Steiner’s view, deeply rooted in his consciousness, was that human beings are not just passive observers of the universe, but are intrinsically connected to it. He opposed the Copernican world view entirely and instead promoted Earth as the center of the cosmos, realigning humanity with Divine Source. The Geocentric and Cellular Earth models are one in the same. Both placing Earth & Humanity back into their respective positions in which we are no longer an insignificant spec of cosmic dust. Below are excerpts on the fallacies of the Copernican system taken from Steiner’s lectures.
The Relationship of the Diverse Branches of Natural Science to Astronomy
It was not by any means my prime intention to let these lectures culminate in this way. I am not pre-disposed on principle to put forward things out of keeping with the accepted notions. We only want to get at the truth. As it is however, the assumptions of the modern astronomical world-picture involves so many contradictions that in the end, having studied the current astronomy, one comes away dissatisfied. Hypothetically, it begins by assuming the world-picture I have also indicated in this sketch (Figure 4), – the elliptic orbits of the planets, the Sun in one focus, and so on. The planetary orbits are then assumed to be in different planes, inclined to one another. For there is no alternative at this stage; the different inclinations are given by the perspective. The complications of it are complications of perspective. Yet the real calculations are not done to the basis of this simple solar system which people have explained to them at school and then retain for life. In practice, they take their start from the Tychonic system. Then one correction after another has to be applied. From the accepted formulae, one calculates, say, the position of the Sun at given time, and it does not come true. Instead of the real Sun being there, it will be the Dynamical of Astronomical Mean Sun, – something fictitious therefore. So it is time and again: Imagined entities are there, and more corrections must be introduced to get to what is real. In these corrections there lies hidden that which would lead to the truth. Instead of holding fast to the conventional formulae and being led to fictitious entities, one should bring movement into the formulae themselves – make them inherently mobile – and then draw curves accordingly. If one did so, one would soon reach the system here drawn, though I repeat, the drawings are diagrammatic.
Spiritual Hierarchies & The Physical World
The two streams–the spiritual and the materialistic–drifted further and further apart. In the Mysteries, the words that later come to denote the external heavenly bodies had always referred to supersensitive worlds, to a sequence of spiritual realms. The out world always understands the words to mean the material aspect, and this is true even of contemporary mythology–I use the word deliberately–we call astronomy. Spiritual science recognizes the full value of all mythologies. Thus, it also appreciates the worth of the mythology called modern astronomy which sees only space filled with physical cosmic bodies. This modern mythology is, for one who truly knows, merely a particular phase of all mythologies. A single thread runs through these mythologies from the ancient European sagas of the gods to the myths of the Greeks and Romans, the obscure myths of the Middle Ages, and the fully justified and admirable ones founded by Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo. A time will come when people will say of modern mythology, “In the past, there were human beings who thought it correct to place the material Sun in the center of an ellipse and to rotate the planets in ellipses around it. They constructed a cosmic universal system even as earlier people had done before them. But, today, we know that it is all mere saga and legend.” Indeed, a time will come when, no matter how much the old mythologies are now despised by the modern world, it will be considered absurd to speak of a Copernican mythology. To realize this will help us to understand how words have been interpreted so differently over the course of time.
The Ptolemaic view, on the other hand, is not merely a physical system. It was derived from spiritual observation at a time when it was still known that the planets represented the boundaries of influence of higher beings.
To characterize the realms of influence of these higher beings, our planetary solar system must be drawn very differently. I will now draw this planetary system as it was made clear in the Mystery schools of Zoroaster.
We would then have to draw what served as the boundary of the Thrones’ sphere of activity in immediate relation to the zodiac–that is, we must draw what made up the boundary of Saturn. After that, we must delimit the sphere of activity of those spiritual beings known as the Dominions, or Spirits of Wisdom–the outermost boundary of Jupiter. Next, we delimit the sphere of influence of the Mights, or Spirits of Movement. This is delineated by the boundary of Mars. We have seen that the battlefield left by the “War in Heaven” is between those two. (Page 97)
To differentiate correctly between the various realms of power, however, we must also draw the boundary line of the Sun. Just as Mars marks the outer boundary of the influence of the Mights, so the orbit of the Sun represents the frontier of the authority of the Powers or Spirits of Form. Here, then, is the boundary marked out by Venus that represents the sphere of influence of the Archai. Next, we come to the realm marked out by Mercury. This is the sphere of influence of the Archangels, the Fire Spirits. We are now coming quite close to the Earth. We reach the realm of influence bounded by the Moon. Therefore, here we must draw the Earth. (Page 98).
You must picture the Earth as the starting-point and around it, a sphere of influence reaching to the Moon. This is followed by a realm reaching up to Mercury; then one to Venus; and then one to the Sun. You may be astonished at the sequence of the planets as I have given it here. You might think that, if the Earth is here and here the Sun, you would believe I should draw Mercury here, near the Sun, and here Venus. This is, however, not right, because both planets were, with regard to their names, mixed up by later astronomy. What is called “Mercury” today, was called in ancient teachings, “Venus”; and the planet referred to as “Venus” today was, in all of the old teachings, called “Mercury.” Mark this well: One does not understand the old writings and teachings if one applies what is said there about Venus and Mercury to what is meant today by the same names. What is said about Venus has to be applied to present-day Mercury, and what is said about Mercury to Venus, because both of these designations were mixed up later. At the time when one turned the world system around, when the Earth was stripped of her central position, one not only changed the perspective, but allowed Mercury and Venus to roll around each other in relation to the old designations.
When speaking about the Copernican and Ptolemaic systems, we must be clear that the Ptolemaic system has preserved something of the constellation for the ruling spirits, and from that perspective the Earth must be taken as the starting point. A time will come when this cosmic system will again be correct, because humanity will again know of the existence of the spiritual world. It can be hoped that human beings will then be less fanatical than our contemporaries. The modern view holds that, before Copernicus, people talked nonsense and had a primitive cosmic system, but Copernicus we know what is correct at last. Everything else is false. Today, people more or less think that, for example, because the Copernican system is right, it will be taught into the infinite future, even after millions of years. Human beings have rarely been as superstitious as modern theoretical astronomers, and hardly ever was there such fanaticism as there is in this field. We may hope that future generations will be more tolerant and say that humanity was no longer conscious of the spiritual world after the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; and, further, that a spiritual world does indeed exist and that in the spiritual world one has other perspectives and must arrange heavenly bodies other than from simple physical observation.
Anyone who asks from the standpoint of occultism what kind of world-view can be derived from the Copernicus tenets will have to acknowledge that, although these ideas can lead to great achievements in the realm of natural science and in external life, they are incapable of promoting any understanding of the spiritual life, they are incapable of promoting any understanding of the spiritual foundations of the world and the things of the world, for there has never been a worse instrument for understanding the spiritual foundations of the world than the ideas of Copernicus–never in the whole of human evolution…. In earlier, pre-Copernican thought, the external world was indeed maya, but much traditional wisdom, much truth concerning the world and the things of the world still survived. Since Copernicus, however, human beings have maya around them, not only in their material perceptions, but their concepts and ideas themselves are maya. People assume nowadays that the Sun is firmly fixed in the middle, and that the planets revolve around it in ellipses. In the near future, however, it will be realized that the view of the stars held by Copernicus is much less correct than the earlier Ptolemaic view. The view of the world held by the school of Copernicus and Kepler is very convenient, but, as an explanation of the macrocosm, it is not the truth. (Esoteric Christianity and the Mission of the Christian Rosenkreutz, lecture of December 18, 1912.)
From Jesus to Christ
You need only recall how many times in speaking of these questions, in one form or another, we have had to say that for quite clever people, who have all science and learning at their finger tips, the thought of Christ Jesus and the Events of Palestine are truly not compatible with the modern conception of the universe. In an apparently enlightened way they say that when men were not aware that the earth is a quite small heavenly body, they could believe that with the Cross of Golgotha a special new event took place on earth. But since Copernicus taught that the earth is a planet like others, can one still believe that Christ came to us from another planet? Why should we believe that the earth is so exceptionally situated as was formerly thought? A simile is then brought in: ‘Since our conception of the universe has been so much enlarged, it seems as though one of the most important artistic presentations had taken place, not on the great stage of a capital city, but on the small stage of some provincial theater.’ So that is how is looks to these people: the earth is such an insignificant little cosmic body that the Events of Palestine appear like the performance of a great cosmic drama on the stage of a small provincial theatre. We can no longer imagine such a thing, because the earth is so small in comparison with the great universe!
Influences of Lucifer and Ahriman
One of the developments in which Ahriman’s (a.k.a. Satan) impulse is clearly evident is the spread of the belief that the mechanistic, mathematical conceptions inaugurated by Galileo, Copernicus, and others, explain what is happening in the cosmos. That is why anthroposophical spiritual science lays stress upon the fact that spirit and soul must be discerned in the cosmos, not merely the mathematical, mechanistic laws put forward by Galileo and Copernicus as if the cosmos were some huge machine. It would augur success for Ahriman’s temptings if people were to persist in merely calculating the revolutions of the heavenly bodies, in studying astro physics for the sole purpose of ascertaining the material composition of the planets–an achievement of which the modern world is so proud. But woe betide if the Copernicanism is not confronted by the knowledge that the cosmos is permeated by soul and spirit. It is this knowledge that Ahriman, in preparing his earthly incarnation, wants to withhold. He would like to keep people so obtuse that they can grasp only the mathematical aspect of astronomy. Therefore he tempts many people to carry into effect their repugnance to knowledge concerning soul and spirit in the cosmos.
