The Rudolf Steiner Archive

9. Luciferic and Ahrimanic Elements in Contemporary Cultural Life

[ 1 ] Our lives must, so to speak, embody what we can become through anthroposophy. This includes a clear perspective on life and sound judgment regarding it. In our time, life is more complicated than it was in the previous era. Even in periods not long past, it was still much less complicated. This was due to the simple circumstances. Back then, the soul and its associated qualities were more widespread among humanity than they are today. But many other things have also changed significantly. And we are all living within this changed reality and must strive to penetrate the sphere of life in which we find ourselves as deeply as is necessary. It is precisely a feature of contemporary life that, despite the fragmentation of modern life, we must attain harmony of the soul and inner unity of the mind.

[ 2 ] This cannot be fully explored in a single lecture; we can only highlight a few points here. Today we find materialism everywhere, including a form of materialism that permeates all of practical life, brought about by industrialization. The latter has made the conditions of business life—and of life in general—much more complicated; it has given rise to the hustle and bustle in which humanity is caught up and cannot find time to reflect. People often do not even realize how their entire labor, their every thought and consideration from morning to night, is devoted to meeting material needs. It is only natural that in an age in which we are surrounded by the clamour of machines, people begin to think materialistically about all matters. The spread of a materialistic and monistic worldview would truly have been impossible in any other age.

[ 3 ] We anthroposophists hold a new worldview. The spiritual movement is entering the world. Consider the difficulties we face; consider how small spiritual science has remained despite its magnificent potential. Let us compare this with what prevails in the world as religious creeds—what must be regarded as remnants of bygone times. We find there many religious endeavors. We should take a good look at them. There we find a very intellectual approach to religion. Preachers appear—Christian ones—who no longer believe in a human Christ or in immortality. People are glad when a Jatho movement or something similar emerges and is presented as rationally as possible. All the old authorities can no longer stand up against the blind faith in what science has proven. These phenomena are all connected once again to moral views. Anyone in a business profession will confirm to me how little place the truth has in today’s interactions between seller and customer. Many who stand in between with a sense of responsibility suffer from this. Do the gossamer-thin concepts of such intellectual preachers possess any moral power? Even public opinion, of which we are so proud today, did not exist in the 13th and 14th centuries as it does now through the press. Great philosophers have long said: Public opinion consists of private errors. — Who could possibly make an Ostwald and the like believe that spiritual beings have anything to do with him? Yet by denying them, he actually summons very specific spiritual beings. Behind an Ostwald marches an army of very specific spirits. Spirit lives in all matter. There is a spirit who has every interest in denying his own spirit; that is Ahriman. When a person directs all his gaze solely toward material laws, he does not drive away the spirits, but conjures them up; they creep into the minds of materialists. Mephistopheles sends Faust into the realm of the Mothers and says: There you will find nothingness. — Faust replies to him: “In your nothingness I hope to find the universe.” — But humanity today does not answer as Faust did, for materialistic people are possessed by Ahriman.

[ 4 ] In the religious-rationalist tradition, however, a different spirit is at work: Lucifer. Through abstract, gossamer-thin concepts, he detaches people from the true spiritual realm. Ideas are now supposed to live within history—which is just as sensible as expecting a painter who is merely a painting to create pictures. This fusion with matter has been in the making for a long time, and today it has reached a preliminary climax. Heraclitus diluted theosophy into philosophy through the influence of Lucifer. This is expressed figuratively in the saying that he sacrificed his book to the Diana of Ephesus.

[ 5 ] Now let us consider public opinion. It arises from the law that Lucifer and Ahriman had to intervene in the world picture. In the past, instead of public opinion, there were people whose inner lives reached up to the spiritual mysteries. These personalities exerted an influence, both good and evil, on world life. One can understand this, for example, by studying the history of Florence between the years 1100 and 1500. Today, this influence is embodied by those people who strive to establish a connection with the spiritual. However, the Luciferic entities left behind on the Moon—which determine public opinion—have not progressed to this point. Consequently, public opinion has lagged behind by about a millennium. The very lowest among them work on public opinion—so to speak, merely the recruits of the Luciferic army. Within them are developing beings who will one day emerge as powerful entities. They sit behind the editorial desk, they stand behind the popular orator, and so on. In their craft, they are Luciferic spirits just beginning, actually still mere toddlers.

[ 6 ] Understanding life is part of practical spiritual science. Human beings form their picture of the world through the intellect. What, then, arises from this intellectual and sensory knowledge? There is an old saying. Not even those who are called to do so can grasp it. The serpent says: You will be like God and know what is good and evil. — All intellectual and sensory knowledge is Luciferic; it is his very emblem. The insistence on external experience, which accepts nothing but atoms, consists of fanciful ideas. Behind Maya do not stand atoms, but spiritual realities. All the phenomena described here are not realities; the realities are the spiritual beings. The monads do not exist unless we perceive them in reality as the higher hierarchies. There are many hierarchies; among the highest are also the deities of the Trinity. Philosophy speaks only of a unity. But the spirits are many, and unity exists only in the souls of the spirits. Whoever has become accustomed to thinking in such a way that they know themselves to be in the community of spirits possesses the moral laws. Ahriman causes people to sink into the swamp of matter; Lucifer draws them away from the truth, preventing them from suspecting that they are losing their way in an illusory world. Maya has a justification when it is understood as an expression of the reality lying behind it.