It is explained here in the first lecture of "Michaelmas and the Soul Forces of Man" that when Michael won the War in Heaven, which occurred between 1841 and 1879, and then cast down to Earth a group of Ahrimanic spirits, that He also sacrificed a measure of His Being by impressing His image in the human etheric body, and thus creating a shield and a sword as a kind of magnetic center against these Ahrimanic spirits being able to gain any kind of foothold in further contracting the etheric body. Michael's more intimate relationship with the individual human spirit also begins here in 1879 with this victory and the New Michael Age.
yes, it's not expressly stated in the German but I wanted to emphasize the rekindling of the inner light, and only what has first dwindled can be rekindled
I don't see the light as having ever dwindled, and especially through Michael, who now lives within the individual human spirit since 1879:
“The knowledge of Nature acquired during the age of materialism can be comprehended in the soul's inner life in a spiritual way. Michael, who has spoken ‘from above,’ can be heard ‘from within,’ where he will begin to dwell. Speaking more imaginatively this may be expressed as follows: The Sun-nature which for long periods man received only from the Cosmos, will begin to shine within his soul. He will learn to speak of an ‘inner Sun.’ This will not prevent him from knowing himself to be an earthly being during his life between birth and death; but he will recognise that this his earthly being is led by the Sun. He will learn to feel as a truth, that a being places him, in his inner nature, into a light which shines indeed upon earthly existence but which is not enkindled within it. In the dawn of the Michael Age it may still seem as if all this were very far remote from humanity; but ‘in the spirit’ it is near; it only needs to be ‘seen.’ A very great deal depends upon this fact, that the ideas of man do not merely remain ‘thinking,’ but in thought develop sight.”
The Condition of the Human Soul Before the Dawn of the Michael Age - GA 26
It is explained here in the first lecture of "Michaelmas and the Soul Forces of Man" that when Michael won the War in Heaven, which occurred between 1841 and 1879, and then cast down to Earth a group of Ahrimanic spirits, that He also sacrificed a measure of His Being by impressing His image in the human etheric body, and thus creating a shield and a sword as a kind of magnetic center against these Ahrimanic spirits being able to gain any kind of foothold in further contracting the etheric body. Michael's more intimate relationship with the individual human spirit also begins here in 1879 with this victory and the New Michael Age.
https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA223/English/AP1946/MiSoul_index.html
The dying light?
yes, it's not expressly stated in the German but I wanted to emphasize the rekindling of the inner light, and only what has first dwindled can be rekindled
I don't see the light as having ever dwindled, and especially through Michael, who now lives within the individual human spirit since 1879:
“The knowledge of Nature acquired during the age of materialism can be comprehended in the soul's inner life in a spiritual way. Michael, who has spoken ‘from above,’ can be heard ‘from within,’ where he will begin to dwell. Speaking more imaginatively this may be expressed as follows: The Sun-nature which for long periods man received only from the Cosmos, will begin to shine within his soul. He will learn to speak of an ‘inner Sun.’ This will not prevent him from knowing himself to be an earthly being during his life between birth and death; but he will recognise that this his earthly being is led by the Sun. He will learn to feel as a truth, that a being places him, in his inner nature, into a light which shines indeed upon earthly existence but which is not enkindled within it. In the dawn of the Michael Age it may still seem as if all this were very far remote from humanity; but ‘in the spirit’ it is near; it only needs to be ‘seen.’ A very great deal depends upon this fact, that the ideas of man do not merely remain ‘thinking,’ but in thought develop sight.”
The Condition of the Human Soul Before the Dawn of the Michael Age - GA 26