Lecture III

Those were not the normal angelic spirits who accompany human beings through several lives on earth. They had luciferic character, for their disposition had remained at the earlier, moon level of development. Thus we are able to say that the ancient wisdom arose when spirits who should have gone through their normal human stage of development on the ancient moon let their soul powers enter into and ensoul human beings, and people would have part in the Angel’s experiences inside them, gaining an extraordinarily sublime insight in this way. The wisdom given to the angelic beings during the moon evolution was at a high level of perfection, but it was not really something which people could put to any real use on earth. People acted more or less out of instinct on earth, we might say they acted like a higher kind of animal. And into this creature shone the sublime wisdom which began to fade away towards the 8th century BC.