Psychology and Anthropology

Man, according  to Steiner, possesses the three faculties of thinking, feeling, and willing.  Thinking is associated with the head, Feeling with the torso, and Willing with the limbs.



Man and the Evolutionary Streams

There is also a polarity here, according to the three evolutionary streams.  Luciferic beings (=Astral plane and body) are responsible for the other-worldly dreamy tendency; for going too much out of one's body; Ahrimanic beings (= Physical plane and body) are responsible for the opposite materialistic tendency; and Divine beings (= Etheric plane and body) constitute the balance between the two.

The theory of the microcosm and the macrocosm is a central one to many occult and magical belief-systems, for example the Golden Dawn cosmology, where it is given a practical theurgic application.  This same theory also appears in Rudolph Steiner's teachings.  In an important early (1911) lecture, The Etherisation of the Blood, he refers to this a number of times.

The "three stages of activity of the human soul - the purely intellectual, the aesthetic, and the moral -" are "microcosmic images of the three realms which in the macrocosm.... lie one above the other.  The Astral world is reflected in the world of thought; the Devachanic world in the aesthetic
sphere of pleasure and displeasure; and the Higher Devachanic world is reflected as morality [good or bad deeds]." [The Etherisation of the Blood, p.16 (Rudolph Steiner Press, London]

So Thoughts are the Shadow-images of Beings of the Astral plane, Sympathy and Antipathy the Shadow-images of Beings of Lower Devachan, and Moral Impulses the Shadow-images of Beings of Higher Devachan.  [Ibid].

Thus

"We have within us shadow-images of the great Universe and all the members of our constitution - the physical, etheric, astral bodies and the ego - are worlds for Divine Beings." [Ibid, p.38].



Rudolph Steiner
Rudolph Steiner


page uploaded 24 June 1998
modified 12 December 1999