The Rudolf Steiner Archive

16. The Stages of Development of our Earth up to the Lemurian Epoch

[ 1 ] Yesterday, we came to the moon's metamorphosis in our consideration of the development of our planet. We saw that it underwent its first incarnation as ancient Saturn, then as the sun, and has now reappeared as the moon. Yesterday we reached the point where we saw that if everything had continued in the same way as before, human beings would not have been able to keep pace with the speed of the cosmic development of other beings. For this reason, during the lunar period of the planet, a kind of separation had to take place at a certain point on this lunar Earth. A kind of withdrawal took place of the sun, which was advancing in the cosmic whole with the finest substances and beings. And the less advanced, the actual old moon, which still contained everything that our present earth and moon are, remained behind as a kind of nebula. As a result, under special conditions, a condensation, a kind of hardening, took place on the old moon and, at the same time, an equal hardening of the physical beings that inhabited it.

[ 2 ] When the sun was gone, its forces acted on the old moon from outside. That which is said to have later emerged as the human, animal, and plant kingdoms had now stepped out of the sun with the old moon and allowed itself to be illuminated by the sun, absorbing its forces from outside. After the separation, the three kingdoms on the moon took shape as follows: There was not yet a mineral kingdom, but what emerged after hardening as the lowest kingdom was a kind of mineral-vegetable kingdom; mineral matter that had a vegetable character, or, if you will, vegetable matter that had a mineral character. And this formed the soil of the moon, a solid-liquid foundation, so to speak. Just as you walk on minerals on Earth today, the ground there consisted of a solid-liquid foundation that was a kind of plant mineral. Imagine a mass like cooked lettuce, a plant substance that you walk on: that was the lowest realm of the moon, which was at the same time, one might say, semi-living. Our earth's surface has now settled down relatively, and only when volcanic activity occurs does this remind us of a certain inner life of our earth. This was not yet the case on the moon. We may perhaps speak later about what occultists have to say about earthquakes and volcanic activity. Just as organs grow in a plant and then die off again, so this semi-living substance manifested itself on the moon. This ancient moon was like a living, mobile, large organism, on which the beings living around it felt similar to parasites in our time. These moon plants were of mineral substance, had some life and were mobile, i.e., they were plant minerals. What are our rocks today, we would also have found there, but they were horn- or wood-like hardenings, that is, of a similar substance. Surrounding the moon, like a kind of atmosphere, were less dense masses of fog, less dense, half-watery, half-living substance, in which the beings of the next kingdom—half animal, half plant—were embedded. If you could squeeze a tree and it would have something like an animal sensation, then you would have something similar to this animal-plant realm. This could no longer exist as such within our Earth today.

[ 3 ] As has often been mentioned, it is not only in school that pupils are left behind, but in [cosmic] evolution there are also beings who remain behind, and the forms associated with them, which are the expression of these beings, also remain behind and are preserved. Thus, there were certain lunar beings still on Earth who were not yet ready to participate in Earth's development. These beings then had to create in their outer expression what had been their living conditions on the moon. As you know, the plants on the moon did not root in mineral soil as they do today, but in the semi-living moon soil. Mistletoe, for example, is a descendant, a latecomer of an ancient lunar form; it must root in plant soil. In the myths of the peoples, you can find many things that refer to this, for example, the legend of Baldur and Loki, who is a being from the moon, while Baldur is a being who is closely connected with the development of the earth and the sun. If you want to interpret a legend, you have to know from which area of occult research the connections are found. Through what the clairvoyant brings, an external science can be enriched so that it can recognize more in the legend than mere folk fantasy. Spiritual science must teach us to research with our whole soul instead of just with our intellect.

[ 4 ] Then we have a third realm on the moon, which is an intermediate realm between the animal and human realms: the animal-human realm. However, you would find beings in those animal-humans that are very different from what today's materialistic science imagines. They are only animal-humans because they do not yet have important parts of their being within themselves, within their own essence. Today, the sleeping human being has his physical and etheric bodies lying here below in bed and his astral body outside. So, basically, he is only half of his being in the physical world, and not the more important half; with his physical and etheric bodies, he belongs, as it were, to an earlier, cosmic stage of consciousness. On the moon, clairvoyant vision sees this state prevailing permanently. The astral body was never completely within the physical and etheric bodies, but on the moon it was more thoroughly and clearly connected with the human being than it is today during sleep. The head of the moon human was not yet as closed off as it is today. A remnant of how the organs were located up in the head at that time is still visible in the spot at the top of the infant's head, which remains very soft and open for a long time. At that time, the human head was completely open at the top, and the organ you encounter when you draw a line vertically below this soft spot, the pineal gland, which today is dry and atrophied, was a very important organ during the lunar evolution. It was a kind of sensory organ that connected the human physical and etheric bodies with the human astral body. The human astral body sent its most important ray forces into the other bodies through this organ, which was like a fine, luminous body. It was the consciousness of the human being, neither sleep consciousness nor waking consciousness. Human beings did not perceive external things. Their consciousness would have been comparable to what we experience in dreams today. At that time, the pineal gland was a kind of heat organ that emitted powerful, luminous rays of heat. When human beings moved around in the external world on the old moon, this organ served to show them the direction they had to take. Their perception on the moon was such that humans felt they were ascending something like a living dream image. There was no concrete seeing or perceiving yet, but an inner weighing up and down of living images. Today's dream images are only faint shadows of this. Everything humans did on the moon, such as searching for food and so on, was done through these images. These moon images were connected with the outer world. He could be directed and guided by them. When he sought his food, he was guided by certain images that arose before him; harmful things were indicated to him by very specific images. And the astral body extended far beyond the physical and etheric bodies; only the physical body had a form that we can describe as human.

[ 5 ] On the moon, human beings did not yet have a certain constancy of internal warmth. Today they do; they have acquired it on earth. On the old moon, human beings absorbed warmth from the heat surrounding them and emitted it again, just as they breathe air in and out today. This was visible in their heat organ. It glowed and shone when they absorbed heat, and when they emitted heat, it darkened. If you could have seen this, it would have looked like the fire dragon you see today as a replica of it. All of this has a deep meaning. When you see figures such as the archangel Michael trampling the fire dragon underfoot, or Saint George fighting the dragon, such images lead back to those conditions. This is a figure that once existed: the fire-breather of the old moon, the old dragon—a stage that had to be overcome.

[ 6 ] This is the explanation of such things derived from occult knowledge. When spiritual science becomes more widespread in the future, people will look at such things, as they have been preserved in these images and ideas, in a different light. This animal-human form was, of course, quite different from that of today's human beings, because the astral body had not yet submerged so deeply into the human physical body as it did later on Earth. Human beings are what they are today because the astral body has completely submerged into them. One could say that what did not allow itself to descend into the depths of the physical world during the lunar evolution decided to do so during the Earth evolution. But if this process had taken place earlier in the cosmos, human beings would have remained at a much lower level. During the Earth's evolution, he has struggled out of the spirit to this noble form, which is godlike. If the possibility of human formation had already existed on the Moon, this descent would have been too early for the astral body. The divine guides always chose the right moment. For this is the essence of lunar evolution: the physical body was given time, so to speak, to develop, and it was reserved for the Earth that human beings would be permeated by the astral body after they had developed physically on the Moon at a lower stage. Then the moon receded again into the sun from which it had previously separated; the old moon sphere was absorbed again by the sun, and everything passed into a world sleep, through a pralaya. This begins at the same moment when the moon returns to the sun.

[ 7 ] The old lunar development thus proceeded as follows: first, a kind of preparation; second, separation into sun and moon; third, formation of the three realms on the moon; fourth, return to the sun; fifth, a flooding away; sixth, the world sleep.

[ 8 ] From this world sleep, the fourth metamorphosis of our Earth then emerges: our planet, the Earth itself. However, this first form of the Earth is completely different from what our Earth now shows us. When it first appeared, this Earth, out of the cosmic night, the twilight darkness, it was large, enormously large, for it contained within itself the sun and the moon; all separation occurred later. It was so large that it reached as far as Saturn today. The differentiation of our system occurred later. The Kant-Laplace theory, as far as physical thinking allows, explains this first emergence of our Earth in a completely understandable way. It speaks of a nebula, a kind of primordial cloud in which everything is dissolved and from which the entire solar system emerges. The rotation of this nebula formed rings, which condensed and, through rotation, formed the planets. This is often demonstrated in school with an experiment: a ball of oil is made to rotate in a liquid of equal weight using a simple mechanical device. One can then observe how this ball flattens, how drops break away from it, which in turn form balls and orbit the main ball, and in this way one sees a kind of planetary system emerging on a small scale through rotation. This is incredibly evocative. Why shouldn't we imagine the same thing in the world? You can literally see how a planetary system is created by rotation; it's right there in front of you! But you forget one thing—yourself or the teacher who is making the rotation. This external fact explains nothing. Something like this world system does not arise out of nothing, does not arise spontaneously out of the nebula, but because many spiritual beings worked on it and, at a certain point in their development, extracted the finest substances from the chaotic substance and ejected the coarser ones, the moon.

[ 9 ] In the first period after the Pralaya, the Earth, which had now reunited all the substances and beings within itself, repeated the Saturn state. At the beginning of this development, it was not a ball of gas, as is often mistakenly assumed, but a ball of heat. For it repeated the Saturn state and extended as far as the present Saturn. It is the spiritual beings who, at a certain stage, take their substances with them. Everything is based on spirit, both in the separation of the sun and in the ancient development of the moon. Nothing external was to blame for this; it was an inner necessity for some of the beings. The higher beings separate from the chaotic substance what they need. It is spirit everywhere that directs the outer. When the Earth first shone forth, everything was within it; these beings were within it at various stages of their development. We will consider this in the following reflections.

[ 10 ] So, after the Pralaya, the Earth first repeated the Saturn state; this is a state of heat. Then this huge, powerful sphere condensed so that it became gaseous, and only at a certain point was it possible for it to form the liquid state, to repeat the Moon state. At that moment, what had happened earlier on the moon was repeated: the sun also separated from our earth, and the earth plus the moon became an independent body with the substances and entities of the earth and moon as they exist today. For a time, therefore, the earth plus the moon and the sun were connected. Then the earth plus the moon were separated, because human beings could not keep up with the pace of the sun beings. If the sun had remained in the Earth, human beings would have been old as soon as they were born. The beings of the universe are at very different stages of development. We will only be able to mention the main points for our fourth period, the Earth time. There are all kinds of degrees, even among the more mature beings. There were those who could not cope with the rapid speed of the sun and then again with the slow speed of the Earth. These separated before the separation, when the sun, Earth, and moon were still together, and formed special places for their activity, where they had their appropriate domains. This is how the outer planets Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars were formed.

[ 11 ] During the repetition of the Saturn state, Uranus, Vulcan, and Saturn separate from the Earth. During the repetition of the Sun state, Jupiter and Mars separate. After the Sun separated from the Earth, it split off Mercury and Venus, and after the separation of the Sun, the Earth split off the Moon. The tearing apart of the old moon was caused by the forces of the advanced powers, which pulled out the sun's body, while the normal and backward ones formed the moon orbiting it. In all mysteries, this is called the battle in heaven. The scattered planetoids are the debris of that battlefield, where the primordial mystery of the origin of evil must also be sought.

[ 12 ] Those planetary spirits could not wait, so to speak, until the sun separated from the earth, for otherwise they would not have found the right ground for their work when development took a different course at that time. For the spatial and movement relationships of the planets are all the expression and effect of the activity of their beings; they reveal the stage of development of the spiritual beings that inhabit the planets. Beings who had believed that they could come with the sun because they had been able to do so in the past, but who were unable to do so, separated from it only after the sun had separated from the earth. These beings, who were still far above human beings, departed only afterwards. They needed another arena for their activity. Venus and Mercury, these two, which separated from the sun only during the separation of our earth from the sun, formed the inner planets of our solar system.

[ 13 ] For the earth, after its separation from the sun, a difficult, dark time began, in a certain sense the darkest, hardest time for the earth. It was still connected to the moon and thus absorbed all the forces that delayed development. Inhibiting life in the most eminent sense is one of the forces that mainly operate in the moon. These inhibiting forces were now much too strong in the Earth at that time. If they had remained connected to it, life would not have progressed at the right pace. Human beings would have hardened to the point of mummification; the Earth would have become a real graveyard, a large cemetery with statues of mummified human bodies. Procreation would no longer have been possible. When the Sun left the Earth, there was a tremendous desolation and hardening of all life on Earth. So even then there were times when the physical body was abandoned by the spiritual part, just as today the physical body is abandoned by its spiritual part at death. Even then there was a withdrawal of the spiritual-soul, its departure from the physical and its return to the physical, as is the case today with incarnations. But it happened more and more frequently that when the spiritual-soul wanted to find a human body again while the moon was still connected to the earth, it simply could not find one because the body was no longer suitable for receiving the spiritual-soul. Imagine that people were dying in large numbers today and that the characteristics of the physical body were causing these bodies to become so decadent that the souls would say to themselves: We cannot use these bodies. They are too bad for us; we find no opportunity for further development in them. Through a particular prevalence of alcoholism, for example, the offspring would gradually become so bad that the bodies would simply be useless for the descending souls. This is how you can imagine the state of the Earth before the Moon left it. Hardened, calloused, dried up, mummified—that was often all that remained of what should have been inhabited down there. There really was a time when souls searched in vain for bodies for their own earthly development. The result was that certain spiritual-soul entities at that time simply could not return to the physical plane as human beings. They could not reincarnate on Earth. And these entities went to other world bodies, to those that had split off from the Sun, to Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars. And there was a time when a large part of these beings, who should normally have incarnated on Earth, depending on their nature and stage of development, placed themselves under the protection of the beings of Mars, Jupiter, Venus, or Saturn, ascended to these world bodies, and populated them. And our Earth became desolate for a time as a result. Only the strongest souls found a way to overcome the rebellious bodies, to soften them, so to speak. Let us understand each other correctly: only the very best soul material returned to Earth because it had the greatest power to overcome the rebellious bodies. However, evolution could not progress in this way.

[ 14 ] The highest beings belonging to our solar system now devised a new plan. The densest substances were extracted from the earth by the hardening forces and separated: the moon was separated. As a result, the remaining forces were no longer disturbed in their development. However, this moon only became what it is today at a later stage. The time had now come for physical, etheric human development to find the right pace that corresponded to its stage. Now the forces of the sun and moon worked together on the earth from outside and kept themselves in balance. Gradually, as the moon moved away, a kind of softening, an improvement of the human body took place. This period we have just described is called the Lemurian period in occultism, the period of the separation of the moon in the physical earth period. The period when the sun leaves the earth is called the Hyperborean period, and the period when the sun, moon, and earth were still together is called the Polar period.

[ 15 ] Throughout the entire period when the sun was separated from the earth and the moon first had a hardening effect on the earth and then left it, high beings worked on this differentiation. Their most important servants were the spirits of form, called Exusiai in Christian esotericism, also spirits of revelation, powers.

[ 16 ] On Saturn, it was the Thrones, spirits of the will, who sacrificed themselves and dripped the substance for the physical body of human beings from their own substance. On the Sun, it is the Dominions or spirits of wisdom who give the substance for the etheric bodies, and on the Moon, it is the spirits of movement or the powers that enable the formation of the astral body. On Earth, it is the spirits of form or the powers that pour in the I and thus cause this I to gradually, very gradually, in this phase of development, to fit itself into what had now been re-created, the physical body, the etheric and astral bodies. This is the work of the spirits of form. Everything we have described was necessary for an I-human being to arise at all, as the expression of an I-consciousness, and for such a division of the three other bodies—the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body—to form. It was necessary for the sun and moon to emerge from the earth, and it was necessary for human beings to experience a hardening and then a softening of this hardening. All this could happen because those wise beings who guided everything first undertook all this on a trial basis for the sake of evolution. Much happens in the evolution of the earth on a trial basis by the high beings who stand behind evolution, even today. What is the Theosophical Movement? It came into the world through the high beings whom we call the Masters, who live in physical human bodies but are at a much higher stage of development than human beings today. From the last third of the 19th century onwards, a certain amount of wisdom flowed out from them. The living inflow of this wisdom from higher regions into our culture is the real foundation of our theosophical movement. Do not believe that it is not possible that the inflow that is being attempted would fall on deaf ears among humanity. Then the Masters would say: A later attempt must be made when humanity is ready for it. In occultism, this is called the test of humanity's maturity. It is not enough for wisdom to flow into humanity from such higher individualities; the success of the test depends on how it is received. Such tests have often been undertaken, but they have not always been successful. Humanity has often proved itself ready for this only within narrow limits; not always have willing souls and hearts been found. Just as here for the purpose of the theosophical movement, so it is in the great universe. When the I was to be poured into humanity, the test consisted in gradually attempting to penetrate what was previously only the astral body from the I. And then it turned out that the astral body, which was permeated with the I, was unable to penetrate the physical body. An adjustment had to be made, and this was done by removing the moon. It was not until the middle of the Lemurian period that the impact of the I, the Christ principle, took place.

[ 17 ] But the following was connected with this: during the separation of the moon, the earth was desolate. We have heard that the bodies had become so bad that they could no longer be a dwelling place for the souls. Such cosmic processes have been preserved in legend, but occult research shows their true origin and teaches us that during the separation of the moon, when the earth was desolate, many souls sought suitable embodiment in cosmic space and then left the earth and embodied themselves on other planets. Now, however, after the moon had departed, it became apparent that the earth was once again capable of providing suitable bodies. And now the souls that had gone to other planets in the last period of Lemuria and then in the Atlantean evolution returned to the earth and reincarnated in these bodies on earth. Groups of human beings now formed on Earth: those who had bodies for souls that came from Jupiter incarnations; those who came from Mars, Venus, or Saturn and now found what suited them. This grouping of souls gave rise to the emergence of the human races. This means that the races are connected in a certain way to the world bodies. So, we could talk about Saturn people, Jupiter people, and so on, and now we could use the term “race” in a way that made sense.

[ 18 ] On the moon, and also on the earth during its lunar period, there were people at different stages of development. We can trace this back to the Lemurian epoch, when humanity differentiated itself through the departure of the moon; after that, the concept of race emerged and began to have a certain meaning from then on. Race is something that has come into being and will pass away again. The age in which the races formed is the Lemurian and Atlantean age. Today we have only the stragglers of the races.