being human summer-fall 2021

being human

anthroposophy.org

rudolfsteiner.org

TENTH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

to walk the human path (p.16)

farms healing the earth (p.22)

medicine more human (p.25)

gallery: Leszek Forczek (p.30)

art awakens higher life (p.37)

enter the (cosmic) child (p.39)

awakening community (p.42)

science and technology (p.45)

articles and reviews by Paige Hartsell, Karen Gierlach, Joyce Reilly, Walter Goldstein, Christoph Linder, Ricardo Bartelme, Walter Alexander, David Anderson, Harlan Gilbert, Christopher Schaefer, Frederick Dennehy, John Bloom, Deb AbrahamsDematte, Andrew Sullivan; poem by Christina Daub

Planning for the life you want to live and for the world you want to live in. M o n e y a t w o r k i n t h e w o r l d i n t h e s e r v i c e o f t h e c o m m o n g o o d .

W e a r e a f i d u c i a r y , e t h i c a l l y b o u n d t o a d v i s e f o r o u r c l i e n t ' s i n t e r e s t s f i r s t a n d f o r e m o s t . O u r t a s k i s t o s u p p o r t o u r c l i e n t s t o f u l f i l l t h e i r i n d i v i d u a l l i f e ' s i n t e n t i o n s t h r o u g h f i n a n c i a l p l a n n i n g a n d a s s e t m a n a g e m e n t t h a t i s c o n g r u e n t w i t h t h e i r p e r s o n a l a n d s p i r i t u a l v a l u e s a n d a s p i r a t i o n s .

O

F i n a n c i a l P l a n n i n g

I n v e s t m e n t C o n s u l t i n g

P o r t f o l i o D e s i g n & M a n a g e m e n t

I n s u r a n c e P l a n n i n g

J e r r y M S c h w a r t z , C F P ®

B e r n a r d C . M u r p h y , C F P ®

K i m b e r l y M . M u l l i n , F P Q P ™

W e i n v i t e y o u t o c o n t a c t u s t o d a y !

D igned for working teach s.

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Gradalis training for Early Childhood and Grades Teachers is taught over 26 months, in seven semesters. Courses provide anthroposophical foundations, rich artistic training in visual & temporal arts, inner development, insights for child observation, and working with special needs. Plus, field mentoring, curriculum and school culture.

Includes: 3 two-week Summer Intensives; 4 Practicum Weekends; and on-line Interactive Distance Learning (8.7% of program) to support the working teacher with monthly pedagogical and main lesson support through two school years.

LEARN MORE: gradalis.edu

‘Teaching as an Art’

Where would we all be without the Rudolf Steiner Library that holds and cares for the books that hold the ideals, ideas, thoughts, and words of Rudolf Steiner? The Rudolf Steiner Library is now open fully after a year of quietly waiting for members to be able “to just touch the books,” as one participant plaintively registered during this last year! Open and busy again—note our all-new logo above!

Interlibrary loans, curbside pick-ups and deliveries, and sorting through the abundant gifts of books, prints, and portfolios we have collected as bequests and personal library downsizings have made the RSLibrary as busy as it ever has been. Our members have been caring and understanding. Consider

Join Our Waldorf Teacher Training in Canada

Early Childhood Educator Training

Birth to Seven, with a Birth to Three Option

Grades Teacher Training

Summer Courses & Workshops

Early Childhood: Ruth Ker ece@westcoastinstitute.org 250-748-7791

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joining them as a RSLibrary member. Find the rich considerations of Rudolf Steiner and many other authors here on broad topics of Anthroposophy, spirituality, relationships, meditation, and life on earth and under the stars.

As work continues to develop a more formal fundraising effort (sorting mailing lists and print schedules), contributions can be made via PayPal and the Rudolf Steiner Library homepage: rudolfsteinerlibrary.org

Building the Temple of the Heart

Building the Temple of the Heart

Anthroposophical Society in America annual conference and members meeting October 7 - 10, 2021

Anthroposophical Society in America annual conference and members meeting October 7 - 10, 2021

Keynote Speakers: Michaela Glöckler, Brian Gray & Michael Lipson

Co-Sponsored by the Central Regional Council

Keynote Speakers: Michaela Glöckler, Brian Gray & Michael Lipson

Co-Sponsored by the Central Regional Council

registration at anthroposophy.org/fallconference

online with opportunities to gather in person

registration at ant h roposop h y.org/fallconferenc e on lin e with opportunit ie s to gather in person

95 years of ASA communications ten years of being human

the first newsletter for members (right), july 1927 the first journal for anthroposophy (2nd right), spring 1965 journals/newsletters (far right and 2nd row) 1976-78-88-90-96-2000

third row from left: 2007 news for members, 2009 evolving news, and first being human at Rudolf Steiner’s 150th birthday, 2011

10 from the editors

51

16 The Twelve Senses: Sensing Justice in the Encounter, by Paige Hartsell

17 Biography & Social Art in the Time of Covid, by Karen Gierlach

19 Two Lives in Progress, reviews by Joyce Reilly

22

Open-Pollinator Future Lab, Youth+Agriculture, presentation by Walter Goldstein

25 Rudolf Steiner & the Art of Healing, by Christoph Linder, MD

30 The Relevance of Anthroposophic Medicine for Our Times (excerpt), by Ricardo Bartelme, MD, and Walter Alexander

30 Gallery: Leszek Forczek

37 The Unified Field, by David Anderson

39 Individuality and Diversity, by Harlan Gilbert

42 Social Ecology in Holistic Leadership, reviews by Christopher Schaefer, PhD

45 The Perennial Alternative by Frederick Amrine, review by Frederick Dennehy

47 “Michaelmas” – poem by Christina Daub

48 Opening Secrets: Rudolf Steiner, Spiritual Science, and Technology, by John Bloom

for members & friends

51 GEMS—An Inspiring Labor of Love, by members of the GEMS community

52 Hazel Archer Ginsberg Joins the General Council

54 Striving Toward Gentleness, by Deb Abrahams-Dematte

55 Thank you, Laura!

55 Welcoming New Members

56 Hartmut Schiffer, by Holly Richardson

57 Members Who Have Died

57 Elizabeth Ann Courtney Pratt, by Susan Weber

60 Elizabeth “Beth” Wieting, by Aaron Wieting

62 “Dear Anthroposophical Self,” by Andrew Sullivan

The Anthroposophical Society in America

GENERAL COUNCIL

John Bloom, General Secretary & President

Helen-Ann Ireland, Chair (at large)

David Mansur, Treasurer (at large)

Nathaniel Williams, Secretary (at large)

Micky Leach (Western Region)

Hazel Archer Ginsberg (Central Region)

Gino Ver Eecke (Eastern Region)

Dave Alsop (at large)

LEADERSHIP TEAM

Deb Abrahams-Dematte, Director of Development

Katherine Thivierge, Director of Operations

being human

is published by the Anthroposophical Society in America

1923 Geddes Avenue

Ann Arbor, MI 48104-1797

Tel. 734.662.9355

Editor & Director of Communications:

John H. Beck

Associate Editor: Fred Dennehy

Proofreader: Cynthia Chelius

Headline typefaces by Lutz Baar

Past issues are online at www.issuu.com/anthrousa

Please send submissions, questions, and comments to: editor@anthroposophy.org or to the postal address above, for our next issue by 12/10/2021. being human is sent free to ASA members (visit anthroposophy.org/join).

To request a sample copy, write or email editor@anthroposophy.org

©2021 The Anthroposophical Society in America. Responsibility for the content of articles is the authors’.

from the editors

Dear Friends,

We’re celebrating ten years of being human. In 2008 the General Council chose to replace News for Members with a full-color magazine. We first put the name on the spring issue of 2011 honoring the 150th birthday of Rudolf Steiner. Many thanks to Marion Léon, James Lee, Fred Dennehy who edited the Library Newsletter, designer Seiko Semones, proofreader Cynthia Chelius, information manager Linda Leonard, and so many wonderful writers and artists!

This issue departs from its usual layout in order to celebrate the living, inspiring ideas of anthroposophy, brought by Rudolf Steiner, and the people who apply those ideas in all the fields of life. Anthroposophists are confident in the human ability to rise higher, to real freedom and love, and those who make our higher potential visible help others regain that confidence. We are mailing to a number of friends who do not usually receive these printed issues. Consider becoming a member at www.anthroposophy.org/join and help sustain this work.

Twice a year in these few pages we try to share the relevance of anthroposophy and its applications. Last issue we included a personal commentary on our current medical situation and its social-political context by Richard Fried, MD, a longtime practioner of Anthroposophic Medicine. This was not a “party line” on health questions and we noted that “contrasting experience-based views are always welcome.” In this issue we affirm Anthroposophic Medicine’s broadest essentials with a remarkable testimonial by the physician who brought it to this country as his life’s work, Dr. Christoph Linder, supplemented by an excerpt from a longer paper by anthroposophists Ricardo Bartelme, MD, and Walter Alexander. Walter is a past contributor and a professional writer on medical subjects who has tackled key questions like the “placebo effect,” which shows that consciousness actually works in and on the physical organism, and the true role of the heart in our circulatory systems. Anthroposophic Medicine is founded 1) on the full reality of the human being, 2) on the fact that every illness is personal , and 3) on the balancing of short-term and long-term goals in its therapeutic treatments.

There are many other wonderful pieces here. Many thanks to Casse Forczek for her work in creating the wonderful gallery. Also note the last page, “Dear Anthroposophical Self,” which means to help us stay alert and questioning even in our engagement with this great being, anthroposophy.

John Beck

In this tenth anniversary issue, Joyce Reilly reviews two autobiographies, Sunshine Girl: An Unexpected Life, and Gardens of Karma: Harvesting Myself among the Weeds, by two highly successful women, Julianna Margulies and Susan West Kurz. Each work touches the intersection of anthroposophy and celebrity, and each differently reveals the karmic interweavings of love and neglect.

Christopher Schaefer, whose life was changed many years ago after meeting Bernard Lievegoed and spending a year with the Netherland Pedagogical Institute, turns again toward Holland to review two books on spiritually based community development. The first, by Erik Lemcke, is Social Ecology in Holistic Leadership: A Guide for Collaborative Organizational Development and Transformation, an invaluable guide and workbook meant particularly for those already

practicing as consultants and facilitators. The second, by Harrie Salman, The Social World as Mystery Center, points to Rudolf Steiner’s insight that the modern mystery center resides in the everyday world of work and play. Salman focuses on the archetypal social phenomena of human meeting, conversation, and the working of karma.

My review of Frederick Amrine’s The Perennial Alternative: Episodes in the Reception of Goethe’s Scientific Work, finds cause for optimism in the continuing, even growing, influence of Goethe’s scientific method. Goethe’s practice has not only proven to be the enduring alternative to scientism, it has expanded beyond the disciplines of botany and color theory to become a way of seeing capable of interpreting anything that lives.

I have also reviewed a modern day trilogy of mystery plays, Angels at Bay, by Owen Barfield, written more than seventy years ago but only published this year. That review, too long for this issue, will be available soon in a new online PDF edition of being human

Though things are arranged differently for this special edition, being human has been featuring a research & reviews section for ten years. In looking back over the decade, I am struck not only by the quality of the publications we have reviewed, but the broad scope of the material. In addition to books about the history of spiritual science, we have had strikingly original works about philosophy, science, social ecology, spiritual practice, religion, art, and literature, as well as distinctively new fiction and poetry.

Most striking to me in overview are the threads connecting most of these books: a passion for inquiry, a readiness to see life within experience, and a willingness to begin each act of thinking anew. Nearly one hundred thirty years ago, a book entitled The Philosophy of Freedom made its appearance on the world stage, and it was an open question whether it would survive a generation, let alone more than a century. Today we see its endurance not only as a text relied upon all over the world, but as a method that brings together the most diverse interests through a shared practice of thinking, seeing, and aspiring.

Fred Dennehy

NOTICE OF ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

The General Council hereby gives notice that the annual general meeting of members of The Anthroposophical Society in America, Inc., will be held Thursday, October 7, 2021, 6:30–8pm Central Time via Zoom, as part of the annual conference. Topics of general interest will include the report by the Society’s treasurer on the state of the Society’s finances.

The ASA invites you to join the

Michael Support Circle

our major donor circle. THANK YOU to the 45 individual members, and to these organizations for their generous and on-going support:

Anthroposophical Society of Cape Ann

Anthroposophy NYC

Association of Waldorf Schools of North America

Bay Area Center for Waldorf Teacher Training

Biodynamic Association

Camphill School – Beaver Run

Carah Medical Arts

Cedarwood Waldorf School

Council of Anthroposophical Organizations

GRADALIS Waldorf Consulting & Services

Great Lakes Branch

House of Peace

RSF Social Finance

Rudolf Steiner Fellowship Foundation

Michael Support Circle members pledge gifts of between $500 and $5000 per year for five or more years. They help the Society to grow in capacity and vitality—the basis for increased membership, new learning opportunities, and greater impact in the world.

To learn more about how you can support the strength and sustainability of our movement, contact Deb at deb@anthroposophy.org

Saint George Slays the Dragon, by Laura James

LegacyCircle

Erika V. Asten*

Betty Baldwin

J. Leonard Benson*

Susannah Berlin*

Hiram Anthony Bingham*

Mrs. Hiram A. Bingham

Virginia Blutau*

Iana Questara Boyce*

Marion Bruce*

Helen Ann Dinklage*

Irmgard Dodegge*

Raymond Elliot*

Lotte K. Emde*

Marie S. Fetzer*

Linda C. Folsom*

Hazel Ferguson*

Gerda Gaertner*

Susanna Gaertner

Ray German

Ruth Geiger

Harriet S. Gilliam*

Chuck Ginsberg

Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

Alice Groh

Agnes B. Granberg*

Bruce L. Henry*

Ruth Heuscher*

Christine Huston

Ernst Katz*

Cecilia Leigh

Anna Lord*

Seymour Lubin*

William H. Manning

Barbara Martin

Beverly Martin

Gregg Martens*

Robert & Ellen McDermott

Helvi McClelland

Robert S. Miller*

Ralph Neuman*

Martin Novom

Carolyn Oates

Mary Lee Plumb-Mentjes

Norman Pritchard*

Paul Riesen*

Mary Rubach*

Margaret Runyon

Ray Schlieben*

Lillian C. Scott*

Fairchild Smith*

Patti Smith*

Doris E. Stitzer*

Katherine Thivierge

Gertrude O. Teutsch*

Catherina Vanden Broek*

Randall Wadsworth

Pamela Whitman

Thomas Wilkinson

Anonymous (18)

* indicates past legacy gift

Legacy giving is an excellent way to support the work of the Society far beyond a person’s current giving capacity.

There are a variety of ways to make a legacy or planned gift. If you would like to learn more please contact Deb Abrahams-Dematte at 603-801-6484 or deb@anthroposophy.org

Space permits only a few full book reviews in each issue. Here we list some of the many others we encounter. Except as specified, the notes are from the publishers — Editor

Vaccination in the Work of Rudolf Steiner, by Daniel Hindes, 121 pp. (Aelzina Books, 2021)

Complementing his Viral Illnesses and Epidemics (2020), Daniel Hindes, school director at the Boulder Valley Waldorf School, has added a further volume of carefully translated and contextualized quotations. “Collected in this book are all of Rudolf Steiner’s statements on vaccination. Spanning over twenty five years, these extended excerpts are drawn from 15 separate volumes of the Collected Works. Several of these statements have never before been published in English. Newly translated from the latest German editions, they serve as an invaluable resource for anyone interested in exploring Steiner’s views on the topic of vaccination.”

To the Infinite and Back Again, A workbook in projective geometry, Part I, by Henrike Holdrege, 103 pp., 8.5x11 in. (Evolving Science Association, 2019)

This richly illustrated book provides countless exercises that foster clarity of thought and precision in imagination. It is a practice-oriented introduction to projective geometry, and in working through the exercises we learn to think in transformations and to experience a beautiful thought world in which ideas weave, grow, and metamorphose. The book leads in a careful step-by-step fashion to the challenging idea of the infinite. We learn to think this mind-expanding concept, a concept that opens up whole new ways of understanding. We begin to see that everything finite gains wholeness and coherence when we conceive of the infinite. As a fruit of the author’s many years of teaching, this workbook is intended for self-study and is a unique resource for high school and college math teachers

Henrike Holdrege trained as a mathematician, a biologist, and a science teacher. In 1998, she co-founded The Nature Institute. She strives in her work to bring deeper dimensions of the world–of nature and of our inner life–to experience. In the Institute’s adult education programs and courses and workshops locally, nationally, and internationally, her two main areas of focus are phenomenological studies of nature and mathematics as a training of thought.

THAN K YO U! to these members, who support the Society’s future through a bequest or planned gift

photo by Javier Allegue Barros

Earthly, Transcendental, & Spiritual Logic: from Husserl’s Phenomenology to Steiner’s Anthroposophy, by Scott E. Hicks, (Amazon.com, 2019).

This book examines the problems of crossing from Husserl’s technique of directly viewing concepts, essences, and ideas to the full experience of crossing the threshold by means of spiritualizing thinking in the anthroposophical sense. It covers all of the places where Steiner mentions Husserl in his collected works and the early part of the book functions as an introduction to Husserl’s phenomenology for the general reader or for the anthroposophist. It begins with everyday consciousness and crosses into the realm of viewing ideas or essences directly. In the later chapters, there are a variety of studies which lead the reader on an adventure from strict scientific consciousness and perception of plants into the phenomenological reduction, and then over the chasm into the real life of living thinking in the etheric world. Through this, it becomes clear that phenomenological reflection does not take place in the same sphere as spiritual research. There are also several studies of Logic itself. These studies penetrate into what happens on the concept planes and in the living world during the processes of thinking, judging, inferring, and creating logical conclusions. The book also contains access to several new spiritual scientific creations and bridges which transform some of the basic logical laws and forms into anthroposophical living pulses and elements in the spiritual world. Most of the book takes place beyond the realm of mental images, following the work of Steiner’s Philosophy of Freedom. The text therefore contains several doorways for the active reader to enter into the new work of the anthroposophical movement in the spiritual world and all that such an approach entails.

THE ONE of the Emerald Tablet: Illuminating Ancient Cryptic Truths , by Anna Lups, MD, 152 pp., large format (SteinerBooks, 2017)

This unusual book escaped our notice until recently. In the Eurythmy Association newsletter Jeanne Simon-MacDonald wrote, “It is hard to try to indicate the depth, breadth and richness of this extraordinary book full of wisdom, anecdotes, and illustrations from Dr. Anna’s life and studies.” Author Peter Lamborn Wilson writes, “In the tradition of Paracelsus, Goethe, Novalis, Hahnemann, and Steiner, Dr. Lups weaves alchemy out of the art of an anonymous, brilliant six-year-old ‘Child Artist’ into a tapestry of symbolism, healing, and wisdom—including many surprises. A magical text!” And David Appelbaum, former editor of Parabola magazine, adds, “Anna

Lups’s marvelous memoir traces a pathway of cure, from health of the outer person to the inner esoterics of the soul, from allopathy to anthroposophic medicine. A lengthy sojourn through archetypal research to spiritual alchemy, she is guided by the questions ‘Who am I?’ ‘Where are my beginning and my end?’ and provides inspiration in the art of living to readers of all pursuits. A work of immense creativity.” —Editor “We are far more than we think we are.” A profound statement that slowly sinks in as a reality during the study of the drawings and the texts which become the material for the stories of all the members of humankind. Introduced through the autobiography of a female physician practicing in the Columbia County region of rural upstate New York, this is a book where the reader is invited to accompany the journey each human being will undertake into the earthly life and the wisdoms learned in the process of “becoming.” Filled with gratitude for this testimony of hope in the miracle that is human and the attention it draws to past

scholars whose knowing was profound but often ignored, this book serves as a reference for future students who find them selves ready for the combined study of natural and spiritual science. Dr. Anna Lups lives in Columbia County, New York, where she has practiced private medicine continuously since 1967. Her background as a cardiologist and family practitioner has allowed her to experience a wide breadth of clinical care motifs. In 1979 she began the anthroposophic extension of medicine and continues to grow her understanding of patient care and alternative holistic medicine.

Knowledge of Spirit Worlds and Life after Death, As received through spirit guides , by Dr Bob Woodward, 166 pp. (Clairview Books, 2020)

“In the Newsletter of the AS in GB, Bob Woodward writes about how he came to work with his spirit guides and what his methodology is. The book follows on from his previous ones on receiving answers from his guides to his questions and gives a more rounded picture of these beings together with their conversations. He asks in a very straightforward way about what life is like after death, with each chapter on a particular theme such as how souls live in the spiritual world, what they actually experience and whom do they meet. Each series of conversations is followed by a commentary and passages from Steiner which seem to corroborate what the guides have described. They give us more detail about the periods fairly soon after death, whereas

incarnations for instance. The book concludes with Bob making contact with his deceased father and noting down their conversations which take place 25 years later and after the kamaloca period. Doubtless Bob felt he was experiencing his father’s presence, but for the reader a shared memory or two would have been helpful as discarnate beings may not always be who they claim to be. It is very courageous to be so forthcoming about one’s spiritual experiences, we can appreciate Bob’s sincerity, concern for accuracy and desire to reach out to a wider public. We are urged to develop our own connections with spiritual helpers, as Steiner does refer in various places to a plurality of beings who want to assist those on the earth.” —Margaret Jonas, librarian at Rudolf Steiner House, London, for many years, is the author of The Templar Spirit and The Northern Enchantment and editor of anthologies by Rudolf Steiner on these subjects.

Exploring Themes in the Calendar of the Soul, by Luigi Morelli, 200 pp. (iUniverse, 2021)

“This work explores themes as they emerge in Rudolf Steiner’s Calendar of the Soul, first as they appear during the two halves of the year, spring/summer and fall/winter, secondly in relation to the mid-season quadrants, formed by the verses of so-called cross 7, which divide the year in four equal parts, centered around the times of the equinoxes and solstices. One of the main threads continues the exploration of the polarity thinking / intuition as it emerges from the work of Karl König, and places it in relation to other ones that emerge throughout the year, such as the expressions of feeling, memory, will, cosmic thinking and cosmic Word and their relationship to the human being. During spring and summer we follow the ascent of cosmic life, cosmic light and cosmic warmth, and cosmic Word as gifts bestowed upon the human being by the cosmos. During the cold time of the year these are inwardly elaborated by the human being, conscious of her place in Earth evolution and of her relationship to the Christ impulse, and given back to the cosmos. The Calendar thus exemplifies how the human being is both connected to the movements of the seasons, but also partly independent in having

to exert inner initiative that counters natural tendencies.”

Editor’s note: This latest in Luigi Morelli’s substantial series of books is available at Amazon but also at millenniumculmination.net where the full list may be available for download and there are some translations in Spanish.

The list includes 2020’s Illness and the Soul; Tolkien, Mythology, Imagination and Spiritual Insight ; and books on Tolkien and Owen Barfield, Aristotelians and Platonists, Karl Julius Schröer and Rudolf Steiner, social questions, and spiritual turning points of both North and South American history, the last two available from SteinerBooks. The author’s bio: “Cultures have been a great part of my upbringing, since I’m American born, part Italian, part Peruvian, mostly grew up in Belgium, and have lived the longest in the US. I have long had a passion for social change from a cultural/spiritual perspective. This has brought me to working with the developmentally disabled in the intentional, holistic communities of Camphill and L’Arche International, and also in the mainstream. I have lived in intentional cohousing for the last ten years... actively involved in community building and process facilitation.”

Fire the Imagination: Write On! by Dorit Winter, 204 pp. (Waldorf Publications, 2017)

How can teachers develop strong writing skills in their students in classroom and in life? Clarity and precision, empathy, and calls-to-action happen when the writing stimulates a clear response. Capacities in writers take practice and focus and refined skill in a teacher. Fire the Imagination— Write On! is a vehicle for developing those teaching skills that, in turn, develop writing skills in the young and old. The rigor of the lessons makes for engagement and plain old fun in working hard on good writing. Just the ticket for middle and high school youngsters—effective with adults as well!

Dorit Winter, MA, brings a cosmopolitan background to all her undertakings. Born in Jerusalem in 1947, she attended kindergarten in Zürich, primary school in Johannesburg and Cape Town, and junior and senior high schools in New York City, graduating from the Rudolf Steiner High School in 1964. Dorit began her Waldorf career in 1973 as a German and class teacher at the Rudolf Steiner School in New York City. Seven years later, she joined the Great Barrington

Rudolf Steiner School, where she coordinated the founding of a new high school. In 1989 she became founder and director of Rudolf Steiner College’s satellite teacher training program in San Francisco. In 2001 she accepted the directorship of Bay Area Center for Waldorf Teacher Training, from which she retired in 2014. Her Waldorf activities can be found at www.doritwinterwaldorf.com and her work as a painter at www.doritwinter.com

An Illustrated Guide to Everyday Eurythmy: Discover Balance and Self-Healing through Movement, by Barbara Tapfer and Annette Weisskircher, 168 pp. (Floris Books, 2017)

Discover the art of eurythmy with this richly illustrated step-by-step guide. Eurythmy is a compelling method of bringing balance and harmony to our body, soul and spirit through a series of rhythmic body movements. For the first time, this unique book captures these gestures visually through dynamic photographs, which clearly demonstrate the core movements of eurythmy therapy. It has long been recognized that we can direct powerful physical and mental changes within ourselves through specific movements of our bodies, as stated by advocates of yoga and tai chi. The authors of this original book are experienced eurythmists, who describe and illustrate the core speech–sound exercises: vowel exercises, consonant exercises and soul exercises, which include love, hope and sympathy. This book is not a replacement for a qualified eurythmy therapist, but is intended as guidance and orientation for patients practicing on their own, after a few initial sessions with a therapist, or for more experienced eurythmists. Contents:

Vowel Exercises

A – (ah) Opening; E – (eh) Crossing; I – (ee) Reaching out from the Heart Space; O – (oh) Circular Enclosing;

U – (oo) Bringing Together

Consonant Exercises

B – Enveloping and Protecting; P – Enveloping and Drawing In; D – Gently Descending; T – Inwardly Radiating; F – Airborne Intention; G – Calmly Repelling;

K – Energetically Repelling; H – Broadening and Freeing;

L – Wavelike Transformation; M – supple Sensing;

N – Quickly Withdrawing; R – Revolving; S – Enlivening and Formative; Sh – Narowly Spiralling Upward

Soul Exercises

A – (ah) Reverence; E – (eh) Love; U – (oo) Hope; Yes / No; Sympathy / Antipathy + Further Resources

Dorit Winter

place between the animals and the angels. It is a transformative new insight: we are an essential part of world design.

Anthroposophy, said Rudolf Steiner, arises as a need of the human heart, and it arrived in human culture at a stage in

there is something higher than ourselves.

Alongside key insights and guidance in self-development, Rudolf Steiner reminded us that we actually will find our higher selves in the world around us: in each other, and in community.

The Twelve Senses: Sensing Justice in the Encounter

by Paige Hartsell

Justice has been at the center of conversation, policy, and mass gatherings over the last year. For many people it has been an ever-present theme over generations as our world struggles to understand what it means to bring equity to fruition across race, class, and gender, cultures, the natural environment, and religious and spiritual traditions. What exactly do we mean by justice? What does justice look like in relation to our Self, the world, and the environment, and as we encounter one another?

On August 11-15, Threefold Educational Foundation and partners is hosting “The Twelve Senses: Sensing Justice in the Encounter.” This international online conference will examine this question of justice in relation to the lower, higher, and highest senses. There are many lenses through which to look at the development of the twelve senses posited by Rudolf Steiner as they relate to such topics as education or agriculture, for instance. Last year, a Twelve Senses conference entitled “A Step into a Human Future” marked the 60th anniversary of Karl König’s lectures on the senses given at the Threefold Summer School in Spring Valley, New York, and the 80th anniversary of Camphill in the United States. Recollecting Steiner’s charge that anthroposophy and human spiritual and social development is not a static task, the conference planning committee explored what keeps the König lectures relevant today. To heal the trauma and unrest of our time, we must be in authentic relationships with those around us. The development and health of the twelve senses is critical for meeting the challenges in all realms of our lives. Integrating the well-developed senses grows our capacity to live into the I-being of another person, to experience compassion, and to be in service to the

world. This year’s conference will examine the theme of justice in relation to the senses in their three groupings and in their capacity to sense justice in the encounter in the inner life of the Self, in the world, and the environment, and in our interactions with other beings

We are honored to have keynotes offered this year by Dr. Lakshmi Prasana, Jean-Michel Florin, Michael Kokinos, and Joan Sleigh. Workshops will fill the middle of each day and cover a wide range of topics, including curative education, the understanding of the senses in the Algonquian/Abenaki language, movement and clowning, inner work, social activism, fiber crafts, education and technology, and more. Each day will include a panel discussion with the day’s workshop leaders and guests, and we will have two additional panels on the topics of curative education and social activism. Presenters this year include faculty and students from Raphael Academy (New Orleans), faculty from the Fiber Craft Studio, Dottie Zold and Frank Agrama of ALIANT Alliance, Robin Schmidt, Carrie Shuchardt, Sharifa Oppenheimer, Elizabeth Frishkoff, and Algonquian/Abenaki language teacher Jesse Bowman Bruchac, individuals working on the frontlines of society in the fight against oppression, faculty from Camphill Academy and The Camphill School, and faculty from the Otto Specht School (Chestnut Ridge, NY). Recorded pre-conference lectures by Richard Steel and Jan Goeschel will be available for registrants. The full program and registration information can be found at www.twelvesenses.org.

Karl König wrote that if we are to strengthen our humanity for living into the future, we have to understand the three highest senses ( A Living Physiology, trans C. Sp-

roll, Camphill Books, 2006, p. 254). Although we can find evidence of honor and respect for our common humanity in the world, we also must acknowledge that the capacity for building the recognition of our common humanity is under attack . While our twelve senses are developing simultaneously, they are also de pendent on and build on one another in order that the human spirit can flower to its utmost in this present life. It is only through an understanding of ourselves and the knowledge that we are endowed with these higher senses that “will awaken us to our reality” (p. 160), as well as deepen our understanding of justice as a moral deed of our choosing.

In developing our senses, we can strive towards objectifying our responses to sense impressions when faced with the challenges of what it means to be human in this world that is both horrifying and indescribably beautiful. We can free ourselves from biases based on our sympathies and antipathies so that our encounters and interactions are unfettered by our untransformed soul capacities. About the United States, König wrote in 1960 that if we Ameri-

cans awakened to the reality of our highest senses, It would blow through the continent like a mighty, rushing wind...and more and more people [would] become able to see the spiritual image... in every human being, in every growing child. This is what is so sorely needed all over the world (p. 161).

What does justice mean to you? Please let us know! Email your thoughts in fifty words or less to: twelvesenses@threefold.org

Paige Hartsell has been involved with anthroposophy through education, agriculture, and community living since 1994. A former Waldorf high school teacher, she worked for several years in both curative and farm education. She is currently pursuing masters degrees in Divinity and Social Work with concentrations in Islam and Interreligious Engagement and Community Organizing through Union Theological Seminary and Hunter College in Harlem. She is an intern at the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice where she is researching food access and security issues in the US as they relate to the Poor People’s Campaign analysis of the five interlocking injustices of systemic poverty, systemic racism, militarism, environmental degradation, and the false moral narrative of religious nationalism.

Biography & Social Art in the Time of Covid

by Karen Gierlach

“I

The last eighteen, enormously challenging months have awakened the impulse to provide a balm during this time of suffering and loss. To our great joy, the social art of biography was able to be one of those balms.

When everything shut down in March 2020, facilitators from the Center for Biography and Social Art were part-way through our plans for the rest of the 2020 school year. Until then, we had greatly enjoyed visiting fourteen different Waldorf schools around the country each year,

presenting Awakening Connections: Creating Community, a three-part series of workshops. These were made available, free of charge, through a generous grant from Janey Newton to the Center.

All our workshops had taken place in artistically arranged indoor spaces and relied greatly on small group, face-to-face human encounters. Initially we questioned using Zoom for that kind of a workshop. It seemed really necessary, however, to provide an opportunity to meet others in heartfelt, open, and sincere ways during a time of the greatest social separation we had ever encountered. Two of our facilitators, Kathleen Bowen and Jennifer Brooks Quinn, were inspired almost immediately to launch two-hour Zoom workshops to the general public

“I feel heard.”

“So nourishing!”

remembered: I have tools of my own...”

called “How Are You.... Really?”

The response was so great that they had to offer this workshop many times over. Additional titles were added to continue this work: “ Tending the Hearth,” “Deepening Courage,” “And Now What?” Because Jennifer speaks Spanish, they were expanded to include our friends in Mexico. We also returned to the schools we had visited in person with a two-hour Zoom workshop of support, titled “A Different Kind of Call” to distinguish it from the overload of organizational and teaching Zoom calls that were necessary for schools to remain open.

Within the two-hour format—which always passed very fast!—we began with an introductory exercise in the full group (e.g., show us an object of your choice and tell us your connection to it). More prompts followed which might lead to a drawing (sketch the first meeting with an important person in your life), some journaling (“I remember, I remember...” ), or commenting on a postcard image or a line from a poem (reflect on why you chose that image or line).

These doorways access memories in an open-ended and non-threatening way and place them outside our heads, allowing us to see them more objectively. Following the prompt, people shared what they discovered in groups of two or three. After each exercise the whole group heard comments about the other small group experiences. The session was rounded off by participants sharing their “takeaways” from the experience.

“I

was able to listen to my own thoughts.”

“This deepened my understanding of these times.”

“Important to hear another perspective...”

By the end of 2020, over sixty such workshops had kept several facilitators very busy. Beginning in 2021, with new funding to bring workshops to Waldorf schools and to anthroposophical branches, we developed seven more two-hour Zoom topics from which those groups could choose. Again, the response was most enthusiastic, and eventually four of us worked with around fifty communities from all over North America.

Teachers and parents were thrilled to meet outside of business-only meetings in the heartfelt ways they missed and said they sometime lacked even before Covid. The branches often invited members who lived far away to attend our workshops, leading to many new meetings. Even members of the same communities welcomed learning new things about each other’s interesting lives.

“A network of stars – we have so much in common.”

“An open-hearted communication.”

“I was amazed that this works through technology.”

We learned several things from presenting so many more workshops. Using Zoom with the right intentions and in an artistic way can provide meaningful experiences similar to in-person meetings. And it enabled people from all over the country and the world to meet. For many it had been difficult or impossible to experience a biography workshop before because they lived too far away.

We also learned that if we stay flexible and listen to what is needed in the world, biography is a very adaptable, yet profound social art. By taking an interest in each other it can help people connect and find commonality, even when outwardly they seem very different.

“Renewed empathy through listening to the stories...”

“Astonished in such a short time to recognize the grace of darkness.”

“I witnessed my wonder at being human and being with other human beings.”

“I was able to connect on a heart level with new people.”

By practicing listening to others, while putting aside our own opinions, assumptions and judgments, we are developing tools which can be used everywhere. Is this not what our times are calling for as we negotiate all the divisions that keep arising among people, even within our own anthroposophical communities? As Rudolf Steiner said already a century ago,

“The longing to be seen and heard in our full reality has arisen in every human soul since the beginning of the 20th century and will grow increasingly urgent.”

For information about workshop offerings in the fall, contact center4biography@gmail.com

Karen Gierlach (pkgierlach@gmail.com) has facilitated biography and social art workshops since retiring from Waldorf teaching 20 years ago. She serves on the board of the Center for Biography and Social Art (www.biographysocialart.org) and with Kathleen Bowen, Jennifer Brooks-Quinn and Patricia Rubano develops and facilitates workshops for Waldorf schools and ASA branches. She also enjoys creating biography and social art workshops for the general public.

Two Lives in Progress

reviews by Joyce Reilly

Sunshine Girl: An Unexpected Life, by Julianna Margulies; Ballantine Books (2021), 256 pp.

Whenever I hear that a new celebrity biography is out on the shelves, I sigh. Talented as many actors are, and public figures, fascinating, the books are often short accounts of their early life and long accounts of a career gone well. Somehow the inner life—what was going on in that child’s mind, what the early days of a working actor felt like, what all the names being dropped and the prizes and accolades signify on a deeper level—are lost. So, when I heard from my local library director that she had spent a spring Sunday afternoon wrapped up in a hammock and a book, I was intrigued to hear that it was the autobiography of Julianna Margulies. I asked, tentatively—interesting? She replied—fascinating!

For those of us who are not television watchers, this surname may still seem familiar due to her parents involvement with anthroposophy: her mother, Francesca, a eurythmist and teacher for many years here in the US and abroad, and Paul, her father, a dedicated study group leader. Paul is also famous as an advertising executive who made his name for the Alka-Seltzer jingle—“Plop plop fizz fizz, oh what a relief its is!” Few Americans of a certain age are not familiar with those words!

Julianna has had a career on television, stage, and film, but is known mainly for important roles on long-

passing up another stint on ER , for millions of dollars, in order to return to her home in New York and the stage.

The book is indeed fascinating, because it is an honest, deep-going, detailed, and vibrant account of an early life leading up to a successful career and fulfilling family life. Julianna spends the majority of her words describing her early life: born in the anthroposophical community in Spring Valley, NY, taken back and forth to various spots in Great Britain and Europe connected to her mother’s career as a eurythmist and teacher, visiting her father abroad as well. Endless moves, new schools and new partners (her mother) and new jobs (her father),—the impression is a whirlwind that two older sisters escaped earlier and that Julianna endured with grace, anger, and some rebellion. Above all, it’s an honest book. The descriptions of her mother’s wild switches from one unsuitable place or lover to another, her father’s reserved support and continual changes, can be heard with a bit of a cringe. They do not come off as the most sensitive or supportive parents, despite The Study of Man and all the Waldorf exposure and soft dolls and pinecone people. Julianna mentions anthroposophy, as a part of all these moving pieces, as a serious endeavor, if a bit quirky, and definitely not a cult! In doing the round of interview shows (virtually) from Oprah to Symphony Space, the word “anthroposophy” is not often heard, but when it is, there is a respect that comes from what it seems is her understanding of her parents love for

Training

And this is what makes this autobiography so unique and so moving. Julianna Margulies describes a childhood and adolescence that one would not wish for—lack of stability, having to parent the parents, inappropriately mature expectations, and continual challenging events. Yet Julianna speaks of her parents today in the most loving terms. Her father Paul was surprised by her anger towards him when she began to be independent, and, after some clarification, wrote her the most heartfelt letter of apology for his own missteps and lack of understanding. When Paul crossed the threshold (she didn’t use this term) in 2014, she wrote a beautiful letter of tribute and grief which was publically shared. One can feel for Francesca, hearing the extremely open and candid way that Julianna describes the boyfriends, abrupt moves, inadequate housing, etc. Yet her mother’s reaction to knowing that this book was coming about was, “Go for it!” In the acknowledgements, Julianna paints the picture of sitting on a porch, sipping iced tea with Francesca and laughing over the manuscript, together.

The most important point of this story seems to me to be what Julianna expresses directly: things were tough, not ideal, too fast, sometimes confusing, but she was not abused. The chaos was not abuse—what an extraordinary distinction to be able to make. She always was loved, and knew she was loved, for herself in all her beautiful manifestations. This is the finest tribute to a childhood one can hope for: that the journey was filled with love. The book is dedicated to “My parents, Francesca & Paul Margulies.”

Gardens of Karma: Harvesting Myself Among the Weeds, by Susan West Kurz; White River Press (2021), 296 pp.

By happy coincidence, another autobiography has appeared “on the shelves” by Susan West Kurz, whom many of you may know as the person who introduced the Dr. Hauschka line of skin care products to the United States in such a way that they have become quite well known. Previously concentrated in health and whole food shops, it is now distributed through high-end retailers, special-

ized cosmetic shops like Sephora, and now the internet. The Dr. Hauschka line also inspired estheticians to be trained in the special skin treatments developed by Elizabeth Sigmund and used in clinics and salons in Europe. Elizabeth Sigmund and Dr. Rudolf Hauschka were deeply connected to the work of Rudolf Steiner, and the inspiration for one of the most highly prized cosmetic lines in the world came from their understanding of the human skin as an organ, and their knowledge and respect for the healing properties of the plant world.

Susan begins her tale with a visit to a writers’ workshop that leads her to express her love for Demeter, the goddess of agriculture, and then to tell us about her ideal vacation in Sicily in an area that is known as the womb of Demeter. After a lovely walk through fragrant gardens and appreciation for the sights and smells of the land that is so uniquely captivating in Italy, we are transported back to her childhood, and how the gardens of her aunt and uncle comforted, intrigued, and inspired her from an early age. Woven into the story of her life, from Rhode Island to New York City and back to New England, are encounters with the gardens of friends and relatives, and the deep holding of one’s being that can occur when there is a connection to the land.

After a somewhat painful childhood with a deeply quiet father and a mother with extreme mood swings, and after a usual elementary school and high school experience, Susan’s college years brought her into new social circles. Moving off campus led to a truly karmic meeting, involving a garden, with the actor James T. Walsh. Known then as Jim, and later professionally as J.T. Walsh, Jim introduces Susan first to anthroposophic medicine administered by a Dr. Laskey, then to Heinz of the Meadowbrook Gardens. Jim was also studying anthroposophy, and Susan, by now living with him and expecting a baby, was a serious and eager student of Dr. Steiner.

What follows is an account of a challenging, inspiring, tumultuous life with Jim and baby John, moving from Rhode Island to New York City, becoming more interested in the Dr. Hauschka line and its potential to be unique and highly-valued in the skin care world. Susan took on

training as an esthetician, setting up a salon, and eventually moving away from Jim as he became JT, a well-known presence both on stage and notably on various screens. (Jim’s alcoholism was a factor in so much of the tumult, and it was at the beginning of an attempt to get a healthier and freer life that he died at the age of 55 in 1998.)

Truly on her own, Susan’s business talent became apparent, and with her meeting a biodynamic farmer at a convention, the Hauschka line was born. Susan West and Clifford Kurz became a team in work and in life and were able to make Hauschka a well-known, profitable business. Susan’s account of finding her voice at business meetings and her feet on the ground with yet more gardens and Clifford, gives a special slant to the usual American success story. Susan and Clifford went on to be parents of two adopted children; though we do not get details of their growing lives nor that of John, we may surmise that, while the challenges do not stop, all sounds quite positive now.

This book leaves me asking for more. Who was Dr. Laskey? Also Heinz of Meadowbrook Gardens—there must be an inter esting story there. How did they all met in the small state of Rhode Island! And the salons and studios that Susan and friends established in New York and around the country, do they continue to serve the serious as well as the celebrat ed? And where can I have a Haus chka facial? The descriptions of the products, the fields of flowers and herbs that create them, make me both curious and envious of those who were there to experi ence all of this.

There is a connection be tween these books. When Susan West Kurz was creating the Dr. Hauschka business and needed advice on advertising, Paul Mar gulies was her trusted advisor! Working with Paul, Susan was able to develop the confidence

to trust her own understanding, and to own her voice. That voice was there already, waiting to be heard loud and clear.

These autobiographies of two women with significant relationships to anthroposophy and celebrity make refreshing and compelling reading.

Any season is a fine time to meet The Sunshine Girl and The Gardens of Karma

Joyce Reilly ( joycereilly@aol.com) found the Camphill movement in early adulthood, worked closely with Georg Kühlewind and supported his work in the USA, and has served on the council of Anthroposophy NYC and as president of the Janusz Korczak Association of the USA.

Celebration of the Festivals

Renewal of the Sacraments

Services for Children

Religious Education

Summer Camps

Study Groups

Lectures

The Christian Community is a movement for the renewal of religion, founded in 1922 with the help of Rudolf Steiner. It is centered around the seven sacraments in their renewed form and seeks to open the path to the living, healing presence of Christ in the age of the free individual.

Learn more at www.th e christiancommunity.org

Connect to the Spiritual Rhythms of the Year...

A sacred service. An open esoteric secret: The Act of Consecration of the Human Being.

That humanity is fully interwoven with the living earth, and indeed the solar system and cosmos, is a foundational insight for the anthroposophical initiative in agriculture, nutrition, and planetary healing. Biodynamic agriculture was one of Rudolf Steiner’s last initiatives—all of which were undertaken because individual people has asked for them. The heavy use of

artificial fertilizers after World War I in Germany caused many farmers to realize that the Earth itself was being stripped of its life. Steiner offered the perspective that a farm could be integrated, with the mineral soil, the life of the plants, the consciousness of the animals, and the creative guidance of the human being forming an organism and bringing new life to soil.

Open-Pollinator Future Lab Youth+Agriculture

by Walter Goldstein

A presentation given on Friday night, February 12, 2021, to the Youth Section in North America

There are at least three worsening crises. There is the crisis of climate instability which is coupled with global warming and catastrophic shifts. There is a human health crisis associated with lifestyle shifts, chronic illnesses, mental illnesses, degenerative diseases, and pandemics. And the third crisis has to do with a degeneration of the life forces in the soil, the purity of our water, and the nutritional value of the plants we eat.

These three crises are interlinked and have primarily to do with our needs for individual development and the prevalent immature societal paradigm. We unleash and flock to technologies that promise us greater powers and efficiency. These technologies are exploitive, attractive, lucrative, and convenient, short term. Collectively, we refuse to foresee or ameliorate their longer-term impacts on us, on the Earth, and on future generations. Around these new technologies, capital becomes concentrated in the hands of sanguine investors but money largely rules where the money flows. Many potential actors are locked into institutional machines and their jobs do not allow ethical decisions but rather decisions that perpetuate their institutions and maximize profitability or dominance. Big institutions, whether they are companies or universities or USDA, are increasingly calling the shots in agriculture.

I would like to share with you three discoveries and actions I am involved with that are critical for addressing these crises with healthy agricultural solutions literally from the ground up. These are:

1. partnership breeding,

2. direct observation of the life of the soil, and

3. finding new forms for commercialization and cooperative work.

This work I am going to tell you about is new and incomplete and it needs help from younger people to thrive and grow into the world.

Breeding and seed

The first is breeding and seed. You may know that as the art of breeding dies out in the agricultural community, I and others, including some young people in the organic movement have begun taking back our crops. You may have heard that our food has become progressively less nutrient dense as we implemented chemical farming and bred for yield. You probably know of problems with food allergies and interest in older kinds of crops that may not be allergenic.

You probably are also all familiar with genetic engineering where genetic material is taken from one organism and put into another. This has allowed the predominant use on this continent of genetically engineered corn and soybean crops that tolerate the herbicide Roundup. Roundup has become the most used pesticide on the Earth and is associated with degenerative diseases and widespread pollution.

Aside from that, what you probably don’t know is that breeding is becoming more and more unnatural. In order to speed up the process of breeding, hybridized plants are tricked into forming ‘haploid’ seeds with only the maternal set of chromosomes. Those haploids are grown out and forced to double their chromosomes in order to make a normal plant. Aside from the fact that this is a painful process to watch, we really have no idea of the long term consequences on the plants and on humans. But the process is faster than normal breeding, it lends itself to factory production, the resulting plants are stable and they can be easily patented. Therefore all the

big companies do it. Furthermore, CRISPR gene editing is just around the corner for tailoring the genetics of our plants. The worst is that we will soon not know whether a plant is engineered in this way or not.

Plants have been defined at universities as genetic machinery that should be programmed by clever scientists. Manipulative biotechnologies are looked at as being necessary tools in the face of the climate crisis. As a consequence of this genomic focus, humans are being separated from plants. Breeding has become a laboratorydriven exercise with genomics where people live in front of screens and robots and cameras are assigned the task of making observations. All this happened because the art of human/plant dialogue has not been properly valued and cultivated because it is not seen to be ‘hard’ materialistically based science. Nevertheless, it is what has brought us healthy agriculture in the first place and is the fruitful source for future healthy breeding.

We practice partnership breeding at the Mandaamin Institute. Critical is that the human pays attention to what the plants do in the field. The human is a partner in the breeding process. It is important that we know our role, do a good job with observing, reasoning, choosing environments and the best parents, and making the right crosses and selections. The plant and microbial partners are the biologically creative element. Under our low input, biodynamic conditions, the plants undergo a process which we call emergent evolution. Plants adapt to new environments and stress by throwing out new variation and patterns in tandem with epigenetic shifts and rearrangements of their chromosomes. At the Mandaamin Institute we are harnessing this more respectful approach with corn, the Earth’s most grown cereal crop. New patterns of storage proteins have appeared that increase the nutritional value of our grain tremendously. In our breeding process the plants became more nutrient efficient, partnering with bacteria that help them obtain minerals and nitrogen that make the grain much more nutritionally valuable. They therefore become less dependent on nitrogen fertilizers.

Nitrogen fertilizer is widely used to grow corn, and the nitrate from it leaches down and pollutes our wells and lakes or it is converted into nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas. We are polluting the water and the sky with the way we grow corn nowadays. Making nitrogen fertilizer is incredibly energy intensive. It takes the energy equivalent of 17 gallons of diesel fuel to make the nitrogen fertilizer needed to grow an acre of corn. But our new

corn fixes nitrogen with the help of bacteria from the air and seems to respond negatively to nitrogenous fertilizers.

Soil life

Unfortunately, we don’t know the life that we depend on. And society does not have a language for it and there are taboos that keep us from paying attention. The soil is alive or dead to various degrees and the human being can develop a real relationship to it by actively observing it through the year. The form of the soil, whether it is brick like and massive and hard, or crumbly and alive, reflects the ebb and flow of this life. There is an inner life to the soil and the human being can be an instrument for detecting and speaking for it by meditating in a focused way on what the soil is like. A language will emerge in us as we study it together and develop an objective soul to soil connection.

My experience has been that the life in the soil degenerates through the growing season. The plants appear to live from this soil life in a kind of parasitic way, depleting it. If the soil is fertilized with organic manures, particularly in the fall, there is the chance for a re-enlivening of the soil to occur. Forces from below become particularly active in November transforming the soil again and filling it with high quality life if the soil has been adequately manured in the past. If the soil is filled with that high quality life the crops will have great taste and value for the human.

In that regard, I would like you to join me in research on your own soil and crops. Our protocol is described in detail on the Biodynamic Association website at: www.biodynamics.com/experiencing-life-quality-our-soils . If you are inclined to study the life

of the soil and

the Earth please note: Mike Biltonen and I would like to schedule our first Zoom meeting in March for an introductory session, which should be followed by meetings every month starting then for each Friday of the month. These would be hour long sessions where people would succinctly relate findings and questions. Please contact Mike if you wish to participate at mikebiltonen@gmail.com

New social forms

The seed world is incredibly competitive. Intellectual property issues and profits sync with greater emphasis on patents and commodification of crops. Orphan crops, not profitable enough for the companies, are neglected. There do not exist platforms for cooperative development of crops across institutions and no framework for help-

ing small scale breeders. In that context we are working with the Northern Plains Sustainable Agriculture Society to develop a Quality Crop Association and the Nokomis Gold Seed Company. We hope to form the latter as a perpetual trust that could attract impact investors without the investors being able to change the intentions of the company.

Biography

My life reflects my desire to form myself as a key to resolve the problems that I see. I was born in 1953. Throughout my childhood I had a love for nature. I felt that there was an enormous wisdom in all living things and I wanted to understand it and apply it to resolve the problems that I knew would face humanity and the Earth as time went on. In 1972 I discovered anthroposophy and biodynamic agriculture while trying to find myself in southern California. I was 18 years old. That started me into a process of trying to shape my life so that I could have an impact and be of some help for the coming problems. It led me to working on various organic and biodynamic farms.

In 1976 I completed a bachelor’s degree in botany in Seattle and thereafter left for Europe to do research studies at different biodynamic research centers in Switzerland, England, and Sweden. I had good mentors there in the form of Herbert Koepf and Bo Pettersson who provided a example of agricultural scientists with insight who were living by principles they believed in.

On the way I met my wife, Bente, and was married with her 1980 in Norway. We returned to Washington State to attend the agricultural university where I was able to earn a masters and doctorate in agronomy and to do research on new crop rotations and effects of biodynamic preparations.

In 1986 I joined with others in Wisconsin to start Michael Fields Agricultural Institute and served as research director there for 25 years. In that time my wife and I purchased a 35 acre farm, where we bred sheep, corn, and fruit trees, and raised kids. My wife began farm school programs with Dana Burns and then continued that for over two decades in the form of a small company called “Farmwise.”

In 2011 I left Michael Fields to start a new non-profit organization in Wisconsin called the Mandaamin Institute with the help of friends. There we work on the farms of cooperators and mainly breed corn. We breed for enhanced nutritional value (nutrient density) and for

nitrogen efficiency under low input, biodynamic conditions. At the Institute we develop and practice “partnership breeding.” This entails a different attitude, where we work with corn and its microbial endophytes as partners, to breed corn that the world needs.

We partner with companies and farmers and universities to do research in Wisconsin and neighboring states. We have an extensive network and lead efforts in public breeding of corn for organic farms throughout the country. This year we are rolling out our first commercial releases. Our corn has much higher nutritional density which strongly affects its value as food and feed, and can lead to a reduction in the use of harmful feed additives. Furthermore, we believe that some of our corn fixes nitrogen from the air with the help of microbes. This is very important because it could lead to reduction in the use of nitrogen fertilizers which are polluting water and air and contribute a potent greenhouse gas. Now our corn also produces yields competitively with conventional hybrids on organic farms, but without needing the same chemical inputs.

Part of our dilemma now relates to how to commercialize what we have and to work with other breeders according to the principles we believe in. We seek to provide an alternative to the normal venture capital route by building an association with others in order to protect our core set of values. Our target is forming business forms such as a perpetual trust, to give the right form to relationships. Engagement with the Northern Plains Sustainable Agriculture Society (Verna Kragnes) and with the Foundation Organic Seed Company are important parts of how we inch forward. Finding funds to do our work is a perpetual challenge, engaging me in fund raising for federal grants and foundation grants for at least a quarter of my time. We are by no means well off, but somehow, we manage to be opening up the door to a new future.

Another dilemma is how to grow the right people to take this effort into the future. I am getting older and cannot keep up the physical work. I do have some good technicians and farm help, but we need to find people who can grow the inner side and management work in a leading way.

Clearly, people who can take on such a venture do not grow on trees but have it in their hearts and it must be cultivated, even in the face of financial uncertainty. If you are interested in our work and helping to foster it in some way, feel free to email me at wgoldstein@mandaamin.org and to visit our website: www.mandaamin.org

Health is a topic both intimate and limitless. Its field is truly suggestive in scope of the whole universe turned inside out. The majestic qualities of minerals are liberated in organic fluidity, the tiny cells of life are incalculably busy, the sensitivity of active and reactive consciousness amazes, and all is touched by the slowly unfolding creative potential of individuality.

The centenary of anthroposophic medicine in 2020 came in the midst of a global health crisis. That jolt demands us to see ourselves more truly in this human existence on a living earth. We begin with an account some fifty years old, followed by excepts from a new paper. The language change of half a century already reveals tremendous challenge and change.

“The young doctors sought not merely a deepened knowledge, but inwardly developed powers which could give depth and renewed life to the whole art of doctoring. To the stammering questions they brought to Dr. Steiner, he gave answers which can be summed up in the words: “You are seeking to make medicine more human.” ... In an age when even in medicine the materialistic world-outlook has more and more to say, and human perception threatens to be destroyed by technical and mechanical diagnosis, Rudolf Steiner with Ita Wegman laid down the first principles of the renewal of a medicine that has its starting-point entirely in the knowledge of the human being. This knowledge does not take into consideration only our bodily sheaths that may become sick, but also, what the eternal in us wishes to experience, has to experience, in an illness. With the knowledge of reincarnation and karma as background, the conception of sickness and healing given us by Rudolf Steiner can be ever further developed.” Grete Kirchner-Bockholt: (Golden Blade 1958, “Widening the Art of Healing”)

Rudolf Steiner & the Art of Healing

by Christoph Linder, MD

We reprint this essay from the first issue of The Journal for Anthroposophy, Spring 1965, for its clear and direct statement of the basis of anthroposophic medicine (AM), which Dr. Linder brought to the United States. The medical and social changes of 56 years are also of interest. Dated references to then-current activities have been deleted, and gender signifiers (man, he, his, him) that were considered neutral in 1965 are updated.

The scientist of today generally does not like to speak of the spiritual, though they may feel very clearly that there is a realm of dynamic creative forces in nature that cannot be measured and that cannot be perceived by the ordinary senses. They consider the spiritual as belonging to the department of philosophy, pure psychology, or religion. The question arises whether it is possible to raise the knowledge of a spiritual world above mysticism and feeling to the level of conscious and concrete perception.

If the answer is no, all the teachings of spiritual science are meaningless. If it is yes —and Rudolf Steiner’s answer is a clear yes —then the greatest vista opens up for medical science, namely a knowledge of body, soul and spirit, and how they interpenetrate each other, that goes far beyond any attempts of modern science and psychology.

The student will find that nothing in this knowledge of the supersensible is in contradiction to medical science of today. True, interpretations of established facts may differ, but it is equally true that such spiritual science

would be pointless without close association with modern science. As a medical practitioner of many years, I can say that modern research becomes infinitely more interesting when seen in this light.

Anthroposophy deals, among other things, with the study of creative, dynamic forces as they are related to physiological processes. One should never think that a chemical process discovered in a living organism is identical with one seen in a chemical laboratory. Not only is the context and the chemical environment a completely different one, but the chemical process serves a different purpose in a living organism where it is the vehicle for a vital, organic force. Modern biochemistry has made great strides and has discovered many finer chemical reactions in which the quantity of substance involved is minimal, effect and dynamic process maximal. A world of enzymes, vitamins, hormones, amino acids, etc., has been opened up, but none has meaning in itself, just as the paint that an artist uses has in itself nothing to do with the experience expressed by the painting. Most scientists recognize this fact; they may not always remember it when interpreting their data. Unless a way is found in which the supersensible part of the human being can be perceived just as clearly as the sensible or physical part, we would have to give up any scientific attempt in this direction. Emotional and dogmatic efforts of an unhealthy nature

have brought this realm into discredit, and it is the task of anthroposophy to present the path of knowledge to the spirit in its rightful light.

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In the search for the cause of illness humanity has developed various ideas during the course of history. There was a time in antiquity when we thought that illness came from God as a kind of punishment and at the same time as a kind of wise guidance by destiny. In the Middle Ages illness was the work of the devil. Sick people were seized by demonic powers. In our times sickness is considered to be a nuisance. Medical science would say disease is due to bacterial invasion, virus infection, hormonal disturbance, etc., or it is freely admitted that we don’t know its cause. However, science has come to an interesting conclusion in regard to certain chronic illnesses.

We all know that each organism transforms food matter into its own individual body substance which is the vehicle for the expression of its individuality. Now science has found clear evidence that in some constitutions certain proteins and chemical compounds are produced that are not found in the healthy organism. Formerly science spoke of a predisposition to illness. Today it is more specific. It speaks of an inborn error of metabolism.

In cancer and allied diseases any amount of modern research has failed to uncover a valid cause. Interesting observations have been made about the biological behavior of cancer which varies greatly from one patient to another. But the enigma is the host. It determines the course of the illness and degree of malignancy. The human individual is the host.

Investigating the cause of illness, we go deeper, step by step, into the problem. We may ask, why is that person so tense and so overactive all of a sudden? We may answer that their thyroid is functioning too strongly. We may ask, why is the thyroid doing this? The next answer may be that the pituitary gland overstimulates the thyroid. Then we may ask, why is the pituitary overstimulated? The answer being that it is the influence of the hypothalamus, a certain region at the base of the brain which affects the pituitary and is also known to be sensitive to all kinds of psychological and mental influences. In all these instances we end up at the same point, the individual themself.

Health, evolution, the individual

Rudolf Steiner stresses the fact that illness and health have to do with human evolution. The human being in

us is not fully developed as yet, but consciously or unconsciously we are striving toward our human goal. Errors and weaknesses that become second nature in the individual may gradually sink into the more physical part of their existence and cause predisposition to illness.

In judging the state of health and normalcy of a person, we lack a yardstick by which to measure. There may be an individual who presents a picture of robust health, never has any complaints, may even be successful in their work, and yet very little of their human abilities may manifest themselves. On the other hand, we may have an individual of delicate health, sensitive, full of aches and pains, but creative and strong in character. Who is healthy and who is more normal? Statistics do not help us. We lack a reliable yardstick as long as we do not develop a feeling for the meaning of human life. Once we do, all our efforts are directed toward helping each person to achieve their individual goal.

As practicing physicians, whatever our advice or prescription, we have to ask ourselves: do we introduce something that improves the condition of the body in such a way that it becomes a better instrument for the expression of the individual, or do we do something that blocks or hinders this relationship? We have in modern medicine potent drugs at our disposal—more than ever during the last ten years—drugs that alter not only the physical condition but the emotional state and the state of consciousness as well. When we feel apathetic we take energizers, when we are excited, tranquillizers. Astonishingly effective medicines are available to relieve pain and spasm, to produce sleep and to reduce weight.

Are we really satisfied with the results, or are they only short-lived? I don’t think that many of us doctors believe that we have thus far found a real solution. Such remedies are eminently practical or convenient in difficult situations, and we must admit that even with a better knowledge we cannot always do what we would like to and feel that we should do. It all depends on that little known and greatly variable factor, the human individual.

When we go through illness, we naturally look forward to a quick recovery. In the light of Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual science, illness is not mere nuisance, it becomes a meaningful event. Going through a period of recovery after an acute illness is a wonderful experience in itself, besides giving us a let-up from the tension and haste of everyday life. When you observe a child with poliomyelitis from the beginning of the illness to the end, and when you observe the child’s daily efforts to overcome

weakness and paralysis, and, finally, you see full recovery achieved, then you see also that the strength of character and will-power of that person have gained enormously. Someone who goes through an acute heart attack goes through a lesson, and a wise guidance and treatment can deepen this lesson. Cancer is frequently an illness of long duration, with intermittent periods of apparently complete recovery, and how different are people in the way they go through such illness. The same applies naturally to all chronic ailments. Quite frequently it happens that a patient states to their doctor who may be known also as a friend for many years, how grateful they are to life for the experience they went through during the illness. It may have given them an opportunity to find themself and to gain more self-knowledge. Such events belong to the greatest of our lives and may mean a turning point in our inner and outer development.

Ideas for treatment

A better understanding of illness will naturally lead to new ideas concerning treatment, and this subject is really closest to our hearts. Throughout Rudolf Steiner’s work he touches again and again on subjects which throw light on the field of medical knowledge and during the last five years of his life, from 1920 to 1925, he devoted much of his time to medicine itself. In 1920 he gave his first course of twenty lectures to a group of doctors who gathered from many countries of Europe at the Goetheanum in Dornach, and thereafter every year at least two lecture courses were given to physicians. Much of this work was done in close association with the late Dr. Ita Wegman with whom he established a new medical center and founded a sanatorium known as the Clinical and Therapeutical Institute in Arlesheim, not far from the Goetheanum in Dornach and near Basel, Switzerland. With her he wrote the book, Fundamentals of Therapy, which bore the subtitle,

An Extension of the Art of Healing through Spiritual Knowledge.

During these years, hundreds of doctors took up the challenge implicit in Rudolf Steiner’s work. A number of clinical institutions were founded and Rudolf Steiner, working in close collaboration with the interested physicians, visited them at frequent intervals and observed many hundreds of patients and a great variety of illness. Here we are faced with the fact that it was a spiritual investigator who saw the patient, recognized the line of their destiny and evolution, and gave advice on how the illness could be treated, indicating many new remedies,

even going into the details of dosage and concentration. It is almost inconceivable to modern people that such a thing could happen in all openness and sanity. How cautious we are in this direction, since we have all experienced so much emotionalism and deceit in these realms. But the great event did occur, and in the memory of those who witnessed it, it belongs to the most important events of their lives. For many it was a turning point. Innumerable remedies were prepared on the basis of Dr. Steiner’s direct advice, at first by pharmacists and doctors themselves. But within a few years the Weleda pharmaceutical concern in Arlesheim, Switzerland, and in Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany, were established. Today the Weleda is a flourishing concern with branches in many European countries and in the United States. For a physician it is a great experience to visit these laboratories and their pharmaceutical gardens. Infinite care is taken in the raising of the plants in the proper soil, or in gathering them from their natural habitat. They are picked at a time of the day and in the season in which their qualities are most potent, and as many of the imponderables as possible are considered in the manufacture of each remedy.

The selection of a remedy depends to a large extent on the goal we pursue. Naturally we all want to relieve suffering and would like to cure illness, but in every disease there is a short-range as well as a long-range aspect.

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We are confronted with this problem already when we treat children’s diseases. The general tendency is to treat symptoms, fever and pain, etc., and to make them disappear as quickly as possible, on the assumption that illness is a mere nuisance. Such an attitude is quite understandable. It does not search for meaning in illness. However, from the standpoint of anthroposophy, children’s diseases and fever in childhood are a manifestation of the process of adjustment that takes place between the individuality of the child, which is not subject to heredity, and the physical organism, into which it incarnates, and which is subject to heredity. The doctor’s task is to guide the child wisely through such illness, protecting it from dangers and making it easier to go through it.

The physician who has frequent opportunity to observe a child intimately before and after they have undergone such illness, notices time and again that certain obstacles have been removed, that a child who was tired and slow for months, suddenly becomes themself again.

The prevention and treatment of infectious diseases which usually cause fever belong to the miracles of our

time. Thanks to modern prevention, certain dreadful infections have almost vanished from the scene, and yet we have to ask ourselves: do we comprehend the problems involved completely? Without wishing for a return of all these infections, we have to try to understand all aspects of disease. Fever is an act of self-defense. It has been used in the treatment of chronic illnesses of various kinds, in some of them with remarkable success. The older organism does not develop fever so readily, and this apparently is the reason why recovery may be delayed. One cannot help feeling on the basis of numerous observations that fever has a rejuvenating influence when kept within boundaries. This naturally does not mean that we should let things go unchecked; it calls for wise guidance and interest in the long-range aspect of illness. A very active treatment may be given.

Anthroposophical remedies have been worked out for certain types of illnesses. This does not mean that they cure all these illnesses. In some instances they are far better than what is available, in other cases they are an adjunct to other treatments. Situations of life and illness are much too varied to allow us to use only one type of remedy. The main thing is that we have a clear goal in mind as to what we wish to achieve.

When asked whether any of these new remedies can cure a fully developed pneumonia with in two or three days, we have to say no. If there is a compelling reason for achieving such a quick result, the remedies that will do this must be used. Are we, however, doing the right thing in always combating fever with quick remedies? Is there really only a nuisance value to disease? This is a problem that is hotly debated today in medical journals. The medical profession has become a little more cautious in prescribing these quick remedies. A host of new diseases have made their appearance or now occur more frequently than heretofore.

One is often asked whether anthroposophy has already worked out a cure for cancer and we again must answer no, not an infallible cure. However, Dr. Steiner has indicated a treatment for cancer, and it is being used successfully in many cases, frequently as adjunct to surgery or other accepted methods of treatment. As to the cause, Rudolf Steiner suggested a lack of integration of the higher members of the human organization in the physical organism. In a person with a predisposition toward cancer it seems as if certain innate creative and spiritual desires that never had an opportunity to express themselves harmoniously throw themselves back upon

the organs in a devastating manner. It is the conviction of physicians who work along these lines that a cure for cancer will eventually be found on this basis, and some progress has already been made. From such a standpoint it is unthinkable that cancer should not have to do with modern civilization and the evolution of humanity.

The treatment of acute illnesses and emergencies has made great progress. Cardiac and other emergencies would be treated in a similar way by all schools of thought, but after an acute attack usually the chronic problem remains. The understanding of chronic ailments lags far behind in modern science and the treatment is controversial. Here there is a field of contributions from anthroposophical medical science. Whatever we do, we must always bear in mind that therapy is not a field for dogma and one-sidedness.

The arts as therapy

Medicinal treatment is just one branch of the art of healing, very important in acute illness, helpful in the treatment of chronic disease; but in real therapy all the arts can be made use of as well. In our present-day way of thinking, painting, sculpture, dancing, etc., are considered as hobbies, unless we practice them professionally. They are, of course, used in occupational therapy, but mainly in order to assist people to kill time, or to keep them busy. This is, however, a very limited standpoint. Rudolf Steiner revealed how all the arts can be used in the art of healing. If they are properly integrated in the life of the individual, they liberate creative powers and they help self-knowledge.

Curative eurythmy, developed by Rudolf Steiner as an adaptation of the art of eurythmy which he originated, belongs especially to this field. It is used in the treatment of chronic cases, and the movements are not merely designed to strengthen the muscles. Experience demonstrates that practically every organ of the body can be influenced through bodily movement. Mechanical movements have something in them that is foreign to the body. They introduce a routinizing, automatic influence into an organism in which they should not predominate. We are surrounded by such influences to an overwhelming degree, in our age of machines. Too easily do we forget that they have a dehumanizing influence on us all. In curative eurythmy an artistic movement is given in rhythmic repetition. With a relatively small physical effort, a dynamic influence works into the organism. Curative eurythmy has been most successful in the treatment of many chronic ailments.

Nutrition and agriculture

Something must also be said about nutrition. Again, the same influences of modern civilization are at work. Every thing has to be big, fast, practical and good-looking. To prevent spoilage, we add chemicals; to make food goodlooking, we process it, thereby removing the vitamins; and then we try to make good by adding them again.

Farmland is infested with an infinite variety of bugs. Powerful chemicals are used to kill them. After a few years you discover that they become resistant, and you have to use more chemicals or new ones. And there the vicious circle begins. Something is interrupted in the household of nature. The poison that is introduced remains in small traces and enters our daily food. By the same token, insects and animals useful to man, such as bees, birds, fish, etc., are either killed or damaged. The problem is similar to the one in medicine—the long-range view versus the shortrange result. An increasing number of physicians realize that this problem is a very serious one. They demand a better quality of food, and they know that it has to start with the soil. We need in our work the help of the farmer who fully understands this situation, as well as the education of the consumer public to the dangers and values involved.

Rudolf Steiner’s contributions to agriculture are of the greatest significance. Nutrition has a great influence on health, and especially on the finer faculties of man. We do not appreciate this sufficiently because our senses are too coarse or too dull. We may know that sometimes after a big meal we feel very drowsy, but we don’t realize that there is a chronic state of drowsiness towards the spirit prevailing in this age of over-eating. Rudolf Steiner stated at one time that wrong nutrition is one of the reasons why people have difficulty in understanding the reality of the spiritual world. Diet, too, can be applied more intelligently on the basis of this new knowledge. It can influence profoundly the growth and development of the child and is very important also in adults. Diet is not merely determined from the standpoint of digestibility and calories, but it varies according to types of illness and constitution, and sometimes temperament.

Medicine and education

Medicine also has a strong link with education. The organism of the child can be compared to a piece of clay that is still moist and can be molded. Environment, physical and spiritual influences help to shape the body. Spiritual science is quite specific on this subject. Vice versa, it is also true that physical exercise and phar-

maceutical agents can profoundly influence the mentality of a child. In the Rudolf Steiner schools a physician works in close association with the teachers, not merely giving them a report about the state of a child’s physical health but trying to assist the teachers in that border realm of education and medicine. My own association with the teachers of a Rudolf Steiner school has been a rich experience in my life and has given me the conviction that here an attempt is really made to understand the development of the human being. The primary goal is not merely to secure a diploma, but to educate the human individual. Such thoughts the physician should also carry with them in their own work, not only when they treat children but also when they see adults. Medicine and education are closely related throughout life. What is more or less in the minds of many of us, Rudolf Steiner pronounced more clearly and more specifically.

Tuned to greatness

Rudolf Steiner’s contribution to the renewal and extension of the art of healing was not given in the form of a multitude of isolated facts, each of which is to be individually accepted or rejected. He opened up an approach to medicine, in the light of spiritual investigation, which enables the physician to extend and deepen their own medical knowledge and experience and to become both more practical and more creative in their profession. In addition to the growing number of individual doctors who base their work on anthroposophical knowledge, there are centers in several countries where this work goes forward. ...

Why is it that this great impulse is still so little known by the medical profession as a whole? Many reasons can be brought forward. The main trends in modern civilization and the immediate demands of life, though necessary, run counter to it. The achievements of synthetic chemistry are miraculous within their own field and overshadow the discoveries of spiritual science that are far more significant but less conspicuous. Modern science may feel itself to be on solid ground, but modern civilization has certainly not given proof that this is so. Modern science has worked with a tremendous expenditure of effort and money for many years, and spiritual scientific research is still at its very beginning, working with greatly limited funds. The scientist who has observed these efforts for many years can say without exaggeration that far greater results could be achieved if only one-hundredth of the effort and money spent for modern research were devoted to research along the lines indicated by Rudolf

Steiner. And then there is a human inadequacy, and perhaps a lack of courage. We are not tuned any more to greatness. This is the reason why we have difficulty in discovering and appreciating greatness of the kind which is revealed in the life and work of a man who lived in our time—Rudolf Steiner.

Christoph Linder, MD, (1897–1964), born in Basel, Switzerland, immigrated in 1926 at the suggestion of Dr. Ita Wegman and at the invitation of Irene Brown, the first physician to practice anthroposophically extended medicine in the USA. He established his practice in New York City in the building in which the Rudolf Steiner School also opened in 1928. Involved in the life and conferences in Spring Valley, NY, he participated in the 1938 meeting that resulted in the Biodynamic Farming & Gardening Association. His appeal to members in 1956 led to the establishment of the Rudolf Steiner Fellowship Community. He wrote this article shortly before his death in July, 1964. [Adapted from Into the Heart’s Land , by Henry Barnes.]

The Relevance of Anthroposophic Medicine for Our Times

by Ricardo Bartelme, MD, and Walter Alexander

The following is excerpted from a longer essay which we expect to make available soon in a new online edition of being human Conventional medicine based on the natural sciences almost exclusively focuses on the physical body, the lowest member of the human organism. This is where chemistry, physics and mechanics play a legitimate role in medicine when the knowledge is adapted to the human being. Of course, biological sciences also contribute to conventional medicine’s knowledge base, but the results are usually interpreted materialistically and are by and large not addressed directly and consciously for true therapeutic effect. The supersensible etheric life body is the true orchestrator of basic biological processes like growth, reproduction, development over time, synthetic anabolic processes, selfhealing, nutrition, vital energy and our sense of well-being. What we can investigate about biology with natural scientific methods is only a physical reflection of the very real, determinative, supersensible and independent-from-

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Gallery Leszek Forczek

West Coast “Illuminism” artist Leszek Waladyslaw Forczek unexpectedly crossed the “rainbow threshold” May 20, 2019 at the age of 72. Illuminism painting relates to the mysteries of Light and Darkness, the underlying realities of nature, the cosmos, and the individual soul. Color is at the heart of Forczek’s engaging, elegant and thoughtful sensibility. His work is based on Goethe’s color theory as developed by Rudolf Steiner; and English-born, Dutch-resident artist and color therapist Liane Collot d’Herbois. Forczek stumbled upon a solo exhibition of Collot’s paintings in Colmar, France, a turning point in his young life. Her breakthrough work on Light, Color, & Darkness encouraged Forczek to a life-long development of Illuminism as an artistic and spiritual path.

Forczek wrote that Rudolf Steiner “actively responded to the request of artists such as Kandinsky and Mondrian who were searching for a spiritual meaning in painting, during a time of chaos and crisis... Steiner provided artists with a new basis to approach art, color, and painting, making countless references to the correlation of light, color and darkness with thinking, feeling and willing. This understanding of color as integral to the evolution of the human being—both cosmic and physical— was able to endow art with a healing and spiritual property.”

Forczek’s paintings are characterized by their unique sense of luminosity, space, and movement, harmonizing the inner and outer aspects of Light, Color and Darkness: this balance of inner and outer is in its essence, beauty, art and life. He taught throughout the US for over 18 years. His last major project, Topaz Mountain, four years in the making, was a unique chromatic animation of landscape paintings accompanied by compelling poetry and music. It is a transformational statement, mysterious and luminous, on the beauty and vulnerability of mountains, lakes, and glaciers.

Forczek’s work is in public and private collections throughout North America. Discover more at his website www.bluepieta.com or by contacting Casse Waldman Forczek (707-349-4042 or cassestar@icloud.com).

Leszek Forczek: Undying Rose – Princess Diana (1997)

Leszek Forczek: Washing of Feet – Disciple Peter (1994)

Leszek Forczek: Life’s Last Word (2009)

Leszek Forczek: Michael & Raphael (2000)

Leszek Forczek: Northwest Mystique (1983)

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the-physical etheric body. For anthroposophy and anthroposophic physicians the etheric body brings new, emergent properties to a living organism that cannot be predicted or explained by a lower level like the physical body.

The third member of the essential fourfold human is the nonphysical realm of the astral body out of which the human soul develops. The astral body allows us to have a field of consciousness, an inner life of mind, inner perceptions, feelings, sentience, desires, impulses and much more. For the soul this is the psychic life of conscious and subconscious processes. Certainly, any good conventional clinician will take account of a person’s psychological aspects of an illness. However, besides counseling, psychological support of various kinds, and various forms of mind-body practices now common in integrative medicine, there is still no coordinated and organized view of how these psychological or mind-body treatments relate to each other and to the bio-psycho-spiritual human being as viewed in anthroposophy. Anthroposophic medicine has specific remedies and modalities that work with the etheric body and bring more vital health.

For anthroposophic medicine the astral body and soul are independent, supersensible, and determinative members or “properties” of the human being that cannot be explained out of its physical or biological aspects. What natural scientists see reflected in animals and humans that aren’t found in minerals or plants are the emergent properties or characteristics of a nonvisible, independent, species-specific astral body that brings in new phenomena of not only sentient, psychic life, but also reflexes, self-propelling motion, catabolic metabolism, internal organ formation, and many aspects of neurochemistry and neurophysiology. All these emergent properties cannot be derived from the basic building blocks of amino acids, carbohydrates, fats and minerals.1

The unique fourth member of the human being is the spirit or “I”. With the incarnation of the “I” in an earthly human life comes self-consciousness, rational thinking, heart thinking, free will, all aspects of morality and values, insight, coping skills, the unique human form, and all aspects of spirituality and spiritual development. With the presence of an “I”, all these characteristics emerge independently of the presence of the three lower members that humans have in common with animals and plants. In addition, the presence of the incarnated “I” means that all aspects of our physical body, etheric body and astral body

1 Dr. Peter Heusser has documented much of this in Anthroposophy and Science: An Introduction (Peter Lang, 2016).

have unique features and properties that are species-specific to human beings. They cannot be found in the other, lower kingdoms of nature. It also means that biomedical research on animals may provide some insights, but the results cannot easily and accurately be translated to human biology.

When Ehrenfried Pfeiffer presented some of his findings from research studies relevant to biodynamic farming, then newly developed out of Rudolf Steiner’s indications, Steiner told him to stop that research, ostensibly because those results could not be usefully and safely introduced into the wider world until certain other advances had occurred. Steiner included specifically the understanding that the heart is not fundamentally a pump. Work on that subject by Branko Furst, MD, professor of anesthesiology at Albany Medical Center, is steadily gaining a wider audience in conventional research circles. In The Heart and Circulation: An Alternative Model (Springer, 2020), drawing on exhaustive research backed by many hundreds of scientific studies, Dr. Furst shows that the heart is not a propulsion pump, but is similar to a hydraulic ram pump. Ram pumps depend on an already moving stream. The heart’s ventricles, rather than producing the bloodstream’s movement, actually impede, pressurize, give rhythm to, and redirect the flow of blood. How does the blood move on its own then? That is a key detail.

Within the blood that carries oxygen and nutriment to all cells of the body, the erythrocytes (red blood cells) actually sense oxygen levels in surrounding tissues, and in the presence of low oxygen saturation, release substances (ATP –>nitric oxide) that open up blood vessels to increase flow to the deprived tissues. In this manner, a dynamic tension, a polarity between the lung’s supplying of oxygen and the peripheral tissues’ consumption of it through metabolism—in other words, between the etheric and astral life of the organism—is what moves the blood. So, you have on the one hand a model of blood flow that depicts an inert fluid being pushed by a mechanical pump, and in the other, a living substance, a dynamic fluid organ that senses the physiologic state of the tissues, and then, responding to metabolic need, shapes its own passage through the body’s causeways. Furst’s work paves the way to see the heart more comprehensively as anthroposophists do—as the seat of the two higher members working with the two lower members, and as the field for our feelings and our deep intentions. How wonderful a picture of what differentiates the mineral level of inert substances from the organic and higher levels of interrelated processes!

So what will anthroposophic medicine practitioners bring to the COVID-19 era out of their more expansive and nuanced perspectives? Do they view disease and suffering as attacks against otherwise healthy and comfortable bodies? With a world conception that links physical, spiritual and moral domains individually and cosmically, the short answer is “no.” While a connection between lunar cycles and menstrual rhythms is recognized conventionally, the notion of variable solar and planetary influences affecting health is still smirked at and viewed in the same light as Sunday newspaper horoscopes. Open systems biology, on the other hand, is gaining credibility, and it departs from the reductionist drive to find all causes at the level of the physical.

Emergent levels

Peter Heusser, MD,2 points out that open systems biology recognizes the reality of organisms, not just particles and forces. Organisms are comprised of levels of organization. Physiology and molecular biology, he states in Anthroposophy and Science, with their precisely coordinated processes in the nerves, metabolism, and vascular supply, can be understood, not mechanically, but as complete spatial and temporal events that require an “active systemic organization at a higher level than the genetic and other events.” Molecular laws and forces are directed from and subject to the higher level of biological laws and forces.

It is not only atoms, molecules and macromolecules which are hierarchically organized in their compositions and structures, but also higher organic structures such as organelles, cells, organs, organ systems and finally the organism as a whole.

Each hierarchical layer has its own emergent laws and properties. So, the parts have to be there in the lower level, but they are organized by the next higher level. Forces at the level of life (the etheric) forestall the decay and disintegration until death, after which the lower-level laws of mere matter intrude. And then going up the ladder, above the level of living tissues and organs and organ systems, the organism itself is the architect of the layers below. This is recognized conventionally in those adhering to an open systems view. But anthroposophically, the connections continue vertically to include psychological and spiritual aspects—and their connections to karma and cosmos.

Rather than invasion by foreign bodies (such as bacteria/viruses), disease may be characterized loosely

2 Dr. Heusser is former chair of Medicine at the anthroposophical University Witten/Herdecke in Witten, Germany.

as a disharmony among the basic constituent members of the human organization, namely, the physical, etheric, astral and the self or “I”. The problem with the more simplistic, materialistic view, as Steiner saw it, is that it diverts attention from deeper, primary causes.3 Stating that “whenever lower organisms find suitable soil in the human frame for development, that soil has been made suitable by the real primary causes of the disease,” he was already pointing to the immune system as an alternative focus for healing. The challenge becomes to identify what makes an individual susceptible to becoming a host for replication of viral particles, for example, and to find therapeutic substances that can help restore balance.4 Understanding how those substances (primarily but not only plant) can offer healing depends on understanding how they and we are integrated into the domains of nature and cosmos out of which they and we are created. Speaking at Anthroposophy NYC, Branko Furst, MD, said:

Immunity is an individualized mark of the self stamped on every cell of the body. To be immune to something is a sign that the organism has conquered an aspect of the environment or an existing weakness. Disease is an opportunity to overcome a hindrance at the level of the organic.

From this perspective, vaccines can be seen as both blessing and curse. They may remove or reduce an immediate threat, but at the cost of diminishing the strength gained by overcoming disease naturally, individually and at the community level. It’s relevant that conventional chronobiology has shown that too regular a heartbeat is a sign of ill health, of reduced vitality and responsiveness to the varying conditions that living creatures are subject to. It’s a sign that the body is descending toward the purely mineral, mechanical laws rather than the organic ones at the level of life processes (the etheric).

Ricardo Bartelme , MD, is a graduate of the University of Michigan Medical School and was chief resident at the University of California-San Diego. Walter Alexander is a regular contributor to being human and writes for medical publications. He has served as president of Anthroposophy NYC for many years.

3 Lecture of March 10, 1920, Spiritual Science and Medicine, CW 312. 4 Chapter 1, Fundamentals of Therapy, (1925).

like the place held by feelings in the soul life. And art also works between the physical world where it would produce its effects, and the spiritual world where live the ideals the artist would realize. For the reunified culture of the future, art is the repository

breakthrough discoveries, but it hurries off quickly to repeat experiments and measure results. The disciplined development of imagination, inspiration, and intuition which Rudolf Steiner called for continue to be realized consistently today only artists...

The Unified Field

by David Anderson

The expression “the social field” is gaining parlance, especially in group processes. As a community of human beings striving to evolve the world and develop ourselves, this makes sense. We are beginning to recognize the opportunity and potential we have as creative, spiritual beings to cultivate the social climate, soil, and growth of what happens in our collective spaces. We see that what happens in our social settings impacts the wider world. Of course, this brings a sense of responsibility as well.

Rudolf Steiner describes the social art as the highest of arts. In the social setting we don’t normally think of ourselves as artists. It is usually a place where we experience our habits, where familiar thoughts, the me-story or inner narrative, and comfortable feelings emerge, where our likes and dislikes find expression.

Like all the arts, the social art has earthly elements and transcendent elements. Meaning, there are tangible and intangible aspects. There are levels of human experience that go beyond what my body, mind, or soul can register. In artistic processes we raise up what strengths we have in the body, mind, and soul as an offering toward a kind of divine intervention. Sometimes in our artistic practices we might seem to be hovering on the earthly plane with our talents (rehearsing our scene, moving our brush around, playing with the clay, chatting), and sometimes we might feel “kissed” by something eternal or evolutionary. We then feel inspired by another source that transcends body, mind, and soul.

In the social field many intentions can work. We unite with others around visions or plans or experiences. We seek to understand each other and sometimes to come to common ground. We make agreements. We bring all individuals under one umbrella or picture, seeking to call upon the creative engagement of each one present. “Do we all feel good about this?” “Can we stand behind it?” We strive to unite on a soul level.

In recent decades we have spent a lot of time understanding the laws and best practices for social processes. Techniques have even developed for how to interact and speak and listen to each other. We have learned to follow these social protocols and hope for the best outcomes. However, we have all been in meetings where we felt inspired on a soul level—maybe it even felt like “a moment” or “a happening”—but the reality of that experience did not extend behind that encounter. The inspiration was born and lived out its life within the time we were together—but did not live beyond that moment.

However, if we wish to work with the social process as an art, the social field can become an offering toward another level of an emerging and sustainable future. How do we lift it up for something more enduring to speak into it?

There are other dimensions of presences in any given social situation that transcend what may be perceptible in the social field. This spiritual level may be called the unified field. It unifies the social field with another dimension of experience. As it is less tangible than other dimensions, it may not be tangible on the physical “sensible” plane or even in our soul experience. And yet, when we expand our awareness and our “sensing” further into the social field, this unified field may be experienced as an inversion of the space. As our sense of space moves out and expands, there appears a corresponding leaning in from the archetypal world.

We do have “senses” to perceive the laws and leanings in of this more archetypal world, but these senses are not body, mind, or soul based (in the ordinary sense of soul as being my personal self with all of its habits, emotions, and preferences).

When we are touched by something beautiful, there is a physical, outer experience and something behind it that whispers in or shines through. We often struggle to

find words to express what is happening to us, as the experience seems beyond words. In such moments we see how our labeling the experience (which can filter it), how our understanding or enthusiasm for what is happening, may get in the way of truly perceiving what is there. When we are moved in this way, beyond the purely soul experience, we recognize how, on a certain level, our familiar soul sets itself aside. An experience lights up in us that might feel more connected to the world soul or to an archetypal experience. Although it is happening to me, and registers in the soul on a certain level, the experience is larger than me. It has a universal character.

The way our senses alight upon these experiences can feel like a grace or revelation. Something inside us seems to resonate with something more than itself. For a moment we go beyond our personal selves. We transcend the purely social field. Something comes to flower in the field which we did not expect. Perhaps we didn’t even see it coming. Perhaps it had nothing to do with the intention that brought us together. Our plan or stated goal was merely the physical body for what incarnated through it. The rich field we have tilled together suddenly reveals a seed from another place.

In such moments, though it is hard to describe what happened to us, and we may not even talk about it with the others (or we say “what was that ?”), we sense something has changed. This change goes with us. It unites us. We may even have the experience that this was not for us but for the earth itself, or for the wider world. When we later see the people who shared the experience with us, the atmosphere or presence of the experience may still be perceptible. We meet a kind of knowing in the other’s eyes. It is still present, and perhaps even growing, in the social field.

To cultivate the potential for such experiences, we would need to develop the senses through which we experience such phenomena. A sense of beauty is one gateway. There are others. In our research we explore different, mostly will-based, exercises for connecting to the laws and processes of the unified field, this dimension that interpenetrates the social field but also works above, beneath, and around it.

This level of presences is seeking us as much as we may be seeking it. Our interest in it helps to build the relationship. Out of this interest we can look at what kind of practices invite these presences to work, what gets in their way, and what sacrifices and/or inner activities we can engage in to open this unified field.

A healthy, open social field supports us to make this connection, but it is not an absolute prerequisite. Grace can blow through any door, but we can’t count on it.

We often start with a few core senses. With all of these senses we begin with a physical experience of them, and through the physical we listen into the soul experience, then from a soul experience, for a more transcendent, universal, or archetypal experience.

A sense of upright came for most of us around our first year. Our whole being engaged with this process until the eternal presence of upright came to consciousness within us. Once we mastered it, it became unconscious, and we slowly put our own personal signature on it. Our habit upright developed. When we began walking, the archetype of walking walked us. We developed enough balance and strength and coordination and then the universal principle of walking could take up these developments and unfold itself.

These archetypal steps of human development are the training ground for archetypal sensation, as in them we recognize an eternal presence or principle. Rekindling a conscious relationship to them helps us to reconnect to the laws and principles behind them.

The senses of movement, speech, balance in space, impulse, and connection (among others) follow closely behind. A sense of circle—the forming of a circle of people in space, once developed as a sensation, becomes a source of strength, a resource and holding vessel for the unified field. To experience a sense of circle I have to give up enough self-awareness that my awareness can extend beyond me to all the members in the circle with me. At the same time, I perceive their awareness extending into me. The circle then is sealed. This sealed vessel, to borrow from Shakespeare’s Boatswain in The Tempest, becomes “tight and yare and bravely rigg’d.”

We begin awakening senses by physically orienting ourselves under the star of the sense we want to cultivate and, when we do this with enough sense of form in our body, our soul comes into alignment with the forces behind it. Michael Chekhov calls this the psycho-physical connection. Our physical presence tunes into the psychology or soul sensation that lives within it. This soul sensation becomes the seedbed for archetypal experience.

If we develop these senses as inner muscles, they become available to our social spaces and can become the perceiving organs for what transpires there. Am I speaking or listening from my upright? What’s the quality of movement within the conversation? What’s its color,

shape, sense of gravity or levity, its musicality? My sensing starts to transcend the more personal soul experience and becomes attuned to dimensions that may also want to speak through the vessel we have created. Then, through our awakened senses, the social field can become a space—a unified field—for universal principles to grow

on the earth. We can manifest our highest ideals. “As above, so below.”

David Anderson is a co-founder and the Executive Artistic Director of Walking the dog Theater (wtd.hawthornevalley.org) in Hudson, NY. He facilitates courses and workshops in Drama and Inner Development throughout Asia. He lives in Taiwan with his family.

Individuality and Diversity

by Harlan Gilbert

During my first year teaching at a Waldorf high school, one of the few Black students shared with me his experience at the school. On the one hand, he said, he was friends with all the students in his class and had friends in other grades as well. In contrast, his friends who went to highly integrated public schools had no white friends and never talked to the white students.

On the other hand, each day he passed across a cultural chasm. For example, at school he played classical music (he was one of the finest cellists ever to attend the school), while in his neighborhood it was all about the hip-hop scene.

In just a few words, Daniel (as I will call him here) precisely delineated a characteristic strength and a characteristic weakness of our school. What we did well and what we failed at then were and are typical of many US Waldorf schools, and because, though efforts at improvement have been made, there is still a long journey ahead.

With the benefit of hindsight, I would say that we strove for a universal education that acknowledged and respected every individuality, but were not conscious of the need for a differentiated education that met the particularities of individual constitutions, communities, and cultures. The following is an attempt to explore the roots of both aspects of our history.

Education as celebration of individuality

To start with the positive side of Daniel’s experience, from their founding on, Waldorf schools have worked to create communities of mutual respect, in which every individual is treated as significant, and to welcome and integrate students across genders, ethnicities, religions, and where economics permit—a significant limitation within the context of US independent schools—social classes, even in times when and places where these were often segregated. There is evidence that this effort can succeed to an impressive extent both in the special sphere of racial relations—our students do not separate out in groups based on ethnicity or race—and more widely— our students don’t separate out into “jocks,” “artists,” and “nerds.” In fact, one of the most consistent reflections by graduating seniors and alumni is how special it was to be friends with everyone in their class, and how they became aware that this was not the norm in other schools. Without exaggeration: instead of asking, “Why are all the Black kids sitting together in the cafeteria?, 1 people who visit our school sometimes ask, “Why are all the kids sitting together in the cafeteria?”

Whereas in most institutions, there is no opting out from being placed in an identity box by the surrounding 1 This is the title of a famous book by Beverly Daniel Tatum.

community, our students can to a much greater extent choose when and how they frame themselves and be accepted for who they are. A transfer student offered the following: “At my old school they made fun of me if I wore blue shoes. Here I can wear whatever shoes I want.” A group of diversity pedagogy professionals who asked our students how safe our school is for people of color were taken aback when every single student walked to the side of the room indicating “very safe.”2 The consultants told me that they had never seen this happen before.

It is a blessing to live as an individual in a community without experiencing particularities such as race constantly playing a defining role. Members of majority cultures commonly enjoy this privilege without even realizing that it is a privilege. The striving to create a space where all may live without being seen in terms of their external characteristics or group affiliations is a natural outgrowth of the core mission of Waldorf schools: to be aware of and committed to the spiritual individuality of their pupils and faculty. In a way, Waldorf schools sought to realize a glorious and honorable dream

Education for inclusion and diversity

But, as dreams go, it was fatally flawed, and I suspect that when Daniel mentioned the abyss between his experience within the school and his experience outside the school, he had something like the following in mind.

First: an institution which regards each individual as a sacred entity may be oblivious to the need to reflect each person’s constitution, community, and culture. Our curriculum, so carefully constructed to nurture individualities, was largely based upon European cultural norms, as well as other cultures interpreted as precursors thereof, and our school was slow to recognize the necessity of broadening this to encompass other perspectives.

Ancient Egypt was thoroughly explored; modern Africa ignored. The history of European settlement of North America was treated in depth, yet it was possible to pass through twelve years of education here without hearing more than a word or two about the indigenous cultures of this land. Focusing on competently delivering a curriculum developed on another continent at another time, we did little to celebrate the contemporary diversity of America. Though we were aware of the importance of offering, in Emily Style’s inspired metaphor, both windows (new perspectives on the world) and mirrors (opportuni-

2 Full disclosure: one (white) student felt that she had not been at the school long enough to give an opinion.

ties for self-reflection), these were too often, in my own metaphor, lazured white

Second: until recently our school was oblivious to the importance of its faculty and staff reflecting the diversity of backgrounds found in its students and families. After all, we were all individuals, were we not? Should this not be sufficient? The answer is obvious: human encounters do not happen exclusively individuality-to-individuality. In reality people meet, and experience differences, on every level of their being.

Finally: even if we were somehow able to completely transcend race within our school environment—and perfection is always an unrealistic expectation—it would still be our responsibility to prepare our pupils to encounter, understand, and overcome:

the reality of racial relationships in America and the world today, including both personal prejudice and institutionalized/systemic/structural racism.

the level of privilege and respect that those identified as white are given in our society and the level of disparagement and disadvantage members of other races and cultures can face.

the long history of transgressions of rights that has led to current differences in wealth, education, status, etc.

the experience of not being represented in a school or other institution, particularly by those in positions of power and authority (e.g. faculty and administration).

Synthesizing the positions

Beloved community is formed not by the eradication of difference but by its affirmation, by each of us claiming the identities and cultural legacies that shape who we are and how we live in the world. —bell hooks

How does a school balance the goal of transcending race to allow students to experience each other as individualities with the goal of providing an education sensitive to diversity?

Pedagogically speaking, valuing diversity allows pupils to feel met as a situated person connected to a particular constitution, community, and culture. Focusing on the diversity of identity awakens us to the importance of honoring race as a defining factor of human identity and celebrating the cultural heritages that makes each race unique.

Pedagogically speaking, emphasizing the universality of individuality allows pupils to feel met as a spiritual being. Focusing on the universally human awakens us to the underlying unity of all humanity and moves us toward a time when people “will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”3

Though these two are not necessarily contradictory in all things, they do tend toward somewhat polarized goals. On the one hand, though race may be a series of social constructs, what has grown up around these constructs is real and significant. On the other hand, though we will always see color, we can strive not to see it as something important, allowing the social construct of race to fade into irrelevance.

For centuries, the conversation around race in this country has swung back and forth between these two aspects. Our schools should be safe centers for explorative and mutually respectful discussions to take place and creative centers for solutions to arise, for Waldorf schools are ideally situated to act as nurturing spaces where students can live as individuals with rich identities not reducible or reduced to members of groups, while being educated in the diversity of humanity and the sometimes problematic, sometimes inspiring history of cultural encounters

Conclusion

We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.

—James Baldwin

Like other institutions in the United States, Waldorf schools are seeking ways to respond adequately to the country’s problematic history of race relations. In the conversation around race in this country, two approaches which appear to be nearly diametrically opposed have alternately dominated the conversation. One approach affirms the unity of all humanity and looks forward to a time when race will become completely irrelevant as a factor in society. (If current sociological and demographic trends hold, the long arc of history is indeed bending slowly but inevitably in this direction, but there remains a long journey ahead.) The other approach focuses on honoring the constitutions, communities, and cultures that make up the various races.

If you could choose, would you wish future generations to be secure in a racial identification that was also honored by society, or to consider race an outmoded cat-

3 Martin Luther King, Jr., speech, Washington, DC, August 1963.

egory irrelevant to their lives?

Perhaps this is a false dichotomy. Cultivating individuality and honoring specific characteristics may appear contradictory, but it seems to me that they are actually complementary elements of human life. Would a person securely grounded in their own constitution, community, and culture not more easily appreciate the fundamental unity of humanity? Certainly, disrespecting a person’s differences erects barriers for that person to experience that unity. Would a person strongly committed to humanity in general not naturally be more open to and interested in the differentiated ways this manifests? Certainly, those who do not see humanity as a unity will naturally tend to elevate their own particular identity over that of others.

Perhaps there is a middle way between overcoming race and upholding a racial identity. Perhaps future generations will have the same freedom with respect to race that we are learning to grant to other aspects of identity. Religious identifications, for example, used to be directly tied to a person’s ancestry and community, and people of different religions frequently felt themselves to be on opposing sides of a cultural divide. There is a growing awareness that people might—among other alternatives—have a strong or weak identification with a single religious tradition, nurture varying connections to multiple traditions, be spiritual but non-religious, be uncertain or in a process of exploration, or be completely indifferent to the theme, and also that it is wise not to draw conclusions about other aspects of a person’s life on the basis of this one element.

Perhaps we will come to recognize that race, ethnicity, and other group identities are of varying import to different people, and that their meaning can only be determined by the individuals who bear these identities. Perhaps each human being will ultimately be free to relate to these themes at each moment in their life in whatever way they choose.

Harlan Gilbert is Co-Chair and Math, Physics, Computer Science, and Philosophy Teacher at Green Meadow Waldorf High School, Chestnut Ridge, NY. His undergraduate education in mathematics and natural science took place at Yale University and Reed College, and he received his Waldorf teaching certificate from Emerson College, England, his Master’s in Education from Sunbridge College, and his PhD in Transformative Studies from the California Institute of Integral Studies. He also studied eurythmy for three years at the Eurythmeum Zuccoli in Dornach, Switzerland.

Social Ecology in Holistic Leadership

Erik Lemcke: Social Ecology in Holistic Leadership: Guide for Collaborative Organizational Development and Transformation; Emerald Publishing, Bingley, UK (2021)

by Christopher Schaefer, PhD

Many years ago, as a young academic, I met the Dutch psychiatrist Bernard Lievegoed and the work of the Netherland Pedagogical Institute, NPI, and was deeply moved by their work in organization and community development. I decided to take a leave of absence from my teaching job at MIT and spend a year or more as an intern at their home office in Holland.

Upon arriving in Holland, I began learning Dutch and participated in staff meetings, research seminars, and training sessions. I also discovered a rich treasure chest of papers, talks, articles, and research notes on the concepts and methods which the members of the NPI had developed over the previous twenty years since the founding of the institute by Dr. Lievegoed in 1954. The documents were all in mimeographed stencils which gives you some idea of how long ago this was.

Erik Lemcke’s new book is a wonderfully updated version of this stencil library, containing many of the essential insights, methods, approaches, and underlying principles and philosophical assumptions of a Social Ecology worked with by the many consultants, advisers, and facilitators who are members of the Association of Social Development, ASD. Members of the Association and their affiliates work in most European countries, the UK, Canada, US, Australia, New Zealand, as well as in Russia and many countries in Latin America.

Erik wrote this book not only to share his personal experiences working with the concepts and methods of

Social Ecology but because he felt that there was not a current summary of the rich legacy of insights accumulated by these consultants and their movement.

“I am motivated to write this book because I sense that many of Social Ecology’s methodologies and insights are more valuable than ever before, but nevertheless are in danger of being forgotten.”

As practiced by the Association for Social Development, Social Ecology involves understanding and facilitating the process of development as experienced by individuals, groups, organizations, and society. As in the case of our own individual life journey, there is a natural development process in all social entities moving from a time of birth through childhood, youth, maturity, and aging to an ending or death. If we can bring consciousness and awareness, a learning orientation, to this process of maturation then authentic development can occur allowing us as individuals and our social creations—families, groups, companies, and other organizations—to achieve something of our true intentions, of our purpose and mission. Helping individuals and organizations to understand and work with these stages of development and their characteristic challenges and opportunities is a hallmark of this approach to institutional and social development.

A second foundational concept of this approach to personal, group, and organization development is that of threefolding: just as we have a body, soul, and spirit so do groups and organizations as expressed in their cultural and value system (spirit), their relational system (soul), and their economic and technological system (body). I have found it helpful in working with organizations to ask how is your dialogue with the spirit (values, mission, purpose), with people (customers, suppliers, co-workers), and with the 1 Lemcke, p.xxv

age to come. Steiner describes this next, “sixth post-Atlantean solidarity would bring, and the ease of social collaborations!

earth (finances, resources, economy) as this gives a general picture of strengths and weaknesses and offers a foundation for further inquiry and work on transformation.

These foundational concepts are dealt with in the beginning of the book which then moves to describe three basic capacities which the advisor and facilitator needs to master in order to be helpful to their clients: the art of asking meaningful questions, the art of listening and observation, and the art of review, of looking back in order to learn.

Part 2 of the book explores collaborative processes to improve group functioning and team-work, including functions of group leadership and the challenges of healthy team development. A significant aspect of working groups in organizations is the challenge of forming judgements and making decisions together. Here Erik gives a detailed description of a process developed by Lex Bos, one of Lievegoed’s early colleagues, called Dynamic Judgement Building, which can be used to deepen and improve collaborative decisionmaking. The exploration of judgment-forming and decision-making constitutes Part 3 of the book and together with Part 2 will be of great interest to facilitators and coaches.

Part 4 constitutes the heart of the book as it deals with organizational change processes, leadership and conflict resolution. Of particular interest is the section called “seamarks”—better described as navigational aids in starting initiatives, also described in some detail by myself and Tyno Voors in Vision in Action: Working with Soul and Spirit in Small Organizations. 2 The subsection on organizational change processes includes a very useful description of the phases of organization development, organizational change models and strategies, and a short section on the learning organization, followed by a description of a U-procedure used in change processes also worked with by Otto Scharmer in his work on Presencing and Theory U.3 The discussion of social ecological approaches to leadership and the concept of horizontal and sustainable leadership is then discussed.

Drawing on the work of the Austrian organization development consultant and author Fritz Glasl, one of the founding members of the ASD, the last section of Part 4 contains a very useful although condensed approach to

2 Steiner Books, Hudson, N.Y. 1996, pp. 59-101

3 C. Otto Scharmer, Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges, Society for Organizational Learning, Cambridge, MA, 2007. Also, The Essentials of Theory U: Core Principles and Applications; Berrett-Koehler, Oakland CA, 2017

conflict resolution work. Part 5 of the book, prior to the brief conclusion, focuses on personal leadership and inner development with a fine section on meditation which draws extensively on Arthur Zajonc’s insightful work, Meditation as Contemplative Inquiry, followed by a brief introduction to working with our individual biography.4

The book consciously links the approach to Social Ecology practiced by the members of the ASD, to the spiritual legacy of Rudolf Steiner, the Austrian philosopher and spiritual teacher and the founder of anthroposophy and Waldorf education. The extensive appendix, which is almost as long as the text of the book itself, contains a brief description of Steiner’s work and provides many examples of the working methods and seminar designs used by Erik Lemcke and his Scandinavian colleagues.

As the book is really a guide and workbook, rather than an in-depth presentation of particular perspectives and methods, it will be of most use to practicing consultants, trainers, and facilitators who already have a wealth of experience from which to assess its value for their work. I highly recommend the book and have added a list of resources in English for readers who want to deepen their understanding of this unique spiritually based approach to Social Ecology and social healing pioneered by Bernard Lievegoed and his coworkers at the Netherlands Pedagogical Institute, (NPI).

Resource Materials in English

Adrian Bekman, The Horizontal Leadership Book, Alert Verlag, Berlin, 2010

Steve Briault, The Mystery of Meeting: Relationships as a Path of Discovery, Sophia Books, Forest Row, U.K. 2010

Fritz Glasl, Confronting Conflict: A First-Aid Kit for Handling Conflict, Hawthorn Press, Stroud, U.K. 1999

Alan Kaplan, Development Practitioners and Social Process: Artists of the Invisible, Pluto Press, London, 2002

Martin Large, Social Ecology: Exploring Post-Industrial Society, Hawthorne Press, Stroud, U.K. 1981

Martin Large and Steve Briault, Free, Equal and Mutual: Rebalancing Society for the Common Good, Hawthorn Press, Stroud, U.K. 2018

Bernard Lievegoed, The Developing Organization, Tavistock, London, 1967.

Bernard Lievegoed, Phases: The Spiritual Rhythms of Adult Life, Rudolf Steiner Press. London, 1998

Christopher Schaefer, Partnerships of Hope: Building Waldorf School Communities, AWSNA, Chatham, N.Y. 2012

Signe Eklund Schaefer, Why on Earth: Biography and the Practice of Human Becoming, Steiner Books, Great Barrington, Mass. 2013

4 Arthur Zajonc, Meditation as Contemplative Inquiry: When Knowing Becomes Love, Steiner Books, Great Barrington, Mass. 2009

Harrie Salman, The Social World as Mystery Center: The Social Vision of Anthroposophy, Threefold Publishing, Seattle, WA, 2020

In ancient times, mystery centers and schools of initiation were in isolated locations, removed from the many distractions of ordinary life. Harrie Salman, the Dutch philosopher and sociologist, in his book The Social World as a Mystery Center, maintains that Rudolf Steiner had a markedly different vision of where the mystery centers of modern life take place, namely in the everyday, where we play, live, and work with others. In describing his inner journey and growing acquaintance with Rudolf Steiner’s work he notes,

Now I began to perceive how new mysteries are enacted between people in everyday life. On this path I discovered the essence of Anthroposophy, namely the search for new social forms for a new spiritual culture and a new spirituality that can arise in meeting others. To me this is the nature of the new mysteries, inaugurated by Rudolf Steiner during the important Conference of 1923. We can work towards a new culture out of a renewed relationship to the spiritual world. But this new culture needs the support of a new social life and the protection of new communities. (p.11)

In direct short sentences Salman describes the mysteries taking place in social life based on Rudolf Steiner’s insights. These include the working of social and anti-social forces in the human soul in our time, the archetypal social phenomena of human meeting, conversation and the working of karma, the principles and laws at work in the social world such as the “Basic Sociological Law” and “Fundamental Social Law.” He then outlines the need Steiner saw for restructuring society according to the three spheres of culture, the state and the economy. (pp. 28-60)

Salman asks the poignant question of why the social mission of anthroposophy and the social path of human development were taken up by so few of Steiner’s students and why these paths of development were not more actively fostered by the Anthroposophical Society.

The reason for a barely developed consciousness of rights in the anthroposophical movement is a poor understanding of the social impulse. The threefolding impulse was a reality for Steiner. In his conscious impulses lived archetypal thoughts of social life while they lived more or less unconsciously in the instinctive life of his contemporaries. By activating the threefold impulse in society, Steiner wanted to give modern

humanity the opportunity to think the thoughts of the other in spiritual life; to experience equality in relation to the other in the practice of political life, and to work out of the other’s needs in economic life. These are, as Dieter Bruell remarked, three aspects of the social impulse of anthroposophy immediately connected to the activity of the Christ within. (p.55)

This is the second, expanded edition in English of Harrie Salman’s book, having first appeared in Dutch in 1994, translated into English in 1999, with the present edition having been published in 2020. This short book is a wonderful heart-filled companion work to Dieter Bruell’s Der Anthroposophische Sozial Impuls, translated as The Mysteries of Social Encounters and published by ASWNA in 2002. If you are seeking a deeper understanding of the profound spirit-filled social insights of Rudolf Steiner, insights which seem as relevant today as they were during his lifetime, read these two books.

Let me end with a rather lengthy quote in which Salman articulates the central mystery of social life, namely that our higher self, our true I, only comes to consciousness in our relation with others.

On December 27th, 1918, Steiner said that our higher being (the higher I) is in all that we meet outside and least within ourselves. It meets us from outside, in karmic relationships. These meetings allow us to experience the awakening of our higher being in daily life as a social process. Through the renewing force of Christ the transformation of the old human being into the new human being (the inner, spiritual being) gradually takes place in our relationships. This process brings self- consciousness and an inkling of what lies within as possibilities and tasks. This brief awakening of the higher being in our soul may be called a moment of Whitsun. It is the festival of the free individuality as well as of community, the festival of the birth of a higher being in the individual soul and the birth of a new sociality. (p.74-5)

Taking an active interest in others is therefore the path to our own evolution and the essential act in acknowledging the world as the mystery center of our time. Conscious conversation between two or more people can also be a revolutionary deed.

Christopher Schaefer, PhD (christopherschaefer7@gmail.com) is most recently the author of Re-Imagining America: Finding Hope in Difficult Times (Hawthorn Press, 2019), reviewed in our last issue. He lives with his wife Signe in Great Barrington, MA, and is co-director of the Hawthorne Valley Center for Social Research.

modern science, descended from “natural science,” is a discipline specialized to focus only on measurable physical substance and mechanical forms. So its fantastic success leads us to misunderstand ourselves, since it cannot fully grasp the living, the conscious, or the individual—life, soul and spirit.

abundance, and also, used without understanding its limitations, creates wastelands in the realms of life and consciousness. Learning how we can connect to the worlds of life and of higher consciousness and their beings is where anthroposophy can help humanity meet a most urgent and immediate challenge.

Perennial Alternative

Frederick Amrine, The Perennial Alternative: Episodes in the Reception of Goethe’s Scientific Work; Adonis Press, 2021, 279 pages.

review by Frederick Dennehy

The first two volumes of Frederick Amrine’s scholarly trilogy were comprehensive bibliographies of the primary and secondary literature in Goethean science, as well as the practical studies that have been undertaken in Goethe’s spirit. This third volume is described by the author as “a collection of essays written at various times about the history of the reception of Goethe’s science,” but it is a great deal more.

Prof. Amrine shows first, that Goethe’s science is unarguably the perennial alternative to orthodox science and scientism, that is, the invariable place to go, then and now, for those who are dissatisfied with conventional scientific methods; second , that Goethe’s science is a living tradition of thought, as vital and fluid today as it was two hundred years ago; and third , that although they have arisen outside of the mainstream, the anthroposophical works being produced on Goethe’s science today belong with anything coming out of the academy

Amrine chronicles the reluctance with which the scientific community has received Goethe’s method as a candidate for a new scientific paradigm, replete with its glib dismissals and inept misreadings. But after reading this remarkable collection, it is difficult not to feel optimistic. For not only gifted anthroposophists, but many original thinkers and practitioners of widely diverse back-

grounds and interests, are actively pursuing Goethe’s “perennial alternative.” Some acknowledge his influence directly, while others are working in “nomad sciences” that no longer recognize the original source. The time, one senses, may be at hand. The revival of the ancient Greek thinking with the etheric body, which Rudolf Steiner repeatedly called for, is on the horizon.

It becomes clear that the fruits of Goethe’s scientific method are not limited to botany or color theory. The imaginative faculty of ‘seeing,’ which Goethe’s genius transformed into a rigorous science of qualities, has the capacity to interpret anything that lives. The vigorous analogue of the musical organism, elucidated in the music theory of Victor Zuckerkandl, illumines Jakob von Uexkull’s pioneering work in the science of ecological emergence , Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of wholeness, and Gilles Deleuze’s foundational philosophy of concept creation. In the unfolding of a musical composition, as in the germination of an organism, we find a direct imaginative experience of the etheric world. As Ronald Brady phrased it, Goethe’s methodology teaches us to hear the living organism as the melody that moves between the notes.

As noted, this third volume of The Perennial Alternative consists of a series of independently written essays. The first, “Goethe’s Italian Discoveries as a Natural Scientist (The Scientist in the Underworld),” follows Goethe to the beginnings of his Italian journey in Padua, where his contemplations before a date palm in the botanical gardens beget what in time would become The Metamorphosis of Plants. Using a matrix of images from Goethe’s biogra-

phy of that time, Amrine demonstrates the initiatory genesis of Goethe’s mature science. Here in the South, Goethe will descend into the realm of the Mothers, to experience, through his own “stirb und werde ”1 transformation, the transformative processes of nature.

“Goethean Intuitions” explores Goethe’s philosophical development. While it has been said that Goethe had little interest in philosophy, that lack of interest extended only to the prevailing Enlightenment philosophies of his own time. Amrine shows that Goethe was strongly influenced by Spinoza, not only as a philosopher of ideas, but as an intuitive practitioner and exponent of self-transformation as a mode of cognition. Spinoza before Goethe, and Steiner after him, each understood that for knowledge to ascend from inference to actual seeing, the knower must first attain to the moral disinterestedness and pure transparency of geometry. It was Spinoza, too, who led Goethe to realize that in order to comprehend nature as dynamically alive, as natura naturans, 2 he must undertake the dogged work of mentally reenacting the gradual genesis of the organism.

In “The Metamorphosis of the Scientist,” Amrine invokes Thomas Kuhn3 to argue that real progress in science comes not within paradigms but between them. If this is the case, change will happen not from data accumulation or the reduction of one way of seeing to another, but in the rigorous and controlled development of new ways of seeing. This is certainly true of Goethe’s phenomenological method. If the Urphanomen4 is not an abstraction but an activity, then it can be realized—it can occur—only through exploration and practice. The intuitive knowledge indispensable to an understanding of organisms may be assisted through systematic training in openness and sensuous awareness of the scientists themselves, so that they can open new organs of perception.

“Methodological Issues Regarding the Experimentum Crucis” 5 considers the prism experiments of Newton, impossible to replicate, which he nonetheless invoked as proofs of his color theory. It appears that Newton was secretive about any “narration” of his experiments, pre-

1 “Die and become.”

2 “Nature naturing”—nature being or doing what nature does, as opposed to natura naturata —“nature having been or done nature”—the product or effect that remains after the living activity itself has finished.

3 Philosopher of science (d. 1996); his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) popularized the idea of “paradigm shift.”

4 “Primal or fundamental phenomena.”

5 An experimentum crucis is a decisive test of a theory.

ferring “idealized descriptions,” and disclosing only the vaguest criteria for the positioning of the equipment he used. Goethe, on the other hand, who believed that all observation is implicated in theory, and that the observer “grows into and together with” the phenomena, saw Newton’s posturing as an artifact of dogmatism, and opposed it unreservedly. His own experiments were open for anyone to see and repeat.

Readers may hope that chapter 6, “Goethe and Steiner as Pioneers of Emergence,” will someday ripen into a book. Emergence, as Amrine presents it, is a science in search of an epistemology. Goethe radically insisted that theory must appear within experience. But it was Steiner who understood emergence as a direct function of consciousness, what ultimately makes phenomena real What is self-organizing, and seems to emerge mysteriously from below, is in fact the result of thinking, the irreducible power that frees living things from the determined status of the inorganic. Given the intense interest today in the phenomenon of emergence in philosophy, science, and systems theory, as well as in art and the humanities, it may be that a new interest in Rudolf Steiner will also be emerging. But this of course has been said before.

In “Seeing Ideas: Goethe’s Science and Modernist Aesthetics,” the argument is not that Goethe’s influence has been responsible for modernist architecture or post-impressionist movements in painting, but that these schools may be better understood in light of Goethe. His call on us to overcome the single perspective of naïve realism, and to increase our perceptual agility, provides us a lens for viewing modern art. For Goethe, archetypal phenomena are revealing because they are not products of perception but represent the very process of perceptual activity. So, for instance, the seeming distortions in Cezanne’s later paintings may be seen as attempts to paint the process of perceiving along with the product Similarly, cubism should never be confused with a formalistic dissolution into intersecting planes. Nor is it about the structure of the object itself Rather, it is about the constructing of a kind of “ intimate seeing” of the object.

“The Music of the Organism” is Amrine’s discussion of the four “modern” Goethean figures—Uexkull, Merleau-Ponty, Zuckerkandl, and Deleuze—referred to earlier. Zuckerkandl, the only musicologist among the four, gives us the ruling metaphor. Music, like any archetypal phenomenon, is an outgrowth of nature, both alive and ideal. It gives direct experience of what Rudolf Steiner calls formative forces, life itself.

These four thinkers, in their highest flights of thinking, at times may appear almost to “escape from the body,” at least from the lower self. In the new causality of emergence, in which consequents are “fundamentally and qualitatively different” from their antecedents, creative thoughts come forth that “build up their own bodies.”

In “Readings in the Text of Nature: Three Contemporary Goetheans,” we see the “gentle empiricism” of Goethe at work in the research of three contemporary scientists: Jochen Bockemuhl in botany, Wolfgang Schad in zoology, and Theodor Schwenk in the phenomenology of fluid media. Goethe, far from being hostile to science generally, saw the limitations of Galileo’s mathematical reading of nature, and devised an alternative, a method that recognizes the intentional workings of the mind in structuring experience, and allows the phenomena themselves to guide that activity. The rigorous, painstaking work of these scientists is confirmation that Goethe was every bit as much a scientist as Galileo or Newton, but a scientist of qualities rather than quantities.

“Goethe’s Epistemology of the South: A Response to Papers by Arthur Zajonc, Jeffrey Swinkin, and Ferdinand Bubacz” looks to the future of Goetheanism in other enterprises through the lens of legal theorist Boaventura de Sousa Santos’s Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide. “The South” is Santos’s name for every possible connection to nature and other human beings that is not already finished and interred by a monoculture that paralyzes whatever it touches. It is also the physical and epistemological journey that Goethe himself took, which awakened him from his scientific slumber. To enter sympathetically into the phenomena means to be willing to approach all phenomena passionately, with surprise and wonder, realizing that “only when we start thinking with love, thinking like a rose, will our thinking begin grow, to proliferate.”

In keeping with his first two volumes, Amrine includes here a bibliographic essay that examines some of the important works that have appeared about Goethe’s scientific studies over the last thirty years, both in German and in English. His summaries can be blunt, which is all to the good; he is not one to suffer fools. And it is especially good to see reviews of anthroposophical studies that stand with distinction next to conventionally academic ones.

Of all the essays, “Goethean Method in the Work of Jochen Bockemuhl” may be the most valuable. Anthroposophical texts often tend to bridge, to reach out to the student or the open minded layperson to find points of

affinity, in order to remove obstacles to the contemporary appreciation of Rudolf Steiner. The disadvantage to this approach is its tendency to domesticate the wondrous and the arcane. Not here. Amrine invites the reader to practice, using a text from Bockemuhl, “a little Goethean morphology,” with himself as guide. This is a splendid exercise, neither in interpretation nor in explication, but simply in seeing.

It is in the course of such exercises that the ‘living tradition’ of Goethean thought comes alive for the reader. The concept of the ideal manifesting itself in and through empirical phenomena may be the key to Goethean science, but experiencing it is the reward. We have to do the work.

Frederick Dennehy is associate editor of being human, a retired lawyer and active thespian, and a class holder of the School for Spiritual Science.

Michaelmas

Let each leaf fall, let the lower self sink back into the earth, into the breath of the dragon slumbering underground. Slay and scythe. Light wanes. What’s left in dark furrows rests, releases. Night encircles. Stoke the fire and take stock. Give the rest away.

—Christina Daub

Christina Daub co-founded The Plum Review, a national-award-winning poetry journal, started The Plum Writers Retreats and The Plum Reading Series which featured Joseph Brodsky, Carolyn Forché, Mark Strand and many others. She teaches creative writing and poetry and is widely published—see www.christinadaub.com

Opening Secrets: Rudolf Steiner, Spiritual Science, and Technology

The following essay was occasioned by the newly published Volume I of A Road to Sacred Creation: A Compendium of Rudolf Steiner’s Perspectives on Technology, edited with commentary by Gary Lamb, with research associates Virginia Hermann and Martin Miller, and illustrations by Michael Howard.

by John Bloom

Our digital devices perform miracles at the touch of a finger, or the sound of our voice, and right before our eyes—a technology of modern wonder. We are networked and connected and at the forefront of the increasing presence of artificial intelligence with its intention to replicate and even transcend human capacities, both physical and mental. The claims for the technological future are many and the pace of advancement almost breathtaking.

We no longer really know whether we are the subject or the object of technology; what we do know is that the pervasiveness of electronic-based technology has compromised privacy. In the world of commerce, identity has been co-opted as a commodity and has clouded our deeper understanding of the importance and meaning of individuality. From a spiritual perspective, what is most deeply human, the evolution of self perhaps over multiple lifetimes, can be considered antithetical to a central tenet of transhumanism, that through technology we can exceed our biological limits. These views of the human being and human destiny can frame our relationship to digital technology.

The challenge is that we have arrived at this moment so quickly, and with such powerful intentions for making life more convenient, that we have rarely taken the time to reflect on some key fundamental assumptions: the physiological effects on human senses; inherent biases migrated into programs and system design; the moral and ethical dimensions of user interface; and even more deeply, the unconscious forces working through electronic-based media.

Research has raised really important questions, though the findings tend to be muffled by those who justify the manifest destiny of technology as a primary path forward in nearly all parts of life.

In this context, and with a concern for and interest in the deeper issues at work in and through electronicbased technology, an extensive review of Rudolf Steiner’s thoughts on technology as found in A Road to Sacred

Creation: A Compendium of Rudolf Steiner’s Perspectives on Technology—Volume 1 is essential. Rudolf Steiner was intensely interested in the issues of the modern industrial era. He was able to see what was emerging in nascent form, and from that to intuit many of the fundamental problems, challenges, and breakthroughs that we live with today and imagine for the future.

Rudolf Steiner’s thinking and influence are deep and wide. The depth of his thinking extends from the macrocosm to the microcosm of physical and spiritual experience. Its scope includes the workings of the world and the self, and the ideal relationship between them. In the last 25 years of his life, he elucidated countless secrets that surround and permeate our normal sense-based perceptions. His life’s task was to liberate knowledge, to expand the bounds of modern Western materialist thinking, and to limn the spiritual world of cosmic thought. He lived the radical proposition that we modern individuals can know the spiritual world as we do the physical, if we develop the necessary faculties to do so. And he devoted his life to helping others cultivate those faculties through meditative disciplines and a methodology he called spiritual science so that they could better serve humanity and the spiritual world.

Rudolf Steiner concerned himself with and researched many aspects of life including sciences, education, agriculture, arts, medicine, economics, and the organization of civil society. And he helped apply this research in the practical development of Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, eurythmy, anthroposophic medicine, associative economics, threefold commonwealth, and more. Although electronic-based technologies are not generally associated with Steiner’s work, he carefully considered elements of their spiritual character and consequences along with their potential social impact.

Rudolf Steiner was trained as a natural scientist at a highly-regarded university in Vienna and received a doctorate in 19th century German phenomenology. Throughout his life he sustained a profound interest in the history

of thought, the nature of human experience, the evolution of consciousness, and how they played out particularly in modern Western culture. His comprehensive study of the history of philosophy informed his insights into how we know. His study of science informed his insights into what we know. In bringing those insights into relationship with each other, Rudolf Steiner sought to develop a worldview that could integrate not only science and philosophy, but also art, social life, and spiritual reality.

Anthroposophy, a composite word that Rudolf Steiner adopted to name the spiritual scientific path he developed, means the wisdom of the human being. As articulated and practiced, anthroposophy is an encompassing and exhaustive body of knowledge both philosophical and practical; and a disciplined contemplative path of knowledge that makes clear the integral and active working of the spiritual world in every detail of the material world.

Anthroposophy is a way to facilitate the integration of thinking with the natural world and the invisible forces infused within it. One can receive the intent of anthroposophy as a living and metamorphic research project premised on an indication that knowledge is without limits and that resonance exists between and links the spiritual with the material.

In addition to the what and how of knowing, there are great whys. These kinds of questions the scientists typically left to the philosophers and theologians—at least until quantum physics ran into its materialist limits. In the modern West, science has been committed to physical, evidence-based understanding, measuring, weighing, and objectifying. Materialist science presumed that the observ er stood outside the system being observed and could therefore be objective about the object being observed. Quantum physics has shown that the observer participates in and affects the process, and thus even the nature of what is known. Even so, the objective observer and objectification itself persist as the basis of scientific belief.

Philosophy, on the other hand, is founded in human experience and the reflective capacity to provide perspective on that experience.

Since Rudolf Steiner was interested in both science and philosophy, he naturally gravitated to the writings of J.W. von Goethe, the German scientist, artist, poet, and playwright of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In his twenties, Steiner served as editor of Goethe’s voluminous natural scientific writings and Goethe’s approach and findings became an essential and important and influence for him. Steiner understood Goethe from the inside, from the depths of Goethe’s biography and artistic output to the profound insights of his scientific explorations. Goethe’s work was driven by observation and cognized through his highly-attuned intuition. To give one example, for Goethe, color was a bridge between science and art, between the origins of color in light and optics and its meaning as a language of soul in painting. Goethe understood science phenomenologically, as a confluence of observation, the observer and the observed—a precursor to quantum science. Goethe also understood that all “things” in nature are in constant metamorphosis, a view that is central to the theory of knowledge at the core of spiritual science.

This meditative and methodical way of knowing informs all of Rudolf Steiner’s writings and lectures. Toward the end of World War I (1914–1918), he recognized the tremendous need for healing and cultural renewal and was asked by practitioners to apply his anthroposophical esoteric research in service to those working in professional fields, including education, agriculture, medicine and allied therapeutic fields, natural science, and the full range of arts. His insights into human development, for example, were applied in the approach to education in the Waldorf school not only in the shape of the curriculum but also in how teachers were engaged in the process of self-transformation. This process of inner development would inspire each rising generation to know themselves as they came to know the world in order to be at home in it, and to be of service to humanity regardless of their chosen paths. In many ways, this profound connection between inner and outer knowledge, between the esoteric and the

exoteric is central to the work of the farmer, the doctor, the artist, and in fact, to anyone. In the wisdom of the human (anthroposophy) lies a path to spiritual knowing. It is a path of insight that moves beyond the convention, even the paradigm, of materialist thinking that was so prevalent in and central to the industrial, machine-centered world of Steiner’s time and remains elusively so in the current age of electronic technology.

One practical way to understand a connection between the material and the spiritual is to contemplate the following statement: Every manufactured object is materialized thought. On one hand, one could say that this is a bit absurd. On the other, how does such an object come into being? Someone has to have an idea of it. Such intelligence is spiritual; it has no physical substance. One could even ask: Where do ideas come from? We know that there are numerous chemical and physiological actions involved in the process of ideation. These can and have been measured to some degree. They are markers of process but provide no sense of what an actual thought might be. To describe and value thought as a neurological process is a conventional view, one with a bias toward physical and measurable reality—as if thought were manufactured. For the one with the thought, this conventional bias is counter to the direct and real experience of the thought itself. Such a bias inherently relegates a path of knowledge that leads through thinking to ever-deepening and widening understanding of the spiritual world itself to a less regarded status, though such knowledge could help us see the reality of culture and the economy anew.

What we call ideas are in many ways the lowest hanging fruit of the spiritual world. To enter into that world beyond having ideas requires commitment, preparation, discipline, time, and guidance. Without the practice that these factors support, it is difficult to discern the meaning of and make judgments about what someone might say about the spiritual world. There is ample room for misunderstanding and manipulation of such knowledge. This is one of the reasons that Steiner made it very clear that moral development is a necessary prerequisite for any working within spiritual development. It is also one of the reasons that he insisted that anthroposophy is not a belief system, as religions typically are. It is science. Much as is conventional science, it is a process of observation, hypothesis, testing, and reflection in ever-evolving stages. Contemplative experience and what emerges from that contemplation can serve as indicator and guide, a kind of moral compass.

Most of what we know of the world comes through

our senses. Knowing about our knowing, however, comes from beyond such faculties—what Rudolf Steiner called the moral realm of imagination, inspiration, and intuition. Navigating in that world requires both the letting go of ordinary knowing and a discipline of being in a world in which no preconceived notion, language, or fixed memory—in short, no earthly knowledge—will serve.

It is also really important to understand that as you engage with Rudolf Steiner’s thinking about the many dimensions of technology, significant challenges to conventional materialist thinking, or the degree to which our thinking has been conditioned to be materialistic, will arise. Within those challenges, consider that the expansiveness and comprehensive assumptions living within what Rudolf Steiner put forth constitute an opportunity to let his words speak without conditioned filters. In the end, you may return to your keyboard and continue working, but I can promise you that the world of electronic-based technology will not feel the same.

Just as we can see that a manufactured object is the materialization of thought, we can come to see that technology is further iteration of that same process. It is a gift to humanity. And yet, we could be far more informed about how to receive the gift we have created through human genius, and to understand how it has also been developed in partnership with spiritual beings who came before us, live with us, and who have intentions for us. Some of those intentions may not coincide with our own or serve the highest purpose of human spiritual development. Some technologies will reinforce the materialist imperative from which they emerged. One result of this imperative is a kind of binding dependency that is counter to the moral-spiritual development at the heart of anthroposophy. With an evolution in moral consciousness, some technologies may instead serve to free the human spirit in its fullness of thought, feeling, and actions. Out of a deepened and spiritual understanding of technology and the intentions embedded in it, much will have been gained in making us aware of our own beneficial agency in relation to technology, morality, and service in the liberation of consciousness for a more human future.

John Bloom is serving as General Secretary for the Anthroposophical Society in the US. He recently closed a 22-year chapter with RSF Social Finance and is working on the development of Spirit Matters—serving anthroposophical initiative. He has written several books; the most recent is Inhabiting Interdependence: Being in the Next Economy, published by SteinerBooks.

news for members & friends of

the Anthroposophical Society in America

GEMS—An Inspiring Labor of Love

“Light a red candle and think of 112 other people around America, each with a little silver thread going up to meet our spirit study guides.” Those were the instructions Margaret Shipman gave to a new “GEM” as preparation for the unique study group she has led for 19 years. During a coffee break at a conference at Rudolf Steiner House in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 2002, an attendee touched Margaret deeply with her sadness. The cause of the sadness? There was no study group to attend between annual conferences. Margaret had long been an active participant in the Los Angeles Branch, and it had not occurred to her that the absence of a group in many communities across the country was causing such a profound feeling of loss. “I never experienced this loneliness,” Margaret said. The “tears moved my heart into a corner for a long time until I could tell myself that, since thoughts are real , we could have a study room called America for members who have to study alone. It seemed daunting and beyond exciting at the same time.” Out of this karmic encounter was born the Geographically Engaged Members Studygroup—“GEMS.”

Every Saturday morning at 6:30 Pacific Time, the members of GEMS would light their candles and study together, their thoughts mingling and directed by their spirit guides. The whole country became a room where a study group came together and focused on materials that Margaret had provided. Each month, a new packet of riches arrived by mail in a large envelope. Lectures, articles, colored drawings, illustrations. Occasionally even booklets. And all tied together with an explanatory letter lovingly written by Margaret, who arose each morning filled with energy and enthusiasm for the day’s research. She committed herself to a staggering amount of work— hour after hour spent in the library, searching and reading and copying for her GEMS. She selected a new theme for study to begin each Easter. Some years that required purchasing a book to supplement the monthly packets. Here are the themes covered throughout the years:

2002/03 The Planetary Seals

2003/04 Calendar of the Soul

2004/05 The Foundation Stone Meditation

2005/06 Life and Death

2005/07 Theosophy

2007/08 Occult Science

2008/09 Festivals and Seasons

2009/10 Spiritual Hierarchies (and the First Goetheanum)

2010/11 Study of Man

2011/12 Man as Symphony of the Creative Word

2012/13 Man, Lucifer and Ahriman

2013/14 Life Beyond Death/Karma

2014/15 Man as Hieroglyph of the Universe

2015/16 Michael

2016/17 Man and the Stars

2017/18 Disease, Karma and Healing + Ernst Katz: Ten Commandments

2018/20 Cosmic 12 (12 topics on some aspect of “12”)

2020/21 How Rosicrucianism Weaves into the Life and Work of Rudolf Steiner

The GEMS members were connected through their mutual striving, their living thoughts, guidance from the spirit world, and the warm rays of Margaret’s love and devotion. In addition, they had contact information for all of the other members so they could reach out by phone, email, or mail. However, in 2015, Margaret was inspired to arrange for GEMS to meet in person. In her words, “We should meet face to face and work as a choir of souls with the Study-Guide-Angel our work has created.” She picked Nashville for its central location and the availability of a conference center—the Scarritt-Bennett Center—that was affordable and provided all the necessary facilities. It was a beautiful setting, a former college for missionaries, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. On the grounds was a labyrinth, the first exposure of many who attended to that ancient and mysterious form of meditation. The two and one-half days of the conference were filled with activities that took months of planning. There were eurythmy performances and lessons by Raven Garland, talks by Michael Ronall on the Archangel Michael, and a performance by Glen Williamson of The Incarnation of the Logos. Attendees shared their poetry, music, art, and crafts. There were group studies and discussions, and much conversation. Everyone received a

gift of The Twelve Aspects of Michael by Christoph-Andreas Lindenberg, with the inspiring and uplifting illustrations of David Newbatt. The spirit that pervaded that entire event was of unforgettable peace, harmony,

Ninetta Sombart, Jacob’s Wrestling with the Angel

mutual seeking, beauty, and love. Meeting Margaret and so many other people who shared the same thirst for spiritual knowledge and growth was inspiring and energizing.

Following that gathering, each season, around the time of the festivals, members would come together to share ideas by computer or phone on a conference line made available by the Anthroposophical Society in America. Members would take turns introducing the discussion topic, proving that the best way to learn something is to teach it.

“Every 18 years 7 months and 13 days in a human being’s life, the sun, moon and earth are in exactly the same configuration as they were on the day he/she was born. These ‘moon nodes’ are like new beginnings in our life’s journey.” Thus Margaret announced in her last GEMS correspondence, dated April 2021, that she would no longer be continuing regular GEMS work. Instead, she will

be sharing her work with a broader audience online, in some manner and through some avenue.

Members of the Anthroposophical Society in America who are not part of GEMS know Margaret by meeting her at conferences or from her music or her lectures on the Foundation Stone, the Spiritual Hierarchies, or the Goetheanum. Soon, you will all be able to share in the fruits of her heroic labors of love, dedication, and study. Stay tuned.

Thomas Brantley, Cheyenne, WY

Christine Lower, Leslie, AR

Renate Kurth, Radburn, NJ

Karen Zabriskie, Liberty, TN

Anne Saldo, Santa Monica, CA

Karl Fredrickson, Radburn, NJ

Christiana Williams, Ghent, NY

Hazel Archer Ginsberg Joins the General Council

After many years of service to the Anthroposophical Society in America, on staff and on the regional and national councils, Marianne Fieber has stepped off to pursue new initiatives, amid many expressions of gratitude for her artistic contributions and generous spirit. The General Council has now welcomed Hazel Archer Ginsberg as Central Regional Council representative.

Having grown up in the wastelands of suburbia, I found refuge in the wilds of nature which sprung up in the empty lots behind the track housing. Developing a rich inner life, singing, writing plays or poetry, and harvesting plants to make herbal medicines with my grandmother, helped get me through the mendacity of a public school education, graduating high school in three years at age 15.

I backpacked around the sacred sites of Europe for a year, and then took my heart to San Francisco on a full scholarship to study Philosophy & Comparative Religion (with a minor in Women’s Studies) at SFSU. There in the dusty halls of dead thinking, I met Rudolf Steiner’s Spiritual Science through fate and the discovery of Owen Barfield, and began to work with the basic books on my own. (It was almost 25 years later when I finally discovered that there was such a thing as an Anthroposophical Society!)

Destiny had prepped me through Rosicrucianism which came into play at an early age, (another long story I

would be happy to relate over coffee) but I didn’t officially join the Societas Rosicruciana in America (SRIA), headquartered in Kingston, NY, until I moved to NYC after college.

I began applying my Midwest work ethic, and my eclectic blend of teachings in the Big Apple. I became a neighborhood leader working with disenfranchised youth. It was almost impossible for former drug addicts, runaways, and artist types to find affordable housing in Manhattan, so the focus of my community activism was with the “Homesteading Movement.” We became “squatters” renovating several blocks of abandoned city-owned buildings on the “Lower East Side.” Through this community I spearheaded many artistic initiatives such the experiential guerrilla Theatre Troupe, “The Valkyries.” I was also a singer, songwriter,

and drummer, performing in several “No New York” genre original bands (Heal, Health Hen, Baby Boom) recording and touring extensively in the U.S. and Europe. In the 1980s, the Lower East Side was a cultural Mecca and we were featured at CBGB’s, the Mud Club, the Bitter End, the Beat Kitchen, etc. When I wasn’t on tour, I was a vegetarian chef, and diligently worked the Rosicrucian path traveling to upstate NY for the SRIA workings.

I also studied for four years and was ordained as a Trans-denominational Minister at the Spiritual Science Center of Maryland, a school dedicated to teaching comparative religions, philosophy, and service to humanity.

I moved to Chicago when my uncle was dying of AIDS. I became a sous-chef at a vegetarian restaurant, and started co-creating with a “Hermetic Order” which had a healing center on the Northside, and sacred land in Indiana, making plant medicines again.

I became the founder & facilitator of

• the SheDrums MysteryLodge, featuring workshops, Retreats & Rites of Passage for Women

• “the WE drum Tribe” = “the Heart-Beat of Chicago’s Conscious Community”

• D.E.V.A. (Divine Expressions of Vital Alchemy), a collaborative dance company that embodied the Divine Feminine through seasonal myth-telling performances

• Sanctuary Dance: the Chicago facilitator for the annual International EarthDance, a worldwide dance event to promote unity across cultures

• producer, director, writer and videographer for The Earth Network, a monthly program focused primarily on environmental, political, and spiritual issues

• Mother-Earth-Minute eight times a year at Lake Street Church in Evanston

• classes on the Wheel of the Year for the Chicago Park District

• videographer for Richard Shay (Art Shay’s son) working with the likes of Michael Jordan, Oprah Winfrey, and Gene Siskel

• WRD Environmental Consultant for the Chicago Conservation Corps (C3).

When I was almost 40 years old, I had my daughter Ultra-Violet Archer, and married Chuck Ginsberg. It wasn’t until my girl was at the Chicago Waldorf School that I finally heard about the Anthroposophical Society, and discovered that the branch was within walking distance from our house!

Through the Waldorf school I trained with Kim John Payne’s Social Inclusion Intervention and Mediation program called “Justice Without Blame,” and went on to do Hakomi, and Matrix leadership training in team building and consensus processes.

As a Minster I started a business called “Milestones” creating custom ceremonies for all occasions: traditional weddings, as well as same sex marriages, fertility rituals, baby blessings, renewal of vows, home and corporate blessings, crossing over ceremonies, funerals, memorials/ celebration of life, and other rites of passage, specializing in coming of age initiations for girls and women.

I studied with Susanne Down and founded “Wisdom Roots Puppetry” working in the Waldorf tradition of therapeutic seasonal story, song and ensouled puppetry.

I have been the Cultural Events and Festivals Coordinator for the Rudolf Steiner Branch in Chicago for about ten years, and a member of the Central Regional Council of the Anthroposophical Society for seven years. I am a member of the First Class of the School of Spiritual Science, and of the Esoteric Youth Circle.

I have long been inspired by Rudolf Steiner’s original Calendar of the Soul where he commemorates feast days, and birth and death days of important individualities, and about four years ago I founded “Reverse Ritual: Understanding Anthroposophy through the Rhythms of the Year” and recently the “I Think Speech” podcast where I strive to reveal the patterns connecting the seasonal round with human karma, great historical events, as well as repeated weather patterns, natural catastrophes, wars, and the many milestones that can help us understand the past, stand with courage in the present, and see what is wanting to come in from the future.

I look forward to serving on the General Council of the Anthroposophical Society in America, especially at this important “turning point” in world history as we approach the 100-year anniversary of the Christmas Conference, a true Whitsun event for the evolution of humanity.

A collection of the many presentations, programs and festivals that I offer or facilitate is on YouTube (www.youtube.com/channel/UC-K-0SnCuVkSxiIbfJierJA). Reverse Ritual is at reverseritual.com and I Think Speech is at https://anchor.fm/hazel-archer-ginsberg

Hazel Archer-Ginsberg is a trans-denominational minister, essayist, lecturer, poet, and anthroposopher working as the Cultural Events and Festivals Coordinator of the Chicago Rudolf Steiner Branch (www.rudolfsteiner.org/chicago) and on the ASA Central Regional Council (www.rudolfsteiner.org/central-region).

Striving Toward Gentleness

by Deb Abrahams-Dematte

Here in my part of the world, the sun is shining and the birds are singing. The mountain laurel along the woods road is blooming and it is breathtaking. Spring is always beautiful here in southern New Hampshire, and as it is fleeting and somewhat unpredictable, my neighbors and I make it a point to get out and really enjoy it. Being in nature helps me to balance my energy and mood, and I am grateful for the abundant woods, gardens, and wildlife around me.

We are going through some transitions here at the ASA too. Our dear colleague Laura Scappaticci ended her work with us at the end of May. Laura brought many new ideas and created transformative programs for members and friends. These events have helped to expand knowledge, enhance connection, and deepen relationships among anthroposophers in the US and beyond. We are deeply grateful for her energy, colleagueship, and passion for anthroposophy and the people who care about it. She has raised the bar for our action in the world, and we stand ready to take up the challenge. We will be hiring a new program director soon, and will keep you posted on the details as they unfold.

For now, I’m working together with Assistant Director of Programs Tess Parker and others to support the wonderful programs we have coming up. Plans are underway for the next cycle of Applied Anthroposophy —the transformative year-long deep dive into the urgent issues of our time. And, our 2021 annual general meeting and conference, Building the Temple of the Heart, is happening online October 7–10. It’s co-sponsored by the Central Regional Council and features Michaela Glöckler, head of the Medical Section at the Goetheanum. We hope you will join us. Recorded versions of past events are available on our website at www.anthroposphy.org/webinars.

Spring Appeal Update

It’s been a challenging time over the past many months, and now as we move toward whatever the new normal will be, I am striving toward gentleness. As a busy working person, life can be hectic and overwhelming, and I can be hard on myself. Perhaps this describes you as well. I am cultivating a gesture of gentleness towards others, and myself as a way to navigate this busy and confusing time.

There is so much to do and learn. So many ideas and opinions to consider. And the landscape keeps changing. How can we take care of ourselves and one another, so that we can move into the future with love and openheartedness? For this is what is needed as we reconsider and renew what “normal life” looks like. In practicing gentleness, I invite healing and connection. I make space for receiving the beauty and possibility of the future. I welcome you to join me.

Thank you for sharing your love of anthroposophy by supporting our 2021 spring appeal, “Share the Love! Youth & Inclusion Access Fund.” As of this writing, we’ve received 122 gifts and more than $15,300 in total. Gifts to this campaign help engage young people and others with financial challenges, bringing strength and vibrancy to the Anthroposophical Society now and in the future. We are grateful for your gifts.

Michael Support Circle Thank You

A great big shout out to our 65 Michael Support Circle members. Your generous support brings strength and vibrancy to our Society. Thank you!

The Michael Support Circle is our major donor circle. Members pledge gifts of between $500 and $5000 per year for five or more years. If you’d like to learn more, contact me at deb@anthroposophy.org.

If you have any questions or thoughts to share, please reach out. I am always glad to hear from you.

Deb Abrahams-Dematte is a member of the ASA Leadership Team and Director of Development

Mountain Laurel, Wilton, NH

Thank you, Laura!

Electronic notices were sent out in May and subsequently to let our community know that Director of Programs Laura Scappaticci had decided to leave her position at the end of that month. She “did a deed” for the ASA and for anthroposophy in just four and a half years.

Her three pre-Covid AGM/fall conferences were significant as outreach in the southern part of the country where members are fewer, in locations of strong and growing interest. Laura formed effective teams with the local communities, found inspiring presenters, and radiated enthusiasm and greeting. Meeting the important cultures was a prominent feature. In Phoenix, Arizona, it was the indigenous cultural warmth manifesting at the Heard Museum (“advancing American Indian art”). In New Orleans is was the host location where two congregations, largely African American and white, had come together after the disaster of Hurricane Katrina. In Atlanta it was the living legacy of the civil rights movement, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Coretta Scott King.

Beyond these were the Sacred Gateway conferences, the webinars that prepared us for online gatherings in Covid time, the Anthroposopher podcast, and the pro -

ductive work with youth and regions and the Council of Anthroposophic Organizations. There is much more which we will are carry with us in the spirit of Rudolf Steiner’s saying toward the end of his life, that anthroposophy “arises as a need of the heart.” —Editor

Welcoming New Members

Hassan M Abushreiha, Wilmington DE

James R Alexander, Boonsboro MD

Barbara Baldwin, Aldinga Beach, SA Australia

Mary Ballantine, Alstead NH

Rachel Batzell, Chestnut Ridge NY

Robert L. Beecher, Portland ME

Michael Benton, Malvern PA

Julia Kim Biddle, San Francisco CA

Cal B Boswell, Albuquerque NM

Michelle Boynton, Spring Valley NY

Elizabeth Brandley, Penn Valley CA

Will Bratton, Brevard NC

Sarah Brock, Stoneville NC

Christine Burgin, Ghent NY

Roderick Casey, Ypsilanti MI

Saeko S Cohn, Nyack NY

Michael Collins, Republic MO

Christine J Covelli, Sun City AZ

Cassandra Cox, Thunder Bay ON

Amy Jo Dailey, Wolf Creek OR

Gareth Dicker, Chapel Hill NC

Kristina Dryza, Eastwood, SA Australia

Karen Egan, Cincinnati OH

Marga Evelyn Enyart, Albuquerque NM

Adrian Falcon, Bandera TX

Susan A Fine, New York NY

Laura L Freysinger, Marblehead MA

Mayra Garcia, Calgary AB

Julie G Giles, Salt Lake City UT

Sean S Green, Manhattan IL

Kathleen Greer-Boughton, Akron OH

Jody Lynn Grossman, Great Falls VA

Rachael Hammerlein, Cincinnati OH

Kathleen Hanrahan, St Louis MO

Caroline W Hopewell, Salt Lake CIty UT

Sharon Housinger, Crete IL

Derek O Hughes, Goodyear AZ

Jamila Jelani, New York NY

Yukako Kadono, Wilmette IL

Jerome Kocher, Chula Vista CA

Patricia Krieg, Sacramento CA

Elizabeth J Larner, Los Angeles CA

Aileen Roberta Mathilde Mar Leijten, Los Angeles CA

Mary Luckey, Bossier City LA

Angela Maar, Spring TX

Michael C Maar, Spring TX

Linda Marooney, Springfield OR

Melanie Milde, Wellesley MA

Dominique Murillo, Laguna Niguel CA

Sarah Narayan, Glenmont NY

Cameron Ahad Nazermoussavi, Palo Alto CA

Jessica F Nichol, Glenwood Springs CO

Lawrence Peers, Philadelphia PA

Deborah A Randolph, Houston TX

Kristen Rice, Seattle WA

Pamela Rico, Portland OR

Constance D. Riley, Monterey CA

Nathan Riley, Louisville KY

Louis Rios, Shreveport LA

Steven Rutledge, New Orleans LA

Calley L Smith, Ann Arbor MI

Gayle Sumida, Oro Valley AZ

Shawna R Sundstrom, Aliso Viejo CA

Jessica Torfin, Grand Junction CO

Angela M Trezza, Reading PA

William F Tyler, Nyack NY

Sandra Weil, Novato CA

Peter L Wiesner, Raleigh NC

Diane M Williams, Wellsboro PA

Kristine Wolcott, San Francisco CA

The Scappaticci family

Hartmut Schiffer

Sept 25, 1925—Sept 27, 2020

by Holly Richardson

I met Hartmut Schiffer in the fall of 2000, the day of the Rose Ceremony. He loved to tell me how I wore a long black dress and curtsied to the class I was about to teach, fresh out of teacher training. Afterwards, he remembers both of us remarking, “I feel as if I have known you before...” Hartmut Schiffer had come to the Waldorf School on the Roaring Fork as a retired Waldorf teacher who had taught from Hanover, Germany, to Washington, DC, Sacramento, CA, and more. He loved to tell how he found the property by the American River in Fair Oaks where that school would find its home. He was a beloved class teacher who also taught German, wood working, math, and more. He found Waldorf when his young daughter, Michaela, needed a school in Munich. He and his wife both became trained Waldorf teachers and his daughter became a eurythmist.

Hartmut had a colorful history. He was in the German navy during WWII and escaped a prisoner of war camp in France. Eventually, he led tours to sacred and historical sites such as Assisi and Chartres. He sold art and would meet Americans; he liked their openness and enthusiasm, and became a US citizen in 1970.

Hartmut enjoyed working with his hands and keeping his mind and body active. Into his 90’s, he walked nearly everyday and would do twelve pushups, squats, and more. He kept a little garden and grew potatoes. Our regular adventures together included walking to the river to sit on a bench and sing. Another favorite outing was going to soak in the Glenwood Hot Springs pool while he philosophized about things spiritual. I would get him to swim laps and try somersaults and handstands under the water.

He kept his mind active by studying anthroposophy and listening to current events. His favorite work was How to Know Higher Worlds ; he would order copies to give to other students of anthroposophy. By the time I became his caregiver in 2010, he could no longer read on his own due to diminishing vision. Then, he enjoyed listening to a friend read to him. One of our daily rituals was reading the Calendar of the Soul verses by Steiner. He would say it in

German and I would repeat it, then he would translate into English and I would offer another English translation. This was the start of my German lessons that would continue for the next ten years. Eventually, he decided we needed to go to Germany and Switzerland together, to visit friends, sites, and the Goetheanum. We called that our “First Adventure Trip,” and would go on to a lyre conference in Hadley, Mass., to Central City to the Opera, to the Aspen Music Tent, and more.

Waldorf education lived in Hartmut’s consciousness and heart until his last days. We would discuss the happenings of Waldorf education in Carbondale and around the world. He had a particular love for the music of the kinderharp and the lyre. He helped purchase a fleet of kinderharps as well as diatonic lyres for our school, which led to the founding of the Rocky Mountain Lyre Choir. He sent me to lyre conferences in Portland, OR, East Troy, WI, Kimberton, PA, all with the goal of learning how to play and then bringing it home to share with the community. He felt that this music brought peace to the world.

Hartmut was a student of life itself, always interested in the world around him. His knowledge of geography was far superior to mine. We shared many passions: Waldorf, languages, classical music, cappuccinos, traveling, swimming, the river, singing in harmony, to name a few from a long list.

He adopted the community at WSRF, and we adopted him. Among his guardian angels were many families. We often included Hartmut in celebrations. There was a blizzard and Dan, my boys, and I walked to Hartmut’s and picked him up; we continued to walk in foot deep snow to my parents for a Christmas morning together. He was almost completely blind and in his 80’s, but was up for such an outing!

Hartmut had a brother and a sister, both deceased. His daughter, Michaela, lives in Denmark with her family. He has grandchildren and extended family in Germany. He passed peacefully in his sleep on September 27, 2020, three days after his 95th birthday. May gratitude for the gifts he brought us ripple through us for all of our days.

Fred H. Coats Chattanooga TN joined 1981 1/07/2021

Susan Crozier Wadsworth OH joined 2010 3/18/2021

Saluting Members Who Have Died

Heidi H. Finser Mill Valley CA joined 1978 4/07/2021

Joyce Gallardo Hillsdale NY joined 1994 4/25/2020

Elizabeth Ann Courtney Pratt

June 7, 1932 - January 1, 2021

Geraldine S Kline Peterborough NH joined 2016 3/23/2021

Hanna M. Kress Hillsdale NY joined 1975 3/27/2021

by Susan Weber, with Alice Pratt and Mark Birdsall

Ann was a member of the “great generation.” Hers was not the first who brought anthroposophy to North America, but the generation who took it up and made it their lives’ work, creating, spiritually striving, as the seeds of change began to germinate farther and farther. Ann was an initiator, one who believed anything was possible. She drew the future toward her as new impulses flowed from the spiritual world into her thinking heart, but also her limbs, her will.

Ann was born in Manhattan into a spiritually-striving family. Her mother was Elise Stolting Courtney who studied biodynamics in Europe as a young woman. Her father was a devout Christian Scientist who died when Ann was quite young. Rudolf Steiner gave what became known as the “American Verse” to her uncle Ralph Courtney. They were part of a quickly growing circle in Manhattan who created what is said to be the first vegetarian restaurant in New York City. The need for healthy vegetables led the group to purchase farmland in Spring Valley, north of the city. Here not only did the gardens grow, but also the arts: music, eurythmy, and theater were part of a burgeoning spiritual life there. Here Ann spent her childhood summers with her parents and sister Charlotte Courtney Dukich. In her teenage years, Ann waited tables at what was then

Phyllis Morris Forest VA joined 1977 10/21/2020

Lenore Ritscher Chestnut Ridge NY joined 1951 6/25/2020

Johanna C. Rohde Chicago IL joined 1973 5/23/2021

Elizabeth A. Trocki Ellsworth ME joined 1990 5/26/2020

“The Threefold Farm” (now home of Sunbridge Institute) during summer conferences.

It was Ann’s mother who first traveled to Dornach in 1926 to study eurythmy; her traveling partner Gladys Barnett-Hahn had sold her grand piano to pay for the trip! It was Ann however, who became a eurythmist, traveling to England to study with Margaret Lundgren, wife of A.C. Harwood, while her husband Swain cared for their daughters Laura and Alice back in New York. Ann’s mother turned to the study of biodynamics.

Ann’s passion for eurythmy started very young. I recall Ann describing to me her first eurythmy performance: she was only a little girl when she played the part of the mouse in the favorite nursery rhyme Hickory Dickory Dock, while Marjorie Spock was the clock. Imagine tiny Ann at the base of a very tall Marjorie clock! She carried this art form with her wherever she landed throughout life. In every teaching situation, she brought eurythmy, and her Antioch students remember those times vividly. Her own movement moved others. Her daughter Alice, and Alice’s childhood friend Christina Root, recall watching their mothers Ann and Nancy perform eurythmy at the Threefold Auditorium in complete awe of the beauty they created in their colored eurythmy silks.

Over Ann’s shoulder was ever an invisible quiver of beautifully-colored arrows, ready to find their mark wherever she planted herself in the service of anthroposophy. They unerringly landed at the point where the task was

to initiate a new impulse—those sparks from the future which spoke so strongly to her threefold self—her heart, her thoughts, her will. She was an initiator, one of those of whom Rudolf Steiner spoke: that over her destiny in golden letters was written, Be a person of initiative

These arrows first took Ann to Wilton, NH, with her husband Swain, then a teacher at High Mowing School, to create first a Waldorf kindergarten. When Beulah Emmet, the founder of High Mowing rejected Ann’s request to create a kindergarten there, especially for the children of the faculty, Ann forged ahead to create it on her own. In 1972, the Pine Hill Waldorf School opened its doors in a small building in Wilton Center owned by local lawyer (and Pine Hill board member) Charles Sullivan. Two years later the school, growing rapidly and attracting dedicated young teachers, bought an old New England farmhouse at the end of the Bennington Battle Trail and soon extended from K-8th grades.

In 1974 Ann was the faculty chair, third grade class teacher, a board member, and taught eurythmy to the early childhood students. Of course, she was also a full-time mother to her two teenage daughters! In the mid 1970’s Ann left active class teaching and was for a time at the Kimberton Waldorf School in PA. By 1984 Ann and Swain were back in Wilton building a home on Curtis Farm Road. The Pine Hill faculty, meanwhile, assisted by regular visits from Alan and Mary Howard, began to offer a teacher training program in conjunction with nearby Antioch College.

After the site burned in 1983, land was purchased on Abbot Hill and the current building was built. Financing was orchestrated by the Rudolf Steiner Foundation and Siegfried Finser, and this collaboration marked the beginning of a national profile for the foundation.

When Antioch New England’s nascent Waldorf teacher education program needed its second director in the 1985 school year, Ann followed that arrow to continue to build up this young seedling. She remained until 1991, when a call from friend and colleague Betty Staley released a fresh arrow which lead her to Milwaukee to be program implementer for the Urban Waldorf School, the first public Waldorf school in the country. From 1991 to 1993, Ann oversaw the Waldorf training of the founding

teachers who came from the local public school district and a few Waldorf schools. She also oversaw program development for the school, a 96% African-American student body in Milwaukee’s poorest neighborhood. In 1993 a change in funding left Ann a difficult choice: leave Milwaukee (she and Swain had recently bought a house) or go back into the classroom. So she became a kindergarten teacher again at age 61. It was a very trying year. One of her students was the most difficult she had ever encountered, and the assistant assigned her offered little cooperation or support. The stress began to affect her health.

Others, one of whom was Mark Birdsall, came to carry on the next phase of work, and Ann returned to Antioch in 1994. That fledgling program was ready to welcome its second faculty member and Ann joined Torin Finser who had become program director after Ann left for Milwaukee. During these second Antioch years she became a founding board member of what became Sophia’s Hearth Family Center. Together with Rena Osmer, Susan Weber, and others, a new impulse was seeded and germinating, first at Antioch through a new design of its early childhood teacher education program, and later on its own. The recognition, revolutionary at the time, was that Waldorf education had a tremendous contribution to offer to the child in the first three years. It became the first program in the United States to prepare teachers for this new work with parents and very young children.

In 1998, Ann stepped back from her Antioch responsibilities, and she and Swain traveled to Sedona, Arizona, where they pondered the possibility of retiring. But work again called and for two years she was a part of “Pine Hill West” where numerous former Pine Hill teachers came to Sedona to support the fledgling school there. Ann helped facilitate the birth and growth of the Red Rock Waldorf Teacher Education program with Merril Badger and others in connection with the Sedona and Flagstaff schools. Asked to come to the Moraine Farm Waldorf School (then Cape Ann) in 2001, Ann moved to Gloucester on the Massachusetts north shore to help build up the early childhood programs there.

At age 72, Ann returned with Swain to her roots in Spring Valley to become members at the Fellowship

Community. But it was too soon for Ann to retire; her need to stay active out in the world brought her to Maine with her daughter Alice who was finishing her Artistic Speech training there. Though Swain had stayed at the Fellowship, the separation was too difficult and in 2004 he joined Ann and Alice in Brunswick for the next year.

Ann and Swain’s next move took them to Keene, NH, to help develop an initiative inspired by the Fellowship Community. Ann joined groups both in Wilton and in the Ghent, NY, area. The latter culminated in the Camphill Ghent Community, a setting for older adults inspired especially by the presence of the arts.

In 2007 the Housatonic Valley Waldorf School in Connecticut asked her to come develop its college of teachers. While serving this community that lovingly surrounded her efforts, Ann suffered from Bell’s Palsy, perhaps a sign at age 75 to slow down? But that was never Ann’s way. There were not only these golden arrows of initiative living in Ann’s soul, but also some inborn restlessness, a challenge to find comfort in her earthly dwellings. When I (Susan Weber) first met Ann in 1986, she and Swain were living in the house they had just completed in Wilton NH, planning to spend the rest of their days there. How surprised I was to hear that no, after the shortest of years, they were on the move.

During that first year in Milwaukee, Anne first, then later with Swain, moved seven times! Moving boxes were always permanently labeled, ready for a change.

Over the last years of her life, Ann wrote poems and recorded her thoughts in notebooks or on slips of paper. One poem was “A Loose Leaf.” I ponder this title so descriptive of her life especially in the later years when all the initiatives were completed. Perhaps it was now a time of waiting or feeling herself a “loose leaf” carried by a changeable wind, rather than the clear path of the arrow.

Did she ever really find peace in an earthly abode? In her notes and musings after the death of her beloved, best friend, confidant, comforter, lover, and husband Swain, the answer is probably not. Still mourning his death, Ann continued to seek kindred souls with whom she could confide and share insights. In her 82nd year, she returned

to the Fellowship Community; even then, her thoughts were of service, how to be “useful” in that community. At 85, when her short-term memory began to fade, it became difficult for her to express her thoughts clearly. But her senses were taking in everything around her in minute detail. Always perceptive and acutely aware of the inner life of others, she suffered or was lifted up by the thoughts of those around her. Her strong moral backbone seemed always to guide her to seek the very essence or kernel of truth in everything that she did in life.

Ann not only inspired the creation of many outer shells for Waldorf initiatives, her inner life was ever actively seeking in the house of her spirit. She was a lover of the sun, basking in its warmth and light until her death. In the early years, wherever she lived, she created beautiful gardens full of color and scent and her family and friends remember her excellent cooking and her love and enjoyment in being with friends and family.

In the last days of her life, Ann was surrounded by pictures of her family, and the ever-present copy of Rudolf Steiner’s How to Know Higher Worlds, offering solace, courage, and guidance for Ann’s striving. I am reminded of the Winged Victory of Samothrace, with wings flowing behind the upright torso, carrying Ann upward to the world of the spirit.

To us it is given, At no stage ever to restThey live and they strive, The active human beings, From life unto life – as plants grow, From springtime to springtime, Ever aloft!

Through error upward to Truth

Through fetters upward to Freedom, Through illness and Death

Upward – to beauty, to health, And to life.

—Rudolf Steiner

Elizabeth “Beth” Wieting

June 10, 1942–July 16, 2019

Eulogy by Aaron Wieting

One of the things I miss most about my mother was her ability to bring people together. She walked in many circles and I especially remember her holiday parties where these circles intersected. Her holiday parties were where she invited various interesting and intelligent people such as neighbors, parents of my childhood friends, Anthopops, people from the Biodynamic Association, colleagues, and her future daughter-in-law and mother of her grandsons. Mom very much enjoyed bringing these people together who might otherwise never have met, and seeing what sort of conversations might unfold, and what new connections and friendships might be made.

Many of you her know her through her involvement in the Anthroposophical Society, I was asked to talk a little about some of mom’s history and her life outside of the Society. Elizabeth Churchill Taft was born on June 10, 1942 in Richmond, VA, to Robert W. Taft and Ruby Mae Churchill. Beth came from an old New England family, her ancestor Robert Taft and his three brothers came from England in the mid-1600s. Two very distant relatives were President William Howard Taft and Senator Robert Taft of Ohio who ran against Eisenhower for the Republican presidential nomination in 1952.

Betsy and her younger sister Marjorie grew up in semi-rural Massachusetts and were around farms and animals from a very early age. She told me many stories of her enormous Great Dane Brindy, and her mother’s horse Queenie, a white quarterhorse with blue eyes. Betsy and Marjorie’s mother Ruby taught them both everything about horseback riding from grooming her, feeding her grains and even changing the stall, putting in new hay. Betsy and Marjorie also had bantam chickens as pets, and Betsy decided she would try to train some of the hens to walk along a “high wire” of sorts, guiding each hen along with a dowel stick. She succeeded, and exercising her natural instinct as a performer would put on shows or circuses for the local neighborhood children.

Betsy loved going fishing, enthusiastically accompanying her father on trips out on Lake Willoughby for bass or Lake Damariscotta in the neighboring state of Maine. By high school Betsy would go with her father and his buddies on their annual fishing trip up in Quebec to a remote lodge that could only be reached by plane. Her father came back praising how Betsy outfished all the

grown men and was an ace at the sport.

There were four high schools in downtown Springfield where everyone from the suburbs would go, choosing each one for what their interests were (business, technology & engineering, a trade or college). Classical and Technical high schools were where everyone who was college-bound went, with Classical being the most rigorous. Beth graduated Summa Cum Laude from Classical High School in Springfield, MA, 1960, as a straight-A student and near perfect SATs with no preparation, and editorin-chief of the Classical Recorder high school newspaper. Beth was a superb piano player practicing up to five hours per day, and was accepted into the private Tuesday Morning Club where student musicians would give solo recitals. Classical is the same high school that Theodor Geisel, known as Dr Seuss, graduated from in 1920.

In 1960, Beth travelled to the Middle East and Europe on a summer-long trip with her best friend Susan and her family, stopping in Egypt, the United Arab Republic, Jordan, Syria, Israel, and Lebanon. Susan’s father was head of the Arab American League and the trip included a private dinner with King Hussein of Jordan as well as visits to Palestinian refugee camps. It had a profound effect on her regarding spirituality, human rights, women’s rights, her place in the world and missions in life.

Beth had the courage to pursue her dreams. Going to Radcliffe was her dream, but her guidance counselor said, “You’ll never get into Radcliffe and don’t even think of applying early decision.” Beth was easily accepted with a “full ride” based on merit & financial need. She spent her junior year studying French in Aix-En-Provence, France, and graduated magna cum laude with a degree in Romance Languages and Literatures. Lady Bird Johnson was the commencement speaker, the first person from outside Radcliffe to give a commencement address.

At Radcliffe, Beth was working in a café in Cambridge when she was introduced to her future husband Tom Wieting. Beth came to Oregon after Tom received a teaching position at Reed College and she initially taught at Milwaukie High School before she and Tom were married and had their only child, myself, in 1967. Beth was largely a stay-at-home mom as she believed in being present during early childhood development, but was also a very active gardener. She was also active in environmental issues and lobbied the Oregon legislature on the bottle bill and vehicle emission testing, and testified on pesticide use in agriculture before the California State Legislature. During this time, she also studied and received a

master’s degree in Comparative English Literature from Portland State University. She also taught music at Reed College for a few years where she made some deep & lasting friendships that she maintained for the rest of her life.

The 1970s were when Beth became very active in organic gardening, providing extensive technical assistance on biodynamic methods to small organic farms in the Willamette Valley that were just starting up. This is also when she became active in the Anthroposophical Society.

I have numerous wonderful memories from this period. Mom believed in exposing children to the outdoors and this involved numerous beach trips and hikes in the Columbia Gorge, and passing on her father’s interest in fishing while teaching me to fish for trout in the Columbia Gorge and bass at Tenmile Lakes near the Central Oregon Coast. We also enjoyed the classic American “road trip” driving back to Massachusetts while my father worked on his doctorate at Harvard. With summers off, there were many camping trips around the Pacific Northwest. I remember some rough camping in the early days near Sumpter in NE Oregon and sweeping up pine needles to make a bed covered with plastic, and then being reminded the next morning not to move too quickly just in case a rattlesnake might have snuck into my sleeping bag in the middle of the night. Later my mother took my high school friends and me on backpacking trips in the Columbia Gorge where we fed ourselves by catching rainbow trout along the way.

Beth went back to teaching in 1983 at David Douglas High School and taught through 2004. She taught English, Literature, French, German, Latin, and Humanities. She was well-loved by her students, many of whom stayed in contact with her after graduating; she was even invited to some former students’ weddings. One student, a photographer, wrote on the back of a photo he took of her: Mrs. Wieting, using literature and music you’ve shown students how to perceive our environment and the people around us. Using your voice as your tool, you explained the concepts of humanity (life). My camera is my tool, looking into a mirror and seeing your reflection is just like seeing a portrait. A picture captures a moment. This picture shows how you are seen by students. You have many admirable qualities. It’s nice to see that students have someone to look up to. A cherished friendship, Kip Nguyen.

Beth retired in 2004 due to health problems; in 2005 she started to lose feeling in her legs while studying at the Goetheanum in Switzerland, and returned to the US to

seek medical attention. Within nine hours after arriving in the US, she was in surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from her spine that was pushing up against her spinal cord. The oncologist stated she had been within 24 hours to a week of losing the ability to walk. She had extensive physical therapy and was given five years to live; she defied the odds as usual, living fourteen years and having the opportunity to get to know her grandsons, Saul and Reunan, born in 2008 and 2011 respectively.

One of Beth’s most appreciated accomplishments was the Festival Newsletter she self-published from 2007 to 2018. She received thousands of cards and letters thanking her. Her last newsletters she sent from the memory care facility where she spent her final seventeen months. Even in dementia, she continued to give back by giving piano concerts for the other residents and insuring that the free-range chickens at Oatfield Estates were well-fed.

Beth’s sister Marjorie describes Beth as a leader who was strong in a quiet way, never seeking to draw attention to herself, but just to do good, to do what was right. Some things I have appreciated most from my mother are the values instilled in me that I hope to pass on to our children: don’t pass judgement; always put yourself in other people’s shoes; don’t elevate yourself by tearing others down; be kinder than necessary for everyone is fighting some sort of battle. And elbows off the table, don’t talk with your mouth full, sit up straight, don’t wolf your food down, and so on and so forth. Of course, one of the most important lessons she taught me is that food quality is paramount, there is no substitute for quality food.

So as I and my family begin the next phase of our lives, I hope to honor her memory by meeting more new and interesting people and finding ways to bring them together. Thank you.

“Dear Anthroposophical Self”

Because, in what you’re about to read, I’m in fact talking to myself, I have no problem asking you to take what I’m about to say not only the right way but also a wee bit the wrong way, so that you have just the very slightest urge to dismiss it. I want to get your blood not so much boiling but simmering. For it’s about time our blood was more than the lukewarm of a too-often spiritually bypassing and self-satisfied equanimity. Think of this as a test of our anthroposophical fragility in the Age of Covid-19 and George Floyd’s murder. Anthroposophical Self, you have needed to hear this for a long time. This is the message of a sort of “still small voice” that has finally resorted to a megaphone because for decades it has been mostly ignored.

From this moment on, I beg you to stop treating anthroposophy as a reenactment society with a far-too-often slavish fidelity to the past. A living tradition is good, semi-conscious reiteration not so much. Risk doing art besides veil painting and eurythmy (stand-ins for all traditional anthroposophical arts) or try innovating them; risk choosing or creating new aesthetics and fonts for your publications; risk other spiritual traditions, hip hop, psychedelics, micro-dosing atavistic clairvoyance, Foucault, and avenues without authorized “indications.” A bit of hybridity will not pollute! There are poets besides Mary Oliver and Novalis, subtle organismic thinkers besides Goethe, and thinkers besides subtle organismic thinkers, as well as epistemically significant ways of relating to the world besides thinking. Doing the Six Basic Exercises and Eightfold Path are no guarantees against being a racist, sexist, pedantic, elitist, and provincial blowhard. Steiner will not answer all your questions. A million Steiners won’t either. Imagine if anthroposophy were the only culture in the world, a hegemony of anthroposophy! It would be an impoverishment of what we have now, as difficult as now is. Let that sink in, Anthroposophical Self. It would be an impoverishment.

As you no doubt know, anthroposophical selves like to speak of the “being of anthroposophy.” What sort of being is this? Is this being relational, open, empathetic, wise, and willing to be moved? Is this being really interested in the lives of others or does this being instead like to explain others to themselves, as they really are in their spiritual essence, with anthroposophical concepts,

as though such concepts are the last best word on everything? This is not a dying to self that allows an awakening in the other; this is a colonization of diverse experience by spiritual science, or, more accurately, spiritual scientism. I want the “being of anthroposophy” to be a being in a community of beings, helping that community flourish, not a being who lives, like the Essenes as Steiner characterizes them in The Fifth Gospel , a life apart and of dubious ethical value.

Where, Anthroposophical Self, are the black anthroposophical feminists; the anthroposophical queer, neuroqueer, and critical theorists; the anthroposophical sanestream dogma critiquers; the anthroposophical anti-racist activists who bravely challenge racism in anthroposophy and in the world; the anthroposophical sex-positive, sexworker intellectuals afraid of no taboo subject? If they are out there, and let’s hope for anthroposophy’s sake they are, we have not centered them enough. We again and again forget or sanitize or uncritically laud Steiner’s radical, beautiful, spiritual approach to life. Anthroposophy, to be anything of value in the future, must live up to its birthright and become queerer and queerer, developing ever newer and more subtle interpretive moral imaginations and intuitions, not to mention, actions and ways of being.

Any philosophy worth anything must have its own dissolution baked into its DNA—anthroposophy, in my experience and when rightly understood, is such a philosophy. Put another way, a philosophy worth anything should be like a map that is designed precisely so that you’ll forget about it because the territory it has led you to is far more interesting, nuanced, unmappable, and surprising. Put still another way, if anthroposophy were the Goetheanum, it would be more scaffold than Taj Mahal. And that’s exactly what we’re looking for, Anthroposophical Self, still other ways of being human in a world and cosmos responsive to and calling for our creative participation.

Warmly, Your Other Anthroposophical Self

Andrew Sullivan (sullivan.ap@gmail.com) is a Waldorf graduate, high school teacher at his alma mater, the Sacramento Waldorf School, and co-leader of the teacher education program. A lapsed member of the Society, he has had a continuing interest in Steiner’s work mostly in the areas of epistemology, spiritual practice, and esoteric Christianity. He is also in the middle of a Doctoral program in Philosophy and Religion at California Institute of Integral Studies.

Becoming the Archangel Michael’s Companions: Rudolf Steiner’s Challenge to the Younger Generation (CW 217)

It’s been fifteen years since the first volumes of The Collected Works of Rudolf Steiner in English appeared in the summer of 2006. With help from Rudolf Steiner Press in England, we’ll soon reach the milestone of having brought out one hundred titles in this series, with many more to come.

But it is not the quantity of volumes that matters most, just as the number of original written works and superabundant lectures of Steiner which make up the series were not the point, but rather the fact that each book and lecture course were fresh attempts to convey or reconvey, articulate or articulate anew, the knowledge, insight, tools, perspectives, he saw as not only “valuable” but also necessary for humankind, individually and as a whole, to navigate the trials of the twentieth century and beyond, and to continue evolving. We share this view—it is the reason SteinerBooks exists, and the inspiration for this ambitious project to make all of Steiner’s work available in the English language, with the care and attention to detail it deserves, now and in (and for) the future.

Each book in this series is a doorway, potentially, a true entry point, spiritually, not only for understanding what Steiner had to say on a given subject, interesting and useful or profound or life-changing as that may prove to be for someone, but a step toward finding or becoming or realizing oneself—the I that I alone can be—which is the first step toward healing, the first step toward right action, the first step toward peace and understanding and forgiveness. As publishers of this series (door makers, if you will), we merely make the “doors” out of existing materials (with care of language and meaning and presentation) and make it known that we have done so. If you’d like to know more about this project or feel called to help in some way, please do reach out, anytime.

THE COLLECTED WORKS OF RUDOLF STEINER

What the human being carries in his head will in time be lost. But what he receives into his heart, the heart preserves and carries into all spheres of activity in which man is involved.

Emerge with us!

Applied Anthroposophy is a transformative immersion in the core wisdom of anthroposophy and its application in today’s world. Meeting on Zoom from Fall 2021 through Spring 2022, the online course unfolds through four themes: Freedom, Love, Initiative, and Service.

Leading Thoughts keynote presentations weave with individual research and artistic work and small group conversation in this pioneering course.

Please explore at appliedanthroposophy.org for the latest information on the faculty, format, schedule, cost, and other frequently asked questions.

Get in touch: emerge@appliedanthroposophy.org

“The butterfly you see is created out of light, but light had to first take up matter, form a case and be turned into threads inside the Chrysalis….”

Rudolf Steiner, October 8 1923

Artwork: Christopher Scappaticci