Rosicrucian Symbols and the Evolution of Human Consciousness

GA 266I — 12 February 1908, Berlin

Esoteric Lesson

Editorial note: The symbols and saying discussed in this lesson were apparently written on the blackboard by Rudolf Steiner at the beginning of the lesson and then explained. They are therefore also presented here: first in the form in which they appear in Rudolf Steiner's notebook Archive No. 381, followed by a slightly different version of the diagram from note B; this is followed by a summary by the editors of the names of the symbols, which are found in the individual notes, each from different perspectives.

Facsimile of the symbols from Rudolf Steiner's notebook archive no. 381.

The following saying is a free translation of an old Rosicrucian saying found in “Geheimen Figuren der Rosenkreuzer aus dem 16ten und 17ten Jahrhundert” (Altona 1785, reprinted Berlin 1919). The original reads:

Whoever understands this tablet correctly,
Sees how one thing comes from another.
First, everything is contained in the number four,
The elements everywhere,
From which the three beginnings arise,
Which bring forth two sexes,
Male and female, from the sun and moon,
From these grows the imperial son:
Who is like nothing else in the world,
And surpasses all kingdoms.

Rudolf Steiner's first translation reads:

Whoever understands this tablet well,
Sees how one thing comes from another.
First, everything is in the number four
The elements everywhere,
From which the three beginnings arise,
Which produce two sexes,
Male and female from the sun and moon,
From this grows the inner son:
Nothing in the world is like him
And he surpasses all the earth.

The version used in the lesson can be found in notebook archive no. 381. In notebook archive no. 536, the saying is recorded again, but in line 8, “Son of Man” is replaced by “Son of Earth” (see p. 311).

Whoever truly understands the workings of numbers
Sees how his world is built up
Seek the four as the first number
The elements everywhere
From it you see the three moving
Spirit, soul, and body give you life
The two arise from the sun and moon
From this grows the Son of Man
Who is equal to nothing in the world
He surpasses all the earth's realms

Version from recording B

Summary of the captions from the various recordings by the editors.

Recording A

If the Rosicrucian student was to be given something in the lesson that would lift him up, raise him up, the following figures were placed before his soul from the abundance of occult characters, and the above saying was spoken to him.

These figures do not mean anything abstract, but must be imbued with feeling and understanding if they are to be understood. If this is done in the right way, the person concerned experiences truths that are of the greatest importance for their further development.

The dot signifies the point of life from which all development proceeds. All life emerges from unity and passes into diversity. From unity springs multiplicity.

Everything else that exists on earth has emerged from human beings. Nature is the expanded, unfolded human being. In it we find minerals, plants, and animals. All the qualities that human beings possess are scattered throughout the individual kingdoms of nature. Man is the crown of creation. Everything that exists comes from man.

In the second row, we see how development into multiplicity takes place. But multiplicity must bring about a unity within itself.

This happened in the middle of the Atlantean race, when man received his ego. At that time, humans were still relatively simple. Today, they are already much more complicated.

If we look at the third row, we see the symbols for the four elements. These elements are completely different from those known in chemistry. The first symbol means earth, the second water, the third air, and the fourth fire.

Today, the first element is found in its purest form in coal or diamonds. It is therefore carbon. Man breathes carbon, which is absorbed by plants and found in solid form in coal and diamonds.

We must bear in mind that conditions on Earth today are very different from those that prevailed when the first human beings appeared. Humans could only emerge from the conditions that existed at that time.

The second element, water, does not exist on Earth today in its original state – it will be up to technology to recreate the original element – and it is what we call oxygen. In earlier times, humans drank oxygen as we drink water today. If we only had carbon and oxygen on Earth, we would age incredibly quickly. Oxygen has the ability to make everything live very quickly and to constantly renew itself.

That is why the third element, air, had to be added. It is what we now call nitrogen. Nitrogen has a deadly, dampening effect [on life]. Without the influence of nitrogen, there would be no consciousness, and the astral could not manifest itself.

The fourth element is fire. Fire plays a major role in occultism. It is the element of warmth. All four elements interpenetrate each other. With the help of fire, we are self-warming beings. Without it, self-consciousness would not be possible. Through it, we have blood, the physical expression of our ego. A combustion process takes place. This has made human beings beings with self-consciousness, as can be seen from the first sign of the fourth row: the sulfur process. The second sign is composed of the moon sign G and the sun sign © with the attached I +. The third sign signifies the division of the physical and etheric bodies. At the beginning of our development, the etheric and physical bodies were similar. Then the physical body condensed, and the etheric body, as the finer body, remained outside, surrounding it. A process similar to that of dissolved salt took place, which first forms a milky liquid from which the salt then settles, leaving the finer water above. This process is therefore called the salt process.

The fifth row represents the dual nature of the human being, which is intertwined.

Record B

The last two lines of the verse [page 309] confirm that the human being surpasses all other realms. Each of these realms has specific, characteristic properties, such as hardness or flexibility, movement, smell, taste, etc.

But every development of any realm or species, be it mineral, plant, or animal, is one-sided or specialized for that one realm or species. In humans, however, all these different characteristics have been combined into a harmonious whole, so that every property or characteristic of any other being is also present in humans.

It is no proof against this assertion to say that some senses are more acute in other beings, such as the eagle's eyesight or the dog's sense of smell. The dog's sense of smell and the retina in the eagle's eye are one-sided, special developments. But since all the senses are united in humans, some of those that have developed further in other species had to be toned down so that they would fit into the harmonious whole that constitutes the human being. Whatever exists outside of us in any realm, and whatever stage anything around us is at, we have gone through similar phases of evolution and in this way have acquired the perfect organism that now belongs to us.

We began as a germ of life (Figure 1), and from that point we began to build tools (Figure 2) that became increasingly complex through many incarnations. The Saturn, Sun, and Moon periods preceded our Earth, on which we currently live, and we built increasingly perfect tools, as indicated by the increasingly diverging lines emanating from Figure 2. We built ourselves a physical body, a life body, and a desire body, and finally, in the middle of the Atlantean race, these tools had become so perfect that the I could now inhabit them and begin to work through the various bodies. This is indicated in our occult writings by the point Figure 3, which stands between the two lines emanating from Figure 2, to show that the I entered when the bodies had reached a certain point in their development.

From this point, Figure 3, the I begins to develop, and it does so by transforming the bodies into soul. This line of development is represented by the gradually enlarging space between the lines emanating from Figure 3. The bodies that developed first are gradually consumed, and only the soul essence remains. - One will notice that the monad begins as a mathematical point. At the beginning of development, all possibilities are latent within it; but as evolution progresses, when the static (?) force is transformed into kinetic energy, into dynamic force — which is indicated by the space between the lines emanating from Figure 2 — when the point of occult writing has attained sufficient expansion, then the weak and helpless monad will have become the independent divine creator.

In order for the proper conditions to be brought about for the development from the monad to man, to a god, the elements are necessary. But the elements as such belong to our earth system (which encompasses the various states called Saturn, Sun, Moon, etc.), and in other systems other conditions exist. These elements are symbolically indicated in the next line of our occult writing. The first is “earth”; not just mineral earth, but everything that is solid: iron, lead, the human, animal, and plant bodies are earth in the occult sense. This element is best represented by carbon, which is found in the composition of all bodies in all realms. In its purest form, we find carbon in coal and diamonds. It is taught that man lived on earth before any of the other kingdoms existed, at a time when there were no plants to dissolve the carbon in the human body. And since we know that man cannot exist without life-giving oxygen, there seems to be a contradiction here. However, at that time there was no atmosphere as we know it today; humans moved, so to speak, in a sea of flowing life, because oxygen was liquid at that time, as indicated by the second symbol, “water.” If only the element “earth” had existed, the human body would have hardened and could not have developed further. But when the second element, “water,” entered the body through external pressure, progress became possible.

Just as the term “earth” refers to everything that is in a solid state, “water” is the occult name for everything that is liquid. Blood, for example, is water in occultism. And when humans lived in a water atmosphere at that time, their blood was cold like that of amphibians. The water of life, liquid oxygen, was absorbed through osmosis. The same process of oxygen absorption took place then as now, with the only difference being that our oxygen flows to us through plants, which exhale oxygen. This oxygen prevents our bodies from hardening due to an excessive accumulation of carbon. It combines with the excess carbon in our bodies and removes it, and returns it to the plant as carbon dioxide. And the carbon builds up the plant's body, while the purified oxygen is fed back to us to protect our bodies from crystallization. Therefore, carbon corresponds to the solid physical body and water (oxygen) to the liquid ether body or life body.

If only these two elements existed, earth and water, then life would be lived too quickly. We would grow old before we had time to be young. The oxygen that gives us strength would be absorbed in such quantities with the help of the life body that it would consume the organism too quickly. For the life body is a constant fighter against the death of the physical body; it is always busy building, and in its concern to preserve the dense body, it would go too far if it were not restrained. This restraining influence is found in the third element, “air,” which is mystically called “Azoth” and corresponds in its effect to the desire body, which also works against the efforts of the life body.

If only the two elements earth and water existed, there could be no consciousness. But the war between the two elements water and air, between the desire body and the life body, between nitrogen and the other chemical elements oxygen and carbon, this struggle between the elements is the cause of consciousness. The destruction of nerve cells and cell tissue generates heat and thus activates the fourth element, “fire.”

If there had been only three elements, the human body could never have become the carrier of the ego. For the ego cannot yet act directly in the air; it can only descend to the level of fire. Therefore, the physical body had to be developed to a point where it could become an independent source of heat, where it could have warm blood in a special instrument, separate and distinct from all other beings. This was only made possible by the fourth element, fire. The union of fire with the ego is represented in the next line of the occult writing we have before us and is symbolized by a triangle with a cross: 🜍. (Why the ego is represented here in the form of a cross will be shown later.¹ ) This is the sign of sulfur or phosphorus, which makes thought possible in the physical realm because it is contained in the brain and nerve centers.

The following symbol ☿ consists of three parts. It reminds us of the distant past when events took place that made this union of the self with its bodies possible. The three parts are: the circle ○, the symbol of the sun; the semicircle ☾, the symbol of the moon; and the cross +, the symbol of the earth. If the sun, moon, and earth had remained united, there would have been no such symbol. But when what was originally a planetary body separated, the sun from the earth and moon, and later the earth from the moon, these processes were embodied in this symbol, which is called “Mercury” because liquid metal best represents the conditions that made such a separation possible. Mercury is also the symbol of the mind, because only the above-mentioned separation of the sun from the earth and the later separation of the moon from the earth could bring about the environment necessary for the mind, the I, to develop.

The last sign in this line of occult writing is a circle with a diameter: 🜔. In alchemy, this is the symbol of “salt.” It represents the separation of the life body from the physical body. During the lunar period, these two parts of the human being, these two tools of the spirit, had the same density (Figure 4) as a saturated salt solution. But during the Earth period, a process took place similar to the separation of crystals in a salt solution; one part of the composite body became coarser, denser, while the other part became finer, more fluid. Thus, this symbol shows the crystallization of the physical body in the etheric body, the life body.

The next symbol ✡ shows the two forces [poles], negative and positive, male and female, etc., and the last symbol ♁ represents the human ego, which towers above all other creatures. We will hear more about these symbols later.

When an occult symbolic table such as the one before us is used for meditation, and when the lines below it [the saying] are spoken correctly and with understanding, it is a great help in occult development; they develop the “spiritual muscles” and should be used for this purpose by all students who wish to progress on the path of self-knowledge.

Record C

In the occult writing above, the dot at the top represents the point that once constituted the entire human body. Its physical form began with just a dot.

Over a long period of time, an ever greater diversity developed from this point. In humans, all the characteristic properties of minerals, the physical “dead” world, are present, as are all those of plants—the world of life or the etheric world—and all those of animals, the astral world. If, for example, individual senses are perhaps more developed in animals, this is only due to a one-sided development of the animal at the expense of the versatility that we find in humans. This development toward versatility from the point is expressed by the first figure in the second row. The second figure, which is the same as the first, begins again with the point at the point of greatest development of the first. It is a general phenomenon of the life and developmental stream that, once full development has been achieved, something new begins to develop, starting again with a point (like the embryo of a child in the “mature” mother). Here, the beginning of spiritual development, the conscious unfolding of the I, is symbolized by the occult sign in Rosicrucianism. In the middle of the Atlantean epoch, the ego began to become conscious of itself in physically developed (and prepared) human beings; only a small, point-like light, on whose unfolding we must work more and more consciously.

The third row contains occult symbols for the four elements. 🜃 = the earth. The solid symbolizes the physical plane.

The most important (chemical) element is carbon, in the form of black coal or transparent diamond. Carbon is, in a sense, the embodiment of the principle of the physical plane. In the plant world, carbon is extracted from the carbon dioxide in the air (which is supplied by the animal and human worlds through exhalation) in a relatively simple, smooth manner and fixed. In coal (and charcoal from charcoal kilns), we see the main content of plants in the form of carbon before our eyes. In humans, carbon is continuously absorbed from food, dissolved by the oxygen in the air we breathe, and removed as carbon dioxide, and this process continues indefinitely. This is one phase of the life process.

In the early Lemurian times, when humans began to form physical bodies, this oxygen, the air of life, was not gaseous but liquid under the pressure conditions of that time. At that time, people drank oxygen. This element of life, oxygen, the embodied ether or life principle, thus became the prototype of the second element, the liquid, “water,” as it is called in occultism. 🜄 is the symbol for the element “water,” the ether or life principle, and oxygen. If there were only oxygen in our atmosphere, life would consume itself, it would happen too quickly, and humans would not be able to gain enough experience. Consciousness and soul qualities could not develop in the right way. The same can be seen in the sun, where beings are caught up in an extremely rapid pace of development that we humans cannot cope with. Plants would also continue to grow further and further if they were exposed only to the etheric or life principle. Here too, the astral must intervene as an inhibiting element, in this case from outside.

There is therefore an inhibiting chemical element in the atmosphere: nitrogen.

🜁 This is the occult symbol for the element “air,” i.e., for all gases, and nitrogen is, as it were, the embodied principle of the astral, since it provides the possibility for the astral to unfold in humans.

🜂 Finally, the symbol for the fourth element is “fire,” which in a broader sense means all heat that permeates everything (cold is only a low degree of heat). Only when humans were able to develop warmth within themselves through their blood system and everything associated with it, and were able to maintain a certain degree of warmth within themselves at all external temperatures at which they can live, were they able to develop the ego within themselves. That is why 🜂 is also a symbol for the ego.

This warmth is produced by a kind of combustion in the human body, which is what makes the conscious ego possible; this combustion phenomenon is brought to our attention in sulfur.

🜍 is the occult symbol for sulfur, the symbol of “fire,” warmth, and combustion; with the cross, the symbol for the ego.

☿ This sign indicates that the sun ○ and moon ☾ had to prepare the way for the ego + to come into being.

It is the sign of Mercury, whose effect extends to the advancement of the soul. It is also the occult symbol for mercury.

Even earlier, when the influence of Mercury began, at the beginning of man's appearance on the present earth, this man was still ethereal; densely ethereal. In the course of development (as always), a division, a multiplication occurred—a poetic element separated and made the rest finer, more ethereal—a separation between life (ether) and form (the physical), between the female principle and the male. A similar process takes place when dissolved substances crystallize in a liquid solvent, for example, a salt in water. The solution is uniform – of medium density. During crystallisation, solids separate out, making the remainder less dense, finer and specifically lighter. In occultism, the solid that has separated from the liquid is therefore often called “salt”, and the symbol for this is a circle with a line dividing it into two parts: 🜔.

✡ This symbol represents the Son of Man, the human being in the aspect of combining the two principles above, the male and female, indeed all four elements. The hexagram can be composed from the four symbols of the elements. The inverted Venus symbol ♁ represents the human being as part of the Earth in its current state.