The Rudolf Steiner Archive

16. The Stages of Our Earth's Development Up to the Lemurian Epoch

[ 1 ] Yesterday, in our examination of our planet’s evolution, we reached the point of the Earth’s lunar metamorphosis. We saw that it underwent its first incarnation as the ancient Saturn, then reappeared as the Sun, and now as the Moon. Yesterday we reached the point where we saw that, if everything had continued in the same way as before, humanity would not have been able to keep pace with the tempo of the cosmic evolution of the other beings. Therefore, during the planet’s lunar period, a kind of separation had to take place at a specific point on this lunar Earth. There was a kind of emergence of the Sun—which was advancing within the cosmic whole—along with the finest substances and beings. And the less advanced part—the actual old Moon, which still contained everything that constitutes our present-day Earth and Moon—remained behind as a kind of nebulous body. As a result, under specific conditions, a densification—a kind of hardening—took place on the old Moon, and at the same time, a similar process occurred in the physical beings that inhabited it.

[ 2 ] Once the Sun had departed, its forces then acted upon the ancient Moon from the outside. That which is said to have later emerged as the human, animal, and plant kingdoms had now emerged from the Sun along with the ancient Moon and was illuminated by the Sun, absorbing its forces from the outside. After the separation, the three kingdoms on the Moon took shape as follows: A mineral kingdom did not yet exist, but what emerged after the hardening as the lowest kingdom was a kind of mineral-vegetal kingdom—mineral matter that had a vegetal character, or, if you will, vegetal 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 mineral matter on Earth today, the soil there consisted of a solid-liquid foundation that was a kind of plant-mineral. Imagine a mass like cooked lettuce, a plant-like substance that you walk on: that was the lowest kingdom of the Moon, which was, one might say, semi-living. Our Earth’s surface has now settled down relatively; only when volcanic activity occurs does this still remind us of a certain inner life of our Earth. That was not yet the case on the Moon. We may perhaps speak later about what the occultist has to say regarding earthquakes and volcanic activity. Just as organs grow in a plant and later die off, so did this semi-living state manifest itself on the Moon. Like a living, mobile, vast organism, so was this ancient Moon, on which the beings living upon it could have felt much like parasites in the present day. These lunar plants were of mineral substance, possessed some life, and were mobile—in other words, a plant-mineral. What we today call rocks would also have been 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 mist—a less dense, half-aqueous, half-living substance—within which the beings of the next realm—of a half-animal, half-plant nature—were embedded. If you could squeeze a tree and it were to exhibit something resembling an animal sensation, then you would have something similar to this animal-plant kingdom. Today, this could no longer exist as such within our Earth.

[ 3 ] As has often been mentioned, it is not only in school that students repeat a grade; in [cosmic] evolution, too, there are always beings who repeat a grade, and the forms associated with them—which constitute the expression of these beings—are then also left behind; they are preserved. Thus, there were certain lunar beings still on Earth who, so to speak, were not yet ready to participate in Earth’s evolution. These beings then had to create, in their outward form, the conditions that had been their way of life on the Moon. As you know, the plants on the Moon did not take root in mineral soil as they do today, but in the semi-living lunar soil. Mistletoe, for example, is a descendant, a straggler from an ancient lunar form; it must take root in plant-based soil. In the myths of various peoples, you can find many expressions that refer to this, for example, the legend of Baldur and Loki, who is a being of lunar origin, while Baldur is a being intimately connected with the development of the Earth and the Sun. If one wishes to interpret a legend, one must know from which area of occult research the connections are derived. Through what the clairvoyant reveals, an external science can be enriched to such an extent that it is able to recognize in the legend more than mere folk imagination. To research with one’s whole soul, rather than merely with the intellect—that is what spiritual science must teach.

[ 4 ] Then there is a third kingdom on the Moon, which is an intermediate kingdom between the animal and human kingdoms: the kingdom of the animal-men. However, you would find beings in those animal-men that are quite different in form from how today’s materialistic science imagines them. They are animal-humans only because they have not yet incorporated important aspects of their being within their own entity. Today, the sleeping human has his physical and etheric bodies lying here below in bed, and his astral body outside. Thus, in the physical world, he is essentially present with only half of his being—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, the clairvoyant gaze perceives this state as persisting there. The astral body was never fully integrated into the physical and etheric bodies there; rather, on the Moon it was more thoroughly and clearly connected to the human being than it is today during sleep. The head of the lunar human was not yet as closed off in on itself as it is today. A remnant of how the organs were arranged up there in the head at that time is still the spot at the top of an infant’s head, which remains very soft and open for a long time. The human head was completely open at the top back then, and the organ you encounter when you draw a line vertically beneath this soft spot—the pineal gland, which today is, admittedly, dried up and atrophied—was a very important organ during the Lunar stage of development. It was a kind of sensory organ that mediated the connection between the human physical and etheric bodies and the human astral body. Through this organ—which was like a fine, luminous body—the human astral body sent its most important radiant forces into the other bodies. It was a state of human consciousness that was neither sleep nor wakefulness. Human beings did not perceive external things. Their consciousness would have been comparable to dreaming as we know it today. This pineal gland was at that time a kind of heat organ; it emitted powerful, luminous heat rays. When human beings moved about in the external world on the ancient Moon, this organ served to show them the direction they were to take. Human perception on the Moon was such that people felt as though they were rising up into something like a living dream image. Concrete vision or perception did not yet exist, but rather an inner ebb and flow of living images. Today’s dream images are only faint shadows of these. Everything humans undertook on the Moon—such as seeking food and so on—all took place through these images. These lunar images were connected to the outer world. Man could allow himself to be directed and guided by them. When he sought food, he was guided by certain images rising before him; harmful substances 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 possess a certain constancy of their inner warmth. Today they do; they have acquired it on Earth. On the ancient Moon, human beings absorbed warmth from the heat surrounding them and radiated it back out, just as they breathe air in and out today. And this was visible in his heat organ. It glowed and shone when he absorbed heat, and when he radiated heat, it darkened. If you could have seen this, it would have looked like the fire dragon that you see today as a replica of it. All of this has a profound meaning. When you see figures such as the Archangel Michael trampling the fire-breathing dragon underfoot, or Saint George battling the dragon, such images trace back to those states. This is a figure that once existed: that fire-breather of the old Moon, the ancient 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 also come to view such things—as they have been preserved in these images and concepts—in a different light. This animal-human form was, of course, quite different from that of modern humans, because the astral body had not yet become as deeply immersed in the human physical body as it later did on Earth. Human beings have become what they are today because the astral body has fully immersed itself within them. One could say that what had not yet undertaken to descend so deeply into the physical world during the Lunar evolution decided to do so during Earth’s evolution. Had this process, however, taken place earlier in the cosmos, human beings would have remained at a much lower stage. During Earth’s evolution, they strove from the spirit outward to attain this noble form, which is godlike. If the possibility of human form had already existed on the Moon, this descent would have been too early for the astral body. The divine guides have always chosen the right moment. For this is the essence of the Moon’s evolution: the physical body was, so to speak, given time to develop, and for the Earth, it was reserved that humanity would be permeated by the astral body after having physically evolved on the Moon at a lower stage. Then a certain regression of the Moon into the Sun, from which it had previously separated, took place; the old lunar sphere was reabsorbed by the Sun, and everything once again entered a cosmic sleep, passing through a Pralaya. This begins at the very moment the Moon returns to the Sun.

[ 7 ] The ancient evolution of the Moon thus proceeded as follows: First, a kind of preparation; second, the separation into the Sun and the Moon; third, the formation of the three kingdoms on the Moon; fourth, a return to the Sun; fifth, a ebbing away; sixth, the world sleep.

[ 8 ] From this cosmic slumber, the fourth metamorphosis of our Earth then emerges: our planet, the Earth itself. This first form of the Earth, however, is quite different from what our Earth now appears to be. When this Earth first emerged from the cosmic night, from the twilight gloom, it was large—enormously large—for it still contained within itself the Sun and the Moon; all separation occurred only later. It was so large that it extended as far as Saturn does today. The differentiation of our solar system occurred only later. The Kant-Laplace theory, as far as physical thinking allows, describes this initial formation of our Earth in a very comprehensible way. It speaks of a nebula, a kind of primordial nebula, in which everything is dissolved, and from which the entire solar system emerges. Through the rotation of this nebula, rings formed; these rings condensed, and through rotation, the planets then formed. In school, this is often demonstrated through an experiment: a ball of oil is made to rotate in a liquid of equal density using a simple mechanical device. One can then observe how this ball flattens, how droplets break away from it, which in turn form into balls and orbit the main ball; and in this way, one sees a kind of planetary system emerge on a small scale through rotation. This is incredibly evocative. Why shouldn’t one imagine the world in the same way? After all, one can literally see here how a planetary system arises through rotation—it’s right before one’s eyes! But in doing so, one forgets just one thing—oneself or the teacher who is causing the rotation. This external fact explains nothing. Something like this solar system does not arise out of nothing; it does not emerge of its own accord from the nebula, but rather because many spiritual beings worked on it and, at a certain point in their development, extracted the finest substances from the chaotic substance and hurled the coarser ones—the Moon—outward.

[ 9 ] In the early period following the Pralaya, the Earth—which had now reunited all substances and beings within itself—repeated the Saturn stage. 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 was precisely repeating the Saturn stage and extended as far as today’s Saturn. It is the spiritual beings who, at a certain stage, carry their substances with them. Everything is based on the spirit—both in the separation of the Sun and in the ancient lunar evolution. Nothing external was to blame; rather, it was an inner necessity for a portion of the beings. The higher beings extract from the chaotic substance what they need. It is the spirit everywhere that guides the external. When the Earth first glowed, everything was contained within it; these beings, at various stages of their development, were present within it. We will take this into account in the following considerations.

[ 10 ] So now, after the Pralaya, the Earth first repeated the Saturn state; this is a state of heat. Then this enormous, powerful sphere condensed until it became gaseous, and only at a certain point was it able to form a liquid state—to repeat the Moon state. At that moment, what had previously occurred on the Moon was repeated: the Sun also separated from our Earth, and the Earth and Moon together became an independent body comprising the substances and beings of the Earth and the Moon, just as they exist today. Thus, for a time, the Earth, the Moon, and the Sun were united. Then the Earth and the Moon were separated, for humanity could no longer keep pace with the Sun’s beings. Had the Sun remained within the Earth, humanity would have grown old almost as soon as it was born. The beings of the universe exist at very different stages of development. We will be able to describe only the main points of this for our fourth period, the Earth era. There are all sorts of levels, even among the more mature beings. There were some who could not adapt to either the rapid pace of the Sun or the slow pace of the Earth. These beings separated even before the division, when the Sun, Earth, and Moon were still together, and formed special realms for their activities, where they had dominions suited to them. This is precisely how the outer planets—Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars—came into being.

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

[ 12 ] Those planetary spirits, so to speak, could not wait until the Sun separated from the Earth; otherwise, they would not have found the right ground for their work once evolution took a different course at that point in time. For the spatial and motion relationships of the planets are all the expression and effect of the activity of their entities; they reveal the stage of development of the spiritual beings who inhabit the planets. Now, those entities who had believed they could go along with the Sun—because they had been able to do so in the past—but who ultimately did not go along, separated from it only after the Sun had separated from the Earth. These beings—who, after all, still far surpassed human beings—did not depart until later. They needed a different arena for their activity. Venus and Mercury—these two, which separated from the Sun only during Earth’s separation from it—formed the inner planets of our solar system.

[ 13 ] After its separation from the Sun, a difficult, dark period began for the Earth—in a certain sense, the darkest and harshest period in its history. It was, after all, still connected to the Moon and thus carried within itself all the forces that delayed its development. Inhibiting life in the most profound sense is one of the forces that primarily operate within the Moon. These inhibiting forces were now exerting far too strong an influence on the Earth during this period. Had they remained connected to it, life would not have progressed at the proper pace. Human beings would have hardened to the point of mummification; the Earth would have become a veritable graveyard, a vast cemetery where statues of mummified human bodies would have stood. No procreation would have been possible. When the Sun had departed from the Earth, there occurred a tremendous desolation and hardening of all life on Earth. So even back 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 aspect, its departure from the physical, and its return to the physical, as is the case today with incarnations. But it happened with increasing frequency that when the soul-spiritual being sought 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 soul-spiritual within itself. Imagine if people were to die in great numbers today, and if, due to the characteristics of the physical body, these bodies were to fall into such a state of decay that the souls would say to themselves: We cannot use these bodies. They are too poor for us; we find no opportunity for further development in them. - For example, due to a particularly rampant spread of alcoholism, the offspring would gradually become so degraded that the bodies would simply be unusable for the descending souls. This is roughly how you can imagine the condition on Earth at that time, before the departure from the Moon. Hardened, withered, dried up, and mummified—that was often all that remained of what was supposed to be inhabited down there. There truly was a time when souls searched in vain for bodies suitable 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 then went to other planetary bodies—those that had split off from the Sun: Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars. And there was a time when a large portion of these beings—who, depending on their nature and the stage of development they had reached, would normally have incarnated on Earth—placed themselves under the protection of the beings of Mars, Jupiter, Venus, or Saturn, ascended to those celestial bodies, and populated them. And as a result, our Earth lay desolate for a time. Only the very strongest souls found a way to overcome the unruly bodies, to keep them “soft,” so to speak. Let us be clear: it was only the very finest soul material that returned to Earth, because it possessed the greatest power to overcome the unruly bodies. However, evolution could not progress under these circumstances.

[ 14 ] The highest beings who belonged to our solar system now encountered a new arrangement. The densest substances were extracted from the Earth by the solidifying forces and separated: the Moon was formed. As a result, the remaining forces were no longer hindered in their development. However, the Moon only later became what it is today. For the physical and etheric development of humankind, the time had now come when it could find the proper pace corresponding to its stage of development. Now the forces of the Sun and the Moon acted jointly upon the Earth from the outside and maintained a balance. Gradually, as the Moon moved away, a process of softening and refinement of human bodies took place once again. This period, which we have just described, is called in occultism the Lemurian period—the time of the Moon’s separation during the physical Earth period. The era when the Sun departed from the Earth is called the Hyperborean era, and the era when the Sun, Moon, and Earth were still united is called the Polar era.

[ 15 ] Throughout the entire period when the Sun was separated from the Earth, and the Moon first exerted a solidifying influence on the Earth and then left it—during that entire period—higher beings influenced this differentiation. And their most significant servants were the Spirits of Form—called Exusiai in Christian esotericism—also known as Spirits of Revelation or Powers.

[ 16 ] On Saturn, it was the Thrones—spirits of the will—who sacrificed themselves and drew the substance for the human physical body from their own being. On the Sun, it is the Dominions, or spirits of wisdom, who provide the substance for the etheric bodies; on the Moon, it is the spirits of motion, or the Powers, who make the formation of the astral body possible. On Earth, it is the Spirits of Form—or the Powers—who infuse the “I” and thus bring about the process whereby, in this phase of development, little by little and very gradually, this “I” integrates itself into what has now been re-formed: the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body. This is the work of the spirits of form. For a human being with an “I”—the expression of “I”-consciousness—to come into being at all, and for such a structure of the three other bodies—the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body—to form, all that we have described was necessary. For this, it was necessary for the Sun and Moon to emerge from the Earth; it was necessary for humanity to experience such a hardening and then a softening of it. All of this could happen because those wise beings who guided the entire process first undertook it on a trial basis for the sake of evolution. Much in the Earth’s evolution is undertaken on a trial basis by the high beings who stand behind evolution—even today. What, then, is the Theosophical Movement? It came into the world because, beginning in the last third of the 19th century, a certain measure of wisdom flowed forth from the higher beings whom we call the Masters—beings who live in physical human bodies but stand on a much higher stage of development than modern humanity. The living inflow of this wisdom from higher realms into our culture—that is the real foundation of our Theosophical Movement. Do not think it impossible that this inflow, which is being attempted, might fall on deaf ears among humanity. In that case, the Masters would say to themselves: 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 that wisdom flows into humanity from such higher individualities; rather, the success of the test depends on how it is received. Such tests have often been undertaken, but they have not always succeeded. Humanity often proved ready for this only within narrow limits; willing souls and hearts were not always to be found. Just as is the case here with the Theosophical Movement, so it is in the great cosmos. When the I was to be infused into humanity, the test consisted in gradually attempting to permeate—from the I—what had previously been only the astral body. And then it turned out that the astral body, which had been permeated by the “I,” was unable to penetrate the physical body. An adjustment had to be made, and this was accomplished by removing the Moon. It was not until the middle of the Lemurian epoch that the “I,” the Christ principle, took hold.

[ 17 ] But the following was connected to this: During the separation of the moon, the Earth was desolate. We have heard that the bodies had become so degraded that they could no longer serve as a dwelling place for the souls. Such cosmic events have been preserved in legend, but occult research reveals their true origin and teaches us that, during the separation of the Moon—when the Earth was desolate—many souls searched the cosmos for suitable bodies and then left the Earth to incarnate on other planets. Now, however, after the Moon was gone, it became apparent that the Earth was once again capable of providing suitable bodies. And now the souls that had gone to other planets—already during the final period of Lemuria and subsequently during the Atlantean era—returned to Earth and once again incarnated in these bodies. Groups of people now began to form on Earth: those who had bodies for souls that had come from incarnations on Jupiter; for those who had come from Mars, Venus, or Saturn and now found what suited them. This grouping of souls gave rise to the emergence of the human races. As a result, the races are connected in a certain way to the planetary bodies. Thus, one could speak of Saturn people, Jupiter people, and so on, and now what might be called the concept of race also had its justification.

[ 18 ] On the Moon, and also on Earth during its lunar period, there were human beings at various stages of development. We can trace this back to the Lemurian Age, when humanity began to differentiate as a result of the Moon’s separation; thereafter, the concept of race emerged and began to take on a certain meaning and significance. Race is something that arises and then passes away. The eras in which the races formed were the Lemurian and Atlantean eras. Today, we have only the remnants of those races.