By Richard Cooper and Alexandra Vasilache
‘Greater love has no man than this than he gives up his life for his friends.’ (John, 15:13)
The path to Christ is through our Time Spirit, Michael. In a sense, like a great friend to Christ, Michael bows down through us to Christ. The unique aspect of Michael is his respect for the potential wisdom and love of human beings; he patiently waits for us to approach him, to pose questions to which we would love to know the spiritual answer. We might assume this does not need to be stated in Anthroposophy, but this article aims to portray a deeper understanding of what the Michaelic spirit means. People have become used to treating Spiritual Science as an emptied of life compendium, betraying less intensified intuitive thinking, and signalling more their experience or desire of the ‘virtue’ of spiritual sight.
A particular anthroposophical devotee in an excitable mood once asked Rudolf Steiner about the rise of new ‘clairvoyants’ and he replied briskly, ‘Any chewing cow has visions’, referring to the fact that in the digestive process of a cow, the astral body contemplates what the etheric body reflects from the physical process; thus, a cow has vivid imaginations in its digestive process. Rudolf Steiner speaks of ‘stomach or belly clairvoyance’, and the delusion coming from these old forms, as many are not objective imaginations or spiritual communications per se, but images from one’s digestive process, to which the ‘clairvoyant’ adds their own intellectual flair. ‘Clairvoyance’ is a term that has become abused lately: the distinction between a regression to old atavistic clairvoyance and the exact one, which arises out of intuitive thinking must be delineated clearly; it needs discretion as spiritual tact, even in anthroposophical circles where the content sounds like Rudolf Steiner. We see everywhere new age bookshelves, new manifestos, new projects for mankind given by aliens, by ascended masters; just because an author assures us of their spiritual authority, we should not be credulous in any of these situations.
Atavistic clairvoyant communications are not the only obstacle. The political spectre is the next significant impediment in getting to the new way of thinking, to the Etheric Christ as an experience of thinking. So, we have to ask, does a writer truly lead us to our own initiative, to our own Michaelic work in these times, as a true path Christ, or does the life spirit in their work feel jaded?
Rudolf Steiner tells us:
‘I just want to remind you how the people who attend political or other meetings today are actually just a flock of sheep that fall for the slogans thrown at them by the speakers and then follow them. In this respect, humanity today is terribly dependent. It is also dependent in that it simply absorbs what has been set. As a result, people gradually come to the point where they can no longer think in reality at all, but only seemingly think, because their thinking can no longer, I might say, be seen in the spiritual light.’
Rudolf Steiner, The Occult Truths of Old Myths and Legends, GA 211, 21 March 1922, Bern
A spectre is an elemental Ahrimanic being that hides in the etheric body. Its purpose is to cloud one’s thinking, colouring it with doubt and mistrust for the creative spirit that manifests in the world or through others while separating it from the living spiritual. Spectres are formed from the disharmony between human beings, such as bad laws, bad formal and informal institutions, thinking patterns, decontextualised holistic slogans inappropriate for individuality. It is the materialisation of one’s thinking. They are the beings of bias, of what splits the thinking in right or left, in white or black, good or bad or any other polarised positions.
A political spectre divides one’s thinking into political wings, left or right. The political spectres are mighty Ahrimanic beings, and if a person adopts one as a political position through mere sympathy and not unbiased thinking, it will not colour only the political views but life views too, and, most unfortunately, the spiritual views. While the politicians themselves are not so loyal to their wing, the political spectre always is, and it will take possession of one’s thinking in the most unexpected way. The political spectre is a tyrant, and it will always imply that anything coming from the preferred wing is good, and anything coming through the opposed wing is wrong. Like any Ahrimanic being, a political spectre is not concerned with the truth. However, it will manipulatively invoke ‘truth’ in arguments every single time, but with the purpose of materialisation of the thought itself by preserving the dead old view, the entire structure of the mechanisms and patterns of thinking of either the right or the left and blocking anything creative in one’s thinking and wants to leave the bias.
If one observes, for instance, the type of political debates an Anthroposophist shares on Facebook or what kind of political discourses they adopt, one can immediately form an opinion of what kind of anthroposophical events one prefers because the political spectre doesn’t stay in its lane, they simply expend to one’s everyday life. However, what is left or right politically is not necessarily the same spiritually, sometimes it is reversed. The political right spectre will be more inclined to participate to events closer to the left-hand esotericism, the public conferences. In contrast, the left political spectre will be more inclined to adopt esoterically the right-hand esotericism, the closed esoteric groups. As we know, left-hand esotericism believes in popularising esotericism, even in a watered-down manner. As representatives, we have the oriental teachings and everything that stands today as the new-age movement. The right-hand esotericism are the occult and closed lodges. They believe that esoteric knowledge should not be imparted to what they call ‘base consciousness’ or the masses. Here, we find the classical closed groups, Masonry, Jesuitism, Zionism etc. But we should be aware that not everyone in those lodges is right wing esoterically, some of them are left. As a cosmopolitan spiritual movement, classic Anthroposophy as given by Rudolf Steiner is neither right nor left. Still, we need to admit that 100 years after Rudolf Steiner’s death, Anthroposophy suffered many foreign influences, imported from left or right streams or different lodges, some of them poisonous and caustic to its spirit.
The political spectres act as predispositions of one’s soul and the most decayed of them will cloud the consciousness of Anthroposophists to recognise Ahriman as Ahriman. Two attitudes of the soul Anthroposophists must overcome to recognize the incarnation of Ahriman today: one is spiritual lust (derived from far-left hand esotericism) and the other is borrowed-pattern thinking, hypnotised or robotised thinking (derived from far-right hand esotericism). They represent the decayed Platonism and Aristotelianism, the egregore of the two streams.
Spiritual lust = decayed Platonism derived from the misuse of one’s will in Anthroposophy
Robotised thinking = decayed Aristotelianism derived from the deadening of the forces of one’s thinking with anthroposophical concepts
If we were to describe in vivid pictures how decayed Aristotelianism promotes robotised thinking, we need to imagine the 19th-century Blavatsky intellectual literature club mood. Here people care more about constructing anthroposophical ideas and less about the spirit behind them. They combine anthroposophical thoughts with such mastery that they become a tight net of wonderful knit forms. However, these forms will eventually suffocate any spiritual experience because their roots lie in the Ahrimanic mixture of ideas, already detached from the spirit behind them. You can easily recognise these people: they are eloquent, they like hearing themselves talk on stage, they like being invited and courted, they like being named with their academic title, although the academic title has no relevance in Michael School, and they will intimidate you with their knowledge. Any question the audience asks draws an entire anthroposophical compendium of concepts and notions that will magically arrange, like a kaleidoscope, to serve as an eloquent answer. But is this answer true? They suppose it is because they think the combinatory is perfect, that their logic is flawless. Behind this soul attitude lies the spirit of intellectual infatuation.
The other mood was something that we can see as a ‘flower-power’ soul mood. We call it ‘spiritual lust’, although Rudolf Steiner calls it ‘voluptuous bliss.’ It happens in Anthroposophy too, unfortunately, after the flower-power movement and because after Rudolf Steiner’s death, there was no guardian on Earth for the workshops offered in the name Anthroposophy. Distinct from the other group, this group is not so eloquent in knitting brilliant thoughts together, but they have experience in the elementary world: they see and teach how to perceive in Nature. This group gathers many natural clairvoyants, and all proposed exercises presume the participants will trust the person who guides the experience. For instance, one cannot check if they say that three gnomes are in the garden. Most seminars are constructed so the participants try to perceive and characterise something they don’t see. We are not questioning the goodwill of people, but what usually happens is that the participants want to perceive so much, that they induce themselves into all kinds of moods to do that. It’s like one tries to guess the present someone brought them, except this time one has no recompense because one cannot lie to oneself that one sees the present they never received. Developing suggested and unreal imaginations is how one gets closer to the eighth sphere.
We can protect ourselves from decayed Aristotelianism by practicing the esoteric exercises Rudolf Steiner gave without fear. We can protect ourselves from decayed Platonism by studying Anthroposophy systematically and carefully, without sympathy and antipathy. Exercises from Knowledge of the Higher Worlds (GA10) will prevent one from falling into decayed Aristotelianism, provided that one doesn’t apply robotised thinking when reading the exercises in the book. Likewise, Philosophy of Freedom (GA4) will prevent one from falling into mystical thinking and developing one’s passions with esotericism. But if one wants to work at the root of their bias, they must address the political spectre inwardly.
Rudolf Steiner’s creative word is full of living life spirit; it can be felt and seen in the after image, when one reads him. A phenomenological observation we may make is that much of the secondary literature since Rudolf Steiner’s death, the traditional combinatory of the anthroposophical concepts or the so-called ‘alternative’, self-professed ‘clairvoyance’ standing in contradistinction to it, now feels dated and of its time, the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s, and was the subject of the previous article. ‘Occult Science’ is a book that is only a partial rendition of all that might be comprehended and seen in the spirit. Rudolf Steiner emphasises that to do justice to all that is perceived in the spiritual world, one would have to write books like Occult Science continually to accommodate the incredible depth of knowledge of the spiritual world shown once one truly awakens spiritually. This has to be the goal of any spiritual researcher and aspirant for Initiation. It is a training for us in discretion in Anthroposophy, to practice spirit remembrance, to remember we are called to do the same, for that is why Rudolf Steiner gave Anthroposophy to the world that we may each follow and attain the same and so fructify life and human evolution.
Today, when we write about Anthroposophy, we can do it in two ways: either we rise beyond the threshold of death as Initiates and communicate directly from the objectivity of the spiritual facts, or we get through our striving in Anthroposophy glimpses of knowledge for which we need spiritual confirmation. When does one have a spiritual confirmation of a specific research/spiritual thought? It is when the thought (or hypothesis) is lived in the will as an act of knowledge and not merely as a thought. It becomes a spiritual fact, a spiritual deed. So, everything we say, even if we are merely repeating Rudolf Steiner’s words, is up to that point, just a hypothesis. Anthroposophic thoughts become facts or acts of knowledge when we come to live them not as dogmas or subjects of belief but as objective facts in our will. You may wonder, do we need clairvoyance for that? Many times, yes, but not always. Clairvoyance is not a condition for the act of knowledge to happen because intuition can be lived also directly, as a deed of grace, in the absence of imagination and inspiration, although it is different when a spiritual thought is lived clairvoyantly and super-consciously beyond the threshold of knowledge. But one should never mistake imagination and inspiration with intuition, which enlivening a thought in the will refers to as the last step.
In any scientific research, we have hypotheses, experiments, or, in this case, spiritual experience(s) and conclusions. When concluding, we need to decide whether our hypotheses were correct or wrong and generate a statement of knowledge. In spiritual research, the experience is always new, no matter how often repeated, because it doesn’t actually repeat but is lived anew. For instance, I go to work every day, but I don’t repeat the experiences of yesterday because life changes organically. Even if I go to work every day, I will have a new day. The same applies since a spiritual experience is experiencing life from the other side. If it is not just a memory image but an experience, it will each time be new.
When it occurs, the act of knowledge is final; it cannot be changed anymore or brought to another state. This is intuition. Scientific research is always like this: ‘This is where we got so far, based on our previous steps. But this final state will change when another researcher improves the theory.’ In spiritual research, when the act of knowledge occurs, it is final. One will say, ‘Now I know,’ which spiritually is the same with ‘I am.’
In intuition, ‘I know’ = ‘I am.’ Before the unification of the subject of knowledge with oneself, everything is just hypothesis in spiritual research.
The act of knowledge in this case doesn’t support itself on time or, better said, on the creative movement of time, but on the very essence of the I am. The I am in the will is also the only one that achieves a spiritual communication with Michael and Michael School. For clarification, we refer to Michael School as the spiritual schooling that started in the 15th century with a spiritual community founded around the discarnated spirits of Aristotle and Alexander immediately after they entered the spiritual in those incarnations (4th century BC), to which the Platonic spirits (Alain de Lille, Pietro de Compostella, Bernard of Chartres, and others) joined in the 13th century. Today, we refer to Michael School as a karmic spiritual community. Michael teaches his devoted servants directly from the 15th century and plans together the deeds on Earth, schooling that includes humans, elemental spirits and beings of the 3rd hierarchy. So, Michael School is not merely what the Anthroposophists refer to as the teachings of the First Class. These teachings are only a small part translated physically of what is taught in Michael School. In Michael School, the ‘I am’ is also used as a promise, a pledge, or a spiritual contract. Sometimes, ‘I am’ also means ‘I recognise you.’ This might seem strange, but it is so. Some languages still have this remembrance, for instance, the present continuous tense in English (to be + verb + -ing). It is engaging, recognising life with one’s entire existence. Being devoted to the truth requires no swinging between sympathy and antipathy, no politics, exoterically or in one’s soul.
‘The Anthroposophical Society rejects any kind of sectarian activity. Party politics it considers not to be within its task.’
Rudolf Steiner, the 4th statute of the Anthroposophical Society as stated at the Christmas Conference 1923/1924
At Easter 2025, some dramatic new astrological events are breaking into humanity’s lives and global experience. Neptune has moved into Aries, ending the old, and starting a new cycle of 165 years, and Saturn will move into Aries in May 2025. Pluto has ended a sixteen-year transit of Capricorn and will be in Aquarius until 2044. We must clarify the distinction between astrology in its popular form and Astrosophy as seen from the anthroposophical perspective:
‘Consider the human being. We divide him into certain members. In accordance with that memberment which arranges the whole nature and being of man rather from the etheric principle, we divide him, as you know, into physical body, etheric body, sentient body, which last we then bring into relation with sentient soul; after that we have intellectual or mind soul (which the Greeks call soul of force or power), and consciousness or spiritual soul. And then we come to spirit-self, life-spirit and spirit-man. And all these several members reveal themselves to us as forming together a single, relatively independent whole; taken all together, they compose man. But now, the way in which the members are put together to compose man, differs in each single human being. One person will have a little more power and strength in his ether body, and correspondingly less in his physical body; another a little more power in the consciousness soul; and so on. And right in the midst of all these members stands man in his very own individuality, which individuality goes through repeated earth lives and has the task of bringing under control this whole connection of various members, has the task of uniting them, on the principle of freedom, under one individual ordering.
And now let us see how that which comes to man from cosmic realms unites itself with these several members. The influence of the Sun, which works strongly on man as a whole, works strongest of all on the physical body. In connection with the etheric body we find that the strongest influences come from the Moon; in connection with the sentient body it is the influences of Mercury that work with special strength; and in the sentient soul we have the strongest influences of Venus. The strongest influences of Mars serve to help the development of the intellectual or mind soul, and of Jupiter the consciousness or spiritual soul, whilst Saturn brings its influences to bear especially on the spirit self. And the members that have not yet developed in man find their support in Uranus and Neptune—the vagrants, so to speak, among the planets, who attached themselves at a later time to our planetary system. In Uranus and Neptune therefore we shall expect to find planetary influences which, under normal conditions, exert no very strong influence upon the constellation at birth.
Spirit Man – Neptune
Life Spirit – Uranus
Spirit Self – Saturn
Spiritual Soul – Jupiter
Intellectual Soul – Mars
Sentient Soul – Venus
Sentient Body – Mercury
Ether Body – Moon
Physical Body – Sun
Rudolf Steiner, Curative Education, GA 317, 6 July 1924, Dornach
As Saturn transits into Aries, it begins a new cycle with fire to new beginnings. Traditionally Saturn is known as the discipline, the hard taskmaster in life, bringing karmic lessons to awaken to higher spiritual responsibility. The link from Saturn to the Spirit Self shows our need on the spiritual path to grow in consciousness and face trials of knowledge in our biographies. This is a deepening of knowledge and spiritual experience over the threshold we encounter through Jupiter. Neptune in Aries compliments this move, but we should reflect on Neptune’s temptation to dissolve into the fog of mysticism and mirror the collective mind. Neptune in Pisces (2012-2025/6), carried the time of COVID and its aftereffects. Neptune in Aries will show where individual initiative in personal and world history might come but will also raise the fanaticism of messianic cults and divisive polemics. As mankind has crossed the threshold to the spiritual world, those on a spiritual path start to accommodate the outer planets’ effect on their biography.
‘Astrologers still have an inkling of these things for they connect Uranus and Neptune only with those human qualities which transcend the personal, make a man a genius, go beyond the individual personal element—where he is concerned with things that no longer have to do with his personal development. All astrological statements are to this effect. Uranus and Neptune only come into play when a man becomes a genius or strives to transcend the human element, when his organization has the tendency to expand or decay too strongly.’
Rudolf Steiner, Course for Young Doctors – Easter Course, GA 316, 23 April 1924, Dornach
Our observation is that the planets later discovered affect people only through their spiritual connection to world history, with world karma. Being in connection with the world karma doesn’t refer only to the present incarnation, but more to our spiritual, Michaelic identity. Therefore, we must assume that the Michaelites will feel the influences of these planets at the individual level through their connection to the world karma.
So, we see Neptune and Uranus in a horoscope as challenges that must be made conscious for the spiritual aspirant and will mirror on the world stage. Discovered in 1930, Pluto fits with a subhuman, sub nature experience of the fallen ethers of light, sound and life, in the Inner Earth as a stage, so to speak, for how the spiritual student may awaken to their will and their creation of knowledge in life. This mirrors world history in the intensified challenges of the 1930s and the Return of Christ in the Etheric, 1933. The understanding of fallen light as electricity, fallen sound and chemical ether as electromagnetism, and fallen life as the third force linking atomic energy and the vacuum, as seen in CERN, needs to be investigated and intuitively understood concerning the nine layers of the inner earth. Uranus transits through Taurus and into Gemini as of July 2025. We would advise the reader to make notes on how to orient to these outer planets in these coming times, by reflecting on biography over the past two decades according to the outer planets. The last time Uranus transited Taurus into Gemini was in 1941 and transited through Gemini up to 1948, a mirroring of the time we shall enter in July 2025. All the changes to communications and all the deaths, leading from the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki up to the end of World War II and then the founding of the CIA, the United Nations and the transfer of science and technology over from Germany to the USA are covered in this period. Our task is to understand what the years 2019 to 2025 were preparing us for. With Uranus in Gemini, the changes in electromagnetism and the effects of radiation during the COVID years will speed things up for technology, artificial intelligence, medicine, and media, and change in the world for good and ill. The challenge of Ahriman is that we cannot keep up with the pace of change, but this is an illusion (for we can, if we take interest). The challenge of Lucifer is that we are lulled into a wish to remain stuck in our past, unable or unwilling to engage with life because it is all too complicated, overwhelming and requires that we ‘show up’ in life. It is essential, as Rudolf Steiner notes when talking of the outer planets, that we remain conscious of what is impelling us, insinuating us in our will, facilitated by Lucifer and Ahriman, to understand ourselves with a grounded understanding of consciousness on the spiritual path, of Saturn.
What can we expect from Uranus in Gemini (entering July 2025) coming on the back of Uranus in Taurus (2019-2025)?
‘The forces which enable the spiritual to stream down to earth with the aid of positive and negative magnetism come from Gemini; they are the midday forces. In ancient times it was known that cosmic influences were involved in this, and today even exoteric scientists are aware that in some or other way positive and negative magnetism lie behind Gemini in the Zodiac. The aim will be to paralyse all that could be gained through a revelation of the true duality in the cosmos—to paralyse it in a materialistic, egotistic way by means of the forces which stream in particularly from Gemini and can be placed entirely at the service of the human Double.’
Rudolf Steiner, The Wrong and Right Use of Esoteric Knowledge, GA 178, 25 Nevember 1917, Dornach
The Ahrimanic doppelgänger (the Ahrimanic double) is a being who enters the human body shortly before birth and leaves shortly before death. Part of the work we published was the need for an understanding amongst Anthroposophists of the meeting with the Guardian of the Threshold. This work brings an understanding of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic doubles. It is essential to begin to perceive one’s own doppelgänger and to start to see the links between the events of 2020, and the effects on the global scale mirrored and implicated in each person’s individual double. One of the phenomena we may witness in ourselves and others is how the effect of the pandemic leads to an accentuation and intensification of the double, through radiation as a cause of the technological development and technological ‘push’ during lockdowns, through the increased electromagnetic impact on the fields of the earth and around it. We may bring together some other observations, such as cloud seeding and weather modification, and reflect on the seemingly ‘new’, ‘strange’ phenomena of the northern lights reaching over Europe in 2024. We are called to question strange anomalies like this, in the media and our personal lives, karma and health, for example, to recognise that we are outwardly being shown electromagnetic connections between the individual and humanity.
‘I called to your attention last time that the impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha was to be eliminated from the world by introducing another impulse from the West, a kind of Antichrist; from the direction of the East, the Christ impulse, as it appears in the twentieth century, is to be paralyzed by directing the attention, the interest, away from Christ appearing in the etheric.
Those concerned with introducing the Antichrist instead of the Christ have endeavored to exploit what could work especially through the most materialistic forces, yet working spiritually with these materialistic forces. Above all they strive to exploit electricity and especially the earth’s magnetism to have influence over the entire earth. I have shown you how, in what I have called the human double, earthly forces arise. This mystery will be penetrated. It will be an American mystery to make use of the magnetism of the earth in its “doubleness,” to make use of the magnetism in North and South to send guiding forces that work spiritually across the earth. Look at the magnetic map of the earth and compare it with what I am now saying. Observe the course of the line where the magnetic needle swings to East and West and where it does not swing at all. (I can only give indications at this time.) From a certain celestial direction, spiritual beings are constantly at work. One need only put these spiritual beings at the service of earthly existence and, because these spiritual beings working in from the cosmos are able to transmit the mystery of the earth’s magnetism, one can penetrate the mystery of the earth’s magnetism and can bring about something very significant of a group-egotistical nature in relation to the three things, gold, health, and prolonging life. It will simply be a matter of mustering the doubtful courage for these things. This will certainly be done within certain circles!’
Rudolf Steiner, Secret Brotherhoods and the Mystery of the Human Double, GA 178, 25 November 1917, Dornach
Ray Kurzweil is an inventor, futurist, and transhumanist currently working as an advisor and technical director at Google since 2012. He started to announce ‘The Age of Spiritual Machines’ in 1998 (book published in 1999), and ‘Singularity’ in 2011, thus creating the timetable regarding the full merger of the human with artificial intelligence by 2045. We note: one hundred years after the two atomic bomb blasts.
According to Kurzweil (in the recent podcast at the end of the post), the main steps to Transhumanism are:
1. Passing the computers’ Turing test by 2029: Machines can be declared self-conscious during this phase.
2. Merging with a human neocortex starting 2030: During this phase, human memory will be gradually enhanced by Google downloading and nanotechnology.
3. Singularity by 2045: Singularity means that artificial intelligence will be fully merged with human intelligence and will have the autonomy to evolve as a new enhanced being. This being can elude illness and death, and, of course, reincarnation, thus achieving Ahrimanic immortality.
All these steps, and many in between, have been announced by Kurzweil since 1998 and implemented by Google and the other big tech companies as we speak, according to the plan already set (publicly) in 1998. Listen to his interviews or read his books. You will soon understand also that the whole recent pandemic was a preparation for testing the fast computation of RNA sequences needed to create an intelligent machine. For example, in 2011 he said they broke the sequences for HIV and SARS viruses. So, the whole thing was preparation for both points 1. and 2.
In a podcast interview from 2022, Kurzweil reveals, among many other interesting facts regarding transhumanism and the current status of achieving Singularity, that the Moderna vaccine, which was computed with Google and Amazon tools, was ready in only two days. So, we are witnessing in our time Rudolf Steiner’s warnings more than 100 years ago.
Perhaps most importantly, in a Michaelic spirit, we must wake up to the manifold deceptions being played upon the public mind. Just a cursory glance at latitudes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki of 1945, are enough to show a link between the 132nd meridian east and the 48th meridian and the 132nd west, forming a circle of electromagnetic charge, highlighting the need for what Rudolf Steiner described as an understanding of how secret societies have aims beneath the facts of history we are outwardly told. Electromagnetic frequencies guide the paths of birds in nature. It is thus indeed intuitively perceptible that the goal of the new vaccine technologies on a social scale is the influence and takeover of the human will, the direction of biography from outside subliminally, and this is no longer science fiction but is the stated aim and well-funded objective of much of the research into vaccines and media hypnosis and communications technology.
To highlight many concerns about the technological development taking over our lives, like a tsunami, we may reflect on how ChatGPT answers the questions of Anthroposophy. We shall notice that its answers challenge Anthroposophists to stop writing texts that an AI could write in seconds. It is a call for us to recognise the redundancy of the spirit of evangelism in Anthroposophy, and to answer what truly comes from our spiritual creativity. ChatGPT shows that Ahriman speaking through AI can provide nearly everything in terms of ‘expousing’ Anthroposophy. It acts like a mirror to consider the work taken from us, from our I, when what should have been done by our thinking is done by a demon at the click of a button. When one submits their thinking to the know-it-all machine is when the evolution is robbed from them.
None of this is easy if we neglect true interest and study of world events. But a true Michaelite has to hold and ask questions of their relation to Anthroposophy and world history. Only by doing so can we establish a working and conscious relationship to Michael as Time Spirit.
Moving forward, if anthroposophical thinking is to evolve, it requires a new orientation to many things socially, politically, and individually. To be a Michaelite while neglecting to notice or state vital concerns about Michael and Ahriman, phenomenologically, cannot exist side by side.
Any machination implemented in the world by the elites has a base in Ahrimanic imaginations. What is, in fact, an Ahrimanic imagination? It is an imagination that shows not a glimpse into the future, but a glimpse into the 7th layer of the Earth, the Reflector, which shows, among many other things, Ahriman’s intentions. It is an inspiration derived directly from Ahriman’s plans for the future. The 7th layer of the Earth is also a reversed Akashic Chronicle, as it doesn’t show the past, but the future, and not the future according to karma, but to Ahriman’s intentions. In the 7th layer, one can see a future that is not karmically derived from the past, it is an Ahrimanic intention; while in Akasha reading the past one can see the future as the laws of karma demand it. This is something known in the hidden lodges and occultism, in general. In Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, for instance, Galadriel uses the Mirror to see Sauron’s intentions, but also to trick Frodo into giving her the ring.
Goethe portrayed something else interesting and true about Ahriman/Mephistopheles in Faust: no matter what machination he chooses to execute on the world’s stage through his servants, he must ask for consent. Mephistopheles asked God if he could tempt Faust. As part of evolution, Ahriman must address humans’ consciousness soul directly before going on with his plans, and he has done this, at least from the last century on, in books, movies and music videos. We know from Rudolf Steiner that two books by Nietzsche were written directly by Ahriman. In the 20th century beginning of the 21st, movies were the best opportunities to do this. Now, the possibilities are diverse, such as podcasts, games, VR videos, etc. Many movies we’ve seen in the past were just glimpses of what was realised in the years after.
Today, we live the times of Ahriman’s incarnation and things are entirely in the open. We see all kinds of Ahrimanic imaginations on Netflix (e.g. Black Mirror, imaginations coming directly from the 7th layer of the Earth), all meetings at the WEF are on YouTube, even the 2019 preparation of the COVID situation in 2020, the 2020 preparation of the war in Ukraine in 2022, the 2022 preparing of the dismantling of Ukraine after the war which is now in progress, etc. We were announced years before and we are still surprised by the reality. Why? Because everything he does in the open is occulted by symbols whose only visual mission is to dull consciousness. Sometimes, this is also done by means of music. For instance, reggaeton has the Arabic rhythm Ayoub (or Zar, as known in Upper Egypt) at its base, which is a ceremonial rhythm. Since he clouded human consciousness almost entirely, Ahriman doesn’t have to hide anymore. We can all see his true colors today, but only if we have the Michaelic courage to look and a heartfelt interest in the world around us.
Ahriman, however, has tricked us with the enormous amount of available communications, so it isn’t easy to see where and when he announced an important thing. So, one gets to the information today only through karma. Karma is the one the drives one to a specific piece of information. Therefore, very few make sense of the language the lodges use in these communications. It’s like reading hundreds of notes on a notice board. Chances are that you will never get to the one that interests you or will not understand it.
What keeps us away from the truth is the relationship with our own truth, our own morality. So, it is expected that some will fall, even Anthroposophists, because they will not get to the right information.
One of the phenomena we may witness in ourselves and others is how the effect of the pandemic leads to an accentuation and intensification of the double, through radiation, through the increased electromagnetic impact on the fields of the earth and around it. We may bring together some other observations, such as cloud seeding and weather modification, and reflect on the seemingly ‘new’, ‘strange’ phenomena of the northern lights reaching over Europe. Each of us had to choose how to respond not just to the events of the pandemic, but to bring all these subjects together. Perhaps most importantly, we have to, in a Michaelic spirit, start to wake up to the manifold deceptions being played upon the public mind, and create the knowledge we need to navigate new realities in our personal lives. There is a fantastic scene in ‘The Hobbit’, film based on Tolkien’s book, that relates to the challenge of Ahriman. The dwarves are going through Mirkwood, slowly descending into states of interpersonal conflict, hallucination, and squabbling due to the dark mood of the forest. At some point, Thorin Oakensheild tells the dwarf entourage, ‘Stop, quiet, we are being watched!’ They were being surveilled by spiders, who then wrapped them up in nets. Bilbo escapes to the treetops to see a vista of sunlight and butterflies above the trees. It is recommended for any spiritual student to watch this scene.
Geopolitical events compound each other, and the individual cannot keep up with them. Just before the end of COVID, the next event, the Ukraine war began, in February 2022, to be followed by Israel 2023. Yet we must accustom ourselves to a wider regard of historical events. The 100th anniversary of the Treaty of Versailles is when the pandemic started globally in 2020. This is an essential symptom for us to remember: The Treaty of Versailles is one of the key moments in the occultation of Michael’s rulership, and we have to call to consciousness what this hides from us.
How do we stand individually and karmically amongst all these considerations? The lecture from ‘Karmic Relationships Vol. 3’ describes something underlying all of these reflections.
‘(…)Through the entry of Michael’s dominion in the Michael age in which we live—with the penetration of Michael to earthly rulership, replacing the rulership of Gabriel—Michael himself is bringing the power which is to bring order again into the karma of those who have gone with him. Thus, we may say: What is it in the last resort that unites the Members of the Anthroposophical Society? It is that they are to bring order again into their karma. This unites them. And if any one of them notices in the course of his life that he is entering here or there into relationships that do not conform to his inmost impulse,—relationships, perhaps, diverging in one way or another from what we may call the true harmony in man as between good and evil,—if he has this on the one hand, while on the other hand he has constant impulse to press forward in the Anthroposophical life,—the fact is that such a man is striving back again to his real karma. He is striving once more to live and express the real karma. This cosmic ray pours through the Anthroposophical Movement, clearly perceptible to him who knows. It is the restoration of the truth in karma.’
Rudolf Steiner, Karmic Relationships III, GA 237, 8 August 1924, Dornach
There is a distinction between ‘real’ and ‘deceptive’ in life and it relates to how people are interlinked through anthroposophy and world history. As we discussed before regarding an ‘endowment’ for spiritual and anthroposophical creative work in the world, it brings us the Royal Social Art as a legacy Rudolf Steiner left us. Ahriman uses superficial slogans to guide world history in the media: such as ‘sustainability,’ ‘mental health’, ‘gender’ and ‘transgender’, ‘transparency’ and ‘streamlining’ and ‘optimisation’ of all things economic and all things psychological to serve a system ruled by him alone. As opposed to all this, we should represent creative artistic anthroposophical work in the world. We need to recognise that the unconscious materialism of the spirit working in the feeling life through Ahriman encourages us to rest content with superficial intellectual explanation of material and spiritual life. Consecutively, we construct a ‘sham’ of ideas as a justification to protect ourselves from what in our unconscious life actually trembles.
‘If one fills the soul with something that afterward proves to be like a dream in its illusory character, and one experiences the illusory in its true nature, then one becomes stronger in one’s own experience of self. In confronting a dream, one’s thinking corrects the belief one has in the dream’s reality while dreaming. Concerning the activity of fantasy, this correction is not needed because one did not have this belief. Concerning the meditative soul activity, to which one devotes oneself for spirit-knowledge, one cannot be satisfied with mere thought correction. One must correct by experiencing. One must first create the illusory thinking with one’s activity and then extinguish it by a different, equally strong, activity.
(…) The denial of the spiritual world is a desire to run away from one’s own soul. This, however, represents an impossibility. One must remain with oneself. And because one may run away but not escape from oneself, one takes care that in running one loses sight of oneself. It is the same with the entire human being in the soul realm, however, as it is with the eye with a cataract. The eye can then no longer see. It is darkened within itself.
(…)‘Thus one is ultimately led to the inner spiritual strength of the soul when one is willing to see the justification of spirit knowledge. And the way to such a knowledge can be had only through the strengthening of the soul. The meditative activity, preparing the soul for spirit knowledge, is a gradual conquest of the soul’s “fear of the void.” This void, however, is only a “void of nature,” in which the “fullness of the spirit” can manifest itself if one wishes to take hold of it.
Rudolf Steiner, On the Life of the Soul, GA 36, Lecture ‘The Human Soul in Courage and Fear’, no date or town, 1923
At Easter, we may take our orientation to this resurrection form illusion from the Gospel of John. On the path to awakening to the initiate’s consciousness of the Mystery of Golgotha, we are as Peter to Christ, seeking to understand, and evolve beyond what we formerly failed know and see. After the crucifixion, after Mary Magdalene arrives, Peter and John have arrived to behold the tomb empty, and we have here a depiction of the void of the missing body and three ways of beholding it: Mary sees two angels at the feet and the head. In contrast, John and Peter arrive as later companions. John and Mary, the ‘beloved’ with initiate’s consciousness and the disciple’s consciousness, of he or she who shall be ‘beloved’ once they have attained initiation.
Lazarus-John has been raised from the dead and initiated by Christ in the new way, out in life rather than in the sanctuaries of the mysteries. With the courage to ask Michael questions, to die in Christ to the illusory, we may learn to open up to the many mysteries of life surrounding us: living in our experience, in places where before we thought there was only darkness, we may find a new creativity in spirit knowledge. Here are mysteries of human friendship and the karma of a Michaelic spiritual community. Peter asks Christ of John, and Christ refers to John as he who shall ‘tarry until I come’: ‘what is that to thee?’ that is, until Christ returns in the etheric, how do we, and how we should relate to this experience and work with it. This is reference to our time, collectively for all humanity. Peter asks John to ask Christ about the identity of the betrayal (John 13:24), and then he asks again Christ but this time directly about John, with no intermediary (John 21:20), after the Risen Christ initiated him. Peter has now experienced his own initiation, so now, he asks of John’s destiny. John and Peter are like two pillars, before death, and after resurrection drawing a new collective initiation path from Peter to John. In this, we have a reminder of the path to initiation: it is an interrelationship between initiates to a community of disciples, for each is connected to the awakening of the other in different degrees according to karma. Peter and the disciples at the Sea of Galilee experience that the betrayal of life to the illusory through the act of Judas, now transforms, and what was formerly void is now full of spiritual life:
‘And he said unto them, Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find. They cast therefore, and now they were not able to draw it for the multitude of fishes.’ (John 21:6).
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