Three successive impressions of strict justice that meet a soul in the Moon sphere, the first region the dead pass through after crossing the threshold.
The Three Judgements of the Moon Sphere in Anthroposophy is Rudolf Steiner's name for three successive impressions of strict justice that meet a soul in the first region it enters after death, described in the third lecture of Supersensible Man (GA 231), given at The Hague on 17 November 1923. The bearer is the will, which after death becomes a moral physiognomy that can conceal nothing. The first judgement: the soul perceives only souls morally like itself and simply cannot see the rest. The second: it recognises that it and its companions resemble the Ahrimanic forms present in that region, while the Angels stay hidden. The third: the Ahrimanic beings point to the great primeval Teachers of mankind and the primordial Wisdom they left on Earth, and the soul gazes into an empty void. Steiner placed all three in the Moon sphere, the cosmic colony to which those Teachers withdrew.
The Three Judgements of the Moon Sphere are not a tribunal. No being passes sentence. Steiner describes them as perceptions that judge by being accurate: the dead person meets his own moral form, meets the company that form qualifies him for, and meets the wisdom it shuts him out of. Justice here is a matter of eyesight rather than verdict.
In Steiner's Own Words
These are the three impressions which must needs come to man when, with a physiognomy of evil, he passes over into the world that lies beyond the gate of death. And it must of course be remembered, that no human being is wholly good; in the very best of men there is, after all, a great deal that is bad. Hence it falls to the lot of a great many human beings to undergo, at any rate in part, the experiences here described. But the more a man is able to assume the physiognomy of the good after death, the more readily will he behold those whom he has through his goodness come to resemble, and the less will he respond to the Ahrimanic beings.
What it Means Today
Emanuel Swedenborg set out something structurally close to this 165 years before Steiner spoke at The Hague. In Heaven and Hell, published in Latin in London in 1758, Swedenborg describes three states the spirit passes through after death: a first state of exteriors, in which the person still appears much as he did in the world; a second state of interiors, in which the ruling love comes out and the outward manner falls away; and a third state of instruction, for those being prepared for heaven. Swedenborg's governing claim matches Steiner's first judgement almost exactly. Nobody is sentenced. Spirits gravitate toward those whose love resembles their own, and the place they arrive at is simply the company they can bear. The Swedenborg Society, founded in London in 1810, has kept these descriptions continuously in print, which is what makes the parallel checkable rather than anecdotal.
Thalira synthesis: the two accounts differ in where the mirror sits. Swedenborg's spirit is sorted by what it loves; Steiner's is sorted by what it can see, so the three judgements of the Moon sphere are three narrowings of sight rather than three punishments. That is why Steiner insists this region works on the will and not on thinking. A soul cannot argue with a field of vision. It can only, slowly, will itself into a form that admits more light.
Where to Read More
- Supersensible Man, Anthroposophically Considered, GA 231
- Find Supersensible Man at SteinerBooks [THALIRA_BLOG_LINKS_PLACEHOLDER]