Lecture XVII

Now just as the earthly, sensory tapestry fades away and such lightning-like and enclosed figures behind it form out of the astral fire and expand ever more, so the stars begin to shine down and their threads of light enable us to see what they are. Starry threads, starry radiations or lights mingle with things that work in an elemental way. Earthly and heavenly things become connected, and we realize that we are in a second world—that was the first one—, and we arrive at the first condition of the second world, where everything is still shining in a natural way, and where we have an inkling that there are beings behind it. At most we perceive elemental beings here, but we know that these beings are the agents of powerful, important and sublime beings; we get to the first precinct, as it were, of the Kyriotetes, Dynamis and Exusiai. They are still behind this, as it were, but they mingle with these beings. The real nature of the Kyriotetes, Dynamis and Exusiai is gradually revealed, the further we go on the path of initiation. This is connected with the emergence of the harmony of the spheres that resounds through the world. The Apocalyptist presents the individual sounds of this world harmony as trumpet sounds, although they really only combine into harmonies and melodies during the course of long periods of time, when time becomes a unity. So we have the pure life of the second hierarchy in the clear sounds of the trumpets, whereas the very powerful beings in the first hierarchy underlie actual sense experiences. This is a world in which one could say that all the sensory effects have become flowing, grand and majestic, so that they're not just located around the things and processes of the physical world, but they have become the expression of beings who work in and with the second hierarchy and through elemental beings. Then we eventually arrive at a third region where we no longer perceive anything natural, or any natural things that have been broken up into elemental things, for if we want to perceive something there we have to perceive it in a spiritual way.