Separation of Moon

When the Moon was part of the Earth, it had no clear boundaries but formed a sphere of slightly thicker material than the rest, so the whole earth was a bit like an egg. However the Moon was located slightly more on one side of the earth, where there is now the Pacific Ocean. This area is now characterized by the so-called 'ring of fire' (Schema FMC00.315).

The separation of the Moon changed everything for the development of the Earth and humanity:

• Earth only hardened to its current state after the moon was expelled and was outside the earth, before it was much more a living organism. The first three most upper layers were produced after the separation of the Moon, see Earth's inner layers (eg Schema FMC00.004 and variants). The surface of the Earth evolved to its current constitution of continents and oceans.
• Also human physical bodies started hardening slowly towards the mineral state in the Atlantean epoch, from earlier forms in the other elements (see oa Schema FMC00.573 and FMC00.574)
• the rotation of the Earth started with the effect of day and night and the Sun influence on the whole Earth
• the Earth now became cradled in between Sun and Moon influences (see Schema FMC00.190A, also Schema FMC00.486), see oa topic pages Lucifer and Jehovah and The two etheric streams

The Reunion of Moon with Earth will most likely take place after the end of the Current Postatlantean epoch or at the start of the Sixth epoch.

Aspects

• The separation of the Moon from the Earth was brought about by the Saturn spirits to stimulate from within the inner development of Man, who, otherwise, would have hardened and become mummified (1909-08-26-GA113)
• Chthon is a designation of the somewhat chaotic condition of the Earth after the withdrawal of the moon, at which time neither plant nor animal nor human forms were to be found. In context of teachings of Zeus, Kronos and Chthon by Pherecydes of Syros (1909-08-26-GA113)
• in the Lemurian epoch life received a new impulse, brought about by the gradual turning of the axis of the Earth: previously there was a tropical climate at the North Pole; later through the turning around of the Earth axis the tropical climate came into the middle region (1905-10-25-GA093A)

Continents

• different stages (see also Discussion Note 1 below for Further reading)
  • before the separation of the moon, the Earth had a more dense area and a more watery area.
    • The dense area became denser because of the influence of the Sun rays from a single side, and after further hardening (after the separation of moon) it evolved to what is called in geology the (more or less) unified arch-continent Pangaea (see Schema FMC00.573). This densification and formation of continental plates has been compared with the embryonic formation of the skull bones (see Dankmar Bosse, fig 221).
    • On the other side we found a lighter substance that became the huge mass of water, in the location of the current Pacific ocean.
  • The large continent Pangaea (Schema FMC00.599) broke up (in as far as it was wholly whole, it probably already consisted of a conglomerate of earth masses) and predecessors of the current continents drifted apart (re the 20th century theory of plate tectonics and continental drift), see eg 1922-09-23-GA347. See also Schema FMC00.601.
  • However this should not be seen as a continuous process whereby one can just wind back time and extrapolate backwards from the current situation (see also the so-called 'foolish extrapolation' on Top five problems with current science). In this period between the Lemurian epoch and our Current Postatlantean epoch, the face of the Earth changed dramatically more than once, oa due to
    • the natural disasters causing
      • the end of the Lemurian epoch by the fire of the still vulcanic Earth surface, eg Blavatsky describes "the sinking and transformation of Lemuria and its destruction by subterranean fires (volcanoes)", ao with "a volcanic and sudden uplifting of the Ocean floor". AIso 1904-GA011: "it was through the activity of this volcanic fire that the destruction of the Lemurian land came about", and more in 1909-06-10-GA109.
      • the end of the Atlantean epoch, re ice age and influence of the Spirits of Form - see eg 1910-12-31-GA126: "the picture of it was very different from that drawn by the hypotheses of modern geology. In still earlier Atlantean times, the picture was again quite different. Before this catastrophe the whole face of the earth was different from anything that can be imagined today." .. and "the macrocosmic conditions worked into the physical and brought about the mighty physical upheavals of the Atlantean cataclysm, which completely changed the face of the Earth. This was the greatest physical transformation of all, the most drastic action of the macrocosm upon the physical Earth ... parts of the earth were blotted out", see Atlantean epoch#1910-12-31-GA126
    • the tilting of the Earth axis: see Lemurian epoch#Main evolutionary events: ... "the axis of the Earth was gradually turned. Previously there was a tropical climate at the North Pole; later through the turning around of the Earth axis the tropical climate came into the middle region". (1905-10-25-GA093A)

Illustrations

Process of separation of moon

Schema FMC00.600: shows various BlackBoard Drawings (BBD) by Rudolf Steiner illustrating the early history of the Earth in the Lemurian epoch, and the separation of the moon.

Left: before the separation of the moon (shown in yellow in the white Earth), the Earth was illuminated by the sun from one side. The fluid Earth was made up from a thick liquid substance, and in this 'Earth soup' land masses floated, huge lumps of slime (white spots under arrows). The Earth had its own reproductive energy as the moon forces in the Earth were fertilized by the sunlight (arrows shown). See also Schema FMC00.318.

Second from left (and right): from the living Earth, consisting of a thick fluid nucleus (yellow) and surrounding thick air (purple), a protuberance developed which wore away and at last split off, thereby forming an offspring that went out into cosmic space.

Right: This inverted body that was separated off (in purple) now had the thick fluid outside and the thinner air inside. It hardened only after it was outside the Earth, and became the current moon. From the hollowing out of the Earth in various places and from the receding continents one can tell that the moon separated from the Earth in the area now called the Pacific Ocean. See also Schema FMC00.315.

With the separation of moon a complete change took place, not only in what separated itself off but also in the Earth itself. The rotation of the Earth began only along with the separation of the moon, with the Sun now working on the whole body of the Earth in an alternate rhythm of day and night. The separation of forces caused a hardening of substances on Earth.

Schema FMC00.600A: is an illustration from Dankmar Bosse's excellent reference work 'The mutual evolution of Earth and humanity', whereby he complements the blackboard drawings from Rudolf Steiner's lectures (above) with another visualization (below) related to the descriptions in those lectures. Taken together with Schema FMC00.600 and these descriptions, one can imagine - see below middle and right - how the denser part of Earth is on the left - turned to the Sun, before and as the rotation of Earth set in. The drawing below right then links to Schema FMC00.599A.

Schema FMC00.315: is an illustration depicting the 'Ring of Fire' as the scar resulting from the separation of the Moon in the Lemurian epoch.

Schema FMC00.599A: links the separation of the moon from the Earth, and the unified primal continent Pangaea (middle), with the tetraeder structure of the Earth as described in 1924-09-18-GA354. On the middle drawing, the red lines map the ring of fire (left), whereas the blue dots map the end points from the tetraeder structure drawing. Below right: another illustration below by Hans-Ulrich Schmutz from the book 'Die Tetraeder-struktur der Erde'.

Schema FMC00.462A: presents the development of Man through the transitions of the separation of Sun and separation of Moon.

At the end of the early text '1903-GA089 - Draft of a spiritual-scientific cosmology - Fragment from 1903/04', Rudolf Steiner describes various aspects explicitly before and after separation from Sun and Moon. This schema organizes these in tabular format, for reference and study

Continents - the face of the Earth

Schema FMC00.599: depicts a possible or probable structure of the large unified arch-continent with granite-gneiss crust called Pangaea at the end of the Paleozoic era, the Permo-Carboniferous period (see also Schema FMC00.209). View from the Sun after the separation of moon in the Lemurian epoch. This large unified arch-continent would have covered about one third of the spherical surface of today’s Earth. The dashed lines give the later fracture boundaries, double-dashed show future narrow zones of high mountain belts.

Illustration from the excellent reference work by Dankmar Bosse 'The mutual evolution of Earth and humanity' (2002), after H.G. Owen 'Atlas of Continental displacement' (1983).

Schema FMC00.601: is a map integrating work from many authors, taken from Hans-Ulrich Schmutz: 'Die Tetraeder-struktur der Erde' (Eine geologisch-geometrische Untersuchung anhand der Plattentektonik) (1986); in English: 'The tetrahedral structure of the earth - a geological-geometric investigation based on plate tectonics'.

The map provides an overview showing expansion areas in green and compression areas in dark grey. Relate the largest green areas on the right and below right to Schema FMC00.599A (and FMC00.600A).

Schema FMC00.206 shows various world maps showing the layout of the continents in the Lemurian and Atlantean epochs. More on the pages of these epochs, the Lemurian epoch and the Atlantean epoch.

Lecture coverage and references

1903-10-30-GA090A

p28

1903-11-10-GA090A

p31

1904-GA011

[Moon split off]

One should now imagine this process to be somewhat further advanced; or rather, one should represent to oneself what is written in the Akasha Chronicle concerning a somewhat later point in time. At that moment the moon split off from the earth.

[Cooler environment – denser substance - no more fire mist]

This event caused a great revolution. The objects which surround man lost a great part of their heat. These objects thereby entered into a coarser and denser substantiality. Man must live in this cooler environment. He can do this only if he changes his own substantiality.

With this densification of substance is connected a change in form. For the condition of fire mist on earth has been replaced by a completely different state. As a consequence, the higher beings which we have described no longer have the fire mist available to them as a medium for their activity. Now they can no longer exercise their influence on those soul activities of man which had previously constituted their main field of action. They have received power over the forms of man which they themselves had previously created from the fire mist.

[Transformation human form – man becomes upright – two halves]

This change in influence goes hand in hand with a transformation of the human form.

• One half of this form, together with two organs of movement, now becomes the lower half of the body, which functions mainly as the carrier of nutrition and reproduction.
• The other half of this form is turned upward, so to speak. The remaining two organs of movement become the rudiments of hands.
• Those organs which previously had served for nutrition and reproduction are transformed into organs of speech and thought. Man has become upright.

This is the immediate consequence of the extrusion of the moon. With the moon all those forces disappeared from the earth through which, during his fire mist period, man could still impregnate himself and produce beings like himself without external influence.

• His whole lower half — that which one often calls the lower nature — now came under the rationally formative influence of the higher entities. What these entities previously could regulate within man, since the mass of forces now split off with the moon was then still combined with the earth, they now have to organize through the interaction of the two sexes. It is therefore understandable that the moon is regarded by the initiates as the symbol of the force of reproduction. After all, these forces do inhere in it, so to speak. The higher beings we have described have an affinity with the moon, are in a sense, moon gods.

Before the separation of the moon and, through its power, they acted within man; afterwards, their forces acted from outside on the reproduction of man. One could also say that those noble spiritual forces which previously had acted on the still higher impulses of man through the medium of the fire mist, had now descended in order to exercise their power in the area of reproduction. Indeed, noble and divine forces exercise a regulating and organizing action in this area.

With this an important proposition of the secret doctrine has been expressed, namely, the higher, more noble divine forces have an affinity with the — apparently — lower forces of human nature. The word “apparently” must here be understood in its full significance. For it would be a complete misconception of occult truths if one were to see something base in the forces of reproduction as such. Only when man misuses these forces, when he compels them to serve his passions and instincts, is there something pernicious in them, but not when he ennobles them through the insight that a divine spiritual power lies in them. Then he will place these forces at the service of the development of the earth, and through his forces of reproduction he will carry out the intentions of the higher entities we have characterized. Mystery science teaches that this whole subject is to be ennobled, is to be placed under divine laws, but is not to be mortified. The latter can only be the consequence of occult principles which have been understood in a purely external fashion and distorted into a misconceived asceticism.

• It will be seen that in his second, his upper half, man has developed something upon which the higher beings we have described have no influence. Other beings now acquire power over this upper half. In earlier stages of their development, these beings advanced further than men, but not as far as the moon gods. They could not exercise their power in the fire mist.

But now that something they themselves had lacked previously has been formed in the human organs of understanding through the fire mist, their time has come.

At an earlier time, the moon gods had attained an understanding capable of acting externally. This understanding already existed in them when the period of the fire mist began. They could act externally on the things of earth. In earlier times, the lower beings we have just mentioned had not attained such an understanding which acts outwardly. Therefore, the time of the fire mist found them unprepared.

Now, however, an understanding is present. It exists in men. These beings seize upon this human understanding in order to act on the things of earth by means of it.

[Dual leadership – lucifer]

As the moon gods previously had acted on the whole man, they now act only on his lower half, while the influence of the lower entities just mentioned acts on his upper half. Thus man comes under a double leadership.

• In his lower part he is under the power of the moon gods;
• in his developed personality, however, he comes under the leadership of those entities which are summed up under the name “Lucifer,” the name of their regent. The Luciferic gods thus complete their own development by making use of the awakened human powers of understanding. Previously they had not been able to attain this level. At the same time they give man the predisposition to freedom, to the discrimination between “good” and “evil.” While it is true that the human organ of understanding has been formed entirely under the leadership of the moon gods, these gods would have left it to slumber; they were not interested in making use of it. They possessed their own powers of understanding. In their own interest, the Luciferic beings were concerned with developing the human understanding and directing it toward the things of earth. Thereby for men they became the teachers of all that can be accomplished by the human understanding. But they could not be anything more than stimulators. They could not develop an understanding within themselves, but only in man.

Thus there developed two directions of activity on earth.

• One proceeded directly from the moon divinities and was lawfully regulated and rational from the very beginning. The moon gods had already served their apprenticeship and were now beyond the possibility of error.
• The Luciferic gods which acted on men had yet to win their way to such illumination. With their guidance man had to learn to find the laws of his being. Under Lucifer's leadership he himself had to become as “one of the gods.”

1905-10-25-GA093a

When man, by working out of the spirit, transmutes the physical body, he conquers death. The separate forces exhaust themselves when they take on special forms. The force enters into the form with ever increasing density and hence life in the Lemurian Age had to receive a new impulse, which was brought about by the turning around of the Earth Globe. The axis of the Earth was gradually turned. Previously there was a tropical climate at the North Pole; later through the turning around of the Earth axis the tropical climate came into the middle region. This change proceeded with comparative rapidity but lasted nevertheless for perhaps four million years. [Rudolf Steiner later revised his time scale of earthly evolution to much shorter periods. Ed.] Four million years were needed by the Moon Pitris in order to turn the axis of the Earth. At that time the Moon Pitris development was already much further on than that of present day Man.

1909-06-27-GA112

Let us once more consider evolution before the Moon's exit. We referred to Man as the first born of creation, for he appeared during Old Saturn stage. The Old Sun stage brought the animal kingdom, the Old Moon stage the vegetable kingdom, and finally the mineral kingdom came into existence on the Earth.

But now, subsequently to the Moon's expulsion, things became different. The Earth was saved from mummification by the exit of the Moon. Everything then revived and was rejuvenated.

What was the manner of this rejuvenation?

The lowest of the kingdoms, the mineral, required little help. The vegetable kingdom was in a sense withered, but could soon revive; the animal kingdom, too, was capable of gradual progress. The human beings were the last to recover so as to be fit to receive the souls which descended upon them from the highest regions.

Thus, through the expulsion of the Moon, the whole process of evolution becomes reversed.

Whereas originally the human kingdom was first to come into existence, then the animal kingdom, later the plants, and last of all the minerals ...

• the mineral kingdom is now the first to show the full benefit of the rejuvenating forces;
• then follows the vegetable kingdom, which develops to its highest forms;
• next the animal kingdom,
• leaving the human kingdom last in order to evolve to the highest forms possible to it.

After the exit of the Moon, the whole sense of evolution is reversed.

The beings who wait longest before uniting their spiritual to their physical form, were precisely those who, in the highest sense of the word, ascended to a more spiritual sphere after the separation of the Moon. Others who completed their spiritual development earlier, remained behind on the Earth at an earlier stage. After the separation of the Moon the laggards appeared first.

You will easily understand the reason. Let us consider some human soul or some being which was unwilling to incarnate earlier owing to the prevailing hardening of substance. In the words of our language, such a being might deliberate as follows: ‘Shall I incarnate now or shall I wait awhile?’ Let us suppose that the Moon was only a short while separated and the substances still very hard. The being is in a hurry to incarnate; it descends at all costs and puts up with the still undeveloped bodies. As a result it is condemned to remain upon a lower level.

Another being might reflect as follows: ‘I prefer to wait awhile in universal space, till the Earth has still further refined and rarefied its physical being.’ This being waits for a later epoch and, as a result, succeeds in giving form and shape to the body in which it incarnates, and makes it a physical image of itself. Hence all beings who incarnate too soon must remain upon subordinate stages; others who can wait, attain the highest stages. Our higher animals remained upon the animal stage because they were unable to wait long enough after the exit of the Moon. They put up with such bodies as were available. The next to descend formed their bodies up to the level of the inferior human races, which are already extinct or are dying out.

Then followed a time when the right moment was at hand for the union of souls and bodies, and when beings were brought forth which were really capable of human development. Thus we see the desolation of the Earth until the Moon's exit, followed by a revival after that event. Thenceforward the beings who had left the Earth because of its excessive deterioration, descend once more. This applies not only to the beings who are exclusively concerned with the development of higher humanity, but also to others who descend for quite other purposes. In this case, too, it is essential for a being to await the right moment to enter a body.

1909-08-26-GA113

If we now follow up the course of the Earth evolution we may ask how the separate classes of spiritual beings participate in its progress. Spiritual beings at different stages of evolution directed the processes of the separation of the Sun and Moon from the earth, as a result of which that progress came to pass.

We have first to consider a class of spiritual beings which attained a certain stage of evolution during the Old Sun period; they belong to the Old Sun evolution because it was destined to provide a field of action for them. These are beings which separated the sun from the earth during the Earth period, because during Old Sun they were Sun-bound in the same way as humanity is now Earthbound. As we have seen, they needed the Sun for their further evolution and with the Sun they left the Earth in order to work upon the latter from without.

When the Sun spirits had withdrawn the Saturn and Moon spirits were left on the Earth. The development of the Saturn spirits was such that they could direct and guide the separation of the Moon from the Earth; they had passed through the same stage on Old Saturn as the Sun spirits had done on the Old Sun; their maturity had preceded that of the Sun spirits, and they were therefore able to separate the Moon from the Earth and to stimulate from within the inner development of man, who, otherwise, would have hardened and become mummified.

It may be said that

• the withdrawal of the Sun was brought about by the Sun spirits, and
• that of the Moon by the Saturn spirits.

The Sun is a cosmic symbol for the act of the Sun spirits, the Moon for that of the Saturn spirits. And what is left upon the Earth itself [are] Spirits of the Old Moon period.

1922-09-23-GA347

But where must the moon once have been in order to make of the earth itself a living being? The moon could not have done that while being outside the earth. It must have been inside it! Just as carbon dioxide cannot keep us alive when it is outside our bodies, but must develop in a living way within us, so the light of the moon must at some time have been inside the earth, not outside.

Therefore, you must imagine, that at the time of these giant oysters the moon was not separate from the earth, but dissolved in its thickish soup. It had no clear boundaries and just formed a sphere of slightly thicker material than the rest. Thus it made the earth as a whole into an egg. The moon, which in our time affects only our im­agination and the bodies of women and female animals, was at one point part of the earth.

That means that at some time it must have moved away. Here we reach a tremendously impor­tant moment in the development of the earth. The moon, which in our time is always outside the earth, used to be inside it. Then the earth expelled it, and now the two are separate.

When we study the body of the earth we discover something remarkable.

• First of all we find that it consists of water in which continents or land masses ‘float’, just as these gigantic animals once swam in the liquid earth. Europe, Asia and Africa ‘float’ in water as these huge creatures once floated in the earth soup. When we study the forms of the various land masses, we see that they look different from each other.
• We also notice from the hollow­ing out of the earth in various places and from the receding continents that the moon once separated from the earth in the area now called the Pacific. The moon was once inside the earth and then was expelled. It hardened only after it was outside the earth.

[Fertility of the organism]

Let us return to the earth condition when it still contained the moon. Then the secretions of the moon gave the earth the function of mother, while the sun produced the ‘fatherly’ substances in constantly creating those lumps of slime and surrounding them with a thick coat of horn. These floating lumps of slime constantly fertilized what was underneath them in the earth soup, which was kept alive by the moon. The earth, then, was a huge egg, ferti­lized continuously by the influences of the sun.

If this situation had continued, it would have led to a very uncomfortable condition. The moon would have been cast out; the earth would have become infertile, and everything would have died after all.

What happened instead?

True, the moon was expelled, and the earth died. But some of the old fertilizing qualities were preserved within the bodies of female humans and animals. Before this expulsion of the moon, there was no birth as we know it now. Just as you take some of the old yeast and put it in the dough if you want to make a new loaf of bread, so some of the old moon substance remained in female bodies so that they could be fertilized. The egg thus fertilized is merely a reproduction of the ancient earth egg. It is no wonder that pregnancy, the length of time the unborn child is carried in the womb, is calculated on the basis of the moon phases; after all, the moon is still involved in repro­duction. If you are a baron’s son, you must live within the terms of the legacy your father left behind. The same is true for the fertilized egg, which actually derives from the ancient moon soup. It must still live by the moon’s terms, because it has inherited its substance from the moon.

... the earth at one time had its own reproductive energy and was fertilized by the sun and these huge animals. The moon forces in the earth were fertilized by the sunlight.

1922-09-27-GA347

[Before and after the separation of the moon]

• As long as the moon was inside the earth, the reproductive capacities of animals had a certain quality. While it was enclosed within the earth, the moon provided the motherly, female qualities for the earth.
• Later, after the moon was thrust out, this changed.

The moon was not located at the centre of the earth, but more to one side. If you look at the earth as it is now, you will notice that on one side, where Australia is, there is a lot of water; whereas the part con­taining Europe and Asia consists mostly of land. In other words, land and water are not evenly distributed, but most of the land is on one side and most of the water on the other. This uneven distribu­tion existed also in the period when the moon was still in the earth; it was lying more to one side, where the earth had the general tendency of being heavy. Of course, on this side where it contained a solid substance, the earth had to be heavy.

1923-10-10-GA351

If we were able to pack up the whole earth, to put it on a world carriage, and quickly drive toward the moon—the moon we put inside the earth, into the Pacific ocean, and thereaf­ter we drive with the earth and the moon, which we loaded into the Pacific Ocean, and quickly drive into the sun: then we would have restored that situation, which once existed

1924-07-03-GA354

with illustration - see Schema FMC00.600A (similar to below on Schema FMC00.600, more than 20 years earlier)

But later something occurred of very special importance. The condition I have described could have gone on for a long time; all could have remained as it was without becoming our present earth. The heavy, clumsy creatures could have continued to inhabit the living earth together with the creatures able to live in the air. But one day something happened. It happened that one day from this living earth, let me say, a young one, an offspring, was formed and went out into cosmic space. It came about in this way: a small protuberance developed, which wore away (see drawing) and at last split off. And a body was now out in the universe which had, instead of the earlier conditions, the surrounding air inside and the thick fluid outside. Thus an inverted body was separated off.

Whereas the Moon-earth remained with thick fluid for its inner nucleus and thickish air outside, a body split off which now had the thicker substance outside and the thinner inside. And if one investigates the matter without prejudice, in honest research, one can recognize in this body the present moon. Today just as one can find sodium in the air, one can also learn the exact constituents of the moon, and so one can know that the moon was once in the earth. What circles round us out there was formerly within the earth, then separated off and went out into the cosmos.

With this a complete change took place, not only in what separated itself off but also in the earth itself. Above all, the earth lost certain substances, and for the first time the mineral element could be formed in the earth. If the moon-substances had remained in the earth, minerals could never have been formed, and there would always have been a state of moving fluid. The departure of the moon brought death for the first time to the earth and with it the dead mineral kingdom. But with this came also the possibility for the present plants, present animals and man in his present form to develop.

We can say, therefore, that out of the Old Moon arose the present earth together with the mineral kingdom. And now all forms had to alter. For with the departure of the moon the air became less sulphurous, approaching nearer to the present condition, and what had been dissolved in the fluid was now thrown out, forming mountain-like masses. The water grew more and more like our present water. On the other hand the moon, which has around it what we have in the interior of the earth, produced a thickish, horny mass on the outside. This is what we see when we look up. It is not like our mineral kingdom, but it is as if our mineral kingdom had become horn-like and turned into glass. It is extraordinarily hard, harder than anything horn-like that we have on earth, but it is not quite mineral. Hence the peculiar shape of the moon mountains; they actually all look like horns that have been fastened on. They are formed in such a way that one can even perceive what had been organic in them, what had once been a part of life.

Beginning with the separation of the moon, our present minerals were gradually deposited from the former dense fluid. Particularly active was a substance that in those ancient times existed in great amounts and consisted of silica and oxygen—we call it silicic acid. One has the idea that an acid must be fluid, because that is the form in which it is used today. But the acid which I mean here and which is a genuine acid is extremely hard and firm. It is, in fact, quartz! The quartz which you find in the high mountains is silicic acid. And when it is whitish and like glass it is pure silicic acid. If it contains other substances you get the quartz—or flint—that looks violet, and so on. That comes from the substances contained in it.

But the quartz which is so hard today that you can't scratch it with a knife, and if you hit your head on it, it would make a real hole in your head—this same quartz was dissolved in those ancient times, either in the thick fluid or in the finer surroundings of dense air. In addition to the sulphur there was an immense amount of dissolved quartz in the thick air around the earth. You can get an idea of the strong influence this dissolved silicic acid had at that time if you reflect on the composition of the earth today just here where we live. Of course you can say: There must be a great deal of oxygen, because we need it for breathing. Yes, there is a good deal of oxygen: 28 to 29% of the whole mass of the earth. But you must count everything. Oxygen is in the air and in many solid substances on the earth too; it is in the plants and animals. And if you put all this together it is 28% of the whole.

But silica, which when united with oxygen in the quartz gives silicic acid, is 48 to 49%! Think what that means: half of all that surrounds us and that we need, almost half of that is silica! When everything was fluid, when the air was almost fluid before it thickened—yes, then this silica played an enormous role, it was very important in that original condition. Nowadays these things are not understood rightly because concerning man's finer organization, people no longer have the right idea. They think today in a casual, crude way: Well, we're humans and we have to breathe. We breathe oxygen in and we breathe carbon dioxide out. We can't live if we don't breathe like this. But silica is still always contained in the air we inhale, genuine silica, tiny quantities of silica. Plenty is available, for 48 to 49% of our surroundings are made up of silica.

2002/2019 - Dankmar Bosse - Mutual Evolution of Earth and Humanity (EN in 2019, DE in 2002)

has the most extensive coverage of the separation of Earth and Moon over many pages, too much to include here, but just a short extract:

quote A

In context with the evolution of a liv­ing earth, the side of the earth opposite to the Permian arch-continent could be considered as the location for the moon's separation. This side, after all, would add up to two thirds of today's surface of the earth.

It would explain the anomalous character of the Micronesian plateau, for instance, with its numerous volcano cones and lack of magnetic spreading bands.

Up until the Per­mian period one would have to assume there was still hot-fluid basaltic material here, and no ocean water.

This is of course in contradiction to the present models, but would derive as a consequence of the previously, presented phenomena.

quote B

Rudolf Steiner he referenced back to the previous lecture he had given on early saurians (fig. 48, p. 82) that formed hard scale armor.

The continents, he then said, formed in a similar way to the shells of mollusks, of oysters (see the quote on p. 310); there was a slimy mass that hardened at the outside while remain­ing totally soft inside. These continents swam on the viscous earth like dumplings in soup. Under the influ­ence of the sun from outside (fig. 211, 1, spots under the arrows), the living earth, "which once had been like a huge egg," gave birth to continental rock masses, while others, previously formed, died.

The moon was still inside the earth (fig. 211, 1 left) and had a fertiliz­ing effect on life processes from within, comparable to the embryonic processes. The moon was not yet sharply bordered within the earth, but was rather a viscous sphere. The continents swam in the earth as in water, like the giant animals once did.

Even today one can read from "the shapes of the continents where the moon once flew out of it".

Discussion

Note 1 - Continents

Since the 20th century, current mineral physical science settled for a theory called plate tectonics, as a follow up to the earlier continental drift hypothesis (links are to wikipedia topic pages). Plate tectonics is the theory that puts forth that the Earth's lithosphere comprises a number of large tectonic plates which have been slowly moving, a theory that became more widely accepted by geoscientists after seafloor spreading was validated in the mid-to-late 1960s.

As described under 'Aspects' above, Rudolf Steiner made clear things are not that simple, without saying the continental drift is not there.

For example in 1910-12-31-GA126: "the picture of it was very different from that drawn by the hypotheses of modern geology. In still earlier Atlantean times, the picture was again quite different. Before this catastrophe the whole face of the Earth was different from anything that can be imagined today."

For a spiritual scientific coverage, see the reference work by Dankmar Bosse: 'The Mutual Evolution of Earth and Humanity', Part III Forming on the Earth's crust and its landscapes. There is a complete chapter on 'The development of the continents' (p305-341).

The schemas on this topic page can be concatenated to follow the logic described in the lectures by Rudolf Steiner, and the explanations laid out by Bosse. The idea is to be able to imagine and integrative picture including current scientific observations of tectonic plates and continental drift with the descriptions given by spiritual science.

The proposed sequence: first Schema FMC00.600 and FMC00.600A, then FMC00.599A and FMC00.315, then linking FMC00.601 with FMC00.599A

Additional illustrations

See oa:

• Schema FMC00.206 on Atlantean epoch#Continent of Atlantis
• Schema FMC00.458 on Lemurian epoch#Continent of Lemuria 2

Further notes

• On FMC00.599, Bosse adds the observation that it isremarkable that Palestine, where the Mystery of Golgotha took place, seems to lie in the exact center of this map. On this map, he tentatively positions what is marked as 'Lemuria' as the hypothetical land mass that evolved to the continent described by Rudolf Steiner.
• On FMC00.599A, the tetraeder axes allow for some interesting remarks, for example (i) between Caucasus and Japan would be the area of the Gobi desert, whereas (ii) the last Atlantean continent would be between central America and the Caucasus. Contemplate also Schema FMC00.454 on Migrations#Illustrations for the positions of Atlantis > Lemuria > Current epoch (Central European cultural basin) > continent Sixth epoch

Related pages

• Lemurian epoch
• Earth and nature in the Lemurian epoch - before separation Moon
• Earth and nature in the Lemurian epoch - after separation Moon
• Evolution

References and further reading

• Dankmar Bosse: Mutual Evolution of Earth and Humanity (EN in 2019, DE in 2002)