Lecture I
GA 90a/1904-10-10/p007
·1904-10-10
·
English
LowLow alignmentMost translators re-paragraphed Steiner substantially. The locus identifies the same chapter or section, but paragraph-N to paragraph-N mapping is loose. For exact-quotation precision, compare with the German.
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: «Frühe Vortragsreihen und Einzelvorträge für Mitglieder in Berlin 1903–1904 nach ausführlichen und z.T. fragmentarischen Mitschriften.» (Early lecture series and single lectures for members in Berlin 1903-1904, from detailed and in part fragmentary listeners' transcripts.). The publisher's description of the volume, as mirrored on AnthroWiki (GA 90a); the description calls them "Hörermitschriften", and the served text carries the note-taker's gap marker "[Lücke in der Mitschrift]". The translation is the maintainer's, not a published one.
In the so-called Polarian Race (the first Root Race) the etheric body was the most important, Man's whole body at that time consisted of fine etheric substance. Only later did the etheric body densify by permeating itself with physical matter. At the end of the first Root Race, man was not fettered to the ground as he is today. He hovered through the etheric earth, and his organs too, were etheric. He was an etheric being. By the time of Lemuria, through gradual densification, he took on physical corporeality. But even in the middle of the Lemurian epoch, he was not as dense a being as he is today. At the beginning of the third Root Race (Lemurian), matter was just a little denser than that of cloud-formations over mountains today. It was into these “fire-clouds” that men incarnated at that time. Hence the Beings who came as the highest Intelligences from other realms to the earth to be teachers of men, are called “Sons of the Fire-Mist.”
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