the purely physical senses can observe, then it is found in the Copernican system. If one asks about the arrangement of our solar system as it depends on the regions ruled over by the spiritual Hierarchies, we must place the earth as its centre, we then get other boundary lines; the planets then become something quite different, they become limits for the region over which each spiritual Hierarchy holds sway.

[ 18 ] And now you will easily be able to see the correspondence between what has been just said about the spacial distribution of each sphere of influence, with that which has been said about the task and mission of each group of Beings.

The Beings who are nearest to the earth, who hold sway in the immediate surroundings of the earth up to the Moon, are the Angels. From that region they guide the life of each single Individual as it progresses from incarnation to incarnation.

But something more is needed in order that whole masses of nations may be distributed in accordance with their mission upon earth. A little thought will reveal that co-operation with the cosmos is here necessary. It really depends on cosmic, not earthly conditions, whether a nation has one sort of character or another. Only think how a race with different qualities, for instance in hair and in skin, acts otherwise than another race would do; here we have the interactions of conditions which must be regulated from heavenly spaces. This is done from a region whose lordship extends up to Mercury, to the boundary of the Archangel's sphere of action.

Further, when the whole of humanity as it develops upon earth has to be guided and led, this has to be effected from still wider heavenly spaces, from that which extends as far as to Venus by the Archai.

When further, the task of the earth itself has to be led and guided, this must be done from the centre of the whole system. [ 19 ] I have said that our humanity evolves through Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan. The Beings of the spiritual Hierarchies, who direct the mission of humanity carrying it on from one planet to another, are the Powers, the Spirits of Form. They must dwell in a very special place, they are of such a nature that their sphere of power reaches up to the Sun. The Sun already existed as a special, a particular globe alongside the ancient Moon; it is now near the earth, in the future it will be near Jupiter. Its realm of power extends beyond the single planets. Therefore the existence of the Sun must be bound up with those spiritual Beings whose realm of action also extends beyond the single planets. The Sun is a very special and perfect globe for this reason, that up to it extends that realm of power which stretches beyond the single planets.

Thus you see that in reality we do not find the outer spheres or dwelling places of the Hierarchies so much on the single planets as in the regions which are limited by the orbits of the planets. If you think of the whole surrounding space from the earth up to the Moon, it is filled with Angel-activities; and if you think of the spheres from the earth to Mercury, it is filled by the activities of the Archangels, and so on.

[ 20 ] Thus we have to do with the spheres of space; and the planets are the landmarks for realms of the spacial activities of the higher Beings. We see that a continual, progressive line of perfection is to be sought from man upwards. Man himself is chained to the earth. That eternal part of him which goes from incarnation to incarnation is guided by Beings who are not bound only to the earth, but who traverse the surrounding air and that which lies beyond it up to the Moon. And so on further.

[ 21 ] Now, man has been engaged on his evolution upon earth since primeval times, and his relationship towards his whole evolution upon earth, is exactly similar to the relationship between the small child and the grown-up person. The latter teaches the small child. It is the same as regards the Hierarchies in the cosmos. Man, who is chained to the earth, only gradually struggles through to the knowledge he needs, to the cleverness which is necessary to him upon earth. Higher Beings must teach him. What must happen so that this object can be gained? In the beginnings of the earth's existence, Beings who were otherwise not bound to the earth, had to come down from higher spheres. And that really happened. Beings who otherwise needed only to live in the surroundings of the earth had to come down so as to communicate to men what they already knew as the older, more perfect members of the Hierarchies. They had to incarnate into human bodies, not for their own development, for they did not need it, just as a grown-up man does not study the A.B.C. for his own progress, but so as to teach it to these small children. Hence, we look back into old Atlantean and old Lemurian times, when Beings descended from the surrounding realms of the earth to which they belonged and incarnated in human bodies and became the teachers of mankind. These are Beings who belonged to higher Hierarchies, to Mercury and Venus. The sons of Venus and of Mercury descended from above and became the teachers of young humanity, so that these men, wandering in the midst of that young humanity, really represented Maya or illusion. There have been such men. Let us suppose, in order to explain it more precisely: some normally developed man of the Lemurian times met such a man. Externally he did not appear very different from others, but a spirit had entered into him whose realm extended as far as Mercury or Venus. Thus, the exterior of such a man represented in reality Maya, an illusion. He looked like other men, but he was something quite different: he was a son of Mercury, or of Venus. In the early dawn of humanity there were such apparitions. The sons of Mercury or of Venus came down and wandered among men, so that they now received within them the character of the Beings of Mercury and Venus. We have said that the Beings of Venus are the Spirits of Personality. Such Beings walked the earth as men, being outwardly limited to narrow human personalities, but who with their mighty power guided humanity. These were the great conditions of lordship in Lemurian times, when sons of Venus guided the whole of humanity. The sons of Mercury guided parts of humanity. They were as powerful as those are now whom we call spirits of nations or of race.

[ 22 ] Maya or illusion does not only exist in the world but also as regards men. A man as he stands before us can have an external appearance which is a truth, which corresponds precisely to his soul; or else it may be a Maya; he has in reality a task, which corresponds to the task of the sons of Mercury or of the sons of Venus. This is what is meant, when it is said, that fundamentally the great guiding individualities of ancient times as they walked the earth with their ordinary names, represented a Maya, and that was what H. P. Blavatsky meant when she pointed out that the Buddhas represented Maya. You can find this very word in the Secret Doctrine. These things are derived in every respect from the teachings of the holy Mysteries: we have only to understand them.

[ 23 ] We are now obliged to ask: How does it happen then that such a son of Venus descends to us? How does it happen that a Bodhisattva can live upon earth? The Being of a Bodhisattva, the Being of a son of Mercury, forms an important chapter in the evolution of our earth which has to do with its connexion to the Cosmos itself. Therefore, tomorrow we shall have to consider the nature of the sons of Mercury and of Venus, of the Bodhisattva or Dhyani-buddhas.

• 1. The following tabulation is not Steiner’s chronology, but common chronology as accepted by the astrologers.
  In order to make this paragraph of use to the ordinary student it has been necessary to depart from the version as it stood in the reported text. The difference lies in the calculation of the dates. The conclusion to be drawn is approximately the same. We know Christ came during Pisces, which began 270 B.C. Add 2150 years and we get the following:
  2420 B.C. as the beginning of Aries,
  4570 B.C. as the beginning of Taurus,
  6720 B C. as the beginning of Gemini.
  Since our year 1881 we are under Aquarius. In other words:
  Gemini begins 6720 B.C. down to 4570 B.C.
  Taurus begins 4570 B.C. down to 2420 B.C.
  Aries begins 2420 B.C. down to 270 B.C.
  Pisces begins 270 B.C. down to 1881 A.D.