The Rudolf Steiner Archive

37. About Atlantis

[ 1 ] The green areas = remnants of the Lemurian continent. Everything on Earth is in a state of evolution. In Lemuria, we would encounter a completely different configuration of the Earth; a much higher temperature. Everything that is solid today would then be found in a liquid state. Metals would flow. We imagine this temperature to be harmless to their beings. The parts of the Lemurian continent were of a completely different nature—not protruding from the liquid elements, but rather slightly liquid parts within a sea of fire, and only upon cooling did this fire become dangerous to the more solid parts. The destruction occurred because the remaining fire became dangerous to the cooled parts. Fire was what the Lemurians used to shape everything; a fine etheric substance surrounded the fiery-liquid mass in which the continents floated; the people were cloud-like, fiery, flowing figures.

[ 2 ] As differentiation took place, fire was confined to fire pits; people were able to harness the power of fire, progressed to black magic, and were consumed by fire. About a million years ago, there was greater differentiation.

[ 3 ] The red was soft masses, more waxy continents; the air was much denser than it is today; the water much thinner, still akin to what we call the element from which life with form arose [...]. Even more akin to the watery substance in plants, so that people were more closely related to their surroundings. They could not yet penetrate the air so easily; the water, much thinner—like today’s fog—was more familiar to them. This diluted water contained more life force than today’s denser, more differentiated water. People, [illegible] this kinship, felt much more akin to the elements. The result was that they were able to utilize the power contained within them. Take, for example, the locomotive with its mineral-based steam propulsion. Seeds possess stored energy similar to that of coal. Modern humans cannot convert this into propulsive power; the Atlanteans, however, were able to power their locomotives with the energy of seeds.

[ 4 ] He crossed the few plant species in order to harness their power, and through skillful crossbreeding experiments produced the many varieties of plants and animals. This is where the difference from Darwin’s theory lies. No scientist would deny that these many species arose from a few; however, all hypotheses—such as “the struggle for existence” and “sexual selection”—have fallen apart, because science is faced with the fact that man himself is the breeder.

[ 5 ] The Atlanteans were endowed with the seed-force, Vril. The fourth root race had the Plan of Life at its disposal and ruled over everything with the seed-force; the fifth root race can only utilize mineral power. The Atlanteans had small airships that they heated with the seed force; these moved through the dense air, close to the ground, and steered over the mountains. The water was thinner and was therefore used for the fine arts, particularly in the City of the Golden Gates.

[ 6 ] Within the root race, there are seven sub-races that underwent migrations. First, the original people.

[ 7 ] Rmoahals, people who were still very similar to the last Lemurians, with a fairly physical constitution, living in harmony with nature. Their descendants, the Tlavatli peoples, organized themselves to develop the defining element of the Atlanteans—memory—which reached its first peak in the third race, among the Toltecs. They had cities built entirely according to the principle of intuitive architecture—as seen today in the degenerate form among beavers.

[ 8 ] “A Rock, a Natural Garden” was, as it were, carried over into the buildings. In perfect harmony with nature, they created fairy-tale-like homes; the sewer system was magnificent, and the cleanliness even more so.

[ 9 ] Gradually, these peoples had developed an increasingly sophisticated way of life. The Sons of the Fire Nebula had grown into adepts with schools of adepts; the rulers were chosen from among the adepts themselves. It was impossible for them to be unworthy, because people knew how to regulate heredity by choosing suitable parents. This secret—the secret of birth—was almost entirely lost. Everything was based on memory; it extended beyond what they experienced between birth and death. It was taken for granted that a son shared a common memory with his father, grandfather, and so on, so that through intuition they mastered the knowledge and arts of their forefathers. Thus, breeding was more important than upbringing. All skill was therefore more a matter of trial and error than of study. Hence the different kind of schools: more like workshops where one learned practical skills. There was no talk of counting; instead, people memorized things and recalled them. [No one was educated; no one would have been unable to describe their ancestral lineage.] The temples were ancestral temples; the later cult of ancestors is a degeneration of this ancestral culture built upon memory. History was recorded in symbols; until the middle of the Third Race, mastery of the Vril force was strictly held in the hands of the adepts, who understood the symbols that one first had to learn.

[ 10 ] The fourth race, the Urturanians, was the first to fall. They seized the secret of the Vril force and became black magicians.

[ 11 ] In the fifth race, the first signs of thinking and reasoning appeared: the Proto-Israelites. They remained intermingled between the sixth and seventh races; they were the progenitor race of today’s Aryan root race, bringing with them the power of memory and adding the ability to reason.

[ 12 ] The sixth race was that of the Akkadians, further toward Asia. They were a people who, driven by a spirit of practical enterprise, already understood the art of combinatorial calculation. A trading people. They were the ones who introduced something that had not existed before: primordial jurisprudence—that is, rules governing the mutual relationships among human beings. The seventh subrace, the Mongols, realized the atmic principle of unity in a religious context. The others looked up at the starry sky and found the divine in the power of the stars. The Toltecs had perceived the power of Vril as divine, then intellectually elaborated upon it until it was worshiped by the Mongols as the “Tao.”

[ 13 ] The Greeks, in their tradition, have expressed many things. Three types of divine imagery:

[ 14 ] —the Zeus type, that of the fifth root race,

[ 15 ] — The satyr, or faun, differs from this; its facial features are related to those of ancient Egyptian mummies, evoking the memory of the Atlantean type. Satyr — to the east = faun: reminding peoples living to the west.

[ 16 ] - Hermes: God of merchants, carrying with him everything that was of central importance to the Atlanteans: the serpent as a symbol of the healing power of Vril, God of physicians. Wings indicated a deep kinship with nature; a winged god who survived the flood. Thus, these three types are truly historical documents.

[ 17 ] Greek mythology, related to Greek esotericism: the

[ 18 ] the Egyptian Hermes—in Egypt, the adepts had withdrawn—and related to the great artists of Atlantis; under the

[ 19 ] They summarized their esoteric knowledge under the name Hermes. Therefore

[ 20 ] the connection between the esoteric Hermes and the god of commerce.

[ 21 ] Now came a time similar to that of the Lemurian era. The continents became denser, and the Turanian arts, harnessing the power of Vril, drew water toward them, so that the continents were shaken by the water’s own force. Due to the water’s increased density, it was impossible to hold it in place at its points; the evil arts, the evil itself, were the catalyst for progress. As the chaos gained the upper hand, the sea condensed. The life force that had been drawn out—which had pushed the molecules apart—brought about the opposite effect; the force above the condensed sea was lost. They themselves drew out the very force that had held the sea together.

[ 22 ] The life force in the Atlantean’s plants was still connected to the Atlantean’s own life force; when he made changes to himself, he could cause the plants to grow more slowly or more quickly.

[ 23 ] So we must change our ideas in order to have a concept of development.