Ether

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Aether (also spelled æther, aither, or ether; from Greek: Αἰθήρ Aither "the clear (blue) sky") was the original name given by the Greeks to the blue sky, illuminated by sunlight and starlight, in which they saw the transition to a higher, non-material etheric world. In the Orphic hymns, the Aither is the soul of the world and the primordial element of all life.[1] Until the Archaic period, the Greeks were convinced that the soul ascends into the Aither after death and that only the dead body sinks down into the womb of Gaia (the personified Earth).[2] For the nomadic Mongols and Turkic peoples of Central Asia, it is the supra-personal sky god Tengri who represents the "eternal blue sky" (Mongolian: Mönkh khökh Tengeri), the upper world, the heavenly world. In it, the same power is revealed that was already called Tao on ancient Atlantis. In the Whitsun lecture held in Dornach on 4 June 1924, Rudolf Steiner described in detail how the ether is directly revealed through the blue of the sky (Lit.:GA 236, p. 238ff).

Later, Aristotle added the ether as the 5th element (quintessence) to the four-element doctrine. It is not to be confused with the hypothetical ether of classical physics, which was finally discarded at the beginning of the 20th century and which had been postulated as a medium for the propagation of light from the late 17th century onwards.

The different types of ether

More precisely, the ether is differentiated into various coarser and finer types of ether, which have arisen in the course of the world evolution. Rudolf Steiner distinguishes the following etheric states:

„We have the ether of light, we have the ether of heat, but it actually has two parts, two layers; one is the earthly layer of heat, the other is the cosmic layer of heat, and they continually play into each other. In fact, we have not one but two kinds of heat, the heat that is actually of earthly, telluric origin, and that which is of cosmic origin. They constantly play into each other. Then we have air adjacent to the heat ether. Then would come water and earth, and above would come chemical ether, life ether.“ (Lit.:GA 230, p. 81)

Warmth with its physical and etheric or earthly and cosmic side forms the gateway between the sensual and the supersensual world. Every change of state in the physical world is connected with such a transition of heat from the physical to the etheric or vice versa. No matter whether it is a change in the state of aggregation of a physical substance, whether the human being tenses his muscles through an impulse of will, or whether he only grasps a thought inwardly in a concentrated way, or whether a chemical reaction or a nuclear reaction takes place, such a transfer of heat always takes place. The I of man, the spiritual core of his being, lives in the warmth of the blood and can thereby directly intervene in the physical organism.

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. ↑ Orphic Hymn 5
  2. ↑ Radcliffe Guest Edmonds: Myths of the underworld journey, p. 211.
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