es. Those migrations which were directed eastward from Atlantis are
especially important for us of today. Europe, Asia, and Africa were
gradually colonized by the descendants of the Atlanteans. Various peoples
fixed their abode in these continents. They were at different stages of
development, and also at different levels of corruption. And with them
came the Initiates, guardians of the oracle-Mysteries. They established
sanctuaries in various parts, in which the cults of Jupiter, Venus, etc.,
were cultivated sometimes in a good, sometimes in an evil manner. The
betrayal of the Vulcan Mysteries exercised an especially unfavourable
influence, for the attention of their adherents was mostly centered on
earthly matters. By this betrayal, mankind was made dependent on spiritual
beings who, as a result of their past evolution, rejected everything
emanating from the spiritual world which had been evolved through the
separation of the earth from the sun. In accordance with the tendency they
had thus developed, they worked upon just that element in man which was
formed through his having perceptions of the sense-world, behind which the
spiritual world lies hidden. Henceforth beings acquired great influence
over many of the human inhabitants of the earth, and indeed their
influence asserted itself more and more by depriving mankind of the
feeling for spiritual things.

Since the size, form, and flexibility of the physical human body were
still largely affected by the qualities of the soul, the consequence of
the betrayal of the Mysteries also appeared in changes of the human race
in these respects. Wherever the corruption of humanity manifested itself
especially in the abuse of supersensible powers for the satisfaction of
lower inclinations, desires and passions, unsightly human shapes,
grotesque in form and size were the result. These were not able to survive
the Atlantean period, and became extinct. Post-Atlantean humanity was
formed physically from those Atlantean ancestors in whom such a
solidification of the bodily form had taken place that it no longer
yielded to those powers of the soul which had now become perverted.

There was a certain period in the Atlantean evolution during which, by
means of the law ruling in and around the earth, just those conditions
prevailed which tended to solidify man's bodily form. Those human racial
types which had been solidified before this period could, it is true,
reproduce themselves fo