GA 208 · the elements
Anthroposophy builds the whole human being from the cosmos in three registers: the form from the twelve form-principles, the life from the seven spheres, and the fourfold members each seeking their own sphere. Every element below is its own reading, and each opens a door back into your own chart.
Anthroposophy shows the human form built through twelve cosmic gestures, one per sign of the zodiac (GA 208, Lecture IV); and the twelve senses answering to them (Lecture VIII). Not animal pictures but forming-gestures. Each is its own reading.
Aries–Cancer. The head is given from the whole cosmos; it looks back, moves within, touches itself, encloses itself.
Leo–Scorpio. The middle human forms itself in balance between stars and earth: filling, ripening, balancing, resisting.
Sagittarius–Pisces. Formed through the four primal earthly activities; here the stars work only as covered by the earth.
Human life unfolds in seven stages, each a planet modifying the Sun’s light-life-love so a life-process can arise (GA 208, Lecture V). Each is its own reading.
Each member of the human being seeks a different sphere of the cosmos (GA 208, Lecture VIII) — and the human being always moves one sphere beyond where the animal stays bound.
the polyhedral (crystal) form
The physical body tends toward the polyhedral, crystalline form and relates to the Moon; in the human being this is lifted out of direct bodily configuration and raised into conscious mathematical and geometrical picturing.
the spherical form
The etheric body tends toward the sphere, imitating the Earth itself as the plant world does; the human head partially realises this rounded, living form.
the pocket (sac) form
The astral body adds the "pocket" or sac-form to the sphere; the eye-sockets, nasal cavities, the digestive tract; produced by the planets working against the earth-forces (Saturn, Jupiter, Mars each "sack" differently).
the filled pocket; the senses
The I belongs to what lies beyond the zodiac: it is the filling of the sense-pockets, the twelve senses, that marks the human being off from the animal, whose whole nature is exhausted within the zodiac.
Source: Cosmosophy, Volume II (GA 208), Lectures IV, V and VIII (Dornach, 1921). A designed contemplative reworking, faithful to the lectures. Nothing here is medical, predictive, or deterministic; tropical signs name fields of work, not identity, and are kept distinct from the fixed-star constellations and the nine hierarchies.