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not have been able to come to a perception of the true facts. The pupil had to go through
the picture, the imagination. The legend of Isis and Osiris was inwardly experienced. This
ecstatic soul-condition was a preliminary to the true vision, a prelude to his seeing what
takes place in the spiritual world. What has been described today could be read by the
pupil in the Akashic Record only when he had reached a high degree of initiation.
Tomorrow we shall speak further of this, and also of the other signs of the Zodiac and
their significance.
* In classical antiquity this feeling of baffling importance was already present. See
Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris.
** Pictures of this ornament may be found in E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian
Resurrection (London, P. L. Warner, 1911), pages 42 and 49.
See the opening passages of Plato's Timaeus.
48
Egyptian Myths and Mysteries
LECTURE 8
The Stages of Evolution of the Human Form
The Expulsion of the Animal Beings.
The Four Human Types.
September 10, 1908
GA 106
WE have become acquainted with significant events in the evolution of the human
organism. We have followed the organism from its beginning to the point of time when
the moon departed from the earth. When we say point of time , we are not speaking
literally, for these events occupied long periods. From the first moment when the moon
began to show signs of withdrawing, until its departure had been completely
accomplished, long stretches of time passed and many things occurred in evolution. But
we have observed man until about the departure of the moon. We have understood man's
form which, as its lower part, approximately from the middle of the trunk to the height of
the hips, manifested a configuration not entirely unlike his present shape. This body,
although soft, could have been seen with modern eyes, whereas the upper parts were
visible only to clairvoyant consciousness. We have already pointed out how something of
man's nature at that time has been preserved by myth, religion, and art in the centaur. The
various parts of the body, the members that gradually evolved into feet, shanks, knees,
thighs, represent the animal forms of our earth at that time. These animal forms, however,
remained stuck at certain stages of evolution, beyond which man was able to progress.
Let us try to understand this thoroughly.
In the earliest times, when the sun departed, no animal forms had yet appeared. After the
sun had left, the highest form of animal was a type that stood at the level of our present
fish. When we say that the human feet corresponded to this fish-form, when we look at
the feet in connection with fish, what does this mean? It means that the feet were the only
part of man that was physically perceptible at the time when certain forms were left
behind which swam about like fish in the water-earth. The remaining parts were present
only in a finer etheric form. What we have described as the chalice or blossom form, the
light-organ, was entirely etheric, an illuminated air-form. Only the lowest part of man
was able really to wade through the water-earth like the fish that had remained behind.
Thereafter there were higher animals, which are depicted in the image of the Water-man,
the man whose body was visible as high as the shanks. Man has been formed in such a
way as to leave behind him, at every stage of his existence, certain animal forms, beyond
which he slowly progressed. When the moon began to withdraw, man was so far along
that he had given his lower half, his lower nature, a physical shape, whereas the upper
half remained entirely pliable. Then, we see taking hold, from the moon, that influence of
the moonlight which the Egyptians called Osiris, which can work upon man through the
different aspects of the moon. We see how the most important formations of the upper
body, i.e., the nerves that bring about the present upper body, are worked into man from
the moon. The nerves, going out from the spine, formed the upper body. At first, through
the tones that Osiris-Apollo played on the human lyre, the mid-part, the hip-region,
49
comes into form. All that had to remain stuck at this point, beyond which man
progressed, appears in later evolution in the forms of the amphibians.
As long as the moon was connected with the earth, it more or less pushed man's evolution
down. The fish form was still connected with the sun, which is the reason for the feeling
that every healthy person today has toward fish. Think of the pleasure of seeing a
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