Like many people, I was rendered angry and depressed by the results of the US presidential election on 5thNovember 2024.
Angry, because Donald Trump has once again, as he has throughout his life, escaped just retribution for his crimes and abhorrent behaviour. It seems that Trump was quite right when he boasted in 2016 at a campaign stop at Dordt College in Sioux Center, Iowa that: “”I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK? It’s, like, incredible.”
Depressed, because the return of Trump as President indicates that a majority of Americans voted for him despite knowing everything about his character. This not only says something disturbing about American society and the polarised consciousness of its voters; but this second Trump presidency is also likely to lead to detrimental consequences in many ways, especially for the climate and all life on Earth. It fits into a pattern of worldwide phenomena showing that we are now well into the process of the Ahrimanic incarnation foretold by Rudolf Steiner. (If you are unfamiliar with this idea, I have written more about it here.)
Do I think that Trump is the incarnation of Ahriman? No, I don’t – I wrote about this back in 2016 and that analysis still seems to me accurate. But I do think it likely that the election result will hasten the decline of the US as a superpower, with knock-on effects for Europe and accelerating decline for the West and liberal values, which for good or ill have shaped the world during my lifetime. There is a persuasive argument to this effect in an article by the historian Alfred McCoy in the online Southern Cross Review. The worldwide rise in populism and nationalism, wars of aggression and the cult of the strong leader who can overcome the deficiencies of democracy, are not going to lead to positive outcomes for any of us or the Earth. I was struck by a reported comment last week in Paris from Richard Moore, who heads the UK foreign intelligence service MI6, that during his “37 years in the intelligence profession, I’ve never seen the world in a more dangerous state.”
One of the things I have noticed in all the commentary there has been about the reasons for the election of Donald Trump is how inadequate this analysis has been in explaining what has happened, however distinguished the intellectual capacity of the commentator and however penetrating their psychological grasp of Trump’s narcissism and American popular opinion. The common factor underlying this inadequacy is the absence of any sense of the spiritual reality behind what is happening. If you are an atheistic member of the commentariat and think that the spiritual world is a delusion, that the material world is all there is, and that human beings have but the one life, then you have no access to an essential understanding of the root cause of what is unfolding right now. This spiritual short-sightedness lies behind the failure to apprehend the grimmer facets of our present situation.
So how should we understand the impending incarnation of Ahriman? Rudolf Steiner predicted that Ahriman would incarnate in the flesh in the first part of the third millennium, which is the beginning of the 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 100 years ago.
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. Thoresen is in supersensible contact with the Nordic being Vidar, whom he describes as continuing the work of Michael as an Archangel, since Michael’s elevation to the rank of an Archai. Vidar is described in Nordic mythology as the one god to survive the great battle of Ragnarök (Twilight of the Gods) and is the outer and shining aura of Christ himself. Thoresen asked Vidar about the future incarnation of Ahriman:
“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.”
Who are these asuric beings and why does knowing something about them help us to make sense of what is currently happening in the world?
In a lecture on 1st November 1906, Steiner described them as “satanic gods of hindrances who began their work in the Atlantean epoch but who are now starting to work in the 5th post-Atlantean epoch (ie our present age). They’re the worst of the three forces hindering humankind and they mainly work into sexual life in the physical body. The many sexual aberrations today are to be ascribed to this strong influx.” And in another lecture from 29th January 1907, Steiner said that: “Asuras are spirits of the very greatest egoism who remained behind during Saturn evolution. They want to condense matter and compress it ever more so that it can’t be spiritualized and brought back to its original condition. They’re the dregs of the planetary evolution that goes from Saturn to Vulcan. The asuras inhabit the moon and from there they work on the humans whom they want to drag down into the eighth sphere and thereby tear away from progressive evolution and its goal — the Christ.”
Now I’m aware that, to many people, this will all sound abstruse and fanciful. But if I describe some practical effects of the activities of these entities on human beings in the world today, let us see if any of it accords with your own perceptions. Are Thoresen suggests that since the year 2019 and the Covid pandemic, the asuras have gained much more access to human beings through the opening of what he calls the first elemental realm. (This refers to what Steiner has described as the crossing of the threshold between the physical and elemental worlds, which he says will happen unconsciously and inevitably for every human being towards the end of the 20th century and thereafter. Much of Steiner’s work was to help us prepare to cross the threshold consciously, by building a bridge between the spiritual and the earthly, thus allowing the unfolding of our soul capacities and awakening the consciousness with which to engage and transform our outer lives. Making this journey consciously is much safer than crossing the threshold unconsciously, which Steiner likened to putting your head into an ant’s nest.)
I am indebted here to the Australian writer and spiritual teacher, Lisa Romero, and her book The Inner Work Path,** for the following descriptions of what may happen to people who cross the threshold to the elemental world unprepared. She describes how there are seven realms or spheres of the true spiritual world and the capacities and preparedness that each of us brings determines which of these spheres we may encounter. For most of us, it is the first three elemental spheres that we are most likely to experience. Beyond the three elemental spheres lies the outer etheric realm, where the Christ has been visible since around 1933 to those who are able to reach him. As we evolve, more and more of us will be able to meet Christ during the next 2000 years.
“For those unprepared, the first crossing to the moon sphere could leave them feeling that life is just an illusion, that they have been caught in maya, living a lie. They can end up feeling despondent and unable to continue as a useful member of society. For those who cross unprepared into the second sphere, it can leave them with the feeling that they are puppets, that nothing they do really matters, and that there is no free will. This can leave the soul incapacitated in relation to earthly life, or even destructive toward others. If seekers cross the threshold unprepared and enter the third sphere, they may feel that they just want to leave this world, escape the wheel of life and death. They may see that if they clear up their personal karma, they can escape the karmic cycle of dying and returning to earth. This may then lead to a life of working simply to liberate the individual self.”
Does any of this sound familiar? Do you know anyone, particularly young people, who may resonate with these descriptions?
Thoresen says that: “…I have also observed that these (asuric) beings were able to give the ‘carrier’ of the entity some degree of clairvoyance, but that this clairvoyance was always false. Usually, the adversarial entities give information that was ninety per cent true and ten per cent false. This makes the carrier believe in themselves, and thus to connect with the adversarial beings and forces for eternity.”
(…) “I had not understood why these asuric beings could provide such clairvoyance, but now, after pondering Vidar’s answer, I understood perfectly. Ahriman is in the process of incarnating NOW. Ahriman is incarnating in ALL people – also myself – and especially spiritual people, with the help of the asuric elementals. In this way, he incarnates, hides himself and also initiates a ‘school’ of magic, leading to clairvoyance – a clairvoyance that is personal and that nobody can agree on.”
It is these adversarial forces that create the things that attack humankind in unseen warfare aimed at all levels of our being. Nearly all of us are totally unaware that this is our situation. The effects of this assault can be seen in many of the disturbing phenomena affecting human society in our time. But by a strange paradox, the elemental beings in the three elemental spheres are the foundation of the material universe. Without them, the material world would not exist. Material creation is thus the outer face or expression of the elemental beings, who although partly adversarial are also necessary for our human development towards freedom.
Our sole protection is the Christ and we need to develop the techniques that will counterbalance these phenomena. Are Thoresen says that: “To be able to work into and with the elemental world in all its three realms, to introduce morality and the Christ-force in the material/elemental world, we have to be able to observe the elemental world. That is why it is so important today to be able to cross the threshold (to the spiritual world), and also to be able to activate one or more of our spiritual sense organs.”
Finding the Christ-point of balance between the adversarial forces is key to our survival as humankind. Thoresen describes how in all the adversarial forces, in all technological devices and even in all human abilities, there can be found a Middle point, the Christ force. By finding this, we can redeem the luciferic, ahrimanic and possibly even the asuric elements in all these, and consequently material reality itself. I don’t want to go into more detail here of how this may be done, so I would refer you to Thoresen’s books for further information.
In Downhill All the Way, the fourth volume of Leonard Woolf’s five-volume autobiography, he writes about how horrible it was to listen on the wireless to the speeches of Hitler, “the savage and insane ravings of a vindictive underdog who suddenly saw himself to be all-powerful. We were in Rodmell during the late summer of 1939, and I used to listen to those ranting, raving speeches. One afternoon I was planting in the orchard under an apple tree iris reticulata, those lovely violet flowers which, like the daffodils, ‘come before the swallow dares and takes the winds of March with beauty’. Suddenly I heard Virginia’s voice calling to me from the sitting-room window: ‘Hitler is making a speech’. I shouted back: ‘I shan’t come. I’m planting iris and they will be flowering long after he is dead.’ Last March, 21 years after Hitler committed suicide in the bunker, a few of those violet flowers still flowered under the apple tree in the orchard.”
So, after the election result was in and taking my cue from Leonard Woolf, I went out into the garden to plant bulbs under an apple tree, which was all I could think to do in human solidarity with the values of truth, justice and kindness. May they flower for many years, long after Trump and all those leaders under the influence of Ahriman have gone to reap their karma. May human beings find the Christ force living in our hearts. May the Earth be protected from all those seeking to destroy it!
* Published 2021 by Temple Lodge Press, ISBN 978-1-912230-83-9
** Published 2014 by SteinerBooks, ISBN 978-1-62148-059-4
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