Ahriman

This Ahrimanic type don’t let feelings stand in his way, he even don’t know what it is, but he is not without egoism, it’s masked as altruism – Hanging on the Left Cross

There is a lot of talk about the incarnation of Ahriman, and not much knowledge. It’s in art we have to look to find real seership, as in the Film “The Matrix”. Michael Hallam has written an article about The Matrix and Ahriman, taking other Archetypal stories into account too.

The Difference between Lucifer and Ahriman

I had earlier in my life difficulties seeing what was Luciferic and what was Ahrimanic, and it seems to be a problem for many. In connection with the Gilgamesh epic I had an inspiration for a rule of thumb:

Lucifer has to do with the Sentient soul, the personal, and it’s negative sides as egoism or arrogance, where Ahriman has to do with the Intellectual soul, the impersonal, where unemotional thinking is the sign of Ahriman, that could be a social worker who just don’t care, or it could be a political leader where the ideals comes before anything else, where empathy is a foreign word, which is a Sentient soul thing, and Compassion, which is a Consciousness soul thing.
Christ is of course connected to the Consciousness soul.

Outside of man, Ahriman works through the Law’s and Rules which inhibits mans conscious thinking and behavior. And with laws we should both understand man-made and god-made, as for example gravity. The higher our weight the more we fight with gravity, the more docile we become in both thinking and actions; the distance from thought to action becomes longer with the number of pounds/kilo we have to move, even if the action is non-physical.

Lucifer works actively through persons, like a leader in a big organization who don’t delegate responsibility, but controls everything through rules, and the rules are Ahrimanic, and they may even be scientifically justified, they just don’t work as intended, as they haven’t taken into consideration that the workers are humans and not robots.

Materialism

In The Trap of Materialism I describe what Ahriman means for man today.

The Ahrimanian is the opposite of the Beautiful (Truth, Beauty, and Goodness):

A genuine feeling for beauty forges a link that binds us here, in earthly life itself, once again with pre-earthly existence. We ought never to undervalue the significance of beauty in education and in outer culture. A civilization that is filled with ugly machines, with chimneys and smoke, and dispenses with beauty, is a world that makes no efforts to forge a link between man and pre-earthly existence; indeed, it tears him asunder. Not by way of analogy, but in very truth we may say: A purely industrial city is a fitting abode for the demonic beings who would like to make man forget his pre-earthly existence in the realm of spirit.

Jahve and Ahriman

Where Steiner uses Ahriman the Theosophists and the Rosicrucian Fellowship uses the name Jahve. In the start Steiner used Jahve, as in Foundations of Esotericism:

Thus there exists in the world a Jehovah Principle and a Lucifer Principle. If the Jehovah Principle alone were to be taught, man would succumb to the Earth. If the teaching of reincarnation and karma were allowed to disappear entirely from the Earth we should win back for Jehovah all the Monads and physical man would be given over to the Earth, to a petrified planet. If however one teaches reincarnation and karma, man is led upwards to spiritualisation.

Later Steiner uses Jahve when talking about the power in the spiritual world and Ahriman when talking about it in the physical world or more concrete the Ahrimanic Spirits.

Ahriman and the Aurvedian Tamas

The Aurvedian Three Gunas, Tamas, Rajas, and Sattva, corresponds to the trinity of Ahriman, Lucifer, and Christ. Ahriman:

We have then the third group of people who are dominated by tamas. It is said Tamas, because it veils the intellect, makes such people short sighted. Their happiness lies in sensual gratification. Tasty food, frequent tactile stimulus, attractive visual objects and captivating sounds dominate their life. When the senses over a period of time lose their acuity, they have less room to be happy and fall into a state of depression as they get older.

Srivatsa Ramaswami

Chthonic Demons

Ahrimanic beings are Chthonic elementals known all over the world, see Chakana – The Incan Cross.

From my Serpents of the Kundalini Fire:

In the Anthroposophy Rudolf Steiner describes the two sides of man as being a kind of fight between Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers, where Lucifer is the masculine power and Ahriman is the feminine power. Both described in the literature as Serpents or Dragons. Lucifer represents The Right Pillar and Ahriman The Left Pillar. They are on Earth seen as Evil powers, but they are necessary factors in our development, as we both need the Feminine and Masculine influence, but we need to find the balance between them.

From The Balance in the World and Man, Lucifer and Ahriman:

The left part of you — your left man, as it were — is the fortification set up by Lucifer, and your right man is the fortification set up by Ahriman. And the whole art of life consists in finding the true balance between them.

Literature

See a Collection of Steiner texts about Lucifer and Ahriman(pdf) .

Inkarnation Ahrimans by Rudolf Steiner in German/Deutsch

The Matrix by Michael Hallam.

Relating to Rudolf Steiner by Sergei O. Prokofieff, where he comments on the Internet.