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THE ORDER OF THE UNIVERSE.

Chapter Three.

Lucifer.

'He's a great humanitarian, He's a great philanthropist.

He knows where you like to be touched, He knows, honey, how you like to be kissed.

When he puts both arms around you, You can feel the tender touch of the beast,

I hear sometimes Satan comes as a Man of Peace,

Oh, yeah!'

"Man of Peace" by Bob Dylan, ('Infidels' CD, 1983).

At the end of part two of this discussion I introduced three spiritual beings and their influences active in the life of the human being. I will now go into more deeply into a discussion of Lucifer.

It is significant that what follows places a real demand on ourselves to place squarely before our souls the statement - "Everything I know is wrong" (with a tip of the hat to The Firesign Theatre, who had made great LP called "Everything You Know Is Wrong" back in the early 1970's.).

This must be taken seriously as a beginning, to wipe away the slate of our pre-conceived notions, to clear away our prejudices and hubris. I have quoted the following, from Rudolf Steiner, elsewhere in The Alchemycal Pages, "Humanity has been obliged to entangle itself in a web of error, so that, through having to disentangle ourselves, we may become free and independent." This statement must be weighed in all its gravity as an accurate and truthful description of where humanity now finds itself. A humanity enmeshed in a web of error, floundering in a Sargasso Sea of self-deception and the hubris to not recognize that our modern culture simply does not have the concepts or tools to be able to even begin to solve the problems of our times. This is because the problems of our times are the symptoms of the concepts and tools developed by our modern culture!

And examples abound. Just this week (12/13/99) we have had the FDA public hearings on genetically engineered foods in the Bay Area. There have been two previous hearings and the transcript to the one held in Chicago is available on the FDA website. Here is what the FDA says about its mission:

Our mission is public health protection. That is our mission. That is our goal. We carry that mission out using sound science based policies. That is essential to our policy for biotechnology, as well as to other products that we regulate.

FDA has authority over foods that are in commerce in the United States and foods that are imported and this includes both foods that are used for human food and feeds that are derived from crops that are used as animal feed. We, of course, are here to ensure that the food supply is safe and wholesome for the public. That is our primary mission.

All very well and good. However, in the 50 years existence of the FDA is there any evidence that the public's health has been "protected"? It is evident that in the last fifty years the health of the public has significantly deteriorated, as everyone can attest by their own experience. So, this mission has been a failure on every count. But the rub is that the 'sound science based policies' are not sound at all, because the 'science' itself is not sound, is wanting of any understanding of what is health and what is "wholesome food".

This dissertation on Lucifer and Ahriman seeks to clarify the spiritual reasons why our culture is so enmeshed in error and self-deception, to illuminate the sources of the concepts and tools lying behind our modern culture.

Lucifer.

I will begin with a more detailed description of Lucifer, with the next instalment being on Ahriman. (I need to point out here that the two terms Satan and the Devil used in The Bible do not refer to the same spiritual being. Satan refers to Ahriman and the Devil to Lucifer.) Later instalments will be descriptions and accounts of Asuras and Sorat, the "Sun-Demon".

As I described in the previous instalment, Lucifer began to ray his forces in to the human soul, the astral body, during the "Lemurian" Epoch. Lucifer also incarnated in human form in the third millennium BC in China (as an aside here, it must be recognized that macrobiotic principles and concepts are the fruits of Luciferic wisdom); that is to say, he incarnated as a being of flesh-and-blood and was the source of the profound wisdom and insight of the whole of ancient civilization spread over the world at that time. The deep insight into nature and life that came from this source is known as "paganism" and while it can be said to have been a lofty wisdom filled with sublime concepts, it cannot be said to have contained a specific individual ethos, whereby a human individual would be stimulated to individual moral action. It was in order to counter this one-sidedness, Christ incarnated in the body of Jesus of Nazareth approximately three thousand years after Lucifer's incarnation, in order to give the impulses for the moral education of Europe and later America.

Lucifer means "Bringer of Light". He has rayed his influences in the human astral body since the Lemurian epoch and has since then has continually had a profound influence, both for good and ill. How does this luciferic influence act upon us? Due to its "raying" into the astral body it works upon all three 'bodies' of the human being - the astral, etheric and physical.

Due to Lucifer's influence on the astral body there arises selfishness, on the etheric body, lying and falsehood, and on the physical body, sickness and death.

It is a profound mystery of human and earthly evolution that sickness and death is a reality which is the consequence of the luciferic influence on the human constitution. However, is was not that these luciferic influences lead as a direct consequence to sickness and death. It was rather, that if nothing had been down to counterbalance the luciferic influences raying powerfully into the human astral body and therefore resulting inexorably in lying, deceit, error and egotism, human beings would have no means to resist or temper the luciferic influences. Thus it was the action of the spiritual hirearchies that have to do with the wise guidance of world evolution who introduced death, illness, suffering, old age and pain into human evolution.

Thus it is very important to understand that illness and pain are the consequences inevitably arising out of the human being allowing the luciferic influences to work unhindered in the human soul. It is therefore important to keep in mind that illness and pain are BENEFICIAL in there fundamental intent - which is to remind us or bring to our attention that we experience pain and illness to the degree our manner of living and thinking and doing is the result of the lucferic impulse.

Here, we must remember that the essential consequence of the luciferic powers acting in the human soul was we were thrust deeper into the material realm prematurely. Thus Rudolf Steiner's statement to the effect that the pole between human beings allowing the luciferic impulses to work untempered in the human souls and the consequent development of pain and illness is always and at all times kept in balance by the"wise guidance of the world". The deeper and more insistent the materialistic tendencies of a culture, the more there will be illness and pain.

It must be always be kept in mind that the workings of the "opposing powers" (Lucifer, Ahriman and the Asuras being those spiritual beings who wish to thwart the proper destiny of humanity and the earth) work to their best advantage when human beings are completely unaware of their existence; this suits their purposes admirably.

This is an important point. If we ask ourselves, what would have occurred had Lucifer NOT rayed his influences powerfully into the human astral body? If this had been the case, human beings would never have lost sight of their relationships and discourse with the Gods, which we DID have in the Atlantean Epoch, and the records of human beings discourses and activities with the Gods are recounted and recorded in the myths of all cultures. In the case of the Luciferic influence NOT raying into the human astral body, then the consequence is we would have not experienced pain, illness, suffering, old age or death, and we would have continued to be surely guided along a very different path of evolution. However, at the same time, we would never have had the possibility of developing freedom. Thus we owe it to Lucifer's influence that we even have the possibility of freedom at all.

As I have said, it is entirely agreeable to Lucifer that he slips into us without us being aware of his presence. So, what would have been the consequence if the "wise spiritual guidance' of human beings had not done what they in fact did, which was to make sickness, pain and suffering the balancing factor to the luciferic forces? We would have developed the positive attributes of Lucifer's influence of a passion for noble, lofty ideals, creative artistic genius as well as the tendency toward lust, desire, error and sin, without having to suffer the consequences. We would have become so luciferically one-sided that the ultimate consequence would have been human beings refusing to have any interest in other human beings, so content in their own self-absorbed narcissism they would have conceived of a profound distaste for the earth and everything connected to it. To the extent they would be glad to fly off into the lofty heights of the luciferically conceived "heavenly paradise", to live there forever satiating their passions and desires, where, of course, Lucifer would be more than happy to be their congenial host.

Thus, it was the influences of the "good gods" who brought it about that sickness and death is the consequence of the luciferic influence. In regard of sickness, it is illuminating to understand that sickness is the consequence of humanity being so "thrust" into the material plane as a result of the raying into the human soul of Lucifer's influence that the true understanding of the divine and spiritual origins of humanity gradually became lost and forgotten. Thus, today, the understanding of humanity's origin is conceived of as totally materialistic, with "life" being conceived of as arising out of some sort of "Big Bang Theory", as if the human organism was some kind of elaborate unified chemico-physical machine functioning according to the laws of physics and chemistry.

This is the epitome of the materialistic delusion and it is THIS that is the fundamental cause of illness. In so many words, the longer and the more people believe in this "machine" explanation of human life (the genetic basis of life, the chemical basis of emotions, the brain is nothing but a computer "made out of meat" and similarly grotesque ideas) and behaviour then the greater and more widespread will be the manifestation of disease - both infectious diseases and degenerative disease. It is, however, the good gods who are responsible for this consequence, and they keep the balance such that it is a perfectly balanced scale - on the one side, belief in the materialistic delusion (the result of luciferic influence) by human beings, and on the other, the consequent illnesses. It is therefore crucial that people generally become more acutely aware of the influences of the "opposing powers" in their lives if there is to be any possible hope for a healthy future - personally, socially, ecologically, economically etc.

So, to go into more detail on Lucifer's activities in the human being (in the next installment I will detail Ahriman's activities.) As I have related in an earlier instalment, the human being is three-fold - body, soul, spirit, and another way of looking at the three-foldedness is Lucifer-Christ- Ahriman.

Thus, the human being is, from this perspective, made up of of these three, and the key point, totally in keeping with macrobiotic principles, is to keep the influences of Lucifer and Ahriman in balance (although it must NOT be assumed that Lucifer and Ahriman ARE Yin and Yang, respectively - which will become clearer later on) and it is the Christ Impulse which furnishes the possibility of mediating, that is balancing, these two.

So, from 8000 BC until the Mystery of Golgotha (the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ, also described as The Turning Point of Time) is the luciferic age. Since then it has been gradually the ascent of ahrimanic influence. This is not to say that the luciferic influence stopped at that time, and the luciferic influence continues to play into the human being as follows:

physical body - softening, rejuvenation.

illnesses are those of fever and too much warmth.

soul - fantasy, dreaming, mysticism, theosophy

spirit -falling asleep

conceptual illusion - that spiritual phenomena arise out of matter.

Steiner has a momentous revelation for us here, from his lecture "The Tree of Life" in the volume of lectures "Evil"(Rudolf Steiner Press, 1997):

"The Yahweh deities originally intended that the knowledge we acquired during the day should be permeated and penetrated by us at night. If this had happened, our science and knowledge would have been of a quite different kind - a much more vital and living science, in which each concept of ours would really live in us. We should also be aware that the concepts we experience during the day are the shadows of living beings, as I have oftened described. During the night we would perceive all the concepts we had formed during the day coming alive, waking up into the form of elemental beings. We would know that the science and knowledge we developed was actually alive, was a real, living, weaving force within the world - active, elemental, weaving life.

But it cannot be this for us, for Lucifer grasps hold of it, and deprives us of it. He takes living knowledge away from us. Every night he sucks dry the living content of our knowledge, leaving us with only abstract, dry husks, the dead concepts which science provides."

"Let me sum up, in the hope that these very important observations lodge in your memory. Ahriman and Lucifer are intimately involved in our lives; they work together, preventing us from establishing a proper harmony and equilibrium between belief and knowledge. Instead we oscillate between the false poles of unknowing belief and unbelieving knowledge.

But it is quite false to think we could ever escape the clutches of Lucifer and Ahriman. They have their cosmic task - all that has happened had to happen."

Our task is to become vitally aware of the activities the two so that we can balance them in our souls and lives. It thus suits them most admirably if we do not take the time and make the effort to become intimately and consciously familiar with their activities.

In the next instalment I will discuss Ahriman in more detail. I must also add that I have not said everything there is to be said about Lucifer and you can explore his activities in more detail, using the following books as a starting point, both containing lectures of Rudolf Steiner:

"The Influences of Lucifer and Ahriman" (Anthroposophic Press, 1993).

"Evil" (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1997).

Chapter One.

Chapter Two

Chapter Four


Comments or questions can be sent to the address below as I check this address every few weeks. Please mention Alchemycal Pages in the subject line. Thank you. Patricia


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