Lecture II

These beings are such that when man can become acquainted with them by means of his occult vision, he perceives them as beings connected with his own soul—with his own astral body. They exert such an influence upon the astral body of man—(as also upon the astral bodies of animals), that we cannot speak of a mere life-giving activity; their activity resembles the action of feeling and thought upon our own souls. The nature-spirits of water and air can be observed; we may say they are in the environment; but we cannot say of these spiritual beings of which we are now speaking, that they are in our environment; we are in fact always actually united with them, as if poured into them, when we perceive them. We are merged into them, and they speak to us in spirit. It is as though we perceived thoughts and feelings from the environment; impulses of will, sympathy and antipathy come to expression in what these beings cause to flow into us as thoughts, feelings, and impulses of will. Thus in this category of spirits we see beings already resembling the human soul. If we turn back again to what has been stated, we may say that all sorts of regulations in time, of divisions in the relations of time and space, are also connected with these beings. An old expression has therefore been preserved in occultism for these beings, which in their totality we recognize as the astral body of the earth, and this in English would be, “Spirits of the Rotation of Time.” Thus, not only the seasons of the year, and the growing and the fading of the plants, but also the regular alternation which, in relation to the earth-planet, expresses itself in day and night, is brought about by these spirits, which are to be classed as belonging to the astral body of the earth. In other words, everything connected with rhythmic return, with rhythmic alternation, with the repetitions of happenings in time, is organized by spiritual beings which collectively belong to the astral body of the earth and to which the name “Spirits of the Rotation of Time,” of our planet, is applicable. What the astronomer ascertains through calculation about the rotation of the earth on its axis, is perceptible to occult vision, because the occultist knows that these spirits are distributed over the whole earth, and are actually the bearers of the forces which rotate the earth on its axis. It is extremely important that one should be aware that in the astral body of the earth is to be found everything connected with the ordinary alternations between the blossoming and withering of plants and also all that is connected with the alternations between day and night,—between the various seasons of the year, and the various times of the day, etc. Everything that happens in this way calls up in the observer who has progressed so far that he can, with his astral body, go out of his physical and etheric bodies and still remain conscious—an impression of the spiritual beings belonging to the Spirits of the Rotation of Time.