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An Outline of Occult Science by Rudolf Steiner

IV. THE EVOLUTION OF THE WORLD AND MAN

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Toward the middle of the Atlantean evolution a calamity gradually befell humanity. The Mysteries of the Initiates had to be carefully kept secret from those who had not purified their astral bodies from sin. Had they gained insight into that hidden knowledge, into the laws by means of which higher beings directed the forces of nature, they would have employed those forces thus placed at their disposal for their own perverted needs and passions. The danger was all the greater because mankind was coming, as has been described, into the sphere of lower spiritual beings, who could not take part in the regular evolution of the earth and were therefore working against it. These persistently influenced humanity in such a way as to instil into it interests which were actually directed against human welfare. But mankind still had the power to employ the forces of growth and reproduction belonging to animal and human nature in their own service.

Not only humanity in general, but even some of the Initiates yielded to temptation from low spiritual beings. They were induced to employ the supersensible forces mentioned above for a purpose which ran counter to human evolution. And for this purpose they sought out associates who were not initiated, and who made use of the secrets of the supersensible forces of nature for low ends. The result was a great corruption of human nature. The evil spread further and further; and since the forces of growth and generation, if torn from their original sphere and used independently, have a mysterious connection with certain forces working in air and water, there were thus unchained, through human action, mighty, destructive natural forces which led to the gradual ruin of the Atlantean territory by the agency of air and water catastrophes. Atlantean humanity was obliged to migrate--i. e., that portion of it which did not perish in the storms.

In consequence of these storms the surface of the earth was altered. On one side, Europe, Asia, and Africa gradually assumed their present shape; on the other, America appeared. Great migrations took place to these countries. Those migrations which were directed eastward from Atlantis are especially important for us of today. Europe, Asia, and Africa were gradually colonized by the descendants of the Atlanteans. Various peoples fixed their abode in these continents. They were at different stages of development, and also at different levels of corruption. And with them came the Initiates, guardians of the oracle-Mysteries. They established sanctuaries in various parts, in which the cults of Jupiter, Venus, etc., were cultivated sometimes in a good, sometimes in an evil manner. The betrayal of the Vulcan Mysteries exercised an especially unfavourable influence, for the attention of their adherents was mostly centered on earthly matters. By this betrayal, mankind was made dependent on spiritual beings who, as a result of their past evolution, rejected everything emanating from the spiritual world which had been evolved through the separation of the earth from the sun. In accordance with the tendency they had thus developed, they worked upon just that element in man which was formed through his having perceptions of the sense-world, behind which the spiritual world lies hidden. Henceforth beings acquired great influence over many of the human inhabitants of the earth, and indeed their influence asserted itself more and more by depriving mankind of the feeling for spiritual things.

Since the size, form, and flexibility of the physical human body were still largely affected by the qualities of the soul, the consequence of the betrayal of the Mysteries also appeared in changes of the human race in these respects. Wherever the corruption of humanity manifested itself especially in the abuse of supersensible powers for the satisfaction of lower inclinations, desires and passions, unsightly human shapes, grotesque in form and size were the result. These were not able to survive the Atlantean period, and became extinct. Post-Atlantean humanity was formed physically from those Atlantean ancestors in whom such a solidification of the bodily form had taken place that it no longer yielded to those powers of the soul which had now become perverted.

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