The first of seven planetary conditions in Steiner's cosmology, a primordial warmth-state in which the physical body germ of the human being first arose.
Old Saturn (German: alter Saturn) is the first of the seven planetary conditions Rudolf Steiner describes in his cosmology of cosmic evolution. It is not the present-day astronomical planet but an earlier, far vaster planetary embodiment that preceded Old Sun, Old Moon, and our present Earth. Its substance was pure warmth, sacrificed by the high hierarchy called the Thrones, and inside this warmth the very first germ of what would later become the human physical body began to take form.
In Steiner's Own Words
Thus we see that ancient Saturn took form through the fact, that from the surrounding universe the Thrones concentrated on one point in space. They did in great measure what in a lower sphere of existence is done by the silkworms, when they spin threads of silk out of their bodies. The Thrones spun the substance of warmth out of themselves, sacrificed themselves on the altar of Saturn. We have to regard the life of the Spirits of Personality on Saturn in such a way, that these Spirits of Personality or Archai actually imparted personality, Ego-consciousness to the warmth. The substance of the fire-warmth streamed together from out of the universe, the Cosmos, it streamed forth from highly exalted Beings, the Thrones.
What it Means Today
The seven planetary conditions (Old Saturn, Old Sun, Old Moon, Earth, Future Jupiter, Future Venus, Vulcan) are Steiner's reading of cosmic evolution from the side of phenomenology. They are not astronomy and they are not metaphor. They are the same kind of inquiry Goethe brought to the metamorphosis of the plant, extended to the metamorphosis of the cosmos itself. Goethe traced how leaf becomes calyx becomes petal becomes fruit, each stage carrying the gesture of the one before. Steiner traces how a warmth-condition (Saturn) becomes a light-and-gas condition (Sun) becomes a fluid-and-sound condition (Moon) becomes our solid mineral Earth, and how each later condition recapitulates and transforms the gesture of all earlier ones. Old Saturn is the densification pole at the beginning of this sequence: pure warmth, no light, no gas, no fluid, no solid, only the differential of warm and cold spinning out of the sacrifice of the Thrones.
The practical anchor is the human being itself. Our physical body, the visible mineral form we wear today, carries the deepest archaeological layer of the cosmos within it. Its first germ was laid down on Old Saturn, and that is why warmth (body temperature, blood-warmth, the warm-organism) is the deepest physical condition we share with the universe. Anthroposophic medicine reads this directly: chronic loss of warmth in the organism is not a peripheral symptom but a signal that the most ancient layer of the body is calling for attention. When you feel cold in your hands and feet, or when a feverless inflammation will not resolve, Steiner would say the Saturn-layer of the body is speaking. The physical body remembers its origin in warmth. Old Saturn returns as the first earthly recapitulation: the Polarian Epoch, Steiner's name for the warmth-body phase of the very early Earth. Distinct from the ancient planetary conditions, the present planetary spheres are the realms the soul traverses between death and rebirth. The warmth-seed of Old Saturn was laid down by the beings of Saturn.
Where to Read More
- Occult Science, an Outline, GA 13 (1909), the canonical exposition of all seven planetary conditions
- The Spiritual Hierarchies, GA 110 (Düsseldorf, April 1909), the lecture cycle on which the Thrones-sacrifice account rests
- Cosmic Memory, GA 11, the earlier theosophical-period account of the Saturn stage
- Buy An Outline of Esoteric Science from SteinerBooks
- Saturn: A New Look at an Old Devil by Liz Greene - Complete Guide