The trumpets will sound in a final phase of the present incarnation of our planet. The trumpets have a parallel role to play as the seals. With the opening of the seals man’s thoughts are purified. With the sound of the trumpets our feelings are tested (Van Egmond, 10 January 1995, p. 17). Each trumpet produces a creative sound with the power of a divine action that results in specific effects on earth. Together, the trumpets bring forth a drama of the human soul, a bitter drama for all creatures which did not include the solar fire of love and compassion in their hearts.   

Bock (p.130-148) notes that at the sounding of the first four trumpets a world conflagration occurs, because fire, in different variations, falls from the sky on earth. At the sounding of the fourth trumpet a new development appears that also affects Moon, Sun and stars. Here the cosmic light is darkened as a presage of the even larger drama that is later going to happen. The first four trumpets reflect the four horses we met at the opening of the first four seals.

Schult (p.146) sees a fiery breath, a stream of red flaming blood, going through all seven trumpets, purifying the world of feeling, the kingdom of the soul.

Icefication of fire

The sounding of the first trumpet results in a rain of fire on earth that is mixed with hail and blood. Bock interprets this as the danger that the excitement of man’s mind can easily be mingled with one-sided focus on material matters. Then the fire ‘icefies’ to hail as the outlook to the spiritual world disappears. Dullaart (p.58) suggests that this means that from the physical realm the etheric realm, including the growth and multiplication forces, is affected. Every time blood appears inappropriately in the exterior world, it means that life force is lost in nature. He sees in this ‘bleeding’ the challenge to help cure the world of plants. Van Egmond (lecture 10 January 1995, p.17) notes that the part of Earth that cannot participate in the ascension, burns to ashes.

The three folded cosmos

Schult (p.146) explains that with the first trumpet the physical aspect of Earth is involved. It concerns the physical aspect of the world that remained in the etheric realm, -symbolized by the green aspects of life-, after the excretion of the physical in the Seal epoch. In the Trumpet epoch, the cosmos is no longer four folded, but three folded: consisting of the etheric, astral and mental realms. In the course of the Trumpet epoch the etheric realm will also be excreted. The third part of the cosmos, the trees and grass, the life-giving aspect, will disappear in the coming world conflagration. Later, in the epoch of the vials of wrath, cosmos will be only two folded: the astral world and mental world. The seven vials of wrath finally separate the two folded cosmos in Babylon, the undergoing city in darkness, and the heavenly city of the new Jerusalem, ascending into the spiritual light sphere.

The first trumpet reveals the astral impulses in the human soul: fire and blood as the up-flaring luciferic passion, and the hail as the ahrimanic hardening and stiffening.

The Earth as astral celestial body

At the end of the Trumpet epoch Earth will, as far as spiritualization progress of man allows, be transformed to an astral celestial body. All beings, that were able to express in their exterior stature goodness, truth and beauty, will join in this ascension. These are the beings that show in their face the seal of the Christ. They will have the power to dissolve physical matter in order that it can become part of the astral body of the Earth. The other beings will not be able to dissolve the physical and this matter will then remain and be separated from the astral Earth as a separate celestial body, a moon, in the next Jupiter incarnation of earth.