Horse

Two young Nokota horses (North Dakota)

Horses

Donkey

Grévy's zebra

Horses (Latin: Equus) are odd-toed ungulates and form the only surviving genus of the originally much richer family Equidae, which, as the numerous fossil finds suggest, spread from what is now North America. The genus Equus, which according to palaeontological and genetic findings developed in the Pliocene around 3.4 - 3.9 million years ago, i.e. in the later Atlantic period, includes - as horses in the narrower sense - the wild horses, including the domestic horses domesticated in Central Asia from around 3000 BC, as well as the donkeys and zebras.

The horse in the narrower sense is an imaginative picture of human intelligence, whose various stages of development are represented in the Apocalypse of John by the four apocalyptic horsemen and their horses. According to Rudolf Steiner, in the course of the earth's and humanity's evolution, the human being put the horse out of himself and was only able to gradually learn to use his mind, which was bound to the physical brain, because he had now grown out of the centaur, as it were. The oldest representatives of the genus Homo, whose last surviving species is the modern human (Homo sapiens) fossilised in Africa for about 300,000 years, appeared about 2.5 to 1.5 million years ago (Homo rudolfensis and Homo habilis).

The donkey is a symbol of the physical body that also appears frequently in fairy tales (cf. for example The Town Musicians of Bremen). Philosophers, who make use of the intellect, are often depicted with imaginative donkey ears, which at the same time are also a symbol - by no means a derogatory one - for the inspiration from which they draw in their thinking. When the first four apocalyptic seals are opened at the end of the seven post-Atlantean cultural epochs, after the war of all against all, the lower nature of man, represented by the horse, must finally be overcome and human intelligence spritualised. It will then no longer be bound to the physical tool of the brain.

„In some areas, the ancient Germans considered the horse an object of worship. They planted a horse's skull as a symbol on their houses. The choice of such a symbol shows that they had a very specific relationship with the horse. Where did this come from? The horse only came into being at a very specific time. In the middle of the Atlantean period this species of animal appeared, gradually of course. This coincided with the development of cleverness. Even if man did not make this particularly clear in terms of concepts, he had a comparative attraction to the horse like a lover to his beloved. The Arab still has a special relationship with his horse. Some references can be found in mythology. Thus the cleverness of Odysseus devised a wooden horse.“ (Lit.:GA 97, p. 293f)

„The one who directs the clairvoyant gaze to the environment asks: To what fact do we owe the fact that we humans have become intelligent? To what animal form did we put forth in order to become intelligent? - Strange and grotesque as it may seem, it is true: If it were not for the animals around us, represented by the horse nature, man would never have been able to acquire intelligence.

Man still felt this in earlier times. All the intimate relations that take place between certain races of man and the horse stem from a feeling that can be compared to the mysterious feeling of love between the two sexes, from a certain feeling for what man owes to this animal. Therefore, when the new culture arose in ancient Indian times, it was a horse that played a mysterious role in the cultus, in the service of the gods, and everything that is connected with the horse in terms of customs can be traced back to this fact. If you look around at peoples who were still close to the old clairvoyance, the old Teutons for example, and see how they have placed horse skulls in front of their houses, it leads you back to this consciousness: man has outgrown the unintelligent state by having separated this form. There is a deep awareness that the attainment of intelligence is connected with this. You need only remember Ulysses, the wooden horse of Troy. Oh, there is deep wisdom in such legends, much deeper wisdom than in our science. It is not for nothing that such a type is used in the saga as the horse type. Man has grown out of a form which, as it were, still had within it that which is embodied in the horse, and in the form of the centaur art has still portrayed a man as he was connected with this animal, in order to remind us of the stage of development of man from which he has grown out, from which he has broken away in order to become the man of today.“ (Lit.:GA 104, p. 95f)

The domestication of horses did not take place until the Egyptian-Chaldean period, when man formed the sentient soul and with it a stronger degree of self-consciousness.

„If we study the laws of Hammurabi [† 1750 B.C.], we find that he does not yet mention the horse among the tamed domestic animals. But it appeared in cultural life immediately afterwards. However, Hammurabi mentions donkeys and cattle, and a little after his time the horse is first called the "donkey of the hill country" in the documents. The horse is called the donkey of the hill country because it was brought over from the mountainous east. Peoples who pushed their way from Asia into the Chaldean region brought the horse with them, and with it the warlike element appeared. We first see this warlike element born in an older time; but we see it further developed when the horse was tamed in addition to the other animals. And this, too, is connected with the state of the soul of man at that time. We can say that man did not sit on the horse earlier and strengthen his individuality, as it were, by chaining an animal to himself in his own movement, than until he had awakened to this degree of self-consciousness, as it was expressed in the pictorial imagination of the Chaldeans, as it was inwardly expressed in the dreamlike life of the Egyptians. So intimately are the external conditions of the development of mankind connected with that which is the metamorphosis of the soul's constitution in the successive epochs, that one can say: on the one side the building of the pyramids and on the other the taming of the horse; they express, seen externally, the third cultural epoch, the Chaldaean-Egyptian, and internally this is connected with the emergence of instinctive imaginative experience.“ (Lit.:GA 325, p. 112f)

„Let us suppose that a present-day philosopher, such an ordinary university professor, were - it would be a small miracle, but let us suppose that the miracle were to happen - to come five minutes by some inspiration to put the question to the spiritual world whether he was a real philosopher by inner profession. What do you think would be the approximate answer? He would have an imagination, and this imagination would be the right answer, only one must interpret imaginations in the right sense. Really, I am not telling you anything that has not been there in innumerable cases. For such a philosopher would get the answer by having donkey's ears put on him. And from this imagination he would have to interpret himself: So I am a real philosopher. - This is not a joke, but is based on the fact that certain ideas which are of such and such a nature on this physical plane are the very opposite on the spiritual plane. To have donkey's ears is no distinction on the physical plane; in the spiritual world to have donkey's ears as an imagination is worth much more than the highest order on the physical plane for any professor of philosophy.“ (Lit.:GA 177, p. 111)

Literature

• Ernst-Michael Kranich: Wesensbilder der Tiere. Einführung in die goetheanistische Zoologie. 2. Aufl., Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 978-3-772-51554-5
• Wolfgang Schad: Säugetiere und Mensch: Ihre Gestaltbiologie in Raum und Zeit, Verlag Freies Geistesleben, Stuttgart 2012, ISBN 978-3772511509
• Rudolf Steiner: Das christliche Mysterium, GA 97 (1998), ISBN 3-7274-0970-3 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Die Apokalypse des Johannes, GA 104 (1985), ISBN 3-7274-1040-X English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Die spirituellen Hintergründe der äußeren Welt. Der Sturz der Geister der Finsternis, GA 177 (1999), ISBN 3-7274-1771-4 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Die Naturwissenschaft und die weltgeschichtliche Entwickelung der Menschheit seit dem Altertum, GA 325 (1989), ISBN 3-7274-3250-0 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org

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.