Seers Saga:

An

Alternative History
of the

Universe

by

Stephen D Evans

Seers Saga

Cover art: NGC 6334, also known as the Cat's Paw Nebula or Bear Claw Nebula; located in the constellation Scorpius, around the end of the scorpion tail.

Seer's Saga:
An Alternative History of the Universe
A retelling of Rudolf Steiner's cosmology in contrast to modern mythologies.

by Stephen D Evans

iii

Seers Saga

Seers Saga: An Alternative History of the Universe Copyright 2008 by Stephen D Evans Revised 2010 to include Appendices
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the Author except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review or printing a purchased digital copy on paper for personal reading. Published in the United States of America Los Angeles, California

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Seers Saga

Contents
page

Introduction

Origin of Middle Earth

Year One: Conception and Gestation

15

Year Two: Newborn into Light Year Three: Toddlerhood of the Soul Year Four: Cosmic Maturation

19 25 35

Year Four continues: Lemuria, Atlantea and Post-atlantean History

45

Appendices
A Conventional History of the Universe Sources and Recommended Reading

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Introduction
I am not a seer or one of the Magi; though the wiser man and woman seek after truth hidden in all tales. I wish here to expand upon discussions I conducted with my own children as they approached an age of reason. At a certain stage of development, every thinking person is challenged to reconcile personal worldview with prevailing beliefs characterizing our post-modern age. I refer to beliefs regarding the emergence of modern culture and politics, the origin of man and other life on earth, the beginnings of the cosmos as we know it, as well as the purpose and destination of all existence. I tried to help my children confront some of this as we studied world history and science. I shared my own attempts to integrate findings of science and psychology with biblical record, my own extrabiblical study and my personal experience. I had hoped thereby, at the least, to familiarize them with some of the language and tone of ongoing debates; such as evolutionism versus creationism; theism versus atheism or agnosticism; relativistic humanism versus divinely revealed morality; classical versus quantum mechanics; and brace yourself positivistic reductionism versus holistic emergentism. I also wanted to equip each of them with a healthy wariness regarding hidden or unacknowledged presuppositions underlying any system of belief, including so-called Science. Fundamentally, I begin with this question: What if the prevailing evolutionary models of astro-geology, biology and civilization are wrong, after all? Most recent trends of discovery are characterized by outright reversals of scientific findings and many double reversals like how theories regarding a zero-point field of energy are reviving interest in classical ideas of ether-filled space that preceded the modern vacuum-void model (see Appendices; also my booklet titled, A Parade of Modern Science Reversals). Perhaps scientific analysis should begin by assuming that a Newtonian, materialistic construct of reality is only one facet of a universe which must be primarily spiritual in nature. Starting with a set of metaphysical assumptions such as is emerging via the latest findings of quantum physics, genetics and micro-biologya different cosmogony emerges; at least one, no less reasonable nor inconsistent with verifiable evidences. Further, how might such an alternative history integrate other classic traditions of metaphysics, including religious mythologies? Then I compare to accepted archeological beliefs some of the modern emerging mythologies often celebrated as reflecting ancient lore in defiance of post-modernism. Consider the Kon-Tiki and similar Lost Empire projects; Dnikens Chariots of the Gods and televisions Stargate or Star Trek and other science fiction followings; The People (a literary series by Zenna Henderson) and like tales popularized by Disney in the Witch Mountain movies; pop culture interest in UFO phenomena, alien abductions and vampire encounters; JRR Tolkiens Middle Earth epic and other fantasy writings; various EndTimes interpretations of Judeo-Christian apocalyptic scriptures ... and the list goes on. My discussion assumes that vision and understanding of our reasoning mind is veiled by a materialistic orientation preferring physical evidences of reality; this perceptive bias

Seers Saga

creates a rationalistic filter or fog obscuring apprehension of any realities that may originate from outside that limited field of observation. Thus we are told that the overwhelming majority of our universe is made of dark matter and energies. One cannot see what he is unwilling to look for. I also assume that human consciousness and other intangible forms of awareness (emotion, intention, imagination) must themselves present unique evidence of a world of being outside the physical/material forms of existence. Why would we have developed such eyes or ears if there be no phenomena rendered visible or audible thereby? Likewise extra-human signs of intelligence and design ranging from animal instinct to DNA coding to the patterned growth of crystals; any of which have yet to be adequately addressed by Newtonian or Darwinian models of natural order. Having recently enjoyed a re-reading of Tolkiens Silmarillion, I wish to begin by entertaining his mythology seriously as if it (or something very like it) could be describing what actually happened in ages past of our own world. Tolkien himself would deny any such intent, referencing the medieval literature that inspired his creation of a purely imaginary world. However, one alternative historian that I have learned to respect specially Rudolf Steiner would suggest that a Tolkien fantasy world reflects our collective unconscious memory of what actually was; just as did the old Celtic and Finnish tales, and like many other mythologies (American Indian, Ancient Greek, Australian Aborigine, even Arthurian legend), faint and distorted but rooted in truth. And that rooting is real and accessible to begin discerning actual history because, Steiner maintains, every living human soul is borne of a spirit that is ancient as all Earths days. In other words, we were there only our matter-bound souls have lost immediate access to that memory. Yet so many of these stories, or elements of them, carry a certain ring of truth, as if a latent human memory of forgone shared experience recognizes the echo of what did in fact happen. This might explain how it is that a civilization like ours more educated and more preferring of fact over hearsay than any prior age of humanity will yet host such a swarm of enthusiasts for fantasy, myth and anachronism. So how can a modern, liberal arts college-educated western mind such as mine actually entertain such notions? Much of the answer has to do with my Pentecostal Christian upbringing, as well as my personal encounters with the Spirit of Christ. More is answered by my peculiar experiences with the puzzles of consciousness. My other writings detail that quest, especially in regard to ASP Awareness during Sleep Paralysis. This will be a broader study, a voyage into the ages before our modern understanding of history. Therefore I start with my own paraphrase of Tolkiens creation story. There follows my development of Rudolf Steiners cosmogony in similar style and finally a link to a mythepoeic rendering of the conventional history of our universe; just for comparison. A corollary work will be biographical: fictional story of a lone and tormented individual awakened to selfhood toward the end of the 20th Century. My hope is that the reader may hear echoes of his own awakening therein and find wisdom or peace. In the end, however, they are the same.

Introduction

MiddleOrigin of Middle-Earth
Before all space and timebefore all Befores, the One was All. But within the One was borne many Imaginations, All His own ideas. He decided to set free some of those thoughts as separate beings in order to develop Ideas more diversely and to enjoy the fruit of their creativity. So, many thoughts were given life and awareness as separate creative beings. And their One Creator withdrew somewhat, so that for the Many was created space, providing freedom to be and to grow. This Space was a measure of Eternity before the creation of Time or Matter; and most of that space began as emptiness, without form or purpose, beauty or joy. And to the Many were given power of voice and hearing, so they could converse with each other and in fellowship with the One across Space; thereby some of the Emptiness began to fill with understanding, hope and joy. In the beginning, such Conversation took the form of music. The One introduced a theme for the Many to develop, and thereby a wondrously beautiful symphony of music began to fill the nearer parts of Space, all in concert and diverse harmony ... to the great pleasure of One and All. But the Music was especially pleasurable to the One, as it produced an even greater diversity of light, color, form and drama that only He was able to perceive. All enjoyed the Symphony all except one of the most creative and powerful among the Many. This being preferred his own company, as if that were All in all brooding over his own dark imaginations and wandering ever further away from the Many into the frontiers of Emptiness, wherein he learned to prefer the formless, joyless void. This wanderer grew jealous of the One, of His fellowship with the Many and their devotion to the One's Music; and he especially desired the One's special power to give separate life and awareness to Imaginations. He objected to the formal unity and harmony ruling the Music of All, discontent merely to develop the principle theme as introduced by the One. So the Objector, in expression of the very freedom and power granted to him by the One, chose to abandon the Primary Theme, intending rather to introduce his own theme and thereby become a rival One.

Seers Saga

The result, from the very first strains of this counter-melody, was dissonance, disrupting the harmonies that would otherwise have filled more of the Emptiness to bring further pleasure to All. Like the Objector, some of the Many were created more aware and more powerful than others; so that the stronger would have helpers as instruments of their creations, and so be granted further space and freedom to serve One and All. These became Directors of great choirs of co-creators. That way their voices were further diversified and combined in ever more colorful chords, as multiplied orchestras of form and beauty. And likewise, the Objector was able to command a following of helpers, making his own interfering bands of instruments. But his own primary theme and tool of persuasion was jealousy; its modes of development darkness, deceit, discord. Its result was continual destruction of the harmonious efforts of All; and so was borne new forms of emptiness misery, hate and despair. The Many withdrew from symphonic spaces that had been ruined by the Objector's noise and this also only added to his jealous satisfaction.

Now the One continued to love and admire his creation, the Children of all his Imagination; yes, He loved even the Objector and his followers though their discord must ever displease Him. So the One decided to the surprise of all to introduce His own Second Theme in counterpoint to the Primary Theme. The result was a new kind of music, magically able to incorporate even the Objector's bands of voices in fresh, ever richer harmonies. So for a new measure of Eternity, discord was healed, redeeming even the instruments of darkness. And the joy of All increased ever further. Except for the Objector and his bandsThey perceived this intrusion by the One as out-of-turn and unlawful, seeking to negate the free and rightful voicing of their own discordant themes. The chief Objector himself was cornered by the Many, in answer to his protests; his bands of deviant voices were restrained. The Many were not, however, seeking to supplant the Ones authority. So they extended this promise, that the original freedom intended by the One would be restored when All even

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Introduction

objectors would decide again to sing in harmony. But the Objector knew better than All the power and intentions of his fellows, as well as their limitations; so he feigned to be reforming his musical taste. Secretly, he sneaked away to seek aid of his most discordant Instruments, one grown powerfully destructive and ambitious as a rival objector. This Destroyer, being another master of emptiness, did reluctantly make temporary alliance with his Director. So, at the call of their chief, or rather in fear of his dark ally, the rebel bands continued to reject the One's generous overtures and invitations to rejoin the Symphony. Their deviant purposes were thereby refocused into a joint campaign to destroy again all harmonies initiated by One and All, which they perceived as lawless music infringing upon spaces they had conquered as their own. However, by nature Discord will never agree for long upon any joint purpose or intent. Each destroyer was ever hoping to recreate another music according to his own lone contending theme. Never would any acknowledge that the final result of such disconcert could only be further rivalries never any joyous harmony ever warring until only two of the most powerful remain in contention; then finally one single voice remains to agonize over an empty victory in lonely darkness. They declared war against One and All an Operation Uncreation. The resulting destruction to all foregoing harmony was great, so that a whole section of the Music was again all but abandoned by the Many, and Joy was diminished for another space of Eternity.

The One moved forward again, introducing yet a Third Theme, of which he had hinted in His Second Theme; so the most powerful of the Many had been somewhat prepared. However, this newest theme proved to be far beyond even their understanding, seeming at first discordant. But again, the Music was changed thereby to pursue ever more diverse modes of development. Hope was reborn for the expanses of Music frontiers; and even that space ruined by warring destroyers was re-occupied though somewhat cautiously at first.

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And sure enough, the Objector was proven able to seize and enslave some elements of the Third Theme, seemingly to serve his own ends. This was possible only because of the Many's initial reluctance to embrace the One's latest challenge to All; also because the Objector had busied his previous false reformation secretly sowing seeds of musical doubt and confusion even among harmonious choirs. Finally, the One directed the most powerful of his Instruments to conduct the concluding measures of their Symphony of sound. The destroying bands were drowned out of discord and the Objector himself removed from the Music. Only a remnant of his instruments and choirs remained to attempt furthering their grotesque campaign, now reduced to mere spoilers of peace, good faith and joy. All of the Music then paused in wonder and anticipation of the One's next intention.

And suddenly there was Light as well as Sound for the Many, as the One granted them power of sight to supplement their hearing. They gazed in amazement as a reprise of their concluded concert was displayed before them now as a symphony of color and a pageant of dancing forms. They beheld, for the first time some small part of the Joy of the One in their joint creation. And All were again delighted. Only the Objector and his following remained unfulfilled. However, the One had yet a greater Idea. He granted to the most powerful of the Many somewhat of the One's own ability that which the Objector had most coveted from the beginning to bestow separate being and awareness upon their own creations. The Father of Life made his creations begetters of yet more life. Yet some of the wisest of the Many questioned the prudence of this development, wondering what might result by such generosity if creators of discord attempted to wield this newest freedom against even the One's best intentions. Yet the Wise could not fathom all the purposes of the One borne before being. Furthermore, the One gave leave to the Many, as many as desired, to clothe themselves in form of their own creations, to dwell therein for a space of Time, acting as characters within their own story. This required, however, that each sacrifice his

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Introduction

own space in Eternity for one movement of the Music, risking that others perhaps those less devoted to harmony might seize that place and ruin his previous efforts again. While contained within Time, it would seem to march one direction, toward a single destination only. There would be no possibility of reprisal to retry or correct these high-risk contributions to the Music not until the conclusion of Time. Once a development was completed, it could not be recalled or recreated within that period. That was necessarily to be the Nature and the Law of such improvisational drama, the very rule of this delight. Therefore, a few of the Many that so chose to give up their places in Eternity each would pour his or her own power into joint creation of a Time-bound realm fit for freewilled separate beings; and these would dwell with their creations, though withdrawn apart from them to guarantee their liberty. These Few could be participants within their own created world while yet subject largely to the limitations of that world; and while respecting the individuality of Will and Destiny thus bestowed upon the flowering of their harmonies, the children of their creative delight. This was to be a Symphony of Sound and Light, Being and Deed. Thus did the One grant to his original Imaginations this unprecedented freedom to do also as He had done in the very creation of their Being and their Space.

The very first to throw himself into this arena of possibilities was the Objector and whoever of his band could be bent to his intention. Here was a chance, he hoped, to resume the great war and to achieve his ultimate purpose to dethrone and supplant the One. But only the wisest of the Many even noticed this defection, so great was the ambitious delight of those Few who pressed ahead to engage the new Adventure.

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And so begins one history of the world we know as Earth. Only this was my clumsy version of a mythology created by JRR Tolkien, one among many thousands of attempts to imagine the genesis and thereby the apocalypse of purpose behind this unfathomable adventure called mortal life. Tolkien's tale, beginning his volume titled The Silmarillion, is far more artful and entertaining. Yet, even the creation myth of the most obscure, least remembered lost tribe of the remotest frontier of Earth will be truer to the objective of human wisdom; a forgotten Celtic faerie story may be nobler than any of the most respected post-modern tales especially those imaginations presumptuously titled science. One might (and many do so arrogantly) think that this generation has finally reached the pinnacle, the end of humanity's quest for the fountainhead of knowledge. 'Not so!' is what a science educator will declare; 'And any who insists that Science knows everything or believes it is finished with its research he only proves that he knows nothing of true scientific inquiry.' (Of course, that isnt what I said.) So why then do we continue to name this modern mythology 'Science', meaning accumulated knowledge of supposed fact? So much of its premises are by nature untestable and unprovable (and so logically untenable). Such is typical of our scientistic double-speak. That same objector will declare just as loudly that all traditions or hypotheses not borne of Science are antithetically unscientific and therefore inadmissible to honest discussion. Of course, a creation story would be verifiable, legally speaking, if only somebody would speak up who had actually been there to witness the event. Thats what the JudeoChristian scriptures claim to do, actually, as divinely-inspired visionary revelations to specially chosen prophets such as Moses, Isaiah, Elijah and Daniel then the final revelation embodied by Jesus Christ. Another such witness may be the super-sensible clairvoyant, Rudolf Steiner. There have been others, and Steiner himself credits many of those as gifted movers of human culture and spirituality. Goethe, Russell, Swedenborg to name a few. But I have found none speaking so clearly as Steiner in his address of the crises confronting our own cultural age and the age to come; though he lived and died decades before I was borne.

So I will attempt next to summarize the wildly colorful history of human existence as narrated by Steiner. It has been said that truth is ever stranger than fiction. Could strangeness itself represent some proof of veracity, Steiners vision would win over every other history science or fiction hands down. I have listed in an appendix some of Steiner's writings and lectures from which I draw, so any concerned reader may also review and judge my attempts to encapsulate the saga.

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Year One: Conception and Gestation

I had no intention to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see, as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the [parasitic wasp] with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice. Not believing this, I see no necessity in the belief that the eye was expressly designed. On the other hand I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe and especially the nature of man, and to conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance. Not that this notion at all satisfies me. I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton. Let each man hope and believe what he can. Charles Darwin, Letter to Asa Grey (1860) Man existed before there was an earth. R Steiner, Cosmic Memory: Prehistory of Earth and Man (1904)

In the beginning was Hope and Love and Joy not mere chemicals or forces, but the Personality who owned those and many more attributes as Names. This Person had always, ages out of time, experienced Love and Joy in fellowship with all other attributes of His Being. But therein lay also the creative Hope of fructifying separate beings and so enhance that fellowship. This He did by sacrificially pouring aspects of His own being into other bodies, making them distinct beneficiaries of His Love and ultimately sharers in His Joy. So they also grew to become aware of their Benefactor and His sacrifices for them. It was their awareness as Gratitude and Trust that enabled this company to rejoin their Originator in further creative endeavors, ever greater projects of Love and Hope for the Joy of all. And thereby, further Names of Original Being were being revealed now as individual lives Truth, Excellence, Goodness and Beauty. Many cycles of creation ensued, each occupying multiplied eons of activity as we would measure it, each separated by eons of restful void, sabbath intervals. Every cycle of labor was rewarded by birth of a new kind of being, as well as the furthered maturation of every elder participant. Then a new project was conceived, a new kind of Sacrifice and therefore a new dimension of Joy. This enterprise would be the creation of Man. Morning broke upon the premiering cycle. At least twelve generations of Benefactors were teamed to expedite the Originators latest plan. Seven of those were appointed to empty themselves sacrificially for the sake of a new birth. And the first to volunteer were the most aware of created entities, the eldest and the wisest, most understanding of the risks and the blessings of such a venture. They were a bit nervous, these entities though never reluctant or fearful. Their intense gratitude for how the Originator had first loved now motivated them to act courageously and decisively. We would say, from the perspective of our current world and experience, that they died, our Elders. Indeed, that is exactly what they gave their very lives and

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beingsfor the benefit of a new creation, in the hope that this newest entity would also be enabled someday to give back in full awareness, in Gratitude and shared Joy. There could never be any guarantee of such a return, but this was ever the way of Love, the rule and model of Creation. Also, time was not experienced in such a linear fashion as we perceive it now. Cause and effect, risk and consequence and reward were potentialities viewed as a whole much as one might observe the events of a parade from on high in the sky, start and finish and proceeding entrants all at once. The higher one's position and the greater one's embodiment of sky, the more one could comprehend past, present and future, like an allencompassing cloud of perceptivity. Therefore the Highest as Holiest must bear the greatest risk as well as Joy. Corollary to this fact would be another cosmic rule: the Hallowed become the Harrowing who would choose to deviate from the Originators purpose. And therein lay the great risk of creative Love, that the most excellent creation might turn to make himself the greatest enemy of primal Goodness and Beauty. Now, the human project was promised to be different from what came before. Man was to be formed as a unique meeting of dimensions, a previously unseen multiplicity in one, more like the Originator Himself. Humankind and his progeny, lesser and greater, would all benefit by Sacrifice from above AND from below, both from higher beings and many more lower than himself on the scale of awareness. Thus in Man was to be revealed previously unmanifest attributes of the Originator. Like all those before him, Man would be a consumer of Loves sacrifice. Yet he would also be enabled to fructify lower beings, even before awareness could engender proper humility, gratitude for such an awesome gift. He was thus appointed from his beginning to be lord over whole kingdoms of lesser creatures. Mans development would be greatly accelerated compared to that of elder beings. Like an infant king, he could begin to enjoy somewhat the executive liberty of the ancients while yet a mere child in cosmic terms. But with this new Hope came risks such as already noted, and none but the Originator had high enough vantage as yet to comprehend them. One hazard was that Man would desire to seize more power and freedom than his understanding of responsibilities warranted. Thus was born potential for the emergence of selfish souls so far inconceivable to the heavenly fellowship arrogance, careless pride, jealousy and fear in both Predator and Prey. With this came ultimately the possibility of Evil. And again, only the Originator could anticipate that beings elder and wiser than Man would choose first to seize upon these deviations, to suffer and cause more suffering by way of unwilling and unholy Sacrifice. And as Highest, nobody stood to suffer more than Him. Previously, even death was simply another form and expression of Joy. This first morning, all were focussed inward upon a heavenly sphere made of sleeping human spirits, the very womb of mankind. The Elders would orbit about the pre-natal wonder, much as a human mother would be seen gazing transfixedly eons hence over her own pregnant belly. However, were we to transport physical eyes to that first Day of Mans conception, darkness would yet prevail, even as the natal seeds of human sight and hearing were being implanted in fetal bodies suspended below every spirit. Creative

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Year One

activity was then, as now, hidden from all but the most active and aware. Our sense of touch, however, might be engaged, enabling us to pet and prod and perceive regions of warmth within that dark, empty space. Clouds of energy were being organized and shaped by the willing sacrifices of the Eldest, gently moving and coalescing to fashion a great nebulous sphere or globe of human pre-sentience. But human spirits hovered over the core of their clustered bodies like somnambulant atmosphere, completely unaware of the eternal sacrifices and cosmic art shaping their destinies. And that knowledge has yet to bloom upon the shared consciousness of mankind, as we continue this day arrogantly to believe we evolvedwith a little help from lucky chancesomehow forming ourselves of cosmic dust. Meanwhile, in the mind of the Originator, each cloud of humanity was known and named, cherished as a unique entity, though no other on this Olympian team dared even try to count their number. Each human was to follow a particular destiny, expressed by his eternal name and remaining mostly hidden until destiny became deed. Only then would one's true name become apparent, revealed to all after the final maturing cycle of the sons of Man. One of those, for the sake of this story, I will nickname Hal though his true name will be much longer and more musically pleasing. *See End Notes.

The primary cycle of activity came to a timely close as the Eldest all completed their orbit and expired. So the first Evening fell still, labors paused for a night of rest. Then a second morning heralded the rise of the Next Eldest, those somewhat less aware than their superiors, so a new Day was occupied by sacrificial labor of another class of benefactors. More seeds were planted, like buds upon the bodies that would develop a later Day to become limbs or even wings, lungs and heart, intelligence and intention. Evening preceded yet another Day, when a third orbit of contributors, somewhat less mature yet joyfully willing, stepped forward on through the series of cycles until all seven generations of elder creations completed their work. It was a great global dance of Loves labor, busied by rhythms, cosmic voices joined in song. And the sphere of human forms resonated answering vibrations, like choirs accompanying their Creators music. In fact it was those very vibrations, natal voices, which would later join the creative efforts of their elders, the Logos or creative Word, and begin to shape themselves as sound waves model our air molecules, transforming mere matter into music or words, mortal vehicles for the eternal Names Mercy, Redemption, Meaning and Purpose. Thus would created humankind participate improvisationally in perfecting their own body, the environment we call Earth. So even the modern mythology of unscripted evolution carries a germ of truth. Ongoing results of Loves attentions were celebrated, as human forms became ever more complex in their construction and promise. The clouds of warmth contained more focused regions of energy, each intended for a specific set of functions. Yet being primarily energy at this stage, the human entities would intermingle and merge, moving

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through each other, reflecting the warmth of others so encountered within that pre-Earth community. It was a great planet of radiant space, their first shared body of being. Hal was one of the earliest to respond almost livingly to this environment, uttering a silent sigh in his long sleep. The Originator heard it, and even some of the Eldest. They shared a glance and giggle, then proceeded with their songful work. Not until the last cycle, the seventh Day of Mans pre-existence, would observers perceive any light emanating from the condensing globe of energy. And then only a nebulous glow would emerge in space among all the bright stars of countless other creative enterprises. It was a gentle light, the combined spirit-ignited souls of embryonic bodies of Man. Then that faintest of human light was doomed to expire, like the glowing end of a spent candle's wick finally sputters cold. Human corporeal design had long become too complex, more than any physical mechanism could maintain in itself. Hal's virtual energy body must naturally wear and break down, lacking any self-restorative power. Such constructions were never yet alive, just life-like. So the prototypical human form would flicker and pass back into the realm of thought, though now a proven idea and design. But the souls of mankind were not deceased, only sleeping. Soon to retire also, all those sacrificial Elders who had for eons of our time denied themselves, deferring selfsatisfaction for the greater good of another and the increased Joy of the universe just as their Elders had done for them, indeed as their Originator had first demonstrated. Many more Days of Man's creation would pass before human awareness matured enough to celebrate that first Sphere of Heaven's influence, now known as Saturn Day. The castoff satellite of our Earth-favored system is named after that ancient series of orbits in remembrance of how elder spirit-brethren nurtured and protected mankind's conception, the promise engendered by the Eldest of Days. So today, the planet we call Saturn continues to serve a physically protective role, attracting and absorbing or repelling invasions of foreign bodies that would long ago have spelled the demise of our privileged home world. Viewed from our limited vantage, the helpful giant appears as a softly radiant pregnant globe encircled by a crystalline rainbow.

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Year Two: Newborn into Light

I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws, but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations. -Albert Einstein, as quoted in Glimpses of the Great (1930) by G. S. Viereck Chronology, the time which changes things, makes them grow older, wears them out, and manages to dispose of them, chronologically, forever. Thank God there is kairos too: again the Greeks were wiser than we are. They had two words for time: chronos and kairos. Kairos is not measurable. Kairos is ontological. In kairos we are, we are fully in isness, not negatively, as Sartre saw the isness of the oak tree, but fully, wholly, positively. Kairos can sometimes enter, penetrate, break through chronos: the child at play, the painter at his easel, Serkin playing the Appassionata are in kairos. The saint in prayer, friends around the dinner table, the mother reaching out her arms for her newborn baby are in kairos. The bush, the burning bush, is in kairos, not any burning bush, but the particular burning bush before which Moses removed his shoes; the bush I pass by on my way to the brook. In kairos that part of us which is not consumed in the burning is wholly awake. -Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet (1972)

Recapitulation: Like original Love and Hope, Beauty, Goodness, Sacrifice and Sabbath, it is eternally a basic law of the universe and creation Recapitulation. This is how it can appear to us later many ages into the process that it all happened naturally, without design and with no need for intervention by greater powers let alone any sacrifice on their part. The first Day of the second sphere of Man's creation was punctuated by a kind of magic. Its the same magic we observe daily now with guiltless lack of wonder when a seed fallen and dried and dormant for a season suddenly bursts forth to reproduce what had come before and engendered its existence. This Day was a spontaneous reprise or review of the great dance which had occupied the entirety of mankind's first cosmic Year. But this time it was the bodies of Man themselves performing the play, reproduced from within Man's fellowship, having rehearsed it all again in secret during the Night between Spheres while their betters were busy elsewhere planning the next Year's labors. This all unfolded now on this cosmic stage for the entertainment and delight of humankind's adoring Elders. And the Originator laughed aloud at the surprise shining on their countenances. So, all seven classes of Elders reasserted their sacrifices, each in turn rejoining the dance, occupying seven faster turns of the globe. This New Year's Day appeared to them all to be passing far too quickly, though every turn would seem now to endure millions of our earthbound years. You see, linear time and space were also being created as mankind's living space, fashioned concurrently with the shaping of Man's own being, stretched and expanded as needed. It is much how any family labors and saves to expand the home, even as their

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household grows. So what was experienced as a Day during the first sphere of activity, was become more like a Year, and the briefer orbits become Days. The creative dance thereby grew ever more complex as the cycles passed in sets. Future Days would become Weeks, compressed to cosmic Hours and then Minutes. Then one Day a moment would come when the Originator could declare another axiom of Eternity, a troubling paradox to our understanding A Day is as a thousand years and a thousand Years a day. This is the God's perspective while watching from His Throne on high over our parade. To one such as Him, many of our questions prove pointless, only highlighting our infantile ground-bound awareness: Was the earth and all its inhabitants created in six days and a seventh to rest? Or, did the process require billions of years of graduated shape-shifting adaptations? The God's answer to both questions must ever be, Yes, of course. Another human theorist wielding unusual clarity of awareness reached the very same conclusion, that all time and space is relative and this applying merely to that which we are finitely positioned to observe and measure. All else that matters, in fact most of what our universe is made of, remains dark to our primitive eye. Yet even this brave thinker was ever reluctant to believe his own logic. An ant knows nothing of the soaring treetops or lofty peaks within its feeble understanding there can be no clouds, no stars. One must admit that the ant, however busy, remains asleep to most of its environment. So also mankind's bodily activity increased and his awareness continued to develop. Yet he too remained asleep to virtually all the greater labors and sacrifices surrounding, permeating his abode, all for his benefit. A deep germ of human awareness was awakened, however, some human souls before others. Many would never yet glimmer or stir that Year. But by the middle of the second cycle, Man's awareness would become apparent to physical eyes as sustained light, a soft but persistent and growing glow in the heavens. Hal was one of those who began to awaken earliest. He wasn't the very first, but one could count his awareness among the greater vanguard of advancing spirits. During this set of cycles he would never achieve anything approaching daytime awareness, not as we measure normal consciousness in our current age of Earth. In fact, human awareness began as experience of an inner world; hardly anything external confronted his mind. He simply didn't yet have senses to perceive surroundings like we do now and good thing. Imagine first awakening adrift within the birthplace of a star. Thanks to the attentions of Elders, Hal's body was now a fit vehicle for Life. The substance of his form had gelled from the pre-vaporous state of Saturn's Day into a denser gaseous stuff exhibiting real physical properties of volume and weight. Therein Hal was given to live and breathe and grow nothing yet like we do now. He had no skin; very primitive organs. Though we would recognize his shape as humanlike, Hal's bodily life and awareness was more like that of an ethereal plant formed out of air and

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Year Two

currents of heat running like sap from top to bottom, head planted earthward. Before, during the First Sphere of eons past, mankind's energetic bodies had been more automatic than living, serving as vehicles for the entertainment of attending Elders to explore this strange new dimension of physical time and space, even while working to perfect it. Imagine that we could someday so enliven our modern motor cars, boats and submarines. This Day, Hals body actually lived and grew grew old and died, so its aerie stuff could be recycled by his life-empowered soul into new living bodies. Only a living body could ever house an eternal soul. But remember, Hals spirit and soul lived mostly outside his physical form, though connected and somewhat active through it, just as we remain connected during sleep however paralyzed and unconscious of its internal labors. If Hal were to have awakened like our souls do now every morning, he would have viewed his body much as we regard the terrain under our feet. His infant limbs and organs of growth would appear below like the trees and bushes and rocks of our planetary abode. Hal's inner world was quite simple. He knew a dull sense of warmth, becoming light. The Light manifested in subtle variations and degrees, with some shifting perspective and focus of energies. When he encountered a neighboring being, there was a vague inner response to vibrations, more like our sense of touch or smell than sight. But even this awareness lasted for very brief periods, only a few days of that Year. His most aware moments resembled what we experience now as dreamless sleep; he was no longer comatose, like had characterized the first year of Man's being. The mans inner life was hardly populated by anything having form, shape or color. Hal did not yet retain any memory of past encounters, so there was nothing resembling any personal preference to have-again or avoid-the-same. Human desire would be a much later development in a future Year.

There were events this Year which shook Hal's world. The Originator's conception of Man was to be a manifold soul fit for inter-dimensional experience. The foundations for these constructions were laid during the Saturn Sphere, but it had still to manifest. As already explained, we must call Hal's awareness merely an inward state of mind. Thought or feeling would be too ambitious a description. Yet to Hal, like his Elders, inward was also the only outward. He felt at one with all his fellows, his whole environment, even to the far reaches of the universe. Physical distance was not an issue or limitation. But that was to change one Day. Man's awareness would gradually begin to narrow and focus sharply as Attention. It's what today enables a cat to leap branches of a tree and a human child to throw a ball. It is object awarenessobjectivity. One class of Elders neither highest nor the lowest was dedicated to impart upon mankind's body and soul the power of individuality. This seems silly to us now, as we take that freedom for granted. But for Hal and his brothers it was a brand new experience. For even these Elders, the effect on mankind was largely a mystery and therefore irresistibly attractive, at least in the eyes of their less-developed fellows. (Much more about them later.) The result of this capacity, while dwelling within this gaseous

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environment was multifaceted, like a crystal unearthed. And so also did the Creators view this gem of Mans development with growing awe. Hal emerged from deep sleep one morning transformed. He was now a duality of being, equipped to experience both an inner and outer world. Even the Eldest were astounded. The outer world Hals environment remained mostly dark to him, except for the vague impressions already described. But this distinction between inner and outer became the impetus to live and move in ways beyond a mere plant-like existence. Already, his body was being nourished by populations of lower entities, stunted or less-developed throwbacks from the Saturn Sphere. Thus one could even say that Hal's body was feeding upon his little brothers. Indeed, that had become the meaning and significance of these lesser creatures existence. Hal's sustenance was to be their redemption, not their doom (as we would perceive it now). Man thereby became rightful regent of this lower kingdom. (In fact, they continue to survive and serve mankinds purposes as the minerals, metals and crystals of our Day.) Even then they lived and developed symbiotically in and around the body of Man, becoming the stuff of crystalline structures needed to support Life energy within mankinds physiology. The mineral entities would otherwise have declined and vanished into the Void as mere errors, cosmic defects or flunkees trash. However, Hal's body loved these little brothers in its own way. He needed them as foundation and nourishment from below, just as he needed the Elders to shine upon him, fashioning his growing complexity from above. And never was young Hal conscious of consuming his fellows, except as contentment of continued life. And so Hal's soul experienced the first buds of human sentience, what would develop later as pleasure and pain (though again no memory and so no preference for either). Here was the seed of human fellowship and joy, the possibility of freedom And there followed a great celebration filled with choruses of bravos and cosmic backslappings over just this single, dual-natured achievement.

Hal suffered another separation, this one in his body. It corresponds to another crisis within the ranks of that same class of Elders, those blessing humankind with individuality. First understand that every sphere of cosmic activity is supervised by the Eldest of those Creators appointed to sacrifice the most of their essence to the project. This Eldest, Firstborn of the Originator and One of Three Most Highof the Logoiwas made functional Regent of that Year. As CFO, indeed Overlord of the world, He had most to lose and most to gain from the risks entailed. And given the highest vantage within that sphere, He could spot potential deviations from the Plan and re-order their dance dynamically to maximize an outcome reflecting Goodness and Beauty. So, for the Good of all, the Spirits of Individuality had agreed to remove from their number some of their own developmentally deficient, while others of the same lessenlightening variety refused the call. Thus a separate globe appeared as dwelling place for the darker entities, placed there to orbit the human sphere at an expeditious distance. Those who stayed behind would sink into pre-Earth's lower atmospheres, where the light

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of human souls disturbed them less. However, the contribution of these to mankinds constitution must continue as appointed. Just as our moon is said to influence the menses of women like ocean tides, this disruption in his environment divided Hal's body of Life into upper and lower sets of growth functions. Higher classes of Elders rushed in to heal and redeem and integrate this seeming blunder. Meanwhile, the lower part of Hal's body began spontaneously performing a new kind of magic. It fructified itself. Parts of his form started pinching off, like monster cells dividing, separating hundreds and thousands of lesser hals in cycle after cycle of regeneration. But all these children of Hal continued united in mind like a great hive sharing the single awareness, which was Hal. The Elders gasped, then breathed a sigh of wonder and relief, while the Originator only chuckled in delight over the mystery. Its all Good, He declared. The Overlord Lead Sacrifice to Mans venture was pleased but silent now, contemplating how the latest turn was to recapitulate in future Years. Meanwhile, the hosts were applauding the Wisdom and Art of His performance. This One had become Star of the Dance. However, He was well aware that His greatest Blessing on behalf of Man had yet to come. These events represented a whole array of new experiences for Hal, too much in fact for his awareness to contain. It had the effect of putting him to sleep, even deeper sleep. Hal's mind simply began shutting down earlier and earlier every day. By the close of that cosmic Year, Hal's awareness had tired and retired into a near comatose state, like Saturns Day. So when the Night fell and the Elders ceased their labors yet again, he didn't even notice that the suffusing light of human consciousness had passed out of all awareness to All except the Originator's thought. The Elders retreated to a distant corner of the universe, having more work to do before they too could retire for the Night. It had been a glorious Year, full of surprises. Perhaps they could better plan the next, preferably sporting no disturbing interruptions. Even the gods like to know what to expect. Nowadays, we refer to that ancient Sphere of Man's creation as Sun Day. Its Regent is known by many titles and names Solaris or Sun King; also the Christ, the Chosen Sacrifice; Adonai or Beloved Son of the Father; the Name Jehovah, that is Y'H-W'H or the I AM. For Hal it would be many more Days before Life-giving Light was to shine from above as well as within.

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Year Three: Toddlerhood of the Soul

[Ramandu the Magician had just described himself as a retired star.] In our world, [Eustace replied] a star is a huge ball of flaming gas. [Ramandu]: Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of. -The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, by C. S. Lewis (1956) A mind not to be changed by place or time. The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n. Here at least we shall be free; the Almighty hath not built Here for his envy, will not drive us hence: Here we may reign secure, and in my choice to reign is worth ambition though in Hell: Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven. -Paradise Lost, John Milton (1667)

Another New Year's Day kicked off with dancing and song, even more Joyful celebration than the previous festival. And it didn't end with a Saturnday review. Evening and Morning launched another round a Sunday fest unfolding again every phase of the last Year's adventures for all to greet with cheering and applause. Even the dimmer spirits whose removal the previous Year had occasioned such anxiety: they now received accolades and hardy slaps. Soon they were partying hard with all their elders though that host had first entered looking rather dour. The Dance had evolved into a complex affair. Each participant group would enter alone, turn about to deposit their blessing and exit, only to re-enter paired with members of a previous group. Orbit after orbit followed more and more involved sets of busy spins and handoffs as the Elders performed in concert with the shifting phases of human revolutions. Only when their Sunday wound down to a finish and a third Day dawned did faces turn serious in contemplation of the next set of moves. It was time for a different theme, unrehearsed. Mankind had spontaneously reconstructed and now manifested all the fruit of their prior Years labors. Hal was ready for a new Day, a fresh challenge. The Company parted to allow yet another entrance by some of the eldest of Creators. All voices had ceased, pregnant with expectation. It almost resembled a wedding, that moment after all the party has marched in and the guests have stood as one to endure a pause before the officiator speaks. Or perhaps it was more like a funeral procession in circumstance? But truly this had to be a graduation ceremony, where the candidates were again called to empty sacrificially their vital essence, the ultimate blessing of humanity's next development. They would literally pour their souls into ours. Hal was attending at least he was one of the human children sleeping in a front row. Even the grandest party of elders will ever remain tiresome to the young. However, color was beginning to dawn in the little one's mind. It was only very basic hues, each shade obliquely representing what Hal's gaseous body would encounter. Blue or greenish modes of mind meant a sympathetic or beneficent presence, such as one of Hal's nearest

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kin. A brown or reddish mental state indicated an entity less preferring of his future interests. The man's inner world was no longer the simple black and white, light or dark existence of prior phases. His mind was growing aware of its own inner kingdom. A variety of cognitive imagery was born. We would say simply that Hal was dreaming. But this experience would later serve Hals own purposes as the basis for navigation, for language, earthly community and survival. And so the Day progressed, becoming more colorful by the hour, thousands of our years filling every Moment. Meanwhile, the changing ranks of Elders were planting more seeds that would sprout another Day to grow the neurobiology of Earths populations. Another Evening passed, then Morning. Suddenly a distinct source of light appeared to Hal's dreaming mind. Most of the Light which normally filled his environment had been gradually coalescing into brighter islands scattered on all sides of the globe. These began gathering into continents of yet greater brightness. Then finally the purified Light separated entirely as a radiant orb too hot to face directly for long. The mans world had descended to orbit the new star at some distance. Even so, Hal felt continually reliant upon this Source, as if his very Life depended upon it which indeed it did, for this is where the greatest balance of Elders had retreated to better focus their creative and life-sustaining attentions upon Man's further construction. Hal did not yet see their sun as an external object in the heavens. The Saturn Day organs that would become physical eyes could not yet open. Yet he felt the Sun Kings Blessing, much as he had dreamily sensed other companions, only now this One was far clearer and brighter and purer than ever before. Sometimes the Light was felt to be burning warmly from one side. Sometimes it wasn't, seeming hidden for a period. The diffused glow of neighboring entities then faded to dimmer sets of greens, blues and reddish hues. When the Light was present, those same colors became brighter, more distinct. And sometimes, when Hal could retain a slumbering sub-consciousness for hours extended, the Light would pass in a gradual orbit from one side to the opposite perspective. Thereby Hal's infant mind was beginning to perceive differences of position between himself and other mind-objects about him, especially his changing relation to the Light. One Hour the Light seemed very close and almost too hot for comfort. Another, it was far away and relatively cold. Another result of segregation from the brightest of Elder beings Hal's body vapors began to condense, so that some parts actually liquefied into cooler courses or currents. What's more, a membrane began to form about the furthest reaches of the living cloud suspended below a dreamy mind. Hals body was bound by a dermis. And an earthly eye would have beheld the human limb extrusions shifting orientation to hang downward now, like a fish or beast, main trunk and head moving parallel to the lower atmospheres. So Hals form was freely mobile now no longer planted upside down as was humanity's Sunday best habit.

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Try looking through a microscope at the myriad community of single-celled life forms teeming inside the skin of a common drop of pond water there you have the modern memory of what Hal's world was like. As the Day progressed, however (become more like a Month of Days as Time also evolved) humanity's home world became denser still, so some internal parts grew to a gelatinous consistency. Men's bodies would now collide and wrap or bounce around each other, while only their minds remained nebulous, interpenetrating their neighbors, even gathering for seasons as great cloud systems of color sensation. Much like the tiny amoeba, or rather a great ocean polyp grown larger or smaller as need determined, Hal's body was breathing the very atmosphere that buoyed his existence. And likewise, breathing nourished the primitive organs of his Life processes. It was yet a much rarified form of air, more like ignited poisonous gases to our feeble lungs. These Amoeba Men were indeed fire-breathers, and no child of our world would like to meet one. Even our ancient tales recall somewhat of this condition in the fabled dragons, the phoenix and salamander monsters. The Year before, human bodies were made of the same sort of fiery plasma and breathed the raw radiant energy of Saturns Day. As this Year's cycles matured, the mans body started again to divide and multiply itself, so one must begin to identify whole flocks of Hal in successive generations, all bonded by the distinct spirit of Hal. But that spirit had already allied with several other human entities, merging with kindred herds of humanity. He was naturally attracted to those encountered who felt most familiar and supportive of Hals own manner of breathing and growing. Thus clans of humankind gathered, each sponsored by the guiding and perfecting Elders trading roles in the Dance. And again, these souls spontaneously responded in sound like celestial choirs. Yes, many Elders had remained behind for this very purpose, while the majority decided for the Good of all to continue work at a distance, from the sun. However, there also remained many whose own development had slowed, even stalled, growing stubborn and self-interested about their business with mankind. These, like Saturn Day's deviants (most were indeed reprisals of that sect) were growing hourly more resistant to the Sun Regent's directives. Their dance began to follow different sets of patterns, causing trips and collisions and even some falls in the course of that Day's performance. Fortunately for all, the same Sun Spirit had foresight to leave a governing Assistant behind, a Lead dancer of class and ability equal to His own. This Governor had ever operated from within the ranks of fellow Creators, quietly guiding their steps and conducting more complicated hand-offs a co-laborer working side by side with the greatest or the very least aware. Hardly did one notice when the Friend of all friends would gently and masterfully correct their movements. And when somebody did trip, this One would be the first to leap into the path of their fall, absorbing the blow, averting the worst of potential damage or embarrassment. And if Someone else was praised for these labors (usually crediting the Sun Spirit), it was the Governor heard singing loudest accolades of agreement.

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It was this Covert Conductor who began early to identify and befriend the most discontented and rebellious of associates. And never once did they realize the Purpose of finding themselves herded into like-minded groups it seemed that the Great Dance's choreography had always so scripted their steps. Then the Evening and next Morning saw legions of wayward ones separated. The Sun Spirits had separated themselves after all. So there was truly no shame as these also were moved onto orbiting worlds, some even further distant than humanity's sphere from the sun. But even this measure could not erase the soul connections formed already between their self-interests and favored families of Man. Many populous groupings of childlike human minds continued yielding, held in attraction to the movements and preferences of their rebel elder hosts. Likewise a whole pile of iron filings will chase a magnet as one body. So also these groups were growing ever more estranged from kindred human clans. You see, even in humanity's toddlerhood of Soul, even an advancing spirit like Hal would never experience himself as a single identity that whole Year of cycles. The sleepy, sometimes dreaming mind of Hal could never say, I am myself. That was for a much later period. However, his sense of being did attain some fleeting feeling of We-ness We are, and We continue to live, while you Others well, you must simply make way so that We can continue where we please. That's right. Hal was beginning to remember where he had been before and forming preferences for where he would rather remain. Something much like animal habit, even instinct was developing. And when Hal or rather the family of Hal and the clan of Halfellows were denied or delayed their satisfaction, a hurricane of passion was released. The fuzzy cloud system of sympathetic minds would gather, organize and unleash an atmospheric storm of rage. The teeming bodies of Men would respond, breaking free from the Elder's attentions, and wreak havoc upon their environment. Yes, there was now an incredibly diverse environment that Hal would call home, had he the external attention and voice to declare it so. However, earthly eyes would labor long to penetrate its fiery mists. Earthly feet would sink into its pulpy foundation. If the previous Sun Sphere's firmest ground was a roiling plasma of vaporized salts, then this planet surface resembled a boiling ball of custard pudding. A little past the midpoint of the Year, there was an aging and drying and cooling that produced some harder areas like bark or bone, but most of the ground level would feel like a protoplasmic swamp to our toes, with islands of stiffer spongy stuff interspersed. The latter would be growths and the rarer horny matter dried stumps of plant colonies, more like our earthly mushroom or messy mounds of mold. This worlds plant life was actually more animal-like by current definitions, like the sea sponge, coral or anemone. They were the stilted carry-overs of mankind's bodily nature inherited from the Sun Sphere. In cosmic terms, they represented a kingdom subservient to Man, having failed to advance in spirit and potential. Some had progressed further than others, thus the variation of kind, color and growth patterns, as well as their flavor and sustenance value to yet higher forms of Life. The mineral entity also continued, now displaced as the third and lowest kingdom of the sphere. Minerals remained the substance

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that nourished the plant-animals and enabled the primordial soup of their environment to gel and congeal and finally harden into horny structures. Else the plants would find no anchor or rooting. Kingdom depended upon kingdom of multiplied variations of Life. And all found their purpose and their joy in furthering the destiny of their patron and majesty, Man. Stranger still would be sight of the herds of monster jellyfish forms. Their limbs reached earthward, tubular tentacles extended upwards like arteries into the life-sustaining sky, bodies hovering over the soupy planet surface. These were populations of mankind's bodily being moving lazily, drifting mostly with the atmospheric currents, schools of sea beasts feeding upon the plant extrusions. But one must never assume that Hal was living a mere animal existence. Even during that Year, the manchild was a noble and powerful being, radiant and fearsome in countenance. Even then, his feeling mind exercised a powerful dominion over the growth patterns of plant and mineral bodies. The lower kingdoms of Man's environment followed his bidding according to his need, much like the mermen of Earth's ancient stories were portrayed wielding a magical command over life, husbanding the oceans produce. By the sixth Day of that Year, Hal would behave and appear more like a mythic god, Neptune or Titan, than the most evolved of modern apes.

Before concluding this chapter of the Saga, I pause to comment further upon some Cosmic Laws of Creation. Saturn's Sphere had seen the Originator's initial demonstration of the power of Speech enjoined by Intent. Its how the Voice of a God imbues thought with shape and being like even our words, shaped of air vibrations, may carry eternal meaning, ultimately to plan and accomplish great deeds or constructions of hands. In fact it was the first Three of the Elohim, known as Logoi meaning Words, that so engendered all created entities, including the prenatal spirits of Man to the astonishment and righteous envy of every other invited to attend our cosmic birthday party. These Primal Utterances became known by the ancient titles of their rank Father, Son and Spirit. They were Spoken as a unified sentence, like a grammatical Subject is joined to Object by Verb. Rarely does One ever appear to act alone, and then it is only a seeming occurrence according to the vantage of a finite mind. The most aware of created beings worship and strive to become worthy of this same creative ability, ultimate of Joys. Another Eternal Fact characterizing the very fabric of our universe involves the Sacrifice of an entity. One may willfully and literally empty his essence into another to further develop or perfect a creation, lending it independent life and awareness. It can be understood, elementally, as our breath expelled into a word, animating it with tone, volume, duration and clarity of articulation in order that it attain its goal, the ear and understanding of an intended hearer. This I have already illustrated, thus far though the power and significance of the act remains a Mystery of the Ages, a source of much misunderstanding, indeed the subject of perversions and evil abominations.

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There is yet a third principle of creation, this one perhaps more familiar to our earthly experience and understanding. It may appeal specially to the technological mind. Ancient scriptures declare that Man was created in God's image. This is a literal fact and description of the methodology exercised. Even during the Saturn Sphere, Elders were busy throughout the final cycles casting reflections of their own complexity into the surface layers of Mans ephemeral substance. It was like focussed light imprinting a carefully framed image into the photosensitive film of emulsion on a camera plate. Thereon the image is fixed and preserved for a time. And that image may itself be utilized to produce many more facsimiles. Or, the image may serve as a template, a guide for lesser beings (including the sleepy manchild) to further decorate, develop and perfect. Children love to color a printed drawing, though not always inside the lines. Multiple images may be overlaid to simulate merging color and depth, even motion. More advanced artisans will know how to group and arrange such animations into lifelike scenes and feature-length motion pictures. However, they are only pictures. Consider how now a human infant, hardly aware of itself as an individual, will yet remain fascinated by his or her reflection. It's a sure way to distract a fussy, self-consumed child. They know intuitively that it is not merely another child of man, that it is somehow connected to their own being. A slightly older one will coo and utter endearments to quiet this other 'baby', like a little mother calling to her own offspring. Animals don't react at all the same. For humankind, the rippling image of sky, mountains, trees and faces in a dark mere has always held a magical import because we know it is: Magic. Now, some duller-minded elder entities will also affix their desire to this latter mode of creation, becoming blind to all other potential and so stunted in their advancement. They remain obsessed with only these life-like constructions. A further development would threaten their narcissistic need to retain control, to dominate the images. These are most fearful of the risks of self-sacrifice. Just the thought sickens and enrages them. Sacrifice is, in fact, the very magic required to transform mere life-like imagery beautiful as these appearances may be into true living beings, free entities capable of Love and Gratitude, and ultimately bearers of eternal Names. Only such life-breathed beings may also, one Day, become willing self-sacrificers and thereby enablers of greater Joy. But the would-be creator who prefers to withhold this gift, will not advance to the quality of Love that gives up its very Life for another. This pathetic spirit has abandoned all Hope of everlasting freewill, both for himself and those he was created to serve, higher or lower than himself. His vantage is blindsided, his intent ever deviating from all Truth, Goodness and Beauty. He needs and ultimately demands the sacrifice of others, willing or unwilling, in joy or in agony (there is no difference to his mind) while yet refusing himself to serve the same blessing according to the need of any other. This all in supposed service of that void which he persists to call Self, his bankruptcy of spirit. If the reader notes a tone of scorn and disgust in my words, he is correct. Our name for this sort of uncreative activity is sorcery, for which there can be no redemption. Such a participant is doomed to expulsion from the Dance.

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Now, returning to the Saga The Third of the Logoi, as Uncreated Regent of the Third Sphere had one overriding mission. Those elders of the rebellious ranks who escaped expulsion had retreated into hiding around the far side of the planet. The densest, darkest, self-deceiving of those would dig themselves deeper into the human planets lowest regions. There they gathered and bickered over which was the greatest, yet hoping therefrom to execute an abduction of Man's development, preventing his complete awakening and even paralyzing his soul, this in order to serve their own decaying interests, whatever the cost to all others in the universe. Naturally, that side of the planet turned away from the Sun would cool and further densify the world's substances. That much was part of the Plan, and a periodic spin of the globe would have graduated the process to Man's benefit. However, this mass emigration had the cosmic effect of weighting and arresting the sphere into a lopsided orbit round its Life-giving star. Just like our current moon, the world's hemispheres would become incompatibly locked apart, a sunny side and a dark side. That could never bode well for the bodies and souls of Man. Indeed, one moment of destiny found Hal wandering round too far from the Sun's rays. Once over the horizon, the environment grew too cool for his comfort. The ligaments of his body started to harden like wood. The images in his mind darkened and became more attuned to the rebellious thoughts of elder entities harbored around that side. But young Hal had lost his way and rebel elder voices were luring his herd deceptively to a darker sanctuary. His mind became confused as his emotions unbalanced, his life tenuous and body brittle, almost to the point of breaking up. It would surely have arrested further development of this childs spirit and Hope, had the Regent of the world been absent or inattentive or too distant to intervene. But He some would rather say She was Present, the very Spirit of Presence and Nurture and Help. Ever a Friend available in need, this Eldest of Creation performed a profoundly simple but effective trick. Even the rebel spirits were unwary of any change, nor could they stop its progress once started. Already noted was how the atmosphere had congealed at the lower levels, thanks indeed to the service and sacrifice of the Mineral entities under Man's dominion. A separation resulted, as the liquefied matter sunk and the thickening soup dragged it lower, forming a virtual bottom to this global sea. The old word for this event was a firmament. So did the Sun-form of Man release its plant rooting and hover as the free-form already described above the sea-floor. This separation of states of stuff allowed the upper layers of atmosphere to move unhindered by the lowest. The whole began to move, like a planetary carousel. The lowest foundation levels remained stationary wherein the darkest of rebel spirits had holed themselves. The upper airs, where the human forms roamed, began a regular and rhythmic orbit of the planet. Otherwise, all of the planet's life would soon have gravitated to the dark side, unable to resist the lure of lying elders. Instead, even Plant and Mineral populations were able to

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migrate seasonally round both sides, eventually returning to the sunny side where their Life processes could be restored. Hal and his fellows orbited most frequently, and the cycles of dark-to-day-to-dark and daylight again would establish a concurrent set of healing rhythms in his mind and body. The balance was restored; his body softened and warmed, remaining receptive to the ministrations of wiser Elders. Hal was already become a gem, the prize and coveted booty in this battle. It would be the first of many in a cosmic war for the souls of man. The rebel spirits wanted to seize control and dominion over this man's development. They wanted it badly now, especially as they perceived that it had already (almost) been won. They had tasted the delights come of seizing and using the subservient creature, body or mind, for their particular pleasures. There was no question of their realizing true Joy ever again, as they had sundered themselves from the Fellowship, expelled their own steps from the Dance. All that remained was a sorry sort of pleasure in the abduction, possession and enslavement of the various members of Mans construction. Some of the abductors purposed to stamp their intentions upon the captured human mind, embezzling the fine structures of thinking, feeling and desiring. And thereupon they would project their own desires, acting out virtual lives of evil adventuring solely for their own entertainments. This was now the only sort of existence they could imagine or desire. It would be way too much work for the dark spirits to start building or maintaining instruments rightly suited for their own soul sorts. Others of these parasites would sink ever deeper, stealing the physical body of Life to drive and torture, like cosmic joy riders, so long as the eons-perfected design would endure. The very worst of these would revel in the decay of the tortured corpses of ruined bodies, corrupting as accursed pirates even the lowest kingdom of Man's intended domain. But thank the Heavens for a beneficent orbit, a world set spinning by just a nudge from the Resident Super Hero. That simple remedy, a silently loving gesture a Mother rocking her Infant's cradle would prove to be mankind's redemption. So a remnant was preserved for optimal advancement before the finishing Hours of that cosmic sphere, later titled Moon Day. Hal and his closest brothers were among those restored and so enabled to advance, enjoying the life-sustaining rhythm, the original Circle of Life. That new set of cycles implanted seeds of experience that would germinate and flower the following Year, first as sleeping and waking rhythms, then changing seasons of fruition and finally as life and death cycles of regeneration. Thus the sorcerous grip of enemy spirits is disabled from ever gaining total empowerment over Man's destiny.

There was to be one more blessing directed by the Presence that Year. The hosts of Wisdom were called back to perform, also known as Sophia the Wise Woman of Solomons quest. They moved silently over the surface of the deep and permeated all

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physical forms with a further degree of inner order and excellence. Their attentions to such detail embedded messages of Hope and Purpose into the cracks and crannies of the mystery house known now as Earth. Thereby the generations of Man, those who would continually seek for Truth, would be certain to find these inarguable indications of Godly Blessing everywhere, wherever the human search wandered. Nobody would have excuse who might fail to awaken when called to stand finally before Truths Light, ever denying and refusing the Elders blessings. So clues were planted, showing the way of escape from the darkest dungeons for any whose minds first fall victim to the death spells of enemy curses and lies. Consider one example of this guiding wisdom, good news of salvation hidden within our own language and environment. The narcissus flower yields a potent drug. Proper dosage renders a corpse-like state of suspended animation, a very deep sleep. Thus our term for any substance that compromises awareness narcotic. The word also hails back to an ancient root meaning to twist and turn, as an obsessive liar must also do to disguise the truth of his intentions. A narcissist is so self-centered and self-deceived that the sleep spell upon his own spirit is complete, his freewill birthright cheaply sold. All wisdom and truth is rendered invisible, indistinguishable from darkness. Truth is called a falsity or irrelevant, Goodness is morally equivalent to evil, and artful Beauty is attributed to abominations.

Another Hour of an especially glorious Month during the final Day of the Ancient Moon Sphere, Hal and his progeny were orbiting back around into the sun's beneficent Light. His dreams had quieted. The disturbing dark images were overwhelmed by brighter colors and resonant vibrations emanated from the center of his being. His soul greeted the Dawn, one voice joining countless other human voices filled with longing desire, hope and excitement. It was Spring, time to propagate in the fashion of giant amoebalike, bottom-feeding beasts. And they did so in perfect contentment. Hal's mind had become a most painful awareness, but he could finally surrender the sort of blindsided clarity produced by passage across the Dark Side, another sojourn through the shadow of the Valley of Death. His souls slumber deepened, allowing his spirits awareness to broaden freely beyond that planet's confines, to relax. Subconscious memory of those Darkened Days still haunts our souls, even as our children gaze into the night sky searching for the Man-in-the-Moon. The fixed orbit of that spongy rock looks so cold and hard, however old tales remind us it was once made of cooked and clotting cheese. Thankfully, its dark side is mostly masked by the deepness of night sky, revealing the friendlier, winking stars. And its sunny side always returns after a spell. But our Moon-memory remains as an achingly deceptive self-certainty of sight. It characterizes the modern sort of day-consciousness we label scientific or even enlightening though in actuality it inhibits our spirits path to true Seeing. Even our dream images are scrambled, seeming random and unmeaning, though the original Moon Man's dreaming mind rooted imaginations in reality. If only our dreams today, especially daydreams, could be so well ordered, then the dark veil obstructing our spiritual sight might finally be lifted.

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Meanwhile, Moon Mans planet was falling asleep, growing warmer as it descended, or more properly ascended again into the bosom of its parent star. The sunny sphere embraced its child, whispered comforting thoughts and prayers of Hope, dissolving away all the hardened sufferings of Hal and his little brothers. And there he remained cradled for another cosmic Night. The newly enjoined Fellowship of Light, the Artisans of Earths pre-creation, must also retire soon. But first, the Sun Elders had to toast their Moon Regents accomplishments. They talked and sang and laughed late into the Night, recalling mostly how very close was Mans demise. Then a hush fell. They pondered. The most advanced of mankind's number, just before the final ascension, was observed to undergo a final change, apparently another, perhaps unintended result of their rescue from Darkness. The resident Elders had seen it. Even some of the eldest of rebel spirits were witnessed to sneak out and spy upon it. All were mystified, though it was believed the rebels had exchanged a wicked grin before plunging back into shadow. Some of the human bodies had begun to exhibit a new and curious variation in form. A strange sort of budding had appeared during the equinox of their final Spring fruition. Another arm or leg was hardly needed just there. It hadnt been part of the original Saturn Day design. What could possibly be its purpose? Whose idea was this: rebels or Originator? Others of the human-beasts also budded there, however it happened inwardly, forming a cavity instead. The fellowshipping behavior of human souls was altered also, as those of one variation were gravitating strongly toward the opposite mutation. Meanwhile, the seasonal fruition of forms proceeded like before, as if nothing had really changed. The Wisest of Elders knew better, of course.

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Year Four: Cosmic Maturation

(Of Adam and Eve) They had what they wanted. That they did not like it when they got it does not alter the fact that they certainly got it. -Charles Williams, He Came Down From Heaven (1938) I'm just one hundred and one, five months and a day. I can't believe that! said Alice. Can't you? the Queen said in a pitying tone. Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes. Alice laughed. There's not use trying, she said: one can't believe impossible things. I daresay you haven't had much practice, said the Queen. When I was your age, I always did it for halfan-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. -Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871) The laws that lie presently at the foundation of form-fashioning in the kingdoms of nature are not valid under any circumstances for the more distant past. -Rudolf Steiner, Outline of Esoteric Science (1910)

For the fourth Year of his existence, Hal awoke amidst music and dance. As before, his physical body had been active and functioning long before Hal's mind became aware of it; he awakened already outfitted and stepping his part in a great stage performance. It was much again as you find yourself nightly, playing a new part in yet another dream existence, a life parallel to your daytime identity. It doesn't seem at all strange, during the dream, that a whole other world was already active, with its own history and culture and populations all awaiting your conscious arrival there. Alternate realities are the common stuff of dreams. It's only the dry, technological awareness of this world wherefrom we cast judgment upon those other lives, painting them broadly as mere random imaginations. Earth Day, as the newest Sphere or cosmic Year is titled its first three planetary journeys recap the Saturn, Sun and Moon developments. Only the fourth Day of the newest Year would begin to resemble life as we know it today, another magical unfolding retold in the creation account of Genesis. (I remind the reader that a cycles label, whether as cosmic Day or Year, Season or Hour, depends entirely upon the observers vantage from within or without the process.) Even so-called extremophiles those organisms newly discovered in our world to thrive in highly acidic, alkaline, freezing or boiling environments they could never have survived the prior spheres of physical development nor Earth's initial three cycles reprising those conditions. It was far too hot, toxic and alien for our modern tastes. Hal's first sensations revealed an external world made only of sound. The mans whole body became a hearing organ. This makes simple sense, for one born and raised, so to speak, inside a Symphonic Dance. For eons of ages his total environ was living Voice and Tone, swimming in an orchestra of meaningful resonations. He responded to natures voices with sound-generating flutters and swishes of his own. Free movement spelled joy. Hindrances to that movement caused intense frustration, even pain and rage.

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The leaders of men (Hal was not yet so advanced) were adepts at divining true meaning from this sound world, interpreting voices of higher or lower beings. They could thereby perceive the reality of a plant, an animal or an elder being as a distinctive mental image of color and form. These leaders were awakened to a sharpness of consciousness more like people today, directing and regulating the activities of earths populations according to the wisdom of elder spirits with whom they constantly communed. The masses of human souls were followers then, living in dimmer awareness of sensations and emotions more like instinct. Though a class of half-adepts emerged (Hal might almost have been considered so) growing able to discern wisdom in external sensations. Many of these became the priest-chiefs of later generations when direct perception of the spiritual world was veiled. At the other extreme, a deficient class of men devolved as less and less able to host the developing human awareness. They had no sense of spiritual selfhood. And these were eventually left behind, either retreating into extinction or continuing as ancestors of our highest animal species:
You must therefore never imagine that the human being was ever such an animal as those existing on earth today. The bodies of those animals were not at that time capable of receiving the I, the Ego; they had remained with the group nature of the Moon. The last which had almost achieved the additional principle of the earth, but which nevertheless proved later on too weak to be the vehicle of an individual soul, are the apes, the present Ape species. They too, however, were never actual ancestors of mankind, but beings which had degenerated. -Rudolf Steiner, Theosophy of the Rosicrucian (1907)

Thus the apes are men of a past epoch who have regressed. As man was once less perfect than he is at present, they were once more perfect than they are now... That which has remained in the field of the human, has gone through a similar process, but within these human limits. Many savage tribes must be considered to be the degenerated descendants of human forms which were once more highly developed. They did not sink to the level of animalism, but only to that of savagery. -R Steiner, Cosmic Memory: Prehistory of Earth and Man (1904)

Second Day, the worlds substances densified; Hals hearing ability localized. A sense of touch germinated to distinguish more proximate vibrations, heat and cold. In fact, the mans body started generating its own inner heat as the outer air cooled. All these developments had the effect of awakening Hals mind even further, both to the pains and pleasures of bodily existence. Seeds inherited from his Sun Sphere existence sprouted, and he began to desire more of the pleasurable, carrying a memory of preferences from one body life into the next. Their manner of reproduction had changed also from the original cell-like splitting off of like bodies to something resembling what man and animals know now an internally protected gestation of smaller young, mother and child forms. However, a baby was born ensheathed by a protective exoform, a sort of soft shell, upon which Hal's parent-soul intention continued to work until the child became independently viable enough to cast off its shell. No, the man did not sit on his eggs. But even after the hatching, mothers of Hal exercised magical willpower over their external environment, summoning fire from the air when babies needed it, creating a cradle of restorative energy.

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Again, no child of today would feel nurtured by such a monster. Dont even imagine a giant ape mother, rather something more like the phantom progenitor of all deep-sea leviathans, great cephalopods in an ocean of fire. Hal's babies felt at home, nonetheless, and they flourished by the thousands. Child lived in parent, who likewise lived through children. They thrived and survived as one body, sharing vitality, a common blood. The kinship we experience as a rule of genetics or psychology today our most ancient ancestors actually lived it in body and being. No man ever lived alone.

Evening and Morning launched a third Day, looking very like the Old Moon. Earth eventually separated from our sun star and other planets, segregating elders from the human progeny and mankind's lesser brethren. The regents of Man also separated out the beastly human species from company of advancing families like Hal's kindred, the truly adamic souls. What distinguished these? It was obvious, really, as the biblical account illustrates Whenever the highly developed soul awakens, rebel spirits are attracted, those bent upon triggering a soul crisis known biblically as the Fall of Man. So it has been, ever since mankind's genesis on this planet. It became a cosmic law, so far as life here is concerned. Lucifer's hoards know it and swarm up to take full advantage of it. Such has become their whole reason for being. And so they continue to deceive Hal and all his brother souls. As a result, Earth's environment was more rapidly cooling and hardening; the animal kingdom was falling backward, losing any humanlike consciousness of pain or emotion; our plant kingdom devolved, losing animal sensibilities; and the mineral kingdom was descending, so today only crystalline forms retain any plantlike nature. We all fall down. Further result: The awareness-of-soul characterizing each kingdom of life was sorely compromised, including Mans own consciousness. An untimely spell of sleep laid hold of Hal's mind and that of all Earths creations. Ironically, it seemed to him that his 'eyes were opened' indeed as the lucifers had promised. (These whispering wise ones their worst and their best predictions always come to pass, though it may be hard to tell which is which.) And so, an external sense of sight was initiated, prematurely germinating another seed planted way back upon the Saturn Sphere. A yet further fall: The Sun Spheres division between inner and outer experience now manifested and sharpened. The physical neurology established during the Moon Sphere was beginning to function, further linking mind to external sensation. Hal's soul began attaching already familiar properties of shape and color now to objects encountered. In fact, he became quite animated, absorbed for millennia naming the populations of creatures as separate things around him. However, direct inner apprehension of soul beings suffered his previously familiar mode of communion with higher and lower spiritual brethren. More and more the soul became pre-occupied primarily as a mirror for physical object perception. Thus the germs of our so-called day-consciousness were conceived: full in-body awareness as a world of external sensation, also the contrasting

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lonely inner world of personal feeling, desire and rational cognition. Only later generations would finally realize what the first Adam so lacked, what Hal and his brothers needed to counteract the Fall. What man truly wanted was a moral sense of responsibility to control lower nature urges personal pride, self-consciousness, conscience. That's what the deceiving elders neglected to whisper, nay-saying the promised Curse. But in truth, such a Hope would have disrupted their rebellious plan, forever dislodging Lucifer as rival regent. Finally the Day ended, when all heavenly bodies reunited. Earth, sun and planets recombined and Evening also fell.

Fourth Day began again with all previous developments in a germinal state of potentiality, Steiner's words; or as another Genesis account puts it, without form and void. Advancing human spirits were present there as independent thought entities, but they had no physical form as yet. Hal certainly thought he existed, likewise all his brothers nobody could have told him otherwise, so he did. All lower creature forms crystallized first as thoughts of their Creators, whereby the generations began again to propagate as during prior spheres, after their own kind. Thought forms vibrated the air, condensed to a watery state and finally densified mineral substances of earth to fashion bodily forms, much as words are shaped by ideas, radio or sound packages of intent. Multiplied ages of redevelopment began to materialize in process generations of mineral, plant and animal kingdoms, and finally the advancing human individualities. Imagine tuning a giant television to a broadcast showing an ancient Earth venue. First it appears as only a brilliant snow storm of chaotically bouncing electrons. Then outlines emerge separating land from skyline, water from air and ocean from shore. These are the firmaments where life prefers to gather, teeming with fruition. Focus sharpens on the motions of clouds and oceans, their currents and waves. Color separation reveals plant life, trees and shrubs. Further definition allows emergence of lower land and sea creatures, then birds and finally higher animal populations. The picture emerges complete, showing all these kingdoms of nature having already lived and grown and propagated for thousands of generations in uncounted variations of species. Only highest definition begins to bring the generations of Adam onto the screen of physical visibility. However the discriminating viewer might earlier have noticed Man's shadowy outlines here and there, like ghost images or interference from a rival frequency. To Hal, who was one of the adamic progeny, this planetary Day was enduring to resemble something more like a Week of intervening days and nights. Even these cycles were long, more like lifetimes, wherein watery bodies lived and grew in response to the external sun. Meanwhile, the man's mind enjoyed his own inner world of brightly colorful feeling, a blissful contentment with that outward growth, and an inner music flooding his soul with each new breath of air. It was still an intensely tropical climate by our standards, but a physical paradise to all of Adam's kind. Daytimes closed with the

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slow passing round of sun, when all Hals members would abandon physical bodyhood again. Yet, like the Moon cycles, his mind remained behind in sustained communion with the sun, to sleep safely in the company of ministering Elders on high. Hal's body substances dissembled from his living form, and finally only a germ of that form remaining, awaiting the new day as the earth turned faithfully round again to face its shining Regent. Then Hal's spirit intention could re-assemble and reshape new bodily forms out of conglomerated matter, the dust and clay of the earth. Now, three immaterial kingdoms emerged, as uttered by creating spirits. These had developed to serve as foundational forces underlying our current earths physiology and biology, matter and life as we know it. (Herein dwell hosts of metaphysical life forms, the fabled faerie folk, the dryad, naiad or undine, the faun, gnome and troll-like creatures.) Behold, the electromagnetic energy spectrum, including that tiny band of frequencies appearing to our eye as the rainbow of physically visible light. (Electrical and magnetic energy fields, being a negative counterpart or shadow of light, were ever preferred by rebel spirits as their particular dominion.) Next observe the subtle energies enabling chemical sensations of taste and smell, hormones regulating metabolism and immunity, molecules of emotion, pleasure and pain. And thirdly re-examine the lower or courser ranges of vibrational energy that exhibit as touch, tone and sound. Underneath it all, these forces function like activating and fixative agents to accelerate the densification of physical forms. And as the first days wound down, it was the recapitulated separation of earth from sun that finally accomplished full materialization of Earth's cosmic sphere as the incarnate body of Adams domain. Second Season of the fourth Day repeated yet again an environment like the Old Moon. However, Earth's matter and human bodies were solidifying too fast and too hard for men's souls to properly reanimate the morning after every twilight. Therefore, third Season launched yet another separation, creating our current satellite moon body. It was a friendly and beneficent withdrawal of Elders to a distance wherefrom they could do their work more slowly and carefully, counterbalancing the Sun Regent's consuming fires. However a number of the Moon powers, less advanced than their brothers, remained hidden in the bowels of earth to pursue unwisely agendas of their own. Up to this point, Hal's soul-being remained outside any bodily form, vivifying its processes from above, just as Elders had done in turns for eons of his development. However, now the man felt his body as actually belonging to him, indeed an image or copy of his inner being. Yet even this comfortable arrangement was changing. Toward the close of this prime Season of days, each body was born actually bearing much of the life and energy of its growth now within its physical shell. A part of the human soul, that part which in turn replenishes the body's life, would also dwell within a fleshly skin made of physical stuff. That is until the daytime closed and the body of clay was cast off. That's when the soul and life that sustained Hal were again called back to rejoin the Spirit or parent Self which always remained in the company of Elders, daytime or night, there to re-energize and re-think the next embodiment. The continuing descent of Hal's spirit would one day lodge a temporary likeness of this eternal individuality into the temporal soul, there to dwell from physical birth to death
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and from morning to night as a dimly mirrored self-awareness. That event was reserved for the far distant future. Then Hal's body would also bear the stamp of lonely individuality. But even this day, during the earliest seasons of the man's earth-bound beginnings, there were variations of form appearing. Human souls were growing independent of their hosts, those like Hal, whose incarnations were advancing most according to Plan how-be-it not so fast as many rebel elders desired, nor yet so slow as laggard spoilers intended. The families of Adam drifted again into sympathetic groupings, reflecting the ancient Moon culture and foreshadowing what would later devolve as differing races of men. Adam's collective body, earth's globe, was spinning now, having been freed of its fixed Moon mode of orbit. Influences of Darkness and Light were more balanced and regular, proceeding like clockwork to count down the Hours unto fulfillment of the Plan. Third Season of the fourth Day is key. It was then that the Eldest performed another in a series of sacrifices, pouring into Man's evolution the power of Ego, that being individual self-consciousness. This was the risk of all Risks and resulted, of course, in a series of new crises. First event, Hal's soul character, and therefrom his body began to transform. The form of Man known as lemurian to the sages was inherited in part from the Old Moon then adapted to Earths conditions in course of the third planetary Day. Hals numbers would have appeared to our eyes like swarms of flaming dragons. In fact, many of the fossilized dinosaur shapes were animals devolved from this period and hardened prematurely. They developed as they did because their lord and sire, Adam, was one time formed as such. Yet in no way can the evolution of mans current form be traced to any dinosaur species. It simply wasn't so, because the sons of Adam were graced to cast off the saurian shape for good reason. Until the separation of earth from moon, our human souls were wholly dominated by animal drives, much as paleontologists will dramatize the society of Jurassic beasts. Even Hal could never otherwise have yielded lower soul to higher ideals. But this separation could not prevent an ever deeper fall of his condition into materiality; likewise that of fellow creature kingdoms. The momentum of Hal's descent continued on into future generations, an ontological inertia. This Day recapitulated the biblical Fall and Expulsion from Paradise, developments actually encouraged by the company of rebel elders named for their leader, Lucifer, meaning light-bearer. Remember, they were among those from the Old Moon who had failed to complete their migration to the sun, intending rather to make themselves quasiregents of Man's intellectual development, prematurely awakening the seeds of rational cognition. To them this advance appears as a gift of inner light, though in truth it is ever an error-prone attitude, a veiled and very limited understanding masquerading as wisdom. The lucifers infiltrated the Watchers earth-stationed Elders appointed to guide and protect human development posing as teachers of early human civilization. The Genesis account surveys some of their technological accomplishments. Selfishness, arrogance and
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interracial strife are their legacy, also the nephilum half-human abominations of later generations. More about that struggle later.
Prior to the advent of the Luciferic influence, the human soul carried out all its activities in line with the intentions of higher spiritual beings. The plan of all that should be accomplished was determined from the beginning, and to the degree that human consciousness was developed it could foresee how, in the future, evolution would be compelled to proceed in accordance with the preconceived plan. This prophesying consciousness was lost when the veil of earthly perceptions was woven over the manifestation of higher spiritual beings and the real forces of the sun nature concealed themselves in these perceptions. The future now became uncertain. With this uncertainty, the possibility of the sense of fear implanted itself in the soul. Fear is the direct result of error. But we also see how under the Luciferic influence man became independent of certain forces to which he previously submitted himself without will. Now he could make decisions by himself. Freedom is the result of this influence, and fear and similar feelings are only the accompanying phenomena of the progress of man to freedom. Rudolf Steiner, Outline of Esoteric Science (1910)

Man's abandonment of the Moon or Dragon condition yielded two more landmark events, both impacting our historical era. One was the aforementioned Curse described in Genesis concurrent with Man's beneficent Expulsion from Paradise. Rival rebels from as far back as the Sun Sphere (known by names Ahriman, Satan and Ba'al) had ambitions upon the lower nature of Man's being, aiming to drag all of Earth's creation down to the animal, even mineral levels. These enemies are masters of dark deception, entanglement and shame, aiming to demoralize man, inciting suspicion and fear, constructing a blinding veil of confusion over all human awareness. Predatory survival behavior became bloody; death gruesome; production grew laborious and pain agonizing. Only Man's life-being was protected, at least partially, as the Elders responsible withdrew even further and thereby set limits upon temporal body existence. This pre-emptive judgment was titled The Curse though actually a great blessing. Else, fallen mankind would have retained a magical power over earth's life and elements, in strife tending soon to destroy his own home planet and all hope of succeeding generations. Instead, aging minds and bodies were scheduled to weaken and fail, so that Hal and his kin would never grow too attached to their temporary forms. However, accelerated descent into matter would plague them with disease and decay. New births were prone to deformity and individual lifetimes were ever shortened. Earth's spin quickened with the shortening of human body lives. Faster solar days (more properly, terra-days) continued to measure Man's portion. Hal's awareness of Time slowed to an arduous crawl. All earth groaned and heavens grieved, knowing that a Season was to come when the generations of mankind would require a new infusion of pure unblemished Life to continue the Plan of development.

Prior even to the Curse was another crisis, the Earthly division of sexes. As the modern human skeleton developed and Hal's brethren stood mostly upright, the predominantly Old Moon feminine nature split into two distinct male and female genders. It happened gradually, propagating forms that were predominantly male or female, each still receptive
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to internal impregnation by the Sun forces of Life. (That had truly been an immaculate conception.) Yet even among later Lemurian generations there appeared male forms equipped to carry this power externally to exclusively female bodies. This pattern naturally repeated itself among lower animal species. To watching elders, it appeared an irredeemably barbaric and chaotic way of life. Just imagine the rutting behavior of tyrannosaurs. On second thought, don't. Therefore, certain of the Elders braved to question the Originator of Species about this sundering of sexual natures Was it a deviation from the Plan? Answer: No, this too is Good, for a Season. In fact, it is thanks to this fact our animal passions being pushed down as physical sexualitythat Hal's mind became free to host an Earthly development of human spirituality. Thus were the mans soul resources released largely from the duty of propagating his species. Adam's sons were freed further to develop individual human consciousness. It was to be a Naming in Truth, not as the lucifers would christen Adams sons. Hals soul neednt remain alone in its selfishness as when first divorced from commune with its Originator. His sense of Self may be reborn rather, conceived instead of the Spirit-who-sacrificially-stays-with-us. And the human spirits physical instrument Hal's superior brain. The energies of humankind's animal urges were transformed as man matured, availed by the most developed as spiritual longings instead, the desire for eternal wisdom and the impetus to advance spiritually, eternally. Modern results include the kind of rational thought and moral culpability we consider a minimal distinction of our humanity today. Ultimately, even sensual love serving self may be redirected as sacrificial Love toward others. (Early sense of this potential is experienced as a parent's protective affection for its own offspring.) Irony is that a male body hosts a female soul of sensitivities (though men are quite loath to admit it), while the female body is actually animated by a masculine lower nature. Go figure. The maturing human spirit, however, seeks remarriage of both natures, restoring the powers of imagination and will to perfect harmony. Only then will dark dreamy bestial instinct be replaced by bright conscious intuition.

This earth is inhabited by the higher spiritual entities, which, in the most diverse ways, are active in the realms we have mentioned. They form a spirit community, so to speak, a spirit state, and their dwellingplace and workshop is the earth, which they carry with them as a snail does its shell. -Rudolf Steiner, Cosmic Memory: Prehistory of Earth and Man (1904)

Hal had conscious access to two classes of elder helpers present during this period (those who were later called Watchers). Spirits of Love were concerned with the sensuality of mankind, motivating the specialization of all his physical functions and continuing generations something like cosmic Cupids. Spirits of Wisdom were also attendant, many who had flagged in development during the prior Sphere. These were

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the lucifers already introduced, the bringers of light or illuminators as in enlightenment, understanding. They focussed upon the soul-development of man. This last association inspired Hal's desire for knowledge, for wisdom tempting him to covet ever greater freedom, even before his soul had properly matured. However Earth's continued descent into matter (the Fall of Man) turned this quest for knowledge more and more toward physical nature and the sensual side of life. Other would-be helpers were also around. This Day there had been a wider series of separations, as during prior spheres and phases. Some friendly and many not so friendly spirits were moved away to further orbiting bodies so their influence would not overwhelm or derail the Elder's Plan. Also hosts of adamic human spirits lagging dangerously behind in certain respects were removed for safe keeping to these satellite worlds until Earth conditions could be regulated better for their needs. Genesis alludes to this in the story of Cain and Abel and the selected line of Seth. Hal's family was originally of the earlier group, though later re-adopted into Sethian clans as were most surviving races of human development. When the moon was finally ejected from Earths sphere, these banished human spirits were returned, at least those having some hope of contributing to the Plan. Thus the Mars men were ushered back by their champion Michael, which event introduced a new element into Earths evolution iron. It was a magical substance, from which our red blood gets its wonderful respiratory ability. Thereby Hal started breathing air and walking upright. He and other sons of Seth developed the physical brain capable of hosting an individual ego as potential overlord of his animal nature. Not so, most of the other races. Even modern anthropologists recognize that whole branches of early humanity were doomed to extinction or subduction in the human gene pool. Such, apparently, were the Neanderthals. The very fact that properly advancing souls took residence in the blood was of primary significance to their survival. Hal and his brothers would turn pale with fear and blush with embarrassment or shame. Primitive reptilian animal nature is not so. The red blood, the heart and lymphatic rhythms became literal expressions of the man's soul state (and to a lesser extent that of higher animals). We know this intuitively, though prominent scientists propose we are innocents all thoughts and decisions pre-determined by underlying hormonal cocktails. But contrary to modern biochemical mythologies, it is truly the Human of all Earth's creatures who begins to dominate his material and animal being. It may appear as involuntary even Hal felt it a weakness compared to surrounding conscienceless societies. It marked these sons of Seth as fundamentally different, bound to follow a distinctive road. But that is and was only a phase in our complete development. Male souls especially feel keenly the expectation that even body chemistry and its various pulsations are fundamentally expressions of human will. Hal has always suspected that he should be able to control his tears, his gonads, sweat and various body odors. And one day, like all the voluntary muscle functions, the blood will also be subject fully to our growing freedom of will.

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From orbiting brother planets, mankind on earth would receive both motivations and inhibitions as a more balanced aid to controlling his lower soul being. Astrological sciences were born, seeking to divine planetary influences, the intentions of those distant elders. Mosaic Law is one example, described later as Tutor of mankinds moral sensibilities. This code served as an external guide until Hal's own conscience might become a reliable manager. In fact, all modern forms of government and jurisprudence are born of that Law first revealed to ancient Semitic civilizations.

Now just a pause to look about and take our bearings on this voyage: Mankinds development today is found in the fifth Hour of the fifth Season of the fourth Day of our fourth Sphere. The first half of this Earth Sphere is known as Tewis (Zeus or Mars) Day its Champion Michael the Warrior who continues to battle the great Dragon for the souls of Man. The last half of Earths development is designated as Wodens (Mercury) Day, named for Gabriel, the messenger of Mankinds salvation. Today we are well into the Wednesday (Wodensday) of our creation. Therefore the current number of Man (referenced in the Bibles final Revelation) is actually a cosmic date: 445.5 (base 7). Saturn Man had constructed a life-like body. Sun Man first conceived a living body. Moon Man was borne a living soul. But only Earth Man, feeling keenly his separateness as a lonely soul, could finally say, I AM. Hal was becoming a spirit incarnate with the potential thereby to make himself a loving soul, a life-giving spirit blessing creatures distinctly other than himself. The future Hal may carry that object awareness further up into the spiritual dimensions, providing a perspective unknown even to the highest angels. Coming spheres will allow each man to realize a spiritual soul, a living spirit and finally a completely spiritualized body.

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Year Four continues: Lemuria, Atlantea and Post-atlantean History

Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud, but the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that everything is stooping and hiding a face? If we could only get round in front -G K Chesterton, The Man Who was Thursday (1908) History can never be explained by considering physical facts alone. -Rudolf Steiner, Christianity in Human Evolution (1909.) For the nineteenth-century fantasy of early man first gazing, with his mind tabula rasa, at natural phenomena like ours, then seeking to explain them with thoughts like ours, and then by a process of inference `peopling' them with the `aery phantoms' of mythology, there just is not any single shred of evidence whatever. -Owen Barfield, Saving the Appearances (1965)

The animals had a capacity of extraordinarily rapid adaptation to new conditions. The malleable body changed its organs comparatively rapidly, so that after a more or less brief period the descendants of a particular animal species resembled their ancestors only slightly. The same was the case in even greater measure for the plants. The greatest influence on the transformation of men and animals was exercised by man himself. This was true whether he instinctively brought organisms into such an environment that they assumed certain forms, or whether he achieved this by experiments in breeding. The transforming influence of man on nature was immeasurably great at that time, compared with the conditions of today. -R Steiner, Cosmic Memory: Prehistory of Earth and Man (1904)

Just an echo of this ancient capacity appeared eons later in the biblical story of Jacob's dominion over his uncle's goat herd, an innate ability to control by power of imagination and intent the breeding of select color patterns. It was a mastery of form exercised by Hal and his brothers from the earliest Days, determining first his own body size and shape as occasion required and later the evolution of other cohabiting species. During the Lemurian age, humankind took the saurian form, moving and behaving much as the legendary dragons. They flew from place to place in short hops and struggled to stand upright upon land. Their bodies were never hard enough, however, to leave any of the fossil remains enduring for modern scrutiny. Then, the air was still a scalding hot mist, and most of earths surface was volcanically molten, with thin crusts of cooling ground. Plants began to take the basic forms we see now. Animal species devolved from laggard human spirits carried over from the Old Moon. Hardly will a Darwinist consider that pre-humankind was never animal such as those appearing on earth today, not even like the higher apes. The Adam species had entirely separate evolutions from the beginning. Never yet would a material evolutionist dream that human adepts were responsible for the intelligent design behind much of animal specialization in body and behavior. Many of the oldest mythologies (read some African and Indian fables) recall this original plasticity of animal forms and Mans playfully creative impositions during the childhood of his evolution. In fact, even the non-lingual, precognitive Lemurian races exhibited a godlike ability to command lower kingdoms, plants and mineral elements. It took only a hand infused with
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primal-human power of will to lift a great boulder, indeed to move a mountain. No calculation or recall of prior experience was needed for their constructions; a builder could see intuitively how materials would serve, much like the autistic savant of our day. Hal's fellows didnt use words to communicate, though they could utter sounds. Just their thoughts enjoined with willpower conveyed any necessary meaning soundlessly. Lemurian adepts, like the legendary magician or Star Wars Jedi, could manipulate matter and life and behavioral processes with his mind alone. When a passion motivated him, the human soul could call up fire from the atmosphere and the lower cauldrons of earth to dissolve any rocky obstruction. Mans imaginative powers were ever connected with the forces of nature, both perceived as sacred gifts of the gods. And as human passions cooled, so did the very surface of earth. The person and habitation of lemurian Hal would appear both barbarically alien and superhuman to modern children. Hals child rearing practices during that age would especially alarm us today. Boys were expected to endure dangers, torturous trials of fire and blade, in order to harden their wills and toughen their skins. Young girls were trained in fantasy. They were conditioned to internalize the terrible wonders of nature, developing powers of imagination in appreciation of beauty, strength and courage. For example, the girl would be left alone on a mountainside to behold the awesome beauty of a storm, combating very fear of its majesty. Lemurian families lived in caves mostly modern mythology gets that much right but they were also skilled at constructing great temples of learning and artistry from wood, stone and earth. Had they survived the global devastations, these buildings would far surpass anything that later civilizations could conceive. Even the Sphinx and the Tower of Babel were but feeble imitations of what used to be.

Except for a remnant of the sons of Seth, all earth's populations were indeed destroyed by a holocaust of fire. Human souls that had retained command over the elements were brought back from their Saturn sanctuary and immediately fell entirely under the most radical of luciferic influences. Generations into the next age, known as Atlantean (pre-Flood), an early order of the Magi of men were able to begin transforming Lucifer's spells from an inhibiting factor into an instrument of advancement, a godspell. This they continued through succeeding ages of history (chief among them famous names like Zoroaster, Melchizidek and Buddha), preparing for advent of the Christ who would finally replace Lucifer as rightful Lightbearer, conveyor of Wisdom and Truth. But rival orders would confuse and encumber mankind's preparations, those mystery schools of wisdom most influenced by Lucifer or by Satan or other self-interested elder powers. Meanwhile the Eldest continued their ministries from the sun and moon and from within Earth's sphere, deflecting the worst of enemy follies, commuting even the Curse into blessings of humanity's future.

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Memory appeared first among women as their powers of imagination developed. Hal's clans boasted many of these prodigies. The women also conceived some of the first ideas of morality, law and order. Womankind became the designers and the directors of mens manipulative powers. A mother of Hal knew best what was good to eat and where it would be most profitable to farm, to hunt or to mine. She was the doctor and contractor; He was the artisan, the engineer and the warrior. As men continued to exercise powers of will over nature, over their body form and clan settlements, it was later generations who attached memory to male authority, the Father Soul of human family groups. But originally, it was Woman who civilized Man. A wise woman had only to dream, and nature would whisper its sagacities, informing the course of their lives. This interpretive imagination would develop into the prototypical nature language, sounding to us more like song than speech. The tones and rhythms of the feminine sirens song has ever since entranced attentions of men. These and other distinctly human attributes came gradually under ownership of souls like Hal's, those growing more individualized with each new generation. The weconsciousness inherited from Old Moon Man was being replaced by a growing sense of personal responsibility, devotion to objective standards of morality and spiritual thirst that is every lone souls longing for reconnection with its parent spirit. This individualization would later inhibit Atlantean Hal's awesome power of memory, eventually limiting the soul's recall to one single body lifetime, even as powers of rationalization increased. This seems only normal to us now days. But even the later Atlanteans still experienced a kind of immortality of consciousness, each recalling as his own the lifetimes of multiple generations past until materialization and individualization and sensualization of Earth's processes trapped self-awareness into single cycles of bodyhood, birth unto death. Such progress was darkening Hal's worldview. And one day all memory of the spirits experiences would be rendered subconscious. Tragically, he would no longer recall the company of Elders and their restorative ministries between death and new soul birth. Before then, when a body withered and died, it was more like losing a limb in order that a new one would grow in its place. However a dimming spiritual awareness continued, passed from father to son, an ever-diminishing capacity to bless or curse one's offspring. Enemy influences have distorted spiritual memory. So in place of the great Book of Life, men would celebrate perverted exploits of Olympian god-men or propagate erroneous traditions of karmic cycles of rebirth, shackling new human souls to sinful ancestors or wretched animal natures. Truth about the reincarnations of human spirit remained hidden for millennia, known only to initiates though Christ himself referenced the mystery in regard to John the Baptist and Elijah, as well as His own Being as a man. Likewise was memory of ancient child training practice perverted to become aberrant sacrificial rites in supposed appeasement of evil gods. Again, the most advanced of Atlantean humankind appeared weak and delicate compared to corrupted populations. Hal's folk were soft and pliable in form, remaining smaller in body unless a particular task required otherwise. Early man was indeed a shape

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changer. It was the less developed souls which grew to giant, fixed and hardened proportions. Worst of these were the nephilim, the daemon half-breeds of apocryphal lore. Moral corruption resulted in crude and fantastic shapes, reflecting openly the distortions of their soul states. (Not so our modern face and form, which serve to hide much of soul behind a fixed mask of appearanceThis will change in future, when a beastly soul nature will mark itself again upon the person's outward appearance.) Most of the nephilim were prone to die early of their own defects and did not survive the Atlantean judgment. Those few groups that continued and settled in the Canaan region were finally purged from Earth's gene pool by the early Israelites under assignment of the Sun Regent Himself.

Before demise of their world, the Atlanteans developed complex civilizations and technologies. Hal's folk utilized their power over plant growth to construct houses of stone and stem, ornate temples, also wonderful vehicles of transport much like hovercraft. Later tales of elven peoples recall somewhat of Atlantea, a society both simple and sophisticated in its symbiosis with nature. They were nourished primarily by the milky sap of primitive plant life. Individuals of Hal's group soul were bound literally by common blood, deliberately reflecting their distinction and tribal allegiance in a uniform set of body features, skin and hair color. These ancient dynasties prefigured the different races of our post-Antlantea history. Group governments were maintained by authority of the strongest chieftain. There was yet no spoken language until much later, however men and women and all other living creatures were able to understand each other implicitly a sort of telepathy or mindmelding of meaning. Also, all the sounds and images of nature functioned as a universal vocabulary, still reflecting imaginatively the thoughts and intentions of elder creators. The Atlantean atmosphere was continually thick with mist, so Hal almost never beheld any stars. As the mists thinned, sun and moon appeared as if newly created. These were momentous events, widely celebrated. Sight of atmospheric phenomena auroras, lightening, meteor trails, rainbows was physically improbable and were virtually never known until conditions allowed for localized cloud formation and precipitation. The Bibles record of first appearances is literally true. Leading up to that day, a great evil had infested the Atlantean populations. As already described, it was worst among those privileged orders initiated by enemy elders. Corrupt adepts and the combined power of decadent human deeds unleashed chaotic forces of nature. This resulted in destruction of the Atlantean continent by terrestrial catastrophes of air and water. Only a remnant of the most farseeing of Seth's sons survived, being led to migrate from the far north, where they had previously retreated, to colonize the newly emergent continent of Asia. The most advanced refugees fathered the great cradle of civilizations identified with common history.

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First was the ancient East Indian culture, which closely imitated the previous Antlantean way of life. Germanic mythology recalls in tales of fantastical creatures (borne of earth, water, air and fire) what Antlanteans actually beheld of resident spirit beings etheric life forms above and below mankind before the Veil of object-consciousness had completely blinded their immaterial sight. Many could yet perceive directly the wisdom of the gods inherent in their natural home. But depravity persisted within these new colonies. Even adepts would eventually betray their calling. Abominations of human regeneration continued, though the most grotesque would die out, unable to survive as earth substances hardened. Such was an evident blessing of the Curse. Later generations would purge any remaining deviants from their midst, though ever remembered in legend as both heroes and monsters. Ancient tales recall also the shapes of corrupting elder powers, those occasions when they descended atavistically into material dimensions, appearing deceptively before mankind's childish object-consciousness as fantastical distortions of animal and mythical spirit forms. They continue to do so on occasion as inexplicable phenomena, such as the nightmare, ghost sightings and various other alien encounters. Most of mankind since then, has fallen into a spiritual slumber or paralysis. Thus the entities and their activities in realms outside physical appearance are mostly shielded from direct perception. That too is largely a blessing. The Ancient Indians were the first to lose direct perception of spiritual kingdoms, but their longing to restore the primeval oneness with nature continues to this day. Their spirituality remains backward seeing, ever regarding the stark world of physical senses, intellect and object consciousness as maya, or illusion, distracting seekers of enlightenment from the ultimate goal, that of going back to the truer dream-like consciousness of their Atlantean fathers. Roots of the Medo-Persian civilizations developed concurrently, though their dominance of Earth's populations followed the ages of Pre-Vedic India. These were more forwardlooking peoples, seizing upon the world of maya for the first time as reality. Such was the persuasion of Hal's soul regenerations, before the reign of Nimrod. These peoples regarded the earth and nature as hostile forces to be conquered, then as subjects to be molded through labor, even tamed or enslaved for their arrogant purposes. Then came the Chaldean, Babylonian and Egyptian peoples. They were first to recognize natural order and law the world wasnt merely a battleground of forces opposing man. They did perceive vaguely the activities of gods in the regularity of stars. They felt that the germs of wisdom gathered from nature must lead to godly knowledge. They were wrong mostly and readily misled, as humanly derived wisdom is never reliable. Hals spirit sought rebirth only twice during this age, once as a man and again as a woman. Such was the pattern from then on, until that Day when the rib of Adam will be restored and Hal is no longer compelled to father generations of mirror souls, male or female. Until then, the produce of each soul's lifetime is weighed and paid back unto the father spirit, the heavenly bosom of Hal.

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The fourth or Greco-Latin age developed civilizations actually informed by natural wisdom. Man would begin to imprint his own spiritual understanding upon the substances of earth and the institutions of culture. Previously, schools of wisdom were the purview of special priesthoods for adepts only. The same wisdom was becoming common and public domain of every man. It was the median of history, the turning point of human consciousness and therefore the fruitful time for our Sun Regent to enter that history. (Sadly, Hal was not to meet the ascended Son of Adam in course of that season; not yet.) Perception of the outer sense-world had been sharpening, and continues to advance. However, physical perception was still rising at the expense of spirit. Spiritual sight and hearing had been growing ever dimmer and finally all-but disappeared behind the veils imposed by enemy elders. That age has passed into a fifth development, our own history of western civilization. The ancient group mind feeling interdependently dependent upon one authority has given way to the individual valuing of natural rights and free expression of ones personal inner reality. Relation by blood carries lessened import. Racial ties and barriers have all but disappeared. Even nationality is considered obsolete or damaging. Meanwhile, we have sunk deeper yet into materiality, over-valuing physical comforts and possessions. Souls borne into our latest age of enlightenment and industrialization experienced mankinds deepest and darkest descent from the heavens. Our modern age has employed the wisdom of the ages in a technocratic worldview, seeking finally to bury spirituality in a muddy grave of self-sufficiency. The Greeks sought to raise man as a new god among elder gods. Modern man has lowered himself to the level of another beast, slightly more clever than the ape. There is a way upward again. The coming age has already begun to champion this message. The Way is newly cleared and paved by the Sun Regent himself, a shining road ever defended by Michael and his hosts against the Beast that would be Man. The Way is also ancient, established as a specially advanced priesthood generations before the deluge of Antlantea. There were many such priesthoods, each sponsored by an elder regent and his hosts. The Christ oracle was inspired by the Eldest of the Sun Sphere who has since replaced Lucifer as both Life and Light of the world. Meanwhile the ancient enmity between Lucifer and Ahriman's legions accelerates to an apocalyptic crisis. Persian mythologies featured this rivalry. Thus the Magi were given to foresee the timely reappearance of Earth's one rightful Regent, the true Christ; and streams of their foundational wisdom continue to this day in diluted forms. So it is figured again in the modern comic book superheroes and arch-villains. Other modern mythologies recall that old competition between priesthoods for dominance of mankind's development Chariots of the Gods, Stargate, even Radical Islam, Mormonism and Scientology. These are fundamentally luciferic in persuasion and ambition. They would demonize western ideals of materialism and humanism as the Great Satan, Prince of Darkness, chief Deceiver of souls ever veiling men's minds from perception of the Truth and Light of their spiritual origins. Agnostic Darwinism, atheistic

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Marxism and democratic Capitalism are all painted with the same broad brush of Lord Lucifer's condemnations. He warns that men's hearts and souls are so lured to abandon their intended destinies, their birthright to becoming nubile gods. The Spirit of the Modern Age, that ancient Dragon, would finally anesthetize all human spirits to a dim bestial level of awareness. And the warning is true, so far as it goes. However, Lucifer's oracles see no way out of Ahriman's paralyzing spell, no escape other than death in defiance of all physicality, even its energy forms. That is the Gnostic's gospel. It ultimately demands sacrifice of all body states below the spiritual. Even unwilling sacrifice is the best news and best hope they can offer. Their last-ditch strategy is to stoop and covertly join forces with their own enemy against the Plan, incarnating Lucifer as a god-man. That would provide him ultimate power over the generations of Adam, to enforce the perfection of sacrifice that Lucifer portends, not redeeming but stifling forever Man's lower nature. This in hope of accomplishing a cosmic coup, installing Lucifer again to his old position so that he (instead of the Christ) may be revealed mankind's long-awaited rescuer from the torture pits of Ahriman's dungeons. But the true Christ is already ascended in the life and being of Jesus of Nazareth. He established a better way, the intended Way according to our Originator's Plan. Hal's feminine soul like the old fairy stories tell is to be wooed and gently reawakened from Ahriman's enchantments. Indeed physicality was the proper means to realize true illumination, freedom at the risk of entanglement. It's the kind of Love that would voluntarily yield up His own Life so that all mankind could live and be saved, the very mystery of Golgotha. It's a gift, not enforcement, the sort of perfection Hal must consciously choose in complete freedom of will. And Saint John's apocalypse reveals the true nature of Lucifer's unholy alliance with his arch-rival against the Christ. The Apostle contrasts the White Horseman, figuring the Sun Regents triumphal return for his Bride, against the ludicrously abhorrent picture of that old harlot, a hag called Babylon mounting her illicit lover, the Beast Ahriman's frankenstinian corruption of poor unwary Hal. The doom of his modern-day soul teeters dangerously upon the brink of Time called History. It is yet to be recorded in the Cosmic Book. You, the reader may help if you will to plead Hals case before the Muses of the Spheres.

But first, what of our remaining Week Days? Wodens Day and Thor's Day look forward, of course, to future planetary cycles known to seers as Jupiter, then Venus spheres of further development. Just as our Earth Sphere is committed to the Son's Sacrifice and Conquest of Death, championed by co-regents Michael and Gabriel, so the fifth will feature Father King, and the newly Crowned Prince of sixth. Frige's Day portends the seventh sphere for the Sons Queen Consort titled Vulcan; characterizing an evolution more akin to original Saturn Day, wherein even our physical bodies will have matured to thrive in an environment more rarified than Dante's Inferno envisioned.

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However difficult to conceive it now, that future is intended to host Hal's truest homecoming, our promised Mansion of New Heaven and Earth.

The Son of Man suffered unto death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like His. George MacDonald, as quoted by C.S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain (1940)

Is all our Life, then but a dream Seen faintly in the goldern gleam Athwart Time's dark resistless stream? Bowed to the earth with bitter woe Or laughing at some raree-show We flutter idly to and fro. Man's little Day in haste we spend, And, from its merry noontide, send No glance to meet the silent end. Lewis Carroll, Sylvie and Bruno (1889)

End Note:
*Regarding my choice of the name Hal for our protagonist readers may recognize herein themes presented in another of last century's creation myths, the Arthur C Clark movie 2001, A Space Odyssey. That production champions precepts of Darwinian Evolution, however reflecting a more biotic than mechanistic theory of origins. Look at Star Trek: The Motion Picture proposing a further spiritual destiny for the machine-persona Vger (a sentient evolution of the lost Voyager 6 space probe), and also the pop literary series, A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for even more echoes of a space-based quest for evolutionary meaning.

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Appendices
page

A Conventional history of the universe

Link to a poeticized account of the emergence of a cosmos, earth, life and human civilization.

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Sources and Recommended Reading

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Appendix

Universalist's Tale: A Conventional history of the universe

Here is a mythopoeic rendering of Evolutionary Science, lately become fashionable. It is even considered necessary now to capture the imaginations and so the fidelity of younger generations in the great ideological war between Science and Religion. Various titles have emerged: The Great Story, New Story, Epic of Evolution: www.epicofevolution.com Ironically, the anti-faith evolutionists attempts to resolve intellectual tensions underlying creation stories have only further mystified what might-have-been, even while packaging their own account as a must-have-been quasi-fact the only scientific explanation of origins. Yet, there is simply no avoiding use of sensationalistic words (sudden, unexpected, creative, appearing, unfolding, mystery) if the story is to be conveyed with any emotional conviction. This is true even of the order's highest priests (the Dawkins and Sagans), who would otherwise object to poetic retellings in the style of Swimme's The Universe Story. Its just too much like the infidel notions of Intelligent Design which foolishly play into the hands of those Creationists who (so very arrogantly and ignorantly) hammer their protests upon revered doors of orthodox institutions against supposed abuses of Science. Yes, even the atheistic scientist is caught referring to our planet and our universe as if there was a conscious plan from the beginning. Yet they turn red with indignation if one suggests they mean anything more than an imagined reunification of separate human awarenesses, all glancing wistfully backward upon the genesis of Time. Only thus (per their informed cosmology) do we all share one Mind and Hope, a virtual godhead. The starry heavens forbid that one might admit the role of a Holy (meaning set aside or separate) Creator transcending our Time and Space. I encountered this latest evolutionary saga after completing my first draft of Seer's Saga: An Alternative History of the Universe. Curiously, it was the basis for a message propagated by one self-ordained evolutionary evangelist, Michael Dowd. He claims to have started as a fundamentalist evangelical, then married an atheistic evolutionist, and so turned universalist preacher of past centuries' social gospel with a new and entertaining scientistic twist. As a team, they call it the Great Story (thegreatstory.org); Dowd's ministry is TGFE or Thank God for Evolution (thankgodforevolution.com). They insist (like the Unitarian-type UCC churches of Dowds former pastorate) that our best approach to mysteries of Deep Time the antidote for all personal or societal dysfunction, and the best hope of saving our ecological future will all be found in Evolutionary Science. However, that must be an Evolution properly interpreted, like any sacred oracle. Therefore they pronounce the historic end of the great war by their marriage of modern science and religion; also titled evolutionary theology or evolutionary spirituality and part of a movement more widely known as religious naturalism (see
evolutionaryspirituality.wikia.com).

I remember another mythology presented as fact; one which later, after proven mistaken, was revived and perpetuated as an imaginative story instead. Scholars of biblical prophecy were teaching into the last half of the 20th century. They were finally run dry of predictions dated to impact current generations. Like George Orwell's 1984, their

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warnings of future doom fell awkwardly behind on the timeline. Yet their apocalyptic worldview was promptly repackaged and marketed as parables of what almost-was or what the future may-yet-become. I see the same happening now to our popular Chicken Little fable of apocalypse caused by global warming. That imagination is embraced, as if fact, to become part of the Universe Story; wherein chance-borne mankind is both deified and demonized, imputed improbable powers of cosmic proportions. Finally, the reader may observe below in Patricia Gordons endnotes a single reference to one factual clause of the Universe Story. This evolutionist, at least, has intellectual integrity to imply that virtually all the rest is imaginative or call it supposition. For instance, take the presumption that consciousness cannot have preceded or preconceived the serendipitous appearance of matter and later life. Rather, personality must have been an eventual (perhaps inevitable) construct of simpler forms of life, just as life itself is now known (though never demonstrated) to have emerged spontaneously via selfassemblage of complex molecules. (See Evolution's Arrow, by John Stewart at users.tpg.com.au/users/jes999/) After all, given enough time anything is possible, therefore probable and believable. Right? Of course, this belief defies all recognized tenets of mathematical science (and dont even mention basic principles of thermodynamics). But the fact that we have it all now fully unfolded before our eyes is itself proof that it could and did happen spontaneously an elegant circular argument worthy of Tom Sawyers superstitious class of scholars. Gordon presents her version of The Universe Story as a composite borrowed from multiple sources, posted freely online at www.rainforestinfo.org.au/deep-eco/patricia_gordon.htm
(alternate copy www.thegreatstory.org/PGordonUniverseStory.pdf).

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Appendix

Sources and Recommended Reading

Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything Evans, A Parade of Modern Science Reversals Gonzalez, The Privileged Planet Pember, Earth's Earliest Ages Schroeder, The Hidden Face of God , The Science of God Steiner, Cosmic Memory: Prehistory of Earth and Man , An Esoteric Cosmology , Esoteric Science, An Outline , Foundations of Esotericism , Genesis: Secrets of the Bible Story of Creation , Theosophy of the Rosicrucian , The Influence of Spiritual Beings on Man , Goethe's Standard of the Soul, As Illustrated in Faust and in the Fairy Story of The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. Swimme, The Universe Story Tolkien, The Silmarillion Turgon, The Tolkien Fan's Medieval Reader The Gospel of John

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