The Principle of Lucifer

THE WAY OF THE GRAIL – SUPPLEMENTARY TEXTS – April 8, 2024

Czech original: Princip Lucifera · cesta-gralu.cz

Once again let it be brought closer what it truly means when the words “the principle of Lucifer” are uttered

In warning one's fellow-men it is also said that they should guard themselves against the influence of “the Luciferian principle of temptation”

In the end, however, most men still do not exactly know what these words mean and what in reality their content is

Alas, to their own harm most men of today merely smile at it, for they consider themselves advanced, and something such as Lucifer and his principle sounds to their ears like a tale out of old fairy stories, or also like a church sermon emptied of all content

There are also men who find everything around Lucifer, whom they link with Satan, alluring, for they think that in occupying themselves with it they too can in a certain defiance set themselves challengingly against obedience to God, towards whom in their immature understanding of life they hold many reservations

There is of course also still a not inconsiderable number of believers

Right at the very last we find a small group of those who strive to know the Truth

In the end there is, strange to say, still on earth a sufficient number of men who have some notion of it, and therefore it is good once again to make clear the essence of what lies in the words “the Luciferian principle”

For many men who believe that Lucifer is not merely an invented figure, there is in the words mentioned something evil, even chillingly mysterious, which can draw near to a man in the form of the most varied ugly things that seek in tempting to gain mastery over him, so that he may at last be dragged over to the dark side

This so fearfully sounding “Luciferian principle” is, however, simple in its working, and therefore also a happening easily overlooked by man

This indicates that much in this matter is otherwise than as men know it

First of all it holds that Lucifer from the beginning stood behind no base perversities such as men link with his working, he being repeatedly and wrongly held for the ruler of the darkness

Men have in this merely confused it with the working of the fallen creatures who succumbed to the Luciferian principle and in their own falling downward brought only afterwards all the other basenesses into their ways of being

This, however, does not concern Lucifer himself in the least, who always stood aside from this only subsequent devastating raging proceeding from the ranks of his victims

From the moment of his fall his influence upon mankind lay solely and only in the form of an all-embracingly working principle, and not in the direct tempting of individual men

Moreover neither Lucifer nor the souls dragged down by him, who work on in the principle of temptation, can simply draw near at will to every human spirit

Thus no one is exposed to the principle of temptation without protection

As in all else, here too there works the Law that brings about the fulfilment of all human wishes

If therefore men wish to have nothing whatever to do with the Luciferian principle and for that reason go through their life with pure striving in all their intuitive perceiving, thinking and acting, they will always remain sufficiently protected from everything

The influence of the alien temptation will not be able to penetrate into their inner being

This can be a lasting comfort for all those who strive for pure and good volition

Against his own will, which under all circumstances strives for pure volition, no human spirit can be influenced, not even if the strongest of the vibrations of the Luciferian principle should draw near to him

If he is pure, everything will remain outside of him

In Creation clarity prevails in everything, precisely because whatever comes into being must at the same time always take place within the frame of the Laws of Creation

Even Lucifer, in spite of his failure, is in his working subject to the Will of God

Thus the principle of Luciferian temptation spoken of, which fills many men with fear for their soul, also unfolds strictly in courses and developmental happenings which we may call lawful

The Laws of Creation will never permit the influencing and the subsequent fall of a human spirit, so that he should at last have to be rejected, if he holds within himself lastingly a childlike simple and pure attunement

All that pertains to temptation will glide off the pure radiance of his spiritual robe

So it is with all those who go through life purely, with an alert intuitive sensing of everything that enters their experiencing upon their path of ripening

It is otherwise, however, with those who succumb to the principle proceeding from the fallen archangel

In that case there works, in the same laws, all the striving towards the result which must come when wrongly used courses of thinking and acting are laid into the running of the Laws of God

It will therefore bring wavering and thereafter a sinking ever further downward, until it may come to a complete fall

In the case of the human spirit there then threatens the great danger of the complete extinction of his conscious being

But here let it again be pointed out that a succumbing to the influence of Lucifer can come about only in him in whom there is a homogeneous volition

This homogeneity lies in the state of attunement of the vain conceit of one's own worth, that is, in the haughty conviction that a man knows this or that better than all others

The danger lies in this, that this vibration shows itself almost imperceptibly, thus also when there suddenly runs through a man even the faintest vibration of that conceited haughtiness about his own abilities which at that moment makes him in something better and more successful than others

Precisely for this kind of inner attunement of pride the greatest warning should hold for all those who wish once and for all to avoid the danger of succumbing to the Luciferian principle of temptation

The danger lies precisely in this, that in its way it is at bottom always a principle going against the Will of God, thus a principle which contains rebellion against Imanuel, against the Holy Spirit

Men are not able to survey all that is contained therein

For a better understanding let us therefore recall here that there is nothing which came into being, or which rose to its own consciousness, without the Creator

And because everything arose out of the Creative Will of God, all that exists needs also to be aware of it in right acceptance

In the case of man it holds that he is always to be aware of the fact that absolutely all the gifts and abilities laid into his spirit come from God

If therefore a man prospers, for instance, in some matter, he needs to be aware that it is not his merit which is contained therein from beginning to end, but that he is only the one who unfolds the abilities quickened in his inward spiritual spark, which came into being in no other way than that it proceeds from God

Only out of the Grace of God was all this permitted to come alive and to unfold in man

If therefore there arises further out of this in its use something which brings manifestations of good for the rest of the world, the man concerned is still to experience joy in the awareness that this is made possible for him solely and only out of the Grace of God, which granted the possibility of self-conscious being to his spiritual spark

Where, however, there arises the conceit that it is the work of man alone and that he alone has the merit of it, there is already contained therein the germ of the wrong conceit that man stands apart from the Creator and that he is even something more than that which the Loving-Kindness of God enabled him to bring to unfolding

Therein lies the actual root of the rebellion against God and against the Holy Spirit, which comes to awakening whenever a man supposes that he knows something better than the Will of God could do it

But the beginning of this rising up against God is hidden already in this, that a man exalts himself above other men

In all this is contained “the Luciferian principle”, which then gradually leads to the poisoning of the consciousness of soul and of thought in man, and if the one concerned does not swiftly free himself in the striving to find childlike purity again, it will at last come to the degree of the necessary dissolution of the consciousness of the human spirit thus deflected out of the Harmony of the whole work of Creation

The principle of Lucifer is something other than many men suppose who expect from the fallen archangel temptation in the most varied basenesses

This principle, however, works quite otherwise

Here on earth it bites into the inner being of man through intellectuality, in which lies the danger of the germ of haughtiness resting in the conceit that a man is better than others

And therefore we can find “the Luciferian principle” also in many matters which are otherwise perhaps wholly pleasing to God

A man succumbing to the Luciferian principle may even outwardly be very beneficial to human society, he may even be very learned in the doctrines about God and may strive with all his powers for the furtherance of the glory of God among men

Alas in the ranks of churches and of various spiritual societies we shall always find many such men

If, however, in the inner being of such a man, instead of pure humility and thanks to the Creator, there sprouts a feeling of self-satisfaction nourished by the complacent conviction that he is better and more precious than others, then such a man must one day strike against the judgment of the Holy Spirit, and his whole work will then show itself as wholly poor and wretched, for true life-giving power lies only where a childlike simple fulfilment of the experiencing of gratitude prevails in all the moments of life

Therefore it is fitting again and again to point out to all inhabitants of the work of Creation that they should strive to guard their purity from any flicker which bears within it homogeneity with “the Luciferian principle”

From the necessary reciprocal effects of this attunement no creature can then be protected

As proof we can see that in the end there came about the fall even of so strong a servant as Lucifer was in the beginning in his origin as an archangel

He had to be cast out of the blessed places vibrating in the nearness of the life-giving radiance of God, where before he belonged together with all the hosts of archangels, with whom from the beginning of his coming into being he was permitted to extol and faithfully to follow the Creator

All this only confirms that for ever over everything there rules the Will of God as the sole power determining for all that has awakened to its own consciousness

In the end this necessarily holds also for the very high divinely animistic origin of Lucifer in the eternal Light of God

The very beginning of the fall of Lucifer was the awakening of the vibration of his own awareness that it is above all he who stands behind the success which came about at the beginning of his working among the developing human spirits, thus in those ancient days which here on earth we may call the time of the empires of antiquity

The awareness of success in connection with his own entirely wrongly understood strength led Lucifer to the conceit that he, as an emissary from the divinely animistic sphere, stands here in Subsequent Creation superior to all life, and in such a position that everything must come to meet him and hearken to him, for he is the strongest and also the best next after God himself

Looking about him in all directions he saw nowhere among the inhabitants of the work of Creation an equal to himself in his abilities

Even all the High animistic servants of Valhalla, faithfully serving the Father of All, stood in comparison with him deep in the lowlands of Creation

As an archangel of divinely animistic origin he truly was also the strongest of all those who as servants of God of a lower animistic kind were around him in the fulfilling of his originally so lofty task in Subsequent Creation

All the servants working around him here in Creation were, by the very nature of their coming into being, always necessarily woven into the threads of Creation, whereas he himself stood until a certain time entirely outside these threads

Thanks to his original radiation of the Divine kind he stood in a certain sense outside the effects of the Laws of Creation, to which all the others were of necessity subject

To come nearer to a better understanding one may give the picture that he worked into Creation from without, and this thanks to the radiation proceeding from his origin, whereby he could serve in Creation and at the same time stand outside it

Such a thing is not easy for our human kind of understanding to picture, therefore let us speak here of a radiation of a higher kind which by its nature stands above Creation, yet for the fulfilling of a mission is at the same time closely and more lastingly joined with a place of service which lies in the lowest, or otherwise the densest planes of Subsequent Creation

In this relation the archangel sent by God to further the development of the weakest kind of the spiritual, which lies deep in Creation, had thus to regard himself in his origin as a wholly exceptional helper

And truly he was such a one, and could be so still, if… if there had not awakened in him the awareness of his exceptional nature

Had he remained in his service lastingly and purely devoted to the mission appointed by the Holy God, he could today be known by human spirits and by all the rest of life in Creation as the archangel who shaped for the developing human spiritual species in Creation helping ways towards the most conscious possible knowing of the Will of the Creator

Next after Parzival he would be known as a precious helper coming from the divinely animistic realm, who raised the life in a part of Subsequent Creation to an upsurge in its development, forward by whole light-years

Parzival is from the beginning appointed by the Holy God, in the words “Let there be Light”, as the administrator of Creation

Lucifer, as the one who brings the conscious knowledge of God and of his Will, could have been joined for ever with this work of Creation by the most fervent thanks of all those whom by his exceptional working he could and also should have helped

But in this he failed so that there can be no greater accusation than that which is borne upward to God from all the inhabitants of the work of Creation

In his working he knew perfectly the effects of all the Laws in Creation, for his sight penetrated them continually as through the surface of water in which the Light of God gleams, while at the same time this Light penetrates further into the depths of the worlds lying below

In this respect his name bore within it the kind of his service

Lucifer – the Light-bearer

Standing above Creation he saw everything move, in like manner as when the eye of man watches the life in water through a glass touching the surface

Unlike the man observing life beneath the surface, he knew exactly how this life should unfold in order to prosper in its development

His task was easy for him, and from the first moments of his service everything prospered with him beyond measure

This, however, held only until the time when he became aware how strong a helper he himself was in all this

This wrong awareness led him at last to the conviction that here in Creation it is he who knows everything best, for his work of swift ascent everywhere confirmed it

Knowing all the places of pitfall and of weakness in the development spoken of in the far reaches of Subsequent Creation, he knew well where rightly to intervene so that no deflection should come about

The sacred spear of life which he received for his task was always to direct all the paths of development of the human spirits only along the development willed by God

It was he who held this livingly radiant spear in his hand as a symbol of the faithful fulfilment of a great mission, and who with it led the temporary helping part of life in Creation at the time when Parzival in his connection with Creation was still a youth

It led him, however, on the contrary to the reflection that the task to which he was sent, namely to help not only men in their ascent to the Light, is easy, and that he could manage to lead all the life to be found in the whole work of Creation

These vibrations of awareness were also the decisive moment of his deviation from his original glorious service

At the same time, in the very vibration at the awareness that he knows how to order all things in Creation better than the Will of the Creator itself, there awoke in him that primordial form of thought which we may designate the foundation of “the Luciferian principle”, working so much harm above all in the distant part of Subsequent Creation

To know better than all others, to know better than the Creator himself, such was the first imprint of the thought which Lucifer brought into the work of Creation

Thereby was laid the foundation of all the perniciousness which then had to show itself in every creature that succumbed to the principle of Lucifer

That perniciousness lies in the original inconspicuousness of the moment when the vibration of the delusion is allowed to sound, that the one concerned has become strong and mighty and is thereby more precious than others, for he knows everything better than anyone else

As soon as this kind of mental awareness begins to vibrate, every inhabitant of the work of Creation finds himself at once ever further outside the Will of God

And this principle of awareness, which is identical with the tasting of poison, became the ruin of many creatures, of whom the most destructively stricken was the human spiritual species, for whose sake Lucifer was sent into Creation to help it in its development in kindly patience with his great abilities

This awareness is distinctly portrayed in the parable in the Bible in the picture where the serpent offers the apple in which the hidden principle of Lucifer is to be found

In the picture it is caught thus, that it was the woman with her intuitive faculty, which she received from the Creator as a spiritually animistic angelic addition, thus a gift of an inexpressibly precious kind, so that she might be able to discern all that is wrong, who was influenced by Lucifer first, for he was aware that if he succeeded in awakening in the woman the flicker of her own worth, then the man would already be an easy morsel for him

And this he also succeeded in doing exactly according to his plan

It is not the awareness of a pure knowledge of oneself, as would be right in every respect, but it is that poisonous awareness of one's own worth in the sense that such a man knows everything best

Thereby conceit and pride at once unfold in man, qualities which here on earth in connection with the strengthened intellect lead to calculating cunning, which often builds one's own success upon the faults and the shortcomings of other men

By the tasting of this apple offered by the tempter the soul of man is at the same time poisoned with conceit and with a proud notion of his own exceptional and unique nature

Besides this it leads in the earthly body to an overstraining of the intellectual faculties, for only through a developed intellectual brain can that conceit assert itself here on earth, precisely in that confirming of oneself in one's abilities with the haughtiness that a man knows everything better than others

The principle of Lucifer bites in everywhere where the simple, childlike pure humility in the inner being of man is lacking

That is, where the human spirit does not shine with the clear light of his pure childlikeness, which he bears within himself from the beginning as the spiritually smallest inhabitant of the work of Creation

Where there is not in man the exertion of a daily striving to hold this simple childlikeness in lasting joyful readiness for all moments, there everyone exposes himself again and again to the danger of being struck by the poison of conceit at the very moment when there runs through him the flicker of the awareness of how good and precious he is and how he knows everything better than the rest

And because the principle of Lucifer has spread too far among men on earth, and at the same time pure childlikeness in all understanding has wellnigh vanished, everyone who is now still on earth is permanently exposed to the danger of this poison of temptation

This will hold until there again unfolds in the human way that primacy of the knowledge that man is only a creature, that he is a child, and thus a small particle of the loving Wisdom of God

Only in the understanding and the acceptance of this knowledge, thus in submitting to the Will of the Creator, can he unfold lastingly into the infinity of his own personality

Such a thing, however, is not easy, for of the apple of temptation mankind has already tasted so much that this principle, which bears within it the baleful bent to suppose that a man knows everything best, has nested itself too deeply in the convolutions of the brain and cannot simply be overcome

It will therefore last some time before visible changes come, and this moreover only upon the fulfilment of the condition that men will wish to change things as they have been for the better with fervour and with perseverance

The highest power in everyone that can change the principle as it is set is his spiritual nature

It is the inward spiritual volition in man that needs to free itself and to take over the rule over all impulses and vibrations in thinking and acting

But against this there works in men the deeply rooted principle of Lucifer, of which they are not even partly aware, for it is skilfully hidden behind all the forms of the will to assert oneself which Lucifer has slipped in

Everywhere where there lives in men the notion that success is bound up with surpassing all other men and thus making them weaker and in a certain sense inferior, everywhere there the hidden principle of Lucifer is to be found

Wherever there awakens in man the impression that he is better than others, even in the most senseless matter, there at once appears the picture of the serpent offering the apple of temptation

But this is exactly something that is for the most part overlooked

Indeed the world of men today goes entirely against the original natural way of the development of the human spirit, for today the endeavour at self-assertion at any price is everywhere encouraged

And self-assertion always bears within it the hidden volition to be better than others, and nourishes the thought-form that life is best used by a man's becoming in some direction more successful than the rest

The principle of temptation has sown among men everywhere the wish to be the best of all

It has gone so far that many long to be the best in wholly senseless things which deny human dignity

Whoever has not this basic impulse to such conduct awakened within him is among the men of today's world held in advance for a failure and a worthless creature who deserves no more than the pity of those who stand above him

A pity springing, however, not from the longing to help the weaker, but only from the hidden volition to confirm one's own success in the knowledge that someone else is less successful in the contest for an imagined victory

So it is daily today, whereby the world of men confirms anew how deeply that poisoning has seeped in which was slipped to men in the most ingenious principle of temptation by him who bore this wound upon himself

In the endeavour to shake their trust in God, Lucifer could hand on to men nothing other than that which had become fatal to himself

He set before the human spirit as a heavy form of temptation that in which he himself had failed

The awakening of the searing heat of the volition to be better, to know everything better, to be in one's own perception more perfect than the Will of God himself

In a thousand variations it vibrates through the inner being of men in the conceit that this is the right way to attain something higher and to fill one's life with something meaningful

And it truly penetrates into everything that men regard as a part of the concept “life”

The woman longs to have influence upon her man, that he may heed her good counsels, the man conversely longs that the woman should fulfil his wishes

The student is driven by the longing to excel above the rest

The scientist nourishes within himself to the point of exhaustion the thought of discovering something before his fellow-workers attain it

The sportsman is consumed by an unceasing voice in his head urging him to become the most successful of all, and he is spurred to it also by his advisers and by those near him, that only the golden cup has the highest worth

The merchant strives to be ever richer, and the leader wishes to be the most influential, because at any price he wishes to hold his power and rule over the rest, whom he calls the crowd and the rabble

And children too, for whole generations, are often led by their parents to the awareness that only such a life has meaning as is under all circumstances earthly successful, and this without regard to how this success is attained

Whoever is not at the summit in some field or direction of human endeavour is, in the perception of today's mankind, only a run-of-the-mill man deserving no attention

How very different, however, is the Truth which uncovers the reason and the meaning of human life

The knowledge of the Truth lies in this, that only that man who in his striving seeks first accord with the Harmony of the whole, using all his abilities of spirit and of intellect, can gradually draw near in fully intuited humility to the knowledge of the Truth through accord with the Will of God and with the all-embracing Harmony pervading the whole work of Creation

Only then will he grasp and draw near to the true experiencing of the content of the concept Truth, which he had so many times before uttered without in reality grasping its true essence

Only in such an attunement can the human spirit also be happy, for only in that moment is he joined with the whole of the Universe, in which there is for everyone a great share of the blessing of God

Only in co-operation can there be attained in the human spiritual species that degree which is sought as the promised “Kingdom of God on Earth”

That this “Kingdom of God” has not yet come is a sign that there is still too much in men that is alien to the state of mutual happiness experienced with others, which is the condition for attaining the great enlightening of mankind and thus for the setting in of the time of that “Kingdom of God on Earth”

This is no philosophical reflection upon the world of men here, nor is it good counsel, but it is a strict and harsh description of the reality of how men stand towards the ordering by God of the great Harmony of the work of Creation

Without the change which lies in freeing itself from the influence of the Luciferian principle, mankind will never make progress further

And this even at the price that mankind will now be struck by the animistic working to the degree of almost complete destruction

No other way is possible

Everything is set for a new developmental direction of this part of the universe

And this either together with the awakened men who will open themselves to the great influx of enlightenment, or without them, only with the smallest number of those who will be capable of it out of themselves

The condition for a quickening to come in all the happenings above mankind and in men themselves is the complete turning about of all the hitherto understanding and experiencing of life, which is in wellnigh everything touched by the influence of “the Luciferian principle”

Childlike joyfulness joined with the awareness that man of himself is nothing without God and his Work is the straightest way to the beginning of changing all the present competitiveness and distortion, in which there is nothing but a remnant of the misunderstanding of the struggle in nature

Yet earthly men have for more than two thousand years had the direction shown by the Word of Truth from the Son of God Jesus, who overcame in every respect Lucifer as the tempter, who in the time in the desert sought to ingratiate himself with him with the offer of his skills and of his help on the condition that Jesus would confirm the validity of his divinely animistic origin and that he would be permitted to return to the places of his origin in the Realm of God

To this Jesus answered the tempter with the words that no one can exalt himself above God without reaping the consequences of his wishes

To men he then sought to show the way of the most fervent following of the Love of God, that they themselves might become aware that they are the spiritual children of this Creation

Alas only few men grasped the great legacy lying in the simple pictures of Christ, which he sought to impress as livingly as possible into the hearts of those who listened

And so we now stand at the very point of the great changes, still without the knowledge and the understanding of what truly lies in the words “the Luciferian principle”

There is only one possibility of guarding oneself against this tasting, still working devastatingly among men, of the poisonous apple offered by the tempter

In the pure and wholly simple experiencing of every moment of life to remove from oneself entirely all the vibrations of haughtiness that one knows something better than the rest

Even simple wisdom in the inner being tells man that it is never so, for the work of Creation of God always contains hosts of servants who in each such thing stand much further advanced, without needing to hear praise and extolling for it

This holds always and everywhere

It holds for archangels and angels, for all animistic servants, and just so much the more for all human spirits