Old Moon

Old Moon references the third planetary stage in the evolution of our current solar system, and the previous incarnation of our current planet Earth.

Aspects

Spiritual hierarchies

During this planetary stage of evolution:

• the Spirits of Motion (SoM) sacrificed their substance, and thereby the element-ether combination of water and chemical ether was added to the environment
• as a spin-off of the sacrifice by the SoM, the group souls for the animal kingdom was created
• the differentiation in Spirits of Form during their development on Old Moon is the underlying reason for two evolutionary types or currents in humanity with a different soul constitution, referred to as the streams of Abel and Cain (in terminology from a legend in the Old Testament)
• the angels went through the 'human' experiential stage (1911-06-07-GA015), thereby weaving the soul element or astral body onto Man's bodily structure
• Man itself:
  • had a 'liquid animal'-like nature with a dream picture consciousness, like an 'animal-man' (1904-GA011)
  • at the same time the development of Group souls of humanity took place
  • was breathing warmth, was a fire-breather (1907-11-19-GA100, also see Schema FMC00.238 on I-less human beings)
  • Man was at the level of dream-sleep consciousness (CoC=3) or picture consciousness (1907-06-01-GA099)
    • Man perceived his own inner becoming in the form of pictures which spread out and filled cosmic space, but just represented the work of spiritual beings upon his human organs. There was no distinction between the outer and inner worlds: the outer world was fully working upon Man's inner being and was thus his inner world: what was inside of him was reflected in pictures outside. Hence it was normal for Man to be enveloped in the astral and feel his own development as an external world. (1910-08-23-GA122, see The eye is formed by the light for the light)
• For illustrations, see also Schemas FMC00.147 and FMC00.149 on Man and nature's kingdoms in evolution.

Cosmic evolution

• the contraction from the Old Sun sphere (reaching to the boundary of current Jupiter) to the Old Moon sphere (reaching to the boundary of current Mars) by the SoM caused the so called Fight or War in heaven between advanced and other SoM and gave rise to the Planetoid belt
• The Sun separated off for the first time during the Old Moon evolution. (1904-GA011)
  • It was then that the light was for the first time active from without, but not then as light. The SoF were in the light, but saw it not, was a bearer of the work in cosmic space (1910-08-23-GA122)
  • see schema Schema FMC00.181 and Schema FMC00.182 below for this split into two bodies of Sun' and Old Moon'
• Christ went through the Luciferic temptation on Old Moon, and developed the macroscopic I between Old Sun and the current Earth stages.
• Old Moon is also called the 'planet of wisdom' (1907-11-19-GA100, 1908-05-20-GA103)
  

Other

• the Old Moon environment was characterized by Nitrogen, just as there is an abundance of Oxygen on current Earth (1906-06-11-GA094). Man's predecessors were fire-breathers (1907-06-03-GA099 and 1907-11-19-GA100)
• The Baldur legend and mistletoe as a remnant of Old Moon (1908-06-22-GA104)

Illustrations

Schema FMC00.182 shows the process of the development of group soul prototypes and lower types after the split of Old Moon into two bodies. On Earth, in the Lemurian epoch, these spirits then descended into the physical bodies on Earth.

Schema FMC00.181 gives a view on the transition between Old Moon and current Earth

Lecture coverage and references

1903-GA089 - Draft of a spiritual-scientific cosmology - Fragment from 1903/04

On Moon evolution

In the first Moon cycle it transferred this world of images to the ether body and this then configured the physical body according to those soul images. Whereas at the Sun level the ether body came between physical body and soul as a configurer, so the body of images I have characterized now found its place between ether body and soul. In occult science it is known as the sentient body. For as human inner sentience of the outside world flows inward, as it were, thus making the contents of the outside world something the inner world possessed, so did the images in the body of images act from the inside to the outside, impressing their contents on the ether body which in turn transferred them to the physical body.

During Moon evolution the human being again went seven times through all the form states, letting the soul mature to a higher level in each of them. During the seventh level the soul had the ability to give its images the more perfect form; it was able to enter into the living experience of everything that happened around it on the cosmic body, and its world of images thus reflected the whole Moon world. At the same time it anticipated experience of the highest level of consciousness which would come at the next level; it began to have vision of solid forms within its changing world of images. This made it ready to influence the ether body so that it was able to develop organs in itself that were of a more lasting nature

[Moon evolution]

When Sun had completed its seven cycles, a time came when the human body had developed so far that it was not only able to receive the incoming light into itself and be enlivened by it, but gained the ability to let the world of sound created from the Mights continue to influence it and also to reproduce it in sounds.

• At this level of existence, which is called Moon evolution, the human body itself produced sounds.
• At the Saturn level, a sound reflected to the surrounding world by the planet was merely an echo of its surroundings; now the sound had changed as it went out into those surroundings. It had changed to such effect that it reflected in a wide variety of ways what was happening in human bodies. These human bodies had thus made the sentient body fully part of their essential nature as a third body. For it was their inner nature, their world of feelings, which was expressed in sound.

The seven spirits which had evolved out of the Saturn spirit during Sun evolution had now become seven times seven. The world surrounding them had become such that they had living experience of their own world of feeling in the sentient bodies which had developed. They then felt themselves surrounded by two worlds which were at a lower level and one which was above them. The world above them made itself felt as cosmic aroma coming from cosmic space; they experienced themselves as entities giving sound, and the two realms which were at a lower level had arisen because a region of human bodies had remained at the Saturn level and another at the Sun level.

These Moon spirits were thus surrounded by

• entities that were like automatons and were continuing their Saturn maturation on Moon under conditions which were very different from those which existed on Saturn,
• and also by plant-like Sun bodies which were in a similar position.

Three kinds of entities were thus present in the actual Moon mass.

• The entities which were like automatons, dark in themselves, had still retained the ability from Saturn to let life shine out around them. They were not lifeless the way today's minerals are. There was no mineral basis on Moon like the one we have on Earth. Instead there was a basis consisting of those entities. You can get an idea of them if you think of them endowed with a life that is present in every part of them, so that the mineral soil of our fields would have been a living, porridge-like mass on Moon; woody parts in this mass were like the rock masses found in softer mineral matter here on Earth.
• In this living basis, the parts of which may be called vegetable minerals, the Sun entities I have characterized who were at a level between present-day animals and present-day plants, had taken root. The freely moving entities dwelling on Moon were the human bodies, developmentally halfway between animal and human. They provided dwelling places for the scions of the planetary spirit of Saturn. This spirit would not have been able, however, to develop waking daytime consciousness in them.

The entities always had to go out of the body to live in such a consciousness. When in the body and therefore sharing its life, they only had a consciousness filled with dream images. In this state of consciousness they would not see anything of their physical surroundings, but they let their inner experiences go out into the surrounding world in sound. The passions and desires of the Moon entities were then coming alive as sound during their sleep.

To consider just one example of this living experience, it should be noted that what we call our love life today, which is the basis of procreation, happened during dream-filled sleep on Moon. Waking daytime life was free from desire and, it has to be said, also loveless, given wholly to vision of the surrounding world. The human ancestor on Moon knew nothing of sexual relationships as yet in his daytime life. The place of the feelings people have in sexual love today was taken by dream images which only showed today's factual reality in allegorical form.

On Moon, therefore, it was not the human ancestor who lived in the world of images when awake but the spirits who came immediately above human beings—the Angels. The dream world of the human being was clear daytime reality to them, as it were. They watched over the dreaming human world just as the Archangels had been watching over the Sun world when it was in plant-like sleep.

[Cycles]

The first two Moon cycles were recapitulations of the preceding states of evolution.

• The seven forms of the first cycle recapitulated the seven Saturn cycles, and
• the seven forms of the second the seven Sun cycles.
• During the third Moon cycle the human body had developed so far that the spirits which were at the Archangel level were able to experience its dream images as their environment;
• in the fourth cycle this was then the case for the Angels. The scions of the spirit of the planet Saturn were able to use the human body during this cycle to such a degree that enveloping it from outside they were able to use it to gain clear daytime consciousness.
• By the fifth cycle these spirits had risen to a level where they no longer had need of the physical human body; this then perceived its environs for itself but only reached a lower level of consciousness for these perceptions. Those spirits only had need of the ether body and the sentient body during this time.
• In the sixth cycle they also left the ether body to itself
• and in the seventh the sentient body.

[Second cycle - separation of Sun]

The Moon was a re-embodiment of the Sun planet. At the time when the stage of Sun evolution was recapitulated on Moon, that is, in the second cycle, the Sun body separated from the Moon mass. This separate Sun body was inhabited by the spirits which had assumed a level of consciousness and of life, the conditions for which could not be found on the Moon itself. During the second cycle these spirits were the Powers; they had shared the life of the physical human body during Sun life.

Now, on Moon, this Sun level had a limited, retarded existence in the above-mentioned animal-plants. The Powers could not live in them. Instead they gave those animal-plants life from outside by sending the light they needed to them from the Sun.

[Further cycles]

• During the third Moon cycle the scions of the Spirit of the planet Saturn had also reached a level where they could no longer exist on Moon.
• The Archangels therefore left the Moon in the fourth cycle, and in this space of time this was also the dwelling place of the Angels, as the Earth was later to be in its fourth cycle for human beings.

The other planets had emerged step by step during Sun evolution and did the same now during Moon evolution. Only they were closer to physical existence by another level now, when the Moon was at the height of its evolution, that is from the physical form of its fourth cycle onwards.

• With the fifth cycle, Mars, then inhabited by the Angels, reached a subtle, etheric and physical form;
• with the sixth cycle this happened for Jupiter, dwelling place of the Archangels.
• Finally in the seventh Moon cycle the same also happened for Mercury.

Mars and Jupiter had grown even denser by then, the density of the former being such that it became possible to develop heat by moving its constituents and letting it flow out into cosmic space.

1904-GA011

Cosmic Memory gives a high level overview of the cycles of the Old Moon planetary stage

It is to be understood in this way if the Moon consciousness is now compared with one with which it has some similarity, namely with that of dream-filled sleep. Man attains the so-called image consciousness on the Moon. The Moon is that planet on which man develops the image consciousness with its symbolical character.

1&2 - During the first two cycles (rounds) the Moon development of man is prepared through a kind of repetition of the Saturn and Sun processes.

3 - In the third cycle the human astral body comes into being through an outpouring of the Spirits of Motion. Concurrently with this process the Moon splits off from the re-awakened unified Sun body and revolves around the rest of the Sun. The development of the beings connected with man now takes place on the Moon.

4 - In the fourth cycle the Spirits of Twilight inhabit the human physical body and thereby elevate themselves to the level of humanity. The developing astral body is inoculated with independence by the Spirits of Personality (Asuras).

5 - In the fifth cycle man begins to work in dullness on his physical body. Thereby the "spirit self" (Manas) joins the already existing monad.

In the ether body of man a kind of joy and pain develop during the Moon existence, which have a passive character. In the astral body on the other hand develop the emotions of rage, hate, the instincts, passions, and so forth.

The two former realms, the plant and the mineral realm, which are thrust down to a lower level, are now joined by the animal realm, in which man himself exists at this time.

Toward the end of the whole universal era the Moon approaches more and more closely to the Sun, and when the time of rest (Pralaya) begins, again the two have become united in a whole, which then passes through the stage of sleep in order to awaken in a new universal era, that of the earth.

quote B:

In order that the transformation of Man described here could occur during the Old Moon period, the assistance of a great universal event was needed. The integration of the astral body and the related development of a nervous system in the physical body was only made possible by the fact that what had previously been one body, split into two — into Sun and Moon. The former advanced to the state of a fixed star, the latter remained a planet — which the Sun also had been — and began to circle around the Sun, from which it had split off. Through this a significant transformation took place in everything which lived on Sun and Moon.

1905-10-02-GA093a

covers:

• Development of the beings on the Old Moon. Moon — Cosmos of Wisdom.
• Jehovah a rank of the hierarchies.
• Transition from the Old Moon to the Earth.

1905-10-25-GA093A

It was only in the Fourth Round that the actual Earth existence emerged and then man had reached a somewhat higher stage than on the Old Moon. There he had not yet reached separate development, he had not yet become sufficiently purified to receive the Monad. On the Moon the astral body was still wild and passionate.

...

The last human beings during the Old Moon existence are our physical forefathers. On the Earth they now developed somewhat further. The Earth-men of the pre-Lemurian Age are the actual descendants of the inhabitants of the Moon. This is why we call the inhabitants of the Moon the Fathers or Pitris of Earth-Men.

...

Then, with the third incarnation of the Earth he became a Moon-man. He bent over, the vertical becoming the horizontal (animal). The tendency towards a spine developed. The symbol for this is the Tau = T. On the Earth he turns completely round. For this the symbol is the Cross. The symbolism of the Cross depicts the development from the Sun, through the Moon to the Earth. On the Earth the symbol of the Cross was attained by the addition of the upper vertical member above the T. This developed further in the bearing of the Cross on the shoulders.

...

Then, in the next manvantara - Old Moon - the following took place: out of the darkness of pralaya the Sun emerged. A part of the Sun substance had the urge to detach itself. At first a kind of biscuit formation developed.

[drawing]

Then the one part severed itself completely and the two bodies continued side by side as Sun and Old Moon. The Sun retained the possibility of emitting light and warmth. The Old Moon retained the power of reproduction. It was able to bring forth again the beings who had been on the Sun, but they had to be dependent on the Sun for light and warmth. Because the Old Moon itself possessed no light, the beings had to orientate themselves towards the Sun. All plants therefore completely reversed their position on the Old Moon. The animals turned half round and human beings also only turned halfway; but to compensate for this they received on the Moon the astral body, Kama, and thereby, developed warmth from within outwards.

The kama was at that time still an essentially warming force. This is why the human beings did not already then turn themselves completely towards the Sun. Life was in the darkness.

The Old Moon also circled round the Sun, but not as our Earth does today. The Moon rotated around the Sun, in such a way that only one side was turned towards it. A Moon-day therefore lasted as long as a half year does today. Thus on the one side there was an intense heat and on the other side an intense cold.

On the Old Moon the predecessors of man again went through a certain normal development. But there were also Moon Adepts who hastened on in advance of the rest of mankind. At the end of the Old Moon evolution these Pitri beings were much more advanced than the rest of humanity, just as the Adepts are today.

[continues with Jehovah and moon adepts]

1906-06-11-GA094

The Earth is a reincarnation of an earlier planet — of the Old Moon.

In this Old Moon stage of evolution, the pure mineral did not yet exist. The planetary body was composed of a substance somewhat akin to the nature of wood a substance midway between the mineral and the plant. Its surface was not hard like the mineral — indeed it was liken to turf.

It brought forth beings by nature half-plant, half-mollusc, and was inhabited by a third kingdom of beings at a stage of existence midway between the human being and animal. These beings were endowed with a dreamlike, imaginative consciousness. We can envisage the kind of matter of which their ‘bodies’ were composed, by thinking of the nerve-substance of the crayfish. This matter densified to become the substance of which the brain is now composed.

On Old Moon, this matter remained in a more fluid state but on Earth it required a protective sheath of bone — the skull. In this sense, all the substances of which we are composed are ‘extracts’ of the macrocosm. All this preparatory activity in the universe was necessary in order that the I might descend into Man.

The atmosphere of Old Moon .. contained nitrogen, just as today the atmosphere of the Earth contains oxygen, and it was the predominance of nitrogen which brought about the end of the Old Moon period and the onset of a cosmic night. The cyanides on Earth are survivals from the conditions existing at the final stages of the Old Moon evolutionary stage. That is why they have a destructive effect on Earth, for the Earth is not their proper sphere. They are the poisonous remains of life in another age.

Animal-man, as he lived on Old Moon, is the ancestor of earthly, physical man; the Spirit within man is the offspring of the Spirits of Fire in the Old Moon stage. The Beings who on the Old Moon were incarnate in the fire, incarnated, on Earth, in the air. But now, has anything of the action of these Spirits of Fire remained in man? On the Old Moon, living beings had no warm blood. What was it that gave rise to the warmth of the blood and, as a consequence, to the life of passions? — The fire which was inbreathed by the beings of the Old Moon and which lives again on Earth in their blood. And the Spirit of the air surrounds the body which contains the heritage of the Old Moon evolution, namely, the warmth of the blood, the brain, the spinal fluid, the nerves.

These examples serve to show that a close study of the transformation of substances is required before we can begin to understand the great processes of metamorphosis which took place during the earlier periods of the Earth's evolution. At a stage still earlier than that of the Old Moon, the planetary sphere which has now become our Earth had a body composed merely of gaseous substance; before that again, we can only speak of a body of sound. It is in this sound — the Cosmic Word — that man's evolution has its origin, proceeding thence towards light, fire, air. Only in the fourth condition does consciousness flash up in the Spirit of man. From this point onwards, the directing force bestowed by the Logos has its rise from within man's own being and his conscience becomes his rightful guide. His primordial being comes to expression in the ‘I,’ the Ego. The conscious Ego is the realisation in man of the Christ Principle.

1907-06-01-GA099

extract on State of consciousness (lecture in full in this doc)

The third condition, which is still dim and dull in relation to our day-consciousness, is that of “picture-consciousness”, and of this we have a clear idea since we experience an echo of it in our dream-filled sleep, though it is but a reminiscence of what on the Moon was the consciousness of all human beings. It will be well to start from the dream in order to get a picture of the Moon-consciousness.

...

The dream of the present-day man symbolises events which are both external and within.

But it was not so when this third state of consciousness was that of the Moon humanity. At that time man lived entirely in such pictures as he has in the modern dream, but they expressed realities.

They signified precisely such a reality as today the blue colour signifies a reality, only at that time colour hovered freely in space, it was not resting upon the objects. In that former consciousness man could not have set out on the street, as today, have seen a man in the distance, looked at him, approached him; for forms of beings with a coloured surface could not have been perceived at that time by man, quite apart from the fact that he could not then walk as he does today.

But let us suppose that one man on the Moon had met another, then a freely hovering picture of form and colour would have risen up before him. Let us say, an ugly one, then the man would have turned aside in order not to meet it; or a beautiful one, then he would have drawn near it. The ugly colour-picture would have shown him that the other had an unsympathetic feeling towards him, the beautiful, that the other liked him.

Let us suppose there had been salt on Old Moon; when salt stands on the table today, you see it as it is in space, as object, granular, with definite colouring. At that time it would not have been so. On Old Moon you would not have been able to see the salt. But from the place where the salt would be, a picture of colour and form would have proceeded, floating free; and this picture would have shown you that the salt was something useful.

Thus the whole consciousness was filled with pictures, with floating colours and forms. In an ocean of such form and colour pictures the human being lived; but the pictures of colour and form denoted what was going on around him, above all, things of a soul character and those which affected the soul nature — what was advantageous to it or harmful. In this way the human being orientated himself rightly with regard to the things around him.

When the Old Moon passed over into the Earth incarnation this consciousness changed into our day-consciousness, and only a relic of it has remained in the dream as one has it now — a rudiment, as there are rudiments of other things. You know, for instance, that there are certain muscles near the ear which nowadays seem purposeless. Earlier they had their significance; they served to move the ears at will; there are very few persons who can do this today.

So conditions are to be found in man which have remained as a last relic of a former significance. Although these pictures no longer have a meaning, at that time they signified the outer world. Even today you still have this consciousness among all those animals — note this carefully — which cannot utter sounds from their inner being. There is in fact a far truer division of animals in occultism than in external Nature Science, namely in to those which can utter sounds from within and those which are dumb. It is true that you can find among certain lower creatures the power of producing sounds, but then this happens in a mechanical way, through friction, etc., not from their inner being. Even the frogs do not create sounds so. Only the higher animals, which arose at the time when the human being could express his suffering and joy in tones, only these, together with man, have gained the power of bringing to expression their pain and pleasure through sounds and cries. All animals which do not utter sounds from within still have such a picture-consciousness. It is not a fact that lower animals see the pictures in such outlines as we do. If some lower animal, the crab, for example, perceives a picture that makes a distinctly unpleasant impression, it gets out of the way, it does not see the objects, but sees the harmfulness in a repelling picture.

1907-06-04-B-GA099

Lecture 12

1907-11-19-GA100

Old Moon as Cosmos of Wisdom, and Fire breathers

[Old Moon – Cosmos of Wisdom]

At the outset of our studies to-day we must deal with a word that in Spiritual Science is very important. In Christian occult science the Old Moon is called the Cosmos of Wisdom and the Earth the Cosmos of Love. By “Moon” we here mean the Moon Period of the Earth. The reason why the Old Moon is called the Cosmos of Wisdom is because all that was then developed was filled with wisdom.

When the Earth Period succeeded the Moon Period the Cosmos of Wisdom was replaced by the Cosmos of Love. When the Earth came forth from the darkness of Pralaya, the rudiments of the human being which had been developed in former periods reappeared — the physical, etheric and astral bodies. On the Old Moon Wisdom had been implanted in these bodies and their mutual relationships; we therefore find wisdom in the constitution of these three bodies. We find the greatest wisdom in the construction of the physical body, less in that of the etheric body, and still less in that of the astral body. If we thoughtfully observe the human body we discover this wisdom in each organ, in each part. For instance, if we study the upper portion of the human thighbone we find in it a network of cells beautifully constructed with a view to their purpose. No engineer of the present day would be able to produce these two columns, which bear the upper part of the human body with the smallest expenditure of matter and force. Wisdom was implanted in the human body as long as the divine Spirits worked upon it. As a rule the physical body is looked upon as the lowest part of man, unjustly so, for the very greatest wisdom can be seen just in the physical body. Only through this wisdom is it possible for the physical body to withstand the attacks continually made upon it by the astral body, and so not break up before the time. The pleasures and desires which hold sway in the physical body when tea and coffee and so on are taken, all these are attacks of the astral body on the physical body, and especially on the heart. It has therefore to be so wisely constructed that these attacks can be withstood for decades. Of course the suitable form of the heart could only be discovered by subjecting it to many transformations.

Wisdom lies at the foundation of the construction of the world, and it is for this reason that our intellect can now seek and find it there. But wisdom did not come suddenly into the world, it was only poured in slowly and gradually; and in the same way love will also permeate the Earth very gradually. The purpose of the evolution of our Earth is to be permeated with love. Love has only begun to permeate the Earth to the smallest extent, but it will spread more and more, and at the end of the Earth Period everything will be saturated with love, just as it was saturated with wisdom at the end of the Moon Period.

[Fire breathers]

On the Old Moon there was something else in place of the breathing of air. Whereas the man of the present day breathes air in and out and thereby has a source of warmth within himself, his ancestors on the Old Moon consisting of physical, etheric and astral bodies; breathed the substance of warmth or fire in and out. Man's predecessors on the old Moon were fire-breathers. Occult Science looks upon all matter only as the expression of spirit. We breathe in and out not air alone, we breathe in the Spirit it contains. Air is the body of Jehovah just as flesh is the body of man. The remembrance of this is expressed in the German legend of Wotan who rides in the Wind. What was breathed in and out on the Old Moon was also spirit.

Upon the Old Moon there were the same spiritual Beings as live upon the Earth; there they lived in fire, but upon the Earth they have become spirits of air. In cosmic evolution Beings remain behind in their development, just as some pupils are backward at school. The Beings who made the Sun their dwelling-place had developed more rapidly and made the transition from fire-spirits to air-spirits; but a great host of beings had not made this transition. The former now worked upon man as spiritual forces from outside, from Sun and Moon. Man takes them into himself through his breath. Between Man and these highly developed Sun-Spirits there are the spiritual Beings, who, it is true, developed very much further than man upon the Moon, but not as fast as the Sun-Spirits and Jehovah. They were unable as yet to influence man through his breathing, nevertheless they endeavoured to influence him. They were the Fire-Spirits who had not completed their task. They worked in the element of warmth and this existed in man his blood. They lived in this warmth.

Thus in the course of his evolution man was placed between the Air-spirits, who live in his breathing (the highest Spirits who permeate him with Spirit), and the fire-spirits who live in the warmth of his blood. They act in his blood as the opponents of the God Jehovah. Jehovah sought to hold men together by love in small groups, He desired to fill them with the feeling of belonging together. But if love had only existed in this form men would never have become independent beings; they would have had to develop love involuntarily. The Fire-spirits directed their attacks against this, with the result that man gained his personal freedom. The small groups of people were broken up. Jehovah's only interest was to lead people together in love, He worked in the blood as the God of blood-love. The action of the Fire-spirits was different; it was they who brought art and science to men. These Spirits are also called Luciferic Spirits. The further course of the evolution of humanity proceeded under the influence of Lucifer, who brings freedom and wisdom to man. Under the guidance of the God Jehovah men were to be led together through the principle of blood-brotherhood. The fact that man has become a free citizen of the Earth, — this he owes to Lucifer. Jehovah placed men in the Paradise of Love; then there appeared the Fire-spirit, the Serpent, in the form which man once possessed when he still breathed fire, and opened men's eyes to what still remained from the Old Moon. This Luciferic influence was perceived as a temptation. But those who were instructed in the occult schools did not look upon this enlightenment, as wrong; the great Initiates have not cast the Serpent down but, like Moses in the wilderness, they have raised it. (Numbers 21:8-9).

1908-02-29-GA102

Now we advance to Old Moon — Old Sun is metamorphosed into Old Moon. In the course of evolution this signifies that the Spirits of Form now lay aside their astral body also and that their lowest member is the I.

To describe their nature we should say: as the human being has the physical body for lowest member, so these Spirits of Form in the environment of Old Moon have the I as lowest member, then they have spirit-self, life-spirit, spirit-man, an eighth, ninth, and a tenth member. Thus they present their I to the outer world. It is very remarkable, but so it is: they present externally pure ‘I’s, pure egos; they simply displayed sheer egos to the outside world. The whole activity in the surroundings of the Moon was as if one met with beings who revealed their whole character and individuality — and this was from the Moon's atmosphere inwards. Just imagine all your I's which are here in your physical bodies being suddenly freed from that and from etheric and astral body, imagine only your egos there as the lowest member, and that they could manifest them-selves through space. Think of yourselves on the old Moon and your egos outside in the universe, but in such a way that they were embedded in the spiritual substances, only the lowest members of the Spirits of Form working in out of the air, then you will have a picture of how the Spirits of Form express themselves as sheer egos out of space. They have given up to the human beings the astral body which they still had on the Sun, so that on the Moon man now consisted of physical body, etheric body and astral body.

[Man]

We will now picture the human being of Old Saturn who has the first rudiments of the physical body. We must visualize hovering above him beings who are the Spirits of Form and have an etheric body, astral body, I, spirit-self, life-spirit, spirit-man, to the eighth member.

Now we must think of the next stage. In the Sun-human-being we have the physical body and the etheric body. The etheric body had been instilled into man by the Spirits of Form, keeping their astral body, so that they had their astral body, their I, up to the ninth member.

Then we pass on to the Moon. We have man consisting of the physical, etheric, astral bodies. The astral body has been sacrificed to Man by the Spirits of Form who then have as lowest member the I, and spirit-self, and so forth, up to the tenth member.

All that we call ‘man’ has gradually flowed down out of the environment of the planet, has been put together, so to speak, from outside. All that is within was once outside, has entered into man from without.

1908-05-20-GA103

(SWCC)

In Spiritual Science we say that Old Moon preceded the Earth. This Old Moon planetary stage of evolution, had also a mission. It did not yet have the task of developing love, but it was the planet or the cosmos of wisdom. Before it reached our earthly condition, our planet passed through the stage of wisdom. Illustrative observation: just look about you at all the creatures of nature. If you do not observe them merely with your understanding but with the forces of your heart and soul, then you will find wisdom everywhere stamped upon nature. The wisdom of which we are here speaking, is a kind of spiritual substance lying at the foundation of all things. Observe anything you wish in nature, and you will find it there. Take, for example, a piece of the thigh-bone and you will see that it is not composed of a solid mass, but it is a fine interweaving of supports which are arranged into a marvelous structure. And if we seek to discover the law upon which this bone is constructed, we find that it follows the law which develops the greatest strength with the least expenditure of material in order to be able to support the upper part of the human body. Our engineering art is not yet so far advanced that it can build such a highly artistic structure as the all over-ruling wisdom has fashioned. Mankind will not possess such wisdom until later in its evolution. Divine wisdom pervades the whole of nature; human wisdom will only gradually reach this height. In the course of time human wisdom will inwardly acquire what divine wisdom has secreted within the Earth. Just as wisdom was prepared upon the Moon, that it might be found everywhere on the Earth, so is love now being prepared here in this Earth evolution. If you were able to look back upon the ancient Moon with clairvoyant vision, you would see that wisdom was not to be found everywhere at that time. You would find many things still lacking in wisdom. Only gradually throughout the whole of the Moon evolution was wisdom stamped upon the outer world. When the Moon had fully completed its evolution, everything was then pervaded by a wisdom which was to be found everywhere. Inner wisdom first appeared upon the Earth with the human being, with the I. This inner human wisdom had to be developed by degrees

1908-06-22-GA104

Then once again came a kind of intermediate condition in which to outer observation (if this had indeed been possible) the luminous planet gradually ceases to glow, then it disappears from a certain stage of clairvoyant observation and is only apparent to the highest spiritual vision. Then it again emerges in a new form of existence, to a tied condition which we call the Old Moon condition. This is the third embodiment of our planet, the Old Moon. This has now developed so far in the evolution of its substance that what formerly upon Old Sun was merely gas has now condensed to water. Through the entry of the watery element, man — who gradually develops again like the plaint from the seed — can receive the astral body; so that man now consists of three parts, the physical body, etheric and astral bodies. He is not yet really man, for he does not yet possess an “I” in these three bodies.

Certain beings always remain behind at every stage, there-fore the beings who remained behind upon the Sun, who were unable to attain to the Moon stage and who only passed through their Sun stage on the Moon, are now unable to incorporate the astral body; upon the Moon they consist only of physical and etheric body. These are especially those who already remained behind upon the Sun, but who in the meantime had developed so far that they could take up an etheric body. These are again the ancestors of our present animals. Those, however, which were not yet so far advanced upon the Moon that they could take up an etheric body, are the ancestors of still lower beings, the present plants. Thus upon the Moon we have three kingdoms, the human kingdom, consisting of physical body, ether body and astral body; the animal kingdom, consisting of physical body and etheric body; and the vegetable kingdom consisting only of physical body.

Again there are certain beings who about the middle of the Moon period pass through their human stage. They are the spirits who in the literature of spiritual science are usually called the Spirits of Twilight or Angels. They also carry man within them as memory. And again the Moon passes through seven such stages. At each stage there are beings who can pass through human existence. It is always the case that some beings hurry forward and others remain behind. Thus upon the Moon too we have seven grades of beings who had passed through their human stage when the Moon had finished its evolution.

Now in order to understand Old Moon fully, we must mention something of importance which took place in the course of the Old Moon evolution. When it began, or at least shortly after the beginning, it was a fluid globe. Had it developed further in this way throughout its seven stages it would not have been able to give man the right foundation for his further development. It was only fitted to be a preparatory stage for earthly humanity by dividing first into two planetary bodies. One of these was the forerunner of the present sun, and the other which separated was the forerunner of the present earth, but in such a way that you must imagine the earth mingled with the present moon, so that the present earth and moon were then one. Now imagine these two bodies, earth plus moon on the one hand and the sun on the other, separated from each other; the Old Moon as a watery body and the Old Sun on the way to becoming a fixed star. Something very essential was connected with this division. It was primarily the sun which brought about the separation and took with it the finest parts, the most etheric substances, while the grosser substances remained behind in the Moon, that is, the present earth plus the present moon. Hence the sun is composed of extremely fine substances, while the Moon becomes a much denser body, a watery mass. Through the sun taking with it the finest and most spiritual forces, it could now be the arena for much more highly developed beings. In fact, many of those high beings who were still able to bear the Saturn existence would have been hindered in their development if they had been bound to the Moon any longer. They needed a field of activity with the finest materials; only there could they develop. So they drew their field of action forth and developed further upon the sun. On the other hand, with the Moon, which had suffered a densification through the exit of the finer substances, there were connected those human germs which consisted of physical body, etheric body and astral body, and there were also the germs of the animals and plants. Now this ancient Moon had an extraordinary appearance. You would not yet ford any-thing like rocks or arable soil, although it already circled round its sun. Mineral substances did not yet exist. The principal part of this Moon, upon which these beings hopped about, so to speak, was a kind of mush, a kind of pulp or puree. The basic substance of the ancient Moon consisted of this puree, just as the basic substance of our earth consists of soil. In it were embedded masses, like, shall we say, wood and the bark of trees. If you were to climb a mountain to-day you would walk upon rocks. At that time you would have passed over a basis which, if it was solid, was something like a surface of wood substance. Instead of granite you would have found blocks which might be compared to wood. Of course this is speaking comparatively. Such was the basic substance and out of it came continually luxuriant growths. This was the lowest kingdom, the present mineral kingdom, which at that time lay between the present mineral and vegetable kingdoms. In a certain way it was alive. It continually produced luxuriant growths. It was not like it is now. If to-day there should be a deposit of soil which one wishes to be rid of, it must be carried away by external means. This substance of the ancient Moon died away — but not like separate plants — it died away and formed itself afresh. It was continually in inward living motion. The fundamental substance of the Moon was in a continuous state of decay and growth. And out of this foundation grew another kingdom. Through the exit of the Moon from the Sun the earlier kingdoms had changed. Upon the Sun they corresponded approximately to our kingdoms. Through the exit of the Moon the ancient plant kingdom-was forced down about half a stage, and so were the other kingdoms, so that the next kingdom was a kind of animal-plant kingdom, but it grew out of the ground. The animal-plants grew out of the ground; they were in the form of plants, but when one took hold of them they had sensations, they squeaked, etc. They were actually half animal and half plant; plants inasmuch as they grew on the ground, most of them firmly rooted to the ground, and animals inasmuch as they had a certain capacity for sensation. And the kingdom which preceded the present human beings were human-animals, beings standing between the present man and the present animals; higher than the present apes, but not as high as the present human beings. That was approximately the form of our human ancestors upon the Moon.

Legends and myths have preserved these truths in a wonderful way. Think how a German legend has preserved the secret hidden behind all this. Certain beings always remain behind. Beings between the present plants and the present animals, which could only take root in a vegetable basis such as was the substance of the Old Moon — these beings also remained behind, and on this account are incapable of thriving on the mineral ground of our present earth. Our present plants can grow in this, but those which stood between the plants and animals and which needed a living basis, cannot, if they have remained behind, grow in mineral soil. Mistletoe is such a plant. Hence it has to “sponge” upon the present plants because it is a backward being. It no longer has sensation, although the astral body enveloping mistletoe is quite different from that of other plants.

The German legend perceived that mistletoe does not belong to our earth, that it is a stranger. In the god Baldur the legend recognizes the god of the earth-sun, the earth force. No being of the earth can approach hire with hostile feelings. Hence also the god whom the German legend knew to be a straggler, namely, Loki, cannot kill Baldur with anything belonging to the earth; he has to kill him with a branch of mistletoe, because this is a stranger among the creations of the earth, and for this reason can serve the straggler, Loki, who is not related to the earth gods. Deep wisdom is hidden behind these legends, and in this legend of Baldur-Loki, this can be clearly traced. It can also be seen in the customs connected with the mistletoe. If you were to study these you would fund that what is said about them proceeds from an ancient wisdom.

Then in the second half of the Old Moon-evolution came the time when the Sun-beings, as well as the beings who had remained behind upon the Moon., had attained what had to be attained during the old Moon period. And then the Sun and Moon united again; they came together and for a time continued their evolution as one body.

Then the evolutionary condition gradually darkened and passed through the purely spiritual condition usually called Pralaya, and then came the dawning of our Earth evolution. At first this dawning cosmic body contained not only our present earth substance; it consisted of what you would obtain if you were to mix together in a gigantic cauldron the substance of the present sun, earth and moon. That was approximately the condition at the beginning of the earth's evolution. This was first a kind of repetition of the Saturn condition and then of the Sun condition and then of the Moon condition.

Now the most important thing for us to realize is that man really only becomes man in the present sense in the middle of the Earth evolution. In the Earth period also we have to distinguish seven conditions. We are now in the fourth. Three have gone before and three will follow. It was in the fourth principal cycle that our present human race was to become man.

Now, just as in all the Rounds upon Old Saturn, Old Sun and Old Moon, certain beings reached the human stage (upon Old Saturn the Archai, upon Old Sun the Archangels, and upon Old Moon the Angels), there were always beings who remained behind. Upon Old Moon there were also beings who could no longer reach the human stage, backward Angels, shall we say, who could only catch up their human stage upon the Earth planet during the first three Rounds. Man reached this stage at the fourth. We therefore say: Before man three other kinds of beings passed through the human stage upon the earth, and the fourth to pass through the human stage upon the earth is man himself.

At that moment in cosmic evolution when man is about to become man, all the beings who have been able to pass through the human stage, throughout Old Saturn, Old Sun, Old Moon and the first three Rounds of the Earth, are beings who have more or less progressed beyond man. But they are all able to look back, as it were, and remember the stage at which they themselves passed through the human stage. They could look down upon the evolving human being and say, “He is now becoming something which we have already been, something which we can understand; although we passed through the stage under different circumstances.” For this reason they could guide and regulate his evolution from the spiritual world.

Let us enumerate how many of these beings there are who are able to look back at the human stage, who are able to under-stand evolving man.

• Seven from the Saturn evolution,
• plus seven from the Sun,
• plus seven from the Moon stage,
• three from the Earth; twenty-four beings in all.

Twenty-four “Men” look down upon the present man. These are the beings whom for good reasons we have called the guides of evolution, the directors of time. Time is connected with evolution. They are the twenty-four Elders who meet us in the Apocalypse of John. They are the same beings who are described in the part relating to the secret of the seven seals. They are described as the real directors of history, the true Alpha and Omega. Thus we have also found the twenty-four Elders again here and you see how the Apocalyptist who wrote this important document has secreted in his pictures in a wonderful way what we ourselves are able to find from the study of the spiritual evolution of the world.

Now certain beings had remained behind at every stage; so that

• the backward Old Saturn beings came out upon the Old Sun as the first foundations of the present animal kingdom, and
• the backward Old Sun beings came out at the Old Moon stage as the first foundations of the present plant kingdom.

Only upon the Earth did a stage of evolution appear as the mineral kingdom. We have stressed the fact that upon the Moon there was as yet no mineral kingdom, man had as yet no rocks to walk upon. At the time when present man began to pass through the human stage, the first mineral masses, the first crystals appeared in the planet which then stood at a stage between the substances of the ancient Moon and the present earthly substance. This was the moment when the mineral kingdom burst forth, and you find this bursting forth described in a very unique manner in the Apocalypse of John where he says: “Around the throne it was crystallized like a glassy sea.” This “glassy sea” is to indicate the bursting forth, the budding forth of the mineral kingdom in its primary form. Thus we see that this secret of cosmic evolution is also indicated in the Apocalypse of John. And from it we have also learnt to perceive that to this degree the writer wishes to present to us in his mighty pictures exactly what we are able to recognize in the development of the earth from the spirit life itself. But in this way the Apocalyptist has led us, at the beginning of his book, to the heights where man can see the pictures of the future stages of evolution.

1909-04-14-GA110

synopsis:

The Spirits of Motion condensed the old Sun to a watery globe called Moon, whose size from the present Sun as its centre would reach to the present Mars. The creation of Moon was different from the others, it implied later a splitting into two globes so that the Sun contracted and was surrounded by another body, in the orbit of the present Mars, and in the periphery of the original single body. The origin of Evil and the Fight in Heaven. The Planetoids.

1909-06-26-GA112

(SWCC) talks about the origin of the group souls on Old Moon (and continues about how they appeared in the early phases of the Earth stage)

.. the physical body, having come into existence on Old Saturn, passed through its third stage on Old Moon; the etheric body, associated to the physical on Old Sun, had now advanced to its second stage of perfection; the astral body, having just been added to the others, was in its first stage on the Old Moon.

.. Whereas man was preserved in a certain degree of uniformity during the Saturn and Sun development .. during the old lunar evolution ... the whole Old Moon-sphere became divided into two parts — into a Sun' and a Moon' satellite. So that whereas in the case of Saturn and Sun we have to consider the evolution of a single planet, only the first part of the lunar evolution can be described as that of a single planet. In the first part of the lunar evolution everything that now composes our Earth, Sun, and Moon was comprised in that one Old Moon-sphere. Later there was a division into two bodies. What appeared then as Sun’ was not our current Sun, nor yet the Old Sun of which we have already spoken; it was a new sphere which became separated from the old Moon as a Sun’, around which another planet circled, which, again, we call the ‘Old Moon’.

The meaning of this cleavage or division is:

• higher beings and finer substances quit the whole mass and left as ‘Sun’ with its separation;
• the grosser substances and lower beings remained behind on the Old Moon.

Thus we have two instead of one planetary body during the old Moon evolution: a Sun-body harbouring the higher beings and a Moon-body harbouring the lower beings. Had no division of the single planet occurred, certain beings who evolved on the Moon after the separation, would have failed to keep pace with the more rapid evolution of the solar beings. They were not mature enough for the solar evolution and were therefore constrained to separate the coarser substances and build for themselves a sphere of action apart. The higher beings, on their part, would have found it impossible to remain united to the coarser substances, for their more rapid progress would have been hindered. They too required a special sphere for their evolution, and the Sun was this sphere. Let us now turn our attention to the beings who took their abode upon the Sun and the Moon respectively, after the division of the Old Moon.

.. the human beings on Old Moon were precisely the beings who could not keep pace with the rapid evolution of the Sun-beings, who had gone forth with the Sun and now abode surrounded by finer substances on that sphere. These human beings coarsened during the lunar evolution.

Man was constituted at that time of a physical, an astral, and an etheric body and his stage of evolution was therefore the same as that of the animal of the present day, but you must not imagine that the human being was actually an animal on the old Moon. The human form had an altogether different appearance from that of the animal on the Earth at the present day. Were I to describe the human form of that time, it would appear most fantastic to you.

Thus we find on the Old Moon forerunners of our present humanity, possessing physical, astral, and etheric bodies which, after the separation into Sun and Moon, became denser and coarser than would have been the case had these beings remained united with the Sun.

Now the beings who had gone forth with the Sun had also passed through the three stages of Saturn, Sun, Moon. Their direction however was that of the Sun, whereas the ancestors of man followed the Moon. Among the Sun-beings we distinguish a threefold nature which runs parallel with that of the human being. There were beings on the Sun who had also advanced to the stage of threefold nature (astral, etheric, and physical body), only in their case, after the separation, instead of becoming coarser, these principles grew finer. Picture the process as follows: After the division of the old Moon, our human forefathers became beings of greater density and coarseness than they were before that event; their tendency was to harden. On the other hand, the corresponding beings on the Sun grew finer. The addition of the astral body during the lunar evolution had in a certain way the effect of lowering man to the level of the animal. But the beings who had kept aloof and had withdrawn to the Sun grew finer and more perfect.

While man was hardening on the Moon, beings of high spirituality were evolving on the Sun. In spiritual science this spirituality is named the counterpart of that which developed on the Moon. On the Moon the human beings developed to the level of the animal, though they were not animals. Now in dealing with the animal kingdom, we are justified in distinguishing different grades of animals.

• The animal-man on Old Moon also appeared in three grades differing from one another, and known in spiritual science as the grades of the ‘Bull’, the ‘Lion’, and the ‘Eagle’. There were therefore on the Moon three distinct groups: Bull-men, Lion-men, Eagle-men. Though we may in no sense apply these designations to the present animals, it is nevertheless true that the degenerated nature of the so-called lion-men on the Moon is in a certain way expressed in the present cat species, and in the character of the hoofed animals is expressed the degenerated nature of the so-called bull-men, and so on. Such was the nature of the human being, in a densified state, after three stages of evolution.

• On the Sun were the spiritual counterparts of these beings, also in three groups. While the astral development on the Moon lent form to these three types of animal-men, the corresponding spiritual human beings evolved on the Sun as angelic spiritual beings, which are also designated, but this time in their character of spiritual counterparts) as ‘Lion’, ‘Eagle’, and ‘Bull’. When we therefore behold the Sun, we find spiritual beings of whom we may say that they represent to us the splendid prototypes fashioned in wisdom.
• And on Old Moon we have something like hardened reproductions of the beings above on the Sun.

... The reproductions down below on the Moon are not without connection with their prototypes on the Sun. We have on the Moon a group of primitive bull-men and above, on the Sun, a group of spiritual beings described as ‘Bull-spirits’; and there is a spiritual connection between type and prototype. For the group-soul is the prototype and functions as prototype, upon the type (or reproduction). The forces proceed from the group-soul and govern its image below, the lion-spirit directing the lion-men, the eagle-spirit the eagle-men, and so on. Had the spirits in those high regions remained united with the earth, had they remained bound to their counterparts and been compelled to dwell in them, they would have been hemmed in and unable to exercise the forces, upon which the preservation and development of their counterparts depended. They came to the following conclusion: ‘We must now care in a higher sense for that which develops on the Moon.’ The Bull-spirit said to himself: ‘I must care for the bull-men; I cannot find on the Moon the conditions necessary for my own progress; therefore I must dwell on the Sun and from there direct my forces to the bull-men below.’ The same applies to the Lion-spirit and the Eagle-spirit. That is the meaning of evolution. Certain beings required a higher sphere of action than those who were, so to speak, their physical counterparts. The latter needed a lower, inferior sphere. To ensure their freedom of action, the higher beings were compelled to withdraw with the Sun and send down their forces from outside. Thus we see how there is one evolution with a downward, and another with an upward trend.

The development on the Old Moon proceeded apace. Through the action of the higher beings upon their counterparts, the Old Moon became spiritualized, so that it could reunite at a later period with the Sun. The prototypes now again united with their types, absorbing them into themselves as it were. There again followed a cosmic night or Pralaya, after which here issued from the dark womb of the universe our Earth whose mission it is to advance human evolution so far that man can add the ‘I’ to his physical, astral, and etheric bodies. This, however, must be preceded by a repetition of the earlier stages. That is a cosmic law: whenever a higher stage is to be reached, all that is previously achieved must first be repeated.

1910-01-15-GA117a

freely rephrased: The catastrophe that ended Old Moon killed all its inhabitants through a cyan compound (‘verbindung’), through prussic acid or cyanide (‘blausäure’) that those beings breathed.

1910-08-23-GA122

describes Old Moon and the work of the SoF, as compared to Earth. The activation of the human organs, providing the eye with inner life.

The Sun separated off for the first time during the Old Moon evolution. It was then that the light was for the first time active from without, but not then as light.

see full relevant lecture extract here: The eye is formed by the light for the light#1910-08-23-GA122

1911-06-07-GA015

Spiritual science teaches us that before becoming the Earth as we know it today, the earth passed through an earlier planetary state or condition called the Old Moon stage. During this Old Moon stage, human beings were not yet human in our sense of the word. Nevertheless, there were other beings on Old Moon who had evolved to the same level as humans have now reached on the Earth, though they looked very different from us. In other words, on Old Moon, which perished and later developed into our Earth, there were beings we can consider as our forerunners. In Christian esotericism these beings are called angels, while those beings above them, who reached the human stage of their development even earlier than the angels, are called archangels.

The angels, known as dhyanic beings or dhyani in oriental mysticism, reached the human level of their development during the Old Moon stage. Consequently, if they completed their evolution on the Old Moon, they are now one level above us. At the end of earthly evolution, we will arrive at the level they reached at the end of the Moon stage.

When the earth state of our planet began and human beings appeared on it, the angels could not manifest in outer human form because the human flesh body is essentially an earthly product appropriate only for beings now at the human stage of development. Since the angels are a level above the human, they could not incarnate in human bodies; they could participate in the government of the earth only by enlightening and inspiring human beings who had achieved a state of clairvoyance. These higher, angelic beings used clairvoyant individuals to intervene in the guidance of the earth's destiny. Thus the ancient Egyptians still remembered a time when their leaders were vividly conscious of their connection with these higher beings, called variously gods, angels, or dhyanic beings. These beings who influenced humanity without incarnating in human bodies, without taking on fleshly human form, were our forerunners; they had already outgrown the level of development we have reached only now.

The word “superhuman” ³ is often misused these days, but in this case we can use it correctly and apply it to those beings who had already achieved the human level of development during the moon period — the planetary stage preliminary to our earth — and have now grown beyond it. Such beings could appear on earth only in an etheric body and thus could be perceived only by clairvoyant individuals. ⁴ That is how they came down to earth from the spiritual worlds and ruled on the earth even in post-Atlantean times. ⁵

These beings had the remarkable characteristic indeed — they still have it today — that they did not need to think. In fact, it may be said that they cannot think at all the way we do. After all, how do we think? Well, usually we start from a particular point, and once we have understood it, we try to comprehend other things on the basis of this understanding. If our thinking did not follow this pattern, many people would have an easier time learning in school. Mathematics, for example, cannot be learned in a day because we must begin at one point and proceed slowly from there. This takes a long time. An entire world of ideas cannot be taken in at a glance because human thinking takes its course over time. A complex thought structure cannot be present in the mind all at once; rather, we must make an effort to follow it step by step.

The higher beings I have described are not encumbered by this peculiar characteristic of human thinking. Instead, they realize an extensive train of thought as quickly as animals know to grab something the moment their instinct tells them it is edible. In higher beings, then, instinct and reflective consciousness are one and the same. What instincts are for animals at their evolutionary level, in their kingdom, direct spiritual thinking, or direct spiritual conceptualization, is for these dhyanic beings or angels. And this instinctive, conceptualizing inner life is what makes these higher beings so essentially different from us.

Obviously, the angeloi cannot possibly use the kind of brain or physical body we have. They must use an etheric body because the human body and brain can process thoughts only over time. The angeloi do not form their thoughts over time; they feel their wisdom flash up in them by itself, as it were. They cannot possibly make mistakes in their thinking the way we can. Their thinking is a direct inspiration. The individuals who were able to approach these superhuman or angelic beings were therefore aware of being in the presence of sure and reliable wisdom.

In ancient Egypt, then, those who were teachers or rulers knew that the commandments which their spiritual guides gave them and the truths they uttered were immediately right and could not be wrong. And the people to whom these truths were then imparted felt the same way. The clairvoyant leaders of ancient times could speak in such a way that the people believed that their words came from the spiritual world. In short, there was a direct current flowing down from the higher, guiding spiritual hierarchies.

Thus, the next higher world of the spiritual hierarchies guides the entire evolution of humanity; it works both on the individual in childhood and on humanity as a whole. The angeloi or superhuman beings of this realm are one level above us and reach directly up into the spiritual spheres. From these spheres they bring to earth what works into human culture. In the individual, this higher wisdom leaves its imprint on the formation of the body during childhood, and it formed the culture of ancient humanity in a similar way.

This is how the Egyptians, who reported that they were in contact with the divine realm, experienced the openness of the human soul to the spiritual hierarchies. Just as the child's soul opens its aura to the hierarchies until the moment indicated in the previous lecture, so, through its work, humanity as a whole opened its world to the hierarchies with which it was connected.

This connection to the higher hierarchies was particularly significant in the case of the holy teachers of India. These were the great teachers of the first post-Atlantean epoch, of the first Indian culture that spread in the south of Asia. After the end of the Atlantean catastrophe, when the physiognomy of the earth had changed and Asia, Europe, and Africa had developed in the eastern hemisphere in their new form, but before the time documented in ancient records, the culture of the ancient teachers of India flourished.

People today generally have a completely false picture of these great Indian teachers. If, for example, an educated person of our time were to meet one of the great teachers of India, he or she would look puzzled and probably say, “This is supposed to be a wise man? That is not how I imagined a wise man.” According to our current definition of the terms “clever” and “intelligent,” the ancient holy teachers of India would not have been able to say anything intelligent. By today's standards, these teachers were simple and very plain people who would have given the simplest answers to questions, even to questions pertaining to everyday life. Often, it was scarcely possible to elicit anything from them other than some sparse utterance that would seem quite insignificant to the educated classes of our day.

However, at certain times, these holy teachers proved to be more than merely simple people. At these times they had to gather in groups of seven, because what each could sense individually had to harmonize as if in a seven-tone harmony with what the other six experienced. Each wise man was able to perceive this or that, depending on his particular faculties and development. And out of the harmony of the individual perceptions of these seven individuals, there emerged the primeval wisdom that resounds through ancient times. Its reverberation can be heard even today if we decipher the occult records correctly. The records I am referring to are not the revelations of the Vedas, though the Vedas are certainly marvelous in their own right. ⁶ The teachings of these holy men of ancient India precede the writing of the Vedas by a long time. The Vedas, those tremendous works, are only a faint echo of those earlier teachings.

When these wise teachers faced one of the angeloi or superhuman forerunners of humanity, and looked clairvoyantly into the higher worlds, listening all the while clairaudiently to this being, their eyes shone like the sun. And what they were able to impart then had an awe inspiring effect on the people around them; all who heard them knew that they were not speaking out of human wisdom or human experience, but that gods, superhuman beings, were intervening in human culture.

The ancient cultures originated from this influx of divine wisdom. The gate to the divine-spiritual world was completely open for the human soul during Atlantean times. In the course of the post-Atlantean periods, however, gradually the gate closed. Little by little, people in many countries felt that human beings had to rely more and more on themselves. Here we can see again that the development of humanity as a whole parallels that of the child. At first the divine-spiritual world still extends into the child's unconscious soul, which is active in the formation of the body. Then comes the moment when each person begins to perceive himself or herself as an I, the first moment one can remember. Before this lies a time we cannot in any ordinary way usually recall. This is why it is said that even the wisest among us can still learn something from the soul of the child as it is in the time before memory develops. Thereafter, the individual is left to his or her own devices; I-consciousness appears, and we become able to remember our experiences.

In the same way there came a time when nations began to feel themselves cut off from the divine inspiration of their forefathers. For just as we are separated more and more from the aura guiding us during our early childhood years, so in the life of nations the divine forebearers gradually and increasingly withdrew. As a result, human beings were left to their own research and their own knowledge. In historical records that describe this development, we can feel the intervention of the guides of humanity.

The ancient Egyptians called the first founder of culture, who was human rather than divine, “Menes.” And they dated the human possibility of error from the same moment, because from then on human beings had to rely on the instrument of the brain. The ancient Orientals likewise gave the name “Manes” to the human being as thinker and called the first bearer of human thinking “Manu.” The Greeks called the first developer of the principle of human thought “Minos” with whom the legend of the labyrinth is associated. The fact that human I beings can fall into error is symbolized by the labyrinth. Labyrinths were first built at the time when the gods withdrew from human beings. They are, of course, images of the convolutions of the brain, in which the thinker can get lost. At the time of Minos people sensed that they had gradually moved away from being guided directly by the gods and were developing a new form of guidance in which the I experienced the influence of the higher spiritual world.

To summarize: Besides the forerunners of the human race, who completed their human stage on the Moon and have now become angels, there are other beings who did not complete their development at that time. While the angeloi or dhyanic beings advanced one level above ours at the moment when human evolution began on earth, these other beings, like the higher categories of luciferic beings, did not complete their human evolution on the old Moon, and thus remain somehow incomplete.

Thus when the earthly condition of our planet began these early human beings were not alone; they received inspiration from divine-spiritual beings. Without their inspiration, like children without guidance, these early human beings would have been unable to progress. Therefore the beings who had completed their evolution on the old Moon were indirectly present on the earth with them. Between these angelic beings and early, childlike humankind, however, there lived beings who had not completed their evolution on the old Moon. These beings, of course, were on a higher level than we are because they could have become angels during the old Moon period. But they had not reached full maturity then and thus remained below the angels, although they are still far superior to us in terms of typically human attributes. Indeed, these beings who stand between us and the angels occupy the lowest level among the multitudes of luciferic spirits — the realm of the luciferic beings begins with them.

It is extraordinarily easy to misunderstand these beings. We could ask why the divine spirits, the rulers of the good, permitted such beings to remain behind, thus allowing the luciferic principle to enter humanity. While we may object that the good gods will certainly turn everything to the good, this question nevertheless suggests itself. Another misunderstanding arises if we consider these beings as simply “evil.” To think that these beings are “evil,” however, is to misunderstand them because, although they are the source of evil in human evolution, they are not “evil” at all. Rather, they just stand midway between us and the superhuman beings. In a certain way, indeed, these beings are more perfect than we are. They have already achieved a high level of mastery in all the capacities we still have to acquire. At the same time, unlike the angelic forerunners of the human race, these luciferic beings, because they did not complete their human stage of development on the old Moon, are still able to incarnate in human bodies during earthly evolution. The angeloi, on the other hand, the great inspirers of humanity upon whom the ancient Egyptians still relied, cannot appear in human bodies but can only reveal themselves through human beings. Thus, in the remote past, besides human beings and angels, there existed beings who were neither angels nor humans and were able to incarnate in human bodies. Indeed, in Lemurian and Atlantean times a number of individuals bore such “retarded” angelic beings within them as their innermost core. During those periods ordinary human beings, who were to develop through successive incarnations to an appropriate level of the human ideal, coexisted with beings who looked outwardly like ordinary people. These luciferic beings had to clothe themselves in human bodies because earthly conditions require the outward form of a physical body. Thus, particularly in ancient times, humanity lived side by side with these other beings who belong to the lowest category of luciferic individualities.

While the angels worked on human culture through human individuals, the luciferic beings incarnated and founded cultures in various places. The legends of ancient peoples often talk about great persons who established cultures in this or that particular place. These were embodied luciferic beings. However, it would be wrong to assume that because such an individual was an incarnation of a luciferic being he or she was therefore necessarily evil. In fact, human culture has received countless blessings from these beings.

According to spiritual science, in ancient times, specifically in the Atlantean period, there existed a kind of human primal or root language that was the same over all the earth because speech in those times came much more out of the innermost core of the soul than it does today. The following will make this clear. In Atlantean times people experienced outer impressions in such a way that to give expression to something external the soul was compelled to use a consonant. Thus, what was present in space — the universe and everything in it — induced people to imitate everything around them with consonants. People felt the wind blowing, the sound of waves, the shelter a house provides, and imitated these experiences by means of consonants. On the other hand, people's inner experiences, such as pain or joy, were imitated by vowels. Thus, one can see that in speech the soul became one with external events or beings.

The Akashic chronicle reveals, for example, that when people in the past approached a hut arching over a family, sheltering and protecting the people, they observed primarily its shape curving around the inhabitants. ⁷ This protective curving of the hut was expressed through a consonant, but the fact that there were ensouled bodies in the hut — people could feel this sympathetically was expressed through a vowel. Gradually, the concept of protection emerged: “I have protection, protection for human bodies.” This concept was expressed in consonants and vowels, which were not arbitrary, but an unambiguous and direct expression of the experience. This was the case everywhere on earth. The existence of a “primal language” common to all people is not a figment of the imagination. To a certain extent, the initiates of every nation are still able to understand this original language. Every language contains certain sounds reminiscent of it; in fact, our modern languages are the relics of the primeval, universal human language.

This original language was inspired by the superhuman beings, our true forerunners, who completed their development on the Moon. If there had been no other influence than this, the entire human race would basically have remained unified; there would have been one universal way of speaking and thinking everywhere on earth. Individuality and diversity could not have developed, and human freedom likewise could not have been established. Divisions and splits in humanity were necessary for the development of human individuality. Languages became different in each region of the earth because of the work of those teachers who were an incarnation of a luciferic being. These luciferic or “retarded” angelic beings used the language of the nation in which they incarnated for their teaching. Thus, we owe the fact that every nation speaks a particular, non-universal language to the presence of such great, enlightening teachers, who were, in fact, “retarded” angelic beings who had reached a far higher level than the human beings around them. Beings like the early heroes celebrated by the ancient Greeks who worked in human form, for example, as well as beings who worked in human form in other nations, were such incarnations of angelic beings who had not completed their development.

Clearly, then, these beings cannot be dismissed as completely “evil.” On the contrary, they have provided what has destined the human race to be free by introducing diversity into what would otherwise have remained universally uniform over the whole earth. This is true for many other aspects of life as well as for languages. Individualization, differentiation, and freedom are due to the beings who remained behind on the Moon.

To be sure, it may be said that the wise leadership of the world intended to guide all beings to their goal in the planetary evolution. However, if this had been done directly, certain other things would not have been achieved. Certain beings are held back in their development because they have a special task in the evolution of humanity. The beings who had completely fulfilled their task on the Moon would have created only a uniform humanity and, therefore, they had to be opposed by the luciferic beings. And this in turn gave these luciferic beings the possibility of changing something that was actually a defect into something good.

1911-11-21-GA132

Inner Realities of Evolution, Lecture 4: Inner aspect of the moon-embodiment of the earth

1912-06-12-GA137

(SWCC)

.. there is deep significance in the fact that from among the many kinds of experience man acquires through the first higher consciousness, I chose the story of the Temptation. For when we direct the same consciousness to the ancient Moon, we find there a repetition of the story of the Temptation. (I say a repetition, but naturally it took place long before!)

We learn how Christ already on the Old Moon overcame Lucifer.

In the scene that is given us in the Gospels we have to see a recurrence of the fact that Christ attained to victory over Lucifer. On Earth Christ repels Lucifer from the outset. This is because on Old Moon, when He was less highly evolved (for Christ also undergoes evolution) He had repelled, through the uttermost devotion of His Being to Highest Powers, all the attacks of Lucifer which at that time still meant something to Him. Already on Old Moon Lucifer approached Christ. On Earth he was no longer dangerous to Him: on Earth Christ repels Lucifer at once. On Old Moon, however, Christ had to exert all the forces at His disposal in order to repel Lucifer.

This is then the added experience that comes to us when we cast back the gaze of higher consciousness into the remote time of Old Moon.

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• Overview of solar system evolution
• Christ on Old Moon
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