On Determinism and Free Will

Ex Deo Nascimur       In Christo Morimur       Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus

"Spirit triumphant! Flame through the weakness of timid, fainthearted souls! Burn up egoism, kindle compassion, so that selflessness, the lifestream of humanity, may flow as the wellspring of spiritual rebirth!" — Rudolf Steiner


The conclusion to Rudolf Steiner's lecture "The Spiritual Individualities of the Planets" given July 27, 1923:


Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn may also be called the liberating planets; they give the human being freedom. On the other hand Venus, Mercury, and the Moon may be called the destiny-determining planets.

In the midst of all these deeds and impulses of the planetary individualities stands the Sun, creating harmony between the liberating and the destiny-determining planets. The Sun is the individuality in whom the element of necessity in destiny and the element of human freedom interweave in a most wonderful way. And no one can understand what is contained in the flaming brilliance of the Sun unless they are able to behold this interweaving life of destiny and freedom in the light which spreads out into the universe and concentrates again in the solar warmth.

Nor can we grasp anything essential about the nature of the Sun as long as we take in only what the physicists know of it. We can grasp the nature of the Sun only when we know something of its nature of spirit and soul. In that realm it is the power which imbues with warmth the element of necessity in destiny, resolves destiny into freedom in its flame, and if freedom is misused, condenses it once more into its own active substance. The Sun is as it were the flame in which freedom becomes a luminous reality in the universe; and at the same time the Sun is the substance in which, as condensed ashes, misused freedom is molded into destiny—until destiny itself can become luminous and pass over into the flame of freedom.