The Rudolf Steiner Archive

12. Sun, Moon, and Stars

[ 1 ] Time and again, we find references to the close connection between humans and the natural world. When we encounter references in scientific writings to fluctuations in grain prices within certain time periods, accompanied by references to changes in glaciers or the water level of the Caspian Sea, it seems at first glance that these phenomena could not be seriously linked. Yet new connections—and their confirmations—are continually being discovered. Much more will yet be discovered, and some errors will have to be ruled out, but essentially, science has provided proof of this seemingly mysterious interaction. Many such events are related to the activity of the Sun, including, among other things, the fluctuating number and size of sunspots. Their maxima and minima occur with a certain regularity. Such a maximum can be observed approximately every \(11\frac{1}{9}\) years. Furthermore, a comparison of observations made to date suggests that a period of twenty-two and a half years might also be a possibility.

[ 2 ] Changes in climatic conditions caused by sunspot activity cannot be ruled out. It appears that a peak in sunspot activity leads to reduced heat radiation from the Sun, which can then cause major changes in nature. For example, good wine vintages followed one another at fluctuating intervals of eleven years. The extent to which Brückner’s thirty-five-year cycle of climate fluctuations can be linked to this has not yet been scientifically established.

[ 3 ] Even what science refers to as ice ages—of which it assumes there were four—these massive changes to the face of the Earth, are linked by science to the activity of the Sun and the position of the Earth’s axis relative to it.

[ 4 ] Thus, our purely mechanical way of thinking links the events on the Sun to the Earth’s evolution. In other times, these things were viewed in a different way, which science today dismisses with a sense of superior wisdom.

[ 5 ] But how must we feel when we see one of the greatest scholars and such a cautious thinker as Aristotle speak of ancient teachings that hold the heavenly bodies to be gods? Everything else that popular belief says about the gods is worthless and has been added by the masses.

[ 6 ] Aristotle expressed caution regarding this doctrine, but he treats it as something that must be approached with respect and reverence.

[ 7 ] Such an echo of ancient wisdom—which today’s natural scientist regards with a shrug—has also been preserved, in a distorted and foolish form, in what is called astrology; yet it still traces back to humanity’s primordial wisdom. It is not easy to explain what such primordial wisdom consists of. Today, people see the stars and the Earth as purely physical bodies moving through space. They would say that it is a childish notion to think that these other celestial bodies could have any significance for human destiny. Back then, people felt differently when they compared human beings to the rest of the world. People did not think of bones, muscles, and senses, but rather of the feelings and sensations that lived within them. The stars were, to them, the bodies of spiritual-divine beings, and they felt themselves permeated by their spirit.

[ 8 ] While people today recognize that mechanical forces are at work in the solar system, in those days they perceived soul-spiritual forces acting from star to star. The great initiates taught not purely mathematical effects, but effects from star to star based on purely spiritual forces.

[ 9 ] It is certainly understandable that this sense of the world has changed in our materialistically colored worldview, but only those who believe that the perspective of the last fifty years applies for all time can close themselves off from the inkling of what lived in the non-materialistic, but spiritual, experience of the world. The same applies to the view that places the Earth at the center of creation.

[ 10 ] In contrast to Christ’s time on Earth, it is argued today that this Earth is merely a grain of sand among the other stars, and that it is therefore inconceivable—and something no one who is not caught up in terrible hubris would accept—that a divine being should have descended precisely upon this insignificant Earth. This shift did not come about out of nowhere. In those days, people looked upward primarily to absorb the spiritual essence of the cosmos, and had not yet made much progress in mastering the physical world. With the emergence of the materialistic worldview, the physical world has only now been conquered to the greatest extent. We do not wish to offer criticism here, but rather to understand how this transformation took place. It had been in the making for a long time, but it made remarkable progress especially in the 19th century.

[ 11 ] The modern worldview is presented to us with crystal clarity in Kant and his followers. The image they have formed of the origin of the solar system is well known: To illustrate the formation of a celestial body, one pours a drop of oil into a vessel containing water or alcohol. This is then set in a rotating motion. As a result, smaller and larger spherical particles separate. Just as these oil particles do here, so too would the worlds there have separated from the mist and fiery nebula—the primordial nebula.

[ 12 ] I need only mention that in the 19th century, the remarkable advances in natural science and astronomy corrected and modified Kant’s and Laplace’s worldview, though the basic principles have essentially remained the same. The great discovery by Kirchhoff and Bunsen—spectral analysis—also seems to confirm this, as it has made it possible to detect on other celestial bodies a large number of the mineral substances that make up our Earth. On the Sun itself, more than two-thirds of all known elements have been identified. It is very characteristic—and more significant than is generally believed—that one of the most knowledgeable developers of this worldview uttered the following statement: “If one traces the structure of the universe, it follows that the primordial nebula took shape in this way, with a necessity similar to that by which a running watch indicates that it has been wound.”

[ 13 ] Through the experiment mentioned above, one can visualize the formation of celestial bodies from the primordial nebula. Logical thinking, however, demands that we think things through to their conclusion. It then turns out that we have forgotten something—namely, the most important thing of all. What actually causes the tiny spheres to clump together? Through the movement performed by the experimenter! Yet when applying the results of this experiment to the hypothesis of the formation of celestial bodies, this fact is forgotten. In the worldview thus established, this “trifle” is completely overlooked. No one wants to hear anything about the experimenter. Without being an opponent of modern natural science, one can still ask this question. One can stand firmly on the ground of scientific thinking and yet not forget the inconvenient experimenter. He is the spirit behind everything, the sum of spiritual beings who reveal their essence in the phenomena of the sensory world, as the results of precise research in spiritual science can demonstrate. Spiritual science need not deny anything that modern science has discovered. It fully acknowledges its findings, insofar as they are derived from rigorous and objective observation, experimentation, and thought. It recognizes the necessity of such research, which is directed solely toward the sensory world. But it also knows that the time has come when humanity must be made aware that the spirit is the foundation of all matter, and that matter is the outward expression of spiritual entities.

[ 14 ] Spiritual science does not merely consider the mechanical processes of attraction and repulsion; it also investigates the spiritual forces that correspond to them. To gain a vivid picture of the plant, to begin with, according to its method, one must proceed as follows:

[ 15 ] The plant directs its root downward and its stem upward. We see two forces at work, one of which is directed toward the center of the Earth, while the other seeks to tear it away with its tentacles. Anyone who observes the plant not merely with the physical eye will discover how the root and the flower embody these two forces. Higher, supersensible forces of attraction and repulsion are at work here. The former arise from the Earth, while the latter radiate downward from the Sun. If the plant were exposed only to the forces of the sun, it would rush headlong in its development, sprouting leaf after leaf, and would wither away in the absence of the restraining force acting from the earth. Thus, the plant becomes for us the result, the expression, of the forces of the sun and the earth. We no longer see it as a separate entity. It appears to us as a being that is a part of the entire earthly organism, just as hair is a part of the human organism. The Earth becomes a living whole, a manifestation of the living and the spiritual, just as the human being is the expression of the soul and spirit.

[ 16 ] The animal is more independent; unlike plants and hair, it is not merely a part of an organism. It owes its partial independence to the fact that it is animated by the animal soul. Unlike the human soul, which is an individual soul, the animal soul is a group soul. The animal is its manifestation and relates to it as the finger relates to the entire organism. As a result, the animal is less bound within the realm of the Earth organism.

[ 17 ] To understand this, one must bear in mind that spiritual research recognizes the forces of attraction and repulsion as earthly reflections of those spiritual forces that correspond to the planetary motions—forces which the Kant-Laplacean worldview, with all its later modifications and additions, knows as gravity. These forces and their consequences arise as facts of sensory observation of things. Their spiritual archetype, which brings about and sustains the physically perceptible phenomenon, is likewise a fact revealed by exact spiritual research. The animal group souls orbit their planet, and through this, the animal kingdom is independent of the planet. Each planet shares its plant life with the solar system to which it is connected. But each planet has its own orbital forces and, consequently, its own animal kingdom, insofar as it is capable of supporting animal life.

[ 18 ] When we consider human beings, we must draw attention to a fact of profound significance. As an embryo, the human being is subject to the influence of the Moon. The human embryo requires ten lunar months for its development. It is the forces of the Moon that govern it as long as it has not yet emerged as an independent being. The plant forces that act as creative forces, driving the plant toward bloom and fruit, are solar forces. The human body is dependent on the Moon as far as form is concerned. These form-giving forces enter into a certain relationship with the forces of the Sun. The Sun and the Moon represent the contrast between life and form that is necessary for human development. If only the persistent forces of the Moon were at work, any further development would be precluded and a kind of lignification would set in, whereas the forces of the Sun alone would have led to combustion. The light that radiates from the moon is not merely reflected sunlight, but rather forces of form-building. The light from the sun is not merely light, but the force of life—of impetuous life—so that a human being would already be old immediately after birth [if exposed to it alone]. The human form is the result of the moon; its life, that of the sun.

[ 19 ] Spectral analysis can identify the mineral and chemical components of the Sun, but not the spiritual life forces that stream down to Earth. Through a telescope, one will see only the Moon as a solidified celestial body, not the form-shaping spiritual force. In the Sun, the natural scientist will likely observe glowing masses of gas, surging motion, churning metals, sunspots, and prominences, but not the body of a spiritual being, the ruler of the processes of life. This is a chapter in a new field of research that is only at the beginning of its development and must first conquer one area after another. But these matters are of the utmost importance.

[ 20 ] Goethe was one of the first modern natural scientists to view light as more than just a mechanical-physical process, though he did not achieve success in this regard. Years ago, in a lecture at the Freies Hochstift in Frankfurt am Main on the occasion of a celebration of Goethe’s birthday, I pointed out that Schopenhauer bitterly lamented the fact that those who celebrated Goethe were doing him a grave and outrageous injustice with regard to his theory of colors. Today, scholars speak of it only reluctantly. For the physicist, it is a beautiful, poetic—but impossible—idea in light of the theory of colors, which has become purely physical. The humanities, however, take a very different view. And when the time is ripe to truly understand Goethe’s theory of colors, people will also realize that light consists not only of seven primary colors—of material vibrations—but that behind what we perceive as earthly light lies the life streaming down from the sun. Then people will also understand what Goethe meant when he said of the colors of the rainbow that they are the deeds of light.

[ 21 ] Not only rays of light, but also spiritual currents of life stream down upon us from the stars, the sun, and the moon. As long as one sees only physical light, one will not be able to understand this, for the spiritual can only be intuited through artistic imagination, experienced as an image in sensory-supersensory vision, and known through spiritual research.

[ 22 ] Human beings are multifaceted entities. When they sleep, only their physical and etheric bodies rest in bed. The astral body, together with the “I,” separates from the lower bodies and ascends into the spiritual world. There, it receives forces more sublime than those the human being receives from the sun and moon during the day.

[ 23 ] Because the astral body is integrated into the much lighter substance of the astral world, the celestial world can exert a stronger influence on it. Just as physical forces act upon the physical body during wakefulness, so do the nearer and more distant starry realms now act upon the astral body, for human beings are born out of the universe, out of the same world spirit as the starry realm.

[ 24 ] When we look up at the sun, moon, and stars, we can understand the forces at work there and learn to recognize the spiritual in outer space. We cannot conceive of a human-like god of the universe, but we can sense the spiritual forces behind the cosmic nebula and thus begin to understand how the worlds come into being.

[ 25 ] We begin to perceive, behind the active forces, the forces of guiding beings.

[ 26 ] Schiller thought the same way when he called out to the astronomers who were exploring only the physical world of the stars:

Don’t go on and on to me about nebulae and suns!
Is nature great only because it gives you something to count?
Your subject is, of course, the most sublime in space;
But, friends, the sublime does not dwell in space.

[ 27 ] If we consider only external forces, we will not find the sublime. But if we seek the spiritual and turn our attention from the immeasurable world of the stars back to ourselves, we can, as it were, see within ourselves a drop of the spiritual life that floods the cosmos.

[ 28 ] When we view the celestial bodies with such a mindset, we better understand Goethe’s words: “Ah, what would they all be—those thousand million suns—if they were not reflected in the human eye and, ultimately, did not bring joy to a human heart?”

[ 29 ] It might sound presumptuous, yet it is actually humble—if we understand it correctly, if we grasp it fully. For when we look up at the sun, from which streams of life emanate, it [appears so] powerful that we could not endure it were it not for the paralyzing influence of the moon’s forces. Thus we perceive the Spirit in the universe, yet we know that we possess organs within ourselves with which we can perceive the Spirit in the universe. Then we allow it to be reflected in these organs, just as the sun is reflected—a sun we cannot see directly, but whose radiance is reflected in a falling waterfall, just as it is expressed in Goethe’s words when he has Faust say, after bringing him back to earthly life:

So may the sun remain at my back!
The waterfall, roaring through the rocky reef,
I gaze upon it with growing delight.
From cascade to cascade it now rolls in thousands,
Then pouring forth into ten thousand streams,
Foam upon foam rushing high into the air.
But how magnificent, springing from this storm,
Is the ever-changing arch of the rainbow...
Now clearly defined, now dissolving into the air,
Spreading fragrant, cool showers all around!
It reflects human striving.
Contemplate it, and you will understand more clearly:
Life lies in this colorful spectacle.