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{{GZ|This mystery of the moon is one of the deepest secrets of the ancient mystery system. For what the moon contains within itself is, so to speak, the primeval wisdom. But that which the moon is able to radiate back out of all the universe is that which forms the sum of forces which sustain our animal world on earth, namely those which are connected with the sexuality of the animal world, which also sustain the animal-physical in man and are connected with the physical-sensual sexuality of man. So that the lower nature of man is a creature of that which the moon radiates, and that which is highest, which once possessed the earth, is inwardly sheltered in the lunar fortress.|228|17}}  
{{GZ|This mystery of the moon is one of the deepest secrets of the ancient mystery system. For what the moon contains within itself is, so to speak, the primeval wisdom. But that which the moon is able to radiate back out of all the universe is that which forms the sum of forces which sustain our animal world on earth, namely those which are connected with the sexuality of the animal world, which also sustain the animal-physical in man and are connected with the physical-sensual sexuality of man. So that the lower nature of man is a creature of that which the moon radiates, and that which is highest, which once possessed the earth, is inwardly sheltered in the lunar fortress.|228|17}}  
== Retreat into the lunar fortress ==
Later, then, the primeval teachers retreated to the [[lunar sphere]] and are still effective there today.
{{GZ|These high leading powers and the other lunar population were once here on earth, have withdrawn from the earth to the moon, however, in a time that already goes back more than fifteen thousand years. Before that, the moon also looked physically different. It did not simply send down the sunlight on the earth, but mixed its own being into this sunlight.|228|73}}
{{GZ|The spiritual entities which inhabit this interior of the moon are entities which in the strictest sense shut themselves off from the rest of the universe. They live as in the lunar fortress.|228|15}}
{{GZ|And those Beings who at that time had already gone through their humanity in part, who had only some of this humanity still to complete during their existence on earth, these are precisely those individualities of whom I have spoken as the great wise primal teachers of humanity on earth, who are today on the lunar colony.|232|131}}
{{GZ|These beings have since withdrawn from the earth, have migrated from the earth to the moon and now live as in a cosmic fortress, imperceptible to earthly existence, in the interior of lunar existence. So that when we look at the interior of the lunar existence, we have to regard this interior as the assembly of those beings who were once the great teachers of men on earth in their etheric body. And in fact we should never look up to the moon in any other way than by saying to ourselves: There are gathered together those who were once the teachers on earth. For for the people on earth, what comes from the moon is not what lives in it, but only what it radiates back from the rest of the cosmos. As it radiates back the light, so the moon also radiates back all cosmic effects.
So, looking towards the moon, we see the light, and this most clearly; but of course it is not the only part, it is even the least part. We see a mirror of the cosmic effects, we do not see what lives inside the moon. Inside the moon lives that which once lived on earth. And it is only in his existence immediately after death, in the soul world, that man again comes under the influence of these beings who were once on earth. And it is they who, with the judgement of the previous world, have a corrective effect after death on what man has done on earth. So that after death, in our present epoch on earth, man again comes into a relationship with those beings who once educated and taught him as divine-spiritual beings on earth within the whole of humanity. The moon must therefore be regarded spiritually as a cosmic fortress into which those Beings have withdrawn who were once with man, and to whom we again come into a relationship immediately after we begin our wanderings through the world of the soul after death.|227|233ff}}


== Literature ==
== Literature ==
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[[Category:Spiritual beings]]
[[Category:Spiritual beings]]
[[Category:Human evolution]]
[[Category:Human evolution]]
[[de:Urlehrer der Menschheit]]

Revision as of 09:53, 11 February 2022

The primeval teachers of humanity, the lunar primeval teachers, were angelic beings who lived on earth in ancient times as teachers of humanity. However, they did not work in physical bodies, but only descended to the etheric body. Later they withdrew, strictly closed off from the rest of the universe, into the interior of the moon as into a fortress (Lit.:GA 228, p. 15) and now work as lunar beings in this lunar fortress.

The Lunar Teachers as Educators of Humanity

The primordial teachers of humanity "have given to humanity the original great wisdoms which are preserved only in echo even in such creations as the Vedas and the Vedanta philosophy." (Lit.:GA 239, p. 130)

These are beings who had already completed part of their human development on the Old Moon, but - unlike the regularly advanced Angels - still had to complete some things during the Earth's development.

„And those beings who at that time [note: on the Old Moon] had already gone through their humanity in part, who had only some of this humanity still to complete during their existence on Earth, these are precisely those individualities of whom I have spoken as the great wise primordial teachers of humanity on Earth, who are today on the lunar colony.“ (Lit.:GA 232, p. 131)

Their remaining behind is to be understood as an act of sacrifice in the service of the development of humanity (Lit.:GA 121, p. 43). In the past they populated the earth as a kind of second, ethereally existing human race.

„These primeval teachers of humanity were not dwelling in a physical human body, they only embodied themselves in an etheric body, and the intercourse with them was somewhat different than it is between physical human beings. These teachers wandered about the earth in an etheric body. The man to whom they became guides felt their nearness in his soul. He felt something enter his soul that was like an inspiration, like an inner illumination of truths, also of views. They taught in a spiritual way. But at that time of the development of the earth, a distinction was made between people who could be seen and people who could not be seen. One did not claim to want to see people whom one could not see, for one had the gift of receiving the teachings from them, even if one did not see them. One heard these teachings coming from within the soul and one said to oneself: If these teachings come, then a great original teacher of humanity has approached me. - And one did not have external views of these original teachers; one met them in spiritual vision. We did not shake hands with them physically, but we met them and felt something like a spiritual handshake.“ (Lit.:GA 239, p. 139)

„When man went through a far distant epoch in his development on earth - I will describe it more precisely later - a very old epoch, which naturally lies before the historical epoch, man was also on earth in the company of spiritual beings who were not directly connected with the earth itself, but were also connected with the cosmos in their earthly life. One can say that divine teachers, not earthly teachers, were the heads of the mysteries and taught earthly people.

These teachers for the most ancient times did not assume a solid, dense, fleshy physical body, but worked on men in their etheric bodies. So that the most ancient teachers of men in the mysteries, the supreme teachers, those whose servants were only the physically embodied men, were etherically divine teachers. These Beings were co-inhabitants of the earth among men in an older epoch of human evolution. So that we can really say in all real sense: There was an ancient epoch in the development of the earthly world in which divine-spiritual beings dwelt on earth with men, who did not show themselves when one, well, I will say, went for a walk, but who showed themselves when one was introduced in the right way to these divine-spiritual beings by the temple servants in the mysteries. They only showed themselves in the mysteries, but there they showed themselves. And through these mysteries they became co-inhabitants of men on earth.“ (Lit.:GA 227, p. 233ff)

The primeval wisdom as an organic growth force

The primeval teachers did not give their wisdom as external knowledge, but they worked directly in the growth forces of the etheric body. When the primeval teachers withdrew into the lunar fortress, the lunar forces condensed into the reproductive forces on the one hand, and on the other hand they diluted into the mind, which became more and more abstract.

„We have often heard how, when one goes back in earthly evolution, one comes to old times where people not only had that instinctive wisdom of which I have already spoken today, but where they had as teachers beings who never assumed a physical body, higher spiritual beings and such beings who only assumed an etheric body, whose teaching in relation to the people consisted in the fact that these beings did not speak to the people as we speak today, but that they inwardly imparted wisdom to the people, as it were implanted it in the etheric body. People knew that these higher beings were there, just as we know that some physical teacher or the like is there, but they also knew that these beings were around people in a spiritual existence. It is to this teaching of higher spiritual beings that everything can be traced back which is recognised even in the Catholic Church as the original wisdom of mankind, that original wisdom which once existed, of which even the Vedas and the noble Vedanta philosophy are only shadowy reflections [...].

But it was a completely different knowledge than the one we have today. It was a knowledge that was organic power in man, that was related to the power of growth and so on. So this primordial wisdom was of a completely different character, and what happened there with regard to this primordial wisdom I can only illustrate by means of a comparison. Imagine that I first pour some kind of liquid into a glass and then put salt into it. I dissolve the salt so that I have a cloudy liquid, then I do something so that the salt precipitates at the bottom as sediment and the solution liquid remains at the top, then the solution liquid is purer and lighter at the top and the sediment is denser at the bottom. If I now want to describe what has permeated mankind during the time of the ancient primal wisdom, it is a mixture of the spiritually pure and the physically animal. When we think today, we believe that these abstract thoughts rule and weave without being anything in us, and that breathing and blood circulation, for example, are something in themselves. But this was all one thing for primitive man in the earlier times on earth: he had to breathe, and his blood circulated in him, and he wanted in the circulation of blood. Then man's thinking moved upwards towards the head and became purer, like the thinner liquid in the glass at the top, and the sediment, so to speak, formed at the bottom.

That was at the time when the primeval teachers withdrew more and more from the earth, when this primeval wisdom was no longer given in this old way. And where did these primeval teachers retreat to? We find them again in this lunar fortress! Therein they are and lead their further existence. And on earth the dregs remained, namely the present kind of reproductive forces. These reproductive forces were not yet there in their present form when the primordial wisdom existed on earth; they have only become so, as it were, as the dregs. I do not mean to say that they are something bad, but in this context they are the dregs. And that which is, as it were, the solution fluid above, is today our abstract wisdom. So that we see how, with the development of humanity, on the one hand the more spiritual, in the abstract sense, comes up, and how, on the other, the coarser animal things arise as dregs. In this way one gradually gets an idea of the spiritual content of the moon.“ (Lit.:GA 223, p. 140ff)

„This mystery of the moon is one of the deepest secrets of the ancient mystery system. For what the moon contains within itself is, so to speak, the primeval wisdom. But that which the moon is able to radiate back out of all the universe is that which forms the sum of forces which sustain our animal world on earth, namely those which are connected with the sexuality of the animal world, which also sustain the animal-physical in man and are connected with the physical-sensual sexuality of man. So that the lower nature of man is a creature of that which the moon radiates, and that which is highest, which once possessed the earth, is inwardly sheltered in the lunar fortress.“ (Lit.:GA 228, p. 17)

Retreat into the lunar fortress

Later, then, the primeval teachers retreated to the lunar sphere and are still effective there today.

„These high leading powers and the other lunar population were once here on earth, have withdrawn from the earth to the moon, however, in a time that already goes back more than fifteen thousand years. Before that, the moon also looked physically different. It did not simply send down the sunlight on the earth, but mixed its own being into this sunlight.“ (Lit.:GA 228, p. 73)

„The spiritual entities which inhabit this interior of the moon are entities which in the strictest sense shut themselves off from the rest of the universe. They live as in the lunar fortress.“ (Lit.:GA 228, p. 15)

„And those Beings who at that time had already gone through their humanity in part, who had only some of this humanity still to complete during their existence on earth, these are precisely those individualities of whom I have spoken as the great wise primal teachers of humanity on earth, who are today on the lunar colony.“ (Lit.:GA 232, p. 131)

„These beings have since withdrawn from the earth, have migrated from the earth to the moon and now live as in a cosmic fortress, imperceptible to earthly existence, in the interior of lunar existence. So that when we look at the interior of the lunar existence, we have to regard this interior as the assembly of those beings who were once the great teachers of men on earth in their etheric body. And in fact we should never look up to the moon in any other way than by saying to ourselves: There are gathered together those who were once the teachers on earth. For for the people on earth, what comes from the moon is not what lives in it, but only what it radiates back from the rest of the cosmos. As it radiates back the light, so the moon also radiates back all cosmic effects.

So, looking towards the moon, we see the light, and this most clearly; but of course it is not the only part, it is even the least part. We see a mirror of the cosmic effects, we do not see what lives inside the moon. Inside the moon lives that which once lived on earth. And it is only in his existence immediately after death, in the soul world, that man again comes under the influence of these beings who were once on earth. And it is they who, with the judgement of the previous world, have a corrective effect after death on what man has done on earth. So that after death, in our present epoch on earth, man again comes into a relationship with those beings who once educated and taught him as divine-spiritual beings on earth within the whole of humanity. The moon must therefore be regarded spiritually as a cosmic fortress into which those Beings have withdrawn who were once with man, and to whom we again come into a relationship immediately after we begin our wanderings through the world of the soul after death.“ (Lit.:GA 227, p. 233ff)

Literature
References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated.
Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com.
Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books
A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works
Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English.
Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold
steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA)
Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.
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