Gnome

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Victor Hugo: Night gnome (1856)
Gnome Watching Railway Train, Carl Spitzweg, 1848
Heinrich Schlitt: Gnome with newspaper and tobacco pipe under a toadstool, with a snail above him and a tree frog in the glass (1923 at the latest).

Gnomes, goblins[1], dwarfs[2], wichtelmen[3], earth spirits[4], mountain spirits, rock spirits or elementary beings of the solid are elementary beings that arose as a cut-off from the hierarchy of the Archai [5]. Their astral home is the interior of the earth, from whose spiritual-soul layers they rise and are therefore particularly close to the earthly embodied human being[6]. They live as root spirits in the damp earth and carry the life ether to the plant. They are entirely sensory organs, but at the same time they absorb thoughts with their perception. They receive the ideas of the universe through the plants and carry them through the earth, especially in autumn and winter. They are super-comprehending beings and have their counterpart in the human thought life.

Normally the gnomes are enclosed in the realm of the root. Gnomes, however, also live in all rock formations. However, they can also grow beyond these boundaries, in fact they always strive to do so, and in this way they grow into gigantic forms: the gnomes then become frost giants.

„The initiate of today knows quite well how a spiritual being is redeemed from every stone in his consciousness, just as other spiritual beings are redeemed from plants. They come to meet you if you do not stop at the outer sense-perception. And every time one goes into Nature, when, for example, one first sees, emerging from their stone dwellings, the goblin-like elementary beings who are inside everywhere where Nature begins to become a little elementary - then, when one thus becomes acquainted and befriends these elementary beings, one soon also sees behind these elementary beings, especially behind the elementary beings of the mineral world, higher Beings who finally lead up to the first Hierarchy, up to the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones.

And if the exercises which I have given in the book "How to attain knowledge of the higher worlds", translated into English under the title "Initiation", are carried out consistently, if one does these exercises consistently, with great inner energy, willingness to make sacrifices and devotion, then it is actually already the case that if one gets the proper inner courage, one first comes upon something like this, that in special mineral impacts outside in the mountains, in a piece of stone, whole worlds of elemental beings are hidden. They only come out in this way, they slip out in all directions, become large, and testify that they are really only rolled up, pushed together in the parts of the elementary world. They are beings first of all within the mineral sphere of nature, especially where the earth comes into a state of " greening ", that it feels so fresh, that it has an earthy aroma, that the plants also have an earthy aroma. When you enter this world of elementary beings, these elementary beings can make you afraid and anxious. And these elementary beings that come out of there are of an unbelievable cleverness. One must have the modesty to say to oneself, when the dwarfs come out of the natural facts and natural objects, "Here you are, you stupid human being, how clever this elementary world is! - And because many people do not like to say this in earnest, because they do not even like to say that a small child who has just been born is much cleverer than one who has learned a great deal - if one looks at it inwardly - that is why these elementary beings at first elude the sight of man. But if one can enter into them, then the horizon, so to speak, widens, and what these teasing dwarfs, teasing one with their cleverness and wisdom, open up as a foreground, carries into a background which comes up to the first Hierarchy, up to the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones.“ (Lit.:GA 240, p. 266f)

The gnomes have a physical body as their highest member. Below this, they have three further members that reach down into the third, second and first elementary kingdoms. Due to the effect of these three lower members, the physical body of the gnomes is not usually visible to the senses. Only under the high pressure of the earthly depths do they take on something like physical materiality. If this pressure is released, this physical materiality dissipates very quickly (see also → members of the elementary beings). The gnomes form their bodies from the invisible, fleeting force of gravity, which therefore constantly runs the risk of losing its substance and disintegrating. The gnomes are therefore extremely attentive to their surroundings, to everything that could endanger their existence, and are constantly compelled to recreate themselves again and again, as it were, out of gravity, and appear as a constantly multiplying, uncountable multiplicity.

„... these gnomes bind together, I would like to say, everything that is present in terms of gravity, and form their bodies out of the fleeting, invisible gravity, which, by the way, is constantly in danger of disintegrating, of losing its substance. The gnomes have to create themselves out of gravity again and again, so to speak, because they are always in danger of losing their substance. Thus these gnomes, in order to save their own existence, are continually attentive to what is going on around them. There are no more attentive beings for earth observation than such a gnome. He watches everything, because he must know everything, must grasp everything, in order to save his life. He must always be awake; if he were to become sleepy, as people often are, he would immediately die of his sleepiness.

There is a German proverb that actually, coming from very ancient times, expresses very well this characteristic of the gnomes to always be alert. They say: Be as careful as a Wichtelman. - And Wichtelmen are just the gnomes. So if you want to remind someone to be attentive, then you say to them, "Pay attention like a gnome. - He really is an attentive being.“ (Lit.:GA 230, p. 129f)

Rudolf Steiner characterises the nature of the gnomes thus:

„We must not speak merely of the solid elements, sodium, calcium and so on, but of that which is connected with all solid, earthly things as spiritual. We must say that what we encounter in the outer world as solid, earthly things is certainly of such a nature that spirit is connected with it, and indeed a spirit which has a special inclination to multiplicity, so much to multiplicity that we cannot even measure this multiplicity. Wherever we look at the solid, we also find, if we look at it in the right way, spiritual things, and indeed many and manifold spiritual beings.

An old instinctive wisdom has spoken here of gnomes and the like. We need not, in order not to shock too much, retain these old expressions; we can certainly speak in a language that is familiar to us, but we must nevertheless look at what shines out at us in certain regions of the earth, especially from every lump of materiality, as spiritual. And so, when we are together, as we are today, in a somewhat more esoteric way, then it may be expressed in this quicker form: He who today is equipped with spiritual perception then confronts this lump of earth in such a way that spiritual beings spring forth which are not embodied in the physical, so that we do not see them with outer eyes, but which can be perceived spiritually. And one can say that they are so much designed for multiplicity that an immeasurable number of such beings can leap out of the smallest lump. They are of such a nature that they consist almost entirely of that which works in the human intellect; they are cunning, clever, superintelligent beings. So that around us there is, I would say, spiritual-living cleverness, cunning, quicker spiritual comprehension than in intellectual, comprehensible form, for this intellectual, which has become substance, lives in all solid earthly element. And until we know how these spiritual beings, which are in the solid earthly element, work together, there will be no true chemistry. What we have today as chemistry, anthroposophy can face with understanding, but the truth will only be grasped when that which is comprehensible to supersensible vision, when spirituality can be found in all that is earthly. Then we must have the will to leave behind even the firmest pillars of intellectuality with human prudence. When we face the earthly, be it whatever we have to count: 1, 2, 3, 4 ..., we are accustomed to see, when we have counted to four, that the sum of four lies before us. That which we detach from solid spiritual entities, which confronts us in its eagerness for diversity, we can begin to count, but then it turns out that it is no longer three or four, but has already become seven: all our counting leaves us on this occasion. Within what mankind knows as the atomistic world, one can count; within the real world everything is set on a much greater multiplicity, there everything is alive, there we must become aware that even our counting is mocked by the higher intelligence. In this world we must not allow our intellect to become absorbed in thought, even though it remains levelheaded; we must fully face with our intellect that which reality offers us. Many will say: "When you encounter something like that in reality, you can go mad! - For this reason it will be of great importance that, before man enters this world, he has come to full prudence and is able to judge earthly conditions with all dryness.“ (Lit.:GA 211, p. 203ff)

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.

References

  1. ↑ GA 102, p. 171
  2. ↑ GA 240, p. 267
  3. ↑ GA 230, p. 130
  4. ↑ The designation -ghosts' is, strictly speaking, incorrect, since they do not have an independent I, i.e. an individual spirit.
  5. ↑ GA 136, p. 64
  6. ↑ Karsten Massei: Schule der Elementarwesen, S. 24
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