Spiritual Hierarchies by Rudolf Steiner: Review

Last Updated: April 2026

Background and Context of the Dusseldorf Lectures

Rudolf Steiner delivered the ten lectures that became The Spiritual Hierarchies and the Physical World: Zodiac, Planets, and Cosmos in Dusseldorf, Germany, between April 12 and April 22, 1909. This period coincided with the height of Steiner's most intensive public lecturing activity within the German Section of the Theosophical Society, just two years before his formal separation from that organization and the founding of the Anthroposophical Society in 1913.

The Dusseldorf audience in 1909 had access to Steiner's two major foundational books: Theosophy: An Introduction to the Supersensible Knowledge of the World and the Destination of Man (GA 9, 1904) and the early draft of what would become An Outline of Occult Science (GA 13, completed 1910). The lecture cycle was therefore pitched as a deepening of concepts readers had already encountered in book form, extending them into the specific territory of the spiritual beings behind cosmic evolution.

The English translation, published by SteinerBooks under the title The Spiritual Hierarchies and the Physical World, runs to approximately 176 pages. The translator's introduction by the editors of SteinerBooks provides basic orientation to the GA numbering system and the historical context of the lectures.

Steiner's interest in spiritual hierarchies was not invented in 1909. His earlier book Christianity as Mystical Fact (GA 8, 1902) had already addressed the relationship between ancient mystery wisdom and the hierarchical beings named in Neoplatonic and early Christian sources. The Dusseldorf lectures represent a systematic elaboration of what had been touched on in earlier works, now framed through Steiner's own anthroposophical vocabulary.

The Three Triads: Nine Ranks of Spiritual Beings

The architecture of Steiner's hierarchy system is drawn from traditional Christian angelology but given an entirely different philosophical foundation. The medieval Christian tradition, following Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite's Celestial Hierarchy (written approximately 500 CE), identifies the same nine ranks of beings. What Steiner adds is an account of their evolutionary history and their functional role in the ongoing development of the cosmos and of humanity.

The nine ranks are arranged in three groups of three, often called triads or choirs:

• Third Hierarchy: Angels (Angeloi), Archangels (Archangeloi), Archai (Primal Beginnings / Time Spirits)
• Second Hierarchy: Exusiai (Powers / Spirits of Form), Dynamis (Mights / Spirits of Motion), Kyriotetes (Dominions / Spirits of Wisdom)
• First Hierarchy: Thrones (Spirits of Will), Cherubim (Spirits of Harmony), Seraphim (Spirits of Love)

In Steiner's system, the numbering inverts conventional hierarchical logic: the First Hierarchy is the highest, closest to the divine Trinity. The Third Hierarchy, which includes the Angels most immediately concerned with individual human beings, is the lowest and most accessible to human consciousness.

The key evolutionary principle Steiner introduces is that each rank of being did not arrive at its current state through creation alone, but through development across prior cosmic epochs. An Angel of the present day, for instance, was at the human stage during the ancient Moon evolution. An Archangel was at the human stage during the ancient Sun. An Archai was human during the ancient Saturn epoch. This means the hierarchy is not a fixed ladder of power but a record of evolutionary stages, each of which is still relevant to the present.

First Hierarchy: Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones

Steiner describes the First Hierarchy as the beings most directly connected to the will, wisdom, and love of the divine Trinity itself. They are sometimes called the Spirits of the Will (Thrones), Spirits of Harmony or Wisdom (Cherubim), and Spirits of Love (Seraphim), though in the lectures Steiner is careful to note that these names carry meanings far more specific than their common usage in religious contexts.

The Thrones are described as having completed their own human stage so far in the past that their current mode of existence is entirely given over to sacrifice. In the lectures for April 14 and 15, Steiner explains that the Thrones sacrificed their own being substance to provide the material basis for the ancient Saturn evolution, the first of the four great planetary stages of our solar system's development. This act of self-sacrifice is not understood as a loss but as the highest form of being: existence so fully developed that it can give itself away without diminishing itself.

The Cherubim carry the wisdom patterns that guide how evolution unfolds. They are not creators in the direct sense but bearers of the archetypal blueprints within which the Seraphim's will impulses find direction. The Seraphim in turn carry the direct impulses of the triune divine being into the hierarchical order below them.

For students of Western esotericism, the parallel with the Neoplatonic triad of the One, Nous (Mind), and Soul is worth noting. Steiner's own lectures occasionally gesture toward these Greek philosophical parallels without dissolving his framework into a simple retelling of Plotinus. The anthroposophical approach insists that the beings named are real, not merely conceptual categories.

Second Hierarchy: Kyriotetes, Dynamis, and Exusiai

The Second Hierarchy comprises the beings Steiner calls the Spirits of Wisdom (Kyriotetes), Spirits of Motion or Movement (Dynamis), and Spirits of Form (Exusiai). This middle triad is central to the account of planetary evolution given in the Dusseldorf lectures and in the companion work An Outline of Occult Science.

The Kyriotetes are described as having passed through their human stage during what Steiner calls the ancient Saturn evolution, making them the most advanced of the Second Hierarchy in terms of temporal distance from the human condition. Their wisdom is not conceptual but cosmic, woven into the structural fabric of evolving worlds.

The Dynamis, Spirits of Motion, regulate the rhythmic movement and temporal unfolding of evolutionary processes. In the lectures, Steiner draws attention to the fact that what we experience as time itself is related to the work of these beings, though he cautions against mechanical interpretations. Time in the anthroposophical sense is not an abstract container but a living stream shaped by conscious beings.

The Exusiai, often called Spirits of Form or Powers in traditional angelology, play a particularly important role in human evolution. Steiner identifies these beings as the "Elohim" of the Hebrew creation narrative, the spiritual beings whose combined activity shaped the form of the physical human body. In the lectures of April 18 and 19, he elaborates on how different Exusiai are associated with different planetary spheres, each contributing a specific formal principle to the evolution of the solar system and its inhabitants.

Third Hierarchy: Archai, Archangels, and Angels

The Third Hierarchy is the one most directly related to human experience. These beings work immediately within the sphere of human consciousness, culture, and individual life. Steiner's descriptions of this triad in the Dusseldorf lectures are among the most practically applicable passages in GA 110.

The Archai, also called Time Spirits or Primal Beginnings, are the beings responsible for the overarching spirit of each historical epoch. Steiner developed this idea extensively in other lecture cycles, particularly in the Occult History lectures (GA 126) and in the series on the mission of the folk spirits (GA 121). An Archai being guides what we might call the "mood of an age," the underlying disposition of human consciousness during a particular historical period lasting several centuries.

The Archangels are the folk spirits and language spirits, the beings responsible for the particular genius of national cultures and linguistic communities. In GA 121, The Mission of the Individual Folk Souls in Connection with Germanic-Nordic Mythology, Steiner gives an extended account of how specific Archangels have guided the development of particular cultural streams. The Archangel Michael, who is identified in Steiner's later work as the current ruling Archangel (since 1879), receives considerable attention in his collected works though not specifically in GA 110.

The Angels are the beings most immediately connected to individual human destinies. Steiner taught that each human being has a guardian Angel, not in the sentimentalized popular sense, but as a real spiritual individuality who has been associated with a particular human soul across multiple incarnations. In the Dusseldorf lectures, he explains that the Angel of a given person carries the karma, the accumulated consequences of that soul's previous lives, and works to ensure that the conditions necessary for karmic resolution are met in each new incarnation.

Zodiac, Planets, and the Macrocosm

One of the most original aspects of GA 110 is Steiner's account of the relationship between the physical cosmos and the hierarchical beings. He does not treat the zodiac and planets as merely symbolic or as physical bodies reducible to their astronomical properties. Instead, he describes them as the visible outer expression of the activity of specific hierarchical orders.

The twelve zodiac constellations represent, in Steiner's account, the outermost sphere of the macrocosm within which solar evolution takes place. The Seraphim are associated with the movements and impulses of the zodiac belt. The seven classical planets (Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon) are understood as seven successive stages of our solar system's evolution, each associated with a different order of beings from the hierarchies.

This framework is not astrology in the conventional predictive sense. Steiner is not suggesting that the position of Mars at the time of your birth determines your personality. He is making a more fundamental claim: that the planets as physical objects are the outer expressions of spiritual activities, much as the human body is the outer expression of soul and spirit. Understanding the spiritual beings behind planetary realities gives a qualitatively different understanding of the cosmos than astronomy alone can provide.

The lectures draw on Steiner's earlier work in Cosmic Memory (GA 11), which gives an Akashic account of planetary evolution preceding the formation of the physical Earth. The Dusseldorf lectures build on that material by peopling it with specific hierarchical beings and their characteristic activities.

Saturn, Sun, Moon, and Earth Evolution

A substantial portion of the Dusseldorf lectures is devoted to Steiner's four-stage account of solar system evolution: the ancient Saturn stage, the ancient Sun stage, the ancient Moon stage, and the current Earth stage. This framework, also presented in An Outline of Occult Science (GA 13), is the backbone of Steiner's cosmological teaching.

During ancient Saturn, existence was purely thermal. There was no light, no life, no form in the physical sense. The Thrones began the first sacrifice that would eventually lead to the physical world. During ancient Sun, light and a form of living vitality entered the evolutionary stream. During ancient Moon, a form of psychic or soul activity emerged. Earth evolution, in Steiner's account, is the stage in which fully individualized self-consciousness, the "I" or ego, becomes possible for human beings.

The hierarchical beings are understood as having passed through their own stages of consciousness during these prior evolutionary epochs. What distinguishes them from humanity is not a qualitative superiority as such, but a temporal one: they have completed stages of development that humanity is still working through. This gives Steiner's system a dynamic, forward-looking quality that distinguishes it from static accounts of spiritual hierarchy.

In the lecture of April 20, Steiner makes a point that surprises many new readers: the physical Sun and Moon that we see in the sky are not the whole reality of these bodies. The physical appears as a kind of reflection or condensation of spiritual activities that are the real substance of solar and lunar existence. This is consistent with Steiner's broader epistemological claim, developed in The Philosophy of Freedom (GA 4) and Truth and Knowledge (GA 3), that sense perception gives access only to the outer surface of reality.

How GA 110 Compares to Other Steiner Lecture Cycles

For readers already familiar with Steiner's work, locating GA 110 within the broader corpus helps clarify what is unique about the Dusseldorf lectures and what is supplemented elsewhere.

Compared with An Outline of Occult Science, the Dusseldorf lectures are more focused and less comprehensive. Occult Science provides the foundational narrative of cosmic and human evolution in systematic form, while GA 110 zooms in on the hierarchical beings themselves and their specific activities. The lectures are therefore better read as a companion to, rather than a replacement for, the main book.

Compared with the Archangel Michael lectures (collected in various GA volumes, particularly GA 152, 177, and 194), GA 110 is less historically specific. The Michael lectures address the spiritual context of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, while the Dusseldorf cycle takes a longer view spanning entire cosmic epochs.

Compared with the lecture cycles on karma and reincarnation (particularly GA 235-240, the Karmic Relationships series), GA 110 is more cosmological and less biographical. The Karmic Relationships lectures show how specific historical personalities relate to each other across incarnations; GA 110 provides the metaphysical architecture within which such incarnations take place.

For readers interested in the intersection of Steiner's ideas with contemporary scientific thought, the chapter on planetary evolution in GA 110 can be productively read alongside Rupert Sheldrake's discussions of morphic fields and the memory of nature, though Sheldrake himself does not engage directly with Steiner's framework. The convergences are suggestive rather than systematic.

What Steiner Scholars Say

Academic scholarship on Steiner has grown substantially since the 1990s. Among the most significant contributions to understanding the hierarchies in Steiner's thought are the following:

Sergei O. Prokofieff (1954-2014), one of the most prolific Anthroposophical writers of the late twentieth century, returned repeatedly to the theme of spiritual hierarchies across his major works. In The Spiritual Origins of Eastern Europe and the Future Mysteries of the Holy Grail (Temple Lodge, 1993), he traces the relationship between Slavic folk souls, their guiding Archangels, and the broader hierarchical context. His The Occult Significance of Forgiveness (Temple Lodge, 1995) addresses the relationship between karmic resolution and the work of the Angels in human destiny.

Terry Boardman, a British Anthroposophical researcher and author, has published extensively on the relationship between spiritual hierarchies and historical events, particularly in relation to the two World Wars and the nature of the Ahrimanic and Luciferic influences in modern history. His essays, available through the Anthroposophical Society's various publications and his own website, provide a contemporary application of the hierarchical framework developed in GA 110.

Rudolf Frieling (1901-1986), a priest of the Christian Community (the religious renewal movement associated with Steiner), wrote extensively on the hierarchies in relation to the Gospels and the Christian sacramental life. His works, particularly Christianity and Islam and Souls of the Nations, engage the Archangel level of the hierarchy in relation to world religions.

Academic scholars outside the Anthroposophical movement who have engaged seriously with Steiner's hierarchical cosmology include Wouter Hanegraaff, whose Esotericism and the Academy (Cambridge, 2012) places Steiner's system in the broader history of Western esotericism, and Geoffrey Ahern, whose Sun at Midnight: The Rudolf Steiner Movement and the Western Esoteric Tradition (Aquarian Press, 1984) remains one of the more balanced outside assessments of Steiner's contribution.

Meditative Practice with the Hierarchies

Steiner consistently maintained that spiritual science is not merely theoretical. The hierarchies are not a framework for intellectual satisfaction but a living reality that can be approached through disciplined meditative practice. In Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment (GA 10), he outlines the path of inner development that makes genuine supersensible perception possible, of which the perception of hierarchical beings is a natural outcome.

For those new to anthroposophical meditation, the primary practices recommended in GA 10 include the following stages: the development of equanimity (Gleichmut) in response to both pleasant and unpleasant experiences; the cultivation of objective thinking through conceptual meditation; the development of positive responses to everything encountered; and the practice of what Steiner calls "the retrospective review" of the day's events in reverse order before sleep.

The Calendar of the Soul, Steiner's sequence of 52 meditative verses one for each week of the year, provides a year-long contemplative curriculum that reflects the hierarchical and planetary themes of GA 110 in poetic form. Reading the weekly verse alongside the relevant passages of the Dusseldorf lectures creates a rich meditative engagement with the material.

Review Verdict: Who Should Read This Book

The Dusseldorf lectures are not the best starting point for someone completely new to Steiner's work. The cosmological vocabulary assumes at least a basic familiarity with the concepts developed in Theosophy and An Outline of Occult Science. Readers who attempt GA 110 without that preparation often find it abstract and difficult to follow.

For readers who have already worked through the foundational Steiner books, the Dusseldorf lectures offer a significant deepening. The specific names and activities of the nine hierarchical orders, the account of their evolutionary history, and the detailed treatment of the zodiac-planet-hierarchy relationship all add layers of texture to the cosmological narrative that the broader works gesture toward but do not fully develop.

For practitioners of anthroposophical meditation, the lectures offer living material for contemplation. Each of the ten lectures addresses a specific aspect of hierarchical reality and can be taken as the seed for a week or more of meditative work.

For researchers in the history of Western esotericism, GA 110 is an important primary source for understanding how Steiner synthesized traditional angelological frameworks with his own evolutionary cosmology. The relationship to Pseudo-Dionysius, to Neoplatonic thought, and to the broader Theosophical movement of the early twentieth century is visible throughout.

The SteinerBooks English translation is clear and readable. The footnotes provided by the editorial team are helpful for orienting GA cross-references. The book is recommended without reservation for its intended audience: serious students of anthroposophy and Western esotericism who wish to understand Steiner's hierarchical cosmology in its own terms.