It is impossible to know anything in the occult sense of the present and future of human or planetary evolution without understanding that evolution in the past. For, that which presents itself to the occult student’s observation when he watches the hidden events of the past, contains at the same time everything that he can learn of the present and future. In this book we have spoken of the Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth evolutions. We cannot follow the evolution of the earth, as the occultist understands it, unless we observe the events of preceding evolutionary periods. For what meets us today, within the bounds of our earthly globe, comprises in a certain sense the facts of the evolution of the Moon, Sun and Saturn. The beings and things that took part in the evolution of the Moon have gone on developing, and all that now belongs to the earth, is the outcome of that development. But not all that has evolved from the Moon to the Earth is perceptible to physical sense-consciousness. A part of what came over to us from the Moon evolution is revealed only at a certain stage of clairvoyant consciousness, at which knowledge of supersensible worlds is reached. When this knowledge is gained, the fact that our earthly planet is united to a supersensible world is recognized. The latter includes that part of lunar existence which is not sufficiently densified to be observed by the physical senses. In the first place it does not include it as it was at the time of the evolution of the original Moon. If this clairvoyant consciousness occupies itself with the perception of these things, which it can have at present, this latter gradually separates into two images. One presents the shape borne by the earth during the lunar evolution, the other shows itself in such a way, that we recognize as its content a form as yet in the germinal stage which will become a reality—in the sense in which the earth is now a reality—but only in the future.