The Local Universe Sons of God

35:8.1Af­ter the cre­ation of the Voron­dadeks, the Cre­ator Son and the Uni­verse Mother Spirit unite for the pur­pose of bring­ing into ex­is­tence the third or­der of uni­verse son­ship, the La­non­an­deks. Al­though oc­cu­pied with var­ied tasks con­nected with the sys­tem ad­min­is­tra­tions, they are best known as Sys­tem Sov­er­eigns, the rulers of the lo­cal sys­tems, and as Plan­e­tary Princes, the ad­min­is­tra­tive heads of the in­hab­ited worlds.

35:8.2Be­ing a later and lower—as con­cerns di­vin­ity lev­els—or­der of son­ship cre­ation, these be­ings were re­quired to pass through cer­tain courses of train­ing on the Mel­chiz­e­dek worlds in prepa­ra­tion for sub­se­quent ser­vice. They were the first stu­dents in the Mel­chiz­e­dek Uni­ver­sity and were clas­si­fied and cer­ti­fied by their Mel­chiz­e­dek teach­ers and ex­am­in­ers ac­cord­ing to abil­ity, per­son­al­ity, and at­tain­ment.

35:8.3The uni­verse of Neb­a­don be­gan its ex­is­tence with ex­actly twelve mil­lion La­non­an­deks, and when they had passed through the Mel­chiz­e­dek sphere, they were di­vided in the fi­nal tests into three classes:

35:8.41. Pri­mary La­non­an­deks. Of the high­est rank there were 709,841. These are the Sons des­ig­nated as Sys­tem Sov­er­eigns and as­sis­tants to the su­preme coun­cils of the con­stel­la­tions and as coun­selors in the higher ad­min­is­tra­tive work of the uni­verse.

35:8.52. Sec­ondary La­non­an­deks. Of this or­der emerg­ing from Mel­chiz­e­dek there were 10,234,601. They are as­signed as Plan­e­tary Princes and to the re­serves of that or­der.

35:8.63. Ter­tiary La­non­an­deks. This group con­tained 1,055,558. These Sons func­tion as sub­or­di­nate as­sis­tants, mes­sen­gers, cus­to­di­ans, com­mis­sion­ers, ob­servers, and pros­e­cute the mis­cel­la­neous du­ties of a sys­tem and its com­po­nent worlds.

35:8.7It is not pos­si­ble, as it is with evo­lu­tion­ary be­ings, for these Sons to pro­gress from one group to an­other. When sub­jected to the Mel­chiz­e­dek train­ing, when once tested and clas­si­fied, they serve con­tin­u­ously in the rank as­signed. Nei­ther do these Sons en­gage in re­pro­duc­tion; their num­ber in the uni­verse is sta­tion­ary.

35:8.8In round num­bers the La­non­an­dek or­der of Sons is clas­si­fied on Sal­ving­ton as fol­lows:

35:8.9Uni­verse Co-or­di­na­tors and Con­stel­la­tion Coun­selors 100,000

35:8.10Sys­tem Sov­er­eigns and As­sis­tants 600,000

35:8.11Plan­e­tary Princes and Re­serves 10,000,000

35:8.12Mes­sen­ger Corps 400,000

35:8.13Cus­to­di­ans and Re­cord­ers 100,000

35:8.14Re­serve Corps 800,000

35:8.15Since La­non­an­deks are a some­what lower or­der of son­ship than the Mel­chiz­e­deks and the Voron­dadeks, they are of even greater ser­vice in the sub­or­di­nate units of the uni­verse, for they are ca­pa­ble of draw­ing nearer the lower crea­tures of the in­tel­li­gent races. They also stand in greater dan­ger of go­ing astray, of de­part­ing from the ac­cept­able tech­nique of uni­verse gov­ern­ment. But these La­non­an­deks, es­pe­cially the pri­mary or­der, are the most able and ver­sa­tile of all lo­cal uni­verse ad­min­is­tra­tors. In ex­ec­u­tive abil­ity they are ex­celled only by Ga­briel and his un­re­vealed as­so­ciates.