The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Lecture Three

[ 1 ] One of the most fundamental principles of occultism is based on the great law of analogies, according to which nature reveals to us what is going on within ourselves.

[ 2 ] To provide a striking and at the same time typical example of this law—one that is, however, completely unknown to official science—we cite the example of the Philosopher’s Stone. It was known to the Rosicrucians. A German journal from the late 18th century mentions this Philosopher’s Stone. It is described there as a truly existing object, and it is stated: “Everyone touches it often without knowing it.” — This is literally true.

[ 3 ] To understand this, one need only delve deeper into the workshop of nature than modern science does.

[ 4 ] Everyone knows that humans inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. This has both a physical and a spiritual significance in yoga training. Humans cannot survive by inhaling carbon dioxide; they would die from it, whereas plants need carbon dioxide to live. Plants provide humans with the oxygen they need to live. Plants renew the air and make it suitable for humans to breathe. And humans and animals, in turn, provide plants with the carbon dioxide that the plants need for their own survival. What does the plant do with the carbon dioxide it takes in? It uses it to build its own body. Now we know that coal is the corpse of the plant. Coal is therefore crystallized carbon dioxide.

[ 5 ] The red blood that has absorbed carbon dioxide turns into “blue” blood, but the blue blood must be constantly replenished with oxygen. Otherwise, the blood would not be able to use the carbon dioxide to build up the body.

[ 6 ] Yoga exercises are a special form of training that enables a person to transform red blood into a building block for their body. In this way, the yogi builds up their body through the blood, just as a plant builds up its own through carbon dioxide.

[ 7 ] We see, then, that the capacity for transformation present in nature is represented by coal, which is a crystallized plant. And the Philosopher’s Stone, in the broadest sense of the word, denotes this capacity for transformation.

[ 8 ] The law of regression applies to all beings, just as the law of ascent does. Minerals are degenerate plants; plants are the ancestors of animals. Animals and humans share a common ancestor. Humans have ascended, while animals have descended. As for the spiritual part of humans, it originates from the gods. In this respect, humans are fallen gods, and Lamartine’s saying is literally true: “Humans are fallen gods who remember the heavenly realms.”

[ 9 ] There was an era when all life on Earth was half plant, half animal. The Earth itself was alive and represented a kind of giant animal. The ground was like an immense mass of peat on which giant forests grew, which later turned into coal. This epoch corresponds to the time when the Earth and the Moon were still a single entity. The Moon represents the feminine element of the Earth.

[ 10 ] There are beings that have remained at a lower stage of development. Mistletoe, for example, is a witness to this world era, a remnant of the parasitic plants that lived on Earth as if on a plant. This is the origin of its special occult properties. They were known to the Druids, who regarded it as a sacred plant. The parasitic mistletoe is a remnant from the lunar era of the Earth. It is a parasite because it has not learned, like other plants, to live directly on mineral soil.

[ 11 ] The situation is similar with illness. It is a relapse caused by parasitic elements in the organism. The druids and the skalds understood the relationship between mistletoe and humans. Echoes of this can be found in the legend of Baldur. The god Baldur is killed by mistletoe because mistletoe represents a hostile element from the previous epoch that is no longer suited to the human body. The other plants, which were adapted to the current age, had, in contrast, sworn friendship to humankind.

[ 12 ] As the plant-based earth became mineral, it acquired a new property through the metals: the ability to reflect light. A celestial body only becomes visible in the sky once it has become mineral. There are therefore many other worlds in the universe that our physical eyes cannot perceive and that can be perceived only by clairvoyants.

[ 13 ] The Earth has become just as mineral as the human physical body. It is characteristic of human beings, however, that a movement in two directions prevails within them. For when the physical human being has descended, the spiritual human being has ascended. Paul expressed this truth. He explains that there is one law for the body and another for the spirit. Consequently, the human being appears as both an end and a beginning.

[ 14 ] The pivotal point—and at the same time the turning point—in human development is the time of the separation of the sexes. There was a time when the two sexes were united within the human being. Even Darwin acknowledged the possibility of such a state. With the separation of the sexes, this new, powerful element entered the world: love. The pull of love is such a powerful and mysterious force that, for example, tropical butterflies of different sexes—which were brought from the tropics to Europe and were two hundred miles apart—flew toward each other immediately after being released and met halfway.

[ 15 ] Something similar occurs between the human world and the divine world as between the plant kingdom and the human kingdom. Humans inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. Just as the plant kingdom exhales oxygen, so does the human world exhale love—ever since the separation of the sexes—and the gods live off these emanations of love.

[ 16 ] Why do animals and humans breathe out love? The occultist sees modern humans as beings in the midst of their full evolution. Humans are both fallen gods and gods-in-the-making.

[ 17 ] The realms of heaven are nourished by the outflow of human love. Ancient Greek culture expressed this fact in the myth of nectar and ambrosia. However, the gods stand so far above humankind that, by their very nature, they would actually crush them. But there is something between humankind and the gods, a kind of intermediate stage, just as mistletoe is an intermediate stage between plant and animal: this is Lucifer and the Luciferic being in general.

[ 18 ] The gods are interested only in humanity’s capacity for love. While Lucifer, in the form of a serpent, seeks to tempt humans to seek knowledge and understanding, Jehovah opposes him. But Lucifer is a fallen god who can rise again only through humankind, by instilling in them the desire for personal knowledge. He therefore opposes the will of the God who created humankind in His own image.

[ 19 ] Rosicrucianism explains the role of Lucifer in the world. We will return to this later. For now, let us simply mention the following maxim from Rosicrucian wisdom: “O human, consider that an upward-rising and a downward-falling current flow through you.”