Interchanging activity of Thoth-Hermes and Moses

By means of their clairvoyance, the direct solar influences could still be perceived by the Atlanteans; but just as at a certain stage in its evolution the earth began to harden, so a time came when man withdrew within himself and began to develop an inner life of his own. Like the earth, he became unable to open himself to the direct influences of the sun. The process of developing an inner life by ceasing to be susceptible to solar influences, and only of developing in himself what was a faint reflection of the activities of the life-ether and sound-ether, continued for long into post-Atlantean times. Direct perception of the solar forces, which was characteristic of the early Atlanteans was eventually lost. As the effects of these forces could no longer penetrate to the consciousness of mankind, his inward life continued blossoming more and more. Then came the time when it was only in the Mysteries that man's spiritual powers could be developed. There, by means of Yoga, a pupil of the Mysteries could be withdrawn from earthly conditions and made directly aware of the solar influences. Therefore, during the second half of the Atlantean period what were rightly called ‘Oracles’ appeared. They were places where a class of people, who no longer perceived the activities of the higher ethers normally, were received as pupils and trained, in sacred wisdom. Here, through training, they learnt to suppress mere sense-perceptions and to become conscious of the revelations of the sound-ether and life-ether. The power to do this was preserved in the true centres of occult science. Indeed, the possibility of this endured so powerfully that even external science, without understanding it, still retains a tradition from the school of Pythagoras that one can hear the harmony of the spheres. Science, ignorant however of what the true ‘Harmony of the Spheres’ was, has changed it into a mere abstract idea. The pupils of Pythagoras understood as the power to perceive the harmony of the spheres, the actual reopening of a man's being to the tone-ether and the divine life-ether.