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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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Search results 191 through 200 of 434

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273. The Problem of Faust: Faust's Knowledge and Understanding of Himself and of the Forces Actually Slumbering in Man 17 Jan 1919, Dornach
Translated by George Adams

Today we should say: We represent how in the centre of the Representative of Man there stands Axieros, how he is encircled by Axiokersa, and how Axiokersos must be placed in connection with all that is earthly—thus giving us the Representative of Man, Lucifer and Ahriman. And here we have the re-moulding suited to the present age, and on into the future, of the holy Mystery of Samothrace. It might be said: Were Goethe to appear among us today, wishing, in conformity with all that man has since won for himself, to tell us what is able to change Homunculus to Homo, he would point to the Representative of Man, surrounded by, and in combat with, Lucifer and Ahriman. I beg of you, however, not to make an abstraction of these things, not to apply the favorite modern method of settling these matters by a few abstract concepts, and taking them for symbols. the more you feel that a whole world, containing the secret of man, lies hidden in the figure of the Representative of Man in connection with Lucifer and Ahriman; the more you repudiate the pride, the unjustified, childish pride, of modern man in his abstract scientific concepts; the more you open your soul to a world giving you a view of this image of the mystery of man—then the nearer you come to this secret.
176. The Karma of Materialism: Lecture VII 11 Sep 1917, Berlin
Translated by Rita Stebbing

The fact is that no one can understand Luther who does not realize that what, out of the spirit and consciousness of his time, was called “the devil”—we would say Ahriman and Lucifer—was for him actual spiritual experience. When he spoke of these matters at Wartburg or anywhere else it was always from direct experience.
But what was Luther's most significant revelation concerning his direct experience of Ahriman? We must keep in mind that the essentially ahrimanic age begins only after Luther. Though people are not aware of it, present-day natural-scientific knowledge is saturated by Ahriman.
Naturally he considers himself far above such a superstitious idea that Ahriman has taken possession of him. But Ahriman has learned to produce from Western science a thinking which is utterly alien to the East, alien because it is a thinking related only to processes of dying.
120. Manifestations of Karma: Forces of Nature, Volcanic Eruptions, Earthquakes and Epidemics in Relation to Karma 22 May 1910, Hanover
Translator Unknown

They always react upon one another, and in a certain sense keep a balance. Lucifer manifests outwards from within, Ahriman acts from without, and our picture of the world is formed between the two.
When we penetrate the world which lies behind the physical world, we always find those deceptive images which Ahriman conjures up. When a man tries to descend mystically into his own soul, he is exposed to the temptations of Lucifer in a special degree.
In its totality our Earth would have succumbed to Lucifer's influence if the results of the Angels' battle against Ahriman upon the Moon had not been brought into our Earth existence.
273. The Problem of Faust: Goethe's Feeling for the Concrete. Shadowy concepts and Ideas filled with Reality 27 Jan 1917, Dornach
Translated by George Adams

It stands to reason that all that is best may be dangerous. And how dangerous the best may be when Ahriman and Lucifer take a hand in things, was precisely the problem Goethe had so vividly in mind. Thus he had his Faust in mind—the Faust who strove after the deepest secrets of existence, who was to be the realisation of what stood ever before Goethe's soul, namely, the direct perception of the living and spiritual in all nature and in all history.
Goethe strove again and again lead men beyond the ideas that savour rather of the tavern, ideas so often heard, such as: Ah, we should like to keep to what is good and to flee from Lucifer and Ahriman, have nothing to do with them.—It is because Goethe does not like these notions that he sometimes makes Mephistopheles quite sympathetic and kindly.
And Homunculus does in fact immediately become clairvoyant, for he is able to see Faust's dream. he describes what Faust—more or less under the influence of Lucifer—is experiencing in another state of consciousness—how he has actually gained access to the Grecian world.
203. The Responsibility of Man for World Evolution: Lecture V 01 Apr 1921, Dornach
Translator Unknown

For they are applicable also to that which should live in humanity as morality, as ethics. The facts that are stated concerning Lucifer and Ahriman are not meant to be taken in such a way that one should theorise about them, that one should only say Ahriman is this, and Lucifer is that. But one should so take up these ideas into oneself that really one should see in all around the activity of the Luciferic spirits who want to hold back the Earth in earlier conditions. So too in all that is Ahriman one should see something which would hold back the Earth so that it does not advance to future stages.
186. The Challenge of the Times: Specters of the Old Testament in the Nationalism of the Present 07 Dec 1918, Dornach
Translated by Olin D. Wannamaker

This is the reason for the Trinity we undertake to represent in our Group1 ; the Representative of Man balancing Ahriman and Lucifer, which is to constitute the middle point of this building. This consciousness of a state of balance for which one strives, but that is always in danger of swinging toward the one or the other side, must become the essential element in the world conception of this fifth post-Atlantean epoch.
You may look at such a sculptural form as that of our Group: the Representative of Man, Lucifer and Ahriman. There you confront for the first time what is working in the whole human being, because man is the state of balance between the luciferic and the ahrimanic.
121. The Mission of the Individual Folk-Souls: Loki - Hodur and Baldur - Twilight of the Gods 15 Jun 1910, Oslo
Translated by A. H. Parker

Lucifer, as it were, takes possession of man from within and in consequence he is the victim of Ahriman who works from without.
Where man is related to the external world Lucifer confronts Ahriman, so that the infiltration of error into his knowledge—even into his clairvoyant knowledge—all illusion and maya, is the consequence of the tendency to falsehood which is active there.
Loki therefore is the destructive power, like Lucifer who drove man into the arms of Ahriman. In so far as man submits to the blind Hodur, the old clairvoyant vision is extinguished.
The Karma of Materialism: Foreword
Translated by Rita Stebbing

Quite early in the book they will be confronted by references to named spiritual beings to whom they have not been introduced, notably certain of the spiritual hierarchies, who have been differently named in different traditions, but for whom Steiner uses the nomenclature found with their earliest recorded appearance in the extant literature of the West, that is the work of ‘pseudo-Dionysius’; and, over and above these, to the 'adversary' figures of Lucifer and Ahriman, especially the latter. If the reader is wise, he will reflect that, where knowledge of the immaterial itself is at issue, and not simply knowledge of its material effects, it is the same as with all knowledge.
162. The Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: The Power of Thought 31 Jul 1915, Dornach
Translator Unknown

What they get hold of in this connection always seems made of paper mache they have little understanding of applying thinking to outer things. Lucifer must of course cooperate in the activity which I have just described, by which man feels the inclination to meditate on the outer world.
I have frequently mentioned that on an important site in our Building there will be set up the figure of archetypal man, which one can also speak of as the Christ, and which will have Lucifer on the one side and Ahriman on the other. What is concentrated in the Christ we take out and distribute again in Lucifer and Ahriman, in so far as it is to be distributed. What was welded together plastically in the one figure we make musical, inasmuch as we make it a kind of melody: Christus-Lucifer-Ahriman. Our Building is really formed on this principle. Our whole Building bears the special imprint in it: to bring plastic forms into musical movement.
140. Life Between Death and Rebirth: Life After Death 26 Jan 1913, Linz
Translated by René M. Querido

The seer finds, for instance, that there are souls who are forced to serve a being such as Ahriman after death. As soon as we enter the realm beyond the physical, Ahriman appears quite clearly to us as a special being. Everything that has been portrayed as the domain of Ahriman and Lucifer in the drama, The Guardian of the Threshold, is real. Ahriman has a number of tasks to perform.
Love of ease and comfort are widespread characteristics, and it makes it possible to be enlisted after death into the ranks of Ahriman, for Ahriman, apart from his other functions, is the spirit of obstacles. Wherever obstacles arise Ahriman is master.

Results 191 through 200 of 434

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