Earth

From Anthroposophy

When using the word Earth we typically refer to the mineral physical sphere we live on, but just like the other planets it is also a living organism consisting of a multifold structure, from I-consciousness to the etheric planetary spheres.

As a living organism or being, a planet it has a physical and etheric body and spirit. Our current Earth itself is only a temporary incarnation of that Being, which previously had existed as Old Moon, Old Sun, and Old Saturn. These incarnations are called the 'planetary stages' in evolution, with corresponding Conditions of Consciousness (CoC). See Three dimensions of evolution to see how the Earth goes through the different Conditions of Life and Form (CoL, CoF).

The Earth is currently in a solid state: this is also a temporary condition, a cyclic state in a cosmic rhythm related to the Sun's journey through the zodiac, and the precession of the equinoxes (see Zodiac clock). The Earth was still more fluid and less dense some 15.000 years ago, and it will be back in a similar condition in the future.

As a living being, the Earth has a daily etheric breathing cycle (related to rotation around its axis) and also a yearly cycle (related to the changing influences and relationship of the Sun). As a spiritual being, the Earth is awake in the winter, and asleep in the summer.

The Earth organism is not limited to the physical mineral sphere, it is made up of Earth's inner layers as well as Earth's outer etheric spheres (see FMC00.003A and FMC00.003).

Since the Mystery of Golgotha (MoG), the Christ has become the Spirit of the Earth. At the time the blood flowed at the MoG, the astral atmosphere changed as the Christ's forces of life and chemical ethers were infused back into the Earth. See Christ Module 7 - Cosmic dimension.

Aspects

rhythmic aspects

  • daily rhythm breathing (as researched by Goethe, and Wachsmuth) - see Rhythm of a day
  • yearly rhythm: asleep in summer, awake in winter - see Rhythm of a year
  • 'Fluid cycle of earth in relation to the universe' describes the image of the water cycle as Earth's blood circulation.(1924-02-09-GA352)
  • Earth's breathing centers

structure and form

substances

  • substance (current make-up of physical matter)
    • three main substances ànd their forces (living etheric formative forces): mica, silica (quartz), feldspar (1923-02-17-GA349)
      • mica: formed of thin plates, so thin they sometimes look transparent .. once upon a time the earth was interwoven by such little mica plates.
      • silica/quartz: making upgrating of lattice-work in the earth, opposing the forces in mica
      • feldspar: today, as in clay, unites the two, it fills in the lattice-work
    • current Earth hardened from a living Earth - plant and animal deposits (1923-02-17-GA349)
      • rocks as deposit of former plant life: "when the Earth was still soft and mica, feldspar and silica (or quartz) swam through each other in the fluid condition, the whole Earth was a giant plant under cosmic influences .. our hardest mountains originate from the plant nature"
      • limestone as deposit of former animal life
    • for silica, clay and lime as the setting for the workings of the 'four sister-substances in the economy of nature' (carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and sulphur), see also Schema FMC00.467 on Mineral kingdom

geography

  • the changing face of the Earth: see schemas FMC00.214 and FMC00.206 on Atlantean epoch
  • etheric geography and the double - geographic medicine, see Illness
  • the five main areas from which the planetary influences of the abnormal SoF work, as related to the five main human races

Christ Impulse

climate

  • the causes for the forces manifesting in air and water and in the mineral realm are to be found within the human beings, and intimately connected with the human will. The causes of processes active in the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms lie within the human organism. (This does not apply to all the forces working in these kingdoms of nature, but to a large proportion of them.) Within humankind lie the causes for what happens on Earth (1919-11-09-GA191)
  • nature's forces (of volcanoes, earthquakes and lightning)
    • layout of volcanoes - see ring of fire (oa Schema FMC00.315) on Separation of Moon
    • key places on Earth where lightning strikes

evolution

various aspects

  • the Earth's magnetic field and poles

Inspirational quotes

1917-11-18-GA178

The Earth is very different from what geologists or mineralogists or palaeontologists say about it; the Earth is a living being through and through.

Illustrations

Schema FMC00.003A: illustrates the Earth with its inner layers or strata, and the etheric spheres or girdles beyond the atmosphere.

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Schema FMC00.003 provides an overview of the Earth embedded further into the planetary spheres.

FMC00.003.jpg

FMC00.206 shows various world maps projecting the continents in the Lemurian and Atlantean epochs (see also FMC00.209 on Earth's seven epochs), see correspondence with the FMC00.214 maps on Atlantean epoch

FMC00.347 is a high level world map with the predominant ethers per geographical areas (Hagemann & Wachsmuth). This is however indicative at a very high level, Hagemann published a map of the dominant mix of ethers across Europe at a more granular level.

FMC00.347.jpg

Lecture coverage and references

1907-06-26-GA100

[situation kingdoms of nature on Old Moon]

The same applies to the plant-animals. A certain number of these had developed to a higher stage, to that of animals; others had remained behind and changed into plants. The kingdom of plant-minerals also followed this line of development: some became heavy minerals, while others ascended in their development to the level of plants.

[each kingdom has two lines of development]

Not everything arose in accordance with one standard of measure, for the animals which we know today arose, for instance,

  • partly through the descending development of men-animals and
  • partly through the ascending development of plant-animals.

In the vegetable kingdom also we have side by side

  • the plant-minerals in an ascending course of development and
  • the plant-animals in a descending course.

The plants now chiefly constituting the pleasant plant-carpet of our earth, arose through the ascending development of the Old Moon's plant-minerals; this is, for instance, the case with the violet. On the other hand, everything that gives us a decaying impression is in a descending development, whereas our green, leafy, plants will in future attain to higher stages.

[mineral kingdom]

Our minerals developed entirely upon the Earth; there were no minerals upon Old Moon, such as exist today. The mineral kingdom is the former plant-mineral kingdom which sank down to a lower stage and which was embedded into the Earth as a firm crust.

When the Earth cast off the Moon, the substances which remained behind and which later on became minerals, solid metals,. etc., were still an altogether liquid mass. The substances which at that time had already reached a solid state, were hurled out into the cosmic spaces, because, had it kept these substances, the Earth could not have developed, further. Then the first metals which reached a solid state were added. Sometimes they had most peculiar forms! What you now encounter in the mountains as granite or gneiss, at that time revealed quite clearly that it had arisen through the descending development of vegetable beings, of plants which had become stones.

You may gather from this that upon the Sun and upon the Moon the mineral kingdom was a vegetable kingdom. The vegetable kingdom has not developed out of the mineral kingdom, but minerals have developed out of the vegetable kingdom!

The coal which is now dug out of the Earth is nothing but a complex of petrified plant — plants which decayed and became stones, so that now they can be dug out of the Earth as petrified plants.

[rocks like gneiss]

If you were to go back still further, you would see that once even the hardest stones were plants; and that they have arisen out of plants through the descending development of plants to the mineral kingdom.

A clairvoyant sees this in the following way: If you investigate gneiss, the mineralogist will tell you that it consists of feldspar, hornblende and mica — but he cannot go further. The clairvoyant says:

  • feldspar in gneiss appears to spiritual vision quite clearly as the petrified stalk and the green leaves of plants, the petrification of those parts which built them up; whereas
  • the mica foundation is related to that part of the plants which still develops today as the plants sepals and corollae. When a modern occultist observes a piece of gneiss he will say: This is a petrified plant, and even as plants now possess leaves and flowers, etc., so the mica foundation of gneiss has developed out of the sepals and petals of ancient epochs.


Thus it can be explained how every mineral developed out of former plants. For the substances which came over from the Old Moon were plants, which then became densified in the liquid mass of the Earth. Even as one can see the water in a receptacle freezing into solid ice, so it is possible to observe in the early stages of the Earth's development the gradual forming of solid masses. Thus the solid crust of the Earth slowly developed out of the liquid Earth. The further we proceed, the higher and purer become the beings who live upon the Earth, and those that were unable to ascend became petrified. It was the same both with animals and men. Man reached the stage of being able to transform his body in a still higher measure.

1911-02-09-GA060

is called 'What Has Geology to Say About the Origin of the World?' and quotes Eduard Suess (1831-1914) from 'Der Antlitz der Erde' (3 volumes 1885-1909)

1917-11-18-GA178

see link The double

The earth is very different from what geologists or mineralogists or palaeontologists say about it; the Earth is a living being through and through. These scientists deal only with its mineral part, its skeleton, and its skeleton is all we normally perceive. This is much the same as if you were to enter this hall and through a special change of sight were to see only the bones of the people assembled here. Just imagine that you came in through the door and only skeletons were sitting on the chairs: not that they were nothing but bones — that would be going too far — but that you could see only the bones, as though with an X-ray apparatus. That is as much as geology sees of the earth — its skeleton only. But the earth is more than a skeleton: it is a living organism, and from its centre it sends out particular forces to every point and region on its surface.

These outward-streaming forces belong to the earth as a living organism, and they affect a man differently according to where he lives on the earth. His soul is not directly influenced by these forces, for his immortal soul is very largely independent of earth-conditions, and can be made dependent on them only by such special arts as those I have described today. But through the other being, which seizes hold of man before birth and has to leave him before death, these various earth-forces work with particular strength into the racial and geographical varieties of mankind. So it is on this “double” (Doppelgänger), which man carries within himself, that geographical and other diversities exert special influence.

This is extraordinarily important. Tomorrow we shall see how the “double” is influenced from various points on the earth and what the consequences are. I have already indicated that you will need to bring what I have said today into direct connection with what I shall be saying tomorrow, for one lecture can scarcely be understood without the other.

1919-11-09-GA191

(in WSS) This lecture is of paramount importance for FMC Free Man Creator, but also for hitting the illusion of physical causality and history. So there is a link with reincarnation and the 'waves of people' and the streams and impulses that they bring forth.

Limited extract, read in full

[Man's belief in physical causality for what happens on Earth]

Let me give you the following illustration of what comes into consideration here. We will approach it, so to speak, from the opposite side. Here (X) is the center of the Earth.

When something takes place in the mineral kingdom, the plant kingdom, or the animal kingdom, it is a matter of seeking the causes. The causes lie at certain points which are to be found everywhere. You can picture what I mean by thinking of the following. In the region around Naples in Italy, you will find that the earth over a wide area will emit vapor if you take a piece of paper and set it alight. Vapors begin to rise from the ground beneath you. You will say: the force which drives up the vapors lies in the physical process generated by the lighting of the paper. In this case, the physical process is that by lighting the paper you rarify the air and because of the rarification of the air the vapors inside the earth press upward. They are kept down by the normal air-pressure and this is diminished by setting light to the paper. If I merely want to give an example of effects of a purely mineral nature — such as these vapors arising out of the earth — I could say for the sake of illustration that here, and here (points in the diagram), a piece of paper is set alight. This shows you that the causes of the rising of the vapor do not lie below the soil, but above it. Now these points in the diagram a, b, c, d, e, f — do not represent pieces of paper that have been set alight; in this instance they represent something different. Imagine, to begin with, that each point on its own has no significance but that the significance lies in the system of points as a whole. Do not think now of the pieces of lighted paper, but of something else which at the moment I will not specify. Something else is there as an active cause, above the surface of the earth; and these different causes do not work singly, but together. And now imagine that there are not six points only, but, let us say, 1,500 million points [Representing, approximately, the total population of the Earth.] all working together, producing a combined effect.

These 1,500 million points are actually there. Each of you has within you what may be called the center of gravity of your own physical structure. When people are awake, this center of gravity lies just below the diaphragm; when they are asleep it lies a little lower. There are therefore some 1,500 million of these centers of gravity spread over the Earth, producing a combined effect. And what issues from this combined effect is the actual cause of a great deal of what takes place in the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms on the earth.

It is a scientific fallacy to trace back to mineral causes the forces manifesting in air and water and in the mineral realm; in reality the causes are to be found within the human beings.

This is a truth of which there is scarcely an inkling today. It is known to very, very few that the causes of processes active in the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms lie within the human organism. (This does not apply to all the forces working in these kingdoms of nature, but to a large proportion of them.) Within humankind lie the causes for what happens on Earth.

Therefore mineralogy, botany, zoology, cannot be cultivated truly without anthropology — without the study of the human being. Science tells us of physical, chemical, and mechanical forces. These forces are intimately connected with the human will, with the force of human will that is concentrated in our center of gravity. If we speak of the Earth with an eye to the truth of these matters, we must not follow the geologist in speaking of an earth in the abstract, but humanity must be accounted an integral part of the earth. These are the truths that reveal themselves on yonder side of the threshold. Everything that can be known on this side of the threshold belongs to the realm of the illusions of knowledge, not to the realm of truth.

At this point the question arises:

What relation is there between the forces of will that are concentrated in our center of gravity, and the external, physical, and chemical forces?

...

1920-02-13-GA196

Our current Earth itself is only a temporary incarnation of that Being, which previously had existed as Old Moon, Old Sun, and Old Saturn

1923-02-17-GA349

quote A - see link with Zodiac clock

In 25.920 years the sun makes a revolution round the whole universe. That is very interesting, and by such a course of the stars one can see how everything on Earth changes. With the conditions brought by our present vernal point, we have our high mountains with the dead granite masses, containing feldspar, quartz and mica. It is all dried up, devastated. So it was, too, 25.920 years ago: similar conditions then prevailed on Earth. But in between it was all different.

For instance, the sun rose at one time in spring in Libra, between Virgo and Scorpio. Then the whole Earth was alive, soft, was in fact a kind of plant. We need not go back more than 15.000 years at most, then through the quite different position of the sun the Earth had a plant nature, and later an animal nature. We should be able to follow from the sun's course how the influences coming in from cosmic space have altered conditions on the earth.

You must think to yourselves, as you go back in time: the rock in the primeval Alps which is quite hard and solid today begins to flow, somewhat as iron flows in an iron foundry. It is naturally not quite the same, for when we go back the flow is reversed, as it were, it is in process of becoming solid. And if we go forward into the future, we shall again have the sun in Libra - for now it rises in Pisces, after 2.160 years in Aquarius, then in Capricorn, Sagittarius and once more in Libra, the Scales. At this future time when the sun rises once more in the Scales, the whole primeval Alpine range will have dissolved. The dense quartzes will have become fluid again, the Earth will once more be plant-like and men and animals return to the condition in which they formerly were. In the meanwhile, however, they have absorbed all that they could take in on the Earth.

quote B

.. the Earth is not some sort of neutral lump, it is really miraculous. It contains all sorts of substances .. three were of quite special importance in ancient times.

  • One of the three is a substance which we call mica. Only a small amount is to be found in plants to-day, but even so it is extraordinarily important. If you have already seen mica, you can perhaps remember that it is formed of thin plates, so thin that they sometimes look transparent. And once upon a time the earth was interwoven by such little mica plates. They went in this direction (sketch). As long as the earth was soft, such forces were still in it.
  • Opposing them were other forces: they went so (sketch) and thus there was a real grating of lattice-work in the earth. These other forces are to-day contained in quartz.
  • And in between is yet another substance: clay. This clay unites the two, it fills in the lattice-work, so to speak. As a rock it is called feldspar.

Thus at one time the Earth was composed in the main of these three kinds of primeval rock. But it was all soft, like pulp. There was the mica, which was really at pains to have the earth formed of thin plates in a horizontal direction. Then there was the quartz, radiating in this direction, and then the feldspar cementing the two together.

[Granite and mountain ranges]

We find these most essential constituents to-day when we take the clay soil that is everywhere in the fields. At one time they were all intermingled inside the Earth, now they are to be found outside in the mountains. If we take a piece of granite, it is quite granular, simply composed of little scales. These scales are the thin places of mica broken into splinters. Then there are very hard grains in it — that is the quartz; and then combining grains — the feldspar. These three bodies are broken down, made granular and are to be found outside in the mountains. They form the base of the hardest mountain ranges.

Thus since the Earth was soft they have been pounded and broken to bits by all manner of forces which work in the earth. But remains of these old substances, particularly remains of their forces, are still to be found everywhere in the Earth and the plants are built up from them by the universe.

We can say therefore that when they are working today out there in the mountains, they can create nothing more. These rocks are broken up, crumbled away, crushed into grains and are too hard to become plant. But since the plant always gives its essential substances and forces to the seed, what is within the Earth can still be used for building up the plant out of the universe.

Such a view as this, where one takes into account how the whole of cosmic space works together to produce life, is not found at all in modern science.

[...]

But one can see quite clearly that life comes out of the universe. One sees in reality that in everything living, not only earth-forces are at work. We use only the forces of the earth for the Eiffel Tower and so on. But in such a tower as this (blade of wheat) there work indeed not only the Earth's forces but the forces of the whole universe.

[rocks as deposit of former plant life]

And when the Earth was still soft, when mica, feldspar and quartz or silica, swam through each other in the fluid condition, then the whole Earth was under cosmic influences; it was a giant plant.

When you go out to the mountains today and find granite there, or gneiss — which differs from granite in being more rich in mica — they are the remains of this ancient giant plant. And just as when to-day the plant decays and gives over its mineral constituents to the earth, so, later on, the whole earth body as plant gave over its mineral constituents. And thus today you have the mountain ranges. For our hardest mountains originated from the plant nature, when the whole Earth was a kind of plant.

I have already told you how the earth looked when this primeval rock had ceased to be in a plant condition, but all was still soft. Our present animals and men were not then in existence, but the Megatherion and all the creatures I described to you. But before all this came about, the Earth was a giant plant in cosmic space. And if you observe a plant today and enlarge it, you find even now that it resembles the mountain formations outside. For the universe only acts on the plant as a whole; its minutest parts are already stone. Thus, briefly, the earth has once been alive and what we find to-day in the hardest mountain rocks is the remains of a living earth.

[limestone - deposit of former animal life]

But the Earth's solid, mineral matter has originated in yet another way. If you go out on the ocean you find island formations. Here is the sea (sketch) and at a certain depth under the sea there live tiny creatures in real colonies — the coral-insects or polyps. These coral polyps have the characteristic of continuously secreting chalk. The chalk remains there and the island is finally covered by their deposited chalk secretions. And then sometimes the ground sinks in here, is submerged and a lake is formed. There is a ring of chalk which the coral insects have left behind. Now the earth as a whole is continually sinking in the very regions where these polyps are depositing their chalk. They can only live in the sea itself, so they go down deeper and deeper, while the chalk is left behind up above.

Thus one can still find in the sea chalk deposits which are derived from living creatures, namely, the coral polyps. Formerly there was animal life where now in the Juras we find limestone or chalk. The limestone is the deposit of former animal life.

[Summary]

If you go into the central Alpine region where the hardest rocks are, there you have the deposited plants. If you go into the Juras, there you have what is deposited by animals. The whole Earth has once been living; originally it was a plant, then an animal. What we have today as rock is the remains of life.

It is simply nonsense to imagine that life is built up from dead substances through chemical combination. Life comes out of the ether-filled universe. It is nonsense to say that dead substances could unite and come to life — what is called “original creation.” No, it is precisely the dead substances that are derived from the living, are deposited by the living. As our bones are separated out — in the mother's body they are not there at first — so is everything, our bony structure, etc., formed out of the living. The living exists first and only afterwards comes the dead. The ether surrounds us and it draws everything upwards just as the earth's gravity draws everything down. It draws upwards but it does not bring death, as gravity does. The more you inhale gravity, the more you become gouty or diabetic or something of the sort. To that extent we become dead. And the more the upward forces prevail in us, the more living we become.

1923-10-06-GA229

contains the funny quote

.. if we can suppose that a flea, let us say, were to become an anatomist and were to study a bone, it would have before it an exceptionally small piece of bone, because the flea itself is so small and it would be examining the bone from a flea's perspective. The flea would then discover that in the bone we have to do with phosphoric lime in an amorphous condition, with carbonic acid, lime and so forth. But our flea anatomist would never come to the point of realising that the fragment of bone is a small part only of a complete skeleton. Certainly, the flea jumps, but in studying the tiny piece of bone he would never get beyond it.

Similarly, it would not help a human geologist or mineralogist to be able to jump about like a gigantic earth-flea. In studying the mountain ranges of the Earth, which in their totality represent a skeleton, he would still be working on a miniature scale. The flea would never come to describing the skeleton as a whole; he would hack out a tiny piece with his little hammer. Suppose this were a tiny piece of collar-bone; nothing in the constituents of the little piece, carbonate of lime, phosphate of lime and so on, would reveal to the flea that it belonged to a collar-bone, still less that it was part of a complete skeleton. The flea would have hacked off a tiny piece and would then describe it from his own flea-standpoint, just as a man describes the Earth when somewhere — let us say in the Dornach hills — he has hacked out a bit of Jura limestone. Then he describes this bit, and works up his findings into mineralogy, geology, and so on. It is still the same flea-standpoint, though certainly somewhat enlarged.

This, of course, is no way to arrive at the truth. We need to recognise that the Earth is a single whole, most firmly consolidated during winter through its salt-formation, its mercurial formation and its ash-formation. Let us then ask what the whole nature of the Earth signifies when we look at it not from the flea's point of view, but in relation to the cosmos.

1923-12-01-GA232
Edna Kenton - 'The Book of Earths' (1928)

contains a chapter (see Lemurian epoch#References and further reading), from which the short quote

And yet it is almost this very figure- the inverted pyramidal plant figure of the floating continents - which William Lowthian Green worked out in 1875 with the aid of a "model crystal," a tetrahedron with its sides depressed and its four corners thereby slightly raised. His hypothesis is that during the process of the Earth's cooling, and because of what he calls "the tetrahedral collapse of the Earth's crust in the southern hemisphere," the assumed spheroid form of the Earth (giving a minimum of surface for a given volume) tended to develop into a tetrahedron (giving a maximum of surface for a given volume), with the continents as the edges and the ocean beds as the sides. "Thus," says Green, "a general view of the crystal, the six-faced tetrahedron [Fig. 20], supposed to be three-fourths covered by water attracted towards the centre of gravity of the figure, represents generally all the continents and oceans on the globe in their actual relative positions. As there are four acute solid angles on the crystal, so there are four and only four continents or masses in relief on the globe, and as there are four obtuse angles on the crystal, so there are four and only four grand depressions or oceans on the globe."

Try to find any general reference to "Green's theory"; scientists knew of it, of course, but otherwise it is as if it appeared like a comet in the sky of 1875, not to appear again for over fifty years.

...

Moreux spoke of it, however, in his 'Astronomy Today', and thanks to the way he spoke of it, we have this last picture of a tetrahedral Earth. He takes up one by one the unsolved problems of the Earth and the heavens, and it is an amazing array of the unknown.

[then follows coverage by Théophile Moreux (1867-1954) in 'Astronomy Today' (1926) - note: much more info on Moreux on the French wikipedia page]

1958 - Walther Cloos

in The Living Earth, sketches an analogy of the living earth with the plant process in nature, from seed forming to germination, see Radioactivity#1958 - Walther Cloos

Earth magnetism

1917-11-25-GA178

describes how the forces of Pisces and Virgo have a impact on doing Good, whereas adverse forces will - in the future - try to use the mid-night forces of Sagittarius.

Those concerned to present an Anti-Christ as the real Christ will try also to make use of something that works through the most material forces, but in this very way can work spiritually. Above all they will strive to make use of electricity and earth-magnetism in order to produce effects all over the world.

I have shown you how earth-forces rise up into what I have called the human Double, the 'Doppelgänger'. This secret will be opened up. An American secret will be to make use of earth-magnetism, with its north-south duality, and by this means to send over the earth guiding forces which will have spiritual effects.

Look at the magnetic chart of the earth and compare it with what I am now saying. Observe where the magnetic needle deviates to East and West and where it does not deviate. I can give only hints about all this.

Etheric geography

An etheric map of Europe was made by Ernst Hagemann.

1917-11-16-GA178

is called 'geographic medicine' and explains how the human etheric double is the origin of organic illnesses, see Illness

A certain portion of the earth's surface shows the closest kinship to these forces. If a person goes to this place, he enters their realm; as soon as he goes elsewhere, he is again outside their realm. For these forces are geographic; they are not ethnographic, not national, but purely geographic forces. There is a region where the force streaming up from below has the most influence on the double, and where, because with the outstreaming forces it enters most into kinship with the double, it is again imparted to the earth. This is the region of the earth where most of the mountain ranges run, not crosswise, from east to west, but where the ranges primarily run, from north to south (for this is also connected with these forces) where one is in the vicinity of the magnetic North Pole. This is the region where above all the kinship is developed with the Mephistophelian-Ahrimanic nature through outer conditions. And through this kinship much is brought about in the continuing evolution of the earth.

Ernst Hagemann

Earth's breathing centers (from Ernst Hagemann)

  • meteorological maps
    • low barometric pressure can be looked upon as a sign of an exhalation of the Earth organism
    • high pressure corresponds to an inhalation
  • three breathing centers
    • in the northern hemisphere which alternate from high to low or vice versa every six months.
      • The north node of one of these centers is in the Gobi desert; its other pole is in the In­dian Ocean. The location of these poles charges somewhat during the course of the year. According to Rudolf Steiner, the central Asian breathing center is near the place to which the most spiritually advanced Atlanteans migrated in order to found the first post-Atlantean, the Indian culture. And the Indian Ocean was the site of the Lemurian civilization.
      • The second breathing center is in the Atlantic Ocean. One of its poles is near Iceland and the other near the Azores and Bermuda. These islands are renmants of the Atlantean continent which sank. This region not only was the site of the Atlantean civilization, but it was also the place where the various plant and animal species originated. Most of these species had been created by the time Atlantis sank.
      • The third breathing center, in the northern hemisphere is at 40 degrees latitude near Hawaii in the summer (inhalation), and near the Aleutian Islands in winter (exhalation).
    • The Earth has only one breathing center in its southern hemisphere. This is an inhalation center all year round near Easter Island. The huge primitive sculptured heads which are preserved there point to the existence of an early cultural center.
  • It is interesting that three out of four of these breathing centers were of considerable importance for man in the development of his civilization.
  • air currents regularly accompany the etheric breathing rhythms which go in and out of the breathing centers.
  • One should note that the wind tends to move
    • counter clockwise around inhalation centers in the southern hemisphere and exhalation centers in the northern hemisphere, and
    • clockwise around exhalation centers in the southern hemisphere and inhalation centers in the northern hemisphere.
    • These air currents are usually called high and low; winds in general are predominantly westerly, moving in the same direction as the earth's rotation. Here we're dealing with pulsation waves which proceed from the earth's breathing centers and which quickly eliminate each other through interference effects.
  • Daily, yearly, and seven-year rhythms can be distinguished in the breathing of the earth-organism, and these result in manifold interference phenomena and weather conditions.

Discussion

Note 1 - Effects of nature - global warming vs human moral behaviour

This note will be developed regarding effects of nature such as thunderstorms and extraordinary weather conditions and how they are understood and to be explained. Mineral science uses physical causality and a materialistic mechanical explanation. Spiritual science connects these to the etheric formative forces in Man and working from humanity at large on Earth.

See especially: Sixth cultural age#1923-03-23-GA222

Base lectures:

  • 1919-11-09-GA191 (see quote and link above)
  • 1921-09-05-GA078 called 'The gulf between a causal explanation of nature and the moral world order'

Related pages

References and further reading

  • Eduard Suess: The face of the Earth (3 volumes, 1885-1909, original: Das Antlitz der Erde)
  • Gunther Wachsmuth: 'Erde und Mensch: Ihre Bildekräfte, Rhythmen, und Lebensprozesse' (1945)
  • Walther Cloos:
  • Iwer Thor Lorenzen: 'Evolution durch Inkarnation und Metamorphose' (1969)
  • Geert Suwelack (1920-2003): 'The New Dialogue with the Spirit of the Earth' (1979 DE, 1985 EN)
  • Hans-Ulrich Schmutz: 'Die Tetraeder-struktur der Erde (1986)
  • Friedrich Benesch: 'Zur Äthergeographie der Erde' (2000)

Christ as spirit of the Earth

see: Christ Module 7 - Cosmic dimension#Christ as spirit of the Earth

see also: Christ Module 17 - The experience of the year#References and further reading

Various other (unqualified)

  • context ether geography (suggested by someone)
    • Joachim von Königslöw: 'Flüsse Mitteleuropa's (1995)
    • Herbert Hahn: 'Vom Genius Europas - Wesensbilder von zwölf europäischen Völkern, Ländern, Sprachen' (1964)


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