The Rudolf Steiner Archive

22. The Mission of Shepherds, Farmers, and Fishermen

[ 1 ] It is important to shed light on the more intimate connections in human development. First and foremost, we must consider the external factors of heredity. One need only consider how strongly a person’s profession influences their entire life, right down to their destiny. Then there are the factors related to reincarnation and karma. All souls who are here have already been incarnated and carry with them—in the form of antipathy and sympathy, as character traits—what they have experienced in previous lives.

[ 2 ] Theosophists, in particular (all of them), are mostly drawn from the urban population, and it must be interesting, from this perspective, to observe certain groups that were sharply distinct in the past: pastoral peoples and farmers. Today, people are so intermingled that such distinctions are no longer possible (Abel, Cain). This sharp distinction may suggest to us that great, great importance was attached to these differences.

[ 3 ] Simply knowing that human beings are divided into seven parts does not, in essence, amount to much. What is important is to understand how these parts manifest themselves on Earth today. And only by taking into account the interrelationships—how the individual parts are connected, whether closely or distantly—can one gain any meaningful insight into these matters. This division into seven is a rough one. The higher aspects arise only through fully conscious, deliberate work on the lower aspects. It should be noted, however, that such work has been done at all times, even if not yet fully consciously and subject to deliberate will.

[ 4 ] For example, during the ancient Lunar Age, the “I” developed the soul of sensation from the sensory body. But the ego also worked on the etheric body in ancient times—specifically on those parts of the etheric body that regulate nutrition. It extracted those currents and forces that are otherwise active in nutritional processes. It must be said: It became very clearly evident in the etheric body that the organ of the intellectual soul was formed—specifically from the forces of growth.

[ 5 ] However, the forces employed by the intellectual soul are the finer forces of the etheric body; the coarser ones continue to serve the process of growth.

[ 6 ] From the forces of the physical body, the consciousness soul has developed the organs with which it now works; this is easy to understand, for the consciousness soul works with the physical brain. It is not a matter of indifference to the soul of consciousness how the physical body develops the brain and so on. These things are, so to speak, interdependent. A great deal depends on the interrelationship of these organs for activity on Earth.

[ 7 ] Let us now consider the conditions within a shepherd people. Their diet consists of ready-to-eat foods: milk and meat. What kind of animals are these? They are the higher animals, the mammals. All the animals now tended by pastoral peoples came into being after the Lemurian era; before that, snakes were the highest form of life.

[ 8 ] These animals, from which the shepherd peoples derived their organization, were under the influence of the Luciferic beings, but only sporadically, for it was not important enough to them, even if the animal’s astral body was, so to speak, exposed. The ungulates, for example, were not subject to the influence of the Luciferic entities at all.

[ 9 ] People built their bodies from animals that had no connection to the moon. So you will now understand when you are told that these pastoral peoples contributed nothing to their own development. What came to the fore—and did so particularly strongly—was what was already present: the development of the astral body: It became denser, more waxy; the sensory body became more viscous. And this is what accounts for what is called the peaceful nature of the pastoral peoples, but they also become more indolent, more dull to external impressions. Their spirituality is subject to this influence; they can bring little of their own imagination to bear on it.

[ 10 ] The situation is different for farmers. They devote themselves to an occupation that did not yet exist on the Moon. On the Moon, no seed had yet been planted in the ground. There were only wild plants. What lies in the direction of human progress is connected to the farmer. Therefore, the farmer was the first sinner, in the sense that he did evil of his own free will—Cain, who killed Abel. The sin in the Garden of Eden is something else: the temptation by the Luciferic beings. Geometry is closely connected to this activity. The Hyksos hindered the Egyptian farmers’ ability to advance in this direction.

[ 11 ] Among the pastoral peoples, the soul of sensation was internalized and sealed off; it could not pass through the viscous astral body.

[ 12 ] Where the Bible speaks to us, it speaks of the peoples living in the outside world, of generations of farmers. (Consider what was said last night.) Combinatorial thinking has been bestowed upon Abraham. His peoples are nomads—a blend of the two groups mentioned—because both approaches were to be harmoniously integrated into one another.

[ 13 ] But the Christ event was to take place—an event that Abraham had merely prepared the way for. How could the one who was to bring the “I” find his closest companions? He had to find those who had not yet been affected at all by either of the two currents described above. The task was to identify that element which neither strove vehemently forward—because such a thing had not yet existed—nor strove backward, having nothing of Earth’s evolution within it yet.

[ 14 ] Now consider the fish. They existed before the Moon’s evolution and never absorbed the nature of the Moon, nor did they descend to the Earth, for there was already water on the Moon. — That is why Christ Jesus had to choose his companions from among the fish.

[ 15 ] Now things are beginning to take a different turn. — We have three types of occupations: first, shepherds; second, farmers; third, fishermen. These fishermen were able to understand Christ and his mission—the development of the conscious soul—and thus these influences have penetrated even into the physical body.

[ 16 ] But in terms of their way of life, they were suited only to that era; otherwise, there would have been a swing of the pendulum in the opposite direction. That is why, today, a diet of fish coarsens what is the finest and most subtle organ in the human body.

[ 17 ] (One should not try to introduce theosophy to everyone who seems to have something to do with it; they are often the ones furthest from the cause.)

[ 18 ] However, one should not conclude that the fishermen are now in a state of decadence. It is quite conceivable that a coastal people, of all groups, is preparing the way for a new, revitalizing influence of Christianity today.

[ 19 ] It is one of the deepest mysteries of the Bible—the mission of shepherds, farmers, and fishermen. —It is the tragic fate of our time that true Christianity is opposed by its apparent representatives. What matters is calling things by their proper names.