A summary explanation of symbol no. 81 – The Earth’s Terrestrial Human Epoch. The Earth’s Spiritual World in its Present Epoch

General notes on symbols nos. 78-85
Symbols nos. 78-85 show the Earth’s various epochs of evolution. The Earth is a living being and, like all other living beings, goes through the spiral cycle. In the middle of the symbols we see the Earth’s physical body. The surrounding coloured rings of rays symbolise the Earth’s spiritual world or spheres of consciousness. The large ring of rays shows the Earth’s day-consciousness in the particular epoch of evolution. The circle of jagged figures in the middle of the large ring of rays symbolises the pole structure. During evolution the energies in the other areas grow and occupy the day-consciousness; they then degenerate and fade away into the inner rings.

The Earth’s spiritual world is populated partly by beings that are passing through because of reincarnation and partly by beings that are resident in this area.

Explanation of symbol no. 81
The symbol shows the present state of the Earth, the terrestrial human epoch. It is a planet with outstandingly developed animal beings, that is, human beings, that are at the moment in the process of waking up to becoming humane beings.

The thoughts of the human beings exist on the spiritual planes, even though their bodies are on the physical plane. When human beings die and leave the physical plane, the amount of animal mentality and human mentality they have is crucial. If they have a lot of human mentality and are highly evolved, they will pass over into the humane sphere. If they do not have very much human mentality, they will pass into the spheres that have a very small area of human mentality and a large area of animal mentality.

• In the middle of the symbol we see the physical body of the Earth.
• The surrounding rings of rays symbolise the spiritual world or spheres of consciousness.
• Red symbolises the spiritual sphere behind the plant kingdom, which is borne by the energy of instinct.
• Orange indicates a mental sphere behind the animal kingdom, which is borne by the energy of gravity.
• In the large ring of rays we see the day-consciousness of the Earth. It, like the terrestrial human being, consists of animal states (orange) and of human or humane states (yellow).
• The dark areas within the orange area symbolises purgatory.
• The yellow areas in the large ring of rays show the highly evolved humane mentality, which is free of purgatory.
• The circle of jagged figures in the large ring of rays symbolises the pole structure. The various graduations of darkness and light indicate various steps in evolution from the one-poled state to the double-poled state.
• Green, blue and indigo symbolise that the Earth, like the terrestrial human being, has a sphere of intelligence, intuition and memory.

Martinus' own explanation of the symbol can be found in The Eternal World Picture, vol. 6, which is not yet available in English.