The Hierarchies ~27 137human beings also to develop an independent life of their own, choos-
ing or refusing to be tempted, to love out of choice, not compulsion.
Before the advent of Luciferic influences, the human soul, says
Steiner, carried out all its activities in line with the intentions of higher
spiritual beings.
Were there no temptation-as is perennially explained by adepts-
humans would not have the choice of eschewing evil. Hence the im-
portant role of Luciferic beings. "The gods," says Steiner, "were able to
foresee that if they continued to create only as they had done, then free
beings who acted out of their own initiative would never come into
being. For free beings to be created, the possibility had to be given for
opponents to arise against them in the cosmic all." He then points out
that one should not look for the origin of evil in so-called evil beings
but in so-called good beings.
In due course, according to Steiner, the Luciferic angels, having
served their purpose, will reacquire their benign angelic status. Sur-
prisingly, he postulates 14,000 or ~g,ooo C.E. for this event, indicating
that the Akashic Record allows its viewer access to the future as well as
to the past.Ahrimanic beings, whose hnction is to tempt humanity to
gross materialism, having served their purpose in humanity's develop-
ment to freedom, may also return to the hierarchical groups from
which they were expelled during the course of earth's evolution.
Yet there remained non-Luciferic, non-Ahrinianic angels, and they,
together with archangels and archai, continue, according to occult phi-
losophy, to help humanity progress to higher stages of development,
stages it cannot reach on its own without help.
What is done for humanity by members of this Third Hierarchy is
regarded by anthroposophists primarily as work upon the human soul,
comparable to the work of a human teacher.The angel, says Stewart C.
Easton in his remarkable overview, Man and the World in the Light of
Anthroposophy, can gaze upon the development of an indvidual soul:
"In reality there is a self belonging to each of us which is not to be
found with ordinary consciousness, but has a hidden existence; it is this
self which the Angel tries to guard, and to reveal to us at certain mo-
ments."