The Three Logoi: Creative Word, Light, and Aroma

GA 266I — 11 February 1907, Hamburg

Esoteric Lesson

Record A

Logos. Most people know little more about them than that the word logos consists of five letters. When people talk about these high beings, the three Logoi, it is often just amateurish babbling. In order to look into the world of the three Logoi, a comprehensive preparatory understanding is necessary. But people often believe that they can understand the highest first. Theosophical writings often speak of the Logoi as the life web of the world. Such an understanding can only be poor compared to what we must rise to if we want to approach the world of the three Logoi. In order to gain some understanding of what is meant by the Logoi, let us consider the beginning of the Gospel of John: "In the beginning was the Word—the Logos—and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made through it, and without it nothing was made that has been made." When we let this resonate in our souls, we sense that something supreme is being struck.

When we remember what is said about the development of our Earth, we know that our Earth developed from another planet, the old moon. On the old moon, all beings were different, and the state of the moon was also different from our present state on Earth; it was not solid, but in a watery state. Before the lunar state, the sun itself was the embodiment of our earth, and before that there was the Saturn state. Thus, our earth has undergone three embodiments. How does the present sun relate to that planet which was the sun state of our earth before the lunar state? An advancement has taken place. The sun, which is now a fixed star, was previously the planet Sun. The best forces and beings separated themselves from this planet Sun, and those who were less highly developed continued on with the Moon, came to Earth, and underwent their development on Earth. Every planet will one day become a fixed star.

Our Earth is not merely a dead body; it is an animated being. The souls that are embodied in the three realms of nature, the human souls and even higher spiritual beings, are connected to our Earth.

When a planet develops into a fixed star, the beings embodied on that planet also rise higher. The best forces and beings of the former Sun have become the fixed star Sun. When our Earth has passed through the Jupiter stage and is almost a sun as Venus, then our human beings will also be similar to the exalted beings who inhabit the sun today. And what will become of a sun? A sun becomes a zodiac. When a sun has reached its state of maturity, the structure we call a zodiac is formed. A zodiac also comes into being and passes away. Even more powerful and sublime beings than those of a sun work down from a zodiac. The sun that shines down on us today will one day shine down as the stars of a new zodiac. Creative beings in the highest stage of development will be the spirit beings of this new zodiac: creative souls.

When we consider human development, we see organs that are withering, that are at the end of their development, but we also see others that are only at the beginning of their development; the heart and the larynx are only at the beginning of their development. In the future, the heart will be a voluntary muscle. This development takes place as the Earth simultaneously transforms from a planet into a sun. And what can our larynx do today? It can spread the thoughts of our soul through the spoken word into the environment. Thoughts are first in the soul, then they are transformed into air vibrations through the utterance of words; human thinking is embodied in the air as movement. This is only the beginning of a development. What now serves as the organs of human reproduction will wither away, and the larynx will become the new reproductive organ. Just as humans today embody their thoughts in the movements of the air when they speak, so will they later produce their own kind through the new reproductive organ, the larynx, by speaking. With the word that emerges from it, the larynx will creatively utter human offspring. This will happen when the Earth changes from a planet to a fixed star and from a fixed star to the zodiac. Then humans will speak into the world, and the word will be creative. This is also how our world came into being. Beings that passed through earlier worlds, even before the Earth was Saturn, sounded down the creative word when the Earth was at the beginning of its development. This is to be taken quite literally: “In the beginning was the Word.” At the end of development, man himself will be a creative Logos. He will be a being who creates through the word. He has emerged from a creative Logos, and later he himself will be a creative Logos.

We speak of three Logoi, of what we call the Trinity. The creative Word is the third Logos. The creative word is usually referred to as the second Logos; cf. the parallel record for this hour. He is the world tone that resounds through the world from the beings that have become creative through the Word. There are even higher, more exalted powers, which is the creative light. Man will also one day be a luminous being. Heat raised to a higher degree becomes light. (All heat is sacrifice!) In the distant future, man will not only be “sound,” but will pass over into a radiantly luminous being that is light. That sublime being that is creative for our world as the second Logos is the creative light. That which passes through the universe as the highest revelation is the aroma of the world. This is an even higher principle of creation than the world tone and the world light.

The world tone is the third Logos. The world light is the second Logos, and the aroma of the world is the first Logos. This is the highest. When the highest creative force transforms into its opposite, it becomes destructive. Here we have the opposite of the world aroma; when the devil is associated with a bad smell in folk tales, this is meant to indicate the destructive nature of the world.

That which always remains of a human being, which passes through all developments as the eternal in the human being, is called in occultism the personal spirit aroma of the human being.

Record B

I will try to record some of what we have heard. Perhaps when we read it again later, something of the experience will come alive again.

First, Steiner tried to give us a deeper understanding of how we should meditate. We should try to visualize what we are saying as vividly as possible. We should not ponder the words, because then we would only experience what we already knew, but rather we should look at the words and immerse ourselves in them. Then they will gradually begin to mean something to us. Through the exercises, we prepare the higher divine beings above us and the masters, our older brothers, to channel the life streams that flow through the world into us. That is the purpose of the exercises.

Brighter than the sun ...

Looking back: Memory would suffer at first during the exercises. But don't worry: this is only a transition. Then you can look back. Learn from what you have experienced, without regret. Strictly speaking, regret would be a kind of egoism, vanity, arrogance. You want to be better than you are. We must completely switch off this feeling during the review. Through this continued conscientious practice, we create an organ for the master that he needs to work in us.

When we walk through an area and come to a resting place and want to look back over the path we have traveled, we can do this in two ways: We can close our eyes and remember everything that has passed us by along the way. Or we can turn around and look back. This is possible on the physical plane. We know this physically in space, but not in time. What we must learn is to read the Akashic Records, the memory of nature. Everything we have done is stored there.

Of the three Logoi

If we want to come to a proper understanding of them, we must form a mental image without speculation. The first Logos is the aroma of the world, a fragrance of which the earthly aroma is only a faint reflection. Into this poured the second Logos, the light (“I am the light of the world,” literally). All visible light, including sunlight, is only a faint reflection of the light that emanates from the second Logos. The third Logos is sound, the music of the spheres. We can already form a concept of sound, since we ourselves have sound, the sounds that come out of our larynx, in language.

This is what the ancient Turanian adepts taught many thousands of years ago in Atlantis. Every sound has a meaning and possesses magical powers. The A, the open, wide-ranging sound, the tone, the third Logos. The dull vowel U—the light of which we cannot yet form a mental image, the second Logos. And the consonant M, the unutterable, the aroma of the world, the first Logos.