Easter Course III

But this is not all that I have to say. If only these things happened, very beautifully developed beings would be produced but they would all of them be like jellyfish, as the human being actually was in far past epochs of the earth. In the Atlantean epoch the human being was a kind of jellyfish. This was because the only substance he could absorb was in a plastic, fluid state, and out of this he was able to build up his physical body. The reason he was able to incorporate into himself potassium, sodium, and the other substances is because the other planets of our system, as well as the moon, pass through Libra, Aries, Taurus and so on, and they member into us those things that enable us to have the true form of man. In the formation of the human head, the influence of the moon is also united with the forces that go out from Mercury and Venus and the constellations into which they enter with the other planets. If these other constellations were not combined with the moon constellations, we should all be born as hydrocephalics. Organic metal is incorporated into us because the constellations of Mercury and Venus are working in conjunction with the moon constellation. We should get a terrible form of rickets, not only bow legs but legs that would be elastic, and our arms would be jelly-like structures if the planets that are more oriented to Saturn were not to combine with the moon constellation and if Saturn himself were not to work together with Jupiter and Mars. It is the sun which brings about the rhythmical balances between these two categories of planets. The first two lines of the verse, therefore, should help you to understand how the human being is actually formed out of the cosmos. We shall not really progress until astronomy—but in the sense I have just indicated—is introduced into our medical science. Most of what is said about these things does not signify much. There is a muddle because things that happen in the human being are ascribed either to external, earthly circumstances, or to heredity. But when one comes down to details, the result is nil, because it is forgotten that the origin of the human form must be understood by a knowledge of the starry heavens in their qualitative aspect, in their inner aspect. The most important planet in the process of the formation of the human being is the moon. The moon must cooperate everywhere; the other planets modify the influence of the moon. The moon is the most important.