Hence there comes under our notice a category of beings who might have used their powers during the Egyptian period, but did not at that time use them fully. In the ensuing Graeco-Roman period they were not able to use them, because then they were replaced by other guiding spirits, and all the conditions of that time made their intervention impossible. But just as the beings who had not reached the angelic stage on the old Moon were afterwards allotted the task of once more actively interposing in human evolution during the earth-period, so also the beings who as guiding spirits in the Egypto-Chaldæic civilization had stopped short in their development, afterwards received the mission, as beings who had lagged behind, of again intervening in civilization. Thus we shall be able to watch a later period of civilization in which beings sent to be guides are certainly there to direct the normal progress of evolution, but in which, at the same time, other beings are intervening who were left behind at an earlier stage, and more particularly those who fell behind during the ancient Egyptian period. The civilization to which we are referring is our own. We live at a time when, side by side with the normal directors of humanity, others are interposing who were left behind in the ancient Egyptian and Chaldæic period. Now we have to look upon the evolution of events and beings in such a way that occurrences in the physical world must be considered only as effects or manifestations, the true causes of which are to be sought in the spiritual world. On the one hand our civilization is in the main marked by an upward movement towards spirituality, and this tendency of certain people towards spirituality is the manifestation of the spiritual directors of our contemporary humanity, who have attained their own normal stage of development. In everything which tends to lead man up to the great spiritual wisdom-truths transmitted to us by theosophy, these normal guides of our evolution are manifested. But the beings out-distanced during the Egypto-Chaldæic civilization are also affecting the tendencies of our age. They are manifested in much that is being thought and done at the present time, and will again be manifested in what lies in the near future. They are revealed in everything which gives a materialistic stamp to our civilization, and may often be seen even in aspirations after spiritual things. In our age we are virtually experiencing a revival of Egyptian civilization. The beings who are to be looked upon as the invisible directors of what takes place in the physical world, fall accordingly into two classes. The first includes those spiritual individualities who have passed through their own normal course of development up to the present time. Hence they were able to interpose in the guidance of our civilization, whilst the directors of the preceding Graeco-Roman period were gradually finishing their task