realm so that the etheric bodies of the multitudinous creatures of the
kingdoms of nature could be created."
Fire, source of all the other elements, is attributed to the cosmic sac-
rifice of "thrones," or spirits of will. "The Thrones reached such an
exalted state of development they were able to let the heat substance
stream from their own bodies, like silk-worms spinning threads from
their bodies." Without the thrones, says Steiner, there would be no
physical world at all. Thrones also produced as offspring the spiritual
beings that became the devas of minerals, enduring and conservative
powers that because of their high descent have, as Hodson was quick
to discover, a high state of consciousness.As Steiner elucidates: "Colors
in flower and leaf glow forth but pass away; the red of carnelian and the
green of emerald endure as long as the earth."
But because these rarefied spiritual beings cannot directly affect
things on the material plane-owing to their higher level conscious-
ness-angels, archangels, and archai, members of the Third Hierarchy,
are obliged to use the services of nature spirits, who are equipped for
directly handling the four ethers on earth to create all kinds of crea-
tures and creations, and through them the material world. So, while the
devas of mineral, plant, and animal were being separated from the First
and Second Hierarchies, nature spirits were being exuded from the
etheric substance of the Third Hierarchy. From the life-ether of archai
appeared a multitude of gnomes; from the chemical-ether exuded by
archangels waves of undines; from the light-ether provided by angels,
flights of sylphs. Salamanders, or fire spirits, for some arcane reason, are
described as deriving from the warmth-ether exuded from the devas of
animals, in turn detached from the dynamis of the Second Hierarchy.'
But all these beings produced by the Third Hierarchy should not,
says Steiner, be properly called nature spirits because they have-as
yet-no spirit, only body and soul. (By soul he means an astral body; by
spirit a ruling ego as yet not developed.) Kather than nature spirits, says
- Some salamanders, says Steiner, can originate from detached parts of animal
group-souls that dare to enter too far into the physical world, becoming overly
attached to a human being, such as a horse to its rider, a sheep to its shepherd, any
pet to its owner.