Esoteric Evolution - 22

The Role of the Fallen Angels

The function of evil

How evil came to be

Cosmic drama

The sacrifice

The events in Paradise

Lucifer and the becoming soul

The consequences of the deed of Lucifer in Lemuria

The fall into sin

Sources

The planetary incarnations of the Earth:

The eras of development of the Earth:

In the previous chapter, The Serpent in Paradise, questions were addressed such as: Why does evil exist in the world? And how could it be that evil was already present in Paradise in the form of the serpent, while the human being was still in the immediate proximity of God?

Big questions like these have to be approached from different angles to find the right answers. That is why in this chapter we will go into the role in human evolution of evil and the fallen angels in more depth.

The previous chapter related that for esoteric Christianity the function of evil in the world is directly connected with the development of us humans to higher stages of humanness, consciousness and existence.

Some day we humans are intended to become free human beings in whom the good, wisdom, and love live in their highest form and are rayed out. However, we can only attain these high stages of consciousness and morality if, besides the good, we also learn to know evil and deal with it. For only by the confrontation with the counter pole, evil, do we become conscious of what the good really is, what it contains, and how it works. And that wakes up the will in our inner being to consciously strive for the good.

Because this task is so essentially connected with our human development, the leading spiritual beings have arranged human life in such a way that we are continually faced with situations in which we meet both the good and the negative: truth and lies, justice and anarchy, aggression and compassion, etc. By experiencing them to our cost we learn to know the difference between what is good and what is negative or evil, how they work and what the results are.

Gustav Doré - Satan on his way to bring about the fall of Adam, illustration to "Paradise lost" by John Milton

This insight teaches us to learn to make conscious choices. What do I do when someone treats me aggressively or harms me? Do I take flight? Do I hit back? Or do I wonder how I can deal with it in such a way that the damage remains limited on both sides and it is still possible to come together?

By learning to deal in such a conscious, searching way with the negative and the good, we inwardly wake up, become conscious, and grow in a spiritual sense. Not only do by such active practice wisdom and the power of love in the higher spiritual self-increase a little. But we also become a little more free - free from the automatic, unfree reactions that come completely unconsciously out of our astral body and can totally dominate our actions.

The previous chapter described with the story of the serpent in Paradise how evil arose in the creation and came to the human being. The serpent is the symbol for Lucifer. Lucifer and his angelic host once belonged to the third hierarchy of creative angelic beings. In the far distant past, they separated themselves from the high creative spiritual beings who stood above them in heavenly hierarchies, and in whose sphere of truth and revelation they lived. They turned away because they wanted to become free of these higher spiritual beings above them and wanted to have an autonomous inner being and existence of their own.

The consequence of this separation was that Lucifer and his angels no longer formed part of the heavenly hierarchies and their divine-spiritual sphere of truth, goodness, and love. Because of this their consciousness was darkened and untruth, illusion, hubris, and egoism have dominated them. Thus, they became "fallen angels," counter poles and adversary powers against spiritual beings such as the Elohim who, as creative beings of the second hierarchy, serve the light and the progress of humanity and the earth in selfless ways.

Such a fall out of the unity of the divine world did in the course of cosmic history not only take place in the hierarchy of the angels. It also happened among the archangels and the archai or spirits of personality. Among them too there were groups of spiritual beings with a leader that strove for the same goal as Lucifer, namely to free themselves from the influence of the hierarchical beings of light and progress above them, in order to pursue their own goals in a condition of autonomy.

Hence, besides the luciferic fallen angels, there are also fallen ahrimanic archangels and fallen asuric archai. In the course of evolution, all these groups that consist of fallen spiritual beings received access to the human being to fulfill the task previously mentioned, namely as powers of evil to form a counter pole with regard to the creative spiritual beings of light and the good.

To achieve that position, they first penetrated the corporeality of the becoming human being, the astral body, next the etheric body, and finally the physical body. From there they penetrated the soul and the I. Thus, they extended their influence also into the personality and the ego-I of the human being.

This cosmic drama in which these groups of angels, archangels, and archai separated themselves from the high heavenly hierarchies of light and progress, and opposed them, took place long before the condition of Paradise. It happened long before the Hyperborean and Lemurian periods of the earth during which the story of Paradise occurred. In fact, these groups of fallen spiritual beings penetrated the becoming human being already in planetary phases that preceded that of Earth, in Old Saturn, Old Sun, and Old Moon.

Lucifer (left) and Ahriman (right)

The Asuric archai came in already during Old Saturn, when the very first basis was laid for the human physical body. During Old Sun, Ahriman and his angels entered the very beginning of the etheric or life body of the becoming human being, whereas Lucifer and his hosts made their way into the becoming astral or soul body during the Old Moon period. Thus, these fallen spiritual beings began to live in the human corporeality already in very early times. But they only became active much later, in the Earth period.

As was mentioned before, it is important to realize that these fallen spiritual beings did not out of themselves take on the role of counterforces, but they were impelled to do so for the sake of the development of the human being to higher levels of consciousness. That made them adversaries of the creative beings of the light, such as the Elohim and others.

As counterforces, these fallen beings made a sacrifice. A sacrifice? Yes, in order to fulfill the role of counterforce they had to let go of their own development as beings of light and became backward spiritual beings. And that means suffering. For, just as in human beings, in spiritual beings the longing also lives to develop further to higher spiritual levels.

It is due to the profound wish to develop that the three groups of spiritual beings mentioned above became counterforces after their separation. For out of this profound need they seized in their became counterforces new state on the only possibility left to them to realize this, on the human being. Through the human being and that which lives in the human being as development potential, they still try, even today, to get ahead and thus increase their strength and power.

With that goal in view, all that time ago they pushed their way into the corporeality of the human being, and at a later stage also into their soul and their I, and thus into their personality. Thus, in the course of time these spiritual powers came to live in the life of passion, desire, and emotion of us humans, and also in our life of feeling, thinking, and will, as well as in our consciousness, including our I-consciousness or self-awareness.

Why is it important to know all this? Because it is only out of this background that we can truly comprehend the events in Paradise and the seduction by the serpent, Lucifer. Then we can answer the questions these things evoke. Lucifer, the mildest of the forces of evil, could be present in Paradise because he already had access to the developing astral body of the becoming human being in the Old Moon era.

What do we now see happening in the time of the story of Paradise, specifically in this astral body? We are told in Genesis 2:7 that the Lord God breathed the breath of life into the human being. Thus, it says, the human being became a living being.

What this text says is that the Lord god, Yahweh-Elohim, in that moment moved to the next phase in the creation process of the human being, namely the creation of the soul in the corporeality. Rudolf Steiner tells us that to achieve this, Yahweh-Elohim had worked on the astral body in such a way that an inner space was created in it, in which an inner world could come about. Hence the expression: "Thus the human being became a living being."

But that was not the only thing that was accomplished at that time. Into this very first, still tender condition of the inner soul world, Yahweh-Elohim now slowly added the I of the human being. The I forms the principle of individualization by which I-consciousness or self-awareness could come into existence.

What happened during this gigantically grand event with Lucifer? Rudolf Steiner tells us that right before the addition of the I by the Elohim, Lucifer made his way into this still only germinally existing human soul, which would later be called the sentient soul. It was a step that had big consequences.

For not only did Lucifer gain access to primary astral or soul forces like passions, desire, and emotions, but he could also reach the germ of the I that was slowly added. In that way he came to live not only in the astral body and soul of the human being, but also in the personality-I, in other words, in that part of the I that is connected with the astral body.

And the other groups of fallen spiritual beings? They received access to the inner world, the soul and the I only later. During Atlantis, Ahriman penetrated through the etheric body into the developing human thinking capacity. And later, in post-Atlantean times, the Asuric Archai penetrated into the soul force we call the will. From there they reach up to the I.

During Lemuria, the time of the story of Paradise, regarding the soul and the I, we still only have Lucifer on our hands. What were the consequences of the deed of Lucifer?

Rudolf Steiner tells us that human passion and desire, which are characteristic of the astral body, under Lucifer's influence became much more intense and passionate than had been intended by the Elohim. Not only did the life of desire and emotion and the concomitant impulses, desires and passions increase strongly in the becoming human beings, but by the connection Lucifer made with the becoming I, they also became increasingly self-centered. In other words, they wanted to feel good in themselves and strengthen that feeling all the time.

With this encapsulating, self-focused gesture, egoism, the selfish side of the I, came in. In this way, with the help of the increased forces of passion and emotion, Lucifer pulled the developing human I to himself and down. This loosened human beings from the spiritual world of their origin and created the potential of error, untruth, illusion, as well as the first beginning of evil.

As a result of these luciferic forces of passion and desire and the concomitant feelings of lust and frustration, human beings connected more and more strongly with the world of earth. In this way we humans more quickly sank down into a life in the physical-material world.

Genesis - The Creation and the Fall

The above shows that Lucifer succeeded in loosening human beings from their world of origin for his own benefit, and in getting them ever more in his own power. That Lucifer succeeded in this was the direct result of his own process of separation from the spiritual world and of the power he had thus gained. Thus, via Lucifer took place in the human being what is called the fall into sin, i.e. the fall into isolation - isolation from the divine world of origin, and thus into the grip of the forces of evil.

How did Yahweh-Elohim handle this new situation? That comes in the next chapter.

Old Saturn

Rudolf Steiner, Genesis, Secrets of Creation, GA 122.

Rudolf Steiner, Die Welt des Geistes und ihr Hereinwirken in das Physisches Dasein, GA 90.

Rudolf Steiner, Spiritual Hierarchies and the Physical World, GA 110.

For English translations see www.rsarchive.org.