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Rudolf Steiner e.Lib
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The Mission of the Archangel Michael
Rudolf Steiner e.Lib Document
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The Mission of the Archangel Michael
Schmidt Number: S-3918
On-line since: 23rd November, 2003
The Michael Deed and the Michael Influence as Counter-pole of the Ahrimanic Influence
ONLY THROUGH a knowledge of the most important and essential laws of
human evolution can man attain a real consciousness that supports his
soul. He must learn to know the events of human evolution and make
them part of his question of taking fully into account I made
this remark already a few days ago that the evolution of
mankind is itself an evolution of a living entity. Just as there is
ordered growth in the single human individual, so is there ordered
growth in the evolution of the whole human race. And since the present
is the moment when we have to become conscious of certain things, and
since the human being has participated, during his repeated earth
lives, in the various configurations of humanity's evolutionary
history, it is also necessary to develop an understanding for the
different human soul moods in the various epochs of mankind's
evolution. I have often stated that what we call history today is
really a fable convenue, a fable agreed upon, for the reason
that the abstract recounting of events and the searching for cause and
effect in historical processes in an external sense does not take into
account the transformations, the metamorphoses of human soul life
itself. When, from this point of view, we make tests, we can easily
show that it is a prejudice to believe that the soul mood of modern
man prevailed also in the times to which the first historical
documents reach back. This is not the case. Human beings, even the
simplest, most primitive, of the ninth and tenth post-Christian
centuries had a soul mood completely different from that of human
beings after the middle of the fifteenth century. We can trace this
right into the lower strata of the human race, but also into the upper
levels. Try, for instance, to familiarize yourselves with Dante's
curious work about Monarchy. If you read such a thing, not
as an oddity, but with a certain cultural-historical sagacity, then
you will notice that such a book of a representative of his time
contains things which could not possibly have been spoken out of the
soul of a modern human being.
In this book, which was intended as a serious treatise about the legal
and political foundations of monarchy, Dante tries to show that the
Romans were the most excellent people of the world, as far as it was
known at that time, was the primeval right of the Romans. He tries to
show that the conquest of the whole earth by the Romans constituted a
right greater than for instance the right of independence of single,
smaller peoples; for it was the will of God that the Romans should
rule over the various smaller peoples, for the latter's own good.
Dante offers many proofs, out of the spirit of his time, why the
Romans were justified in ruling the earth. One of these proofs is the
following: He says: The Romans descend from Aeneas. Aeneas married
three times. First, Creusa; through this marriage he acquired the
right, as progenitor of the race, to rule Asia. Secondly, he married
Dido; through this marriage he acquired the right, as ancestor of the
Romans, to rule Africa. Then he married Lavinia; through this he
acquired the right for the Romans to rule Europe. Herman Grimm, who
once discussed this matter, made the telling remark: How fortunate
that at the time America and Australia were not yet discovered!
But this sort of conclusion was something quite self-evident for an
enlightened spirit of the time of Dante, indeed, for the most
outstanding spirit of that time. This was a juridical presentation at
that time. Now I ask you to imagine that any lawyer of the present age
would draw such conclusions. You cannot imagine it. And you can just
as little imagine that the mode of thought which Dante employs in
regard to other subjects could arise in the soul constitution of a man
of the present age.
Thus a quite obvious fact shows that we have to take into
consideration the transformation of the soul constitutions of human
beings. To fail to understand these things was tolerable in a certain
way up to our time. But it will no longer do in our time, and quite
especially will it not do for mankind in the future, for the simple
reason that mankind, right up to our time, or at least up to the end
of the eighteenth century, had certain instincts; (since the French
Revolution matters have gradually changed, but still, old remnants
remained of the soul constitutions in question.) Out of these
instincts mankind was able to develop a consciousness which supported
the soul. But in the present state of the constantly changing organism
of mankind these instincts no longer exist and man must consciously
acquire the connection with the whole of humanity. This is, after all,
the deeper significance of the social question in our present time.
What people state in their party platforms are only superficial
formulations. That which surges in the depths of human souls expresses
itself in such formulas; mankind feels that it is necessary to acquire
a conscious relationship of the individual to the whole of humanity,
that is, to acquire a social impulse.
Now, we cannot do so without focusing our attention upon the law of
evolution. Let us do this once more after having done so repeatedly in
regard to other questions. Let us take the time from the fourth
post-Christian century up to the sixteenth post-Christian century. We
see how Christianity bears the character of which I spoke yesterday
and on previous occasions. We find that great care is taken during
this period to understand the secrets of Golgotha through human
concepts and ideas as they had been transmitted by Greek culture. Then
a changed form of evolution sets in. We know that it really set in at
an earlier time, around the middle of the fifteenth century; but it
became clearly discernible only in the sixteenth century. At that time
the natural-scientifically orientated thinking began to take hold of
the upper level of mankind and to spread further and further.
Let us focus our attention upon this natural-scientific thinking in
regard to a certain quality. There are many qualities of
natural-scientifically orientated thinking which might be mentioned,
but today we want to emphasize one quality in particular. It is the
following: If we are a really efficient, modern thinker in the present
sense, we are unable to cope with the problem of the necessity of
nature and human freedom. The natural-scientific thinking
of the modern age pressed onward more and more toward conceiving of
the human being as a member of the rest of nature, the latter being
considered a stream of causes and effects determining one another.
Certainly, there exist today many human beings who see clearly that
freedom, the experience of freedom, is a fact of human consciousness.
But this does not prevent them from being unable to cope with this
problem as they steep themselves in the special configuration of
natural-scientific thinking. If we think about the being of man in the
way modern natural science demands we are unable to reconcile this
thinking with the thinking about human freedom. Some people take it
very easy in regard to human freedom, in regard to the sense of human
responsibility. I knew a professor of criminal law who began his lectures
on criminal law every time with the following remarks: Gentlemen, I
have to lecture to you on criminal law. Let us begin by assuming the
axiom that there is human freedom and responsibility. For, if there
were no human freedom and responsibility, there could be no criminal
law. However, criminal law exists, for I have to lecture on it to you;
therefore, responsibility and freedom exist also. this
argumentation is somewhat simple, but it points to the difficulty that
arises for human beings when they have to ask the question: How can
the necessity of nature be reconciled with freedom? It shows, in other
words, how the human being has been forced more and more through the
evolution of the last few centuries to acknowledge a certain
omnipotence of the necessity of nature. One does not express it in
these words; nevertheless, a certain omnipotence of natural necessity
is conceived of. What is this omnipotence of natural necessity?
We shall understand one another best if I remind you of something
which I have mentioned frequently. Modern thinkers believe that they
act or, rather, think without prejudice, merely as
scientific researchers, when they assert that man consists of body and
soul. People, all the way up to the great philosopher Wilhelm Wundt
who is great, however, merely through the graces of his
publisher people maintain: if we think without prejudice, we
have to consider man as consisting of body and soul, if we ascribe any
validity to the soul at all. And only timidly does the truth make its
appearance, namely, that man consists of body, soul, and spirit. The
philosophers who consider themselves unbiased in their belief that man
consists of body and soul do not know that their concept is merely the
result of a historical process which had its starting point in the
eighth Œcumencial council of Constantinople when the
Roman-Catholic church abolished the spirit by establishing the dogma
that henceforth the orthodox Christian was to think of man as
consisting of body and soul, the soul having some spiritual qualities.
This was a church law; philosophers still teach it today and do not
know that they are merely following a church law. They believe they
carry on unprejudiced science. This is the situation today in regard
to many things called unprejudiced science.
The matter is similar in regard to the necessity of nature. During the
whole evolution between the fourth and the sixteenth centuries the
concept of god took on a quite particular form. If one takes into
account the more intimate aspects of the spiritual evolution of these
centuries, one will become aware of the fact that a quite definite
concept of God was more and more elaborated in human thinking, a
concept of God which culminated in the dictum: God, the Omnipotent,
the All-Mighty. Few people know that it would have had no meaning
for human beings prior to the fourth post-Christian century to speak
of God, the All-Mighty. My dear friends, we do not engage in catechism
truths; there you will, naturally, find: God is all-mighty, all-wise,
all-benevolent. All these are things which have nothing to do with
realities. Prior to the fourth century, nobody would have
thought of considering omnipotence as a fundamental quality of the
Divine Being if he had an understanding of these matters and really
lived with them. For at that time the after-effect of the Greek
concepts still held sway. In thinking about the Divine Being, people
would not have spoken of God, the All-Mighty, but of God, the
Omniscient, the All-Wise.
(Previously: God the All-Wise)
fourth century sixteenth century
Wisdom was considered the fundamental attribute of the Divine Being. The concept of Omnipotence only gradually penetrated the idea of the Divine Being, from the fourth century onward. It continued to develop. The concept of personality was abandoned and the predicate was transmitted to the mere order of nature, which is conceived of more and more mechanically. And the modern concept of the necessity of nature, the omnipotence of nature, is nothing but the result of the evolution of the concept of God from the fourth to the sixteenth century. Only, the qualities of personality were abandoned and that which constituted the concept of God was taken over into the structure of thinking about nature.
Now, my dear friends, the genuine natural scientists of today would
oppose such statements vigorously. Just as many philosophers believe
they are thinking without prejudice about man by considering him as
consisting of body and soul, whereas in truth they merely follow the
eighth Œcumenical Council of Constantinople in 869, just
as these philosophers are dependent upon a historical stream, so all
the Haeckeleans, Darwinists, physicists with their natural order are
dependent upon the theological stream that developed in the period
from St. Augustine to Calvin. These things have to be comprehended. It
is the peculiar character of every evolutionary stream that it
comprises evolution as well as involution or devolution. And while the
concept God the All-Mighty developed, there existed a
sub-current in the subconscious spheres of human soul life,
which then became the leading upper current: the nature necessity.
(See diagram, red) And since the sixteenth century there exists a new
sub-current which prepares precisely in our time to become an upper
current. (blue.)
Click image for large view
It is characteristic of the Michael age that that which has been
prepared in the form of a sub-current of nature-necessity must
henceforth become an upper current. But if we wish to acquire a
possible concept of what it is that has thus prepared itself, we must
understand the inner spirit of Earth evolution.
I recently drew your attention to the fact that what takes place in
the evolution of the earth and of mankind in particular moves in a
descending line. Earth humanity and the evolution of the earth itself
is on the path of decadence. I drew your attention to the fact that
this is today a recognized geological truth, that geologists who are
to be taken seriously admit that the earth crust is in a process of
decay. Mankind itself, in particular, is in a process of decay through
the sensuous-earthly forces. And mankind, in its evolutionary process,
must receive spiritual impulses which counteract decadence. Therefore
a conscious spiritual life must enter mankind. We must be clear about
the fact that we have already passed beyond the pinnacle of Earth
evolution. In order that it may proceed, the spiritual must be taken
up more and more clearly and distinctly.
At the outset, this seems an abstract fact. But for the spiritual
researcher this is not an abstract fact. You know that we can trace
the evolution of the Earth through the Saturn,
Sun, and Moon states right into the Earth state.
This evolution may also be characterized in the following way: if we
speak of present mankind, we may consider the evolution of mankind
through the Saturn, Sun and Moon periods as a
preparation, as a pre-state. Only upon the Earth itself did man, as he
received his ego, gain his true humanhood, and he will receive further
elements into his true being during the subsequent evolutionary stages
of the Earth.
Now you know that the so-called Archai, the present Spirits of
Personality or Time Spirits, were in the Saturn state at the stage of
evolution at which the human being is today, although in quite
different forms, with a completely different outer aspect. I have
expressed this in my books by saying: what we designate today as
Archai, as Spirits of Personality, was man during the Saturn
period. The Archangeloi were man during the Sun period, the
Angeloi during the Moon period. During the Earth period
we are man.
Our own evolution, of course, went on alongside all this, by way of
preparation. If we go back to the Moon state we must say: Here
the Angeloi were human beings, human beings, to be sure, with an
appearance quite different from ours, for there were quite different
conditions upon the ancient Moon. But alongside these
Moon men, the Angeloi, we developed in a pre-state of the
Earth evolution, in a very advanced state, so that we had to be
taken into consideration by the Angeloi. Especially during the
descending phase of the Moon evolution did we, at times,
constitute a troublesome concern for the Angeloi. The same, however,
is the case with us in descending Earth evolution: since the Earth
evolution has entered its descending phases, other beings make
themselves felt. My dear friends, it is a significant, an important
result of spiritual-scientific research which is to be taken very,
very seriously, that we have already entered the period of Earth
evolution when certain beings make themselves felt who upon
Jupiter the next state of Earth evolution
will have advanced to the form of man, a different form of man, to be
sure, but which, nevertheless, may be compared with the being of man.
For we will be different beings on Jupiter. These so-to-speak
Jupiter men exist already now just as we existed upon the
Moon. They exist, of course not externally visible; but I
explained to you recently what it means to be externally visible, and
that man is also a super-sensible being. Supersensibily these beings
are very decidedly present.
I emphasize once more: it is an extremely serious truth that certain
beings make themselves felt which exist in the environment of mankind.
They make themselves felt more and more since the middle of the
fifteenth century. These beings possess chiefly the impulse of a force
which is very similar to the human force of will, that force of will
of which I told you yesterday that it exists in the deeper strata of
the human consciousness. These invisible beings are related to that
element of which ordinary consciousness thus remains unconscious
today; but they already make themselves very strongly felt in the
development of present-day humanity.
For the person who takes spiritual research truly seriously this is a
problem of great magnitude. I was confronted with this problem
especially strongly at the time I spoke to a number of our
friends about it in one or another form I was confronted with
this problem in a demanding fashion, as it were, when, in the year
1914, this war catastrophe broke in upon us. One had to ask oneself:
How did an event overtake European mankind which it is impossible to
gauge as to its causes in the way that is customary in regard to
previous historical events? The one who knows that not more than
thirty or forty people participated in Europe in the decisive events
of the year 1914, and who also knows the soul condition in which most
of these people were, will be confronted by this significant problem.
For most of these people, as strange as it may sound today, my dear
friends, most of these people had a dulled, obscured state of
consciousness. During the last few years much has occurred that was
caused by a dulled human consciousness. In the decisive places of the
year 1914 we see everywhere that the most important decisions of the
end of July and the beginning of August were reached with an obscured
consciousness; and this has continued on right into our present day.
This is a problem, terrifying in its nature. If we investigate it
spiritual-scientifically, then we find that these obscured
consciousnesses were the gateways through which precisely these
will-beings were able to take possession of the consciousness of these
men; they took possession of the obscured, veiled consciousness of
these human beings and acted with their consciousness. And
these beings who thus took possession, who are still sub-human beings,
what kind of beings are they? We have to pose this question very
seriously: What kind of beings are they?
Well, my dear friends, we have asked about the origin of human
intelligence, about the origin of human intelligent behavior which,
stating it simply, has its instrument in our head organism. And we
have seen that this intelligent constitution of our soul stems from
that deed of the Archangel Michael which is commonly presented in the
symbol of the fall, the casting down of the Dragon. This is actually a
very trivial symbol. For, if we really conceive of Michael and the
Dragon, we have to visualize, first, the Michael Being, and, secondly,
the Dragon who, in reality, consists of all that which enters into our
so-called reason, into our intelligence. Not into a hell does Michael
cast his opposing hosts, but into the human heads; there this
Luciferic impulse continues to live. I have characterized human
intelligence as an actual Luciferic impulse. Thus we may say: if we
look back into the evolution of the Earth, we find the
Michael-deed, and to this Michael-deed is joined the
illumination of man by his reason.
The sub-human beings whose main character consists of an impulse which
strongly coincides with human willing, with the human power of will,
now appear from below, as it were, whereas the hosts of forces
cast down by Michael came from above; and while these latter
took possession of the human power of will; they unite themselves with
it and are beings produced by the realm of Ahriman. Ahrimanic
influences acted through those obscured consciousnesses. Indeed, my
dear friends, as long as one does not take into consideration these
forces as forces objectively existing in the world just as one takes
into consideration what today is called magnetism, electricity, and so
forth, one will not gain an insight into that nature which, according
to Goethe's prose Hymn to Nature, comprises man. For nature, as
it is conceived of in today's natural science does not contain man,
but merely the human physical self.
At the beginning of Earth becoming we have to do with a
downfall of Luciferic beings; today we have a rise of
Ahrimanic beings. The former beings influence the Luciferic power of
thought, the latter the human power of will; we have to recognize the
arrival of these latter beings within the evolution of mankind. We
have to realize that these beings arrive and that we have to reckon
with a conception of nature which, to be sure, for the time being only
includes man; for the animal kingdom will only be included later on in
the Earth period. Upon the animal these beings have no
influences as yet. We shall not comprehend the human race without
taking these beings into consideration. And these beings, who are, as
it were, pushed from behind, for behind them there stands the
Ahrimanic power which endows them with their strong will power, which
pours into them their directive forces, these beings who as
such are sub-human beings are controlled in their totality by higher
Ahrimanic spirits and thus contain something which far surpasses their
own nature and being. Therefore they show something in their
appearance which, if it takes the human being captive, acts much more
strongly, very much more strongly than that which the weak human being
can control today, if he does not strengthen it through the spirit.
What is the aim of this host? Well, my dear friends, just as the hosts
which Michael has pushed down have aimed at human illumination, at
human permeation with reason, so these hosts aim at a certain
permeation of human willing. And what do they want? They burrow, as it
were, in the deepest stratum of consciousness in which the human being
is still asleep today in his waking state. Man does not notice how
these beings enter his soul and also his body. Here they suck in, with
their power of attraction, everything that has remained Luciferic,
that has not become Christ-permeated. This they can reach: this they
can take possession of.
My dear friends, our time raises these problems for us. We must no
longer pass by these things. They are not convenient. For it has
become convenient for human beings to think differently, that is, not
to think at all about man, not to take him into consideration at all.
And it is not without danger to speak about these things in complete
truth at a time when many people do not at all love the sense for
truth, quite apart from the fact that false sentimentality might find
these things a psychic cruelty.
The result of the comprehension of these things, however, will be a
thorough grasp of the necessity of the Christ impulse. One must
recognize where the Christ impulse is lacking. Yesterday we showed
that in the middle stratum of consciousness the Christ impulse takes
hold of the middle stratum of consciousness, if man really permeates
himself with the Christ, then these Ahrimanic powers cannot penetrate
through this middle stratum, upward, and they cannot, with their
spiritual forces, pull down the intellectual forces. Everything
depends on that.
It is very necessary today that we recognize the nature of the
influences which come to us from extra-human, sub-human beings which
in turn are influenced by other beings. They are just as important as
many influences which are only rooted in the world of man. A week ago
I talked to you about the Michael influence. I have characterized this
Michael influence for you. It is a very necessary one. For just as it
is true that the Michael influence has brought about the Luciferic
influencing of human intelligence, so true is it that now the
counter-pole arises, namely, the appearance of certain Ahrimanic
beings. And only through the constant activity of Michael is the human
being armed against that which arises there. Even physiologically it
is dangerous today to cling to mere nature necessity, to that kind of
fatalism which is expressed in nature necessity. For education,
through school and through life, in the concepts which are merely
based upon nature necessity, upon the omnipotence of nature
necessity, weakens the human head, and human beings become thereby so
strongly passive in regard to their consciousness, that other
forces are able to enter this consciousness, and human beings will
fail to acquire the strength that is necessary for the reception into
the human soul of the Christ impulse in its present form.
It is my duty, as it were, my dear friends, to speak at this time of
the subject of which I have begun to speak today (I shall continue it
tomorrow): of the appearance of certain Ahrimanic beings, which we
have to take into account. Of this appearance numerous people upon
earth are cognizant today. But they give it the wrong interpretation.
They interpret it wrongly for the reason that they know nothing of the
real triad Christ-Lucifer-Ahriman, or do not wish to know anything
about it, but jumble up Ahriman and Lucifer. Then discrimination is
impossible; then it is impossible properly to recognize the true
fundamental character of these Ahrimanic beings who now arise. Only if
we clearly elaborate the Ahrimanic element and know the nature of the
super-sensible influences which now arise as the counterpart, as it
were, of Michael's casting down of the Dragon. It is like a lifting
up, out of Ahrimanic depths, of certain beings. And these beings find
special points of attack in the human being if the latter yields to
unbridled instinctive impulses and does not strive for clarity in
relation to them.
Now, there exists today a method I might call it an anti-method, of
concealing the instinctive element, by putting down a concept and
pushing another over it, so that it is impossible to form a proper
judgment concerning it. Just think of the battle cry of the
proletariat of the modern age. Behind this battle cry there stand very
justified demands of mankind I have often dealt with this. But
these demands are not, to begin with, appealed to. In our idea of the
three-fold social order they are appealed to for the first time.
Something essentially different is appealed to: Proletarians of all
countries, unite! What does this mean? It means: Foster your antipathy
against the other classes, foster, as individuals, what resembles
hate, and unite; that means, love one another, unite your feelings of
hate, look for the love of one class, search among you for the love of
the members of one class out of hate. Love one another out of hate, on
the basis of hate. There you have put down two concepts of
opposing poles. This pushing back of instincts makes man's conceptions
so nebulous, rendering him unable to know what he is dealing with in
his own self. There actually exists a kind of anti-method, if I may
use the paradoxical expression, in order to obscure, through
present-day human thinking, the holding sway of an instinctive life
which offers especially strong points of attack for the described
Ahrimanic beings.
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Last Modified: 02-Nov-2024
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