being human (Evolving News) Summer 2009

News for Members

& Friends

the crossroads that is “threefold”

Threefold memorabilia, clockwise from top: the farm, pond, main house, Ralph Courtney, summer school type and booklet, local currency, students

summer-fall 2009 a quarterly publication of the anthroposophical society in america including the rudolf steiner library newsletter

Waldorf Education Anthroposophy the Arts

Come study on 140 beautiful acres just 40 minutes from New York City in a community of institutions and initiatives centered on promoting spiritual values in all aspects of human life since 1926. New

Notes from the Editor

News of the passing of Ernst Katz came just as this third evolving edition of your News was finally ready for the printer. I was in Ann Arbor two weeks ago and joined the Wednesday night study group, which Dr. Katz attended; and we talked for an hour afterwards. His mind was partly on the wonderful book of Ann Arbor Festival Plays (see page 28) created by his late wife Katherine, particularly the Christmas play which he felt should replace the Oberufer Three Kings Play, at least in the English-speaking world. And he asked that, when the time came, we print only the brief obituary for him that he sent a few days later. It is on page 45, and the image below, accompanying names of members who have died, was taken in the arboretum near his home and our society headquarters. We are all significantly in debt to Ernst Katz, but we will surely meet him again.

This issue will bring many memories. Along with those of Dr. Katz, we have an extended look back at our anthroposophical center in “Spring Valley” (actually Chestnut Ridge, New York) and at the Threefold Farm which is now the Threefold Educational Center, flanked, of course, by several other leading institutions, on Hungry Hollow Road. Bill Day of the center wrote the main text and organized all the pictures, in the article and on the front and back covers. And Kevin Dann kindly permitted us to take a brief excerpt from his 2000 book, Across the Great Barrier Divide, where he sets the early work at Threefold in contrast to mainstream naturalists’ work nearby. By happy coincidence, Torin Finser’s letter on page 33 involves a walk through the same memory landscape.

BOOKS ON Waldorf Education, Anthroposophy, Parenting Gardening, Art, Math, Medicine, Science, and More!

BOOKS FOR Children, Young Adults, Parents, Teachers GREAT FINDS! Gifts, Art Prints, Stationery, Postcards, Musical Instruments

Letters have started to flow (pp. 4-6), and I hope you will pause to read them. Several respond to items in our E-News, including a virtual short essay on a musical topic by Beth Usher. The final letter from Ben Bingham engages last issue’s article on the global “credit crunch” by Christopher Houghton Budd. More letters may flow in response to William Bento’s review (p. 17) of Joel Wendt’s American Anthroposophy, particularly with Joel’s concern with “the almost universal assumption that a reading of a Steiner text provides knowledge” as its primary purpose—and with his association of this issue with Sergei Prokofieff and his admirers. I too admire Prokofieff and his work, and his devotion to the person of Rudolf Steiner seems to me, a one-time student of things Russian, not idolatry but a true expression of a Russian mood of soul. I also recognize the grave if subtle danger Joel is pointing to, and hope that we can give it due consideration.

This brings me to an offer made in the July E-News. More good articles arrive than we can afford to print, and one came in January which I wanted very much to publish: “Spiritual Beings Dwell in the Ground of Propositions,” by Scott Hicks, a member of the society and school who lives in Pennsylvania. Scott’s title speaks directly to the point just mentioned, that reading Steiner is actually an opportunity to be introduced to beings, not just to gather reports. Would you care to read this article? Please go to anthroposophy.org, where we will be posting this and other articles for download when we haven’t space to print them. If you lack internet access, ask a friend to print it out, or call us.

— John Beck, Editor, Evolving News for Members & Friends

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Would you like to support this publication and at the same time make your service or product known to our thoughtful readers? Call soon to reserve space in the next issue; the ad file itself is due October 5th. The issue will be delivered in November and would be a great time for you to offer art works, books, crafts and children’s gifts for the holiday season; invite new friends to your group, school or branch’s holiday events; start people planning for conferences, summer travel and education; promote a service, store, professional practice, publication, or website; or offer membership and invite support for an organization. Again, please call or email us to get started.

Letters to the Editor

Time to be heard...

Thank you for your article “Communicating Anthroposophy: The social question.” I agree that it is time to be heard, to share the good news—but how do you describe something so profound? I propose that you invite people to share successes they have had in telling others.

At the Cedar Springs Waldorf school in Placerville, CA, I realized how a Waldorf community can be an example of the healing social life, and I was inspired to collect stories of positive change, even transformation, that families have experienced as a result of their contact with Waldorf education. I am hoping these stories of positive change will inspire others to investigate Waldorf education and anthroposophy.

A mother from Kenya told how a Waldorf school had such a positive influence on her children that she felt inspired to become a teacher. A Pakistani mother told me about finding a Waldorf school near her home and the gratitude she feels that her five year old son is there. She described the parallels between Waldorf education and Islam. She too wants to become a Waldorf teacher. I am sure that each school around the world has similar stories told by families who have experienced positive change. My goal is to share with others about the healing and inspiration that is possible.

Bob Hickman, Fair Oaks, CA

Philippine spirituality...

The [E-News] article “Perlas Runs for Philippines Presidency” contained the line: “Philippine people have been known for a special spirituality. . .” I’m wondering about the origin of this statement, and what it actually refers to. One of the refreshing things about the new publication is that is free of most of the anthroposophical jargon that made reading earlier publications so

tedious, especially if one wanted to share an article with someone perhaps interested in Steiner but still exploring. The statement above has the quality I would avoid sharing with interested friends, but I’m keeping an open mind, and would like to understand the statement better.

Darryl Centers Editor’s Reply:

The comment about Philippine spirituality was anecdotal, which should have been stated. Wikipedia’s “Religion in the Philippines” confirms this impression, however, stating that “Religion holds a central place in the life of the majority of Filipinos...not as an abstract belief system, but rather as a host of experiences... that provide continuity in life, cohesion in the community, and moral purpose for existence.... Christianity and Islam have been superimposed on ancient traditions and acculturated. The unique religious blends that have resulted, when combined with the strong personal faith of Filipinos, have given rise to numerous and diverse revivalist movements.... [I]n the intensely personalistic Philippine religious context, they have not been aberrations so much as extreme examples of how religion retains its central role in society.”

Copland’s Spring

Aaron Copland received a Pulitzer Prize for Appalachian Spring the same week as Victory in Europe Day, May 8, 1945. The piece is a ballet score, commissioned by Martha Graham “to create a mythic picture of life on the American frontier.” The title comes from the section ‘The Dance’ in Hart Crane’s The Bridge. One of Graham’s male leads, Merce Cunningham, created the role of the Revivalist.

According to John Adams, who, as a boy, watched Copland conduct the piece at Tanglewood, “Copland’s orchestral works… are typical of the American grain.” Our high school music director brought in Appalachian Spring one day and we fell in love with it. A couple of years later, Copland with his entourage piled into an Ann Arbor coffee shop en route to the airport and I, a young political science major earning college money, had the honor of serving him a hamburger. Aaron Copland was one of my musical heroes.

Imagine the scales falling from my eyes while reading in Alex Ross’ The Rest is Noise–Listening to the Twentieth Century, that my hero was involved in the parent organization for the Congress of American-Soviet Friendship, had delivered a speech to a rally of Communist farmers, and played an especially prominent role in the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. “Most of the attendees,” writes Ross, “did not know to what extent the event had been engineered by Soviet propagandists, who were under the aegis of the Cominform organization.” [Ross, p. 407] The FBI subsequently opened a file on Copland, leading to an investigation by Joe McCarthy’s senate subcommittee.

The chord described in the NPR article [“Aaron Copland’s American Vision,” npr.org , July 1, 2009, cited in the July 2009 E-News], is, however, unarguably and independently heavenly. Anthroposophists can for many reasons become viscerally interested in this and other chords, with or without political overtones. One of my favorites (see first bar below) is the downbeat of measure 69 in Johannes Brahms’ Intermezzo, Opus 118, No. 6 (1893). [Listen online: youtube.com/watch?v=crGp-CwTmYY]

This chord looks forward, but it also looks back, poised for a moment in freedom to either evolve or fall back into old forms. The eurythmy form for this piece was drawn by Rudolf Steiner soon after the 1923 Christmas Conference, a moment when the Society itself was poised to either evolve or fall back into old forms. The Intermezzo goes forward through a terrific, dissonant ‘ego struggle’ four bars later, before peacefully rising through the arpeggiated e flat minor chord to the octave in measure 85 to end. Stunning as this is for us, NPR probably would not make it headline news.

Anthroposophical headlines could draw our musical attention to the thoughts at the end of Rudolf Steiner’s Torquay lecture series, Initiate Consciousness— True and False Paths in Spiritual Investigation, No. 243. “If music allows itself to be inspired by spiritual science, it will find ways of expressing the Christ Impulse, for it will reveal purely artistically and intuitively how the Christ Impulse in the cosmos and the Earth can be awakened symphonically in tones.”

Musicians in the anthroposophic stream are currently working with these thoughts. Let’s listen for the next thousand years of music in human evolution to find where this theme leads.

Beth Usher Austin, Texas Personals?

I appreciate E-News very much. I’ve been a member since 1974. Now widowed, I wonder if E-News might consider an ads section for jobs and for personals. As an older woman, who doesn’t have retirement knitted together, who never had a career (except raising children and working in a Waldorf school office); who has energy, health, enthusiasm, untapped intelligence, is willing to move, and needs a living wage—I’d enjoy knowing if jobs are available in businesses where one or two others are also anthroposophists. Waldorf jobs are findable at waldorfteachers.com. I’m also interested in other businesses or possibilities. I’d like

to find connections. Or, perhaps there could be a space where I could advertise myself to see if some business across the country would like to interview me.

And then, personals—it is difficult to find connections with people who share common ground around spirituality, in particular, anthroposophy.

Am I the first person asking about this? I’m pretty sure German anthroposophical papers had/have these columns. What are your suggestions?

Name Withheld

Editor’s reply:

Good questions, and thank you for asking. There is a job board at our site, anthroposophy. org (linked at the bottom of the main page). It is free to use; we will promote it more. And we could add classified ads to this publication.

Personals? We would like to hear readers’ thoughts about that. Write by email or post to the addresses given below.

Solving an Ego Problem

“Ego,” the Greek word for ‘I,’ has gradually taken on negative connotations in English usage. Today, “ego” commonly means a puffed-up ‘I.’ So it is encouraging to see “Ich” increasingly translated as ‘I’ in Steiner’s work, and more and more to hear the unegotistical self called the ‘I.’

William Lindeman

Recent News from China (sent to NC friends)

Facebook is blocked at the moment as are numerous sites. Consider what this it is like to have others deciding for you what information is suitable for you. Then imagine: I am not sure if you have received my email unless you reply. Working in

China under these conditions is a difficult and lonely experience. At times, the work seems a drop in a vast ocean of confusion.

This week [July 13] I have contemplated this a great deal. Something at the house made me feel every small effort does help: I planted a few flowers at my doorway which I share with maybe thirty others in a complex. It has been fascinating to see people pause to look at the beauty; some have watered and weeded the area, too. The little bit of care for life gave others a chance....

You may wonder why I would be seeking funds for this upcoming meditation and biodynamic retreat. The recent Anthroposophical and Waldorf Regional conference in Manila was very well attended by mainland Chinese; their interest and drive to learn is quite amazing. Ben Cherry, one of two teachers who introduced Waldorf education into China, will be teaching. We will use biodynamic preparations made at Alkana, the silk worm farm outside Chengdu.

The workshop is an opportunity for some farmers and support people, who are helping link farmers to the buyers, to study alongside teachers and parents. Work on the land is not respected, thus wages are low, about $146-292 a month. They are quietly doing their work with a great commitment to healthy food, sustainable land and fairer ways of recognizing people’s relationship with the land.

Some money has already been raised, but interest has grown since a biodynamic workshop in November, 2008 in Guangzhou.

If you would like to support this work, please send a small donation to The Anthroposophical Society in North Carolina, earmarked for the farmers in China: ASNC, PO Box 16024, Chapel Hill, NC 27516 —or email at asnc@ rtpnet.org. Please email me, so that I am able to plan the support for the farmers, at hughestammylynne@gmail.com

Tammy Hughes

Letters continue, next page

Rudolf Steiner College

A Center for Transformative Education, the Arts, and Waldorf Teacher Education

SPECIAL EVENTS AND NEW PROGRAMS

Experience Rudolf Steiner College’s Special Events, Part-time and Full-time Programs.

SPECIAL EVENTS

Oct. 2–3 The Rosicrucian Mysteries and Contemporary Art with Irène François and Brian Gray

Oct. 23–24 The Metamorphosis of Darwin’s Legacy: A Goethean Perspective with Mark Riegner, Patrick Wakeford-Evans, and David Basile

Oct. 23–24 Trustee Education—Too Important to Fail A Symposium for Waldorf Schools and Spiritually Inspired Organizations

Nov. 6–7 The Great Passage Across the Threshold of Death Coros Institute in collaboration with Rudolf Steiner College with Nancy Jewel Poer and Dennis Klocek

Nov. 13–14 Rudolf Steiner and Sri Aurobindo: The Adventure Within at our San Francisco Campus with Robert McDermott, PhD. and Irène François

ENROLLING NOW FALL 2009

• Foundations in Anthroposophy

• Part-time Foundation Studies in Fair Oaks (New!)

• Waldorf Teacher Education in San Francisco

• Consciousness Studies

• Compassionate Community Facilitator Training (New!)

• Waldorf Administration with Spirit (Spring 2010)

Photo by Jim Heath

centerpoint

ANTHROPOSOPHY NYC

www.asnyc.org

138
West
15th
ST
•
New
York
NY

212‐242‐8945

anthroposophynyc@yahoo.com

The NY Branch offers: lectures, workshops, study groups, art exhibits, festivals & much more.

The Rudolf Steiner Bookstore offers: titles on Anthroposophy and Waldorf Education & more.

H IGHLIGHTS - F ALL 2009

Sep 21, Oct 19, Nov 23, Dec 14 – Linda Larson

EURYTHMY – Workshop Series

Sep 24 – Joan Almon

THE GREEN SNAKE & THE BEAUTIFUL LILY

The Unfolding Of The Human Ego

Sep 25 – Lori Portocarrero & Glen Williamson

THE GREEN SNAKE & THE BEAUTIFUL LILY

A Retelling of Goethe’s Tale

Sep 27 – GertrudeReifHughes

POETRY AS PORTAL OF SPIRITUAL PERCEPTION

Georg Kuhlewind Memorial Event

Oct 1 – Festival

MICHAELMAS CELEBRATION

Oct - June – David Anderson

GOETHEAN SCIENCE: 10-Part Lecture Series & CLAY WORKSHOP

Oct 7/8 - Human Anatomy & Physiology

Nov 11/12 – Chemistry & Nutrition

Dec 9/10 - Botany

Oct 11 – Andrew Franck

ART EXHIBIT OPENING

Oct 15 – StephenUsher

THE THREEFOLD SOCIAL ORDER & ITS RELEVANCE TODAY

Oct 22 – Andrew Franck

REASSEMBLING WISDOM

Illustrating the Holistic Imagination of Spiritual Science

Oct 29 – Robert Stewart

FAUST: THE ARCHETYPAL MODERN MAN

Nov 7 – PaulMargulies

FROM THINKING TO LOVING

Nov 18 – Clemens Pietzner

ALIGNMENT & THREE-FOLDING

Dec 5– Festival

ADVENT GARDEN

Letters continued from p.5

Questions about money...

In response to Christopher Budd’s challenge to think Michaelically in the realm of money, I would like to offer the following thoughts:

In practice I find it quite useful to speak about three kinds of money with conventional thinkers in the world of money management. Economists and bankers may be more comfortable with two, but there are three kinds of money that Steiner elucidated directly and indirectly and that are worked with daily at least to some degree in the management of trillions of dollars of investors’ portfolios around the globe: cash, bonds (loans or fixed income investments) and stocks (or equities). In presenting this it is helpful to think imaginatively of cash as relating most to the past; to find inspiration in thinking about current initiatives to support with loans in the present; and to think intuitively about the future when investing in the unknown promise of good sustainable companies, just as we invest in the future with each gift we make.

Cash (referred to as purchase money or exchange money by Rudolf Steiner) usually is derived from and pays for finished works and work that is finished. With the aid of Imagination, purchasers may explore and appreciate the history of each item or service, whether it was sustainably produced in a healthy way, compensating the producers in a way that fairly supports them, as in Fair Trade products, for example. In a portfolio cash is a measure of desired liquidity amassed from past profits waiting to be paid out as income or be transformed into loan money or gift money.

Bonds (or loan money), include direct and indirect lending in the form of notes, and relate most to the present, providing a fixed return or income to investors while supporting current cash flows. It may be needed for increased capacity and infrastructure in businesses or institutions, or mortgages for individuals. In considering this form of money, Steiner indicates (see Education as a Social Problem) the capacity of Inspiration as a guide for choosing whom to support with loans. Inspiration is the ability to connect to the spiritual beings behind the organizations, answering the question, what is the higher purpose here? In the

case of mortgages, one could ask the higher being of the family or marriage if this debt will be beneficial and workable in the current flow of life or is it a risk with too many future unknowns to warrant taking. As Dr. Budd indicates, lending with a purpose such as in microfinance and community-based lending or lending to social enterprises is far more productive than stashing money in savings accounts or CD’s. In turning to the future, in conventional thinking, stocks are owned specifically for growth in order to meet long term needs. More recently investors have begun to consider sustainability and long term health in the valuation of this form of money or wealth. Gift money, as Steiner calls it, is normally associated with pure philanthropy, but there is a wind change currently in which gifting is mingled within investments in the form of philocapitalism (for-profits within not-for-profits), social venture enterprises, mission- and program-related investments, as well as high-impact socially responsible investments that consider the triple bottom line of “people, planet, and profit.” The point here is that all these are drawn from an unknown future. The capacity indicated by Steiner for this kind of money is Intuition or “spirit envisioning” of a healthy future. Hearing this call from the future is a Michaelic task.

We should no more take gift money out of economic considerations than we would leave spirit behind and speak only of soul and body because it is easier. I am sure this was not Dr. Budd’s intent. The suggestion is to work with Imagination in the use of cash, appreciating all that goes into each thing or service we purchase; to seek Inspiration in assessing the rightness of each loan taken or given for current expenses that can be repaid without undue risk; and to develop the capacity for Intuition in envisioning a future that will arise from the culture that investments support in the form of research and development in science, sustainable agriculture and technology, innovative charities, free education, and the arts.

RSF Social Finance, the Triskeles Foundation, and Benchmark Asset Managers, among others, are certainly thinking in this way, as are our Michaelic friends in the financial realm globally.

Ben Bingham, Philadelphia, PA

News Briefs from e-News & NNA

Inner Fire in Manila

(NNA

correspondent Walter Siegfried Hahn—Manila)

How can children in a society increasingly dominated by artificial and cognitive technologies still develop meaningful values, attitudes, skills and abilities? And how can Waldorf education contribute to protecting childhood and helping children cultivate the “inner fire of freedom”?

These were the themes at the week-long Asian Waldorf Teachers Conference (AWTC) and the Asia Pacific Anthroposophical Conference (APAC) held in May in Quezon City in the Philippines.

The majority of participants came from the host country as well as China and Taiwan. The first meeting of anthroposophical initiatives in the Asian region took place in 1996, also in Manila, with 25 participants from seven countries—Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, Philippines, Taiwan, USA. This time the number of countries had doubled with participants also from Japan, Malaysia, Nepal, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam. They were joined by speakers and seminar leaders from Britain, Germany, Israel and Switzerland. The next conference takes place 29 April to 6 May 2011 in India. There was a lively discussion how to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Rudolf Steiner’s birth.

As in the Philippines, in China and Taiwan the transformation of the status quo in schools and other areas of society is being tackled with great enthusiasm.

Speakers included Hans Mulder from New Zealand and Paul Mackay, Cornelius Pietzner and Christof Wiechert from Dornach. Wiechert identified the spirit of new departure, which one participant compared to the years 1923/24 in Europe, and he accordingly spoke in his daily morning lectures about the beginning years of the Waldorf movement. Workshops were led by participants from the Philippines, Taiwan, India, Singapore, Japan, New Zealand, Australia and Thailand. In his own APAC workshop, “I

am a TV baby”, Raph Lazo from the Anthroposophical Group in the Philippines tackled the central conference theme: current trends in technological development and their influence on the development of the child. Others brought basic principles about ecology, economics, and community, since it was assumed that the audience might be less well informed about these subjects. Hans Mulder spoke about the way our images of the earth and its landscapes shape it. Paul Mackay dealt with the three qualities of money: purchase money, loan money and gift money, emphasized the necessity of gift money to support culture and spoke of the transition from slave labour to the labour market to the service economy. Having grown up in a Camphill community, Cornelius Pietzner spoke about three pillars of community: the shared ideal is just as much a condition as constant and adequate communication and the diversity of opportunity.

The conference was supported by the Friends of Waldorf Education in Berlin, the Anthroposophical Group in the Philippines and the Manila Waldorf School.

Medicine in Cuba, Colombia

(Medical Section at the Goetheanum, Summer Newsletter 2009, by Michaela Glöckler) —There were two special events in July: first, the major conference for curative education in Cali, Colombia, which takes place every four years. Some 250 specialists from almost all Latin American countries met on the campus of a neat Catholic school. Everything had been perfectly prepared and organized—and when I expressed some surprise about that I was asked with a smile, did I not know that Columbia is the South American Switzerland? A few days earlier in Medellín I had also noticed how aesthetic and clean this tree-lined city is with its population of three million. A large hospital for the poor attached to the medical faculty in Cali, of which I was given a tour

after a lecture there, was also of a quite surprisingly high hygienic and technical standard.

In view of the negative headlines which so often determine the picture of Colombia, this was a special experience, including seeing the warmth, the interest, the seriousness and the enthusiasm for anthroposophy and curative education. The latter has a great future in South America and is growing rapidly—including the training now being set up or developed further everywhere.

The first International Postgraduate Medical Training in Cuba was a particularly pleasing event. Invited and organized as part of a complementary medicine project of the Interior Ministry, the number of participants was limited to 80 although the interest was much greater. Ivan Villegas from Peru has been looking after this initiative since the late 1990s and prepared this training week together with local colleagues. We Europeans—Harald Matthes, Christoph Tautz and I [Michaela Glöckler]—were particularly inspired by the artistic talent and capacity for philosophical thinking of the participants. Schools and universities not only study Marx but also his great teacher Hegel. The Cuban national poet José Marti, killed at the age of 42 in the fight against the colonial power Spain, was a freemason; whether he also encountered the Theosophical Society in his long years of exile in Mexico and the USA deserves further investigation. Every school pupil in Cuba is familiar with his poem of the white rose, below, with its Rosicrucian overtones.

I cultivate a white rose

In July as in January

For the sincere friend

Who gives me his hand frankly. And for the cruel person who tears out the heart with which I live, I cultivate neither nettles nor thorns:

I cultivate a white rose.

José Marti

New Karl König Edition

(NNA: Edinburgh/Stuttgart/Berlin) – Publication of a complete edition of the works of Karl König, a joint project of the Ita Wegman Institute for Anthroposophical Basic Research in Arlesheim and the Karl König Archives in Aberdeen, is gathering pace. The output of the founder of Camphill, the movement for schools and villages for children and adults with special needs around the world, includes books, essays,

manuscripts, lectures and notes, diaries, notebooks, artistic work and extensive correspondence. The edition is being published in twelve thematic categories, in English and German, by Floris Books/Edinburgh and Verlag Freies Geistesleben/Stuttgart. According to the Berlin Office of the Karl König Archives, the plan is to publish two volumes in spring and autumn of each year. “The aim of this edition is to make König’s comprehensive life’s work publicly available in a systematic way, a task in which many people from various countries are involved,” the press release said.

What’s Happening in the Rudolf Steiner Library

Judith Soleil, Library Director

Our enthusiasm for OPALS (Open Source Automated Library System), the library’s Internet-based circulation program, continues unabated. With over 5000 items currently cataloged, OPALS is beginning to change the way we work. All book returns can now be processed quickly by volunteers, we can reserve books with ease, and patrons can reserve books themselves (contact us to set up an account for you). You do not need an account to search the growing catalog at rsl.scoolaid.net (no “www” or “h” in scool).

We received two generous bequests that are helping to support the automation project. We are glad that the Rudolf Steiner Library played such an important role in our donors’ lives, and honored to receive their assistance. Their gifts will enable the library to enrich the lives of many more readers into the future.

A helpful online site is: anthromed.org. This site, featuring articles on anthroposophical medicine, is sponsored by PAAM (the Physicians’ Association for Anthroposophical Medicine) and is maintained by Lilipoh Publishing. The site includes hardto-find translations of important articles on topics such as depression and ADHD, among others, that originally appeared in German (from, for example, the journal Merkurstab).

Bill Hunt, poet, teacher, and former membership secretary for the Anthroposophical Society in America, will speak at the library on September 18, 2009 about his conversations with Nobel laureate Saul Bellow, particularly during the period 1974-2000. Bill will discuss the focus of Bellow’s anthroposophic interests as these are presented in his fiction and in his correspondence with Owen Barfield.

Mark your calendars. Arthur Zajonc, professor of physics at Amherst Col -

lege and former general secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in America, will offer a meditation workshop at the library January 29 and 30, 2009. Contact us for details.

We would like to hear from society members and friends who do not use the library. Please let us know why not! As you know, access to the library is a privilege of membership, and others may use the library for a nominal fee. We offer research; mail-order access to all of Rudolf Steiner’s available works in English and in German (including multiple copies for study groups); thousands of books on Waldorf education, anthroposophical science, medicine, agriculture, and other related subjects; current and archival journals; and a growing collection of audiovisual materials. We are eager to serve you and welcome your suggestions.

Library Annotations

[ js=Judith Soleil, jk=Judith Kiely]

Anthroposophy—Child Development

Brooks, Cindy, and Joya Birns, Parenting with Spirit: A Waldorf Guide for the Three Phases of Childhood, self-published, 2008, 60 pgs.

This work grew out of a “parenting circle” at the Santa Cruz Waldorf School in California, and provides a general overview of child development; tips for discipline with children of different ages; therapeutic stories; helpful advice on coand single parenting, and a bibliography.

Elliott, Sharon, and Carrie Ferguson, A Child’s Way: Slowing Down for Goodness

Sake, Goldenstone Press, 2008, 134 pgs.

The authors’ mother-daughter collaboration has produced a lovely hardcover book filled with gentle wisdom and beauti -

ful photographs. “We wanted to take a holistic approach and explore the emotional, social, and spiritual development of children. We hoped that through entering the magic of childhood we might reveal the intelligence of the heart and mind that is developing during this crucial stage.” It will be of particular interest to expectant families. —js

Anthroposophy—Waldorf Education— Early Childhood

Blanning, Nancy, ed., Meeting the Needs of the Child Today: Lectures from the 2008 International Waldorf Early Childhood Conference, WECAN, 2009, 35 pgs.

This book contains volumes in its brief pages. The lectures presented here focus on two interpenetrating themes: child development and adult development.

Dr. Johanna Steegmans discusses sensory development and the assault on the senses in early childhood. She shows how children and their parents can become filled with doubt and fear through encountering media images, which the author characterizes as fabrications and untruths. These work into the etheric constitution and undermine the sense of life. Self-education is a hallmark of Waldorf teaching, and Renate Long-Breipohl, author of the two lectures on this topic, reminds us that a healthy education for children depends upon “continuous and intentional self-development by the adult educator.” She relates virtues to strive for with the zodiac, and gives vivid examples of how these virtues manifest (or not) in real classroom situations. —js

Soulé, Holly Koteen, with Patricia Rubano, Professional Review and Evaluation in Waldorf Early Childhood Education, WECAN, 2008, 85 pgs.

“This book is a companion volume to…Mentoring in Waldorf Early Childhood Education [WECAN 2007; also available from the library]. Mentoring and evaluation are both processes that help educators develop themselves and improve the quality of Waldorf early childhood education…. There are, however, important distinctions between the two processes. Mentoring is a confidential, interpersonal relationship through which an educator can benefit from another’s experience. An evaluation or professional review process is a tool through which individuals can gain self-knowledge and insights about their practice of Waldorf education. It

is also a means by which an institution can objectively assess the quality of its programs and how best to support its faculty and staff…. What is presented in this handbook is based on the premise that all education is self-education.” (from the introduction) —js

Anthroposophy—Waldorf Education— Eurythmy

Bardt, Sylvia, Eurythmy: A Creative Force in Humanity—Experiences from Pedagogical Practice, translated by Mado Spiegler, AWSNA, 2008, 140 pgs.

This welcome book by a master eurythmy teacher—and teacher of eurythmy teachers—“shows how through eurythmy the [Waldorf] curriculum can be woven together into a whole and colorful tapestry, full of life.” Sylvia Bardt starts with the premise that the goal of eurythmy teaching is to lead the spirit in humanity to the spirit in the cosmos: “We want to guide our movements in such a way that they are related to cosmic movements. We can say about eurythmy that it appears in the human being as a heartfelt necessity, and it finds its justification in its ability to satisfy this need.”

The author shares many poems, songs, and eurythmy forms for grades one through twelve. Her profound grasp and exposition of child (and general human) development make this a most valuable book for all teachers and parents, not just eurythmists. She describes how eurythmy enhances specific main lesson themes throughout the school, building bridges between the subjects and within each subject. “Ideally, [eurythmy’s] task is to create in movement a kind of quintessence of the most diverse subjects.” That the eurythmy curriculum is a totality, with correspondences between grades one and twelve; eleven and two; ten and three; etc., is the pedagogical and artistic heart of this inspiring book. —js

Russell, Leonore, Kinesthetic Learning for Adolescents: Learning through Movement

and Eurythmy, AWSNA, 2009, 130 pgs.

The tone of this book and the one reviewed above brims with warmth, creativity, and enthusiasm. Certainly both authors must be inspiring teachers. Bravo to AWSNA (and to the authors) for bringing out two wonderful works on school eurythmy (so far!) in 2009.

Lenore Russell has been teaching for over thirty years, and her examples and

anecdotes are not only instructive, but make it clear that eurythmy should have an important place in the Waldorf curriculum not just in the lower school, but throughout high school as well.

“If we remember that the innermost self is in movement…then we will see the implications of teaching eurythmy and integrating movement in all learning…. Students need movement throughout the day in various degrees of intensity and consciousness. We will build successful schools and educate healthy students only when young people experience knowledge in an integrated and meaningful context. This can be achieved when teachers bring activities into the day that ground students and the material and help to make learning memorable. Learning is an event!” —js

Anthroposophy—Waldorf Education— History

Cook, Susan, Biographies for 8th Grade History: Twenty Remarkable Men and Women, AWSNA, 2009, 166 pgs.

“Eighth grade history in the Waldorf curriculum is simply overwhelming in scope, and careful choices must be made that both characterize the stages of history in the last 3½ centuries and pay tribute to movers and shakers in your region…. My intention is to focus on two key points: 1) the inclusion of international perspective, and 2) a demonstration of the spirit of revolution in a variety of fields.” Includes a bibliography and an extensive list of other historic figures who would serve well as topics for student reports.

Anthroposophy—Waldorf Education— Mathematics

Simmons, Donna, Fourth Grade Curriculum: Mathematics, Christopherus Homeschool Resources, 2008, 67 pgs. + worksheets.

Curriculum resources for specific subjects and particular grades are very popular among teachers and homeschooling parents. Donna Simmons’s guides are thorough; she includes not just subject matter but insights into the Waldorf curriculum and helpful teaching tips out of her long experience. Best of all, she encourages pedagogical creativity, stressing that her guides are not meant to be “cookbooks.”

Anthroposophy—Waldorf Education— Plays

Ward, William, compiler, Hawthorne Valley Harvest: A Collection of Plays for the Elementary Grades, AWSNA, 2009, 243 pgs. Master teacher William Ward created moving, insightful, and humorous plays for his classes throughout the thirty years of his career. This collection of plays by William and his colleagues at Hawthorne Valley School in Harlemville, New York, will be a valuable resource for teachers in grades K-6. Yet William’s intention here is to inspire every teacher to create his or her own plays: “The matrix of archetypal wisdom that originally inspired the bards and ensures the enduring relevance of time-honored stories is a reservoir of inspiration to awaken the sleeping poet-playwright in you. Be certain, from humble beginnings, your creative effort will prove to be a powerful current in a stream flowing between child and teacher that engenders reverence for the living word as bearer of beauty, light of thinking, warmth of idealism, and clarion call to action.” —js

Anthroposophy—Waldorf Education— Science

D’Aleo, Michael, compiler, Colloquium on Physics, AWSNA, 2009, 98 pgs.

This is AWSNA’s research project no. 11, and is subtitled “A Work in Progress.” “Progress” is the operative word here: these reports from AWSNA colloquiums truly lead forward. They permit us to eavesdrop on interactions among teachers who question themselves, their work, and one another with an end to sharpen, refine, and enliven their teaching. As they learn from and inspire one another, so do readers. This physics colloquium involved high school teachers intent on ensuring that they strive to view “what we are teaching our students within a wider context, so that it will lay the groundwork

The Rudolf Steiner Library’s borrowing service is free for Anthroposophical Society in America members; nonmembers pay an annual fee. Borrowers pay round-trip postage, plus $1 handling per order. Requests can be made by mail (65 Fern Hill Road Ghent, N.Y. 12075), phone (518-672-7690), fax (518-6725827), or e-mail: rsteinerlibrary@taconic.net

for a deeper understanding in the future.” —js

Simmons, Donna, The Human Being and the Animal World (Two 4th Grade Main Lesson Blocks), Christopherus Homeschool Resources, 2009, 56 pgs.

Donna Simmons wades into deep water here with characteristic clarity and aplomb. She introduces human-centered biology and the threefold human being without apology to an audience of homeschooling parents who may be largely unfamiliar with anthroposophy. Simmons presents lesson plans and resources, including a detailed bibliography of anthroposophical sources. Many Waldorf teachers also find a great deal of useful material in her books. —js

Anthroposophy—Medicine

Camps, Annegret, et al., Anthroposophical Care for the Elderly, translated by Johannes M. Surkamp, Floris, 2008, 128 pgs.

This is the first publication in English that integrates an anthroposophical approach with care planning (in this case, the focus is largely on institutional care). Written by professional nurses and caregivers affiliated with the Herdecke anthroposophical hospital in Germany, the book’s first two sections elaborate anthroposophical concepts and terminology, preparing readers for the details of care planning that follow. The authors describe the existential experiences of ageing with depth and sensitivity; reading this book one wishes that all people might be met and cared for with such insight and tact. “In view of the increasing number of senior citizens, especially in the industrialized world, the question arises as to whether old age is seen as a burden or whether its hidden meaning may provide [hu]mankind with an opportunity to develop faculties which run counter to much of the social coldness, destructiveness, and violence of contemporary society.” —js

Hemmerich, Fritz Helmut, Handbook of Anthroposophic Gynecology, translated by Peter Luborsky, Mercury Press, 2007, 129 pgs.

This is primarily a handbook for physicians, with a section detailing various medical conditions and another describing relevant remedies. The author’s brief introduction states: “Anthroposophic medicine employs remedies of mineral, plant, and animal origin. Its understand -

ing of illness is based on the conviction that all disease processes are essentially rightful processes in nature which lead to illness only when the physiological processes occur at the wrong time (dysrhythmically) or the wrong place (displaced). It follows that the aim of medicine is not to combat illness, but rather to guide the processes into an appropriate rhythmic or topical relationship. At the same time, in the initial phase of serious illnesses the use of the conventional medical and surgical approaches occasionally cannot be avoided. In this sense the anthroposophic method is not an alternative to conventional medicine; rather, its underlying therapeutic considerations relate to different aspects of human nature.” —js

van Heek-van Tellingen, Christa, ed., Vade Mecum—A Handbook of Anthroposophic Medicine: A Collaborative Effort of Methodic Work in Anthroposophic Medicine, Mercury Press/Medical Section at the Goetheanum, 2007, 239 pgs.

This handbook, while aimed at medical professionals, may be interesting to anyone seeking to understand anthroposophic medicine. It “arose from the wish to present methodological approaches for the usage of medicinal substance. This was especially intended to help young doctors find an entry into anthroposophic medicine and to give stimulation for further study.” Most of the book is comprised of descriptions of various substances and medicines. —js

Anthroposophy—Nutrition

Spindler, Hermann, The Demeter Cookbook: Recipes Based on Biodynamic Ingredients from the Kitchen of the Lukas Klinik, Temple Lodge, 2008, 272 pgs.

The Cookery Book from the Lukas Clinic in Switzerland was first published in English in 1976. It has been a popular staple at the library for all these years. The Demeter Cookbook is a decidedly upscale revision of that humble paperback booklet: it is a hardcover book with a spacious layout and color photos. Many of the recipes from the original volume are included; all are lacto-ovo-vegetarian. An index of recipes and ingredients would have been a helpful addition. —js

Sundstrom, Kelly, The Waldorf Cookbook, not paginated, not dated, 129 pgs.

The author of this self-published cookbook solicited recipes from Waldorf parents

and teachers around the world. In some cases her characterization of these dishes as “natural, wholesome, and holistic” is a bit of a stretch, but everyone is likely to find something appetizing here. —js

Wolff, Otto, What Are We Really Eating?

Practical Aspects of Nutrition from the Perspective of Spiritual Science, Mercury Press, 2008, 113 pgs.

Dr. Wolf’s book was originally published in German in the 1990s. It is undogmatic and informative. Topics include raw food diet, milk products, fats, sugar, and meat. As he navigates around fads and misconceptions, the author invokes Mark Twain, who once wrote that the safest food is water—taken in moderate amounts. —js

Art—Artists—Hieronymus Bosch

Falk, Kurt, The Unknown Hieronymus Bosch, Goldenstone Press, 2008, 112 pgs.

This posthumously published study of the work of 15th-16th century painter Hieronymus Bosch, by the cofounder of the Tobias School of Art in Forest Row, England, takes as its starting point a lost painting titled The Last Judgment, previously held at the Museum of Modern Art in Cairo. Falk maintains that this work “speaks the language of Hieronymus Bosch in an impressive manner,” and that a contemplation of the painting can provide a “fundamental contribution to an understanding of the works of Hieronymus Bosch.”

Falk examines in detail the figure of the Treeman, the “ego-conscious human being” who can remind the viewer of a “Christian initiate who is neither paralyzed by Ahrimanic actions nor lulled to sleep by Luciferic hopes of self-redemption.” Writes Falk, “It is the

countenance of the Treeman…that makes one receptive to Hieronymus Bosch’s language of the spirit…. We are challenged to investigate what this alert countenance consciously observes in its surroundings.”

Rudolf Steiner mentions Bosch in his art history lecture no. 6 (Dec. 13, 1916). —jk

Astrology & Astronomy

Powell, Robert, History of the Zodiac, Sophia Academic Press, 2007, 214 pgs.

A revised and updated version of Powell’s Ph.D. thesis, The Definition of the Babylonian Zodiac and the Influence of Babylonian Astronomy on the Subsequent Defining of the Zodiac (2004), this book focuses upon the origin of the zodiac in Babylonia in the 5th century, and how this system of dividing the “ecliptic into twelve signs, each thirty degrees in length… for specifying the locations of stars and planets” influenced the later understanding of the zodiac by Greek, Egyptian, and Indian cultures. Powell explains the various definitions of the zodiac—the tropical, astronomical, and sidereal—and hypothesizes that the Babylonian sidereal zodiac was based upon the “location of Aldebaran and Antares in the middle of their respective signs” such that “all other stellar longitudes were then determined by measuring the distances of stars from Aldebaran or Antares.” Using this sidereal zodiac, Powell reconstructs the entire Babylonian star catalogue. —jk

Christianity

Sit, Kwan-Yuk C., The Lord’s Prayer: An Eastern Perspective, SteinerBooks, 2008, 171 pgs.

The author grew up in Hong Kong and moved to the U.S. to attend graduate school. She holds a Ph.D. in mathematics from the City University of New York and is professor emerita at La Guardia Community College. She is deeply interested in Eastern philosophy and anthroposophy, and has worked with the Lord’s Prayer for many years. —js

Fairy Tales—Collections—Iran

Chelkowski, Peter J., Mirror of the Invisible World: Tales from the Khamseh of Nizami, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1975, 117 pgs.

This donation to the library’s collection is lavishly illustrated with color reproductions from a 16th century edition of the

Khamseh in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Prose translations of three tales from the original verses of this 12th century work by Nizami are included: “Khosrow and Shirin,” “Layla and Majnun,” and “The Seven Princesses.” The book also features a thorough introduction and commentary by the author, and an essay by art historian Priscilla Soucek on the Khamseh of 1524/25, which she terms a “splendid example of the high level of bookmaking achieved in sixteenthcentury Iran.” —jk

Folk Souls

Salman, Harrie, Europe: A Continent with a Global Mission—the Illustrated Spiritual Biography of Europe, Kibea, 2009, 347 pgs.

History of Consciousness

Smitherman, Daniel J., Philosophy and the Evolution of Consciousness: Owen Barfield’s Saving the Appearances, iUniversity Press, 2001, 170 pgs.

Smitherman aims in this self-published book to “place Barfield’s thought as presented in Saving the Appearances into the context of the history of recent philosophy, from roughly 1875 to the present, in order to demonstrate the primarily philosophical character, rather than, say, the sociological or literary or historical character of that work.” Writes Smitherman: “Barfield’s theory of the evolution of consciousness provides special insight into the history of philosophy itself....”

Although the title of this work implies that it is mainly a study of Owen Barfield’s Saving the Appearances; the book is more aptly described as a history of recent philosophy in the light of Owen Barfield’s work, covering as it does diverse philosophers from Karl Marx to Thomas Kuhn. —jk

Science—Ecology

Dreiseitl, Herbert & Dieter Grau, eds., New Waterscapes: Planning, Building and Designing with Water, Birkhäuser, 2005, 176 pgs.

“Water is a universal landscape element. It is the vital element which can bring life to any landscape; immediate life, constant life.” (p. 10)

Copiously illustrated with color photographs, this large-format history of Europe examines the development of consciousness from the mystery centers of prehistory through “successive cycles of cultures” into the twentieth century and beyond, from an anthroposophical point of view.

Writes Salman: “European culture has passed through many phases of development, each with specific forms of consciousness, education, and social organization…. The content of Europe’s biography is the development of its culture… Its goal is the creation of a free personality able to use its spiritual potential.” (from the introduction)

Author of The Social World as Mystery Center, Prof. Salman currently focuses his research on the development of a new spiritual culture. —jk

With contributions by Robert Woodward, Wolfgang Geiger, Wolfram Schwenk, Detlev Ipsen, as well as editors Dreiseitl and Grau, this expanded and revised edition of an earlier work published in 2001 examines a variety of urban water projects in Europe, a handful in the United States, and one in China. Filled with color photographs, the book highlights the “creative uses of water in the city, in art, the landscape and architecture” such as the “integration of natural watercourses into the built environment…the creation of oases of tranquility or drama such as pools or fountains,” as well as “intelligent rainwater management” and the “daylighting and rehabilitation of rivers.” Herbert Dreiseitl was an artist in residence at the Rudolf Steiner Institute in 2008. —jk

Full-length reviews from the library are found in this issue on pages 26 to 28.

The Threefold Community A Crossroads for Anthroposophy at Work Bill

Day

IfA mericA n A nthroposophists ever decl A re A Founders’ dAy– our own Fourth oF July or BA stille dAy–then July 8, 1933 would Be A n A ppropri Ate l A ndm A rk dAte On that evening, a crowd gathered under a tent at Threefold Farm in Spring Valley, New York, to hear Dr. Christoph Linder present a lecture titled “Introduction to Anthroposophical Medical Science,” thus inaugurating the first Anthroposophical Summer Conference at Threefold Farm.

The setting at Threefold Farm was rustic, to say the least. The only house on the property, today known as the Threefold Main House, comprised just three rooms (two upstairs and one down), plus some insubstantial additions suitable only for summer use. Most visitors slept in tents (room and board for the two weeks: $13.00), and the “lecture hall” was an extra-large tent, pitched under the trees behind the Main House, where the Holder House parking lot is today.

The stars of the conference were three prominent European anthroposophists on their first visit to America: Ernst Lehrs (left), Ehrenfried Pfeiffer (top of next page), and Maria Röschl (right). Röschl and Lehrs both taught at the first Waldorf school in Stuttgart; Röschl was the first leader of the Youth Section of the School of Spiritual Science; and Pfeiffer headed the research laboratories at the Goetheanum. Over the two weeks from July 8 to July 23 they gave lectures and led discussions on medicine (Pfeiffer); social science, economics, and social threefolding (Lehrs and Pfeiffer); pedagogy (Röschl); spirituality (Röschl and Lehrs); and biodynamics (Pfeiffer).

Luminaries from the New York anthropos -

ophical community, such as Miriam Wallace (a eurythmist who had studied under Marie Steiner) and Ralph Courtney (an evangelist for social threefolding), filled out the faculty, and the program also included daily painting lessons and ample time for discussion, swimming in the pond, and walking in the surrounding woods and hills.

The brochure announcing the summer conference had proclaimed: “There is only one Spiritual Movement today which claims to have new spiritual and material knowledge on which to base a solution of present-day problems. This is the Spiritual Science, or Anthroposophy, of the late Dr. Rudolf Steiner. Anthroposophy makes definite statements as to new social arrangements (a decentralized threefold commonwealth), new art forms, scientific and medical knowledge, new agricultural methods and gives much information concerning spiritual forces of which this world is the outer expression.”

A“Spiritual Movement . . . on which to base a solution of present-day problems” —a phrase that can easily slip by unnoticed. But if we circle back and reexamine it, we see something that looks more unusual the longer we study it. What do most spiritual movements offer, in 1933 or in 2009? More often than not, a pathway to reduced personal discomfort: less anxiety, more compliant children or spouse, relief from personal shortcomings, some narrow notion of happiness. What did the Threefold Group offer to attendees of their summer conference? A whole new “social arrangement,” with new art, science, medicine, and agriculture to boot, challenging all comers to lift their aspirations above self-interest. Just to make it extra-real, the conference took place in a setting that doubled as a laboratory for testing and applying these new ideas: “The Farm belongs to Anthroposophists who are experimenting with the social ideas of the new Steiner philosophy. They are also using the Steiner agricultural methods which do away with the use of poisonous sprays and mineral fertilizers.”

The Threefold Group was not the first association of anthroposophists in America; it was preceded by the St. Mark’s Group, founded in 1910. Threefold Farm was only an outpost, the Threefold Group’s home base being 318 West 56th Street in New York City, where they operated a restaurant, a rooming house, a laundry, and a furniture shop. Many Threefold members had encountered anthroposophy and even met Rudolf Steiner personally while traveling in Europe, and were at or near the origins of many anthroposophical impulses in the arts, education, medicine, and agriculture. They all shared a heartfelt commitment to bringing anthroposophical ideals to life in the social fabric of the New World, and Threefold Farm was integral to this impulse.

Ralph Courtney (left), the Threefold Group’s founding father and guiding light, met Steiner in 1921 while working in Europe for the New York Herald Tribune. Soon after his conversations with Steiner, Courtney returned to the U.S. and acquired a circle of anthroposophist friends through meetings of

the St. Mark’s Group. Among these were the founding members of the Threefold Group: Gladys Barnett (later Hahn), Louise Bybee, Charlotte Parker, Margaret Peckham, Alice Jansen, and Reinhardt Mueller; together, they dedicated themselves to the practice and application of anthroposophical ideals in all facets of life, both spiritual and material.

The zeal of the Threefold members who put on the 1933 conference can be directly tied to the urgency that Rudolf Steiner expressed, particularly regarding the social question, starting in 1919. At the Christmas conference of 1923, for example, he said: “Now you might say that the progress of mankind has always gone forward at a slow pace …. However, with civilization in its present brittle and easily destructible state, it could very well happen that in fifty or seventy-five years’ time the chance will have been missed for achieving what so urgently needs to be achieved.... I am convinced that if it were possible for us to create the necessary equipment and the necessary institutes and to have the necessary colleagues, as many as possible to work out of this spirit, then we could succeed in achieving in five or ten years what will now take us fifty or seventy-five years. The only thing we would need for this work would be 50 or 75 million francs. Then we would probably be able to do the work in a tenth of the time” (The Christmas Conference, p.209).

In its work the Threefold Group expressed its will to bring together the “necessary equipment … institutes … and … colleagues” to catalyze and bring to life a community where, as Steiner put it, “real cooperation continually renews social forces.”

Within a few years of the first conference, a “Summer Season” of activities ran from early June to Labor Day, with a summer school running for three weeks in July. With the exception of two or three summers during the Second World War, anthroposophical summer conferences have been held at Threefold every year since 1933.

The early conferences featured lecturers from Europe who had known and studied under Rudolf Steiner, many of whom

gave their first American lectures at Threefold Farm. Attendees (who numbered in the hundreds) slept in self-described “shacks” and ate and attended lectures under rented circus tents, while eurythmy and dramatic performances were staged amongst the trees of the nearby oak grove. They also enjoyed swimming in Threefold Pond (a summer pleasure to this day),

and meditative walks in the neighboring fields and forests. Meanwhile, the community expanded, both physically and experimentally. The 200-seat Threefold Auditorium (above and below), dedicated in 1949, gave lectures and performances an indoor home, while experiments in economics (Threefold printed its own currency in the 1930s; see cover) and land ownership were carried out in the community’s living laboratory.

The Biodynamic Association, which was founded partly by the tireless Ehrenfried Pfeiffer in 1938, held its annual meeting at Threefold every year from 1948 until 1980, although as early as 1961 Evelyn Gregg reported that “the Conferences have outgrown the facilities of Threefold Farm and only those who apply early can now find accommodations there.”

Programs from the 1960s show a growing youth orientation in conference programming, a trend that culminated with “Self-Development and Social Responsibility,” a remarkable international youth conference that drew some 600 participants from throughout the U.S. and Europe in August 1970. In 1986, the Waldorf Institute, a Detroit-based Waldorf teacher-training school, relocated to the Threefold campus and took on the name Sunbridge College. Sunbridge’s popular summer programs for Waldorf teachers carry on the Threefold tradition of summer adult education in the service of anthroposophy.

Thousands of lives have been touched, directly and indirectly, by the work done over the years at Threefold. To take just one example: It was almost by chance that Henry Barnes,

age twenty-one, found himself at the 1933 summer conference, knowing nothing of Rudolf Steiner yet following his destiny with an open heart. Within months of the conference, Henry was in Stuttgart to train as a Waldorf teacher. In 1940 he returned to the United States and took a position at the Rudolf Steiner School in New York City, where he remained for thirty-seven years (with a three-year break for wartime Army service), including twenty-eight years as faculty chair. Upon his retirement in 1978, Henry moved to Harlemville, New York, where he helped found and foster the Hawthorne Valley Farm and School Association, the wellspring of Hawthorne Valley School and Hawthorne Valley Farm. Henry served as General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society and was also active in the Waldorf education movement.

Along with countless articles, he wrote two books: a biography of Rudolf Steiner (A Life for the Spirit: Rudolf Steiner in the Crosscurrents of Our Time, 1997) and a history of the American anthroposophical movement (Into the Heart’s Land: A Century of Rudolf Steiner’s Work in North America, 2005).

Among his last projects, Henry helped conceive and plan a 2008 conference at Threefold to mark the seventy-fifth anniversary of the 1933 conference. The resulting Michaelmas conference, entitled “Honoring the Past–Recognizing the Way Forward,” was inspired by Henry’s life, work, and spirit, particularly his steadfast advocacy for research: the work that will make manifest the real benefits of having a spiritual basis for our work in the sense-perceptible world. Rudolf Steiner highlighted the need for this research in these remarks (offered vis-à-vis scientific research presented by Lily Kolisko): “Today there is an abyss between art and science; but within science, too, there is an abyss between, for instance,

physiology and physics. All these abysses will be bridged if scientific work is done in the right way in our circles. Therefore from a general anthroposophical point of view we must interest ourselves in these different things as much as our knowledge and capacities will allow.”

In a piece from the early 1990s entitled “Rudolf Steiner on the Urgent Need for Research Arising from Anthroposophy,” Henry called on every institution and endeavor based in anthroposophy to set aside resources for this research, writing, “We must find the way to work for future values (the purpose of all genuine research), while meeting the immediate demands of today, tomorrow, and the next day.” He acknowledged that it’s not easy, but he also insisted that it is essential if our institutions are to grow and prosper, not just as fine schools or communities or farms, but as active expressions of a spiritual impulse to bridge the abysses created by old, reductionist ways of thinking. This is the path to a “Spiritual Movement on which to base a solution of present-day problems.”

Henry crossed the threshold just a week before the 2008 conference, but his spirit permeated the gathering, embodied in his life of service to the ideals of anthroposophy.

This, the seventy-sixth year of conferences at Threefold, is especially rich and varied. In January, “The New Agriculture Course” offered in-depth study of the foundational document of biodynamics. In August, “Inner Transformation and Social Renewal” investigated the spiritual capacities we must develop to address today’s crises and create a political, economic, and cultural life for the future. Then the Threefold Mystery Drama Group’s presented “The Portal of Initiation and Its Relationship to Goethe’s Fairy Tale.” The Threefold Community’s Michaelmas festivals and a pre-conference gathering of organizations working out of anthroposophy lead up to Threefold’s hosting of the annual conference and members’ meeting (AGM) of the Anthroposophical Society in America from October 2-4. Linking these busy weeks is “Transforming Capacities,” an art and science exhibit which opened in August and closes with the AGM. Information about Threefold events and a sign-up button for an e-newsletter can be found at www.threefold.org

Bill Day serves as development coordinator for the Threefold Educational Center in Chestnut Ridge, NY. See below, and Torin Finser’s letter on page 33, for more recollections of Threefold.

Kevin Dann

In Across the Great Barrier Divide: The Naturalist Myth in America (Rutgers University Press, 2000). Kevin Dann weaves a superb narrative of two contrasting initiatives “up Hudson” from New York City, the first of which celebrated the Naturalist worldview as well as social betterment through eugenics. The following excerpt begins to introduce the other initiative, what anthroposophists still refer to as “Spring Valley,” comprising the Threefold group, farm, and center. The two stories unite in Percy Mackay, who began in one camp and ended in the other (see page 41). Note that Kevin Dann will lead a history walk in New York City on Sept. 30th; see the listings on the next page. —Editor

Among the dozens...of Arcadian experiments carried out in the New York metropolitan region in the opening decades of the twentieth century, the convergence of personalities and events in that part of the Ramapo Mountain landscape transformed into Harriman Park was unique. No other place witnessed quite the concerted effort at restoration and integration or so distinctly expressed the new ethos of Naturalism held by its shapers. In the 1930s, at almost the exact moment when the metropolitan naturalists felt most assured of the success of their venture, just across the Great Border Fault a much smaller band of Manhattanites was directing its efforts at rescuing humanity from the very triumph of Naturalism celebrated by its Arcadian neighbors. Though sharing their Naturalist peers’ commitment to the scientific reshaping of the individual and society, these men and women blazed a radically different trail into

modernity. They called themselves “anthroposophists,” a name that denoted their allegiance to a spiritual science that placed the human being at the center of knowledge, radiating out into the natural world, contrary to the Naturalist stance of defining the human being out of knowledge derived from nature.

Threefold

By Sunday afternoon, the field beside the oddly shaped green three-bay garage at Threefold Farm was filled with automobiles, most of them with New York plates. Many of the newly arriving non-motoring guests had come via the Erie train from Jersey City or by bus from the Astor Hotel Bus Terminal.... Ralph Courtney and other residents of Threefold Farm periodically made the two-mile trip in his roadster to the Spring Valley station to bring them out to the farm. ...[O]vernight guests headed across the yard, past the greenhouse and gardens, into the oak woods, where twenty canvas tents...accommodated participants in the two-week Anthroposophical Summer School Conference of 1933, the first to be held in America.

The conference had opened the night before with a lecture by Dr. Christoph Linder on anthroposophical medical science. On Sunday morning ... Dr. Maria Röschl, a teacher from the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, [lectured] on “Ways of Inner Development.” A vegetarian lunch was then served in the dining hall of the main house. All afternoons were free for reading, meditation, and tea under the trees, a tradition introduced by Threefold founder Ralph Courtney, who had picked up the habit during his student days at Oxford.... There was also plenty of time for a swim in the pond, which had been created by damming

“Not an Earthly Service”

the Oost Val, the little brook that bisected the farm’s thirty-two acres. A photograph of the pond, sporting a diving board and sandy beach, was featured on the front cover of the conference brochure, which advertised the farm as a “delightful vacation spot...lying in the foothills of the Ramapo Mountains....” In 1926

Charlotte Parker, one of the original members of the Threefold Group of the Anthroposophical Society in America, had come to Spring Valley searching for a place where she and her fellow anthroposophists could escape the stifling city heat and begin to put into practice in a more convivial setting some of their ideas for regenerating modem metropolitan American culture....

Charlotte Parker had first come to know Ralph Courtney in another Arcadian setting, an Adirondack summer camp, during the terribly hot summer of 1922. There Courtney had put up a sign outside his cabin: “Lectures by Rudolf Steiner read here every evening.” She recalled that only one person usually attended the evening readings....

Anxious about the political compromises at [the 1919 Peace Conference at] Versailles, Courtney [had been] drawn to Steiner’s threefold idea and conducted two interviews with Steiner in 1921. At their second meeting, as they said good-bye, Steiner helped Courtney put on his overcoat. Courtney was

Michaelmas, Pre-AGM & AGM Events At & Around Threefold

See www.threefold.org/michaelmas/ for details, links. Pre-register for the AGM at www.anthroposophy.org or 734-662-9355 for questions.

FRIDAY, September 25, 7:30 pm

Opening/Reception: Transforming Capacities: An Art and Science Exhibition

Threefold Auditorium, Free

SATURDAY, September 26, 9:00 am - 5:00 pm

Dyeing Yarns with Plant Colors

Fiber Craft Studio, $95; 845-425-2891

6:00-8:00 pm

Farmer to Table Family Style Dinner with local farmers

Hungry Hollow Co-Op, $25 per person; 845-356-3319

SUNDAY, September 27, 1:00-4:00 pm

Michaelmas Festival and Prep Stirring with Mac Mead Pfeiffer Center Garden, Free; 845-352-5020 x18

4:00 pm

Michaelmas Family Festival with Eurythmy, Music and Storytelling Threefold Auditorium, Donations welcome; info@eurythmy.org

TUESDAY, September 29, Michaelmas Day, 6:30 am

Act of Consecration of Man (communion service)

Christian Community Chapel, 15 Margetts Rd., Monsey NY; 845-573-9080

Afternoon

Green Meadow Waldorf School Michaelmas Festival and Play (Time and location will be posted on www.gmws.org)

4:00 pm

Fellowship Community Michaelmas Festival: Sowing Rye in the Fields Fellowship Community, Hilltop House, Free; 845-356-8494

7:30 pm

Sacred Geometry of the Earth: Exploring the Relationship Between Form and Spirit of the Earth, a lecture by Frank Chester Threefold Auditorium, $15/$10 students & seniors; 845-352-5020 x18

WEDNESDAY, September 30, 6:30 am

Act of Consecration of Man (communion service) Christian Community Chapel, (see Sept. 29)

9:00 am - 12:00 pm

Exploring the Living History of the Anthroposophical Society in America: A Pilgrimage with Kevin Dann

Location: Meet at Anthroposophy NYC, 138 West 15th Street, New York, NY The event ends at the Rudolf Steiner School, 15 East 79 Street Donations gratefully accepted; details will be posted at www.asnyc.org

4:30 pm

Sacred Geometry of the Earth: Exploring the Relationship Between Form and Spirit of the Earth, a lecture by Frank Chester Goethe Room of the Fellowship Community; suggested donation: $15/$10 students & seniors; 845-352-5020 x18

Wednesday, September 30, continued, 7:30 pm

Eurythmy Spring Valley pedagogical graduation

Threefold Auditorium; info@eurythmy.org

THURSDAY, October 1, 9:00 am - 12:00pm

Inner Affinity: Cultivating a Human Connection: North American Youth Section Meeting 2009 Brookside House, sliding $10-$15; email leslielal@yahoo.com or call 503-819-3399

3:00-6:00 pm

Economic Round Table, sponsored by the Section for Social Sciences

Brookside House, Free; email kristen.puckett@gmail.com

7:30 pm

“Aeschylus Unbound” performed by Glen Williamson & Laurie Portocarrero

Threefold Auditorium, $15 / $10 students and seniors (at the door)

845-352-5020 x 18

9: 00-11:00 pm

Evening Café featuring live music and refreshments

Threefold Café, free; 845-352-5020 x18 or events@threefold.org

FRIDAY, October 2, 9:00-11:30am

Open Forum: The North American Collegium of the School of Spiritual Science

Threefold Auditorium, Free; email shawnjs1@pacbell.net

11:00 am - 4:30 pm

Fiber Craft Studio, Open Studio extended hours

Fiber Craft Studio, Orchard House; 845-425-2891

FRIDAY, October 2, 1:00 pm through Sunday, October 4, 1:00 pm

Creating Living Connections: Christian Rosenkreutz & the Social Impulse: 2009 Annual Conference and Member’s Meeting, Anthroposophical Society in America

At Threefold; pre-registration required: 734-662-9355 or www.anthroposophy.org

SUNDAY, October 4, 9:30 am / 10:00 am

Sunday Service for Children / Act of Consecration of Man (communion service)

Christian Community Chapel, (see Sept. 29); childcare provided

11:15 am

Michaelmas Festival for Children; for adults: “The Deeper Meaning of Michaelmas” Christian Community Chapel; 845-573-9080

1:00-4:00 pm

Transforming Capacities: An Art and Science Exhibition

Closing with Participating Exhibitors

Threefold Auditorium, Free; 845-352-5020 x18

TUESDAY, October 6, 7:30 pm

Camphill Benefit Concert 2009

Frederick P. Rose Hall, Broadway at 60th Street, New York City, $150; www.camphillconcert.org

overwhelmed by a feeling that he found impossible to describe but that seemed to recognize Steiner as the representative of the very universalism for which his threefold idea called. Courtney formed an inner resolve to devote himself to nurturing in America the idea of the threefold social order....

In November 1923 Courtney founded the Threefold Group.... The purchase of the Spring Valley farm in 1926 provided a landscape close enough to Manhattan to allow them to engage fully in an effort to renew both nature and culture. But the Arcadians assembled at Threefold Farm were far from going “back to Nature.” Rather than seeking to be redeemed by Nature, they sought to become redeemers of Nature, aiming to reclaim for human beings their central role as the intermediaries between the sensible and supersensible worlds. While their contemporaries just a few miles away in Harriman Park were reshaping the physical landscape in hopes of drawing modem metropolitans into closer contact with the sensible, the Threefold anthroposophists directed their efforts at a wholly supersensible landscape. In 1924, when Rudolf Steiner had carried out the rededication of the General Anthroposophical Society, he had declared: “This anthroposophical movement is not an earthly service; this anthroposophical movement, in every detail of its totality, is a divine service, a service of the gods.” ...

The audience for the evening lecture that Sunday in 1933 was very large, as it was to be the first American lecture given by Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, who had pioneered the Biologic Dynamic agriculture practiced at Threefold Farm.... Enlisting at age eighteen in the German Army Corps of Engineers, Pfeiffer [had been] sent to the war front... In 1919, back at [the manufacturing firm] Bosch, he attended a lecture on the threefold social order given by Rudolf Steiner to the employees at their union hall.... Steiner emphasized the need to discover new forces that were life-enhancing; until humanity reckoned with them, modern social structure would continue to mimic the disintegrating forces upon which modern civilization was based.... It was a hot summer day, and Pfeiffer noted that the long lecture had already left the speaker hoarse and perspiring. He asked a waitress to set a bottle of soda water on the speaker’s platform, and Steiner immediately drank it. From that moment on, Pfeiffer devoted himself to serving Steiner’s work. In 1933, eight years after Steiner’s death, he was at the beginning of a relationship with the American anthroposophical community that would echo Steiner’s twenty-five-year relationship with European seekers of a spiritual science.... For the next twenty-seven summers, Pfeiffer would open the Threefold summer conference and, along with the biweekly Sunday lectures he gave after coming to live at the farm in 1942, pour forth a remarkable body of knowledge about nature and history in his own right.

by Joel Wendt Reviewed by William Bento, Ph.D.

Joel Wendt, self-proclaimed “outlaw anthroposophist,” has written a tract on anthroposophy in America that is surely to be read and experienced as bitter medicine. It is not for the lighthearted, nor for the die-hard traditionalist. His stream of consciousness runs like treacherous rapids through uncharted waters. He challenges the complacent mind and calls for an awakening of the “consciousness soul” in every one of us. Despite obvious shortcomings, it is a series of essays worth repeated readings. His forthrightness, honesty, and incisive critique on many aspects of the Anthroposophical Society provoke serious consideration.

Although Wendt attempts to write for both neophyte and seasoned anthroposophist, his intimate, autobiographical style is less than scholarly, more akin to “letters to friends.” At times he falls into a kind of “in”-speak. He refers repeatedly to essays he has previously written and to lectures by Rudolf Steiner and books by authors that have shaped his thinking, but he does not always give adequate references for readers to follow up. This said, I urge the reader not to be taken aback, but to read diligently Wendt’s thought-provoking positions. He alludes to open mysteries and gives his point of view with boldness and daring.

Wendt presents America as both a battleground of the spirit and as a potential sacramental chalice for the wedding of the new Sun mysteries with the ancient Saturn mysteries. The battleground involves what he refers to as the “threefold Shadow” and its role in allowing evil to hold sway in our time. The sacramental chalice relates the presence in our midst of the etheric Christ to the prophetic wisdom of the Native Americans. This fusion of the new Sun mysteries with the ancient Saturn mysteries suggests the power of love and wisdom necessary for overcoming evil, or “becoming one with the Good.” This vast and complex view of America is compelling, yet Wendt offers it not as a simple sentiment but as an outcome of a practice, a method of cognition that he articulates as Steiner’s basis for spiritual science.

No time is wasted in serving up the bitter medicine. The introduction offers a harsh but sober indictment of the Anthroposophical Society as Wendt points out three essential practices that he finds lacking within its current models and leadership:

» the self-knowledge that can be derived from objective study of Steiner’s A Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe’s World Conception and The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (or Freedom);

» the understanding and practice of the “reverse cultus” described in Steiner’s Awakening to Community (1923);

» and a rightful grasp and application of the Michaelic cosmic intelligence as distinct from its fall into intellectualization.

These points are not easily dismissed. I am convinced that

Ehrenfried Pfeiffer (right) with long-time coworker Sayre (Sally) Burns in the 1950s.

everyone involved in the Anthroposophical Society’s many activities has encountered the lack of such practices, though they cannot be said to be completely absent from the society. Nor is Wendt’s the only formulation of essential practices.

The first practice can be extended to all studies of methods of psychological introspection and inquiry, anthroposophical or otherwise. My reading is that Wendt means for us not to rest in the idea of study, but to take up a more concerted practice of the methods implied by Steiner’s epistemology.

The second practice exists in many forms of group work which strive to lift thoughts and ideas into the realm of the spirit; it need not be in the specific terms of Steiner’s reverse cultus. Often it is experienced as moments full of grace, and not necessarily attributed to some correct method of conversation.

The third practice is less likely to take place in print than in an oral transmission from the soul of one truth seeker to another. It is in the living word, not the printed word, that so much of the esoteric nuances of Michaelic intelligence can be conveyed; what is problematic is the notion that Michaelic intelligence can just be read and repeated as knowledge.

Wendt’s criticism seems to be aimed primarily at institutional forms within the Anthroposophical Society. Exclusive attention to this formed aspect of the society can lead to a despairingly one-sided picture. It fails to acknowledge the life freely engendered among members who find in anthroposophy the light of human wisdom and the flame for their friendship.

The section following the introduction is titled “The Challenge.” In it Wendt discusses the incarnation of Ahriman as the “outwardly dominant characteristic of this time.” Readers who study it will at the least gain in understanding of the working of Ahriman, as the author demonstrates a comprehensive grasp of the subject. This section involves Steiner’s definition of in the threefold ordering of social life, and Wendt points out with insight how the sphere of rights is currently being exploited, particularly the culture of media. I think he overreaches in pointing a finger of identification at Karl Rove, but he is convincing when showing Ahriman’s signature behind much of Rove’s engineering of the Bush-Cheney administration.

“The Orientation” characterizes the “inwardly dominant characteristic of this time” as the true Second Coming of Christ, and Wendt recommends Valentin Tomberg’s Inner Development and Jesaiah Ben-Aharon’s The Spiritual Event of the Twentieth Century to supplement his explications. Among the well-phrased thoughts in this section is:

Gnosis without Faith is empty of Life; and, Faith without Gnosis is empty of the Truth. Only when we join them together, do we get: the Way (the Mystery of living the Good), the Truth (the Mystery of knowing the Good) and the Life (the Mystery of union with the Good).

Drawing on an article by Dennis Klocek in the News for Members for Autumn 2005, Wendt describes, in a unique manner, an alchemical approach to thinking through the four trials of initiation. He offers this as an aid for Americans to understand the “new thinking.” Such metaphors as the music of discipleship and the joyous celebration of sacramental thinking are well

grounded and quite accessible. Presenting an American path for transforming the social sciences and the Anthroposophical Society in America, Wendt relies primarily on European resources. I will not fault him for the resources he emphasizes, but such reliance on Europe was a complaint he himself made at the outset. His scant remarks about Ralph Waldo Emerson and American thinkers of the last two centuries is a troubling omission.

Wendt homes in on the challenge of facing the inner evil that finds its expression in our social life. He offers many interesting perspectives and potential solutions to this problem, but I take issue with his solipsistic use of the terms double and shadow which perpetuates the confusion between these concepts. This subject deserves a book of its own, exploring the different doubles Steiner referred to in his lectures and the Jungian concept of shadow and its current usage.

In the section titled “Encountering the Mystery of America,” Wendt delivers a riveting articulation of the Hopi prophecy. He implies that the “True White Brother” coming from the East bearing the “rose-cross” refers symbolically to anthroposophy, its foundation stone, and its task to proclaim the Second Coming of Christ. This perspective is a timely and illuminating contribution to spiritual-scientific research and one of Wendt’s most relevant additions to an American anthroposophy.

This section is followed by a critique of the Russian anthroposophist Sergei Prokofieff and many of his admirers, who are said to espouse a form of Steiner idolatry. Wendt perceives this influence as a significant barrier to truly understanding the core principles of a practiced anthroposophy:

Real knowledge never comes through another, but only out of our own activity such that we are able to unite experience (percept) and thought (concept), which is a major reason why Steiner repeatedly insisted we not use him as an authority (the other major reason is that we are not to make our thinking dependent on him; otherwise we are not inwardly—spiritually—free).

What this social process (the almost universal assumption that a reading of a Steiner text provides knowledge) means is that not only have we failed to appreciate the true value of these texts for enlivening our understanding, but we may have allowed this material to enter the soul as mere belief. In this way then the teachings of Spiritual Science become in the soul religious—not scientific, which is why I have been forced to use the term Steinerism to describe this system of beliefs. (page 233)

Whether or not one accepts this analysis, it is hard to deny that this type of presentation often makes anthroposophy appear cultish to others. The distinction Wendt makes between knowledge and understanding may appear to be subtle, yet it has huge ramifications in how anthroposophy is disseminated.

The latter part of the book addresses the theme of the new mysteries. Wendt proposes that we may conceive of Rudolf Steiner’s work “as fostering in the Center the New Mysteries of Man,” whereas in the East, out of its own intuitions, a fostering of the new mysteries of light may emerge. In the true West (the Americas) intuitions fostering the new mysteries of the earth may arise. His understanding of this task in the Americas focuses on the social and moral trials of our time. He does not explicitly

align these new mysteries with the Platonic virtues of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good, but he infers it.

His primary aim is to link the Good with the American task. In this regard, Wendt makes a poignant statement about the deeper reality of the consciousness soul age that relates quite specifically to the development of an American anthroposophy: The moral freedom of the fully developed ego consciousness of the human being is now bringing about the ability to unite the I within the soul with the eternal—that is with the Good, while at the same time this reaching for goodness is meant to be the soul and spirit foundation for true brotherhood —for the new healthy social life.” (page 246)

Wendt connects this with the poetic inspiration of the song “America the Beautiful,” particularly with the phrase “… and crown thy good with brotherhood.” As he articulates the hindrances to achieving the Good, he further identifies the Ahrimanic strategy that needs to be confronted. A resource he recommends as an aid is Jesaiah Ben-Aharon’s book, America’s Global Responsibility: Individuation, Initiation, and Threefolding

American Anthroposophy can be summed up as a passionate call for a radical catharsis to take place within the Anthroposophical Society and movement. As Wendt puts it, small acts of courage, of rebellion, of celebration, and of birthing the new mysteries are needed for an American anthroposophy to emerge. In conclusion, he makes a plea to anthroposophists in America to take three basic actions:

1) that we create a true history of our movement’s activity in the 20th century (spirit recollection);

2) that we take a deep interest in the Mystery of America as it comes toward us out of the future (spirit vision);

3) that we stop saying: Steiner said (a gesture only possible out of memory), and instead begin to share our own in-themoment heart thoughts (spirit mindfulness).” (page 250)

For me the first plea is a bit perplexing. Is he implying that there are false versions of the history of our movement’s activity in the twentieth century, or is he asking a deeper and/or different question? Regarding the second plea, he has made a substantial case for its relevance; it could also be heard as an invitation for others to share research on the spiritual aspects of America and how anthroposophy interfaces with it. Wendt’s third plea amplifies a growing concern, particularly among anthroposophists seeking to build bridges with the world at large.

There are other valuable and relevant aspects of this book, but I have exercised my own bias to give as concise and balanced a review as possible. Books like Joel Wendt’s are too often put aside or marginalized because of their controversial material or because they are perceived as not politically correct. As an American anthroposophist I feel a responsibility to weigh in on such an important subject. My own approach would have been quite different from the way Wendt chose to express his ideas and opinions. However, I am only too glad to bring attention to the theme of American Anthroposophy. If in any way this review can prompt a dialogue among members of the society and movement about the necessity of a genuinely American approach to the understanding and practice of spiritual science, I will consider my contribution meaningful.

William Bento, Ph.D., is a transpersonal clinical psychologist and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at Rudolf Steiner College.

Learning to Perceive the American Soul

by Joel A. Wendt

Rudolf Steiner had much to say in the course of his life concerning the division of the world into Eastern and Western cultures (Orient and Occident) on the one hand, and Eastern, Central, and Western soul characteristics on the other. It is important to distinguish the cultural manifestations from the soul characteristics. In this article I am only going to reflect briefly, and, I hope, deeply, on the particular soul characteristics of Americans; I urge readers of Steiner to seek to appreciate a certain subtlety involved when he spoke about East and West from these different points of view—in the one case about spiritual culture and in the other about the general characteristics of the soul. One way to help see this is to conceive of spiritual culture as related to the history of ideas, and another is to see that matters of the character of the soul involve the evolution of consciousness

There are many possible approaches to perceiving the American soul, one of which is reading books and pamphlets. These could include (but not be limited to) Carl Stegmann’s The Other America: The Western World in the Light of Spiritual Science; Dietrich V. Asten’s America’s Way: The Tasks Ahead; and F. W. Zeylmans van Emmichoven’s America and Americanism. These materials are, by the way, the work of Europeanborn individuals whose interest and curiosity about America and Americans can be very useful. At the same time we need to note that these authors did not possess an American soul, so those soul phenomena that can only be understood through objective and scientific introspective self-knowledge will have escaped their vision.

“Make no mistake, it’s not revenge he’s after. It’s a reckonin’.”

Another way to perceive the American soul is to look at American spiritual culture, past, present, and future, for such culture can be a kind of mirror of soul characteristics. Certainly, for example, the Transcendentalists are worth a good look, and we can ask a significant question by wondering whether and in what way Transcendentalism is similar to or different from Romanticism and/or German Idealism. Obviously, we can look also to Rudolf Steiner as part of this past.

For example, Steiner said in The Challenge of the Times that English speakers live instinctively in the sphere of the consciousness soul in their life of rights. He also said, in lectures to the workmen on 3 March 1923, that Americans come to anthroposophy naturally, while Central Europeans come to anthroposophy spiritually. An ongoing meditative contemplation of the concepts in these sentences can bear much fruit.

As someone inspired by three years spent with Carl Stegmann and the Emerson study group in the early 1980s in Fair

Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday in Tombstone (1993)

Oaks, California, I will try to bring forward as the heart of this essay a few of the more essential results of my own thirty years’ spiritual research on the American soul.

My principle discovery was to come to understand that in the “Western,” both in film, television, and novel forms, there existed a deep, nearly mythic, representation of the American soul (sometimes in American Studies classes this is called the “American character”). One could go into this in great detail, but here I only have space for a kind of sketch. Please keep in mind that in looking at American film, television, and novels we are looking at spiritual culture (various forms of expression in the history of ideas) and finding mirrored in these artistic expressions deep aspects of the American soul.

For those not familiar with American culture, let me recall some facts. The Western was a popular type of film right from the beginning of the silent movies in the 1920s. From television’s arrival in the 1950s, the Western was a principle dramatic form that prevailed for decades. Western novels are less well known, but those who want to do further research may want to look closely at the works of Zane Gray. Some academics consider the hard-boiled detectives of film noir to be a translation of some of the antiheroic characteristics of the better Westerns into a more modern social environment.

Let’s consider for a moment the basic plot structure of the Western (and somewhat, of the detective story). First there is in the community the presence of evil. This evil evokes fear, and thus paralyzed, the community is unable to act. Then enters the lone stranger, who at sometimes great personal cost makes individual sacrifices that result in the removal (or taming) of evil. Often the community will not be grateful for this service, and the lone stranger (if he survives) might be rejected by the community. There are, of course, many variations on this basic theme.

The best modern practitioner of the art of the Western in film is the actor, writer, and director Clint Eastwood. While many sensitive souls will be repelled by the violence of the Western, we need to remember that those individuals who are willing to face down evil in any community do so at grave personal risk. Eastwood’s work is well regarded by his peers, and his penultimate expression of the Western, the film Unforgiven, won many awards.

In the beginning the Western was simple in its use of archetypes, with the good guy wearing a white hat and the bad guy wearing a black hat. In Unforgiven the real moral ambiguity of the consciousness-soul age is fully present, for in this film there are clearly no good guys or bad guys. Eastwood in Unforgiven plays a down-and-out former murderer who is hired by some prostitutes to kill a cowboy who viciously cut the face of one of their friends while he was drunk.

This archetype of the cowboy is so subtly prevalent in American society that we often miss its broader appearance

and implications. For example, the elder former-president Bush instinctively moved to Texas in 1948 to step away from the reality of his father’s family ties to a wealthy New England elite; he also moved in order to clothe his own young family in the myths of Texas manhood. One can find, among political historians of America, insightful considerations of the importance of this struggle between the Yankees and the cowboys (the Northeast vs. the Southwest). John F. Kennedy was a Yankee and his vice president, Lyndon Johnson, was a cowboy. The cowboy is, of course, more in line with the true myth of the American character (soul) in the guise of the common man of the West, while the Yankee is more in line with the elites of banking—what some call the merchant princes —who are historically the inheritors of many of the former powers of the once-dominant aristocracies of blood.

There are many other films that could be discussed, such as High Noon starring Gary Cooper (who was born in Helena, Montana, making him not only a natural common man of the West but an ideal personality for many of the films of Frank Capra, such as Meet John Doe). Clint Eastwood also made the remarkable film Pale Rider, in which, in response to the prayer of a young adolescent girl, a dead man (Eastwood) comes to town dressed as a preacher in order to confront the evil there (Revelation 6:8: “And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death...”).

Now hidden behind this somewhat mythic picture of the lone stranger and the problem of evil in the community is something more general in the American soul that can be described in this way: The American uses thinking to solve a problem perceived as social. If we understand that thinking is a spiritual activity and that ideas are crucial spiritual aspects of human existence, this use of thinking by Americans is not only important to perceive, but we also need to understand how the West is different in its thinking gesture (soul characteristics) from the center and from the East. Here we have stepped away from the mirroring aspect of American spiritual culture and entered directly into the real realm of soul processes that can be observed through scientific

“There’s no living with a killing. There’s no goin’ back from one. Right or wrong, it’s a brand... a brand sticks. “ Alan Ladd as Shane in Shane (1953)

“You should never kill a man unless it’s absolutely necessary.” Clint Eastwood as Bronco Billy in Bronco Billy (1980)

“I never shot nobody I didn’t have to.” John Wayne as Rooster Cogburn in True Grit (1969)

and objective introspection.

As anthroposophists in America we are more familiar with the thinking gesture of the center, which is not necessarily something good for Americans to imitate and practice. In the center, the thinking gesture stands between what is earthly and what is heavenly so that human beings of the center, in their social practices, want to incarnate the ideal. Their thinking takes hold of the ideal and seeks to bring it into incarnation. As a phenomenon in the Anthroposophical Society and movement we see this in habitual and semiconscious approaches to Rudolf Steiner’s conceptions of a threefold social order. The social world is to be molded into the shape of this remarkable ideal.

expressed) a threefolding: producers, distributors, and consumers;—the rights life in the course of Western civilization came to comprise three aspects: the state, media, and the people. This made media, in its most comprehensive sense, the heart of the social organism (see also my 1995 essay: “Waking the Sleeping Giant: the Mission of Anthroposophy in America”).

Media presently consists of an old fourth-cultural-age aspect that is still dominated by top-down, pyramidal, hierarchical third-cultural-age structures such as huge media corporations and the new media (Western civilization is dying into a new becoming) with its morally free (instinctive and natural ethical-individualistic) tendencies (e.g., the Internet) to create a functioning media anarchy. As a result, Americans’ creative impulses have invented, for example, social networks (MySpace, Twitter, and Facebook, etc.) and free, creative media such as YouTube. These are the social growing point of a new, free media configuration and will turn out to be the best place for anthroposophy to become socially accessible in the future.

We need to visualize media in this sense as a dynamic, living social process within the total social organism. Recognizing the social necessity and inherent problems of media is a phenomenological and inventive approach to social threefolding rather than an ideological one that seeks to conform social relations to a preconceived ideal. It is within free media that new impulses (seeds) connected to the rights life will find their most vital social growth medium (soil).

“There are some things a man just can’t run away from.” John Wayne is the Ringo Kid in Stagecoach (1939)

When Americans try to do this we mostly fail, in large part because it is an unnatural gesture in the realm of thinking, although rooted in understandable imitation of our European brothers and sisters (remember, Americans are natural anthroposophists). Just as represented in the American myth, the Western, the American soul seeks to solve the problems it perceives in the social realm and the thinking gesture then seeks to grasp those ideas that “solve the problem” (thus our tendency to pragmatism). First comes the experience of the social dilemma and then the gesture of thinking that seeks to heal it. Deeply introspective self-observation will confirm this, as well as serious Goetheanistic examination of the phenomena of American life and culture.

Americans, then, do not try to conform social life to any ideal as do Europeans, but rather try to heal the social realm of its defects, and our natural gesture of thinking serves this need. We are first oriented toward what is earthly, and we reach up to the heavenly only as needed. We can understand this from social phenomena if we carefully recall the founding of the United States, which was prompted by multiple social problems connected to the evils the colonists perceived in the overreaching of the English aristocracy. In response to this we have Thomas Paine’s Common Sense (1775); then the Declaration of Independence (1776), which led to war with England; and then finally the U.S. Constitution (1787). All of these were pragmatic attempts to solve certain social problems; in no way were they attempts to first conceive an ideal and then bring it to incarnation.

There is a very real question lurking in the background here that has to do with how the threefolding idea instinctively (English speakers instinctively inhabit the realm of the consciousness soul in the life of rights) and naturally (Americans are natural anthroposophists) arises in American political culture. As this is a very large theme, I can only give a couple of hints.

Some years ago (1991) I wrote a brief summary of certain beginning results of my social/spiritual research titled: “Threshold Problems in Thinking the Threefold Social Order.” In that short work I observed that similarly to cultural life, which has three aspects: science, art, and religion;—and similarly to economic life, which has latent within it (although yet to be fully

It is also here in the heart of the rights life (free media) that the means to truly heal the social dysfunction currently manifesting in the world’s economic crisis will be found. If we understand threefolding in a living way we come to realize that the center (the rights life) is an amalgam or synthesis of the cultural and economic spheres. These social spheres are not separate from each other but interpenetrate in a living way such that free media bears within it the best of the cultural (free spiritual life) and economic (brotherhood and sisterhood impulses) realms in a kind of unitary combination or synthesis (see Steiner’s Inner Aspects of the Social Question for certain important indications).

“I’ve heard guns. My father and my brother were killed by guns. They were on the right side but that didn’t help them any when the shooting started. My brother was nineteen. I watched him die. That’s when I became a Quaker. I don’t care who’s right or who’s wrong. There’s got to be some better way for people to live.” Grace Kelly as Amy in High Noon (1952). In the final scenes, Amy kills a man in order to save her husband; even she finds a “necessity” that causes her to set aside her “theoretical” pacifism.

Another way to examine the difference between the “center” and the true West (America) would be to compare the archetypes of Goethe’s Faust with the archetypes of the Western. The American is not a Central European in his fundamental soul characteristics, and Faust, as an example of mature spiritual culture in its representation of consciousness soul questions, is inapplicable to the same consciousness soul questions faced by the more youthful American soul and spiritual culture.

Understanding this difference between the American soul and the Central European soul will also help us to appreciate today’s split in American Waldorf education between the idealists who want pure, “ideal” Waldorf schools and the pragmatists who foster charter schools in order to make Waldorf education more universally available—seeing modern weakness in education as a social problem to be solved rather than as a situation demanding the incarnation of an ideal.

Now to round out our examination it would help to add the picture of this same thinking gesture as it tends to arise in the East (again, in the sense of soul characteristics and not spiritualcultural tendencies). Whereas the West perceives what is earthly and seeks to solve its dilemmas, and the center perceives the ideal and seeks to bring it to incarnation— to build an artistic bridge from the ideal to the incarnate real, the East seems to want to remain united with the remembered ideal and leave behind entirely what is earthly.

Elaborating such a theme, however, might be going too far, because we are less familiar with both the phenomena and general spiritual history of the East than we are of these same facts for both the Center and the West. Thus my comments on the East here are brief, and are to be taken with a grain of salt in the absence of something far longer and more sophisticated.

So we have a powerful ahrimanic tendency in the West (a rich and vital materialism, with its obvious attendant dangers, including Ahriman’s incarnation, that seeks to bind the ego to the sense world); a presently imprisoned Christ-oriented tendency in the center (the higher elements of the German spirit, for example, have been held at bay by the appearance on the social plane of the Beast from the Abyss within National Socialism following Steiner’s death); and an ancient and powerful luciferic tendency in the East for merging the soul with a now rigid, overly ideal order that would then strongly inhibit the earthly freedom of the ego (the spirit), witness a continued presence of remnants of the caste system in modern India.

Rudolf Steiner has challenged us to understand this and to find a way that these differentiated soul gestures might work together. Each by itself is one-sided. Through our conscious coworking via international conferences on these very themes, we may discover the means by which the anthroposophical movement might offer true healing to the social world of humanity in a more integrated fashion. For example, far less urgency for idealistic Waldorf schools, and more support for local adaptations of the basic themes. For Americans, the path to this work begins with increased self-understanding and the perception of our own soul characteristics as distinct from those of the center and the East.

Without a deeper knowledge of our own soul and how it is differentiated from the other soul gestures in the threefold world of West, center, and East, anthroposophy in America will suffer. Already there has been in the society and movement here in America an excess of interest in European culture at the expense of coming to know American culture. Granted, Euro -

pean culture contains the heights to which Western civilization has risen, but this is of the past. The West, particularly America, is of the future.

Here is the English anthroposophist Terry Boardman, in the 1999 book The Future Is Now: Anthroposophy at the New Millennium, reflecting on Steiner’s thoughts: “In his lectures to the WestEast Congress in Vienna 1922, Rudolf Steiner spoke of EuropeAsia as ‘the problem’ of modern times and Europe-America as ‘the solution’. By this he meant that Europeans were preserving the dessicated remnants of an ancient Asian spirituality in the dusty abstractions of their intellectual, political, and religious systems. The future lay rather with the will to create out of nothing. And this willingness he saw in the youthful energies of the Americans.”

A first step in consciously manifesting this potential to perceive the American soul depends upon Americans taking up not only the introspective study of their own souls but also a deep and appreciative encounter with their own, albeit youthful, culture. The practice of anthroposophy, as we all should know, is about self-knowledge. We can, as an aid to our inquiries concerning the American soul, adapt something Steiner has said in a more universal context: We learn the most about ourselves (our American character) by studying that which is outside us (in this case American culture), and the most about what is outside us (American culture) by studying ourselves (our personal version of the American character). That we also bear more universal soul characteristics should not be forgotten, but if we want to learn to better perceive the American soul the above orientation will be a great help.

From personal experience let me add one final thought. It is crucial to love any object of thought if we are to draw near to its true idea-essence. If we harbor antipathies to American culture—if, for example, we judge it as wanting in comparison with European culture—we will by that presumption disable our capacity to know, through love, the genuine and youthful creative heart of American culture. And, unfortunately, we will also miss coming to know something quite profound in ourselves as Americans.

Joel Wendt is the author of several books which can be read for free at his blog “Shapes in the Fire” ( http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/). William Bento’s review of American Anthroposophy, the latest book, precedes this essay.

“Well, that Spirit ain’t worth spit without a little exercise.”

Clint Eastwood as The Preacher, in Pale Rider (1985)

“Tommy was weak. Tommy was stupid. Tommy is dead.” Russel Crowe as bad guy Ben Wade in 3:10 to Yuma (2007)

Bringing New Consciousness to Anthroposophical Remedies

Ross Rentea M.D., Mark Kamsler M.D., Andrea Rentea M.D., founders of True Botanica, LLC

First Steps, First Intentions

When we started the True Botanica Company five years ago it was clear to us that what we wanted to accomplish was more than just to make anthroposophical health products. (The question of what transforms simple ingredients into an anthroposophical formula is difficult in itself and we struggle with it every day. We will tackle it, at least in broad strokes, later in this article.)

Certainly we hoped that our efforts would contribute in some measure to the well being of people using our products, and we are gratified to say that they did, and increasingly do. But we also hoped that our activities would make an awareness of anthroposophical medicine more central to general anthroposophical life. How many of our anthroposophical friends are regularly using anthroposophical remedies—to name just one of the pillars of anthroposophical medicine? How often is anthroposophical medicine, for that matter, even discussed in our regular anthroposophical branch work? Most members who routinely deepen themselves through Rudolf Steiner’s lectures; practice their meditations (many of us three times daily); and perhaps do some eurythmy on a regular basis, and so on, are only peripherally concerned with or take anthroposophical medications. From among the many health-related activities we will concentrate here on the work with substances, arguably one of the hardest anthroposophical areas to penetrate both from a purely spiritual point of view as well as from a legal-regulatory stand. Should one bother to at least be informed about the work with anthroposophical remedies, let alone consider it an absolutely essential part of one’s anthroposophical life? How can one support this part of the anthroposophical movement if one is not convinced through and through of its cardinal importance in one’s personal and “societal” life?

The causes for this current situation are many, but perhaps among them could be mentioned the lack of practicing anthroposophical doctors and the resulting difficulties in getting prescriptions for even the most basic anthroposophical remedies (or for curative eurythmy, for that matter). Another reason may be the failure of doctors to convey the message that anthroposophical medicines, of whatever nature, do not just satisfy an immediate need to improve various physical symptoms—“make the pain go away, doctor”—but that they also help, when properly designed, to significantly assist our spiritual and meditative

life even when physically “there is nothing wrong.”

Rudolf Steiner placed health as a first requirement for higher development in his fundamental book How to Know Higher Worlds. The health that will allow a higher spiritual development simply cannot be achieved without remedies (the word should be understood here in the broadest possible way) that are designed to assist the spiritual person beyond affecting chemical processes in the physical body.

This separation of central anthroposophy and the medical movement was not always so. In the original sketches and building plans for the first Goetheanum, a medical clinic was envisioned standing as a “next-door neighbor” to the Goetheanum. This never came to be, though physician Ita Wegman later built one in the next town and played a large role as Rudolf Steiner refounded the Anthroposophical Society and formed the School for Spiritual Science.

When one looks at the original imagination that Rudolf Steiner had for the Anthroposophical Society it emerges as an entity formed of four sections: the School of Spiritual Science; the Anthroposophic Press; the Goetheanum building; and finally, the Clinical Therapeutic (medical) Institute. If we compare the living organism of the society to the configuration of a human being, then the fourfold organization of the society as originally conceived can be likened to an organism resting on the four major organs in the human body, four organs without which the human being cannot live: the lungs, the heart, the liver, and the kidneys. Which section corresponds to which organ require an analysis that would go beyond the scope of this article. But it can be said that at least in the United States our anthroposophical organism is missing “the medical organ” as Rudolf Steiner

Lightroot, Dioscorea batatas, tubers

had once conceived it. In a conversation in the early 1920s Ehrenfried Pfeiffer asked Rudolf Steiner the following question (loosely translated and edited here for clarity and brevity): “Why is it that in spite of their best and earnest efforts more anthroposophists are not clairvoyant? Why is it that one does not see in their lives more evidence for spiritual deeds done in the physical world?” Rudolf Steiner’s succinct yet clear answer was that this is a nutritional problem. He explained that food no longer contains the spiritual forces needed to support the physical organization such that our spiritual life naturally leads from thought to will impulses. This led ultimately to the birth of biodynamic agriculture, where the attempt is being made to cultivate plants in such a way that they again store more of the cosmic etheric forces. Do we, however, eat enough—or even any—of those biodynamically grown foods? Do we even discuss in our circles the general lack of availability of these foods? And what if health problems have gotten even worse over the intervening decades? What if today not even “good foods” alone would be enough to support us? What if the cultural attacks, the environmental toxins, and so on are having such a devastating effect on our physical body and our higher members that we need “nutritional supplementation,” not just “nutrition”? What if intensely active work is needed to obtain the necessary health we require for an anthroposophical life rather than a passive “maintenance of the status quo”? What if pretending that we have satisfactory health is only an illusion? It is absolutely crucial that we develop the will in the Anthroposophical Society to tackle these practical problems together! Maybe the time has come when exchanging ideas at a meeting is no longer enough, but rather we need to develop those associations Rudolf Steiner spoke of as being necessary in economic life in order to support and ensure the existence of products essential to our anthroposophical spiritual life.

With these and other considerations in mind we decided at True Botanica to create many anthroposophical remedies that would be formulated as “nutritional supplements” that can be obtained by anybody, mostly without prescription. These formulas would support physical health and have recognizable practical utility (for example, to “stop a cough” and so on) but

would also have to have a specific spiritual quality. These are complicated formulations, since they must contain ingredients that we can understand anthroposophically and then must be worked upon in such a way that the processes they are subjected to will make them suitable to help the etheric or astral bodies or the Ego:

It is important that besides making remedies based solely on the currently accepted materialistic chemical forces one should also produce those remedies of which it can be said: Into those remedies the spirituality of the world has been inserted in a particular manner. (Rudolf Steiner, 8.29.24, free translation)

Crucially important are the processes themselves to which the individual ingredients have been subjected, and one must stop thinking that the substance in itself is the actual healing factor. (Rudolf Steiner, 9.3.23, free translation)

In the manufacture of our remedies we use special centrifuge devices, dilution or ashing processes, harmonic potentizing, alcohol-free extraction, and other processes.

In fall 2009 we will host an intensive, full-weekend conference entitled “What Are Anthroposophical Supplements?” For now, here are some brief examples of our work.

Lightroot comp™ (Dioscorea batatas)

Rudolf Steiner observed that the root (tuber) of the wild yam (Dioscorea batatas) is the only plant capable of storing light ether in its sub-terrestrial parts. This light ether would be very significant to the people of the future. After much searching we have been able to secure special biodynamically grown dioscorea plants. These have been hand harvested with great care by our farmer friends in conditions that excluded as much as possible the influence of electricity. (We know from Steiner that electricity is “fallen light” and thus adversary to the light ether.) These aspects have been considered even in regard to how the plants are transported: they are wrapped in protective peatmoss cloth. After arrival at our facility the dioscorea is prepared with rhythmical processes in the morning and evening; ashes are obtained from the root and potencies are made.

These ingredients make up our remedy Lightroot Comp™. On a physiological level, taking this nutritional supplement helps to increase health wherever the “light metabolism” is active: eyesight; bone

Kevin, our production manager, with the Inversina® mixer.

Dhondup, our tinctures and creams specialist, preparing a lotion with frankincense and chrysolith gemstones

Trellises being constructed by Steve, a BD farmer, in order to help the light ether connection of Lightroot, Dioscorea batatas, a climbing vine.

strength; helping to restore the circadian rhythm that may disturbed by shift work, travel across time zones; and more.

On a more spiritual level, it is helpful with improving mood and helps support meditative life (we have had excellent reports in this respect). Most importantly, it has a crucial role in the restoration and maintenance of memory, which depends on the light ether.

Stannum Complex™

Rudolf Steiner was consulted in 1924 about a “delicate and sensitive” patient who had abdominal bloating, various other stomach complaints, insomnia, and headaches—probably in today’s language an irritable bowel syndrome. Other factors seemed to point also to a kidney problem. Steiner recommended a remedy made from stannum (tin) that was to be combined through a series of steps with nitric acid, copper, and alum. The formula as given is very cryptic, and demanded a lot of study and work on our part to refine it, but ultimately it was extremely rewarding. Eventually, following that path one could actually observe how the grey color of the tin transforms itself to white and finally to a delicate azure blue. (Incidentally, Steiner once elucidated that it is precisely these color changes that demonstrate the presence of spiritual-elemental forces at work.) Ultimately, over thirty different potentizing and chemical steps were required to obtain the final result!

How do we understand some of the spiritual significance of this remedy? The principal element here is stannum, the Jupiter mineral that governs the whole astral body. To strengthen this effect the indication here is to combine it with nitric acid, which in itself anchors the forces of the astral body into the metabolism. Tin appears here in a particular gelatinous form (not easy to create) that extends the effect of stannum to the “gelatinous” areas in the body like the connective tissues, the joints, and so on. Finally, the union with copper and the sulfate group of the alum solution also direct the effects of stannum to the kidney.

Stannum is governed by the Jupiter forces. On a soul level the “royal Jupiter” functions are manifested in clear, concentrated, and measured thinking. But the Jupiter forces connected to the spiritual kidney functions have yet another role: they contribute to fighting the “kidney dullness” of our time.

Rudolf Steiner commented in more than one of his lectures on the apathy, senselessness, and aggression of our culture. He reveals that, ultimately, the organic cause of

these phenomena rests in a kidney “dullness.” This kidney dullness results from the fact that while other organs in the body can receive direct spiritual life without our assistance, the kidneys need our own conscious support. If we ourselves do not feed the kidneys with spiritual material, they lag in their function and lead to an abnormality that finally becomes the cause for further spiritual pathology. In other words, the lack of spirituality starts the cycle and weakens the kidneys so that after a while the diseased kidneys themselves become the cause that leads to the person’s further spiritual decay, even opposes spiritual development.

Rudolf Steiner goes so far as to say that, for example, the First World War was to be considered “a manifestation of the huge kidney disease of mankind.” Does this description of inertia, lack of inner spark and inquisitiveness, even the all-too-often encountered acceptance of “simple” drug therapy even if it is ultimately harmful, denote the same process? We think so. It is wonderful to have now such a remedy that can begin to correct this widespread cultural problem.

Hope for the Future

As we have seen, we can look at anthroposophic medicine—and within it specifically at anthroposophically prepared substances—as an essential component of our earnest spiritual strivings. Starting from a real need, be it a physical pain or illness, a spiritual crisis, or our genuine wish to advance our spiritual work, we can look to the world of substances to support us. Building a relationship with these substances and the beings that stand with them we can approach the ideal of having, as Rudolf Steiner formulates it, our human soul truly live in the limbs, the heart, and the lungs, and in the “resting head.”

Several immediate challenges lie ahead of us. The more external ones we will discuss on another occasion. Our parting hope here is that we anthroposophists would begin to cultivate awareness of the anthroposophical medical aspects of our spiritual life and initiate a conscious discussion on how to support and improve it. The first step that must be taken is a step We have nothing to fear but doing nothing. For information, or to share comments or needs, please contact us: truebotanica.com True Botanica is presenting a fall conference, What are Anthroposophical Supplements? New Approaches for Practical Therapies, from October 16 to 18, in Mukwonago, Wisconsin, about thirty minutes west of the Milwaukee airport. For details please go to www.truebotanica.com/fallconference2009.html or call 800-315-TRUE (8783).

Tin (stannum), natural grey color

Stannum, in a white gelatinous form, after beginning reaction with nitric acid

Stannum, after reacting with copper and alum solution, toward the end of the process

Wilt Thou Be Made Whole? Healings in the Gospels

by Georg Kühlewind, translated and introduced by Michael Lipson; Lindisfarne Books, 2008, 120 pages.

Review by Frederick J. Dennehy

Some are born to anthroposophy, some cultivate it, and some have anthroposophy thrust upon them. A stumbling block for many who encounter it is the connection between anthroposophy and the New Testament.

I do not mean the relationship between anthroposophy and Christianity; that is a separate question. I have in mind the hostility from organized Christianity that many readers, greatly interested in Rudolf Steiner, have experienced in their lives. I am thinking, too, of those who wandered away from mainstream Christianity after hearing the Gospels portrayed as fairytales or, equally off-putting, after being given bowdlerizations that edit out the hard sayings and astonishments and present us with a predictable moral code and a Jesus who would have won the Nobel Peace Prize had it been available during the reign of Tiberius. For not a few the response is to accept Steiner’s epistemology, anthropology, and even eschatology, but to return the gift of his Christology unopened.

For anyone who has had an uneasy relation to the Gospels, and in particular the stories of the “miracle” healings, Georg Kühlewind’s book may prove a revelation. Rudolf Steiner spoke repeatedly about the healings in the Gospels. Kühlewind’s book provides a contemporary bridge to Steiner and also presents his own spiritual research on the healings.

The book’s introduction by Michael Lipson gives us a wonderfully intimate glimpse of Georg Kühlewind at the conferences he held in New England for many years. In one of the last such gatherings, at the time he was writing this book, the main theme was healings in the Gospels. The impression Kühlewind gave at first meeting was of a profoundly intelligent, urbane, witty man fully in control of his feelings. But when he spoke of the New Testament his feelings were very close to the skin. When he turned his attention to “the Lord,” his gestures and even his appearance changed. He knew the Gospels, quite literally, chapter and verse, and he studied the healings with the care of a scholar and the insight of a master teacher. He understood what so very few scholars and commentators do—that the stories of healings in the Gospels are neither presented as journalistic accounts of events nor as “evidences” of the divine power of Christ, but rather are reports of the authors’ meditative experiences that are meant in turn to be meditated by readers.

W hat does this mean? Kühlewind evokes the ancient Orphic text in which the human being acknowledges: “I am a child of Earth and of the starry Heavens.” We are, in other words, born both “from above” and “from below.” This is the polarity that configures our lives, our missions, our infirmities, and our deaths. Healing always means that “the ‘one from above’ heals the lower part of us, which is the only part of us that can become sick.” Healing means “wholeness”; the Self is present, even if temporarily, in the world “above.” It means the dissolution of what separates us from ourselves and others; a reversal, even if only for a time, of the Fall. For this to occur we

have to return, for a brief time, to the “openness” characteristic of archaic times and our own infancy.

This condition is termed pistis or “faith” in the Gospels. Faith is not a willed belief when reason can go no further. Rather, it is complete certainty, understanding without any doubt. It is a direct experience of our connection with the “Source”—as real for us as the act of climbing a mountain. The realization of faith takes place in the realm of arche, of primal beginning, where one I-Being—who exists as communication —interpenetrates another without mediation. The sign in the healing stories for this realm is the healing touch. It may also become present through the Word of the Lord. The healing stories in the Gospels often include the word dynamis, which is usually translated “power,” but whose most resonant translation is “meaning.” As Kühlewind puts it in a meditation that itself touches wholeness, “the power of the word is its meaning.”

Kühlewind proceeds by detailing a human “anthropology”— based upon statements by Rudolf Steiner but presented in a modern idiom—that accounts for both the possibility of healing and the manner in which healings occur. He describes the sentient or vegetative body (which relates to what is currently referred to as the autonomous nerve system. It is “a mechanism through which the state of the soul can effect changes upon bodily function without conscious intervention”); the “I” body, which is characterized by noncognitive self-perception and is related to egotism; and the spiritual core of the human being. He then examines the healings themselves—the “psychiatric” demon expulsions, the healings through personal touch of the afflicted one; and the mediated healings that take place at a distance. What emerges for the reader is an experiential, often first-time understanding of what the healings mean, and in addition, the basis for a revelatory, anthroposophicallybased spiritual psychology.

Kühlewind was thoroughly fluent in Greek, and he provides new translations for key recurring words and phrases in the healing stories that change the meanings of the healings from familiar recitations of miraculous powers to meditative experiences in which we may choose to participate. Through a detailed analysis of anthroposophical anthropology, he shows what the healings mean in terms of the conscious, the superconscious, and the subconscious. He makes it clear why, as Steiner emphasized, healings were more apt to occur 2,000 years ago than they are now, as well as why they are more apt to occur again in the near future.

It is not too much to say that for many who read this book, the New Testament will be “opened” in a way previously unforeseen. But this is not a book to sit back and imbibe. It includes twenty-five meditations that readers should stop reading and do, and almost as many preludes to meditation, which Kühlewind calls “ponderings.” To read this book actively is to read the New Testament—whether one has heretofore avoided it or worn its pages brittle with turning—for the first time: to arrive at the place of beginning and to finally know oneself.

Michael Chekhov on Theatre and the Art of Acting

by Mala Powers;

In a lecture hall in Hollywood, California, in 1955, a group of professional actors gathered weekly to hear the great Russian actor Michael Chekhov (1891–1955) speak about his approach to the art of acting. Among Chekhov’s students at that time who might have been present were such film stars as Anthony Quinn, Gregory Peck, Gary Cooper, Marilyn Monroe, Ford Rainey, Ingrid Bergman, Jack Palance, and Mala Powers. Fortunately for us, as Chekhov addressed his “colleagues” and “good friends,” actors John Abbot and John Dehner had the foresight to turn on a tape recorder.

The late television and screen actress Mala Powers (1931-2007) worked with an audio restoration specialist to edit and restore these recordings. They are now available on compact disc. These CDs, together with the accompanying booklet, offer a delightful and profound insight into the life and work of an extraordinary actor, teacher, and devoted student of anthroposophy.

Students of Chekhov’s technique will also want to read his To the Actor or On the Technique of Acting, but hearing the master speak of his method in his own voice enlivens and inspires as the printed word cannot. And there are elements here of Chekhov’s acting technique that cannot be found anywhere in his books: his “five guiding principles,” for example, or (I believe) “shortcuts to the part.” Neither recordings nor books can replace learning and doing the exercises in person with an experienced teacher, but these recordings are an invaluable source of insight and inspiration. Even listeners not professionally interested or involved in the theater will find these lectures interesting and entertaining. I played part of the first disc for friends who are not actors, and they were fascinated by Chekhov’s way of speaking and his examples of character “centers” and “imaginary bodies.”

Listen to the joy and delight in his voice (and the occasional laughter from his audience) as Chekhov instructs us in his techniques for transforming oneself into a character through imagination and movement, through visible and invisible means. Note how his carefully chosen words are filled with professional and life experience as he guides his listeners through the many levels of the invisible “mask” an actor can “wear” to reveal his or her character and creative individuality to the audience. Observe the gentle, warm, and encouraging certainty with which he shares techniques for “avoiding monotony in the actor’s performance;” awakening artistic, rather than personal, feelings and emotions; and developing a feeling of ensemble and “love in our profession.”

Williamson

a 4-CD audio set with booklet, “A Guide to Discovery with Exercises”; The Working Arts Library, 2004. Review by Glen

Students of anthroposophy will appreciate the wisdom and wholeness in Chekhov’s understanding of human psychology, behavior, and soul life. He speaks from his heart and his own experience, and every word is steeped in his spiritual understanding of the world gained through intimate familiarity with and painstaking application of Rudolf Steiner’s spiritualscientific path. Witness Chekhov’s use and understanding of the terms “creative individuality” and “higher self” or “higher ego.” He speaks of imagination and inspiration in a way that any actor can understand and of love in a practical and unsentimental way. He describes overcoming egotism, finding the thinking heart, and confronting the negative part of ourselves, “this other guy…this other me…who becomes my own enemy.” In one of the later lectures he clearly differentiates soul and spirit: The soul accumulates experiences, but only the spirit can unite these experiences, draw conclusions, and create principles and archetypes; our spirit is “a wise scientist working in our hidden unconscious laboratory,” he tells his audience. He is addressing Hollywood actors and, in his own unique imagery, he is giving them pure and practical anthroposophy.

The CDs

The four CDs comprise five hours of lectures. At the beginning of each of the nine sections, over a lovely mandolin theme we briefly hear Mala Powers’s expressive voice (recorded, it seems, in 1992) cheerfully, lovingly, and sometimes humorously guiding us into the next topic. In her voice as in her writing we hear her love for her teacher, as in his we hear his love for his fellow actors and his profession.

The nonprofessional recording quality and the extraneous sounds (“unavoidable due to the limitations of the source tapes,” we are reminded) add to the charm. Only occasionally is it a strain to understand Chekhov’s thick Russian accent: He speaks with the emphasis, clarity, and range of the sensitive and skilled actor (and human being) he was. I remember twentyfive years ago a striving young actor had to go the Library of Performing Arts at Lincoln Center to listen to the crackly old tapes of these valuable lectures. The quality of these CDs is much improved.

The Booklet

Because Chekhov gave these lectures to professional actors who were already familiar with the fundamentals of his technique, Mala Powers created an accompanying 60-page booklet with a remarkably complete and concise orientation to Chek-

A treasured photo belonging to Michael Chekhov (L), with Russian-born composer Sergei Rachmaninov (courtesy of Dorothy Emmerson).

hov’s life and work. The booklet outlines many techniques as well as instructions for exercises corresponding to each of the nine lectures. Even non-actors will find valuable tools and suggestions for developing self-awareness and creativity. Readers familiar with anthroposophy will notice reflections of Steiner’s basic exercises (in open-mindedness and positivity, for example) and of the threefold human being.

In a compelling and illuminating essay, “The Importance of the Michael Chekhov Technique for the Modern Actor,” Powers describes how the world and the theater today are not only more in need of but also more open to Chekhov’s ideas and techniques than when he first taught them. In “A Life of Discovery,” a vivid and concise biography enhanced by the author’s intimate acquaintance with her teacher and friend, she humbly and lovingly tells of Chekhov’s often painful and difficult search for his own higher individuality and for circumstances in which he could work with colleagues. Tracing his circuitous journey from Russia to Hollywood through major events, theaters, and personalities of the twentieth century, Powers notes, “It was Chekhov’s destiny . . . to have his fondest hopes and dreams regularly shattered by political upheavals, revolutions, and wars.”

It’s a breathtaking story. The son of playwright Anton Chekhov’s alcoholic brother, “Mischa” began his career with spontaneous childhood performances for his mother and his nurse. There followed work at the Maly Theater in St. Petersburg, and then triumphant performances (and later his own studio) at the famous Moscow Art Theater. Having survived the Bolshevik Revolution in Moscow, battles with depression and alcohol, and a failed marriage to actress Olga Knipper, Chekhov explored yoga, hypnosis, and, at last, anthroposophy. Mala Powers writes, “In the fall of 1922 Chekhov traveled to the Netherlands to hear Steiner lecture. Mischa remained a devoted student of Steiner’s anthroposophy for the rest of his life.”

Chekhov, with his second wife, Xenia, barely escaped Bolshevik Russia in 1928, never to return. After rapidly learning German, he acted on the stages of Berlin, Vienna, Paris, Lithuania, and Latvia, where he suffered a heart attack while directing the opera Parsifal and then had to flee a fascist coup. He came to the United States in 1935 and acted with a Russian-speaking company on Broadway, then learned English and taught in England. When war with Germany was imminent, he relocated to Ridgefield, Connecticut, taught and directed in New York City, and formed a theater company and toured widely in the eastern and southern United States (1939-1942). During World War II, he and Xenia moved to California, where he acted in ten Hollywood films.

When he gave these lectures in 1955 at the age of 63, Chekhov had worked with some of the greatest directors of the twentieth century, Stanislavsky, Vakhtangov, Reinhardt, and Meyerhold, who all held him in the highest regard, and he had been nominated for an Academy Award for his performance in Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound. He was at the height of his powers as a teacher, having mastered not only the English language but also the ability to formulate and express his ideas and techniques for his fellow actors. “Perhaps it was his life-long, relentless struggle to ‘discover’ himself that made him so creative in helping others to discover themselves, as artists and human beings,” Mala Powers concludes. Within the year, he was gone from this world. But today his influence continues to grow through the many actors, teachers, and students who share and work with his teachings.

Glen Williamson, a founding member—with Ted Pugh and Fern Sloan—of The Actors’ Ensemble (a theater group inspired by the acting technique of Michael Chekhov), is an actor and storyteller based in New York City whose performances have toured widely. With Mala Powers he co-authored the two-person play Aeschylus Unbound, which will be given October 1st before the AGM (see page 16).

THE ANN ARBOR FESTIVAL PLAYS

For decades these plays by Katherine Katz have enlivened the four major festivals of the year in Ann Arbor 232 pages, 80 color photos, diagrams, musical scores, and more, with extensive editorials by Ernst Katz on acting, speech, staging, lighting, costumes, etc.

CONTENTS

The Ann Arbor Christmas Play

the play for wherever English is spoken, esp. Waldorf schools Parsifal and the Holy Grail for the Easter season two plays for St. John’s Tide (one for open air) two plays for Michaelmas (one loved by children)

Ordering Information:

Send $50.00 + $2.00 P/H to: Festival Plays, c/o Anthroposophical Society, 1923 Geddes Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48104-1797 Phone (734) 662-9355 – Fax (734) 662-1727

“Because of our tendency to compartmentalize our actions, there may be a temptation to look upon this book as two books rather than one—a book on the spirituality of food and a practical cookbook. But, Anne-Marie is very clear in what she is doing. She helps us perceive how our bodies, our lives, the world around us, and the larger universe as a whole form multiple, related activities that come together in miraculous ways through the act of eating. Until we can consciously enter into the miracle of food, we are lost in one popular speculation after another concerning how to eat.”

—from the Introduction

by Robert Sardello

Cooking for the Love of the World

Awakening Our Spirituality through Cooking

by Anne-Marie Fryer Wiboltt; Goldenstone Press, 2008, 201 pgs. Review by Conrad Rehbach

A few years ago I had the good fortune to organize a course for early-childhood educators and one of my colleagues on the faculty was Anne-Marie Fryer Wiboltt. Anne-Marie taught the importance of healthy nutrition both at home and in the kindergarten or school setting. Later, when I looked through the evaluation forms students had submitted, I read: “I loved Anne-Marie’s energy and charisma. She had great knowledge and openness to ideas.... “ Reading AnneMarie’s new book, Cooking for the Love of the World, I reached the same conclusion: “I love Anne-Marie’s energy and charisma!” These qualities shine on every page, from the beautiful artwork, the layout and design, the chapters on cooking, the recipes, and in lovely touches like the “Explore” sidebars. These address simple questions like: “How do you feel after eating a carrot?” or deep thoughts like “Take care of your body with steadfast fidelity. The soul must see things through these eyes alone, and if they are dim, the whole world is clouded.” (Goethe)

Cooking for the Love of the World is not simply a cookbook, but is really a guide to understanding how cooking in all its aspects is a spiritual path, a path of self-development. The author encourages readers to see the kitchen as a holy place, like our soul.

On Cooking for the Love of the World

“Cooking is always an activity of and about the soul, and food is profoundly mysterious. Our metallic culture likes to chase the mysteries and the spirits away, but Anne-Marie brings them back gently and wisely. This book is infinitely more significant than it looks. It could represent the cosmic shift in culture that we desperately need today. Read this book. Take it to heart. And live in a world brought to life in the simple sanctuary of your kitchen.”

In the first of its two sections we find chapters on preparing ourselves to cook and on food preparation. Wiboltt looks at the rhythms and wisdom in the world; then at growing and harvesting food; and finally at the art of cooking itself. The kitchen is presented as a place where artistic activity occurs daily, where we can create meals that bring us into harmony with nature and with ourselves. The section ends with a chapter fittingly titled “At the Table,” as we are now ready to sit down and enjoy a meal.

The second section includes recipes divided into four chapters, one for each season of the year, helping us to cook with the seasons.

The book includes a recipe index, a bibliography for further study, and a comprehensive list of resources.

Purple Hibiscus

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; Algonquin Books, 2003, 307 pgs. Review by Conrad Rehbach

Purple Hibiscus is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s first novel, published in 2003. She received the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for this work. It is set in Enugu and in Nsukka, both in Nigeria, and tells the story of a young girl growing up and experiencing the effects of colonialism, corruption, political turmoil, the disparity of wealth and poverty, the Christian missionaries’ work and influence on the country and on her family, and the conflict between traditional life and beliefs and the modern influences brought by the Catholic church and the media.

—Thomas Moore, author, Soul in Everyday Life

“This is a friendly and poetic book. While the reasons given for food choices are based on the spiritual approach of Goethe and Steiner instead of on science, they do actually conform to the most up-to-date scientific nutrition. A pleasure to read—it sent me into the kitchen.”

—Annemarie Colbin, PhD, author, Food and Healing; Founder, The Natural Gourmet Institute (NYC)

Adichie’s writing is powerful and descriptive, with great attention to detail, including the ironies and the small things in life that really tell the story. She writes with the objectivity and passionate aloofness of the consciousness soul that observes yet withholds judgment, but also does not spare the reader from descriptions of gruesome experiences. The result is a powerful book that gives readers an experience of modern-day Nigeria while at the same time depicting the inner conflict, the search for new ideals, that has gripped the souls of modern human beings everywhere. In this it is a story of the time we live in.

The Black Madonna of Chartres

Lorraine Dopson

Chartres is perhaps the world’s best-known cathedral, a lofty edifice located an hour south of Paris and dedicated to Our Mother. It is one of the grandest of the beautiful cathedrals that arose in France in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, a time of great adoration for Mary the Mother. This was also the time of courtly love, a love dedicated to purity, beauty, and unrequited passion. But Chartres has a story that reaches far back before the time of Mary. It holds within its magnificent walls a history of the feminine principle of humanity. By this I refer to the tradition of devotion to the Mother that endured throughout Europe for at least 30,000 years. During the Paleolithic and the Neolithic periods, reverence for the Mother or Goddess embodied a vital bond with

Seventh-century Christian missionaries encountered Druids at this location, which by then was a sacred oak grove. The Goddess tradition had been modified by Celtic practices and beliefs, though it endured like an underground stream, feeding the souls of people grappling with the dichotomies of the newer male sky god and the worship of Mother Earth.

The Goddess tradition endures underground at Chartres in a subterranean grotto with an ancient well. In that chamber is a statue of a Black Madonna. She sits at the front of an underground chapel. Regular services are still dedicated to her. Local people and visitors from abroad climb down an ancient stairway into the darkness, coming to light candles, worship, and pray.

No one knows why the Black Madonna phenomenon began;

the world of matter, mater, mother; the natural world of birth, death, sex, ecstasy, and healing. The Black Madonna portrays some of the historical overlays that are part of this ancient site. The lower third depicts a Paleolithic culture, centered on mother, child, and nature. The people sit by a stream. A sacred stream or spring was often the place of worship for those close to the Great Mother. Long ago a stream flowed where the cathedral now lies. Chartres, like many European churches, was constructed above an ancient well once dedicated to the Goddess.

perhaps she reflects beliefs brought back from Rome and North Africa by the Crusaders. Dedication to Isis and Cybele remained strong in those places for centuries after the birth of Christ. Whatever the reason, the Black Madonna tradition flowered in Europe during the Middle Ages. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of these statues were created. Cathedrals like Chartres were homes to both the Black Madonna and Mary.

No one knows why she is black. Some say it’s from smoke or age, though many of her statues are painted. I believe her blackness comes from something far deeper. Veneration for a feminine aspect of the divine seems to have emerged spontaneously in all cultures during the Paleolithic age. Artifacts from that time tell of a preoccupation with the female body, not simply as an object of sexuality but of life itself. The pagan cultures of Europe needed no outside prompting to worship the feminine. The Divine Mother in black skin stirred something deep within them. Her creation must have been a spontaneous, collective act of spiritual creativity that allowed worshippers to revere their new Christian Mother while staying close to their ancient source of meaning.

In the top right corner the Black Madonna watches over the people and the earth. Her face is powerful but kind. This painting celebrates the reemerging consciousness of the feminine aspect of God in our culture today.

Lorraine Dopson, a counselor, artist, and writer, lives in Bismarck, ND; she has long been interested in the evolution of consciousness and is the author of The Light at the End of the World

Volunteering... in Pakistan

One scene that will stay with me perhaps the longest and perhaps most clearly is the unfolding of the bedtime routine, namely the goodnight circle. We begin by crowding around the long dinner table in the half darkness, listening to a flute introduction of the song we are about to sing. Before the notes would have a chance to bow themselves politely from the spotlight, each of us launches into his or her own interpretation of the melody we have just heard; the low voices and the high ghostly wail, the faltering few and the drones all coming together to form a jaw-clenching serenade ushering us to bed. Invariably, we will have to pause from our singing as we are frantically waved into silence to accommodate the cries from the neighboring mosque, calling all to evening prayer. This is how we begin and end each day, around this table, and neither restlessness nor a perfectionist ear could convince me that it should be any other way.

A Camphill in Pakistan is no more or less vibrant than one would imagine. To understand the beauty of this, one has first to recognize the true passive splendor of the surrounding countryside. Fields of rice and wheat are hemmed in by low brick walls, and the flat expanse is dotted with windowless, cement shells of houses that forewarn us of impending development. A glance at Roshni Village reveals green lawns and rows of planted vegetables, a chicken coop, and a beautiful, new brick building towering at the center of the property, as well as at the center of life at Roshni. The Community House plays host to ten of the special needs “students” who live at Roshni throughout the year; to the founding family of Roshni; and to a number of volunteers both from Europe and Pakistan. There are also roughly 25 other students who come during the week to participate in workshops. These workshops, which include textiles, woodworking, and even a bakery, are the staples to keep everyone busy, and are designed to nurture creativity and skilled handwork in the students.

In the textile workshop, women clad in varying shades of shalwar kameez (the traditional tunic and trousers worn by both men and women) all cluster around a wooden table to embark on a day’s worth of steady engagement. These are the dependable tasks of stringing beads and embroidery, or stuffing sewn projects, slowly guiding an animal or doll into its rightful form with tufts of wool meticulously and rhythmically placed. Such constancy and repetition is well exercised here at Roshni, for which both the students and volunteers are grateful. Kausar, a woman of 33, is the unspoken center of the women’s sewing circle; perched on a chair at the head of the table, needle and sequins in hand, she keeps a deceptively hooded gaze on her work, but if I look a little bit closer,

By Maika Munske

I can see that she is monitoring every bit of the surrounding action. Chatter and small jokes are made, and every so often one of the men from the woodwork shop wanders over to pester the women or talk to Monsoor. Monsoor is the only man who works in the textile workshop; his designated work is at the loom and each morning one can observe him making his rounds, carefully dusting off the different rigs before beginning to weave.

Morning activities give way to a simple lunch, usually consisting of dal (spiced lentils) and alu (potatoes); the ubiquitous organic Roshni bread, baked on the premises, is of course at the table for each meal and is also sold in various stores in and around Lahore. In the afternoon, most of the students go home, save for the few who live at Roshni. We generally spend slow afternoons in the shade, preparing vegetables for the evening meal or gardening, waiting for the heat to subside so that we can take our daily walk down to the local park.

Attimes, I imagine myself standing in front of a world map and putting my forefinger on the dot indicating our location in South Asia. Is it true that this place, this land that holds so much turbulence and mystery, can also be the same place of peace where we are living? In seeming contradiction to what is widely known about this country, we have found no more struggles than those of daily obligation to existence, no more conflict than the ever-present mealtime discussions over who will get the last roti (flatbread).

What exactly had I expected before coming to live at Roshni? Should I have rather experienced a world fraught with the newspapers’ clowning for chaos? One month spent at a Camphill in Pakistan has dispelled any would-be uncertainty about how this world can live. It seems as though one month is really no time at all when reflecting on everything that happens here during a single day. When visiting the city of Lahore for a few hours, I can hardly hold onto each perception due to the sheer amount of things to see. One month flies by without a second glance, in a whir of colors and sounds, and the ever-present smell of cooking food and chai.

Taking tea here is something as inescapable as riding in a rickshaw or eating lentils, not to imply that these are things to avoid. Quite the opposite, in fact; anywhere in the city will surely host hoards of chai stands and street vendors hawking neat stacks of raw sugarcane and heaps of samosas, vying for one’s attention and business.

It is impossible not to enjoy having senses in this city, and despite the constant dust and smog, it exhibits an unfamiliar beauty to convert even the coldest of travelers.

Contact Hellmut Hannesen at roshni@gmx.net for more information, or online at www.roshni.org.pk . Donate to the Roshni Association through RSF Social Finance rsfsocialfinance.org

Maika Munske recently graduated from the Portland Waldorf School and is based in Järna, Sweden.

The Anthroposophical Society in America

General Council Members

Torin Finser (General Secretary)

MariJo Rogers (General Secretary)

Gordon Edwards (at large)

James Lee (at large)

Virginia McWilliam (at large) Regional Council Representatives

Lori Barian (Central Region)

Linda Connell (Western Region)

Ann Finucane (Eastern Region)

Marian León, Director of Administration & Membership Services

Jerry Kruse, Treasurer

News for Members is published four times a year by the Anthroposophical Society in America

1923 Geddes Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48104-1797 Tel. 734-662-9355 Fax 734-662-1727 www.anthroposophy.org

Editor: John H. Beck

Associate Editors: Judith Soleil, Fred Dennehy

Please send submissions, questions and comments to: editor@anthroposophy.org or to the postal address above.

©2009 The Anthroposophical Society in America

The responsibility for the content of articles is the authors’.

Welcome to New Groups

The Eastern Regional Council welcomes three newly recognized groups: Epiphany Study Group, Comer, Georgia; Rochester Study Circle, Rochester, New York; Anthroposophical Society of Cape Ann, Massachusetts.

Ed Scherer for the Eastern Regional Council

Reminder:

The Annual

Spirit-Recalling, SpiritAwareness, Spirit-Beholding

At a recent weekend of meetings of the Collegium of the School for Spiritual Science in North America, the Council of Anthroposophical Organizations and the General Council of the Anthroposophical Society in America, I took a lunchtime walk down Hungry Hollow Road. Originally just a dirt road on the outskirts of Spring Valley, NY, this rural lane evolved into a central artery in an active anthroposophical community, now including not only the Threefold Educational Foundation but also the Fellowship Community, Eurythmy Spring Valley, Green Meadow Waldorf School, and several other initiatives. Serving people from birth to old age, this community will host our Annual General Meeting and conference on October 2 and 3, 2009, as it has countless conferences over the past seventy years.

As I took my walk, I passed houses that brought back vivid memories of people I knew so well in my childhood: Lisa Monges, who taught me eurythmy at age four and later sponsored me for membership in the society; Howland Vibber, who often played God in the Paradise Play; Connie Ling, who gave me my first lawn-mowing job; Ernst Daniel, who ran the farm and taught me how to milk.... Some recollections were not so distant, such as my meal at the Fellowship Community sitting next to Henry Barnes in May 2008; others went way back, such as the Tasha Tudor cottage that served as summer home for the Wetzels, now just a patch of etherically rich trees and shrubs. I recalled meeting the stately Charlotte Parker on her regular afternoon walks (perhaps one of the reasons she lived to be over 100), and Madame Selke, who always checked the mileage on my odometer to tell me if I had biked to Buffalo yet. All these wonderful people resurfaced in my feeling-memory, giving rise to a deep sense of gratitude.

This spirit-recalling led to a kind of inner dialogue as I walked further. Conversations came back to me, not so much in words but in gesture and inner meaning. In some cases I felt an acute sense of loss and a growing wish to have said goodbye in a more conscious way. What was left unsaid?

My feet guided me to the top of the hill and my hand surprised me by knocking on the door of Ann and Paul Scharf. Much to my surprise, they were home and ever so willing to see me. My childhood doctor, the parents of my childhood friends—in that moment were both a memory and a contemporary presence. We had a wonderful conversation that covered many topics in a short half hour and managed to include both thank-yous and the sharing of insights. When asked for advice for the Anthroposophical Society, Dr. Scharf gently oriented me in the direction of the associative principle in Rudolf Steiner’s work. Which brings me to “spirit-awareness.”

Meeting of the Anthroposophical Society in America will be held Sunday, October 4, 2009 at the Threefold Auditorium, 285 Hungry Hollow Road, Chestnut Ridge, New York. The meeting will begin at 9:00 a.m. and conclude at 1:00 p.m.

Members’

Some of us are comfortable looking backward, others are eager to move into the future, but many struggle to live fully in the moment. This is in part because the soul is often beset by sensory overload coming from the physical world, and by new ideas and impulses coming in part from the spiritual world. The soul, in some ways

the most vulnerable part of our human nature, has to work hard to breathe properly into everyday living.

This “breathing with” is part of our challenge to live in spiritawareness in the presence of the other. This does not happen with an “on/off switch” as with much of our technology today, but rather the awareness rises and falls in rhythmic patterns. Even in a conversation there is an ebb and flow of being present; some of us occasionally try to reassert awareness by talking, as it is often more challenging to remain present just by listening.

My colleague Hartwig Schiller, general secretary in Germany, has been speaking about a “situational society.” I hope his article can soon be translated; in essence, he describes how the Anthroposophical Society lives most fully in situations—at times simply in fleeting moments—when human beings find one another in spirit-seeking. If there is truth to this observation then there may be many implications for how members and friends see themselves in free association. I find that our consciousness often reverts back to old Roman, institutional forms: buildings, chairs, membership cards, dues.... Perhaps the world today is asking us to take a leap in our spirit-awareness in how we work together, and to see the situational moments of human encounter as more real than the outer trappings. What is needed to effect this kind of reorientation? How can we work with our organizational forms so that there is maximum flexibility for the soul realm of spirit-awareness?

Looking forward, spirit-beholding can further draw us together. Dr. Johannes Tautz once said in a presentation I attended that the past divides but the future unites. It is for this reason that the general council has begun conversations in groups and branches on “imagining our future.” Peter Senge, author of the bestseller The Fifth Discipline, writes: “The practice of shared vision involves the skills of unearthing shared ‘pictures of the future’ that foster genuine commitment and enrollment rather than compliance” (p. 11). My way of understanding this is that in the process of creation we awaken will forces that can help meet us out of the future. Imagining our future is a relational activity achieved best through conversation and dialogue. The Greeks saw dia-logos as the free flow of meaning through a group, allowing for insights that individuals could not attain on their own. Old forms of leadership were sometimes seen as “telling people what to do.” The leadership of the future has more to do with initiating processes that allow for transformational experiences. Imagining our future, or spirit-beholding, is thus simply a vehicle to release our inner striving.

Finally, in calling upon spirit-recollection, spirit-awareness and spirit-beholding, Rudolf Steiner repeatedly—and I believe intentionally—used the word “practice.” In my mind, this certainly means “do it.” It is like the student who asked the teacher, “which meditation is the best one for me?” and the teacher’s response: “the one you actually do.” So, with any of the exercises given by an initiate, we need to move beyond gratitude to actual practice.

If we are to take courage and do more practicing, we might also want to prepare to practice more forgiving. We often hold oneanother to a standard we have not achieved ourselves. If we are to move forward as a human race, perhaps we need to allow for more risk-taking, initiative, and even the occasional mistake. Our flaws make us more vulnerable, but also more lovable.

Torin M. Finser, General Secretary

Introducing Virginia McWilliam

We are happy to welcome Virginia McWilliam to the general council this year. Last year Virginia had shared with a member of the Eastern Regional Council that she was willing to do “whatever was needed” to support the society. That led eventually to her attending a general council meeting in January as a guest. She immediately and wholeheartedly plunged into the work underway at that meeting, impressing council members and leading us to invite her to join the council. She’s bringing fresh ideas, limitless enthusiasm, and says she’s keeping an eye open to keeping the work relevant.

MariJo Rogers, General Secretary

When the compass was first created in ancient China, it was a simple and crude device made of a piece of straw pierced by a sliver of magnetic rock. After years of collective work and advancement, the compass is now a highly developed tool for global navigation. Like the compass, my biography had a basic foundation that was built upon by the contributions of many people. My upbringing provided me with a center and a focal point. My early years gave me basic values for which I am truly grateful. But as my life unfolded, my foundation became a limited perspective that I had to move beyond.

Early Years

I grew up in England during the 1950s. My hometown in Salford was located in the heart of the smoky industrial Northwest. I lived in a terraced row house with my mother and two sisters. Salford was still recovering from the effects of World War II bombings, and derelict or destroyed areas existed between hastily built row houses as a visible reminder. Finding an occupation outside the factory was rare. The existing poverty and hardship of my surroundings did not detract from an imaginative and playful childhood with my two sisters. As I grew older, my mother tried to steer me toward factory work. But my teachers at school pushed harder for me to follow a higher education. My academic successes were rewarded by a government scholarship to attend university. With this new opportunity, I left home at age seventeen to study biochemistry and chemistry. This was the first step beyond the limits of my working-class background.

Career Background

After completing my undergraduate degree, I decided to seek voluntary work before embarking on a career path. I ended up at Beaver Run, a Camphill community in Pennsylvania. Camphill is a worldwide organization that offers an anthroposophicallybased curative lifestyle to mentally and physically handicapped individuals. Beaver Run cared specifically for handicapped children, offering them continuous care and support from residents

and volunteers, supplemented by a Waldorf-based education. It was here that I learned about anthroposophy, which became a very significant and meaningful philosophy in my life.

I also met my husband, David McWilliam, while working at Beaver Run. David’s parents, Charles and Adola McWilliam, were founding members of Beaver Run, where they worked and raised their family. As I had done, David wished to move beyond the confines of his own upbringing. Together, we set off traveling and eventually ended up in Boston, where David completed his university degree.

For many years I considered how to obtain an income with work that was connected to my inner values and my love of curative work in an anthroposophical setting. The answer was found in my becoming a Waldorf teacher, which satisfied my needs to grow as an individual without totally compromising my role as a mother.

Final Notes

As a Waldorf teacher, I have enjoyed success not only in the classroom, but also as a colleague and mentor. My mission as a mentor has been to provide leadership that offers inspiration while also being open to the individual initiatives of my colleagues. My recent work in South Africa as an educator and mentor was a turning point in my career. By facing a different environment and a new challenge in South Africa, I also gained new objectivity regarding my prior work.

Over the past twenty years, I have enjoyed and treasured a long-term relationship with the Cape Ann Waldorf School as both a parent and teacher. I am currently exploring Waldorf education beyond the school that had become a home. With my children now grown, I find myself with a renewed capacity for discovery. I look forward to enriching my life with new initiatives and new adventures.

Virginia McWilliam General Council Member at Large

Office News

As Torin Finser mentioned in his article on the Michael Support Circle (issue #2), we are involved in taking a critical look at our staffing configuration with an eye to better meeting our current needs while minimizing our costs.

In May, a decision was made to eliminate the position of Director of Financial Services. In human terms, this means that Winnie Han is no longer a part of our administrative team. Winnie had been with the society for eleven years, and during that time had become a familiar voice to many of our members. Winnie first came to the Ann Arbor office to fulfill the role of bookkeeper. She quickly became a valued member of our staff and a good friend as well.

Two things influenced our decision. First, with the changes we have made recently in our financial management (new auditor, new treasurer, and new accounting program), we believe we can meet the needs of the members and the organization in a more cost efficient way. And secondly, as the society grows and develops, different skills are needed. By reallocating our funds, we intend to reduce some of our costs and to bring in help in the realm of communications and development.

Saying goodbye to a valued colleague is always difficult. Winnie has been able to enjoy some time with her extended family,

and is looking forward to continuing her education in the fall. We wish her well!

Linda Leonard, our receptionist, is stepping into the role of bookkeeper. If you have questions concerning your dues, subscriptions, or accounts receivable, Linda will be happy to speak with you. In addition, Jerry Kruse, our treasurer, is taking an active role in financial oversight. Jerry is in the office all day on Tuesdays and Thursdays. If you would like to contact him by email, his address is JerryKruse@anthroposophy.org.

Please join me in welcoming three new groups! During their June teleconference, the General Council formally recognized the Epiphany Study Group of Comer, Georgia, the Rochester Study Circle of Rochester, New York, and the Anthroposophical Society of Cape Ann, Massachusetts. These groups have all been working for some time to bring their intentions to fruition. Congratulations!

Members’ correspondence continues to flow into the office— ideas for study-group support, concerns about membership, questions about the society’s finances, and many wishing us well. All is appreciated and taken into consideration.

I look forward to seeing many of you at this year’s AGM. Don’t forget to contact the office soon if you need a replacement pink membership card!

Marian León Director of Administration & Membership Services

Imagining Our Future

Every day thousands of feet pass the small storefront on West 15th Street carrying intent, determination, and habit through the daily grind. Often, people gaze up at the curiously long name on the wooden sign above the door, and some notice the activities board of Anthroposophy NYC and the Rudolf Steiner Bookstore and stop to read about programs. Sometimes, there is an interest to enter and find out about anthroposophy and the Anthroposophical Society. This can be a life-altering event.

The New York branch of the Anthroposophical Society came into being through the determination and persistence of members after the Anthroposophical Society’s headquarters were moved from New York City to Chicago in the early 1980s. Actors were strongly represented in this group that, after moving among several spaces in the city, purchased half the shares of a townhouse (with anthroposophist owners retaining the other half) on West 15th Street. Years later, in 2001, members purchased the remaining fifty percent of shares after the death of owner Lydia Wieder. Originally, the ground floor housed a carpentry shop, and the current main corridor was an entrance for horse-drawn carriages. After a redesign by Jorge Sanz Cordona a foundation stone was set under the new auditorium floor. The 21st anniversary of this event was grandly celebrated and remembered earlier this year and attended by many of those present during the earliest years. After the purchase of remaining shares, the upper floors of the building were completely renovated, so that two floor-through apartments and two offices could be rented out to help pay the mortgage. Forty-one days after the branch signed a substantial mortgage with the Rudolf Steiner Foundation, the World Trade Center attacks plunged the city into chaos. In the following period of havoc, confusion and pain, apartment and business rents in lower Manhattan fell

precipitously. The branch’s rental spaces were vacant for nearly a year and this, coupled with other factors, plunged finances into a deep crisis.

New York is not for the fainthearted. Branch members stepped courageously forward, working tirelessly to eliminate all inessential expenses. In the ensuing years, the Chelsea neighborhood has become increasingly fashionable and the rental market swelled with the economic bubble. Intermittent rentals of the auditorium space to mostly spiritually-based groups and activities (including a Chekhov acting school and early-childhood initiatives) contribute to the branch’s economic viability. Today, despite a generally soft rental market, the renovation of 138 West 15th Street is paying off, placing Anthroposophy NYC finances on firm footing. There, anthroposophy is alive, well, and present whenever someone off the street comes to meet it. The branch programs host national and international speakers, meetings of the School of Spiritual Science, and a wide range of workshops, courses, concerts, art exhibits, and study groups.

I know this story because I was one of four members of the general council that met recently at the branch in conjunction with a special gathering of Anthroposophical Society members in nearby Spring Valley. We wanted to meet with branch members, learn about their activities and experiences, and share information about the Anthroposophical Society’s evolving strategic planning and development program. We had a lively conversation and, typical of cosmopolitan New York City, the dialog could have continued well into the night if the visitors hadn’t had early morning commitments in the suburbs. Present were members of the branch, its council, the St. Mark’s Group (whose 100th anniversary is to be celebrated the week of March 5 & 6, 2010, leading up to the annual SteinerBooks seminar) and the Barfield Group. They wanted to know what’s new in the society; what impulses are carried by anthroposophical youth; how members can have a stronger relationship with the national society; how the society can help facilitate circulation and interchange among groups and branches; and how the society can reach out to enrich the larger community and, in turn, be reinforced by it. Many other thoughts were presented that may be carried forward by branch members. With 46,000 members in the world, the Anthroposophical Society has a responsibility to reach out to the 1.8 million directly associated with its work, and the 8 million who are indirectly linked to anthroposophy.

How do we increase our social relevance and impact?

How do we increase the number of members and friends who support the Anthroposophical Society?

How do we broaden the financial basis of the Anthroposophical Society so it is less dependent on dues to fund its programs?

The general council wants to develop tactics that will have an immediate effect on the well-being of the Anthroposophical Society while keeping costs within financial means. We recognize that members, branches, and groups are already working in these arenas and we want to take advantage of their work and knowledge to gain clarity from their understanding, experience, and will. Each of the members of the general council have committed to visiting at least two branches between now and the society’s annual general meeting in October. We are attempting to do this in such a way that travel costs are kept low and at least two council members are present at each meeting. We urge members, groups, and branches that would like to host a meeting with members of the general council to contact me by e-mail at anthroposophy@earthlink.net and start the conversation.

2009 Annual Conference

Creating Living Connections:

The general council is working with four strategic areas related to the well-being of the Anthroposophical Society in America. We think these issues will have diminished meaning if they are not also carried and worked on by members and friends of anthroposophy. The strategic issues are broad by design and cover wide areas of interest:

How do we become more effective in our organizational relationships so as to better connect with members and friends of the Anthroposophical Society?

October 2 – 4,2009 Spring Valley,New York

For information,visit our websites: www.anthroposophy.org www.threefold.org

All that has been said in this article shows that the institution of the Anthroposophical Society is derived from the will, initiative and inner work of each individual member and the active groups of members carrying anthroposophy in their social interactions. A meeting of delegates and interested members will take place between 5:30 and 6:15 p.m. on Saturday, October 3 at the AGM conference to stimulate activity and collaboration among members, groups, and branches and to strengthen and further this work. I will host this meeting with those who are interested to participate with the Anthroposophical Society in developing and carrying activities that serve the society within the strategic areas described above. If you are interested, bring this idea to your group or branch and see what will exists among members to do something with others. I look forward to seeing you there. If you are an independent member with an interest in this activity, stop by and participate. You will be welcomed.

James Lee

General Council Member at Large

English Week, Dornach, 2010

The theme of the Third International English Conference at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland, will be “Stepping into the 21st Century Spiritually”. The dates are August 2–7, 2010. The first such Conference was 1998 and the second in 2003. Please save the dates!

The Anthroposophical Society in America in collaboration with the Threefold Educational Center is pleased to present

“Encouraging News for Members”

From the June 2009 Branch Newsletter of the Portland, Oregon, Anthroposophical Society

There are strong forces at work in our civilization that would draw us into passivity, dullness or other ways of being less than our true selves. Anthroposophy offers us a way to wake up to our potential and to develop the capacities to become truly human. The Anthroposophical Society has the task of furthering the life of the soul—both in the individual and in human society—on the basis of a true knowledge of the spiritual world. It is not a mere organization to join but an activity.

This activity can be exercised by individuals in any circumstances and by groups in anthroposophical institutions such as Waldorf schools and Camphill communities. In such settings those who are members of the Anthroposophical Society are actually expressing the very ideals that led them to join the society. They may even feel sad that their anthroposophical commitments at work prevent them from participating in events of the society! It can also happen that under the pressure of work the cultivation of the life of the soul amongst teachers and co-workers is neglected and there is need for that impulse of the Anthroposophical Society to come more to the fore. And very frequently one finds people doing the work of the society but holding back from joining it because of an inner resistance to becoming a member of any group professing to specific spiritual beliefs. (This is a healthy feeling that Rudolf Steiner acknowledged by saying of the newly founded society: “It cannot be a matter of setting up principles to which one is then expected to declare one’s adherence.”) The number of people who are inspired by or benefit from anthroposophy far exceeds the number of members of the Anthroposophical Society.

From May 29th to 31st, Rudiger Janisch and I participated in some encouraging meetings in Spring Valley, and we’d like to share our experience with our friends in the Branch. After meeting on Friday with the Collegium of the School of Spiritual Science (where I represent the Agriculture Section and Rudiger represents the General Anthroposophical Section), we came together in a combined meeting of the Council of the Anthroposophical Society, the Collegium, and the Council of Anthroposophical Organizations. (This includes the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America, the Camphill Association, the Biodynamic Association, RSF Social Finance, the Eurythmy Association, SteinerBooks, adult education centers, and others.)

The purpose of the meeting was 1) to consider the needs of the world at this time and how we are meeting these needs and 2) to see how the council, collegium and CAO can collaborate more fruitfully to achieve our common aims. The thirty people present made a commitment to try to strengthen the life of anthroposophy on this continent. By meeting face to face we were able to clear up some misunderstandings, develop a feeling for each other as individuals, and respect the need for the different tasks of each group. We acknowledged the detrimental effect of negative thoughts and speaking among colleagues and committed to working through problems and concerns directly with one another to create a socially hygienic atmosphere amongst the three groups. We did eurythmy with Mark Levene and Doro -

thea Mier, rice drawing with Michael Howard, and speech with Helen Lubin, and we celebrated Whitsun together, all of which contributed to a sense of the presence of the creative spirit in and among us.

We explored how, even under the very challenging financial circumstances that the Anthroposophical Society finds itself in, it can most effectively fulfill its aim of cultivating an understanding and experience of the whole human being as a wellspring for health. From the beginning to the end of our meetings we lived with the imagination of the first Goetheanum as a living archetype that we are striving to bring into our spiritual and social endeavors, guided by Rudolf Steiner as were the many workers who originally carved and painted the building in Dornach. Led by Rudiger, we turned to the Foundation Stone Meditation, and later Torin Finser asked if we might call on one another to turn to it at particular moments in time as a common effort for the Good. We spoke about how the various sections of the School for Spiritual Science can be seen as working into the Anthroposophical Society and into life, and how the central task of the society can, with a slight shift of consciousness, be seen as an aspect of the General Anthroposophical Section of the School. And through the presence of Philip Thatcher, the General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in Canada who is part of the collegium, we could look forward to expanding our awareness to include our friends across the border to the north. The collegium will meet in Montreal in one year, together with the Canadian society’s council. We asked the small group of representatives from the three groups that planned these meetings to continue to foster the work that we began and prepare a next meeting of the large group, probably in two years.

Sherry Wildfeuer and Rudiger Janisch, Camphill Villages, Pennsylvania

G E M S : A Study Group Without Borders

It has been seven years since my wife, Christine, and I began participating in the Geographically Engaged Members Study group (GEMS). It was founded in 2002 through the inspiration and initiative of Margaret Shipman. She opened her heart to members of the Anthroposophical Society who, because of their geographic isolation from other members, were unable to study with others in a group. A creative new form had to enable members to feel connected with others. As of a few months ago, we have some eighty-eight members from the United States and Canada joining “together” each Saturday morning at 9:30 a.m. Eastern time. Although many of the members may live in areas where they can participate in a regular study group, the innovative impulse of joining together in a kind of etheric space is worthy of support.

One of the first steps in spiritual development is study. The study material that Margaret puts together has a yearly theme and is mailed out monthly. These materials for directed study have been unique and informative. Steiner lectures in published editions are recommended, and Margaret often includes excerpts that have not been published or are out of print. Secondary sources are also suggested. Margaret includes a monthly letter with reading suggestions, fresh ideas, and incentives to

broaden our own researches. She has also included colored art prints by artists who have pondered some of the yearly themes and seasonal rhythms. A bookmark listing the names of the nine spiritual hierarchies recently arrived in a monthly packet. Members of the group also send ideas for enriching our studies.

In recent months, as our own busy schedules require weekend travel, we find ourselves in our car at the weekly meeting time, one of us reading while the other drives. We try to envision members we don’t know and may never meet, using the time to focus on the reading for the week, month, and year. If we miss the Saturday hour we try to recoup the missed time by reading and studying at another day and time. Even though this may not be the most ideal method of study for some, we still feel the benefit of working in this group. The subjects are uplifting and inspiring on more than one level. Even though time and space may separate us, we feel we are all united in pursuit of spiritual science. Much gratitude to Margaret Shipman for her sparkling initiative in these challenging times.

Basil Williams

Library News From Los Angeles

The Los Angeles Branch of the Anthroposophical Society has its own building in Pasadena, part of which is rented out to provide income to the branch. “Our” part contains an auditorium that seats 125 people, a lending library, and a bookshop. The building is located in an alley in “Old Town” Pasadena, close to all kinds of restaurants, shops, and parking. The library and bookshop are a separate legal entity with its own board of trustees, but for all practical purposes they are operated as part of the branch.

Interestingly, this library, the official name of which is Rudolf Steiner Libraries, Inc., was founded as two libraries in 1943 during World War II, the other one being in Kansas City. These two were stocked with printed and mimeographed books by Rudolf Steiner from Dornach for the specific purpose of keeping them out of the hands of the Nazis, just in case Germany would ever violate Switzerland’s neutrality and invade that country. There was even a plan to relocate the books to a very remote farm near the village of Hyampom in northern California should the Axis powers ever invade the United States. After the war the books were concentrated in Los Angeles, since there was an active branch there where they would be useful and could be cared for. The old volumes have long since been replaced by newer editions, but we do not have a complete set of the printed works in German.

The library contains about 700 titles in English by Rudolf Steiner, including about 3600 lectures, many in multiple copies and editions. Although we can’t pretend to have a copy of every Steiner book ever published in English, that is our current policy. In addition, we have an extensive collection, about 1900 titles, of books written by other, mostly anthroposophical, authors. The library is open to the public free of charge; the only thing we ask for is a $25 deposit that is refundable if one ever gives up borrowing privileges. We have a computer-based catalog that we are currently preparing to post on the branch’s website, anthroposophy-socal.com, so it will be easy to see the library’s holdings.

As many of you know, the Rudolf Steiner Verlag in Dornach has published the collected works of Rudolf Steiner (Gesamtausgabe or GA) in electronic form. It is contained on a small hard disk (HDD) that can be connected to a computer. It is organized in a searchable format that makes it possible to search the entire printed work of Rudolf Steiner for specific words, names, strings of words, concepts, etc. In response to a search, the system shows a list of all the places where the search terms appear in the collected works, including the GA number, title of each volume, and page numbers, all in a matter of a second or two. One can also view each page where the item is mentioned and scroll up and down from that page through that entire volume in order to see the context. Quite amazing. One potential problem for American users: it’s all in German.

Earlier this year, our library received a special donation from a generous friend to enable it to acquire this system. As a result, we are now able to offer to do searches for members who are interested in such a thing in connection with their studies, or just out of curiosity. We have two volunteers who can handle this in German and who work in the library regularly. We will provide reference assistance, particularly bibliographic research on specific themes and topics, at a rate of $30/hr., with a $15 minimum charge, for members of the Anthroposophical Society. The rate for nonmembers is $50/hr., with a $25 minimum charge.

In the bookshop it is our policy to have in stock at least one copy of every in-print English translation of the books and lectures by Rudolf Steiner available in the U.S. Sometimes it takes a while for the books published in England to become available here. Other anthroposophical authors are also well represented. We accept email and phone orders and will ship anywhere in the U.S. via postal service Media Mail without charge for postage and handling. Sorry, we do not have a catalog of books for sale. We welcome your interest and will do our best to match Amazon.com’s service!

Philip Mees for the Rudolf Steiner Library and Bookshop, 110 Martin Alley, Pasadena, CA 91105, telephone 626-578-7513; fax 626-795-7105; email phmees@sbcglobal.net. Open Wednesday and Saturday 10:30am-5:00pm Pacific time.

“Novalis” is the latest in the series “Classics from the Journal for Anthroposophy”; all issues can be ordered at anthroposophy.org Each many-faceted volume is a fine introduction to anthroposophy.

Membership Matters

Membership Matters

Walking through a lush, green biodynamic garden with water gurgling through flow forms, or strolling down the halls of a colorfully lazured Waldorf kindergarten, one cannot help but feel that Rudolf Steiner’s contributions are of benefit to humanity. Joining the Anthroposophical Society is a way for us to say, yes, Steiner’s work—work such as that done at the Goetheanum1 in Switzerland—is worthwhile.

Joining the society is not a large step; it is a tiny step. It is a way to affirm our support of the kind of work Steiner did. It is similar to joining the Sierra Club, the Red Cross, or other organizations that do good in the world.

There is a misconception in the anthroposophical movement that it is a big step to join the society—that the threshold is high. Of course, many people treat the threshold into the society as a low one, as Steiner intended. However, the misconception is pervasive enough that many people do not join the Society because they feel it is too big a commitment.

Part of the problem is that people confuse the threshold of joining the Anthroposophical Society with that of joining the School for Spiritual Science. Joining the school is a serious commitment; you indicate willingness to represent anthroposophy in the world, and you commit to study the esoteric lessons of the school actively.

Recently, I spoke with a few young people who are very actively representing anthroposophy in the world. They run a program engaging people in a deep study of Steiner’s works. Even with their deep commitment, they did not feel comfortable joining the Anthroposophical Society because they had been given the impression that it was a BIG DEAL. They felt that the threshold was very high.

When I joined the society in the early 1990’s, it was necessary to have a sponsor in order to join. I am grateful that that practice has been discontinued since it seems totally out of line with the intent of a low threshold to membership.

Another problem is that the dues are too high. Money is both symbolic and practical. If I need to spend a lot, it becomes a significant step. I need to consider carefully spending $120 to join the society. The Sierra Club and Red Cross have starting membership dues of $15 and $10 respectively.

I am grateful for the student dues and for the footnote in the membership renewal form that says that no one will be turned away for lack of funds. (Why is that footnote not visible with the new membership form on the website?) I am grateful for the attitude of the new treasurer in his recent article. Gestures like these help us begin to shift consciousness, but they are not yet enough.

I understand that there is a depth of content that can be delivered to an audience that has a background knowledge of Steiner’s ideas, but “Society Members Only” lectures also perpetuate a sense of a high threshold to membership. It is no longer simply a matter of supporting the kind of work Steiner did, the pink membership card becomes an entry ticket into an elite group that can attend special events.

One of the wonderful things about anthroposophy is

1 The fourth principle (formerly referred to as statute) of the Anthroposophical Society states: “…Anyone can become a member, without regard to nationality, social standing, religion, scientific or artistic conviction, who considers as justified the existence of an institution such as the Goetheanum in Dornach, in its capacity as a School of Spiritual Science…”

that it is about becoming more conscious, and students of anthroposophy are committed to growth and change. I am confident that, eventually, the message that the threshold to membership is high will be replaced by a welcoming gesture, and our membership will swell to encompass all those who consider Steiner’s work to be a benefit to the world.

Per Eisenman

Thoughts from the Editor:

It would be good to hear from members and friends about barriers to membership. Do we confuse society membership with membership in the School for Spiritual Science? Should membership be as open as possible, resting only on Rudolf Steiner’s requirement that one must consider the existence of the Goetheanum as school for spiritual science to be justified?

On the website membership form, we’ll restore the missing footnote, that no one will be excluded for financial reasons, and please give us a call in such a case. The folks in our office like to talk to people and work these things out. Since we send $35 for every member to support the work at the Goetheanum, regardless of how much they are paying, a reduced membership fee actually redirects other funds. So we hope that requests will be conscious situations, as when someone is unemployed or otherwise on a restricted income.

Meanwhile, we can make the payment easier, with quarterly or monthly charging. Such would come to $30 or $15 per quarter, $10 or $5 monthly (the lower for students and elders). Does spreading the payment out lower the financial threshold—and perhaps the psychological one?

Stepping back as Per invites us to do, can or should the standard, minimum membership dues be less? It’s true that dues start at $15 for the Sierra Club’s 1.3 million members. It has a simple, compelling message, does really good work, and had substantial assets as of 2007, around $100 million. By contrast, the Anthroposophical Society is trying to sustain some measure of awareness across an extraordinary range of profound human needs, concerns, and resources, and in the USA we are around thirty-five hundred members. Our membership looks to be a much broader responsibility than what is implied by donating to the Red Cross or being a member of the Sierra Club. Do we perhaps need a relationship besides “membership” that expresses interest and shared values, receives this publication to stay informed, and involves the same maybe six-cents-a-day donation level?

Finally, is there a larger question here—in this disparity between anthroposophy’s great value and wide concerns, and the participation and financing being won for other valuable but much more narrowly focused efforts? Are we telling our story? Are our language and concepts understandable and credible? Is that a conversation we should be having, and if so, how should we go about having it?

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Membership Matters is intended to be a regular feature. Please send us your thoughts and experiences, about any aspect of participation in the society, to editor@anthroposophy. org or by letter to the Editor, Anthroposophical Society in America, 1923 Geddes Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48104.

Columbia Rising! & the Spirit of St. Louis

Central Region Gathering for Groups and Branches, May 1-3, Dittmer, Missouri

Since 2004, the Central Regional Council has hosted an annual gathering of individuals who are trying to bring anthroposophy to life in their local communities throughout our region. We are seeking to strengthen ties between “center” and “periphery” within the Anthroposophical Society; build networks among our members; and to develop among the representatives of the groups, branches, and initiatives in the central region a collegial “circle of coworkers” for the CRC. With this circle of coworkers we have been building through the years an understanding of what it means to work out of anthroposophy—to grapple with its challenges, open to its blessings, and manifest its enlivening vision—in the heartland of America in the 21st century.

We chose “Columbia Rising! Nurturing the Good Spirit of America” as our theme for 2009. To quote Robert Karp from the invitation:

We feel this is a momentous time in our country. Hearts and minds are opening to new ideas and opportunities even while stubborn old structures try to hang on and persist. We feel the good spirit of America rising from the ashes of this post-9/11 period, inspiring new hope, idealism, and optimism. How can we support this breakthrough of the good spirit of America so that it takes a healthy direction? How can we bring helpful Michaelic impulses to bear on the emerging social, economic, and cultural tasks of our country? How can we nurture and heal our own communities so that we can better serve the world around us? We meet in a different place each year so we can experience the geography and the people of our region. The site for this year’s gathering was a lovely Franciscan retreat center in the foothills of the Ozarks, 40 miles SW of St. Louis (not far from the starting point of our 2006 post-Katrina pilgrimage to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast).

Our 27 participants came from 16 different groups and

branches in 12 states. We asked each group to send with their representative(s) a 2’x2’ fabric square with a star from their local community. Laid out on the floor of our meeting space, these 13 unique stars provided an inspiring focal point for our circle throughout the weekend. Rebecah Freeling has taken up the task of combining the stars into a colorful (and, we hope, growing) “patchwork” of the central region. Another connection to our communities around the region came at snack times, for which participants bring along delectable local specialties. Among this year’s favorites—an entire flat of Arkansas strawberries …and those buckeye chocolates from Columbus, Ohio!

We chose the four panels of Rudolf Steiner’s Foundation Stone meditation as the framework for the content of the weekend. Conversational and journaling exercises in spirit remembering, spirit sensing, and spirit envisioning challenged us to look at the past, present, and future of who we are as individuals and as members of our local communities, our region, our nation, and humanity as a whole. Singing led by Marianne Fieber and eurythmy led by Connie Michael, as well as offerings of songs, poems, and prose by various participants, wove an artistic thread through all our time together.

On Friday evening, Rick Spaulding from Chicago sounded the call to spirit remembering with his keynote talk, in which we were taken on a journey from before the founding of the United States, to Emerson and Whitman, and to recent times. The theme of liberty sounded throughout the evening. Liberty is not to be taken for granted and is the basis for our freedom in this nation. We heard about Phillis Wheatley, a black slave who, as a young girl in 1775, wrote a poem to George Washington that led to her being invited to meet with him. “Celestial choir! enthron’d in realms of light, Columbia’s scenes of glorious toil I write, While freedom’s cause her anxious breast alarms...” This image of Columbia, a divine goddess leading America, was alive through the 1800s and has gradually become less used. The naming of our capital, District of Columbia, is a direct connection to this

Columbia leads “American Progress” in John Gast’s 1872 painting (above). Phillis Wheatley became the nation’s first black poet of note (below, right). Thomas Craford’s “Freedom Triumphant in War & Peace” has stood atop the US Capitol since 1863 (below). Bottom, cheerful participants and the field of thirteen stars.

early image. Rick’s talk gave us a firm foundation for our work throughout the weekend in taking responsibility for bringing the spirit of America to life in our local places.

Saturday morning allowed for reflection on the previous evening and additional “looking back” before moving into the present with spirit sensing. Our focus turned to a lectures by Rudolf Steiner titled Ideas for a New Europe, in which he describes how imperialism has manifested in different periods of human development [see excerpt following]. In our own time it is the imperialism of the empty word in which everyone can be “right.” The role of shame and uncertainty is to wake us up to the need for change—to spread real culture and the new spirit in the world. We closed Saturday afternoon with our first glimpse of the future: spirit envisioning

Every year we celebrate our regional gathering with a festival evening. Saturday evening was dedicated to a (mostly) spontaneous performance of excerpts from Percy MacKaye’s remarkable 1914 pageant The Masque of Saint Louis (available online at http://books.google.com/books?id=vDgrAAAAYAAJ ). Originally performed in St. Louis’s Forest Park by a cast of 2000 before an audience of over 100,000, this drama portrays beings and forces that we have experienced as vital to an understanding of our region and our work here. MacKaye’s powerful language brought the Masque to life; Robert Karp, Marianne Fieber, and Connie Michael directed, and Rebecah Freeling miraculously materialized props and costumes.

Sunday morning offered a final opportunity for spirit envisioning: how can we bring these ideas into reality in our own situations?

The capstone of our weekend gathering is the central region’s annual general meeting. Here, with our circle of coworkers, the CRC reviews our activities of the past year and plans for the future. This year we had reports from the national office by Jerry Kruse, the society’s treasurer, and from the new editor of the national newsletter, John Beck. We are grateful for their work!

Though regional councils are not elected, the CRC does ask for feedback and affirmation by our circle of coworkers at the regional AGM. Our choice of Dennis Dietzel to join the CRC was unanimously affirmed, as was the ongoing service of the five other CRC members. We also received many constructive suggestions and comments regarding the weekend itself, as well as our work throughout the year. (Notes from the central region annual general

meeting are available on request.)

It is important to note the contribution of Bryan Wessling to our work in the central region, and to this gathering in particular. Bryan had carried the “Spirit of St. Louis” in our coworkers’ circle since 2005. Just days after our 2008 meeting in Kentucky, Bryan was diagnosed with cancer. Through Linda Ottow’s sensitive communications, she called on the prayerful support of our colleagues throughout the region in her valiant struggle with the disease. To open oneself up in this way is in itself tremendously courageous. Bryan’s situation was key to our recognition of St. Louis as the right place for our meeting this year. We were exceedingly grateful that she was able to join us Friday evening, and that her husband, Christian, was able to participate in much of the weekend. Bryan Wessling crossed the threshold on June 22. While we will miss her greatly, we know that she will continue to nurture the Spirit of St. Louis and anthroposophy in the central region from the spiritual world.

Shame in the Time of Empty Words

From a lecture given by Rudolf Steiner at Dornach, Switzerland on February 21, 1920, during a post-war visit by English friends (lecture 17 in GA 196). First English publication in Ideas For a New Europe (1992) lecture 6, pages 65-7.

To want a threefold ordering of society is the same as to want to replace lies and empty words with truth, with truth which is reality. A period has just begun, however, in which reality is not truth. Empty words can be made to flourish very well in the cultural sphere and also in the sphere of rights and state. ... You cannot, with any success, have empty words in the economic sphere, because you cannot eat them, or at any rate your hunger cannot be satisfied by them. ...

The moment we recognize the illusion for what it is, and the empty word for what it is, we will be overcome by a feeling of immense shame. We will discover that we human beings, endowed as we are with intelligence, use this intelligence purely to take care of the economic basis of our physical life, which is something the animals do without the benefit of intelligence. ... [W] e are prostituting our intelligence, because we are using it to do something which the animals can perfectly well do without possessing the luxury of an intelligence. At the moment when this self-knowledge dawns on us, at the moment when we see empty words for what they are, we shall see the beginning of a great feeling of shame. And then the turnaround will come. Then will come the realization that a renewal of spirit and culture is needed.

Suitable preparation will have to be made for this by ensuring that a sufficiently large number of people can see the situation of today as it really is. ... Little thoughts will get us nowhere, so we must pluck up our courage to think great thoughts.

—Report by Margaret Runyon and Dennis Dietzel, photos by Dennis Dietzel and Travis Wyly.

Cornelius Pietzner stands sixth from left in this photograph of society treasurers meeting this spring in Dornach.

Percy Mackay’s cast-of-thousands pageant in 1914 (left), and a spirited if more homeopathically-scaled rehearsal at the Central Regional gathering (right).

Below, the Mackay pageant’s costume for Gold, the most troublesome contender against the Spirit of St. Louis.

Michael, Cosmopolitanism, and Christ

The Spirit of Whitsun & the Mission of Group Work

On Whitsunday 2009, friends and members gathered in Hershey, PA for the Susquehanna Corps de Michael’s 16th annual Whitsun Festival. Our theme celebrated two new members who are natives of South Korea and Ghana, Africa. Saetbyul Ryu and Kofi Nsiah found their way to the Corps de Michael branch of the Anthroposophical Society in Hershey through recent outreach activities: a Corps de Michael booth at the Susquehanna Waldorf School’s winter fair, and a Holy Night celebration at the home of a member in Red Lion (suburban York, PA). Due to the volunteer nature of these outreach activities, the global economic downturn has had zero effect on our branch membership. Reflecting the cosmopolitan spirit of the Age of Michael, our roster of active members continues to grow…and currently includes natives of four continents!

The festival opened with a vocal solo by Lisa Hildreth, “Love Is Come Again.”

This heavenly melody, celebrating spring’s rebirth and the resurrection of Christ, was followed by multilingual readings describing the moving events of the first Whitsunday (Acts 2:1-11). A cosmopolitan note was struck as we heard the rhythms and intonations of English, South Korean, a native Ghanaian language, German, French, Spanish, Latin, and Greek.

Fifty days after Easter, the disciples gather together in a house, dazed and confused. They had lost their great teacher: first, through the Crucifixion and second, through the Ascension. As the disciples gathered on the first Whitsun, they had not grasped what Rudolf Steiner calls “the most difficult of all mysteries to understand,” the mystery of birth, death, and resurrection, the Mystery of Golgotha. (“Michael, the Messenger of Christ,” London, 2 May 1913). Sitting together at the “first group meeting,” they are bereft. Then the spirit moves through the house. Flames of knowledge descend from the heavens and come to rest above the head of each disciple. The flames are not theoretical or abstract knowledge. They are knowledge inspired by Michael—the fiery Prince of Thought in the Universe. It is a knowledge that speaks to the soul and warms the heart. It is a knowledge that paves the way to a higher form of community, leading each soul out of one’s separate existence to the archetypal spirit of the universally human.

As word of the first Whitsun spreads, persons of many nations, races, ethnicities, and spiritual streams come to experience the flames of spirit-knowledge. The “first group meeting” offers a foreshadowing, a premonition of both Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love achieved in the sixth epoch as a metamorphosis of today’s anthroposophical group work, and the

New Jerusalem. At Whitsun, the multitudes speak in different languages and yet each understands the other. They do not merely celebrate their differences as taught by diversity training, rather, in the cosmopolitan spirit of Michael, each ethnicity offers a particular revelation of the universally human:

The point is… to know how to found a bond of sister-brotherhood. Only those whose lives are grounded in universal esoteric truth, valid for all human beings, find themselves together in the one truth. As the Sun unites the plants which strive towards it and yet remain individually separate, so must the truth to which all are striving be a uniform one, then all human beings find themselves together.

Rudolf Steiner, Theosophy of the Rosicrucian, (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1966), chapter 13, p. 143.

Following the multilingual readings, we heard the brotherly words of William Penn to the Susquehannock and Delaware Indians at Shackamaxson. In 1682, in a moment of world historic significance, Penn inaugurated his “Holy Experiment” by extending his hand in peace, brotherhood, and friendship to the Native Americans. Soon the persecuted of Europe flocked to the New World to practice the spiritual path of their choosing (a radical concept in the 17th century)! As persons of different ethnicities, races, and spiritual streams lived together, side by side in cosmopolitan, Michaelic harmony, the Holy Experiment became a spirit seed of American freedom—the Spirit of 1776. Moreover, as long as William Penn lived, not one drop of blood was shed between Native Americans and the colonists of the Holy Experiment, also known as Pennsylvania.

Festivities included singing; a study of “Michael, the Messenger of Christ”; remarks on the risen etheric Christ by Scott Hicks; contemplation of flower art by anthroposophical artist Ymelda Hamann-Mentelberg; and a festive potluck on the west lawn of Stonehaven, home of the Corps de Michael.

Perhaps the highlight of the joyous festivities was remarks on the theme by our newest members, Saetbyul and Kofi. Each offered an inspiring vignette of their journey to the branch from their native lands.

We conclude this report with Kofi’s remarks to friends and members gathered at Stonehaven on Whitsunday 2009:

My Journey from Africa to Corps de Michael

I was born in a small farming village in the central part of Ghana, Africa, shortly after the Second World War. My cultural background reflects a close-knit tribal and blood-related society in which nearly everyone in the village was related by blood or marriage. The religious practice was nature worship that believes in some form of reincarnation. In fact, my parents believed I was an incarnated great-uncle of my father’s, and they often told me stories about him.

Soon after I was born, the Wesleyan missionaries introduced the Christian Methodist church and school in my village. Most children born at this time went to the school, and were required to abandon all aspects of traditional beliefs, including religious practices (and reincarnation). Transition to the new Christian beliefs became difficult for me since the Christian teachers and preachers forced me to abandon a core part of what my parents had taught me to believe about my being as an incarnated soul. I became a Christian, but the question regarding “who I am” persisted. I embarked on a lifelong quest for answers. I studied the Bible intensely and when I was admitted to a teachers’ college, I enrolled in an elective course on world religions. I was fascinated when I first read that Eastern religious practices included the teaching of reincarnation. However, I could not be completely satisfied until I attained certainty as to whether Jesus taught about reincarnation and what he taught about it.

In 1986 I moved to England to live and work in a Camphill Village, the Croft community. I was asked to work in the Camphill Bookstore in Malton, and I started to read about Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual science and the Christ Impulse. During one of Camphill’s Saturday Bible Evenings, I raised a question about my conflict with the teachings of the Christian church regarding reincarnation. A Christian Community priest who happened to be at the gathering read Matthew 11:14. Jesus was teaching his disciples about John the Baptist. Then he said: “And if you will receive it, this (John) is Elijah, who was to come.” I finally got the answer I had been searching for all my life—that Jesus also knew and taught about reincarnation, referring to John as the reincarnation of the prophet Elijah!

In 1987 I moved to Camphill Copake in New York to participate in the social therapy seminar, during which I also studied biodynamic farming. I later studied Waldorf education, after which I moved to Pennsylvania to teach at the Kimberton Waldorf School. Finally, I settled in York, central Pennsylvania, where I met David Lenker, who introduced me to Corps de Michael. Members of Corps de Michael have shown sisterly and brotherly acceptance in the spirit of Michael’s task of the age, “cosmopolitanism,” in spite of my background.

In my quest to find and congregate with individuals of similar spiritual aspirations, a passage by Rudolf Steiner has brought constant inspiration. It is from a lecture given in Oslo, 7 June, 1910: “Those who understand the spirit today are drawn toward spiritual science. It is this spirit which, reflecting the spirit of the age, transcends individual folk souls.”

David Lenker and Kofi Nsiah

Susquehanna Corps de Michael — Anthroposophical Society in Hershey, PA — www.corpsdemichael.org

Soul Calendar Dates, February 2009—April 2010

Herbert O. Hagens

The year is well advanced, but this guide may still be useful! —Ed.

In 1912/1913 Rudolf Steiner published 52 verses and suggested that one begin with verse #1 on Easter Sunday. But the moveable date of Easter requires setting a new sequence every year, since there are never 52 weeks between one Easter and the next.

The dates given here are intended for those who follow the practice of beginning a new Soul Calendar verse on each Sunday (starting with verse #1 at Easter) and then working with the verse for a full week. The dating formula allows the meditant to adhere to the seven day astral rhythm of one’s soul life and to keep in sync with the major festivals.

The approach given here also takes into account the meditative pathway of seven verses from the week of Ash Wednesday to Easter and from Easter to Whitsun. There are 55 weeks between Easter 2008 and Easter 2009. In order to spread 52 verses over a span of 55 weeks an adjustment was recommended to occur in June 2008 and January 2009. Since there are 51 weeks between Easter of 2009 and Easter of 2010, the shift being proposed falls on St. John’s Tide 2009. The verses then continue without interruption through to Easter 2010 (April 4th).

Feb. 8 #44

Feb. 15 #45

Feb. 22 #46 Ahrimanic Temptation (Ash Wednesday Feb. 25, 2009)

Mar. 1 #47

Mar. 8 #48

Mar. 15 #49

Mar. 22 #50

Mar. 29 #51 Spring Awaiting

April 5 #52 (Palm Sunday / Holy Week)

SPRING

April 12 #1 Easter Mood

April 19#2

April 26 #3

May 3 #4

May 10 #5

May 17 #6

May 24 #7 Luciferic Temptation

May 31 #8 Whitsun

June 7 #9

June 14 #10

June 21 #11 and #12 St. John’s Mood

June 28 #13

SUMMER

July 5 #14

July 12 #15

July 19 #16

July 26 #17

August 2 #18

August 9 #19

Aug. 16 #20 Luciferic Temptation

Aug. 23 #21

Aug. 30 #22

Sept. 6 #23

Sept. 13 #24

Sept. 20 #25

Sept. 27 #26 Michaelmas Mood

AUTUMN

Oct. 4 #27

Oct. 11 #28

Oct. 18 #29

Oct. 25 #30

Nov. 1 #31

Nov. 8 #32

Nov. 15 #33 Ahrimanic Temptation

Nov. 22 #34

Nov. 29 #35

Dec. 6 #36

WINTER

Dec. 13 #37

Dec. 20 #38 Christmas Mood

Dec. 27#39

Jan. 3 #40 Epiphany Jan. 6, 2010

Jan. 10 #41

Jan. 17 #42

Jan. 24 #43

Jan. 31 #44

Feb. 7 #45

Feb. 14 #46 Ahrimanic Temptation (Ash Wednesday Feb. 17th)

Feb. 21 #47

Feb. 28 #48

Mar. 7 #49

Mar. 14 #50

Mar. 21 #51 Spring Awaiting

Mar. 28 #52 (Palm Sunday/ Holy Week)

SPRING

April 4, 2010 Easter Mood

Anne Bryan Hucke Wessling, Ed.D.

January 30, 1956—June 22, 2009

Bryan, as she was known to most, entered this life January 30, 1956, on a very cold winter morning in Columbus, Indiana, where her father, a flight surgeon, was stationed with the Air Force. She followed a brother and a sister as her parents’ third and last child. Soon the family moved to Fayetteville, Arkansas, where her mother’s family had lived for generations.

Fayetteville combined the bucolic scenery and friendliness of a small southern town with the cultural and intellectual refinement of a major university center. The large wooded lot of her parents’ house abutted her grandparents’ and two great-aunts’ homes. As a little girl she was able to spend much time with her extended family and out in nature communing with elves and fairies which abounded and provided rich memories for her later years.

At the neighborhood Catholic grade school where she was the only non-catholic child, one of her teachers was mentally imbalanced, and Bryan felt wounded and cruelly treated for being an outsider. However, being a high achiever, and wishing not to upset anyone, she did not complain and stayed seven years. These early experiences contributed to her fervor as an educator: there had to be a better way to educate the whole child and not punish those who were in some way different.

With the teenage years, Bryan’s life grew in complexity. Her mother’s health deteriorated as did her parents’ marriage. Her older siblings were away launching medical careers, so responsibility fell on her for her parents, their household and the elderly relatives next door. At the same time, having set her own sight on medical school, she kept up her excellent grades and held under her warm wings a group of fellow students who were “different” and disenfranchised by a variety of events. Lifelong friendships started. One could wonder both how she did all she did and what price a soul pays for bearing such responsibility at a young age.

Bryan’s many gifts included the poetic and the musical. Her rich mezzo-soprano voice provided beautiful singing and speaking expression for her deeply artistic nature. Perceived by many as a wise old soul, she had much older friends even when she was very young. She could not stand the cut-throat premed competition and eventually decided against a career in medicine.

In 1977, my twin brother Fritz introduced us when she and her parents were traveling in Europe. Our friendship deepened over the next years while most of the time the Atlantic Ocean was between us. This was still in the days of the longhand letter. My first visit to Fayetteville was in 1979; we were married there August 1, 1981. Later that year, I graduated from medical school in Duesseldorf, Germany. Our oldest child, Sarah Anne, was born in 1983, followed by William Thomas Christopher in 1988 and Lydia Maria in 1991.

By the time we married I had become interested in anthroposophy and its approach to medicine. Bryan followed me to the seminar at the Lukas Klinik in Arlesheim, Switzerland, where we spent several months. She noticed that among my fellow participants a few stood out as well-rounded and humanistic in their approach to

life, far different from her own premed classmates. She found that they had gone to Waldorf schools and wanted to learn more.

After we moved to the St. Louis area, it took Bryan some years to overcome her reserve about anthroposophy and anthroposophists. She eventually took a lead role in our study group, joined the society and became a member of the School of Spiritual Science.

Not long after the birth of our last child came the stunning announcement that she would start a Waldorf school. Being bright, capable and determined, new sources of strength opened up and it became apparent that nothing would stop her. She gathered some interested souls and in 1993, Shining Rivers School accepted its first students. From Dornach to Denver, Viroqua to Vienna, our house began to be blessed by a stream of visiting anthroposophists and Waldorf educators. On top of her family responsibilities, she taught full-time, worked intensely on the board and administration and weathered the crises that seem to come with a small but growing school. She completed formal Waldorf training through Sunbridge College and pursued a doctorate in early childhood education at the University of Missouri, persevering when twice her thesis advisers were denied tenure and she was forced to start from scratch. When she graduated, it was time for a big party. The invitation showed our children when the dissertation was begun and at completion ten years later.

Bryan gave much of her life and life substance to the school in the many phases of its development. She took one group of children from kindergarten through grade eight. At their graduation, she went with them on a final class trip to Ireland which she felt to be her karmic home. The picture shows her there with the Atlantic Ocean behind her. Many times everything for the school seemed to depend on her; yet when she fell ill, people stepped up and grew into new responsibilities.

The diagnosis of uterine sarcoma in June 2008 was unexpected and carried a serious prognosis. The treatments decided upon included chemotherapy, surgery and then more chemotherapy. She fought valiantly. The hardest thing was that she felt her work on earth was not complete. Unfortunately, recurrences came early. In the final months, there was much pain to suffer through. The school community came through beautifully with all manner of support, for her personally and for us as a family. Shortly before her passing, the school sponsored a workshop on death and dying with Marianne Dietzel and Linda Bergh which she was still able to participate in.

On June 22, at 11:15 am, during new moon and summer solstice, Bryan crossed the threshold from her sickbed in our home just as a linden tree was being planted in the back yard in her honor. We were able to be with her in this important moment. Friends helped us have a three day vigil in our home. The church service five days later was attended by three hundred. It was, as one of our friends called it, a celebration of her “heroic” life. May her strong and bold spirit live on in the many she touched as her soul continues on its journey through the spiritual world.

Christian Wessling, M.D. Webster Groves, Missouri

Ernst Katz, Ph.D.

We regret to inform you that Ernst Katz passed into the spiritual world on September 2, 2009, at age 96 years. He was a founding member of the Anthroposophical Society in the Netherlands, led by Dr. F. W.Zeijlmans van Emmichoven since 1935, a member of the Anthroposophical Society in America since 1953, and a Class Hoider for America since 1970.

He served as a professor of physics at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor from 1947 through 1979. It was his explicit wish that no further details of his life and accomplishments in physics and in anthroposophy be mentioned.

He is survived by one son, two grandsons, and two great-grandsons. Persons moved to making a memorial contribution in memory of Ernst Katz may send a (tax deductible) gift to CSAM (Community Supported Anthroposophic Medicine), 1825 W. Stadium Blvd., Ann Arbor, MI 48103.

Members Who Have Died

Eva Gardner, Ghent NY joined 2/14/1973; died 7/8/2009

Ernst Katz, Ann Arbor MI joined 1935; died 9/2/2009

Harvey Lisle, Norwalk OH; joined 1/16/1961; died 8/2/2009

Marta Nanez, Fair Oaks CA; joined 10/20/1969; died 5/27/2009

Ron Richardson, Freeport ME; joined 10/26/1973; died 7/9/2009

Barbara Sokolov, Healdsburg CA; joined 5/16/2000; died 10/12/2008

Gertrude O. Teutsch, San Diego CA; joined 11/15/1940; died 6/22/2009

Rose Washburn, Monroe NY; joined 7/21/1980; died 2009

Anne Bryan Wessling, Webster Groves MO joined 12/9/1992; died 6/22/2009

Jean W. Wightman, New York NY; joined 11/29/1994; died 2008

New Members of the Anthroposophical Society in America

As recorded by the society from May 2009 through August 2009

Paula Alkaitis, New York NY

Carol Avery, Demarest NJ

Chad Bandeen, Bay Minette AL

Christine M. Barritt, New Paltz NY

Chris Barron, Birchrunville PA

Linda Bestor, Sturtevant WI

Saundra M. Bidwell Williams, Spokane WA

Marc Blachere, Copake NY

Natalie Brinkley, Calistoga CA

Jenn Cantwell, Wilmington NY

Svava Carlsen, Sacramento CA

Valray Cheripko, Bethany PA

Maggie Churchill, Camden ME

Ellen Cimino, Decatur GA

Carol Clayton, Takoma Park MD

Jeremy T. Clough, East Swanzey NH

Joyce K. Cole, Bethel OH

Sarah S. Cornett, Schenectady NY

Belinda J. Cronin, Racine WI

Susan Crozier, Wadsworth OH

Karin Cseak, Cuyahoga Falls OH

Victoria Culbeaux-Burke, Longmont CO

Colleen Culhane, Charlotte VT

Billie J. Darling, Wimberley TX

William Day, Spring Valley NY

Vernon Dewey, Denver CO

Erika Bro Dobrzynski, Newburgh NY

Blythe Edwards, Roan Mountain TN

Dawn L. Edwards, Melrose MA

Heidi Eisenmann-Jones, Mountain View MO

Bonnie J. Engelhardt, Stoughton MA

William Franko, Pittsburgh PA

Janine Fron, Huntley IL

Carolyn Getson, Akron OH

Susan Guida, West Hempstead NY

Sarah Hearn, Great Barrington MA

Joan Hourican, West Palm Beach FL

Gene Hutloff, Phoenix AZ

Laura Iturralde, Houston TX

Nicholas Ivanov, Clearwater FL

Nadja Jiguet, Copake NY

Elfa Kagan, San Francisco CA

Susan Kerndt, Fairbanks AK

Andre Khalil, San Francisco CA

Marilyn Kiloran, Motley MN

Sylvia Lagergren, Johnson City TN

Kathleen Lawless, Vienna ME

Kristin Witbeck Lee, Shutesbury MA

David Lessner, Claymont DE

Kenneth A. Levy, Monroe NY

Sadeh Lior, Kimberton PA

Sean C. McAloon, Glenmoore PA

Andrea Marquarett-Preiss, Seattle WA

Rebecca Morrison, Copake NY

Jackie Oelfke, Brainerd MN

Tim O’Neil, Saint Louis MO

John Palumbo, Thorndike ME

Thomas Pangrazio, Costa Mesa CA

Elizabeth M. Peacock, Rochester NY

Martha Pearl, Ballston Spa NY

Piper Perreault, Mill Valley CA

Susan Piccirilli, Sylvan Lake MI

Patti Pigg, Boulder Creek CA

Pax Piper, Tempe AZ

Astrea Ravenstar, Saratoga Springs NY

Carrie P. Reuther, Nevada City CA

Deborah Rogers, El Prado NM

Heather Rowland, Northport NY

Patty Sandberg, Gum Spring VA

Peter Silverman, Evanston IL

Henry D. Simms, Rialto CA

Richard A. Sirico, Staten Island NY

Angelo Sphere, Mill Valley CA

Wilda Stacey, Fayetteville NY

Sandra K. Stoner, Merriam KS

Kate Stornetta, Potter Valley CA

Hank Taylor, Gainesville FL

Anouk Tompot, Seattle WA

Amy Watson, Camden ME

Karol S. White, Freeland WA

Susan White, Magnolia MA

Andrea Williams, Ghent NY

Francis Wolf, San Francisco CA

Lucy Wurtz, Portola Valley CA

Karen Younger, Fair Oaks CA

Denver Karma Conference

NetworkM asked Bridget Blanning to write a live blog of the Denver Youth Conference. She was kind enough to oblige and we present her notes to you now.

In the first day of the Denver Youth Conference, participants explored various ideas of karma, destiny, and the place of youth in today’s world, and began a weekend that incorporated singing, eurythmy, art, presentations, and insightful conversation.

The group began to focus each day’s energy by singing together–with Coco Roy Reinhart–helping each participant to relax into the group setting. Coco encouraged regardless of pitch, and participants laughed and danced. The songs quickly engaged and energized the group.

On the first day in eurythmy with Glenda Monasch of Boulder, CO, the group worked through forms that took them directly into the conference theme of karma. The exercises created a picture of light and warmed the group, developing a profound sense of group awareness. We contracted together; we expanded together. The group worked as one. An experience of unity resulted–members spoke of an enhanced sense of consciousness, both personal and communal.

Ina Jaehnig, a teacher at the Denver Waldorf School, began by picturing with the group the fourfold human being: the physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego. She spoke of the ego as giving humans the ability to question their path and destiny on this earth and how they meet it, and how questions of karma relate to that ability.

She spoke of reincarnation and karma and the group explored the ideas together–both through text study and relating their personal experiences. In today’s world, she said, people want to know, “Is there a spiritual world?” Steiner answers that question with spiritual science. The group looked deeply at themes of both karma and destiny.

Marielle Levin led the group through charcoal work on light and dark. The activity was challenging, but to see the different interpretations was both surprising and exciting.

Robert Karp, who lived in Denver as a youth and was excited to reconnect with the community, shared his thoughts on the significance of our time and youth’s role in it. He offered an exciting description of today’s potential for youth to join forces with older anthroposophists and bring anthroposophy into the larger community and to make it a real, active social movement.

On the second day, Dr. Adam Blanning joined the group to speak on karma and illness. He presented the view that illness

can be a gateway to spiritual experiences–a spiritual activity–saying, “Illness is imperfections seeking out suffering so that they may be transformed into virtues.” By describing the two streams, hereditary and spiritual, and how they unite, he engaged the group in a conversation about the varying manifestations of illness. The group embraced the topic with enthusiasm and genuine interest. During the course of the presentation, participants asked reflective questions. It was clear the topic took on a life of it’s own and participants would have happily spent much more time exploring it.

Glenda Monasch, joined by her husband David-Michael, led the group–along with First Class members–through the same eurythmy forms as the day before, but with added vowel sounds. It gave the work a fresh quality and feeling.

Painting with Marielle Levin gave a nice insight into the different individualities in the group, and the conference participants were able to take an out-breath through the creative work.

During the time for reflections on the second day, the group looked at the question of goodness: what does it to be good? To be evil? Is the importance really to find a balance rather than achieve “simple goodness”?

On the final day, Dr. Caroline Heberton, a teacher at the Denver Waldorf School, spoke of karma and relationships. The quality of the discussion was notably different, as personal questions about the nature of friendships and relationships arose. The group felt at ease and excited about redirecting the theme toward a specifically personal sphere. By posing questions about the role of honesty and responsibility in relationships, Dr. Heberton encouraged open discussion among participants about personal experiences and how they relate those to karma.

The conversation ended on an open, relaxed, and enthusiastic tone, which naturally led into the closing session, the plenum. During the plenum, one participant said that he felt a newfound sense of excitement and possibility for the future.

The group ended the gathering by initiating plans for an autumn youth gathering, and the Denver Youth Conference came to a close with strong feelings of optimism, joy, and a sense of community.

For more information on the happenings of the Denver Youth Conference please contact Bridget at bmblanning@hotmail.com or (303)902-1326.

The 2009 meeting of the North American Youth Section is happening October 1st in Chestnut Ridge, NY, at the Threefold Educational Center. See page 16.

Praxis Peace Institute and RSF Social Finance present

“We must join together to bring forth a sustainable global society founded on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace.”

From the Preamble of the Earth Charter

What would economic relationships look like if fear and scarcity were replaced with collaboration and generosity?

“We must join together to bring forth a sustainable global society founded on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace.”

The Economics of Peace is both vision and praxis. It is a dynamic process that draws from inquiry, imagination, and practical application. It is an emerging form of enterprise that already exists in many part of the world but receives very little notice in mainstream culture. One of the purposes of this conference is to shine a light on these models, to learn from them, and to transform our economic culture.

From the Preamble of the Earth Charter

OCTOBER 18–23, 2009 SONOMA, CALIFORNIA

Transforming Money

Rebuilding Community Redefining Wealth

THE ECONOMICS OF PEACE

In the midst of the greatest economic collapse in recent history, Praxis Peace

The Economics conference. Both organizations are dedicated to deep inquiry, systemic solutions, and spiritual values that honor the earth and all of its inhabitants.

Conference Themes

Purpose and Goals

The Economics of Social Justice and Environmental Sustainability

Transforming Money

Exploring Money, Race, and Class

Green jobs, Slow Money, and Slow Food

THE ECONOMICS OF PEACE

The Shadow Economy

The Caregiving Economy

Rebuilding Community Redefining Wealth

relationships look like if fear and scarcity were replaced with collaboration and generosity? If everyone had meaningful employment? And, what type of

economic system supports peace?

OCTOBER 18–23, 2009

Living wage initiatives and the role of labor

SONOMA, CALIFORNIA

The role of philanthropy and the Gift Economy in transforming society

In the midst of economic collapse, we are compelled to seek wiser systems of commerce and more equitable economic relationships. While it is imperative that we understand the history of our economic structures and what went wrong, it is equally important that we experience the outstanding examples of collaborative business practices and innovative exchange systems that are changing the economic landscape today. Examples include cooperative businesses, complementary currencies, green business, green jobs, slow money, slow food, living wage initiatives, social finance, credit unions, Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE), and more.

The Influence of Cultural Myths and Propaganda on Economic Policies

Deconstruct the myths that block systemic change

The role of the media in forming public perceptions and opinions

Examine our beliefs about money and economics

Address economic assumptions: money, myths, and memes

The challenge before us is to align the efforts of the millions of individuals, businesses, and organizations that are working to provide a space for independent networks and organizations. The goal is to form deeper levels of collaboration and to begin describing the next economic paradigm. In essence, it will be a place for the imaginal cells of a movement to begin transforming economic relationships to better serve people and planet.

How to change the economic story into one that better serves people and planet

Transforming the Means of Economic Exchange

Local living economies

Usury: Its history and role in the current economic crisis

Complementary currencies

Local stock exchanges

The micro-credit revolution

Community finance and social finance

Open source organization and exchange

Imagining the banks of the future

Toward a New Ethic of Ownership

Stewardship of the environment and natural resources

Explore organizational structures that support healthy ownership

Associative economic forms:

Community Supported Agriculture and Fair Trade Practices

Deconstruct the current financial crisis in an ethical context

Evolving Policies for a New Economics

Define economic policies that support peace, social justice, and environmental sustainability

The Economics of Peace

“We must join together to bring forth a sustainable global society founded on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace.”

From the Preamble of the Earth Charter

Today, the connections between economics and peace, social justice, and environmental sustainability are clouded by the drive for profit and the need to over-accumulate wealth. If we are to transform our current economic practices and monetary policies, we need new forms that reflect our most deeply held values. Equally important is the need to understand the myths and beliefs that have shaped our thinking and hinder systemic change. Cultural norms have a way of imposing the status quo, and our challenge is to help transform failed policies into ones that serve everyone.

We have planned a series of presentations that address different aspects of systemic economic change. There will be keynote speeches, practical workshops, and interactive presentations that draw on the expertise and creativity of all participants. There will be café discussion groups, open space sessions, and multiple networking opportunities for participants and organizations to collaborate on future projects. This conference will showcase some of the most successful and inspiring examples of economic models that value people and planet before profit.

Transforming Money

Rebuilding Community Redefining Wealth

THE ECONOMICS OF PEACE

OCTOBER 18–23, 2009

www.praxispeace.org 3

SONOMA, CALIFORNIA

“Most Americans don’t realize that a middle class is created and maintained by direct intervention in the marketplace by a democratic government, including laws protecting labor, defining minimum wage, and taxing great wealth.”

Osprey Orielle Lake, sculptor and conference Artist-in-Residence, is the founder/artist of the International Cheemah and Mari Monument Projects, which are dedicated to environmental sustainability, cultural diversity and societal transformation.

Thom Hartmann

What is the role of cooperatives in a new economy? What can they teach us?

Triple bottom line accounting: financial, ecological and social benefits

Civic Participation: The role of informed citizens in developing policy

Accountability and transparency in business and government

The Role of the Commons in evolving new economic relationships

Please join us for an inspiring and energizing meeting of concerned individuals and organizations! Together, we can manifest sustainable and peace-oriented alternatives that transform money, rebuild community, and redefine wealth. In the midst of crisis, we have the opportunity to rediscover our commonwealth and build a sustainable and peaceful future. We welcome your participation in this timely meeting of outstanding thinkers, doers, and activists!

In peace,

Don Shaffer, President and CEO, RSF Social Finance, Redefining Social Finance

Norman Solomon, Author, Activist, Co-Chair of Green New Deal

Woody Tasch, Author of Slow Money and Chair of the Investors’ Circle

John Bloom, Director of Organizational Culture, RSF Social Finance

For detailed bios and presenter additions, please visit our website often at www.praxispeace.org

Chris Lindstrom, RSF Fund for Complementary Currencies

Georgia Kelly, Founder/Director of Praxis Peace Institute

John Wilson, Ph.D., Economics and Social Justice: Building a New Model.

More workshops and break-out sessions are being added!

Workshops and Break-Out Sessions

Mikel Lezamiz & Fred Freundlich, from the Mondragón Cooperatives, Spain. Richard Logie, Founder of Global Exchange Trading Systems (GETS).

Julianne Maurseth,Ph.D., Professor of Green MBA program, Conference Outcomes

Please check our website frequently for updates and additions to speakers, workshops, and other presentations. www.praxispeace.org

The Economics of Peace

2009 Conference: Sonoma, California

“Complementary currencies facilitate transactions that otherwise wouldn’t occur, linking otherwise unused resources to unmet needs, and encouraging diversity and interconnections that otherwise wouldn’t exist.”

Bernard Lietaer

The Economics of Peace

2009 Conference: Sonoma, California