personal and cultural renewal in the 21st century
100 Years of the Art of Eurythmy
Giles Deleuze’s Philosophy of Freedom
“That Good May Become”: a special section to prepare our August conference
Color & Music through the Circle of the Year Three courses with Manfred Bleffert
June 16-22 Instrument Building
The breathing process of the earth and of the cosmos as a musical base for the development of new instruments and musical form.
June 25-29 New Music Improvisation
July 2-6 Color & Tone in Relation to Rudolf Steiner’s Soul Calendar
Manfred Bleffert has dedicated his life to developing new music. His work includes a unique approach to graphic notation, composition and instrument building. His research is broad and profound. His compositions are improvisational and unique. He is a musician, a visual artist, and a dynamic and inspiring teacher.
July 14-18 Five Days of Experimental Work with Color, Light, Music & Puppetry with Laura Summer, Nathaniel Williams, Faye Shapiro & Marisa Michelson
July 23-27 Seeing the Word through Painting A workshop with Laura Summer
Working with poems & stories, watercolor, pastel, charcoal, and collage, we will relax our expectations, playfully manipulate our media, and experience the realm of creation to develop skills for further work.
July 23-27 Orientation Toward an Inner Voice Vocal experimentation with composed and improvised music with Marisa Michelson & Faye Shapiro
ALL COURSES WILL BE HELD in Columbia County, NY, two hours north of New York City. The work of Free Columbia is based on an understanding of the importance of creating a free cultural space. There are no set tuitions, rather we offer suggested donation amounts based on what it costs to run courses. It is also possible to make a monthly pledge to support Free Columbia rather than making a one-time donation. In addition to the suggested donation, a commodity fee of $180 will be charged to participants in the instrument building workshop. This fee enables you to take home the instrument you build.
Five-day course suggested donation: $250 – $450 Instrument building fee: $180 All supplies are included but not housing or food.
For information: Laura Summer at 518-672-7302
laurasummer@taconic.net www.freecolumbia.org
the New York Branch of the Anthroposophical Society in America
138 West 15th Street, NY, NY 10011 (212) 242-8945
lectures, workshops, art exhibits, festivals, study groups
Apr 14, Sat 7pm: Auditioning for Antichrist - Eugene Schwartz Pt 3: Adolf Hitler
Apr 15, Sun 2-4pm: Art Opening: John Fornieri & Friends
Apr 16, Mon 7pm: Celebrate Eurythmy, 100 Years! - Linda Larson
Apr 18, Wed 7pm: Evolution of Religions in World History: “Islam & the Crusades” - David Anderson
Apr 19, Thu 7pm: Moving in the Golden Mean - eurythmy with Brigida Baldszun (Pt 1 of 5, continues weekly on Thursdays)
Apr 21, Sat 1:30pm: Sacred Symbolic & Creative GeometryJohn Lloyd, Karl Lorenzen; Pt 1: Language of Shapes, Numbers & Patterns (continues on Weds at 7pm: Apr 25, May 23, June 20)
Apr 22, Sun 1-4pm: Painting the Spring Tree - Phoebe Alexander (Painting the Summer Tree: Sun, June 24)
Apr 27, Fri 6pm: Working with the Six Basic Exercises (from Knowledge of Higher Worlds), a new monthly study - Sarah Hearn
Apr 28, Sat 11am-6pm : Rudolf Steiner’s Life and Work, an all day workshop - David Anderson
Apr 29, Sun 7:30pm: AR Gurney’s play “Love Letters” - an encore performance by Dorothy Emmerson & Fred Dennehy
May 2, Wed 7pm: Anthroposophy Down to Basics: Evolution (Sorry, no gorillas!) (continues May 9, “The Cosmic Christ”)
May 4, Fri 7pm: Member’s Evening (welcoming all Anthroposophical Society members, local and global; next evening June 1)
May 5, Sat 11am-6pm: Rudolf Steiner’s Mystery Dramas, Karma & Reincarnation - Barbara Renold, Laurie Portocarrero
May 12, Sat 7pm: Auditioning for Antichrist - Eugene Schwartz
Pt 4: Joseph Stalin
May 16, Wed 7pm: Evolution of Religions in World History: “The Goetheanum” - David Anderson (Pt. 10: June 13)
See full details at asnyc.org
Hundreds of titles by Rudolf Steiner plus many other authors on spiritual research, holistic therapies, Waldorf education, the arts, Goethean science, biodynamic agriculture, personal growth and more
Serve the future by teaching the children of today through Waldorf Education. Become a Waldorf Teacher by completing a Part-Time Program in Waldorf Early Childhood or Elementary Teacher Education at Sunbridge Institute.
Now Accepting Applications for Teacher Education Programs Enrolling Summer 2012
Now Accepting Registration for Summer Series 2012
Courses in Professional Development and Continuing Education
Details at www.Sunbridge.edu
In collaboration with the University of the West of England we are delighted to announce the first Masters of Science in Practical Skills Therapeutic Education ©
Commencing 28 th August 2012, the MSc programme will delivered by the Crossfields Institute Hiram Education and Research Department. It will be based in the Field Centre a new bespoke campus for practical and academic education and research, Gloucestershire, UK (www.thefieldcentre.org.uk)
"The Field Centre represents an essential innovation in interdisciplinary, spiritually based research, teaching, and learning. By intention and design, it seeks to weave together an ethical relationship to the Earth with a deeply therapeutic education and an exploration of human consciousness as loc us for true freedom and ethical action grounded in love.
Self knowledge, stewardship of the Earth and care for each other will, at the Field Centre, become the three strands that, when braided together renew higher and further education."
Professor Arthur Zajonc, Amherst University Patron of the Field Centre.
This Masters of Science programme is designed for professionals in anthroposophic health and social care, curative and therapeutic education, arts, crafts and commerce. It offers specialism in the method of Practical Skills Therapeutic Education.
The programme offers 70% experiential, work based learning in 8 different locations across England and Wales. Individual modular and work based pathways and subject specialisation are available for professionals who wish to develop their practice in their workplace.
Aims and rationale
“There is no more beautiful symbol of human freedom than the human arm and hand.”
The MSc in Practical Skills Therapeutic Education aims to equip learners with the know ledge, understanding and skills to set up, manage and/or teach in organisations wishing to implement or integrate this method. The overall learning outcomes focus on the development of:
Rudolf Steiner quoted in Carlgren Education Towards Freedom.
1. A Practical Skills Therapeutic Education curriculum for people with special educational needs.
2. A therapeutic and educational residential care component .
3. Tools for leadership and management in organisations
The rationale for the combination of these themes is to develop expertise in integrative and holistic education, care and management within special educational needs provisions.
“Today, trust, training and practising sense perception is st ill a quite new and challenging way of research.
The Field Centre is dedicated to this path of research and it has the potential to become one of the centres of phenomenon based science in the western English speaking world. Therefore I support this projec t with my best thoughts and the warmth of my heart.” Johannes Kühl, Director of the Natural Science Section at the Goetheanum.
For further information on the programme structure, entry requirements, fees and accommodation, please contact Nick McCordall, Programme Coordinator, Crossfields Institute nick@crossfieldsinstitute.com ( ++44 (0) 1453 808118 www.crossfieldsinstitute.com/education_and_training/msc programme/
37
54 What’s Happening in the Anthroposophical Society? by Marian León Portland Salute to MariJo Rogers; General Secretary’s Travels; CAO in Tulane Panel Discussion; John Price Joins Society Staff; Library Advisors, Donors Thanked; Central Region Happenings; Introducing Dennis Dietzel;
57 New Member Profile: The Helper from Hamburg, by Margaret Runyon New Members of the Anthroposophical Society; Members Who Have Died
Welcome to our slightly time-shifted spring issue, which you saw last year several weeks before spring arrived. For 2012 we’re arriving more with the season.
This issue has two special sections. One celebrates the 100th anniversary of eurythmy (pp.13-28). Maria Ver Eecke, editor of the Eurythmy Association of North America, deserves credit as co-editor, having organized the larger part of this section which, besides eurythmy, is full of insights about education, therapies, esoterica, physiology, and personal striving. (And the Soul Calendar ? Herbert Hagens’ guide is on page 63, with much to come in the summer issue.) Special thanks also to Ella Lapointe, an anthroposophically trained artist and illustrator in the Harlemville area, who gave this section its beautiful treatment and the issue its wonderful cover.
The second special section (pp.36-53) serves to prepare for the Anthroposophical Society in America’s August conference. Even if you are one of our newer readers and not familiar with the ASA, its mission and history, do take a look, and be sure to read the final part, a key lecture by Rudolf Steiner. If you are a Society member, we encourge you to look at this section immediately.
Here we might admit to a touch of shyness about calling our publication being human when it is centered on a single social-cultural movement. Just before press time, we were able to view live and online a fascinating day-long conference from San Francisco called “being human 2012.” The contributions ranged from very good to awesome; yet each came toward the human being from somewhere else: from brain science, from meditative practice, from the foibles of primates, from the disputes of academic philosophy. Rudolf Steiner’s “anthroposophy” begins from our innermost humanness: our complex constitution, our unique human evolution and consciousness, our integration into the cosmos. It is a holistic discipline
meant to help refocus civilization around the human being. So hearing the conference’s brilliant talks about parts and aspects related to the human reassured us that being human , however modest, is quite properly named. Finally, last fall’s issue featured a long, challenging lecture by Israeli philosopher-anthroposophist Yeshayahu Ben-Aharon. It advised us bluntly that anthroposophy’s core cultural efforts were defeated early in the 20th century and need to be renewed so as to engage cultural developments like the recent French philosophers. Frederick Amrine, who a year ago wrote us a great essay on Rudolf Steiner’s cultural significance, has ably taken up the challenge in “Gilles Deleuze’s Philosophy of Freedom” (p.29). It brings the earlier article into even clearer focus.
This issue contains two reviews of books available from the Rudolf Steiner Library. Sara Ciborski reviews The Path of The Soul after Death, by Peter Selg. As Ms. Ciborski points out, Rudolf Steiner viewed building a community that bridges the abyss that separates the living from the dead as anthroposophy’s “most important task.” Mr. Selg’s book, as the review shows, treats not only the narrative of the path of the soul after death, but highlights practical suggestions for bridging that abyss. Among them is the creation of a thought/feeling image of the deceased. Depending upon the stage of I-consciousness that has been attained, this image becomes an organ of the spiritual world through which the deceased is able to assist in shaping events on earth.
Another understanding that may be new to readers, as Ms. Ciborski points out, is the importance of dying itself, and the beholding of the physical body at the moment of death, an experience that fills us with the perception that
Sample copies of being human are sent to friends who contact us (address below). It is sent free to members of the Anthroposophical Society in America (visit anthroposophy.org/membership.html or call 734.662.9355).
To contribute articles or art please email editor@anthroposophy.org or write Editor, 1923 Geddes Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48104. To advertise contact Cynthia Chelius at 734-662-9355 or email cynthia@anthroposophy.org
we are in the world for a purpose that only we can fulfill. We understand this when we perceive the emptiness that is the space once occupied by our physical body. Also in this issue is a review by Keith Francis of The Prince of Virtuosos: A Life of Walter Rummel, American Pianist, by Charles Timbrell. Rummel was as appreciated by the masters of his day as he is unknown by today’s general public. It was Claude Debussy who named him “the prince of virtuosos.” Mr. Francis points out that Rudolf Steiner was the single greatest influence on Walter Rummel’s life, but it is a matter of some doubt how much Rummel understood of Steiner. The story of Rummel’s life is a fascinating one, oscillating between the best and the worst influences of his time (1887-1953). A CD included with the book gives us “a good idea of Rummel’s fine technique, even touch, and beautiful phrasing” but does not contain “large-scale works that would have allowed us to experience the command and musical structure for which [he] was often praised.” For those with an interest in modern art in general, biography, classical music, and the great pianists in particular, this book, as Mr. Francis’s review shows so well, will be of great interest.
CLASSICS FROM THE
Robert McDermott series editorAlongside the basic books, these “Classics” collections explore the tremendous cultural and social innovations of anthroposophy and its contemporary development in North America.
Welcome to the first “being human digest”. This new section will pull together news and ideas of interest from the wide range of holistic and human-centered cultural initiatives inspired by anthroposophy and similar impulses. Items are brief, suggestions are welcome. Please write to editor@anthroposophy.org or “Editor, being human, 1923 Geddes Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI, 48104.”
We will make occasional requests. With the documentary “The Challenge of Rudolf Steiner” joining “Queen of the Sun” and a string of outstanding films, we would like to make a list as a common resource. Send names and notes of films and filmmakers, artistic or documentary, worth watching for how they engage the human heart and mind and the cosmic spirit.
The story of the last six months, still rippling out in national and local media, is high-tech parents who choose “low-tech” schools for their kids. They recognize that pushing small children into technology may gain little for their grown-up capacities—but may block other opportunities: to socialize and develop imagination in play, to enhance the whole spectrum of human intelligences with arts and crafts, and to open the mind with wonder through direct, creative engagements with nature. — All the media attention has been handled gracefully by parents, teachers, and kids, and clearly the message resonates. One boy announces, “This is the education of the future!” Well, if one asks what kind of “technology” could sustain a lawful cosmos, a planet full of life, amazing human individuals and societies and culture—then is it Waldorf schools that are really teaching the high tech?
“AWSNA is proud to officially endorse Screen-Free Week (April 30-May 6), the annual celebration where children, families, schools, and communities turn off screens and turn on life.” www.screenfree.org
Excerpts from a wonderful long letter:
“Dear friends from the world, Happy Chinese New Year. We just got the elementary school license for Chengdu Waldorf School. Chengdu Waldorf School has been operated 7 years half legal and not full licensed. We got
licenses for our kindergarten and training school in the beginning, not a full license for the grade school... The government could have closed down our grade school any time. We had been on the thin ice for the past few years....
“It is a miracle what we have achieved so far. For many years, we have been in a ‘chicken and egg business.’ The Chinese Education Authority thinks a good school should be big. They are closing down small schools and consolidating. Children can no longer walk to small schools nearby. If a new school starts, in order to get license for schooling, it needs to be big.
“Our school grew double in size each year. We now have over 250 children and 40 teachers, 4 full time staff organizing the training in the teacher training center. We needed to renovate or lease new classrooms each year till two years ago. Then, we decided to build new standard size classrooms. With support from some parents of school and Freunde der Erziehungskunst in Germany we have signed a long term lease for the land and built a new school building with 8 standard size classrooms.
“…During this period of time, school district officers came to visit many times, each time they brought different requirements. However, we have been making friends with some of the officers. In fact, the government officers really appreciate what we have achieved and value what we have been carrying. The chief officer of education department agreed that they would keep our school as a unique experimental practice.
“However, we still need to work hard to close the gap between the state curriculum and Waldorf curriculum. Our teachers started working on curriculum research two years ago. We have three former school headmasters and some public school teachers trained as Waldorf teachers in our school. We all worked very hard to compare state curriculum and Waldorf curriculum. Finally, education department accepted our application. ...But the chief officer who would sign the paper suddenly asked: ‘If this school will run into religion-related problem, who will be responsible for it?’ The meeting became silent. They had been suspecting Waldorf school has religion background since the beginning.
“Then, we become bold again. We decided to help them clear the cloud. Zewu and Li took turns talking to all related officers. We invited them come to visit our school again and again showing them what we had done. The amount of trust needed to be built up was not an easy job. Finally, the deputy of the mayor of Chengdu understands Waldorf education and supports us....
“This hard work coming to the end only means that there are more new hard jobs just beginning... When we did not have a full license, we did not have to follow any requirement of the school authority; now we have to. There will be much more challenge for us in future which is keeping Waldorf spirit alive in such complex environment. There is great need for wisdom and courage for all of us….” — Harry, Zewu and Li, January 10, 2012
Waldorf and Service
AWSNA’s Service Weekend takes place April 19-22 in Kyle, SD, on Pine Ridge Reservation at the Lakota Waldorf School and the Oglala Lakota College. All alums are welcome: parents, teachers, board members, administrators, former and current students, and grandparents.
Life and Compost: Ann Arbor ReSkilling Festival
Ann Arbor Rudolf Steiner School is reclaiming community bonds in the form of the Ann Arbor ReSkilling Festival. “Reskilling” is all about sharing often abandoned skills for “resilient, low-energy living,” in a face-to-face community setting. Since 2009, people have gathered at the Rudolf Steiner high school twice a year for a day of free workshops and seminars on such abandoned skills as cattail mat weaving, composting, and canning fruits and vegetables. The idea of reskilling through community events is part of the world-wide transition movement, taking shape in all sorts of ways around the world. More at WhyWaldorfWorks.org
“Play is the fundamental equation that makes us human,” says Stuart Brown, the founder of the Californiabased National Institute for Play. “Its absence, in my opinion, is pathology.” In Waldorf Today e-news, Jan 30.
We finally met Edgard Gouveia Junior in San Francisco and Oakland, CA. Cynthia Hoven organized an evening panel of young activists and an afternoon workshop. At the Oakland workshop we saw Abraham Entin and Rachel Flug, among other old friends. Change activities should be free, fun, and fast, says Edgard, an architect and city planner turned peoplemover. Leslie Loy accurately described him in the Youth Section e-news as “a joy-filled and inspirational visionary, net-weaver and social activist.” He’s aims to engage a large part of humanity in free, fun, fast, and play-full culture change. In Oakland, simple games brought this hardshelled cynic into open-hearted and hopeful interest.
Edgard will be a main resource at Impulse Festival II: Metamorphosis, a “four-day community awakening” for “people of all ages” whose loose structure appeals especially to a lot of today’s young people. It’s April 26-29, at White Feather Ranch, in Placerville, northern California.
Heartbeet Conference #20
“Know Yourself and Change the World” takes place in Vermont May 26-27. Continuing with inner develop -
ment, it explores finding courage to begin (Joan of Arc for inspiration), connections between inner work and social justice and transformation, karma and reincarnation, the new clairvoyance, and more. www.heartbeet.org
Learn-Work-Share: Anthroposophic Medicine
Youth Conference, July 4-21, 2012
Applications were due end of February, but it’s worth noting this three-week conference. It offers a chance for 16-30-year-olds to learn more about anthroposophic medicine, hands-on. Attendance, room and board are all free. It’s a project of the Rudolf Steiner Health Clinic in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and 25-30 young people are expected to participate. The first week you learn basic anthroposophy, anthroposophic medicine, nursing care, therapies, nutrition, lifestyle, biodynamic agriculture, and community building. Then work at an anthroposophic health retreat. Or share healthy nutrition and lifestyle approaches with pre-teens. More at www.steinerhealth.org.
“What Moves You: Celebrating 100 Years of Eurythmy” from July 8 to August 5. Eighty young participants from all over the world doing the Fifth Symphony of Ludwig van Beethoven at two performances in Berlin, Germany. Think of that! www.whatmovesyou.de
The last BD Conference (at Threefold Educational Center, Chestnut Ridge, NY) still reverberates. Biodynamics continues building a rep as “beyond organics” or “what organic was supposed to be,” and integrating into
with presenters Robert Sardello, PhD, William Bento, PhD, Dennis Klocek, Orland Bishop, Cheryl Sanders-Sardello, PhD, David Tresemer, PhD, Brian Gray, and Gillian Schoemaker
Pre-registration is required by April 15. Meal and housing options are available. For more information or registration visit www.steinercollege.edu Rudolf
the big and increasingly passionate food and food rights movement. www.biodynamics.com
What might be termed a regulatory assault on the Zinniker farm in Wisconsin, the oldest biodynamic farm in the country, has been unfolding since 2010 in Canada, Wisconsin, and elsewhere, as a food rights movement. Despite consumers’ establishing mechanisms to their own cows (paying the farmers to tend them), local governments seem quite desperate to prevent even the cow owner from consuming raw milk. What are they thinking?? Among the Paul Reveres of the movement are Canadian Michael Schmidt and Wisconsinite Vernon Herschberger. www.farmfoodfreedom.org & biodynamicsbda.wordpress.com/2011/12/12/rawmilk-freedom-riders/
The most intimate concern
Health is the concern that touches us all, from time to time, most closely. Despite being the pioneer of complementary medicine, anthroposophically-extended medicine hasn’t yet achieved the recognition of Waldorf schools, biodynamic farms and foods, and Camphill
communities. The training of doctors is fundamental, of course, and another round of the “International Postgraduate Medical Training” (IPMT) is coming in May. IPMT organizer Dr. Alicia Landman sent us a letter responding to a recent article on the background and origins of anthroposophical medicine:
“I greatly appreciated Christopher Bamford’s beautifully written article in the Fall 2011 issue, on the importance of Steiner’s medical methodology as presented in 1920 in his first lecture course for doctors. Mr. Bamford could not have better set the stage. I hope we will have follow-up specifying how Steiner’s first medical course affects work with health and illness. Where is anthroposophic medicine now and how is it developing in its centennial decade? I would be glad to submit something and would love to see other physicians’ contributions.
“The Medical Section at the Goetheanum jointly with the U.S. Physicians’ Association for Anthroposophic Medicine (PAAM) offers training for physicians and other licensed prescribers (nurse-practitioners). Our upcoming IPMT training week, May 4th-11th, at Rudolf Steiner College, in Fair Oaks, CA, will engage newcomers as well as doctors with some experience, through eurythmy, medicinal plant study, close text study, and clinical sessions
seminar explores how human prenatal development expresses the essence of human spiritual unfoldment. Understanding the stages of embryological development provides a basis for therapeutic recognition of embryological forces in all later stages of life. This seminar is a rare opportunity to hear a world authority on modern embryology through a unique synthesis of scientific and spiritual principles.
on treatment of pain and of children’s behavioral problems. Michaela Glöckler will work with us each evening on the nature of health and illness, ethics, and the path of the physician. It’s an intensive week, but many of our doctors who come in weary, leave refreshed.
Alicia Landman-Reiner, MD, PAAM Education Director www.paam.net paamdrscourse@anthroposophy.orgFrom the dynamic folks in Santa Cruz, CA, we received this notice: “Did you know… that a number of anthroposophists have been researching issues related to drug and alcohol use for over 30 years? …that there are numerous drug/alcohol treatment centers in the world based on the anthroposophical view of the human being? …that there are currently no such treatment centers in the United States?
“A study group is beginning here in Santa Cruz County to explore initiating a drug and alcohol treatment center, based in anthroposophy, in our community. The purpose of this study is to gain a deeper understanding of how drugs and alcohol affect both the Individuality of the human being as well as our collective ability to address these challenges in a socially/ therapeutic man-
ner. The first book of study will be Drugs, A Danger for Human Evolution? by Dr. L.F.C. Mees.” — “Imagination Troubadour” Daniel Bittleston could connect you to more information: danielbittleston@hotmail.com
William Bento supplied notes for the conference May 11-15 in Fair Oaks, CA, at Rudolf Steiner College (details, see the ad on p.9). They are given in full in the “Articles” section at www.anthroposophy.org. An excerpt:
“This theme began with an intuition that a Renaissance is breaking into our time similar to what was launched by the Platonic Florentine Academy of the late 15th century. Although there was no such formal discipline as psychology at that time, there was an implicit focus on soul life. The need to re-engage with mystery wisdom as a source for the renewal of culture and an impetus to liberate minds from a dogmatic blindness of the prevailing Christian churches became the unwritten creed of the Platonic Florentine Academy. Today something like a re-emergence of this impulse exists within a small circle
A residential community for adults with developmental challenges
We are a Rudolf Steiner inspired residential community for and with adults with developmental challenges. Living in four extended-family households, forty people, some more challenged than others, share their lives, work and recreation within a context of care.
Daily contact with nature and the arts, meaningful and productive work in our homes, gardens and craft studios, and the many cultural and recreational activities provided, create a rich and full life.
• COMMUNITY SPIRIT •
• THE ARTS •
• MEANINGFUL WORK •
• RECREATION •
For information regarding placement possibilities, staff, apprentice or volunteer positions available, or if you wish to support our work, please contact us at:
PO Box 137
603-878-4796
• Temple, NH • 03084
• e-mail: lukas@monad.net
lukascommunity.org
I believe that miso belongs to the highest class of medicines, those which help prevent disease and strengthen the body through continued usage. . . Some people speak of miso as a condiment, but miso brings out the flavor and nutritional value in all foods and helps the body to digest and assimilate whatever we eat. . .
—Dr. Shinichiro Akizuki, Director, St Francis Hospital, Nagasaki
of creative individuals searching for ways to advance the life of soul in the spirit of Anthropos – Sophia....
“Seeing spirit in all matter of phenomena is for me beholding the sacred, uniting with the immanent divinity in all life upon the Earth. This perception must become a consistent attitude of gratitude and a feeling for the sacrament…the sacrament that makes all things sacred and whole once again. Out of this ideal I am seeking to join hands with those who are willing to explore what the new mystery language of Spirit Soul may be in vision and speech. The conference is one small step in this pursuit.”
We asked above for tips on films and filmmakers. Here we’ll mention Wim Wenders and his “Pina” in 3D, about the late Pina Bausch. The film conveyed a sense of an artistchoreographer creating a real space of freedom for other artist-dancers—in which she and they express something remarkable about the human place in the world. It may still be in theaters, and the 3D is stylistically appropriate.
Eurythmy: Hallelujah to the World
On May 27th, Whitsunday, we hope you can join a worldwide celebration of eurythmy. We invite as many people as possible to perform the “Hallelujah” exercise at exactly the same time, all around the world. “Hallelujah” was the first word made visible in Eurythmy by Lori Smits in 1912, under the direction of Rudolf Steiner. Wherever you are, on your own, or in a group, we hope that you will take part, knowing that possibly thousands of others around the globe are performing “Hallelujah” too. This is not a “flashmob” or spectacle to be videoed and put online, but an invitation to an “inner event”, to celebrate 100 years of eurythmy. The time to perform the exercise in each region is 7:00am East US; 12noon Ireland, UK; 13:00 Central Europe etc. Some will have to rise before the dawn to take part (4:00am US West Coast!) but we hope you will feel the gift you’re offering is worth the effort! This project is an initiative of Eurythmy Ireland.
Summer Festival: 100 Years of Eurythmy:
“You can only see clearly with the heart”
July 7-11, 2012, at the Goetheanum, Dornach, Switzerland, “You can only see clearly with the heart”—from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s story The Little Prince —is a truth that will be taken seriously. During this conference,
which is open to everyone interested in eurythmy, courses will be given for adults, children and eurythmists, as well as lectures on the pioneer eurythmists and on how eurythmy developed. A wide range of presentations, short performances, and evening programs conveys eurythmy in its diversity. We hope participants may receive sparks from the fire of the pioneers to carry through the present and into the future. www.goetheanum.org/4610.html
Eurythmy:
…will take place at Eurythmy Spring Valley and the Norwegian University College of Eurythmy in Oslo in 2012-14. If you would like more information, contact Coralee Schmandt ecoralees@gmail.com
Free Columbia: “Art–or Social–or Social Art?”
“Columbia” is a county in upstate New York, as well as an old name for the Western hemisphere, or the USA, or the guiding free spirit of this brave land. “Free” points to something without cost, and in Rudolf Steiner’s sense, to deeds done out of those ideals which one truly loves. The Free Columbia folks love art, community, and society, and have been combining arts, society, freedom, inspiration, and generosity in wonderful ways. See the left side of page 2 for their summer programs plus contact information for the year-round, tuition-free program.
From the RSF Social Finance e-newsletter: “January 3rd marked the first day that California businesses were able to register as Benefit Corporations! ... Among the first to elect benefit corporation status were Patagonia and long-time RSF office supply vendor, Give Something Back. Benefit corporations are a new type of corporation required to: a) have a mission to create material positive impact on society and the environment; b) consider nonfinancial interests when making decisions including employees, community, and the environment; and c) report annually on performance using a recognized third-party. California became the sixth state to pass benefit corporation legislation in October 2011, joining Maryland, New Jersey, Vermont, Virginia, and Hawaii. New York has since signed a similar law and legislation has been introduced in the District of Columbia, Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.... We believe this momentum represents the beginning of a transformation – one that will lead businesses to achieve deep social and environment impact.”
being human digest
This past December marked the 100th year since eurythmy, the new art of making language, music, and singing visible through beautiful, rhythmical gestures, was born! Since then, this beautiful art has been developed all over the world in many languages including German, English, Russian, French, Spanish, Japanese, and Chinese—even in dialects (especially for humorous pieces). Rudolf Steiner spoke about eurythmy as being like a winging bird, borne up out of anthroposophy. It had never been on earth before!
Here in North America, eurythmists joined together to form the Eurythmy Association of North America in 1979, at first from the east coast and then gradually across America, sending out a newsletter three times a year. We have all been very grateful for the continuing support and donations of the members of the Anthroposophical Society! Your continued and faithful backing has enabled the Association to bring workshops and conferences to different regions, and recently to bring the Foundation Stone Meditation in eurythmy to the east and west coasts.
We hope the following articles will give you a comprehensive picture of our art and inspire you to become engaged with eurythmy courses in your area. Celebrate with us, this 100th year of the young, new art of movement, bringing healing to all realms of social life today!
With gratitude and greetings,
Alice Stamm President,Eurythmy
Association of North America
by Leonore Russell
Editor’s note: We begin where many readers will have first encountered eurythmy, in a school...
One of the first questions parents ask when they come to learn about a Waldorf school for their child is about the movement art taught in most Waldorf schools: eurythmy. What is it? Why does my child have to do this? After many years of working as a eurythmy teacher and in Waldorf schools’ administration I find myself still answering these questions. Yet the answers grow and develop as the years pass and new knowledge both in science and education bring light to bear on the questions.
First of all, what is eurythmy? It is a movement art living in the family of movement arts, such as mime and ballet, yet standing midway between these two arts. It shares meaning and gesture with mime, yet it is married to sound rather than objects or recognizable actions and shares the moving-to-music and -words with dance, but seeks to follow the invisible movement within sound rather than move to it or juxtapose itself against it. It is the expression of the human soul through gesture and movement.
A student once asked: “Who thought this up?” after seeing the same gestures in the great art of the past. He had stumbled on the truth of the expressive gestures that artists, such as Giotto and Michelangelo, had mastered in their paintings. In the early part of the 20th century, Rudolf Steiner pointed us toward these gestures to learn their meaning and to find a new art of human movement. He worked first with a young girl and then an ever growing group of interested artists to develop this new art of movement.
Eurythmy begins with human speech. The center of movement is in the heart/larynx area of the body and the gestures flow into the hands and arms primarily, but encompass the whole human form. Its name, “eurythmy” means beautiful rhythm, or harmonious movement. Eurythmy began as a stage art, but soon people said, this is beautiful and health giving, shouldn’t we teach it to children? And so school or “pedagogical eurythmy” was born. It found a home in the Waldorf schools in Europe and later in the Americas. Then the question was asked, since this movement art expresses the whole human being, wouldn’t certain movements strengthen the internal organs and relate to illnesses? Curative or therapeutic eurythmy was then developed collaboratively by doctors and eurythmists basing their work on Steiner’s work in curative education. Unlike pedagogical eurythmy, therapeutic eurythmy is for a specific individual condition and is practiced usually one-to-one, rather than as a group activity.
All three types of eurythmy are appropriate in the school situation. Adults and children alike need to see artistic performances. It is then that the adult really is able to comprehend the scope of this new art. Children see what they are learning in a whole experience. They light up with enthusiasm on seeing such performances and are motivated to learn. Teachers have found the presence of a therapeutic eurythmist on staff is the greatest help in understanding and working with challenges that more and more children face.
What role does eurythmy play in the school? All healthy children take great joy in movement. They experience:
• Movement, music, poetry and stories in an age appropriate and joyful way
• Support and strengthening of language development
• Musicality and the power to listen
• Integration; the coordination of hands, arms, legs and spatial movement combine with eye, ear and balance, as well as thought processes
• Intentional movement that creates complex neural development (see Carla Hannaford’s Smart Moves)
• Focus: they feel how good focused attention is
• Joy and a sense of freedom in movement
• Confidence and balance of the inner and outer social capacities
• The ability to work on problem solving collaboratively in their group
• Creative thinking, and action based on it.
A student once said: “Eurythmy helps us to become more human.” This is the best answer I know why eurythmy is needed in the schools. It meets the ever-increasing demands of children of today, in health of the body and the soul. Even as an audience watching a eurythmy performance adults and children alike feel harmonized by eurythmy. It strengthens the healing effects of its sister arts, music and speech, and brings the curriculum alive.
A last word, again from a student: “Eurythmy helps us breathe.” It is the breath that gives us life. Eurythmy is the breath of the school. The human being as part of the whole creation is communicated to the community in eurythmy.
For information on bringing eurythmy into your school, contact the author leonorerussell@gmail.com or email editor@EANA.org
Photos:
Tara Performing Arts High School, Boulder, Colorado www.tarahighschool.org.
“Briar Rose”, a Eurythmy Fairy Tale, performed by the twelfth grade, February 2011, director Leonore Russell.
by Margarita Woloschina
Born in Moscow in 1882, the author met Rudolf Steiner in 1905. She became a eurythmist, and helped paint the interior of the First Goetheanum.
It was in May 1908 that Rudolf Steiner spoke about St. John’s Gospel in Hamburg. In the first lecture he related how the world was created out of the word. It was a world of silence, but in man, who was silent too, the word was concealed and it began to resound from him.
Rudolf Steiner then picked out a lily-of-the-valley from the bunch before him and said: “Just as the seed is hidden in this flower, so are new blossoms concealed in the seed.” After the lecture he approached a young woman in the audience and asked her: “Could you dance that?” She was not unduly surprised at this question, thinking that as Rudolf Steiner knew everything he must also be aware that ever since childhood she had felt the need to dance every deep experience, so she replied: “I believe one can dance everything one feels.” “But today the feeling was just the point,” was his answer, and he remained standing before her as if awaiting something. At that time, however, she did not know that the words a spiritual teacher addresses to a student are not of a casual nature but contain an indication. He does not talk just in order to make interesting conversation. So it was only much later that she realized that in our age of freedom, the Michael Age, the impulse must come from the human being, even if only in the form of a question, so as to enable the spiritual world to pour forth its revelations as into a vessel.
In the same year Rudolf Steiner spoke to the branch in Berlin of the harmony between the rhythms of heavenly bodies and the rhythms of man’s bodily members. Once
more he approached the same listener with the words: “Your dancing contains an independent rhythm. The dance is a movement the focal point of which is outside the human being. Dancing rhythms reach back to the most remote periods of cosmic time, to the timeless age before Saturn. Our presentday dances are a degenerate form of very ancient Mystery dances, in which movements and rhythms revealed most profound cosmic secrets.” Again he paused before her for a few moments, but again the question remained unasked. I must now confess that I myself was the person who failed to ask the question.
The question was to come from another quarter when three years later [in December 1911] a mother came to consult Rudolf Steiner in regard to a profession that her daughter of eighteen wished to adopt. In thinking about the etheric body Clara Smits had already had the idea that this life- or time-body might be fortified by means of appropriate movements. In January 1912 Rudolf Steiner now gave her daughter the principles of eurythmy. Lory Maier-Smits has written about this herself. From what I have been told by those who were present, when Rudolf Steiner was shown by the young girl the results of this work, he seemed delighted and repeatedly thanked the young eurythmist. It was always thus—he, the giver, was intensely grateful when his suggestions were acted upon.
In the year 1913, in Bergen, Rudolf Steiner spoke about eurythmy for the first time just after giving the lecture course on the Fifth Gospel in Christiania. He began by describing how we can shape an organ of perception for cosmic evolution, by transforming the forces that are
at work behind our thinking and which are liberated in us after they have formed our brain. He then described how the transformed forces of the word that fashion the larynx and are freed at puberty can lead us to knowledge of former incarnations—a sphere rendered dangerous by Ahriman and Lucifer. He then went on to speak about the forces that bring about the upright position and which, in the case of man, are held in reserve after he has learned to walk in childhood. We can discover these pure and sacred forces within us and can transform them into faculties that grant us vision of the loftiest spiritual regions we inhabit between death and rebirth. “You may ask how this can be accomplished. We have already made a start when we seek for these forces,” said Rudolf Steiner. “If all proceeds normally these forces generally grow active only after the age of seven, but the beginning is there and this beginning will lead further. As a rule these forces, which have been saved up in man’s bodily nature, are disregarded. Now the human being can promote consciousness of them by practicing an appropriate form of dancing. Of course this consciousness can be produced through meditation too, but for nearly a year now, the new art of eurythmy, based on the principles governing the movements of the etheric body, has been practiced in anthroposophical circles....”
What importance Rudolf Steiner attached to eurythmy can be seen by a story told by Dr. Noll, who cared for him towards the end of his life. Rudolf Steiner was distressed that owing to his illness “so little was happening.” Therefore Marie Steiner made the great sacrifice of leaving Dornach with the eurythmists in order to visit several German cities. And when telegrams brought news of the success of eurythmy performances, Rudolf Steiner wept with joy....
From “Eurythmy as the Mystery Art of Our Time,” translated by A. Innes.
by Sue Simpson
Sue Simpson is both a eurythmist and General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in New Zealand.
Eurythmy has grown up out of the soil of the Anthroposophical Movement, and the history of its origin makes it almost appear to be a gift of the forces of destiny.
Rudolf Steiner, Penmaenmawr, 26th August 1923
It was nearly one hundred years ago when this gift was first received. We have long since moved on from the excitement and challenges of the early years. Despite the passage of years, eurythmy is still a child in development; nurtured in the anthroposophical movement, it is only gradually finding its place in the world. It too faces the challenges of modern life.
In Magdalene Siegloch’s biography of Lory Maier-Smits, How the New Art of Eurythmy
Began , it is amazing to read how committed and engaged she remained over the next years as she worked in isolation. She immersed herself deeply into every instruction given and gradually she mastered each exercise. Lory not only worked with Steiner’s instructions, she brought her own initiative to the work. On a number of occasions, out of her practice or study of ancient Greek dances and art, she discovered something behind an exercise or explored new gestures or movements. Demonstrating these to Rudolf Steiner, she often met with his affirmative and supportive response.
Lory became the teacher for the first interested young women. A number went on to become eurythmists, developing the artistic, educational and therapeutic eurythmy. World War I interrupted the continuity of her work. From the beginning, Marie Steiner took on responsibility for the nurturing and development of this young art and, in 1914, she took on the training. Over the years, a stage group was formed; eurythmists from approximately 20 nations came. Performances were given regularly in Dornach and also toured throughout Europe.
The primary impulse of eurythmy was the artistic aspect. When eurythmy was inaugurated in 1912, there was no thought of its developing along any but artistic
lines. When the Waldorf School was founded in 1919, its educational significance and benefits were soon realized. The subject was compulsory for all students. Not long after the school had been founded, a group of young doctors found their way into the anthroposophical movement and they, recognizing the healthy nature of eurythmy, requested exercises that could be given in the treatment of illnesses. As for the social aspect of eurythmy, it had been there from the beginning and, over the years, eurythmists deepened and evolved exercises for adult courses and for taking into the workforce.
The initial growth was tentative and, as was the way with many professions, working out of anthroposophy. World War II saw the doors of many anthroposophical initiatives and organizations close. For a number of years, work could only be carried forward in a quiet way and often in isolation.
A number of biographies, essays and anecdotes have been written describing the early days and the individuals who carried eurythmy into the world. Right up to the 1980s, eurythmy schools bore the strong signature of particular individuals through which diverse impulses came. Many of the early teachers had direct connection to the founding impulse through Rudolf Steiner or the first eurythmists. A number of them knew and worked with Marie Steiner. There was not always harmony and agreement amongst them but they were inspired and burned with enthusiasm for eurythmy. They held a strong sense of purpose and direction in their work.
After the Second World War, the movement reformed; schools, curative homes, medical practices and various trainings opened. The call for eurythmists and the interest in eurythmy grew. By the 1970s, new eurythmy schools opened and it seemed like eurythmy was really finding its feet in the world.
The 1970s and 1980s were a time when the eurythmy trainings flourished and classes filled with enthusiastic people searching for eurythmy. Students streamed from around the world, for the most to study in Europe or England. In time, trainings also opened in America, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Many eurythmists went into schools or curative homes, and it was common to see regular artistic performances in many of the or-
ganizations. Stage groups formed and travelled widely. In particular, the Stuttgart group led by Else Klink performed in Japan, the Americas, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.
At the end of the 1980s, something changed. Returning to Europe in 1989 after seven years absence, I was full of anticipation to see and experience the forward strides of eurythmy. It was puzzling to see gymnastics, dance, pantomime, and drama integrated into many of the performances and often I struggled to find the eurythmy.
I was left with the impression that the etheric forces had receded; the movement was often reduced to the physical body and rarely streamed out to the periphery. In one conversation with eurythmy students, I was asked if I thought eurythmy was an art. This floored me as my experience has been that the educational, social and, I assumed, therapeutic eurythmy, is enhanced through the artistic work. I learned that a growing number of people entered eurythmy trainings for personal development. On reflection, these experiences portrayed what was happening in life and especially in Europe. It was as though the life forces in nature were dying as self-interest dominated world consciousness.
The confusion and mixing of movements continued to evolve and can still be seen. On the other hand, eurythmists challenged by what they were meeting, took steps towards opening new doors by exploring the possibilities of eurythmy, taking their movement and exercises to new depths and expanses.
In recent years, it has been wonderful to see groups such as the Dornach and Stuttgart stage groups join together for major productions. Once again, major eurythmy productions have been performed on the stages of Europe, Asia, and America. There are Olympiad performances of fourth year students completing their trainings. Some trainings now offer university degree status, others remain with diplomas. Eurythmists can now achieve a master’s degree. Eurythmy is finding a footing in the world and, to do this, eurythmists are taking up the challenges and possibilities of modern life.
Reprinted (abridged) from Sphere, a quarterly journal of Anthroposophy in New Zealand.
Maria is Editor of the Newsletter for the Eurythmy Association of North America.
When Dorothea Mier speaks of eurythmy, she offers living, gem-like images; each ideal has been thoroughly practiced and lived by her. Dorothea studied piano at the Birmingham School of Music and the Royal College of Music, then received eurythmy training and taught for 17 years at the Lea van der Pals School in Dornach, Switzerland. From 1959 to 1980 she performed and toured with the Goetheanum Eurythmy Ensemble under Marie Savitch. In 1980 she was invited to lead the School of Eurythmy in Spring Valley, New York. With the Eurythmy Spring Valley Ensemble, she has toured all over the United States, Canada, and Europe. In 2005, Dorothea’s choreography of three movements from Antonin Dvořák’s New World Symphony was part of a symphonic eurythmy tour to sixteen cities in North America (see photos). Retired in 2006, she still brings her gifts to Eurythmy Spring Valley part-time, and teaches in diverse settings and countries.
Maria Ver Eecke: Dorothea, you have devoted your life to eurythmy and anthroposophy. Could you speak of eurythmy as an inner path of development?
Dorothea Mier: Through eurythmy, one comes to know oneself, and not just in movement. You practice with the whole of yourself, spirit, soul, and body. You, yourself, are the instrument, so everything you do, think, feel has an effect on this instrument. Eurythmy is inseparable from anthroposophy, so obviously the more you
“live” anthroposophy, starting with the many exercises that Rudolf Steiner has given, the more expressive this instrument will become. In eurythmy, the physical body moves to the laws of the etheric which are guided by the soul-spirit. A good instrument does not get in the way, but will allow the speech or music to come across.
The elements of speech and music are the bearers, the medium of the poets and composers. We need to penetrate these, to “become” them so as to “bring to life” in movement what the poet and composer wished to convey. Frank Lloyd Wright said, “If you wish to know the nature of a thing, you will find it in the thing.” When a concerned eurythmist asked Rudolf Steiner whether something would be too subjective, he answered that it cannot be subjective enough. The subjective aspect becomes objective through the fact of uniting oneself with the element [of speech or of music].
MVE: Could you speak of eurythmy in relation to the etheric?
DM: Eurythmy does not follow physical laws of measure, weight, and number, but the laws of levity. It is a “time” art, the movement between, as the present is between the past and future. The more this can be brought to expression, the richer it will be. Eurythmists do not tire because eurythmy raises the physical body to the laws of the etheric; and this is enlivening. An example of this is if you are out of breath after doing a quick piece – you have been moving too physically. In group forms it is important not only what each individual does, but what happens between the eurythmists, while in a solo, with the space around one.
MVE: That sounds like a conversation, as also between eurythmist and the speaker or musician. Can you speak to looking back on one hundred years of eurythmy?
DM: I have realized that this isn’t just a looking back, but reading what Rudolf Steiner gave at the very beginning with today’s eyes and hearts. Recognizing all that was contained in the first indications can be an inspira-
tion to penetrate them ever more deeply.
MVE: What changes have you seen over the years?
DM: Possibly the students are more open. They ask very different questions. Over the decades I have noticed an increase in wanting to understand what is being brought, which is on the one hand, very positive; but there is a danger that by having grasped something intellectually many feel that now they have it – which is far from the truth. Now the work begins to translate this experience into deed. There is much in eurythmy that is very hard to conceptualize; you learn a lot through just doing.
I have also noticed lately that there is greater interest to know more about the early eurythmists. And many who come to eurythmy now are more interested in how it will help their self-development and less with the question how they can serve the “being of eurythmy.” Another change is seen with those professional eurythmists who try to reinvent eurythmy or to merge it with other influences. At the end of the eight lectures Eurythmy as Visible Singing, Rudolf Steiner mentioned that “if instead of eight lectures I had given fourteen, I would have been concerned that the subject matter be properly assimilated.” All the musical elements had been addressed. I could imagine that further lectures would deepen rather than bring in new elements.
MVE: Please tell us about just one of the highlights of your artistic work over the last thirty years.
DM: Dvořák’s New World Symphony was indeed such a highlight! I had the great privilege of being a member of the Goetheanum stage group when Marie Savitch worked on the second and third movements of Dvořák’s New World Symphony in Dornach in the 1960’s. She was a master of big group pieces, and we included as much as we could for our production of these movements. I was
able to recreate these forms from memory with the help of her forms. I still had to develop the fourth movement. The Symphony Project in this country came about through the initiative of Marke Levene [eurythmist and founder of Lemniscate Productions] who had the vision for such a project, as well as contributing the financial support. We began in the summer of 2004 and performed the whole production in 2005. I then worked with the first movement with a group in Europe and we hope to work on it this summer in Spring Valley.
MVE: What is special about orchestral work?
DM: The orchestra brings the full human being to expression on a grand scale. The woodwinds correspond to the thinking part of the human being, outspokenly they carry the melodic element. The strings bring the middle realm, the breathing, warm harmonic element, and the brass, the will/limb aspect. Within each section there is again a three-folding or comparison to the voices of a choir or quartet—speaking very broadly. Flute and oboe, first and second violins, trumpets, and cymbals— they are the sopranos. Clarinet, viola, horns are the altos; bassoon, cello, double bass, and trombone are the tenors and basses. There is such wealth, through movement, to differentiate the various qualities; the clarity of the woodwinds, the flowing warmth of the strings, the forceful quality of the brass, and the throbbing accentuation of percussion. The difference between chamber music and orchestral music also holds good for eurythmy. There will be times when the music asks for a whole section to move together, where the different parts all serve the whole with a lot of doubling up; other passages require the individual treatment of each voice delicately interweaving. There is so much variety—surely working with a symphony is every eurythmist’s dream—at least, it’s mine!
In 1921, working together with eurythmists and medical doctors, Rudolf Steiner developed “curative” or “therapeutic eurythmy.” It was introduced to the Waldorf school movement in the year following its inception. At the same time, a large circle of physicians began to prescribe it as an element of medical therapy. Since that time, therapeutic eurythmy has found acceptance in settings around the world including schools, homes for the handicapped, clinics, and hospitals.
The universality of eurythmy stems from its origins in a spiritual and scientific body of knowledge known as “anthroposophy,” the study of wisdom inherent in the human being. Steiner’s studies in anthroposophy led him to define the human being as a threefold organism comprising nervous, rhythmical, and metabolic-limb systems. These systems form the physiological basis of thinking, feeling, and willing. Thinking requires the organic processes active in the brain and nerves. Feelings and emotions have their basis in the functions of the heart and lungs. “Will,” or the ability to carry out activity, has its organic foundation in the metabolic functions.
While these functions sustain biological life, they also are essential to consciousness. Steiner observed how the vitality and growth of the infant gradually produces the organic foundations for its cognitive life. Growth leads in time to consciousness—and consciousness to individuality and freedom.
Learning to speak is of monumental importance to this process. Through it the young child enters the world gaining awareness of itself and the environment. In the area of child development, Steiner studied the process of “learning to speak” and its relationship to physical, emotional and mental growth. He concluded that speech and song are not exclusive to the brain and nervous system, but involve the metabolic and rhythmical function as well. How does the small child learn to speak? For those who raise a child, it appears to be a magical happening. Completely new capabilities seem
to arise out of nothingness. There is, however, a thread which weaves its way through the child’s life, beginning with its conception in the womb.
A single, fertilized egg divides, guided by a tremendous intelligence, unknown to us. Differentiation ensues and an incredibly complex network of processes go on to produce a living being. Formed by unending movement, the tiny human being undergoes constant metamorphosis assuming manifold gestures. During these formative weeks and months, it gains the power to move its body. At birth, with the addition of air from its new environment, the child begins to move its larynx as well. These early sounds are accompanied by limb movements. Through the movements of its larynx and limbs, the newborn child expresses its existence.
As the infant learns to focus its eyes, to touch, to taste and smell, it makes new sounds and gestures. The voice of its mother, its nourishment and the ever expanding influx of the sensory world unfolds new experience for the child. It responds with sound and gesture. The small child gradually assembles more and more gestures. New ones appear; others disappear, only to come back much later. Through a series of reactions and internalizations, it forms a record of its exploration of the world. At this time it is reenacting the creation of an alphabet.
The child’s growing awareness of its environment expands to embrace the spoken language of the country into which it was born. Thus the child adopts a mother tongue. It needs language in order to fully unfold its person. The cultural setting supplies that stimulus. The essential steps leading up to learning a language are universal among all people.
Learning to speak is part of a greater development which unfolds during the first three years of life. The child first learned to stand upright, then speak and finally to think. These stages culminate in the moment when the child first says “I.” It has gained its independence and laid the foundation for all the growth and learning that will follow. Developing the sense for language is fundamental to the whole life of the child. These seemingly simple, almost primeval gestures of the infant comprise the prerequisite activity for forming mental images which will be retained as memory.
The sounds and gestures made by the small child are of two distinct types. Gestures which simulate the envi-
ronment by imitation of its shapes, contours and textures are the consonants. A second form of speech-gestures expresses the child’s inner, or soul, response and is known as the vowels. These two basic types form the basis of every language. The vowels are formed in the larynx and their nature is tonal and independent of the other organs connected with speech. Only the opening of the mouth, be it wide or narrow, helps the vowel to sound. Conversely, the consonant is formed by the dynamic movements of the palate, tongue, lips and teeth. Consonants can suggest the element of fire, in the hissing “S” for instance, or suggest the sharp edge of a rock with the sound “K.” Vowels cannot describe the surroundings, but describe our feeling for it. We behold a beautiful work of art or a magnificent landscape with the sound “Ah” or “Oooo”... never with “B” or “T.” If we wish to tell another person about what we have seen, vowels alone are useless, and consonants are necessary. Words contain both forms, allowing each language to find ways to express its speaker’s experiences through words.
Ancient cultures have left records of their existence in the form of languages. The further back in time a culture existed, the more immediate and direct its approach to language. The ancient Phoenician and Hebrew alphabets comprise whole systems of characters, pictorial and significant. The actual shapes of the letters suggested very exact meanings to those who spoke or read them. They are moving images, held or frozen as gestures.
For us, the “B” is just a sound, somewhat abstract. In the Hebrew, it has a meaning in itself. It also has a numerical value of two. It suggests a dwelling. The letter itself portrays the concept. It could indicate a house, a temple, or the soul within the body. The letter “T” signifies finality and eternity; it is the last letter of the series and has the value 400. These ancient languages contain both vowels and consonants, but only consonants were given a visible written form. Vowels, Rudolf Steiner confirmed, originate in the “inner realm” of the human being. The experience of the vowels must have been profound in ancient times.
Unfortunately, present day conditions do not support a deeper experience of language or music. Despite the countless advantages offered by computers, word processors, simulated voices and simulated intelligence, language itself has suffered greatly. These technologies exploit
grammatical forms in order to use language to process and store information quickly and efficiently. Words are abbreviated, coded and “abstracted” from their original forms and meanings. Buttons replace the geometric experience of writing. The use of computers in early education as a substitute for the fine motor experience of writing is especially questionable since directionality in writing is intimately connected with the child’s sense of its own body. Music has also suffered from electronic simulations and manipulations. We marvel at technology, investing money in equipment instead of demanding and supporting “live” music.
These developments offer us “artificial intelligence” in one form or another. So long as we retain a living relationship to language and music, we can use these devices to our advantage. The danger is that these technologies tend to deaden our senses. They remove the living, creative elements of speech and music, all but eliminating the very spirit which gave birth to communication itself: the human being.
The evolution of speech and music is synonymous with the evolution of consciousness. Each era of history has molded and altered these expressions. Rudolf Steiner developed eurythmy as an antidote to the destructive elements of our time. Eurythmy seeks to reawaken human sensibilities. Poetry, which has experienced a severe decline, is restored and illuminated in the form of movement. Music is shown to be a revelation of human feeling and emotion. As a performing art, eurythmy gives its audiences a deeper experience of human nature as expressed in art. Gesture, movement, color, and choreography create an imaginative presentation. The objective, creative laws, which the genius of the poet or composer knew intimately, are brought to visibility. Style and content are revealed in a new light.
Rudolf Steiner developed a eurythmy curriculum for each grade in the Waldorf School. It addresses the physical, emotional and mental growth of the different stages of child activity. The foundations for a true “working together,” for building community through commitment and energy, are engendered. Pedagogic eurythmy supports all other subjects by teaching children how to form their thoughts and feelings into actions—actions sensitive to the intentions of a group.
Eurythmy means “harmonious rhythm.” Growth, organic functions, and consciousness are intimately relat-
We behold a beautiful work of art with “Ah” or “Oooo“ sounds, never with “B” or “T.”
Despite advantages offered by computers, language has suffered greatly.
eurythmy invites the rhythmical system to restore harmony to the organism.
ed to one another. The rhythmical system of the human organism mediates between the nervous system and the metabolism. Therapeutic eurythmy can effect a profound change in situations where the human organism is tending in the direction of imbalance and illness. It invites the rhythmical system to restore harmony to the organism. Specific sound gestures are chosen and practiced in sequence. The gestures are intensified and repeated in order to stimulate specific organic functions. Some of the exercises exert an influence upon the nervous system; others can regulate functions of the digestive tract. Vowel exercises work directly upon the rhythmical processes as well, but by way of the metabolic systems. Emotional health can be encouraged through therapeutic eurythmy exercises.
Steiner invited a medical doctor to join the faculty of the first Waldorf school. This has become a tradition among Waldorf schools. The physician acts as a consultant and offers advice in situations where remedial help becomes necessary. The therapeutic eurythmist works together with parents, teachers and the school doctor in order to best serve the needs of the child with special difficulties.
Therapeutic eurythmy enables the child suffering from illness to take an active role in improving its condition. Movement exercises can be used to stimulate the faculties needed in order to learn. Rudolf Steiner designed exercises that help the slow learner as well as others that help the child who tends to become overly stimulated.
Therapeutic eurythmy can help overcome learning disabilities, a growing problem in our time. It is taught on a one to one basis, over a prescribed length of time. Like pedagogic and performing eurythmy, it is an art. It is challenging and fun to do. The results often exceed the expectations. This is due to its far-reaching significance for the entirety of human development. Eurythmy reawakens a forgotten sense for all that lives in music and speech. It raises it to a higher level. Eurythmy supports the truly spiritual in art—the work of the human spirit.
The Thereapeutic Eurythmy Training in North America is part-time over three years. International teachers, physicians, therapists and artists assist. For information contact Seth Morrison, PO Box 389, Copake NY 12516.
by Barbara Bresette-Mills
Barbara is a board member of the Association of Therapeutic Eurythmists of North America (ATHENA).
Let us assume that some organ has the tendency to deformation, a tendency to assume an abnormal form. A form of movement exists which will counteract this tendency. And such is the case with every organ.
Rudolf Steiner, April 12, 1921, Dornach, GA315
In eurythmy we are given the opportunity to connect directly with the cosmic archetypes, the cosmic forces which have formed us. The indications and lectures for therapeutic eurythmy were not given until 1921; however, the intentions for this healing art were there from the early beginnings. In September 1912, on the seventh day of the first course of eurythmy lessons, Rudolf Steiner instructed Lory Smits in the formation of the “Halleluiah,” the first word presented in eurythmy. When Marie von Sivers witnessed it she exclaimed, “Doctor! This must give tremendous forces!” And Dr. Steiner replied, “Yes. Do you think we only want to dance? Don’t we want to help sick people as well?”
At the first World Conference for Eurythmy Therapy at the Goetheanum in 2008, Dr. Michaela Glöckler spoke of eurythmy therapy as a “decisive instrument” and an “infinite blessing” that helps persons enter into their body, act on and give guidance to the formative forces. Eurythmy as an immensely human activity enables one to take part in one’s own healing process, not just on a physical level but on a karmic, spiritual level. Do we have the courage and inner strength to take on a path of healing in which we become co-creators?
If we practice musical scales on the piano we can strengthen our fingers, make them more flexible and improve our playing. If we study a language over time, see the words and constellation of let-
ters, listen intently to how the sounds are formed and practice by ourselves, we come to speak and understand it. And exercise of various muscles or practice of a particular athletic activity enables one to be more accurate in a sport. Is it such a leap to think that by doing a sequence of eurythmy gestures with intention, care, focus, and continuity over time that one could actually change the condition of one’s health?
After experiencing eurythmy, many people feel a deep connection to the sounds and gestures and have “made them their own.” Here are a few comments:
“I feel completely alive when I do my eurythmy exercises. It lets me feel in charge of my own health. It has been the most positive experience in my recovery from surgery for cancer.”
“I had to do my eurythmy ‘B’ at the airport so I wasn’t afraid of being so crowded.”
“I was practicing my exercises on the porch of the half-
by Barbara Richardson
Lory Maier-Smits was the first eurythmist to apply eurythmy to the work place by offering eurythmy sessions in her family’s button factory in Germany. Annemarie Ehrlich, a Dutch eurythmist, developed this work over several decades, working widely with such businesses as hospitals, a drug store chain, Coca-Cola executives, members of the Austrian Parliament and, in 1999, the Saturn Corporation in Tennessee. A company sponsoring eurythmy sessions wrote that it helps them develop “upright employees who know where they are going.”
Annemarie has trained many eurythmists in Europe and in North America, herself giving courses on “Eurythmy in the Workplace” and “Teaching Eurythmy to
way house. People kept asking me what I was doing. They could see the positive effects the exercises had for me. When I explained that these were my eurythmy exercises, they asked if they all could learn them.” (This led to a workshop for all the men in the home.)
“When I haven’t done my exercises I miss them, for they have become my friends.”
In North America there are 75-100 trained therapeutic eurythmists—in schools, clinics or private practice. It is an act of love and will to carry this work in a time when many alternative therapies are available and such a strong materialistic culture is active in medical/therapeutic fields. We are fortunate to have a therapeutic eurythmy training, carried by Seth Morrison and Anna Ree, held in the nurturing community of Camphill Copake. Anyone interested in therapeutic eurythmy (formerly known as curative eurythmy) in North America is invited to join ATHENA; visit www.therapeuticeurythmy.org.
Adults.” She has led groups of eurythmists to the anthroposophical community Sekem in Egypt (pictured), for one month each year. Her latest and final trip to Sekem began three days before the Arab spring uprising.
Eurythmists in North America have worked with many Waldorf school boards and anthroposophical groups, as well as foundations, banks, factories, restaurants, and other businesses, with support from the Anthroposophical Society, Shared Gifting Group of the Mid-States, and organizational development consultants.
Common components of this work with adult groups include the use of copper balls, creating forms around poems that may have a meaning for the participants, and time for reflection and sharing after each session. The copper balls reduce people’s initial unease or self-consciousness in movement and increase the social awareness among the group. The experience of receiving and giving, flexing and extending, are inherent in the movements. Poems create a shared content among the participants and the working out of forms expressing of the poems helps to raise the group’s level of consciousness. Reflections written down at the end of the session give participants a chance to see themselves from a new perspective and become more conscious of the effects of eurythmy.
A small booklet, Eurythmy in the Workplace – One Company’s Story, is available from Barbara Richardson at brichardson@centerforanthroposophy.org
by Barbara Schneider-Serio
Barbara succeeded Dorothea Mier as the director of the Spring Valley Eurythmy School and is a member of the Eurythmy Spring Valley performing ensemble.
In their first conversation about eurythmy Rudolf Steiner told Clara Smits that he had long wished to bring this new art of movement into the world, since he needed it “when things need to be brought which are so deep that they cannot be put into words...and need cumbersome explanations, then this new art can be used and appeal to different possibilities of understanding...” (Steiner et al., Die Entstehung und Entwicklung der Eurythmie, Dornach 1982: 8). Previously, after she had been astonished at his description that eurythmy would be arising out of the word, he had given her a picture of human beings at the beginning of earth evolution, where, before speech was possible, the soul was enticed to enter human bodies by gestures and sounds of a priestess.
A training in eurythmy thus needs to bring us back, slowly and with consciousness, to that early point and even beyond—to the planets and zodiac; but it needs to have a carefully built process for our modern souls to rekindle this ancient connection which is at the same time the most modern there is. It is a path that leads each student through the realms of light and darkness of soul, slowly to discover who she/he is and find her/his unique voice. And the instrument is this most noble and mysterious one, our body.
When entering the first year, students know that they will get to know themselves in a way they had never known themselves before. At first it is rediscovering what it means to be upright, to walk in a way that breathes with oneself and with one’s surroundings, to experience the difference of a straight line and a curve not by knowing only, but doing, feeling, intending it. Copper rods will be the truthful but relentless friend that will show if indeed the student is finding a right angle in his gesture or whether it is just so much fantasy. The different rhythms will teach the student to experience how differently an iambic carries one into movement than a trochee or anapest.
And maybe eventually, somewhere in these first weeks, she will listen to sounds as ancient peoples did and have a dawning realization of the earth shattering quality
of the sound “A”—the whole world opens! Though essential, it is not enough to be bowled over by that. Now the work begins: to move it, imbue it with feeling, so that gradually the inner experience becomes the outer movement: they need to be one and the same.
At the end of the first semester there might even be a consonant that arrives. After blissfully finding yourself to be a vowel being, suddenly a new being appears, ‘L’, for instance, this sound of light, life, love; and again a whole new world opens up. The student as poet is delighted, the cynic scoffs, yet the world does live in “L,” all the best words have an “L”—why, what is the secret of “L”?
But now the student needs to do it as it wants to be done. Like a treasure, he has it hidden in his arms, in his being. Can he find this etheric law in himself and
let the physical arms follow and the movement convey what is experienced in a lawful way? And so the discoveries abound. Then come the challenges: keeping it alive, continuing to practice, again and again and again. And then there are the classmates! At times our best supporters and closest friends, and then, suddenly, they are simply annoying or deeply challenging. But every form is a group form, so we need to find bridges to each other, while at the same time everyone struggles daily not to lose herself entirely, though she knows that is what is needed before the new eurythmic self is born—letting go, letting go, again and again, practice, again and again...
And just as she is about to know the sounds and all the rod exercises inside and through herself in harmony with the rest of the class, the second term begins and the elements of music such as melody, rhythm, phrasing make their appearance—plus so many more consonants, rhymes, alliteration, words. And a whole new world, at first frightening and incomprehensible, but eventually most enticing, opens up.
Thus it continues. Each year has a carefully built up curriculum, leading in speech eurythmy from the first indications Rudolf Steiner gave of forms, rhythms and vowels, from the Dionysian experience of the world to the clear and grammatically cool world of Apollo. In tone eurythmy from the circle of fifths with all their sharps and flats, to major, minor, and dissonance, to the ineffable world of the intervals. Each year builds on the next, simple forms slowly transform to complicated group forms, many given by Steiner, others choreographed by teachers or those who worked closely with Steiner. From simple sounds, to words, sentences, color imbued, filled with soul gestures, dramatic head and foot gestures, to character pieces in tales and ballads, the pinnacle of the planetary and zodiacal movements, to musical modulations, complex fugues, and different musical styles such as Beethoven sonatas or Schoenberg pieces.
The inner development of the eurythmist must be in sync with the outer learning of the magic of movements with poetry, prose, music from all ages and languages, done beautifully. And the social workings of the class need to be able to deal with the growth—at times joyfully and (at rare times) crankily—of each student, and the ever growing tasks they have to fulfill: presenting lectures, preparing festivals, working on solos and demonstrations, not to mention the continuous challenge of working any other hour of the day to finance this incredible endeavor.
To become a eurythmist means to become a new human being—in soul, body, and spirit. It is the most joyful and the most arduous of trainings—to learn to become a fitting instrument for the mighty revelations of the word and music. At the same time a strong grounding in anthroposophy and an understanding and familiarity with many of the neighboring subjects is essential: speech formation, musical studies, singing, gardening, poetics, anatomy, projective geometry, astronomy, modeling—to name just a few of the accompanying subjects, in blocks and evening lectures. Luckily we are embedded within the Threefold community with many individuals who can bring their expertise to these subjects, and many institutions which provide an ongoing stream of lectures, conferences, study groups, concerts, etc., to make for a rich spiritual and cultural tapestry. Essential for all eurythmy students is to see
many performances, which here in Spring Valley is possible through the stage group with performances for all ages and occasions, plus studio and festival performances including many of the local eurythmists.
Another aspect included in most of the four year trainings around the world is an intensive study of Waldorf pedagogy. Besides extra weeks of study in the summers, practicum and teacher training blocks also take place within the four years so that the curriculum of the Waldorf schools in general and specific to eurythmy is studied, and a foundation is laid for teaching children.
One hundred years after its inception, eurythmy is still that “gift of the forces of destiny” that arrived in the Anthroposophical Society as Rudolf Steiner spoke of it, and it still is precariously perched, wondering if it can stay here. Many eurythmy schools have found it difficult to stay open and are struggling to keep their footing in an ever more alien world for the human being and thus the arts. The School of Eurythmy in Spring Valley celebrates its 40th birthday this year with much to celebrate, graduates all over the world working deeply in all aspects of eurythmy, leading initiatives in Asia, Europe, North and South America. A full fourth year is about to get ready for graduation, a fifth year working on their performance, and a first and second year and a part-time class are working hard on this most wonderful and challenging of arts. Yet the forty years have had many precarious moments of struggle facing the myriad challenges of a non-profit obscure art school. The support of many staunch friends has made it possible for us to keep the faith and find a way through.
When students first arrive for an interview, there is always the surprised look – four years – why so long? But as they learn about life, through the joys and challenges of each year, before they know it they’re in fourth year and then inevitably they arrive in September and cry: Fourth year, I need more time, it flew by!
Having gone through the training myself and throughout the last 20 odd years observed how students change and suddenly, miraculously, a eurythmist is born after many struggles on all levels, it is a special gift to be part of that process and see it happening in front of one’s eyes. No better way to spend four years of one’s life.
The Eurythmy Spring Valley Ensemble was formed in 1986 and performs frequently for festivals, conferences, and events in its home area north of New York City, and tours to all parts of North America and Europe. 2012 plans focus on the Northeast; see eurythmy.org
Northern Star Eurythmy includes eurythmists from Ontario and Buffalo, NY. They have presented Marjorie Spock’s work on the four ethers, the Foundation Stone Meditation, Michael Imagination, and Grimm fairytales.
The Pennsylvania Eurythmy Ensemble have toured the US, England, and Ireland, and plans March 2012 workshop/demo/performances in Philadelphia and the local area including pieces from their Unheard Voices.
Sound Circle Eurythmy Ensemble, Boulder, CO, performs and tours with What the Bee Knows and Winged Wonders for children. Visit soundcircleeurythmy.org also for news of their new training program.
Austin, TX, has two performing groups. Chaparral Eurythmy, with the Austin Waldorf Faculty, presented a eurythmy centennial celebration in January. The latest project of the Austin Eurythmy Ensemble is Aurora Eurythmy Academy, Casa De Luz: austineurythmy.org Their new evening program is <in- between roots>.
Lemniscate Arts in the Bodega Bay Area of northern California will perform the Foundation Stone Meditation in eurythmy during the 2012 AWSNA Summer Conference. The San Francisco Opera Orchestra invited them to perform eurythmy to a Beethoven String Quartet.
Recent graduates of eurythmy training at Rudolf Steiner College have founded “Jackanory Eurythmy,” a fairy tale performing group planning weekend classes.
For 13 years the San Francisco Youth Eurythmy Troupe has presented a full program annually and has performed in Europe, Egypt, India, and the far East.
Around LA, Lynn Stull has offered free talks to celebrate the eurythmy centenary, speaking to women inmates, human resource managers, elders at retirement homes, and a local church service, combining group interests with eurythmy history and audience participation. Lynn and others present eurythmy at the LA Branch.
Note: many performing groups have received grants for performing via the Eurythmy Association of North America, a daughter organization of the Anthroposophical Society in America. Visit www.eana.org for more information.
by Gail Langstroth
In September 2001, I was in America preparing for a tour of the West Coast. As the events of 9/11 became known, I, along with many others worldwide, experienced that a life sheath had been powerfully wrenched open. At the time I recognized that something had to change in my own life; I needed to take up metanoia —the Greek word meaning to change one’s direction, to rethink. One year later, I left my career as a professional performer and teacher of eurythmy. I enrolled as a student in the Christian Community’s Priest Seminar, Hamburg, Germany.
During the 36 years prior to the Seminar, I had the opportunity to work and study under the direction of one of the first eurythmists, Else Klink, and to perform with her on stage. Mantric texts by Rudolf Steiner, poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Christian Morgenstern, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Novalis, were often the focus of our rehearsing. Now, as a student in the priest training, the words from these poems and texts, as if washed in a new light of experience, returned. Having made the conscious decision to leave eurythmy outwardly, I soon realized that I was beginning to do eurythmy within.
While in the Seminar, listening to the thoughts of theologians, priests, doctors and artists—all of whom had experienced and not just thought what they were saying—I began to have epiphanies. Eurythmy’s Word Roots, its origins in The Logos, sounded in my heart like a quiet, apocalyptic trumpet. After two and one-half years breathing in The Word’s fructifying essence, I had to return to the arts, to eurythmy.
Immediately after leaving the Seminar, I embarked upon a journey of research, looking carefully at eurythmy’s biography in relationship to Dr. Steiner’s own spiritual path. Throughout this work I was accompanied by the wise and loving artist, Hebrew-Greek scholar Elsbeth Weymann. From 2005 to the present, the fruits of our research have been shared in the form of a lecture with demonstration entitled, “Whoso danceth not, knoweth not what cometh to pass . . .”
(The Acts of John: 95).
As the subtle threads of this extraordinary tapestry revealed themselves to me, a question arose. Did Dr. Steiner give indications for a specific meditative path for one who wants to carry this art esoterically? Knowing that we are talking about an art form, not a religious or scientific practice, I knew it would appear in a form which leaves the individual totally free.
Yes, there it was in plain sight. I set to work, proceeding to take up the word essence of the texts into my inner life, day after day for years. Slowly, they began to sound forth in the English language.
Dr. Steiner himself saw the need for what later was named eurythmy; he asked the question on May 18, 1908, in Hamburg, Germany. A small crowd of less than 20 individuals was gathered in the salon of a four-story villa on Amgartstrasse 20. After speaking on The Doctrine of the Logos, the Logos as it is presented in John’s High Poetic Hymn, The Prologue, Dr. Steiner approached the Russian painter, Margarita Woloschin asking, “Do you not want to dance this?”
It has been my wish not to publish these texts. I continue to share these results in a living form through the lecture and demonstration. For the first time, as a part of our recognition of eurythmy’s centennial, I feel it is time to print these translations.
(original German from Rudolf Steiner, April 26, 1913)
He Who enlightens the Sphere of Cloud May He enlighten through May He sun through May He glow through May He warm through also Me in my I too
Discovering and witnessing The Genius of these texts and the relationships between them is a source of light and life. I will indicate only a few of the gems. The verbs in Text IV cite the verbs of the previous texts in reverse order (think, speak, seek, feel ). From Text II (ending with the words in me) we are led directly to the beginning of Text III in which the first person I begins for the first time, I seek within.
The verbs of Text I are all verbs relating to light and warmth. They descend from the sun and clouds into the warmth of the physical body. The verbs of the first triplet in Text II are all verbs related to the plant world.
I want to note that any word(s) in the English that may appear as a change or addition to the original German have been weighed and contemplated. I take full responsibility for each rendering.
These four Texts form a meditative cross. As a wreath of fluid light around this cross, the ten L’s of the Hebrew word Hallelluiah can be imagined. On September 22, 1912, Dr. Steiner gave the specific indications as to how to move this word in eurythmy. Meaning to sing, praise and dance the highest, Halleluiah is our first word.
December 2004, Patmos, Greece, through December 2011, Baltimore, Maryland
(July 10, 1924, Rudolf Steiner)
The soul’s wishes are sprouting. The will’s deeds are waxing. Life’s fruits grow ripe.
I feel my destiny; my necessity finds me.
I feel my star; my higher self finds me.
I feel my aims; my goals find me.
My soul and the world are one.
Life becomes brighter around me.
Life becomes more difficult for me.
Life becomes richer in me.
(July 11, 1924, Rudolf Steiner)
I seek within: the creative powers creating, the creative will working.
Earth’s weight of gravity speaks through the word will of my feet. Air’s forming strength speaks through the moving song of my hands.
Heaven’s light-peace speaks through my head’s perceiving— How the world in me speaks, sings, thinks.
(July 12, 1924, Rudolf Steiner)
I stand at peace with the world and with myself – (awakening the “EE” of the human upright posture in silence before beginning the exercise)
--I perceive WORD in the world.
--I open myself to the WORD; I take the WORD in, and I speak --I have spoken.
--I seek for myself in the WORD.
--I feel myself within myself.
--I am on the way to the I AM of my Spirit Self, the WORD in me.
Raised under the Big Skies of Montana, Gail Langstroth spent 40 years in Europe, training and working as an international performer and teacher of eurythmy. After her return to the United States she began studies for an MFA as a poet (Drew University). As a featured poet in Austin’s International Poetry Festival, April 2011, and most recently, The Patricia Dobler Prize in Poetry, January 2012, (Carlow University), Langstroth resides in Baltimore, MD and divides her time between performance, writing, and teaching. She is available to share the fruits of her research with communities and groups with or without previous knowledge of eurythmy and anthroposophy. Contact her at: gplcampostella@gmail.com or (727) 656-4087. Website: www.wordmoves.com.
by Cynthia Hoven
Cynthia founded and led for eight years a eurythmy training at Rudolf Steiner College; she can be reached at choven@sbcglobal.net. The following are short excerpts from her illustrated book, to be published this summer,— “a celebration of the beings whom I love deeply: the sounds of language.”
Aries: The Ram
And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us. We carry the Word in our minds and hearts and bodies. We are living in the great mystery of learning to speak the Word as we grow into earthly/cosmic maturity.
In the beginning, human beings were mute. We could not speak, but we could dance Even as plants dance in the wind, As jellyfish dance in the water, As cilia dance in our bellies, We participated in the first dance of the creation.
As the willed-wisdom-moving Word of the Creator poured forth, Creating the world and all that is within it, We danced in imitation of it. Our limbs were long and loose and lithe, And we were one with all of nature.
Across all the widths and depths of time and space, the movements of creation surged forth from the first source as the manifestations of the Creative Word. World wisdom gave rise to sculptural movements, and these gave rise to the shapes, forms and textures of the manifest world. Our loving gaze can reveal the mysteries of the World Word behind all its manifestations.
Now, everything we behold in the world is a mute mystery. As the world became hardened, the dance of our bodies became small.... Eurythmy is the new dance, the dance reborn, the dance of the new word.
The World Word weaves through the world.
The first utterance of the World Word arose as an expression of pure world will and wisdom. It lifted as the surge of a wave from the depths of the spirit’s ocean being, and in its wake the world was born.
is the wave that rises from the depths of the water, and the wind that blows through the widths of the world.
I am one with the Being of the World Word. I unite myself with the Beings of W. In the Being of W, I discover the guardian of the World Word. It is the delicate breath that hovers at the threshold between spirit and matter. I will now awaken to the Being of W in me.
I stand clothed in deep blue, experiencing the peace of the world. Around me I sense the pale yellow field of world movement, pregnant with surging life.
I bend myself low to the ground and let my arms hang heavy at my sides with the palms facing to my back, containing a quiet violet tension in the backs of my arms. Feeling the impulse of a wave swelling from the depth below me I rise, lifting my arms with a movement that begins heavy that starts from the shoulders. My arms press outwards and forwards in a great convex curve. The movement expands and grows around me.
I have become upright. My head, no longer bent to the earth, is crowned with yellow light. All around me I feel spirit brightness. I know myself to be human.
Winter warblers watch for wiggly worms
Frederick Amrine teaches literature, philosophy, and intellectual history at the University of Michigan where he is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor in German Studies.
After all, what would be the value of the passion for knowledge if it resulted only in a certain amount of knowledgeableness and not, in one way or another and to the extent possible, in the knower’s straying afield of himself? There are times in life when the question of knowing whether one can think differently than one thinks, and perceive differently than one sees, is absolutely necessary if one is to go on looking and reflecting at all.
—Michel Foucault, The Use of Pleasure, read aloud by Gilles Deleuze at Michel Foucault’s funeral
Rudolf Steiner’s Philosophy of Freedom appeared in 1894, exactly 100 years after the two revolutionary works that chiefly influenced it: Schiller’s Aesthetic Education of Man, and Fichte’s Science of Knowledge. Another century later, in 1994, two equally revolutionary philosophical works by the great French philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) first became available in English: Difference and Repetition , and What is Philosophy? 1 This symmetry is already compelling, but it extends further: in each instance, philosophical breakthroughs were achieved in response to a failed revolution. In the case of Fichte and Schiller, it was of course the failure of the French Revolution, which became abundantly clear in the Terror of 1793. Both Fichte and Schiller argue that the failure of the Revolution was ultimately a failure of imagination in
the broadest sense, and, in response, both mount radically new philosophies in which the creative imagination stands as the central faculty. In the case of Steiner, it was the failure of Nietzsche’s revolution in philosophy. In the case of Deleuze, it was the failure of the “French” revolution of May 1968, in which students took to the streets, rallying under the motto “L’imagination au pouvoir!”— “All power to the imagination!” But this event, this irruption of pure becoming, 2 as Deleuze would call it, also failed to transform thinking, and thus had no hope of succeeding. Like so many of his contemporaries, Deleuze was shaken by the events of 1968, but unlike most others’, his response was, I believe, genuinely transformative: a radical epistemology that crosses the threshold into a direct experience of the living force that both Steiner and his predecessors called Imagination.
I share Yeshayahu Ben-Aharon’s admiration for this “most significant French thinker of the 20th century,” and I am inspired to respond to his call for engagement by imagining a sort of virtual dialogue between Steiner and Deleuze. 3 Like Steiner, Deleuze is nearly impossible to paraphrase; like Steiner’s, his writings are prolific, challenging, imaginative, and highly original. But even if it cannot do him justice, I hope that this brief essay will at least convey my own sense of excited discovery, and that it will encourage others to engage Deleuze.
Deleuze rejects logic’s “infantile idea of philosophy” [WiP 22]: as Wittgenstein had argued before him, everything important in philosophy cannot be “said” —captured in propositional form; rather, it can only be “shown” to the imagination. Steiner is equally emphatic
2 Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations: 1972-1990 (New York: Columbia UP, 1990) [henceforth N ], pp. 1445; 153; 171.
The failure of the Revolution was ultimately a failure of imagination.
in The Philosophy of Freedom: “Words cannot indicate what a concept is; they can only indicate the presence of a concept.” The living concept itself must be experienced by what Deleuze calls a “transcendental empiricism.” In a brilliant metaphor, Deleuze compares propositional thought-structures to the devices of Baroque emblems, which represent only an abstract schema of the living event that is “shown” in the rich and dynamic iconography of the accompanying image. 4
Paradoxically, abstract thought is body-bound. Deleuze intuits what Steiner revealed in the opening lectures of his “French Course”: the physical body can only reflect thinking as Abbild or deadened image. 5 And today’s consumer capitalism regulates desire—and thereby manages the human being in society—by feeding it sensory pleasure. For Steiner and Deleuze both, the first step toward freedom is to reorient and intensify sense-bound thinking and desire. They must be turned away from the body, “deterritorialized” (as Deleuze and Guattari famously put it) and metamorphosed into free, intransitive energies that can be “reterritorialized” or brought to bear on new objects. “One’s always writing to bring something to life; to free life from where it’s trapped, to trace lines of flight” [N 141]. When thinking is mobilized and accelerated in this way, it can achieve escape velocity, and new pathways, new “lines of flight” can open up, raying out towards the macrocosmic periphery where thinking flows freely with infinite speed.
Deleuze’s achievement of a body-free thinking is nowhere more evident than in his last published essay, “Immanence: A Life.” 6 Here Deleuze’s liberated and sublimated desire achieves a kind of ecstasy: his thinking finds a footing not only outside the body, but entirely outside the lower self. Deleuze is the Schwenk 7 of thinking and desire. He leads us into etheric and astral streams of pure becoming that have yet to suffer the division of consciousness into subject and object. Thinking, desire, and their objects unfold as immediate, inseparable presence: “We will say of pure immanence that it is A LIFE, and nothing else” [IAL 27].
Thinking becomes an encounter with something
4 N 160, N 201; this thought was first presented in Deleuze’s late masterpiece The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1993).
5 See Philosophy, Cosmology, Religion (GA 215), lectures 1 and 2 (6 and 7 Sept. 1922).
6 Gilles Deleuze, “Immanence: A Life,” in his Pure Immanence: Essays on A Life (New York: Zone Books, 2001) [henceforth IAL].
7 Theodore Schwenk, author of Sensitive Chaos, pioneering water and flow researcher. –Editor
substantial. In lecture 3 of the “French Course,” Steiner describes this experience of greater “density” in one’s thinking as a clear sign of progress in meditative work. Living thinking becomes a direct experience of the life forces: “Something in the world forces us to think. This something is an object not of recognition but of fundamental encounter....its primary characteristic is that it can only be sensed” [DaR 139]. Deleuze seems to have discovered the same field of pure activity that Spinoza termed natura naturans, and Steiner described as “living working” ( Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts), “an absolute immediate consciousness whose very activity no longer refers to a being but is ceaselessly posed in a life” [IAL 27].
Although he does not use the term, there are passages in which Deleuze is clearly describing a macrocosmic experience that is sense-free, body-free, and even “beyond subject and object.” Deleuze has found the modern “analogue” of the ancient Greeks’ experience of thinking with the etheric body that Steiner calls for in GA 215 [Philosophy, Cosmology, Religion]. Steiner insists that this new experience of the etheric must be fully conscious, like mathematics, and Deleuze has done just this, reverting over and over to images from higher, “ an exact” mathematics such as projective geometry and topology, and describing an “intensive” thinking of pure quality. Although it transcends Greek thought in its clarity, the pure activity Deleuze uncovers arrives with the mythic power of Poseidon’s storms: 8
Something “passes” between the borders, events explode, phenomena flash, like thunder and lightning. Spatio-temporal dynamisms fill the system, expressing simultaneously the resonance of the coupled series and the amplitude of the forced movement which exceeds them... a pure spatio-temporal dynamism... experienced only at the borders of the livable [DaR 118].
Foucault felt the same power: “A bolt of lightning has struck, that will bear Deleuze’s name. A new kind of thinking is possible; thinking is possible anew. Here it is, in Deleuze’s texts, leaping, dancing before us, among us...” [N 88]. Deleuze discovers the young will—the “embryonic” will 9 —that is behind the “old man” of passive thought. “You write with a view to an unborn people that doesn’t yet have a language” [N 143].
Deleuze’s thinking reveals itself as an embryology of the higher self.
Deleuze seems to have discovered the same field of pure activity...
Deleuze’s thinking reveals itself as an embryology of the higher self. No longer “arborescent,” no longer rooted in the physical, sense-free thinking ramifies endlessly into a rhizome that again recalls Steiner’s description of the newly mobile etheric body in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds : “…these currents branch out and ramify in the most delicate manner and become, as it were, a kind of web which then encompasses the entire etheric body as though with a network.” Previously, the etheric was an undifferentiated “plane of consistency” (Deleuze) or “universal ocean of life” (Steiner), but now living thinking differentiates this plane locally, calling forth thought-organs (Steiner); a pliable, ever-folding line mapping incarnating archetypes or “singularities” (Deleuze); a membrane that becomes sensitive to the macrocosmic currents passing through it; a new “center” in the region of the heart from which etheric currents run forth (Steiner). “Things” dissolve into processes, unfolding “events.” (Deleuze: “I don’t believe in things.” [N 160]) Like Steiner, Deleuze describes a realm in which one can watch time metamorphose into space: “This indefinite life does not itself have moments…. it doesn’t just come about or come after but offers the immensity of an empty time where one sees the event yet to come and already happened, in the absolute of an immediate consciousness” [IAL 29].
As consciousness expands out from the single, isolated point of the Cartesian cogito, it moves inexorably toward its polar opposite: the projective plane at infinity, thinking as a single, organic whole that is simultaneously infinite and indivisible, hence a “plane of consistency.” Expanding consciousness likewise bursts the illusory containers of the body and the soul, revealing the peripheral forces streaming in from the macrocosm to form them. Steiner begins the twelve lectures comprising A Psychology of Body, Soul & Spirit (GA 115) with just such a macrocosmic picture of the human body, followed by an intimate phenomenology of the inner life that traces faculties such as sympathy and antipathy, feeling, representation, and memory back to their common source in an intransitive desire that flows from a macrocosmic spiritual will.
Deleuze praises psychoanalysis for having revealed this desire at the base of the soul, and Freud even more so for having discovered that the energies of the libido can be “deterritorialized,” which is to say, transferred, metamorphosed, and sublimated. But he laments “the other
aspect, of personifying these apparatuses (as Super-ego, Ego, and Id), a theatrical mise-en-scène that substitutes merely representative tokens for the true productive forces of the unconscious, crippling all desiring production thereby” [N 16]. Hence, Deleuze and his co-author Guattari seek to liberate and transform this desire, to help it escape from the imagined, neo-Freudian “container” of the body and become a “body without organs.” 10 This notoriously enigmatic “BwO” reveals its real profundity only against the background of Steiner’s macrocosmic account of our higher human nature. One finds even what sound like intimations of karma in Deleuze’s late writings, e.g.: “A wound is incarnated or actualized in a state of things or a life; but it is itself a pure virtuality on the plane of immanence that leads us into a life. My wound existed before me…” [IAL 31].
Ben-Aharon’s recent book, The Event in Science, History, Philosophy & Art, includes an excellent discussion of the potentials for social transformation that are opened up in Deleuze’s enlivened thinking, waiting to be actualized. My own, briefer discussion seeks only to situate this aspect of his work relative to Schiller’s and Steiner’s. Deleuze was personally engaged in many causes, including the rights of prisoners, gays, and Palestinians. But his writings are those of the “pure metaphysician” he claimed to be: like Schiller and Steiner, Deleuze says little about specific ethical consequences or social programs. And it must be said in defense of all three that this stance is entirely self-consistent: from the perspective of radical freedom, it is impossible to prescribe ethical actions to others, or even to oneself. Instead, the ethical individual expands, refines, and transforms her own cognitive faculties, so as to become a vessel for spiritual intuitions, an artist able to shape and embody entirely new social forms.
The ethical individual expands, refines, transforms her own cognitive faculties...
The first step toward actualizing freedom is to understand the pathologies of dead thought, of thinking as mere representation of extant structures. Such “repetitions” (as Deleuze calls them) remain impotent: living thinking can conceive abstract thought, but there is no way that thought as structure, on its own, can give birth to the spiritual activity of thinking. The “tracings” of repetitive thought
Expanding consciousness bursts the illusory containers of the body and the soul...
are necessarily shot through with presupposed interests: as Schiller wrote of the French Revolution, no genuinely radical politics has arisen or ever can arise out of such untransformed thought. “Recognition” (thought as mere representation) “is a sign of the celebration of monstrous nuptials, in which thought ‘rediscovers’ the State, rediscovers ‘the Church’ and rediscovers all the current values that it subtly presented in the pure form of an eternally blessed unspecified eternal object” [DaR 136].
Instead, we must build a rhizome, an open field of interconnected energies:
The rhizome is altogether different, a map and not a tracing...The orchid does not reproduce the tracing of the wasp; it forms a map with the wasp, in a rhizome. What distinguishes the map from the tracing is that it is entirely oriented toward experimentation in contact with the real. The map does not reproduce an unconscious closed in upon itself; it constructs the unconscious. It fosters connections between fields, the removal of blockages on bodies without organs, the maximum opening of bodies without organs onto a plane of consistency...The map is open and connectable in all of its dimensions; it is detachable, reversible, susceptible to constant modifications. It can be torn, reversed, adapted to any kind of mounting, reworked by an individual, group or social formation. It can be drawn on a wall, conceived of as a work of art, constructed as a political action or as a meditation [P 12].
Via this thinking that is an exact yet rigorous, we leave the “royal road” of extension, learn to live off the Cartesian grid, experiment with non-metric “nomad sciences.” New possibilities open up before us within an intensive field of pure qualities. As in Schiller, as in Steiner, the philosopher becomes the cognitive artist who creates concepts, and the cognitive artist inspires in turn the ethical and the social artist. The philosopher sings; the living concept is her “unvoiced song.” 11
by Peter Selg. SteinerBooks, 2011, 271 pgs.
The stated purpose of this soul-stirring book, “to help deepen our awareness of our connections with the dead,” is too modest, for its themes are cosmic and its scope vast. The main content is indicated in the book’s subtitle: extracts from Rudolf Steiner’s eulogies and funeral addresses, along with knowledgeable commentary by Selg, make up the rich substance of three-fourths of the book. The rest is a compelling overview of the results of Rudolf Steiner’s research on the path of the soul after death.
After mentioning earlier occasions, dating back even to his student days, when Rudolf Steiner responded to requests for funeral addresses, Selg focuses on Steiner’s appeals to anthroposophists to work concretely with the dead. The task—and Steiner viewed it as anthroposophy’s most important task—is to build and nurture a community that bridges the abyss that separates us from the dead and that encompasses souls on both sides of the threshold. Such work in anthroposophical groups can sustain connections that have the potential both to enrich earthly life and to support the path of the deceased—even more than do memories of the dead cherished by non-anthroposophical family members.
11 N 163. Deleuze is himself a witness to this powerful experience of real Inspiration: “Take any set of singularities leading from one [to] another, and you have a concept directly related to an event: a lied. A song rises, approaches, or fades away. That’s what it’s like on the plane of immanence: multiplicities fill it, singularities connect with one another, processes or becomings unfold, intensities rise and fall” [N 146-7].
Rudolf Steiner gave many practical suggestions for this work, for example, the re-creation in thought and feeling of an image of the deceased. Such an image “becomes a force, an organ of the spiritual world through which the deceased is able to initiate connections and contribute to shaping earthly events.”
We must build a rhizome, an open field of interconnected energies...Rudolf Steiner Library Newsletter Reviews
Among many aspects of the topic that Selg touches on is Steiner’s experience of dwelling in the thinking of deceased persons: he reported that there were subtle, individual differences among them depending on the stage of I-consciousness each had attained. We also learn that the words he spoke at a funeral or a cremation actually emanated from the deceased through Rudolf Steiner’s “orienting” his soul toward that of the other. And we learn why he considered ritual, specifically the Christian Community’s ritual for the dead, to be essential. He was emphatic that rituals performed by an ordained priest are indispensable, even stating (Selg cites GA 345, not yet translated into English) that he would refuse to speak without one being present.
Selg devotes considerable space to detailed accounts of Rudolf Steiner’s responses to the deaths of individuals who were connected in some way with the building of the first Goetheanum. He quotes at length from beautiful eulogies, verses, interment, cremation, and memorial addresses for Sophie Stinde, Hermann Linde, Edith Maryon, and others. His words show deep compassion as well as penetrating knowledge of the destinies of these individuals whose forces united with, inspired, and strengthened the souls left behind. Always modest, always speaking as spokesperson for the anthroposophical community, Steiner never denied the pain of loss. It is especially moving to read about his loving and wise support for the family of seven-year-old Theo Faiss, who died in a tragic accident, and whose etheric body, Steiner said, became active in the atmosphere around the Goetheanum as a source of artistic inspiration.
The second part of the book, only twenty pages long, is dense with important, not-to-be-missed notes (as is the first part), mainly extended quotes from the sources, along with Selg’s contextual remarks. Much of the text here concerns the meaning of the actual moment of dying, which Steiner called the “consummate event” (Selg cites GA 157a, The Forming of Destiny and Life after Death). We experience dying not as a departure of soul from body (as the common image would have it) but as the body departing from the soul (a very different image). And more wondrous: any enhancement of I-consciousness after death depends absolutely on the very power of our experience of our own death. Dying, says Rudolf Steiner, allows us for the first time to see the entire physical body (which we could not do while inhabiting it), and it is the looking back on our death that gives us post-death self-awareness. Selg quotes from GA 209 (lecture of 7 December 1921, not translated):
Beholding the entire physical body, the gift of I-consciousness, in the moment of death makes a tremendous impression. That impression endures and forms the content of I-consciousness between death and rebirth, when everything becomes temporal and the spatial aspect…no longer exists.
Self-experience gained through our connection with the moment of dying also helps to reorient us amid the excess of consciousness in the spiritual world. No one can ponder these thoughts without being moved. Are there implications here for what in this light might be viewed as the excessive use of pain medications during terminal illness?
Steiner has of course described the path of the soul after death in a number of lecture cycles long available in English. But here we find details and precise images from quite a few sources yet to be translated. I was especially struck by Steiner’s description in one of those sources (GA 168) of the spirit-soul’s experience of the emptiness in the cosmos that is the space that was occupied by our physical body:
It is the perception of something in the world that must be repeatedly filled by you. You then arrive at the perception that you are in the world for a purpose that only you can fulfill. You sense your place in the world; you sense that you are one of the building blocks without which the world could not exist. That is what our perceiving this emptiness does.
Most of us have the intuition that every individual life has meaning. But what Steiner expresses here could scarcely be more uplifting and inspirational.
Also inspiring to read are Steiner’s indications about the individual’s encounter after death with the Christ as the “cosmic archetypal image of the human being” and thus the “ultimate Christological foundation of conscience.” Selg expands this statement in the notes with extracts from three different sources: the feeling of accountability to the Christ will develop ever more in coming centuries, and we will experience the spiritually radiant cosmic archetype ultimately and objectively as our Self and as “implacable judge.”
A warning: reading this book can be extremely frustrating, owing to the way that the publisher has handled the references. Note numbers send you to the endnotes, which cite sources by German title. When you look in the bibliography, you find sources listed, perversely, not by title but by GA number. You must then scan five pages of titles searching for the one you seek, hoping meanwhile that you don’t lose the thread of the text. This awkward system obliges you to hold fingers in two places whenever
you want publication information and whether a title is available in English and other. And there are 305 notes! Notwithstanding the efforts required to cope with the references—and, after all, patience and slowed reading have value in reading spiritual texts—The Path of the Soul after Death is a treasure. The first part, in revealing so much about Rudolf Steiner’s relationships with coworkers, provides some of the satisfaction of a wellwritten biography, amplified by the reach of the subject matter. It reveals an aspect of Rudolf Steiner’s character that some readers (those perhaps unfamiliar with published reminiscences and memoirs) will not have encountered: his unconditional, warmhearted, and very personal support for the grieving relatives of those deceased. And throughout, readers will be grateful for the many extracts from works not yet translated into English, for example, Das Geheimnis des Todes (GA 159) and works mentioned above, Die Verbindung zwischen Lebenden und Toten (GA 168) and Vom Wesen des wirken Wortes (GA 345). Another frequently cited work, Unsere Toten (GA 261), is listed in the bibliography as only available in German, but it has just been published by SteinerBooks as Our Dead: Memorial, Funeral, and Cremation Addresses, 1906-1924.
The book has an added bonus of eighteen black-andwhite illustrations: photos of the people mentioned in the text and of the first Goetheanum, and reproductions of Steiner’s handwritten verses and notes.
Charles Timbrell’s biography of Walter Rummel was published six years ago and has been the subject of many favorable reviews, most of which have appeared in specialist publications such as Clavier, Tempo, The Pianist, and International Piano Magazine. Priced at $58.00 and devoted to the life of a pianist whose name is unknown to the vast majority of music lovers, it was clearly written for the relatively small constituency of people who have a serious interest in pianists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and their repertoire, but this should not discourage potential readers. If such names as
Godowski, Moszkowski, Busoni, Schnabel, Bauer, and, of course, Rummel, mean little or nothing to you, you may still find much that is of great interest in this very well-written story of an extremely complex individual who encountered Rudolf Steiner as a young man and for whom anthroposophy became a lifelong influence. It is also true that while the many comments on Rummel’s interpretations of such masterpieces as Schubert’s final piano sonata, Schumann’s Humoresque and Debussy’s preludes will be hard to fathom if you are unfamiliar with these works, Timbrell’s book may have the added merit of inspiring you to remedy the situation with a trip to your local record store (if you have one), or some hours spent with your local classical music station (if you have one), or by logging on to a convenient music outlet. I have to put the matter in these terms as solo piano recitals are rare events in most localities.
By general consent among his contemporaries, Walter Rummel (1887–1953) was a great pianist and an accomplished composer. His father, Franz, was a British citizen and a brilliant pianist descended from a long line of distinguished German musicians, and his mother was the daughter of Samuel F. B. Morse, of telegraph fame. Rummel studied first with his father, but when he was fourteen Franz died, and his mother moved to Washington, DC in order to be near her brother. Rummel continued his piano studies in Washington with an eminent pupil of Liszt and Moszkowski, but returned to Berlin in 1904 to study with Leopold Godowsky. He made his Berlin debut in 1908 at the age of twenty-one, playing a sonata of his own composition with his violinist brother, William. A year later he moved to Paris, and began a long friendship with Claude Debussy, whose music became one of the staples of his repertoire.
Debussy liked the way Rummel played his music, and provided the title for Timbrell’s book when he referred to the pianist as “the prince of virtuosos.” As far as the subtitle is concerned, it must be said that to describe Rummel as an American pianist is a considerable oversimplification, since he was born a British citizen in Germany in 1887, became an American citizen in 1908, accepted German citizenship in 1944, hoped to gain French citizenship in 1948, and was regarded by the American State Department as a Nazi collaborator. Timbrell states that Rummel was proud of his American citizenship, but doesn’t hesitate to quote the disparaging references to American culture that appear in some of his letters. There was, in fact, nothing simple in any aspect of Rum-
mel’s life, and the relative brevity of this biography is as much due to shortage of source material as to the author’s admirable taste for economy.
Rummel’s repertoire extended from the baroque to the late romantics and Debussy. Reviewers were almost unanimous in their approval of his performances and he was lavishly praised by some of the most fearsomely influential critics of the time, including Bernard Shaw and Ernest Newman. Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, and Tchaikovsky were prominent among the composers whose music he performed to great acclaim, but he ignored most of his contemporaries: Stravinsky, Bartok, Schoenberg, and Hindemith were notably absent from his programs.
Rummel moved easily among the literary lions of the early twentieth century. One of his most important friendships was with Ezra Pound, whom he met in the United States and continued to see after his move to Paris, and it was through Pound that he was introduced to W. B. Yeats. Pound and Rummel formed what might be called a mutual inspiration society, and Rummel became deeply involved with Yeats’s “Celtic Twilight.”
Extremely attractive to women, he seems to have been the innocent cause of one suicide, and may have been the less innocent cause of his first wife’s loss of reason when he began an extended affair with Isadora Duncan. He parted company with Duncan after apparently falling in love with one of her pupils, and was married twice more. And yet none of these liaisons and unions carry much conviction either as normal conjugal or as ideally platonic relationships. Rummel was quite capable of forming an ostensibly romantic attachment and then informing the object of his affections that what he had in mind was “brotherly devotion.” Duncan told one story in her autobiography and a different one to her friends, and the only thing we can say with any certainty is that the ambiguities of his personal life were part and parcel of the mass of contradictions evident in the course of his life as a whole.
Rudolf Steiner lectured frequently in Paris from 1905 until 1908, and it is likely that Rummel first encountered him during this period. After several years of involvement in theosophy, Rummel wrote to Steiner in1913, express-
ing his gratitude for “an affirmation of my inner feelings,” and met him at a lecture Steiner gave in May of that year. Rummel and his first wife spent six weeks in Dornach in early 1915, watching the construction of the Goetheanum and hearing distant gunfire. His devotion to Steiner may be gauged from the fact that he filled two notebooks with passages copied from such works as An Outline of Occult Science and The Nature and Origin of the Arts. In 1919, he and Isadora Duncan gave a Chopin program at the Goetheanum in the presence of Leopold van der Pals, who was an accomplished composer with a keen interest in eurythmy. Van der Pals confided his opinions to his diary, and it is of some interest that what may be the only report on Rummel’s work by an anthroposophist musician is entirely negative:
I had a very sad impression of him. He carries himself lightly as if he is happy with his new way of life, but one senses an internal dissatisfaction… nearly a conscious self-destruction. In the evening he and Isadora Duncan gave a Chopin program. It was dreadful. They can talk so much about the Soul, but everything she gives is an outward appearance, and not even artistically beautiful. Rummel looked depressed and bored. He played badly, without internal organization of the works and with poor execution. Everything made a depressing impression on me.
Rummel wrote program notes for his concerts, sometimes attempting to express his understanding of the spiritual nature of music in relation to the human being. He complained about the elevation of the brain, the intellect, to the status of almighty God, and the degenerative influence of “connoisseurs and individualists” in “insisting on an understanding of music, an ‘intellectualization’ of music….” These connoisseurs “forget that the public, the crowd, is not a composition of many individuals but a body, the medium of an unconscious entity; the soul of the crowd is as real as that of man. It is to her that great artists of all time have sung, danced and spoken….”
Reading this plea for communication with the group soul, we may be forgiven for wondering how much of Steiner’s message about the current state of human evolution Rummel had actually understood. There was, how-
ever, much more to Rummel’s experience of anthroposophy, and we may accept Timbrell’s verdict that Steiner was the greatest single influence on his life while maintaining reservations about his assertion that Steiner’s “thinking guided virtually every aspect of Rummel’s thinking from about 1908 on.” It is to be hoped that his conduct during the Second World War and his clumsy misrepresentations thereof were not the product of anthroposophically-oriented thinking, but we can’t help observing that the notes he wrote for a 1941 concert in Nazi-occupied Brussels continue a line of thought already present in the notes quoted above, and somehow manage to combine a Hitlerian view of art with sentiments often heard when anthroposophists gather together.
A new wave of life is unfurling in Europe. No force will be able to thwart its course. The year 1940 was the date of its birth… Art and, above all, Music is destined to arise victoriously from the present strife… The public, weary of the artifices and deceits of modern pseudoart… demand a human and wholesome art. We will witness the… dismemberment of institutions which for the most part sprang from anti-artistic and snobbish centers… we will see without pity the failure of this snobbism that has launched on the musical world a horde of dilettantes, merchants and schemers… All of us who are convinced of the new European dawn must unite to forge a cultural sword that will thrust itself into the jaws of a music that under the mask of modernism and purism is nothing but an anemic ghost of a certain cerebral intellectualism excluding and denying all activity of heart and true spirit.
Timbrell quotes the response of a French commentator; “In other words, long live the ‘directed art’ of Monsieur Hitler and down with Hindemith, Schoenberg, Milhaud and their consorts.”
It is worth noting that in the fifty years that have elapsed since I joined the Anthroposophical Society, attitudes toward modern art have thawed out considerably among anthroposophists. Many of these “heartless” composers are truly appreciated; their works are even choreographed for eurythmy performances, and it is clear that the difficulties presented by their music were not caused by lack of heart or feeling.
Rummel’s stepson from his final marriage believed that the great pianist “had always been politically naïve,” but Rummel had always shown a great capacity for selfpromotion, and Timbrell points out that “political naïveté combined with professional opportunism is a dangerous
thing” and that in his cooperation with the Nazi regime, Rummel had for a while been “able to play both sides against the middle,” continuing “his active international career for four long years before accepting German citizenship in August 1944.”
The final chapters of Rummel’s life, in which he used a self-serving “Memorandum” as part of his struggle with the American authorities for rehabilitation and was able to make a partial comeback before succumbing to spinal cancer in 1953, do not make cheerful reading. I’m happy to give the closing words of this review to Charles Timbrell, who has given us a balanced and eminently readable account of Rummel’s life and work:
As an artist, Rummel seems to have wanted very much to be apolitical, but unfortunately he lived at a time when that was impossible. In many respects, he failed to adapt to a world that was changed forever by World War I, retreating whenever possible into a life of imagination populated by sprites, fairies and medieval legends, and believing with absolute certainty in reincarnation and the life of the soul. He was a confirmed idealist who lived much of his life in denial—a circumstance that might help to explain, but not to condone, his activities during World War II and some of the statements found in his postwar “Memorandum.”
*
The CD included with Prince of Virtuosos contains twenty tracks transcribed from recordings made between 1924 and 1948. They give us a good idea of Rummel’s fine technique, even touch, and beautiful phrasing. Only the three chronologically latest tracks, which are placed first on the CD, suggest what Rummel might have sounded like on an off day. These are three of the pianist’s own Bach transcriptions, recorded in 1948, and are marred by excessive tempo changes and an occasional clumsiness not apparent in any of the earlier recordings. Rummel wrote eloquently about the need for a flexible approach to tempo, but when there is a complete lack of a basic pulse, tempo changes are apt to seem meaningless. The unavoidable drawback of the CD is the absence of any largescale works that would have allowed us to experience the command of musical structure for which Rummel was often praised. All twenty-five of Rummel’s highly praised Bach transcriptions are available in excellent modern recordings by Jonathan Plowright on the Hyperion label.
Walter Rummel plays Liszt’s Liebestraum #3 (1942 recording) on www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWX4zJJBKyk
The following pages are offered as a preparation and means of participation in this year’s annual conference. Its concern is to discern and shape the future direction of the Anthroposophical Society in America. Included are:
• Looking Toward August — from the conference organizing committee, p. 37
• Notice — the Annual General Meeting, p. 37
• Taking Stock of Our Situation — reviewing studies from 1994 forward, p. 39
• Confidence in the Human Being: Stating Our Intentions — a working draft from the General Council, p. 40
• Participation and Human Warmth — exploring questions of our movement’s scope and our ways of meeting each other, p. 40
• Financial Participation — funding the Society’s activity with understanding for our different circumstances, p. 42
• Synergy and Mutual Empowerment — overcoming individual isolation and making best use of the Society’s resources, p. 42
• Feedback — addresses and a coupon to share your experience and perspectives, p. 43
• A Special Appeal — inviting support for transformative work going forward at the Rudolf Steiner Library, p. 44
• Toward a Future Worthy of the Human Being — from a recent public talk in Philadelphia by General Secretary Torin Finser, p. 45
• To Be a Thinker — techniques for clarity from conference co-facilitator Jane Lorand, p. 46
• The Work of the Angels in Our Astral Body — selections from a particularly significant lecture by Rudolf Steiner in 1918, p. 49
There are many practical questions to consider, but first this fundamental question–of what we are, who we are destined to be, and how we need to present ourselves to best serve the emerging soul and spirit of humanity–needs to be wrestled into consciousness. Do we have the strength and courage for this initial struggle? [from p. 38, first column]
From the Conference Committee:
Dennis Dietzel, Beth Dunn-Fox, Marian Leon, Leslie LoyWe are in a dramatic stream of anniversaries that began in 2010, when we commemorated the hundredth year of anthroposophical group work in the United States. We continued into 2011, celebrating Rudolf Steiner’s 150th birthday, and in 2011/2012 we honor the hundredth anniversary of eurythmy and of the Calendar of the Soul The end of this year marks the centennial of the founding of the original Anthroposophical Society. These anniversaries give members of the Anthroposophical Society and friends of Rudolf Steiner a wonderful opportunity to reflect, and to share in carrying these great impulses into the future.
For this summer the Society is planning a major conference: “That Good May Become”: Meeting Our Spiritual Destinies in America, to take place in Ann Arbor, Michigan, August 9–12, on the campus of the University of Michigan. The General Council is pleased to welcome individuals from the Executive Council at the Goetheanum to work with us as we consider the future of anthroposophy on this continent. We are also delighted to announce that Jonathan Stedall will join us to discuss his new film,
The 2012 Annual Members’ Meeting of the Anthroposophical Society in America will be held on Sunday, August 12 at the Michigan League, 911 N. University Avenue, Ann Arbor, Michigan. The meeting will begin at 10:30 a.m. and conclude at 2:30 p.m. Members are invited to submit proposals to be considered for the meeting. Items for consideration may be addressed to the General Council and must be submitted in writing and sent via first-class mail postmarked by June 12, 2012 at the latest. Send your request to the Society office at 1923 Geddes Avenue, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104. Thank you.
The Challenge of Rudolf Steiner. The participation of Eurythmy Spring Valley in planning the conference means that the arts will have an important role in our deliberations, and ensure that each day of the conference will flow artistically and hygienically.
The intention of this expanded version of our annual conference and AGM is to help deepen our understanding of anthroposophy and the purpose of the Anthroposophical Society, particularly in America, and to strengthen our collaboration. This has led the conference planners to ask an additional question: What are the new ways in which we are meeting one another and this work? This is leading to several new opportunities for engagement, including the decision to hold the conference in August to make it accessible to as many members as possible.
On the next few pages you will find material to help you prepare for and participate in the conference, whether or not you can physically attend . For everyone, conference calls with groups and branches, study guides from the Rudolf Steiner Library, and special pages for posting thoughts and questions on anthroposophy.org will help us focus our thoughts as a national community. We want to be “hearing” everyone’s voice!
Anticipating the conference, in January the General Council began studying Rudolf Steiner’s The Work of the Angels in Our Astral Body. Excerpts are included here along with some leading questions that can help us begin to relate its remarkable images with the circumstances of
North America. We hope that individually or in groups you will take up a study of the lecture. The full text is posted online; type conference.anthroposophy.org into your browser or purchase a copy from SteinerBooks.
In this lecture, Rudolf Steiner describes how angels are creating pictures in human consciousness that are meant to make their way into full awareness. These include three transformative perceptions:
• that every human being is a spiritual being, formed in the divine image;
• that the suffering of others will be felt more and more to be just as urgent as any bodily injury of my own;
• and that a new, comprehensive spiritual truth and lawfulness is beginning to be recognized, allowing each human being to experience the reality of spirit through clear, conscious thinking.
Do we experience any or all of these images becoming conscious today in America? How do they manifest in our own life and work? Can they be seen in the values emerging in our Society? Are they visible in the relationships that people are forming with each other? How are they being expressed? Are these images clear in the foundations of anthroposophical initiatives? Do you see them illuminating other social and cultural initiatives?
May our feeling penetrate
Into the center of our heart.
And seek, in love, to unite itself
With the human beings seeking the same goal
With the spirit beings who, bearing grace
Strengthening us from the realms of light
And illuminating our love,
Are gazing down on our earnest, heartfelt striving.
The council has chosen this lecture, along with the Foundation Stone Meditation and the Threefold or American Verse, as foundations for the conference work. Over the course of these months leading up to the conference, we invite members to share their thoughts and questions concerning the special character and destiny of America—and the role our society and movement can play in furthering that destiny.
At conference.anthroposophy.org you can find links to all the resources. In your local group or branch, please assist those without internet access.
In June 2005 the Rudolf Steiner Foundation (now RSF Social Finance) commissioned a review and summary of a series of studies and reports relating to membership and membership issues of the Anthroposophical Society in America. The studies had been undertaken between 1994 and 2000, so that the 2005 review had an eleven-year perspective—including the fact that in 20012002 the Society had had to make major cutbacks in staff and budget. The review and summary was carried out by RSF founder and board member Siegfried Finser, a former treasurer of the Society, corporate executive and consultant, president of the Threefold Educational Foundation, and a Waldorf schoolteacher. Finser wrote in his 2005 cover letter that
... the purpose of this work was to try to be of assistance to the leadership of the Society as it prepared itself to improve its current financial and social situation. … The reports stemming from these earlier studies were remarkably clear and articulate. The recommendations seemed highly suitable given the information derived through questionnaires and focus group discussions. …
I have come to the conclusion that [if] the Anthroposophical Society really ... wishes to accomplish its mission as clearly indicated by Rudolf Steiner in 1923, and become the world movement it has the potential to become, no superficial measures are sufficient. A really fundamental reforming is required and anything short of that is helpful and useful, but will in the end fall short of what is expected of us by the spiritual world active in our time. …
Could it be that the problem is not with the conclusions in the studies, but in finding a course of action, making decisions, and finding the support for moving ahead?
Are we, perhaps, a little afraid to step forward because our history has shown us that anyone stepping forward in a decisive way will be “chopped to bits?” Are we a community of human beings that can think and feel along one set of values, but we act individually and collectively around a different, defensive set of values? Are we having trouble practicing anthroposophy? Is it possible that we need to confront something in ourselves if we wish to accomplish our purposes during the coming century?
The report was reviewed in the next year or two by the
General Council and no doubt contributed to the mandate of the 2008 publications/communications task force.
Meeting in January 2012, toward the end of Rudolf Steiner’s 150th Birthday year which saw many fresh and hopeful initiatives across this country and internationally, the present General Council reviewed the report again and spent an evening in conversation with its author. With an August leadership colloquium and national conference already taking shape, and with the supportive spiritual rhythm of 100 years since some of Rudolf Steiner’s most important accomplishments, it seemed timely to explore the Society’s challenges and possibilities as fully and frankly as possible with the members.
Taken together, the conclusions of the 1994-2001 studies were grouped into these areas:
Mission Confusion
Why Join the Anthroposophical Society
What Do the Dues Support
The Name, “Anthroposophical Society in America”
Reinventing the Anthroposophical Society in America
Recommendations of the Studies
The reviewer offered several observations in conclusion (his emphasis):
We may need to fundamentally alter how we perceive our mission and how we present ourselves as a social organism. …
This basic decision is probably the one we, as an organization need to make. It stands before us as an unanswered question. Do we want to confront our shortcomings, articulate a mission and transform ourselves to accomplish it? If the answer to this question is yes, here’s what seems to be necessary.
The Anthroposophical Society must change from being a society that pretends to benefit its members to a society that opens its heart to all striving human beings regardless of their religious, scientific and artistic beliefs. Any dogmatic coloring must fade from our image and only our warmth of soul, our empathy for all human striving, and our openness to the soul and spirit in human nature must be revealed in our words, attitudes and actions. Such a Society can become “public” in the true sense of the word.
The Anthroposophical Society could become a social organism that supports the spirit emerging ever more in “all” human beings. The Society is a mirror image, an organizational reflection of what is happening in the evolution of the human being. Just as the spirit in humanity is emerging daily, so the spirit in the Society is also slowly emerging. The spirit emerging in the
Society is nurtured in the School for Spiritual Science. The School for Spiritual Science was placed into a caring warmth body called the Anthroposophical Society which in the past 80 years has gradually become cold and self absorbed. The Society was clearly intended to provide human warmth, openness, and encouragement for all the striving in human beings, not just the few who share certain beliefs.
If it continues as it presently exists, the Anthroposophical Society may have to become increasingly defensive. It will be a fortress for a small minority espousing little understood views. It will be forced more and more to defend its right to exist. The Anthroposophical Society in the end may be a modern re-enactment of the final years of the Templars.
We wonder whether our present condition is all due to our misunderstanding the social form Rudolf Steiner created in 1923 and our inability to realize it in practice. How can nearly 4,000 people who are members in the Society in America envision a different social role? Certainly not easily and not quickly. We will want to retain all our individual uniqueness, our foundations in human freedom, and still begin forming a new view of the Society and in what way we become members or participants.
We will need to be organized to “recognize” the soul and spirit in others, not “bring it to them.” We will need to support the School for Spiritual Science to “bring it to them,” while the Society generates warmth and encouragement for all who strive to fulfill their human social potential. This differentiates the role of the Society from the role of the School and integrates the two into a purposeful organism.
There are many practical questions to consider, but first this fundamental question–of what we are, who we are destined to be, and how we need to present ourselves to best serve the emerging soul and spirit of humanity–needs to be wrestled into consciousness. Do we have the strength and courage for this initial struggle? …
I’m sure if we can agree on our true mission as Society (not the School) we will undoubtedly be able to harness the great capacities of our members and find all the ways and means to accomplish our mission.
The General Council took up these questions as fully as their meeting time permitted, and mandated that key questions be put before members and friends here in being human and at anthroposophy.org in the months leading up to our August national conference in Ann Arbor.
Wrestling with the question of “mission confusion,” the General Council worked on the draft of a concise statement of intention:
We intend to develop an active, dynamic, vibrant ASA that supports each participant in becoming more fully and consciously human; and by manifesting our humanity, we collectively work toward social transformation. We aim to do this through ASA activities and programs that bring people together.
Immediate ways of carrying out this intention include the August conference and possible co-sponsored conferences in future years; publications both in print and online, including a “viewbook” which will clearly connect core anthroposophical concepts with the major initiatives; and programs both direct and co-sponsored. Budget priorities will be aligned to above.
In the above-mentioned review of studies and reports from 1994 to 2005, a central question for the Society can be described as participation. The studies had found that, “In general, there are many people who do feel that anthroposophy is right for them, but whose experience of the Society and its membership keeps them out.”
Rudolf Steiner understood the situation of someone who is seeking fellowship but is not met by others. As described in his autobiography, his first public decades in the 1880’s and 1890’s were spent appreciating the views of others but without any real reciprocation. He was beginning his fifth decade before he found receptiveness for his deeper insights.
A number of the statues of the General Anthroposophical Society adopted at the Christmas Foundation Conference point to questions of openness, participation, and truly meeting other human beings. The Society is to be “an association of people whose will it is to nurture the life of the soul, both in the individual and in human society, on the basis of a true knowledge of the spiritual world” (statute 1, emphasis added throughout). The Soci-
ety will cultivate a genuine science of the spiritual world “together with all that results from this for brotherhood in human relationships and for the moral and religious as well as the artistic and cultural life” (statute 2). Statute 3 affirms the view of the original Executive Council led by Rudolf Steiner, that “Anthroposophy, as fostered at the Goetheanum, leads to results which can serve every human being as a stimulus to spiritual life, whatever his nation, social standing or religion. They can lead to a social life genuinely built on brotherly love.” And “no special degree of academic learning is required to make them one’s own and to found one’s life upon them, but only an openminded human nature.” “A dogmatic stand in any field whatsoever is to be excluded from the Anthroposophical Society” (statute 9) and “members may join together in smaller or larger groups on any basis of locality or subject ” (statute 11).
Returning to the studies done for the Anthroposophical Society in America, key points include that:
• The members seem to be both the greatest asset and the greatest deterrent in the process of applying for membership. Having a good mentor, someone really interested in them, often draws individuals into the Society.
• Negative first impressions formed in early encounters with members often turn away those having an interest in anthroposophy. A person interested in anthroposophy rarely finds among the members anyone really interested in them. The great readiness to convert frequently drives away the very people for whom the Anthroposophical Society was established.
• The Anthroposophical Society is not perceived by others as being a truly public society. It has the aura of something exclusive and not easy to join. Therefore its members are generally perceived as “representing” the Society, and many members act as though they represent the Society. Joining the Society is felt to require a high level of commitment to certain beliefs and therefore to non-members it seems to entail giving up their “spiritual freedom.”
Rudolf Steiner had already had to address such problems in the year leading up to the Christmas Foundation Conference, as described in the lectures in Awakening to Community. In the February 13, 1923 lecture in Stuttgart he described how in three stages one becomes an anthroposophist. First, the heart recognizes that conditions in the world are not right, and one’s will—normally turned
outward to meet the world—is reversed and turned inward. Second , one then seeks for higher knowledge to answer the questions that arise from the heart’s perceptions. Third , one takes the knowledge gained and turns back with the intention to do one’s part in making things right in the world. Steiner points out as a key source of conflict that established members in the second and third stages (knowledge-seeking and taking action) too often forget the character of the first stage in meeting newcomers, and so meet them from the head, critically, rather than from the heart.
Certainly this is often not the case, and a new person finds interest and warmth and support. However, the problem has perhaps evolved. With the wide dissemination of esoteric knowledge since Rudolf Steiner’s time, many who approach anthroposophy, or might be approached by us as colleagues in the vast effort of the renewal of culture, already have spiritual insights and perspectives. Some of these views will be new since Rudolf Steiner’s time. Some will surely be erroneous. And still others will be unfamiliar to us because we have not encountered or have not recognized them in Steiner’s vast work.
Rudolf Steiner often observed that his own research could appear contradictory, because spiritual realities especially can and should be observed from many different viewpoints. (Cosmic and Human Thought, GA/CW 151, gives an extensive treatment of the legitimate diversity of perspectives and experiential relationships toward what we casually call “reality”!)
Today there should also be persons who have already experienced anthroposophy in Rudolf Steiner’s lifetime and have reincarnated quickly, as he indicated. What transformations will anthroposophy have undergone in such a soul? What kind of perspectives and impulses may they be bringing?
Anthroposophists are learning to work with the “challenge of difference” in parts of the world where European culture is not native. Here in North America it’s complicated. Superficially our national culture may appear to be European, but even that element has evolved separately now for centuries. The mysteries of the first nations are still active, and streams from Africa and Asia are woven into the whole. Fundamental conditions of spirit, culture, and the earth are quite different here, and Rudolf Steiner was rarely asked about these.
The lecture “The Work of the Angels in Our Astral Body,” excerpted at the end of this section, speaks profoundly to these questions.
At the January 2012 meeting, the ASA’s General Council also determined to explore the question of “financial participation.” How do we gather the funds needed for our work (including our support of the Goetheanum’s work) without creating further barriers—economic barriers—to membership? The letter from Marian León that is now going out with membership renewal requests invites a conversation on this topic:
It is no secret that many national anthroposophical societies including the U.S., and the General Anthroposophical Society in Dornach, are facing financial challenges. Here in the United States our treasurer, Jerry Kruse, has been stressing for several years that the Society’s operating income, from dues and programs, should cover our basic operating expenditures, so that special gifts and legacies can support growth and new initiatives. Again in 2012 we are tightening our belts, but we need resources to grow. The success of our 150th anniversary year activities, and the world situation, tell us how much anthroposophy is needed.
Thank you to the large number of members who have raised their annual membership contribution to $15/ month or $180 for the year. As Jerry has previously noted, this is the average level which would allow the U.S. Society to balance its regular operating budget with our present number of members and our current level of gifts. While more than half of the members contribute at this level, it is the average membership donation which needs to reach $180. Several dozens of members have made five-year commitments of $1000 or more per year through the Michael Support Circle. And a number of friends have stepped forward to contribute at a higher rate to compensate for those who are temporarily unable to give a minimum of $40, which is the amount we send, on each member’s behalf, to support the work at the Goetheanum. Still, as Rudolf Steiner said at the Christmas Foundation meeting, dues are an awkward business—like a man reaching with his right hand into the left trouser pocket!
The General Council discussed this situation at its January meeting, and reviewed studies that have been held over a number of years which indicate that the present level of participation in the life of the Society is substantially lower than should be possible. The central question we face is how to manifest the heartfelt welcome and the warm human relationships valued in anthroposophy so that all of the thousands of people who are involved with and touched by anthroposophy in this
country can participate, collaborate, and strengthen our movement.
As part of that conversation and review, the Council came to the understanding that it would be healthy for members and the Society to begin speaking in terms of “financial participation” rather than dues. Some individuals stretch to give $10 quarterly, just covering our dues payment to the Goetheanum, while giving constantly in other ways. Some are blessed with more abundant resources and gladly give $100 per month in order to see the entire movement and Society flourish. So setting one fixed dues amount asks too little participation of some members and too much of others. In the spirit of the human and spiritual community we strive to foster, wouldn’t it be better to recognize this?
The concept of financial participation in the Society requires further development, and so the General Council has asked that we once again send out dues forms much as we have in the past. They invite you to be generous according to your ability.
Above all, we want to hear from you—about participation, about difficulties you may face in making any financial contribution this year, about ways to continue the momentum of “Steiner 150.” The staff is working on new ways to support your learning, engagement, and striving toward that “future worthy of the human being” that Rudolf Steiner spoke of. Please let us know how you feel about moving from “dues” to “participation,” financial and otherwise, and make a payment of commitment as you are able to do so.
You will not have received this letter if your renewal date has not yet arrived, but your thoughts are welcome now!
The special term “synergy” (Greek: “working together”) was popularized by Buckminster Fuller in his 1960s book Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth. It indicates the property of a “whole”—that a true whole is “more than the sum of its parts.” This fundamental concept of holistic thinking stands opposed to the notion that all of reality can be found in the minimum parts and particles.
Anthroposophy is truly and intensively holistic, which is part of its challenge. Many, many perspectives can and should be brought together to describe a real spiritual truth, and this is an important aspect of the work of the School for Spiritual Science.
There is also a social dimension of synergy. About 3500 individuals are presently members of the Anthroposophical Society in America, with perhaps several times that many friends, readers, and independent students of Rudolf Steiner’s work. Even among the members a very large part “feel isolated.” Either they are geographically distant from any group or branch in this huge country, or nearby groups have different interests or social styles. In this isolation there lies a great potential for future synergies. Alone or in groups, people studying and working out of anthroposophy are typically more interested and awake than is usual today. They are knowledgeable, artistically engaged, inclined to self-reliance, and motivated. If biodynamic farmers tend to consider their words before speaking, the experience and insight they reveal is remarkably grounded, imaginative, and well-informed. From kindergarten to high school, Waldorf teachers are also highly observant, creative, resourceful people, and able to engage. The same is commonly true not only in Steiner-inspired initiatives, but among parents, CSA members, patients, and study group members. You really can’t engage anthroposophy to any great degree without beginning a process of waking up beyond the level of attention and insight generally expected today
What a tragedy it is, then, if this personal and human evolution unfolds in isolation from others! A very special cultural “synergy” that should result from genuine association and whole-hearted collaboration is lost. But what an opportunity if we can overcome this isolation! Whatever the reasons for this individual isolation in the culture of the anthroposophical movement, the strength of anthroposophy in the world grows tremendously to whatever extent we can convert isolation into synergies.
Within the tiny staff of the Anthroposophical Society in America we are stretching to initiate some breakthroughs in this area. A really crucial step is the modernization of our records system—that is, the updating of our “membership database.” This is a computerized system, but its capacities have not really progressed in a decade, since the 2001-2002 budget and staff cutback.
Technology has progressed rapidly in the meantime. The present system allows for us to keep track of your address, dues payments, special gifts, and membership status. We have only the barest sketch of you! And when information changes, you have to send it and we enter it.
The system soon to come online can be updated directly by you if you have an internet connection, as the vast majority of members and friends now do (includ-
ing many of the oldest members). It will be able to take in a much fuller picture of your interests, associations, contacts with the society, and professional activity and expertise. We will be able to communicate with you in much more specific ways. Collaboration and sharing is now familiar on the “social internet.” So we can begin, thoughtfully and for mutual empowerment, to cultivate such links. And we’ll be able to receive much fuller feedback than we can handle by mail and phone alone.
This new system will also allow us to manage more events including phone and internet conferences and conversations. It could allow volunteer projects supporting the Society and movement to be distributed across the country—and connect eventually with members in other countries. This “synergy initiative” within our operation will allow us to support you in making new, focused, human connections—for mentoring, study, research, and initiatives, nearby or at a distance. And it will help the Rudolf Steiner Library provide new resources and draw on your expertise. Details on that are on the next page!
Look for more on all these efforts in the next issue of being human where we expect to start the process of working together with this new resource.
Please clip and return this coupon with brief comments on ideas and questions raised in this section, or email marian@anthroposophy.org or write and send by mail to: Marian Leon, Anthroposophical Society in America, 1923 Geddes Ave., Ann Arbor, MI 48104. Thank you!
We’re excited about some new developments, and would like to share them with you. We at the Rudolf Steiner Library have been working with the Society’s staff in Ann Arbor to improve the integration of library resources with all the activities of the Anthroposophical Society in America. Combining new initiatives in member services and communications with continuing innovations in the library is a major step that will benefit all our members and friends. To keep moving forward, we need your financial support.
Here’s a glimpse of what’s ahead:
• Demand for the library’s outstanding resources is growing! More people now use the library’s online public access catalog, and many ask for content that can be transmitted electronically. There are treasures in the library’s collection waiting to be unearthed and shared, and new technologies make this possible. With help
I would like to make a special gift in the amount of $______ to the Society for evolving the Rudolf Steiner Library. (To pay online: at www.anthroposophy.org use the top navigation to go to Library/Library Donation)
Name:
Address: City/ST/ZIP
Phone:
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I enclose my gift by:
Check (Payable to: Anthroposophical Society in America, send to 1923 Geddes Ave., Ann Arbor, MI 48104; Memo: Library)
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Thank you!
from a grant, we have started to digitize back issues of the society’s Journal for Anthroposophy, and will post the content, which will be searchable, online. Free Deeds, The Forerunner, the Society’s News for Members —these vintage American anthroposophical publications all deserve wide exposure, and we hope to be able to digitize them before too long.
• We recently launched an email newsletter, featuring news, new books, your research questions, and interesting links.
• The Anthroposophical Society’s lively website will soon be interactive, featuring study guides, facilitated group studies, webinars, and new ways for members to communicate and share with one another. We will help create bibliographies for these endeavors and supply participants with study materials—both physical and electronic.
These initiatives will create new possibilities for engagement: with Rudolf Steiner’s work; with the works of kindred others, past and present; and with one another. The library is home to a living conversation, and your participation is crucial. Do you have books to recommend? Reviews and links to share? Research results and questions? Your voice keeps the conversation lively!
Please join us with a gift of $50, $100, $500 or more. Your special gifts, in addition to your already generous support of the society’s programs, will make it possible to continue developing the Rudolf Steiner Library into the multidimensional, 21st-century resource it can become. We appreciate your active interest, your ideas, your enthusiasm, and your participation—we know that all of these are at the heart of each gift.
With warm greetings,
Judith SoleilPS: We are not forgetting our friends who prefer to contact the library by telephone or postal mail: we are happy to serve you, as always!
Editor’s Note: the Rudolf Steiner Library Newsletter, edited by Fred Dennehy, has been folded into this publication since 2009. RSLN material includes book reviews (pp. 32-36), plus library news and annotations about new books added to the collection (pp. 59-62).
Talk given in Philadelphia to members and friends on Jan. 24, 2012
Many people today feel disconnection, alienation from the conditions of the existing world. This may happen when one turns on CNN, listens to political debates, or considers the economic crisis. Nowadays one often feels: Here is little me versus all that stuff going on in the world over which I have no control. How can I ever make a difference given all these big issues? Perhaps I am just a speck in a large, seething mass of seismic events, a tsunami of forces much greater than I am.
We then throw ourselves into daily external tasks, pouring our will into work, scheduled events, shopping for groceries etc. We use our will forces to do the things in front of us, hoping to get through the day and have at least something to show for it. But then there are moments, sometimes just fleeting moments, when one looks within. This can happen unexpectedly in the space inbetween appointments, or when one is delayed and has to wait in traffic or sit in the waiting room of a doctor’s office. Sometimes the glance within becomes stronger when faced with a crisis, or when one is on a trip and the geographical landscape has changed. In any case, it happens that occasionally our externally directed will is turned within, and when that happens one inevitably discovers longings of the soul.
Many things try and conspire to cover over, or only partially satisfy, these longings of the soul: turning on the radio, flipping through a magazine in the doctor’s office, going through emails... But over time, if one is honest with oneself, one discovers that these longings are real. One cannot escape them, they hover within us, waiting, asking to be embraced. These longings tell us that we want to be seen for who we are, recognized, accepted as a striving, growing person, perhaps even loved. Once one taps into these realities, one cannot flee from them, they become companions on the journey of life.
Then out of these longings of the soul there can develop a growing thirst for supersensible knowledge, a more comprehensive view of the human being, evolution, relationships, art. This thirst can lead to picking up a book
on self development, or enrolling in a retreat! Many people explore different spiritual paths, and as a response to the “thirst” thus described, they are all valid. We need to embrace one another in our shared striving.
For some years now I have changed the opening of my “Evolving Consciousness” classes at Antioch University. Rather than just reciting a verse, I have taken up a twelve session process of helping the group learn to work with the teacher’s meditations given by Rudolf Steiner. After experiencing silence for a few moments, I read one of the meditations as a start. Then I ask the group to ponder a question, such as, “How can one characterize the difference between beholding and touching?” They are asked to carry that question for seven days and then return to share aphoristic impressions that have arisen. Then I share the meditation again and poise a new question. This is repeated week after week. The point is not that we all become initiated (at least not in that class!), but that we learn to share our striving and our meditative experiences.
For human beings today, sharing is a basic need, just as is eating or drinking. This sharing of experiences of supersensible striving can lead to a stronger sense of one’s own destiny: I have tasks on the earth. This is my time to be on the earth. I am here for a reason.
And when one comes to this growing sense of one’s destiny, one feels at the same time a new kinship for others who share this time on the earth, our sisters and brothers. There are others who have the same questions! We have much to talk about! I am not alone! This shared experience gives us a deep feeling for our humanness.
So now I finally come to a word I have not yet spoken in this talk: anthroposophy, which one could say is the consciousness of one’s humanity. One can become a student of anthroposophy (in name or not) by traveling the modern path described above. And if one wants to do so with others, finding support, encouragement, and companionship along the way, one can look to the vehicle designed by Rudolf Steiner for such purposes, the Anthroposophical Society. To quote from a lecture given by Rudolf Steiner in Stuttgart on February 13, 1923:
The path that leads into the Society consists firstly, then, in changing the direction of one’s will; secondly, in experiencing supersensible knowledge; lastly, in participating in the destiny of one’s time to a point where it becomes one’s personal destiny. One feels oneself sharing mankind’s evolution in the act of reversing one’s will and experiencing the supersensible nature of all
truth. Sharing the experience of the time’s true significance is what gives us our first real feeling for the fact of our humanness.
At a recent meeting of the Council of the Anthroposophical Society in America, I presented three aspects of our work:
Advocacy, for spirit matters. I love the quote from Gandhi: “Let us fight the world’s strongest empire with the power of the spirit.” So we can say today, “Let us counter our present materialism with the truth of the spirit.”
Dialogue, for we want to awaken to community. Marshall Rosenberg, in speaking of the heart in nonverbal communication says: “What I want in my life is compassion, a flow between myself and others based on a mutual giving from the heart” (p.1, Non-violent Communications). There are many people on this earth who want to have new conversations...
Service, for we aim to help others and thereby promote change. Peter Senge in his Fifth Discipline describes applying “leverage” to do things that can have a maximum effect: “seeing where actions and changes in structures can lead to significant, enduring improvements” (p. 114). The anthroposophical movement, through Camphill, Waldorf schools, medical work, the arts, biodynamics, publishing, etc., is full of examples of service. But we need to show how we are all working out of the same impulse, and that the Society is a vessel that can encompass the whole.
As an Anthroposophical Society we are currently at an inflection point, a moment in time when we can either bumble along into obscurity fed by internal preoccupations and self absorption, or we can become a Society known for supporting initiative (see talk at the Portland AGM in being human , winter 2011). The conference and colloquium in Ann Arbor planned for August 8-12, 2012 is an important moment for us to address our common tasks and the future of our work. So is the chance to work in separate groups all over the country on the content of Rudolf Steiner’s lecture The Work of the Angels in Our Astral Body. In preparing together, and through greater and greater engagement in the substance of spiritual science, we can find the answers to all the riddles and challenges we face, not just as a Society but as human beings. Together we can affirm that spirit matters and that it is possible to forge a future that is truly worthy of the human being.
Jane Lorand is Director of the new Center for Systemic Leadership at Rudolf Steiner College. An elementary educator, tax attorney and entrepreneur, in 2008-2009 she developed the three Fort Baker Leadership Summits for California, developing a “Vision and Guidelines for a Sustainable Future for California” using ReasonedJudgment Methodology that is the foundation of the GreenMBA at Dominican University of California. She and colleagues Bruce McKenzie and Leslie Loy will be facilitating the Leadership Colloquium, August 8-9, 2012, for the Anthroposophical Society in America.
To live fully in what Rudolf Steiner calls “the consciousness soul,” we approach truth through thinking. But what kind of thinking activity? How do we optimize the personal intelligence of man to work out of freedom ….to be a thinker on behalf of the plight of humanity?
Rudolf Steiner, in 1924, elaborates on what it means “to be a thinker.” One must be self-possessed, clear thinking, working in full freedom out of ordinary waking consciousness that is not dampened. A thinker is grasping and spiritualizing his earthly intelligence in total freedom of will.1
This is a tall order in today’s cluttered and complex context. It is so easy to give over to what I call the “Veil of the Moment’s Outer Framing of Reality.” Ahriman both throws up these veils and also benefits by the ambiguity humans experience. Our work is to reclaim our human spirit’s capacity to recognize what is happening and intervene. Our work is to redirect our life forces in line with a consciously chosen and designed “Inner Frame of Reality.” This frame can hold and manage the outer activities within a chosen time window. In this way, we work with the courage of our convictions, because we know what those convictions are and why we find them compelling.
At Rudolf Steiner College in Fair Oaks, California, there is a new Center for Systemic Leadership where “Critical Thinking”—that is, discerning and disciplined reasoning,—is the focus of the work. Critical thinking and “Complexity Management” underpin new forms of thought, leadership, and the development of new social forms that we need to build in this era of the consciousness soul. Our work is to bring experiences to individuals who want to be working out of freedom and rigorous, dis-
ciplined, and effective thinking. This work supplements our daily effectiveness and our spiritual development.2
Let’s look at an example of our work.
“How do I know if my idea is a good idea?”
This seems like a basic question that all of us should be able to answer. Yet, it stops most people in their tracks.
“I want to take initiative yet how do I know if my idea is a good idea?” We can derive help based on the “Archetype of Reasoning.”
Am I willing to extract the subjective elements of my personal preference3 and submit the idea to a rigorous testing methodology? Although the “answer” to the question cannot be quantified, there is an objective “Reasoned-Judgment Methodology ” that I can use. The methodology is based on the Archetype of Reasoning itself. This reasoning process will enhance the quality of my initial idea and open it up for others to explore it and consider it. The method has a dual gesture: sorting out essential elements of thought, and bringing them together by coherently optimizing reasoning, imagination, discipline and clarity.
sort poorly-reasoned judgments from well-reasoned judgments using intellectual standards.
The Reasoned-Judgment Methodology based on the Archetype is content neutral and transferable to any question or issue or problem. If we invest in learning the method, we can practice it in every aspect of our lives, every day. The clarity of thought from this method supports appropriate and valuable feelings.5
Inference , Implications HigherPurposes
Points Tentative Conclusions
Information and Interprtation
of View Assumtions Opportunity, Problem, or QuestionofIssue
The visual represents an imagination of the elements that form part of the ReasonedJudgment Methodology, which is non-linear and iterative. The methodology can be done effectively in groups as well as individually. This methodology is also a foundation of effective collaboration.6 Disciplined reasoning is humbling, but we now have elements to help structure our conversations and questions.
Archetype of a Well-Reasoned Judgment
Is my idea a good idea?
After two decades of working with the Archetype and this Reasoned-Judgment Methodology, I believe it is as powerful for human progress as the scientific method. Unlike the scientific method, it is applicable to questions/problems/opportunities where the “answer” cannot be quantified.4 Such questions remain as a matter of judgment, and our goal is to develop “Well-Reasoned Judgments” using a rigorous, non-linear yet objective method. Of course, depending on the underlying values, there can be multiple Well-Reasoned Judgments about a single question. Ironically, this is not a source of conflict but a pathway forward.
The Reasoned-Judgment Methodolgy enables us to
2 “Anyone who, from the beginning, does not consider making a healthy judgment the foundation of his spiritual training will develop in himself supersensible faculties with which he perceives the spiritual world inexactly and incorrectly.” Steiner, Rudolf. Occult Science, An Outline, p.292. Anthroposophic Press, 1972.
3 Steiner, Rudolf. Theosophy, p. 46 Anthroposophic Press, 1994.
4 Data/Information is part of a Well-Reasoned Judgment, under this Reasoned-Judgment Methodology, however it is simply one of the informing elements. As with the scientific method, its relevance, accuracy, and quality need to be explored, as well as its consistency and coherence.
It takes time, but we can prepare individually before coming together, optimizing shared time for true conversation. Questions are prompted by each of the elements. Relevant skills and practices can be taught as part of effective critical thinking courses.
Let’s take an example from “real life” and use the flower (left) as a visualization of the flow of the inquiry that is part of this Reasoned Judgment Methodology. To be comprehensive in our reasoning, we need to address each of the flower’s petals.
Situation: I’m having a conversation with an old friend, Alan, whose young-adult son is being asked by his parents to move out for the third time.
There is no communication and I feel ill-at-ease when I come home from work and he is there. I need privacy and
5 “No feeling and no enthusiasm on earth can compare with the sensations of warmth, beauty, and exaltation that are enkindled by pure, crystal-clear thoughts relating to higher worlds. Our loftiest feelings are not the ones that happen by themselves, but the ones achieved through strenuous and energetic thinking.” Theosophy, p.32.
6 Without these tools of “personal intelligence” that we use out of freedom, our attempts at collaboration often collapse into a set of competing preferences, power, personality and politics. Questions that need to be asked are perceived as attacks as we wallow among subjective opinions. We end up frustrated and isolated, without seeing Ahrimanic forces at work.
we are enabling him to avoid coming to terms with reality. I’ve been hearing this dilemma from Alan for several years, yet he is still unsettled about the whole situation.
opportunity: Should I introduce the idea of karma, from my anthroposophical background, to help Alan to try a different perspective and begin to ask different questions? Is it a good idea? Here are some of the questions I’ve been asking myself, to help me decide.
What is my Higher Purpose for introducing the concept of karma?
What, exactly, is the Opportunity? Would other anthroposophical concepts be more useful? Am I the best person to initiate this? Is this the best time? In person or in writing?
The Core Concept “karma” is complex: can I do it justice in explaining it?
What Assumptions am I making about Alan, the situation, and my relationship with him?
What additional Information do I need, and how should I interpret all that I already know?
What Points of View should I consider?
What Inferences, Implications and Consequences do I need to consider? For example, if I bring it up, will it adversely affect our friendship?
What Tentative Conclusion can I draw, and am I prepared to identify its strengths and limitations equally?
This vignette is real and I believe we anthroposophists often struggle in deciding if or how to bring insights from our spiritual understandings to our friends. It is an issue calling for judgment, thus the Archetype and the Reasoned-Judgment Methodology based on it are there to serve me, if I seek to use them.
If we think through the elements, reflecting on the questions we need to ask ourselves to feel confident, we will engage more courage to act, because we are more deeply knowledgeable about our convictions and our intent. Of course, we need to be willing to be honest with ourselves, yet my experience is that people generally are— they are disabled more often because they are not sure that they have “thought it through.”
If we don’t have our own “Inner Frame of Reality and Reference,” based on what we believe and why we believe it, the Ahrimanic and Luciferic forces are more than willing to provide one for us. Theirs will erode our
freedom and our self-possessed clear thinking. In my view, we need to focus on builder-basics of a “Culture of Clear Thinking” in organizations, and on the role of intellectual humility and perseverance. In Applied Critical Thinking courses, experiential learning is essential.7 Cold, abstract intellectual thinking is not what we are about. Yet, we need living and disciplined methods and frameworks to cut through all of the “information clutter” and “twisted framing” of today’s daily life. We are striving to be clear, free thinkers taking action “on the edge,” relying on our “Inner Frames of Reality and Reference” so as not to be “blown back” by the conventional, materialistic opinions so common today.
The political implications of the Archetype of Reason and Reasoned-Judgment Methodology are staggering. It is a Trojan Horse, and a revolution in the making. Its effect is no less than to level the intellectual playing field, to give self-educating people, young and old, everywhere, the tools to do an end-run around costly, formal higher education. With the internet, this generic, teachable basis for all critical thinking will likely be discovered and mastered by those who are unwilling or unable to go into deep debt in these uncertain economic times. Universities who want to add value will pick it up and use it to weave coherent curriculum for students across the life of learning they offer. However, it is a complete “re-tooling” and in my experience, most insulated university faculty are simply not up for the challenge.
In the next being human , a follow-on essay will identify principles and additional applications in systemic thinking and complexity management, as they fit together with critical thinking—the precise work that the Center for Systemic Leadership at Rudolf Steiner College is offering. We are grateful to be a part of an institution bearing Dr. Steiner’s name and to be pioneering global transformation through thinking.
www.CenterForSystemicLeadership.org (916) 864-4858
7 For teachers, at any level, the Reasoned-Judgment Methodology is at the heart of what students need. The veils can be seen as the content areas: the economics veil, the marketing veil, the literature veil, the history veil, etc. The Reasoned-Judgment Methodology sits behind the veil, and it is the teacher’s job to make the veil translucent. Thus, all “schooling” is mutually supportive and linked. If the veil is opaque, the bits from each course remain just that, unrelated bits to be forgotten. With our help, students can emerge with transferable skills that they practice daily and develop mastery. It also enables them to move from “I think” to “We think.” Collaboration is then possible. The Center offers special courses for educators.
Selections from a lecture by Rudolf Steiner
Given in Zurich, 9th October, 1918, GA 182; translated in 1960 by D. S. Osmond with the help of Owen Barfield.
Rudolf Steiner begins by announcing his concern with the living and effective character of anthroposophy:
Anthroposophical understanding of the spirit must not be a merely theoretical view of the world, but a leaven, an actual power in life. Only when we manage to investigate this view of the world so fundamentally that it really comes alive in us does it properly fulfill its mission. For by linking our souls with this anthroposophical conception of the spirit we have become custodians, as it were, of very definite and significant processes in the evolution of humanity.
Another basic concern follows immediately: that we recognize thoughts and ideas as having reality in world evolution, and not just when they may be carried into physical action:
Whatever their view of the world, men are generally convinced that thoughts and ideas have no status in it except as the contents of their own souls. Those who hold such views believe that thoughts and mental pictures are “ideals” which will be embodied in the world only to the extent that man succeeds in ratifying them by his physical deeds.
The anthroposophical attitude posits the conviction that our thoughts and ideas must find other ways of taking effect besides the way through our deeds in the physical world. Recognition of this essential principle implies that the anthroposophist must play his part in watching out for the signs of the times. A very great deal is happening all the time in the evolution of the world; and it is incumbent upon men, particularly the men of our own time, to acquire real understanding of what is going on in the evolutionary process in which they themselves are placed.
And then Rudolf Steiner challenges the rarely questioned notion that human beings of different periods of history were pretty much as we are now:
In the case of an individual human being, everybody knows that account must be taken of his stage of development, not only of the outer facts and occurrences around him. ... Outer, physical happenings are going on around human beings of five, ten, twenty, thirty,
fifty, seventy years of age. But nobody in his senses will expect the same reaction to these happenings from the five-year-olds, the ten-year-olds, the twenty-year-olds, the fifty-year-olds, the seventy-year-olds! ... Everybody will admit this in the case of the individual.
...So too are the powers and faculties possessed by humanity in general constantly changing in the course of evolution. Not to take account of the fact that the character of humanity is different in the 20th century from what it was in the 15th century, let alone before and at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, is to sleep through the process of world-evolution. ...
The paramount force in human evolution from the 15th century until the beginning of the third millennium, is the Spiritual Soul.
But in true Spiritual Science we must never stop at generalizations and abstractions; everywhere and at all times it must be our endeavor to grasp concrete facts. ...
Concrete knowledge of the reality of the human being is essential, including the central role of the Ego, self, or ‘I’:
To arrive at a clear conception of these things, we must above all consider in greater detail the nature of man himself. In the sense of Spiritual Science, the members of man’s being, beginning from above downwards, are: ‘I’, astral body, etheric body—which latterly I have also called the body of formative forces—and physical body. The ‘I’ is the only one of these members in which we live and function as beings of spirit-and-soul. The ‘I’ has been implanted in us by the Earth-evolution and the Spirits of Form who direct it. Fundamentally speaking, everything that enters into our consciousness enters it through our ‘I’. And unless the ‘I’, as it unfolds itself, can remain connected—connected through the bodies—with the outer world, we have as little consciousness as we have during sleep. It is the ‘I’ that connects us with our environment; the astral body is the legacy of the Moon-evolution, the etheric body of the Sunevolution, the physical body, in its first rudiments, of the Saturn-evolution.
Rudolf Steiner described the human bodies in An Outline of Occult Science , along with the creative activity of higher beings (from the Angels up to the Seraphim) through prior planetary incarnations (!) back to a point “before which one cannot really speak of time.” This picture of cosmic-human evolution is extremely complex. Where in that awesome process can we take hold of concrete questions to enliven our insights into our times?
... It is necessary to investigate the facts themselves, in order to get the answer to a question such as: What
is the task of the Spirits of Wisdom or of the Thrones in the etheric body of man during the present cycle of evolution? Only, this latter kind of question is indescribably complex and we can never do more than make an approach to the domains where such questions arise. ...Roughly speaking, it is the prospects nearest to us—those that directly concern us—of which we can get a clear view. But such a view we must get, if we are not to remain asleep at our stations in the evolution of humanity.
And so a modest question we can appropriately ask: What are the Angels—the spiritual Beings nearest to men—doing in the human astral body in the present cycle of evolution? The astral body is the member nearest to the ‘I’; obviously, therefore, the answer to this question will vitally concern us. ... These Beings of the Hierarchy of the Angels ... form pictures in man’s astral body. Under the guidance of the Spirits of Form (Exousiai) the Angels form pictures ... accessible to thinking that has become clairvoyant. If we are able to scrutinize these pictures, it becomes evident that they are woven in accordance with quite definite impulses and principles. Forces for the future evolution of mankind are contained in them. ... And indeed in forming these pictures the Angels work on a definite principle, namely, that in the future no human being is to find peace in the enjoyment of happiness if others beside him are unhappy. An impulse of Brotherhood in the absolute sense, unification of the human race in Brotherhood rightly understood—this is to be the governing principle of the social conditions in physical existence.1
But there is a second impulse in the work of the Angels... in connection with ... man’s life of soul. Through the pictures they inculcate into the astral body their aim is that in future time every human being shall see in each and all of his fellow-men a hidden divinity. ... Neither in theory nor in practice shall we look only at man’s physical qualities, regarding him as a more highly developed animal, but we must confront every human being with the full realization that in him something is revealing itself from the divine foundations of the world, revealing itself through flesh and blood. To conceive man as a picture revealed from the spiritual world, to conceive this with all the earnestness, all the strength and all the insight at our command—this is the impulse laid by the Angels into the pictures. ... When that time comes there will be no need for any religious coercion; for then every meeting between one man and another will of itself be in the nature of
1 Compare the report on social initiatives by Truus Geraets on page XX.
a religious rite, a sacrament, and nobody will need a special church with institutions on the physical plane to sustain the religious life. If the church understands itself truly, its one aim must be to render itself unnecessary on the physical plane, as the whole of life becomes the expression of the supersensible. The bestowal on man of complete freedom in the religious life—this underlies the impulses, at least, of the work of the Angels.
And there is a third objective: To make it possible for men to reach the Spirit through thinking, to cross the abyss and through thinking to experience the reality of the Spirit. 2
Spiritual Science for the spirit, freedom of religious life for the soul, brotherhood for the bodily life—this resounds like cosmic music through the work wrought by the Angels in the astral bodies of men.
All that is necessary is to raise our consciousness to a different level and we shall feel ourselves transported to this wonderful site of the work done by the Angels in the human astral body.
Rudolf Steiner then shares insights into the research by means of which he is able to report these findings.
Where are we to look for this work of the Angels?
It is still to be discovered in man while he is sleeping, in the conditions prevailing between the moments of falling asleep and waking—also in somnolent waking states. I have often said that although men are awake, they actually sleep through the most important concerns in life. ... Such things proceed in a way which must necessarily seem highly enigmatic and paradoxical. A man may be considered entirely unworthy of having any connections at all with the spiritual world. But the truth about such a man may well be that in this incarnation he is just a terrible dormouse who sleeps through everything that goes on around him. Yet one of the choir of the Angels is working in his astral body at the future of mankind. Observation of his astral body shows that it is being made use of, in spite of these conditions.
What really matters, however, is that men shall become conscious of these things. The Spiritual Soul must rise to the level where it is able to recognize what can be discovered only in this way.
As he observed at the beginning, living thoughts and ideas have consequences. Knowledge of the angels’ activity will have consequences.
... Purely through the Spiritual Soul, purely through their conscious thinking, men must reach the point of actually perceiving what the Angels are doing to prepare the future of humanity. The teachings of Spiritual Science in this domain must become practical wisdom in the life of humanity...
But the progress of the human race towards freedom has already gone so far that it depends upon man himself whether he will sleep through this event or face it with fully wide-awake consciousness. What would this entail? To face this event with wide-awake consciousness would entail the study of Spiritual Science. Indeed nothing else is really necessary. The practice of meditations of various kinds and attention to the guidance given in the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment, will be an additional help. But the essential step has already been taken when Spiritual Science is studied and really consciously understood. Spiritual Science can be studied to-day without developing clairvoyant faculties. Everyone can do so, who does not bar his own way with his prejudices. And if people study Spiritual Science more and more thoroughly, if they assimilate its concepts and ideas, their consciousness will become so alert that instead of sleeping through certain events, they will be fully aware of them.
These events can be characterized in greater detail, for to know what the Angel is doing is only the preparatory stage. The essential point is that at a definite time—depending, as I have said, upon the attitude men themselves adopt it will be earlier or later or at worst not at all—a threefold truth will be revealed to mankind by the Angels.
Firstly, it will be shown how his own genuine interest will enable man to understand the deeper side of human nature. A time will come—and it must not pass unnoticed—when out of the spiritual world men will receive through their Angel an impulse that will kindle a far deeper interest in every individual human being than we are inclined to have to-day. This enhanced interest in our fellow-men will not unfold in the subjective, leisurely way that people would prefer, but by a sudden impetus a certain secret will be inspired into man from the spiritual side, namely, what the other man really is. By this I mean something quite concrete—not any kind of theoretical consideration. Men will learn something whereby their interest in every individual can be kindled. That is the one point—and that is what will particularly affect the social life.
Secondly : From the spiritual world the Angel will reveal to man that, in addition to everything else, the
Christ Impulse postulates complete freedom in matters of religious life, that the only true Christianity is the Christianity which makes possible absolute freedom in the religious life.
And thirdly : Unquestionable insight into the spiritual nature of the world
As I have said, this event ought to take place in such a way that the Spiritual Soul in man participates in it. This is impending in the evolution of humanity, for the Angel is working to this end through the pictures woven in man’s astral body.
Along with these evolutionary steps comes the possibility of not taking them. Other spiritual beings push us in that direction, with dire consequences.
If man were to follow the dictates of his own proper nature, he could not very well fail to perceive what the Angel is unfolding in his astral body; but the aim of the Luciferic beings is to tear men away from insight into the work of the Angels. And they set about doing this by curbing man’s free will. They try to cloud his understanding of the exercise of his free will. True, they desire to make him good—for from the aspect of which I am now speaking, Lucifer desires that there shall be goodness, spirituality, in man—but automatic goodness, automatic spirituality—without free will. Lucifer desires that man shall be led automatically, in accordance with perfectly good principles, to clairvoyance— but he wants to deprive him of his free will, to remove from him the possibility of evil-doing. Lucifer wants to make man into a being who, it is true, acts out of the spirit, but acts as a reflection, as an automaton, without free will. ... Thereby on the one side the danger would arise that prematurely, before his Spiritual Soul is in full function, man would become a being whose actions are those of a spiritual puppet and he would sleep through the impending revelation.
But the Ahrimanic beings too are working to obscure this revelation. They are not at pains to make man particularly spiritual, but rather to kill out in him the consciousness of his own spirituality. They endeavor to instill into him the conviction that he is nothing but a completely developed animal. Ahriman is in truth the teacher par excellence of materialistic Darwinism. He is also the great teacher of all those technical and practical pursuits in Earth-evolution where there is refusal to acknowledge the validity of anything except the external life of the senses, where the only desire is for a widespread technology, so that with somewhat greater refinement, men shall satisfy their hunger, thirst and other needs in the same way as the animal. To kill, to
darken in man the consciousness that he is an image of the Godhead—this is what the Ahrimanic beings are endeavoring by subtle scientific means of every kind to achieve in our age of the Spiritual Soul. ... Only now are we experiencing the age when a theory or a science, by the path of consciousness, robs man of his divinity, of his knowledge of the Divine. Only in the age of the Spiritual or Consciousness Soul is this possible. Hence the Ahrimanic spirits endeavor to spread teachings which obscure man’s divine origin.
... Here lies the great danger for the age of the Spiritual Soul. This is what might still happen if, before the beginning of the third millennium, men were to refuse to turn to the spiritual life. The third millennium begins with the year 2000, so it is only a short time ahead of us. It might still happen that the aim of the Angels in their work would have to be achieved by means of the sleeping bodies of men—instead of through men wide-awake. The Angels might still be compelled to withdraw their whole work from the astral body and to submerge it in the etheric body in order to bring it to fulfillment. But then, in his real being, man would have no part in it. It would have to be performed in the etheric body while man himself was not there, just because if he were there in the waking state, he would obstruct it. ... But what would be the outcome if the Angels were obliged to perform this work without man himself participating, to carry it out in his etheric and physical bodies during sleep?
Firstly, something would be engendered in the sleeping human bodies—while the ‘I’ and astral body were not within them—and man would meet with it on waking in the morning ... but then it would become instinct instead of conscious spiritual activity and therefore baleful. It is so indeed: certain instinctive knowledge that will arise in human nature, connected with the mystery of birth and conception, with sexual life as a whole, threatens to become baleful if the danger of which I have spoken takes effect. Certain Angels would then themselves undergo a change—a change of which I cannot speak, because this is a subject belonging to the higher secrets of Initiation-Science which may not yet be disclosed. But this much can certainly be said: The effect in the evolution of humanity would be that certain instincts connected with the sexual life would arise in a pernicious form instead of wholesomely, in clear waking consciousness. These instincts would not be mere aberrations but would pass over into and configure the social life, would above all prevent men— through what would then enter their blood as the effect of the sexual life—from unfolding brotherhood
in any form whatever on the earth, and would rather induce them to rebel against it. This would be a matter of instinct. ... Natural science will be totally blind to the event of which I have told you, for if men become half devils through their sexual instincts, science will as a matter of course regard this as a natural necessity. Scientifically, then, the matter is simply not capable of explanation, for whatever happens, everything can be explained by science. The fact is that such things can be understood only by spiritual, supersensible cognition. That is the one aspect.
The second aspect is that from this work which involves changes affecting the Angels themselves, still another result accrues for humanity: instinctive knowledge of certain medicaments—but knowledge of a baleful kind! Everything connected with medicine will make a great advance in the materialistic sense. ... Knowledge of the medicinal effects of certain processes and treatments will be enhanced, but this will lead into very baleful channels. For man will come to know through certain instincts, what kind of illnesses can be induced by particular substances and treatments. And it will then be possible for him either to bring about or not to bring about illnesses, entirely as suits his egotistical purposes.
The third result will be this. Man will get to know of definite forces which, simply by means of quite easy manipulations—by bringing into accord certain vibrations—will enable him to unleash tremendous mechanical forces in the world. Instinctively he will come to realize the possibility of exercising a certain spiritual guidance and control of the mechanistic principle and the whole of technical science will sail into desolate waters. ... An unspiritual conception of life would see through none of these things, would not perceive how they deviate from the true path... The sleeper, as long as sleep lasts, does not see the approach of a thief who is about to rob him; he is unaware of it and at most he finds out later on, when he wakes, what has been done to him.
Rudolf Steiner returns now to the question of the responsibilities which we are invited to take up, out of the understandings gained through anthroposophy.
If a feeling has been acquired of how Spiritual Science penetrates into and affects our whole attitude of mind, I believe that there can also arise the earnestness required for receiving such truths as have been presented today. From this earnestness there can stem what ought indeed to stem from all Spiritual Science: the acknowledgment of definite obligations, of definite responsibilities in life.
Whatever our position may be, whatever we have to do in the world, the essential thing is to foster the thought that our conduct must be permeated and illumined by our anthroposophical consciousness. Then we contribute something towards the true progress of humanity.
And what “signs of the times” could be seen already in 1918?
Anyone who looks at life, particularly in our own age, must himself be asleep if he does not notice a number of things. How men have preened themselves on their conduct of life, particularly during the last few decades! Things have finally come to the point where the leading positions everywhere are held by those who are most contemptuous of the ideal, of the spiritual. People managed to go on declaiming about their conduct of this life as long as mankind had not actually been dragged into the abyss. Now a few—mostly out of instinct—are actually beginning to croak that a new age must come, with all kinds of new ideals. But it is all so much croaking. ... One who today makes impassioned speeches to men in the words they have so long been accustomed to hear can still usually count on some applause. But men will have to get used to listening to different words, different ways of putting things, if social cosmos is again to arise out of chaos.
If, in some epoch, the men who ought to be vigilant fail in this respect and do not discern what really ought to happen, then nothing real does happen. Instead, the ghost of the preceding epoch walks—as the ghosts of the past are walking in many religious communities today, and as the ghost of ancient Rome still haunts the sphere of jurisprudence.
In the age of the Spiritual Soul, Spiritual Science must make men free in just this way, must lead them to perception of a spiritual fact: what the Angel is doing in our astral body. To speak abstractly about Angels and so on, can at most be the beginning; progress requires that we speak concretely—which means that in reference to our own epoch we find the answer to the question nearest to us. ...
To conclude, Rudolf Steiner offers a practical exercise, noticing the miracle in the life of each day, by means of which we may connect to the work of the Angels: We can season ourselves to be watchful human beings by paying heed to many things. We can make a beginning in this direction now; we can discover that in reality no single day passes without a miracle happening in our life. This last sentence can be turned, and we can also say: If on some day we find no miracle in our
life, then we have merely overlooked it. Try one evening to survey your day and you will find in it some event of slight or great or middling importance of which you will be able to say: It came into my life and took effect in a truly remarkable way. You can realize this provided only that you think comprehensively enough, provided only that you have in your mind’s eye a sufficiently comprehensive picture of the circumstances and connections of life. But in the ordinary course this does not happen, because as a rule we do not ask ourselves: What was it that was prevented from happening by this or that occurrence? ...
What manner of things might have happened to me today? If we ask ourselves this question every evening and then think of particular occurrences which could have had this or that result, observations will couple themselves with such questions and introduce the element of vigilance into the exercise of self-discipline. This is something that can be a beginning, and of itself leads on and on, until finally we do not explore only into what it meant in our life when, for example, we wanted to go out, say, at half-past ten one morning and at the last moment somebody turned up and stopped us ... we are annoyed at being stopped, but we do not enquire what might have happened if we had actually gone out as we had planned. What is it that has been changed?
I have already spoken here in greater detail about such matters. From observation of the negative in our life— which can, however, bear witness to the wisdom guiding it—to observation of the Angel weaving and working in our astral body, there is a direct path, a direct and unerring path that can be trodden.
We
Are
Will
–R.Z.Balchowsky, 1984Are
Torin Finser (General Secretary)
Virginia McWilliam (at large)
Carla Beebe Comey (at large)
Regional Council Representatives
Ann Finucane (Eastern Region)
Dennis Dietzel (Central Region)
Joan Treadaway (Western Region)
Marian León, Director of Administration & Member Services
Jerry Kruse, Treasurer
being human
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The Portland AGM and conference last October marked the conclusion of MariJo Rogers’ seven years of service as General Secretary of the society. Under the bylaws, a general secretary serves a four-year term which can be extended twice by mutual agreement with the General Council. As members were informed last spring, MariJo had decided not to serve a third term.
Until her first term, which was begun alongside General Secretary Joan Almon, the Society in the US had had only a single General Secretary. Torin Finser was selected as a second General Secretary after Joan stepped down, and now has now begun his second term as a single incumbent.
At the AGM, with Victoria Sease of the Executive Council in Dornach in attendance, Torin spoke briefly both of MariJo’s qualities which many of us know—grace, tact, dedication, and love of meeting with members,—and of her abilities working with the general council in crafting agendas, facilitating conversations, and synthesizing objectvely the thoughts of the group.
Council member Joan Treadaway observes of MariJo that she is able to bring a kind of “poetic gathering of thoughts and ideas out of her deeply esoteric base. There is a quiet eloquence, not only in her person, but in the quality and depth of her thinking, inspiring her colleagues to higher perspectives. One cannot help but be impressed by her ability to create a mood with her speaking, and with the attention she gives to creating a space, paying attention to the real questions living within the group, often just by listening. Her style has always been one that wishes to hear from everyone, and in doing so leaving people free with her listening and reflecting.
“For MariJo the Anthroposophical Society has been a matter of the heart ever since she joined it—she often refers to it as ‘our dear society.’ It was part of her strength as a leader of the society that she was carrying something deeply in trust with the members. It was clear that she was continually trying to penetrate how an esoteric Society can deal with the fundamental questions of what it means to be a human being in the
world today. The deep respect and admiration of members and friends alike testify to the vitality and importance of her work.”
MariJo will continue sharing her depth of spiritual research with anthroposophical communities across the country, and has taken up the invitation to be a Class Holder for the School for Spiritual Science.
Torin Finser is increasingly busy on behalf of the Society. He continues his international role and is expanding his meetings with groups and branches inside the United States. In January he spent eight days in the Sydney area in Australia. He gave two lectures and had many informal meetings at a conference attended by about 150 teachers from many of the 42 schools in Australia. He spent an evening with Peter Gladsby, the new General Secretary there, a naturalist and scientist, born and raised in India, who worked in the biodynamic movement before becoming a high school teacher. Norma Blackwood, the outgoing General Secretary, arranged for Torin speak also to the branch at the Rudolf Steiner House in downtown Sydney. The Australian Society has a stable membership of 600-700.
On his return to the States, Torin visited the Philadelphia area, with a members evening and a public lecture, “Toward a Future Worthy of the Human Being,” which is included in the special section, earlier in this issue, preparing for the August conference. We will highlight Torin’s future visits and talks at anthroposophy.org in the calendar.
The Council of Anthroposophical Organizations (CAO) will hold its spring meeting in April in New Orleans. Several CAO members will participate
in a panel discussion, “Transforming Culture: Rudolf Steiner’s Vision in Action,” co-sponsored by the Society and the Tulane University School of Social Work. The focus will be on agriculture and food is-
sues, education, and money—key issues in everyone’s life! Panelists will include John Bloom of RSF Social Finance; Torin Finser for the Society; Robert Karp of the Biodynamic Association of North America; and Patrice Maynard of the Association of Waldorf Schools in North America. Julianna Padgett, assistant dean of the School of Social Work at Tulane, will moderate. A segment from Jonathan Stedall’s new film, The Challenge of Rudolf Steiner, will open the evening. The event takes place Tuesday, April 17, 7:00–9:00pm, in Freeman Auditorium on the Tulane campus.
From mid-2009 Carole Turner managed the Society’s accounting and helped us transition to a new system. We appreciated her good humor and skill in a difficult time! With her husband reaching retirement, she wished to spend more time with her family.
Last summer John Price joined us in the enlarged responsibility of Director of Financial Services. With over 20 years of finance and accounting experience, John has brought new perspectives and transparency to our budgeting and reporting. John also brings the experience and interests of a Waldorf parent and former member of the finance committee at the Rudolf Steiner School of Ann Arbor where his two children are enrolled. The new digest at the front of this issue was developed out of his feedback. “I keep thinking about being human and the overarching and consistent message I think needs to be about community building, holding it all together, and the value of being associated with a hopeful future.” You can reach John by email at accounting@anthroposophy.org or by phone at 734.662.9355, ext. 16.
Since the 1980s a group of members have served as the Rudolf Steiner Library Advisory Group. Douglas Sloan, professor emeritus at Columbia University Teachers College, has been a member from the beginning, joined in more recent years by Gertrude Reif Hughes, professor emerita at Wesleyan University, Ed Scherer, member of the Eastern Regional Council, and Fred Dennehy, a Class Holder and long-time council member of the New York Branch.
Meeting on December 9th with librarian Judith Soleil and an ad-hoc committee appointed last May by the General Council, the advisors reviewed the mandate of a new library committee of the council and discussed further steps in the library’s evolution. The appreciation of the council for their years of devoted service was expressed by Virginia McWilliam, and the Advisory Group ceased its activity. All advisors were invited to consider membership on the new committee, and Fred Dennehy, who also oversees the library’s book reviews published here in being human, will continue with the new committee. Other members are Virginia McWilliam, former library task force member Deborah Kahn, and staff members Marian Leon, Judith Soleil, Judith Kiely, and John Beck.
The meeting also expressed great appreciation to the Berkshire-Taconic Branch and the local community around the library, located for many years in Ghent, NY. Last fall branch members successfully raised extra funds to continue digitizing the library’s catalog for online access. (See Judith Soleil’s report below.)
February was a busy month. To celebrate 100 years of Rudolf Steiner’s Calendar of the Soul, the Greater Detroit Branch and the Great Lakes Branch hosted a lecture series by Rev. J. Michael Brewer titled “Gestures and Rhythms” and an art exhibition and sale of Sophie Bourguignon-Takada’s paintings for the weeks of the Calendar at the Rudolf Steiner House in Ann Arbor.
The Minnesota Waldorf School in St. Paul hosted the AWSNA Great Lakes Regional Conference, “Straight From the Heart(land): Building Regenerative Communities,” February 23-25. Michael D’Aleo was keynote speaker with an exciting lineup of workshops.
The Little Rock group is hosting the region’s annual group and branch representatives gathering, May 4-6 at Camp Mitchell near Petit Jean State Park in Arkansas.
Dennis is the Central Region representative on the Society’s General Council. He has been living and working with anthroposophy since 1976. His wife, Marianne,
was studying teacher training from 197677 at the Detroit Waldorf Institute, where Dennis attended many lectures with Hans Gebert and Werner Glas. During this time Dennis studied saxophone with Bruce Weinberger, then the music teacher at the Detroit Waldorf School, and with Sigurd Rascher, world renowned saxophonist and a student at the first Waldorf school in Stuttgart, Germany. Sigurd was a guiding light for Dennis in his early years of discovery in anthroposophy (and the saxophone).
He spent 1988-94 as a farmer and houseparent at Camphill Village Minnesota, where he developed a deep appreciation of biodynamic agriculture and the rhythm of the festivals through the seasons. He is currently a biodynamic gardener and beekeeper. He has also been active as a board member and parent in Waldorf schools.
Dennis’ wife Marianne is also an active anthroposophist. They have an older son, Kevin, who is beginning a biodynamic dairy and cheese operation near Ames, Iowa, and a younger son Soren who is currently traveling the world. Their daughter, Nina, died in a car accident in 1996 in Harlemville, NY. Dennis works professionally as a database programmer for a dairy processing company in St Paul, Minnesota.
His interest lies in developing a common sense approach to spiritual science that is grounded in the world with clear thinking and, at the same time, allows the imagination to expand beyond what is experienced with the five senses. Dennis has been a Class Holder in the School for Spiritual Science since 2005 in the Twin Cities and in Viroqua, Wisconsin.
At the conclusion of last fall’s AGM in Portland, Oregon, James Lee completed seven years of service as a member of the General Council. James brought a depth of
understanding, humor, and heartfelt caring to all that he undertook. He was a passionate believer in careful planning, was the catalyst for the recent improvements to the Rudolf Steiner House, and led a task force on communications initiatives in 2008. James has been an active member in New York and Florida, and now resides in Portland with his wife, Jannebeth Roëll. At the conference, James shared his thespian talents as he played the role of Felix Balde in a scene from Rudolf Steiner’s second mystery drama.
In 2008 the General Council adopted term limits, which precipitated several changes in recent years. In January 2008, Marsha Post, an editor for SteinerBooks in Great Barrington, MA, stepped off the council after several years of service. And Douglas Miller, council member and editor of News for Members, completed his term on the council. Linda Connell from Los Angeles represented the Western Region until reaching her term limit in 2009; Joan Treadaway from Prescott, AZ, succeeded her as the WRC representative. As noted previously, Lori Barian from East Troy, WI, served as the CRC representative until 2010, and has been succeeded by Dennis Dietzel. Gordon Edwards of Chicago has also served the society for many years, both as council member and as treasurer. He stepped off the council in 2010. We welcome our newest council member, Carla Beebe Comey from Colorado; her profile will appear in the next issue. (She is also pictured in this issue on page 11 with the board of the Eurythmy Association.)
Marian Leòn, Director Administration & Member ServicesCompiled from reports from Regional Councils, members and friends. Send contributions to editor@anthroposophy.org.
Judging by the grassroots activity in Santa Cruz, California, anthroposophy is alive and thriving in America. T After a talk and video showing given here by Nancy Jewel Poer, twelve participants established a Threshold Group, preparing to help with Home Death. T A Biodynamic Intensive, with winter, spring, summer and autumn
gatherings, has sprouted on the new farm started by our opera-singing farmer Delmar McComb. Last month, I spoke on anthroposophy to twenty aspiring biodynamicists and was surprised to have one say to me, “This is the first time I hear that anthroposophy is about love!” T Camphill California had a rousingly artistic foundation-stone-laying ceremony for their new community building which could have doors open already in June.
Four months ago, out of an initiative from Margaret Shipman, I embarked on a seven-week road trip with the Rudolf Steiner 150th Birthday exhibition, visiting branches and Charter/Waldorf schools in California, Arizona, and New Mexico. At a presentation to parents in Santa Monica, a young man told me, “I’m making a movie about anthroposophy. Would you like to help?” Mathew Schmid graduated from Waldorf in Germany and now is a leader of the Tree Media Group producing movies, most recently Urban Roots about the explosion of organic farming in inner city Detroit. T June 2011 saw a lively production of possibly the first anthroposophical rock musical, Equinox, created and directed by Armand Ruby, with a cast of homeless people and members of the Branch Core Group. (Now on DVD.) T With the nurturance of Coleman Lyles and Jeanie Elliott, our First Class membership is growing into the twenties, with all members increasingly taking on responsibilities.
This January, we had a thrilling visit from Frank Chester, showing and explaining his heart-based architecture, followed by a meeting of the new Seven Circles Foundation to support his work. T Longtime kindergarten teacher at Santa Cruz Waldorf School, member of First Class and local marimba band, Steve Spitalny has just self-published his book Connecting With Young Children. T Our mystery drama reading group will, after three years, complete the final scenes in April this year. T And, finally, ‘Only In Santa Cruz’: our performance downtown of the Oberufer Paradise Play had—perhaps for the first time ever?—young women taking, very capably, the parts of Adam and God…
Daniel J. Bittleston Santa Cruz-Monterey Bay BranchInvited by Paul MacKay of the Social Science Section, an amazing group of 36 people came to prepare for a Global Social Forum at the Goetheanum in 2013. Argentina, Colombia, Brazil, USA, Australia, China, Philippines, Vietnam, Israel / Palestine, South Africa, Sweden, Germany, and Switzerland were represented, as well as Freunde der Erziehungskunst, GLS Treuhand e.V., Acacia, and the Youth Section. Ute Craemer and Truus Geraets launched this impulse 12 years ago with Social Forums in 2001 in Brazil and Los Angeles.
Deep humanitarian work is being done in many places under the most difficult, often dangerous circumstances, as we saw during a public evening of video presentations. Most anthroposophists are not aware of it because there is no overarching organization. Truus has started a compendium—55 projects so far, in agriculture, with AIDS patients, in education. One aims to enable 10,000 street children in India to get an education. Among those from across the USA: the Ipswich House of Peace, Anthroposophical Prison Outreach, the Lakota Waldorf School, the Sophia Project, Elderberries Café, Shade Tree Multicultural Foundation, and the Agawamuck Project.
A Goetheanum Social Forum in 2013 is a big task, but more are envisioned: Ute Craemer in Sao Paulo 2012, Truus and others in 2014 in South Africa or Kenya. We will present our intentions at the two world conferences for teachers and kindergarten teachers around Easter 2012. Meantime we need a working group of those engaged in such social work in this country.
We live in apocalyptic times. At the colloquium we directed ourselves to both Michael and Uriel, asking for the help and guidance of the archangelic forces for us to proceed with courage and strength. Our leading thought, words Rudolf Steiner gave to Edith Maryon: Getting a feeling for the needs of our time implies replacing the intellectual spirit with the creative spirit.
Truus Geraets
Costa Mesa, CA; 949-646-6392
www.globalsociallab.goetheanum.org
Miriam Karnow, Spring Valley, NY; died November 3, 2011
Edward Sayers, Oak Park, MI; died December 2011
Timothy Smith, Granada Hills, CA; died March 1, 2011
Wilda Stacey, Fayetteville, NY; died October 13, 2011
Helga Ingeborg (“Inge”) Friedländer Elsas may at age 96 be the oldest “new member” of the Anthroposophical Society, but she is by no means new to anthroposophy. It has been part of her life since having in fact saved her life in 1933.
Inge was born on July 10, 1915, eldest daughter of a prominent attorney in Hamburg. She attended one of the most exclusive schools in the city; and it was there, when she was chosen for the role of Mother Mary in her third grade Christmas play that a classmate’s shrill protest clued her in: “She can’t play Mary, she’s a Jew!” (Never mind the obvious…) Shocked, Inge promptly went home and asked her mother if this were true. Her mother’s affirmative response initiated the nine-yearold’s quest to discover what it meant to be Jewish.
Hannah Avellone, Chicago, IL
Rhonda Baird, Bloomington, IN
Paul Bantle, Chelsea, MI
Kendra Barnett , Santa Cruz, CA
Gregor Barnum, Moretown, VT
Julie Barsam-Cummings , Cambridge, MA
Marca-Maria Boggiano, Scottsville, VA
Gloria P. Bowman, Auburn, AL
Amy Sonya Burkey, Cincinnati, OH
Safina Callesen, Ghent, NY
Cynthia D. Capodestria, Sanbornton, NH
Bridget Cappo, Austerlitz, NY
Jan Caviness, Citrus Heights, CA
Lily-Rakia Chandler, Lexington, MA
Ashley Cole, Glenmoore, PA
Frances Culley, Chatham, NY
Sasha Dixon, Fairbanks, AK
Mia Ellers, Portland, OR
Inge Elsas, New Orleans, LA
Steven C. Elliott , Mechanicsburg, PA
Editha Ghani, Milpitas, CA
Rea Gill, Wilton, NH
Tracey B. Glowe, Jacksonville Beach, FL
Cynthia Goodale-Hansen, Cadillac, MI
Elizabeth Hare, Opelika, AL
Robert L. Hare, Opelika, AL
Bonnie Harrington, Mokena, IL
Christopher John Hazem, Tekonsha, MI
Virginia Hermann, Austin, TX
Eve Hinderer, Newburgh, NY
Bettina C. Hindes, Pittsburgh, PA
Christine Hucker, Delray Beach, FL
Janice Kazanjian, Sacramento, CA
Donna Patterson Kellum, Portland, OR
Johannes Lasthaus, Bonita, CA
Eyahnna Magner, Santa Fe, NM
Simona H. Martin, Los Altos, CA
David Sewell McCann, Charlotte, VT
Martha Meyer-Von Blon, Minneapolis, MN
Gwendolyn Moss, Louisville, KY
Dominic Mwaura Mwangi, Glenmoore, PA
Alexander Nitsche, Ann Arbor, MI
Sara Oakley, Soquel, CA
Charles Orphanidis, Brooklyn, NY
Tom Pichard, Woodinville, WA
Elaina Sophia Pilgreen, Summerville, SC
John M. Price, Dexter, MI
Doris Rainville, Grass Valley, CA
Laura Riccardi-Lyvers, Loretto, KY
Stephanie Skinner, Albuquerque, NM
Harriet E. Sorrell, Austin, TX
Fritz Soterbier, Edinburg, TX
Jennifer Sparks, Louisville, CA
David Stowell, Germantown, TN
Ulrike Stuerznickel, Santa Fe, NM
Akiko Suesada, Hudson, NY
Edward Sumners, Copake, NY
Mary Swank, Saint Cloud, MN
Paula Thomas, Alexandria, VA
Derek Matthew Thurber, Baltimore, MD
Eric Tidblom, Hardwick, VT
Matthew Uppenbrink, Spring Valley, NY
Larkin H. Wade, Auburn, AL
Lis Hirano Wittkamper, Silver Springs, MD
The following year she was enrolled in Hamburg’s Jewish Lyzeum (girl’s high school), where she developed a special love for poetry and literature. But it was for helping others that Inge felt greatest passion, resolving at age 13 to become a social worker.
The political climate was such that by 1932, the Jewish congregation Inge attended had given up their sanctuary and were renting space in an office building. One winter Sabbath, Inge was particularly moved by the Rabbi’s sermon on Freedom: we must cultivate it within ourselves, though outer conditions may constrain and oppress us. As she emerged from services, her eyes fell on a notice on the door of the office across the hall. That office happened to house the Anthroposophical Society in Hamburg, and the notice announced a Nurses’ Training in Switzerland. Inge knew this was for her!
Though the program accepted trainees only from age 18, Inge’s steely determina-
tion won over the course leaders, and at Easter, 1933, the 17-year-old left Germany for Arlesheim, unaware that she would never again go home to her family. All but her younger brother perished in the Holocaust.
Inge’s four-year training (1933-37) was under the direct supervision of Dr. Ita Wegman (co-founder with Rudolf Steiner of anthroposophical medicine), who also served as the young trainee’s personal physician. Inge truly loved her work with the special needs children at Sonnenhof, and was grateful for all she experienced there.
Upon completion of her training in Arlesheim, Inge took a position caring for the young children of an Italian Count. They wintered in Libya (where Inge had her own camel) and summered in Rome (where they were invited for tea at Mussolini’s palace). But that all ended when Hitler and Mussolini signed their pact in 1939, and the Count could not longer retain his children’s Jewish nurse.
As destiny would have it, however, Inge had met at the playground in Rome an American mother, Mrs. King, who so admired “Schwester’s” way with children, she asked if Inge knew anyone “like her” who might come work for them. Now, Inge herself was available to care for the King children! As Mr. King was an architect for the U.S. State Department, the next years were spent traveling extensively around Europe, then to Brazil, and finally to Washington, DC, where Inge met a gentleman who suggested she enroll at Tulane School of Social Work in New Orleans—destiny, once again!
Inge Friedländer arrived in New Orleans in 1941. While pursuing her social work degree at Tulane, she worked as a house mother at the Jewish Children’s Home. It was at the Children’s Home that fate literally knocked on her door, in the form of Henry Elsas, a German Jewish immigrant now enlisted in the US Army. Before their deployment, he and a friend were selling raffle tickets door-to-door for a fund-raiser, and when Henry spied the comely Inge descending the stairs, he exclaimed, “This is the woman I will marry!”
Inge and Henry were indeed married, in 1946. In addition to raising their three children, Inge developed and ran a program
for special needs children in New Orleans and a summer camp on the north shore of Lake Ponchartrain. She taught Sunday School at Temple Sinai for decades. She enjoyed a long career as a social worker at the Traveler’s Aid Society. The training she’d received in Arlesheim informed all of this, but Inge had little if any outer connection to anthroposophy for 42 years.
Then, in 1983 Inge was amazed to see an announcement of a Rudolf Steiner Study Group (hosted in those days by Mary Lee Plumb-Mentjes and Molly and Quentin McMullen-Laird). But the amazement was more than mutual, when the scientist and the medical students found a pupil of Ita Wegman in their midst! It was into this auspicious constellation that I first came to Study Group on Inge’s front porch in October 1985.
Inge continues to this day to welcome us into her home for study every other Sunday evening. Her schedule as a “retiree” includes five days a week volunteering in various programs for the elderly, and serving as an ombudsman at a nursing home— where of course most of the “old people” are younger than she is! She remains active at Temple. She is the recipient of innumerable awards and honors for her lifetime of outstanding service to the community.
From early in our relationship, it was a mystery to me that Inge had never joined the Anthroposophical Society. As I became better acquainted with the history of the Society, however, I realized that 1935—the year of Ita Wegman and Elisabeth Vreede’s ouster from the Society (along with many other members), following the breakdown of Rudolf Steiner’s hand-picked leadership team after his death—fell directly in the heart of Inge’s years in Arlesheim. No wonder she felt resistance to Dornach! Yet, that was so long ago and Inge was only peripherally exposed to the conflict; shouldn’t she just “get over it” and support this work that has been so important in her life?
Ita Wegman, MD1998, has in the past 10 years actively taken up the question of ongoing fallout from those initial brutal hostilities at the very core of the Society. What role might an “un-lamed” anthroposophy have played in the 20th century? What would it have meant to have the warm, loving and unified heart of anthroposophy beating on that hill in Switzerland? Who else might have felt drawn to us? How might we have treated each other? What can we do now to own and help heal the damage done 77 years ago, and make whole the vessel of Rudolf Steiner’s gift to all humanity?
Somehow, I wasn’t able to connect the dots until after Marian Leon’s January visit to New Orleans, during which we shared a conversation about our vision for a vibrant and welcoming Society—one where all those striving for spirit in the world can feel truly “seen” and supported, and experience community. The next Sunday morning, on my regular weekly phone check-in with Inge, it suddenly hit me: the question of Inge’s joining the Anthroposophical Society was not about supporting it, but of helping to heal it!
As she is one of the few still on Earth who were in Arlesheim at that time, how powerful would it be for Inge to ask her teacher, Ita Wegman, to accompany in spirit Inge’s healing deed of joining the Society?
That was the question to be asked! Friday morning January 26, Inge Elsas, her heart filled with purpose and joy, called the Ann Arbor office and said “YES” to the Anthroposophical Society. Please rejoice with us in welcoming Inge, and let us all say “Yes” to a Society where, “in the mirror of each human soul the whole community finds its reflection, and where in the community the strength and virtue of each individual is living.”
Margaret is a member of the Central Regional Council and lives in New Orleans.
The Central Regional Council of the U.S. Society, on which I have served since
Grant: The library’s new scanner arrived yesterday, purchased with grant funds awarded by the Academic and Special Libraries Section (ASLS) of the New York Library Association (NYLA) and New York’s Reference and Research Library Resources System, and we’re excited about plunging into our pilot digitization project. Judith Kiely, our “digitization specialist,” will create electronic copies of two back issues of the Journal for Anthroposophy, and post them online. We hope this will lead to a wide sharing of the rich anthroposophical content in the library’s journals collection!
Catalog: Our local Berkshire-Taconic branch members raised funds in the fall of 2011 to support the library’s cataloging project. With the donations received, we were able to add an additional 2000 items to our online catalog, including:
• twelve drawers of individual lectures by Rudolf Steiner in English translation, a number not yet published
• all issues of The Golden Blade (19492009)
• the balance of the library’s books in German, including Flensburger Hefte and Tycho Brahe Jahrbuch für Goetheanismus
• fifty newly acquired books. This brings to 27,000 the total number of items added to the catalog to date. In the coming year or two, we hope to catalog our 27 file drawers of articles by anthroposophical authors other than Steiner, and our collection of 250 periodicals.
http://rsl.scoolaid.net
Search Tip: Volunteer Martin Miller is currently adding dates and titles of individual Rudolf Steiner lectures to the catalog records. If you only know the date that a lecture was given, you can look it up in the catalog using the following format: DD MMM YYYY—for example, 10 Oct 1916 (do not put a period after the month). Try it; in this particular example, you’ll find that there are nine different sources for the lecture given on that date, most recently translated as: “Psychological Distress and the Birth Pangs of the Consciousness Soul.”
New Books: Do let us know if you have
book recommendations. We know that our members read widely, and we appreciate your steering us to important titles we should be aware of—as well as interesting websites and online books, which can be shared through our online catalog. To search in the catalog for links to online electronic resources, select “anywhere” in the drop-down box for the keyword search, and type pdf into the search box.
Judith Soleil, LibrarianEsoteric Lessons 1913–1923: From the Esoteric School, vol. 3. (CW 266/3), trans. Marsha Post, SteinerBooks, 2011, 556 pgs.
This volume is the first complete English translation of Aus den Inhalten der esoterischen Stunden, Gedächtnisaufzeichnungen von Teilnehmern, Band.3, 1913 und 1914; 1920–1923. Part One contains thirtynine lessons largely focused on deepening the Rosicrucian path through meditation. The emphasis is more practical than theoretical. Then, with the outbreak of World War I, the esoteric lessons ceased for a time. Part Two covers the period from 1918 to 1923, with only six lessons.
Part Three contains the two esoteric lessons given to the esoteric youth circle— meditations and instructions that were never before made public. This section is preceded by a moving account of the history and development of the esoteric Youth Movement.
Our Dead: Memorial, Funeral, and Cremation Addresses 1906-1924: With Two Lectures Given in Kassel, Germany, May 9 and 10, 1914. (CW 261), introduction and verse translations by Christopher Bamford, main text translated by Sabine Seiler, SteinerBooks, 2011, 372 pgs.
This volume is a translation from the German of Unsere Toten. Ansprachen, Gedenkenworte und Meditationssprüche 1906–1924 (GA 261). It contains a collection of Rudolf Steiner’s memorial, funeral, and cremation addresses, as well as a sam-
pling of prayers and meditations for the dead. Speaking in an intimate, personal way, he unites the living and the dead with words that are both practical and healing.
Those seeking comfort and guidance when grieving loved ones who have died, and “those who seek ways of entering a real relationship with the dead, who wish to understand how the dead might influence our lives—these will find in this volume irreplaceable substance for meditation, thought, and practice.”
Rudolf Steiner: The British Connection. Elements from His Early Life and Cultural Development, Crispian Villeneuve, Temple Lodge, 2011, 736 pgs.
“Following his major work on Rudolf Steiner’s ten visits to Britain, Crispian Villeneuve studies Steiner’s relationship to the British Isles during the approximately forty years before those visits. The theme of Steiner’s early connection to British culture leads inevitably to the broader topic of his relationship to modern science. This in turn highlights the polarity and tension between the Goethean philosophic view that arises from Central Europe, and the ‘Baconian’ perspective emanating from Western Europe.
“Interweaving these contrasting Baconian and Goethean worldviews, Villeneuve presents numerous primary texts—often culled from obscure sources and many previously unavailable in English—with commentary on Rudolf Steiner and the nineteenth century.”
Rudolf Steiner zu Individuum und Rasse: Sein Engagement gegen Rassismus und Nationalismus [Rudolf Steiner on the Individual and Race: His Work against Racism and Nationalism], Uwe Werner, Verlag am Goetheanum, 2011, 152 pgs.
This is a new book on the debate about anthroposophy and racism by Uwe Werner, longtime director of the archives at the Goetheanum, and author of an earlier, related work, Anthroposophen in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus (1933-1945) [Anthroposophists in the Era of National Socialism (1933-1945)].
A Biodynamic Manual: Practical Instructions for Farmers and Gardeners, Pierre Masson, Floris Books, 2001, 224 pgs.
This manual, fully illustrated with explanatory diagrams and photographs, discusses all aspects of making and using biodynamic preparations and composts; managing the health of plants; weed and parasite controls, animal care; and specialized crops including fruit trees and vines. The author addresses the human qualities needed to practice biodynamic agriculture successfully, as well as the technical aspects of biodynamic growing. A patron who recently borrowed this book proclaims it the best book on biodynamics he’s read.
Queen of the Sun: What Are the Bees Telling Us? DVD, Taggart Siegel, director, Portland, OR, Collective Eye, 2011, 82 min.
“Taking us on a journey through the catastrophic disappearance of bees and the mysterious world of the beehive, this engaging and ultimately uplifting film weaves an unusual and dramatic story of the heartfelt struggles of beekeepers, scientists, and philosophers from around the world including Michael Pollan, biodynamic beekeeper Gunther Hauk, and Vandana Shiva. Together they reveal both the problems and the solutions in renewing a culture in balance with nature.”
Pfeiffer’s Introduction to Biodynamics, Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, Floris Books, 2011, 80 pgs.
Ehrenfried Pfeiffer was a pioneer of biodynamics in North America. This short but comprehensive book is a collection of three key articles introducing the concepts, principles, and practice of the biodynamic method, as well as an overview of its early history, and includes a short biography of Pfeiffer by Herbert H. Koepf. Pfeiffer’s Introduction to Biodynamics was previously published by the Biodynamic Farming and Gardening Association as Biodynamics: Three Introductory Articles
The Venus Eclipse of the Sun 2012: A Rare Celestial Event: Going to the Heart of Technology, David Tresemer, SteinerBooks, 2011, 172 pgs.
“The hyperbole and inflated attention
given to the supposed ‘end of the world’ on December 21, 2012, has obscured an actual rare celestial event happening in June of 2012—the passage of Venus before the face of the Sun as seen from the Earth, which happens every 125 years. Although Venus is much smaller than the Sun, Tresemer calls this an eclipse because of the ways he expects it to affect world events.”
Growing into Anthroposophy: Four Stages of Spiritual Thinking, Jan Dostal, Wynstones Press, 2011, 130 pgs.
The author presents four steps for the development of spiritual thinking, beginning with the expansion of pure thinking, which can be released via reverence into love, and, finally sacrifice. “Anyone working toward a deeper understanding of human existence will invariably encounter many paradoxical and contradicting phenomena—in life just as in anthroposophy and the work of Rudolf Steiner....[W]e have to view such paradoxes as the very foundations for a realistic way of knowing....”
Creative Spiritual Research: Awakening the Individual Human Spirit, Coenraad van Houten, Temple Lodge, 2011, 160 pgs.
Based on the application of the “seven life processes,” the author has developed “vocational learning” (Awakening the Will, 1999) and “destiny learning” (Practising Destiny, 2000). Here, in the culmination of his research trilogy, he presents a new path of adult learning, “creative spiritual research.” This method relates to esoteric schooling, thresholds of consciousness, and human creativity.
Rudolf Steiner’s Intentions for the Anthroposophical Society: The Executive Council, the School of Spiritual Science, and the Sections, Peter Selg, translated by Christian von Arnim, SteinerBooks, 2011, 96 pgs.
Written in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of Rudolf Steiner’s birth, this book seeks to clarify the mission and tasks of the Anthroposophical Society by describing the historical background of Steiner’s vision of anthroposophy’s “civilizational task” and how he had hoped it might be accomplished.
Respiratory System: Disorders and Therapy from a New, Dynamic Viewpoint, C.W. van Tellingen and G.H. van der Bie, Louis Bolk Institute, 2009, 124 pgs.
The experience of three individuals with asthma and pneumonia is used as backdrop for this study of airway disorders. The authors look at the part rhythm plays in the healthy respiratory tract and in the treatment of its diseases, and offer new insights and innovative avenues of treatment for respiratory disorders in general.
The Brotherhood of the Shadows: Hidden Powers of Opposition, and How They Work, Heinz Pfeifer, trans. Graham Rickett, Lochmann-Verlag, 2011, 250 pgs.
Heinz Pfeifer studied the forces working behind the scenes of political life. This work first appeared in German in 1981; it was published in a completely revised German edition in 2010, and appears here in English for the first time. The author introduces readers to a method Rudolf Steiner called “historical symptomatology,” which is needed in order to penetrate behind the “fable convenue” of history and of events in modern times.
By the Light of the Lanthorn: Working with People with Special Needs
A Cultural and Social Impulse in a Changing World, Siegfried W. Rudel, Temple Lodge, 2011, 176 pgs.
The Peredur Trust has been caring for disadvantaged and differently abled individuals for more than sixty years. The author, its president and one of its four founders, tells the story of the original impulse behind the organization, and, in so doing, tells the story of the many Camphill initiatives around the world. He relates the losses and challenges he and his anthroposophical family experienced in Germany during and after the Second World War, adding a personal dimension to this inspiring book.
A School as a Living Entity: The Growth and Development of a School as
a Living Entity, Rea Taylor Gill, AWSNA, 2011, 212 pgs.
The author, a Waldorf-school administrator, suggests that when “a school’s operating systems and organizational structure are intentionally differentiated based on Threefold principles, the school becomes a dynamic, effective, and vibrant entity.” The book’s foreword is by Torin Finser.
Waldorf Education in Practice: Exploring How Children Learn in the Lower Grades, Else Göttgens, Outskirts Press, 2011, 133 pgs.
This lively, humane, and wonderfully practical book is filled with humble wisdom. A taste: “Many people spend most of their time on what to teach. However, particularly in the lower classes, that is not the main issue. It is the how that matters by far the most. It is the ‘how’ that entices the children to ‘work willingly and learn greedily.’ Being allowed to let contents mature during sleep, being fed with images, finding something new to be interested in every day, experiencing your learning matter through your own body, being met in your own temperament, to be given tasks that ask for an effort, but are within your range of power, and very specially: having all this lightened up by humor: very few children can resist this invitation to work.”
The Story of Waldorf Education in the United States: Past, Present, and Future, Stephen Sagarin, SteinerBooks, 2011, 220 pgs.
In this engaging account of the history and development of Waldorf education in the United States, the author relates how the number of Waldorf schools grew steadily after the founding of the Rudolf Steiner School in New York City in 1928, and how they have evolved through four generations. As Waldorf education becomes more widely known, a number of public schools around the country have adopted Waldorf methods. The author presents what he considers to be “Waldorf myths,” and contrasts these with the essentials that “make Waldorf Waldorf,” adding a strong voice to the debate surrounding “Waldorf-inspired” schools.
I Am Different from You: How Children Experience Themselves and the World in the Middle of Childhood, Peter Selg, SteinerBooks, 2011, 120 pgs.
In many of his education lectures, Rudolf Steiner spoke of what is often called the “nine-year change,” a significant but often overlooked shift in the way children experience themselves and the world that occurs in the middle of childhood, in the ninth or tenth year. “There comes a time when children show, not in what they say but in their whole behavior, that they are struggling with a question or a number of questions that indicates a crisis in their soul life. It is a very subtle experience for the child that requires an equally subtle response.” Peter Selg, a child psychiatrist, illuminates this phenomenon, providing important insights for parents and teachers.
Brother Sun, Sister Moon, retold by Katherine Paterson, illustrated by Pamela Dalton, Chronicle Books, 2011, 28 pgs.
Local girl makes good—and how! Harlemville’s own artist extraordinaire, Pamela Dalton, illustrated this book, selected by the New York Times as one of the ten best illustrated children’s books of 2011. Her exquisitely imaginative and intricate handpainted papercuts enhance this retelling of Francis of Assisi’s prayer of praise.
The Story of Christmas: From the King James Bible, illustrations by Pamela Dalton, Chronicle Books, 2011, 24 pgs.
This stunning book follows the story of the nativity from the appearance of the angel, to the shepherds who came from the fields, to the three wise men who followed the star to bring their gifts to the newborn king. With full-color, glowing reproductions of Pamela Dalton’s paper-cut illustrations.
Invisible Guardians: True Stories of Fateful Encounters, Jakob Streit, translated by Nina Kuettel, AWSNA, 2011, 63 pgs.
The author writes: “The stories in this book are based on actual events. Some of them were told to me during conversations, and a few are taken from my own experiences. Still others came to me by way of letters that were written in answer to a survey. Only a portion of those were suited for the purpose of re-telling as a story. However, all the people who reported such
experiences were consistent in their belief that a guiding force had intervened in their destiny.”
The Temple Sleep of the Rich Young Ruler: How Lazarus Became the Evangelist John, Edward Reaugh Smith, SteinerBooks, 2011, 366 pgs.
Christian tradition holds that the author of the John Gospel was John the Apostle, “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” In 1902, Rudolf Steiner wrote that the author of the Gospel of John was in fact Lazarus, whose encounter with death—which was actually an initiation into higher spiritual realities—uniquely qualified him to write it. Edward Smith shows that subsequent research points to Lazarus for reasons grounded both in John’s Gospel, and in archaeological discoveries that corroborate Steiner’s reasoning, pointing to Lazarus as “the rich young ruler” of Mark’s Gospel.
Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, edited by Wouter J. Hanegraaff in collaboration with Antoine Faivre, Roelof van den Broek, Jean-Pierre Brach, Brill, 2006, 1228 pgs.
This massive book is the first comprehensive reference work to cover the entire domain of “Gnosis and Western Esotericism” from the period of Late Antiquity to the present. Containing around 400 articles by over 180 international specialists, it provides critical overviews discussing the nature and historical development of all its important currents and manifestations, from Gnosticism and Hermetism to Astrology, Alchemy and Magic, from the Hermetic Tradition of the Renaissance to Rosicrucianism and Christian Theosophy, and from Freemasonry and Illuminism to 19th-century Occultism and the contemporary New Age movement. It also contains articles about the life and work of all the major personalities in the history of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, discussing their ideas, significance, and historical influence.
In the Image of Orpheus: Rilke - A Soul History, Daniel Joseph Polikoff, Chi-
ron Publications, 2011, 784 pgs.
Born in the same year (1875) as Carl Jung, the godfather of archetypal psychology, Rainer Maria Rilke’s own formative years coincided with those of the professional field of psychology itself. His early relationship with Lou-Andreas Salomé (who was later a colleague of Freud), introduced him to ideas about psychology, religion, and art that “revolutionized his thinking.” Blending biography with close analyses of Rilke’s poetry and prose, the author, an independent scholar, poet, and Waldorf teacher, tells the inner story of Rilke’s literary career.
Sofia Gubaidulina: A Biography, Michael Kurtz, Indiana University Press 2007, 335 pgs.
Michael Kurtz, since 2001 a music specialist at the Goetheanum, has written the first biography of contemporary Russian compos-
er Sofia Gubaidulina to be published in any language. The composer, born in 1931, has been called “one of the most original, powerful, and highly respected voices in the world of contemporary music” (Christian Science Monitor). Her work, Kurtz says, “reflects a deep-rooted belief in the mystical and religious qualities of music.”
Shakespeare’s Secret Booke: Deciphering Magical and Rosicrucian Codes, David Ovason, Clairview Books, 2010, 256 pgs.
The author states that Shakespeare used a mysterious code that figures widely in the esoteric literature of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, but he did not himself invent it. Ovason shows that many leading esoteric writers—alchemists, occultists, and Rosicrucians—contributed to this “Secret Booke”: among them John Dee, Ben Jonson, and Edmund Spenser. He
also presents many other literary figures as part of “a remarkable underground literary movement,” including Jakob Böhme, Robert Fludd, and Johann Valentin Andreae, credited as author of The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, a work filled with sophisticated examples of encoding.
The Hidden Geometry of Flowers: Living Rhythms, Form, and Number, Keith Critchlow, Floris Books, 2011, 448 pgs. In this beautiful book, which includes 560 glorious color illustrations and photos, renowned thinker and geometrist Keith Critchlow presents the flower as a teacher of symmetry and geometry. “What is evident in the geometry of a flower’s face can remind us of the geometry that underlies all existence.”
Annotations by Judith Soleil, Librarian
2012 marks the 100th anniversary of Rudolf Steiner’s Calendar 1912-1913. That publication contained the 52 verses we know as the “Soul Calendar.” The dates listed here are intended as a guide for those who follow the practice of beginning a new verse on the Sunday of each week. In keeping with Rudolf Steiner’s instruction, we begin with Verse 1 at Easter. This procedure matches the way in which the 52 verses appeared in the original 1912-1913 edition, and it adheres to the seven-day astral rhythm of the soul. In addition, this approach takes into account the seven preparatory verses (Lent) leading up to Easter, and the seven verses that follow, from Easter to Whitsun.
SPRING
April 8, 2012: verse #1 Easter Mood
April 15: verse #2
April 22: verse #3
April 29: verse #4
May 6: verse #5 Light from Spirit Depths
May 13: verse #6
May 20: verse #7 Luciferic Temptation
May 27: verse #8 Whitsun
June 3: verse #9
June 10: verse #10
June 17: verse #11
June 24: verse #12 St. John’s Mood
July 1: verse #13
SUMMER
July 8: verse # 14
July 15: verse #15
July 22: verse #16
July 29: verse #17
Aug. 5: verse #18
Aug. 12: verse #19
Aug. 19: verse #20 Luciferic Temptation
Aug. 26: verse #21
Sept. 2: verse #22 Light from Cosmic Widths
Sept. 9: verse #23
Sept. 16: verse #24
Sept. 23: verse #25
Sept. 30: verse #26 Michaelmas Mood
FALL
Oct. 7: verse #27
Oct. 14: verse #28
Oct. 21: verse #29
Oct. 28: verse #30
Light from Spirit Depths Nov. 4: verse #31
Nov. 11: verse #32
Ahrimanic Deception Nov. 18: verse #33
Nov. 25: verse #34
Dec. 2: verse #35
Dec. 9: verse #36
WINTER
Dec. 16: verse #37
Christmas Mood Dec. 23: verse #38
Dec. 30: verse #39
Epiphany 2013: Jan. 6: verse #40
Jan. 13: verse #41
Jan. 20: verse #42
Jan. 27: verse #43
Feb. 3: verses #44 + #45
Ahrimanic Deception Feb. 10: verse #46
START OF LENT: FEB. 13
Feb. 17: verse #47
Light from Cosmic Heights Feb. 24: verse #48
Mar. 3: verse #49
Mar. 10: verse #50
Anticipating Spring Mar. 17: verse #51
Palm Sunday Mar. 24: verse #52
Easter Mood Mar. 31: verse #1
There are 51 weeks from Easter 2012 through Easter 2013, but we have 52 verses. This calls for an accommodation in order to maintain the organic whole of the Soul Calendar. One possible solution for this year is to work with Verses 44 and 45 together during the same week in February. These two dynamic meditations focus on strengthening the soulforces necessary to overcome Ahriman’s powerful deceptions.
The changing cosmic date of Easter requires the meditant to chart a new course through the Soul Calendar every year, since there are never just 52 weeks between one Easter and the next. It is a joy to celebrate the treasure that Rudolf Steiner gave us 100 years ago!
With gratitude to Michael Ronall for his careful editing and suggestions.
Week 1
The Mystical Heart of Abraham with Christopher Bamford
Cancer: Living Forces and the Soul Experiences Near the Threshold with Hans-Broder von Laue, M.D. & Rev. Julia Polter
The Art of Child Study: An Inspirational Path to Understand the Unfolding Human Being with Christof Wiechert
AWSNA Mentoring Course for Experienced Eurythmy Teachers with Leonore Russell & Carla Comey
Fundamentals of Pedagogical Speaking with Craig Giddens
A Bridge Across the Threshold: Creating a Living Connection with Marianne Dietzel
Crossing the Rubicon: Grades Six, Seven, and Eight in the Waldorf School Setting with Eugene Schwartz
Know Thyself: A Colored Perspective in Watercolor Painting and Pastels with Iris Sullivan
Experiencing Music as a Path to Spirit: Singing through the Grades with Eleanor Winship
World Languages: Deepening By Doing in Grades 1, 2, and 3 with Lorey Johnson & Kati Manning
Transformative
Handwriting: Using the Vimala Alphabet to Overcome Hindrances with Jennifer Crebbin
Week
For Waldorf teachers and administrators––along with parents, trustees, artists, and thinkers seeking to deepen their lives through anthroposophy.
Week 2
Body, Soul, and Spirit: Dialogues with the Divine with Dennis Klocek
Honeybees in Crisis: Our Evolving Relationship with the Animal Kingdom with Gunther Hauk
Faust: Encountering Evil at the Threshold with Frederick Amrine
Healing Gestures: Renewing Forces for the Early Childhood Teacher, Health-Giving Opportunities for the Young Child with Laurie Clark & Rena Osmer
Craft as Process, Rhythm, and Transformation with Aonghus Gordon & Master Craftsmen Stuart Groom, Chris Halliwell, Jonathan Code, & Michael Chase
Picture Your Life: Fundamentals of Biography through Eurythmy and the Arts with Regina Kurek & Linda Larson
In-Between: Building Relationships for Healthy Waldorf School Administration with Torin Finser
Projective Geometry with Jamie York
An Introduction to the Visual Healing Arts with Iris Sullivan & Karine Munk Finser
Self-Education through Intuitive Thinking and Artistic Perception with Signe Motter, Douglas Gerwin, Hugh Renwick, & Elizabeth Auer
July 1 – 28, 2012 Waldorf High School Teacher Education Program
Gerwin, Director
