The Spiritual Hierarchies and Human Temperament Formation

GA 266I — 5 August 1908, Stuttgart

Esoteric Lesson

Record A

Every esotericist who strives for inner development must become clear about his connection with the environment and the spiritual forces that live in it, with which he is in constant contact, and which flow in and out of him.

When we look at human beings, we first see their physical body. The fact that the physical body is composed in this way is due to the effects of spiritual forces. The forces at work in the four elements—earth, water, air, and fire—are the archai or primal forces. They flow in and out of his physical body. Thus, the archangels work in his etheric body, and the angels work in his astral body. The sentient soul is structured within this; the powers [dynamis] work on it.

The powers (Exusiai)¹ work on the intellectual soul, and the dominions or Kyriotetes work on the consciousness soul. Even higher beings work on the higher members of the human being: the seraphim on the spirit self (manas), the cherubim on the life spirit (buddhi), and the thrones on the spirit man (atma).²

If the esoteric student of the Christian school wanted to recognize his being, he had to look at this image, which shows that the human being is shaped like a tree rooted in the spiritual. This was understood by sitting under the fig tree or the Buddha under the Bodhi tree. When Jesus said to Nathanael, “When you were sitting under the fig tree, I recognized you,” it meant that Nathanael had placed himself in such a relationship with his environment. Yggdrasil, the world ash tree in Norse mythology, is also a representation of this tree.

The forces that act upon the physical body are the archai. They are not all of the same kind, but are divided into four special types of beings. They are not embodied in physical bodies, but have reduced their physicality to the ether. These are the four kings who act upon human beings in the ether. Human beings owe their physical bodies to these beings living in the ether. We arrive at completely wrong mental images if we try to understand the ether as ascending from the solid to the liquid and gaseous, imagining increasingly finer substances. The nature of the ether is essentially different from that of physical substances.

The four forces that work on humans in the ether and move in and out of them, according to which their physical body has been formed, are to be understood as the four temperaments. The substance of the four beings are the four temperaments. They are embodied in them. We have entities that work in the choleric temperament, others in the sanguine, others in the phlegmatic, and others in the melancholic. All have their special task. The entities that have the choleric as their embodiment work in the element of warmth in humans; the entities that are embodied in the sanguine work in the airy in the human body; the beings embodied in the phlegmatic temperament work in the liquid element, and the beings embodied in the melancholic temperament work in the solid or earthy element.

Although one of the four temperaments usually predominates in each person, the others are also present. All of them are important for human beings.

The melancholic temperament has the significance of predisposing the physical body in such a way that the person is able to form fixed concepts that remain the same; so that when he thinks “horse” today, this also contains the same concept for him tomorrow. The phlegmatic temperament, on the other hand, means that concepts remain fluid, enabling the person to always take in new information. When a person thinks, something like this forms in their aura: a uniform mass with more solid parts, the thoughts. In some people, these thought forms have the property of remaining fixed, while in others they change constantly.

One person may try to explain something to another; they do not understand each other because one has fixed thought forms and cannot take in the thoughts of the other. But if his thought forms are malleable, the new thoughts can penetrate and the two understand each other perfectly. An esotericist must cultivate this flexibility of thought forms. This is of great importance for him. The fact that human beings are capable of this is based on phlegm. It is just the opposite. The physical body is formed from the temperaments by the spirits working within it. From the way a person places their feet, from their hand movements, from the look in their eyes, one can tell which temperament predominates in them.

It is wrong to assume that a person has this or that temperament because he has this or that physical body.

It is important to imbue our feelings with these truths.

Recordings B and C

If one wants to understand human beings as spiritual beings in the higher worlds, one must free oneself from the mental images of materialistic science, which imagines human beings as being made up of atoms. It is necessary to form new mental images. With every physical breath, etheric currents flow through our bodies, and spiritual beings enter and leave, connecting us with the spiritual world. A view in which the higher human members are thought to be formed only from refined matter remains a materialistic one. From a spiritual point of view, the human being can appear like the world tree, rooted in the cosmos and accompanied in its growth by supersensible beings. There are four large groups of etheric beings, working and living in the elements earth, water, air, and fire. The temperament of the human being is determined by the group of these beings that has the strongest influence on him.

In esoteric imagery, “sitting under the fig tree” or “under the bodhi tree” means that one knows the esoteric structure of the human being.

Temperament is important for human development. The choleric temperament, which is considered unfavorable for external perception, serves to give thoughts firmness; the phlegmatic temperament protects against excessive solidification, crystallization of thoughts, for which there are many opportunities in our current era of development. Thought forms handed down through centuries, the advances of materialistic science, and heredity bring with them the danger of crystallization of human thoughts. The occultist, however, must strive to keep his thinking flexible so that it can take in new impulses.

The clairvoyant sees in the imaginative constructs of narrow-minded people fixed, unchangeable inclusions; in conversation with a flexible-minded person, these solidified forms make understanding impossible. The more flexible and adaptable our thoughts are, the more insights we gain. Sharp criticism is harmful, but free judgment is necessary.

Regarding the following diagrams:

The assignments between the constitutional elements and the individual Hierarinds have been recorded slightly differently in each record. Therefore, here are the different versions for overview.

Record D

The tree of life, how the gods affect the individual bodies of humans: