The Categories of Aristotle

Does one have to be a philosopher of great erudition to understand Aristotle’s gift to humanity – his Categories? Perhaps, yes! However, let us explore a path out of intellectual confinement to an experience of expansion supported by eurythmy.

A lecture and workshop given by Claudia Fontana, October 2022 Jointly sponsored by the Threefold Branch and Eurythmy Spring Valley

Review by Nadya Thompson

Behold the Sun at the midnight hour; Build with stones in the lifeless ground. Thus in decay and in the night of Death Find Creation’s new beginning, young morning’s strength. Glory in the heights the eternal Word of Gods; Shelter in the depths the Powers of Peace. In darkness dwelling, create a Sun; In matter weaving, know spiritual joy!

Rudolf Steiner

“Behold the sun at the midnight hour,” a verse by Rudolf Steiner, set the mood for our time together with Claudia. She is a fascinating, engaging artist with a fine sense of humor. As a fourth-year eurythmy student, I was deeply touched by her vivid presentation.

The theme of the categories of Aristotle was very well presented. Aristotle is the father of logic. His work on categories brings structure into the sentence as we know it; his point of departure was the experience. To have such an experience, the soul has to be led out of imprisonment of the physical body. Aristotle received his knowledge in the Mystery Center through intuition imparted to him from the spiritual hierarchies.

Through a carefully constructed sentence, Claudia led the audience through a discovery of the ten categories. She would ask us: what is the substance of the sentence? What is its orientation? And we were able to explore together the meaning of the categories. The last category is suffering, which is the mystery of evil. Can I bear it? Can I overcome darkness that is in me?

Broadly stated, this necessary darkening aspect in human evolution began with Aristotle and ended with Kali Yuga. I think of it as a time of contraction. Now our task, as humanity, is to expand. Then Claudia began to speak of the artistic aspect of eurythmy, which leads to an expansion of language.

Claudia presented excerpts of poems for each of the twelve consonants of the Evolutionary Sequence. She spoke these by heart. In poetry, we are lifted into another level of consciousness.

The next day in the workshop, we explored these twelve consonants in eurythmy with this expansion in mind. She led us through an artistic exploration of these twelve speech sounds of the Evolutionary Sequence.

Claudia, an experienced eurythmist who has taught all levels in the United States, Europe, Thailand, Malaysia, and China, shared with us an alphabet sequence the way she presents it to children moving along the circle with piano music. She led us through an artistic exploration of the twelve speech sounds of the Evolutionary Sequence. What is ‘B’, as it protects and surrounds? She spoke of ‘M’ as tasting and ‘D’ as blessing. ‘R’ moves the air; ‘R’ storms can happen not only in nature, but also in our thoughts. ‘Ch’ lives in light imbued air. Air is filled with the effects of our thoughts, shaped through our movements, sculpted by our speech.

Through eurythmy we can learn to truly experience the essence of the sounds of speech. With her delicate guidance we tried to experience through gesture and movement that which is inherent in each speech sound. The following is an example of the imaginations that Claudia gave us to better know ‘L’ through eurythmy.

‘L’ is the sound of ever-blooming unfolding life. It is the destiny of the soul to remain young. Only on earth do we grow old. The source of life is in the ‘L’. The human being is like a cathedral built over a spring; I can discover huge vaults of space, inner and outer, and the spring of blossoming life and revelation. In the body there is rest. In the blood there is constant movement and in the movement lives the ‘I’. The physical home of the ‘I’ is in the blood. That which is to come, rests on that which was….metamorphosis.

All of us moved a simple form along the circle experiencing the mystery of the L as Claudia spoke these enchanting lines by David Richards…

The Lily is a flower

The f lower is a star

The star is a rose.

I left the workshop uplifted, inspired, and encouraged to seek meaningful experience in every eurythmy gesture and to make sense of everything I do eurythmically. We have eurythmy that Rudolf Steiner gifted us and we, eurythmists, can find the courage to help others expand their conceptual understanding.