8. The Nature of the Luciferic Influence in History

Whereas the old Indians realised that both paths led to the same goal, the old Persian, the Chaldaic-Egyptian and the Graeco-Latin epochs came to regard the two revelations from within and without as being in different directions. On the one hand we have the revelation coming from outside, and on the other the manifestation from within. This is already observable during the second epoch of the post-Atlantean civilisations. There we have on the one side not only the path of the people, but also the path of the mysteries, leading externally as well as inwardly to the realm of Ahura Mazdao, That which was still a living reality in old Indian thought, the one-ness which was to be found in both the spiritual worlds, had already disappeared from the eyes of the second post-Atlantean civilisation. That unity which had already withdrawn into impenetrable depths of existence could still be dimly sensed, but it could no longer live in the soul. The old Indian felt: ‘Whether on the one side I go outwards or on the other side I go within, I come to the unity.’ The Persian, in so far as he followed the teachings of Zarathustra, in following the outward path said: ‘I come to Ormuzd’; or if he took the inward path, ‘I come to the being of Mithras.’ But in his consciousness these two paths were no longer united. At most he dimly sensed that they must be united somewhere. Therefore he spoke of that being who could then be sensed but dimly, as the Unknown in Darkness, the unknown primeval God. This God then, was a primeval spiritual being whose existence was not doubted, but whom men could no longer find. Zaruana Akarana was the name of this god existing in the darkness. That which could be attained to lay behind the tapestry of the external sense-world and Zarathustra's teaching laid special emphasis upon this phase. It was therefore something deriving from Zaruana Akarana, it was the God Ahura Mazdao, the Lord in the realm of the Sun-spirits, in the realm whence the beneficent influences came down, which in contradistinction to the physical may be designated as the spiritual sun-influences. From this same spirit also did the old Persian civilisation derive its moral precepts and laws, which the initiate—for it was he who by means of initiation raised himself to a knowledge of these precepts and laws—brought through as codes of morality, and as laws for human conduct, for human functions, etc. That was one path, and men who followed it, saw in the very highest region, the spirit of the sun and his rule; they saw the servants of the sun spirit, the Amshaspands, arrayed as it were, around his throne, and who are his messengers. The sun-spirit was lord over the whole realm; the Amshaspands directed the various activities. Beings of a lower order, subordinate in their turn to the Amshaspands, are generally called Izets or Izarads and finally beings of whom it may be said that they correspond in the spiritual world to the thoughts in the soul of man. Thoughts in the human soul are only the shadow-reflections of realities; outside in the spiritual world they are spiritual beings. According to the old Persian conception these beings, called Fravashi (Feruers), were immediately above man. Thus during the old Persian evolution it was conceived that behind the covering of the sense-world there were successive stages of spiritual beings rising higher and higher up to Ormuzd.