Jom

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Jom (Hebrew: יום "day"), or in the plural Jamim or Days of Creation, is the term used in Genesis to describe the truly advanced Spirits of Personality who, as servants of the Elohim, weave in the light and can therefore also be understood as Spirits of Light. As Spirits of Time they regulate the course of the events of creation. In gnosis they are called Aeons. Opposed to them are the Primordial Angels who have come over from the Old Saturn and remain weaving in the darkness, who are called Laj'lah (Hebrew: לילה "night"). (Lit.:GA 122, p. 93ff)

„What does this word jom, which is usually translated as "day", mean?

What is meant by it can only be understood by those who are able to take their whole sensibility back to old ways of describing things, to old nomenclatures. One must have a completely different feeling and understanding than one has today if one wants to return to old nomenclatures. But I would like to take you back step by step, so as not to surprise you too much. First of all, I would like to direct you to an old teaching that exists in the sense of the Gnostics. They spoke of powers which participate in the development of our existence, which intervene one after the other in this development of our existence, and they called these powers, these beings, aeons. One spoke of the aeons in the sense of the Gnostics. These aeons do not mean periods of time, but entities. This means that a first aeon works and what it is able to work, works out, is then replaced by a second and this, after it has worked with its powers, is again replaced by a third and so on. The gnostics meant such successive, mutually detaching entities that guide development when they spoke of aeons, and it was only very late that the purely abstract concept of time was connected with what the word aeon originally meant. Aeon is something being-like, something living being-like. And in the same sense as it is aeon, that which is designated by the Hebrew word jom is also living essence. Here we are not dealing with a mere abstract determination of time, but with something essential. Jom is an entity. And when one has to do with seven such jamim in succession, then one has to do with seven entities or, for my sake, groups of entities that take turns.

We have the same thing here, which is hidden behind another word similarity. In the more Aryan languages you have the word relationship of deus and dies, "God" and "day". In older times, the relationship between "day" and a being was definitely felt, and when one spoke of weekdays, as we speak of Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and so on, one did not only mean periods of time, but at the same time the "dies" meant the groups of beings working in the Sun, Moon and Mars. If you understand the word jom, which is written in Genesis and which is usually rendered as "day", as a spiritual entity, then you have those entities which are one step below the Elohim in the hierarchy, which the Elohim use as subordinate spirits. There, where the Elohim had worked through their higher, ordering powers that light should become, there they placed in its place jom, the first entity, the first of the time spirits or Archai in the sense of these primal words. Thus these spiritual entities, which we call spirits of personality or primal beginnings, are the same thing that is called time-spaces, "day", jom. They are the ministering spirits of the Elohim, those who carry out, as it were, what the Elohim order from the higher point of view. Those of you who have heard the lectures I recently gave in Christiania will remember that I also described the Archai as the spirits of time, and that I characterised how these spiritual entities still work as the spirits of time. These were the serving entities of the Elohim; they employed the Elohim, as it were, to carry out what they themselves ordered in great lines, according to the plan.“ (Lit.:GA 122, p. 90f)

Literature
References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated.
Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com.
Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books
A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works
Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English.
Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold
steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA)
Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.
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