The Rudolf Steiner Archive

11. Occult Signs and Symbols IV

in relation to the astral and spiritual worlds

[ 1 ] The most significant of all symbols and allegories we possess—and one that has been recognized as such by occultists throughout history—is the human being itself. Humanity has been and always will be called a microcosm, a small world. And rightly so, for whoever comes to know humanity closely and intimately will become increasingly aware that within it, in a sort of miniature form, everything—absolutely everything—that is spread out in the rest of nature is contained. This may be difficult to understand at first, but if you think about it, you will grasp what is meant: all substances and forces are found in human beings as a kind of extract from the rest of nature. If you study any plant in terms of its essence and are able to investigate deeply enough, you will find that the human organism contains something of this very same essence, however small the measure may be. And if you take an animal from the outside world: you will always be able to identify something in the human organism that, in terms of its essence, appears to be something that has been incorporated into the human organism in a certain way.

[ 2 ] It is, of course, necessary to view the development of the world from an occult perspective in order to understand this properly. For example, the occultist knows that human beings would not have the kind of heart they have today if there were no lions out in nature. Let us imagine ourselves in an earlier time, when there were no lions yet. Humans already existed back then, for the human being is the oldest creature, but their hearts were shaped quite differently at that time. Now, there are connections everywhere in nature, though they are not always obvious. When, in ancient times, human beings developed their hearts into their present form, the lion came into being at the same time: the same forces shaped both. It is as if you were to extract the essence of the lion and, with divine artistry, fashion the human heart from it. Perhaps you think that the human heart has nothing lion-like about it, but for the occultist, this is indeed the case. You must not forget that when a thing is placed within a context, within an organism, it acts quite differently than when it is free. One can also say the reverse: If you could extract the essence of the heart and now wanted to shape a being that corresponded to this heart, if it were not determined by the forces of the organism, then you would have the lion. All the qualities of courage, boldness, or, as the occultist says, the “royal” qualities of the human being stem from the connection with the lion, and Plato, who was an initiate, placed the royal soul in the heart.

[ 3 ] Paracelsus used a very beautiful analogy to describe this connection between humans and nature. He says: It is as if the individual beings in nature were letters, but humans were the word composed of these letters. — Outside, the great world: the macrocosm; within us, the small world: the microcosm. Outside, each exists on its own; within the human being, it is determined by the harmony in which it is placed alongside the other organs. And precisely for this reason, we can illustrate in the human being the development of our entire universe, insofar as it belongs to us.

[ 4 ] You can see an illustration of this development of humanity in relation to the world to which it belongs in the seals that were hung in the ballroom during the congress in Munich. Let’s see what they depict!

[ 5 ] The first shows a man dressed in white, his feet like metal, like molten bronze; a flaming sword protrudes from his mouth; his right hand is surrounded by the symbols of our planet: Saturn, the Sun, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, and Venus. Anyone familiar with the Apocalypse of John will recall that a fairly similar description of this image can be found there, for John was an initiate. This seal, one might say, represents the idea of all humanity. We will understand this if we recall certain mental images already known to the elders here.

[ 6 ] If we look back at human evolution, we arrive at a time when human beings were still at a very primitive stage. For example, they did not yet have what you carry on your shoulders today: the head. It would sound quite grotesque to describe the humans of that time. The head, in fact, has developed only gradually and will continue to develop. There are organs in humans today that have, so to speak, reached their final stage; they will no longer be present in the human body in the future. Others will undergo transformation, such as our larynx, which has a tremendous future ahead of it—though, of course, in connection with our heart. Today, the human larynx is only at the beginning of its development; it will one day be the reproductive organ transformed into the spiritual. You will gain a mental image of this mystery when you realize what humans accomplish today with their larynx. As I speak here, you hear my words. Because this hall is filled with air and certain vibrations are produced in this air, my words are transmitted to your ear, to your soul. When I utter a word, for example “world,” waves of air vibrate—these are the embodiments of my words. What human beings produce in this way today is called production in the mineral kingdom. The movements of the air are mineral movements; through the larynx, the human being acts mineralically upon his surroundings. But the human being will ascend and one day act vegetatively; he will then evoke not only mineral but also vegetative vibrations. He will speak plants. The next stage will then be that he speaks sentient beings; and at the highest stage of development, he will evoke his own kind through his larynx. Just as he can now only express the contents of his soul through the word, he will then express himself. And just as human beings will speak beings in the future, so were the predecessors of humanity, the gods, endowed with an organ with which they spoke forth all things that exist today. They spoke forth all human beings, all animals, and everything else. They are all spoken words of the gods in the literal sense.

[ 7 ] “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God!” This is not a philosophical statement in the speculative sense—John has presented a fundamental truth that must be taken quite literally.

[ 8 ] And in the end, the Word will be, and creation is a realization of the Word; and what humanity will bring forth in the future will be a realization of what is the Word today. But then humanity will no longer have the physical form it has today; it will have progressed to the form that existed on Saturn, to the state of fire-matter. Thus the creative power at the beginning of world evolution is linked to our own creative power at the end of world evolution.

[ 9 ] The being who spoke into the world everything that is in it today is the great model for humanity. It spoke into the world Saturn, the Sun, the Moon, the Earth—in its two halves, Mars and Mercury—Jupiter, and Venus. This is what the seven stars signify; they are a sign of the heights to which human beings can develop. In the end, the planet will be in the fire element again; and human beings will be able to speak creatively within this fire element: this is the fiery sword protruding from their mouth. Everything will be fiery, hence the feet of molten metal. The meaning of evolution is depicted in this sign in a wonderfully moving way.

[ 10 ] If you compare modern humans with animals, the difference is such that one must say: As an individual, the human being possesses within himself what the individual animal does not. The human being has an individual soul; the animal has a group soul. The individual human being is, in himself, an entire animal species. All lions, for example, together have only one soul. These group-I’s are just like the human I, only they have not descended into the physical world; they are found only in the astral world. Here on Earth, you see physical human beings, each of whom carries their own I. In the astral world, you encounter beings in astral matter just like yourself, only not in a physical but in an astral form. You can speak with them as with your equals—these are the animal group souls.

[ 11 ] Humans, too, had a group soul in earlier times; only gradually did they develop into the independent beings they are today. These group souls were originally in the astral world and then descended to dwell in the flesh. If one now examines the original group souls of humanity in the astral world, one finds four species from which humanity originated. If one were to compare these four types with the group souls belonging to today’s animal species, one would have to say: One of these four species can be compared to the lion, another to the eagle, a third to the cow, and the fourth to the human of prehistoric times, before his ego descended. Thus, in the second image of the apocalyptic animals—the lion, the eagle, the cow, and the human—an earlier stage of human development is presented to us. But then there is, and there will be as long as the Earth exists, a group soul for the higher revelation of humanity, represented by the Lamb, by the mystical Lamb, the sign of the Redeemer. This grouping of the five group souls—the four of humanity surrounding the great group soul that still belongs communally to all humanity—is what the second image depicts.

[ 12 ] If we trace human evolution far, far back—so far that we must go back many millions of years—we encounter something else entirely. Today, human beings exist physically on Earth; but there was a time when what walked the Earth here could not yet have housed a human soul. At that time, this soul was on the astral plane. And going further back, we come to a time when it was on the spiritual plane, in Devachan. In the future, it will ascend again to this high level once it has purified itself on Earth. From the spiritual through the astral and the physical and back up to the spiritual: this is the long evolution of humanity. And yet it seems like a brief period when we compare it to the time of evolution that humanity underwent on Saturn and the other planets. There, humanity went through not only physical transformations, but also spiritual, astral, and physical ones. And if one wishes to trace these, one must ascend into the spiritual worlds. There one hears the music of the spheres, sounds that flood through space in this spiritual world. And when humanity once again immerses itself in this spiritual world, this harmony of the spheres will resound to meet them. In occult circles, these are called the trumpet tones of the angels. Hence the trumpets in the third image. Revelations come from the spiritual world, but they are revealed to him only as he progresses further and further. Then that book with the seven seals will be revealed to him. These seals are precisely what we are contemplating here; they will be unraveled. Hence the book in the center and, below, the four phases of humanity; for the four horses are nothing other than the stages of humanity’s development through the ages.

[ 13 ] But there is an even higher stage of development. Humanity originates from even higher worlds, and it will ascend once more to these higher worlds. And its form, as humanity possesses it today, will then have vanished into the world. What exists out there in the world today—the individual letters of which humanity is composed—all of that it will then have taken up again: its form will have identified itself with the form of the world. In a certain trivial interpretation of theosophy, it is taught and spoken of that one should seek God within oneself. But whoever wishes to find God must seek Him in the works spread out throughout the universe. Nothing in the world is merely matter—that is only an illusion—; in reality, all matter is an expression of spirituality, a manifestation of God’s activity. And humanity will, as it were, expand its being in the course of coming times; more and more it will identify with the world, so that one can represent it by substituting the form of the cosmos for the human form. You see this on the fourth seal with the rock, the sea, and the columns. That which today traverses the world as clouds will yield its matter to shape the human body. The forces that are today with the spirits of the sun will in the future provide humanity with that which will develop its spiritual powers in an infinitely higher way. It is this solar power toward which humanity strives. In contrast to the plant, which lowers its head—the root—toward the center of the Earth, he turns his head toward the Sun; and he will unite it with the Sun and receive higher powers. You have depicted this in the sun-face resting upon the body of clouds, upon the rock, and the columns. Man will then have become self-creative; and as the symbol of perfect creation, the colorful rainbow surrounds man. You can also find a similar symbol in the Apocalypse of John. In the midst of the clouds there is a book. The Apocalypse says that the initiate must devour this book. This points to the time when humanity will not only receive wisdom externally, but will be permeated by it just as we are today by food, when humanity itself will be an embodiment of wisdom.

[ 14 ] Then the time will come when great changes take place in the cosmos. When humanity has harnessed the power of the sun, that stage of development will begin in which the sun will be reunited with the Earth. Humans will become beings of the sun. Through the power of the sun, humanity will give birth to a sun. Hence [on the fifth seal] the woman who gives birth to the sun. Then humanity will have reached such a level of moral and ethical development that all the corrupting forces lying dormant in lower human nature will have been overcome. This is represented by the beast with seven heads and ten horns. At the feet of the Sun Woman lies the Moon, which contains all those evil substances that the Earth could not use and had not expelled. All the magical forces that the Moon still exerts on the Earth today will then be overcome. When humanity is united with the Sun, it will have overcome the Moon.

[ 15 ] Then [in the sixth seal], we are shown how the human being who has thus ascended to a high degree of spiritualization is like the figure of Michael; how he keeps that which is evil in the world bound in the symbol of the dragon.

[ 16 ] We have seen, in a certain sense, that the beginning and the end of human development are marked by the same states of transformation. We saw these states depicted in the man with feet of molten fire and a sword protruding from his mouth. In profound symbolism, the entire being of the world is now revealed to us in the symbol of the Holy Grail. With a few brief words, I would like to present this seventh seal to your soul.

[ 17 ] Anyone who comes to know our world as an occultist knows that space is something quite different for the physical world than mere emptiness. Space is the source from which all beings have, as it were, physically crystallized. Imagine a cube-shaped glass vessel, completely transparent, filled with water. And now imagine that certain cooling currents are passed through this water, so that ice forms in the most manifold ways. In this way you can gain a mental image of the creation of the world: “space”; spoken into space, the divine word of creation; crystallized out of it, all things and beings.

[ 18 ] The occultist represents this space, into which the divine word of creation is spoken, as a crystal-clear cube. Various beings develop within this space. Those closest to us can best be characterized as follows: the cube has three mutually perpendicular directions, three axes—length, height, width—and the cube represents the three dimensions of space. Now imagine adding to these three dimensions, as they exist out there in the physical world, the counter-dimensions. You can get a mental image of it roughly like this: one person walks in one direction and another comes toward them, and the two collide. In a similar way, there is a counter-dimension for every spatial dimension, so that we have six rays in total. These counter-rays simultaneously represent the primordial seeds of the highest members of the human being. The physical body, crystallized out of space, is the lowest. The spiritual, the highest, is the opposite; it is represented by the counter-dimensions. Here, in the course of development, these counter-dimensions first take shape as a being that can best be depicted by allowing them to converge into the world of passions, desires, and instincts. That is what it is at first. Later, it becomes something else. It purifies itself more and more—we have seen to what height—but it originated from the lower instincts, which are symbolized by the serpent. This process is symbolized by the convergence of the counter-dimensions into two serpents facing each other.

[ 19 ] As humanity purifies itself, it ascends to what is called the “world spiral.” The purified body of the serpent, this world spiral, has a profound meaning. You can get an idea of this from the following example: Modern astronomy is based on two of Copernicus’s propositions; it has disregarded a third. He said that the Sun also moves. The Sun advances, and does so in a helical path, so that the Earth moves with the Sun in a complex curve. The same applies to the Moon, which moves around the Earth. These movements are far more complex than is assumed in elementary astronomy. Here you see how the spiral has its significance in the celestial bodies; and these celestial bodies represent a form with which humanity will one day identify. In that time, the human power of procreation will be purified and refined; the larynx will then be the reproductive organ. What the human being will have developed as a purified serpent’s body will then no longer act from below upward, but from above downward. The transformed larynx within us will become the chalice known as the Holy Grail. And just as the one is purified, so too will the other be purified—that which connects with this creative organ: it will be an essence of the world-force, the great world-essence. And this world-spirit in its essence is represented by the image of the dove facing the Holy Grail. Here it is the symbol of spiritualized fertilization, which will work from the cosmos once humanity has identified with the cosmos. The entire creative power of this process is represented by the rainbow: this is the all-encompassing seal of the Holy Grail.

[ 20 ] The whole conveys the meaning of the connection between the world and humanity in a wonderful way, as if summarizing the meaning of the other seals. That is why the mystery of the world is inscribed on the outer edge of the seal here as well. This mystery of the world depicts how humanity was born in the beginning out of the primordial forces of the world. Every human being, when looking back, went through that process at the beginning of time which they undergo spiritually today when they are reborn out of the forces of consciousness. This is expressed by Rosicrucianism [with the letters] E.D.N.: I am born of God.

[ 21 ] We have seen that within Revelation a second element is introduced: death alongside life. But in order for humanity to rediscover life within this death, it must overcome this death of the senses at the primal source of all living things. And this primal source is the center of all cosmic development; for we had to encounter death in order to attain our consciousness. But we will overcome it when we find the meaning of this death in the mystery of the Redeemer. Just as we are born of God, we die in the sense of esoteric wisdom in Christ: I.C.M.

[ 22 ] And because wherever something is revealed, a duality emerges that must be united by a third element, once humanity has overcome death, it will identify itself with the Spirit that permeates the world (the dove). He will rise again and live once more in the Spirit: P.S.S.R.

[ 23 ] This is the Theosophical Rosicrucian symbol. It shines a light on those times when religion and science will be reconciled.

[ 24 ] You can see, then, how the entire world is represented in such seals, and because the world has been imbued into them by magicians and initiates, they possess a tremendous power. You can return to these seals time and again; you will find, time and again, that they can unlock infinite wisdom through meditation. They have a tremendous influence on the human soul because they are drawn from the mysteries of the world. Hang them in a room where such things are discussed, as we are speaking here today, where one rises to the sacred mysteries of the world; there they have a highly invigorating and enlightening effect, even if people are sometimes unaware of it. But precisely because they have this significance, they are not suited to be profaned. And as strange as it may seem: if they hang all around a room where nothing spiritual is spoken, where trivial words are spoken, they also have an effect—but one that makes the physical organism sick. As trivial as it may sound: they disrupt digestion. What is born of the spiritual belongs to the spiritual and must not be profaned; this is evident from its very effect. Symbols of spiritual things belong where spiritual things take place and come into effect.