The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Beginning of the Present Earth, the Exit of the Sun

[ 1 ] The Akashic Chronicle will now be traced back to the distant past, in which the present Earth had its beginning. Earth is to be understood as that state of our planet through which it is the carrier of minerals, plants, animals and humans in their present form. For this state was preceded by others in which the aforementioned natural kingdoms were present in substantially different forms. What is now called earth has undergone many transformations before it could become the carrier of our present mineral, plant, animal and human world. Minerals, for example, were also present during such earlier states, but they looked quite different from our present ones. These past conditions will be discussed later. This time we shall only draw attention to how the next previous state was transformed into the present one. - One can visualize such a transformation by comparing it to the passage of a plant through the germinal state. Imagine a plant with root, stem, leaves, blossom and fruit. It absorbs substances from its environment and excretes them again. But everything about it that is substance, form and process disappears, apart from the small germ. Life develops through this, in order to arise again in the same form in the new year. Thus everything that was present on our earth in the previous state has disappeared in order to arise again in the present. What could be called mineral, plant, animal in the previous state has passed away, just as the root, stem and so on of the plant have passed away. And there, as here, a germinal state has remained, from which the old form arises anew. Hidden in the germ are the forces that allow the new form to emerge.

[ 2 ] So at the point in time we are talking about here, we are dealing with a kind of earth germ. It contained the forces that led to today's earth. These forces have been acquired through the earlier states. However, this earth germ must not be imagined as a dense material like that of a plant. Rather, it was of a spiritual nature. It consisted of that fine, pictorial, mobile substance which is called the "astral" in occult literature. - In this astral germ of the earth are at first only human dispositions. They are the dispositions for the later human souls. Everything else that was already present in earlier states in mineral, vegetable, animal nature has been absorbed into these human dispositions, has been fused with them. So before man enters the physical earth, he is soul, astral entity. As such he finds himself on the physical earth. This is present in an extremely fine materiality, which is called the fine ether in occult literature. - The origin of this etheric earth will be explained in the following essays. The astral human beings connect with this ether. They imprint their essence on this ether, so to speak, so that it becomes an image of the astral human being. So in this initial state we are dealing with an etheric earth which actually consists only of these etheric human beings, which is only a conglomerate of them. The astral body or the soul of man is actually still for the most part external to the etheric body and organizes it from the outside. For the secret researcher, this earth looks something like this. It is a sphere, which is again composed of innumerable small ether spheres - the ether people - and is surrounded by an astral envelope, just as the present earth is surrounded by an air envelope. The astral people live in this astral envelope (atmosphere) and work from there on their etheric images. The astral human souls create organs in the etheric images and bring about a human etheric life in them. Within the whole earth there is only one material state, the fine living ether. In theosophical books, this first humanity is called the first (polar) root race.

[ 3 ] The further development of the earth now takes place in such a way that two states of matter are formed from one. As it were, a denser one separates and leaves behind a thinner materiality. The denser materiality is similar to our present air; the thinner one is similar to that which causes chemical elements to form out of the former undivided materiality. In addition, a remnant of the former materiality, the animated ether, remains. Only a part of it is divided into the two states of matter mentioned. Thus we are now dealing with three substances within the physical earth. Whereas previously the astral human beings in the earthly shell only worked on one materiality, they now have to work on three. And they work on them in the following way. What has become airy initially resists the work of the astral beings. It does not accept everything that is contained in the perfect astral man. The consequence of this is that astral mankind must divide itself into two groups. The one group is one which works on the aerial materiality and creates in it an image of itself. The other group is capable of more. It can work on the two other materialities, it can create such an image of itself that this consists of the living ether and the other type of ether that brings about the chemical elementary substances. This type of ether will be called the chemical ether here. This second group of astral men, however, has only acquired its higher faculty by excreting from itself a part - the first group - of the astral entity and condemning it to lower work. If it had retained within itself the forces which brought about this lower work, it could not have risen higher itself. We are therefore dealing here with a process that consists of something higher developing at the expense of another, which it eliminates from itself.

[ 4 ] The following picture now presents itself within the physical earth. Two kinds of beings have emerged. Firstly, beings that have an aerial body, which is worked on from the outside by the astral being that belongs to it. These beings are animal-like. They form the first animal kingdom on earth. These animals have forms which would appear quite adventurous to people today if they were described here. Their form - it must be noted that this form has only air-like material - does not resemble any of the animal forms that exist today. At most they bear a distant resemblance to certain snail or mussel shells that exist today. Alongside these animal forms, the physical formation of man is progressing. The astral man, who has now risen higher, creates a physical image of himself which consists of two kinds of matter, the life ether and the chemical ether. So we are dealing with a human being who consists of the astral body and who works into an etheric body, which in turn consists of two types of ether: life ether and chemical ether. Through the life ether this physical human image has the ability to reproduce itself, to allow beings of its own kind to emerge from it. Through the chemical ether it develops certain forces which are similar to today's chemical forces of attraction and repulsion. As a result, this human image is able to attract certain substances from the environment and unite them with itself, only to later expel them again through the repulsive forces. Of course, these substances can only be taken from the described animal kingdom and from the human kingdom itself. We are dealing with the beginnings of nutrition. These first images of man were therefore animal and man eaters. - In addition to all these beings, the descendants of the earlier mere life ether beings also remain; but they wither away as they have to adapt to the new earth conditions. After undergoing many transformations, the unicellular animal beings and also the cells that later compose the more complex living beings are formed from them.

[ 5 ] The further process is now as follows. The air-like matter splits into two, one of which becomes denser and watery, the other remains air-like. But the chemical ether also splits into two states of matter; one becomes denser and forms what will be called light ether here. It brings about the gift of light in the beings who have it within them. A part of the chemical ether, however, remains as such. - Now we are dealing with a physical earth that is composed of the following types of matter:

[ 6 ] Water, air, light ether, chemical ether and life ether. In order for the astral entities to be able to act on these types of matter again, another process takes place through which a higher being develops at the expense of a lower one, which is eliminated. This gives rise to physical entities of the following kinds. Firstly, those whose physical body consists of water and air. Coarse excreted astral entities now act on these. This creates a new group of animals with a coarser materiality than the earlier ones. - Another new group of physical beings has a body that can consist of air and light ether mixed with water. These are plant-like beings, but again they are very different in form from the present plants. The third new group is the human being of that time. His physical body consists of three types of ether, the light ether, the chemical ether and the life ether. If one considers that descendants of the old groups also continue to exist, one can appreciate the diversity of living beings that already existed at that stage of earthly existence.

[ 7 ] Now follows an important cosmic event. The sun separates. This means that certain forces simply disappear from the earth. These forces are composed of part of what was previously present on Earth in the life ether, chemical ether and light ether. These forces were thus pulled out of the previous earth, as it were. A radical change thereby took place with all groups of earth beings who had previously contained these forces within themselves. They underwent a transformation. The plant beings mentioned above initially underwent such a transformation. A part of their light ether powers was withdrawn from them. They were then only able to develop as living beings when the power of light that had been withdrawn from them acted on them from outside. This is how plants came under the influence of sunlight. - The same happened to human bodies. From then on, their light ether also had to interact with the sunlight ether in order to be viable. - However, not only those beings who directly lost light ether were affected, but also the others. For in the world everything works together. Even the animal forms, which did not themselves contain light ether, were previously irradiated by their fellow beings on earth and developed under this irradiation. Now they too came directly under the influence of the external sun. - The human body in particular, however, developed organs that were receptive to sunlight: the first human eyes.

[ 8 ] For the earth, the consequence of the sun's emergence was a further material compression. Solid matter was formed out of the liquid; likewise the light ether separated into another kind of light ether and into an ether that gives bodies the ability to heat. Thus the earth became an entity that developed warmth within itself. All its beings came under the influence of warmth. Again a similar process had to take place in the astral as before; some beings developed higher at the expense of others. A portion of beings separated out which was suited to work on the coarse, solid materiality. And thus the solid skeleton of the mineral kingdom was created for the earth. Initially, all the higher kingdoms of nature were not yet effective on this solid mineral bone mass. Hence we have on earth a mineral kingdom that is hard, a plant kingdom that has water and air as its densest matter. In this kingdom the air body itself had condensed into a water body as a result of the processes described above. In addition, animals existed in the most diverse forms, those with water bodies and those with air bodies. The human body itself had undergone a process of condensation. He had condensed his most dense corporeality to the point of wateriness. This watery body of his was permeated by the heat ether that had arisen. This gave his body a materiality that could be described as gaseous. This material state of the human body is referred to in works of secret science as that of the fire mist. The human being was embodied in this body of fire mist.

[ 9 ] Thus, the consideration of the Akashic Chronicle has advanced close to that cosmic catastrophe which was caused by the egress of the moon from the earth.