Planetoid belt
The planetoid belt is the result of the so-called Fight in Heaven (or War in Heaven), which is referenced in the Bhagavad Gita and is part of the Mysteries. It contains the primeval mystery regarding the origin of Evil.
The Fight in Heaven happened between two classes of the Spirits of Motion, the more advanced and the ones who had remained behind, during the contraction of Old Sun to Old Moon. It caused a split from the one sphere which was Old Saturn or Old Sun, into two bodies: the advanced SoM staying on ancient Sun (part of Old Sun during Old Moon stage), and the less advanced forming the Old Moon body.
The host of small planetoids scattered between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter are a result of this Fight or War in Heaven. Note Jupiter represents the outer limit of the Old Sun sphere, Mars represents the outer limit of the Old Moon sphere.
Illustrations
Lecture coverage and references
1909-04-14-GA110
(SWCC)
Which are the Spiritual Beings who carried over the condensation of the substance of Old Saturn to Old Sun?
These Beings whom we call the Spirit of Wisdom (SoW). It is they who now press inwards from outside and who originally pressed together the mighty mass of Old Saturn so that it grew smaller. The SoW brought pressure to bear upon it, until Old Sun became the size of a globe, the mass of which, if you place the Sun in its centre, you must imagine as reaching out to Jupiter.
- Thus Old Saturn was a gigantic world-globe, which having our Sun in its centre would have reached as far as to the present Saturn, an enormous globe, as large as our present solar system.
- The Old Sun of which we have just spoken was a world-globe which stretched a far as the Jupiter of today. This point marks the boundary of the Old Sun-world.
You will do well if you picture those outer planets as boundary marks for the limits of the ancient Worlds. You see that we are gradually approaching the theory of the planets, being led thereto through the activity of the hierarchies.
[Old Moon]
We know that the next condition is again one of condensation. The third condition of our world system is that of the Old Moon. Those of you who have given attention to the communications from the Akashic Record know that Old Moon had come into being because the Sun substance had condensed still more, as far as to the condition of water. The Old Moon contained no solid earth as yet, but was composed of fire, air and water. It had so coordinated the watery element. Gas or air was condensed in it to the element of water.
Who effected this?
That Hierarchy of spiritual Beings brought this about, whom we call Spirits of Motion (SoM). Thus it happened through the SoM, that the mass of Old Moon contracted to the limits of the orbit of the present Mars.
- Mars is thus the boundary showing the size of Old Moon. If you imagine a globe with the present Sun for its centre, and for its limit the orbit of the present Mars, you have the size of Old Moon.
[Split of single globe of Old Moon]
We have reached the point when we must remember that when Old Moon was formed out of Old Saturn and Old Sun, something quite new took place. A part of the dense substance was now thrown out, and two globes came into being.
- One of the two took up the finer substances and Beings and became a finer Sun,
- the second became a denser Moon.
This third condition of our planetary system developed in such a way that, for a time, it remained one single planet; then it threw off a planet from itself, which remained in its vicinity. At first, so long as it formed one single body, the Moon extended to the orbit of the present Mars; then the Sun contracted, and was encircled by another body; approximately in the place where the present Mars has its orbit, was more or less the periphery of the original single body.
Through what did this division take place? Through what influence did a single globe split in two?
It happened in the time of the domination of the Spirits of Motion. For those who have already followed me in this domain, it is not new to hear that [in] the Cosmos things happen very much in the way they happen in ordinary human life. Where beings are evolving there are some who advance and others who remain behind, as many a father knows, who complains that his son in college lags behind whilst others are making good progress. We are concerned, therefore, with a difference in the ‘tempo’ of development. It is the same in the Cosmos.
And through certain causes, which we shall learn later, now that the SoM entered on their Mission, something came into play which is called in all esotericism and in all Mysteries, the ‘fight in Heaven.’ This ‘fight in Heaven’ forms an essential, and integral part of all Mysteries; it contains also the primeval Mystery regarding the origin of Evil.
At a certain point of Old Moon evolution the SoM had reached very different degrees of maturity. Some of them aspired to rise spiritually as high as possible; others again had remained behind, or at least had progressed normally in their development. Some of the SoM on Old Moon had progressed much further than their companions. The result of this was that these two classes of SoM divided.
- The more advanced ones drew out with the body of the Sun, and
- the others formed the Moon revolving around it.
We have now given a sketchy description of the fight in Heaven, the rending asunder of Old Moon, so that
- the planet accompanying Old Moon comes under the domination of those SoM which had remained behind,
- and the [ancient] Sun under the domination of the advanced SoM.
Something of this fight in Heaven still sounds in the first sentences of the divine Gita, where symbolically at the beginning of the battle can still be heard echoes of that mighty fight of the heavens. O, it was a mighty field of battle!
From the time when the SoW brought about the formation of Old Sun, up to the time of that of Old Moon, when the SoM took up their mission, all was a mighty field of battle; a gigantic fight reigned in Heaven.
[Key section planetoid belt]
The SoW had contracted the whole mass of our solar systems to the boundary of Jupiter, then the SoM contracted it to the boundary of the Mars of today.
Between these two planetary frontiers in the heavens lies the great battlefield of the fight of Heaven.
Look at that heavenly battlefield! Only in the nineteenth century has the physical eye discovered again, so to speak, the devastations produced by the Fight in Heaven. You have a host of small Planetoids scattered in between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. These are the wreckage of the battlefield of the fight in Heaven which was fought between the two points of cosmic time when our Solar System was contracted first as far as Jupiter, then to Mars.
And when astronomers direct their telescopes towards the heavenly spaces and still discover other planetoids, these are still the wreckage of that great battlefield, of that fight in Heaven between the advanced SoM and those who were less advanced, and which also brought about the severing of Old Moon from the [ancient] Sun.
Thus, we see, when we consider the actions of the divine spiritual beings, how external things appear to us as the expression, the outward physiognomy of those divine spiritual beings.
1909-04-15-GA110
recaps
We saw yesterday how the facts of the Cosmos proceed from the spiritual life of Beings who stand above man. Especially such a phenomenon as the one we introduced towards the end of our last lecture, the fight in heaven, which has left, so to speak, so many ‘corpses’ on the field of battle between Jupiter and Mars, which as planetoids are still being discovered by physical [editor: mineral] science in everincreasing numbers. Such a phenomenon must be of particular importance to us, and we shall have to return to it again: We shall see how this event is also reflected in certain processes of the earth's evolution, and how precisely in the beginning of the Bhagavad Gita we find the earthly reflection of this fight in heaven.
1909-06-09-GA109
The planetoid belt are the remnants of the battlefield where one has to search the primal secret of the origin of evil.
SWCC
During the recapitulation of the Old Saturn planetary stage, Uranus, Vulcan and Saturn separated from the Earth.
During the recapitulation of the Old Sun planetary stage, Jupiter and Mars separated.
And after the sun had left the Earth, Mercury and Venus separated from it. After the separation of the sun, the Earth cast out the moon.
The dispersal of Old Moon was brought about by the forces of the progressed beings who drew out the solar body, while the normal and retarded beings produced the moon circling around it.
In all the mysteries these happenings were called the strife in heaven. The detached planetoids are the ruins of that battlefield. It is here that the primal secret of the origin of evil must be sought.
1923-GA227 NB
The appendix of volume GA227 includes notebook entries from the 1923 courses in the UK.
These include the following entries in the context of the process between death and a new birth
.. the colonies on the planetoids
...
Most currently living [editor: incarnate] people come from the planetoid region, there they turn around.
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