Otherwise, we should not be surprised when the organism of the earth fights back. This happens when its creative elemental forces are activated. We arouse them through our behaviour.
And as I quaked and trembled, I fell upon my face, and I beheld a vision, and lo! there was a second house, greater than the former, and the entire portal stood open before me, and it was built of flames of fire. And in every respect it so excelled in glory and splendour and extent that I cannot describe to you its splendour and extent. And its floor was of fire, and above were lightnings and the path of the stars, and its ceiling also was flaming fire. [1]
The element of Fire moves the Earth
Fire is a creative elemental force. It works in the spiritual realm, the soul, and material world. Here, in the material world, it manifests itself very clearly before our eyes. Hardly a month goes by without an earthquake or volcanic eruption being reported in the news. We still have the images of the volcanic eruption on the Spanish island of La Palma, which spewed out red-hot lava for more than three months at the end of 2021. Volcanology explains that the increasing frequency of volcanic eruptions is caused, on the one hand, by increased earthquakes, and on the other hand, by the accelerated melting of the polar ice caps as a result of global warming.
Today we know that the processes in the heart of a volcano far surpass every generally accepted understanding of fire. During a volcanic eruption, enormous forces act from deep within the Earth. Even the detonation of a hydrogen bomb is only a tiny matchstick fire in comparison. During a volcanic eruption, 50 cubic kilometres of rock can be reduced to fine ash within a few hours. That is roughly the same as if the entire city such as Frankfurt were covered 300 metres thick with dust and rock.[2]
The cause of volcanic activity is the elevated temperature inside the earth. Every 100 metres, the temperature inside the earth increases by about 3 degrees until it is finally as hot in the centre of the earth as on the surface of the sun, namely ca.~45000C degrees. The heat originates from prehistoric times, when the earth melted under meteorite bombardment.
The Earth consists of several concentric layers and has a solid inner core and a liquid outer core. This temperature of 4500 degrees Centigrade refers to the liquid core, because the solid core is about 6500 degrees Centigrade. At the boundary between the core and the lower mantle (2,900 km), the so-called mantle plumes move gravitationally as in jumps into the earth’s crust. On the surface, they form hot spots (e.g. Hawaii) and extensive oceanic rifts.
Below a depth of 2900 kilometres, the temperatures diminish, as does pressure. There, the rock can expand and turn into honey-like magma. Sometimes this burning hot rock mass makes its way to the surface – a volcano erupts. This usually happens at the edges of two Earth plates, where one slides under the other, melts in the hot depths and swells up again as magma.[3]
Volcanism appears only in zones of this stretching of the earth’s crust. These stretching zones are like deep wounds on the body of the planet. Here, a process similar to shaking and opening a champagne bottle is possible – an eruption.
But because the Earth’s core is under the gravitational pressure of the entire planet, it does not melt. The main factor is the phase transformations of matter associated with abrupt change in the relationship between pressure and temperature. It’s like gradual changes in consciousness.
The main factor is the extension of the Earth, which causes that when the pressure in a given zone drops, matter begins to melt. The end result of the interplay between pressure and temperature is an eruption.
Modern humans are also moved by fire.
An “unholy” spiritual fire has led humans to subjugate and exploit nature ruthlessly according to their own will. It is the fire of egoism and materialism that again and again leads to friction, quarrels, conflicts, and wars. High pressure has been building up under our feet for decades. We feel the tensions in the atmosphere around us, we experience the threat to the ecosystem, the threat of war, terrorism and reckless experiments in nuclear energy and genetic manipulation.
The earth consists of several layers, the topmost of which is the earth’s crust. The deeper layer was called the “fire-earth” or “fire-layer” by Rudolf Steiner and is the origin of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. According to Rudolf Steiner, this sphere has an affinity with the human forces of will:
The human will acts precisely on the fire layer. Here there is a connection between the interior of man and the interior of the earth. … And so, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, seaquakes occur.[4]
More and more people in our time suppose or realise that the earth is a living organism. We live not only on it, but in a sense in it, in its very atmosphere. We breathe its air, drink its water and receive our life force from its products. As human beings, we are that part of the earth that has awakened to the ability to think. This should be a way of thinking that is in harmony with the entire organism and provide it with positive impulses. If this is not the case, we should not be surprised when the earth, as an organism, retaliates. This happens when its creative elemental forces are activated. We arouse and release them through our behaviour, and they in turn correct our deviation from the order of nature.
Already a hundred years ago Rudolf Steiner saw a direct connection between the increased materialistic thinking of humanity and an increase in volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.
Something is going on in the souls of humanity, is going on, for example, in a way that a large proportion of people are falling into materialism. This causes Ahriman to stir in his element. (…)Ahriman stirs up storms, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.[5]
Collectively, as humanity, we are moving along a fault line. The fault line we walk on is where two periods of time meet. As in a physical earthquake, where two tectonic plates collide and form a fault line from which accumulated pressure can escape, humanity is facing or is already in the centre of a “soul earthquake”. An important step in the evolution of consciousness is imminent. The earth is urging us to change our entire behaviour. By refusing to do so, enormous tensions are created, within humanity and within the Earth. Fiery high vibrational energies are rising from within the earth and breaking through the surface structures of our materialistic life. They stop at nothing, they make their way through everything that is hardened, and they make it softer and more flowing.
With regard to concrete world events, they obstruct habitual processes. The Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull, for example, forced a complete halt to central European air traffic for about a week after its eruption in March 2010 due to its enormous ash rain, causing chaos in transport and economic traffic.
We cannot go on as before. We are being corrected to create fertile ground for a shift of consciousness, for a necessary change. In the collective psyche, the energies of the “mental earthquake” are discharged in the form of wars and migration flows, transforming our collective destiny through suffering and traumatic experiences.
How do we react in this collective earthquake, in this distress?
We know that our current patterns of behaviour are inadequate. We have experienced in recent years our reactions to the disturbances of this world. We have experienced fearful withdrawal and a clinging to our possessions in order to preserve our “way of life” and our “habits of life”. We have also experienced that we are quick to project our fear onto others. However, in order for something fundamentally new to happen in the period that is just beginning, we must come to deeper insight, deeper realisation. This includes understanding the interplay of fire and water, both externally and spiritually.
Fire and water
The scientist Marcel Violet carried out many experiments in which he was able to prove that all waters, lakes and rivers on earth absorb electromagnetic vibrations, a process that has an extremely beneficial effect on humanity and on the earth’s organism. Thunderstorm vibrations have a very high voltage. Electricity in the air is an effective fire element. Rainwater – after a thunderstorm – shows powerful effects on its surroundings and favours the growth of plants and animals. Water absorbs firepower, in this way serving nature. In Russia, thunderstorm rainwater is collected especially to water animals, because it has been found that the animals in such herds grow much faster. Cattle on pastures always seek drinking water from puddles after a thunderstorm; they instinctively know that their organism is strengthened by it. [6]
One could even say: water needs fire. It needs revitalisation and vitalisation through electro-magnetic and cosmic vibrations. When the ancient alchemists searched for “living water”, they did not mean a specific, particularly pure quality of water that could be found somewhere. Rather, they wanted to express that, on the one hand, the human organism, which consists of about 50-60 percent water, must be exposed to an electromagnetic force, firepower, if it is to receive true vitality, and that, on the other hand, the same must take place at the level of the soul.
In alchemical terms, we as humanity, poisoning ourselves through ego qualities, food, breathing and “unholy willing and thinking”, have become “brackish water”, unnatural and lifeless water.
We absorb not only through thinking, feeling and through the sense organs, but we absorb with our whole being, through the skin, through the magnetic field of the hair. Our whole organism is a great reception field. When this reception field, which we are – in our natural state – is disturbed, there is counter-reaction, resistance, friction, disharmony between water and fire. [7]
To become a “living soul”, as Henk and Mia Leene describe it, we need cosmic energy. The soul within us is, in its etheric substrate, an original “atom” from a divine-spiritual cosmos in which water and fire are harmoniously combined in a wholesome way. A spiritual electro-magnetic field must have such a high state of vibration that it touches this soul-atom, so that we as a personality can experience the strong impulse for transformation.
Soul impulses, electromagnetic flashes that touch the soul atom, are indispensable for soul development.(…) Actually, one can say that a room where spiritual work is undertaken is a place where “thunder and lightning” must be continuously present, with spiritual discharges that ignite and transmit a powerful fire impulse. [8]
Through such impulses of fire from the force field of a spiritually striving group, we are able to understand the light we discover in our own depths as “sparks of the world soul”. The earth needs this light and we can release it within us, for all life on and in the earth. What happens within us radiates into the entire organism. We can give the earth something of our inner essence, of our heart’s fire. The mystics of all times have testified to how the fiery heart of an awakened human being can be directed towards the energy structure of the earth. From the human heart a fiery healing energy can flow into the inner worlds polluted by materialism. This is an energy of love in which all opposites are united in oneness.
When all human hearts will experience the Christ Spirit in a true sense, the power that will flow from it will be so strong that it will appease fire and water. [9]
This love-fire power transforms us. It also transforms the world. Hermann Hesse put this into impressive words in a prayer:
Let me despair, God, of myself,
But not of you!
Let me taste all the misery of error,
Let all the flames of sorrow lick at me,
Let me suffer all shame,
Help me not to be preserved,
Help me not to unfold!
But when all I am has broken,
Then show me
That it was you.
That you bore the flames and the sorrow,
For I will gladly perish,
Will gladly die,
But I can only die in you.
[1] The Book of Enoch, Chapter 14, 8-19
[2] published in: Die Welt, “Fire Keeps the Earth Moving“, July 24th, 2002
[3] Ibid.
[4] Rudolf Steiner, Kosmogonie, Gesamtausgabe (Collected Works) 94, Dornach, 2nd edition 2021, p.182
[5] Rudolf Steiner, Die Beantwortung von Welt- und Lebensfragen durch die Anthroposophie, Gesamtausgabe (Collected Works) 108, Dornach, 2nd edition 1986, p. 92
[6] Marcel Violet, Le Secret des Patriarches; https://de.scribd.com/doc/260065640/Le-Secret-Des-Patriarches-Marcel-Violet
[7] Henk and Mia Leene, Das Zusammenschmelzen von Feuer und Wasser, http://henkenmialeene.org
[8] Ibid.
[9] Rudolf Steiner, Kosmogonie, ibid.
