Salamander

A 16th-century image of a salamander from the Book of Lambspring

Sixteenth-century woodcut questionably identified as a depiction of a salamander by Manly P. Hall

The salamanders, fire beings, fire spirits or elementary beings of fire, are elementary beings that work in fire and in all warmth processes. They arise as a cut-off at the death of certain higher warm-blooded animals, which already have almost an I-like character, sometimes also at the death of very low-minded libidinous people. Thus, for instance, the monkey takes too much of the group spirit down with him into the individual animal form; and while with the lower animals everything merges again into the group spirit with death, the monkey, because he has become too complicated in his bodily organisation, retains something behind. This is not the case with the lion, for example, but it is with the marsupials. The salamanders thus show an I-like character and have the same members as the human being, namely the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the I. However, the physical body is a pure heat body, and their I is also not directly comparable with the human I (see also → Members of the elementary beings). The heat of the blood of the beings from which they have cut themselves off gives them their fiery character.

„Think of the group soul of any insect species. If the individual insect dies, it is no different for the group soul than if a hair falls out or a nail is cut off. The animals that always form anew are only replaced new members of the animal group soul. Thus you can follow animal series far upwards, and you will find that what is on the physical plane appears like a cloud always dissolving and forming anew. The physical existence metamorphoses itself and the group spirit only renews that which settles down with it. This goes on up to a certain level. Then something new enters. With higher animals - and the more you go straight to higher animals, more and more - something occurs that no longer looks quite like what I have just described to you. Take the monkey, for example. The monkey takes too much of the group spirit down into the individual form which is below; and while otherwise in the lower animal everything goes back again into the group spirit, the monkey, because it has become too complicated, retains something in its physical organisation. Too much of the group spirit has flowed into it, and it cannot go back again. That is the progressive group spirit. It works in such a way that it creates a new member in the lower animals; then it absorbs the whole being again, creates a new one, absorbs that again, and so on. It is the same with the lion. But if you take a monkey, for example, the group soul produces the monkey, but the monkey takes something out of the group soul, that cannot go back again. Whereas in the case of the lion, when it dies, the physical dissolves and the soul returns to the group spirit, in the case of the monkey it is the case that what it cuts off from the group spirit cannot return. With humans, the I goes from incarnation to incarnation and is able to develop because it can accept new incarnations. You don't have that with the monkey. But the monkeys can't go back either. That is why the monkey seems so strange to the naive mind, because in reality it is a being cut off from the group spirit; it cannot go back to the group spirit, but it cannot reincarnate itself either. Marsupials are another kind of such animals, which tear something out of the group spirit. Now that which remains of these so to speak individual animal souls, but which also cannot incarnate again, that is the true origin of a fourth group of elementary spirits. These are cut-off parts of such animals which cannot come back to the group spirit because they have skipped the normal point in evolution. From numerous animals such I-like beings remain, and these are then the salamanders. This is the highest form of the nature spirits, for it is I-like.“ (Lit.:GA 102, p. 180f)

Literature

• Rudolf Steiner: Natur- und Geistwesen – ihr Wirken in unserer sichtbaren Welt, GA 98 (1996), ISBN 3-7274-0980-0 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Das Hereinwirken geistiger Wesenheiten in den Menschen, GA 102 (2001), ISBN 3-7274-1020-5 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Der Mensch als Zusammenklang des schaffenden, bildenden und gestaltenden Weltenwortes, GA 230 (1985) English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Aus den Inhalten der esoterischen Stunden, Band II, GA 266/2 (1996) English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org

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