Professor Bruce Charlton, on his blog Charlton Teaching, has written extensively about the nature of evil. According to Charlton, there are three types of evil. Luciferic, Ahrimanic, and Sorathic. As he explains,
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.
Let’s explore each a bit.
Luciferic Evil
Luciferic evil is named for, and symbolized by, Lucifer’s rejection of God’s sovereignty: “I will not serve.” It represents the first stage of evil, in its anti-authoritarian, individualist, and rebellious aspect which seeks to overthrow cosmos (natural order) to maximize freedom of action. Luciferian evil is often attractive, in the lustful blood-and-song manner of ancient pagan heroes, pirates, and rebels.
Charlton argues that Luciferic evil dominated the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s as well as certain aspects of the Libertarian movement. According to Charlton:
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… The 'sixties impulse' was Luciferic.
I would add that some members of the Dissident Right probably also have some Luciferian evil in our souls, shouting “I do not consent” to clown world not so much out of support for God but simply out of refusal to pay homage to what we disagree with. (Certainly I am guilty of this.)
Another blogger from the Charltonsphere, William James Tychonievich, explains:
Those who follow Lucifer are motivated by pleasure rather than the avoidance of pain, and are willing to embrace risk, danger, adventure, even a sort of heroism, in its pursuit. They do not shy away from violence and may even revel in it. Alcibiades, Casanova, Blackbeard -- Falstaff, even.
What Charlton and Tychonievich call Luciferic evil equates to what Guenon and Evola called anti-tradition. By exploiting human selfishness, individualism, and lust, it toppled the Traditional world.
But in the 20th century there came a turning point, when Luciferic evil gave way to Ahrimanic evil, and anti-tradition gave way to counter-tradition.
Ahrimanic Evil
Ahrimanic evil is named for Ahriman, the Zoroastrian adversary of Ahura Mazda. Unlike Lucifer, Ahriman is not a rebel; he is rather a full-fledged counter-sovereign implacably opposed to God, though one lacking in the creative capacity. Charlton explains:
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.
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 organizations, corporations and Western nations.
Tychonievich describes Ahrimanic evil in contrast to Luciferic evil:
If Lucifer seeks pleasure, Ahriman seeks control. Note that this is not necessarily the same thing as seeking power. Those who serve Ahriman may seek to be in control themselves, but more often their goal may simply be that everything be under control. Hierarchy is of Ahriman, because even those who are far from the top have no objection to it. Even an Ahrimanist who has the ability to control things personally will generally defer these personal decisions to a system or algorithm, personal responsibility being unpleasantly risky. A near-perfect example of Ahrimanic man is the 2020s birdemicist, happy to submit to house arrest, universal surveillance and censorship, and forced medical procedures -- rather than take a chance of catching the flu. "Non serviam" is Lucifer's motto, not Ahriman's; if Ahrimanism were condensed into a two-word motto, it would be, "Safety first" -- or, if more than two words are needed, "None are safe until all are safe.
What Charlton and Tychonievich call Ahrimanic evil equates to what Guenon and Evola called counter-tradition. Having allowed Luciferic evil to “clear the field” of the physiocratic or cosmic order based on beauty, goodness, and truth, Ahrimanic evil proceeds to implement the Black Iron Prison of our contemporary consensus, a system of control over our thoughts and actions.
The Traditionalist analysis of the occult war stops with Ahrimanic evil. Charlton and his cohorts, however, believe Ahrimanic evil is being subsumed by its successor, Sorathic evil.
Sorathic Evil
Sorathic evil is named for Sorath, who Rudolf Steiner described as “the sun-demon of Revelations, whose number is 666.” (For more on Steiner’s description of Sorath, read this essay.)
Charlton explains Sorathic evil as:
…. the purest, most absolutely negative form of evil.
If Luciferic evil is motivated by short-termist pleasure; while Ahrimanic evil is motivated by God-denial, spiritual blindness and reductionism towards a meaningless world of mechanical procedures; then the Sorathic impulse is driven by negative impulses - primarily fear, resentment and hatred.
Sorathic evil will therefore tend to destroy both the lustful pleasures of Luciferic evil, and the complex functional bureaucracies of Ahrimanic evil….
Tychonievich describes Sorath like this:
By Sorath I mean the principle of evil at its purest, the devil of all devils, Goethe's "spirit that negates." God is the love-motivated Creator, and Sorath is the hate-motivated anti-Creator, who opposes all creation -- who thinks it "better nothing would begin" and that all that has begun "deserves to perish wretchedly."
Sorath's ultimate goal is that nothing at all exist, including Sorath himself.
There is no equivalent of Sorathic evil in Tradition; Evola and Guenon wrote their most important works during the inflection point when Luciferic evil began to give way to Ahrimanic evil. Neither lived to see the final stage, the stage at which we have arrived.
For, according to Charlton, the world we inhabit is actually already Sorathic:
A world in which the Luciferic lusts of sex/ drugs and the rock-and-roll lifestyle are forbidden and punished; and also a world in which the global system is being disabled and destroyed - even as its Ahrimanic architects have successfully accomplished a silent global coup, and are trying to perfect it into the grandiose schemes of The Great Reset/ Agenda 2030.
In 2020 we observe all modern institutions, corporations and every kind of bureaucracy as rapidly declining in efficiency and effectiveness - under pressure from an ever-increasing culture of fear, victimology, entitlement and resentment.
Sorath divides Mankind into more-and-more, smaller-and-smaller, self-identified victim groups; each resentful-of and pitted-against each other. The aim is eventually for each person to feel alone, consumed by feelings of thwarted entitlement, and hatred of the world; and living in permanent fear of a whole world of other people, each of whom resents and hates the solo-victim just as he hates them.
And then - eventually - Sorath's intent is that everyone, without exception, should die in fear and despair.
Even those of us who are living it can be misled as to Sorathic evil’s objective really is. Indeed, most of the servants of evil don’t even understand it:
[The tripartite nature of evil] leads to considerable mutual incomprehension looking upwards.
The evil Masses simply cannot recognize the evilness of the Establishment-managerial class; they cannot comprehend that the Establishment'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.
Our overlords though the plan was a new world order… but the real orders are to end the world.
More at: https://treeofwoe.substack.com/p/the-strategy-of-evil
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