We Wrestle Not Against Flesh and Blood
“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” - St. Paul
“People do not like to speak of events in human affairs having spiritual causes. Anyone who knows the real situation, however, is well aware that psychic or spiritual influences from the spiritual world on human beings here in the physical world are, in fact, particularly powerful at the present time.” - Rudolf Steiner
Politics has become a new pseudo-religion. As the breakdown of traditional religion and its influence has continued apace, many have transferred the source of meaning in their lives from spiritual sources to the temporal arena of politics. Thus, the devotion of individuals to political parties, and indeed political candidates, has taken on an a religious fervor. The intensity of emotions around the most recent election is evidence of this.
Politics are indeed important in their own way, but all mature spiritual teachers agree on one fact: Earthly political maneuverings are but a mirror of battles taking place in spiritual realms. It is the height of materialistic thinking to assume that political battles are won or lost merely based on campaign tactics, advertising budgets, or voter registration counts. Political battles, for good or ill, are nested within the unfolding of a far bigger cosmic drama.
The outcome of this spiritual drama is often determined by forces that are hidden and seemingly insignificant. Massive campaign war chests and celebrity endorsements may be splashy and attention grabbing, but they pale in comparison to the force of a single prayer. Divine moral logic operates by paradoxical rules in which the small far outweighs the great.
The readings from this Sunday’s Mass indicate this clearly. The story of a Widow’s sacrifice of all that she had for the prophet Elijah unlocking unlimited abundance, followed by the New Testament narrative of the Widow’s mite—both indicate that from the perspective of the Divine, the small is more significant than the great.
Which Way, Humanity?
The battle unfolding before us is not so much about Right vs. Left, Conservative vs. Liberal. It is far more about a prison of materialistic thinking against the freedom of a liberated human being open to the realm of spirit. As Rudolf Steiner indicates in his lecture series, The Fall of the Spirits of Darkness, this battle has been unfolding intensely for well over a century.
Materialistic thinking assumes the triumph of the globalist technocratic paradigm, represented by Big Pharma, Big Food, Big Tech, transhumanism, economic manipulation, and the worship of AI, among other things. This materialism seeks to create a new Eden through the forces of scientistic-materialistic control of every dimension of life. It seeks to destroy the life of the spirit in human beings, collapsing our horizons to the horizontal axis of endless consumption, neutralizing our spiritual potential and returning us to stones.
The path of Freedom, however, represents the great trust of the heavenly hierarchies, indeed, of God himself, in the free human being. It is the path of openness to the realm of spirit, to the instreaming of grace from Above to Below. It is the path of the continued evolution of human consciousness as it grows in wisdom and knowledge of higher realms, matures, and evolves, culminating in the eventual spiritualization of matter, the releasing of the hidden fire at the heart of all things—the radiant Omega point which Teilhard de Chardin prophetically foresaw.
This is the real cosmic battle unfolding behind the facade of political machinations. The spirits of darkness have been cast down to Earth, and they are doing all they can to frustrate the progress of humanity. They seek to prevent us from becoming the 10th Angelic hierarchy.
This battle is not won or lost based on gerrymandering districts, encouraging early voting, or collecting multi-million dollar donations. It is won by St. Michael, the ruler of this age. It is won by forces operating in the night side of history—invisible, silent, and subtle. It is won by the Force of the Virgin triumphing over the dragon. And triumph She will.
It could be said that these dark principalities and powers are created by and in the collective psyche of human beings, and thus projected on to the world stage.
If you examine the Christian world-view it is dualistic all-the-way-down and at root based on an unconscious war of the "spirit" vs the "flesh" or the body with the "flesh" being the source of all evil. At another level the "spirit" is associated with the power-and-control-seeking male principle, and the "flesh" with the feminine principle (and more concretely with women's bodies in particular) - hence the European witch burnings and the Medieval text The Hammer of Witches.
It’s interesting if you look at the anarchic (not progressive or woke) Left (such as Jim Wallis, Richard Rohr, Sri Aurobindo and David Bentley Hart, you see very much the non materialistic/spiritual Force which will undoubtedly triumph in the course of the evolution of consciousness.