Originally posted in German on 10th August 2026
What does inversion of truth mean in the context of black magic?
According to the spiritual scientific observations presented here, black magic does not become apparent primarily in outer rituals or secret practices. It begins where human perception distances itself from truth and realities are turned into their opposite. Insights are no longer objectively related to their object; instead, they become increasingly influenced by desire, subjective mental pictures and attachments to groups.1)Both the introductory summary and the questions and answers at the end of the article were added for the online edition. The main text is by Heinz Grill.
This is the fourth part of the article series. In the first part the meaning and the essential ways that black magic works were presented; in the second part the criteria for recognising black magic; and in the third part the mechanisms of black magic.
The example Stairway to Heaven
About 35 years ago, an anthroposophical speaker gave a talk about black magic at a conference. He referred to the rock band Led Zeppelin, who composed the song Stairway to Heaven.2)Stairway to heaven was released in 1971 on the album, Led Zeppelin !V. At the beginning of the 1980s, public claims were made, particularly in the USA, that if it was played backwards in certain passages satanic messages could be heard. Led Zeppelin denied an intentionally encoded, backward message. He said that the song could be played backwards, revealing a message that paved the way to hell. He suggested that hidden in the composition was something satanic and that the band was indeed involved in black magic. Through listening to Stairway to Heaven, the other message caused a black magical darkening of the soul. The anthroposophical speaker comprehended the fundamental concept, that all black magic practices actually must invariably employ the being of inversion, so that a disturbance in the astral body can arise, and people are brought into confusion. The unconscious should become stimulated in order to bring to light a different reality from the one corresponding to the physical and metaphysical circumstances. The example of the rock group Led Zeppelin, however, is not suitable because there is no clear expression of the message supposedly contained in the song, and in any case, people rarely went to the effort of playing the song backwards. The referral to Satan, often made in regard to this pop group, is a trivial one and does not correspond to the actual circumstances. Nevertheless, the anthroposophical speaker had pointed to a noteworthy and genuine technique, namely that of inversion. This must, however, happen in relation to a truth and the human conscience and not in an outer musical composition that is not easily accessible nor readily apparent.
The inversion of perpetrator and victim
A particularly effective form on the path to black magic – a way to gain energy and quietly immerse oneself in a certain subjective reality – is the inversion of the victim-perpetrator-status. Someone learns to get through life better playing the role of a victim, thereby gaining energy through the attention of others and creating advantages for themselves out of it. In courtrooms, at police stations, in self-help groups, and by spoilt individuals, this behaviour is often carried out to the point of tearful ecstasy. There are also politicians who maintain their standing in the world solely by draping themselves in the mantle of victimhood and with this compel support from others. The people, who launch insidious and underhand attacks on this cowardly basis, realise how with this attitude of consciousness of being a victim they can polarise others. They become covert perpetrators, cowardly straps that bind astral forces. Instead of conscientiously confronting their own actions, temptations and sense of responsibility, these people ceaselessly project blame on others, alter reality and secretly gain energy from doing so. Through these actions, these weak individuals subvert the Self – not only in terms of the courageous act of standing up to face reality, but also in the sense of hidden lies, which they employ to the point of secretly stoking aggression, krodha, towards others.
The inversion of spiritual ideals
The classic inversion that paves the way to subjective power within the darkness of the soul arises from the false interpretation and misuse of spiritual texts and of words originally shaped by an ideal vision. A sense of group identity and claims of participation and leadership within communities – are necessary prerequisites for this process. Today, many esoteric and religious groups function as modern cult-like movements; precisely because of their group networks they fall prey to a kind of delusion, a form of moha. These people are not actively carrying out black magic; they may well live for the good, yet they cannot set free any force for real culture or for peace.
Take, for example, the ideal of fraternity first articulated during the French revolution.3)Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité (liberty, equality and fraternity) became the classic motto of the French Republic. The three terms became firmly linked in the form known today during the French revolution and its later acceptance. Is this word truly understood and in a soul sense experienced with complete closeness, empathy, healthy perception, genuine connection and content-related scope? For instance, when groups come together and share all goods, one might be led to believe that this ideal of fraternity has already been realised. In most cases, however, it is merely another, more modern form of communism, one in which individualism is lost. The situation only becomes critical when people propagate fraternity and use hidden forms of encroachment to bind other people to themselves through the ideology. Through such people, who are going about spreading lies, the ideal in the word takes on a materialistic character or one that is caught up in emotion. Those who share about and submit to the group are deemed ‘fraternal’. Whereas those who take an individual stance and wish to uphold their ideals independent from the group are labelled as materialistic or reprehensible. Really good, lived content that is connected to the human Self would lead to fraternity and to sharing. It would foster economic balance. Yet, when people make use of words they neither embody nor comprehend, they begin to emanate totalitarian traits and exert energetic dominance over others.
In this sense, the following religious sentence is inverted into a grotesque opposite: ‘Where two or three people are gathered in my name, I am amongst them.4) Matthew 18,20. The quote is used in the article to illustrate how spiritual content can be claimed due to wanting to belong. Christ appears to be present everywhere, in all communities who merely use His name. These movements have reached a peculiar cult-status. They are, in effect, hidden cult movements because people call on ideals while completely evading the responsibility of developing a real insight into the scriptures. This is why there are so many enlightened and awakened people, who deem themselves better than the warmongers and materialists of the present age. These people that take the scriptures so trivially, claiming them for themselves and for their sense of group identity, feel themselves to be better than the average person while failing to notice how they secretly serve as instruments for ideologies. What does this really look like in the soul and what is the relationship like to the spiritual source? These questions must occupy a spiritual teacher and anyone striving on a spiritual path.
A mistake that often occurs today – and everyone must seriously ask themselves about this – is that people believe they know Christ and have already spiritually ‘arrived’ simply through the sense of belonging to a group. This superficial approach and the fast, emotionally driven interpretation of texts forms, as a result, the tragedy of the ‘first inversion’: believing oneself to be with Christ while others are not yet there. Still, such simple and superficial claims of belonging do not in themselves amount to an act of black magic. Although, these increasing claims to the truth take a truly tragic turn if others are excluded, disparaged as a ‘sect’ and if claims are even made of being a great saviour of spiritual paths, values and an ideal future.
In many communities that exclude others, the principle of fraternity is gravely abused. The terms that once embodied an ideal, and were connected with visions of an ascending humanity, plunge into the abyss of kāma – the tempting, encroaching and emotionally charged desire. As the Bhagavad Gita expresses, out of this kāma arises krodha: aggression, whether overt or subtle. Ultimately, kāma, that hidden desire in people tends to descend again into moha: a state of total delusion. It is within this moha that low magic effects can arise.5)c.f. Bhagavad Gītā 2, 62-63. This passage describes a series of consequences starting from the thought activity with the sense object – through attachment (saṅga) and desire (kāma) to anger (krodha), delusion (saṃmoha), loss of memory and ultimately to loss of the ability to differentiate.
The inverted movement of the astral body
In black magic, the movements of the astral body, with its deep drives of the will and the potential to develop a sense for truth, do not take the path towards spiritual statements, the Gospel texts, the foundations of yoga, Rudolf Steiner’s core thoughts or the great philosophers. Instead, the movements turn in a curve at a carefully chosen speed, miss their aims, and end up in subjective perception. Objects are no longer recognised, the thinking begins to be governed by the will or by kāma, by desire. The unusual thing is that people carrying out black magic always believe themselves to be on the right side and within the group this is mutually confirmed, everyone has the correct opinion and it is only ‘the others’ who are causing the disturbances. The sun loses light while the moon desirously takes the cosmos inside itself. The expansion of light and of genuine perception would be the fundamental principle of the astral body, and this founds itself in its most noble disposition, in the tireless pursuit of truth.
The eyes look out of the car window and see a bird; in reality, however, they are only distracted by a speck on the glass and consequently the consciousness mistakes the fleck of dirt on the glass for a bird. The dynamic strength that the astral body requires for the pursuit of knowledge and development of truth is already inherently weak in people today and therefore, many are susceptible to suggestive and manipulative influences. Those who derive power from the weakness of others become the initiators of a kind of cult movement characteristic of the modern time and the near future. Although many esoteric groups, yoga events and anthroposophical initiatives aspire to embody these ideals, they more often than not harbour a perilous potential for magic; this arises because they fall under the sway of hidden gurus, who are unknowingly active in the groups, losing sight of the true ideals found in the texts and the perspective waiting to be developed.
A directly visible inverted position, like the headstand, for example, is a conscious act. People could believe that when they stand on their heads, they are also preparing to invert reality. Strictly speaking, however, those that soundly carry out an asana, guide the body more through conscious action and create a form that is both appropriate and aesthetic. The practice of asana is therefore very beneficial for self-observation and self-discovery because it reveals an inner personal attitude in an outer, visible and pictorial reality.
Cult movements are very widespread today due to their superficial nature, even though these movements often do not carry out any overt cult practices. The more they fail to engage in the actual, intensive researching of truth and courageous development of truth, the more their most valuable possession, the force of Self, is diminished within their group, and one-sidedly accompanied by emotionally attached energies. Consequently, on the one hand a world of false belief-claims and emotional-esoteric attachment, while on the other, there are wars and an exhausting lack of economic resources. The scale of this polarity is greater than in earlier times, and the two poles reinforce one another: materialism drives people to seek refuge in groups, while the groups on a spiritual path attract the very materialism that offers no way out.
Black magic intensifies when a spiritual threshold is experienced
In his book ‘The knowledge of the higher worlds and its attainment’ Rudolf Steiner mentions that after people have been involved in a certain way of practice, they are confronted by the so-called guardian of the threshold.6) Rudolf Steiner: The knowledge of higher worlds and how it is achieved. GA10 chapters ‘The guardian of the threshold’ and ‘Life and death – the great guardian of the threshold.’ This threshold, well known to any spiritual student who has diligently pursued the path of practice for some years, demands the most careful examination of consciousness and future initiatives based on that process. Individuals can no longer simply follow old habits, nor should they give any credence to ideologies that they have previously relied on. According to whether this examination of conscience and the subsequent work of realisation are carried out positively, that means with diligence and a discerning view of truth, white magic and the force of the soul can be expressed in its full capacity. However, if this conscientious engagement is lacking, the door and gate of black magic are thrown wide open. The result is then always withdrawal, finding fault in others and the individuals life paths will not be carried out in accordance with the necessary obligations towards spirituality and the shaping of societal life. From this critical juncture, where some individuals find themselves in their development, black magic can take its most crude and inevitable course.
Drawing: Anne-Michèle Hambye
What happens after death to those that have practiced black magic?
‘It is not I, it is my non-I’ – this forms the fundamental formula enabling an inversion of energy in which the weak become healthy and strong, while the virtuous are driven to exhaustion. Furthermore, Paul’s words, in the sense of experiencing Christ, could be inverted: “It is not I but the Christ that is in me.”7)cf. Galatians 2:20: “… it is no longer I who live, but Christ (who) lives in me …” The wording in the text conveys the essence of Paul’s thoughts. Yet, it is precisely this confusion that takes place regarding Christ, for upon reaching the guardian of the threshold, karmic forces rise in the consciousness of aspiring individuals. It is the lower, unredeemed parts of the soul, the deceased with their suffering, that step into the place of the coming Christ and, tragically, instil in people a tempting and obscuring force, moha. These parts provide a form of validation that, however, no longer stems from true spiritual vision and a consciously comprehensible, logical reality. They give individuals great power, and in most cases, others will even fear them. Such people appear more physical, more bound to the material than even the staunchest advocates of materialist theories could ever be. Through black magic, the lowest parts of the unredeemed world, that is, the after-world of the deceased, enter the earthly sphere and then draw on the will-energy of the people, who have arrived at the threshold of their own-self.
Those who practice black magic semi-consciously through emotional and good energetic attunement or even in the powerful and fuelled fervour of their own self-deception abandon the process of developing their Self. Having reached a point where they should be conscious of their obligation, they instead succumb to kāma, the drive of the unconscious. The less there is an intended aim to harm others, the easier it is for individuals who are currently on the path of withdrawal, accumulating advantages and energy, to turn back. However, matters become more difficult, when the will-energy on a spiritual path is deliberately employed with elite arrogance for it operates like an unstoppable drive, devoid of reason and impervious to criticism. In the life after death, however, black magicians can no longer help themselves because, through their non-Selves they are in endless isolation, as if paralysed in their insufficient ability to relate. The soul persists in the after worlds but it is totally tuned down to the physical. ‘Blackness’ is not only a term for a tempting force; it is a reality that ultimately envelops and constricts the soul in the afterlife. Fundamentally, however, a soul seeks to enter into relationship, both in earthly existence and in life after death. In this world, the soul can establish relationships through the body and its senses. In the afterlife, it can determine its relational state only through the light that it itself has generated. Black magicians want to enter into relationship in accordance with their souls’ needs, yet all light is lacking. Only when pure and free insights arise from a source of genuine spirituality does the light reach the heavy astral abysses where the souls of those who practiced black magic continue to exist. The feeling in the after worlds is akin to being hemmed in by a wall at the front and sides, rendering them unable to move either their limbs or senses. The advantages that black magicians cowardly secure for themselves in earthy life carry terrible consequences over into the existence in the afterlife.
Unfortunately, this description is very difficult to stomach for everyday thinking and for those who believe in the good. However, within the spiritual school it should be well-known that people cannot entirely close their eyes to these phenomena occurring within world creation.
The article highlights the following questions:
What does Heinz Grill mean by the ‘inversion of truth’?
‘Inversion’ refers to a process in which perception no longer leads to the object and to insight in an unbiased manner. Personal desires, group affiliations, or preconceived notions increasingly dictate how reality is interpreted. Consequently, objective truth is overlaid by a subjectively created reality.
What role does the astral body play in black magic?
In the article, the astral body is described as the bearer of deep impulses of will and of feelings for truth that are capable of development. Its healthy movement is directed toward perception, insight, and the search for truth. In the event of an inversion, this movement misses its mark and increasingly results in subjective perception.
What do kāma, krodha, and moha signify?
Kāma denotes desire, krodha anger or aggression, and moha delusion. The Bhagavad Gītā describes a connection between these movements of the soul. In the article, they serve to characterise the progression from desire through aggression to increasing delusion.
What does Rudolf Steiner mean with “guardian of the threshold”?
Rudolf Steiner describes the guardian of the threshold in the context of spiritual development and the entry into supersensible realms of knowledge. Heinz Grill takes up this term and links the corresponding stage of development with a necessary examination of conscience: according to his account, a persons subsequent inner orientation determines whether this spiritual development leads to greater truthfulness or to a problematic reversal.
Anmerkungen
| ⇑1 | Both the introductory summary and the questions and answers at the end of the article were added for the online edition. The main text is by Heinz Grill. |
|---|---|
| ⇑2 | Stairway to heaven was released in 1971 on the album, Led Zeppelin !V. At the beginning of the 1980s, public claims were made, particularly in the USA, that if it was played backwards in certain passages satanic messages could be heard. Led Zeppelin denied an intentionally encoded, backward message. |
| ⇑3 | Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité (liberty, equality and fraternity) became the classic motto of the French Republic. The three terms became firmly linked in the form known today during the French revolution and its later acceptance. |
| ⇑4 | Matthew 18,20. The quote is used in the article to illustrate how spiritual content can be claimed due to wanting to belong. |
| ⇑5 | c.f. Bhagavad Gītā 2, 62-63. This passage describes a series of consequences starting from the thought activity with the sense object – through attachment (saṅga) and desire (kāma) to anger (krodha), delusion (saṃmoha), loss of memory and ultimately to loss of the ability to differentiate. |
| ⇑6 | Rudolf Steiner: The knowledge of higher worlds and how it is achieved. GA10 chapters ‘The guardian of the threshold’ and ‘Life and death – the great guardian of the threshold.’ |
| ⇑7 | cf. Galatians 2:20: “… it is no longer I who live, but Christ (who) lives in me …” The wording in the text conveys the essence of Paul’s thoughts. |