Lecture Eleven

Things that are real often appear quite differently when studied in accordance with true reality instead of in accordance with generally received opinion. Just as, when we judge externally, we call winter the sleeping time of the Earth, and summer her waking time, whereas it is the reverse; in the same way, judging externally, Saturn and Jupiter might be regarded as more spiritual than Venus and Mercury. This is not the case; for Venus and Mercury stand in more intimate relation to something behind the whole Cosmos than do Jupiter and Saturn. Thus we may say that in Venus and Mercury we have something which places us outwardly, as a member of the planetary system, in relation to a super-sensible world. Here, while we live, we are brought into connection with a super-sensible world through Venus and Mercury. We might say: When we are incorporated by birth into the physical world, we are carried into it by Saturn and Jupiter; while we live from birth to death, Venus and Mercury work within us and prepare us to carry our super-sensible part back again through death into the super-sensible world. In fact, Mercury and Venus have just as much share in our immortality after death as Jupiter and Saturn have in our life before death. It is really so, we have to see something in the Cosmos which corresponds to the relation between the comparatively more spiritual organisation of the head and the rest of the human organisation.