Lightning

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 I and the astral).

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)
• 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
• see also cosmic thunderstorm in Man and the workings of the First Hierarchy, re Transition between 4th and 14th century#1924-07-28-GA237
• 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)

Various

• 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.

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.

Lecture coverage and references

1909-04-10-GA109

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.

1917-12-30-GA180

(not on rsarchive)

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.

Related pages

• Four elements
• Alchemy
• Tetractys
• Rhythm of a year

References and further reading

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