The Essence of Christianity

GA 68a — 9 November 1906, Leipzig

21. On Lucifer

The name Lucifer inspires a slight sense of dread in some, and is usually associated with notions of antipathy. Is this justified? The name Lucifer means: light bearer, light bringer. Medieval beliefs were different, but for those who have studied the deep knowledge of the world, Lucifer actually denotes something quite different.

Spiritual beings play a role in human life. The religions of the East speak of deva and dhyani chohan, the more Western religions, such as Christianity, speak of angels and archangels. To those who are familiar with the spiritual worlds, they represent something true and real. Higher beings play a role in human life. Lucifer is also understood to be among the guiding personalities, the leading or seducing ones.

Here we must be clear about dualism – duality – which plays a role in all areas of life. The ancients, including Pythagoras, speak of this duality: light and darkness, male and female, positive and negative magnetism, and we could cite many more such dualities. – When we make a glass rod electrically positive by rubbing it, we simultaneously make the rubbing material electrically negative. The electricity of glass and that of the rubbed material are related to each other as light is to darkness. In the Persian creation myth, we find Ormuzd and Ahriman: good deity, evil deity. Everything that drives the world forward is done by the good god, while everything that hinders it is withdrawn by the evil god. They place man in the middle.

Remember that everything in the world has a good and an evil side. What do human beings, with their culture, not owe to fire. And on the other hand, how destructive the power of fire can be in volcanic phenomena. Germany's great poet Schiller sang gloriously about this in “The Bell”: “Beneficial is the power of fire...” and so on.

This duality also works in man himself. For centuries, the one principle was seen as evil. A distinction was made between divine - good, and luciferic - evil. In the story of creation, the luciferic principle was represented as a snake. Man had to grow out of a dull nature, so the snake came and opened his eyes to good and evil, and thus another principle was opposed to the divine one. The ancient Indians called the Rishis a snake.

We have to go much deeper into the development of the human soul to see what reality underlies the Lucifer principle. In more recent times, views on this have undergone changes. These were already evident in the old Faust saga. Goethe reshaped it to meet human needs. Faust not only wanted to immerse himself in divine science, he also wanted to make a covenant with evil powers. Then he no longer wanted to approach theology, he wanted to remain a medical doctor. He put the Bible behind the bench and that was considered a reason to fall into the hands of evil forces. In Goethe's work, the crux of the matter is in the second part of Faust: “Whoever strives, we can redeem.” So it is not something destructive, but rather a power is evoked that is not opposed to the deity.

If we want to understand this power, we must realize how man fits into the world around him. Man forms one of the kingdoms; alongside him we have the mineral kingdom, the vegetable kingdom and the animal kingdom. Man perceives himself as a self-aware being and carries within himself all these kingdoms; he is the bearer of all these natures. He has a physical body in common with the mineral, and he also shares the etheric or life body with the plant. Through his world of feelings, which, as the astral body, is the carrier of passions, instincts, desires, he has something in common with the animal. Thus, man is in an interdependent relationship with the three realms.

Man can only sustain his life by breathing. He draws in the air of life – oxygen – into himself, combines the latter with carbon in his body and exhales this poison – carbonic acid. But man and animal could not live if the plant did not continually renew this air of life. Man and animal owe the possibility of life to the plant. The plant owes it to the mineral. It is only logical to extend this chain of development beyond man, not only to lower beings but also to higher ones. Just as man belongs to lower beings, so he also belongs to higher ones. The fact that man does not see higher beings is no reason why they should not exist. Higher senses can bring man this perception.

Man is first of all a tetrad: physical body, etheric body, astral body and the I. He is a developing being. How does his development take place? A savage still follows his animal instincts, he follows every urge; the one who is higher up only follows certain urges, and those who are very high up, let us say, for example, Schiller or Francis of Assisi, follow even fewer of the lower urges, but transform them into ideals. This results in an upward development of the astral body. The inferior man also has an astral body, but he has done little work in it. A superior man raises his astral body from the animal stage to a higher, nobler and more perfect form. The astral body consists of two parts: what other entities have given him, and what he himself has worked into it. That which he has worked into it himself, we call “Manas”, spirit self, and we thus designate the fifth limb of man. Manas is nothing other than the transformed astral body. But man can do much more than transform his astral body. An undeveloped person knows nothing of morality, law, logic; he has developed little Manas.

But there are even deeper changes. In the ninth and tenth centuries, people did not all have such perfect ideas, but much of what they had learned was incorporated into their astral bodies, because it is the carrier of everything we can learn in the world. What we learn changes quickly, but habits and temperaments change more slowly. We could compare what changes quickly with the minute hand of a clock and what changes more slowly with the hour hand. But there is also the opportunity to change what we are used to, and in doing so we change the etheric or life body: because it is denser, it makes it more difficult for the ego to change. As much as the human being changes his etheric body, so much 'budi' arises in him. Religions are instructions on how to work “Budhi” into the etheric body, while morality only changes the astral body. In the highest sense, art does the same as religions.

Thus you can now find the human being with six limbs, even if manas and budhi are only present in him in a germinal state. But there is already secret training that develops the etheric body. What is taught to the individual is doctrine; what transforms humanity is an influence on the budhi, is secret training. A chela, an occult disciple, works in his etheric body.

But what is hardly present in the seed is the Atman. It is such a strong power that a person can work with it right into his physical body. What can a person do in his physical body today? A person who can develop as an artistic human being, as a chela, can become master of his habits. But the person who has worked this seventh link, this Atman, into himself, also learns to control his pulse. And with this, he becomes partaker of the eternal. This is an achievement of mastery.

Now we see the human being with manas, budhi and atman. We now know that man, we said the I, stands in relation to the three lower realms, and now we see that he stands in relation to a realm above him, the divine realm, through what he has worked into himself as Manas. In this divine realm we have to seek the Elohim, divine spirits, of whom the Bible, as Jehovah, names one.

Through his Manas, his spiritual self, man is linked to the higher worlds. Therefore, we speak of man as one who is becoming, an evolving God. Christ Jesus says, “You are gods.” (John 10:34) Man will one day look back on his present spiritual level and he will feel like a human being who has grown out of it completely.

If we believe in evolution, we must also consider this for other beings, and looking back, we see that our older brothers, the Elohim, with them Jehovah, on an earlier planet or on the earlier embodiment of the earth, occupied the same stage that man now occupies on the present embodiment of the earth. The law of embodiment is not only the basis of man, but of all beings. Goethe speaks of the Earth Spirit: “In the flood of life, in the storm of action, I surge up and down,” and so on. The Earth was seen by individuals as a spiritual being and man as its members. The Earth was often embodied and in its previous embodiment it brought the present gods to the level of man. And in a later incarnation, the present-day human being will take on the level of his older brothers, the Elohim or gods. God, the Nameless, the Unfathomable, is not spoken of here. Elohim or Deva, better translated into German as: spirits.

To illustrate this “progressive” view, I will give an albeit trivial example: just as a student passes through different classes, the class that present humanity is going through is what the gods went through in their previous incarnation on Earth. Students also remain in classes, and so there were beings that did not go through this class completely.

Where do they stand today between humans and gods? They are higher beings than humans, but lower than the gods. In a sense, they are familiar with humans. The following law exists: Each of the basic parts of the human being is developed in an incarnation on earth. In the present incarnation on earth, the manas is developing; in the earlier incarnation, the astral body. The essential thing in this development on earth was that man has changed his entire astral body, that he no longer has anything of the animal in him. Through the development of the manas, he can enter into contact with manasic beings. Only when the atman is developed can he develop independently. Today, older brothers work, later still older ones in budhi and still older ones in atman. The higher spirits that have remained are related to the human astral body. They have already tasted of the Divine. Just as in Manas, demigods also help us to assert ourselves and to glow with the Divine. We would remain trapped in lower instincts if it were not for this stimulation. Thus the passions are transformed into higher instincts. There would only be a barren realm of moral principles, but they would not pulsate in man.

The Old Testament has wonderfully developed this law. The entities that evoke enthusiasm, the glow of love for the manasic, are called Luciferic entities. Thus, Lucifer is the one who evokes the astral passion for the divine in man. He thus arouses in him the desire to learn to love the divine, not as a duty, but as an inclination. He adds independence to submission. He is the instigator of human freedom.

Man becomes free only by following the divine out of his own urge. This is reflected in the biblical story of creation. God guided man, he could not choose. Then the serpent came, and the thought came into man, not only to live in God is desirable, but to become God himself, to carry the image of the deity in [himself] as a personality. Through Lucifer — biblically expressed through the serpent — the human body became the light bearer, as Lucifer himself was the light bearer, until Christ entered the world as “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12) and realized the principle of love for the divine. External knowledge, knowing what the laws of the world are, now seems dull to man. This external knowledge should grasp our inner being, should intervene directly as theosophy, as an independent inner experience. This is how Lucifer anchors himself in man. This research is called the school of Luciferian striving. These people are called: children of Lucifer.

If the gods gave science, Lucifer gave enthusiasm.

God: Revelation.

Lucifer: freedom.

We have a filial relationship with God; Lucifer awakened the feeling of being an independent being, of freedom. Devotion was a voluntary sacrifice. As everywhere, there must be a duality: God and Lucifer.

Thus, the Luciferic entities have not been left behind for no reason. They are those who strive to lead us to the divine by our own free choice. To do so, man must also have the opportunity to be evil. He can certainly become divine without it, but only through free choice.

If the Supreme is to be free, then it must be anchored in the other nature. In this way, God and luciferic entities work towards perfection and freedom.

Question & Answer: Question: [What does the] sphinx mean?

Rudolf Steiner: What the mind is trying to grasp today is nothing new as a concept. The pyramids represent the ancient views of our ancestors: there are four lines on which they stand = the fourfold nature of the human being, physical body, etheric body, astral body with the I. That is the foundation. Above it rises the triangle, representing the three basic parts that the ego works out of the four: Atman, Budhi, Manas. The trinity is not yet complete. If you want to feel this, then you must look at the sphinx. She represents the lower nature and from the eye the riddle of future development radiates towards you. In it, man prophetically seeks his future.

Question: [Not handed down.]

Rudolf Steiner: There are two writings – they are not actually writings in the strict sense – one is kept by a religious community, a church in secret, the other is kept by a master, a great leader of humanity.