Centaur

The centaur Cacus in Dantes "Divine Comedy", Inferno, Canto XXV, 12-33. Illustration by William Blake

Fight of a Centaur against a Lapith at the Parthenon in Athens (c. 435 BC)

The centaur Cheiron instructs young Achilleus (Roman fresco from Herculaneum, Naples National Archaeological Museum)

Centaur, painting on the north side of the small dome of the first Goetheanum.

A centaur (Greek: Κένταυρος Kentauros, plural Κένταυροι Kentauroi; Latinised Centaurus, Centauri) is, according to Greek mythology, a being half man, half horse. In astronomy, the so-called centaurs were named after them, a group of asteroids between Jupiter and Neptune, such as Chiron (discovered in 1977), Pholus (1992) and Nessus (1993), which are presumably "extinct" comets that have already largely lost their volatile components, which otherwise form the typical comet tail, through sublimation.

Mythological background

The centaurs are said to be descended from Ixion, the Thessalian king of the legendary Lapiths, who had been raised to heaven by Zeus and gifted with immortality. When the drunken Ixion saw Hera at a feast of the gods and desired to love her, Zeus created an image of his wife from a cloud of mist. Ixion, in the ecstasy of love, embraced the cloud, which was shaped like Hera, and begat with her the centaur, who later mated with the mares of Magnesia and thus begat the race of the centaurs. Enraged by Ixion's sacrilege, Zeus had him tied to a fiery wheel as punishment, which has been driven around in eternal whirl through the air ever since.

The centaurs are generally regarded as a lustful, unrestrained people, full of the lower instincts - quite in contrast to the noble Lapiths, who according to the oldest traditions were regarded as giant storm demons or the personification of the storm itself. The centaurs were the arch-enemies of the Lapiths and were driven out of Thessaly to the Peloponnese by the latter when the centaurs "heated by wine" at the wedding of the noble king of the Lapiths, Pirithous, attacked their wives.

Chiron (Greek: Χείρων Cheiron „hand“) is known as the noblest of all the centaurs, who was skilled in healing and was the wise educator of many Greek heroes. As such, he was also the teacher of Asclepius.

„Asclepius, the son of Apollo, is the father of Greek physicians, so to speak. And what are we told about him in Greek myth? His father takes him to the mountains in his youth, where he can become the pupil of the centaur Chiron. And it is Chiron the centaur who instructs Asclepius, the father of medicine, in the healing powers of plants and other healing powers found on earth. Chiron, the centaur, what kind of being is he? He is a being that is characterised to us as such as they were before the descent of man before the Lemurian time: a being, half man, half animal. This myth conceals the fact that in the corresponding mystery those powers are shown to Asclepius which were the great powers of health, which could bring forth health before man entered the first incarnation.“ (Lit.:GA 107, p. 234f)

The spiritual reality of the centaur

Every human being carries within him an etheric centaur, which is closely related to the rhythm of breathing and connects him very closely with the supersensible world of the dead.

The world of the dead is actually constantly around us, but the sensory veil hides it from us. We cannot perceive them with our senses, but they speak to us from the depths of feeling and will, only we usually sleep through it. The breath, the lungs are tools of feeling and especially the etheric lungs would be an organ of perception for the astral region in which even the dead live for a long time. This etheric lung is actually something like a very wise etheric head, though only very shadowily visible, and to this head also belongs a body, a very clearly clear-sighted body, which is, however, an ugly animal etheric body, filled with very strong urges and desires, in which egoism is rooted as a luciferic gift. We must transform this etheric centaur as a dead person into the physical body of the next incarnation. From its etheric head, that is, from the etheric lung of the present incarnation, becomes the physical head of the next life. This etheric head is tremendously wise and it is above all the doctor, the healer in us, who heals us via the diversions of the breathing rhythm. It is not for nothing that Chiron is even said to have instructed the son of Apollo, Asclepius, in the art of healing. Chiron thus appears as the noblest of all centaurs, in whom the lower drive nature is most strongly restrained:

„The impressions of the senses, one can imagine them as if they spread out before us like a carpet. Of course, we have to imagine this carpet occupied also with the auditory impressions, with all impressions of the twelve senses, as we know them from anthroposophical contemplations. You know that the real number of senses is twelve. This carpet of senses covers, so to speak, a reality lying behind it. We must not imagine this reality lying behind the sense perceptions in such a way as the natural scientist imagines the atomic world, or as a certain philosophical direction speaks of the thing in itself. For I have even emphasized in the public lectures: Searching for a thing in itself, as today's philosophy does, as Kantianism does, that would be about the same as wanting to search for the reality of the beings that one sees in a mirror by breaking the mirror in order to see what is behind it. - In this sense I am not talking about something that lies behind the sensory perceptions, but I am talking about something that lies behind the sensory perceptions as a spiritual, in which we ourselves are embedded, but to which man's ordinary consciousness, which he carries between birth and death, does not reach. At the moment when we would, so to speak, unravel the sensory tapestry on a first level, so that we would see more outwardly than the multiplicity of sense impulses - what would we see on this first level of the spiritual unraveling of the sensory tapestry? This is the question we want to ask ourselves.

It can be surprising at first what must be called that which one sees at first. What one sees there at first is a sum of forces, which all go out to impulse our whole life from birth, or let us say from conception to death. Not in the individual events we would see our life, if we unravel the tapestry of meaning, but in its whole nature. We would not find something completely foreign at first, we would find ourselves at the first stage of unraveling the sensory perceptions - but not ourselves as we are at this moment, but ourselves as we are this whole life between birth and death. This life, which does not play into our physical body and therefore cannot be perceived with physical senses, plays into our etheric body, into our body of image forces. And our body of formative forces is essentially an expression of this life, which we would survey if we were to switch off the senses, the sense perceptions. If, as it were, the sensory carpet were to tear - and it does tear when man rises to look - man finds himself, as he is constituted for this earth incarnation, in which he makes the observation in question. But as said, the senses are not suitable to perceive this.

What is suitable to perceive this? Man already has it, what is suitable to perceive this; but he has it in such a stage of development that at present there can be no question of a real perception. What would be perceived there, does not penetrate into any eye, no ear, does not penetrate into sense organs, but is - I ask you to understand this well - inhaled, sucked in with the breath. And that which etherically underlies our lungs - there can be no question of the physical lungs, for the lungs, as they are, are not an immediate organ of perception - that which etherically underlies our lungs is actually an organ of perception, but for man between birth and death it is not a useful organ of perception of that which is breathed in. In the air we breathe in, there is actually our deeper reality in relation to each breath, how it fits into the overall rhythm of life from birth to death. It is only so arranged that that which underlies the whole lung system is undeveloped in man on the physical plan, has not advanced to the ability to perceive. If that which actually builds up our lung system, that which underlies it etherically, were investigated and correctly recognized, then it would basically appear to be quite the same as what physically, for the physical world, is our brain with the sense organs. In what underlies our lung system, we have a brain on an earlier stage of development, on a, one would like to say, still childlike stage of development. Also in this respect we carry in a way - I say expressly: in a way - a second human being in us. And you do not imagine wrongly, if you think that apart from the physical head, which the human being carries, there is still an etheric head, which is only not yet usable as an organ of perception in ordinary life, but which in its disposition has perceptive faculty for that which lies behind the body of image forces, as creating this body of image forces. But this, what lies behind the body of image forces, that is the one, into which we enter, when we go through the gate of death. We then discard the body of image forces itself, but what creates it, what produces it, into that we enter. It is perhaps a difficult conception; alone it is good if you try to really think this conception through to the end. Schematically, we could still clarify the matter.

Etheric lung, drawing from GA 179, p. 74

We imagine the physical system of the head, and we imagine the physical system of the lungs (see drawing, red), working in from the cosmos the impulses of the cosmos (blue arrows), which express themselves rhythmically in the lung movements (red hatched). Through our lungs we are in relationship with the whole cosmos, and the whole cosmos creates on our etheric body. We discard the etheric body itself when we pass through the gate of death, but we enter that which plays into our lung system; this is in connection with the whole cosmos. Hence that strange correspondence in the rhythm of human life and in the rhythm of breathing. You know - I have already explained this here once - if you calculate the 18 breaths that man has per minute, so that you get the number of breaths in a day, then it is 18 times 60 in the hour, for the day times 24 are 25 920 breaths in a day. Man breathes in and breathes out; this gives his rhythm, his smallest rhythm at first. But then there is another rhythm in our life, as I have already indicated to you: this consists in the fact that we breathe our soul, the ego and the astral body, into our physical system every morning when we wake up, and breathe them out again when we go to sleep. This is what we do throughout our physical life. If we take an average measure of human life, we have to calculate it in such a way that we say: 365 times during one year we breathe ourselves out and breathe ourselves in. This gives, if we take the human life, let us say, on the average of 71 years, 25 915. You see, essentially the same number - the life is not the same with the individual human beings -, again 25 920 times during a life between birth and death is exhaled and inhaled that which we call our actual self. So that we can say: As we relate with one breath to the elements around, so we relate to the world to which we ourselves belong. In the same rhythm to the cosmos we live during the life in which we stand by our breathing during the day. And again, if we take our life, let's say about 71 years, and we consider this life of man as a cosmic day - let's call once a human life a cosmic day - a cosmic year would be 365 times as much, 25 920, so approximately again a year. But this is the time in which the sun again returns to the same constellation: 25 920 years [see -> Platonic World Year]. If in a certain year the sun appears in Aries, after 25 920 years it appears again in Aries in the rising, because the sun moves through the whole zodiac in the course of 25 920 years. Thus a whole human life is breathed out of the cosmos, a breath of the cosmos, which relates exactly to the cosmic becoming, to the cosmic turning of the sun in the zodiac, like a breath to the daily life. A deep inner regularity! You see, everything is built on rhythm. We breathe threefold or at least we are threefold in a breathing process. First, we breathe through our lungs in the elements - in a rhythm indicated by the number 25 920. We breathe throughout the solar system when we count the rising and setting of the sun as paralleling our falling asleep and waking up. We breathe through our whole life in a rhythm which is again determined by the number 25 920. And finally, the universe breathes us out, breathes us in again in a rhythm which is again determined by the number 25 920, determined by the revolution of the sun around the zodiac.

Thus we are placed in the whole visible cosmos, which is now based on the invisible cosmos. We enter this invisible cosmos when we step through the gate of death. Rhythmic life is that life which underlies our emotional life. We enter the rhythmic life of the cosmos in the time we live through between death and a new birth. This rhythmic life lies as our etheric life determining behind the sense carpet spread out. At the moment when one comes to the seeing consciousness, one would see this world rhythm, which is, so to speak, a rhythmically surging sea of worlds, now astral in nature. And in this rhythmically surging astral sea the so-called dead are also present, the entities of the higher hierarchies are present, that is present which belongs to us, but which lies below the threshold from which only the feelings surged up, which are dreamed away, the impulses of will surged up, which are slept away in their own reality.

The question can be raised - we may say the matter comparatively, without lapsing into teleology, thus: Why has it been arranged by the wise guidance of the world that man, as he now is between birth and death, does not perceive what lies there as rhythmic life behind the carpet of sense? Why is the head of man, the hidden head of man, to which the lung system corresponds, not suitable for a corresponding perception? Yes, this leads to a truth which, one can say, has been kept as a secret by the corresponding occult schools until our age, because, however, other secrets are connected with this secret, which should not be revealed, should not have been revealed, until now. But in our time the epoch has just come when such things must be brought to the consciousness of mankind.

The occult schools, which are established here or there, keep such things for reasons which are not to be discussed now, in many cases still today, although the things today should necessarily be brought to the consciousness of man. But since the last third of the nineteenth century, ways and means have been given by which that can be overtaken which the occult schools actually retain in many cases unlawfully. This is connected with the event of which I have spoken to you as falling in the autumn of the year 1879. We can only touch the outermost hem of this mystery for this time. Alone this outermost hem of this mystery belongs to the most significant realizations of the human being. It is, however, a head that we carry within us as the head of a second human being, it is a head - but what belongs to this head is also a body, and the body that belongs to it is first of all an animal body. So man carries a second man in himself: this second man has a properly formed head, but an animal body to it, a proper centaur. The centaur is already a truth. It is an etheric truth. The important thing is that in this being there is a relatively great wisdom, a wisdom that relates to the whole cosmic rhythm. What the head sees, which belongs to this centaur, that is the cosmic rhythm, in which also the human being as a being, who lives between death and new birth, is embedded. It is that world rhythm which has been shown here numerically in three ways itself, that rhythm on which many mysteries of the cosmos are based. This head is much wiser than our physical head. All human beings carry within themselves a very wise other human being, precisely the centaur. But at the same time this centaur, in spite of his wisdom, is equipped with all the wild instincts of animalism.

Now you will understand the wise world guidance. It could not give to man a consciousness which on one side is powerful and sees through the rhythm of the world, but on the other side is untamed, living in wild instincts. But what is animal in this centaur in one incarnation will be - keep what I am saying now together with other lectures in which I have illuminated the subject from a changing point of view - that will be tamed in the next incarnation by passing through the world of the world rhythm between death and new birth. What lies at the basis of our lung system in the present incarnation, what is hidden there, appears as your physical head, which is then, however, subdued to its limited sensual knowledge, and it appears in the next incarnation as the whole man now also tamed according to the wild drives. What centaur is in this incarnation is the sensually perceiving man in the next incarnation.

And now you will understand another. Now you will understand why I said that between death and a new birth man has as the lowest realm the animal realm, in the powers of which he must become master. What then must he do? What must he participate in between two incarnations? He must participate in transforming the centaur, the animal in him into the human for the next incarnation. For this purpose knowledge is really necessary which must extend over the impulses of the whole animal kingdom, which in their attenuation have been atavistically peculiar to the people of that age in which Chiron lived. Even if the cognitions of which Chiron speaks are attenuations of this incarnation, of this kind they are. But you see the connection. You see for what purpose man, between death and a new birth, needs this lower realm in which he must become a master: he needs it because he must transform the centaur into a man.

What the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science offers, has until now actually only been attained in individual flashes of light outside the occult schools. But there have always been individual people who have come upon such things as through flashes of light of life. Particularly in the 19th century, I would like to say, individual spirits came to the conclusion that there is something inside man with wildly tamed instincts. There are writers who speak of it. And from the way they speak of it, you can see how they are frightened by this realization. Yes, so comfortable to digest mentally as the today's natural scientific realizations, so comfortable the high truths are not. These high truths have already sometimes the characteristic that one can be frightened before their reality. And there have been spirits in the 19th century who have been frightened, who have been terribly touched when they perceived what actually speaks from the sometimes confused looking eye of man or from other things in man. One of the writers of the 19th century expressed himself drastically by saying: Every man actually carries a murderer in himself. - He meant this centaur who had come to his consciousness unclearly.“ (Lit.:GA 179, p. 71ff)

Literature

• Rudolf Steiner: Geisteswissenschaftliche Menschenkunde, GA 107 (1988), ISBN 3-7274-1070-1 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Geschichtliche Notwendigkeit und Freiheit. Schicksalseinwirkungen aus der Welt der Toten., GA 179 (1977), Vierter Vortrag, Dornach, 11. Dezember 1917 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org

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.