Man, Nature and the Cosmos

GA 91 — 21 June 1905, Berlin

4. The Designation Of The Days Of The Week

Not arbitrarily, but from the knowledge of the world, the initiates have given the names for the days of the week. They wanted the great events to be remembered on each day.

The first thing that developed from man was the physical body. In this first stage it was quite different from what it is today. Today, as it is, it is interspersed with other bodies, with the etheric body and the astral body. Without the others, only [as a physical] body, it first came into being on the planet Saturn. It is not the Saturn of today, but the one of today also has something to do with the one of then, it is a remnant of it. There man has formed like a shell, a snail shell, in fine matter. It was the dull state of consciousness. That is the first stage; each stage has seven rounds and each round goes through seven globes.

The second stage, the development of the etheric body, took place on the sun. The latter was at that time a planet, which did not irradiate beings, who would have been on a secondary planet, but man himself was there and had a constitution, which endured that light and heat. The physical body formed once more and then was penetrated by the etheric body. Now on Saturn, besides man, a kind of mineral was formed; all the forces which were unfit for the building of man formed the mineral kingdom. On the sun the plant kingdom came into being. In order for man to form his etheric body, other etheric parts had to be forced down and thus formed the plant kingdom.

The third stage took place on the moon. The sun itself changed into the moon, separated only later. The moon jumped off and orbited the sun, he behaved as he behaves today to the earth. He had inhabitants only on the one side which was turned to the sun. Then man developed his astral body; the forces which he did not use for his astral formation formed the animal kingdom. So we have the mineral kingdom, the vegetable kingdom, the animal kingdom, and man at the animal stage.

The fourth stage is the earth. When humans completed the lunar stage, the sun and moon reunited and dissolved into the pralaya. Earth evolution began with the sun and moon being one. All the lunar germs reemerged on the earth. [Man had developed the physical, etheric and animal bodies.] The astral body was ready to develop drives and desires as the animals. A new impact had to come, and this was not to be found on the earth itself. Therefore, the leading gods of the earth had to infuse the human body with a force that they took from elsewhere. The manus or leaders had to draw this impact from a world body which was so far ahead that its beings were a little beyond man, had left behind, as it were, what man now needed; that was thus drawn from Mars. So that the Martian forces have been brought down as the new.

Saturn-, sun-, moon- and Mars-development are to be considered together as the first half of the earth-development. If man would have got only Mars development, he would never have got further than to the mere egoism. But he should come to idealism and therefore he had to get a further impact from another world. The warlike Martian man should become an intelligent man. This second impact was fetched from Mercury, and the mind soul was formed. The occultist does not speak of the Earth, but of Mars and Mercury; a child of these forces, to which it owes its development, is our Earth.

From Jupiter comes the consciousness soul, which has as its shell the preceding [soul members]. Now in the womb of the mind and consciousness soul the spirit self will mature. And the shell will pull the spirit-self, when it is matured, to Jupiter, and when there this shell falls off, the innermost core, the actual spirit-self, will come to the planet Venus. Vulcan is the last, the eighth planet, of which it is said that no soul bound to a brain can think it.

The succession of the planets was placed in the week by the sages so that man would remember the past and the future daily.

Saturn - Saturday
Sun - Sunday
Moon - Monday
Mars - Mardi
Mercury - Mercredi
Jupiter (Donar) - Thursday
Venus (Freya) - Friday

Remember that your past and future are related to these seven stars