The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Theosophy and Rosicrucianism X

[ 1 ] Today we want to consider the transformation of the ancient Moon into our Earth. But first we must point out an important aspect of the Moon’s development itself. As this development drew to a close—that is, once everything I described yesterday had more or less taken place—a reunification of the old Moon with the Sun itself occurred. This old Moon, so to speak, fell back into the Sun, so that there was now once again a unified body. Then this body entered a sort of dormant state of planetary existence, and the fourth metamorphosis emerged anew; this was not immediately what our Earth represents, but rather the state of our Earth was only slowly being prepared. We can best understand a cosmic law through our Earth: that later states must, in a certain sense, repeat what was already there before. Before our Earth could truly become our Earth after awakening, it had to briefly repeat once more the states of Saturn, the Sun, and the Moon. However, this development unfolded in a somewhat different way than with the three planets themselves.

[ 2 ] We have heard that on Saturn the first rudiments of the sensory organs we possess today were already present. By the first repetition, these sensory formations had advanced to such an extent that a kind of human form began to take shape; yet during this metamorphosis, that automatic sensory apparatus did not yet have an etheric body. During the repetition of the solar state, the etheric body took shape, and during the third transformation—the repetition of the lunar state—the astral body. In the third phase, we again have the Sun and Moon floating separately in space. The beings were somewhat more highly developed because they were increasingly preparing for what they were to undergo on Earth. The four bodies that the animal-humanity possessed on the Moon were joined by a fourth member, the ego. But this did not happen so quickly. While the Earth was undergoing its Saturn period, the entire human sensory apparatus had to develop the form that would enable the ego to be received. During the Sun cycle, the etheric body transformed itself so that it could become the bearer of the I; and during the Moon cycle, the astral body also transformed itself so that it could receive the I. It was as if these members were waiting, so to speak, to receive an I.

[ 3 ] What we have already been able to trace was a separation of the Sun and the Moon. Then, as we approach our own evolution, we are dealing with a splitting of the Moon and the Earth. The ancient moon split into two bodies: one, consisting of the worst material available in terms of beings and substances, was cast out into space; the other is our present-day Earth. Whatever would have prevented the beings from undergoing further development had to be eliminated, and this formed the present-day moon. Only then did the Earth exist as an independent celestial body. We are thus faced with momentous cosmic events: the separation of the Sun from the Earth and the Moon; and then, in turn, the separation of the Earth from the Moon. These two events paved the way for our present development.

[ 4 ] I have guided you up to the point where our Earth became an independent sphere. I would now like to guide you to this point from a different angle, so that you have a clear understanding of where this point lies for our Earth.

[ 5 ] Let us now move from the immediate present back into the past; let us begin, then, with the form of the Earth that you all know. Even natural science points to considerable differences between the Earth’s appearance in the past and today. Although it is all based on hypothesis, we can be glad that natural science and Spiritual Science are already finding common ground in this regard. Natural science says: In the regions where we live today, there were vast primeval forests with a climate like that which prevails today at the equator; mighty animals were to be found there. The face of the Earth had looked quite different, according to what natural science says today. Following the tropical climate that prevailed back then, before today’s temperate climate, came the glacial or Ice Age, and so on. These are things you can already find in any geology textbook. I am telling you this to point out that we must certainly bear in mind that the face of the Earth changes dramatically over certain periods of time and looks quite different. Natural science, which has at its disposal only the combinatory intellect, its instruments, and so on, can look back only a few millennia at the external appearance of our Earth. But when the seer looks back, he must describe it in a somewhat different way; yet that harmony between natural science and Spiritual Science will one day come to pass. Natural science already points out to us today the fact that the seer must assert with certainty: that the face of the Earth has not only changed in terms of plants and so on, but that entirely different regions of our Earth were covered by land or sea than is the case today. Huxley, for example, has pointed out that an entire part of Great Britain has already been submerged four times. Accordingly, the face of our Earth looks quite different time and again. — For example, in *Kosmos*, issue 10, you will find an essay on so-called ancient Atlantis, in which a scholar grounded entirely in the natural sciences demonstrates, based on the configuration of the plant and animal kingdoms in Europe and America, that what is now the Atlantic Ocean must have been land in the past, and that in those times large parts of Africa must have been sea rather than land. Instead, the land of Atlantis existed to the west of us, stretching between Europe and America.

[ 6 ] The scholar can only speak of the flora and fauna, but that is only natural. Even if there were to be remains of those ancient people, our ancestors—which would have to be found on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean—we are still unable to explore the ocean floor to that extent today. The spiritual researcher looks back to the dawn of time and knows that ancient Atlantis, which even Plato still speaks of, truly existed back then. Essentially, the entire area that is now ocean was ancient Atlantis, and that is where the physical ancestors of the present human race lived. Admittedly, they looked quite different from the mental image of modern science. Yet we must by no means compare them to the modern ape species; the Atlanteans were very different from modern humans, both spiritually and physically, but they were not apes. The ape species did not yet exist at that time; it only emerged at a later period, and only in the sense that certain human forms of that era remained at the developmental stage of that time and then degenerated to an even lower level. Darwinism, in fact, makes a mistake, but one that is very easy to see. If someone sees two people whom they hear are related—one an imperfect human, while the other, who has made good use of their abilities, is an excellent human—they will not say: “They are blood relatives, so the perfect human descends from the imperfect one.”—Yet this is the conclusion of the Darwinists. Yet the perfect and the imperfect stand side by side: only one has evolved upward by making good use of his abilities, while the other has driven them downward and fallen into decadence. So too do the apes, from whom humans branched off, and humans themselves stand in contrast to one another. The ape that encounters a human appears to him as a caricature of a human, not as a human. — Thus, at the time of Atlantis, a completely different type of human existed; this one had developed to a higher level. Certain beings lagged behind. And because the Earth changes, they too did not remain at that level, but descended, atrophied, and became a caricature of humanity, the ape species. Thus, the lower beings are degenerate higher beings who have fallen into decadence.

[ 7 ] If we consider the people of Atlantis themselves, we can best understand how they lived by examining their spiritual qualities.

[ 8 ] What modern humans are capable of—logical thinking, arithmetic, and so on—all developed later. Logic, judgment—all of that was still completely foreign to the Atlantean. Instead, the Atlantean possessed a quality of the soul that has declined considerably today, namely a memory that is almost incomprehensible. To calculate in such a way that he had learned the rule: two times two is four, and to perform this calculation over and over again based on his judgment—that did not exist. But they could memorize what happens when you add two and two together and recall it again and again. This is connected to a completely different physical nature of that ancient continent itself. If you want to create a mental image of this continent in terms of its physical nature, the best way to picture it is to think of a mountain valley filled with dense water vapor and masses of fog. For the Atlanteans, there was never such a thing as water-free air. The air was always saturated with water. The ancient Atlanteans retained the memory of this when they came over to Europe; that is why they call the land where their ancestors lived Niflheim. It was not until the end of the last third of the Atlantean era that people began to realize that they are an “I.” The predisposition for this had long been present, as had a certain sense of it. But to articulate clearly and distinctly: “I am an ‘I’”—this was only learned in the last third of the Atlantean era. This is connected with the relationship of the etheric body to the physical body. If you observe these two bodies, you will see that they roughly correspond, though the etheric body extends slightly beyond the physical body. There is now a spot between the eyebrows that serves as a focal point for certain forces and currents of the etheric body. Associated with this is a very specific point in the physical brain; both must coincide, and upon this rests the ability to perceive oneself as an “I”; upon this also rests the ability to calculate, to reason, and so on. In idiots, for example, the connection between these points in the head is absent; they do not coincide. The moment they diverge, the person’s power of judgment is no longer properly functioning. In the Atlantean, it was still normal for these two points to be separated. This is still the case today with animals; if you look at a horse’s head, you will find both points still far apart. In the Atlantean, the etheric head protruded, and the physical head had a receding forehead.

[ 9 ] But the Atlantean possessed something else in return, though this was lost with the integration of the physical body into the etheric body. He had developed an ancient, dim form of clairvoyance, even though he could not actually count to five. All the judgment he possessed came to him from his memory of incredibly distant times. And that ancient clairvoyance presented itself as a certain intensification of our present dream life. Imagine this dream life heightened to the utmost, and you would ascend to the visual perception, to the ancient, dim, dreamlike clairvoyance of the Atlantean. When the Atlantean walked through the land, he did indeed see the human being within his physical boundaries, much as we see him today, but in a certain sense this was still hazy and blurred; yet he saw something else as well. When you meet a person today, you see nothing special of their inner being, only what their expression conveys: if their expression is gloomy, you infer that they are sad and can guess something of their soul from this. But when the Atlantean met a person who harbored ill will toward him, a brown-red vision would appear to him, for example; if that person loved him, a bluish-red vision. A kind of color vision corresponded to the other person’s state of mind; one could still perceive something of what was taking place within the person. If the Atlantean was walking and a dreadful reddish-brown mist appeared before him, he would run away, for he knew: there is—perhaps still miles away—most certainly a dangerous animal coming that wants to devour me.

[ 10 ] Ancient Atlantean clairvoyance even had a physical basis. For people regarded only their closest blood relatives as belonging to their own circle, but to a much greater extent than was later the case; only very small communities that barely extended beyond the family circle. And the main thing was that people married within these small blood kinships. This marriage within the closest blood brotherhood resulted in such a mixing of blood that the etheric body could remain receptive to the spiritual. Had the Atlantean attempted to marry outside this blood kinship, the ability to see would have been suppressed; he would have become an idiot in the astral sense. Remaining within the blood brotherhoods was a matter of morality and ethics. Before one truly felt one’s individual self, one would say of the entire blood brotherhood: “This is me.” — Just as a single finger belongs to the hand, so the individual human being regarded himself as belonging to the blood kinship. But there is something else based on this. The Atlantean remembered not only what he himself had experienced, but also what his father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and so on had experienced, stretching far back through the generations, all the way to the founder of the family. Everything that lived on from that time was perceived as a single entity. This will show you how enormously developed the memory of the Atlantean was. Everything was based on memory. We will hear later how humanity lost its memory precisely through the breaking of the close-kin marriage.

[ 11 ] Such a soul necessarily requires a completely different physical nature; it also requires a different environment, such as that ancient Niflheim remembered by the ancient Germanic peoples. By no means are legends and myths based on what is called folk poetry or folk imagination. You can now see where these legends come from. Among the Atlanteans there was still an ancient, dim form of clairvoyance; these events actually took place there, were later retold, and have been preserved—albeit often in a distorted form—in the legends and myths of the peoples.

[ 12 ] The migration of the Atlanteans eastward has been wonderfully preserved in the folklore of Europe. On the continent of ancient Atlantis, human beings could not say “I” in reference to their individual personalities. Consequently, the egoism that later formed the basis of social order did not exist there. The Atlantean still possessed what the entire bloodline possessed, and he felt himself to be merely a member within that bloodline. Then the migration to the East began. The sense of “I” emerged more and more in human beings, and with it, selfishness. Previously, human beings lived much more in the outer world than in their inner world; nature still belonged to them. Human beings felt as though they were within nature, belonging to it. Now, with the attainment of ego-consciousness, things became ever more confined around them; they increasingly separated themselves from it, grew ever more alien to it, and the ego emerged ever more strongly. This was linked at the same time to a natural process. When the ancient Atlantean looked up at the sky, he could not see the sun as we see it; dense masses of fog filled the air. He beheld a mighty halo of rainbow colors when he looked at the sun or the moon. Then came the time when the Atlantean saw the sun and the moon as such. But there was one phenomenon the Atlantean did not yet know at all: that was the rainbow itself. It was only when the waters of Atlantis left the air, when a distribution of rain and sunshine formed as it does today, that people came to know the reality of the rainbow. In that water-laden atmosphere, there was no rainbow. Now recall that the ancient Atlantean flood exposed vast tracts of land; this emergence of vast tracts is magnificently preserved in legend and especially in the Bible. Just think of the profound truth contained in the Bible when you read: “And Noah saw the rainbow when the waters had receded.” It was only as the air was cleansed of the ancient Atlantean mists that the sun emerged for humanity in its free, present-day form. This occurred in parallel with the constriction, the binding of the human being into its selfhood, its ego. — For reasons that lie deep within, spiritual wisdom refers to the light flooding through space as ethereal gold, and gold is regarded as sunlight that has become dense. The ancient Atlanteans knew from their Atlantean teachers that sunlight and gold are connected, and this was the image they received: The sunlight, the sun’s gold, is emerging! It encircles you with the ring that separates the self, which causes you to no longer feel at one with nature. — Among the Atlanteans, the self was still scattered in the misty clouds; now it wraps itself around the human being like a ring.

[ 13 ] The mists of Atlantis leave the air, are pressed downward, and appear as the rivers in the West. To the Atlantean descendant, the Rhine itself is nothing other than the masses of mist that have sunk and are now flowing downward. In the Rhine he sees the masses of water that were still permeated by sunlight; he sensed the sun’s gold in the Rhine, the sun’s gold that had worked in an unselfish, primal way in ancient Atlantis. That was the Nibelung treasure in the Rhine to him, and hostile to him is the one who wants the Nibelung treasure for himself.

[ 14 ] Richard Wagner was not consciously aware of it, but was inspired by this powerful, all-encompassing fact, which he expressed even in his music. Recall the prelude to *Rheingold*: what is the powerful pedal point in E-flat major other than the moment when the “I” strikes humanity? But just as the plant is unaware of the laws by which it grows, so too does the poet have no need for such knowledge. This is how we must view the creative artist, who is inspired by forces standing behind him. Here, a significant artist has sensed what must be reincorporated into humanity. — Thus we see how it is ensured that in art, too, the same spirit flows into culture that underlies ‘theosophy.’ It happens from two sides. Thus one must view life as a whole.

[ 15 ] We have now traced humanity back to Atlantis. Let us consider a few more details. In those days, houses were not built as they are today; instead, people were able to make much greater use of what was available in nature itself. Massive rock formations, which had been reshaped by incorporating the trees found there, were joined together so that houses with a natural appearance served as people’s dwellings. The further back we go, the more we find humans endowed with clairvoyant powers; the more we encounter a pictorial consciousness in them. In images, they see the feelings of the beings around them rising before their souls in a visionary way. The will, too, was developed quite differently in the early days of the Atlantean. Today, your will can spread your fingers; this is something connected to the power of the mental image today. In the early Atlantean era, the body was still a much softer mass. The Atlantean could not only stretch out his fingers but also make them longer or shorter; he could easily have made his hand grow. If he had a plant that was small, he could make it grow larger through an effort of his will. A kind of magic was at his command. He also had a peculiar relationship with the animal world: he perceived something that could no longer be perceived later on. With his gaze, he could exert a fascinating power over the animals.

[ 16 ] If we go back even further, we arrive at a time when even Atlantis did not yet exist, when humans lived on a continent called Lemuria. South of present-day Asia, this continent stretched all the way to Africa and Australia; our ancestors inhabited it when they were still Lemurians. They had much more delicate bodies than the Atlanteans, and their will was far more powerfully developed than that of the Atlanteans. On the other hand, the ground beneath the Lemurians was quite unstable: it was constantly thrown into turmoil by eruptions and volcanic forces. This ancient Lemuria was a sort of land of fire. If we go even further back to its beginnings, we arrive at a point in time when the skeletal system was only just beginning to emerge from the boneless mass. Then we come to the era when the Earth had not yet formed the mineral kingdom as we know it today: everything that is now found within the mountains was then in a state of constant ebb and flow.

[ 17 ] And the further back we trace the course of Earth’s evolution, the higher the temperatures we encounter. We arrive at times when the formations that are now solid land flowed just as mercury or lead would flow today at a higher temperature. Solidification did not begin until the time of the Lemurians. The masses of mist become denser and denser. We are no longer dealing merely with a sea of mist, but with a dense, glowing sea of water vapor in which all manner of substances are dissolved and swirl back and forth. However, in certain parts of this water vapor, conditions already existed that allowed the human ancestors of that time to live; only, the beings were of a very different nature back then. We thus arrive at a point in time when humanity lived in a kind of primordial sea, in a warm, watery-fiery element. The Earth’s core was as if surrounded by a primordial sea containing the seeds of everything that later developed. This, then, was the state of the Earth immediately after the Moon had broken away and become independent.

[ 18 ] We have gained insight into a process leading up to the point when, first, the Sun separated from the Earth and the Moon, then the Moon separated from the Earth, leaving the Earth in the state I have just described to you.

[ 19 ] Tomorrow we will revisit this process, which we have just pieced together from two perspectives, and also examine the further development of humanity and the Earth up to the present day.