Overview influences of the spiritual hierarchies

This is a temporary 'scratchpad page' for Work In Progress, listing reference to organize and plug into right pages later.

Illustrations

Schema FMC00.260 illustrates the main spiritual influences of various kinds: the Earth, elements and ethers, planetary influences and zodiacal streams.

FMC00.260B shows the four groups of cosmic spiritual influences of Earth and the elemental world, the planetary spheres, and the fixed stars.

Compare with Schema FMC00.280 (Fludd) and the BBD illustration FMC00.260.

Schema FMC00.257 shows how current threefold Man, that rises upright on Earth, gets form and life from three groups of zodiacal influences and three groups of planetary influences. Starting left, the embryo is formed in the womb, and the baby then rises upright (second drawing) as Man did in the Lemurian epoch. Compare the three groups of zodiacal influences to FMC00.256, see also Discussion area. On the right, quoting from 1921-10-30-GA208 how the soul life comes about:

Man develops an independent etheric life towards the head because they raise that part out of both the zodiac and the movements of the planets. Then the astral body and the I enter and are able to take part in the thought and idea activity of the ether body.

Schema FMC00.034 is taken from Sun and The heart's two blood circuits as Man's microcosm (heart with four chambers) is mapped to the macrocosm and the spiirtual Sun's four 'chambers' or rather different streams of spiritual beings. (1914-07-05-GA286)

Schema FMC00.208 from 1910-06-11-GA121, that elaborates on how the H1 works from within the physical and the elements on Earth (and from within the Earth), whereas H2 works from the cosmic periphery in the higher ethers - see also Spectrum of elements and ethers.

Another illustration of this is on the right side drawing of Schema FMC00.291 on The two etheric streams.

Compare with FMC00.142 on Overview Golden Chain.

Schema FMC00.202 see GA026-Ch. 24

Lecture coverage

1914-07-05-GA286

the spiritual Sun clairvoyantly shows four chambers, corresponding to different streams of spiritual beings, and these can be mapped to the four chambers of the human heart, see Schema FMC00.034.

See quote: Sun#1914-07-05-GA286

Streaming down: the rippling seeds from above and clothing downwards

1903-summer-GA089

Here the descent is described in a single flow:

First of all the cosmic foundation was created when the two qualities—selfishness and selflessness of the first Logos—came together. Through the second stream in this, guided by harmony, atomistic essence was created. This enveloped itself in mother substance, which was already extant, and the creation of atoms ensued. These atoms, with their outer shells of varying density, step by step created the matter which could then serve the second Logos, the mirror reflection of the first, as a medium to give its mirror reflection over to it.

The second Logos then flowed into this matter, which on its first, nirvana level was so subtle in consistency that it could flow through it without hindrance and without being changed.

It then entered into the budhi region; here it was stopped, and even though selflessness is so strong in this region that it does not seek to hold the Logos fast in its realm, it does lay claim to it for its whole cosmos. Here the Logos' sacrifice began; the voice, the sound came forth from it: it wanted to enliven matter with its spirit, that its thoughts should exist as independent forms. This realm, where divine thought became sound and voice, in the budhi sphere, was the divine realm of the Middle Ages.

Enveloped in budhi, the Logos then flowed into the mental region, which consisted of the arupa and rupa levels; the world of divine thought poured in, with exemplary ideas surging and mingling. Here the exemplary idea was created of what later would be separate entity, still resting in the Logos in the budhi sphere. This arupa level of the mental sphere was Plato's world of ideas, the world of medieval rationality. At the arupa level these ideas assumed their first configurations. As divine genii they began their separate existence, floating and interpenetrating still, being entities of a like kind. It was the medieval realm of heaven.

These spiritual entities then entered into the astral sphere; here, enveloped in denser matter, sensation awoke from touch; only now did they feel themselves to be separate entities, sensing the separation. It was the elemental world.

Following descent to the ether sphere this sensation was pushed from the inside to the outside, it swelled up, expanded and grew because of the etheric vegetative power, ..

.. and was then enclosed by physical matter and crystallized, for here the selfish principle was still seeking with all its power to be set limits. Sentience is thus shut up in the mineral world, with the divine ideas sleeping in sublime peace in the virginal rock. Stone—a frozen divine thought: 'The stones are dumb. I have put the eternal creator word into them that it may lie hidden; virginal and bashfully they hold it enclosed within them.'86 This is an ancient druid saying, a prayer. In medieval times, ether and physical world or mineral world were called microcosm or small world.

Streaming in, the Logos surrounded itself with progressively denser vestments until it learned to define its Limits firmly in rock. Stones are dumb, however, unable to reveal the eternal creator word. The rigid physical shell had to be cast off again; it remained behind in its world, whilst the crystalline forms in their soft ether vestment were able to expand, growing from the inside, that is, able to live. For life was growth; stone became plant. Ascending further the Logos also shed this ether vestment and came to the sphere of astral sensation. Here, activity developed through interaction between touch and sensory perception; sentient animal existence configured itself in a living way out of sentience and active will. lt then gradually developed its organs of perception, with the impetus from outside acting inwards as sensation. The types evolved. On transition into the mental realm this sentience perceived itself, and the human level was reached with self awareness. From the cosmic point of view the Logos would descend most deeply into matter on streaming into the mineral world and begin its ascent on casting off the first outer vestment. From the human, anthroposophocentric point of view, which the ancient druids held, among others, the spirit resting in the chaste rock would be a sublime level of existence. Untainted by selfish intent, the stone obeys only the law of causality. For human beings on the lower mental level of development, which is where we are now, the rock would be a symbol for higher development. Going through lower kamic passions and errors we would develop to an etheric plant existence, living and growing from inside in a selflessly self-evident way, later to live in our causal body, untouched by anything external, resting in ourselves, pure spirit, just as the crystallized spirit rests enclosed in the rock.

1908-05-23-GA103

A simple reference to the descending and ascending flows is given in 1908-05-23-GA103

We have also pointed out that when the astral body and I were outside the physical and ether bodies in those periods which we call the Jahve or Jehova epochs, that Jehova was active as an inspirer.

But it was the true Light, the Fullness of the Godhead or of the Elohim, the Pleroma, that was also constantly radiating through the physical and ether bodies.

However, the human being, not having yet received the necessary impulse from the Christ-principle before the appearance of this Principle upon the earth, was not able to recognize it. Those principles which are to come to expression in the physical body, dwell in the higher spiritual regions of Devachan.

The spiritual beings and powers which work upon the physical body are at home in the higher heavenly spheres, in higher Devachan, and those powers which work upon the ether body are in their own sphere in the lower heavenly realms. So we may say that in this physical body there are constantly active, beings from the highest regions of Devachan and in the ether body, beings from the lower devachanic regions are active. Men can recognize them only after having received the Impulse of the Christ into themselves. “If you truly understand the Son of Man, you will perceive how the spiritual forces descending from and ascending to the heavenly spheres work upon mankind. This you will know through the impulse which the Christ gives to the earth.”

1909-03-27-GA111

Man is compared to a seed, and described how he adds something new and unique in the spirit world

1909-04-12-B-GA110

Let us now look around at our world: we see solid rocks, flowing streams of water, we see the water changing into rising mist: we see the air, we see all the solid, liquid, gaseous things and we see fire, so that at the foundation of all things we have nothing but fire. All is fire — solidified fire: gold, silver, copper, are solidified warmth. All things were once upon a time warmth; everything has been born out of warmth. But in all that solidified realm, some bewitched spirits are dwelling.

How are those spiritual, divine beings who surround us able to produce solid matter as it is on our planet — to produce liquids, and air substances?

They send down their elemental spirits, those which live in the fire: they imprison them in air, in water and in earth. These are the emissaries, the elemental emissaries of the spiritual, creative, building beings.

1910-03-31-GA119

Through our heart we make ourselves men; through the larynx the Macrocosm makes us men. When in a new incarnation we grow into the Microcosm, we grow into an organism of which the heart is the centre; but this organism, this bodily constitution, is unceasingly maintained by the Macrocosm, the forces of the Macrocosm stream into it. Through the larynx there streams into us from the Macrocosm something that is a supreme manifestation of the spirit. There we are linked with the Macrocosm. We not only receive into ourselves influences from the Macrocosm but in a certain sense we also give them back, although we still have no individual control of them.

1910-06-11-GA121

As all spiritual Beings manifest themselves in some way or other, so that they appear somewhere in the realm of maya or illusion, that is to say, in the realm of the world of the senses, where may we seek for them in the lowest stage of manifestation, at the stage of illusion?

1910-12-31-GA126

makes the link between zodiacal influences and twelve Amshaspands and twelve main nerves, but also intrigueingly with the Mars canals:

In other regions, too, it has been known that what comes to manifestation in the human being flows in from outside. For example, in certain periods of Germanic mythology mention is made of twelve streams flowing from Niflheim to Muspelheim. The twelve streams are not meant in the physical-material sense, but they are that which, seen by clairvoyance, flows as a kind of reflection from the macrocosm into the human microcosm, the human being who moves over the earth and whose evolution is to be brought about through macrocosmic forces.

It must however be emphasised that these streams are to be regarded today as astral streams, whereas in the Atlantean epoch, which immediately followed that of Lemuria, and in Lemuria itself, they could be seen as etheric streams.

So a planet which is related to the earth, but represents an earlier stage of development, must reveal some similar phenomenon. And as from a distance things can often be observed which in proximity escape our observation, because what we see is then broken up into details, so in the case of a planet resembling the earth, when it is sufficiently distant and passing through earlier stages of development such as those undergone by our earth, it might be possible, even to-day, to observe these twelve streams.

To be sure, they will not look quite the same as once they appeared when seen an the earth. Distance is an essential factor, for if, to take an example, you are standing in the midst of a swarm of gnats, you do not see the swarm with its different shades of density; these are perceived only when you see the swarm from some way off. What I have just said lies at the root of the observations of so-called “canals” an Mars.

It is there a matter of certain streams of force which correspond to an earlier stage of the earth and are described in the old Germanic myths as streams flowing from Niflheim to Muspelheim.

1913-03-23-GA145

cycle year monthly Amshaspands + ether body in man above below what part predominant (link temperaments)

1916-03-20-GA174A

covers the weaving of H3 in Man's etheric body

As so often, there is one lecture where Rudolf Steiner gives the key paragraph, the essential missing piece of information, or the explanation for otherwise mysterious or difficult to understand statements.

1921 - Cosmosophy Vol 2

1921-10-29-GA208

Looking up to the fixed stars, we see the zodiac as representing the principles that give rise to the human form. Observing the movements of the planets, we find the explanation for the different levels of human life. We look to Saturn for the life of the senses, to Jupiter for the life of the nerves, to Mars for the life of breathing, which is active in images.

Let us take a special look at this life of breathing. I told you that the images are received from the cosmos: form. The movements experienced in the zodiac, stream inwards as images of our internal organs. The images enter into us and become suffused with matter, otherwise we would have no internal organs. So: when we breathe, the images are pushed inwards, for example the image of the kidney. Matter then fills this out (drawing).

However, between birth and death human beings are on earth, and the lower acts into the upper, with the result that everything has its polar opposite: there is also always a counter process. The opposite also happens, this time in an upward direction, with the images thrown back, as it were, like an echo.

But do not think of this as a once-only event. The organs are in existence, having been developed in the early stages of earth existence; but the counter action may go on all the time.

Consider each on its own, therefore. You take in the images of your internal organs with the life process.

Then comes the counter action, in which the echoes of those images rise up again, as does the zodiac, especially with the life of breathing in it. Just think of your ears, and there you have the counter process. These images are created and go out into the air—they are the vowels and consonants! The vowels come more from the planets, the consonants from the zodiac.

The counter process to the images coming in, is reflected in speech.

Consonants and vowels are pushed into us, as it were, to be the foundation for our organs. Anything that is more by way of form inside us comes essentially from the zodiac, anything that is more by way of life comes essentially from the planets.

If the counter action relates more to life, we produce vowels, if it relates more to form, we produce consonants. All this is to some extent connected with the life of breathing, and we can see that quite clearly in speech.

.. human beings take their form from the life of the fixed stars and reproduce this as an echo, which gives rise to the consonants. They take in the movements of planetary life which influence their own life. The life of breathing in particular creates images of all this. The counter action then produces the vowels. Human speech can only be understood if consonants are seen in relation to the constellations of fixed stars and the vowels.

1923-08-27-GA227

Yesterday I described how the Druid priests set up stones and screened them in such a way that, by gazing into the shadow thrown within this structure and looking through the stones, they could gain information concerning the will of the spiritual worlds which impressed itself into the physical.

But something else also was connected with this. In the spiritual world there is not only a going away, but also always a coming back. Just as there are forces of time which carry us forward through physical existence on Earth, and after death draw us backwards again, so, in the structures set up by the Druids, there are forces descending from above and also forces ascending from below. Hence in these structures the Druid priests watched both a downward and an upward stream.

When their structures were set up on appropriate sites, the priests could perceive not only the will of divine Spirits coming down from the Cosmos but — because in the upward stream the one-dimensional prevailed — they could perceive the good or bad elements which belonged to members of their community and flowed out from them into the Cosmos. Thus these stones served as an observatory for the Druid priests, enabling them to see how the souls of their people stood in relation to the Cosmos.

1923-09-02-GA223

see the page on Human 'I' for the full lecture extract - sketches that the body we call 'I' to with our Waking Consciousness in the physical world, is not our true I at all, by showing that at night, the three hierarchies H3, H2 and H1 live in the blood, astral, and etheric bodily principles and maintain it, whereas the Trinity lives in the physical body.

.. this form or Man is a picture of the working-together of all the Hierarchies, they are within it. Look at this human head in all the detail of its form; look at the rest of the body in its human form. I do not look at it truly if I describe it as a reality — as a real being, thus or thus. I only look at it truly if I say: It is a picture of an invisible, super-sensible working of all the Hierarchies together.

Only when things are seen in this way can one speak truly and in detail of what is commonly propounded in a rather abstract manner. The physical world is not the true reality, so it is said; it is a maya — the true reality is behind it. Yet such a statement does not help us much. It is too general, as if one were to say: Flowers are growing in the meadow. Just as this statement will only be of use if you know what kind of flowers, so too the knowledge of the higher world can only be applied in practice if one is able to point out in detail how it is working in the outer picture, maya, or reflection, which is its physical, sense-perceptible manifestation.

1923-10-13-GA229

(in FMC-B)

Wie alles sich zum Ganzen webt,

Eins in dem andern wirkt und lebt!

Wie Himmelskräfte auf- und niedersteigen

How each the Whole its substance gives,

each in the other works and lives!

See heavenly forces rising and descending,

— rising and descending! And then the lines that follow:

Und sich die goldnen Eimer reichen,

Mit segenduftenden Schwingen

Vom Himmel durch die Erde dringen,

Harmonisch all das All durchlingen!

their golden urns reciprocally lending:

on wings that winnow sweet blessing

from heaven through the earth they're pressing,

to fill the All with harmonies caressing.

Remember how in yesterday's lecture I spoke of it all passing over from plastic form into musical sound, universally resounding harmony.

Through the earth

I cannot tell you what I felt when this stood before my soul and I read again these lines by Goethe: vom Himmel durch die Erde dringen! This durch — it can shake one profoundly, for that is just how it is — it is true! It is staggering to realise that these words ring through the world like a peal of bells and are regarded as poetic licence or something of the sort — or as words that anyone might write in letters or articles. It is not so. These are words which correspond to a cosmic fact. It is really shattering to read these words in the context of Goethe's Faust and to know how true they are.

Further

Now we will go further. We have seen how the heavenly Powers with golden pinions — the Archangels — permeate the universe in harmony, working and living in one another. But that is not all.

1924-09-09-GA354

planetary influence on nature's kingdoms

1924-09-15-GA318

gives overview planets in plant and human being, and correspondence

The GA110 lectures

The key to understanding the principle of the Golden Chain is in 1909-04-13-GA110, 1909-04-14-GA110.

1909-04-13-GA110

In 1909-04-13-GA110 is explained how, on Old Sun, the 'inhabitants' Archangels that go through the human stage of waking consciousness, are met by the Cherubim who come to meet them and have a spiritually highly vivifying influence.. The Cherubim approaching from four sides, represented in old cultures by the the winged Lion, winged Eagle, winged Bull, winged Man. A side effect of that 'assistance' is also the creation of an 'off-spring' in the form of the animal kingdom (hence the name of the animal circle for the zodiac). Each Cherubim had two companions, hence twelve Cherubim forces around Old Sun. On Old Saturn, the Cherubim had not yet reached that stage (CoC-10), they uplifted themselves as a hierarchy by accepting the light which sprang forth from the fire substance sacrifice from the Thrones on Old Saturn.

1909-04-13-GA110 then continues but expands on other perspectives and goes less into the core of the subject matter considered here.

On Old Saturn, the similar situation occured with the Seraphim (then at CoC-10) who came to meet the archai who were then going through the 'human stage of waking consciousness' (in short: CoC-4, for Condition of Consciousness 4 out of 12, see FMC00.064). Above then and 'in' Old Saturn where H2 hovering above them (SoW as directors, SoM executors, SoF upholder/supporters of what is built).

1909-04-17-GA110

Old Saturn, H1 around .. as a hollow sphere ..

Zodiac signs are just pointers to the different directions from where different spiritual beings are active and send their influence. Symbolized, for good reason, by animal signs.

The formation of the globe of warmth of Old Saturn arose from spiritual beings working from two sides: H2 from inside, and H1 from outside and thus something arises between the two currents or streams of soul-warmth and inner-warmth (perceptable). Through a slow process different germs of Man's organs were laid by the different signs .. heart by the Lion area, breast area Cancer, etc (some names got transformed through the ages).

The inner motion full of molbility is brought to a standstill by the Lion.

Old Sun after the pralaya has shrunk in circumference and containes warmth-substance but also the more condenses gaseous air substance.

Two currents again compress the ball of mist between them. From the periphery the SoW and H1, in the Sun globe the SoM+SoF.

Certain currents are created by the surrounding spirits — the Spirits of Wisdom and the Thrones. These currents are somewhat denser than those which were produced by the Thrones alone. Inside, the mass contracts, and a ball of mist is now compressed between those two streams.

The first stimulation of life into the Sun globe arose from the area of the Eagle and the spiritual beings in that area in cosmic space.

Now, when this living globe had once completed its circle and returned to its starting point, to the region of the Eagle, something else comes into operation. Whilst the globe had first begun to be inwardly alive at this point, when it reaches the same point again it is killed through the same influence which originally called it to life.

This ‘sting of death,’ which the life of the ancient Sun received from universal space, was felt as the sting of the scorpion. Therefore that region where they were killed is called the ‘region of the Scorpion.’

• At this point the constellation can be seen which rouses dead matter to life: the Eagle
• and also that wherein work the forces which kill: the constellation of the Scorpion

We can therefore say:

• in the region of the Lion are those forces of the Zodiac, which brought the original life of the germinal physical human body to rest;
• in the region of the Scorpion are these forces which had the power to kill life as such. We shall get to know the correspondence to modern conditions, which are differently constituted, but this can only be explained gradually. A thick veil or Maya has been drawn over the original conditions.

Furthermore it says, in:

1909-04-18-GA110

What is called the physical body today had its first foundations during the earliest Old Saturn planetary stage. That physical body was not as yet interpenetrated by an etheric body or an astral body; but it was already so organised that after passing through all the transformations it experienced later, it could become the bearer of the spiritual earth-man of to-day. Very slowly and gradually was this physical body organised during Old Saturn evolution, and, whilst Old Saturn itself was being formed, the different signs of the Zodiac slowly revolved, and the human body member by member, took on its earliest form.

1909-04-18-GA110

(SWCC) is a continuation and summary statement for the detailed explanations on 1909-04-17-GA110

What is called the physical body today had its first foundations during the earliest Old Saturn planetary stage. That physical body was not as yet interpenetrated by an etheric body or an astral body; but it was already so organised that after passing through all the transformations it experienced later, it could become the bearer of the spiritual earth-man of to-day. Very slowly and gradually was this physical body organised during Old Saturn evolution, and, whilst Old Saturn itself was being formed, the different signs of the Zodiac slowly revolved, and the human body member by member, took on its earliest form.

Food upward - or 'nourishment'

For the relation of Man to H3, see Schema FMC00.472.

section moved to: Third Hierarchy

Maximilian Rebholz

essential section copied from 'elementary kingdoms' essay

And in 1923-11-04-GA230 it is described in a wonderfully clear manner, how the undines, sylphs and elemental fire-beings connect themselves with these being-essence, and present it to the higher hierarchies as nourishment. The undines, for example, see these products of decomposition in the sea as glimmering and glittering colours, which they avidly take in.

They draw these colours into their own bodily nature. … Then in a vast, in a magnificent cosmic picture, one sees how, emanating from earthly water, the colours which are carried upwards by the undines and which have spiritual substantiality, provide the higher hierarchies with their sustenance, how the earth becomes the source of nourishment in that the very essence of the undines' longing is to let themselves be consumed by the higher beings.

A similar description is given for the sylphs and fire-beings.

lectures 7,8,9 or 1923-11-02/03/04-GA230  are on the life of the elementals in nature

1905-10-17-GA093a

It is not the substance in which Man is now incarnated. But certain retrograde beings who had fallen behind on the Old Moon had discovered in this astral substance — food for their gluttony. They want to feed on it; it has for them a great force of attraction. This shows that we are continually surrounded by beings whose higher nature is related to our lower.

When someone produces egotistical thoughts, this is very welcome to these beings. In other respects they are actually more advanced than Man, but they have the craving to embody themselves in the astral forms which we ourselves create. They are the so-called Asuras. Through our baser thoughts we provide nourishment for these asuric beings.

When people whose nature is not yet purified, not yet free from passions, meditate, creating strong thought forms, they conjure up around themselves a powerful aura of desires. In this incarnate asuric beings of this kind which are then able to draw such people downwards. If a person drowsy with sleep meditates and in so doing does not rise clearly enough into thoughts, he creates this substance, and because he has no counterbalance, such beings incarnate in his thought forms.

Human creation and the link with spiritual science and sense-free thinking

see also ref 1924-09-14-GA318 on page Human breath

East and West orientation hierarchies

1923-11-25-GA232

We find therefore first of all the spirits of nature, those beings into whom we penetrate with our world of gesture; but we also find the world of the Angels, Archangels and Archai, and grow also into these Beings. We enter into them. We plunge into the deeds of the Angels through our memories. We enter into the living beings of the angelic world through what we have imprinted in ourselves as physiognomy and gesture. This penetration which takes place in sleep is such that we can say: When we pass over livingly into nature the process is that the further we go out in a direct line the more do we come into the regions of the Angels and Archangels and the Archai. We come into the sphere of the third Hierarchy.

And when in sleep we dive down with our memories and our gestures as into a flowing sea of weaving beings of Angels, Archangels and Archai, then from one side there comes another stream of spiritual beings, the second hierarchy, Exusiai, Kyriotetes, Dynamis. If we wish to express in the outer world that which we have just described, we must say: This stream flows in such a way that the course of the sun by day from east to west marks the way the second hierarchy crosses the third hierarchy.

The third hierarchy, the angels, archangels and archai, are as if floating up and down “offering one another the golden buckets.”

1923-11-25-GA232

(in FMC) also adds to the stream of the second Hierarchy on a daily basis from east to west, a yearly stream of the first hierarchy from west to east

This means in reality that you are living with this stream which flows from east to west; because gradually you feel more and more strongly: There in the spiritual world which you enter in sleep your life does not merely consist in being merged with the spiritual, but in this spiritual there transpires something which was reflected externally at the time you sat around the pension table with these human beings. You have forgotten it long ago but it is still there. You behold, it as you can behold those things which can often be seen inscribed in the Akashic Record.

The moment you have this before you, you have identified yourself with this stream flowing from east to west, the stream of the second hierarchy. In this stream of the second Hierarchy something lives which is outwardly reflected by day.

Now days vary in the course of the whole year. In Spring a day is longer, in Autumn shorter; in summer it is longest, in winter shortest. The day is subject to change throughout the year.

That is caused by a stream which flows from west to east, counter to the stream from east to west; and that is the stream of the first Hierarchy, of the Seraphim, the Cherubim and the Thrones.

...

But one can also experience the year. This is done by paving attention to the way in which the will works in us, and observing that it is relatively easy to bring the will to expression when we are really warm, whereas it is difficult to let the will stream through the body if we are very cold.

..

That means, the thoughts which are first experienced in the head pass over into the whole body. They first fill the body and then press out of the body again. These words express the nature of the summer-will, the will in us which is related to the summer. We may also say: “I have called up from my inner being the active memory of something experienced long ago; the day with its night confronts me with it in supplementing it with the external perception of space; and that corresponds to the stream from east to west.”

We may also say: “In us winter-will changes into summer-will, and summer-will into winter-will.”

We are no longer related to the day with its interchange of light and darkness. We are related to the year through our will, and thereby are identified with the stream flowing from west to east, the stream of the first Hierarchy, the Seraphim, Cherubim and the Thrones.

As we go on we shall see how man is hindered or helped through heredity or external adaptation to environment with reference to this relationship with the inner being of nature; for what I have explained to you today relates to the way in which man, if he is hindered as little as possible by the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces, can grow in this way with his thought and will into the inner being of nature, and is received by

• the time-forces, the day-forces and the year-forces,
• the third Hierarchy, the second Hierarchy and the first Hierarchy.

But the Ahrimanic forces as they appear in heredity and the Luciferic forces as they appear in adaptation to environment have an essential influence on all this. This great question shall occupy us in the next lecture...

Eagle, Lion and Cow forces

1923-10-20-GA230

Having considered in the lecture yesterday the nature of

• the animals of the heights, represented by the eagle,
• the animals of the middle region, represented by the lion, and
• the animals of the earth-depths, represented by the ox or cow,

we can today turn our attention to man's connection with the universe from that particular aspect which reveals the inner structural relationship of the human being to these representatives of the animal world.

Let us first turn our gaze to the upper regions, about which we said yesterday that when the animal derives its particular forces from them, they do then in fact cause the whole animal to become head-organization. There we see how the bird owes its very being to the sun-irradiated atmosphere. This sun-irradiated atmosphere — everything, that is to say, which can be absorbed by the bird through the fact that it owes the most important part of its being to it — is a necessity to the bird. And I told you yesterday that it is upon this that the actual formation of the plumage depends. The bird has its actual being within. What is brought about in the bird by the outer world is embodied in its plumage. But when the influence of this sun-irradiated air is not impressed on the being from without, as in the case of the eagle, but is activated within, as in the case of the human nervous system, then thoughts arise — momentary thoughts, as I said, thoughts of the immediate present.

When we thus turn our gaze upwards to the heights, and are filled with all that results from such a contemplation, it is to the tranquil atmosphere and to the streaming sunlight that our attention is drawn. We must not, however, think of the sun in isolation. The sun maintains its power through the fact that it comes into connection with the different regions of the universe.

• Human knowledge has expressed this relationship by connecting the sun activities with the so-called animal circle or zodiac, so that when the sunlight falls to earth from Leo, from Libra or from Scorpio,
• its significance also signifies something different for the earth according to whether it is strengthened or weakened by the other planets of our planetary system. And here different relationships arise in regard to the different planets; the relationships in regard to the so-called outer planets, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, are different from those in regard to the so-called inner planets, Mercury, Venus and Moon.

[Eagle: sun forces modifed by Mars-Jupiter-Saturn]

If we now consider the organization of the eagle, it is most important first of all to observe how far the Sun-forces become modified, strengthened or weakened, by their interaction with Saturn, Jupiter, Mars. It is not for nothing that legend speaks of the eagle as the bird of Jupiter. In general Jupiter stands as the representative of the outer planets.

And if we were to draw a diagram illustrating what is meant here, we would have to draw the sphere which Saturn has in world-space, in the cosmos, as also that of Jupiter and Mars.

Let us draw this, so that we may actually see it, in a diagram: (see next page) the Saturn sphere, the Jupiter sphere, the Mars sphere; then we find the transition to the Sun sphere, giving us in the outermost part of our planetary system the working together of Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn.

And when we see the eagle circling in the air we do in fact utter a reality when we say: These forces which stream through the air from the Sun in such a way that they are composed of the working together of Sun with Mars, Jupiter and Saturn — these forces are those which live in the whole structure, in the very being of the eagle. But at the same time they live in the formation of the human head. And when we place man into the universe in accordance with his true nature — on earth he is only, so to speak, a miniature picture of himself — as regards his head we must place him into the eagle-sphere.

We must, therefore, think of Man in regard to his head as belonging to the eagle-sphere; and therewith we have indicated that element in the human being which is connected with the upward tending forces.

[Lion]

The lion is the representative of those animals which are in the real sense Sun-animals, in which the sun unfolds its own special force. The lion prospers best when the constellations above the sun and the constellations below the sun are so ordered that they exert the least influence upon the sun itself. Then those special characteristics appear which I described to you yesterday, namely that the forces of the sun itself, permeating the air, produce in the lion a breathing system of just such a kind that in its rhythm it is in perfect balance with the rhythm of the blood-circulation, not as regards number but as regards its dynamic. In the lion this balances itself out in a wonderfully beautiful way. The lion regulates his blood-circulation through the breathing, and the blood-circulation continually stimulates the stream of the breath. I told you that this can be seen even in the form, in the very structure of the lion's mouth. In this form itself the wonderful relationship between the rhythm of the blood and the rhythm of the breath is actually expressed. One can see this, too, in the remarkable gaze of the lion, resting in itself, and yet turned boldly outwards.

But what lives in the lion's gaze lives also in the other elements of human nature, the metabolic system, the head system, and the breast or heart system, that is the rhythmic system of Man.

And if we picture the special Sun-activity we must so draw the diagram of the human being that we place his heart, and the lungs connected to it, into the region of this Sun-activity. It is here, in this sphere, that we have the lion-nature in man.

[Cow: Mercury-Venus-Moon]

When we turn to the inner planets nearer the earth, we have first the Mercury sphere. This has to do in particular with the finer parts of the digestive organism of man, the region where the foodstuffs are transformed into lymphatic substance, which is then carried into the circulation of the blood.

Progressing further, we come into the region of Venus-activity. This is connected with the somewhat coarser parts of man's digestive system, to that part of the human organism which works primarily from the stomach upon the foodstuffs which have been taken in. We next come into the sphere of the Moon. (I am drawing this in the sequence customary today in astronomy; I could also draw it differently.) There we enter that region where those digestive processes which are connected with the Moon act and re-act upon the human being.

In this way we have placed man into the entire universe. By turning our minds to those cosmic activities which the Sun carries out in conjunction with Mercury, Venus, Moon, we come into the region containing the forces which are taken up by the order of the animals represented for us by the cow, in the sense which I spoke of yesterday. There we have what the Sun cannot do by itself alone, but what the Sun can only do when its own forces are conducted to the earth by means of the planets which are nearest to the earth. When these forces are all at work, when they do not only stream through the air, but penetrate through the earth's surface in various ways, then these forces work up again from the earth depths. And what thus works up from earth depths belongs to the sphere which we see embodied outwardly in the organism of the cow.

The cow is the animal of digestion. It is, moreover, the animal which accomplishes digestion in such a way that there lies in its digestive processes the earthly reflection of something actually super-earthly; its whole digestive process is permeated with an astrality which reflects the entire cosmos in a wonderful light-filled way. There is — as I said yesterday — a whole world in this astral organism of the cow, but everything is heavy, everything is so organized that the weight of the earth works there. You have only to consider that the cow is obliged to consume an eighth of her weight in foodstuffs each day. Man can be satisfied with a fortieth part and remain healthy. Thus the cow needs earth-gravity in order fully to meet the needs of her organism. Her organism is orientated towards this need for the weight of matter. Every day the cow must digest an eighth of her weight. This binds the cow with her material substance to the earth, whereas, through her astrality she is at the same time an image of the heights, of the cosmos.

This is why, as I said yesterday, the cow is an object of so much veneration for those who confess to the Hindu religion. The Hindu says to himself: The cow lives here on the earth; but through this fact she forms in solid physical substance an image of something super-earthly. It is indeed the case that man's nature is organized in a normal way when he can bring into harmony these three cosmic activities manifested in a one-sided way in eagle, lion and cow; when he himself is the confluence of the activities of eagle, lion and cow.

In accordance with the general course of world events, however, we are now living in an age when the evolution of the world is threatened by a certain danger; and this danger will — if I may so express myself — actually take effect in man also in a one-sided way. From the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries up to our own day the facts of human earthly evolution are such that, to an ever increasing degree, the eagle activities wish to make one-sided claims upon the human head, the lion activities upon the human rhythmic system, and the cow activities upon the human metabolism and upon all man's activity on the earth.

This is the stamp of our age, that it is the aim of the cosmic powers to bring about a threefold division of man, and that, each form of these cosmic powers is always striving to suppress the others. The eagle strives to subjugate the lion and the cow and make them of no account, and in like manner with each of the other elements. Just in our present age something particularly alluring is working upon the subconscious in man; alluring because in a certain sense there is also something beautiful about it. In his conscious life man today is unaware of this but, for his sub-consciousness, three calls surge and sound through the world seeking to tempt him with their allurement.

And I must say that it is the secret of our present time that, from the sphere of the eagle, there sounds down to man what actually gives the eagle his eagle nature, what gives him his plumage, what hovers around him as astrality. It is the eagle nature itself which becomes audible for the sub-consciousness of man.

...

[three calls]

Thus speaks the cow. And it is the orient which is specially exposed to the allurement of this call. What is meant here, however, is that, though it is the orient which is primarily exposed to this alluring call of the cow on account of the ancient veneration of the cow in Hinduism, yet, if this allurement were actually so to seize hold of mankind that what arises from this call would gain the mastery, then these influences emanating from the orient would produce a civilization, which, spreading over centre and west, would hinder progress and engender decadence. The demonic earth-forces would work in a one-sided way upon earth-civilization.

What then would actually happen?

The following would happen. In the course of the last centuries, under the influence of a technology brought about by external science, an external technological life has come about on the earth. Certainly our technical achievement is wonderful in every sphere. But in technology nature forces work in their lifeless form. And the important factors in bringing these lifeless nature forces into play so absolutely and utterly that they would impose a stratum of civilization over the earth — these factors are number, measure and weight.

The scales, the measuring rod — to weigh, to count, to measure — these are the ideal of the modern scientist, of the modern technician, whose entire profession is actually dependent upon external science. We have brought things to such a pass that an important mathematician of our times, in response to the question: What is the guarantee of existence?, gives the following answer. (Philosophers of all ages have tried to answer the question: What is actually real?) This important physicist says: What can be measured is real; what cannot be measured is unreal. The ideal is to regard all being in such a way that it can be brought into the laboratory, and weighed, measured and counted; and from what is weighed, measured and counted, science, or what stands for it, is constructed. All this then streams out into technology. Number, measure and weight have become the standards of the whole of civilization.

Now as long as people only apply themselves with their ordinary understanding to measure, number and weight, things are not particularly bad. People are certainly very clever, but they are still a long way from being as clever as the universe. And this is why things cannot become particularly bad so long as, in comparison with the universe, they go about the measuring, weighing and counting in a dilettante way. But if present-day civilization were to be transformed into initiation, things would be bad indeed, if this attitude of mind remained. And this can happen if the civilization of the west, which stands entirely under the sign of measure, number and weight, were to be flooded by what might well come to pass in the east, namely, that through initiation-science people might fathom what actually lives spiritually in the organism of the cow. For if you penetrate into the organism of the cow, burdened with earthly heaviness, with this eighth of her weight in foodstuffs, with all that can be weighed, measured and counted, you learn what is being organized spiritually in the cow by this earth-heaviness, you learn to understand the whole organism of the cow as it lies in the meadow digesting, and in this process of digestion manifesting wonderful revelations from the astrality of the universe. Then you learn how to form what can be weighed, measured and counted into a system with which you could overcome all other forms of civilization and impose upon the whole earth-globe one civilization, which would do nothing but weigh, count and measure, making everything else disappear. For what would result from initiation into the organization of the cow? That is a question of utmost gravity, a question of immense significance. What would be the result?

Well, the whole way in which people construct machines varies greatly according to the nature of the machine in question; but everything tends towards the gradual development of these still imperfect, primitive machines into a kind of machine which depends upon vibrations, and where the aim is to make the machines effective by means of vibrations or oscillations, by means of movements which run a periodic course. Everything is hastening towards such machines. But if once these machines in their coordinated activity could be constructed in such a way as can be learned from the distribution of foodstuffs in the organization of the cow, then the vibrations which would be conjured up on the earth-globe through the machines, these small earth-vibrations, would so run their course that what is above the earth would sound together with, vibrate together with what is happening on the earth; so that our planetary system in its movements would be compelled to vibrate with our earth-system, just as a string tuned to a certain pitch vibrates in sympathy when another one is struck in the same room.

That is the terrible law of the sounding in unison of vibrations which would be fulfilled if the alluring call of the cow would so decoy the orient that it would then be able to penetrate in an absolutely convincing way into the unspiritual, purely mechanistic civilization of the west and centre; and thereby it would become possible to conjure up on the earth a mechanistic system fitting exactly into the mechanistic system of the universe. Through this everything connected with the working of air, with the forces of the circumference, and everything connected with the working of the stars, would be exterminated from human civilization. What man experiences, for instance, through the cycle of the year, what he experiences through living together with the sprouting, budding life of spring, with the fading, dying life of autumn — all this would lose its import for him. Human civilization would resound with the clattering and rattling of the vibrating machines and with the echo of this clattering and rattling which would stream down upon the earth from the cosmos as a reaction to this mechanisation of the earth.

If you observe a part of what is active at the present time, you will say to yourselves: A part of our present-day civilization is actually on the way to having this terrible element of degeneracy as its goal.

Now turn your thoughts to what would happen if the centre fell a prey to the allurements of what is spoken by the lion. Then, it is true, the danger I have just described would not be present. Then mechanism would gradually disappear from the face of the earth. Civilization would not become mechanistic, but, with a one-sided power, man would be given over to all that lives in wind and weather, in the cycle of the year. Man would be yoked to the year's course, and thereby compelled to live particularly in the interaction of his rhythms of breathing and blood-circulation. He would develop in himself what his involuntary life can give him. He would primarily develop his breast-nature. Through this, however, such human egoism would come over earth civilization that everyone would be intent upon living for himself alone, that no-one would bother about anything save his own immediate wellbeing. It is this temptation to which the civilization of the centre is exposed, such is the existence which could hang like a fate over the civilization of the earth.

And yet again, if the alluring call of the eagle were to seduce the west, so that it would succeed in spreading its way of thinking and attitude of mind over the whole earth, binding itself up in a one-sided way in this kind of thinking and mental attitude, then, in mankind as a whole there would arise the urge to enter into connection with the super-earthly world, as this once was, as it was in the beginning, at the outset of earth-evolution. People would feel the urge to extinguish what man has won for himself in freedom and independence. They would come to live only and entirely in that unconscious will which allows the gods to live in human muscles and nerves. They would revert to primitive conditions, to original, primitive clairvoyance. Man would seek to free himself from the earth by turning back to beginnings.

And I must say that, for exact clairvoyant vision, this is further emphasized through the fact that man is continually approached by what may be called the voice of the grazing cow, which says: “Do not look upwards; all power comes from the earth. Learn to know all that lies in earth-activity. Thou shalt become the lord of the earth. Thou shalt perpetuate the results of thy work on earth.” Yes, if man were to succumb to this alluring call, it would be impossible to avoid the danger of which I have spoken: the mechanizing of earth civilization. For the astrality of this animal of digestion wills to make the present enduring, to make the present eternal. From the lion-organization proceeds not what wills to make the present endure, but rather what would make the present as fleeting as possible, what would make everything a mere sport of the cycle of the year, always repeating itself, what would spend itself in wind and weather, in the play of the sunbeams, in the currents of the air. And civilization, too, would take on this character.

If, with real understanding, one contemplates the eagle as he soars through the air, it appears as though he were bearing upon his plumage the memory of what was there at the very inception of the earth. He has preserved in his plumage the forces which have still worked into the earth from above. It can be said that in every eagle we see the past millennia of the earth; with his physical nature he has not touched the earth, or at the most only for the purpose of seizing his prey, and in no way for the satisfaction of his own life. To fulfil his own life the eagle circles in the air, because he is indifferent to what has developed on the earth, because he has his joy and inspiration from the forces of the air, because he actually despises the life of earth and wishes to live in that same element in which the earth itself lived when it was not yet earth, but when, in the beginning of its evolution, it was still imbuing itself with heavenly forces. The eagle is the proud creature which would not partake in the evolution of the solid earth, which withdrew from the influence of this solidifying process, and wished to remain united only with those forces which were there at the inception of the earth.

Such are the teachings given to us by this threefold representation of the animal kingdom, if we can conceive it as an immense and mighty script, written into the universe for the elucidation of its riddles. For, in very truth, every single thing in the universe is a written character if we could but read it. And especially when we can read their connection do we understand the riddle of the universe.

How full of significance it is to have to realize: What we do when we measure with the compasses or measuring rod, when we weigh with the scales, when we count — this is in fact only a putting together of something which is fragmentary; it becomes a whole when we understand the organization of the cow in its inner spirituality. This means to read in the secrets of the universe. And this reading in the secrets of the universe leads into the understanding of the being of the world and of man. This is modern initiation wisdom. It is this which must be uttered at the present time from out of the depths of spiritual life.

It is difficult indeed today for man to be really man. For, if I may put it so, in face of the three animal types, man conducts himself like the antelope in the fable which I told you yesterday. What wills to be one-sided takes on a particular form. The lion remains lion, but he wishes to have his fellow beasts of prey as metamorphoses of the other animal representatives. Thus for what in truth is eagle he substitutes a fellow beast of prey, the hyena, whose nature it is to live upon what is dead, upon that element of death which is induced in our head, and which continually, at every moment, contributes atomistic particles towards our death. So this fable replaces the eagle with the hyena, the hyena which consumes decay; and in the place of the cow — in line with the degeneration — the lion puts his fellow beast of prey, the wolf. Thus we have in the fable the other threefold animal group, the lion, the hyena, the wolf. And as today the alluring calls stand over against each other, their cosmic symbolism is confronted with its opposite, in that, when the alluring calls resound, the eagle sinks to earth and becomes the hyena, and the cow no longer desires in her holy, humble way to be an image of the cosmos, but becomes the ravening wolf.

And now we can translate the legend with which I ended my lecture yesterday from the african version into that of modern civilization.

References and further reading

• Klaus-Peter Endres and Wolfgang Schad: Moon Rhythms in Nature: 'How Lunar Cycles Affect Living Organisms' (2002 in EN)
• Ita Wegman: 'The signature of zodiacal and planetary forces in Man' (March-April 1929, published in 'The Mysteries')

• Rawn Clark: Path to Understanding. The Hebrew Sequence of Creation (1997)