After many months of anticipation and recurrent checks to the SteinerBooks website, there is a new release in the Collected Works of Rudolf Steiner. As volume 136 in the series, titled Spiritual Beings in the Heavenly Bodies and in the Kingdoms of Nature, the text contains 10 lectures given by Steiner in April 1912.
My main interest in this book is that it contains a detailed description of each of the nine angelic ranks, and gives a series of meditations for getting to know the nature of these beings. Steiner described the work and activities of the angelic ranks in his Rosicrucian initiation manual Outline of Esoteric Science
, showing their unique personalities, if that word applies here. However he did not give any detailed meditaitons for connecting to the different angelic ranks, so the publication of this text will be very helpful to those seeking this kind of spiritual experience.
, showing their unique personalities, if that word applies here. However he did not give any detailed meditaitons for connecting to the different angelic ranks, so the publication of this text will be very helpful to those seeking this kind of spiritual experience. |
| Rudolf Steiner, 1961 - 1925 |
The nine angelic ranks and their heavenly correspondences are as follows:
- Seraphim - Spirits of Love - The One
- Cherubim - Spirits of Harmony - The Constellations
- Thrones - Spirits of Will - Saturn
- Dominions/Kytiotetes - Spirits of Wisdom - Jupiter
- Virtues/Dynamis - Spirits of Motion - Mars
- Elohim/Powers - Spirits of Form - Sun
- Archai/Principalities - Spirits of Personality - Venus
- Archangels - Spirits of Fire - Mercury
- Angels - Sons of Life - Moon
From the book's description at SteinerBooks:
For Steiner, what constitutes the world are “beings”—including the ground of the world itself, the “Father being.” Steiner’s cosmology or angelology is personal, and it is known in relationship; therefore, he presents it in terms of states and deeds of conscious, and of the divine-spiritual beings whose states and deeds they are. The spiritual world is thus always a world of beings. The twin realizations—I am an “I” being and reality is constituted of other “I” beings—go together. Cosmology is angelology. Spiritual beings define experience of the nature of reality. In these lectures, the reader is led through a series of meditations to recognize these spiritual beings and come to know their deeds.
Steiner’s approach is “contemporary” in that, while continuous with the most ancient understanding of the cosmos, he discovers it for himself, out of his own experience and consciousness, and expresses it in his own words with a logic and language appropriate to our time. Thus he teaches us, his readers, to do the same. In these lectures, the reader is led through a series of meditations to recognize and come to know the activities and beings of the nine angelic hierarchies
Rudolf Steiner’s achievement in these lectures, as Valentin Tomberg said, “cannot be compared with the accomplishment of any contemporary seer or thinker, or with any of the Middle Ages or antiquity. It towers over them.”
I will be ordering this book from Amazon today. If you are interested, please follow the link below to Amazon to order your copy. This will support my efforts to continue bringing you this kind of information.
