Year 1, Letter 1 September 1927 Astronomy and Anthroposophy Rudolf Steiner s spiritual science has given us a cosmology that is in accordance with spiritual law, and through which humankind is once more placed within the world-picture, and heaven and Earth are again united. He repeatedly attempted to establish the connection between this spiritually-based knowledge and that of modern scientifically-based astronomy. The necessity of establishing such a connection springs from the very foundations of spiritual science the idea that the external world is maya, or illusion, and that spiritual science seeks to penetrate to the reality that lies behind it. Where and how maya and reality meet with one another is the great question. It was this question that Rudolf Steiner addressed in his cycle of lectures in Helsingfors [Helsinki], Finland (1912), The Spiritual Beings in the Heavenly Bodies and in the Kingdoms of Nature. A close study of this cycle reveals to us the way from external maya to inner spiritual reality. If one wishes to find what has resulted from this reality one must go back to the past. The world of physical heavenly bodies represents the remains of the past deeds of the various beings of the hierarchies, and the aftereffects of their deeds extend into the present. Thus the world of stars is as much an illusion or maya as the rest of nature, and what is more, it is a maya of the past! But if one penetrates behind this maya then the stars reveal themselves as colonies of spiritual beings. One is led to contemplate the beings of the higher hierarchies that are raised above humankind in nine degrees, and who are all in one way or another connected with the world of the stars and its cosmic evolution. This is more closely described in Rudolf Steiner s An Outline of Esoteric Science. Above the human being there is, first of all, the sphere of those angelic beings we call angels or angeloi, who are the guardians of individual 3
4 astronomy and spiritual science human beings and accompany them from incarnation to incarnation. They live in the sphere of the Moon, although they do not actually carry out their activities upon the Moon itself. For that greater powers are necessary, which are only to be found among the archangels or archai. These beings, who, together with the angels, compose the first or lowest hierarchy of the spiritual world, guide the nations of the Earth and the great epochs of time. The archangels are at the same time folk-spirits and the archai, spirits of time. Thus this hierarchy, which extends as far as the Moon, is primarily concerned with the historical life of individuals and of whole peoples. Further, in the Sun we find those beings whom we designate as the second hierarchy; to these belong the spirits of form, the spirits of movement, and the spirits of wisdom. In a certain sense these beings have their habitation on the Sun, but from there they work upon the planets and send their forces from the planets down to Earth. The spirits of form give the planets their outer configuration. The spirits of movement cause the inner mobility of the planets not their movement through space, but the alterations and transformations that take place within them over the course of centuries and millennia, for example, those that take place on Earth through the ebb and flow of tides, through volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, and through meteorological and climatic influences. It is different with regard to the spirits of wisdom. These beings work from the Sun itself, and are the mediators who convey the forces of the Sun throughout the planetary system. While the inner configuration and inner mobility of each planet is different in accordance with the individual forces of the active spirits of form or spirits of movement, the efficacy of the spirits of wisdom is the same for every planet. We can trace the uniform workings of the spirits of wisdom most easily in the plant kingdom. The forms of the plants are all different; their stipules and tendrils show varieties of spiral regularity. In these are reflected planetary forces that come either from spirits of form or spirits of movement who have their respective planets as the starting-points of their activity. But there is one thing that is common to every plant, namely, the vertical direction of its stem, from Earth to the Sun. This is for every plant the expression of the uniformity of the work of the spirits of wisdom. It is a kind of universal, simple form of consciousness of the entire planetary system, somewhat as in all human beings there is a universal similarity of feeling and inclination that rises out of the
1:1 ASTRONOMY and ANTHROPOSOPHY 5 subconscious. The spirits of wisdom are not only to be found upon the Sun, but also upon every one of the fixed stars, so that the first commonality of the entire world of the fixed stars is to be sought in these spirits of wisdom. Hence they are also described as the doorway for the inflowing of the Christ, whose light, in a certain sense, shone through the spirits of wisdom into the Sun during the time previous to the Mystery of Golgotha before he united himself with the Earth. In the first hierarchy are the most sublime and lofty of all the beings of the cosmos, the thrones, cherubim, and seraphim, as they have been called in the ancient esoteric wisdom. It is the thrones, or spirits of will, who create the movements of the planets through space, while the cherubim regulate the different movements and bring about definite relations between planet and planet. They are the messengers for the planets, as the angels are the messengers for the human world. The seraphim have a similar task in respect to the entire world of the stars. They bring about a mutual understanding between the Sun and the other stars, between fixed star and fixed star, bringing the whole universe into a single harmony. We come thus to the following scheme: Seraphim Cherubim Thrones Spirits of Wisdom Spirits of Movement Spirits of Form Archai Archangels Angels Human Being Comets Fixed Stars Planets Moon Earth We must also mention the comets as being a special sphere for the activity of the seraphim and cherubim. It may appear surprising that the sphere of the comets, who are the rebels against the general order of the cosmos, should be allocated to the highest of the hierarchies we have mentioned above. In order to understand this we must try to enter still more deeply into the relation between maya and reality. What we have just described contains, as it were, the divine universal plan that the beings of the higher hierarchies (and particularly the first
6 astronomy and spiritual science hierarchy) receive from the divine world spirit and bring to completion during the course of the whole stupendous evolution of the cosmos. But during this process a great deal has entered in that has brought the spiritual reality into the state of maya we all live in today. In this connection we include, above all, the fact that the movements of the planets and of the fixed stars (and here we mean the apparent so-called movements of the latter) are carried out in so regular a manner that a modern person might well ask: What can the thrones and the other beings still have left to do in regulating the external movements of the planets? Everything is taking place according to strict mathematical laws! But it was not always so, and indeed in a certain sense neither is it the case today. The comets are an exception, and one can begin to understand that their movements need to be directed by the very loftiest beings. We must now observe that the universe has gone through various stages of development that are called, in Rudolf Steiner s An Outline of Esoteric Science, the Saturn, Sun, Moon, and Earth periods. To this we must add what was given in his Leading Thoughts (News-Sheet 1.43). During each one of these periods the whole world of stars was different. On Old Saturn there were only spiritual beings those whom we have mentioned just now. But they did not yet express themselves in the form of a starry firmament, but rather as a general inclination or hint of stars. During the Sun evolution, however, the stars were there as revelations of the spiritual beings. In their movements and so on they were a direct expression of the beings who dwelled on them, in the same way that the human physical body is a direct manifestation of the movements and expressions of the indwelling spirit. In the next stage, that of the Moon, the spiritual beings could only pour their effective working into the heavenly bodies. They gradually withdrew themselves more and more. In order to make this a little clearer, we will briefly describe the historical progress of Earth evolution from this standpoint. Earth represents the fourth of these stages, and Rudolf Steiner described it as a finished work, inasmuch as what was set forth at the beginning of this letter has now been realized. But during the historical ages, humankind again lived through the earlier evolutionary periods of consciousness. In the ancient Indian civilization, for example, human beings attitude toward the world of stars was such that they did not
1:1 ASTRONOMY and ANTHROPOSOPHY 7 notice them at all (this was at a time previous to the Vedas), but instead looked up to the spiritual beings themselves. In the ancient Persian civilization Zoroaster received the revelation of the being of the Sun. (The Sun itself at that time moved, of course, in accordance with the same laws as today, whereas in the Old Sun condition it was still a direct expression of the Sun spirit. Therefore the ancient Persian experienced an earlier condition at a later age.) The Old Chaldeans and Egyptians realized with special force the effective working of the spiritual beings in the heavenly bodies, and hence they had such a wonderful astrological science in their time (which, however, cannot be applied in the same form by humanity today). Theirs was a kind of recapitulation of the Old Moon condition. They saw the beings connected with Sun, Moon, planets and stars, but these beings were no longer solely those of the higher hierarchies. The forms of the Egyptian gods human bodies with animal heads, or complete animal forms, which appear in the Egyptians world of stars do not belong directly to the beings of the hierarchies mentioned above. But they are their offspring-beings that the hierarchies have separated off from themselves. It is these beings, then, who in a certain sense continue the activities from which their creators, the hierarchies themselves, have withdrawn, now that the plan of the movements, orbits, and so on of the planetary system has been established. There are numbers of effective lesser gods of this kind in the universe. The Egyptians or the Chaldeans, especially of later times, who could no longer raise their perception to the gods of the stars themselves, contemplated instead the working of these lesser beings. These offspring of the various hierarchies regulate those things that human beings today believe go of themselves. In order that the human being should develop in freedom, it was necessary that the higher beings should withdraw themselves from the starry worlds and from the whole of nature and leave these to a mechanism apparently without spirit. (We will speak in more detail about the meaning and manner of this withdrawal later on.) Nevertheless, in this mechanical celestial world, as in every phenomenon of nature, the spiritual beings who are the offspring of the higher hierarchies continue to work. The sprouting of the plants out of the Earth in spring, their flowering and fruiting, their decay in autumn, the coming of spring and the
8 astronomy and spiritual science blossoming of the plants at the other side of the world when we have autumn here this is brought about by those nature spirits, the sylphs, undines, and gnomes who are the descendants of the third hierarchy (angels, archangels, and archai), and by the salamanders (fire-spirits) who have been separated off from the spirits of form. They carry out this work under the guidance of the spirits of the revolutions of time, who direct them here and there over the Earth, and who also turn the Earth upon her axis, while others guide the Earth and the planets around the Sun on their regular orbits, and so on. The spirits of the revolution of time are the descendants of the highest hierarchies, of the seraphim and cherubim. The spirits of movement, wisdom, and will have as their offspring those beings we can call the group-souls of the animals, plants, and minerals. We can set down in a schematic form which beings have been separated off from the different hierarchies as their offspring: Hierarchy Offspring Seraphim, Cherubim Spirits of the Revolution of Time Thrones Group-Souls of the Minerals Spirits of Wisdom Group-Souls of the Plants Spirits of Movement Group-Souls of the Animals Spirits of Form Fire Spirits Spirits of Personality (Archai) Gnomes Archangels Undines Angels Sylphs These are all beings who are of a lower order than their progenitors, and who have so worked within the divine task that the natural world order and moral world order no longer remain as one but, at least for outer observation, has developed a certain duality. Hence it has come about that we stand before nature and the cosmos as before a maya in which the forces of nature appear merely as an impress of the activity of the nature spirits. And in the place of an unimpeded inpouring of activity from the hierarchies, we now find the laws of nature as an impress of the spirits of the revolution of time within the world of maya. Therefore in these offspring we have beings who bring us a step nearer to what is otherwise observed in the domain of external natural science.
1:1 ASTRONOMY and ANTHROPOSOPHY 9 While all this is taking place in the orderly and lawful manner that is necessary in order for human beings to arrive at an inner experience of freedom, there are still the comets, which do not fully fit into this orderly scheme. Even though the so-called periodical comets do conform more or less to the general order, the appearance of new comets (and comets are as numerous as the fish in the sea, as Kepler already observed) testifies again and again to a breaking of these laws. The comets constitute an element in which we can surmise something like the direct interposition of spiritual powers, and, indeed, powers of the very highest sort namely the seraphim and cherubim. That which has to break through any established order is just the very thing that calls for regulation by the highest possible force and insight. The comets constitute a quite remarkable contrivance in the midst of our planetary system and have their polar opposite in the moons of the various planets. As the moons on the one hand are a species of corpse that the planetary system drags about with it, so on the other hand the comets are like incessant cleansers of the astral atmosphere of the solar system. In earlier ages they were regarded with awe as the scourges of God, and much superstition has gathered around them. For spiritual sight, too, they are wondrous forms that ever and again sweep the unclean astral forces out of the cosmos, or have the task of bringing fresh impulses into it. Thus in a certain way we can behold the component parts or limbs of the planetary system if as Rudolf Steiner says in the Helsingfors cycle we gaze with occult sight at the various heavenly bodies. The moons and there are also moons belonging to Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and so on create the general impression of a corpse. Just as the human corpse is a kind of memory image of what was once living, so the moons of the planetary system are like the memory of an earlier living condition that, however, has now absolutely and completely perished. So the planetary system has, as its lowest member, the moons; and similarly, human beings have, as their lowest member, the physical body. On the other hand, if we observe the totality of the planets in the solar system, we receive an impression that more or less coincides with the occult impression we can obtain when we regard the limit the boundary of the human physical body. Therefore the planets represent, so to speak, the physical body of the solar system. And, moreover, from the single planets there issue those activities that go to build up the inner organs of human beings.
10 astronomy and spiritual science When we look at the Sun as a fixed star within the planetary system, it awakens an impression that is comparable to that of the etheric body. This is not the etheric body of the human being, but the etheric body of the world of plants in all its purity, free from any penetration by the astral forces. The astral body of the solar system actually consists of a plethora of beings including those whom we have described the hierarchies and the spirits of the revolutions of time. But those beings that stream out from the evil thoughts of human beings also belong to it, as well as those that come from the so-called laggard beings in the cosmos. (These are the substances that must be removed by the comets.) Further, we can also speak of an I-being of the planets. For Earth there is the spirit of Earth whose impress upon the outer world may be called the sense 1 of the Earth. In ancient times this Earth spirit was one of the elohim Jahweh or Jehovah. Since the Mystery of Golgotha Christ is the spirit of Earth he who has given Earth her sense. And therefore he has to be found through a much more inward means than any of the other spiritual beings. The spirits of the revolution of time, who represent the astral body of the Earth, still have a relationship to the astral body of the human being. Both are in a certain sense a multiplicity a manifoldness. We can feel this relationship when we allow the seasons of the year to work upon our soul, as is indicated, for instance, in the Calendar of the Soul. Even the outer expression of these spirits the laws of nature is related to the human soul, born out of the human soul. We have a less definite relation to the forces of nature, even when we learn to master them through the medium of our knowledge of nature s laws. These forces of nature are indeed the impress of the nature-spirits, the gnomes, undines, and so on. The etheric body of the Earth is composed of a multiplicity of these beings. But human beings for the most part feel their own etheric body as a unity, and thus do not inwardly feel closely connected with the realm of the nature spirits. If we take the world perceived by the senses as being the physical body of the Earth as it appears quite simply to our sense-perception, the following scheme emerges: 1. Sinn. Rudolf Steiner did not use this word as Mind, but as sense.
1:1 ASTRONOMY and ANTHROPOSOPHY 11 Planetary Spirit Sense of Nature I Spirits of the Revolution of Time Laws of Nature Astral Body Realm of the Nature Spirits Forces of Nature Etheric Body World Perceived by the Senses Perceptions Physical Body But there are not only those beings and forces present in the cosmos that have been mentioned. If it were so, the entire cosmos would consist solely of an element of being without any visible substance. The heavenly bodies would not be perceptible to our sight, nor would earthly substance be tangible. In order to understand maya we must also consider that still other beings called luciferic and ahrimanic in An Outline of Esoteric Science have interpolated themselves into the evolutionary process. These are beings of the higher hierarchies who, however, have not followed the same course of development, but have remained behind while the normal spirits have gone on to ever higher and higher degrees. Thus, for example, there are the laggard spirits of form, who should properly have become spirits of movement, but who have remained behind at the stage of the spirits of form. While the etheric spheres of Saturn and Jupiter were being fashioned by the spirits of form and their inner mobility was being given by the spirits of movement, rebellious spirits of form hurled themselves against the normal spirits instead of taking part in the creation of movement. By remaining in a state of resistance at a certain point within the sphere, they created a form, and this form is actually the planet we now see shining in the heavens! The sphere of the planet remains as an etheric structure in which astral forces are working. The planet itself moves in its orbit on the circumference of this sphere. At the same time other luciferic beings advanced and hurled themselves against the seraphim and cherubim who were carrying the spiritual light of the Sun out into the whole of cosmic space and robbed them of it, retaining one part of the light in the planet itself and thrusting back another part. This stolen light then changed into external, perceptible light so that the planet became externally visible. At a later stage ahrimanic beings added solid matter to the Earth and fashioned the thick veil of maya that now represents the outer world perceived by the senses. Everything in existence that can be the object of external investigation has in itself, in some form or other, a luciferic element an outer light
12 astronomy and spiritual science nature; and an ahrimanic element, which incorporates weight into itself. This, too, belongs to the maya that is spread out over the whole of the spiritual reality. We can study these things further with regard to yet other forms, the meteors, which are also connected with the comets. The comets appear as spiritual forms that are sent into the universe by the highest spirits, and in the course of their astral scavenging they absorb many substances such as gases and so on. But at the same time other creations appear that project themselves against them. These belong to an abnormal class of beings, namely thrones who should actually be seraphim or cherubim. They have remained behind at the stage of the thrones, and now work with that stupendously powerful might that they owe to their having remained in an earlier condition. The thrones are the creators of the group-souls of the minerals, and the laggard thrones therefore produce hard mineral-substantial forms in the cosmos as meteors and so on, which often either accompany the comets, or appear in more or less regular cycles of time and spatial positions as meteoric showers in the atmosphere of the Earth. Thus these creations, which are to some extent withdrawn from the normal regularity of the laws of the planetary system, represent a lofty spirituality united with the most compacted matter. We will deal in greater detail with the nature of the comets and meteors at a later stage. It is precisely the behavior of the comets that serves to remind us again and again that it is not possible to explain the occurrences within the planetary system solely by means of the Newtonian theory of gravitation. Even with respect to the other heavenly bodies, there is always something remaining over that, if it be taken together over immense periods of time, is an expression of the living activity of spiritual beings within the solar system, which has not entirely passed over into the condition of finished work. But it is only the comets and meteors that actually to some extent introduce the incalculable element an element of arbitrary self-will. With regard to the other heavenly bodies the incommensurability of their relative periods of movement shows that they demand a different method of observation from the gravitational one that holds good for Earth. Rhythm and periodicity pertain to the planetary movements and fundamentally constitute their own primeval laws, even as the immediate periphery of the Earth has its laws of
1:1 ASTRONOMY and ANTHROPOSOPHY 13 gravitation. (Naturally the Earth also partakes of the cosmic regulation of rhythm and period, as it is also a heavenly body.) These laws are the same as those upon which humanity and the other kingdoms of nature are based. By this mode of conception humanity and the universe will once more be united, and after this manner, too, religious feeling will once again be able to find its connection with the starry heavens. Indeed, the stars are for us the traces of divine deeds that lead us up to the beings of the hierarchies, and to the very throne of God himself. Thus Rudolf Steiner could say in the lecture course I referred to in which he pointed the way from anthroposophy to astronomy: Inasmuch as we behold the world of the stars, we behold the bodies of the gods, and ultimately the form of all that is divine.