Spiritual Beings in the Heavenly Bodies
The spiritual beings within the planets, fixed stars and comets, and the cosmic deeds of the hierarchies, from Steiner's 1912 Helsinki cycle (GA 136). Part of Thalira's Anthroposophical Glossary of 515 terms, and companion to the in-depth guide Anthroposophy.
The teaching that planets and stars are the outer bodies of spiritual beings, so the sky read by occult vision is a community of gods, not dead matter.
The high spiritual hierarchies whose sacrificial deed kindled the warmth-seed of Old Saturn, the first germ of our cosmos and of the human body.
Steiner's reading of planetary orbits as the visible circling of ranked spiritual Beings, whose realms are bounded by the paths the planets trace.
Steiner's reading of comets as the cleansing organs of a living planetary system, sweeping away the harmful astral matter shed by human and Luciferic life.
The self-giving of the gods: the higher hierarchies create and sustain the world by pouring out their own substance, the lawful passage from taking to giving.
The will-substance that the Thrones, the first hierarchy, pour out of themselves and sacrifice to lay down the foundation of the whole cosmos.
The motionless stellar sphere Steiner reads as the script of the highest hierarchies, standing behind the moving planets and sending formative forces to earth.
Spiritual beings who ensoul whole constellations and stream their shaping forces toward the earth, so that a star-group is the visible body of a soul.
Steiner's teaching that warmth, air, water and earth are the working territories of spiritual beings, not lifeless matter.
The spiritual intelligences whose will lives in each planet, so that the orbit of Saturn, Jupiter or Mars is the gesture of a being, not a mechanism.