The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourth Lecture

[ 1 ] Yesterday we spoke of all the various spiritual beings that, as it were, complement what surrounds us in the physical world. We have seen how even stones and plants have their own “I,” their astral body, and our spiritual vision has expanded to encompass a wealth of realities beyond those visible to the physical eye and comprehensible to the physical mind. We have also seen how higher beings are, so to speak, active in what human beings accomplish within the course of Earth’s evolution; even with regard to the individual human being, we saw that a higher class of beings must intervene. In the spirit of spiritual science, we regard the individual human being, at first, as the complete master of his inner world and the world of his deeds and his will, between his physical birth and his death. We know, however, that the actual inner essence of the human being has undergone many incarnations, and that in his present normal development, the human being is not yet capable of exerting an influence beyond a single incarnation; rather, higher beings must intervene to provide those guiding forces that act not only between birth and death but beyond death, from incarnation to incarnation. We have seen that these spiritual beings are called angels or angeloi in Christian esotericism, and that in theosophical terminology they are also referred to as the spirits of twilight or dusk; they may also be called the Sons of Life in the sense of Rosicrucian spiritual science—all these designations will become increasingly clear to us over time. Then we considered how human communities—such as races and peoples—are guided by a kind of spirit we call archangels or fire spirits; and finally, we saw how that which extends beyond the narrower ethnic communities—what is expressed as the spirit of the age—is guided by the primordial forces also known as Archai, spirits of personality, or Asuras in theosophical terminology. Thus, wherever we are, spiritual beings act upon our world, and we see the realms that initially surround us multiplied by three. Let us now also form a conception of what the more outward manifestation of these beings looks like.

[ 2 ] When we view it from the ordinary physical-material perspective of our Earth, we see it as composed of what we call earth, water, air, and fire. As we have already heard, these are, first and foremost, four states of external matter. What we usually call “earth” in spiritual science is today referred to as “solid”; in spiritual science, everything that is solid is simply designated by the name “earth.” Everything that is liquid—not only water, but also mercury and so on—we designate as “water”; everything gaseous and air-like as “air”; and everything that we perceive as having some degree of warmth is conceived of as being permeated by something we call “substantial warmth,” which is not an external property for us, but rather represents a continuation of the states of matter just mentioned and is equally entitled to such a designation. Thus, we have first of all set before our eyes that which surrounds us materially.

[ 3 ] Now, however, the various entities we have spoken of dwell within these different material elements—that is, within their outward physical form. For those who observe the world with clairvoyant vision, what is known as the liquid element—especially water—is not merely animated and permeated by the beings we know as water spirits, fish, and so on; but such a person knows that, despite the, so to speak, flowing nature of the liquid, no fixed form is retained in this aqueous element, and that spiritual beings nevertheless dwell within it. Indeed, they dwell there truly embodied in the aqueous element, in a flowing, constantly changing form that cannot therefore be distinguished even with the physical eye. There they live, these beings whom we have called angels, spirits of twilight. Their physical bodies are such that they do not constitute a solidly defined physical form; and when the ancient myths and legends speak of such water beings, this is not a figment of the imagination but corresponds to reality. Furthermore, the beings we call archangels live in what we know as the element of air—and primarily in our atmosphere. And it is by no means a fairy tale or a mere legend when we see the physical manifestation of these spiritual realms in the flowing air and in the roaring storm. When it was said earlier that angelic beings live in water, it is primarily that water which permeates our air like water vapor—which is volatile, scattering into individual atoms—in which the clairvoyant gaze perceives the embodiment of what we call the archangels. And in what we perceive as warmth, we find the embodiment of those beings we know as the spirits of personality, as the primordial forces. Therefore, you will also understand that the human being is composed of these four elements: earth, water, air, and fire—and in such a way that not only are the four elements mixed within the human being, but the beings we have just named are thoroughly intermingled with one another; they fill the human body, so to speak, just as much as the material does; they enter and leave the human physical body,

[ 4 ] However, the range of beings associated with humankind is not limited to these. There are even higher beings connected to the Earth, the world, and humankind—beings that stand on an even higher level than the spirits of personality, the Primordial Beginnings. For example, there are those beings who shine toward us in light; and light, for us, is a finer state than warmth. Wherever something glows, there we find in that light the garment of high beings who, in Christian esotericism, are referred to as Powers, or Exusiai. They are also called the Spirits of Form, for they are the beings who give form to everything around us. Wherever you see something in a specific, defined form, it is these spirits who are at work. We have seen that what acts as the various “spirits of the age” in our Earth’s evolution is governed by the spirits of personality; the spirits of form, however, have an even higher task. We can best understand this by considering that from the beginning of humanity’s actual evolution—that is, from the moment when human beings underwent their first incarnation—the spirit of the age has constantly changed, with different leaders continually emerging from the host of the spirits of personality. But transcending everything that is brought about by the spirit of the age is something that permeates all of Earth’s humanity. When human beings began their earthly mission on Earth, spiritual beings intervened in this human race, and it is thanks to them that we, as Earth’s humanity, are able to act. And whether they have appeared as spirits of personality within the spirit of the age, as archangels in individual communities, or as angels in relation to individual human beings—those spirits, which we have called the spirits of form, have been directing, as it were, from a higher realm since the beginning of the earthly mission, and in the grand scheme of things, they guide and direct everything that these spiritual beings do. These powers had the task of working within the Earth mission as a whole; they had a planetary mission. We see, then, that when we move beyond the spirit of the age to the spirit of all humanity, we encounter these powers, these spirits of form.

[ 5 ] Now you know that our Earth, as a planet, is subject to the law of reincarnation just as human beings are. Our Earth used to be what we call the ancient Moon. At that time, what we now call the Earth mission did not yet exist in the same way as it does on Earth. The Moon had a different mission; every planetary state has its own mission to fulfill within the context of the cosmos; nothing repeats itself in exactly the same way—everything is subject to evolution and development. Back then, during that incarnation of the Earth that we call the ancient Moon, the beings we refer to in Christian esotericism as the Powers, the Dynameis, or the Spirits of Movement had a task similar to that of the Spirits of Form here on Earth. If we go even further back in evolution, we arrive at the planetary state of our Earth that preceded the ancient Moon state; we then arrive at the primeval Sun state, which, as you know, has nothing to do with what we see today as the Sun in the sky. On this ancient Sun, just as the spirits of form ruled on Earth and the spirits of motion ruled on the Moon, there also reigned high beings—those referred to in Christian esotericism as Kyriotetes, or as dominions, glories, and spirits of wisdom. These, then, are the spirits who, so to speak, held oversight during the Solar stage. - And now we come to the last planetary state, ancient Saturn. We call the beings who presided here in a similar manner the Thrones, the spirits of will. Thus we have ascended to ever higher levels of spiritual beings, up to beings who are not merely the conductors of something that changes like the spirit of the age, but of that which has to do with the mission of planetary states—which changes only from planet to planet.

[ 6 ] The Thrones, the Spirits of Wisdom, the Spirits of Movement, and the Spirits of Form—all of them are still constantly connected to us in some way, even if not in such a close, immediately perceptible connection as the other, lower spiritual beings. Let us use an example to clarify how such beings influence the development of our Earth. To do this, however, it is necessary that we first consider the development of those beings we know as angels, archangels, and the spirits of personality. These beings are all higher than present-day human beings. But present-day human beings will also one day reach higher stages in their development. As early as the next incarnation of our Earth, in the Jupiter state, humanity will stand as high as the angels do today; humanity undergoes a continuous ascent to ever higher levels of perfection. But the evolution of the other beings was the same; they were not always what they are now—they, too, have passed through lower stages of evolution. Take, for example, the angelic beings. They, too, went through their human stage in earlier times, just as we are doing now on our Earth; this took place on the ancient Moon, and because they worked on themselves back then, they became the higher beings they are today. Likewise, the archangels or fire spirits went through their human stage on the ancient Sun; back then they were beings like us, but today they stand two stages higher. And the spirits of personality went through their human stage on the ancient Saturn. They were one stage higher than those beings who went through their human stage on the ancient Sun, and today they are three stages higher than human beings on our Earth.

[ 7 ] But those beings whom we call the Spirits of Form or Powers—whom we look up to as supremely exalted beings—have, in a past beyond our imagination, passed through their human stage; and when the first incarnation of our Earth began, when the Earth was Saturn, they had already completed their human evolution. From this we can gauge what lofty feelings must dwell within us when we look up to these spiritual beings. But they, too, are subject to the law of evolution, and even though they were already higher beings on Saturn than present-day human beings, they have nevertheless passed through ever higher and higher stages—through the Sun and the Moon—all the way to our Earth. And so they have finally attained a degree of sublimity such that they have such a vast sphere of activity that they no longer need a planet to find the substances through which they can exist there. For the other beings, in a certain sense, need our Earth; the angels need water, the archangels need air, and the spirits of personality need fire; but the spirits of form no longer need our planetary condition; they therefore required a different dwelling place when our Earth began its evolution, and that was the reason why they separated from our Earth.

[ 8 ] I have told you that there was a time when our Earth formed a single body with the Sun. At that time, the beings we call the spirits of form were also united with our Earth. But their development had already progressed too far; they needed a finer substance than the Earth could have provided, so they drew the finer substance and the finer beings out of the Earth and, so to speak, departed with the Sun. That is the spiritual reason why the Earth and the Sun separated. It is not merely a mechanical fragmentation of matter; rather, celestial bodies separate in order to become dwelling places for spiritual beings. The Spirits of Form tore the subtle substance from the Earth, and the solar sphere came into being, which now sends light to the Earth from without. And in the sunlight, the spiritual essence of the cosmic forces flows toward us; that is why I told you earlier that light is the garment of these forces. When we look up at the sun in the spirit of spiritual science and see the bright sunlight streaming down toward us, then this light becomes the garment for the spirits who send their guiding and directing forces down to Earth; from the sun, they direct the Earth’s mission.

[ 9 ] If we come to understand that such cosmic separations have their cause in the spiritual entities connected to matter, then another fact—one that is otherwise difficult to explain—becomes clear to us. As you know, natural science points to an initial state of our solar system, a kind of primordial nebula. Admittedly, the so-called Kant-Laplace theory has since been somewhat modified by certain researchers such as Arrhenius, but we need not concern ourselves with these minor details here. Let us assume what is generally accepted: namely, that the Sun and the other planets orbiting it coalesced from the primordial nebula; everything that is dense today was thus once present in this primordial nebula; which then began to rotate, thereby separating off our Sun and the other planets. What spiritual science has to say on this matter in no way contradicts what is taught here as a hypothesis. If, so to speak, someone had placed a chair in outer space to observe, over millions of years, how this differentiation of the primordial nebula into today’s planetary formations took place, the picture would indeed not be much different from that presented by the scientific hypothesis. But let us see how the clairvoyant’s spiritual eye perceives this primordial nebula.

[ 10 ] For him, too, it is a vast, immense ball in a very fine state, in which no sun, Earth, or Jupiter has yet emerged; but this primordial nebula did not form for him—no one knows from where—rather, it has a past, and this past lies in the ancient Moon: you must regard it as the predecessor of our Earth. You must imagine this ancient Moon, just like our Earth, as a celestial body, and ultimately it underwent, if we may put it that way, a process of spiritualization. What had already been differentiated at that time was, so to speak, stirred up again and returned to an undifferentiated state. Then all of this passed through a kind of cosmic sleep, and then emerged from the bosom of the cosmos that ball of nebular ether, which is the rebirth of the ancient Moon. For us, it is not merely a material mass; rather, all spiritual beings live within this sphere, and within it, in a special state, live those mighty beings whom we have designated as the spirits of movement, form, and so on. Human beings existed within it only as seeds, for they did not yet possess an “I” on the Moon—they acquired that only on Earth—but all the spiritual beings who had already passed through certain stages of development were intimately connected with this primordial nebula.

[ 11 ] What does the materialistic physical hypothesis do when it seeks to explain how the solar system formed from this primordial nebular mass? Recall an experiment often demonstrated in school to illustrate this process: A ball of oil is set in rotation in a liquid of equal density using a simple mechanical device. One can then observe how this ball flattens out, how droplets break away from it, which in turn form into spheres and orbit the main ball; and in this way, one sees a kind of planetary system emerge on a small scale through the rotation. This is incredibly evocative. Why shouldn’t one imagine the world in the same way? After all, one can literally see here how a planetary system arises through rotation—it’s right before one’s eyes! But in doing so, one forgets just one thing! Sometimes it’s quite nice to forget this one thing, but not in this case: namely, one forgets oneself. If you were to conduct this experiment without a human standing there turning the crank, the entire planetary system would not come into being. But this is, after all, standard practice in materialistic thinking: one always takes only a part of what is right in front of one. If one were to think correctly and logically, one would have to imagine a gigantic human being in outer space setting the axis in motion by turning a massive crank. Now, of course, no such giant exists in outer space, but something else is there. The cosmic nebula is not merely matter; it is spiritualized and permeated by those beings we have spoken of, who have certain needs and longings—one kind of which animates this matter, another that kind. And it is they who, after reaching a certain stage of maturity, carry out the separation, so that the higher beings set out with the Sun, while that which requires earthly substances and forces remains behind on Earth. Within this seething primordial mass, all these spiritual beings are at work, gradually shaping what we currently know as our planetary system. For example, there were certain beings who had not fully attained the goal that the spirits of form were meant to achieve—beings who had lagged behind in their development. These beings were too advanced to have the Earth as their arena, yet not mature enough to move on to the finer substance of the Sun. There were primarily two classes of such beings, and we will come to know them through their influence on Earth. For just as the fully developed and matured powers, as Spirits of Form, shine down upon our Earth from the sunlight and direct it from the Sun, so too do these intermediate beings direct the Earth—but, so to speak, from a lower perspective, which is, of course, a more exalted one than that of human beings. These beings selected materials that suited them and fashioned them into celestial bodies between the Sun and Earth; and thus Venus and Mercury came into being between the Sun and Earth, inhabited by beings who occupy an intermediate stage. And in the same way, the other planets of our solar system also came into being because other beings required them as their sphere of activity.

[ 12 ] Now let us once again consider the moment when the Sun, together with its beings, departs; the Earth remains behind with all the seeds that later developed on it, including the people of the present, who, however, were not yet at the current stage of human development at that time. There are also other beings from the animal and plant kingdoms that have already undergone their development in the Earth’s previous incarnations and are now emerging in embryonic form. Let us consider, for now, only human beings!

[ 13 ] In the past, when the Sun was still united with the Earth, those mighty forces emanating from the high solar beings were also still connected to the Earth and acted upon human beings from within the Earth. But humanity, as it had come over from the Moon, had, as it were, sprung from its seed and was initially endowed only with the physical, etheric, and astral bodies. The physical body was not yet as dense as it is today, but rather etheric and finer. The “I,” however, had not yet developed at that time. Because the Sun shone upon the Earth from the outside and the solar beings acted upon the Earth from within, conditions on Earth changed completely for human beings. Imagine it this way: As long as the Earth was still connected to the Sun, those high beings who later departed with the Sun were hindered in their own evolution—and thus also in their power and authority—by the coarse forces of the Earth. Now they had become free; they could move freely, and they could set a completely different pace for their evolution than before, when they still had to bear the full, heavy weight of the Earth’s mass. The more they freed themselves from the Earth in their own evolution, the more they thereby gained the powers and forces to exert a more significant influence on human beings from the outside. Human beings, who had previously been under the influence of the sun spirits—whose powers were still hindered by their connection to the Earth—now came under the influence of the sun beings, who were developing freely and powerfully and acting upon the Earth from the outside. As a result, however, development would have accelerated to an immense degree, and human life would have been brought to a close at a tremendous pace, had something else not intervened. Human beings could not keep up with this pace, and therefore one of the spirits—along with his hosts—separated from the totality of the spirits that had previously been there: he remained united with the Earth. And this Spirit of Form had the task of halting and restraining what the solar forces would have accomplished with tremendous acceleration, so that these solar spirits would not act alone. But if this Spirit had remained connected to the Earth and had continued to act within it, the entire Earth would have fallen into a state of solidification, for its power and influence would have been too strong. What happened, then? It took the coarsest substances and forces and emerged from the Earth. What emerged is today’s Moon. Thus, this spirit—which had taken on the task of hindering and holding back the overly rapid development—now remains connected to the Moon. Development continues. The Earth and Moon beings separate. The Earth beings now come primarily under the influence of two forces: some come from the Sun, others from the Moon. If human beings were subject solely to the influence of the Sun’s forces, they would already be old barely after being born; under the sole influence of the Moon, they would have become frozen, hardened, and mummified. He can develop only when the forces of the Sun and the Moon are in balance. Human beings are placed on Earth, and entities and forces act upon them from outside in a spiritual sense so that they may undergo their present evolution on Earth. We have seen that, from incarnation to incarnation, human beings are guided by those beings we call angels. But these angels have no independence within the great cosmos; they have higher directors who are the inhabitants of the Sun. Under the influence of these solar spirits alone, everything would be crammed into a single incarnation; under the influence of the Moon alone, nothing at all would come to pass. But as it is, in their interaction, the stabilizing, form-giving force emanates from the lunar powers; whereas that which destroys forms and carries the enduring essence beyond the incarnations comes from the Sun. And so we come to understand that, if we consider it purely from a spiritual perspective, everything in the world has its purpose.

[ 14 ] And now let us try to visualize a little more concretely what took place on Earth. As we know, when human beings came over from the old Moon, they had only their physical body, their etheric body, and their astral body. At that time, when the Sun separated, the physical body was not yet developed enough for the sense organs to be able to perceive an external object. They had existed since the time of Saturn, but they could not perceive external objects. These were the organs that produced images from within on the ancient Moon. It was something like this: Imagine that one person had approached another; the person would not have been able to perceive the other’s external form. But something like a dream image would then arise within him; and if this image had certain forms or certain colors, then he knew it was an enemy, and he could flee. It was this pictorial consciousness that stood in a real relationship to the soul qualities of the surroundings. Object consciousness only gradually emerged on Earth; even when the Sun was already out there as a celestial body, human beings still could not see it—they perceived only an inner light in their images. He did, however, perceive in a certain spiritual-soulful sense the beneficial effect that the spirits of the sun sent down to him; he sensed it, so to speak, and saw it radiating in auric images; but this has nothing at all to do with today’s external perception. There was, therefore, a time when the forces of the sun streamed their light toward human beings, yet human beings did not see the external sun.

[ 15 ] The moon’s departure occurred somewhat later. It was only at the moment the moon moved away from the Earth that human beings became capable of developing the very first stirrings of a sense of self; it was only then that they began, so to speak, to feel themselves as distinct beings. Before that, he felt himself to be in the bosom of other beings. And only now did the possibility arise for him to perceive the external physical world in its first glimmers through self-consciousness. You can very easily understand that this external seeing is connected to self-consciousness; for as long as one cannot distinguish oneself from the external world, one is not a self. The first ability, the first glimmer of “I”-consciousness, therefore coincides with the opening of the eyes to the outside world. This is also linked to the moon’s departure. In the past, when the moon was still connected to the Earth, it guided the growth forces of the individual human being within the Earth from birth to death, just as it still does now—but from the outside. But so that the human being would not be confined solely between birth and death, those forces that worked inward from the Sun had to come from the outside. Thus, the Earth’s development was continually linked to an interplay between the inner forces of the Moon and the outer forces of the Sun. And now try to imagine quite vividly and precisely what happened there.

[ 16 ] As long as the Sun had already separated from the Earth but the Moon was still connected to it, human beings perceived the effects of the solar forces in inner images; they felt the beneficent effects of the solar forces, for these always combined with the lunar forces within the Earth’s body, and this had an effect on human beings in their physical constitution; but he could not see the forces of the Sun. Now the Moon, too, withdrew. Humanity’s senses were opened, and as a result, the ability to perceive the soul-spiritual aspect of the Sun’s forces vanished for them. Imagine the moment when, so to speak, soul-spiritual perception in images fades away and the very first beginnings of an external view of the Sun—of actual seeing—begin. But in truth, human beings could not yet see the sun, for the Earth was shrouded in dense mists. In contrast to the earlier, dim, clairvoyant sensing of these solar forces, they would now have been able to see the sun externally—albeit only gradually—had it not been veiled from them by the hazy, dense atmosphere. Thus, through his higher development, the beneficial effect of the sun vanished from human experience. The ancient Egyptians, recalling this state, named the forces of the sun—the pure rays that humans once perceived through dim clairvoyance—Osiris. This perception of Osiris disappeared, and because of the cloud cover, even external perception was not yet possible: what humanity had once seen was dead. “The adversary Typhon has killed Osiris,” and those forces that had gone forth as the moon—the forces active between birth and death—now longed for the old Osiris.

[ 17 ] And little by little the fog cleared; of course, this took a long, long time, lasting well into the Late Atlantic Period. And humankind began to see the sun once more, but no longer as before, when they shared a collective consciousness; instead, the sun’s rays fell into each individual eye as humankind now beheld the sun: the dismembered Osiris.

[ 18 ] This is a tremendous cosmic process. And while we were incarnated in ancient Egyptian times, we recognized it in its recurrence. That was what the Egyptian priest-sages originally had in mind, and they expressed it through an image. They said: Back then, when the Moon and the Sun first appeared in the heavens, humanity was in the center, as if held in balance by the forces of the Sun and the Moon. In those days, sexual reproduction did not yet exist; what was at work was what is called virgin reproduction. The forces that ruled our Earth passed from the sign of Virgo through Libra—the state of balance—into the sign of Scorpio; hence the Egyptian priest-sage said: When the Sun was in the sign of Scorpio, when the Earth was in Libra, and the rays acted like stings, piercing the sense organs—this intrusion of external objectivity, which is the Scorpio sting, appeared as something new in contrast to the old virginal reproduction—it was then that Osiris was killed. And this is when humanity’s search and longing for the ancient power, for the vision of Osiris, begins.

[ 19 ] You see, we must not merely look for some astronomical element in a myth such as the Osiris myth, but we must recognize in it the result of the deep, clairvoyant insight of the ancient Egyptian priest-sages. In such a myth, they embodied what they knew about the evolution of the Earth and humankind.

[ 20 ] All myths are based on real facts from the higher spiritual worlds. Today, you will see how such a fact underlies the Osiris myth.