JUPITER ~ 18 MARCH
1955
Today we look at Jupiter. First
of all I would like to give you a few astronomical details about Jupiter. It is
the largest planet in our solar system, with a diameter eleven times that of
the Earth. As we know, the planets become larger and larger. Mercury, the
astronomical Mercury which is quite near the Sun, is quite small, then comes
Venus which is almost as big as the Earth, and so on. It’s a rising tide, so to
speak, with regard to size from the Sun toward Jupiter. With Jupiter there is a
culmination and then again an ebbing back; thus Saturn is smaller than Jupiter.
Now, if we see Jupiter through a telescope, we see a round disk and then
something like clouds, like a surface or a ball of clouds (see drawing). In one
spot there is even a kind of bright island, as it were. That is what one sees
in a telescope. One is aware, of course, that this is not solid matter but
gaseous, and one is not even certain whether or not there is a solid surface
below that sea of clouds. We can imagine that tremendous globe of Jupiter all
surrounded by clouds of maybe some gaseous substance. It is likely that the
whole globe consists of these clouds.
We shall come back later on
to the aspect of Jupiter in the greater setting of the embodiments of the
Earth, and from that point of view it is quite clear that the planet Jupiter
cannot consist of solid matter such as what we find on the Earth. It must be
quite a subtle substance, almost on the borderline between substance and ether.
One is also not certain whether Jupiter has its own light. That is the
distinction that one makes between fixed stars and planets. Fixed stars, for
instance our Sun, are considered to be fixed stars because they have their own
light; that is one of the distinctions. However, with Jupiter we are not
certain whether or not there is some sort of light shining from within through
those clouds. That is also something which one can understand on the background
of cosmic evolution — the previous embodiments of the Earth.
The mean distance of Jupiter from the Sun is about
five times that of the Earth (see drawing). We need not think in Copernican
terms that this Earth moves around the Sun, it is not at all necessary. However,
one thing is rather certain, that the Earth stays in a mean distance from the
Sun, though it varies a little in the course of a year. For instance, about the
time of Christmas, the Earth is nearer the Sun than during the rest of the
year, and about the time of midsummer, it is furthest away from the Sun. Now
take this mean distance of the Earth from the Sun and stretch it out five
times, and out there we would find Jupiter. This is important to know. I don’t
think it makes any sense to tell you the distances in miles, because it cannot
convey anything to us — all those thousands and millions of miles of distance
of the planets from the Sun.
There again I would say that
one need not think in terms of Copernican orbit, that can be quite different;
one can even demonstrate it quite differently. Still, Jupiter would stay in a
kind of mean distance to the Sun. Now just to add something to make this picture
perhaps clearer, if we take the entire orbit — that which lies within the
entire path of Jupiter — that is the sphere, the invisible part of Jupiter (or
any planet), which is most important. Within that invisible part, that sphere
of Jupiter, we find the spiritual beings of the hierarchies dwelling. The
sphere of Jupiter has a diameter which is about 60,000 times the diameter of
the Earth.
We just want to add another little fact, which is the
time of revolution of Jupiter. That means its return to the same sidereal
position, to the same fixed star, as we see it from the Earth. If we see
Jupiter out here, and we look toward it, then we see it in front of a certain
fixed star out in cosmic space. In the course of twelve years, i.e., exactly
eleven years and 315 days, it goes around the Sun. It is not a straight line,
and it is certainly not just a simple orbit in a Copernican sense. It is much
more complicated; it is actually a movement that would be roughly like this
(drawing). Jupiter goes around the Sun through cosmic space, and after eleven
years and 315 days, it would then come back to this position. This is also
quite an interesting ratio, because it is about twelve times longer than the
Sun year that we experience on the Earth, which is the foundation of our
computation of time on Earth. Twelve years is like a potentized Earth time. Now,
Jupiter is the domain of the Spirits of Wisdom. In the lecture cycle that was
given in Düsseldorf, Rudolf Steiner speaks of the spheres of the planets and
how they are permeated by the activity of the spiritual hierarchies, and
Jupiter is especially the domain of the Spirits of Wisdom, or Kyriotetes.
The Kyriotetes are the
guardians, so to speak, of the divine-cosmic wisdom, and they are also the
Givers of Life, which we know from the book Occult Science. It was the
Spirits of Wisdom who endowed the ancestor of human beings with life on Ancient
Sun. Let us also remember that Dr. Steiner speaks in the book, Theosophy of
the sphere of Jupiter during the time of life between death and new birth. He
says that the soul of a human being experiences in the Jupiter sphere the
thought archetypes of life and in Mars the archetypes of the physical objects. In
order to work out the main characteristics of Jupiter, to create a picture of
Jupiter in the present moment, we may perhaps go back to Ancient Sun. Why do we
want to go back to Ancient Sun? We go back there because Jupiter, of our
present solar system, has a direct connection with Ancient Sun. We spoke
earlier of the mean distance of Jupiter from the Sun as being about five times
that of the Earth. Within that space wherein Jupiter moves — what we will call
its orbit for the moment, though it is not a straightforward orbit — there we
have the sphere of Jupiter. We hear from Dr. Steiner that Ancient Sun was as
big as the sphere of Jupiter. This is not just chance, and the time of its
revolution of twelve times that of the Sun year is not just chance. We see in
this a sort of recapitulation, or kind of living memory of that which took
place on Ancient Sun.
Let us now try to paint a
picture of Ancient Sun. First, Ancient Sun was preceded by Ancient Saturn,
which was a globe that had assumed the nature of warmth about the middle of
that evolution. It was surrounded by a kind of great circle or aura, and within
that circle the hierarchies lived and from there worked upon Saturn. A Zodiac
did not yet exist, and in the place of the Zodiac there existed this aura, this
circle, or this sphere of spiritual-hierarchical beings — all those hierarchical
beings of which we read in the book Occult Science: the Thrones,
the Kyriotetes or Spirits of Wisdom, the Spirits of Motion, and so on. They
worked from that circumference upon this body of Saturn. However, the planet
could not hold that which was worked onto it. Like a mirror it reflected the
impact that came from its spiritual orbit, or from its “spiritual Zodiac”, a
Zodiac of living beings. Warmth altogether has that faculty. We may have to
speak later about the capacity of warmth to work as a mirror does by reflecting
things that are taking place in the environment. Thus Ancient Saturn was like a
mirror. It reflected the impact that came from the environment, and thus an
aura was created which was actually the very first beginnings of the Zodiac
that we see in the sky. The Zodiac was woven, as it were, out of the
reflections coming from various hierarchies, originally working into the planet
but then reflected into the environment.
Now then, Ancient Sun had quite a different dynamic. The
point is to see that the impact comes from this spiritual Zodiac (yellow in
diagram, p. 98). The events were, so to speak, placed into the center — that is
the difference. On Ancient Saturn the impact was working in the periphery, but
on Ancient Sun the workings were coming from the center. First of all, Ancient
Saturn was repeated — indicated by the blue circle. It was repeated, or
re-created, after the pralaya between Ancient Saturn and Ancient Sun had come
to an end. Then a further condensation took place, and toward the center the
warmth was contracted and condensed into air. Thus we now have on Ancient Sun
air and warmth, partly even interpenetrating. The main point is that in the
very center, the Spirits of Wisdom — those of whom we said have their domain in
the sphere of Jupiter — created a focus, one might say the forerunner of our
present Sun. From there they radiated light into the environment, and again
that mantle of warmth was like a mirror. It reflected the light that came from
the Spirits of Wisdom in their domicile, or their focus. Those beings whom we
call the Archangels nowadays worked there; they went through their “human”
stage on Ancient Sun, and they brought about the reflection, the radiating
back, the reflecting of that life which had come from the Spirits of Wisdom, or
Kyriotetes. Thus there came into existence or grew into the flowing of light,
so to speak, into this reflection of light, those “plant beings”, which are the
predecessors of human beings. This is only an indication; they did not look
like present day plants, but with regard to their consciousness they had
attained the plant stage (outer circle). There we see this light of the Spirits
of Wisdom radiating into cosmic space. It permeated that substance, or that
corporeality of air and warmth, and thus the beings who came into existence
were permeated by an ether body. It was on Ancient Sun when, through the
sacrifice of the Spirits of Wisdom, the ether body was created, and we were
imbued with that ether body.
This is important to realize,
because we shall see that we are moving toward a similar time in the cosmos. As
we know, this Earth cosmos will vanish away and disappear, or dissolve, and
after another night of pralaya there will rise up again another cosmos, that
which is called in occultism, the future Jupiter. Here we have the connection:
this future cosmos will be as big as the sphere of present Jupiter; that is the
inner connection. Nothing exists without reason, and that present Jupiter with
all that which is contained in its sphere, in one regard, is a kind of memorial
of Ancient Sun. Furthermore, in the sphere of Jupiter there are beings or
colonies of beings who at present are working far in advance of evolution, and
they are preparing the future Jupiter, namely, that planet, or cosmos, which
will follow the Earth when the Earth cosmos has been dissolved, following a
“night” of pralaya. In order to get this straight, we must now literally dig a
bit deeper into this future Jupiter. We can do that, we can know about the
events in the future, because the events in the future are not just a
repetition of the past, but they are a transformation of the past and that
which has been in the past. The past will come again but in a completely
transformed form. Therefore, we can already look forward toward that future
embodiment of the Earth, the future Jupiter. Now we can ask, “Why is Jupiter
called Jupiter?” It reminds us of the Greek god, Zeus (the Roman God Jupiter). Why?
Who was Zeus? Zeus was experienced by the Greeks as the guiding spirit of their
civilization that spirit, or rather that family of divine beings. Zeus was, in
a sense, the father who had inaugurated the Greek civilization. What is the
significance of Greek civilization? As we know, it is the development of the
new capacity of philosophical thinking, which was then quite new, and the Greek
art or capacity to descend right into the realm of the physical Earth and live
there happily, enjoying that world of external features. There is, for
instance, one picture of Zeus or Jupiter, which shows him with horns like the
horns of a ram. This indicates that the brain was, so to speak, inaugurated. It
was the beginning of the typical use of the brain of present humanity. That was
inaugurated by Zeus. In ancient times, for instance in Ancient Indian times,
the fontanels were still open, and the more we go back, the more we find that
the etheric brain was really reaching out into the cosmos, like horns. Thereby
it acquired, or received cosmic thoughts, which were not experienced in human
beings as thought; rather, they were experienced by them as visions, as
imaginations, as inspirations, but certainly not experienced as what we call
thoughts. We call our own thoughts nowadays our own creations. This capacity
came only relatively late, and during the Greek civilization human beings
learned chiefly to use their etheric brain, because it had been, so to speak,
drawn right down into the physical brain. Thus they were able, for instance, to
call their body their own body and to call their thoughts their own thoughts. The
capacity to say, “I am thinking;” only came then.
Think also of the picture of
Greek mythology, that Pallas Athena was created out of the head of Zeus. Well,
the story is simply this: One day Zeus had a terrible headache, and then one of
his companions split his head with an axe (rather a crude method of relieving
somebody of a headache), and out came Pallas Athena. If we study the role, the
initiative of Pallas Athena in Greek civilization, we will realize that Pallas
Athena’s main impulse had to do with the development of the human intellect, of
the capacity to arrange everything that we did on Earth according to
intellectual standards, so that we now could experience our own personality in
what we did. That was not so in times before the Greek civilization. Human
beings were led and felt themselves led by divine beings, by divine forces. Thus
we have here in the planet Jupiter something that is strongly connected with
thinking and also with the realization of thoughts and ideas in practical life.
That is also an activity of the Jupiter organization in the human body.
We know, for instance, that
Jupiter in the human being is connected with the function of the liver. The
liver has quite a well-known function with regard to the whole metabolism in
the human body, but apart from that it also has another function, and that is
the transformation of ideas into deeds. There are certain subtle illnesses of
the liver which are not distinguishable on the surface, and in those cases it may
happen that a person has ideas but is not capable of executing the ideas. This
is Jupiter and it is connected with thinking. In the lecture cycle Man in
the Light of Occultism Theosophy, and Philosophy we hear of the seven
movements within the ether body of human beings, and there Jupiter stands
representative for the movement of thinking. That means the movement in the
ether body which directs the whole human organism toward the capacity of
thinking. That comes from Jupiter.
Now then, what is this good for?
This Jupiter we saw, up to now, connected with the past, a kind of memorial of
the past, but we mentioned earlier that in that sphere of Jupiter there are by
now colonies of beings who prepare for the future Jupiter. That is the other
side of Jupiter, the future, the preparation of the future, and in that very
capacity of thinking, of directing the whole human organism toward the capacity
of thinking, there already lies a good deal of that future, actually of that
future Jupiter, because that future Jupiter will consist entirely of thought. Our
present Earth consists of mineral substance, of mineral matter, and we know
that the geologists dig into the Earth and find the geological layers which
betray past stages of the Earth evolution. On future Jupiter one will certainly
not find any mineral substance. The mineral substance can only exist within
this solar universe, especially on the Earth, which is, so to speak, the focus
in this solar universe where mineral matter can exist. On future Jupiter there
will be no such thing as mineral substance; rather, it will consist of thought.
Just as we find on Earth the layers of geological formation, so one would find
on future Jupiter — if one “dug”, as it were, into that planet — only thought
layers, including all the thoughts that have been thought by human beings at
present during the Earth evolution. Therefore, nothing is lost of that which we
think now; or perhaps if we don’t think, that is also not lost. Whatever we
achieve in the realm of thinking is not just something for our entertainment
now, something to pass the time; it is a reality that will live over and across
to that future stage of Jupiter.
We now can imagine, just as
the present Sun consists of layers that future Jupiter will also consist of
layers. Why the Sun? Our Earth which is now a planet will become a Sun. The
normal development is planet, Sun, Zodiac, fixed-star Zodiac. That is, so to
speak, the normal evolution of a planet. Of course that can vary in the one or
other case, it may be different. But our present Earth is supposed to, or is
ordained, so to speak, to become a Sun one day. We can understand the Sun if we
take into consideration all that which we hear from Dr. Steiner about the union
of Christ with the Earth. Christ was once upon a time the Great Guide, or Head,
of the Kyriotetes in our solar system. In occultism in ancient times Christ was
called the Lamb of God, or Ram of God, which actually means, in esoteric
language, the Head of the Kyriotetes. Thus Christ entered the Earth and at
least part of His Being is united with the Earth — it is not, however, His
entire Being. Christ united with the Earth in order to transform the Earth into
a Sun. This is of course only in the beginning, and it will take long ages of
evolution until that is accomplished; but the beginning has been made. We can
be sure that there in the center of the Earth, where on the one hand is the
darkest darkness — where the darkest forces are centered — there is also the
brightest light. There is, so to speak, the new Spirit-land preparing itself in
that center as the new Sun of the future; and thus the Earth will become a Sun.
During the future Jupiter evolution, the Earth will be a Sun, and just as the
present Sun is surrounded by layers — there is the photosphere, the
chromosphere, there are the protuberances, there is the corona, all spheres
that reach, in fact, very far out into cosmic space — we can imagine all that
on future Jupiter, i.e., that the Earth, or the new Sun, will consist of such
layers. Those layers will consist of those thoughts that we are now thinking. We
can possibly see now what a great responsibility we have from an occult point
of view. So much depends on the thoughts that are thought nowadays, because
these thoughts will be the sustenance of a future cosmic existence.
Let us perhaps just very roughly indicate these layers
in a drawing, and we can also imagine that there will be dark spots in these
layers. What will those dark spots be? Will these be Sunspots, as it were? Well,
they will exist and actually consist of all the faulty thinking that we develop
and especially which we develop during this materialistic age. There will be
spots everywhere, and it will take some effort for that Sun to break through
those spots. Rudolf Steiner indicated, for instance, that just the
materialistic thinking that is developed in our present age would also be
present. It is not that a selection takes place whereby only the good thoughts
and the progressive thoughts will be found in those layers, in that kind of
geological formation of that future universe, but the faulty thoughts will also
be present, because they will have to be transformed. Thus we can imagine that
a great struggle will take place on that Jupiter too; namely, a struggle to
overcome the darkness created within the Earth evolution itself. Further, we
can again imagine that there will be this center, and hierarchical beings will
again radiate from this Sun into cosmic space, and reflections will come back
from cosmic space as on Ancient Sun. Radiations will, so to speak, be
reflected, and in that interplay there will came into existence the creation of
that future Jupiter. But all that will be very much influenced and worked
through by these thought layers, which are really the thoughts of our present
time. I think it becomes apparent just how important it is that thinking is
developed, because it is then truly the foundation for not only future
existence, but for the creation of future Jupiter.
We experience here on the Earth the external objects;
we see, for instance, a flower. There are flowers, and we know perfectly well
that those flowers will vanish and wither away, but the essence of that flower
may be contained in human thought. All depends on whether we have noticed it,
have observed it consciously, and how consciously we observed it. Whether we
find in that plant something of that which Goethe described as the archetypal
plant; that would be, so to speak, the culmination of such observations. The
external plant, which we see there on the table, will wither away, but that
which we create in observing the world that does not vanish away. Those
thoughts that we create in observing the world can live into the future and
will live on and will create, or perhaps recreate. It depends so much on what
we do now or what we don’t do, for that is what will create the object world of
that future Jupiter. Now the question is how we can prepare all that at
present. Well, we have outlined already how important it is to use the capacity
of thinking. If we develop thinking, say, in the sense of Dr. Steiner’s Philosophy
of Spiritual Activity, we are already preparing; we are using the
forces, the capacities of present Jupiter, and therefore we are preparing the
future. But that has, of course, a much deeper significance.
This Jupiter capacity in us
culminates in the two-petalled lotus flower between the eyes. Here in this
point (drawing), but of course behind the forehead, actually above the palate,
there is an astral organ. These lotus flowers, or chakrams, are organs of the
astral body, and the two-petalled lotus flower is here between the eyebrows,
but it is further back in the space which is otherwise the base of the brain. We
can read a good deal about the two-petalled lotus flower in the book Knowledge
of the Higher Worlds. There Dr. Steiner gave quite a lot of information
about the use and development of the two-petalled lotus flower. Actually, it is
developed on a
rather high stage of inner development. When the stage
is reached that Dr. Steiner calls the “inner word”, which is of course
inspiration, then the two-petalled lotus flower can come into action. If one
expresses it in occult language, one would say that it begins to rotate, to
revolve.
How can we use and develop
that two-petalled lotus flower? We find, in the above mentioned book of Dr.
Steiner’s, the description that in a certain moment of inner development there
emerges a stream from the larynx, the region where we find the sixteen-petalled
lotus. Certain forms or streams rise to the two-petalled lotus and from there
they stream down into the arms. They are of course etheric streams that are set
into motion by the astral organs of the chakrams. Thereby we gain the inner
word; that which is otherwise the external word connected with the larynx,
becomes the inner word. We can then live, so to speak, in inspiration; the
objects speak to us; they speak through us their inner meaning. That is what we
develop with this Jupiter capacity in its highest manifestation. We have here a
stream coming up from the region of the larynx (see above drawing), and then
another stream coming down and streaming through the arms. It is inspiration
that becomes deed, or can become deed, but not inspiration which is passive, by
no means passive! Inspiration speaks through the one who has the capacity of
inspiration. The inner meaning of the object world speaks through such a
person. Thus we can then gain the higher insight. Actually, that is the moment
of the birth of the higher self, and the birth of the higher self is already a
kind of prophetic condition; it is that which the whole of humanity will attain
on future Jupiter, the birth of the higher self, really, in the lower self. The
birth of the higher self is actually already the ascent to a stage where
humanity has almost achieved its belonging to the fourth hierarchy.
We have the Jupiter organ
here between the eyes, and here the Mars organ in the larynx region; there is
an interplay between these two organs — between that which is Mars activity and
Jupiter activity — when those final achievements of initiation are reached. Of
course it is more complicated than this, and we will realize that if we read
about it in the chapter called “Some Results of Initiation” in Knowledge of
the Higher Worlds. Further, the Mercury activities also play into that,
which we have described earlier, i.e., the transformation of the Mars of the
past, of that belonging to the past and which was partly developed in the past,
into that which is entirely the future. Therefore we can now imagine that the
movements and gestures of Jupiter in the outside cosmos, for instance, in
conjunction with Mars, would indicate something like a gigantic cosmic chakram,
something that is representative of a grand picture of that which we achieve on
a smaller scale, so to speak, in the microcosmic world here on the Earth.
It is most interesting to
follow up the conjunctions of Jupiter and Mars. Mars, the first half of the
Earth evolution in which is contained still the workings of the Ancient Moon,
and the transformation of that through the second half of the Earth evolution,
through occult Mercury, into the future; that we can read in such a
development, in such conjunctions of Mars and Jupiter. In July a conjunction of
Mars and Jupiter will take place in Crab, then after an interval of two years
we will have another conjunction of Jupiter and Mars here in Virgin. Thus the
conjunctions of Jupiter and Mars go through the Zodiac; and after twelve years,
because twelve years is the time of a revolution of Jupiter, we would expect
that Jupiter would again have a conjunction with Mars here in Crab. But that is
not so. There are small differences; it just does not happen after twelve
years, but it happens after 36 years. After 36 years, which is in the year
1991, there will be another conjunction almost exactly in this same position in
Crab. There is a small difference of about two or three degrees, as the
conjunction will move on a few degrees in the Zodiac. In between, the
conjunctions are in different places. Thus we have here again something like a
hand on the cosmic clock that moves according to a certain rhythm of time, in
this case it is 36 years.
Now we can seek to find out
what this conjunction of Mars and Jupiter could mean, what it contains, what it
carries, so to speak, in the sense of this interplay between the Jupiter
chakram and the Mars chakram, which takes place in every human being whether we
are conscious of it or not. Of course if it is not developed, then it can lead
to disturbances, for instance; but the possibility for development is there in
every human being. Out there in the cosmos we have those meetings of Mars and
Jupiter, and in order to read them we must now search out what happened in the
past, say 36 years ago. At that time there was actually a conjunction of Mars
and Jupiter here in Crab; that was in September 1919. Well, of course one could
now work out many things that happened in history, so to speak, that have now
worked up from the Mars chakram, and have grown up into the Jupiter chakram, in
a cosmic sense, which can now flow into action, as it were, in cosmic human
being.
What happened in 1919? In
1919, almost exactly to the day, there was the opening of the Waldorf School in
Stuttgart. The conjunction took place on the 2nd of September. During those days Dr. Steiner gave the
principal course on education, the Pedagogical Course, which was the foundation
of Waldorf School education. Then on the 7th of September the Waldorf School was opened. This is something that
stands in the past, where in the being of the whole cosmos something happened
that was a movement from Mars, so to speak, to Jupiter, a rising, or at least a
possibility of lifting up something from Mars to Jupiter, of redeeming certain
trends, such as those in education, and connecting those with the future
Jupiter evolution. Now we move into a time when this is again in the cosmos,
called into memory, as it were, and we can imagine that this present moment is
a crucial moment with regard to the further development and expansion of
Waldorf School education. Incidentally, we hear that in Holland there is going
to be a very large international conference on education, and I believe such
events have not been arranged according to cosmic rhythms, but they have been
arranged according to the needs of humanity here on this planet. Nevertheless,
we see cosmic rhythms working into that which human beings are doing as it is
arranged according to reason and according to thinking here on the Earth. We
see how it all moves according to cosmic rhythms. In such a fact we realize,
then, how comforting it is to see that humanity is advancing, that its
evolution is taking place in connection with cosmic rhythms and that such
developments, such as those which I very briefly indicated, somewhere have their
place in the cosmos. They have their setting and their rightful place in the
cosmos, such as plants that have been planted in the right place and which are
growing toward the future.
This rhythm of 36 years can
be found everywhere, and it comes back with surprising, almost embarrassing
regularity. We find it in political events, for instance, in how certain things
come back with a precision which is surprising. Of course those political
events, those historical events, have not been thought out or arranged
according to the cosmic rhythm of the return of that Jupiter-Mars conjunction. However,
the fact that they happen in the whole setting of that cosmic rhythm, that is
an indication that events on the Earth, such as historic events, are somehow
observed, as it were, are somehow taken up by the beings of the spiritual world
and are taken into that process of the evolution from the Mars past into the
Jupiter future. Remember we said before that also the dark thought development
or thought forms of the Earth evolution will be taken into future Jupiter in
order to be purified, in order to be transformed in the future.
Thus we see, for instance,
such connections as 1917. That was the time of the events in Russia, when the
Russian Revolution started, and 36 years later brings us to the time of 1953,
when again quite a new development set in, there in the East. We cannot yet say
just what will happen, but something takes place which may lead that
development into new directions — again, something in the cosmos in the sense
of cosmic rhythms, which shows us that the cosmos is taking part in or is
watching that which happens on the Earth. On the other hand, in humanity there
is something inherent that guides us to take notice of those cosmic rhythms and
to transform our own being according to those cosmic rhythms. We may also
mention in this connection that twice that rhythm of 36 years is 72 years — about
the normal lifetime of a human being. [Ed. Note: In 1989, 72 years after the
end of World War I in 1917, the Berlin Wall came down.]
Well, this is Jupiter, and
we couldn’t say very much about this Jupiter in Crab, but I hope that in the
course of this term, perhaps in the last lecture, we might then gather
everything together which we have worked out so far and try to create a
picture, a kind of comprehensive picture of the events in the course of this
year.
Answers to Question
Before, you
gave us the form of Mars. How does Jupiter move in the Zodiac?
We would have then in the Zodiac such a movement. Of
course,
imagine
that the Sun would be here and the Earth here, and then Jupiter. One must
think, then, in terms of a lemniscate, but of course a much bigger lemniscate —
Jupiter would then be here. Of course that is now quite out of proportion. Jupiter
would be here, and about half a year later and a little more, we would then
find Jupiter out there, and that would happen twice in a year. I mean, once
nearer to the Earth and once distant from the Earth; that would happen once in
each constellation during twelve years. Here we have the two petals, as it
were, the cosmic petals, of course.
The lemniscate comes into
existence through the working together of two spheres, a centric sphere
radiating from the center toward the periphery and another sphere pressing in,
as it were, from the periphery toward the center. Think of the sphere of the
Zodiac, of the archetypal Zodiac, and then the more centric and the working
together of those two spheres that is a lemniscatory movement. That is life. We
can say that the minus (-) and the plus (+) and
the exchange, which is the harmonization between the two polaric spheres, would
be life — life between birth and death, or between death and new birth. We
always have something that develops between two polarities, two spheres, as it
were; and then we get movement altogether. Otherwise we have a static
situation.