Earth's seven epochs

This topic page provides an overview and perspective 'across seven evolutionary epochs' in the current 'physical' Condition of Form (CoF, or globe) of the fourth 'mineral' Condition of Life (CoF, or round) of the Earth planetary stage of evolution (Condition of Consciousness or CoC) - see Three dimensions of evolution.

This phase represents the most important period for the development of humanity in the current planetary stage of Earth evolution (see Schemas FMC00.203 and FMC00.014 on Overview of solar system evolution). This page focuses on patterns and aspects across this whole period, thereby allowing to position the Mystery of Golgotha and Christ Impulse in a broader view.

Jump page for details about each epoch:

1. Polarian epoch
2. Hyperborean epoch
3. Lemurian epoch
4. Atlantean
5. Current Postatlantean epoch
6. Sixth epoch
7. Seventh epoch

Aspects

• overview on the major impulses - summarized in Schema FMC00.190, both:
  • cosmic: separation and reunion of Sun and Moon
    • separation of Moon and separation of Sun
    • reunion of Moon and reunion of Sun
  • divine interventions - see Schema FMC00.185: Jehovah in Lemurian, Christ in current Postatlantean, and the Father impulse in the Sixth epoch
• the trickling in of the SoF and development of I-consciousness and the threefold soul happened during the Lemurian and Atlantean epochs. It was recapitulated and refined in our current epoch of the MoG. In these two earlier epochs however Christ already intervened to steer and correct this process, and this happened three times, see Three pre-MoG interventions of Christ
• Man before separation of Sun
  • first in the form of a sort of plant with a warmth body and its chalice opened upward into cosmic space; then this inner part began to light up as a sort or airy gas body took form outside and around the chalice form (1908-09-09-GA106); the view was then of cloud masses with chalice-like formation expanding in an upward direction, the chalice glowing with inner light, but with no firm boundaries dividing them from the collective Earth-mass. Man lived like a light-plant with had a dim consciousness (like the plant-world has today), and Man hung as though nourished on the umbilical cord of the Earth-mother. (1908-09-07-GA106)

Mars and Mercury influences

• the Mars and Mercury passages or astral influences are timed in the 3th and 4th epochs of COL=4, but have an effect related to the CoL
• Earth can be viewed as double Mars-Mercury
  • both pillars Jacim and Boaz represents the two halves of the earthly development that are also called Mars and Mercury. In the first half, the Earth is watery-airy, in the second one solid (1908-06-25-GA104)
  • this is reflected in the days of the week
  • the Mars impulse
    • brought iron and led to warmth in the blood, and warm-blooded animals
    • before the Earth grew etheric and physical in CoL=4, the Earth went through Mars which was etheric too at that time, and this passage continued into the physical Earth condition. The leaders of humanity took the astral matter needed for the intellectual soul for Mars, using the warm blood as its physical carrier as iron got incorporated into the blood.
  • the Mercury impulse:
    • Mercury came to the Earth as part of astral matter being taken to the Earth from the middle of the Atlantean epoch to affect the human soul. Quicksilver is still liquid upto today, but will become solid when the mission of Mercury will be fulfilled. When the Earth will be fluid/plastic/astral, it will pass through etheric Mercury spatially.
  • sources: 1905-10-28-GA093 and 1905-11-25-GA089 (see also 1906-12-06-GA094, 1906-08-30-GA095 as well as 1907-05-31-GA99)
  • relevant schemas: FMC00.451, FMC00.219 below, and FMC00.057B and FMC00.057B on Earth rounds perspective

Christ Impulse

• Consider Schema FMC00.190 across epochs. The departure and reunion of both the Sun and the Moon are pivotal moments. It is important to realize that the spiritual beings, including the SoF/Elohim, were all in one cosmic body. In previous planetary stages they had developed together alongside. In the Hyperborean and Lemurian epochs, both the Sun first, and afterwards the Moon, separated off and the Earth is now in a cradle held between Sun and Moon influences from outside (whereas previously influences were from the same sphere). The MoG Christ Impulse instigates the process towards reunion with the Sun.
• This is where Freedom as a basis for Love is realized through the combined orchestration of Jehovah, Lucifer and Christ. That is a simple sentence to describe something complex: both Lucifer and Jehovah are classes of beings, which brought about a (spiritual) force field between < freedom > and <(a first version of) love>. Note this also links to the separate topic of the redemption of Lucifer through the Christ which will find its conclusion with the Reunion of the Sun, as by that time the Luciferic beings that stayed behind on Old Moon will have been able to catch up in their development.

Various

• To position the period of seven epochs in the evolution of Earth
  • see Three dimensions of evolution and Schema FMC00.057A on that page, as well as Schema FMC00.203 on that page that shows that one CoL is evolutionary important for each planetary stage.
  • how the seven epochs are part of the greater evolutionary dynamic and rhythm of CoL and CoF (see the three CoLF substages in Schema FMC00.302, one where development slows down, a key middle substage, and another where development speeds up again)
• see also The great journey of humanity (PDF file) which provides an introductory overview with a selection of Schemas from the site, and zooms into the pivotal phases of the four epochs between the third and sixth epoch on Earth, and the crucial period of the next 3000 years which is pivotal in the transition of humanity between the current and the next sixth epochs.
• various scientific perspectives**mapping to the geological framework of mineral science (see FMC00.209 and variants below)
  • the evolution of the changing face of the Earth and layout of the continents in the Lemurian and Atlantean epochs (see FMC00.206 below, also related: Schema FMC00.455 on Migrations)
  • positioning to what is called 'big history' in mineral science, see Schema FMC00.293 on Evolution Module 3 - Integrating traditions

Illustrations

Overview

Schema FMC00.486 is an integrative poster that brings together a multitude of aspects of the development of Mankind through the epochs of the current physical-mineral condition on Earth.

Central are the evolutionary spirals, a characteristic of the dynamic of the spiritual hierarchies across the periods of evolution, whereby the fruits of one period are carried over as the seeds of the next (FMC00.169). This is the frame on which are shown the developmental goals for humanity, and also already the 'next thing' seed that is developed for the next period. For example: humanity is currently in the development of spirit-self (manas), but in the next sixth cultural age of this epoch a small group will already develop the life-spirit (buddhi or Christos) as a basis for the next great Sixth epoch. In the Sixth epoch humanity will be developing the life-spirit, but a group will already be developing ahead to spirit-man (atma) and know an ascent of spiritualization.

These development goals are enabled through three major divine interventions or impulses that 'fructify' humanity to make this possible. These are shown with the arrows in yellow, green, and blue (FMC00.185). On top of the diagram is symbolized the changing configuration of the solar system to support this evolutionary pathway through accomodating the right conditions for all beings involved in this development. The current balance of the Earth held in a cradle of balancing Moon and Sun forces is a temporary stage, and will be followed by the reunion of Moon and later Sun. This will make the Sixth epoch transformative for humanity, just as the Lemurian was before.

Embedded artwork illustrations symbolize major events as depicted in the apocalyptic seals (referring the Book of Revelation). Also shown is Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper with the symbolism of the apostles for the development from late Atlantean to early Sixth epoch, with Christ in the middle (FMC00.021A, see also FMC00.438). Below is also added an illustration of the concept of the Second Adam, with the Christ as convergence point of unification as future group soul of humanity (FMC00.189).

Schema FMC00.584: provides a overview and synthesis table over the Earth's seven epochs and the overall evolutionary pathway for Earth and humanity, as a map for orientation across the many separate topic pages and Schemas. For a more graphical presentation, see Schema FMC00.486. This is a first tentative version, to be iteratively improved in the future. Click one to three times to enlarge or go to page for download at full resolution.

Schema FMC00.302 takes an ingoing perspective of the Conditions of Life and Form in which to understand the seven epochs in this 'CoLF' or 'Condition of Life and Form'. See Earth rounds perspective as well as the Schemas on Three dimensions of Evolution.

In the GA090A lecture, Rudolf Steiner describes how each evolutionary period is characterized by three sections, a preparatory, a characteristic which is slowest and most important, and a final flushing one. The first part is slowing down, the third part is speeding up again.

Also compare this with Overlapping evolutionary periods that goes into the fact we should not see this as strict periods with a start and end, but rather concurrent developments that overlap and flow into one another.

This Schema can also be considered in positioning the transition between the SoF and Archai, see Transition between 4th and 14th century. The schema also shows why the current stages in the current fifth epoch are decisive: in the current fifth cultural age the work for the important sixth cultural age is already decisive. See also Schema FMC00.169A on Overlapping evolutionary periods.

Schema FMC00.212 is a high-level integrated overview chart showing manifold aspects of the seven epochs in the current CoL and CoF.

Diagram by George O'Neill, based on Outline of Esoteric Science.

Schema FMC00.475 is a first version of a table to show the evolution of Man's consciousness experience across three epochs, showing alternation of waking and sleeping, a qualitative description of day and night consciousness as well as the experience during incarnation or between death and a new birth (based on1908-09-11-GA106 and 1908-09-12-GA106), and the evolution and individuation from group soul to the individual human I (based on 1908-06-01-GA102). For the latter, see also Schema FMC00.594.

The current schema can be greatly improved upon as Rudolf Steiner gave many qualitative descriptions spread across the GA. The intention of this table is to initialize the idea and format, a next stage should further enrich the contents with (and truncate current texts to) more concise bullet point descriptions).

Christ Impulse

Schema FMC00.190 is a 'napkin' drawing that depicts (middle) the seven epochs, and the process of separation and reunion of Sun and Moon.

The schema shows how the seven epochs and the separation and reunion of Sun and Moon are all geared towards establishing an environment for developing the human 'I', with freedom and love, which represents the evolutionary goal of the planetary stage Earth.

It shows the pivotal moment of the Christ Impulse at the Mystery of Golgotha. Below the three divine interventions are shown with embedded schema FMC00.185. In the current epoch, the Earth is held embedded in the Moon and Sun spheres. This refers to the topic of The two etheric streams (and Jehovah and Lucifer), see also the Emerald Table. The divine being of Christ came across the spheres and the Sun to 'fructify' humanity on Earth with an 'infusion of budhi', that is depicted by the metaphoric image on the right.

Schema FMC00.185 is a drawing by Rudolf Steiner in a letter to Marie von Sivers (GA262).

For the accompanying text, see Second Adam#1906-01-13-GA262

See also:

• for an explanation of the third Father impulse, oa Mysteries of the Spirit, the Son and the Father#1904-10-24-GA090A
• quote Luciferic beings and their influences#1905-10-25-GA093A

.

Schema FMC00.373B depicts the symbolism of of the Christ impulse in the language of the zodiac signs, see more commentary on the basis figure of Schema FMC00.373 on Christ in the future cultural ages and next epochs.

.

Mars and Mercury influences

Schema FMC00.451 depicts the Mars and Mercury influences in the Atlantean epoch, as well as the arising of counterforce spiritual beings and influences in the Lemurian, Atlantean and Current Postatlantean epochs. The Mars influence used by the luciferic beings aided human development by bringing Man wisdom . The mercury influence was/is necessary in order to allow Mankind to absorb the Christ Impulse (1905-10-28-GA093A).

Schema FMC00.219 is an illustration by Rudolf Steiner of the Mars and Mercury passages in the Earth's mineral round or CoL=4

Man - the human being

Schema FMC00.591: shows the decisive phase for the development of humanity between the third Lemurian epoch and the Sixth epoch. In the Lemurian epoch, the spirit and group souls descended into the physical bodies that had developed to sufficient complexity to be able to develop the Human 'I'. This is shown left with the extract from Schema FMC00.210. The process of individuation through the Development of the I is still ongoing in the Current fifth Postatlantean epoch. In the next Sixth epoch, part of humanity will spiritualize again.

A bifurcation is happening with a decisive division between good and evil branches of mankind, starting today but especially the coming millenia and onwards. As a result of this, the balanced and spiritually mature (represented by the path of the Christ) will be able to continue development in non-physical changing conditions on Earth and beyond. Others will be chained to the lower material realms and ultimately make up a lower kingdom on the next planetary stage of evolution Future Jupiter. This is shown right with an extract from Schema FMC00.583 and the evolution of the kingdoms of nature per planetary stage.

The central illustration is based and inspired on Rudolf Steiner's drawings in the lecture of 1911-10-14-GA131, see also Schema FMC00.591A.

Schema FMC00.574 illustrates the evolving structure of the structural make-up of elemental constitution of the human being based on the development of the elements on Earth in the previous epochs.

The sketches (above) come from original notes by someone who attended the 1908-05-25-GA103 lecture, but merely constitute help for the imagination when read along with the lecture text. The extra drawings (ao below in blue) are a tentative to stress that the lines in these sketches should not be seen as sharp boundaries.

For example on the lower left, the first tenuous fine physical germ of the human physical body is pulled together from the substance of the fluidic water-vapour Earth by the I-endowed astral bodies embedded in the surrounding astral atmosphere, forming enclosures. Relate this also to (the middle part of) Schema FMC00.570. Thus the first germ of Man's physical and etheric bodies was surrounded by the astral body and I, and this was the start of further densification and development of the other physical bodily principles. This development has be studied in parallel with the development of the etheric formative forces on Earth (see Schema FMC00.573, and lectures of the 1910-GA122 cycle on Book of Genesis), and the separation of Sun and Moon played key roles in this, as for example the workings of the chemical ether brought forth the emergence of albumen protoplasm as foundation of all living growth on Earth in the Hyperborean epoch (1908-03-16-GA102),

Schema FMC00.573 shows the early stages of the Earth in the 'physical' Condition of Form of the fourth 'mineral' Condition of Life - see Three dimensions of Evolution. See also Schema FMC00.057C.

Taken from Iwer Thor Lorenzen's book 'Fundamental problems of evolution', original in DE 'Grundprobleme der Evolution' (1958-60)

Separation Sun and Moon

Schema FMC00.462 presents the development of Man through the transitions of the separation of Sun and Moon.

At the end of the early text '1903-GA089 - Draft of a spiritual-scientific cosmology - Fragment from 1903/04', Rudolf Steiner describes various aspects explicitly before and after separation from Sun and Moon. The schema organizes these in tabular format to present them in a graphical layout and logic, for reference and study.

Nature kingdoms

Schema FMC00.210 shows a famous diagram by Poppelbaum and the evolution of nature's kingdoms (left) and finally the descent of Man and the appearance of physical mineral Man (right). See also FMC00.209 above.

Schema FMC00.210A is another, more illustrated version of the Schema FMC00.210 by Poppelbaum

Schema FMC00.210B: shows a translated version of the original drawing by Rudolf Steiner in the lecture of 1907-11-22-GA100. This drawing and lecture has been misinterpreted outside of a spiritual scientific framework and understanding by groups and forces whose aim is to accuse anthroposophy and Rudolf Steiner's teachings of racism. See 'Further reading' section on the Human races page for an extensive coverage of sources who correct these wrongful attacks.

For this reason specific details on the Scheme are added. The two blackboard sketches part of this lecture have been merged, and terminology has been adapted to contemporary language versus the terms used over 100 years ago in context of an audience who had another understanding of these words as part of a larger knowledge framework of human races. Specifically: the word 'epoch' has been added to the evolutionary periods; an explanation has been added in light grey for the 'monera'; the term 'Indianer' has been replaced with 'ancient American Indians' (not to be confused with native americans as we know them today, as here the remnant of the Saturn sub-race of the Atlantean epoch is meant - see Schema FMC00.186 and Schema FMC00.204); and the term 'dekadente Abzweigung' is translated by 'declining branch(ing)', as it branches off in a declining fashion relative to the main evolutionary pathway (see Schema FMC00.546).

Schema FMC00.221 is a more recent variant of Poppelbaum's diagram (FMC00.210) by Dankmar Bosse in 'The mutual evolution of Earth and humanity' (see references below). The evolution of the human vertebrate branch is shown schematically in counter-running evolutionary spirals. The outer thick arrows show the discontinuous sequence of finished forms, in opposite direction are thin arrows (center outwards) from soft-bodied conditions to hardening species. The dotted circle shows the boundary between soft-bodied and fossil-preserved forms.

Schema FMC00.221A shows the original schema in German by Dankmar Bosse in 'The mutual evolution of Earth and humanity', for reference.

Geological time periods

Schema FMC00.209 provides an overview of the epochs as related to the appearance of the physical elements and nature's kingdoms, and as mapped to the geological time periods (see FMC00.209A below). See also John Davy's document on Evolution in the References section below.

Schema FMC00.209A provides reference to the scientific classification of periods used in stratigraphy with the International stratigraphic chart.

Schema FMC00.209B is another version of the stratigraphic chart which maps more clearly to the main periods in FMC00.209

Continents - the face of the Earth

Schema FMC00.206 shows various world maps showing the layout of the continents in the Lemurian and Atlantean epochs. More on the pages of these epochs, the Lemurian epoch and the Atlantean epoch. See more on Separation of moon.

Other

Schema FMC00.573 shows the early stages of the Earth in the 'physical' Condition of Form of the fourth 'mineral' Condition of Life - see Three dimensions of Evolution. See also FMC00.057C

Taken from Iwer Thor Lorenzen's book 'Fundamental problems of evolution', original in DE 'Grundprobleme der Evolution' (1958-60)

Lecture coverage and references

1905-05-25-GA093

The conditions on earth were not always the same as today. The earth was once joined to the sun and the moon. The sun separated itself, as it were, and then shone upon the earth from outside. Later, the moon split away. Thus, in earlier times, the earth was quite a different kind of dwelling place for man. Man was quite different physically, at that time. But when the sun and the moon split off from the earth, the whole of man's life underwent a change. Birth and death took place for the first time, man reincarnated for the first time, and for the first time the I of man, the individuality, descended into the physical body, to reincarnate itself in continuous succession. One day that will cease again. The earth will again become joined to the sun, and then man will be able to pass through his further evolution on the sun. Thus we have a specific series of steps, according to which the sun and man move together. Such things are connected with the progress of the sun across the vault of heaven.

Now everything that happens in the world is briefly recapitulated in the following stages. Everything has been repeated, including the evolution of the global stages in the first, second and third epochs. [See scheme at the end of the notes to lecture 10]. It came about, then, that man descended into reincarnation.

The sun separated [from the Earth] during the time of transition from the second to the third epoch, the moon during the third epoch. Now the Earth develops from the third to the sixth epoch, when the sun will again be joined to the Earth.

Then a new epoch will start in which Man will have attained a much higher stage and will no longer incarnate.

1906-06-14-GA094

Our fifth epoch will be followed by another, the sixth. This sixth epoch will see the development of brotherhood among men, clairvoyance and creative power.

What will Christianity be in the sixth epoch? To the priest in the Mysteries before Christ, there was harmony between science and faith. Science and faith were one and the same. When he looked up to the heavens, the priest knew that the soul was a drop of water from the celestial ocean, led down to Earth by the great streams of life flowing through space. Now that the attention of men is wholly directed to the physical world, faith has need of a refuge, of religion. Hence the separation between science and faith. Faith in the Person of Christ, of the God-Man on Earth has temporarily replaced Occult Science and the Mysteries of antiquity.

But in the sixth epoch, the two streams will again unite. Mechanical science will become spiritually creative. This will be Gnosis-spiritual consciousness. This sixth epoch which will be radically different from our own, will be preceded by mighty cataclysms. It will be as spiritual as ours has been material. But the transformation can only be brought about by physical catastrophes.

The sixth epoch will prepare for a seventh epoch.

This seventh epoch will be the end of the Post-Atlantean civilisations and conditions of earthly life will be entirely different from those we know. At the end of the seventh epoch there will be a revolution of the elements analogous to that which put an end to Atlantis, and the subsequent eras will know a spirituality prepared by the two preceding Post-Atlantean periods.

in DE original

In der sechsten Epoche werden die beiden Strömungen sich vereinigen. Die mechanische Wissenschaft des physischen Planes wird sich zur Höhe spiritueller Schöpferkraft emporheben. Das wird dann die Gnosis oder geistige Erkenntnis sein. Dieser sechsten, von der unsrigen radikal verschiedenen Epoche, werden große, umwälzende Katastrophen vorausgehen. Denn diese Epoche wird ebenso spirituell sein, wie die unsrige materialistisch war, aber diese Umbildung kann nur durch physische Umwälzungen vonstatten gehen. Wiederum wird alles, was sich im Verlaufe der sechsten Epoche gestalten wird, die Möglichkeit einer siebenten Epoche herbeiführen, die das Ende dieser nachatlantischen Kulturen bildet und völlig andere Lebensbedingungen als die unseren kennen wird. Diese siebente Epoche wird enden mit einer Revolution der Elemente, ähnlich derjenigen, die dem atlantischen Kontinent ein Ende setzte, und der Zustand der dann in Erscheinung tritt, wird ein Zustand sein, dessen Spiritualität durch die zwei letzten nachatlantischen Perioden vorbereitet sein wird.

1908-09-07-GA106

If we imagine a cloud formed with some regularity, a chalice-like formation expanding in an upward direction, the chalice glowing with inner light, we have the men of that time who, for the first time in this Earth-evolution, began to have a dim consciousness, such a consciousness as the plant-world has today.

These men were not like plants in the modern sense. They were cloud-masses in chalice-like form, illuminated and warmed by the light, with no firm boundaries dividing them from the collective Earth-mass. …

We must picture it as a light-filled globe, shone round by light-bearing clouds and generating wonderful phenomena of light and color. … The luminous masses surged back and forth. Within them were all the human beings of today, woven through by all the spiritual beings, who rayed forth light in manifold grandeur and beauty.

As though by an umbilical cord that sprang from the divine, Man hung upon this totality, on the light-womb, the world-womb of our earth. It was a collective world-womb in which the light-plant Man lived at that time, feeling himself one with the light-mantle of the Earth. In this refined vaporous plant-form, Man hung as though on the umbilical cord of the Earth-mother and he was cherished and nourished by the whole mother Earth.

1908-09-09-GA106

The first that arose out of this germ, when the sun was still connected with the Earth, was actually like a sort of plant, which opened its chalice upward. These forms filled, so to say, the whole Earth as they shaped themselves out of the primeval mist. But in the earliest time in which this arose, like a sort of flower corolla opening itself into cosmic space, this corolla was scarcely visible; Man would only have been able to perceive it by feeling its presence as a chalice-shaped warmth-body. This was present at first as a warmth-body. While the Earth was still connected with the sun, the inner part of this human formation began to light up and to shine into cosmic space. … At about the same time a sort of gas-body took form, outside and around the chalice form. Many substances were present in this, in solution, just as today we find fluid and solid substances in the human and animal bodies. At that time, however, they were air-forms.

1923-12-01-GA232

Some lectures are essential because they have a unique content. This is such a lecture. It sketches the changing constitution and face of the Earth in the Hyperborean epoch and especially the Lemurian epoch, as the separation of Sun and separation of Moon brought about a change in the spectrum of elements and ethers (Schema FMC00.573). Therefore this provides the background for descriptions of the Lemurian epoch, and also the development of Man (Schema FMC00.574)

Through that which I gave you in my last lecture it is now possible to speak more exactly of many of those events which occurred in the course of the evolution of the Earth, and which have brought about its present form.

You will remember I said that one who has attained to knowledge through inner vision comes into a certain relationship with the metals of the earth, with all that has its being in the Earth, through the fact that the Earth is permeated with veins of metal, that the Earth in general carries within itself various kinds of metals. This relationship into which Man can enter with the metals enables him to look back on that which has happened to the Earth.

It is particularly interesting to look back to what happened on the Earth in the times preceding the Atlantean evolution, that period which I have described in a somewhat external way, as the Lemurian epoch; to look back also to the period of time which immediately preceded this, when the Earth went through the Old Sun stage. During the Lemurian epoch the Earth went through the Old Moon stage. It is interesting to look back on all these events, for we thereby receive an impression of how wonderful is everything in the sphere of earthly existence.

[physical Earth today]

Nowadays we are accustomed to regard the Earth as complete in the form which it presents to us today. We live on the continents as human beings, and are surrounded by what the Earth bears upon it in the way of plants, animals, birds of the air, and so on. We know that we ourselves live, in a certain sense, in a sort of air-ocean, the atmosphere which surrounds the Earth, that out of this atmosphere we take oxygen into ourselves, that our relation to the nitrogen also plays a certain role. We picture to ourselves in general that this atmosphere, consisting in oxygen and nitrogen, surrounds us. Then we look upon the oceans, the seas ... and we form a picture of the planet which we inhabit in the universe.

[fine fluidic albumininous atmosphere - no mineral chemical elements existed]

The Earth was not always as it is today; it has undergone tremendous changes. If we go back to the times I have just indicated, to the Lemurian age and a little further back we find quite a different condition of the Earth from what we have today.

Let us begin with the atmosphere in which we now live, and which we regard as non-living, lifeless; even this atmosphere shows itself in those early ages as something quite different. If we go still further back we have to observe something else. Today, we have this firm solid Earth-kernel and around it the atmosphere. A similar mental picture might also be made even for those very ancient times, but there could be no question of there being round the Earth anything like the air we now breathe. In the air we breathe today oxygen and nitrogen play the chief part, carbon and hydrogen play a less important part, and sulphur and phosphorous a still less significant one.

As regards those very ancient times it is really not possible to speak of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, sulphur and so on, simply because what the chemist calls by these names today did not exist in this ancient period. If a chemist of today were to meet a spiritual being of that time and speak of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, etc., that being would reply “such things do not exist.” It is possible to speak today of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, etc., but in those ancient times there was absolutely no possibility of speaking of these things for they could only be present as such after the earth had reached a certain density and had acquired forces such as it has within it today. Oxygen, nitrogen, potassium, sodium and so on, all the lighter so-called metals simply did not exist in that ancient epoch.

On the other hand there was at that time around the Earth, in the place where today we have the atmosphere something which was of an exceedingly fine fluid nature, of a consistency halfway between our present air and water. It was of a fluid nature, but in its fluidity it was similar to albumen; so that in reality the Earth at that time was entirely surrounded by an albuminous atmosphere. The albumen in eggs today is very much denser, but it may be compared with that of which we are now speaking.

[densification came later]

From this environment of the Earth when later the Earth become denser, what we now call carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and so on were gradually differentiated. They were not there in such a way that we can say this ancient albuminous atmosphere was composed of these elements, for it did not have these several elements as ingredients. Today we generally think of things as being formed by combination, but that is nonsense. What we know as certain higher substances are not always composed of what appears when they are analysed, for these things cease to be present in the higher substance. Carbon is not present there as carbon, nor oxygen as oxygen, but there is a substance of a higher nature.

[description of condition]

1/ As I have said, this substance according to its qualities may really be described as albumen in an excessively fluid condition.

2/ The whole of this substance surrounding the Earth at that time was permeated from the universe with cosmic ether, which gave it life. So that we have to represent to ourselves the cosmic ether as projecting into this substance and giving it life. This substance lived because the cosmic ether projected itself into it.

3/ Not only was it alive, it was also differentiated in a remarkable manner, e.g. in one part there appears a large structure in which Man would be suffocated, in another part another large structure appears in which Man could specially have regained new life and activity if he could have been there at that time as a human being, and so forth. Formations arose, producing effects which remind one of the chemical elements of today, but chemical elements in our modern sense did not exist.

4/ Then the whole was pervaded by reflections of light, gleams of light, rays of light, sparkles of light. And finally the whole was warmed through by the cosmic ether.

Such were the characteristics at that early period of the Earth's atmosphere.

[silica (quartz) - first primeval mountains]

1/ The first thing to be fashioned from out of the cosmos is what I described in the last lecture as the very first primeval mountains. These were fashioned from out of the cosmos. Thus the quartz that is found out there in the primeval mountains in its beautiful form, in its relative transparency, was formed in the Earth to a certain extent from out of the universe. That is why, today, if we transfer ourselves through Imaginative vision into these rocks of the primeval mountains into what are now the hardest formations of the Earth they are to us as the eyes of the Earth through which it gazes out into the universe. But also it was the universe which implanted these eyes in the earth. They are there now. The universe has placed them in the Earth. The quartz, the silica and such like which then permeated the whole atmosphere and were gradually deposited as primeval mountains were not so hard as today. This only came afterwards, this hardened state through circumstances which developed later. All that was thus fashioned out of the cosmos in that far-off time was scarcely harder than wax.

If you go now into those mountainous regions and there see a quartz crystal, it is so hard that, as I have said before, if you were to knock your head against it your skull would crack but not the quartz. At that far-off time, however, because of the life which pervaded everything the quartz was actually as soft as wax. We may, therefore, say that these rocks of the primeval mountains came out of the cosmos as a kind of trickling wax.

All that thus slipped into the Earth from out of the cosmos was transparent, and its relative hardness, its wax-like hardness can only be described by mentally employing the sense of touch. If we could have grasped it, it would have felt like wax. It was in this way that these ancient mountains were deposited from out of the cosmos as a kind of wax-substance trickling in and then gradually hardening. Silica had a wax-like consistency at the time in which it was deposited out of the cosmos into the Earth.

2/ That which today is present more spiritually and which I described in the last lecture, viz. that by transposing oneself into this hard rock one has pictures of the cosmos — this phenomenon was at that time quite perceptible spiritually, and in such a way that when such silicates in the wax-like condition began to condense one could distinguish in them something like a kind of plant-form. Anyone who has looked round a little on nature knows quite well that something like distinctive marks of an ancient time are to be found in the mineral world today. We find stones, we take them in our hands, we look attentively at them, and we find they have within them something like the outline of a plant-form. At that time it was quite a usual phenomenon which came into this albuminous atmosphere, pushed in as it were as outlines which could not only be seen but which were substantially photographed in this wax-like body.

Then the peculiar configuration came about that the fluid albumen which existed in the atmosphere filled in these outline forms and thereby they became somewhat harder, somewhat denser. Then they were no longer merely outline forms. The silicious part fell away from them and was dispersed in the rest of the atmosphere.

[plant formations]

In the earliest part of the Lemurian epoch we have those gigantic floating plant-formations reminding us somewhat of the forms of the algae of today, which are not rooted in the soil, for as yet there was no soil there. They floated in this fluid albumen with which they were permeated and out of which they formed their own substance. Not only did they float in this fluid albumen, they also shone forth I might say, they lit up and then faded away. They were capable of transformation to the extent that they could arise and disappear.

Place this picture clearly before your minds. It is a picture which is indeed very different from anything around us today. If we as modern men could transpose ourselves into that ancient epoch, if, let us say, we could set up a little sentry box somewhere and watch what happened around, if from it we could look out into that ancient world we should see all round us, over there a plant-form shoots up, a tremendous plant-form, like our present algae (sea-weed) or even like a palm. But it shoots up. It does not grow out of the Earth in spring and die down in autumn; it shoots up, appearing in the spring-time (the spring-time was much shorter then) and reaches a tremendous size. Then it disappears again into the fluid albumen-like element. Such an observer would see green ever appearing and then fading away. He would not speak of plants covering the Earth but of plants which like air-clouds appear from out of the cosmos, become dense and then dissolve away, something which grows green in this element of albumen. Then in the time which would somewhat correspond to our summertime today he would say: This is the time when the environment of our Earth grows green. But he would have to look up to the green rather than look down on it.

In this way the idea comes to us how the flinty part of the Earth atmosphere draws down into the Earth, and how the plant-force which is really out there in the cosmos attracts it up to itself, how the plant-world comes down to the Earth from out of the cosmos. In the period of which I am now speaking we have to say: This plant-world is something which arises and passes away in the atmosphere.

[Man?]

Something else must also be said. If today as human beings we transfer ourselves through this relationship with the metallic elements of the Earth back into those ancient times we feel as if all this belonged to ourselves, as if we had something to do with that which at that time within the atmosphere grew green and then faded away. When today we recall our own childhood our memory extends over a relatively short span of time. Yet just as we can recall a pain which we experienced in childhood — and that is something which belongs to us — in the same way in this cosmic recollection aroused by the metallic element of the Earth we experience this process of the becoming green and fading away as something which belongs to us.

Man was already at that time connected with the Earth, that Earth which lived in this watery albuminous atmosphere. He was united with it as a human being but in such a way that as Man he was still wholly spiritual. We express a reality when we say: Man must acquire the concept that these plants which we see there in the atmosphere at that time are something separated, something thrown off from that which is human. Man puts this out of his own being which itself is still united with the whole Earth. And he has this conception, or should have it, of something else that he places outside of him, something quite different.

[animals]

The following also happened. Everything I have hitherto described was brought about through the silica substance in the atmosphere having been already deposited in the wax-like substance of which I have spoken. But apart from that, this albuminous atmosphere extends everywhere. Upon this atmosphere the cosmos works. Upon this atmosphere there work the countless manifold forces which stream down to the Earth from the cosmos everywhere, those forces of which our modern science has no wish to know anything.

• Hence our modern science is indeed no true knowledge, for the most various phenomena which occur on the Earth would indeed not occur if they were not brought about by cosmic impulses and cosmic forces. Because the learned men of today do not speak of these cosmic forces they do not speak of what above all things is reality. They take nowhere into account that which is really living. Even in the smallest particle which we look at under the microscope there live not only earthly but cosmic forces, and if this is not taken into account there is no reality.

Thus were the cosmic forces active at that time upon this fluid albumen in the environment of the Earth. These cosmic forces worked on many parts of this albumen in such a way that they congealed, so that one could see everywhere albumen congealed by the forces of the cosmos; this cosmically congealed albumen swam in the Earth environment. These forms of cosmically congealed albumen were not merely imaginary masses of clouds, they were living things having definite forms. These were actually animals which consisted in this congealed albumen thickened to the density of jelly or even to that of our present-day gristle. Such jelly-like animals existed in this fluid albuminous atmosphere. They had a shape which we find today on a smaller scale in our reptiles, in lizards and creatures of that kind; they were not so dense as these are, but they had gelatinous bodies and the power of movement. At one moment they had long limbs, at another these limbs were drawn back into the body. In short, everything about these limbs is like a snail which can extend and withdraw its feelers.

[limestone (chalk)]

While all this was being formed outside something else was being deposited in the Earth from out of the cosmos, another substance in addition to the silica, and that is what you find today as the chalk or limestone of the Earth. If you go into the primeval mountains, or merely into the Jura mountains, you find this limestone rock. This limestone rock certainly came to the Earth later but it came in the same way as the silica out of the cosmos on to the Earth. Thus we find chalk as the second substance in the Earth.

This chalk continually oozes in and the essential thing is that it works in such a way that the kernel of the Earth gradually becomes denser and denser. In certain localities the silica incorporates itself into the chalk. But the chalk retains the cosmic forces.

Chalk indeed is something quite different from the coarse material which the chemists of today represent it to be. It contains formative forces, relatively active though unrecognized.

Now we come to a peculiar thing. If we consider a somewhat later time than that which I have described in connection with the phenomenon of the arising and passing away of the green, we find that in this albuminous atmosphere there is a continual rising and falling of chalky substance. Chalk-mist is formed and then chalk-rain. There was a period on the Earth when the water which today rises in mist and falls as rain was of a chalk nature which rose and fell, ascending and descending. Now the peculiar thing comes about that this chalk is specially attracted by the gelatinous, the gristly forms; it permeates them, impregnates them with itself.

And through the Earth forces which are in it (I told you the Earth-forces are in the chalk) through these forces the whole gelatinous mass is gradually dissolved, the mass which, as we have seen, formed itself there as coagulated albumen. The chalk abstracts the albumen and carries it down nearer to the Earth, and from this gradually arise the animals which have bones containing lime. That is what develops in the later part of the Lemurian epoch.

[recap]

We have, therefore, first of all to look upon the plants in their most ancient form as pure gifts from heaven.

In the animals, in everything possessing an animal form we have to see something which the Earth, after the heavens had given it chalk, took and made into an earthly form. These are the marvelous things which we discover in those ancient times. We feel so bound up with these things that we feel this whole process as an expansion of the human being into the cosmos.

Such things naturally sound paradoxical because they touch upon a reality of which the Man of the present day usually has no idea; nevertheless they are absolutely true.

• Does it not correspond with reality today when someone says from what he remembers: “When I was a child of nine years old I had a friend whom I fought or hurt?” That recollection is something which arises from within. The speaker may feel pleasure in it or not. It may cause him pain, but it arises within him.
• Similarly there arises in man through the relationship with the metals an enhanced human consciousness which becomes an Earth consciousness:
  • Whilst thou hast formed on the Earth thy whole being from out of the heavens, by the descent thou hast separated the plants from thee. They are cast off from thee.
  • Thou hast also cast off the animal nature. In the form of coagulated jelly or gristle thou didst will first of all that the animal nature should become a separate product from thyself. But in this case thou hast had to see how earlier Earth forces have taken this work from thee and have fashioned the animal forms into another shape, which is a result of Earth creation. In this way, in, a cosmic memory, one can see this as one's own experience just as one can see the case I have just given you as an experience of a short earthly life. One feels oneself, as has been said, united as a human being with all these things.

[sulphur]

But all this is indeed connected with many other processes. I can only sketch for you the chief events. Many other things happened. For example, while all that I have described was taking place the whole atmosphere was filled with sulphur in a finely divided state. This finely divided sulphur united itself with other substances, and from the union there arose what I may call the parents of everything which is found today in the ores as pyrites, galena, native sulphide of zinc, etc. In this way all these substances developed in an older form, soft, thick and wax-like. The body of the Earth was permeated with these things.

When these ores, these metallic substances developed out of the general albuminous substance and formed the solid crust of the Earth the metals had really not much else to do, unless man made some use of them, than to ponder over what had happened in the past. We find them still doing this, bringing graphically to the mind of one who has inner vision all that has happened to the Earth.

• Now because he has, as his own, this cosmic or at least tellurian experience he says: Through having cast off from thyself all this, through having cast off the primeval plant-form, a form which has since developed into the later plant-forms, through having cast off that which still exists in a more complicated way as the animal creation as I have described it, thou hast separated from thyself that which formerly hindered thee from having as Man a will of thine own.

All that I have described to you was necessary. Man had to cast off these things from himself, just as today he has to get rid of perspiration and other matter. Man had to cast off these things so that he might no longer be a being in whom merely the gods willed, but so that he could be a being with a will of his own, certainly not yet a free will, but his own. All this was necessary as preparation for the earthly nature of Man.

[change to atmosphere sylphur -> oxygen]

Through much else that happened everything gradually became transformed. As the metals were now within the Earth the whole atmosphere changed also. It became a different atmosphere, much less sulphurous. Oxygen gradually gained the upper hand over the sulphur, whereas in the ancient times sulphur was of very great significance for the atmosphere of the Earth. The whole atmosphere of the Earth became transformed.

In this transformed atmosphere Man could again cast off from himself something else. What Man now separated off appeared as the successors of the earlier plants and earlier animals.

Gradually the later plant-forms developed. These had a kind of root by which they held on to a still extremely soft earthy substance.

And there arose reptiles, lizard-like animals, more complicated creatures, impressions of which present-day geology can still discover. Of the most ancient creatures of which I have spoken nothing can be found. Only in that later period, when man for the second time separated off from himself more complicated forms, only then were there such creatures as I have been describing to you. First of all cloud-like structures, continually arising and disappearing, growing green and then fading away; soft animal-like forms which were really animals, forms which gradually consolidated themselves, had a life of their own and then disappeared into the common earth-life. This was the case with all these beings. And out of all this arose something which condensed more into itself.

[example animal(s) + sketch]

Among these animals was one which may be described as follows: it had a very large eye-like organ surrounded by a sort of aura. Near it was a kind of snout, which besides was elongated forward, then something like a lizard's body, but with powerful fins. Such a form as this arose, which now developed more firmness within itself. Animals arose possessed of what I may just as well call wings as fins, because these animals were not marine creatures, for there was no sea as yet, there was a soft earthy mass and the still soft element of the surroundings from which only the sulphur had been partly removed. In these surroundings such an animal flew or swam, it was an activity between flying and swimming.

Besides these there were other animals which did not have this kind of limbs. They had limbs which already were formed more out of the forces of the earth itself, and which remind us too of the limbs of the lower mammals of today.

Thus if starting from today we could wander back through time rather than through space into that period which unites the Lemurian epoch with that of Atlantis, a peculiar prospect would face us.

We should see these gigantic flying lizards, with a sort of lantern on their heads which shines and also gives warmth. Down below is the soft morass-like Earth which has something extremely familiar about it, because it offers to the visitors of today a kind of odour, something between a musty smell and the smell arising from green plants, something between the two. Something seductive on the one hand and extremely sympathetic on the other would be offered by the mud of the soft Earth. In this morass too we find moving about as swamp-animals creatures which already have limbs more like those of our present lower animals, but spread out below them, something like the webbed feet of a duck but of course very much bigger. With these “shovels” they propel themselves in the swamp, and also rock about from side to side.

Man had to go through all this casting-off process so that he might be prepared for independent feeling during his Earth existence.

[recap]

1/ Thus we have first a vegetable-animal creation consisting in products separated off from Man, which prepares the possibility for the earthly human being to become a willing being. If all this had remained in man it would have taken possession of his will. His will would then have become entirely a physical function. Through having separated these things from himself the physical is put outside of him and the will assumes a psychic character.

2/ In like manner, through this second creation feeling assumes a psychic character.

Not until the middle of the Atlantean epoch do there develop out of these animals and plants the animals and plants that are similar to ours of today. The Earth at that time had reached a stage similar in appearance to what it is now. The same chemical substances as are recognized by the chemists of today were also in existence. Gradually there developed what we know as carbon, oxygen, the alkaline heavy metals, and the like. These things were developed by that time.

3/ Thereby Man was able to make the third separation from himself, viz., that which he today forms in his surroundings as the plant-animal world. And inasmuch as he separated this off from himself and inasmuch as there arose around him the present-day creation he has become prepared for his life on Earth as a thinking being.

Thus we must say that humanity was not then divided as it is today into single individuals. There was one common humanity, still of a psychic and spiritual nature, sinking itself in the ether. For this common humanity came down from the cosmos with the ether which streamed down to the earth from the cosmos.

Humanity then went through those events which you find described in my Outline of Occult Science. It came to the Earth, went away to the other planets, and came back again in the Atlantean epoch. This went on continually alongside the other happenings, for whenever something was separated off humanity could not remain on the Earth. It had to go away in order to strengthen the inner forces, which were now of a much finer, more psychic nature. Then humanity came down again. You may read about these events in more detail in my Outline of Occult Science. They are as follows: Man, humanity, really belonged to the cosmos, and prepared for himself his own earthly environment by sending into the domain of the Earth those things which he separated from him, and which then became the other kingdoms of nature. They are now in the domain of the Earth, where man is surrounded by them. And now we can say: By sending these castoff products into the domain of the Earth, Man gradually developed within him that which furnished him as an earthly human being with willing, feeling and thinking.

For that which Man is today as a thinking, feeling and willing being, which, during the period between birth and death rests upon a physical organic foundation, has only gradually developed, and it is connected with those beings who, for the sake of human evolution, have separated in the course of time from the human kingdom. Owing to this separation they have metamorphosed themselves to their present forms.

You see from what has now been said that we do not speak merely in a general abstract way about this relationship with that which is of a metallic nature in the Earth. For when one is united with these metals, which conceal within them the memory of earthly events one can then really speak of what one remembers, one really finds what I have related today.

[further description]

When we travel back into those earlier times we find everything more fleeting, more quickly vanishing. Just contemplate the grandiose, the majestic outlook which I have described to you.

Those wax-like mobile silicate forms in which the outlined forms of the plant-world arise which suck themselves full of the soft albuminous substance, and thereby present in the earthly environment to which we look up something which grows green and fades away again.

Think over these things and you yourselves will say: In contrast with plants growing on the Earth today with firm roots and solid leaves; or, compared with present-day trees with their hard trunk, all that is a fleeting picture. Just think how fleeting those earlier forms were compared with the oak-tree of today! (The oak itself is not proud of its firmness, but those living round it generally are, for they confound their own frequent weakness with the firmness of the oak.) If you compare the hardness of the oak of today with the substance of those ancient plant-forms, how feeble is their rising, how feeble their fading away, like shadows rising in the atmosphere, condensing, then vanishing away! Or if you compare this with a coarser case, say, a hippopotamus or an elephant of today, or any living mammal in its stout skin — compare these with the creatures of that early time, when as coagulated albumen they came out from the common albuminous mass and were seized on by the chalk, and through that process in somewhat denser fashion developed indications of bones in the animal nature of the earth; how in this way they become somewhat denser and develop the first indications of a bony system. If you consider all this solidity of today compared with what the Earth once was you will no longer be able to doubt that the further we go back the more fleeting and volatile are the conditions.

We then go further back to where there are only colour-formations surging up, weaving and living, which arise and pass away. If you then take the description of the Old Sun, of Old Saturn, the predecessors of the Earth as you will find them given in my Outline of Occult Science you will say that all this is comprehensible when we know that we have to go back from the present time to an earlier condition. There this evanescent plant-formation absorbs the albumen and becomes something like a cloud-formation. At a still earlier period we find forms manifesting only in colour, such as I have described when speaking of the Old Sun existence or the Old Saturn existence.

Thus gradually, if we follow what is physical backwards through time we get away from the gross and elephantine, through the finer physical to the spiritual, and in this way, by paying attention to actual fact we get back to the spiritual origin of everything which belongs to the earth. The earth has its origin in the spiritual. That is the result of true vision, and I think it is a beautiful idea to be able to say: If you penetrate into the interior of the Earth, and let the hard metals tell you what they remember they will relate the following:

“We were once spread out in cosmic space in such a way that we were not physical substance at all, but in the spirit we were essence of colour, weaving in the cosmos, arising and vanishing.”

The memory of the metals of the Earth takes us back to that condition where the metals were cosmic colours, permeating one another, where the cosmos was in essential a kind of rainbow, a kind of spectrum, which then gradually differentiated itself and then became physical.

This is the point at which what I may call the merely theoretical impression communicated by the metallic element of the Earth passed over into the moral impression. For each metal tells us at the same time:

“I originate from the expanses of space and from earth-forms. I arise out of the heavenly kingdom. I am here drawn down and enchanted into the earth. But I await my redemption, for I shall once again fill the universe with my being.”

When in this way we learn to understand the speech of the metals, then gold tells us of the Sun, lead tells us of Saturn, copper tells us of Venus. And then these metals say to us:

“Once upon a time we extended far out, copper to Venus, lead to Saturn. Today we are enchanted here. But when the earth shall have so fulfilled her task that man shall have attained what only on the earth he can attain we shall extend out yonder again. We have been enchanted in this way so that man on the earth might become a free being. When freedom has been purchased for man, then our disenchantment too can begin.”

This disenchantment has already begun. We have only to understand it. We must understand how the earth, together with man, will develop further into the future.

1973 - Ernst Hagemann

see description on: Book of Genesis#1973 - Ernst Hagemann

Mars and Mercury influences

1903-GA089

(draft of a spiritual cosmology 1903/1904 - fragment)

[withdrawal of Mars]

This major change in the human body was connected with a cosmic event which in occult terms is called the withdrawal of Mars from the Earth. Mars is the planet which before that withdrawal had with the powers inherent in it brought about the process in the human body that was later taken over by the blood circulation. With the blood taking over the Mars activity in this way, the spirits concerned were able to go outside the Earth, and the influence of Mars on the human being was then such that it influenced him from outside. The way it happened physically was that iron became an important constituent of the blood; iron is the form of matter on which Mars powers have a specific influence. Respiration as it is today thus has to do with the withdrawal of Mars.

All this gave the human being something which we may call the inner power of the blood. Ensoulment had become possible. The human being did indeed breathe in his soul when he breathed air.

1905-10-28-GA093A

Jehovah's aim was the perfection of form. Lucifer would have been able to develop in astral substance his passion for premature spirituality. The result would have been a violent battle between the Jehovah-spirits and the hosts of Lucifer. There was the danger that through Jehovah some human beings would become living statues and that others would be too quickly spiritualised through Lucifer. Means of bringing about equilibrium would have to be obtained elsewhere.

[Mars influence]

In order to annul the battle between Jehovah and Lucifer, the White Lodge, which was just in its beginning, had to obtain material from one of the other planets. This differed essentially from the astral substance that had come over from the Moon, from the astral-kamic animal substance. The possibility arose of leading over substance from other planets: new passions, less vehement but conceived on the basis of independence. The new material was brought over from Mars. Thus in the first half of our Earth evolution astral substance from Mars was introduced. A great advance was brought about through the introduction of this astral substance from Mars.

External civilisation on the Earth arose through the fact that hardening on the one side and spiritualisation on the other side were prevented. Lucifer made use of what had been given by the Mars forces. The new state of the Earth was given the name of Mars.

[Christ impulse]

Things continued in this way until the middle of the Atlantean epoch. Then a new question arose.

Man had absorbed wisdom, but in the future it would not be possible for wisdom alone to manifest in a form-creating way. One would have been able to build up the mineral kingdom through Lucifer, but Lucifer could not have given it life. Man could never have imparted life under the influence of the other powers.

This was why a Sun God had to come, a higher being than Lucifer. There still existed what are known as the Solar Pitris. The most exalted among these is Christ. As Lucifer represents the spirit-self (manas) element, so the life-spirit (budhi) element is represented by Christ.

[Mercury influence]

The human astral bodies had still to receive a third impact. This was brought down from Mercury.

Christ united his sovereignty with that of Lucifer.

If one has the will to ascend the heights in order to find the way to the Gods one needs Mercury, the Divine Messenger. He is the one who prepared the path of Christ from the middle of the Atlantean epoch onwards in order later to enter into the astral bodies, which had received the mercurial element.

[explanation on metals]

All our present metals have only gradually become what they are now. Gold, silver, platinum and so on all pass through certain conditions. When they are heated they become first hot, then liquid, then gaseous. This latter was once the condition of all metals in the gaseous Earth. Gold too first densified with the Earth: at one time it was entirely etheric gold. When we go back to the time when the Earth was still united with the Sun, there was as yet within it no solid gold. The particles of the white Sun-Ether became first fluid and then solid. These are the veins of gold which are now in the Earth. Gold is solidified sunlight. Silver is solidified moonlight. All mineral substances have gradually solidified. When human beings become ever more spiritualised, quicksilver will also become solid. At one time gold and silver formed drops just as water does now.

The fact that mercury is still fluid is connected with the whole process of Earth evolution. It will become solid when the God Mercury has fulfilled his mission.

[Mars and Mercury]

In the middle of the Atlantean epoch quicksilver was brought down from Mercury in etheric form. Had we not had quicksilver we should not have had the Christ-Principle. In the drops of quicksilver we have to see what was incorporated in the Earth in the middle of the Atlantean epoch.

When the Mars Principle (Kama-Manas) was incorporated into the Earth, iron was brought down to the Earth from Mars. Iron originates in Mars. It was at first in astral form and later densified. When we trace the Earth to that period of time we find ever fewer warm-blooded animals. It was only in the middle of the Lemurian epoch that warm blood made its appearance together with the Mars impulse. Iron came into the blood at that time.

It is iron that in all occult writings is brought into connection with Mars, quicksilver with Budhi-Mercury. Certain people learned this from the adepts. The Earth was therefore understood as Mars and Mercury. Everything that did not originate from Mars and Mercury has come over from Old Moon.

...

[Ages]

Blood came into the Earth with the Mars-Wisdom (Kama-Manas). Deep meaning lies in many other things. The separation of the Moon preceded the Mars-Age. The Moon contains silver. Still earlier took place the separation of the Sun.

• Gold is condensed sunlight, hence the Golden Age;
• Moonlight and silver: the Silver Age;
• Mars and iron: the Bronze Age.

1905-11-25-GA262

(letters to Marie von Sivers)

[Mars and Mercury]

The human being was never on Mars, but his intellectual soul is connected esoterically with this planet in such a way that its forces have been taken from there. This must be understood spatially as the Earth passing through Mars — which was etheric at the time — before itself becoming etheric (i.e. physical) in its fourth cycle.

Diagrammatically it can be represented thus [see Schema FMC00.219]

This passage through Mars was still taking place as late as the physical period of the Earth. And while this was taking place the leading beings took from Mars the kama substance required for the intellectual soul, and since the physical vehicle of the former is the warm blood (the Ares-blood of militant man), iron, which is a constituent of the blood, was added to the Earth at that time.

Equally, the human being will never really inhabit Mercury, but since the middle of the Atlantean world he has been connected with the kama substance (actually kama-manasic substance) of Mercury and the leading beings have supplied the human consciousness soul with forces from it. The influence of Mercury brought quicksilver (mercury) to Earth as its physical vehicle. Following the development of Earth to the plastic state, it will pass through Mercury in space. The Earth itself will then be astral, but Mercury etheric.

see also: Earth rounds perspective

1906-01-06-GA262

(enclosure with letter to Marie von Sievers), extract SWCC:

[Mars influence]

The work of the monads would have remained cold and dry, however, if the astral body had not received an element which resulted in the human being using his intellect with a certain higher passion. This element was given to the human being from Mars. And the beings who transmitted it are the luciferic beings. Although they progressed beyond the stage of later human Earth existence, they did not reach the stage of concluding their Moon development with the manvantara of the Old Moon, as the Lunar-Pitris were able to do.

As initiates they now carry the astral forces from Mars into the astral body of the human being and thus fan within him the passion for using his intellect. In this way they vitalise the knowledge of human beings; they arouse them to independence. This is the aid to human development given by the luciferic principle.

Nevertheless, they linked self-interest with knowledge, since they aroused thinking through passion, and this results in self-interest. But only in this way has it become possible for the human being to make the Earth serve his purposes, to use it for himself. Jehovah could only have given the form of the intellectual organs and the spirits from Venus only awakened passionless feeling in the latter. For their gifts in this direction were given to the reproductive forces.

1906-01-07-GA262

(enclosure with letter to Marie von Sievers), extract (SWCC):

It seemed to me yesterday that the thoughts I wrote down for you for tomor­row still needed some clarification. I therefore want to add a few things to the chapter on 'Earth Development'.

You know that the Lunar-Pitris, that is, the beings who are one stage ahead of human beings, have to advance their existence on the Moon to a level which is analogous to the stage of human existence on Earth.

Let us now consider for one moment the half-way stage of Earth development. You know that at that point the human being is under the influence of Mars and Mercury and strives towards his 'Future Jupiter existence' as one strives towards an ideal.

Of the three members of the astral body, the sentient soul, intellectual soul and consciousness soul,

• the human being brings only the first, the sentient soul, with him from Old Moon.
• The intellectual soul comes from the influence of Mars
• and the intellectual soul [editor - probably consciousness soul] from the influence of Mercury.
• The consciousness soul can only unfold because the forces which will later be developed fully on Future Jupiter already throw their shadow ahead, as it were. The consequence of this shadow is the develop­ment of the consciousness soul which thereby can become the vehicle for spirit-self, as described in my 'Theosophy'.

To the extent that the human being is already able to develop manas, he is developing into the Future Jupiter stage. The Future Jupiter stage is followed by the Future Venus development for all beings who are part of the seven-stages of the human evolutionary cycle. In the same way that the human being grows towards Future Jupiter, the angels [Lunar-Pitris from the Moon, the 'Spirits of Twilight'] grow towards the Future Venus existence if they have gone through their normal development. The archangels ['Spirits of Fire'] are already there, and they are growing towards their Vulcan existence.

Therefore, if one wants to describe the present situation completely correctly, one must say:

• The human being on Earth grows towards Future Jupiter,
• the angels on Jupiter grow towards Future Venus, and
• the archangels on Future Venus grow towards Vulcan.

Once a being has reached the Vulcan stage it has become creative. During the Earth development of the human being it is the 'Spirits of Form' who are in this position. They are therefore the creators of earthly human beings. And insofar as they are in this position, 'Jehovah' is their representative. So since the mid-point of Earth development the human being deals with:

• 1. His creators, the Spirits of Form, who lent him his earthly form.
• 2. The archangels, who gave his astral body its sensual emotions.
• 3. The angels, who gave to this astral body its earthly knowledge. And lastly,
• 4. himself, living as 'I' in the consciousness soul.

The action of the spirits of fire takes place in the second half of the Lemurian epoch, along with the work of the angels [Lunar-Pitris]. Then during the 5th sub-race of the Atlantean epoch the human being begins to develop into an independent 'I'.

Within this progression the angels who have not completed their development work differently from those who have. The latter imbue the astral body perfectly with the Mercury element from without, but the former still have to perfect themselves with the things which are developing in Man. Their own being is therefore within the human being. In this way they are the luciferic principle.

1907-05-31-GA099

see extract on: Mystery of silver#1907-05-31-GA099

on Mars-Mercury for the two halves of the Earth stage of evolution

1908-02-15-GA102

But now the human beings would not have been able to evolve further, they could not support the tempo as long as the sun remained with the Earth. Then something came about which we can well understand when we are clear that the beings we have called the Fire-Spirits took their scene of action away from the Earth. The sun pressed out and we have now sun, with Earth and moon together.

During this time Mars — in a way which would take too much time to relate now in detail — had again formed a theatre for particular beings, and in its further advance Mars actually passed through the Earth and moon and left behind what to-day we know as iron. Hence Mars was the cause of the iron particles deposited in living beings, that is, in the blood.

[parenthesis]

Now someone could say: That is not so very remarkable, iron is everywhere. For just as other bodies were in the primordial mist, so too was Mars with the iron which it left behind. Iron is in all the other planets as well!

Science today, however, wonderfully confirms what is given here from the teaching of spiritual science. You will remember that I once showed you how one passes symbolically from the green sap of the plant, chlorophyll, to the blood of man. Plants arose at the period before this passage of Mars had taken place and have preserved their characteristic. Then the iron was deposited in the beings more highly organized than the plants, permeating the red blood. Thus what has recently been found in a Zurich laboratory is in complete accordance with these spiritual-scientific facts, namely, that blood cannot be compared with chlorophyll, simply because it was deposited later. We must not imagine that blood depends in any way on the substantiality of the chemical element iron. I say that especially, because someone might say that one can speak of no connection at all of chlorophyll with the blood. Today science makes the discovery that the blood is to be traced back to the element iron — whereas chlorophyll contains no iron. It is nevertheless in the fullest harmony with what spiritual science has to say, it is only a matter of looking at things in the right light.

[Separation of Moon - Mercury and Venus]

Then for reasons which we have already stated, the moon separated and we have the earth by itself and the present moon as its satellite. To the sun withdrew all the beings of an essentially higher order than man, whom we have called the Fire-Spirits. But there were certain beings which had not ascended high enough to be able really to endure the sun existence. You must be clear that they were beings exalted far above man, but still not so far advanced as to be able, like the Fire-Spirits, to live on the sun. Dwelling-places had to be created for them. None of the other theatres could have served them, for those were for beings of another nature, who had by no means attained the great age of the beings who, though belonging to the Fire-Spirits, had not quite kept up with them in cosmic evolution.

In the main there were two species of beings who had remained behind, and two special arenas were therefore formed for them through the severing of Mercury and Venus from the sun. Mercury and Venus are two planets which have split off as the centres for those Fire-Spirits who are exalted far above human existence, yet who could not have supported the sun-existence. So you have Mercury in the neighbourhood of the sun as arena for those beings who had not been able to live with the Fire-Spirits on the sun, and Venus as arena for beings who in a certain respect had remained behind the Mercury beings but who yet stood far above man.

Thus you have seen these various cosmic bodies originate out of the primoridal mist from inner causes, from spiritually-inspired activities. If one keeps to the physical alone, matters take their course in the way depicted by modern science, but the point is to learn to know the spiritual causes by which things have become what they are. Inside the primordial mist, the beings have themselves created the dwelling-places in which they could live. Now these various beings who were, so to say, harmoniously side by side before they had separated, did not remain without connection. On the contrary, they work through one another throughout.

The influence of the Mercury and Venus beings on the Earth is of a quite special interest. Put yourselves back into the time when the sun and then the moon released itself from the earth and man began his existence in his present form. He has acquired this existence in the present form through the fact that one of the Sun-Spirits forbore — if I may so express it — from continuing his existence on the sun, but united himself with the moon. In this way a lofty regent of the moon arose. Beings of a lower order existed on the moon, but one of the Sun-Spirits united himself with the moon-existence. This Sun-Spirit who is therefore really a displaced Sun-Spirit in the universe is, as divine, spiritual being, Yahve, Jehovah, the regent of the moon. We shall see why that came about if we consider the following.

We have seen that if the sun had remained united to the earth man would have been consumed by the swift course of development, and if the moon and its forces alone had worked upon man he would have been mummified. Precisely through the harmony of sun and moon forces arose the equilibrium that keeps man in the present tempo of evolution. When the Earth had come over from the old Moon, man had his physical body from Saturn, his etheric body from the Sun and his astral body from the Moon. But because he had the three bodies and the seed with the three bodies now began to develop, he had a very different form. You would open your eyes in amazement if I should de-scribe it to you, for the present human form has arisen quite slowly and gradually from the time of the moon-separation. But the base, inferior moon-forces could not have given man his present form. They could certainly have given him a form, but an inferior one. If the moon-forces had remained with the earth they would have held him fast in one form. Forces that give the form must proceed from the moon, while forces that continually alter the form proceed from the sun. But in order that the present human form should arise, a molder, a modeler of form, must work from the moon; it was not possible otherwise. At that time therefore began the development of the I-man. The fourth member of the human entity arose and Jehovah gave the human being the nucleus to a form which would enable him to become an I-bearer.

Now man was not yet capable of carrying out the work of which I have told you. I have explained that man's I works upon his astral, etheric, and physical bodies. But he can only begin this work gradually. As a child needs teachers, so when man was already prepared to become an ego-bearer, he needed a stimulus on earth to enable him to advance, and there were two 'stimulators'. You can think whence, from the whole cosmic evolution, they came.

The beings who stood nearest to man were the Venus and Mercury beings. Until, at the end of the Atlantean Age, man could make the first feeble efforts to work independently with his I upon the three bodies — for that was just possible at the end of the Atlantean Age — he had to have teachers. These teachers were beings of Venus and Mercury, and they went on working far beyond the Age of Atlantis. But they are not to be looked on as we look on our present teachers; the Venus beings must rather be thought of as those who endowed man with his intellectuality. Men knew nothing at all of this; just as the different human fluids work upon man, so did the forces of these beings influence him until he could work upon his bodies independently. What we find in man today as intelligence was mediated to him through the spirits who remained behind on Venus as Fire-Spirits of a lesser order. In addition to these were other teachers and they were in fact perceived consciously as teachers by men who attained clairvoyance — the teachers of the great Mysteries of ancient times. In the far past there was not only that all-embracing influence of the Venus-Spirits who worked more or less on mankind as a whole, there were also Mystery centres where the most advanced human beings received instruction spiritually from the Fire-Spirits. The exalted Fire-Spirits of Mercury instructed in the Mysteries; there they appeared — if we may say so — in a spiritual embodiment and were the teachers of the first initiates. Just as the first initiates became the teachers of the great masses of mankind, so did the beings of Mercury work as the teachers of the first initiates. From this you may realize that the beings of other stars have an influence upon Man, but the very complicated nature of this influence can be seen from the following.

[threefold soul]

You remember that in my Theosophy we roughly divide the human being by saying that he consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body, I, spirit-self, life-spirit, spirit-man. The more correct division, as you know, is physical, etheric, astral bodies, then the three soul-forces in which the I emerges — sentient soul, intellectual or mind soul, consciousness soul — and that only then we have spirit-self (or manas), life-spirit (or budhi), spirit-man (or atma). Thus the soul-element is inserted as sentient soul, intellectual soul, consciousness soul.

If we follow Man's evolution on the Earth we can say that to the three constituents brought over from the Moon, the first development to be added was the sentient soul, then arose the intellectual soul, and not till towards the end of Atlantean times, when Man learnt for the first time to say “I” to himself, did the consciousness-soul arise. Since then Man can begin to work consciously from within upon the members of his being. If we divide man thus into body, soul, spirit, then we have to divide the soul again into sentient soul, intellectual soul, consciousness soul. These evolved gradually, and the consciousness soul could as yet have no influence, for it arose only as the last. These members had therefore to be kindled from without, and beings from outside were active.

[Three influences developing threefold soul]

Mars in fact worked on the sentient soul, the already-separated Mercury with its beings worked on the origin of the intellectual soul, and Jupiter, which had been in existence the longest, worked on the origin of the consciousness soul.

Thus in the soul-nature of man we have the working of the three cosmic bodies,

• of Mars in the sentient soul,
• Mercury in the intellectual soul,
• Jupiter in the consciousness soul,

.. and inasmuch as spirit-self presses into the consciousness soul, Venus with its beings is active. Mercury was also active with regard to the first initiates, so that the Mercury beings exercised a twofold activity, the one quite unconscious to man inasmuch as they developed his intellectual soul, and then as well they were the first teachers of the initiates when they worked in a fully-conscious way. The Mercury beings had thus a continuous double activity, rather as many country schoolmasters instruct the children and cultivate the land allotted to them. The Mercury beings had to develop the intellectual soul and besides that had to be the great schoolmasters of the great initiates. All these things can also be grasped by pure logic.

Now you can perhaps ask why should just Jupiter work on the consciousness soul, since it is such a distant planet. But these things are not investigated on logical grounds, but by investigating the facts of the spiritual worlds. There you would perceive it as a fact that the consciousness soul is kindled by Jupiter beings, to whose help come, on the other hand, laggard Venus beings. Things cannot be fitted into an external scheme in the activity of the cosmos; one must realize that when a planet has already fulfilled a task, its beings can later fulfill another task as well.

In the course of the second race of humanity Jupiter beings cooperated on the perfecting of the etheric body; then they themselves advanced a stage, and when the human being was far enough on for his consciousness soul to develop, they had to intervene again and help in its development. What is working in space enters into joint activity in most varied ways; one cannot pass from one activity to another in any sort of schematic way.

Geological time periods

1908-06-28-GA244

RSH

On the correlation of geologic and spiritual-scientific periods: The last ice age as the beginning of the post-Atlantean period. The Tertiary corresponds to the Atlantean period. "In the last Atlantean period the human being appears in such a way that the methods of the present-day geology can find him. We would come back to the time of the dinosaurs (ichthyosaurs) - that would be about the period that meets the Lemurian age of the earth. As for the earlier periods, there it is better not to draw a parallelism."

1911-02-11-GA127

In this connection we have one of the finest examples of complete accord between spiritual knowledge and modern science in its true form. It is essential that anthroposophists should learn to distinguish between true science and all that through countless popular channels poses as science, but in reality is nothing but a compendium of preconceived ideas, theories and the like. If we go to the true sources of the several sciences we realise how fully spiritual knowledge accords with science. And here is one of the very best examples. —

There is no more reliable or well-versed geologist than Eduard Suess; and what another geologist says is undoubtedly correct, namely, that Suess's work “The Face of the Earth” is a great geological epic of the earth. It bears all the traces of exceptional thoroughness and careful study. With all caution, and unprejudiced by theories, the author of this really monumental work presents what may be stated today on the foundation of actual geological facts.

Suess is not guided in his investigations by ideas previously conceived, as was the case even with such men as Buch or Humboldt. Suess investigates facts, facts alone. What he has to say on the basis of meticulously observed facts about the formation of the Earth's soil is particularly interesting. His conception is exactly the same as that of spiritual science, only of course Suess knew nothing of spiritual science. He draws his conclusions from the actual physical facts.

[Earth in a declining physical mode]

He maintains that valleys have formed as the result of the working of certain forces through which rock and stone were hurled down; subsidence took place and heights remained. All this is the result of processes of segmentation, displacement and “folding”, in which only forces of destruction are working. Let me refer you to one passage in Suess's great work and you will see that here, where we have to do with true science, there is complete accord with spiritual knowledge. The passage is as follows:

The breaking up of the terrestrial globe, this it is we witness. It doubtless began a long time ago, and the brevity of human life enables us to contemplate it without dismay. It is not only in the great mountain ranges that the traces of this process are found. Great segments of the Earth's crust have sunk hundreds, in some cases even thousands of feet deep, and not the slightest inequality of the surface remains to indicate the fracture; the different nature of the rocks and the discoveries made in mining alone reveal its presence. Time has leveled all. In Bohemia, in the Palatinate, in Belgium, in Pennsylvania in many other places as well, the plough quietly traces its furrows over the mightiest fractures .....

I refer to this merely to show you that our Earth-planet displays the same process of withering, shriveling and destruction as the physical body of Man. Those who come forward with views of the world today do not base themselves upon science in its true form. Even to read intelligently through this tremendous work, “The Face of the Earth”, entails strenuous effort. But even that would be of no avail unless one were acquainted with the whole of modern geological science; for this alone teaches one how such a book should be read. When a Man turns to the true sources of knowledge he finds the absolute facts.

[granite]

Spiritual science tells us — for example about the progress of our Earth's evolution — that at one time, before organisms existed, the Earth was not in that fantastic condition when granite is alleged to have been liquid fire, but when the whole Earth was pervaded by an activity similar, for example, to the activity taking place in a Man when he is thinking.

The process of destruction was once introduced and as a result of it we are able to say: The chemical substances which today are no longer contained in the Earth's organism — for example, the substances of which granite is composed — fell away from this organism like rain. They trickled down, as it were, and in essentials it was these processes of destruction which in alliance with the chemistry of the Earth made it possible for granite to come into existence as the mother-soil of the earth. But by that time a process of destruction had already set in, and what is present today is the necessary consequence of that process of destruction which continues in a straightforward line.

What does true natural science show us? That those processes which must be there are there. And in true natural science this is shown us everywhere. True natural science nowhere contradicts spiritual science; everywhere there is corroboration.

1919-09-25-GA300A

The Ice Age is the Atlantean catastrophe. The Early, Middle and Late Ice Ages are nothing more than what occurred in Europe while Atlantis sank. That all occurred at the same time, that is, in the seventh or eighth millennium.

... [question to Steiner's contribution the the articles on this in Pierer’s Encyclopedia, of which seven editions were published between 1824 und 1893, see Universal-Lexikon_der_Gegenwart_und_Vergangenheit]

...

A teacher: It is difficult to find the connections before the Ice Age. How are we to bring what conventional science says into alignment with what spiritual science says?

Dr. Steiner: You can find points of connection in the cycles. In the Quaternary Period you will find the first and second mammals, and you simply need to add to that what is valid concerning human beings. You can certainly bring that into alignment. You can create a parallel between the Quaternary Period and Atlantis, and easily bring the Tertiary Period into parallel, but not pedantically, with what I have described as the Lemurian Period. That is how you can bring in the Tertiary Period. There, you have the older amphibians and reptiles. The human being was at that time only jelly-like in external form. Humans had an amphibian-like form.

A teacher: But there are still the fire breathers.

Dr. Steiner: Yes, those beasts, they did breathe fire, the Archaeopteryx, for example.

A teacher: You mean that animals whose bones we see today in museums still breathed fire?

Dr. Steiner: Yes, all of the dinosaurs belong to the end of the Tertiary Period. Those found in the Jura are actually their descendants. What I am referring to are the dinosaurs from the beginning of the Tertiary Period. The Jurassic formations are later, and everything is all mixed together. We should treat nothing pedantically. The Secondary Period lies before the Tertiary and the Jurassic belongs there as does the Archaeopteryx. However, that would actually be the Secondary Period. We may not pedantically connect one with the other.

[Remarks by the German editor: In the previous paragraphs, there appear to be stenographic errors. The text is in itself contradictory, and it is not consistent with the articles mentioned and the table in Pierer’s Encyclopedia nor with Dr. Steiner’s remarks made in the following faculty meeting (Sept. 26, 1919). The error appears explainable by the fact that Dr. Steiner referred to a table that the stenographer did not have. Therefore, the editor suggests the following changes in the text. The changes are underlined:

You can find points of connection in the cycles. In the Tertiary Period you will find the first and second mammals, and you simply need to add to that what is valid concerning human beings. You can certainly bring that into alignment.

• You can create a parallel between the Tertiary Period and Atlantis,
• and easily bring the Secondary Period into parallel, but not pedantically, with what I have described as the Lemurian epoch. That is how you can bring in the Secondary Period. There, you have the older amphibians and reptiles. The human being was at that time only jelly-like in external form. Humans had an amphibian-like form.

Yes, all of the dinosaurs belong to the end of the Secondary Period. Those found in the Jura are actually their descendants.

What I am referring to are the dinosaurs from the beginning of the Secondary Period. The Jurassic formations are later, and everything is all mixed together.

We should treat nothing pedantically. The Secondary Period lies before the Tertiary and the Jurassic belongs there as does the Archaeopteryx. However, that would be actually the Secondary Period. We may not pedantically connect one with the other.]

A teacher: How do we take into account what we have learned about what occurred within the Earth? We can find almost nothing about that in conventional science.

Dr. Steiner: Conventional geology really concerns only the uppermost strata. Those strata that go to the center of the Earth have nothing to do with geology.

A teacher: Can we teach the children about those strata? We certainly need to mention the uppermost strata.

Dr. Steiner: Yes, focus upon those strata. You can do that with a chart of the strata, but certainly never without the children knowing something about the types of rocks. The children need to know about what kinds of rocks there are. In explaining that, you should begin from above and then go deeper, because then you can more easily explain what breaks through

1919-09-26-GA300A

A teacher: I put together a table of geological formations based on what you said yesterday.

Dr. Steiner: Of course, you should never pedantically draw parallels. When you go on to the primeval forms, to the original mountains, you have the polar period.

The Paleozoic corresponds to the Hyperborean, but you may not take the individual animal forms pedantically. Then you have the Mesozoic, which generally corresponds to Lemuria. And then the first and second levels of mammals, or the Cenozoic, that is, the Atlantean age.

The Atlantean period was no more than about nine thousand years ago. You can draw parallels from these five periods, the primitive, the Paleozoic, the Mesozoic, the Cenozoic, and the Anthropozoic.

A teacher: You once said that normally the branching off of fish and birds is not properly presented, for example, by Haeckel.

Dr. Steiner: The branching off of fish is usually put back into the Devonian period.

[editor: indeed, see Poppelbaum on Schema FMC00.209. Note this Schema does not correspond to the description given here, the Paleozoic is included in the Lemurian, wherease below Steiner maps this to the Hyperborean epoch].

A teacher: How did human beings look at that time?

Dr. Steiner: In very primitive times, human beings consisted almost entirely of etheric substance. They lived among other things but had as yet no density.

The human being became more dense during the Hyperborean period. Only those animal forms that had precipitated out, lived. Human beings lived also with no less strength. They had, in fact, a tremendous strength. But they had no substance that could remain, so there are no human remains. They lived during all those periods but only gained an external density during the Cenozoic period [editor: Atlantean epoch].

If you recall how I describe the Lemurian period, it was almost an etheric landscape. Everything was there, but there are no geological remains.

You will want to take into account that the human being existed through all five periods. The human being was everywhere. Here in the first period (Dr. Steiner points to the table), “primitive form,” there is actually nothing else present except the human being. There are only minor remains. There the Eozoic Canadensa is actually more of a formation, something created as a form that is not a real animal.

• Here in the Hyperborean/Paleozoic period, animals begin to occur, but in forms that later no longer exist.
• Here in the Lemurian/Mesozoic period, the plant realm arises, and
• here in the Cenozoic period, Atlantis, the mineral realm arises, actually already in the last period, in these two earlier periods already (in the last two sub-races of the Lemurian period).

A teacher: Did human beings exist with their head, chest, and limb aspects at that time?

Dr. Steiner: The human being was similar to a centaur, an extremely animal-like lower body and a humanized head.

A teacher: I almost have the impression that it was a combination, a symbiosis, of three beings.

Dr. Steiner: So it is, also.

A teacher: How is it possible that there are the remains of plants in coal?

Dr. Steiner: Those are not plant remains. What appears to be the remains of plants actually arose because the wind encountered quite particular obstacles. Suppose, for instance, the wind was blowing and created something like plant forms that were preserved somewhat like the footsteps of animals (Hyperborean period). That is a kind of plant crystallization, a crystallization into plantlike forms.

A teacher: The trees didn’t exist?

Dr. Steiner: No, they existed as tree forms. The entire flora of the coal age was not physically present. Imagine a forest present only in its etheric form and that thus resists the wind in a particular way. Through that, stalactite-like forms emerge.

What resulted is not the remains of plants, but forms that arise simply due to the circumstances brought about by elemental activity. Those are not genuine remains. You cannot say it was like it was in Atlantis. There, things remained and to an extent also at the end of the Lemurian period, but as to the Carbon period, we cannot say that there are any plant remains. There were only the remains of animals, but primarily animals that we can compare with the form of our head.

A teacher: When did the human being then stand upright? I don’t see a firm point of time.

Dr. Steiner: It is not a good idea to cling to these pictures too closely, since some races stood upright earlier and others later. It is not possible to give a specific time. That is how things are in reality.

Discussion

Note 1 - Parallelization: mapping spiritual scientific evolutionary epochs to geological models and stratigraphy

Introduction

See Schema FMC00.209, which provides a mapping between the epochs in evolution and the geological periods used in mineral science. As Rudolf Steiner deliberately did not give definition but only descriptions, many people have tried to reconcile both and map the findings of mineral science to the evolution as sketched by Rudolf Steiner (or the way around).

This exercise however proved to be not a simple one, leaving room for various interpretations.

1919-09-25-GA300A

You can create a parallel between the Quaternary Period and Atlantis, and easily bring the Tertiary Period into parallel, but not pedantically, with what I have described as the Lemurian Period. That is how you can bring in the Tertiary Period.

...

Yes, all of the dinosaurs belong to the end of the Tertiary Period. Those found in the Jura are actually their descendants. What I am referring to are the dinosaurs from the beginning of the Tertiary Period. The Jurassic formations are later, and everything is all mixed together. We should treat nothing pedantically. The Secondary Period lies before the Tertiary and the Jurassic belongs there as does the Archaeopteryx. However, that would actually be the Secondary Period. We may not pedantically connect one with the other.

...

Dr. Steiner: Conventional geology really concerns only the uppermost strata. Those strata that go to the center of the Earth have nothing to do with geology.

1919-09-26-GA300A

Of course, you should never pedantically draw parallels. When you go on to the primeval forms, to the original mountains, you have the polar period. ... The Paleozoic corresponds to the Hyperborean, but you may not take the individual animal forms pedantically.

• Here in the Hyperborean/Paleozoic period, animals begin to occur, but in forms that later no longer exist.
• Here in the Lemurian/Mesozoic period, the plant realm arises, and
• here in the Cenozoic period, Atlantis, the mineral realm arises, actually already in the last period, in these two earlier periods already (in the last two sub-races of the Lemurian period).

Dankmar Bosse provides an overview of anthroposophists and parallelization, and includes viewpoints from (more than) a dozen authors in their various works (books) but also in articles.

• 1926 - Ehrenfriend Pfeiffer
• 1930 - O. Eckstein
• 1928 - Hermann Poppelbaum
• 1929/1958/1970 - Walther Cloos
• 1950 - Wachsmuth
• 1953/1973 - Ernst Hagemann
• 1961 - Helmut Knauer
• 1969 - Sigismund von Gleich
• 1966 - K. Lang
• 1969 - Iwer Thor Lorenzen
• 1969 - Rudolf Rissman (in 'Evolution der Pflanze')
• 1993 - K. Frisch

Commentary

Evolution in periods, time periods, division

spiritual hierarchies, cosmic breathing, ..

separation of sun and moon, and their reunion

cosmic catastrophes, ending Atlantean and Lemurian epochs

turning of the Earth's axis

foolish extrapolation

mineral did not exist, time as we know it today did not exist

research what mineral science says about Moon + Earth

Notes WIP - Remnant from old website section

The Mystery of Golgotha positioned in evolution

It is useful to switch gears and zoom in/out and across in all dimensions to improve our grasp of this. The various perspective help to not get bogged down when studying the Lemurian/Atlantean/Postatlantean epochs in depth. An encompassing understanding needs to assimilate and integrate all of these, and other views. The 'switching gears' in terms of the scope of evolution we consider, helps to keep our thoughts dynamic and fluid.

• Schema FMC00.190 is across epochs. Taking a step back, the departure and reunion of both the Sun and the Moon are pivotal moments. It is important to realize that the spiritual beings, including the SoF/Elohim, were all in one cosmic body. In previous planetary stages they had developed together alongside. In the Hyperborean and Lemurian epochs, both the Sun first, and afterwards the Moon, separate off and the Earth is now in a cradle held between Sun and Moon influences from outside (whereas previously influences were from the same sphere). The MoG Christ Impulse instigates the process towards reunion with the Sun. This is where Freedom as a basis for Love is realized through the combined orchestration of Jehovah, Lucifer and Christ. That is a simple sentence to describe something complex .. both Lucifer and Jehovah are classes of beings, which brought about a (spiritual) force field between <freedom> and <a first version of love>. Note this also links to - separate topic - the redemption of Lucifer through the Christ.

• Another dimension is at the level of planetary stages of evolution. The Lucifer-Christ separation on Old Sun, and how the impact of the Christ will last through Future Jupiter and upto Future Venus' (eg FMC00.022) .. so the process spans four planetary incarnation stages from Old Sun to Future Venus.

Related pages

• Christ Module 3 - Evolutionary framework
• Evolution
• Evolution of Earth
• Christ Module 7 - Cosmic dimension
• Seven secrets
• Human races

References and further reading

• John Davy: 'Evolution: the hidden thread' (published in The Golden Blade, 1956), in PDF version
• Sigismund von Gleich: ‘Der Mensch der Eiszeit und Atlantis’ (ao table similar to FMC00.209 on page 19)
• Dankmar Bosse: 'The mutual evolution of Earth and humanity' (2019 in EN, published in 2002 as Die gemeinsame Evolution von Erde und Mensch)