Frost giant

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Frost giants (also ice giants) are gnomes enlarged to the size of giants who have exceeded the limits of their actual sphere of action in the root kingdom of plants.

„In the roots of plants, the nature spirits work beneficently within the limits assigned to them by the sun and moon. But they can wrest themselves from these limits. That which in the root draws together the salts of the earth in order to assimilate them into the form of the plant can leave the boundaries of the plant, make itself independent. Then it proliferates into the gigantic. Instead of the narrow root being, it takes hold of the vastness of natural events. It lives in the products of frost, in the wild effects that emanate from the cold of the earth. The root spirits grow into the giants of ripeness and frost. What in the leaf the shaping of the plant brings into the air lives, emancipated from its narrow limits, as storm and wind giants. And what in the blossom and fruit the plant releases to the power of the sun becomes, growing independently, the giants of fire.

Thus a view of nature once arose in the European North which saw the giants of frost, storm and fire where today "forces of nature" are seen.“ (Lit.:GA 227, p. 363f)

The Druids drew their knowledge of healing from the spiritual observation of the elementary beings who are confined within their natural limits and those who transcend these limits:

„One notices this best when one points to what was present as a kind of healing science among these Druid priests. They saw, on the one hand, the elementary beings banished to their limits in the various productions of the mineral, especially of the vegetable kingdom, and so on. Now they observed what happens to the plants when they are exposed, let us say, to frost, when they are exposed to the effects which the storm-giants, the wind-giants carry through the airspace, when they are exposed to the boiling of the fire-giants. And by studying what the giants of frost, the giants of storm, the giants of fire released, would do to the plants, they came to take plants in their way and to imitate within certain limits that which is indicated in nature as giant effects: to subject the plants to a certain process, the process of freezing, the process of cooling, the process of burning, the process of dissolving and binding.

And so these Druid priests said to themselves: Let us look out into nature and see the devastating effects of the frost giants, the storm giants, the fire giants. But we can take from these giants, these Jötunns, that which they spread clumsily over the world, we can snatch it from them. We can in turn banish these released lunar forces into narrower confines.

And by doing this, by studying what takes place in the thawing earth, what takes place in the storm, in the wind, in the boiling of the heat of the sun, by studying this and applying it to the sunlike thing that lived in the plants and which they received in their initiation, they produced their remedies, healing herbs and the like, which were based on reconciling the giants with the gods.

Every remedy in those days was a testimony to the reconciliation of the enemies of the gods with the gods themselves. A foodstuff was that which was taken up directly under the influence of the sun and moon, as it presented itself in nature. A remedy was that which man produced by continuing nature, by taming the giant power in order to place it at the service of the solar power.“ (Lit.:GA 228, p. 111f)

See also

Literature
References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated.
Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com.
Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books
A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works
Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English.
Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold
steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA)
Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.
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