Rudolf Steiner on the Spiritual Hierarchies

While angels are not physical beings, they affect the physical world and are intertwined with nature and human beings. Every human being has an angel, often called a guardian angel, that is unique to them. This angel protects us and is responsible for guiding our higher faculties until we progress far enough spiritually to become fully conscious of them and to interact directly with the higher world. Rudolf Steiner described this spiritually conscious stage of human development as “Spirit-Self” and described it as the result of the purification of the astral body, or catharsis. Once we develop to this point, we free our angel and embark on another level of initiation within the hierarchies.

“Such an Angel being works in fact with every human individual, guiding him in his task of developing the spirit-self in the astral body. In a part of Christian doctrine it speaks of man’s Guardian Angel and that is a conception completely corresponding to reality. They are the beings who create the harmony between the human individual and the course of earthly evolution until man will have advanced so far at the end of Earth’s evolution that he can release his Angel. He will then himself have the consciousness of an Angel.”
𝘐𝘯𝘧𝘭𝘶𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘚𝘱𝘪𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘭 𝘉𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘜𝘱𝘰𝘯 𝘔𝘢𝘯: 𝘓𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘝𝘐𝘐 (𝘎𝘈 𝟣𝟢𝟤)

Angels are also behind the forces of nature. They are in the wind, the elements, bodies of water, and lightning. Every part of nature is, in fact, the body of an angel, the activity of the angels. Early pagan rites were centered around nature because people understood that the natural world was an extension of heaven, specifically that the angels were present all around them and communicating through the natural world.

“If you want to look for an Angel, you must keep in mind that his physical part is something like a mirrored reflection of his spiritual principles, which are to be found only in the spiritual world. In flowing and running water, in mists dissolving into water, also in the winds and the lightning flashing through the air, in all these, you have to look for the physical body of Angelic beings. The difficulty for man consists in his fixed idea that a physical body must necessarily have a definite outline. It is difficult for a man to say to himself: I see fog rising, I see a stream of water dissolving into spray, I stand in the blowing wind, I see lightning dart from the clouds, and I know that all these are revelations of Angels; behind this physical body, which is by no means so limited as the human one I have to recognise the spirit. Man has to develop all his principles enclosed within him; because of this he cannot realise that a physical body can be so liquid and evanescent that it does not even have to be enclosed or outlined with precision. You must realise that eighty Angels may be associated with and have the most solid part of their physical body in some one sheet of water. The physical body of an Angel need not be understood as having any boundary; one piece of water may belong to it here, and far away another piece. In short, all that surrounds us as the water, fire, and air of the earth, we have to imagine as containing the bodies of the Hierarchy which stands next above man.”

𝘓𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘝𝘐𝘐 𝘰𝘧 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘱𝘪𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘭 𝘏𝘪𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘳𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘦𝘴 (𝘎𝘈 𝟣𝟣𝟢)

Our examination does not end there. When it comes to our relationship with the angels, there were also individuals who developed over time to perceive angels and even more consciously unite with them. Oracles, prophets and priests were special people who had learned to interpret messages from the angels by attuning themselves to nature and divining messages.

Leadership also began under different circumstances for humanity and has since deteriorated. Priest-kings, or chieftains, were originally people who could unite their consciousness with their higher angel and exert powerful changes within the community through this divine and special union. To do this was an incredible act of service, as it required surrendering the lower ego and giving oneself over fully to a spiritual being. Achieving this union with a particular angel marked a high level of initiation and was greatly revered. This presents a very different image of power from what we see today, where modern leaders often operate seemingly exclusively from their lower ego and for personal gain.

“In the beginnings of the earth’s existence, Beings who were otherwise not bound to the earth, had to come down from higher spheres. And that really happened. Beings who otherwise needed only to live in the surroundings of the earth had to come down so as to communicate to men what they already knew as the older, more perfect members of the Hierarchies. They had to incarnate into human bodies, not for their own development, for they did not need it, just as a grown-up man does not study the A.B.C. for his own progress, but so as to teach it to these small children.

Hence, we look back into old Atlantean and old Lemurian times, when Beings descended from the surrounding realms of the earth to which they belonged and incarnated in human bodies and became the teachers of mankind. These are Beings who belonged to higher Hierarchies, to Mercury and Venus. The sons of Venus and of Mercury descended from above and became the teachers of young humanity, so that these men, wandering in the midst of that young humanity, really represented Maya or illusion. There have been such men.

Let us suppose, in order to explain it more precisely: some normally developed man of the Lemurian times met such a man. Externally he did not appear very different from others, but a spirit had entered into him whose realm extended as far as Mercury or Venus. Thus, the exterior of such a man represented in reality Maya, an illusion. He looked like other men, but he was something quite different: he was a son of Mercury, or of Venus.

In the early dawn of humanity there were such apparitions. The sons of Mercury or of Venus came down and wandered among men, so that they now received within them the character of the Beings of Mercury and Venus. We have said that the Beings of Venus are the Spirits of Personality. Such Beings walked the earth as men, being outwardly limited to narrow human personalities, but who with their mighty power guided humanity. These were the great conditions of lordship in Lemurian times, when sons of Venus guided the whole of humanity. The sons of Mercury guided parts of humanity. They were as powerful as those are now whom we call spirits of nations or of race.”

𝘓𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘝𝘐 𝘰𝘧 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘱𝘪𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘭 𝘏𝘪𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘳𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘦𝘴 (𝘎𝘈 𝟣𝟣𝟢)

In this passage, we can observe that the relationship with one’s angel was part of human initiation. An individual, born like everyone else into the world, could develop to become the vessel for a particular angel, which in turn allowed him to perform extraordinary feats for humanity. The planetary references to Mercury and Venus refer to the orbits of these planets in which the spiritual bodies of the angels dwell. The mystery here is that the human soul is always reaching to return to the Christ, the being revealed through the sun, the spirit of the sun. Thus the soul slowly climbs Jacobs Ladder, or the spiritual hierarchies, reaching through venus and mercury to the sun, to eventually unite fully with the Christ. However to do this, spiritual union with the angels of such spheres is required. This is the true mystery of heaven which is they mystery of our time.