The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Theosophy and Rosicrucianism IX

[ 1 ] Today, as a continuation of the outline given yesterday on planetary evolution, we will make further observations. It was stated that our Earth previously passed through a Saturn, Sun, and Moon state. Today I would like to describe these successive states to you, as is customary in occultism. When we speak of the evolution of the soul on the path of knowledge, you will then see the meaning behind many things that are presented hypothetically today. If we now turn directly to the Saturn state—that is, the state of our Earth millions and millions of years before our time—it appears quite different from what is assumed according to our current understanding of physics. Above all, we must be clear that the most perfect being we know—the human being itself—has the longest evolutionary history behind it. You will therefore hear an account of evolution that one might say deviates very far from the Haeckel-Darwinian theory of evolution. You will, of course, see the advantages over this purely materialistic theory in my book.

[ 2 ] First and foremost, it is important to understand that the most perfect has undergone the longest process of development. The most perfect being is the human being, and first and foremost, the physical human body. All other beings around us are less perfect than the physical human body, which took the longest time to develop. Therefore, when we look back with spiritual insight, we find that the first seeds of this perfection were already present in the Saturn state. The entire cosmos, with all the beings and things within it, exerted an influence on the Earth’s earliest state. They still possess within themselves all the organs that were formed at that time as the most perfect aspects of our physical body; these are the sense organs, the apparatus that can be understood in purely physical terms, which first arose in embryonic form back then. Of course, you must not imagine that the eye already existed back then in the same form as it does today. But the first rudiments of the eye, the ear, all the sense organs, and all other purely physical apparatus in the human being arose on Saturn. Only those forces existed on Saturn that still manifest today in the mineral kingdom. The human being existed at that time in the initial form of his physical body; everything else—blood, tissue, and so on—was not yet present. The first rudiments of the human body existed as physical apparatuses. Just as emeralds, mica, and so on arise through physical laws and form as cubes, hexahedrons, and so on, so too did apparatus-like forms take shape, which existed on the body of Saturn just as crystals exist today within the Earth’s body. And the mode of action of Saturn’s surface was essentially that of a kind of reflection into outer space. The beings surrounding Saturn—who are now scattered throughout outer space—projected their influences downward. In particular, what is called the “world aroma” was also strongly developed at that time. Today, you can only get a sense of what happened on Saturn back then through a few phenomena: when you hear an echo out in nature, you would find in the tone of the echo something that flowed out from Saturn in response to the impressions that had acted upon it. These organs, which reflected such images back into outer space, are the earliest precursors to what later developed, for example, into the eye. And in this way, we could trace every individual aspect. What you carry within your body today was, back then, a physical realm of Saturn that reflected the entire world picture back into space in manifold ways.

[ 3 ] Myths and legends have preserved this phenomenon much more clearly than one might suspect. For example, the Greek myth—which is itself derived from the Eleusinian Mysteries—has preserved something of this in the image of the interaction between Cronus and Rhea, although there has been a significant shift in the facts due to the way the structure of the universe was conceived at that time. We are told there that Cronus casts down his ray, and it returns to him in the most varied ways; hence that image: he devours his children.

[ 4 ] Now, you must not imagine that the mass of Saturn was something as solid as today’s physical bodies; even if you were to think of water or air, you would still not get a sense of Saturn’s fundamental substance. In occultism, when speaking of bodies, one refers to solid, watery, and airy bodies. When speaking of elements in the ancient sense, these correspond to what is today called states of matter in chemistry; you must not assume that the ancients meant the same thing by “elements” as we do. But there is also a higher state of matter, which in ancient occultism was called “fire”; the term “heat” would more accurately capture its meaning. Physics, too, will be compelled to acknowledge that what we call heat can truly be compared to a kind of fourth state of matter—a form of matter distinct from air and water. Thus, the mass of Saturn was not yet condensed even into air; it was purified warmth. It acted much as the warmth in your blood acts today, and it was linked to inner life processes, for these physical processes were genuine life processes. Saturn consisted of warm substance—an immensely fine mass that, in relation to our substances, could be called neutral.

[ 5 ] If we now wish to consider the beings who inhabited Saturn, we must first realize that what walks the Earth today was itself the earliest rudiment of a physical body there; it did not contain an “I” or an astral body. Other beings, however, who are much higher than human beings today, animated Saturn; yet they, too, did not walk about there in physical bodies: they were embodied in the heat substance, and they acted like a stream of heat moving along. Such streams of warmth constituted the actions of the beings who animated Saturn. Just as you shape a table today, so did these beings perform their work by causing streams of warmth. Otherwise, nothing of them was perceptible. Just as when two streams of warmth moved back and forth and exchanged with one another, so did beings greet one another, so to speak, on Saturn. The beings who passed through their human stage on Saturn did not have a physical body as their lowest member; they did not descend so far into matter that they would have needed a physical body. Their lowest member was the “I,” just as you today have the physical body as your lowest member; then came their spiritual self or Manas, their life spirit or Buddhi, and the spiritual human or Atma. But in addition, they had developed an eighth, ninth, and tenth member, which we must therefore include in our account of them.

[ 6 ] Theosophical literature refers to these aspects, which human beings have not yet developed, as the “three Logoi”; in Christianity, they are called the Holy Spirit, the Son or the Word, and the Father. Thus, one can say: Just as human beings today consist of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, and the “I,” the spiritual self, the life spirit, and the spiritual human, so too did these beings who inhabited Saturn—whom we can compare to present-day Earth humans in their relationship to the Earth—consist of the “I,” the spiritual self, the life spirit, the spiritual human, the Holy Spirit, the Word or the Son, and the Father. Theosophical terminology calls them “Asuras.” They are the ones who, from the very beginning, implanted into this physical constitution of the human body the capacity for independence, self-consciousness, and a sense of self. You would not be able to use your eye in the service of the “I” at all if your constitution had not already been prepared back then in such a way that you could place it in the service of the “I.” Thus, these faculties were prepared by the spirits of the “I”—also called the spirits of egoism. They have given us what is wisest, when properly developed. But everything that is highest is turned into its opposite and has the most harmful and destructive effect when it is not properly developed. Humanity could never have reached that high level which we call independent human dignity if these spirits had not instilled in it the sense of the “I.” There have always been beings who have taken the path of evil. Therefore, it must be said: These beings, who were the instillers of the sense of self—who today are far exalted above humankind, whom we look up to as the most exalted beings there can be—have placed the sense of self in the service of self-denial and sacrifice; the others have selfishly pursued their own sense of self.

[ 7 ] We carry within us the effects of those spirits of the “I” who have taken the right path in their striving for freedom and human dignity, and we carry within us the seed of evil, because the beings who fell back then continue to exert their influence. This contrast has always been felt. Christianity itself distinguishes between God the Father—whom Christianity regards as the highest-ascended spirit of Saturn—and his adversary, the spirit of all evil “I’s” and all that is radically immoral, who fell away on Saturn at that time. These are the two representatives of Saturn.

[ 8 ] Just as you encounter other forms of existence after death, so too does such a world body, before entering a new state, pass through a kind of intermediate state, a kind of dormant state—a Pralaya, as opposed to a Manvantara—so that between the Saturn and the Solar states there lies a kind of rest, a latency of the planet. Then, emerging from this state of sleep—which is, however, a spiritual state and not merely a state of rest—the entire planet reemerges in a new form. Thus, Saturn reemerged as the Sun. A significant transformation now took place. A large number of those capacities that had already developed on Saturn and are now maturing within us were now permeated by an etheric body on the Sun. During such a planetary transition, something happens that can be compared to taking the fruit of a plant and placing it in the soil: it rots, but the seed for a new plant forms. Thus, everything that had developed on Saturn sprouted anew on the Sun and became permeated by an etheric body. Not everything—some elements remained behind in such a way that what had previously been the germ of the human body split into two realms. One part ascended to become a kind of plant-human; just as the plant today has its etheric and physical bodies, so the Sun-people of that time had a physical and etheric body. And on the mineral-physical level, other beings remained behind that could be compared to today’s mineral kingdom. The Sun encompassed this as a subordinate natural kingdom within itself, and it had elevated another as a plant-human kingdom. You can get a proper idea of the solar atmosphere by imagining a chemically dense gas that is no longer merely a reflective body, but has now absorbed everything that has been radiated upon it and only reflects it back after it has transformed it within itself—just as is the case today with the color of a plant. The plant produces its green pigment and other substances, and returns what it has produced to the cosmos.

[ 9 ] We can no longer compare what lived within the Sun’s body to an echo or a reflection, as in the case of Saturn; rather, a peculiar phenomenon arises for the beings who were embodied on the Sun—one that can only be compared to a kind of Fata Morgana, to mirages, which are a kind of colored image. Such phenomena, which today can only be perceived in certain regions of our Earth’s surface, could help you visualize how the plant bodies became visible back then. You must imagine that your own bodies had mirage-like predecessors through which a present-day body can simply pass right through. They were as ethereal as mirages, but it was not merely a mirage of light; at the same time, there were sound and scent effects that swirled through the gaseous sphere of the Sun. While all the beings that were on the Sun were luminous—just as every fixed star is today—the ancient Saturn realm of those beings who had been left behind appeared as a dark enclosure, like shadowy spots in contrast to the light, like gloomy caverns within the Sun’s body that disrupted its harmony. Particularly with regard to the world’s aroma, sensations from the entities that had been left behind mingled in, spreading all manner of foul odors. Our mythology has preserved this by stating that the devil stinks and leaves behind a foul odor. As the Sun progressed, a dark inclusion did indeed remain behind, and today’s sunspots are truly the stragglers of the ancient Saturnian realm on the Sun. That is precisely why, hypothetically, they must be explained exactly as they are today; all of this is true.

[ 10 ] Thus we have, so to speak, sketched the Earth’s existence as a planet in terms of its material aspects. Let us now see which beings had by then ascended to the human level. We would have to describe them as follows: Their lowest body is the astral body; next came their “I,” their spiritual self, their life spirit, their spiritual human being or Atma; then, in the Christian sense, the Holy Spirit; and finally, the Son or the Word. The Father was something they did not possess—something that had only been developed during the Saturnic Age. These spirits have since ascended to higher realms and now stand far above humanity. And the leader of the Solar Spirits—insofar as he exerted the highest influence on Earth—the representative of these spirits, who had the Son or the Word as their highest expression, is the Christ in the esoteric sense of Christianity, the true ruler of the Earth, insofar as the Earth has Solar existence as a prerequisite. On the Sun itself, he would not have been called Christ. This was always taught in early Christianity, and the very distinction between true Christianity and exoteric Christianity—which is often based on misunderstandings—lies in the fact that early Christianity sought to employ all thought and all perspectives to comprehend the nature of that exalted being who had taken on human form at that time in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Ancient Christianity sought to gain insight into what actually lay at the foundation of this, and for this purpose no wisdom was too lofty or too intricate for it; and thus it described the essence of the Christ in Jesus of Nazareth. Many a word in the Gospel of John can only become understandable to you if you view it from this perspective. One need only point out one thing: If you take the saying “I am the light of the world” literally, it implies that He is the great solar hero, that the light belonging to the sun is part of His very being. We call the entire host of spirits, whose leader is Christ, the “fire spirits,” and we say: On the human plane, during the Saturn era, there were the Asuras or “I-spirits,” while during the Sun era there were the “fire spirits” or Logoi, whose highest representative is designated as the Logos or “Word.” Hence, Christ Himself is referred to as the “Word” that was in the beginning, at the very beginning; in the Bible, “the very beginning” denotes a very specific starting point in cosmic evolution.

[ 11 ] Once again, an intermediate state occurs—a sort of dormant state of the entire cosmic body—and then it glows as the old moon. You must imagine that in the beginning, the Earth and the Moon as we know them today, together with the Sun, formed a single body. Only when the Sun began to shine anew did a portion of the beings separate themselves from a portion of their surroundings, resulting in the formation of two celestial bodies. One of them, the Sun, begins to become a fixed star and is orbited by what has split off. Thus, the old Sun divided into two parts; more highly evolved matter remained on the Sun, and the less perfect matter was cast off, so that what had previously followed a single path—because there was only one body—now followed two paths: the path of the Sun and the path of the Moon. The path of the Sun was the one that developed on the solar body; the Moon formed its own world. You would obtain the ancient Moon if you were to mix today’s Earth with the Moon; from this you can already draw a conclusion about the nature of the Moon. The Moon of today is, in all its qualities, physically and spiritually far inferior to the Earth, and the Earth separated from the Moon precisely for this reason—to have better conditions of existence for its beings. The Earth has already developed further than it was back then in its lunar state. After all, the best remained behind on the Sun.

[ 12 ] So what was it like on the Moon? Those beings who had prepared themselves on Saturn through the physical structure of the sense organs had transformed these on the Sun in such a way that an etheric body had been incorporated into them; as a result, the sense organs had become centralized, and the first rudiments of all growth organs, including the glands, had been able to develop on the ancient Sun under the influence of the etheric body. This was the final product of the solar state. — On the Moon, the astral body was incorporated in a similar manner. Everything astral was, after all, initially present in the surrounding environment—the fire spirits had formed the astral body as the lowest link; therefore, these beings truly constituted a kind of plant; for example, they had a fixed location. Although the entire solar body was gaseous, you must imagine denser layers of air there, which served as bodies for the human plants. Now the human astral body became integrated: this gave rise to the first rudiments of a nervous system. The realm that had evolved upward through the plant state of the Sun transitioned into an animal-like state. Thus, the physical human ancestors of the Moon possessed the three bodies: the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body; but they were a good degree higher than today’s most advanced apes; they were human-animals that modern biology can no longer prove existed—an intermediate realm between human and animal. Our present-day plant, animal, and mineral kingdoms did not develop until much later. But just as there were human-like animals, we must also assume an intermediate realm between plant and animal: plants that possessed a partial capacity for sensation, which actually squeaked when touched. These plant-like animals could never have grown on mineral soil such as that found on Earth today; indeed, such soil did not yet exist. In terms of its mass, the Moon did not consist of today’s minerals; not even anything resembling topsoil was present. The surface of the Moon consisted, to put it in relative terms, of something like what you would get if you cooked lettuce or spinach and made a purée out of it; it contained a kind of mineral plant, and so the entire surface of the Moon was a plant-like entity. If you think of a peat bog today, it resembles what was then a natural realm between our plants and minerals. There were no rocks either; anyone walking across the surface would have been walking on such peat bog or plant-based soil, and as an analogy for the rocks, you can imagine lignified deposits. From this entire ground grew the plant-animals, and above them moved the beings who were human-animals, within the sphere of the Moon known as “fire-air.” Imagine the entire atmosphere filled with vapors of nitric, carbonic, and sulfuric acids; the lunar beings lived in this fiery air that you would thus obtain. The occultist has always been familiar with this “fire-air”; and under the ancient conditions on Earth, it was even possible to produce such “fire-air” chemically, something that today can only be done within a very small circle. True alchemy has preserved this knowledge. Therefore, when you read in Faust: “I will make a little fire air,” this is an allusion to the depths of occultism. Fire air enveloped the Moon; that was its atmosphere.

[ 13 ] We may come to understand this lunar existence even better if we add one more point. We had a realm of plant-minerals, of animal-plants that grew out of the plant-mineral soil, and then animal-humans who moved about on it. At every stage, however, there are beings who lag behind; call it “repeating a grade,” if you will. Not only in school, but also in the grand process of evolution, there is something akin to repeating a grade, where a student must go through the same class again. Such “repeaters” appear under quite remarkable circumstances in the later stages of evolution. We find the “repeat students” among the animal-plants in the form of parasites, for example, in mistletoe. It cannot grow in mineral soil because it was accustomed to growing in the mineral soil of plants. It is a testament to what a “repeat student” represents; only, the beings who lag behind in the evolution of the world fare much worse. This, in turn, has found expression in mythology, particularly in the northern regions. In Norse mythology, you are familiar with the story of Baldur and his death at the hands of Loki.

[ 14 ] Once upon a time, the gods were reveling in Asgard, playfully tossing all sorts of objects about in the heavens. But beforehand, Baldur had had dreams foreshadowing his imminent demise; therefore, the gods feared they might lose him. The Mother of the Gods had therefore made all beings swear an oath that they would never harm Baldur; for the gods had amused themselves by throwing all sorts of things at Baldur. Loki, who was the enemy of the gods, had learned that one being, considered harmless, had not been made to take this oath: the mistletoe, which was hidden far away. So he obtained the mistletoe and gave it to the blind god Hödur, who threw it at Baldur; the mistletoe wounded Baldur, since no oath had been taken against it, and thus Baldur died. — This myth is meant to suggest that that which is invulnerable on Earth can be harmed by nothing other than what remains from another existence as something now evil. In the mistletoe, something was sensed that had been brought into the present existence from a previous one. All beings on Earth today have a connection to Baldur. On the Moon, things were different; therefore, the being that remained from the Moon is capable of killing Baldur. The various customs associated with mistletoe also originated from this.

[ 15 ] We must also consider this lunar existence from another perspective—the spiritual one. We must describe its beings, who at that time were at the human level, as beings who had, as their lowest member, the etheric body; as the second, the astral body; then the “I,” the spiritual self, the life spirit, the spiritual human, or Atma; and finally, they also possessed the Holy Spirit. They no longer had the ninth member, which was unique to the solar fire spirits. The highest of these spirits of the Moon, who at that time had attained the human stage, is called the Holy Spirit in Christian esotericism. Thus, in early Christianity, the three-fold divine being is brought into an inner connection with the development of the Earth, and the Holy Spirit is the spirit standing above the human being, capable of inspiring him directly.

[ 16 ] As you can see, the spirits of the moon stand above humankind today. They are also called “lunar Pitris,” moon fathers, or spirits of twilight. However, the entire host that belonged to the Holy Spirit is called the host of angels in Christian esotericism. The angels are nothing other than those spirits who stand directly above human beings and who had their human existence on the Moon.

[ 17 ] The lives of the animal-humans and the plant-animals on the Moon were different from the lives of the beings that evolved from them on Earth. The motion of the Moon—which had already been cut off from the Sun—was quite different from the motion of the Earth today as it orbits the Sun. That Moon revolved around the Sun in such a way that it always presented the same side to it, just as the Moon still does today with respect to the Earth; thus, the Moon rotated on its axis only once while orbiting the Sun. Consequently, all beings were dependent on the Sun’s presence in a completely different way than they are today on Earth. Throughout the Moon’s entire orbital period around the Sun, it was always day on one side and a kind of night on the other. The beings who were already able to leave their dwelling place at that time wandered in a sort of circle around the Moon, so that they had a period during which they came under the Moon’s influence. The time during which they were under the Sun’s influence was the time when they reproduced. Reproduction already existed back then. The moon people did not yet have the ability to express their pain or pleasure through sounds; what they expressed had a more cosmic significance. The time of the sun was the time of mating, which, when experienced, was accompanied by a terrible cry from the beings—a phenomenon that has been preserved to this day among animals.

[ 18 ] Many other such things have been left behind. You know how to investigate the reason behind the migration of birds, which in a certain sense circle the globe. We can understand many of the things that are mysteriously hidden today when we consider the entire course of our existence on Earth. There was a time when beings set out to reproduce only when they migrated toward the sun; one might call this the period of sexual life. General processes of lunar life were expressed in sounds that occurred at certain times of the year; during the other times of the year, the moon was silent.

[ 19 ] This is how we came to understand the Earth’s passage through its three earlier states: Saturn, Sun, and Moon.