1. Inner aspect of Saturn-Embodiment of Earth.

Now imagine yourself surrounded by nothing but what I have described. I have already said, and have laid certain stress upon it, that we cannot say of it: ‘we have it around us,’ we can only say, ‘it is there.’ We must think ourselves into this. And concerning the conception that something is there flashing up, I said it was not a flash but a glimmering. It is not as though something arose and vanished again; everything is simultaneous. Now, however, the feeling comes that there is some connection between these Spirits of Will and the Cherubim. The feeling comes to us that they have established a relationship between themselves; we become conscious of this. And indeed we become conscious too that the Spirits of Will or Thrones sacrificed their own being to the Cherubim. That is the last conception to which we can attain when we approach Saturn in retrospect, that of the sacrificing Spirits of Will offering their sacrifice to the Cherubim. This is the first scaffolding of our world. And we can experience the sacrifice that the Spirits of Will make to the Cherubim; something is wrung from our being, which we can only express by saying, through the sacrifice made by the Spirits of Will to the Cherubim, time is born. But ‘time’ here is not the abstract time of which we usually speak, but independent being. We can now first speak of something that begins. Time begins with the birth of time-beings—whose nature is pure time. Beings are born consisting only of time. These are the Spirits of Personality, known to us as Archai in the hierarchy of spiritual beings. In the Saturn existence they are nothing but time. We have also described them as Time-Spirits, as Spirits who rule time. But there they are born as spirits, they are really beings consisting of nothing but time.