The Embroidery of the Spirit

The invisible weaving of life, evolution, and matter

“In the tides of Life, in Action's storm,
A fluctuant wave,
A shuttle free,
Birth and the Grave, 
An eternal sea, 
A weaving, flowing 
Life, all-glowing; 
Thus at Time's humming loom ‘tis my hand prepares 
The garments of Life which the Divinity weaves.” - Goethe, Faust

If we imagine a great circumference of an early stage of our solar system, it might have extended like an enormous egg-like shape, beyond the orbit of any of our current planets–an enormous cloud. This was the original circumference of the Sun. As its threads tightened, it became smaller, and its circumference shrank. Much like a magnifying glass can concentrate light from a wide area to a smaller one, so we can imagine the Sun doing the same, radiating the light of space back to itself. We might imagine that the larger circumference has now condensed into the space of the Sun we see, its surface like a great mirror releasing all the light from a much greater circumference.

The brightness of the Sun is accomplished by its negative character. It is not a black hole, where not even light can escape, but it is on the same spectrum. Imagine a black hole as space bent onto itself, but not so much so that light cannot escape. When this happens, we get a star instead of a black hole. The glyph for the Sun☉is not a convenient symbol, but it is rich with esoteric significance. The circle is the greater sphere from which the Sun is compressed to a point, a point that is “nothing” but negative space, almost as if millions of miles of space were compressed into a single point. The sun’s brightness in this image would result from millions of cubic miles of radiant energy shining out of a collapsed space. It is as if this massive circumference were wrapped tightly like a ball of yarn. Thus, from a central concentrated point, we actually have the diffuse peripheral cosmic radiations arising from the heart of our solar system as our Sun.

As Steiner puts it, “The Sun must be conceived as a hollowing-out, shall we say, of cosmic matter, a hollow space, a hollow sphere, — a sphere enveloped by matter, — in contrast to the Earth where we have denser matter enveloped by more attenuated [matter].”¹ This is not to say that the Sun is actually a pure empty space, but rather a Gordian knot of space-time. If it had been too much bigger, a black hole would have formed. Imagine all the light streaming from the stars increased a millionfold. That is the amount of “hollow” space-time folded into what we see as the Sun. 

This leads to an enormous amount of activity and even the fusion of new substances on the Sun’s surface. According to secular science, it takes 100,000 years for a beam of light to reach the surface of the Sun. Now, their explanation claims that the Sun gets ever more dense towards its core. This does not contradict Steiner’s observation that the core of the Sun is “hollow,” if we consider this as the light of space-time folded into one point. 

When the Sun was at a much earlier stage, it contained all planets within itself as potential, but none of them had been actualized out of its original circumference yet. A useful image of this primordial unity of the cosmos can be seen in what is best known as the “hieroglyphic monad.” This is often credited to the person who most recently popularized the symbol, but that is neither here nor there. The image of the fertile chaos of the primordial universe had long existed in alchemical texts in a more symbolic form, but the meaning was already there. As with many things esoteric, there is a tendency, over time, for hidden things to be made more explicit.

In the monad glyph, we see an image of seed “chaos” in which all the planets are not yet fully differentiated.

This is the kind of “chaos” to which seeds must strive. Our solar system was once such a “seed” of unformed potential, of chaos. The earth itself was undifferentiated then, as were all the other planets.² As it is written, “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” (Genesis 1:2)

These differentiated planetary threads of the Spirit are like weavings of space-time. We can only see their outermost expression with our eyes, the most external aspect of that inner working. It is as if matter itself forms the knots at the end of invisible threads of the etheric that the Spirit takes in its hands. The astral movements using up this etheric thread drag the etheric along behind it. When the thread runs out, it is as if the Spirit ties a knot, which becomes new matter -- the dead end of a formerly living process. In seed peppers, where we burn a seed, we remove the seed’s dynamic aspiration to return to the Spirit but leave behind its blind hunger. In a way, in the sense-perceptible physical world, we are always seeing only the backside of a much more beautifully embroidered broach. 

Embroidery front

Embroidery back, photo Credit:  https://kate-and-rose.com/blogs/blog/about-the-back-of-embroidery​​

The spiritual world brings coherence to what we see, but the sense-perceptible world and its apparent discordance can be hard to reconcile sometimes. Materialism errs by confusing the backside for the front. Any approach limited to the wrong side of the weavings of the Spirit will inevitably find itself at dead ends. To try to understand the spiritual world merely by physical elements is like trying to see the coherence of embroidery without ever turning it over to see the unifying picture. To be sure, we can get close, but it will always remain a sketchy image compared to unifying idea itself. The  right unifying spiritual concept gives wholeness to otherwise fragmentary chemical processes. 

As such, many of secular science’s observations are quite accurate because, at many points, the weaving of the Spirit is more obvious than at other points. The etheric thread does little by itself, and the astral movement of the needle does not happen by itself, nor do the physical knots appear by themselves; they are all driven by a unifying aspiration towards a spiritual template that guides each stitch. 

The canvas on which the Spirit weaves, using its etheric thread and astral movements, is itself composed of threads from the past. As today’s plants become tomorrow’s topsoil, what is woven today becomes the canvas of the future. But if the physical canvas is not strong enough, the weaving of the etheric threads pinches too tightly, and the embroidery collapses on itself. Likewise, if the physical canvas is too dense, it becomes harder for the etheric to penetrate properly and requires greater effort to make the same stitches. If the thread is too short, the produced image may appear stunted. If the movements of the needle are not deft enough and delicate enough, this can damage the picture or snap the thread. The physical canvas needs to be strong enough, but the thread must also be long enough while not being too long. If there is excessive ethericity, this is like hanging loops of thread, unable to be pulled tight even by the full length of the arm of the Spirit. These lead to tangles and loose stitches. 

If there is no connection to a spiritual template to aspire to, the workings are far less likely to be coherent. The spirit, the astral, the etheric, and the physical must all work together just as there must be a template, willful movements to direct the thread, the right length of thread (and the right colors!), and a suitable canvas on which to embroider. Likewise, in the garden, we need the right minerals, the right amount and kinds of vitality, a corresponding astral will to pull the etheric into place, and a connection to a spiritual form towards which these can aspire. 

Life on earth is a reflection of the life of the cosmos. What emerged last in material form first originated as a spiritual idea, though it took aeons to manifest phyiscally. This is why Adam was made on the sixth day, after all the other processes had been established and internalized. The final image displayed by embroidery is not “last” except in the sense of telos, which, in ancient Greek, can mean “end” and “goal” and “death” and even “marriage.” All the working along the way to the human being was the goal all along, not an accidental byproduct of a mindless process. There were many rough sketches, but if we see evolution as the human being coming into ever greater clarity, we will see more clearly our special place in the history of life.

First, a canvas had to be woven out of the pure chaos of the cosmos, but this descended from pure energy to gasses, then from gasses to fluids, and only finally did it become solid enough to be the basis of the apparent “ascent” of life through evolution. As Rilke says in his Duino Elegies, “all this was mission.” None of it was without purpose, nor did human beings merely arise from apes because we appeared after them. 

If you have a rough sketch alongside a finished image, you cannot say the sketch is ontologically prior to the final image, even if it is technically chronologically prior. On the contrary, the final image is the future cause towards which the embroidery has been striving. 

Only finally is an embroidered image finished after countless tiny revisions. This is the relationship of the macrocosmic image of mankind to evolution. Over time it can appear that we have climbed upwards, and in a sense, this is true, but what are we approaching? We are approaching the image that inspired all of this in the first place. In theological circles, this is referred to as the imago dei, the image of God that all human beings share in common. We are a microcosmic image of a macrocosmic working.

Similarly, every plant has its “constellation” in the cosmos of which it is a developing reflection. As a plant evolves, it gets closer to the template it aspires to manifest. There may even be false starts and dead ends, as is often the case with embroidery and evolution. Still, the aspirational idea preexisted the evolving impulse reflecting it back to its originator. Knowing how to treat a plant (or a person) correctly presumes familiarity with the macrocosm and whether or not that individual aligns with the macrocosmic form. 

When you handle plants, imagine the delicacy with which the Spirit coaxed these forms into being.

You hold an entire universe in the palm of your hand.