The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Karmic Reflections on the Historical Development of Humanity II

[ 1 ] I would like to express my sincere thanks to Dr. Unger for his kind words. You can be sure that I am very pleased to have the opportunity to speak once again before my friends in Stuttgart.

[ 2 ] The last time I had the opportunity to speak here at our Waldorf School conference, I discussed with you some aspects related to karmic connections within humanity and its evolution. Today I would like to say a few things as a continuation of that lecture, starting with material that is more or less familiar to you, and then moving on to the unknown.

[ 3 ] We know, of course, that when a person passes through the gate of death, the first thing they must undergo is the dispersion of their etheric body into the cosmos, after having shed their physical body at the very moment of death. Now, we will not consider this first stage after death—the shedding, or rather the dispersal, of the etheric body into the cosmos—today, but rather what follows it. And this can best be understood if we first take a look at human life on earth as it unfolds between birth and death. This human life on earth, after all, passes through two states that are sharply distinct from one another: waking and sleeping. Now you know from various anthroposophical considerations that the waking state arises because the four members essential to modern human beings—the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the ego—are interwoven, stimulating and supporting one another in their activities; but that the state of sleep arises when, while lying in bed, the physical body and the etheric body lead, so to speak, a provisional, temporary plant-like existence, while the astral body and the “I” organization live independently in the spiritual world, separated from the physical and etheric bodies. Now, however, you know from ordinary life experience that when a person sends a memory back into their earthly life, they are actually, in a certain sense, distorting that memory. For when we look back on our earthly life with ordinary consciousness, the retrospective view appears to us as a continuously flowing stream; one event follows from another, and in doing so we usually fail to notice that we are not at all dealing with such a continuous stream of memories, but rather that the flow of memory is constantly interrupted by the nights, so that we should actually view the memory as follows: day, night, day, night; always, so to speak, a period of light, followed by a period of darkness, which in turn is followed by a period of light, and so on. For the most part unconscious—with the exception of the dreams that arise from nighttime sleep—is the portion of our earthly life that we spend asleep: this is generally one-third of our earthly life, unless a person is a real sleepyhead. One can certainly add up—even taking into account how much more a child sleeps—the total time spent sleeping: the result is roughly one-third of one’s lifetime on Earth.

[ 4 ] First of all, we might ask ourselves: What do the “I”-organization and the astral body do during this time of sleep? They are, after all, in the spiritual world. But they do not perceive anything in the spiritual world; as mentioned, with the exception of dreams, they remain unconscious. If a person—given the nature of his ordinary consciousness on Earth—were to perceive everything even while asleep, he would be led astray in one direction or another: either toward a state where his consciousness would seem to be overcome by a kind of fainting spell during the day, so that he would go about in a sort of paralysis of consciousness, if they are of a more Ahrimanic disposition; or, if they are of a more Luciferic disposition, they would go about with a confused consciousness, in which thoughts and feelings jostle one another.

[ 5 ] In general, human beings are protected by what is called the “Keeper of the Threshold” from perceiving the spiritual world that surrounds them at night. But once a person has passed through the gate of death and spent the first few days after shedding the etheric body, they enter—between death and a new birth—a state of existence that proceeds in reverse: we begin with the day of death, move on to the preceding day, and so on, thus reliving life once more, but now in the direction from death to birth. But now we do not relive the days; rather, we relive the nights. Therefore, the time during which we spend our lives in this backward manner takes up about one-third of our lifetime. For a person who has lived to the age of sixty and then dies, this backward journey lasts about twenty years. This life is thus lived through three times as quickly as earthly life. And then we live through this life between death and a new birth in such a way that we look back upon the nights in which—albeit unconsciously—images have been formed that are, in a certain sense, negative reflections of life.

[ 6 ] If humans were not protected by the “Guardian of the Threshold,” they would experience every night—but in a way they could not bear, resulting in consequences such as those I have just described— every night, if they had done something evil to someone, they would experience it as if they had to put themselves in the other person’s shoes—feeling and experiencing what that person feels and goes through because of the evil they have inflicted upon them. During sleep, the person is then truly inside the being to whom they have inflicted one thing or another. But for the reason stated, we do not experience this during sleep. But after death, we experience it during the period described, and we experience it very, very intensely. There we relive our earthly life and experience everywhere the compensatory experiences for what we have done or failed to do. Through what do we experience these compensatory experiences?

[ 7 ] To answer this question, we must refer to a cosmic experience. You will recall that I have often explained to you how, in the course of Earth’s evolution, the Moon—which was originally a part of Earth’s evolution—separated from the Earth. I described this here only recently—how the Moon emerged from the Earth and formed an independent physical existence. But I have also already mentioned that some time after the Moon separated its physical nature from the Earth, the very ancient primordial teachers of humanity followed—teachers who, as long as they were on Earth, were not embodied in a physical body but only in an etheric body. They therefore influence people through imagination and inspiration. And all those wonderful teachings, clothed in a more poetic guise and contained in the legends of the peoples, stem from a magnificent, majestic primordial wisdom that existed on Earth and was imparted by the primordial teachers of humanity. But by virtue of their nature, these primordial teachers were able to withdraw to the Moon, and they have lived there ever since.

[ 8 ] When a human being passes through the gate of death, he truly experiences the cosmos. And he truly experiences the cosmos in such a way that his being expands more and more. At first, he grows into the lunar sphere. But as the human being first grows into the lunar sphere after death, they come into contact with those who are now the great primordial teachers. These great primordial teachers preserve, so to speak, a naive, instinctive, and innocent state of the human race. Before human beings fell into the capacity to do evil, these primordial teachers were present on Earth. Therefore, it is they who take in what is written into the Akashic Records during the nights we experience within our earthly existence; they imbue it with their own being and then allow us, in the first third of our journey back through life after death, to experience it more intensely than the events of life here on Earth. Anyone who can look into what a deceased person experiences during these first decades after death knows that earthly experiences are indeed robust enough—they jostle and drive us—but what is experienced there through the power of magically active teachers who have established their colony on the Moon has a much stronger effect; it drowns out and overshadows the earthly experiences. And we truly go through this. Let’s say you slapped someone: when you relive the experience, you do not feel the satisfaction, anger, or resentment that gave rise to the slap, but rather you slip into the other person’s skin, experience how it hurt them, how it shook their spirit—you feel exactly what they went through. There is something special about reliving events with a deceased person—not something you would call shocking, but something that moves you deeply.

[ 9 ] You see, I’d like to give an example of this. Most of you will recall that among the characters in my Mysteries, I depicted the character of Strader. This character of Strader, like most of the characters in the Mysteries, is based on reality. There was a person who lived almost exactly as Strader is portrayed in my Mysteries. You can also imagine that I took a great interest in this person during his physical life on Earth. He died in 1912. From that point on, my interest turned to his experiences after death. Everything this individual—who ultimately became a theological-rationalist writer—experienced here on Earth manifested itself to a much greater degree as he himself experienced the effects of his books, his theological rationalism, and so on. After I had spent some time sharing in what he was experiencing, it was no longer possible for me to continue the character of Strader in The Mysteries: he dies in the drama because it was no longer possible to muster interest in his earthly life, which had been eclipsed by interest in what he experienced after death.

[ 10 ] A minor side event occurred: Some friends were very interested in the estate of that role model of Strader’s; they were committed to the cause and wanted to show it to me. I couldn’t muster any interest in it. I had to walk past, had to ignore it all, for the simple reason that interest in the dead is far more intense and overshadows everything else. I merely wish to point out how, in this return journey of life, a person experiences things much more strongly and intensely than they do on Earth. Compared to this experience, earthly life is almost like a dream. But it is precisely the negative experience—the experience of the consequences in the other world of what we have done and failed to do. Therefore, it must not be portrayed as merely a horrifying existence. Nevertheless, a person must become aware of which of their deeds, thoughts, and feelings were just, and which were unjust.

[ 11 ] Now you can imagine that this is where the first seed of karma is sown. For when a person sees what happens between death and a new birth, they judge things differently than we do. I may have mentioned this before: many years ago, I met a woman who overheard a conversation taking place in her presence about repeated earthly lives. She said that, having experienced one such life, she did not want any more earthly lives, and she railed vehemently against the possibility of having to return again and again. So I had to tell her: “Yes, it may be that you hold this view here on Earth; but that is not what matters—what matters is the judgment that takes place between death and a new birth.” — She accepted this for the time she was there, but then wrote a postcard from her trip: “I still don’t believe in repeated earthly lives!”

[ 12 ] When a person has this intense experience after death, they make a resolution that can be expressed something like this: “You have become imperfect—an inferior human being—because of this and that; you must make up for it!” This establishes the intention that becomes karma. And resolutions in the spiritual world—in the life between death and a new birth—are realities. Just as it is a reality here that you will burn yourself if you stick your finger into a flame, so too in the spiritual world, when you make a resolution, it is a reality that comes to pass. And you certainly do make that resolution!

[ 13 ] But a person experiences all of this in the lunar sphere. Through the next spheres—the Mercury and Venus spheres—he then gradually reaches the point where he must enter the solar sphere. The Mercury and Venus spheres form the transition for him to enter the solar sphere. But one cannot enter it at first if one were to carry along the entire baggage—the entire burden of evil—that has settled upon one’s soul during the lunar sphere. The cosmic order is such that when we leave the lunar sphere, the evil remains behind. It waits until we return: then we pass through the lunar sphere once more. But along with the evil, we leave a good part of ourselves behind, for the human being is, after all, one with his or her deeds. If I have done anything evil here on Earth, I thereby become inferior; when passing through the Moon in the manner described, I lose a part of myself—I leave a part of myself behind. A person who were a thoroughly evil villain—though such people do not actually exist—who had never done anything good, would be left behind entirely in the lunar sphere. Well, that doesn’t happen: people move on.

[ 14 ] Then, as a more or less complete or incomplete human being, one first enters the Mercury sphere. In the Mercury sphere, too, one experiences something special between death and a new birth—something that already prepares one for life in the Sun. You see, here in physical earthly life, one does indeed fall ill in one way or another. One must enter the solar sphere with a soul and spirit that are completely healthy. That is why, in the Mercury sphere, one is freed from everything the soul carries within itself in the form of illnesses. That is also why true medicine can only be learned by observing how the dead are freed from their illnesses in the Mercury sphere. From this, one can deduce what must be done on Earth for human beings to free them from illness. That is why, in times when there were mysteries and instinctive clairvoyance, medicine was always regarded as something revealed from the sphere of Mercury through the mysteries. For you see: What is a god to people today? A god is a being that can never be seen on Earth. That was not the case for the people of the instinctively clairvoyant primeval times. Mercury had its mysteries. There were Mercury mysteries; you can read about them in my Occult Science. Yes, the very first high priest of the Mercury mysteries was Mercury himself. This was accomplished through the birth of a human being whose spirit was liberated through a superhuman process in order to seek incarnation in a different way. The body was there: the god Mercury used this body to incarnate on Earth—that is, to reveal himself in the mysteries. The gods themselves were already the teachers in the ancient mysteries. This is true of all the gods of Greece; they were all on Earth. And this god Mercury taught medicine to humankind. Hippocrates preserved a later tradition of this.

[ 15 ] Then the human being enters the Venus sphere. In the Venus sphere, a person becomes fully aware of their own incompleteness; but it is precisely in the Venus sphere that this incompleteness is prepared for the solar existence, where one spends the longest time. One is there twice, but we need only speak of one of those times. One spends the longest time in the solar existence within it. In this solar existence, one is, first of all, together with the souls with whom one has some karmic connection and who are now in the spiritual world—who are just as much the deceased as oneself; but one is also together with the beings of the higher hierarchies: the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, and so on. What happens there? There, as the human being becomes aware of the incompleteness within their consciousness, they work together with the beings of the higher hierarchies on the pattern and archetype of their next earthly life; specifically, in the first half of the solar life they work more on the archetype of their physical form, and in the second half more on the archetype of their moral earthly life. This work during the Solar Life is in fact not nearly as monotonous as it seems when one has to describe it; rather, it is immeasurably richer, far more magnificent, and more powerful than anything a human being can experience on Earth. Here on Earth, a human being does not experience what is immediately enclosed within their own body, but rather what surrounds them. During the solar existence, it is exactly the opposite: there, the human being experiences everything that exists in the cosmos. Just as we say here, “This is my stomach”—so we will then say, “Out there is my Venus”—; just as we say here, “This is my heart”—so we will say, “This is my Sun.” — The beings of the universe become our organs. We ourselves become like the universe, and the human being who stands here on Earth—but is perceived in spirit—who is filled only with earthly substance, that person is then our world. And this inner world of the human being is truly more comprehensive, more magnificent than the extra-human cosmos here on Earth. Everything that a human being harbors within is unconscious to them here on Earth. But it is far greater than what a human being sees on Earth. And what a person harbors within themselves here on Earth is revealed to them during their solar existence. And from what constitutes their world there, they shape their physical and moral being for their next earthly existence. This is also where work is done on karma. Now that we have learned how we must work in the first decades after death, work is done here on the formation of this karma. I would like to say: the final touch is only achieved when, during our second passage through the lunar sphere, we rediscover our evil and then bring the power to what is intention—to what is the outworking in the archetype—so that we may plunge into our karma on Earth in a new earthly life.

[ 16 ] Now, to gain an even clearer understanding of how karma actually works, we must consider the following. Stars—what are they, really? Physical scientists speak of stars as if they were burning balls of gas or something similar. But that is not the case at all. Just imagine you were on Venus. Then the Earth would appear to you much as Venus appears to you now, and you would simply describe the Earth the way you now describe Venus, overlooking the fact that here on Earth—which is the stage for human beings—there are so many human souls. In exactly the same way, wherever any other star shines, there are souls. There are souls on the Moon: the souls of the great primordial teachers, already somewhat intermingled with the souls of the Angeloi. On Mercury: souls of the Archangeloi; one lives together with them when one passes through the sphere of the Archangeloi—the god Mercury is an archangelic being. Then, on Venus, the Archai. Around the Sun—Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes: it is specifically with them that one shapes one’s karma. One must regard what shines there in the stars merely as the outward sign of spirit colonies that exist in the cosmos. In the direction where we see a star, we must know that a spirit colony is there.

[ 17 ] After a human being has passed through the solar sphere, he enters the sphere of Mars, the sphere of Jupiter, and the sphere of Saturn. He has, of course, already begun to work on his karma in the solar sphere. But in order to later confront their evil deeds when they return through the lunar sphere—and to prepare their karma so that it can be realized on Earth—they also require the spirits who dwell in these planetary spheres: the spirits on Mars, the spirits on Jupiter, and the spirits on Saturn. And especially when it comes to shaping very characteristic human destinies, it is indeed the case that the final stages of shaping these karmic connections take place precisely in the sphere of Mars, the sphere of Jupiter, or the sphere of Saturn. However, work on karma can also continue when the human being returns to the sphere of Venus, and even to the sphere of Mercury. Between death and a new birth, a person works on their karma together with the beings of the planetary system. And it is extraordinarily interesting to observe how this work on karma is carried out.

[ 18 ] The time has now come—as I have already explained here on this occasion—when we must speak more openly and freely, without veiling certain spiritual facts. The Christmas Conference at the Goetheanum was intended to initiate this current of esotericism that is to flow through the entire Anthroposophical Society at the present time. That is why, the last time I had the privilege of speaking to you, I had already begun to explain various karmic connections. One should not think that one is, so to speak, meddling crudely in human life when one endeavors to speak of karmic connections in relation to particularly interesting human phenomena. It is through this that the world becomes transparent and luminous—and thereby truly not poorer, but richer and more magnificent.

[ 19 ] So today I would like to draw your attention to a human individuality who, with an immensely open spirit, was incarnated in what is now Italy—that is, in Rome at that time—around the second century A.D., and who at that time endured all that was endured in terms of self-sacrificing martyrdom by those who, as Christians, sought to gradually establish themselves in the Roman Empire—an individual who also endured the cruel injustices, the depravities, and the moral decay in which the Roman Empire was already so steeped at that time. A wealth of good and evil had poured into the feelings of this individual. And when one looks at it through the means of spiritual research, by which such things can be recognized, one finds this individuality truly—I would say—drawn into the storms of life, into what was experienced at that time in the second half of the 2nd century A.D. in the Roman Empire during the spread of Christianity. And there is something extraordinarily moving about this particular individuality when one directs one’s spiritual gaze toward it in the manner I explained last time regarding other human individualities in their repeated earthly lives.

[ 20 ] It is precisely in this individual, whose life came to an end in old age, that we see how—having witnessed so much, I would say, of the highest self-sacrificing goodness in the burgeoning Christian faith and an infinite amount of evil and wickedness in the Roman Empire of that time—she arrived at something akin to a judgment and a question: Where, then, is the middle ground? Is there only absolute good and absolute evil in the world? — With imaginative, inspired awareness, one can clearly trace how this individuality was then reborn as a woman in the 11th century A.D. Through the experiences in her life as a woman, the sharp, angular qualities—which this personality had developed during her Roman life in old age—were balanced out; they softened and became an inner, contemplative observation of good and evil. Then this personality returned in the 18th century and was born as the German poet Friedrich Schiller. And now try to delve into Schiller’s life as it unfolded: first toward a mediocre outlook on life; how he then needed Goethe to help him shed everything he had brought with him from the conviction that there is only good, there is only evil. Read his dramas, and you will understand them if you look back in this way on his earlier earthly life. But to what circumstance do we owe this? We owe it to the fact that Schiller, in whom what he had experienced in his Roman life was still alive—but who had already passed through the female incarnation in the Middle Ages—then shaped his karma in a special way in the Saturn sphere during the time between death and a new birth.

[ 21 ] To come to know this sphere of Saturn in its particular nature and essence, the initiatory science of a higher age is actually necessary. For, you see, you might ask: How does one even come to know what lives on the stars and so on? Well, I have described to you: When a person ascends to imaginative consciousness, they see their entire life as a vast tableau, but they also see it divided into epochs. If one attains inspiration and returns to a state of empty consciousness—so that one can erase this tableau—then something from each epoch shines forth. Instead of seeing one’s own life between birth and the age of seven, one beholds at this point in the tableau of life the events of the Moon: there one can look into the events of the Moon. — In the second epoch of life, what shines through everything, so to speak, is the Mercury phase—that which takes place between the change of teeth and sexual maturity. Looking back at this tableau of one’s school years leads one precisely into the Mercury phase. Consider how ingeniously the individual planets were assigned their functions on Earth during the time of instinctive wisdom! Statistics show that a person is at their healthiest not in the years between birth and the change of teeth, nor after reaching sexual maturity, but during school years, because that is the time when Mercury exerts its greatest influence on human beings, including on earthly existence. — In the next epoch, between puberty and the ages of twenty-one or twenty-two, one observes the processes and entities of Venus. Again, it is ingenious that the sphere of Venus was assigned to the sexual sphere when it begins to take effect. — Between the ages of twenty-one and forty-two, the solar phase; between forty-two and forty-nine, the Martian phase; between forty-nine and fifty-six, the Jovian phase; and between fifty-six and sixty-three, the Saturnian phase. And in fact, even as an initiate, one can only perceive all the interrelationships in which Saturn is involved—those pertaining to life between death and a new birth—once one has passed the age of sixty-three. Before that, one can gain experience of this existence in a wide variety of ways; but one can only see things in their context from one’s own perspective once one has passed the age of sixty-three. Now you will understand why I am only now speaking about something related to the Saturn phase.

[ 22 ] So, Schiller worked through his karma particularly in the sphere of Saturn. To view this Saturnian existence in the way I have indicated here does, however, make an impression that I would describe as deeply unsettling, because it is so different from what one can experience on Earth. On Saturn, in the consciousness of the beings there, there is only the past; there is no present at all. But the past is present in a magnificent way. You see, if I were to compare it to something that could happen on Earth—it doesn’t happen, of course, but hypothetically it could—I would have to say: Imagine for a moment that you have no idea what you look like; you only know that you exist. You act, you do things: you don’t see that either, not until it has passed. Imagine that you are walking: you don’t see your own steps, not the movements; but immediately afterward, these movements transform into a little snowman, and you retrace the entire movement when you look back and see what you have done. Such is the life of these particular spirits on Saturn. They never perceive what they do out of the immediate decision of the present moment; rather, they see it only once it has passed. It is difficult for ordinary consciousness to imagine, but it is so. In such an existence are also the individualities that, together with an individuality such as Schiller’s, shape karma. Such individualities are then capable of a wondrous insight into the past. So that Schiller’s soul, before being born in 1759, was in fact in the spiritual world with a magnificent retrospective view of everything past that is connected to its own karma. Upon entering the Earth, this transforms into a reaction: the contemplation of the past transforms into the grasping—the enthusiastic grasping—of future ideals. And thus Schiller’s future ideals arose from his karmic work during his Saturn existence.

[ 23 ] Let us consider another life, a life that once existed in an earthly existence in Greece, where it came into close contact with Greek plastic arts, but also with Platonic philosophy—namely, in its youth it embraced with immense enthusiasm a form of plastic art that could simultaneously be perceived spiritually, and what was perceived spiritually could in turn be translated into artistic expression with tremendous inner artistic sensibility: After it had also passed through other incarnations, we were able to trace this individuality as it developed its karma in the sphere of Jupiter. The Jupiter beings are of a different nature than the Saturn beings. The Jupiter beings are not like, for example, Earth humans. If an Earth human wishes to become wise, he must undergo inner development, struggle, fight inwardly, and overcome obstacles; in short, during periods filled with development, the human on Earth climbs his way up to a modest wisdom. It is different with the Jupiter beings; they are not born at all like Earth beings, but rather they take shape out of the cosmos. Just as you watch a cloud taking shape, so the Jupiter beings take shape in an etheric-astral way out of the cosmos. Then they do not die; they interpenetrate one another, which is why they have space. But they are, so to speak, realized wisdom. They are born with wisdom and cannot help but be wise. Just as we have blood circulation, they have wisdom. It is their nature; that is simply how these Jupiter beings are. Within this context, karma can in turn take shape. This individual, who had one of the most significant earthly lives in ancient Greece, passed through the sphere of Jupiter, was touched by all that constitutes the wisdom of Jupiter, formed their karma there, and was reborn in the 18th century as Goethe. Hence this wonderful fusion of Hellenism and wisdom in Goethe.

[ 24 ] I do not believe that studying history in such a way that we understand what happens on Earth through the mysteries and secrets of the cosmos diminishes the value of Earth’s history. Let dry-as-dust professors come along and say: Well, it’s certainly much more vibrant to take Goethe as he presents himself than to elevate him to such a higher sphere!” — In better times in human development, when instinctive clairvoyance still existed, people also spoke openly about the way in which heavenly existence reveals itself through human actions and human existence here on Earth. We must return; we must emerge from this abstractness, where we believe ourselves to be like earthworms standing here on Earth, looking up and seeing only what astronomers and astrophysicists say about the stars. And this struggle—which is taking place in our sorely tested civilization and culture—between those who strive spiritually to comprehend the cosmos in accordance with its spiritual laws, and those who want to know nothing of it; who limit themselves to the Earth—not only in the natural sciences, but also in what people at universities call the humanities: there one studies documents, that is, only what exists in a physical, sensory sense. A decision will surely come in the course of Earth’s evolution. Either our decline in the spiritual realm will continue further and further, and a disease—of which I have been speaking for years, including in public lectures—will spread more and more; there is not yet much about it in medical books, but all the more so in life: “dementia professoralis” — or else humanity will have to bring itself to incorporate insights into the supersensible into its enthusiasm. In doing so, it will also penetrate the connection between the cosmos and human life.

[ 25 ] I would like to present a third example to you, one that is somewhat more complicated. Here we are dealing with an individual who was incarnated in India during a previous earthly life, at a time when India was already in decline, and who, in that earthly life, took in all sorts of things that she was able to absorb despite having exceptionally poor physical eyesight. One really must go into such details. And it is usually these details—as I pointed out last time—that allow one to gain insight into the broader context. This individuality also went through various other earthly lives, but these were less significant than what was inherent in her precisely because, in India—with a somewhat superficial gaze due to her poor eyesight—she saw the lotus flowers and blossoms more longingly through the mist than with clear distinctness, and came to know life in the way one does when looking at it from a distance, without delving into the details. This individuality then developed its karma in a complex manner. First, in the sphere of Mars, everything that made this personality a sort of fighting cock in the spiritual realm was formed. Then this personality worked extensively on their karma in the sphere of Mercury, absorbing wit and satire there. And imagine, in the background, a non-European world: the individuality tends to be reborn in Europe, but it passes through the sphere of Mars—struggle—and through the sphere of Mercury—sharp, critical thinking and feeling. After developing specific qualities in the sphere of Venus—it is a particularly complex karma—and looking beyond the physical while remaining extraordinarily spiritual, this personality became Heinrich Heine in the 19th century. Now try to really put yourself in the position of understanding what one gains from each stanza of Heinrich Heine—down to the language, the structure, and the very words—when one knows: this is actually generated in the spheres of Mercury, Venus, and Mars; it all actually originates from the cosmos. It is in the cosmos that karma is formed and shaped; here on Earth, it is lived out. And when one looks back at this tableau of life: one sees the lunar sphere, the Mercury sphere; from sexual maturity to the age of twenty-one or twenty-two, the Venus sphere; from the twenty-first to the forty-second year, the solar sphere; then the Martian sphere, the Jovian sphere, the Saturnian sphere—I cannot go into detail about the subsequent years, though one can already see something there, but I cannot elaborate on that now—one can see that these spheres have something to do with karma. Ordinary consciousness is unaware that these exist within the human being: the Mercury sphere, the Moon sphere, and so on. Yet it is what is within the human being that brings about karma; it is this that drives the human being toward the way in which karma plays out. So if Heinrich Heine over there shaped his karma through Venusian, Mercurian, and Martian beings, it is these same Venusian, Mercurian, and Martian beings who work through his earthly physicality to help him fulfill this karma. Thus, precisely through his karma, a human being stands within the cosmos with his entire being, living out the cosmos here on Earth. Naturally, one person does so in one way, another in another.

[ 26 ] These things must be observed with a free, comprehensive sense. When I tell you that Goethe transformed what he had instilled in ancient Greece into instinctive wisdom within the sphere of Jupiter—which is evident in everything he created through the beings active there—this process unfolds differently in another person. At a time when Mexican culture was in sharp decline, there lived an individual; the echoes and even the cult practices of the Mysteries were still present. Amid all the magic and decadence of Mexico’s Mysteries era, there lived a very strong individual who knew precisely the nature of the vitality of Quetzalcoatl, Tezcatlipoca, and Taotl. Ordinary cultural histories usually contain little more than the names. But of all these gods—Quetzalcoatl, Tezcatlipoca, Taotl—there were very vivid conceptions and relationships between human beings and supernatural beings. The individuality I am referring to, having grasped this, was then reborn relatively quickly without an intermediate earthly life; he lived in the 19th century as the magical-occultist Eliphas Levi, after having passed through the Jupiter sphere during the life between death and a new birth. He absorbed the enchanting, magical, and bygone elements of ancient Mexico. These were transformed in the sphere of Jupiter in such a way that this peculiar yet wisdom-filled primitivism—a wisdom of a lesser sort—emerged, as found in the books of Eliphas Levi. The very same thing that, in Goethe’s case, produced that gentle Olympian fire and that towering wisdom in the Jupiter sphere—due to his earlier earthly life—gives rise, in Eliphas Levi’s case, to somewhat charlatan-like rambling in all manner of incantations. It is our earthly lives that determine what the stars make of our karma. But the stars—that is, the beings who are present where the stars indicate the existence of these beings—they transform into karma that which is predisposed to become karma here on Earth.

[ 27 ] You see, this is the approach now being taken to delve deeper and deeper into anthroposophy. And we will simply have to accept that some things sound paradoxical or strange. But it is precisely the paradoxical and the strange that constitute the real truth. For human life is founded on a deeper and more complex basis than is commonly thought. To understand it, one must not keep one’s thoughts confined to the earth; one must let them wander beyond the earth into the vastness of the cosmos. And just as one all too easily forgets the spirit on earth and focuses only on matter, the opposite is true as soon as one enters the starry sky with even a little imaginative insight. There, one is sure to forget matter and gradually begin to see the spirits, just as the poor shepherds did in ancient, primitive times, and as was the case well into the Middle Ages, when people did not merely draw external symbols on the celestial sphere, but figures—because they actually saw these figures through imaginative insight. Anthroposophy also deepens one’s sense of feeling, as I have often said. For just think: when one approaches it with the kind of insight I have described, one looks upon the destiny of a human being. What a wealth of things one sees there! One actually begins to view the destiny of every human being with sacred awe. For what is at work in the destiny of every human being? All-encompassing stellar wisdom! Utterly all-encompassing stellar wisdom! Nothing allows one to see the workings of the gods in the universe in such a moving way—a way that cuts deep into the soul—as when one sees it in the destiny of human beings, in this all-encompassing cosmic justice that surges through the eternal, which is, in fact, the existence, activity, and thought of the gods weaving behind the human being. That is what I wanted to tell you today about karma. The karma of the Anthroposophical Society and the essence of the anthroposophical movement.