Testament of Astrology 2

The Testament of Astrology - 2002, All Rights Reserved
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The Testament of Astrology
Introduction to Astrology as an Esoteric Science
Second Sequence:
The Zodiac and Man
Seven Esoteric Lectures
by
Dr. Oskar Adler
June 4, 1875 May 15, 1955
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Introduction to Astrology as an Esoteric Science
Second Sequence: The Zodiac and Man
First Electronic Edition, 2002
Copyright 2002, Amy Shapiro
All Rights Reserved
ISBN: Pending
Produced in the United States of America by
ONLINE College of Astrology
E-Publishing Division
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http://www.astrocollege.org/
Translated from original German by Zdenka Orenstein
Desktop publishing production and illustrations by Tuxedo Cat Enterprises,
Las Vegas, NV
Copyediting by Amy Shapiro
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Table of Contents
First Lecture .............................................................................. 6
The Problem of Character
Psychologic and Astrologic Teachings
The Zodiac as Spectrum of Life
The Experience of the Circle
Vernal Point and Human Sacrifice
Life and Death
Second Lecture ......................................................................... 20
The Arrangment of the Zodiac:
Its Structure
The Twelve Segments
The Four Elementary Worlds
Third Lecture ........................................................................... 38
The Four Human Types:
Earth-man, Water-man, Air-man and Fire-man
Earth-man in General:
Capricorn-, Taurus- and Virgo-man in Particular
Fourth Lecture .......................................................................... 58
Water-man in General:
Cancer-, Scorpio- and Pisces-man in Particular
Fifth Lecture ............................................................................ 79
Air-man in General:
Libra-, Aquarius- and Gemini-man in Particular
Sixth Lecture ........................................................................... 105
Fire-man in General:
Aries-, Leo- and Sagittarius-man in Particular
Seventh Lecture ....................................................................... 127
The Precession of the Vernal Point and Human Development:
An Expedition into the Last Six Thousand Years
Appendix................................................................................. 141
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Bajezid Bastami (9th Century) said,
For thirty years I searched for God,
And when I had opened my eyes
at the end of this time,
I discovered that it was HE,
Who searched for me.
~ Martin Buber, Ecstatic Confessions
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First Lecture
To him that overcometh will I give
To eat of the tree of life, which
Is in the midst of the paradise of God.
~ Revelation 2:7
Based on the insights we have won in our introductory contemplations, we are now faced with
the task of building the system of astrology, in the center of which stands man. The perception
of this mans character shall not be gained from the depths of his conscious existence, not from
self-observation directed at his particular physical, emotional, mental and moral character, nor
by the subtle methods of modern psycho- and character-analysis. For the way by which the
mystery of the individual is reached through astrology is almost the opposite. In astrology the
individual represents a sort of projection-picture of the cosmos. His individuality reaches far
beyond what is accessible to his consciousness by mere self-observation and analysis-----it reaches
into cosmic depths! The projection-picture of the universe, visible here in the form of each
individual, resembles the shadow that an object brought into the rays of light casts on a
surface.
We may regard the true character of an individual as this object set into the path of cosmic
rays, and his apparent form on Earth as a cast shadow, as it presents itself not only to his
environment but to himself as well. All practical psychology-----in the widest meaning of the
term-----in fact, all that we may call knowledge of human nature is concerned with the analysis
of this cast shadow.
Astrological exploration of the human being attempts to fathom the depths of the universe, not
only to find there the object whose shadow on Earth is represented by the human being, but
also to detect the special characteristics causing this shadow to be what it is, and not any-
thing else, in this mans moment of birth or the first visibility of his earthly projection.
Let us stop for a while at this comparison. It is intended to simplify what we spoke of in the
introduction to these lectures. Undoubtedly the nature of this projected picture will depend
on different factors, the most important of which may be the following:
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1. The intensity of the cosmic light.
2. The transparency of the object (let us call this the degree of his
cosmic resistance).
3. The greater or lesser perigee (proximity to Earth).
We may look upon the intensity of cosmic light as something constant. The cosmic resistance
signifies the degree of development of the object in the sense of the alchemistic scale. The
perigee means to us the degree of entanglement in the bulk of earth heredity. The object
shall be that true identity of the individual that we place in the center of astrologythat
which we try to comprehend astrologically.
This comparison should clarify the difference between psychological and astrological knowledge
of human nature. Psychology examines the shadow-man. By comparing many such shadows,
it obtains a picture of a human type increasingly generalized, which is an abstraction of
man. But psychology is conscious that this general human type has no reality. It is merely
an idea, or practically speaking, it is a supplementary concept, as is every conception of
a species.
The astrologer tries to seize that human nucleus, swinging freely between Earth and the
world of the stars, to study him and his terrestrial shadow as well as the heavenly light into
whose realm he stepped. Practical knowledge of human nature starts, as it must, from the
empirically given single individual and his form of life, which became significant for the
individuality of the person. Psychology attempts to explain them in analogy to what became
evident of mans inner structure through self-observation. Therefore, there will be as many
kinds of practical knowledge of human nature as there are men striving for such knowledge
of human nature. The depth of such knowledge depends very strongly on the degree to
which misunderstandings, which necessarily appear, contribute to our learning therefrom,
and how much the judgment of our own character and its use as a key to the perception of
that of the others needs to be corrected. This compromise, which indeed looks like a vicious
circle, becomes increasingly important. Yet such a compromise may stand at the beginning of
all esoteric knowledge of human nature, if comprehended in all of its depth. This way of
compromise asks to j udge others according to oneselfand oneself according
to others.
Schiller expresses this demand somewhat differently:
Wouldst thou know thyself, observe the actions of others.
Wouldst know other men, look thou within thine own heart.
Obviously this is not in reference to human knowledge, but to knowledge of oneself, and
only then to the understanding of others, not of perception.
What may we then expect of such practical knowledge of man that is of general psychology
applied to the individual? Accessible to us areas Schiller phrases it so characteristically
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their actions; actions that we at best can understandto understand for our needs, inasmuch
as we find similarities in ourselves.
But how far does this self-knowledge go? Not farther than our observations of other peoples
actions as the expression of an agency in the other person that we do not know, to which our
own hearts give us the key?
This unknown agency, to which psychology is to lead us, is mans character. Its exploration
is the main target of the practical study of man. It starts from the tacit supposition that
character is that part of human nature that is the enduring foundation of all his actions. Man
can be understood by these actions as they happen on different occasions with unmistakable
assurancejust as the chemical character of an element can be determined by its behavior
toward several reagents. The same chemical element must always show the same chemical
reactions; thus, the actions of a person must be similar under similar circumstances.
The axiom of the stability of character, as a theoretical thought-requisition, has been strongly
supported by Schopenhauer, who with special sharpness expounded upon Kants marked
discrimination between what he termed the empirical and the intelligible character. To
Kant, the intelligible character of man is the fundamental direction of his will, which concerns
the metaphysical nucleus of man, and forms his last, unchangeable core. It lies behind all
the actions through which he reveals himself. Against this intelligible character, which is
only dimly felt but unequivocally given, is the empirical character. It is a sort of collective
conception of all the constantly changing expressions of that fundamental character in the
actual world. Under the influence of the greatest variety of motives, actions result-----actions
that present only a fluctuating picture, explainable in many different ways. From them may
be disclosed, in a synthetic way, the constitution of a substratum lying behind them, whose
conception must always remain in need of correction. This empirical character is also the
starting point of self-knowledge. Thus it happens that everybody comes to know his true
character only gradually, up to a certain degree, after he has discoveredthrough a great
number of illusions and disillusionsthe essence of that difference in himself as well as
in others.
We often find an antithesis similar to that of Kant and Schopenhauer among practical
astrologers. Among them is a sharp distinction between individuality and personality. The
actual moral subject is understood as individuality; personality is understood as the sum of
all talents that do not originate in the nature of the moral subject but are found as peculiarities
of heredity. They are not altogether in an organic connection with that subject, but in a
connection very difficult to interpret.
This personality, which might correspond to Schopenhauers empirical character, implies
something essentially different in that interpretation. Personality, derived from persona,
is a sort of mask or disguise; not self-chosen indeed, but presenting the appearance with
which every subject is clothed when entering this world. Calderon expresses a similar view
in his drama, The Great World Theater.
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People, who by their birth step onto the earthly stage, are like actors who must play a certain
role, the contents of which form their task; the one has to be a criminal, the other a paragon
of virtue; this one a king, that one a beggar, a warrior or an artisanwithout really being
either! But, for one evening, he has to appear as such; he has to burden his true character,
whatever it may be, with the feigned character of his role, and to unite with it.
This thought is strangely powerful, showing the problem of character in yet another light. If
Kant saw in the empirical character only a deceptive form of the intelligible, true character
of man in this contract between role and actor, an essentially different element is revealed. If
we ask ourselves, what actually is the relationship between the actor and his role, something
similar to the relationship between intelligible and empirical character begins to emerge, yet
in a different way. For if we must present a certain person on the earthly stage, donned
with a mask, and stand acting in life through only it, thenand that is the essence of the
comparisonthe relationship between the true and the assumed character will have to contain
something similar to this relationship.
To get to the deeper meaning in Calderons fictional life-comedy, let us ask ourselves: from
where does mans inclination for play-acting really come, this inclination to replace his true
or supposed individuality with the person? Wherefrom does this urge to put on a mask
originate? Why do children and so many adults like to play theater? Perhaps because in
playing they can learn voluntarily what we are compelled to learn in lifes comedy, that is to prove
ourselves in our true nature. First to see and test for ourselves: Watch the action of others.
But are these others, whose roles we play, whose masks we assume, actually completely
the others? Is not something of the beggar or king, the hero or coward, the noble or the
mean person, hidden within each of us?
Then the mask would be something that would serve, as every mask does, to disguise
something that in reality wants to reveal itself in the shelter of this disguise! Our true subject
nature would, therefore, urgently need that disguise, to free itself under the protection from
something of which, though it pertains to him, he yet wants to be releasedof which he tries
to rid himself.
The personality would be that side of ones nature that has become most mature for
transformation: for victory over the Self. It is that sediment that we have best recognized and
which matured has been incorporated into our subject nature and, therefore, no longer
needs to be acted.
How ever the value of this disguise may be judged, we see in this personality (obscuring
our true Self) that connecting link with our environment, which is destined to supply the
proper opportunities to the development of the Self and to its need for further development,
guiding it to perceive that which has become ready for transformation.
Thus the true actor may be best suited to personify just those roles that match his inner
development, either presenting that phase of his nature that he is just about to transform, or
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the roles that indicate to him the presentiment of a future stage in a sort of anticipated
perfection, while other roles remain outside of his talent or interest. This interpretation of
the function of our personality leads us to another aspect of the problem of character as it
is mainly seen in the Orient. There is a simile that is used to clarify the double meaning
of mans character, which compared those two fundamental elements to a vessel and its
invisible driver.
We can only recognize the true intentions, the actual character of the driver in that which he
is able to transmit to the vehicle. The result naturally depends to a high degree on the
capacity of the vehicle, but also on the genius of the driver. A piano virtuoso will achieve
admirable feats even on an inferior instrument; a violinist plays beautifully even on a miserable
violin, even ennobles his instrument by constant use. But if the piano is out of tune, the artist
will not be able to avoid the sour sound of certain keys of his instrument, even by display of
his highest artistry. The defects of the instrument will, in turn, act upon him and force
him to make the best possible compromisethat is, the best possible for himand this
compromise appears as the empirical character.
We do not wish to pursue this thought of the double nature of character into every possible
shade as different thinkers have taken in the course of time. We will stop at the confirmation
that, as soon as one approaches the problem of character analysis from the psychological
point of view, the above-described conflict between a true, that is enduring, and a seemingly
changeable character immediately appears. The ancient Romans had a well-known, often-
quoted adage:
Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurrit.
(You may expel nature with pitchforks, it always returns.)
Talking of habit as second nature is a significant expression. In that Latin proverb, only
the first nature can be meant, which may, therefore, appear as something beyond habit.
But if the first nature is beyond habit, which must also be changeable, whether it is born
with us or acquired laterwhere does the first nature come from, and where shall we assume
its location in man? Can self-knowledge or the observation of others lead us to it, or does it
remain forever strange and unknowable to us?
In a little known sermon, Gautama Buddha talks of the place of our true self in a simple
simile:
The elephant, who arrives at the pond and seeing his image in it indifferently
walks on because he takes it for another elephants image in the pond, is wiser
than the person who sees his image in the pond and says: That is I! For know
ye, our true I is beyond the fetters of Maya.
Maya is the name of the great illusion to which we all submit. We take the world of
outward manifold appearances for reality. To truly realize the reality, we must destroy its
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semblance, thereby to enter the road to perception of its true nature.
The attempt of psychology to explore character and personality finally ends somewhere in
the ocean of the metaphysical. Schopenhauer too confesses in a letter: How deep the roots
of individuality reach down in the subconscious remains an insoluble riddle.
Just where practical psychology abandons us, in steps astrological knowledge of man. The
conditions of astrological knowledge are different from the very beginning, for it is not
concerned with man himself, but with his horoscope, from which it interprets the persons
individuality.
The horoscope indicates many more essential factors than those two, called the empirical
and the intelligible character. First, there are three essential elements partaking in the casting
of the horoscope: the Zodiac, the world of the planets, and Earth itself, as projection-surface.
Therefore, the character of man consists of three fundamental elements, one of which is
founded in the Zodiac, the second in the planetary functions, and the third in the Earth-
function.
In the Zodiac reposes the idea of man, his idea form, in the shape of a twelve-membered,
circular-bent, spectral ribbon, whose constitution we have previously explored, in a general
way (see the First Sequence).
The geocentric distribution of the planets in the separate regions of this circle at the moment
of birth decides which elementary colors of this spectral ribbon flow toward the human
being, and in which special way, interpreted by the planets. Zodiac and planets thus form
the image of man destined to take shape on Earth. But only the projection-plane Earth itself
supplies this image, radiated down from celestial remoteness, with the possibility of becoming
visible. Earth catches this image, and arranging it according to her nature, measuring it on
a second twelve-membered scale, causes the distribution of the total radiation into the six
regions above and beyond the horizon. Between them lies the entire mass of Earth like an
immense filter. Only through this second transformation of the cosmic radiation, comprising
not only the Zodiac but also the planetary function, the human form emerges, immediately
accessible to us: Man in his earthy, visible formin the form in which we meet him in
everyday life.
Herein we can immediately conclude whereby the psychological and the astrological analysis
of character must differ. Psychology seizes only the physical, last stage of a developmental
process, which astrology seeks to understand in its entire expansion. It watches the history
of the evolution of shadow, casting looks into the cosmic workshop, and bares the elements
that unite in the total character of the human being. For exactly this reason, astrology arrives
at an essentially different conception of the human character. It can very well accept the
distinction between empirical and intelligible character, but with the reservation that even
this intelligible character does not comprise mans true Self. For the true Self of man, that
in Buddhas words lies beyond the fetters of Maya, reposes in the prototype of the human
ideas, in the Zodiac whose rays flow unto the earthly plane only through the planetary filter.
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They are, therefore, in a state of cloudiness before they reach Earth at all. Then it happens,
that what appears to us as a distinctly colored character of the individual now presents a
certain variation of the pure human type. It actually lies beyond the horoscope. The
horoscope reveals to us the special sort of character-beclouding of an individualeither in a
favorable or unfavorable waybut not the character itself: only attributes of a variable
degree of constancy and atomicity. Even the ingenious differentiation between personality
and individuality (which will be highly serviceable to us in the following lectures) relates
only to a fleeting border within the human analysis, which, though reaching farther than the
psychological art of discernment, yet remains essentially within the world of Maya.
In summing up what we are able to achieve by astrological analysis of the human
individual, we will keep in mind the following:
The nucleus of manhis divine nucleuslies beyond the horoscope and is incomprehensible
to man. His apparent form (God-embryo) or his development phase (individual character)
show three essential characteristics; it resemblesthus we could now modify the comparison
used beforea tree, whose roots lie in the Zodiac, whose trunk is formed by the planetary
world, and whose crown touches and unites with Earth. The rooting ground is represented
by the threefold four elements of the Zodiac; the trunk by the nine planets (including the
newly discovered Plutoten planets); the crown or outer ramification are the houses as
the twelve earthly correspondences to the signs of the Zodiac (General Foundation,
Seventh Lecture).
The houses are the place for mans Self-probation; there alone does he gain the powers of
self-knowledge, of correcting and extending his development (see sketch).
Now if we wish to comprehend mans character from an astrological-cosmic standpoint,
then we must understand it not as something lasting and unchangeable, but as one phase of
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development of the human being in movement, with certain possibilities given to him as a
sort of provender for his wanderings. We learn to know these possibilities with all the
temptations for use or misuse they contain as well as all the inhibitions, and to thus erect the
living image of the actual person, in which personality and individuality find their place
as different, but related, elements.
Just because it is conscious of having no way to mans true Self, the essence of astrological
knowledge is: that astrology does not permit us the mistake of psychology, which is to
evaluate and judge mans fundamental nature by moral standards.
Here the command of the Sermon of the Mount applies more than ever: Judge not! In
Socrates opinion, no man does evil for evils sake: his ignorance, greater than that of other,
better, men, causes his actions. All astrological studies of character should bear in mind that
each persons innermost core is of a divine nature. The trunk of the human tree of life is
often enough sick, and its crown plunged into unfavorable regionsperhaps just because
this person is about to cast off a sediment. This may only be possible by his playing the role
of evilbeing forced to play it, to free himself from that sediment that he was not mature
enough to discard in any other way. Because of his ignorance, because he could not yet
remember his true nature!
Our task now lies before us clearly. The astrological knowledge of mans nature shall
contribute to diminishing the ignorance, and therewith simultaneously remove more and
more of the evil. Then, from such knowledge of human nature, a blessing can issue forth.
Its power will not be exhausted as long as the belief in the divinity of the true human core
does not vanish.
Our task now falls logically into three parts. The first part of the task is the study of the
Zodiac and the impulses for human development and the prototypes of character formation
that it contains. It is still concerned with the general un-dimmed human image, corresponding
to the twelve sections of the Zodiac and the development of twelve types of people.
The study of the planetary world in connection with the Zodiac forms the second part of our
task. Here will be disclosed the manner in which the total possibilities, which the Zodiac
presents, are specified and limited for the individual: how this limitation works favorably or
unfavorably, and how the pure Zodiac emanations become dimmed and obstructed by the
position of the planets in its sections.
The characteristic of human nature is already intercepted by this way of contemplation,
before it has reached Earth completely. I intentionally speak here of characteristic rather
than of character, because this expression implies something of the moral evaluation of
which astrological human knowledge has to abstain on principle! We will see, to be sure,
what essential share falls to moral function self in the casting of the total picture of the
human constitution; as such it will have to be studied as painstakingly as the other elements,
as part of the total characteristics within the total picture of man.
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The third part comprises the realm of mans being rooted in Earth, the test of his individual
being against the resistance of the earth-matter; to speak astrologically, the study of the
significance of the distribution of the Zodiac-sections, as well as planets in the regions above
and below the horizon, for the development of the individual on Earth: the cast-shadow of
the zodiacal man on Earth, and the summary of tasks of his earthly workthe work in the
arable soil earth, ager whose fruit he incorporates into his wandering ego. Here alone
is formed what we have termed mans fate, in the widest meaning of the word.
Therefore, our first and most important task is to study the characteristics of the human
individual and his connection with destiny, based on his nativity.
First we will be concerned with the exploration of the character-constitution of the person
based on his birth-constellation. We want to know the separate elements of this constitution,
and to learn to discern the relatively constant from the variable, the important and firm from
the less important and changeable. Thus ensues naturally, as first requisite, learning to know
the influences that issue from the Zodiac in which, as expounded in General Foundation, the
prototype of man reposes. We must, therefore, suppose in it the seat of those powers that
are the foundation of what is constant in mans nature or the general characteristic of
humanity as such.
According to the sector of the Zodiac wherefrom its rays flow down to the newborn person,
either because of its special position in regard to the horizon of the birthplace at the moment
of birthwhereby one half of its rays remain subterranean, or by the manner of distribution
of the planets within the Zodiac as mediators for those rays, a different combination of the
fundamental picture of the individual must result each time.
The analysis of this character-picture by means of astrological laws shows a great similarity
to the spectroscopic analysis of light, issuing from different glowing substances. As the dark
lines contained in the solar spectrumthe so-called Frauenhoffer-linesdisclose the existence
of certain chemical elements in the solar body (whose nature is known by their position in
the sector of the total spectrum, so that by this strange fact a chemical signature pertaining
to separate, exactly fixed, places of the solar spectrum seems to be given), so we can also
speak of a special astrological signature pertaining the separate parts of the Zodiac. Regarding
the astrological character analysis, this signature plays a role similar to that of the Frauenhoffer-
lines in the chemical analysis. There is no more to be seen or sought for in this analogy but
a comparison that helps us to clarify our next and most important task: the study of the
single sections of this circle or, in other words, of the twelve regions or signs of the Zodiac,
whose names and order you already know.
Let us first look at this circle exoterically. In this contemplation, we have before us nothing
but the orbit on the firmament through which the Sun passes in the course of a yeara
circle, returning in itself and actually representing the Earth-orbit or ecliptic, projected onto
the sky. The oblique position of the Earth-axis in regard to its orbit forms an angle of about
23
o
27' at present with the equator projected onto the sky. The two points of intersection
thus formedand therefore common to both circlesare called the vernal and the autumnal
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equinoxes. The counting of the degrees of ecliptic as well as of equator begins at the vernal
equinox. In the vernal equinox we count the 0
o
; in the point of the autumnal equinox, the
180
o
of ecliptic and equator, which like all circles are divided into 360 degrees.
This provides a rather simple solution to the question that naturally arises from an impartial
contemplation of the line of the circle as a closed geometric figure, returning in itself: the
questionwhere is its beginning, and where is its end?
In our case, with two intersecting circles, it is not difficult to make one of the intersections
the starting point of both circles. But what would constitute its starting point if we had only
one circle before us? Is it only arbitrarily fixed? And further: what about the division into
360 degrees? Is this number also arbitrarily chosen? Or is a deeper meaning hidden in this
numbersomehow connected with the true nature of the circle?
We will consider one of these questions rather closely today. Is it really merely an astro-
nomical agreement to put the beginning of the Zodiac at the point of the vernal equinox, as
the intersection of ecliptic and equator, or has this stipulation a deeper, esoteric meaning?
Is there such an experience as the point-of-intersection-of-the-vernal-equinox-experience,
an esoteric absolute circle-experience? If we succeed in finding an answer to this question, then
perhaps the way also opens to the meaning of the number 360. At any rate, it is absolutely
necessary that we come to an understanding of this matter before turning to the analysis of
the separate sections of the Zodiac.
Let us start today from an experience that stands in the focus of all fundamental astrological
experience. It was included in the cosmic-life-feeling of mankind, long before there was any
knowledge about the intersection of equator and solar orbit, yet it was closely connected
with it. Let us call it the spring-experiencethe experience of the vernal equinox point.
We mentioned this elementary experience in the introduction, in connection with one of the
four characteristic points: vernal and autumnal point, summer and winter solstice. Today we
plunge more deeply into this experience of the vernal equinox. Revealed in it is the
inner, esoteric meaning of the junction of those three elements, through which, regarded
from the outside, this vernal point comes into existence: the axis-rotation of Earth forming
the equator, the rotation of Earth around the Sun forming the ecliptic, and lastly the inclination
of the Earth-axis toward the ecliptic, by which this intersection becomes possible. As the
three essential elements of the astronomical relation between Earth and Sun visibly join in
the vernal point, so the esoteric meaning of these same three elements converges into a
feeling of abysmal depth in the spring-experience. We will take the justification for placing
the beginning of the Zodiac at this point by astronomy and astrology as a starting point for
todays probings, and we will be occupied with them more fully in the following lectures.
This experience might be called an intoxicated state: life becomes self-intoxicated to a
degree which brings into ecstatic consciousness the presentiment of its profound depth. It
unites, into a mystical union, the arch-contrasts of being and passing, strongest affirmation
of life and strongest life denial: Life and Death. In this union, the holy breath that connects
these two oppositesor the great world-breathingtakes possession of us, as described in
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the second lecture of the first sequence. What essentially distinguishes the spring-experience
from the cosmic-all-feeling is the strange mood that accompanies ita mood that finds its
expression in a cultic rite bound to the event of the spring-point and spreads all over the
world. Its most important act was the offering of the sacrificein ancient times, the human
sacrifice.
When, after the disappearance of the last winter showers, nature awakens all around us, it is
as if life, moving everywhere, must rush us along into the lan of its awakening. The ice
melts; the avalanches thunder down the mountains; the waters rush into the valleys every-
where: A stream of joyful tears to meet the spring (Nikolaus Lenau), and the valleys: They
cannot contain the rivers exultation (ibid). While all around, as if awakened by this exultation,
the valleys grow green, the buds open, and the newly awakened life-ecstasy streams over
every creature alive. In the midst of natures exultation, man sees himself drawn into its
intoxication, whose content is: live, livelive and enjoy lifelife in this warmth and light-
flooded sensuous outward world, absolutely surrendering to it.
But! While this ecstatic vitality thus takes possession of us, it is as if something else were
awakened within us at the same timethat is like a silent weeping for another life that will
escape uslike a quiet, huge lament that the inner life might die in the affirmation of the
outward one! That the submerging in the general nature-intoxication is not identical with the
submergence in the universe in which the Self expands into the cosmos. It rather equals the
dying in which we have given awayor lulled to sleepfor Mayas sake, the most precious,
the true Self, that which is beyond the fetters of Maya.
We will understand the full meaning of the spring-experience when we heed this feeling of
inner grief that always accompanies it. As Schiller has expressed it,
The paths that lead to Life
All lead inevitably to the Grave.
We have understood the other side of the spring-experience: the experience of death! In it we
face the real mystery of the vernal equinox and its esoteric meaning. The death-experience, as
we have hinted, is the feeling of perishing in the life-intoxication, perishing in yet another
sense: as having to die of a mystical guilt toward the higher Self. The death-experience,
though only vaguely felt, stood in the life of the people behind the most terrible and deepest-
reaching rituals. Everywhere it formed the center of the rites of springthe offering of the
human sacrifice in the night of the vernal equinox.
Rudolf Falb describes in his work, Critical Days, the Flood and Ice-age, such a ritual of
Indians in Central America. He says, among other things,
The children were not allowed to sleep in that night, so that they might not be
changed into mice. (It was, therefore, expected that men would be transformed
into animals). Then a large procession, in the attire and with the symbols of their
gods, and accompanied by a vast crowd, went out of the capital onto the mountain
17
Huixachta near Iztapalapan. At the height of the mountain the whole expedition
stood still, expectantly, until midnight.
There, stretched out on a round stone, lay a man who had offered himself of his
own free will as a sacrifice for the god. Exactly at the hour of midnight, the priest
thrust a knife into his chest, tore out the heart and held it in his raised hands
toward the starry night sky, while another priest laid a small round block of dry
soft wood on the gaping wound, and a third priest sprung upon the stone and
kneeling on the body, placed a hard rod vertically on the block, whirling it quickly
around with both hands. A spark sprang from this powerful friction. Quickly
seized, it was thrown into a nearby pyre, whose flames predicted to the people the
promise that the god would wait a little longer in the destruction of the world, and
grant another reprieve to mankind.
Then the assembled people raised their voices in a moving joyous shouting, which
spread to the more distant crowd. This crowd filled the capital and its surroundings,
the temples, hills and roofs, holding their eyes fixed upon the mountain Huixachta.
The new fire was rapidly spread and flared before dawn on all the altars and
fireplaces of Anahuak. The priests themselves carried it to the large temple.
The following fourteen days were days of relaxation and joy; festive parades,
dances and games never stopped. The houses were renewed, cleaned and white-
washed; tools, dresses, valuables, household utensils were all repaired. Everything
signified symbolically the renewal of the world. The last feast of this kind was
celebrated in the year 1506, even more splendid and with more human sacrifices
than ever before.
Thus for the report of Falb. Let us first consider the fear of the multitude of the possible loss
of humanity through transformation of children into animalsdescent into the animal realm?
if the sacrifice does not take place or is not accepted; and let us consider then the jubilant joy
about the newly won life. Other reports relate the mad orgies that followed the sacrifices,
where the blood of the victims, often mixed with wine, was drunk, whereafter men and
women copulated indiscriminately until morning, until they fell down exhausted, in deep
stupefaction. What may have been the meaning of this sacrifice and the strange ritual
following it?
Let us try to submerge into that spring-feeling in which two worlds struggle for our possession.
In each of these worlds, the words life and death seem to have an opposite meaning. Life
devoted to the outer world and its eternal iron equal laws, eternally placed in the ever-
identical cycle of nature from which there is no escape, day in and day out, year in and year
out, delivered up to the eternal return of the sameas yonder Ixion of the Greek saga
fastened onto the wheel of timean Ahasverus of lifeuntil this eternal circulation is perhaps
at last exhausted. On the other side: lifea life of freedom, giving itself its own laws, in free
perception and free decision bursting the prison of that cycle. Only he who is allowed to
untie these fetters, which render him powerless servant of the ever-recurring natural rhythm,
18
has earned the right to rise from animal to free man. This can only be done by an act that is,
due to its inner nature, apt to lead out of the cycle of eternal recurrence of the same, to burst
it, and to break through. This freeing act can only emanate from the spontaneity of a will
consciously opposing the mechanism of natural occurrences. It appears to be the denial of
the one life, to win the other, the higher one. This act we call sacrifice.
As Joseph in Egypt frees himself from the embrace of the temptress by discarding his coat,
so man leaves, so to speak, his dress in the hands of nature in that sacrificial act; to flee her
beguiling arts, he leaves her joyfully his corpse! Through this sacrificial death, he succeeds not
only in breaking through the circle and in giving it another direction, but he also incorporates
his blood as holy bequest unto the next generation: the circle will no more return in itself, will
no longer remain for all eternity without beginning and end. A mark is set that becomes,
year after year, the beginning of a new circle, each time starting a step higherand therewith
a step further toward becoming human is takenthe Self is saved. Now we understand why
the moment of this sacrifice was the spring night, and why the point of the vernal equinox
must be the beginning of the Zodiac. But we comprehend even more.
The time of human sacrifice in this rude form is long since. It is no longer necessary for
people who have achieved their ascent from the animal realm, to a certain degree, since
their awakened Self began to oscillate, detaching itself from animal-dom. But this sacrifice
has to be made constantly. It is now dedicated to the conquest of our temporary lower
nature, that obligatory inheritancethrough the spontaneity of the free determining will of
our higher Self. We now realize why the first section of the Zodiac, which the Sun enters at the
time of the vernal equinox, received the name of RAM or Lamb (Aries), the sacrificial animal
that symbolically represents the human sacrifice. According to the Bible (Genesis 22, 12), the
Lamb, the Agnus Dei in later interpretation, by whose holy blood the renewal of mankind
is gained ever again...
Saying with a loud voice,
worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power,
and riches, and wisdom, and strength,
and honor, and glory, and blessing.
~ Revelation 5:12
Now we also understand why this first section of the Zodiacor the sign Ariescould only be a
fire-sign; because the power that makes this sacrifice possible represents the highest expression
of that member of the human being that signifies, as the innermost (fourth) in the scale of the
elements, and as the first in the scale from above to below, the divine spark in man, the fire of
his Self-hood or the moral, responsible will (see General Foundation, Fourth Lecture)
Herewith we will close for today. The question regarding the starting-point of the Zodiac
will be discussed in the next lecture. We will then try to apply the two esoteric auxiliary
means, the human body and number, already known to us. Let us consider the words of
Nikolaus Lenau (who was concerned more than any other poet with the problem of the
Self) in describing the experience of the border-point:
19
DOUBLE NOSTALGIA
A double nostalgia overwhelms the heart,
As we stand on the rim of the steep ravine
Dizzily gazing into the sepulchral night
With darkened eye, death-hollowed cheek.
Nostalgia for the earth makes us afraid and sad;
That joy and pain of earth must pass;
And heaven-nostalgia wafts over us
Like morning air, that we desire to leave.
This double nostalgia sounds in the swans song,
Converging flows in our last tear drop
An easy evasion and a hard separation.
Perhaps our unexplored self is
Before sharp eyes nought but a dark line,
In which miraculously two worlds touch.
The examination of the Zodiac radiation shall show us the way to our unexplored Self, to
throw light into its depth, there to discover its true character.
20
Second Lecture
The eternal Feminine
Draws us upward and on!
~ Goethe, Faust
In the last lecture, guided by the experience of the circle, we tried to understand why the
ecliptic point of the vernal equinox is taken for the beginning of the Zodiac. The cyclic
return of the eternally same drives man at lastwhen the despair of ever being free from this
circle has risen to its maximumto the decision to break through by force, to escape the
fetters into which nature wanted to chain him forever, to the freedom of self-determination.
What thus takes place resembles recovery from a fatal illness. The involuntary imprisonment
into the cycle of natural events was felt as such a deadly disease by the not yet awakened
Self of prehistoric man. He was close to this break into consciousness by his yearning for it.
Sacrifice was the only possible way to break through: the human sacrifice in the first night
1
.)
An ancient figure, called Svastika in Sanskritrecoverysymbolically intimates this breaking
through the circle:
Figures 1 and 2
_______________________________________________________________________________
1
As a late echo of this prehistoric usage in historical times, among people with an already highly developed culture, may
be regarded the so-called sacred spirit--Ver Sacrum--of the old Romans. Ver Sacram, Spring dedicated to divinity in
difficult times, with the ancient Italian people, was a sacrifice promised to the gods of all the products of the following
spring. Fruit and beasts one really sacrified; children born at that time were driven, when grown up, out of the country. It
was up to them, under the protection of Mars--the planetary God of Aries--to seek new homes. The Ver Sacrum was
promised for the last time by the Romans during the second Punic War, 217 B.C.
21
Figure one (shown on the previous page) shows the cross in the circle, the sign of periodicity,
entered and kept prisoner in matter. At the same time, it is the sign of the planet Earth (see
General Foundation, Fifth Lecture); Figure two (also shown on previous page) shows the
breaking of the circle at the four marking points, corresponding to the vernal and autumnal
equinoxes and to the two solstices.
Actually the three last named points are felt as a sort of turning point somewhat resembling
that of the spring point, and they play an important role in the ritual life of primitive peoples.
The point of the autumnal equinox has been, for many Eastern peoples especially the
Hebrews, the beginning of the year while, at present in Western countries, generally the
winter solstice takes this place. More about this later.
All four points indicate a turn, or the passing of a boundary. At the point of the vernal
equinox, the most important and impressive turn happens. Understood esoterically, it is
aimed at the conquest of the pseudo-self, toward attaining the true one.
It shall be our task today to gain a deeper insight into the structure of the Zodiac, once the
starting point of this circle has been established. Therefore, let us first try to regard the
Zodiac as a mere geometric circle, disregarding all esoteric relations. First we find its partition
into twelve sections (whose deeper esoteric meaning we have already come to know to a
certain extent) directly through the geometric nature of the circle. According to a geometric
law, the radius of the circle can be applied to its circumference six times as chord. Thereby
the six-partition of the circle becomes understandable. The twelve-partition results easily
from the bisection of the sixth; and its continuation, the number six, remains the fundamental
measure of the circle. Applied to the Zodiac, through combination with the four marking
points, it leads directly to the twelve-partition (see figure three).
Figure 3
In Keplers work, Secrets of Creation in the Depths of the World, he occupies himself
with the same problem, namely the partition of the Zodiac and of the circle in general into
twelve segments, and arrives at a relatively simple solution, which has to do with the basic
numbers three and four (3 x 4 = 12). If, from any point of the circle, the equilateral triangle
is inscribed, and then, from the same point, the inscribed square, a twelfth of the circle is
found as the smallest arc (see figure four on next page).
22
Figure 4
This inspiration did not come to him from geometrical considerations alone, but also from
the idea of a general harmony, to which music shows the direct way, as the echo of the
cosmic harmony through the spatial measures of the universe become sound.
If one imagines the circle as a sounding chord, then half of this string, the semi-circle,
presents the octave; the third of the circle, the quint; the fourth of the circle the octave again;
and the three quarters of the string, the quart of their key-note: these are the fundamental
numbers of harmony of Pythagoras!
Beyond these basic measures, a partition into five may be made, that corresponds to the
third. In the circle itself, there is formed therewith a partition into sixty, into a hundred and
twenty, and lastly the partition into three hundred and sixty degrees or stages of the circle
function. Anybody especially interested in pursuing these ideas of Kepler is referred to his
Harmonices Mundi (the Harmony of the Spheres).
Let us keep in mind that the numbers six and twelve have been recognized as closest and
most directly connected with the idea of the circle. Now the road to one more perception
is opened to us, which is quite odd and which leads us to a relationship between the circle
and the number seven, the number of the planets (without Uranus, Neptune and Pluto): six
circles of the same diameter enclose a seventh circle of equal size. (see figure five).
Figure 5
Let us try to find an inner connection between these geometrical ideas and our probings
about the starting point of the Zodiac. First remember that we have understood the human
figure as being radiated in a sort of pangenesis (see General Foundation) from the Zodiac,
23
its prototype. We then can understand that this partition of twelve of the prototype must also
pass onto the human figure in some form, that in the human body the number twelve must
also be contained as the organic number of the circle. We are confronted here with that
ancient tenet of the mutual correspondence of the twelve parts of microcosmic man with the
twelve parts of the Zodiac. According to this tenet there corresponds:
To the head region of man Aries q
To the neck region Taurus w
To the chest region Gemini e
To the stomach region Cancer r
To the heart region Leo t
To the intestinal region Virgo y
To the kidney region Libra u
To the genital region Scorpio i
To the hip region Sagittarius o
To the knee region Capricorn p
To the lower leg region Aquarius [
To the foot region Pisces ]
The words head, arms, and so on directly concern the physical appearance of man, but
regarded esoterically, they refer to parts of the inwardly experienced human body. That
means, if we perchance speak of the head, we have before us the outward appearance of
what is the inwardly conceived Aries-radiation; speaking of the feet, we have before us what,
conceived internally, is the Pisces-radiation, and speaking of the heart, we have before us the
radiation of Leo in its physical appearance, as we have before us in the element natrium the
physical appearance of what in the solar spectrum corresponds to the D line.
Regarding the human figure in this sense, we must naturally put the beginning of the human
circle between Aries and Pisces, that is, between head and feet, the head regarded as
the beginning, the feet as the end of the human circle. But how do feet and head join? If we
imagine the human figure bent into a circle, as Kepler did with the sounding string, then the
completion of one circular rotation progressing from organ to organ would be the inward
experience of the human organism or the God-embryo-structure of each individual on his
level, according to the degree of his development. If the individual is to progress, and not to
remain on his level, he must break out of this circle, that is, he must strive beyond himself,
climb above himself, so that now in the new circle which he thus starts, his lowest parts
become what had been highest before: he must put the feet above the head, to grow
further from therehigherhe must sacrifice his conquered human circle to the higher.
An ancient mystic figure will make this clearer to us.
In a symbolic set of pictures, symbolizing the secret meaning of the first twenty-two numbers
(which correspond to the old Hebrew alphabet)Tarotthere is a symbol of the number
twelvethe number of the circlethe picture of the hanged man, that is of a man, sus-
pended on one foot, so that the whole human figure is turned upside down. A very remarkable
24
position of the limbs is shown in this human picture. The free leg is crossed over the fettered
one (cross, square), the arms are closed with the head in a sort of triangle, so that the
following geometrical figure is formed:
Figure 6
Do we not have the human sacrifice before us here, even if in another sense? It is no more
the voluntary physical death; it is the spiritually comprehended Eternal Dying (see the
end of this Sequence), as in the parable of Chuang-Tzu, which enables man to progress in
his development and frees him from the circle. Die and become alive, Goethe phrases this
command to sacrifice.
When we regard the figure of the hanged man attentively, composed of triangle and cross----
the numbers three and fourdoes it not remind us of the old riddle of the Sphinx: on four
in the morning, on three in the evening? One must gain a new morning from the evening,
to accept yesterdays legacy, freer, richer, and bettertoward the new day.
For the present we will avoid the many-sided symbolism of this figure, and will concern
ourselves with it later on. We will keep in mind that the number twelve evolved directly from
the idea of the circle, and that the point of the vernal equinox, the incision between Pisces
and Aries, must be the esoterically conceived starting point for the partition into twelve.
One may also arrive at the twelve-partition of the ecliptic in an empirical manner, if it is
remembered that the Sun, in its yearly wandering through the Zodiac, meets the Moon
twelve times. Thus originate the twelve months of the solar year, which, each counting for
about twenty-nine and a half days, do not completely fill the year. The difficulties regarding
the calendar, resulting therefrom, form a special chapter in the historic development of the
chronology of various peoples.
25
Let us now first view the sequence of the twelve Zodiac segments in a general orientation,
starting from the sign Aries. A sort of spectroscopic formation of the Zodiac is therein
revealed, as was explained earlier. According to ancient teachings, this spectroscopic formation
contains a threefold sequence of four signs each, whichalways starting from the Fire
categoryleads through Earth, Air and Water, if one proceeds in the direction of the solar
orbit through the Zodiac. Progressing in the opposite direction, the sequence is: Fire,
Water, Air, Earth.
Therefore, Fire and Air, Water and Earth, can never follow each other. What then is the
meaning of the rhythm in the circle?
With this question, we enter into a province of which we talked only in general, a province
concerned with the problem of the circle and its numberthe number six and its double
the province of the cosmic six-hood, or the cosmic sex(6)-uality.
It was already expounded upon in the introduction, that the criterion of all revelation is the
splitting of the arch-one into subject and object: the object is the subject become manifest,
or apparent, confronting itself in the act of Self-revelation. Thus its appearance is formed (in
addition to the original resting-in-itself), as consequence of a dis-union that can only be
nullified by a third, that is, the endeavor for integration of the reestablishment of the one-ness.
It is this third element by which the course of the universe is set and kept in motionthe real
spiritus rector of the world phenomenon, which is revealed to human comprehension
only in the threefold aspect of space, time and causality. The two arch-elements, the subject
per se and the subject viewed in the mirror of its Self: the object, we now regard as the
prototype of this contraposition that appears as the male and the female, in general.
Male is that which asks for objectification, seeking to bring an inward impulse into the
outward world and become reality there. Female is that which seeks acceptance of this
impulse toward objectivity; to form, with its aid, the object; and to lend to creative will,
revealed in the male impulse, the substance in which it may be expressed.
The female becomes the reflector or resonator of the male. Without this female sounding
board, the male impulse would be lost and wasted in the infinite; without the male impulse,
the female would remain an empty and vain experience, mere possibility without capability.
Without the female impulse, the male would be mere activity without realization. Only the
harmony of the male and the female brings forth what can be called the reality, the limited
form, the thing or objective that is the essence of all appearance in this manifest world.
In everything that became reality or materialized, the arch contrasts of male and female
vibrate and gain a third stage, the neutral gender, as effect of combination, comparable to
the cast shadow which an area receives from something existing beyond it. For the arch-
male and the arch-female are beyond perceptibility.
If we apply these observations to that which is perceptible in the world of appearances, we
26
see in them a sort of graded development, whereby each higher level appears male in
relation to the lower, emitting the impulse to rise, before it had been entered from below,
female, if it is left in the rise to gain the higher level. Each rung in the scale of ascent, if it
were not to remain the last, must be transformed into the resonator of a higher impulse, that
is, femininely transformed, to be able to ascend still higher. Therefore, the real apparent
lifting power of evolution is its female part, because it represents the repulsion-component of
something yet unrealized, which, coming from the future, seeks to be wedded to the present.
It is this, that Goethe calls the eternal feminine, which draws us above.
These ideas will help us to understand a special sort of graduation of the Zodiac-spectrum, which
is revealed in the sexual evaluation of its sections, according to which a male----a Fire or Air----sign
always follows a female element, that is, a Water or Earth sign, corresponding to the two
phases of the arch-oscillation.
Figure 7
Figure seven shows a standing wavy line, returning into itself with six wave crests and six
wave valleys each. Let us remember that the four elements correspond to the four levels of
organization of the organic realms, namely:
Earth to the mineral realm
Water to the vegetable realm
Air to the animal realm
Fire to the human realm.
Then we must perceive that we must designate the two end parts of this series, that is
mineral and man, or Earth and Fire, also to the opposite qualities----Earth to the female, Fire
to the male quality.
In the human being, the physical body corresponds to Earth, and willpower corresponds to
Fire. Thus Earth and Fire represent the extremes of a line between which Water, closer to
Earth, is female in relation to Fire and Air. We can thus represent Water in relation to Fire,
Air and Earth as: -- --
+.
Air, which is closer to Fire, presents itself as male toward Earth and
Water, and as female in relation to Fire, like this: + + --.
27
Therefore, Earth is the absolute female element, Fire, the absolute male; Water is mixed,
but more female, Air is mixed, but more male, corresponding to the intellectual side of
man.
The wavy line presented in figure seven now takes the following shape:
Figure 8
To the absolute female must be counted everything that came into existence, everything
that has been impressed into matter and has become fixed there, everything that took shape
in the physical world: Earth -- -- --.
To the absolute male must be counted everything that merely sends out impulses without
ever possibly being influenced or dependent on matter. It is the supreme lawgiver as highest
will: Fire
+ + +
.
To the mainly female, with a male touch: --
+
--, we must count everything that has to do with
formation, but not with the already complete form, fixed in matter, but which is turned
toward the negative side of this formative process, that is, to experience of all the pain and
aches of an unwelcome interruption of permanence, which is brought about by the changes
through the formative process, as the labor pains of evolution: Water --
+
--, the region of
evolutionary pain.
To the mainly male, with a female touch, we have to count everything, also related to formation,
but to its positive side, the sensitive grasp and joyously active aid in the formative process:
Air
+
--
+
, the region of zest for evolution.
All evolution-pain is female, directed toward the past, is becoming as passive form of the
auxiliary verb to be. All zest for evolution is directed toward the future, is the active,
future tense of the same verb. In this characteristic, we easily recognize what already has
been propounded at an earlier occasion (General Foundation, Fourth Lecture). We recognize:
28
in
+ + +
Fire our moral Self
in
+
--
+
Air our perceptive power
in --
+
-- Water our emotions
in -- -- -- Earth our body substance.
From what has been discussed, we learn that the sequence of the four elements in the
Zodiac is actually possible in a twofold sense. Starting from Aries, that is, Fire, either Earth
or Water follows, then Air, and again Water and Earth. The line F E A W and so on,
starting with 0
o
Aries, in the direction of the solar orbit, builds man proceeding from head to
feet, from Fire to Waterfrom above to below. It reveals man under the rule of the celestial
impulse, radiated from the Zodiac, the macrocosmic archetype of his organization, in his
male aspect. The other direction----starting from 30
o
Pisces, opposing the direction of the
solar orbit----therefore, in the direction of the precession of the point of the vernal equinox,
builds man proceeding from the feet to the head, from below to above, that is W A E F.
It reveals man in his female aspect, conceived by Earth, and radiated back from her mans
child, the son of Earth, microcosmic man, who strives toward the above.
Only the combination of both aspects forms man, as we see him in reality.
The old symbols for Fire and Water have always been: for fire, the triangle with its vertex
directed upwards; and for Water, the triangle with its vertex turned downward.
Lost in the sight of this sign, in which the secret of creation seems to be disclosed, Goethe
puts these enraptured words in Fausts mouth:
In these pure features I behold
Creative Nature to my soul unfold
How each the Whole its substance gives,
Like heavenly forces rising and descending
Their golden urns reciprocally lending,
With wings that winnow blessing
From Heaven through Earth I see them pressing,
Filling the All with harmony unceasing!
And now something more. Let us consider again the spectral circle of the Zodiac as pure
geometrical form in respect to that which presents itself in its passage as polar opposite in the
geometrical sense; then we arrive at yet another sort of contrast. Let us term it opposition. Two
signs of the Zodiac form together an opposition group of the same sexual character. Earth is
always opposed to Water and Air to Fire. Here too we are confronted with a sort of secondary
sexual contrast, to be evaluated differently. Here the comparison with the complementary
colors in the solar spectrum forces itself upon us. Complementary colors, such as red and
green, or orange and blue, supplement each other; that is, their combination forms a sort of
neutralization of their quality in the sense of their approaching the white of the total solar
light, even if with less intensity. Each of the two complementary colors can give to the other,
what it lacks for completenesstheir complement.
29
Figure 9
In this relationship of mutual complementation, which also represents a sort of sexual contrast
inside of the same sex, there are:
Fire and Air, on the one hand,
Earth and Water on the other hand, therefore the signs:
+ ---
+ Aries and Libra -- -- Taurus and Scorpio +
+ Leo and Aquarius -- -- Virgo and Pisces +
+ Sagittarius and Gemini -- -- Capricorn and Cancer +
Thus originate inside of the Zodiac:
a) six groups of opposing signs of two members each, as in figure ten,
b) four groups of elements at three members each, as in figure eleven.
Figure 10 Figure 11
30
For easier understanding of the above diagrams, we repeat here the drawing already
contained in the First Sequence, Fifth Lecture:
31
Let us first turn to the four triplicities (see figure 11), and let us trystill quite generallyto clarify
the way in which they represent themselves to human consciousness, esoterically experienced.
The Earth-triplicitythe absolute female element earthis the entire world as cognizable to the
senses, or the world of material aspect. We are incorporated in it through our physical body,
submitting through it to the same physical and chemical laws that are effective in the material
world. As we receive direct knowledge of this world through our bodys sense organs, so can we
work directly into this world only through them, influencing the current of events mechanically
and physically, that is, motorically through the strength of our muscles or the chemical process of
our material digestion, and perhaps also through the physical radiation of the total organism.
It is essential of the element Earth, that everything that presents itself to us dressed in the
attributes of the corporeal is the last pronouncementthat is, irrevocable reality, fixed in
matter and, therefore, the final reality of all impulses, notwithstanding whether they come
from the physical, the emotional, the mental, or the moral sphere. All reality fixed in matteror
that which is realizedis, therefore, arch female, and bound to the past. It tells of something
that once materialized becomes an encrustation, as the chalk-cliffs are the encrustation of a
life that had once been.
Therefore, the basic relations of time, space and causality, as we experience them in the
world of matter, receive a color of experience only valid in and for it, which contains
absolutely the criteria of the aspect of the past. In the world of Earth, space is dominant, and
time and causality are here only of secondary importance. The category of space or expansion
in the material world is a sort of irrefutable claim of each body to its continuity. It is at the
same time, its defensive position against all attempts to infringe upon this legal claim.
Expansion is the increase of this legal claim and, at the same time, a declaration of war
against the legal claim of the neighbor. Space is the eternal barrier that separates body from
body. All approach or conquering of space is merely a measuring, or a sort of drawing up
distances in the futile race for the restoration of the past.
This measuring creates the importance of the time category in the material world. It too is
turned toward the already existing; of the three aspects of timepast, present and future
only the past actually exists in the range of the material world. Present, as well as future,
appears bound to the past; that is, they are conditioned by what has already become a
reality. Future has no reality in the material world, and can only be included in it insofar as
the realization of any event in the material attire is expected of it. Time in the material world
is the abyss between expectation and the event of its realization in matter, measured in
review. Only time that has past can be measured!
But also causality, which like time is not at home in the physical world, receives, if applied
to the physical world, a purely reflective character; it has the tendency to seek the causative
destination of all present and future events in the past, and to build them upon it. Thus is
created a pure past-perspective, typical for the Earth-world, which we may call the historical
or the chronological perspective.
32
Within this briefly sketched peculiarity of the Earth-world, the three poles of the Rajas-,
Tamas-, and Sattwa-species present themselves as three impulses, of which the first is
directed to the increase of reality in matter----therefore to the realization of the hitherto
unrealized; the second, to the preservation and protection of the already realized; and
the third, Sattwa, balancing, is directed to the useful combination of the two other
impulses in the sense of the best possible effectuation as well as the acquisition of an
unchanging, objectively fixed measurement, to master all phenomena discernible in
the material world (Capricorn, Taurus, Virgo).
The Water-triplicity, still belonging to the female category but not entirely female (
+
-- -- ),
presents itself to esoteric perception as the world of the soul-experiences, of the passions and
instincts, pain and happiness, hatred and love, as the world of longings and fears, of hopes
and despairs. All this corresponds in the world of Water to what in matter constitutes the
realities of this world. But we have no entrance to those realities through our physical body;
we can neither perceive them through our bodys organs, nor can we influence them
directly through the organs of the body. And yet these realities touch us with immediately
perceptible force.
This Water-world also has its laws, wherein we are included. We also are incorporated into
this world through a sort of body, which belongs to us as the physical body belongs to us
and which, on its part, is also subjected to the laws of the emotional outside world.
We will call this part of the Water or emotional world, following the esoteric usage, our
astral body. By it we feel ourselves inside of the world of emotional realities as if limited
against an emotional outside worldtake it, if you will, as a mere construction.
Through it, we are incorporated in this world of emotions, in which a sort of outside
presents itself. In it too, the three basic relations of space, time and causality work, only in a
completely different manner. What presents itself in the world of Water as the category of space
is not defined, as in the physical world, as the juxtaposition, the complete juxtaposition
according to the three dimensions of space, but as a form of togetherness; and the measure
of the spatial distance in the world of the soul becomes the degree of intensity of this
together, from the most complete indifference to hostile rejection, or to the most fervent
impulse for unification.
The degree of our longing or fear, of our affection or repulsion, becomes spatial measure in
the world of the soul, and creates the emotional space-perspective, according to which what
concerns us closely looks near and big to us, but that which is far from our emotional life,
appears small and remote. Therefore, there exists in the space of the soul no constant
measure that could be somehow presented in a more concrete form. If one would attempt
to transmit this measure into physical space, it would look like a thing pulsating according to
a completely irrational law, changing incalculably into all dimensions, with no lasting
form butlike wateractually taking the form of each vessel into which it is poured.
33
Inasmuch, therefore, as this soul-measure proves to be dependent on the world of mans
longing, the category of space in this world is also past-bound. It receives the law of its
relations from the soul-contents, which man gains from those desires that represent that
invisible pre-formed vessel into which the water-reality (the emotional equivalent of the
earthly matter) pours.
In the Water-world, the category of time appears different than in the Earth-world. The
three aspects of time, past, present and future, flow pell-mell here. Even if time presents itself
in the real physical world in a straight linepast, present, futureit cannot actually be put in
such a line here. In the Water-world, past, present and future appear altogether as already
past, and can be exchanged at will inside of this past, so that here there is no lasting earlier
or later in a temporal physical sense. The measure for the earlier or later lies in the degree
of the soul-effort required to calm the souls emotions or to master or forget them. This
would be analogous, in the physical world, to the conquest of distance.
In the world of the soul, similar to the physical world, time is only fully revealed with its past-
aspect. But here this past is variable; it is effaceable, and once effaced, creates a perspective
of a future detached from the pasta perspective impossible in the physical world. In the
world of the soul, hope is the future-aspect. The physical world is without hope!
Yet again the category of causality in the water world shows another face. While physical
causality includes man in his material actions in its inexorable course, it yet excludes his
soul, and allows his thinking and willing no part in its rule. Causality shows us man enclosed
in its cohesion in an entirely different manner. This causality too is turned toward the past,
but not in presenting man as an inbred slave of the past, nor as bound to the past through
the pressure of necessity, but in a changeable connection according to the degree of his guilt-
commitment or Karma. Mans inclusion in the life of the soul reveals itself inwardly.
The past, source of all causality in the physical world, is immutable; it becomes so because
there is no kind of causality in the physical world that, taken temporarily, would possess
retroactive power. The causality of the soul has such power, able to annul the souls pastto
cancel guilt-thereby giving it a direction from the present into the past. It is able to dissolve
its inflexibility and to melt the hard compulsion of its dominionto diminish the past or to
forgive, and thereby change the stream of causality in its course: in other words: to make the
water flow upward!
In this sense, the causality of the soul is oriented toward the past as well, but we ourselves
have a substantial part in its power. In place of the hopeless necessity which causality
presents in the physical world, we find in contrast expressed in the Water-world the idea of
unlimited possibility. Within the Water-world, the three modes, active, passive, and balancing,
are revealed as ever-present readiness for increased intensity in the sense of highest sensitivity
of the life of the soul (Cancer); as the development of this readiness to receive the highest
power of the soul (Scorpio); and ultimately as readiness for full realization of this sensitive-
ness of the soul in purification and transformation (Pisces).
34
The third, Air-triplicity, leads us into the intellectual sphere. In contrast to these already
described, it is ruled by male, creative impulses: --
+
--, the realm of ideas and thoughts, of
pure forms and formation. We are not in direct connection with this world of the intellect
through either the physical body or the soul-body. The creations of this sphere are only
directly accessible to us through that which we surmise as the substance of our mentality or
perceptive function. Let us call it our intellectual body or, in the technical expression of
occult teachings, our Air or mental body.
This mental world is replete with realities, which represent to us the prototypes of all that
which has taken material shape in the physical world, and which as such becomes recognizable.
The vessels that are invisible in the physical world are created in the mental world. They
become visible only when the stream of matter has filled them. The creation of these forms
and their mutual relations are subject to the laws of the mental world. We are integrated
with our mental-body into this intellectual world, as we are integrated with our physical
body into the physical and chemical laws of the Earth-world.
While the aspect of the past or necessitythe female side of the lawrules these laws, the
mental laws belong to energies that are directed toward the future and thus create models
whose incomplete copies appear in the physical world as physical realities.
In the mental world, there is no happening, only creating, and all perception in this
world is a creation or active formation in mental-substance. Perception is, therefore, active
power, ability, and entirely creative, artistic activity. Therefore, the languages of antiquity
have only one linguistic rootgen, g-nfor create, beget, give birth: gignere; and
perceive: gnoscere.
The relations between the mental realities, produced by that intellectual law, are here also
presented under the threefold aspect of space, time and causality. In the mental space, the
mental forms do not appear side by side as do forms in the physical space; nor do they
appear with each other, as the forms in the space of the soul; but in each other whereby
the intellectual spatial measure becomes the measure of mental concentration, or distraction
(de-centration) from the forms created in thought, into which the realities of the mental
world have to be absorbed so that they may become our own.
In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant calls these two space-dimensions of the mental
world: the ability to generalize and to specify. Through these two basic functions, the realities
of the mental world are kept in a correlation of mutual classification, association and substi-
tution, whereby the effective active causality of the Earth-sphere is created. The earthly
causal relations are the shadow-picture of the mental space-relations in the mental world.
The mental or perceptive process is, therefore, a constant creation of forms, wherein we
harbor the mental contents, actually ladling from the vast universal reservoir of mental
substance ever renewed with this vessel. A sort of inner compulsion, which possesses as
much inescapable power as the physical causality, gives steadiness and firmness to these
forms and their mutual relations. We call it logic or the creative power of the mind.
35
Through the power of this logic, the immense building of the mental realities is kept together.
Through it is created that inner, independent, unchangeable and lasting firmness which we
call truth. The spatial law ruling in the Air realm is the in-each-other, the prototype of all
mathematical laws.
The mental effort needed to create and maintain these forms leads us to the time-category in
the mental sphere. Now a strange thing happens. The mental aspect of time in its peculiarity
approaches what in the physical sphere is felt as space, namely that which separates what lies
between the mental realities or the forms, and forever delays their complete arrangement into
one single reality, comprising everything in itself.
What, therefore, presents itself in the mental sphere as time is analogous to what signifies
space in the physical sphere; the mental space reveals itself to the outward world of the
senses as the sum of the there ruling mathematical laws.
Inasmuch as the mental time-function (as the inwardly experienced creative work or effort)
is entirely concerned with the future, its goal becomes something that was actually at the
same time the beginning of all revelation: the world before it split, the total integration of the
world or restoration of all things----Apokatastasis----the homecoming to the one-ness. This
third, the Air-sphere, is also split into three categories:
The active: creation of forms Libra
The passive: classifying of the forms in a system Aquarius
The coordinative: search for the criteria for evaluation of the forms Gemini
Let us proceed to the fourth triplicity, the Fire-triangle. The world of Fire, or the divine
world of the arch-will, experiences itself in the Self of every individual through immediate
Self-revelation. It represents the highest world, out of which all revelation impulses flow.
With regard to the human ego, this world can be called that of moral impulses. It is above
space, time and causality, which are nothing more than the three aspects of revelation, as we
have come to know them in the three numbers one, two and three, constituting together the
revealed One-ness.
The expansion of will creates the space-category for the three other worlds of Air, Water
and Earth. Will, experienced in itself: time; will, perceiving itself; causality, or the highest
law of the revealed world.
These three aspects of expansion, Self-experience and Self-perception are also the three
modes of the Fire-quality, as they work actively in the sign of Aries, passively in Leo and
balancing in Sagittarius.
Let us finally consider the three crosses by which each of the four signs of equal modality is
brought into relationship. We find an order of the signs of the Zodiac in three groups of four
36
members each. The members of the Rajas-group are also called cardinal or movable signs;
the members of the Tamas-group are the fixed, and lastly the members of the Sattwa-group,
the balanced signs.
The largest potential is revealed in the fixed signs, for in them are gathered the total energies
of the corresponding elementary realms. They are the sounding board of the energies
flowing from the cardinal signs. All the separate realms rest in them as yet unused possibilities.
Therefore, they are considered as the actual reservoir of strength for the four realms. They
are what the Bible calls the four holy animals as, for example, in Ezekiels vision:
And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and
a fire enfolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof
as the color of amber, out of the midst of the fire. Also out of the midst thereof
came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance: they had
the likeness of a man. And everyone had four faces, and everyone had four wings
As the likeness of their faces, they four had the face of a man, and the face of a
lion, on the right side; and they four had also the face of an ox on the left side;
they four had also the face of an eagle.
~ Ezekiel 1:4-6, 10
In front and to the right, the male elements: AirAquarius (man) and Fire-Leo (Lion). To the
left and behind, the female elements: Water-Scorpio (Eagle) and Earth-Taurus (Ox). On
account of their power-accumulation, we will also call these signs the potential or magic signs.
The cardinal signs or the signs of the turning points, we will call the determining signs, and
lastly, the four Sattwa-signs, we will term the alchemistic signs, which are: Fire----Sagittarius,
Water----Pisces, Air----Gemini, and Earth----Virgo. In them are prepared realization, the working
out, and the higher transformation.
We have now gained a picture of the rank characteristics of each separate Zodiac sector.
The human image grows out of the flowing-together of their separate radiations. Now let us
learn how the fourfold entity man (who carries within himself the harmony of the four
world-powers, according to the constituent substances of his Earth-, Water-, Air- and Fire-
body) receives and utilizes the radiation of the separate Zodiac sections. We arrive thus at
twelve human types. The task of the next lectures will be to describe them.
To sum up now the meaning of todays exploration, we perceive how each man----born into
this world, radiated from heaven, conceived by Earth----must go upwards, carried by all that
he can gain here as an active, suffering, perceiving and will-endowed person. When passing
through the element Earth, he surmises in the shadow-like, perishable contents of matter the
mental forms, of which Earths realities are mere copies. When passing through the element
Water, he comprehends the insufficiency of all that surrounds him there in the thousands of
undulating forms of unrealizable longings. Lastly, in the realm of the Air-element, escaped
from the past, he matures into creative action, toward the highest plane of divine Fire.
37
For
All earth comprises
Is symbol alone, THE PHYSICAL WORLD
What there neer suffices
As fact here is known; THE ASTRAL WORLD
All past the humanly
Wrought here in love; THE MENTAL WORLD
The Eternal-womanly
Draws us above. TOWARD GOD.
These words of Goethe, which, like a blessed inheritance, show the direction for human
strife, shall now close our general remarks about the structure of the Zodiac.
38
Third Lecture
Whosoever will be great among you
shall minister to you;
And whosoever of you will be the chiefest,
shall be servant of all.
~ Mark 10:43-44
We are now sufficiently prepared to develop the characteristics of the twelve fields of radiation
of the Zodiac from which flow the main traits of the twelve ideal types of mankind.
Twelve character portraits will thus evolve, three of which belong to each elemental group.
Therefore, we see three sub-species of the main type Earth-man, corresponding to the
Zodiac regions of Capricorn, Taurus and Virgo; three sub-species of the archetype Water-
man, corresponding to the Zodiac regions of Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces; three sub-species
of the archetype Air-man, corresponding to Libra, Aquarius and Gemini; and, three sub-
species of the archetype Fire-man, corresponding to the Zodiac radiations of Aries, Leo
and Sagittarius.
It must be emphatically stressed right at the beginning, that we are speaking here merely about
pure types, each of which represents a single component of the total picture of man, in whom
many such single components unite, producing the real living man in their totality. If we
should start to define these single components with all possible clarity, then our procedure
would be similar to the production of a colored picture done in the three-color-printing method.
Let us look at the first, yellow, part-color-print. Some parts of the final picture appear in their
true color, but other parts, which now show a yellow color, will show a mixed color in the
final picture, as perhaps orange, green, or brown, while other parts will be completely
missing in the first print.
We must keep this in mind to prevent the mistake of taking such sketches for complete or
final character pictures. Many beginners, too impatient to wait, make the mistake of using in
practice the incomplete and rudimentary knowledge learned at the start of a course. We
deal here merely with a general characteristic of these twelve Zodiac regions. Today it will be
our task to sketch the type of the pure Earth-man, and his three sub-species, the Capricorn-,
39
Taurus- and Virgo-man.
In reference to the comparison of the technique of the three-color-print (in our case a four-
color-print), let us pose this academic question: How would a man see the world, and
experience himself in it, while wearing only Earth-spectacles?
Such spectacles would present everything in one color only-----their own. Everything having
that color will appear clearly, bright and shining, to man; everything else less clear, darkened,
weak and blurred, unimportant compared to earth-colored objects, and understandable
only in relation to them. The same will be true with the three other categories.
In other words, only that which is the same color as ones own glasses appears as real. The
world appears as having reality only because of this color, and the value of ones life only
measurable in the values represented by this color. If, at the end of their lives, the wearers
of these four spectacles were forced to account for their lives in retrospect, and to confess
what seemed to them the most important thing in this life now past, we would receive four
different answers.
The wearer of the Earth-spectacles would be obliged to confess: Of first importance in life
to me was what I accomplished in the external world. All my actions relating to the objective
world were important because, through them, I could change material events. Everything
short of perfection, or that which retained mere intention, was futile. My place in the world
is defined by action alone. All the other evaluations in life pale in retrospect, in contrast to
the importance of what I could leave behind as a material legacy through my actions. Futile
also are all the powerless emotions, thought-structures and plans that did not reach completion.
The man with the Water-glasses would speak in a different way. If he were to draw a
resume of his life, the direct reality of the material world would not appear as the most
important thing to him: all actions, and the changes in his surroundings wrought through
them, would be unessential compared to the soul-experiences. Not action, but suffering and
feeling are of primary importance. How did I endure joy and sorrow, and how did I cause
joy and sorrow to others? How have I been inwardly transformed and changed by joy and
sorrow? It was not material goods that made life worth living, not their possession; nor my
performances in the realm of matter-----all such reality pales, compared with the world of my
feelings and sufferings which, in retrospect, seem to me just as sweet as the much rarer joys.
For their sake alone, life was worth living!
The man with the Air-glasses will speak differently. He too has indeed acted and suffered,
as Earth- and Water-man did, but the contents of all this action and endurance are insignificant
compared with the importance which thinking gained in his life. The hours when he could retire
into his mental world are sure happiness for him. From this vantage point, he could watch, safe
against the storms of life, the activities and sufferings and joys of men, as if from a seat in a
theater-----to gain his philosophy of life from this spectacle. His lifes happiness is to remain
detached. The highest and purest joy of life is tied to his intellectual occupation, to the
enthusiastic intoxication of creation, or in re-creative perception.
40
If Air-man were to draw his final balance sheet at the end of his life, he would not give
undue value to material evidence testifying for his existence on Earth, nor for the contents
of his joys and sorrows. Only because of his thoughts, his mental searching, perceptions and
creation, and his struggle for truth-----no matter whether successful or in vain-----his life was
worth living.
To the man with the Fire-glasses, the world appears differently, as an immense arena for
the demonstration of his willpower. Behind everything revealed in earthly, material events,
in emotional joys and sorrows, behind all mental effort, he sees at last, and only reality the
basic direction of the wi1l. This takes on an importance and color, in contrast to which
everything else pales. The highest values that make life worth living and at the same time
justify him before the judgment of his own conscience are tied to his morality. The worst
reprimand, the severest accusation he can raise against himself, is to have been diverted
from the command of his own conscious will. To have led his morally purified will to
victory is only justification for all the troubles of fight, to which he has been subjected in life.
The four ideal types of Earth-, Water-, Air- and Fire-man just sketched will never be found
in complete purity. For this would mean that in a mans nativity only one element would be
astrologically effective. But there will be many people in whose nativity the influences of one
special element predominate in such a way that they would recognize themselves immediately
in one of the sketched portraits.
It has often been tried outside of the circle of astrological ideas to classify man into four
groups, according to his character. The idea of the four temperaments exemplifies this. It
refers mainly to the differences in the basic affect - moods, as they appear in life-expressions.
In this way we distinguish:
The choleric temperament -- vehement and lasting
The sanguine temperament -- vehement and brief
The phlegmatic temperament -- slow-moving and brief
The melancholic temperament slow-moving and lasting
This theory referred to the conception of the four bodily fluids, on which the old humoral-
pathology was based: the yellow bile, blood, mucus and black bile, and to their mixtures in
the total organism. It was essentially concerned with the liquid man and the different
states of the fluid-mixture. Here the fact may interest us that these four fluids had been
brought into a special connection with the four elements, namely:
The yellow bile with Fire
Blood with Air
Mucus with Water
The black bile with Earth
Though this co-ordination was limited to the physical appearance of man, and served only
41
the purpose of medicine, it was not without cosmic relation. This may be more easily
understood if we remember that for quite some time the four elements were supposed to be
the expression of certain mixtures, which represented different degrees of temperature of
the moist and the dry. Accordingly, Fire and Air are warm; Water and Earth are cold.
But Fire and Air differ inasmuch as Fire is absolutely dry, while Air is of a moist nature.
Water and Earth, both cold, differ inasmuch as Earth is absolutely dry, and Water, moist.
Earth and Fire equally lack moisture; Water and Air are similar in lacking dryness. At the
same time Earth and Fire contrast to Air and Water in warmth and coldness. We will not
follow the cosmic symbolism expressed herein, but will refer only to the role it plays in
Nordic mythology.
The chaotic arch-being Ymir, the stormer, also Oergelmir, the very ancient,
from whose body the world was created, was at Jtun
2
and ancestor of all
Jtuns. In the abyss Ginnungsgap the ice-streams, Elivagar, which came from
the cold north side, Niflhjem, the fog-world, began to melt before the flying
sparks from Muspelhjem, the southern fire-world, and the drops came alive,
thus forming Ymir.
~ Uhland, The Myth of Thor
In the curriculum of our universities, we meet another partition of four, closer to the doctrine
of the four elements, in the form of the four faculties. The concern here is a classification of
the sum of human sciences according to the spheres of interest which they are to serve.
Here it becomes plain that these four spheres of mans activity actually cause that partition
of four. The theological faculty, or the realm of the wisdom of the divine, receives its
justification from the Fire-realm; the philosophical faculty, quite obviously, from the Air-
realm; the medical faculty, occupied with the cure of pain and suffering, from the Water-
realm; and the juridical faculty-----as well as social and economical sciences, as can easily
be seen-----from the Earth-realm.
Before we go further into the separate elementary groups, let us characterize the essential of
these groups with four expressions:
We will call the representatives of the Earth-group the Workers. Workers in the acreage of
Earth, they are the executors or completors, the classicists of and also the realists of life. We
will call the representatives of the Water-group the romantics of life, the dreamers and mystics
as well as the great lovers and ecstatics. Let us term the representatives of the Air-group the
philosophers, the searchers and the idealists. We will call the representatives of the Fire-group
the priests, the impetuous, the heroes and the prophets.
Thus we arrive at a classification of men into four castes, similar to those of the old Indians
and Chinese. We realize that these limits do not actually exist in real life, since each living
__________________________________________________________________________________
2
Jtun---approximately what we call matter.
42
individual presents a special mixture of these four single energies, in which one or the other
element may predominate. Gautama Buddhas explanation of the value of the caste system
might apply here:
As the four rivers, flowing into Ganges, lose their names as soon as their waters
join the holy river, thus all believing in the Buddha cease to be Bramans,
Kshatrias, Vaisjas and Sutras.
Now let us present, with the greatest possible accuracy, the separate regions of the Zodiac.
We will call them the signs of the Zodiac.
All Earth signs have in common the direct relation to the material world of reality. Earth-man,
or the Earth-individual, is first of all a man of reality and of activity in this world. The organ
through which he works in this world of reality is also of a material nature-----the physical body.
We regard the hand as the bodys most important and most differentiated member. It is that
limb of the human body which Aristotle called the instrument of instruments. Action or
handling
3
becomes significant of all activity pertaining to the realm of the Earth signs.
Manus, the Romans called this organ above organs, through which alone man can
leave as per-man-ent the imperishable imprint of his existence that in matter.
Seen esoterically, the total human body in its physical appearance becomes a kind of hand as
tool of the remaining, now three-fold man, who, consisting of the elements Fire, Air, and Water
owns in his physical body an executive organ, through which alone he can intervene in the
physical world. This intervention in the Earthly world becomes the real life-task of all Earth-men.
As soon as this intervention takes place, it immediately encounters the resistance of matter.
What now appears is a sort of compromise between the will, which led to this intervention,
and the resistance of matter, which designates the limits of its possibilities of realization to
this will.
Three components are revealed in this apparent compromise, which occur in every action:
1. The will to realization, inasmuch as it can impart itself to the physical
executive-organ of man, the expression of human force.
2. The resistance of matter or its inertia in the physical sense.
3. The compromise or the visible effect-----the accomplished action.
In physics, we speak of force, weight and work, and express the mutual relation between
these three basic elements of all physical events in the formula: work
=
force x weight.
All relations in which man experiences the energies flowing to him from the Earth-realm
can be expressed in this formula.
________________________________________________________________________________
3
Translators note: The German word Handlung would be insufficiently expressed by handling.
43
If he directs his attention toward force and its fate, then he experiences the Rajas-quality of
his Earth-destiny; if his main interest is in weight and its fate, he experiences the Tamas-
quality of his Earth-destiny; if he turns his main interest to the work-effect., then he experiences
the Sattwa-quality of his Earth-destiny.
A simple example may clarify this for us, an example that is related to the oldest form of
human work-----to mans gardeners work in the acres of Earth, his Earth-work kat-exochn,
as the direct prototype of agere-----agriculture.
Arare
4
, the tilling of the field, the sowing of the seed, may represent the Rajas-component;
the attention is turned here to the force-component. The care of the soil after sowing, the
watching of the seed-culture, may represent the Tamas-quality; attention is turned here to
the weight-component and its fate; and lastly, the harvest after the ripening of the plants and
the garnering and utilization may represent the Sattwa-component; attention is now turned
to the work-effect and its utilization.
The key-note to the life-content, which the three substrata of the Earth-quality must show, is
hereby given. Capricorn as the sign of sowing, Taurus as the sign of care, and Virgo as the sign
of harvest and its utilization. We must learn to explain this picture correctly, to see evolve
before us the three variants of the Earth-man type. Under any circumstances, the contents of
his life are aimed at all that is obtainable through activity. Earth individuals take part in the
external events through their actions-----they may be good or bad, bring profit or harm.
Thus, material success becomes the measure of all sorts of evaluation. In the physical sense,
it may be the enlargement of the size or value of property; in the emotional sense, it may be
the joy in success and the higher esteem due to it; in the mental sense, it may be the
augmentation of knowledge, inasmuch as the activities in the physical world become more
profitable and successful; and in the moral sense, inasmuch as institutions and laws are
created thereby. Through these institutions, the evils in this world may be diminished to
degree.
Three characteristics are thus attained, common to all three substrata of the Earth-man type.
First of all there is the tendency to gain the measurement for an evaluation through the facts
and realities of the outside, material world, which then becomes the last, supreme and decisive
authority in a1l questions of doubt, since it represents the highest degree of reality.
Experience thus attains the rank of a highest and decisive authority in all fields and even
becomes the touchstone for emotional, intellectual and moral values. History becomes the
incorruptible censor of all ideal values. Thus, if we try to sketch Earth-mans position in regard
to the facts of the emotional, mental and moral life, we find the following attitudes.
________________________________________________________________________________
4
Arare is connected, as well as aes (ore), with the Hebrew ares (earth).
44
Unfortunately, emotions constitute an inevitable addition to the actual realities of life. There
is no inclination to submit to them for any length of time. It becomes especially difficult to
separate them from functions of the body-----they mingle to a high degree with conditions of
the body, whereby they lose much of their intensity. The inclusion of the body in nearly all
emotional experiences is a peculiarity only found in Earth-signs. By this circumstance,
sensuality is given an outstanding part in emotional life, and also, as we shall see, a
characteristic relationship of the Earth-quality to arts and morals, even to science in general.
This body-bondage makes it easier to overcome the emotions of the soul. They rule life to
a much lesser degree than in the case of Water-man. Therefore, Earth-man often seems
cooler in his emotional life and not inclined to consider other peoples feelings unless
they are physically manifested. Emotions not strong enough to lead to action are to be
concealed as much as possible. Over-sensitiveness is not appreciated by Earth-man, either
in himself or others. Feelings condensed into actions have to be well considered to serve
as guides for ones behavior.
The intellectual life of Earth-man is also primarily interested in the actual outside world, which
offers the only reliable standard for scientific perception. Even the facts of inner experience,
the emotional and intellectual life inside of one, can only be considered as scientifically
perceived, if they can be submitted to a standard of the outside world. Therefore, the Earth
individual is more inclined to doubt his own existence than that of the outside world, for
whose actuality the evidence of his senses is the highest proof. The foundation of all so-called
exact experimental sciences stems from such perception. They owe their existence altogether
to the practical necessity for mental mastery of the history of all sorts of occurrences or events,
which, with their help, are made serviceable for practical purposes.
Thus originates not only the history of humanity as chronological statement of outside events,
but also all natural history, which is descriptive natural science. All sciences, inasmuch as they
are pursued by Earth-men, have this character of history. History is every kind of classifying
statistic. Applied to mans intellectual life, it becomes empirical psychology and further the
so-called history of thought, history of philosophy, of religion, of art-----in short, cultural
history.
Earth-man is inclined to apply to art primarily an aesthetic measure. Everywhere he sees a law,
revealing the outward appearance of the work of art in measurable relations and one which
prevents it from becoming vague. The aesthetic viewpoint demands a complete balance of all
parts of the work of art, immediately recognizable. This is also the criterion of what in art is
called the classical. All Earth-men are thus, first of all, adherents of the classical in art.
Earth-mans attitude regarding the moral problem is especially interesting. Here we find the
inclination to make the committed deed and its consequences the measure of all moral evaluation.
Not disposition, nor intention, not passions and the struggles of conscience that precede
it-----only the fact of the committed deed decides the moral rank of him who perpetuated it.
He has to carry the whole weight of responsibility for it. Whether the action and its conse-
quences prove useful or damaging becomes the decisive reason for moral judgment.
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Thus, the idea of a human law emerges, in contrast to Fire-mans conception of a divine
ordinance revealed to him directly in the voice of his conscience. In the human law, the idea
of duty takes the form of an obligation based on any kind of reciprocity. Profit and damage
are calculated, according to a balancing justice. This justice has its model in the inexorable
natural laws, according to which every kind of action is answered by a relative reactionbut
in the opposite direction. Man is responsible for this answer or reaction inasmuch as it has
been created by his action, either consciously or unwittingly. In this sense, the moral problem
takes a shape for Earth-man, which we could best call the juridical. It is inseparably connected
with the historical development of the social structure of the human community.
In this light, the various viewpoints of several thinkers, regarding the moral problem,
according to their temperament, are interesting to observe.
I. Kant, whose horoscope shows a strong influence of the Earth sign Taurus, begins his
Categorical Imperative with the words: Act(attention)act in a way that you can also
wish that the maxim of your action may be applied to a general legislation.--therefore,
a kind of juridical version of the moral law; while A. Schopenhauer, for whom the Water
sign of Pisces played an important role, placed compassion as the basis of all morality,
and replaced the indefinite maxim of Kant with the Sanskrit sentence: Tat twam asi
that thou are.
We will now discuss the main characteristics of the separate Zodiac signs of the Earth-
quality.
Capricorn, the cardinal, the active among the Earth signsthe sign of sowinginspires energetic
activity and clear, sharply defined purposefulness of this activity in the sense of fulfilling a
task. The realization of an intention, by overcoming all the obstacles that the inertia of
matter opposes to it, is the most essential element of this task. Its completion is felt as a sort
of mission. To have left it incomplete, or to have become disloyal to it, causes the most
severe conflict of conscience; To do nothing by halves is the way of noble spirits may be
his motto. Therefore, we regard tirelessness and tenacity in the pursuit of a goal as essential
characteristics of the Capricorn-nature. The resulting inflexibility does not concern will, but
rather an enforcement of duty: the act must be done. It is not important that I enforce my
will, but that the work is done. Everything that might be a hindrance toward its realization
from the spheres of Water, Air or Fire, has to submit to this aim. Therefore, man, as the
embodiment of pure Capricorn-radiation, is not inclined to any inner concessions or
compromises, but to those material ones, which make the realization of his intentions
possible.
The straight wayas the crow fliesis rarely his shortest way. As the ant is ever willing to
make even the longest detours, tirelessly avoiding obstacles it cannot surmount, but always
returning to its original direction leading to its goal, so we also see Capricorn-man chose,
in clever judgment of his capacity, the detours which to him appear the shortest among
all roads.
46
From this results the quality of practical shrewdness in the pursuit of his aims, which is
called diplomacy: the art of achieving in the end, by detours, what seemed the most
important goal.
This special ability of elastic tenacity supplies him with a degree of resistance-ability in the
life-struggle, which cannot be conferred in similar strength by any other sign. The stubbornness
and hardness resulting from it prove its quality not only in the struggle against the outward,
but also against the inward obstacles. This is especially demonstrated in the endeavor to
control the emotional side in the various forms of moods that play such a big and important
role in Water-mans life. He strives to allow such emotions no influence whatsoever on his
actions; they must remain his private affairs, which are nobodys concern. It is part of his
style of life to hide them as much as possible. One could speak here of even a certain ascetic
chastity of the soul. Therefore, Capricorn-man may often appear cold and unattached,
because he is not willing to allow his emotions as much importance in his life as Water-man
does. He shares this trait with the other Earth signs, but he is conscious of it as a dutythe
duty not to be diverted from his main line by such inferior matters. This has more and
important consequences, mostly regarding his attitude toward other people. It is an essential
characteristic of Capricorn-man that he maintains above all a certain emotional independence.
This rule applies to his own soul-processes as well as to those of other people.
The demand for independence is not the expression of a craving for freedom, as we will
find within the Fire signs, but only the expression of a practical precept. Therefore, we find
Capricorn-man disinclined to enter any obligations that cannot be clearly expressed in a
legal contract. It embarrasses him to acquire something by means other than his own capacity
and, as a result, to be obliged to carry within himself a lasting debt of gratitude, which can
not be repaid. Clara pacta boni amici is a Capricorn principle. We find, as a characteristic
trait of Capricorn-man, the wish to credit all he ever attains to himself alonea self-made
man. For the same reason, he prefers to carry the sole responsibility for his actions, sharing
it with no one. This consciousness of responsibility strengthens his self-respect and his self-
evaluation, which he wishes others to acknowledge as well.
As his field of action is enlarged--whose steady growth and intensification appear especially
important to him (as the active modality of the Earth-quality), the desire grows to carry an
increasing burden of responsibility. He thus gains a special aptitude for responsible leadership
in all of the undertakings that he inaugurated. A special sort of ambition is hereby developed,
which we may call a moral ambition, inasmuch as he is to be evaluated according to the
degree of actual performance, especially by those who are to profit by it. This is the typical
basis of Capricorns association with his fellow men. Above all, it applies to those whom he
employs in work, undertaken to profit a larger public. He can thus appear as the actual
master of those of whom, at the same time and in the same measure, he feels himself the
servant. An increasing number of people take part in his work, in this strange, reciprocal
relationship of service whose supreme commander he is. He profits in no other way than
gaining the satisfaction of having fulfilled his need for activity and an increased self-respect
and general esteem, so his lifes task is fulfilled: to be a sower in Earths acre.
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This is why the pure Capricorn-type always shows the tendency to occupy an official position
and to choose professions that allow an opportunity to rule by serving, or to serve by ruling. It
must, therefore, be stressed emphatically that the aforementioned common sense and
diplomatic talent of Capricorn fits him for offices allowing full play of all his gifts. In
outstanding cases, this would be the vocation of a statesman or politician or diplomat.
Let us turn our attention from the external professional sphere and observe the effect of all
the talents just described, in their more primitive forms, in the life of an ordinary individual.
Then we find another important trait of the Capricorn-type: the conception of mere human
existence as vocation.
Be prolific and propagate! Does not this ancient command sound like the voice of conscience
of primitive man, admonishing him to leave in the material world visible memorials of his
earthly existence, where he could work only through the connection with his progeny,
through a clear feeling of responsibility for their existence, and through the care for their
future development. Thus emerges before our eyes the picture of the pater familias, of
the eldest of a tribe, of the patriarch. What the patriarch is within his tribe is, in the widest
sense of the word, the Capricorn-type. It is understandable from the above description
that it is absolutely impossible for Capricorn-man to take life easy, even if he were born
rich and affluent. Upon him rests, like the heavy burden of a duty, the obligation to work.
Therefore, an intense seriousness is the keynote of his whole life. It seems to stem from
the feeling of responsibility for the consequences of his actions. Special attention should
be given to this circumstance, because a curious form of the responsibility-experience is
expressed here. We do not find it in the other element-qualities. It is not the way of the
Capricorn-type to imagine, after an action has been done, how much wiser it would have
been to abstain from it. But once he arrived at this conviction, he tries everything possible
to correct the act, while he shows no inclination to submit to long and painful repentance.
In the general description of the Capricorn-radiation so far presented, we have avoided
speaking of anything but such symptoms as result from the emerging of Rajas- and Earth-
qualities. There can be no indication in this description of the way in which the energies
radiated from the sign of Capricorn are worked out and incorporated into the totality of his
being by the single individual. To get an approximate picture of the possible variations of
the just-described basic traits in practical life, we will compare two types of Capricorn-man,
which, while they both show all the elements of the Capricorn-radiation mentioned, differ
from each other on account of their respective degrees of development.
Let us recall that at the beginning of this sequence we compared the character picture of a
single individual with the shadow cast by an object brought into the rays of light. We said at
that time that the nature of this cast-shadow depended on the source of light which we
supposed as constant--in our case the sign of Capricorn--and that it further depended on
the degree of transparency, and lastly on the closeness of the object to Earth.
Transparency and closeness to Earth indicate the degree of development of the inner man,
which we have termed his Self. If man is only inconsiderably awakened in his Self, then
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we are confronted with a lower grade of development. In him, there is the son of Earth yet
stronger than the divine-there the God-embryo is still farther from his second birth (see
General Foundation, Sixth Lecture) than in the other case. We can, therefore, very well
speak of a lower- and a higher-developed Capricorn-type.
In what respect do these two types differ? We have already come to know two essential
astrological characteristics that will help us understand the essence of this difference.
All higher development is only possible through the acceptance of such impulses that bring us
closer to our wedding with the universe and thereby protect us from isolation and stagnation
on our level. All higher development demands again and again the evolution sacrifice
consisting in the willingness to joyfully renounce all clinging to the already attained level, to
keep alive in the knowledge that, wherever we may be, we always are only part of a higher,
further-reaching Whole.
This demand derives meaning astrologically through two impulses. One consists of the fact
that each sign stands in a complementary relationship to its opposite. Consequently, the
mightiest help for his higher development for the human type who lives under the influence
of the Capricorn-radiation must come to him from the Cancer-radiation.
Capricorn and Cancer are, therefore, each others most important helpers toward their
higher development, and we shall seein the next lecture when we shall deal with the
Water signswhat Capricorn must learn from Cancer, and likewise Cancer from Capricorn,
in order to perfect themselves through this complement.
What we can discuss already today is the second general relation, which results from the
idea of the Zodiac as the prototype of the human figure, inasmuch as each sign of the
Zodiac signifies an inserted organ, whose meaning can only be understood in connection
with the total organism.
The knee is correlated to Capricorn (as mentioned in our last lecture) as the inwardly bodily-
experienced Capricorn-radiation. The deeper and more intensely we grasp the meaning of
this radiation in connection with the cosmic prototype of man, the clearer we see what the
designations higher and lower mean, in regard to the Capricorn-type.
What is the knee? And what does it mean to kneel?
The knee is that part of the human body, the muscles of which carry man (let us take the
word first in the physical sense) higher, as when, for example, he climbs a mountain--carry
him higher by helping him to alternately bend and stretch his knee. The forces of bending and
stretching, of humiliation and erection, are realized through the knees function. Between
these two phases of ascent lies the difference between high and low. So, Capricorn either
becomes the sign of him who wants to humiliate others in order to raise himself, or of him
who humbles himself to elevate others. It becomes the sign of him who burdens himself
on others to make them his servants--or of him who becomes the voluntary, bearer of
49
everybodys burden, to lift them above with himself.
There can be no doubt, in the esoteric sense of higher development, which of the two
extremes characterizes the higher-developed man. We can now understand why the highest-
born man was born in this sign of the burden-bearer, who humbles himself. It was He who
taught us the deepest meaning of this sign.
But Jesus called them to him and saith unto them, Ye know that they which are
accounted to rule over the Gentiles exercise Lordship over them; and their great
ones exercise authority upon them. But so shall it not be among you; but whosoever
will be great among you, shall minister to you; the chiefest shall be servant of
all. For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister,
and to give his life a ransom for many.
~ Mark 10:42-45
We are confronted here with a sacrifice similar to the one described in connection with the
sign of Aries, only that which is affected by the Capricorn sacrifice takes place in the physical
sphere, the sphere of the tiller of the soil in the Earth-realm.
Thus, it becomes understandable that at a time when this perception began to spread through
mankind, the start of the year, and with it the whole calendar, was changed: the beginning
of the year was counted from the entering of the Sun into the sign of Capricorn. In ancient
Rome there existed an institution able to clarify this Capricorn-doctrine. The feast of the
saturnalia was celebrated there about the time of the Suns entrance into the sign of
Capricorn--the winter solstice. This festival was held in honor of Saturn, the God of the
crops and at the same time the name of the planet looked upon as ruler of Capricorn. It was
customary to free all the slaves. They were made masters symbolically; they sat at the festive
board and were served by their own masters,
Before we leave the sign of Capricorn, let us briefly describe how the Capricorn radiation is
received and worked out by the man not yet awakened to higher development. Foremost
he lacks the perception of being part of the higher organism that includes him. Therefore,
though all the aforementioned characteristics of the Capricorn-type will be present, they will
be colored by egoism. The strong energies of action will be wasted in petty tasks. Paltry
tendencies to draw attention become important; the subordination of emotional life to the
prominence of reality changes to indifference and coldness, even hard-heartedness. The
family-sense leads to the limitation of all social ties and responsibilities to the few members
of the close family circle. Cold ambition and a need to be respected, combined with restless
activity, complete the picture of this type. He leads the basically joyless life of a slave under
the eternal pressure of obligation--a slave who has the misfortune to be in his own employ.
We now turn to the sign of Taurus. Taurus corresponds to the feminine gender of Earth
quality--to the Tamas-modality the feminine gender of the absolute female quality Earth,
and is, therefore, among all the signs of the Zodiac, the one in which the peculiarity of the
female is most clearly revealed. This Earth sign is also turned toward the material reality and
50
finds therein the main field for its work. This work is different from that of Capricorn. With
Taurus, it is not a question of the deployment of energy in the sense of sowing, not of a
desire to interfere in the course of the outside world, but the effort which we may best
understand if we remember the physical formula: work =
force x weight. In this case, we
think of weight. Let us plunge mentally into the essence of the weight-experience in
regard to the material world.
Weight is the sum total of all resistance opposed to the activity of force, all resistance that
necessitates the concessions and compromises of which we spoke in characterizing Capricorn.
Taurus also is a sign of compromise, only its purpose is contrary to that of Capricorn--by it,
Taurus wishes to secure for himself claim to the greatest possible inertia, the claim of avoiding
all changes as much as possible.
To Capricorns consistency in the determined realization of his objectives, Taurus opposes
the consistency of resistance. Thus we arrive at the first and most characteristic quality of
the Taurus-personality, which is conservatism in the words most inclusive connotation.
Conservatism in every form is the inner acceptance of the female principle, the passive
side of the work-complex. Consistency represents the male side of the work-complex.
Conservation is the consequence of inactivity and of inertia.
What does this consistency in inertia mean on the physical plane? It is the means by which
stability is secured for the Earth-world. It is the base of all firmness, without which there
would be no dependable soil on which to build. Taurus is the strongest Earth sign in this
sense, inasmuch as it represents the characteristic of the element Earth in the purest way.
Let us try to sketch the pure Taurus-type. The image of a man emerges, one born with the
unconscious intention of passive resistance----a man with the intention of preserving and
defending at all costs, as his inalienable property, all that he brings with him as legacy: his
talents or material possessions obtained through his membership in a certain family; the
knowledge or prejudice he absorbed in early youth from parents and teachers. Let us term
this trait fidelity. This fidelity is not to be understood in the moral sense at first. Hidden
behind it is merely a compulsion to adherence in general, or the feeling of absolute depen-
dencetherefore, also a sort of bondage. This servitude is of a different character than that
of the Capricorn individual, who is born with the disposition to be master. The most highly
developed Capricorn knows how to exalt himself through voluntary humiliation. Taurus-
man is born with a disposition to bondage, which he takes upon himself so as not to be
forced to act under his own responsibility. Therefore, it is his unspoken desire to remain a
subaltern and to have authority above him, in whose moral protection he feels safe. Such
authority is derived primarily from the entire weight of traditions, of customs, of inheritance
in himself, which plays the role of the responsible master. If we thus understand the fidelity,
then we will find that, according to the degree of development of man, it can take every
shade from bondage to that voluntary highest humility, which places itself in full conscious-
ness and utter devotion under the law of its self-chosen master. We will make this idea of
fidelity the starting point for the analysis of the Taurus-type.
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In the less developed type of Taurus, fidelity originates directly from the fact that the energies
stored in the Taurus modality of the Earth quality come to life only when called to resistance
by a positive force. The thus awakened resistance is aimed at the defense of the inertia with
the tendency to make the utmost use of it. What here emerges from the storage of inertia in
the form of defensive powers is nothing else but the historically solidified, adorned with
the nimbus of reverence and inviolability. We will call the fidelity thus preserved the
tradition-fidelity--the imprisonment in the traditional, joined by the urge to defend it like a
sacred fort. All Taurus people live in such an invisible fort, built of the material of their
tradition-possessions--they may be received either from ancestors or through early experiences
in their own life. This fort that they inhabit consists of the power of habits to which they
adhere with the whole intensity of their urge to persistence. It may become painful, even
insupportable to them, when they are forced to act contrary to these habits.
These habits refer not only to material possessions. They not only embrace the entire scale
of loyalty toward what directly appears physically, as perhaps the home and furniture,
relatives and friends, or work, profession and the daily routine. In these habits are also
included the feelings of belonging to a group, perhaps family, nation, religious groups,
political affiliations one has entered, or the country to which one belongs.
The power of habit causes in spirit a loyalty of convictions--though merely based on mental
laziness. This loyalty presents itself as a stubborn attachment to the mental habits acquired
in early life. It hardens itself against trends of thought different from ones own. Here rules
what Kant terms so adequately sane reason; in his opinion, this is nothing but the tenacious
adherence to inherited thought-habits--the most persevering adversary of all that opposes
these habits of thought. A large share of the tragic in the Taurus fate lies in this lazy thought
loyalty.
That there is something that one can not refrain from is the basis of all tragedy writes Lenau
in a letter. Schiller terms it the eternal yesterdays in Wallenstein. Goethe goes even
farther with:
All rights and laws are still transmitted
Like an eternal sickness of the race,
From generation unto generation fitted,
And shifted round from place to place.
Reason becomes a sham, Beneficence a worry:
Thou art a grandchild, therefore woe to thee!
~ Goethe, Faust
It would be a mistake to observe Taurus merely from this side, which discloses only the less
developed stages of the sign. We find the key to an interpretation of Taurus in the higher
sense when we try to understand this power of perseverance esoterically. Then it becomes
the power of memory as the faithful keeper of the entire past. Mans memory is the treasury
of the past, and Taurus-man is this treasurys keeper.
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Without this treasury, all that which had ever been or will ever be the object of experience
would be lost. The sign of Taurus is actually one of the four guardians or keepers of
Heaven, as the ancients called the four Tamas signs. Let us remember our simile of sower,
seed and harvested grain (Taurus representing the seed): then it suddenly becomes clear to
us that this seed is the treasury of the total organic past of the plant and, at the same time, its
keeper, installed by natures.
It is a characteristic of the higher Taurus individual that he is conscious of this keeper- and
guardianship as of a sacred mission. What he has thus been committed to is the care for
perpetuation of already existing cultural values. His mission is not to endeavor for the new,
but instead to conserve what has been attained, to keep it ready for use at an opportune
moment.
In the double meaning of the phrase wait upon------on the one hand, care for and, on the
other hand, expect------is revealed the basic emotional mood of the Taurus-type, which
contains patience as well as endurance. Taurus might, therefore, be called the sufferer. In
this term lies an indication of the esoteric meaning of this sign--Taurus: Curator, Guardian,
and Sufferer.
When we further consider that, in the human organism, the region of the neck corresponds
to Taurus, then it becomes clear that the throat can actually be called a guardian, watching
everything that passes it, before it can be incorporated into the body. But, in this throat there
is also the larynx, the organ of the voice; this too is a guardian--of the lungs. This, however,
is not the only important thing. The organs of the throat not only watch the things entering
the body; they also watch those that leave it. In the esoteric sense, the throat is primarily the
watchman and keeper of the spoken word.
As memory is the treasury of the past, so is the word the treasury of perceptions. The word
is the minds custodian and abode, warranting as well as conserving the sense. (They shall
let the word remain, says Luther.)
Not only does the voice organ belong to the region of mans neck, but also the nape and the
shoulders. Man loads his burden upon them, as Atlas in the ancient legend who had to
carry the celestial globe, as one of the worlds guardians. Taurus-mans burden is a sort of
celestial globe in miniature, the amassed tradition of the cosmic history of human development
on Earth, the cultural treasure of human seed. This he carries and cares for, devoted in
faithful service, just as woman carries in her womb--hopeful and expectant--the seed of
God-embryo man. This becomes clearer when we consider the planet entrusted with the
Taurus radiation--the planet Venus.
Without anticipating the later sequence of our studies, which will deal with the world of the
planets, we will understand this planet to be representative of that which we have called the
eternal womanly in the preceding lecture. It is Venus who endows man with the power to
venerate. This veneration is the looking up in adoration to the higher, through which
alone the impulses of the higher level can flow into him and impregnate him. Thus we attain
53
the highest effect of the Taurus-radiation on man--the power of hopeful, tolerant devotion
to the higher or highest: the moral side of this radiation.
The symbolic sign for this Zodiacal sector reveals, in the most penetrating way, what we
may look upon as his mission in this sense: the semi-circle, opened toward above, resting on
the circle--the female symbol on the male--the position of praying or thanksgiving man, or
of man converting in humility to the female, to be prepared for the higher, creative impulse.
If we confront the higher Taurus-type with the lower, then all the qualities hitherto
mentioned will be changed in a manner similar to the changes we noted regarding
Capricorn. The limitation, in every sense of the word, becomes characteristic of all
variations of the Taurus-complex.
His fidelity is like that of the dog: it is bondage. It originates in the slavish submission of his
entire being to the rule of tradition. Tradition, self-established, becomes the measure of
everything he permits himself to think or do. It becomes the supreme, uncompromising
judge by whose dictum he swears, the phantom of authority always accompanying him
invisibly. The word governs the meaning; the letter governs the spirit!
On words let your attention center!
Then through the safest gate youll enter
The temple halls of Certainty.
~ Goethe, Faust
He too is his own prisoner, bound to Earth and devoted to her in deepest superstition. This
he defends with the utmost tenacity, ready to condemn everything not grown in his own
soil. He offers the disagreeable picture of a man whose main vocation is to collect: he
amasses a treasury of dead values, preventing himself as well as others from using them.
The custodian of his own relic!
We now turn to the sign of Virgo--the balancing or Sattwa gender of the Earth-quality. This
Virgo-radiation serves not the sowing, nor the cultivation of sown seed, but the harvest, the
gathering and use of the fruit of the soil. It is the preparation of bread or aliment for whose
sake sowing and cultivation are done.
Virgo-radiation also takes effect at first in the world of reality of Earth-matter. In regard
to the physical conditions of this world, Virgo corresponds to work in our formula:
work = force x weight, to what we will call the effect of utilization. The useful and
utilitarian are raised to the fundamental content of the Virgo-types life. The work process
in Earths acres (toward which all Earth signs are turned) must be so organized that the
greatest possible usefulness is attained with the least effort, with all due consideration of the
inertia-component. Thus is produced the claim to what in modern times has been termed
the rationalization of work; the rationalization of any kind of labor, it may refer to physical,
emotional, intellectual, or even moral matters, becomes actually the Leitmotiv of the
Virgo-type. Its first and most important effect is the search for a work plan before the start of
any work.
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Fore-sight, prudence, or what the old Romans called providentia or prudentia,
premeditating intelligence, are communicated to man by Virgo-radiation, in the form
of a special sensibility for everything that may cause profit or harm to him. The
development of this sensibility into conscious perception leads to the methodical foundation
of all practical efforts in science, in natural science as well as in many other branches
of knowledge, in which the objective is to find short cuts in the acquisition of
useful information. This conscious perception shall also prevent trial by error and
attain the use of prudence before harm is done.
Even the foundation of these useful disciplines must follow a plan of rationalization. That
means that the contents of these sciences must be organized according to a plan, guaranteeing
their easy survey.
We will call the method of work thus gained organization-----the principle of its use and
utilization, the principle of economy.
To get a more vivid picture of the importance of our understanding of the essential Virgo
traits, let us think of the organ of the human body whose esoterically experienced function
is received as the essence of the Virgo-radiation. It is the intestinal or digestive function.
Through it, the bread received into the body is transformed in such a way that its forces can
be directly espoused by the forces of the human body. The human body extricates from the
aliment whatever is fit for its use and eliminates whatever is unfit. What is presented in the
physical realm of the body organ becomes the model for everything that we have already
submitted in regard to conscious Virgo work.
Virgo-mans relationship to his surroundings corresponds to that of the digestive tract to the
taken nourishment. As the intestinal tract with unfailing assurance selects the beneficial
from the injurious matter and takes care that the harmful leaves the body again as speedily
as possible, thus Virgo-man also carries within himself a delicate sensitivity to everything
that could vitiate or disturb the strictest economy. Thus, we arrive at a third trait of the
Virgo-character: the aversion to all superfluous, impure and unclear matters. The difference
between main and side issues gains special importance here.
The aptest measure for the judgment of Virgo-mans conduct in his life is his natural
tendency to examine every occurrence with regard to the possibility of assimilation--and
to what extent--as in the case of food. This attitude presupposes a deep-seated, almost
suspicious caution, ruled by an instinct for everything corresponding to his own nature
and, therefore, suited to harmonize it with nature in general. The natural actually
becomes the motto for the practice of life here. In the purely physical sense, this attitude
leads to a high evaluation of hygiene and a far-reaching and careful preoccupation with
his bodily functions.
We find this hygienic attitude in the emotional sphere in the form of a delicate sensitivity
toward sympathy and antipathy, which are felt with extreme clarity. This sensitivity precludes
55
those heavy disappointments and emotional catastrophes of all kinds, which fill Water-
mans life to such an extent.
The above-described precaution is also applied in the sphere of the soul, leading to an
extensive critical restraint in all regions of the emotions, which is often taken as a special
degree of modesty, but could be better termed economy of the soul.
To understand the character of the Virgo-type, the principle of assimilation can be usefully
applied to the mental sphere here also. The total of all perceptions, which is the storeroom
of his intellectual wealth, must be easily attainable. It may be used as measure for new
perceptions, which can be digested and assimilated with its help.
Here too we find an abode for common sense, not in the sense of Taurus, but in an
entirely mental-hygienic meaning. One must believe only that which does not contradict ones
own thinking. Virgo-mans intellectual life stands thus absolutely under a self-control that
obtains here an importance similar to the Virgo-sympathies and -antipathies in the region of
the soul.
The same fundamental attitude also exists in the moral sphere. Nothing can be acknowledged
as good that in some way appears harmful. Morality too has its hygienic and economical
side. It is a sort of balancing compromise between the right of all to the highest possible
degree of well-being with the greatest possible protection of individual interests, to live ac-
cording to ones own nature. As with Capricorn, the moral code resulting from this cannot be
separated from the social organism. But it is not concerned with rulership and service. It
deals with a system of mutual assistance in consequence of inter-dependence, according to
a far-reaching rationalization of damage and profit. If one can create such an order of
human existence, that everybodys personal gain was at the same time profitable to his
fellow-men, that everybodys loss was at the same time also his fellow-mans loss, then we
would have found the ideal social structure in which Virgos moral principles could
celebrate their highest triumph. This principle has also been called the principle of the
well-understood-egoism. With this we have arrived at the point where the ways of the
high- and the low-developed Virgo-type separate.
How do we recognize the higher developed Virgo-type?
Starting once more from the organ corresponding to Virgo, we easily understand that, what
is effected by the intestinal function-----the utilization and assimilation of nourishment-----serves
the conservation of the total organism, including the intestines. While caring for its own
well-being, the organ intestine provides health for the whole body of which it is a part.
While serving its own interest, the intestine at the same time serves the community in which
it is included.
We can easily find the criterion for the higher or lower Virgo-type through the esoteric side
of the organ-function of the intestine, as the actual organ of assimilation. For it is concerned
with the alchemistic transformation of the lower into the higher, insofar as it relates to the
56
building of the body. But inasmuch as the single individual, absorbing the Virgo-radiation,
has to take over the cosmic intestine-function, he becomes humanitys mediator for the
celestial radiation. While he concerns himself with his own higher development, he at the
same time cares for the advantage of all those with whom he has relations. To strive for
ones own perfection for the sake of others is now the correctly interpreted life task. To be
alchemist in this sense becomes his actual vocation.
This perfection must remain in constant relation with the labor in the acreage of Earth, with
agere, the action, performance and creation. To comprehend the meaning of the sign of
Virgo in its full depth, let me utter a thought in connection with matters previously
propounded.
Remember that we have previously said (see General Foundation) that the most wonderful
and natural fruit of the terrestrial acre (the physical world) to which all Earth signs are
turned, the fruit of the agere, should be mans ego, which shall be regained here in long
and painful labor, in its original purity, after the mysterious sin of the first man. The meaning
of our labor in the Earth-realm is that through it we re-awaken our true Self, which we can
only find when we give up our egoistic pursuits for temporal advantage. When we trans-
form our limited ego in such a way that it may become the nutriment of others, we thus
serve them, strengthening and ennobling them.
Here too is a sacrifice, but he who makes it raises himself through it. While raising the
others, he serves himself, by serving them.
Now we can also understand the meaning of the Virgo with the corn sheaves. She is
not only the profane harvester who helps to bring home the corn. She is the symbol for
the transformation of man born a second time in his higher Self, after having given up
his egoistic self. The man who passed through this second birth, by which he
surmounted Earth, is called virgin-born, born by the Virgo in the house of bread:
Beth-Lechem.
Therefore, the planet that serves as power-transmitter in the sign of Virgo is Mercury, whose
essential function is the mediation between Above and Below--the mediator. More about
this later. Let us now briefly sketch the lower Virgo type.
In everything at any cost, he is devoted to the useful and appropriate, cautious to extreme
suspicion. He is too preoccupied with preparations and preliminary measures to actually
reach his goal. He puts the service of usefulness above its object. His whole life becomes a
chain of pedantries of all kinds, petty cares, endless elaborations of systems, classifications,
statistics, and of practice, preparation and tests. Only when he thinks himself safe in his
physical existence does he turn his interest to his fellow man. But his main interest remains
always himself.
We can best perceive what developmental help comes to Virgo from the radiation of the
opposing sign of Pisces when we will talk of the Water signs in the next lecture. There is a
57
similarity to what is valid for Capricorn --- Cancer and Taurus --- Scorpio. For today we will
close with this thought:
Capricorn, Taurus and Virgo, the decisive, magic and alchemistic powers of the Earth-
quality, we now understand in this way:
Capricorn as the sign by which man enters Earth;
Taurus as the sign in which he acclimatizes himself there;
and Virgo as the sign by which he conquers and leaves Earth.
58
Fourth Lecture
And every plant of the field
before it was in the earth, and
every herb of the field before
it grew: for the Lord God had
not caused it to rain upon the earth.
~ Genesis 2:5
Today our task is to examine the fields of radiation of the three Water signs----Cancer,
Scorpio and Pisces-----and their special significance for the general character formation of
those whose horoscope indicates influences coming to them only from these Zodiacal regions.
We will, therefore, deal here also with a merely fictitious case, just as the subject of our last
lecture, pure Earth-man, was fictitious. But this fiction of the pure Water-man and his
characteristics confront us with a much more difficult task than did the construction of pure
Earth-man.
Earth is the quintessence of objective, external, material reality clearly accessible to our
senses, the world of immovable natural lawfulness--the superior authority of reality, common
to all men! From early youth, we are well acquainted with it as an instinctive faith, incarnate
in us all, warranting its indubitable existence. Therefore, the description of human types
belonging to Earth could not meet essential difficulties even as mere fiction. It is different
with the world of Water, the world of emotions and moods, of instincts, desires and
passions. Since it is inaccessible to objective observation, it does not lie before us seizably;
it is given to us only subjectively, understandable only through plunging into the experiences
of our soul, and only accessible to each for his or her own person.
The thought might be permitted that the objective Earth-world could exist in itself without
its becoming anybodys experience, without being recognized by anybody. But this thought
cannot be applied to the world of emotions, since it is impossible to believe in the existence
of soul-events as nobodys emotional experience. Hereby the Water-world is removed from
the region of objective interpretation.
In the Second Lecture of this Sequence, we already expounded upon this Water-world. Let
us remember, first of all, that it belongs, together with the Earth-quality, to the female
component of the total Zodiac radiation. We then arrive at a simple, and yet rather odd,
59
picture when we think of the physical correspondence to the Earthy and Watery: Earth and
Water form a mixture called clay.
The cold and dry Earth becomes moldable only through the cold and moist Water.
It becomes the Golem of the Bible, from which the human body was formed, before the
breath of life (Air) in Ruach had been implanted in him by God
5
.
Water is the lowest outpost of the divine radiation into the world of matter. Perhaps we
can, therefore, symbolize the relationship between Earth and Water with the following
confrontation:
+
---
Water --- Earth ---
--- ---
The common feminine gender outweighs the gender-contrast in the above group.
The contrast between Earth and Fire is complete:
--- --- --- Earth
+ + + Fire
Thereby forms a relationship between these two extreme contrasts that reveals, even from
the exoteric viewpoint of mere psychological observation, the naive consciousness of man,
that he supposes everywhere in the resistance of matter the expression of an inexorable
nature--will, in whose conquest he strengthens his own will.
The acres of Earth are not only the actual school of his Self-development, the human body is
the spatial Self-limitation integrated in the matter of the external world, the physical confir-
mation and reflector of his Self, the outward visible cover of his internal world! Therefore, the
Earth-world, among all the elemental worlds, most forcefully challenges the human will--it
demands that will be posed against will, in the strongest and most direct way, forcing active
interference in the world of matter. This world appears to the naive consciousness of man as
the deposit of an inexorably powerful nature-will.
Conditions in the Water-world are different. Its forms and phenomena are not subject to
physical matter. Today we are not concerned with the contemplation of the Water-world in
general, as we already did that in a previous lecture. Our object today will be the characteristic
of those human types for whom this Water-world represents the only arena in which their
existence and activities take place.
________________________________________________________________________________
5
Breath, air, appears in the Latin language as the life-principle, but in two genders, as animus, the will (courage)----
masculine, and anima, feminine gender, the soul turned toward the body.
60
We, therefore, will have to create once more the fiction of a man, who lives only emotionally
the fiction of a pure Water individual. Perhaps we come closest to what we have to see in
such a pure water-type, if we remember the state in which we all are when we sleep and
dream at night, when we actually live in a purely emotional way. The physical body is
dismissed--as dreamers, we no longer have a real material body though it may well lie
there in bed, but it is not the body the dreamer attributes to himself. He has another--one
is tempted to call it a simulated body--which is subjected to laws quite different from
those governing his actual physical body. Also dismissed are, in a certain sense, his mental
body and his Self. The intellectual life is quite substantially reduced and ceases to function
according to the laws of strict logic. All memories obtain a plastic dream-reality and represent
themselves in the form of various symbolic pictures and persons, seeking their place in
undulating dream-surroundings, or often barely talking to us in words and sentences as
through, for this purpose, freshly created beings--as if these were not our own thoughts
and opinions, but the thoughts and opinions of other people.
Just as our thinking is derived of its power, so is also our moral Selfwe cannot will any more,
but merely wish. Often this goes so far that we watch our dream-fate as if from an invisible
observation point, as if it were somebody elses fate, or--as Rudolf Steiner expresses it--we
often experience ourselves in our dream not in the first person, but in the third person.
Self and body are, therefore, missing in our dream life. Not the will, but the realm of wishes
dominates our dream-events. At the same time, it substitutes for what in the external world
is the law of nature, and in the interior world, is the law of morality.
It will be an advantage to take this dream life and its psychology as a starting point for our
contemplation of the pure Water-type and his basic psychological attitude toward life and its
problems. Perhaps the actual driving force of the whole dream-mechanism may be seen--
with reference to the results of the research of the ingenious Sigmund Freud in the wish-and
desire-impulse. The dream content is then grouped around one single basic element:
wish-fulfillment, only we must remember that wishing has two forms of expression: a positive
and a negative one. One either wishes for something to take place, or for something not to
take place.
In the life of Water-man, desire and fear are the two stage managers.
Man believes what he hopes,
Believes, what he fears.
~ Grabbe: Duke Theodor of Gothland
Fear and hope rule life. What is free breathing and difficult breathing in physical life is, in
emotional life, sperare and desperare--hope and despair. A periodical alternation of
satisfaction and dissatisfaction of the soul is thus created, disclosing a process analogous to
what in the physical are food-intake and digestion, saturation and hunger. As the body must
absorb nourishment from its environment, so also does the emotional body need nourishment
61
for the soul, which we can only derive from our emotional surroundings, comprised of our
fellow-creatures. The air that Water-man breathes and the food that he eats, he must obtain
from his emotional relationship to his neighbor.
We derive two important characteristics from these preliminary insights. One refers to the
attitude of a Water individual toward the material world or toward actual reality, in which
he feels himself an alien. He flees from a discussion of it. His main problem is not how to
explain himself with it, but how to avoid such an explanation as long as possible.
The second characteristic is his dependence on other people--his emotional bondage of
the Thou. This thou also exists for him only emotionally. Like him, it is, so to speak,
robbed of its physical body, so that its outward appearance becomes unimportant. Physical
form and exterior, social rank, age, health or illness, high or low intelligence--they all play a
minor role, compared to the interest in a mutual soul-relationship of togetherness, mutual
understanding through shared joy and sorrow.
More than that!
The strong dependence on the emotional relationship with others, and the thereby created
intense preoccupation with his own soul-experiences, create a high degree of emotional
sensitivity--even to the point of hypersensitivity. This produces a special form of egoism
quite different than that of the Virgo-type, which we can term with the rather modern
expression egocentrism. The steady concern nourished by fear and hope for the purity of
his emotional life creates a form of egoism that we find only in Water-man. It is not dictated
by advantages of a material sort, nor does it seek to benefit by anothers loss. This egoism is
purely emotional, aimed at the fullest measure of enjoyment of joy and pain; one wishes to
experience himself as intensely as possible through the way in which he undergoes happiness
and sorrow, thereby forgetting reality. This makes Water-man a person of unreality, or a
romantic of life, in contrast to Earth-man whom we called the classicist of life. Earth-man
aims to accomplish; Water-man flees every completion that would mean an awakening
from the dream of life--the end of his romantic fairy-world!
We said the dreamer has no real physical body, merely a phantom-body, absolutely non-
identical with his real body. This leads to a further comparison which at first appears quite
grotesque--to the comparison with an enormous number of living beings in our immediate
neighborhood. Like the fictitious Water-man, these living beings--animals--also live without
a physical body. The animal lives in this world as if without a body, because it lacks the
ego-relationship, which alone could make the animal body its body. The animal suffers in
its own body in no other way than it suffers from the outside world, which is revealed to it
through this suffering only. The rock, which wounds the animal, hurts just as much as the
injured part of its body. An outward world opposing an inner world does not exist for the
animal; it is unable to distinguish between exterior and interior, and, therefore, does not
have a body in the same sense that the awakened man does. The animal too is a being
which lives only emotionally: it leads, expressed in human language, a pure dream life, in
which that we call reality does not exist. It forms a part of the animals emotional life, in
62
which the subject and object are not yet separated.
This explains the reason for a peculiar relationship to animals found only in Water-man,
which shall help us to understand another one of his characteristics. The relationship to
animals, which man has chosen for companions, can only be emotional. If he does not use
the dog to merely watch his home, or the cat to merely catch mice, but seeks more the way
to the soul of the animal, he then begins to play with it. I find my dog willing to play at any
time, day or night.
Herein lies the reason for a frequent great misunderstanding of the importance of this play
for animal and for man. If the dog brings back the stick I threw ten times and is begging,
ready to fetch it for the eleventh time, then I play, but for the dog this means a grave, sacred
task. The dog, bringing me back the stick, is fulfilling a sacrifice, while I play. In this sense,
we can now understand that within the pure Water-man lives an ineradicable tendency to
play. Water-man is more than a dreamer; he is also playful, and his play has a serious,
sacred importance.
Certainly Earth-man also plays, and may also be interested in it; but a game to him is
important only for the sake of its potential gain or loss, while Water-man plays for the sake
of the play. In fact, play, detached from all practical purposes and needs, becomes the
specific mark of the humane in the Water-realm. Says Schiller, whose nature shows a strong
influence of the Water-signs: Man is only totally a man when he plays. (The Aesthetic
Education of Humanity, XV)
Thus, life becomes a vast playground of passions and emotions. To live through them is
more important than whatever their causes may be.
It is already evident that the image of a Water type, as seen up to now, very much resembles
that of a man in his early youth. The child too lives in a sort of unreal dream-world, where
he plays and dreams. We can even say that almost all Water-men retain, throughout their
lives, much from childhood------that they remain big babies all their life. Water-mans child-
hood shows an especially high degree of dreaminess, coming close to actual dreams.
The comparison with the emotional life of the animal gives us the occasion to speak of
something else also, which concerns the physical appearance of Water-man. We shall refer
to two traits.
Through the relationship existing between the separate types of animal classes and the
emotional life of Water-man, some types of animals seem to him to be as symbolic expression
of what he himself felt as the basic character of the states of his soul. Since ancient times this has
caused the choice of certain heraldic animals--a circumstance that was expressed especially in
individual names. Names like Lion, Wolf, Bear, Ox, Eagle and so on refer to an external
resemblance, if I may say so, not recognizable to the physically adjusted eye of Earth-man,
but discernable to the astral-seeing eye of Water-man. What was thus revealed in the
external physiognomic picture of man was the face of his animal-soul. Thus was called, what
63
we have termed in the review of the Water-world and its laws, mans astral body. This
face is especially evident in the exterior of Water-man, because the vivacity of his ever-
changing moods work their evidence more clearly and expressively into the human physi-
ognomy, than is the case in the other elemental qualities. (The origin of the animal fable
probably originated herein.)
Let us mention another thing that generally finds little consideration. One of the characteristics
of Water-mans outward appearance is a special growth of, if not a conscious stress on, his
hair. One may perhaps look upon hair as a sort of atavism, reminiscent of the animal level,
since animals are in general much hairier than man, but this growth of hair is closely related
to the degree of Water-mans animal-soul vitality. It is no accident that woman, whose
astral life is more intense than mans, is especially concerned with caring for her hair, as
women are more instinctively aware of the biological importance of their hair for the
hygiene of their emotional life.
As we know through the research of Professor Gustav Jaeger of Stuttgart, hair stands in a
very close connection to astral life. Jaeger pointed out that every emotional upset is
accompanied by the appearance of fleet, minute substances in the physical body, which,
though not chemically recognizable, are revealed through the sense of smell. A highly
developed sense of smell could, therefore, infallibly discern mans changing passions and
moods. (Gustav Jaeger: The Discovery of the Soul.)
According to Jaegers theory, hair is the organ for the secretion of these fine soul-substances.
At the same time, it is also the protective astral organ, for it has the capacity of storing those
soul-substances which are beneficial to the emotional life, as perhaps the fragrance-substance
of contentment, happiness, joy--the substances called euphoric by Jaeger--and to secrete
the dysphoric substances such as the fragrance-substance of rage, hatred, fear and anxiety,
which have a bad influence on the life of the soul. The retained substances give the hair
its personality-fragrance. People with euphoric fragrance rouse sympathy; people with
dysphoric fragrance summon antipathy. The comparison with soul-nourishment and
soul-metabolism receives in this illustration by Gustav Jaeger an almost materialistic proof.
We can now well understand that hair and its charm are especially important in the life of
Water-man, while it plays a much more subdued role in the life of Air-man: baldness is not
connected with any loss of vitality for Air-man.
Before we describe the single signs of the Water-quality, we will briefly observe Water-mans
general attitude toward the remaining three spheres: Earth, Air, and Fire.
Regarding his attitude toward the realities of the material world, we have already explained
that all Water-signs avoid these realities as long as possible, and try to elude confrontation
with them. They want to postpone as long as possible the awakening from the dream, to be
allowed to remain children who play as long as possible.
Since this evasion is not forever possible, sooner or later they found an outlet, perhaps best
64
characterized in the words chosen by Goethe as title for his autobiography, Fiction and
Truth. Fiction and truth do not denote a side by side but togetherness. According to it,
all fiction becomes to Water-man that truth which guarantees a higher reality than mere
historical truth, the ideal of Earth-man. Thus, Water-man poetically transforms afterwards;
he absorbs of the realities of life--without necessarily becoming aware of it---so that he may fit
it into his dream-life. For him, reality becomes the symbolic disguise of his life--and life itself--a
novel: the Water-world becomes the soil in which actual events change into a romance. In his
life-novel, the exterior world similarly attains a symbolic meaning as the realities of his
dream environment. Like the child shutting its eyes in the belief the others now cannot
see it, the main policy of Water-man remains that of the ostrich, as long as he has not
freed himself from his world.
Before we leave the description of Water-mans relationship to his physical surroundings,
we shall briefly touch the erotic sphere, which is essentially different in Water-mans life
from that of Earth-mans. Here too we may best classify the contrast between the two ways
of experience as being of the classical and the romantic.
The erotic life of Earth-man stands, understandably, strongly in the sign of sensuality. The
pure Earth-type is not a pining gallant. If he cannot reach his goal, he soon consoles himself,
like the young men in ancient Rome, with another partner who helps him forget his earlier
one. For Water-man, the matter is different. For in his world there is no union in the same
degree of reality as in the physical world, for souls cannot unite in the same way as bodies.
Therefore, Water-mans erotic life exists in the feeling of eternal longing for the
unbreachable. But, as all physical reality is for him the symbol of a truth beyond this reality
which at the same time becomes poetry, he takes every individual not merely in his physical
form or sensuous appearance, but also as a symbol also for a supersensual phantom for
whose sake he entered the game of love. Therefore, from the start, Water-man becomes a
sensuous-supersensual suitor, wooing the unrealizable phantom in a mystical love. Through
this devotion for only the sake of yearning and suffering, for a creation of his soul, every
woman and man becomes a substitute for the unattainable.
Regarding his mentality, Water-man tends to make his wish the censor of his thoughts.
Logic thus created differs distinctly from Earth-mans logic. While Earth-mans logic is always
willing to submit to the censorship of reality to make it the touch-stone of the validity of his
thoughts, and, therefore, may be termed inductive logic, the logic of Water-man does not
accept reality as supreme judge for the validity of his thoughts. This logic rather sees in
reality merely a special case for the possible. Before something becomes a reality, it first had
to be possible! Out of the wealth of possibilities, another reality could have emerged. Thus,
the fact that for each reality there was a necessary possibility becomes the compelling idea.
Possibility is, therefore, more important than reality. The need of logic is satisfied when the
possibility is recognized in its root; the reality that issues from it is unimportant.
In such logic, a positive-creative element is already revealed, ---
+
--- , which is of a mere
65
imitative nature. This logic is concerned not with the art of calculation, but of divining from
a fact the conditions of a hypothetical lawfulness. The inductively perceived is merely a
single case thereof. Affixing to this presentiment a high power of perception, it becomes the
basis on which structures of thought are erected. These thought structures try to present, in
pictorial or symbolical manner, something super-sensuous within the sensuous, something
general within the special------the farther reaching sphere of possibility within the reality.
We here perceive the important role that imagination plays in the mental life, a circum-
stance which, in extreme cases, may lead to complete disorientation in the physical world.
Those branches of science that allow for a certain amount of divination are preferred; these
are mostly concerned with the life of the soul, as perhaps psychology or psycho-analysis, or
studies about art, not in the aesthetic but rather in an explanatory way.
The relationship of Water-man to art is thereby easily understood. He is foremost interested
not in the body of the work of art, but in the soul behind it, as the mystic substance of all
possibilities, of which one was materialized in the work of art. These words, which Ibsen
puts into the mouth of the Skalde Jatgeir in his play, The Pretenders, may be the motto of
Water-man:
The most beautiful songs are those that have never been sung.
The Water individual remains a romantic in art also, endeavoring to leave the ultimate
unsaid. Among the arts he is mainly attached to music, and least of all to graphic arts, which
are more in the line of Earth-man.
In the moral sphere, we see the tendency to make the basis for moral evaluation not the
deed, but its emotional background, the inner struggle preceding it. To enter into the feelings
of this struggle compassionately, and to be able to understand it emotionally, is more important
than to judge. Once able to understand, one may forgive.
Earth-man is concerned with evil created by the act, Water-man with guilt. Evil belongs to
the outward world, guilt to that inside of us. This guilt already exists when the evil is merely
contemplated, even though that contemplation was never realized. Since we are all full of bad
desires in our dream world, nobody ought to cast a stone at another. Thus a moral
attitude is attained which may appear as lukewarmness or as moral indifference to
Earth-man, but has to be generally considered as a tendency toward mildness, whereby it
proves essentially different from the attitude of Earth- and Fire-man.
Let me add a few words about the three modes of Water-quality. Here the main concern is
not action but suffering, and thus the active element replaces the passive, whereby the
nature of Rajas and Tamas modality actually seem exchanged. Thus the cardinal sign of
Cancer, the power-component, becomes the intensified suffering--sensibility--let us call it
the suffering force. The fixed sign of Scorpio, the gathering component, becomes passion--let
us call it the suffering power. And the balancing sign of Pisces becomes the fruit of suffering
66
that purifies and transforms the soul, so that our former formula now takes this new form:
Redemption of suffering
=
suffering energies x suffering power.
Let us now contemplate each separate sign of the Water-category.
Cancer, the active, cardinal or movable sign.
Corresponding to its active nature, the emotional energies issuing from its radiation must be
immediately reflected by the individual who receives them. They cannot be received by the
physical body, as was the case with the Earth signs. Standing under the influence of only the
Cancer-radiation, man lacks this bodily protection. His astral-body or soul-body is unpro-
tected in complete nakedness. There must evolve in souls early life a feeling of nakedness
and unprotectedness. Cancer-man is born with this feeling, which soon takes the shape of a
pronounced fear of life. Anxiety is the first characteristic of Cancer.
What could be more understandable as Cancer-mans early search for all sorts of assistance,
designed to substitute in his defenselessness for what Earth-man owns naturally: the protective
body. He can only find this substitute in his environment. He seeks to use it as a sort of
cover for his souls nakedness, this cover being the sympathy of other people. He develops,
early on, a keen sensitivity to the judgments of others, from whom he receives either friendly
or hostile waves of emotion. He seeks the first and flees the latter. The first person in his
earliest youth, in whose emotional aura Cancer-man feels safe, is his mother. It is she, whose
protection he has enjoyed before birth as well as immediately afterwards. Though this
applies to all men indiscriminately, this fact endures in a special manner for Cancer-man,
who is organically bound in the memory.
He is strongly attached to his mother for his whole life. He flees to her in yearning and
thought later in life, her influence remaining strong throughout his entire life. He received
the first tokens of tenderness from her, which were to his soul what the mothers milk was to
his body. He especially desires such soul nourishment, and the need for tenderness remains
forever. The desire for sympathy and love, at first only an instinct, takes a constant form
later in life as he courts the sympathy of others. This is not done through application of
exterior, artful means, but by peculiar politics quite the opposite to those of Capricorn, who
in politics is a diplomat of exterior life.
Cancer is a diplomat of emotional life. This diplomacy is first revealed in the selection of
people with whom he surrounds himself. But even in this selection he is not aggressive but
lets people come to him, keeping only those to whom he has something to offer that may
bind them to him in gratitude, thus forming a protective cover for his souls naked body.
Therefore, Cancer-man is primarily surrounded by people who seem to need help, and
thus appear to be in some way inferior to him. Because he feels superior to them, he need
not fear these people.
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For the same reason, he avoids those whom he believes may be superior to him. Cancer
differs essentially in this way from Capricorn-man, who likes the company of people above
him, either socially or as personalities. Cancer-man is afraid of all criticism from superiors,
even of criticism itself, and tries to avoid it whenever possible. Understandably, the so-called
examination-fear is especially found in the sign of Cancer.
This fear of criticism or superiority of others can go so far that Cancer-man would rather
hide his own merit than face the potential of letting others reduce it. He feels himself ill fitted
for struggle in public life. Here we again see the contrast to Capricorn who, especially well
equipped for public life, seems to be afflicted with a similar modesty in regard to the emotions,
fearing nothing more than failure. If the confrontation with public life becomes inevitable in
spite of everything, the diplomatic skills of Cancer-man are shown in his adroitness in
eliminating all those who could become dangerous rivals from the start.
He tries, in advance, to create conditions that make the environment of his public appearance
inferior to him in essential ways. Then he likes to lower himself and go to those for whom he
may, for reasons mentioned, become teacher, leader, or protector, to make sure of their
sympathies. For Cancer-man, it is terrible to be in an unsympathetic environment. Where
no other way is feasible, he tries to win people by flattery, seeking to adapt in such a way
that they take no offense. These tactics are usually termed howling with the wolves. Sly
Odysseus has given many instructive examples. His trick of mimicry, at first unconscious
but later conscious, for the sake of self-protection forms an essential part of Cancers diplomacy
of life, when he considers himself too weak to openly fight. Where he believes himself
strong, when he has found an environment wherein he may rule, and in which he has found
his bodyguard, so-to-speak, he shows a tendency to act as tyrant in the circle he rules,
forcing everyone belonging to it to help him bear his sorrows and joys.
He tries to shift all his moods upon them, to be rid of this burden--this emotional tyranny.
But, since he first won most of those he engaged for his soul-protection by serving them
before he ruled them, there also exists a strong dependence from each of his bodyguards.
This makes it very difficult for Cancer-man to lose anyone that once belonged to his circle.
He is conscious of the difficulties and especially of the enormous amount of energy used in
each new human requisition; Cancer cries for each soul vanishing from his circle.
But something else results from this circumstance; just as he is rendered especially sensitive
by this dependence from the living protective cover of his soul-body (as Earth-man feels all
changes in his physical body as loss of health), so Cancer-man ails from every disharmony
between himself and his guard, in an especially sensitive way. Just as an exact thermometer
reacts to every change of temperature, so too Cancer responds to every delicate change in
moods and sympathy with corresponding depression. This causes capriciousness as a nearly
constant characteristic. He does not always place the same person in the first place but shifts
them often and easily. As long as the Cancer radiation has not been transformed in the way
of higher development, sorrow prevails over joy, among all possible moods.
For this very reason--as often happens with Water signs--we see Cancer flee into the realm
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of fantasy, which compensates him for the bitterness and mortification of the outside world.
Here we find the day-dreamers, to whom success comes easily, success for which his
counterpart, Capricorn, must painfully strive.
In this imaginary garden whose marvelous plants are watered with all of the desires yet
unfulfilled, there grow the most gorgeous trees, and thrive the sweetest fruits--instead of the
sour grapes of real life, which fortunately hang too high anyway. His active imagination
enables Cancer-man to serve art as a sensitive interpreter of the creative artist, especially in
the realm of music, which is closest to him among all arts. Like himself, music has no
immediate physical body but remains intangible like the soul-body.
So far our picture of Cancer-man does not differentiate between the higher and the
less-developed types. We must consider that it is the mark of those not yet matured to
higher development to maintain their own level, enslaved by their emotional egoism, in
addition to the above-mentioned tyranny.
What Cancer can learn from his complementary sign, Capricorn, is easily apparent. Cancer
humbles himself to service for the sole purpose of gaining a psychological supremacy. As
long as he has not recognized the task posed to him by his special character, his service is
without ethical value. It is incumbent upon him to use the innate delicateness and susceptibility
of his soul for his fellow-creatures salvation. How this may be done is best shown by the
physical organ that corresponds to the sign of Cancer. In the human organism, the stomach
corresponds to the Cancer radiation. The vestibule of the intestines, its task is to retain food
long enough to work over with its juices, that it may be safely handed over to the intestines
and be fully utilized by the entire body.
Cancer is the vestibule for all those forces that shall become active in the outside world by
mans responsible actions. All those impulses that could be harmful to the soul shall be
removed by it.
Therefore, the higher developed Cancer individuals can be regarded as patron saints of the
weak and helpless; intent with all their might on leading them upwards, regarding their
main vocation to be to alleviate emotional pain, provide comfort and encouragement to the
disheartened, bring hope to the despairing, and dispense food to those with starved souls.
And lower developed Cancer?
He uses his sensitivity only to his own advantage, which in itself has a purely negative
character. His motto is: avoid ennui at all costs. He thus reveals himself as a man whose fear
of life bears no other fruit than the elaboration of a system of safeguards. His strategy is
purely defensive; to retreat is his main tactic.
The Moon is Cancers ruling planet, ruling as power-transmitter. It corresponds to that part
of us that is turned toward the feminine of the night-side inside of us; it corresponds to the
receptive in us, and in the Father/Mother/Child triad, to the Mother-principle.
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This brief remark may suffice for the present. We will speak of it in greater detail in the next
sequence.
We now turn to the fixed modality of the Water-signs, to Scorpio. In contrast to Cancer, the
main characteristic of Scorpio-man is not the diversion, but the accumulation of the radiation
coming from this sector of the Zodiac. Scorpios intense concentration enriches the
emotional energies, which are thus condensed into a sort of power-storage of absolutely
negative traits.
This emotional procedure is similar to the suction cup of a pump. Scorpio-man is insatiable
in sucking-up emotional powers that, absorbed by him, cannot at first be used in the outer
world. This causes some very important circumstances that will permit us to see deeply into
the soul of this human type.
Since he also belongs to the Water-world, he has no physical body into which this radiation
can enter directly. He too is alien to the world of reality and turned away from it, and must
create a protective cover for the nakedness of his soul-body. He too attains this cover from
the emotional flow of the people around him. But while Cancer-man sought a sort of protection
of his soul as a supplicant, Scorpio possesses a faculty, enabling him to annex the emotional
powers of the people surrounding him and to expropriate them, bringing others into the position
of supplicants, after having appropriated their powers, which now make him superior. The
force that seems to emanate from Scorpio-man is indeed peculiar. To use a simile to charac-
terize the relationship of Scorpio to his environment, we could speak of the vampire or the
leech, although such images do not cover the Scorpio-types essential problem. In considering the
outward characteristics of Scorpios relationships, we most frequently find him surrounded
by a group, which was drawn to him as if forced by a secret magic, to supply him with
soul-nourishment. They are to be emotionally expropriated, and they are happy in this
role--this circumstance must be emphatically stressed--as if they were receiving what they
themselves actually bestow. From the first, these individuals enter into a relationship of
bondage, without feeling burdened by it.
The powers that they place at Scorpios disposal in this way come back to them in such a
manner that the mutual dependence-relationship is steadily kept up and reinforced by them.
From the physicists point of view, one could speak of a system of standing waves. Or one
could regard the human circle, in whose midst the Scorpio-soul is enthroned, as a sort of
giant reflector; the reflecting surfaces are ever loaded anew through its radiation power,
collected in one point, thus steadily enhancing the counter-effect, to be finally exhausted in
the mirage of a pretended perpetuum mobile of the soul.
The actual energy that feeds this mirror-process is the emotional hunger that the
Scorpio-nature provides. Can one be satiated by nourishment that feeds only the hunger,
but not the body? In the Teachings of the Fathers, we are told of a thing that becomes all
the hungrier, the more it is fed.
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The greatest strength of Scorpio-man is this power of wishing, reaching a degree of such
peculiar intensity that we must find a special name to characterize it. We will term it the
magic power of wishing. Herewith we face the actual riddle of the Scorpio nature. Perhaps
we come closest to the essence of this mysterious power if we start from the organ that
corresponds to the sign Scorpio, the sex-organ. Here that magic wishing power is trans-
formed into the power to attract the opposite sex and keep them in sexual bondage, thus
enhancing ones own feeling of power.
We shall call this sort of magic, sexual-magic. We will try to clarify this analogy to this
natural magic---subconsciously present in all men and animals---in what may consist the
essence of Scorpio-power, which is fundamentally related to that sexual magic. These powers
actually reach deep into the cosmos, forming the two poles of world-sexuality, originating in
the arch-splitting of the One into the Two. All beings, called to take part in the continuous
work of creation, are able to fulfill this task only through these powers. That which forces
animals and people together with unexplainable vehemence, when called to propagation, is
the magic of this arch-power of the act of revelation, of the very mystery of life itself, ever
renewing itself. It is given to the sexual organs of all living creatures to be the agents of
these powers.
To see how this dignity is present in the animal-soul of man, perhaps it is best to start by
contemplating the animal that served to name the celestial sign--the scorpion, or the spider.
The spider casts its net; it does not leave it to go forth on a hunt. Attracted by something
they do not understand, insects become entangled in this web, there to be sucked up by
the spider.
But this is not the reason for our comparison. If we let the spiders net symbolize the magic
power to imprison a victim, and then transpose it to the sexual life of the spider, we are
confronted with something strangely terrible. When the male spider has approached the
female--in bondage to her by that arch-impulse--he is being mercilessly killed and sucked
up after the act of union. Only rarely does a male spider escape alive.
The German writer H.H. Ewers has succeeded incomparably in translating the animal-
side of this process into the human in his story The Spider (from the collection, The
Possessed). Ewers also concerns himself with the riddle of Scorpio in other, later tales,
the content of which is the mystery of sexual life. The pure Scorpio-type would
represent its personification, but this power is expressed only in the realm of the soul.
Therefore, we have to transpose it from the familiar physical realm to the purely
emotional. This has some important consequences.
On the physical plane, sexual power activates the heredity-memory, whose keeper we met
in Taurus. Physically viewed, progeny is brought into the organizational stage of the
progenitors by heredity. It is a secret organically acting impulse, imparted to the dormant
germ, which then starts to develop according to this impulse. The power issuing from
Scorpio-man is similar to such a suggestive power, taking possession of the souls of people
who fall into his province and placing them unaware in heredity-bondage. It puts them
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into a condition of enforced mimesis, causing them to assimilate to their picture of the
Scorpio-man. Here we can talk of an active mimesis, in contrast to Cancers characteristically
passive mimesis. The phrase to hear is to obey perhaps best expresses this primarily
subconscious process.
Scorpio-man possesses the ability to imprint the mark of his personal peculiarity upon the
circle in which he rules. Once recognized, this dangerous power can be clearly used in very
different ways, which is what distinguishes the lower type from the higher developed type.
The name eagle, which the Bible gives to this Zodiac sign, serves to characterize the
higher type. To understand this further, we will confront the masculine and the feminine
Scorpio-type, corresponding to the sexual character of this sign.
According to the feminine fundamental signature of Water-man, we more often find the
characteristics of the lower Scorpio-type in pure culture in women, encountering the
characteristics of the higher type more frequently in men. Therefore, even in men, the
model of the lower type is feminine, and vice versa, almost always encountering either the
masculine woman or the feminine man.
To the first group primarily belongs the demonic woman, so often described in literature.
She is enthroned as ruler amidst a court of enslaved souls, who feel greatly honored to be
in her service. This naturally causes an enhanced self-confidence, a naively trusting enjoyment
of every sort of flattery and success, and above all, an urge to assert oneself--an urge that
may in some cases become pathological. This craving for success engenders a sort of hunting
spirit which takes the form of an insatiably erotic covetousness. It aims merely to increase
ones own feeling of power, but not the momentary object. Once captured, interest in it
vanishes. A new, as yet uncaptured, victim is sought. This behavior necessarily produces
peculiarities which represent the exact opposite nature to Taurus; faithlessness, irreverence,
ingratitude, or the lack of a moral memory. The refusal to accept temporary responsibility
(as Earth-man would accept) is a common characteristic of the restless, desiring-nature of the
Scorpio-type. Goethe, in whose horoscope the sign of Scorpio plays an important role
together with the sign of Virgo, makes his Faust say:
In all its tides sweeps not the world away,
And shall a promise bind my being?
And what are the desires which he names to Mephisto?
A game whose winnings no man ever knew ...
Show me the fruits that, ere theyre gathered, rot
And trees that daily with new leafage clothe them!
Something similar to the demonic woman can be said of demonic man. His type would be
Don Juan, but transposed into the realm of the soul.
The increased urge to assert oneself often produces consequences, which then lead to certain
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compensations when the desired success is denied. Such compensations are mainly the
fantastical exchange of failure into success as well as the strong tendency to represent actual,
negligible success to oneself and to others as important. This tendency toward self-glorification
is rarely absent.
Scorpios intense consumption of other peoples emotional powers unavoidably leads to
severe wounds of which he is unaware for a considerable time. Should Scorpios powers
start to diminish, or actually become extinguished later in life before he succeeds in raising
the sexual energies to a higher level or in transforming them, then he often becomes very
unhappy. He may then suffer from the wounds he formerly inflicted with his sting, as if his
sting were now turned against himself.
Here help comes only from transforming the original magic wish-power so as to reverse its
effect. It is not a matter of feeding ones own soul with the nourishing powers taken from
others, but to use the internally transformed and increased emotional powers, not to wound
but instead to heal wounds.
Then the suggestive forces, formerly serving only egoistical purposes, shall be divested of
their egoism and placed in the service of healing, selfless love. Herein is revealed the essential
destination of a higher developed Scorpio-type--in the figure of physician in the broadest
sense of the word--of the man from whom healing powers emanate.
Let us stop a while at this thought.
To understand the lower Scorpio powers, we started from the type of the demonic woman.
To understand the higher Scorpio powers, we shall start from the male type--but not that of
demonic man, but of him whose sexual powers have become healing powers. From this
type too emanate sexual powers, but they do not take effect in the erotic sphere. We can
best compare them to that which Gustav Jaeger termed the power of super-virility. This
power produces a relationship between its possessor and the person benefiting from it,
similar to that of the demonic woman and her victims. Only the powers at work here
become those of leadership, enabling them to inoculate others with the vaccine of the
higher levels attained by transformation. They may thus form them after their own image,
through the ennobling power of a magically acting mimicry.
They too possess the true gift of fascination--the gift of captivating. It is they who issue the
ideal, which is accepted by the circle that they rule, as the organically acting development
impulse. This impulse acts to rejuvenate weakening vital energies.
As forces issue from the sexual organs within the organization of our physical body which
again and again regenerate it, thus it becomes the task of the higher developed Scorpio to
become a fountain of youth for humanity.
After these remarks, it hardly seems necessary to elaborate upon how Taurus and Scorpio
supplement each other.
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The ruling planet of Scorpio is Mars. Without anticipating our later studies of the astrological
essence and the character of Mars radiation, we may refer here to our confrontation with a
planetary energy that forms a strong contrast to the principle of Venus, ruler of Taurus.
While Venus represents the eternally feminine, the soul open to the higher impulse in
longing and expectation, so Mars represents all active expanding energies, radiating
outward, widening of the realm of activities.
Examining the graphic symbols for Mars (
g
) and Scorpio (
i
), we recognize in both of
them a sort of dart-point, reminding us of scorpions sting, and, in general, of a martial
instrument. As the poisonous sting of the scorpion may be converted into the needle of a
healing serum hypodermic in the hands of the physician, so may the dart of Mars be
converted in the sense of the higher Scorpio-power into the symbol of a voluntarily assumed
death, as the life of our base passions must die in order to be reborn as higher, unselfish,
supra-sensual, healing love.
We now turn to Pisces, the balancing sign of the Water-quality.
One may characterize the sign of Pisces as the most helpless among the three modalities of
the Water-quality. All three signs, Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces, lack the protection that, in
the material world, only the body can offer. While Cancer and Scorpio could find aid for
the unprotectedness of the naked soul body in their human surroundings, Pisces nature
totally lacks those energies aimed at acquiring such aid; in the souls struggle for a balance
between the active and the passive polarities, these energies are used up and neutralized.
Among all the Water signs, Pisces is thus the one that most thoroughly entangles man in
emotional life, keeping him imprisoned therein--like a somnambulist, who is unable to
work himself up into wakefulness, like a dreamer who cannot awaken.
Let us try to bring this condition closer by an illustration, one taken directly from the Zodiac
symbol for Pisces.
The two fish are posed with their length-axles parallel to each other, but in such a way that
the head of one is at the same height as the others tail.
This position reminds us involuntarily of that union of two magnetic needles, which in
physics are called the astatic pair of needles. Each needle by itself has magnetic power,
has, so to speak, its own character, its own stability; but when north-pole lies upon south-
pole and south-pole upon north-pole, then the pair of needles completely lose direction.
The magnetic powers seem to be annulled in such a pair of needles. In reality, however,
they are merely detached from Earths magnetism and are all the more sensitive to even the
slightest influences conveyed to them out of the changes in surrounding electromagnetic
tensions.
Applied to man, this means that the emotional state is without proper direction, but is
extremely sensitive to every emotional vibration that reaches him from his surroundings.
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Therefore, while thinking that he lives his own life, he participates in an alien emotional life,
suggested to him by the emotional vibrations coming from his environment, as if they were
his own. This alien emotional life does not protect his own, but rather mixes with it in such
a manner that, within this mixture, the boundaries vanish like a dream. To express it in the
words of Ewers, it seems as if he passively lives a life that someone else is dreaming about
him, suffering from his own as well as from others lives. When Faust, entering Gretchens
prison cell, spoke, Mankinds collected woe oerwhelms me, here. he expressed approxi-
mately what the soul of Pisces-man may feel at birth-that he must suffer an imprisonment
within his human body. Throughout his life, he finds himself rendered to a state of lasting
confinement regarding the emotional life of his environment. In modern terms, this could
be called a sort of protective imprisonment.
What has been here presented as an illustration would give us, were we to meet it in actual
life, the idea of a madman, psychopath or hypnotized person---or that of a sleepwalker who
cannot be torn away from his pure dream-life by anything. We would be confronted with a
sick man!
To a certain degree this dream-life is characteristic of all Water-people. None have a physical
body to connect them directly with the world of reality. But Pisces, unlike the two other
Water signs, is not even capable of building himself a substitute body. Therefore, he
becomes conscious of being a sufferer and a prisoner of his sufferings earlier in life than
other people--a sufferer imprisoned in the feeling of his sickness. An ailing person at best
tries to live in his sickness as the hale person lives in his health; at home in his disease, as
is the healthy man in his good health, Pisces-man is an escapist, one who takes refuge in
his ailment.
In this state, as an enduring one, many Pisces-men take refuge from lifes battle theater.
There are those who have given up the life-struggle from the start. Let us try to picture this
emotional state, the essence of which is an idea (never admitted to himself) of his own
inferiority to other, better-equipped, healthy men of reality, who with great ease find their
way whereto their own strength does not reach. As a consequence of this, Pisces tries with
stubborn moroseness to continue his own dream-life as long as possible. As always in
such cases, he must try to make the best of it and bring to the forefront the positive values
of his innate talents. Considerable strength is needed to be able to actually take this path.
In many cases, we observe the tendency to choose a sort of compromise, and to see a
virtue in the mere ability to endure ones fate. Here a strange style of living is developed,
which leads to taking advantage of, and even demanding, all the indulgence that a sick or
inferior person thinks he has claim to. As the child has a natural right to be treated with
consideration, so Pisces-man--who does not want to work himself into sanity--(we will
call him the lower developed type) claims to be treated with special considerations
because he still is a defenseless child, one who will never grow up.
And yet he is not so defenseless. Only the tactics of his style of life are copied from the
childs--the tactics of the weak whose consciously stressed weakness is his strength. First it
is expressed in the claim, to not be taken seriously, as the child; to be allowed to remain
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irresponsible when things become serious as is the child before the law. This causes a
peculiar behavior that, without being moral, is easiest understood in its moral conse-
quences. We have here a special case of protective mimesis, which we will call a moral
mimesis in contrast to the passive mimesis of Cancer and to the active one of Scorpio.
Let us remember that we saw the characteristics of the Pisces nature in mans participation
in the emotional life of his environment as if it were his own. He is, therefore, open to every
impulse of passion that surrounds him. We can then understand how well he is fitted to
absorb, and to unite, the most contradictory emotional currents. To perform such continuous
unifications and to give them a sort of inner center of gravity, one moral subject is
insufficient, lest it be so all-embracing that it could simultaneously contain love and
hatred, malice and kindnessin short, everything that can be considered as content of the
souls life--side by side, in all imaginable forms, without causing confusion. To make
this possible, it would have to be presupposed that one man could simultaneously be all
that what perhaps a gifted actor would alternately perform on the stage on several
nights--what he merely performs, without being it, without having to be it. Applying
this simile of an actor to Pisces-man, we see with horrible clarity the kind of an actual
moral talent for mimicry. It not only enables Pisces-man to howl with the wolves as
we saw in Cancer, but to actually temporarily become a wolf who howls with the others,
not because he thinks this clever but because an inner pseudo-moral urge forces him to
do so. We thus arrive at a further characteristic trait of Pisces nature: the moral mediality.
Flight into this condition creates that variation of Pisces that we could term actors of life.
As the famous film-star Chaney was called the man of a thousand faces, so we could
speak here of the man or woman of a thousand characters, with the difference being that
here we have a more or less unconscious dramatic art. It is absolutely nothing else but the
tactics of childhood (advanced into a more mature age) to become accustomed to its
environment by copying it.
Yet, this moral mimesis, painful and humiliating as it may be, is not felt as a voluntary
act, but as something enforced, like a suggestive order that annihilates ones own moral will
to replace it with the current strange one. Thus we are at last led to another trait of Pisces
nature, to the feeling of being a helpless victim, robbed of moral resistance, Gods stepchild
on Earth, destined to pass his life in impotent rebellion against his emotional imprisonment.
He finally finds resignation as the only possible way out, saving him from the hopeless
struggle for his freedom.
Up to now we have tried to draw a portrait of the Pisces nature, whose essential element we
shall call mediumship. As Cancer was the romantic and Scorpio the magician, so Pisces is the
medium. Herein lies a hint regarding the road of development, which Pisces-man will take
in life.
Two roads differ very obviously; one which leads down, the other upwards--a road which
we may call the sickness-road and a road leading out of it to healing, which we shall term the
road of recuperation or the path of redemption.
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Accordingly, we can now plainly discern the two basic types of lower and higher Pisces-man------the
lower, more and more obstinately sticking to his disease, and dedicating his existence to living
through it; and the higher, who finds the way of salvation and pursues it victoriously.
Let us observe the first, the way of resigned martyrdom. It is the vocation of all those who
chose this road to live through their emotional mediumship in a manner that they become
professional mediums, either literally or figuratively. They then strive to become media of
the people of their environment. With keen penetration, they try to attract such people
whose victim or tool they later become; whose crude sense of reality or brutal egoism
enables Pisces-man to become a martyr, in whose self-sufficient glory he believes himself
lifted from his humiliation. Thus he can once more flee into his favorite dream of being a
stepchild. Lastly, we must mention the often-encountered trend of Pisces to flee from the
terrors of abrupt awakening into the use of narcotic poisons, such as alcohol, opium, cocaine,
morphine and so on. It is no accident that so many psychically gifted people become
victims of this vice, whether they are professional mediums or mediumistic actors, as are so
often found among Pisces. For here is opened to them a field that offers them a secondary
front of life where they can lead their tendency to moral mimicry to victory without sacrificing
themselves completely.
And the other, the road to salvation?
Let me first characterize it with the words, which Richard Wagner uses in his Parcifal:
To become wise through pity.
Who else but he in whose soul echoes all of mankinds misery, experiencing in himself by
this echo the music of harmony of all the high and low sentiments that move the human
soul, could dissolve all of these dissonances and transform them into harmonies? From that
which was the source of disease to the low Pisces-type, he works out, by a voluntary self-
sacrifice and an understanding penetration of all the depths of emotional confusions, a
remedy for these sufferings by overcoming them in himself. Thus, he shows the way to
others, offering them the restorative extract of his own sufferings as saving serum--the wisdom
flowing from commiseration, a blessing to all men! No more or less is involved here than to
change the curse of a forced share in others sufferings into the blessing of a voluntary
commiseration, from which alone can be won the knowledge of pain-redemption.
To understand this, we will start with the organ of the human body that correlates to the
Pisces-radiation: the feet. With his feet, man stands upon Earth; they point toward Earth
while his head points toward heaven. Through our feet, we are in constant, direct contact
with Earths dirt. No man is ever so clean that through his contact with Earth something of
her dirt does not cling to him.
Still, earthly rests remain which have oppressed us
Theyd not be pure of stain, though of asbestos.
~ Goethe, Faust
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But this being soiled by Earths soil is nothing else than our share of what, in the Middle
Ages, was termed original sin, through which we must remain Earth-bound--the son of
man, of Earth. (General Foundation, Sixth Lecture)
From this, turned-to-the-past, feminine region of our being, arise all our sufferings. In this
region are gathered, like the mud on our feet, all the remains of our heredity-sediments, all
that is low and drags us down. Therefore, it is given to the higher Pisces-type to be able to
do what no other sign has the power to do---to clean from the dirt--to wash the others feet,
as Christ, the Fish (Ichthys) taught in this excerpt from John 13.
After that he poureth water into a basin,
and began to wash the disciples feet,
and to wipe them with the towel
wherewith he was girded.
...Peter saith unto Him,
Thou shalt never wash my feet.
Jesus answered him,
If I wash Thee not, Thou hast no part with me.
Simon Peter saith unto Him,
Lord, not my feet only,
but also my hands and my head.
Jesus saith unto him,
He that is washed needeth not save to wash
his feet, but is clean every wit...
To win this power to absolve others is only given to one who can walk the path of the higher
Pisces-man who sees in the sinner the man burdened with the past, the sufferer, the sick
man who is not yet able to cleanse himself; he could become the knowing physician through
the transformation of sick matter into curative means.
Thus evolves Pisces-mans true profession to become a helper for all those who are still
imprisoned in the egoism of their woebegone soul-body, unable to find the path to the
whole. But first of all, he becomes a physician of the soul: a physician to those who
endeavor in vain to escape the dirt that has accumulated as the dregs of all that is low and
Earth-bound. For he knows all about this, because he was destined to live and work in
these regions of the soul as the foot-man.
We now understand which transformation must be made by what we have termed moral
mimicry, which in extreme cases could lead to total extinction of moral conscience. It now
becomes the ability to understand everything and, therefore, to forgive everything, but not
to forgive in the way of weak gentleness. It becomes that healing, overpowering mercy in
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which the assurance is innate: from now on you will sin no more!
The planet Jupiter, in its feminine polarity, serves as power-transmitter to the Pisces-radiation.
Here it may suffice to indicate that this powerful planet bestows all the elevating powers,
which are freed after every sort of sediment-removal, loosening the Earth-heaviness. It
bestows the wing power of devout hope and thus becomes the inner compass for the path
leading upward.
Before we leave the Water sign region, a few words about its relationship to the sphere of
Earth in general. We made some remarks about this at the start of todays talk, but now it
has been absolutely clarified how the opposing signs of Earth and Water complement each
other. Only by reciprocal action of these two regions is the brittle, hard, dry Earth softened,
and Water becomes effective in the Earth-substance only by oozing into it. Without Water,
the Earth-world would remain bare and lifeless, and Water without Earth would remain
ineffective.
This thought resounds marvelously in the Bible, in the story of Creation.
And every plant of the field before it was in the earth
and every herb of the field before it grew;
for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth
~ Genesis 2:5
What is rain?
The rationalist would say: rain is water, which is H
2
O. But in the conception of Chinese
spiritual science, rain is understood similarly to our esoteric perception of Water, as the
messenger of the higher realms turned to Earth. Hovering high above in the regions that are
freely accessible to the Suns beams, the water-drops absorb this radiation. When they then
fall onto Earth as rain to ooze into the soil, they transmit a greeting from the Sun to all the
expectant germs of life in the dark womb of Earth. Stirred by this greeting, life begins to
sprout everywhere, toward the Sun.
What rain is, in the sphere of the macrocosmic man, is the tear. The tear is a messenger of
Gods grace, the water of suffering whose sanctifying power melts the inexorable severity of
the pitiless iron terrestrial laws.
All the tears that have ever been shed in pain and torment are the waters which on account
of its positive power (---
+
---) take the road upward against the drag of Earths heaviness--
freeing from the past.
They are the waters that flow upwards.
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Fifth Lecture
What can I do? said Zeusfor all is given;
The harvest, sport, the market, all are seized.
But should thou choose to live with me in heaven,
Come when thou willst and I shall be well pleased.
~ Schiller, The Partition of the World
We have wandered through the Earth- and Water-worlds and familiarized ourselves with
the feminine half of the Zodiac spectrum well enough to comprehend the corresponding
human types. We have seen the three subspecies of the active or Earth-man, and the three
subspecies of the passive or Water-man come to life. These were all merely types, not yet
living people with individual features, only one-color parts of a many-colored print.
Today we are concerned with a similar treatment of Air-man, of people embodying the
pure influence of the radiation from the Air signs region, of Libra, Aquarius, and Gemini.
In this Zodiac region, we enter its positive, masculine half, the mental world of our perceptive
powers. We have arrived in the realm of creative energies, freed from the past, turned
toward the future. Let us try to picture the relationship of the mental or Air-world to the
other regions.
+ + +
Fire
+
-----
+
Air
---- + --- Water
--- --- --- Earth
We see the Air-world as similar in contrast to the Water-world, though of a milder nature
than to the contrast between the Fire- and Earth-worlds.
The first contrast showed man, induced to action by the impulses of the Earth signs. He was
the active man or doer, encountering opposition in every area of his activities. He was
compelled to understand this resistance as the expression of a will contrary to his own. In
the substratum of this world of reality, matter, and in its resistance, he imagined the severity
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of an inexorable will of nature against which he had to direct his own powers, cleverly
estimating them according to his aims. From this results a closer relationship between Fire-
and Earth-quality, for matter must appear to active Earth-man to be the result of the
inflexibility, constancy, and iron consequence of a supreme will, and its laws to be the result
of the worlds moral laws, innate in this will.
We must understand the relation between Air-man, rooted in the mental world, to the
Earth-region in a different way.
+ ----
+
Air
---- ---- ---- Earth
Here there is one common link. What presents itself to the view of mental or Air-man as the
reflection of his species is not the resistance of matter--wherewith he no longer has direct
contact. Nor is it any individual lawfulness of matter, appearing to him as a sort of residue
of the moral lawfulness of a higher will, but it is the constancy or the inner power of cohesion
of the forms that, while taking shape in earth substance, are not subjected to material laws
but to an essentially different kind of law.
The Earth-world does not present itself to mental man as the playground of physical or
chemical powers and laws, but as forms and figures that have been stamped into matter. These
forms are also firm (formareor firmare: to make firm), whose powers of resistance, as
we shall see, reach even farther than that of matter! But the basis of this firmness rests
entirely in the intellectual sphere.
For these forms exist in the material worlds only insofar as they can be mentally perceived;
there they have their proper place and from whence they are radiated into the Earth-world.
Plato calls these forms archetypes or ideas. We have already tried to depict this world of
ideas in the Second Lecture of this Sequence. Today we must dwell a little longer upon
this subject.
The relationship between this realm of ideas and the realm of matter has perhaps been most
impressively expressed in Schillers poem Ideal and Life. In it, he speaks of this realm as
of those regions, where the pure forms dwell, and in another spot,
But free from all times power,
The playmate of blessed beings,
Walks above, on Lights meadows,
Godly among Godsthe form.
With decided sharpness, Lao-Tzu stresses the contrast between the mental and the Earth-
world. In the eleventh stanza of his Way of Life, he says,
Thirty spokes join in the hub,
But the void between them
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Creates the essence of the wheel.
Pots are formed of clay
But the void inside of them
Creates the essence of the pot.
Walls with windows and doors form a house
But the void between them
Creates the essence of the house.
The substantial causes usefulness
The unsubstantial causes the essential.
The void?
Let us remember that this void is used merely symbolically. The essence of form cannot
be explained by means of matter and its laws. It is another kind of lawfulness that looks
upon mental man through masks of matter. This lawfulness corresponds to matter and its
laws as the form of the vessel to its content; the content may change while the form remains.
Its relationship is similar to that of the meaning of, and the actually spoken, word.
Goethe talks of this relationship in an ingenious, facetious manner in his West-Eastern Divan:
For that a words meaning is not simple
Ought to be self-evident.
The word is a fan! Between the sticks
Look out beautiful eyes a pair.
The fan is merely a veil quite fair.
The features it may hide from me,
But the girl herself stays free.
For what of her is the most fine,
--Her eye-- it sparkles into mine.
~ Hafis Nameh II.
The mental eye sees something behind matter that is related to it, something mentally so
real that--if the expression is permitted--it has been merely painted with the color of matter
to become visible in the sensual world.
We find the most convincing example of the relationship between mental and material
substantiality in the organic world. Here we see how the living forms of plants and animals
not only preserve themselves although their material substances constantly change and
renew themselves, but how this change actually keeps them alive. Thus, the form which
living develops itself proves to be more resistant and enduring than the matter in which it
is substantiated.
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No time nor power ever destroys
Created form, that living develops.
~ Goethe, Orphic Destiny
What appears as form bound to matter, but actually is this matters organizer in the Earth-
world, corresponds in the mental region to that which presents itself as the living function of
perception per se. The essential power of perception is delimitation and re-disintegration of
the delimited; its insertion into a higher unit of the expression of the great breath that we
depicted in the first two lectures of the First Sequence.
The images of those archetypes thus originate in the thinking process, created by the highest
intelligent beings. Only through perception by supposition of these archetypes does mental
man find access to Earth-world, the only possible way for him to find names for those forms
he encounters--their names. Names and forms have the same origin; they are correlated.
Name is the finite vestment of infinite spirit. As Earth-man supposes that a supreme will
is behind the resistance of water, so must Air-man suppose a highest intelligence behind
the constancy of forms. Confident of this, he undertakes to mentally penetrate this
material world.
While Earth-man is a physicist by nature, Air-man is a metaphysician.
Before we begin the general characteristics of Air-man, a few words about the relationship
between the Air- and Water-worlds.
+
---
+
Air
---
+
--- Water
This relationship is more difficult to understand, for although it is a relationship of pure
contrast, similarity also attains decisive importance.
Perhaps we can best understand this relationship when we imagine that the Water-world is
interposed as a sort of connecting link between the mental (Air) and the Earth-world,
between form and its appearance in matter, between thought and the act of its realization.
Thought does not contain any designation compelling the realization act. Only in the
Water-world originate desires and passions that lure pure thought into the realm of matter.
This results in the captivation or limitation of the mental forces (which tend to wander
into the infinite) by matter, as representative of a moral legislation. Matter, while serving the
realization or materialization of thought, proves at the same time with the concretion (up
until then general) all the imperfection of that which has been created in thought but not
yet tested in the realm of reality. Matter thus serves to prepare the way for a higher
development in the mental world. Desire, the actual agent of Water-power though not the
father of thought, is the mother of its verification in matter. Herewith we face a perception
deeper than may appear at first sight.
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Let us remember the plan of the construction of the elementary worlds, as sketched in the
General Foundation (Fifth Lecture).
Earth ---- mineral ---- the physical
Water ---- plant ---- the emotional
Air ---- animal ---- the intellectual
Fire ---- man ---- the moral: Self
Man in his ascendance to the divine recognizes Fire as his highest rung. Through its reflection
in the body, the scale is now reversed, and the last run of the evolutionary scale, which led
up to man, now becomes the lowest rung from which starts his ascent to the divine.
The following figure, simplifying our previous scheme (First Sequence, Fifth Lecture), shall
make this clear.
The body or Earth inside of man thus becomes the first rung of his ascension or his way
inwards. From here he rises through the inner regions of Water and Air to Fire. But now
that which in the exterior development had been Air corresponds in the interior development
to the Water region, and what had been in the exterior development Water, now
corresponds to Air. That means: as man develops emotionally, he encounters himself in
animal, which must now be transformed (animal-soul), and in developing mentally, he
encounters the plant, which he must transform.
Now we understand the contrast as well as the similarity between the Water-world and the
Air-world. What the animal-reason does in the animal becomes the life of passions in man.
And what works as the pure instinctive life in the plant becomes mans mental life.
Let us pause a little at this thought.
Last time, trying to draw a picture of pure Water-man, we started from the dream-state of the
sleeper, of that man who, like the animal, does not own a physical body, whose dream-
world was the echo of his desires and passions. As pure Water-man, man actually lives the
life of the humanized animal; or, compared to man, the animal lives a pure dream-life. As
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the animal, viewed humanly, lives a pure dream-life, so the plant, viewed humanly, lives a
pure mental life, but it knows this life of pure form-creations merely instinctively. Thus,
what appears in the greatest purity in plant-life lies beyond all passions and desires. It is the
constant affirmation or, more precisely, the valiant affirmation of the pure forms as they
unite according to the laws of a sort of symmetry in the fullest sense of the word; as they
continually procreate and sustain themselves through inward confirmation in spite of all
hostile influences, which is analogous to that which is truth in mans mental life.
Inasmuch as this valiant force of truth appears as the actual organizing world force in the
consciousness of Air-man, it gains a second distinction within his mental life; it opens his
eyes to the other side of this truth, as the law through which alone not only exists the mental-
world, but most of all that he himself as the assisting witness of this truth is constantly
rejuvenated by its force. In this sense, he has a direct part in this inner impetus of truth. He
is dragged into the creative perception of intellectual life as a life-ecstasy, whose mirror in
the physical world may be the joy of life as a pure existence intoxication, as it appears in
its purest form in the vegetal world, and viewed mentally, is revealed as beauty--the other
face of truth.
From the experience of this beauty emanates a sanctifying effect, which completely pertains
to the mental world: everyone seized by this magic--he may be ever so deeply entangled in
the fetters of Earth-matter, or in the passions of the Water-world--becomes, for the duration
of this enchantment, a citizen of the Air-world so that he is freed from all earthly destination
and bondage, escapes all the degrading passions, even ceases to be that man with this or
that name, of this or that family or nation, of this or that era, this or that age. (Schopenhauer
calls him pure subject of perception in this intellectual phase.)
Removed from this earthly world, he changes into the disembodied pure mental man. In
the spring of this beauty, the intellectual energies of mankind as well as all the ideals, tired by
matter and its resistance, are forever renewed by its healing power. It leads mans intuition to
the rule of an order that stands above all earthly order, which corresponds to it as inner
freedom to outward compulsion.
The contours of pure Air-man should have become clear enough by this exposition to enable
us to sketch this type with a few lines. Air-man is not a man of reality--he lives, similar to
Water-man, a life of unreality. But in this case we cannot compare it with dream-life.
Let us form an idea of a man who lives exclusively in a world of thought and
thought-formations. Enlarge this picture with consequence, and we meet a difficulty that
immediately explains Air-mans peculiar behavior.
It is not to be denied that the individual in these mental surroundings (which should contain
only that which was created by thinking and its laws) encounters thought-formations or
imaginations, which, as Kant remarked at the very beginning of his Critique of Pure Reason,
allude to reality that lies outside of this reasoning, that could not have originated in this
reasoning.
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But, since pure Air-man is surrounded only by his own thinking, he must regard the contents
of his mental environment as if they had all been created, in their necessity, through this
thinking. The mind of Air-man cannot find peace until he recognizes everything he encounters
in his intellectual surroundings as the function of this very mental ability. His actual task
now becomes none other than to create once more in his mind everything that he encounters
as realities. The purest example for the creation of such forms is the edifice of mathematics
and geometry, which, while they yet belong to our being, we encounter as realities.
To bring all forms of our mental environment into such a relationship that their cohesion
resembles mathematical cohesion is Air-mans lifes leitmotiv (main theme). This leitmotiv
looks like the supreme law of a life wisdom whose symbol is a mathematically conceivable
truth. That this leitmotiv can be applied in a threefold sense is already clear.
The first sense is the idealistic demand to build a structure such that, viewed from outside,
looks like a copy of the naturally given fact by the creative force of thought; viewed from
within as the presupposition of this naturally given fact in thought. It is artistic power that
erects such an edifice; the edifice itself is the work of art.
The identification of the active modality of the Air-quality results herefrom, as it radiates
from the cardinal sign of Libra. Libra-man is the artist. The second modality or the passive,
female, refers to Air-mans ability to build himself inside of this self-erected edifice, molding
it in every direction in a completely secluded world. He lives in it as the monk in his cell; but
the cell is richer, larger, more splendid and all-embracing than any reality. All those matters
that rub against each other in the space outside live inside together easily in their mental
form. For the present, let us term the man so disposed Aquarius-man, the sage, or the
hermit. And lastly, a third balancing modality unceasingly endeavors to probe the inner
value of the edifice, to ever examine and test its foundations. We will term the thus briefly
characterized man, Gemini-man, the tempter or the seeker.
Before progressing to the description of Air-mans three subdivisions, let us look at the
general relationships between Air-man and the three other elementary regions. Much has
already become clear regarding the relationship of Air-man to the physical world. We know
that just the material reality of this world, which is the last and supreme resort of reality for
Earth-man, does not have the same importance for Air-man for whom material realities
appear as pictures projected from a higher world onto a screen of matter. For Air-man,
therefore, the actual, real events take place on a different level. The physical level, as we
may call this projection stage, is merely a stage of reactions, none of which can be perceived
as being causal to any other, as the pictures on a movie screen cannot depend on each other
causally. Rather they refer, in their apparent thingness, to the true cause lying beyond the
screen, or expressed in general terms, to a world of fundamental causes, accessible to the
mind but not the senses. (Certain esoteric schools of thought call the causal body that part
of the mental body that has immediate access to the forms of the world of ideas.)
While this behavior toward the physical world is common to all Air-men, it is actually
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known only to the higher developed type. From it springs an attitude toward the real occurrences
of life that is similar to that of a spectator in a theater. Since he knows that events on stage
are merely supposed to present something and that the actors are not the real people of the
drama, he concludes that while he may watch the play, it would be absurd to interfere in its
course in order to affect a change in the outcome. If he wanted to influence the ending, he
should talk to the author, who is beyond the play. He thus views reality as if it were the work
of a poet or as a shadow-play, which the Greeks called theorein. This is quite unlike
practical and active Earth-man. Nor is Air-man passive like Water-man. Most of all he is a
critic or theorist of life.
All of lifes occurrences, even life itself, are comprehensible to him only when understood
as a type of illustration for a theory, whose inner logic replaces in thought the impelling
causality that natural events lack. And as Earth man was inclined to doubt his own existence
rather than the reality of the outside world, so is Air-man rather inclined to distrust the
evidence of his own senses than the result of his theories. The axiom of Protagoras may
belong in this context:
Man is the measure of all things,
of those that are, that they be,
of those that are not,
that they do not exist.
This aloofness from real life results in an almost ever present awkwardness and timidity that
causes all Air-men to be hesitant and latecomers. Like Schillers dreamy poet, they remain
empty-handed upon leaving this Earth because they could not bring themselves to capture
or to defend their place with brutal force.
Before we leave Air-mans relationship to the physical world, a few words about his attitude
regarding eroticism. Neither sensuality nor the longing of the soul are his leitmotiv here.
The goal of his desires is neither the union of body nor of soul. His longing is aimed at
something that the troubadours, above all others Walter von der Vogelweide-called love
or adoration, before whose majesty they bowed in devout awe.
Adoration is neither male nor female,
It has neither body nor soul,
Earthly form it does not own;
We know its name, but it is strange on earth.
Yet nobody can win without it
Nor Heavens mercy nor its bliss
Adoration can only be mentally comprehended; it is the gift shining in the depths of a
memory, open to the beyond, to recognize as our other half what had been within us and
which inextricably belongs to us and forms the entity man only with us together. The
eroticism is thus transformed to the joy of seeing and recognizing once more in the bliss of
the renewal of a union that which already existed eternally.
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What consecrates this union is that in it converges all that which binds man to man--
therefore, every kind of kinship takes the form of a cosmically ennobled brotherhood,
possible only in an ideal order. This order is the greatest and most comprising, the order of
mankind itself--to which all those who belong as brothers and sisters meet as pure citizens
of the mental world. This love, rooted in the ideal of such solidarity, glorifies the erotic life
of pure Air-man.
In relation to the Water-world, Air-man takes a position that forces him to constantly search
for a secret meaning beyond passions and emotions. Its perception enables him to regard
them all as symptoms of an illness by which the mental harmony is endangered. Like
physical pains, the souls sufferings also point to a sore spot and are ultimately the expression
of a mental disturbance that must be cured by the mind. Passions and pains are the souls
mistakes, resulting from a shading or clouding of the clear perceptive power. When this
confusion has been successfully cleared up, the soul reaches a calm mood, which alone is
worthy of intelligent man: the calm, untroubled serenity of the sage.
But in those serene regions
Where pure forms abide
The dark storm of misery is heard no more.
No tear flows here to sorrow,
Only to minds courageous flight.
Lovely, as the rainbows fiery colors
On the stormclouds darkly dew
Shimmers through melancholys dim veil
The serene blue of calmness
~ Schiller, Ideal and Life
We have already sufficiently characterized Air-mans attitude toward his own realm. He is a
metaphysician with regard to science. His endeavors are aimed at that which Kant termed
pure science, whose perceptions are completely organized by the laws of logic. Obviously,
what here appears as science definitely has a speculative constructive character in contrast
to Earth-mans empirical science. Essentially, this sort of science is related to art. If all science
is based in the Air-region, its task is to investigate the laws that present the construction plan
or design of that mightiest work of art, which the ancient Greeks termed, in adoring
admiration, the cosmos (literally, the ornament) or the world-edifice.
From the cosmos flow the laws of human art as well as those of the Air regions science,
giving all the sciences of this realm a mental character. And art? Art is the adequate experiment
of such mental science in the true sense of the term, that is, to create a cosmos in miniature,
and thereby to practice on the phantom the creative energy--the faculty of perception. Art
becomes the practice-field of the human mind on the mental sphere: the preparatory school
of wisdom.
In the work of art, the Air individual seeks neither the harmony of forms nor the romanticism
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of a soul ready for higher conception, but instead seeks to be a messenger of the higher
world, who may whisper to him the password that opens heavens gates so that, after having
disposed of earthy matter, he may enter as guest where creative man may freely enter or
leave. We have learned to know beauty as the distinctive mark of this messenger.
Beauty becomes the standard for all evaluation of art. The artist becomes the teacher of a
wisdom that, although it is the same as the goal of intellectual science, is yet higher in rank.
As Beethoven once said of music, Music is higher revelation than all wisdom of philosophy.
Schiller says in his ode, To the Artists,
What only after millennia had passed
The ageing reason could invent,
Was, in the symbols of beauty and greatness,
Revealed beforehand to the childlike mind.
For Air-man, the value of all art is contained in its symbolic representation of truth.
A few words about the Air individuals attitude toward the moral problem
It is obvious here that the criterion for good and evil is not in the usefulness or harmfulness
of the act, nor in the degree of entanglement in the heredity-mass of passions. Air-mans
morality is concerned only with the conviction that either denies or defends at any price what
has been recognized as good. Therefore, only one form of evil can exist: to act against ones
genuine conviction.
What is created here is neither evil, nor guilt, but sin--or the wicked attempt to undermine
the edifice of truth--which is the essence of the mental world. As such, the lie in any form
appears as the gravest iniquity in the Air-realm. The greatest perils grow from them, only
they cause the opposite of beauty--creating the ugly, the false. More on this later.
Let us now turn to the individual signs.
Libra, the cardinal, active Air sign corresponding to the Rajas quality, stands in the middle
of the Zodiac spectrum diametrically opposed to Aries, the Zodiacs beginning.
We will call the person placed in the radiation of this sign, as expression of the pure Libra-
energy, Libra-man. Compelled to proceed actively, Libra-man must try to act upon his
environment. But, while Earth-man possessed in his physical body the adequate instrument
for his environment, Libra-man, as an Air-man, lacks such an organ. He does not own a
hand to intervene in this world. So, he must first create such an instrument by inserting
between himself and his environment a switch-instrument that enables him to intervene
intellectually, as Earth-mans hand enables him to act. This intellectual instrument for grasping
is no less than the instrument of reason, which we term idea. By formulating an idea,
Libra-man takes possession of this world. By creating ideas in the realm of the material
reality, alien and pathless to him, he builds in a system of highways and lanes. By the
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strength of the organizing thought, he creates a road for himself that leads through the
tangle of the material wilderness. We call this process of road building: consideration. The
tool for this pioneer work is the organizing thought, the idea forced into words. The creation
of the word and its development into a system of connected ideas in the form of language is
the analogous to what, for Earth-man, is the performance of the act.
Language is the instrument of Libra, serving to build the road, the mental correspondence
to Earth-mans hand. As Aristotle has termed the hand the tool of all tools, so can
language be called the work of art beyond all works of art.
To draw the portrait of the pure Libra-type, based on the above statement, and to under-
stand his nature psychologically, we will first note that the obligation to act, forced upon him
by his position in the outside world, becomes the main source for all complications in store
for him during his earthly existence. It is not so much his tragedy to be obliged to act than
the compulsion to end the work of reflection, to proceed toward a decision before it had
matured in his mind. The compulsion to decide is the main cause of all suffering for Libra-
man. This suffering has a very peculiar form, unintelligible to Earth-man. It consists of a sort
of inner necessity to deny afterwards in his imagination the premature mental decision, and
to continue the now meaningless contemplation, as if the act had not taken place (Epimetheus).
When Libra-man is forced by his environment to make a decision, he may often be seen to
do something that denies all theoretical wisdom (which is always at his disposal when advising
others), only to escape the torment of being forced from his spiritual attitude.
To ponder for a long time and then to do the wrong thing, or to let somebody else decide
for him (or to count it out on his coat buttons), that is the Libra-mans way.
Clever thoughts and acts that went astray----
Throughout my life, this was my way.
confessed Grillparzer, who probably was strongly influenced by Libra.
Inability to decide and aversion against all encroachment in the crude world of reality have
deep reasons, reaching onto the root of what we must regard as Libras true destination. The
degree to which Libra-man is qualified for this destination determines the higher or lower
level of this human type.
This mission signifies none other than the adjustment between inside and outside, to mentally
find the right way that harmoniously solves the otherwise insoluble dissonance between
mind and matter. Libras true calling is to spend all his energy on this solution. To forsake
it characterizes the lower; to solve it--not only for himself but for others as well--the higher
Libra-type.
If we could anticipate the solution of this problem on the phantom, the picture of a highway
would evolve, created by the intellect of the higher Libra-type. United by the common aim,
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a human community would walk now faster, now slower, on this road--companions for a
short while or forever--the right path, as Lao-Tzu calls his work: Tao-Te-King, the Book of
the Right Path. Lao-Tzu was the great son of the realm of the Middle, China, the land
under Libras rule. Lao-Tzu was indeed a spokesman of Libras doctrine: Tao, the word that
in Chinese also means the path and the reflection, or thought that creates it.
Let us first consider what may result when the Libra-type evades his mission, because that
too necessitates a decision. We then find a human type who is endowed with the criteria of
an artist, but in an almost negative sense. The lower Libra-type has made his lifes philosophy
to shirk all friction as much as possible. He seeks a quiet place and takes a purely passive
attitude toward life. When he is obliged to move on, he chooses the line of least resistance.
He prefers to be shoved. His main maxim is indolence. A great similarity appears here to the
lower Taurus-type, who flees every conflict: not to get excited, every passion is ugly--not to
act as long as it may be postponed, to know how to wait--everything passes on at last! Why
get excited? And further, not to take sides, not to interfere in matters that do not concern
him! And to be sure to refrain from looking at things one does not like to see. The last
refuge of life is the moral-intellectual alibi of a complete disinterestedness. For in the end,
everything is vain--nothing!
A type of indifference may be found here, similar to that of the Pisces-type, only here we
are not concerned with the emotional to-understand-all, but with a moral attitude that,
analogous to the earlier mentioned picture of the astatic pair of needles, could be compared
with the state of equilibrium on the scales (Libra). This instrument is fit, in its impartiality,
to weigh--but not to judge or decide. Thus is created a state of moral inertia that may
even consider itself beyond good and evil, but whose beyond is only the expression of
his complete ethical indifference: the negative caricature of justice. To lead this indifference
in life to victory wherever possible is the special art of the lower developed Libra-type.
For he too is an artist; he knows, through application of this principle of the scales, to
balance all disputes, foremost oppositions of principle. From his point of view, everybody is
right. His mistake is merely to have fixed himself upon one viewpoint. For, as Raimund
makes his good old Valentine say in his drama, The Wastrel, In the end nobody knows
nothing. And Ansengrubers old Hauderer opines, Its all nonsense!
We thus arrive at a triad of characteristics of Libra-man, before he is awakened to conscious
knowledge of his mission: inability to be decisive; flight before any disturbance of the state
of equilibrium, and flight before fight. But, let us not forget that this attitude of the lower
Libra-type forms only his theoretical life philosophy. When he is forced to act, this philosophy
proves powerless to give direction to his action.
There is hardly another sign where the conflict between individual character and action is
as ominous as with this type. His Rajas-power is exhausted by warding off every compulsion
to act, as well as by the struggle to preserve his equilibrium.
Confronting this type of weakness, softness, and the art to appease with the higher Libra-
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type whose well-perceived mission is to reconcile the mental with the physical world, to
robe the mentally experienced truth with the vesture of matter, we perceive the real Rajas-
power of the Air element--the power of the creative artist who knows how to imprint into
matter the mark of his ideal or archetype.
To understand this power, let us use the same means chosen to illustrate the higher types of
the other signs of the Zodiac. We start from the organ in the human body corresponding to
the Libra-radiation: the kidneys. The essential function of this organ is the liberation from
physiological sediments: to free the bloodstream from poisons. The kidneys are organs of
secretion. This elimination can only take place when the distinction has been made between
that which lies in the direction of the evolution of life and that which endangers and destroys it.
The kidneys resemble a living sieve or filter, secreting all that is harmful for development.
The difference from the function of the intestines (Virgo) is clear; the concern here is not to
bring nourishment to the body, but to keep it clean. The kidney function in physical life is
similar to the work of the sculptor who causes the statue to appear out of stone by removing
what hides it with chisel and hammer. For it exists already in the stone--exists for the
artists eye, who has viewed its archetype in his mind and mentally-projected it into the
stone; he merely must free it from the coffin of matter.
It is the vocation of the higher Libra type to be such a sculptor of life. His sacred mission is
to make himself into the kidney for humanity--into the organ removing the poisons of
exhaustive life. Chisel and hammer become the tools of the mind, the statue the image of
higher man, and the rocky debris the evolution sediment of which the higher Libra type is
freeing him.
From now on, it becomes his task to keep the ideal of higher intelligent man continuously
alive for humanity in every way--to keep open the road onto which the mental impulses
flow from the higher worlds--the path that he is permitted to guard because of his Libra-
nature. Which is this path? It is that path on which the wedding between macrocosm and
microcosm continuously takes place. The power exchange between the part and the whole,
or what we have termed the great breath, whose symbol is the five-pointed star (General
Foundation, First Lecture).
Let us recollect this symbol: the pentagram, which grows toward the outside as well as
toward the inside according to the same law. We have here before us a picture of the deeper
meaning of every symbol, the condensation into the small, seizable form of what the
universe represents, in incomprehensible infinity. This compressed, condensed picture of
the great whole, the Greeks called the symbol--the compressed--poetry, the work of art.
The symbol is like a talisman handed to mankind, a token of remembrance, so that they
may not forget their true homeland. To renew this symbol forever in its ennobling power is
the artists or the higher Libra types mission.
In tending this path to the intellectual homeland, and in keeping it open, he becomes the
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gate-keeper of all intrinsicality. His service consists of guarding the gate of the road of reason
or of the initiation into esoteric wisdom.
As we recognized in the sign of Aries (opposed to Libra, and its supplement, as we shall see)
the beginning of the Zodiac--because from it started the renewal of humanitys life after the
sacrificial offering, by which the ever-in-itself returning circle was broken--so we can see in
the sign of Libra the path to renewal of the single ego, or the birthplace of higher man,
wrestling himself free from the lower, emerging as if by a new birth. As Aries stands at the
start of a new circle, Libra stands in the middle as the sign of the turning point. It has not the
character of a breakthrough, but of a passing through a gate, opening to the view in both
directions. It thus reveals how every lower being is merely the incomplete image of the
higher one. And, as the work of art, as the sacrificial offering of man passing the gate, on the
altar of truth, shows two faces--one turned to the material world, beauty, and one turned to
the mental world, truth, so the function of the planet Venus, the signs power-remitter,
reveals this double function in a figure, incomparably represented by Schiller. His words
make us perceive in full clarity how the same planet (whom we have already met as ruler of
Taurus) appears here in its power turned toward the future:
Who, with an aura of Orions
In lofty majesty her brow surrounding,
Espied by purer spirits only,
Walks beyond stars a-burningly,
Fled on her solar throne,
The dread, magnificent, Urania.
With superseded fire-crown
She reveals herself as beauty.
Encircled by the belt of grace
A child she is, so children know her too.
What we have sensed as beauty here,
As truth will come to meet us in the future.
Urania--Venus Urania--thus the mental Venus pertaining to Libra was called in ancient
Greece.
Let us now regard Libra-mans role in practical life. We see him serving beauty everywhere;
he softens the rough; he rounds the angular; he exhorts everywhere to reconciliation. Where
fistfights, passions or opinions endanger human peace, he demonstrates how only lack of the
proper insight caused the aberrations from the right path or its having been missed; the right
path--the only way of the greatest possible harmony between rightly perceived truth and
reality. To strive for this greatest possible measure of harmony is a moral duty. To make it the
basis of ones judgment means--to be just. Thus, like Capricorn, Libra also arrives at an ideal
of justice. But while Capricorn-man saw in justice a sort of juridical norm, patterned after the
physical law of equality of action and reaction--actually representing a law of vengeance,
Libras picture of justice is concerned with a balance, with fostering an insight that removes
contrast or opposition. We thus arrive at a triad of ideals: truth, justice, and beauty.
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Contrasting the higher developed Libra-type with the already described lower one, we
observe that something of the splendor of the higher type is reflected on the Libra-man not
yet matured to the consciousness of his mission. We notice that from him also radiated
something that surrounds him with a strange aura of calm and appeasement, like oil poured
on the waves.
We turn now to the sign of Aquarius.
Aquarius, the fixed, female or Tamas modality of the Air-region, gathers all the power of
creative perception to its highest potency. But this potency remains entirely self-contained.
As the physicists say, it remains potential. It is locked in itself without seeking access to the
outside. What has been said of the peculiarity of that fictitious human type, whose life is
purely led by thought, is realized here in its purest form: whose life takes place in the world
entirely his own creation. No other law applies to it than that of a cohesion of the mutual
classification into strata of equal or superior order of all essential elements--framed in an
immense edifice, whose architectural design is that of mental space (as described in the
Second Lecture of this Sequence).
Perhaps the most immediate example of the intellectual architecture in the physical world,
common to us all, would be the structure of human language and of pure instrumental
music. We can speak of space or spatial law only symbolically in this mental world; in
reality Aquarius mental world is just as much beyond physical space as are language and
music. Such a world, completely apart from physical space, although built according to the
law of a mental space, could be called (after Thomas Morus) Utopia, to illustrate this not-
being-in-space. We thus arrive at the first characteristic of Aquarius: he is the Utopian.
Aquarius lives in this utopia like a monk in his cell. He too is a monk, a monakos, a
hermit, in this world. In it, everything is in mutual relationship, absolutely cognizable in
perception. These relations unite in total balance; thus, that utmost measure of self-
sufficiency is created, no longer in need of any outside help.
This self-sufficiency of his world gives Aquarius the second essential character-trait; he is not
only the utopian, the hermit, but also the autocrat, the independent, self-sufficient man--the
strong man, most powerful if left to himself. He knows that his strength lies in the compulsion
to be alone. He knows that his strength is immediately endangered when he wantonly
leaves his seclusion and Utopia. It may, therefore, seem to him that to remain true to
himself under any circumstance is the supreme law. To make no compromises becomes the
unconditional leitmotiv of his behavior.
This autocracy refers only to the intellectual side of life. The demand for absolute originality
in regard to his own achievement exists here: to walk in no one elses footprints, if he had
not found the road; to keep his intellectual independence at all costs.
When the composer Franz Lachner was once asked if he was a Wagner-ite or a Brahms-ite,
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he answered indignantly, None of those; I am a Lachner-ite.
Aquarius-man has his own Weltanschauung, his own science, his own ethics, his own
psychology and logic. He thus feels that he must not only avoid exposing himself to alien
influences to keep his individuality intact, but he must also avoid speaking to others about
his utopian world, lest it be profaned; that he might not have to see it waver under outside
influence. He must keep it unapproachable to others, and he must be unapproachable
himself, in his peculiarity.
Intellectual pride accompanied by the knowledge to never be able to belong to a crowd,
and to be a chosen one, are further traits of Aquarius. Just because it must be his concern to
keep his world safe from outside interference, due to his fear of profanation, he must hide
the nobility of his chosen-ness at all costs. Although deeply averse to all compromise, he
must yet simulate ignorance of this nobility, thus making an apparent compromise with
himself. He must, as the psychiatrists term it, dissimulate the belief in his apartness, and
behave as much as possible like the ordinary man of the masses.
As such, he walks incognito among others, as perhaps Harun al Rashid, or the Austrian
emperor Joseph II. Like them, he is condescending and jovial, with an inner disdain for
everything base and common. Frosch identifies the strangers as alleged noblemen,
(Goethe, Faust):
Theyre of a noble house, thats very clear;
Haughty and discontented they appear.
In this sketch of Aquarius-man, we cannot yet recognize the difference between the higher
and the lower types. But this much has become clear, that the simple traits of this picture can
be applied to two extremes without essential changes. They can depict the solitary sage as
well as the solitary fool, entangled in his own paranoiac delusions. Notwithstanding the
great difference between these extremes, their similarity cannot be so very unimportant.
Many truly wise men have been looked upon as fools by their contemporaries just as many
madmen have been considered wise.
Was Diogenes more of a fool or a sage? Was he not one of those lunatics whose madness has
method, a logical method without inner contradiction, completely elaborate? Let us stop a
while at this thought of methodical madness, because it will lead us to a concept in truth
belonging to the region of the fixed Air sign. It is interesting enough that the severe thought-
structure of madmen has been termed fixation; that is, an idea that proves absolutely
unable to compromise with external reality, because the fixed idea demands that reality
conform to it. Now the sentence of Protagoras, quoted earlier, Man is the measure of
everything, would sound like this, I, I am the measure of truth itself; I am the method, the
measure of everything.
If we were to classify this doctrine of life among philosophical systems, we would arrive at
that basic opinion called solipsism. According to this view, my ego is the only thing whose
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existence is fixed beyond any doubt, but my ego--and not perhaps the ego in general. This
view can exist only once in this world, namely as my own. It is not adaptable as a tenet since
no one other than me could accept it. Herewith we have arrived at the point that divides the
ways of the higher and the lower Aquarius-types. Both live in their utopia as in their actual
home. It is the special quality of this utopia that allows us to perceive the developmental
direction of the Aquarius-type inhabiting it.
What constitutes the main difference between the two possible directions is the relation to
the Thou, the most difficult of all the problems resulting from the Aquarius-nature. How
does Aquarius find the way to the Thou, out of his sequestered world?
It is only possible for him to find and take this road if he either allows the right of the ego for
the thou, or if he drops his own over-developed ego, to find it once more after joining the
thou on a higher plane, in a super-ego or all-ego, to which the imagined only-ego is
sacrificed for the sake of the higher all-mankind-ego. When super-man dies in order that
the simple, pure man may be realized, who now, from the perception of his general human
nature, must find the way to the otherwhich is like him of nobility--through the cosmic
rank of the human level.
All human beings, born equal,
Are a noble race.
~ Heinrich Heine
To better demonstrate the difference between the higher and the lower Aquarius-type, we
will again start from the bodily organ that in cosmic correspondence represents the Aquarius
radiation: the lower leg. The lower legs are the part of the human body where those muscles
originate that not only enable us to walk but, even more importantly, to leave the ground
if only temporarilyjumping and dancing; to free ourselves from Earth and to rise above it.
Translated into the ideal, this detachment from the terrestrial means the liberation and
disengagement from entanglement with past traditions, with the customary, the inherited
and conventional, of all that what Schiller in his Wallenstein calls eternal yesterdays.
Which is valid today, because it was so before.
Certainly, what was valid yesterday may be confirmed today, but not because it was valid
yesterday; rather it could be in spite of this, if it were found anew today. Here it is not said,
as in Goethes Faust,
What from your fathers heritage is lent,
Earn it anew, to really possess it!
It is in itself a curse that there is something like an inheritance at all. Flee it, in order to be
regenerated every day anew, entirely youlight and weightless! Therefore, the true Aquarius
must be like Nietzsches dancer, Zarathustra. Free from all forms of tradition, he is his
own first and last authority.
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But in this all too fleeting moment in which the dancer is above the ground, gravity claims
him and he must return to earth, to bound again, and so forth. If there were no earth, how
could he use his power? Thus (to stay within our picture), a condition develops wherein we
encounter two elements. They teach us how we can separate the way upwardsthat of the
higher Aquariusfrom the other way. One of the elements is found in the tragic compulsion
to continuously leap from the groundit is the way of the recurrent protest against Earths
gravity. The other element is the repeated returning to the below after being above, having
enjoyed the freer and farther view that cannot be attained below.
He who walks the road of protest lives in a continuous state of war against a world of
enemies, using up the greater part of his energies and enjoining him, as a last refuge, solitude
and asceticism. Here emerges the image of the outsider, of the cynic or misanthrope. He must
detach himself to draw the last tragic conclusion from the fact of having submitted to the great
error, that the part supposedly detached from the whole could ever be an independent
whole. But just because he is forced to deny this whole, two beliefs result for him, which
could best be called confessions of unbelief. They play the same role before the forum of
his own conscience as the above sketched dissimulation plays before the forum of his
environment.
He is atheist without conviction and irreligious without inner freedom. As the dancer landing
on the ground may regard this landing as an unpleasant but unfortunately necessary
interruption of his airy soaring, so does the lower Aquarius-type regard the need to leave
his exclusiveness temporarily only insofar as it makes him realize how much better, more
perfect and harmonious his utopian cell appears ever again. In it he finds, without friction
or fight, the mental correspondence of the unavowed surrogates of all values, whose
caricatures out there are offensive to him, the aristocrat. Outwardly a secret misanthrope
and world-despiser, he receives in the throne-room of his mental world all, friend or
foe, in indestructible perceptual unity. For here he, a second Prometheus, has recreated
them all according to the plan of his own mind, in his own image. The tragedy of this
solitary man who, fighting against God and the world, wants to preserve his own self
at all costs, has been made the basic idea of his Faust by Nikolaus Lenau, with
incomparable force.
Says the monk:
Wilt thou see and know the holy man
Thou must at first his light in thy soul ignite.
Through its power thou mayst think him alone.
Oh! That for thy blessedness it may be done!
Faust answers:
If he the one to view should be
And at one time eye and light be he,
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Then he sees but himself alone
Within my house, while I do none.
And further:
Such wisdom can give happiness to me
Which is my own and from his is free.
I always want to feel myself as I;
From my solid wall enclosure shall
No holy wave sweep me away
Like dew that lightly on the shoregrass fell.
When we compare this would-be superman with the highly developed Aquarius-type,
who does not protest against Earth but knows well the art of detaching himself from it, who
after the leap back to Earth offers to it what he beheld abovethen the portrait just sketched
is strangely changed.
Let me describe in the form of a vision what, in this case, may represent itself as the utopia
of the higher Aquarius-man, whence he returns after his detachment from Earth, and what
he tries to fetch down from this Utopia. This vision shall open our eyes to something that
only in modern times has taken a form accessible to everybody, although it has always
existed. Let us remember that we talked of the imprint of highest spiritual beings in Earths
sand when we dealt with the problem of evolution. We said further that man was also
starting to press his imprint onto Earth, continuing on his level the work of those beings; in
recreating the symbols mysteriously hidden in his physical body, as his tools and machines,
aware only later of where his knowledge came from: the fist, the hammer; his teeth, scissors;
the grasping hand, pliers; the eye, the camera, etc. (See General Foundation, Third Lecture.)
Lower Aquarius-man may speak here of his invention and compare it to insensible nature;
it does not suit the higher type to think in this way.
What we have just propounded will help us to see the vision, for we will now speak of a
human invention, which seems not to originate in the organization of the physical body, like
the afore-mentioned examples. Instead it originates in the organization of his mental body.
This invention, foreshadowing the Utopia of higher Aquarius, is the radio. Radio creates an
illusion of a purely mental world, wherein the thoughts of all men flow side by side and
intertwined, as the ether wavesharean object turned into a common possession of perception.
Supplied with a mental all-waves-antenna, every individual would become direct inhabitant
of this intellectual world. In this Utopia, there would be no possibility of mental isolation;
each thought would immediately become visible in the common space of this Utopia.
Herefrom results a law with compelling logic, very different from the physical law of the
material world because, turned toward the future, it is taking the form of a demand. This
demand appears as the opposite of Kants Categorical Imperative; the demand to think in
such a manner that each separate thought proved able to nourish the power of the one
common great thought-stream of truth, and to support it. The idea springing from a general,
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absolute mental harmony under the flag of truth can now actually be compared to the
unwritten law that guides the cooperation of the musicians in a great orchestra. Every musician
is inspired never to play his part as a main part, taking the other orchestra-members for a
necessary evil, but he is conscious of being able to reach the common goal only as a
necessary member of a community with the same endeavor, in harmony with them: the
ideal rendition of the composition. In other words, to give the mentally visualized work the
physical body worthy of it.
It is higher Aquarius-mans assignment to make possible the realization of human brother-
hood, to make this community the germination plot for perfect man wherein the son of Earth
is joined to the son of Heaven.
Such impulses created in the eighteenth century in the German classics, especially in Herder,
the idea of humanism as a general ideal of mankind. In the spirit of this idea was contained
the axiom of equal title to the attainment of the highest human dignity for all beings,
wearing a human face, no matter how different they were in descent, nationality,
language, religion, even with regard to their physical, emotional, mental or moral
development level. All differences become negligible to the spiritual viewpoint, which
recognizes the divine even in the degenerate.
Regarding the Utopia, home of the highly developed Aquarius, we now see a human
community whose members are united in indissoluble concord, like the physical organs
in the human body.
The vitality radiating from the consciousness of this concord onto each individual is like the
intoxication of a mutual love and gratitude, born neither of emotional romanticism nor of
sensual desire, but of an unearthly joie de vivre, analogous to the feeling of health on the
physical planean eternal Spring of the spirit. To such Elysian intoxication of joy, Schiller
sang his immortal Ode to Joy, dedicated to the idea of brotherhood of all mankind, which
will be verified in the coming Age of Aquarius.
To summarize the essence of this sign, which symbolizes man himself in his true nature
among the holy four animals of the Bible, let us remember the words that Klopstock puts in
his dying Adams mouth, as a blessing for future mankind:
Be wise that your hearts may become noble
Love each other! You are brothers!
Being human must become your bliss!
He who is the most human
shall be the greatest among you
The planet Saturn is coordinated as power-transmitter to the sign of Aquariusthe same
planet that we have come to know as ruler of the sign of Capricornthe god of time and
grain, the lord of all seeds. Only here we meet him in his positive polarity, turned towards
the future. For it is the strange attribute of the mystery of the seed, this living symbol or
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life-poem, that contained in it is the memory of the past as well as all directing power of the
ideal of the future. As the human germ, come from God and wed to Earth, longs to return
to God and at the same time forward, risen from a past that simultaneously signifies the
ideal future, so it should be mans ideal, ever awake in his consciousness, to ripen the divine
germ (as the seed entrusted to him) toward the future, mindful of the dignity implanted to
the human level.
We turn now to Gemini, the sign of the balancing modality, the Sattwa-genus of the Air
element. Here we have neither the artist who created the work of art as tool of his activity in
the realm of reality, nor the sage who lives the perfect work of art that radiates the power
through which alone an eventual harmonizing of the material world can be hoped. What
appears with specific clarity in Geminis nature is something similar to Pisces, only not
related to the emotional but to the mental realm.
To understand this, we will start from the graphic symbol. It shows two parallel lines united
by a sort of cross-bar on their upper and lower ends. This figure can be looked upon as the
simplification of the mythological figures of the two youths, Kastor and Pollux, the twins of
the well-known legend of which we will speak in a moment. As two fishes were posed side
by side in Pisces symbol but put together with head to tail-end and tail-end to head, which
led us to compare it with the astatic needle-pair, so the two human figures of the twins are
here posed side by side, but not inverted toward each other. Contrast between them exists
here also, but in a different way. Kastor and Pollux are twins, children of one mother but not
of one father. The father of PolluxPolydeucesis Zeus, the highest god. The father of
Kastor is a man, King Tyndareus; the one immortal, as his heavenly father, the other mortal,
like his earthly father. It is quite clear that these twins are not supposed to represent two
separate individual humans, but together form man in whom the terrestrial and the divine
origin are united: the child of man and the son of God. Thus we arrive at the deeper
meaning of the Gemini problem, clearly expressed in the often-quoted words of Goethe,
spoken by Faust:
Two souls, alas! Reside within my breast,
And each withdraws from, and repels, its brother.
One with tenacious organs holds in love
And clinging lust the world in its embraces;
The other strongly sweeps, this dust above,
Into the high ancestral spaces.
If, in these words, the emotional tension of man is expressed, the longing divided between
the heavenly and the earthy home as depicted in Lenaus poem Double Nostalgia, we
must seek this discord in the sign of Gemini in the mental sphere. Here it becomes doubt, an
event appearing in the realm of the mind with a force similar to that double nostalgia in the
sphere of the soul. Doubt is not merely an inability to choose one direction. It is also the
desire to simultaneously pursue opposing possibilities, the so-called contradictory opposition,
without the power to synthesize them into a higher unit. Doubt thus attains permanence.
The actual content becomes immediately insignificant as soon as the doubt disappears.
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Gemini spends his life in searching and researching, which are more important to him than
the finding. Goethe spoke of two souls dwelling in the double-mans bosom. Lessing speaks
with similar clarity of the searchers dual intellectual nature. Confronted with the choice
between truth and the urge to search for it, he decides in favor of the search, even at the
price of continual error.
Not the truth, in whose possession some man is,
or supposes to be, but the honest effort he has applied
to get at this truth, creates mans value.
For his powers are not enlarged by possession but his quest,
in which alone his steadily increasing perfection consists.
Perfection makes people quiet, lazy, proud.
If God held in his right hand all truth, and in his left
only the ever alert urge for truth, although with the
addition that I would always and eternally err,
and He would speak to me, Choose! I would humbly
grasp His left hand and would say, Father, give!
Pure truth is only for Thee alone!
Let us try to understand the actual meaning of this strange dualism. It presents itself in that
old dual-path of deviation; the remote goal of truth before his eyes, Gemini-man is yet
restrained by an inner shyness and cannot summon the courage to walk the straight path.
We are here confronted with an experience terrifying in its entirety, both depressing and
uplifting. It contains nothing less than the presentiment of the way of world-development
itself, which, once originated in the oneness, endeavors to recapture its loss. We found the
expression for this in the number three, or the arch-oscillation, the law of rhythm that
permeates the entire worldthe rarum concordia discorsthe sinus line, whose wave is
recognizable in the swinging electrons as well as in the circling and turning of the planets, in
the alternation between night and dayin the microcosm man himself, as breath, as the
exchange between in- and ex-halation.
All this (discussed in detail in the General Foundation), we will now allow to reverberate
within us in an attempt to penetrate the mystery of the sign of Gemini. The body-organs,
destined to embody the Gemini radiation, are the lungs--the organ for breathing. They serve
the gas-exchange; by them the oxygen necessary for the bloods renewal is extracted from
the air: in-halationand on the other side, carbonic acid is expelled: ex-halation.
When we translate this life process into the mental (Air) sphere, we get direct insight into the
mechanics of a process, which, in regard to perception, is very similar to the deliberation
that we met as characteristic of the Libra-function. But here the concern is not to create the
way but to make oneself the tool of such road-building; to experience oneself in the state
that resembles breathing--always split into two phases. Each of these phases-according to
the side wherefrom it is seen-is at the same time inhalation and exhalation: When I exhale
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the cosmos, it inhales me. (See General Foundation, Second Lecture.)
To be at the same time inside and outside oneself, at the same time here and there, at the
same time son of Earth and son of God, at the same time in the day and in the nightat the
same time perceiving and perceivedat the same time male and female! Who could think
this complete contradictionequally mysterious for the sage and the fool! And yet it is the
actual life-principle of the Gemini-born to live this contradiction.
This demand may be illustrated in a simple example.
Tone is an acoustic expression of undoubted realitybut it is only possible through vibrations
consisting of two opposed phases that contradict one another. The annulment of this
contradiction would result in no tone. We experience this tone, experience the synthesis
of this contradiction. The tone is not only wave-crest and wave-valley, but both together!
Hearing the tone, we recognize nothing of its double nature; but if we ourselves were this tone,
and if we would experience this double nature in ourselves as mental oscillation, then we
would be confronted with the contents of intelligent life, even of life itself, as Gemini-man.
We would have within us the contradiction of the two phases which together make life a
fact. What we experience in this manner is the eternally oscillating power of life continuously
revealed in matter. The eternal flow of becoming, as world-event, that never is and only
supports itself through self-denialas waters in a river constantly pass, while the river
remains in its form only through this passing. Everything flows was one side of this
perception in the philosophy of Heraclitus; strife is the father of everything, the other side.
The picture of Gemini-life thus resembles an oscillation wherein the contradiction of wave-
crest and wave-valley is experienced simultaneously. The ancient symbol for the mystery of
the perfect contradiction in the becoming is the Caduceus, Hermes staff, the cane around
which two snakes are wound (sinus-lines), turned toward each other in such a way that their
windings are in symmetrical spirals.
Based on the given analogies of the Gemini-radiation, let us now start to describe the human
type that embodies this pure Gemini-radiation.
The first characteristic we will find is an inner restlessnessdisquietthe feeling of a tensed
springa mental compulsion to think in contradictionsa sort of mental need for symmetry
that forces each thought to oppose its counterpart and to thus always go in two opposing
ways at the same time since he cannot entrust himself to one alone. For him there is,
therefore, no straight road that perhaps would lie in the middle of two contrasts; the road
built by Libra-man lies in the shrubbery of chaotic formless environment, for orientation in
it is not his way because the singlemindedness of its direction appalls him. He remains
rather without direction; he prefers to remain a skeptic to whom doubt appears to be more
reliable a guide than faith, which excludes doubt. Only that faith, born in the duel between
perceptions ever in conflict, can represent the ideal toward which he strives. If, according to
the Bible, the one repenting sinner is more welcome in Heaven than the ninety-nine steadfast
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just men, so to Gemini, the one who after long errant wanderings has reached faith after
doubt is more welcome than the believer who remained steadfast.
Herewith we arrive at the point where the lower and the higher developed Gemini-types
differ from each other. Lower developed Gemini loves doubt for doubts sake. As Scorpio
was a gambler in the emotional sphere, so Gemini is a gambler in the intellectual sphere.
Mental adventure tempts him because of the inner tension; he seeks to test a mental power
that has no other aim than his experiencing himself in it again and again.
The highly developed Gemini-type sees a goal before him, promising realization of truth by
way of error, to complete the work of redemption in thought, whose presuppositions are
analogous to the redemption-work of Pisces; there, knowing through pity; here, believing
through error.
Let us try to characterize the peculiarities of Gemini as they are revealed in relation to
everyday life.
It is clear that this tendency to doubt everything before it had been tested on the opposite
possibility bestows a strong critical capacity, which is directed against others opinion just as
well as against his own. This ever-ready criticism brings a strongly averse influence into his
life. It leadsapart from the time lost for practical occupationsto the leaving of the once
chosen way before its end has been reached, to try something else, etc.-----to live life in
fragments; to begin much while ending nothing, to leave open the possibility of other roads.
These attempts to go in as many different directions as possible create, as a remarkable
peculiarity, a far-reaching, many-sidedness and adroitness of the mind that can be intensified
to the degree of universality. It thus resembles what we termed moral mimesis when we
spoke of the sign of Pisces. Here it would result in the ability to absorb all intellectual trends,
even those contradicting each other. Gemini hereby gains a far-reaching understanding of
the minds of the most diversified human types. Herein can hide a danger, similar to Pisces:
the danger of yielding to mediality.
It may thus come to a sort of mental characterlessness which, together with the critical
ability and sharpened by skepticism, fights today in a pointed debate what will be defended
tomorrow with the opponents arguments. Doubt also threatens to degenerate here into a
sort of moral despair, and in the end into nihilism or even a total lack of direction. What
once ought to have been the first elements of a faith to be attained now becomes an aim in
itself: destruction of all religious values.
But despite all similarity between the disposition of emotional Pisces and intellectual Gemini,
we deal here with a male, turned toward the future, quality, which must be understood in its
essence as absolutely active, not passive. Gemini, therefore, can never stop at the mere
inner experience of doubt. He too is forced to live his doubt as Aquarius his artful Utopia.
He is compelled to burden everyone else with his skepticism, to make them companions of
his destiny.
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Thus we see the Gemini individual, whether the higher or less developed type, surrounded by
many people. He attempts to make them searchers and doubters like himself. He tirelessly
tries to prove to them that their supposed security is based merely on a lack of self-criticism,
and that credulity and superficiality substitute for them only that which can be won through
intense application, as a finally attained treasure of faith.
Good old Valentine (in Raimunds The Wastrel), whose resigned wisdom was expressed
in the words, In the end nobody knows nothing, is replaced by his great ancestor, Socrates,
the greatest sage of ancient Greece, who had made it his task to prove to everybody that
they know nothing like himself, with the only difference, to their disadvantage, that they did
not even know that much. Was Socrates then also a doubter or even a destructive skeptic?
Let us remember that, when speaking of the peculiarities of the Air-world, we stated that
true perception was a kind of creation. (The German expression schpfen means both to
create and to ladle.) With an ever-renewed self-made vessel, it was a creative up-sweep. The
most essential content of the Gemini doctrine appears to be the perception that such vessels
can never be loaned or stored. They have to be produced again and again by each
individual; and that there exists no other knowledge than that whose truth is ever created
anew in thoughtthereby forever rejuvenating itself.
And when Goethes Faust, the Searcher, must confess at the end of his lifes work,
Yes! To this thought I hold with firm persistence;
The last result of wisdom stamps it true:
He only earns his freedom and existence
Who daily conquers them anew.
So the deeper meaning of the Gemini doctrine teaches us to understand.
Only he who gains truth in daily struggle perceives it. An organic life maintains itself only in
the contrast of enduring form and degenerating matter, so it is the fate of all truth to be
allowed to promise itself only to him who untiringly, daily and hourly, courts it and
victoriously passes all the tests that the long and toilsome road of errors imposes upon
himthat road so rich in temptations and adventures, in errors and entanglements.
Returning to the cosmic correspondence of the sign of Gemini, we can now understand the
mission of the highly developed Gemini-type; he must be the lungs of all mankind, untiringly
proving that as little as it suffices to breathe once to be sure of life for all time, a knowledge
gained once can only be preserved if it is continuously tested on the power of its opposite. To
keep the world spiritually abreast of progress, open to the wafts of the holy spirit: such is
Geminis mission.
Confronting this picture of the higher Gemini with the lower developed type who only tries
without seeking, an apostle of unbelief, then we meet him in many shapes: as a mental
globetrotter, a professional dilettante, unserious debater, eclectic in the case of need, a
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busybody without methodical occupation, ever ready to teach others who do not need it,
inventor and solver of riddles, a lost man who refuses guidance, whose most essential virtue
is to never lose patience in the game of his life, thinking his reserves inexhaustible.
In our next lecture, we will supplement this description of the three Air-signs with their
relations to opposing Fire-signs. Let us close today with the perception that one enters the
Air-world with Libra as artist, as sage with Aquarius, creating his home there, but only
Gemini may leave the Air-world through transformation of the powers of perception into
the power of faith borne toward God!
The planet serving as power-transmitter to Gemini is Mercury, whom we have met as lord of
Virgo. Here it appears in its male quality as mediator between above and below in the
figure of the leader Hermes, who first gave its name to the caduceus (Hermes staff).
What it brings about here may be expressed in a sentence of the dark Master of Ephesos
(Heraclitus), whose words may now appear less dark; he speaks of the...
Two roads, the way down and the way upwards (the two snakes), which
together form one road.
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Sixth Lecture
And the angel of the Lord
appeared unto him in a flame
of fire out of the midst of a bush;
and he looked, and behold,
the bush burned with fire,
and the bush was not consumed.
~ Exodus 3:2
(Moses at the Burning Bush)
Today we must discuss the Fire signsAries, Leo and Sagittariusto complete our analysis
of the individual Zodiacal radiation regions.
Among the four elementary regions, the Fire-region is the most positive. It represents the
absolute male principle within humanity, corresponding to the core of the Self or the will.
Willpower is the expression of life adequate to the Self. In the scale of beings from below to
above, man is the first to begin to develop a relationship to the Self, the first being able to
consciously oppose a non-Self and to limit himself in his own physical body against an
outside. He, therefore, represents the physical correspondence to his Self, as revealed to
him as an inner experience. This experience of the Self is actually the greatest secret of
mans nature. As we demonstrated at the beginning of this course (see General Foundation,
First Lecture), the possibility of all occult knowledge rests upon this secret.
Today we must plunge deeply into this experience of Self, since our assignment is to examine
that part of the Zodiac from which the Fire radiation emanates. We must first of all clarify
the relationship between the Fire element and the Self. Let us remember once more that we
classified the four elements as follows:
Acting or Earth-man
Suffering or Water-man
Thinking or Air-man
Willing or Fire-man
It is our duty today to explain the closer relationship between the will, as expression of the
Fire-quality, and the Self, as the highest component of mans nature. Is what we call our Self
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really that which is in its purest form revealed to the man who wills? Is the Self that part of
us that wills, the autonomous bearer of will?
Our Self is not in our physical body. Though parts of the body may be cut off, the Self
remains. Thus, the essence of the Self does not exist in the body. As Gautama Buddha
taught his disciples, we too must say of the members of our body: This body truly belongs
to ME, is MY body, but this body IS NOT my Self. The laws according to which my body
leads an organic life are beyond the region of my Self.
Is my Self perhaps found in the realm of the soul, in my passions, desires, pains and joy?
No, here too we must confess that is not I; that is not my Self. For all aspirations and
covetousness is suffering, is something that happens to me that wants to rule and shackle
me, to drag me down and subjugate me, and would rather rob me of my Self.
That can truly not be my Self.
Perhaps my thoughts! Perhaps I am contained in my thoughts in such a way that my thinking
is absolutely mine, so that I must say here, either comprehending or mistaken: this IS my
Self, this I AM! Actually, at the beginning of the modern philosophical era stands the mental
deed of a man who pronounced the audacious sentence, Cognito, ergo sum!I think,
therefore, I am! For if I may doubt everything, I cannot doubt the fact of my doubt! With
the fact of my doubt, my existence is irrevocably assured.
Doubt! Is to doubt, to think? Or is doubt more than mere thought? Actually, later thinkers
objected to Descartes famous axiom, which viewed critically is a vicious circle. He ought to
have said, IT thinks, for thinking in itself contains no Self-relation. Let us consider: Is not all
logic the same compulsion for thought, impossible for us to escape as long as we think
logically, as the desires exerts the same compulsion, without opposition? If we all MUST
think that 2 x 2 = 4, and this deduction in our thinking is inevitable, then truly is my Self in
that thinking which passes over my head in its necessity? Perhaps my Self is not in thinking,
but in doubt. For doubt is not thinking, but the revolt against the compulsion of logic that,
even though experienced in my head, passes beyond it: 2 x 2 = 4, regardless of me! But
doubt cannot exist without me. Descartes should not have said, Cognitoergo sum, but
dubito-ergo sum. Not: I think, therefore, I am, but I doubt, therefore, I am.
For doubt is primarily a matter of ethics and not of the mind. Doubt is rebellion against a
sort of mental compulsion, expressing the wills urge for freedom. The sanctioning of all
mental perceptions primarily depends upon this free will, on which, therefore, the last
decision depends.
The philosopher Franz Brentano recognized the moral character of all intellectual decisions. He
stated that even the simplest, most logical judgment is actually a moral one, inasmuch as each
judgment expresses either acceptance or rejection of a fact by the judging person. To accept
or to reject are acts of the will, to which is acceded the supreme power in the intellectual
realm as well, since that which is incompatible with my moral principles cannot be true!
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So, should Descartes have said, I will, therefore, I am?
No! Once one is convinced that he wills, he may dispense with this therefore. The Self-
experience lies directly in the conscious will. Schopenhauer sees, therefore, in WILL the last
and original substratum of all existence. Through the will alone, action, suffering and thought
receive Self-relation, therefore, rising to the human level.
What does it mean to will? What is will?
Will is as much mans last and deepest secret as his Self.
Rudolf Steiner indicated repeatedly how mans Self is only in the beginning stage of its
development, and how the will is, as yet, little enlightened by our consciousness. This
explains why it is difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between wish and will. Most
people become conscious of their will only after it has become realized. They then recognize
in astonishment that what had been accomplished by action had not been their true will at
all, since they did not intend to act this way. Whereby do we then recognize the true essence
of our will?
Let us first try to comprehend the relationship between the Fire-world and the remaining
three elemental worlds as it is revealed to mans consciousness. We have spoken in detail of
the relationship to Earth-world. Man sees the activity of a will everywhere behind the physical
laws, the natural law being the last and irrevocable expression of this immutable will.
This fact directly leads us to an analogous relationship between Fire- and Air-world, the
world of thinking.
+ + + Fire
+
---
+
Air
If mans finding such natural laws is his mental action, then preceding this mental process in
his own mind must be the belief that something like a law actually exists. Law presupposes a
power capable of not only issuing it, but also to supplying it with irrevocable acceptance.
What is this power, capable of not only providing nature but also thinking, with this irrevocable
law, natural and intellectual law and so unites these two with each other? Who gave logic to
our thoughts, which goes parallel with natural law? If I can surmise a will beyond the
inflexibility of natural laws, guaranteeing their absolute authority through austerity, then I
must logically surmise the same inflexible will behind the laws of logic, as a token of truth.
There may be quite some mental rebellion against it, condemned to the same powerlessness
as revolt against the laws of nature. And yet the Self-experience starts only from this revolt
and its suppression, because in it is revealed the most essential mark of the Self: the moral
power to decide, revealed in acceptance and rejection.
But, as all comprehension aimed at nature must err when it distrusts this inexorability of a
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consistent will behind it, so also all intellectual perception, when it distrusts the immutability
of logic, must err if it does not trust in ultimate principles of truth, the foundation of all
thinking. Although they appear within thinking, such principles cannot originate in it, and
cannot, therefore, be comprehended by anything by faith. Faith is the moral trust in an
unchangeable, highest will, which is law in itself, the will of God whose echo in the
consciousness of the individual is no longer mere knowledge but the unimpeachable
gauge of knowledgeconscience.
But where shall wisdom be found?
And where is the place of understanding?
Seeing it is hid from the eyes of all living and kept
Close from the fowls of the air.
Destruction and death say: We have heard the fame thereof
With our ears. God understandeth the way thereof,
And he knows the place thereof.
EARTH For He looketh to the ends of the earth and seeth
Under the whole heaven
AIR To make the weight for the winds;
WATER And He weighteth the waters by measure
FIRE When He made a decree for the rain, and a way for
Lightening and thunder.
Then did He see it and declare it; He prepared it, yea,
And searched it out.
And unto man He said: Behold, the fear of
The Lord, that is wisdom;
And to depart from evil
Is understanding.
~ Job 28
Posing the question of the relationship between Fire- and Air-worlds,
+ + +
+
----
+
it now becomes clear that all Self-finding, and therewith will, are expressed here in a sort
of confession of faith, giving direction to thought and its searchand that nobody can perceive
anything but that which lies in the direction of this faith. Every decision thus expressed even
in the simplest statement (for instance, it rains) becomes here tooaccording to Brentano
a moral judgment, a confession of faith, behind which stands as adjudging power, our part
in the total willthat is, our moral subject.
Regarding the relationship to the Water-world, a certain analogy to the relationship between
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Air- and Earth-world is evident:
Fire
+ + +
-- -- -- Earth
Water --
+
-- + + + Air
This peculiarity is expressed clearly enough by the planets ruling the relative signs of the
Zodiac. Saturn, Venus and Mercury, which rule the Earth signs in their feminine polarity,
are in their masculine polarity the rulers of the Air signs.
--- Capricorn --- Taurus --- Virgo
Saturn Venus -- Mercury
+ Aquarius + Libra + Gemini
The same applies to Fire and Water; but Sun and Moon, who do not have a dual polarity,
appear only once.
Aries Sagittarius

+
Leo
+
Mars Sun Jupiter
--- Moon ---
Scorpio Cancer Pisces
This relationship can be viewed as similar to that which becomes visible as form clad in the
color of matter on the physical plane, but for this reason incomplete, in need of change; so
the desires and passions are also a sort of terrestrial coloring of that which represents----in the
realm of pure will----the actual archetype of all desires. As pure forms are merely im-
pressed in the material mold of the Earth-world and, therefore, appear only as a sort of
negative, so too are desires and passions merely a sort of emotional negative or impres-
sion in the realm of the female-modified soul-substance. Although the mold to which
forms appear bound in the material world obeys physical laws, forms stand beyond
these laws, obedient to intellectual laws. So, too, does the will stand in truth, appearing in
the soul-world within the dull twilight of desires and passions. Will resides beyond the
laws that govern the soul-realm. Will is directly subject only to moral law.
Desires and passions die being fulfilledwill is immortal. All desires and wishes are amoral
and unscrupulous-----emanations of the will, fallen into temporality and there rendered powerless.
This applies to good and evil wishes alike, for they are all dissected at fulfillments which
shall take place without interference and, therefore, without responsibility on our part. He
who doubts the amoral nature of such wishes may compare the expenditure of moral
energy of the millions of good morning and good evening wishers with the energy
expended by him who contributes of his own power to prepare a really good morning or
evening for his fellow-man.
The essential difference between wish and will lies in the fact that all wishes are turned
toward the past, for their content is aimed at redemption from a state of discontent, of pain
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and suffering, only without being able to apply ones own forces toward this redemption.
To wish means to experience oneself in the tragedy of the unavoidable without the power to
free oneself. All wishes are aimed at attaining temporary aimswill is timelesspointing to
an eternal future.
Will is always turned toward the future. It is the power borne by faith to withstand, for
eternitys sake, temptations and seductions (rising from the realm of the soul) which want to
chain it to passing, temporary, transitory fulfillments, as the form withstands matter. Only he
who can deny wishes knows what it means to will. He who can experience himself in this
energy turned against wishes, he alone has come close to the Fire-world in which sadness
and pain no longer exist, but only joy of life that is enlaced in victory even in death.
Therefore, Fire-man is a man of joy and is optimistic in all circumstances, as Water-man is a
man of pain, the pessimist. For when that man, whose actions are directed by his passions
and instincts, realizes what he has created out of such motives, he is filled with sadness upon
experiencing that he cannot at all agree with such activity. Everything we do that is dictated
by passion, even if it seems in that moment to spring from the very core of our being, will
afterwards appear in our memory like a sad defeat of our humanity. But whenever our
actions spring not from instinctive bondage but instead from conscious will, they are
accompanied by a feeling of pleasure. In this feeling, the joy of ones own confirmation in the
defense of human dignity against everything that would drag it down is forever renewed.
After this short description of the Fire-region in individual man, let us now sketch Fire-man
in general, again creating the fiction of a man who only wills, whose life represents solely the
spreading of his wills influence in every part of it. How is such a life spent, and how does it
make itself felt in the four regions of the physical, emotional, intellectual and moral?
The pure man-of-will who now stands before us feels himself constantly driven forward by
an inner force, appearing to him not as a compulsion but as a duty. His life is dominated by
the inner voice of imperatives. He either identifies himself with them or rebels against them,
demanding a higher imperative. In any case he feels himself to be commissioned by a
higher authority. We can now clearly understand the three modalities of the Fire quality in
this way: in the active Aries sign we will find a human type compelled by this inner imperative
to force the law of his will upon others, to become a pioneer of his own will; the fighter. The
fixed Fire sign, Leo, represents the quiet, independent power of a will conscious of its
unassailable being; the victor. The balancing Fire sign, Sagittarius, is the conqueror. What
creates a balance here is the endeavor to bring his own will into the direction of the
highest, supreme law, recognized as divine, and to sacrifice his own will to the higher: to
conquer himself.
Before we continue on to the separate signs of the Fire quality, let us sum up the essential
traits of Fire-man.
Not the realist, not the romantic, nor the philosopher or the artist confronts usit is the
idealist in the words true sense. He is the pioneer, the banner-bearer for a moral idea. It
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becomes his mission in life to make this idea accepted publicly and privately. The importance
of all other interests pales compared to the force of this demand. He is a man of enthusiasm
and joy, because he has no time for pain and suffering. All happiness lies in will, and the
affirmation of life contained directly in it. As every existence, comprehended in the roots of
its vitality, always presses forward, in every moment slipping from a dying past, eager for
resurrection toward an ever-new future, for Fire-man too, no past can bind him. An
ingenious modern musician (Ed Steuermann) has called all music music of the future,
since its content will never be realized in the present now, but always in the continuum.
So also can Fire-man be called man of the future, because he experiences every now as
pregnant with the following moment.
The relationship of Fire-man to the three lower regions is thus unequivocally defined.
The material world of reality becomes an area in which it is not important to realize a
practical goal, but to win acceptance for the law of will, not to stop at an attained goal, but
to regard each step as a kind of milestone, wherefrom one must continue ones way after a
short rest, forever farther without weakening. The ideal demand, no matter what its
temporary content, penetrates all activities of life. It places them under a ritual, sanctified
by personal legislation, wherein will, not always equally alert, continues evolving.
Regarding the region of passions, wishes and emotional upsets of all kinds, there is no
inclination to submit to them for any length of time. They exist to be either removed by a
quick solution of the tensions, like annoying bodily complaints, or to practice resistance
against them, growing morally by this resistance.
Regarding intellectual relations, the Fire-type is averse to complicated logical deliberations
or discussions, preferring to trust in his intuitive power, whose way resembles a kind of
mental short-cut. He is, therefore, especially inclined to have prejudices, which are hard to
shake by logical counter-arguments. Tertullians Credo, quia absurdum estI believe just
because it is absurdcould here be used as a motto.
He is mainly interested in sciences whose character is not objective, but distinctly dogmatic,
if not dictatorial; sciences that refer to duty: therefore, primarily practical life-philosophy,
eudaimonology, education, macrobiotics, calo-biotics, etc.
The greatest misfortune threatening Fire-man is to see himself shaken in the security of his
faith. The collapse of his ideals is the greatest catastrophe.
Fire-mans highest ideal in regard to morals is to attain freedom, which acknowledges only
one legislator above him: the law of conscience. The difference between the highly and the
less developed Fire-man thus essentially depends upon the moral rank of his conscience.
We will see later that the abyss between the two possible extremes is actually the deepest in
the Fire-categorythe abyss between good and evil.
A few words now about Fire-mans relationship to art. Optimism being his fundamental
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attitude in life, the main requirement and actually the measure of all artistic value, is that the
victory of joy over pain, of good over evil, shall be repeatedly experienced through the
work of art. Therefore, works of art created under the dominion of the Fire-principle are
without exception presentations of strife with the view of the final surmounting of all that
drags down, the realization of the power of the divine joy triumphant over dumb matter and
humiliating suffering, yea, even over all the chaos of opinions and ideas. This applies to all
the arts and even to artistic skills. Per aspera ad astra, or in the words of Schillers dying
Maid of Orleans, Short is the painjoy is eternal, could be a motto here.
To end this general characterization, a few words about Fire-mans erotic life. Its basic color
differs from what was said about Water- and Air-man in essential points. It approaches the
nature of Earth-man insofar as sensuality steps into the foreground here as well, in such a
way that it corresponds to the earthy one as the element Fire to the element Earth in general.
What thus appears as sensual pleasure in the Earth-sphere becomes the material symbol of
a divine happiness, which Schiller opposes to its terrestrial shadow-picture in the words,
Debauchery the worm enjoys,
And the cherub stands before God.
Through this standing-before-God, felt in the deepest core, sharing in the creative
intoxication of happiness that permeates the entire creation as the eternal highest
volitions voluptuousness, the otherwise animal sensuality is ennobled and sanctified as an
offering to Heaven. It becomes the divine ritual of two human beings union on Earth and
their united initiation into the work of creation, whose consecutive revelation includes himself
as witness of the holy arch-trinity of Father, Mother and Child.
What is most frequently conserved of this fundamental erotic attitude in everyday life as a
mere dark feeling is expressed in the mundane ceremony (probably grown in this soil) of
the so-called gallantry. In it is hidden the demand, felt differently in different eras, for
recognition of the sex-partners role as herald of the divine, thereby sanctified, to be
protected against all profanation, even the man himself.
We shall now speak of the individual Fire signs.
Aries, the active, masculine or cardinal modality of Fire, was reviewed at the beginning of
these lectures because of its special importance as the first sign of the Zodiac. But today we
are interested in the character of the human type represented by the pure Aries-radiation.
The vigor emanating from this radiation gives Aries-man the desire for absolute expansion of
his will-impulses. Throughout his life, he is in the power of an inner imperative, which
drives him to carry forward the law of his will, without looking to the left or the right, or
backwards; to over-run all obstacles to enforce this law on his opponent. But since this will
acknowledges no outward limit, not even the limit of anothers will, we find as Aries-mans
most important characteristic, his freedom from all consideration and respect for the nature
of these obstacles regardless of whether they are physical, intellectual or moral ones. Like
the battering ram, which the Romans called aries, he too attempts to ram his head
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through the wall, as the eminently fitting expression says. We thus find, in addition to a
characteristic lack of consideration and unscrupulousness in regard to the chosen direction,
the attribute of foolhardiness, which does not measure the obstacle before running against it.
If I were prudent, I would not be Tell.
~ Schiller, William Tell
That is to say, foolhardiness and lack of consideration are his traits. Every means is accepted
which can lead to the goal without demeaning compromises or detours. An essential difference
presents itself here from Capricorn-man, whose persistent force in the pursuit of a definite
intention also seeks to overcome all obstacles. But while Capricorn, with a diplomats art,
knows how to make all kinds of compromises because it seems most important to him to
realize his concrete goal, Aries-man is absolutely undiplomatic, for he is not at all concerned
with reaching a limited material goal that could put an end to his willing, but he is
concerned with the creation of an enduring law, which he alone may disavow.
It is now clear how much depends on the evolutionary level of Aries-man-----whether, equipped
with such unrestrained powers, he will go the way of salvation or of disaster.
For Aries too is concerned with preparing a way, as is Libra, the opposite Air sign. But,
while the latter creates the intellectual path through the power of deliberation before he acts,
Aries breaks through all obstacles like a battering ram, after having been directed not by
deliberation but by intuition in which he blindly trusts. Here the difference between the
lower and higher developed Aries shows itself in the manner in which he clings to this
direction regardless of all hindrance. The highly developed type obeys a moral imperative
that endows him with the power of a leader, because it conveys to him, with the indestructible
faith in the moral power of his ideal, the gift to see a road unforeseen by anyone else. It even
enables him to transmit this gift to others. Thus he may perform the miracle, like Moses who
led his people through the sea with dry feet and the waters were a wall unto them on their
right hand, and on their left (Exodus 14:22).
It is this faith that gives him not only the lan, which sweeps away everybody, but also the
courage to pursue the chosen road without wavering or hesitation, even sacrificing his life
and asking the same of those who have joined him. Cowardice, or even lukewarmness or
indifference, are serious trespasses.
The image of the hero thus arises before us, who stood in high esteem throughout the ages,
especially with the Romans and Greeksthe hero, the conqueror, the liberator.
Confronting this type of highly developed with the lower Aries-type, we find a man with
similar heroic attributes. He too is courageous; he too has the ability of the sweeping lan of
his will; he is also ready to risk his life. But the imperative he follows has no moral power, is
not filled with an intuition supported by faith in an ideal. The road he creates is destined to
bring satisfaction to only himself. This road is, therefore, characterized by accompanying
phenomena, which cannot belong under any circumstances to the attributes of a person of
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high morality. We have before us not the leader, but the mis-leader, not the hero, but the
criminal who justifies every means to enable his will to prevail, even at the price of every
ethical value. Lies, calumnies, abuse of confidence, treason, unscrupulousness, cruelty, coldness,
indifference toward others, and above all, irresponsibility, in the widest sense of the word,
enable him to walk over corpses, in every sense of this expression.
And yet, in some cases, it is difficult to distinguish between the higher and the lower Aries-
type! Just as the fool and the sage have, often enough, not been recognized in their true
values. Hero or criminal? Leader or erring fanatic? History is full of examples of people,
later admired as heroes, who were considered criminals by their contemporaries. For the
hero too must be hard. He who wants to seek a new road for humanitys salvation is not
merely to make sacrifices, but he must also demand sacrifices.
To bring light into this question, let us start once more from the organ in the human body
that corresponds to the Aries radiation. It is the head of man, that part of the human figure
that is turned directly skyward, above. The skull, the upper end of the spine, formed in a
capsule (caput), houses the brain; all the orders of the Self are transmitted from here to the
bodys other organs on the secret ducts of the nervous system. But the capsule of the skull is
not entirely closed; it possesses windows, so to speak, for the organs destined to receive light
and sound. Messages reach us through these windows, bringing knowledge from an outside,
at the same time presenting this outside in language familiar to us, that of our inside, so
that this outside loses its strangeness, that the world outside is at the same time outside and
within ourselves. Here is not the place to look closer at the mystery of perception through
the senses, or even unravel the entire problem of perception.
If somehow through our sense organs the images of an outside reach us in forms that are
understandable to us because they correspond to our being, these pictures are nevertheless
not created in ourselves. This presents us with a strange idea when we try to translate these
hints into the esoteric. Would it seem unthinkable that the skull, this upper end of the spine
on its highest pointvertexmight contain a window invisible to our senses through which
the radiation of the above, of the entire starry skythe region of freedom (General
Foundation, Fourth Lecture)radiated into him, brought to him the message in a
language akin and understandable to his Self, from the great universal willthe will of
God? Would he then be the highest developed Aries-man who knows how to keep this
window open, to humbly submit his will to that of God, which echoes in his
conscienceas the light in the sun-like eye, that may remember the divine power
in himself, which he used to call his will.
We have not spoken of mere phantasms. Since ancient times the opening in the crown of
the head, the so-called great fontanella, was supposed to be the place of a conscious organ
(the Indians called it Sahasrara Chakrathe thousand petal lotus) that is represented on the
head of the Buddha like a crown.
It is such a crown, the crown of human dignity, which predestinates man to the ruler on
Earth. The cranium, as the old Romans called the skull, thus becomes the place of that
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royal crown of man who humbles himself before the highest will, sacrificing his own.
Only through such sacrifice can Aries or the head-man become head of mankind, bringing
Gods commands to them, an interpreter of the highest God, his law-giver.
Is it now necessary to speak of the characteristics of the lower developed Aries-type?
He too may wear a crown, but only one artificially made, which he wantonly puts on his
head, insolently showing a bold front to the stars.
Mars serves as the planetary power transmitter of the Aries radiation in its positive polarity.
In it rests the power of decision, of resolution, to which is reserved the power to open a lock
or to smash it.
6
Only through such power is it possible to break through the circle of necessity
for the sake of turning toward freedom. In confronting the two polarities, Mars, as lord of
Aries and of Scorpio, the already known contrast of the energies of will and wish is repeated,
of the sword still sheathed and the drawn sword as symbol for the arrived at decision.
We now turn to the sign of Leo, the fixed or Tamas modality of the Fire quality.
The willpower accumulates and matures to the highest degree of concentration in this sign,
and increases to the highest potency of Self-consciousness, as conscious will to live, which
affirms itself in this will to live. This affirmation of oneself is to be understood not as
physical, emotional or mental, but as a most immediate and timeless feeling of life, of the
ever-present existence, rooted in the Self. I am that I am COULD BE THE EXPRESSION
of such Self-affirming life-awareness. To understand this, we will start with the planet that
transmits the power of the Leo radiation, and further, as we expounded earlier, the real
mediator between primary fixed-star and secondary solar-Zodiacthe Sun itself, the center
of the solar cosmos.
The Sun is termed planet in the astrological sense because, viewed geocentrically, it
seems to circle between the fixed stars. It is the largest and most important among the
planets, and also, in its present form, the common arch-parent of all the other planets,
source of all planetary life, giver of light and warmth, dispatcher of all the other so-called
actinic energies. [Translators note: Actinisn -- actinic is the property of radiant energy found
especially in the shorter wave-lengths of the spectrum by which chemical changes are produced,
as in light-sensitive photographic emulsions.]
Let us try to grasp esoterically what we receive from the Sun; it becomes the direct symbol
of Self-revelation, as it corresponds to the heliotic core of planet Earth, its inner Earth-fire.
But also what we term light and warmth gains a special importance esoterically. Lightthe
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6

At this point, there is an untranslatable play on words in the German original. Reluctantly, this had to be omitted from
this version.
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AUR of the Biblewhich, created on the first day of creation, stands at the beginning of all
world-revelation, and is simultaneously the basic condition for all revelation. It is the polarity
opposite to darkness of the arch-oscillation, whose opposing phases correspond to each
other as day and night, as revealed and un-revealed secret existence (See General Foundation,
Fifth Lecture).
And God divided the light from the darkness.
And God called the light day,
And the darkness He called night.
~ Genesis 1:4-5
The word AUR reveals more than the mere fact of bring in the light. It reaches farbeyond
everything that is usually exoterically understood by light. Revealing a flash of light, the
three letters of this archaic term indicate a trinity parallel to the trinity of the act of revelation
of the oneness itself, here represented in a special meaning. A, the first letter of the alpha-
betalephindicates the starting point of revelation: being = arch-being; R, -resh caput,
head: being perceived consciously; V waf nail, needle indicates the junction of conscious-
ness and being in the act of the Self-comprehension of being. It is this threefold act of the
coruscation of Self-revelation, which separates the arch-light from darkness. This light
simultaneously shines within and outside. Only in this light, the outside becomes recognizable
as being within at the same time. In AUR lies the possibility of all sensual perception; that
is, the becoming aware of something outside of us, which can be simultaneously found
within ourselves: the mystery of world-revelation. Therefore, the syllable AUR forms
the common linguistic root that the senses bring to us from afar.
Is it not strange that, for example, the ancient Greeks used the same word, which in German
means hren (hear) for sehen (see); the German hren corresponds to the Greek
horn, which means to seeboth expressions formed from the root aur. Further, in
Latin: aura, aurora, forms of light, but auris, the ear. In Greek, ops, the voice, and
optikon, the light-like, etc. In Persia: Ahura Mazda, Ormuzd, the great solar being, indicates
that power flowing through the Sun to Earth, which is not light in the physical sense, but
revelation of the arch-light, clearness, consciously experienced, in which only the world and
the Sun become visible as celestial bodies. The World as Appearance reflects that which
lives within us as clarity of consciousness.
It is interesting that the Platonists and Epicureans framed the concept of the act of seeing
within such a basic view, attributing outer and inner light to the same root. The eye emits
rays, which meet rays emitted by the objects, and afterwards return to the eye with the
impression of these objects (Landeis: Compendium of Physiology).
Let us try to become intensely and vividly conscious of this being-immersed-within-the-radiation-
of-the-arch-light; we can then comprehend the essence of the Leo-radiation, the Tamas
modality of Fire.
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Esoterically perceived, warmth also attains its special importance. If in light we felt the
extensiveness of world-revelation, we experience in warmth the intensity of our partnership
in the revelation, or the participation of our Self in the fact of universal life.
Let us attempt to clarify this fact by means of a picture taken from the exoteric way of
observing nature. Physically, warmth is the universal storage room of all the worlds active
energies. From this storage room incessantly flow masses of energy in all directions, ready to
change and to return again after reverberation. They flow to every part of the cosmos,
swirling around them, to keep them together, warming and nourishing them, as if by the
glow of a love that embraces everything with the same tenderness. But, if we could follow
the course of this radiation with cosmic-trained eyes, if we could especially watch how it is
received by living organisms, then we would observe something strange.
According to the teachings of physiology, the outside of the process of organic life represents
itself as a kind of slow burning of the material life substratum, the chemical ingredients of
the cell-bodies, whose outward recognizable combustion-index forms the life-warmth.
But, if we could watch this slow burning process of the organic substances with a kind of
cinematographic fast-motion-apparatus, then we could see, instead of each living being, a
small blazing little flame in which is repeated in miniature the biblical miracle of the burning
bushthe miracle that in this fire the living form is not destroyed but, on the contrary, is
revealed in its true nature only by this flame. If we could then watch this same process, not
with a quick-timed apparatus but with a slow-motion lens that could greatly surpass that
which we see in motion pictures, then we would no longer be witnessing an optic event, but
we would sense the now extremely slowed vibrations of warmth as sounds, and lastly as
numbers.
All the colors of these flames, from darkest red to brightest white and the peculiarities of all
the tones from the lowest to the highest, all degrees of temperature from coldest ice to the
highest degree of heat, are evidence of the immense scale of the different intensities of
vitality in the incomprehensibly mighty life-symphony of the universe, whose transmitter is
the Sun, according to Goethes words:
The Sun intones, in ancient tourney,
With brother-spheres, a rival song
~ Goethe, Faust
In this world-symphony, you and I are small Solar-flames with our own light, warmth and
sound, illuminated by the universal light and immersed in it, participating in the AUR.
This had to be premised to make clear what swings in the immediate Self-affirming life-
experience, and what constitutes the disposition of those people who embody the pure Leo-
radiation.
We will now try to briefly sketch the main characteristics of the pure Leo-type. First of all, he
possesses the very strong, absolutely optimistic vitality, which we may almost term elementary,
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and with Leos Tamas-nature, reaches such a high degree that it is reflected in his environment
as much as the magic power of Scorpios desire-nature. Leo too likes to surround himself
with people on whom he may reflect his enjoyment of life and love. But Leos relationship
to his environment is essentially different than that of Water-man, who is to a high degree,
even absolutely, dependent upon his environment. For Cancer-man, his surroundings offer
a kind of emotional protection, for Scorpio the ever-indispensable soul-nourishment, and
for Pisces, the substitute for the lack of an inner power of direction. In contrast is Leos inner
independence. He really does not need his environment, although he loves it, because he
gives to it from his enjoyment of life, and what he gives is reflected back to him so that he
suns himself in it as the reflection of his own vitality. To live and let live is his motto.
Herein lies a certain similarity to the mirror-process we encountered with Scorpio, with the
distinction that Leo always remains emotionally independent from others.
Herefrom results a strong feeling of his own worth. Its consequences are a higher degree of
self-assurance and a feeling of self-importance. Added to this something that is usually
termed pride, but this pride does not stem from the idea of being unique, as with Aquarius.
Pride is not actually an attribute of Leo, but is formed in the judgment of his environment,
as a mental reaction with which people around him acknowledge Leos distinctly felt inner
independence. The inner cheerfulness and the bright and lively basic color of Leos entire
attitude toward life is linked with the fact that, from his early days on, his life tactic is aimed
at keeping everything that could interfere with his comfort and enjoyment of life at a
distance, avoiding such interference wherever possible. Most of all, he seeks to evade
suffering and anguish, even avoids participating in other peoples sorrows through compassion.
As Cancer avoids any environment where he expects to meet no sympathy, thus Leo avoids
the company of sad or depressed people; out of a feeling of discomfort caused by the
presence of such people, Leo tries to interfere immediately in a helpful way. This is not
done, as Pisces would do it, out of compassion, but is done for the sake of preserving his
own cheerfulness. Leo dislikes seeing anybody suffer, and he himself flees any kind of
suffering. In connection with this is the fact that he is not a psychologist probing the depths
and abysses of the soul. He is foreign to all those emotional problems that torment Water-
man. He is not a knower of human nature who considers as essential basis for judging
people the conflicts which rage within the soul of man, partially known, partially subconscious,
before he finally musters the courage to act. According to his Fire-nature, Leo considers
important for judging others only the end-results of such inner conflicts. He can predict it
with surprising accuracy, because he sees primarily in the other man, the man who wills. He
feels that in the end, all decisions depend only upon the ethical power of this will. Leo is not
inclined to be interested in others emotional and mental conflicts, which he overlooks with
lenient humor.
He is also no ponderer or punctilious person, nor is he a man of moods. He is, therefore,
quite independent of the momentary variations of the barometer of the soul. Compared
with Water-mans usual moodiness, his mood appears to his environment to be one of
pleasant salutary equanimity. Together with his own independence from others and their
judgments, his equanimity bestows a strong moral superiority upon him. Indifference to
others criticism makes him fearless, courageous and magnanimous.
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Like Cancer, Leo does not like failure, but to him it is not the catastrophe that it is for
Cancer. He passes over it with the same benevolent humor with which he regards anyone
elses failure.
Here it is important to explore the difference between the lower and the higher developed
Leo-type. The differences in this case appear outwardly, just because they are rooted in
mans morals, as if the less developed Leo-type were a sort of moral diminutive of the higher
developed, or a kind of dwarf-Leo, as the cat may appear as the miniature image of the great
lion: Leo-man, whose moral growth has been retarded, whose attributes, although intended
for greatness, have been sentenced to crippling as in the little cat. Starting with this thought,
it will not be difficult to characterize the lower developed Leo-type.
Exuberant joy of life, self-affirmation, the inclination to avoid the dark and the ugly are now
changed into inordinate desire for enjoyment, a hunt for pleasures together with the inclination
to shun the unpleasant consequences of his own actionswantonness in all affairs of life.
Regarding his relationships, the comparison with the cat may be of service. The cat, like the
lion, is a regal animal. It does not care for men by whom it is pleased to be stroked or
petted; it can consume great quantities of others affection and kindness without feeling
obliged to gratitude. When it has had enough, it stretches and simply leaves, as if wanting to
show man all its royal scorn for such low testimonies of esteem. Thus too is the lower Leo-
type. He likes offered love, of which he only accepts that which flatters his self-esteem. He
too then leaves without gratitude. This is especially evident in the erotic region, where the
inclination exists to not only forget his partner unscrupulously, after he has done his duty as
an object of pleasure, but even to despise his partner.
Disposition for derision and disparagement of that which lies beyond his understanding all
too frequently hide Leos unconfessed fear of having to face his own inferiority.
What we have understood as an aversion to lowering himself to the depths of emotional and
mental conflicts also becomes evident in the under-developed Leo-type as a caricature, in a
style of life, which we can best call frivolity and irresponsibility. Since here the great verve
of the life lan is missing, this frivolity, together with the other already mentioned peculiarities
of the Leo-nature turned petty, will unite in the not very pleasant picture of a Philistine of life
enjoyment. We find with this type of the undeveloped Leo the attributes of self-complacency,
self-satisfaction, and the inclination to belittle the deeper natures living in all kinds of
conflicts, making fun of them with ironical pity.
It is different with the higher developed Leo-man. What we have perceived up to now as
attributes of the fixed Fire sign attains a different importance on his level. Pride becomes the
feeling of human dignity. Leo regards others emotional struggles, which he cannot imitate
in his own soul, with a sense of his superiority that becomes a kind of indulgent humorous
view of others struggles, less happily endowed in their emotional constitution than he, as if
the other lacks something that Leo would be pleased to give him. He would like to make all
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these people happy, to impart his own Sun-nature to them. The frivolity of the lower Leo-
type becomes, for higher Leo, an insight teaching him to perceive that man, in his emotional
life exclusively occupied with passions and their control, must be redeemed. He must be
helped to find a way out of the enthrallment of his will, caused by the inordinate supremacy
of his sensuality, by instilling into him the ideal of the true, self-affirming joy of life. He thus
becomes a comforter of his fellow-men. We can say that an influence emanates from him,
causing people near him to forget their trouble, always lifted by his exuberant vital energy
as by the power of the warming, shining rays of the Sun.
Optimism too attains a special meaning in this connection. We may perhaps best call it a
kind of more or less conscious trust in God, which has become a part of his system. The
higher Leo-man lives absolutely in the feeling that everything must turn out for the best in
the end, and that the final victory of good over evil is an immutable world law. If this life-
doctrine could be incorporated into a philosophical system, we would find a philosophy
uniting Stoicism with Epicureanism. From Stoicism, Leo would take the axiom to never take
lifes external events for something that could touch our true Self, in either good or in bad
fortune; from Epicureanism, a belief in the worth of joy in contrast to Stoicism, which scorns
the exterior world even with its joys.
We have called Leo the sign of the victor. Both the high and low Leo-types sun themselves
in the consciousness of power, derived from victory. This may explain why he thinks so
highly of power in his life; power impresses him. He cares not for softness, thus little promise
of success is to be expected by appealing to his sentimentality, but much can be gained
when Leo is approached with respect for his power consciousness, thus flattering him.
Let us return to the highly developed Leo-type. Let us ask ourselves what his true human
mission is, by which he justifies his high development. It seems best to start from the organ
corresponding to the Leo radiation in the human bodythe heart.
As the Sun is the center of our entire planetary system, so the heart is the organic-life-center
of the body. From here flow the streams of blood to all the organs, including the heart. The
human body lives as long as his heart beats. The permanent stoppage of the heart means
physical death. All vital power thus emanates from the heart. It has always been felt as the
true seat of the will-to-live, the organic will to live, and of vital power.
Repeated in the rhythm of the pulse is the arch-law of all biological development. It is the
vibration, organically transformed, upon which is based the threefold oneness of that act of
revelation, as its third manifestationthe AUR. In reference to this, the great artery that
sends the blood in many branches to the body was named by the ancients, AOR-TA.
This contemplation leads us back again to the symbol of the Sun, in which may be found a
direct relation to the heart. We understand the circle with the central point as the starting
point of revelation (See General Foundation, Fifth Lecture).
When we view the empty circle as the ovum awakening to life, then this central point
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signifies the first appearance of the germ of the heart, in the form of a pulsating, hopping small
point, which Aristotle called the springing pointpunctum saliens. It is the corporeal
correspondence of the great all-reuniting world respiration, or of that principle which causes
the millions of cells united in the human body to retain the unison holding them together, as
part-unit joined with millions of such part-units to the next higher organisms (See General
Foundation, First Lecture).
Within the human body, the heart thus becomes a kind of governor or viceroy of the
organic life in the body as the Sun is king among the planets. For this reason, the ancients
called this organ: cor koiranos kyrios Cherr Herr Herz heart.
Now we can understand what may be the meaning of this royal dignity, which makes the
sign of Leo the royal sign par excellence (kat exochn), the representative of the highest
human eminence. To be the guardian of this dignity is the true task of the evolved Leo-man.
He must realize with responsible consciousness that the possibility of mankinds higher
development depends on the preservation of mans dignity, as whose guardian he is chosen.
If Schiller said of the artist,
Into your hands the dignity of man is given,
he says, in a different place (Maid of Orleans),
Together should the kinds and poets stride,
On mankinds summit do they both abide!
It is majestic mans deepest ingrained law never to descend below the once-reached level.
He always morally reinforces his environment through his own example, not commanding
nor consulting, by the magic power instilled in him, by his consciousness of nobility as an
I by Gods grace. It would seem like treason to those around him, should they feel them-
selves unworthy of him.
We now turn to Sagittarius, the balancing modality of the Fire-quality. Here the ever-rigid,
unlimited, expansive, pugnacious will-power is balanced with the self-supporting,
concentrated, self-conscious victorious power of a self-affirming vitality.
To understand what happens by such equalization, we must remember its effects upon the
other Sattwa signs. In the region of the Earth quality, the meaning of this balance is the
demand for the greatest possible utilization, reached with the least effort. The demand to
eliminate everything superfluous or harmful led to the application of this economical maxim
to the thought process; thus, Earth-man arrived through a well-organized treasury of experience
at those sciences which attempted to glean from nature the laws which should render mans
labor fruitful.
In the region of Water or the soul, the demand for balance was concerned with the two
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polarities of emotional life, represented in the Cancer- and Scorpio-natures. It is the demand
for acquisition of an emotional center of gravity, which alone can ward off the danger of a
formless deliquescent mediality. The power of limitless pity won through the mediality is
made salutary by it.
In the Air region, we saw two contrasts struggling for predominance. In their incompatibility,
they created doubt as a heavenly and earthly inheritance of human nature. It was the
meaning of this doubt to lead as redemption from all mental insecurity and discord into
antithesis of all kinds to the attainment of an airy center of gravityto faith. All truly
intellectual perception receives its definite direction by faith alone.
Conditions are similar in the realm of Fire. If, in the highest region of human existence,
where the ego-function of man is directly experienced, a balance shall take place between
the two polarities of expansion of, and concentrated, will (Aries and Leo); it can only be
done through a law bridling will itselfa law given by will itself. This can only be an ethical
law, aimed at obtaining an ethical center of gravity. Where is it?
Let us make clear again, as we showed at the start of todays probings, that will is that region
of our being, which is at present least known consciously. For this reason, will is often
confused with our desire-and-wish-life. Therefore, will must first be cleansed from the residues
of this life of instincts and passions. Pure will must be separated from whatunder the
deceptive semblance of being our moral willis in truth merely our misled wanting,
caught by an excessive urge, slipped from the dominion of our morals, or not even mature
enough for it. Thus arises, within the moral nature of our being, a conflict similar to that in
our intellectual nature. Intellectual doubt finds its reflection in moral doubt. It is the function
of the Sagittarius-radiation to dissolve this doubt; to penetrate the wishing, falsified by our
urges, with pure will, freed from low desires.
To enter deeper into this problem, we will start from the symbol for Sagittarius. We see here
the picture of a being showing, similar to that of Gemini, two united figures representing
actually only onedivided man. But while the two figures of Gemini were placed side by
side, the two figures in Sagittarius are placed one above the other. This indicates that instead
of the coordination of the two contrasts fighting each other in Gemini, one of the powers has
already been victorious in Sagittarius.
This strange double-being, representing the sign of Sagittarius, is the figure of the centauros:
below--animal, above--God. In this Gods hand, we see the drawn bow with the arrow
ready to be shot. The Centaur was named, for this reason, Sagittarius, the archer.
The significance of the contrast between animal and God is clearboth figures indicate the
mans earthly and heavenly ancestors, the animal and the divine level between whom is
placed the present evolution stage of God-embryo-man. But what do bow and arrow signify?
Let us consider what happens when the arrow is shot from the drawn bow. The drawn bow
is a symbol for that which, in physical nature observation, the potential energy owns, the
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accumulated power in that moment when it is about to discharge; the shot arrow is the
symbol of the energy in statu nascendi, brought into the world by the shooting. What
happens here is actually similar to an act of birth. In this sense, Artemis, the goddess of
birth, was given bow and arrow by the ancient Greeks, as symbol of natura naturans, the
eternally ready-to-breed nature, which the Greeks for the same reason called physisthe
bubble tensed to burst. Is it then surprising that the Sun-god Apollo carries bow and arrow
alsothe genius of the Sun, whose rays constantly hit the Earth like shot arrows, full of vital,
newly born energies!
The shot arrow thus becomes the symbol for the change of potential into kinetic energy.
But! The figure of the centaur tells us more about this changefor the shot arrows do not
leave the bow blindly, not under the compulsion of a nescient crude necessity. They are
aimed at a goal--not blind necessity; it is the archer who shoots them, mindful of the aim.
The change thus effected is not merely a physical changebut an alchemistic change, the
change from the lower into the higherof the animal into the god. To make this possible,
there must be a standard by which to identify, beyond any doubt, the high and the low, or
the direction upwards.
The part of the human body representing the Sagittarius radiationthe hipexplains clearly
what is meant by this demand for alchemistic change. The hips are those parts of our body
by which we rise, whereby mans erect posture occurs, and distinguishing man from
the animal.
While other beasts, heads bent, stared at wild earth,
The new creation, man, gazed into blue sky
And learned to raise his face unto the stars.
~ Ovid, Metamorphoses I
But this outward perpendicularity of the body is only (symbolically expressed in the physical
human appearance) the inner ascension in the direction from below to above: from animal
to man. This ascension must be struggled for, wrested from the animal, which must be
conquered and extinguished, that from it the higher human level may be born.
Let us stay awhile with the picture of the centaur; does it not resemble the picture of a rider
in complete mastery of his mount, so that it has absorbed his will into its instinctive life, not
knowing that it is the will of the higher which it obeys, but surmising it, and by it becomes
one with the riderhis chosen tool?
Now we understand: as the animal, guided by mans will, has initially accepted this will as
an uncomprehended instinct, thus becoming mans willing tool, so man himself becomes
the tool of the higher when he absorbs his will, which gives him the directing power toward
the above, carrying him upward beyond himself, towards God.
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As the mount unconsciously changes mans will into instinct, so man ought to accept the
command of the higher will. He then perceives that his gain, from conquering the animal in
him, resembles a trophy of victory, which he is now allowed to take home as the law now
defining his moral center of gravity: the moral law above methe other, the esoteric side, of
natural law (See General Foundation, Second Lecture).
This moral law is of a different kind than in the sign of Virgo, which referred in its essence
to the social order or relationship between people. The law at work here does not order
human relationships but orders the immersion of human will in a higher world, by which it
changes from a social to a religious law. Man, posed in the radiation of Sagittarius, does not
act according to a principle recognized as suitable in the sense of social economy, but out of
a sense of unity with the divine will felt in his innermost core.
What thus presents itself to human perception does not exist like scientifically conceived
law, but like an impulse from higher worlds. The resulting moral imperative we may now
term the religious intuition of Sagittarius, which bestows upon him the peculiar special dignity
of this sign: not only to know of the goalthat is, to recognize himself as responsible link
between natural instinct and its metamorphosis into human willbut also as protector, as
patron
7
of all those not as developed as himself.
If we must describe Sagittarius mission in a few words, it cannot be done better than by the
27th stanza of Lao-Tzu, defining the divine-human order in these words:
The higher man is lower mans master,
The low mantool of the higher one.
Reverence to the master, love to the tool:
That is the rule of the world.
Reverence for the above and love for the below are the two alchemistic fundamental
principles of higher development.
The characteristic of both higher and lower Sagittarius-types can be easily deduced from
here, as we find them in life. Let us keep in mind: all those who represent the pure
Sagittarius-radiation have their share in religious intuition. But the way that the individual
uses this gift creates the essential differences here. They can be traced back to the non-
recognition of the directing powers of reverence and love. Thus, the most evident trait of
the lower Sagittarius character emerges: moral arrogance. The lower Sagittarius-type is
convinced that in all ethical matters he is right. This circumstance makes him themostly
unwelcomeumpire in all kinds of dissent. He is seen judging others mistakes unsparingly,
and with a surprising abundance of zeal, while on the other side he is filled with an
________________________________________________________________________________________________________
7
Translators note: There is a double meaning in these words in the original, a relationship between Schtzel/Sagittarius
and Schtzer, Schtzherr, which was translated with patron.
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unusual enthusiastic readiness for reverence of everything in which he sees perfection. In
both cases, he is confident of his infallible intuition, and he is of an unbending intolerance
and hardiness.
In such soil grow those fanatical religious zealots who are wanting in love (as perhaps
Ibsens Brand). For the sake of the ethical principle they sacrifice its true content. The lower
Sagittarius-type never doubts his right to give others the moral law, or at least to preach it to me.
Since the severity toward others is not permitted to stop before his own person, a strange
variety of the Sagittarius-type often originates here; their representatives become the pitiless
agents of the ethical law, whose sense they do not comprehend. Instead of maturing to
freedom through this law, they are continuously abased as slaves of their own maxims.
Such people start to live according to the principles they preach to othersthey do not
receive the ethical laws of their conduct at first handthey become sticklers for their
principles, to whom immediate ethical intuition has been lost. Perhaps it is the most
essential characteristic of such people that they seek a substitute for the lost power of
religious intuition by clinging to that which corresponds in practical life to the ritual of
religious serviceto ceremony in the widest meaning of the word. They become formal
people who especially care about keeping of the strict, accepted pattern of social behavior.
The lower Sagittarius-type adheres to ritual and ceremony, which must serve as substitute
for the inner moral direction he no longer feels clearly.
In the mental realm, this fact is reflected in a similar metamorphosis. It causes superstition to
emerge from the forces of faith of the higher Sagittarius-type. This superstition permeates all
performances of daily life. He cannot live without it, because it must substitute for higher
Sagittarius faith.
Characteristic of both Sagittarius types is the demand for a law supporting the order of
precedence, in which the idea of moral classification seems to be guaranteed. As the plant
is above the mineral and the animal above the planet, and man above all lower realms
(which he unites within himself), so the moral quality in man must rule over the body, over
all emotions of the soul, and even over his thoughts, as highest judge. Thus, the discipline of
the body as constant practice, known and highly esteemed today as sport, would be as
important as the curbing of passions and of thought. The truth of thought must be brought
before the forum of ethical conscience, as last touch-stone. Only that can be true which does
not contradict ethical principles.
It is not necessary to delineate the high-developed Sagittarius-man with the same minuteness
of detail. Through his life and actions, in matters of greatest as well as of lessor importance,
that ceremony is established and continuously supported in this worldnot as mere form,
but as a living powerwhich shows, like the great figure of man, the road up from below,
according to the motto of Lao-Tzu. Reverence before that recognized as superior, and love
for the tool form the quintessence of all true religiosity. The higher Sagittarius-man is borne by
it, and he bears it to others everywhere. It enables him to be not only priest but also
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prophet, because he already anticipates (looking into that truly hierarchic order in his
imagination, impregnated by faith) what must be done for all included in this order. He
thus receives his actual mission: the gift and the duty to impart his inner impulse to others;
to let its power flow into their souls like a healing, strengthening fluidto say it in one
word: the gift and the duty to bless and thereby to accomplish what only the conqueror
is able to do.
The planet that transmits the Sagittarius radiation is Jupiter who also rules the sign of Pisces.
Without anticipating the contents of the next sequence, we may briefly sketch here that this
planet, in ancient times called the name of their highest god, the father of gods and
mankind, transmits to man, in his struggle to rise, the powers of blessing that come from
above. While this power to bless grows in the sign of Pisces from a sort of acquittal of the
past, it flows in the sign of Sagittarius from the ideal of the future development stage,
which lovingly offers its helping hand from above to everyone ready to grasp it in faith,
and with reverence.
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Seventh Lecture
For everything must fall apart
Trying to retain its form
~ Goethe
We have now brought our studies of the general characteristic of the twelve Zodiac segments
to a preliminary close, having made somewhat of a spectral analysis of the Suns radiation
circle described in its yearly wandering through the ecliptic. This spectral analysis taught us
to understand the special way in which each of the twelve segments relates to the human
being in general. As yet, nothing could be said about the way the individual absorbs and
unites these most diversified radiations, since the particular manner in which this occurs
depends on the individual mixture. This mixture is defined not only by the position of the
Zodiac relative to the birthplace horizon at the moment of birth, but also by the planetary
distribution in the separate parts of the celestial spectrum. This planetary distribution determines
the particular manner in which the total celestial radiation flows to the single individual in
that moment. Although the explanation given so far of the characteristics of the Zodiac
radiation does not allow any conclusions applicable to the individuality of any one person
since, viewed from the Zodiac perspective, the single individual is still imperceptiblethe
structure of the human species in general becomes discernible therefrom. It offers us insight
into a sphere that, just because it is so comprehensive, reaches far beyond the individuals
nature and fate; it is concerned with all of humanity, and forms the basis of a general
evaluation of human nature and the possibilities of its development.
We might even presuppose, from our insight into the structure of the Zodiac thus far reached
(See General Foundation), in which lies not only the archetype of man but also the conditions
for his development, the cosmic law of human development. In the twelve sectors of the
Zodiac, we see the sources of twelve evolutionary impulses that flow to mankind in successive
historical epochs, received according to humanitys degree of maturity. In their succession,
these impulses follow a rhythm whose intelligence has unimpeachable validity, like the law
that rules the sequence of day and night, or of the seasons.
If it were possible to formulate this law, we would gain an insight into humanitys entire
history, and we would learn to comprehend the directive powers that it obeys. The history
of mankind would unveil a meaning to us that would make what is usually called history
appear in an entirely different light, uncovering the cosmic background for historical necessities,
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as the Zodiac uncovers the basic lines of human nature. In its essence, historical science is a
chronicle of the past. According to Schopenhauer, it occupies the lowest rank of all branches
of science, because it must even learn from every new commonplace day what, up until
then, it did not know. Even the keenest knowledge of history does not permit a conclusion
to be drawn from today for tomorrow.
Today we will attempt to gain an insight into the moving powers of human history, aided by
the axiom of the Zodiacal structure. For this purpose, it is necessary to form a different idea
of the essence of what is generally understood by history, as taught by exoteric research.
We must replace the exoteric historical concept with its esoteric counterpart.
All esoteric etiology of the essence of human history in general starts from an assumption,
appearing like an axiom, which has slipped unnoticed into the ideas of exoteric research. It
is the assumption that humanity must be viewed as a whole, as an existent, living entity, not
merely as a generic notion set logically over the single individual, but as a sort of gigantic
organism that has its own development, as does the single person.
We have spoken at length about the esoteric side of this conception in the first two lectures
of the General Foundation. In the following two lectures, we expounded upon the esoteric
side of the idea of evolution. Now it seems important for todays subject to cast a glance at
the role the idea of evolution played in the exoteric thinking of the Western world.
It is hardly more than a hundred and eighty years since this thought began to gain recognition
in the form of hypotheses, which were debatable, and are still to this very day, debatable.
Thus the question has remained unanswered, if we were allowed to speak of mankinds
evolution.
Certainly, the idea of evolution itself is very old. But it has always been applied only to the
individual being. It was seen that from the seed the plant germinated, that the egg became a
chicken, man being born, growing, maturing, attaining full vigor, was aging and finally dying.
But the endeavor to carry the idea of evolution further, to apply it to the species and to
reach thereby, surpassing the individual, a kind of super-individual being, as for example,
the species fir or oak, chicken or horse, or in further generalization, mammals or birds, and
ensuing the species of manmankind, and to seek the laws for this extended evolution,
which would cover much longer epochs; this endeavor started only about the middle of the
eighteenth century. Until then nobody thought that individual development could ever
surpass the established limits for a certain species, or even if that exception happened in a
single case, that it could impact the species itself.
The idea of the invariability of the species, as propounded by Linnaeus or Buffon, was
actually a scientific dogma.
Then an idea suddenly struck in the midst of the dogma of the immutability of the species,
which existed from the beginning. It was a thought directly opposed to this dogma; the
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concept that the species also underwent a constant development. The single individuals
forming this species are included in it in such a manner that the evolutionary impulses do
not primarily reach the individual, but the species.
When Swedenborg, as the first person who voiced the idea of a cosmic evolution of our
planetary system from arch-nebulae (which was propounded again by Laplace and Kant),
the view developedespecially in France through Lamarckthat the separate living forms
of the organic world were not firm, but were in a state of steadily progressive change. The
so-called theory of descendents originates here in its various forms. The novelty of all these
doctrines appears in the application of the theory of evolution to the human species, to
mankind as an organism. The fiction of a metaphysical person called mankind is thus
created. In its body, individual man is incorporated as an organ in his own body. This
mankind-organism was seen rising over immense periods of time on a scale of many rungs,
which began deep down in the realm of one-cell organisms, and whose end is not to be
foreseen. It was inevitable that doubts opposed this tremendous idea of an evolutionary rise
of the human race, but mostly with the right to talk of mankind as a living form of a higher
order. Moreover, the question regarding individual mans share in the totality of mankind
life remained unanswered. What does the individual contribute to this evolution? Do the
driving forces of evolution flow from the individual to the total-body of humanity? Or in
reverse, the evolutionary impulses flowing from the total body of mankind to each
individual, which could only be understood by the higher consciousness of this gigantic body,
surpassing all individual consciousness? Well, if such problems and ideas appeared for the
first time in Western thinking at about the middle of the eighteenth century, they were
known for a long time by esoteric science where it was taught from the beginning that
impulses flow to mankind as a whole, impulses that do not originate on Earth but in the
Universe, sent by super-mundane beings.
It is the tenet of the avatars, or of the coming down to Earth of higher beings who take
human shape here, to give a new impulse to mankind, similar to the gardener who implants
through graft the vital sap of a higher developed plant to a lower one. Indian teachings
speak here of various incarnations of the Vishnu-principle, the second pole of the Trimurti,
that is the Indian trinity. Only by intervention of these beings, coming from super-mundane
regions, can be incorporated into mankind such a vital sap, which in reality is heavenly
manna (food). To speak in modern terms of a natural science: a heavenly vitamin, which,
having penetrated body, soul and spirit of mankind, changes it gradually in a manner so
that it can rise one rung higher in the evolutionary scale.
It is rather strange that in the eighteenth century two sublime minds have transplanted the
main idea of this doctrine into Western philosophy, even if it was done in a purely rationalistic
way: Johann Gottfried Harder and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. They both sought impulses
of evolution in influences of extra-, if not even supra-mundane origin, stemming not from
Earth but from heaven. Herder begins his historical-philosophical Ideas about a Philosophy
of the History of Man with these words:
To at least partly deserve its name, our philosophy of the history of mankind must
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begin with the heavens. Since our habitation, Earth is nothing in itself but receives
quality and form, its ability for organization and preservation of its creatures,
from celestial forces extending throughout our entire universe, we ought to ob-
serve it not singly and isolated, but in the chorus of the worlds among which it
is placed. Earth is bound with invisible, eternal ties to her center, the Sun, from
which it receives light, warmth, life and well-being...
We are mostly content to regard Earth as a grain of sand swimming in the vast
expanse, where planets complete their orbits around the Sun; where this Sun, with
thousands of others, circle around their center, and perhaps several such solar
systems exist in the diverse spaces of the sky, until at last imagination as well as
reason are lost in this ocean of infinity and eternal greatness, finding nowhere an
outlet and end...
If I then open the vast book of these heavens and see before me this immeasurable
palace, which alone, and everywhere, the Godhead can fill, I conclude as
undivided as I can, from the individual to the whole, from the whole to the
individual. It was only one power that created the brilliant Sun and which
keeps my grain of salt upon it; the same one power makes perhaps a Milky
Way of suns move around Sirius, and sets upon my Earth-body in laws of
gravity. As I see that the space occupied by Earth in our Sun-temple, the place
it describes in its orbit, its size, its measurements with everything depending on
them, are determined by laws which work in the infinite, I will, if I were not
to revolt against the immeasurable, not only be content in this place, be glad to
have joined here the harmonious chorus of innumerable beings; it also will be
my most exalted assignment to ask what I should be in this placewhat I
probably can be only there. If I were to find in those things that appear to me
as the most limited and hateful, not only traces of that great creative power,
but also manifest cohesion of the smallest things, with the plan of the creator
into the immeasurable, it will be the most beautiful attribute of my God-imitating
reason, to follow this plan and to resign myself to the divine reason.
One can hardly speak in a more magnificent manner about this idea of a unique and
uniform law, uniting life on Earth with life in the entire universe. Lessing expresses this
concept differently. In a short assay (printed posthumously), titled About the Education of
Mankind, the author is concerned not with the education of individual man, but of humanity
as a whole. What is education for the individual is revelation to humanity.
It may be sufficient here to refer to that which Lessing understands by revelation; the fact
that something is given to mankind that it does not possess through its own effort. It is
implanted in it through activities of exalted leaders of mankind, which here seem to replace
the avatar.
Is it then REALLY NECESSARY to leave Earth and reach for celestial regions, to explain
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the problem of evolution? Let us once more return to the viewpoint of non-esoteric thinking,
to the cardinal question, whether such a form of development were possible, one which
concerns the total-organism mankind. Let us enlarge this question in a way to include the
prerogative of the theory of evolution itselfas the concept of a rising, directed to the perfection
of the imperfect. No doubt was ever possible in the fact of the development of the egg into
the chicken, the seed into the plant, the human embryo to new-born man; nor could it be
questioned that an actual passing from an imperfect to a more perfect state took place. It will
be decided whether it is necessary at all to pass beyond terrestrial conditions into the depths
of the cosmos, if we take this fact for a starting-point in the question of how the development
from egg to chicken and so on, was possible, and furthermore, how we ought to imagine the
development of mankind. No one ought to believe it is very simple to satisfactorily answer
the question of how the egg becomes a chicken. Though we observe the occurrence, we
cannot look into the depth of its mechanism. According to Aristotle, the idea of the
completed chicken influences, as a mental impulse, the development of the egg. The
figure of the completed chicken, invisible to human eyes, hovers, so to speak, above the
egg. In the nineteenth century, a thinker appeared who accepted and enlarged this
Aristotelian conception, though once more in a more realistic manner.
Ernst Hckel saw the moving impulse of embryonic development in the evolution of the
species in occurrences that presupposed the species as a whole. He inferred that in the
course of immense periods of time the species chicken was formed from primitive one-cell
forms of life and that each embryonic development of the individual chicken from the egg
repeated this long road of development, in short, as if under the influence of an organic
memory resting in the ever present secret plastic memory, which contains the evolutionary
history of the species. The rousing of this remembrance is, therefore, the actual force guiding
all embryonic and individual development. Chicken-ity as such is the bearer of the
evolution-impulse for each individual chicken, which emerges daily from the shell. This
essentially metaphysical thought reaches far beyond the life limits of all single individuals of
the species.
But wherefrom does chicken-ity itself receive the law of its species-evolution or, transposing
this question to humanity: wherefrom receives mankind the law of its generic development?
Then we will comprehend, in E. Hckels sense, that every human germ, matured in the
short span of nine months to an infant ready-to-be-born, repeats therewith the genetic history
of humanitythen perhaps the riddle of the embryonic development of the individual may
be solvedbut not that of the human species. If we develop Hckels theorem further, it
leads us directly to the threshold of the cosmos. For then, human development, spread over
many millions of years, must appear to us as a condensed repetition or, in brief, as a sort of
embryonic development referring to a model reaching far beyond earthly matters, placed in
the depths of the universe, REFERRING TO THE IDEA OF A PERFECT DIVINE MAN
WHO IS RESTING in the Zodiac. The Zodiac now encloses, as the circumference of a giant
egg, the embryo humanity. Thus, one lifestream flows from cosmos to humanity and from
humanity to individual man. Every woman born within mankind, who gives birth to a child,
transfers to it what in truth has been received from cosmic depths. Herder may have visualized
something like this, when he placed the above quoted passage at the beginning of his
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Philosophy of the History of Mankind.
We have treated in detail the esoteric side of the evolution-idea in the Third and Fourth
Lectures of the General Foundation. Today we are concerned with the connection of this
evolutionary law and our observation of the starry sky. It is a very ancient tradition (essentially
similar to the earlier mentioned tenet of Vishnus reappearance), that after the lapse of a
period of about 2,000 years, a new evolution-impulse flows down to mankind. These 2,000
years are the duration of a world-month, or one-twelfth of the Platonic year, which spans
about 25,600 years. In the course of the Platonic Year, the Vernal Point (the intersection
between the apparent solar orbit and Earths equator, which the Sun passes on its wandering
from South to North) returns to its starting point, after having wandered back through the
whole expanse of the ecliptic. As stated previously, we call this wandering of the Vernal
Point, and thereby of the whole secondary (solar) Zodiac on the primary fixed star Zodiac,
the precession of the Vernal Equinox (see General Foundation, Seventh Lecture). Over the
past 2,000 years of this precession, the Vernal Point has been in the sign of Pisces and is now
about to enter the constellation of Aquarius. As a result, all that is connected with the
impulses of life-renewal and the Vernal Point experience will take on a new basic color in
the next 2,000 yearsthat of Aquarius. The 2,000-year-old Pisces-era will come to an end to
make room for the Aquarius-era, as did the Aries-era 2,000 years ago, as well as 4,000 years
earlier, the Taurus-era ended, etc.
Based on the analysis of the individual Zodiac sections, given in this course of lectures, we
are now able to understand the nature of the evolution impulses active in these world-
months. As successive stages of embryonic development are bound by a law that makes it
impossible to exchange the developmental stagesas it is impossible for a human embryo to
obtain a set of durable teeth in the second month of its growth, the fact of the precession
suggests which laws of evolution the God-embryo Man follows upon Earth. As the idea of
the complete chicken hovered over the egg, so the idea of celestial man, the image of God,
hovers over the God-embryo, as the Zodiac sections appear, one after the other, as cosmic
correspondence of the human organs. We treated these correspondences particularly when
we characterized them as higher representatives of the relative Zodiac relations.
Now we will go beyond this. We will attempt to clarify what these organs of celestial man
may mean in the sense of esoteric contemplation of man. These organs are highly exalted
above earthly organs of the human body, or as the idea of perfect man, the image of God,
is above earthly man, the son of man. These organs of psychical man become beings
themselves, which represent the most perfect degree of highest developed human beings.
They are representatives of the individual Zodiac radiations as God-instinct implanted into
them, though yet dim. These celestial organs become high conscious beings who (like the
organs of the human body constitute the entire man) unite with the body of God in a way
barely comprehensible to man at his present level.
Let me fortify this thought once more before we draw conclusions, by means of an image
that Swedenborg presents to us in a kind of vision. To him, the totality of spiritual beings
above mans level appears to be united in a manner very similar to that of the organization
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of the human body. Kant describes this vision of Swedenborg:
Herefrom one mayif one thinks it worth the effortform an idea of the most
adventurous and strange imagination, in which all his dreams converge. As
various forms and capacities form that unit which is the soul or the inner man,
so also form various spirits (whose main characteristics are related to each other
as the various abilities of one spirit among themselves) a society that has the
appearance of a large man, and in which phantom each spirit finds himself in
that place and in those limbs which correspond to his particular functions in
such a spiritual body. All spirit-societies together and the whole world of all
these invisible entities appear at last once more in the form of the great man
He continues,
I am getting tired of copying the wild fantasies of the worst of all eccentrics, or to
continue them up to his description of the condition after death; I also have other
scruples. A collector of naturalia places upon his shelves among the stuffed objects
of animal propagation, not only those of normal form but also monstrosities; but he
must be careful not to show them to everybody too closely. For among those curious
persons there could be a pregnant woman who could receive a bad shock. And since
among my readers there might be some also in interesting circumstances, re-
garding the conception of ideas, I would be sorry if they should get a shock here too
since I have warned them right at the beginning I will not be responsible; I hope I
will not be blamed for the mooncalves that might be born by their prolific
imagination.
Really? If we must speak of nervous shock during pregnancy, what could be more beneficial
to human nature, what could stimulate the secret urge to higher development better, than
for earthly man to be allowed to be shocked at the sight of the divine idealif he could
make permanent the pregnant state of mind and soul into a lasting expectancy, into
which the higher ideal of the expected, the future, already shines forththe heavenly
vitamins of higher development?
As we observe the progress of the Vernal Point through the separate Zodiac sections, it
serves as a beacon so that we may perceive not the meaning of human history but the rhythm of
its pace. As, within the Zodiac, a female sign (Earth and Water) always follows a male sign
(Fire and Air), so also, in the history of humanity, alternate male and female eras or epochs,
whose evolution-impulses are alternately turned toward past and future.
In those periods turned toward the past (Earth and Water), the tendency prevails to sort, to put
in an order, to clarify, to purify, to use upto serve, to suffer, to save; not to acquire anything
new, but to make use of the oldto bear, to endure, to sift, to atone, to redeem old guilt.
In those epochs turned toward the future (Air and Fire), the main issue is to fight, creatively,
the past and its present-day remnants, opposing them with will and reason; withstanding
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physically the powers of nature as well as emotionally the forces of suffering.
In female epochs, the feminine part of us dominates. Mans interest is turned to the body
and corporeal, to the natural and emotional forces; it is turned toward all that which ties us
to Earth and tradition. In male epochs, the masculine part of us dominates. The interest is
focused on supremacy of ideas and will, on everything that frees us, and makes us forget our
bondage.
When we apply this idea to the periodical change of 2,000-year-eras following each other
like day and night, to the course of historythen we may truly obtain a little insight into the
movement and rhythm of the spirit of the age in human history. The problem of the
spirit of the age is one with which every historian must be concerned. It was Herder again
who, occupied with the problem of mankinds history, has found wonderful words about
the essence of the spirit of the ages, in his work entitled Letters to Further Humanity.
There he answers a correspondent, quoting his letter first,
Several times I find the spirit of the age mentioned in your letter. Wont we
better clarify this expression? Is it a genius, a demon, a hobgoblin, a ghost from
old graves, or perhaps a whiff of air, the sound of an aeols harp? Where does it
come from, where does it intend to go, where is its domain, its power? Must it
dominate, must it serve, can it be led?
Herders reply,
Really the spirit of the age is a mighty genius, a powerful demon. If Averroes
could believe that all humanity has but one soul, in which each individual partici-
pates, sometimes actively, sometimes passively, I would rather apply this poetic
thought to the spirit of the age. We all are subjects in its realm, sometimes active,
sometimes passive.
This periodic change between activity and passivity finds its cosmic equivalent in the Vernal
Points retrograde wandering through the Zodiac, leading it alternately through male and
female signs.
Let us now transmit this thought to the consecutive historical epochs of 2,000 years, as far as
they are historically known. We will briefly characterize the spirit of the age of four world-
months: the era of Taurus (about 4,000 -- 2,000 B.C.); the era of Aries (about 2,000 -- 0 B.C.);
the era of Pisces (about 0 -- 2,000 A.D.); and, looking forward, the era of Aquarius, which
already casts its shadows in the present time (about 2,000 -- 4,000 A.D.)
To understand the spiritual and emotional impulses of these epochs, we must remember
what was said in the analysis of the relative signs, and transmit it to the organism of humanity
itself, which experienced the neck-radiation in the Taurus-era, the head-radiation in the
Aries-era, wandering in the Pisces-era through the region of the feet, and will experience the
radiation from the lower leg during the Aquarius-era.
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We must remember that, to such a look directed from the Zodiac perspective toward Earth,
not only does individual man become invisible, but together with him so also all the events
of the so-called political historysuch as wars and victories, throne ascendances or
dethronements, conquests and subjectionsand that in the interchange of all these events,
only the genius of mankind is visible to view, whose appearance mirrors the impulses
received, the immensity of the skies as they flow to him according to the organ function
of the various Zodiac regions. What is thus represented to us actually resembles a man
who, for the purpose of his education, undergoes a kind of celestial instruction, rising
from one grade to the next higher level, led by heavenly ideas, according to a cosmic
lawful plan, rising from the feet to the head, growing beyond himself after completion
of each Platonic school-term.
We will now briefly review the eras of Pisces, Aries and Taurus.
The Pisces-era, which ends in our present day, is a female era, turned toward the past with
its glance directed inward, toward the sediments of soul, longing for redemption. At the
beginning of this epoch, the Western world was submerged in a kind of twilight mood,
when at sunset the thousand voices within us come alive to take possession of us during
the night.
The bright sunshine, which classical antiquity saw spread over the outside world, sinks
down, and spreads before the inner view, the arena of all the inner emotional values.
Consciousness of past-conditioned entanglement in guilt and vice powerfully takes
possession of the soul, awakening the voice of a judging conscience, demanding the
achievement of inner freedom through purification of emotional life contamination.
The washing of the feet that we mentioned in the fourth lecture thus becomes the true
symbol of the Pisces era.
The Gods from their seats in the heavens were hurled,
And their pillars of glory oerthrown;
And the Son of the Virgin appeared in the world
For the sins of mankind to atone.
The fugitive lusts of the sense were suppressed,
The man now first grappled with thought in his breast.
Each vain and voluptuous charm vanished now,
Wherein the young world took delight;
The monk and the nun made of penance a vow,
And the tourney was sought by the knight.
Though the aspect of life was now dreary and wild,
Yet love remained every both lovely and mild.
~ Schiller, Epochs of the World
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The dark ages, which composed the first part of the Pisces-era, have been called the thousand-
years night, and rightly so, if this night is understood as every night must be understood: as
that phase in lifes rhythm concerned with regeneration, liquidation of refuse, restoration,
and redemption of the remnants of the past.
We must understand the Taurus-era (4,000 -- 2,000 B.C.) in a similar way. Here, too, we see
man bowed down and humble, a female type. But this period is signified by an Earth sign:
submission does not take place abased in a feeling of guilt, not dirty feet humiliating man; it
is the neck that now meekly bows under the yoke of physical powers: under the yoke of the
forces of nature experienced in awed apprehension, as the merciless will of world-law,
revealed in earth matter. Egypt rose with her immense buildings, as, for example, the
pyramids, which symbolize the force and laws of nature, with man as her powerless
subject. According to recent research, the Cheops-Pyramid contains all the basic
measurements of the cosmos in symbolic form, presenting the iron law of nature to the soul
with awe-inspiring severity. An insight is gained into the laws of the cyclic passage of all
happenings. The Egyptian year, with its Sothis-periods
8
ruled over humanitys mind.
Believing in the eternal repetition of the same, without possibility of breaking through this
circulation, man became increasingly entangled in matter and its rule. Dictated by fear and
awe, the reverential submission to the conserving power of matter thus arose in the depths
of the soul. All form finally hardened in it to a mummy of worldly memory, represented in
its earthly appearance as all female-maternal. The female world principle of matter ruled.
The service of nature, matriarchy and submission to everything that appeared conserving
like matter, came into existence. The physical dominated, so that men tried to preserve the
body in its physical state, even after death. Pyramid and mummy became this eras symbols
for posterity.
It is different with the Aries-era (2,000 B.C. -- 0), the time of classical antiquity, where the
head-radiation ruled. At first it seemed as if humanity wanted to revolt with all its energies
against the impulses of the Taurus-era; as if it were inspired thus: do not let natures powers
subjugate you, rid yourself of the past! With lifted head, look toward the future! Develop
your will (Fire), then be invincible! Resist, if necessary, even the Gods! Mightily mans will
resisted natures powers; even though he might not overpower them, he would not bow his
neck before them. The ideal of the hero was born. Human will remained victorious under all
circumstances, even if the body succumbed! Raised to highest virtue in the Aries-era was
Arete, the virtue of Ares, the Mars-virtue that formed the hero, the heroic-masculine in
man. This virtue succeeded in the same manner against men and gods: though man could
fight against the overpowering might of the gods, he had best not bow his neck to them.
Aware of the force of his will, he became the mightiest being on earth.
_________________________________________________________________________________
8
A Sothis (Sirius) period (1460 years) represented a miniature Platonic year, during which the calendar date passed the
Zodiac at the beginning of spring, not the Vernal Point. This was due to the Egyptian year having no leap year, so that only
after the passage of four times 365 years, did the seasons fall on the same calendar date. Contrary to the Platonic year, the
Sothis period is merely an artificial time period, resulting from a mistake.
137
Much of power there is, but nothing
Is more powerful than man.
Thus Sophocles praises man, who even forces the neck of the bull under his yoke.
Observing the transition from the era of Taurus into the Aries-era, a proceeding is revealed,
which occurs with almost statutory regularity at each transition from one epoch into the
next. Each epoch, in its first segment, is filled with endeavors for disengagement combined
with an especially violent protest against the spirit of the preceding periodas man awakening
in the morning vehemently wards off the memories of the events of the night, or as he who
is about to sleep in the evening tries to forget the day and its tasks, to dive once again into
the inner world.
But then, at about the first half of an epoch, we see the impulses of the past era returning, as
if emerging from memories, yet transformed in the spirit of the new era, to be developmentally
incorporated in this new form. If we follow symbolically the Aries-point and its progression
on the primary Zodiac, at about the middle of each epoch it reaches a point that
corresponds in a certain sense to Libra. After the fighter has progressed to the
middle part of an era, the artist appears. It is the mission of art, in each world-
month, to unite the male and the female impulses to develop with foresight and hindsight.
Art is the eternal link between the timely ideals of the world-eras.
We thus see the experiential contents of the Taurus-era return in changed form in the Aries-
era. First, we experienced the resurrection of the mummy. What had been mummy to
ancient Egypt became statue of the living man in Hellas of antiquity. Erect it stands, upright
like hope turned skyward for a later future in which man, idealized in the statue, shall walk
alive over the Earth, the ideal of man simultaneously beautiful and good, in whom the
physical power of nature is united with the freedom of ethical will.
But we see yet another renaissance of the Taurus-era; the drama of fate was born.
What appeared as natural power in the Taurus-era then became human fate, which,
although human will could not conquer it, could not, on its part, harm human will.
Although fate had to be accepted, man remained essentially untouched by it (The
philosophy of the Stoa).
When we now proceed to the Pisces-era, we see the same laws at work. The first half of this
epoch was filled with protest against the ideals of the preceding era, with penitent man
replacing the hero. He too exercised a kind of heroism, but one that was not to be proven
in fight against outward antagonists; it was turned against the inner enemy, who had to be
recognized and conquered in the souls arena. Repentant man also walked bowed down
under a burden, under an emotional burden or, in other words, under the oppressing
burden of conscience; vice, stemming from original sin, of which he could only free himself if
he kindled an emotional power within himself, which, resisting sensual temptations, would
138
be filled with heroism similar to antiquitys spirit of resistance against the forces of fate.
This metamorphosis into the realm of the soul caused what had appeared in the Aries-era as
heroic ideal to become the power of Eros. Not through the forces of willfulness set against a
foreign will, but by change through the strength of forgiving love became the ethical principle,
even to change an opponents hostility into love. In this transmutation, another memory,
stemming from the female Taurus-era, seemed to be involvedwoman, there the
representative of natures power in the Pisces-era, became the ennobling instrument
for the transformation of the heroes into Erosthe Great Mother of the ancient
Egyptian cult, became the ideal figure of the eternally feminine, adorned with the
glory of the virginal God-mother, Maria.
But, in the second half of the Pisces-era, another renaissance occurred, pertaining to the
Aries-era and its art: celebrating the resurrection of antiquitys drama-of-fate; only the hero,
king or general with his historical fate was replaced by common man with his pains and
sufferings in the fight against the inner enemyhis passion and desires.
The domestic drama being born, awakened with it interest in man per se, only turned
inward, beyond all external effortsin the eternal human. The mummy of the Taurus-era,
reborn as status in antiquity, now became the ideal pattern of man striving for his salvation.
Thus originated the idea of humanism, lovingly embracing the totality of all men,
specially propagated by the writers of German classicism.
Exactly this idea was mirrored in the loftiest art with which the Pisces-era crowned the
legacy of the past. Instrumental music was been created as its most ideal expression.
Blossoming forth in its orderliness into wonderfully pure forms, the united tones working
together, as the harmoniously attuned souls of a human society are carried by common
love to higher levels. This became the harmonious work of an invisible world-dome,
replacing the Pyramid of Cheops.
We can foresee that what was modeled in this purest, most glorious art of the Pisces-era, will
return about the middle of the Aquarius-era as most-alive human experience, like Egypts
mummies in Greeces statues, then, after a thousand years, the great builders of that dome,
as Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, will return as the organizers of the utopian human
society of the Aquarius era.
And now a few more words about this Aquarius-era, which shall fill the next 2,000 years.
When describing the sign of Aquarius, we have already spoken in detail about the cerebral
ideas of this once more male-intellectually disposed period of mankind. Before these utopian
ideals shall be realized, the first part of this period will once more see mankind in protest
against the doctrine of commiseration of the Pisces-era. But, we must deny ourselves the
temptation to speak about this here.
It was not our intention to penetrate deeper into the movement of the thoughts of human
history, and the laws governing it. The superficial, perhaps too superficial, contemplations
139
expressed here were intended to make us conscious that one great law is effective in the
depths of cosmos as well as in the human soul, which is mirrored in every individual life and
beingthe basic idea of astrological wisdom. Beyond this, a view into the immeasurable
distance is opened to us.
The Suns yearly journey through the twelve Zodiac signs is like a miniature Platonic year;
the month as the abbreviated epoch of 2,000 years of human history, the daily axis-turning
of Earth a still-diminished Platonic year. Within each day, every two hours corresponds to
the month. And lastly, the duration of one breath corresponds to the length of a day, as
calendar year corresponds to the Platonic year (according to Rudolf Steiner, man, in the
course of a day, draws breath twenty-six thousand times, eighteen in one minute). As such,
the rhythm of more than 24,000 years is mirrored in smallest detail. Platonic years range in
ever-larger, farther-reaching cycles of time, until at last the largest of these cycles attains the
duration of the Brahma-day, succeeded by the Brahma-nighttogether one breath of the
infinite universe. This gigantic rhythm ultimately finds its way to individual man by the
insertion of planetary eras orbiting around the Sun in greater and smaller circling movements.
And in this immense clockwork of the cosmos, each individual has a pre-ordained place for
his or her short life span on Earth included in the great cycles and circles.
With this idea, we have returned to the beginning of this investigation of Zodiac and Man.
The next Sequence of our course will teach us to understand the smaller wheels of this
clockworkthe world of the planets in their relationship to man. For today, let us once more
intensely submit to the thought that only he who understands that all life that opposes
harmony with the higher, greater organismblind to the necessity of sacrifice of all egoism
must perish; only he can fulfill his true destiny as a human being; that the heritage of eternity
will be given only to him who knows how to die in every moment, to win life in a higher sense,
to relinquish his sham-self in order to attain the true Self, free from death through his
contribution to the living work of revelation of the great unity.
Let us again summarize all of this, and let it be told by two masters, who knew about this last
secret:
Chuang-Tzu says,
And every man has his Sun-spirit onto which he is attached; if this leaves, he dies,
and he revives when he returns. If I spirit-endowed body walk to the end without
the eternal and life-renewing change: if I yield to general detrition like a mere
object during the days and nights; if I am not aware of the eternal dying, if I am
in spite of this spirit-endowed body only aware of this, that nothing can save me
from the gravethen I use up life until it is in death as if you and I had only once
leaned shoulder to shoulder, before we were separated forever! Is this not cause
for sorrow? But you turn your eyes upon something within me that as you look has
already disappeared. And yet you look for it as if it still must be thereas one
seeks horses sold in the market. See: what I admire in you is subject to change.
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What you admire in me is subject to change. Why mourn? Even though my self
dies every minute, eternity is proven by CHANGE.
Goethe says: One and All.
The individual will gladly perish if he can find himself again in boundless
infinity, where all vexations dissolve; where instead of passions, wishes and
wild desires, irksome demands and stern obligations, the self will delight in
self-surrender.
Come, soul of the world, and flood through us! To vie with the very spirit of the
world will be the supreme task of our strength. Good spirits shall sympathetically
guide us, great master minds gently conduct us towards him who is creating and
has created all things.
And an eternal, living activity works to create anew what has been created, lest it
entrench itself in rigidity. And that which has not yet been seeks now to come into
being, as pure suns and many colored earths: none of it may remain at rest.
It is intended to move, to act and createfirst to form and then to transform
itself; its moments of immobility are only apparent. In all that lives the Eternal
Force works on: for everything must dissolve into nothingness, if it is to remain
in Being.
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Appendix
Volumes Two through Five of The Testament of Astrology can be ordered through Online
College of Astrology at http://www.astrocollege.org.
Dr. Oskar Adler: A Complete Man 1875 -- 1955 by Amy Shapiro is also available through
Online College of Astrology. This fascinating eBook presents the authors personal
correspondence with those who knew Dr. Adler intimately and includes rare letters
detailing his-----and Paula (Freud) Adlers-----experiences after fleeing Austria. This unusual
biography is a perfect companion to Oskar Adlers esoteric lecture series, The Testament of
Astrology. It makes a wonderful gift for anyone wanting a deeper understanding of the history
of the first half of the 20th Century, as seen through the eyes of many who witnessed it.

Table of Contents
Volume One:
First Sequence
General Foundation of Astrology -- (Seven Lectures)
Lecture 1: General Idea of Astrology as Esoteric Knowledge... What is Esoteric Knowledge?
Natural Science and Esoteric Doctrine; Man and the Universe... The Human Body and
Number as a Bridge to the Cosmos... Astronomy and Astrology... The Self as Key to Esoteric
Knowledge.
Lecture 2: Living Community between Man and Universe... Macrocosmos and Microcosmos...
One-ness and the Number One... Suffering and Sorrow as a Further Link to the Cosmos...
The Idea of Fate... Natural Law and Moral Law.
Lecture 3: The Enigma of Evolution in the Light of Esoteric Wisdom... The Zodiac.
142
Lecture 4: Evolution and Alchemy... The Four Elements... Their Relationship to Inner
Life and to the Road of Development of Man... The Riddle of the Sphinx.
Lecture 5: Cosmic Numbers and Human Development... The Numbers 4, 7 and 12... Zodiac
and Planets... Periodicity and the Law of Rhythm... Planetary Symbols and Digit-symbols.
Lecture 6: The Three Cosmic Perspectives... The Cosmic Importance of the Moment of
Birth... Heredity and Self-development... The Second Birth.
Lecture 7: Zodiac-segments and Zodiac-symbols... The Precession of the Vernal Point...
Eternity and Temporality... The Road to the Neighbor... The Road to Ones Own Self.
Second Sequence
Zodiac and Man -- (Seven Lectures)
Lecture 1: The Problem of Character... Psychologic and Astrologic Teachings... The
Zodiac as Spectrum of Life... The Experience of the Circle... Vernal Point and Human
Sacrifice... Life and Death.
Lecture 2: The Arrangements of the Zodiac, Its Structure, the Twelve Segments, the Four
Elementary Worlds.
Lecture 3: The Four Human Types: Earth-man, Water-man, Air-man and Fire-man...
Earth-man in general... Capricorn-, Taurus- and Virgo-man in particular.
Lecture 4: Water-man in general... Cancer-, Scorpio- and Pisces-man in particular.
Lecture 5: Air-man in general... Libra-, Aquarius- and Gemini-man in particular.
Lecture 6: Fire-man in general... Aries-, Leo- and Sagittarius-man in particular.
Lecture 7: The Precession of the Vernal Point and Human Development (An Expedition
into the Last 6000 Years)
Volume Two:
Third Sequence
Part One: The World of the Planets and Man -- (Ten Lectures)
Lecture 1: The Experience of World Rhythm as Messenger between Time and Eter-
nity... The Women of Radak... The Planets as Mediators between Zodiac and Man... Plan-
etary Clockwork and Cosmic Building Plan... The Pythagorean Triangle and Music of the
Spheres... The Doctrine of the Music of the Spheres from Pythagoras to Schopenhauer.
Lecture 2: World-memory... Between Non-being and Being... Overtones of Gods Word...
The Numbers 3, 7 and 12... The Curtain before the Inner Sanctum... Caduceus and
Rosicrucian Cosmogony... Geo-centric and Helio-centric Viewpoints... Polarity and Sexuality
in the World of the Planets and in Music... Zodiac-places of the Planets, their Dignities and
Weaknesses... Exaltation of the Sun and Moon.
Lecture 3: Planets and Cosmic Sense-organs... 1 = 3 = 1... Polarity and Relativity... Definition
of the Functions of the Seven Holy Planets... The Phoenix-bird
Lecture 4: The Teachings of Ptolemy... The Planetary Symbols... Essence and Value of the Symbols...
143
Mans Wandering through Time... The Planetary Experience as Gradation Experience...
For here we have no Continuing City.
Lecture 5: The Individual in the Concert of the Stars... Sun and Moon as Representatives
of the Two Poles of the Self... Conception and Birth... New-Moon- and Full-Moon-man...
Solar and Lunar Eclipses... Maja -- Maria.
Lecture 6: The Moon Phases... The 24 Quarter-Moon Positions and their Importance...
The Burden of the Cross.
Lecture 7: Moon in the 3 Fire-signs in relation to Sun.
Lecture 8: Moon in the 3 Air-signs in relation to Sun.
Lecture 9: Moon in the 3 Water-signs in relation to Sun.
Lecture 10: Moon in the 3 Earth-signs in relation to Sun.
Third Sequence
Part Two: The World of the Planets and Man -- (Eleven Lectures)
Lecture 1: The Ancient Scheme of Planetary Rulerships... Elevations and Falls Critically
Examined... The Recently Discovered Planets, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, and the Ancient
System, comprising only seven Planets... General Remarks about the Functions of Uranus
and Neptune... Transcending and Imminent Planets... The Theory of Forster.
Lecture 2: The Planets and Tones... Once more the Problem of Uranus and Neptune...
Uranus and the School of Life... The Seven Year Periods of Human Development... The
Cosmic or Eternity-background of Everything Transitory (Neptune)... Self-concentration
and Self-immolation.
Lecture 3: Analysis of the Function of Mercury... Mercury as Copula between Subject
and Object... The Function of Perception... Hermes Trismegistos and the Smaragdine Tab-
let... As Above, So Below... Logos and Human Logic... Four Ways of Logical Thinking:
Inductive, Deductive, Artistic (Creative) and Moral and in relation to the Sun... Dignities and
Weaknesses of Mercury... Aspects between Mercury and the Moon.
Lecture 4: Analysis of the Function of Venus... Venus, one of the poles of the Mars-
Venus Polarity... Empedokles Doctrine of Friendship and Quarrel as Poles of World-sexuality...
Eris and Eros... Creative Impulse and the Instrument... Bliss to be Chosen an Instrument...
Scale of Love and the Sacrifice-idea... Taurus and Libra as locations of Venus Power, Pisces
as Place of Exaltations... Venus in the Four Categories and the Twelve Signs in relation to
the Sun... Aspects between Venus and Moon, Venus and Mercury.
Lecture 5: Analysis of the Mars-function... The Male Form of Energy... The Moment of
Decision... The Drawn Sword and the Shot Arrow... Sword and Plough... Puberty and
Mars-development... Circumcision Bow and Lyre... Aries and Scorpio as Site of Mars
Strength, Capricorn as Site of Exaltation... Mars in the Separate Categories and Signs in
Relation to the Sun... Mars-aspects with Moon, Mercury and Venus.
Lecture 6: Analysic of the Jupiter-function... Polarity between Jupiter and Saturn... Wordless
Perception and Those Bound to the Word... Faith and Knowledge... Faith as Inspiration of
Knowledge... Excursion into the Realm of Music... Planets and Sounds, the Polarity between
Major and Minor (Zarlino)... Hexagram and the Tonal System... Dominant and Subdominant...
144
Again Jupiter and Saturn as contrasts... The Above and Below of the Smaragdine Tablet...
The Below a Reflection of the Above... Law and Order... Justice and Mercy... Hybris...
Sagittarius and Pisces as Locale for Jupiters Strength, Cancer as Place of its Exaltation...
Jupiter in the Signs... Aspects with Sun, Moon, Venus and Mars.
Lecture 7: Analysis of the Saturn Function... Ptolemy and the Planets Cycles... Polarity be-
tween Sun, Moon and Saturn... Moon the Geometric Medium between Sun and Saturn... Be-
tween Past and Future... Saturn according to the Teachings of the Rosicrucians... The Publican
at the Bridge-head of the Future... The Formation of Necessity into Freedom... The Struggle with
Adversary... The Anti-Ego... The Borderline between Capricorn and Aquarius as the Regions of
Saturn... The Burden of Past and Vice... Overcoming the Burden... Saturn in the Separate
Categories and Signs... Aspects with Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter.
Lecture 8: Analysis of the Uranus-function... The Uranus-problem... On the Border
between the Here and the Beyond... The Stability of the Total Horoscope and Test of
its Inner Compactness... Self-relation... Ego-logistic Attitude... Know thy Self... Uranus and
the Old System of Astrology; this not shaken... Index of Dangers of the Uranus-function for
People not yet awakened to Uranus-maturity... Uranus in the Separate Categories and Signs...
Aspects with the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.
Lecture 9: Analysis of the Neptune-function... History of the Discovery of Neptune...
Beyond the Limit of Saturns Orbit... The Reflected Jupiter, as Uranus is the Reflected
Saturn... The Cosmic and Transcendental Experience of the Self... Self-immolation... The
Planet of Meta =: Metaphysics, Meta-psychics, Meta-logics Meta-ethics... Four Forms of
Meta-logics... Ego-logic and Cosmologic Attitude... Neptune in the Separate Categories and
Signs... Aspects with Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus.
Lecture 10: The Uranus-Neptune Aspects as Significators of the Temporary
Weltanschquungen in the Respective Generations... Characteristics of the Generations
from 1860 to 2000, according to the Relative Position of Uranus and Neptune.
Lecture 11: The Pluto-problem... Esoteric Remarks about the Pluto Function... Pluto, the
Reflected Mars... The Planet of Conscious, Purposive Self-development... Past and Future
in Changing Relation... Decision of Man... Janus... Pluto in the Separate Categories and
Signs... Aspects with the Rest of the Planets.
Volume Three:
Fourth Sequence: Man and Earth
Part One: Twelve Legends of Mans Wanderings on Earth
Rising Signs -- (Six Lectures)
Lecture 1: Earth as Human Habitat... Earth and Heavens Geography... The Zodiacs
Projection upon Earth... The Horizon as Equator... The 12 so-called Houses... Above and
Below the Horizon... Celestial and Terrestrial Heredity... Old Traditions in the Light of
Modern Thinking... Interpretation of the Individual Houses according to our Theory...
Mans Wanderings on Earth.
145
Lecture 2: The General Legend of Human Life... Another Analysis of the Separate Houses
in Analogy to the Analysis of the Signs of the Zodiac... The Points of Intersection between
Zodiac and Horizon... The Meaning of the Ascending Sign... The Ascendant Position of
the Houses in relation to the Zodiac... Esoteric Significance of the Ascendant.
Lecture 3: The General Formula of Earthly Life, according to the Position of the Ascendant...
Twelve Images of Life... The Ascendants: Aries, Leo, Sagittarius.
Lecture 4: The Ascendants Libra, Aquarius and Gemini.
Lecture 5: The Ascendants Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces.
Lecture 6: The Ascendants Capricorn, Taurus and Virgo.
Part Two: Between the World of the Planets and Earth
The Planets in the Houses -- (Fifteen Lectures)
Lecture 1: The Three Perspectives once more... First, Second and Third Zodiac... Mutual
Relations... Hierarchic Rulership of the Zodiac... New Explanation of the Houses in regard
to the Second Zodiac... The Four Elements in the Third Zodiac.
Lecture 2: Continuation... Psychological Meaning of the Houses... Human Roots in Earth...
Mans Attitude concerning his Terrestrial World-field.
Lecture 3: The Functions of the Planets, experienced from Earth-perspective... The Earth-
coefficient of the Separate Planets... The Aspects in the Light of the Earth-perspective...
Mundane Aspects... Opposed House-groups and their Meaning.
Lecture 4: The First House... Planets in the First House.
Lectures 5 -- 15: Houses Two to Twelve and the Planets in them.
Part Three: Fate and Destination -- (Eleven Lectures)
Lecture 1: Essential Association between Fate and Destination... Readiness for Fate and
External Occurrences... Fate-involvement Dream Experiences... Connection between
Certain Areas of Life (Houses) in the Individual Horoscope... The Problem of the
Accidental... What is Accidental... The Rulers of the Houses... The Ruler of the
Horoscope... General Remarks about the Rulers of the Twelve Houses.
Lecture 2: Causality and Fatality... Three Conditions of the Soul, as: Hammer, Anvil and
Submission... Their Coloration in the Four Elements... Genius of Fate... Paracelsus and
Schopenhauers Views about this Genius... The Meaning of the Hour of Death.
Lecture 3: Intelligible and Empiric Character... The Ruler of the Horoscope as Master of
Personality... The Individual Planets as Rulers of the Horoscope, in general... Function of
the Ruler of the Horoscope in the Houses One to Six.
Lecture 4: Its Function in the Houses Seven to Twelve.
Lecture 5: The Ruler of the Descendant and its General Meaning... Hammer, Anvil and
Submission with regard to Descendant... The Four Elements once more... The Function of
the Ruler of the Descendant in the Houses One to Six.
146
Lecture 6: Its Function in Houses Seven to Twelve.
Lecture 7: The Ruler of the Tenth House and its General Importance.
Lecture 8: Its Function in the Houses.
Lecture 9: The Ruler of the Fourth House and its General Importance.
Lecture 10: Its Function in the Houses
Lecture 11: The Rulers of the Remaining Houses in the Four Edge Houses.
Volume Four:
Fifth Sequence: Man in the Concert of the Stars
The Tenet of the Aspects -- (Twenty-five Lectures)
Lecture 1: Construction and Constitution of the Horoscope... Constitution of the Human
Organism... Eukrasy and Dyskrasy... Astrological Constitution... Good and Evil Aspects...
Order of the Aspects... Theory of Kepler... Aspects and Musical Intervals... Concave-mirror
Theory... Isolation and Forming of Complexes.
Lecture 2: Individual Psychology and Astrological Theory of the Aspects... The Essence of
the Individual Aspects... Secret Aspects... Parallel Aspects... Three Special Parallel Aspects.
Lecture 3: The Conjunction... Conjunction Sun/Moon in every Individual Sign.
Lecture 4: Sun/Jupiter Conjunction in the Individual Signs... Sun/Saturn Conjunction in the
Individual Signs... Sun/Mercury Conjunction the Individual Signs.
Lecture 5: Sun/Venus and Sun/Mars.
Lecture 6: Sun/Uranus and Sun/Neptune.
Lecture 7: General Remarks about the Moon Conjunctions... Moon/Mars... Moon/Venus.
Lecture 8: Moon/Mercury... Moon/Saturn.
Lecture 9: Moon/Jupiter... Moon/Uranus... Moon/Neptune.
Lecture 10: General Remarks about the Conjunctions of Mercury.
Lecture 11: Mercury/Jupiter... Mercury/Saturn.
Lecture 12: Mercury/Uranus... Mercury/Neptune.
Lecture 13: The Conjunctions of Venus... Venus/Neptune.
Lecture 14: Venus/Jupiter... Venus/Saturn.
Lecture 15: Venus/Uranus... Venus/Neptune.
Lecture 16: The Conjunctions of Mars... Mars/Jupiter... Mars/Saturn.
Lecture 17: Mars/Uranus... Mars/Neptune.
Lecture 18: The Conjunctions of Jupiter with Saturn and Uranus... The so-called Great
(Platonic) Conjunctions... Jupiter/Saturn in general... The Last Jupiter/Saturn Conjunctions
since 1861... Jupiter/Uranus since 1872.
Lecture 19: Jupiter/Neptune Conjunctions since 1868... Saturn/Uranus 1896 -- 1898 and
1914 -- 1943... Saturn/Neptune 1881/1882 and 1917/1918.
Lecture 20: The Aspect of Opposition... The Opposing Zodiac-signs... Six Groups and
their Meaning... Above and Below the Horizon... Individual Oppositions... Mars-Venus,
Jupiter-Mercury, Sun-Moon, Sun-Uranus, Moon-Saturn, Moon-Uranus.
147
Lecture 21: Continuations... The Oppositions between Mars and Saturn, Mars and Jupiter
Mercury-Neptune, Mars-Uranus, Venus-Jupiter, Sun-Jupiter, Moon-Venus, Venus-Saturn,
Moon-Jupiter, Venus-Neptune... The Big Oppositions: Jupiter-Saturn 1852 -- 1930...
Uranus-Jupiter 1865 -- 1933/34.
Lecture 22: Square, Trine, Sextile... Complementary Aspects: Semi-square and Sequare,
Half-sextile and Quincunx.
Lecture 23: The Parallel Aspects.
Lecture 24: The Moon Nodes... The so-called Hyleg.
Lecture 25: Sex and the Horoscope.
Volume Five:
Sixth Sequence
Movement of the Stars and Course of Life -- (Thirteen Lectures)
Lecture 1: Possiblity of Prediction of Fate based on the Rhythm of the Stars?... The Problem of
Prophecy... Three kinds of Prophesies: that based on Mathematics, Natural-scientific Prophesy and
Moral Prophesy... Astrological Prophesy, a Combination of these Three Ways... Ancient and
Modern Concept of the Fate Idea... Superstition and Science.. On the Border between Both.
Lecture 2: The Three Ways of Prophesy once more: their Astrological Translation into the
Doctrine of Transits and Directions, the Doctrine of Consecutive Natural Periods of Life in
connection with the Stellar Rhythm, Mans Fate-maturity as Expression of his Moral Develop-
ment... Individual-and-mass-fate... General Remarks about the Essence of Transits; Four Dif-
ferent Forms of Transits... Review of some Older Teachings about the Planetary Rhythms.
Lecture 3: The Fourth Form of Transit... The Daily Transitof the Sun through the Twelve
Houses... The Suns Yearly Orbit through the Zodiac... Solstituces and Equinoxes... Ascendant
and Individual Vernal Point... The Sun Reveals... The Yearly Travel of the Sun through the
Twelve Houses... The Monthly Rhythm of the Moon and its Way through the Twelve
Houses... New Moon and Full Moon.
Lecture 4: The Old Theory of the so-called Planetary Houses... The Solar Transits of the
Individual Planetary Locations... Mercurys Wanderings through the Twelve Houses and
over the Places of the Planets.
Lecture 5: Wanderings of Venus and Mars through the Twelve Houses... Transits of
Venus over Planetary Places... Transits by Mars... Jupiter Transits.
Lecture 6: Saturn Transits... Special Importance of its Transit over the Sun... Wanderings
through the Twelve Houses and Above the Places of the Planets.
Lecture 7: The Planet Uranus treated in a Similar Fashion.
Lecture 8: Transits of Neptune through the Houses and above Planet-locations... Ascending
and Descending Moon-nodes... Their Interdependence... Wandering through the Twelve Houses.
Lecture 9: Transits over Aspect-places... Critical Periods, Critical Days and Critical Points...
Demonstration on a Special Horoscope... Warning regarding False Conclusions... Reverence
to a Higher Law of Maturing, of Fate-preparedness.
148
Lecture 10: The Doctrine of the so-called Progressions... A Day equals a Year... Astronomical
Reasons for this Key... Progressive Wanderings of the Ascendant through the Elements
following that of Birth... Wanderings of the Ascendant through the Three Modii following
the Modus of Birth... Three Tables of Human Development... Uranus-table of the Twelve
times 7-year Period Change of Elements, Change of Modality... Progressive Movement of
the Ascendant through Houses 1 to 4, and the Places of the Planets there located: Moon,
Mercury, Venus, Mars treated similarly.
Lecture 11: The Ascendant moving through Houses 1 to 4 and over the places of Jupiter,
Saturn, Uranus and Neptune... Movement of the Medium Coeli (Mid-Heaven) through the
Elements and Modalities... Movement of the Medium Coeli through Houses 10 to 1 and
Accidental Planetary Locations.
Lecture 12: Similar Treatment of the Immum Coeli (Lowest Heaven or Nadir) regarding
its Movement through Houses 4 to 7 and the Planets located there... Movement of the Descen-
dant through Houses 7 to 10 and over the Planetary Locations therein.
Lecture 13: Continuation... Progressive Transits of Ascendant and Medium Coeli over
the Moons Nodes.
Seventh Sequence
Work on Ones Own Horoscope -- (Ten Lectures)
Lecture 1: The Treasure Hidden in the Vineyard... Value and VAnity of the Knowledge
of Ones Own Horoscope... Wandering and Transformation of Man through the School of
Life... World Development and Individual Development... At the Crossroads Hermes, Master
of Change... The Four Falling Houses: 3, 6, 9 and 12... Ways of Mans Rising above his
Birth Constellation.
Lecture 2: The Rulers of the Falling Houses in general... The Progression of the Houses
and Mans Natural Change in the Course of Life... Plan of the Following Examination.
Lecture 3: Correspondence between Houses and Signs of the Zodiac... Transformation
of the Sun; the Relations between the Solar Position of the Nativity and Ascendant... Analysis
of the Sixteen Possible Cases.
Lecture 4: Moon-transformation... Relation of the Moon-position in the Nativity and the
Second House... Sixteen Cases.
Lecture 5: The Sixteen Cases of Mercury Transformation.
Lecture 6: Venus-transformations.
Lecture 7: Mars-transformations.
Lecture 8: Jupiter-transformations.
Lecture 9: Saturn-transformations.
Lecture 10: Supplement.

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