In today's world, the idea of higher beings, cosmic influences, the eternal nature of the human soul, and a cosmic redeemer is a debated, and even scoffed at, topic since it is not provable in any outer or scientific way. The study of divine beings, and opposing forces who seek to mislead humanity away from our spiritual destiny and origins, is for most of us a necessary study that begins with faith and the heart. An aspiring student of the mysteries, however, is compelled to consider these things with an open mind.
All of the religions of the world speak of higher, or divine, and lower, or opposing, spiritual beings who influence humanity. The names of these individualities are, at best, partially known. Initiates, who have shared their observations with the world over the centuries, have given us genuine insights. In light of Anthroposophy, through the lectures, works, and research of Dr. Rudolf Steiner, the world is influenced by an array of higher and lower beings who do not incarnate in the physical world and are not perceptible to physical sight. A form of inner or spiritual vision is necessary to perceive this individualities directly. Dr. Steiner observed through his supersensible investigations that there is a hierarchy of individualities who do not incarnate in the world in physical terms yet influence humanity in a variety of ways; both direct and indirect.
This concept is nothing new, and the religions of the world have a perspective on this theme, but the reality of just who these individuals are, and how they influence humanity, has been the stuff speculation, and faith, mixed with fact having been passed down through the centuries through dogma, treatises, and tradition.
By necessity, spiritual, or soul, experiences are inner and individual experiences. Each person will have unique individual inner experiences which can only be communicated, or demonstrated, to others. Whether it be a vision, a clairvoyant experience, a clear dream, observations attained during states of meditation, or a near-death experience; these are individual experiences that can only be described using the boundaries of human language and perception.
Where Dr. Steiner's observations part ways with religious doctrine, and theological speculation, is due to observations made by way of an advanced form supersensible perception; not faith, belief, or bias. His was a journey of objective observations, characterized by far-reaching vision, and relaying those observations to others.
Dr. Steiner observed matters of the spirit, the world, and humanity through a mature and developed form of supersensible or clairvoyant (literally "to see") perception that all people possess in a latent form, yet few have sought and developed. Unlike those who posses an immature form of clairvoyance, or at best one that is only partially developed, Dr. Steiner's far-reaching faculties accompany one who has passed through structured and advanced stages of spiritual initiation over the course of many lifetimes.
One will find commonalities and differences between religious doctrines, which agree and disagree with one another, and the details, nuances, and facts of the spiritual worlds as observed by Dr. Steiner which can also be referred to as esoteric knowledge. His was an objective path thus his stream of activity which he named "Anthroposophy" (Anthro - Humanity, Sophia - Wisdom). He also referred to it as "Spiritual Science". His quest was to observe the facts and reality of things as an initiate using an expanded faculty that most people have not yet developed. He explored the riddles of existence as a scientist and an artist; a task he undertook factually and faithfully, the records of which are left to us today through lectures, articles, books, schools, and buildings.
Of the most astounding, and perhaps poorly understood and even controversial, observations that Dr. Steiner shared with his students in the early 20th century was the true nature of evil and the roles that supporting, and opposing, beings lay in the evolution of humanity. Evil, in terms of orthodox religion, is portrayed as a battle between God and Satan (or Lucifer); good and evil are expressed as a dualistic relationship. In light of Anthroposophy, this is actually a threefold relationship.
The forces of Light, led by the Christ and the divine powers of the spiritual hierarchies, are opposed by twin, or opposing, groups of beings who have assumed an inimical disposition in the cosmos. They seek to corrupt humanity for their own purposes. Dr. Steiner observed and revealed to his students the fact that three mighty and higher spiritual beings play leading pivotal roles in the evolution of humanity, and the individual human being; Christ-Jesus (the "Representative of Humanity"), Ahriman, and Lucifer.
The universe is populated by a vast array of individual beings of all levels of attainment who support, and are influenced by, streams of activity. For example, Dr. Steiner mentioned certain devious beings who have a severely destructive influence on humanity called the "Asuras". In light of Hinduism, these beings are in perpetual battle with benevolent beings of the same rank who are referred to as "Devas" or "Suras". Some of the higher and lower beings of the cosmos are mentioned by name in the lectures of Dr. Steiner, and in other places such as the Vedas, the Kabbalah, and the Christian Bible. Other beings of a highly exalted - as well those of a more insidious and diabolical nature - have also been observed and elaborated upon in various writings.
"Asuras are starting to work in the post-Atlantean epoch. They're the worst of the three (Ahriman, Lucifer, and Asuras) and they mainly work into sexual life in the physical body. The many sexual aberrations today are to be ascribed to this strong influx." -Rudolf Steiner, Esoteric Lessons I, GA 266, Number 10, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA266/English/UNK1998/19061101e01.html
Other leaders, such as the Archangel Michael, are associated with the Christ-Sun-Sphere and has a unique and leading role in the Christ mission over time. One of his tasks in the current world age is to ensure that humanity does not succumb to illusions through faulty thinking, willing, and feeling. He is the leader of 7 Archangels who bring a unique influence to humanity in average intervals of 350 years. According to Dr. Steiner, Michael's regency began in 1879 and will last to about the year 2200 AD. Dr Steiner referred to Michael in one article as the "fiery Prince of Thought in the Universe." -Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts, GA 26, 1. At the Dawn of the Michael Age https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_c01.html
The names of divine leaders are also the stuff of speculation in many cases have been passed down through dogma and religion. The spiritual hierarchy of the cosmos consists of 9 grades of angelic or high begins above humanity, angelic beings. Humanity is also led by those who are born into the world as "initiates" in and thus act as bridges between the divine and humanity as true spiritual leaders. Names of these individuals Anthroposophy, and Theosophical texts, and other genuine spiritual works include Parsifal, King Arthur, St. George, and Manu.
The expanded and mature spiritual abilities, or faculties, that Dr. Steiner attained came only with tremendous effort over long periods of time and accompanied genuine spiritual missions that required many sacrifices. These latent and undeveloped abilities of the human being lay dormant in the recesses of the human soul for all of us but they can gradually be developed if one follows an informed path.
Dr. Steiner delivered the bulk of his lectures to a groups of informed students, of all ages, who had some exposure to the foundational principles of Anthroposophy. It was to that group of people that the following observations were initially presented in lecture, article, and book format and have since been disseminated to the wider public since Dr. Steiner's death in 1925.
These lectures, books, and articles have been preserved for future generations and the following summary reflects some, but certainly not all, of those observations. The various ways in which higher beings, or intelligences, engage with humanity, and the world, are diverse and vast. Thus, with regard to the study of the Representative of Humanity and the opposing powers, one should consult the works in the Rudolf Steiner archive (available for free) at www.rsarchive.com.
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An Introduction in Light of Anthroposophy
The divine beings who oversee humanity are engaged in a perpetual struggle with higher beings who have assumed an opposing disposition with regard to humanity's gradual path of evolution. Whether good or evil, all beings have a rightful and necessary place in humanity's struggle for transformation. For example, Guardian Angels oversee the karmic path of the individual from one life to the next at the more personal level while Archangels are referred to by Dr. Steiner as "Folk Souls"; leaders who oversee the destiny of nations and individuals. The "Archai" are one stage above the Archangels and are referred to in Anthroposophy as "Time Spirits". Beyond the triad, there are six more groups of higher, or divine, beings who make comprise a cosmic family.
Paths and dispositions were chosen long ago with regard to humanity's involution, or entrance, into the earth and have evolved over time. This evolution has been gradual and can be viewed in 7 stages. We are currently in the 4th stage in light of Anthroposophy. This struggle continues perpetually concerning the proper path for the transformation of humanity. It is a battle of forces, and influences, that emanate from individual beings, and groups of beings, that try to mold and shape the physical world and the human being; the Christ force, or impulse, seeks to bring freedom to the individual while the opposing powers seek to steer humanity away from freedom and under their influences.
Most of us are blind to these influences due to a form of perceptive blindness in today's world, which is a necessary part of our path at this stage of human evolution in modern times. It is a barrier that we must overcome through individual effort. As Dr. Rudolf Steiner observed, the gradual transition into purely outer, and intellectual, observation has resulted in a form of spiritual blindness that was once an inherited part of our disposition eons ego. However, this is the necessary path of individual freedom.
This necessary step in human evolution and consciousness is the path to thinking, freedom, and individuality. It is a path that humanity is required to pass through as we take the next step forward in our evolution acquiring new capabilities, in particular individual spiritual freedom, that can only gradually unfold over time and with significant effort through the "I" in each of us. This change has come at a temporary sacrifice; our inherited spiritual vision.
In ages past, humanity relied upon this inherited disposition which enabled us to perceive, however dimly, the spiritual worlds through a clairvoyant form of awareness. According to Dr. Steiner, human beings in the ancient past perceived and sensed our connection to the spiritual worlds, and the beings within them, and could more vividly remember and understand those interactions which often occurred at during waking life and at night while we dreamed. While this is a necessary transformative period of humanity, according to Dr. Steiner this period of change also carries with it risk and peril if we become too polarized and fall into the traps of pure materialism and egotism, which in turn can lead to spiritual blindness, illness, and redemptive karma.
Dr. Steiner observed that the battle between the opposing influences and the Divine is not dualistic as is traditionally portrayed in theology as a conflict between Satan, or the Devil, who is referred to as Lucifer in the Christian bible and God, the Creator, and/or Christ. In reality, there are two opposing beings or influences who seek to corrupt the human being out of balance. These beings exist as two extremes pushing and pulling the human being into a state of polarization.
The two opposing powers, while bringing necessary influences to humanity, are brought into balance only through the middle way. We accomplish this difficult task by utilizing the powers and faculties within us in alignment with divine and spiritual principles. These principles, which are living forces brought to humanity by divine higher beings, are manifested through the greatest of spiritual leaders who are referred to as spiritual initiates in Anthroposophy and initiation wisdom, which culminated in the life, death, and cosmic mission of Christ-Jesus.
Dr. Steiner referred to Christ-Jesus as the "Representative of Humanity" who brings balance and freedom to the human being and the world. He referred to the opposing powers as "Ahriman" (usually depicted artistically as a lower influence of darkness), and "Lucifer" (usually depicted artistically as higher influence of false pride and false light).
In light of Anthroposophy, the Christ, who incarnated in the great initiate Jesus in 30AD, revealed the path of spiritual balance and freedom and introduced His light into the world as an actual living spiritual force at the Event of Golgotha in 33AD. His was not a symbolic gesture, but a living impulse that permeated the entire planet, and the future of all human beings, which gradually unfolds over time in mysterious ways. His is the path of the spirit, balance, consciousness, and the highest expression of love in the spiritual expression of true brotherhood through service and self-sacrifice.
In contradiction, the opposing powers seek to lead humanity astray and subject us to their will. They seek to rob us of our freedom by pulling us out of balance. In the Far East, some traditions referred to the twin powers of evil as "the left-hand way" and "the right-hand way" in reference to the polarization that humanity struggles with in finding balance.
A vast array of beings, of all levels, support the Christ's, Ahriman's, and Lucifer's mission. Amongst the rank of the Archangels, Michael is the leader and herald of the Christ mission. He is the Archangel of the Sun (light). In light of Anthroposophy, the seven leading Archangels preside over 7 successive cycles of 300-400 years where they bring unique impulses into humanity. Michael's regency began after a victory over a group of rebellious beings, who were Ahrimanic beings, that began in 1840 and concluded in 1879; beings that had once served a proper purpose in the evolution of humanity.
According to Dr. Steiner, Michael's regency began in 1879 and will continue sometime into the 2200s. Each regency brings with it unique goals for the world. When we look back in time, during certain points of history, there were moments when the opposing and divine influences were more or less prevalent. All beings, however, are perpetually active. The opposing powers wish to distort the human being into a caricature of what we should be according to the plan of human evolution. If the opposing beings have their way, human beings are held back, or advance too quickly, and thus become servants of their missions and do not achieve our rightful path of change and transformation. We would fall short of our divine goal.
Throughout history, in light of Dr. Steiner's lectures, each century and age has been a bit more influenced by either opposing power to a greater degree. In the 15th century, for example, Dr. Steiner stated that the Luciferic powers were more prevalent. Beginning in the 19th century, humanity has experienced a general shift in how we perceive the world in more materialistic and conceptual terms (which has led to staggering innovations compared to the times 60 years ago), Ahrimanic powers have been more prevalent.
The balancer, and remedy to the influences of the opposing powers, is the Christ force and the divine beings of the spiritual hierarchies who enable each human being to overcome polarities within themselves and thus reach our full potential. These forces are soul and spiritual forces; they work within the human being and compel, or influence, one in this direction or that.
Ignoring the existence of these influences, and their origins in the cosmos, inevitably compels one to fall into traps, mistakes, and snares. We human beings cannot escape the influences of the spiritual hierarchies, whatever their unique disposition, which radiate throughout the world, but we can perceive and manage them, and bring them into balance, within ourselves. Without the activity of the higher and lower beings of the spiritual hierarchies, humanity and the world would not exist. Awareness of these aspects is a vital aspect of initiation, or spiritual, wisdom. If one can attain a greater understanding of these influences, and from whence they originate, we can manage, control, and channel our activities, thoughts, and deeds in an informed way. We can take a step forward to true human and spiritual freedom.
The battle for the human soul is a continual battle that occurs within all human beings and influences relationships and world events in peculiar ways. World events are not determined by people's individual choices alone in an egotistical or conventional sense. Rather, we are also driven by soul forces, and our uniqueness, that are influenced by the conditions of the world in which we live and the moment of history. The living spiritual influences that ray out from higher beings into the world and humanity affects us all.
Regardless of one's education, culture, or background, this area of spiritual study is a vital, compelling, and informative area that challenges one to look at things from an informed perspective; through the vision of a genuine spiritual initiate in Dr. Rudolf Steiner.
"…a fearful war is waged all the time between the air-fire beings (Lucifer) and the earth-water beings (Ahriman); 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.” -Steiner, Rudolf. The Ahrimanic Deception. Lecture, Zurich, October 27, 1919
-"Because you are a human being you are my brother. This is the highest principle of Christianity." -Rudolf Steiner, GA 116 Lecture III. The Entrance of the Christ-Being into the Evolution of Humanity. https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA116/English/APC1926/19100202p01.html
-"There is no greater love than he would give his life for another."
- Gospel of John 15:13. Author's Note: There are dozens of translations of the Bible and variations exist throughout. Without getting lost in word gymnastics, this translation is based on the author's perspective which I believe captures the true spirit of the verse which must be gender neutral recognizing that humanity is one family and therefore all human beings are "brothers" in the spiritual sense.
-"The first shall be last, and the last shall be first." - Gospel of Matthew 20:16.
- "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is LOVE." - 1 Corinthians 13
-"...The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the kingdom of God is within you.” -Luke 20-21
-"Ask and you shall receive; seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asks receives, and he that seeks finds; and to him that knocks, it shall be opened." -Matthew 7: 7-8
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The Christ, who permeated into and worked through Jesus at the Baptism on the River Jordan in 30AD is the archetype, leader, representative, and redeemer of humanity. Dr. Steiner referred to Christ-Jesus by variety of names including “the Lord of Karma,” the “Initiate of Initiates,” and the “Representative of Humanity.” He is also sometimes referred to as the “13th disciple”.
He is the good shepherd, defender of the human being, and the life guide for each human being on the planet. After the Event of Golgotha, the Christ, who is the God of the Sun-Sphere and Light, bonded forever with the world and, as Dr. Steiner revealed, the aura of the world, when perceived through supersensible vision, changed forever in that moment.
A cosmic spiritual substance was brought to humanity by the Christ from the spiritual worlds. A living and universal spiritual force of light was imbued into the human being, as well as the physical and spiritual worlds, through a cosmic sacrifice that revivified and enabled all of humanity to achieve our proper path of spiritual evolution; a path, based on a divine plan put in place eons ago, that is at risk of being permanently corrupted by the opposing powers. As humanity progresses over time, so does the nature of the corruption that humanity is exposed to by way of the opposing powers. The Christ forces gradually work within the human being and lead us through the jungle of illusion which is the inevitable outcome of faulty, or flawed, thinking, feeling, and willing.
The Christ, as the Light of the World, came to humanity from the Sun-Sphere, which is the highest spiritual plane (of 7 planes or planets) in the cosmos. The Sun is the physical embodiment of light, but its source is a spiritual one; the spiritual sphere, and source, of light. When the Christ entered the man Jesus, as perceived by Dr. Steiner, it was the first and only time that He incarnated in human form. It will not happen again.
The Sun-God was referred by different names throughout the world in the Ancient Mysteries , however, the proper name of the Christ in the modern era describes the same individuality. The Christ is the God of Light and the Sun.
There is a deeper mystery at work that Dr. Steiner revealed with regards to the Event of Golgotha. This one-time event carries within it many mysteries which Dr. Steiner investigated and revealed through his works, yet the Christ's mission can be approached from several perspectives which are understandable by all. -Refer to The Gospel of St. John, GA 112, Lecture XII, The decline of the ancient wisdom and its renewal through the Christ-impulse. This lecture provides deeper insights into the necessity and reality of the impulse given over to the humanity through the redemptive act of the Christ event from a spiritual-scientific perspective. https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA112/English/PLH1933/19090705p01.html
The being we refer to as the Christ is the fulfillment of all of the Ancient Mysteries, and human destiny, since time began. Dr. Steiner referred to this one-time event which began at the Baptism on the River Jordan and culminated at the Event of Golgotha as the "Turning Point in Time" which took place in the year 33AD (he noted actually 33 1/3 years). Dr. Steiner observed that this cosmic event occurred at the exact midpoint of human evolution.
Dr. Steiner provided deep insights on the complexity of the life of Jesus and the various personalities who played a role in it over vast periods of time who prepared the way and worked in support of His mission. There are many mysteries connected to the Event on Golgotha and the mission of the Christ that imbued humanity with a restorative impulse and a new transformational path for all of humanity.
Many details emerge through a study of Dr. Steiner's lectures and written works. For example, according to Steiner, when viewed spiritually through supersensible perception, today there is a golden five-pointed star that is observable in the area (aura) of Jerusalem where the Event of Golgotha occurred. In contrast, there are an array of colors observable in the spiritual fields across the globe which differ as one observes the different peoples and cultures of the earth.
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"The Mystery of Golgotha appeared like what physical observation precedes when the astronomer directs his telescope to space and beholds something which fills him with wonder like, for example the flashing-up of new stars. Seen spiritually, from the Universe, the Event of Golgotha was the flashing-up of a star of gold in the blue aura of the Eastern half of the Earth." -Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophical Life Gifts, GA 181, II. The Relativity of Knowledge, and Spiritual Cosmology, Berlin, 1st April, 1918, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA181/English/FB1986/19180401p01.html
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It is not the intention of this summary to provide a comprehensive study of Christ-Jesus because it is simply not feasible. What was observed by Dr. Steiner and religions, is that the event on Golgotha, and the mystery of the Christ, is the central defining evolutionary impulse for humanity. Modern depictions of Jesus as a "simple carpenter from Nazareth" or as a kind of holy man who heard a "calling" are - in light of initiation wisdom as validated through Dr. Steiner and the initiates who have also come forward to share their observations and paths - materialistic and uninformed. These depictions are a product of the age in which we live.
Christ-Jesus represents the balance between the polarities that influence the world. The conditions of the world evolve from age to age and so does the battle between Christ forces and the influences of the opposing powers - expressed through the names Ahriman and Lucifer - who seek to pull humanity away, and corrupt us, from our rightful path of evolution. While other planets consist of an array of divine beings, who work in unique ways, the Christ is the "God" of the Sun. Thus, He is referred to as the "Light of the World". This light is not a conceptual reference. He brings a living light of transformation to the world and so do those who support His mission. It is the raising one's consciousness and the transformation of the inner self.
But there is another dimension to the Event of Golgotha. The human being, by the time of the Event of Golgotha, was reaching a stage of evolution whereby we would no longer be able to incarnate in the physical world and thus be unable to fulfill the purpose of human evolution. When Christ-Jesus died on the Cross, he imbued the world and humanity with forces that enabled us to fulfill our destinies in the world.
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"When the age drew near in which the Mystery of Golgotha took place, the evolution of the human physical body was such that all humanity was faced with the prospect of not being able any longer to incorporate on the earth. This meant that they could no longer have a share in the declining evolution of the earth.
A fact well known in the schools of initiation, and that can naturally be known also to-day, was that about the time of the Mystery of Golgotha the human physical body had reached such a state of decline that the men incorporated at that time or who were about to be incorporated shortly afterward, and until about the fourth century, were confronted with the danger of having the earth become barren and empty and of finding it impossible in the future to descend from spiritual worlds or to form bodies for themselves out of physical earthly substances. This danger existed, and men would have actually been obliged to fail in their earthly destiny.
The co-operation of Lucifer and Ahriman had brought things to such a pass at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha that man would have died out on the earth, but by what was accomplished through this great Mystery he was saved from the forces of destruction. The invigorating forces of which the physical body had need were imparted to it once more, so that man was enabled to continue his further evolution on earth, to come down from the realms of the soul and spirit and again enter into and dwell in physical bodies. This was the result, the entirely real result, of the Mystery of Golgotha." -Rudolf Steiner, Three Lectures on Easter and Pentecost, GA 224, II. The Mystery of Pentecost and the Ascension, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/19230507p02.html
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Throughout all of human history, the Christ perpetually brings His influences into the world to properly transform humanity and guide human progress in accordance with the divine plan of evolution. This plan is perpetually influenced by opposing powers who seek to thwart human progress. The opposing powers have a rightful place in human evolution. Thus, divine intervention, and perpetual activity, are required by great spiritual leaders, angelic beings, and their supporters across time who support the Christ mission as the divine struggle of the human soul evolves.
This mission occurred only because of great efforts and sacrifices over a long period of time by leaders, human beings, and higher beings, who do not incarnate in the physical world, who set the stage to fulfill this pivotal cosmic mission. The journey began with human involution; when humanity first came into existence. Before Golgotha, the Christ spirit slowly approached humanity over long periods of time, in anticipation of His incarnation and mission in the physical world, from the spiritual Sun Sphere. He worked, and works, directly through heralds, and messengers, including the Archangel Michael who has been known by different names over time.
The spiritual initiates of old, including the "Magi" of the Christian Bible, perceived the coming of the Christ and the one-time cosmic event as being of the most vital and redemptive significance. They perceived this reality through training in the Mysteries by way of matured supersensible perception; an expanded spiritual faculty that is attained by those who reach the highest stages of consciousness and attainment.
In ancient Persia, Michael was recognized by the name of “Marduk.” During the Persian period, the Christ worked through the great initiate Zarathustra, or Zoroaster, who founded the Zoroastrian religion and is remembered today as a mighty Persian prophet (Dr. Steiner also commented that the first Zarathustra lived much earlier than modern academics and theologians presume and that all priests in the line of Zarathustra were referred to by the same name). The Greeks referred to the Christ as Apollo; Master of the Sun (refer to "On the Fifth Gospel" by Dr. Rudolf Steiner which can be read for free at: https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA148/English/LAL1969/19140210p01.html).
The name of the being whom Dr. Steiner referred to as "Ahriman" was referred to by Zarathustra during as the dark being, and opposer, of the Sun-God. Steiner observed that the Christ, through Christ-Jesus, brings His profound transformative influences into the world eternally and gradually as a living force and substance in the human soul and the world. Christ-Jesus, as the Redeemer of the planet, is the balancer between the opposing forces of Ahriman and Lucifer and brings the path, and force, of spiritual transformation, growth, and redemption to humanity.
The battle for the human being is a struggle of the soul; it is an inner battle - which must be viewed in light of one's karma, decisions, and environment - to attain balance by seeing beyond the veil of materialism and by overcoming our lower aspects. It is only through the Light of the Christ, and His mission, that the path of human destiny is enabled and allows us to meet our destiny on the long journey of individual, global, and cosmic transformation...
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Selected Quotes from Dr. Rudolf Steiner's Lectures:
(1) “We know that as far as concerns Earth-development on the physical plane Christ was incarnated for three years in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. We know that that incarnation took place once for all, that there had been no previous incarnation, and that there will be no other like it. What the Christ did by dwelling for three years in a human body was necessary for human beings on the Earth, it was necessary for men as earthly beings of sense to have the Christ also among them once as an earthly being of sense.
But in His essential nature the Christ is not restricted to His life for three years in the sheaths of Jesus of Nazareth; He is also the leader of all the Beings of the higher hierarchies. He is an all-embracing, cosmic, universal Being." -Steiner, Rudolf, Wonders of the World, Ordeals of the Soul, Revelations of the Spirit. GA 129. Lecture 4. Dionysos as the representative of the ego-forces. The entry of the Christ Impulse into human evolution and the activity of the planetary gods. August 21, 1911, Munich. https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA129/English/RSP1963/19110821p02.html
(2) “From the universal rule that the real, guiding individualities do not incarnate during Earth evolution in human bodies, the Christ in a certain respect forms an exception, since He was incarnated for three years in a human body. What is the reason for this? It is because the Christ Being in all His forces, in all His impulses, is an essentially higher Being than any of the individualities of the hierarchies we have described — an Individuality even higher than the Archangels and the Archai, a Being of whose full greatness we can only be dimly aware.
These stronger forces and impulses enabled this Individuality to fulfill a purpose that we shall come to understand more closely; they enabled Him to assume a human fleshly sheath as a sacrifice for three years.”-Steiner, Rudolf, Wonders of the World, Ordeals of the Soul, Revelations of the Spirit. GA 129. Lecture 4. Dionysos as the representative of the ego-forces. The entry of the Christ Impulse into human evolution and the activity of the planetary gods. August 21, 1911, Munich. https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA129/English/RSP1963/19110821p02.html
(3) “What then is the consequence of the event which culminated on the physical plane in the Mystery of Golgotha? The consequence was that now the etheric and astral spheres of the Earth became substantially permeated by the Christ Being. Whereas previously the Being whom we know as Christ was not there, now the etheric and astral spheres have become permeated through and through by Him.”-Steiner, Rudolf, Wonders of the World, Ordeals of the Soul, Revelations of the Spirit. GA 129. Lecture 4. Dionysos as the representative of the ego-forces. The entry of the Christ Impulse into human evolution and the activity of the planetary gods. August 21, 1911, Munich. https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA129/English/RSP1963/19110821p02.html
(4) “Thus through the Christ-Impulse the consciousness came to man that in his ego he had something of Divine substance and of Divine nature. The thought that man can take in the Divine in his Ego-being and that this Divine part can be active therein and distinguish between good and evil, underlies all the deeper sayings of the New Testament. We may therefore say that with the reception into the inner nature of man of the Christ-Impulse, it was made possible for man to say: ‘I must be my own guide for the knowledge of my existence and the distinction between good and evil.’” -Steiner, Rudolf. The Christ Impulse and the Development of the Ego-Consciousness, GA 116 Lecture III. The Entrance of the Christ-Being into the Evolution of Humanity. https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA129/English/RSP1963/19110820p02.html
(5) “The more individualized a man becomes the more he can become a bearer of Love. Where the blood links men together they love because they are led to what they should love. When man is granted individuality, when he tends and nurtures the divine spark within him then the impulses of love, the waves of love, pass from man to man out of the free heart. And thus with this new impulse man has enriched the old bond of love that is bound to the blood-tie. Love passes over gradually into spiritual love which flows from soul to soul and which will ultimately encompass all humanity in a common bond of brother-love.
But Christ-Jesus is the Force, the living Force, once historically and externally present, through whom for the first time mankind has been brought to the bond of brother-love. Men will learn to understand this bond of brother-love as the perfected spiritualized Christianity.” -Steiner, Rudolf. The Apocalypse of St. John, GA 104, Introductory Lecture, June 17, 1908, Nuremberg. https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA104/English/APC1958/ApoJon_index.html
(6) “The souls that imbue themselves with the Christ-Force know that love can forge indestructible spiritual bonds beyond all material hindrances. And there is nothing in life between birth and death and between death and rebirth to which we cannot spiritually find the way through the Christ-Impulse. If we imbue ourselves with the Christ-Impulse, it is unthinkable that we could possibly be separated from what we love in the long run. The Christ brings us together with what we love.” -Steiner, Rudolf. The Principle of Spiritual Economy. GA 109, Lecture VIII. The Event of Golgotha. The Brotherhood of the Holy Grail. The Spiritualized Fire. https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA109/English/AP1986/19090411p02.html
(7) “A strong heavenly force had to radiate into physical matter and sacrifice itself into this matter. What was required was more than just a God wearing the mask of human appearance; what was needed was a true human being with human powers who was carrying the God within himself. The Event of Golgotha had to happen so that the matter into which the human being was placed could be readied, cleansed, and ennobled. When components of matter are cleansed and sanctified, this will make the comprehension of primordial wisdom possible again in future incarnations. Mankind must be led to a true understanding of how the Event of Golgotha has really worked in this sense.”-Steiner, Rudolf. The Principle of Spiritual Economy. GA 109, Lecture VIII. The Event of Golgotha. The Brotherhood of the Holy Grail. The Spiritualized Fire. https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA109/English/AP1986/19090411p02.html
(8) "In the Easter bells, we encounter a symbol for the resurrection of the Earth Spirit itself and for the salvation of mankind. In the past, there has been no one with a proper understanding of this symbol who did not know how to elevate himself or herself to spiritual heights through the Easter mystery. It is not without significance that Faust, when he is near death, is tolled back into a new life by the Easter bells. This leads to the great moment in his old age when he ultimately becomes blind in the face of death and is able to say, “Yet inside me there shines a brilliant light." Now he is ready to penetrate the spiritual worlds above where all noble members of mankind's salvation." -Steiner, Rudolf. The Principle of Spiritual Economy. GA 109, Lecture VIII. The Event of Golgotha. The Brotherhood of the Holy Grail. The Spiritualized Fire. https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA109/English/AP1986/19090411p02.html
(9) "The Easter symbol opens a perspective not only on the future of the entire earth but also on that of human evolution. Easter is our assurance that some day the human beings inspired by Christ will increasingly change from Saul to Paul individuals and become more and more capable of seeing a spiritual fire. To be sure, just as Christ appeared to Moses and to those who had declared their faith in Him in the physical fire of the bramblebush and in the lightning on Sinai as a prophecy of His own coming, so will He appear to us in the spiritualized fire of the future.
“He is with us every day to the end of the world,” and to those who allowed their perception to be illuminated by the Event of Golgotha, to those He will appear in the spiritual fire even if at first they had seen Him in a different form."-Steiner, Rudolf. The Principle of Spiritual Economy. GA 109, Lecture VIII. The Event of Golgotha. The Brotherhood of the Holy Grail. The Spiritualized Fire. https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA109/English/AP1986/19090411p02.html
(10) "It is the duty of the investigator into the spiritual world to draw the attention of humanity to the spiritual fact that Michael has taken over the spiritual guidance of human affairs. Michael does what he has to do in such a way that he does not thereby wield an influence over human beings; but they may follow him in freedom, in order with the Christ power to find the way out of that sphere of Ahriman which they were obliged to enter." -Rudolf Steiner,
Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts, GA 26, 4. Michael's Task in the Sphere of Ahriman https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_c04.html
(11) "The Christ has come. His impulse is working. For a long time he could act only in the unconscious; then he had to act through what was understood until that time. But it will be ever more necessary for man to learn to understand him, the Christ, who through the bodies of Jesus of Nazareth has entered the earth's aura and humanity's development." -Rudolf Steiner, The Fifth Gospel, Volume II, Lecture II, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA148/English/SCR2013/19131218p01.html
(12) "Only when the great suffering — the Mystery of Golgotha — was before him was the total union of the Christ-being with the bodies of Jesus of Nazareth accomplished. What happened then is beautifully described in the other Gospels. For the seer who reads in the Akasha Chronicle about what happened, it is a fact that while Christ was hanging on the cross something like an eclipse of the sun took place in the area around Golgotha. I can't say if it was an eclipse of the sun or a powerful darkening of the clouds, but a darkening like what can be observed during an eclipse of the sun took place in the area around the event of the Mystery of Golgotha.
...While this transformation of the earth was taking place, also in the physical sense, he whom we call the Christ-being went over into the earth's living aura. Through the death of Christ Jesus the earth received the Christ impulse.
The greatest event to occur on earth must be described in such simple, stammering words, because it is impossible to even approximate this greatness with human words." -Rudolf Steiner, The Fifth Gospel, Volume II, Lecture II, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA148/English/SCR2013/19131218p01.html This is an abridged quote.
(13) "The Event which, together with the “Crucifixion” and the “Resurrection” we call the Mystery of Golgotha, followed three other Events as a kind of culmination. One of these other Events had taken place in very ancient Lemurian times; the second in the early period of the Atlantean epoch, and the third towards its end.
These first three Events, however, transpired in the spiritual worlds, not on the physical plane. We have therefore to turn our eyes to four Events, of which the last only — the Mystery of Golgotha itself — took place on the physical plane. The three others were Events in the spiritual world, as it were in preparation for the fourth." -Rudolf Steiner, On the Fifth Gospel, Lecture IX, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA148/English/LAL1969/19140210p01.html
(14) "Let us imagine that there is a man who knows nothing of the name of Christ Jesus, nothing of what is communicated in the Gospels, but that he understands the radical difference between the nature of wisdom and might and that of love. Such a man, even though he knows nothing of the Mystery of Golgotha, is a Christian in the truest sense. A man who knows that love is there for the paying of debts and brings no profit for the future, is a true Christian.
To understand the nature of love — that is to be a Christian! Theosophy (Footnote 1) alone, Spiritual Science alone, with its teachings of Karma and reincarnation, can make us into great egoists unless the impulse of love, the Christ Impulse, is added; only so can we acquire the power to overcome the egoism that may be generated by Spiritual Science.
Even if all the wisdom of this world is ours, the Deed of Christ may still be beyond our comprehension. Love is essential for any understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. Only when love streams into wisdom and then again wisdom flows into love will it be possible to grasp the nature and meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha — only when, as he lives on towards death, man unfolds love of wisdom". -Rudolf Steiner, Love and Its Meaning In The World, GA 143, 17 December 1912, Zurich https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/LovWld_index.html
(15) "For the divine spiritual beings who may be designated the creators of men, birth and death do not come into consideration. Lucifer also does not incarnate himself as a human being in the physical world. He works in man through man; uses men as his vehicle, as it were. Thus we have to do with the gods and with the Luciferic beings, who look down, so to speak, upon their creations.
Had evolution continued in this way, had nothing happened in the world of the gods, then the intention of the gods for men would never have been fulfilled; Lucifer would have thwarted the plan of the gods. The gods had to make a sacrifice — that was their concern — they had to experience something which was related to their sphere in such a way that it really could not be experienced by gods if they remained in their own sphere:
They had to send from their own ranks down to the physical plane a being who experienced something which otherwise gods in the spiritual worlds cannot experience. The gods had to send the Christ down to earth to do battle with the Luciferic principle. In the course of time, when the time was fulfilled, the gods, whom we group together under the name of the divine Father-world, sent down the Christ in order that he should learn to know the unending pains of men, which mean something entirely different for a god from what they mean for a man. Therewith the gods entered the earth-sphere to do battle with the Luciferic spirits. A god had to suffer death on the cross, the most disgraceful human death, as Paul especially emphasizes." -Rudolf Steiner, The Three Paths of the Soul to Christ, GA 143, II. The Path of Initiation 17 April 1912, Stockholm https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA143/English/AP1942/19120417p01.html
(16) "Those who compare Christ to the ancient religious teachers do not understand anything about him. In the first place, Christ worked through a deed, the ancient religious leaders through their teachings. To describe him merely as a teacher of humanity means not knowing at all who Christ is. The essential thing about him is the deed he performed, which began as a consequence of his baptism by John and ended with the crucifixion on Golgotha.
What was done there for humanity is spiritually all-important. What happened there is what can permeate human souls ever since then, namely, the experience St. Paul described as “Not I, but Christ in me.” Indeed, Christ has become the path into the spiritual world because he brought it into this world." -Rudolf Steiner, The Presence of the Dead, GA 154, 3. Awakening Spiritual Thoughts, 5 May 1914, Basel https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA154/English/AP1990/19140505p01.html
(17) "I believe we can inscribe deeply in our souls that progress in the knowledge of Christ is a real gain for the human soul, and that when we consider the relationship of the human soul to Christ, it again becomes clear to us how before the Mystery of Golgotha there was a veil, as it were, between the human soul and Christ; how this veil was broken by the Mystery of Golgotha, and how we can say with truth: “Through the Mystery of Golgotha a cosmic Being flowed into Earth-life, a super-earthly Being united Himself with the Earth.” -Rudolf Steiner, Christ and the Human Soul, GA 155, Lecture I,Norrköping, 12th July, 1914 https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA155/English/RSP1972/19140712p01.html
(18) "For the welfare of humanity Christ has united His being with the dead part of divine-spiritual existence in Ahriman's kingdom. Thus two things are possible for man, and through this possibility his freedom is guaranteed: — to turn to Christ consciously in the spiritual frame of mind which he possessed subconsciously during the descent from the vision of supersensible spirit-existence to the use of intellect; or to wish to feel his severance from spirit-existence and thus fall in the direction taken by the Ahrimanic powers.
Humanity has been in this situation since the beginning of the fifteenth century. It was prepared — for everything takes place gradually in evolution — after the Mystery of Golgotha, which, as it is the greatest event that has happened on the Earth, is destined to rescue man from the destruction to which he must be exposed because he is to become a free being...
...It is the duty of the investigator into the spiritual world to draw the attention of humanity to the spiritual fact that Michael has taken over the spiritual guidance of human affairs. Michael does what he has to do in such a way that he does not thereby wield an influence over human beings; but they may follow him in freedom, in order with the Christ power to find the way out of that sphere of Ahriman which they were obliged to enter." -Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts
GA 26, 4. Michaels Task in the Sphere of Ahriman, https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_c04.html, *This is an abridged quote.
(19) "If the divine-spiritual powers, which are found in the way, as I have described it in the public lecture yesterday, also wanted to know nothing about Lucifer and Ahriman, the world would just not be able to exist. You do not position yourselves in the correct relationship saying: Lucifer, I avoid him! Ahriman, I avoid him! You rather have to look at that which the human being has to strive for as a result of the Christ Impulse like the equilibrium position of a pendulum.
The pendulum is in the middle in balance; however, it must swing to and fro. That is similar also in the earth development of the human being. The human being must tend on one side to the luciferic principle, on the other side to the ahrimanic principle, but he must learn and stand firmly on that which Paul said: “not I, but Christ in me.” - Rudolf Steiner, 18 May 1915, Linz (GA 159), https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA159/English/UNK2013/19150518p02.html
(20) "...every physical event has its spiritual counterpart, and as the blood flowed from the wounds on Golgotha there occurred a corresponding spiritual event: at this moment it happened for the first time that rays streamed forth from the earth into cosmic space, where formerly there had been none. We must visualize, then, as created at this moment, rays streaming from the earth into cosmic space. Darker and darker had the earth become with the passing of time — up to the event on Golgotha. Now the blood flows on Golgotha — and the earth begins to radiate light.
...The earth began to shine — for the time being astrally, visible only to the seer; but in the future the astral light will become physical light and the earth will be a luminous body, a sun body." -Rudolf Steiner, The Gospel of St. John in Relation to the Other Three Gospels, GA 112, 13. The Cosmic Significance of the Mystery of Golgotha, 6 July 1909, Kassel, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA112/English/AP1948/19090706p02.html
(21) " God is supreme love, not supreme might, not supreme wisdom.
...The Mystery of Golgotha is a Deed of the Gods and a concern of the Gods. This Deed cannot be understood out of wisdom but only out of love. Together with selfishness, evil came into the world. It had to be so, because without the evil, man could not lay hold of the good. But through man's conquest of himself the unfolding of love has been made possible. The darkness has enabled the light to come into our ken." -Rudolf Steiner, Love and Its Meaning in the World, GA 143, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/LovWld_index.html *This is an abridged quote.
(22) "The Being of whom we have said that he had not chosen the path down from the planets to the Earth, but had remained behind, the Being who later appeared as the Nathan Jesus-child and who had dwelt from primal ages in the spiritual worlds — this Being resolved (if we may use this expression, for of course all these expressions are taken from human speech and cannot fully convey what one wants to say) while still in the world of the higher Hierarchies to go through a development which would enable him to be permeated for a time by the Christ Being.
Thus we have to do not with a man but with a superhuman Being who (if we may speak in this way) lived in the spiritual world and as it were heard the distress of the human sense system crying out to the spiritual world for help, and in response to this cry made himself fitted to be permeated by the Christ." -Rudolf Steiner, Christ and the Spiritual World - The Search for the Holy Grail, GA 149, Lecture III, 30 December 1913, Leipzig https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA149/English/RSP1963/19131230p01.html
(23) "We can search through the entire evolution of the world without finding a deeper understanding of selflessness than that offered by Christ's appearance upon earth. To know Christ is to go through the school of unselfishness, and to become acquainted with all those incentives to human development that fall gently into our souls, warming and animating every unselfish inclination within us, arousing it from passive to active soul life." -Rudolf Steiner, The Four Sacrifices of Christ, GA 152, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/ForSac_index.html
(24) " “Saturn” is the name of the soul of Saturn. The names of the planets come from the spirits of the seven planets found around the earth. These have an influence on human life. The lamb, Christ, contains all seven. Christ is the alpha and the omega; the seven planets are related to him like members to an entire body...
From Saturn one rises to the Sun, from there down to the Moon, then on to Mars, Mercury, and so forth. The same thing is expressed in the names of the seven days of the week: Saturday, Saturn; Sunday, the Sun; Monday, the Moon; Tuesday, Mardi, Mars; Wednesday, Mercredi, Mercury; Thursday, Jeudi, Jupiter; Friday, Vendredi, Venus. Christ is the regent of all these world spheres; their actions constitute only part of his being; he unites them all." -Rudolf Steiner, Reading the Pictures of the Apocalypse, GA 104a, Part One, Lecture I, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/ReadApoc/19070422p01.html *This is an abridged quote.
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"At the turning-point of time,
The Spirit-Light of the World
Entered the stream of Earthly Evolution.
Darkness of Night had held its sway;
Day-radiant Light poured into the souls of men,
Light that gave warmth to simple shepherds' hearts,
Light that enlightened the wise heads of kings.
O Light Divine! O Sun of Christ!
Warm Thou our hearts,
Enlighten Thou our heads (minds),
That good may become
What from our hearts we would found
And from our heads (minds) direct
With single purpose."
-Steiner, Rudolf. The Festivals and Their Meaning: Christmas, Christmas Meditation, 1923. https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/Christmas/ChrMas_meditation.html
"Lucifer and Ahriman" by early Anthroposophical artist Baron Arild von Rosenkrantz (1870-1964).
An Abridged Quote From Chapter 20 of "The Spear of Destiny" by Trevor Ravenscroft.
"The Twin Resonators of Evil
Tracing back the history of the Earth Planet by means of the Cosmic Chronicle ...the whole evolution of the earth and the being of man developed out of the spiritual Macrocosm as the result of the ceaseless creative activities of Spirit-Beings. ...the inner life of man has been from the earliest times under the guidance of these hierarchies of Spirit-Beings, but some of these hierarchies are inimical to the divine plan of human evolution.
The consciousness of early man should have remained an infallible mirror-image of the world, but this aim was diverted by a hierarchy of opposing powers who sought to evoke in the soul of man a kind of resistance to these conditions. These spirits, the first hierarchy of the trinity of evil, collectively known as Lucifer, sought to divest man’s consciousness of the character of a mere mirror. The Luciferic adversaries of the celestial hierarchies wished to bring about prematurely a capacity in man to unfold a free activity within his consciousness so that he would become severed from the guidance of the Macrocosm.
The intervention of Lucifer initiated a process through which man became master of his own cognition and capable of personal resolve. At the same time man was led into the possibility of evil and error. The human “I”, or ego, fell into dependence upon certain lower elements in the soul. Higher spiritual influences were no longer able to control and regulate the cravings and passions to which man now became exposed. In this manner he became too involved in the wheel of physical existence and too interfused with the material processes of the earth.
This period in the evolution of mankind, which took place in yet earlier epochs than Atlantis, is described in The Bible in the symbolic picture of the “Fall from Paradise” in which man is won over to the aims of evil by the subtle temptations of the Serpent.
Within the forces of the earth itself under whose influence man was now brought, other demonic powers were at work. These spirits, which belong exclusively to the material world in which Lucifer involved mankind, are called Ahrimanic Spirits, and collectively known as “Ahriman”. The second hierarchy of the trinity of evil, they seek to cut man off from all vision into the Macrocosm, and to lead him down into a total confinement in the three dimensional world of measure, number and weight. Ahriman wishes to mislead man into regarding the sense- perceptible world of physical existence as the only reality. But for the intervention of Ahriman, the spiritual powers underlying the forces of nature would never have been veiled from human vision.
Lucifer and Ahriman are the two great adversaries of mankind’s evolution. Lucifer leads man into a spiritual independence of the celestial hierarchies, tempting him, as it were, to set himself up as a God. Ahriman strives to establish a purely material kingdom on earth which is entirely isolated from spiritual realities, and he seeks to draw mankind so deeply into this kingdom that he loses all awareness of his spiritual origin and destiny."
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General Quotes on Ahriman/Lucifer
(1) "We see from this that when we want to form a judgment of such beings as Ahriman and Lucifer, it cannot be a question of simply calling them good or bad. Instead we have to understand what is the lawful activity, what is the right domain of these beings and where their unlawful activity, the overstepping of their limits, begins. For through the fact that they go beyond their limits, they entice human beings to an unlawful overstepping of the boundary..." -Steiner, Rudolf, Secrets of the Threshold, GA 147, Lecture II, 25 August 1913, Munich" https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA147/English/AP1987/19130825p01.html
(2) "Ahriman is the more spiritual being; what he carries out in the way of unlawful activity, of the unlawful activity he can create, flows more or less into the general world of the senses. Lucifer is more a being of soul; he tries to draw emotional soul elements out of the sense world and embody them in his special luciferic kingdom, where for every human being — according to the egoism rooted in his nature — Lucifer wants to ensure the greatest possibility of segregated independence." -Steiner, Rudolf, Secrets of the Threshold, GA 147, Lecture II, 25 August 1913, Munich" https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA147/English/AP1987/19130825p01.html
(3)"The all-encompassing attribute of the Godhead is not omnipotence, neither is it omniscience, but it is love — the attribute in respect of which no enhancement is possible. God is uttermost love, unalloyed love, is born as it were out of love, is the very substance and essence of love. God is pure love, not supreme wisdom, not supreme might. God has retained love for himself but has shared wisdom and might with Lucifer and Ahriman. He has shared wisdom with Lucifer and might with Ahriman, in order that man may become free, in order that under the influence of wisdom he may make progress." -Rudolf Steiner, Love and Its Meaning In The World, GA 143, 17 December 1912, Zurichhttps://rsarchive.org/Lectures/LovWld_index.html
(4)"Lucifer can be described as an archangel left behind at an earlier stage of evolution, Ahriman as a spirit of personality also left behind at an earlier stage. -Rudolf Steiner, The Presence of the Dead, GA 154, 4. The Presence of the Dead in Our Life, 25 May 1914, Paris https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA154/English/AP1990/19140525p01.html
(5)"Experiences deriving from the influences of Lucifer and Ahriman are all the time playing into human life. In this basic experience of man during the Fourth Post-Atlantean or Greco-Roman epoch, Lucifer's influence was the greater; in our own epoch, Ahriman is the predominant influence. Lucifer is connected with all those experiences which, lacking the definition imparted by the senses, remain undifferentiated and obscure." -Rudolf Steiner, The Balance in the World and Man, Lucifer and Ahriman, GA 158, Lecture I, Dornach, November 20, 1914, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA158/English/RSPC1948/19141120p01.html
(6)"...we have no occasion either to hate Ahriman or to fear Lucifer, since their powers are inimical only when they are working outside the realm where they belong." -Rudolf Steiner, The Balance in the World and Man, Lucifer and Ahriman, GA 158, Lecture III, Dornach, November 22, 1914 https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA158/English/RSPC1948/19141122p01.html
(7) "The beings who permeate the astral body and make it unfree are known as “Demons.” Your astral body is always interpenetrated by demons and the beings you yourselves generate through your true or false thoughts are of such a nature that they gradually grow into demons. There are good demons, generated by good thoughts; but bad thoughts, above all those that are untruthful, generate demoniacal forms of the most terrible and frightful kind and these interlard the astral body — if I may so express it.
The etheric body is also permeated by beings from which man must free himself; these beings are called “Spectres”, “ghosts.” And finally, permeating the physical body there are beings known as “Phantoms.” Besides these three classes there are yet other beings, the “Spirits,” who drive the Ego hither and thither — the Ego itself also being a Spirit. In actual fact the human being generates such creatures who then determine his inner and outer destiny when he descends to incarnation.
These beings work in your life in such a way that you can feel the “demons” created by your astral body, the “ghosts” or “spectres” created by your etheric body and the “phantoms” created by your physical body. All these beings are related to you and approach you when the time comes for reincarnation." -Rudolf Steiner, Theosophy of the Roiscrucian, GA 99, VI. The Law of Destiny, 30 May 1907, Munich, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/19070530p01.html
Model of Ahriman by Rudolf Steiner and Edith Maryon
According to Dr. Steiner, "Ahriman" is a name that describes a higher being who leads a group of rebellious spirits who, in the modern world age, wish to imprison humanity within the physical world. This group of opposing beings were referred to by Dr. Steiner as the “Spirit of Darkness” who “through imperfection and evil, brings shadows into the light.” -Steiner, Rudolf, Turning Points Spiritual History, Part I, Zarathustra, Six Lectures, January 1911 – January 1912).
This group of beings are attached to the earth and seek to pull humanity towards physical reality and outer perception alone; into all things solid, physical, and three-dimensional. According to Dr. Steiner, they try to influence our will, perception, the instincts, and the direction of our thoughts of human beings in peculiar ways.
Ahriman’s influences seek to corrupt the human being into a one-sided dependency on the intellect and the perception, and belief, that the hardness of the outer world (sense world) is the only world; that there is nothing behind it except for atoms and mechanical processes that have no divine origin or meaning. These beings steer humanity towards materialism, rigid and inflexible thinking, and a perception that is devoid of spiritual principles and ideals. If spiritual ideas manifest, Ahrimanic influences seek to corrupt the environment by inspiring illusions or pitting one perspective against the other.
Ahriman grabs hold of the power of the intellect through rigid and materialistic thinking. This does not mean that thought, or thinking, is improper. The power of thinking is the means by which we find individuality and freedom. Ahriman seeks to rob humanity of our spiritual perception and thus the truths, principles, and existence of higher beings that created and sustain the physical world.
If we become polarized, we can lose our sense of freedom, power, and insight because we become over-reliant on the reality of the sense world as the only reality, and conceptual intellectual thinking, which can foster both constructive and destructive habits. We may achieve great insights through the intellect, in what Dr. Steiner referred to as "clever", but we come to rely on the outer observation as the only one. In other words, we can allow the intellect to become spiritualized or we can allow it to become an instrument of pure self-interest leading to egotism. Ahriman wants to bond human beings to the earth in a physical way and deprive us of our connection to the spiritual worlds keeping us bound to the physical world, which is his domain.
Ahriman’s goal is a world devoid of culture, art, spirit, right thinking, and spiritual feeling. War, disease, division, conflict, mechanical innovations of magnificent design, and situations where people are opposed to one another based on race, nationality, religion, culture, gender, or any group-based quality that sets one against another are, at least in part, influenced by the activities of Ahrimanic beings.
Ahrimanic beings can influence the passions and the metabolism of human beings but, based on Dr. Steiner's lectures and works, their primary field of activity is the rigid hardening of the human being. This is accomplished by bringing into the minds and souls of human beings an emphasis on materialism, and intellectuality, that leads to a view of the world as a commoditization through mechanics; a worldview based solely on number, measure, and weight...a world devoid of feeling, individuality, the soul, and the striving of the spirit.
Ahriman also projects cooling and stilling influences, which an be constructive and helpful to achieve balance, but alongside them he also projects disruptive influences into the metabolism and the passions of the human being as he is connected with the subsensible realms of the physical earth. Becoming dry, philistine, and prosaic are polarized and destructive influences. One of Ahriman’s goals is a complete hardening of the human being devoid of any spiritual activity.
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Selected Quotes from Dr. Steiner's Lectures:
(1) "They influence instincts, desires, and passions. They live directly upon the earth, yet in a way that is invisible to people.” -Steiner, Rudolf, Spirit as Sculptor of the Human Organism, Sixteen Lectures Given in Stuttgart, Dornach, The Hague, London and Berlin in 1922, CW 218.
(2) "Ahriman seeks to project the illusion into humanity that a materialistic observation is, in fact, the only reality and that there is no inner spiritual meaning behind a physical object. Observing a planet, for example, and suggesting that it rotates around the sun over a certain period of time and at a certain rate due to purely gravitational, physical, or mathematical reasons with no inner reason or purpose, devoid of a connection to a foundational creative force that created, informs, and sustains the universe and humanity from the spiritual words, is an Ahrimanic observation and deception.
In Ahriman, lies the “origin of the aberrations of thought.” -Steiner, Rudolf, Spirit as Sculptor of the Human Organism, Sixteen Lectures Given in Stuttgart, Dornach, The Hague, London and Berlin in 1922, CW 218).
(3) "The Ahrimanic powers which have taken hold of the human intellect become extremely powerful if we do not want to know them or learn about them."- Rudolf Steiner, The Fall of the Spirits of Darkness, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA177/English/RSP1993/FalDar_index.html
(4) "The ideal of many people is to study science and then apply the laws of science to the social sphere. They only want to consider anything which is ‘real’, meaning anything which can be perceived by the senses, and never give a thought to the things of the spirit. If this ideal were to be achieved by a large section of humanity the Ahrimanic powers would have gained their purpose, for people would then not know they existed." -Rudolf Steiner, The Fall of the Spirits of Darkness, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA177/English/RSP1993/FalDar_index.html
(5) "The Ahrimanic powers will also thrive if people nurture the elements which they desire to spread among people today: prejudice, ignorance and fear of the life of the spirit. There is no better way of encouraging them." -Rudolf Steiner, The Fall of the Spirits of Darkness, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA177/English/RSP1993/FalDar_index.html
(6) “…what is the aim of these other 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 Luciferic spirits build...their strongholds in the air, in order to fight for the moral — as against the earthly — element in man, the Ahrimanic beings struggle to harden man; they want to make him like themselves.” -Steiner, Rudolf. The Planetary Spheres and Their Influence on Man’s Life on Earth and in Spiritual Worlds, Lecture 5, London, November 16, 1922. https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/PlanSphere/PlnSph_index.html
(7) "It is indeed true, and initiates have always said so: ‘When human beings are filled with spiritual wisdom, these are great horrors of darkness for the Ahrimanic powers and a consuming fire. It feels good to the Ahrimanic angels to dwell in heads filled with Ahrimanic science; but heads filled with spiritual wisdom are like a consuming fire and the horrors of darkness to them.’
If we consider this in all seriousness we can feel: filled with spiritual wisdom we go through the world in a way which allows us to establish the right relationship with the Ahrimanic powers; doing the things we do in the light of this, we build a place for the consuming fire of sacrifice for the salvation of the world..."
- Rudolf Steiner, The Fall of the Spirits of Darkness, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA177/English/RSP1993/FalDar_index.html
(8) "Hence the possibilities for Ahriman to take a hand in civilisation have become ever greater and greater. Needless to say, Spirits like Ahriman are not there to incarnate in physical bodies on the earth. Nevertheless, they can work on the earth, not indeed by incarnating but by incorporating themselves for certain spaces of time; when in one man or another there happens what I mentioned before: a diminution or diversion of consciousness.
At such moments the human being provides a vehicle, and Ahriman is able — not indeed to incarnate, — but to incorporate himself and to work out of that human being, with that human being's faculties." - Rudolf Steiner, Karmic Relationships Volume 3, Lecture 9. https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA237/English/RSP1977/19240803p02.html
(9) "My dear friends, we must learn to know this Ahriman, these hosts of Ahriman. It is not enough to find the name of Ahriman contemptible or to give the name of Ahriman to so many beings whom one despises. That is of no avail. The point is that in Ahriman there stands before us a cosmic Being of the highest imaginable Intelligence, a cosmic Being who has already taken the Intelligence entirely into the individual, personal element. In every conceivable direction Ahriman is in the highest degree intelligent, over-intelligent. He has at his command a dazzling Intelligence, proceeding from the whole human being, with the single exception of the part of the human being which in the human forehead takes on a human form." - Rudolf Steiner, Karmic Relationships Volume 3, Lecture 8. https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA237/English/RSP1977/19240801p01.html
(10) "To reproduce Ahriman in human Imaginations we should have to give him a receding forehead, a frivolously cynical expression, for in him everything comes out of the lower forces, and yet from these lower forces the highest Intelligence proceeds. If ever we let ourselves in for a discussion with Ahriman, we should inevitably be shattered by the logical conclusiveness, the magnificent certainty of aim with which he manipulates his arguments.
The really decisive question for the world of men, in the opinion of Ahriman, is this: Will cleverness or stupidity prevail? And Ahriman calls stupidity everything that does not contain Intelligence within it in full personal individuality. Every Ahriman-being is over-endowed with personal Intelligence in the way I have now described; critical to a degree in the repudiation of all things illogical; scornful and contemptuous in thought." - Rudolf Steiner, Karmic Relationships Volume 3, Lecture 8. https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA237/English/RSP1977/19240801p01.html
(11) "When we have Ahriman before us in this way, then too we shall feel the great contrast between Ahriman and (Archangel) Michael. For Michael is not in the least concerned with the personal quality of Intelligence. It is only for man that the temptation is ever-present to make his Intelligence personal after the pattern of Ahriman. Truth to tell, Ahriman has a most contemptuous judgment of Michael. He thinks Michael foolish and stupid, — stupid, needless to say, in relation to himself. For Michael does not wish to seize the Intelligence and make it personally his own.
Michael only wills, and has willed through the thousands of years, nay through the aeons, to administer the Pan-Intelligence*. And now once more, now that men have the Intelligence, it should again be administered by Michael as something belonging to all mankind — as the common and universal Intelligence that benefits all men alike."- Rudolf Steiner, Karmic Relationships Volume 3, Lecture 8. https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA237/English/RSP1977/19240801p01.html The parenthesis are mine.
(12) "Ahriman, Mephisto, Mammon — they mean the same. They are immersed in money and in everything connected with human egotism. The fact that it is necessary for human life to be commingled with materialistic things means that humanity must reckon with Ahriman." -Rudolf Steiner, The Fifth Gospel, Volume II, Lecture II, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA148/English/SCR2013/19131218p01.html * "Pan" in this quote means something akin to "all", "everything", or "for everyone".
Standing in opposition to Ahriman, above him as it were, as Dr. Steiner observed, is a group of beings who collectively unite under a single higher being known as “Lucifer”. Dr. Steiner observed that this being can, in fact, be confused with a higher angelic being if one is not equipped with the insights to discern the difference properly. Dr. Steiner stated in his lectures that Ahriman, and not Lucifer, comes closer to the contemporary perception of “Satan” and the “Devil”. The traditional conceptions of Lucifer as a being who lives beneath the earth as a mighty red devil with hooves, horns, a pitchfork, and a tail are illusions.
While Ahriman drags humanity down towards the earth, Lucifer seeks to pull humanity away from the earth. Steiner referred to Luciferic beings collectively as “air-fire beings”. This group pulls humanity away from the earth into the realm of perfect morality, light, culture, and art. On the extreme, their influences can lead to fantasies, dreams, and illusions. Self-indulgence and self-importance are Luciferic qualities. Like Ahrimanic beings, Luciferic beings seek to achieve a form of slavery over humanity but theirs is unique. According to Steiner, Luciferic beings seek a kind of liberation from the spiritual hierarchies; they seek a humanity that is beyond independently of the physical world and does not incarnate there; a sphere which has been permeated with Christ's forces since the Event of Golgotha in 33AD and is the rightful plane of human activity.
The proper ordering of humanity’s constitution, and state of balance, falls within the collective hierarchy, of which Angels and Archangels are the two immediate stages above humanity, of which humanity has its rightful place.
The influences of Ahriman and Lucifer are viewed in esoteric terms as beings that, if managed properly, can bring forth constructive forces and, on the extreme, bring destructive impulses depending on the unique nature of the human being in question. They both serve a rightful place in cosmic evolution and the human experience.
For example, explosions of passion and temperament are connected either to Luciferic or Ahrimanic impulses and give rise to metabolic disorders, instinctual impulses, and illnesses. Dr. Steiner observed that these impulses can be utilized by Ahrimanic beings in a number of ways. While Ahriman would prefer that humanity remain permanently bound to the physical earth, Lucifer would prefer that souls do not incarnate into the physical plane, which is the dominion of Ahriman. They are polarized beings, thus they work in on humanity in a polarized way. It is up to the human being to become knowledgeable of their influences. We cannot avoid when we are born into the physical world but we can learn to manage them.
If understood, we can follow a path that prevents us from becoming polarized and these necessary influences can be applied in a human being’s experience in a constructive way.
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Selected Quotes from Dr. Steiner's Lectures:
(1) “The Luciferic principle strives to make every human being independent, to endow the single individual with the greatest possible power.” Yet, these beings also seek to rob humanity of our freedom. They “hate human freedom above all else and wish to have nothing to do with it.” -Steiner, Rudolf, Spirit as Sculptor of the Human Organism, Sixteen Lectures Given in Stuttgart, Dornach, The Hague, London and Berlin in 1922, CW 218.
(2) "The name Lucifer comes from the Latin meaning “bearer of the Light.” One's childhood picture of Lucifer as a slithering manifestation of evil is difficult to reconcile with the beauty of this name. Lucifer, however, represents a force that paradoxically can combine beauty and if you will, beauty gone too far, to the extreme of decadence, hence to evil." -The Influences of Ahriman and Lucifer, GA 191, by Rudolf Steiner https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA191/English/AP1993/InLuAr_index.html
(3) In Lucifer, lies the “erring of will.” -Steiner, Rudolf. The Gospel of St. John. Lecture VI. GA112.
(4) “…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…” -Steiner, Rudolf, Man’s Life on Earth and on the Spiritual Worlds, Lecture V, Luciferic and Ahrimanic Powers Wrestling for Man, London, November 16, 1922.
(5) “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.” -Steiner, Rudolf. The Ahrimanic Deception. Lecture, Zurich, October 27, 1919
(6) “Luciferic forces want man to unfold only that which was proper to him during his cosmic childhood; the Ahrimanic forces, which are opposed to the Luciferic and yet co-operate with them, would like to develop only those forces which were gained in later ages of the world, and so let the cosmic childhood of man wither away.” -Steiner, Rudolf. Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts. Second Study: How the Michael Forces Work in the Earliest Unfolding of the Spiritual Soul.
(7) "Looking back into ancient times, it is revealed that in men's earlier incarnations on the Earth certain beings worked into their astral bodies from two sides. In the course of incarnations through the epochs of Lemuria and Atlantis, the Luciferic beings penetrated into human nature, and their influences took actual effect in the human astral body. Then, from the Atlantean epoch onwards, man was also worked upon by beings under the leadership of Ahriman.
Thus in the course of his earlier incarnations, man was subjected to the influences of both the Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings. Had these beings not worked upon him, he could have acquired neither freedom nor the capacity to distinguish between good and evil, nor free will. From a higher point of view, therefore, it is fortunate that these influences were exercised upon him, although it is true that in a certain respect they led him from divine-spiritual heights more deeply into material existence than he would otherwise have descended." -Rudolf Steiner, The Gospel of St. Luke, Lecture 3, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA114/English/RSP1964/19090917p01.html
(8) "The Luciferic beings have remained stationary at other stages of evolution and they introduce an element that is foreign to the normal evolutionary process. They are deeply interested in so seizing hold of man that he does not unfold free will, because they themselves have not acquired free will. Free will can be acquired only on the Earth but the Luciferic beings want to have nothing to do with the Earth; they want only Saturn-, Sun-, Moon-evolution, and to remain at those stages.
In a sense they hate the free will of man. Their manner of acting is highly spiritual, but it is automatic — that is a point of great significance — and they want to lift man to their own spiritual heights, to make him an automaton — a spiritual, but an automatically spiritual being. Thereby on the one side the danger would arise that prematurely, before his Spiritual Soul is in full function, man would become a being whose actions are those of a spiritual puppet and he would sleep through the impending revelation.
But the Ahrimanic beings too are working to obscure this revelation.
They are not at pains to make man particularly spiritual, but rather to kill out in him the consciousness of his own spirituality. They endeavour to instill into him the conviction that he is nothing but a completely developed animal.
Ahriman is in truth the teacher par excellence of materialistic Darwinism. He is also the great teacher of all those technical and practical pursuits in Earth-evolution where there is refusal to acknowledge the validity of anything except the external life of the senses, where the only desire is for a widespread technology, so that with somewhat greater refinement, men shall satisfy their hunger, thirst and other needs in the same way as the animal.
To kill, to darken in man the consciousness that he is an image of the Godhead — this is what the Ahrimanic beings are endeavouring by subtle scientific means of every kind to achieve in our age of the Spiritual Soul." -Rudolf Steiner, https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/19181009p01.html
(9) "...egotism had to be implanted in man on the ancient Moon, and, as man received his astral body on the ancient Moon, egotism has its seat in the astral body; and, as Lucifer has preserved his Moon-nature, he has brought egotism to the earth as the inner soul-quality of his beauty. Therefore, on the one hand he is the Spirit of Beauty, and on the other the Spirit of Egotism.
And what we may call his error is only this: that he has transplanted to the earth something which, as far as man is concerned, if I may use the expression, belonged to the ancient Moon; that is, the permeating and impregnating of himself with egotism. But thereby, as has often been said, was given to man the possibility of becoming a self-contained, free being, which he never would have become if Lucifer had not carried over egotism from the Moon to the Earth." -Rudolf Steiner, The Effect of Occult Development Upon the Self and the Sheaths of Man, GA 145, Lecture IX, 28 March 1913, The Hague, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA145/English/RSPC1945/19130328p02.html
(10) "Lucifer has the tendency continually to do this by contaminating the feeling life of the soul. Ahriman has more to do with our thinking, Lucifer with the feelings, with the life of the emotions, passions, impulses and desires. Lucifer is lord over everything of soul feeling in the physical sense world. He has the tendency to detach and separate this feeling life of the soul from the physical world, to spiritualize it, and to set up, one can say, on a specially isolated island of spiritual existence a luciferic kingdom composed of all the soul feeling he can seize and carry off from the sense world.
Whereas Ahriman wants to hold back thinking to the physical sense world and make shadows and phantoms of it, visible to elementary clairvoyance as floating, wafting shadows, Lucifer does the opposite: he takes what is soul feeling in the physical sense world, tears it out and puts it in a special luciferic kingdom set up as an isolated kingdom similar to his own nature, in opposition to the general cosmic order. Steiner, Rudolf, Secrets of the Threshold, GA 147, Lecture II, 25 August 1913, Munich" https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA147/English/AP1987/19130825p01.html
(11) "When the earth's evolution began, the beings of the higher hierarchies had certain intentions for humanity. They wanted to guide the earth's evolution in a certain way. But Lucifer inserted himself into this intended guidance of humanity's earthly affairs. ...Not everything that happens down there happens through us. Lucifer is continually intervening. Due to Lucifer's intervention, and later Ahriman's, a foreign element is present in human evolution. " -Rudolf Steiner, The Fifth Gospel, Volume II, Lecture II, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA148/English/SCR2013/19131218p01.html
(12) "...frailty, infirmity, illness, and death are connected with the lack of harmony between our Ego, permeated by the Luciferic principle, and our organization. Death, after all, is connected with the Luciferic principle, and that in a very special way. It would be an entirely false idea if we were to assume that Lucifer brought death. Lucifer did not bring death, he brought what we can call the possibility of error (also of moral error), the differentiation of men into races, and the possibility of freedom.
Lucifer brought these things. If only what Lucifer brought had been efficacious in mankind, if nothing had been opposed to him, then this Luciferic principle would have led to the point where mankind would have fallen out, would have broken out, of the progressive divine evolution. Man would indeed have spiritualized himself, but in an entirely different direction from that to which the progressive divine evolution led. To retain mankind within this divine evolution, to prevent mankind's being lost for the divine evolution, a particular arrangement had to be set up: Man had to be continually reminded of what the consequences are if he misuses the possibility of error and of freedom.
All illness, frailty, infirmity, and death are reminders that man would have to estrange himself from the progressive divine evolution if, in addition to having the Luciferic freedom, he were healthy and full of energy. Thus illness, infirmity, and death are not gifts of Lucifer, but gifts of the good, wisdom-filled divine powers, who have therewith set up a dike against the influences of Lucifer." -Rudolf Steiner, The Three Paths of the Soul to Christ, GA 143, II. The Path of Initiation 17 April 1912, Stockholm https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA143/English/AP1942/19120417p01.html
(13) "Lucifer was at work in the Lemurian epoch, could be included in earth evolution, and worked as a liberator by giving men independence and enthusiasm for wisdom. Satanic Gods of hindrances began their work in the Atlantean epoch. Asuras are starting to work in the post-Atlantean epoch. They're the worst of the three and they mainly work into sexual life in the physical body. The many sexual aberrations today are to be ascribed to this strong influx. All forces of hindrances try to hold onto currently existing things that are still imperfect, carry them out and intensify them. Lucifer gave independence, egoity with egoism. Egoism, error and animal love are the first expressions of egoity, wisdom and highest spiritual love. We must bring about the respective transformations." -Rudolf Steiner, Esoteric Lessons I, GA 266, Number 10, München, 11-1-'06https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA266/English/UNK1998/19061101e01.html
(14) "Not all the beings on the previous planet (note: the "previous planet" is the preceding stage of human evolution on the earth referred to as "Old Moon"in Anthroposophy) attained the height of wisdom. Some remained behind and are at a level of development between gods and humans. Though they still need something from human beings, they can no longer clothe themselves in physical bodies. They are designated as Luciferian beings, or collectively by the name of their leader — Lucifer.
Lucifer's influence on human beings is very different from that of the gods. The gods approach what is noblest in human nature; a mortal's lower nature they cannot and must not approach. Only at the end of evolution can wisdom and love be united. The Luciferian beings approach a person's lower nature, the undeveloped element of love, they build a bridge between wisdom and love, thus causing a mingling of the two, with the result that what should remain impersonal becomes entangled with what is personal.
...Without Lucifer, human self-consciousness would never have become mingled with love. Thinking and wisdom now became servants of the self; a person could choose between good and evil. But love ought to be directed to the self only in order to place it in the service of the world: The rose should adorn itself only to adorn the garden. That must be deeply engraved in the hearts of those who seek higher development. In order to have a feeling for what is good, we must also have a feeling for what is bad. The gods endowed us with enthusiasm for what is higher; but without evil we would have no feeling of self, no free choice of the good, no freedom." -Rudolf Steiner, Supersensible Knowledge, GA 55, IV. The Origin of Evil, 22 November 1906, Berlin, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA055/English/AP1987/19061122p02.html *This is abridged quote. Parenthesis are the author's.
-Rudolf Steiner, The Fifth Gospel, GA 148, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA148/English/RSPC1950/FG1950_index.html
-Rudolf Steiner, Esoteric Lessons, GA 266, Lesson 6, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA266/English/UNK1998/19040000e01.html
-Rudolf Steiner, The Fifth Gospel, Volume 2 GA 148, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA148/English/SCR2013/FG2FTS_index.html
-Rudolf Steiner, On the Fifth Gospel GA 148, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA148/English/LAL1969/On5Gos_index.html
-Rudolf Steiner, Esoteric Christianity: The Gospel of St. John and Ancient Mysteries GA 68a, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/EsoJon_index.html
-Rudolf Steiner, The Four Sacrifices of Christ, GA 152, 1 June 1914, Basel, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/ForSac_index.html
-Rudolf Steiner, On The Gospel of St. John, GA 90b https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/OnJohn_index.html
-Rudolf Steiner, The Gospel of St. Luke, GA 114 https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA114/English/RSP1964/GosLuk_index.html
-Rudolf Steiner, The Gospel of St. Mark, GA 139 https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA139/English/AP1986/GosMrk_index.html
-Rudolf Steiner, The Gospel of St. Matthew, GA 123 https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA123/English/RSP1965/GoMatt_index.html
-Rudolf Steiner, Lucifer and Ahriman: https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/LucAhr_index.html
-Rudolf Steiner, Initiation, Eternity and the Passing Moment, GA 138, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA138/English/AP1980/IniPas_index.html
-Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts, Article 15, Heavenly History - Mythological History - Earthly History. The Mystery of Golgotha, https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_c15.html
-Rudolf Steiner, The Influences of Lucifer and Ahriman, GA 191, https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/InLuAr_index.html
-Rudolf Steiner, The Balance in the World and Man, Lucifer and Ahriman: https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/BalWld_cover.html
-Rudolf Steiner, The East in the Light of the West, GA 113, 6. Lucifer and Christ https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA113/English/RSPC1940/19090828p01.html
-Rudolf Steiner, The Mystery of Death, GA 159, 11. Christ's Relation to Lucifer and Ahriman — The Threefold Being https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA159/English/UNK2013/19150518p02.html
-Rudolf Steiner, The Cosmic Prehistoric Ages of Mankind, GA 184, II. Lucifer and Ahriman https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA184/English/UNK1965/19180921p01.html
-Rudolf Steiner, The Balance in the World and Man, Lucifer and Ahriman, GA 158 https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA158/English/RSPC1948/19141120p01.html
-Rudolf Steiner, Supersensible Knowledge, GA 55, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA055/English/AP1987/SuKnow_index.html
-Judith von Halle, The Representative of Humanity: Between Lucifer and Ahriman. Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Representative-Humanity-Between-Lucifer-Ahriman/dp/1855842394
-Search on keyword "Ahriman" in the Rudolf Steiner Archives: https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/search=mode?query=ahriman&mode=context.
-Search on keyword "Lucifer" in the Rudolf Steiner Archives: https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/search=mode?query=lucifer&mode=context