The Rudolf Steiner Archive

8. Occult Signs and Symbols I

in relation to the astral and spiritual worlds

[ 1 ] These four lectures, which are to take place here in Stuttgart, will have a somewhat more intimate character, since the audience consists—at least for the most part—of members of the Theosophical Society who have long been familiar with the basic ideas of theosophy and therefore likely also wish to learn about more intimate matters from the field of theosophy. The subject matter of these lectures will be the occult symbols and signs relating to the astral and spiritual worlds. A series of occult symbols and signs will be explained in their deeper meaning. In this regard, I ask you to bear in mind that some things may sound strange in the first two lectures and will only be fully explained in the course of the third and fourth lectures. This is simply in the nature of things, for theosophical lectures cannot be like other lectures, which are built up, so to speak, in a mathematical manner from simple elements. Some things will have to remain unclear at the beginning, but little by little they will emerge clearly and understandably.

[ 2 ] Symbols and signs—not only in the profane world but also in the theosophical world—often give the impression of being more or less arbitrary, having only a “meaning.” That is by no means correct. You have all heard of such symbols and signs and are well aware that, for example, the various planets of the universe are represented by symbols. You know that a well-known symbol in theosophical allegories is the so-called pentagram. Furthermore, you are aware that in various religions, light is cited as a symbol of wisdom and spiritual clarity. If you now ask about the meaning of such things, you may hear or read that they signify this or that; a triangle, for example, signifies the higher Trinity, and so on. Myths and legends are also frequently interpreted in theosophical writings and lectures; “they signify something,” it is said. To get to the heart of the meaning, to the essence of this significance, to recognize the reality of such symbols—that is precisely the purpose of these lectures. Let us clarify what is meant by this with an example.

[ 3 ] Let us consider the pentagram. As you know, much has been speculated and imagined about it; therefore, it cannot be a subject of occultism. To understand what the occultist says about the pentagram, we must first recall the seven fundamental parts of the human being. You know, of course, that there are seven fundamental parts of the human being: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, the ego, and furthermore the mental body, the Life-Spirit, and the Spirit-Man—or, as they are customarily called in theosophical literature: Manas, Budhi, Atma. Let us set aside the physical body, which is something material that can be touched with the hands; it is the etheric body that is of particular interest here. The etheric body already belongs to that which is hidden from the physical senses, to the so-called “occult”; it cannot be seen with the ordinary eyes. It requires the clairvoyant method to perceive it. But when one can see it, it is, of course, something quite, quite different from the physical body. The etheric body is not—as most people have in their mental image—a thin, material body, a sort of finer mist-like formation. The characteristic feature of the etheric body is that it is composed of various currents that permeate it. It is, after all, the architect, the creator of the physical body. Just as ice takes shape from water, so the physical body takes shape from the etheric body; and this etheric body is permeated on all sides by currents, like the sea. Among these there are five main currents. If you stand with your legs spread apart and your hands outstretched, then the human body appears as shown here in the picture (it is drawn):

[ 4 ] You can clearly trace the directions of the five main currents; they form a pentagram. Every human being has these five currents hidden within them. They flow through the etheric body in the directions indicated by the arrows (see diagram); they form, so to speak, the “skeleton” of the human etheric body. These currents flow continuously through the etheric body, and this remains the case even when the person is moving. Whatever the posture of the body may be, a current always flows from the center of the forehead—the point between the eyebrows—down to the right foot, from there to the left hand, from there to the right hand, then to the left foot, and from there back to the forehead. What is called the pentagram is as mobile within the etheric body as the human physical body itself. And when the occultist speaks of the pentagram as the figure of the human being, he is not referring to something contrived, but speaks of it as the anatomist speaks of the skeletal structure. This figure truly exists in the etheric body; it is a fact.

[ 5 ] From this brief example alone, we can see what the true meaning of a symbol is all about. All symbols and emblems you encounter in occultism point toward such realities. The pentagram is thus the flexible “skeleton” of the etheric body; that is why it represents the human figure. This is the true meaning of such a symbol.

[ 6 ] When one gradually receives the proper instructions on how to use the figures or symbols, they become a means by which a person is gradually introduced to the spiritual world and can become clairvoyant. For those who immerse themselves in the pentagram during meditation, the path lies in these currents within the etheric body. There is no point in inventing arbitrary meanings for these symbols. If one holds this symbol in mind during meditation—one must simply do so with patience—it leads to occult realities. And so it is with all symbols and signs, including those you can find in various religious texts, for these symbols are deeply rooted in occultism. When any prophet or founder of a religion speaks of the light and thereby intends to denote wisdom, you must not think that this simply occurs to him or that he uses this expression because he perhaps wishes to be witty. The occultist bases his work on facts; therefore, he has no interest in being witty. He only wants to be truthful. As an occultist, one must break the habit of haphazard thinking; that is, one must not draw conclusions or pass judgments arbitrarily, but must develop correct thinking step by step, guided by spiritual facts.

[ 7 ] This symbol of light, in turn, has a very, very deep meaning; it is a spiritual reality. To understand this, let us turn once more to the human being. We know that the third member of the human being is the astral body, which is the bearer of pleasure and suffering, of joy and pain, of instinct, desire, and passion—of everything that constitutes a person’s inner soul experiences. The plant has no astral body, and therefore does not experience pleasure and pain as humans and animals do. When naturalists today speak of the plant’s sensation, this is based on a complete misunderstanding of what sensation actually is. We can only gain a proper mental image of this astral body by tracing its development over the course of time. We have previously considered the development of the human being in connection with the development of the great cosmos, and in doing so found that the physical body of the human being is the oldest and most complex component of the human being, that the etheric body is less ancient, the astral body even younger, and that the I ultimately represents the youngest component of the human being. The reason for this is that the physical body has already passed through four planetary states of the Earth in its development; it was already present in its rudimentary form when our Earth existed in an earlier incarnation known as the Saturn state. Back then, long ago, the Earth was not yet the Earth and humanity did not yet exist in its present form; only the rudiment of the physical body was present on Saturn; but all its other bodies—such as the etheric body, the astral body, and so on—were still missing. It was not until the Earth’s second incarnation, on the Sun, that the etheric body was added for humanity. At that time, this human etheric body had the most pronounced form of the pentagram; later this was somewhat modified by the fact that, during the third incarnation of our planet, on the Moon, the astral body was added. And then the Moon transformed into the Earth, and the I joined the three bodies.

[ 8 ] Now we may ask: Where were these bodies before they became part of the human being? Where, for example, was that which on the Sun was drawn into the physical body as the etheric body—where was it on ancient Saturn? The etheric body must have come from somewhere.—It was present in the atmosphere of Saturn, just as the air is present in the atmosphere of the Earth today. Everything that was later drawn into human beings was already present in the atmosphere, in the atmosphere of ancient Saturn. Likewise, on the ancient Sun, the astral body—which was only drawn into the Moon—was present in the atmosphere. You can form a mental image of the ancient Sun as not consisting of rocks, plants, and animals, as the Earth does today, but rather there were two kingdoms of nature that existed on the Sun. The beings, the humans, who were on the Sun were initially human plants. In addition, there was a kind of mineral on the ancient Sun. However, you must not confuse this ancient Sun with the present-day Sun. The ancient Sun was surrounded by a powerful astral shell. The ancient Sun was, as it were, enveloped by an astral atmosphere, and this astral shell was luminous. Such was the scene on the ancient Sun.

[ 9 ] Let us now turn our attention once more to modern human beings, who possess a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, and an ego. When the ego now works into the astral body and increasingly purifies it in intellectual, moral, and spiritual terms, then this astral body becomes the Spirit-Self or Manas. When, in the distant future, what has barely begun today is completed—when the human being has transformed his entire astral body—then this astral body will be “physically” luminous. Just as the plant already carries within itself the seed of new life, so the astral body already contains the seed of a light that will one day radiate out into space when humanity has purified and refined its astral body more and more. Our Earth will transform into other planets. Today it is dark. Anyone who could observe it from the outside would see that it appears bright only through the reflected light of the sun. But one day it will itself be luminous, luminous through the human beings who will then have transformed their entire astral bodies. The sum of all astral bodies will radiate out as light into outer space.

[ 10 ] This was also the case with the ancient Sun. The ancient Sun was inhabited by beings more advanced than modern humans, and these beings had luminous astral bodies. These beings, whom the Bible very aptly calls spirits of light or Elohim, radiated their astral nature out into space.

[ 11 ] If we now ask ourselves: What is it that a human being works into their astral body? —, then the answer is: It is what we call goodness and wisdom, through which a human being refines their astral body. When we consider a savage who is still at the stage of a cannibal, who blindly follows all his passions, and ask ourselves what distinguishes him from more highly developed human beings, we must say: it is that the civilized human being has already worked on his astral body, whereas the savage has not. The human being who views his instincts and passions in such a way that he says to himself: ‘I may follow this one, but not the other’—forms moral concepts and ideals, and this signifies the transformation and refinement of the astral body. By working on his astral body from incarnation to incarnation, the human being refines himself more and more into that luminous being of which we spoke earlier. This is called “working wisdom into the astral body.” The more wisdom there is in the astral body, the more luminous it will be. The Elohim, those beings who dwelt on the Sun, were completely imbued with wisdom. Just as our soul relates to the body, so does wisdom relate to light. You see, the connection between light and wisdom is not a figure of speech; it is based on a fact; it is a truth. Light is indeed the body of wisdom. Thus we come to understand that the religious texts speak of light as a symbol of wisdom.

[ 12 ] For the learner who is developing greater perceptive power and clairvoyance, it is of great importance to perform exercises such as the following: They imagine the room to be dark, without any external light affecting them—whether in the darkness of night or by closing their eyes—and then gradually seek to penetrate, through their own inner power, to the mental image of light. If the person can form this mental image intensely enough, it will gradually grow brighter, and he will then see a light that is not physical light, but a light that he now creates for himself, which he generates within himself through inner power. And this is a light that will be radiant with wisdom, in which creative wisdom appears to him. This is what is called astral light. Through meditation, a person comes to generate light through inner strength. This light is a harbinger of what a person will one day see—not with physical eyes, but with finer sense organs. It will become the garment for truly existing spiritual beings, such as the Elohim. If a person performs this exercise correctly, it is a means of entering into a relationship with these higher beings. This is how those who know something of the spiritual world from their own experience have done it.

[ 13 ] Through certain other methods, which we will discuss later, a person can reach a state in which, through their own inner power, space is not only illuminated by light—permeated by the light of wisdom—but also begins, as it were, to resonate. In ancient Pythagorean philosophy, as you know, there was talk of the music of the spheres. By “sphere” here is meant the cosmic space, the space in which the stars float. This is not an imagined, fanciful image, nor a poetic comparison, but a reality. When a person has practiced sufficiently according to the instructions of the secret teacher, they learn not only to see inwardly an illuminated, radiant space that is the expression of wisdom, but they also learn to hear the music of the spheres that floods the cosmic space. And when space begins to resound, it is said that the person is in the heavenly world, in Devachan. It is true that space resounds, but it is not a physical sound; rather, these are spiritual tones that do not exist in the air, but in a much higher, finer substance, the Akashic substance. Space is constantly filled with such music, and there are certain fundamental tones within this music of the spheres.

[ 14 ] Let us now consider what is meant by “sphere music.” I am well aware that today’s mathematical astronomers would dismiss as utter madness the way “one speaks of the planets in occultism.” That does not matter; it is true nonetheless.

[ 15 ] We have spoken of how our Earth has developed gradually; we have spoken of Earth incarnations. Our Earth was first Saturn, then became the Sun, then the Moon; now it is Earth, and later it will become Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan. Now you may ask: There is also a Saturn in the sky today; does this present-day Saturn have anything to do with the Saturn that was the first embodiment of the Earth?—When we look at the starry sky, we see the planets known to us exoterically. The names of these planets were not chosen arbitrarily, not—as has become customary in recent times—after a specific person, such as their discoverer, but rather they are meaningful names given out of a deep knowledge of the nature of the stars. Today, this is no longer done, and Uranus, for example, does not have such a justified name because it was discovered only later. What you see today in the sky as Saturn stands at the same stage of development as our Earth did when it was still in the Saturn state. Exoteric Saturn relates to Earth much as a boy relates to an old man. Just as the old man did not develop from a boy standing next to him—he himself was once a boy—so too did Earth not develop from today’s Saturn. The Saturn that stands in the sky today will one day become “Earth”; it is now in a sort of youthful stage. And it is similar with the other celestial bodies. The Sun is such a body as the Earth once was, only it is, so to speak, “advanced.” And just as different stages of life coexist among humans—just as the boy stands beside the old man—so do the various planets stand side by side in the heavens at different stages of development, stages that our Earth, which is now in its fourth incarnation, has already partly gone through and will partly still go through. The planets stand in very specific relationships to one another. But the occultist expresses these relationships differently than today’s astronomer does.

[ 16 ] You know that the planets move around the Sun at very specific speeds. But the Sun itself is also in motion, and it is this motion, as well as that of the planets, that has been thoroughly studied by occult astronomers. Research has shown that the Sun moves around a spiritual center, and that the orbits of the planets are spirals whose axis is the Sun’s orbit. The speeds at which the individual planets travel along their orbits are in very specific, harmonious ratios to one another, and to the listener, these ratios combine into a symphony of sounds, which the Pythagoreans called the music of the spheres. This harmonious blending, this music, is thus a reflection of cosmic processes, and what the Pythagorean school teaches is by no means a contrived notion. The ancient occult astronomers observed: The starry sky, which appears to be at rest, is in truth in motion and revolves around the spiritual center with such speed that it advances by 1° in 100 years. The speeds of the planets in relation to one another are as follows: Saturn’s speed is 1,200 times greater than that of the entire starry sky, or it advances 12° per year.

Saturn's speed = 2.5 times that of Jupiter
Jupiter's speed = 5 times that of Mars
Mars' speed = 2 times that of the Sun, Mercury, and Venus
the Sun's speed = 12 times that of the Moon

[ 17 ] When physical musical harmonies arise, it is because, for example, different strings vibrate at different rates—one faster, the other slower. Depending on the speed at which the individual strings move, a higher or lower tone is produced, and the blending of these different tones sounds as music, resulting in harmony. Just as you now receive musical impressions here in the physical realm from the movements of the strings, so does the one who has ascended to the stage of clairaudience in Devachan hear the movement of the celestial bodies as celestial music. And through the relationship of the various speeds in the movement of the planets, the fundamental tones of celestial harmony arise, which resound throughout the entire universe. In the Pythagorean school, therefore, one rightly speaks of celestial music; it can be heard with spiritual ears.

[ 18 ] In these observations, we can also point to another phenomenon. If you take a thin brass plate, sprinkle it as evenly as possible with fine dust, and stroke the plate with a violin bow, not only will a sound be audible, but the dust particles will arrange themselves in very specific lines. All sorts of patterns form, corresponding to the tone. The tone causes a distribution of the matter, of the substance. These are the well-known Chladni figures.

[ 19 ] As the spiritual tone resounded through the universe, it arranged the planets in their relative positions to form a spherical harmony. What you see spread out in outer space has been arranged by this creative tone of the Deity. As this tone resounded into outer space, matter took shape to form a system, the solar and planetary system. Thus, the expression “sphere harmony” is not merely a witty comparison; it is reality.

[ 20 ] Now let us move on to something else. We know that our Earth has not always been as it is now. Anyone who has studied theosophy for some time knows that our Earth, in its present incarnation, has gone through various stages of development. In the distant past, it was in a molten state. What are now our stones and metals were once present in a dissolved state within this molten Earth. The objection that no humans or other beings could have lived in such intense heat must be answered as follows: The human body was then in a physical state adapted to the conditions of that time; it could live at a temperature even hotter than today’s smelting furnaces. This fiery age of the Earth was followed by a watery age, which we call the Atlantean age. Let us now consider this Atlantean Age. The Atlantean continent, which stretched between present-day Europe and America in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, was inhabited by our ancestors, who were, of course, quite different in nature from people today. Their vision was not like ours; in a certain sense, they were clairvoyant. In the development of the Atlanteans, there were various stages of vision. The final stage, at the end of the Atlantean era, was like a kind of echo of much higher stages. For example, the Atlantean could see an external object only in the final period of Atlantis. Earlier, the atmosphere was so filled with dense masses of watery mist that objects did not stand out spatially from one another. In this earliest period of Atlantean development, the nature of perception was entirely different. When approaching an object or a being, the ancient Atlantean did not first see the outline or the physiognomy of a person or an object; rather, a color image arose within him that had nothing to do with the exterior, but rather reflected an inner state of the soul. Color images told him whether an approaching being was helpful or dangerous to him. If, for example, the approaching person harbored a feeling of vengeance toward the other, this was expressed to him through a corresponding color image, and he would run away. If a wild animal approached, he recognized it in the same way and was able to save himself. The Atlantean perceived the states of mind of his surroundings in this final phase of clairvoyance. Only gradually did modern vision develop from this. Imagine a very foggy day, how objects become blurred. Imagine, on such a day, a streetlamp that first appears as a dot; then, gradually, you make out its outlines. Just like that, the Atlantean learned to see. What humans used to see was a kind of astral color, which they initially perceived as floating freely and which, as it were, lay over the objects.

[ 21 ] Of course, this different mode of perception was linked to the fact that people at that time looked quite different from people today. In the final phase of the Atlantean period, for example, the human forehead was set far back, over which the etheric body protruded like a massive sphere. The point behind the forehead, set back slightly between the eyes, had not yet coincided with the physical body and the etheric body. Then the physical body and the etheric body drew together, and the union of these two points in the etheric body and the physical body was an important moment in human evolution. Today, the physical head fits roughly right into the etheric head. With the horse, it is still different. But just as this head has changed in humans, so too have their limbs changed. Gradually, their present physical form took shape. Imagine vividly the end of the Atlantean era. What was it actually like back then? Humans perceived the soul states of their surroundings through a kind of clairvoyance. Imagine once more that dense, foggy atmosphere, the air saturated with heavy water vapor. You would not have been able to see the sun, the stars, or any objects around you back then in that dense, watery air. The rainbow did not yet exist, for the rainbow could not yet form. Everything was shrouded in dense, heavy masses of fog. That is why the legend speaks of Niflheim, a “home of fog.” Gradually, the water, which had spread powerfully through the air, condensed, “and the waters of the Flood poured down upon the earth.” This means nothing other than that the massive masses of fog condensed into water and fell as precipitation, as rain. As the water separated from the air, the air became purer, and as the air became purer, the modern way of seeing took shape. Human beings were only able to see themselves once they could see the objects around them.

[ 22 ] Now, the human physical body exhibits many patterns that are of profound significance. One of these is as follows: If you were to construct a box with dimensions such that the height, width, and length are in the ratio of three parts to five parts to thirty parts, and if the length corresponds to the length of the body, then you will find the same proportional relationships in the human body. In other words: This indicates the ratio of a regular structure of the human body. Back when humanity emerged from the floods of Atlantis, the human body was formed in such a way that it corresponded to the proportions 3:5:30. This is beautifully expressed in the Bible with the words: “And God commanded Noah to build an ark three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide, and thirty cubits high.” In these dimensions of Noah’s Ark, we have precisely the dimensions of the harmony of the human body.

[ 23 ] Occult signs and symbols are derived from the very essence of things and therefore show us how we can use them to gain insight into the conditions of the spiritual worlds.