World Historical Cosmic Systems

World Historical Cosmic Systems:
Heliocentricity Versus Geocentricity
Even as I have received of my Father. And I will give him the morning star. -Rev 2:27-28
Color Scheme: *Morning Star, ^oSmall Red Planet

SYSTEM		TIME FRAME
Geocentric		Ancient
Saturn Jupiter Mars Sun Venus^o Mercury* Moon Earth	A N C I E N T	According to ancient traditions, including Aristotle, the sequence of the spheres surrounding the Earth begins with the Moon Sphere, followed by the spheres of Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Ptolemy used this (Ancient) sequence in his "Almagest," his study of the movement of each planet against the background of the fixed stars. Ptolemy's study, however, was not intended to show the size of the spheres in relation to each other. (The Spiritual Hierarchies and the Physical World, Rudolf Steiner, Page 255 (Appendix, Georg Unger))
Name Change		After Christ (AD), Mercury and Venus names were reversed.
Saturn Jupiter Mars Sun Venus* Mercury^o Moon Earth		What is the reason for this exchange of names? In his 1908 cycle, The Apocalypse of Saint John (page 71), speaking of the "Morning Star," Rudolf Steiner mentions that, after the Mystery of Golgotha, the decision was made in the Mysteries to veil a certain occult truth, making use of a "mask." In this case, the simplified instruction was given "to exchange the names of Mercury and Venus." In mentioning this, Rudolf Steiner said, he was exposing a "minor occult secret." (Ibid., Page 256 (Georg Unger))
Ptolemaic		2nd Century AD, Ptolemy used ancient system without (apparently) knowing names had been reversed.
Saturn Jupiter Mars Sun Venus* Mercury^o Moon Earth		Without now going into the very complicated question of the "transposition of Mercury and Venus" in detail, it can be shown here how it happens that both Ptolemy and Copernicus called the same star "Venus" while giving it a different place in the sequence. We must also remember that the Ptolemaic system did not actually take the spatial relationships into consideration, but rather the temporal relationship and similarity of rhythms that arise from them. Thus Mercury is found to revolve in its epicycle in less time than Venus does, and from this point of view is therefore the nearest to the stationary Earth. Ptolemy was far from considering relative distance of the planets from the Earth or the Sun, establishing instead merely the order of the spheres. That Mercury must be the planet nearest the Earth, and then Venus, is borrowed from tradition, and this tradition is one that originated in the Mysteries. (Ibid., Page 252 (Elisabeth Vreede))
Heliocentric		15th Century AD, Copernicus switched Sun with Earth/Moon.
Saturn Jupiter Mars Earth/Moon Venus* Mercury^o Sun		Later, when the shift occurred to the Copernican system, all the planets were shown to circle the Sun. The popularity of this view was increased by Copernicus' contemporary, Rheticus, who suggested putting the Earth and the Moon where the Sun had been in the Ptolemaic model, while moving the Sun to where the Earth had been. This journalistic simplification contributed greatly to the rapid acceptance of the Copernicus system long before Galileo had found serious proof of it. (Ibid., Page 256 (Georg Unger))
Esoteric		20th Century AD, Rudolf Steiner brings back the ancient esoteric system.
Saturn Jupiter Mars Earth/Moon Venus* Mercury^o Sun	P R E S E N T	According to Steiner, in ancient times, due to a particular change in the perspective from which the order of the interior planets is observed (i.e., from Earth or from Sun), as Powell says, "the names of Venus and Mercury became interchanged, so that esoterically considered the orbit of the Earth lies between that of Mars and Mercury* (presently called Venus). In the light of this consideration the validity of the designation of the two halves of Earth evolution as 'Mars' and 'Mercury' can be seen. (The Burning Bush, Edward Smith, page 568) You may still find in certain books of the Middle Ages, which describe the true state of affairs, that the stars of our planetary system are enumerated thus: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, and then Earth is followed not as it is now by Venus, Mercury^o, but by the reverse, Mercury*, Venus^o. (The Apocalypse of St. John, Rudolf Steiner, page 71)
Geocentric		20th Century AD, Rudolf Steiner brings back the ancient geocentric system.
Saturn Jupiter Mars Sun Venus^o Mercury* Moon Earth		Thus there is much at stake behind this question of the transposition of Mercury and Venus. Above all, what is at issue is the true relation between the Earth and the Sun--heliocentricity and geocentricity. Phenomenology, medieval alchemy, spiritual vision all point to the spiritual reality of geocentricity... (The Spiritual Hierarchies and the Physical World, Page 254 (Georg Unger))
Celestro-Centric?		What does the future hold?
Saturn Jupiter Mars Sun Venus^o Mercury* Moon Earth	F U T U R E ?	The modern view holds that, before Copernicus, people talked nonsense and had a primitive cosmic system, but since 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. (Ibid., Page 101)

"If human beings will but bring the spirit into the conceptions of Space once more, humanity can conquer a new portion of the universe for the Gods." -The Archangel Michael by Rudolf Steiner (page 197)