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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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Search results 341 through 350 of 434

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57. Goethe's Secret Revelation: The Riddle in Faust: Exoteric 11 Mar 1909, Berlin
Translator Unknown

This power presenting the outer world to the view of a man in an untrue form was first recognized in its complete depth by Zarathustra. Under the name of Ahriman, Zarathustra first presented this being as the opponent of the God of Light. In everything connected with the teaching of Zarathustra, Ahriman was the deceitful being, who hid everything in mist and smoke which otherwise would have been visible to man as a transparent, spiritual splendour.
The later traditions of Faust no longer distinguished properly between the forms of Lucifer and of Mephistopheles. In the age following the sixteenth century there was no longer a clear idea of these forms. Men no longer knew how to distinguish between Lucifer and Ahriman, and they united them in the form of the Devil or Satan; and because nothing was known of the spiritual world, no particular difference was made.
205. Therapeutic Insights: Earthly and Cosmic Laws: Lecture V 03 Jul 1921, Dornach
Translated by Alice Wuslin, Gerald Karnow, Mary Laird-Brown

The human being is continually a point of attack for Lucifer from the side of will and a point of attack for Ahriman from the side of thought (see drawing, page 84). Ahriman continually strives to make the human being all head. Lucifer continually strives to cut the head off so that the human being cannot think at all, so that everything streams out in warmth by way of the heart, overflows with world love, flowing into the world as world love, as an excessively sentimental cosmic being flows out.
Ahriman works toward consolidating the earth, toward the earth remaining as earth. Ahriman works against the saying, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.”
346. Lectures to Priests The Apocalypse: Lecture XV 19 Sep 1924, Dornach
Translator Unknown

We should realize that when we come into the divine element that is connected with human evolution and into the state of equilibrium between the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces that is continually being maintained,—if we grasp the real essence of this, then whenever we rim into this, when we rightly perceive what is not an influence from Lucifer and what is not an influence from Ahriman, that is, when we perceive what comes from this progressive, divine spirituality that is really connected with human evolution,—if we approach the divine element that keeps a balance between the realms where Luciferic elements are continuously flowing in and Ahrimanic things are continuously flowing in, we find that the basic force in everything that is streaming through here and which forms men outwardly, and which inwardly ensouls them and permeates them with spirit—is pure love.
143. Reflections of Consciousness, Super-consciousness and Sub-consciousness 25 Feb 1912, Munich
Translator Unknown

We must learn to know ourselves by passing really and truly through that stage where we are at first faced by a world in which Lucifer and Ahriman continually promise us the kingdoms of the world. This signifies that we are placed before our own inner world and that the devil tells us—this is the objective world.
251. The History of the Anthroposophical Society 1913–1922: Second General Assembly of the Anthroposophical Society — Day Five 22 Jan 1914, Berlin

When we have begun to formulate, we must also bring this point into the form; otherwise it forms the gateway for hostile attacks that come not only from outside but also from within society. Lucifer and Ahriman are also inside and ready to invade again at any moment. Mr. Levy: If we adopt a resolution here, it is certainly with the absent members in mind.
186. The Fundamental Social Demand of Our Times: Understand One-Another 21 Dec 1918, Dornach
Translator Unknown

The Bible, my dear friends, in its first pages, does not tell us that is was Lucifer or Ahriman who drove man out of Paradise; it was the Jahve—God Himself who did so. And as we know, this very expulsion from paradise signifies man's becoming free—the conscious experience of freedom by mankind.
161. Meditation and Concentration: Three Kinds of Clairvoyance: Lecture III 02 May 1915, Dornach
Translator Unknown

We shall never learn to know about this Mystery of Golgotha if we are not ready to accept conceptions of the kind touched upon at Eastertide2—about Christ in connection with Lucifer and Ahriman—and if we do not permeate these conceptions with spiritual science. We are living in a terribly hard time, a time of suffering and sorrow.
273. The Problem of Faust: Some Spiritual-Scientific Observations in Connection with the “Classical Walpurgis-Night” 27 Sep 1918, Dornach
Translated by George Adams

Then we wake up out of this world, and in waking come to our ordinary-consciousness. For a special reason Goethe has combined Lucifer and Ahriman into the one Mephistopheles. This waking he shows in the experience of Mephistopheles, and it is interesting that, as long as Mephistopheles represents the condition of being but half-awake, he is still down below, experiencing it through the Greek Lamiae.
157a. The Forming of Destiny and Life after Death: Lecture on the Poem of Olaf Åsteson 21 Dec 1915, Berlin
Translated by Harry Collison

But when a man bears this Luciferic nature within him, then, while he beholds the external world with Lucifer he is led to Ahriman. He then naturally sees this outer world materialistically in our epoch, quite naturally he looks at it in a materialistic manner. For when a man with Lucifer in his nature begins to contemplate the world, he then meets Ahriman. For these two seek each other out in man's intercourse with this world.
In everything that man can prove in external fashion, Ahriman plays a part. But Ahriman may never meddle with the proof as to Christ. Therefore there exists no historical proof.
181. A Sound Outlook for Today and a Genuine Hope for the Future: The Being and Evolution of Man 23 Jul 1918, Berlin
Translator Unknown

There we have our individual education, our uselessness and also our value,—there we survey our own personal life between birth and death; but we do not see our ego as it is in reality, as it works upon the metamorphoses of our physical body; we see it as Lucifer shows it to as, rarified. We see our physical part materialised, densified by Ahriman; our soul-spiritual part rarified by Lucifer.
What we are accustomed to look upon as our organism, densified through Ahriman as we see it, has its real origin much more in our last incarnation than in this one. From the various studies of this year and former years you will gather that your physiognomy, in its present form, results from your preceding incarnation, your last earth-life.
This comes forth, as it were, out of his personality, and behind it remains what Ahriman makes visible as the result of th earlier embodiment. For anyone who is accustomed to look upon man as a real living being, it is, when meeting a fellow-man, as though an entity emerged from him.

Results 341 through 350 of 434

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