Superhierarchies fi 151The exusiai, spirits of form, allowing their forces to flow in and out
of the human etheric body, individualized this life essence, giving man
a more permanent form after their own, endowing humans with a
spark of their own fire: their ego or I.This allowed humans to deliber-
ately seek what causes pleasure and avoid what causes antipathy.
Next, the archai, spirits of personality, worlung on the human astral
body, conferred on man the appearance of personality, imparting inde-
pendence.Worlung together with members of the highest hierarchy, the
seraphim or spirits of love, they then allowed humans to observe in pic-
tures the inner soul-states of beings in the environment, engendering
the emotion of love, an emotion that was to degenerate-as man gained
freedom-into the confusion between spiritual and sensual love.
Archangels, or spirits of fire, worlung on the human etheric body,
made man aware of his own existence, developing organs of sense and
the first beginnings of a glandular system. Working on the ether body,
they allowed the physical body to draw nutrition from animals and
plants. Angels, known to Steiner as sons of light, appeared as beings that
humans can picture mentally as etheric soul-forms, or bodles of light.
They give memory to man's etheric body and work on his physical body
so that it can become the expression of his independent astral body.
By the end of the Lemurian Age, says Steiner, ego forces permeated
the human astral body. During the Atlantean period these same forces
permeated the human etheric body; in post-Atlantean evolution they
came to penetrate the physical body. As this occurred, the hierarchies
began to withdraw, leaving humans to their own devices.
As human bodies became distributed over the whole earth, subject
to earthly influences, which vary at different points of its surface, dif-
fering varieties appeared in human forms. When the present moon
separated from the earth, there ensued the separation of the sexes, the
purpose of sex being to continually refine the love principle to the point
of spiritualization. Someday, says Steiner, when our earth has attained
its goal, all earthly beings will be filled with love. "Love will be devel-
oped in its true form initially on earth: to put it crudely: love will be
bred here, and the gods, through their participation in mankind, will
come to know love, just as, in another sense, they bestowed it."