The seven-by-seven inner stages within each planetary condition of Steiner's cosmos: rounds are states of life, globes are states of form.
Rounds and globes are the fine-grained tiers Rudolf Steiner placed inside each great planetary condition of cosmic evolution. A planetary condition is a state of consciousness. Within it, an entity passes through seven rounds, which are states of life, and each round unfolds through seven globes, which are states of form. Earth is the fourth round of its planetary condition, and humanity now stands on the fourth, physical globe.
Rounds and Globes in Anthroposophy is the inner sub-structure of Steiner's planetary evolution, carried over from his Theosophical period. Each planetary condition, which is a state of consciousness, passes through seven rounds, which are states of life, and each round passes through seven globes, which are states of form. The seven form-states run arupa, rupa, astral, physical, plastic, intellectual, and archetypal. Steiner laid this out in the Berlin lecture course of 1904 to 1905, published as Foundations of Esotericism (GA 89), where Earth stands as the fourth round of the fourth planetary condition and humanity occupies the fourth, physical globe. The full scheme is a seven by seven by seven lattice, 343 stages, which Steiner inherited from Theosophical writers such as Sinnett and Blavatsky and later refolded into the simpler sequence of Old Saturn, Old Sun, Old Moon, and Earth that defines his mature cosmology.
In Steiner's Own Words
In form, humans are now physical (fourth globe or fourth form state); in terms of life they are mineral (fourth round); in terms of conscious awareness, awake (fourth planetary system). A 'round' means the passage of an entity through one of the realms of life. Each planetary system has seven rounds. On Earth, human beings are in their fourth round. In this round, mineral evolution will be taken to its perfection, in the fifth round plant evolution, in the sixth animal evolution, the animal level of awareness, and in the seventh round human conscious awareness.
What it Means Today
This vocabulary is the clearest place to watch Steiner build on, then move beyond, the Theosophy he taught between 1902 and 1909. The seven-rounds, seven-globes scheme was not his invention. It reached English readers through A. P. Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism (1883) and was systematized in H. P. Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine (1888), where planetary chains of seven globes carry life through seven rounds apiece. Steiner adopts the framework in GA 89 almost intact, down to the Sanskrit form-names arupa and rupa, then quietly recasts it. The scholar Robert A. McDermott, longtime chair of the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, traces this exact shift in The Essential Steiner (1984): the dense Theosophical lattice of conditions, rounds, and globes contracts, in Steiner's later work, into the four named planetary embodiments most readers meet first, Old Saturn, Old Sun, Old Moon, and Earth.
Thalira synthesis: rounds and globes are the scaffolding Steiner climbed and then folded away, so the planetary-condition names you encounter in Occult Science are the visible fourth-globe surface of a hidden seven-by-seven interior he had already mapped. Knowing the lattice changes how you read those familiar names. When Steiner says Earth, he means one round of one condition seen at its physical globe, a single lit window in a building of 343 rooms. Holding that in mind keeps the planetary stages from flattening into a tidy four-step timeline, and restores the breathing, recursive rhythm Steiner actually described in 1904.
Where to Read More