LECTURE 9
The Battle between Michael and
‘The Dragon’
Dornach, 14 October 1917
It is necessary to let certain fundamental
truths of spiritual development come to mind whenever you
have gained some material, as we may call it, by way of
knowledge and the like, for this will allow you to penetrate
those fundamental truths more deeply. In the last days we
have considered all kinds of ideas which may explain the
events of our time, at least to some extent. We have
therefore acquired a number of ideas concerning present
developments. We can put these together with fundamental
truths which we already know from certain points of view, but
which can be penetrated more deeply if we approach them again
following further preparation.
I have
frequently spoken of the significant break which occurred in
the spiritual development of the peoples of Europe and
America in the middle of the nineteenth century, and
especially in the 1840s. I have pointed out that this was the
time when the materialistic point of view came to its peak,
with a peak was reached in what we may call a way of grasping
dead, outer facts with the intellect, refusing to enter into
living reality.
The deeper
sources of such events — and today we are very much
involved in their after-effects, which will continue to have
an influence for a long time to come — must be sought
in the world of the spirit. And if we investigate the
processes in that world which have come to outer expression
in the event of which I have just spoken, we have to point to
a struggle, a real war in that world, which began then and
came to a certain conclusion for the world of the spirit by
the autumn of 1879. To have the right idea about these
things, you must visualize a battle which continued for
decades in the spiritual worlds, from the 1840s until the
autumn of 1879.
This may be
called a battle which the spirits who are followers of the
spirit belonging to the hierarchy of Archangels whom we may
call Michael fought with certain ahrimanic powers. Please
consider this battle to have been in the first place a battle
in the spiritual world. Everything I am referring to at the
moment relates to this battle fought by Michael and his
followers against certain ahrimanic powers. A good way of
strengthening this idea, especially if you want to make it
fruitful for your life in the present time, is to have it in
your mind's eye that the human souls who were born exactly in
the fifth decade of the nineteenth century actually took part
in this battle between Michael's followers and the ahrimanic
powers when they were in the spiritual world. If you think on
this, it will give you a great deal of understanding of the
outer and inner destiny experienced by these individuals, and
above all of their inner constitution. The battle thus took
place in the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s and came to a conclusion
in the autumn of 1879, when Michael and his followers won a
victory over certain ahrimanic powers.
What does this
signify? To see something like this in the right way, we can
always call on an image which humanity has known throughout
its evolution — the fight between Michael and the
dragon. This image has come up again and again in the course
of evolution. We may characterize it by saying that every
battle between Michael and the dragon is similar to the one
in the 1840s, but it is about different things —
harmful and damaging things. We may say that a particular
crowd of ahrimanic spirits seek over and over again to bring
something into world evolution, but they are always overcome.
And so they also lost the battle in the autumn of 1879, and,
as I said, this was in the spiritual world.
But what does
it signify that the powers of the dragon, this crowd of
ahrimanic spirits, are driven down into the human realms,
banished from heaven to earth, as it were? Losing the battle
means they are no longer to be found in the heavens, to use
the biblical term. Instead they are to be found in the human
realms, which means that the late 1870s were a particular
time when human souls became subject to ahrimanic powers with
regard to certain powers of perception. Before this, these
powers were active in the spiritual realms and therefore left
human beings more in peace; when they were driven out of the
spiritual realms they came upon human beings. And if we
enquire into the nature of the ahrimanic powers which entered
into human beings when they had to leave the realms of the
spirit, the answer is, the ahrimanic materialistic view with
its personal — mark this well — its personal
bias.
Materialism
had, of course, reached its peak in the 1840s, but in those
days its impulses were more instinctive in humans, for the
crowd of ahrimanic spirits still sent their impulses from the
spiritual world into human instincts. From the autumn of 1879
onwards, these ahrimanic impulses — powers of
perception and of will — became the personal property
of human beings. Before this they were more of a general
property, now they were transplanted to become personal
property. We are thus able to say that due to the presence of
these ahrimanic powers from 1879 onwards, personal ambitions
and inclinations to interpret the world in materialistic
terms came to exist in the human realm. You only have to
trace some of the events which have arisen because of
personal inclinations since then, to understand that they
resulted when the Archangel Michael drove the dragon, that is
the crowd of ahrimanic spirits, from the realms of the
spirit, from the heavens, down to earth.
This occurrence
has profound significance. The people of the nineteenth
century and of our own time are not inclined to pay attention
to such occurrences in the spiritual world and to the way in
which they relate to the physical world. Yet the ultimate
reasons and final impulses for events on earth can only be
found if one knows the spiritual background. It has to be
said that it takes a fair amount of materialism, even if
dressed up as idealism, to say: ‘In terms of eternity,
what does it matter if so and so many more tons of organic
matter will perish as the war is allowed to
continue?’ One has to feel the extent to which
such a view has its roots in ahrimanism, for its roots truly
are in the realms of inner response. The philosopher Henri
Lichtenberger's
[ Note 1 ]
philosophy of ‘tons of organic matter’ is
one of many examples which may be quoted to Show the specific
forms taken by the ahrimanic way of thinking.
The deepest
impulse which has been living in many human souls since 1879
is therefore one which was cast down into the human realms;
before that, it lived as ahrimanic power in the world of the
spirit. It is helpful to look for other ways of strengthening
the idea in our minds by using concepts from the material
world, using them essentially as symbolic images. What
happens today more at the level of soul and spirit had more
of a material bias in very early times. The world of matter
is also spiritual; it is merely a different form of
spirituality.
If you were to
go back to very early times in evolution, you would find a
battle similar to the one I have just described. As already
mentioned, these battles have recurred over and over again,
but always on different issues. In the distant past, the
crowd of ahrimanic spirits were also cast down from the
spiritual worlds into the earthly realm when they had lost
such a battle. You see, they would return to the attack again
and again. After one of these battles, for example, the crowd
of ahrimanic spirits populated the earth with the earthly
life-forms which the medical profession now calls bacilli.
Everything which has the power to act as a bacillus,
everything in which bacilli are involved, is the result of
crowds of ahrimanic spirits being cast down from heaven to
earth at a time when the dragon had been overcome. In the
same way the ahrimanic, mephistophelean way of thinking has
spread since the late 1870s as the result of such a victory.
Thus we are able to say that tubercular and bacillary
diseases come from a similar source as the materialism which
has taken hold of human minds.
We can also
compare the occurrences of the last century with something
else. We can point to something which you know already from
Occult Science
[ Note 2 ]
the withdrawal of the Moon from the sphere of Earth
evolution. The Moon was once part of the Earth; it was cast
out from the Earth. As a result, certain Moon influences took
effect on Earth, and this, too, followed a victory won by
Michael over the dragon. We are therefore also able to say
that everything connected with certain effects relating to
the phases of the Moon, and all impulses which reach the
Earth from the Moon, have their origin in a similar battle
between Michael and the dragon.
These things
really do belong together, in a way, and it is extremely
useful to consider this, for it has profound significance.
Some individuals develop an irresistible hankering for
intellectual materialism which arises from being in league
with the fallen Ahriman. They gradually come to love the
impulses which Ahriman raises in their souls and, indeed,
consider them to be a particularly noble and sublime way of
thinking. Once again, it is necessary to be fully and clearly
aware of these things. Unless they are in our conscious
awareness and we have clear insight, we cannot make head or
tail of events. The danger inherent in all this must be
looked at with a cool eye, as it were, and a calm heart. We
have to face them calmly. We shall only do so, however, if we
are quite clear about the fact that a certain danger
threatens human beings from this direction. This is the
danger of preserving what should not be preserved. Everything
which happens within the great scheme of things does also
have its good side. It is because the ahrimanic powers
entered into us when Michael won his victory that we are
gaining in human freedom. Everything is connected with this,
for the crowd of ahrimanic spirits has entered into all of
us. We gain in human freedom, but we must be aware of this.
We should not allow the ahrimanic powers to gain the upper
hand, as it were, and we should not fall in love with
them.
This is
tremendously important. There always is the danger of people
continuing in materialism, in the materialistic, ahrimanic
way of thinking, and carrying this on into ages when,
according to the plan of things, it should have been
overcome. The people who do not turn away from the ahrimanic,
materialistic way of thinking and want to keep it, would then
be in league with everything which has come about through
similar victories won over the dragon by Michael. They
therefore would not unite with spiritual progress in human
evolution but with material progress. And a time would come
in the sixth post-Atlantean age when the only thing to please
them would be to live in something which will have been
brought about by bacilli, those microscopically small enemies
of humanity.
Something else
also needs to be understood. Exactly because of its logical
consistency, and indeed its greatness, the scientific way of
thinking, too, is in great danger of sliding into the
ahrimanic way of thinking. Consider how some scientists are
thinking today in the field of geology, for instance. They
study the surface formation of the earth and the residues and
so on, to determine how certain animals live, or have lived,
in the different strata. Empirical data are established for
certain periods. Scientists use these as a basis for their
views as to what the earth looked like thousands and millions
of years ago, arriving, for instance, at the nebular
hypothesis of Kant and Laplace.
[ Note 3 ]
They also develop ideas as to the
future evolution of the earth, and from the physical point of
view these are quite correct. They are often utterly
brilliant, but they are based on a method where the evolution
of the earth is observed for a time and then conclusions are
drawn: millions of years before, and millions of years
afterwards.
What is really
being done in this case? It is the same as if we were to
observe a child when it is seven, eight or nine years old,
taking note of how its organs gradually change, or partly
change, and calculate how much these human organs change over
a period of two or three years. We then multiply this to work
out how much these organs change over a period of centuries.
So we can work out what this child looked like a hundred
years ago, and going in the other direction we can also work
out what it will look like in a hundred and fifty years. It
is a method which can be quite brilliant and is, in fact, the
method used by geologists today to work out the primeval
conditions of the earth; it was also used to produce the
hypothesis of Laplace. Exactly the same method is used to
visualize what the world is going to be like according to the
physical laws which can now be observed. But I think you will
admit that such laws do not signify much when applied to a
human being, for example. A hundred years ago the child did
not exist as a physical human being; neither will it exist as
a physical human being in a hundred and fifty years'
time.
The same
applies to the earth with reference to the time-scale used by
geologists. The earth came into existence later than Tyndall,
Huxley, Haeckel
[ Note 4 ]
and others reckon. Before the time comes when you can simply
paint the walls of a room with protein and have enough light
to read by, the earth will be nothing but a corpse. It is
quite easy to work out that one day it will be possible to
use physical means to put protein on a wall where it will
shine like electric light, so that one can read the paper.
This is bound to happen as part of the physical changes, no
doubt. But in fact the time will never come, just as it will
never happen that in a hundred and fifty years time a child
will show the changes calculated from successive changes seen
in its stomach and liver in the course of two or three years
between the ages of seven and nine.
Here you gain
insight into some very strange things we have today. You can
see how they clash. Think of a conventional scientist
listening to what I have just been saying. He will say this
is sheer foolishness. And then think of a spiritual
scientist; he will consider the things the conventional
scientist says to be foolish. All the many hypotheses
concerning the beginning and the end of the earth are indeed
nothing but foolishness, even though people have been utterly
brilliant in establishing them.
You see from
this how unconsciously human beings are, in fact, being
guided. But we are now in an age when such things must be
perceived and understood. It is necessary to link such an
idea with the other ideas we have characterized today. A time
will come when we must have transformed our materialistic
ideas to such an extent that we can progress to a more
spiritual form of existence, but by then the earth will have
been a corpse for a long time. It will no longer support us,
and incarnations in the flesh such as we seek today will no
longer be sought. But the individuals who have become so tied
up with the materialistic way of thinking that they cannot
let go of it will still sneak down to that earth and find
ways of involving themselves in the activities of bacilli
— the tubercle bacillus and others — bacillary
entities which will be rummaging through every part of the
earth's corpse. Today's bacilli are merely the prophets, let
us say, of what will happen to the whole earth in future.
Then a time will come when those who cling to the
materialistic way of thinking will unite with the moon powers
and surround the earth, which will be a burnt-out corpse,
together with the moon. For all they want is to hold on to
the life of the earth and remain united with it; they do not
want to take the right course, which is to progress from the
earth's corpse to what will be the future soul and spirit of
the earth.
In our time
particularly, all these things are having an effect on many
much admired brilliant ideas and moral impulses —
people christen everything ‘moral impulse’‘
nowadays — in which the ahrimanic and materialistic
powers are alive. These have the capacity to develop into the
impulses which act as numerous ties to hold human beings to
the earth, of their own will. It is important, therefore, to
turn our attention to these things. And it is really most
necessary to pay real heed to some highly respected elements
which are taken as a matter of course today, such as certain
laws of nature. Anyone who does not accept them is called an
amateur and a fool. Certain moral and political aspirations
are taken as a matter of course. Great Wilsoniades are
proclaimed with regard to them. All these things have the
potential to develop into something that can be characterized
in the way I have just done.
I had my
reasons for saying that the people who had a part in the
beginning of the battle in the 1840s were in a special
position. They were placed on earth at that time. And we can
understand a great deal of the inner life of these people,
especially those who were active in mind and spirit, and of
their doubts and their inner battles, if we consider the
impulse they brought from the life of the spirit in the 1840s
into the second half of the nineteenth and the beginning of
the twentieth century.
Something else
also relates to this, something which should not be
overlooked today, but very often is. It is the belief that
spiritual entities and their activities have no part in human
affairs. People do not like to speak of events in human
affairs having spiritual causes. Anyone who knows the real
situation, however, is well aware that psychic or spiritual
influences from the spiritual world on human beings here in
the physical world are, in fact, particularly powerful at the
present time. It is not at all uncommon to find people today
who will tell you that a dream, or something like a dream
— they do not normally understand what is going on, but
these are always non-physical elements — drove them to
a particular course of events. Psychic influences of this
kind play a much greater role today than materialists are
prepared to believe. Anyone who has the opportunity to go
into such things will find them at every turn. If you were to
take the published works of today's better poets and do a
statistical analysis of how many poems have come into
existence in a way for which there is a rational explanation,
and how many by an inspiration — a definite spiritual
influence from the other world, with the poet experiencing it
in a dream or something similar — you would be
surprised how great is the percentage of direct influences
from the spiritual world. People are influenced by the
spiritual world to a much greater extent than they are
prepared to admit. And the human actions performed under the
influence of the spiritual world are indeed significant
ones.
Now and then
the question comes up: ‘Why was a particular newspaper
started?’‘ The individual who started it had a
particular impulse from the spiritual world. If he trusts you
enough to speak openly about his impulses, he will speak of a
dream when you ask about the real origin. This is why some
time ago I had to say here that when historians come to
discuss the outbreak of this war in time to come and use the
documents of our civilization in the same way as did
Ranke
[ Note 5 ]
and other historians who went by the documents, they will
never write about the most important event, which is something
that happened under the influence of the spiritual world in 1914.
Figure 9a
Things go in
cycles or periods. Anything which happens in the physical
world is really a kind of projection, or shadow, of what
happens in the spiritual world, except that it would have
happened earlier in the spiritual world. Let us assume this
line here (Fig. 9a) was the line or
plane separating the spiritual and the physical worlds. What
I have just said could then be characterized as follows: Let
us assume an event — for example the battle between
Michael and the dragon — happens first of all in the
spiritual world. It finally comes to an end when the dragon
is cast down from heaven to earth. On earth, then, the cycle
is brought to completion after a time interval which
approximately equals the time between the beginning of the
battle in the spiritual world and the time when the dragon
was cast down. We might say: The dawn, the very beginning of
this battle between Michael and the dragon, was in 1841.
Things were particularly lively in 1845. It is thirty-four
years from 1845 to 1879, and if we move on thirty-four years
after 1879 we come to the mirroring event: You get 1913, the
year preceding 1914. You see, the developments which started
in the physical world in 1913 are the mirror-image of the
prime reasons for the spiritual battle. And now consider 1841
— 1879 — 1917! 1841 was the crucial year in the
nineteenth century. 1917 is its mirror-image. If one realizes
that the exertions of the crowd of ahrimanic spirits in 1841,
when the dragon started to fight Michael in the spiritual
world, are mirrored right now in 1917, much of what is
happening now will not really come as a surprise. Events in
the physical world can really only be understood if one knows
that they have been in preparation in the spiritual
worlds.
These things
are not being said to worry people or put strange notions in
their heads; they are meant as a challenge to see things
clearly, to resolve to make the effort to look into the
spiritual world and not to sleep through events. This is why
it has become necessary in the field of anthroposophical
development to say over and over again that there is need to
be watchful, to take note of what is happening and not let
events go by unnoticed.
It is sometimes
only possible to say what I mean by using an analogy.
Yesterday I spoke of the way in which the people in Eastern
Europe draw conclusions from such events. If we here in the
West want to find out what actually lives in the East
European soul, the best way is to study the works of the
philosopher Soloviev,
[ Note 6 ]
though there are serious limits to what we can learn in this
way. Real insight can only be gained from what has been said
for many years in lectures and lecture courses given within
the anthroposophical movement on the destiny and true nature
of the Russian spirit. But by turning our attention to the
philosopher Soloviev it is possible to express by means of an
analogy what one really wants to say in this case. As you
know, Soloviev died at the turn of the eighteenth to the
nineteenth century and has therefore been dead for a long
time. Western people did not bother much with his philosophy.
They had little opportunity to get to know it and little
effort was made to study Soloviev as a representative of
Eastern Europe. At best we have the situation of the
professor who some years ago had an idea that it was not
exactly right for a Professor of Philosophy to know nothing
about Soloviev — you know the story. So he let someone
write a doctoral dissertation, saying to himself: He can
study the work of Soloviev and I can read his
dissertation.
I merely want
to use the point at issue as an analogy, therefore. I should
like to put it like this. If we were to say that,
hypothetically, Soloviev were alive today and had known this
war and the events taking place in Russia — what would
he, a Russian, have done? The answer can, of course, only be
hypothetical, but it is a reasonable assumption that Soloviev
would have found a way of removing everything he had written
before the war and would have written new works. He would
have realized that it was necessary to revise his views
completely, for his views were based on the time when they
were written. He would thus have drawn the same conclusion as
the whole of Eastern Europe.
It seems
paradoxical to say something like this. But if one reads
Soloviev today it is best to be clear in one's mind that
little would have Soloviev's absolute approval today. It
would be a sign of being wide awake to make a fundamental
revision of ideas which carried the greatest weight at the
time but have since been reduced to absurdity. 2+2=4 would
still be 2+2=4, but other things must certainly be revised.
And we are only awake in our time if we are aware of this
need for revision.
In this year of
1917 — thirty-eight years after 1879, with 1879
thirty-eight years after 1841 — something important is
being asked of humanity. What matters today is not what
people did in 1914, but that they get themselves out of this
situation. The problem we have to face now is how to get out
of it again. And unless people realize that the old ideas
will not get us out of it and that new ideas are needed, the
result will be failure. Anyone who thinks we shall get out of
this with the old ideas is barking up the wrong tree. The
effort must be made to gain new ideas, and this is only
possible with insight into the spiritual world.
It has been my
intention today to give you something of a background to much
of I have been saying in there last days. You see, if one
deals with spiritual life in concrete terms, it is not enough
to have the general twaddle which is so popular with the
people who believe in pantheism and similar philosophies
— that there is a spiritual world, that the spirit is
behind all physical things. Talking about the spirit in vague
general terms will get you nowhere. We must consider specific
spiritual events and spiritual entities which are beyond the
threshold. Events in this world are not merely general but
quite specific, and they are concrete and specific in the
other world. I do not think that there are many who, as they
get up in the morning, would think: ‘If I step outside
the front door, I shall be out in the world.’‘
They would not say this, but they will have ideas about
something specific they are going to encounter. In the same
way we shall only manage to deal with the deeper sources of
human and world evolution if we are able to visualize the
things which are beyond the threshold in a specific and
concrete way and not just refer to them in general terms such
as ‘universal’, ‘providence’, and the
like.
Much, much can
be felt when we look at the figures 1841 and 1917 in the
diagram (see Fig. 9a). But our inner
response to this has to be alive in us if we are to
understand what is really happening.
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