Lightning

From Anthroposophy

Lightning is an effect that plays between the elements warmth and air.

In the atmosphere (see Schema FMC00.003A warmth and air zones), if the air gets intensely hot - for example due to the fact it gets compressed under pressure - the warmth or heat generated in the air makes it way through an area of thinner air.

Through lightning, the element water in the atmosphere, the waters of the Earth are fertilized with light and warmth so they can fulfill their function on Earth.

The same process happens in the process of fertilization in the plant.

In the human being, lightning - as the process from warmth fertilizing air - corresponds to the process of thinking, the inner warmth of the blood fertilizing the inner air of the nerve system (so between the human I and the human astral body).

Aspects

  • lighting and electricity
    • "because of this intensely violent movement, the electric currents that are always present in the air receive a stimulus. It is the lightning that stimulates electricity; lightning itself is not electricity."(1924-09-13-GA354)
  • in nature
    • fertilisation of water by lightning (similar process when plants are fertilised; or thoughts flash up in the human being) (1923-07-20-GA350)
    • for alchemy of nature, see also Schema FMC00.249 on Rhythm of a year which explains this sulphur process in spring and summer
  • for the process of combustion between fire+air, see also Tetractys Schema FMC00.556 below
  • spiritual hierarchies

Various

  • in ancient times, clairvoyant initiates saw lightning not like we do today, they saw living spiritual beings moving in the sky, so not with sharp lines of the flash as we see now. They did not see the lightning at all, instead they saw a host of spiritual beings hovering and moving through cosmic space. (1923-12-25-GA233)
  • red sprite lightning
  • world map showing frequency of lightning strikes
    • maximum lies in middle Africa in Congo

Illustrations

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

1100px)

Schema FMC00.556: shows the tetractys symbol with some explanatory notes to bring the ten dots to life with meaning.

As the 'mystery of number', see Schema FMC00.551 and of the Book of Ten Pages, this symbol is all about relationships and a typical example of a pyramidion symbol, with underneath a pyramid of spiritual scientific knowledge and wisdom. Keywords link to concepts from alchemy and the spectrum of elements and ethers as related to the planetary stages of evolution and the different worlds of consciousness.

650px)


Lecture coverage and references

1909-04-10-GA109

from RSH

A thought originates in the living interplay of blood (I, warmth) and nervous system (astral body, air). “The origination of the thought inside of the soul corresponds to rolling thunder in the cosmos. Likewise, when the lightning flashes in the air, and when air and fire interact to produce thunder, this corresponds to the fire of our blood and the activity of our nervous system, then this is ... the same process in the universe...“ That is why Moses sees the macrocosmic Christ in the fire on Mt. Sinai, and John receives the Revelation on Patmos with thunder and lightning flashes.

extract

What is it in the great universe that corresponds to the mysterious origin of human thought?

What is it that kindles thoughts in us, what process is taking place when the simplest or the most sublime thought flashes through us?

When thoughts flow through our soul, two forces are working together in us: our astral body and our I. The physical expression of the ‘I’ is the blood; the physical expression of the astral body is the life of the nervous system.

Thoughts would never flash through the soul if there were no interplay between I and astral body, coming to expression in the interplay between the blood and the nerves. It will seem strange to science in time to come that the science of our day should look for the origin of thought in the nervous system alone. For thought does not originate only in the nerves. It is in the living interplay between the blood and the nerves, and only there, that we have to look for the process which gives rise to thoughts. When our blood (our inner fire) and our nervous system (our inner air) are in this interplay, thought flashes through the soul.

Now the genesis of thought within the soul corresponds, in the cosmos, to the rolling thunder. When the fiery lightning is generated in the air, when fire and air interact to produce thunder, this is the macrocosmic event corresponding to the process by which the fire of the blood and the play of the nervous system discharge themselves in the inner thunder which, gently, peacefully, outwardly imperceptible, it is true, rings out in the thought.

Lightning in the clouds corresponds, within us, to the warmth of our blood, and the air in the universe, together with the elements it contains, corresponds to the life pervading our nervous system. And just as lightning in the action and reaction of the elements gives rise to thunder, so the action and reaction of blood and nerves produces the thought that flashes through the soul. Looking out into the world around us, we see the dashing lightning in the formations of the air, and we hear the rolling thunder ... and then, looking within the soul, we feel the inner warmth pulsating in our blood and the life pervading our nervous system; then we become aware of the thought flashing through us, and we say: “The two are one.”

Fire and air in the macrocosm are, in man the microcosm, blood and nerves. As you have lightning and thunder in the macrocosm, so you have thoughts arising within the human being.

1909-05-31-GA109

Ahura Mazdao himself, the Leader of the Sun, had to descend to earth to bring light into this icy separateness. He had to become a human being in the physical world in order to help both the living and the dead. He had to be a human among humans! The high and the magnificent that lives in the sun descended to earth and revealed itself in and to humanity. Previously, it had revealed itself in the elements, for example to Moses in the fire of the burning bush and in the lightning on Sinai. The Israelites were to make no graven image of their God. Why? Because no external name can be given to “Me,” the Divine Being; only an entirely different name can express the “I am the I am!” The only possibility of discovering the spirit of the sun's name is to seek it in the human being. That which lives as “I” in human beings is the Christ-Being.

...

In some cases external events such as natural catastrophes or similar things enhance this weaving of spiritual bodies into the soul of the recipient. It is said of St. Thomas Aquinas that lightning struck and killed his little sister in the room where he happened to be standing, but spared him. He interpreted this lightning bolt next to him to the effect that elemental forces were necessary to help him take up the copy of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth. Elisabeth of Thüringen also had an imprint of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth in her soul.

1912-11-18-GA140

I would like to relate a particular instance. In the twelfth century there lived a certain personality named Norbert, who founded an order. At first he led a worldly, dissolute life. Then one day he was struck by lightning. Such events are by no means rare in history. A flash of lightning can have the effect of shaking up the physical and ether bodies. His whole life was changed.

Here we have an example of how an outer happening is used by the spiritual world to alter the course of a man's life. Such chance phenomena are not uncommon. They completely shake up the connection between the physical and ether bodies and radically transform the individual concerned. That was the case in this instance. It is not a question of coincidence. Such events are carefully prepared in the spiritual world so as to bring about a change in a person. Since the year 1899, however, such happenings have taken on a more intimate character. They are less outward and the human soul is deepened more and more inwardly.

1917-12-30-GA180

see also: Overview of the spiritual hierarchies#1917-12-30-GA180

The area of the cherubim and seraphim is already “not discernible in such a high degree that the imperceptibility is perceived again. It evades so intensely to human consciousness that the human being notices this evading consciousness.” The cherubim appear (objectively) in thunderstorm and volcanic forces, the seraphim in volcanic fire and lightning: “It is just the reverse, the absolutely negative, but the spiritual is so strong that just already its imperceptibility, its non-existence, is perceived by the senses.”

1923-07-20-GA350

The fertilisation of the water by lightning; similar process takes place when plants are fertilised and thoughts flash up in the human being.

1923-07-13-GA266

from RSH:

The sun counteracts the earth gravity by means of the force of levity (lightness). It makes the water ascend and evaporate up to the clouds and even farther. That is why too much foreign ether accumulates in the Earth’s surroundings, which appears again suddenly as lightning in the material earthly sphere.

1923-07-20-GA350

.. Let us consider what is happening with the plant in a completely different way. Let us assume this is the Earth [Figure]

Don't look at a plant now .. but let's first look at the Earth, how mists rise at a distance — maybe looking at it from a mountain, there it is easiest to see. There the mists are rising. They consist of water.

If you were to look at a plant, the situation would not be all that dissimilar, it would be similar. Looking at such a plant — you'd have to sit there for a long time, however, observing all the time — you'd see that to begin with it is low, then it rises, opening out into leaves.

But the mists also open out as they rise. So look at the Earth here. It is only water which rises, not the solid parts you get when a plant is growing. But the water is rising.

When the plant reaches a certain point up there it is fertilized out of the cosmos.

When the water, here rising as mist, reaches a certain point, it is also fertilized out of the cosmos.

And what happens then?

Lightning develops, gentlemen! It does not happen all the time, of course, but when fertilization occurs and things are as clearly apparent as they are in summer — the lightning also comes at other times, but then it is invisible — the water is fertilized with light and heat by the universe.

The same process which occurs in the plant also happens up there, and lightning makes it visible.

And when the mist has been fertilized up above it comes down again as fruitful rain. So when you see a cloud of mist rising it is really a gigantic but extremely thinly spread plant. This opens up its flower up there in the cosmos, it is fertilized, contracts, and the fertilized droplets come down again in the form of rain.

This explains lightning for you. People imagine huge Leiden flasks up there or giant electricity generators; but that is not so. In reality the waters of the Earth are fertilized out there, so that they can fulfil their function on Earth again.

And the process which happens in the plant only happens much lower down because the plant is more solid. You always get these tiny flashes of lightning up here in the region of the flower when it is the right time of the year; it is just that we do not see them. But these tiny flashes of lightning cause fertilization to occur. The rain and mists show you the same phenomenon which also occurs when a plant is fertilized.

And this then also goes as far as the human being, where cosmic breathing, the breathing of the universe, which normally is only in the head, occurs in the human abdomen.

...

Looking at lightning, one would then say: 'Is the lightning only up there?'

Oh no, the lesser lightning is there all summer as the plants are fertilized — passing over the pastures, over the woodlands.

And finally there is a lightning that always happens in us. Everywhere within us we have the same phenomena which we see occasionally when there's lightning, for our thoughts flash up like lightning in us. But compared to the tremendous flash of lightning outside, the process in our thinking is only a faint one.

But now you'll also be able to say to yourselves: 'It does mean something to say, as I look at the lightning, that I am seeing cosmic thoughts. For this is the same process which is also inside me.' You need to look at things scientifically and not in a superstitious way.

...

At the same time they also won't tell you what really happens when plants are fertilized. And when mists rise and rain falls the explanation is that it is not much different from when you cook something on a stove — the vapours rise and then come down again. But that's not how it is, for when the vapours rise they reach a sphere up above where they are fertilized by the universe. And lightning is proof that they are fertilized. And there we actually see fertilization take place, a process that also happens elsewhere.

1923-12-25-GA233

quote A

Already in those olden times the Initiates of the Mysteries saw the world as it is seen today. Only they united with this perception a different attitude of mind and soul. For them, all that they experienced in clear, sharp outlines — even as we to-day experience external objects in sharp outlines, when we perceive with our senses — was something that came from the Gods, that came even for human consciousness from the Gods.

For how did external objects present themselves to an Initiate of those times?

There was perhaps a flash of lightning (to take a simple and obvious illustration). You know very well what a flash of lightning looks like to a Man of today. The men of olden time did not see it thus. They saw living spiritual beings moving in the sky, and the sharp line of the flash disappeared completely. They saw a host, a procession of spiritual beings hurrying forward over or in cosmic space. The lightning as such they did not see. They saw a host of spirits hovering and moving through cosmic space.

The initiate also saw, with the rest, this spiritual host, but he had developed within him the perception that we have today, and so for him, the picture began to grow dim and the heavenly host gradually disappeared from view, and then the flash of lightning could become manifest.

The whole of nature, in the form in which we see it to-day, could only be attained in olden times through initiation.

But how did man feel towards such knowledge?

He did not by any means look on the knowledge thus attained with the indifference with which knowledge and truth are regarded today. There was a strong moral element in man's experience of knowledge. If we turn our gaze to what happened with the neophytes of the Mysteries, we find we have to describe it in the following way. When a few individuals, after undergoing severe inner tests and trials, had been initiated into the view of nature, which today is accessible to all, they had quite naturally this feeling: consider the Man with his ordinary consciousness. He sees the host of elementary beings riding through the air. But just because he has such a perception, he is devoid of free will. He is entirely given up to the divine-spiritual world. For in this waking-dreaming, dreaming-waking, the will does not move in freedom, rather is it something that streams into man as divine will. And the initiate, who saw the lightning come forth out of these Imaginations, learned to say: I must be a Man who is free to move in the world without the Gods, one for whom the Gods cast out the world-content into the void.

other version

The initiates of the (early) mysteries already saw the world as we see it today, only with a different spiritual perception, with a different feeling. What they saw in sharp outlines, as we see things today in sharp contours in sense perception, was to them everywhere something that came from the gods, and so was human consciousness. For how did it appear to the then initiate? Here was, say, lightning, for example. Let's take a clear picture. Today's man sees this as a man sees lightning. The old man did not see this. Here he saw living spirit beings moving, and the sharp outlines of the lightning had completely disappeared. It was a mass movement, a sort of army of spiritual beings advancing through outer space. He did not see the lightning itself. He saw a spiritual streak floating in outer space. The initiate saw this mass train like other people, but he developed a vision with which, as the mass train gradually dimmed and then disappeared, he saw the lightning form in the form we see today. To see nature as we see it today could only be achieved through initiation. But how was this perceived? Not at all as indifferently as we perceive today's cognition or reality. All this was felt with a moral content. And if we look at what happened to the disciples in the Mysteries, we have to say the following: they were led to a view of nature that later became natural, accessible to everyone. Some could only come to this view of nature through hard inner trials and tests. Then, on the other hand, this feeling developed in them completely naturally: here is the person with his everyday consciousness. He sees a mass procession of elemental beings in the air. However, by having such a view, he is freed from human free will. He surrenders himself completely to the divine-spiritual world. – Because in this waking dream, the will did not live freely, but in such a way that the divine will flowed into the person. And the initiate who saw the lightning form from this imagination felt this as he had learned from his initiate: I must be a man who can move in the world without the gods, for whom the gods project the contents of the world into uncertainty. This was what the initiates saw in sharp outline, the world content imposed by the gods, to which the initiate approached by becoming independent of the gods.

1924-09-13-GA354

I have now given you a brief survey of the laws affecting wind and weather and the like. But still it must be added that the forces arising in the atmosphere itself have a tremendously strong influence on the weather.

Think of a very hot summer when there is constant lightning out of the clouds and constant thunder growling: there you have influences on the weather that come from the immediate vicinity of the Earth.

Modern science holds a strange view of this. It says that it is electricity that causes the lightning to flash out of the clouds.

  • Now you probably know that electricity is explained to children at school by rubbing a glass rod with a piece of cloth smeared with some kind of amalgam; after it has been rubbed for some time, the rod begins to attract little scraps of paper, and after still more rubbing, sparks are emitted, and so on. Such experiments with electricity are made in school, but care has to be taken that everything has been thoroughly wiped beforehand, because the objects that are to become electric must not even be moist, let alone wet; they must be absolutely dry, even warm and dry, for otherwise nothing will be got out of the glass rod or the stick of sealing-wax.
  • From this you can gather that electricity is conducted away by water and fluids. Everyone knows this, and naturally the scientists know it, for it is they who make the experiments. In spite of this, however, they declare that the lightning comes out of the clouds — and clouds are certainly wet!
  • If it were a fact that lightning comes out of the clouds, “someone” would have had to rub them long enough with a gigantic towel to make them quite dry!
  • But the matter is not so simple. A stick of sealing wax is rubbed and electricity comes out of it; and so the clouds rub against one another and electricity comes out of them! But if the sealing wax is just slightly damp, electricity does not come out of it. And yet electricity is alleged to come out of the clouds — which are all moisture! This shows you what kind of nonsense is taught nowadays.

The fact of the matter is this:

You can heat air and it becomes hotter and hotter. Suppose you have this air in a closed container. The hotter you make the air, the greater is the pressure it exerts against the walls of the container. The hotter you make it, the sooner it reaches the point where, if the walls of the container are not strong enough, the hot air will burst them asunder.

What's the usual reason for a child's balloon bursting? It's because the air rushes out of it. Now when the air becomes hot it acquires the density, the strength to burst.

The lightning process originates in the vicinity of the Earth; when the air gets hotter and hotter, it becomes strong enough to burst. At very high levels the air may for some reason become intensely hot — this can happen, for example, as the result of certain influences in winter when somewhere or other the air has been very strongly compressed. This intense heat will press out in all directions, just as the hot air will press against the sides of the container.

But suppose you have a layer of warm air, and there is a current of wind sweeping away the air. The hot air streams toward the area where the air is thinnest.

Lightning is the heat generated in the air itself that makes its way to where there is a kind of hole in the surrounding air, because at that spot the air is thinnest.

So we must say: Lightning is not caused by electricity, but by the fact that the air is getting rid of, emptying away, it's own heat.

Just because of this intensely violent movement, the electric currents that are always present in the air receive a stimulus. It is the lightning that stimulates electricity; lightning itself is not electricity.

All this shows you that warmth is differently distributed in the air everywhere; this again influences the weather. These are influences that come from the vicinity of the Earth and operate there.

You will realize now how many things influence the weather and that today there are still no correct opinions about these influences — I have told you about the entirely distorted views that are held about lightning. A change must come about in this domain, for spiritual science, anthroposophy, surveys a much wider field and makes thinking more mobile.

Discussion

Note 1 - Events affecting state of consciousness

1 - Introduction

Certain natural events can have an impact on the physical constitution of a human being and change the state of consciousness, examples given are sun-stroke, or being stuck by lightning. Rudolf Steiner uses the terms karmic event and initiation, just as sometimes also disease can be a life-changing event related to initiation or awakening of one's Individuality (probable example being Goethe).

For context and perspective, more broadly

1915-05-07-GA159

They are not simply legends, for in fact there always existed specially gifted people who passed through a kind of nature-Initiation. Elemental forces were active within them in this natural initiation, which we can only attain through the will, by faithfully following the indications given for the path leading to initiation. We may therefore say: during the materialistic epoch, we can always come across people who were able to unite themselves with the Spirit of the Earth in the middle of winter, when the Spirit of the Earth is most wide awake, and they were thus able to receive inspirations.

...

The Maid of Orleans was actually born on the 6th of January, and this is the great mystery connected with her: that she passed through a Nature-Initiation during the thirteen days which preceded her birth.

see also: Thirteen holy nights

2 - Specific cases

Norbert of Xanten - lightning

Norbert of Xanten (ca. 1075-1134) in the 12th century founded the Norbertine (or Premonstratensian) order on the basis of love, selfless sharing, and radical hospitality. Friend of Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), co-founder of the Knights Templar and leader in the reformation of the Benedictine Order through the nascent Cistercian Order.

1912-11-05-GA141

I have often said that anyone possessed of spiritual knowledge is aware that 1899 was a very significant year; it was the end of a period of 5.000 years in human history, the so-called Lesser Kali Yuga. Since that year it has become necessary to allow the spiritual to come to men in a way differing from what was previously usual. I will give you a concrete example.

In the early twelfth century, a man named Norbert founded a religious Order in the West. Before the idea of founding the Order came to him, Norbert was a loose-living man, full of sensuality and worldly impulses. One day something very unusual happened to him; he was struck by lightning. This did not prove fatal, but his whole being was transformed. There are many such examples in history. The inner connection between Norbert's physical body, etheric body, astral body and I was changed by the force contained in the lightning.

It was then that he founded his Order, and although, as in so many other cases, it failed to fulfil the aims of its founder, in many respects it did good at the time. Such ‘chance’ events, as they are called nowadays, have been numerous. But this was not a chance happening; it was an event of world-karma. The man was chosen to perform a task of special importance and to make this possible, particular bodily conditions had to be created. An outer event, an external influence, was necessary.

Since the year 1899 such influences on the souls of men must be purely inner influences, not exerted so definitely from outside. Not that there was an abrupt transition; but since the year 1899, influences exerted on the souls of men must more and more take effect inwardly. You may remember what I once said about Christian Rosenkreutz—that when he wishes to call a human soul to himself, it is a more inward call. Before 1899 such calls were made by means of outer events; since that year they have become more inward. Intercourse between human souls and the higher hierarchies will become more and more dependent upon inner exertions, and men will have to apply the deepest, most intimate forces of their souls in order to maintain this intercourse with the Beings of the Hierarchies.

1912-11-18-GA140

I would like to relate a particular instance. In the twelfth century there lived a certain personality named Norbert, who founded an order. At first he led a worldly, dissolute life. Then one day he was struck by lightning.

Such events are by no means rare in history. A flash of lightning can have the effect of shaking up the physical and ether bodies. His whole life was changed.

Thomas Aquinas
1909-05-31-GA109

In some cases external events such as natural catastrophes or similar things enhance this weaving of spiritual bodies into the soul of the recipient. It is said of St. Thomas Aquinas that lightning struck and killed his little sister in the room where he happened to be standing, but spared him. He interpreted this lightning bolt next to him to the effect that elemental forces were necessary to help him take up the copy of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth. Elisabeth of Thüringen also had an imprint of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth in her soul.

Brunetto Latini - sunstroke
1924-08-14-GA243

A personality such as Alanus ab Insulis was still able to present such conceptions to his pupils in the School of Chartres. But because the Initiates saw this old conception of the Goddess Natura gradually fade and die, saw replete with life and vitality the nature that we today regard as dead and abstract because we have lost touch with her, sorrow and tragedy were written on their faces.

Then, again, we hear of such men as Brunetto Latini, Dante's famous teacher. During his travels, through some strange karmic incident, he suffered a heat-stroke which produced a change of consciousness. This event was far more important for his development than the sufferings he endured when the last of the Guelphs were expelled from his native city. Because of this transformation of consciousness he was still able to perceive this Goddess Natura and described her in his book Tesoretto. He gives a graphic description, imaginatively inspired, of how, on his homeward journey to his native Florence, he came upon a hill in the midst of a desolate forest and on this hill he saw the Goddess Natura weaving at her loom. She revealed to him the significance of thinking, feeling and willing for the human soul the intrinsic nature of the four temperaments and the function of the five senses.

And the eyes of his spirit and soul were opened. This experience on his homeward journey from Spain to his native Florence under the influence of a depressed, pathological condition was a spiritual reality. As a result of this inward transformation, he saw the weaving life of the four Elements, fire, earth, water and air, the flux and movement of the planets and the soul emerging from the body into the Cosmos. All this he experienced under the influence of a spiritual teaching at the hands of the Goddess Natura.

These experiences were described by the men of that epoch with a clarity and concreteness that could scarcely be bettered today. At the same time, they felt that the ancients had experienced this knowledge in a different way and that in the course of time it had gradually been lost. In order to revive the knowledge of these mysteries it was necessary to induce a pathological condition. And they felt an irresistible urge to keep alive the real image of Natura.

And when in retrospect we review man's whole attitude to nature knowledge, we feel that our approach to nature is abstract, that nature is a catalogue of laws. We are proud if we can see these laws even to some extent as a related whole. If we look back a few centuries we see that a living relationship existed between man and a divine Being who was living, weaving and working in natural phenomena—in the rising and setting of the Sun, in the transmission of warmth to the stones and plants, a warmth that is actively operating within all this life, growth and proliferation. How different was a science that took into account the activities of the Goddess Natura. The mood in which the students of the School of Chartres—the majority were of the Cistercian Order—came out of their lectures was vastly different from the mood of students leaving their lecture-rooms today! Their response was vitally alive and a deeper expression of their inner being. And the same living reality is reflected in the descriptions of such men as Brunetto Latini, the celebrated teacher of Dante. The vigorous, creative spirit of the time can readily be imagined, for the characters and splendid pictorial descriptions of Dante's Commedia are inspired by the graphic descriptions of his teacher Brunetto Latini who owed his Initiation to a karmic incident. And the School of Chartres and other Schools were indebted to Initiates such as Joachim of Fiore and others for much of the instruction given at the time.

1924-08-15-GA243

After this brief digression into history I should now like to continue our investigations. I have already indicated how the metallity, the basic substantiality of the mineral element, is related to man and his conditions of consciousness. Having shown man's relationship to the metal copper, I described the state of consciousness that enables him to participate in the experiences of the so-called dead after death.

We must realize that it was a form of perception such as this which Brunetto Latini experienced in that semi-pathological condition following upon his heat-stroke.

Indeed all that he describes, all that came to him through the inspiration of the Goddess Natura can be attained in that condition of consciousness—so closely related to our everyday consciousness—which is able to share the experiences of the dead immediately after their death. I said that it was a condition of greater reality. We inhabit a world of more powerful impressions, more luminous, a world that brings everything to fuller consummation than the phenomenal world.

...

And this was the surprising discovery of Brunetto Latini when he returned from Spain to the neighbourhood of his native Florence and suffered that slight attack of heat-stroke which opened up to him this intermediate world. He realized that his sense organs were a gift from this other world, that his senses would be wholly undeveloped if this intermediate world did not permeate the world of sense experience. Our human status is determined by the fact that we owe our sense organs to our connection with this second world, this intermediate world.

1924-09-12-GA238

Wonderful indeed was this School of Chartres. If we look at its writings to-day they seem, as I already said, like catalogues of names. But in that time it was not customary to write in any other way of things which one wished to have before one in full living spirituality. One simply catalogued them as it were. He however who can read such things, he above all who can read the order in which they are placed, can very well perceive how permeated by ancient spirituality are the writings that come to us from the teachers of Chartres. But the deep spirituality of the school worked not only in the teaching that was given, nor in the fact that there were many pupils who carried out again into the world what they had learnt there. No, it also worked in a direct spiritual way. The living spirituality that was present in that School radiated out even in an occult way into the spiritual atmosphere of mankind. We see the spiritual rays of the School of Chartres passing through France even into Italy. And in many schools whose outer name has been handed down to history, a teaching about Nature was given such as I have here indicated.

Brunetto Latini, the teacher of Dante, returning from his post as an Ambassador in Spain suffered at the same time a slight sunstroke and a great shock as he came near to Florence, the city of his fathers. At that moment he was really touched by the occult radiations of the School of Chartres and underwent an experience which he himself describes as follows.

He said that as he came near the city of Florence he entered a deep forest. There he first met three animals and then he met the Goddess Natura who built up the kingdoms of Nature in the very way in which this had been taught for centuries as I have indicated. He, however, beheld it directly. In the semi-pathological condition which soon passed, what had been taught in the School became immediate vision to him. Then, having seen the Goddess Natura, the successor of Proserpina, in her creative work, he beheld how man is built up out of the Elements and how the soul lives and moves in the forces of the planets. Then with his thought he was uplifted even into the heaven of the fixed stars. Thus in his own person he experienced the whole of this majestic, medieval science.

And he was the teacher of Dante. Had he not been so, had he not given to his pupil Dante what he had received in this majestic vision, we should not have the Divina Commedia, for the Divina Commedia is the reflection of Brunetto Latini's teaching in the soul of Dante.

Related pages

References and further reading

  • Walther Bühler: 'Nordlicht, Blitz und Regenbogen : Metamorphosen des Lichtes' (1972)
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