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Before we embark on a description of further phenomena which testify to the cosmic nature of the forces with which we are here concerned, it will be well (following a principle applied before) to establish the historical antecedents of the conception of the universe we are about to develop.
We realize that the type of force with which we are here seeking to become familiar is the one responsible for the existence of what we commonly call 'soul'. The creation of a body-bound soul, however, is only one particular form of the activity of these forces. Another is the one which we have just seen manifest in the plant. In yet another way the same forces function as movers and stirrers of the macro-telluric processes of the earth, and beyond this of the happenings in the body of our planetary system, including the movements of the various planets.
This is an aspect which was by no means unfamiliar to ancient man. It was naturally lost when the onlooker-consciousness awoke. In this respect it is of historical significance that the same man, G. A. Borelli (1608-79), a member of the Florentine Academy, who was the first to inquire into the movements of the animal and human body from a purely mechanical point of view, made the first attempt to deduce the planetary movements from a purely physical cause.3 Through this fact an impulse comes to expression which we may term Contra Animam, and against which we have to put our Pro Anima, in much the same way that we put our Pro Levitate against the Contra Levitatem call of the Florentine Academicians.
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It will help our further descriptions if we introduce at this point the name which Rudolf Steiner adopted for the type of forces we are concerned with here. In view of the fact that their origin lies in the extra-terrestrial realm of the universe, he called them 'astral' forces, thereby giving back to this term, also, its true and original meaning. It is under this name that we shall speak of them henceforth. To make ourselves more familiar with the character of the astral forces, it will be well to observe them first of all in their macrotelluric form of activity.
There is, as already mentioned, the rhythmic occurrence of the seasons in connexion with the varying relative positions of earth and sun. Alongside this we may put the rhythm of the tides, coincident with the phases of the moon. Just as the solar rhythm manifests in an alternating rise and fall of the saps in the plants, so also does the lunar rhythm.4 (Note how this fact actually vitiates the usual explanation that the tidal rhythm of the sea is caused by a gravitational pull exerted by the moon's body on the oceanic water.) In neither instance is the change of position of the relevant cosmic body - in our examples that of the sun or moon in relation to the earth - the 'cause' of the corresponding rhythmic events on the earth. Together with all other rhythmic events of equal periodicity, it is itself the effect of the activity of a force-sphere constituting the cosmic realm to which the relevant planetary body belongs.
From this statement three major questions arise, which need to be answered before we can carry on our description of the astral forces themselves:
Firstly, by the way we have spoken of the varying relations of the sun and moon to the earth, seeing in them the effects of certain astral activities, we have treated them as if they were of like nature, namely, resulting from a movement of the relevant heavenly body round the earth. According to the Copernican conception, however, only the moon rotates round the earth, whereas the apparent yearly progression of the sun is actually caused by the earth's motion round the sun. This raises the question of how far the Copernican, heliocentric aspect is valid in a science which strives to embrace the astral realm of the universe in its inquiries.
Secondly, what roles do the other members of our planetary system play as compared with those of the sun and the moon?