The Rudolf Steiner Archive

14. Forms and Numbers in their Spiritual Significance

[ 1 ] What can be presented here are essentially only examples drawn from the vast array of occult symbols and signs. The aim is not so much to provide a comprehensive treatise explaining this or that occult sign, but rather to explore the meaning of occult signs in general and their relationship to the astral and spiritual worlds. If such signs were nothing more than a kind of schematic illustration, then their purpose and significance would truly be of little consequence, and some might believe that they are merely a kind of symbolization of certain facts of the higher worlds. But that is not the case. Those symbols and signs borrowed from the occult worldview have great significance for human development and perfection; indeed, one may say that occult signs and seals, if we understand them in the broadest sense of the word, have played a major role in the education and development of all humanity. You need only be aware that the thoughts, feelings, and mental images that a person conceives are a real force that acts upon the human being in a transforming, shaping, and metamorphosing way.

[ 2 ] We need only bring to mind the fact that the physical and etheric aspects of the human being, as he stands before us today, are condensations of the astral. Before becoming an etheric and physical being, the human being was merely an astral being. In truth, all the denser substances—that is, the etheric substance and the physical substance—separate from the astral substance, just as ice separates from water. Just as water condenses and becomes ice, so the astral substance condenses into etheric and then into physical substance. In the time when human beings were still such beings as you are today when you sleep—when you are outside your physical and etheric bodies—the forces that formed their astral substance were pure powers of sensation and imagination. The astral substance, after all, acts quite differently from the etheric or the physical. The astral substance is in constant motion. Every passion, every instinct, every desire immediately manifests itself in the astral substance, so that in the next moment it takes on a completely different form when it is the expression of another passion. Today, the mental no longer acts so easily upon the dense physical human body. Nevertheless, even today the mental and the emotional have their effect on the physical human body. You need only consider that when a person is startled or afraid of something, they turn pale. This means nothing other than that their entire blood mass performs different movements within the body than in a normal state. It pushes the blood mass from the outside in. Or take blushing caused by a sense of shame; there, the blood is driven from the inside toward the periphery, outward. These are only minor effects that the soul still has on the body today. But if you consider long periods of time, you will find much more significant effects of the soul and the mind on the body. If you could trace human forms over millennia, you would see that the figure, the entire physiognomy, everything about the human being changes. This happens in such a way that the soul and spiritual processes are there first. Human beings have certain mental images, and depending on how they form these mental images, their physical form and physiognomy take shape over the course of millennia, even if this is not immediately apparent from an external biological perspective. Everything takes shape from the inside out. Our external, materialistic science is still far from understanding how these effects relate to one another over the course of millennia. But they are there.

[ 3 ] To understand how these connections work, let us recall the first appearance of the Gothic architectural style, when certain processes in human development were expressed for the first time in Gothic architectural forms. Those people who devoted themselves to prayer in spaces built in the Gothic style experienced the thoughts that served as the inspiration for Gothic architecture. These thoughts, active within the souls of people, shaped the souls and the inner forces of the human being right down to the etheric body; they transformed the forces of the human being. And centuries later, as a consequence of these impressions received by the senses and the mental images formed from these sensory impressions, that mystical movement emerged which we find in Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, and others. In what they conceived, we see the aftereffects of what their ancestors had received as impressions through Gothic architecture. And those higher individualities who lead humanity in its development consciously guide this course of human evolution. They consciously look ahead into the centuries and millennia, and at a specific time, humanity is given what is meant to develop this or that quality. Thus we see how, over the course of a few centuries, through the contemplation of the external forms of the Gothic architectural style—the pointed arch style—that heaven-striving mysticism finds expression in Meister Eckhart, Tauler, and so on. If we were to consider millennia instead of centuries, we would see how even human body forms are shaped according to the thoughts, feelings, and mental images that people had millennia ago; and the great leaders of humanity give people the right mental images at the right time in their development, so that even the human form may be transformed.

[ 4 ] Let us now transport ourselves to the time of the transition from the Atlantean to the post-Atlantean era. We know that our ancestors—indeed, our very souls in other bodies—lived in ancient Atlantis. In the final days of Atlantis, this continent—particularly its northern regions—was largely shrouded in masses of fog, and everything living on the earth on this continent was enveloped in thick fog. And if we go back even further, we encounter times when there were not only masses of fog, but also masses of water cascading down where our atmosphere is today. The first Atlantean human was even more of a water being. Only gradually during the Atlantean era did he transform into an air being. At that time, the human had a completely different distribution of his etheric and physical bodies. Today, the etheric body and the physical body are distributed in such a way that in their upper parts they are almost equal in form and size. This is by no means the case with other beings. If you were to look at the etheric body of a horse, you would see the horse’s etheric head shining out far above the physical head. In humans, too, the etheric body of the head used to extend far beyond the physical head, and it was only toward the end of the Atlantean era that the two parts merged. A point that today lies within the head used to be outside the head and only gradually moved inward. These two points drew closer and closer together, and in the last third of the Atlantean epoch they merged. That was the time when the Proto-Semitic race migrated down from the northeast of Atlantis, from the region of present-day Ireland. At that time, human beings acquired the ability through which the two points converged and came into alignment. Because the etheric body of their head was outside, the Atlantean human possessed a kind of hazy clairvoyance. The Atlantean human could not calculate or count, nor could they develop any kind of logical thinking. That is only a result of the post-Atlantean era. But they possessed a kind of primal clairvoyance, because the etheric part of their head was much more outside the head than inside it. At that time, when this etheric part of the head was outside the physical head, the thoughts and feelings of the astral body also had a much greater influence on this part of the etheric body and thus on the formation of the physical body. That which first lived in the astral body as feelings, sensations, and thought-images continued as a process of movement into the etheric body and shaped the physical body into its present form.

[ 5 ] Where, then, do the current length, width, and height of the physical body actually come from? They are a result of what was first present in the astral body and the etheric body. First there were thoughts, images, sensations, and so on. You will be able to understand this better if you recall the process that occurs immediately after physical death; there the physical body is first left by the etheric body and then by the astral body. During sleep, only the ego and the astral body depart, while the etheric body and the physical body remain in bed. Death differs from sleep in that the etheric body also departs with the astral body and the I. A peculiar phenomenon then occurs, something that could be described as a sensation, but one that is linked to a certain mental image. The human being feels as if he were growing, as if he were expanding in all directions; he takes on dimensions in all directions. This enlargement of the etheric body, which he undergoes immediately after death, this perception of the etheric body in great dimensions, is a very important mental image. In the ancient Atlantean human, this mental image had to be awakened when the etheric body was not yet as closely connected to the physical body as it is today. By awakening it, by presenting to the human being that greatness which they now experience when they grow after death, the cause—the thought-form—was formed to shape the physical body into the form it has today. By presenting these forms and dimensions to human beings at that time—when the physical body and the etheric body were still more separate—this stimulated the physical body to assume the form it has today. And these forms were inspired by those who are the guides of human evolution. Traces of precise details about this are contained in the various flood myths, especially in the biblical flood myth. If you imagine human beings surrounded by the forms that their etheric bodies must have so that the form of the physical body is formed correctly, then you have the size of Noah’s Ark. Why does the Bible specify the dimensions of Noah’s Ark as 50 cubits wide, 30 cubits high, and 300 cubits long? Because this is the ratio of dimensions that a human must have around them during the transition from the Atlantean to the post-Atlantean era, so that they form the correct thought-form, which is the cause of the post-Atlantean human’s body being formed correctly in length, height, and width. In Noah’s Ark you have a symbol of the proportions of your present-day body. These dimensions are the effects of those thought-forms that Noah experienced, and which he had incorporated into the Ark in such a way that, by beholding them, the world of thought arose according to which the organism of the post-Atlantean human being was to be built. Humanity was educated through effective symbols. Today, you carry within you, in the dimensions of your physical body, the dimensions of Noah’s Ark. When a person stretches their hands upward, the dimensions of Noah’s Ark provide the measurements for the human body of today.

[ 6 ] Thus did humanity pass from the Atlantean era into the post-Atlantean era. In the era that will succeed our own, the sixth cultural epoch, the human body will once again take on a completely different form. Even today, humanity must experience those thought-forms that can provide the causes for the human body to attain the correct proportions in the next cultural epoch; this must be demonstrated to humanity. Today, the human being is formed according to the proportions of 50 : 30 : 300. In the future, he will be formed quite differently. How, then, is the thought-form given to humanity today through which the future form of humanity in the next race will be shaped? It has already been said that this is found in the proportions of Solomon’s Temple. In the proportions of Solomon’s Temple, the entire organization of the human form—as it will be in the next, the sixth race—is depicted in profound symbolism.

[ 7 ] All the forces at work within humanity arise from within, not from without. What exists as thought and feeling in one era takes on external form in the next. And the individualities that guide human development must implant within humanity, many millennia in advance, the thought-forms that are later to become external physical reality. Therein lies the function of thought-forms, which are inspired by such symbolic images as Noah’s Ark, the Temple of Solomon, and even the four apocalyptic figures: man, lion, bull, and eagle. They have a very real significance. With this, we have discussed at some length the images that guide human beings when they surrender to them. It was also images that we cited yesterday in the four figures of the human, the lion, the bull, and the eagle; and it is images that we are speaking of today. The images lead human beings to participate in the world that immediately adjoins their own.

[ 8 ] When we ascend to an even higher world, we are no longer dealing with mere images, but with the inner relationships of things—with what is referred to as the “sound of the spheres,” “music of the spheres,” or the “world of tones.” As we traverse the astral plane, we essentially encounter a world of images that are the archetypes of the things here. The higher we ascend, the more we enter a world of sounds and tones, though you must not imagine that the world of tones is a world of sound in the external sense. You do not hear the Devachan world with the external ear. You cannot compare the essence of the resounding spiritual world with our physical sounds, which are merely an external manifestation of the Devachanic world of sound. The spiritual sounds are substances of the Devachan world, the spiritual world that begins where the world of images merges into the world of sounds. These worlds are thoroughly intertwined. Here, surrounding the physical world, lie both the astral and the Devachanic worlds; one permeates the other. It is like bringing a person born blind into this well-lit room; colors and burning candles surround him, but he cannot perceive them; only when he regains his sight through a successful operation can he perceive what was already around him before. In the same way, the astral and spiritual worlds around us are only perceived when the senses are opened to them; then it is also perceived that these worlds do not border one another, but interpenetrate each other. One can perceive everything that is in one world in the other worlds.

[ 9 ] What spiritual music is in the Devachan world is reflected in the astral world and expressed through numbers and figures. What is called Pythagorean celestial music is usually regarded by abstract philosophers as a metaphor. But it is a true, genuine reality. The sound of the spheres is there, and those who train their hearing—the term is not entirely accurate, but we must use it—to perceive in the higher worlds perceive not only the images and colors of the astral world, but also the sounds and harmonies of the spiritual world. Just as the things around us on the physical plane are manifestations of the astral world, so too are they manifestations of the spiritual world, which express themselves in the physical through the mediation of the astral. The spiritual world expresses itself in all our physical things, and the more uplifting and meaningful the sensory things are, the clearer, more beautiful, and more magnificent they also appear as expressions of the spiritual world. When we take an insignificant thing from our physical plane, it is usually very difficult to trace it back to its spiritual archetype. In contrast, the spiritual archetypes reveal themselves with great beauty when we look at more significant, uplifting things in the physical world. For example, the interaction of the planets in our solar system is an expression of the spiritual world. What exists in our solar system in the most diverse ways can be traced back, for those who can perceive these things, to what is called spherical harmony. The movements of our planets are such that those who are able to perceive them in the spiritual world “hear” the mutual relationships of the movements of our planets. For example—viewed from the perspective of higher worlds—Saturn moves 2 1/2 times as fast as Jupiter. This movement of Saturn is perceived in the spiritual world as a correspondingly higher tone, “with the ear of the spirit,” as Goethe puts it.

[ 10 ] Let us consider the relative speeds of the planets in our solar system. If you compare the speed of Saturn’s motion to that of Jupiter, Saturn moves 2 1/2 times as fast as Jupiter, that is, in a ratio of 2 1/2:1, and the speed of Jupiter’s motion relative to Mars is 5:1. To the spiritual ear, therefore, Jupiter’s motion appears as a much higher tone compared to Mars’s motion. If you consider the speed of the movements of the Sun, Mercury, and Venus, which is approximately the same, this stands in a ratio of 2:1 to the movement of Mars; it is therefore exactly twice as great. If you consider the movement of the Sun, Mercury, and Venus in relation to the Moon, this ratio is 12:1; the speed is therefore twelve times as great. For those who view the movement of all the stars visible to us from a spiritual perspective in relation to their background, the starry sky advances by one degree in a century. And the speed of Saturn’s movement relative to the starry sky is in the ratio of 1200 to 1.

[ 11 ] So we have

Saturn: Jupiter = 2½ : 1
Jupiter : Mars = 5 : 1
Sun, Mercury, Venus: Mars = 2 : 1
Sun, Mercury, Venus: Moon = 12 : 1
Saturn: Starry Sky = 1200 : 1

[ 12 ] In spiritual perception, these ratios are expressed through sounds that are audible to spiritual ears in the spiritual world. These are the real foundations of what is called “sphere music.” These numbers actually indicate harmonies that truly exist in the spiritual world. You see, just as the clairvoyant sees images and colors in the astral world, so the clairaudient hears the spiritual harmonies of things in the spiritual or Devachan world. For those whose spiritual ear is trained for this, everything that manifests here in the physical world gives rise to sounds as a spiritual background. Thus, for the occultist, the four elements—earth, water, air, and fire—produce various tonal relationships that are entirely beyond the perception of the ordinary person. The initiates have reproduced in the physical world tonal relationships that they could hear from the spiritual background of earth, water, air, and fire. And the result of these sound vibrations has been captured in the original tuning of a musical instrument, the lyre. In the lyre, the vibrational ratio of its strings corresponds to the tones that the initiates knew for the four elements. It corresponded

the bass string of the earth
the D string of water
the A string of air
the G string of fire.

[ 13 ] We could explore many things if we could go back to times long past, and we would then see how much of what today seems self-evident to people in matters of culture has developed from observations in the spiritual world. The physical tones of the lyre are modeled on what first existed spiritually as the relationship of the four elements to one another.

[ 14 ] Underlying this is the profound idea that everything that happens within the human being—the microcosm—should mirror what exists in the macrocosm. When everything in the microcosm resonates with the spiritual events of the macrocosm, then the world and humanity are in harmony; and because there is no disharmony, humanity can truly connect with the development of the world and feel at one with it. But if a person steps out of this harmony, if they do not attune themselves to the sounds of the world, then their outer condition also becomes disharmonious, and it becomes impossible for them to continue moving with the course of the world.

[ 15 ] All of this is intended to give us a mental image of how the symbols—which are real facts in the higher worlds—were created from those higher worlds. Many of the elements of our culture are symbols—symbols to be realized—through which it is ensured that human beings can be prepared to develop on the physical plane in the future what today exists only on the higher planes. It is the course of evolution that everything which is today in the higher worlds descends into the physical world. Since human beings are called upon to co-create the outer world themselves, they must descend with their thoughts into the physical world. They shape the world around them; they also shape what is within their own physicality. It is precisely through Theosophy that human beings must develop a sense that everything they do, feel, and think in one time continues to have an effect into another time, into the future. When human beings build temples, works of beauty, or when they create works of statecraft for human social life, these are all things that have significance for the future. What human beings build today with the help of natural forces shapes the natural products of the future. When human beings build a Gothic cathedral, for example, they construct it according to mineral laws. It is true that the substance, the materiality, the bricks and stones from which the cathedral is composed, will decay. But the fact that the form once existed is not without meaning. The form that was imprinted upon matter by human beings remains; it is incorporated into the etheric and astral bodies of the Earth and continues to develop as a force alongside the Earth. And when the Earth has passed through its present stage of development and the Pralaya and reappears as Jupiter, then this form will grow out of the Earth as a kind of plant being. We do not build works of art and beauty today, nor do we shape works of wisdom on our Earth in vain. We shape them so that they may later blossom as natural products of the Earth. And just as we build domes and houses today whose forms are enduring, which connect with the Earth and will emerge again in the future as a kind of plant, so too have our present-day plants and crystals been shaped according to what the gods and spirits of the past world had built for us. Everything that humanity incorporates into the Earth from the perspective of knowledge, wisdom, and beauty and true social life; everything it projects into the outer world as symbols—even if it forms them only in thought—becomes a great, joyful, progressive force for the Earth’s further development; these will be the real forces and forms of the future. Our machines and our factories, however—everything we do solely to serve external utility, the principle of utility—will be a harmful element in the next incarnation of our Earth. When we imprint symbols on matter that are expressions of higher worlds, they will have a progressive effect; our machines and factories, on the other hand, which serve only external utility, will become a kind of demonic, destructive force in the next incarnation of our Earth. We thus shape for ourselves our own good forces as well as the demonic powers for the next age of humanity.

[ 16 ] Today, in the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch, we are most deeply immersed in matter and are creating the most terrible demonic forces for the next epoch. Where we transform ancient sacred things into physical-mechanical objects, we are working our way down below the physical plane. The underworld will be what humanity shapes in this way. One must be clear that the evil forces must also be incorporated into the Earth’s evolution. In the time when they must be overcome, humanity will have to exert a tremendous force to transform the evil and the demonic back into the good. But his strength will grow through this, for evil exists to steel the strength of humanity through its overcoming. All evil must in turn be remolded into good, and it is precisely in the plan of Providence to develop strong, energetic forces within humanity—far greater than if humanity had never had to transform evil into good.

[ 17 ] Everything we conceive in the physical world with our minds has a spiritual background, and we can see these things in the spiritual world. I would now like to give an example of how something conceived on the physical plane is expressed as a figure in the spiritual realm: the caduceus, the staff of Mercury.

[ 18 ] The consciousness we possess today is what is known as clear waking consciousness, in which we perceive through the senses and synthesize through the intellect. This waking consciousness has only recently developed to its present level. It was preceded by a different kind of consciousness, a dreamlike, pictorial consciousness. At the beginning of the Atlantean epoch, human beings still perceived the world and its spiritual and soul beings clairvoyantly in astral and etheric images. Today’s dream is still a last remnant of this atavistic pictorial consciousness. Let us note this down. First, we have clear waking consciousness. This was preceded by the consciousness that today only plants possess, which we might call sleep consciousness in humans. Then there is an even more dulled state, such as that found today in our physical minerals; we can call it a deep trance consciousness. (During this explanation, the following was written on the board, from bottom to top: waking consciousness, pictorial consciousness, sleep consciousness, deep trance consciousness. See drawing on the next page.) We can connect these four types of consciousness with a line (a straight line is drawn from top to bottom). However, human beings do not develop in this way. If human beings were to develop along the path of this straight line, they would start from a deep trance consciousness, then descend to sleep consciousness, then to image consciousness, and finally to today’s waking consciousness. But it is not made that simple for human beings; rather, they must pass through various transitional stages. Human beings had a deep trance consciousness during their first Earth incarnation that we can trace, on Saturn; there they developed this consciousness to varying degrees. We depict this here by allowing consciousness to develop along this line. Humanity branches off from the straight line and reconnects with it on the Sun, where it experiences sleep consciousness, then continues as this spiral line shows, to reach image consciousness on the Moon. And today, after various transformations, human beings stand on the level of bright daytime consciousness. Human beings now retain this bright daytime consciousness for all time to come and consciously acquire those states of consciousness that they had in a dull form on earlier stages. Thus, on Earth’s Jupiter stage, they regain pictorial consciousness; this will enable them to perceive the spiritual world around them once more. However, this development occurs in such a way that their clear waking consciousness is not weakened or dulled, but rather that on Jupiter they will have pictorial consciousness in addition to their waking consciousness. One could say: Daytime consciousness brightens into pictorial consciousness (see diagram: dotted line). Then, on Earth’s Venusian stage, he regains the sleep consciousness he had on the Sun; this will enable him to look deeply into the beings, as only the initiate can do today. The initiate follows the straight path; he develops in a straight line, whereas the normal development of the human being proceeds in twists and turns. And as he ascends, the human being then regains the first consciousness on the volcano—trance consciousness—while retaining all the other states of consciousness. Thus, the human being undergoes a development in a descending and an ascending line. You can see this line recurring again and again. This path of descent and ascent is a real, existing line that has found its expression in the caduceus, in the staff of Mercury.

[ 19 ] [The following section is only partially preserved in all the transcripts.] Thus we see how the symbols we receive in this way are deeply rooted in the very essence of world events. And a line such as the caduceus also has an educational significance for human beings when they devote themselves to this figure in meditation. No one can commit this figure to memory without it exerting a profound inner educational effect upon them. The seer has drawn this line from the spiritual worlds to bestow upon human beings something that makes them future seers. What one must develop while meditating on this line are certain sensations. At first you sense a dull darkness. You gaze into the darkness; little by little it begins to lighten and takes on a violet hue, then indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, red, and now back again, with a certain reflection of the development taking place, until you have risen once more to violet. As you follow this shaded line, your sensations will shift from the qualitative aspects of the color nuances to moral sensations. If you do not merely perceive this line as a chalk or pencil line, but, by looking into the black, try to place the gloomy before your soul, create a mental image of the self-sacrificing at the violet, and so on continuously through the other colors—blue, green, yellow, orange, and then, with the red, summon the joyful before your soul—then your soul will pass through a whole scale of sensations that are first color sensations and then become moral sensations. Because the form of the Mercury staff is reflected in the soul as sensations, something is structured within it that enables the soul to develop the higher organs. Through the real symbol, it is transformed in such a way that it can take in the higher organs.

[ 20 ] Just as the influence of external light once conjured up the eyes from indifferent organs, so too does devotion to the symbols of the spiritual world conjure up the organs for the spiritual world. It is quite impossible to say: I cannot yet see what is to come into being. — That would be just as if a person who had no eyes yet had said: I do not want the light to act upon me. — We must first be taught what can lead to the development of the inner organs; then we can perceive the mysteries of the spiritual world around us.