260 ROSICRUCIANCOSMO-CONCEPTION
times felt its compelling influence in a marked way.
When laggards inhabiting a Moon have retrieved their
position and returned to the parent planet; or, when
continued retrogression has caused complete disintegration
of their vehicles, the abandoned Moon also commences to
dissolve. The momentum of a spiritual impulse which
propelled it in a fixed orbit for aeons, may endure for aeons
after the moon has been vacated, and from the physical point
of view it may still seem to be a satellite of the planet it
encircles. As the time goes on, however, and the power of
attraction exercised by the parent planet diminishes, its orbit
widens, until it reaches the limit of our solar system. It is
then expelled into interstellar space; dissolved in Chaos. The
expulsion of these cinder-like dead worlds is analogous to
the manner in which hard and foreign bodies imbedded in
the human system make their way through the flesh to the
skin. The Asteroids illustrate this point. They are fragments
of moons which once encircled Venus and Mercury. The
beings once confined upon them are known in esotericism as
“The Lords from Venus” and “The Lords from Mercury;”
they retrieved their lost estate in a large measure by service
to our hu ma nit y, as will b e lat er describ ed, and are now s afe
on their parent planet, while the moons they inhabited have
partly disintegrated, and are already far outside the earth's
orbit. There are other “seeming” moons in our system, but
The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception does not notice them,
as they are outside the pale of evolution.