The Soul's Journey After Death

Glossary Collection · 20 Terms

The soul's expansion through the planetary spheres after death, from the backward life-review through the cosmic midnight to the return toward rebirth (GA 140). Part of Thalira's Anthroposophical Glossary of 515 terms, and companion to the in-depth guide Anthroposophy.

Helping the Dead

A living person serving someone who has died by reading spiritual content to them inwardly, so the bond of love keeps working across death.

Reading the Cosmic Script

The soul's after-death art of perceiving its earthly thoughts turned inside out as a world-memory written across the stars.

Soul Groups After Death

The companies the dead gather into by inner kinship of conscience, faith, and love, never by the blood-ties or nationhood that ordered earthly life.

The Backward Journey Through Life

In kamaloka the soul retraces its just-ended life in reverse, feeling, from the receiving side, the effect of every deed it once did to others.

The Expansion into the Cosmos

The widening the dead soul undergoes as it grows from the single point of its body out to the orbit of the Moon and beyond.

The Forming of the Next Body

The work of the journey's second half, where spiritual beings help the soul model the seed of its future physical body out of the cosmos.

The Jupiter Sphere

In Steiner's account of life after death, the planetary station of cosmic wisdom, where the world-thoughts are heard inwardly as sounding meaning.

The Living and the Dead

Steiner's teaching that those who have died stay in active community with us, the bond held open by interest of heart and feeling.

The Mars Sphere

The after-death realm beyond the Sun where the soul turns outward and the harmony of the spheres begins to sound as the speaking Cosmic Word.

The Meeting with the Hierarchies

The waking encounter, between death and rebirth, in which the soul comes to live consciously among Angels, Archangels and the higher spiritual beings.

The Mercury Sphere

The second region the soul enters after death, where moral quality alone decides whether one finds companions or stays alone.

The Moon Sphere

The first region the soul enters after death, bounded by the Moon's orbit, where every earthly passion is inscribed as a lasting record.

The Night and the Dead

In sleep the soul leaves the body and meets those who have died, rejoining loved ones each night between falling asleep and waking.

The Return Toward Rebirth

The contracting half of the after-death journey, when the soul turns homeward from the cosmos and descends toward a waiting body and its future parents.

The Saturn Sphere

The outermost planetary station of the soul after death, the sphere of cosmic memory where the karmic record of the whole planetary world is read.

The Soul After Death

In Steiner's spiritual science, the soul's journey from death through the planetary spheres to the cosmic midnight and back toward a new birth.

The Sun Sphere After Death

The mid-point of the soul's journey beyond death, where the human being expands to the Sun and finds fellowship only through the Christ carried up from earthly life.

The Venus Sphere

The after-death realm of cosmic love, where the warmth a soul felt toward the divine gathers it with others of kindred faith.

The Work of the Dead

Steiner's teaching that the so-called dead keep acting into earthly life, working into human habits, conduct, thought, and the forces of nature.

The Zodiacal Sphere After Death

The world of the stars beyond Saturn, the outermost boundary the soul reaches between death and rebirth, where it receives the forces of the whole cosmos.