The MysTech online conference on the theme of ‘Facing the Incarnation of Ahriman’ was held from 7th to 10th August 2025. Organised by Andrew Linnell and his colleagues, it offered an impressive range of talks by some excellent speakers. I was not able to listen to all sixteen speakers, but I did manage to hear presentations from: Inessa Burdich, Harrie Salman, Bastiaan Baan, Benjamin Cherry, Adriana Koulias, Doug Smith, Florian Sydow, Robert McKay, Are Thoresen and Andrew Linnell. The text of my own talk is given below.
In a lecture given in Dornach on 18th November 1917, Rudolf Steiner said: “What people in our epoch must learn is the need to wage a fully conscious fight against the evil that is making its way into human evolution.”
The epoch to which Steiner was referring is our present stage of human development which he called the Age of the Consciousness Soul, or the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. This has been with us since the early 15th century and it will last for around 2,200 years, ending approximately in the year 3600 of our present era. Steiner tells us that, since the beginning of this Age, the propensity for evil lies in the subconscious of every person, and that there is no crime, however dreadful, that each one of us, as people of this epoch, does not have the potential to commit. Paradoxically, confronting this reality is the only way that we can solve the riddle of evil, which is the most important task of our age.
The existence of evil is also, of course, a powerful reason why many people say they do not believe in God, for how can a god of love who is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent allow evil phenomena to exist? Yet initiates tell us that God has two aspects, which when understood and viewed correctly, enable us to see the purpose of evil. Evil can be seen as the unevolved and undeveloped aspect of life, the force which tests us and absorbs and removes that which is unwanted.
So this is the scale of the challenge each of us is facing in this very difficult period in human physical existence. Anthroposophists characterise our present time as one in which we shall see the actual incarnation of the great dark archangel, Ahriman. Ahriman could be defined as the power which prevents man in his physical-sense world existence from perceiving the spiritual-soul beings lying behind the surface of our physical world – but Ahriman is also an actual being, whose incarnation in physical form is imminent. This will be the last of three unique incarnations of which Steiner spoke – the first was the incarnation of Lucifer in about 3000 BCE (believed by many to have been as the Yellow Emperor in China, he of the terracotta army); the second was the incarnation of Christ in Palestine two thousand years ago; and the third will be the incarnation of Ahriman, which to quote Steiner will take place “before only a part of the third millennium of the post-Christian era has elapsed”, probably in the USA. Each of these incarnations is prepared for many years, indeed centuries, in advance, and we can see quite clearly already the kind of evil influences that the future Ahrimanic incarnation is bringing to bear upon our human societies.
In my view, the past one hundred and fifty years has been the most terrible period in the whole of human history and the evil is worsening and intensifying as we approach the actual incarnation. Some of the notable characteristics of what is happening across the world right now include:
A huge increase in personal stress levels
A loss of faith or confidence in governments and public institutions of all kinds, both nationally and internationally
Rancour and divisions between families, friends and colleagues, with irreconcilable positions taken on issues of the day
A collapse of the systems on which we all rely, including the international rules-based order
The gradual disappearance of many of the old certainties on which society is based.
For anthroposophists, these social phenomena indicate that what is happening is Ahrimanic, clear signs of the impending incarnation of the being that Christ called the ‘ruler of this world’. Wherever we look, we see many examples which are indicative of this and perhaps even of the actual incarnation itself. The signs are all around us, and you don’t need me to list them. We are all aware of the ever-increasing range of threats which confront humanity and the entire web of life.
For me, the Covid pandemic has been one of the most significant of the Ahrimanic phenomena. Covid is a viral disease, which means that it is mineral in nature and does not have its own life processes and therefore needs a host organism so it can reproduce itself. But it also has astonishing intelligence, for example in the resistance it can develop to medicines, or in the way it can mutate, partly in response to vaccinations. But I can’t help asking, where does this astonishing intelligence live? In what being does this intelligence reside?
Second, the Covid pandemic produced fear, much of it stoked by deliberate government policy, as well as anxiety and division between people, even within families. It also led governments to dismantle existing civil liberties with an ease that they had not expected to find in Western democracies. It became impossible to have a fruitful exchange of views between those taking different standpoints and we saw instead heightened emotions, rejection and hatred of other people’s opinions. This process was driven even further by our news outlets and social media, who censored the views of anyone, even distinguished professors of medicine, whose expert opinion did not fit the official line. Again, one must ask: whose interests are being served by this fracturing of social cohesion?
Such attitudes have also radiated out into wider society, causing dissension between ordinary people. We see it internationally and we see it also in our national lives, with both the USA and the UK having more divided societies than ever before. And during Covid we also began to see discord and division growing in our localities. Here are just two examples of these polarised attitudes from the time of Covid, from my own local community: the first one was told to me by a woman who has a mother in a care home. This woman did not want to have the jabs and was told that as a result not only would she not be able to visit her mother but that unless she had both jabs her mother would no longer be able to stay in the care home! The second comes from someone who runs a kindergarten, who at the height of the pandemic was told by some parents that if she herself had the jabs, then they would remove their children from the kindergarten. Tyranny runs in both directions… Such unkindness and the breaking-down of relationships are characteristic of the impending incarnation.
When contemplating a theme as weighty as the incarnation of Ahriman, it is helpful to have in our minds a picture of ourselves as human beings and our current evolutionary progress. For we are undoubtedly at a significant point of change and our evolution can go either in the way intended by the spiritual hierarchies or else in the direction wished for and worked towards by Ahriman and his helpers. The issue is still in the balance and the outcome depends on each one of us.
Anthroposophy teaches us that we human beings are engaged on a path of development that leads us to ever higher levels of consciousness and existence. And it’s clear today that we are at a critical point along that path. What we are now being called upon to do is to connect and work with our higher spiritual self, which everyone of us has and which Steiner calls the ‘I ‘or higher ego: the image of God, our true nature, which is within each of us.
It is particularly confusing for us at this time that there are three processes going on simultaneously, some of which are cause for despair and others which are as, Ita Wegman said in another context, “full of future”.
The first process is that we are coming to the end of the old path of development, which brought widespread prosperity and progress; but which also increasingly led us to materialism, selfishness, greed and disconnection from the environment and the spiritual world, and hence to the multiple crises facing us. It is the breaking-down of this first process which we tend to see reflected in our news media. That is also the aspect which Ahriman and his helpers want us to focus on because it induces great fear in us. This old developmental stage made us become who we are today: independent personalities with an ‘I‘ and self-consciousness. But now that humanity has accomplished this developmental stage, the old path is breaking up and is slowly coming to an end amidst chaos and confusion, which increases the fear and uncertainty felt by so many people.
The second process is that a new way of being is seeking to be born, as the old is breaking down all around us. This is occurring as people ask themselves questions on their life paths, search for answers, go through processes of change and, as a result, perceive, think, and do things differently. This new kind of consciousness, arising as it does from inner transformation, is happening everywhere and can be recognised worldwide. It is leading to the emergence of a new culture in which people connect to their feelings, think about what they believe, make conscious choices, know what values they stand for, and consciously interact and cooperate with other people and with nature. It is those who can ride the wave of this change who are creating the new culture.
The third process is about building new ways of being. Instead of an attitude of competition and rivalry, opposing and fighting each other, people are increasingly seeking connection and cooperation. Instead of blindly obeying an authority outside our self, we would rather trust our own authority, our own inner knowing. This is accompanied by a shift of perception from separateness to wholeness – the recognition that we are connected to the greater whole in all aspects of life and reality, our humanity, the earth, the cosmos, everything that lives. There is an increasing realisation that everything is dependent on everything else.
One way of looking at this might be to say that humanity has lived in a state of adolescence for two thousand years. Now it is time for us to grow up, become true adults and work for unity and understanding throughout the world. We have progressed in our intelligence and our mastery of scientific discoveries but our capacities for wisdom and love have not progressed to the same extent. We have uncovered the workings of the laws that govern Nature without being sufficiently attuned to the Cosmic Law as it is reflected in Nature; and have thus brought ourselves ever closer to destruction.
In this MysTech conference we are considering the role of Ahriman but we should also consider other adversary forces. Steiner spoke about another spiritual entity, an opposing principle to the Lamb of Christ, that he calls the ‘Sun Demon’ or ‘Sorat’. It is this being, the adversary of the Lamb, who is literally the anti-Christ. It is an open question for me as to how much Sorat, and his demonic helpers, the Asuras, have been behind the work of Ahriman during the last century and a half. Whereas Ahriman’s aim is to lead us into an ever-intensifying form of brain-bound, earth-bound materialistic thinking, and Lucifer’s is to tempt us into disembodied fantasy and to believing that we are gods, the aim of Sorat the Antichrist, the Sun Demon, is to destroy the human ‘I’ (the Self, the bearer of the Christ principle or the indwelling divinity in the human being), to drag us towards the so-called Eighth Sphere and to destroy the Earth itself, which our ‘I’ needs for the future development of the human soul. Yes, we and the Earth need each other for our evolutionary paths. Climate change, war, the sixth great extinction, genocide, materialism, racism, and transhumanism – these are all facets of attacks from the same enemy. This is the true scale of the battle with which we are now engaged.
A quick explanation about the expression just used, the Eighth Sphere. Anthroposophy teaches us that humankind in its total evolution from the very beginning to the end of time must pass through seven planetary spheres, which correspond to our seven bodies, which are members or aspects of our being. We are currently in the Fourth Sphere, which is our dear planet Earth and which corresponds to our ‘I’ or higher ego, the individuality which we take with us from incarnation to incarnation. Over aeons we have already lived through the first three spheres which are: Saturn, which corresponds to the physical body; the Sun, which corresponds to the etheric body; and the Moon which corresponds with the astral body. There are three further bodies which we have within ourselves as potential for future development, that is to say Spirit Self, Life Spirit and Spirit Man. (You can read more about these seven bodies or members of the human constitution in Steiner’s book Outline of Esoteric Science.) The adversarial forces are working together to try to divert us from our natural evolutionary progress through the seven planetary spheres, and to take us instead into the Eighth Sphere. If they are successful in this, it means that we would be unable to progress with evolution, nor have the possibility of the encounter with Christ, but instead we would be thrown back to a lower level. Both Ahriman and the Asuras work from the Eighth Sphere. This is the realm which the religions call Hell.
Steiner says that in their will to evil and in their fullness of power, the Asuras surpass both the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic beings:
“The Asuras – the evil ones – are beings who are again one degree higher in their will to evil than the ahrimanic beings and two degrees higher than the luciferic ones.“
“These are the beings who strive towards the Eighth Sphere. They want to compress matter more and more, so that it cannot be spiritualised again, i.e. returned to its original state. They want to drag human beings down into the Eighth Sphere and thus snatch us away from progressive development and its goal – the Christ.“
And alongside this, we are also facing the challenges brought to us by transhumanism. Many scientists, technologists and engineers are working on the development of these concepts, which in a nutshell are designed to transcend human limitations through technological interventions within the human body. Targeted genetic, neurotechnological, prosthetic and pharmacological interventions are meant to optimize our bodies, feelings and brain and broaden them so that biologically programmed human limitations, such as sickness, ageing and death can be overcome and ultimately left behind. Andrew Linnell, our conference organiser, and several other of our speakers, specialise in these matters and I am hoping they will have more to say about them during this weekend. (They did!)
A prominent figure in all of this is Ray Kurzweil, Google’s former futurologist, who is a leading computer scientist and inventor. His prediction, made in his book The Singularity is Near, is that we human beings will become more godlike as we become more machine-like and as machines develop more god-like powers. Kurzweil says that we humans are nothing special in the animal kingdom: we have no immortal soul, there is no essential human self and our thoughts and emotions are the product of electrochemical impulses which can in the future be modelled by algorithms. Our future lies in the hands of technologists, people who are experts in biotechnology, artificial intelligence, cognitive and computer science. Their work will produce new tools that will become parts of our bodies. We will have bionic hands, feet and eyes, while nanorobots will move through our bloodstream looking out for disease and repairing the damage of age and injury. We shall have wearable and implanted devices to expand our senses and alter our moods, while biological tools will enter our cells, remodel our genes and give us new and better flesh, blood and neurons.
it is clear that Kurzweil, who is a highly intelligent man, is nevertheless one of the Useful Idiots preparing the way for Ahriman. As part-evidence for my statement that Kurzweil is an idiot, it should be noted that he has joined the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, a cryonics company. In the event of his death, Kurzweil plans for his corpse to be perfused with cryoprotectants, vitrified in liquid nitrogen, and stored at an Alcor facility in the hope that future medical technology will be able to repair his tissues and revive him. If only he had studied Steiner, he’d know that his consciousness is already immortal and he could have saved himself $200,000!
But it does seem quite possible that those of us alive today are likely to be the last generation of pure human beings that the world will know. Within a single generation the transhumanists intend that we will become a hybrid species of biological and synthetic bodies. Ray Kurzweil says: “Some people find this frightening. But [The Singularity] is going to be beautiful and will expand our consciousness in ways we can barely imagine, like a person who is deaf hearing the most exquisite symphony for the first time.” But it’s surely also possible that these developments will limit our ability to think, to love, to adapt to the conditions of the emerging world in a healthy way. Behind all this is Ahriman, who wants us to lose our capacity for emotion, empathy, intimacy and forgiveness – the very qualities that we value and cherish in our humanness.
The historian of humankind, Yuval Noah Harari, also points to a near future in which “people will no longer regard themselves as autonomous beings who follow their own wishes according to their life, but rather as a collection of biochemical mechanisms that are constantly monitored and directed by a network of electronic algorithms”. He says that “Humans, giraffes, viruses are all algorithms. They differ from computers in so far as they are biochemical algorithms which have evolved at the caprice of natural selection over millennia.” “The individual authentic self is no more real than the immortal Christian soul, Santa Claus or the Easter bunny.” As a not entirely humorous aside, my wife has a fear that in the future those of us who refuse to be microchipped or to accept technological improvements to our bodies will be forced by the rest of society to live in nature reserves where we can be visited and observed as quaint throwbacks by the medically enhanced ‘normal’ people, as a kind of millennium seedbank of the human genome.
Do all these phenomena mean that Ahriman has already incarnated? Rudolf Steiner predicted that Ahriman would incarnate in the flesh in the first part of the third millennium in which we are now living. The details of how, when and in whom this incarnation would happen have of course been the subject of much speculation since Steiner spoke about this over one hundred years ago. Steiner also said at a meeting with young people in Breslau that Ahriman will do everything in his power to advance the moment of his incarnation as much as he can. Steiner then mentions the year 1998, which for anyone interested in numerology is 666 multiplied by 3.
My own view is that, rather in the way that the incarnation of Jesus Christ was preceded for around 500 years by all kinds of what might be called precursor indications, the various phenomena we are seeing now are also indications of what is heading our way. At present, I don’t see any convincing candidates for the role of Ahriman, despite strong competition among current world leaders, so even if Ahriman is now here in a physical body, he has not yet assumed the prominence we might expect.
For how long will these evil times last? Here is a quotation from the great Bulgarian master, Beinsa Douno, also known as Peter Deunov (1864 – 1944), who was a contemporary of Steiner – they had a high regard for one another. This excerpt comes from a talk with his followers during the 1920s, and it still seems highly relevant to our situation now:
“The ‘end of the world’ manifests itself through the cleansing of the old humanity, so that a new humanity can come in that place. This cleansing (…) has been carried out for a period of 45 years. This period began in 1900 and will end in 1945. You are all eyewitnesses to what happened during this period.”
“From 1945 will begin another period, which will also last 45 years until 1990. Such times come and such power comes, that whoever opposes it will lay his bones on the ground. A great dictatorship ensues (…) “
“After this period there will be a short break until 1999 (…). And then a new period will come, with an even more terrible dictatorship (…). It will also last 45 years.”
That takes us to the year 2044. So, if Peter Deunov is correct, we can expect around another twenty years where these Ahrimanic phenomena will intensify and worsen, years which will perhaps include the actual incarnation.
Steiner did not specify what exactly Ahriman would do on earth, and what sort of person he might be in the flesh. But in a lecture given in Bern on 4th November 1919, he said that during his incarnation, Ahriman would seek “to utterly mislead and corrupt humanity on earth.” He also said in 1922: “And what is it that these Ahrimanic beings are seeking to bring about? They set themselves the task of keeping man on the Earth by every possible means. You know from the book Occult Science that the Earth will one day pass over into the Jupiter condition. That is what these beings want to prevent. They want to prevent man from developing in a regular way together with the Earth and then passing over into the Jupiter condition in a normal way. They want to preserve the Earth as Earth and mankind for the Earth. Hence these beings work unceasingly and with great intensity to achieve their purpose.”
But Steiner also says repeatedly in the lectures that this incarnation could not and should not be averted. It has to happen and, in the right conditions, might even benefit human evolution. The really important thing is that people should be sufficiently awake to recognise Ahriman for what he is. Only if Ahriman were to go unrecognised would this event be wholly calamitous for the evolution of the earth and humanity.
There’s no doubt that Ahriman has an easier task than one could wish. He finds it easy to persuade humans to give up their future to him, because Ahriman can work through the seat of human desires – our pride, greed, laziness, lust or wish for power – but Christ can only reach us through our ‘I’ or higher self and this means that the struggle is not an equal one. Our ‘I’ has so to develop that it can in time learn to recognise and resist the many temptations offered by Lucifer and Ahriman. These two adversarial forces work as allies 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 point of balance between them, which is represented by Christ.
One has to recognise, however, that the behaviour over centuries of some Christians, some churches and some supposedly Christian nations has combined to make the name ‘Jesus Christ’ distasteful to many people today. This is another area where Ahriman has been working effectively.
To quote from the very useful AnthroWiki website, “Jesus Christ is the name for the unique and singular earthly embodiment of the Christ in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. According to Steiner’s research, this incarnation began with the baptism in the Jordan River, which occurred around the 30th year of Jesus’ life, and was completed with his death on Golgotha”.
“Through the Mystery of Golgotha, the Christ Power, which originally worked from the Sun, united with the Earth. This is a spiritual fact that stands above all denominational religious confessions and is also not bound to the name ‘Christ’ that is in common use among us”. As Steiner emphasised: ‘Never will he who recognises the Christ-being insist that the name of the Christ remain.’ ” In other words, we shouldn’t get upset if other people use a different term for the universal fact of Christ. And Steiner has made the stupendous statement that “the ‘I’ in human beings is microcosmically the same as Christ is macrocosmically for the world.”
Just lately I have been reading Travels on the Northern Path of Initiation by the anthroposophical writer and seer, Are Thoresen, in which he offers an intriguing update on Steiner’s descriptions of Ahriman’s incarnation. Thoresen is in supersensible contact with the Nordic angelic being Vidar, whom he describes as continuing the work of Michael as an Archangel, and who is the outer and shining aura of Christ himself. Thoresen asked Vidar about the future incarnation of Ahriman. To quote from the book:
“Vidar’s answer was clear and simple, and as I slowly pondered this it made more and more sense. He said that Ahriman was already in the process of incarnating, at this very time, but he is incarnating in all of us, with the help – or by being given cover by – the asuric beings. It is extremely important to understand this.” Are Thoresen is one of the speakers who will be taking part in this conference so I’m hoping that he will be saying more about all of this during this weekend. (No, he spoke instead about ways of entering the spiritual worlds.)
And whether you agree with Steiner or Thoresen or even with neither of them, one real challenge of these times is how to get through them without succumbing to despair. For me, the pain consists in seeing what is happening and realising that the vast majority of our fellow human beings, although they know that we are living in a very troubled world, are oblivious to what is really going on. And what is really going on, to borrow the title of a book by Bernard Lievegoed, is The Battle for the Soul. According to Lievegoed, because the human spirit is unassailable, the opposing powers therefore direct their efforts against the soul. The human soul is the real battlefield of the war between the powers of good and evil. What the Ahrimanic powers are attempting is to obscure the human soul or even to destroy it, so that the human ‘I’ is unable to gain the experience it needs on Earth for its healthy evolution.
Ahriman is also working very hard to ensure that we humans are unaware of the second coming of Christ, which according to Rudolf Steiner will not be a physical incarnation this time around. That was done once and for all 2000 years ago and will not be repeated. Steiner says that since about 1933, the Christ has been available to human beings in the etheric field and that more and more of us will be able to have the experience of an encounter with Christ. We know how Ahriman dealt with this threat in 1933, by assisting the rise of Hitler to power in Germany, thus creating more assaults on the human soul that diverted us from awareness of what was happening in the etheric realm. By keeping the eyes of most of humanity fixed firmly on the material world, and completely unaware of any other reality, Ahriman has kept knowledge of the second coming from our souls.
Why is it that we have come to this particular crisis in our time? After all, humans have been killing one another and behaving with utter selfishness and greed for centuries. What has made the difference now? Why has there been this intensification, a kind of industrialisation, of the scale of evil on this Earth? And how can we wake up to what is really going on and begin to counteract “the evil that is making its way into human evolution”?
This relates to what Steiner called “the war in heaven” that took place over the period 1840 to 1879 between the Archangel Michael and the dark angels. Since that time, when Michael cast out these dark forces from heaven and into the earth, these adversarial powers have been working within the blood and nervous systems of human beings in an attempt to reverse both human and angelic evolution. It is no coincidence that since the fall to earth of these dark angels, humanity is being forced to endure what I have already called the most terrible one hundred and fifty years in the whole of human history.
But we should also bear in mind that at this time, in this 21st century, all signs point towards the emergence of a new world amidst the old, dying world. That new world originates not from outside our selves but from the inner life of us humans. It is derived from the divine core that lives and works inside every individual human soul. This means that the development of every individual on earth is of the utmost importance.
And what looks right now as though the triumph of Ahriman is a foregone conclusion, may not be quite as strong and solid as it appears, because as we know from the past, despite many victories in battle along the way, in the end Ahriman always loses the war. I suspect he will lose this time as well because there is a resilience in human life and the natural world which, when allied with the love of Christ and our innate capacities for empathy, compassion and kindness, give certainty that truth and real human values will outlast and survive the worst that can be done to us, or that we can do to ourselves.
But in the meantime, how can we counter Ahriman and find the strength and resilience to live through these terrible times? We can hope that increasing numbers of people will discover what it truly is to be a human being; that is to say, we humans are beings with one foot in the material world and another in the spiritual world; that spiritual world to which we return between earthly lives and which is our real home. Here on Earth, we have something which is not available to us in the spiritual world – and that is the privilege and the challenge of free will, something which allows us to experience both the good and the bad sides of our natures over many lives and through this process to grow and evolve in freedom through our own decisions.
In a way, we should be grateful to the Ahrimanic beings who, in this spiritual evolutionary process play an essential part. Not only are they instrumental in the forming of the human being’s constitution in all its beauty and darkness, but they also play an important role in bringing us face-to-face with the consequences of our actions and decisions and hence also the forming of our destiny and karma.
It is all too easy to feel that the struggle is hopeless. Whenever I am feeling overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the challenges facing all of life on Earth, the following words from Judith von Halle can give me new courage:
“The consistent psychical-spiritual work of an individual, or of a few individuals, can have an enormous influence on the physical and spiritual conditions of the world! When someone asks: What can I as one person do to influence world events? – the answer is: everything! If people could only see with physical eyes the effect on the macrocosmic context that the decision and its implementation to consistently practise only one meditation by a single person, then probably no one would hesitate to undertake such an exercise themselves. For the possibilities are enormous! Allow me to give you this as the greatest consolation, as the strongest ray of hope in the present situation. The individual person holds the world’s fate in his hands. This is the gift of the Christ, who sees the individual I as a deity, who treats it as a deity. (…) Spiritual life must become a reality in our hearts and therefore in our higher consciousness. We must develop a feeling in our souls for the true, the beautiful and the good that resides in this spiritual life.”
And I also feel it important to concentrate on those areas of life where one can make a difference, rather than wasting time and emotion on problems which are way beyond one’s capacity to influence. Each of us is now being called upon to do all that we can to help in the evolution and progress of human life. In the face of the current massive onslaught which is seeking to re-define what it means to be a human being, any project which concentrates on true human needs and values is a worthwhile antidote to the poison of our times. People are trying to help in their own myriad ways: artists through their creative work, teachers and parents through educating and bringing up children, activists through changing policies and laws, and any of us through our encounters in daily life. If we can be people of initiative, rather than passive sponges soaking up whatever is done to us, humanity will survive the incarnation of Ahriman.
We should remember a saying of St Francis that: “All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.” A few people working with and for the light can counteract the negative workings of thousands of others. If you can get together regularly with one or two other people to pray for humanity and all life on the Earth, then the effect of this will be much greater than you can possibly imagine.
In a lecture given at Dornach on 1st November 1919, Rudolf Steiner said the following: “To the extent to which people can be roused into conducting their affairs not for material ends alone but also so as to incorporate a free and independent spiritual life alongside economic life, as an integral part of the social organism — to that same extent Ahriman’s incarnation will be awaited with an attitude worthy of humanity.”
I’m going to finish with a prayer by Paul King, who is a translator for Temple Lodge Publishing and also a member of the meditation group which meets in our house:
Light of the world,
Great Sun-Spirit of the Earth!
May Your light enlighten our heads,
May Your love warm our hearts,
May Your peace pacify our strife!
Thank you for listening and I look forward very much to the rest of this conference!
Category Archives: Judith von Halle
Facing the Incarnation of Ahriman “with an attitude worthy of humanity”
Filed under Ahriman, Anthroposophy, Archangel Michael, Cryonics, Evil, Judith von Halle, Lucifer, Ray Kurzweil, Sorat
Sergei Prokofieff, Judith von Halle and the Representative of Humanity
After my recent blog posting on Coronavirus and the Indwelling Divinity of the Human Being, I received an email from an anthroposophist, someone for whom I have considerable respect:
“I read your blog with interest (…). Thank you, it was stimulating food for thought. However, I’m afraid I don’t set great store by Judith von Halle’s sensational claims. I appreciate that you have obviously found them helpful, and I don’t want to undermine that, but from past experience and from Sergei Prokofieff’s analysis of her seership, I am very cautious. I think the pandemic is more about preparing humanity for the incarnation of Ahriman, the hallmarks are very much of ahrimanic nature. That’s not to say that other beings don’t also have an effect, but does Judith von Halle offer any substantiation of her claims? It’s a very strong statement that individual karma is being thwarted, for instance. When seers dislike being questioned, I become suspicious. She is welcome to offer opinions, but when they are dressed up as facts, I am wary. But it’s good that you write blogs and get people to think more widely.”
Another correspondent wrote to tell me how she attends a regular study group and after reading the blog post, “last week I mentioned Judith Von Halle and was jumped on by each of the others! Sometimes I feel that many people wouldn’t recognise Christ if he walked through their front door!!! “
What these messages show me is that there are many anthroposophists who revere the late Sergei Prokofieff (16 January 1954 – 26 July 2014), who regard him as a star in the anthroposophical firmament and a worthy successor to Rudolf Steiner. They have listened to his criticisms of Judith von Halle and have downplayed her significance accordingly. I don’t share this view but I realise that there are many people who won’t agree with me; if serious anthroposophists such as Peter Selg hold Prokofieff in high regard, then who am I to say that they are wrong? I would, nevertheless, like to explain my views on both Prokofieff and JvH.
Only once did I see Prokofieff in the flesh, and that was when he gave a lecture at Rudolf Steiner House in London. His buttoned-up appearance reminded me of Virginia Woolf’s jokey description of the repressed and reserved T.S Eliot, as “wearing his four-piece suit.” My doubts increased as he was speaking, because he seemed to me to be distorting Steiner’s teachings and drawing from them quite unjustified conclusions. Several other people with whom I spoke afterwards had similar reservations.
Later on, as I acquired copies of some of his books and began to read what he had written, my doubts increased further. I have now given almost all of these books away to Prokofieff enthusiasts, as I did not find them helpful.
Since it was clear to me that Prokofieff was introducing a Luciferic distortion of Steiner’s teachings, I became intrigued as to why he was regarded so highly by many anthroposophists, culminating in 2001 with his being invited to join the Vorstand (Executive Group) at the global centre for anthroposophy at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland.
I then came across a very important critique of Prokofieff’s work. This is Sergei O. Prokofieff: Myth and Reality by the late Irina Gordienko. This book crystallised for me all the reservations I had felt about Prokofieff’s work. I won’t say any more about it here, because an excellent review of the book has been provided by Kim Graae Munch on his website and I would urge anyone who is interested to read it:
https://kimgraaemunch.wordpress.com/various/irena-gordienkos-on-sergei-o-prokofieff/
In his memorial address for Prokofieff given on 29 July 2014, Peter Selg described him as “this most inwardly faithful pupil of Rudolf Steiner and protector of his new revelation of Christ.” It is abundantly clear from Prokofieff’s writings and actions that he idolised Rudolf Steiner and that he wanted to be just like his eminent teacher. Like Steiner, Prokofieff was a prolific writer and lecturer dealing with profound esoteric matters. But I take leave to doubt whether Prokofieff was a high initiate in the same mould as Steiner himself.
In his remarks at the memorial gathering, Selg clearly did not feel it appropriate to make any reference to the controversies surrounding Prokofieff’s interpretations of Steiner’s teachings, nor his attacks on Judith von Halle. He did manage, however, to imply that Prokofieff was not always an easy colleague, recalling that: “In 2001 he was finally called to Dornach to join the Executive Council at the Goetheanum. Looking back on his life in personal conversations, he expressed repeatedly that he should have been called to the Executive Council by 1994 at the very latest so he could work intensely in Dornach for the ‘payment of the debt owed’ to Rudolf Steiner and for the culmination.” (The ‘culmination’ refers to Steiner’s expectation that anthroposophy would be transformed in such a way that it would enter significantly into the global scene of the 21st century as a world-changing creative power.)
Prokofieff also was “increasingly troubled by the relationship to Rudolf Steiner within the Anthroposophical Society and in Dornach, and he published a book concerning this relationship in 2006. Selg adds that Prokofieff also “felt himself to be increasingly isolated. He knew and accepted that an experience of ‘cosmic loneliness’ was part of modern initiation, but he often had to ask himself where his colleagues in the battle for the culmination were to be found. It pained him that his relationship to Rudolf Steiner—and the reasons he insisted on its significance—were often misunderstood; its inner spiritual dimension was not seen and what he taught and authentically lived remained uncomprehended.” Shortly before his death, Prokofieff told Selg “that he had things to tell the spiritual world and Rudolf Steiner, especially about the conduct of anthroposophy on the earth.”
Clearly, everyone but Prokofieff was out-of-step. No-one can doubt Prokofieff’s devotion to Steiner and anthroposophy and his single-minded pursuit of what he felt was a sacrificial path of martyrdom. But I can’t help wondering what Rudolf Steiner will have said to his disciple when they met in the spiritual world after Prokofieff’s death.
So why am I resurrecting this fairly ancient history? It is because Prokofieff’s attacks on Judith von Halle are still influencing many anthroposophists, such as my correspondent cited above. Anyone who is new to these controversies can find out more by following this link and this to items appearing in Southern Cross Review in 2013:
I would like to say something now about my own feelings concerning Judith von Halle. Up until fairly recently, I had stayed away from the controversies surrounding her and the attacks mounted on her by Prokofieff and others such as T.H. Meyer and Mieke Mossmuller. Then I read a book called The Representative of Humanity – Between Lucifer and Ahriman by Judith von Halle and the late John Wilkes, about the unfinished wooden sculpture by Rudolf Steiner and Edith Maryon, which is today exhibited at the Goetheanum.
As I read this book, I was seized by an absolute certainty of knowing that Judith von Halle in her previous life had been Edith Maryon. How can one explain these things? I just knew.
This book is a sacred text. In the chapters, written alternately by John Wilkes and Judith von Halle, one is given not only the history of the first Goetheanum as a mystery temple and the central place in it of the wooden model, but also a beautifully clear and simple exposition of what it is to be a human being and an outline of the evolutionary journey on which we are all embarked. If you are looking for a concise and clear explanation of anthroposophy, I don’t think you can do better than to read this book. The photos and illustrations of the first Goetheanum and the artwork inside it are very moving and make one realise what a unique treasure was lost when the arsonist did his work on New Year’s Eve 1922.
It is an extraordinary thing that, just a few days earlier, on 26th December 1922, Rudolf Steiner gave to Edith Maryon a mantric verse that would seem to be a kind of preparation to deal with the shock of what would occur on the last day of the year:
When human beings discovered the way the world
Dispersed endlessly in atoms
They accepted an understanding of the death of nature:
They should now strive to find in spirit what will overcome
The dead remains, and they will direct their understanding
To world becoming.
By giving Edith Maryon this verse, Steiner was showing to her that in the artistic realm one should not cling to the material aspect, because if one had done the work with the right attitude, one would have created something that is imperishable at the angelic level, a lasting spiritual work of art that will then have eternal existence.
John Wilkes was the founder of the Foundation for Water at Emerson College in the UK, where he did much of the mathematical research that led to the creation of flow forms for revitalising water. But he also was instrumental in the saving and restoration of the wax, plasticine and clay models that had been prepared by Steiner and Maryon for the Representative of Humanity, which had been thrown out (some were even wantonly destroyed, including a bust of Rudolf Steiner) when Edith Maryon’s studio was being cleared out in the 1950s. A little while ago I spoke with John Wilkes’ widow, Alfhild, who, although being understandably reluctant to discuss such a sensitive subject, confirmed that my intuition about Judith von Halle’s previous life was also shared by JvH herself. Interestingly, Alfhild also suggested that JvH, in some of her spiritual research, did not always get things invariably correct, which is a theme that Prokofieff, Meyer et al might agree with.
It is, nevertheless, for her spiritual research that Judith von Halle should be celebrated today. She is able to do work that only a very few anthroposophists are capable of doing, ie genuine spiritual scientific research. I know of only a few such people doing distinguished work in their own fields, for example Susan Raven (nature spirits), Ralf Roessner (bees, the light root) and Iain Trousdell (John Wilkes’ successor at the Foundation for Water). There must be others that I’m unaware of, but they are all precious and we should cherish them.
Von Halle herself has said this about her work:
“I am often criticised—it is the main criticism—that my lectures and books only contain the description of the perceptions, of unreflected-upon visions. But that is not the case. The work of investigating the spiritual world, that is my real activity, and it was also the case before the stigmatisation. Together with the stigmata really came experience of the events in the life of Christ and its historical circumstances, but perceptions of concrete historical situations from other times have also been possible for me since then, such as from the time of the Templars or events from other times and their circumstances. That was an amazing experience. However, what was important was that based on these historical events it was possible for me to spiritually investigate, that is to find out by means of spiritual science why just these historical events happened and their esoteric meaning in the overall cosmic plan. And it should be clear to every anthroposophist that such things cannot be found out through mere perception, but only by working for knowledge of them. And that is the kind of work, namely spiritual research, which I also did previously. It is very important that this be understood, because the same error in judgment of my spiritual activity is repeated again and again in public, at least by those people who judge without having been correctly informed about my work by reading my books. Therefore in every introduction to my [Christological] books I write about this – but it is unfortunately often ignored.”
Asked about how she does her spiritual research, JvH said this (and also gave a clue about herself which I followed up): “An indication of what happens in this respect on a higher plane can be found in Rudolf Steiner’s Class lessons for the members of the Free University for Spiritual Science, especially what he says at the beginning of the 11th lesson”.
This is what Rudolf Steiner said in Dornach on 2nd May 1924, at the beginning of the 11th Lesson:
“My dear Friends! You were probably all deeply affected this morning by the news that Miss Maryon has departed from the physical plane, even though this was an event long expected, coming as it has after a very grave illness lasting for over a year.” (Edith Maryon died from tuberculosis.)
“Tomorrow, when all the members of the Anthroposophical Society are present, I shall tell you what I have to say about Miss Maryon’s departure from the physical plane. For today, let me just mention that the First Class has lost a truly devoted pupil, for Miss Maryon was foremost among those who, with devoted work and inner fervour, have been deeply attached to what it has been giving. Despite her severe illness, she not only participated in the esoteric work being developed here but also practised the exercises given, letting them work on her and living with them with exceptional inwardness.”
“In her case this was all founded on the fact that she was actually already an esoteric pupil when she came to us. She belonged to an esoteric school working in quite a different direction before she made the transition to the Anthroposophical Society, and she very rapidly made the complete transition from that esoteric school into Anthroposophy. For her the esoteric element was what really mattered; she lived very intensely within it during the years she was with us on the physical plane, and will now continue to do so, having departed from the physical plane, though most certainly not from Anthroposophy.”
(…) “My dear friends, in esoteric life the essential thing is that a person should at least see and contemplate the ways and means whereby real knowledge in spiritual things comes about. As to how far the one or other among us will progress in following these pathways – this, admittedly, will depend on his karma. It will depend on the conditions he brings with him from former lives on earth.”
The karmic connections between Rudolf Steiner and Edith Maryon lay across many ages and intensified during their work together on the Representative of Humanity. During the winter of 1916, as recounted by Steiner in his funeral address for Edith Maryon, she had saved him from death or serious injury when he almost fell from the scaffolding in the high ceilinged studio built the previous year to accommodate the 9.5 metre high model of the sculpture: “It was fairly near the start of our sculptural activities at the Goetheanum in Dornach when I had to work in the outer studio, that is in the large front studio, up on the scaffolding next to the figure of Christ in our model. That was the moment when, because of a gap in the scaffolding, I ran the risk of falling off, and I would definitely have fallen with my whole body onto a post with a sharp point if Edith Maryon had not caught hold of me.”
For reason of these deep karmic connections between Steiner and Edith Maryon, I am inclined to think that in her current incarnation as Judith von Halle, the I of her being is in close touch with the great Christian initiate who was Rudolf Steiner. I therefore give high credence to her spiritual research and insights and less credence to the criticisms from people such as Prokofieff, Thomas Meyer and Mieke Mossmuller. I speak as I find, and I find their thoughts overly head-centred and intellectual. I wish they could find their way to the kind of heart-centred thinking towards which all anthroposophists should aspire. Like my second correspondent cited above: “Sometimes I feel that many people wouldn’t recognise Christ if he walked through their front door.”
anthropopper 