Ahriman’s here, Lucifer’s gone

Most people have never heard of Ahriman, whose evil influence dominates the world today, and most people have a misguided understanding about the now long-gone influence of Lucifer on Earth, which exists now only in the non-physical realms. 

For an understanding of the influence of Lucifer and Ahriman on Earth and humanity, Rudolf Steiner’s 90-page booklet of five 1919 lectures published by the Anthroposophic Press under the title The Influences of Lucifer & Ahriman, with a subtitle Human responsibility for the Earth, is one of the best sources of easily-understood information. 

Exactly who are Ahriman and Lucifer?

Firstly, Ahriman. Ahriman is considered by Steiner as the essence of evil in a way that Lucifer is not, and never has been.

Ahriman’s influence has been to tie human souls to earth, to disconnect entirely from the spirit realms, whereas Lucifer’s aim was to move human souls entirely into the non-physical realms and away from any connection to the physical realms.

Ahriman: Aingra Mainu, or Ahriman, was first spoken of in the religion of Zoroastrianism in Persia. Steiner states that Ahriman “was an evil god, the lord of lies who tempted men and women to believe that they were solely earthly beings”. 

Ahriman’s purpose, which appears to be have been very successful, is to separate humans from their soul connection and to make the materialistic world their ‘god’, to the exclusion of the spirit world.

For several centuries now, the influence of Ahriman has been building to this time: the final plan being (and Steiner is talking a century ago in 1919) that man would merge with machine (‘transhumanism’). We have now reached the point that Steiner lectured on a hundred years ago, with AI pushing out the soul from the human body. 

He said (and he could be talking in 2022, rather than 1919): 

“Just think with what contempt average citizens today regard anything that seems idealistic, anything that seems to be a path leading in any way to the spiritual. At heart they are always asking: what is the good of it? How will it help me to acquire the world’s goods”? 

Steiner says we have now reached the point where only what is ‘useful’ is of interest to humans, in other words, in today’s parlance, personal gratification, and physical maintenance, something that helps to put food in the mouth.

Lucifer: Lucifer, on the other hand, was never really the evil Satanic figure that is portrayed in these more modern times. Steiner’s lectures make it clear that Lucifer had a good influence on the evolution of humanity in a way that Ahriman never has.

Who was Lucifer? Lucifer was a being that advanced soul evolution with the aim of ultimately relocating souls away from the physical universe and into Lucifer’s non-physical realm.

The influence of Lucifer on Earth has now almost completely evaporated however, and has ceased to be relevant. Lucifer incarnated in the third millennium before Christ, in China and has now been superceded by the influence of Ahriman on Earth.

Ahriman’s projected arrival was at the start of the third millennium after the Golgotha Mystery (the crucifixion of Christ) – in other words, now. The dark influence of Ahriman is now upon us.

To understand the importance of Lucifer, one has to go back to the time when souls originally came down to earth and surrounded themselves in earthly physical beings. These souls were childlike, and struggled to become compatible with human bodies.

The evolutionary integration of souls in humans after many years of limited existence on earth was the result of the intervention of the luciferic beings, allowing a far more rapid evolution of intelligence and thinking in humans.

The problem with the luciferian influence was that it wanted humans eventually to abandon the path of earth evolution, their alliance with earth, and follow Lucifer into his world, away from earth, into the non-physical realms.

With the arrival of Christ, who re-balanced the souled human’s evolution, this shift to Lucifer’s world never occurred, and humans are now inextricably tied into the fate of Earth.

The influence of Christ’s balance between the earthly and spirit realms has waned in recent years, and Ahriman’s influence is now dominant for most of humanity.

What is clear from the five lectures is that the antidote to the all-powerful influence of Ahriman is to connect to spirit, to our higher selves. 

This is the time of the separation of wheat from chaff.

It is simply a question of the direction that the consciousness of humans takes in the face of this powerful and evil incarnation. 

It seems that most people are already lost, unawake or aware of what is happening, but those who are awake should continue to try to awaken others for as long as they are able to. Every day counts.

2 July 2022

[Book review: Rudolf Steiner – “The Influences of Lucifer & Ahriman”]