jmd said:
Reference to Steiner's lecture (also online
here):
"The Alphabet: An Expression Of The Mystery Of Man", given in Dornach (Switzerland) on 18th Dec. 1921 [GA 209 in the collected works]
Thanx: I have wanted to read this, to get more acquainted with the man and his thoughts on such matters.
Nearly half-way through (or a third?) he says: "In the etheric body and in the physical body there echoes the music of the spheres. In so far as it is of a vowel nature it echoes in the etheric body, and in the physical body in so far as it is of a consonant nature."
Now I find this extremely interesting, as in the bardic/Qabbalistic model the vowels occupy the
lower half of the form world or 3rd wheel, which corresponds to the form of man (zodiac of seated torso or standing body), while the consonants occupy its
upper half and the lower half of the next larger wheel (the 2nd) surrounding it (from horizon without to horizon within). In other words, things are in a sense
inverted from Steiner's model.
Yet I think Steiner here points to a deeper truth: that the vowels
originally resounded through the greater whole, the bardo-Qabbalistic inversion merely showing how this has become limited by the hypnosis of sensation, which limits the power of the vowels in us (and led to their consonantization in Semitic and Hamitic, no doubt).
A bit later on, he says: "And the forming of consonants in the physical body is the echo of what resounds from the single formations of the Zodiac, whereas the formation of vowels within the music of the spheres occurs through the movements of the planets in the cosmos."
This conforms, surely, to the Greek view, and it forms a sort of counterpoint to the inner, bardo-Qabbalistic (or Merkabah) view expressed by
Sefer Yetzirah, where the seven doubles are all definitely consonants (and six of the vowel-equivalents are simples). I have speculated that the former (the Greek) was a sort of 'cover' or veil to obscure the latter, and yet I have expended no mean amount of 'grey matter' in the attempt to fix vowels with planets
anyway! (typical of us obsessives).
A very telling quote comes just before the circular diagram of letters: "(This is naturally not a material process but has to do with formative activity.)" This places 'formative' prior to or distinct from 'material', just as the formative
world is, in the Kabbalah.
Immediately after that diagram, though, he speaks of the 'constellations' of the zodiac, that is, in conformance to the common misperception. But then he says H is not a real letter: could he have been aware that it was numbered zero (or rather represented no-thing) in the bardic scheme? Hmm.
Later he says: "If we look upon Man and gradually learn to know his true nature, then his physical body actually ceases to be in the way it normally confronts us and otherwise stands before us, our vision widens and Man grows into the heavens of the fixed stars." This is pure Hermetic truth: I laud him. I would refine it only by defining
physical body as Ezekiel's 4th wheel, the round of the womb that forms it, as this makes clear the
poetic reason space is dark, the
mundane 'reason' being that light has finite velocity and the 4th wheel is the
present instant.
Nearing the end, he says: "Today grammar has become very abstract. Going back into times of which history tells us nothing, but which, nevertheless, are still historical times, we find that grammar was not the abstract subject it is today but that men were led through grammar into the mystery of the individual letters." Amen. And: "The unit embraced all numbers and was the greatest. Today the unit is the smallest." It is as if he anticipated my signature!
