Ahrimanic beings and their influences

General positioning: Spiritual beings evolve along a normal developmental line, but as in any population there are cohorts that lag behind or develop ahead. The Luciferic beings developed from the Old Sun planetary stage onwards, see Schema FMC00.019, and play a key role in the development of Mankind. A polar opposite counterimpulse of the Luciferic stream and beings are the Ahrimanic beings.

In the solar system upto the higher spirit world, we have the normally developing spiritual beings, but also Luciferic, Ahrimanic, and Asuric beings. Together they constitute what is called evil with its many faces: the chance to err, lie, do harm, etc. On the higher budhi and nirvana planes evil does not exist.

Man is the battleground between the above mentioned classes of beings, and hence Man is torn between the Luciferic and Ahrimanic paths of development, or the right balanced development represented by the Christ.

• This is symbolized by the Representative of humanity, a statue by Rudolf Steiner.
• See also Schema FMC00.244 on the Human 'I' page, and Schema FMC00.238 on I-less human beings for schematic perspectives on how Man is currently placed between the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences both in one's life development (FMC00.244), and in an evolutionary context on Earth. (FMC00.238)

Aspects

• evolutionary positioning:
  • arising of the Ahrimanic impulse in the Atlantean epoch, hinted at in the Bible as 'the sons of the gods to take a liking to the daughters of men (1916-08-20-GA272)
  • Ahrimanic beings have a stronger and more powerfull will to evil than Luciferic beings. The Ahrimanic beings recruit from various hierarchies, from archangels upto Spirits of Form (1909-04-21-GA110)
  • Ahrimanic spirits have remained behind instead of growing into the First Hierarchy (of Cherubim, Seraphim, Thrones), they have only become Spirits of Wisdom (1921-03-11-GA203)
• Ahrimanic influence on Man
• incarnation of Ahriman
  • references by Rudolf Steiner in seven lectures in 1919 (1919-10-27-GA193, 1919-11-01/2-GA191, 1919-11-04-GA193, 1919-11-15-GA191, 1919-12-25/28-GA195) has been the subject of much study and speculation, see coverage by Boardman, Schroeder (EN) and Lazarides (FR), see also 'Further reading' section below
• the whole physical cosmos is mineral-material due to Ahrimanic influences, and due to Luciferic influences
• Ahrimanic elemental spirits of birth and death as a vehicle for destruction of civilization in the future (1917-10-06-GA177)
• names:
  • Ahriman (or Angra Mainyu, the name used by Zarathustra in the ancient Persian cultural age)
  • also known as Mephistopheles, Mammon, Beelzebub, and Angra-mainyush .. and Satan (tbc) (1908-09-11-GA106)
• influence of the Ahrimanic spiritual beings since the middle of the Atlantean epoch ( 1909-03-22-GA107; GA013, Ch 6 Part 4)
• Ahriman as
  • the God of hindrances
  • origin of fear
• Further reading, also see: Fall of the spirits of darkness (1917-GA177 on Ahrimanic beings on Man)

Illustrations

Schema FMC00.238 depicts various aspects related to the battle for the soul, the 'I' of Man on Earth. See more on I-less human beings.

• It shows how, in the second half of a planetary phase, the beings of the next phase already emerge, whilst the main beings go through what is called the 'human stage' at CoC level 4 (see Twelve Conditions of Consciousness, and schema FMC00.077A on Creation of solar system).
• Hence, already today the Future Jupiter men are emerging, and they can incarnate prematurely into human beings that are not evolved or strong enough.
• Furthermore it also depicts how backwards beings who are lagging the normal evolutionary pathon planetary phase N will continue their development in phase N+1, for example the backward angels live as Luciferic beings in Man on Earth from the Lemurian epoch onwards.
• Hence it illustrates how Man is really pressed between Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences, and how the various lecture references hang together.

Schema FMC00.352 shows the Spirit of Gravity as sketched by Rudolf Steiner (left) and as part of the Goetheanum window with the theme of the Will, where Man confronts this spirit. The window is left for personal contemplation, however notice the leave pattern, with leaves and plant as a symbol of the etheric, and the seven nodes on the right that may map to the seven chakras from which leaves hang downwards whereas Man on the left has a rising upwards feel.

Lecture coverage and references

1909-04-21-GA110 (error, GA110 between 12 and 18 April)

Ahrimanic beings have a stronger and more powerfull will to evil (than Luciferic beings).

The Ahrimanic beings recruit from various hierarchies, from archangels upto Spirits of Form (Powers).

Some stayed behind on the Old Sun, others on Old Moon;

• those that stayed behind on Old Sun can catch up their development on Old Moon,
• those that stayed behind on Old Moon can catch up on the Earth, and so on.

1912-GA017

(The Threshold of the Spiritual World) .. explains that viewed from the spiritual realm,

[w]e feel the physical world to be a kind of reflected image of the world of the spirit. Yet this image, although reflecting the events and beings of the spiritual world, does not merely do this, but also leads an independent life of its own, although it is only an image. It is as though a person were to look into a mirror, and as though his reflected image were to come to independent life whilst he was looking at it.

Moreover, we learn to know spiritual beings who bring about this independent life of the reflected image of the spiritual world. […]

[…] One class of these spiritual beings presents itself in such a way that through them we discover the reason why man experiences the physical world as substantial and material. We discover that everything material is in reality spiritual, and that the spiritual activity of these beings consolidates and hardens the spiritual element of the physical world into matter. […] And so we will call the beings who bring about materialisation the Ahrimanic beings.

1912-04-08-GA136

quote D

That spirit who carried the forces of his being from the center-point of the Sun into the periphery, was everywhere opposed by the abnormal spirits of the different hierarchies, which in their totality, form the kingdom of Ahriman. We shall, however, see that we must separate the kingdom of Ahriman from that of Lucifer with regard to the planetary system.

.. Zarathustra in his own way symbolically pointed out to his pupils this connection of the light of Ahura Mazdao, or Ormuzd, streaming out from the Sun, and of the kingdom of Ahriman embedded within it.

Zarathustra said:

• What proceeds from the Sun we represent symbolically through that which the Seraphim and Cherubim carry, i.e. through the light.
• That which is hurled against the light in opposition by all the abnormal spirits of the higher hierarchies, the notch thus hollowed out, we represent by what is accepted as darkness. (That is, an individual light imprisoned within, manifesting externally as darkness.)

That, Zarathustra represented as a kingdom of Angramanyu, or Ahriman.

1913-03-29-GA145

.. that these animals are not what they appear to be in maya, but are imaginations: that is, they are imaginations, conceived in a consciousness. Who, then, conceives the animals as imaginations? Whose imaginations are they? Animals, also plants in their outward forms — though plants less than animals, and least of all minerals — are imaginations of Ahriman. […] Thus, if we take the lion-tribe; the group-soul of this species belongs to the good spiritual beings, as it were, and the war of Ahriman against the good spiritual beings consists in his pressing their group-souls into the separate individual forms of the animals and imprinting upon them his own imaginations. The separate lion-forms, as they move about outwardly in the world, are forced out of the group-souls by Ahriman.

1915-10-24-GA254

We have heard that when man breaks through the veil of nature and penetrates into the world lying behind nature, he encounters Ahrimanic beings, beings intent upon destruction. In the World Order these beings are bitter enemies of man's earthly nature, so that if, through weakness, he allies himself with them — and this is possible, as I have indicated — he is allying himself with the enemies of man on Earth. That is a fact, and a certain relationship existing between the human being and the Cosmos does much to promote such an alliance.

These beings behind the veil of nature are highly intelligent. I have spoken of human intelligence, but these beings have their own kind of thinking and intelligence; they have feeling, although it is different from human feeling; they also have will, although it, too, is different from human will. They perform certain deeds which come to expression outwardly in manifestations of nature, but the essential substantiality of which lies behind the veil.

Now there is a remarkable affinity between something in man and the highest faculties of these beings. I will make this clear in the following way. When man crosses the Threshold of the spiritual world and approaches these beings, it may seem to him as if he were entering a veritable inferno, or whatever he conceives it to be. What matters is that he shall understand the experience aright. What will strike him most forcibly is the remarkable intelligence of these beings. For they are extraordinarily clever, extraordinarily wise. Their faculties of soul come to expression in this cleverness. But the soul-forces, the higher forces of these beings are all related to the forces of man's lower nature. Sensuous urges in man are, in these beings, the very forces which strike one as so significant. Thus there is a relationship between the lowest forces of man and the highest forces of these spiritual beings. That is why they strive to identify themselves with the lower forces in man. When a man enters this other world, instincts of destruction or hatred, or the like, arise in him, because these beings draw up what constitutes man's lower nature to their own higher nature, and with their higher forces work through man's lower forces. Nobody can ally himself with these beings without debasing his own nature, without greatly enhancing the strength of certain sensuous urges and impulses.

This is a fact of which special account must be taken, for it shows us unambiguously how we must picture our relation to the Cosmos. In our own human nature there are lower urges and impulses. But these lower urges are forces which represent lower impulses only in us, as human beings. These same urges are, in these spiritual beings, higher forces. But these beings are working all the time within us. They are always there within our nature. Our progress in Spiritual Science depends essentially upon our recognising them, knowing that they are there. This enables us to say: we have our higher forces and we have our lower forces, and, in addition, those forces which in us are lower forces but in these spiritual beings are higher forces. — This expands the duality of our higher and lower forces into a triad. We are already at the border of the Threshold of the spiritual world when, instead of the duality of our higher and lower forces, we recognise the triad.

Now as I said, in our age it is impossible to adopt the method employed by Father Antonius in dealing with Paul the Simpleton; it is also impossible to do many things in the way certain Orders have been wont to do them. — It amounts to this: the knowledge in its old form cannot be used. For if it were thus presented to men, it would bring about exactly what I have been speaking about. It would without any doubt arouse lower instincts in them.

For example, there actually exists in the world an Order which leads men to knowledge of these mysterious beings without any preparation. In all such men, instincts of destruction are aroused, so that this Order is actually responsible for sending human beings with destructive instincts out into the world. In a passage in one of his writings Nietzsche hinted at the existence of this Order without knowing the actual circumstances.

1916-08-20-GA272

in DE

.. and as we correctly place the Luciferic temptation [or seduction], which the Bible presents to us, into the Lemurian time, so we must look for the Ahriman in a place of the Bible, which has not become clear, because the Ahrimanic secret is not yet revealed in the Bible in the same way as the Luciferic secret. Just as looking for the Luciferic secret in the Lemurian epoch, we have to put the Ahrimanic secret into the Atlantean epoch. There the Bible has only a hint, not such a clear, widely shining picture as that of the paradise temptation. The Bible only says that the impulses that came into the Earth's existence caused 'the sons of the gods to take a liking to the daughters of men'. This is only an indication of what comes in as an ahrimanic impulse.

see also FMC00.480 and Streams of Abel and Cain#1905-06-10-GA093 and Streams of Abel and Cain#1910-01-25-GA118

1917-10-06-GA177

The elemental spirits of birth and death are, of course, messengers of Ahriman. The iron necessity of world evolution forces the gods to use Ahriman's messengers to control birth and death.

When they ask the elemental spirits to act on their behalf they do not allow the powers of these messengers to enter the physical world.

But as civilization goes into its decline, from the fifth post-Atlantean age onwards, this element has to come in again, so that catastrophe may be brought about. Human beings must use these powers themselves.

Ahriman's messengers are therefore an iron necessity; they have to bring about the destruction that will lead to the next step forward in civilization. This is a terrible truth, but it is so. And nothing will avail where this truth is concerned but to get to know it and to see it clearly.

1919-11-01-GA191

as Lazarides noticed (link in FR), is a good example of translation issues once one gets into important details, hereby a free translation in english from his note on the key sentences

[Ahriman's incarnation]

before that even a part of the third millenium has elapsed

[Lucifer's incarnation]

A true incarnation of Lucifer took place during the third millenium before Christ [eine wirkliche Inkarnation des Luzifer im 3. vorchristlichen Jahrtausend

One cannot understand the full meaning of the MoG when one ignores the fact that it has been preceeded by an incarnation of Lucifer, not quite 3000 years earlier [nicht ganz dreitausend Jahre]

1921-03-11-GA203

Now when the Earth came into existence, there was the question:

Will Man now remain simply an inseparable member in the great organism which mounts to its eighth globe (CoL), the great organism of the Elohim, or will he develop to freedom and become independent?

[editor: as example illustration of translations causing error and confusion the original translation had eight sphere here!]

This question of whether men should become independent was decided through a most definite cosmic act. In respect of our will-system psychically and our metabolic-limb system we are indeed parts of the Elohim, there we are asleep. There we are not separate. We are separated, severed, in respect of our head-system.

[Positioning - Luciferic backward beings]

What occasioned this severance?

It came about through the fact that certain spiritual beings who by a normal evolution would also have become Spirits of Form (SoF or Elohim) did not become SoF, they remained behind at the stage of archai or archangels. .. they are beings who, if they had advanced normally, could have been SoF. But they did not advance normally, they stayed behind. They belong .. to the same sphere to which the angels, the archangels, belong; but they are not the same nature as the angels or archangels or archai.

They are actually of the same nature as the Spirits of Form, but have remained behind in their evolution and have fallen into the hosts of angels and archangels, manifesting themselves in the same sphere.

[editor: underline to highlight scope H3; and note SoF remained behind not just to archai but also archangels, so this can or is to be read that 'falling behind' is not just one level in the hierarchies]

Their activity has had to confine itself; they do not work upon the whole Man, nor on what Man has pre-eminently acquired upon Earth, the metabolic-limb system, but they work upon the head-system of Man.

I will draw here the head-system (see diagram, rose) as the counter-pole of the will-system, the metabolic-limb system. Here the great cosmic organism of the SoF is not active, but actively at work are the backward SoF whom I will draw so (yellow), working in this sphere together with angeloi, archangels and archai. These beings, the laggard SoF, are actually opponents of the other SoF. The other SoF have separated Man off from themselves, but they would not have been able to give him freedom because they have an influence on the whole Man.

On the other hand, the laggard Spirits of Form restrict themselves to the head and gave Man reason, intellect. They are essentially the Luciferic spirits and as you may see from what has been said, they are givers-of-will on a lower level.

The SoF/Elohim give will to the whole Man; they give will to the head. The head would otherwise be filled only with will-less concepts. Concepts only become rational by being penetrated with will and becoming the power of judgment. That has come about through these spirits.

You will perhaps realise from what has now been depicted from a certain aspect that one must not apply cut-and-dried ideas when one considers cosmic opposing forces. One must not simply treat the Luciferic spirits with scorn, turn a cold shoulder .. but one must be clear that these spirits are of an essentially higher order than Man himself. In fact, they are not actually opponents of Man, they are opponents of the Elohim because they have remained behind in evolution and confine themselves to the human head.

If you picture what these spirits would really attain if they had an entirely free hand with human evolution one comes to the following. When the Earth came into existence, there were the SoF risen to their high rank while the others had stayed behind at earlier stages of evolution. These are in this way the bearers of what was pre-eminently imprinted into Man from the past, from the Old Saturn, Old Sun, Old Moon existence, the bearers of what is to be implanted into Man of the sublime past which we went through in the three former metamorphoses of evolution.

Since they have remained behind and set themselves in opposition, as it were, to what the Elohim/SoF purposed for the human beings of the Earth we can say of them: These beings who are really Spirits of Form but who meet us in the spiritual world among the ranks of the angels, archangels and archai imprint into man all that would like to keep him from descending to a complete earth existence. They would really like to keep him above the mineral kingdom. They would prefer man to experience only what is in the sprouting plant world, what lives in the animal world and in the actually human world. But they do not want him to come down to the dead mineral world. And in particular they desire above all that he should have no contact with our technics. That enrages these Spirits. They would like to keep man in a spiritual sphere and not let him descend to the earth. In this way they are opponents of the Elohim, because the Elohim, who have made man solidly firm in the dust of the earth, as the Bible expresses it, have drawn him down into the mineral kingdom. But freedom, the freedom which man is to experience in the earthly element, actually does not depend on just those Spirits who would keep him free of the earthly.

[Introducing and positioning Ahrimanic beings]

Now, by means of the Elohim Man has been established in the terrestrial mineral world and this has enabled still other spirits to gain access. Note carefully the difference between the spirits of whom I have just spoken and the spirits of whom I have still to speak.

• Those of whom I spoke earlier are in the spheres where the Angels, the Archangels and the Archai are to be found. We find them among the hosts of these Spirits and it is they who bring flexibility, mobile reasoning, into the human head, the activity of phantasy, art, and so on. The[se spirits] .. have been present throughout evolution, they have only stayed behind; they were not able to share in it but they are backward Elohim, present in the cosmos with the Elohim, only not willing to let Man come quite down to Earth. However Man did come down to Earth through the Elohim.
• But because man has been pressed down into the mineral kingdom, because the Elohim have given him an independence which is no full independence, for he experiences it asleep in his will and metabolic system, because of this, other spirits have secured admittance. They smuggle themselves, as it were, into evolution .. from outside came other Spirits. We find them if we direct the occult gaze to the hosts of the Cherubim, Seraphim, Thrones. Of the spirits actually belonging to this order some again have remained behind. They have not entered these hosts, they have only become Spirits of Wisdom (SoW). One can say of them that they would really like to begin quite a new creation on the earth, they would like to preserve a thorough earth-man. He has been incorporated in the mineral kingdom through the Elohim and they would like to take this as a beginning and from then on carry evolution further. They would like to wipe out the whole past; “Oh dear, the past,” they say, “that no longer bothers us; man has come down into the mineral kingdom, now let us tear him away from the Elohim, they do not need him, let us tear him away from the Elohim and begin a new evolution. Let him be the original member and then live on and on!”. Those are the Ahrimanic Beings. They want to expunge the whole of the past and leave man with merely what he has gained directly on the Earth.

You see how the Elohim take a middle stand; they would like to link the past with the future.

• The spirits whom I described before would like to permeate man through and through with his lofty past.
• The other spirits want to wipe out the entire past, take away from the Elohim what Man is out of the dust of the Earth and make a new beginning, make evolution only begin from the earth onwards, Away with this “balloon” of Old Saturn, Old Sun, Old Moon. None of that is to have any meaning for Man. A new evolution is to begin with the Earth; this is to be the new Saturn, then a new Sun comes, and so on. That is the ideal of these Beings. They break into man's unconsciousness, into the will-life, the metabolic-limb-life, that is where they make their attack. They are that race among the spiritual beings who want to give Man a special interest for the mineral-material, an interest in what is externally mechanistic. They would particularly like to destroy everything that the Earth has brought over from the Old Moon. They would like the animal world to disappear, the physical human world to disappear, the plant world to disappear, and of the mineral world only the physical laws to remain. Above all they would like human beings to be removed from the earth and to form a new Saturn out of machines, a new world purely of machines. In this way, the world should go on; that is actually their ideal. In the domain of external science it is their ideal to reduce everything to matter, to mechanise.

[Religion]

In the sphere of religion these two polarities are plainly to be perceived.

In former times, as you know from other lectures that I have given here, men were more exposed to the Spirits of the first kind who work on the head-nature. Even in the time of Plato you find that if one spoke of the eternity of the human soul, it was especially of the pre-natal existence and what one actually remembered of this previous existence.

That ceased gradually the further we come Into the Middle Ages, until the Church entirely prohibited a belief in pre-existence. Today this belief is held by the Church to be heresy.

Thus on the one hand there is a tendency to the knowledge of pre-existence, on the other hand the Ahrimanised Church which continues Man's life only beyond his death and makes his future existence merely the fruit of what he is here on earth.

You have that as an article of faith - what a human being experiences here in physical life he carries with him through death. His soul always looks back to that. The whole succeeding life is actually only the continuation of what was here between his birth and death. That is precisely the same as what the Ahrimanic Spirits want. This is just the important question that lies before mankind today:

Shall the Ahrimanic faith go on flourishing as if there were only a life after death, or shall the consciousness of pre-existence re-awaken and shall it then come to a union of pre-existence and post-existence through a centre balance?

That is what Spiritual Science must seek, the Christ-principle, the equilibrium between the Luciferic-Ahrimanic — on the one side pre-existence and post-existence on the other. That is the weighty problem of the present day, namely, that after humanity has succumbed for a time to the Ahrimanic belief in a mere post-existence, we should unite with it the consciousness, the knowledge, of pre-existence, in order to come to a conception of full humanity

1922-05-28-GA212

If one has in mind their physical aspect only, when speaking about the four elements of earth, water, air and fire, then it makes no difference whether one uses these terms or prefers the more recent ones of solid, liquid, aeriform bodies and conditions of heat. When they are referred to today, all one has in mind is how the physical substances within them are either combined or mixed, or else separated. However, it must be stressed that everything of a solid, earthen nature has as its foundation an elemental spirituality. Today's ‘enlightened’ people may laugh when reminded that older folks used to see gnomes in everything earthy. However, when knowledge is no longer obtained by means of combining abstract, logical thoughts, but by uniting ourselves through our thinking with the world rhythm, then we shall rediscover the elemental beings contained in everything of a solid earthy nature. The outstanding characteristic of these elemental begins dwelling in solid earth is cleverness, cunning, slyness — in fact, a one-sidedly developed intellect. Thus, in the solid earth element live spiritual beings of an elemental kind who are very much more clever than human beings. Even a person of extreme astuteness intellectually is no match for these beings who, as super-sensible entities, live in the realm of solid earth. One could say that just as man consists of flesh and blood so do these beings consist of cleverness, of super-cleverness. Another of their peculiarities is that they prefer to live in multitudes. When one is in a position to find out how many of these astute beings a suitable earthy object contains, then one can squeeze them out as if from a sponge — in a spiritual sense, of course — and out they flow in an endless stream.

1923-10-07-GA229

These things are naturally not apparent in a crude outward form, but in a subtle, intimate way they do occur. The growing plants draw water and carbonic acid from the limestone in the soil. But this very loss signifies for the limestone an inner access of living activity, and it acquires on this account an extraordinary power of attraction for the Ahrimanic beings. Whenever spring approaches, their hopes revive. Apart from this, they have nothing particular to hope for from the realm of outer nature, because they are really able to pursue their activities only within human beings. But when spring draws near, the impression which the spring-limestone makes on them gives them the idea that after all they will be able to spread their dragon-nature through nature at large. Finding the spring-limestone full of life, they hope to be able to draw in also the astral element from the cosmos in order to ensoul the limestone — to permeate it with soul.

So, when March is near, a truly clairvoyant observer of nature can witness a remarkable drama. He sees how everywhere the hopes of the Ahrimanic beings play over the Earth like an astral wind, and how the Ahrimanic beings strive with all their might to call down an astral rain, as it were. If they were to succeed, then in the summer this astral rain would transform the Earth into an ensouled being — or at least partly, as far as the limestone extends. And then, in autumn, the Earth would feel pain at every footfall on its surface.

This endeavour, this illusion, lays hold of the Ahrimanic beings every spring, and every spring it is brought to nothing. From a human standpoint one might say — surely by now the Ahrimanic beings must have become clever enough to give up these hopes. But the world is not just as human beings imagine it to be. The fact is that every spring the Ahrimanic beings have new hope of being able to transform the Earth into an ensouled, living being through an astral rain from above, and every year their illusions are shattered.

But Man is not free from danger in the midst of these illusions. He consumes the nature-products which flourish in this atmosphere of hopes and illusions; and it is naïve to suppose that the bread he eats is merely corn, ground and baked. In outer nature these hopes are shattered, but the Ahrimanic beings long all the more to achieve their aim in man, who has a soul already. Thus every spring man is in danger of falling a victim — in subtle, intimate ways — to the Ahrimanic beings. In spring he is much more exposed to all the Ahrimanic workings in the cosmos than he is during other times of the year.

But now, if we direct our gaze upwards, to where the elemental beings of the Earth ascend, where they unite themselves with the cloud-formations and acquire an inner activity which is subject to planetary life, something else can be seen. As March approaches, and down below the Ahrimanic beings are at work, the elemental beings — who are wholly spiritual, immaterial, although they live within the material Earth — are transported up into the region of vapour, air and warmth. And all that goes on up there, among the active elemental beings, is permeated by Luciferic beings. Just as the Ahrimanic beings nourish their hopes and experience their illusions down below, so the Luciferic beings experience their hopes and illusions up above.

If we look more closely at the Ahrimanic beings, we find they are of etheric nature. And it is impossible for these beings, who are really those cast down by Michael, to expand in any other way than by trying to gain domination over the Earth through the life and desire that fill the limestone in spring.

The Luciferic beings up above stream through and permeate all the activities that have risen up from the Earth. They are of a purely astral nature. Through everything that begins to strive upwards in spring, they gain the hope of being able to permeate their astral nature with the etheric, and to call forth from the Earth an etheric sheath in which they could then take up their habitation.

Hence we can say [editor - see BBD]: The Ahrimanic beings try to ensoul the Earth with astrality (reddish); the Luciferic beings try to take up the etheric into their own being (blue with yellow).

When now in spring the plants begin to sprout, they assimilate and draw in Hence the carbonic acid is active in a higher region than it is in winter; it rises into the realm of the plants, and there it comes under the attraction of the Luciferic beings. While the Ahrimanic beings strive to ensoul the living limestone with a kind of astral rain, the Luciferic beings try to raise up a sort of carbonic acid mist or vapour from the Earth (blue, yellow). If they were to succeed, human beings on Earth would no longer be able to breathe. The Luciferic beings would draw up all that part of man, his etheric nature, which is not dependent on physical breathing, and by uniting themselves with it they would be able to become etheric beings, whereas they are now only astral beings. And then, with the extinction of all human and animal life on Earth, up above there would be a sheath of etheric angel-beings. That is what the Luciferic spirits strive and hope for, when the end of March comes on. They hope to change the whole Earth into a delicate shell of this kind, wherein they, densified through the etheric nature of man, could carry on their own existence.

If the Ahrimanic beings could realise their hopes, the whole of humanity would gradually be dissolved into the Earth: the Earth would absorb them. Finally there would arise out of the Earth — and that is Ahriman's intention — a single great entity into which all human beings would be merged: they would be united with it.

But the transition to this union with the Earth would consist in this: Man in his whole organism would become more and more like the living limestone. He would blend the living limestone with his organism and become more and more calcified. In this way he would transmute his bodily form into one that looked quite different — a sclerotic form with something like bat's wings and a head like this. This form would then be able to merge gradually into the earthly element, so that the whole Earth, according to the Ahrimanic idea, would become a living Earth-being.

1924-04-21-GA316

Why is dead matter called Ahrimanic?

Why is the quartz crystal an earthly thing, retaining its form really in a very pedantic, rigid way? The quartz gets its form from an inner force and if you break it apart with a hammer the single parts always retain the tendency to be six-sided prisms, self-contained, six-sided pyramids. This tendency is present. You can as little rid the quartz of this tendency as you can get pedantry out of a man who is pedantic by nature. You may atomize a pedantic person, but he will still remain pedantic. The quartz does not allow itself to come to the point where the cosmos can do anything with its forces. Therefore the quartz has no life. If the quartz could be pulverized to such a degree that in the single fragments it no longer had the tendency to be governed, in the single fragment, by its own forces, something living and cosmic would grow out of the quartz. This is what happens in the formation of a seed. In the seed, matter is driven out to such a degree that the cosmos can intervene with its etheric forces.

.

The world must be seen as a perpetual entering into chaos and again an emergence from chaos. What is contained in quartz also came at one time from the cosmos, but it remained at a standstill, has become Ahrimanic. It no longer exposes itself to the cosmic forces. As soon as anything enters into the realm of the living it must always pass through chaos.

Ahrimanic elementals in technology

Ernst Hagemann on "Activities of ahrimanically influenced elemental beings in technology".

Lecture references are Schmidt numbers.

In the previous section, we became acquainted with elemental beings who are necessary servants of the creator powers in the realm of birth and death, and who also have the task of developing technology and of leading our modern civilization to its destruction. The following shows the manifold ways in which these elemental beings work in technological processes. A three-stage process is involved here. In the first stage, the raw materials which are necessary for technological processes are torn from their natural surroundings and broken down. Rudolf Steiner describes this as follows.

"When we break up nature, beginning with minerals, we bring about a certain feeling of pleasure on the part of the spiritual elemental beings in it...In what occurs, the important thing is that we drive the elemental spirits which belong to the sphere of the regularly progressing hierarchies out of the kingdoms of nature which they hold together. There are elemental ("very useful") spiritual beings everywhere in nature. When we disintegrate nature, we press the spiritual kingdom of nature-spirits out of it. This is what is continually happening during the first stage. We break up and pulverize material nature and thereby free the nature spirits. We lift them out of the sphere assigned to them by the Jehovah gods, into a realm where they can flutter around freely, where they are no longer bound to their original assigned dwelling places. Therefore we can also call this first stage the expulsion of the nature spirits.

In the second stage we put together again what we have taken from nature and broken down, in accordance with the laws we have discovered. When we make a machine or a complex of machines from raw materials, we plant certain spiritual beings in the thing we construct. The thing we make is by no means devoid of spirit.

At the third cultural stage, we could say that the effect technology has on us is that we stuff ourselves full of ahrimanic spirits - we really stuff ourselves completely with them. This is how it looks from the inside. Now if we turn away from this occult side of modern life and look back to the days when a human being slept in such a way that he was only separated from nature by walls permeable to the spirit, when he worked in nature during the day in contact with the regular spirits from the Jehovah hierarchy, we have to say that at that time, human souls-the I and the astral body-brought spiritual things from nature into their physical and etheric bodies, which had a stimulating effect on their inner soul life. This is becoming increasingly rare today"(2994)

In the following words Rudolf Steiner describes the experiences of our I and astral body during sleep in a moving motor vehicle, and how these experiences are brought back in a befuddling way into our physical and etheric bodies upon awaking.

• "Because of certain 1in^-übtions which cosmic laws naturally impose on us, in a case like this our I and astral body are mainly very dose to our physical and etheric bodies, so that when we're asleep in a moving train coach, our I and astral body are basically right inside the braking, rolling, and noise which is connected with the wheels and the machinery of the train, etc.. The same is true if we're on a modern steamship. We are inside everything that is going on around us there. We are inside these truly not very musical experiences in our environment, and one only needs to have gone through the very first steps in initiation to notice upon waking how the ego and astral body returning to the physical and etheric bodies bring with them what they experienced while they were being squeezed through the machinery the moment before they woke up...One really brings in the worst disorder, the most awful racket-rattling„ squeaking, creaking-And if one has a sensitive feeling for this, its effect upon one's etheric body is as if-this, of course, is a crude comparison, but you will not mis-understand it-as if one's physical body were being crushed and cut into pieces. This is an entirely neces-sary accompaniment to modern life." (2994)

Rudolf Steiner elaborates on this theme as follows:

• "When we sleep, our soul merges with all the mechanisms which we ourselves have constructed. But a mechanism we have constructed is something quite different from the nature around us which was built up by nature spirits. For example, when we are outside in the woods, where everythirtg has been built up by nature spirits, we are in an entirely different environment from when we are around mechanisms which we have constructed. For what are we doing when we take things from nature and put them together in the machines and apparatus which we use in everyday life? We are not just putting pieces of matter together. Every time we put pieces of matter together, we are giving a demonic ahrimanic servant an opportunity to unite with the machine. We give a starting point to the ahrimanic demonic elemental spirits and servants in every machine and mechanism, and in everything that belongs to present-day civilization. When we live around machines, we are living to-gether with demonic ahrimanic elemental spirits. We  become permeated by them; we not only become permeated by the squeaking, creaking mechanisms, but also by something that is extremely destructive for our soul and spirit...We should notice and understand that our age is characterized that we are permeating the environment with demonic beings more and more. We are increasingly dealing with things that are mechanizing our civilization." (3009)

A few years later, Rudolf Steiner made the following comments on this same theme.

• "A cultural world which is filled with ugly machines, smoke, and ugly chimneys, and which lacks beauty, is a world in which people do not want to make a connection with their pre-earthly existence. It is a world that tears them out of their pre-earthly existence. One can truly say-and not just by analogy-that a completely industrialial city is a delightful abode for all the demons who would like to make man forget that he had a pre-earthly existence in the spiritual world." (5142)

Finally, we have indications by Rudolf Steiner about the ahrimanically influenced elemental beings who will become increasingly active in technology, and the fact that the "very useful" elemental beings will lose their particular connection with plant growth.

• "Where Man does not yet have or cannot have an influence, and where elemental spirits and nature spirits still do, present-day Man does with respect to social life-there one still has the sacraments. Although people do not realize this yet, there are very  strong ahrimanic impulses in individual human beings today. I repeat: people do not realize this yet. These ahrimanic impulses are trying to snatch away the sacramental influence of certain elementary nature spirits upon earth evolution. When modern technol­ogy has developed far enough to be able to generate artificial warmth over certain surfaces, one will snatch away plant growth and especially the growth of grains from the nature spirits and elementary spirits. This will happen. I am not criticizing it, for it is something that will necessarily occur in the future. One will not only make greenhouses or heated rooms for smaller numbers of plants to grow in the winter, but one will heat entire grain fields, so that the grain will be torn away from the laws which work down from the cosmos. lt will be able to grow at other times than those times when it only grows by its own nature with the intimate help of the nature spirits and elemental spirits. This will bring about the same degradation for plant seeds as has happened to the sacramental nature of conception and birth when they became spread out over the entire year." (3318)

Incarnation of Ahriman

1919-11-04-GA191

To these two incarnations, the Lucifer incarnation in ancient times and the incarnation of the Christ which gives the earth its meaning, a third incarnation will be added in a future not so very far distant.

And the events of the present time are already moving in such a way as to prepare for it.

Of the incarnation of Lucifer at the beginning of the third millennium B.C., we must say: through Lucifer, human beings have acquired the faculty of using the organs of their intellect, of their power of intellectual discernment.

What is now in preparation and will quite definitely come to pass on earth in a none-too-distant future is an actual incarnation of Ahriman.

As you know, since the middle of the fifteenth century we have been living in an era in which it behooves humankind to come more and more into possession of the full power of consciousness.

It is of the very greatest importance that people should approach the coming incarnation of Ahriman with full consciousness of this event.

The incarnation of Lucifer could be recognized only by the prophetic insight of the priests of the Mysteries.

People were also very unconscious of what the incarnation of Christ and the event of Golgotha really signified.

But they must live on toward the incarnation of Ahriman with full consciousness amid the shattering events which will occur on the physical plane.

Amid the perpetual stresses of war and other tribulations of the immediate future, the human mind will become very inventive in the domain of physical life.

And through this very growth of inventiveness in physical life—which cannot be averted in any way or by any means—the bodily existence of a human individuality in whom Ahriman can incarnate will become possible and inevitable.

… A task of humankind during the next phase of civilization will be to live toward the incarnation of Ahriman with such alert consciousness that this incarnation can actually serve to promote a higher, spiritual development, inasmuch as through Ahriman himself humanity will become aware of what can, or shall we say, can not be achieved by physical life alone.

… People must learn from spiritual science to find the key to life and so be able to recognize and learn to control the currents leading toward the incarnation of Ahriman.

It must be realized that Ahriman will live among people on the Earth, but that in confronting him people will themselves determine what they may learn from him, what they may receive from him.

This, however, they will not be able to do unless, from now onward, they take control of certain spiritual and also unspiritual currents which otherwise are used by Ahriman.

… To understand the whole process of which I have been speaking, it is essential to recognize the character of certain currents and influences— spiritual or the reverse.

… Do you not see the continually growing number of people at the present time who do not want any science of the spirit, any knowledge of the spiritual? Do you not see how numerous are the people to whom the old forces of religion no longer give any inner stimulus?

Whether they go to church or not is a matter of complete indifference to large numbers of human beings nowadays.

… But, you see, human beings as we live on Earth are veritably a unity. Our spiritual nature cannot be separated from our physical nature; both work together as a unity between birth and death. And even if human beings do not receive the spiritual through their faculties of soul, the spiritual takes effect, nevertheless. Since the last third of the nineteenth century the spiritual has been streaming around us; it is streaming into earthly evolution. The spiritual is there in very truth—only people are not willing to receive it

1917-11-18

Moreover, people who wish to take over Christ's sphere of influence will actually call this Ahrimanic being 'Christ'. It will be essential to learn to distinguish the true Christ, who will not appear again in the flesh, from this other being. This is a very real battle, not an affair of abstract ideas - a real battle to set another being in the place of Christ for the whole of the rest of the Postatlantean epoch, some 6000 years.

1919-10-27

It depends on how human beings are prepared, whether they can resist this. Many people will in any case scoff at the whole idea of such an incarnation, which is just one of the means Ahrimanic powers use to hide the reality. It helps to know the means through which he works. One is the mathematical-mechanistic illusion of the universe held by science. Another is to foment everything that breaks people into small groups, especially the impulse towards nationalism. But his best means of triumph is to believe the half-truth that the Gospels give the whole of Christianity.

1919-11-15

When Ahriman does incarnate, he will, if not prevented, establish a great occult school which would make people magically into seers, though prematurely and without the effort otherwise necessary. But the clairvoyance of each person would be different, confusion would prevail, and constant strife would be inevitable. People could survive, but all culture would be overthrown.  

Related pages

• Ahrimanic influence on Man
• Spiritual Hierarchies
• Evil
• Christ Module 14 – the counterforces: Lucifer, Ahriman and Sorat
• I-less human beings
• Mineral plant like spiders
  

References and further reading

• Hans-Werner Schroeder:
  • three articles in 1978-79 in German and in 1979-1980 in English - in PDF: Ahriman and Sorat articles
• Christian Lazarides: 'Une contradiction qui passe inapercue' (2020)
  • Incarnation Ahriman - DE source extract reference with comments in FR