have come to see things in reverse—they seek knowledge where it can only be found in name—or have come to not see things at all. The nature of the beast of occult control is that we no longer know what is true and what is not. That was the dismay that led Steiner to say after the fire, Where should the modern human being now go? 2 This hundred-year commemoration—if it is not to pass us by as any other public relations opportunity amid calls for renewal, etc. ad infinitum—has to be a call to discernment. The burning of the First Goetheanum led the anthroposophical endeavor out over the Christmas Conference and into the world. Anthroposophy at present lingers largely in a rather passive and sentimental form. If the hundred-year mark means anything, its meaning would be to see where ghosts can be laid to rest (anthroposophy, as if stuck in a 2 Words stated by Rudolf Steiner in devastation after the fire.
graveyard, needs to be awoken like a sleeping beauty from enchantment)—and to be brave, to seek out those with whom we can work to further develop living spiritual work, and to leave the archival and proselytizing work for those who perhaps need it more in this life. Perhaps we might think of the butterfly meditation3 that Steiner gave shortly after the fire, and transform it dynamically so as to imagine the new. After the chrysalis, over the tragic ruins, out from the fire arises a phoenix. Richard Cooper was born in the United Kingdom, and later studied history, social work, and psychology. He moved to Switzerland in 2002, and continued anthroposophical study in fine art, philosophy, poetry, eurythmy, and geopolitics. In 2023, together with The First Class Esoteric Youth Circle of 12 (with an initiative named Anthroposophicum), he started an online social initiative for meditation and anthroposophical research (with participants from Ukraine, Europe, and the United States). 3 The “Falter” Meditation in German. See Freemasonry and Ritual Work (SteinerBooks, 2007), GA 265.
A Light That Has Changed the World Benjamin Cherry I wish to thank the carriers of this initiative for addressing their questions to our feelings, for through this, doors can open that might otherwise remain closed. It even makes it possible to ask ourselves, in deep humility, how it might have been for Rudolf Steiner himself on that intimate level of his own being, as he carried out the momentous decision to unite his destiny with that of the world community he was founding. And in daring to sense this, I feel I am connecting more truthfully with my own feelings, too. Readers who have worked with the exercises in the fourth chapter of Theosophy will know that it is possible gradually to transform our feelings, which are usually related to ourselves, into organs of perception in the service of others. What a truly noble picture arises when I contemplate Rudolf Steiner himself, using that holy organ of perception as a way of connecting with the hearts of those who were present, during that freezing mid-winter gathering near the ruins of the First Goetheanum, from Christmas Eve 1923 until New Year’s morning 1924.
Through this Deed of founding the World Anthroposophical Society as a global community of free individuals and taking on its leadership, Rudolf Steiner carried out, as I feel it, a true Christ Deed. On the one hand, this giving up of his own freedom was a spiritual precondition, making it possible for what was dying to be born anew; but on the other hand, it was a completely free deed, taken out of love for the action. Through it, he united his destiny with all of us who are connected in our hearts with the ideals of this world community. Free deeds add something to world reality that was not there before. They are Acts of Creation. And a deed of this magnitude, carried out in the presence of the whole spiritual world up to the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, must imprint itself with very great power into the imperishable record of human actions. It changes World Karma, even if only very few human beings are aware of it. Especially must this be so in the case of a high initiate who knew that his own health and well-being would depend, from now on, on the social and spiritual health december 2023 • 73
