The Rudolf Steiner Archive

78. Image of the evolution of the Moon and Earth

[ 1 ] At that time, a mineral kingdom, a plant kingdom, and an animal kingdom had already developed. The animal kingdom extended all the way up to human beings. After all, human beings are a product of the Earth. Those kingdoms were quite different from what they are today.

[ 2 ] The mineral kingdom still possessed an immediate life within it. The Moon was, so to speak, like a fruit in its physical state—a fully juicy fruit. Inside was the solid shell, and outside were the parts of the fruit that merge into the spiritual atmosphere. The solid shell was the physical matter. The fruit—the mineral kingdom of the Moon—grew mightily from the outside; the crystals were bursting with succulent fertility, and so on. Alluding to this, the Egyptians spoke of the fertile and luxuriant Isis.

[ 3 ] The second was the plant kingdom, which grew like lush vegetation and differed from the growing crystals only gradually. The plants extended their aerial roots into the soft, gelatinous body of water surrounding them, which contained dissolved kama. Through the roots that the plant world extended, it absorbed not only air and light but also kama dissolved in the dense air; thus, they possessed sensation—not a specific sensation, but that of general life. Our Venus flytrap is still something of a remnant of this. The Earth had a general life of sensation, and the plants were its organs.

[ 4 ] The animal world was not yet as primitive as our present-day animal world, but was essentially related to the surrounding Kama element, floating and only occasionally groping its way, like water-dwellers who are completely at one with their surroundings; hence this dull, dreamlike consciousness, which does not yet lead it to say “I” to itself. The dreamy human of the Moon possessed a remarkably keen perception of the astral realm. Our present-day seawater is a dilution of the gelatinous water of that time. But since the water is still related to the astral realm—even if not directly mixed with it as it was then—sailors have legitimate visionary insights; to reject these is more a matter of superstition than of reason.

[ 5 ] These beings were not yet able to say “I” to themselves; the “I”s floated as mere thoughts in the surrounding sea of wisdom.

[ 6 ] So we have: at the core, a solid crust of vegetative metal and stone; then vegetation endowed with sensation; and a layer of wisdom—not yet condensed into air—in which the “I’s” lived. These were still to take on physical form on Earth itself. That is why the Moon is also called the Cosmos of Wisdom. This layer of wisdom is more like a sphere that permeates everything, interwoven with threads, and at the points where they intersect, something like a knot arises—that is an “I.”

[ 7 ] Thoughts flow through the entire sphere, like a collective nervous system, a manasic plexus. This was the wise process through which all intellectual activities on the Moon took place. Like electric threads without the wire mesh; this is “Fohat”—the kinship of our thought with electricity, [illegible]

[ 8 ] Essentially, the entire fourfold nature of the human being consists of the three lower kingdoms, but the lowest has not yet reached the stage of hard minerality. For the threads to be severed, it was necessary for the gelatinous mass to advance to its very limit. Human beings are nothing more than the part of the nervous system torn away by this hardening.

[ 9 ] This lunar vegetation and lunar animal life are far more magnificent to behold. For this animal life is entirely chaste; everything is governed by the shared Manas, and they interact with one another solely through wisdom.

[ 10 ] When considering the formation of the Earth, we must bear in mind that each realm descended one level:

- The mineral loses life.
- The plant loses sensation.
- The animal loses manas.

[ 11 ] The “I”s, however, move forward and enclose themselves within the earthly matter that has now become physical. Thus, the “I”s truly pass through all three states that previously governed them from the outside. Now the human being has a mineral body; in the next cycle, a plant body; and in the sixth cycle, an animal body.

[ 12 ] What we have described as the Moon’s form was its state during the third cycle of the Moon, for that was the actual condition that mattered for the Moon—just as the fourth cycle did for the Earth. Later, it receded and absorbed the realms it had formed, so that they remained in their basic structure but had sprouted like seeds. And on Earth, human beings draw life out of the mineral realm and leave it behind as dead rock. From this, in the fourth round, they form their skeletal system; they were able to crystallize this as the foundation of their own life by leaving the lifeless substance of the mineral realm behind—Adam and Eve, the Persian myth, Deucalion and Pyrrha.

[ 13 ] Because sensation was withdrawn from the plant during the second round, humankind developed its sentient muscular system. And because general wisdom was withdrawn from the animals, humankind developed its special Manas—and left the animal realm without wisdom.

[ 14 ] As the lunar cycle wanes, the processes of hardening outward begin to take shape. All soft stone material forms shells around itself; plants develop an epidermis; animals even develop hides with bristles. Everything, then, has a tendency to form shells; it is a shell-forming development.

[ 15 ] If we imagine that the beings we have come to know as Luciferians are, there on the Moon, defining the act of creation—that is, the state of being distinct—and forming shells, then we see that they are thus the creators of distinctness and freedom; and they naturally have a tendency to form and retain shells, so that when they emerge on Earth, they are the formers of animals endowed with an external skeleton, and in the plant kingdom, of those that do not take root in the earth but in the element of life itself, such as mistletoe and parasitic plants.

[ 16 ] All of our animals were soft during the Earth’s early evolutionary stage, but they have a tendency to create solidity within themselves, whereas on the Moon, solidity was created on the outside.

[ 17 ] If the moon spirits had continued to create, they would have created an Earth that brings forth all that exists in wisdom, love, and power in a marvelous work of art. A magnificent marble work would have been created. The fact that art now exists on Earth—that a part of it could be wrested from humanity—we owe to the Luciferic principle.

[ 18 ] A turn of the vortex, when the Earth had progressed to the point where it began to solidify. Lucifer is the god of outward heroism, beauty, and outward wisdom; he still wrested this for humanity. Hence the contrast between mystical interiorization and the external sense of beauty. This contrast can only be overcome at a very high level. Then the mystic loves life in its beauty. The Theosophical Society must become ever more life-affirming, because it is meant to spiritualize life, not to alienate itself from it.