Supplements to Member Lectures

GA 246 — 12 January 1908, Leipzig

10. Occult Signs and Symbols of the Astral World

When I speak today of the occult signs of the astral and spiritual world, “spiritual world” is meant and used in the sense of the Devachan. Our physical plan is irradiated by the astral world and even higher worlds. What the occultist comes to know of these higher worlds is often expressed by all kinds of symbols. We need not think of particularly artificial images, but we must take them symbolically, as we speak, for example, of the “light of knowledge”, the “light of wisdom”. Anyone who follows poetic language, who examines religious documents, will find symbols. The occultist, however, never needs such images in a speculative sense, because occult signs are not speculative. So you cannot penetrate the meaning of the images by mere reflection. The only way is through the secret science itself, and the same way must be applied to the legends and fairy tales of the peoples. You must hold that a true occult symbol is something really to be seen in a higher world.

Man in his astral body can have just such organs of knowledge and perception as the physical body. When the astral body leaves the physical and etheric body, unconsciousness occurs, but not because the physical senses are missing, but because there are larger and completely different worlds around him and because [man] has not yet developed his astral organs. They are very different from the sensory organs. They are called lotus flowers or wheels because of their shape. They are movements of light that flash. If we draw these movements of light in the main lines, especially the fast-moving two-petaled one, the result is the so-called swastika. We know the meaning of this drawing just as little as we know what an eye is when we only see its drawing. One cannot recognize the meaning of that sign by contemplation, but only through the knowledge of secret scientific facts.

So the pentagram is nothing other than an organ of the etheric body. It signifies the human being because it is inscribed in his etheric body. However, the lines of this pentagram follow the movements of the human body and are therefore not always straight.

Today we want to pick out a few from the large series of these signs, namely those that are close to the human being in a certain respect, and want to point out what underlies them as reality.

If we consider the four members of the human being according to their perfection, the physical body is the most perfect, less so the etheric body, even less so the astral body and least of all the ego. The physical body is the most perfect because man had already developed it when the earth was still Saturn. Now the earth has become sun and moon and has further perfected it on these levels. The etheric body was first formed on the sun, which is why it reached a threefold degree of perfection: sun, moon, earth.

The astral body only reached a twofold degree of perfection: moon and earth. The ego is still in its infancy, but will later become a very perfect being. The occultist only sees man as a perfect human being according to his physical body, while with regard to his etheric body he has the value of an animal, with regard to the astral body the value of a plant and with regard to the ego only the value of a mineral.

What is the nature of the ego? It is a perceiving and comprehending thing. But now the ego can only comprehend the mineral world. That is why man only knows how to make the mineral useful to him; he uses it for his machines and so on. The ego can only absorb the mineral into itself and, for example, make a clock with mechanical efficiency. Man cannot call a germ, a plant into existence. One day he will also be able to bring forth living things, not only the plant, but even himself into existence.

An occult rule is that man will only be able to create out of himself when man's work on the laboratory table has become sacramental. Only when the laboratory table has become an altar will beings be called into existence by the higher beings.

Now only the physical body is similar to God; that is the human being. The etheric body is still essentially on the animal level, has more or less animal form, and indeed four very specific animal forms are expressed. These were named after related animals, which they only resemble. The one (typical) exemplary form is: man; the other, because it is similar to a hoofed animal, is bull; another lion; and finally the fourth form, which has the urge towards the ideal: Eagle.

In death, these forms emerge precisely. It is still difficult for people today to recognize these exemplary etheric forms. In the Atlantean period, when man's etheric body had not yet taken possession of him, had not yet crawled into him, i.e. when there was not yet a distinct individuality, there was a resemblance to the four animal forms. At that time there were four group souls: Man, bull, lion, eagle. These are not arbitrarily invented symbols. Today, occultists can distinguish between these four groups: Man-man, bull-man, lion-man, eagle-man. This is how these images are traced back to their reality.

That which is just a name for many people today really exists: tribal soul, Folk-souls. I would like to remind you here of the Cherusci people that appear in ancient Germanic history. It arises, reaches a height, descends again and disappears in history, just as a person disappears from this plan after his life passes away with death. In the people we have something that is a real Folk-souls; and each individual Cheruscan - outwardly completely distinct - was nevertheless embedded in the general astral Cheruscan soul. The Cheruscan soul existed; it is a real astral being.

Imagine if a clairvoyant had looked down and followed this development. He would not have looked at each individual Cherusker, but he would have focused his attention on the Folk-souls. He would see how the soul arises and develops, but then he would see something else. When we follow a person up into Devachan since his last death, we continue to follow his life in those higher worlds until he steps down again into earthly life and so on. We do not see such a Folk-souls disappear and reappear on its plan, but as it once transformed itself from another soul, so it forms itself anew on its own plan. The Cheruscan soul had transformed itself from another Folk-souls and is now forming itself into another. A Folk-souls consists of sensations, impulses, desires, like a human being of nerves, muscles and so on, and is always being created anew from itself, is always creating itself anew from the eternal fire, and such a Folk-soul does not leave its world. Such beings exist today; they never appear on earth. And because they have appeared to some people in the form of a bird, such beings have been called “bird phoenixes”. It is a fact and is simply modeled on the astral experience, event. Thus we have cited an important symbol.

The cross has a deep meaning and plays a major role in the Middle Ages. Probably [a pupil in the Middle Ages] who was given to the Rosicrucian for education. [In the form of a dialogue] I will tell you - which may have gone on for weeks and months - how the Rosicrucian communicated with the disciple: "Look at the plant; it sprouts the root, the stem, produces flower and fruit. Place yourself next to this plant. Now you must not compare the flower of the plant with the head of the human being, but what the root is for the plant, the head is for the human being. The plant turns its fruit organs upwards towards the sun; exactly the opposite is the case with man. In the animal they are horizontal because the animal is only halfway through its development. If we draw a line upwards for man's main energy, downwards for the plant and horizontally for the animal, the cross is formed by these lines.

If we follow the development of the human being, we will say that the human being has acquired something that is higher than being a plant, and also something that is lower. The plant contains nothing of instinct and sensuality. Man had not retained this pure nature because he took into himself the astral body and with it desire. This led him to day consciousness on the one hand and desire on the other. If the plant is imbued with astral matter, the chlorophyll or leaf green will turn red, the color of blood, and be pulsed with desire. At a higher level of consciousness, however, man will have purified his instincts and desires, shed his nature of desire and returned to the chaste plant substance. Then he will kill off the baseness of his nature, the covetous nature of his blood. Here you have an ideal of man's future. If you think of the cross as a sign of death and the red blood purified and returned to pure nature, then you will understand the wreath of red roses around the cross, the symbol of the Rosicrucian.

Such symbolic images are to be experienced, then they are strength, they are nourishment for your spirit and your soul. Something opens up for us when we have the Rosy Cross in front of us.

When it is said in the fairy tale that a bee sucked on the blood of the crucified Savior as if it were a plant, something special is meant; this blood was already at that height at that time, was already the purified rose blood. So much wisdom has flowed into legends and fairy tales.

If we follow the path even higher, beyond the astral world, we come to the so-called spiritual world. The astral world, especially in its middle stage, shows stillness, flooding light with wonderful light phenomena, but soon the noise of the physical world falls silent. After this silence, the spiritual world resounds, which sound in this [spiritual] world was called “music of the spheres” by the student of occultism of Pythagoras. Goethe meant the same thing when he said in the beginning of “Faust”:

The sun sounds after the old fashion
In fraternal spheres' song of competition;
And its prescribed journey
Completes it with thunder.
(Prologue in heaven)

And then at the point in the second part of “Faust” - he also lets Ariel speak at the beginning:

Sounding to mind's ears
Already the new day is born,
Rock gates creak rattling,
Phoebus' wheels roll pattering:
What a roar the light brings! It drums, it trumpets,
Eye blinks and ear amazes,
The unheard of is not heard.

This describes what is real; great artists do not utter phrases. When man learns to perceive in this spiritual world, then the tones appear to him symbolically; it sounds and resounds spiritually from the celestial spaces, faster or slower. It is a different sound; music of the spheres is not an image, it is a reality that is experienced.

You know, [Jupiter] makes a certain movement in world space; [Saturn] moves more slowly. The true ratios are like this: [Jupiter] moves two and a half times faster than [Saturn]; when Saturn stands out from the starry sky, which continues to move, Saturn moves 1200 times faster than it. The motion of Jupiter to Mars is like five to one. Mars compared with [...], Venus, Mercury: Ratio [of about three and eight] to [one]. This is how one can indicate the tone ratios in the great world harmony.

[But there are also such ratios in] our world - earth, water, air and fire - are in very special numerical relationships. The initiate learns to hear the ratios.

This is the basis of something very important. The first ancient initiates tuned their musical instruments accordingly. The bass note of the lyre was the note of the earth, the D-string of water, the F-string of fire, the A-string of air. This is how the instruments are constructed from the mysteries of the cosmos; in them sounds what the initiates heard. This indicates that much in our world is symbolic. - Richard Wagner, with his brilliant insight, once said: “In the sound of the instruments together you can hear something of the music of higher worlds.”

So you can see how many things that are symbolic for us are born out of spiritual sounds. We could also list many things that could show how even in art many things are images from the spiritual world.

Today this small selection may teach us: Our world of the senses around us is in a certain way rigid; but, when we come up into the higher worlds, there everything becomes mobile, capable of transformation - and there man needs something to express it, and so the symbol points us to the truth of the spiritual world. Every being in the world, whether it is stone or plant or sun, is a parable. What we see coming into being and passing away, what is spread out around us in the cosmos, is a parable for the eternal. Goethe's saying is true (conclusion of the second part [of Faust II]):

Chorus mysticus:
Everything transient
is only a parable.

Thus we learn to understand the world itself as a parable. When we first learn to regard our corporeality as a parable of the higher human being, then we have reached the highest level with regard to the contemplation of the highest; when man is able to regard his transience important enough, but it is not overly important to him, when it is the parable of the imperishable.