Lecture I

As evolution proceeded, a different age came to birth. Darkness gathered over the old clairvoyance, with the result that the special processes, which the Initiates had been able to make elective in the days of ancient India and ancient Persia, presented greater and greater difficulties. Up to the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, of course, and for a few centuries afterwards, remnants of the old clairvoyance persisted, particularly in certain regions. But it was already dim and by the second or third century B.C. the procedure of which I have spoken could no longer be as effective as it had been in the earliest times of human evolution after the Atlantean epoch. The Initiates of the Mysteries were more and more at a loss when they desired to make use of the power of the Moon-Beings in the guidance of mankind. If I am to describe what then took place between the Initiates and the Moon-Beings, I will say the following: When an Initiate of the Egypto-Chaldean epoch approached one of these Moon-Beings with the object of charging this Being, when he had entered into a man via the inbreathing, to instill this or that into the soul, the Moon-Being would often reply to the Initiate: During the hours of day-consciousness we no longer have any dwelling-place on the earth; we find a dwelling-place only during the hours of night.