Letter 15: THE DEVIL

"Lucifer and Ahriman, the two principles of evil, subjective and objective, the seducing principle and the hypnotizing principle, have so taken possession of the consciousness of Anthroposophists that there is hardly a single thing which would not fall under the category of being Ahrimanic or Luciferic. Science is Ahrimanic in so far as it is objective; Christian mysticism is Luciferic in so far as it is subjective. The East is under the domination of Lucifer, because it denies matter; the West is under the domination of Ahriman, because it has created a material civilization and tends to materialism. All machines -- including the apparatus of radio and television -- incorporate Ahrimanic demons. Laboratories are the fortresses of Ahriman; theatres -- and churches, some believe -- are the fortresses of Lucifer. And so on.

Anthroposophists are led to classify thousands of facts from the point of view of the category of evil which is revealed through them -- which suffices to occupy them for the whole day. And to so occupy oneself amounts to contact with evil and a corresponding reduction of living and inspiring contact with good. The result is a lame wisdom without wings, deprived of creative élan, which only repeats and comments to satiety what the master, Dr. Rudolf Steiner, said. ..it is the preoccupation with evil which has clipped the wings of the Anthroposophical Movement and which has rendered it such as it is since the death of its founder: a movement for cultural reform (art, education, medicine, agriculture) deprived of living esotericism, i.e. without mysticism, without gnosis and without magic, which have been replaced by lectures, study and intellectual work aiming at establishing a concordance between the writings and stenographed lectures of the master."  --VT

"Melancholic"
watercolor  15"x28"