x. Extrusion of the Moon

It will be seen that in his second, his upper half, man has developed something upon which the higher beings we have described have no influence. Other beings now acquire power over this upper half. In earlier stages of their development, these beings advanced further than men, but not as far as the moon gods. They could not exercise their power in the fire mist. But now that something they themselves had lacked previously has been formed in the human organs of understanding through the fire mist, their time has come. At an earlier time, the moon gods had attained an understanding capable of acting externally. This understanding already existed in them when the period of the fire mist began. They could act externally on the things of earth. In earlier times, the lower beings we have just mentioned had not attained such an understanding which acts outwardly. Therefore, the time of the fire mist found them unprepared. Now, however, an understanding is present. It exists in men. These beings seize upon this human understanding in order to act on the things of earth by means of it. As the moon gods previously had acted on the whole man, they now act only on his lower half, while the influence of the lower entities just mentioned acts on his upper half. Thus man comes under a double leadership. In his lower part he is under the power of the moon gods; in his developed personality, however, he comes under the leadership of those entities which are summed up under the name “Lucifer,” the name of their regent. The Luciferic gods thus complete their own development by making use of the awakened human powers of understanding. Previously they had not been able to attain this level. At the same time they give man the predisposition to freedom, to the discrimination between “good” and “evil.” While it is true that the human organ of understanding has been formed entirely under the leadership of the moon gods, these gods would have left it to slumber; they were not interested in making use of it. They possessed their own powers of understanding. In their own interest, the Luciferic beings were concerned with developing the human understanding and directing it toward the things of earth. Thereby for men they became the teachers of all that can be accomplished by the human understanding. But they could not be anything more than stimulators. They could not develop an understanding within themselves, but only in man. Thus there developed two directions of activity on earth. One proceeded directly from the moon divinities and was lawfully regulated and rational from the very beginning. The moon gods had already served their apprenticeship and were now beyond the possibility of error. The Luciferic gods which acted on men had yet to win their way to such illumination. With their guidance man had to learn to find the laws of his being. Under Lucifer's leadership he himself had to become as “one of the gods.”