Genesis E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

How was the world created? Battle lines are currently drawn between two dogmatic camps: the fundamentalist 'Creationists' who believe that creation took place in six days, and the scientific reductionists who expound theories of 'big bangs' and so on. From a direct spiritual perception of the facts, Rudolf Steiner presents a new perspective which transcends these bipolar arguments. He affirms that clairvoyant research accords with the biblical descriptions, but he emphasizes that the text of Genesis has to be interpreted in a special way. In this extraordinary document, Steiner speaks of the six days of creation as a reawakening of the previous phases of the Earth's development. He describes the work of mighty spiritual entities called the Elohim, and how they co-operated with other spiritual hierarchies in the creation of Earth. He also clarifies the relationship of the Elohim and the biblical Jehovah. In addition, Steiner discusses themes of light and darkness, the meaning of Adam and Eve, the 'day of rest' on the seventh day, the stages of human development on Earth, and the special character of the Hebrew language. Also featured in this new edition is a previously unpublished introductory lecture on the meaning of mystery drama.

Leseprobe

RUDOLF STEINER (1861–1925) called his spiritual philosophy ‘anthroposophy’, meaning ‘wisdom of the human being’. As a highly developed seer, he based his work on direct knowledge and perception of spiritual dimensions. He initiated a modern and universal ‘science of spirit’, accessible to anyone willing to exercise clear and unprejudiced thinking.

From his spiritual investigations Steiner provided suggestions for the renewal of many activities, including education (both general and special), agriculture, medicine, economics, architecture, science, philosophy, religion and the arts. Today there are thousands of schools, clinics, farms and other organizations involved in practical work based on his principles. His many published works feature his research into the spiritual nature of the human being, the evolution of the world and humanity, and methods of personal development. Steiner wrote some 30 books and delivered over 6000 lectures across Europe. In 1924 he founded the General Anthroposophical Society, which today has branches throughout the world.

GENESIS

Secrets of Creation

The First Book of Moses

Eleven lectures given in Munich, 16–26 August 1910

RUDOLF STEINER

RUDOLF STEINER PRESS

Rudolf Steiner Press Hillside House, The Square Forest Row, East Sussex RH18 5ES

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

This edition published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2002 Reprinted 2012

First published in English by Anthroposophical Publishing Co., London 1959, and reprinted by Rudolf Steiner Press in 1982

Originally published in German under the title Die Geheimnisse der biblischen Schöpfungsgeschichte (Volume 122 in the Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe or Collected Works) by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach. This authorized translation, based on the 4th revised edition (1961), is published by kind permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach

Translated by Pauline Wehrle Translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 2002

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 85584 368 4

Cover art by Anne Stockton; cover design by Andrew Morgan Typeset by DP Photosetting, Aylesbury, Bucks.

Contents

Introduction by Baruch Luke Urieli

Lecture 1, 17 August 1910The Mystery of the Primordial Word

The opening words of the Bible: B’rechit bara elohim et hashamayim v’et ha’aretz. The creative power of the Hebrew language and the meaning of its characters. A revelation of the origin of humankind in the opening words of Genesis. The interpretation of the primordial words: In the weaving of the elements there comes forth from the creative thinking of the elohim a complex of pictures that manifest outwardly and a complex of pictures that are active inwardly.

Lecture 2, 18 August 1910Ha’aretz and Hashamayim

The conceptual character of ‘hashamayim’ and the desire or will character of ‘ha’aretz’. The condition of tohu wa’bohu. The elohim. The separation of Sun from the earth. The departure of the hashamayim, spiritual light, sound and word creation from ha’aretz, the elements of warmth, air, water and earth. The organizing of ha’aretz by the rays of force of hashamayim. The creation of the human form from the sounds of speech.

Lecture 3, 19 August 1910The Seven Days of Creation

The work of the six ‘days’ as a re-awakening of the previous planetary conditions of the earth, the entering in of the light. The dividing of the intermingling elements of water, gas and warmth into air and water. The precipitation of solid matter from out of the element of water, and the arising of the group soul nature of the plants. The addition of outer cosmic forces to earthly existence. The development of the animal world in air and water. The dignity of man.

Lecture 4, 20 August 1910The Forming and Creating of Beings by the Elohim.The Aeons or Time Spirits

Lecture 5, 21 August 1910Light and Darkness, Yom and Laila

Light and darkness as polar opposites. The progressive archai (yom) manifest as helpers of the elohim in the light, and the retarded archai (laila) manifest as darkness. The alternating conditions of waking and sleeping as processes of destruction and upbuilding and their connection with the Sun being (yom) and the Saturn being (laila). The activity of the hierarchies and their portrayal in the story of creation.

Lecture 6, 22 August 1910Elemental Existence and the Spiritual Beings Behind It.Jehovah-Elohim

Lecture 7, 23 August 1910The Structure of the First and Second ‘Days’ of Creation.The Work of Elemental Beings on Human Organs

Images of ancient Moon. Objective consciousness as the actual earth consciousness. The consciousness of the hierarchies on ancient Moon and on the earth. The activity and consciousness of the elohim on the first ‘day’ of creation according to Genesis.

Lecture 8, 24 August 1910Stages of Human Development up to the Sixth ‘Day’ of Creation

The human being as the firstborn of creation. The laying down of the foundations of his soul/spirit during the first five ‘days’ of creation. The sentient soul on the first ‘day’, its progression to intellectual or perceptive soul on the second ‘day’, and to consciousness soul on the third ‘day’; its clothing in an astral body on the fourth ‘day’ and in an etheric body on the fifth ‘day’. The development of physical man (as a being of warmth) on the sixth ‘day’. Jehovah-Elohim did not make him into a being of air until after the sixth ‘day’ of creation. The sinking down of the human being out of the earth's periphery through the luciferic influence. The further condensation to water and solid matter and the descent of the human being of flesh.

Lecture 9, 25 August 1910The Moon Element in Man

The separation of sun and earth. The withdrawal of human soul/spirits to the planets with the exception of a representative couple, Adam and Eve. The separation of moon and earth. The return of human soul/spirits. The coinciding of Genesis with the facts of An Outline of Esoteric Science. The moon element in earth and man. Cosmic moon substances and human independence. The future pulverization of earth matter by moon forces. The imprinting by Jehovah-Elohim of moonlike earth dust into the bodily nature of man.

Lecture 10, 26 August 1910The Way the Bible Accords with Clairvoyant Research

The creation of a male/female human being on the sixth ‘day’. This sixth ‘day’ of creation chronologically identical with the Lemurian age of spiritual science. The imprinting of the ego by Jehovah-Elohim. The differentiation into a more condensed physical body outside and a more rarefied etheric body inside. The meaning of the ‘day of rest’ on the seventh day. The ascent of the elohim to Jehovah-Elohim. The transition from the etheric elohim human being of the Lemurian age to the physical Jehovah human being of Atlantis. Man as the last of all the creatures to descend from the spiritual realm into the physical. The need for human beings to take into themselves the spiritual being of Christ.

Lecture 11, 16 August 1910The Portal of Initiation

Schuré's The Children of Lucifer and The Great Initiates. Rudolf Steiner expresses his thanks to all those taking part in and giving assistance to the performance of the Rosicrucian mystery drama The Portal of Initiation which took place prior to the lectures. A look at the drama as an attempt to portray in an artistic picture the path into spirit heights.

Notes

Note Regarding Rudolf Steiner's Lectures

Introduction

Readers opening a book entitled Genesis—Secrets of Creation and expecting to find a philosophical or theological investigation will be surprised by something quite different here. In the very first lecture, given more than 90 years ago, Rudolf Steiner shows clearly that he wishes to enter the realm of Creation through the medium of the creative processes in the power of the Word. Demonstrating an amazing knowledge of the Hebrew language he is able to describe how the creative power hidden in the interplay of consonants and vowels in every word can give us a clear picture of those creative forces which shape cosmos and earth.

Like his original audience we, as readers, are drawn into those creative processes. Prepared thus by the first lecture we can behold in the second the growth of the creative tension between the heavens and the earth. Cosmic powers begin to form earth existence, but this does not happen at the mere flick of a divine finger. The third lecture shows that the musical scale of seven aeons is needed in order that the song of earth existence can unfold out of its cosmic origins.

In the fourth lecture we are made aware that behind the phenomena of warmth, air, water and earth, as well as light, sound and life, spiritual beings are at work. We are led to behold those hierarchical beings who are hidden behind the seemingly naive words of the first chapters of Genesis.

On coming to the fifth lecture we are made aware that not all the hierarchical beings are of a progressive nature. There also exist retarded creator beings whose work is obstructive. Yet these beings, too, fulfil an essential task in the labour of creation. The creative tension first pointed out in the second lecture can now be seen as a fundamental ingredient of any creation.

Out of such tension a new world can be born. Having established this, Rudolf Steiner then points out in the sixth lecture that man could only be created once the seven elohim had become a unity: Jehovah-Elohim. This union enabled them to act not merely out of the sum total of their powers but out of a potentizing of the power of each by that of all his fellow creators. This new creator being was able to create man as a first beginning of a new hierarchy to come.

By the description of the creation of the sensory organs we are made aware in the seventh lecture that due to the gift of his senses man can become a conscious being. The precondition enabling such a gift to be bestowed is that the hierarchical beings in question are those who have attained a higher consciousness. In consequence of this, it is possible for man, too, born out of their creative forces, to become progressively a soul/spiritual being who can attain to ever higher levels of consciousness.

This is shown in the eighth lecture. The counterpart of man's growing mastery of conscious experience is his evolution from a being of warmth through ever denser stages of existence until the present stage of physical humanity in which he has a body of flesh and bone.

In the ninth lecture we are shown that during a time of accelerated hardening of the earth only the sturdiest representatives of the human race could stay whilst all the others had to move, in spiritual form, to the planets until this crisis point in earth evolution had passed. However, as a result of this crisis the earthly human being was able to regain some of his cosmic origin in the manifoldness of races, languages and peoples which began to repopulate the earth when the exiled souls were able to return to this planet. It was a planet which had become so earthly that human bodies would fall into dust once the soul/spirit being had to leave them in death.

Densification of the human body also made it impossible for the human being to remain androgynous as had hitherto been the case. Two genders were now necessary, male and female, but the earthly gender was complemented in that the etheric body in the man was female and in the woman male. It is in the realm of the etheric life forces that outer human existence can be complemented by an inner half. This inner half is the hidden staircase by which human beings will eventually be able to regain their cosmic wholeness and once more find access to that part of the divine creator force which withdrew from its creative work for a period in order to unfold future creative gifts. The union of the human being with the being of Christ is the key which will give humanity access to those future steps of development. Christ is the Lord of the Sabbath not only in its earthly dimension (Math. 12,8) but also in its cosmic aspect (as shown in the tenth lecture).

*

The first part of this Introduction has attempted to follow the thought processes through which Rudolf Steiner guides his audience during this series of lectures. The purpose of this was to highlight the fact that these lectures given in 1910 ultimately belong with all those in which Rudolf Steiner pointed to the reappearance of the Christ in the etheric realm. Time and again between 1908 and 1923 he pointed out that the working of the Christ had entered the realm of the forces of life and was thereby opening to man the way to a conscious beholding of the creative forces which weave through all life—just as 1900 years earlier, through his entry into a physical body, Christ had opened the way for a conscious beholding and mastering of earth existence. The frequency of such lectures and indications by Rudolf Steiner peaked in the year 1910.

This faculty which began to develop was totally new, and rather disconcerting at that, for when human beings start to realize that they have begun to possess the gift of seeing the inner life processes of nature and especially of man they might initially experience themselves as peeping through the keyhole into a forbidden chamber. Only in so far as the soul can battle through to an entirely selfless love can it take this step unscathed.

These lectures on Genesis offered Steiner a unique opportunity to lead people in an entirely objective way into the secrets of the creative life forces while making them aware of the conditions ruling this path as well as of its wonders and hurdles. Since this way of teaching is also an entirely discrete one it respects the freedom of the individual in an exemplary way. Attempting to tread the path of consciously beholding etheric reality together with a well-prepared group of people is even today, nearly 100 years later, a true adventure. One has to learn how to step on to holy ground.

*

It is very significant that Rudolf Steiner gave these lectures immediately after the first performance of ‘The Portal of Initiation’. In this first of his mystery dramas, as well as in the following three, he attempted to show how human destinies are moulded, purified and transformed when individuals begin to step beyond the threshold of physical earth existence. These lectures on Genesis unfold in the afterglow of that great new step in the life and work of Rudolf Steiner, and he refers to it time and again.

It is good that in this new edition in English the lecture relating to that performance is placed at the end of the book rather than in its historically correct position at the beginning. This may help readers realize out of their work with the secrets of creator life, the secrets of Genesis, that where these life forces are taken hold of consciously on an inner path of striving towards initiation they will bring totally new aspects and developments into the life of the individual and that of his or her life community.

Baruch Luke Urieli

Lecture 1, 17 August 19101

The Mystery of the Primordial Word

If anyone who has a background of spiritual science and has absorbed something of what anthroposophy can tell us about the evolution of our world is able to find the way into those tremendous opening words of our Bible, it should be like entering an entirely new spiritual dimension.2

There is probably no account of human evolution so open to misinterpretation as this document usually known as Genesis, the description of the creation of the world in six or seven days. If a person of modern times calls to mind, in one of the languages spoken today, the words ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth’, what they contain for him can be termed hardly a reflection, barely a shadow of what lived in the ancient Hebrews when they opened their souls to the opening words of the Bible. In fact, with regard to this particular document, the least possible importance attaches to finding the equivalent modern words to put in the place of the ancient ones; and it is far more important that we prepare ourselves through anthroposophy to feel at least something of the mood which lived in the hearts and minds of the ancient Hebrew scholars when they brought to life within themselves the words: B’reshin bara elohim et hashamayim v’et ha’aretz.3

What was it like—this whole inner world which scholars experienced in the moments when these words flashed through their souls? We can only compare it with what can come alive in the soul of a person when he receives the pictures experienced by a seer who can see into the spiritual world. For what, after all, is being described to us through what we call spiritual science? We realize that these descriptions are the outcome of seership, of the living intuitions which the seer receives when, having freed himself from the conditions of sense perception and of the intellect bound up with the physical body, he looks with spiritual organs into the spiritual world. If he wants to translate what he sees there into the languages of the physical world, he can only do so in pictures, and if his descriptive powers suffice, he will do it in pictures which are able to awaken in his hearers a mental image corresponding to what he himself sees in the spiritual worlds. The resulting experience must, however, not be mistaken for a description of things and events of the physical sense world, and we must be aware the whole time that we are having dealings with an entirely different realm—one which does indeed underlie and maintain the ordinary sense world and the mental images, impressions and perceptions which belong there, but which does not actually identify with it at all.

If we want to portray the origin of this our sense world including that of the human being himself, our ideas must not remain confined to the sense world. No science equipped solely with ideas taken from the world of the senses can reach the origins of sense existence. For sense existence is rooted in the supersensible element, and although we can go a long way back historically and even geologically, we must realize that if we want to arrive at the origins, we must, at a certain point in the primordial past, leave the sphere of the sense world and rise up into regions that can only be grasped supersensibly. What we call Genesis does not begin with the portrayal of anything to do with sense perceptions, a portrayal of anything that could be seen with eyes in the external physical world. In the course of these lectures we shall have ample chance to become convinced that we should be quite mistaken to take the words of the first sections of Genesis as referring to things or events which can be seen with the physical eye. Therefore as long as you connect the words ‘heaven and earth’ with anything containing a residue of the sensuously visible, you have not reached the dimension to which the first sections of Genesis are referring. Today there is practically no other way of throwing light upon the world it describes except through spiritual science. But with the spiritual scientific method a certain possibility is there to approach what we might call the mystery of these primordial words with which the Bible opens, and get a feeling for their content.

What is their special character? If I may put it abstractly to begin with, their secret lies in the fact that they are written in the Hebrew tongue, a language which works upon the soul quite differently than any modern language can. Although the Hebrew of these early chapters may not work in the same way today, it did at one time have the effect that when a letter was sounded it called up a picture in the soul. Pictures arose in the soul of someone who entered with living interest into the words and let them work upon him—pictures harmoniously arranged, organic pictures, pictures which may be compared with what the seer can still see today when he proceeds from the realm of the senses to the realm of the supersensible. The Hebrew language or, to be more exact, the language of the first chapters of the Bible, enabled the soul to call up pictorial images very similar to those the seer encounters when, freed from his body, he is able to look into supersensible regions of existence.

Therefore if we want to reach in some measure a living picture of these powerful primordial words it is essential to forgo all the pale and shadowy impressions which any modern language can have on us and get an idea of the tremendously alive, creatively stimulating power inherent in any of the sound sequences in this ancient tongue. So it is of immense importance that in the course of these lectures we really do attempt to conjure up those very pictures which arose in the Hebrew scholars of old when a particular sound worked creatively within them and the corresponding image arose. You see from this that there has to be an entirely different way of penetrating into this document than all those paths chosen today to understand ancient writings.

This gives you an indication of our line of approach. It will be a slow and gradual process to acquire a living picture of what lived in the ancient Hebrew sages when they let those most powerful words work on them which, as words, do at least still exist in the world. Our next task will be to stick as little as possible to what we already know, and free ourselves as much as we can from the ideas we previously held when we talked about heaven and earth, the gods, creation and a primordial beginning. The more we can liberate ourselves from the feelings we had towards these words the better we shall be able to penetrate into the spirit of a document which arose out of quite different soul conditions than those of today. Above all we must come to an agreement as to what we are talking about in the spiritual scientific sense when we speak about the opening words of the Bible.

You know of course that it is possible for today's clairvoyant researcher to describe from a certain aspect the origin and evolution of our earth and of human existence. In my book An Outline of Esoteric Science4 I endeavoured to describe how the earth, as the scene, the planetary scene of the human race, gradually came into being through the three preliminary stages of evolution, the Saturn, Sun and Moon stages. You will certainly be able to recapture, at least in broad outline, what was described there. The question is at what point in the spiritual scientific account should we place the soul impression made on us by the mighty word b’reshin? Where does it belong?

Let us be clear about the way in which we can visualize the Saturn, Sun and Moon existences. If we look back for a moment to ancient Saturn we picture it as a cosmic body which does not yet possess anything of what we are used to calling material attributes. Of all that we find in our own environment it has only the element of warmth; warmth or fire, the mobile element of warmth. No air or water or solid earth is as yet to be found upon ancient Saturn; so that even where it is densest it is living, weaving warmth. Then, as we know, existence advances to the so-called Sun stage. To that mobile warmth a kind of air or gaseous element is added; and we have a true picture of the planetary condition of the Sun if we regard the elements of which it is composed as consisting of an interweaving and combining of gaseous, airy elements and warmth elements. The third condition in the evolution of our earth is the so-called Moon stage. Here, what we can call the element of water is added to the warmth and air. During the old Moon stage there is as yet nothing of what in our present earth stage we call solid. However, during the Moon stage a special event occurs: the homogeneous character of the life of the planet now divides into two. Looking back upon old Saturn we see it as a unified state of weaving warmth, and old Sun appears as an interweaving of the elements of gas and warmth. During the Moon existence a split occurs between what is of the nature of the Sun and what is of the nature of the Moon. It is only when we come to the fourth stage of our planetary evolution that we see the solid earth element added to the earlier elemental conditions of warmth, air and water. So that this solid element could occur in the life of our planet the division which had previously taken place during the Moon stage had to be repeated. Once again the sun element had to withdraw from the earth nature of the planet. Thus at a certain moment in the evolution of our planet the denser earthly element and the more delicate airy sun element separate out from a unified planetary condition where there was an interweaving of the elements of fire, air and water. It is only in this newly-arisen earthly element that a densification into the solid element could occur.