FOUNDATIONS AT THE PERIPHERY:

RUDOLF STEINER'S OBSERVATIONS ON STAR KNOWLEDGE

1895

“ . . . .I believe that true education accepts the greatness of a personality and corrects small errors, or brings incompleted thoughts to conclusion.” (Friedrich Nietzsche - Fighter for Freedom, 1955, pg. 120)

{ Dr. Steiner challenges deep assumptions that have spread through the popular scientific education as if they were facts. One of these is the assumption that life has been dominated by what is reflected in the fossil rocks, and another is that the dead physical and chemical forces active now were instrumental in stimulating themselves into life. According to Steiner's view, the lifeless is preceded by the living, and life has access to a vast array of forms capable of evolution and metamorphosis, appropriate to conditions. Steiner also defines the several spiritual worlds that interpenetrate, support, destroy and anticipate reality, through the activity of their Beings. In some ways it is the past history of vast spiritual relationships that sets the stellar influences, in others it is future goals and incipient needs of the Beings involved in both specific and general planetary evolution.

Two of the principle and persistent confusions with Steiner's star-knowledge are his double meanings for the terms planet and star. On the one hand, the double meaning of the `Evolutionary Planet' as opposed to the existing planets, has been largely clarified by writing (in many instances) the evolutionary stages with capitals, and naming them: Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth (sometimes as Mars-Mercury), Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan. These `planets' have to be understood as evolutionary reincarnations of the solar system, each attaining successive densification as the normal goal, until the middle of the Earth evolution; which goal then reascends into the spiritual for succeeding evolutions. Each reincarnated system includes brief recapitulations of previous stages similar to embryo recapitulations in mammals and man, these leaving an embodiment of the former conditions co-existing with the normal evolution of the stage in question. This massive evolutionary view, as distant as it may appear, is what lays the framework for the workings and qualities of the starry whole. Current planets are usually typed with the lower-case, with the sun being frequently called both a Planet and a planet, although Steiner uses it to define a fixed star. The context of all quotes is hopefully sufficient to figure out what star or planet Steiner is talking about, especially as gathered here, chronologically and in sufficient number. But readers should be aware of the potential for confusion if this work is superficially read.

Another confusion for the modern mind is Steiner's use of the terms earth, water, air and fire as words to describe solid, liquid, gaseous and pre-gaseous states of matter. When used like this these words represent the ancient use of the word `elements'; so the way these words are employed, whether as elements (see 26 Nov. 1906 for a typical example), or as what we call `water' or `air' today, must be carefully discerned. Some other potentially confusing perspectives, none of which can be open-mindedly disproved by modern direct factual scientific evidence, are summarized below:

1) The present solar system is the fourth incarnation of a pattern of seven `great cycles' or evolutionary planets, called respectively (old) Saturn, (old) Sun, (old) Moon, Earth, (future) Jupiter, (future) Venus, and (future) Vulcan. The speed of evolution slows to the point when the inception of human self-consciousness occurs, during late Atlantean times of our Earth, and is now speeding up again.

2) Mankind has been present at various evolutionary stages throughout this pattern, and life in general is able to persist and evolve forms in states of purely fiery and gaseous conditions.

3) The Zodiac is the creator of and exists beyond the physical existence of the evolutionary planets, this fact being reflected in the twelve daylight and twelve night-time hours.

4) Civilization has epochs related to the occurrence of the vernal sun in different constellations of the Zodiac. The governance of each sign was revised to a then-consistent 2,160 years, with the sun entering Aries about 747B.C. and entering Pisces about 1413A.D. (see 3 & 8 Oct. 1905, June 1906, 25 Aug. 1906, 4 Sept. 1906)

5) Sun, moon and earth were united in one body, but the sun had too fast, too dissolving a pace of evolution, so it had to depart the earth and moon. (see 1904)

6) Sometime after the sun left the earth+moon, Mars penetrated the fiery, gaseous mass and left astral iron. Mercury left etheric mercury in mid-Atlantean times; thus occultists sometimes designate the evolutionary planet Earth, as “Mars - Mercury.” This had been incorporated into the naming of the days of the week. (see 1 & 28 Oct. 1905, June, 1906, 30 Aug. 1906)

7) The moon departed because it had a too hardening, mummifying effect on the early albumin; but its leaving also weakened the reproductive forces of the earth and caused the sexes to arise. (see 1904, 31 Aug. 1906)

8) The movements of sun, earth and planets are actually spirals within spirals.

9) Radioactivity has only existed for a few thousand years because the Earth-evolution is on the decaying side. Rocks were formerly softer and `more alive'; they are progressively hardening and crumbling, including nuclear decay.}