Part 3 of 3
Ahriman and Lucifer, the fallen angels
Interestingly, Steiner does not make a straight distinction between Good on the one hand and Evil on the other. Instead he has two poles of Evil, which he calls Lucifer and Ahriman.
Steiner saw Lucifer and Ahriman as not only forces or tendencies which affect humankind and draw us towards evil but also as actual beings. Unlike the Christ, these forces can take up their abode in our astral bodies, the seat of our desires and emotions and thus exercise a strong influence on us from within.
The head of Lucifer – a carving by Rudolf Steiner
Lucifer encourages the tendency in human beings towards expansiveness, inflation, egotism, sensuality, passion, and ungrounded spirituality; Lucifer is the being who tells us that we are like the gods, knowing both good and evil, whereas Ahriman tells us that there is no God and that material reality is the only reality. Ahriman represents tendencies towards contraction, reduction, splitting, materialism, over-intellectualisation, lying, and a denial of spiritual realities; this leads to the idea that we are physical beings only. Both of these beings also play a helpful role and are in fact indispensable for human life, as the first awakens us to our freedom, while the second helps provide us with the capacity for speech and thinking. The two forces work in harmony at the present time, even though they appeal to different instincts in us. The way to deal with these two poles of Evil is to seek the balance in the middle, which is represented by Christ. However, because Ahriman can work through the seat of our desires but Christ can only work through our I or individuality, this means that the struggle is not an equal one. Our individuality has to so develop itself that it can in time learn to recognise and resist the many temptations offered by Lucifer and Ahriman. Steiner and the English sculptor Edith Maryon produced a monumental wooden carving called “Representative of Man”, which you can see in the Goetheanum at Dornach. It depicts the Christ providing the active place of balance between the opposing forces of Lucifer above and Ahriman below.
The monumental wooden statue, “Representative of Man”, carved by Rudolf Steiner and Edith Maryon.
Lucifer appeals above all to our pride and ambition, making us think that we have no limitations. Yet he is also the being who set us out on our evolutionary path to freedom. But Lucifer does not want us to be truly conscious, nor to acquire an egohood independent of himself.
In our present age, Ahriman is a greater threat to us than Lucifer. He is infinitely clever and is helping us to develop our technological civilisation. He wishes us to advance at breakneck speed, long before our individuality and moral nature are ready for such advances. He wishes to foreshorten our development so that we can never reach our true goal but only a false goal of enjoyment and endless material possessions. The scientist, the technologist and the inventor are Ahriman’s natural prey but all of us can fall victim to his temptations. Wherever there is egoism and love of power, entry is made easy for him.
While we may know of Ahriman from Persian mythology, Rudolf Steiner spoke of him as an actual, living spiritual entity. He is a being who fell behind during the Ancient Sun planetary stage. This being, he said, works to embed people firmly into physicality, encouraging dull, materialistic attitudes and a philistine, dry intellect. Steiner, in rare prophetic mode, talked about an actual incarnation of Ahriman on the earth and the potential consequences. Just as Christ incarnated in a physical body, so would Ahriman incarnate in the Western world – before ‘a part’ of the third millennium had passed. Steiner places this incarnation in the context of a ‘cosmic triad’ – Lucifer, Christ and Ahriman. Lucifer had his incarnation as the Yellow Emperor who reigned in China in the third millennium BC. Ahriman will incarnate as a counterpoint to the physical incarnation of Lucifer in the East, with the incarnation of Jesus Christ in Palestine two thousand years ago as the balancing point between the two.
The Head of Ahriman, carved in wood by Rudolf Steiner.
It seems possible to me that today we are living in the time of Ahriman’s incarnation. Ahriman is the Lord of Death and his will is to materialise human thinking into dead thinking to such an extent that the soul becomes fettered to the physical body and to an ever materialised earth, effectively cutting human beings off from their spiritual home – as an Ahrimanic form of immortality. This is nothing less than a spiritual death.
His incarnation on the physical plane will intensify his influence and many of us will fall into his clutches unknowingly, because his effects work in the unconscious aspect of the human being. It will work in the human thinking through the etheric body, where the human being is not conscious.
Though it is the wish of the “good” angels that we should reach our goal, it is not pre-destined that Ahriman will be defeated, because the goal can only be reached in freedom, by us choosing to get there out of our own free will. It’s therefore clear that the possibility cannot be ruled out that humankind will succumb finally to Ahriman and other opposing forces who are gaining in strength all the time, as we see around us every day in the news and in our daily lives.
There is one even more malign aspect of Evil spoken about by Steiner and that is Sorath, the Sun Demon, who is served by both Lucifer and Ahriman. I will say nothing more about Sorath here.
Rudolf Steiner in his studio, working on the statue “Representative of Man”.
Michael
Rudolf Steiner often spoke about the great battle that occurred in the spiritual world between the spirits who are followers of Michael the Guardian of the Cosmic Intelligence, and certain ahrimanic powers. According to him the latest battle commenced around 1840 and was lost by the ahrimanic powers in the autumn of 1879. I referred in Part 1 to the Archangel Michael but strictly speaking since 1879 he should be considered as one of the archai.
We know that in 1879 these ahrimanic powers, or spirits of darkness were cast down into the physical world and a picture of this can be found in the Revelation of St John – the Angel holding the key to the bottomless pit in which he is said to imprison the dragon. Perhaps the tragic history of the 20th century is not so much the result of human folly but rather of these powers being shut out of the spiritual world and thus rampaging through the physical world, influencing the likes of Mao, Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot and their many other human agents. On present form, the 21st century is shaping up to be even worse than the previous one.
The foremost of the archai is known to us as Michael. It was his task to go on to become the guardian or administrator, one might say, of the Cosmic Intelligence. He is known in anthroposophy as the son of the Divine Sophia who is the foremost being of the hierarchy of the Spirits of Wisdom, the Kyriotetes, and whose task it is to gather up, regulate and harmonise the Cosmic
Intelligence.
What is this Cosmic Intelligence? There are many ways of describing the Cosmic Intelligence. One such way is that it is a gathering up of all the ‘conversations’ had by the hierarchies amongst themselves; their interrelationships regarding their knowledge and understanding pertaining to the being of Christ, the second logos who descended to earth and died at Golgotha. One could also call it the essence of the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit is the mediating substance.
Rudolf Steiner tells us that at around the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, Michael began sacrificing his ‘rulership’ of the Cosmic Intelligence to human beings. And it is the third hierarchy, which is the closest to humanity insofar as it shares various soul and bodily sheaths with human beings, that has the task of helping us to take up the Cosmic Intelligence in the way intended by Michael.
But we humans have the unique privilege of freewill, so we have a choice. To quote Steiner: “Two things are possible for humankind and through this possibility our freedom is guaranteed: to turn to Christ consciously … or to wish to feel our severance from spirit existence and thus fall in the direction taken by the ahrimanic powers. Humanity has been in this situation since the beginning of the fifteenth century.”
Since 1879 Michael has taken over the spiritual guidance of human affairs. He does what he has to do in such a way that he does not thereby wield an influence over human beings; but humans may follow him in freedom, in order with the Christ-power to find the way out of that sphere of Ahriman which they were obliged to enter.
The classical image of Michael depicts him in battle with a dragon and shows him standing on the dragon and spearing it in the mouth. One way of interpreting this might be to say that what Michael is doing is showing us how to penetrate the dragon of materialism with spiritual vision and insight, so that the spirit coiled up in matter can be released.
Sir Jacob Epstein’s bronze statue for Coventry Cathedral of Michael.
But Michael also sees how the danger of humanity succumbing to the ahrimanic powers grows greater and greater. He knows that as regards himself he will always have Ahriman under his feet; but will that always be the case with human beings?
Michael sees the greatest event in the Earth’s history taking place. He sees Christ’s descent to the Earth, so as to be here with us when the Cosmic Intelligence is handed over to human beings. Through Christ’s great sacrifice, He is now living in the same sphere in which Ahriman also lives. Humans are now able to choose between Christ and Ahriman. Should humans wish to, we will be able to find the Christ-way in the evolution of humanity. But Michael cannot force humans to do anything – it is because the Cosmic intelligence has come entirely into the sphere of the human individuality that compulsion from the spiritual world has ceased.
And herein lies our great danger. Ahrimanic spirits seek to smother human beings’ awareness of their own spirituality. They want to teach people that they are really only a perfectly developed animal. Ahriman, says Steiner, is in truth the great teacher of materialistic Darwinism. He also teaches all the technological and practical activity in Earth evolution where nothing is considered valid unless it can be perceived by the senses. His desire for us is that we should have widespread technology, plenty of material goods, entertainment media, all sorts of toys and gadgets, the aim being to kill and obscure any awareness we may have that we are an image of the godhead. This is the aim ahrimanic spirits are seeking to achieve by sophisticated scientific means in our age.
What if Ahriman succeeds? You may recall from Part 2 that Steiner said that the angels had particular work to do in inserting three impulses into our astral bodies. You remember these three impulses:
1. That no human being should be able to enjoy the peace of happiness himself if others around him were unhappy
2. That human beings should be able to perceive the divine principle operating in every other human being
3. That human beings should be able to gain irrefutable insight into the reality of the spiritual world.
The angels do this by working within our astral bodies when we are asleep at night. Steiner was speaking in 1918, but he said that if human beings are not willing to turn to life in the spirit before the beginning of the third millennium, ie in our present time, then the angels would need to work in a different way; that is by withdrawing all their work from the astral body and taking it into the etheric body. But then, Steiner says, the human being would have no part in it, as it would have to be done when humans are asleep, as of course when we are asleep we leave behind our physical and etheric bodies in the bed and take our astral body and individuality into the spiritual world.
And he says that, if this happens, the inevitable effect on human evolution would be threefold:
First, something would be engendered in human bodies which human beings could not discover in freedom.
Second, danger would threaten from certain instinctive perceptions connected with the mystery of birth and conception and with sexual life as a whole.
Third, humanity will get to know specific powers which enable them to unleash some degree of mental control over machines, a development that will take the whole of technology along disastrous channels, a state of affairs, however, that will serve human egotism extremely well and please many people.
Now, I don’t know about you, but that sounds to me like things that are already happening. Let’s take the second point, about the effect on our sexuality. It’s unusual for Steiner to say very much about sex but here he is clear. He says that the effect on human evolution would be that certain instincts belonging to the sexual life and to sexual nature would not come to conscious awareness in a useful way but instead would become harmful. These instincts would not be mere aberrations but would enter into the social life, configuring it. Something would enter into people’s blood as a consequence of sexual life that would above all make people go against brotherliness on Earth rather than develop brotherliness and this would be a matter of instinct.
And Steiner hints at something even worse – he says that danger will come from certain angels who themselves would undergo a change, which he says “is something I cannot speak about, for it belongs to the higher secrets of initiation which may not yet be disclosed.”
But nearly one hundred years later, I think we can say something about this, and to me what may be happening now is very frightening.
Let us go back to the War in Heaven, which started in about 1840 and was completed in 1879 with the victory of Michael over the ahrimanic beings, who were cleared out of heaven and thrust into the abyss. Now what does that mean, to be cast out of heaven and into the abyss? Where have they gone?
There is a link between our blood and the etheric body and our angels usually work in our blood and in our heart. By 1840 a number of abnormal backward angels, (these are angels with the ‘potential’ to be archangels but who have not yet reached that stage) wanted to leave the blood in order to enter into the nerves, the brain, where the normal archangels were taking up their domain. This created an obstruction, a hindrance to the flow of spiritual wisdom that was seeking to enter into the astral body. Now a battle ensued between Michael and these retarded angels, the angels of darkness. To cut a long story short, these ahrimanic angels were cast out of the nervous system into the realm of the blood again – into the abyss – by 1879. They were thrust down into the etheric body by way of the blood, which is closely connected to intellectuality and human thought. Here, in the realm of intellectual thinking, they found relief for their pain.
These beings connected to Ahriman have inspired more and more intellectualism and materialism than there has ever been before, because they thrive on it; and by way of the intellect’s relationship to the realm of Ahriman they have connected the intellect with the sub-earthly ethers, ie the realm of electricity, magnetism and atomic forces. Whether we know it or not, our etheric bodies interpenetrate these ethers all the time.
Let us recall that Michael had to surrender the Cosmic Intelligence so
that the human ego could remember it again, but this time in a free and personal way and through inner work to reconnect this intelligence with Christ.
But these spirits of darkness living in the human being and in the earth do not want this to happen: as followers of Ahriman, the antagonist of Christ, they are doing their level best to prevent us from rising up. They want to drag us down to the level of the electrical, the mechanical and atomistic – the realm of Sorath the Sun Demon – and they are making great strides forward.
As already mentioned, the angels have the task in our times of shaping images in our astral bodies at night. Our angels can only create those pictures at night, if by day we have thought, lived and spoken with integrity and morality. Only then can our angels connect us with the archangels and archai.
Steiner says: “In fact it actually depends on human beings themselves – on their attitude, on the whole way their world of feeling is disposed to the spiritual world – whether their angels accompany them when they leave their physical and etheric bodies in sleep or not…. If a person leaves his physical and etheric body in a materialistic mood, his angel would be denying his realm, his affiliation to the archangels, the archai and the exusiai if he were to accompany the human being. “
This distances us from our normal angels and draws us closer and closer to the ahrimanic angels and their offspring – the ahrimanic elemental beings. Our reproductive and sexual life is administered by the normal angels working in our blood. But for those human beings who cannot rise above materialism, not only will the dark angels take over the task of the spirits of light, but their angels, instead of rising to other tasks may, due to the influence of these dark spirits, fall even deeper than the etheric body.
What does this mean? Rudolf Steiner warns us: “We should not allow the ahrimanic powers to gain the upper hand, as it were, and we should not fall in love with them…” If this were to happen human beings would thereby, “unite spiritual progress with material progress.” This is what Rudolf Steiner called “Prostitution with Matter.”
The union of angel and man in the etheric nature of the human being, where live not only the forces of life and death, dying and becoming, but also all the unconscious desires associated with the sexual life, the life of the sensual, results in the angel ‘falling in love with matter’ through the human being, which leads to an angel’s downfall which one could call, a supra-human fall. The result
is that something thereby enters the material world that does not belong there.
Just as those human beings who today bind their egos to their physical bodies and the sub-earthly ethers, will in future times not be able to exist in a spiritualised world that has no ‘physicality’, so too do the angels of such people fall into the temptation of binding their spirit self (which sets into motion their etheric bodies), to the physical body of human beings, and not to their own etheric bodies creating not only an estrangement from spiritual worlds but also a unification of their spirit, the angel’s consciousness, with the physical world – an unlawful binding of spirit to matter by way of the human being which ultimately will prevent their future development from taking place.
When the human being falls, the right conditions are created for the human being’s angel also to fall. This corresponds to the Second Fall in the Book of Revelation, where angels fall into the realm of the physical body and ‘possess’ their human beings so that together these and the backward angels and elemental spirits that belong to them, become the hosts of Ahriman and ultimately the followers of the Sun Demon, Sorath.
So is it possible that right now the ahrimanic beings are seeking not only to reverse human evolution but also to reverse angelic evolution? If this is indeed happening, it will have huge ramifications on the future of humanity and the world.
What might this lead to? First, Rudolf Steiner warned us that, instead of a greater sense of brotherhood, the most evil sexual instincts would enter into the blood. This is surely what we are seeing today. This disconnection from the moral life signifies a separation from the angelic hierarchies and a binding to the ahrimanic mineral realm, causing an animalisation of the human being. This in turn leads to a form of unconsciousness of the feelings of others and a kind of anti-brotherhood sentiment, because the karmic ties that bind human beings are, in such cases, completely severed. Isil or the Islamic State seems to me to be a direct manifestation of this phenomenon.
Second, instead of humans having a vision of the Christ in other human beings, there will be an unconsciousness of Christ. In our time, the goal of many human beings is a sensual form of happiness without morality, and material welfare unconnected with goodness. To this end certain drugs (antidepressants, prescription drugs, alcohol, recreational drugs) have been created to dull the mind and numb the feelings and to prevent any discomfort at immoral behavior. Other drugs create the right conditions in the etheric body that will lead to an animalisation of the physical body, eg steroids, sports vitamins, food additives, mercury-based vaccines, GM foods etc. Selflessness in the etheric body is turned to its opposite – a heightened form of egoism. This estrangement from the moral world order leads us away from the Cosmic Christ and draws us closer to Sorath, his antagonist.
Is there anything we can do about this? Well, first of all, we can pray. Prayer is the most important deterrent against the forces of evil in the world today. One person working within the light is able to offset a thousand working against it. Each one of us is asked daily to send our light to the spiritual hierarchies. Due to the escalating attacks, the angelic world needs more of our light energy to help alleviate the mounting stress and to assist in the affairs of humankind. Our prayer, whether directed or in general, is the essential ingredient for the angels working on our behalf – but we have to ask for their help first. Owing to our free will, they cannot intervene until we ask. So let us determine to ask, remembering for example that Rudolf Steiner said the Lord’s Prayer every day at 3.00pm.
Second, we can try to wake up to what is going on, and to keep ourselves informed. Some of what I have been writing above has been inspired by a book called Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts or as it is sometimes known, the Michael Letters or the Michael Mystery. These leading thoughts were written by Steiner and started to appear in 1924 and continued up until his death in March 1925. I find it incredibly moving that Steiner as he was dying continued to the last to get down on paper these thoughts, which are both very profound and very clear, much clearer than he sometimes comes across in the transcripts of his lectures. It is as though he was burning himself up to the very last ounce of his physical substance, in his efforts to help us to understand the seriousness of the times we live in. And for anyone who is a member of the School of Spiritual Science, you will recall that it was Steiner’s intention that there should be three classes of the school, but he was only able to complete the lessons of the First Class before he became too ill to continue. It is my belief that the contents of the Second Class and possibly the Third Class, too, are in these Michael letters.
And third, we need to ask the angels for the gifts mentioned in the College Imagination, that is: Unity, Courage, Wisdom and the Light which is Love for one another.
anthropopper 
Thanks Jeremy, very clearly written. I’ve found your overview really helpful and good to refresh knowledge gleaned but scattered over the years. Bit of a task ahead for us eh?! Blessings on you both xx Ann
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Thank you, Ann! Yes, we’re entering quite a dark time, I think.
All the best,
Jeremy
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Thankyou for this . Most helpful at this time of Covid-19.
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Hi Jeremy,
I’ve been following your blog for quite some time and I want to thank you for sharing your thoughts which, very often, made me discover aspects of Steiner’s teachings and life that I didn’t know anything about (such as his meeting with Kafka).
In this articles about the Angels, you briefly touched upon a subject very important to me, but one that, at the same time, is becoming more and more puzzling as I strive to find links to Spiritual Science: Fitness and Weightlifting culture.
“Other drugs create the right conditions in the etheric body that will lead to an animalisation of the physical body, eg steroids, sports vitamins, food additives, mercury-based vaccines, GM foods etc”
I haven’t been able to find anything from Steiner about bodybuilding, weightlifting or other aspects of fitness in relation to Anthroposophy, although they were alredy quite developed during his time.
It stands clear to me that some aspects of these sports (such as drug-use) are strongly Ahrimanic, but at the same time I can’t deny many positive aspects experienced first-hand or observed on others: self-confidence, motivation, discipline, people changing their lives for the better thanks to weightlifting etc.
Same doubts about sport vitamins and supplements (not talking about steroids): materialistic in nature, but so many long-time users, now very old in age, are living in very healthy and strong bodies and possess healthy and active minds.
These issues have become very important to me as I’m thinking of pursuing fitness both as a lifestyle and as a career and I’m afraid to enter in some line of work or way of living that could inadvertently kill my spiritual development.
I apologize for any grammar mistakes, since English is not my first language.
Thank you so much
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Hi Antonio,
I’m no expert when it comes to sports vitamins and I might be entirely wrong about this; but my impression is that the whole field of supplements is like the Wild West and that there is little regulation or distinction between ingredients of natural origin or ingredients of synthetic origin.
The supplements aisle leaves me feeling dazed and confused. The labels whisper all kinds of empty promises in your ear: lose weight, stay young, live forever and ‘optimise your performance’ (whatever that means).
When we look at the back of the label to try to understand what’s really going on, it’s even more confusing, e.g.:
What is magnesium stearate and what does it do? Why is it that on food labels, vitamins are labeled “Vitamin B6” and “Vitamin A,” yet on supplement labels they’re referred to as “Vitamin B6 as pyridoxine hydrochloride” and “Vitamin A as retinol palmitate.”
“As pyridoxine hydrochloride” and “As retinol palmitate” means they’re the synthetic, lab made versions of the same vitamins found in nature.
My instinct is that these synthetic vitamins are not going to do you much good and may be harmful over time. My approach would be to eat the best food you can (biodynamic or organic and locally grown, for preference) and then see how that affects your performance. If you’re still under par, then by all means try adding some supplements but from natural, not synthetic, sources.
Steiner never said anything about vitamin supplements, as far as I’m aware, but I do recall one quote of his which is: “You can’t eat your way to heaven”, meaning “don’t be too dogmatic about diet”. I might be completely wrong about sports vitamins, so I suggest you do your own research and then follow your intuition about what is right for you.
Your English is very good and clear, by the way…
All the best,
Jeremy
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This definitely was some food for thought.
Thank you for taking the time and the kind words, Jeremy.
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Hi Antonio
And hello Jeremy I hope you don’t mind me commenting on this.
Just some thoughts as I’ve been wrestling with the same question. Before the spiritual awakening I had I was an exercise fanatic. . Besides keepin fit, i used this for my ego 😅 and as a way of coping with stress.
I think suppliment is okay in its most natural form, if possible. like fruit and veg powers. Example is Baobab very high in potassium and vitamin C, and billlbery power. There are so many more though, and I understand it’s hard nowadays to get the proper nutrition as soil is depleted, which prob wasn’t the case in Steiner’s times?? I dunno but definitely vitamins can help if taken in moderation in some cases, especially with people who can’t eat enough due to illness etc . there is definitely a leaning to the natural version and there are now admittedly more expensive suppliments that cater for this. Plus a good balanced diet. No processed food is a big one I struggle with 😅😅 Chlorella and Spirulina very GOOD.
I’ve been studying natural remedies for around 20 years due to illness in the family, and maintenance of physical health is very important as no matter what we still live in a material world and good health all round is much preferred if possible lol!! 😅 So it’s just about balance, which is why I’ve moved from extremely busy and “vanity” based exercise to more gentle, like dance and martial arts as I can actually mix this with the spiritual work too. I guess we all have to find a way that suits us best, but looking after the body is still very important In our world i think lol!
Bless
Leil
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Dear Jeremy,
Thank you for another very interesting exposition of Steiner’s teachings.
I have read ‘the work of the Angels in the Astral Body’ a number of times and I am puzzled by your rendering of the third picture the Angels have been working at. You express it thus, “That human beings should be able to gain irrefutable insight into the reality of the spiritual world.’
I have to rely on translations and I have always understood the picture to be, ‘To make it possible for men to reach the Spirit through thinking, to cross the abyss and through thinking to experience the reality of the Spirit.’
I cannot see any reference to irrefutability. Your version worries me because if something of a spiritual nature is irrefutable then it does not leave me free to find my own relationship to it. You, yourself say, earlier in the post, that ‘compulsion from the spiritual world has ceased’.
I think irrefutability is not the same as the certainty gained through one’s own efforts, experiences and insights.
I am glad that you mentioned prayer, and in particular The Lord’s Prayer. Some years ago John Gordon made me aware that Rudolf Steiner prayed every day and since then I have tried to do likewise. Until John spoke about it I had always thought prayer was asking for favours, but now I feel that it can be quite objective, telling the Spiritual world of what we human’s think we need. Rudolf Steiner gave a wonderful lecture on The Lord’s Prayer, ( Berlin, January 28, 1907) which used to be available as a little booklet.
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Dear Tom,
Thanks for your message. By “irrefutable” I meant exactly what you describe – the certainty gained through one’s own efforts, experiences and insights. Skeptics may scoff and sneer but you yourself know what is true, because you have experienced it in your own being.
Thanks also for the mention of Steiner’s lecture on the Lord’s Prayer, which I’ve not come across and will now seek out.
All the best,
Jeremy
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Hi Jeremy,
This third installment is rather comprehensive in its take on the Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings as they work in an especially significant way for human evolution on earth. As hold-overs from the Ancient Moon evolution, they are compelled to seek a kind of independence from the Third Hierarchy in order to gain entry into the human astral and etheric bodies; this is the means whereby Lucifer and Ahriman, respectively, take control away from the Spirits of Form, and begin to give us the freedom to be individual human beings.
I think your assessment from the lecture on the “Work of the angels…” is very timely in that courage is yours in going forward with what these indications of inordinate sensual-animal tendencies will mean for the future. We now stand at a point, due to the existence of spiritual science as a cultural imperative, wherein we can look equally from the fifth cultural epoch to the third cultural epoch, as well as toward the seventh cultural epoch, and wherein the so-called “War of All against All” is to occur. Thus, what is beginning now in our techno-materialistic culture, which owes so much to the sub-earthly realms of decayed light, magnetics, and negative atomics,
is also the means to begin to subvert the human will to the side of Soradt.
The future incarnation will see the existence of the good vs. evil race. The present dilemma of racial strains which causes so much consternation for people will become simply, the battle of good and evil. The good will be those that see now a future wherein complete freedom of individual spirit is the goal, and the evil will be those who reject now, and also show in manifold ways the tendencies that Steiner could not elaborate.
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/LorPry_index.html
Regards,
Steve
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Hi Jeremy,
Yes, the word “irrefutable” could appear to be a strong statement of personal belief, yet freedom itself is a strong belief, especially when the concepts of spiritual science are taken so personally, and with great conviction. When the warmed solution rises throughout the glass, and the sediment forms the foundation below, we have an exact condition.
The Leading Thoughts are also an exact measurement of Steiner’s proof statements, which will prove to be ‘irrefutable’ in the course of time. The very last three, with its corresponding essay, have been shown to be the theme of the “beware the technocracy” that infuriates so many opponents today, who subscribe to the greatness of materialism.
183. In the age of Natural Science, since about the middle of the nineteenth century, the civilised activities of mankind are gradually sliding downward, not only into the lowest regions of Nature, but even beneath Nature. Technical Science and Industry become Sub-Nature.
184. This makes it urgent for man to find in conscious experience a knowledge of the Spirit, wherein he will rise as high above Nature as in his sub-natural technical activities he sinks beneath her. He will thus create within him the inner strength not to go under.
185. A past conception of Nature still bore within it the Spirit with which the source of all human evolution is connected. By degrees, this Spirit vanished altogether from man’s theory of Nature. The purely Ahrimanic spirit has entered in its place, and passed from theory of Nature into the technical civilisation of mankind
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_c29.html
So, we could definitely be looking at that.
Regards,
Steve
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Hello Jeremy,
I was going to write you a private letter on this, but decided that it would be useful for this third part of your essay. The lecture below gives maybe the best assessment of what Steiner had to say on the functional purpose of Lucifer, Ahriman, and Asuras in the post-atlantean cultural epochs, wherein they each have been brought a step forward in their original evolutionary intent. Owing to the event of the extraction of the moon from the earth-moon system in the last half of the Lemurian epoch, which was necessitated in order to remove the “Old Moon Force” from the previous Ancient Moon epoch, and free the Earth as an independent sphere, i.e., the Fourth, for its own evolution, these three have all gained the ability to make mankind free in terms of individuality.
Lucifer exists to make humanity free in the astral body;
Ahriman exists to make humanity free in the etheric body;
Asuras exists to make humanity free in the Ego.
Christ dies the ‘Death of a God’ on Golgotha to redeem the Physical.
Christ remains the fulcrum event at the mid-point of earth evolution, but these three, i.e., Lucifer, Ahriman, and Asuras, all serve their purpose in aiding the actualization of the free and individual human spirit in our time. As such, Christ becomes Lord of Karma in replacement of Lucifer, who had
this distinction when the “fall of mankind” began with the mineralization of the earth in the last third of the Lemurian epoch, and brought these three forward a stage in their original evolutions, beginning with Lucifer.
In short, these “fallen angels” are not fallen at all. They serve their respective functions in the evolution of free humanity. Only Soradt, the so-called “Sun Demon, is Evil, and even he has a function to serve in achieving complete freedom of the individual human being reaching again to the Fourth Hierarchy. We stand on the verge of this through Rudolf Steiner’s
dissemination of the Cosmic Intelligence of Michael.
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA107/English/AP1954/19090322p01.html
As such, Soradt is the one that needs to be brought into the discussion, as he plays his hand in this third millennium, with its War on Terrorism since 2001. Soradt’s second evolutionary phase began in 1332, and made a war in Europe that lasted 100 years. Is this what he’s thinking for the present one?
Regards,
Steve
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Hello Jeremy,
Sorry to post such an odd question but it came to me some years ago and now I take the chance to address it plain. Do you think that in the reference to certain instincts belonging to the sexual life, homosexuality might be included as well ? I mean it is not about acceptance but rather to the strives for revealing it as a common sexual behave or even more (eg Pride Parade).
Thanks and best regards,
Sorin Stefanescu
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Hello Sorin,
No, I don’t think that homosexuality is what Steiner had in mind. My assumption is that he was referring to what we are seeing today, i.e. the huge increases in child sexual abuse, the mass use of rape as a weapon of war, enslavement, etc., and many of the practices that are being employed by Isil, the Islamic State or whatever else you call it. It seems clear to me that the people who do these things are at some level demonically inspired.
Best wishes,
Jeremy
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Thank you so much for your kind reply and views.
Gratefully,
Sorin
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Thank you for the clarification, I found your summary of “ things we are seeing today“ A bit too vague and potentially misleading. this clarification makes absolute sense – wherein sexual practices linked to abuse, violence, violation of consent, and also dark rituals define the prophesy, as opposed to other things we are “seeing today”, like the expansion of the spectrum of preference identifications and relationship forms.
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@JS and SS
I think Jeremy is mistaken in his identification of aberrant sexual instincts entering into the social life, changing the social structure. Surely this does not refer to activities which are generally acknowledged as disordered, illegal, abhorrent; but to sexual identifications and behaviours which are – as it were – officially tolerated, supported, encouraged and rewarded: e.g. via such means as government policy and statements, courts, education systems and (perhaps most importantly) the mass media. These are those non-conventional sexualities which have truly had and have a transformative effect on modern society.
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I agree with Bruce.
In a conversation once, when Steiner was asked about homosexuality, he said it was “the greatest possible expression of egoism.” It is egoism that works against brotherhood.
What enters the blood (where the ‘I’ is) as a result of sex from lust, as against sex for procreation, is a horde of Asuric beings; lust and base desires are food to them. The people are then listening to the urgings of the Asuras, instead of to their Higher I, and so you find not a trace of brotherhood in them.
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When people start a comment with, “In a conversation once, when Steiner was asked about homosexuality, he said……” I am immediately sceptical. There are thousands of remarks attributed to Steiner which have no evidential support whatsoever. I believe this particular thought came from Dr. Ralph Twentyman, who uttered other condemnatory and prejudiced thoughts about homosexuality. My gay friend whom I have known for 47 years, a eurythmist and curative teacher, assures me he has never found anything in Steiner’s published work to support any prejudice against homosexuality. I agree with Jeremy, it is paedophilia and other perversions Steiner was talking about in the lectures on the work of the angels.
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I feel like sexuality of today, the energy of creativity, is coupled with materialism in a sense that people don’t seek intimacy ( seeing into each other, seeing a human being as a partner rather then seeing just a person who will make us happy ) and are seeking only physical pleasure… this is how understand it.
I read a lecture by Steiner, don’t remember the name -which basically says that souls that have incarnated lets say mostly as female and then come through in male bodies tend to have feminine tendencies and are attracted to the same sex..
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Dear Bruce and Teleile,
Insofar as anyone, heterosexual or homosexual, has exploitative, power-based sexual relationships, then they are behaving in ways that degrade, rather than exalt, the human being. If you are suggesting (and I apologise if I’ve misunderstood you) that it is not possible for homosexual men and women to have loving and caring relationships, then I don’t agree with you at all. Anthroposophy as I understand it is entirely about love and compassion for all humanity, struggling as we are with the duality of our natures; and it seeks to help us, whether gay or straight, to realise the magnificence of human beings, our potential and our ultimate destiny. It is the quality of our relationships, not our sexual orientation, that is the important point.
Regards,
Jeremy
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Thank you Jeremy for your blog and the interesting discussions that you so courteously replied to. We do live in alarming times and I am returning to reading anthroposophy every day to get concepts well known to me more sharply defined and to discover the inexhaustible wisdom I have not yet discovered!
. I am somewhat comforted by the thought that every single thought of gratitude for the beauty around us, for the work of others in serving us, every moment of thankfulness for our lives, and prayers for the well being of others and for all beings whether it be Christian, agnostic, Buddhist, Islamic, neopagan or whatever is nourishment for our angels. And so is every kind act.
Best
Vivien
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Hello. Good interpretation with complete lack of Lucifer s influece understanding. Thats not true that ahrimanic powers are more dangerous theese days. Occult luciferic powers work strongly on false order on the Earth and fuelling forced, wrongly imposted evolution of man.
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Hi Jeremy. Thank you for your well-written article on very crucial Steiner information that I have not previously come across. I have found it very valuable, and timely, coming as it has at a time when I am personally dithering spiritually, worn down by physical afflictions I’ve had to live with for quite some decades now. Reading your article has given me renewed energy and to keep my eye on the ball, spiritually, again. When I was 28 yrs old I met Christ on the inner; I’m now 62. Only this year I came across what Steiner had to say on that happening later in the century. He said that if that happened there wouldn’t need to be faith, because the truth was from then on apparent with nothing to be proved. My challenge is to continue to endure physical afflictions and not wish that anything had been better in my life along material, physical lines; to keep my focus on the beauty of the love and goodness of Jesus Christ and to foster compassion and understanding for others.
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Thank you for your kind words, Clarice! That is a great blessing you received when you were 28 years old and I hope that its effects will continue to help you through present difficulties. I have always liked the advice given by the founder of the White Eagle Lodge, to “keep on, keeping on.” Not easy, of course, but we are burning off our karma through every day that passes, and hopefully we’re not making too much more bad karma in the process. Best wishes, Jeremy
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Hi Jeremy. thanks for this wonderful article.
I believe I’ve had a spiritual awakening regarding this, and it’s about harmonies with music, prayer and positive visualisations at the same time. Plus dance, spinning and kind of “mental blocking”. With a complete focus on training the mind and spirit to master good thoughts. It’s not easy but it’s getting better, now after 2 years.
I believe Angels contact us via numbers and sign’s, plus visions songs and ideas, thoughts and emotions. (when we are in a positive state of mind with thoughts orientated to the spirit lol) .
I think the universe is at work with alot of us and things are accelerating pretty fast. I spend sometimes hours in prayer and meditation, when I can manage it, as I’ve seen most of my family destroyed, by the “Service to self”, aka the antichrist aka Ahriman aka the evil thought.
This article really resonated with me, as it’s kind of what I hear via intuitive voice. Long story to explain the whole lot 😅
It’s my Life mission to fight for the “Good”, the Spiritual. And this is what I am focusing all my energy on, in time I will record the music. The prayes are all in rhymes and music, and they are based around the things you mentioned at the end of the article. Love, truth, wisdom, light, gratitude, truth . and humility. Plus many more. It is also about putting energy into loving, creative thought and thereby redirecting and channeling any negativity into positive and creative energy, as these negative entity’s feed off our negative emotions. It’s certainly not easy! As I’m sure we all know lol! It really is a battle, from within but I believe we will succeed with help from the Angels and God, though prayer, pure thoughts and faith . The universe longs for harmony. Above all, faith and love for each other, and the prime Creator, the Cosmic mind . The power to use our free will to let Go of our ego, realize we are a manifestation of the universe, and welcome the good Spirit back into our lives. It would be impossible to describe it all here. . Kind of goes like this..
The Army is the Harmony, with the Armour of good Karma. 😅🙏
The Ascended Masters, the Original rappers. We listen to the voice of the hereafter.
Universe, one verse, one song let’s sing it!
And feel the love, it’s up to us to bring it! And so on etc.
Thanks for you work, bless you.
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