Plant

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Plants, which include vascular plants and mosses, form an independent kingdom of nature on Earth alongside minerals, animals and humans. The essential plant organs or basic organs[1] of vascular plants are root, shoot axis and leaf. The entirety of the plant world or plant kingdom is also called flora after the goddess of blossom and spring known from Roman mythology. The vegetation in a given area is formed by the totality of the plant communities and plant formations (e.g. deciduous forest, coniferous forest, grassland, desert, shrub steppe, etc.) living there. It is shaped by factors such as climate, soil, rock and water balance, but also by the influences of animals, humans and fire.

Plants are living beings that have an independent etheric body in the physical world, but no astral body and no individual I of their own. The astral body of plants is to be found in a higher world, in the astral world. And the common I of the plants is to be found as an essential spiritual reality in the lower devachan.

The Metamorphosis of Plants

In his Metamorphosis Theory, Goethe dealt specifically with the annual flowering plants, because it was in them that the plant-forming principle seemed to him to become most clearly apparent. They are all, Goethe recognised, built according to a uniform law. Behind the individual types such as the rose, the tulip, the violet, etc., there is a common archetype that encompasses them all and which Goethe calls the archetypal plant (German: Urpflanze). There must be such a thing, he thinks, because otherwise how could we even recognise that they are all plants. In fact, when we recognise a plant as a plant, this archetypal plant is active in each of us. Only we do not normally become really aware of it, but only of the finished judgement: "That is a plant". We sleep through the actual living thought process that produces this judgement. But this is nothing other than the exact mental image of the original plant itself that is active in nature.

The I of the plants

The group-I of the plants, their group spirit, which lives in the lower devachan, is localised in the centre of the Earth.

„If we now ascend to still higher worlds with the visionary faculty, we come to the lower devachan plan, the lower spiritual world. It too pervades our physical and astral world. There we find the group-spirits of the plants. You already know that the plants that cover the Earth are to be united into large groups, to which a group ego then corresponds. Only these group-I's are to be found on the Devachan plan, but they are first localised in the centre of the Earth. There all the group-I's of the plants have their centre. And if you imagine the whole Earth in this way, you see it as a great organism in which the various group-I's of the plants also interpenetrate. This sum of plant group-I's feels suffering and joy, pleasure and pain, just as the human organism does. We can state quite precisely how pleasure and suffering exist in this earth organism. We know that the plucking of the plants gives pleasure, even lust, a feeling of well-being, a feeling of well-being similar to that which the cow feels when the calf sucks its milk. The uprooting of the root, on the other hand, hurts the Earth organism, causes it discomfort. Thus you see how one can indicate in particular how the beings of the devachanic world feel. Whatever we do on Earth, are not sober facts, but when we do this or that, we give some being pleasure or pain, joy or sorrow. When the reaper cuts through the stalks, a breath of well-being, which the plant soul feels, passes over the fields. Thus he who has feeling for these things passes over the Earth, learning to sympathise with the spiritual beings who live in the higher worlds and who again only send their organs into the physical world.“ (Lit.:GA 98, p. 164)

Thus, when flowers or other above-ground plant parts are cut off, the whole Earth feels a sense of well-being comparable to that felt by the cow when she suckles her calf. It is quite different, however, when the roots are torn out of the soil:

„Now that which is above the Earth in plants relates to the Earth in approximately the same way as milk relates to man and animal. When the calf sucks on the animal, on the cow, it means a certain feeling of well-being for the cow. The whole Earth has this same feeling when you cut off a flower or a plant. For what the earth sends to the sun, what it expels, is the same in another form that lives in the milk. But if you tear out a plant by the root, it is exactly the same as if you tear out a human limb or cut it into the flesh. It is something quite different that our Earth feels when you cut off a plant that is still firmly rooted in the Earth - the Earth feels a sense of well-being there - and something quite different when you tear out a plant with the root. You are not to judge this morally, but as the facts lie; and so they lie.

Now try not merely to think such a truth, but to feel it! You see, one feels it like this: When one goes outside in autumn and sees the farmer mowing away the grain with his scythe, one who knows what it is about in the astral body of the Earth feels, with the mowing away of the grain, something like feelings of lust, of joy, of pleasure, passing over the Earth. Indeed, it is a feeling of joy for the whole Earth when the reaper cuts away the grain at harvest time.“ (Lit.:GA 98, p. 119f)

Each plant genus belongs to a certain group soul, but on the whole there are seven comprehensive plant group souls which send out their effects from the centre of the Earth.

„On the whole there are seven group souls which belong to the Earth as plant souls and all have in a certain way the centre of their own being in the Earth's centre. So that we cannot only imagine the Earth as this physical ball, but this Earth is permeated by seven such spheres, more or less large or small, which all have something like their own spiritual centre in the centre of the Earth. And then these spiritual beings drive the plants out of the Earth. The root grows towards the centre of the Earth because it actually wants to go there and is only prevented by the remaining earth matter from advancing to the centre. Every plant root strives to penetrate to the centre of the earth, where the centre of the spiritual being is, to which the plant belongs.“ (Lit.:GA 134, p. 109f)

The group-I's of the plants are descendants of the Spirits of Wisdom, who on the Old Sun gave man his etheric body.

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. ↑ The term was coined in 1850 by the German botanist Alexander Braun: "Thus s h o ot, l e a f and r o o t appear to us as essentially different parts of the vegetal organism, as basic organs of the plant life based on the diversity of the directions of its formation. Their sure and sharp distinction is the foundation of morphology". (Alexander Braun: Betrachtungen über die Erscheinung der Verjüngung in der Natur, insbesondere in der Lebens- und Bildungsgeschichte der Pflanze. Verlag von Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipzig 1851, p. 120 archive.org)
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