Spirit of Light. On the other hand he
represented Ahriman (Angra mainju) as a power working injuriously on the
life of the human soul, when it engrosses that soul completely. This power
is none other than the one previously described, which had acquired
special dominion over the earth since the betrayal of the Vulcan
Mysteries. Together with the message concerning the Light God, Zarathustra
proclaimed teachings about those spiritual beings who were revealed to the
seer's purified perception as associates of the Spirit of Light. These
were in strong contrast to the tempters who appeared to that unpurified
clairvoyance which was left over from the Atlantean period. It had to be
made clear to the ancient Persians that in man's soul, so far as it is
engaged in work and endeavor in the physical sense world, a conflict is
going on between the power of the Light God and his adversary. It had also
to be shown them how man must act so as not to be engulfed by Ahriman, and
how to turn his influence to good through the power of the Light God.

The third era of post-Atlantean civilization began among the peoples who
finally gathered together in western Asia and northern Africa after the
migrations. This civilization was developed among the Chaldeans,
Babylonians, and Assyrians on the one hand, and among the Egyptians on the
other. In these peoples the taste for the physical world of sense
developed in a different form from that which it had taken among the
Persians. The former had acquired the quality of mind lying at the root of
the faculty of thought which has arisen since Atlantean times, that is,
the gift of reason. Indeed, it was the mission of post-Atlantean humanity
to develop within itself those faculties of the soul which it was possible
to acquire through the newly awakened powers of thought and feeling. These
powers cannot be directly stimulated from the spiritual world, but result
from man's observing the sense-world, becoming familiar with it, and
working upon it. The conquest of the physical world of sense by these
human faculties must be regarded as the mission of post-Atlantean
humanity. Step by step that conquest proceeded. It is true that even in
ancient India, man, through the condition of his soul, was already turned
toward that world; but he still looked upon it as illusion, and his spirit
turned to the supersensible world. In the Persian race, on the contrary,
there sprang up the endeavour to conquer the physic