Golden vessels interchanging
This topic page covers what Goethe called 'golden vessels interchanging', and Rudolf Steiner explained these 'descending and ascending spiritual influences' in many lectures from varied perspectives, and often with a different language in context of the lecture.
Goethe's golden vessels
Goethe was deeply impressed by Kirchweger's book on Homer's Golden Chain. On various occasions, Rudolf Steiner references a phrase from Goethe's Faust where Goethe described a similar concept, eg in 1908-01-27-GA102
What heavenly forces up and down are ranging,
The golden vessels interchanging.
When writing Faust, Goethe had come to a state of soul and understanding so he was able to write this imaginative descriptive picture.
Rudolf Steiner points out later that maybe Goethe, although initiated in a certain stage of his life, did not see the full explanation that lies in this image, he was still able to get the correct image.
Entry point for study
This short quote is a good example how an intriguing image or quote can start us off on the learning path for a more elaborate spiritual scientific explanation. Indeed these spiritual influences are underlying the whole of creation, see also Cosmic fractal, and one needs the overview picture to see how Rudolf Steiner was always referring to and describing the elements in the grand scheme of the Golden Chain.
This page therefore lists some main references as an entry point for study, as the purpose of this page is to be part of the introduction of the Golden Chain, as expanded on other topic pages.
Aspects
- different archangelic folk souls descend and ascend at different timeframes, not only to soul level but down to physical body (hence causing stronger nationalism) - examples for central Europe in Current fifth cultural age (Italian 1550, French 1600, British 1650, German 1750 to 1830-1850 (1915-03-14-GA157, 1915-03-16-GA157, 1915-05-09-GA159 - see Folk souls#Folk spirits in the current fifth cultural age)
- see also related Schema FMC00.534 and Schema FMC00.535 on 1840 and 1879
Inspirational quotes
1910-GA013
In order to visualize what is going on in the human soul at this time, one must pay attention to the fact that in the air-fire body of the Earth the beings standing above the human being are rising and falling. .. while these perceptions penetrate into his soul from the Earth, the images of the higher entities, in whose bosom he feels himself, still rise up and down in it.
1923-11-25-GA232
The third hierarchy, the angels, archangels and archai, are as if floating up and down “offering one another the golden buckets.”
Illustrations
Schema FMC00.104 gives a image for contemplation of 'the golden vessels (or buckets) interchanging' (see Goethe's Faust and the Golden Chain) and the work of the archangels and nature's four seasons as per 1923-10-13-GA229, see Rhythm of a year.
Schema FMC00.002: shows symbolic imagery from Anton Josef Kirchweger's book 'Aurea Catena Homeri' (1723), with underneath the relevant quotes of the lecture 1909-03-11-GA057 called 'Goethe's secret revelation'.
Left: ouroboros, see Schema FMC00.328 on IAO topic page
Right: Homer’s Golden Chain
Lecture coverage and references
Overview coverage
Overview of RSL around the quote from Faust regarding the 'golden buckets or vessels interchanging' in a spiritual scientific explanatory context, besides the quotes that relate to the life of Goethe and his state of soul (re: Homer’s Golden Chain#1909-03-11-GA057):
- 1908-01-27-GA102 - the 'mystical lamb' lecture with zodiac streams up and down
- 1923-10-13-GA229 – where the quote is explained as the working together of the four archangels
- 1923-11-25-GA232 - the process in sleep with H1 and H2 (can be linked to 1924-06-27-GA236 and 1923-05-02-GA224 about the same)
Goethe’s ‘golden vessels interchanging’
1908-01-27-GA102
1909-03-11-GA057
More expanded quote of the 1909-03-11-GA057 introduction where we get a sketch about the old Goethe and his state of soul
.. So we find Goethe in his 70th year beginning to see himself in the character of Faust. In this character he expressed all the dissatisfaction, and all the sorrow proceeding from the desire for knowledge which remained unsatisfied. And when we look at the first monologue in ‘Faust’ we see clearly what was described at the beginning of to-day's lecture. We see a man who having occupied himself deeply in outer science had reached a state of despair which threatened to shatter his life completely. We see how he seizes on the old book — Goethe called it the Book of Nostradamus, but anyone acquainted with the literature of magic also known to Goethe, will clearly recognize the book to which he referred — in which Faust perceived the sign of the macrocosm and of which he says:
‘Like heavenly forces rising and descending, Their golden urns reciprocally lending,
With wings that winnow blessing
From Heaven through Earth I see them pressing,
Filling the All with harmony unceasing.’
Faust, Scene I.
and then added to these words a description of feeling, a kind of rapture that passed through him at the sight of this page. Through all this we see what at that time worked on Goethe. It was possible for such moods and ideas to flow into Goethe's soul, that he could truthfully describe them. When he stood before the remarkable sign of the two interlaced triangles and the two dragons — the upper one representing the spiritual and the lower one the physical — with the signs of the planets in the corners of the interlaced triangles, such forces penetrated through them that he really had the shining planets before him as the golden urns, with the forces flowing between them and filling the All with harmony unceasing.
When we consider Goethe's soul with its deep and honest striving for knowledge, we begin to doubt whether it is possible to have clear ideas or to speculate much about it. We can only try to place the fact before our souls so that any feeling for such things may be satisfied. But anyone understanding life and the way in which it develops through age, knows that in spite of such battles, Goethe was a man in whose soul a germ had been laid which would ripen and bear fruit very much later, in years to come. We see too how the germs which developed later so wonderfully in Faust were really there, and much can be gained from the study of this life by those who have a distinct leaning to spiritual science.
To-day unfortunately such striving is very superficial. We see many people taking it up in a hurry, but they drop it again after having acquired a few ideas. The riddles that exist are only known to one who can look back to a time twenty or thirty years previously when a fluid was poured into his soul and then stored over by the events of the following years and by many experiences, so that only thirty years later he is able to give an approximate answer respecting what was poured in his soul so long before. From this point of view we cannot look too deeply into Goethe's life. We see the echo of his feeling in relation to the ‘Aurea Catena Homeri’ or ‘The Golden Chain of Homer.’ We see it expressed when Faust breaks forth into the words, ‘What a show!’ Yes, a very powerful show, when the soul sinks deeply into these pictures, without even a guess of what they will become in the future. It is a show. But does it stop at mere guessing? ..
1909-03-30-GA111
The symbol of the dragon is touched on after describing the rosecrucian symbol or the rose and cross:
.. the key is to go deeply into the presented image, to dive and sink in and not just try to imagine an image .. the key of Solomon, above a white flying dragon, below a black one that dies.
1910-01-23-GA272
Another contextual description is given in 1910-01-23-GA272:
At that time there was one book, The Golden Chain of Homer — Aurea catena Homeri. When opening this, one finds a remarkable symbolic drawing — a dragon full of life in the upper half circle bordering on another dragon, one which is dried-up and dying. Various signs are connected with this: symbolic keys, two intersecting triangles and the planetary signs. All this is mere fantasy for our contemporaries of a scientific bent, because they know not what to do with them. Goethe feels that they represent something. They do not express directly something to be found here or there in our world. But if these symbols are allowed to work upon us by, so to speak, becoming blind and deaf to our physical environment, letting only these signs act upon us, then we experience something highly peculiar — we feel, that the soul becomes aware of something that has been asleep — like a spiritual eye which has opened. And if one has sufficient perseverance, one takes to what is called meditation and concentration which so develop the soul that, as an actual fact, something like a spiritual eye operation is performed and a new world makes its appearance. Such a new world could not disclose itself to Goethe at that time, for he had not developed so far. But in his soul arose a presentiment that there exist keys for that spiritual world and that one can enter it.
We have to realize this mood of Goethe's: The living sensation or feeling; something within me becomes active, compelling me to the belief that something exists which leads into the world of spirit. But simultaneously he feels his powerlessness to enter that world. If at anytime Goethe had been identical with Faust, we could say that he was in the same position as Faust when we see him at the beginning of the first part, where Faust, after studying the most varied departments of science, opens books containing those signs and symbols, feels himself encompassed by a spiritual world, but lacks the means of entry. But Goethe never was identical with Faust in that way; one part of him was Faust, but he himself grew beyond that part of himself. And so developed that which transcended Faust, through his disregard of any inconvenience, more and more and his continuous striving brought him to the conclusion that one cannot get behind the secrets of existence at one bound, not through formula and incantations, but through the patient and energetic effort to penetrate all that surrounds us in the physical world — gradually, step by step — with a true, psycho-spiritual perception.
It is easy to say: this higher knowledge must arise in the soul. True, but it arises in its true form only if we are striving with patience and endurance to recognize, step-by-step, the real nature of the phenomena of the physical world and then, behind them, seek the spiritual. But Goethe could compress all this, could see it all in a different light, with what he had gained in his Frankfurt period.
This also links to 'living with questions' as an appropriate soul characteristic for spiritual scientific study.
1923-10-13-GA229
Or again, in RSL 1923-10-13-GA229, Steiner describes:
If we open our souls to the impressions which may come to us from the content of these pictures, then at the same time there will come to us much that has been experienced in the course of human evolution as an echo of old, instinctive clairvoyance; to-day this is sometimes treated historically, but fundamentally it is not understood. Real poets and spiritually inspired men lay hold of these often wonderful voices which sound from the traditions of the past, and make use of them just when they wish to express their highest and greatest conceptions. But even then they are very little understood.
So in the first part of Faust there rings out a wonderful saying which is scarcely at all understood, though it is quoted often enough. It occurs when Faust, having opened the book of Nostradamus, comes upon the sign of the Macrocosm:
Wie alles sich zum Ganzen webt,
Eins in dem andern wirkt und lebt!
Wie Himmelskräfte auf- und niedersteigen
Und sich die goldnen Eimer reichen,
Mit segenduftenden Schwingen
Vom Himmel durch die Erde dringen,
Harmonisch all das All durchklingentranslated as:
How each the Whole its substance gives,
each in the other works and lives!
See heavenly forces rising and descending,
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.
Descending and ascending spiritual influences
1908-01-27-GA102
The following is probably the very best starting point:
The forces from the Zodiac “rain” down continuously into the planetary existence and continuously ascend again; for that which at one time became our Zodiac must gradually ascend again. The distribution of forces in our earth existence may be conceived as follows: — on the one side forces are descending from the Zodiac and, on the other, forces are ascending to the Zodiac. Such is the mysterious interplay between the Zodiac and our earth. Forces descend and forces ascend.
This is the mysterious “heavenly ladder” upon which forces are descending and ascending. These forces are indicated in various ways in the different scriptures; you find them indicated, too, in Goethe's Faust:“What heavenly forces up and down are ranging,The golden vessels interchanging.”
As far as our human understanding goes, these forces began to descend during the Saturn-existence of our Earth and when the Earth-existence proper had reached its middle point, the stage had arrived when they gradually began again to ascend. We have now passed beyond the middle point of our evolution, which fell in the middle of the Atlantean epoch; and what human beings have lived through since then is a phase of existence beyond the middle point. In a certain sense, therefore, we may say that at the present time, more forces are ascending to the Zodiac than are descending from it.
When, therefore, you think of the whole Zodiac, you must picture that some of its forces are descending and some are ascending. We think of the forces which are now involved in the ascending line of evolution, collectively, as Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra — because they actually belong to these constellations. These seven constellations comprise the ascending forces. The descending forces are comprised, approximately speaking, in the five constellations of Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces. Thus forces rain down from the Zodiac and ascend again: seven constellations of ascending, five of descending forces.
The ascending forces also correspond, in man, to the higher members of his being, to his higher, nobler attributes. The forces which are in the descending phase of evolution have first to pass through man and within him to attain to the stage at which they too can become ascending forces.
In this way you will realize that there is interaction between everything in cosmic space, that everything in cosmic space is interconnected, inter-related. But it must never be forgotten that these operations and activities are going on all the time, that they are ever-present. At any given moment in our evolution we can therefore speak of forces which are going forth from man and forces which are coming in; forces are descending and forces are ascending. For all and each of these forces there comes, at some point, the moment when from being descending forces they are transformed into ascending forces. All forces which eventually become ascending forces are at first descending forces. They descend, so to say, as far as man. In man they acquire the power to ascend.
and further:
Since the middle of the Atlantean epoch humanity has passed beyond this middle point. And since the middle of the Atlantean epoch there have begun, for men in general, those conditions in which the ascending forces preponderate. If we were speaking of the proportion of forces descending from and ascending to the Zodiac before the middle of the Atlantean epoch, we should have to say: they were in equal proportion. We should have to speak differently of the conditions then prevailing, enumerating as the ascending forces: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo — counting Libra with the other descending forces.
..
How has man reached a position which makes it possible for something to stream from within him? What has happened to man that enables something to stream forth from him? He has reached this position because his ego, after long, long preparation, has steadily unfolded and developed. This I, this ego, has been in course of preparation for long, long ages. For truth to tell, the object of all existence in the Saturn-condition, the Sun-condition and the Moon-condition when the sheaths into which the I was to be received were produced — was to prepare for the I. In those earlier conditions, other beings created the dwelling-place for the I. Now, on the earth, the dwelling-place was at the stage where the I could take root in man and from then onwards the I began to work upon the outer, bodily sheaths from within. The fact that the ego is able to work from within has also brought about a surplus, a surplus of ascending forces; there was no longer a state of parity. Before the ego was able to work within man, the ascending forces gradually evolved until the middle point had been reached; and when the, ego actually entered into man the ascending and the descending forces had reached the stage where they were in ‘balance.’
At the entry of the ego, the ascending and the descending forces were in balance and it rests with man to turn the scales in the right direction. That is why the occultists have called the constellation which was entered at the time when the ego itself began to operate, the ‘Balance’ (Libra). Up to the end of Virgo, preparation was being made for the deeds of the ego in our planetary evolution, but the ego had not itself begun to work. When Libra had been reached the ego itself began to participate and this was a most important moment in its evolution.
Just think what it means that the ego had reached this stage of evolution:
From then on it was possible for the ego to participate in the work of the forces belonging to the Zodiac, to reach into the Zodiac. The more the ego strives for the highest point of its evolution, the more it works into the Zodiac.
There is nothing that happens in the innermost core of the ego that has not its consequences right up to the very Zodiac. And inasmuch as man with his ego lays the foundations for his development to Atma, or spirit-man, he develops, stage by stage, the forces which enable him to work upwards into the sphere of Libra, the Balance, in the Zodiac. He will attain full power over Libra in the Zodiac when his ego has developed to Atma, or spirit-man. He will then be a being from whom something streams out, who has passed out of the sphere of Time into the sphere of Duration, of Eternity.
1910-GA013
internet translation
From a certain point of time of the development the earth is compressed so far that only a part is still fiery. Another part has taken on a substantial form, which can be addressed as "gas" or "air". Now also with the human being a change goes on.
He is now not only touched by the heat of the earth, but the substance of the air is incorporated into his fiery body. And as the warmth has ignited life in him, so the air surrounding him excites in him an effect which may be called spiritual sound. His etheric body resounds.
At the same time a part of the astral body secretes itself, which is the first plant of the later appearing soul of understanding. - In order to visualize what is going on in the human soul at this time, one must pay attention to the fact that in the air-fire body of the earth the beings standing above the human being are rising and falling. In the fire-earth it is first of all the "spirits of personality" (Archai) which are significant for man. Likewise in the air body the Archangeloi announce themselves. It is their effects which man feels as sound in himself when the air plays around him. Thus, what man perceives at this stage through his connection with the earth is not yet a sum of physical objects, but he lives in sensations of warmth which rise to him, and in sounds; but he senses in these currents of warmth and in this swirl of sound the "spirits of personality" and the Archangeloi. He cannot, however, perceive these beings directly, but only as through the veil of warmth and sound. While these perceptions penetrate into his soul from the earth, the images of the higher entities, in whose bosom he feels himself, still rise up and down in it.
1916-04-13-GA167
see: Rhythm of a year#1916-04-13-GA167
short extract
An interworking between the spirits of the higher hierarchies and the elemental beings who weave and live in the nature which surrounds us performs itself in the cycle of the year.
This means we are continuously concerned with an up and down pouring, an up and down streaming of spiritual beings of the hierarchies whose students are the elemental beings who provide the enlivening forces for all that which has to sprout and germinate in the course of the year. All that which arises and fades away in the course of the year does not simply grow out of the Earth, but stands in a direct interworking with the divine spiritual. That that which germinates and sprouts in the course of the year stands in direct interworking with the beings who permit their forces to stream up and down and they pour these forces into the elemental world.
.. just as today sylphs, gnomes, undines and salamanders receive their influence from the beings of the hierarchies who stream up and down according to the course of the year, so when Man did not have such a solid physical body in ancient times, he also received instructions from the higher hierarchies who streamed up and down. .. sagas and myths tell us that in ancient times man received such instruction from beings who themselves had descended out of the spiritual worlds, and these myths absolutely rest upon a truth. Man found himself with those spirits among whom the gnomes, sylphs, undines, and salamanders exist today, and whereas these elementals receive those forces through which they are able to effect the forms which sprout out of the Earth during the course of the year, so Man in ancient times received his instructions from hierarchies who streamed up and down.
1923-10-13-GA229
1923-11-25-GA232
The Goethe quote comes back again in 1923-11-25-GA232 where the interlinked nature of third and second hierarchy is explained:
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.” In this presentation we have the second Hierarchy going with the sun, as it were, from east to west. This is not apparent, because here the Copernican world-conception does not hold good, but this stream actually does go from east to west, following the course of the sun during the day. Thus we see — i.e., if we have the ability to see — how man during sleep grows into the third Hierarchy; but this third Hierarchy is continually being graciously permeated from one side by the second Hierarchy. Thus this second Hierarchy also makes itself felt in the life of our soul.
Discussion
Note 1 - Imaginative pictures
Rudolf Steiner points out later that maybe Goethe, although initiated in a certain stage of his life, did not see the full explanation that lies in this image but still was able to get the correct image. A similar observation was made when commenting on Wagner.
For Steiner, we can deduce from quotes in lectures, it was apparently quite touching that, though for him Goethe and Wagner did not have the state of clairvoyance to be able to see the full extent and depth of the spiritual reality they were describing; the images in which they captured the essence of that spiritual reality where spot on correct .. even though they could not have known or seen the extent to which they were corresponding truthfully to the spiritual reality in detail.
It means that the process of developing imaginations or receiving inspiration has a content which is richer and more correct than even the receiver can see, know, or realize.
See also the Study process and developing imaginations and Stages of clairvoyance
Draft work area
topics to be expanded:
Zodiacal influences from different angles and constellations towards the earth (incl passing through earth) + their modulation through the planets
for this we need a base understanding of the russian dolls image of the interpenetrating spheres and planetary intelligences
