Salamander

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A 16th-century image of a salamander from the Book of Lambspring[1][2]
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)

The salamanders, who live in the warmth-light, bring the warmth ether into the plant blossoms.

„And the pollen is that which now, so to speak, gives off the little airship for the fire spirits to carry the warmth into the seed. The heat is collected everywhere with the help of the stamens and transferred from the stamens to the seed in the ovary. And this, which is formed here in the ovary, is on the whole the masculine, which comes from the cosmos. Not the ovary is the feminine and the anthers of the stamen the masculine!...For plants the earth is mother, the sky father.... And that which now arises from the interaction of gnome action and fire-spirit action is fertilisation. And fertilisation takes place during the winter down in the earth, when the seed enters the earth and meets the forms which the gnomes have received from the sylph and undine effects...“ (Lit.:GA 230, p. 121f)

Salamanders also reveal themselves where man connects with the animal kingdom in a more soulful way, as can be seen, for example, in the relationship of the shepherd to his flock or the Arab to his horse.

„Nowadays people also know the salamanders, because when someone says: Something is flowing to me, I don't know where from -, it is mostly the effect of the salamanders.

When man enters into intimate contact with the animals, as the shepherd does with his sheep, then he receives knowledge whispered to him by beings that live in his surroundings. The shepherd received the knowledge he had about his flock of sheep from the salamanders in his surroundings. These old knowledges have dwindled nowadays and must now be regained by well-tested occult knowledge.“ (Lit.:GA 98, p. 92)

The salamanders have great sympathy for the insect world, namely for the butterflies, they connect with them, become part of their aura. They complete the insect body downwards, together they form enlarged something like a winged human being (Aquarius):

Blackboard drawing from GA 230 (Plate VI)

„When we then come to the fire beings, it is in the case of the fire beings that they form the complement to the fleeting butterfly nature. The butterfly itself develops, as it were, as little as possible of its physical body, of the actual physical body; it leaves it as thin as possible; on the other hand, it is a being of light. The fire beings turn out to be beings who complement the butterfly body, so that one can get the following impression. If you see a physical butterfly on one side and imagine it enlarged accordingly, and on the other side a fire being - these beings are rare together, only in the cases I mentioned to you yesterday - then you have the feeling that if you bake them together, you actually get something like a winged human being, really a winged human being. You only have to enlarge the butterfly accordingly and find the fire creatures adapted to the size of the human being, then you get something like a winged human being out of it (Plate VI, centre).

This again shows you how the fire creatures are actually the complement of these animal beings who are closest to the spiritual; they are, so to speak, the complement towards the bottom. Gnomes and undines are the complement towards the top, towards the head; sylphs and fire beings are the complement of birds and butterflies towards the bottom. So the fire beings must be brought together with the butterflies.“ (Lit.:GA 230, p. 134)

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. ↑ Nicolas Barnaud (editor): The Book of Lambspring
  2. ↑ The Book of Lambspring, 1556
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