Rmoahals

The Rmoahals were, according to Rudolf Steiner, the first of the 7 sub-races on ancient Atlantis:

„The first subrace of Atlantians developed from a very advanced and evolved part of the Lemurians. In the case of the Lemurians, the gift of memory appeared only in the very first beginnings and only in the last period of their development. It must be imagined that a Lemurian could form ideas of what he experienced, but he could not retain these ideas. He immediately forgot what he had imagined. That he nevertheless lived in a certain culture, for example, had tools, built buildings and so on, was not due to his own imagination, but to a spiritual power within him, which was, to use the word, instinctive. But this is not the instinct of animals today, but of a different kind.

In theosophical writings the first sub-race of Atlantians is called Rmoahals. The memory of this race was primarily directed towards vivid sensory impressions. Colours seen by the eye and sounds heard by the ear had a long effect on the soul. This was expressed in the fact that the Rmoahals developed feelings that their Lemurian ancestors had not yet known. Attachment, for example, to what was experienced in the past is one of these feelings.

The development of language also depended on the development of memory. As long as man did not preserve the past, he could not communicate what he had experienced through language. And because the first beginnings of a memory took place in the last Lemurian period, the ability to name what was seen and heard could also begin at that time. Only people who have a memory can make sense of a name that is attached to a thing. The Atlantean period is therefore also the time in which language found its development. And with language a bond was created between the human soul and the things apart from man. The latter produced the sound-word within himself; and this sound-word belonged to the objects of the outer world. And a new bond also came into being between man and man through communication by means of language. All this was still in a youthful form among the Rmoahals, but it still distinguished them in a profound way from their Lemurian forefathers.

Now the forces in the souls of these first Atlantians still had something natural about them. In a way, these people were even more related to the natural beings around them than their successors. Their soul forces were even more natural forces than those of present-day human beings. Thus the sound-word they produced was also something powerful of nature. They did not merely name things, but in their words there was a power over things and also over their fellow human beings. The word of the Rmoahals had not only meaning, but also power. When one speaks of a magic power of words, one is implying something that was far more real to these people than to the present. When the Rmoahals pronounced a word, that word developed a power similar to that of the object it signified. It is because of this that words had healing power in those days, that they could promote the growth of plants, tame the rage of animals, and what other similar effects there are. All this diminished more and more in the later sub-races of the Atlantians. One could say that the natural fullness of power was gradually lost. The Rmoahals felt that this fullness of strength was a gift of the powerful nature, and their relationship to nature had a religious character. Language in particular had something sacred for them. And the misuse of certain sounds, which had a significant inherent power, was something impossible. Every human being felt that such abuse would have to bring him tremendous harm. The magic of such words would have turned into its opposite; what, used in the right way, would have been a blessing, would, if used sacrilegiously, have been a ruin to the speaker. In a certain innocence of feeling the Rmoahals attributed their power less to themselves than to the divine nature working in them.“ (Lit.:GA 11, p. 33ff)

Literature

• Rudolf Steiner: Cosmic Memory, translated by Karl E. Zimmer, Harper & Row Publishers 1981, ISBN 0-06-067572-1 rsarchive.org

German

• Rudolf Steiner: Aus der Akasha-Chronik, GA 11 (1986), ISBN 3-7274-0110-9 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org

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