Fear, Resentment and Despair - the triad of Ahrimanic sins... Leading towards purely-negative Sorathic evil - as seen in 2020 with social destruction

(Note: Here I am using a typology of evil: Luciferic, Ahrimanic, and Sorathic - which I have adapted and transformed from their origin in the works of Rudolf Steiner.) 

*

In the past, the dominant sins were probably the triad of Anger, Lust and Pride. These, at any rate, seem to be the dominant characteristics of great sinners of history - right up into the middle twentieth century. 

But as Western society became more industrialised, specialised, coordinated and impersonally-systemic; the dominant nature of evil became Ahrimanic. 

The most prominent triad of sins became Fear, Resentment and Despair. 

 

Fear, Resentment* and Despair is the dominant mood of the world in 2020 - these are the modern, 'bureaucratic sins'. 

The self-seeking, self-aggrandising evil of the mid-twentieth century (as exemplified by the atheist-socialist dictators such as Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot etc.) is not much in evidence in the West. Of course, Luciferic evil is still present; but these sins require greater courage and motivation than are possessed by the masses - or indeed the rulers - in 2020. 

Luciferic sin is weaker and less common than in the past; because it requires high motivation which is fuelled by the virtue of courage. 

Great Luciferic sin entails a positive, active, for-the-self mind-set. However; courage, hence motivation, has been incrementally eroded by the passage of several generations of de facto atheism. Hence the rise in Ahrimanic sin; which is much more passive, negating, and directed against-others. 

Beyond the Ahrimanic lies the Sorathic, which is even more fully negative in its motivations. I think this happens, because the Ahrimanic sins erode their own basis. 

A bureaucratic world tends towards a state of passive, unconscious, materialism. The Ahrimanic impulse begins with a denial of the aliveness of the mineral world, extends through denial of consciousness to plants, then animals, and eventually - as for the past decades, creates a world where aliveness, and consciousness is denied even to Men. 

This materialism (positivism, scientism) is the basis of modern bureaucracy; which terms Men 'human resources', and generates policy on the basis of numbers and statistics. The individual Man counts only as an integer. 

 

When this world view of negation of the Self, penetrates the soul and has been internalised; we get the Sorathic form of evil. 

...Evil as the negation of The Good - any good. 

So, evil loses any positive goal and becomes directed-against Truth, Beauty and Virtue; against life and consciousness, against the natural and spontaneous, against Beings and their relationships. 

Sorathic evil's only 'satisfaction' (because it has become incapable of 'pleasure') is in this destruction of anything that is of-God; anything created, anything capable of creation.

 

An example? Well, a very obvious instance of Sorathic evil in 2020 is the imposition of that demonic-triad of lockdown, social-distancing, and masking. Leading, as they must do, to the permanent annihilation of human society - and the construction of a world of universal solitary-confinement.

Obviously the mainstream, birdemic-related, excuses for annihilating human society and culture are lies. But - much more significantly - even the architects of the Great Reset cannot make a coherent argument why societal destruction is necessary!

They do it, but They can't explain it.

 

Their attempted justification of universal isolation relates to the need (and benefits) of automation, robots and artificial intelligence systems; but this is a non sequitur. The 'need' for one, does Not imply the destruction of the other.

What we are therefore seeing here is a very pure form of Sorathic negation. Even the Global Establishment themselves, the people who are imposing societal destruction on the world, do not understand why they are doing this work of societal destruction. 

They insist upon its necessity; but they cannot coherently explain it!

 

The reason is that the 'need' for societal destruction cannot be explained in materialistic terms - which are the only terms possible in public discourse; and among those who deny the reality of God and creation. 

The true reason for societal destruction is that human society is Good and therefore needs to be destroyed. Society between Men is indeed one of the great and essential Goods of this mortal world; as Men at all times, everywhere, have acknowledged and acted-upon - quite naturally and spontaneously. 

The idea that this can and should be dispensed with is monstrous, outrageous and ridiculous... for anyone who is Not deep into the servitude of Satan. But then, that is precisely what we are dealing-with. 

 

Therefore human society is an obvious, and essential, target for Sorathic evil; not because it is 'useful' to destroy human community, not because its destruction will enhance the lives of the Global Establishment - but exactly because human society is Good, and a Great Good; and because destroying it will induce suffering and (in this atheistic world) despair on a scale unprecedented. 

 

(And despair is a sin, because it is a rejection of God: a failure to trust in God, and a refusal of Jesus's gift of eternal life in Heaven. Despair - that is, as an existential decision, not a mere emotion - is therefore the choice of damnation.) 

 

In this burgeoning world of Sorathic evil, we need to stop looking for the 'advantage' in evil. Need to stop trying to 'explain evil' in terms of it (for example) making more money for Them, or giving Them more power...

From now, evil needs gain no advantage by its action: evil thrives purely on the destruction of whatever is Good. 

Evil has therefore ceased to be a triad, and has become a unity - the unity of negation; the unity of simple destruction of Good.

This is Sorathic evil. 

* Resentment can be understood as primarily directed against others. Spitefulness is another term for this. A person motivated by spite will put his greatest efforts into causing harm to others, rather than promoting himself. He will even harm himself in his zeal to harm others. The 'positive' face of resentment is the burgeoning phenomenon of 'entitlement'; which, again, has a strong flavour that 'my' privilege is best expressed in terms of the intrusive inconvenience, anger and misery it causes to others.

 

Note added: 

There are implications in the above understanding for Christians; because Luciferic evil was usually opposed by trying to build church-administered systems to 'tame' Anger, Lust and Pride - by encouraging/ insisting-upon obedience to church rules. 

However, this strategy of taming by obedience (as we have seen) played-into the reinforcement of the Ahrimanic sins. And church-Christianity has dis-couraged, and de-motivated itself. Thus all the churches have (more, or less) become part of the global, atheistic bureaucratic System of Ahrimanic evil. In 2020, the mainstream churches have actively embraced their all-but annihilation by birdemic rules.

Ahrimanic evil was opposed by 'counter-cultural', anti-System, individualistic ideas - which, when not 'Romantic' Christian - often fell back into Luciferic evils (especially lust). And it is tempting, nowadays, to suppose that evil can be attacked by resisting and destroying the Global Bureaucratic System ('The Matrix'). But, if I am correct that this Ahrimanic System is already being superseded and consumed by negative, Sorathic evil; then the current, world dominating evil cannot be resisted by any form of destruction. 

In sum; if we aimed primarily to destroy The System, we would only reinforce the emerging Sorathic spirit of destruction. 

What then? Resistance to Sorathic evil is as simple as the evil it opposes; in that it is to pursue the positive virtues most characteristic of God - which are love and creation (which are one: creation being a superabundance of love); that is, to pursue loving and creating.

('Loving' in the sense of love in the best marriages and families; 'creating' in the broadest sense of thinking and acting from our real, divine self - we are children of God; which is always original and generative.)

And, resistance to Sorathic evil must be individual, or based upon personal, loving 'familial' relationships; because of the danger of Ahrimanic ('Systemic') evil, standing behind the Sorathic.  

So, our course seems clear and simple, as well as difficult and hazardous; which is for each individual to resist Sorathic destruction by creation; to resist Sorathic negation by love. And to ensure that these values and behaviours of creation and love come from within-us: that is, come from God-within-us. 

And not to wait for a lead from any church, institution or other-person - nor to look behind to see if anyone is following us. We must do what needs to be done our-selves, starting now.

 

This Ahrimanic age and the End Times

Rudolf Steiner's idea that evil has two faces and natures - the unconscious/ instinctive/ spiritual Luciferic, and the systematic/ bureaucratic/ materialistic Ahrimanic - is one that has lodged permanently in my mind (although I don't use the terms exactly as Steiner did).

Steiner foresaw that the Ahrimanic tendency was dominant and increasing in our age - and he was absolutely correct; including within the Anthroposophical Society which he founded. Indeed, the history of Steiner's movement is worth studying from the perspective of just how pervasive, how inevitable-seeming, the Ahrimanic tendency is in our age. here we have a movement studying, and officially opposing, the Ahrimanic tendency but using highly Ahrimanic methods!

Such is, however, almost universal in our time. Whenever any human and individual priority or problem is highlighted; the 'solution' is always to set-up institutional, bureaucratic mechanisms that are supposed to deal with it: task forces, surveys, committees, conferences, statistical reports, agenda-items, targets...

(The middle sixties is a clear example; because the 'sixties impulse' was Luciferic - but this dominated for only about one year - from the summer of 67 to the summer of 68; and everything radical/ leftist/ progressive we have seen since, has been ever-more-thoroughly Ahrimanic. Nowadays, the sparks of individualistic Luciferic instincts - especially sexual and transgressive - merely feed the Leviathan of bureaucracy.)  

These are all both tools and manifestations of Ahrimanic thinking; and implement and sustain that cold, rational, spirit-denying materialism. This is specifci totalitarianism. Then the individual Ahrimanic bureaucracies link-up to make the Single Totalitarian Bureaucracy, centrally controlled - and Ahriman is triumphant.

It matters not one whit if the 'ends' and objectives are spiritual, heartfelt, animistic - because the means by which they are approached ensures that spirit-denying materialism is the medium of discourse.

We see this everywhere, except in small family or friendship groupings; every institution is not just contaminated but corrupted and inverted by Ahrimanic thinking; and it is this which makes me ever more convinced that our future must be post-institutional - involving a return (but with a major spiritual distinction) to that world built on loving personal relationships rather than formal organisation.

However, first-time-round; this personal world was Luciferic - and therefore unconscious, instinctive, 'given', immersive, unindividual. It cannot be Luciferic again - even if some would wish for that; because history is linear and a developmental process.

So the future personal world will be conscious, self-aware, deliberately-chosen - therefore individually-based. 

This prospect ought to be welcomed; but even though it is not welcomed, and is indeed opposed vigorously (even/ especially among most Christians), it will very likely happen. It will happen because corrupt institutions cannot sustain the modern world, and the corruption runs so deep and has already done such damage that there is no possibility of institutional reform. There is grossly too-little of the true source from-which a reform might be initiated and sustained.

Our institutional corruption is terminal - the cancer of Ahrimanism has overwhelmed the host; and there is not enough healthy tissue remaining for the cancer to be cut-away. The cure will kill us - more exactly; if the cancer does not kill us first, the cure will kill the institutions.

To put it differently: cancer is dysfunctional, and will kill the host; yet the global organism is almost-all cancer tissue: so either way, there can be no cure. 

A world of seven billion people without formal institutions seems impossible - and presumably is impossible. And if the vast population cannot be sustained, then it will not be sustained.

So this will be something like the End Times - even when examined purely in a material sense; although I have no doubt that its ultimate causes are spiritual.    

Luciferic, Ahrimanic and Sorathic evil reflect the societal hierarchy

If we take the three types of evil - Luciferic, Ahrimanic and Sorathic  (lustful-tormenting, systemic-bureaucratic, and negative-destructive) - we can see that this ordering is reflected in several ways, which are related. 

First it describes the ordering of dominance in history, secondly the degree of evil-ness, and thirdly it reflects the societal hierarchy of The Masses, The Establishment, and The Satanic powers. 

By societal hierarchy I mean that Luciferic evil dominates the Masses - who are evil in impulsive, short-termist ways; Ahrimanic evil is typical of the Global Establishment and its managerial-class servants - who regard Men as merely human resources towards abstract goals; and the Sorathic evil of negation, value-inversion and destruction of The Good is characteristic of the demonic overlords.

 

This leads to considerable mutual incomprehension looking upwards. 

The evil Masses simply cannot recognise the evilness of the Establishment-managerial class; they cannot comprehend that the Establishement's vast and comprehensive agendas, plans, schemes are a kind of evil. 

The Masses cannot see this as evil because it is so abstract, so impersonal. Ahrimanic evil has very little 'fun'; it is dull drudgery - meetings, tick-boxes and flow charts. 

 

And when the Global Establishment look upwards to their demonic overlords; they too fail to see that demonic evil is of a very different nature from the complex Ahrimanic, international, bureaucratic systems that are so laboriously, so tediously, being constructed at present. 

The abstract system-builders do not recognise that the demons are sabotaging cherished Ahrimanic goals of a transhumanist technocratic society of total surveillance and micro-control; by, on the one hand, encouraging Luciferic destructiveness among the Masses (riots, arson, beatings, murder); while on the other hand degrading efficiency and capability faster than the systems can be built. 

The cause of this Ahrimanic misunderstanding is always-increasing dishonesty. 

 

Ahrimanic systems depend on real information, and real information depends on honesty. Yet the Ahrimanic Establishment class are continually selecting, hyping, spinning and (where deniable) fabricating the 'data' upon which their own power depends. 

Claims increasingly outstrip attainment - decline is re-analysed into growth, failure is redefined as success. 

Thus the Establishment always overestimate the degree to which their plans are succeeding. 

 

Put bluntly, the Establishment do not know what is happening; they do not know because nobody in their systems is seeking the truth or speaking with honesty. 

Consequently, the Establishment suppose they have done well in 2020! 

They know they are richer; They believe they are more powerful; and They are confident that everything is going pretty-much according to plan - and infer that Their prospects are bright...

But such evaluations are based upon a tissue of falsehoods. 

 

They do not know - consequently they do not realise that they are in truth (and very obviously, to anyoneone outside of the System's deceptions) elaborately rubbing their hands and cackling with glee at fouling their own nests!

The Establishment suppose they are creating a global totalitarian society of law and order with Themselves at the top and outside, pulling the strings and collecting the rents. 

In fact, they have created (and are actively worsening) global spiritual chaos, collapse of morale and motivation, and a conflagration of fear and despair; which will surely accelerate, spread and consume the Establishment uncontrollably; like a wild-fire.   

 

They began by lying to the Masses while sharing reality with each other in secret 'elite' meetings and conspiracies; but this Ahrimanic 'Iron Cage' very swiftly evolved to a pseudo-system of universal and mutual propaganda and manipulation, in which the Establishment were themselves enmeshed. 

Now, everybody is lying to everybody else, 24/7. 

And then - the biggest lie - making confident assertions about what is going-on and what will happen. 

(And then lying about that.)

 

The only real winners of 2020 are the Sorathic demons whose agenda is merely negative, destructive, and aimed-at universal human self-damnation. 

The demons despise all humans, but especially those arrogant and foolish Men who believe they have outwitted, and are controlling, the demons. 

Fairy stories and legends are full of warnings against dealing with demons; but the Establishment made the Faustian bargain nonetheless. 

They invited evil into their hearts (which is the only way it can enter); made a 'bargain' with the Father of Lies, were (apparently) 'rewarded' by power and gratification in the short term; but in truth they were actually selling their souls literally, surrendering their wills - and this (sooner or later) becomes de facto irrevocable.

 

This is a spiritual war, and the stakes are salvation and damnation. 

There used to be several 'sides' in the spiritual war, but in 2020 the middle ground has all-but gone: there are only two sides. 

One side asks that we consciously choose to acknowledge God our Father and the Creator as Lord, if we wish to follow Jesus Christ to our 'reward' of resurrected eternal life in Heaven. 

That is one choice.

 

The other side offers some (more-or-less brief) up-front gratification in mortal life, as reward for being invited-into the heart. And for which it enforces a payment which is always the same, and is always exacted sooner than expected: enslavement, fear, resentment, despair and eternal misery. 

That is the other choice.  

Two choices only: either to have the next world as our chosen priority; or this world - but not both. 

In this Ahrimanic age, Christianity should eschew doubling-down on Ahrimanic responses to the threat of mainstream materialism

I have found a modified version of Rudolf Steiner's schema that evil can be distinguished in two forms - Ahrimanic and Luciferic - to be a valuable tool.

The Luciferic is (roughly) the impulsive, instinctive, self-gratifying, psychopathic kind of evil - as characterised by the frenzied violence and torture of unbridled war; or the greedy lustfulness that drives the sexual revolution. This tended to be the dominant form of evil in ancient times - and of course it still continues.

But that does not capture the modern form of evil - which may originate in this kind of 'id'-driven thirst for instant gratification; but which takes this and operationalises it in the form of definitions, laws, regulations, and bureaucracy - enforced by omni-surveillance and micro-control mechanisms. This is the Ahrimanic - a cold, rational, systematic form of evil.  

In other words, the distinctive and dominant form of evil of this time, of modern times, is totalitarian. The Ahrimanic is the totalitarian, bureaucratic, strategic...

It is the evil of a whole society organised in pursuit of evil that has been pre-defined as Good. It may be an evil without pleasure; evil as an industrial process - a crushing, icy evil. The modern sexual revolution is presided-over, guided, implemented - not by passion crazed Caligulas - but by stony-eyed officials.


The problem is that almost all the real and serious Christian denominations and churches (I mean the best churches - not those that are liberal, apostate, vaguely-Christianised-leftist organisations) still seem to regard evil as Luciferic; and respond to its threat (or try to respond) by doubling-down on the Ahrimanic aspects of Christianity.

For example, the sexual revolution is seen by Christians as primarily about the Luciferic - to be opposed by better organisation. Whereas the real problem is not the work of lust-crazed individuals seeking pleasure; but the Ahrimanic, incremental, planned strategy of a vast army of drab, cold-eyed, strategising bureaucrats; armed with United Nations mission statements, European Union laws, International consensus definitions, guidelines, terms-of-service, models of best practice etc etc.

All too often the Christian response to the sexual revolution has been along exactly the same lines as the totalitarian bureacrats. An increase in planning, systems, supervision; a greater number and precision of rules; tougher enforcement - and so forth.

This is to fight ice with more ice; to fight Sauron with the One Ring. Such a Christianity presents the individual with what looks like nothing more than a choice of rival bureaucracies - one powerful and growing, the other small and collapsing. A choice of two would-be totalitarian monitoring and control systems. Both alienate, both are evil in form.

One can either be crushed by secular materialism, or crushed by religious practices...


The answer to the dominant Ahrimanic evil cannot be merely a different version of the same. Nor can it be a version of old-fashioned Luciferism; which is, anyway, an impossibility...

The middle sixties saw a massive cultural upsurge in the Luciferic (turn-on, tune-in, drop out - let it all hang out etc.) and that would-be explosion of the id and the instinct, merely fuelled decades of ever-expanding and further-encroaching bureaucracy. Nowadays, the Luciferic 'liberation' serves merely as an excuse for ever-more Ahrimanic constraint.

If evil comes from some combination of the domination of the Genital urges (Luciferic), and the raionalism of the 'Left Brain' (Ahrimanic) - what is needed is the Heart. And that is something new, something untried - but something profoundly Christian.


What Christianity needs cannot be captured in any formula or rule (that is just more Ahrimanic stuff) - in a totalitarian age we cannot expect to protect Christianity, or even to be Christian, by adhering to any principle of truth, or any flow-diagram of validity.

Nor can we fall into the trap of regarding anything other than the systematic as Luciferic, hence evil. There is a third way - the way of Jesus - and that is the only Good way. 

We must acknowledge the individual person in relation with God to be the fundamental unit of truth, beauty and virtue. This has been said many times before - but never done. A religion of the heart must be rooted in persons, not abstractions; because only persons can love - yet love is objective, the primary basis of all creation, the heart of Christ's teaching.

Accelerating chaos and evil Not-plans: wishing you a Happy (demonic fake) New Year!...

Old readers will know of my aversion to the official New Year defined as 1st January; which is defined in terms of what it is not (not astronomical, not seasonal and not Christian) rather than what it is - which is to say arbitrarily numerical... 

This means the Year is not truly new, but only demonic-fake-'New'. 

So, the New Year and its 'celebration' is almost-certainly Satan-spawned - as what else could it be? When we are induced to celebrate the arbitrary, it is only one step away from celebrating the actively-evil.  

Thus your cheerful and social Happy New Year! greetings with neighbours are approximately spiritually-equivalent to a Nazi salute or the clenched fist of Communism... 

(...You're welcome...)

But this is the day one of the calendar-year; and my understanding is that the demons are very keen on arbitrary numerology - on the special significance of certain arbitrary numbers (i.e. fakely-significant numbers); being super-especially fond of decimals, decades, centuries - and the metric system generally, including SI units ("Systeme International" - French, wouldn't you know). 

The lower-ranked (bureaucratic, 'Ahrimanic') demons love these systems because they are made-up by officials; and because of their abstract efficiency, and easily calculational inter-convertibility. 

SI units model the world as-if it was already the single totalitarian System that the Ahriminic demons day-dream about implementing and operating... 

The metric-SI system artificially-'unifies' the world - and achieves this abstract coherence by its indifference to the human.  

By contrast the Imperial System (feet and inches, furlongs and leagues etc) was originally based-on the human body and mind; and the usage of measures that are functionally appropriate to the actual task in hand. This was especially the case in its earlier, 'medieval' forms - e.g. when 'an acre' was the amount of land that could be ploughed in a day, locally. 

There are also sacred, 'magical' number and geometrical 'systems', apparently derived from Pythagorean-Platonic philosophy - and these are universal; but abstract, not human, not functionally-derived.

(See How the world is made: the story of creation according to sacred geometry, by John Michell, 2012.)   

But naturally, none of these genuine, good-aiming spiritualities are of interest to the demonic powers - except when they can be subverted and then inverted; because inversion is the basis of anti-Christian symbolism and ritual - just as inversion of values is the most advanced form of evil. 

It was, presumably, the middle-managers among the demons (as among humans) who chose to make 2020 the year for the global totalitarian coup. 

2020 is just the kind of meaningless but superficially-significant 'decimal' number which they like best, and which they believe brings them the best results. 

So - what about 2022? Anything special? 

I think not - not for the kind of Being that is engaged in the Ahrimanic programme. They are keen planners and 'strategists', and are explicitly aiming at 2030, the next decade - for the 'completion' of their current strategy of worldwide surveillance and control.  

But as of the approach to 2022; these mid-level demons have apparently lost control, and their plans are not happening to schedule. 

Why? Partly because the plans were based on falsehoods and could never have-worked. 

Partly because of unexpected resistance. 

But mostly because the 'Sorathic' demons of chaos, of sheer destruction and negation, are increasingly in control; and are using The System to inject chaos, destruction and negation into itself.

The Ahrimanic demons intended to use The System to rule the world post 2020... 

But the Sorathic demons want to use The System to destroy The System. 

There is no doubt that order is collapsing and chaos is increasing - locally and worldwide. 

Therefore: the most likely prediction for 2022 is... Accelerating chaos  

(...Which is actually a bit of a non-prediction - since the nature and location of chaos cannot - by definition - be predicted!) 

But this tsunami of dysfunction is not apparent to the Ahrimanic middle-managers, because they are incompetent and dishonest; self-blinded fools who live by self-serving lies - and they believe that their interests are best served by pretending to omniscience and omnipotence. 

When real knowledge and power are lacking, the adopt the Texas Sharpshooter tactic of claiming that whatever has-happened was exactly what they wanted to happen...

In the face of actual accelerating chaos; demonic middle-managers will continue 'confidently' to assert that everything is getting better... 

...All is on-track and on-schedule; tractor production continues to increase by hundreds of percent per year; and the bureaucratic utopia of own-nothing/ be-happy will be oven-ready for 2030 - all in accordance with plans... 

And this will be asserted, louder and louder, officially and by the mass media - until the world is engulfed by war and famine, disease and death, flame and flood...

At which point they will simply claim that they always meant to do that. 

Romantic Christians should not be misled by the collapse of the Ahrimanic-bureaucratic plans into assuming that this means the powers of Good are necessarily ascendant. 

The birdemic-peck narrative would indeed collapse because of Christian resistance - if such existed. But does it exist?

Good can only come of good (not from evil-motivations) - and unless there really is a Christian resurgence, then failures of evil planning will not imply a better overall outcome - not if those failure are due to ascendant chaos.  

All complex strategies and functionalities (both Good-motivated, and of evil-intent) that depend on organization, coordination and obedience will - sooner and sooner - be sabotaged by the waxing of Sorathic evil. 

Thus, the failure of evil-plans is not good news when they are being thwarted by evil-not-plans...

But only when evil-plans are thwarted by intentions on the side of Good. 

Sorath is ascendant... But is Sorath a specific being?

I have recently blogged about the theme of Sorathic evil; which I adapted from some remarks of Rudolf Steiner - and which I first came across, summarized, in the work of Terry Boardman. 

Sorathic evil is here defined as a purely negative, short-termist and destructive kind of evil; ultimately motivated by resentment and hatred of God and all that is God's creation. 

I envisage Sorathic evil as a kind of end-stage (end-times) phenomenon; and one we may observe following-on from the recent and current Ahrimanic evil that denies the reality of God, creation and the spiritual realm altogether; and attempts to impose a wholly materialistic and scientistic, Global Total System of surveillance and control. 

This Ahrimanic evil takes a long-term perspective, aiming to maximize quantitative human damnation - and in pursuit of this goal includes necessarily various elements that are good; such as the bureaucratic virtues of obedience, thoroughness and hard-work. 

Ahrimanic evil aims to create a system of value-inversions (virtue becomes vice, while sin is encouraged and rewarded; truth becomes hate-facts and fake-news, while lies are science... etc.). This System will (by such means as law, media propaganda and corporate regulations) subversively 'process' people into a social structure that is anti-God, anti-Christian, anti-Good.  

But as Ahrimanic evil has become dominant and pervasive, and gets closer to completion (as is happening rapidly at present) so the stage is set for Sorathic evil. 

It will begin to be 'noticed' that The System still relies upon good-motivations (e.g. residual habits of thinking and behaving inherited from tradition and Christianity; or innate common sense evaluations and survival instincts as a consequence of human biology). 

When these tacit and implicit Christian (or Pagan) virtues are pointed-out;  and the Ahrimanic will begin to lose faith in their compromises. 

As The System becomes more 'total', and as Good agents are disempowered and suppressed) inevitably Sorathic zeal begins to focus on those aspects of the The System itself, that conflict with the aims of evil. 

Extremist and impatient Sorathic agents will turn-upon the plodding 'moderates' of evil; aiming to purge them. Indeed, by this point the sincere Ahrimanic agents will be among the least-evil of those who wield power and influence.    

Until that point, short-termist immediate evil cannot prevail; because it cannot self-organize. After all, Sorathic agents will fight each other whenever immediate advantage is to be gained from it.

However, when Good has been substantially destroyed and replaced with an evil-orientated and evil-permeated System; then there will commence a kind of natural selection among agents of evil. 

Sorathic agents that are more short-termist (hence destructive) will begin to prevail over Ahrimanic agents who are trying to be long-termist by clinging-onto virtues like obedience and pragmatic long-termism.  

And Sorathic 'gratification' is, at this extreme, sheerly spiteful destructiveness. A Sorathically-motivated being will destroy even when this takes hard work, and even when it harms the Sorathic being. 

(For a Sorathic being; cutting off your nose to spite your face is normal operational procedure.) 

Against such reckless, frenzied, destructive hate; the sensible, practical, self-seeking Ahrimanic 'moderates' will be helpless. 

For this reason I do not think that there can be a specific being of Sorath. 

Instead Sorathic evil is a kind of mass effect, the product of many spiteful individuals operating in a situation of advanced-evil where good agents have been dispersed and stripped of power. Individualistic spite will prevail. 

There cannot be a Sorathic 'leader'. Any attempt to plan and lead Sorathic activity, would be self-contradictory! After all; planning and strategizing of evil is Ahrimanic rather than Sorathic! 

Maximizing immediate short-term destruction is intrinsically opposed to optimizing long-term Systemic evil They are goals that cannot simultaneously be pursued - one or the other must prevail. 

In conclusion, I do not think that Sorath is a specific being, but a type of evil: the most advanced and extreme type of evil - therefore, one that cannot thrive until the ground has been prepared for it, by the success of Ahrimanic evil and its expulsion of Good agents from public discourse and practice. 

And the ground has, very nearly, been exactly thus prepared; and the ascendency of the Sorathic has already begun. 

Against bullet-point thinking: our Ahrimanic habits

If we use Ahrimanic as a shorthand term for that kind of bureaucratic, abstract materialism that has grown (over the past couple of hundred years) to dominate The West and The World - and acknowledge that this is an intrinsically evil mode of thinking; then we can begin to see how deeply this has invaded our lives. ...How Ahrimanic habits have become so ingrained that we reach for them even as we try to combat them.

This began with the man who invented this (broad) usage of Ahrimanic: Rudolf Steiner. Having described the terrible consequences to be expected for Man if he continued down the Ahrimanic path; Steiner himself created an Ahrimanic system of spiritual development! - with checklists, methods, training. He made an international, hierarchical bureaucracy to guard and administer his legacy. He preached individualistic Heart Thinking and intuition; but constructed an enormous quasi-factual archive of materialistic information on history and prehistory, the structure of the universe, spiritual techniques, politics and society, education, medicine, agriculture...

The form of the message refuted its content.


The pattern is common, almost universal - especially as the world converges into a single mega-bureaucracy; and clearly most of us find it very difficult to avoid falling into the Ahrimanic trap.

Consider Romantic Christianity. Our first, habitual, response on learning about the fact that it is necessary for each individual person to practise intuitive discernment, to live from his true (divine) self etc - is to ask for a canonical reading list, a course of study, a directory of approved authorities, an organisation to join, a set of bullet points about what to do.

Such advice can only be general - hence the form must work-against the content...

Even on a daily basis; (unless we catch our-selves first) too often we pay primary attention and expend great energy on looking for external guidance and structure - a curriculum to follow; and simply forget to attend to our actually-present intuitions of the heart.


At the bottom line, if we each are individuals (from eternity), and each are experiencing a bespoke (tailored to the individual) mortal life (that God is creating for our benefit, for us to learn-from); then our case is unique, and generic advice can never take us very far, especially not in a positive direction.

(We can reliably be told some generic things Not to do - to avoid; but almost never what we personally ought to be doing, here-and-now.)


I think the Ahrimanic problem arises from our tendency to put-off, to procrastinate, to plan instead of do.

Yet we will never be closer to God than we are Now. The Only time to begin to live from our Heart Thinking is Now. The lessons of mortal life that we need to learn (for our own eternal Good) are all around us - Now.

If this Intuition-Now perspective can perhaps become a counter-habit; maybe we can (starting Now!) begin to roll-back those pervasive Ahrimanic reflexes that have been socially-inculcated, and which work towards our eternal detriment.

Ego-denial and the nature of Ahrimanic-demonic possession

Modern demonic possession is qualitatively different from that of the past. For a start it is a mass phenomenon, and enormously more common than in any previous era. And secondly possession nowadays is much less personal, far more abstract, then before...

So much so; that "Ahrimanic-demonic possession" is taken-for-granted as the attribute of a good employee, an obedient citizen; a nice and decent person with all the right opinions. 

Traditional demonic possession was an individual phenomenon. In return for greater power and/or lustful pleasure; the host sets aside his own ego and allows a demonic spirit to inhabit the space. 

In terms of responsibility; an individual refuses to take responsibility for his own choices - and hands-over his will to the demon. 

The consequence is that proud, often brave; spectacularly selfish, violent, sadistic and individualistic evil of the past; which I have termed Luciferic. 

Mass modern evil is very different; and anything-but spectacular: it is the grey evil of grey Men. 

Modern evil is detached, impersonal, cold, grey - bureaucratic. This is Ahrimanic evil. Instead of being short-termist and self-indulgent; Ahrimanic evil is characterized by pathological pseudo-altruism, self-hatred, and a suicidal despair.  

Ahrimanic possession is driven by a self that refuses to be a self; an 'ego' that refuses to take responsibility for its own freedom; and instead hands-over ultimate authority to 'the system' - that is to an abstract 'group mind' which functions by impersonal procedures and processes (such as committees and votes). 

In different words; the individual-ego submits to a group-ego*; and the negated individual passively-absorbs values from the group-ego. 

Or; Ahrimanic possession is a consequence of deliberate surrender of Being, a result of regarding oneself as an acted-upon thing, rather than an intrinsically free Being. 

Mass modern Ahrimanic demonic possession (which is so common as to be statistically-normal in the West: it is indeed the New Normal) can therefore be conceptualized as a form of group-possession.

Ahrimanic possession is when the group-ego is colonized by demons - and the individual ego merely submits to that group ego. 

So, mass modern demonic influence is at one remove and indirect; its motives abstract and procedural; which is probably why the vast and pervasive extent of modern demonic possession is so seldom recognized, so easily denied.

* For more on the group ego, see this post.

The Luciferic Ahrimanic double-whammy that has (partly or wholly) destroyed all institutions (including churches)

One of Rudolf Steiner's most valuable insights was that evil has an older Luciferic and a more modern Ahrimanic form.

Luciferic evil is instinctive, short termist, selfish and psychopathic - for example the lust which desires other people merely for sexual exploitation, or the sadism that desires torture, or the power that desires to humiliate and crush. This is the evil of Caligula or Nero, of Ghengis Khan, of the post-war African dictators such as Charles Taylor.

The Ahrimanic evil is more modern; it is the despair-inducing, soul-destroying, utterly-demotivating Iron Cage of totalitarian bureaucracy - where all is a single system and all Men are merely cogs to serve it. This is the evil of late Soviet communism, of The Borg, of the overpromoted-middle-manager, Head Girl Type (e.g. the-3-Ms - Merkel, May, Macron) that increasingly runs large organisations, corporations and Western nations.

These evils synergise - especially when Luciferic liberation - such as the middle sixties style sexual revolution feeds the vast arrays of spies, informers, officials, inquisitors and controllers that is the realm of modern sexuality - enforcing their inverted value system with bribes, threats and coercion.

The modern era emerged from what Steiner termed the era of the 'Intellectual Soul' - and example of which is the medieval world of Western Europe, with its institutions of religion, law, education and the like. These institutions were simple bureaucracies but with a 'light touch, and considerable space for individualism, eccentricity and indeed selfish psychopathy...

But when Christianity receded then was excluded, these institutions became compromises which pleased neither the Luciferic libertarians, nor the totalitarian Ahrimanic powers. 

Think of the education system of the the first half of the twentieth century. It was regulated and hierarchical, it had rules and certificates and exclusion - but the period of education was relatively short, and there was space for considerable personal judgement and large variation in philosophy and practice between institutions.

Schools and colleges were regarded as suffocatingly oppressive and controlling by the little Lucifers of the sixties counter-culture. This began the destruction.

And then the Ahrimanic systemisers found more and more evidence of their bureaucratic incompleteness. Human judgement meant the possibility of individual corruption, variations meant that some institutions must be deficient or wrong. The pressure was irresistible to bring all institutions under a single 'true' ideology and to close off all loopholes, fill all the gaps in the systems...

Same applies to churches. They became a compromise that satisfied nobody. On the one hand they were institutions of patriarchal dictatorship; on the other hand they were economically and economically 'unaccountable' - what was going on in them? Nobody knew. Who controlled what they did, lost of mostly unidentified people, What were the details of their operations? Unrecorded...

The response was a massive programme of incremental monitoring and control of every aspect of decision-making - and the integration of this with the national (eventually multi-national) System.

There is no functional coherence to this pincer movement of institutional destruction - the only coherence is destruction. There is not coherence or direction to the end result of this crude mixture of psychopathic irresponsibility and totalitarian control - except the evil ethic of value-inversion.

But the end result is that nobody supports the actual compromise of any existing institution - always they want more Luciferic license, and/or more Ahrimanic 'accountability'.

Hence, all institutions, of every kind, have-been or are-being destroyed... With no end in sight, and no end possible even in principle - since in our secular, hedonic-despairing, God-eliminated society there is no higher value that might be able to transcend the destructive paradox.

The Empire Strikes Back! The current Ahrimanic (globalist) backlash in the United Nations

(For once!) I seem to have been correct in my prediction that the current Arrakis war is being exploited (and, very likely has been set-up) as a way of re-asserting globalist totalitarian bureaucratic control, especially via their long-favoured tool of the United Nations. 

The current quasi-legal proceedings against CHOAM is being accepted as A Good Thing by many supposedly awakened and skeptical radicals who, a mere few months ago, would have recognized the UN as an agent of Ahrimanic evil; an institution designed to be a prime agent of the intended internationalist tyranny of a System of mass omni-surveillance and micro-control. 

But now; this same UN is being regarded as a beacon of impartial law, defender of the weak and innocent, wielded against a rogue-state; and its powerful, wealthy, reckless and cruel Western backers*...

(*Although the worst that can be said against The West and CHOAM is true; on the one hand this was made so by those same powers who are now shrouding themselves in the mantle of Justice; while on the other hand the solution on-offer is as evil - in its different mode - as the problem it affects to address.)

To me, the situation has, very obviously, been manipulated into being by the Empire (that is, the Empire that never ended, the Black Iron Prison); who are fighting back against the chaos-loving, war-mongering, destructive Sorathic factions (arising within the Empire itself) who delight in human suffering and death for its own sake - and even at the cost of weakening or breaking The System; and who have are waxing ascendant in the ruling classes of The West since at least the summer of 2020^.

(^This may need clarification. My understanding is that The Empire is an Ahrimanic project; but that Sorathic individuals arise within it as a kind of psychopathic and parasitic element, and these individuals form a faction who band together expediently to indulge their purposively destructive agenda. This can be seen, perhaps, in US politics where a small but powerful faction within the leadership - successfully cooperate to create and amplify torture, war, famine, mass death - and other forms of chaotic destruction.) 

The Ahrimanic agenda includes the discrediting and elimination of all nations, especially those with power or who display any desire for autonomy. There is zero national loyalty among the totalitarian bureaucrats - although they are happy to allow and encourage nationalism insofar as it can be manipulated towards that destructive end. Which is precisely what is afoot. 

They are very keen to destroy all the Western nations, who are all very keen to be destroyed; and even keener to destroy any nations such as CHOAM (and the Fire Nation) who desire to survive. This is attempted by trying to reshape nationalism into resentment, and transform the desire to survive into the desire for revenge - both of which will be likely to lead to reckless and self destructive behaviour. 

So far this has failed in the Fire Nation, but succeeded spectacularly in CHOAM, which is behaving in ways almost guaranteed to lead to its own utter annihilation. 

So - the situation is set-up in which there is apparently a forced-choice between (Ahrimanic) global totalitarianism, and (Sorathic) global war; that is - between tyranny and death. 

(Indeed, in an ultimate sense, the choice between chosen slavery to Satan, and indirect suicide.) 

And, as always with evil - the choice is real in the sense that (to be spiritually effective) we need to consent to evil: to invite evil into our hearts. For example, by enthusiastically regarding as our saviour and supporting the UN... with all that implies+.  

In such a situation; the only escape from embracing one or another of the twin evils of worldly expediency, and thereby taking the side of evil; is a perspective that is Not of This World. 

As seems more and more often the case: the age of neutrality is passed, things have come to a point; we are being corralled into making an ultimate existential choice for God and Heaven - or actively enlisting against them.

  

+Note added: I do not think that this current Ahrimanic backlash will be effective in reversing the progression towards Sorathic destruction; partly because this trajectory is the inevitable direction of those who are allied to evil; and partly because reckless destruction is so much easier and more rapid than making and sustaining a System of global totalitarianism. 

Demons with a thumb in the scales: why have all Western societies 'drifted' always-Leftward?

The first step was Western people abandoning Christianity - from the top (most educated, high status, powerful) people on downwards. Abandoning by dilution (liberal Christianity, Christian socialism, socially-orientated nonconformism etc), and by increasing adoption of atheism (aka agnosticism).

A society that saw the world as created, purposive and having objective meaning for every person - and was ultimately orientated towards eternity; was replaced by a society that saw the world as a mixture of accidents and determinism - and only acknowledged meaning and purpose the span of mortal life, and the reality of the material/ measurable/ perceptible world.

It became mainstream, normal, and mandatory in the public sphere to regard life as (at bottom, in reality) a matter of subjective personal emotions on an axis of pleasure and suffering. Therefore, there could be no real idea of progress, of positive change - either for individuals or for society as a whole. Everything was necessarily known to be adrift...

The abandoning of Christianty as primary, was therefore - also and necessarily - an abandonment of long-term (strategic) purpose. 


But if everything was adrift - how come the drift was always towards atheism and the political Left? (Such that the most 'Right wing' mainstream political parties today are far to the Left of the most ardent socialists of seventy years ago. But so rapid is this drift now that we can see it over a timescale of just a few years.)

So that we have a literally insane society that has lost the capacity to speak, apparently even to think, with any coherence about anything? (No matter how urgent and important.) Yet we never significantly drift out of this insanity, but always deeper in.

By my understanding, if drift was genuinely the whole story, the overall movement would have been random - back-and-forth or zig-zags - but not overall directional.

If people, and especially the most educated, high status and powerful people) are indeed adrift on the tides - bobbing-around without organisation or direction; then what is it that has ensured that the tide is always receding?


This is where the demonic comes-in. If we assume that there are such creatures as demons - supernatural and eternal beings who oppose God, love and creation; and are working in that net-direction; then it becomes reasonable to suppose that as men abandoned Christ and saw themselves as arbitrary bundles of short-lived emotions, then demonic power would become decisive.

As we lost the overall Christian purpose and direction and began to drift, then the overall demonic purpose would necessarily and increasingly dominate (because there was no other). 

If demons indeed have a thumb in the scales, tipping them always towards their anti-Christian, anti-Good agenda - then there could be no concerted opposition to this from the drifting of Modern Man. Each Man would see his situation as drifting, yet the tide would always be receding.

The patterns on the surface of the sea might include faster movement with the tide, or short counter-movement against the tide; but at the end of each generation the range of surface movements would have receded a bit further as the tide ebbed.


There have been, it seems likely, different kinds of demons dominant at different points in world history. And the kind that have become increasingly dominant throughout modernity have been termed the Ahrimanic.

Ahrimanic demons are those whose evil is organised, systematic, bureaucratic, materialistic, totalitarian. The evil is cold, humanity-denying, objective, spirit-denying, quantitative (and quality-denying).

(These are not the only kind of demons. For example, others inflame lust, sadism, spite, pride, gluttony etc. But it is the Ahrimanic type that are now by-far the most powerful and least recognised. Unrecognised probably because they have not often or recently been dominant for human society - it was the Industrial Revolution - with its division of labour, massive expansion of trade and technological innovations - that created a situation in which the Ahrimanic could thrive.)

The demonic thumb of this type is what has been pressing-down on all forms of social organisation, as well as upon individual modern Men, with increasing strength for the past two centuries. Such demons have affected all forms and types of organisation - including the Christian churches - so that our world experience is nowadays of encroaching and tightening bureaucracy.

Bureaucracy is evil intrinsically, and it tends towards greater bureaucracy and greater evil. It is - I suggest - the primary weapon of the main type of demons that are both the most influential, and simultaneously the least detected and opposed, in these modern times.

The demonic thumb is mostly experienced as the pressure of bureaucratic, System-atic, humanity-denying organisation; and until this is known as evil we will remain helpless to resist the Leftward tidal drift; even if we are (currently) Christians. 

Beyond Problem-Reaction-Solution: When the establishment induce chaos, this causes a net-increase in chaos

Some years ago; David Icke insightfully described a behaviour and policy patterning that was repeatedly deployed by the leadership class, which he called Problem-Reaction-Solution- "PRS". 

The PRS idea was that the rulers would (repeatedly) create a problem, and this elicited a reaction from many "people" (i.e. in practice the mass media) and demands for something-to-be-done - and resulting action always turned-out to be a pre-decided pseudo-solution - a "solution" that was not really designed to prevent or cure the problem, but was something the leadership had wanted to do anyway. 

The "solution" was, indeed, always a further incremental step on the road to tyranny, intended to increase societal totalitarian surveillance and control. 

In other terminology: Problem Reaction Solution was, in a specific sense, a policy of Ahrimanic evil - which aims at the reduction of all thinking to materialism, and then control of this reduced thinking with the aim of pursuing the demonic agenda of evil. 

 

But I had not previously noticed that while PRS was usually tactically effective in enhancing top-down control of some specific domain of social living (e.g. increased control of the police, doctors, lawyers, or some type of corporation)... While PRS led reliably to the goal of  extending and deepening bureaucratic systems... At the same time, and inevitably; this local increase of "order" is attained at the cost of increasing overall and long-term dis-order/ chaos. 

Short-term and local increase in order is "bought" at the price of increased long-term and overall dis-order. 

This happens because the "problem" entails some kind of increase in chaos, some kind of break-down in functioning. 

And each time a problem is deliberately induced, every cycle of PRS - by deliberate design; the "solution" does Not solve the problem. (i.e. Because the "solution" was not intended to solve the problem, but instead to increase surveillance and control.) 

Therefore, every time PRS is deployed there is an unsolved problem, which means an increase in the problem; which means there is a long-term and a cumulative increase in social dysfunction and disorder. 

In sum; it can be seen that Problem Reaction Solution sequence can be deployed by the agents of Sorathic Evil to promote chaos and destruction under the guise of enhancing control. 

That is: repeated use of the PBS tactic actually promotes a net-destructive strategy. 

If we assume that the highest level of global leadership is Sorathic in motivation - that is, motivated to destroy, rather than to control - then it can be seen that PRS is a way of manipulating mid-system-level leaders, managers and bureaucrats. 

(Thus manipulating the middle-managers of totalitarianism as well as simultaneously manipulating the gullible masses.)  

The middle-management level of The System is therefore encouraged repeatedly to induce Problems: Problem after Problem! - to harm economies and trade (e.g. by sanctions); to provoke and promote wars; to organize and enforce mass migration into The West; to attack marriage and the family; to encourages hatred and resentment between races, sexes, classes... etc.

The Middle Managers believe that a PRS policy will enhance their control of society and the world - and they see the actual incremental expansion of surveillance and control bureaucracies (and their own wealth and high status) as evidence of the success of this strategy...

But meanwhile, the underlying reality is of civilizations, nations - and the world itself - collapsing into chaos.   

In other words: Problem Reaction Solution is a real strategy, at the mid-level of power structures; and superficially it seems to be "working"; in the sense that bureaucracy expands and expands to cover all aspects of life, and there are more and better paid jobs for the managerial class in administering The System - and indeed bureaucratic "power" continued to grow. 

But such bureaucratic power is only power within The System, and what The System recognizes. 

And the System recognizes only The System - all outwith The System is invisible to it, and treated as not real. 

The System does not, because it cannot, recognize chaos.

Therefore; when rulers deliberately engage in destruction, and the world consequently descends into chaos - the agents of Ahrimanic evil perceive only their own increase in System-control with an expanding System. 

Paradoxically; the overall-effect is that agents of total control are manipulated into implementing the agenda of total destruction! 

As the world collapses around them in consequence of their own purposive decisions and actions; the managerial-intellectual class (eg. of the UN, EU, WEF, Western national leadership, media Moghuls; financial and corporate executives and owners, academics, "scientists" and "artists") perceive only new chances for immediate personal enrichment, greater personal status, and opportunities to extend their bureaucratic empires. 

Note: This was triggered by a post from Francis Berger, and the response it elicited. 

Understanding the Ahrimanic distinction

The Ahrimanic-style demon Balthazar from the (enjoyable) movie Constantine (2005)

If you do not already understand the distinctively 'Ahrimanic' nature of modern evil; then I think it would be time well spent for you to look-into this.


One quick and enjoyable way - which I wrote about a couple of years ago - is to study Screwtape Proposes a Toast (1959) by CS Lewis (PDF version here) - and indeed the character of Screwtape as contrasted with his nephew Wormwood in The Screwtape Letters (PDF here).


Throughout the Letters Screwtape is recurrently trying to reign-in Wormwood's naive, short-termist and (for Wormwood) personally-gratifying evil of tormenting, frightening and playing-nasty-tricks-on his 'patient'; but losing sight of the fact that the ultimate (and proper) goal of demons is damned dead souls, not miserable living humans.

By this analysis: Wormwood's is the old-style 'Luciferic' evil; Screwtape represents the modern, totalitarian, bureaucratic, soft-sell, incremental Ahrimanic evil - much less spectacular and obvious; but in the end much more powerfully damning for exactly those reasons.


In Proposes a Toast, Screwtape comments:

The quality [of Ahrimanically-damned souls] may be wretched; but we never had souls (of a sort) in more abundance....

We are tempted to say that such souls — or such residual puddles of what once was soul — are hardly worth damning. Yes, but the Enemy (for whatever inscrutable and perverse reason) thought them worth trying to save. Believe me, He did. 

You youngsters who have not yet been on active duty have no idea with what labour, with what delicate skill, each of these miserable creatures was finally captured.The difficulty lay in their very smallness and flabbiness. 

Here were vermin so muddled in mind, so passively responsive to environment, that it was very hard to raise them to that level of clarity and deliberateness at which mortal sin becomes possible. 

To raise them just enough; but not that fatal millimetre of “too much.” For then, of course, all would possibly have been lost. They might have seen; they might have repented.


That is exactly the nature of modern Ahrimanic evil - it is pathetic in its passivity of evil-ness (it is evil minus the courage and motivation of great villains of the past); but there is such a lot of it!

Mainstream globalist leftism, and Sorathic conquest by deliberate corruption and chaos

It seems to have been little noticed that for several decades, the West's idea of 'conquest' has been morally to corrupt nations - for the obvious reason that those paid to notice and inform the masses, are themselves among the most corrupt. 

If you follow-up the consequences of any Western intervention - whether an invasion/ occupation; engineered and paid-for 'regime change'; or 'subversion as usual' by means of subsidizing NGOs, 'charities' and funding destablizing leftist groups...

You can see a pattern of Western intervention invariably increasing moral corruption (bribery, theft, sexual immorality, social breakdown with violence); including the destruction of any genuine religion by convergence and suppression (especially Christianity, but also any traditionalist religion with a distinct world-view and morality). 

Thus, the actual and achieved pattern of Western intervention abroad is Sorathic (i.e. doing evil by inducing chaos) rather than Ahrimanic (i.e. evil imposed by systems of totalitarian bureaucratic surveillance and control) - and has been for a good while. 

A clear example is the current conflict involving the Fire Nation - where it seems that (as usual) the main Western 'plan' has been first grossly to corrupt the top-level leadership-class of a nation (by standard techniques of bribery and blackmail); then deliberately - but 'deniably', by proxy - to provoke a war; and now to encourage the maximum of destruction to population and infrastructure. 

By such means has the Western Establishment has pursued the most advanced forms of Sorathic evil abroad - but what about 'at home'? 

Meanwhile, for the past couple of decades and peaking in 2020 with the global coup; the dominant strategy 'at home' in the West has been Ahrimanic. That is, to use a single, linked, increasingly international bureaucracy-mass media, to create a society of omni-surveillance and total control. Agenda 2030 and the Great Reset are some statements of this plan. 

However, there have also been strongly Sorathic aspects in home policy; especially the implementation of mass immigration to the West - including the encouragement of illegal, violent and criminal migrants. 

This inevitably creates social and economic breakdown and chaos; and the chaos has been deliberately concealed by suspending the surveillaince-control Ahrimanic state when it comes to 'multicultural' sub-groups - such as 'no-go zones' of cities, and police policies of 'non-intervention'. 

The actual governance of Western nations (e.g. in relation to the personal behaviour of politicians, and the conduct of elections) has also become extremely, now all-but openly, corrupt - hence chaotic.

Chaos has more recently been fuelled by birdemic-testing-quarantine and the peck, the imposed cult of antiracism and race-sex preferences, and the truly colossal global economic destruction caused by financial and economic 'sanctions'. 

At some point, the forces of chaos become, of their nature, irreversible. Evil feeds upon itself - inevitably, by its nature (when unrepented); and the Sorathic is a more advanced form of evil than the Ahrimanic.   

The triumph of leftism (and it is, indeed, triumphant - worldwide, at the highest levels) therefore turns-out to be the triumph of corruption and chaos. 

That is what leftism is at root, and what it always tended to become over time - because the nature of leftism is oppositional and negative; hence incoherent; and incoherence is another word for chaos. 

In other words; leftism is the ideology of evil, but evil has different forms; and there is always conflict among evil-serving persons and entities.

Yet, over time, evil innately 'progresses' from Ahrimanic to Sorathic; from (partly) constructive and planned, towards very-fully-destructive and chaotic. 

For a while, the most destructive evils of mainstream Western Establishment leftism were mainly exported abroad; where societies were destroyed serially. 

But now, the same chaotic evil is getting a grip 'at home' - overwhelming the bureaucrats, transhumanists, and mind-programmers - and the current triumphs of the left are more about spreading destruction than about increasing control. 

The bad news is that it is much easier to corrupt Men than to encourage morality, to destroy than to create. 

The 'good' news is that the left is - at an increasing rate - destroying its own capacity to inflict chaos.

Yet evil does not destroy itself as it advances, and Good can only arise from Good-aiming Persons - and Good means of-God. 

However, this analysis suggests that there may be coming more spiritual scope for Good, for Christian awakening and conversion, as The System destroys itself... Even though the physical/ material prospects seem extremely bleak. 

Mangerialism is a sign of actually-happening evil, of evil being-implemented

A comment by John Fitzgerald on yesterday's post clarified something for me. he said:

I was leafing through the Roman Catholic Diocese of Salford's 2019 almanac at my Mum's house today. There was a page devoted to one of those organisational-structure flow-chart diagrams, showing who's who and who does what in the Diocese. To me, the sight of the Church aping the world of business and HR in this way, was an eruption of pure Ahrimanuc evil and an admission and indeed a celebration of Ahriman's taking power in the Diocese. The medium is the message, form is content, etc. Honestly, an old-school pentagram would have been less alarming!

I replied:

A very good example. Yet, how few people can recognise that as a mark of actually-existing evil?

At most, some might acknowledge this as sign of a risk of corruption. But the truth is that it is a mark of corruption, it is evil being-implemented.

*

This is important - very important. When we see managerialism, bureaucratic thinking, then we are seeing evil: the main form of evil. Not just something that encourages evil, but actually-happening evil.

It is a lethal blind spot of our era that we fail to notice and identify the major form of evil in our era. This can be termed Ahrimanic (or specifically Satanic) evil; and is the bureaucratic evil of materialism/ reductionism/ positivism/ scientism.

The cold, dehumanising, despair-inducing Ahrimanic evil is far more common and dangerous than the 'old style' 'Luciferic' type of demonic evil - of impulsive lust, torture, killing. More common and dangerous because is simply is not admitted to be evil!

And the Ahrimanic is not admitted to be evil exactly because it is everywhere, obvious, triumphant; in all organisations and institutions including our most cherished Christian churches!


The worst that most people will say of managerialism is that it is a 'waste of time'. But it certainly is not that - because for the demonic powers time expended on managerialism is powerfully corrupting; keeping the mind away from Good, and enforcing and rehearsed the denial of God and the world of spirit and joy. 

The point is that when we see an organisation emphasising its hierarchical and functionally differentiated managerial structure, using Public Relations, dishonesty and manipulation in public announcements, pandering/ virtue-signalling in advertising material by emphasising Leftist weazel-concepts such as equality, diversity, anti-poverty, climate change...

When we hear or read the tropes of managerial language and behaviour; observe committees, voting, procedure etc - that whole crushingly-familiar world of The System; we are seeing actual evil being implemented - just as surely and solidly as if we were seeing demons with horns, pointy-tails and tridents boiling a human being in sulphur.


The big problem is that there are such powerful and plausible excuses for this type of evil.

It is all too easy to say - But we have to do this, nowadays - and if we didn't we could not function. And it is all too easy to accept this excuse, which is true - at least at the level of rational materialism, and simply to forget about the whole thing because it is inevitable, and a necessary compromise.

We have had many generations of this compromise; of the forces of Good using the instrument of evil on the basis that either there-is-no-alternative, or that they are doing-so in a way that the benefits outweigh the disadvantages.

Yet we look around and see that the opposite has happened. The instruments of evil have thoroughly corrupted all institutions and nearly-all Western people - who nowadays accept the inevitability and potential benefits of managerialism.

It seems that our society will go to its destruction, and we will go to our deaths, defending the absolute necessity of that which incrementally and systematically corrupts and dooms us.

Bureaucracy kills the spirit - and bureaucracy is now (almost) everywhere

I find it hard to recognize that most people do not feel - immediately and without having to reflect upon it - the innate evil of bureaucracy; the soul-killing properties of a world of monitoring and control of ever more of life; the world of ever more regulations, procedures, check-lists. 

And the adverse effect that bureaucracy has upon people - on their thinking, behaviour - on their souls... I am astonished that this is not more widely recognized, and opposed.  

My own aversion to bureaucracy is spontaneous and powerful; and has shaped my life for several decades - and much of the 'activism' of my younger adult life was directed against it in medicine, universities and science.

For one example, I was the editor of what was apparently the last international academic journal Not to be (bureaucratically) peer reviewed (Medical Hypotheses). And the (official) reason for sacking me from this job was my refusal to introduce peer review. 

But what I did not recognize about bureaucracy until a few years ago - was that it was not just a result of evil choices; but more fundamentally a consequence of bad choices operating on changes in human consciousness. 

Past societies were never bureaucratic in the way that ours is - and officialdom lacked the parasitic and malignant tendency of modern bureaucracy, primarily because they could not be like that. The minds of Men could not operate in the ways necessary for a modern bureaucracy. 

When modern Man 'evolved' (developed deliberately; as part of God's creation, part of God's plan) bureaucratic thinking was always going to be a temptation; but it was one that Men were supposed to reject. 

A handful of the early (and Christian) romantics (e.g. Coleridge, Wordsworth, Novalis) showed the proper path, the God-intended and God-hoped-for path. But instead most Men chose the path of atheism, leftism and materialism - which leads inexorably to bureaucracy, death of the spirit, nihilism and despair.

Now bureaucracy is the public face of Ahrimanic evil: it has occupied the world, including the means of production and communication, and extends its tentacles almost daily. 

Now - if we reject bureaucracy, we also reject the System - and the System is what keeps us alive. 

Yet the ultimate evil motivation of bureaucracy is evident in the fact of its parasitic, malignant nature - that it will grow until it kills its host. 

And its evil is evident in that the bureaucratic leadership class - the leaders of major government, institutions and corporations; are advancing in corruption beyond the Ahrimanic; and into more purely negative evil of the spitefully-destructive.

In other words, because of their developing corruption - because of being ideological bureaucrats; They no longer serve The System - but instead serve Satan and themselves. 

Therefore the System - the global bureaucracy - is not only killing itself distally by parasitic colonization of the means of production... But also killing itself from within - by leaders implementing mandatory policies for enhanced group and interpersonal resentment; and multiple PSYOPS leading to destruction at all levels. 

The bureaucracy is, in other words, no longer internally-'rational', rule-based and systemic in nature;  but convulsed from within by contradictory objectives, compulsory incoherence, value-inversions and other manifestations of the most advanced forms of evil.  

 

This is why the individual must step-back from any affectation of concern with the System, with Politics, with Civilization or Society... These are not an answer, because these are destroying themselves from both external and internal reasons. 

We now have a global bureaucracy, which is a global system for evil; and the system evil is one that is atheist, leftist and materialist - and which therefore innately has the property of damning all those who live by it, believe it, endorse it. 

I think everybody knows this at some unconscious (and usually denied) level: i.e. that we are in the End Times - although what that phrase means in detail is unsure. But I mean the sense that things are going spiritually downwards and will continue to go inexorably downwards, to some kind of terminus.  

Thus hope is in opposition to optimism. 

Hope is spiritual - for salvation: for resurrection to life eternal. And hope depends on being spiritually separate from the System bureaucracy. 

Whereas optimism (expectation of positive outcomes) depends on wishing for the bureaucracy to continue - wishing for it not to be destroyed by inner-spite or by its own malignant tendencies - or not yet, at any rate. 

Optimism dictates that we defend and try to reform the System; hope dictates that we neither actively nor willingly participate in the work of evil; that we do identify, repent and reject evil. 

The System demands that we identify-with its evil - demands that we want and favour inclusion for our-selves and for all. 

But Romantic Christianity instead has it that our hope be located in divine creation rather than the System; beyond this world rather than in this world; beyond death rather than in mortal life. 

Our task is therefore to live from this transcendental root. 

This task is not easy - but it is possible. 

"AI" is strategically about destruction, not control - Francis Berger's post, Laeth's comment

Following an insightful post on "AI" by Francis Berger; in the comments, Laeth produced a simple and convincing re-conceptualization of what lies behind this global strategy 

I have edited this excerpt. 

Ahrimanic refers to a type of totalitarian/ bureaucratic/ systemic evil, that is materialistic in assumptions and seeks omni-surveillance and thought control. Sorathic refers to a more advanced, negative, and purely-destructive evil; that is motivated a spiteful hatred of humans, life, and all manifestations of divine creation.

**

(Laeth's comment, edited)...

When all this started my intuition was that the diabolic element here was mostly Ahrimanic, that is, the objective was pure control. 

But more and more I think I was wrong about this (even if Ahrimanic forces were channelled to bring it to fruition). 

It seems more likely to me now that 'AI' is actually pure Sorathic envious evil. A big fraud at all levels that won't really even be useful for control, only to debase and destroy everything - from its enormous consumption of earthly energy for its functioning to the consumption of human energy from the engagement of people. An all consuming strategy, really. 

I try to avoid even seeing anything of AI or about it. I even try to avoid speaking too much against it, because I fear that too is me being sucked into its web. But it's now impossible to not find it: it's everywhere. Even normal, (and older) people, have started to talk about it (and in the exact terms the system wants them to). 

Yet even my tangential acquaintance with AI is enough to see that it's terrible at its purported higher objectives. It will just jumble up things with no direction, no purpose and no coherence - and any minimally intelligent person can understand that it's all nonsense. it cannot 'manage' anything. 

If given any power to manage a system, AI will just run it to the ground'; and I see now that that it its goal. To destroy any possibility of management, while consuming every possible resource that could be used to correct it. 

I think Ahriman was tricked too, in other words. Full Sorathic destruction is its only route and possibility of it.

**

My Comment: This immediately struck me as correct. 

The globalist totalitarian Establishment who sustain "The System" is being lied-to and tricked-into the Trillions-Dollar-Project of AI, by demonic beings whose purpose includes the destruction of The System. 

Once pointed-out (but it needed pointing out!), the strategy seems clear. 

Because (given the actuality of AI, of what it is, of how it works) this is the only possible outcome of widespread usage of, and therefore inevitable dependence upon, so-called AI. 

AI is a kind of mind virus that has been introduced into the consciousness of managers, at almost every level - from national and multi-national leaders down to the multitudes of middling-myrmidons. 

In the immediate short-term, all the institutional incentives are lined-up to focus upon introducing and developing and expanding AI - regardless of its effect on institutional functionality. 

But in the medium to long term; AI will destroy management itself, in a very direct fashion; along with institutional functionality. 

So the mind virus of AI functions like an addictive drug that rewards its user by short-term euphoria, at the cost of actively killing the user. 

My reading of Western social trends is that the Sorathic agenda has been gaining ground since the summer of 2020; when the Ahrimanic-totalitarian global triumph of the Birdemic coup (with its international lockdowns); began to yield to the intrinsically socially destructive policies of combining multivalent institutional antiracism with a renewal and acceleration of mass immigration. 

Since 2020; the Sorathic destructive agenda has been doubled-down-on by those who control the Western leadership class. Especially, it has caused/ sustained/ escalated war in Eastern Europe; then rolled-out to the Middle East; now (being attempted) in South Asia (also elsewhere). 

All this gratuitous and self-annihilating destruction (eg "sanctions" that damage the sanctioner more than the sanctioned!) is "sold" to the managerial classes of the world as assisting their globalist totalitarian goals (Great Reset, Agenda 2030 etc.). 

They are told that inducing societal chaos will create a desire for order, and thereby facilitate a further coup (on-top-of the successful early-2020 Birdemic coup) to enable a stable and lasting dictatorship of the Left.

Yet this was never possible; because the materialist Leftist ideology of the totalitarians is intrinsically negative, oppositional, hence destructive. 

Even in its earliest and partly-good manifestations; Leftism always had Sorathic evil as its Secret Master. This canker of the heart was evident in that, whenever totalitarian control was (briefly) established, it was inevitably followed by accelerating disorder and destruction.      

 

While there is an almost irresistible Schadenfreude induced by watching the managerial state enthusiastically implementing that self-destruct button which is AI; observers need to be mindful that evil does not cancel-out. 

As totalitarianism is destroyed by spiteful sadism, the process yields no increase in net-good in the world. 

Good comes from recognizing what is going on in the spiritual war of this world; rejecting it inwardly (i.e. repenting our complicity); and then spiritually affiliating to God and divine creation - by following Jesus Christ to that salvation which is resurrected eternal Heavenly Life. 

Which kind of evil is worse?

I have often posted on the progression of evil from Luciferic - traditional selfish evil; through Ahrimanic - bureaucratic evil; to Sorathic - chaotic evil. 

(For those who know The Lord of the Rings, the sequence can be seen going through to completion with de facto suicide in the character of Saruman.)  

That part of the world known as The West is well advanced in Ahrimanic evil, with its establishment of a System of omni-surveillance and micro-control in service of value-inversion. 

But, because the mass of the population are Godless (even when they self-identify as Christian) this mature, advanced, more-evil type of evil has remained all-but invisible, undetectable - indeed its reality is denied and it is instead asserted as Good (due to the value-inversion made possible by anti-Christian atheism).  

The progressed evil of Ahriman works by a pretense of being and doing Good, concealed by that pseudo-concern and feigned-niceness, empathy and compassion; which is all-but universal among public figures. 

Because so many (especially of the managerial and 'expert' classes) are assimilated to this way of thinking - gross evils have become undetectable, denied or even boasted of and propagated. 

A clear example is the brain-washing, poisoning, mutilation, sexual grooming, and trafficking of children - that goes on under the 'caring' label of the transagenda. And those who dissent from such historically-unprecedented systemic vileness are themselves labelled as evil!

Meanwhile, the Western masses are trained to recognize only Luciferic evil, mostly using the single dishonestly-selective and -projected, dishonestly-honed and -crafted, example of the National Socialist Workers Party of Germany - the consequence of which means that Nazis are detected and opposed everywhere among enemies of The System - except (apparently) where they actually exist! 

Thus the evils of The West are invisible to The Western populace, hence increasing without limit because they are regarded as good; whereas the more 'blatantly' Luciferic parts of the world, who are actually less advanced in evil - still retain some significant ability to detect and acknowledge evil (and thus a greater possibility of self-limitation or even repentance). 

This makes The West the most evil part of the world. 

Which is why the most advanced, chaotic, Sorathic type of evil is currently making its greatest strides in The West. 

Why categorize evil? Why categorize Good?

 A couple of profoundly-clarifying posts by WmJas Tychonievich have led to the following thoughts. 

Good and evil are not symmetrical - not mirror images - because Good is positive divine creation; while evil is 'various ways' of being opposed to divine creation. Thus Good is primary, and evil cannot exist without Good. 

(This is why I habitually capitalize Good, and make evil lower case - subliminally to emphasize their qualitative difference in kind.)

The reason that I have suggested considering evil as Luciferic, Ahrimanic and Sorathic is a matter of expediency - it need not reflect and actual categories or distinction in the real world. It is a (more, or less) useful way of understanding evil. 

The reason for doing it was becuase Ahrimanic evil was not being recognised consciously as evil. I think most people spontaneously feel that Ahrimanic evil is indeed evil - i.e. the modern workplace and mass media makes people feel bad (e.g. afraid, resentful, despairing). 

But they do not consciously recognize it as necessarily evil by nature and motivation because they do not understand that Good is rooted in God and divine creation; and even if Christians have become transfixed by ancient lists and exemplars of Luciferic sins (murder, torture, rape, arson, theft etc) which are not what it at issue in a totalitarian Matrix of omni-surveillance and micro-control. 

OK so much for evil; but why divide and differentiate Good? I think that a categorization of Good ought to reflect actual, natural reality - rather than being merely expedient. 

And this seems especially important in this Ahrimanic age, when we so often categorize to kill: categorize in order to destroy that which is alive, organic, conscious, purposive...

Lists of virtues, laws of behaviour... these Now (however it was in the past) function to short-circuit thinking from our real and divine self - and to make us bureaucratic functionaries, being instructed by checklists and flow-charts. 

All language, and all concepts, are merely 'models' of real-reality; but we should only be categorizing Good in so far as this is really based-on the categories of real-reality. 

Good is rooted in divine creation, which is rooted in love - so Good is ultimately a unity of motivation. For a Christian Love is Good and it is the single Good.  

Indeed, the purpose of Jesus making possible our resurrection to eternal life is that we may each become able to contribute, each in our unique way - from our unite nature, to the single harmony of many unique goods - to help-make a creation that is always (but always differently and changing) Good. 

But WmJas reminds me that (as we both know, from our acceptance of Joseph Smith's Mormon revelations) behind the integrated harmony of divine loving creation are Two divine beings: our Heavenly Father and Mother. 

God is a dyad, and the single harmony of creating comes from the love of our Heavenly Parents; who are therefore, two qualitatively-different kinds of being that is Good. 

In a sense Heavenly Father and Mother can each be understood (i.e. can be abstractly modelled in language) as what Wm terms Ahuric /Seeking-Good  and Devic Avoiding-evil; or active versus passive* Good - or (as I now think of them) man-good and woman-good.  

Mormon theology has it that sexual difference (male and female) is an essential characteristic of individual pre-mortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose. God the Father is not a self-sufficient 'monad' of Goodness. Instead - God is two kinds of Goodness. 

Instead "God" is a dyad of Heavenly parents, a man and a woman. It is their love (and love is always between Beings) that is the cause of creation: thus all creation is loving-creation. 

(I will now modify, summarize and expand on some comments from Wm Jas.) 

This implies that there are two complementary types of good. No being, no person (not even Jesus) can fully embody both. And, as Wm says, Jesus was indeed an exemplar of positive, active Good - but not so for the negative, passive* kinds of Good (which are instead represented in Catholic Christianity by the figure of Mary his mother). 

Since sexual difference is an essential pre-mortal characteristic. This difference comes before observable chromosomes, hormones, genitalia, motivations, abilities and behaviours. Sexual difference therefore reflects a fundamental division of primordial Human Beings - into promordial men, who are (insofar as they individually are Good) are orientated towards positive Good; and women who are orientated towards the avoidance of evil.

And that causal primary division of ultimate nature is usually reflected, or approximated, in the 'sexual dimorphism' of anatomy, physiology and behaviour of mortal incarnate humans. 

(...Remembering that this mortal life is individually tailored for our unique personal learning requirements - so no specific generalizations apply universally.) 

In sum: it is legitimate to state that really there are two qualitatively different kinds of Good - and that these are the two characteristic Goods of our Heavenly Parents. These are reflected in their Heavenly Children as we observe them - mortal men and women; and will be reflected in Heaven. 

That is the reality - and we can then summarize, model, and in general try to capture these reality-differences in language - but these linguistic descriptions will never be more that partial and distorted representations. 

The reality is in the distinction between the two persons of our Heavenly Father and Mother.

*Passive and negative are wrong terms - for reasons described in the comments. In truth, I think the distinctive complementary qualities of good in a man compared with a woman are irreducible; because this sexual difference of human Beings is primary (hence irreducible).