Seven year rhythm

During Man's life development, the human being develops through an 'unfolding' of the different bodily principles in periods of seven years or 'septennia', related to the work of the spiritual hierarchies and corresponding the influences of the planetary spheres.

These septennia

• correspond to major changes in Man's physiology, eg the changing of the teeth or the physical changes at puberty. See Schema FMC00.236 and Schema FMC00.649
• can usually easily be found back in personal biography work, as this rhythm maps to milestones regarding one's development in terms of personal interests or professional career, new (karmic) challenges, or contacts with people that enter or leave one's life (whereby people that enter one's life become important in a next period)
• have major consequences for education (see Waldorf education, Steiner Schools, Free Schools) and the leading of a conscious life.

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In summary: When the physical environment of the mother's body is abandoned at birth, the part of the human being then born is really his physical body only - based on the hereditary model; what comes to the fore during the first seven years is the development of one's own physical body. At the change of teeth, when the etheric sheath has been discarded, the etheric body is set free. In the fourteenth year, when the astral sheath is discarded, the astral body is set free. The astral body becomes free as regards the outer world at about the twenty-first year: then what is called the sentient soul becomes gradually free to develop. This is followed by the development of the intellectual soul around age 28 and the consciousness soul around age 35.

Note: This page is to be studied alongside with Man's life development as themes and references overlap.

Aspects

• during the first seven years
  • Man lives in an body based on inheritance, but thereafter he further develops his own physical body. See oa Model for hereditary physical body.
  • the child is wholly sense-organ, is completely and wholly an eye; everything you do yourself passes over into the child and pursues its way within him. The finer processes are that the sense organs pick up determines the course of the circulation of the blood, the etheric body makes a picture of it, from it something passes over into the entire circulation of the blood and the metabolic system. So if a child grows up in the proximity of an angry father or hot-tempered teacher, then the vascular system, the blood vessels, will follow the line of the anger and the results of this implanted tendency in the early years will remain through the whole of the rest of life. (1924-08-13-GA311)
• corresponding three 21 year periods in life and the Spirits of Form (SoF) (1910-06-10-GA121)
• the importance of the age or 35 - further covered on Man's life development#Importance of age 35.
  • Man's being has progressed to the point where the can make full use of the faculties dependent upon the astral body, the sentient soul and the intellectual soul. Dante made particular mention of his 35 year in the beginning of the Divine Comedy. Also note on age 33 of Christ-Jesus (the ages of Nathan Jesus (14->12, 21->19, 28->26, 35->33)) (1909-09-21-GA114)
  • after age 35, the sheaths of Man's bodily principles recede (and the forces that have formerly built his physical body now begin to stream into his spiritual body in order to affect his sur­roundings): with age 35, the astral body begins to harden, to recede .. this takes till around 40. The ether body begins to recede after age 42 (see: on Man's life development#Importance of age 35)
• in Greek culture:
  • symbol of threefold Hecate represents the aspects of transformation on the physical, etheric, and astral bodies. Only afterwards the Demeter forces come into play again. The three daughters of Persephone: Luna, Astrid, Philia are mapped to the strengthening of the threefold human soul (1911-08-18-GA129 and 1911-08-19-GA129, no extract yet below)

education

• second seven-year period
  • importance of respect for authority: "raise children so that they will not be know-alls at that time but rely on people around them whom they respect as authorities, people to whom they are devoted .. so that the adults around them are the accepted authorities" (1913-03-14-GA150)
• for reference, see the foundational essay 'The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy' (1907-GA034)

biographical examples

• biographical examples: the seven year periods were very outspoken and clear and have been studied for several important personalities such as Goethe and Napoleon, .. (eg 1916-11-05-GA172, 1919-08-30-GA293)
• the Karmic Relationship Individualities (KRI), see Schema FMC00.241A on Karma research case studies, and the secondary literature with biographies (for example the seven year periods are apparent in Norbert Glas' book on Henry Stanley)
• secondary literature (see 'Further reading' section below)
  • Rudolf Steiner: book by Fred Poeppig
  • Goethe: books by F.C.J. Los and Rudolf Treichler
  • Romauld Landau (autobiographical)
  • Henry Stanley: book by Norbert Glas

various other

• see also: Humanity is getting younger: the moment that Man is 'fully developed', and the soul becomes free of the body, occurs at a certain age, and has not been the same in the various preceeding cultural ages. This age shifts with time and this life period becomes ever shorter, showing a convergence point at the end of the epoch.

Inspirational quotes

Hermann Hesse

in the novel Demian (1919)

"The seventh year always transforms man. It brings a new life, new character, and a different state."

Notes:

• The novel explores stages of growth (self-discovery, transformation, individuation, spiritual awakening), and the tension between societal norms and pressures and individual freedom; as the protagonist Sinclair undergoes significant personal transformation as he moves from childhood to adulthood. The quote is found during a conversation between Sinclair and his mentor Demian who helps Sinclair understand that life is a journey of transformation, and that key moments - such as turning points at certain ages - can act as catalysts for a shift in perspective and self-awareness.
• This quote is often attributed to Martin Luther, but until further notice no verified source was found to confirm he said or wrote this. It appears to be one of those quotes that has been associated with him, but its precise origins remain unclear.

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1924-08-16-GA243

we exist within seven interpenetrating spheres, and in the course of our life we grow into them and are related to them. The original pattern of our life between birth and death undergoes a metamorphosis through the influence of the starry spheres which mould us from birth to death.

Plato

Don’t force your children into your ways, for they were created for a time different from your own.

Note: quote often attributed to Plato but not not found in or not yet traced to any of his known works. It may be a paraphrase or interpretation rather than a direct excerpt from his writings, as Plato discussed education, human nature, and the development of character extensively in works like 'The Republic and Laws'.

Illustrations

General

Schema FMC00.236: provides an overview of the septennia or seven year periods, with:

on the left: how Man's bodily principles develop corresponding to the various spiritual forces from Sun, Moon, the other planetary spheres and the zodiac - see also Schema FMC00.649.

middle: the karmic perspective of the various planetary spheres and the influence of various spiritual hierarchies, as described in the Karmic Relationship lectures of 1924.

right: three main phases of 21 years each, developing the bodily constitution up to age 21, development of the threefold soul and Human 'I' between ages 21 and 42, and the further spiritual development between ages 42 and 63.

Schema FMC00.236A: illustrates Schema FMC00.236 with extracts from the original black board drawings (BBW) by Rudolf Steiner, showing the developmental stages in a human life in seven year periods, as connected with the influences from the planetary spheres and the spiritual hierarchies.

Schema FMC00.649: depicts how different spiritual influences (in colours) develop Man's bodily principles in consecutive seven year periods (greyed background) and how these forces cause new soul faculties after they are set free from this work. The table focuses on the first three septennia up to age 21, and is based on 1924-09-11-GA318.

Life chart diagram

Schema FMC00.237: depicts the Life Chart diagram by George and Gisela O'Neil (based on Rudolf Steiner's lecture of 1924-08-16-GA311) - see Schema FMC00.237A for more info. The diagram is is used for and appears in many books for personal biography work. Click image to download at any resolution.

Schema FMC00.237A: provides a selection of various illustrations by George and Gisela O'Neil from the book 'The Human Life' compiled by Florin Lowndes (1990), based on the work by O'Neil published in quarterly Newsletter contributions in the period 1977 to 1981.

The book brings to life the Life Chart diagram and connects with the various aspects described by Rudolf Steiner in the lectures describing Man's life development from manifold perspectives. It is centered on the seven year periods (see also Schema FMC00.236) with on the left focus on the first three septennia (see also Schema FMC00.649), on the right the importance of the age thirty five, and above the three phases of twenty one years each (see also right on Schema FMC00.236).

The age 35 is pivotal, as "on the one hand, we have a path of evolution where the various bodies - the physical, the etheric, and the astral bodies develop; and on the other hand, we have a path where these bodies recede: an ascending and a descending path. But it is on the latter path, as the sheaths decrease, that the eternal in Man unfolds and grows." (1908-03-10)

Schema FMC00.237B: shows the human life as a cycle of the microcosm - relate to Schema FMC00.288.

On the left: just one quote where Rudolf Steiner links descriptions of cosmological evolution to the same pattern in a single human life

In the middle: illustration linking the seven wooden columns in the first Goetheanum (Schema FMC00.301A) to the Life Chart diagram (Schema FMC00.237). These columns speak not only of the cosmic archetypes of the planetary stages of evolution .. or the Earth's epochs .. but also of the stages of mankind's becoming and growing up coming from 'It' to an 'I' to a productive outpouring entity contributing to the cosmos (re: Meaning of Free Man Creator).

The words given to help reading the sculptural forms of the columns "blossom when watered with meditative life forces". The words on the columns, from Old Saturn to Vulcan (in German) "Das Es, An Es, In Es, Ich, Vom Ich, Aus Mir, Ich Ins Es" translate in English somewhat like "The It, On It, In It, I, From the I, Out of me, I into It". A short comment by O'Neil:

• With 'It' one can imagine the Father, a mineral (Old Saturn).. in our cradle years we are lovingly spoken of as 'it' and mirror our environment's every gesture.
• The plant is caressed by the light 'on It' and reflects its wisdom of number and form (Old Sun). In school years we take 'on' and reflect wisdom, language of the environment and those we loved.
• Innerness 'into It' begins with animals (Old Moon) .. in human life, the unpredictable innerness of 'In It'-ness in adolescence.
• 'I-ness' with the human being (Earth) .. in human life: we are off on our very own during these middle years
• then come, after this preparation and all this receiving, being given and guided .. the transformation of these gifts into givings. After mid-life, our inspirations shine forth 'from the I' .. and after 50 this can flow forth to others 'out of me'. In later years around 60 the will exteriorizes and can galvanize the surrounding world into action: the I can live 'into the It'.

On the right: from the spirit world Man is born into earthly substance of the Father principle (EDN) .. then goes through Individuation (ICM) .. and awakening himself into the spirit world (PSSR)

Illustrations middle and right, along with commentary on the columns, from O'Neil's 'The Human life'.

First 21 years and education

Schema FMC00.651: provides a synthetic table on the first three septennia (see Seven year rhythm) and the development of Thinking, Feeling and Willing (TFW), and its implications for a balanced education of the child.

This is the basis underlying implementation in Waldorf or Steiner or Free Schools (the term depends on the country), probably the most well-known of the Anthroposophical application areas as shown in Schema FMC00.335

Consider in context with Schema FMC00.649 and Schema FMC00.236.

Lecture coverage and references

Pietro d'Abano (1257-1316)

already writes about the seven year periods, see eg the following quotes from 'History of magic and experimental science' published in 1923 by Lynn Thorndike (1882-1965)

p895:

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In Difference 26 .. Peter divides the life of Man into seven ages under the seven planets

1907-03-04-GA096

human biography and planetary evolution

1907-GA034

foundational essay titled: 'The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy'

1909-09-21-GA114

the age of 35 + the ages of Nathan Jesus (14->12, 21->19, 28->26, 35->33)

• When the physical environment of the mother's body is abandoned at birth, the part of the human being then born is really his physical body only; what comes to the fore during the first seven years is the physical body. In various lectures on the education of children the great importance of this knowledge for the teacher has been emphasized.
• Then, when the etheric sheath has been discarded, the etheric body is set free.
• Again, in the fourteenth year, when the astral sheath is discarded, the astral body is set free
• Immediately connected with the etheric (or life) body is what is called the astral (or sentient) body which does not become completely free as regards the outer world until about the twenty-first year. Then what is called the sentient soul becomes gradually free.
• At the twenty-eighth year the intellectual or mind-soul (Gemütseele) becomes free, and later the spiritual soul (or consciousness-soul).

This applies, to the human being of today. Observation of human life guided by spiritual science clearly reveals these stages of development.

[age 35]

The great leaders and leading figures of humanity have also known why the thirty-fifth year is so important. Dante was aware why he made particular mention of his thirty-fifth year as the time when he had the visions set down in his great poem. At the very beginning of the Divine Comedy there is an indication to this effect. At the age of thirty-five Man's being has progressed to the point where the can make full use of the faculties dependent upon the astral body, the sentient soul and the intellectual soul.

1910-06-10-GA121

three 20 year periods and SoF

1913-01-14-GA141

When we study the cyclic periods already referred to and mentioned in my little book, Education of the Child, we shall notice that they begin in connection with the most physical, the most external member of Man's being and are then concerned with the other, more inward members of his constitution. From birth until the seventh year development is connected primarily with the physical body, then for seven years with the etheric body, then for seven years with the astral body, the sentient soul, and so on.

The evolutionary factors pass over more and more decisively from the external to the inner nature of Man. That is essentially characteristic of the seven-year periods.

What, then, is there to be said about occurrences which cut across these seven-year periods?

The flashing-up of ‘I’-consciousness during the first cycle is an emphatically inner event. For the sake of clarity, here let us consider something that seems to be in contrast with this flashing-up of I-consciousness. If we observe human life with discernment we shall find that the cessation of growth may be compared with some happening which cuts across the seven-year cycles of evolution. We will therefore think about the cessation of growth which after all occurs comparatively late in life, and study its implications.

• The first seven-year period ends with the change of teeth. The appearance of the second teeth is, as it were, the final act of what may be called the formative principle. The last contribution made by the forces that give the human being his form is when they drive out the second teeth. That is the culmination of the formative process, for the principle which builds up the human form is no longer in action. With the seventh year the formative principle ceases to be active.
• What comes about later on is only an expansion of what has already been established as form. After the seventh year there is no more remodelling of the brain. All that happens is growth of what is already established as basic form. Therefore we can say that the principle of form unfolds its activity specifically in the first seven years of the life of a human being. The principle of form stems from the Spirits of Form; thus these Spirits of Form are active in the human being during the first seven years of his life.
• It can therefore be said that when the human being enters into life through birth, his actual form is not complete. What happens is that the Spirits of Form continue their active intervention during the first seven years of life; the human being has then reached the point when his form merely needs to grow. The basis for the form has been established by the seventh year, and the second teeth are what the formative principle still produces out of the human being. The formative principle has now come to its conclusion. Were its activity to continue, the second teeth would inevitably make their appearance later than is now the case.

Here we may ask: When these Spirits of Form have worked on the human being until the seventh year of his life, does everything they do for him come to an end?

The answer is ‘No’, for the human being goes on growing and the basic principles of his form develop still further. If nothing else intervened, growth would be able to continue without interruption. If we think only of the principles of form that are active in the human being until the seventh year there is no more reason in the case of man than in that of other beings why these forms should not continue to grow if nothing were to intervene. But something does intervene. When the human being stops growing, certain principles of form still have an effect upon him. They have already been drawing near to him but now they unite in the fullest sense with his organism, lay hold of it, but in such a way that they now act as a hindrance, and further growth is prevented.

The formative principles that are active until the seventh year of life allow the human being a certain elasticity. But at that point other formative principles approach him; their nature is such that they capture and confine what is elastic in the demarcated form, thus preventing any further growth. That is why growth stops at some point. When growth stops, this means that formative forces approaching from outside are at work. Whenever formative principles are active, whenever forms grow larger, provision must be made for the stoppage of growth by the appearance of counter-formative principles which oppose the first category as its polar antithesis. When Man's form has developed until about the seventh year of life (indicated in the shaded portion of the diagram) this form can continue to grow. [see drawing in online version lecture] The formative principles have been at work until the seventh year; these principles work from within. Then different formative principles work in opposition from outside, so that the human being can grow only to the limit indicated by the line b–b. It is really as if until the seventh year of his life the human being were given an elastic garment which he can constantly stretch and enlarge. But at a specific point of time he is given one that is not elastic; he is obliged to put it on, and thenceforth cannot grow beyond its limits.

We can therefore say that in the human being a confrontation takes place between two kinds of formative principles, one working from within and the other from without. The formative principles belonging to the first category come from the Spirits of Form, from those Spirits of Form who have passed through a perfectly normal process of evolution in the Cosmos. The formative principles working from without are not of the same kind. They come from Spirits of Form whose development has been retarded and who have acquired a Luciferic character. They are the factor which works in the purely spiritual domain, whereas the forces working in the material sphere have had a normal development; having evolved through the stages of Old Saturn, Old Sun and Old Moon, they then pass to the Earth in the regular way and shape the human form from within. The ‘irregular’ Spirits of Form take what is presented to them and hold back its further development. Thus the process of growth in the human being is brought to a halt by these backward Spirits of Form. The Beings of the higher Hierarchies have the most varied tasks, among them the one that has been characterised today.

We have now been able to consider many different aspects of the work of the ‘regular’ Hierarchies and also of the work of the backward spiritual Beings belonging to the different Hierarchies. In the book Occult Science — an Outline ¹ you can read how the human being reached the stage where through the Spirits of Form he could be endowed with the germinal foundation for the ‘I’. We know that man received the germ of his physical body from the Thrones, of his etheric body from the Spirits of Wisdom, of his astral body from the Spirits of Movement, and the germinal foundation for the ‘I’ from the Spirits of Form. Bearing this in mind we can say that man, in his outer stature, has been organised by the regular Spirits of Form into an Ego-bearing being and that this comes into manifestation in the first seven-year cycle of his life. But then the backward Spirits of Form who are the opponents of the regular Spirits of Form, put a stop to his growth. This is actually the antithesis of the first, most deeply inward experience in the human being, namely, the kindling of the consciousness of ‘I’ — the Ego. This happens in the early years of life, in the innermost realm of being. The outermost manifestation, the form, is checked at a later age, as a final act. Thus we perceive two evolutionary — but antithetical — processes in the human being. Of the one I have said that it comes from without and moves inward, taking hold of the sentient soul and so on, in the twenty-first year of life. Then there is another evolution proceeding from within outwards until the growth of the physical form is checked. The one evolution, the regular evolution, proceeds from the spiritual to the corporeal, from within outwards and is of interest especially for education. The other evolution — which is a much less regular and also more individual process — proceeds from without inwards and, when the human being has reached a certain age, it comes to expression in the completion of the outermost principle — the physical body.

It is very important that teachers should have knowledge of these two antithetical lines of evolution. Hence in the book The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy it was right to call attention to the first process of evolution which proceeds from within outwards, because it is only there that education is possible. On the other line of evolution — from without inwards — which is the line of individual development, it is impossible to make any actual impression. This is something of which account can be taken but which cannot be halted; neither can much be achieved in the way of education. And to be able to distinguish between where education is possible and where it is not, is of fundamental importance.

Just as the cessation of growth is caused by the backward Spirits of Form, the first actual manifestation of the ‘I’ in the human being during early childhood is the work of the backward Spirits of Will (Thrones). Between these two extremes there are other happenings which are to be attributed to backward Spirits of Wisdom and backward Spirits of Movement.

No adequate characterisation of man's life as a whole, including the existence between death and the new birth, is possible unless we take account of all the factors which have an effect upon him, and recognise that even in everyday life the influences of Luciferic beings take effect in many different ways. This influence is evident in other spheres as well. And as our endeavour in these lectures is to acquire a really fundamental understanding of man's life as a whole, we will not hesitate to think about matters which seem to be somewhat remote.

1913-03-14-GA150

We will do something that is good for the child, whatever the circumstances, if we create situations in the first seven years where the child lives in an environment that is healthy for his or her physical body.

We do something that is good for them, whatever the circumstances, by creating good authorities in the best sense of the word around children in the second seven-year period, so that they will not be know-alls at that time but rely on people around them whom they respect as authorities, people to whom they are devoted. We do something that is good when we raise children who do not want to know everything themselves in their ninth or tenth year, but who - if asked why one thing or another is right and good will say: because my father, or my mother has said that it is good, or because my teacher says so. If we raise the children so that the adults around them are the accepted authorities, we do something that is good for them, whatever the circumstances.

We are doing something that is bad for young persons, whatever the circumstances, if we sin against these seven-year periods, creating such conditions that at this very time the children start to criticise the people who have the natural authority, if we do not prevent this critical attitude from developing.

1916-04-13-GA065

see further on Folk souls

First of all, I must direct your attention to the development of the individual human being. For the spiritual researcher, there are certain stages in human life that he must pay particular attention to in order to penetrate the secrets of the development of the human being, of the whole human being. As I said, I cannot prove the details today; I can only cite the results of spiritual research. As far as the reasons are concerned, I must refer you to my earlier lectures or to my writings.

• One such stage occurs during the years when the human being is going through the process of changing teeth. Much of what I now have to say certainly seems fluid compared to the scientific concepts that are so firmly established and so sharply defined today. But spiritual science really must play a role in many cases, which I would like to compare with what the painter spreads over a landscape as a mood, which he otherwise, insofar as houses and trees are concerned, paints in fixed outlines. What is there of houses and trees in fixed outlines, what is, so to speak, a sharply outlined drawing, only becomes real in the right way, I just want to say now, in a painterly way, when everything that is now the mood of the picture has been poured out. And this mood content truly cannot be captured in such fixed forms as that which is drawn below in houses, trees and the like. So the seventh year approximately – of course, all these numbers are to be understood only approximately – the time of the change of teeth, is to be considered particularly. And there, to the spiritual researcher, certain processes appear in human development that are certainly more subtle, that, I might say, are poured out, as it were, only in the mood over the human soul life, but that are of great importance for the understanding of this soul life. For the spiritual researcher, this change of teeth expresses a complete shedding of what had previously worked in him as physical forces, and like the emergence to the surface of a being that has certainly wanted to come to the surface for a long time, but which, I would like to say, is like a duplication of his being. And in the eruption of the first teeth and their replacement by the second teeth, something that is going on in the whole human organism during this period is expressed strikingly and outstandingly in a particular place.

Now the spiritual researcher must bear in mind that what we encounter in human development as a whole, in the full human being, shows us that the external material, the physical, is always permeated, imbued with spiritual soul.

But if one regards human development in the way that one is scientifically accustomed to today, then one grasps this development in such a way that one now actually only follows the events in the succession of time. One looks at an earlier state, a later state, again a later one and so on, and always imagines the later one emerging from the earlier one. That is how one regards development. But just as it would be wrong to look at the human organism in spatial terms, as one would a machine, in that one only considers the neighboring parts in relation to each other, so one must consider the human organism in such a way that there are, as it were, mysterious relationships between the most distant organs, which do not spatially neither do we, when we consider the whole human being in his fullness, consider what happens in the succession of time in such a way that things do not simply develop apart in the succession of time, but that what happens to the human being is intertwined in many ways.

You will soon see what I mean. For the spiritual researcher, it is clear that in human development up to the change of teeth, the soul-spiritual, let us say, pushes out of its inner being – I cannot speak more specifically today due to the limited time – and, imbued, as it were, physiognomized, the material, the material.

What is it exactly that pushes out as soul-spiritual during the period just mentioned?

[first period]

To arrive at an answer, we must first distinguish between the development of boys and that of girls.

We shall therefore speak first of the development of girls up to the change of teeth. One must consider a completely different period of human development if one wants to understand spiritually what is actually pushing its way out of the human being's inner being, not only into the face but into the whole physiognomy of the human being, what also permeates and imbues him until his teeth change, what works and lives and is active in him.

If you want to find what is inside the girl and, as it were, gives her organs plastic form, then you must first turn your gaze to certain peculiarities, but inner peculiarities, not to what the soul has learned through education, through school, but to the inner configuration, to the inner formation of the soul.

First, from about the age of twenty to twenty-eight or thirty, what one must first consider comes to light emotionally and becomes visible to the outside observer. Then we must leave aside what is to be found in the period from twenty-eight to thirty-five or thirty-six, and must again consider what is in the soul in question from the age of thirty-six to forty-two, forty-three, forty-four.

If you examine people in general, you can apply more general principles. If you want to examine an individual person, everyone can easily object, but the objection is fair, I just can't go into it now: Well, if you want to understand the person, you have to wait until they have changed their teeth, until they have become that old. Of course, you have to wait for the individual person if you want to understand them. But you know, science is not achieved through individual observations alone, but by applying what is observed in one case to the general case. And now you have to try to recognize how certain peculiarities of the soul present themselves during these years. And if one were to undertake a kind of amalgamation of the qualities in the first twenty years and the qualities in the second thirty years up to the forty-second and forty-third years and form an idea of what the soul life is in these years, then one comes to the conclusion that in the girl, until the teeth change, it presses into the physical. The way in which the physical configures itself, how it forms plastically, within which the soul lives and works, is only revealed in later years as a soul configuration in the manner indicated.

Let us now consider the boy up to about the age of seven, until the change of teeth. If we want to understand him, we must consider not two periods of time, but one period of human soul development, namely the period that lies roughly between the ages of twenty-eight and thirty-five. If we form an image in our minds of what emerges in the soul during this period and then consider what drives and propels the entire physiognomic development, lawful formation and plasticization of the boy's body, then we come to a certain understanding of the connection between the external-physical and the soul-spiritual.

[second period]

Then we have to consider what lies in the second period of human development. For the spiritual researcher, this second period lasts from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, that is, up to the thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth year. During this time, we must again distinguish between the boy's and the girl's organism.

• What the girl's organism adds here in terms of body and soul is precisely what the boy's body incorporates in its first seven years, that is, what is experienced by the soul between the ages of twenty-eight and thirty-five.
• And what the boy's body then assimilates during these years is what we had to say earlier that the girl's body assimilates during the time until the change of teeth.

So we see that the conditions actually overlap; that what later appears in the soul, that is, in the refined soul-spiritual state, in the internalized state, initially has a formative, invigorating effect on the person in the dull subconscious, just as he or she appears to us as a physical person.

[later periods]

And if we then consider the later developmental periods, we have to say that they are not as sharply defined as the first ones, but that for a more subtle observation of human life, later periods can be considered in a similar way. But what has been developed then appears in a more inward form.

From puberty onwards, what used to work on the organism is withdrawn, so to speak, from imbibing, let us say, the organism, and develops internally. From this point onwards, anyone with an eye for such observations can clearly see how, from puberty to the early twenties, both in the male and female organism, the two later periods - the unified and the separate - still interact in a more individual way, but how then, to a certain extent, this distinction ceases and the soul becomes more unified, so that we can no longer say: From the early twenties onwards, we find in the soul itself something that can be related to other periods in such a way as to characterize the physical and psychological development in the first two or three stages of life. We find the soul working more out of a unified whole; we find it asserting itself as a unified whole out of a certain inner harmonious fullness. Nevertheless, with more subtle observation, we can again clearly distinguish how a mood — and an even subtler mood — is poured out over the soul life, just as this soul life itself was poured out over the physical life earlier.

We can distinguish three periods within the development of the soul. I have already hinted at them:

• from the beginning of the twenties to the end of the twenties;
• from the end of the twenties to the age of thirty-five or thirty-six;
• from the age of thirty-six to the age of forty-two or forty-three.

The human soul does go through certain developmental phases that can be clearly distinguished, even if, as I said, what can be distinguished here only spreads like a finer mood over the soul life. There is a spiritual and soul element to the development in these years. And those who are familiar with the difference between the spiritual and the soul, which has often been mentioned here and to which I will return, will understand what I mean. In these years, up to the forty-second, forty-third, forty-fourth year, we are dealing with inner development alone, one that is colored by soul and spirit.

Then a more spiritual development of the inner life begins. The inner life withdraws even more than in previous years from the saturation and permeation of the organism. It lives even more within itself. And the possibility of distinguishing periods of time for the future is hardly appropriate for the present state of development of humanity. Only when earthly development has progressed further will it be possible to distinguish between the decades of human life in the way we do for the earlier years. Thus we see how, in a quite remarkable way, the soul and spirit interact in what confronts us as human beings in the physical world.

...

[related to folk souls]

If we study the nature of the Italian national soul from a spiritual scientific point of view, we find that such a national soul does not work as I have indicated in the life of an individual person, in that a later period of time imprints its characteristics on an earlier one; rather, such a national soul works on the human being from certain depths of the spiritual being throughout his or her life.

Of course, this does not have to be the case. A person can leave one nation and be accepted into another. But the effects are the same, even if they are modified by the change. The folk soul is there, and what I have to describe is, in a sense, an encounter with the folk soul. A person who remains within his own nation throughout his life will experience this effect his whole life long. If you move from one nation to another, you will first experience the influence of one national soul and then that of the other. That is not the point now. It would be interesting to hint at the individual effects of changing the folk soul, but there is no time for that. Throughout human life, then, what comes from the folk soul can have the same effect as what comes from the stages of life in the periods of time indicated.

And if we look at the Italian national soul, at its peculiarities, in the way it takes hold of people when it imprints its moods on the soul, imprints them on the whole person, we find, quite that there is a certain strong affinity between the forces of this Italian national soul and the individual forces that a person develops from the beginning of their twenties to their twenty-seventh, twenty-eighth, twenty-ninth year. So one can study the real inner essence of the Italian national soul if one can study the affinity, I would say the elective affinity, that exists between this national soul and what lives in the human soul between the twentieth, twenty-first and twenty-seventh, twenty-eighth years. One must only add – but in such a way that this second element only hints at what is lived out in the soul from the age of thirty-five to the age of forty-two, forty-three, forty-four. But the stronger element of the Italian national soul is that which is related to the early twenties. It is only shaded by that which, as I have indicated, is being lived out in the later years. The power of the Italian national soul takes hold of the individual human being who places himself in it and allows the soul to be imbued with the mood of the national soul. It takes hold of him in the way that the years between the twentieth and the twenty-seventh or twenty-eighth can be most powerfully and intensely seized by the soul and spirit.

You see, the human being is a very complicated thing, and one must see many, many things together if one really wants to study this human being. But you will recognize from what has been indicated that everything that can be regarded as Italian folk tradition is imbued with the same mood that comes from a folk soul related to the human individuality in the way indicated. Something that is intimately related to what lives in the soul from the age of twenty to twenty-eight, imprints itself in the Italian folk soul in man.

If you take the French folk soul, it imprints something in the same way in Man, which is roughly related to the soul life between the ages of twenty-eight and thirty-five.

If we take the British national soul, then this imprints something in the human being, that is, it pours a mood content over the entire human being from childhood on, something that then interacts with the other mood contents, which is related to the human soul in its development between the ages of thirty-five or thirty-six and forty-two, forty-three, forty-four, but shadowed by what has been in the soul since the early twenties.

Thus, the only way to study the peculiarities of the national soul is to examine its affinity to what is found to be the deeper characteristic of the individual human soul. The task is to look into this and see what forces are at work within. Of course, today the human being as a human individuality transcends nationality. But when you look at what makes an Italian Italian, you see, so to speak, not the interaction of the soul of the people with the soul of the individual, as if in an experiment, but rather an observed interaction by observing the interaction between the national soul and the individual soul during the period between the twentieth, twenty-first and twenty-seventh, twenty-eighth years.

...

Let us take a look at the Russian national soul. What we find is that the peculiarity of the national soul, the character of the national soul, turns out to be related to a kind of mixture between

• what happens in the individual human organism from sexual maturity to the beginning of the twenties; [so 14-21]
• and that is shadowed by what happens from the age of forty-two or forty-three to the age of forty-nine or fifty. [so 42-49]

If you imagine these two soul characters in a state of confusion, that is to say, what is at work in the organism from sexual maturity into the early twenties, still permeating it, but also at work in the soul, if you imagine this overshadowed , thoroughly organized, of what works at such a late time, then you get, so to speak, an arithmetic mean, let me express the rough word for this fine thing, which shows what the peculiarities of the Russian national soul are. For the Russian national soul works with the forces that are similar to the forces just characterized in the human organism.

And other overall souls work in a very similar way. For example, we can consider an overall soul that has had a truly far-reaching effect throughout Europe from the south. Everyone can imagine for themselves how this overall soul essence has worked. I am referring to the collective soul of Christianity. Just as one can speak of the soul of a people, one can also speak of the collective soul of Christianity. What streams forth from Christianity, what it works out, permeates and shapes human beings, has done so for a long, long time and will continue to do so.

...

Let us take a time when the influence of another national soul on the German national soul was more effective, let us say the thirteenth century.

Because the soul of the German people has been poured out throughout the entire period of the development of the human soul, from the age of twenty to thirty-five or thirty-six and even later, because it is spread throughout this entire period, it can also absorb influences from outside through all the qualities I have mentioned. We shall see in a moment how particularly shaped these influences are. We have seen here how Christianity has flowed into them. We could demonstrate these peculiar words in words, in word transformations, which flowed in as foreign words at the time when the French folk soul nature had attained a particular strength, as in the thirteenth century.

1916-11-05-GA172

The Rhythm in Goethe’s life

1917-12-15-GA179

title: 'The Members of Man's Being and the Periods of His Life'

In order to understand these things fully we must grasp thoughts which are not so easy to digest (but these things must be said because they are so)—thoughts that cost us an effort to think out. Man has no such thoughts in the course of his everyday waking consciousness. He prefers to limit his knowledge to that which is stretched out in space and that which takes its course in Time. A frequent pathological symptom is this one: to imagine even the spiritual world spatially, although these thoughts may be nebulous, thin and misty; yet we somehow wish to imagine is spatially; we wish to think of souls flying about in space, and so on. We must go beyond the ideas of space and time to more complicated ideas, if we really wish to penetrate into these things. Today I wish to draw your attention to something that is very important for the understanding of the whole of human life.

Let us bear in mind once more the fact that—roughly speaking—we possess this four-fold nature—the physical body, the body of formative forces or etheric body, the astral body, and the ego.

Now, when someone speaks from the standpoint of the usual waking consciousness, he may ask:

How old is a person How old is a certain person A?

Someone may give his age, let us say 35, and he may believe that he has made an important statement. In stating that a certain person is 35 years old he has, in fact, said something of importance for the physical plane and for the usual waking consciousness; but for the spiritual world, in other words, for the etheric being of man, this implies only a part of the reality. When you say: I am 35 years old—you only say this in regard to your physical body. You must say: My physical body is 35 years old—then this will be correct. But these words express nothing at all as far as the etheric body, or the body of formative forces is concerned, and nothing at all as far as the other members of the human being are concerned. For it is an illusion, it is indeed quite fantastic to think that your ego, for instance, is 35 years old, when your physical body is 35 years old. You see, here we must bear in mind different speeds, different rapidities in the development of the various members.

The following figures will make you realize this. A human being is, let us say, 7 years old; this means nothing less than this: his physical body has reached the age of 7 years. His etheric body, his body of formative forces, is not yet 7 years old, for his body of formative forces does not maintain the same speed as the physical body and has not yet reached this age. We are not aware of such things just because we imagine time as one continuous stream, and thus we cannot form the thought that different things maintain different speeds within the course of time. This physical body that is 7 years old has developed according to a certain speed. The etheric body develops more slowly, the astral body still more slowly, and slowest of all, the I. The etheric body is only 5 years and 3 months old when the physical body is 7 years old, because it develops more slowly. The astral body is 3 years and 6 months old, and the I, 1 year and 9 months.

Thus you must say to yourself: when a child is 7 years old, its I is only 1 year and 9 months old. This I undergoes a slower development on the physical plane. On the physical plane this ego develops at a slower pace; it is a slower pace, the same pace that we find in our life with the dead. Why do we not grasp what takes place in the stream of the experiences of the dead? Because we do not grow accustomed to the slower pace of the dead, and do not admit this into our thoughts and especially into our feelings, in order to hold them fast.

Hence, if someone is 28 years old as far as his physical body is concerned, then his I is only 7 years old. As far as your I is concerned, which is the essential part of your being, you thus maintain a much slower pace in the course of development than that of the physical body. You see, the difficulty consists in the fact that, generally, we consider speed, or velocities, merely as outer velocities. When things move one beside another, we say that one thing moves more quickly and the other one more slowly because we use time as a comparison. But here the speed within time is different. Without this insight into the fact that the different members of the human being have different speeds in their development, it is impossible to grasp the connections with the true deeper being of man.

From this you will see how in everyday consciousness people simply throw together entirely different things contained in human nature.

Man consists of this four-fold being, and the four members of this being are so different from one another that they even have different ages. But man is under a great illusion in making everything depend on his physical body. He says something that has absolutely no meaning whatever for the spiritual world, in stating that his I is 28 years old, when he is 28 according to his physical body. His statement would only have a meaning if he would say: My ego is 7 years old—in the case of the I, a year is naturally four times as long as in the case of the physical body. One might also say that the age of the four different members of the human being must be reckoned according to four entirely different measurements of time; for the ego, a year is simply four times as long as for the physical body.

Pictorially you might conceive this as a projection from the physical plane—for instance, one human being may normally become 28 years old, while another child may grow more slowly and after 28 years be like a child of 7. Thus the whole matter appears at first like an abstract truth. But it is a fundamental reality in man. Just consider that our I is the bearer of what we call our understanding, or our thinking consciousness of self. When our understanding and our conscious thinking are within our I, then this understanding and conscious thinking are really essentially younger than we ourselves apparently are, according to our physical body. This is indeed so.

But this will show you that when a human being of 28 gives the impression of one whose understanding has developed to the age of 28, only one fourth of this understanding is really his own. It cannot be helped; when we have a certain quantity of understanding at 28, only a quarter of this is our own; the rest belongs to the universe, to the world in which we are submerged through our astral body, through our etheric body, and through our physical body.

But we only know directly something of these bodies through ideas, through sense perceptions, in other words, again within the I. This means that during our development as human beings between birth and death we are indeed mere apparitions of a reality. We make the impression of being four times as clever as we really are. This is true. All we possess, in addition to this one fourth, we owe to what holds sway in the historical, social, and moral processes within that world we dream away and sleep away. Dream and sleep impulses, which we have in common with the universe, seethe up, above the horizon of our being and fructify this fourth part of our understanding and soul, and make it four times as strong as it really is.

You see at this point arises the illusion concerning the freedom of Man. Man is a free being; he is, indeed. But only the real, true Man is a free being. That fourth part, of which I have just spoken, is a free being.

Other beings play into the remaining three fourths; these cannot be free.

This gives rise to the delusion in regard to freedom so that we continually ask: Is Man free or is he not free? Man is free when he connects this idea of freedom with the one fourth of his being, in the sense in which I have just explained it. If the human being wishes to have this freedom as an impulse of his own, then he must develop this fourth part in a corresponding, independent way. In usual life, this fourth part cannot assert itself, for the simple reason that it is overpowered by the other three fourths. In the remaining three fourths is active all that man calls his desires, his appetites, his emotions and passions. These slay his freedom, for what is contained in the universe in the form of impulses works through these desires, emotions and passions.

Now the question arises: What shall we do to make this one fourth of our soul-life, which is a reality within us, really free?

We must place this one fourth in relationship with that which is independent of the remaining three fourths.

[cont'd]

1919-08-30-GA293

Napoleon as example of strict rhythm of septennia

In Napoleon there appears subsequently a figure who is fashioned entirely in conformity with the rhythm of the personality, but with a tendency to the opposite pole.

• Seven years of sovereignty,
• fourteen years of imperial splendour and harassment of Europe, the years of his ascent to power,
• then seven years of decline, the first years of which he spent once again in disrupting the peace of Europe

— all in accordance with a strict rhythm: seven years, then twice seven years and then again seven years, a rhythm of septennia.

I have been at great pains (and I have alluded to this on various occasions) to trace the soul of Napoleon. It is possible, as you know, to undertake these studies of the human soul in divers ways by means of spiritual scientific investigation. And you will recall no doubt how investigations were undertaken to discover the previous incarnations of Novalis. [ Note 2 ]

I have been at great pains to follow the destiny of Napoleon's soul in its journey after his death. I have been unable to find it and do not think I shall ever be able to find it, for it is probably not to be found.

And this no doubt accounts for the enigma of Napoleon's life that unfolds with clockwork precision in seven-year rhythms. We can best understand this soul if we regard it as the complete antithesis of a soul such as that of James I, or again as the antithesis of the abstraction of the French Revolution: the Revolution all soul without body, Napoleon all body without soul, but a body compounded of all the contradictions of the age.

In this strange juxtaposition of the Revolution and Napoleon lies one of the greatest enigmas of contemporary evolution. One has the impression that a soul wanted to incarnate in the world, appeared without a body, clamoured for incarnation amongst the revolutionaries of the eighteenth century, but was unable to find a body ... and that only externally a body offered itself, a body which for its part could not find a soul, i.e. Napoleon. In these things there are more than merely ingenious allusions or characterizations, they harbour important impulses of historical development. They must of course be regarded as symptoms. Here, amongst ourselves, I use the terminology of spiritual science. But what I have just said could equally well be said anywhere if clothed in slightly different terminology.

When we attempt to pursue further the symptomatology of recent times we see the English character unfolding in successive stages in relative peace. Up to the end of the nineteenth century it developed fairly uniformly, it shaped the ideal of liberalism in relative peace. The development of the French character was more tempestuous, so much so that when we follow the thread of events in the history of France in the nineteenth century we never really know how a later event came to be associated with the previous event; they seem to follow each other without motivation so to speak. The major feature of the historical development of France in the nineteenth century is this absence of motivation. No reproach is implied here — I am speaking quite dispassionately. I merely wish to characterize.

1919-10-04-GA191

discusses intuition, inspiration and imagination the first three seven year periods. Earth forces work in the first, air forces in the second, and in the third period work the from outside instreaming forces. After the 21st year these forces work in the blood.

.. the first of the capacities that leads man into super-sensible realms is the force of Imagination, the second capacity is the force of Inspiration and the third capacity the force of Intuition.

The question now is whether these capacities need concern us at all except in their connection with knowledge of super-sensible worlds or whether these capacities have any part to play in the rest of man's life?

You will see that the latter is the case. As my book Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy tells you, we can see human life running its course in three stages: from birth to the change of teeth, from the change of teeth to puberty, and from puberty till about the twenty-first year. If you do not regard man purely superficially, you will be struck by the fact that the nature of man's development is entirely different in the three different seven-year stages. The pushing through of our permanent teeth is connected with the development of forces that are not merely confined, let us say, to our jaws or their neighboring organs, but fill our whole physical body. There is work in progress within our physical body between birth and the seventh year, and this work comes to an end with the pushing through of our permanent teeth.

• It is obvious that the forces doing this work of developing the physical body are supersensible, isn't it? The perceptible body is only the material in which they work. These super-sensible forces, active in the whole of man's organization during the first seven years of his life, become, as it were, suspended when their purpose has been achieved and the permanent teeth have appeared. At the age of seven these forces go to sleep. They are hidden within the being of man; they go to sleep within him. And they can be drawn forth from your being when you do the sort of exercises I describe in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds as leading to Intuition. For the forces that are applied in the acquisition of intuitive knowledge are the same forces that you grow with at the time of life when this growth culminates in the change of teeth. These sleeping forces that are active within the human body until the seventh year are the forces you use in super-sensible knowledge to reach Intuition.

• Now the forces that are active from the seventh year to the fourteenth year and go to sleep at puberty in the depths of the body, are drawn forth and form the power of Inspiration.
• And the forces that in bygone times used to be the source of youthful ideals between the fourteenth and the twenty-first year — it would be too much of an assertion to say that this still happens today — the forces that create organs in the physical body for these ideals of youth, are the same forces you can draw forth from their state of slumber and use for the acquisition of Imagination.

From this you will see that the forces of Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition are not just any old forces gotten from we do not know where, but are the same forces as those we grow with from our birth to the age of twenty-one. So the forces that live in Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition are very healthy forces. They are the forces a human being uses for his healthy growth and that go to sleep within his body when the corresponding phases of growth are completed.

...

The question now arises as to how this activity is distributed. There is a considerable difference in this respect in the first, second and third stage of life, that is, up till the seventh year, the fourteenth year and the twenty-first year.

• The will working in us up till the seventh year works entirely from out of the planet's interior. It is very interesting to see spiritual-scientifically that in everything working in the child up till the age of seven, it is the force of the earth's depths that are active. If you want to see an actual manifestation of the forces of the earth's interior, then make a study of everything going on in the child up till the age of seven, for these are the forces from within the earth. To delve down into the earth to find the forces of the earth's interior would be absolutely wrong. You would only find earth substances. The forces that are active in the earth come to manifestation in the work they do in the human being up till his seventh year.
• And from the seventh to the fourteenth year, it is the forces of the encircling air that work in man, forces that still belong to the earth, to the earth's atmosphere. These are predominantly at work in everything developing in the human being between seven and fourteen.
• Then comes the most important stage of all, from fourteen to twenty-one. At this stage the subsensible passes over into the super-sensible. Here a kind of balance is created between the subsensible and super-sensible. Now the forces of the earth's whole solar system work at organizing the human being.

So we have the earth's interior in the first period of life; encircling air in the second period of life, that is, what the earth itself is embedded in. The forces streaming down from cosmic spaces in so far as these cosmic spaces are filled with our own actual planetary system, up till the twenty- first year. Not until the age of twenty-one does man tear himself away, as it were, from the influences brought about in him from outside by the planets and the planetary system belonging to these.

Please notice that in everything I have referred to as having an influence on man, bodily influences are of course included. They are bodily processes that the forces from the planet's interior bring about up till the seventh year. They are bodily processes that are formed by the circulating air in connection with the breathing and so on between the seventh and the fourteenth year. There is no doubt that they are bodily processes, in fact actual transformations of bodily organs are brought about; everything being connected with man's growing and becoming larger. Thus man grows beyond all this work being done on him by the earth; all this ceases at twenty-one.

What happens then, however? What happens after twenty-one?

Up till twenty-one we draw on what comes from the earth and its planetary system in the way we have described. We build up our constitution with the earth's help.

• Then, after we have reached the age of twenty-one, we have to draw on ourselves. We gradually have to release what we have put into our organism from out of the forces of the planet and the planetary system.

Activities going on in the blood forces always used to ensure that this happened in the past. As you will probably know, man has not learned to release the planetary forces himself, after the age of twenty-one. And yet he has been doing so. He did it as an unconscious process. The capacity was in his blood. It was built into him to do it. The important change in our present time — and the present extends over a long period of several centuries, of course — is that man's blood is losing the capacity to release what we have put into the organism in this way, before twenty- one.

1919-12-06-GA194

Wherever I have lectured on education, I have always given emphasis to an important landmark in the course of life that occurs at about the ninth year. It is a turning-point that should be very carefully marked in teaching. Up to that time one's teaching about nature should be entirely of the kind where the description of nature and her processes is connected — by way of fables, legends, and so forth — with the moral life. Only at the ninth year may one begin to describe nature in a simple, elementary manner. Then the child is ripe for it. In Waldorf education the whole arrangement and treatment of subjects is derived directly and entirely from actual observation of the human being, down to the smallest details. I pointed this out in the article I wrote on the educational foundations of the Waldorf School, and I alluded there to this turning-point around the ninth year.

We may characterise this turning-point by saying that the I-consciousness receives then a new form.

The child becomes capable of taking note of external nature in a more objective way. Earlier, he unites whatever he sees in nature with his own being.

Now the I-consciousness unfolds, as you know, in the first seven-year stage of life, from about 2 – 2 ½ years of age. What happens is that it comes back in the second seven-year period, at about the ninth year. This is one of the most striking ‘returns’ — this return of the I-consciousness at about the ninth year of age. It comes back in a more spiritual form, whereas in the second or third year of life it has more of a soul character.

This is only one of the events which comes back in a striking manner. The same observation can be made for less significant events.

1920-09-29-GA283

The recurrence itself need not surprise you. For you need only look back over your life, if it has already been going on for some time; in particular, the usual periods, which do not cover the same number for everyone but are nevertheless present, could show you exactly the stages, could tell you: in this year a stage ended that lasted until that year, and so on. If someone experiences a phase of life at the age of forty-five, they will experience it again at the age of fifty-two at the next stage. And one can see the recurrence in human experience very clearly when one experiences something at the age of fifty-two, which does not have to be the same, but which, in its inner character, represents something similar to what happened in one's forty-fifth year.

1921-07-28-GA077A

The further we go back in human development, to Greek, Egyptian, Persian and Indian cultures and prehistoric times, the more we find that the entire human constitution is actually different. We see today that in childhood life develops in such a way that the soul life is bound to a high degree to the bodily organization.

• Take my little book The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy or other things I have said about education, and you will see how, with the change of teeth in the seventh or eighth year, the whole soul constitution of the child changes.
• And from ordinary life we know how the whole soul constitution of a human being changes when he reaches sexual maturity.
• It is less noticeable that similar changes take place at the beginning and the end of the twenties; these take place more inwardly, but they are quite clearly still present even for the modern human being.
• When we come to the later years, to the thirties, the soul and spiritual life of the human being becomes highly independent of the physical. We enter a stage of our development in which we change our soul through external experience, through being with the world. We no longer change our soul through what happens in us in such a way as the change of teeth, sexual maturity, or the changes after the age of twenty.

But what extends in us more during the youthful years until the end of the twenties, in ancient times extended up to the high age of Man. This law is a historical law. This can be observed by those who have acquired the ability to observe the inner soul life, which shows us, in the remnants that still occur today in old people, that such a development was once present.

If we know this, then we can look back, for example, to the ancient Indian times, to times that lead into prehistory, where Man's soul and spiritual life was dependent on physical development up to the fifties. One became a patriarch at the same time through physical development and in spiritual development, just as today one becomes a sexually mature person both physically and spiritually. This harmony of the physical with the soul-spiritual went up into old age in ancient times.

In those ancient times, Man also experienced the descending line of physical development, which begins around the age of 35. Until then, our organism grows and sprouts; from then on, it goes downhill, from then on, there is a descending development. Today, we do not go through this descending development in the same way; we are certainly weighed down by old age, but that is different from what it was in ancient times. In ancient times, as the external physical body became stiffer and drier, there was a simultaneous bright illumination of spirituality, so that in the patriarchal age one grew into a certain spirituality through natural development.

1924-05-29-GA236

As you will readily understand, Initiation is possible at any age in life, with the exception of early childhood. Children up to the age of seven are not, as a rule, initiated. And if what I am now describing is to be seen and understood, one must, in the present earthly life, have passed beyond this age. Everyone who is initiated has passed the age of seven. That is why vision of what is disclosed by this first phase of life is comparatively easy to attain. What is here revealed are, as we have heard, the experiences undergone by a human being after death during the backward journey which lasts for a third of the time of his earthly life.

A second revelation is possible when that part of the backward survey which corresponds to the years between 7 and 14—that is to say, to the time of puberty—becomes visible to inspired consciousness. The experiences lived through by the human being after death as he ascends from the sphere of the Moon to that of Mercury are then revealed.

Having traversed the sphere of the Moon, man ascends to the sphere of Mercury. But in order to establish relationship with human beings in the Mercury-sphere, the phase of life between the 7th and 14th years, between the time of the change of teeth and that of puberty, must be obliterated from the memory-tableau.

If in inspired consciousness, the next phase of life is obliterated, enabling what can become visible here to shine through, the experiences undergone by man in the sphere of Venus after death are revealed.

Thus in looking back with the inspired consciousness of Initiation over these first periods of life, one beholds what is happening in the macrocosm, the spiritual macrocosm, to the so-called Dead.

You will realise from what I am saying that infinite wisdom is contained in the terminology used by ancient science. For the element of love is associated with the name of Venus. Vision of the Venus-sphere corresponds to the period of human life following the onset of puberty.

Then there is a period lasting from the 21st until the 42nd year of life. When this period is revealed in inspired consciousness, one experiences—or can at any rate experience—what a dead man undergoes in the period that is by far the longest—in his life between death and a new birth, when he is living together with the Sun Beings. The Sun-existence between death and rebirth is now revealed.

The Sun is a heavenly body of such might, embracing such a multitude of spiritual forces and spiritual Beings, that in order to perceive all the influences of the spiritual Sun-sphere upon the human being between death and rebirth, a period three times as long as the others must be obliterated from the memory-tableau, namely the whole period between the 21st and 42nd years. You will realise from this that initiates themselves must have passed the age of 42 before they are able to look back upon man's connection with the Sun beings between death and a new birth. This connection cannot be perceived in its fullness before then. To grow older, you see, has an important bearing upon spiritual vision itself. There are realities for the perception of which a certain maturity of years, not only a certain degree of Initiation, must have been reached.

We come now to the period between the 42nd and 49th years. This is the point to which I tried to lead in the last lecture, for when Man reaches his 49th year the possibility of direct relationship with the hierarchies ceases. You will have gathered this from what I have said. We shall consider presently how it is with men who have passed the age of 49.

If our attention is focussed upon influences which interweave with this phase of the tableau—we ourselves must of course have reached the age of 50 or more—and we look back at the span of time between the 42nd and the 49th years, we can behold the experiences a man undergoes after death in connection with the beings of the Mars-sphere.

But in this sphere the spiritual world begins to impart a strongly individualised character to the karma of the human being when he is on earth. You have heard that a man's karma is prepared during the period which immediately follows death and lasts for a third of the time of the earthly life. Karma is then gradually elaborated, and I have already indicated how this takes place. Karma is elaborated, wrought out, in union with higher Beings.

Now there are men whose karma is elaborated mainly in the Mercury-sphere, or in the Venus-sphere, or in the Sun-sphere; and again there are others whose karma is elaborated mainly in the sphere of Mars. Human beings who by virtue of their earlier earthly lives bring into the spiritual world something that must be elaborated chiefly in the sphere of Mars, give evidence of this during their next life on Earth.

... [example of Voltaire KRI 29] ...

And now when a man penetrates with the inspired consciousness of initiation into the phase of life between the 49th and 56th years—he must be considerably older than was necessary for the vision connected with the earlier periods—he attains knowledge of what the beings of the Jupiter region can bring about in human beings during their life between death and a new birth.

Acquaintance with the Beings of the Jupiter-sphere makes a very remarkable impression. One must of course have passed the age of 56 before this experience is possible. The first impression is one of astonishment that beings like those belonging to the Jupiter-sphere can exist at all. I mean that as a Man on Earth one is astonished, not as a man between death and rebirth; for then, of course, one is actually connected with these Jupiter beings. They are beings who need not ‘learn’ anything, because the moment they take form - I cannot say ‘the moment they are born’ as you will presently see - they are already wise, supremely wise. They are never stupid, never unwise. They are as men on earth would often like to be—men who do not appreciate the blessings of being taught and would prefer to be wise directly they are born. These beings on Jupiter are not ‘born’; they simply arise out of the whole organism of Jupiter. Rather in the way that we see clouds forming out of the atmosphere, so do these beings arise out of Jupiter, and once they are there they can be regarded as embodied wisdom. Neither do they die; they are merely transformed, they undergo metamorphosis. Jupiter is in essence weaving wisdom. Picture yourselves standing, let us say, on the Rigi, and looking down at the clouds. And now imagine that you are looking, not upon weaving clouds of water-vapour but upon weaving wisdom itself, weaving thought-images which are actually beings.—Then you will have an impression of Jupiter.

... [example Eliphas Levi KRI 30] ...

When it is possible to survey the period of life from the 56th to the 63rd year—and I myself am now in this position—one gazes at the influences exercised upon man between death and rebirth by Saturn, by the beings of Saturn. This is an even more startling vista, a vista that causes bewilderment, nay indeed actual pain.

The beings associated with Saturn are beings who by their very nature take no heed at all of what they do in the immediate present; they act as it were unconsciously, under the sway of much loftier Beings into whose world they enter on reaching maturity. But as soon as they have done something, it stands there in powerful, living remembrance.

Try for a moment to imagine yourselves in this position ... I am not referring to any particular vocation or profession ... but just picture yourselves doing something, no matter what, and not noticing anything at all while you are actually doing it; but once you have done it, it stands there in living remembrance as an intensely vivid picture. Take a singer: he sings but is unconscious that he is doing so; he is simply being used by the Gods to sing. Imagine a large audience listening to him; as long as he is actually singing he is aware of nothing at all; he knows nothing, either about himself or about what he is experiencing. But the moment it is all over and the concert ended, the whole event is there and does not fade away; it remains and forms part of the content of his very life. On Saturn, man is the past, only the past.

Think of yourselves walking over the Earth. As you walk you see nothing of yourself. But when you have gone a little further and look back, you see a little snowman - he is a figure of yourself as you were before you took the last step. Again you observe nothing, but walk on, and another little snowman stands behind you. And so it continues, with more and more little snowmen standing behind you. To all of them you say “I”. Now transpose this imagery into the spiritual and you have the key to the nature of the Saturn beings. Between death and a new birth man has to encounter these beings who live wholly in the past. And there are men who in the elaboration of their karma have a particularly strong connection with these Saturn beings.

The destiny of such men can be intelligible only when one looks back upon the period of life between the 56th and 63rd years. Again I will give an example in order to show you how karmic events in life point back to happenings in the super-sensible world between death and a new birth.

... [example Victor Hugo KRI 31]

1924-05-30-GA236

Remember what I told you yesterday about the backward survey of the memory-tableau. If this memory-tableau is blotted out in the activity of Inspired Knowledge, we perceive what it is that is present there within the physical body. And when the memory-picture of the phase between birth and the 7th year, until the time of the change of teeth, is blotted out, we perceive that within this physical body there was an an angel! We actually behold there a being of the Third Hierarchy. So that what happens is this. We succeed in getting outside the physical body and then return into it as into our house and home ... and lo! we meet our angel there when we look back upon the phase of life from birth until the 7th year.

...

What were the grounds for this? It was known that when Man has been outside his body and then returns into it, he sees himself as the bearer of spiritual beings. And the whole conception that little children, especially, are guarded by their angel originates in the fact that when with initiation-knowledge we look back upon the phase of life from birth to the 7th year, we experience what I described yesterday by saying that when this phase in the memory-tableau is blotted out, the Hierarchy of the angeloi, that is to say, the deeds and activities of the Moon-sphere shine through.

Again, when we look back upon the phase from the 7th to the 14th years and then return into the body, we find an archangel. This archangel is of course also present within the human being from birth until the 7th year, but we do not find the archangel when we are looking back only at the phase between birth and the 7th year.

...

[example]

Men of the modern age have to a great extent lost this sensitivity, this delicacy of perception; their perceptions have become crude.

But suppose there is someone who looks back with more delicate perception upon the relationship he had with a human being who was an example to him in his youth—a teacher, perhaps. People do not always feel contemptuous about those who were their teachers; many look back with inner happiness to those who educated them. When this is so, the recollection can deepen into a very intimate experience. It may come to us that between our 7th and 14th years, for example, we always felt obliged to do whatever this revered teacher did; or we may realise that when this teacher told us something we felt as though we had already heard it, as though it were just being repeated. It is actually one of the most beautiful experiences in life when we remember something of this kind, feeling that it was repetition.

And then it strikes us that something must underlie this experience. Healthy human reason will tell us that there is nothing to account for it in the present earthly life, and then the same reasoning faculty points us to previous lives. There are indeed many whose attention is directed in this way to earlier lives on earth.

Now what does it mean when we can look back to a teacher with feelings like these? It means that in our present life destiny has led this teacher to us. It is our karma to have such a teacher and it points to a previous earthly life.

As a rule—and this is shown by occult observation—as a rule it is not the case that in the previous earthly life the teacher was also our teacher; the relationship then was quite different. From a teacher we receive thoughts, ideas, even if they are clothed in the form of pictures; in true education we receive thoughts and ideas. When this is the case it points back, as a rule, to a relationship where feelings, not thoughts, were communicated by the person in question; there was less opportunity for receiving thoughts from him, but feelings were communicated—feelings which can be transmitted in so many different ways. And the same may apply to the present and a future earthly life.

Let us suppose that in this present life a man feels drawn by warm, inner sympathy to some other person with whom life does not bring him into specially close contact, whom he merely meets but to whom he is strongly drawn. In such a case it may happen that these feelings of sympathy lead to the other becoming his teacher in a later-life.

[from H2 to H3]

What, then, has actually happened? When feelings of sympathy and attraction towards another person unfold in a man, this is the result of what the beings of the Second Hierarchy unfold in and around the human being.

Then, in the next life, when the influence does not work by way of the feelings but by way of thoughts and ideas, this means that the beings of the Second Hierarchy have given over what they wrought in a preceding life, to the beings of the Third Hierarchy, to the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai; and it is they who are now working within the human being.

When, therefore, our karma unfolds from one earthly life to another, this means that actual deeds are passed on from one hierarchy to another and that in the cosmos, in the spiritual cosmos, something of immense significance is taking place.

In looking at a Man's destiny we gaze, as it were through a veil, into a wide vista of cosmic happenings. If we can become conscious of this, the impression will be one of tremendous power. You have only to picture it to yourselves, entering into it with the right feeling and understanding.

Imagine now that you are observing the manifestations of destiny in the life of a human being. This should never be done in a spirit of indifference, for in observing the destiny of a human being we are in truth beholding deeds which have poured from the highest hierarchy into the lowest hierarchy, and again from the lowest into the highest hierarchy.

We are gazing upon a weaving activity of life in the ranks of the hierarchies when we study the destiny of a human being. It is something that must be contemplated with deep piety and veneration, because as we behold this destiny the world of the gods lies manifest before us.

1924-06-01-GA240

• The Sun existence shines through the epoch lying between the ages of twenty-one and forty-two,
• the Mars existence through the epoch lying between the years forty-two and forty-nine;
• the Jupiter existence through the epoch from forty-nine to fifty-six; and
• the Saturn existence through the epoch from fifty-six to sixty-three.

1924-08-13-GA311

from lecture cycle 'The Kingdom of Childhood'

The child during the first seven years is really completely and wholly an eye. Now consider only this thought: in the eye a picture is formed, an inverted picture, of every external object. This is what ordinary physics teaches everyone. That which is outside in the world is to be found within the eye as a picture. Physics stops here, but this picture-forming process is really only the beginning of what one should know concerning the eye; it is the most external physical fact.

But if the physicist would look upon this picture with a finer sense of observation, then he would see that it determines the course of the circulation of the blood in the choroid. The whole choroid is conditioned in its blood circulation by the nature of this picture within the eye. The whole eye adjusts itself according to these things.

These are the finer processes that are not taken into consideration by our ordinary physics. But the child during the first seven years is really an eye. If something takes place in the child’s environment, let us say, to take an extreme example, a fit of temper when someone becomes furiously angry, then the whole child will have a picture within him of this outburst of rage. The etheric body makes a picture of it. From it something passes over into the entire circulation of the blood and the metabolic system, something which is related to this outburst of anger.

This is so in the first seven years, and according to this the organism adjusts itself. Naturally these are not crude happenings, they are delicate processes. But if a child grows up in the proximity of an angry father or a hot-tempered teacher, then the vascular system, the blood vessels, will follow the line of the anger. The results of this implanted tendency in the early years will then remain through the whole of the rest of life.

These are the things that matter most for the young child. What you say to him, what you teach him, does not yet make any impression, except in so far as he imitates what you say in his own speech. But it is what you are that matters; if you are good this goodness will appear in your gestures, and if you are evil or bad-tempered this also will appear in your gestures — in short, everything that you do yourself passes over into the child and pursues its way within him. This is the essential point. The child is wholly sense-organ, and reacts to all the impressions aroused in him by the people around him. Therefore the essential thing is not to imagine that the child can learn what is good or bad, that he can learn this or that, but to know that everything that is done in his presence is transformed in his childish organism into spirit, soul and body. Health for the whole of life depends on how one conducts oneself in the presence of the child. The inclinations which he develops depend on how one behaves in his presence.

1924-08-16-GA243

[effect of age on initiation and perspective with clairvoyant faculties]

In Initiation today Man is dependent to a certain extent on age.

[example case 1]

Let us take the case of a Man who is thirty-seven when he begins his Initiation and has good expectations of life. He begins to practise meditation, concentration or some other spiritual exercises, either under guidance, or independently, in accordance with some instruction manual. As a result of repeated meditation on some theme, he acquires, first of all, the capacity to look back over his life on Earth. His earthly life appears before his inward eye in the form of a uniform tableau. Just as in normal three dimensional vision objects are situated in space—the front two rows of chairs and their occupants here, over there a table and behind it a wall; we see the whole in perspective in simultaneity—so at a certain level of Initiation we see into time. One has the impression that the passage of time is spatial. Now we see ourselves at the age of thirty-seven. We had certain experiences at thirty-six, at thirty-five and so on, back to the time of our birth. In retrospect we see a uniform tableau before us.

Now let us assume that at a certain stage of initiation a Man reviews his life in retrospect.

• At thirty-seven he will be able to look back into the period from birth to the age of seven approximately, the time of the change of teeth.
• Then he will be able to look back into the period between the ages of seven and fourteen, up to the age of puberty.
• And then he is able to look back into the period between fourteen and twenty-one and the rest of his life up to his thirty-seventh year.

He can survey the panorama of his life in spatiotemporal perspective, so to speak. If he can add to this perception the consciousness born of the emptied waking consciousness, a certain power of vision flashes through him. He acquires insight, but his insight assumes widely different forms. The experiences from birth to the age of seven, from the age of fourteen to twenty-one, and those of later years evoke different responses in him. Each life-period responds in its own way; each period has its own power of vision.

[example case 2]

Now let us consider the Man of sixty-three or sixty-four. He is able to look back over the later periods of his life.

• The period between the ages of twenty-one and forty-two appears relatively uniform.
• Then follows further differentiation. There are significant differences in his perceptions between the ages forty-two to forty-nine, forty-nine to fifty-six, fifty-six to sixty-three. All these periods are an integral part of his make-up. They represent the spiritual aspects of his life on Earth. If he develops this inward vision, he sees that his different insights are dependent upon the level of his being at a particular age.
• The first seven years of childhood awaken in him a different insight from that of the years between seven and fourteen. In the period of adolescence, from fourteen to twenty-one, it is again different; the years between twenty-one and forty-two bring further differentiation, to be followed in its turn by the somewhat differentiated powers of insight that belong to the later periods of life.

Let us assume that we have acquired the capacity to have memory-pictures of our life experiences and, in addition, have attained the insight derived from the emptied consciousness which has obliterated the memory-pictures. The forces of inspiration now become operative, so that we no longer survey our life-periods through the physical eye, but through the spiritual eye, the new organ of vision.

Through inspiration we have reached a point when we no longer conjure up pictures of our life-periods with their separate happenings, but perceive them through spiritual eyes and ears.

• At one time we see clairvoyantly the life-period between seven and fourteen, at another clairaudiently the period between forty-nine and fifty-six, just as formerly we heard and perceived in the external world when we used our eyes and ears. In the world of inspiration we make use of the power derived from the period between the ages of seven and fourteen and from the period between the forty-second and forty-ninth years. In this world the life periods become differentiated organs of cognition.

Thus we are, to a certain extent, dependent upon our age for the range of our vision.

At thirty-seven we are perfectly capable of speaking from first-hand experience of initiation, but at the age of sixty-three we would speak with deeper knowledge, because, at that age, we have developed other organs. The life-periods create organs.

Now let us assume that we propose to describe personalities such as Brunetto Latini or Alanus ab Insulis, not from information derived from books, but from clairvoyant knowledge. (These examples will be familiar to you because we have already spoken of them in the last few days.) If we try to describe them when we have reached the age of thirty-seven, we discover that we are in touch with them spiritually in the awakened consciousness of sleep. We can converse with them, metaphorically speaking, as we do with our fellowmen. And the strange thing is that when they discuss spiritual matters with others, they can only speak with them from their present level of wisdom and inner spirituality. Then we realize how very much we can learn from them. We must listen to them and accept in good faith what they have to teach.

Now you will realize that it is no light matter to stand in the presence of a personality such as Brunetto Latini in the spiritual world. But if we have made the necessary preparations we shall be able to determine whether we are victims of a dream delusion or in the presence of a spiritual reality. It is possible therefore to evaluate the communications we receive.

Suppose, then, at the age of thirty-seven we were to converse with Brunetto Latini in the spiritual world. This should not be taken literally, of course. He would talk to us of many things; then, perhaps, we should like to have more precise, more detailed information. Thereupon he would say: ‘in that case we must retrace our steps from the present, the twentieth century, back through the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries, to the century in which I lived when I was Dante's teacher. If you wish to accompany me along this path you must wait until you are a little older, until you have a few more years behind you. Then I can tell you everything and satisfy your thirst for knowledge. You can become a high Initiate, but, in reality, you cannot accompany me along this path into the past by spiritual volition alone.’

For this to be possible you must have grown older. If you wish to make certain of returning without hindrance to the spiritual world with the person in question, you must have passed your forty-second year at least and have reached the age of sixty.

These things will show you the deeper aspects of man's being and the significant part they play in youth and age. Only when we draw attention to these things are we in a position to understand why some die young and others live to a ripe age in their different incarnations. I shall have more to say about this later.

We have seen how Man, as he develops, progressively deepens and extends his perception of the spiritual world. I have shown how his relationship with a being existing as a discarnate soul in the spiritual world, such as Brunetto Latini, changes with the conditions of evolution, depending on whether he uses for spiritual perception the organs developed in youth or in age.

...

[life review - after first period]

In normal consciousness we see ourselves standing here on Earth, and at night the Moon over against us in the heavens. In order to see differently, we must enter into another kind of consciousness and sometimes that takes a considerable time. When we have attained this consciousness and are able to perceive our experiences, all that we have lived through from birth to the age of seven, to the change of teeth, with the consciousness that is in touch with the dead, with a consciousness that has achieved Inspiration and so become inner power of vision, then we see a totally different world around us. The ordinary world grows dim and indefinite.

This other world is the Moon sphere. When we have attained to this new consciousness, we no longer see the Moon as a separate entity, we are actually living in the Moon sphere. The Moon's orbit traces the furthest limits of the Moon sphere. We know ourselves to be within the Moon sphere.

Now if a child of eight could be initiated and could review the first seven years of its life, it could live in the Moon sphere in this way. Indeed, a child would not have the slightest difficulty in entering into the Moon sphere because it has not yet been corrupted by the influences of later years. Theoretically this is a possibility; but, of course, a child of eight cannot be initiated.

When we use the power derived from the first life-period, from birth to the age of seven, for spiritual vision, we are able to enter into this Moon sphere which is radically different from the sphere perceived by ordinary consciousness. An analogy will help to illustrate my point.

In embryology today the biologist studies the development of the embryo from the earliest stages. At a certain stage in the development of the embryo a thickening of the membrane occurs at an eccentrically situated point on the external wall. Then encapsulation takes place and a kind of nucleus is formed. But whilst this is clearly visible under the microscope, we cannot say: this is nothing but the germ, the embryo, for the rest is also an integral part.

The same applies to the Moon and the other stars. What we see as the Moon is simply a kind of nucleus and the whole sphere belongs to the Moon. The Earth is within the Moon sphere. If the germ could rotate, this nucleus would also rotate. The Moon's orbit follows the boundaries of the Moon sphere.

The ancients who still knew something of these matters did not speak therefore of the Moon, but of the Moon sphere. The Moon, as we see it today, was to them only a point at the furthest boundary. Every day this point changes position and in the course of twenty-eight days traces for us the boundaries of the Moon sphere. When our inner experiences between birth and the seventh year become inspirational vision, we acquire the power to enter into the Moon sphere as our perception of the Earth is gradually lost.

[second life-period]

When the experiences of the second life-period, between the change of teeth and puberty, are transformed into inspirational vision, we experience the Mercury sphere, the second sphere. We live together with the Earth in the Mercury sphere. The experiences of the Mercury sphere only become visible through the organ of vision that we can create for ourselves when we look back consciously and with clear perception into the experiences of our life on Earth between the ages of seven and fourteen.

[third life-period]

With the inspirational vision derived from the years between puberty and the age of twenty-one, we experience the Venus sphere. The ancients were not so ignorant as we imagine; with their dreamlike knowledge they knew a great deal about these things and they endowed the planetary system that we experience after the years of puberty with a name associated with sexual awareness which begins at this period.

[age period 21 to 42]

Then when we look back consciously on our experiences between the ages of twenty-one and forty-two, we know that we are within the Sun sphere.

When the separate life-periods are transformed into organs of the inner life, they endow us with the power to enlarge step by step our cosmic consciousness.

It would be untrue to say that we cannot know anything of the Sun sphere before our forty-second year. We can learn about it from the Mercury beings for they are fully acquainted with it. But in that event our experience comes to us indirectly, through super-sensible teaching. Now in order to have direct experience in the Sun sphere in our own consciousness, in order to be able to enter into it, we must not only have lived in the period between the ages of twenty-one and forty-two, but we must have passed our forty-second year, we must be able to look back over the past, for only in the retrospective survey are the mysteries revealed.

And again, when we are able to look back upon our life up to the forty-ninth year, the mysteries of Mars are revealed.

If we can look back upon our life up to the age of fifty-six, the Jupiter mysteries are revealed.

And the deeply veiled, but extraordinarily illuminating mysteries of Saturn—mysteries which, as we shall see in the following lectures, veil the profound secrets of the Cosmos—are revealed when we look back upon the events and happenings between the fifty-sixth and sixty-third years.

Thus you will realize that Man is in fact a microcosm. He is related to those things that he never perceives in normal consciousness. But he would be unable to fashion, or to order his life,

• if the Moon forces were not active within him from birth to his seventh year. He perceives later on the nature of their influence.
• He would not be able to re-create his experiences between the ages of seven and fourteen, if the Mercury mysteries were not active within him;
• nor would he be able to re-create his experiences of the years between fourteen and twenty-one—the period when powerful creative forces pour into him, if he is karmically predisposed to receive them—if he were not inwardly related to the Venus sphere.
• And if he were not united with the Sun sphere, he would not be able to develop ripe understanding and experience of the world between the ages of twenty and forty-two, the period when we pass from early manhood to maturity. In ancient times the system was not very different: the craftsman served his apprenticeship until he reached the age of twenty-one, then he became “travelling man” and ultimately “master.” Thus, all Man's inner development between his twenty-first and forty-second years is related to the Sun sphere.
• And all his experiences during his declining years between the ages of fifty-six and sixty-three can be attributed to the influences of the Saturn sphere.

Together with the Earth we exist within seven interpenetrating spheres, and in the course of our life we grow into them and are related to them. The original pattern of our life between birth and death undergoes a metamorphosis through the influence of the starry spheres which mould us from birth to death.

[after age 63]

When we have reached the Saturn sphere, we have passed through all that the beings of the planetary spheres can of their bounty accomplish for us. Then, in the occult sense, we embark upon a free and independent cosmic existence which looks back upon the planetary life from the standpoint of Initiation, an existence that in certain respects is no longer subject to the compulsions of earlier life-periods. However, I shall speak further on these matters in the following lectures.

1924-09-11-GA318

First, human beings have their physical organism. The most striking phenomenon in the physical organism is that in the first period of life they have what we call “first teeth,” which last until the time we call “change of teeth.” The teeth are only the most obvious thing that is changed at this time. For the fact is that human beings only keep the physical substance they received at birth until the change of teeth. They are constantly stripping that physical material from their form.

The process is, of course, more complicated than is implied in the brief statement that in the course of every seven or eight years a person pushes off all physical substance and replaces it.

The truth is near to that, but one need only look at the change of teeth itself to realize that this picture must be modified somewhat. For if this abstract assertion were correct, we would have new teeth every seven years. We get new teeth only once. The teeth are changed once and do not undergo any other renewal. They belong in this category in the most extreme sense.

As a matter of fact, the course of human life is such that the older one becomes, the more one retains of old physical substance. A replacement of by far the greatest part of the substance does indeed take place in seven- to eight-year periods; but we must distinguish what remains behind. At the seventh year it is only the adult teeth that remain. After each subsequent period there remain also certain parts of the substance that are not replaced, although the greater part is indeed replaced in the course of seven or eight years.

[first seven years]

Thus a basic statement can be made for the first seven years. Human beings strip away all the physical substance they had when they were born, keeping none of it, keeping only the forces that have lived and worked in it during those years. These forces have so appropriated the fresh new substance that was constantly being aquired that at seven the physical body has been completely renewed, even to the teeth. And from that statement the understanding must follow that the principle of heredity as our current natural science conceives of it really holds good only for the first seven years of life. Only for those first seven years is it true that a person's characteristics come from parents and grandparents.

The physical body of those first seven years provides, in a certain sense, a kind of model from which the artist working in the human being (who consists now in these years of etheric body, astral body, and I) fashions a new physical body.

[see also: Model for hereditary physical body]

We see how what we bring down from spiritual worlds—our individuality, our own being—and what we receive from heredity work together in artistic reciprocal activity. If a human being is an inwardly strong individual and brings an intensely strong inner astrality and I nature, which in turn makes the etheric body strong, then we will see a young person shooting up who from inner strength keeps very little to the model, only copies it for the general form. Naturally, the universal human model must be preserved, and therefore an affinity is already there for the inherited human form; features of it definitely remain beyond the change of teeth. Still, to thoughtful observation it will be apparent that in the case of inwardly strong individuals important changes come after the change of teeth because such individuals follow only slightly the model they inherited.

• If we investigate such an individual as St. Teresa [see Schema FMC00.647], we find that these particularly strong individualities resemble their parents very closely in the first seven years, but then in the ninth and tenth years they develop in surprising ways. Then the real individual is emerging.

In the strongest sense of the word, heredity only holds good for the first life period. What seems to appear later as heredity is not really heredity but must be recognized as a copy of the inherited model. The copy may be more or less exact; even so, it is not heredity; it is a copy of the inherited characteristics. The ordinary natural scientist considers this to be simply the principle of heredity carried further. But someone who really studies the nature of humanity will perceive that there is a complete qualitative difference between the resemblance to parents before the change of teeth and the resemblance after the change of teeth. Before, the forces of heredity are active. After, the forces that copy the model are active. To be exact, one can no more say that a human being has inherited what is carried between change of teeth and puberty than one can say of an artist copying the Sistine Madonna in the Dresden Gallery that the painting has caught the qualities of the Madonna through heredity!

You can see the particular kind of work the etheric body has to do. For in the years up to the change of teeth, the astral body and I organization participate very little. The etheric body forms a new physical human body in accordance with the model. Why? Because, like the child during the first seven years, it is not yet able to receive other than a very special kind of impression from the outer world.

Here we come upon an important secret of human evolution, a secret that answers the question: What does a child really perceive? The answer lies far away from present-day ideas.

We live, shall we say, between death and a new birth (or conception) in the spiritual world. In the spiritual world we are surrounded by realities very different from those found here in the physical world. We come out of that world into the physical world and continue our life in a physical body that we receive. Now in this physical world the same forces work further, although they are hidden from human sense perception. If you look at a tree, the same spiritual forces are working in it as those you encounter between death and new birth, only they are covered over, veiled, by the physical material of the tree. Everywhere in the physical world in which we live between birth and death, spiritual forces are active behind the sense-perceptible physical entities. We can think of the activities of the spiritual world continuing into this world in which we live between birth and death.

Now in the first seven years of life the child's whole being cannot unite with anything except this spiritual reality in all the colors, all the forms, all warmth, all cold. The child is fully aware when entering this physical world of the continuing spiritual activity. This awareness gradually diminishes up to the change of teeth. A sense impression is quite different to a child than to an adult. This fact is never recognized. To a child the sense impression is something entirely spiritual. For this reason if a child's father has a fit of anger, the child is not conscious of the angry gestures but of the moral state behind the gestures. It is this that passes into the child's body. During this time, therefore, the child is working with the forces that build a physical body in accordance with the child's own model—the body that will now be the child's own—and during this time is turned entirely toward spiritual foundations and works out of spiritual forces.

What does that mean? What is really working when spiritual forces are working? Obviously colors, forms, warmth, cold, roughness, smoothness work upon the sense perceptions. But behind all that, what is the fundamental force that is working?

In reality, whatever has to do with an I nature. Only invisible spiritual beings make an impression on the child, beings who have something to do with an I nature, above all, beings of the spiritual hierarchies higher than human beings, but also the animal group-souls, and the group-souls of the elemental beings. In reality, all this is working upon the child. And out of these spiritual forces, out of these mighty spiritual dynamics the child forms a second body from the original model. It grows and is finally present as a complete second body when the change of teeth takes place. This is the body that the human being has built for itself since birth, the first body that is it's very own, a physical body built out of the spiritual world.

Thus we have in this first life period very special laws working within all that activates the child, in all the awkwardness and uncertainty that are in the soul and with which it moves. They come from the fact that constant adjustment is having to be made to the physical world, since the child is still dreamily and half-consciously immersed in the other surrounding world: the spiritual world. Someday when medicine reaches a proper spiritual outlook, this interplay between the spiritual and physical worlds during the first seven years of life will be seen as the true cause of the so-called “children's diseases.” Then we will have the explanation for a problem that today is solved in the medical books by empty words and formal elucidations that do not lead to any reality.

[second seven year period]

The etheric body has a great deal to do in these first seven years of life. It works quietly and steadily to develop the faculties that it will possess in the second seven-year period: independent faculties of memory leading toward the intellect. Whoever has an eye for it can see the greatest transformation in the child's soul-life when the first life period goes over into the second.

The etheric body is now relieved of the work it had to accomplish—in the full sense of the word—to build the second body. It is relieved, freed. How it is freed, one can only realize if one perceives that at fourteen years not only the teeth remain but still more that had to be renewed, like the teeth, in the first life period. This now remains in the physical-material substance.

What remains frees the etheric body—itself becomes free in the etheric body.

Quantitatively it is a small thing, but qualitatively it is something of tremendous importance. It is what now becomes tremendously active as soul attributes, soul characteristics. What the human being saves by not having to create a third set of teeth (and much else that is taken care of by evolution in the same way as the teeth) enables something of the etheric body to be “left over.”

What flowed during the first seven years into the physical development and is now “left over” from the physical development works now purely in the realm of soul, its nature depending upon the individual. With the faculties upon which you call as a teacher in school, the faculties you train, the child accomplished the great change from milk teeth to second teeth, and much else. With the forces that are saved by not having to form a third set of teeth, the child begins to develop soul faculties. This takes place in the depths of human nature. During the first seven years these soul forces had been entirely embedded in the physical development. We have to comprehend physical development as a soul-spiritual activity just as much as a physical activity. We see a spiritual entity active in the body in the first seven years of the human being, in the fullest sense of the word.

How does this relate to general human evolution?

Those forces with which the human soul works in the first seven years of life are in the cosmos; they are sun forces. It is not only physical-etheric rays that stream down from the sun: in those physical-etheric sun rays, forces are streaming down from the sun that are identical with the forces by which our etheric body renews our physical body in the first seven years of life. It is the Sun being (Sonnenentität) that works there. Look at the child—how the child works at a second physical body, copying from the model! The child is absorbing pure forces from the sunshine. One must understand that—how humanity stands within the cosmos!

And when the child has certain etheric forces released at the change of teeth, they then work back upon the astral organization and I organization.

Then in the second life period human beings have access to what could not reach them at all in the first period. They now have access to the moon forces.

The etheric forces in the first seven years of life are sun forces. At the change of teeth we have access to the moon forces; these are identical with the forces of our astral body. Thus at the change of teeth human beings move from the sun sphere—in which, however, we also still remain, for it remains active in us—into the moon sphere. And now between change of teeth and puberty we work on ourselves with the moon forces.

With the moon forces we now build our second own body (the third earthly body), in which not so much is replaced as in the first life period, but even so a great deal. Again forces remain behind, but they are now of an astral nature, and they are now transforming the soul. They were freed from their work on the body when we reached puberty. We have now reached a period in which we manifest certain forces that are now free in the soul, forces that had to work in the physical body between the ages of seven and fourteen.

So we work entirely in the first life period with what comes to us from the sun. And with the school child between change of teeth and puberty, it is sun forces that have now become free for soul activity. That is the great powerful fact we find in human evolution, that if one is educating a child's soul between change of teeth and puberty, one has to do purely with sun forces. The child-soul is so intimately related to what lives in the sunshine! One's heart can rejoice in such knowledge. The knowledge really sheds light on the relation between humanity and cosmos.

Moon forces are active in this second life period in the bodily development; they are not yet freed for the soul-life. They become free at puberty, and then they join the work on the soul. The change that takes place in the soul-life at puberty is caused by the fact that moon forces are now impressing themselves into the soul-life. So what a young person does in all kinds of behavior after the onset of puberty is a working together of sun and moon forces.

Thus we see into the depths of human evolution. We will stay clear of speaking of heredity in the crude sense in which natural science speaks of it. We will look in the opposite direction, to see what lives in the human activity of the child. It is the sun that lives in all the human activity of the child, and in the child's human thinking.

It is the sun that streams to us from the stone—for a stone has no light of its own, it can only reflect the sun's light to us. The natural researcher grants you that fact—but that is the very smallest, the most abstract detail! The child also reflects the sun forces back to us, between the seventh and fourteenth years. Just as we can designate the light reflected from the stone as sunlight streamed back to us, so we can designate what the child does in the second life period as “sun.” Sun is not merely there where it seems to be concentrated. This physical notion, that the sun is only there is like the notion of someone who looks at the soup in a soup bowl and sees a blob of fat floating on the top of it and thinks that the blob of fat is the soup.

Yes, our physical ideas are often very childish, and if one uncovers them and shows them for what they are, then people laugh. One could wish there were the same reaction to much that is happening today in the name of science, because it is pretty laughable. When someone takes the blob of fat to be the soup itself, that's the same as when that gold ball up there above us is regarded as the entire sun. In reality the sun fills the whole world.

Now let us look into the connection between the moon forces and the forces of reproduction. The forces of reproduction now gradually form the child's own second body that is built up between the seventh and fourteenth years and is finished when puberty begins. The human being takes in the reproductive forces during this time; this is plainly moon activity. These forces relate entirely to moon activity. They are the result of moon activity.

[third period]

And now we reach the life period in which we must form our own third body (the fourth when counted from an external view), the time from puberty to the beginning of the twenties. The division of time in the later years is no longer so exact as the time between change of teeth and puberty. Now there is always more physical substance remaining behind; it stays fixed in the human being, it becomes permanent structure. Gradually a great deal of permanent structure accumulates.

The older a person becomes, the less material is stripped away from the bones and replaced. Also in the rest of the organism certain parts need a longer time to separate off. And one can see a simple fact in connection with the teeth: that once one has got one's second set of teeth, whether one still has them later depends upon how long they last—just as with a knife, one only has it as long as it lasts. The knife can't renew itself. Teeth can't renew themselves either, really.

Obviously everything is in flow: there is renewal in the first place, but then it goes over into the state of nonrenewal. The teeth maintain their life process at a much slower tempo than the rest of the organism, so far as intensity is concerned. But therefore in reverse, the tempo is faster so far as quality is concerned, for they actually become bad before the other parts of the organism—for the reason that the other parts can always renew themselves. If the teeth were subject to the same laws as many other parts of the human organism, there wouldn't have to be any dentists. On the other hand, if the other parts of the organism were subject to the same laws as the teeth, we would all die young in this modern civilization of ours.

But now to go on.

• We are active in our organism in the first seven years of life with the forces of the sun,
• in the second seven years with the forces of the moon. In this second period the sun forces remain and the moon forces combine with them.
• In the third seven-year period, from puberty into the twenties, much more delicate forces are taken in, coming from the other planets. These other planetary forces appear in the human growth process, and because they work much less strongly than the sun or moon, their influence is outwardly much less visible. They had been working in the body between the fourteenth and the twenty-first years. Now at twenty-one, although it is hardly noticeable, they begin to work in the area of soul and spirit. Whoever has insight can see this remarkable change. Up to that moment only sun and moon have spoken out of human deeds. Now planetary forces modify that sun and moon activity. Actually people's coarse methods of observation afford very little capacity for grasping this change. But it is there.

Knowledge of these connections is necessary for someone concerned with the human being in health and in illness. For what do we really know of a human being, shall we say in the eleventh or twelfth year, if we don't know that the moon forces are working there? After that period, even though there are continually fewer parts to be renewed, the person must still renew them. Up to the twenty-first or twenty-second year, the sun, moon, and planets are working in succession into human growth.

[period from 21 to 28]

Then from the twenty-first to the twenty-eighth year the constellations of the fixed stars work. To be sure, this escapes ordinary observation. Only mystery wisdom tells of the entire zodiac playing into the human being between the beginning and the end of the twenties.

[at 28]

Then the world becomes severe. It no longer wants to work into a person; it becomes harsh. Of this strange new relation of the human being to the world in the twenty-eighth, twenty-ninth year—that the world hardens toward us—of this, today's science hardly knows anything.

Aristotle taught it to Alexander when he told him that we push against the crystal heaven and find it hard. Thus “the crystal heaven,” beyond the sphere of the fixed stars, acquires meaning for human comprehension.

And one begins to realize that when we come to the end of our twenties, we find no more forces in the cosmos for our own renewal. Why do we not die, then, at twenty-eight years? Well, the surrounding world does in fact let us die at twenty-eight. It is true. Whoever sees humanity's relation to the world, whoever looks consciously out into the world, must say, “O world, in reality you sustain me only until my twenty-eighth year!” Only when one realizes this does one finally begin to understand the real nature of the human being.

For now what happens when the world withdraws its formative forces—forces that previously we had always been free to use to build ourself up?

At this remarkable moment, when in the twenty-eighth year we begin to show clearly that the earlier forces of growth are now completely gone, some people begin to die off. Some hold on a little longer to the forces of growth that are flowing away.

• But even Goethe had grown smaller when he measured himself carefully. This was when he began to work again on the second part of Faust. Earlier he had already begun to fade.

From the moment when the world deserts us, we have to manage our renewal ourselves, out of forces we have received up to that moment. Certainly when the parts of our organism that can be renewed are becoming fewer and fewer, we cannot work to give ourselves a new body in the same glorious measure that children use up to the change of teeth, when they are forming their first very own body from the model. But we have collected many, many forces from sun and moon and stars which we are carrying within us and which we need when at twenty-eight we have to begin to renew our physical-material body ourselves.

This is the moment in earth-life when we find that we are now given complete responsibility for our human form. This moment of our life when we are put entirely on our own is the point of time toward which we have been striving, and from which we must go on. (Plate III, middle)

We strive from childhood when we are receiving many cosmic forces, strive more and more toward a point lying at the end of our twenties, when we no longer build our growth out of cosmic forces. Whatever we do after that moment, we do from forces out of our own body. In the middle is the point at which we stop working with cosmic forces and begin to develop forces out of our own body.

[zero point]

We often find a premature activity happening in some child from forces out of the child's own body. We become aware of it from certain pathological symptoms the child shows from the bones, for instance, becoming brittle, and particularly from becoming fat. But the connection between these things is not easily seen. In every moment of life a person is either striving toward this twenty-eighth-year point or away from it. You must realize that it is a kind of zero point, a kind of hypomochlion, a zero moment in time when we stand between ourselves and the world. Always in our inner dynamics we are striving toward it or from it. Whatever is happening in us is a striving toward a zero or away from a zero, something we do toward or away from nothingness. We are striving toward the point where the world is no longer active and we are not yet active. Between the two conditions is a kind of zero. There is something in us that is oriented toward nothingness. It is this that makes us free beings; that is why we can hold responsibility.

It is rooted in the human constitution that we are responsible free beings, because at the moment of transfer from the world to ourselves we go through a point of zero. Just as the beam of a pair of scales goes through a point of zero from right to left, from left to right, and that point does not follow the laws to which the rest of the scales is subject. You can think when you have a pair of scales, (Plate III, right) here the mechanical laws you have learned are in force; this gives the scales an exact form—either this above and that below or the opposite. That is the law of scales, the law of leverage. You can carry the scales around; their relation remains the same everywhere, subject always to those mechanical laws wherever you take them—except at this point. This point is free. You can carry the point around as if it were not connected to a pair of scales: the scales remain unchanged. And so it is, when you take hold of yourself in your soul experiences at that point toward which first you strive, from which afterward you strive away: first the world is active, afterward you yourself, and here nothing is active. With the tendency toward and the tendency from, here where a hypomochlion sits, here can live freely that human capacity which is determined neither by nature nor by the world. Here is the point of origin of human freedom. Here is where responsibility is born.

[development assessment of zero point]

If, therefore, one wants to be able to judge the degree of responsibility in, for instance, a person thirty-five years old—and I mean professionally, not merely a layman's opinion, or that of a dilettante—then one must ask oneself, has too much, perhaps, worked over from this person's abnormal development up to the point at the end of the twenties? Is the point moved more toward youth or more toward age?

• A person is properly responsible if the point is normal, if judging the whole individual from external life one can decide that the point is normal.
• If it lies too far back toward youth—that is, if the world ceased too soon to give its forces to some person—one may perhaps find that the person suffers easily, even though to a small degree, from compulsive ideas. The soul is becoming rigid and cannot be held fully accountable for its deeds.
• If the point comes late, the question will be whether that person is hindered by his or her inner nature from developing complete freedom of soul and is too rigid physically, and for that reason cannot be held fully responsible.

The physician and the priest are the ones who are competent to form this judgment, in the finest sense of the word. They will know that they can judge pretty accurately from people's appearance what their development has been, whether they are in balance, whether their life-hypomochlion is at the right spot, that is, at the right point of time, or is too early or too late. We will discuss physical appearance later, for even an intensive study of physiognomy belongs to pastoral medicine.

Eugen Kolisko

from his essay: 'From Darwinism -Whither' in the book 'Reincarnation and Other Essays' (1940, 1978)

Few intelligent people nowadays doubt the scientific basis on which researchers both in England and in America predict the recurring cycles of crops and of the weather, whilst more recently statistics have become available to account for the cycles of good and bad trade. Now if these various cycles really have validity, then they must be based on law; and if they are indeed facts in nature, then it would be neither unscientific nor unprofitable to pursue the enquiry into other departments of human life and activity. My experience and training as a doctor have provided me with certain interesting pointers to the existence of 'cycles' in the human body. There is for instance the cycle of seven.

A wound on the hand heals in about seven days. Invariably the surgeon removes stitches from a suture after seven days. It is quite certain that in healing there is a rhythm of seven. This rhythm is also observable in memory. Remembering occurs in periods of seven, fourteen, and twenty - one days almost invariably. Indeed this memory cycle of seven is a law of psychology. So that just as the wound, or gap, in the skin heals after seven days, so does the 'gap' in the memory 'heal' in a like time.

In addition to the seven day cycle, there is the seven year rhythm, a very important one in the science of physiology. It is a well-known fact that in every seven years the human body is completely changed and renewed.

Any parent can check the seven year cycle by observing his own children.

• The initial rhythm occurs just about the seventh year when the first great change takes place - the changing of the teeth. This is really a most important change for more than the teeth are involved. The whole body undergoes an entire re-shaping of its form. Watch the child carefully and it will be seen that the mind changes too. That which hitherto the child treated as a subject for play, becomes a serious occupation. It "sets its mind" at something.
• The succeeding seven years see the transition from the nursery to the school where reading, writing, and not least -the ability to sit still -are real accomplishments.
• At about the age of fourteen, puberty occurs. Another tremendous event, and again a complete change of body. Sex is developed and a new range of interests are awakened. In the case of the boy the limbs appear to grow to disproportionate lengths. The mind becomes interested in mechanics, the hands itch to construct things for themselves. At this age the centre of growth is more definitely located in the lower part of the body, but radiates in all directions. Then there is a crisis in the mind too, but of a different kind from the one which took place seven years previously. In the first instance the effect was on the head and the intelligence. In the second case the change concerns the sexual life and the limbs, while there is also a definite crisis of the will.
• From the twentieth to the twentyfirst year (a further seven years) there occurs another change, one which the law allows to represent maturity and responsibility. The boy is now a man and can 'stand on his own feet'. This period marks the conclusion of bodily development.

It becomes obvious that from birth to maturity we develop in three clearly defined phases.

• First the head is shaped, the second teeth giving it a final, decisive form.
• During the second seven year rhythm the trunk is developed, the last stage in this term being the development of the reproductive organs.
• During the third period of seven years ending in bodily maturity, the limbs gradually reach a truer proportion with the rest of the body; the legs being now sufficiently strong to support the whole - the man is literally able to "stand on his own feet".

Three seven year periods have thus far elapsed. But the third is by no means the end of the seven year rhythm. The body being completed, the changes now concern themselves with the development of personality. This fact emerges clearly if we study biographies. At least one well known writer discovered for himself the law of seven in his own life and which he has recorded in a very interesting book: 'Seven' by Ron Landau

[editor: 'Seven: An Essay in Confession' (Autobiography) (1936) by Romauld Landau (1899–1974)

In the book, Landau reflects on his own life and discusses how he found meaning in these seven-year phases. He refers to this concept as "the law of seven," suggesting a pattern or rhythm to life that aligns with spiritual and philosophical insights. The book delves into the mathematical and metaphysical significance of this idea, drawing connections to his personal experiences and spiritual journey​ and philosophical insights.]

But Mr Landau has drawn also on other biographies to illustrate his thesis, and among the examples he has chosen none is more remarkable than Tolstoy.

With the precision of a clock every seventh year marks a decisive turning point in the personal and artistic life of the Russian philosopher. This peculiar fact had already been observed by Tolstoy's biographer Paul Birukow.

[editor: 'Leo Tolstoy - His Life and Work' (4 volumes in period 1905-1924 by Paul Birukoff (1860-1931)]

When it was pointed out to him Tolstoy agreed. In later years, Birukow wrote:

'I heard once from Tolstoy that he believed that as physiologists divide human life into periods of seven years, so psychological life has the same periods of growth, and that each period of seven years has its moral physiognomy'.

But a careful reading of the lives of our favourite heroes, whether artistic, religious, scientific or political, will surely and certainly reveal the law of seven.

Consider Charles Darwin for example. For most people his life is centred around his three great discoveries: Variability of Nature, the Transmutation of Species, and the Descent of Man. It can easily be demonstrated that the main steps of the development of his theories coincide with the seven - year periods of his life.

• Born in February 1809; in July 1837 (at 28 years of age) he commenced his first notebook for the material intended for 'The Origin of Species' which he actually began to write in September 1858 when he was 49 (seventh cycle of seven years).
• The 'Descent of Man" was published in 1871, but the most valuable of his books, 'The Expression of the Emotions in Men and Animals', was originally intended to be a single chapter in 'The Descent of Man'. 'The Expression of the Emotions' was published in 1872 when he was 63 years of age ( ninth cycle of seven years ).
• Exactly seven years later (1879) he published his 'Life of Erasmus Darwin', his grand-uncle. Darwin died in 1882.

Such are the principle features in Darwin's life. But when you read his life story with the seven - year cycle in mind, we should notice further details.

• For instance, as just turned fourteen he delivered two papers before the Plinian Society at Edinburgh University.
• He was twenty - one years and some months old when he set out on the Voyage of the Beagle.

And it would be possible to go on ...

But this recognition of the seven year cycles has greater import than a mere game. Its application could, and should, revolutionize education. Following an experience of over twenty years in educational and medical psychology I am thoroughly convinced that our whole education system must be re-planned on the basis of cyclic development. Education must follow nature and be the result of a study and application of her ways.

The boy of tomorrow must not be thrown out upon the world in such a top - heavy state that his "unbalance" is obvious to all. There must be a natural coordination between the body, the brain, and the spiritual faculties. His curriculum must have firm psychological foundations.

Discussion

Note 1 - About the mapping of the seven year periods to Man's bodily principles

The periods are indicative and vary per person

The seven year periods should not be taken as exact hard dates, but indicative periods of development that will vary with the individual person.

Also, the development of consecutive periods may also not go along the theoretical template laid out, but deviations may occur with how one bodily principle develops and fits aligned as it should, or not. Examples of this are given, for example, with Schema FMC00.338 and Schema FMC00.647.

As a result, one should really look at the individual to asses the specific situation, as illustrated with the quote(s) below:

1924-09-11-GA318

If, therefore, one wants to be able to judge the degree of responsibility in, for instance, a person thirty-five years old .. then one must ask oneself, has too much, perhaps, worked over from this person's abnormal development up to the point at the end of the twenties? Is the point moved more toward youth or more toward age? ... The physician and the priest are the ones who are competent to form this judgment, in the finest sense of the word. They will know that they can judge pretty accurately from people's appearance what their development has been, whether they are in balance, whether their life-hypomochlion is at the right spot, that is, at the right point of time, or is too early or too late.

Development of bodily principles after age 28 to 42 - septennia periods don't really apply to the higher principles

A reader asked the question: "in which lecture does Rudolf Steiner mention that in the period from 42-49 we work on our spirit-self, 49-56 – on our life-spirit, 56-63 on our spirit-man"?

These periods are indeed appearing on Schema FMC00.236 and the Life Chart such as Schema FMC00.237A. It is a logical extrapolation of the septennia that Rudolf Steiner does describe in lectures, the first three periods up to age 21, as well as the second three between ages 21 and 42 for the threefold soul. However, to date no lecture has been found that actually extends the mapping in a linear way for the three principles of Man's higher triad (note this does preclude it exists and may still be found).

However, Rudolf Steiner does use answer this in 1916-04-13-GA065,

The underlined statement below confirms what is logical, that given the stage we are in with humanity and a broad mix of different cohorts at different stages of development, these septennia periods don't really apply to the higher principles. This is because most people are currently at the stage of developing the consciousness soul, but many are still at earlier stages of developing intellectual soul or sentient soul. This is further explained on Sixteen paths of perdition (oa Schema FMC00.562), Development of the I (Schema FMC00.233) and I-less human beings.

Seven year rhythm#1916-04-13-GA065.

We can distinguish three periods within the development of the soul. I have already hinted at them: from the beginning of the twenties to the end of the twenties; from the end of the twenties to the age of thirty-five or thirty-six; from the age of thirty-six to the age of forty-two or forty-three. The human soul does go through certain developmental phases that can be clearly distinguished, even if, as I said, what can be distinguished here only spreads like a finer mood over the soul life. There is a spiritual and soul element to the development in these years. And those who are familiar with the difference between the spiritual and the soul, which has often been mentioned here and to which I will return, will understand what I mean. In these years, up to the forty-second, forty-third, forty-fourth year, we are dealing with inner development alone, one that is colored by soul and spirit.

Then a more spiritual development of the inner life begins. The inner life withdraws even more than in previous years from the saturation and permeation of the organism. It lives even more within itself. And the possibility of distinguishing periods of time for the future is hardly appropriate for the present state of development of humanity. Only when earthly development has progressed further will it be possible to distinguish between the decades of human life in the way we do for the earlier years. Thus we see how, in a quite remarkable way, the soul and spirit interact in what confronts us as human beings in the physical world.

...

Let us take a look at the Russian national soul. What we find is that the peculiarity of the national soul, the character of the national soul, turns out to be related to a kind of mixture between

• what happens in the individual human organism from sexual maturity to the beginning of the twenties; [so 14-21]
• and that is shadowed by what happens from the age of forty-two or forty-three to the age of forty-nine or fifty. [so 42-49]

The last paragraph has been added to show that Rudolf Steiner does implicitly use the 'template' by linking the manas or spirit-self to a life period of approx ages 42 to 49. This can be seen when the above extract is linked to the one below.

Folk souls#1915-05-09-GA159

The characteristic of the Russian culture is that it can develop when once the point in time can enter when the Russian folk-soul combines with the spirit-self - I already expressed this in the mentioned series of talks. A time has to come in which this characteristic of the European East is only revealed. This will be completely different from the development in the West or in the middle of Europe. Provisionally, however, it is quite explicable that that which is allotted to the Russian culture is not there at all, but that the Russian culture has such a relationship—like the individual human being—to the spirit-self that it turns always upwards. The single member of the Russian people and even profound Russian philosophers do not speak as one speaks of the biggest matters in Central Europe, but they speak quite differently.

One angle from which this makes sense is to look at the spiritual beings of the planetary spheres, see Schema FMC00.236. However this is not applicable as a general rule for all incarnated souls worldwide, as explained above.

Rudolf Steiner does describe that the developmental goal for the current fifth postatlantean epoch is to develop the spirit-self or manas, but that humanity has only now started the transformation of the lower astral body, and hence this development will take place for part of humanity in the next sixth cultural age. (see green text box below on Schema FMC00.486)

In conclusion, from 1907-02-28-GA055 (see Man's life development#1977-81 - George and Gisela O'Neil)

In the first half of life, everything has developed in rhythmic progression;

in the second half, the boundaries are not so exact .. we are working toward the future.

Related pages

• Man - the human being
• Cosmic breathing
• Humanity is getting younger
• Biography work

References and further reading

• Helmut Hessenbruch: 'Von der Bedeutung des Siebenjahr-Rhythmus beim heranwachsenden Menschen' (1968)
  • Ph.D thesis 1938
• George and Gisela O'Neil: 'The human life' (1990, third printing 1998)
• William Bryant: The Veiled Pulse of Time: Life Cycles and Destiny' (1993)
  • Chapter two is on the cycles of seven
  • see also: Man's life development#References and further reading

First seven years of life

• Christoph Rau: 'Wenn die kleinen Kinder beten : Sprüche und Gebete für die ersten sieben Lebensjahre' (1981)
• Werner Christian Simonis : 'Die ersten sieben Jahre. Ein Ratgeber zum Verständnis des Kleinkindes' (1986)
• Dr. med. H. Michael Stellmann ; Wolfgang Warner: 'Die ersten sieben Lebensjahre : das Kind von der Geburt bis zur Schulreihe ; ein medizinisch-pädagogischer Ratgeber' (1999)

Case studies of seven year rhythm in life biography

• Romauld Landau: 'Seven: An Essay in Confession' (Autobiography) (1936)
  • In the book, Landau reflects on his life and discusses how he found meaning in these seven-year phases. He refers to this concept as 'the law of seven', suggesting a pattern or rhythm to life that aligns with spiritual and philosophical insights. The book delves into the metaphysical significance of this idea, drawing connections to his personal experiences and spiritual journey​.]

• Fred Poeppig: 'Die Bedeutung der siebenjährigen Entwicklungsperioden im Lebensgange Rudolf Steiners' (1950)
• F.C.J. Los: 'Der siebenjährige Rhythmus in Goethes Lebenslauf'
• Rudolf Treichler: 'Metamorfosen in de levensloop : Ziekte en ontwikkeling in het leven van Goethe' (1990), original in DE 1984 as 'Metamorphosen im Lebenslauf'

More non qualified

• Tony Crisp: 'Every Seven Years You Change: Does Your Personality Change Too? (2011)