The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Michael's Task in the Ahrimanic Sphere

[ 1 ] When man looks back on his development and thereby brings to his spiritual view the particular peculiarity which his spiritual life has assumed for five centuries, he must recognize, already within the ordinary consciousness, at least intuitively, that since these five centuries he has stood at a significant turning point in the whole earthly development of mankind.

[ 2 ] In the last observation I referred to this significant turning point from one point of view. There one can look up into the prehistory of development. You can see how the power of the soul has changed in man, which is currently active as the power of intelligence.

[ 3 ] Now thoughts, dead, abstract thoughts appear in the field of human consciousness. These thoughts are bound to the physical human body; man must recognize them as those generated by him.

[ 4 ] In primeval times, when man turned his soul's gaze in the direction in which his own thoughts reveal themselves to him today, he saw divine-spiritual entities. Man found his whole being, up to the physical body, bound to these entities; he had to recognize himself as the product of these entities. But as such a product he had to recognize not only his being, but also his doing. Man had no will of his own. What he did was a manifestation of the divine will.

[ 5 ] In stages, as this has been described, it has come to its own will, the time of which occurred about five centuries ago.

[ 6 ] But the last stage is much more different from all the preceding ones than these are from each other.

[ 7 ] When thoughts pass over to the physical body, they lose their vitality. They become dead; spiritually dead entities. Previously, by belonging to the human being, they were still at the same time organs of the divine-spiritual entities to which the human being belongs. They wanted to be in man. And through them, man felt a living connection with the spiritual world.

[ 8 ] With the dead thoughts, he feels detached from the spiritual world. He feels completely transported into the physical world.

[ 9 ] Thus, however, he is transferred into the sphere of the ahrimanic spirituality. This has no strong power in the regions in which the entities of the higher hierarchies hold man in their sphere in such a way that they either, as in primeval times, work in man themselves or, as later, through their animated or living reflection. As long as this work of supersensible entities entering into human activity exists, that is until about the fifteenth century, the ahrimanic powers have only a - one might say - faintly insinuating power within the development of mankind.

[ 10 ] What the Persian worldview describes of the work of Ahriman is not in contradiction with this. For this worldview does not mean an activity of Ahriman within the unfolding of the human soul, but such an activity in a world directly adjacent to the human soul world. Ahriman's weaving certainly plays over from a neighboring spirit world into the human soul world, but it does not intervene directly.

[ 11 ] This direct intervention has only become possible in the period of time that began about five centuries ago.

[ 12 ] So man stands at the end of a current of development within which his being has become of such divine spirituality that ultimately dies for itself in the abstract intelligence-being of man.

[ 13 ] Man has not remained in the spheres in which he has his origin as in this divine spirituality.

[ 14 ] What began five centuries ago for the consciousness of man had already taken place for a wider scope of his total being at the time when the Mystery of Golgotha entered into earthly manifestation. It was then that, imperceptibly for the consciousness of most people at that time, the development of mankind gradually slipped from a world in which Ahriman had little power into one in which he had much power. This slide into another world history reached its completion in the fifteenth century.

[ 15 ] Ahriman's influence on man in this world history is possible and can have a devastating effect because in this layer the work of the gods related to man has died. But man could not come to the development of free will in any other way than by entering a sphere in which the divine-spiritual beings connected with him from the beginning were not alive.

[ 16 ] Cosmically speaking, the essence of this human development lies in the mystery of the sun. The divine-spiritual entities of his origin were connected with what man could perceive up to the significant turning point of his development in the sun. These have detached themselves from the sun and left behind on it only their first dead, so that man can only absorb into his corporeality through the sun the power of dead thoughts.

[ 17 ] But these beings have sent the Christ from the sun to earth. He has combined his essence with the immortality of the divine-spiritual being in Ahriman's realm for the salvation of mankind. Thus mankind has the twofold possibility, which is the guarantee of its freedom: to turn to Christ in the spiritual attitude which was subconsciously present when descending from the contemplation of the supersensible spiritual existence up to the use of intelligence, now in a conscious way; or to want to feel itself in detachment from this spiritual existence and thus fall into the orientation taken by the Ahrimanic powers.

[ 18 ] Mankind has been in this situation since the beginning of the fifteenth century. It has been prepared - in development everything happens gradually - since the Mystery of Golgotha, which, as the greatest event on earth, is destined to save man from the perdition to which he must be exposed because he is to be a free being.

[ 19 ] It can now be said that what has happened so far on the part of mankind within this situation has taken place half-unconsciously. And in this way it has led to the good of the view of nature living in abstract ideas and to some equally good principles of the attitude to life.

[ 20 ] But this age, in which man is allowed to unfold his existence unconsciously in the dangerous Ahriman sphere, is over.

[ 21 ] The investigator of the spiritual world must draw humanity's attention today to the spiritual fact that Michael has taken over the spiritual leadership of human affairs. Michael accomplishes what he has to accomplish in such a way that he does not influence people through it; but they can follow him in freedom in order to find their way out of the Ahriman sphere again with the Christ-power, into which they necessarily had to come.

[ 22 ] Whoever can honestly, from the deepest essence of his soul, feel at one with anthroposophy, is a true understanding of this Michael phenomenon. And anthroposophy wants to be the message of this Michael mission.

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Further guiding principles sent out by the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 23 ] 106. Michael goes upwards again on the paths which humanity has gone downwards on the stages of spiritual development up to intelligence activity. Only Michael will lead the will upwards along the paths that wisdom has followed downwards to its final stage, intelligence.

[ 24 ] 107. How Michael shows his path only from this time of world development, so that man can walk it in freedom, distinguishes this Michael guidance from all earlier archangel guidance, indeed from all earlier Michael guidance itself. These guides worked in man; they did not merely show their work, so that man could not be free in his own at that time.

[ 25 ] 108. To realize this is man's present task, so that he may find his way of spirit with his whole soul within the Michael Age.