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QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 197
firemist. The Bible goes back even further and speaks of
a time before that mist, when the earth became glowing
and luminous as fire; a time when darkness reigned.
There have been in all four epochs or stages in this de-
velopment of the earth. First there was this dark stage,
which is called in the Rosicrucian terminology the "Po-
larian" Epoch. Then the substance which now forms the
earth was a dark mass, hot and gaseous. -In the second
stage, called the Hyperborean Epoch, this dark mass was
ignited. We are told "God said: 'Let there be light/ and
there was light." Then came the stage when the heat of
this firemist in contact with cold space generated moisture,
and this moisture was densest near the fiery core, where
it was heated to steam that rushed outward from the cen-
ter "God divided the waters from the waters," that is, the
dense water nearest the core from the light steam outside.
Finally there came an incrustation, such as always takes
place where water is boiled over and over again, and thus
the crust over the earth, the dry land, was formed.
When that crust had been completed, there was no
water upon the surface of the earth, but as the Bible says,
"A mist went up from tae surface," and no herb had yet
grown upon the face of the earth. At that time, however,
vegetation began to appear and nascent humanity lived
there. But they \vere not a humanity constituted as we are
today. Their form was very much different and they were
not nearly as evolved as we are at the present time. In
fact, body and spirit were not perfectlytogether; the spirits
hovered partly outside and therefore "man's eyes had not
yet been opened."
Old folk stories such as we hoar of in Germany and dif-
ferent places in the Old World, speak of them as the Niebel-
unp-en. "Xiebcl" moan- mi>t and "ungen" is children.