LECTURE 12
The Spirits of Light and the Spirits
of Darkness
Dornach, 26 October 1917
The event I have been referring to in the
preceding lectures, the occasion when certain spirits of
darkness were cast out of the spiritual realm and down into
the human realm in the autumn of 1879, holds great
importance. We have to reflect again and again what it really
means to say that a battle raged for decades in the spiritual
realms. The battle started in the early 1840s and ended when
certain spiritual entities, which had been acting like rebels
in the spiritual world during those decades, were vanquished
in the autumn of 1879 and cast down as dark spirits into the
realm of human evolution. They are now among us and the
effect of this is that they send their impulses into our view
of the world, not only into the way we think about the world,
but also into our inner feelings, our will impulses and even
our temperaments. Human beings will be unable to get even a
partial understanding of the significant events of the
present time and the immediate future, unless they are
prepared to recognize the relationship which exists between
the physical world and the spiritual world and take as much
account of important events like this as they do of natural
phenomena. At the present time people generally give validity
only to natural phenomena, phenomena of the physical world
which are part of historical evolution. They will have to
give validity again to spiritual events, which can be
perceived with the aid of spiritual science, for only then
can the events in which human beings are caught up be really
understood.
With reference
to this important event it is quite easy to establish how
seriously people are in error if they base themselves only on
concepts and definitions when considering the world and not
on direct observation of reality. One always has the feeling
one ought to base oneself on defined concepts — what is
Ahriman, what is Lucifer, what are the particular spirits in
one hierarchy or another? Those are the questions we ask, and
we believe that having got the definitions we have also
understood something about the way these entities work. An
extreme example of the inadequacy of definitions is the
following, which I have quoted before. It may not have been
the ideal way of defining the human being, but it is the
definition which was given in a school in Greece: A human
being is a creature who walks on two legs and does not have
feathers. The next time the pupil came to school he brought a
plucked cockerel: a creature who walked on two legs and had
no feathers. This is a human being, he said, according to the
definition.
Many
definitions of this kind are generally accepted, and many of
our scientific definitions are therefore more or less in
accord with the truth. We must not base ourselves on such
definitions in anthroposophy, however. Perception will be
poor if we base ourselves on abstract definitions. Yes, it is
possible to define the term ‘spirits of
darkness’, but this will not get us far. Spirits of
darkness were cast down from heaven to earth in 1879. This
may give a general idea of the spirits of darkness, but it
does not get us far in understanding the real issue. The
spirits of darkness now walking among us are of the same kind
as the spirits of darkness which had been cast down from the
spiritual world, that is from heaven to earth, in earlier
times; they had specific tasks to perform during the whole of
the Atlantean age and right into Graeco-Latin times.
Let us try to
use the different insights we have gained and determine the
task those spirits of darkness had to perform through
millennia, through the whole Atlantean age and on into
Graeco-Latin times. It has to be kept in mind that the great
scheme of things will only work if higher spiritual entities
who have the task of guiding human evolution make use of such
spirits, putting them in the right place, as it were, to
enable them to do what is necessary. As you will remember,
the ‘luciferic temptation’ of old held major
significance for human evolution. It did, of course, arise
from Lucifer's specific aims — and from Atlantean times
onwards Lucifer was in league with Ahriman. These aims gave
rise to counter-aims of, let us call them ‘good
spirits’, the spirits of light. Fundamentally speaking,
the spirits of darkness also wanted the best for humanity in
those early times, they wanted human beings to have the
capacity for absolute freedom; but humanity was not ready for
this at the time. They wanted to provide humanity with
impulses which would make every human being an independent
individual. It was not to be, however, for humanity was not
yet ready.
A
counter-force had to be set up by the spirits of light; this
was done by taking human beings from the heights of the
Spirit and putting them on to the earth, which is
symbolically described in the expulsion from Paradise. In
reality, human beings were being placed in the stream of
hereditary traits. Lucifer and the ahrimanic powers wanted
every human being to be an independent individual. This would
have meant that people would have become spiritual very
rapidly while still immature, but it was not to happen. Human
beings were to be educated on earth, brought to full
development through the forces of the earth. This was
achieved by placing them in the stream of heredity, where
they would physically descend from others. In this way they
were not independent, but inherited certain traits from their
forebears. They were weighed down with earthly qualities
which Lucifer did not want them to have. Anything to do with
physical heredity was given to humanity by the spirits of
light to counterbalance the luciferic stream. A weight was
attached to human beings, as it were, and this connected them
with the earth. In everything connected with heredity, with
the begetting of children, procreation, with love in the
earthly sense, we must therefore see ourselves connected with
the entities which are under the leadership of Yahveh or
Jehovah.
This is the
reason why we find so many symbols of procreation and earthly
heredity in the ancient religions. The laws of Judaism
— which was to prepare the way for Christianity —
as well as those of pagan religions, clearly show the
importance attached to regulating everything to do with the
laws of heredity here on earth. People had to learn to live
together in tribes, nations and races, with blood
relationship as the signature for the way affairs were
ordered on earth.
This had been
in preparation during the Atlantean age and was to be
repeated in the fourth epoch of civilization, the
Graeco-Latin epoch, mainly on account of the measures taken
in the third, Egypto-Chaldean epoch. We can see that
specifically during epochs which were to recapitulate the
Lemurian and Atlantean ages, account was taken of race,
nation and tribal connections in all the ways in which human
affairs were ordered; in short, account was taken of
hereditary traits arising from blood bonds. The priests of
the ancient Mysteries were mainly responsible for the
ordering of affairs — today we would say for affairs of
state — and they took care to observe the way in which
customs, inclinations and habits had to develop in various
places to take account of blood relationships, of people
belonging to a particular nation or tribe. Their laws were
based on this. We shall not be able to understand what issued
from the Mysteries of the third and fourth post-Atlantean ages
unless we consider the careful study of racial, national and
tribal relationships on which the priests based the laws they
made for different regions of the earth. What really counted
in each individual region was to establish order in the blood
relationships.
In those
times, when the spirits of light made it their concern to
order human affairs on the basis of blood relationships, the
spirits of darkness which had been cast down from heaven to
earth with humanity, made it their concern to work against
anything connected with heredity through blood relationship.
They were the source of all rebellion against ordinances
based on blood relationship in those ages, and of all
teachings of rebellion against heredity and against tribal
and racial relationships, insisting on the independence of
the individual and seeking to establish laws based on this,
laws which did, of course, come from human beings but were
inspired by the spirits of darkness. Those ages extended as
far as the fifteenth century. Echoes still persist, of
course, for systems do not come to an abrupt end when there
is a major break in evolution. Up to the fifteenth century in
particular, we see teachings come up which rebel against
purely natural bonds, against the bonds of relationship,
family, nationality, and so on.
Thus we have
two streams: the ‘protector’ of everything to do
with blood relationship, which is the stream of light; it is
opposed by the stream of darkness as the
‘protector’ of everything which wants to abandon
the bonds of blood relationship and help people to be free of
the bonds of family and heredity. All this does not, of
course, come to an abrupt halt any more than it does in the
natural world, and in 1413, the year when the break occurred
which marks the boundary between the fourth and fifth
post-Atlantean ages, the old ways did not stop immediately.
We can see the influence of the two streams continuing right
into our own time. For from the nineteenth century onwards,
from the time of the significant events I have described to
you, we see something entirely different emerge — I
have already made some mention of this. Angelic spirits,
members of the hierarchy of the Angels have been active among
us since 1879. They follow on after the old spirits of
darkness, are related to these and are of a similar kind, but
have only been cast down from heaven to earth because of the
event which occurred in 1879. Until then they had their
function up above, whilst their relatives, who acted in the
way I have just described, have been among human beings from
Lemurian and Atlantean times.
Thus there was
a break in evolution in about 747 before the Mystery of
Golgotha; another one came in 1413 after the Mystery of
Golgotha, and the break which is particularly important to
us, in 1879.
Throughout the
whole of this time spirits of darkness were active on earth,
whilst certain other spirits of darkness, which are related
to those down on earth, were still in the spiritual world.
1841 saw the beginning of the mighty battle of which I have
spoken. Then the spirits which are related to those others
descended to join them below. The power of the old rebels, of
the continuing stream of spirits of darkness who had their
tasks to perform from Lemurian and Atlantean times, is
gradually dying down as the powers of their brothers begin to
take effect. This means that from the last third of the
nineteenth century the situation has been completely
reversed. The spirits of light who have been continuing in
their activities have done enough where the establishment of
blood, tribal, racial and similar bonds is concerned, for
everything has its time in evolution. In the general and
rightful scheme of things, enough has been done to establish
what needed to be established through blood bonds in
humanity. In more recent times, therefore, the spirits of
light have changed their function. They now inspire human
beings to develop independent ideas, feelings and impulses
for freedom; they now make it their concern to establish the
basis on which people can be independent individuals. And it
is gradually becoming the task of the spirits who are related
to the old spirits of darkness to work within the blood
bonds.
The function
which was right in the past or, better said, belonged to the
sphere of the good spirits of light, was handed over to the
spirits of darkness during the last third of the nineteenth
century. From this time onwards, the old impulses based on
racial, tribal and national relationships, on the blood,
became the domain of the spirits of darkness, who had
previously been rebels in the cause of independence. They
then began to instil ideas in human minds that affairs should
be ordered on the basis of tribal relationships, of blood
bonds.
You can see
that definition is impossible. If you define the spirits of
darkness on the basis of the function they had in the past,
you get exactly the opposite of their function in more recent
times, that is from the last third of the nineteenth century.
In the past, it was the function of the spirits of darkness
to work against hereditary traits in humanity; from the last
third of the nineteenth century they have been lagging
behind, wanting to lag behind, wanting over and over again to
make people aware of their tribal, blood and hereditary bonds
and to insist on these.
These things
simply are the truth, though it is a truth which people today
find extremely unpalatable. For millennia, human beings have
instilled the insistence on blood bonds into themselves, and
out of sheer inertia they are letting the spirits of darkness
take control of these habitual ideas. We therefore see
insistence on tribal, national and racial relationships
particularly in the nineteenth century, and this insistence
is considered idealistic, when in reality it is an early sign
of decline in humanity. Everything based on dominance of the
blood principle meant progress for as long as it was under
the authority of the spirits of light; under the authority of
the spirits of darkness it is a sign of decline. The spirits
of darkness made special efforts in the past to implant a
rebellious feeling of independence in human beings at the
time when hereditary traits were passed on in a positive
sense by the progressive spirits. In the three ages of human
evolution which now follow and will continue until the time
of the great catastrophe, the spirits of darkness will make
extreme efforts to preserve the old hereditary
characteristics and inculcate human beings with the attitudes
which result from such preservation; in this way they
introduce the necessary signs of decline into human
evolution.
Here is
another point where we have to be watchful. In particular, it
is not possible to understand the present time unless one
knows the change of function which came in the last third of
the nineteenth century. A fourteenth-century person who spoke
of the ideals of race and nation would have been speaking in
terms of the progressive tendencies of human evolution;
someone who speaks of the ideal of race and nation and of
tribal membership today is speaking of impulses which are
part of the decline of humanity. If anyone now considers them
to be progressive ideals to present to humanity, this is an
untruth.
Nothing is more designed to take humanity into its
decline than the propagation of ideals of race, nation and
blood. Nothing is more likely to prevent human progress than
proclamations of national ideals belonging to earlier
centuries which continue to be preserved by the luciferic and
ahrimanic powers. The true ideal must arise from what we find
in the world of the spirit, not in the blood.
The Christ,
who is to appear in a specific form in the course of the
twentieth century, will know nothing of the
‘ideals’ proclaimed by people today. In earlier
times Michael, the spirit from the hierarchy of Archangels
was the representative of Yahveh; thanks to the functions
given to him in 1879, he will be the earthly representative,
the vicar, of the Christ, of the Christ impulse to create
spiritual bonds between human beings which will take the
place of the purely physical blood bonds. For only the bonds
of spiritual communion will bring a progressive element into
the entirely natural element of decline. Please note, the
element of decline is natural. Human beings cannot remain
children as they get older, and their bodies then follow a
downward curve of development. In the same way the whole of
humanity has entered into a downward trend of development. We
have passed the fourth post-Atlantean age and are now in the
fifth; this, together with the sixth and seventh, will be old
age in the present stage of world evolution. To think that
old ideals can live on is no more intelligent than to think
people should continue to learn their letters throughout the
whole of their lives just because it is good for children to
learn their letters. It would be equally unintelligent for
people in the future to speak of a social structure for the
whole world based on the blood bonds of nations. It is
Wilsonianism, of course, but also ahrimanism — of the
spirits of darkness.
It is no doubt
far from easy to accept the truth of this; it is easier today
to share in the phraseologies in common use all over the
world. Reality takes no account of phrases; it follows the
true impulses. We shall not be able to change the labels on
things which no longer hold true for the fifth, sixth and
seventh periods, even if they are still being poured into
Wilsonian world programmes in a form which still has power to
convince a humanity that likes to take the easy way.
There are
still enough people, even today, who simply do not want to
get to the point where they are prepared to accept such
universal human truths, which are independent of all blood
bonds. These are universal human truths because they have not
come from the earth but have been brought down from the
spiritual worlds. How terrible is the reaction already
occurring as almost the whole world is resisting the true
progress of humanity, and the phrase ‘freedom of
nations’ is used for something which goes against the
stream of evolution. It has always been the destiny of
Mystery-truths that they have had to go against the stream of
comfortable ease and with the stream of evolution. And we
shall have to see if there will not be at least a small group
of people free of all blood prejudices who are able to
recognize the phraseology that goes round the world today,
phrases signifying that something which in spiritual terms
presents itself as the event of November 1879 is now coming
to the surface with might and main.
The events of
the present time have been foreseen by the initiates of all
nations. They were foreseen and forecast, and it was said
that a highly reactionary mood would bubble up from the blood
and people would believe it to be highly idealistic. We must
be able to observe on the large scale, as in small things; we
must not allow ourselves to be deflected by the opinions and
phrases one hears in the world today. We have to be able to
rise a little above ourselves to understand the signs of the
times. Yes, you may choose the other road and continue in
your blood-prejudices; you will then join the streams which
lead downwards. These are coming. You need to know how to be
watchful where they are concerned and oppose them with
elements which follow the upward trend. The downward trend
comes of its own accord.
We must have a
feeling for life on the upward and life on the downward
trend. Do not fall prey to the foolish inclination to escape
from the downward trend, saying, ‘I will have nothing
to do with Lucifer, nor with Ahriman.’ I have often
censured this foolish inclination, for we must certainly take
account of the Spirits which serve the great cosmic scheme of
things. Our failure to do so, assuming an attitude where they
remain outside our conscious awareness, make them all the
more powerful. We shall only be able to judge human affairs
if we are able to take a broader view of the impulses of life
in the ascendant and also in the descendant. It is important,
however, to keep clear of sympathies and antipathies.
Two streams
have arisen in modern science; one of these I have called
Goetheanism, the other Darwinism. If you study everything I
have written, from the very beginning, you will see that I
have never failed to recognize the profound significance of
Darwinism. Some people were foolish enough to think I had
fallen under the spell of materialism, and so on, when I
wrote anything in favour of Darwin. We know, of course, that
this was not from conviction, but had quite different
reasons; and the people who say such things only need to
think about it and they will know better than anyone else
that they are not true. But if you really study everything I
have written you will see that I have always done justice to
Darwinism, but have done so by contrasting it with
Goetheanism, the view of the evolution of life. I have always
sought to see such things as the theory of descent in the
Darwinian sense on the one hand and the Goethean on the
other, and I have done so because Goetheanism presents the
ascending line, with organic evolution raised above mere
physical existence.
I have often
referred to the conversation between Goethe and Schiller.
[ Note 1 ]
Goethe drew a diagram of his archetypal plant and Schiller
said, ‘That is not empiricism — learning from
experience — it is an idea.’ Goethe's reply was:
‘In that case I have my idea in front of my eyes!’
[ Note 2 ]
For he saw the spiritual element in everything. Goethe thus
initiated a theory of evolution which holds the potential for
elevation to the highest spheres, for being applied to soul and
spirit. Goethe may only have made a start with organic evolution
in his theory of metamorphosis, but we have the evolution of the
spirit to which humanity must attain from this fifth
post-Atlantean age onwards — for human beings are
becoming more inward, as I have shown. Goetheanism can have a
great future, for the whole of anthroposophy is on those
lines. Darwinism considers physical evolution from the
physical side: external impulses, struggle for survival,
selection, and so on, and in this way outlines an evolution
which is dying down — everything you can discover about
organic life if you give yourself up to impulses which came
up in earlier times. To understand Darwin, one merely has to
make a synthesis of all the laws discovered in the past. To
understand Goethe, one has to rise above this to laws which
are ever new in earth existence. Both are necessary. It is
not Darwinism which is the problem, nor Goetheanism, but the
fact that people want to follow one or the other rather than
one and the other. This is what really matters.
In future,
human beings, the older they get, will need to take in
spiritual impulses if they want to be able to grow younger
and younger and really develop their inner life. If they do
so, they may have grey hair and wrinkles and all kinds of
infirmities, but they will get younger and younger, for their
souls are taking in impulses which they will take with them
through the gate of death. People who relate only to the body
cannot grow younger, for their souls will share in everything
the body experiences. Of course, it will not be possible to
change the habit of going grey, but it is possible for a grey
head to gain a young soul from the wellsprings of spiritual
life. This is how human evolution will proceed in the fifth,
sixth and seventh post-Atlantean ages in terms of Darwin's
grey-haired theory, if you will forgive the expression. But
in order to go through the catastrophe which is comparable to
the earth's death — the catastrophe lying ahead —
people must gain the power of youth which lies in
Goetheanism, in the theory of metamorphosis and of spiritual
evolution. This has to be taken through the future
catastrophe, just as in the case of the individual the
rejuvenated soul is taken through the gate of death.
Humanity was
able to unite with the earth because when it came down from
heaven to earth, if we may put it like this, the spirits of
darkness which came down with it laid an adequate foundation
for human independence during the time when the laws of
heredity, nationality and race prevailed. What Lucifer and
Ahriman had done became a good thing in so far as humanity
was enabled to unite with the earth. To show this in
diagrammatic form, we may put it like this: before Lucifer
took action, humanity was united with the whole cosmos
including the earth (see diagram, violet); human beings
united with the earth (yellow) because hereditary traits
— original sin in biblical terms, hereditary traits in
scientific terminology — were implanted into them. This
made human beings — I am using crosses to indicate them
— part of the earth. You see, therefore, that Lucifer
and Ahriman are servants of the progressive powers.
Evolution then
continued. We are now at the time when human beings live on
earth and are united with it. Luciferic and ahrimanic
spirits, spirits of darkness, have been cast down from heaven
to earth. Because of this, human beings must be released from
the earth, torn away from it, with part of their essential
nature taken back into the spiritual world. Humanity must
develop awareness of not being of this earth, and this must
grow stronger and stronger. In future, human beings must walk
on this earth who say to themselves: ‘Yes, at birth I
enter into a physical body, but this is a transitional stage.
I really remain in the spiritual world. I am conscious that
only part of my essential nature is united with the earth,
and that I do not leave the world where I am between death
and rebirth with the whole of my essential nature.’ A
feeling of belonging to the spiritual world must develop in
us.
In earlier
years this merely cast a false shadow in so far as people did
not want to understand physical life and practised a false
asceticism, believing this to consist in mortifying the
physical body in all kinds of ways. It has to be understood
that it is not through false asceticism, but by uniting
themselves with things of the Spirit, with the essence of
things, that people will be able to perceive themselves as
not merely earthly creatures but belonging to the whole
cosmos. Gaining knowledge of the physical world has merely
been a preparation for this. Just think how dependent people
were on the soil where they had grown, as it were, right into
the fifteenth century, the end of the Graeco-Latin epoch, and
how much their development depended on the soil. This was
good, but it must not dominate our lives now.
Physical
science has torn human beings away from the earth in the
physical sense with Copernicanism, and soul awareness must
also be torn away from the earth. The earth has become a
small body in space; but initially this is only in terms of
space. Through Copernicanism human beings were shifted out
into the cosmos, as it were, though in entirely abstract
terms. This must continue, but it should not be applied to
physical life in the wrong way. The physical will take its
own course. Take America, for instance, though not the
population native to its soil for centuries. As you know, a
new population consisting entirely of Europeans has arrived
there in recent times. Careful observation shows that
physical life continues to be bound to the soil. The
Americans who are Europeans transplanted to America are
gradually acquiring traits which recall the old Indian
population — this has not yet progressed very far, but
it is true nevertheless. The arms are a different length from
what they were in Europe because these people have been
transplanted to America. The physical human being does adapt
to the soil. It even goes so far that there is now a
considerable difference in physical form between Americans
who live in the West and those who live in the East. This is
adaptation to the soil. If the soul were to go along with
this physical process the American Indian culture would be
revived in time, though in a European form. This sounds
paradoxical, but it is true. In future, humanity cannot be
bound to the soil; the soul has to become independent. All
over the world people may then assume the physical
characteristics given by the soil, and the bodies of
Europeans may become indianized when they go to America, but
in their souls human beings will tear themselves away from
the physical and earthly element and be citizens of the
worlds of the spirit. And in those worlds there are no races
or nations, but relationships of a different kind.
These things
must be understood today when great, tremendous events happen
in the world, unless you are going to be mulish —
excuse the expression — and present old-established
prejudices as new ideals.
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