The Rudolf Steiner Archive

9. The Symbol of the Snake and the Fish

[ 1 ] We often find the fish symbol in the catacombs; it is called the monogram of Christ Jesus, and this symbol is often associated with the snake symbol. It is used in a wide variety of contexts.

[ 2 ] When we consider human evolution in relation to the evolution of other beings, we find minerals, plants, and animals in the world. It is easy to think that the minerals spread out around us—as lifeless objects—are the oldest products of evolution; plants are younger, animals even younger, and humans the youngest of all. But that is not the case. From an occult perspective, minerals appear to be the very youngest; plants are older, and animals even older—but the oldest, the first to evolve, is the human being. Admittedly, this assertion will seem grotesque and paradoxical to materialistic natural science, but it is nevertheless true. Natural science, on the other hand, would argue that before [plants] existed, there must have been [minerals]; that animal life, too, is only possible when plants are present; and that human beings could only enter the world after other beings had already preceded them. These are facile objections, to which we will return later; for now, let us present the facts as they truly are.

[ 3 ] The non-living is formed from the living! Let’s take coal as an example. These were once plant beings that covered the earth’s surface in vast fern forests in the distant past. They died, became covered with soil, and transformed over time so that what was once a living being—a plant—now appears to us in rock, in coal. Here the facts are quite clear: coal, the inanimate, was formed from living beings. Anyone who looks back with an occult eye knows that this applies not only to coal but to all, all rocks. The hardest rocks—granite, mica schist, gneiss, clay schist—all of these are solidified plant beings. Gneiss, which consists of feldspar and quartz mica, was once a plant; this can be demonstrated by the remnants of plant parts that have crystallized into mica-like formations.

[ 4 ] Therein lies the essence of the matter: that the living is the original; everything inanimate has formed from the living; it is the fossilized corpse of the living. With every step we take on Earth, we walk over nothing but solidified living beings. In the distant past, we find on our planet no minerals, no plants, no animals—only the human kingdom. However, if we understand this in the same way as we do today, it would be easy to object that these humans could not have sustained themselves without the other kingdoms. But humans back then did not need food. They were of a spiritual nature and essence; they were spirit before they became matter.

[ 5 ] When we study human beings today, we see that they consist of the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the I. When a person goes to sleep at night, only the physical body and the etheric body remain in bed; the astral body, together with the I and the other higher aspects of human nature, rises out of these two. The astral body and the “I” are in their home realm at night. What is today the astral body is the starting point for the human being; in its essence, it once consisted of astral substance. At the beginning of our Earth’s evolution, long before the Lemurian period, the human being was an astral entity. You were once as you are today when you are asleep. For what are the etheric and physical bodies? They are densifications of the astral body. You can picture this correctly by creating a mental image of the following: Suppose you had a certain amount of water; part of it densifies into ice. Then you have water and ice within it—the ice is water, just in a different form. In the same way, the etheric and physical bodies are nothing other than the astral body in a condensed form. This was the course of human development: the astral body first condensed into the etheric body and subsequently into the physical body. One might say, if the physical body could be dissolved, that it would dissolve back into astral substance.

[ 6 ] Back then, as an astral being, humans did not need food, not even when the astral body condensed into the etheric body. It was only when humans condensed into a physical body that they needed food.

[ 7 ] When we speak of human beings as the “firstfruits,” we are referring to human beings in their astral state. Now, think back to the distant past, when human beings, as astral beings, began to condense. That was the first stage of human development. Human beings in their astral state give up a part of themselves to their etheric body.

[ 8 ] We are talking about a time long ago, when the Earth was in the Saturn stage. But this repeats itself at the beginning of the Earth’s development. Imagine many such astral beings; some of them condense and continue on their path.

[ 9 ] With others, the following happens: Imagine that when water begins to turn into ice, tiny ice particles form within it—imagine that once there are a certain number of these ice particles, some fall out, while others remain inside. The process continues, and what hasn’t fallen out will grow larger, while what has fallen out cannot grow larger. That’s how it would work in a water reservoir!

[ 10 ] Now imagine, instead of this image, the astral beings; for them, the physical has just begun to take the form of an astral lump. A number of these lumps, after a certain stage of development, have fallen away; therefore, the lumps remain at the stage they had reached when they fell away—but those that remain connected to the astral realm can continue to develop. Human beings were indeed once such beings of an astral-etheric nature, and their physical bodies were like tiny lumps. — Some of them have continued to develop, while others have fallen away and cannot develop further. These are the smallest living beings of the most imperfect kind, the monera.

[ 11 ] At a certain stage, worms branched off in the same way; at a certain stage, fish; at a certain stage, amphibians; and so on, until, at a certain stage during the Atlantic period, mammals branched off. When we speak of the ape, we know—today the crude notion of human descent from them has been abandoned—that it is said the apes [also] descend from those primordial beings from which humanity evolved into its present state. Spiritual Science says: Monkeys represent the degenerate form that clings to an ancient shape and has therefore degenerated... The monkey is like a kind of shame for humankind, showing us where the corruption of intentions can lead.

[ 12 ] If we go back to the simplest living beings, which consist of only a single cell, they are related to humans. In the distant past, humans were the progenitor of all living beings: the simplest organisms branched off first, and as humans evolved upward, those organisms evolved downward.

[ 13 ] Humanity continued on and on; it shed all animals from within itself and continued to transform the physical body until it reached its present-day perfection. Thus, in the most ancient times, animals—the coarser astral substance, so to speak—separated from humanity as astral beings during the process of human formation. Later still, plants separated from the animals, and even later, minerals separated from the plants. The principle is this: the lower can form from the higher through a process of separation. All the beings around us are byproducts of human evolution—human brothers who have fallen behind, who have dropped out of the evolutionary process and remained at a certain stage.

[ 14 ] When we view this development in this way, the relationship between human beings and their environment—and the way this environment has evolved from within humanity—becomes clear. There is nothing objectionable about this; it explains why we can call humans the “firstborn” on Earth, for they are the most highly developed beings and have left all other beings behind in their evolution.

[ 15 ] However, there are many other mysteries underlying the Earth’s evolution. We know that the Earth was once Saturn, then the Sun, and then the Moon. When we consider Saturn’s evolution, we must create a mental image of human beings as astral beings. They lived, however, in a form different from that of the human astral body today. Imagine that the entire audience listening here has fallen asleep; the astral bodies rise up and float above. But they do not remain separate; rather, they merge into one another, blurring into one another; one passes into the other and passes through the other. When the Saturn evolution began, nothing else existed but these astral beings—they condense and receive infusions from the etheric.

[ 16 ] First, in the region surrounding Saturn, we have all the human astral bodies as a mass; everything is contained within it, just as water contains what will later form into ice. In the center of this astral mass is a large hollow sphere. Now, from the astral, first the etheric condenses, then the physical—this settles out first, but it was much thinner than the air is today: We call the substance of which it consists “heat”—or, in occult terms, “fire.” The physicist does not regard this as a substance, but only as a property; however, for occultism, it is the fourth state of matter. This is what constituted the human physical body at that time. The entire planet Saturn is a conglomeration of these early human bodies; there are no other beings on Saturn. — Nor does a state of greater density than the one just described occur on Saturn.

[ 17 ] Now, after the Pralaya, evolution continues on to the Sun. On the Sun, we initially also have the human astral body; it condenses into the etheric body and further condenses into the physical body, but this physical body does not remain as thermal matter—rather, it becomes air-like and gaseous, so that these air bodies first emerge and compose the Sun; above them are the etheric body and the astral body; yet these air bodies are now able to gradually absorb the etheric body into themselves. The air bodies of these human bodies are permeated by the etheric body, just as today’s plants are also permeated by the etheric body. The entire Sun consists of a conglomeration of air beings, cloud beings, who change in the same way as clouds. They are permeated by the etheric body.

[ 18 ] The astral body remains up above. Everything that is human sleeps a blissful sleep on the Sun. The Sun is composed of this sleeping human race—and something else as well. Only a portion of the entire substance of Saturn has been able to transform itself in such a way that it could accommodate the etheric body; other parts have remained at the stage of being merely physical matter. This forms a less developed realm. So that we now have on the Sun: the advancing human realm and another realm—beings who have advanced to the solar stage, and those who have remained at the Saturn stage.

[ 19 ] On the Moon, not only does the etheric body enter the physical human body, but the astral body does as well. This is the state we refer to in occult terms as “water,” or “liquid.” The physical state on the Moon is spring-like.

[ 20 ] Some beings also fell behind there, remaining on the Solar Stage. These, together with those from the Saturn Stage, thus form three kingdoms.

[ 21 ] You can see exactly how these things form—which at the same time makes it clear just how complex the process is.

[ 22 ] On the Sun, humanity has evolved to the point where it has the status of a plant as we know it today: it has a physical body and an etheric body. As it evolved toward the Moon, it incorporated the astral body and attained the stage of an animal.

[ 23 ] However, this line of development did not consist solely of human beings, but also included higher beings who were connected to human evolution. These were beings so highly developed that they no longer needed to descend to the level of physical form.

[ 24 ] On the Moon, the gaseous body of the Sun began to expand and took on structure. Beings who stood far higher than human beings never need to descend to the level of the physical body unless they choose to do so of their own free will; this is why the Sun separated from our Earth’s evolution in the first place. The Sun, the Moon, and the Earth were one body at the beginning of our evolution.

[ 25 ] In the course of evolution, the finest substances and entities stand out—those that did not need to descend any further than to the stage of gaseous condensation. They were able to remain there and use this gaseous body as their physical body. Human beings would not have been able to endure this; they would have become spiritualized too quickly.

[ 26 ] After the Sun had departed, the Earth was still united with the Moon—which contained inferior substances. Had the Earth remained united with it, humanity would have stagnated; it would have become rigid, like a mummy. The lunar principle is the principle of solidification. - The solar being is constantly active life; the lunar being gives fixed form. The proper balance on Earth exists when solar and lunar forces radiate upon it from outside.

[ 27 ] If we were to consider the state of the human body just after the sun had set, it was not yet a human body, nor a mammalian body, nor an amphibian body—what remained were merely bodies comparable to those of today’s fish.

[ 28 ] That was the harvest the Earth had retained after the Sun had departed. — The clairvoyant could have seen the solar beings who had departed, heavenly beings on the same level as human beings; what remained for the Earth was a harvest of bodies on the level of fish. Had the Sun remained united with the Earth, they would have remained in an ethereal form; the moment the element of life departed, they became fish. Those beings whose ruler is the Christ had departed with the Sun—all solar beings must serve the one to whom they belong, their leader; the Christ—he is the ruler of the Sun. Therefore, the fish on Earth shows us that level of development the Earth was at when the Christ principle was still connected to it. This is preserved in the fish’s body; hence, the fish symbol is the monogram of Christ.

[ 29 ] Then came a period in the Earth’s development that we might describe as a dark one. The Earth was united with the solidifying principle, the Moon, after the Sun of Life had separated—everything would have taken on solid forms. That is when those creatures formed—terrible amphibians, the plesiosaur, the ichthyosaur—all those dragon-like creatures. As such terrible forms of a solidified nature, all physical life would have continued to develop if the Earth had remained united with the Moon. We must realize that, had the Moon remained with the Earth, the Earth could have reached no higher a level than the physical nature of those amphibians and snakes.

[ 30 ] There were beings who, had they completed everything correctly, would have gone on to the Sun as Elohim. However, they had remained at the stage of the lunar being and were therefore in close contact with the Moon. They share the lunar being’s particular inclination toward self-enclosure. These beings, whose primary aim was to preserve the lunar forces on Earth, were involved in matters of physicality as long as humanity remained at the stage of the amphibian and the serpent. That is why the serpent is their symbol.

[ 31 ] At that time, death was implanted in human beings. It did not exist before. Such beings do not die; like clouds, they take on other forms, but their consciousness remains. What we call death—the shedding of the physical form—did not exist. Yet the moon’s departure was a kind of total death, for if the moon had remained united with the Earth, then humankind would have become like mummies, like dead, statue-like beings; there would have been nothing but dead people.

[ 32 ] Humanity is saved from this death by the separation of the Moon. If the Sun had remained with the Earth, there would be no incarnation, since the forces of the Sun would have spiritualized humanity too quickly. If the forces of the Moon had remained, there could not have been any incarnation either, for the opposite reason. Human beings would then have come into being once and become increasingly solid; everything would have been incorporated into the bones. Balance is achieved through the separation of the sun and the moon.

[ 33 ] Human beings owe this implantation of present-day death to the lunar forces—the forces that lead human beings to sensory perception. Human beings received this through the lunar forces, the serpent being [...]. The fish being does not perceive things as human beings do. The fish perceives through clairvoyance, through the aura. All beings in the water are clairvoyant and clairaudient. — Death is not implanted in them; the group soul, the soul aspect, is immortal; the individual beings exchange energies. Only with the implantation of red blood and blue blood—the substance of death—does death actually occur. At the same time, the ability to see all around emerges: human eyes are opened. The serpent tells us that the eyes have been opened. Thus, the symbols of the serpent and the fish arose from the development of the world. The serpent is the true symbol of death, but also of the being that brought external sensory perception and science into the world.

[ 34 ] Saturn was at first a blaze of fire, within which were human bodies. The Sun was gaseous. The Moon was an ocean of water, within which the bodies existed as denser formations. The Earth, in contrast, is becoming increasingly solid. It has a tendency to imprint forms upon matter. If we consider the lunar water in an occult sense—not like the naive physicist, who sees only water in water—then we see: It is permeated by forces in all directions. These forces condense in certain places, giving rise to bodies; the lunar water contains a thousand possibilities for coalescing into all manner of bodies.

[ 35 ] If we go back to ancient Atlantis, which is shrouded in thick mists, we find human bodies that are not yet particularly dense. Although they already had a structure, they were gelatinous, with the skeletal framework inside, yet still soft—as if we had modern-day polyps inside our skin. All around were masses of water, and within them these gelatinous human beings. What is within the human being today—the soul—was not yet present. The ancient Atlantean did not think or reason; nature around him did that for him; the springs and the trees spoke to him.

[ 36 ] Wisdom was poured out into the waters; there it had its substantial body. What spread throughout the waters was iodine—the substance that allows us to say, “The Spirit of God hovered over the waters.” We find this iodine today in marine plants. When the waters receded, they absorbed the wisdom—they absorbed the iodine. In the human body, iodine is present in the thyroid gland; if it is removed from a person, they become mentally impaired. Thus, all substances serve as bodies for spiritual realities. The naive physicist has no idea about this! Water is matter for a spiritual essence contained within it, and the spirit can transform itself into physical bodies at any time. Iodine is a vessel for a certain form of wisdom that human beings absorb—a wisdom that enters them from the outside. Worlds are always preparing themselves; new worlds are constantly forming.

[ 37 ] When we look at ice flowers, we see the spirit of water at work; there we see the first attempts at Jupiter formation—how beings will emerge from matter in the future. The occultist gazes upon them with awe; in the ice flowers on the window, the forces contained within the water reveal themselves to him. These are the embryonic forms of future bodies that will become beings. If you could look back at the Moon, you would see your own bodies taking shape just as you see the ice flowers forming on your window today.

[ 38 ] This is what gives us the true sense of the depths of the world’s development when we look upon such things with reverence. When we look at a crystal formation today, we see that it was once a plant being; these are all beings that humankind has left behind, and it is humanity’s mission to redeem them.

[ 39 ] The forms that surround us have emerged from within human beings. And the ice flowers are the harbingers of the living forms of the future. Everything around us is alive, and we intuitively immerse ourselves in the unfolding of the world through our sensations and feelings when we seek out the spirit of the world, which contains within itself sensation and feeling. Intuition is the great mother of the sensation of the world’s becoming! The laws of the world become beings with whom we form friendships as we connect with them ever higher and higher.