Rudolf Steiner spoke of Vulcan as both a planet and a stage of evolution. For him, these were almost indistinguishable, since — according to him — humanity is passing through developmental stages that are associated with (mediated by, influenced by, manifested as...) various "planets." And if you believe that... 

In SLEEP AND DREAMS, for instance, Steiner speaks of a god living on the Moon. [1] Steiner quickly catches himself and explains that he is only speaking “imagistically.” But then he affirms that the god really is physically there. As far as Steiner's truths go (which isn't far), this is probably the best Steiner could do. In his scheme, the Moon is the physical stand-in for a spiritual reality — as is everything physical, when you come down to it. The spiritual reality is more important, BUT the physical reality does exist, too, in its own relatively unimportant way. Same for the planets, same for everything in the sky: They are all there, in reality, while they also manifest other more significant stuff from otherwhere or otherwhen.

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. He said that we evolved on Old Saturn, Old Sun, and Old Moon, and he said that we should not confuse these evolutionary periods with the present-day planets that bear their names. Yet he himself often referred to these periods as planets and he spoke of us living "on" them. Trying to straighten all this out is tough. Today's Saturn may be considered a remnant of Old Saturn, for instance, and there would be Steinerish "truth" in this. But Old Saturn was also the forebear of Earth and all the other planets (including the Sun and Moon). Bottom line: Steiner could have been much clearer, but he chose not to. He saw advantages in being mystical and "deep," which often meant being inscrutable.

It helps to remember that the planets evolve just as we evolve. So, the conditions we met or will meet on other "planets" are different from conditions prevailing today, just as the bodies we have now are not like the bodies we used to have or will have. Or so Steiner would have you believe. But it is also important to know that Steiner said that some important past events were actually quite recent. His sense of time doesn't wash, in other words. Thus, if we take his word for events in/during Atlantis, the conditions that science tells us prevail today on other planets would have prevailed then, such a short time ago. “The Atlantean period was no more than about nine thousand years ago.” [2] “[T]he majority of [human] souls withdrew from the earth to other planets ... during the Atlantean epoch, these souls gradually came [back] down to the earth in order to incarnate in earthly bodies ....” [3] Presumably we could exist on Saturn, for instance, in some unearthly human form. Still, knowing the actual conditions on Saturn is informative — I will offer such info, from time to time.

Of course, Vulcan raises a whole other set of perplexities. What was/are/will be the actual conditions on a planet that does not actually exist? Here are some more passages in which Vulcan looms. You won’t find them extremely enlightening, I’m afraid:

“The last planet which can still be counted among the series of earthly transformations, and hence follows Venus, is called ‘Vulcan’ by mystery science [for this, read spiritual science, i.e., Anthroposophy, i.e. the occult nonsense that Steiner promised would be in Waldorf schools [4] ... Not much can be publicly communicated about life on this planet ... only mystery students of the higher order, who may leave their physical body [sic] and acquire supersensible knowledge outside it, can learn something about Vulcan.” [5] Shucks. I wanted to hear more about the habits and habitats of Vulcans. Still, we have made some progress: Note “life on this planet.” Not “in” or “at” this stage of evolution: Life on Vulcan. 

“[W]hat I described in OCCULT SCIENCE — the periods of Old Saturn, Old Sun, Old Moon, Earth and the future periods of Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan — is only present to the Gods in Time.” [6] I’ll pass over RS’s pitching of his own book, OCCULT SCIENCE. But take note of the plural: “Gods” [sic]. To follow Steiner, you have to be extremely flexible about such matters as the number of planets in our solar system and the number of gods running the show. (Minor aside: The translator of this quotation that refers to Vulcan is named Spock — Marjorie Spock. I’m not making this stuff up.) The "Gods" take countenance of the periods only when operating within Time; when the "Gods" are comfortably settled outside Time, things look different to them.

The teachers at Steiner's Waldorf School, being Anthroposophists, presumably believed in Vulcan and all the rest of Steiner's mythology. Consider the following exchange in that context. A Waldorf teacher asks about a possible summer camp in Transylvania. (I absolutely promise that I’m not making up any of this stuff.) Steiner replies: “That may be possible, but I find it difficult to imagine how ... I went to a coffee house in [Transylvania] where you had to scrape the dirt away with a knife. A number of players [sic] came in ... There was something Vulcan-like and stormy in their astral bodies; they were somehow all tangled together ... The room was next to a pigsty and there was a horrible smell ... Everyone gets bitten by all kinds of insects as well.” [7] Ok, ok. Moving on:

“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.” [8] Here we see why Steiner's version of the solar system is odd: He required seven planets in order to house seven stages of 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: His seven planetary stages are Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan; 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 coun.  can go fly a kite.

In the passage we just now looked at, Steiner swings back and forth between discussing physical planets (“on his own planet,” “on Saturn,” “on each planet”) and discussing states of consciousness. His explanations of mysteries are often equally circuitous. But note that “physical” organs are developed “on” the planets. Further: Note how Steiner equates clairvoyant powers with “Imagination” and “Intuition” — words that are often used in Waldorf schools, but usually without an explanation of their true Steinerian meaning. It is crucial for parents of Waldorf students and prospective Waldorf students to understand that the teachers at a true Waldorf school subscribe to a belief in clairvoyance (and Old Saturn, and Vulcan, and...). 

Steiner subscribed to astrology. According to him, all stars, planets, comets, etc., exert astrological influences on humans. The influences of the zodiac’s 12 signs call for especially close scrutiny, because they wax and wane due to the movements of the moon: “The [sign of the] Lion continually influences human beings except when it is covered by the moon ... The moon, passing through the constellations at four-week intervals, brings it about that there is always a time in a four-week period when some constellation of the zodiac does not have an influence. With other constellations the influence is always the same ... And so you see why the zodiac is more important when we study the starry heavens than other stars are.” [9]

As I have argued, Steiner’s version of Christianity was weirdly mixed with paganism. In the following passage, we see Christianity explicitly tied to astrology: “In this next sphere [a Theosophical term transplanted by Steiner into Anthroposophy, indicating a stage of development] man feels in his astral body [one of a true human’s nonphysical bodies] the forces that come from the constellations of the zodiac; forces come in one form direct from the zodiac and in another form through the Earth, for it makes a great difference whether a particular constellation is above or below the earth ... Christ becomes our guide through the zodiac during sleep.” [10] Note that the signs of the zodiac and the earth are here discussed as physical entities. Otherwise, it makes no sense to discuss a sign being “below” the earth (not that any of Steiner’s teachings make much sense). Conflating Christianity and astrology is what people of orthodox faith would call heresy.

Heavenly orbs influence not only man but all things on Earth, including animals, vegetables, and insects. Farmers should certainly take astrological conditions into account when planning their plantings. In the next quotation, Steiner corrects the faulty ideas of those who do not understand astrology as deeply as he does. (He was never shy about admitting that he knew best about everything.) “[T]he sun, as it moves through the zodiac, has the greatest influence upon bees. The changes the sun undergoes as it goes through each sign are transmitted to the bee ... this is where there is a connection between the farmers' sowing of the seed under a certain sign of the zodiac and the bees' finding of substances the plants have prepared for them. Such things aren’t simply pulled out of nowhere; however, the way they are normally presented is very amateurish and misleading.” [11]

Physical phenomena, as we know, have no meaning except as they manifest spirit. Nothing on the physical plane is really real (a precept that, as I have argued elsewhere, can be extremely injurious to children, teaching them that what is real is unreal, while only the unreal is real — a kid could go nuts (or sink into irretrievable mysticism — which amounts to the same thing)). Scientists can come up with ingenious pseudo-explanations for stuff, but only Steiner and his devotees can — thanks to “spiritual science” — lay out the true truth (Steiner frequently and insistently set himself up in explicit opposition to science). In our next selection, Steiner lays out a third theory of the nature of light (#1: light consists of waves; #2: light consists of particles; #3: light consists of the emanations from the actions of faraway spiritual beings of intelligence and will — I've taken this quotation from a section titled “Stars and the significance of the zodiac”): “If we look up to the stars, we can say that something streams from them [i.e., light] that can be perceived by the human being's sense organs here on earth ... [I]t proceeds from beings of intelligence and will whose life is bound up with those stars. The effects appear to be physical because the stars are at a distance. They are not really physical at all. What you see are the activities of beings of will and intelligence in the stars. I have spoken to you of the ingenious description of the sun given by astrophysicists. But if it were possible to journey to the sun it would be found with amazement that nothing of what is to be expected from these physical descriptions exists ... What we see is in reality the working of will and intelligence which at a distance appears as light.” [12] Actually, of course, we do not "see" light, we see objects illuminated by — but Steiner never got any of this stuff right.  

“You know from the book Occult Science [written by one R. Steiner] that during the Lemurian epoch of earth-evolution [i.e., during the epoch associated with Lemuria, a pre-Atlantis lost continent] only very few human beings ... remained on the earth ... [T]he majority of souls withdrew from the earth to other planets, continuing their life on Mars, Saturn, Venus, Jupiter, and so forth.” [13] I’m very nearly speechless, but unfortunately not quite. Here we see Steiner talking about planets as planets, physical spheres in the sky. Or perhaps we do. Anyway, he was talking about the colonization of "the other planets" by "human beings." This is science fiction, although not very scientific, and although Steiner claimed it wasn't fiction but verifiable fact.

“Now since the universe is filled with the gaseous substance we perceive in the zodiacal light, this universe would be found to emit all kinds of different smells if organs of smell existed which were even more delicate than that of the dog ... such a creature might sniff towards the evening star, and its smell would be different from that of the sun. Then it might smell towards Mercury, towards Venus, towards Saturn ... it would get the sun smell, the moon smell, the Saturn smell, the Mars smell, the Venus smell.” [14] In the 19th century, physicists thought that the universe was filled with a gaseous ether. Wising up, they later tossed out this theory. Despite his clairvoyance, Steiner didn’t see the change coming. He was an ether-believer.

“Mars consists primarily of a more or less fluid mass ... Now a great deal is said about the ‘canals’ existing on Mars. But why ‘canals’? There is nothing to be seen except straight lines ... Everything for which intervals of years are needed on the earth — as in the case of grubs and cockchafers — is dependent upon Mars. So there you see a significant effect of Mars.” [15] The fluidity of Mars would come as a surprise to NASA, which has operated various rovers on the solid, dry surface of that planet (or stage of consciousness or evolution), trying hard to find even slight traces of any liquid on or under that surface. Steiner was right that there are no canals on Mars, but he was wrong about the existence of long, straight, canal-like lines on Mars. People in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries thought such lines existed, just as they believed in the universal ether. Steiner, despite his claims to transcendent knowledge, was very much a man of his times — trapped in the knowledge and ignorance of his times — as we can see in his acceptance of these erroneous ideas.

As for grubs and cockchafers — ugh — I’ll pass.

“What goes on in the universe between the population of Mars and the population of Venus ... relates to the human being ... the hidden spiritual interaction between Mars and Venus [is] related to what appears in earthly life as human speech. Physical forces alone would not enable us to speak ... Long ago human beings were able to see these things with an instinctive atavistic clairvoyance....” [16] Populations of Mars and Venus. I’ll pass again. In re. clairvoyance, however, I’ll say this: Steiner frequently said that humans used to possess natural clairvoyant powers. He said these were generally lost when humanity became more rational. But Steiner was no advocate of rationality. One purpose of Anthroposophy and Waldorf pedagogy is to help humanity develop new, even better, powers of clairvoyance. Can you buy it?

“But where is the actual Buddha, the one who lived as Gautama [the Buddha's given name]? He became for Mars what Christ has become for the earth.” [17] “The Buddha wandered away from earthly affairs to the realm of Mars. Until then Mars had been the chosen center of forces designated by the Greeks as fearfully warlike. The mission of Mars came to an end in the seventeenth century. Another impulse became necessary and the Buddha accomplished a Buddha crucifixion there. The Buddha Mystery on Mars did not take the same course as the Christ Mystery on earth, but Buddha, the Prince of Peace ... was transferred to the belligerent realm of Mars.” [18]* All this would startle Buddhists, no doubt. But Christians should be even more shocked. Steiner broke with Theosophy because he wanted to give greater emphasis to Christ Jesus. His religion, Anthroposophy, combines Theosophy with smatterings of Christianity. But notice how he denigrates Jesus. Rather than being the Son of God — and thus one aspect of the triune God — Jesus is just one spiritual guide among others, including Buddha (and Steiner). Jesus isn’t even the Prince of Peace — Buddha is. And Jesus’s ministry could be equaled by others: Buddha did for Mars what Jesus did for Earth. Curiouser and curiouser. 

Setting aside the question of Steiner's heresies, we should note once more that Steiner took at face value various myths, folk tales, fallacious theories, etc. (Mars is the planet of war, there are “canali” of some sort on Mars, the universe is filled with a “gaseous substance,” etc.) Like the Theosophist Madame Blavatsky before him, Steiner erected an edifice of teachings that are, by and large, nonsense (myths, legends, paganized pseudo- Christianity, discarded scientific concepts ... ). So what is the resulting edifice? By and large, nonsense.

*We might be tempted to say that Steiner associated Mars with war for no better reason than that the ancient Greeks did so. We would probably be correct, although Steiner's defenders would deny it — they attribute Steiner's teachings to his powers of clairvoyance. This causes difficulties for them, however. Steiner's descriptions of the solar system — like his descriptions of most everything else — are terribly inadequate, as we've seen (and we'll see more at the page conveniently named More Overhead). Here's an additional, minor instance. Steiner gave little indication that he had any inkling of the minor or “dwarf” planets in our solar system: Ceres, Quaoar, Sedna, Eris, and others. Steiner certainly should have been clairvoyantly aware of these bodies — they are substantial spheres that, by Steiner's dark lights, should play astrological and perhaps evolutionary roles. Pluto, the first minor planet to be discovered, is no mere speck — it is more than 1400 miles in diameter, and it has a spooky name (in Greek mythology, Pluto is the god of the underworld, Hades), just the sort of name Steiner liked. Other minors also have evocative names (Ceres, god of grain; etc.), and one of them, Eris, is larger than Pluto. Still larger minor planets (call them major minor planets) may yet be discovered. And here's a further wrinkle: The ancient Greeks linked Mars with bloody war because it is red. But Pluto is also red. And so is Sedna. So which of these red planets is the real Planet of War? Trick question. If we go by the number of wars that have actually been waged on any of the planets, the obvious answer is that the Planet of War is Earth. [For more about Pluto, Eris, and the other minor planets, see astronomy Web sites such as http://web.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/dwarfplanets/. Astronomers have also discovered a large number of planets orbiting stars other than the Sun, but we'll give Steiner a pass on that issue, okay?]

— Roger Rawlings

Astronomical images: NASA.

The pictures show Vesta, methane distribution on Mars,

and star formation in a pinwheel galaxy.

Aside from Star Trek movies, there are no images of Vulcan

(aside from its namesake, the god Vulcan):

[Keightley's Mythology, 1852.]