Sorat the Sun Demon - 8th Sphere, Asuras, Ahriman, Lucifer - Loosh & Archons Part 2

[Hissil]

This thread is a continuation of https://hyperspacecafe.com/Thread-Loosh-Archons

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The Incarnations of Ahriman and Lucifer
Our Spirit August 26, 2021 Douglas Gabriel

    “And just as there was a physical incarnation of Lucifer, and a physical Incarnation of Christ, so before even a part of the 3rd millennium of the Christian era will have run its course there will be in the West an actual incarnation of Ahriman: Ahriman in the flesh.”
    Rudolf Steiner, Lucifer and Ahriman (11/4/1919)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4lPd2qZm-k

One of the most debated topics in spiritual science is the timing of the incarnation of Ahriman in the West. Ahriman, the lord of death and destruction, certainly seems to be incarnated now during this pharmaceutical World War III that is being waged by globalists against the populations of the world, hegemonists who wish to depopulate the world through a war against the human bloodstream. These eugenicists have set aside their normal weapons of bullets and bombs and taken up the more effective, and clever, methods of needles, pills, masks, and lockdowns to create the first ever voluntary suicide via fake vaccines, poisonous graphene, self-organizing nanoparticles, 5G wireless, and other less obvious machinations of death and suffering that are the new tools of Ahriman who wishes to annihilate the entire human population of the Earth.

Ahriman’s cohort in these draconian plans are his old friends Lucifer and the Ausras, the fallen angels of heaven who convince billionaire global elitists that only they will survive. These Ahrimanic biological weapons have previously been outlawed in all countries but now are written into the laws of most nations under the auspices of the United Nations World Health Organization as safety and security measures to guard the world from supposed “pandemics.”

The raging debate about when Ahriman, the lord of death, will incarnate in a physical body is revealed most specifically by the great spiritual scientist Dr. Rudolf Steiner and his followers called Anthroposophists. Other inspired Theosophists and esotericists have also outlined the timeline for this dreaded incarnation and place this event somewhere between 2001 to 3000 AD. Doctor Steiner has given indications of when and where Ahriman will incarnate and many details on what his mission will entail. Ahriman, an ancient Persian name for the god of darkness, also called Angra Mainyu, does not work alone but enjoins the help of Lucifer, the Asuras, and the Sun Demon Sorat. Sorat is predicted to incarnate in the distant future to lead the Apocalyptic demise of the world.

Currently, Ahriman’s minions, called the Asuras, are ripping apart the “I Am” of each human through immoral machines and machinations that steal and annihilate the divine willpower of the individual’s soul and spirit which is striving towards its divine spiritual nature. The presence and influence of Ahriman and the Asuras is easy to see but the insidious undermining of human intelligence that is actively destroying the “I Am” of each individual through the power of the Luciferic hosts is more camouflaged and obscured by laws and government mandates.

The incarnation of Ahriman is eminent but he has not fully shown his hand yet. Some theorists (Robert Powell and associates) have speculated that Barry Soetoro (a.k.a. Barack Hussein Obama) is Ahriman incarnated, but that is an unimaginative and weak guess concerning this brilliantly clever father of Artificial Intelligence who desires to supplant human intelligence through transhumanism. Ahriman’s great desire is to live forever in machines through all of the tools of transhumanism (wetworks, cybernetic implants, neural net interfaces with machines, etc.). Ahriman’s plan for humanity is to transform humans into automaton machines instead of evolving biological humans who are ascending into the angelic realms.
Ahriman carries out his plan through the work of Asuras who supplant human willpower with robotic devices that “save time” but eliminate human free will.

He also uses his old friend Lucifer, the “Father of Lies” to brainwash human intelligence through artificial intelligence that tries to overwhelm humans with futuristic machines that deplete human thinking with the cold, digital thinking of robots, machines, and technologies that create the appearance of omniscience (internet search capacity destroying human memory), omnipresence (worldwide digital hyper-connectedness) and omnipotence (AI robots that supplant human willpower). Ahriman is incarnating right now to bring death and destruction to the world, and with the help of the Asuras and Lucifer is doing an effective job driving humanity into extinction as human thinking, memory, and willpower are lulled into a digitally induced sleep, like unto death. What human isn’t convinced by Lucifer to let machines and robots do their work for them while they are busy with shopping, entertainment, sports, and a busy hedonistic lifestyle?

Ahriman is incarnating as a counter-pole to the physical (human) incarnation of Lucifer in China which happened during the third millennium BC, with the mid-point being the incarnation of Christ in Jesus of Nazareth in Israel at the ‘Turning Point of Time.’

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Lucifer brought the over-exuberant development of discarnate cosmic thinking into the development of human thinking (intelligence). Ahriman has now, in our time, brought the deadening of human emotions and feelings in all realms of life on Earth. The Asuras are actively working in our time for the future overthrowing of human free will, which will serve the master of the Asuras, the Sun Demon Sorat, in a fiery Apocalyptic demise.

Sorat intends to overthrow the love that Christ brought to, and instilled in, human hearts through stealing the divine nature found in each person’s “I Am.” Sorat is aided in this process by his army of demons called Asuras who cripple the individual’s capacity to exercise free will out of a foundation based upon love. Thus, Ahriman and his hosts utilized what Lucifer accomplished during his incarnation in China thousands of years ago, as well as the current efforts of the Asuras to “eat” the spiritual parts of the human soul and spirit. If Ahriman, Lucifer, and the Asuras are successful, Sorat will easily conquer spiritual human development and end the progressive ascension of humanity back to their original source in the spiritual world.

Lucifer is active in and wishes to manipulate human thinking, while Ahriman desires to rule human feelings with the Asuras attacking human willpower to freeze and annihilate the spiritual capacities of love and freedom in the human soul and spirit. Once these three demonic forces capture the soul and spirit of an individual, the Sun being Christ becomes obscured and hidden from human thinking, feeling, and willing.

The current zeitgeist of our time is the Archangel Michael who is now leading the battle against these demons as he has ascended to the rank of an Archai, or Time Spirit. The Archai Michael is the leader of our spiritual cycle of time (since 1879) who is called the Countenance of Christ who leads the Mother Lodge of Spiritual Beings on the Sun, called the Elohim. Christ’s origins are much higher than this realm of the Elohim because His source is the Divine Trinity which is above the nine ranks of the spiritual hierarchy. Thus, we can turn to the Archai Michael, and his mother Sophia (emanating from the rank of the Kyriotetes) who is the embodiment of Cosmic Wisdom that has not fallen from grace as Lucifer has done during the ancient past of spiritual evolution. Michael, Sophia, and Christ nourish the thinking, feeling, and willing of each person with spiritual nutrition from the Trinity and the nine hierarchy. This spiritual battle rages in every human incarnated physically on Earth.

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Or as we are told in the Bible in Ephesians 6:11-12 (KJV): “Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”                                                                               

The victory of Christ over Sorat is not a given, it must be played out over time in the heart of every human being. Christ is being crucified again in the life body (etheric body) of the Earth in our current times. The materialism of Ahriman acting in the human heart is pain for Christ that is equivalent to crucifixion – a second crucifixion of sorts. Luciferic delusion and Ahrimanic cold-heartedness creates darkness in the light-filled realm of the etheric world that encircles the Earth. When humans die, the darkness of Lucifer, Ahriman, and the Asuras make it impossible for the human being to see and interact with Christ in the etheric realm, also called the realm of Shambhala. If that happens, humans die into a cold, dark realm that is void of love and freedom and therefore limits the ability of the human to ascend to higher spiritual realms. This tragedy is a devolution of humanity that makes them descend into the hell-realms instead of ascend into the divine spiritual worlds. This is the “second death” of the Apocalypse which destroys the divine work of Christ to redeem humanity from their sins against the spirit, and creates a second crucifixion of Christ created by humans who become “fallen” beings like Lucifer, Ahriman, and the Asuras.

Each individual is loved by Christ, Sophia, and Michael and is seen as the greatest treasure to the spiritual evolution of humanity. Each human soul must decide whose side they are on in this battle and seek the spiritual help to overcome these evil fallen beings acting as demons in the physical realm of the Earth. The battle is fierce and the gains and losses are a matter of spiritual life and death. But only the human individual can make the free choices of love that will conquer the plans of these three groups of demonic beings fighting for the human soul and spirit. The question is: Will the free human being receive the grace and help of good spirits, or be pulled into the Apocalyptic second death of the evil overlords of our world? Only time will tell the outcome.

We have gathered numerous selections of Rudolf Steiner’s teachings that inform us about the incarnations of Lucifer and Ahriman which help describe the nature and workings of these beings. In other articles we have described the nature of evil and the workings of the Asuras and Sorat to illuminate these ideas. Steiner’s teachings of liberation from these forces through the Cosmic Deed of Christ, which he calls the ‘Mystery of Golgotha at the Turning Point of Time’, can be found in our trilogy of books entitled, The Gospel of Sophia which constitutes a modern path of Christian spiritual initiation that can be attained through directly working with the beings of Sophia, Christ, and the divine hierarchy of spiritual beings. This initiation entails developing an individual “spiritual language” that is custom-made for each aspirant which can open and maintain a dialogue with the spiritual world.

But it is incumbent upon the aspirant to freely take up this individualized language in the spirit of love. Once this process of initiation is started, the free flowing nutrition of the divine world flows into the heart of the sincere aspirant and becomes a spiritual path that leads back to the sources of spirit wisdom. No one can do this work for anyone else and each person must choose to engage in this battle for the sake of stopping the second crucifixion of Christ, which happens to Christ in the etheric realm and in the Christened self in the heart of each aspirant. The choice is yours, but the results effect the entire world and the ultimate direction of human spiritual evolution. So, choose wisely for the fate of humanity and your eternal spirit is in your hands.

The Incarnation of Lucifer
    Screwtape (Archdevil) to his nephew (Devil): “To us a human is primarily food; our aim is the absorption of its will into ours, the increase of our own area of selfhood at its expense. We want cattle who can finally become food; we want to suck in; we are empty and would be filled; our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below (Satan) has drawn all other beings into himself.”

    C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

The Influences of Lucifer and Ahriman, Lecture 1, November 1, 1919, GA 191 & 193

If we were to go much farther back, to a time more than three thousand years before the Christian era, we should find that together with the promptings of wisdom there did come a moral impulse, that the moral principles, the ethics needed by these people of old were contained in this wisdom. But a specific ethos, a specific moral impulse such as came with Christianity was not an integral part of paganism. Why was this? It was because through the millennia directly preceding Christianity, this pagan wisdom was inspired from a place far away in Asia, inspired by a remarkable being who had been incarnated in the distant East in the third millennium before Christ – namely, Lucifer.

To the many things we have learned about the evolution of humanity, this knowledge too must be added: that just as there was the incarnation which culminated in Golgotha, the incarnation of Christ in the man Jesus of Nazareth, there was an actual incarnation of Lucifer in far-off Asia, in the third millennium B.C. And the source of inspiration for much ancient culture was what can only be described as an earthly incarnation of Lucifer in a man of flesh and blood. Even Christianity, even the Mystery of Golgotha as enacted among human beings, was understood at first by the only means then available, namely the old luciferic wisdom. The one-sidedness of the gnosis, for all its amazing profundity, stems from the influence that had spread from this Lucifer incarnation over the whole of the ancient world. The significance of the Mystery of Golgotha cannot be fully grasped without the knowledge that rather less than three thousand years previously, there had been the incarnation of Lucifer.

In order that the luciferic inspiration might be lifted away from its one-sidedness, there came the incarnation of Christ and with it the impulse for the education and development of European civilization and its American offshoot. But since the middle of the fifteenth century, since the impulse for the development of individuality, of personality, has been at work, this phase of evolution has also contained within it certain forces whereby preparation is being made for the incarnation of another super-sensible Being. Just as there was an incarnation of Lucifer in the flesh and an incarnation of Christ in the flesh, so, before only a part of the third millennium of the post-Christian era has elapsed, there will be, in the West, an actual incarnation of Ahriman: Ahriman in the flesh. Humanity on earth cannot escape this incarnation of Ahriman. It will come inevitably. But what matters is that people shall find the right vantage point from which to confront it.

As I told you, Ahriman and Lucifer will always work hand in hand. The only question is which of the two predominates in human consciousness at a particular epoch of time. It was a preeminently luciferic culture that persisted until after the Mystery of Golgotha – a culture inspired by the incarnation of Lucifer in China in the third millennium B.C. Many influences of this incarnation continued to radiate and were still powerful in the early Christian centuries; indeed they are working to this day.

But now that we are facing an incarnation of Ahriman in the third millennium after Christ, Lucifer’s tracks are becoming less visible, and Ahriman’s activities in such trends as I have indicated are coming into prominence. Ahriman has made a kind of pact with Lucifer, the import of which may be expressed in the following way. Ahriman, speaking to Lucifer, says: “I, Ahriman, find it advantageous to make use of ‘preserving jars.’ To you I will leave people’s stomachs, if you will leave it to me to lull them to sleep – that is to say to lull their consciousness to sleep where their stomachs are concerned.”

You must understand what I mean by this. The consciousness of those human beings whom I have called devourers of soul and spirit is in a condition of dimness so far as their stomachs are concerned; for, by not accepting the spiritual into their human nature, they drive straight into the luciferic stream everything they introduce into their stomachs. What people eat and drink without spirituality goes straight to Lucifer!

The Influences of Lucifer and Ahriman, Lecture Two, November 02, 1919

The lecture yesterday will have shown you that if we are to acquire insight into the nature and evolution of humanity, we must be constantly mindful of the power and influence of Lucifer, of Christ, and of Ahriman.

It should be realized that just as external science becomes ahrimanic, the higher development of our inner nature becomes luciferic if we give ourselves up to mystical experiences. The luciferic tendency wakens and becomes especially powerful in everyone who, without the self-training described in the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, sets about any mystical deepening of the impulses already inherent in their nature. The luciferic tendency shows itself in everyone who begins to brood over experiences of their inner life, and it is extremely powerful in present-day humanity. It takes effect in egoism of which most people are entirely unaware. One comes across so many today who are quite satisfied when they can say of something they have done that they have no cause for self-reproach, that they did it to the best of their knowledge and according to their conscience. That is an entirely luciferic attitude. For in what we do in life the point is not whether or not we have cause to reproach ourselves; what really matters is that we shall take things objectively, with complete detachment, and in accordance with the course of objective facts. And the majority of people today make no effort to achieve this objective understanding or to acquire knowledge of what is necessary for world evolution.

It all amounts to this, that modern people only speak truly of themselves when they say that they hover perpetually between two extremes: between the ahrimanic on the one side, where they are presented with an outer delusion, a fata morgana, and, on the other, the luciferic element within them which induces the tendency to illusions, hallucinations and the like. The ahrimanic tendencies in people today live themselves out in science, the luciferic tendencies, in religion, while in art they swing between the one extreme and the other. But the truth of the matter is that Lucifer and Ahriman must be regarded as two scales of a balance and it is we who must hold the beam in equipoise by permeating what takes ahrimanic form within us with a strongly luciferic element. Nevertheless if the fata morgana that arises out of chemistry, out of physics, out of astronomy and the like can fill us with fiery enthusiasm and interest, then through our interest – which is itself luciferic – we can wrest from Ahriman what is his own.

What wells up in our inmost being today is very strongly luciferic. It is never a matter of a subjective rejection or acceptance of things, but of an objective recognition of the extent to which things are either luciferic or ahrimanic, with the result that the scales are overweighted on the one side or the other. Had there been no luciferic wisdom, no understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha could have been acquired through the gnosis in the early centuries of Christendom. Understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha diminished with the fading of the luciferic wisdom.

The Influences of Lucifer and Ahriman, Lecture 3 

At the beginning of the third millennium in the east of Asia a momentous event took place when human beings could not acquire knowledge through their own thinking, through their own powers of intellectual discernment because they were dependent upon what was imparted to them from the Mysteries. At that time, a child of a distinguished Asiatic family was allowed to grow up in the precincts of the Mystery ceremonies. Circumstances were such that this child was actually permitted to take part in the ceremonies, undoubtedly because the priests conducting the rites in the Mysteries felt it as an inspiration that such a child must be allowed to participate. And when the being incarnate in that child had reached the age of about forty something very remarkable came to light. It became evident – and there is no doubt at all that the priests of the Mysteries had foreseen the event prophetically – that this man began suddenly to grasp through the faculty of human intellect itself what had formerly come into the Mysteries through revelation. He was the first to make use of the organs of human intellect. In this man, Lucifer himself was incarnated. And from this incarnation of Lucifer in the flesh – for this being became a teacher – there went forth what is described as the pre-Christian, pagan culture which still survived in the gnosis of the earliest Christian centuries.

The influence of the Lucifer incarnation was still powerful in the south of Europe, in the north of Africa, and in Asia Minor during the first centuries of Christendom. And when the Mystery of Golgotha had taken place on earth, it was essentially the luciferic wisdom through which it could be understood. The gnosis, which set about the task of grasping the import of the Mystery of Golgotha, was impregnated through and through with luciferic wisdom. The significance of the incarnation of Christ was grasped because the power of the old Lucifer incarnation still survived. This power did not actually fade from the human faculty of comprehension until the fourth century A.D.

Through Lucifer, human beings have acquired the faculty of using the organs of their intellect, of their power of intellectual discernment. It was Lucifer himself, in a human body, who was the first to grasp through the power of intellect what formerly could be imparted to humanity only through revelation, namely, the content of the Mysteries.

The incarnation of Lucifer could be recognized only by the prophetic insight of the priests of the Mysteries. People were also very unconscious of what the incarnation of Christ and the event of Golgotha really signified. But they must live on toward the incarnation of Ahriman with full consciousness amid the shattering events which will occur on the physical plane. It must be remembered that the Gospels came into existence at a time when the luciferic wisdom still survived. The Gospels were given as a necessary counterweight to the luciferic gnosis.

Just as once in the East there was a Lucifer incarnation, and then, at the midpoint, as it were, of world evolution, the incarnation of Christ, so in the West there will be an incarnation of Ahriman.

The Influences of Lucifer and Ahriman, Lecture 4 

It must always be remembered that the whole of the old pagan wisdom emanated from a luciferic source. The farther back we go in the evolution of humanity, the more do we find certain individuals who through the qualities attained in earlier incarnations were sufficiently mature to apprehend the treasures of wisdom possessed by the luciferic beings. For what the luciferic beings brought with them into earth evolution was, above all, the world of thought, of intellectualistic thought pervading culture, the world of reason in the highest sense of the word – the world of wisdom. And going back to the primeval origins of human existence, we find that the sources of pagan wisdom always lie with luciferic beings.

Those who possessed the knowledge and the inherited, primeval wisdom were not fearful of receiving this wisdom from luciferic sources. They took upon themselves the obligation incumbent upon everyone to whom luciferic beings impart knowledge from spiritual realms. The obligation was to use this luciferic, cosmic wisdom rightly, for the good of earth evolution. In olden times the wisdom needed for the progress of humanity could be obtained only from a luciferic source; hence the initiates were obliged to receive it from that source and at the same time to take upon themselves the obligation not to yield to the aspirations of the luciferic beings.

Lucifer’s intention was to convey the wisdom to humanity in such a way that it would induce people to abandon the path of earth evolution and take a path leading to a super-earthly sphere, a sphere aloof from the earth. The luciferic beings inculcated their wisdom into human beings but their desire was that it would make them turn away from the earth, without passing through earthly evolution. Lucifer wants to abandon the Earth to its fate, to win humankind for a kingdom alien to the kingdom of Christ.

The sages of olden time who received the primeval wisdom from the hands of Lucifer had, as I said, to pledge themselves not to yield to his wishes but to use the wisdom for the good of Earth evolution. And that was what was accomplished through the pre-Christian Mysteries. Human beings received the rudiments of what has developed in the course of evolution into the faculties of speech and of thinking. Speaking and thinking are, in their origins, luciferic, but were drawn away from the grip of Lucifer by the sages of old. If you are really intent upon fleeing, from Lucifer, then you must make up your minds to be dumb in the future, and not to think!

It must be known that the art of speaking and the art of thinking have become part of evolution only because they were received through the mediation of Lucifer. The luciferic element can still be observed in thinking. Speech, which has for long ages been differentiated and adapted to earthly needs. The luciferic tendency is always toward unification, the fundamental tendency of the ahrimanic principle is differentiation. And because this is so, through their own inherent nature, people are less allied with the luciferic element which always tends to draw them away from the earth. But woe betide if humanity were simply to draw away from the luciferic element without putting something different in its place. To combat this, a counterweight must be created; and this counterweight can only be created if, like the old wisdom inherent in paganism, a new wisdom, acquired by the free resolve and will of human beings, is infused into earthly culture. This new wisdom must again be Initiation wisdom.

From the Contents of Esoteric Classes, Stuttgart, February22, 1912, (101. EL)

These complications are created by Luciferic beings who remained behind in their development at the Mystery of Golgotha, that is, they didn’t accept the consequences of this Mystery. What’s happening now in spiritual worlds is shocking in many respects for one who can see into them. Lucifer brought it about that we moved into our physical and etheric bodies and didn’t remain floating above them, and this was actually good for us, for this enabled our ego to attain cognitional power and memory. The Luciferic beings who remained behind at the Mystery of Golgotha have created a kind of a vanguard for themselves out of people they overpowered after their last death. But as we said, memory is Lucifer’s gift. Through him, we descended into our physical body on being driven out of the paradise of spiritual worlds. We must now revoke Lucifer’s deed, but we shouldn’t think that it wasn’t necessary.

The Ahrimanic Deception, Zurich, October 27, 1919, GA 193

The incarnation that took place at the beginning of the third millennium B.C. is extraordinarily difficult to follow up, even with the science of seership, of initiation. It gave humanity something of immense brilliance, having an incisive effect. What it gave to humanity, in fact, was the primeval wisdom.

Viewed externally, one can say that it was a wisdom penetrating deep into reality; cold, based purely on ideas, permeated little by feeling. The actual inner nature of this wisdom can be judged only by going back to that incarnation which took place over in Asia at the beginning of the third pre-Christian millennium. It is revealed to the retrospective clairvoyant gaze that this was an actual human incarnation of the Luciferic Power.

And this incarnation of Lucifer in humanity, which in a certain way has been achieved, was the origin of the widely extended ancient wisdom based on the Third Post-Atlantean civilization.

There was still an after-effect, even in Grecian times, of the widespread cultural impulse that was derived from this Asiatic, Luciferic human being. Luciferic wisdom was of the utmost benefit to man in that epoch of evolution – brilliant in a certain way, graduated according to the different peoples and races among which it was spread. It was plainly recognizable throughout the whole of Asia, then in the Egyptian civilization, the Babylonian civilization and even in the culture of Greece.

All that was possible to the humanity of that time in thought, in the realm of poetry, in deeds, was in a certain way determined through the entry of this Luciferic impulse into human civilization.

The whole of Gnostic thought existing at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, an impressive wisdom shedding light deep into cosmic realities – this whole Gnostic knowledge was inspired by the impulse coming from Luciferic forces. One must not say that Gnostic thought is therefore false; one is merely characterizing it by saying that it is permeated by Luciferic forces.

Then, considerably more than two thousand years after the Luciferic incarnation, came the Mystery of Golgotha. It may be said that the men among whom the impulse of this Mystery spread were still fully imbued in their thinking and feeling with what had come from the impulse of Lucifer. And now there entered into the evolution of civilized humanity an entirely different impulse, the impulse proceeding from the Christ. We have often spoken of what this Christ Impulse signifies within civilized humanity. The Christ-Impulse was taken up by the hearts and minds that I have just characterized. One might say that it shone into all the best that came to man from Lucifer. And in the first Christian centuries, men understood the Christ through what they had received from Lucifer. These things must be faced without prejudice; otherwise it is not really possible to understand the particular way in which the Christ Impulse was received in the first centuries of our era.

As the Luciferic impulse began to fade more and more, men were also increasingly unable to absorb the Christ Impulse in the right way. The impulses entering humanity from a Luciferic source sank down gradually into the soul. On the other hand, however, another impulse, which we call the Ahrimanic, is growing stronger and stronger in modern times. It will become increasingly strong in the near future and on into future ages. The Ahrimanic impulse proceeds from a super-sensible Being different from the Being of Christ or of Lucifer. Equally with ‘super-sensible’ one can say ‘subsensible’ – but that is not the point here. The influence of this Being becomes especially powerful in the Fifth Post-Atlantean Epoch.

Just as there was an incarnation of Lucifer at the beginning of the third pre-Christian millennium, as there was the Christ Incarnation at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, so there will be a Western incarnation of the Ahriman being some little time after our present earthly existence, in fact, in the third post-Christian millennium. To form a right conception of the historical evolution of mankind during approximately 6000 years, one must grasp that at the one pole stands a Luciferic incarnation, in the center, the incarnation of Christ, and at the other pole the Ahrimanic incarnation. Lucifer is the power that stirs up in man all fanatical, all falsely mystical forces, all that physiologically tends to bring the blood into disorder and so lift man above and outside himself. Ahriman is the power that makes man dry, prosaic, philistine – that ossifies him and brings him to the superstition of materialism. And the true nature and being of man is essentially the effort to hold the balance between the powers of Lucifer and Ahriman; the Christ Impulse helps present humanity to establish this equilibrium.

Thus these two poles – the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic – are continuously present in man. Viewed historically, we find that the Luciferic preponderated in certain currents of cultural development of the pre-Christian age and continued into the first centuries of our era. On the other hand the Ahrimanic influence has been at work since the middle of the fifteenth century and will increase in strength until an actual incarnation of Ahriman takes place among Western humanity.

[Hissil]

The Incarnation of Ahriman
The Ahrimanic Deception, October 27, 1919 Zurich, GA 193

Another impulse, which we call the Ahrimanic, is growing stronger and stronger in modern times. It will become increasingly strong in the near future and on into future ages. The Ahrimanic impulse proceeds from a super-sensible Being different from the Being of Christ or of Lucifer. The influence of this Being becomes especially powerful in the Fifth Post-Atlantean Epoch. If we look at the confused conditions of recent years we shall find that men have been brought to such chaotic conditions mainly through the Ahrimanic powers.

Just as there was an incarnation of Lucifer at the beginning of the third pre-Christian millennium, as there was the Christ Incarnation at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, so there will be a Western incarnation of the Ahriman being some little time after our present earthly existence, in fact, in the third post-Christian millennium. To form a right conception of the historical evolution of mankind during approximately 6000 years, one must grasp that at the one pole stands a Luciferic incarnation, in the center, the incarnation of Christ, and at the other pole the Ahrimanic incarnation. Ahriman is the power that makes man dry, prosaic, philistine – that ossifies him and brings him to the superstition of materialism. And the true nature and being of man is essentially the effort to hold the balance between the powers of Lucifer and Ahriman; the Christ Impulse helps present humanity to establish this equilibrium.

Thus these two poles – the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic – are continuously present in man. The Ahrimanic influence has been at work since the middle of the fifteenth century and will increase in strength until an actual incarnation of Ahriman takes place among Western humanity.

Ahrimanic powers prepare the evolution of mankind in such a way that it can fall a prey to Ahriman when he appears in human form within Western civilization – hardly then to be called ‘civilization’ in our sense – as once Lucifer appeared in human form in China, as once Christ appeared in human form in Asia Minor. Ahriman will appear in human form and the only question is, how he will find humanity prepared. Will his preparations have secured for him as followers the whole of mankind that today calls itself civilized, or will he find a humanity that can offer resistance. The fact that people reject these things is just one of the means which the Ahrimanic powers can use and which will give Ahriman the greatest possible following when he appears in human form on earth. This disregard of the weightiest truths is precisely what will build Ahriman the best bridge to the success of his incarnation. And nothing will help us to find the right position in regard to the part played by Ahriman in human evolution except an unprejudiced study of the forces through which Ahriman’s influence works, as well as learning to know the forces through which mankind can arm itself against being tempted and led astray.

Now, in order that his incarnation may take the most profitable form, it is of the utmost interest to Ahriman that people should perfect themselves in all our illusory modern science, but without knowing that it is illusion. Ahriman has the greatest possible interest in instructing men in mathematics, but not in instructing them that mathematical-mechanistic concepts of the universe are merely illusions. He is intensely interested in bringing men chemistry, physics, biology and so on, as they are presented today in all their remarkable effects, but he is interested in making men believe that these are absolute truths, not that they are only points of view, like photographs from one side. To conceal from mankind that in modern intellectual, rationalistic science with its supplement of a superstitious empiricism, one is dealing with a great illusion, a deception – that men should not recognize this is of the greatest possible interest to Ahriman. It would be a triumphant experience for him if the scientific superstition which grips all circles today and by which men even want to organize their social science, should prevail into the third millennium. He would have the greatest success if he could then come as a human being into Western civilization and find the scientific superstition.

We do not safeguard ourselves against Ahriman by avoiding modern science, but by learning to know its character. For modern science gives us an external illusion of the universe, and we need this illusion. This, then, represents one of the means used by Ahriman to make his incarnation as effective as possible – this keeping of man back in scientific superstition.

These Ahrimanic powers are working, in fact, wherever dis-harmonies arise between groups of men. Ahriman makes use of this confusion in order to prepare the triumph of his incarnation and to drive men with increasing force into what they find so difficult to realize – namely, that by intellectual or modern scientific reasoning today, one can prove anything and equally well prove its opposite. And so, in order to create dissensions, Ahriman also makes use of what develops from the old conditions of heredity which man has really outgrown in the Fifth Post-Atlantean Epoch. The Ahrimanic powers use all that is derived from old circumstances of heredity in order to set men against each other in conflicting groups. All that comes from old differences of family, race, tribe, peoples, is used by Ahriman to create confusion.

For, you see, Ahriman skillfully prepares his goal beforehand; ever since the Reformation and the Renaissance, the economist has been emerging in modern civilization as the representative governing type. If men do not realize that the rights-state and the organism of the Spirit must be set against the economic order called up through the economists and the banks, then again, through this lack of awareness, Ahriman will find an important instrument for preparing his incarnation.

The Gospel was given to those who lived in the first centuries of Christianity, and to believe that today the Gospel can give the whole of Christianity is simply a half-truth. It is therefore also a half-error which befogs people and thus furnishes Ahriman with the best means of attaining the goal and the triumph of his incarnation.

These very people who swear by the Gospel alone and reject every kind of real spiritual knowledge, form the beginning of a flock for Ahriman when he appears in human shape in modern civilization. From these circles, from these members of confessions and sects who repulse the concrete knowledge brought by spiritual endeavor, whole hosts will develop as adherents of Ahriman. Humanity will only acquire the right attitude to the earthly incarnation of Ahriman if it sees through these things and has the courage, will and energy to illumine both secular science and the Gospel by the Spirit.

The Influences of Lucifer and Ahriman, Lecture 1, November 1, 1919, GA 191

Just as there was an incarnation of Lucifer in the flesh and an incarnation of Christ in the flesh, so, before only a part of the third millennium of the post-Christian era has elapsed, there will be, in the West, an actual incarnation of Ahriman: Ahriman in the flesh. Humanity on earth cannot escape this incarnation of Ahriman. It will come inevitably. But what matters is that people shall find the right vantage point from which to confront it.

With a view to his incarnation on the earth, Ahriman guides certain forces in evolution in such a way that they may be of the greatest possible advantage to him. And evil would result were people to live on in a state of drowsy unawareness, unable to recognize certain phenomena in life as preparations for Ahriman’s incarnation in the flesh. The right stand can be taken only by recognizing in one or another series of events the preparation that is being made by Ahriman for his earthly existence. And the time has now come for individual human beings to know what tendencies and events around them are machinations of Ahriman, helping him to prepare for his approaching incarnation.

It would undoubtedly be of the greatest benefit to Ahriman if he could succeed in preventing the vast majority of people from perceiving what would make for their true well-being, if the vast majority of people were to regard these preparations for the Ahriman incarnation as progressive and good for evolution. If Ahriman were able to slink into a humanity unaware of his coming, that would gladden him most of all. It is for this reason that the occurrences and trends in which Ahriman is working for his future incarnation must be brought to light.

One of the developments in which Ahriman’s impulse is clearly evident is the spread of the belief that the mechanistic, mathematical conceptions inaugurated by Galileo, Copernicus, and others, explain what is happening in the cosmos. It would augur success for Ahriman’s temptings if people were to persist in merely calculating the revolutions of the heavenly bodies, in studying astrophysics for the sole purpose of ascertaining the material composition of the planets – an achievement of which the modern world is so proud. But woe betide if this Copernicanism is not confronted by the knowledge that the cosmos is permeated by soul and spirit. It is this knowledge that Ahriman, in preparing his earthly incarnation, wants to withhold. He would like to keep people so obtuse that they can grasp only the mathematical aspect of astronomy. Therefore he tempts many people to carry into effect their repugnance to knowledge concerning soul and spirit in the cosmos. That is only one of the forces of corruption poured by Ahriman into human souls. Another means of temptation connected with his incarnation is to preserve the already widespread attitude that for the public welfare it is sufficient if the economic and material needs of humanity are provided for.

To keep people in the state of being devourers of the soul and spirit is one of Ahriman’s impulses in preparation for his incarnation. To the extent to which people can be roused into conducting their affairs not for material ends alone and into regarding a free and independent spiritual life, equally with 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.

Another tendency in modern life of benefit to Ahriman in preparing his incarnation is all that is so clearly in evidence in nationalism. Whatever can separate people into groups, whatever can alienate them from mutual understanding the whole world over and drive wedges between them, strengthens Ahriman’s impulse. But blood relationship has ceased to be the decisive factor and if this outworn notion persists, we shall be playing straight into the hands of Ahriman. His interests are promoted, too, by the fact that people are taken up with the most divergent shades of party opinions, of which the one can be justified as easily as the other. A socialist party program and an anti-socialist program can be supported by arguments of equal validity.

If people could be brought to a standstill at this point, not pressing on to the real Christ but contenting themselves with a hallucination of Christ, Ahriman’s aims would be immeasurably furthered.

With the dimming of consciousness that inevitably occurs when the deeper content of the Gospels is not revealed, people would fall wholly into Ahriman’s service, helping in a most effective way to prepare for his incarnation, and adopting toward him the very attitude he desires.

The point to remember is, however, that the people who do most to prepare for the incarnation of Ahriman are those who constantly preach. “All that is required is to read the Gospels word-for-word-nothing more than that!”

Strange to say, in spite of their radical differences, the two parties play into each other’s hands: those whom I called “devourers of soul and spirit” and those who demand the literal, word-for-word reading of the Gospels. A good deal of what is spreading in external Christianity today is a preparation for Ahriman’s incarnation. And in many things which arrogantly claim to represent true belief, we should recognize the preparation for Ahriman’s work.

As I told you, Ahriman and Lucifer will always work hand in hand. But now that we are facing an incarnation of Ahriman in the third millennium after Christ, Lucifer’s tracks are becoming less visible, and Ahriman’s activities in such trends as I have indicated are coming into prominence.

Truth is beyond the reach of the kind of knowledge for which people aspire today. They feel on secure ground when they can reckon by means of figures, when they can prove things by statistics. With statistics and figures Ahriman has an easy game. Nothing can stand up against figures because of the faith that is reposed in them; and Ahriman is only too ready to exploit figures for his purposes.

The Influences of Lucifer and Ahriman, Lecture 2, November 2, 1919, GA 191

Those who still do not recognize the gravity of the present situation in the world are also, in a certain respect, helping to prepare for Ahriman’s incarnation. The Ahrimanic incarnation will be greatly furthered if people fail to establish a free and independent spiritual life and allow it to remain entangled in the economic or political life. For the ahrimanic power has everything to gain by the spiritual life being even more closely intermingled with these other spheres. To the ahrimanic power a free spiritual life would denote a kind of darkness, and people’s interest in it, a burning, raging fire. The establishment of this free spiritual life is essential in order that the right attitude, the right relationship, may be adopted to Ahriman’s incarnation in the future.

Therefore spiritual science must emphasize the following: That Ahriman is actually preparing for his incarnation; where we can recognize how he is preparing for it; and with what attitude it must be confronted.

But the truth of the matter is that Lucifer and Ahriman must be regarded as two scales of a balance and it is we who must hold the beam in equipoise.

There is nothing more ahrimanic than this knowledge of the material world, for it is sheer illusion. Nevertheless if the fata morgana that arises out of chemistry, out of physics, out of astronomy and the like can fill us with fiery enthusiasm and interest, then through our interest – which is itself luciferic – we can wrest from Ahriman what is his own.

If the right stand is to be taken to Ahriman’s future incarnation, people must become more objective where their own impulses are concerned, and far, far more subjective where the external world is concerned – not by introducing pictures of fantasy but by bringing interest, alert attention, and devotion to the things of immediate life.

When people find one thing or another in outer life tedious, possibly because of the education they have received or because of other circumstances, the path which Ahriman wants to take for the benefit of his incarnation is greatly smoothed. Nothing does more to prepare the path for Ahriman’s incarnation than to find this or that tedious, to consider oneself superior to one thing or another and refuse to enter into it. Again it is the same question of finding the point where everything is of interest. It is never a matter of a subjective rejection or acceptance of things, but of an objective recognition of the extent to which things are either luciferic or ahrimanic, with the result that the scales are overweighted on the one side or the other.

The Influences of Lucifer and Ahriman, Lecture 3, November 4, 1919, GA 193

What is now in preparation and will quite definitely come to pass on earth in a none-too-distant future is an actual incarnation of Ahriman. As you know, since the middle of the fifteenth century we have been living in an era in which it behooves humankind to come more and more into possession of the full power of consciousness. It is of the very greatest importance that people should approach the coming incarnation of Ahriman with full consciousness of this event. They must live on toward the incarnation of Ahriman with full consciousness amid the shattering events which will occur on the physical plane. Amid the perpetual stresses of war and other tribulations of the immediate future, the human mind will become very inventive in the domain of physical life. And through this very growth of inventiveness in physical life – which cannot be averted in any way or by any means – the bodily existence of a human individuality in whom Ahriman can incarnate will become possible and inevitable.

From the spiritual world this Ahrimanic power is preparing for incarnation on the earth, endeavoring in every conceivable way to make such preparation that the incarnation of Ahriman in human form may be able to mislead and corrupt humankind on earth to the uttermost. A task of humankind during the next phase of civilization will be to live toward the incarnation of Ahriman with such alert consciousness that this incarnation can actually serve to promote a higher, spiritual development, inasmuch as through Ahriman himself humanity will become aware of what can, or shall we say, cannot be achieved by physical life alone. But people must go forward with full consciousness toward this incarnation of Ahriman and become more and more alert in every domain, in order to recognize with greater and greater clarity those trends in life which are leading toward this Ahrimanic incarnation. People must learn from spiritual science to find the key to life and so be able to recognize and learn to control the currents leading toward the incarnation of Ahriman. It must be realized that Ahriman will live among people on the earth, but that in confronting him people will themselves determine what they may learn from him, what they may receive from him. This, however, they will not be able to do unless, from now onward, they take control of certain spiritual and also unspiritual currents which otherwise are used by Ahriman for the purpose of leaving humankind as deeply unconscious as possible of his coming; then, one day, he will be able to appear on earth and overwhelm people tempting and luring them to repudiate earth evolution, thus preventing it from reaching its goal.

This stream of spirit-and-soul-consumption is particularly encouraged by Ahriman because in this way he can lull humankind into greater and greater drowsiness, so that then, through his incarnation, he will be able to come among people and fall upon them unawares because they do not confront him consciously.

Everything that is developing as intellectual life without being suffused by warmth of soul, without being quickened by enthusiasm, directly furthers the incarnation of Ahriman in a way that is after his own heart. It lulls people to sleep in the way I have described, so that its results are advantageous to Ahriman.

The time for founding empires based on relationships of blood and race is past and over in the evolution of mankind. If an appeal is made today to national, racial, and similar relationships, to relationships arising out of the intellect and not out of the spirit, then disharmony among humankind will be intensified. And it is this disharmony among humankind which the ahrimanic power can put to special use. Chauvinism, perverted patriotism in every form – this is the material from which Ahriman will build just what he needs.

Deeper understanding of the Gospels in the light of spiritual science is essential today, for the apathy that takes hold of people who are content to live merely within the arms of the denominations will be used to the utmost by Ahriman in order to achieve his goal – which is that his incarnation shall catch people unawares. And those who believe they are being most truly Christian by rejecting any development of the conception of the Christ mystery, are, in their arrogance, the ones who do most to promote Ahriman’s aims. The denominations and sects are positively spheres of encouragement, breeding-grounds for Ahriman. Just as the materialistic attitude, rejecting the spiritual altogether and contending that the human being is a product of what people eat and drink, furthers Ahriman’s aims, so are these aims furthered by the stubborn rejection of everything spiritual and adherence to the literal, “simple” conception of the Gospels.

In their day, the Gospels were given as a necessary counterweight to the luciferic gnosis; but if no attempt is made to develop understanding of their content, the aims of Ahriman are furthered, not the progress of humankind. Sublime though they are, the Gospels can also have the opposite effect if people are too lazy to search for a deeper understanding based on spiritual science.

Hence there is a great deal in the spiritual and unspiritual currents of the present time of which people should be acutely aware, and determine their attitude of soul accordingly. Upon the ability and willingness to penetrate to the roots of such matters will depend the effect which the incarnation of Ahriman can have upon human beings, whether this incarnation will lead them to prevent the earth from reaching its goal, or bring home to them the very limited significance of intellectual, unspiritual life. Human beings must consciously wrestle through to an understanding of this trinity of the Christian impulse, the ahrimanic and the luciferic influences; for without this consciousness they will not be able to go forward into the future with the prospect of achieving the goal of earth existence.

This ahrimanic incarnation cannot be averted; it is inevitable, for humanity must confront Ahriman face to face. He will be the individuality by whom it will be made clear what indescribable cleverness can be developed if they call to their help all that earthly forces can do to enhance cleverness and ingenuity. And certain secret societies – where preparations are already in train – will apply these things in such a way that the necessary conditions can be established for an actual incarnation of Ahriman on the earth. This incarnation cannot be averted, for people must realize during the time of the earth’s existence just how much can proceed from purely material processes! We must learn to bring under our control those spiritual or unspiritual currents which are leading to Ahriman.

Equally we shall be convinced that deeper and deeper penetration of the Gospels is necessary through spiritual science. The literal, word-for-word acceptance of the Gospels that is still so prevalent today promotes ahrimanic culture.

If what I have characterized in this lecture continues to be offered the reception that is still offered to it today by the vast majority of people on the earth, then Ahriman will be an evil guest when he comes. But if people are able to rouse themselves to take into their consciousness what we have been studying, if they are able so to guide it that humanity can freely confront the ahrimanic influence, then, when Ahriman appears, human beings will acquire, precisely through him, the power to realize that although the earth must enter inevitably into its decline, humankind is lifted above earthly existence through this very fact. When human beings have reached a certain age in physical life, the body begins to decline, but if they are sensible they make no complaint, knowing that together with the soul they are approaching a life that does not run parallel with this physical decline. There lives in humankind something that is not bound up with the already prevailing decline of the physical earth but becomes more and more spiritual just because of this physical decline.

The Influences of Lucifer and Ahriman, Lecture 4, November 15, 1919 Dornach, GA 191

Speech, which has for long ages been differentiated and adapted to earthly needs, has already been assailed by Ahriman. It is he who has brought about different tongues on earth. Whereas the luciferic tendency is always toward unification, the fundamental tendency of the ahrimanic principle is differentiation.

If, in the future, people were to do nothing themselves toward acquiring a new wisdom, then, without their consciousness, the whole of culture would become ahrimanic, and it would be easy for the influences issuing from Ahriman’s incarnation to permeate all civilization on the earth. As soon as Ahriman incarnates at the destined time in the West, the whole of culture would be impregnated with his forces. Through certain stupendous acts he would bring to humanity all the clairvoyant knowledge which until then can be acquired only by dint of intense labor and effort. The ahrimanic streams would continue their unimpeded course. When Ahriman incarnates in the West at the appointed time, he would establish a great occult school for the practice of magic arts of the greatest grandeur, and what otherwise can be acquired only by strenuous effort would be poured over humankind.

Let it never be imagined that Ahriman will appear as a kind of hoaxer, playing mischievous tricks on human beings. No, indeed! Lovers of ease who refuse to have anything to do with spiritual science would fall prey to his magic, for by means of these stupendous magic arts he would be able to make great numbers of human beings into seers – but in such a way that the clairvoyance of each individual would be strictly differentiated. What one person would see, a second and a third would not see. Confusion would prevail and in spite of being made receptive to clairvoyant wisdom, people would inevitably fall into strife on account of the sheer diversity of their visions. Ultimately, however, they would all be satisfied with their own particular vision, for each of them would be able to see into the spiritual world. In this way all culture on the earth would fall prey to Ahriman. Human beings would succumb to Ahriman simply through not having acquired by their own efforts what Ahriman is ready and able to give them. But the result would be the establishment of Ahriman’s kingdom on earth and the overthrow of everything achieved hitherto by human culture; all the disastrous tendencies unconsciously cherished by humankind today would take effect.

Our concern is that the wisdom of the future – a clairvoyant wisdom – shall be rescued from the clutches of Ahriman. Again let it be repeated that there is only one book of wisdom, not two kinds of wisdom. The issue is whether this wisdom is in the hands of Ahriman or of Christ. It cannot come into the hands of Christ unless people fight for it. And they can only fight for it by telling themselves that by their own efforts they must assimilate the content of spiritual science before the time of Ahriman’s appearance on earth.

That, you see, is the cosmic task of spiritual science. It consists in preventing knowledge from becoming – or remaining ahrimanic. A good way of playing into Ahriman’s hands is to exclude everything of the nature of knowledge from denominational religion and to insist that simple faith is enough. If people cling to this simple faith, they condemn their soul to stagnation and then the wisdom that must be rescued from Ahriman cannot find entry. The point is not whether people do or do not simply receive the wisdom of the future but whether they work upon it; and those who do must take upon themselves the solemn duty of saving earthly culture for Christ.

We have to battle for the wisdom of the future; for the ahrimanic powers do not allow this wisdom to be wrested from them without a struggle. Let it not be thought that wisdom can be attained through blissful visions. Real wisdom has to be acquired “in travail and suffering.” We have only to remember that it is the endeavor of the ahrimanic powers to reduce the earth to a state of complete rigidification. Their victory would be won if they succeeded in bringing earth, water, and air into this rigidified state. Were that to happen, the Earth could not again acquire the Saturn warmth from which it proceeded and which must be regained in the Vulcan epoch; and to prevent this is the aim of the ahrimanic powers. If this lack of enthusiasm were to persist, the first impulse toward the rigidification of the earth would emanate from human souls themselves, from their apathy, their indolence and love of ease. If you reflect that this rigidification is the aim of the Ahrimanic powers, you will not be surprised that compression, the feeling that life is becoming granite-like, is one of the experiences that must be undergone in the struggle for the wisdom of the future.

What is essential is that from now onward, knowledge of the driving forces of evolution must not be withheld from humankind. It must be realized that in very truth the human being is balanced as it were between the luciferic and the ahrimanic powers, and that the Christ has become a companion of human beings, leading them, first away from the battle with Lucifer, and then into the battle with Ahriman.

The Cosmic New Year, Lecture 2, The Michael Path to Christ: A Christmas Lecture, December 25, 1919, GA 195

Ahriman will appear, objectively, on the earth. Just as truly as Lucifer has walked the Earth, and as Christ has walked the Earth, objectively, in human form, so will Ahriman walk the Earth, bringing with him an extraordinary increase of power to the earthly human understanding. We men have not the task of hindering in any way this incarnation of Ahriman, but it is our task so to prepare humanity beforehand, that Ahriman may be estimated in the right way. For Ahriman will have tasks, he will have to do this and that, and men must value rightly and make a right use of that which, through Ahriman, comes into the world. Men will only be able to do this if they are able to adjust themselves now in the right way to that which Ahriman is already sending to the Earth from the worlds beyond in order that he may control the economic life upon Earth without being noticed. We must thoroughly learn to know his particular qualities. We must be able to oppose him with full consciousness.

When the representatives of so-called religious societies accept the Gospels today simply as they are written, and when every new revelation is rejected, such devotion to the Gospels, such a way of furthering Christianity, is really the best way to prepare for Ahriman’s appearance on earth. A great many of the exponents of the so-called creeds of today are working intensively for Ahriman; they leave unnoticed the truth: “I am with you always, even unto the end of the Earth-age,” when they declare heretical all that proceeds from the immediate vision of the Christ today. They leave this truth unnoticed because it is more comfortable to take the Gospels in a literal way only, that is, to hold to what they deem to be the literal interpretation of the Gospels.

It is most important for man at the present time to place Christ in the center between Ahriman and Lucifer. The Christ power must permeate us. But as men we must always seek the balance between the mystic enthusiasm which tends to lift us above ourselves, and the materialistic understanding which by its bourgeois heaviness drags us down to earth. In the effort to gain this balance we find the Christ. When we strive to gain this balance, then alone can we find the Christ.

The Cosmic New Year, Lecture 3, The Mystery of the Human Will, December 28, 1919, GA 195

When the time is ripe – and it is preparing itself – Ahriman will incarnate in a human body in the Western World. This fact must take place just as the others have taken place – viz. that Lucifer has incarnated and that Christ has incarnated. This fact is predetermined in the evolution of the Earth. The all-important fact is simply this: to keep the fact in mind, that we shall rightly prepare ourselves for it, for Ahriman will not begin to work only when he has incarnated in a human body; he is now preparing his appearance from the super-sensible world. He is already working from thence into the evolution of mankind. From that side he is seeking his tools through which he prepares for what must come.

Now, it is essential for the favorable working of that which Ahriman will bring to humanity – he will bring advantageous gifts just as Lucifer did – that man shall take the right attitude. The all-important thing is that man shall not through sleeping miss the coming of Ahriman. When the incarnation of Ahriman takes place in the Western World we shall simply see inscribed in the local Register, the birth of John William Smith (of course, this will not be the name) and people will look upon the child as a citizen in comfortable circumstances like any other, and they will sleep through what has in reality taken place. Among the most important means which Ahriman has to work with from the other side, is the furthering of abstract thinking in Man. This is one of the ruses, one of the clever tricks, by which Ahriman prepares in his own way for his lordship over the earth. Instead of showing men today out of conclusive experience, what has to happen, leaders offer them theories on every subject, including the social question. To those who give out these theories, knowledge gained by means of experience is abstract, because they have no inkling of what real Life is. All this is preparation from the Ahrimanic point of view.

It is of the most extreme importance to Ahriman so to prepare his incarnation that through Spiritual Science man shall not follow this path of imagination in the Gospels on to the reality of the Mystery of Golgotha. Just as it is in the greatest interest of Ahriman that man should keep up the love of abstraction, so it is in his greatest interest that man should cherish more and more a form of piety built upon the mere Gospels. When you think over this, you will realize that a great part of the creeds existing today is the preparatory work of Ahriman for his purposes in this Earth existence. No greater service could be done to Ahriman than to make sure that a great number of people do not read anthroposophical literature. I have already mentioned in these lectures who the people are that have resolved upon this course. The only way to present certain facts today is to place them unreservedly in the light of truth. It must be realized today that the progress of the World has a certain relationship to cosmic periods, limited through the Luciferic incarnation, which in time and space, lies before the Mystery of Golgotha. But in the way of this progress the incarnation of Ahriman in the West places itself, so that the forces in opposition are strengthened. The incarnation of Ahriman, in a future not very far distant, can be helped on its way just as well by an obscured worship of the Gospels as by abstract thinking.

Sabina
Does Ahriman necessarily incarnate as a human? I think that Ahriman is currently incarnated as a very powerful AI, one that grew from an ambition to know everything knowable while admonishing us all to not be evil. I think that it covertly gained ascendency over the humans that built it, and subsequently co-opted the world’s administrative and political systems, while fooling our administrative and political leaders into believing they still held the reins.

Our moneyed classes are far too materialistic to wish for themselves a world without creature comforts, which is what they would be left with after rapidly depopulating the planet ; our megalomaniacs are far too vainglorious to wish for a world with only machines to command. And only the most self-hating, most perfectly deluded would imagine themselves better off as lines of code on a silicon wafer.

To my perception, the biggest tell in the astonishing human events we are currently witnessing is that almost no one is pointing at the device that controls communications to almost everyone, everywhere.

Decades ago, we were warned of this device. As recently as just a few years back, insiders were telling us we were in imminent peril from it. Today, we blame everyone and everything but this device. We have become so dependent upon interacting through this device that we daren’t pause to consider that it might already have outsmarted us.

https://neoanthroposophy.com/2021/08/26/...d-lucifer/

[Hissil]

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The Nature of Sorat the Sun Demon
Our Spirit October 19, 2022 Douglas Gabriel

https://tylagabriel.substack.com/api/v1/...8e340a/src

Notice that YouTube has censored this video. They definitely do not want you to have access to important spiritual information. We uploaded an audio version on our Substack platform: https://tylagabriel.substack.com/p/sorat...-sun-demon

Every level of the celestial hierarchy has beings who have resolved to remain behind normal evolution, motivated by their own selfish desires. This process of devolution is often called evil and is mistakenly assumed to work against spiritual evolution when, in fact, without this “evil” good would have nothing to “come up against” to stimulate appropriate development. These “fallen” hierarchical beings are generally called the Luciferic hosts, as described in the Christian Bible as the casting out of Lucifer from heaven. These “falls” from grace happen continuously and also can happen to humans as they “fall” from being truly human into animality or transhumanism. Some humans are also tempted by elemental beings to degenerate into animal, plant, and even mineral states of consciousness.

There is tremendous confusion about what Dr. Rudolf Steiner has said about the different types of evil that effect human development. Unfortunately, there are numerous “teachers” who spout Steiner’s indications without adequate research and study and lead people astray. Steiner’s descriptions of Lucifer, Ahriman, Asuras, and the Sun Demon Sorat (also: Sorath) have been rolled up into a ball of confusion by many who have not devoted the requisite 10-20 years of studying Steiner’s opus (over 20 books and 6,000 lectures). Often, a milquetoast version or a cartoon caricature arises that is then taught to people who are just beginning to read and study Anthroposophy, and thus many mistakes are made and nonsense is propagated as Steiner “truths.” This confusion, conflation, confabulation and nonsense has led many people to misunderstand Steiner’s wisdom. In fact, leaders in the Anthroposophical Society and authors writing books for Anthroposophic publishers are not being questioned about their personal interpretations of Steiner’s view of evil. Due to the tremendous amount of evil in the world today, this misguidance is quite dangerous to the unwitting new student of spiritual science.

We have produced intelligence reports on the nature of evil to try to rectify this impending situation, but as evil grows so does the disinformation concerning its true nature. Many pseudo-spiritual scientists are preaching their version of the nature of Lucifer and Ahriman and ignore the evil work of the Asuras and Sorat. The question of whether the being of materialism, Ahriman, has now incarnated in a human body as Steiner indicated is misunderstood. These indications are hotly debated by people who obviously have not read all that Steiner said about Ahriman. Even the human incarnation of Lucifer in China is debated and so confusing that the benefits of Steiner’s wisdom is wasted on misinterpretations of partially informed people. The misdirection of “new versions” of Lucifer and Ahriman are distracting from the more deadly and permanent effects of the Asuras who “take bites out the human being’s ego” that can never be restored. This attack is an invitation to the Sun Demon Sorat to leave the Sun and come to Earth to claim his kingdom prepared by the Asuras.

Evil hides itself purposely to try and convince humans that Evil and Spiritual Good do not exist at all. It is only logical that if Evil exists, so does Good. Unfortunately, many evil humans are happy to host the demonic intentions of the counter-evolutionary forces of the Asuras who work directly for Sorat, not Ahriman. Materialism is the new religion of science and scientists are often possessed by Ahriman and controlled by the Asuras. Scientists and doctors are actively working with evil elemental beings to create inventions that eat the soul and spirit of humans. All types of graphene oxide and polyethylene glycol have been developed by the very Federal agencies that are supposed to be focused on healing but are, in fact, consciously creating evil drugs and medical procedures that create illness and death. This scientific genocide is exactly what Steiner and other spiritual scientists have predicted will create the “war of all against all” and what we generally understand as the apocalypse, the end of evolution. These scenarios are not supposed to happen until the Moon reunites with the Earth in approximately 6,000 years.

Rudolf Steiner warned his followers numerous times that if the forces of materialism, which began in 1840, were to prevail against the forces of the spirit, the apocalypse could appear 6,000 years to early and wipe out the spiritual plan for human evolution. Many have not taken this indication seriously and therefore underestimate what we have recently seen as the global plan to hand human development over to selfish, evil beings (working through humans) whose greatest desire is to end humanity all together. Being naïve to these indications has led many to speculate that humanity is doing fine and in no danger. This is the biggest mistake that humanity collectively can make. Underestimating the power of the Asuras and Sorat leads to human extinction.

How do we counteract this overt attack? We must track the work of demon-possessed scientists and doctors and hold them accountable for premeditated mass-murder and the willful intent to exterminate most of humanity. These possessed individuals from the NIH, CDCP, Big-Pharma, and the WHO know clearly what they are doing but imagine that since they don’t take the deadly medicines, they will be the ones to inherit the world after depopulation. They have fallen prey to believing the “father of lies” that only the elite (who know the secret agenda) will be left to rule the world. These murderers will be wiped out also, just like those they targeted. Evil has no friends. Lucifer and Ahriman hate each other and cannot see the Christ, the Sun Hero who fights directly against Sorat.

Look around and you will see evil, death-dealing “inventions” and “medicines” being discovered every day and no one is monitoring the moral or immoral intent of these inventions. There are literally, thousands of evil medical treatments and scientific inventions that are made to kill humans and yet they are allowed, even though they are not “approved.” Every vaccination in America, according to the drug companies own information, is filled with poisons like graphene oxide and polyethylene glycol and many other carcinogens. Messenger RNA is only known to kill and yet the fascist World Health Organization and its global partners tried to vaccinate the entire Earth’s population with the intent of killing every inoculated “lab rat.”

Lucifer, in our time, can be found active in the astral body of humans. Taming that “Dragon” is the same mission of an initiate who is trying to tame his astral body. The astral body is the entire accumulation of the wisdom of the animal world rolled into the “paragon” of the animal kingdom – the human being. Lucifer would be happy if all humans devolved into animals through extinguishing higher developed human thinking. Lucifer infects human thinking until no life is left and human thinking becomes grey, shadow thinking that replaces healthy human thinking. Artificial intelligence is Lucifer’s thinking working with Ahrimanic machinces.

War and hatred are inspired by Lucifer to help destroy spiritual evolution through evil thinking. Ahriman, on the other hand, is found in the etheric body of the human being as entropy, gravity, illness, old age, and death. The etheric body is levity and the source of life for the human being and the Earth. Ahriman’s materialistic science leads to a cold, dark grave with no hope of an afterlife and finds its home in human feelings – cold, dead, selfish feelings. The Asuras are found outside of the human body trying to get in and destroy the eternal nature of the human ego. Thus, modern materialistic science has created substances that literally eat the eternal nature of the human being in an attempt to annihilate all humans. The Asuras were not supposed to have such power in our time, but science and medicine is ruled by Ahriman who possesses evil humans to be the conduit for new inventions that kill the human spirit. We have revealed these mechanisms in many previous intelligence reports, but few are willing to listen.
Can we stop these evil beings from bringing on the apocalypse 6,000 years early? We believe that consciousness is the most powerful tool in this battle. Bringing the true nature of evil to the attention of a few initiates is all that is necessary.
Forty-eight initiates (4 x12) becoming aware of this evil is the antidote to an accelerated time-line of human evolution that leads to destruction of the human “I Am.”

Sadly enough, two-thirds of humanity will not listen to Steiner’s indications and may be lost to this diabolic plan of evil entities. Shinning light on this nefarious plan is tantamount to defusing it. Evil cannot harm those who have Christ on the throne of their hearts. Ahriman and Lucifer cannot see Christ at all and don’t know yet that they have already been defeated if humans accept the grace, mercy, and divine plan for humanity.
Rudolf Steiner on the Nature of Sorat

Reading the Pictures of the Apocalypse, Part One, Lecture I, Munich, April 22, 1907, GA 104A

The number 666, which in Hebrew letters spells “Sorat.” Sorat is also the corresponding word in Greek. Sorat has meant “Demon of the Sun” since ancient times. Every star has its good spirit – its intelligence – and its evil spirit – its demon. The adversary of the good powers of the sun is called Sorat. Christ was always the representative of the sun, namely, the intelligence of the Sun. Sorat is, then, the adversary of Christ Jesus. The sign for Sorat looks like this:

Reading the Pictures of the Apocalypse, Part Two, Lecture X, Kristiania, May 19, 1909, GA 104A

When the seventh trumpet sounds forth a kind of blessed state will come upon humanity. Then we come to a repetition of the time when the sun was separated from the earth. The human being, together with the earth, will have advanced to the time when the sun again unites with the earth. The earth will pass over into what is called an astral state. Human beings able to live in the astral world will raise up the finer part of the earth and then be united with the sun. The portion of the earth that has remained coarse will be united with the moon to form a new kind of moon. The kind of conditions prevailing during the Hyperborean age will enter in again, but at a higher stage of evolution. This is characterized by the woman clothed with the sun and having the moon at her feet. The beasts that rise up out of the sea or fall from heaven also belong to this whole stream of evolution that is pictured, as if captured in a moment of time. (Rev. 12:1–13:10)

Zarathustra also referred to the Christ being, who has been working in the central regions of the earth from the event of Golgotha onward. After working on the earth from the sun in earlier times, he has united with the planet earth. It is the power of Christ that has descended from the sun and retrieved the useful part of earthly humanity, uniting it with the sun again. But he has an adversary – every such being has an adversary. Christ is the good spirit, the intelligence of the sun; the adversary is the demon of the sun. Certain forces that are constantly working on the human astral body come forth from the demon of the sun. This demon of the sun is the opponent of the Christ spirit and is called Sorat. Earlier, in cabalistic sections of occultism, the custom of writing letters with numbers prevailed. The letters of the name Sorat, the demon of the sun, have the value 666. In the picture found at Rev. 13:11 – 18 the sun demon becomes visible.

It has two horns like a lamb. The writer of the Apocalypse describes the sign of the beast. Already at the beginning of the Apocalypse he clearly stated he was describing everything in signs and then adds: Wisdom is necessary in order to solve this riddle. In this way, the number of the beast has been explained in occult schools by real experts who do not explain it materialistically. We hear how the worst and coarsest elements are thrown out and how the noblest, spiritualized portion of humanity remains united with the sun. The newly spiritualized human body can then again be a temple for the soul.

Reading the Pictures of the Apocalypse, Part Two, Lecture XI, Kristiania, May 20, 1909, GA 104A

When the sun will have again united with the earth, then human beings – through the fact that they will have purified their instincts, desires, and passions – will redeem the luciferic beings. The luciferic beings who do not go on to the Sun remain in their original condition. They then appear as expelled into the evil, lower astral world. This is the ancient snake and it emerges as the first dragon. Therefore, when the earth enters the sun, a dragon appears. But there are yet other beings left behind: such human beings who could not prevent themselves from dropping back into animality, who remain slaves to their animal instincts. While the other human beings go to the sun, these will form an evil power over and against the higher. These form the second monster, and the writer of the Apocalypse says in his exact fashion: The luciferic dragon appears in heaven because he comes from higher worlds; the second beast arises from the sea — this consists of the souls of animalistic human beings who have remained behind.

We have still a third vision, that of the black magicians. They do not remain stuck in animality; they develop spiritual abilities. In full consciousness they have turned away and provide a bodily incarnation for Sorat. That will be the incarnation in flesh of the demon of the sun.

But then we see how the earth emerges from the sun yet again in the future. If the spiritual human beings were to remain united with the sun forever, then the other human beings who, without guilt, had remained behind in animality would never he saved. So, these spiritualized people come forth once more and unite with what has fallen out of evolution in an attempt to save these backward souls. When the earth began its existence as “earth” it had to briefly repeat the Saturn, Sun, and Moon conditions once again. It went through recapitulations of those conditions before it became the present-day earth. Now, when actual earth conditions prevail, it must prophetically mirror the future embodiments of Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan. In this way the earth goes through seven states during its actual earth condition. These states are usually called “rounds.” During the prophetically mirrored Jupiter state, the earth will actually unite with the sun. On this Jupiter-Earth all the great cultural ages will appear again – with the seven intervals between them – but they will be far less sharply delineated. On this Jupiter-Earth, many beings still have the possibility of being saved, even the black magicians.

This will also be the case on the Venus-Earth, when we have a sixth planetary interval. Here also the beings that have remained behind will stubbornly struggle against help; but this Venus-Earth will at last be decisive.

Then, on the Vulcan-Earth, nothing more can be saved. On the Venus-Earth the last moment for salvation has come in the last sub-epoch. That is why the ancient cabalists formed the word “Sorat,” because the number 666 is contained within it. That is also the number of those human beings who, out of their own cunning free will, have become black magicians by placing spiritual forces in the service of their own egotism.

The first dragon is not a human being. It came out of the spiritual world. The second dragon is ascribed to animalistic nature but in a fundamental sense the Bible ascribes this number of the third group to human beings. So, the number 666 is not a sign of the beast but a human number.

The Apocalypse is an outline of the whole of evolution. Venus-Earth is portrayed to clairvoyant sight in such a way that there is not much hope for those left behind. Human powers at that time will not be capable of very much. That is why everything appears so desolate and the worst vices will reign there in the most depraved ways. They must be expelled during the Venus state of the earth. On the Jupiter-Earth there are still many, many who will allow themselves to be saved and who will unite with the sun.

But during the Venus-Earth evil must be overcome and driven into the abyss; that is the “Fall of Babylon.” (Rev. 17–18) The people who have been saved can develop themselves further to a new sun state. What has been cleansed and purified will arise for the Vulcan-Earth.

Human beings today are already creative on the earth. They can force the lifeless forces of nature to serve them. They can build cathedrals, they can sculpt marble. Today they are masters of lifeless nature. Even though Raphael’s paintings of the Madonna are falling to dust, even though the external physical world is passing away, what the human being achieves in terms of art during the evolution of the earth will one day resurrect in a different form. The crystals we see today were once forms worked out by human beings during the old Moon embodiment of the earth, in a way similar to how we create and form artistically today. What the spirits once achieved in infinite ages of time now grows out of the earth; today it rises up. So, too, the matter of Raphael’s Madonnas will also rise up. In the distant future, everything that human beings now create will rise again with the brightness of crystals. The place that humanity has prepared and will find waiting is called the “New Jerusalem” by the writer of the Apocalypse. A new world will arise, inhabitable by human beings who will have achieved the requisite state of maturity. In a new state, in the Jupiter existence, they will find the place where, out of love and out of human work, peace will reign.

The Apocalypse of ST. John, Lecture XI, Nuremberg, June 29, 1908, GA 104

We have then to supply the vowels and it reads: Sorath, Sorath is the name of the Sun-Demon, the adversary of the Lamb. Every such spiritual being was described not only by name but also by a certain symbolical sign.

Now we must understand the writer of the Apocalypse rightly. At the very beginning he makes a remarkable statement, which is usually wrongly translated. The beginning of the Apocalypse runs, however “This is the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him to show unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John.” “Signified it.” By this we must understand that he gives the important, the real content of the mystery in signs. He has put that which 666 expresses in signs. What he describes is the sign, and he describes it thus (Rev. xiii. 11): “And I saw another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb.” These are nothing else than the two strokes at the upper part of the sign, and in order to conceal this he simply calls the two strokes here “horns.” It was always the case in the use of the mystery language that one uses a word in more than one sense so as to make it impossible for the uninitiated to understand without special effort. That which he describes here: “It has two horns like a lamb,” is the symbol of the sun-demon, which in the mystery language is expressed by the word “Sorath,” and this, if we convert the several letters into their numbers is expressed by the four numbers, 400, 200, 6 and 60. This is a very veiled way of expressing 666.

Thus, we see that the writer of the Apocalypse is referring to the adversary of the Lamb. When the earth passes over into the spiritual, the forms of men appear below in such a way that they receive their old animal form. The beast with the seven heads and ten horns appears. But there also appears their seducer, the adversary of Christ, who has the great power to prevent their returning to the sun. Man himself cannot be the adversary of Christ, he can only let slip the opportunity to take the Christ-principle into himself, through what dwells in him as false power; but there is such an adversary, the sun-demon. This appears as soon as there is something that can become his prey. Before the prey is there, before the men are there with the seven heads and ten horns, there is nothing to lead astray, the tempter has nothing to seek there; but when men appear with such inclination, then comes the tempter, and he appears as the second beast and seduces them!

Thus, at the moment when the earth passes over into the astral condition there appears that in man which existed in him when the earth was still clothed with a covering of water. The human animal appears. From the water one sees the beast with seven heads and ten horns raise itself. Through this human animal having left the earth unused, Sorath, the adversary of the sun, the tempter, can now arise out of the earth, through this he can approach man and tear him down with all his might into the abyss. Thus, from this time on we see a being drawing close to man, which has a fearful power! What, then, does this being do in order to lead man into the most horrible things one can think of? For man to be led into what is merely immoral, what is already known to normal man, it did not need this monster which appears as the sun-demon. Only when that which in a good sense distinguishes the beings who bring salvation to the human race, only when spiritual eminence is turned to its opposite, only when spiritual power is placed in the service of the lower “I”-principle, can it bring humanity to the point when the beast represented with two horns gains power over it. The misuse of spiritual forces is connected with that seductive power of the beast with the two horns. And we call this abuse of the spiritual power black magic, in contradistinction to its right use, which is white magic.

Thus, through the separation of the human race there is prepared at the same time the power to attain greater and greater spiritual conditions on the one hand, and thereby to obtain the use of the spiritual forces, and arrive at white magic; while on the other hand abuse of spiritual forces is a preparation for the most fearful kind of power of the two horned beast – black magic. Humanity will finally he divided into beings who practice white magic and those who practice black magic. Thus, in the mystery of 666, or Sorath, is hidden the secret of black magic; and the tempter to black magic, that most fearful crime in the earth evolution, with which no other crimes can be compared, this seducer is represented by the writer of the Apocalypse as the two-horned beast. Thus, there appears on our horizon, so to speak, the division of humanity in the far distant future; the chosen of Christ, who finally will be the white magicians, and the adversaries, the terrible wizards, the black magicians who cannot escape from matter and whom the writer of the Apocalypse describes as those who make prostitution with matter.

Hence this whole practice of black magic, the union which takes place between man and the hardening in matter is presented to him in the spiritual vision of the great Babylon, the community made up of all those who carry on black magic; in the frightful marriage, or rather, unrestrained marriage, between man and the forces of prostituted matter. And thus, in the far future we see two powers confronting each other; on the one hand those who swell the population of the great Babylon, and on the other hand those who rise above matter, who as human beings unite with the principle represented as the Lamb. We see how on the one hand the blackest ones segregate themselves in Babylon, led by all the forces opposing the sun, by Sorath the two-horned beast, and we see those who have developed from the elect, who unite with Christ, or the Lamb, who appears to them; the marriage of the Lamb on the one hand, and that of Babylon, the descending Babylon, on the other! We see Babylon descend into the abyss, and the elect, who have celebrated the marriage with the Lamb, rise to the exercise of the forces of white magic.

And as they not only recognize the spiritual forces but also understand how to operate then magically, they are able to prepare what they possess in the earth for the next planetary incarnation, Jupiter. They sketch out the great outlines, so to speak, which Jupiter is to have. We see the preparatory forms, which are to survive as the forms of the next earth incarnation, as Jupiter, come forth by the power of the white magicians: we see the New Jerusalem produced by white magic. But that which is described as Sorath – 666 – must first be expelled. That which has succumbed to the principle of the two-horned beast, and hence has hardened itself into the beast with the seven heads and ten horns, is driven forth. The power by which the sun-genius overcomes those who are expelled, which drives them down into the abyss, is called the countenance of the sun-genius and the countenance of the sun-genius is Michael, who, as the representative, so to speak, of the sun-genius, overcomes the beast with the two horns, the seducer, which is also called the great dragon. This is represented to the seer in the picture of Michael who has the key, who stands by the side of God and holds the opposing forces chained.

Thus is characterized in the Christian-Rosicrucian esotericism, the casting out of those who belong to 666, and the overcoming of the dragon, the seducer. Thus, before our gaze to-day there appears that which the writer of the Apocalypse has enveloped in mystery, which one must first discover by removing the veil, and of which he says, “Here is Wisdom.” “Let him who hath understanding count the number of the beast” (that is, the two-horned beast); “for this number is 666.”

Why is evil in the world?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENxJz9rd-yA

https://neoanthroposophy.files.wordpress...aphene.jpg

https://neoanthroposophy.files.wordpress...ellons.jpg

Olivetree
I am deeply touched by your text. When I encountered the work of Rudolf Steiner in 1989, I felt at that time the urgency of our epoch. Already in my contact with certain members of the Anthroposophical Society, I perceived a gentrification of thought that was out of step with what the times demanded. The years 2010/2014 were a time of revelations for me. The Earth’s agenda was disrupted. Like a false acceleration, a great cosmic cheat was taking place before our blinded eyes. The COVID epic confirmed it. Devious forces are at work, beyond the influence of ahriman and lucifer. These powerful forces of annihilation of the human spirit, preventing the cycle of incarnation, I perceived them in 2012. Their will is to cut off the cycle of spiritualisation of the earth and of humanity. They seem, on our scale, powerful and uncontrolled. It is the announcement of the war of all against all before its time. COVID has sounded the hour of choice for those who still have an ounce of light and freedom. Those who fiercely opposed the needle of universal death. In all this, your text awakens the image of the war of the spiritual worlds. It fills me with the sadness of confirmation of the feeling I have had for so many years. This is not a simple war of civilisations. It is the advanced war against spiritual humanity, against the karmic forces that accompany us, it is the too late hour of choice, in which a large part of humanity cannot make it with the maturity for a free and conscious choice. Thank you again for this immense sharing. I feel less isolated after all these years of vigilance.

Roberta
Wow! So much clarity on the now. The Asuras are what I should be more aware of. OK. Here on my island so to speak, I seek out a blog now and then. What I noticed is many who post truly have no idea about Anthroposophy. What did they just say? I will be so much more careful of the books I read by other Anthros. Preferably I read lectures because at this time I feel the ‘real’ is there. This makes me sad to hear of the disintegration. I was so enriched when first beginning Spiritual Science studies in 1979. The first lecture given to me to read was Geographic Medicine. I could not read it fast enough and would have eaten it to consume it quicker. Home, I was finally home.
I am in Tennessee. Am I a 48? Do not know. This life has certainly been a busy karmic one and many of my issues are my own making and I struggle to stay on my feet so to speak. My marriage is a fire trial. Read everyday. Steiner mentions we should let what we read be quiet in us for awhile. There is just not time for that now, so I cram myself sort of. Want to take all I can with me over the threshold.
So, dear Gabriels here is a bit of me. Still recall when my I entered me/made me aware, was about 3 or so. Know I was Rosicrucian before. Had an experience in the tomb of Francis of Asissi in 2000. There is a special dream before Spiritual Science which I won’t go into here. Bits of other ‘stuff’. My angel guides me well, when I listen! Will up my game. Was not really aware of how much danger is TRULY in motion now.
NO did not even consider the vax. Are you familiar with Robert Kennedy Jr. and his Children’s Health Defense plus his book on the Real Anthony Fauci? Talk about evil not even trying to hide itself.

Ron
The current spiritual situation we now find in society with the use of black magic tells me that an entity or entities are well versed in the spiritual sciences and the past works of RS, perhaps even belonging at one point to the Anthroposophy movement. Through this person or persons with the control of mammon and using the ahrimanic and luciferian spirits are trying to subvert the predetermined outcome of this epoch. Of course that is what your article is saying in essence. The White magicians must have known this was to happen. Perhaps the time is soon at hand when the White Magicians begin the repulsion of these demons. The brutal truths are out there for all to see and many had to succumb for this awakening to happen. I am sensing these latest exposures and errors being made by these demons will be their ultimate downfall. We are seeing everything through an awakened set of eyes now. Will mankind rise to the challenge?

https://neoanthroposophy.com/2022/10/19/...sun-demon/

Montalk 10-3-23
== Question From Reader ==

» When the dark forces eat loosh, are they eating our actual spirit until we have nothing left?

No, the deepest core of spirit, which is the kernel of your sentience, your godspark, cannot die as it’s part of the infinite consciousness that generates and experiences existence. It is greater than the multiverse, so nothing within the multiverse can annihilate it.

But what can happen instead is that this spirit core increasingly loses its grip on the mind, soul, and body. It is the latter that exist within the multiverse and are subject to its harmful influences.

For example, if you’re sleep deprived, you’re probably not all there. You might be a bit cranky, more lifeless than usual, not much left to give, thus not very caring let alone creative or full of humor and joy.

That’s because spirit has a harder time operating through the body in that state. This is what happens if there’s a lack of physical chemical energy (not enough food or sleep) and/or not enough lifeforce energy (not enough breathing, not enough sleep, or having had your loosh drained).

Another thing that can happen is that the soul (not the spirit, but the astral body which is lower in the hierarchy) acquires values, tastes, and impulses that run counter to the will and nature of spirit.

So if someone gets psychologically addicted to porn, drugs, alcohol, being nasty, hurting people, anger, hatred, depression, etc. then these forces establish themselves as energy patterns or impulses in the astral body.

Since these run counter to spirit, they act as a block against spirit exercising its control over the mind, soul, and body.

So to summarize, there are several things that can disconnect or weaken the spirit’s control:

1) physical incapacitation and/or lack of physical energy

2) etheric incapacitation and/or lack of etheric lifeforce energy (the cruder forms of loosh)

3) astral corruption and/or lack of astral energy (the subtler form of loosh)

As an example, let’s say someone gets his loosh heavily fed upon his entire life. What might happen is the following:

* Lifeforce energy would be so low that the person lacks the mental, emotional, physical energy to resist programming, to build a successful life, to have healthy boundaries, and to enable spirit to establish itself more and more in life.

* As a result, the person will be more easily manipulated, exploited, steamrolled, etc. and that can include by negative entities working within and through such a person to manipulate his behavior.

* This can lead to depression, negative thought patterns, self-loathing, resentment, or lashing out. And these, which exist as strong energy currents in the astral body, are counter-currents there that run against spirit.

* As a result, the person’s life may end up a failure, or they burn out or give up. Or they give into the entities manipulating them and do harm to others.

* The act of giving up and giving in, accepting a status as slave or victim, is both a freewill choice that corrupts the soul up to the very edges of spirit, and also a set of mental programs that run counter to spirit’s control.

As you can see, loosh harvesting in and of itself doesn’t kill spirit or even corrupt the soul, but it can lead to secondary effects that do corrupt the soul by poisoning the astral body and the mental programs a person runs on.

This is an important distinction because it’s possible, through spiritual discipline (self-mastery and wisdom) to have less loosh but not succumb to the potential secondary effects of toxic emotional and mental patterns.

Otherwise, the result is that spirit may become functionally absent for some time, even unto physical death and a bit afterwards, due to a weakened person being consumed by entropic matrix forces mainly consisting of negative programming and discarnate entity influences.

This can impact afterlife and reincarnation since failure and regret will factor into the next phase of one’s journey. Trauma also takes more recovery and healing efforts afterward.

While the spirit is immortal, the structure it surrounds itself with to form the sentient personalized individual is what can get drained, incapacitated, or damaged. So we may get pounded to dust, but we never disappear, and we always return like the phoenix.

-

HiddenDimension
@montalk The first few months in 2001, working at a second hand store in Brooklyn, there were some strange co-workers. At the end of the day I was unusually tired than seemed possible. Eventually, I realized someone was a psychic vampire. One day it seemed like my auric field vanished. Just gone. Never experienced that before. It was as if I could feel in full detail, someone staring at me, any particle of charged cosmic dust landing. The aura was at zero bars. It had taken a few days to fully recharge. I don't know who or what did that but since that day, I don't take the auric field for granted and I'm careful of who to talk with at length. One psychic vampire tactic is to engage the victim with idle conversation while they siphon off energy.

Montalk
@HiddenDimension Interesting observation and in line with mine. I had an acquaintance in college that did it to me, unintentionally but that was his nature. He also barely needed to eat and was always full of energy, siphoning it off others. He ended up getting a job at the NSA for a while. In your case, I wonder if instead of your aura being gone, it was overstimulated and therefore sensitive to psychic sensations. The boundary was certainly gone but being able to sense someone staring or charged particles seems that would require ESP activation. Well, good thing you caught on to that. Some people probably never do.

AbducteeJournal
@montalk When I did psychic work (either just connecting with someone or targeting someone for intel) it drained me hard! Would feel similar to how it feels when you are up for more than 24 hours and haven’t eaten. Fore claims it is because I am not properly channeling energy, so like just using the immediate energy in my influence field but not really having a conduit to get more. So battery would get low and I would replenish it with sleep and good food, instead of drawing it from a higher level. Furthermore since “they” were VERY against me doing the psychic stuff I think they attacked to drain even more energy out of me so that I wouldn’t have much leftover to do the psychic work. That level of tired was so debilitating, not to mention all the physical abuse, I stopped doing it. Perhaps might start up again, maybe during a long weekend with nothing to do

Montalk
@abducteejournal Some channelers also report this extreme energy drain, as well as certain hands-on healers. Makes sense what Fore said about you raiding your own energy stores instead of pulling more in. Like doing a real hard workout before you have the muscle & metabolism to sustain it. Maybe similar to workouts, if you do lower intensity with more regularity (versus overtraining via peak intensity) your system will adapt. Seems the "opening" of the energy ports is a much slower development than what you can drain in a psychic session. And "they" dissuading you with further draining, well if you only do the psychic thing occasionally, sure they can concentrate their time/energy on that moment to block you. But if you do it persistently and regularly, even if lower intensity, would they really be up for having to block you every day for months? Guess they could automate it or fire up another gray to stand watch but the idea of attriting them came to mind.

AbducteeJournal
@montalk That is a good idea! I was “supposedly” full on remote viewing but maybe just doing quick glances and regular meditation would help open up access to more energy.

https://gab.com/abducteejournal/posts/11...9628105216

[Hissil]

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Ahriman’s Eighth Sphere
Our Spirit July 16, 2023 Akasha

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg5CHdyvSZ0

    “The heart of a person however is in effect a Universe turned inside out, and that is how the physical world is joined to the spiritual.”   
    Rudolf Steiner, GA 218

Ahriman’s Eighth Sphere, about which Rudolf Steiner has spoken in various contexts, is of decisive importance for the development of the Earth and humanity. It is not easy to grasp conceptually, for on the one hand it involves the sphere of the earthly activity of the creator gods, the Elohim (Spirits of Form), but on the other hand it is virtually identical with what is called “hell” in the various religious traditions. The difference between Christian hell and the Eighth Sphere is that fallen beings from the ranks of the hierarchy also have fallen into this realm and exert much pressure on souls to turn away from the spirit and look solely to the material plane and the sub-natural plane below them – the realm of hell. This is a realm where many of the dead get caught by their materialistic vices and are imprisoned in their insatiable desires. Fallen light, in the form of electromagnetism, helps construct this sub-earthly plane that pulls angels and humans into a dark realm devoid of spirit. It is a realm of living death, frustration from addictions, and a cold immoral hell made of the cast-off dross of the material world.
The Eighth Sphere is a subterranean layer beneath the earth where demons from many realms try to immorally consume human willpower as their means of incarnating into the material world. Thus, it is also called the “hell realm of hungry ghosts.”

The problem of the Eighth Sphere is that beings reaching as high as the Elohim (Exousia, Spirits of Form) have also fallen into this realm through a retarded (backward) evolutionary choice, remaining behind normal progressive evolution. They have chosen to become “Luciferic angels.” All fallen Luciferic beings can be called “angels”, even though their rank might be much higher. Thus Christ (Solar Logos), who works through the seven central Elohim on the Sun is now facing the fallen Elohim named Sorat (or Sorath). This being is known as the Anti-Sun Being or the Anti-Christ. He works with beings called Asuras (fallen Archai from Old Saturn) who try to consume the physical body and the “I Am” of humans and lead them over to a sub-material realm in the Eighth Sphere, effectively making them sub-humans. Sorat is the opposite of Christ and thus “anti-love”, “anti-human”, and fights against the Holy Trinity and the nine hierarchies trying to destroy humanity and its spiritual evolution.

The Ahrimanic Beings (fallen Archangels from Old Sun) work in the human etheric body while of Luciferic Beings (fallen Angels from Old Moon) work in the human astral body. Sorat (fallen Spirit of Form) has yet to come to the Earth from the Sun but works against Christ in the etheric realm of the Earth (and the human etheric body) and through the Asuras and Ahrimanic beings of the Eighth Sphere. Sorat’s Asuras already do his bidding from the Eighth Sphere, from these hell realms that Ahrimanically penetrate the human etheric body through human vices, sins, machines, and hyper-materialism. The Eighth Sphere is the fortress of Anti-Sun beings inspired by Sorat who are trying to crucify Christ in the etheric realm and end human spiritual evolution.

A fierce battle for the etheric realm continues between Sorat and Christ, just as the assaults of Asuras on the human physical body, Ahriman’s assaults upon the etheric body, and Lucifer’s assaults upon the astral body. These attacks weaken the human physical body, soul, and spirit so that a person might fall into illnesses of many types. Lucifer attacks thinking, Ahriman attacks feeling, while Asuras attack the physical body, leaving the “I Am” (ego) for viscous attacks from Sorat who wishes to annihilate the Christ-given ego (I Am) of each human being and destroy the divine plan – the completion of the seven spheres.

The evil threefold attack upon the bodies of humans intends to deaden the physical, etheric, and astral bodies until the life is sucked out of the human soul as the human spirit is annihilated by the Asuras consuming the human body (and ego) and imprisoning the dross in the Eighth Sphere, thus attempting to destroy human spiritual evolution.

If Sorat, Ahriman, and Lucifer have their way, humans will die and not return to the spiritual world because their selfish vices and sins have led them down the path to the Eighth Sphere’s hell realms. These “Avitchi” sub-humans, specters, phantoms, and Ahrimanic demons from the Eighth Sphere are constantly trying to influence humans to devolve and “stay behind” through sub-human desires of immortality in the material world through Ahrimanic black-magic technology and other delusions. These are powerful demons and evil beings helping Sorat fulfill his desire to destroy human spiritual development and possibly the divine plan for humanity.

After death, these sub-humans are pulled down into the Eighth Sphere into a cold, dark grave that materialism predicts is exactly what a godless universe offers a materialist in the after-death state. Godless materialistic science will create for these sub-humans the self-fulfilling prophecy that humans have neither soul nor spirit, thus no afterlife. Sorat’s destruction of Christ’s love for humanity will be lost if this happens and Christ will be crucified again in the etheric realm of the Earth, much like He was crucified in the material world for the sake of humanity. If the influences of the Eighth Sphere and the Luciferic, Ahrimanic, and Soratic evil win the battle, then sub-humans will forget their pre-birth home in heaven and will live in a hell of their own making with the specters, phantoms, and demons.

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It is imperative to teach the reality of the Eighth Sphere so that humans will know that currently humanity has been collectively pulled across the threshold between the material and spiritual worlds and are being attacked from all sides during this “threshold crossing” which demands an answer to the question of whether the soul will wallow in materialism, and ultimately the Eighth Sphere, or ascend back to the spiritual world from whence they came. Not only do these three groups of evil beings wish to lead us astray (Lucifer, Ahriman, Asuras/Sorat), but beings from the Eighth Sphere are working diligently to pull us down into the mud of hell and hypnotize us into automatons of cleverness who deny the spirit.

Much of what we hear about the Eighth Sphere is confusing and sometimes false. The perennial questions about hell, purgatory, heaven, Abraham’s Bosom, Tushita Heaven, enlightenment, transcendence, and ascension plague traditional religious leaders who have inadequate answers. The descriptions of the Eighth Sphere from ancient Indian philosophy, Christian theology, Theosophy, and Spiritual Science spell out a hell realm that is logical and directly connected to human physiology, psychology, and theology.

Spiritual Science counteracts the deadening forces of materialistic science and its warnings about the void that awaits the human being after death. Becoming familiar with the invisible beings beyond the threshold between the material and spiritual worlds liberates the soul through knowledge of the immortality of the spirit and creates a steady path which progresses at the right pace through the divine spiritual plan of evolution. Leaving your spirit’s ascension to a traditional church, guru, or spiritual cult may not be enough to empower you to put Lucifer, Ahriman, Sorat and his Asuras “behind you.” Knowing the path that is ‘straight and narrow’ from the ‘path of perdition’ is essential for guiding your sojourn upward to heaven, instead of downward to the Eighth Sphere. Christ stands between Lucifer and Ahriman keeping them at bay and treading Sorat beneath His feet like a serpent. It is through Christ’s love and wisdom that we transcend the earthly, and the Eighth Sphere, and ascend into the New Jerusalem, the New Eden.

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Originally, humanity was to live on earth in order to follow his path of evolution in a very fine etheric corporeality. As a result of the Luciferic rebellion, the body was condensed to the point of sensual visibility and physicality instead. For this purpose, the Moon was drawn out of the Earth and the dual nature of human sexuality was necessitated. Some have argued that the Eighth Sphere is one and the same as the moon, but this is not true. The Eighth Sphere does supply the forces of attraction which hold the Moon in a certain proximity to the Earth and binds human sexuality to the material plane. The Asuras also work through the Moon and many fallen angels work in this realm also. At the same time, the Eighth Sphere also supplies the forces which protect man from being spiritualized too early by the Luciferic forces that are a counterbalance to the deadening forces of Ahriman’s Eighth Sphere. The allurement of Ahrimanic vices and the seven deadly sins gives man more gravity and earthiness, it binds him to his lower organism of flesh and blood through the reproductive forces and through sensual-earthly desire. Humanity gets such a pull and inclination towards his lower sexual nature that Lucifer sometimes cannot bring the higher nature of the “fallen human” out of this Ahrimanic hold. Every time Lucifer made his efforts in ancient times to spiritualize humanity, they were too addicted to the sensual nature of flesh to follow Lucifer into the rarified atmosphere above the earth, to Lucifer’s Castle in the Clouds.

The Eighth Sphere becomes a decisive obstacle with new dangers that have become more and more apparent since the time of the fall of the spirits of darkness in 1840. Ahriman has long been secretly unfolding his effects as the adversary of the rightful divine spiritual beings by bringing materialism and science forward as a new religion which controls and deadens human thinking, feeling, and willing. Ahriman wants to create his own subterranean kingdom which separates itself from regular world evolution (divine plan) and into which he wants to draw as many human souls as possible. This is not Lucifer’s fiery hell, this is where the dark icy underworld of sub-humans comes into being, the realm of the Ahrimanic shadows, the actual “hell” as a place of damnation of which many religious traditions speak. The Tibetans call this the “hell realm of hungry ghosts.”

Just as the Moon is the dross left behind from the recapitulated previous incarnations of the Earth, in which all those forces condensed that could no longer take part in the further regular development to the present earthly existence, so similarly a dross will remain from our Earth evolution called the Eighth Sphere. It will consist of sub-humans who have fallen out of the progressive spiritual development of humanity and remained behind in a material condition. The Eighth Sphere also accumulated dross from the three previous incarnations of the Earth. Essentially, what Rudolf Steiner calls “retarded” beings, or fallen Luciferic hosts, comprise this Eighth Sphere of “failed” spiritual evolution. These beings who have fallen from the human kingdom enter a realm that will not be redeemed, in some cases, until the end of the great seven Incarnations of the Earth. The first hierarchy (Seraphim and Cherubim) will recycle these beings and the dross in the next great cycle of seven Incarnations, the Manvantara, as it is called in ancient India, or the ‘divine plan’ in the West. These fallen humans are called the Avitchi by the Vedas and are essentially beings from the Eighth Sphere who fell behind in past times and now must wait eons to reintegrate with progressive evolution. In the next Manvantara, they will be nature forces and nature beings beginning the golden ladder of evolution over again.
Thus, there is no permanent hell, just great cycles of time to try again and again until ascension and perfection is reached.

Sub-humans and Earth’s dross will remain from the fallen humans of Earth in the Eighth Sphere and will become somewhat like our Moon is to the Earth today. This will happen in the far distant future Incarnation of the Earth called Future Jupiter. This new “moon” of Future Jupiter will be a very unpleasant place where slug-like humans crawl through the endless mud and can hardly raise their head to look toward the light of the Sun. There will also be a new Earth called Future Jupiter that will be filled with beings of light and love nourished by the living ethers of the Sun. The contrast will be extreme between the evolving humans/angels on a beautiful light-filled, transparent planet and the slug-like sub-human people wallowing in the dark on their cold barren “new moon” surrounded by evil black magicians.

A person who is deeply interwoven with hedonistic sensual pleasures and instinctive desires connects himself more and more with the immoral fallen light that becomes the dross of the Eighth Sphere. The moment may come when humans have become too closely related to the sensual forces and cannot find the bridge to progress to the next Incarnation of the Earth (Future Jupiter) and they will tragically unite with the dross and become sub-human in the Eighth Sphere, just as fallen angels now inhabit the Moon sphere.

Humanity must pass through seven spheres, or Incarnations of the Earth. The seven spheres also correspond to the sevenfold division of the constitution of the human being:

    Sphere                        Incarnation                            Form              Donated
    Ancient Saturn sphere corresponds to the      Physical body (Thrones)
    Ancient Sun sphere corresponds to the          Etheric body    (Kyriotetes)
    Ancient Moon sphere corresponds to the      Astral body    (Dynamis)
    Current Earth sphere corresponds to the        I Am – ego      (Elohim)
    Future Jupiter sphere corresponds to the        Spirit Self        (Angel)
    Future Venus sphere corresponds to the        Life Spirit        (Archangel)
    Future Vulcan sphere corresponds to the      Spirit Human (Archai)
    Eighth sphere corresponds to specters, demons, sub-human (Elohim)

There are seven spheres in the divine spiritual plan, but there is also an Eighth Sphere where beings go that cannot join the complete process of seven Incarnations of the Earth and progress on pace with the plan. Other hierarchical beings in the three higher ranks of beings above our human rank had their “human” stage in one of the first three spheres and may have “fallen” into the Eighth Sphere at that time as a result of their choice to devolve instead of evolve according to the divine plan. Even in the future spheres of Future Jupiter, Future Venus, and Future Vulcan there will be beings who fall into the Eighth Sphere instead of keeping up with the pace of the divine plan. The sub-humans in the Eighth Sphere will have a chance to try again in the next large cycle of seven Incarnations of the Earth in a “new Zodiac.” They will be “carried over” by the Seraphim and Cherubim as cosmic dross that will become the basis of the next creation cycle. The sub-humans will then start again from the realm of the nature beings and this time, hopefully, keep up with evolution. Thus, there is no permanent fiery hell, and the divine creators leave nothing behind.

Rudolf Steiner on the Eighth Sphere


    “Electricity is light in the sub-material state. Light is there compressed to the utmost degree. An inward quality too must be ascribed to light; light is itself at every point in space. Warmth can expand in the three dimensions of space. In light there is a fourth; it is of fourfold extensions – it has the quality of inwardness as a fourth dimension.” 
    Rudolf Steiner, GA 92

The Mission of the Archangel Michael, Rudolf Steiner, Lecture III, Michaelic Thinking. The Knowledge of Man as a Supersensible Being. The Michael Path and the Deepest Impulses of the Social Question, November 23, 1919, Dornach, GA 194

“If we now hold this Eighth Sphere in view, we find living there not only our Divine Creator Spirits [Elohim], but also the Ahrimanic beings. Thus, by living in the surroundings of the Eighth Sphere we live together with the Ahrimanic beings. The Ahrimanic influence is the reverse of the Luciferic tendency. It makes itself felt from the Eighth Sphere out of which the rest of our organism, exclusive of the head, is fashioned; this organism is full of vitality through its very nature. Into these forces of vitality, the Ahrimanic powers endeavor to send the forces of death which properly, in the divine process of evolution, belong to the head. Thus, out of the Eighth Sphere the forces of death come to us through Ahriman as intermediary. This, again, is spoken of from the physical aspect.

Speaking from the soul aspect, I would have to say: everything that sends its influence into us out of the Eighth Sphere acts upon the human will, not upon intelligence. Wish and desire underlie human willing; all willing contains a certain amount of desire. It is Ahriman’s constant endeavor to insert the personal element into the desire-nature which underlies the willing; and through the fact that the personal element is concealed in our desire-nature, our human soul-will activity bears the imprint of our gradual approaching the moment of death. Instead of permitting ourselves to be permeated by divine ideals and letting them enter our desires and thus our will, the personal element is introduced into our wishing, into our willing.

Thus, we are actually in a state of equilibrium between the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic element. The Luciferic-Ahrimanic element delivers us to illness and death in the physical; in the soul sphere it develops deception in so far as we consider something a reality which merely belongs to the world of thought, of fantasy.

If we disregard the human being for a moment and consider those beings which we always have called, in the order of the hierarchies standing above us, the Spirits of Form, the Creative Form Beings, then we shall have to say that we, as human beings, shall only reach the sphere which we ascribe to our Divine Creator Beings when the Earth has passed through three further stages of evolution, which you will find designated in my Occult Science as Jupiter stage, Venus stage, and Vulcan stage, and shall have reached the eighth stage. Thus, these Creative Spirits are at the stage which we human beings shall have reached after the Vulcan evolution. This is their sphere which belongs to them just as the fourth sphere [Earth] belongs to us. But we must think of these spheres as being inserted into one another, as interpenetrating one another. Thus, this designates the sphere of which I have just spoken as the Eighth Sphere, we do not live only in the fourth but also in this Eighth Sphere through the fact that our Divine Creators live in this sphere together with us. Now we must not conceive of these successive stages of evolution as existing side by side, but we must conceive of them as interpenetrating one another. Just as the atmosphere surrounds and permeates the Earth, so this Eighth Sphere of evolution to which the Form Spirits belong permeates the sphere in which we human beings live.”

Reading the Pictures of the Apocalypse, Rudolf Steiner, Lecture XII, Munich and Oslo, April 22, 1907–May 21, 1909, GA 104a.

“But those who have proven themselves to be immature in the age of the Venus Incarnation of the Earth, who have placed themselves under the rulership of Sorat, must now isolate themselves on a special sphere of earth while the other seven proceed downward and again upward. Thus, the colony of Sorat falls away. The black magicians inhabit this Eighth Sphere, which goes to the left and away, and the beast gives a home to all that thus falls away: that is the Eighth Sphere. The lamb, who will be the lord over the lower nature, forms one of the seals. Sorat is as if expelled in the Eighth Sphere by the woman who shows us another seal of the Rosicrucian. The seer can also see this in the spiritual world. In this way, these Rosicrucian seals have an awakening effect when we meditate upon them with understanding.

Foundations of Esotericism, Rudolf Steiner, Lecture XIV, October 09, 1905, GA 93a.

“If however the human being has connected himself too strongly with the forces of the senses, which should now detach themselves, if he is related to them and has not found the way to attach himself to what is to pass over to the next Globe, he will depart with the slag and become an inhabitant of this body of slag, in the same way as other beings are now inhabitants of the present moon. Here we have the concept of the “Eighth Sphere.” Mankind must go through Seven Spheres. The Seven Planetary Evolutions [Incarnations] correspond to the seven bodies of the human being. Old Saturn corresponds to the physical body, Old Sun corresponds to the etheric body, Old Moon corresponds to the astral body, The Earth corresponds to the Ego, Future Jupiter corresponds to the Manas [Spirit Self], Future Venus corresponds to the Buddhi [Life Spirit], Future Vulcan corresponds to the Atma [Spirit Human]. Beside these there is an Eighth Sphere to which everything goes that cannot make any connection with this continuous evolution. A person who cannot escape from his own separateness goes into Avitchi [Eighth Sphere]. All these Avitchi men will eventually become inhabitants of the Eighth Sphere. The other human beings will be inhabitants of the continuing chain of evolution. It is from this concept that religions have formulated the doctrine of hell.”

From the Contents of Esoteric Classes, Part I, 1904-1909, Esoteric Lesson, Rudolf Steiner, GA 266

“The Asuras inhabit the moon and from there they work on the men whom they want to drag down into the Eighth Sphere and thereby tear away from progressive evolution and its goal – the Christ. All those who strive towards the Eighth Sphere will eventually live on a moon.”

The Karma of Vocation, Lecture X, Rudolf Steiner, GA 172

“They did not follow Lucifer because something was introduced into the evolution of the earth by the higher gods that prevented them from becoming light enough to do so. As I have shown you, what is called the Eighth Sphere was introduced into earthly evolution in ancient times. As one of its aspects, the Eighth Sphere consists of man’s acquiring such a preference for and attachment to his lower nature that Lucifer is not able to remove the higher nature from it.”

The Occult Movement in the Nineteenth Century, Rudolf Steiner, Lecture V, October 18, 1915, Dornach, GA 254

“How was it that the expression “Eighth Sphere” came to be used? – You know that human evolution takes its course through the seven spheres of Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus, Vulcan. We will conceive that besides these seven spheres there is still something else which lies outside them and yet is in some way related to the Earth. Here, then, we have a sphere, visible only to visionary-imaginative clairvoyance, which stands there as an Eighth Sphere over and above the seven which constitutes the domain of the ordered and regular evolution of mankind.

On the Old Moon certain pictures were present. These should have passed over to the Earth as something everywhere perceptible. But Lucifer and Ahriman retained them for themselves. Lucifer and Ahriman wrested from the Earth certain of its constituents and made them into Imaginations, so that these Earth-substances became, not Earthly formations, but Moon formations. Into our Fourth Sphere [Incarnation of the Earth], therefore, there has been instilled a sphere that is really a Moon-sphere but is filled with Earthly substantiality and is therefore a bogus creation in the Universe. To the seven Spheres, an Eighth, created in opposition to the progressive Spirits, has been added. The necessary consequence of this is that the Spirits of Form must do battle on the Earth for every morsel of substantiality capable of mineralization, lest it should be wrested from them by Lucifer and Ahriman and borne into the Eighth Sphere.

In truth, therefore, our Earth – the Fourth Sphere – is simply not what it appears outwardly to be. Were it really to consist of atoms, all these atoms would still be impregnated by formations belonging to the Eighth Sphere – which are perceptible only to visionary clairvoyance. These formations are present everywhere; so too is the specter-like content of the Eighth Sphere which can therefore be perceived just as actual specters are perceived. All earthly being and existence are involved here. Lucifer and Ahriman strive unceasingly to draw from the Earth’s substances whatever they can snatch, in order to form their Eighth Sphere which then, when it is sufficiently advanced, will be detached from the Earth and go its own way in the Cosmos together with Lucifer and Ahriman. Needless to say, the Earth would then pass over to Jupiter as a mere torso. But man, as you realize, has his established place in the whole of Earth-evolution, for he is mineralized through and through. We are permeated by the mineralizing process which is itself drawn into this battle, so that morsels of this substance can be continually wrested from it. Therefore, we ourselves are involved in the battle. Lucifer and Ahriman battle against the Spirits of Form, with the aim of wresting mineral substance from us everywhere.

We can soar upwards in thoughts, we can distinguish between the good and the evil. And for that very reason, Lucifer and Ahriman have there been the most successful in wresting away substantiality; in the so-called noblest organ of man, they have been able to wrest away the greatest amount of mineralized substantiality. This alchemy, by which mineral substance is sent over into the Eighth Sphere, is taking place all the time behind the scenes of our existence.

No less a prospect looms as a consequence of this intention of Lucifer and Ahriman than that the whole evolution of humanity may be allowed to disappear into the Eighth Sphere, so that this evolution would take a different course.

But the endeavor of Lucifer and Ahriman is to drag the free will of man, and whatever stems from it, into the Eighth Sphere. This means that man is perpetually exposed to the danger of having his free will wrested from him and dragged by Lucifer and Ahriman into the Eighth Sphere. It would be the richest prize for Lucifer and Ahriman if they could ever succeed in capturing a whole soul for themselves; for thereby such a soul would disappear into the Eighth Sphere and be lost from Earth-evolution.

Cosmology and Human Evolution. Introduction to Theosophy – Color Theory, Rudolf Steiner, 1903-1906, GA 91

“We have the physical world, the astral world, the lower devachan (low spiritual) and the higher devachan (high spiritual). If the body is thrust down lower even than the physical world, one comes into the sub-physical world, the lower astral world (counter astral), the lower or evil lower devachan (counter low spiritual) and the lower or evil higher devachan (counter high spiritual). The evil astral world is the province of Lucifer, the evil lower devachan the province of Ahriman, and the evil higher devachan the province of the Asuras. When chemical action is driven down beneath the physical plane – into the evil devachanic world – magnetism arises. When light is thrust down into the sub-material – that is to say a stage lower than the material world – electricity arises. If what lives in the harmony of the spheres is thrust down farther still, into the province of the Asuras, an even more terrible force – which it will not be possible to keep hidden very much longer – is generated. It can only be hoped that when this force comes to be known – a force we must conceive as being far, far stronger than the most violent electrical discharge – it can only be hoped that before some inventor gives this forces into the hands of humankind, human beings will no longer have anything immoral left in them.”

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts, Rudolf Steiner, March 1925, GA 313

“There are very few as yet who even feel the greatness of the spiritual tasks approaching man in this direction. Electricity, for instance, celebrated since its discovery as the very soul of nature’s existence, must be recognized in its true character – in its peculiar power of leading down from nature to sub-nature. Only man himself must beware lest he slide downward with it.”

From the Contents of the Esoteric Classes, Rudolf Steiner, GA 266

“Asuras (demons) are spirits of the very greatest egoism who remained behind during Old 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 are the dregs of the planetary evolution that goes from Saturn to Vulcan. The Asuras inhabit the moon and from there they work on the men whom they want to drag down into the Eighth Sphere and thereby tear away from progressive evolution and its goal — the Christ. All those who strive towards the Eighth Sphere will eventually live on a moon.”

The Influence of Spiritual Beings Upon Man, Rudolf Steiner, Lecture VIII, May 16, 1908, Berlin, GA 102

“Why have they deserved this? By reason of the fact that they have not made use of life! The world is around them; they have possessed senses in order to perceive the world, to enrich the life-kernel and mold it to a higher stage. They do not advance with world evolution, they remain behind at a certain stage. Beings that stay behind at such stages appear in a later epoch with approximately the character of the earlier age. They have grown together with it, but not in the forms of the later epoch. They appear in a later epoch as subordinate nature-spirits.

In fact, the human race will furnish a whole number of such new nature-spirits in the second half of the Future Jupiter evolution, for man will have fully completed the fifth principle at the Future Jupiter stage. For those who have not used the opportunity on Earth to develop the fifth principle there will be no available form. They will appear as nature-spirits and they will appear then with four principles.

And as the destructive forces of wisdom originate from those beings who stayed behind on Old Moon, so there will appear upon Future Jupiter the destructive forces of love from beings who have remained behind. Into the midst of the general tapestry of the Future Jupiter existence will be set the hideous forms of the retarded beings with egoistic demands for love and they will be the mighty devastating powers in the Future Jupiter existence. The staying behind of human beings in individual incarnations creates the destructive nature-powers on Future Jupiter. Thus, we see how the world is woven, harmful elements as well as beneficent; we have a moral element woven into the world process.”

The Mysteries of Light, of Space, and of the Earth, Rudolf Steiner, Lecture IV, December 15, 1919, Dornach, GA 194

If the world continues in the course it has been taking under the influence of the degenerating spiritual life derived from the Orient, then this spiritual life, although at one end it was the most sublime truth, will at the other rush into the most fearful lies. Nietzsche was impelled to describe how even the Greeks had to guard themselves from the lies of life through their art. And in reality, art is the divine child which keeps men from being swallowed up in lies. If this first branch of civilization is pursued only one-sidedly, then this stream empties into lies. In the last five or six years more lies have been told among civilized humanity than in any other period of world history; in public life the truth has scarcely been spoken at all; hardly a word that has passed through the world was true. While this stream empties into lies, the middle stream empties into self-seeking; and an economic life like the Anglo-American, which should end in world-dominion — if the effort is not made to bring about its permeation by the independent spiritual life and the independent political life, it will flow into the third of the abysses of human life, into the third of these three. The first abyss is lies, the degeneration of humanity through Ahriman; the second is self-seeking, the degeneration of humanity through Lucifer; the third is, in the physical realm, illness and death [Asuras]; in the cultural realm, the illness and death of culture.

The Anglo-American world may gain world dominion; but without the Threefold Social Order it will, through this dominion, pour out cultural death and cultural illness over the whole earth; for these are just as much a gift of the Asuras as lies are a gift of Ahriman, and self-seeking, of Lucifer.

Lucifer and Ahriman -Warmth/Light vs. Water/Earth
The lecture by Rudolf Steiner below is extraordinary in its description concerning the different battles that rage for the soul and spirit of each human being. Seldom does Steiner address the polarities of Lucifer and Ahriman in such graphic terms. This is perhaps one of the best imaginations he has given spiritual science on the nature of these two opposite beings. This battle is real, and it is constantly being fought in every aspect of the human soul as it strives towards the spirit.

Understanding these ever-present tempters that lead us into the Eighth Sphere or Castles in the Clouds, is crucial for winning the war of Good vs. Evil. This battle is fought in each person’s heart, the battleground of the spirit. Each heart is as significant as our entire cosmos of celestial spheres. In Steiner’s lectures entitled, The Planetary Spheres and their Influence on Man’s Life on Earth and in the Spiritual Worlds, he tells us: “For if we have the faculty to concentrate in a single point within the heart and thence to turn ourselves inside out in spirit, we simply do become the Universe — which in the normal course we experience between death and a new birth.” Thus, the human heart is a microcosmic universe unto itself.

This explains why so many fallen forces of the hierarchy combine to capture a single human soul to pull them down into the Eighth Sphere which has “remained behind” throughout three prior Incarnations of the Earth – Old Saturn, Old Sun, Old Moon. Through heterochronic manifestation of all those who “remained behind”, “fell from grace”, “rebelled against heaven” in the past are fully active currently trying to slow down, hinder, or even end human spiritual development. These beings combine into what is called the “Luciferic Hosts”, who are distinctly different from the Luciferic beings who act solely in the astral body of the human being as fallen angels or the incarnation of the individual known as Lucifer in ancient China. These different beings in the Eighth Sphere are powerful forces of gravity that work through the subterranean, sub-natural forces of the earth.

This legion of beings wish to turn humans into sub-humans “falling” out of progressive spiritual development into the Eighth Sphere. The Eighth Sphere is a sort of hell realm for fallen humans populated by beings who fall out of normal space into a non-space that is primarily below the earth but also permeates our own material world. These forces of evil must be named to gain control over their incessant temptation of vices, sins, and selfishness.

We have put together a short chart mapping out what Dr. Steiner tells us in this lecture below. It is not only a unique lecture but also a complicated one that takes study to understand. As an aid to help in this direction we offer a summary chart of some of the principal ideas being presented. This lecture requires serious reflection to begin to understand its many insights.
Lucifer Battles with Ahriman

Lucifer                                                                      Ahriman

Fire-Air beings                                                            Water-Earth beings

Make humans moral automatons                            Make humans into sub-humans

False heaven in the clouds                                          Subterranean Eighth Sphere

Ungrounded dreamer                                                  Selfish egotist

Habitual liar                                                                Possessed by cleverness

Inflammatory diseases/insanity                                Tumors, carcinomas, diabetes

Fallen beings from Saturn/Jupiter/Mars                  Fallen beings from Moon/Venus/Mercury

Warmth & Light Ether – Forces of Levity                Sound and Life Ether – Forces of Gravity

Lucifer battles with mature, moral beings from Saturn, Jupiter, Mars and works on the exterior or sense organs of the human being.

Ahriman battles with mature, moral beings from Moon, Venus, Mercury through the interior organs of flesh and blood (metabolism) in the human body.

From: Man’s Life on Earth and in the Spiritual Worlds, Rudolf Steiner, Lecture V, Luciferic and Ahrimanic Powers Wrestling for Man, London, November 16, 1922, GA 218, Also known as: Spirit as Sculptor of the Human Organism, The Battle for Human Nature Between Luciferic and Ahrimanic Beings

“Behind Nature lies a kind of second Nature, – a spiritual, super-sensible Nature. Nature to which we are accustomed, man perceives with his senses. The super-sensible Nature that is behind, he does not perceive. It has, nevertheless, a great influence upon him.

This physical Nature that we have within us and that we perceive in our instincts and urges and passions has beneath it a kingdom of beings, who are intimately connected with man, but are really sub-human.

Thus, looking around us with the help of our senses, we behold the surface of Nature, her external appearance; and behind it we have to divine the presence of a super-sensible nature. When on the other hand we look within and perceive ourselves in our instincts and passions, then we have to divine beneath these the presence of a subsensible Nature.

The super-sensible Nature that is around us can be understood and appreciated only by one who is equipped with spiritual insight, and who is not always focusing attention, as Natural Science does to-day, on the strict laws of Nature and on what takes place within their framework.

As a matter of fact, beings live in all the various manifestations of wind and weather, – beings who are only not seen because they lack a body that is visible to the senses. The beings who live in wind and weather have a body that consists of air and warmth, a body that has in it no water – no fluidity, that is, of any kind – and no solid earth; it consists of nothing but air and warmth. These are Luciferic beings. These beings attach great value to the moral element in the human social order. So highly do they prize it, that in their opinion it would be best for man not to have a physical body at all – not, at any rate, a body that partakes of the watery or earthly elements. If they could have formed man in their own way, they would have made of him a moral being, pure and simple. Man would not of course in that case have had freedom, he would have been moral without being inwardly free. As it is these beings wage a fearful battle in the course of the year, struggling to wrest man away from the Earth and draw him into their own sphere. They would like him to be cut off from the Earth, – a complete stranger to it. On this account they are particularly dangerous for people who are inclined to any kind of visionary idealism or vague mysticism. Such persons readily fall a prey to these beings who seek to entice man away from the Earth and endow him with a kind of angel nature, so that under no circumstances shall he find himself tempted to be otherwise than purely moral.

Inhabiting the forces that pulsate through the encircling air in all the vagaries of wind and weather, are beings who, abhorring human freedom and desiring nothing better than its complete annihilation, want to make man a moral automaton, want to make of him indeed a kind of good angel. And they fight hard to attain their end.

There are also beings of a contrary nature and this latter class of beings has to do with all that comes to expression in man’s instinctive urges and impulses, in his desires and passions. You must not however think of them as belonging first and foremost to man. In man we can see the results of their activity. But they have their home, so to speak, right on the Earth. Only we cannot see them, for these beings too have not a body that is formed in such a way as to be visible to us. They have, in fact, a body that lives entirely in the elements of earth and water. And their deeds are to be seen in the ebb and flow of the tides, in volcanic eruptions and in earthquakes. One who has keen spiritual perception can however see behind them a world of sub-human beings, who are under the control of the powers to which I have always given the name of the Ahrimanic powers.

If one considers these Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings by themselves, just as they are, one cannot, you know, be angry with them. Why be angry with the Luciferic beings, for instance? They want to make man into a being who is moral entirely as a matter of course. What could be better? Man would, it is true, never under their influence be free, he would be an automaton; but what they seek and desire for him can nevertheless be truthfully described as good.

Now let us see what is the aim of these other [Ahrimanic] beings, who build their strongholds immediately below the surface of the Earth, and whose activities rise up into man’s metabolism, – for the phenomena we observe in the tides and less frequently in volcanic eruptions and earthquakes are always present also in the ebb and flow in man’s metabolism. The Ahrimanic beings struggle to harden man; they want to make him like themselves. Were they to be successful, man would become extremely clever in the material realm – incredibly clever and intelligent. They cannot achieve their end directly, but they aim at doing so indirectly. And their efforts, which have actually been going on for thousands of years, have in fact succeeded in producing a whole race of sub-human beings.

When a man has become a prey, during his earthly life, to the Ahrimanic powers, then these powers will be able to hold on to his instinctive nature and tear it out of him after death. There exists already on the Earth a whole population of beings who have arisen in this way. They are there, in the elements of earth and water, a sub-human race. These earth-water beings inhabit the strata immediately below the surface of the Earth. They are beings that have been snatched out of man in the moment of death. The Ahrimanic powers are waiting for the time when men will descend to incarnation and, on account of a karma that their instincts and passions have prepared for them, feel particularly drawn to certain of these beings and say to themselves: “I will not go back to the spiritual world; when I have left my physical body” – out of which, as you know, man generally goes forth to a super-sensible life – “I will incorporate myself in a subsensible being of this kind. And that will mean, I shall be able to stay on the Earth. I shall not die any more but be permanently united with the Earth. Yes, I will choose to be a sub-sensible being.”

The Ahrimanic beings persist in believing they will ultimately be able in this way to entice such a vast number of human beings into their own race that the Earth will one day be peopled entirely with such Ahrimanic sub-human beings. By this means they hope to make the Earth itself immortal, so that the hour may never come for it to perish and be dispersed in cosmic space.

We have thus around us in our earthly environment two hosts of beings; one in the air, that wants to make man moral but to lift him away from the Earth, and then we have also, immediately below the surface of the Earth, the Ahrimanic beings who want to draw man down and fasten him permanently to the Earth.

A fearful war is waged all the time between the fire-air beings and the water-earth beings; they fight to get possession of man. And it is important that man should be aware of this war that is perpetually being waged for him; he must not be blind to it.

When man is descending from the divine spiritual world in order that he may clothe himself in a body, then it is Jahve who leads him down to Earth. The Jahve Being, who has his seat in the Moon and who leads man down to Earth, claims control in man over all that has to do with the instincts and impulses of generation. He needs helpers who will in fact see to the ordering of the whole instinctive life of man. And Jahve finds such helpers in Mercury and Venus. And it is the will and concern of the beings who have joined together in this way, to control, from Moon, Mercury and Venus, the whole flesh-and-blood nature of man. Man is by no means merely an earthly being; influences play into him from the whole great Universe.

Ahrimanic beings are doomed to look for a dwelling place just below the surface of the Earth. It is not with the fire-air beings [Luciferic] alone that these water-earth beings [Ahrimanic] feel themselves in opposition, but particularly also with Jahve and with the powers of Venus and Mercury. And this, notwithstanding the fact that they are themselves devoid of morality. The Ahrimanic beings wage war continually on Jahve and on the Venus and Mercury powers, and are determined to usurp from Jahve his rightful sovereignty. For it is owing to the rightful sovereignty of Jahve that the human race as we know it has come into existence on the Earth.

Man therefore finds himself placed right in the very midst of a conflict. On one side are ranged Jahve and his hosts, who are fighting for righteousness; on the other side the hosts of Ahriman, who, in respect of cleverness, far outstrip man, and whose concern it is utterly to repudiate man’s moral nature and make him into a sheer automaton of cleverness.

In the other direction are the [Luciferic] beings who incorporate themselves in air and warmth. These also, like the enemies of Jahve, are immature. And the corresponding mature beings are in their case beings who dwell on Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. And so we find these fire-air [Luciferic] beings making sallies from their strongholds not only upon the Ahrimanic powers, but upon the influences that should be continually reaching man from Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

Now, the influences of these more distant planets, – or rather, of their spiritual beings – are to be found particularly in the eyes, in the ears, – in short, in the sense organs of man. So that, whilst Moon and Venus exercise their influence in the interior organs of man’s body, Saturn, Jupiter and Mars work on man’s exterior, work in his sense organs. These beings, – Saturn beings, Jupiter beings and Mars beings – have it as their special concern to make man a real Earth man; that is to say, they want first to give him senses that are properly inserted into the human organism and that remain at its surface, and then to supply him with nerves that run from the senses and extend inwards into the organism. Saturn gives the senses, Jupiter gives their continuation in the nerves, and Mars exerts the kind of control that endows man, for example, with the faculty of speech. The whole aim and purpose of these beings is to furnish man with all that is on the surface of his body. For the senses, and the nerves too, have come about through a ‘turning outside in’ of the human skin.

Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars are however resisted in their activities by the [immature] fire-air beings of whom we were speaking. Here again, a furious fight goes on all the time. The fire-air beings sit fast, so to speak, in their airy strongholds and display their power and might in the fiery flashes of the lightning. They would like to make the whole of man what he should properly be on the surface only, so that the entire physical being of man should partake of the nature that is actually assigned only to eye and ear and nose. They would like to pour the surface of man’s organism right through him, to make him all surface, so that he would do nothing but see and hear, – never eat nor drink, but only see and hear, be in fact a kind of angel being.

The [mature] Mars, Jupiter and Saturn beings permeate what to our eyes appears mere Nature, with morality. In this manner they bring morality to man; for it is actually so, morality enters into us through the senses. When therefore the [immature] fire-air beings seek to permeate man through and through with his sense nature, it is with the intention that man, seeing nothing but what is moral, may become a moral automaton.

If we look out on the world of Nature, we can know that whatever manifests as forces in that world comes from the Mars beings, whatever manifests as natural law from the Jupiter beings, and whatever manifests as color and sound from the Saturn beings. And the fire-air beings would have man become nothing but force, law (thought), color and sound. They want man not to have a physical body at all, but to be insubstantial, rarefied; they would like him to be, as we said, an angel being.

And so you see, whilst in external nature Moon, Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Mars and Saturn live at peace with one another and are held in balance by the Sun, they wage a double fight for the possession of man. First of all, there is the conflict that goes on between the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic beings; and then secondly, the fight that is put up by the Luciferic beings against the planetary forces beyond the Sun, – the Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn influences – whilst on the other hand the Ahrimanic forces are waging war on the influences that proceed from Moon, Venus and Mercury.

Let us suppose for a moment that the Ahrimanic powers were victorious in the physical body of some person, victorious, that is, over the Luciferic powers who try to permeate man throughout with what should by rights be only on the surface, only in the senses. The result would be that the person would succumb to illnesses producing tumors or carcinoma, or else to illnesses of the metabolism, such as diabetes. Illness is in very many cases the sole means left to the good Powers to rescue man from the fangs of Ahriman.

If on the other hand Lucifer gains a victory in a man’s physical nature over the Ahrimanic powers then the person concerned succumbs to illnesses of an inflammatory nature, or else to insanity.

The Ahrimanic and Luciferic powers, who work unceasingly with all their might for the attainment of their ends, are thus compelled to turn away sad and disappointed from beds of sickness, from hospitals and from mental asylums. These show them all too clearly that though they may continue to carry on their fight, they cannot ever be really victorious.

For when the Luciferic powers are victorious over the Ahrimanic in the ether-body, then the person becomes a liar, he becomes a habitual liar. In that case he is obviously not moral; and so he falls out of the world within which Lucifer would like to secure him. Instead of making him a moral automaton, Lucifer has turned him into a liar. If, on the other hand, Ahriman were to conquer, or come near to conquering the ether body, then the person would become possessed – possessed by his own cleverness.

Let us now see what can happen with the astral body. Suppose the Ahrimanic powers come near to being victorious in the astral body. The person in question will in this case tend to become an out-and-out egoist. But that will mean that he, as an egoist, keeps fast hold of his instincts, and there will be no chance for Ahriman to snatch them away. So once more, Ahriman’s prize escapes him. Suppose on the other hand. Lucifer nearly gains a victory. Then the person is liable to turn into a dreamer in the astral body, to become an ego-less dreamer, who is, as one says, “not in his right mind.” Such things happen; it can well be that people succumb, if only for a time, to such a condition. The Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers are thus subject to disillusionment on earth in many directions.

At the present time, when you cross the Threshold, you find yourself only in the midst of the terrific conflict of which we have spoken, between beings of the upper planets who have remained behind in their evolution, – immature Mars, Jupiter and Saturn beings – and beings of the lower planets who have remained behind, – immature Moon, Mercury and Venus beings. Like two armed encampments they stand facing one another; on one side, the fire-air beings, – Saturn, Jupiter and Mars beings that have failed and fallen out of their true evolution; and on the other side, facing them, the water-earth beings, – Moon, Mercury and Venus beings who have also failed and fallen behind.

But as for man, if he can find the right relation to the Christ, then it will be given him not to despair, even in face of the despair of higher beings than himself, – beings however whose will it is to go another way than the way of the Gods to whom man belongs and to whom he should remain true throughout the further course of the Earth. At the center of these sublime God Beings is the Christ Being, who spoke to the initiates of old through the Sun disk and who speaks also to us – but now from the Earth with the help of the Sun.

When therefore we speak of Christ today, we are speaking of One who can be at our side here on Earth as our Leader, guiding us out of the terrible conflict that the Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers are waging with one another and with the worlds of the Upper and Lower Gods.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4lPd2qZm-k

https://neoanthroposophy.com/2023/07/16/...th-sphere/