9 lectures, Munich, August 23-31, 1909 (GA 113)
"Awonderfully beautiful legend tells us that when Lucifer fell from
heaven toearth a precious stone fell from his crown.... This precious
stone is, in a certain respect, nothing else than the full power of the
'I.'"-- Rudolf Steiner
Seven years after staging Édouard Schuré's drama The Children of
Lucifer, Rudolf Steiner felt he could speak openly about the complex
relationship between Lucifer and Christ. In this extraordinary series of
lectures, Steineraddresses the difficult and frequently misunderstood
subject of Lucifer's role inhuman development. Speaking in the broader
context of ancient and modern--both Eastern and Western--spiritual
teachings, Steiner makes it clear that Lucifer is not the simple
caricature of evil that many imagine but actually plays a pivotal role
in human development.
Whereas Rudolf Steiner held a deep respect for Eastern philosophy, he
workedconsistently from his personal knowledge of the Western Christian
esoteric tradition. Though many of his colleagues revered ancient
Eastern texts, Steiner viewed those documents as representations of an
earlier stage of human consciousness and as evidence of the heights
Eastern wisdom had reached thousands of years before the development of
Western science and culture. Nonetheless, Steiner maintains that the
ancient truths need to be understood in the context of modern
knowledge--that the old wisdom of the East has to be seen in the light
of the West.
Chapters include: Eternity and Time - Comparison of the Wisdom of East
and West - The Nature of the Physical and the Astral Worlds -
Evolutionary Stages - The Children of Lucifer and the Brothers
ofChrist - Lucifer and Christ - The Nature of the Luciferic Influence in
History - The Bodhisattvas and the Christ.
This volume is a translation from German of Der Orient im Lichte des
Okzidents. Die Kinder des Luzifer und die Brüder Christi (GA 113).
