The Time When the Antichrist Raises His Head – Part I

THE WAY OF THE GRAIL – SUPPLEMENTARY TEXTS – February 3, 2025

Czech original: Doba Pozvednutí Hlavy Antikrista – Část I. · cesta-gralu.cz

The culmination of the time which millennia ago was designated in the prophecies as the time when the Antichrist raises his head above mankind is now here

At the same time there is here also that period when hosts of false prophets emerge on a great scale, leading mankind into blind alleys

The raising up of the Antichrist lies in the complete exalting of everything material above the values of the spiritual kind

Something of the kind is called forth in the human world by the earthbound intellect

It may be said that it is a revolt of the intellect, with all its accumulated knowledge, against all the other life to be found in the planes of Creation, where everything unfolds solely out of the pure receptivity of intuitive perceiving

This revolt of the intellect shows itself in its whole manner of thinking and acting

Sadly, men notice nothing of this and are foolish glorifiers of the intellect

Of that intellect which in its overgrowth has gained the impression that it knows everything best, and which gives precedence to everything material over anything of supra-earthly origin

It has now come to such a state that mankind glorifies the intellect as an idol

And for being permitted to glorify it, this idol demands of men in return a sacrifice of the most precious thing they have

It demands the complete surrender of their own intuitive perceiving, which means the denial of their spiritual inner being

In demanding this sacrifice of men the intellect does not, however, proceed visibly and directly, as might perhaps be expected, but does so with a treacherous inventiveness

Step by step it severs the still remaining intuitive perceiving in man from his everyday life

It kills the capacity for a clearer intuitive perceiving, and thereby makes a truly free decision on man's part impossible

It narrows the space of the independence and the freedom of the spirit with the bars of intellectual opinions, whose supposed rightness it enforces by repeating with dogged persistence the phrases about the manner of life set up by the Antichrist

In the repetition of phrases lies precisely that danger for every man, for thereby everything engraves itself ever more deeply into the convolutions of the brain

Therefore in the end even those men succumb to the Antichrist who are otherwise spiritually purer and more alive

In the outcome this can bring the spiritual part in man's inner being only a state of uprootedness and of hopelessness

Suffering and inner privation come into the lives of many men together with the tying down and the trampling of the still remaining healthy perceiving that proceeds from the capacity of intuitive perception

Yet that is precisely the sacrifice demanded by the Antichrist upon the way of the direction offered by the intellect towards the attainment of a perfect material world according to its conceptions

According to his plan the intuitive perception in the inner being is to be wholly slain through the suppression of everything finer

Towards all those who still maintain a connection with the more translucent and more luminous spiritual worlds standing high above matter the intellect therefore always works with ruthless disruption, for such men are a threat to it precisely in that their free will, longing for the values of the Light, lies beyond the boundaries of its comprehension

The intellect considers all those who are still alive within as dangerous dreamers severed from the earthly world

And sadly it truly holds that the greatest part of mankind carries within it a thinking entirely subject to the Antichrist

With the glorifying support of the majority, intoxicated by matter, victory is therefore attained by him who stands behind it all – the fallen archangel

His influence has brought it about that the intellect today attains, for a time, an almost complete dominion over the spirit

The originator of the overstrained use of the intellect is Lucifer, who was originally to bring the developing human germs a widened knowledge of God's work of Creation and was to teach them to ripen with this knowledge and to build the realm of the Light on earth

The archangel, glorious in his origin, failed in this task of his and dragged mankind down into his principle of "wanting to know better"

This temptation soaked into earthman through the instrument of the brain, which through its overstrained development made possible the unfolding of the intellect, which gradually exalted itself above the spirit

The temptation of "wanting to know everything better" tore mankind away from the original direction of spiritual development set by the Wisdom of God, and also away from the maintaining of a living connection with the other parts of the work of Creation

Thereby the whole development of the inner and of the earthly life of men set out upon a way leading to a final destructive collision with the unalterable effects of the Laws of Creation

The rescuer who brought the maintaining of the connection with the spiritual worlds and with the Divine radiation became the Son sent by God the Father, Jesus Christ

Fundamentally, therefore, in the present time designated as "the time when the Antichrist raises his head", there stand opposed to one another on the one side Lucifer, who fell in his striving to gain for himself a standing and an influence that never belonged to him, and, through Christ, God the Father Himself, who in the time of the distress of Subsequent Creation separated from Himself a Ray of Love for the healing of the wound opened by Lucifer's failure

On the side of the Antichrist there is here on earth an immense multitude of slaves of the intellect subject to him, over against the small number of those who, thanks to the capacity of a living spirit, still keep their trust in the Wisdom of God, in that through intuitive perception they find the working of the said Wisdom of God upon themselves and around them

On the level of human society there stand here on earth opposed to one another the ponderous, earthbound intellect and the free human spirit striving towards the Light, unfettered by the influences of the existing material world

It is thereby all one whether it is a matter of taking an outward stand across the general opinions of men and the most varied excesses of human society, or whether it is a matter of the inner struggle taking place within the individual man

The manner of the struggle and its outcome is always the same

Where the intellect gains the upper hand, there almost no space at all is left to the spirit for its unfolding

The said raising up of the Antichrist lies precisely in the unceasing confirming of man in the belief that the intellect is the one which knows everything about matter and therefore knows how all the affairs of the human world are best to be ordered

Through the work of the intellect, which the materialists have unceasingly refined over centuries, the Antichrist now has on his side all those who bear the designation of false prophets

Their attention is directed wholly and only to the conditions which a superficial material life can offer them

They are men who regard the material world as the central point of all existence, and in their understanding therefore mankind neither needs nor ever needed any higher guidance from the Wisdom of God

These false prophets are always ready to claim shamelessly that they know which way mankind is to go in its development, for they are convinced that this is confirmed to them by their knowledge researched in the history of mankind on earth hitherto, supplemented by the findings gained from the stubborn investigations of scholars and scientists in matter

A partial knowledge of matter, however, is no knowledge of the work of Creation

In the tiny knowledge of this world which has come to intellectually schooled men there is not to be found even a thousandth part of the actual knowledge of the work of Creation and of the Laws working in it

In material interpretations no answer can be found to the question of what is the true task of the human spirit in the great work of Creation

One thousandth is truly little for the right way to be attained

Therefore men who draw upon the knowledge of matter and upon the earthly history of mankind are able to offer nothing more than a tragically narrow and limited knowledge which does not lead to a real ascent, but in this knowledge there will always lie only the inevitable turning in a circle

Out of such straying there arises in the end no ascent, but the necessary decay of the whole of society, out of which after a time there is again born the endeavour towards a renewal, as is the content of the ever-repeated cycle of the little world of men

This has been happening in various guises for millennia

It is a recurring, whirling vortex which tears whole generations from their original way into the danger of the necessity of atoning again and again for the mistaken opinions they have made their own

In anything of the kind, however, there lies no healthy foundation for the unfolding of man's spiritual capacities

The necessity of recognising and of living out all the errors hitherto only fetters human spirits to matter

Men are entangled in the Law of Reciprocal Action, which demands the laying aside of everything false, and this far more than they suspect

It is the sad result of Lucifer's working upon the intellect of man

The gathering of knowledge about matter and about life, concerning only the narrowly material life of man, must lead to a desperate distortion of his true spiritual nature

Now, however, everything is being driven by the pressure of the Light

The Light brings revolutionary changes into all the happening

Under the heightened inflow of the Power of God a shift sets in in everything, and precisely for this reason the Antichrist strives with all his accumulated strength to resist the necessary developmental shift, which this time is enforced by the great cycle in the whole of Subsequent Creation, that shift which brings the liberation of mankind from Lucifer's principle of temptation

The nearness of the Ray of Parzival, standing close above the earth, now compels in every man the showing of whether he longs to be freed or not

There comes a clash between the Light and the Antichrist such as has never been here before