Who is Lucifer and who is Ahriman?

Firstly, they are actual spiritual beings who have influenced humanity throughout history and, importantly, in daily life. In yours and mine. No amount of spiritual development or even just ignoring them will make them go away.

Even in spiritual practice, their impulses are there, and walking the line in balance between them is pretty hard. But possible. Always possible.

So what are they called? Well, i’ll preface this by saying that these are old, meaningful names, you might have seen them before, but the words are used here are probably not referring to what you are thinking of. And also; these could be called literally anything, as long as the speaker and the listener understand, it could be anything. Words represent cosmic forces, but they are not the cosmic forces themselves. These just happen to be the ones people use.

The cold, materialistic being is called Ahriman, and the escapist over-spiritual one is called Lucifer. Their impulses are often called the Ahrimanic and Luciferic impulses respectively. 

ALSO! Don’t take this as a dogmatic word-for-word thing by the way, these are descriptions of impulses you probably have seen and no doubt will see in life, i’m trying to describe them as best as i can, but don’t let the specific wording of this influence the way you think about them, it’s often not as simple as “okay so this looks materialistic so it’s ahrimanic and i should stay away”, follow your instinct rather than definitions which are too general to be applicable in every case. Often both of these impulses, in their own little ways, present in ways that you don’t immmediately notice, being what they are, they will catch you off guard.

I should hope i already made this clear before but i’ll say it again; These concepts are probably not the first things that come to mind; Lucifer is not a cartoon devil. Lucifer and Ahriman are not demons or whatever in the Christian fundamentalist sense. They are firstly very hard to explain and secondly not as straightforward as what you see on TV. Through just knowing what they are, next time you see them, you’ll know what they are. 

Who is Ahriman?

Ahriman is the force that moves us towards coldness; scientism, materialism, dead logic, systems, cynicism, nihilism, the over-systemisation of life, doomscrolling, control. How can anyone make some of those things look appealing? It’s different for every person, but look around the world today, Ahriman obviously knows.

This is the MOST important impulse to look at in today’s age. Ahrimanic impulses have permiated into almost everything nowadays. BUT looking too hard at one also can mean leaving the door open to the other. Things are not as easy or black and white as they might initially appear.

To name some examples; the ahrimanic impulse is the one that people who “just don’t care about politics” know very well, even if their opinion means turning a blind eye to real harm, they just don’t care. Another example is the many people today who are not religious, not spiritual, but also not atheists either. They just haven’t thought about it. They can’t give you a good explaination of what they believe, and if they do, it’s obvious that this is the first time they’re thinking about it. I don’t have any problem with atheists who have thought about it, and came to the decision that there is nothing beyond the physical, even though i don’t agree. But the people i am describing here are not that, they haven’t thought about it at all, not because they made that decision consciously, but because the entire idea of the spiritual world is completely alien to them, so alien and out of their grasp that they haven’t even taken a second to think about it, but not because they naturally think it doesn’t exist, but because “it” is just not something that they know. I’ve seen this, quite alot, and while it’s not that many people, and this description is just a generalisation, it is concerning. To me, anyway. 

These people aren’t worse off or bad, but they may be more deeply caught in Ahrimanic currents, so deeply they don’t even see them. It’s only they who can choose to pull themselves out, but it’s obviously not that straightforward, easier said than done and it’s also different for each person.

But “stopping” this isn’t as simple as forcing people to go back on what they believed, it’s getting people to a point where they can, in freedom, move away from this, not because it is expected or even wanted of them, but because they know and understand why.

Ahrimanic impulses have also worked their way into society as a whole, education, even things that you probably wouldn’t expect. I won’t go too deep into this one because i’m going to give you some homework; what do you think?

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