Esoteric Evolution - 17

The Separation of the Moon and its Consequences

Splits from the original unity

The center in the creation: the development of the human being

The densification process of the Moon

The six Elohim

Yahweh-Elohim

The collaboration between Sun, Moon, and Earth

The end of androgyny

Source

The previous chapter, The androgynous human being in antiquity and Paradise, told us that halfway through Lemuria a number of profound changes took place that had huge consequences for the further evolution of humanity and the Earth. Besides the separation of the sexes and the impact of evil, there was the radical event that the Moon separated from the Earth and became an autonomous heavenly body.

This chapter discusses especially the latter event. As we shall see, the separation of the Moon is closely related to the separation into two sexes.

To understand why the Moon and the Earth separated from each other, we first have to call to mind again the big overviews of the development of the Earth. The Earth has seven planetary states. It is currently in the fourth planetary state, the Earth phase. This was preceded by three such states, and three will follow it. They are:

The Earth, as it exists in its current fourth state, can be subdivided into seven different periods, called eras. Just as in the great planetary states, the creation develops further during these eras and humanity makes new steps in its evolution. And with humanity the whole Earth and all that lives on it.

The seven eras of the Earth are:

In our time we are living in the fifth era, Post-Atlantis, which began some 12,000 years ago.

Our whole solar system, the Sun as the central star with all its planets including the Earth and the Moon, at one time formed part of one great "world body." This world body was all-encompassing because ever since Old Saturn it had in itself, in a spiritual condition, all the planetary states that would develop later. It was the blueprint, as it were, of the divine plan that underlies the entire creation from the beginning. Everything we see around us today, on the Earth and as our solar system, has come into being from this original spiritual body, this world body.

The creation came into being because high creative spiritual beings, the Elohim, in service of the Godhead, the Logos or the Word, separated parts from that spiritual, all-encompassing unity and, step by step, created new forms out of these. Out of those forms they then created subdivisions. Thus, out of the original unity, that all-encompassing spiritual world body, a multiplicity of ever new forms gradually appeared from which, in turn, new forms came into being all the time.

The human body was in its original spiritual form at one time also part of this all-encompassing world body and was step by step separated from it. And also, from this original human body further separations occurred. One of the previous chapters describes how the Elohim separated parts from the original, more spiritual corporeality of the human being, from which later the plant kingdom with all its riches and variety came into being. That began already during the Old Sun state. During Old Moon, parts split off that later formed the basis of the animal kingdom.

The evolutionary process of humanity and the Earth is characterized by continual separations and ever greater autonomy - differentiation. That process can be observed everywhere. The separations, on the one hand, completed an old phase of development, but on the other hand, they opened new developments and forms for the future.

The separations from the original corporeality of the human being not only made the development of the plant - and animal realms possible, but also that this corporeality became capable of taking an I and a spirit into itself. This constituted a critical, new step in the developmental process of the human being.

The foregoing shows that the outer circumstances, the way they come into being in the creation, are the result of developmental impulses that come forth from the inner human being and from the creation itself. Conventional science is based on the idea that human beings developed as a result of coincidental changes in the environment. No, says esoteric Christianity.

The central point in evolution is the development of the human being to ever higher levels of consciousness and existence - true humanness therefore. That task runs like a red thread through everything. It is the intrinsic objective from which everything else comes forth. The outer circumstances ever again adapt themselves to the developmental impulses coming from within, support them and make them reality.

In the course of the evolutionary process of the Earth, which lasted billions of years, the Elohim separated from the original world body not only the different planets, but also the Sun. During Polaris the first ones were the planets Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars; during Hyperborea it was the Sun, later followed by the planets Venus and Mercury.

At the beginning of Lemuria, of that original world body only the Earth and the Moon were still connected with each other. The Earth, which carried the Moon in itself, had then gone through several archetypal states, the warmth-like, air-like, light-like, and water-like - elements that then determined life on Earth. But here too the creation went on. In the course of Lemuria, the creative beings made a beginning with the addition of the solid, mineral element to what already existed. Why did this happen?

It took place because human beings can only develop I-consciousness, self-awareness, in a physical body in a physical environment that consists of firm mineral materiality. In other words, they need a physical body with bones, as well as earthly materiality of sand, stones, rocks, and minerals such as iron, copper, etc. Human beings need the solid world of matter to be able to inwardly awaken and gain self-awareness.

We are going back to the situation in the middle of Lemuria when the connection between the Earth and the Moon still existed. The Earth still had the Moon in it. This meant that the spiritual forces of the Moon directly worked in the Earth. And that was necessary because the whole process of gradual densification via the elements of warmth, air, light, and water to the solid, mineral element could only take place in Lemuria thanks to the inworking of Moon forces. If those had not been there, the densification process could not have happened.

Still, at a certain moment problems arose. That was because the densification process threatened to go so fast that human bodies would prematurely have hardened. The result would have been that the souls of becoming human beings could no longer incarnate in them. Nor could they have had an I, let alone grow and develop.

That danger could only be averted by withdrawing the Moon with its densifying Moon forces out of its connection with the Earth, and let it work upon the Earth from outside. Thus, it happened.

The separation of the Moon

Rudolf Steiner relates that some 160 million years ago, in a process that in itself lasted four million years, the Moon was gradually separated from the Earth. That was still possible at the time, because the materiality of Earth and Moon was not solid, but mostly fluid, watery. You can form a picture of that process, said Rudolf Steiner, by visualizing a big "drop" - the Earth that still has the Moon in it - from which a small drop very gradually frees itself, the later Moon.

What would have happened if this process had not taken place? The bodies of humans, animals, and plants would have become more and more hardened and dehydrated by the densification process of the Moon, and the Earth would have ended up empty and dead, just like the Moon today. Life would then have become impossible.

The most important actors in this process of separation and development were, as we have seen, the Elohim of the second hierarchy, the Spirits of Form. Seven of these high Elohim, together with other high creative spiritual beings, led the creative work on the Earth during Polaris, Hyperborea, and Lemuria. In their "six day creative work" (the creative process in six "days" as it is described in Genesis 1 in the Bible) they had developed to such an extent that they had arrived at a kind of united consciousness.

With the completion of their task of that time, as well as the achievement of this united consciousness, six of these Elohim withdrew for various reasons to the Sun on the "seventh day". From that moment, they worked via the sunlight from outside on the Earth and the developing creation.

The seventh Eloah, who was part of this group of Elohim who had reached unity consciousness, Yahweh-Elohim, remained behind. Yahweh-Elohim, as was mentioned before, was also known as the God of Israel from the Old Testament in the Bible. As such he was also called Jehovah or Adonai. He made the sacrifice of staying behind on Earth and not going to the Sun with the other six Elohim.

The Moon part of the Earth became his realm. Because on Earth he remained connected with the Moon and worked in it, in Lemurian times a beginning could be made with the densification process to solid materiality. The Moon forces that brought about the densification are essentially the same as the high creative powers of Yahweh-Elohim.

When halfway through Lemuria it became necessary for the development of humanity that the Moon should separate from the Earth, it was Yahweh-Elohim who accomplished this separation. During the entire event he stayed connected with the Moon part. This meant that he left the Earth together with the Moon. From then on, Yahweh-Elohim also sent his forces from outside to the Earth and the creation, but now from the Moon.

After the Moon had left, the situation arose that, on the one hand, spiritual forces were working from the Sun and, on the other hand, from the Moon. Between them was, on the Earth, developing humanity. Both spiritual forces, those of the Sun and those of the Moon, are needed to lead progressing human evolution in the right way.

In the previous chapter we already saw how essential the collaboration between the forces of the Sun and those of the Moon is for the benefit of life on Earth. There it was described that on the island of Bonaire Sea coral spawns every year in September, seven days after full moon, three hours after sunset, so that fertilization then takes place. This clearly shows the connection between the positions of the Sun and Moon relative to the Earth, and their influence on its creatures. There are also other places in the world where this phenomenon can be observed.

The separation of the Moon had huge consequences for human corporeality. As long as the Moon was still connected with the Earth, the corporeality of becoming human beings was androgynous, male-female. With the separation of the Moon and the new relationship that arose between Moon, Sun, and Earth, this changed.

Moon, earth, sun

The Moon forces of Yahweh-Elohim, which worked from outside, caused a split into two groups in the organ of procreation of the human body. According to Rudolf Steiner, one group had more "spirit-soul-germinating power," the other more "etheric-life germinating power." That split was the first step in the direction of the separation of the two sexes. In the course of time, human beings had more and more clearly a male or female body, each with their own sexual characteristics.

Because of this development, already in the course of the second half of Lemuria, human beings could no longer bring forth offspring out of themselves. Procreation became possible only by cooperation of the two sexes with each other. The male body needed the female body for procreation, and the female needed the male.

Why was the separation into two sexes necessary? Why are there women and men? That is the subject of the next chapter.

Old Saturn

Rudolf Steiner, Cosmic Memory, GA 11.

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Translated by Philip Mees