Saturn
00
Now, if we are to consider the evolution of any entity, we must be clear that it must pass through all these stages of consciousness, life and form, in the following manner: Every being must pass through the seven stages of consciousness, and each stage of this state of consciousness in its various manifestations is called a planetary system in the Theosophical textbooks. A being goes through a planetary system, that is: it metamorphoses in these seven stages of consciousness. Presently man is going through the stage of awake consciousness; this we call the earth stage. Before that, man went through the dream consciousness stage. At that time, he lived in the stage of lunar development. It is said: Man has completed the moon in his development. In every stage consciousness, man has to pass through all the stages of life. Thus, on the moon he passed through the first, second, and third elementary kingdoms as well as through the other four kingdoms of dream-consciousness. Then he had to go through the seven stages of life on earth. At present man is on the planetary stage of the earth, that is, in the waking state, in the middle stage of life, the mineral kingdom. Regarding the stages of form, man is now physical (fourth globe or fourth state of form); in life, mineral (fourth round); in consciousness, awake (fourth planetary system). The passage of a being through one of the kingdoms of life is called a round. Each planetary system is comprised of seven rounds. Man is on the earth in the fourth round. In this round the mineral development is brought to completion, in the fifth round the vegetable, in the sixth round the animal, the animal consciousness, in the seventh round the human, the human consciousness. Every being must go through all seven stage of form and in each of these seven stages, he takes each form. First arupic, then rupic, then astral, then physical, then plastic, then intellectual and finally archetypal.
1
The relations of the four planetary embodiments can only be described here quite sketchily. For the processes, entities and their destinies are truly as manifold on Saturn, Sun and Moon as on the Earth itself. Therefore, only single characteristics of these conditions can be emphasized in the description, which is suitable to illustrate how the conditions of the earth have developed from the earlier ones. One must also consider that these conditions become more and more dissimilar to the present ones the further one goes back. Nevertheless, one can describe them only by using ideas that are taken from the present earth conditions.
2
When it is said: Old Saturn consists of warmth, then, in order to gain an actual understanding of what lies behind it, we must not merely acquire external physical concepts - for "warmth" is a physical concept. Rather we must use concepts that we can only gain from the life of the soul itself, from the moral, wise life of the soul. No one can know what warmth is - who is not able to form an idea of what is meant by sacrificial giving of what one possesses, what one has. Indeed, one must consider not only sacrificial giving of what one has, but of what one is oneself. The sacrifice of one's own being, the surrender of one's own being, grasped in the soul so that at the same time one thinks of it in such a way that one is ready to give one's best for the salvation of the world. This means not to keep one's best for oneself, but to want to sacrifice it gladly on the altar of the universe. Grasping this as a living concept that penetrates our soul with a feeling, this leads gradually to the understanding of what is behind the appearance of warmth. Just imagine what is connected with the concept of sacrifice in modern life even today. One cannot quite imagine that he who sacrifices with understanding ever does so against his will. If someone sacrifices against his will, he would have to be forced to do so for some reason; there would have to be a compulsion. But then we would not have to do with what is meant here. But what is meant here is what flows naturally as a sacrifice from the being that sacrifices. And when someone sacrifices something, not because he is urged to do so for some external reason, nor because he hopes to gain something, but because he feels urged to sacrifice from within himself, then it is inconceivable that he should feel anything but inner warmth. If we feel that we are flooded with inner warmth, then we have already expressed what we cannot call otherwise than that the one who sacrifices feels warmed through, flooded with bliss. There we have the possibility to feel for ourselves how the sacrificial glow can meet us in the Maya of the outer world warmth.
This is something extremely important: to take part in this sacrifice of the spirits of the will to the cherubim and in the birth of the spirits of time. For only now, when the time is born, something else appears, which makes it possible for us to speak regarding the state of Saturn as something that has some similarity with what surrounds us now. The sacrificial smoke of the thrones, as it were, which gives birth to time, is what we call the warmth of Saturn. That is why I used to say Saturn is in a state of warmth, describing what is there. Compared to all the elements that we have around us at present, we can only speak of the old Saturn state as being in a state of warmth. But this warmth arises as sacrificial warmth, which the spirits of the will offer to the cherubim. Now this gives us at the same time an instruction how we should think in truth about fire. Where we see fire, where we feel warmth, we should not think in such a materialistic way, as it is natural and usual for today's man. Instead, where we see and feel warmth occurring, there is still invisibly present in our environment, spiritually underlying, the sacrifice of the spirits of the will towards the cherubim. Only through this does do we see the world truly, that we know that behind every manifestation of warmth there is a sacrifice. Therefore, if we want to truly characterize the warmth, we will have to say: The world heat is the revelation of the world sacrifice or the world sacrificial deeds.
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Now one could ask: Did the becoming of the world begin with Saturn? Did not other states perhaps first bring about what Saturn became? Did not other embodiments precede Saturn? - It would be difficult to go back before Saturn, because only with Saturn something began, without which we cannot go back before Saturn at all. Only with Saturn begins what we call time. That means we cannot speak of anything before Saturn because there was no time yet. Time also had its beginning. Before Saturn there was no time, there was only eternity, duration. There everything was simultaneous. That the processes follow each other, that occurred only with Saturn. In that world situation, where there is only eternity, duration, there is also no movement. Because time belongs to movement. There is no circulation, there is duration and rest, as one also says in occultism: There is blissful rest in duration. That is the expression for it. Blessed rest in duration preceded the Saturn state.
The state of warmth is preceded by such a state, which man at present experiences only in his inner being. If he devotes himself to ideas which he forms in his soul without the cause being forced upon him by an external impression, then he has something in himself which no physical senses can perceive, which is rather only accessible as perception to the higher seeing. The warmth state of Saturn is preceded by revelations which can only exist for the supersensible perceiver. Three such states can be named: purely spiritual warmth, which cannot be perceived externally; purely spiritual light, which is externally darkness; and finally spiritual beingness, which is complete in itself and needs no external being to become conscious of it.
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What can be observed there does not yet have the later character of warmth. If one wants to characterize it, one can only speak of a quality which can be compared with the human will. It is through and through nothing but will. So we are dealing with a purely soul state.
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After this outpouring had lasted for a while, the activity of the "spirits of wisdom" characterized above connects with the will. Thereby, gradually, the will, which before was completely without properties, acquires the property of radiating life back into the celestial space.
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To have an image, imagine a mulberry or a blackberry, how it is put together from single berries. Thus, for the supersensible perceiver, Saturn is composed of individual Saturnian beings in the period of development described above, which, however, do not have a life of their own and do not have a soul of their own, but radiate back the life and soul of their inhabitants. There is no inwardness in the whole of Saturn; but the "spirits of personality" recognize the image of their own inwardness, as it flows to them as warmth from Saturn.
7
In the further course of Saturn's development facts of a different kind than the previous ones follow. Whereas up to now everything was a reflection of outer life and feeling, now a kind of inner life begins. In the world of Saturn begins a life of light which flickers here and there and then darkens again. Trembling flickering at this or that place, something like twitching lightnings at others, appears. The Saturnian heat bodies begin to flicker, to shine, even to radiate.
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These events are followed by a new period of Saturn's existence. To the play of light comes another. For many, it can seem like madness when one expresses what is presented to supersensible cognition. Inwardly in Saturn it is like swirling taste sensations. Sweet, bitter, sour, etc., are observed in the most diverse places inside Saturn; and outwardly, into the celestial space, all this is perceived as sound, as a kind of music.
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The origin of the planetary seals goes back to the Munich Congress of the Theosophical Society in May 1907. For the program booklet of this congress Rudolf Steiner drew five different planetary seals, also called "vignettes" by him, one for each day of the congress, starting with Saturday - Saturn, then Sunday - Sun, Monday - Moon, Tuesday - Mars, and as last Wednesday - Mercury. Two more seals, Jupiter, and Venus were added four years later, during the design of the Stuttgart Branch House in 1911, where all the seals in the meeting room were painted in gold on a dark blue background. Rudolf Steiner, as with all his artistic works, largely refrained from a more detailed explanation of these planetary seals. They are to be understood as a pictorial-imaginative representations of the successive stages of planetary development, which reveal their meaning through meditative contemplation.
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The development of Saturn reveals itself as warmth, then a play of light appears, then a play of taste and sound; finally, something appears which manifests itself to the inside of Saturn as the sensation of smell, and to the outside like a machine-like human ego. The result of Saturn's development is that the human germ has developed to a certain level. It has attained the low, dull consciousness mentioned above. One should not imagine that its development begins only in the last stage of Saturn. The "spirits of the will" work through all states. In the last period, however, it is most prominent through supersensible perception. In general, a firm boundary between the workings of the individual groups of beings is not implied when it is said: First the "Spirits of Will" work, then the "Spirits of Wisdom" etc., it is not meant that they work only there. They work throughout the whole evolution of Saturn; their work can only be best observed in the periods indicated. The individual beings have the leadership there, as it were.
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What the life of Saturn is in the large, that is at this stage the human being becomes in miniature. And with this the first germ is given to that what is still germinal in present man: to the "spirit man" (Atman).
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Life levels - rounds: see details below.
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Beings, which are so far along in their development that they can use the germinal germs to see the world processes in the life of Saturn. They are beings who can be considered as "spirits of love" (Christian: "seraphim"). If they were not there, the fire spirits could not have their consciousness. They look at the processes of Saturn with a consciousness which enables them to transfer these as pictures to the fire spirits. They themselves renounce all advantages which they could have by watching the processes of Saturn, all enjoyment, all joy; they give up everything so that the fire spirits can have it.
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They convey to the "sons of life" a dull kind of consciousness. It is even duller and dimmer than the dream consciousness of the present-day man. It is the kind of consciousness that comes to man in dreamless sleep. This is of such a low degree that it does not come to man's consciousness at all. But it is present. It differs from daytime consciousness in degree and also in kind. Plants at present have this "dreamless sleep-consciousness." Even if it does not convey any perceptions of an outer world in the human sense, it regulates the life processes and brings them into harmony with the outer world processes. On the Saturn stage in question the "sons of life" cannot perceive this regulation; but the "spirits of harmony" perceive it, and they are therefore the actual regulators.
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One can call the beings, which feel their bliss in emanating will in the beginning of Saturn development, the "spirits of the will". (In the Christian esoteric science, they are called "thrones.")
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Very high entities, whose life Saturn radiates back, may be called "spirits of wisdom". (In the Christian spiritual science they had the name "Kyriotetes", that is "dominions.") Their activity on Saturn does not begin only with the described middle epoch of its development. In a certain way it is already finished there. Before they could become aware of the reflection of their own life out of the heat bodies of Saturn, they first had to develop these heat bodies to be able to create this reflection. That is why their activity began soon after the beginning of Saturn's evolution. When this happened, the Saturnian corporeality was still disordered materiality, which could not have reflected anything.
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When the bodies of Saturn had acquired the ability to reflect life, the reflected life was able to be interpenetrated with the qualities which have their seat in the astral bodies of the "spirits of movement". The consequence of this is that it appears as if expressions of sensation, feelings, and similar soul forces are flung out from Saturn into the celestial space. The whole of Saturn manifests like an animated being, which manifests sympathies and antipathies. However, these soul expressions are by no means its own, but only the thrown back soul effects of the "spirits of movement".
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While these (Dynamis) communicate only general sensation expressions to the reflected life, the astral body of the "spirits of form" (Christian: "Exusiai", "powers") works in such a way that the sensation expressions are flung out into the world space as if by individual beings. One could say that the "spirits of movement" make Saturn as a whole appears like an animate being. The "spirits of form" divide this life into individual living beings, so that it now appears like an assemblage of such soul beings.
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Through these beings the "I" from the environment of Saturn looks down on it. And it communicates its nature to the individual beings of Saturn. Thus, something is sent out from Saturn into world space, which appears like the effect of the human personality at the present. The beings, which cause this, are called "spirits of the personality." (Christian: "Archai", "Primal Beginnings.") Due to the fact that these "spirits of personality" let their essence radiate back from the Saturn bodies in the way described above, that fine materiality is imparted to them, which was described earlier as "warmth". When all this occurs, the "spirits of personality" stand on the level at which man stands at present. They are going through their epoch of humanity. If one wants to look at this fact with an unbiased eye, then one must imagine that a being cannot be "human" only in the form which the human being has at present. The "spirits of personality" are "human beings" on Saturn. They have as their lowest member not the physical body, but the astral body with the ego. Therefore, they cannot express the experiences of this astral body in such a physical body and etheric body as the present man; but they not only have an "I," but also know about it, because the warmth of Saturn makes them conscious of this "I" by reflecting back. They are "human beings" under other than earthly conditions.
20
These entities have an astral body, but on this stage of their existence they cannot give any stimuli to their own astral body; they would not be able to excite any feeling, any sensation, if they could not have an effect on the heat bodies which have reached the described Saturn stage. This effect gives them the possibility to recognize their own existence by the effect they exert. They cannot say to themselves, "I am here," but for instance, "My environment lets me be here."
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They are called the "sons of twilight or of life" (Christian: "Angeloi", "angels"). They interact with the taste forces existing in the interior of Saturn, which surge up and down. Thereby their etheric or life body comes into such an activity that one can call this a kind of metabolism. They bring life into the interior of Saturn. Nourishing and excretory processes take place in Saturn as a result. They do not directly cause these processes, but through what they cause, such processes arise indirectly.
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The "sons of life" attain thereby that dull picture consciousness which the "fire spirits" had reached on Saturn. The "spirits of harmony" (the cherubim) are their helpers with this.
24
During the described Saturn period they are of quite changeable form. Sometimes they look like this shape, sometimes like that. In the further course of development, the shapes become more definite; at times they become fixed. This is due to the fact that they are now permeated by the effects of the spirits which already came into consideration at the beginning of Saturn's development, namely by the "spirits of the will" (the thrones). The consequence of this is that the human phantom itself appears with the simplest dullest form of consciousness. One has to imagine this form of consciousness even duller than that of dreamless sleep. Under the present conditions the minerals have this consciousness. It brings the inner being into harmony with the physical outer world. On Saturn the "spirits of will" are the regulators of this harmony. And man, thereby appears like an imprint of the life of Saturn itself.
25
The human germ was dissolved at the end of the Saturn’s evolution. In order that the more developed spiritual beings can continue where they left off earlier, this human germ must again briefly repeat the stages which it passed through on Saturn. This is how it shows itself to the supersensible perceptive faculty. The human germ emerges from its concealment and begins to develop out of its own ability through the powers that have been implanted in it on Saturn. It emerges from darkness as a being of will, develops itself to the appearance of life, soulfulness, etc., up to that machine-like revelation of personality which it had at the end of Saturn's development.
26
Through the sacrifice which the spirits of will bring to the Cherubim, the time is born. But time is not now that abstract time of which we usually speak, but it is an independent entity. Now one can begin to speak of something that begins. Time begins with that which is born first as time entities, which are nothing but pure time. Beings are born which consist only of time; these are the spirits of personality, which we then get to know as Archai in the hierarchy of spiritual entities. In Saturn existence they are only time. Previously we have also described them as spirits of time, as spirits who regulate time. But when they are born as spirits, they are really entities that consist only of time.
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When you enter the first period of Saturn's existence, time also stops. There is no earlier or later anymore. Of course, this is very difficult to imagine for man today, because his imagination itself flows in time: one thought is before or after the other. That the time stops, that is to be characterized now again only by a feeling. This feeling is truly not pleasant. Just think of your ideas as frozen, so that everything you can remember and what you intend to do, freezes like a rigid rod, so that you feel stuck in your imagination and can no longer move. Then you will no longer be able to call that you have experienced something that you experienced earlier, "earlier". You are tethered to it, it is there, but it is frozen. Time ceases to have any meaning. It is no longer there at all. Therefore, it is also quite nonsensical if one asks: You describe the Saturn existence, the sun existence and so on, but still what was before Saturn existence! "Before" has no more sense there because time stops, so that one must also stop with all-time determinations. Of course, it seems quite strange to say that one meets beings who are just as real as the human being made of flesh, and who are not made of flesh but of courage. But it is so. As such entities we meet the spirits of will, and what we at first called Saturn existence is that which the spirits of will, consisting of courage, represent; nothing else. That is Saturn to begin with. This is a world that we could not say is a world that is spherical, hexagonal, or quadrangular. All these determinations of space are not appropriate, because there is no possibility of finding an end there. If we want to use the image of swimming again, we can say: it is not a sea where one would come to a surface, but on all sides one always finds spirits of courage or will.
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Now it becomes apparent that out of the rigidity, the timelessness, by which this infinite sea of courage with its entities, which we call the spirits of will, is characterized, beings of other hierarchies seem to penetrate, seem to play into it. Only at the moment when one feels this non-existence of time, one notices that other beings play into it. One notices an undefined experience of which one cannot say that one experiences it oneself, but that it is there, one can only say that it is inside the whole infinite sea of courage. One notices something like a flashing through this field, like a becoming brighter, but not actually a flashing, but more like a glimmering. It is a first differentiation. A glimmering - but a glimmering which does not give the impression of a glimmering light, but - one has to resort to various things in these matters - if you want to make it comprehensible to yourself, think of the following. You come face to face with a person who says something to you, and you get the feeling: How clever he is! and as he goes on talking, the feeling increases, and you feel: He is wise, has experienced infinite things, that he can say such wise things! And this personality has such an effect that you literally feel something like a magic breath emanating from him. Think of this magic breath as being infinitely increased - and think of it as appearing in the sea of courage like clouds which do not flash but glow. If you take all this together, you will have an idea that in the hierarchy of the spirits of will there play into it beings which are entirely wisdom, but such a wisdom which plays into it radiantly, which is not merely wisdom, but is radiant wisdom. In short, you get an idea first of what is clairvoyant perception of what the cherubim are. The cherubim play into it.
It is just not so that one comes into being and passes away, but everything is at the same time. But now one gets a feeling of a relationship of these spirits of will and the cherubim. One gets the feeling that they gain a relationship to each other. One attains this consciousness. Namely, one gains the consciousness that the spirits of will or thrones sacrifice their own beingness to the cherubim.
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At first, we call only that Saturn existence, which represents the spirits of will, which consist of courage; nothing else. That is Saturn at first. This is a world of which we could not say that it is a world that is spherical, hexagonal, or quadrangular. All these determinations of space do not fit to it, because there is not the possibility to find an end there. If we want to use again the image of swimming, we can say: it is not a sea where one would come to a surface, but on all sides, we always finds spirits of courage or will.
30
See no. 125.
31
If you take all this together, you will have an idea that in the hierarchy of the spirits of will there play beings, which are completely wisdom, but such a wisdom, which plays in radiantly, which is not only wisdom, but radiant wisdom. In short, you get an idea first of what clairvoyant perception is of what the cherubim are. The cherubim play into it. Now think of nothing at all around you but what I have just described. I said before, putting some emphasis on it: You can't say you have it around you, but you can only say it's there just as I have described it now. One must think oneself into it. But the idea that there is a flashing is not quite right; that's why I said it is not a flashing, but a glimmering, because everything is at the same time. It is not that one thing comes into being and goes away, but everything is simultaneous. But now you get a feeling of a relationship of these spirits of will and cherubim. One gets the feeling that they gain a relationship to each other. One attains this consciousness. Namely, one acquires the consciousness that the spirits of will or thrones sacrifice their own beingness to the cherubim. This is the last conception, to which one comes, if one approaches, going backwards, Saturn the sacrificing spirits of will, which direct their sacrifices up to the cherubim, it does not go further, there the world is if boarded up.
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Thrones - Sacrificial Act: (see also No. 2)
Religions are always there to point to the great mysteries of the world in images, in imaginations. Today we have pointed to ancient phases of development, and by adding the concept of resignation to the concept of sacrifice and virtue as giving, we have thereby again taken a step into the truthful as opposed to maya and illusion. Such images and concepts were also given to people in religions. And there is something within the biblical religion through which man can appropriate the concept of sacrifice and resignation, of rejecting the sacrifice. This is the story of the sacrificing Abraham, who has to offer his own son to God, and of the renunciation of this God of the sacrifice of the patriarch. If we take this concept of renunciation into our soul, then such views can come into us as we have already expressed. Once I said: Let us suppose that the sacrifice of Abraham was accepted, and Isaac was sacrificed. Since the entire ancient Hebrew people descended from him, God would have taken this entire people from the earth by accepting the sacrifice. Everything that descended from Abraham, God gave by the renunciation of a sphere which is outside of him, withdrew it thereby from his sphere of action. If he had accepted the sacrifice, he would have absorbed the whole sphere that took place within the ancient Hebrew people, because the sacrificed Isaac would then have been with God. But in this way, he renounced it and thus left this whole evolutionary line to the earth. All concepts of resignation, of sacrifice, can come to us in the meaningful image of the sacrifice of the old patriarch.
And now a good imagination is the following. It is spoken of very often in "How To Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds" and it has also been said elsewhere that the second stage of Rosicrucian initiation is the formation of imaginations. The anthroposophist has to form these imaginations from the right ideas about the world. Thus, he can think of what we have discussed today transformed into an imaginative picture: the thrones, the spirits of will, kneeling in full devotion, full courageous devotion before the cherubim, but in such a way that the devotion does not arise from the feeling of littleness, but from the consciousness that one has something to sacrifice. The thrones in this willingness to sacrifice, which is based on strength, courage, kneel before the cherubim and send up the sacrifice to them. And this sacrifice they send up like seething warmth, flaming warmth, so that the sacrificial smoke flames up to the winged cherubim! This could be the picture. And starting from this sacrifice it is as if we could speak the word into the air and this word would be the time, but the time as entities, emerging from the whole process: the spirits of time, the Archai. This sending out of the Archai, that gives a grandiose, powerful image. And this image, placed in front of our soul, is extraordinarily impressive for certain imaginations, which can then take us further and further in the field of occult cognition.
33
The dull experience of the substance corresponds in the area of the creative to the bringing forth of this substance. The substance flows into the world in an indifferent way. This region is called the area of formlessness.
34
Siehe 134 – 140
35
Saturn consciousness has the lowest degree of brightness. It is quite dull. It is difficult to give a more exact idea of this dullness because even the dullness of sleep is still one degree brighter than this consciousness. In abnormal, so-called deep trance states, the present man can still fall back into this state of consciousness. And also the man who is a clairvoyant in the sense of the secret science can form an accurate idea of it. But he himself does not live in this state of consciousness. Rather, he rises to a far higher one, which, however, is similar to the original one in certain respects. In the case of the ordinary man of the present stage on earth, this state, which he once passed through, has been extinguished by the " daylight consciousness ". The "medium" who falls into a deep trance, however, is put back into the same, so that he perceives in the same way as all men once perceived during the "Saturn period". And such a medium can tell then either during the trance or after the awakening of experiences which are similar to those of the Saturn scene. However, one may only say "similar", not "the same", because the facts which took place on Saturn are over once and for all; only those which have a certain relationship with them are still taking place in the environment of man. And only a "Saturn consciousness" can perceive these latter. - The clairvoyant in the above sense now attains such a Saturn-consciousness like the marked medium; but he retains for this purpose also his " day consciousness ", which man did not yet have on Saturn, and which the medium loses during the state of trance. Such a clairvoyant is therefore not in the Saturn consciousness itself; but he can form an idea of it. - While this Saturn consciousness is inferior to the present human consciousness in brightness by some degrees, it is superior to it in the extent of what it can perceive. In its dullness it can not only perceive everything down to the smallest detail what is happening on its own world body, but it can also observe the things and beings on other world bodies which are connected with its own - Saturn. And it can also have a certain effect on these things and beings. (It need hardly be said that this observation of other world bodies is quite different from that which the present man can make with his scientific astronomy. This astronomical observation is based on the " day consciousness " and therefore perceives other world bodies from the outside. Saturn consciousness, on the other hand, is immediate sensation, a co-experience of what is going on in other world bodies. Not quite, but nevertheless to some extent correct, one expresses oneself, if one says, a Saturn inhabitant experiences things and facts of other world bodies - and of his own - like the present human being experiences his heart and his heartbeat or similar things in his own body).