of those celestial bodies back to remote ages of the past, to
apprehend the connection of contemporary planets with their predecessors.)
On Jupiter the souls that have been described continued their evolution.

And later, when the earth was tending more and more toward solidification,
still another abode had to be prepared for souls who even though they were
able to occupy the solidified bodies for a time, could no longer do so
when this solidification had progressed too far. An appropriate place for
their further evolution was prepared on "Mars." Even as far back as the
time when the soul was still united with the sun, and was incorporating
the sun's air elements within itself, certain souls were proving unfit to
participate in the earth's evolution. They were too powerfully affected by
the earthly bodily form. Accordingly, even at that time, they had to be
withdrawn from the direct influence of the Sun-forces. These had to
influence them from without. The planet Saturn became the scene of their
further evolution.

Thus, in the course of the earth's evolution, the number of human forms
decreased, and forms appeared which had not embodied human souls. These
were able to receive only astral bodies as the human physical and etheric
bodies on the old Moon had done. While the earth was becoming depopulated
as far as human beings were concerned, these other beings were colonizing
it. Eventually all human souls would have been compelled to leave the
earth if, by detaching the Moon from it, a way had not been provided to
preserve those human bodies which at that time could still harbor human
souls. It was made possible for these, during their earth life, to
withdraw the human ego from the effects of the Moon-forces coming directly
from the earth, thus allowing it to mature sufficiently within themselves
until it could be exposed directly to those forces. As long as the embryo
was developing within man, it was under the influence of those beings who,
under the leadership of the mightiest of their number, had detached the
moon from the earth in order to conduct the evolution of the latter over a
critical point.

When the earth had developed the air element within it, astral beings were
present as described above, who had belonged to the old Moon and who had
been left behind. They had fallen short even of the lowest human souls in
their evolution. They became the souls of those forms which already before
the separation of the S