This is an interesting piece dealing with black magic. It provides one definition of an absolute human evil - enjoying causing pain to another conscious being - and, more importantly, it deals briefly with how the black magician acquires power through extinquishing life and through 'sex magik'. It also ties the practice of black magic to gaining control over the minds of others through hypnotic processes, which in turn links to the initiation of the Jesuits which seeks to gain control over the wills of others without being aware of whence the suggestions for their actions originate.
It is from a chapter entitled 'Sorat - the Sun demon' - Sorat (or Sorath) being the demon of the Sun and the being properly termed the actual Antichrist in distinction to the two temptors of man, Lucifer and Ahriman. In the most basic terms, Sorat desires to destroy the earth and to destroy man, to deprive him of his self-conscious indiviuality, whereas the temptors wish for humans to follow their own alternative visions for the future of mankind. [For the terms 'etheric' and 'astral' see the notes after the piece]
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From 'Michael and the Two-Horned Beast: The Challenge of Evil Today' by Bernard Nesfield-Cookson, Temple Lodge 1998.
The two-horned Beast is designated by the number 666. Rudolf Steiner interprets this number as signifying the name of the Sun Demon. This number, John hears, 'is the number of a man' (Rev. 13:18). Rudolf Steiner helps us to understand what this statement really means. According to him, it is not the number of all human beings, but solely of those who 'out of their own cunning free-will have become black magicians by placing spiritual forces in the service of their own egotism'
The two-horned Beast, Sorat, may be understood to be an intensified expression of Ahriman's satanic cunning to enlist humankind's aid in the fight against Christ. In John's Revelation we hear that the two-horned Beast is the adversary of the Lamb. Steiner describes this power as being the adversary of the sun, the adversary of Christ. In order to gain some small insight into the spiritual being Sorat and his sphere of activity, we need to focus our attention on a particular period in the evolution of the earth. Rudolf Steiner shows us that in the long distant past the sun and the moon were still united with the earth. Now, the forces of the moon have a powerful 'hardening' tendency, and if it had not separated itself from the earth the physical bodies of human beings would have become 'hardened' to such an extent that no souls would have been able to incarnate into them. It is these hardening forces of the moon that Sorat and his agent, the black magician, employ.
"Centres of black magic arise where moon forces cooperate with spirits who have entered directly in their service -a service that makes for evil. And because many activities of this kind have been practised in recent centuries, a dangerous atmosphere has been created on the earth. This dangerous atmosphere is undeniably there and is transfused with multitudinous forces that are born of a union of human activities with moon elements and of dynamic moon forces with elementary beings in the service of illicit moon forces. It is this region that is actively opposed to all that is destined to proceed from the sun region in the Michael Age."
Michael works from the sun. The spiritual influences emanating from the spiritual sun can also be called the influence of Michael and his followers
For human beings to be led into that which is merely immoral, the influence of Sorat is not needed.
"Only when spiritual eminence is turned to its opposite, only when spiritual power is placed in the service of the lower 'I' principle, can it bring humanity to the point when the Beast represented with two horns gains power over it. The misuse of spiritual forces is connected with that seductive power of the Beast with the two horns. And we call this abuse of the spiritual power black magic, in contradistinction to its right use, which is white magic . . . In the mystery of 666, of Sorat, is hidden the secret of black magic . . . Thus there appears on our horizon, so to speak, the division of humanity in the far distant future: the chosen of Christ, who finally will be the white magicians; and the adversaries, the terrible wizards, the black magicians who cannot escape from matter and whom the writer of the Apocalypse describes as those who make prostitution with matter."
It is through the right use of spiritual forces, that is, used in complete selflessness and out of purified love for the earth and mankind, that the earth will be transformed into a sunlike state. Therewith the first step will have been taken towards the spiritualization of the earth, towards the `building' of the New Jerusalem. The New Jerusalem will be 'produced by white magic'. Sorat works against this transformation in that he enlists human beings to misuse spiritual forces-to use such forces for purely egoistic, power-seeking motives and intentions.
In the city of Babylon the community is made up of all those who practise black magic. There, as we have noted already, an "unrestrained marriage between man and the forces of prostituted matter" prevails. "And thus," Steiner states, "in the far future we see two powers confronting each other; on the one hand those who swell the population of the great Babylon, and on the other hand those who rise above matter, who as human beings unite with the principle represented by the Lamb'. This is what will appear in the far future, but, as Steiner points out, those who in our time are beginning in an unjustifiable way to oppose the spiritual, who oppose the Michaelic impulse and therewith Christ, are already beginning to nurture the germs of something one might call black magic. It is only when the ABC of black magic is practised that one begins to tread the path downwards into the abyss. "The ABC consists in the pupil of a black magician being taught to destroy life quite consciously, and in doing so to cause as much pain as possible and to feel a certain satisfaction in it . . . The beginning in black magic is to cut and stab into living flesh . . . This draws the pupil closer and closer to the being described as the twohorned Beast"
Elsewhere Rudolf Steiner says:
"The black magician draws the most powerful forces out of the morass of sensuality. The purpose of sexual rites is to introduce such magic into these circles . . . In no way can one so readily assimilate destructive astral forces as by killing. Every killing of a being possessing an astral body evokes an intensification of the most brutal egotism. It signifies a growing increase of power. In schools of black magic, therefore, instruction is first given as to how one cuts into animals."
The black magician gains sensual pleasure in cruelty. In contrast to this, the basic principle of all white magic is that no power can be either gained or increased without selfless devotion.
Whereas, according to Rudolf Steiner, white magicians would impart to other human beings, to other souls, the spiritual life with which they themselves are imbued, black magicians have the urge to kill, that is, to create a void around themselves in the astral world, for it is in such a void that their egotistic desires can unfold themselves. A necessary step towards the creation of the void around oneself in the astral world is the acquisition of the power which results from seizing the vital forces of anything that lives, that is to say, by deliberately killing, destroying, it. That is why the first rule of black magic is: Life must be conquered."
Any form of egotistic power-seeking influence upon the will of another person is also an integral part of the ABC of black magic. For instance, the overpowering of a human being by means of hypnotism is a form of `killing', for it nullifies the will of the person hypnotized. White magicians, on the other hand, address themselves to the conscious faculty of thinking and never intrude upon the unconscious levels of being in another person; they never intrude upon another person's freedom.
When black magicians hypnotize other people they have the power to implant harmful instincts in the etheric body of those people. It is only permissible, Rudolf Steiner states, to work on another person's etheric body when one is certain that one's instincts have undergone catharsis. Under hypnosis it can happen that the person hypnotized "works into the world the harmful instincts of the hypnotist". In the case of people who are fully conscious the physical body prevents the etheric body from being 'shuttled' hither and thither. "When, however, the physical body is in a state of lethargy, it is possible for the etheric to be worked into. If a person hypnotizes others and works harmful instincts into them, these remain with them after death".
Many of the practices of black magicians have consisted in creating willing servants by this means.
Black and white magic are not only opposed to one another in regard to their relationship to human souls but also in regard to their role in the future evolution of the cosmos. In the long distant future the earth will be spiritualized and the condition Rudolf Steiner designates as 'Jupiter' will come into being. In the New Testament this condition is spoken of as being the New Jerusalem. Those who follow the `white path' help in the preparation of the process of spiritualization. Those who follow the 'black path' work with forces opposed to such a transformation. They are subservient, willingly, to the two horned Beast, to the Ahriman-Sorat forces of destruction.
Our earth is the arena of the opposing forces of black and white magic. The white power strives to spiritualize the earth once again after it has reached a certain degree of physical density; the black power, on the other hand, strives to make the earth ever more dense. The earth could take on two entirely different 'expressions'. It could become the physical expression for the good powers through human beings uniting themselves with the spirits working for unification, with those spiritual powers who are active in the service of Michael, the Countenance of the Sun Spirit, Christ. Or it could become the physical expression for the evil powers, those who are active in the service of the Sun Demon, Sorat. The earth "becomes the physical expression for the good powers through human beings uniting themselves with the spirits working for unification, in that they seek the ego in the community... Were we to burrow more and more deeply into ourselves, the final result would be that we should strive to separate ourselves from one another... To be a black magician means to develop more and more the spirit of separateness. There are black adepts who are on the way to acquire certain forces of the earth for themselves. Were the circle of their pupils to become so strong that this should prove possible, then the earth would be on the path leading to destruction"
Some three years after Rudolf Steiner gave the lecture from which I have just quoted, he gives us a further insight of profound significance. Because Christ has united Himself with the earth, because the earth is His body, Sorat has been unable to receive anything from the earth, from earthly existence. `This being could only have got something from the earth by being able to gain the rulership at a certain moment, namely, when the Christ-principle descended to the earth. If the Christ-principle had then been "strangled" in the germ, if Christ had been overcome by the Adversary, it would have been possible for the whole earth to succumb to the Sorat-principle. This, however, did not take place, and so this Being has to be content with those human beings who have not inclined towards the Christ-principle, who have remained embedded in matter; they in the future will form his hosts"
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Physical, Etheric, Astral and Ego (Notes)
When man dies he leaves behind a physical body which then becomes subject to purely physical forces which slowly destroy and dissolve its form. Whilst we are alive we possess an 'etheric body' (also known as the life-body or the body of formative forces), which constantly conquers the purely physical forces both within our being and assailing us from without. The etheric body maintains the forms and structures of our physical body (for example, the structures of the internal organs). Plants consist of a physical and an etheric body - their form is determined by forces within them, whereas minerals are shaped by external forces.
The 'astral body' - which approximates to what people usually term the 'soul' - allows us to be sentient beings. It is the seat of our emotions and desires and it allows us to be conscious of the sensations which stream towards us from the outer world. Animals possess a physical, etheric and an an astral body - for example, they experience pain as an inner experience, which plants do not.
The 'Ego' or 'I' is the spiritual part of man, the part which distinguishes him absolutely from the animals - and is that part which the Eight Ecumenical Council in 869AD removed from Christian teachings of man's being, declaring that the soul of man could experience the spiritual streaming into it, but that man was not in essence a spiritual being. It is the ego which allows us to reflect upon the sensations which we experience and allows us to override our instincts and emotions It permits us to overcome the slavery of a life committed purely to seeking to continually fulfil our sensual needs - as is the case of the animal, which divides its time between searching for food, eating, having sex, rearing offspring, fighting for territory, etc. Modern man may often seem to do little more than this, but it doesn't have to be this way! Christianity has to take some of the blame for the current situation as, after it stole from man the knowledge that he is a spiritual being, it has often portrayed man as a helpless being, unable to determine the course of his life without the grace of God (which usually equated to submitting to the authority of his self-appointed earthly 'representatives'). It is the spiritual element of being which makes us individual (self-conscious) and free beings.
