Steiner taught that no member of the human being is our own property: each sheath is an outgrowth a hierarchy puts down into earthly life.
The Sheaths as Outgrowths of the Hierarchies in Anthroposophy is Rudolf Steiner's teaching that the members of the human being are lent, not owned. In GA 205, The Human Being as a Physical and Spiritual Entity, given at Dornach on 17 July 1921, Steiner describes each sheath as an Ausstülpung, an evagination or outgrowth that a spiritual hierarchy pushes down into earthly existence and withdraws again at death. The physical form is an outgrowth of the Archai, who extend their structure first, so that the form stands ready and only then is the human being inside it. The etheric body is an outgrowth of the Archangeloi, the astral body an evagination of the Angeloi, and the earth that carries all three belongs to the Exusiai, the Spirits of Form, whom Genesis names the Elohim. Anthroposophic nursing works with these sheaths from outside the skin.
The sheaths as outgrowths of the hierarchies is the short name for what Steiner set out on 17 July 1921: our form, our life body and our soul body are on loan. Each is a limb a higher rank of beings lowered into earthly conditions, held in service for one life, and drew back when the gate of death opened.
In Steiner's Own Words
And with regard to the astral body, it is certainly the case that there is a similar relationship to the realm of the Angeloi, the angels, as there is to the realm of the Archai with regard to the physical form and to the realm of the Archangeloi with regard to the etheric body. We do not have our astral body entirely of our own either. It is an evagination of the angelic beings. So that we can say: From the human astral body, something passes over into the realm of the Angeloi at death. We also have our astral body like a garment of our being from the realm of the Angeloi. So you see how, by having a physical human form, an etheric body, and an astral body, we are actually embedded in the realms of the next higher hierarchies.
What it Means Today
Read as a working instruction rather than a cosmology, the lecture explains anthroposophic nursing's attention to the outside of a patient. Ita Wegman opened her Klinisch-Therapeutisches Institut at Arlesheim in 1921, the year of this lecture, and the nursing practice that grew there starts where the lecture starts: the form under the nurse's hands is not the patient's private possession. Margarethe Hauschka, who worked with Wegman at Arlesheim, developed that touch into Rhythmical Massage Therapy and founded her school at Bad Boll in 1962 to teach it. The strokes lift rather than knead, and they address the etheric body rather than muscle tissue. External applications in the same lineage, oil dispersion baths and ginger kidney compresses, rest on one premise: work on the sheath, and the being inside it answers.
Thalira synthesis: we call this the Loaned Garment reading. If the physical form belongs to the Archai, the etheric body to the Archangeloi and the astral body to the Angeloi, then care of a body is care of borrowed property, and the standard for handling it is the standard for anything held in trust. A nurse in the Bad Boll lineage is not working on a machine. She is tending something that will be reclaimed.
Where to Read More
- The Human Being as a Physical and Spiritual Entity, GA 205
- Find Occult Science, an Outline at SteinerBooks [THALIRA_BLOG_LINKS_PLACEHOLDER]