MORE OVERHEAD

STILL MORE CELESTIAL WISDOM

Would you buy a used boat from this man?

Would you navigate it by the stars in his sky?

Some "ancient" events actually occurred quite recently, as judged in the context of multi-million-year-long planetary history. “The Atlantean period was no more than about nine thousand years ago." [1] Nine thousand years is such a short span — humans, the Earth, and planets such as Mars would have been much the same then as they are now. Or so science tells us. Hence, although I may seem benighted to any Anthroposophists reading this, I will toss in some scientific facts about the planets. Such facts do not always demolish Steiner's statements (many of which have no reference to reality), but they do provide an interesting context.

FAR OUT

 

Beginning in the 1960s, the USA, the Soviet Union/Russia, and the European Union have sent numerous space probes to Venus. Some flew past the planet, some went into orbit, and some landed. All these probes reported consistent — and discouraging — news about conditions on the “planet of love.” Venus is constantly shrouded by thick clouds of sulfuric acid. The temperatures on the surface approach 900 degrees Fahrenheit. There is, of course, no water on the surface (any that may have been there in the past has long since boiled away). The atmospheric pressure at the surface is almost 100 times greater than on earth — any mammal set down there would be instantly crushed (and then eaten up by sulfuric acid). It’s a hellish place. 

No such considerations, however, dissuaded Rudolf Steiner from describing the colonization of Venus by human beings, long ago: “[D]uring the Lemurian epoch of earth-evolution only very few human beings had outlasted, on the earth itself, the happenings of this evolution ... the majority of souls withdrew from the earth to other planets, continuing their life on Mars, Saturn, Venus, Jupiter, and so forth.” [2] Lemuria preceded Atlantis, so the trip from Earth to Mars, etc., occurred well before 9,000 years ago. But the trip back was yesterday, cosmically speaking: “[D]uring the Atlantean epoch, these souls gradually came [back] down to earth ....” [3]

Let's look out farther into space. Take Jupiter. Astronomers report that Jupiter is a colossal, rapidly rotating ball of gas. It is five times Earth’s distance from the Sun — the feeble sunlight reaching it produces little warmth. The tops of Jupiter’s clouds are about -250 degrees F. Extreme winds hurl the clouds into maelstroms. Farther down, the atmosphere grows progressively thicker in the increasing gloom, and the winds are proportionately fiercer. There is no planetary surface. Instead, far down, the atmosphere becomes so condensed that it turns to liquid. At the dismal level where gravity is two-and-a-half times Earth’s, the temperature is approx. 70 degrees F. — cozy, except for the literally crushing pressure. Below that, hotter, super-compressed liquid, far greater pressures, pitch dark. All in all, not a hospitable place for humans. But I'm being too literal, maybe. Could human souls, clad in unearthly bodies, survive “on” (or around, or in) Jupiter? Sure. We can imagine that, or almost anything else. Imagination is flexible, as Steiner showed. I'm recklessly injecting a little reality into the discussion, knowing that reality is irrelevant to Steiner. But let’s see what Steiner himself had to say. (Don’t get excited. It’s not illuminating.)

“If you were now to imagine bodies of men forming out of the clouds and flying down to the Earth, that would be a picture of how the new Beings come forth from a kind of cloud-mass on Jupiter ... Just as we on Earth are pervaded by air, so everything on Jupiter is pervaded by wisdom. Wisdom there has substantiality, streams in the atmosphere, discharges itself like rain on Jupiter ... Herein live the Cherubim, who in this realm of existence gather up and give shape to the karma of human beings.” [4]

“On Jupiter human beings will no longer have physical hands that are mobile organs [sic], for they will be fixed. On the other hand [sic] their astral and ether hands [sic] will be in part able to move outside those physical hands. As a result, Jupiter man will not merely think with his brain, for his fixed hands will enable him to reflect into [sic] the elements now united with his physical hands.” [5]

For additional references to conditions “on” Jupiter, see the following Steiner books: ANGELS; COSMIC MEMORY; THE FIFTH GOSPEL; CORRESPONDENCE AND DOCUMENTS (“The Consciousness soul can only unfold because the forces which will later be developed fully on Jupiter already throw their shadow ahead....”); GUIDANCE IN ESOTERIC TRAINING; FACULTY MEETINGS WITH RUDOLF STEINER; OCCULT SCIENCE; AGRICULTURE; ACCORDING TO LUKE; THE MEANING OF LIFE AND OTHER LECTURES ON FUNDAMENTAL ISSUES (“The animals perish in their earthly forms, but the animal group-souls are fertilized and appear on Jupiter having been prepared for a higher existence....”); ROSICRUCIAN WISDOM [sic]; CHANCE, PROVIDENCE, AND NECESSITY; THE SPIRITUAL HIERARCHIES AND THE PHYSICAL WORLD; NATURE SPIRITS; ESOTERIC CHRISTIANITY AND THE MISSION OF CHRISTIAN ROSENKREUTZ; ISIS MARY SOPHIA; CHRIST AND THE HUMAN SOUL; LOVE AND ITS MEANING IN THE WORLD (“The beings who will wander about on Jupiter, just as human beings move about on Earth, will find love exhaling from all creatures ... ”); GUARDIAN ANGELS; THE INFLUENCE OF SPIRITUAL BEINGS UPON MAN; THE ARCHANGEL MICHAEL; AN OUTLINE OF OCCULT SCIENCE; THEOSOPHY OF THE ROSICRUCIANS; OCCULT SIGNS AND SYMBOLS. ART IN THE LIGHT OF MYSTERY WISDOM; WONDERS OF THE WORLD (“[A] Spirit advances with the souls of men towards existence on Jupiter....”); and THE MISSION OF THE ARCHANGEL MICHAEL (“For we will be different beings on Jupiter. These so-to-speak Jupiter men exist already now just as we existed upon the Moon....”) You'll run into a fair bit of repetition, since Anthroposophical publishers do a lot of second (and third and fourth) dipping.

Saturn, now. There’s a vacation spot. Pretty rings. Otherwise, Jupiter’s smaller sibling, almost 10 times Earth’s distance from the Sun. Cold (cloud tops: -290 F). Dim. Toxic (helium, ammonia, etc., above liquid metallic hydrogen, above iron and ... ). Crushing gravity. Nasty.

“Even on the planet Saturn man was present. Saturn did not shine, but it sounded and could have been heard ... [I]t gradually vanished away, was for a long time invisible, and then shone out as the Sun. The planet Sun [sic] passed through the same process and reappeared as the Moon ... Saturn-man was very different from the human being of today ... he would not have been visible to physical eyes ... The human form was like a kind of auric egg [sic], and within it was a remarkable scaly structure, a sort of vortex, shaped like a small pear and as though made of oyster-shells [sic].” [6] Not helpful, but intriguing, no?

As for Neptune man and Uranus man: Nothing. Steiner is silent. I think he missed a trick there.

 

THE PLANET MOON

 

Let’s get serious. The moon is not, of course, a planet — it is earth’s natural satellite (probably created by the collision of Earth and a stupendous asteroid (debris from the collision fell into a ring around the Earth, after which it amassed at the moon)). Low gravity. No atmosphere. Little if any water (none on the surface except, perhaps, a little at the poles). Extreme temperatures: during each 14-day-long day, 260 F.; during each 14-day-long night, -280 F. Lifeless.

“If one looks at the Moon man as a whole, he consists of three parts: a physical body, an ether body, and an astral body. The physical body is tripartite; its partition is the result of the work of the Saturn, Sun, and Moon forces ... Through the absorption of the astral body on the Moon, man has become capable of a life of sensation ... the Moon man can regulate his behavior entirely in accordance with the images which arose in his image consciousness.” [7] Comments, anyone?

“But there is nothing mineral in this Moon-man, hence he cannot be seen with physical eyes but only with spiritual sight.” [8] How convenient.

“I know Moon man has become earth man, but this effect still holds its original cause within it, we still have Moon man in us. Looking upon this Moon man we are able to say: ‘He is what we call the dreamer in us.’ Yes, indeed....” [9] (Yes, indeed. This is as folksy as Steiner gets.)

“Thus the third stage of consciousness was reached on the Moon, and it may be compared with the present dream-filled sleep, but it was much more vivid and real.” [10] I find I feel I need to repeat what I’ve said previously and perhaps even in prior lives: Bear in mind, Steiner tried to wriggle away from the explicit meaning of his statements by claiming that he was talking about stages of development, not — for the most part, although somewhat, “in a sense” — actual, physical orbs. His lectures lean as far away from rationality as possible: Overcoming rationality is central to dogmas that endorse clairvoyance, imagination, and intuition (which are sometimes “in a sense” the same thing). 

And recollect: “[T]he majority of souls withdrew from the earth to other planets, continuing their life on Mars, Saturn, Venus, Jupiter, and so forth.” If he meant this to mean “they passed through the ‘Mars’ phase, the ‘Saturn’ phase, etc.,” he might have said so. Instead, he tried to have it both ways. He trafficked, after all, in mysteries. The more mystifying his doctrines, the better — for him. Obfuscation was his modus operandi: Give the people stunning visions, but keep them guessing, too: If they wanted “truth,” they had to come to him, the greatest source of supersensory blather. The only way we can sensibly affirm Steiner’s teachings is to assert that language has no real meaning — don’t take words literally. But this is a poor defense of Steiner, since it entails the admission that Steiner’s statements have no real meaning — they are, in sum, nonsense. (I’ve said that before, too.)

THE PLANET SUN

Like the Moon, the Sun is not a planet (no matter what Steiner said). It is a tremendous ball of glowing gases (glowing from nuclear fusion; and note that “tremendous” is a relative term: the Sun is only average size for stars: some are far bigger). Situated about 10,000 light years from the center of the galaxy (in all, the Milky Way has 100,000,000,000 stars; and there are probably more than 100,000,000,000 galaxies: we ain’t nowise central). One orbit by the Sun, around the galaxy, takes about 250,000,000 years. Temperature at the “surface”: 10,000 F. (at the core: 27,000,000 F.). Quite toasty.

Of course, in emphasizing the physical conditions that actually prevail on the celestial bodies that actually exist in the actual universe, I am missing Steiner’s point. He quite clearly was not talking about anything actual. 

“We have the dreamer in us who has brought Moon nature into us, and we also have a Sun man in us from Sun evolution. This Sun man, however, is no longer able to dream. His conscious awareness is of the same kind as that of plants. We have within us a plant or Sun man, who is asleep. And then we have in us a Saturn man who is completely dead, as dead as a stone.” [11] Drat. I sort of liked Saturn man. Anyway, note that here Steiner is semi-clearly referring to evolutionary stages. But wait:

“Man's physical body was prepared on Saturn; on the Sun was added the etheric or life body ... It took what the physical body had already become by itself, and worked on it further. On the Moon was added the astral body; this still further altered the form of the [physical] body. On Saturn the physical body was very simple, on the Sun it was much more complicated ... On the Moon the astral body was added, and on the Earth the ego....” [12]

THE SOLAR SYSTEM:

Reprise and Development

If we hunt for statements in which Steiner spoke of humans existing on other planets, we would find a basket's worth. Here’s a single, fairly comprehensive example:

“Man's physical body was prepared on Saturn; on the Sun was added the etheric or life body ... On the Moon was added the astral body ... On Saturn the physical body was very simple, on the Sun it was much more complicated ... On the Moon the astral body was added, and on the Earth the ego....” [13] On Saturn, on the Sun, on the Moon... Twice. (Plus “on the Earth!” Whoever heard of anything so... No, wait. That one’s OK. Sorry. But note that Earth is a physical orb in the solar system. The other orbs mentioned in the series are presumably similar. Saturn, not Old Saturn. Sun, not Old Sun. Moon, not Old Moon... Except, of course, that he clearly meant Old Saturn, etc. As it were.)

At a minimum, Steiner was sloppy in his word choices.

◊◊◊

Let’s try to wrap this all up. Here are some more quotes. I won’t slow down to explain each strange term Steiner uses. Sometimes it’s best just to let this stuff wash over you.

The solar system, as described by Steiner, is an exceedingly weird place. There are only six real planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) — Steiner acknowledged the existence of Neptune and Uranus, but he generally considered these two bodies irrelevant outsiders, not really members of our solar family. The count of planets swells, however, if — as Steiner sometimes did — we count the Sun and Moon as planets. It swells even further if we count Vulcan. Complicating all this is Steiner's use of planetary names for periods in the distant past or future.

For the most part, for most purposes, Steiner said that the solar system consists of seven "planets" that correspond to levels of consciousness. We have been to three such planets, we are now on the fourth, and we will go on to three more. “On the planet which will replace our Earth, the whole of humanity will have [the] psychic-consciousness or Imagination, the ‘Jupiter’ consciousness ... The seventh state of consciousness is the ‘spiritual consciousness’ or Intuition, the very highest, when man has a universal consciousness; when he will not only see what proceeds on his own planet, but in the whole of the cosmos around him. It is the consciousness man had on Saturn, a kind of universal consciousness, although then quite dull, which he will have in addition to all the other states of consciousness when he will have reached ‘Vulcan’ ... Each planetary stage is bound up with the development of the seven states of human consciousness, and through what takes place on [sic] each planet the physical organs for such a state of consciousness are perfected.” [14] Note that Steiner uses, interchangeably, the terms "planet" and "planetary stage." The "organs" in question encompass organs of clairvoyance in its various levels of development.

The quote we just read shows one central reason why Steiner's account of the solar system is odd: He required seven planets in order to house "the seven states of human consciousness." Fine. Except,

a) the real solar system consists of eight major planets

(Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus) 

and several minor planets (such as Pluto);

b) Steiner includes the Sun, the Moon, and Vulcan as planets 

or planetary stages, although none of these is a planet, 

and one of them does not exist at all; and

c) Steiner acknowledged the existence of Mercury, Mars, Neptune, and Uranus, 

but he only admitted the former two to the physical solar system, 

and he only did this is some contexts, in which case the count of "planets" would

 swell to nine (or drop to seven again if we omit Sun and Moon 

— or drop to six if we leave out Vulcan), 

or it would climb to eleven if we include the two planets 

he excluded while retaining Sun and Moon.

◊◊◊

Sometimes, despite his seven-planet scheme, Steiner spoke of Beings, including humans, existing on planets outside this scheme, such as Mercury and Mars. Or, if we don't quite live on such planets (he denied that we ever lived on Mars, for instance) [15], we live within the "spheres" of these planets. Death is a particularly good time to make excursions to such tourist destinations.

"After a human being has adjusted himself to existence in the Sun sphere his life expands further outwards, into the Mars sphere." [16].

“There are souls on the Moon: the souls of the great primeval Teachers ... On Mercury there are the souls of the Archangeloi, among whom we live when we pass through the sphere of the Angeloi. The God Mercury is an Archangelic Being. On Venus are the Archai. And upon the Sun are the Excusiai ... When the human being has lived through the Sun existence, he enters into the Mars sphere, the Jupiter Sphere, the Saturn sphere ... But as well as this he goes back through the Moon sphere ... [H]e needs to live with the Spirits indwelling Mars, Jupiter and Saturn ...  Karma can, of course [oh, of course!], be worked out when the human being comes again into the Venus sphere, and also into the Mercury sphere. Between death and a new birth man works at his karma, together with the Beings of the planetary systems. And it is exceedingly interesting to investigate this.” [17] Indeed, it is exceedingly interesting. (What an exceedingly deep, deep man this deep, deep man must be.)

◊◊◊

At a minimum, Steiner was a sloppy speaker and writer.  He was also, I submit, a sloppy thinker. In fact, I’ll go so far as to submit that he was either insane (which I doubt) or a spiritual shyster (bingo, IMO).

Did Steiner know what he said? Did he care what he said? Did he say what he meant? Did he care whether he said what he meant? Did he care whether he knew whether he said what he meant? Did he know whether he cared whether he meant what he said?

Yes, he cared, at least to the extent of trying to pull his statements into a semblance of order, mystic and fuzzy and beyond-brain-thinking as it was.

But, when all is said and done, should we care?

We don’t need to care, except for one reason. There are children who are being “educated” by people who believe Steiner. They attend Waldorf schools. They need us, or somebody, to care. 

— Roger Rawlings

---

---

 

The illustrations Steiner created to accompany his lectures

generally tell us little if anything. Here we see the influence

of the Moon beaming down to the Earth.

(Steiner's words, while also uninformative, are generally more interesting.

Here's some of what he was illustrating: "When human beings

cling too strongly to earthly things it may be difficult for them to find

their bearings in the sphere of the Moon Beings ... The moon-influences

do not penetrate very deeply into the earth." [Rudolf Steiner,

KARMIC RELATIONSHIPS, Vol. 2 (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1974), p 150.

I'm not sure why the image is off-kilter; this is how Steiner drew it.

To add a little pizzazz to the b&w illustration in the book, I have added colors; 2009.]

---

Painting by a Waldorf student

[courtesy of PLANS].

Astronomical images: NASA.

Here and in "Overhead" I have used images unlike any we can see

with our naked eyes; to a slight degree, this many help us

visualize things as a "clairvoyant" might see them.

(But not really.)

ENDNOTES

[1] Rudolf Steiner, FACULTY MEETINGS WITH RUDOLF STEINER (Anthroposophic Press, 1998), p. 50.

[2] Rudolf Steiner, OCCULT HISTORY (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1982), p. 36.

[3] Ibid., p. 36.

[4] Rudolf Steiner, KARMIC RELATIONSHIPS, Vol. II (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1974), p. 48.

[5] Rudolf Steiner, THE DESTINIES OF INDIVIDUALS AND OF NATIONS (SteinerBooks, 1986), p. 152.

[6] Rudolf Steiner, FOUNDING A SCIENCE OF THE SPIRIT (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1999), p. 73.

[7] Rudolf Steiner, COSMIC MEMORY (SteinerBooks, 1987), p. 219.

[8] Rudolf Steiner, THE OCCULT MOVEMENT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY (SteinerBooks, 1973), p. 75.

[9] Rudolf Steiner, THE DESTINIES OF INDIVIDUALS AND OF NATIONS, (Steiner Books, 1986), p. 216.

[10] Rudolf Steiner, THE APOCALYPSE OF ST. JOHN, (Steiner Books, 1977), p. 169.

[11] THE DESTINIES OF INDIVIDUALS AND OF NATIONS, p. 224.

[12] Rudolf Steiner, quoted by Richard Seddon, RUDOLF STEINER (North Atlantic Books, 2004), p. 29.

[13] Ibid., p. 29.

[14] Rudolf Steiner, UNDERSTANDING THE HUMAN BEING (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1993), pp. 30-31.

[15] "The human being was never on Mars." [Rudolf Steiner, CORRESPONDENCE AND DOCUMENTS 1901-1925 (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1988), p. 70.] Of course, this leaves open the possibility that we lived on the other planets. Indeed, it seems to imply as much. But Steiner sometimes extended the denial much more broadly: “Man has never lived on any other planet” than Earth. [Rudolf Steiner, INVESTIGATIONS INTO OCCULTISM SHOWING ITS PRACTICAL VALUE IN DAILY LIFE (Kessinger, 1996 - reproduction of 1920 edition), p. 146.] So that seems clear. But it is impossible to square this with such statements as “[V]ery few human beings had outlasted, on the earth itself, the happenings of this evolution ... the majority of souls withdrew from the earth to other planets, continuing their life on Mars, Saturn, Venus, Jupiter, and so forth.” [See endnote 2.] If we fiddle with the definition of “human being,” we might make these statements consistent. If the "souls” who went to Mars were not human (except that they were: Steiner refers to “human beings”) at the time of their trip, then maybe... But then there are statements like this: “The Mars oracles provided instruction and leadership for human souls who had spent the waiting period on Mars.” [Rudolf Steiner, ACCORDING TO LUKE (Anthroposophic Press, 2001), p. 89.] Human souls. Human. “Gradually all the souls that had been transported to Mars, Jupiter, Venus, and so on returned to Earth. As the descendants of the ancestral couple [Adam and Eve] multiplied, souls gradually repopulated the earth [Mars humans, and humans from other planets, mated with Earth humans]. The time from the end of the Lemurian period until well into the Atlantean period saw the return of increasing numbers of souls [human souls] who had been waiting on other planets until they could once again reincarnate in earthly bodies [human bodies as they were at that time]. These souls constituted the population of Atlantis.” [Ibid., p. 89.] The of Atlantis population was human. The sorry truth is that Steiner couldn’t keep his story straight.

——-

Whether or not we ever lived on Mars, today there are immense boneless creatures on Mars, along with “human beings” — but they aren’t our sort. “Mars is not densely solid in the sense in which today the earth is solid ... [T]he earth too was once in a condition when mineral, solid matter took shape for the first time ... [T]here were then gigantic animals which, however, had as yet no solid bones. Mars today is in a condition similar to that of the earth in that earlier epoch and therefore also has upon it those living beings, those animal beings which the earth had upon it at that time. And ‘human beings’ on Mars are as they were on the earth at that time — still without bones ... These things can be known. They cannot become known by the means employed in modern science for acquiring knowledge; nevertheless it is possible to know these things.” [Rudolf Steiner, THE EVOLUTION OF THE EARTH AND MAN AND THE INFLUENCE OF THE STARS, Lecture 10, Sept. 9, 1924  http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/19240909p01.html]

——-

[16] Rudolf Steiner, BETWEEN DEATH AND REBIRTH, Lecture 2 (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1975).

[17] Rudolf Steiner, KARMIC RELATIONSHIPS, Vol. VI (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1971), p. 110.