Spiritual Hierarchies & Nature Beings

Angels in Anthroposophy are the lowest rank of the nine, also called Sons of Twilight, the personal guardian spirits one rank above humanity whose specific work in each human's astral body Steiner detailed in GA 182.

Archai in Anthroposophy are the Spirits of Personality, also called Time Spirits, who govern cultural epochs and the I-being's development across history.

Archangels in Anthroposophy are the Folk Spirits, the ninth rank above humanity, who govern nations as ensouling Volksgeister with one Archangel rotating as cosmic regent every 350 years.

Cherubim in Anthroposophy are the second of the nine angelic ranks, Spirits of Harmony whose wisdom-substance shapes the harmonies of star-existence and patterns cosmic evolution.

In GA 178 Steiner describes cast-off human etheric bodies occupied by demonic spirits, the Eastern lodges' counterpart to the Western brotherhoods' captive dead.

Steiner's name for the ahrimanic beings that gain a physical foothold when a machine creates a vacuum, driving the air, and the god, out of a space.

Dynamis in Anthroposophy are the Spirits of Motion (also called Mights or Virtues), the moving-power animating planetary spheres who gave the astral-body germ at Old Moon.

Spiritual entities working behind earth, water, air, and warmth, known as gnomes, undines, sylphs, and fire-spirits, that sustain nature's living processes.

What a person makes in his calling detaches from him and becomes the outer sheath of elemental beings that continue evolving without him.

Exusiai in Anthroposophy are the Spirits of Form (the biblical Elohim), third rank of the second triad, who gave humanity the etheric-body germ at Old Sun and shape life-forces into form.

The warmth elementals of Steiner's spiritual science, formerly called salamanders, who carry cosmic warmth into the blossom and the seed.

Folk-Soul in Anthroposophy is the Volksseele, the group-soul that ensouls a people or nation, understood as the work of an Archangel-rank being through the etheric and astral life of that people.

Gnomes are Steiner's root spirits: clever earth elementals that draw mineral substance to plant roots and carry the earth's gravity-forces in full waking consciousness.

Grey magic is Steiner's term for reaching the spiritual world with the will forces that beat the heart, because the Portal of Death was skipped.

The shared soul and I of a whole animal species, living on the astral plane, of which the single animals are extended members.

Growing into a people from without is Steiner's name for national belonging stamped on the returning soul from outside when its bond to angel and archangel has gone slack.

Kyriotetes in Anthroposophy are the Spirits of Wisdom, first rank of the second triad, who articulate cosmic Wisdom into the ethereal forms of life and shaped Old Sun existence.

In GA 196 Steiner teaches that memory houses the Angeloi, intelligence the Archangeloi, and sense activity the Archai: the human being is a dwelling for the Third Hierarchy.

Michael is the Archangel-rank Sun spirit who, since 1879, leads humanity's present epoch as the cosmic intelligence inviting free, individual cognition of the spiritual world.

In Steiner's reading, humanity did not climb from many gods to one: worship descended from Archai to Archangeloi to each person's own Angelos.

Steiner's diagnosis that the nineteenth century idea of nationality arises when a people binds its feeling life to one Archangel and forgets that the Archangels cooperate.

Offences against the Time Spirit are collective human errors that reach the Archai, rebound from the cosmos, and return as decadence, illness, and death in earthly life.

Steiner's name for a Folk-Soul that reaches the human being from beneath the earth, seizing the will rather than being met in freedom.

Seraphim in Anthroposophy are the highest of the nine angelic ranks, the Spirits of Love whose substance overflows in pure love-creating activity immediately beneath the Trinity.

In Steiner's teaching the soul must cast off its bond with the folk spirit between death and rebirth, releasing every national imprint before entering purely spiritual life.

From falling asleep to waking, Steiner taught, every soul leaves its own folk soul and lives in the round dance of all the others, its own excepted.

The Spiritual Hierarchies are the nine ranks of supersensible beings (angels, archangels, archai, exusiai, dynamis, kyriotes, thrones, cherubim, seraphim) who guide cosmic and human evolution.

Sylphs are Steiner's air-and-light elementals: the light-bearers of the plant world, living in the moving air and kindled to selfhood by the flight of birds.

Retarded Archangeloi who completed only six of their seven principles on the Old Moon, were cast down to Earth, and dragged human language below its intended level.

The Angel Mistaken for God names Steiner's diagnosis that the believer who rejects all mediating hierarchies reaches only his own Angelos and calls that being God.

Steiner's name for souls that certain Western occult brotherhoods deliberately bind to the earthly sphere after death, then consult through mediums for knowledge and power.

The being that Western brotherhoods of the left intend to set in the place of the true etheric Christ, so that humanity reveres a substitute under the borrowed name.

Steiner's teaching that every Folk-Spirit shapes its people through one elemental channel: air in Italy, water in France, salt in Britain, warmth in Central Europe, reflected light in Russia.

The esoteric legend Steiner retold in 1917: Ireland is the earthly image of Paradise, separated off before Lucifer entered, and so became the Isle of the Saints.

Steiner's method of reading each folk soul as the mood of one stretch of individual life, assigning Italy, France, Britain, Russia, and Germany their own ages.

Steiner's name for the voice-organ as a seed of the future: today it forms the word, in time it will give birth to the whole human being.

Steiner's law that the age at which people stay naturally able to grow inwardly has fallen through every epoch, reaching twenty-seven today.

Steiner's image for a permanently loosened etheric body: a person set outside life's circuit, touched by everything human yet fused with nothing.

The Kingdom of Speech is Steiner's name for everything humanity speaks on earth: a kingdom of nature that the angels perceive as we perceive minerals, plants and animals.

Angels who completed only five or six of their seven principles on the Old Moon, were cast down to Earth, and now inspire the delusion of one uniform truth.

Steiner's law that the post-Atlantean epochs reflect one another around the Greco-Latin pivot, so Egyptian, Persian, and Indian impulses return transformed in the later ages.

Steiner's name, given in 1917, for an intended use of the earth's north and south magnetic polarity to send spiritually guiding forces across the whole planet.

The Asian murder-order Steiner cites as occult crime under expert direction: killings ordered by unknown superiors to send chosen souls early through death.

A secret bargain between Lucifer and Ahriman, transacted at waking and at falling asleep, by which each adversary claims the experiences the other gathered in us.

The possession-concept is Steiner’s name for the idea of owning what lies outside one’s own person, an idea born only when Sun and Moon separated from the Earth.

Steiner's future event, around the eighth millennium, when the moon rejoins the earth, physical birth ceases, and humanity must master moon-forces consciously or fall to mechanization.

The sixth post-Atlantean epoch, where the spirit self develops through felt brotherhood, freedom of thought, and a spirit-grounded science Steiner called pneumatology.

Steiner read Grimm's consonant shift as a cosmic rhythm: each speech sound migrates through the astral body, the etheric body and the physical body across the ages.

The current of desire and anticipation that Steiner said flows toward the soul out of the future, meeting the stream of past conceptions to make consciousness.

Steiner's name for the modern proletarian movement: a migration of peoples that no longer rolls across geography but rises vertically from the social depths, calling for a descending spiritual stream.

Thrones in Anthroposophy are the Spirits of Will, the lowest of the first triad, who sacrificed their substance as warmth on Old Saturn to give humanity the physical-body germ.

Undines are Steiner's elemental water spirits, the dreaming beings who weave in sap and moisture and act as the chemists of plant life.

The Germanic creation triad Steiner set beside Genesis: three gods shape the ash and the elm into humanity, giving it spirit, intelligence, and outer form.