138 -@ The Secret L!@ of NatureThe role of angels, adds Adam Bittleston, an ordained priest of the
Christian Community-a religious group following Steiner's phi-
losophy, separate from the Anthroposophical Society but widespread
throughout the world-is to care for individual human beings and to
lead human souls into successive civilizations. Archangels shape these
civilizations so as to provide the right experiences for those who in-
carnate into them. Archangels, unconcerned with single human be-
ings, says Bittleston, bring about harmonizing influences among larger
groups, among peoples, races, and so forth, indwelling the development
of a nation, working primarily among its artists, thinkers, and reform-
ers. "But just as a man's pride in his own genius is a great hindrance to
his Angel, national pride blocks the work of the Archangel, producing
an appalling caricature of it." Instead of fostering a healthy spirit of na-
tionalism, Luciferic angels, says Bittleston, "turned what had been a
normal feeling of unity with one's fellow countrymen into the evil
that is nationalism."
In a world capable of producing a Thirty Years' War, a Hundred
Years' War, two World Wars, and endless Holocausts, some heavy
jousting may be in order between Luciferic and archai~gelic contes-
tants for the illumination of human minds. In Steiner's mind it is still
touch and go as to whether humans will make it, especially if we con-
tinue to ignore angelic prompting. His direst prophecy involves a great
war of "all against all."
On the positive side stands a Bittleston analogy: "The Archangel is
to the Angel like a brother who can remember very much further into
the past, a past of great nobility and splendor of which he often tells his
younger brother." And in yet another analogy, Bittleston sees angels
as akin to patiently flowing water, archangels to the swift winds of
heaven, archai to fiery spirits, enkindling and purift-ing love, their
physical bodies only perceived in flames.
Arclzai-a Greek word that could be rendered as "princes"--or
"Spirits of Personality," as Steiner calls them, highest members of the
Third Hierarchy, are those who form successive civilizations, awaken-
ing and bringing about human "ego-consciousness"; this they are said
to do in such a way that individuals can develop toward a personality