Infrared


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Ultraviolet


It does not break off at the red but becomes warmer and warmer until there is no light but only heat (infrared). On the other side similarly, when we no longer have light there is only chemical action (ultraviolet). Both are effects manifesting in matter.

Goethe's theory was that there were not seven colors, but twelve, in circular form. When the circle was made sufficiently large, the portion visible to an outside observer became practically a straight line in such manner that only the lower seven colors were visible, with the extremes fading out into Darkness. The color opposite the green was peach-blossom, the color of human skin.²⁵ See the diagram below:



Is there not a precise analogy and parallel between the heat and light phenomena, as presented above? Human senses detect only a middle band of materiality in the one case, or colors, in the other. And do not both present us with the divine numbers seven and twelve? For we gauge our material sound waves, an earthly reflection of the long separated sound (or chemical) ether, on a normal scale of seven notes and a chromatic (meaning color) scale of twelve. Did we not perceive the sound ether (the Word of God?) in the garden during the Fall (Gen 3,10), even as it was being separated from us in our descending materiality?

But we cannot stop at either X or solid bodies, for these do not close up the circle of which our materiality is but a sensate band. Steiner goes on.

It is not difficult to see that we can go beyond X to a Y and a Z realm, just as in the light spectrum we move from green to blue, blue to violet and then to ultraviolet. And to be consistent, we can then postulate a realm U below the solid on the basis that it must in like manner as above give us a picture (image) of the solid realm. Thus:

Z
Y
X	Materialization—Dematerialization
Heat region
Gaseous bodies	Rarefaction—Condensation
Fluid bodies
Solid bodies	Form
U

To that end, let us go back momentarily to the fluid. Its enclosed surface level shows its relationship to the entire Earth. The gravity thus active in it is a force akin to the creation of the form of solids. In the U realm we must find something that happens similarly to the form-building in the world of solids that would parallel the picturing of the fluid world by solids—an action that foreshadows the various formations of the solid world.

According to Steiner, the U realm is that of polarization. Under the influence of the form-building force, something appears in the U realm that creates form in the realm of solids just as gravity forms only the surface in the fluid realm. It is what he calls polarization figures. One can study the normal texts (e.g., 9 Brit 556, "polarization," and 26 Brit 474, "Radiation … Wave aspects of light") and find polarization "explained" by the wave theory of light. While there is a certain practical utility in this approach, Steiner denies the reality of the wave theory, as we shall see more fully in the "Light" essay below. Arthur Zajonc, professor of physics at Amherst College and also a prominent anthroposophist, in his Catching the Light, The Entwined History of Light and Mind (CLT), tells us that Augustin Fresnel explained polarization through his theory that light waves were transverse in contrast to the longitudinal compressions and rarefactions of sound waves (pp. 116-118). But Zajonc says that more recently science has discovered problems with this theory of polarization that simply have not yet been solved (pp. 311-316). It would seem that the existing state of perplexity on the matter vindicates the assertion by Steiner early in the twentieth century. He said that while nineteenth-century physics (still maintained in common textbooks) determined (based upon an erroneous wave theory) that light itself gives rise to the phenomenon of polarization, in reality it only makes the phenomenon visible. This is consistent with the present state of perplexity among those who have delved into it most deeply, as indicated by Zajonc's book. To comprehend polarization figures, Steiner says, one must seek an entirely different source than the light itself, for what is taking place has nothing to do with it. It simply penetrates and makes visible what is going on there as a foreshadowing of the solid form.

Returning to the so-called spectrum, we saw that beyond the infrared and the ultraviolet we passed into infinity—to the point Goethe saw as being peach-blossom in color. So also do the X, Y and Z realms pass into infinity in one direction while at the opposite end the U realm passes into infinity in the other. But before we depict it as Steiner seemed to suggest, let us, as he also suggested, consider the rainbow. A remarkable thing about the rainbow is that it is never just one bow. There is always a second, even when it is not very obvious. The two belong together. Their meaning as phenomenon is missed unless they are considered as components of a single picture. And the imperative for understanding the picture is to give due consideration to the fact that the second rainbow always reverses its colors from those of the first. They head off in different directions, the ultraviolet escaping from the top of one and the bottom of the other. Nature presents us this picture as an integral portion of the entire universe—and we must so comprehend it. The second rainbow converts the phenomenon into a closed system so to speak. It is as though the first rainbow has run around to the other side of a transparent sphere and shown itself to us again, albeit more weakly and with its colors appearing thus reversed. But if the sevens become twelves, there is still the hint of the peach-blossom falling in between the two in the invisible portion of the sphere.

Science is still bewitched by what it calls "rays of light." As a practical matter, light manifests in ways, i.e., optical laws, that seem to work in accordance with the existence of rays, and yet their nature otherwise remains a total mystery—for they seem to behave with effect, and manifest, in a material world without themselves having any materiality. But using drawings of these putative rays, science explains how the rainbow comes into existence by primary and then secondary reflections within millions of individual raindrops so that seeing the rainbow depends on where one stands in relation it. Excellent illustrations are given in 9 Brit 906, "rainbow," and in CLT, pp. 169 and 176, and they complement one another for fuller understanding.

Zajonc's book gives an excellent portrayal of how human beings of all walks have been fascinated from primeval times by the rainbow. And the Bible student must surely recall its first appearance to Noah (Gen 9,13-17). Less memorable but equally remarkable are its appearances in Revelation. At that early stage of insight when to John's clairvoyance the four corners of the twelvefold zodiacal heavens appeared (Rev 4,7) and the crystallization of the waters began (Rev 4,6), a rainbow had appeared (Rev 4,3) in the midst of the twenty-four elders (reflective of twelve²⁶). And it was only then that the "seven torches of fire" appeared that presaged the descent of the human being into materiality. We have the seven colors that appear to the senses, but hidden from the senses are the five others, including the peach-blossom of archetypal human skin.

We come again to the rainbow in Rev 10,1, between the blowing of the sixth and seventh trumpets(see "Trumpet[s]" in The Burning Bush), the final age before humanity will leave the Physical Condition of Form. It speaks of the seven thunders, but the days are approaching when it will speak of the "twelve stars" (Rev 12,1) and then all of the twelvefoldness of the "new heaven and new earth" (Rev 21-22).

The rainbow and the so-called spectrum present seven colors to our senses, but just as the biblical sevens become twelves, so also is the mystic rainbow twelvefold, with peach-blossom on the far side still hidden from our earthly perception.

Fire, Page 7

Fire, Page 9