THE ALCHEMYCAL PAGES

THE ORDER OF THE UNIVERSE.

Chapter Four.

Ahriman.

'Mindless drifter on the road.. Why do I...I

Carry such an easy load...Why do I...I

It's how you look and how you feel...Why do I...I

You must have a heart of steel...Why do I...I

Oh, why do I...I...I...I....Keep f*!#in' up!'

"F*!#in' Up" by Neil Young & Crazy Horse, ('Ragged Glory' CD., 1990).

I mentioned in the discussion of Lucifer that he incarnated as a being of flesh and blood in the Far East over 2000 years before the incarnation of Christ, in the middle of the 3rd Millennium BC. Now, Ahriman is making preparations for his own incarnation in the near future, in the West. As Steiner remarks, when an incarnation such as this is about to happen, preparation for it is made in advance, so as to make the circumstances in which the incarnation occurs, as ideal as possible, from, in this case, Ahriman's point of view. At present, we are 2000 years after the incarnation of Christ.

It is important then for us to recognize what Ahriman is doing, that is, what corrupting influences he is pouring into the human soul in preparation of his forthcoming incarnation. It is also as well to note that it would suit his purposes most admirably if these corrupting influences were perceived as beneficial and for the good of humanity, or at least as being inconsequential. It would suit Ahriman's purposes most admirably if the vast majority of humanity "sleeps through" these signs of the preparation of his impending incarnation in our midst. Each and everyone of us will meet with Ahriman face to face sooner or later so it as well to be prepared for this encounter, for how well we prepare ourselves will determine how we fare. And evil will result if we sleep through these preparations in a state of drowsiness.

I must point out that we are dealing here with fundamental spiritual realities, Lucifer-Christ-Ahriman, and the fact is that if we are unaware of the activities of Lucifer and Ahriman and Christ in our souls, then we NECESSARILY become allies of Lucifer and/or Ahriman. Thus the question is, do we see that these activities of Lucifer and Ahriman are played out at all in our culture and in our daily lives? In so many words, is it evident to the unprejudiced, open-minded person that we can 'see' the activities of Lucifer and Ahriman in the actions of human beings?

The difference with Christ is that we have to come to a personal relationship with Christ (and this means everybody on earth, with no exclusions) out of voluntary action - in other words, we have to want to have this relationship, consciously, willingly and in freedom. Whereas with Lucifer and Ahriman it suits their purposes most admirably if their presence is ignored, or dismissed as the fantasies of idle dreamers.

Steiner, in 1919, with respect to Ahriman, gave several indications of the preparation of the pending incarnation of Ahriman. These tendencies and machinations of Ahriman he gave as follows:

The mechanistic explanation of life so thoroughly permeating every aspect of modern scientific knowledge and explanation of life and the cosmos, from the mathematical calculation of the planets and stars in the heavens and deducing from this the origin of life in the "Big Bang Theory" to the "Genetic Code" explaining the growth and development of human, animal and plant organisms. These mechanistic explanations, in addition to explaining nothing, have in common the complete absence of any understanding of soul and spirit. The interesting fact here is not merely that people have no interest in soul and spirit, there is a general feeling of hostility toward the very notion that the human being and the cosmos is constituted primarily of soul and spirit. People seem generally transfixed by the delusion that we are material beings only, this appears to be very comforting to them. So, when it is pointed out that nothing of life can be understood when viewing its outer shell or external physical appearance as if this were reality itself, people become very agitated, almost as if the idea itself is a personal insult.

Another important indication of Ahriman's preparations is the widespread tendency to believe that it is enough to guarantee the welfare and general good of the populace if their material and economic needs are taken care of (and I will leave for another discussion the reality that for the majority of the world's population, the world economic system is awash in an ocean of debt and is singularly inept at meeting their material and economic needs!). This is so widespread now that it appears that the ONLY marker or barometer of a culture is the strength or weakness of its economy. Today every aspect of culture is literally held hostage to the merely economic - from politics to law to education to agriculture to the arts and religious life. This is somewhat puzzling as it is clear that no amount of money can guarantee anyones' welfare. After all, the truly valuable qualities of a life fully lived cannot be purchased at any price, no matter how much money a person possesses. One cannot buy love, vitality, health, peace of mind, joy, security, clear thinking, sound memory, compassion etc., and yet without these qualities one is entirely poverty stricken even if one is in possession of vast amounts of material wealth.

Yet the whole of cultural life is geared toward this one end - the acquisition of material wealth and goods. From the moment we are born all anyone can think of is to get a good education so that one can acquire the necessary piece of paper to get a good job. In essence modern education is a conveyor belt on which the individual is placed to go through the grade schools and on to university to gain a degree while all the rough edges and unique qualities of an individual are moulded into the perfect "cog" ('bent out of shape by society's pliers")to become suitable fodder for the corporate church.

It does not escape one's notice that on every US currency bill is the phrase "In God We Trust" and one is pressed to ask, what God is being referred to here? It is the god of money, whose name is Mammon. And Mammon is an ahrimanic being. So, this means that the modern culture, with its relentless emphasis on the "bottom line", is a Cult of Ahriman and the Pope of this cult is the Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Well, I could take this thread for a long spin, but I am sure you get the drift.

And to what end, finally, is all this gaining of knowledge for the sake of material acquisition really about? It is all geared toward the stomach! The daily ritual of getting up, going to the office or factory is only considered worthwhile because it satisfies the animal appetite. Any path of knowledge that is not deemed useful in this sense is dismissed because it is "not something which one can eat", in Steiner's phrase.

And here Steiner makes an interesting observation. "In this connection today people have succumbed to a strange fallacy. They do not believe the spirit can be eaten, and yet the very ones who say this, DO eat the spirit! Although they may refuse to accept anything spiritual, nevertheless with every morsel that passes through the mouth into the stomach they are devouring the spiritual, but dispatching it along a path other than the path which leads to the real well-being of mankind. These Europeans and their American affinities are...devourers of soul and spirit. The soulless devouring of food leads to a side-tracking of the spirit... To keep people in the state of devourers of soul and spirit is one of Ahriman's impulses in preparation for his incarnation."(my emphasis in italics).

Now, in the year 2002, some 83 years after these words were spoken by Rudolf Steiner, the soulless devouring of food epitomizes modern culture!

Another of the corrupting influences poured into people's souls by Ahriman is in the realm of politics - the two main thrusts of this corruption are manifested in nationalism and political party differences. There can be no question that the ideal so widespread today of "freedom of the people" based as it is on blood relationships is simply antiquated and outmoded. This outmoded tendency is everywhere evident with the political map having to be redrawn every year as various ethnic groups claim their "homeland" and then attempt to purge their borders of anyone who is not of the same blood, as the massive atrocities happening everywhere on earth given the the quaint phrase "ethnic cleansing' attest.

And when it comes to political parties who want to gain control of government, the interesting quality of their opinions of which they pride themselves as being "correct"for the country to "move forward" is that when you examine the policies put forth by different party opinions they can be both seen to be valid from their own narrow perspectives and yet at the same time none can possibly hope to move the country forward at all!

It is hard to imagine any more rigorously hardened an impediment toward social progress than today's conventional forms of government. In terms of Lucifer and Ahriman, the so-called liberals (in the United Sates, the Democratic Party) are mainly influenced by Lucifer, and the so-called conservatives (The Republican Party), are thoroughly Ahrimanic.

In fact, modern government, in every country of the world today, is NOT modern at all. They are outmoded, antiquated and retrogressive in extremis. In the West, they are fundamentally a combination of Roman imperialism and medieval feudalism, with the State as it is to-day being an instrument which is intended to curtail human freedom. It is clear that we need to create a radically different form of government than the narrow-minded, pusillanimous and misanthropic institutions of government we have today if humanity is to make any progress. To put it another way, if we want to have our freedoms and allow them to flourish, then we have to get rid of the state. If we want the state to take care of us ( which it cannot do, for only the individual can do that, and the individual is far greater than any state, anyway) then we necessarily have to give up our freedoms. In other words, it is an oxymoron to expect the state to "guarantee our freedoms".

As we are already witness to, states, in both the East and West, have become instruments of controlling the population by a very small and wealthy elite. The fact is we do NOT have a democratic form of government, and a democracy has not yet existed on the face of the earth.

It has to be evident to anyone paying attention to life in the in the past 50 years that absolutely no progress has been made in any but the most narrow of fields - that of technology. Every other domain - health, ecology, economics, business, art, religion, philosophy, spiritual life, politics, education - is, for the most part, in decline, stagnant or retrogressing, built on ideas and concepts that are rehashed or recycled from long dead eras.

Steiner recognized this fact and put forward concepts and ideas for a radically different form of governance, one that is thoroughly modern and inspired by the ideal of human freedom being allowed to flourish without government control and interference. I will be discussing these elsewhere in The Alchemycal Pages.

Another trend which is evidence of Ahriman's impulses working in the souls of humanity is the reading of the Gospels of the New Testament as if they can be understood with our modern, habitual mode of thought. It is clear to me that both Lucifer and Ahriman have wormed their way into and become deeply entrenched in the various so-called Christian churches and sects for what we have here are groups of people who have at best merely a fantasy of Christ, a faintly adumbrated and insipid cartoon character. The fact is that in actual practise the exoteric Christian church has to be seen as opposing Christ every step of the way, since its founding as an institution, beginning with the Holy Roman Empire. It is clear that the history of the Christianity, starting with the Catholic Church, is one of an organization bent on secular power and control. That is, it has, and all the Christian churches, for the most part, have this trait, the overweaning desire to control people. It has succumbed to the "Judas Temptation". It has this trait in common with modern government, and it is thus not surprising that the Church has worked hand in glove with governments when it has suited its purpose.

What is the "Judas Temptation"? It may have occurred to us to wonder why it was that the "Pharisees" wanted Judas to identify Christ. After all, why could they not readily recognize Him when they saw Him? This was because when Christ had the disciples go out and preach the Gospel in various different places at the same time, when they were preaching, He would be the one preaching, using them as His willing instruments. Furthermore, fantastic as it may sound (though not to anyone who has seen a medium in trance at work), the disciples, as Christ was preaching through them, took on the visage of Christ.

Thus, the "Pharisees" actually did not know who the real Christ was among the 13 (Christ and the 12 Disciples); they thus paid Judas to betray Christ to them; that is, identify Him at the time they wanted to make the arrest. The "Judas Temptation" consists in that Judas, for 30 pieces of silver, was willing to do this. He "knew" who Christ is, and wished to 'force his hand' and "set everything in the world right' by His spiritual powers, which He is certainly capable of doing. However, Christ refused this and acceded to being arrested.

The spiritual truth is that the modern church does not worship Christ at all. No, it worships either Ahriman or Lucifer depending on the nature of the Church in question. It is necessary to point out that just because one says one is a worshiper of Christ, this does not make it so, for "the name of a thing is not necessarily the thing named". So, this reading of the Gospels as "the word of God", and insistently iterating it is "the word of God", and saying "if you only accept Christ as your Saviour, all will be well", simply plays right into Ahriman's hands. The Gospels cannot be understood with our habitual modes of thought.

And I am not even discussing the fact that we do not have the true gospels with us anyway! Either through deliberate editing out of passages for the purpose of furthering the Church's aim of secular power or due to poor translators, the gospels we have to-day are poor versions of the real thing.

For example, we have the passage from the Gospel of St. Luke, "and on earth, peace and good will unto men" which is not an accurate translation. It should read. " and on earth peace to men of good will" which has profoundly different implications.

It is also important to realize that Ahriman works in co-operation with Lucifer.

Comments or questions can be sent to the address below as I check this address every few weeks. Please mention Alchemycal Pages in the subject line. Thank you. Patricia

kaareb@mac.com

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