Esoteric Evolution - 11 

The Six Days of Creation

In this chapter we will go explicitly into the events during the six days of creation in the Bible, as Rudolf Steiner describes them in his lecture cycle Genesis, Secrets of Creation.

The first day of creation

Genesis begins with the condition that developed when the Sun and the high sun beings had mostly left the primeval body of the becoming Earth. On the Earth that was left behind darkness and chaos reigned. In the thick mass, warmth, the airy/gaseous and watery elements moved through each other without differentiation.

The first thing that happened in that new phase was that the Elohim, by means of light-ether forces, let the working of light strike into the darkness, an event that in Genesis 1:3 is described as: "And God said: 'Let there be light;' and there was light." The text then continues: "And God saw that the light was good."

Rudolf Steiner tells us that seeing this light was something entirely new for the Elohim. Previously, as high Sun beings, they themselves streamed in the light and were one with it, so they did not see it. After they had left the Earth together with the Sun, and the Sun had turned itself toward the earth, the light shone to them from outside, from the Earth, and they could observe it. They did not only see the light, they also saw that it was good. What does that mean?

In what was reflected back they perceived that the divine spirit, the Logos, worked in the light. That confirmed to them that their work had succeeded. For it was through the working of the Logos in the light that, in that primeval time of the Earth, the separation between light and darkness arose.

What is a day of creation?

The Elohim called the light day and the darkness night (Genesis 1:5). What is meant here with the word "day"? It is naïve to suppose that in that phase of the creation a day of creation would have consisted of 24 hours. In the primeval time of the Earth time did not yet exist. The arrangement of the 24-hour day, as we now know it, is connected with the relationship between the Earth and the Sun. Only on the fourth day of creation is there any mention in Genesis of the existence of the Sun and the planets as the ones who regulate time. It is clear that in the first three days of creation we still have nothing to do with time. This means that we have to view the days of creation as processes in time, gigantically long, geological periods, during which evolutionary developments were taking place.

The second day of creation

After the light had struck into the darkness and chaos, another big step in evolution followed. In the primeval mass, in which everything flowed into and through each other, the Elohim now proceeded to separate the airy/gaseous from the fluid. To that point, the watery, the airy/gaseous, and warmth formed one whole.

What the Elohim did was to irradiate the Earth, in its state of becoming, with the forces of the sound ether. The sound ether comprises sounding energies from high realms in the spiritual world that are called "the harmonies of the spheres." The sound ether forces first brought about a separation followed by a certain ordering in the still spiritual fluid mass. As a result, two separate elements came into being, the air-like and the water-like. The air-like had the tendency to stream upward and become like vapor, air. The other, tending to contract, streamed downward and gave form to the watery state.

In this way, in the chaos of the primeval mass the airy and the watery were separated from each other. Genesis 1:7 describes this event: "And God made the firmament and separated the waters that were under the firmament from the waters that were above the firmament. And it was so. And God called the firmament heaven."

Creation mosaic Basilica San Marco Venice

The third day of creation

On the third day of creation, the Elohim again brought about a sweeping change, this time by separating off a densification in the watery element, which tended to move downward, resulting in the solid, earth-like. It was the beginning of what would later become solid earth, matter. Genesis 1:9 describes this process as follows: "And God said: 'Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.' And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas."

The separation between the watery and earthly made something entirely new possible. From the earthly now appeared, as a repetition of the Old Sun and Old Moon states, the plant-like element. This occurred because the Elohim, after the light ether (on the first day of creation) and the sound ether (on the second day), now let the much finer life ether work into the elementary mass. Life ether, which is a very high creative force, forms the basis of life. It brings about growth, blossom, fruit, and seed.

Hence at that moment we read in Genesis that green, living vegetation and trees make their appearance. This beginning, sprouting plant-like aspect in that primeval time, however, did not look at all like our current plants and trees. What then appeared were the group souls of the plants, the plant species (rose species, fern species, birch species, etc.). Individual plants (the various roses, ferns, birches) developed only in much later times.

The fourth day of creation

Until the third day of creation there is no description that something worked from the outside in. It is therefore very significant that the Bible says that on the fourth day the light started working from the outside, and that the Sun and the planets shone upon the Earth from outside. It indicates the gigantic step that had then taken place in evolution. For from this arose, in its first, still spiritual form, what we today call our solar system, the Sun and the planets.

Genesis 1:16-18 describes this process: "And God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness." Thus, the basis was laid for the difference between day and night. The element of time made its entrance, but not yet in the form we are familiar with today.

The fifth day of creation

To this point, the animal has not yet appeared in Genesis. The reason is that the creation - the becoming Earth and humanity - were still entirely in an etheric, plant-like, spiritual stage. There was not yet any trace of solid, mineral earth.

To understand the condition on the fifth day of creation we have to know that the primeval form of the human body - the basis of which was laid in the period of Old Saturn - went from a purely spiritual state through a plant-like and animal-like phase. During these plant-like/etheric and animal-like/astral phases, the Elohim separated first the plant-like and then the animal-like out of the becoming body of the human being.

Out of these now separate parts, the Elohim then gradually built up the plant and animal kingdoms. This means that what we now know as plants and animals came into being out of separations that took place during the work on the body of the human being. As plants and animals, they fulfill fundamental functions without which we would not be able to exist on earth as human beings.

The foregoing shows that human beings do not originate from animals, but the animals from human beings. The higher does not originate from the lower, but the lower from the higher. Because until the fourth day of creation the becoming human corporeality was going through the plant-like/etheric stage, until that point only the plant-like is mentioned in the story of creation. Not until the fifth day is there any mention of the animal element. That is because developing human corporeality then went through the astral phase, which we also call the "animal phase."

The animal-like, astral element became in the creation the foundation for what would later become the soul, the inner world of the human being. In the plant we only find the life element, the etheric. In the animal and in the human being we find, because of the astral element, also the element of movement, of emotion, an emotion that can express itself in sounds.

The astral, animal-like element could, according to Rudolf Steiner, only develop when the high, creative spiritual beings had separated themselves completely from the becoming Earth, and the Sun and the planets began to shine in from the outside. That is why only during the fifth day of creation the animal-like astral bodies became available into which the (group)souls of the animals could descend from the spiritual world and find a home on Earth.

First appeared the animal species that live in the watery and airy elements. In Genesis 20 we read: "And God said: 'Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the firmament of the heavens.' So, God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind."

Here also we have to realize that these animal species cannot yet be compared with current animals, because at that time they were still in a condition of etheric and astral substance, which we would not have been able to observe with our current physical eyes.

'Mystic Mountain' observed with Hubble telescope

The sixth day of creation

The sixth day of creation is the day when the human being was created. Before that point, Genesis describes that first the land animals are created. This was possible because the continuing densification of the Earth and human corporeality enabled the Elohim then to form out of the astral materiality of the human being the corporeality of the animals that were going to live on the land.

Genesis 1:24 tells it as follows: "And God said: 'Let the earth bring forth creatures according to their kinds: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.' And it was so. And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the cattle according to their kinds, and everything that creeps upon the ground according to its kind."

Here too, there are not yet any individual animals, but animal species, as the text correctly states. Step by step the Elohim developed the bodies of higher and higher animal species. This made it possible that the group souls of the various land animals could descend step by step from the spiritual world and take on form - i.e. a body - on Earth. After the reptiles first the lower mammals such as, for instance, the rodents appeared, while the higher mammals, such as the felines, only appeared later. The last ones to appear were the ape-like animals.

Then follows what is called the creation of the human being. In the Revised Standard Version, Genesis 26 describes it as follows: "Then God said: 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…" And verse 27: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them."

The creation of the human being can only be correctly understood if we always realize that human beings consist of a duality: they have a spiritual nature and a physical nature. Initially they each went their own way. At a certain point in evolution - we will come back to this - they came together and thus formed the human being we now are.

The origin of our spiritual nature, that which we also call our higher spiritual self, lies in the spiritual world, in the inner being of the Godhead, the Logos. Our deepest being is therefore of divine nature; it forms part of the divine, just as a drop of water forms part of an ocean.

Our bodily nature, our physical, etheric, and astral bodies, developed by means of the creation process described previously as a gift from high spiritual beings, the heavenly hierarchies, in the course of evolution. This is the way from Old Saturn, via Old Sun and Old Moon, to the Earth.

At the time of the sixth day of creation, the corporeality of the human being had developed to the point that the combination of the spiritual part and the bodily part of the human being was forthcoming. This great event had to be prepared. The sixth day describes that preparation.

The Elohim undertook several actions for this. First, they made the wild, strongly animal-like astral body of the human being suitable for taking in the spiritual part. They did this by removing the wildest instincts and passions from this body, thus purifying it from its strongest astrality.

Into this more or less purified astral body they brought - still at the spiritual level - the wonderful, noble form that is now characteristic of the human figure. Rudolf Steiner speaks in this regard of bringing the primeval form into the becoming human being, a primeval form or primeval figure that is the image of the Elohim. The realization of this human figure was the objective of the Elohim in the creation process.

Why was the human figure so important? Because it would enable human beings to walk upright, to think, to speak, and receive an I that could be the bearer of their spiritual core, their spiritual self. In other words, because of our bodily figure it became possible for us as spiritual beings to go on a path of development on earth as human beings.

Thus on the sixth day arose, in the realm of astral corporeality, as the image of the Elohim, the primeval human being. Just as the Elohim, Rudolf Steiner emphatically stated, this primeval human being was not male and female, two genders therefore, as most Bible translations say, but male/female combined, i.e. androgenous. For the separation of the two genders had not yet taken place.

The above shows that on the sixth day there is not yet any indication of the combination of the spirit and the corporeality of the human being. That happened only later during the second creation - Genesis 2:7. To this, as well as about the seventh day, the "day of rest," we will return later.

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Sources

Rudolf Steiner, Genesis, Secrets of Creation, CW 122.

Rudolf Steiner, Foundations of Esotericism, CW 93a, Lecture XXIII, October 25, 1905.

All quotations from the Old Testament are from the Revised Standard Version.

'The Pillars of Creation', photo from NASA's James WEBB Space Telescope Oct 2022