10. Occult Signs and Symbols of the Astral World

GA 246/1908-01-12/p019 ·1908-01-12 · English High

Record: listeners' notes. Written from listeners' notes, summaries, or memory rather than a shorthand transcript. The wording is the note-taker's as much as Steiner's: weigh a single striking phrase here far more cautiously than the same phrase in a stenographic volume, and do not rest an argument on one word. Evidence: «Nach zum Teil bruchstückhaften Mitschriften» (From transcripts that are in part fragmentary). The publisher's description of the volume, as mirrored on AnthroWiki (GA 246), which also speaks of "fragmentarischen Hörernotizen und Vortragszusammenfassungen". The translation is the maintainer's, not a published one.

If we follow the development of the human being, we will say that the human being has acquired something that is higher than being a plant, and also something that is lower. The plant contains nothing of instinct and sensuality. Man had not retained this pure nature because he took into himself the astral body and with it desire. This led him to day consciousness on the one hand and desire on the other. If the plant is imbued with astral matter, the chlorophyll or leaf green will turn red, the color of blood, and be pulsed with desire. At a higher level of consciousness, however, man will have purified his instincts and desires, shed his nature of desire and returned to the chaste plant substance. Then he will kill off the baseness of his nature, the covetous nature of his blood. Here you have an ideal of man's future. If you think of the cross as a sign of death and the red blood purified and returned to pure nature, then you will understand the wreath of red roses around the cross, the symbol of the Rosicrucian.

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Cite: GA 246/1908-01-12/p019 · edition English