Lecture I

There is still something else to note, in speaking of the Saturn, Sun and Moon conditions. Just as we human beings on the earth are passing through the condition which we call the self-conscious human condition, so during the earlier conditions of our earth evolution, during the old Moon, Sun and Saturn conditions, other beings went through the stage we are now going through upon the earth. It is not of much importance whether we use the terminology of the East or that which is more customary in the West, to describe these beings. Those beings who, during the Moon-state of our earth, were at the stage which man is now passing through, and who are the next higher beings above ourselves, we call in the terminology of Christian esotericism, Angeloi or Angels. These are one stage higher than man, because they completed their human stage one epoch earlier, so that therefore these beings during the old Moon state were what we now are. But they were not human in the sense that they went about on the Moon as we do now upon earth. They were beings at the human stage, but they did not dwell in flesh as man does now. It was only that their stage of evolution corresponded to the human stage which man is going through to-day. In the same way we find beings of a still higher order, who went through their human evolution on the old Sun. They are the Archangels. These are beings who are two degrees higher than man, who went through their human stage two epochs earlier. If we go still further, back to the first incarnation of our earth-existence, back to the Saturn stage, we find that those beings went through their human stage there whom we designate as Spirits of Personality, Archai, or First Beginnings. So that, if we begin with these beings, who were men in the primeval past, during the old Saturn state, and if we then follow the incarnations of the earth down to our own period, we have the stages of evolution of various beings, down to ourselves. Therefore we can say: The First Beginnings, the Archai, were men on old Saturn; Archangels, or Arch-Angeloi, were men on the old Sun; Angels or Angeloi were men on the old Moon; men are men on our earth.