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LUCIFERIC AND AHRIMANIC IMPULSES WITHIN MICHAELMAS
As Michaelmas approaches, those of us
involved with Waldorf education, in the home or in a school setting find
ourselves presented with copious amounts of stories, poems, and images of brave
knights and dragons. There is not the same emphasis on Michaelmas as a holiday
or as a season in the general culture, at least here in the United States. In
the cross over from Catholicism to Protestantism, there was a great lessening
of emphasis on traditional “saints” and in the church calendars, the Being who
we refer to as Archangel Michael is usually designated as Saint Michael.
Dragons are still very popular, although in widely different ways from their
portrayals in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. With a revival of interest in
Asian cultures, kicked off in the 1960s, dragons became more recognized as a
symbol of “heavenly” energy with meanings greatly different than the tie in
with the “devil” widely popular in the European past.
These days, much that
was once taken fairly seriously by adults has become the “plaything” of
children. Now that we don’t “believe in” dragons anymore, we have relegated
them to the level of dinosaurs, fit for speculation but best left to children’s
imaginations. Dragons, like dinosaurs are very popular subjects for books,
poems, songs and film and television entertainment created for and directed to
children. Many of these mediums are now portraying various versions of 'friendly' dragons. If we consider it at all,
we have come to expect dragons who can interact in a playful way with children,
in the manner of gnomes, fairies and nature spirits, and other imaginary
friends - even to the point of being of great help to innocent little children.
The main argument for these portrayals
includes not exposing children to disheartening material deemed too mature or
saddening for them. So Michael’s Dragon is replaced by a sweet, flighty friend
who pulls the unsuspecting child into an alternate reality. In some version,
there is the dragon who is a sarcastic, passive aggressive little companion who
is constantly at his master’s heels, alternatively nipping and serving him.
But from an Anthropsophical point of
view, these friendly but delusory dragons have nothing in common with the Dragon
that Saint (or Archangel) Michael overcomes. Our modern dragons are born out of
a materialistic world view where people no longer understand the world of Archetypes
that lie behind these “fantastical” images. We live in a world where most
people no longer see such pictures as realities or believe that such realities
exist. Nevertheless, if a new/ old “festival” or “holiday” such as Michaelmas
is to have any kind of meaning or relevance in today’s world, it must be
brought into consciousness. Most people are quite satisfied with a fairly
simplistic understanding of Christmas and Easter as they are handed down
through their families, bolstered by media and advertising. But there is
basically no such cultural base for Michaelmas and St. John’s Day, the other
two cardinal “festival days” of the year. Not only then, is there a need to
“renew” the understanding of these feast days if we are to celebrate them at
all, but also to totally re-create them in light of a new understanding for our
time.
Why the “Fight between Michael and the
Dragon?” what does this represent? What meaning can it have, does it have to
the individual and to our society and culture as a whole? Where lies the
“reality” of a Dragon? Is it merely a symbol of a psychological and/ or
spiritual state, some kind of obstacle or inner challenge? Or does it also
exist as something external to ourselves although unseen and unrecognized?
The Dragon, like the ancient concept of
The Devil, is actually an amalgamation of two forces which exist internally and
externally to the Human Being. One is the force of Illusion, embodied according
to Rudolf Steiner in the Being traditionally called “Lucifer”. The other is the
force of Materialism even more anciently referred to as “Ahriman”. Ahriman was/
is the Spirit of Darkness recognized in Ancient Persia which the Lord of Light,
Ahura Masdao had to battle and overcome. In every spiritual tradition of the
world, there is an ancient and ongoing battle of “Light and Dark” or the Forces
of Light versus the Forces of Darkness, or simply the battle of Good versus
Evil.
There are stories, from ancient myths
to fairy tales to real biographies of battles of Light against Dark, of
warriors, great and small who fight these battles in many ways. The “dragons”
they fight may be symbolic or they may be embodied in a variety of ways. But
once one is conscious of the true nature of these battles, it is easy to see
the Dragon or Dragons in our midst.
Ahriman is embodied in the dragon that
wants to drag human kind down into materialism, to pull our consciousness down
into the merely earthly; as in our time the tendency is to see only the
physical and not to be able to recognize the spiritual reality intrinsic in all
of creation.
The object here, in the Ahrimanic
influenced portrayal of the dragon, is to “hoard” the treasures of the Spirit
in a dark cave, jealously guarding them from Humanity, keeping the Human Being
“poor in Spirit.” Our most modern representation is Smaug in the “Lord of the
Rings Trilogy”. He is a very dangerous dragon that can’t be conquered, but can
be tricked. The Ahrimanic Dragon, like Ahriman himself is extremely
intelligent, extremely clever in a cold and heartless way. This Dragon is a
threat, a very real threat, to the “Woman Clothed With the Sun” who is about to
give birth to the Child, which is the new spiritual evolution of Humankind. The
Dragon of Materialism is content to allow Humanity to exist but not to dare to
intrude on the spiritual world in which he slumbers. He wants us to slumber
also! Not to “wake up” to our true spiritual nature. This Dragon is no playmate
of Mankind. He is usually portrayed in films and stories as needing to be
“slain” – put to death. Of course, no spiritual entity can actually “die.” But
Michael and His forces can banish him from “Heaven” and with Michael’s help,
humans can “slay” him in our plane of existence, ultimately. But this “death”
is still in the future. The battle goes on and will go on for many centuries
yet. Everyday we battle these dragon forces within our own soul – greed, fear,
anger, depression, sloth, hatred, prejudice and the slumbering contentment of
material well being when we possess it. The “death” of this Dragon and these
“dragon forces” is not a one time event. But the stories and Imaginations of
this battle are meant to bolster our courage and determination to win in the
end, to triumph ultimately over the evil prospect of a world gone cold in
materialism without the Fire of Divine Love to keep us alive and warm in
Spirit.
The other kind of Dragon is what in
Anthroposophical terms is called “Luciferic.” This kind of dragon is sometimes
harder to conquer because its aspect is so friendly and seemingly benign.
Lucifer was/ is that “devilish” being called “The Father of Lies.” Lucifer was
a great Archangel, truly the greatest of all who fell, by some accounts due to
a kind of jealousy of God Himself, especially when Human Beings were created
materially with the potential for full Spiritual consciousness and development.
Lucifer’s pride and ego could not abide “sharing” the Presence and Being of God
with created beings of such a lower order. Lucifer’s purpose, since he tried
and failed to “fight” God (through God’s representatives, the Angels) is to
sabotage God’s creation through the “flaw” in Man’s psychological and spiritual
make up – Free Will. The stories of all cultures abound with temptations.
Lucifer plays with humanity’s foibles – pride, gullibility, lust, desire for
pleasure and desire for power. Lucifer and Ahriman often work together. Ahriman
may use greed as represented by love for actual gold whereas Lucifer compounds
it with love for the pleasures wealth can bring – often at great expense to
ourself - materially and spiritually. Lucifer usually appears to us in very
pleasant aspects (while Ahriman usually uses fear as his preferred tool.)
Lucifer is the “Candy Man” who only wants to make us happy, to solve our
problems, to lead us to the playground of life.
But the Eastern cultures were well
aware of the Dragon Lucifer’s dual nature. Yes, he has an important function on
the Earthly plane. Asian dragons symbolize power – elemental power. Long before
the “discovery” of electricity, the Dragon was its symbol. And just like
electricity, it can come from dark, extremely dangerous underground forces like
oil, coal or uranium, or, as we are finally discovering, it can come from more
benign elements like the sun, wind and water. Where ever it comes from, however
it is produced, it always has the power to harm or to bestow blessing. As Jimmy
Buffett said, “The difference between lightning and a harmless lightning bug.”
This energy must be “conquered” by the
Human Being. It must be harnessed to the Good and made to serve only the Good.
This too, is an ongoing struggle, destined for eons yet to come. There are many
stories for children and novels for adults (Dragonriders of Pern and many
others) where a hero or heroine or a whole culture has become adept at “taming”
dragons, riding them and putting them to use, often in a symbiotic yet still
uneasy social structure.
But when we find Lucifer embodied by
the “friendly” dragon such as Puff the Magic Dragon, Pete’s Dragon and others,
we are succumbing to the trivialization of this mighty Cosmic Being. This kind
of “harmless” trivialization of cosmic forces swelled with the advent of
television from the 1950’s turning the powerful images and ideals of the
Archetypes first into Stereotypes (the hardened out forms) and ultimately into
Caricatures. The great Dragon Archetype becomes a “harmless” Saturday morning
cartoon for children’s entertainment. But the joke is on us, really, because
those Saturday morning cartoons were far from “harmless.” It would take a
separate thesis to go into all of the subliminal messages and propaganda
imposed on the young minds of the past half century or so. There he is –
Lucifer – Father of Lies – coming to us in the benign, playful, happy aspect –
setting up residency in the imaginations of us as children an of our own
children. Studies have been done, or at least attempted, on the connection between
the growth of hallucinogenic drug use and cartoon watching among the “boomer”
generation. Even more significant is the proven connection between the reliance
on even the most “beneficial” “children’s” programming and the actual decline
of verbal skills. The Father of Lies has had generations believing that
“children’s programming” i.e. Sesame Street et al, was improving children’s
later aptitude for school and academics, whereas it has been shown to be just
the opposite.
The very expectation that “education”
should be “painlessly” introduced through media that does not require
consciousness on the part of the child is an underlying falsehood controlling
much of our failed educational systems today.
The very force embodied in the
Luciferic portrayal of the dragon lifts one out of the earthward pulling forces
into levity, away from the proper incarnation into your earthly tasks and
therefore leads to dreamy, hallucinatory states of mind. Out of these thoughts
people want to change the image/concept of the dragon to something safe and
friendly and to change the development of the child in such a way that the Ego
(“I” – true self) is weakened rather than strengthened as it is through
wrestling with academic subjects (at the proper times) until one is able to
“master” them. For many children today, it has become impossible to engage in
any task or subject that doesn’t “come easily.” For many young adults, this has
resulted in submission to a kind of social system in which the individual is
merely a “cog in a wheel” or an ineffective kind of rebellion which results in
escapism and self-harm, even self-destruction.
In our current time, of course, we grapple
with the Ahrimanic forces of the great globally directed social machine. The Ahrimanic
Dragon and his legion of helpers are the materialistic forces that want to entice
human beings to strive for personal and social security, material wealth and
power and a “perfect” world. Lucifer is a great ally to this, spinning dreams
of a “perfect” world in which all problems have been overcome – at the expense
of true freedom of thought and action, of the development of full Individuality
and even at the expense of real Love, which is of the nature of sacrifice and
struggle more than of pleasure and satisfaction.
We who recognize or who are willing to
acknowledge and entertain the ideas presented here are challenged to find
creative, living and true ways to re-introduce mythology to children and young
people. We have the option, some might say obligation, to reject the dragons of
the cartoon world and to create new stories and celebrations that portray The
Dragon as something that threatens Humanity once again. Of course, these
stories, ancient and modern, need to correspond properly to the psychological
and spiritual stages of childhood and be appropriate for the ages they are
presented to. But even in the “fairy tales” the Dragon must be “overcome” – if
not slain, then “tamed” and required by might to be the servant of the Human
Being rather than the Human Being becoming or remaining the Slave of the
Dragon. Only by speaking, celebrating and living this Truth will we, our
children and those yet to be born be inspired to ultimately overcome the dragon
forces of illusion and materialism and bring the balancing power of the Christ,
whose visage is Michael, Archangel and Archai of our Time Period, back into the
Spiritual Evolution of Humanity and of the Earth.
Michelle Missel
Christine Natale
Nesta Carsten
September 20, 2015
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