The Rudolf Steiner Archive

10. Occult Signs and Symbols III

in relation to the astral and spiritual worlds

[ 1 ] The first thing we will consider today is a reflection on what is known as numerical symbolism. When speaking of occult signs and symbols, one must at least briefly mention those symbols that are expressed through numbers. You will recall my remarks from the day before yesterday, when I spoke of the numerical ratios in the universe and the speeds at which the individual planets move. We have seen that these numbers and numerical ratios are expressed in the harmony of the spheres that permeates space, and that they have a certain significance for the universe as a whole and for our understanding of the world.

[ 2 ] Today we will explore a more intimate symbolism of numbers—a symbolism whose meaning we can, of course, only touch upon, for to truly delve into it would require many other considerations that we would need to examine in greater detail. At the very least, you will gain some idea of what is meant when, for example, the ancient Pythagorean secret school taught that one must delve into numbers and their nature in order to gain insight into the world. To some, the idea of reflecting on numbers may seem dry and tedious. Above all, it will seem like a mere game to those people who have been corrupted by the materialistic education of our time, if one believes that by contemplating numbers one can fathom something of the essence of things. Nevertheless, there is deep reason why the great Pythagoras told his students that knowledge of the nature of numbers leads deep into the essence of things. One must not, however, believe that it is enough to reflect on the number 1 or 3 or 7. The true Esoteric Teaching has nothing to do with witchcraft or sorcery, nor with any superstition regarding the significance of any number; its knowledge is based on much deeper things. From the brief sketch you are to receive from me today, you will see that the number can provide a certain point of reference for deepening one’s understanding—what is also called meditation—if one possesses the key to truly delving into the number.

[ 3 ] We must begin with the number one, with unity. The extent to which this number one truly symbolizes what I am about to say will become even clearer later when we examine the other numbers. In all occultism, the number one has always been used to denote the inseparable unity of God in the world. The number one is used to denote God. However, one must not believe that one gains anything in terms of world knowledge by merely delving into the number one; you will see how this delving must take place. But we will find this far more fruitful if we first move on to the other numbers.

[ 4 ] In occultism, the number two is called the number of revelation. With the number two, we gain a foothold, so to speak, whereas with the number one we are still groping around in the abyss. When we say: Two is the number of revelation — this means nothing other than: Everything that confronts us in the world, that is not hidden in some way but emerges into the world, exists in some form of duality. For you will find the number two widespread throughout nature. Nothing can reveal itself without touching the number two. Light can never reveal itself on its own as a unity. When light reveals itself, shadow or darkness must also be present; there must therefore be a duality. There could never be a world filled with revealed light if there were not corresponding shadows. And so it is with all things. Good could never reveal itself if it did not have evil as its shadow. The duality of good and evil is a necessity in the revealed world. There are an infinite number of such dualities; they fill the entire world; we need only seek them out in the right place.

[ 5 ] An important duality that humans can reflect on deeply in life is the following: Yesterday we considered the various states that humans went through before becoming inhabitants of our present-day Earth. We saw that on Saturn and the Sun, humans possessed a certain immortality in that they directed their bodies from the outside, so that parts of these bodies crumbled away and new ones grew back, so that humans felt nothing of death or decay. But their consciousness at that time was not like their consciousness today; it was a dull, twilight consciousness. It was only on our Earth that human beings attained a consciousness linked to self-awareness. Only here did they become beings who knew something of themselves and could distinguish themselves from objects. To achieve this, they had to not only direct the body from the outside, but they had to slip into this body—alternately—feel themselves within it, and say “I” to it. Only by being fully immersed within his body has humanity been able to attain full consciousness. But now he also shares the fate of this body. In the past, when he still stood above it, he did not. It is only because humanity has attained this level of consciousness that it has entered into a relationship with death. At the moment his body decays, he feels that his “I” ceases to exist, because he has identified it with his body. Only gradually, through spiritual development, will he regain the old immortality, and the body is there as a school for consciously attaining it. Man would never be able to attain immortality on a higher plane if he did not earn it through death, if he did not recognize the duality of life and death. As long as man had not become acquainted with death, the world was not yet revealed to him, for the revealed world includes the duality of life and death. And so we could demonstrate dualities in life at every turn. In physics you find positive and negative electricity; in magnetism, forces of attraction and repulsion; everything appears in duality. Two is the number of appearance, of revelation.

[ 6 ] But there is no revelation without the Divine at work behind it. Therefore, behind every duality, a unity remains hidden. The number three is therefore nothing other than the two and the one—namely, the revelation and the Divinity that stands behind it. One is the number of God’s unity; three is the number of the Divinity that reveals itself. There is a saying in occultism that goes: Two can never be a number for the Divine. One is a number for the Divine, and Three is a number for the Divine, for when it reveals itself, it reveals itself in duality, and behind that lies unity. The person who sees the world in duality sees it only in its manifestation. So whoever says that there is a duality in outer appearances is right. But whoever says that this duality is the whole is always wrong. Let us clarify this with a few examples. This principle of true occultism—that the number two is only the number of manifestation, not the number of fullness or completeness—is frequently violated, even in discussions of Theosophy. Thus, in popular occultism, you often hear people who do not truly understand it say that all development proceeds through involution and evolution. We will see how this actually stands. But first, let us examine what involution and evolution mean. Let us consider a plant, a fully developed plant with roots, leaves, stem, flower, fruit—in short, with all the parts a plant can possibly have. That is one aspect. And now consider the small seed from which the plant can once again arise. Anyone looking at the seed sees only a small grain, but within this small grain the entire plant is already contained; it is, so to speak, enclosed within it. Why is it there? Because the grain is taken from the plant, because the plant has placed all its powers into the seed. That is why occultism distinguishes between the two processes: one consists of the seed uncoiling and unfolding into the whole plant—evolution; the other, of the plant folding in on itself so that its form, as it were, creeps into the seed—involution. So when any being with many organs develops in such a way that nothing of these organs is visible anymore, that they have shrunk down to a small part, this is called involution, and the spreading out, the unfolding, is called evolution. This duality alternates throughout life, but always only in the realm of manifestation. You can observe this not only in plants, but also in the higher realms of life.

[ 7 ] For example, try to trace in your mind the development of European intellectual life from Augustine to Calvin and beyond the Middle Ages. If you let your gaze wander over the intellectual life of that era, you will see a certain mystical depth in Augustine himself. No one will read his writings, especially his Confessions, without sensing how deeply intimate this man’s emotional life was. And if we then move further forward in time, we find such a wonderful figure as Scotus Erigena, a monk who came from Scotland and was therefore also called the Scottish John, who lived at the court of Charles the Bald. He fared poorly within the Church; legend has it that his fellow monks tortured him to death with pins. This is not to be taken literally, of course; but it is true that he was tortured to death. He authored a magnificent book: “De divisione naturae” (“On the Division of Nature”), which displays tremendous depth. Further on we find the mystics of the so-called German “Pfaffengasse,” where this emotional sensibility gripped entire masses of people. It was not only the leaders of the clergy, but also the people; the men who worked in the fields or in the smithy—they were all seized by that emotional sensibility, which manifested itself in this way as a trend of the times. Further back we find Nicholas of Cusa, who lived from 1400 to 1464. And so we can trace the era back to the end of the Middle Ages; we always find that emotional depth, that intimacy, which spread across all circles. If we now compare this era with the later one that succeeded it—the one that begins in the 16th century and extends up to our own time—we notice a tremendous difference. At the starting point we see Copernicus, who, through a comprehensive idea, brings about a renewal of spiritual life; who incorporated this idea into humanity to such an extent that today anyone who believes otherwise is considered a fool. We see Galileo, who discovered the laws of the pendulum from the oscillations of a church lamp in Pisa. Thus we can follow the course of time step by step; everywhere we would find the stark contrast to the Middle Ages. Feeling diminishes more and more, intimacy fades; reason and intellectuality come to the fore more and more, people become ever wiser and more intelligent. Thus two epochs follow one another, each of precisely opposite character. Spiritual Science provides us with an explanation of both epochs. There is an occult law that states that this must be so. From the time of Augustine to Calvin was an epoch of mystical evolution and intellectual involution, and since then we have been living in a time of intellectual evolution and mystical involution. What does this mean? From Augustine to the 16th century was a time of the outward unfolding of the mystical life; it was out in the open then. But something else was only present in embryonic form back then: intellectual life. It was like a seed, so to speak, hidden in the spiritual soil, to unfold gradually after the 16th century. Intellectual life was thus in involution at that time, just as the plant is inside the seed. Nothing in the world can come into being unless it was first in such a state of involution. Since the 16th century, intellectual life has been in evolution, while mystical life has receded; it is in involution. And now the time has come when this mystical life must step forward again, when it must be brought back to unfolding, to evolution, through the Theosophical Movement.

[ 8 ] Thus, throughout life, involution and evolution alternate in their manifestation. But those who stop there are looking only at the outer surface. If one wishes to view the whole, a third element must be added, one that lies behind these two. What is this third element? Imagine for a moment that you are faced with a phenomenon of the external world and you are reflecting on it. You are there, the external world is there, and within you thoughts arise. These thoughts were not there before. If, for example, you form the thought of a rose, it arises only at the moment when you enter into a relationship with the rose; you were there, the rose was there; and when the thought, the image of the rose, now rises within you, something entirely new, something that has not yet existed, comes into being. This is also the case in other areas of life. Create a mental image of Michelangelo at work. Michelangelo almost never worked from models. But let us imagine for a moment that he had assembled a group of models. Michelangelo was there, the models were there. But the image that Michelangelo now has of this group in his soul—that is new; it is a completely new creation. This has nothing to do with involution and evolution. It is something entirely new, arising from the interaction of a being capable of receiving with a being capable of giving. Such new creations always arise through the interaction of beings with one another. Such new creations are a beginning. Remember what we considered here yesterday: how thoughts are creative, how they can ennoble the soul, and later even work on the formation of the body. That which any being once thinks—the creation of thought, the creation of imagination—continues to work and have an effect. It is a new creation and at the same time a beginning, but it entails consequences. If you have good thoughts today, these thoughts are fruitful for the distant future, for your soul follows its own path in the spiritual world. Your body returns to the elements; it decays. But even if everything from which the thought arose decays, the effect of the thought remains; the thought continues to work. Let us take the example of Michelangelo once more. His magnificent sculptures have had an uplifting effect on millions of people. But these paintings will one day crumble to dust, and there will be generations who will see nothing more of his creations. What lived in Michelangelo’s soul before his paintings took on an outward form—what was first a new creation in his soul—that lives on, that remains, and that will emerge and take shape in future stages of development. Do you know why clouds and stars appear before us today? Because in ancient times there were beings who conceived the idea of clouds and stars. Everything arises from thought-creations, and thought is a new creation. Everything has arisen from thought, and the greatest things in the world have emerged from the thoughts of the Deity.

[ 9 ] There you have the third. In the process of revelation, things alternate between evolution and involution. But hidden deep within this lies the third, which alone provides fullness—a creation that is a complete re-creation, one that has emerged from nothing. Three things thus belong together: creation out of nothing, and then, when this becomes manifest and unfolds in time, it takes on the forms of revelation: evolution and involution.

[ 10 ] This is what is meant when certain religious systems speak of the world being created out of nothing. And when people mock this today, it is because they do not understand what is written in these sacred texts. In the Manifest—to summarize once more—everything alternates between involution and evolution. Underlying this is a hidden creation out of nothing, which unites with this duality to form a trinity. The trinity is the union of the Divine with the Manifest.

[ 11 ] So you see how one can reflect on the number three; one must simply avoid speculating about it in a pedantic manner. One must seek the trinity behind the duality that can be encountered everywhere. Then one views the numerical symbol in the correct way, in the Pythagorean sense, when one seeks the three behind the two. For all dualities, the hidden third can be found. |

[ 12 ] We now come to the number four. Four is the symbol of the cosmos or of creation. You will understand why four is called the number of creation if you recall what was said earlier, namely, that our Earth—as far as we can trace it—is in its fourth incarnation. Everything we encounter on our Earth, including the fourth principle in human beings, presupposes that this creation is in the fourth stage of its planetary development. This is merely a specific example of all prominent creations. Every creation stands under the sign of the number four. In occultism, it is said: Humanity is currently in the mineral kingdom. — What does that mean? Today, human beings understand only the mineral kingdom, and they can master only this. They can build a house, construct a clock, and do other things by assembling mineral materials, because these things are subject to the laws of the mineral world. But he is not yet capable of anything else. For example, he cannot yet form a plant through his own thinking; to do so, he would have to be in the plant kingdom himself. That will be the case at a later time. Today, humanity is a creator in the mineral kingdom. This was preceded by three other kingdoms, known as the three elemental kingdoms; the mineral kingdom is the fourth. In all, there are seven such kingdoms of nature. Thus, humanity stands today in its fourth kingdom; there it attains its true outward consciousness. On the Moon, humanity still operated in the third elemental kingdom; on the Sun in the second; and on Saturn in the first. On Jupiter, humanity will be able to operate in the plant kingdom; it will be able to create plants just as it can make a clock today. Everything that appears visibly in creation bears the sign of the number four. There are many planets that you cannot see with the physical eye; those planets that are in the first, second, and third elemental kingdoms are invisible to the physical eye. Only when a planet enters the fourth kingdom, the mineral kingdom, can you see it. That is why four is the number of the cosmos or of creation. Only upon entering its fourth state does a being become fully visible to eyes that can perceive the external world.

[ 13 ] Five is the number of evil. We can best understand this by looking again at human beings. Human beings have evolved into a fourfold being, a creature of creation, but on Earth the fifth element—the Spirit-Self—is added to them. Had the human being remained merely a fourfold being, he would always have been directed toward the good from above, by the gods; he would never have developed independence. He has become free through receiving on Earth the seed of the fifth member, the Spirit-Self. Through this, he has gained the ability to do evil, but through this he has also become independent. No being that does not appear in the fivefold nature can do evil, and wherever we encounter an evil that can actually have a corrupting effect of its own accord, a fivefold nature is at work. This is the case everywhere, even out in the world. Human beings simply do not observe this, and today’s materialistic worldview has no concept that the world can be viewed in this way. We can see from an example how, wherever the Five confronts us, there arises justification for speaking of evil in some sense. How beneficial it would be if medicine were to make use of this and study the course of diseases according to how a disease develops from its onset until the fifth day, or how it progresses on individual days in the fifth hour after midnight or in the fifth week. For the number five always governs precisely where the physician can intervene most fruitfully. Before that, he can do little else but let nature take its course; but there he can intervene helpfully if he observes the law of the number five, because there the principle of the number five flows into the world of facts, which can justifiably be called harmful or evil. Thus, in many fields, we can show how the number five has great significance for external events.

[ 14 ] There are seven periods in a person’s life: the first is before birth, the second lasts until the teeth are replaced, the third until sexual maturity, the fourth for about seven to eight years thereafter, the fifth until about the age of thirty, and so on. Once people come to understand what factors are relevant to these periods and what is best to approach or avoid during the fifth period in particular, they will also know a great deal about how to prepare for a good old age. This is where the foundations for good or evil can be laid for the rest of one’s life. During the early periods, much can be achieved through education in accordance with these laws. But then a turning point occurs in the fifth period of human life that is decisive for the rest of one’s life. This turning point in the fifth period of human life must at least be passed before a person can, so to speak, be set loose into life with complete confidence. The prevailing principle today of sending people out into life very early is very bad. It is of great importance to observe such ancient occult principles. That is why, in the past, on the instructions of those who knew something of this, one had to complete the so-called apprenticeship and journeyman period before one could be called a master.

[ 15 ] Seven is the number of perfection. You can see this clearly in human beings themselves. As a creature, a human being is part of the number four, and as a being capable of being good or evil, they are part of the number five. When he has developed everything that is contained within him in embryonic form, then he will be a sevenfold being, perfect in his kind. The number seven reigns in the world of colors, in the rainbow; it reigns in the world of sounds, in the scale. Everywhere, in all areas of life, you can regard the number seven as a kind of number of perfection. There is neither superstition nor magic behind it.

[ 16 ] Now let us look back at the unit once more. By having considered other numbers as well, what needs to be said about the unit will appear in the proper light. The essential nature of the unit is its indivisibility. In reality, of course, one can also divide the unity again, for example into 1/3 and 2/3. But there is something very significant and important that you can grasp in your mind: In the spiritual world, the one-third remains part of the whole even if you take away two-thirds. God is a unified being. When something is divided off from God as a revelation, the whole remainder remains present as something that belongs to it. In the Pythagorean sense: Divide the unity, but never divide the unity in such a way that you do not have the remainder in your underlying thought.

[ 17 ] What does it actually mean to split the unity? Take, for example, a small gold plate and look through it; the world will appear green to you. This is because gold has the property of reflecting the yellow rays when white light falls on it. But where do the other colors go that are still contained in the white light? They enter the object and penetrate it. A red object is red because it reflects the red rays and absorbs the rest. You cannot extract the red from the white without the rest remaining. With this, we touch upon the edge of a great mystery of the world. You can look at things in a certain way. For example, when light falls on a red tablecloth spread over a table, we perceive the color red. The other colors contained in the sunlight are “absorbed”; the green color, for example, is absorbed by the tablecloth and not reflected. If we now make an effort to take in the color green into our consciousness at the same time as the color red, then we have restored unity. In the Pythagorean sense, we have divided the unity so that the remainder is preserved. If one practices this meditatively—always reconnecting what has been divided back into unity—it is a meaningful work through which one can rise high in one’s development. There is an expression for this in mathematics that is universally accepted in occult schools:

$$1 = (2 + x) - (1 + x)$$

[ 18 ] This is an occult formula intended to express how to divide the One, and how to represent the parts in such a way that they add up to the One again. The occultist should conceive of the division of the One in such a way that he always brings the parts back together to form the One again.

[ 19 ] Today, we have examined what is known as numerical symbolism and have seen that, when one contemplates the world from the perspective of numbers, one can penetrate deeply into the mysteries of the world. To supplement this, let me say once more: In the fifth week, on the fifth day, or in the fifth hour, it is important to be mindful that something may be missed or made up for. In the seventh week, on the seventh day, or in the seventh hour, or in a specific corresponding numerical ratio—for example, 3 1/2, because the number seven is also contained within it—something always happens through the nature of the matter itself; for example, a fever will take on a certain character on the seventh day of an illness, or even on the fourteenth day. There are always numerical ratios underlying these phenomena that indicate the structure of the world.

[ 20 ] Anyone who truly immerses themselves in what is referred to in the Pythagorean sense as “the study of numbers” will learn to understand life and the world through this symbolism of numbers. Today’s remarks are intended to give you a rough outline of this concept.