Four kingdoms of nature
The current planetary stage of evolution called Earth has seven kingdoms of which we know four physical kingdoms: mineral, plant, animal kingdoms besides Man or the human being. The three other kingdoms are called the Elementary kingdoms that provide the formative forces working on the Earth's kingdoms - see also Golden Chain.
Man owes his ascent to the other kingdoms of nature, and will redeem them in the future, see Man and nature's kingdoms in evolution.
Aspects
- the symbol of the cross and its origin and meaning in the ancient Mysteries: 'the world soul is stretched/nailed/crucified on the world of matter in the form of a cross' (Plato), see Schema FMC00.654 and compare with Symbol of rose cross
- see also animal kingdom, plant kingdom, mineral kingdom and Man and nature's kingdoms in evolution
Inspirational quotes
John of Salisbury, in Metalogicon (Book 1, Ch 16)
Nature is rich and beautiful, and provides human indigence with her untold wealth ... with the result that the properties of things overflow into words.
Illustrations
Schema FMC00.518 illustrates the consciousness of the four kingdoms of nature at different planes of consciousness.
Only Man has individualized Human 'I' consciousness as he was and is in the process of detaching himself from the various granular levels of the group souls of humanity through the process of individuation and Development of the I.
In the animal kingdom, a collective of animals part of a certain species have their group soul on the astral plane, the working group of the animal group soul intelligence can be seen for example in flocks of birds and herds.
The plant kingdom has its group soul on the lower spirit plane. The astral body of the Earth forms the common astral body for the whole plant kingdom, the I of the plant is in the center of the Earth. The astral world does not penetrate the individual plant but merely touches it through the 'kiss of the Sun', which is the origin of the blossom causing the appearance of the flower.
The mineral kingdom is frozen and chaste and has the group soul in the higher spirit world.
FMC00.147 provides an overview to contemplate how the kingdoms of nature on Earth originate in previous evolutionary stages.
Schema FMC00.149: gives a tabular synthesis showing the development of the Spectrum of elements and ethers and the development of our current Four kingdoms of nature as well as Man's developing Condition of Consciousness, see also Schema FMC00.583 on Man and nature's kingdoms in evolution
It shows how the plant and animal kingdoms evolved from the planetary stages of evolution: part of the development lagged behind and was not able to develop the next structural bodily principles, such as the astral on Old Moon, and the human 'I' on Earth.
Note: this schema has a Schema Commentary page, right click the schema number hyperlink to open in a new tab window.
Schema FMC00.142B lifts out one aspect from Schema FMC00.142, graphically depicting the origin of nature's kingdoms as offsprings of the spiritual hierarchies in previous evolutionary stages.
Schema FMC00.654: depicts the saying by Plato that the world-soul is crucified on (the cross of) the world-body, or: the soul of the world is bound to the body of the world as it were upon a Cross.
The soul of the world develops through living beings and has its bodies in the kingdoms of nature. On the physical-material body of the world, the soul of the world (the divine in the kingdoms of Nature) is stretched in the form of a cross.
This is the origin and meaning of the cross in the ancient history of humanity as it arose from the teachings of the ancient Mysteries.
Lecture coverage and references
Reference extracts
Paracelsus
.. writes (see 'The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Paracelsus', Book IV pg 135) that all kingdoms on Earth are spiritual, and actually all realities are spiritual in nature.
There is nothing corporeal but has latent within itself a spirit and life, which, as just now said, is none other than a spiritual thing.
But not only that lives which moves and acts, as men, animals, worms in the earth, birds under the sky, fishes in the sea, but also all corporeal and substantial things.
For here we should know that God, at the beginning of the creation of all things, creates no body whatever without its own spirit, which spirit it contains after an occult manner within itself. For what is the body without the spirit? Absolutely nothing.
1920-04-03-GA312
see also Schema FMC00.415 and Schema FMC00.603
The things that concern Man cannot be found through the study of animals. I have often stressed this difference in public lectures, and should like to emphasise it still more here.
People are in the habit of thinking: an eye is an eye, an organ is an organ, lungs are lungs, a liver is a liver, and so forth.
But that is not so, the eye in Man is the organ which also exists in the animal world as eye, but with a modification: it is changed by the fact that in Man the I has been incorporated.
The same is the case with all other organs. And for the occurrences within the organs, especially in cases of disease, the permeation by the I is of much greater importance than what happens in the animal’s organs, where there is no such permeation.
This essential difference is still far too little regarded and men persist in off-hand pronouncements of this sort: “here I have a knife; well, a knife’s a knife, isn’t it? One knife is the same as another, so both, being knives, must have the same origin.” But suppose that one of these “identical” knives is a table knife, the other a razor. In that case the simple proposition that “a knife’s a knife” becomes untenable.
It is making the same mistake to explain the human eye and the animal eye by the same methods and terms. It is simply nonsense to seek for the explanation of anything in its mere external aspect; moreover such an approach is entirely barren as a foundation for study. Study founded on animal “material” simply hinders the adequate study of certain conditions in mankind; for it is only possible to form a just estimate of the dissimilarity here, by realising that in Man it is precisely the peripheral organs which are the most permeated by the I and moulded by it.
Plato's statement - world soul in cross on world body
the world soul is stretched/nailed/crucified on the world cross of matter
1901-12-28-GA087
It is quite natural that Plato arrived at the doctrine of ideas: For Plato, the world process was, on the one hand, emergence from chaos, and on the other, emergence from ideas. The world process consists of the continuous interpenetration of the spiritual with the material, of ideas with chaos.
The demiurgos, the world soul, arises as the first product. It is the first matter into which the breath of the spirit has penetrated. Plato depicts this in the form of a cross.
And connected with this form is the entire world of ideas of the Logoi, as the Platonic world of ideas must be called. Thus it presents itself as the pursuit of pure truth and then again in the Timaeus as truth itself. This truth is presented to us under the new image, under the new symbol of the Logos stretched on the world cross. We have the Logos in connection with the world cross.
You will now see that it was already in the original Platonic mystic that in the form in which Christianity later developed - after it had passed through a Greek spiritual consciousness - [...] it had to deepen from mere myth to true mysticism. After all, the Logos crucified on the world cross is found in Greek.
1902-GA008 Ch 4
The drama of the world's creation is presented in the Timaeus. Whoever wishes to retrace the paths leading to this creation comes to the point of divining the archetypal force from which everything has sprung.
“Now to discover the Maker and Father of this Universe were a task indeed; and having discovered Him, to declare Him unto all men were a thing impossible.”
The mystic knew what was meant by this 'thing impossible'. It indicates the drama of God. God is not present for him in the materially comprehensible world. There He is present as nature. He lies spell-bound in nature. According to the ancient mystics, only he can approach Him who awakens the divine within himself. Therefore He cannot so easily be made comprehensible to everyone. He does not appear in person, even to those who approach Him. This is what the Timaeus says.
The Father has created the world out of the cosmic body and the cosmic soul. In perfect proportions He has united harmoniously the elements which came into being when He offered His own, separate existence by diffusing Himself. Thus the body of the world came into existence. On this body of the world, the soul of the world is stretched in the form of a cross.
This soul is the divine element in the world. It has met with death on the cross in order that the world may exist.
Plato is able to call nature the tomb of the divine element. This is not a tomb containing something dead, but something eternal, for which death only gives the opportunity to express the omnipotence of life.
Man sees this nature in the right light when he approaches it in order to deliver the crucified soul of the world. It must be raised from death, the spell must be lifted from it.
Where can it come to life again? Only in the soul of the Man who is initiated. In this way wisdom finds its right relationship to the cosmos. The resurrection, the deliverance of the Godhead: this is cognition. The evolution of the world from the least to the most perfect is traced in the Timaeus. An ascending process is represented. The beings develop. God reveals Himself in this development. The process of creation is a resurrection of God from the tomb. Man makes his appearance in this stream of evolution. Plato shows that with Man something special has arrived. True, the whole world is divine. And Man is no more divine than the other beings. But in the other beings God is concealed, and in Man He is manifest. The end of the Timaeus reads:
“And now at length we may say that our discourse concerning the Universe has reached its termination. For this our Cosmos has received the living creatures both mortal and immortal and been thereby fulfilled; it being itself a visible Living Creature embracing the visible creatures, a perceptible God made in the image of the Intelligible, most great and good and fair and perfect in its creation—even this one and only begotten world.”
1905-09-28-GA093A
In surveying the whole evolution: plant, animal, Man, one discovers definite relationships between them. The plant is reversed in Man. The direction of the animal lies midway between them. The plant has sunk its roots into the Earth and directs its sexual organs upward towards the sun. If we turn the plant halfway round we have the animal. If we turn it right round we have Man.
That is the original significance of the cross: plant kingdom, animal kingdom, human kingdom. The plant sinks its roots into the Earth. The animal is the half-reversed plant. Man is the completely reversed plant. This is why Plato says: ‘The World Soul is stretched on the Cross of the World Body.’
In the plant the organ of direction lies in the root-tips. In Man it is in the head. What in Man is the head, is the root in the case of the plant.
[link with human senses and the ear]
The reason, why in Man the sense of direction is connected with the sense of hearing, is that hearing is the sense which raises Man into a higher kingdom. The last faculty to be attained by Man is the faculty of speech. Again, speech is connected with the upright carriage, which without the sense of direction or balance would not be possible. The sound which Man produces through speech is the active complement to the passive sense of hearing.
What in the plant is simply a sense of orientation has become in Man the sense of hearing, which bears within itself the old sense of orientation in the three semicircular canals, which are arranged in accordance with the three dimensions of space.
1906-06-07-GA094
The initiate can work in the sphere where the germs of new plants come into being, for the spirit world is the region where vegetation receives its form. In the astral world, Man works at building up the animal kingdom. Kamaloca [astral world] belongs to the Moon-sphere; the spirit to the Sun-sphere.
Thus Man is bound up with all the kingdoms of nature. Plato speaks of the symbol of the Cross, saying that the soul of the world is bound to the body of the world as it were upon a Cross.
What is the meaning of this symbol?
It is an image of the soul passing through the kingdoms of nature. In contrast to the human being, the plant has its root beneath and its organs of generation above, turned towards the Sun. The animal is at the intermediary stage, its organism lying, generally speaking, in the horizontal direction. Man and the plants stand vertically upright and with the animal form a Cross, the Cross of the world.
In future ages there will be conscious participation on the part of Man in the higher worlds after death, in the work of building up the lower kingdoms of nature. The consciousness of Man will govern the circumstances whereby a new civilisation comes into being, concurrently with the appearance of a new flora. The divine mission of the spirit is to forge the future. A time will come when there will be no question of ‘miracle’ or chance. Flora and fauna will be a conscious expression of the transfigured soul of Man. Creative works on Earth are wrought by the Devas and by Man. If we build a cathedral, we are working on the mineral kingdom. The mountains, the banks of the holy Nile are the work of the Devas the temples on the banks of the Nile are the work of Man. And the aim is one and the same: the transfiguration of the Earth.
In future ages, Man will learn to mould all the kingdoms of nature with the same consciousness with which today he can give shape to mineral substances. He will give form to living beings and take upon himself the labours of the Gods. Thus will he transform the Earth into the spirit world.
1906-08-30-GA095
The old occult science gave expression to this in the ancient symbol of the Cross, saying, as Plato said in the language of the old Mysteries: the World-Soul is crucified on the cross of the World-Body. The World-Soul is contained in everything, but it has to work its way up through these three stages; it makes its journey on the cross of the body of the world.
1907-01-22-GA068B
see: Christ Module 6 - Principle in image and story#1907-01-22-GA068B
1907-11-28-GA056
I would like to explain in the form of a dialog what one said always in such secret schools to the pupils. I say this to you to make clear the principle, the method of initiation. What I speak in a few words takes a long period of training. The dialog that I describe never did take place, but that what it shows has always taken place in any spiritual school.
- One says to the pupil, look at the plant, which points with its root to the Earth, which lets grow its stalk, its leaves, and blossoms upwards, and compare it to the human being. You would compare wrongly if you wanted to compare the head to the blossom and the foot to the root. I would like to remark that also that who founded the newer natural sciences so greatly gets to this view. He compares the root to the head of the human being and regards the plant as the reverse human being and the human being as the reverse plant. The root is the head that the plant sticks toward the centre of the Earth, just as the human being sticks his head that he holds in the opposite direction toward the sun or the heavenly forces. The plant turns its reproductive organ, the blossom, virginally to the sunbeam that one called the “holy lance of love” in the medieval secret schools.
- The human being is the exact opposite. He sticks his organs of conceptions toward the center of the Earth, the head toward the space.
- In between, one says to the pupil, is the animal who does half a turn, so that the spine is horizontal.
Look at plant, animal, and human being and you understand the dictum of Plato that the world soul is crucified on the cross of the world. Plato understands plant, animal, and human being by the world. The plant stands vertically, the human being reversely to it so that he looks with the head at the free world ether, and the crossbar is the animal. This is the prototype of the cross, as one knew it in ancient times and in all secret schools.
Then one says the following to the pupil:
imagine the plant and its pure, chaste substance. The human being is on a higher level than the plant. The plant resembles the sleeping human being. It has physical body and etheric body as the sleeping human being has physical body and etheric body. The human being is, actually, beyond the physical and etheric body. That what thinks in him and feels desire and pain has been cut off in the sleeping state. The plant has a consciousness that we know as sleep consciousness.
What does the development from the horizontal line up to the entire turn mean?
It means that be the human being has attained his present bright day consciousness. With the transition from the animals, the human being has become a being with bright day consciousness.
He had to lose something else for it. Look at the plant: a body of desires, an astral body does penetrate it. The plant has physical body and etheric body. The human being must go through the animal and integrate instincts, desires, and passions. He has higher risen integrating the astral body into the plant body.
Now spiritual science puts a great Imagination before him. This spiritual science shows how he can gradually develop the strength that leads him back again to the purification of his desire nature that leads him up to that point where he lives again in the pure, chaste body on higher developmental stages while retaining his current state of consciousness. There he has overcome what he had necessarily to absorb in himself with the transition to the higher stages. What the teacher put before the pupil was a future ideal: you will have the plant nature again! One gave him the means to attain it. One said to him, the entire humanity comes again to this stage once when the human beings have developed the purely spiritual strength. Then he is no longer tied to the desire nature, he no longer sticks his organs of conception toward the spiritual sunbeam. In the initiatory training, one calls this organ the Holy Grail, which then the human being has attained, and which is a spiritual organ.
1907-03-14-GA055
The three directions indicated by plant, animal and human are known as the cross. The animal represents the beam across, the plant the downward, the human being the upward pointing section of the vertical beam.
Plato, the great philosopher of antiquity, stated that the World Soul is crucified on the World-Body.
He meant that human beings represent the highest development of the World-Soul, which passes through the three kingdoms of plant, animal and human. The World-Soul is crucified on the cross of plants, animal and human kingdoms. These words of Plato are spoken completely in the sense of spiritual science and present a wonderful and deeply significant picture.
1907-06-28-GA100
In the cosmic process of evolution the plant, the animal and Man are symbolized by the Cross. The Cross is the plant, the animal and Man. Now you will be able to understand Plato's words: The soul of the universe hangs upon the Cross of the universe.
1907-11-22-GA100
... we will recapitulate very briefly a conception which was put before the pupils in the Rosicrucian School. At a certain stage in his development the pupil was told the following:
Observe the plant and compare it with Man.
The plant turns its root downward, to the center of the Earth, the seat of its I. Its organs of reproduction it turns chastely towards the sun, towards the light. It opens its flowers in the light of the sun and lets it ripen the fruit. In spiritual science this fertilising action of the light is described as the touching with the Sun's sacred lance of love. It opens the flowers and brings about the fruitfulness of the Earth.
The part which the plants sinks into the Earth, the root, this corresponds to the head of Man. Man turns his head to the sun, to the light; and what the plant turns towards the light, its organs of reproduction, these he turns towards the Earth, Man presents the reverse picture to the plant; and the animal stands half way between the two.
We represent the plant as being turned vertically towards the Earth, Man as turned vertically away from the Earth, the animal horizontal, in this way we get the form of the cross.
Plato expressed this when he said: “The World-Soul is crucified on the ancient World-Cross.” The Cross is a cosmic symbol that has been placed in the evolution of the world.
1907-12-02-GA092
This, then, was said to the pupils of the Grail:
‘Look at the plant. Its flower may not be compared with the human head. The flower, with its male and female organs of fertilisation, corresponds to the sexual system in man. It is the root of the plant that corresponds to the human head.’
Darwin himself once rightly compared the root of the plant with the head of Man. The human being is a plant reversed. He has accomplished the complete turn. In chastity and purity the plant stretches out its calyx towards the light, receiving its rays, receiving the ‘holy love-lance,’ the ‘kiss’ which ripened the fruit. The animal has turned only half-way.
The plant, whose ‘head’ bores into the earth, the animal with its spine in the horizontal direction, and the human being with his upright posture and his upward gaze—these together form the cross.
To the pupils of the Grail it was further said:
‘Verily, Plato spoke truly when he said that the World-Soul lies crucified in the Body of the World. The World-Soul, the soul pervading plant, animal and Man, lives in bodies which, together, represent the cross.’
This is the original signification of the cross. All other interpretations are meaningless.
In what sense has Man accomplished the complete turn? According to the insight of true Mysticism, the plant has the consciousness of sleeping man. When he is asleep, the human being is, in a sense, like a plant. He has acquired the consciousness that is his t-day by having permeated the pure plant-body with desires, with the body of passions. Thereby he has risen higher on the path to self-consciousness. But this has been achieved at the cost of permeating pure plant-substance with desire.
1907-12-18-GA068A
Today, we can hear the magic word “evolution” being bandied about everywhere. People talk about how Man, a subordinate being, has risen, has become more and more perfect, and has evolved from a lower being to his present form. They put forward abstract ideas. Those who really want to penetrate the development of the world and of man must learn to transform their concepts into images.
Only in this way can he penetrate behind the veil; we must learn this, the teacher makes clear to the pupil what is meant by it, in such a dialogue, which is never held, but which nevertheless belongs to a development of the pupil that lasts for months, sometimes years:
'Look at the plant, it thrusts its roots into the earth, stems rise from the earth, leaves, finally flowers and calyxes. The corolla rises towards the sun, and within it rests the fruit. By stretching its calyx towards the sunbeam, its innermost part is drawn out, so that it can produce new seeds and thus new plants. The plant owes its ripening to the kiss of the sunbeam, so that it can produce something similar.
Now compare the human being with the plant, but in such a way that you compare the human being's head with the plant's root. What the plant extends purely and chastely toward the sunbeam, its organ of fertilization, the human being shamefully hides and extends toward the earth. The human being is the transformed plant; he freely extends the head, which represents the root of the plant, out into the cosmos to absorb those forces as the plant also absorbs them when it receives the power from the sunbeam to produce seeds. We thus understand a saying of the great Plato: 'The soul of the world is crucified on the cross of the body of the world'.
The soul of the world develops through the living beings; it lives in plants, animals and human beings. These are its bodies, the kingdoms of nature. We find this symbolically indicated in the cross. The three kingdoms are in
- the downward-pointing beam, the plant with its roots in the earth,
- the upper beam is Man, who freely stretches into the cosmos what is at the plant root,
- in the middle the animal, the crossbar, which corresponds to the horizontal position of the animal.
That is the deepest meaning of the cross in all religions. This was made clear to the disciple.
Man has risen from the plant. Look at the plant, why is it allowed to stretch freely towards the sunbeam?
The whole substance of the plant is chaste, free from desire, but it has no consciousness through which it can perceive like Man. It sleeps like man in the night. Man has bought the consciousness he now has by permeating the pure, chaste plant substance with passion and desire. The plant substance has become flesh in him. In this substantial that has become flesh, Man lives in waking consciousness.
Now look into the future, when the human being will have transformed himself. He will have purified the impure, desire-filled fleshly substance; human nature will become pure and chaste again. Then the lower organs of desire will have fallen away, he will be equipped with higher organs and a higher consciousness, and he will stretch out his pure, chaste organs of fertilization towards the spiritual sunbeam of the holy love lance.
He who can look into the process of world evolution knows: There are organs in the human body that will wither away, that will wither away, and those that will be developed higher and higher, that will bring forth similar things in a pure and chaste manner, equipped with a higher consciousness.
This real ideal, which stands before the eyes of the human being as a disciple, as something that will truly reach all of humanity, gives a different concept of development than abstract concepts. When we turn to this real ideal, which is called the Holy Grail, when we survey this development, then we pursue such a development not only with thoughts, not only with the mind, but our feelings are carried away. Shivers run through the one who follows the course of human development in this way, and what we then feel is something that passes like a breath through the soul. Then we develop inner organs in our soul and new worlds appear to us – through such intimate processes of the inner being, the spiritual organs are awakened. As thinking was developed before, so now feeling is developed.
1909-08-25-GA113
When a spiritual seer looks back to the time preceding the Christ event, a striking vision comes before him.
The external form of the Earth, confronting the physical senses as Maya, vanishes and something comparable to the human form appears, but only a form, a figure. To spiritual vision the outer Mayavic Earth (and I say the Earth deliberately) changed into the form of Man with arms outstretched in the shape of a cross, a male-female form.
This reminds us of the wonderful words of Plato, words that he drew from the Mysteries, that the world soul is crucified on the cross of the world's body.
This is exactly the image which presents itself to the eye of the spiritual seer: the Christ died on the cross, and thereupon the Earth, which had been mere form and figure, became filled with life.
The coming of the Christ principle into the Earth had something in common with the withdrawal of the moon; life poured into what otherwise would have remained mere form.
To understand ancient times aright is to realise that they all lead up to the Christ event. Just as men of today look back to the Christ as a being Who at a certain point of time entered into human evolution, so pre-Christian initiates all pointed to the coming of the Christ as fore-shown by events.
Nothing could have been a surer herald of the Christ than the mighty phenomenon, visible under certain conditions to spiritual sight, of the disappearance of the physical form of the Earth and the vision of the world soul crucified on the world's body.
In dim Indian antiquity it was said by the sages that when their spiritual vision arose, they saw, deep down under the mountains of the Earth, near its central point, a cross, and upon it a male-female human being, having on its right side the symbol of the sun and upon its left side the symbol of the moon, and over the rest of the body the various land and sea formations of the Earth. That was the clairvoyant vision which the sages of ancient India had of the form waiting until our Earth could be brought to life by the Christ principle.
And inasmuch as those ancient sages pointed to the most important prophecy of the Christ event, they were justified, when they looked still more deeply into existence, in saying: the Christ will come because that which points to Him is in existence.
Ancient wisdom at its highest level becomes prophetic; it looks towards that which will come to pass in the future. What the future holds is entirely the result of the present and so present spiritual vision can receive intimations of a spiritual event, which is to take place in the future. Indications of the Christ event were not given in any outwardly abstract way, but were revealed to spiritual sight by the phenomenon of the world soul crucified on the cross of the world's body, waiting to receive the life of the Christ when He should unite Himself with the earth. The wisdom of all I's is a harmonious unity if considered in its fundamentals. Starting from this point let us look at the wisdom of different epochs in a light that will reveal it in its true aspect.
Discussion
Note 1 - About crosses and Schema FMC00.654 - the world soul is crucified on the world cross of matter
Introduction
This short note comments on the relationship between the symbol of the cross and
- the 'Plato cross' (the cross referenced in the statement by Plato),
- the Symbol of rose cross,
- the Cross at Golgotha, and also
- the Earth containing the form of human being at the start of the Earth development, see Adam Kadmon and Giant Ymir.
Commentary
1/ Plato's cross references the kingdoms of nature, and the path of development up to the human being. That is no less than the pathway from Old Saturn or Old Sun to the current Earth stage of evolution, see Overview of solar system evolution.
Schema FMC00.654 states:
On this (material) body of the world, the soul of the world (the divine in the kingdoms of Nature) is stretched in the form of a cross.
Or: the demiurgos, world soul, or Logos … is stretched ‘on the world cross’: the divine spiritual element can be found in the kingdoms of Nature - in the form of a cross.
It has met with ‘death on the cross’ … in order that the world may exist. So nature is like the ‘tomb’ of the divine element (not as something dead, but something eternal, for which death gives the opportunity to express the omnipotence of life).
The crucified soul of the world will be raised from death, lifted from it … and come to life again in the soul of initiated Man, who is bound up with all the kingdoms of nature
What is to follow is the spiritualization of the lower kingdoms, the spiritualization of Man and his redeeming of the lower kingdoms. That is the future of the next CoL on Earth, and the next planetary stages Future Jupiter, Future Venus and Vulcan.
This is also the picture of the Symbol of rose cross, the ancient mineral physical falls away as the dark burned wooden cross in background, and what emerges are the roses or spiritual, spiritualized principles.
2/ Interestingly, 1909-08-25-GA113 states that
When a spiritual seer looks back to the time preceding the Christ event, a striking vision comes before him. *The external form of the Earth, confronting the physical senses as Maya, vanishes and
- something comparable to the human form appears, but only a form, a figure.
To spiritual vision the outer Mayavic Earth (and I say the Earth deliberately) changed into the form of Man with arms outstretched in the shape of a cross, a male-female form. This is exactly the image which presents itself to the eye of the spiritual seer: the Christ died on the cross, and thereupon the Earth, which had been mere form and figure, became filled with life.
which of course reminds one of Adam Kadmon and Giant Ymir.
.
3/ Furthermore, this lecture continues
In dim Indian antiquity it was said by the sages that when their spiritual vision arose, they saw, deep down under the mountains of the Earth, near its central point, a cross, and upon it a male-female human being, having on its right side the symbol of the sun and upon its left side the symbol of the moon, and over the rest of the body the various land and sea formations of the Earth. That was the clairvoyant vision which the sages of ancient India had of the form waiting until our Earth could be brought to life by the Christ principle.
And inasmuch as those ancient sages pointed to the most important prophecy of the Christ event, they were justified, when they looked still more deeply into existence, in saying: the Christ will come because that which points to Him is in existence.
Ancient wisdom at its highest level becomes prophetic; it looks towards that which will come to pass in the future. What the future holds is entirely the result of the present and so present spiritual vision can receive intimations of a spiritual event, which is to take place in the future. Indications of the Christ event were not given in any outwardly abstract way, but were revealed to spiritual sight by the phenomenon of the world soul crucified on the cross of the world's body, waiting to receive the life of the Christ when He should unite Himself with the earth. The wisdom of all I's is a harmonious unity if considered in its fundamentals. Starting from this point let us look at the wisdom of different epochs in a light that will reveal it in its true aspect.
Indeed the Mystery of Golgotha is the event that triggered the reversal of Earth development at the nadir of the evolutionary curve. And the Christ-Jesus, the Logos crucified on the cross, the Cross of Golgotha ... is a condensed factual reality of the cross in the ancient Mysteries, stating 'the soul of the world is on the body of the world in the form of a cross' (Plato).
This soul of the world is the Logos, and the Logos having become flesh repeats the cosmic process in physical existence. (1902-GA008 Ch. 12)
On ancient symbols of cross in and on a circle
Cross on Top of a Circle
A cross placed above a circle is known as the alchemical symbol for the Earth (and also antimony), and the 'globus cruciger' in Christian iconography. The globus cruciger was first used in art by the Romans around the 4th–5th centuries CE, during the transition to Christian rule (notably in depictions of Emperor Constantine).
See also en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globus_cruciger
Note: this symbol also appears in Herman Wirth's 'Der Aufgang der Menschheit' (1928) - see Alphabet#References and further reading.
See Text Tafel III symbol 80 (with variants 86, 87, 89). Compare with ancient chinese signs/symbols: Text Tafel VII symbols 91 to 93 and Text Tafel VIII sybols 192 to 195.
Circle with a cross inside
The symbol ⊕ is known as the Earth symbol in astrology and astronomy, it also represents salt in alchemy. One can relate the cross to the four cardinal directions (north, south, east, west) or the four elements (earth, air, fire, water). It can also symbolize the intersection of spirit and matter, or heaven and earth. It dates back to prehistoric times and appears in Neolithic petroglyphs (5,000–10,000 years ago) and ancient European and Mesopotamian cultures
Plant and .. stone: the mineral kingdom
In the language of the ancient mysteries, see Mystery School tradition, the cross and the plant were used as symbols to convey certain meaning related to the journey or developmental pathway of Man, as described above with Schema FMC00.654, and also on [[Christ Module 6 - Principle in image and story#[1] - symbolism of the plant]].
The same goes for the stone, that can be used as a symbol. The stone and mineral kingdom has a group soul in the higher spirit world, a world of unity and principle before form. The physical body of a stone on Earth has neither desire nor instinct (astral or etheric bodies), and so it presents us with an ideal for human beings for their future spiritualization. The stone is thus chaste and virginal and preserves the creative Word of creation in the depths of its physical existence.
This is expressed with a single sentence, which Rudolf Steiner relates back to the language of the druids, and which was also a rosecrucian saying:
"the stones are mute" or “I have laid the eternal creative word in the stone”
or: "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."
See source quotes:
Related pages
- Worldview spiritual science
- Evolution
- Man and nature's kingdoms in evolution
- Mineral kingdom
- Plant kingdom
- Animal kingdom
- Man - the human being
References and further reading
- Raoul Heinrich Francé (1874-1943)
- Bios. Die Gesetze der Welt. (Grundlagen einer objektiven Philosophie IV-V. Teil) (1921)
- Das Leben im Boden. Das Edaphon (1995, a reprint of 'Das Edaphon - Untersuchungen zur Oekologie der bodenbewohnenden Mikroorganismen (1913) and 'Das Leben im Ackerboden' (1922))
- see also: Plant kingdom#More
- John Blackwood (1940-2015): Geometry in nature' (explaining the morphology of the natural world through projective geometry) (2012)
