43. Consciousness – Life – Form

When the sun drew its matter out of the earth, so that the latter only had the mass of the moon left in it, all conditions on the planet changed. The substance of human bodies condensed into a liquid substance, which can be compared to today's blood. The previously liquid beings took on a solid form, and the solid plant minerals acquired a very dense materiality. Before the departure of the sun, the life of the human body was essentially a kind of breathing, an absorption and release of air-like material. After that, a way of nourishing itself developed out of the liquid environment. And reproduction was also connected with this nourishment. The viscous human body was fertilized from the reproductive material of its environment and split under such fertilizing influence. Its development, while the moon substance was still within the earth, proceeded in such a way that it formed semi-solid parts within its liquid mass, which condensed to the point of becoming cartilaginous. He could not yet form solid, bone-like limb inlays during this time, because the earth mass was not suitable for this as long as it contained the moon. Only with the departure of the moon, when the coarsest materiality was removed, did a solid framework develop in the human body. And this was also the time when the possibility of taking the fertilizing substances from the environment ceased. With the mass of the moon, the earth substances also lost the ability to have a fertilizing effect on the human body. In the time before, there were not two sexes in the human body. Man was a being of a feminine nature, to which the masculine essence in the earth environment itself was. The whole moon earth had a masculine character. With the departure of the moon, some of the human bodies were transformed into those with a male character. Thus, it absorbed the fertilizing forces that were previously contained in the sap of the earth itself. The female nature of the human body underwent such a transformation that it could be fertilized by the emerging masculinity. All this happened because a kind of double-sex human body changed into a single-sex one. The earlier human body fertilized itself with absorbed substances. Now the one form of the human body, the female, only received the power to mature what had been fertilized. This happened in such a way that the male power in her lost the ability to prepare the fruit material. This power remained only in the etheric or life body, which has to bring about the ripening. The male form of the human body lost the ability to do anything with the fruit material within itself. The feminine in her was limited to the etheric body. Thus it is that in present-day humans, the etheric body of man is female, but that of woman is [male]. The acquisition of these abilities coincides with the development of a solid skeleton.