Archangels

In anthroposophy, based on teachings by Rudolf Steiner, there are many spirits belonging to the hierarchical level of archangel.   In general, their task is to inspire and guard large groups of human beings, such as whole nations, peoples or ethnic groups.   This reflects their rank above the angels who deal with individuals (the guardian angel) or smaller groups.   The main seven archangels with the names given by Saint Gregory are Anael, Gabriel, Michael, Oriphiel, Raphael, Samael and Zachariel have a special assignment to act as a global Zeitgeist ("time spirit" or, "spirit of the times/age"), each for periods of about 380 years.   According to this system, since 1879, Michael is the leading time spirit.   Four important archangels also display periodic spiritual activity over the seasons: Spring is Raphael, Summer is Uriel, Autumn is Michael and Winter is Gabriel.   In anthroposophy, archangels may be good or evil; in particular, some of their rank are collaborators of Ahriman, whose purpose is to alienate humanity from the spiritual world and promote materialism and heartless technical control.

General comments on angels; Steiner

Almost everything on this page is directly quoted from the book The Four Seasons and The Archangels by Rudolf Steiner

• During their season the angel works in the cosmos, on the plants, in the atmosphere.   In their opposite season, when the angel is working on the other side of the earth, they stream through from beneath and work in the human body.

• When March is near, a truly clairvoyant observer ... sees how everywhere the hopes of the ahrimanic beings play over the earth like an astral wind, and how the ahrimanic beings strive with all their might to call down an astral rain, as it were.
• This endeavour, this illusion, lays hold of the ahrimanic beings every spring, and every spring it is brought to nothing.   From a human standpoint, one might say, surely by now the ahrimanic beings must have become clever enough to renounce these hopes.   But the world is not just as human being imagine it to be. The fact is that every spring the ahrimanic beings have new hope of being able to transform the earth into an ensouled, living being, through an astral rain from above, and every year their illusions are shattered.
• But human beings are not free from danger in the midst of these illusions.   They consume the nature products which flourish in this atmosphere of hopes and illusions; and it is naive to suppose that the bread we eat is merely grain ground and baked.   For within it are the illusions and hopes of the ahrimanic beings.   In outer nature these hopes are shattered, but the ahrimanic beings long all the more to achieve their aim in human beings who already have a soul.   Thus every spring human beings are in danger of falling victim -- in subtle intimate ways -- to the ahrimanic beings.   In spring they are much more exposed to all the ahrimanic workings in the cosmos than they are during other times of the year.
• The luciferic beings up above stream through and permeate all the activities that have risen up from the earth.   They are of a purely astral nature.   Through everything that begins to strive upwards in spring they gain the hope of being able to permeate their astral nature with the etheric, and to call forth from the earth an etheric sheath in which they could then take up their habitation.   Hence we can say: The ahrimanic beings try to ensoul the earth with astrality; the luciferic beings try to take up the etheric into their own being.
• While the ahrimanic beings try to ensoul the living limestone with a kind of astral rain, the luciferic beings try to raise up a sort of carbon dioxide mist or vapour from the earth.   If they were to succeed, human beings on earth would no longer be able to breathe.   The luciferic beings would draw up all mankind's etheric nature, which is not dependent on physical breathing, and by uniting themselves with it they would be able to become etheric beings, whereas they are now only astral beings.   And then, with the extinction of all human and animal life on earth, up above there would be a sheath of etheric angel beings.   That is what the luciferic beings strive and hope for when the end of earth approaches.   They hope to change the whole earth into a delicate shell of this kind, wherein, densified through the etheric nature of mankind, they could carry on their own existence.
• If the ahrimanic beings could realize their hopes the whole of humanity would gradually be dissolved into the earth; the earth would absorb them.   Finally --and that is Ahriman's intention--the earth would become a single great entity in which all human beings would be merged--they would be united with it.
• Thus the two human extremes are written into the life of the earth itself: first, the extreme that human beings would come to if, under the influence of Ahriman, they were to take up the living limestone and thereby become gradually one with the earth, dissolved into the whole living, sentient earth. the other extreme is what human beings would come to if the luciferic beings were to succeed in causing a vapour of carbonic acid to rise from below, so that breathing would be extinguished and physical humanity would disappear, while the human etheric bodies would be united with the astrality of the luciferic angel being above.
• The hopes of the luciferic beings are shattered once more every spring, but they work on in human beings.   And in springtime, while on the one hand they are exposed to the ahrimanic forces, they are also exposed more and more -- and right on through the summer -- to the luciferic beings.
• Now a principle of the luciferic beings is to set free everything on earth, including conception and birth.   That human beings can be born at any time of the year came about in earlier times through the luciferic influence which frees mankind from the earth.....Otherwise, human beings could have been born only in winter.   As against this the ahrimanic beings try with all their might to draw man back into connection with the earth.   And since the luciferic beings had this great influence in the past, the ahrimanic beings have a prospect of at least party achieving their purpose of binding man to the earth by merging his mind and disposition with the earthly element and turning him into a complete materialist.   They would like to make his capacity to think and feel depend entirely on the food he digest.   This ahrimanic influence bears particularly on our own epoch, and will get stronger and stronger.
• Since ahrimanic beings cannot actually dissolve humanity into the earth, they will contrive at least to harden human beings so that they become crude materialists, thinking and feeling only what material substance thinks and feels in them.         back to top

The Archangel Raphael

The following notes about the Archangel Raphael and his relationship to Spring are taken from The Four Seasons and The Archangels by Rudolf Steiner.   They are given here as a springboard for personal contemplation not as strict eternal truths to be taken literally or followed by rote.   I would like to encourage readers who cannot abide by Christian beliefs to attempt to find the universal, archetypal metaphors that lie within the philosophies here.   I think that there is valuable food for all of our souls.

• Raphael, is the regent of Mercury and his name means God heals.
• As we come round again to spring, up above we find Raphael with his deeply thoughtful gaze, with his staff of Mercury (which now in the airy heights has become something like a fiery serpent, a serpent of shining fire), no longer leaning it on the earth but as though holding it in front of him, using the forces of the air, mingling and combining fire, water and earth so as to transmute them into healing forces working and weaving in the cosmos.
• Below, becoming especially visible, is Michael, coming to meet mankind with his positive gaze, showing the way into the world and glad to draw our eyes in the same direction, as he stands close to mankind, the complement of Raphael, in spring.
• When spring comes, the earth breathes out, as it were, its elemental being.   The elemental spirits rise up as though from a tomb and ascend into the atmosphere.   During winter they conformed to the inner order of the earth, but now, as spring advances and especially when summer comes on, they open themselves to the order that is imposed upon them by the stars and the movements of the stars.
• Although the mystery of Golgotha had indeed to enter as a once-and-for-all event into the history of the earth, it is in a sense renewed for human beings each year.   There arises between the luciferic and the ahrimanic forces the figure of Christ: the Christ who, freeing Himself from the weight of matter, has Ahriman under His feet; who is wresting Himself free from the ahrimanic and taking no heed of it because He is overcoming it.   The head of the Christ figure, the conqueror of Ahriman, appears with a countenance, a look and a bearing wrested from the dissolvent forces of Lucifer.   The luciferic power drawn into the earthly realm and held there, such is the form of the Christ as He appears every year in spring.   That is how we must picture Him: standing on the earth, which Ahriman seeks to make his own; victorious over death; ascending from the grave as the Risen One to the transfiguration which comes from carrying over the luciferic element into the earthly beauty of the countenance of Christ.   Thus the Risen Christ in His Resurrection form appears before our eyes, between the luciferic and the ahrimanic forms, as the Easter picture; the Risen Christ, with luciferic powers hovering above and the ahrimanic powers under his feet.   There is nothing arbitrary about this.   Every look, every trait in the countenance, every flowing fold in the garment should be thought of as placing the Christ figure between the forms of Lucifer and Ahriman as the One who works in human evolution so that human beings may be wrested from the luciferic and ahrimanic powers at the very time, the time of Easter and spring, when they could most easily fall victim to them.
• Raphael teaches man to see in what way the ahrimanic and luciferic forces make him ill, and how through the power of Raphael he can be led to perceive and recognize the healing principle, the great all pervading therapy which lives in the Christ principle.   Raphael is really Mercury in Christian terminology, and in Christian usage should carry the staff of Mercury.
• For Ahriman hardens human beings, while Lucifer wishes to dissolve and evaporate them through their breathing.   In all this the forces that make for illness reside.
• The Easter Imagination is supplemented by the teaching that Raphael, the great cosmic physician, can give to mankind.   When we allow all that Raphael brings about, working in the springtime forces of nature, when we allow all this to work on us at Easter through the spiritual healing of Inspiration, then we have the crowning of all the truths of healing.
• Raphael is the spirit of spring and in autumn, as he travels round the earth, he engenders the forces of human breathing.   At Michaelmas Raphael is active in the whole human breathing system, regulating it and giving it his blessing.
• A true picture of autumn with Michael Imagination, with the sword forged from meteoric iron, the garment woven out of sun-gold and shot through with the earth's silver-sparkling radiance, while down below Raphael is working in mankind, aware of every breath that is drawn, of everything that flows from the lungs into the heart and from the heart through the whole circulation of the blood.   Thus human beings learn to recognize in themselves the healing forces that play through the cosmos in the Raphael time of spring, if in autumn, when the rays of Raphael pass through the earth, they come to know how Raphael is active in human breathing.   All healing resides in the breathing system and all the secrets of healing are at the same time secrets of breathing.  
• In the autumn we have the guiding look of Michael.   Michael's gaze is like a pointer, as though wishing not to look inwards but outwards into the world.   His gaze is positive,, active.   And his sword forged out of cosmic iron is held so that at the same time he indicates to human beings their way.   Below is Raphael, with deeply thoughtful gaze, bringing to mankind the healing forces that he has first kindled in the cosmos--Raphael, with deep wisdom in his gaze, leaning on the staff of Mercury, supported by the inner forces of the earth.
• In the spring we have Raphael with his deeply thoughtful gaze, with his staff of Mercury which now in the airy heights has become something like a fiery serpent, a serpent of shining fire, no longer leaning it on the earth but as though holding it in front of him, using the forces of the air, mingling and combining fire, water and earth so as to transmute them into healing forces working and weaving in the cosmos.   And below, becoming especially visible, is Michael, coming to meet mankind with his positive gaze, showing the way into the world and glad to draw our eyes in the same direction, as he stands close to mankind.
• Gabriel draws nutritive forces out of the cosmos and brings them into humanity at midsummer.   Raphael controls the breathing system.   Gabriel and Raphael as they ascend and descend work together in such a way that Gabriel passes up into the breathing system those forces of his which are otherwise active in human nutrition, and there they become healing forces.   Gabriel hands on the nourishment to Raphael and it then becomes a means of healing.   When what is otherwise only a nutritive process in the human organism is interwoven with the secret of breathing, it becomes a healing force.
• The forces that prevail in our breathing system are healing forces; they are healing us continually.   But when these breathing forces rise into our heads, the healing forces become spiritual forces, active in sense perception and in thinking.   Thought, perception, the inner spiritual life of humanity, are a higher metamorphosis of therapy, of the healing process; and when the healing element in the breathing system, which lies between the head and the digestive system, is driven further up, we it were, it becomes the material foundation for the spiritual life of humanity.   The thoughts which flash through the human head are really a transmutation of the healing impulses that reside in the various substances.   If a substance enters a person and passes beyond the realm of breathing so that it works in his head it becomes the material bearer of the power of thought, for Raphael then hands on his vessel to Uriel.   What Raphael has received from the realm of nourishment and transmuted into healing forces he hands over to Uriel, and it then becomes the power of thinking.   Why does a remedy heal?   Because it is on the way to the spirit.         back to top

The Archangel Uriel

• Uriel, the archangel of summer is regent of Saturn and his mane means light of God.   He is concerned with the deepest intentions of the will and wants to awaken our conscience with his stern, admonishing gaze.   Uriel appeals to us to transform our misdeeds into virtues.
• At St. John's-tide Uriel hovers in the heights, weaving his body out of golden light in the golden radiance of the sun.   We must picture him with grave, discriminating eyes, for his gaze is directed down toward the crystal realm of the earth and he sees how little compatible human errors are with the abstract but none the less shining beauty of the crystallization process that goes on below the surface of the earth.   That is the reason for his gravely judging gaze, as he looks down and compares human errors with the living activity in the crystals of the earth.
• Uriel's gesture is a warning gesture, indicating to human beings what they ought to do.   It calls upon them, if they understand it aright, to transform their faults into virtues.
• As summer passes through autumn into winter, Uriel begins to descend.   Thus Uriel works in nature at midsummer and during the winter season he works in the human head.   In winter he creates the inner forces in the human head.
• The summer picture at the time of St. John: up above the grave countenance of Uriel, with his judgmental look, his warning mien and gesture;(commanding,) and, drawing near to human beings and permeating them, the mild and loving gaze of Gabriel, Gabriel with his gesture of blessing.
• In the winter, Gabriel is up above, with his mild and loving look and his gesture of benediction, weaving his garment of snow in the clouds of winter.   And below is Uriel, with his grave judgment and warning, at the side of humanity.
• The forces that prevail in our breathing system are healing forces; they are healing us continually.   But when these breathing forces rise into our heads, the healing forces become spiritual forces, active in sense perception and in thinking.   Thought, perception, the inner spiritual life of humanity, are a higher metamorphosis of therapy, of the healing process; and when the healing element in the breathing system, which lies between the head and the digestive system, is driven further up, we it were, it becomes the material foundation for the spiritual life of humanity.   The thoughts which flash through the human head are really a transmutation of the healing impulses that reside in the various substances.   If a substance enters a person and passes beyond the realm of breathing so that it works in his head it becomes the material bearer of the power of thought, for Raphael then hands on his vessel to Uriel.   What Raphael has received from the realm of nourishment and transmuted into healing forces he hands over to Uriel, and it then becomes the power of thinking.   Why does a remedy heal?   Because it is on the way to the spirit.
• It is Michael who receives from Uriel the thought forces, and through the power of cosmic iron, out of which his sword is forged, transforms these thought forces into forces of will, so that in mankind they become the forces of movement.         back to top

The Archangel Michael

• Michael, whose name means who is like God is concerned with raising mankind's consciousness and bringing to earth the cosmic intelligence.
• A true picture of autumn with Michael Imagination, with the sword forged from meteoric iron, the garment woven out of sun-gold and shot through with the earth's silver-sparkling radiance, while down below Raphael is working in mankind, aware of every breath that is drawn, of everything that flows from the lungs into the heart and from the heart through the whole circulation of the blood.   Thus human beings learn to recognize in themselves the healing forces that play through the cosmos in the Raphael time of spring, if in autumn, when the rays of Raphael pass through the earth, they come to know how Raphael is active in human breathing.
• In the spring, Michael's forces penetrate up through the earth and live in all that comes to expression in human beings as movement and the power of will, enabling them to walk and work and take hold of things.
• In the autumn we have the guiding look of Michael.   Michael's gaze is like a pointer, as though wishing not to look inwards but outwards into the world.   His gaze is positive, active.   And his sword forged out of cosmic iron is held so that at the same time he indicates to human beings their way.   Below is Raphael, with deeply thoughtful gaze, bringing to mankind the healing forces that he has first kindled in the cosmos--Raphael, with deep wisdom in his gaze, leaning on the staff of Mercury, supported by the inner forces of the earth.
• It is Michael who receives from Uriel the thought forces, and through the power of cosmic iron, out of which his sword is forged, transforms these thought forces into forces of will, so that in mankind they become the forces of movement.         back to top

The Archangel Gabriel

• Gabriel, the archangel of winter, regent of the moon, whose name means strengeth of God is the partron of the arts.
• In the winter, Gabriel is up above, with his mild and loving look and his gesture of benediction, weaving his garment of snow in the clouds of winter.   And below is Uriel, with his grave judgment and warning, at the side of humanity.
• During the summer, Gabriel carries into mankind all that is brought about by the formative forces of nourishment.
• The summer picture at the time of St. John: up above the grave countenance of Uriel, with his judgmental look, his warning mien and gesture; and, drawing near to human beings and permeating them, the mild and loving gaze of Gabriel, Gabriel with his gesture of blessing.
• Gabriel draws nutritive forces out of the cosmos and brings them into humanity at midsummer.   Raphael controls the breathing system.   Gabriel and Raphael as they ascend and descend work together in such a way that Gabriel passes up into the breathing system those forces of his which are otherwise active in human nutrition, and there they become healing forces.   Gabriel hands on the nourishment to Raphael and it then becomes a means of healing.   When what is otherwise only a nutritive process in the human organism is interwoven with the secret of breathing, it becomes a healing force.