ir
own existence with the moon,--thus becoming earth-moon beings,--brought
about a certain formation of the human organism by means of the forces
which they sent to the earth from the moon. Their influence affected the
"ego" which man had acquired, and made itself felt in the interplay of
that "ego" with the astral, etheric, and physical bodies. They made it
possible for man to reflect within himself consciously and to reproduce
within his cognition, the wisdom revealed in the cosmos. It will be
remembered that during the old Moon-period man, owing to the separation
from the sun at the time, acquired a certain independence in his organism,
a more unfettered stage of consciousness than that which he had been able
to derive directly from the Sun-spirits. This free, independent
consciousness--a heritage from the old Moon-evolution--appeared again during
the earth-period in question. But it was just this consciousness which,
through the influence of the described earth-moon beings, could again be
brought into union and harmony with the universe and be made a reflection
of it. This would have happened if no other influence had asserted itself.
Without that influence, man would have become a being whose consciousness
would not have reflected the world in pictures of cognition, through his
own free volition, but through natural necessity. But things did not
happen in this way. At the time when the moon split off, certain spiritual
beings interposed in human evolution who had retained so much of their
Moon nature that they could not take part in the exodus of the sun from
the earth, and were shut out from the influence of the spirits who from
the earth-moon had exerted their activity upon the earth. These spirits
with the old Moon nature were, so to say, banished to the earth, but with
an irregular development. In their Moon-nature was that which had rebelled
against the Sun-spirits during the old Moon-evolution, and which had so
far been a blessing to man that it had led him to a free, independent
state of consciousness. The consequences of the peculiar development of
these spirits during the earth-period entailed their becoming adversaries
of the spirits who, acting from the moon, desired to make human
consciousness an automatic reflector of the universe. What had helped man
to a higher state of development of the old Moon, proved to be in
opposition to the possibilities which had arisen through the evolution of
the earth. The