Lecture VI

Let us now take the names we employed yesterday for the legs and feet and apply them in a corresponding manner to the arms and hands which are joined on to the head and which—as quite a superficial observation will enable you to see—have spiritual connection with the whole thought world of the head. You will not find it unreasonable or inappropriate if we now apply to these arms and hands that are connected with the head, the same terms that we used yesterday for legs and feet, and name this symmetrically extended continuation of the head in the following way. First we have, as fourth member, the upper arm, and to this we give the same designation as we gave to the thigh,—Archer (Sagittarius) ♐. We note a difference between the elbow and the knee, there being no development in the elbow to correspond to the knee-cap, but in spite of this the similarity is sufficiently obvious. And so we give to the elbow the Sign and the name we gave to the knee,—Goat (Capricorn) and ♑. We allot to the lower arm the same Sign as we took for the leg, the Sign of Waterman (Aquarius) ♒, and the hands are denoted with the same Sign as we gave to the feet,—the Sign of Fishes (Pisces) ♓. And now if we take these members of man's nature all together, by themselves, comprising as they do the whole head and arms, we have a seven-membered man. That is an important perception. When you reflect on how this complete sevenfold man receives nourishment—the nourishment is of course brought up to it from the rest of man—then the idea will not be utterly grotesque if we imagine for a moment that this sevenfold man might receive its nourishment from without, like a plant which finds nourishment prepared for it in the world outside, and merely receives it and works upon it. We could quite well imagine that the same thing happened for this sevenfold man, and that it did not get whatever it needs for the maintenance of the brain and so forth from the other parts of man's nature, but instead directly from the external world. This sevenfold man would then be directly and immediately linked with the external world.