The inverted, planet-organed body a soul inhabits in Steiner's Sun-sphere, where Mars, Jupiter and Saturn serve as its head.
The Cosmic Body in the Sun-Existence in Anthroposophy is the reversed, planetary body a human soul inhabits during the central stretch of life between death and a new birth. Rudolf Steiner described it in Karmic Relationships, Volume V (GA 239), in the lecture given at Paris on 25 May 1924. On Earth we are enclosed by skin and look outward. In the Sun-sphere the relation inverts: the world lies inside us, and the planets become organs. Moon, Mercury and Venus form the limbs; the Sun-sphere with the Exusiai, Dynamis and Kyriotetes becomes the rhythmic system of heart and lung; Mars, Jupiter and Saturn constitute the head. Through Mars the soul lives by the cosmic word, through Jupiter it bears the wisdom of worlds, and through Saturn it holds cosmic memory. Elisabeth Vreede's Mathematical-Astronomical Section at the Goetheanum has taught this planetary anatomy since 1924.
The cosmic body in the Sun-existence is what Steiner called the form a soul wears once it has passed the Moon, Mercury and Venus spheres after death. Its anatomy is planetary rather than fleshly. Everything a person looks out at on Earth is now carried within, and what is looked upon is Man himself, vast as the starry world.
In Steiner's Own Words
In the Sun-existence, Moon, Mercury and Venus are our limbs; the Sun itself is our whole rhythmic system; the Sun-sphere itself, with all its Beings, is our heart and our lungs; whereas our organ of intelligence and reason, the head, is represented in the Sun-sphere by Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. And just as we speak with the mouth in the lower part of the head, so, because we carry Mars within us in our cosmic body, we live by virtue of the cosmic word. The cosmic word sounds through the wide expanses of space. Thus, just as here on Earth we carry in our head those insignificant earthly thoughts, so through Jupiter we bear within us the wisdom of worlds. And as here we have memory, experiences of remembrance, so in the Sun-existence we bear within us the Saturn-existence which gives us cosmic memory.
What it Means Today
The most direct modern continuation of this picture is not astrology but the Mathematical-Astronomical Section of the School of Spiritual Science, founded at the Goetheanum in Dornach at the Christmas Conference of 1923 and 1924 and led by the Dutch mathematician Elisabeth Vreede (1879 to 1943). Vreede studied mathematics, astronomy and philosophy at Leiden before joining Steiner's circle, and from 1927 onward she issued a monthly series of astronomical letters, later gathered in English as Anthroposophy and Astronomy. Those letters treated the planetary spheres as a field of observation, not a set of symbols. She asked what the actual motions of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn have to do with the human being, the question the Paris lecture opens from the other side.
Reading Vreede next to GA 239 changes what the term asks of a reader. The cosmic body is a claim about anatomy rather than a poetic image: the organ functions we know as limb, rhythm and head are the same functions the planets carry, only turned inside out, and that a person between death and rebirth works in that anatomy alongside the Exusiai, Dynamis and Kyriotetes on the body he will later be born into. Thalira synthesis: the practical use of this term is diagnostic rather than devotional, because it says every biography was drafted somewhere the biographer cannot see, and the parts of a life hardest to explain by heredity or circumstance are the parts drafted there.
Where to Read More
- Karmic Relationships, Volume V, GA 239
- Find Karmic Relationships at SteinerBooks [THALIRA_BLOG_LINKS_PLACEHOLDER]