Lucifer, Ahriman & the Adversaries
The adversary powers in anthroposophy: Lucifer, Ahriman, Sorat and the double, and their balance through the Christ-impulse. Part of Thalira's Anthroposophical Glossary of 1384 terms, and companion to the in-depth guide Anthroposophy.
The cosmological being of materialisation. The downward-pulling, mechanising actor in human evolution, distinct from Lucifer above and balanced by Christ at centre.
The materialising, hardening, mechanising tendency in human evolution. One of three opposing impulses balanced by Christ at centre.
The Ahrimanic Deception names the specific lecture-cycle (GA 191, 1919) in which Steiner warns of Ahriman's coming attempt to incarnate in a single human body in the third millennium.
Steiner's therapeutic principle that illness is an excess at one pole, luciferic softening or ahrimanic hardening, healed by remedies deliberately prepared toward the opposite pole.
In Steiner's spiritual science, the third and most dangerous opposing power: retarded Archai spirits of egoism who attack the consciousness soul and tear away fragments of the I.
Steiner's physiological case for freedom: the nerve halts its own growth and breaks itself down, so the soul life spread over that ground is not its product.
In anthroposophy, the Eighth Sphere is a spectral counter-world Lucifer and Ahriman build by tearing matter from Earth, set against the seven spheres of evolution.
A truth that cannot be forced on anyone: it is recognized only as a free deed of the soul, and the spiritual Christ is its highest instance.
Steiner's proof of human freedom in GA 179: the perceived world is a mirror image, and since a mirror image can compel nothing, action from pure thought is self-caused.
Steiner's name for a luciferic Asian counter-impulse that sought to make Western culture visionary, balanced by the discovery of America.
The upward-pulling, ego-inflating, mystical-escapist force. Distinguished from Satan, balanced by Christ at centre.
In Steiner's teaching, Lucifer is not only the tempter but the being whose influence makes human moral freedom possible, forcing us to create our own motives.
Steiner's tripolar moral cosmos: Christ at the heart, balancing the Luciferic upward pull and the Ahrimanic downward pull.
The third-century teaching of the Persian prophet Mani, rehabilitated by Steiner as the path of redeeming evil through love, distinct from the Augustinian heretic-narrative.
Steiner's name for the region below thinking where the force that grants us memory turns into a motive for evil if it rises out of place.
Three classes of artificial elemental being that human moral failure detaches from the spiritual world: lying breeds phantoms, bad laws breed spectres, coercion of thought breeds demons.
Steiner's name for the Sun-Demon, the being hidden behind the apocalyptic number 666 and pictured as the two-horned beast opposing the Christ.
Sparks of darkness are the dark flarings contemplative sight perceives in the body's luminous aura where nerve sedimentation dies away, the point where Steiner watches the I wring itself free.
The realm of purely earthly, mechanical forces that work one step below nature, the field Steiner named in 1925 as the home of technology and Ahriman.
An Ahrimanic spirit-being of the ancient Mexican mysteries who, Steiner taught, drove a sacrificial cult aimed at mechanizing the earth and stripping souls from human evolution.
Steiner's name for the Eastern wisdom-stream born of Lucifer's light, destined to unite with the Western Christ-stream and become the brothers of Christ.
An Ahrimanic spirit-being that enters the human body shortly before birth, leaves at death, and carries cold intelligence and sub-earthly electrical force.
The egoism of the earth is Steiner's term for the winter earth that closes against inflowing cosmic sun forces and lives from what it can produce alone.
Steiner's teaching that ahrimanic angel-beings, beaten by Michael, were cast from the spiritual world into human minds in November 1879.
Steiner's occult law that an untruthful account destroys the astral form radiating from an event, making every lie a murder in the astral world, and a self-murder.
Steiner's teaching that Luciferic spirits set the planets moving, disturbing the immobile star script the dead were meant to read between death and rebirth.
Steiner's name for the decadent Atlantean mystery stream of pre-Columbian America, whose Taotl priests used ritual murder as black magic to mechanize the earth.
Steiner's name for the social end state, total egoism and vanished social instinct, that unchecked head materialism was breeding for the close of the twentieth century.
The condition after death in which Lucifer continually taps the soul forces of those who refused to recognize the luciferic impulse during earthly life.
The virgin-born Mexican sun-hero whom Steiner calls the unknown contemporary of the Mystery of Golgotha, who crucified the black magician of the Taotl.
Two ways of working occult forces: white in harmony with earth's central spiritual leadership, black through the betrayal of occult secrets and machinations of cruelty.