The Planetary Princes

50:1.1The Plan­e­tary Prince and his as­sis­tant breth­ren rep­re­sent the near­est per­son­al­ized ap­proach (aside from in­car­na­tion) that the Eter­nal Son of Par­a­dise can make to the lowly crea­tures of time and space. True, the Cre­ator Son touches the crea­tures of the realms through his spirit, but the Plan­e­tary Prince is the last of the or­ders of per­sonal Sons ex­tend­ing out from Par­a­dise to the chil­dren of men. The In­fi­nite Spirit comes very near in the per­sons of the guard­i­ans of des­tiny and other an­gelic be­ings; the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther lives in man by the preper­sonal pres­ence of the Mys­tery Mon­i­tors; but the Plan­e­tary Prince rep­re­sents the last ef­fort of the Eter­nal Son and his Sons to draw near you. On a newly in­hab­ited world the Plan­e­tary Prince is the sole rep­re­sen­ta­tive of com­plete di­vin­ity, spring­ing from the Cre­ator Son (the off­spring of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and the Eter­nal Son) and the Di­vine Min­is­ter (the uni­verse Daugh­ter of the In­fi­nite Spirit).

50:1.2The prince of a newly in­hab­ited world is sur­rounded by a loyal corps of helpers and as­sis­tants and by large num­bers of the min­is­ter­ing spir­its. But the di­rect­ing corps of such new worlds must be of the lower or­ders of the ad­min­is­tra­tors of a sys­tem in or­der to be in­nately sym­pa­thetic with, and un­der­stand­ing of, the plan­e­tary prob­lems and dif­fi­cul­ties. And all of this ef­fort to pro­vide sym­pa­thetic ruler­ship for the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds en­tails the in­creased li­a­bil­ity that these near-hu­man per­son­al­i­ties may be led astray by the ex­al­ta­tion of their own minds over and above the will of the Su­preme Rulers.

50:1.3Be­ing quite alone as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of di­vin­ity on the in­di­vid­ual plan­ets, these Sons are tested severely, and Neb­a­don has suf­fered the mis­for­tune of sev­eral re­bel­lions. In the cre­ation of the Sys­tem Sov­er­eigns and the Plan­e­tary Princes there oc­curs the per­son­al­iza­tion of a con­cept that has been get­ting far­ther and far­ther away from the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and the Eter­nal Son, and there is an in­creas­ing dan­ger of los­ing the sense of pro­por­tion as to one’s self-im­por­tance and a greater like­li­hood of fail­ure to keep a proper grasp of the val­ues and re­la­tion­ships of the nu­mer­ous or­ders of di­vine be­ings and their gra­da­tions of au­thor­ity. That the Fa­ther is not per­son­ally pres­ent in the lo­cal uni­verse also im­poses a cer­tain test of faith and loy­alty on all these Sons.

50:1.4But not of­ten do these world princes fail in their mis­sions of or­ga­niz­ing and ad­min­is­ter­ing the in­hab­ited spheres, and their suc­cess greatly fa­cil­i­tates the sub­se­quent mis­sions of the Ma­te­rial Sons, who come to en­graft the higher forms of crea­ture life on the prim­i­tive men of the worlds. Their rule also does much to pre­pare the plan­ets for the Par­a­dise Sons of God, who sub­se­quently come to judge the worlds and to in­au­gu­rate suc­ces­sive dis­pen­sa­tions.