being human (Evolving News) 2010-02

Evolving News for

Members & Friends

a quarterly publication of the anthroposophical society in america including the rudolf steiner library newsletter

Research not Revelation

The present issue has taken some time to reach you, but we expect it to be an annual feature, since the subject is so important. Research! A word that is so strongly associated with natural science for the last several centuries, and secondly with the new fields, the humanities, the human sciences, which blossomed as disciplines in the 19th century.

Research is also at the heart of Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy. But anthroposophy does not see limits where natural science has placed them. It takes those limits as demands for enhancing human capacities. Our sophisticated mechanical instruments provide wonderful data, but first and last anthroposophy looks to disciplined human observation, imagination, inspiration, intuition. So it charts new paths in research in many directions, making much of very limited resources.

And despite the impression that anthroposophy all comes from Rudolf Steiner himself, we find both outstanding predecessors to whom he pointed, as well as a remarkable number of capable individuals and groups carrying on where Steiner left off. As detailed on subsequent pages, research generally begins in self-examination and meditation. It then evolves either in conversational settings like study groups and branches of the Anthroposophical Society, or in the very conscious activity of initiatives like Waldorf schools, biodynamic farms, Camphill villages, medical and therapeutic practices, social finance organizations, and countless artistic and community undertakings. And ideally it finds its way then into the work of sections of the School of Spiritual Science, an institution Rudolf Steiner created in 1924 for this purpose. For over two decades the school has had a unifying collegium in North America, and the good effects of this collaboration are being felt even with shoestring budgets.

Only a few segments of the range of anthroposophical research are represented in this one issue, but we hope it will allow you to begin to imagine the true scope of Rudolf Steiner’s intentions for anthroposophy: that it should seed the culture of our times with an abundance of living and healing impulses and thereby renew the consciousness of our humanity.

Expanding Communications

As we cannot do justice to the scope of anthroposophy’s research work in this one issue, so a quarterly printed magazine cannot contain everything that friends and members want to share. Nor is it satisfying to offer a largely one-way communication at a moment when the means for lively interchange get easier and easier. So we are beginning a policy of publishing much more on the society’s website, anthroposophy.org, and linking to it by way of the twice-monthly E-News communication. The many interesting and timely reports will be published more quickly. Comments can be shared. New and old items can be linked topically. The website will become a broader and deeper destination. And our choice of what to include here or leave out will be made less agonizing! So please sign up for E-News at anthroposophy.org to keep in touch with further developments.

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

Serve the future by teaching the children of today with an unhurried, age-appropriate education rich in art and academics. Become a Waldorf Teacher B y comple T ing a par T T ime program aT Sun B ridge in ST iTuT e! Waldorf education, based on the work of rudolf Steiner, is the fastestgrowing independent school movement in the world. There is a constant need for Waldorf teachers (K-12) with hundreds of job openings every year for qualified men and women.

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www.sunbridge.edu

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Letters to the Editor

On Elemental Beings

Regarding the letter by Jenny Hohmann about nature spirits, I would like to recommend Peter and Anneli’s Journey to the Moon published by SteinerBooks two years ago. In the catalog’s description major happenings in the book were ignored: the encounter of the children with the Spirits of Nature. (The translated verses are a bit clumsy—I am no poet!) The illustrations by the famous German painter Hans Baluschek are in themselves worth looking at.

Marianne H. Luedeking

Note: Ms. Luedeking translated the book in question. The original German cover is below:

progress, but on ‘the empathic evolution of the human race and the profound ways it has shaped our development.’ Empathy, Rifkin explains, is not a quaint behavior trotted out during intermittent visits to a food bank or during the Haiti telethon. Instead, it lies at the very core of human existence. Indeed, in this time of economic hardship, political instability, and rapid technological change, empathy is the one quality we most need if we’re going to survive and flourish in the 21st century.”

Notes/Notices

LA Library catalog online

people at Forest Row, East Sussex. Three program areas are active at this time: visual arts, foundation through the visual arts, sculpture training; biodynamic agriculture courses; and storytelling courses. Emerson is on the web at emerson.org.uk

Correction/Update

Summerfield Architect

In the article “Musical Instrument Building and Improvisation” mention was made of “architect and parent Steve”— which should have specified “Steve Sheldon, who designed the buildings at the Summerfield Waldorf School where the workshop had taken place.

Wiechert in Bay Area

again for a conference “Finding Balance,” February 24-26, 2011, in the San Francisco Bay area; bacwtt.org has details. Also, the picture of Christof used (below) should have been credited to BACWTT.

On Empathy

Because of your interest in my article on empathy [in the Sophia Sun newsletter], I thought you would like to see the article below. It’s really amazing to see positive proof of the evolving of human consciousness.

Kathleen Wright

Arianna Huffington’s article from the Huffington Post, Feb. 3, 2010 was attached. It begins:

“ For this month’s HuffPost Book Club, I have chosen Jeremy Rifkin’s The Empathic Civilization, which boldly sets out to present nothing less than—as Rifkin puts it—‘a new rendering of human history.’ This alternative history focuses not on the conflicts and power struggles that have marked human

From Rudolf Steiner Library & Bookshop in Pasadena: “The catalog of our library can now be consulted on the website of the Los Angeles Branch of the Anthroposophical Society – anthroposophyla.org. (On the home page click on Library & Bookshop, and on the following page click on Library Catalog.) You can search the catalog by book title, author, translator and subject. You can search for a specific Steiner lecture by date and/or place and run reports of all the books in our collection by Rudolf Steiner sorted by title or GA number. Books by other authors can be sorted by title, author or subject section. Reports include full particulars of a book, such as publisher, publishing year and GA number. At this time our library has 860 different Steiner titles, over 3800 Steiner lectures and about 2000 titles by other authors. Please direct inquiries to Philip Mees phmees@sbcglobal. net.”

Emerson College

Joann Ianniello wrote to be sure that we were aware of continuing life and activity at Emerson College in the UK, in the new context of “Emerson Village.” No doubt a great many people share her gratitude for time spent with remarkable

The article “Renewal” mentioned as upcoming an appearance by Christof Wiechert at the “New Impulse Conference” of the Bay Area Center for Waldorf Teacher Training in California that was already past (see p. 45). Christof will appear at BACWTT

Christof Wiechert will also return to the Renewal 2011 program in Wilton, NH, “Celebrating Rudolf Steiner’s 150th Anniversary.” One week courses run from June 26th-July 1st and July 3rd-July 8th. Other presenters include Virginia Sease, Van James, Christof Wiechert, Aonghus Gordon and craftspeople, and Dr. Tobias Tuechelmann. Email info@ centerforanthroposophy.org or call 603 654 2566.

Join us as we trace the threads of spiritual history in the landscape and soul-scape of Scotland.

Story, song, eurythmy & informal talks will guide us into the unique cultural climate of this beautiful and infinitely varied country. We will visit the Neolithic stone circles of the Outer Hebrides and Orkney, the glens and mountains of the Highlands, the sacred island of Iona, the social initiative of Robert Owen at New Lanark, the spiritual community of Findhorn, historic and beautiful Edinburgh, and much more. Tour leaders are native Scots:

Gillian Schoemaker, eurythmist, Camphill Special Schools, Pennsylvania, and Sean Gordon, Celtic scholar, storyteller and Waldorf teacher, Aberdeen, Scotland

What’s Happening in the Rudolf Steiner Library

Judith Soleil, Library Director

Flying barcodes! Yes, the automation project proceeds apace. The library’s online public access catalog at http:// rsl.scoolaid.net now contains searchable records for nearly 14,000 items, about half the collection. When visiting the catalog online, be sure to check out the “News” section. We are posting book annotations on the page now as well as events we host at the library. Also check the “New Items” page, which lists monthly acquisitions.

Call for volunteer translators! The library subscribes to a number of Germanlanguage anthroposophical journals with intriguing contents: Das Goetheanum, Info3, Flensburger Heft, Der Europäer, Die Drei, Die Christengemeinschaft. We would love to share some of the articles from these journals with English speakers. Please let us know if you would like to collaborate with us on such a project; we will provide editorial assistance.

We are looking for back issues of the

British journal Anthroposophical Movement/News Sheet for Members of the Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain, and copies of the Rundbrief published by the Pedagogical Section. Contact us regarding specific dates needed.

Why books? Are books just a tired, inefficient, outdated medium (ouch!)? Digital resources are important, particularly in the sciences, where researchers rely on up-to-the-minute online journals and databases. Still, Robert Darnton, director of Harvard’s university library, predicts longevity for the book: http://harvardmagazine.com/2010/05/gutenberg-2-0

Book Reviews

by Frederick Dennehy

I believe that miso belongs to the highest class of medicines, those which help prevent disease and strengthen the body through continued usage. . . Some people speak of miso as a condiment, but miso brings out the flavor and nutritional value in all foods and helps the body to digest and assimilate whatever we eat. . .

In this issue we offer Keith Francis’s review of Metamorphosis: Evolution in Action, by Andreas Suchantke, one of the most important books on Goethean science to appear in years. Readers of this book (and, because it is so incisive and detailed, this review) are likely to come to a fresh understanding of metamorphosis as not only a concept, but as an imaginative activity. Suchantke emphasizes the need to “escape from the idea of a fixed spatial form” and cultivate an intuition of “the inner line, or, rather, the time-gestalt of the whole of evolution.” In a larger context, readers will be challenged to wean themselves from the mechanistic habit of focusing exclusively on what Aristotle termed “efficient cause” and to develop a sense for the neglected “formal cause” or “archetype.” Such a genuinely scientific approach yields a comprehension of living things and of

the process of change—metamorphosis— sharply distinguishable from a grasp of the finished world that physicists investigate. Also in this issue is my review of Where On Earth Is Heaven? by Jonathan Stedall, a warm, honest, and amateur—in the best sense—inquiry into the meaning of immortality. Readers will be intrigued (and instructed) by Mr. Stedall’s understanding of anthroposophy from the periphery of the movement, and an account of Rudolf Steiner not from the vantage point of a disciple, but from that of a sympathetic friend.

Book reviews are on p.6 and p.23.

Library Annotations

Brief descriptions of new books available from the library; annotations this time by Judith Soleil.

Anthroposophy—Rudolf Steiner

Astronomy and Astrology: Finding a Relationship to the Cosmos, compiled and edited by Margaret Jonas, Rudolf Steiner Press, 2009, 250 pgs. Includes notes and a bibliography.

“Although Steiner rejects the simplistic notion of the planets determining our lives and behavior, he makes a clear connection between the heavenly bodies and human beings…. This…anthology features excerpts of Steiner’s work on the spiritual individualities of the planets, the determination of human characteristics by the constellation at birth, the cultural epochs and the passage of the equinox, solar and lunar eclipses…and much more.” An excellent introduction by Margaret Annotations continue on p. 62

Rudolf Steiner Library’s borrowing service is free for Anthroposophical Society in America members; non-members pay an annual fee. Borrowers pay round-trip postage. Requests can be made by mail (65 Fern Hill Road Ghent, N.Y. 12075), phone (518-672-7690), fax (518-672-5827), or e-mail: rsteinerlibrary@taconic.net

—Dr. Shinichiro Akizuki, Director, St Francis Hospital, Nagasaki

Where on Earth Is Heaven?

By Jonathan Stedall; Hawthorn Press, 2009, 566 pgs Review by Frederick J. Dennehy

Books describing an author’s spiritual journey generally tend toward an ending. Readers find themselves traveling along with the author and sense in the final pages that a “destination” of some sort will be reached.

Where on Earth Is Heaven? is not structured in that way. As Richard Tarnas aptly notes in his foreword, Jonathan Stedall’s book is more like a fireside chat. His account has the freshness and honesty of a friend’s impressionistic reminiscences, as well as the meandering and somewhat repetitious features of informal conversation.

Mr. Stedall’s original intention was to write very little about himself, and to focus on the people whom he had come to know and the ideas he had encountered that had influenced him spiritually. Readers of the first draft suggested that the book needed to be more autobiographical; consequently, Mr. Stedall, with some reluctance, extended his account to include moments from his “own bumpy journey—the downs as well as the ups.”

is simply between science and religion. Rather, the division is between those persons who sense and seek an intrinsic meaning and purpose in the world, and two other groups: (1) those who see any notions of meaning and purpose as the ephemeral projections of needy humans, determined by a combination of biochemistry and “contingency”; and (2) those who believe in the existence of objective purpose and meaning but think that these are destined to be realized elsewhere, in a “heaven” somewhere beyond Earth. That “somewhere” is often conceived to be on a “thinner” or disembodied plane that is subject nonetheless to “ordinary consciousness”—the same consciousness that regulates our experiences at ten in the morning on a not very exciting workday.

Editor’s Note: by separate routes we received two reviews of this unusual book. Since they are relatively short and different in character, we are publishing both. The second review, by Signe Schaefer, follows the continuation of this review, on page 59.

Mr. Stedall takes his stand unmistakably on the first side of this divide, but not as a combatant, a philosopher, or a systematizer. Instead, he reports to us as an observer of long standing who has seen and inquired into a vast range of human experience. A significant part of that experience is closely related to anthroposophy.

“Where on Earth is heaven?” was a question originally asked many years ago by the author’s then seven-year-old son. This book is Mr. Stedall’s effort, after a gap of twenty years and his encounter with serious illness, to answer it. Each of the thirtysix chapters is connected—directly or indirectly—to the possibility and meaning of immortality. The chapters loosely follow Mr. Stedall’s career as a BBC documentary film producer. His employer (hard to imagine this now!) allowed him to travel—geographically and spiritually—almost wherever his most burning questions dictated.

Mr. Stedall is not a scholar but a producer of films. He is not a man of personal visionary experience but a person of natural devotion and highly focused attention. In the words of Nicolas Malebranche, “attention is the natural prayer we make to inner truth in order that it may be revealed in us.”

This book takes its place on one side of a cultural divide whose fault lines have been visible for a long time and have been widening at an ever-increasing speed. The topography of that divide has also altered appreciably since it was delineated by C.P. Snow in The Two Cultures in 1961. The split is not so much between the scientific method and the humanities (Geisteswissenschaft), and it would be crude to maintain that it

Mr. Stedall returns again and again to Rudolf Steiner, as a philosopher, an esotericist, and the source for the creation of Camphill therapeutic initiatives and Waldorf education. Very little in these pages could be deemed to be “original” regarding Steiner, and a fair portion of the commentary is overtly mediated through secondary sources. Mr. Stedall was enormously impressed with the Camphill movement, which he encountered through his work documenting the Camphill community, Botton Village, and the school at Camphill Aberdeen. He was strongly influenced by his nine-month stay at Emerson College in England, particularly by the scientific method of founder and principal Francis Edmunds. During that same stay he boycotted all eurythmy classes. While he enrolled both his children in a Waldorf school, he found the experience there insufficiently flexible to accommodate the particular interests evinced by his children when they did not conform to the time frame expected by the teachers concerned.

But this is not a book for students of Rudolf Steiner or for participants in the daughter movements of anthroposophy who want to go deeper. Nor is it a book in which you will find the struggles and hurdles encountered by a man who at long last “finds” anthroposophy. What you will find is an intelligent, intensely curious, and candid thinker who experiences and digests the insights of Rudolf Steiner along with those of Carl Jung, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and many others, albeit with a partiality toward Steiner. You will find a man fascinated by the human side of great thinkers and doers. And so he places Steiner in both surprising and unsurprising company, along with Tolstoy, Gandhi, Sir Bernard Lovell, Malcolm Muggeridge, the poet John Betjeman, Laurens van der Post, and many

Review continues on page 59

Ernst Katz, teacher of anthroposophy

Donald Melcer

On September 3, 2009 one of the great teachers of anthroposophy crossed the threshold. Ernst Katz was 96 years old. He joined the society when he was 16, and was fully dedicated to anthroposophy as a way of life and for understanding man’s purpose on Earth for all those 80 years.

I first became acquainted with Ernst in 1962 when a series of his articles about the book The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity was published in the new journal (now defunct) Free Deeds I had been reading various works of Rudolf Steiner for about three years. Like many people, I had struggled to understand that particular book, as well as most of Steiner’s other “basic books.” Ernst’s articles were examples of extraordinarily clear thinking. I felt as though I had at last found a competent guide to the lofty ideas presented in The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. Every time the postman delivered a new issue of Free Deeds I felt a rush of anticipation for Ernst’s next article.

About five years later at a summer anthroposophical conference I met a young professor of German from the University of Michigan. Alan Cottrell told me about the Ann Arbor study group in anthroposophy led by physics professor Ernst Katz, and the wise guidance he provided. As a person who had studied anthroposophy mostly alone and had many unanswered questions, I was envious of those fortunate people who had such a teacher. Destiny responded kindly to my envy, for within a year I was offered a position at Michigan State University, just a fifty minute drive from Ann Arbor. I quickly broke my vow never live in a place where it snowed all winter, and we left sunny Austin, Texas for snowy East Lansing, Michigan.

The Ann Arbor study group held its meetings in the homes of several members. The presentation protocol was simple. A designated person would present a short recap of a preselected Steiner lecture which was followed by a general discussion. Attendance was typically 25 to 30 eager anthroposophists, and discussion was lively. I found Ernst’s behavior interesting. There was no doubt that he was the leader but he showed no inclination to display his superior anthroposophical knowledge. Often he made little or no comment about a question or topic. More typically the discussion would continue until a question arose that no one could explain adequately. The room would grow quiet as all eyes turned toward Ernst. He would then say rather quietly, “Yes, well...” and then give his thoughts on the question. We learned to have our notebooks and pencils ready at those moments.

Physics students at the university also recognized his extraordinary teaching skills and personal character. Once a group of students called on him during office hours and said something to this effect: “You know, Dr. Katz, we students gossip about our teachers, and we have noticed something different about you. Your courses are more alive and you seem genuinely interested that we

understand what you present in lectures. Can you tell us what it is that makes you different?” The students were quite correct in their perception, for Ernst believed that every human connection was an event of destiny, and he treated each one with respect and reverence.

Some years later, Ernst phoned the regular members of the study group and suggested that we buy an old abandoned fraternity house. The purpose was to create a dwelling for university students interested in spiritual development so they could have a common place to live and study. We responded, and the Rudolf Steiner Institute of the Great Lakes Area was formed as a non-profit corporation. The structure of the building was sound, but the interior had to be completely renovated. Much of the restoration work was done by local members who donated their weekends for at least a year. A central building was created where anthroposophical activities of all sorts could take place. Ernst and his wife Katherine soon sold their large home on the Huron river and bought a small house adjacent to the building now named Rudolf Steiner House. For many years they were overseers of the building and friends of the students and artists who lived there. After it’s mission had been served, the building was donated to the Anthroposophical Society in America and is now the society’s headquarters.

The University of Michigan allowed professors to teach what was called “Free Offerings,” full credit courses in their special interests. Course content was carefully screened by a special committee. Ernst applied to teach anthroposophical courses, and after intense scrutiny, was allowed to do so. As a result, he was one of the few university professors at that time—perhaps the only one in North America—who taught courses in both natural science and “spiritual” science.

One of the great blessings of a university teaching career is that opportunities for work are always greater than the time available to do them all. Boredom is never a problem. I saw that Ernst accomplished an amazing amount of work, yet never seemed rushed or anxious. How did he do it? I simply could not accomplish everything I wanted to, and decided to make a special trip to Ann Arbor to ask Ernst’s advice for improvement. Of course I hoped that he would give me a few clues as to how one accomplishes more work in less time.

ANTHROPOSOPHY NYC

email: anthroposophynyc@yahoo.com

Lectures, workshops, art exhibits, festivals, study groups.

RUDOLF STEINER BOOKSTORE

features works of Rudolf Steiner and many others on spiritual research, Waldorf education, personal growth, Goethean science, Biodynamic agriculture, holistic therapies, the arts, and more

Fall/Winter Highlights

CELEBRATING 100 YEARS: ANTHROPOSOPHY IN AMERICA & NYC

Nov 20, Sat, 7:30pm – Mel Shrawder

Pax Vobiscum, a full length play

Nov 21, Sun – Vivian Gladwell

The Courage to Be, An Introduction to Clowning Conference & Workshop , 1-5:30pm; Performance, 7pm

Nov 22, Mon, 7pm – Linda Larson (eurythmy workshop)

Colors of the Rainbow (Dec 13: In the Advent Mood)

Dec 5, Sun, 5pm – Advent Garden Festival Celebration

Dec 8, Wed, 7pm – David Anderson (10-part series)

Essential Steiner: Steiner & Psychology (Jan 19: Projective Geometry; Feb 16: Chemistry)

Dec 9, Thu, 7:30pm – Dorothy Emmerson

Acting for Non-Actors (Michael Chekhov Techniques)

Dec 18, Sat, 2-5pm – Art Exhibit Opening

Jorge Sanz Cardona: Soulscapes

Dec 26–Jan 6: The Holy Nights & Epiphany

Phoebe Alexander, Walter Alexander, Cynthia Lang, Barbar Simpson, Keith Francis, Kevin Dann, George Centanni, Lenard Petit, Linda Larson, Erk Ludwig, Fred Dennehy; Jan 6 - Epiphany Dinner & Concert

FUTURE SPECIAL EVENTS

Feb 14, Mon, 7pm – Torin Finser

Freedom & Initiative:

Anthroposophy in the 21st Century

Feb 26, Sat, 7pm – Eugene Schwartz

Rudolf Steiner & the 21st Century

Mar 11-12, Fri/Sat – Steiner Books

Spiritual Research Seminar 2011

ANTHROPOSOPHY NYC

the New York Branch of the Anthroposophical Society in America

138 West 15th Street, NY, NY 10011

(212) 242-8945

www.asnyc.org

Instead, he told me how one of his colleagues, a famous scientist who received many requests for more information about articles he published, responded to all these inquiries—more than he could possibly answer. Ernst said, “He ignores the first and second request by any individual and only answers if there is a third. He figures that if a person asks the third time, he or she is really interested and will make good use of his reply.” That was Ernst’s quiet answer to my question. As I drove home to East Lansing I felt that he had not answered my question at all. I had expected a detailed answer describing how one goes about improving his output. After a time, the answer dawned upon me. Ernst had said in effect, “Here is how one man does it. You will have to develop the capacity and skills to accomplish what you want in your life—there is no simple formula.” Thanks, Ernst.

All of Ernst’s teachings, whether given to an individual, or published as essays for all to read, have this quality—they did not provide a ready answer to a particular problem, but required the person to think through the details and find his or her own solution. Ernst knew that we learn most profoundly through our own active thinking, and he was a master at stimulating such thinking. No wonder that his physics students perceived something different about him.

All his published anthroposophical essays will soon be available in a book titled Core Anthroposophy: The Teaching Essays of Ernst Katz to be published by SteinerBooks. Jannebeth Röell, James Lee, and I edited the book and found the work absolutely inspiring. Ernst’s composition is exquisite. One of the last questions I asked him before his death was, “How do you write these excellent essays?” This was not just a question of curiosity—I wanted to improve my own writing. I was hoping again for an answer in the form of step-by-step instruction.

His response was to mail me a copy of a letter by Sergei Prokofieff praising Ernst for one of his essays. Prokofieff is one of the current generation’s most respected anthroposophical writers. Ernst’s letter thanked me for my compliments about his writing and enclosed a copy of the Prokofieff letter. That was all. What was he suggesting?

Ernst was too modest to be calling attention to himself, so I knew the Prokofieff letter was not for that purpose. His response said in effect, “You discovered something about my writing that a writer we both highly respect also discovered.” I took that to be a very nice personal compliment, but the real lesson was, “If you will continue to study the essays carefully you will discover the method of my writing.” Then, of course, what I learn will come as my own effort in imaginative cognition, not by following a set of instructions that would likely produce a dull imitation. At that moment I felt deep thanks—thanks from the heart—for Ernst’s answer to my question.

Ernst intended all of his writings to be for both the present and coming generations. He would be pleased if you were to select him as one of your spiritual teachers. You won’t be disappointed if you do.

Donald Melcer, PhD, is professor emeritus at Michigan State University, a clinical psychologist, and a marriage and family therapist. He coordinates the Anthroposophical Foundation studies at the Austin, Texas, Waldorf School.

Building the Positive Future

A conversation with Clemens Pietzner on Triskeles

In 2002, Clemens Pietzner and a group of colleagues and board members created the Triskeles Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to youth, philanthropic services and community building. From 1984 to 2002, Clemens was executive director of the Camphill Foundation, a public foundation focused on serving communities caring for and supporting children, youth, and adults with developmental disabilities.

Working out of World Themes

» Evolving News — How did the Triskeles thought and approach develop?

Clemens Pietzner — Part of this was biographical, and some of it has to do with how I’ve had the privilege of being inserted into the world. Prior to Triskeles, I had 20 years of active engagement in various ways with Camphill. And prior to that, government work in three different state governments. I have always had an interest in social action, social justice.

Some key themes have been part of the formation of Triskeles. Those are not personal themes; they belong to all of us; they are world themes.

The first theme is: how do we build a positive future? That has always been a big question for all of us, with the emphasis on “positive.”

A second theme relates to the question of community and individual. How can I be my best independent self, standing free and fully conscious, and how can I—at the same time—be most connected and most engaged in my community—be that with my family, or my social organism? Connectedness and engagement are central to the second theme.

The third theme is: stewardship and ownership What can I truly own in this world? And what is it my practical and moral obligation to be a steward of? I don’t mean that only in terms of natural resources. But what kinds of forces do I need to steward, what kinds of relationships, and even how do I steward my own world and the social contract that I make with others?

And finally, the fourth theme is that of: money and intention Money is neutral, and it’s given value and movement through a series of our actions and oftentimes, arbitrary agreements that we generate collectively. A whole universe of activity emerges from that! In fact, money gains a certain kind of value, by what

it does. And it “does stuff” because we ask it to. So we give it intention when we buy something or when we give a gift. It bears something of our consciousness, and it gains movement through that. I’ve always been really interested in what money bears, what is inherent in the transactions of money and the forces connected to money.

These four themes were central to the formation of Triskeles. We chose to build our programs with those four themes in mind, because they are all intertwined. By working with young people, we are directly addressing a positive future. And, we chose to work with money and intentionality around the issues of investment and gifts. That was true also of the themes of ownership and stewardship in community.

So, these ideas continue to be very much at the core of what Triskeles currently does even as our programs continue to evolve, emerge, and grow.

Thought into Actions and Back into Thought

» EN — You’ve done some shaping of the organization, separating out the original foundation/philanthropic work, and you’ve certainly had a lot of success in the youth work. Where would you say it is going?

CP — All I can really speak to with accuracy is maybe the next three to five years. First of all, we are generating a lot of energy and excitement and programmatic effectiveness around youth employment, health, nutrition,

all the issues around obesity, leadership training, social entrepreneurship, and philanthropy. Our “Food for Thought” program is becoming in some respects our flagship program, and it touches on all of those areas. So, we’ll continue to focus on and build that program.

Secondly, because we work with young people, we are finding a great deal of interest in the area of social entrepreneurship. Young people want to know about business, about money, about green projects and operations, sustainable organizations, and globalism in the best sense of the word. How do young people take those large ideas and apply them in their practical lives? We will continue to focus on the areas of social entrepreneurship for young people and youth philanthropy. I also think this is a huge area of opportunity for the Waldorf schools. Youth today are really interested in those topics and get inspired when they see people who “walk the talk” and are doing things that are connected to their ideals.

The third direction we are working towards has to do with alignment. More and more people understand the positive aspects of sustainable and socially responsible investing and are seeing more deeply that it’s productive to think about investing aligned with one’s values and aligned with one’s charitable intent. There have been significant leaders in this field who have demonstrated that there is, can, and should be effective alignment between those things. That’s where returns, not just financial returns, but returns

of impact and social importance, defined in a variety of ways, continue to be more and more important. This is what we strive for in our donor advised funding and related work in philanthropy. To be part of and helping initiate conversations on different levels around this issue of alignment, whether that be with financial planners or people who come at this from a very spiritual perspective and want to see how that streams into practical life, will be a factor in our growth.

We want to continue and expand the approaches that we have to our donor advised fund work and our philanthropic work. We definitely see our “Food for Thought” and our related programs growing. And we’re looking to further develop our green Sustainable Directions Internship Program in New York City. We will be adding board members and increasing infrastructure. We’re interested in youth entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, and philanthropy also with youth.

These are directions for further expansion. Of course, a particular challenge is finding resources. Can we find the resources to meet the demands and interests in our activity areas?

Engaging the Work of Triskeles

» EN — Then how can people step forward and help, work with you, and also benefit from your experience?

CP — We are very interested in working with people who, through philanthropy, wish to take advantage of our donor advised fund services. We are always looking for new, positive relationships that might manifest as board membership or advisors, or as volunteers on the local level. We are looking for program support. Without question, all this will help us grow. Unfortunately, we are not always able to meet a very, very significant demand for our youth programs because we just don’t have the bandwidth at times to do that. And then if people wish to benefit from our experience, we also do advisory work for and with small projects and not-for-profits. We are not a grant-making organization in the traditional sense. It’s important that people understand that. We do have resources, but the funds that we have in the Triskeles Foundation are stewarded by us; we don’t have discretionary gift money. The

gifts we make are supportive of our donors’ intents. As a result, we have to disappoint people a lot, but that’s just how it works. Finally, we can serve smaller not-for-profits who are interested in a sustainable investment approach by working with their endowments or reserve funds. Sometimes endowments or reserve funds in organizations aren’t big enough to get the attention of money managers. We’re able to do that on their behalf. We can manage these funds in a socially-responsible, mission-related way, and the resources do not have to be huge. Those are a variety of ways that people could get engaged—and if you gave me another ten minutes I could think of a hundred more!

A Working-with-the-Whole Process

» EN — It seems an unusual combination, altogether, from understanding philanthropy through actual money management to all the human relationships. And these very specific needs of young people and their families, both the under-served and then young people looking to experience entrepreneurship. Is Triskeles fairly unique in this combination?

CP — I don’t know of any youth organization that actually provides programs that could potentially support a youngster from kindergarten through 12th grade. More specifically, I don’t know of other organizations that are focusing on the youth work around food and youth entrepreneurship and then also taking it all the way into philanthropy; not only for youth but beyond that. I don’t know of another organization that unifies all these pieces. In our “Food for Thought” program, for example, we’re making products like pesto or salsa with the youth. And we’re creating small business plans with them. Many of these youngsters are underserved kids, but Waldorf youth are important participants in these activities as well. We are creating small business plans around the food products that they have actually made. Then, we’re taking the products and youngsters to local farmers’ markets and shops in their neighborhoods where they are selling their products. From the money that we make with the youth, we put the money into a small youth donor advised fund. And then we guide the youth through a philanthropy process in which the young people are actually thinking, “What are the entities in our community that we use?”

“How can we support them?”

We lead the youngsters through a process in which they make choices about what local charities they want to support with the money that they’ve earned. Some of our board members have matched the youths’ gifts and sales. That is a long process. Again, I don’t know of any other group that is taking the process that far. There are many great youth groups around food, and there are great youth employment groups, but we seek to combine all of these pieces.

» EN — It’s real social-artistic work. I’d ask more but you’ve given a lot of time this morning.

CP —Triskeles has come a long way in these seven years, and it has been a great journey, hard sometimes, but joyful and very rewarding.

Photos by Emilie McI. Barber.

LA Karma Exercises Workshop Tycho Brahe, Herzeleide, Emperor Julian

with Linda Connell, Jannebeth Röell, MariJo Rogers, Lynn Stull and Joyce Muraoka

June 25– 26, 2010 in Pasadena, CA

This excellent workshop should be subtitled, “An Evolving Method for Studying Karma.” Linda Connell, Jannebeth Röell, and MariJo Rogers (center, right, and left in the picture at right) shared with us the results of many months of their private endeavors to bring karma study to life through looking at the lives of Tycho Brahe (1546-1601, left), Herzeleide (9th century, pictured below watching a tournament) and Emperor Julian (Julian the Apostate, 331-363, two sculptures at lower right). They began with these three people because Rudolf Steiner gives a fairly lengthy description of their connection in Karmic Relationships, vol. 4 (lectures of 9/14 and 9/16/1924), describing something of the earthly life of this individuality in each incarnation as well as life between death and rebirth.

The workshop focused on the first karma exercise, the Saturn, Sun, and Moon exercise (Karmic Relationships, vol. 2, 5/4/1924), where you bring before your mind certain features and characteristics of a person and then “think them away” in order to arrive at deeper levels in the person’s life, and, ultimately, a picture of the person’s karma.

Jannebeth, MariJo and Linda had each done extensive research into the life of one of the three: Jannebeth studied Emperor Julian, MariJo pondered Herzeleide, and Linda researched the life of Tycho Brahe. After a brief introduction to the first karma exercise, each presented an extensive biography of the person she had studied. The basic method was to look initially at physical characteristics and constitution, including significant illnesses (moon level). Next, we heard about upbringing, family life, education, travels, work, significant people met, geographic settings, and relationships;

in other words, all that the person saw and heard and accomplished or attempted in life (sun level). Finally, a deeper look at what seemed to live as the tendency of the person’s life, the direction of the person’s thought (saturn level).

In the final session of the workshop, Jannebeth drew a grid on the blackboard: across the top¸ Julian, Herzeleide, and Tycho; along the left side, from top to bottom, “spiritual world”, saturn, sun, moon, making a grid of 12 squares. It was our turn to bring something to the workshop. What had we noticed, what stood out for us, what parallels might exist, what had surprised us, made us say “Aha!”? This collaborative work was challenging and very exciting. Among the observations: each person was born into a noble family; there were very strong themes of the sun in each life; there was a powerful connection between this individuality and Mani in at least the lives of Julian and Herzeleide; and each of the people at some point were within the same geographic areas in Europe. This was a beginning, a first tentative penetration into the themes of this fascinating and important personality.

We were supported in this endeavor by the nourishing eurythmy brought by Lynn Stull. With Joyce Muraoka speaking, they presented “The Stars Once Spoke to Man,” a verse presented by Rudolf Steiner to Marie Steiner, three times throughout the workshop, which helped us deepen our appreciation of the theme. We also had a eurythmy session with Lynn, with a wonderful collaborative effort to choreograph and perform one section of the verse.

This workshop takes up the important question of how we can study karma. Rudolf Steiner gave us his karma research as a precious legacy and an incentive to take up this essential work. Using his work as a scaffolding, Linda, MariJo, and Jannebeth have begun to construct a practical method for taking up this task. If any other branch is interested in having this workshop, please email any of the presenters:

Linda Connell ( linconnell@sbcglobal.net); Jannebeth Röell ( jannebeth@mindspring.com); MariJo Rogers (marijo.rogers@hp.com).

Marcia Murray

Pasadena, CA

Anthroposophy as developed by Rudolf Steiner a century ago is distinguished by truly holistic breadth and by commitment to a path of objective, scientific research. It does not accept the so-called “limits to knowledge” which still mark off the boundaries of modern natural science— specifically the limits to our understanding of “matter” and “consciousness.” These are not real, unsurpassable limits, Steiner insisted, but stage-markers in human development which are calling for new techniques based in the cultivation of the potentials of human consciousness.

Rudolf Steiner’s own life path is filled with new approaches and new beginnings in the search for real knowledge and experience. Gifted in childhood with what Hollywood has popularized as the ability to “see dead people,” Steiner turned away from this spontaneous gift and sought to find a path to the same and further experiences by methods appropriate to the Western scientific tradition. An early discovery was that the true contemplation of geometric forms involves a “sense-free thinking.” Lines without width and planes without depth, the stuff of geometry, are no more perceptible to the physical senses, and no more materially real, than human beings who have left their bodies at death; but they can be known in contemplation. Steiner continued with intensive studies in Vienna which for its time would equate to a course at MIT or Cal Tech today. He learned to review the most uncongenial and dogmatic lectures over and over again— backwards. In that way he discovered how their hidden logical failures could unlock more living insights.

In the years before 1900 Steiner explored many paths: psychological phenomenology (which became essential to 20th century philosophy); the dynamic morphological and evolutionary science of Goethe (still slowly being recognized as fundamental to true ecological and life sciences); the esoteric wisdom of a “simple” folk herbalist; and the popular occult spiritualistic streams like Freemasonry and Theosophy. He engaged the most serious scientific research of a triumphant time which had unlocked the vast force fields of electromagnetism, unrolled the time dimension of life in biological evolution, and opened the doors of the unconscious mind. He also immersed himself in the arts and humanities, and in the intense social questions arising at the end of aristocracy. Most importantly, however, he was developing capacities for introspection, meditation, and contemplation, until he arrived at the little understood point of “initiation.”

As he described it just short of a century ago, “We must gradually accustom ourselves to the necessity of submitting our ideas, concepts and modes of thought to a certain change before we are able to form correct ideas of the higher worlds beyond the senses.... Anyone really pursuing the practical path into the worlds opened by initiation, anyone having actual experience of life beyond the sense world,

knows well that one must not only transform many things in oneself...but also lay aside many habits, representations, and concepts before one can enter the higher worlds.” (Lecture of August 27, 1912)

So the path of anthroposophical research is at the same time a process of personal growth and transformation. And everyone who undertakes this challenge is immediately faced with the rather overwhelming abilities and accomplishments of Rudolf Steiner himself. How could he know so much, critics ask, and why has he had no equals? The first question can be met by pointing to persons of unique gifts in many fields. For the second, the answer lies in human evolution itself, the evolution of consciousness which is both an individual matter and an aspect of the life of humanity. There are many researchers following Steiner, but anthroposophy recognized that we are all becoming, never finished. And so the very most essential requirement for this path of research may simply be humility. In T.S. Eliot’s phrase, “Humility is endless.” Submitting ourselves to humility’s power, we become capable of attempting whatever needs doing.

The following pages, then, offer some aspects of the present work of research among anthroposophists today. What we do not capture at all in this first look is the working of the three emerging higher senses for which Rudolf Steiner used the names Imagination, Inspiration, Intuition. He meant them in a specially disciplined and intensified form, but imaginations and inspirations and intuitions such as we all have give us a clue: private, intimate moments of wonder, fresh perception, insight, realization. Experiences of that sort are contemplated and then perhaps taken into the conversations of study groups and branches, into the teachers’ circles of schools and the life of all kinds of initiatives. With special intention they are also shared in the work of the sections of the School for Spiritual Science, established by Rudolf Steiner in the last months of his life.

And so what is won individually and humbly is shared, heard, pondered; and it becomes, in Michael Howard’s phrase in an article we will publish in the next issue, vital threads in a living fabric — The Editor

Living with and Sharing Questions in the Twin Cities: Spiritual Research in the Branch

by Dennis Dietzel, Roseville, MN

Branch activity in the Twin Cities has waxed and waned over time, but in the last five years we have consistently met on the third Wednesday of each month with ten to fourteen people. Our current activity is largely due to the hard work of a few people, particularly Becky Streeter, who has been our Branch contact in recent years.

About five years ago we started follow ing a three-part meeting format, inspired by Rene Querido:

1. some content related to anthroposophy / spiritual research,

2. branch business and reports from local initiatives,

3. current events in the light of anthroposophy. As we have worked with this form, we have gradually moved to a two-part meeting preceded by a social time where we share a potluck meal.

During the first part of the meeting, we strive to build an awareness of local anthroposophical initiatives and attempt (in words inspired by Robert Karp) to build a vessel that weaves together the spiritual intentions of the different initiatives. We are blessed with many anthroposophical initiatives—three Waldorf schools, two life-sharing/CSA farms, Camphill Village Minnesota, some medical related work,—and through our shared experience we hear about the various initiatives and their activities. We then hold them in silence for a few minutes, sending our best thoughts for their efforts. This part of the meeting is our vesselbuilding work and takes 30-45 minutes.

The second part of the meeting is devoted to sharing the spiritual research of members. We approach this in a very humble way, encouraging the person to share their research at whatever level they are. We keep the definition of “spiritual research” broad enough so that people do not feel intimidated or that they have to match up to Dr. Steiner’s standards. The format is up to the presenter, but generally he or she speaks for 20-30 minutes followed by conversation and questions (up to an hour). “Minnesota Nice” prevails here, so we tend to not be overly critical of each other, striving to listen and respect each others’ opinions. Following are some examples of recent presentations:

Albert Linderman is involved professionally as an organizational development consultant. He has studied the work of Otto Scharmer (www.presencing.com) and taken a workshop on Theory U, Otto’s approach to group decision making. Albert described Theory U, which takes a group through a transformative process of open mind/heart/ will to presencing, allowing solutions to come from the future. Although Otto is presenting his work in

the main-stream as a lecturer at MIT, it happens that he grew up on a biodynamic farm in Germany. He does not speak about anthroposophy in his written work, but his work reveals many inspirations from this fount.

John Fuller recently attended the Economics of Peace conference in California. John shared this work with us and related it to anthroposophical principals of threefolding. After presenting a sober picture of our current economic situation, John shared from the many inspiring presentations of people he heard at the conference (www.economicsofpeace.net).

Our next meeting will focus on the work of Shona Terrill, who is working on her masters degree at Antioch College. She will lead a session on the topic of her dissertation, which is “Moral Education.” Shona describes her work thus:

I explore observations of past societal crises and reveal how these relate to education through the prism of five moral pillars: sympathy, benevolence, reason, equity, and self determination. I also use these pillars to examine modern day social and educational theory. By studying three local schools of differing educational streams, I explore how contemporary society puts moral education into practice.

We have found this sharing of research to be fruitful for the group and a way for the researcher to deepen his/her own work. It does take extra effort to put ones’ ideas in front of other people, but the payback is the insight gained from the input of others.

Reprinted from the Winter-Spring 2009-10 edition of The Correspondence, the newsletter of the Central Region. Dennis Dietzel serves on the Central Regional Council and joined the General Council of the Anthroposophical Society in America representing his region.

As it did for Rudolf Steiner, the research process may begin with our own experiences and insights. These will commonly be shared first in a branch or study group.

“Sections” of the School for Spiritual Science founded by Rudolf Steiner serve medicine, pedagogy, agriculture, the social sciences, visual arts, performing arts, literary arts and humanities, natural science, mathematics and astronomy, and the spiritual striving of youth.

The Life of a Research Section

In any Section of the School of Spiritual Science, not all members work on a single theme; rather, each individual generally works on the issue or issues that present themselves in life. This can allow us to research and be active in areas that we love.

The Section for the Social Sciences, by its very nature, includes a particularly wide range of interests: members work in and represent research and activities touching on every realm of social life. As described on the Goetheanum website:

The Section for Social Sciences is concerned with human relationships in the three spheres of social life: economic, legal and cultural/spiritual. Depending on the sphere different fundamental questions arise:

How are the basic needs of the world’s population to be met? What responsibility does a citizen bear for the common good? What does a human being need from the world in order to reach his or her potential?

With such questions in mind the Section conducts research, pursuing insight and creative forms in a range of areas including: family culture, biography work, conflict resolution/peace studies, addiction, economic questions and the science, practice and politics of law.

The Section for the Social Sciences in North America was founded in June 1987; over time, eight points emerged, eight areas which, we believe, continue to indicate the Section’s scope:

1. to foster and encourage individual and collaborative research at local, regional and national levels with a focus on social lawfulness and the threefold nature of social life.

2. to work toward a deeper understanding of the spiritual beings connected to social life.

3. to recognize that the sacrament of human encounter is an essential task for this section.

4. to do what we can—humanly, socially, and spiritually—to encourage and support the initiative and research capacities of members of this section, and to cultivate collaboration with other sections of the School for Spiritual Science.

5. to provide local support in the branches of the Anthroposophical Society.

6. to foster consciousness of world events in a spiritual context.

7. to encourage associations of individuals and groups sharing common interests.

8. to create forums of meeting to help heal social ills and relationships.

A mighty set of tasks! One can see how work in the Section for the Social Sciences cannot but interweave with that of other sections. And one can wonder: How does this set of guideposts play out in a practical way? How does life within the Section for the Social Sciences manifest?

The section itself consists of about 140 members. Within the section, a Traveling Collegium meets with geographically scattered groups—generally twice a year—and sponsors a twiceyearly newsletter, providing members a forum of colleagues. The North American section maintains a close connection with that at the Goetheanum and was happily able to send two Collegium members to a Section for Social Sciences meeting in Dornach in November 2009. That year also saw cosponsorship of a public conference in Spring Valley and a “Round Table on Economics” at the Annual General Meeting of the Anthroposophical Society. At both the latter events younger friends were visible and active.

The heart of the section lies in the initiative of members. In some areas—the Northern California and Berkshire-Taconic groups come to mind—Section members meet regularly to study and share work-in-progress. Members who work with youth groups, offer workshops on social threefolding, work in social finance, provide mediation, or otherwise offer special services, bring their section perspective to that work.

Mention of a few recent articles in the section newsletter may give some flavor of the nature and variety of endeavor: Alexander Cameron described a “collaborative research in study,” an epistemological study with a (non-anthroposophical) colleague; Denis Schneider wrote of “developing community through art” in the form of writing workshops; Meg Gorman asked “What Shall We Do About Ahriman,” an article also published in Das Goetheanum; Chris Schaefer offered practical advice on things we can do relating to our very own financial institutions; Richard Rettig has brought a three-fold perspective to such contemporary issues as same-sex marriage and the liberal-conservative divide in politics; Stephen Usher delved into presentday world events in “The Present Crisis: The Surface Explanation and the Deep One;” Luigi Morelli described weaving the seven life processes into nonviolent communication and social technology modalities; Addie Bianchi described peace activities in the Israel-Palestinian area; Carl Flygt expanded his work on “Goethean conversation;” and so on …

A final quote from the Section at the Goetheanum may characterize a key aspect of the Section for the Social Sciences:

Of primary importance is the conversation between the various members of the section who are doing scientific research. Today one can no longer undertake any research on the social level in some ivory tower—exploratory conversations and exchange with others is essential.

For further information, please contact Shawn Sullivan, (California) 916-965-6553, shawnjs1@pacbell.net or another Collegium member:

Meg Gorman (New Mexico), 206-325-5520, pelicanmeg@earthlink.net

Kristen Puckett (Colorado), 970-689-3902, kristen.puckett@gmail.com

Bette Shertzer (New York), 212-877-1094, bshertzer@aol.com

Claus Sproll (Pennsylvania), 610-469-6292, claus@sproll.net

The Section for the Social Sciences in North America

A Resurgence of Research at Threefold: Frank Chester, the 2010 Threefold Visiting Researcher

Bill Day

Thirty years ago, Henry Barnes called on every anthroposophical institution to set aside resources to support research. Of “the urgent need for research arising from anthroposophy,” Henry wrote: “We must find the way to work for future values (the purpose of all genuine research), while meeting the needs of today, tomorrow and the next day.” Henry was inspired by Rudolf Steiner’s call at the 1924 Christmas Foundation Conference for the establishment of research institutes that could support and carry forward spiritual scientific research. Through the work of these institutes, Steiner said, the insights of spiritual science will penetrate the general culture.

Today, anthroposophy has proven its ability to foster (for example) beautiful schools and productive farms that freely acknowledge Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual research as the basis of their work. But even the most prosperous and stable anthroposophical institutions still devote most of their resources to simply keeping the wheels turning, paying the bills, and staying alive for the next school year or planting season. Our people are busy just doing their jobs, we say, and there’s hardly enough money even to meet our immediate needs.

At the same time, who can deny that the need to discover our “future values” feels more urgent than ever?

With that in mind, Threefold Educational Center has created a Visiting Researcher program to bring together innovative researchers, motivated students, and Threefold community residents and guests.

The inaugural Threefold Visiting Researcher is artist, sculptor and geometrician Frank Chester. This fall, Frank brought his studio to the Threefold community, where a select group of research fellows have joined him in conducting investigations into the properties of new geometric forms.

Fellows entered the program on one of two tracks. Those in the Apprenticeship Track are working on projects assigned by Frank Chester, while Fellows in the Research Track brought an existing project or question to the Fellowship, with the aim of applying research methodologies they are learning from Frank Chester. Fellows in both tracks received intensive, hands-on instruction in Frank’s methodology. They will then have the opportunity to apply those methods to previously uninvestigated forms, with completely unpredictable results. Through their guided experience of one researcher’s methods, fellows will develop unrealized capacities and unexpected insights.

The 2010 residency has been structured in three parts:

September 19-25: Frank and his research fellows work together at Threefold. This intensive week-long gathering included morning lectures, work with projective geometry and orthographic studies, geometric net development, two- and three-dimensional drawing, perspective, form studies, basic construction techniques, and group discussions. Frank provided instruction on his research methodology, assigned research projects to fellows in the Apprenticeship track, and guided fellows in the Research track as they apply the methodology to their own research question.

September 26-October 23: Fellows work independently, on their own projects or on the forms and elements assigned by Frank. This independent research can be completed anywhere – fellows can return home or stay on at Threefold, where studio facilities are available. Each fellow will have at least one personal phone consultation with Frank during this time to check on progress and ask questions.

October 24-30: Frank and fellows reconvene at Threefold. This second group session will include presentations of independent work and a group compilation and reporting of research findings. An exhibition in Threefold Auditorium will feature the work of the research fellows, and time will also be devoted to exploring how the research methodology might be applied to each fellow’s own life questions and themes.

In early November, after the Visiting Researcher program is completed, the Threefold community will host a research symposium co-sponsored by Threefold Educational Center and the Collegium of the School of Spiritual Science. This event will include contributions from researchers of long standing, and be a fitting cap to a season marking a resurgence of research at Threefold.

In shaping the Visiting Researcher program, we at Threefold have worked hard to ensure that it is adequately funded and appropriately structured so that it can achieve the Christmas Conference ideal of institutionalizing spiritual-scientific research. As we work, continuous dialog with the Collegium of the School of Spiritual Science is intended to ensure that Threefold’s work harmonizes with the Collegium’s efforts in the same direction. We are striving to temper our enthusiasm and sense of urgency with a commitment to ensuring that the 2010 Residency is the first of many for the years to come.

Bill Day is Development Coordinator at Threefold Educational Center. For more information, contact Rafael (Ray) Manaças, Executive Director of Threefold Educational Center, at 845-352-5020 x12 or rafael@threefold.org. Learn more about Threefold Educational Center at www.threefold.org

Though underfunded by any measure, the sections at the Goetheanum, in Dornach, Switzerland, begun by Rudolf Steiner, provide an international focus for research.

The on-going need for institutional support and funding for research in North America is a large one. In the USA, the Threefold Educational Center, originally the “Threefold Farm,” was already a center in the 1930s. Ehrenfried Pfeiffer (right, with colleague Sally Burns) had a laboratory there. The North American Collegium of the School for Spiritual Science was glad to announce, earlier this year, a new fund named for Henry Barnes, a leader of anthroposophical work for many decades.

The Henry Barnes Fund for Anthroposophical Research

The North American Collegium of the School for Spiritual Science is pleased to announce the Henry Barnes Fund for Anthroposophical Research. This has been made possible through a generous gift to the Collegium for the purpose of furthering and supporting research in the realm of the spirit.

To foster a culture of research within the School for Spiritual Science and the Anthroposophical Society, the Collegium will award grants to individuals who are nominated by their peers within the Sections of the School based on their work with research and its methods. The completed research will be presented through publications, exhibitions, performances and other forms of sharing with groups who express interest.

In addition, the Fund will support events such as symposia, lectures, conferences and workshops that focus not only on the content of research but also on the paths of inner activity leading to enhancement of our human capacities as described by Rudolf Steiner.

In order to recognize and support anthroposophical research activity beyond the scope of the original gift, we plan to cultivate an ongoing gift stream to sustain the Fund.

For the first year, beginning July 2010, a total of $25,000 will be available for distribution as grants of varying amounts.

Criteria for Awarding Grants:

a) As a rule, nominated researchers will be active members of one or more Sections of the School for Spiritual Science in North America (the United States and Canada).

b) Researchers are to be nominated by their peers, typically by their Section Council.

c) Grants will be awarded on the basis of previous research activity grounded in anthroposophy. However, a perceived potential to advance some aspect of anthroposophical research will be a deciding factor.

d) Both the need for the research topic itself and the need for financial support for the research will be considered.

e) The Collegium assumes there is a spectrum of kinds and levels of research in the realm of the spirit. Grants will be directed primarily towards research that exercises organs of perception and cogni -

tion beyond conventional sensory and intellectual faculties. Therefore grants will not be awarded for conventional academic forms of research on spiritual matters, but rather to support what is also known as Goethean scientific or Goethean artistic research, as well as imaginative, inspirational and intuitive forms of spiritual scientific research.

The Nominating Process

The Councils of the Sections of the School for Spiritual Science are invited to nominate one or two individuals active in their Section in recognition of their anthroposophical research and its further potential.

In nominating an individual, the Section Council—or an individual requested to act on behalf of the Section Council—will submit a two to five page statement that expresses why they believe the individual should be awarded a grant relative to the criteria outlined above. This will include some history of the nominee’s previous research activity and an outline of intentions for future research.

Part of the acceptance process will include a written agreement concerning the following: 1) Researchers will document their research activity in an appropriate manner, such as an article, performance or exhibition. This will include a discussion of their method and ways of developing the faculties of perception and cognition necessary to the research. 2) Researchers will agree to present their research in 1- 3 events arranged in collaboration with the Collegium. Honoraria for such events would be in addition to the original awards.

The Henry Barnes Research Fund Committee will also consider applications for financial support of events such as lectures, workshops or conferences that advance the understanding and practice of anthroposophical research. To qualify, such events are to be sponsored by a Section of the School, or by two or more members of the School who consider themselves active in the General Anthroposophical Section.

The Award Granting Committee currently consists of two members of the Collegium, Sherry Wildfeuer and Helen Lubin.

Please address questions or nominations to:

Sherry Wildfeuer or Helen Lubin

PO Box 1045 PO Box 1384

Kimberton, PA 19442 Fair Oaks, CA 95628

sherrywlf@verizon.net

helenlubin@gmail.com

Modern social sciences rarely address whether ultimate reality is founded in “things” or in “beings.” Religions, spirituality, and one wing of today’s ecological thinkers take for granted that humans, animals, and plants are not the only “beings” in the cosmos. Hard sciences and rationalists disagree, and seem uncomfortable sometimes even with the beingness of humans. So anthroposophy is challenging in its aim to be both genuinely scientific and at the same time fundamentally concerned with beings not perceptible to physical senses. Three “principles” who are experienced as “principals” are known by historically familiar names of Lucifer, Christ, and Ahriman. The first two entered fully into a human life experience in the past; the third is preparing for such an incarnation in our times, Rudolf Steiner reported. Lucifer provided access to freedom, supports idealism, and tempts us to abandon the earth. Christ provides the power to become a real individual, balancing other powers and serving the needs of the earth. Ahriman brings abstracting intelligence and technical power, and is presently seeking to dominate human beings with an ideal of mechanization. What do we do about that?

Meg Gorman presented this work to fellow members of the Section for the Social Sciences in Spring Valley in August 2009 and subsequently brought it to the Goetheanum. It was translated and published in the News from the Goetheanum

Rudolf Steiner tells us “...there is only one book of wisdom.” The challenge of our time is to determine whether or not this wisdom is in the hands of Ahriman or the Christ. Dr. Steiner then says, “It cannot come into the hands of Christ unless people fight for it.”1

How shall we do this? How can the goals of human evolution be realized in the middle of the Ahrimanic forces pouring into our times. What can we, mere individuals, do to impede Ahriman and better serve Michael and the Christ? Dr. Steiner tells us that there is much we can do. “People must learn from spiritual science to find the key to life and so to be able to recognize and learn to control the currents leading towards the incarnation of Ahriman.”2

Ahriman and Lucifer are alive and well in each of us, in the anthroposophical movement, and in the world. The more we do our work well, the more we may find ourselves attacked by negative forces. When Jesus of Nazareth received the Christ into his being at the baptism of John, he is first recognized by Lucifer and Ahriman in the temptations in the desert. Where the Christ is active, these forces will show up to undo our work. Thus, we are all fair game. The task is to stay awake and identify these influences, especially in ourselves. As my colleague, Denis Klocek says, once we can see these forces working in us, we need to tell them, “Thank you for sharing, please sit down.”

The bad news, in one sense, is that Ahriman is coming, and there is nothing we can do about it. In addition, collective humanity is helping his incarnation and that of his henchmen. This is not new information for anthroposophists. On the other hand, there is good news: through human activity, it is possible to help Ahriman serve humanity. We do not have to endure him only; we can work to make Ahriman a helper of human beings. Aside from the obvious reality of materialism in our time, Rudolf Steiner gives us many other hints on how we are preparing for Ahriman‘s activities. It is important to be conscious of these in ourselves and in our work.

First comes the BAD NEWS. At the risk of being superficial and overly organized, I list below some of the ways in which we make Ahriman‘s job easy. When deeply considered, each of these can also become a tool for discernment in living the “examined life.” The following, in no particular order, are helping Ahriman‘s incarnation: Disregarding weightiest truths. Ignoring or discounting our spiritual selves and our destinies in the world and in human evolution create the greatest bridge for Ahriman.

Denying or ignoring the spiritual nature of the human being. The idea that we are only our biology permeates much of the world today. As higher animals, some say we bear no spiritual responsibility for one another. Ahriman delights in this.

Seeing the world as a “great mechanism” only and maintaining this scientific superstition.

1 The Influences of Lucifer and Ahriman 65-66

2 The Incarnation of Ahriman 69

Meg Gorman

This makes science into a new religion and creates “scientific superstition as a prevailing dogma.” When we think mechanistically, we create disharmony in our waking and sleeping. We see this today in the enormous rise in sleep disorders, especially among our teenagers.3 Getting caught up in fears like anthrax, swine flu, and global warming without understanding the science behind them is a great help to Ahriman. Believing that science will save us from ourselves is equally helpful to him.

Seeing the world as a duality of good versus evil. The American statements concerning “the axis of evil” are an excellent example of this. Some devil is always to blame whether or not it is Osama Bin Laden or George Bush. Adam said, “Eve made me do it”; Eve said, “The devil made me do it.” It‘s always someone else‘s fault. We play a dangerous game of shaming and blaming others, of thinking in blacks and whites, of seeing the world as a duality of good and evil. To think in this way is a failure to see the complexity of our times and to take responsibility for them. It is a failure to seek the role of Christ as a balance between Lucifer and Ahriman.

Organizing our lives too much. Efficiency is not a bad thing in itself, but it needs to leave enough room for real human meeting and conversation.

Living in the superficial intellect. We often do not dig beneath the surface of things. We Google life, and think we have it. We put the world and its people into convenient boxes that rest on the surface of realities. We anthroposophists can be especially guilty in this area when we say things like: “He‘s just so phlegmatic. No one can work with someone who is so choleric. Plastic should never touch the lips of small children.”

Proving things instead of experiencing them. We are especially good at using statistics to this end. They often put truth beyond reach because figures can be divorced from the qualitative aspects of life.

Sowing conflicts between groups and getting them to attack each other. Whether in family, race, tribe, faculty meetings in a Waldorf school, or anthroposophical groups, we are all very busy in this area. This does not mean that conflict is bad, but that it’s here to challenge to new perspectives, not polarize us. Living in dogmatic one-sidedness and endorsing national chauvinism. Any firmly held ideology can create discord. The forming of political parties creates ideology at the expense of human beings. We often think it is more important to be right than to find a way to work through issues to something larger than ourselves. “National Chauvinism, perverted patriotism in every form, is the material from which Ahriman will build exactly what he needs.”4

Believing in the great Ahrimanic deception that economics drives world history and that the economist knows all. We turn to economists today for answers. Dr. Steiner actually says economists have replaced initiates in our times. He adds, “We must not imagine that the rulers of our times are anything other than economists.”5 We need only look to things like the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, or groups like the US Council on Foreign Relations to recognize this. Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine does a lovely job of revealing this reality.

Believing that public welfare depends only on providing the

3 The Incarnation of Ahriman 20

4 The Incarnation of Ahriman 72

5 The Incarnation of Ahriman 26

economic and material needs of humanity. Providing material needs is important, but this alone will not solve the problems of the world. We see this everywhere as people ask things like, “How does spiritual understanding help me to acquire stuff? How does a Waldorf education help me to get a good job?” In this regard, Rudolf Steiner states: “Europeans and their American appendages are devourers of the spirit.”6

Involving ourselves in half or quarter truths. These are more harmful than total errors or outright lies. They create insecurity, fear, and confusion. They are, therefore, the marketer‘s delight. If we just drink the right beer, use the right toothpaste, and drive the right kind of car, we will be whole human beings. We accept these lies and deceive ourselves easily in small fractions.

Believing in fixed creeds of any kind. This includes blind anthroposophy. Concerning Christianity, if we see the world solely through scripture or through one gospel alone, Rudolf Steiner tells us we will be led to the “hallucination of Christ.” The rise of religious fundamentalism worldwide from Christianity to Islam is a case in point Any kind of religious fundamentalism prepares a good place for Ahriman, such as the Koran only, secular science only, denominational instruction of any kind. An excellent BBC film on this is The Power of Nightmares which documents the rise of the Christian right in America as Islamic fundamentalism rises in Muslim countries.

Fostering drowsy unawareness through tedium. We find ourselves exhausted and at a loss for energy, and then blame the state of the world and our lives. Rudolf Steiner tells us that a dry cash book can be as interesting as the Sistine Madonna if we can find the right entry point of interest. “It is we, not the world, who are at fault.” We cannot use our weariness as an excuse to become unconscious.7

Falling into “pickle jars.” Pickle jars, Dr. Steiner tells us, are libraries and universities filled with theses no one will ever read. They may also be lawyer‘s dossiers, the piles of papers of proofs, and books with little real interest in human beings. I have my own piles of paper, my little pickle jars. Sometimes I think Ahriman wants to bury us under paper. Steiner gives a little quote from Ahriman to Lucifer. “It is advantageous to make use of pickle jars….To you I will leave people‘s stomachs if you will leave it to me to lull to sleep the awareness of their stomachs.”8

Eating and drinking things of the physical and spiritual worlds unconsciously. How often are we conscious of the gifts that fill our gustatory needs? How often do we grab a sandwich on the run, eat at our desks? How often do we quote Rudolf Steiner out of context or without thinking things through? How conscious are we in our lives.

Eating and drinking for cleverness. Marketing tells us that we will be smarter and cleverer if we just eat and drink certain products. Today in America we even have a brand of bottled libation called Smart Water. We now have pharmaceutical solutions, from Ritalin to Prozac, to help enhance our intelligence and deal with human issues.

Taking things in only through the heart without the head. It is easy to get lost in our silks and felted angels, or any other stuff that makes us feel good and brings us bliss. Here we are then

6 The Incarnation of Ahriman 40

7 The Incarnation of Ahriman 58

8 The Incarnation of Ahriman 45-47

safely asleep in the arms of Lucifer, so Ahriman can do his work.

Taking things in only through the head without the heart; living with abstractions of any kind. We in anthroposophical work can be especially guilty of this. We need the heart‘s balance. Intellectual life without warmth leads us into the world of pickle jars.9

Taking things in through the heart and the head, and doing nothing with them, otherwise known as weakness of will. Speaking of and loving spiritual things, but not carrying these into the activities of everyday life creates a wonderful working space for Ahriman. Love of anthroposophy, knowledge of anthroposophy is not enough.

Quantifying qualitative Life. Testing in education, “No Child Left Behind,” statistics without qualitative considerations all fall into this category.

Allowing envy and gossip to sway our common sense. Steiner has strong things to say about envy and gossip because they undermine our collective work for the future. As he puts it, “We cannot on the one hand want to take part in the processes of the cosmos, and on the other hand make derogatory remarks about our fellow human beings in the widespread way this happens in restaurants and clubs in this bourgeois age.”10

Fear-mongering and submitting to fear. The news media, marketing, our politicians, and to some degree some of our movement is interested in creating a kind of fear which para lyzes us. Forgetting the widespread suffering of the earth. Writing on Christmas, 1919, Dr. Steiner‘s words are enough clear: “We have no right to forget the widespread suffering, the wide spread sorrow of our times….It is our duty to allow all symptoms of decline in human civilization today to permeate our thoughts and penetrate right through to the Christmas Tree.”11

Then there is the GOOD NEWS, the ways in which we can help Ahriman serve humanity. These are things we can all do in our daily lives. They are not so easy, but self-development is not a path of ease.

Control thinking and avoid abstractions. The practice of spiritual science asks us to develop an inner discipline of think ing. As Dr. Steiner puts it. We must “gain control over our thinking just as we have control over our hands and legs.”12 This also means that we need to know the difference between living thinking and abstractions.

See the world with three-fold eyes. We need to move out of duality and see how we can balance Lucifer and Ahriman with the Christ. This threefoldness is everywhere, in our bones, our education, and our beings. It is also in our interactions with one another, and it is crucial that we begin to work with Dr. Steiner‘s picture of the threefold nature of social life, the threefold social organism.

9 The Incarnation of Ahriman 109

10 The Incarnation of Ahriman 100

11 The Incarnation of Ahriman 84

12 Past and Future Influences in Social Events, 3 March 1919

Develop inner strength. This comes with our daily review of the day, the practice of the six basic exercises, and our continued struggle on the path of self development. Dr. Steiner tells us that “Inner strength alone can enable anthroposophy to achieve its goals.”13

Be conscious and interested in the world. We need to stay awake. As Dr. Steiner reminds us, one of the main tasks of humanity today is “to live towards the incarnation of Ahriman with such alert consciousness that this incarnation can serve to promote higher, spiritual development.”14

Know science. We need to develop an exact knowledge of science as much as we are able. We need to educate ourselves through scientific illusion to spiritual substance. We need to love the facts and know how to use them with common sense. We need to guide science and technology to serve human needs. Young people in New York are reading Rudolf Steiner in “book slams.” A group gathers, studies and discusses a text in a weekend. Those who live too far away to attend are present through Skype and can take part in the process. Thus Ahriman is foiled by his own technology.

Conduct affairs not for material ends alone but for the free spiritual life. This is one area in which we in our movement may be impeding Ahriman well. Working actively for Anthroposophia is, for most of us, more a labor of love than a way to pad the packet.

Seek beyond the hallucination of Christ to the Christ within the self and the other. This is best done where two or three are gathered together, and we can practice finding the Christ in one another.

Radically re-evaluate all values. Nothing is quite as it seems in the consciousness-soul age. The Ten Commandments no longer apply in all circumstances. For instance, if the donkey is suffering in the ditch, we need to pull him out, no matter the day of the week and societal prohibitions. We need to look again and again at our values and how they are playing out in life – from the Waldorf curriculum to our national policies.

Refrain from envy, gossip and things that drive wedges between people. Dr. Steiner advises us as follows in this area. “We need to leave ambition to one side, but nevertheless, the most dire manifestations of it exist within the anthroposophical movement, and mutual envy is on the increase.”15 We have much work to do in this area.

Work against hatred, bitterness and resentment in our own souls. This is a daily task, sometimes minute-by-minute, task, and it takes rigorous self honesty, and the constant process of asking these forces to sit down and behave themselves rather than allowing them to take over our souls.

Face fear with courage. There is nothing wrong with fear as long as we can examine it with our thinking and use it to create the courage we need. Fear is useful in this regard. The crucial thing is not to allow fear to bring us into a paralysis of will.

Tell the truth. It is not always so easy to speak one‘s point of view. Instead we hold back to be nice, and then gossip later about what another has said. In the end, this is detrimental to our work. “What is required of us is to courageously stand up and tell the truth as far as we are able.”16

13 The Incarnation of Ahriman 9

14 Past and Future Influences in Social Events, 3 March 1919

15 The Incarnation of Ahriman 100

16 The Incarnation of Ahriman 112-113

Live life with enthusiasm for and interest in our times. We need to stop complaining and get busy with the work that needs to be done all around us. Then, “through our interest— which is itself luciferic—we can wrest from Ahriman what is his own.”17 Michael, our current Time Spirit, needs us to love his regency. When he sees our interest and enthusiasm, he will help us.

Widen the zone of individual comfort. We often think very narrowly and only in the range that gives us a sense of well-being. It is so important to be able to move beyond this range, to see through the eyes of others and to become, in the process, true global citizens.

Practice, practice, practice. Spirit remembering, sensing and envisioning are gifts from the Christmas Foundation Meeting. Practicing in them makes us instruments for the good beings of the cosmos, and weakens Ahriman.

Bear the burden of the earth with Michael and the Christ. The times are going to be hard, there is no doubt about it, and we need to see them with as much clarity as we can muster. The afflictions of the world, whether in Darfur or next door, may be there for our consciousness. May the sacrifices of the downtrodden of the earth not be in vain. When we watch the anguish of the world on the evening news, we need to hold that pain in our hearts and work towards agape love, i.e. the love that is too great for others to hurt us. Often as I think about these things I am reminded of the Pietà. Perhaps Anthroposophia today is like the mother of Christ carrying the broken body of her Son. If we anthroposophers can learn to carry the sorrows of our world in our arms with as much equanimity as Mary Sophia, we will be able to help Ahriman serve the human being. These are the many things to consider these days, and ponder in our hearts. There is, in fact, much we can do about Ahriman.

17 The Incarnation of Ahriman 57

Sources

Steiner, Rudolf. The Fall of the Spirits of Darkness. Trans. Anna Meuss. Given in Dornach 29 September to 28 October, 1917. Bristol, England: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1993.

Steiner, Rudolf. The Incarnation of Ahriman. Trans. Matthew Barton. Forest Row: Rudolf Steiner Press, 2006.

Steiner, Rudolf. The Influences of Lucifer and Ahriman. Trans. D.S. Osmond. Hudson, New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1993.

Steiner, Rudolf. Past and Future Impulses in Social Events —Lecture III & V, unpublished translation by Maria St. Goar.

GA (or CW: Complete Works) Numbers: GA 190, Lectures 3 & 5; GA 191, Lectures 2 & 3; GA 193, Lectures 3 & 4; GA 194, Lecture 1; GA 195, Lectures 6 & 7

The Seven Levels of Illness & Healing

A Modern Fable

Philip

Incao

Onceupon a time in a far-off realm, seven students of the art of healing were gathered for their final examination. Their mentor, who was old, wise, and greatly loved by his pupils, led them to the bedside of a patient they had known well in life. Alas, he had just given up the ghost, and as the students contemplated with sadness and wonder his lifeless form, the master posed the question. “My dear pupils, you knew him well, and we grieve his passing. Death comes for all of us, but why did it come for him now? Why did he die?” The students were among the best and brightest of that realm. They pondered the master’s question, but hesitated to speak. Finally, one student, who had been in deep meditation, spoke.

•1•

“Honored teacher, you have taught me much, and I have also learned from the wisdom which the stars speak to me. It is clear to me that our friend and patient had lived out his destiny. He had completed his karma for this life. He freely chose his path and followed it to the ends of his god-given capacities. He could make no further progress within the limits of the soul and bodily constitution furnished to him in this life. So he—his spirit—departed his body for higher realms, to begin work on a new body affording his spirit and soul further progress when he returns. It was ordained by his own higher will and of course by God’s will.” The master was silent, but another student spoke up, a bit impatiently.

• 2 •

“Yes, yes,” she said, “we know about karma and reincarnation, but there is a more proximate cause of death here, one closer to the reality of this fellow’s life as he lived it.” The others regarded her expectantly, as she continued, “The spark had gone from his soul, he had lost all interest in life. He had given up, he had lost his will to live. That’s why he died.”

Research does not belong only to quiet, detached observation. In professional life research is a recurring element in fields like the arts or teaching or medicine. In the story at right, Dr. Philip Incao shares the complexity of illness as seen in anthroposophically-extended medicine.

Research–a special section

Theypondered her words in silence. Then another student summoned the courage to speak. He began hesitantly: “We all know that our spirit and soul have a guiding influence on our health in the course of our lives, but it was his body, after all, that failed him in the end. For weeks before he died his pulses were so weak I could barely feel them. His chi, his life forces, were utterly exhausted, and his organs had no energy to function. His adrenals especially were shot. He was utterly stressed out, fatally depleted of the force and energy of life.”

• 4 •

Nowa few students began to speak. “Yes, I agree, I agree” said one, “but we’re neglecting the most important factor, his lifestyle. He was a very gifted man, but he neglected his health terribly. He ate, drank, smoked and used drugs to excess. He would work or party at night and sleep during the day. Women loved him and he greatly and frequently enjoyed them. His life consisted of chaotic highs and lows, totally lacking in any rhythm or consistency. And he never took any fresh air or exercise. It’s no wonder he exhausted his life forces!”

• 5 •

Nowthe students became more animated. “Yes, he was complex and very talented,” said one, “an intense and passionate soul. We will certainly miss him. But I agree that his lifestyle was torture for his body. I’m sure his cells and organs were so stressed that they were unable to properly carry out their breathing, digesting, and self-cleansing life processes. This caused stagnation and congestion, leading to a build-up of cellular wastes and toxins. I am absolutely certain that the levels of toxins in his blood were sky high. And that’s what killed him in the end—he was utterly toxic. He died from his own toxicity; his exhausted organs were unable to eliminate the poisons in his body. He could no longer detoxify, so he died.”

• 6 •

The remaining students spoke at once, excitedly. The master’s eyes widened, but he remained silent. One voice broke through, “Yes, one could see from his tongue and from his eyes that he was toxic, but what follows toxicity as night follows day? Why, infection of course! We all know that as garbage and manure attract flies, the toxicity and waste matter in our body will attract the bacteria and other vermin that normally live in, on and around us. I am sure he died of an infection. He had a very high fever, he was septic!”

•7•

Now, all had spoken save one. The last student looked at her colleagues with admiration, and spoke slowly and thoughtfully. “I can’t disagree with anything that has been said,” she began, “but I have been studying the most recent research, and it seems we have neglected the ultimate and most proximate cause of our friend’s demise. Yes, he had an infection, and was septic, but in the end it was his own immune system that killed him.” The other students were incredulous. “How can that be? That’s impossible!” they exclaimed. A faint smile crossed the master’s face, but he remained silent.

The last student continued, “Yes, until recently the immune system was thought to be always protective, except in autoimmune diseases. But now science has discovered that our immune system produces chemical agents in our body that can

sometimes harm us and even kill us. These agents, called cytokines, are of many different types: the interferons, the interleukins, the tumor-necrosis factors, and others. Some of these cytokines create and intensify inflammation in the body and other cytokines inhibit and shut down inflammation when it has done enough of its cleansing work. When our body works harmoniously, then our cytokines create just enough mild inflammation to destroy excessive microbes and to maintain the ongoing detoxification of our bodies, without causing symptoms. But just as the same fire that warms our home can also burn it down, so too, when our immune system is grievously provoked by severe imbalance, toxicity or infection, it can aberrantly unleash a “cytokine storm,” a massive outpouring of cytokines into our blood stream. These then cause a systemic inflammation to flare up in us and rage out of control, causing high fever, septic shock, or generalized sepsis and a severe dysfunction or shut-down of major organs often ending in death. That is what finally killed our dear departed friend and patient.”

The students were silent, alternately lost in thought and gazing at one another in wonder. Though reluctant to break the silence, the master finally spoke, with great emotion: “My dear pupils, your words and thoughts have warmed me to the core of my being, and brought joy to my heart. Though I have but little knowledge, I believe that all that has been spoken is true. Before my wondering soul, you have unfolded a continuous chain of causation from the heights into the inner depths of the human body, stretching from spirit into matter. At each link of the chain, we might discover a different way that the human spirit, soul and life force can work together harmoniously in the body to create health, or work in conflict with each other to create illness in the physical body.

“You are now ready to go out into the world as healers. My teaching is done, you will learn from your patients now. But remember always the seven levels of illness you have learned today. None of the illnesses you will encounter will have only a single cause. Many levels work together in health and illness, and you must never judge by one or two levels alone. Remain aware of all levels of causation from highest to lowest, regardless of whether you can see through them or not. That will give you the necessary measure of humility to truly heal.”

Then the seven students, having passed their final examination, bid farewell to each other and to their beloved teacher and went out into the world to practice the art of healing. They were unsure in their knowledge and understanding, but their will to heal was strong. And learning much from their patients, they healed many, and grew in understanding.

Author’s note:

My little fable is loosely based on a story Michaela Glöckler [leader of the Medical Section of the School for Spiritual Science in Dornach, Switzerland] tells about Paracelsus, but much modified and expanded to fit in all seven levels of illness important today, and their interconnections.

Philip Incao, MD, is in practice in Crestone, CO, and can be found on the web at PhilipIncao.com.

Metamorphosis: Evolution in Action

By Andreas Suchantke. Translated by Norman Skillen. Adonis Press,

My first impression on receiving the review copy of Metamorphosis was “What a beautiful book!” and the discovery that it had been printed in China went some way toward erasing recent impressions of the quality of goods from that country. It is coffee-table sized and the pictures, most of them by the author, are an education in themselves; but as we shall see, Metamorphosis is definitely not a coffee-table book.

Andreas Suchantke, who was born in Switzerland in 1933, taught life sciences at the Rudolf Steiner School in Zurich and worked extensively in teacher training. Apart from teaching, his life’s work has been the development of an ecological understanding of landscapes and traditional cultures, and he has published books on tropical South America, South and East Africa, and Israel and Palestine. In his new book he shows how the fundamental principles implicit in Goethe’s scientific work, together with the insights gained from a lifetime of studying nature’s ways, lead to a far-reaching understanding of the evolution and interrelatedness of all that lives on Earth. In so doing he acknowledges his debt to Rudolf Steiner, and it seems appropriate to allow Steiner to give us a starting point with a few words on the subject of Goethe:

For him, art and science sprang from a single source. Whereas the scientist immerses himself in the depths of reality in order to be able to express its impelling forces in the form of thoughts, the artist seeks by imagination to embody the same forces in his material…. ‘In the works of man, as in those of nature, what most deserves consideration is the intentions,’ says Goethe. Everywhere he sought, not only what is given to the senses in the external world, but the tendency

2009, 324 pgs. Review by Keith Francis

through which it has come to exist…. In nature’s own formations she gets ‘into specific forms as into a blind alley’; one must go back to what was to have come about if the tendency had been able to unfold without hindrance…. Not what nature has created, but according to what principle it has created, is the important question. And then this principle is to be worked out as befits its own nature, not as this has occurred in the single form subject to a thousand natural contingencies. The artist has to ‘evolve the noble out of the common, the beautiful out of the misshapen.’

In contemplating the forms of plants and animals Goethe perceived a principle of metamorphosis that enabled him to see each organism as a unity of interrelated parts. He expressed his thoughts on plant and animal morphology in such a way as to suggest principles of growth and being that might apply to the whole process of nature. He saw the development of the plant as a series of alternating expansions and contractions: seed, leaves, calyx, corolla, stamens and pistil, fruit, and, again, seed. To ask for a physical cause for the expansions and contractions is, as Steiner pointed out, to stand the matter on its head.

Nothing is to be presupposed which causes the expansion and contraction; on the contrary, everything else is the result of this expansion and contraction. It causes a progressive metamorphosis from stage to stage. People are simply unable to grasp the concept in its very own intuitive form, but demand that it shall be the result of an external process. They are able to conceive expansion and contraction only as caused, not as causing. Goethe does not look upon expansion and contraction as if they were the results of inorganic processes taking place within the plant, but considers them as the manner in which the entelechy, the principle, takes form.

The fruits of research appear in conversations, conferences, and of course books. Though it is still mostly “outside the mainstream,” anthroposophical research has a further, hidden life, like that of runners from a plant, through a quiet stream of fine books. Also worthy of note is the quality of work coming from authors from whom serious research would not be expected in the mainstream—high school teachers, for example. Both the author of this book and the reviewer were long-time Waldorf high school teachers.

People who believe that nature consists of nothing but particles, waves, and space feel the need for a mechanism for such processes. I speak with the voice of personal experience when I say that it is very hard, even for those of us who are intuitively drawn to Goethe’s view of nature, to get out of the mechanistic habit. Goethe’s way of expressing things has the cognate disadvantages of provoking facile ridicule from the scientific intelligentsia and receiving uncritical acceptance by the half-baked dilettan-

Research–a special section

ti. Suchantke’s book shows that a contemplative biology drawing on the fundamental concepts of Goethean science and imbued with reverence for the living Earth can produce a consistently illuminating picture of life in all its amazing abundance and multiplicity.

•

From the beginning, Suchantke emphasizes the need to escape from the idea of a fixed spatial form (space-gestalt):

We must learn to think in terms of development, to engage in the transformation of our conceptual systems in accordance with a deeper, dynamic understanding of the sphere of life. It was Goethe who first demonstrated that a method seeking to unravel the secrets of living processes must not be applied to, but rather must take its lead from its object of study, and thus… develop organically. This process should encompass all aspects of the development of the living organism under consideration and recreate them as fully as possible in imagination—quite a tall order! In the introduction to his botanical studies, Goethe formulates it as follows:

In introducing a science of morphology, we must avoid speaking in terms of what is fixed. If we use the word Gestalt [form] at all, we ought to have in mind only an abstract idea or concept, or something that is held fast but for an instant.

The principles of metamorphosis apply not only to the development of the individual plant but also to the evolution of species, in which the retention of juvenile characteristics into adulthood (neoteny), and the changing relationships to the environment known as internalization and externalization play important parts in generating a stream of continuous change. In describing these and other time-gestalts, the author says,

Our guiding principle will be Goethe’s words to the effect that, when we study forms, organic ones in particular, nowhere do we find permanence, nowhere repose or completion.... For no sooner has something been formed than it is immediately transformed, and if we wish to achieve a living perception of nature, we must strive to keep ourselves as mobile and flexible as the examples she herself provides.’ What follows, therefore, will also be concerned with breaking through from the organism’s sense-perceptible, external form or space-gestalt to the process of its formation, which is an expression of its time-gestalt. This can only be perceived when we actively reconstruct it in our imagination: an inner process which enables us to experience and describe its formative movements.

Metamorphosis should not be read like a textbook; it asks the reader to entertain the possibility of inner transformation in which the imagination becomes an organ of perception, thus giving the title a double meaning that its author undoubtedly intended. •

It would be impossible to convey the immense richness of

Upcoming Conference of the Natural Science Section in Chicago

The Spherical & Radial Principles in the Human & Animal Organism, with a focus on Horns & Antlers

The next annual conference of the Natural Science Section will take place at the Rudolf Steiner Center in Chicago from the evening of Thursday, November 18 till noon on Sunday, November 21, 2010. The theme of the conference will be “The Spherical and the Radial Principles in the Human and Animal Organism, with a focus on Horns and Antlers.” At a time when cows are routinely dehorned and organisms are being manipulated for practical and commercial purposes, it is incumbent upon us to gain a scientific understanding of their living wholeness and integrity. Such an understanding, however, requires the development of new cognitive capacities. During the conference we will engage in Goethean observation of skeletons, horns and antlers in an attempt to “read” them as the expression of dynamic forces and in relation to our experience of the living organisms. The goal is to experience and understand the organisms in question as concrete manifestations of creative forces.

Because of the importance of cow horns in biodynamic agriculture, we are also inviting members of the Agricultural Section to participate in the conference. As we would also like to continue to work at the level of the Class, this conference will again be for Class members only. Essential reading in preparation for the conference will be Metamorphosis: Evolution in Action (especially chapters 2 and 11) by Andreas Suchantke,

published by Adonis Press, and lecture 4 of Spiritual Foundations for the Renewal of Agriculture, published by the Biodynamic Association.

For more information on the conference, contact:

The Natural Science & Mathematics/Astronomy Section c/o John Barnes, 321 Rodman Road, Hillsdale, NY 12529 Phone 518-325-1113; Fax 518-325-1103; adonis@fairpoint.net

Metamorphosis: Evolution in Action is available to conference participants at a discount of 40% (for $30). There is more information on the book at the Adonis Press website: adonispress.org To take advantage of this offer, send a check for $30, made out to Adonis Press, to the address above along with your reservation fee.

John Barnes also published an essay some months ago, The Third Culture, subtitled “Participatory Science as the Basis for a Healing Culture.” It deals with this same theme: the need for the development of new scientific methodologies capable of insight into living organisms and qualities. It attempts to put Goethean science and anthroposophy into the broader context of the development and current crisis in western culture. A review of the book will be posted shortly at anthroposophy.org.

Suchantke’s book in the few pages of a review, so I’ll give a brief impression of its contents and concentrate on just one aspect of the author’s thinking.

After giving a vivid account of some of the transformatory processes of nature he tackles the difficult question of the functioning of the archetype in the evolutionary process. He goes on to clarify the concepts of metamorphosis with a discussion of Goethe’s perception of the relation between the bones of the spine and those of the skull, but he doesn’t limit himself to the human skeleton. Salamanders, foxes, moles, bats, hummingbirds, and even cacti are drawn into the discussion, which ends with the perception of polar tendencies that produce both round, immobile, protective structures such as the skull, and mobile, articulated, linear structures like the arms and legs.

Chapter 3 deals with the forms of leaves, showing their relatedness to other parts of the plant and to its functioning within the environment. The theme of sphere and radius, already developed in relation to the vertebral nature of the skeleton, reappears here. “The leaf, we must agree with Goethe, is the ‘true Proteus.’ From top to bottom the plant is all leaf.” From leaf to flower is a transformation that naturally takes us into chapter 4, which deals with the polarity of the two structures and the extraordinary correlations between color and form. Of particular note is the section on the evolutionary potential of the blossoms, in which Goethe’s ideal of intensification reaches a high point. Chapter 5 reviews the functioning of metamorphosis and reminds us that we, as readers, are invited to take part in a process of transformation.

Next comes a chapter on the various forms of metamorphosis in the plant kingdom, in which the ideas of the previous chapters are profusely illustrated and developed. In chapter

7 the principles of polarity and threefold organization are illustrated by the growth of plants from the unity of the seed into the structure of root, leaf, and blossom, the subtlety of which cannot altogether be conveyed by a simple spatial picture. Of great interest is Suchantke’s commentary on the description Rudolf Steiner gives in his autobiography of the gradual development of his perception of the threefold nature of the human being. Chapter 8 is an extended tour de force that demonstrates how polarity and threefoldness are expressed in different ways throughout the animal kingdom. The photographs and drawings are breathtaking.

Chapter 9 brings us back to the archetype. Different groups of creatures emphasize different aspects of the threefold organization and, when viewed together at a moment in time, can be seen as forming a gestalt, momentarily frozen in space. When the gestalt is regarded as “only fixed for a moment” and “about to undergo transformation” we enter “the realm of formation and transformation, of development on the different levels of ontogeny (development of the single individual) and phylogeny (development of the ancestral group, evolution).” “In this way,” Suchantke states emphatically, “the archetype comes to be understood as the initiator of evolution, which is as much as to say as evolution itself.”

This is important enough to repeat in different words:

“The archetype may thus be construed as the prime source of evolutionary impulses and at the same time, the inner line, or, rather, the time-gestalt of the whole of evolution, revealing facets of itself in the various species, genera, and families of organisms. Its full compass is only to be revealed through contemplation of the whole or through the fact that at every stage of evolution it inclines towards polarization and ultimately toward clear, tri-structured order.”

The Nature Institute: a Center of Excellence in Holistic Research

The Nature Institute may be the only scientific research institute in North America dedicated to developing and practicing a scientific methodology that can gain insight into living, organic nature. The Institute is entering a new phase in its growth and development at a time when the limitations of modern science and technology in this regard are becoming increasingly clear. John Barnes writes us that “the excellent research and educational courses occurring there are laying the groundwork for a further development in science that will lead to a far deeper, more living, and mutually healing relationship with nature.”

Recently The Nature Institute joined Think OutWord to sponsor a new category of the Credere grants, Goethean phenomenology. The 2010 application deadline is past, but donations to fund grants are always welcome, at thinkoutword.org/grants.html. Another Institute project, nontarget.org, collects reports on “unintended effects of genetic manipulation.”

Much of the public debate concerning genetically modified organisms, their widespread use in animal and human food, and their impact upon the environment could be raised to an entirely new and more productive level if certain undisputed facts were more widely known. The facts at issue have to do with the unintended and systemic consequences of genetic manipulations, as revealed in one research report after

another. Putting the matter plainly: when foreign genes are introduced into an organism, creating a transgenic organism [GMO or GenTech organisms], the results for the organism and its environment are almost always unpredictable. The intended result may or may not be achieved in any given case, but the one almost sure thing is that unintended results—nontarget effects—will also be achieved. These facts have been, and are being, widely reported in the scientific literature. While they are correcting our understanding in important ways, they are not at all controversial. And they bear directly upon the wisdom of virtually all the current genetic engineering practices

If there has been limited reportage of unintended effects in the popular press, it may be because the facts are often buried in technical scientific articles. And within genetic engineering research itself, scientists are mainly concerned with achieving targeted effects and not with investigating beyond the range of their own intentions and reporting unexpected effects. But when they do investigate, there is usually plenty to see. It is the purpose of this project to make evidence about the wide-ranging and never wholly predictable effects of genetic engineering readily accessible to concerned citizens, policy makers, and scientists... [Emphasis added.]

Along with the searchable short reports, natureinstitute.org has a major collection of longer articles covering the whole field.

Research–a special section

It seems to me that chapter 9 is the fulcrum of the book, the point at which the final intent becomes clear:

The environment is internalized, and that which later on lights up as the inner content of consciousness is the inside, or spiritual content of nature, internalized and raised to the level of consciousness. Internalization of the external world, steady gain in inner richness and complexity—this is the leitmotiv in the evolution of deuterostomes, the line in the animal kingdom that leads to the human being.

Two further chapters deal with the evolutionary processes of the endo- (inner) skeleton, characteristic of vertebrates, and the exo- (outer) skeleton of the insect world, and finally bring us to the embodiment of the archetype in the human being, in whom evolution “has not only expressed itself in the physical form of a single species, but at the same time has become conscious of itself.”

Evolution does not stop here, however. The capacities of consciousness can be intensified but “there is a vast discrepancy between what we actually achieve and the goals we aspire to, goals which should in principle have been attainable. This is a feeling that can arise in connection with any activity: it could have been better, we should really do it again more thoroughly! The importance of this experience cannot be overestimated because it induces the future and is an expression of the developmental potential of the Self, probably its most important attribute.

All this only makes sense… if the Self, as the bearer of this developmental resolve, has the possibility of further existence beyond its present life; if, indeed, what it has begun in this life can be carried on in subsequent ones…. The continuity of the individual spirit through a series of physical incarnations is the precondition for the quantum leap from biological to mental/ spiritual evolution.

This is how Suchantke ends his book, and some readers may feel that although the evolution of human consciousness has been in his crosshairs from the beginning, his conclusion is rather brief and facile. If, however, we say that the further development of the human soul and spirit is a subject that demands another whole book, we must recognize that other whole books have already been written, notably by Rudolf Steiner, whose intimations about the future of this incarnation of our planet make rather uncomfortable reading. This is not surprising since any realistic survey of the past has the same effect.

Metamorphosis will undoubtedly be both a comfort and a challenge to students of anthroposophy, and may well be a source of inspiration to people who have never heard of Rudolf Steiner. Whether it will have any influence within the scientific community is a different question, one of the problems being the rather partisan tone that the author adopts in speaking of Darwin, his supporters, and modern biological science. Speaking of the idea of the struggle for existence, Suchantke says, “It

is often forgotten that this idea was no hard-won conclusion of Darwin’s, but was lifted from a completely different realm of discourse and applied to Nature. He adopted it from Thomas Malthus, whose book An Essay on the Principle of Population attempted to address the effect of world-wide population growth.” This is rather like saying that Niels Bohr filched the idea of quanta from Max Planck and applied it in a different context. Darwin never made any secret of his indebtedness to many of his predecessors, including Malthus, and it’s worth noting that Loren Eiseley, in his masterly Darwin’s Century, puts the matter much more fairly, seeing the gradual evolution of Darwin’s ideas as a process—dare I say, as a time-gestalt—rather than suggesting that he simply plucked a ripe fruit from someone else’s tree. There are more examples of this tendency. Although T. H. Huxley may be “notorious” among anthroposophists and creationists, in other circles “famous” would seem more appropriate—but this is something that could easily be corrected and there is another far deeper problem that is simply in the nature of the enterprise.

Suchantke goes to great lengths to characterize the archetype and its all-pervasive functioning, but it remains a concept that is very hard to get hold of, partly because, like Proteus, it is always changing its form and partly, perhaps, because it isn’t a concept. Proteus had been given the gift of prophecy, but on being questioned he assumed different shapes and eluded his questioners. The archetype does not merely “know” the future; it brings all kinds of different futures about in constantly changing ways and we may well be excused for feeling that we still don’t know what it “really” is. We see what it achieves, but something in us wants to know how it works and where it comes from. These may be unanswerable or even meaningless questions, but we can’t help asking them, and it may be helpful to look at evolution from a different angle, for which the study of Steiner’s Outline of Esoteric Science would be a good starting point. How does Suchantke’s description of the organic development of a vehicle for human consciousness relate to Steiner’s account of the work of the hierarchies, in which the human being has been present from the very beginning? And if we want to know what the driving force for evolution is, we could profitably study The Driving Force of Spiritual Powers in World History, a course which, among many other things, gives the clue to the emergence of the archetype in the form it took in the Middle Ages.

As Suchantke indicates, the very idea of the archetype is likely to promote an acute negative reaction on the part of a modern biologist, even when it is given a new context and a new understanding, and it will take either a catastrophe or a long evolutionary process to change this situation. Nevertheless, Metamorphosis has the ring of truth and will amply repay the contemplative reader.

Keith Francis majored in physics at Cambridge University and worked as an engineer at Bristol Aircraft before joining the teaching profession. He was on the faculty of the Rudolf Steiner School in NY for 31 years as a teacher of physics, chemistry, mathematics, earth science, English and music. Since his retirement he has written several novels and a history of atomic science.

The Postmodern Revolution

As is well known, the late 1960s marked the beginning of a wave of social, ecological, and cultural change that swept the world. The generation reaching adulthood in those years protested against the existing order and sought to develop new social and cultural forms. An alienated attitude critical of establishment values was widespread in this rebellion, which looked for some kind of universal renewal of modern civilization.

If we look for a background to these developments in Rudolf Steiner’s research which informs anthroposophy, we focus first on the opening of the century. The year 1899 marked the end of an age of spiritual darkness, Kali Yuga, which lasted five thousand years. Now humanity could begin again to attain a conscious awareness of spiritual phenomena. Steiner saw this evolutionary development as a consequence of the “Mystery of Golgotha,” the great sacrifice of the Christ. He also observed that the 33 ¹/ ³ year life-rhythm of Jesus Christ continues to influence events. Moving into the twentieth century, it brings us to 1933, when Steiner said human beings would begin to have experiences of the reappearance of Christ within the etheric realm, along with counter-measures which led to the second world war. In The Spiritual Event of the Twentieth Century Jesaiah Ben Aharon shared his own research into the “Christ Event of the Twentieth Century,” which developed in stages beginning in the twelve years from 1933 to 1945.1 Ben Aharon suggests that we look at these twelve years again after another 33 ¹/ ³ years, that is, the period 1967-1979, when many deeper changes of the Christ Event began to occur.

There were human souls in the spiritual world during the 1933-1945 events who were approaching a new birth. Born just after the war, this generation began to reach their ego maturity around 1966-68. These souls of the “Baby Boomer” generation helped to lead significant social, ecological, political, cultural, and spiritual transformations of the last third of the century, working out of unconscious will forces and semi-conscious heart forces.

Even without anthroposophical insights, the period 1967-1968 shows the beginning of a fundamental change in the visual arts, the shift from modernism to postmodernism. Anthroposophists working in the visual arts have mostly ignored this transformation in mainstream art for more than thirty years now. It is past time to begin taking a look at it—especially if we want our art to relate to the contemporary world and take its place within the artistic dialogues and developments of our time.

Postmodern art is far too large a topic to cover here, but I want to make a beginning by looking at the key period of the late 1960s. Even this is a large topic, so I will only present the initial period of these artistic changes, symptomatically, through the work of a single American artist. It is appropriate to focus on an American artist, since with each of the two world wars, America assumed a new role and responsibility for the inner

by David Adams

development of western (if not global) human culture, a role in which Europe had largely failed. First we must recall briefly the context of that time in the artworld in New York City.

The New York Context

Abstract Expressionism, which emerged just after World War Two in the later 1940s and 1950s, was the first major artistic style to originate wholly within the United States—and then be imitated in Europe. The New York School artists experimented with the spontaneous, the indeterminate, the dynamic, the open, and the unfinished. The development of their painting has been classified (somewhat arbitrarily) into two main tendencies: gesture (or “action”) painting and color-field painting.

Gesture or “action” painters such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning spontaneously organized their canvases as open, expressive accumulations of direct painterly ”gestures,” forming a unified “allover” image that seemed to expand dynamically beyond the framing edge (fig. 1).

Color-field painters such as Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still, who developed slightly later, concentrated on the overall effect of the painting as a single shape, presenting more refined, unified, and expansive optical textures or “fields” (fig. 2). They wanted to maximize the visual impact of specific colors and

Fig.1 - Jackson Pollock. Reflection of the Big Dipper. 1947, oil on canvas 43¼ x 16¼”.

Research–a special section

found that, to do so, they had to simplify or eliminate any other figures or symbols and apply the colors in large expanses that would saturate the eye. This was a more radical abandonment of the familiar structural basis of existing western art – that is, of the use of modulated dark and light values to produce the

modern era each of the arts has been impelled toward “selfdefinition,” toward what is unique and irreducible in their particular medium. Uniquely characteristic of painting are “the flat surface, the [rectangular] shape of the support, the properties of pigments” [i.e., color]. Most important was flatness, for it alone is “unique and exclusive to pictorial art.” In its urge for purity, painting was required to steadily purge itself “self-critically” of all representation and illusion, of every effect that was not essential to the medium of painting. It was this progressive purification that gave rise to the changes of style in modern art.2

There are some similarities to Greenberg’s idea in statements of Rudolf Steiner. For example, in The Arts and Their Mission he criticizes the traditional practice of using spatial (linear) perspective to create the illusion of spatial depth in painting. “This rejects at the outset the most important material the artist has, for he does not create in space, he creates on a flat surface, and it is quite ridiculous to want to experience the thing spatially when one’s basic material is a flat surface.3 He also refers to color as the proper or fundamental element of painting.4

Greenberg was the leader of a general attack on de Kooningstyle gestural painting in the early 1960s. Loose, gestural brushwork was condemned because it denied pictorial flatness and suggested a degree of illusionistic space and “atmosphere.” Also forbidden was structure based on contrasts of light and dark, which tended to create illusionistic space. Even thick-textured paint produced more of a sculptural quality and detracted from the purely “optical” effect of color. Greenberg urged Louis and Noland and other painters to suppress painterly details and treat the entire picture as an open field of flat color-shapes, using thin colors stained directly into the canvas.

illusion of three-dimensional mass in space. Instead, the surface of the painting was treated as an active ”field” with a unified texture for an allover, “single image” effect.

A number of younger artists took up the color-field wing of Abstract Expressionism, eventually leading it toward simpler, flatter, and hard-edged forms. Different names were given to these later tendencies in painting (which continued into the 1970s and beyond), of which I will use Post-Painterly Abstraction. The Post-Painterly Abstract artists used a hard edge; a more anonymous execution; even, clear, bright colors; and often a feeling of openness and simple clarity.

Clement Greenberg’s Art Theory

New, properly non-painterly styles first emerged outside of the New York School: the hard-edged abstraction of Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Stella, and Leon Polk Smith; and the stained colorfield abstractions of Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, and Jules Olitski. Louis and Noland in Washington, DC accepted the influential critic Clement Greenberg as their advisor and promoter. He introduced them to the work of Helen Frankenthaler, who had thinned her paint so it soaked directly into the canvas as a color area, helping eliminate the visual distinction between a foreground and a background.

One of the basic ideas of Greenberg, the most important art critic and theorist to emerge since the war, was that in the

Frank Stella was probably the outstanding figure of this group. His “black-stripe” paintings seemed to use the physical depth of the canvas as a kind of module (fig. 3). It dictated the width of his stripes. These were separated by thin strips of bare canvas that called attention to the physical picture surface. The rectangular shape of the stretcher determined the concentric and symmetrical composition of the stripes. Shape and thickness of canvas seemed to dictate the picture’s configuration, i.e., it seemed to refer only to itself as an object. Stella aimed to carry to its ultimate solution the formalist view of the central problem

Fig.2 - Mark Rothko. Orange and Yellow. 1956, oil on canvas, 91 x 71”.

Fig.3 - Frank Stella. The Marriage of Reason and Squalor (second version). 1959, black enamel on canvas, 90¾ x 132¼”.

of modern art – how to articulate the reality of the picture as a flat, two-dimensional thing. His blunt black and later industrial and metallic colors formed large, clear stripe-patterns that were instantly perceptible, and the in-between bare-canvas lines flattened the pictorial space to an unprecedented degree, asserting the physicality or objecthood of the canvas.

Stella’s own formalist aesthetic was based somewhat more on the writings of painter Ad Reinhardt than Greenberg. Reinhardt had argued the purification of painting by eliminating everything that was not of and for painting, especially extra-aesthetic references to “life.” He wanted to purge art of everything but art, although he had a rather materialistic idea of the art object. He ridiculed the “transcendental nonsense, the picturing of a ‘reality behind reality’” of color field painters. Instead, he called for “pure painting [in which there] is no degree of illustration, distortion, illusion, allusion, or delusion.”5

Minimalism

The new style known as Minimalism first emerged as sculpture in the one-person shows of Donald Judd and Robert Morris in 1963. Minimal sculpture consisted of elementary geometric volumes or symmetrical, serial sequences of modular geometric volumes placed not on pedestals but directly on the floor or wall. They used non-relational design, uninflected surfaces with no signs of process, and colors that were simply those of the substances used, especially industrial materials (or paint). The emphasis was on literal objecthood and extreme physicality, but the design was based on preconceived ideas. The seemingly simple sculptures of Minimalism depended upon a lot of critical writing, mostly by the artists themselves, to explain why they were important.

Judd admired visual intensity or immediate impact in art and felt that no painting could hold its own visually against this new work in three dimensions that in 1965 he called Specific Objects. Also, he argued that working in actual materials like fiberglass, formica, plexiglas, chrome, plastic, and fluorescent lights had a specificity and power that painting lacked, especially when these new materials were closely related to the form of the artwork. Because of this, Judd announced, painting was dead and “had to go entirely.” This led to a series of 1966 debates: “Was painting dead and at its historical end?” Even the most minimal painted illusionism was

seen as a distortion of the true nature of the object. Only with the perception of objects that existed to begin with in all three dimensions did the eye’s vision match what the mind knew to be true from experience.

For his own art, Judd began in 1964 focusing on relief, constructing metal boxes cantilevered off walls (fig. 4). Each element was an isolated Specific Object, yet also part of a mathematically-arranged pattern. Such “arrangement” avoided traditional composition, the use of major and minor elements ordered into a balanced, hierarchical structure. In Judd’s work all parts were equal. Judd felt that traditional composition reflected a larger idea of order, which diluted the immediate concrete experience of the piece by referring to something else exterior to the work of art as an object.

From the later sixties onward he concentrated on large floor pieces, often with perforated surfaces, to emphasize static immobility, simplicity, openness, and clarity (fig. 5). His extreme focus on the literal object was something new in sculpture.

In contrast to Judd’s rejection of painting, Clement Greenberg had argued that the goal of advanced painting also was objecthood, accepting its essential qualities of flat canvas and color.

Robert Morris in 1966 called for a clearer distinction between painting’s optical (color) qualities and “sculpture’s essentially tactile nature.”6 He also believed painting was outmoded and applied Greenberg’s goal of “reduction to essentials” to sculpture. What made sculpture unique, said Morris, was its literal, monolithic physicality, whose (physical) properties were scale, proportion, shape, and mass. To maximize these physical properties, he preferred simpler forms that could be directly apprehended as constant, known shapes: mainly regular polyhedrons, such as cubes and pyramids. He called them Unitary Objects. Sculpture also should avoid segmentation, color, sensuous surfaces, details, and inflection—anything that could be seen as spatially illusionistic or pictorial. Not only painting, but also pictorial sculpture was outmoded. Ironically, Greenberg didn’t like Minimalism, feeling it was contrived, “something deduced instead of felt or discovered.”7 For Greenberg, the experience of modernist art was divorced from common, real, literal space and time. But the Minimalist sculptors used Greenbergian principles to move beyond Greenberg’s own opinions.

Because Minimalist sculptures were pre-planned and prefabricated (or arranged from prefabricated materials), minimal artists avoided the improvisational process of creation associated with Abstract Expressionism. The creative act was the artist’s idea, not the activity of construction. Carl Andre took a further

Fig.4 - Donald Judd. Untitled (Ten Stacks). 1969, anodized aluminum.

Fig.5 - Donald Judd. Untitled. 1977, stainless steel and nickel, 4 nits, each 59 x 59 x 59”.

step beginning in 1966 by arranging bricks and squares of metal in rectangles on the floor, aligned with the form of the room (fig. 6). “Rather than cutting into the material, I use the material as the cut in space,” he said.8 His use of materials blended them into the space so that the sculpture loses much of its object-like quality. He even invited viewers to walk on them, further emphasizing the literal presence of the material. “I severed matter from depiction,” he claimed.

Postmodern or Postminimalist Art

In addition to his concept of a progressive “self-definition” of each art, Greenberg asserted that the artist’s primary goal was to create art of quality. There was an importance to “aesthetic value and excellence for its own sake, as an end in itself.” 9 Thus, artworks were typically displayed as isolated, independent objects surrounded by white walls in galleries and museums. For Greenberg, the antithesis of modernist art was kitsch: “popular, commercial art and literature”—e.g., magazine covers, illustrations, ads, pulp fiction, comics, pop music, Hollywood movies. There could be no compromise in the struggle between authentic high culture and debased popular culture or entertainment. The idea that the work of art should be autonomous and self-sufficient within its own realm is a position labeled “formalism” and associated with modernist art. The primary enemy for Greenberg in the 1960s was Pop Art, which broke down the barriers between high art and kitsch, foreshadowing postmodernism.

Actually, there were no widely agreed-upon definitions of either modernism or postmodernism in the 1960s and 1970s – or even once postmodern art more widely emerged in the 1980s. At first, art historians treated postmodernism as a pluralist bundle of styles superseding modernist ones. Then a more sociological outlook proposed that a radical change had taken place, from an industrial society, which had generated modernism, to a postindustrial society that also gave rise to postmodern art.10 In philosophy postmodernism refers to the end of an epistemologically centered philosophy based on the efforts of a knowing subject to know truth by achieving a true mental representation of objective reality (the Cartesian subject-object dualism). It argues (among many other things) that there is no temporally invariant truth since human understanding is always historically-based (or “contingent”).

Modernism in art was characterized by qualities like autonomy, quality, and novelty. Art was felt to be universal and transcendent within its own special sphere (“art for art’s sake”). Viewers expected to react to the latest formal innovations with the “shock of the new.” By contrast, postmodernism valued social rel -

evance. It felt art should engage its specific social context and that nothing really new was still possible in art. Viewers should expect a “shock of recognition” when seeing familiar aspects of their daily world used for works of art. Modernists believed a work’s content inhered in its innovative and creative form, while subject matter was more or less incidental. Postmodernists emphasized subject matter or content in art.

Postmodernists initially took their cues from architecture, which earlier had launched a sustained attack on the modernist International Style, an attack initiated by Robert Venturi’s 1967 book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. Postmodernist architecture called for multiplicity, inclusiveness, and eclecticism instead of the formalist uniformity and exclusiveness identified with the International Style. It repudiated Modernism’s obsessions with the new, and it often rehabilitated decorative motifs from premodern styles, combining them with modernist motifs. Although this soon became primarily a kind of appropriation and eclectic mixing of historical styles (historicism) that did not develop further, it seemed new and fresh at the time.

Also prominent in postmodern thought was the idea that the modernist way of carrying art to extremes to achieve the next new, innovative style had become too commonplace in the art world. It had become a cliché, and art had gone as far as it could go. The avant-garde was dead. A large part of the public no longer responded in outrage to the latest novel development in art. Modernist art had become institutionalized and “official” as well as so popular that it could increasingly be considered another form of mass cultural entertainment or decor.

Postmodernists also had revised attitudes toward popular culture (or kitsch). In the second half of the twentieth century, popular culture (including the mass media and mass consumerism with its accompanying advertising) had grown so pervasive and powerful that it had become like the “second nature” of modern life. Art could no longer ignore it. By the 1980s the art of those who mixed artistic mediums, embraced diversity, and looked for inspiration in everyday, common imagery, the mass media, past art, and consumer commodities, seemed much more vital than modernist art. (See for example fig. 7, which also suggests the revival of painting that took place.)

Many young artists had ceased to believe in the futuristic visions of progress from the modernist era and began in their art to “quote” or recycle images and forms from past art and the mass media. Appropriation, as this practice came to be known, became the primary sign of postmodernist art. The new

Fig.6 - Carl Andre. Aluminum Square. 1968, 25 aluminum squares, 3/8 x 197 x 197”.

Fig.7 - David Salle. Muscular Paper. 1985, acrylic and oil on canvas and printed fabric, 98 x 187½”.

art declared the end of the modernist, formalist approach and introduced an art of replication and mixing of previous styles (often called “neo” or “retro” styles), of appropriation and simulation. Along with this was a denial of originality, experiment, innovation, and invention – even of the importance of the role of the artist as creator.

Above all, postmodernists rejected modernist claims to universality. Observing how such ideas had been used politically in the past to reinforce exploitative power relations, they were suspicious of any kind of universal guiding principles or idealist programs. They dissolved every kind of totalizing explanation and hierarchy. They asked: Wasn’t this modernist culture just the creation of Western middle-class whites and heterosexual males? Instead, Postmodernist artists have stressed differences in class; gender; local, regional and national character; race and ethnicity; and history, culture, and current events—the particular and the multicultural. They also began to analyze or “deconstruct” the practices and institutions of the art world itself.

It was especially Minimalist art that was attacked by the early postmodernists. In fact, they were called postminimalists at first, and some still argue that the postminimalists were just the very last gasp of modernism rather than the first breath of postmodernism. To become more thinglike, minimal sculpture had eliminated all internal relations or variations that might call the viewer’s attention away from simple thingness or objecthood. However, this led the viewer to pay attention to relationships between the minimal sculpture and its surroundings. Thus, changes in the environment, lighting, and position of the viewer (or different viewers) were experienced as components of the work. Because of this, it was pointed out that the Minimalist artwork lacked self-sufficiency. Critic Michael Fried maintained in a much-debated 1967 article “Art and Objecthood,” that, because the viewer is included in the “situation” of minimal sculpture, it is “theatrical,” like a stage with the viewer as an actor, experienced in time.11 It could also be said that, as the art object in space grew simpler, the focus of attention began to shift more to the experiences of the subject (viewer) in time.

The postminimalists embraced Fried’s idea of “theatricality.” If time was implicit in the way minimal sculpture was experienced, these later artists made temporal experience and theatricality thoroughly explicit – in fact, the only possible way of experience, especially in new forms of film, video, and performance art. Postminimalists dematerialized the object (process art and conceptual art), spread it out into its surroundings (process art, installation, and earth art); formed an idea and presented it as a work of art in itself (conceptual art); and employed their own bodies in performance (body art and performance art). (See fig. 8.)

The new postminimalist artists experimented in four fundamental directions based on polarities of mind and body as well

as time and space (which can be seen to form a kind of defining cross of incarnated existence). Temporary situations in actual space and real time dispensed with the conception of art-as-a-precious-object, existing in a special, timeless “art space” different from ordinary space. It could be said that the Minimalists had tried to reduce art to purely an object, but discovered they couldn’t eliminate the human subject, the other side of the subject-object polarity that delimits human experience. So the postminimalists accentuated the subjective.

Postmodernism generally represents an attempt to open out the enclosed aesthetic world of modernism to the real world so that aesthetic experience can be reintegrated with everyday life. Thus, the postminimalists moved their art into the world, outside of elite, protected gallery and museum spaces. Likewise, the postminimal denial of art-as-object was joined with a growing revulsion against the commodification of art. Many artists, disgusted by the art market, purposely made art that could not be bought or sold: piles of dirt, trenches dug in the desert, conceptual art consisting only of verbal statements. However, they eventually discovered that there was no art so extreme or inaccessible that some collectors would not still pay handsomely for it.

During the late 1960s many alienated young people and artists “dropped out” of mainstream society to seek a new way of life. The counterculture arose to oppose the tradition of Western culture marked by rationality, work, duty, maturity, and success. A disgust with the past and despair for the future compelled disaffected young people to look only to the present. Thus, in terms of social context it is not surprising that artists rejected art-as-object-for-the-ages and instead favored the direct, present process of art making over the finished product, often using perishable materials or no materials at all.

The succeeding artists of the 1970s, leading into postmodernism proper, generally responded with more irony and with radical, irrational, unconventional, absurdist, or perverse experiments in art. A variety of styles and approaches arose and are still arising, especially under the category of digital or media art (see fig. 9). Having progressively “purified” itself down to color field painting and then minimalist sculpture, modernist art passed through the “eye of the needle” around 1967-68 to emerge into a new profusion or “pluralism” of “postmodern” styles and movements.12

Robert Morris

I want to introduce postminimalist or early postmodern artwork symptomatically through the creations of one artist, Robert Morris. In many ways he is the ultimate postminimalist artist, having gone through almost every postminimalist mode as well as Minimalism: Performance, Body Art, Process Art, Earth Art, Installations, Conceptual Art, Sound Art, film, and, later, Neo-Expressionism.

Fig.8 - Four Directions of Postminimalist Art.

Fig.9 - From Modernism to Postmodernism.

Research–a special section

He had already in 1961 been concerned with the problem of how to get the process to show in the product. In 1961 he created Box with the Sound of Its Own Making, a walnut box containing a 3-hour tape recording of the sounds of its own fabrication. His I-Box of 1962 clearly made the minimalist box “theatrical.” When the chalky pink door of this large, Minimalist-looking wooden box was opened, there was a literal “I” inside in the form of a full-size photograph of the naked Morris with a twinkle in his eye. That purposely trivialized the Abstract Expression -

verbal form as independent works of art. This came to be called conceptual art, and Morris was a pioneer in this as well.

In Morris’ 1963 Card File, a series of plastic-encased cards documented the process of compiling the file. This work anticipated both process art and conceptual art. It becomes complex to think about the work when the work itself is its own description (as a process). This work also mocked the traditional idea of the artwork as the sum of the intentions and actions of the artist. In another conceptual art project in 1968, Morris sent a telegram proposing to “re-do” the Chicago Fire of 1871.

Process Art

As he continued to explore form, Morris also turned to what he considered its dialectical opposite, matter. He began to manipulate materials whose “forms” were flexible and open-ended, especially soft materials that would move away from traditional ideas of structure. Influenced by Joseph Beuys and Claes Oldenburg, he chose gray felt for many of these works, because he could preconceive cutting it according to geometric progressions. Once the cutting was done, however, the arrangement of the felt was shaped by the process of gravity. The resulting form could never be predicted or final, and it changed with time and new installations.

In a 1968 essay Morris argued that Minimal Art was not as physical as art could be because the ordering of its modular or serial units was not inherent in their material. Rather, the

ist idea of artists inscribing or revealing their true I in their artwork. When the case was opened, there really was nothing inside but another outside. Morris was playing with how we think of our “self” hidden within our body.

Morris explored a number of witty variations on the nature of the Minimalist object. He noted that when internal, intimacyproducing relationships were taken out of a work, they were transferred to the context in which the work was shown. Thus, the unitary object is carefully placed into its environment in real three-dimensional space. He created a number of his “Unitary Objects” from off-white fiberglass that the viewer knew to be hollow, again undermining their solid objecthood. In the untitled sculpture shown in figure 10 the slit in the block allows a slice of light to escape from the fluorescent-light interior, just where one would normally expect shadow.

In the late 1960s he developed many variations to his Unitary Objects in both form (cylinder, oval, tapered square, wedge, “L,” and “H”) and materials (steel mesh, aluminum, wood, granite, fiberglass, etc.). The materials chosen typically compromise the serial units by making them more optically complex. His subversion of the object was most extreme in a 1965 piece consisting of four plexiglas-mirror-covered wood boxes that more or less dissolved in their reflections of the environment (fig. 11). It created a paradox and invited the viewer’s movement. Having disposed of Minimalist pretensions, Morris proceeded to explore artwork in each of the four basic new types, also using his work in these new forms to comment on previous notions of art.

Conceptual Art

Minimal artists based their works on preconceived ideas intended to produce the most objectlike of objects. At the end of 1960s artist began to consider the preconceived ideas behind Minimalist objects for their own sake and to present them in

process of a work’s “making-itself” had to be emphasized.13 Thus, this new, still more literal art focused on matter and the action of gravity upon it. Morris argued that the minimalist unitary object was related to its surroundings in a traditional figure-ground relationship and was thus “terminally diseased.” The cure was to base three-dimensional art on “the conditions of the visual field itself,” to replace the discrete object (for a discrete subject) by installed “accumulations of things or stuff.”14

In these works of “process art” accumulations of soft materials spill across the floor into the viewer’s space and colonize more and more of the gallery floor space (fig. 12). His installation

Fig.10 - Robert Morris. Untitled. 1966, fiberglass with light, 91 x 122 x 229 cm.

Fig.11 - Robert Morris. Untitled. 1965, 4 mirrored boxes, each 21 x 21 x 21”

Fig.12 - Robert Morris. Untitled (Tangle). 1967, felt, 264 pieces.

“Threadwaste” from 1974 filled the entire gallery floorspace with an expansive heap of threadwaste, mirrors, asphalt, aluminum, lead, felt, copper, and steel. Random piling, stacking, and hanging gave passing form to the material, and these installations were sometimes called “scatter pieces.” Rather than preconceiving a clear definition, this form of sculpture depended on real time and even on chance occurrences, requiring the viewer to participate, to “be there and to walk around the work.” It was essentially theatrical and soon evolved into what we refer to as installation art today.

Earth Art

In 1968 Morris exhibited an installation titled Earthwork, composed of a pile of another disordered material: soil. From that it was only a short step outdoors into Earth Art. Thus, two new forms arose: outdoor earth art and indoor installation art. Because minimal sculptures lacked internal relationships and articulated their outer limits so emphatically, they pointed to their surroundings beyond. Thus, postminimalist Earth Art sculptors began to take into account the sculpture’s site and overall “situation.” One such change was to make work outdoors. Nature tended to be a more appropriate site for these spreading artworks than the contained, four-walled gallery. Like the materials of Process Art, most substances found in nature were impermanent, indeterminate, and changeable. In a piece realized several times between 1967 and 1973, Morris worked outdoors in even more “formless” medium – steam (fig. 13). Minimalist sculpture had still been “commodity art” (precious objects for sale) – but how could you sell steam? In a later, larger-scale project of 1979 in King County, Washington, he reclaimed an abandoned gravel pit, a site of ecological abuse, shaping concentric terraces and slopes to form a kind of amphitheater (fig. 14). From within, only the sky is visible.

Performance Art

Another new art form was body art (or, as it is more commonly known today, performance art), which carried theatricality to an extreme in “sculpture” where artists (at first) used their

own bodies as the material of their art, performing elementary movements whose simplicity was inspired by minimal art or perhaps the artist’s biography or artworld issues. Morris created and performed in a number of dance-like performance pieces. In these performances he did not entirely neglect undercutting modern painting either. In his 1965 work, Site, a large white wooden cube played the sound of a jackhammer drill as Morris entered in plain white workman’s clothing wearing a mask of his face (made by artist Jasper Johns). This emphasized the work and “action” of creating art, an ironic reference to Abstract Expressionism. Three 4 x 8’ sheets of white plywood were grasped, turned, and shifted to reveal the reclining Carolee Schneeman, nude in white make-up, against a fourth panel in the pose of Edouard Manet’s 1863 Olympia, a famous touchstone of early modernist painting for its unprecedented flatness (fig. 15). But here the scene was brought out into three actual dimensions, until Morris’s dance with plywood sheets gradually hid her again. The performance was an absurd acting-out of modernist cult of the flat picture plane (which largely began with Manet). It also referenced the “white cube” environment of typical gallery and museum exhibition spaces that reinforce the modernist idea of the work of art as existing in self-referential isolation.

One other example of a Morris performance was Waterman’s Switch of 1965, performed with dancers Lucinda Childs and Yvonne Rainer (fig. 16). This presentation in four segments lasted 17 minutes. Foam-rubber rocks were rolled on stage and bounced around to a recording of rolling boulders. After a blackout, Childs dragged a set of gray plywood tracks to the center, where, as a Verdi aria played, Morris and Rainer, wearing only mineral oil and locked in an embrace, began slowly traversing the tracks, shadowed by Childs in an outsized man’s suit unwinding a ball of twine over her shoulder as she moved. A series of similar symbolic movements ensued, sometimes incorporating elements of recorded sound or film, but generally dealing with the same themes of physical struggle, stones and boulders, and a labyrinthine stringing of the twine—almost like a musical theme-and-variations.

All of these new, postminimalist/postmodern forms of art denied and tried to avoid fixed objecthood in art. The acts of

Fig.13 - Robert Morris. Steam. 1971-74 (1967 original), steam outlets under bed of stones outlined with wood, W. Washington Univ., Bellingham.

Fig.14 - Robert Morris. Untitled. 1979, reclamation project, Johnson Pit No. 30, King County, Washington, 3.7 acres, earth, tree trunks, tar.

Fig.15 - Robert Morris. Site. 1964, performance with Carolee Schneeman, NYC.

Fig.16 - Robert Morris. Waterman Switch. 1965, performance with Lucinda Childs and Yvonne Rainer, Buffalo, NY.

conceiving and placing the pieces took precedence over the “object quality” of the work. Many other artists have worked with these new forms in a great variety of types of expression.

Preliminary Anthroposophical Commentary

Where would anthroposophical art stand in relation to the issues of modernism versus postmodernism?

I mentioned that some of Rudolf Steiner’s statements seem to support the formalist, Greenbergian ideas of a focusing of each art form on its own unique, essential qualities – for example, focusing painting on flatness and color. There are also his comments on sculpture remaining true to the form tendencies of particular materials, e.g., concave forms with wood and convex with stone. Other comments reinforce the formalist idea of the work of art as autonomous and self-referential. For example: “In its inherent element, every art becomes both content and form.”15 Or he speaks of “the superearthly character of the miniature world of art.”16 Or “...the artistic impression depends solely and entirely upon what confronts us in the picture, and makes itself best felt when we pay no attention at all to anything but what speaks from the picture itself. The inhabitant of Mars would therefore really be the best observer from a purely artistic point of view.”17 In apparent opposition to the very idea of conceptual art, Steiner also said the following: “You can only think afterward about artistic forms. An artist does not understand them first, does not create from concepts and ideas.”18

However, still other Steiner statements seem to point in the direction of postmodernism, although it wouldn’t really come into being until more than forty years after his death. First, he supported liberating art from galleries and museums so that it can play a role in the rest of life: “Beauty must not remain captive in museums. Step by step we must work for its release.”19 Or: “Art is very frequently severed nowadays from the general life of culture and civilization, and treated as though it were something that lives apart. This, too, is wrong.”20 Steiner said that in the future the visual arts must become more of a musical experience, more like the performing arts, and vice versa. Do not the postminimalist forms bring an element of time and performance to the “essential object” that was the center of the previous modernist aesthetic – as well as a musical kind of “theme-and-variations” approach to composition? In the de-emphasis on the art object (on its “objecthood” and formal qualities), the emphasis shifted more to the experience of the viewer—another change Steiner predicted must increasingly enter into future art: “Unlike in previous times, the work of art for the future is not there to make its effect as physical painting, forms, color, spatial relationships, etc., but so that the soul’s experience encountering the work of art may itself become a work of art.”21

Steiner also advised that, in contrast to past art that arose largely from a one-sided Luciferic inspiration, in the future there must be more of an interplay between the Luciferic (the beautiful) and the Ahrimanic (the ugly) in art. 22 He

supported the idea that everything can have multiple interpretations (at least twelve), although I don’t know if he would have taken it as far as concluding that this meant the end of originality and the “death of the artist” (a postmodern catchphrase from Roland Barthes). In contrast to what I quoted previously about conceptual art, Steiner said in several places that art today must be created out of greater consciousness than in the past. “I believe that the significant factor in the further evolution of spiritual science will be that, in the process of attempting to understand the concept of art, it will itself devise an art of the conceptual, in which the work and activity of ideation will be fulfilled with images, with reality...”23 Or: “What we must do is bring art into our thinking...”24 He also mentioned his unfulfilled artistic wish to some day “draw the content of the The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity.”25 In tune with the philosophical origins of postmodernism, Steiner’s own philosophical work moved in a similar direction of overcoming the unknowable “things-inthemselves” of Kantian idealism as well as the rigid Cartesian separation of subject and object in understanding human experience, including the experience of art. In fact, Steiner’s philosophical views can be seen as a kind of postmodern philosophy before its time. 26

These comments can seem contradictory or ambiguous in relation to postmodernism, so it is important to consider the complete context of Steiner’s remarks as well as the date. For example, when he said painting must be two-dimensional, he meant using a “planar color perspective” to overcome what is merely spatial and enter an etheric fourth dimension, which is also two-dimensional in character. Also, he seemed to speak mainly about what the progress of contemporary art of his time allowed or induced him to speak about. He cautioned about too much intellectual, linguistic generalization about what is the “essence of art,” rather advising us to pay attention to our actual experience of an art form.27 Above all, perhaps more than any particular formal qualities, Steiner sought an expression of genuine spiritual reality in art, something that went beyond the merely personal. “Art, indeed, will never be able to proceed from anything else than from the relation of the human being to the spiritual world.”28 This is what unites these seemingly contradictory comments.

I feel that the development of Postmodernism does not necessarily mean that all of Greenberg’s modernist, formalist views were totally wrong, only that they may have been incomplete or too materialistically understood. In art it may even be possible to imagine a kind of balance between the positions of Modernism and Postmodernism, or at least a combination of the best or most true aspects from each. At its best (especially when not overly influenced by materialistic or Marxist-oriented authors), postmodernism may be the protest against and alternative to those aspects of the modern Western culture that are illusory, rigidly dualistic, materialistic, exploitative, and unfree. Isn’t this also what anthroposophy wants to be?

While the artwork done within the anthropo -

Fig.17 - Joseph Beuys. Art = Capital. 1980, color photograph on aluminum with paint.

sophical movement generally has ignored for more than thirty years these new postminimalist/postmodern developments in mainstream art, there was one anthroposophist who tried to work with all of these new, postmodern forms of art already in the early 1960s—who in fact was one of the chief pioneers in these fields in Europe and an inspiration for Robert Morris and other leading “mainstream” postmodern artists. That was Joseph Beuys, 1921-1986 (fig. 17).

Joseph Beuys

The innovative sculptures, drawings, installations, and performance art of German artist Joseph Beuys from the 1960s through the 1980s have often been cited as the most significant expression of avant-garde art in post-war Europe. In his familiar felt hat, jeans, and air force ammunition (fisherman’s) vest, Beuys became a cult figure for hundreds of students and artists from around the world. Through his own striking but enigmatic artworks as well as his extensive teaching, Beuys influenced two generations of contemporary artists. Beyond the artworld, Beuys also played a role in European politics, higher education, environmentalism, and social reform.

Beuys is known for his ritualistic “Actions” (performances); his provocative uses of unfamiliar artistic mediums (for example, fat, honey, felt, iron, copper, horns, bones, gelatin, peat, blood, chocolate, conversation); his challenging arrangements of objects and artwork in gallery installations and vitrines; his creative blurring of the boundaries between art and life; his articulate theoretical statements on art, human evolution, and social reform; and his intense, wiry drawings.

Although Beuys adapted for his work aspects of the 1960s avant-garde, postminimalist movements known as process, performance, installation, and conceptual art, he used them in personal and unusual ways. In his performances he extended his thinking from his own body in action to the body social and politic, which he felt could also be sculpted—and healed. He stated that his artworks could only be understood by an intuitive, spiritual awareness, not by linear, logical thought.

Unhappy with the social role for art represented by the isolated “art-world ghetto,” Beuys saw the end of modernism in art as a transition to an expanded “social art” or “social sculpture” in which everyone could be creative and participate democratically to re-sculpt the body social.

Beuys’s “totalized concept of art” referred to the fundamental process of human form-making, whether this occurred in artworks, thoughts, speech, or social interaction. “Every human being is an artist” was his motto, and this expanded idea of art was his hope to restore a socially reformative—even revolutionary—role to the cultural sphere.

After working his way through a more conventional modern artistic training and a number of personal crises, Beuys began participating in 1962 in the radical and often raucous art performances of the international Fluxus movement. While he supported the Fluxus goal of abolishing the traditional distinction between artistic and nonartistic practices of creativity, he criticized their anti-individualism and lack of a theory of knowledge with a clearly defined social goal. His performances were generally more complex, metaphorical, and multi-leveled than the usual short, simple, outrageous, and funny Fluxus events.

In anthroposophy Beuys found both a suitably holistic theory of knowledge and clearly articulated social and spiritual ideals. He had been studying Steiner since age 20 (in 1941), and while the context of his artwork was quite different from Steiner’s own artistic creations, Beuys based much of his artwork on anthroposophical ideas and experiences.29

Mysteries of the Natural and Human Worlds

Much of Beuys’s work attempted to convey forces, energies, and mysteries of the natural and human worlds, often grasped at a prelinguistic level or presented in ways that helped to focus viewers on their experiences rather than the art objects. “All my actions are based upon concepts of basic human energies in the form of images,” he remarked.30

For example, in The Chief, a nine-hour meditative performance of 1964 in Berlin, Beuys used fat, felt-wrapped copper rods, and two dead hares (representatives of the animal world) placed at the ends of a large hare-fur-felt roll with Beuys lying inside uttering amplified primitive sounds, especially the call of the wild stag and other animals (fig. 18). As the human being could be said to be the irresponsible “chief” within the household of nature,

Beuys attempted temporarily to “die” to his own species and contact animal forms of life and to remind his human viewers of other modes of existence that could help expand restricted

Fig.18 - Joseph Beuys. The Chief. 1964, performance in Berlin.

Fig.19 - Joseph Beuys. Coyote. 1974, performance in New York City.

human understanding. It also recalled the old “temple-sleep” initiation death-experience as a means of self-transformation. This Action seems to prefigure his famous 1974 performance in New York, Coyote (or I Like America and America Likes Me), another effort to raise questions about the nature and root-problems of western culture, where Beuys lived three days in the gallery with a wild coyote as a representative of the persecuted, unappreciated, and misunderstood natural world and Native Americans (fig. 19). The Chief was also a long-distance collaborative performance with Robert Morris, who was supposed to be executing the same actions as Beuys at the same time in New York City.

Beuys hoped both to connect the human being “from below with the animals, the plants, with nature, and in the same way tie him with the heights with the angels or spirits.”31 He saw the animal kingdom as an ally for the evolutionary process of broadening and deepening human awareness. The bee, horse, stag, elk, coyote, fox, swan, goat, hare, moose, and wasp all appeared in his drawings, performances, and sculptures. Beuys felt that the essential, higher being of animals gave access to forgotten spiritual energies now needed again by human society.

Beuys also explored new approaches to visual art based more on the spiritual and even sacramental qualities of substances themselves than on their elements of form or content within a specific artwork—an understanding of art that might be called “alchemical.” Many of his creations work with balancing polarities, related to Steiner’s Christic conception of “mediated polarity,” for example, between iron and copper (Mars and Venus), or between chaotic, expanded forms and ordered, contracted forms within a single medium, such as beeswax or fat. Beuys’s art questioned the belief that we can adequately understand the inner workings of our world through normal modes of perception. He maintained that organs of Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition quite different from ordinary logical, analytical thinking must be employed to apprehend the forces at work in material substances, as well as in his own artworks. For Beuys, visual art only had a real meaning if it worked upon the development of human consciousness.

The Four Postmodern Modes

From the vast range of Beuys’s artistic production, I want to point briefly to a few of his artworks as examples of each of the four new postminimalist modes of artistic expression. Many of his performance props and sculptures were either made with perishable materials, such as fat, chocolate, or sausages, or were made so that they demonstrate the process of their making. Beuys himself pointed out, “...the nature of my sculpture is not fixed and finished. Processes continue in most of them: chemical reactions, fermentations, color changes, decay, drying up. Everything is in a state of change.”32 So, as an example of process art or installation, we could cite The Pack of 1969 (fig. 20), a Volkswagen bus from whose open rear door spills a number of survival sleds, each equipped with a roll of felt, fat, and a flashlight. Fond III/3 of 1979, consisting of nine large piles of felt and copper, or the much larger Stag Monument of 1982 (fig. 21), are two of many sprawling installations that perhaps could be labeled “scatter pieces.”

In a sense, all of Beuys’s work is “conceptual art.” Unlike most conceptual artists of the period, Beuys did not just demonstrate the possibility of conceptual art by exhibiting a pithy or witty verbal phrase, usually related to art itself, but he shaped a more complex and meaningful conceptual structure that he felt had the power to change the world. This is not to mention his presenting and working out of advanced potentials of human thinking to develop Imagination and higher powers of knowledge. Probably the clearest example of Beuys’s conceptual art are his many blackboard drawings, derived in part from those of Steiner, and used to illustrate Actions and conversations (fig. 22).

As for earthworks, 7000 Oaks, begun in 1982 as “an ecological sign” (of the difference between dead matter and living plant), is still the largest sculpture in world. It consisted of 7,000 oak trees matched one-to-one with 7,000 tall basalt stones gathered together in Kassel, Germany, from where they were gradually placed in parallel installa -

Fig.20 - Joseph Beuys. The Pack. 1969, Volkswagen bus, 20 sleds with fat, felt rolls, flashlights.

Fig.21 - Joseph Beuys. Stag Monument. 1948-1982, installation at exhibition Zeitgeist, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin.

tions all around the world (fig. 23).

Some of Beuys’s works focused on exposing “trauma points” in modern materialistic social life and then attempting to effect a symbolic healing. For Tallow of 1977 he chose a “sick” spot in the town of Münster, a pedestrian underpass representing a “wound” of an ugly corner of a rectilinear building created out of the abstract thinking of modern city planning and architecture. He cast the “negative” form of this urban access ramp in a huge block composed of 20 tons of animal fat, which was then cut into 5 elements of which the largest was 78¾ x 78¾ x 118” (fig. 24). Through the warming qualities of fat, he hoped to bring a new warmth to the cold one-sidedness of the underpass, and thus effect a healing of this soulless modern urban environment by reintegrating the warm and cold poles.

Despite Beuys’s widely varied artistic production, he still is probably best known for his imaginative performance pieces.

As one example from his more than one hundred Actions,33 we can consider How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare of 1965. This was a three-hour gallery Action for the opening of his art exhibition at Galerie Schmela in Düsseldorf. In this strange but compelling performance, Beuys sat on a stool or walked about inside the closed gallery gesturing as he silently explained his artworks to a dead hare he cradled in his arm or let touch the pictures with its paw (fig. 25). Viewers could watch through an open doorway or a window. They saw Beuys speaking to the hare, with his head covered in honey and gold leaf, a felt sole tied to his left shoe, an identical iron sole tied to his right shoe, a leg of the stool wrapped in felt, and under the stool a “radio” constructed of modern electronic parts and animal bones connected to an amplifier. The felt was made of hare’s fur and carried a warming, insulating and/or infiltrating effect. The felt sole was attached to the more inner, receptive left side of his body, while the sole made of hard, masculine iron was attached to the more active, outwardly-oriented right side. The Action raised questions about the possibilities of adequately explaining art or the world and about what capacities would be necessary for real understanding. Beuys commented: “Using honey on my head I am naturally doing something that is concerned with thought. The human capacity is not to give honey, but to think — to give ideas. In this way the deathlike character of thought is made living again. Honey is doubtlessly a living substance. Human thought can also be living.”34 Gold is the metal of the sun, and Beuys was also indicating the potential for bringing a sunlike quality into thinking, a Christ-related human potential Steiner had spoken about. The hare, which literally digs into matter, represented the sharpened materialistic thinking of modern science that now needed to be filled by living intuitive thinking. The fact that the hare was dead, recalls the deathly qualities of modern abstract, scientific thought. Beuys spoke to an externalized part of himself (representative of all human beings), re-enlivening and reintegrating the dead thing that now existed outside himself as “object.” At the same time, the hare represented a still authentic spiritual power alive in the animal world that human beings have largely forgotten. “The idea of explaining to an animal conveys a sense of the secrecy of the world and of existence that appeals to the imagination. . . . even a dead animal preserves more powers of intuition than some human beings with their stubborn rationality.”35

Fig.22 - Joseph Beuys. “Sun State.” 1974, blackboard drawing, Chicago.

Fig.23 - Joseph Beuys. 7000 Oaks. 1982 onward. Partial installation in New York City at Dia Art Center.

Fig.24 - Joseph Beuys. Tallow. 1977, working on 1 of 6 “fat castings.”

Research–a special section

Social Sculpture

Beuys also always pursued art within the context of Steiner’s ideas on the “threefold social organism,” which he promoted tirelessly through both his artistic and political activities. This is the conception of society organized into three independent areas, each with its own fundamental principle: freedom in the culturalspiritual sphere, equality in the political-legal sphere, and cooperation (“brotherhood”) in the economic sphere. Beuys commented:

In the future it will be unimaginable that a conscious person could work solely within culture, like a painter who would make lots of paintings without paying attention to what happens in the democratic structures and the economic activities.... It’s an element of degeneration in so-called modern art. It’s the statement of a kind of emptiness, of an absence of meaning, in favor of curious innovations.... The new art is concerned with the needs of everyone to create things, not only art....36

This was part of Beuys’s radically broadened concept of art itself, his compassionate version of postmodernism as “social sculpture.” At times he began to speak of an “ecological Gesamtkunstwerk” (total work of art), to be created through the democratic participation of all citizens in reconstructing “a so -

cial organism as a work of art.”37 His solution to the riddle of the work of art is the end of modernism and the development of a new concept of art as social art, where every person recognizes him/herself as a creative being with powers of thinking, feeling, and willing—as well as their more highly developed forms—and participates in the reshaping of the world out of the free, selfconscious ego.

Yet Beuys’s last work, an installation in London from 1985 titled Plight, seems somewhat pessimistic (fig. 26). It can be read as an image of the modernist isolation (by rolls of felt insulation) of culture and art (represented by the piano) from the rest of the contemporary social world. A thermometer on the piano records the temperature of artistic activity in relationship to the rebalancing warmth forces so needed by modern society.

As his own original contributions to art and culture, Beuys once cited his “totalized,” “anthropological” understanding of art—the ideas that everyone is an artist, that one can be a formcreating artist already in thinking or in speech, that art expanded to life as ”social sculpture” is what is needed in our time, and also that this creative intelligence of the people, this enlarged art, is the real capital of an economy. His primary purpose was always to stimulate social and spiritual reform, and he used new contemporary art forms as his means for bringing this message in ways that he hoped would reach people more deeply than purely intellectual dialogue and hopefully motivate them to get creatively involved in changing themselves and their world. His example still stands as a suggestive, alternative way of working artistically out of anthroposophical inspiration within a postmodern cultural climate.

David Adams, PhD, has published and taught about art history at various state universities and art schools for 30 years and at Sierra College in California since 1996. He taught in Waldorf schools for nine years and is a member of the Council of the Art Section of the School of Spiritual Science in North America. Contact: ctrarcht@nccn.net

Endnotes

1. Jesaiah Ben-Aharon, The Spiritual Event of the Twentieth Century: An Imagination (London: Temple Lodge, 1993).

2. Clement Greenberg, “Modernist Painting,” Arts Yearbook 4 (1961), pp.

Fig.25 - Joseph Beuys. How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare. November 26, 1965, performance in Düsseldorf.

Fig.26 - Joseph Beuys. Plight. 1985, installation at Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London.

103-104; as cited in Irving Sandler, Art of the Postmodern Era (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998), p. 2.

3. Rudolf Steiner, Colour, trans. John Salter and Pauline Wehrle (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1992), p. 127; for a different translation see The Arts and Their Mission, trans. Lisa D. Monges and Virginia Moore (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1964), p. 31.

4. The Sensible-Supersensible and Its Manifestation in Art (manuscript translation; Emerson College Library, Forest Row, East Sussex), p. 20; differently translated by Catherine E. Creeger in Michael Howard, ed. Art as Spiritual Activity: Rudolf Steiner’s Contribution to the Visual Arts (Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1998), p. 207.

5. Ad Reinhart, in Ad Reinhart, exhibition catalog (New York: Betty Parsons Gallery, 1947), n.p.; as cited in Sandler, Art of the Postmodern Era, p. 46.

6. Robert Morris, “Notes on Sculpture: Part I,” Artforum (February 1966): pp. 43-44.

7. Clement Greenberg, “Recentness of Sculpture,” in Maurice Tuchman, ed., American Sculpture of the Sixties (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1967), p. 25.

8. Carl Andre, quoted in Barbara Rose, “ABC Art,” Art in America (OctoberNovember 1965): 67.

9. Clement Greenberg, “Modern and Post-Modern,” Arts Magazine (February 1980): 65.

10. In addition to Daniel Bell’s related earlier books, The Coming of PostIndustrial Society (1973) and The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976), probably the earliest full statement of this aspect was the influential book by Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Paris 1979; English translation: Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1984).

11. Michael Fried, “Art and Objecthood,” Artforum (Summer 1967): 12-13.

12. For short overviews of the various forms postmodern visual art has taken (at least through the early 1990s), see Charles Jencks, What Is PostModernism? (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986) and Eleanor Heartney, Postmodernism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). For a much more detailed account, see Sandler, Art of the Postmodern Era.

13. Robert Morris, “Anti-Form,” Artforum (April 1969): 30-33.

14. Robert Morris, “Notes on Sculpture, Part 4: Beyond Objects,” Artforum (April 1969): 50-54.

15. “The Two Sources of Art: Impressionism and Expressionism,” in Howard, ed. Art as Spiritual Activity, p. 211.

16. “Truth and Verisimilitude in a Work of Art,” Dramaturgische Blätter,” supplement to Magazin für Literatur (August 1898); translation in The Forerunner 3, 1 (Spring 1942): 1-6.

17. “Raphael’s ‘School of Athens’ and ‘Disputa.’” Lecture of May 5, 1909 (manuscript translation; Rudolf Steiner Library, Ghent, New York); my italics.

18. Ways to a New Style in Architecture, (New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1927), p. 9.

19. Lectures to Teachers (report by Albert Steffen of 1921 lectures; London: Anthroposophical Publishing Co., 1931), p. 79. For more on this theme, see my “Dissolving the Cartesian Threshold: Anthroposophical Art, Postmodernism, and the Reunion of Art and Society” in Art Section Newsletter 24 (Spring-Summer 2005): 17-24; and my five-part article, “Showing Off: A Critical Review of the History of Exhibition of Art,” Art Section Newsletter 25 (Autumn-Winter 2005): 7-9; 26 (Spring-Summer 2006): 32-36, 41; 27 (Autumn-Winter 2006): 20-21; 28 (Spring-Summer 2007): 19-23.

20. The History of Art. Lecture IV of November 15, 1916 (manuscript translation; Rudolf Steiner Library, Ghent, New York), p. 1.

21. “Technology and Art,” Golden Blade (1959): 8;. The same thought is expressed in The Balance in the World and Man. Lucifer and Ahriman (North Vancouver, B.C.: Steiner Book Centre, 1977), pp. 28-29; my italics.

22. The Mission of the Archangel Michael, (New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1961), p. 47.

23. Questions and Answers after The Inner Nature of Music and the Experience of Tone (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1983), lecture of September 3, 1920 (manuscript translation); my italics.

24. Speech and Drama (London: Anthroposophical Publishing Company, 1960), p. 325.

25. The Being and Meaning of Illustrative Art, p. 16.

26. See my “Dissolving the Cartesian Threshold”; my ““Philosophical Similarities between Anthroposophy and Postmodernism as a Basis for a Socially Effective Anthroposophical Art,” Jahrbuch für Schöne Wissenschaften (Dornach: Verlag am Goetheanum, 2006), pp. 371-376; Douglas Sloan, “Introduction” to Revisioning Society and Culture: Classics from The

Journal for Anthroposophy 77 (Spring 2007): 5-40; and sections of Andrew Welburn, Rudolf Steiner’s Philosophy and the Crisis of Contemporary Thought (Edinburgh: Floris Books, 2004) such as pp. 17-26, 35-46. And 57-58.

27. Questions and Answers after The Inner Nature of Music, lecture of September 30, 1920.

28. “The Meaning of Art in Ancient Times and Today,” Anthroposophical Movement (July 17, 1927): 225-32 (lecture of June 1, 1923).

29. For a more thorough treatment of Beuys’s relation to anthroposophy as well as additional information on his artistic work, see my essay “From Queen Bee to Social Sculpture: The Artistic Alchemy of Joseph Beuys,” printed as an afterword in Rudolf Steiner, Bees (Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1998), pp. 187-213; I have also drawn on this essay for parts of this summary of Beuys’s work.

30. Joseph Beuys, in Götz Adriani, Winfried Konnertz, and Karin Thomas, Joseph Beuys: Life and Work (Woodbury, NY: Barron’s Educational Series, 1979), p. 257.

31. Joseph Beuys, quoted in Filiberto Menna, “Encounter with Beuys,” Nov. 1971, handout, Ronald Feldman gallery, New York, 1971, p. 7; as cited in Sandler, Art of the Postmodern Era, p. 15.

32. Joseph Beuys (1979), in Carin Kuoni, comp., Energy Plan for the Western Man: Joseph Beuys in America (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1990). p. 19; also in Caroline Tisdall, Joseph Beuys (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1979), p. 6.

33. These Actions are covered comprehensively in photographs and descriptions (in German) in Uwe M Schneede, Joseph Beuys: Die Aktionen (Ostfildern-Ruit bei Stuttgart: Verlag Gert Hatje, 1994).

34. Adriani, Konnnertz, and Thomas, Joseph Beuys, p. 132.

35. Tisdall, Joseph Beuys, p. 105.

36. Interview with Jean-Pierre Van Tieghem, February 5, 1975, in Joseph Beuys (Brussels and Paris: Galerie Isy Brachot, 1990), p. 26.

37. Quoted in Johannes Stüttgen, Zeitstau: Im Kraftfeld des erweiterten Kunstbegriffs von Joseph Beuys (Stuttgart: Urachhaus, 1988), p. 150.

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Research–a special section

Challenges Facing Waldorf Education

Hague Circle Report (The Hague, Netherlands, May 12-24, 2009)

By James Pewtherer, Chairman, Pedagogical Council of North America

The Hague Circle, active for 40 years, aims to renew itself from time to time. The group has expanded to 37 members now including representatives from Italy and countries as far flung as New Zealand, South Africa, Japan, and Chile. Two new members from North America joined the Hague Circle at this writing: Dorit Winter from California and Frances Kane from Minnesota.

Education in 21st Century Society

Waldorf education is faced with challenges that go far beyond the realm of education alone. Thinking that has produced our global society with its endless merchandising of consumer items, increasingly restrictive accountability standards, and hypersensitivity to individual rights, also surrounds Waldorf schools wherever they may be. In discussions over four days in the Steiner School in The Hague (one of only a handful founded during Rudolf Steiner’s lifetime), these pressures were evident. Contributions came from more than twenty countries. The conversation turned repeatedly to the challenge of educating free human beings in the context of our times and our culture.

Much of the appeal of Waldorf/Steiner education is based on values that run counter to considerations that see education as a “product” that can be purchased. If it is a product, then product standards and testing from the world of business make perfect sense. What happens then, when education is presented as a process? How is accountability to be implemented without cutting short the process itself? This is at the heart of a question that parents and governments and society as a whole are obliged to think about in a different way if education is to be properly supported. It is especially the case when they seek to understand and gauge the educational practice in Waldorf schools. Because we in Waldorf schools understand that education is a partnership lasting many years among parents, teachers, and society, we need to make clear that enrollment of a child in the kindergarten is just the first step in a long-term process that really can’t be thought about as a finished product.

In light of this, what happens in the realm of accountability? Here, the thinking behind often well-intentioned government mandates tries to reduce education to a common denominator for ease of comparison, so that “no child is left behind.” Yet we can see that measuring only a narrow band of student performance through use of standardized tests strangles an approach to holistic learning such as the one we use in the Waldorf

school. Finally, the wish to live in a society based on individual freedom has to balance the individual needs of the child with the social responsibility of accommodating the needs of the group. The wishes of the parent to make sure his/her child’s needs are always met and always paramount need to be broadened to include all the children in the class. We know that the class community is an essential element in our schools. So we strive to provide an education in which every child is expected to be in every subject so as to provide a rich basis for the individual choices in school and in life and which will come later.

Holland as a study: pluralism vs. uniformity

The Waldorf/Steiner schools in Holland provided a point of study for our meetings this time which illustrated some of what is noted above. It also demonstrated an increasing tension in deciding how to administer our schools. The Dutch government offered to take on the support of the Steiner schools after World War II, providing state salaries as well as school construction and maintenance. The schools were assured that they could teach as they had before and did so for many years. In the last decade or so, difficulties have emerged. One challenge on the institutional level has to do with running an effective, efficient, transport business, accountable to the government education ministry. The Ministry is looking for economies and decides, for instance, that there must be only a limited number of high schools and that these should be separated from elementary schools. This means effectively that there are almost no 12-year Steiner schools. Moreover, some 50% of the HS students are new to Waldorf education at the 9th grade level. What happens to the ideal of a 12-year education in such circumstances?

In contrast to the view which emphasizes schools as a business, others emphasize the educational process as an artistic endeavor which meets child and class and student body with creativity and something of a process—which is not easily defined or measured. Tension between these two views has been increasingly evident over the last ten years around the world. But it seems to have hit an extreme in the Netherlands, of all places, the country that offered sanctuary to the Pilgrims to worship as they chose when that freedom was denied them in England. Yet now the laws have developed to such a point that equality has eclipsed freedom—and too often the equality has come to mean “being the same.”

Meeting with representatives from Dutch Steiner Schools, the difficulties with the government were made manifest. A national Waldorf business manager association negotiates funding and salaries with the government on behalf of some 52 schools and 1,500 faculty and staff. Yet it has little influence because it is a small group among many other schools which are negotiating with the government on behalf of their teachers, all of whom are government employees. Moreover, the possibility to find funding for special aspects of Waldorf curriculum like eurythmy under a 1902 law guaranteeing free choice by parents

Research is an international activity, and is nowhere more important than in the Waldorf schools movement, where large social trends conflict with core aspects of a holistic and healing impulse. James Pewtherer kindly agreed to share this report of international work some time ago, and we are glad to round off our presentation of research activity with it.

has been progressively restricted under socialist governments. All early childhood places must be connected to a school and the elementary school is obliged to end at grade 6. Increasing numbers of tests accompany these restrictions.

Waldorf teacher training has flourished in Zeist where 80% of the students are in their 20’s and 30’s and the training runs four years. It combines early childhood and elementary training for two and a half years and then specializes for the next one and a half years, providing a BA degree with the possibility for an MA with additional study. There is currently no high school training, so this need has to be met by the schools themselves. Even with the robust enrollment, there are only enough graduates in a given year to fill about half the 66 openings in early childhood and elementary schools. It is encouraging that so many young people seek out this education as a career.

When Steiner Schools do not meet government standards

The education ministry tested all schools in Holland three years ago and found that there were 19 Steiner schools which tested “very weak” according to their test results. In addition to poor scores in math and language skills, these schools were found lacking in effective leadership and record keeping. The Steiner School Association, which is represented by delegates from 53 of the 70 schools (many of whom are board members from their respective schools), has decided that it will aim to have all schools meet government expectations and then push to have acceptance and support for the “Waldorf” requirements. In the meantime, there are a number of faculties which feel that their creativity and effectiveness as Steiner educators is being bargained away and are dissatisfied.

Pedagogical Section support

The Pedagogical Section has been active over the last 17 years and is working to help to think through the approach to some of these questions. It has been especially active in working with teachers on the Study of Man, the role of reincarnation and karma, on meditative work and lately on addressing the child from the point of view of doctor, teacher, and priest. The School Association provides some funding for its activities and to support on-going exploration of educational themes.

In conclusion

The Hague Circle is an organ of the Pedagogical Section and so is there to offer advice or suggestions when asked and not to issue dictates. But it was clear to us that the matter of balancing the wish to offer universal education regardless of income along with a truly free and creative education continues to be a knotty issue. We found it highly instructive to see what these challenges look like on the ground and expect that more wrestling with these issues will be necessary. One of the strongest expressions we heard from our Dutch colleagues was the solidarity they felt from their international colleagues was crucial as they struggle to maintain pluralism of education. As this term of pluralism is now being written into European Union law, some colleagues feel that this will be the principle which will win out in the end.

Included in this volume:

Diana Hughes and John Kettle: Waldorf Education: Radical and Relevant

John Gardner: What is a Waldorf School?

Reg Down: The Role of the Teacher-Artist Within the Waldorf School

Christy Barnes: Can Imagination be Trained? A Crucial Question for Schools Today

M. C. Richards: Early Childhood

Eugene Schwartz: Grade One – Notes

Ruth Pusch: What to Do about Witches

Heinz Müller: Healing Forces in the Word and its Rhythms

Amos Franceschelli: Mathematics in the Classroom: Mine Shaft and Skylight

Hans Gebert: About Goetheanistic Science

Christy Barnes: Training Capacities through the Study of Literature

Henry Barnes: Has Religion A Role in Education Today?

Rudolf Steiner: Education for Adolescents

Helmut von Kügelgen: How Important is it that Schools are Independent Today?

Der Spiegel: Research on Waldorf School Graduates: GovernmentSponsored Study Comparing Graduates of Waldorf and State (Public) Schools

AVAILABLE ONLINE AT anthroposophy.org (link to Store)

Other titles in the series: Meeting Rudolf Steiner * Anthroposophy & Imagination * Revisioning Society & Culture * Mani & Service * Meeting Anthroposophy * Novalis * Science & Anthroposophy

The Anthroposophical Society in America

General Council Members

Torin Finser (General Secretary)

MariJo Rogers (General Secretary)

James Lee (at large)

Virginia McWilliam (at large)

Regional Council Representatives

Ann Finucane (Eastern Region)

Dennis Dietzel (Central Region)

Joan Treadaway (Western Region)

Marian León, Director of Administration & Membership Services

Jerry Kruse, Treasurer

Evolving News for Members & Friends 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.

©2010 The Anthroposophical Society in America. The responsibility for the content of articles is the authors’.

Freedom and Initiative

Can an individual human being still make a difference today?

Torin Finser

The following thoughts are excerpted from remarks prepared for delivery at the Third International English Conference at the Goetheanum, at the beginning of August 2010.

All of us here have lived a significant part of our lives in the 20th century. Yet as we look back, despite tremendous technological and material progress, the last hundred years have done little to resolve some of the most fundamental issues facing humanity. Despite wars and even revolutions fought in the name of freedom, few people today are truly free, or even have a real conception of freedom. And as for taking initiative, many feel hobbled by organizational structures, financial constraints and the general hectic pace of our modern lives.

* * *

I would like to begin with the assertion that freedom is an inner condition that rests upon a fertile bed of soul conditions that supports the true intentions of the human spirit. Anthroposophy is dedicated to helping the striving human being create and nurture the inner conditions that make freedom possible. To start let us look at the notion of impartiality.

We need to find a balance between the opening of the senses to the rich world of impressions around us and at the same time reject any sort of compulsion that comes from external sources. We want to be open to the beauty of the natural world, such as the wonderful colors we find in flowers during the summer months, while at the same time protecting our senses from the onslaught that comes from the media and advertising. This battle of the senses, fought on a daily basis, is one threat to our freedom. Another, much more subtle one, is the one-sided prejudice that can come from deeply held convictions within. How often do we see others through the lenses we have chosen to wear? During my recent trip to China, I was surprised at myself, in that only when I was there did I see how varied the people where, depending on their province or family background, and all along I had carried one predominant visual image of an abstract Chinese person. How many unexamined, unintended prejudices do we all carry around with us?

So when speaking of impartiality in The Stages of Higher Knowledge, Rudolf Steiner said: “Freedom means not only that I am free from the compulsion of an outer authority, but above all that I am not subservient to any prejudices, opinions, sensations and feelings of my own” (p. 19). Even with the advice of esoteric teaching, one cannot allow blind acceptance of an external authority. Instead, one becomes free in practicing the good advice and making it one’s own. So although there are different spiritual paths, the Oriental or Christian, for example, it is a particular aspect of the Rosicrucian approach that there is nothing opposed to modern man’s sense of freedom.

Taking the notion of impartiality one step further, one can say that on a daily basis, we tend to know the life of the soul from one side. Since we are immersed in it, we tend to see the world from within out. I am here and the world around me is out there. This tends to have us see the surface of things, and the danger as described above is that we either look too much through our own lenses, or we let the external world of senses rule the impressions we take into the soul life. But there is a further step that the seeker of freedom can take. Instead of looking at the external world from outside and experiencing himself from inside, the seeker can “slip out of his skin as it were, to observe himself from outside” (p. 33). This objective observation of oneself is an essential part of esoteric training and a crucial step toward attaining greater freedom.

And likewise in our daily interactions with each other, we tend to see separate uni -

This battle of the senses, fought on a daily basis, is one threat to our freedom. Another, much more subtle one, is the onesided prejudice that can come from deeply held convictions within.

ties: I am here, you are there. Even in reading Theosophy, one can come away with the conception of the I as kernel of the soul. This everyday understanding of our own I is a necessary illusion for living in our sense bound world. However, in the phrase

Know thyself and know the world; Know the world and know thyself

one has a hint of something more. The revelation of the world within us in the physical body entails the earthly I. The normal understanding of the I is a projection of myself into my body. Yet anyone who has worked with young children knows, in the wonderful powers of imitation one has something else at work as well, something that works in from the periphery – Know the world and know thyself.

In his Bologna lecture of 1911, “The Psychological Basis of Spiritual Science,” Rudolf Steiner describes the transcendent I that uses the physical body as a kind of mirror of consciousness:

The I is not in the body but outside it …. One’s physical activity represents only a living mirror that reflects the life of the I within the transcendental.”

Just as Goethe said that the light creates the eye so the eye can observe the light, so it is with the I that needs the physical so it can observe its reflected image and thus become aware. We as humans need to be sure to distinguish between the reflected image of the I that is embedded in our everyday experience of our physical existence, and the true reality of the I, which is free of these constraints. Anthroposophy gives us this crossing point, this path of freedom, in which the I is transcendent and the body is physical. We, out of our conscious intention, can move between the everyday I and the transcendent I. This relationship holds throughout life, only to be dissolved at death, when one realizes once and for all this dual aspect of human existence.

In addition to the path of conscious selfdevelopment described in anthroposophy, which can help school the capacities for a new state of freedom in regard to the I and Self, life also offers unexpected opportunities when we can work with “awakening” moments. These awakening moments include illness, in which an increasing number of people have experiences that their life was unfulfilled until illness became a wise teacher. Many of the stories told out of experiences of illness point to the transcendent I. There are also moments of other kinds of crisis, earthquakes and the like, which lead to spirit awakening. Especially in times of economic challenge, many people feel the old material supports slipping away and, upon observing themselves, sense that life is calling for a new beginning. When realized, whether through the portal of death, illness, or economic struggle, human beings are prompted to self observe, and even if they do not use terms such as “transcendent I”, the activity itself is liberating. The result is more self-aware action, which is the bedrock of human freedom.

Before leaving the topic of freedom, despite an inadequate time and space devoted to this topic thus far, I would like to

say a few words about freedom and those involved in spiritual movements such as anthroposophy. It is perhaps ironic, though I hope not inevitable, that those who have achieved a sort of spiritual certainty in their own lives can inadvertently restrict the freedom of others. If I heard correctly, our friends in Holland who did exit interviews of those leaving the Anthroposophical Society, reported that some gave the reason that they wanted to re-claim their freedom. How could this be, when the very core of anthroposophy is based upon the notion of freedom? I took this remark, if accurate, to reflect a human failing, not a shortcoming in anthroposophy. It is a challenge to all who are inspired, who have found certain truths, that we tend to advocate for those selfsame truths without always inquiring enough about the real nature of the other person. If I am certain about something, does that give me license to expound and explain regardless of the human condition represented in the person across from me? In the name of freedom, we may want to remind ourselves that there is value in entertaining questions together, and not always jumping to a conceptual formulation of an answer.

Initiative

Just as the human soul is the starting point for reclaiming freedom, so it also is the basis for fostering initiative as a way forward for the 21st century. If the considerations about freedom (above) had a lot to do with imaginative consciousness, the next section on initiative will have to concern itself with accessing inspiration and intuition as resources for active deeds on the earth. Just as we need to transform our imagination in picturing the I and the Self, so also we need a new way of working with feelings and willing in order to support a culture of entrepreneurship and innovation.

One exercise is to work with what is “true” and by its side, what is “false”. One lets the juxtaposition of the true alongside the false work again and again to gradually develop a heightened faculty of judgment. Not only does one become more sensitive to an erroneous opinion, even experiencing an error as inward pain, but one has likewise to develop tolerance toward the very person expressing the erroneous fact. This inner struggle, after time can produce “quick-witted judgment and unerring certainty of decision.” (Steiner, p. 39) Thus one learns to act and decide more effectively when such exercises have been carried for a while.

Ancient Chinese medicine taught that each act should consume only the amount of energy needed for that deed, no more, no less. We often become tired simply because we exert too much energy for tasks that could be done with less. This conservation of human life forces (chi ) can be considered also from the point of view of the human soul. Emotions such as fear or anxiety also entail an expenditure of soul force. One could say that soul force is lost when one gives way to fear and anxiety. But if one can curtail the emotion, such as fear, the soul force remains available for other purposes: “If he repeats such processes often, he will build up an inner treasure of these continually husbanded soul forces…and such economies

Inspirations find us when we are receptive. They fire up the human being for taking initiative.

It is a challenge to all who are inspired, who have found certain truths, that we tend to advocate for those selfsame truths without always inquiring enough about the real nature of the other person.

of feeling will…bring to expression the revelations of a higher life.” (Steiner, p. 40) Thus if, during the course of normal living, one practices this exercise of exposing oneself to events while denying the emotional gratification of simply going with the flow of feelings, gradually an inner resilience is developed that becomes the fertile ground for Inspirations. Rather than becoming cold and un-feeling, this exercising of the soul produces a kind of receptivity to higher forces. One has only to consider the long preparations of the ancient mystery schools to see this soul preparation at work. Inspirations find us when we are receptive. And inspirations fire up the human being for taking initiative.

I was fascinated to find an excerpt of a lecture given by Rudolf Steiner on June 26th, 1906 in Berlin in which he described some common obstacles and four basic laws that accompany them [only the concluding passage is printed here]:

Conclusion: A pupil of spiritual science must search and counsel within himself his foremost task: how can I fulfill these four sentences:

Learn to be silent and yours will be power. Forego the power and yours will be willing.

Forego the willing and yours will be feeling. Forego the feeling and yours will be cognition.1

In a world of constant chatter, one has to let go of the word and find silence. This will produce inner resources of strength out of which one can be creative. Next, one has to let go of the power, the authority, the trappings of any office in order to free the willing. Those who spend most of their day fulfilling the expectations of others will not so easily be able to generate new impulses. We need to create leadership roles that have little managerial responsibility but maximum emphasis on vision building and forward-moving initiatives.

How can one let go of willing? It is not easy, especially for those of us who often have to power our way through the day despite exhaustion. If we can let go, step back and see the situation from a distance, so to speak, then we free an inner space for true experiences of feeling. That feeling, in turn, gives us the possibility to relate, to connect in ways that would not have happened if we had just powered our way through the situation. Here again we have a reference to the peripheral I, in that the body, or in this case the problem, can become a kind of mirror which can reflect an image and thus help us attain new consciousness.

The final step is then to let go of the feelings so as to achieve cognition. We all know what it is like to be immersed in feelings, swimming as it were in deep waters. There is often a point of emotional block when one cannot see through things clearly. Thus one needs to again practice letting go, this time of the

1 Lerne Schweigen und dir wird die Macht. Begib dich der Macht, und dir wird das Wollen. Begib dich des Wollens und dir wird das Feuhlen. Begib dich des Fuehlens und dir wird Erkenntnis.

feelings. This can come with reflection, (as my wife would say, more blue and less red) when one starts to look at the horizon of things. This distancing generates perspective that lifts us out of the feeling realm and helps us eventually form reflective thoughts.

At each step of the four-fold journey, the exercise requires a kind of stepping back, a letting go of the ordinary, the usual way of working. Rather than working out of the Self as embedded in the body/things of the world, one has to let go and work from the periphery. This then frees the human soul for new capacities, in this case new strength, new willing, new feeling and new cognition. This is a path of freedom that can result in released capacities for initiative.

* * *

Initiative is in fact released capacity. That which was held within is now available to the world, that which was a seed is now manifest in a new form. Rather than wandering along in an evolutionary way, we are looking at involution as a basis for initiative and innovation.

The great challenge for many of us today is finding the resources out of which to act. Rudolf Steiner ends the lecture on the above-mentioned exercises with the image of the pentagram and the following words:

If this pentagram is used, it will be a key to the spiritual world. If you can develop a feeling for the relative strength of these impressions and hold them together into one, then that har-

mony of strength is brought about which exists between the forces of the ego (circle), astral body (outer pentagon), ether body (pentagram) and physical body (inner pentagon).

Is it not fascinating that the ego or I is portrayed in the circle, not at the center! This image of the pentagram is thus a true picture of the four-fold human being, and the unity of expression is the basis for creative work in the world.

Torin Finser is General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in America. These remarks will be made available in expanded form later this year.

We need to create leadership roles that have little managerial responsibility but maximum emphasis on vision building and forwardmoving initiatives.

“A New Impulse” Conference

February 18-20, 2010, San Rafael, CA

I must give a new impulse .... Make no mistake, it is largely a question of interest in the children and the young people and a matter of enthusiasm .... We shall not get anywhere in any direction without enthusiasm and inner mobility.... A person certainly cannot be tired if s/he is to be spiritually alive.

Rudolf Steiner

With these words spoken at the faculty meeting of the Stuttgart Waldorf School, July 24, 1924, Rudolf Steiner ends his engagement in the original Waldorf School. Ninety years later we might ask ourselves: Do we now also need a new impulse? How can we balance structure and form with impulse and creativity so that they serve a “new impulse” for Waldorf schools—an impulse that is needed as we approach the centenary of this new educational paradigm?

These thoughts formed the “seed crystal” around which the Bay Area Center for Waldorf Teacher Training imagined and structured the conference. More than 200 Waldorf professionals from six states representing more than 30 schools attended.

Using references to contemporary research and autobiography, Schiller’s Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, lively anecdotes, personal research, humor, straight talk, and insightful comparisons of familiar Waldorf verses and meditations, Christof Wiechert brought us an utterly fresh and refreshing way of seeing the human being, the world, our tasks as Waldorf educators and ourselves. Head of the Pedagogical Section in Dornach and main speaker at “A New Impulse,” Christof splendidly modeled the content of his lectures.

He reminded us that our task as educators is to ensure that the teacher and the pupils/students always form a unity. This unity develops out of our deep interest in our fellow human beings and out of enthusiasm born of love for everything that is in the world around us (love every subject you teach).

Christof said one way to find unity with our pupils and students is in realizing that, perhaps surprisingly, we are not here to educate the individualities before us. Individualities, the spiritual essences of human beings, come into physical existence to educate themselves. We teachers are here to educate the sheaths that are receiving those individualities. That is, Waldorf education addresses the physical body, the senses, purposeful movement, soul, heart, imagination, thinking, all with clarity and rigor—but

not the unique individuality itself.

We learned that different capacities for judgment develop in different seven-year periods: aesthetic, with the physical body (1-7); intellectual, with development of the soul (7-14); idealistic, with the longing for identity and authenticity (14-21); personal when the full individuality is present (from 21 on).

Christof reminded us of what Rudolf Steiner said at the beginning of Study of Man:  Unity that is born of interest (in each human being) and enthusiasm (for the whole world) begets a new

moral relationship, for our task as Waldorf educators is not only intellectual and emotional, but also moral and spiritual. In order to educate in a way that respects the sanctity of the child’s individuality, we have to develop moral techniques:

• Take each child/student as s/he is; do not label.

• With this as the starting point, find an individual way to work with each child. Note: There is no longer such a being as an “ideal child.” This may have existed fifty years ago, but conditions have now changed.

• Wholeheartedly accept the child/student as s/he is.

• If the child/student is not “performing” as you would like (in meeting standards, in behavior), look within yourself, not at the child or student for the answer to the riddle of why.  Note: No child or student wants to perform badly, and every single one wants to learn.

Christof showed us ways to better understand the situation of the modern child or youth. The physical body has two basic urges: the urge toward matter (physical necessities and all that we find in the physical world) and the striving toward organized life, form and structure. Out of this duality there develops a third realm: the urge to play. It is only in play (in the wider sense of the word) that we can find freedom. This is also the realm of imagination and initiative.

We can also look at the polarity between sensory ‘input’ and personal, active ‘output’. When we do not find individualized soul life developing between these two poles, we see that ‘input’ with no ‘output’ is what characterizes autism. ‘Input’ with unprocessed, immediate ‘output’ is what we find in hyperactivity.

Even more arresting is the realization that between ‘input’ and ‘output’ is the middle realm, the realm of images, stories, metaphors, and play. This is where there is human experience. It is just this human experience of perceiving, thinking and speaking that the spiritual beings we work with are looking for. Thus, our educational task takes us into a new paradigm, one that reaches across the threshold, beyond the intellectual and emotional to the moral and spiritual.

In 2019 we come to the 100th anniversary of Waldorf education. Christof suggested that we have some work to do before we can celebrate with all the enthusiasm such an event should engender in us. He mentioned the following focus points:

• Re-balance the material/organizational/structural and play/ imaginative /initiative forces in our schools.

• Eradicate from our schools habits unrelated to Study of Man

For example: too many stories; Form Drawing in blocks; “Circle Time” (see his research soon to be published in the Pedagogical Section Journal ); starting the day with movement because children no longer walk to school.

He left us with several blackboard images of familiar verses and meditations to ponder in our hearts and enliven our inner work. He reminded us that the Second Teacher’s Meditation (“Geistiges blicken…”/“Spirit beholding…”) was given to the first Waldorf teachers after a crisis and was meant as an “energy boost.”   Indeed, participants felt that “A New Impulse” conference itself served as an energy boost, and the decision was made to have Christof return next February for “A New Impulse II.” We look forward to the opportunity to continue and deepen our work together.

Jeanie Elliott, Santa Cruz

Joan Treadaway General Council Western Representative

Joan Treadaway rejoined the General Council of the Anthroposophical Society in America in 2009 succeeding Linda Connell, who had given devoted service and reached her term limit. Joan is a long-time member of the Western Regional Council and served previously on the General Council from 1994-2000. For over 45 years she has been a consultant and mentor, and is in private practice (Childhood Consulting Services in Prescott, Arizona) as a Waldorf Remedial Therapist. She works with children and young adults, consults with parents, and provides support for teachers and schools. A consultant to several Waldorf schools, she lectures widely on the challenges of children in the 21st century.

Joan has also worked extensively in administration and community development, advising boards, parent groups, and school administrations. She is currently working on a booklet on effects of custodial arrangements on children of divorce.

In recent talks in several areas of the West Joan shared some fundamental insights about how children and adults— all of us—are constantly immersed in the media’s reality. During the period from birth to seven years, children are learning naturally by imitation and lack the ability to distinguish fantasy from reality. Even at later stages studies show that exposure to media violence is desensitizing, and television itself affects brain function for all viewers. Parents and teachers working together can reduce the negative effects of the media.

Along with providing a Western perspective to the General Council, Joan hopes to bring the strengths of “Goethean observation” to the work of council development. At her first meeting she shared some constructive aspects of the way the Western Regional Council works:

Each meeting is a building processes to bring the Western Region alive. The WRC works, in a very real way, to attempt a new social form in which council members are given the space to come together and speak freely out of themselves and their experiences, to share insights, not out of a plan, but creating out of what is possible and out of the real contacts with groups and branches in the region. This gets reforged and recreated by the end of their regular weekend meetings and becomes a direction in which to move forward.

Joan graduated from Whittier College with a degree in Psychology and Sociology, and has a MS in Waldorf Remedial Therapy from Sunbridge College. She lives in Prescott, Arizona

with her husband Glen. Whenever possible, she enjoys birding, hiking, kayaking, going to great movies, reading, and being with her grandson. She credits her joy in life, in a large part, to her parents and three brothers, with whom she shared an archetypal childhood of strong family rhythms, laughter, and living close to nature in rural New Jersey.

She is a board member of the Association for a Healing Education which is involved in promoting healthful practices in education and in therapeutic intervention through a deeper understanding of childhood development and hindrances to development.

Michael Support Circle Report

At the depth of what has been called the Great Recession, Ernst Katz and I took the initiative to begin a donor circle to help ensure the financial viability of the Anthroposophical Society in America. Starting with a simple letter mailed to a few friends, the effort continued after Ernst’s death last year. About ten people responded immediately. We consciously decided not to do any brochures or mass mailings, thus keeping our costs to date at less then $300. Since then I have continued the effort, mainly through phone calls and personal conversations at branch meetings and conferences. Now, a little over a year later, we have 65 commitments of $1,000 per year for five years. This means not only $65,000 of unrestricted gifts for this year’s operating budget, but over $300,000 in total pledges for the next five years, a tremendous vote of confidence in our future as a Society.

One especially gratifying development over the past months is that several participants in the Michael Support Circle have suggested friends and acquaintances who might be approached. This is so needed, in that one person cannot possibly reach all those who might want to support the work. This is our Society, and it’s future is truly in our hands. For those reading this report who have not joined this effort, please ask yourself as well as those members and friends you know who might be able to support this project.

If at the same time we deepen our spiritual work, individually and in groups, as well as find new ways to connect with others who carry the same values, we can hope to ever more fully realize the hopes and the mission of the Anthroposophical Society, not only in our country by as part of a world-wide movement for social renewal. And as you so well know, the world needs Anthroposophy today more than ever.

Torin M Finser, PhD

Florida Groups Gather At The Spring Equinox

I had the pleasure of representing the Eastern Regional Council at the sixth annual Anthroposophical/Waldorf conference in Brooksville, Florida the weekend of March 18-20, on “The Healing Power of Anthroposophy and Waldorf Education.” Approximately 30 people were in attendance representing five active groups, and there were several students from the University of Southern Florida. The groups present included:

The Michael Group of Cutler Bay, near Miami. The leader

of the group is Yvonne Cumming. They have been meeting for 20 years and are home to the K-5 Waldorf International School, which will add a 6th grade next year. They are in process of building a “totally green” new school. They have four study groups including a Spanish-speaking one reading Parzival Clearwater, Florida is the site of the Steiner Circum-Study group led by Dr. Stephen Salamone, whom I would call “the Ernst Katz of USF,” a university professor with a large following of students interested in Steiner’s works. Barbara Beddingfield, coordinator of this wonderful conference, is contact person for this group. They are currently reading Mystics after Modernism. Nearby is the K-8 Suncoast Waldorf School in Palm Harbor.

The Sarasota Group is studying How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds and is led by Anne and Joe Savage, teachers at the K-5 Sarasota Waldorf School. The Boynton Beach Group (near Boca Raton) is also reading How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds. They are home to the Sea Star Initiative, an aspiring Waldorf School currently from N-K to grade 2. The Jacksonville Beach Group has a Waldorf initiative (N-K) and is currently studying The Kingdom of Childhood Conference

Overview

The Conference opened with introductions and singing. The next morning, Herbert Hagens began with a talk on the healing nature of fairy tales. He spoke of the symbolism in Grimm’s fairy tales and led into Goethe’s fairy tale and the fairy tales in Steiner’s mystery dramas. He humorously recommended that we see “Happily Ever After” a Broadway play based on fairy tales with modern themes (e.g. Peter Pan becomes a gay drag queen; Gretel opens a bakery; and the old witch from Snow White finds herself in a nursing home singing “Que sera, sera”).

Dr. Richard Halford spoke about the healing power of anthroposophical medicine and ingeniously wove together his talk with Herbert’s, beginning with the myth of Prometheus and how the eagle eating his liver represents sugar metabolism (the anabolic and catabolic rhythm of the liver). Dr. Halford gave a magnificent review of the major organs and illnesses, and told of

the unique ways anthroposophical medicine helps cure them.

Michelle Cumming, daughter of Yvonne Cumming of the Cutler Bay group, teaches at the Waldorf School in Atlanta. She gave a talk on the causes of learning and behavioral dysfunctions, and how anthroposophical methods provide healing for sensory integration issues. She gave a wealth of information for Waldorf teachers in the classroom, and a large stack of handouts.

The final speaker was Dr. Stephen Salmone, professor at the University of Southern Florida, whose impressive resumé includes a degree in Classical Studies from Boston University and others in Linguistics, Psychotherapy and Cultural History. He has studied in Turkey and Greece and subsequently led tours there. He has even counseled drug addicts. His talk was entitled: “Honoring the Development of the ‘I’”. It was followed by a very animated question and answer period.

My favorite part of every conference is the conversation and fellowship in between the talks. I was very much impressed by the warmth and vitality of this group of individuals. One really “cool” thing was that Cherylynn Van Kirk did free facials for the women attendees with her wonderful “Star Flower” organic cosmetics. I was most elated, however, by the energy and interest expressed by the college students in attendance. One young man named Jordan Stone is vice president of a Student Alliance that sponsors all sorts of events for social justice, alternative media, schools and spirituality (especially Waldorf and anthroposophy). Jordan would like to start a Steiner Group at the university. When asked if he wanted to become a Waldorf teacher, he replied, “No, I want to become a banker—I want to support Waldorf education!” Having left Waldorf teaching because I could not live on the salary, I really appreciated that remark!

Finally I must mention is the beautiful and peaceful site, the Pines Conference Center operated by the Unitarian Universal Church. The lodging was peaceful and rustic; we were surrounded by live oaks, palm and hollies.

Kathleen Wright, Eastern Regional Council (Slightly abridged from the report in the Sophia Sun.)

Stars, Stones & Mutuality: Weaving the Social Fabric of the Future

Central Regional Council and Society Members Gather in Ohio for an AGM and Retreat

About twenty people gathered from Ohio, Michigan, North Dakota, Wisconsin, Texas, New Orleans, Kentucky, Illinois and Minnesota for the Central Regional Council’s Annual General Meeting and retreat held in rural Peebles, Ohio. Each day, we sat in a circle around a candle surrounded by rainbow silks, on which were placed stones which each participant brought from their region, land or home. Quilted stars, created by members in the various regions, were hung in the main meeting space.

On the opening evening, the names of many Waldorf schools, study groups, biodynamic farms, anthroposophic medical practices, organizations and other community initiatives were spoken in the circle as a way to bring mindfulness and inclusion to the many anthroposophic initiatives we each represented, and that are active throughout the central region.

The mornings began with singing, led by Marianne Fieber, and songs were woven in throughout each day. The beautiful space at Hope Springs Institute provided plenty of room for daily eurythmy led by Connie Michael which included “I Think Speech”

and the “Five-Pointed Star.” Lively speech exercises were carried by Kim Snyder-Vine, including a participatory recitation of the Foundation Stone Meditation each evening.

We spent one day at Serpent Mound, a quarter-mile long ancient Indian mound, in a festival atmosphere—singing, reading poetry, meditating and doing eurythmy as we made our way around the entire perimeter of the sacred place.

The basis of study for the weekend retreat was Steiner’s lecture, “Brotherhood and the Fight for Survival.” (Berlin, November 23, 1905 GA 54.) Though spoken over 100 years ago, this lecture bears striking relevance to the social issues we face today. It centers largely on community building as a practical basis for true human progress, and as a spiritual gesture, because, by working in conscious community, we are actually participants in the new mystery centers. As an artistic exercise, we each drew a colored gesture in response to the word “brotherhood.” Alternately, we drew a colored gesture in response to the phrase “fight for survival.” There was much to “see” by expressing the concepts of brother-

hood and fight for survival through color and image.

Group discussions were enriched by small breakout groups, so each had the chance to share insights and everyone’s voice was heard. We worked through concepts in the lecture, and we devoted time in small groups to share the needs and challenges of our respective anthroposophic community work, and then shared that which we thought we could offer to our community’s development.

The days began early and ended late—there was plenty of work to be done, and ground to cover. The council members,

Margaret Runyon, Dennis Dietzel, Marianne Fieber, Robert Karp, Lori Barian and Mary Louise Hershberger, organized a meeting with a wonderful balance of artistic activity, spiritual study and fellowship— with delicious, healthy food in between.

A special goodbye was said to longtime CRC members Robert Karp and Lori Barian. Robert is now active as the director of the Biodynamic Farming and Gardening Association, while Lori will

continue to serve as editor for The Correspondence.

Christy

Korrow, Burkesville, KY

The Austin Centenary Celebration of Rudolf Steiner’s Announcement of the Reappearance of Christ in the Etheric

By Beth & Stephen Usher

The Novalis Branch of Austin, Texas held a festive conference of the centenary of Rudolf Steiner’s 1910 announcement of the Reappearance of Christ. The event took place March 26-28, 2010 on the Austin Waldorf School campus. About seventy people attended the celebration. The event was bathed in the art of eurythmy and brought to life through scenes from Rudolf Steiner’s first mystery drama, The Portal of Initiation, lectures by General Secretary MariJo Rogers, Judith Brockway, and Stephen Usher, a projective geometry lesson with David Booth, conversation, good food, and some real fun.

The conference opened Friday evening with eurythmy by Austin’s Chaparral Eurythmy on Beethoven’s sixth and tenth sonatas for piano and violin. Rudolf Steiner choreographed these forms several weeks before he died in 1925. Dr. Stephen Usher then lectured on “The Reappearance of Christ in the Etheric & The Re-emergence of Human Awareness of the Etheric World” [which follows this report.] He explained the basic content of the 1910 lectures when Rudolf Steiner first spoke of the imminent reappearance of the Christ in an etheric body that would commence in the 1930s and would develop over the next 2500 to 3000 years. Steve also noted that Ernst Katz had agreed to speak at the conference with the caveat that he might already be on the other side as turned out to be the case. But Ernst was most certainly attending in his spiritual form.

After the lecture pianist Anthony Tobin performed Adagio ma non troppo from Beethoven’s Sonata in A-flat Major, Op 110.

Dr. David Booth’s Projective Geometry Lesson1

Saturday morning opened with a lesson on projective geometry and the etheric by Dr. David Booth; everyone had the opportunity to draw projective geometric constructions. David explained that “ether,” or aether, refers on the one hand to a hypothetical medium for the waves of optical theory in late nineteenth century physics, and on the other hand to a fact of the clairvoyant observation of nature. He described how the ether can be seen as interweaving streams in the atmosphere, related to flows on the earth. These streams resemble flows of water, but do not always go downhill. Plants appear to be fundamentally etheric objects into which matter is lifted by spiraling ether to produce the botanical forms of everyday, physical observation.

Dr. Booth went on to tell how early anthroposophical scientists sought experimental evidence of this etheric action in delicate processes, and recognized that certain mathematical ideas are related to etheric phenomena. Projective geometry was prominent in these studies. As the twentieth century proceeded, however, various scientists reported a “death of geometry.” An autopsy would identify the cause of death as excessive formalization and algebraic abstraction. The decline of geometry was long and intergenerational; scientists, then engineers, schoolteachers, and finally, Waldorf schoolteachers and anthroposophists were affected. Geometry will be born again. There was a basis for renewal among anthroposophists in the 1950s and independently in the structural topology movement in the 1970s. These two groups never got together to form a single school of thought, however.

CRC members at Great Serpent Mound, near Peebles, Ohio

How is the almost vanished science of projective geometry connected with the ether, Dr. Booth asked. Geometry involves duality, which resembles the relationship between physical and etheric action. In plane geometry this duality interchanges the concepts of point and line. Everything true of points and lines is equally true of lines and points. It is interesting to take familiar geometrical constructions, such as those of perspective drawing, and consider their dual configurations. The horizon line becomes an infinitely distant point; a vanishing point on the horizon becomes a line through that infinitely distant point. Using this approach you can gradually become familiar with the truths of planar duality. In three dimensions, points and planes are dual; lines are self-dual. The configurations of lines in space are symmetrically balanced between positive and negative space, and may be applicable to those phenomena that share physical forces and etheric action. Parallel eurythmy lessons followed Dr. Booth’s lesson. After lunch, the audience reassembled for Judith Brockway’s lecture, which was placed between solo and duo eurythmy performances of Beethoven sonata movements.

Judith Brockway’s Lecture: “The Occult Resistances to Perceiving the Etheric Christ and the New Natural Clairvoyance”

During the years of World War I, and particularly in 1917, Rudolf Steiner spoke about occult powers and forces that were actively working to prevent human beings from perceiving this event.2 Judith explored the content of these lectures where the working of certain occult brotherhoods of the West and of the East are characterized. Steiner began the lectures with a request that his audience examine our concept of the word, “unconscious.” In those worlds we cannot see with our physical eyes, highly conscious beings are active. There are those who work for progressive evolution whereby the human being will become independent, responsible and free to co-work with them. There are also those who have as their sole purpose the subjugation and materialization of the human soul and spirit. The power of the spiritual beings working against our human evolution is enhanced when people think there is a world of unconsciousness. As soon as we begin to pursue a deeper knowledge of what lies below or above our consciousness and gain an understanding of these pernicious beings and their intentions, who are themselves very conscious, we have a chance of winning the battle with materialism.

Judith explained that one of the groups opposing the Etheric Christ is designated the Brotherhoods by Rudolf Steiner. It is their intention to blind human beings to the event of Christ’s Return in the Etheric by eventually placing a being in physical incarnation and identifying him as the true Christ. He will not be the true Christ, he will be a false Christ. To do this they make

use of their occult capacity to use materialistically minded souls who have crossed the threshold of death, yet are caught in the sphere between the Earth and the Moon. These souls cannot easily move beyond the moon sphere in the way normal to the human soul after death, and it is their fate to be used as the “clientele” of these brotherhoods. They cause disturbances on earth and cultivate and further materialistic thoughts in human beings on the earth, thereby blinding them to the true event of the Christ in the Etheric.

The Brotherhoods of the East, Judith explained, work differently and will not place a false Christ before human beings, but will create the situation whereby the event of Christ in the Etheric will be passed by. Under certain circumstances human etheric bodies do not immediately dissolve after death into the cosmic ether. These etheric bodies can become inhabited by demonic beings and it is these that the Eastern brotherhood use for their purposes. By encouraging a kind of ancestor worship they aim to divert human beings from having any interest in the Etheric Christ.

Both the brotherhoods of the West and the brotherhoods of the East are well aware that the Christ is active in the Etheric. They also know that our becoming aware of both the Etheric Christ and their activity will decrease their power in the situation. In connection with these events Judith commented on the incarnation of Ahriman 3, the role of comets, notably Halley’s and Biela’s comets,4 5 the Ahrimanic double 6 , and the battle of Michael in the Spiritual world during the years just before 1879 when he became the ruling Archangel.7

Judith went on to describe the task of the Fifth Post-Atlantean Epoch that is to transform evil into good through love. It is a Manichean task that is full of mystery. One approach to this mystery is to immerse oneself in the description of what Rudolf Steiner calls the second crucifixion of the Christ that occurred in the Etheric.8 During the last third of the nineteenth century a black sphere had formed in the etheric world. This was created by the materialistic thoughts that human beings were carrying over into the spiritual world when they died. This “black sphere of materialism” caused Christ—then living in the etheric and carried by an Angel being—to suffer extinction of his consciousness through a kind of suffocation.9 This resulted in a new resurrection. Because of this crucifixion and resurrection human beings can now experience in their own souls a direct consciousness of the Christ. “The spiritual death by suffocation that accompanied the dissolution of consciousness of the angelic being is a repetition of the Mystery of Golgotha in the worlds lying directly behind ours, so that a resurrection of the previously hidden Christ consciousness can take place in the souls of human beings on Earth. This return to life is in the process of becoming the clairvoyant vision in the twentieth century.”10

Judith concluded by pointing to the Pink window in the Goetheanum. There we can see the disciple accompanied by his angel entering the living, creative world of the etheric. The disciple sees the Christ in the midst of this. From the two windows below we can see and learn how Christ approaches Lucifer on the one side and Ahriman on the other. It is clear that it is with independent, freely-given, over-flowing love.11 By contemplating such a picture we can water the seeds now in our own soul, for this needed future activity.

After a group conversation followed by a delicious supper, the Austin Mystery Drama Players presented the fruits of one year of rehearsal: parts of scenes 1, 3, and 7 of The Portal of Initiation, which frame Theodora’s proclamation of the coming Reappearance.

Sunday morning, MariJo Rogers’ presentation was preceded and followed by speech eurythmy. Before the lecture Chaparral presented “If It Could Ascend” by N. Scott Momaday and “Great Spirits” by John Keats. “Light’s Weaving Essence” from The Portal of Initiation followed the lecture.

Rogers Lecture:

MariJo’s lecture directed our attention to the fact that we had entered Easter Week, as it was Palm Sunday. She explained that Easter’s Holy Week marked the heart of the Mystery of Golgotha and the last days that Christ walked the earth in a material, physical body. She continued to explain that today—as Rudolf Steiner’s Spiritual Scientific research has discovered—He walks among us in an etheric body that can be seen with etheric vision. “Christ will reappear,” Steiner states, “because human beings will raise themselves to Him in the etheric.”

Rudolf Steiner not only lectured about seeing the etheric Christ, he dramatized it in The Portal of Initiation, first performed in August 1910. Theodora, a seeress, envisions that one day she and others will see a Form in shining light. The Form tells them that “a drop of spirit vision” is now theirs, that they will begin to see and no longer need believe. “Feel it deeply in your souls,” says the Form, whom we understand to be the Christ.

While such a meeting may occur by grace and by natural development, anthroposophy asks us to understand all that this reappearance involves and signifies and to cultivate etheric

vision. Otherwise, the Christ experience destined for this time may pass humanity by and “injure Earth’s salvation,” as Rudolf Steiner once phrased it.

Theodora’s vision and men’s actual experiences of seeing Christ were foreshadowed by Paul’s Damascus event. Paul had cultivated a form of etheric vision through prolonged esoteric training, which also taught him that when the Messiah came, He would be seen in the atmosphere of the earth, no longer in the Sun realm. Paul not only saw, heard, and knew the Messiah had come, but also realized he was filled with His Impulse, with “Christ in me.”

The more we become accountable to the Christ for our actions, the more we will see how our actions must be karmically balanced in the future. In this way our conscience becomes an organ for perceiving Christ as He works today as Lord of Karma, bringing order again into humanity’s karma by weaving our actions into the evolution of humanity as a whole, so that what we do may benefit all humanity, not just our own progress. Conscience becomes a new faculty of conscious collaboration with Christ in the sphere of karma. The etheric body of Christian Rosenkreutz, which strengthens all work in anthroposophy, enables the development of this new faculty.

After MariJo’s lecture a tasty taco brunch preceded the closing plenum, where a warm conversation about the many offerings and experiences unfolded. Beth Usher had arranged for some serious fun at the close of the plenum. Several folks quickly passed around baskets holding 12 dozen traditional Mexican cascarones, Easter Egg tokens for wishing one another good luck. The eggs are emptied, dyed, filled with confetti and sealed with a bit of colored tissue paper. Everyone commenced gleefully breaking eggs over the heads of their neighbors, raining confetti with peals of laughter. It was a joyous ending to an unforgettable weekend.

Endnotes

1. The summaries of the presentations by Dr. Booth, Judith Brockway, and MariJo Rogers were written by the presenters and slightly edited for integration into this report.

2. Nov. 18,19,and 25, 1917, Reappearance of Christ in the Etheric

3. Nov. 1 and 2, 1919, Lucifer and Ahriman by Rudolf Steiner, Rudolf Steiner Press; Lecture by Hans Peter von Manen, March 3,1966, Das Goetheanum, Mercury Press.

4. March 5, 1910, Reappearance of Christ in the Etheric, Anthroposophic Press.

5. September 16, 1924, Book of Revelation, Rudolf Steiner Press.

6. November 1917, Geographic Medicine, Mercury Press.

7. Nov. 18 and 19, 1917, Reappearance of Christ in the Etheric, Anthroposophic Press.

8. May 2, 1913, Occult Science and Occult Development, Christ at the Time of the Mystery of Golgotha and Christ in the Twentieth Century Approaching the Mystery of Golgotha, Rudolf Steiner Press.

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid.

11. The Coloured Window Motifs at the Goetheanum, Michaela Glöckler.

MariJo

“Seeing Christ in the Etheric: The Roles of Conscience and the Etheric Body of Christian Rosenkreutz.”

MariJo Rogers, General Secretary, Anthroposophical Society in America

The Reappearance of Christ in the Etheric & the Re-emergence of Human Awareness of the Etheric World

Lecture given March 26, 2010, at the Austin Reappearance Conference by Stephen E. Usher, Ph.D.

Introduction

We are celebrating the 100th anniversary of Rudolf Steiner’s announcement of Christ’s imminent Second Coming or Reappearance in the etheric world. The first time Rudolf Steiner made this announcement was on January 12, 1910 in Stockholm, Sweden during a lecture cycle on the John Gospel. Unfortunately no transcript of that lecture exists, though there is a one-page note about the announcement in Marie Steiner’s handwriting.

His next lecture on the Reappearance took place January 25, 1910 in Karlsruhe, Germany and a transcript of that lecture exists, which was published under the title “The Event of the Appearance of Christ in the Etheric World.” From Karlsruhe he continued to other German and Italian cities, lecturing on the theme until May of 1910. In all, he delivered 17 lectures in 13 cities during this period. He returned to the theme on many occasions during the rest of his life; and a number of the important lectures have been published under the English title The Reappearance of Christ in the Etheric 1

In August of 1910 the first performance of Steiner’s first Mystery Drama was produced in Munich. The drama includes the proclamation of the Reappearance by the seeress, Theodora.2

Steiner’s Announcement In a Nut Shell

What exactly did Rudolf Steiner announce in 1910? He stated that commencing in the 1930’s, human beings—ordinary human beings who had not undergone an esoteric training—would start to have delicate experiences of the etheric world. He pointed to these experiences:

A person might have a vision and discover that what he saw would come true in a few days; in other words, a pre-vision of events to come.

A person about to enact a deed might have a vision of the karmic consequences that would flow from the deed; thus a kind of second chance would be offered to those about to do something with undesirable karmic consequences. Additionally, a person might have a vision of the karmic consequences of a deed just enacted.

A person might see a very delicate etheric aura around other people, animals, or plants.

And, finally, a person might experience the Christ in the form of an etheric angel, an angel who in the moment of the experience would appear to be a physical human being.

A person having the experience of the Etheric Christ would be in difficulties of some kind. He might be very depressed and not know how to manage. Suddenly, a person will be beside him and speak a few words. These will have the effect of completely changing his perspective. His soul disposition will lift and he will see how to go forward with life. Then the stranger will disappear and the person will realize that this could not have been an ordinary human being. In a lecture of 1911 titled “The Etherization of the Blood”3 Rudolf Steiner described this experience in these words:

“[H]e may become aware that suddenly someone has come near to help him, to make him alert to this or that. The truth is that Christ has come to him, although he believes that what he sees is a physical man. He will come to realize, however, that this is a supersensible being, because it immediately vanishes. Many a human being will have this experience when sitting silently in his room, heavy-hearted and oppressed, not knowing which way to turn. The door will open, and the etheric Christ will appear and speak words of consolation to him. The Christ will become a living comforter to men. However strange it may as yet seem, it is true nevertheless that many a time when people, even in considerable numbers, are sitting together not knowing what to do and waiting, they will see the etheric Christ. He Himself will be there, will confer with them, will cast His word into such gatherings.”

Rudolf Steiner explained that the Etheric Christ has the only etheric body that can appear as a physical body. Moreover, He can appear simultaneously to 10, 100, 1000 people all around the globe. “[Christ has] the only etheric body able to work in the physical world as a human physical body works. It will differ from a physical body in this respect only, that it can be in two, three, even a hundred, a thousand places at the same time.”4

In the 1910 lectures Rudolf Steiner stated that the Reappearance would start during the years from 1930 to 1940 and that

Notes of Marie von Sievers (later Marie Steiner) of the Stockholm lecture.

it would be particularly notable in the years 1933, 1935, and 1937. From a small number of occurrences in the beginning, the experience would come to ever more people over the course of the next 2500 to 3000 years.

It is important to note that Christ came only once in a physical body and will never again appear in that form.

The Evidence 100 Years After Steiner’s Announcement

As 100 years have passed since Steiner’s pronouncement, we may well ask if there is evidence that people have encountered the Etheric Christ in the manner predicted. As a matter of fact there are numerous accounts. When I have lectured about the Reappearance over the last few years, it is not uncommon for a member of the audience to tell of an experience of the Etheric Christ, either his own or that of some acquaintance. During the late 1970s two Swedish Researchers posted ads in newspapers, asking for people who had experienced the Christ, to write the experience down and send it to them. They published their findings, which unfortunately have never been translated into English.5

A caveat in interpreting peoples’ accounts is in order. Some people tell, for example, how they met Christ in a dream or perhaps in a daytime vision. Such accounts are not consistent with Steiner’s prediction for he says, specifically, that in the moment of an awake encounter, the person will believe he is meeting a physical human being. But then, by the way the being departs, he realizes it could not have been an ordinary physical person.

One of the most remarkable accounts I have come across6 is from a Danish author, Hans Heltoft, who wrote about his experiences in a Gestapo prison during the 2nd World War in the Copenhagen newspaper Morgenbladed

“In a musty cellar are five hundred prisoners of all nationalities busy plaiting mats. An overseer came in and for some groundless reason cudgeled a Russian to death and went on beating the lifeless bloody heap. Every blow was felt on our own bodies by we prisoners … ‘It is enough’, cried a Polish prisoner, beside himself. ‘It is enough’, we all repeated in a hollow voice. …’ In that same moment Jesus entered the cellar. I do not belong to the church and have never seen Jesus before. And still I knew him and noticed also that the others recognized Him… His whole impression simply went beyond our usual world of understanding. The one thing that is clear to me today, is that this Jesus was something that I cannot describe and yet at the same time was an ordinary man. And, in spite of standing outside the church, I must say: ‘It was the very greatest thing that we had experienced and indeed could experience.’ And now the following happened simultaneously with the entrance of Jesus: The musty cellar-space was quite transformed…above the cellar there settled a color with shades of bright red and blue which spread out to a sphere which gave one the feeling of peace…the space to the ceiling seemed to me to be so large that a complete barn could have been built inside…Jesus did not look at us…he gazed only at the battered man at his feet. His countenance rayed out a love that cannot be expressed in words…He bent over the Russian and gently kissed his bleeding, swollen cheeks. The man that we held for dead opened one eye; the other was stuck together with blood. When he saw Jesus his maltreated countenance lit up in childish joy. With a

great effort he stretched out one hand towards Jesus, who took it in both his hands while he bent forward a little. It was so indescribably beautiful that we others stood there involuntarily with a quiet smile—the warden too. The Russian collapsed and the unspeakably beautiful expression over the whole abused figure vanished. Jesus softly laid the hand of the Russian back again on the body and went out of the cellar. Forthwith everything was as before.”

A Refresher On Steiner’s Spiritual Scientific Investigation of the Mystery of Golgotha

This refresher must be brief and incomplete.7 Probably the most important point to understand is what actually occurred at the Baptism. Just prior to the Baptism the Ego of the great initiate, who had lived as Jesus of Nazareth and who had perfected the body as a vessel, left the body of Jesus. This happened during a conversation with his mother during which his ego left on the stream of his breath. The initiate’s last deed was to give the body—consisting of physical body, etheric body and astral body—an impulse to walk to the river Jordan where John was baptizing. When John baptized Jesus there resounded from the heavens these words: “This is my beloved Son. This day have I begotten Him.” According to Rudolf Steiner this is the correct translation of the Greek words usually rendered “This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased.”

When I first read Steiner’s explanation about 37 years ago, I was a student at the University of Michigan and I wanted corroboration. My search at the enormous graduate library turned up an edition of the New Testament that contained a footnote stating the passage could be rendered “This day have I begotten Him.” So Steiner’s interpretation was supported by at least one biblical scholar!

According to Steiner, the significance of the Baptism is this: the great Solar God, the Logos of the Sun, or Christ took possession of the body and lived in it for 3½ years. This body had been prepared by 6 times 7 generations of Hebrews who followed elaborate dietary laws and migrated according to star patterns guided by the great spirit, Jehovah, in order to perfect a blood strong enough to withstand the presence of a macrocosmic god. The founder of the ancient Persian civilization, the original Zarathustra, already knew of this God around 6,000 BC and named him the Ahura Mazdao or the Great Aura. While the ellipsoidal, microcosmic aura of a human being is about twice as high and four times as wide as the physical body, the aura of Ahura Mazdao was as great as the outspread light of the sun.

The 3½ years of Christ’s life in a physical body ended with his dying on the cross at Golgotha. According to Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual scientific research, when the blood flowed from the wounds of Christ and permeated the earth, the entire earth aura changed.

Death means that the etheric body, the carrier of life, which makes organic and biochemistry possible, separates from the physical body and the latter begins to follow the laws of inorganic chemistry and rigor mortis and decay set in. By Easter Sunday two things had happened. First, the earth inside the tomb opened and the physical body of Christ was received into the depths of the earth. Steiner’s spiritual scientific research reveals that the earth not only opened to receive the body but it shook in such a way as to neatly fold the burial garment. He tells

that this movement of the earth represented a rare manifestation of the working of the Father God. Second, Christ reassembled an etheric body that was specially densified and rose from the dead. When Doubting Thomas touched the wound of Christ, he actually felt the densifed etheric. Rudolf Steiner explained this by observing that to heal a wound the etheric body puckers around it. Because the etheric body had densified, Thomas was able to feel the etheric puckering that had formed around the lance wound in the side of Christ.8

At the Ascension, Christ lifted into the clouds and into the earthly atmosphere where he has dwelt ever since in the etheric form of an Angel. He appeared in this etheric form to Paul at Damascus. And, indeed, Paul’s experience was a precursor of the experience human beings can have in our time, the experience of Christ in the etheric that is also known as the Second Coming of Christ.

The Second Coming, which commenced during the 1930s and continues until about 5000 AD, can be described as the awakening of humanity to the Etheric World at the hand of Christ in His Etheric Form.

This means transforming our understanding of the earth itself. The generally accepted view of our planet is that of materialistic geology and astronomy. The earth is thought to be a dead body with an iron core around which rotates a molten mass. Above the molten mass are the earth’s crust and the earth’s surface upon which human, animal, and plant life run their course. The rotation of the molten mass around the iron core generates an electric field about the earth. According to accepted materialistic theory the earth originated from accretion from the solar nebula about 4.54 billion years ago. This accepted picture concerns activities in dead matter.

Rudolf Steiner argues the materialistic picture of the earth’s origin is not correct. In the lecture “Buddhism and Pauline Christianity”9 he claims that a new understanding of the origin will arise that contemplates not dead material and the point centered forces known to physics, but rather the plant world and etheric forces that are not point centered but work in planes.10 The new understanding will arrive at a picture of a primordial etheric earth composed only of plants with pure etheric forms, i.e. non-material. Slowly, these etheric plants condensed to warmth and then to air forms. They directed their roots to the earth’s center and their leaves and blossoms toward the sun. Further condensation led to increasingly dense conditions of materiality, that is liquid and finally solid forms. This, according to Steiner, will become recognized science in the future. The plants, he explains, preceded minerals just as coal was once plant life. The plants give the earth its form and they give off the substance from which minerals originate. When man is able to receive the growth forces of the plant kingdom, he will be released from the forces that now hinder him from beholding the Christ.

Three Paths to Etheric Experience: The Old Atavistic Clairvoyance, The New Natural Clairvoyance, and Modern Imaginative Consciousness

In the 1910 lectures on the Reappearance of Christ in the Etheric, Steiner explained that ordinary people will begin to experience higher sight. They will begin to have perceptions of the

etheric world and will meet the Etheric Christ. This becomes possible because these people attain what Rudolf Steiner calls the “New Natural Clairvoyance.”

This clairvoyance arises of itself in the course of human evolution. Many of the 1910 lectures sketch a long horizon of human development, describing four periods or ages: the Golden Age, the Silver Age, the Bronze Age, and the Dark Age or Kali Yuga. During the Golden and Silver ages mankind was endowed with the old atavistic clairvoyance where, in a kind of enhanced dream awareness, men could look into the spiritual world. But for this old clairvoyance to function it was necessary that people have only a dull consciousness of self. With their limited self-awareness people could dream in a kind of ecstasy of spiritual realities and spiritual beings. The old atavistic consciousness diminished in the Bronze Age and slowly came to an end for most human beings around the middle of the Kali Yuga, which lasted some 5000 years.

The receding atavistic clairvoyance coincided with a gradual shrinking of the etheric body, particularly around the head. In the early ages—Golden and Silver—the etheric head extended way beyond the physical head and this made it possible for the etheric head to be in deep connection with the etheric environment.11 As time progressed the etheric head shrank and reached the point where it coincided with the outline of the physical head, whereupon the old atavism was lost and the possibility of developing wide-awake self-consciousness came about.

The last two thousand years of human history have revolved around acquiring and stabilizing a strong sense of self in the security of the sense world. But the Kali Yuga ended in 1899 and a new Age of Light has begun. This means that the etheric body is beginning to loosen again. The loosening will be a gradual process manifesting, at first, in a small number of people. Then, over the course of time, it will become reality for many. Some of those who experience this loosening will awaken to the etheric world through the New Natural Clairvoyance and will be able to experience those phenomena, enumerated above12 that are associated with the Second Coming.

But modern people do not have to wait for the natural loosening. It is possible to take one’s spiritual development in hand by practicing certain exercises of soul and spirit. These exercises are organized according to the laws that govern the germinal potential for higher sight that lies in every human being.13 Practicing these exercises rigorously can lead to a much more comprehensive unfolding of supersensible perception than that of the New Natural Clairvoyance. It should be noted, however, that the speed of such self-engendered development is dependent on a person’s individual karma.14

Rudolf Steiner explains these exercises in many books and lectures.15 The exercises lead to enhancing consciousness to states above that normal to human beings of our time, the consciousness of the senses and the intellect bound to the senses. The enhanced consciousness that arises from systematic practice enables the awakened seer to perceive the etheric world and the etheric body of living entities and much more. Rudolf Steiner designates the first enhancement “Imaginative” consciousness, and he defines what he means by this quite precisely in a number of his works. In particular, he asks his readers not to confuse the term with the normal dictionary meaning of the word. In the same spirit he speaks of a second and third en -

hancement of consciousness. Above “Imaginative” is “Inspired” consciousness and above that is “Intuitive” consciousness. To fully behold the etheric world and etheric body requires the first two enhancements.

A shorthand way to think of Imaginative consciousness— which is obviously an oversimplification—is as follows. It is possible for most people to visualize pictures in their minds, e.g. geometric figures, images, sounds, smells, textures, etc. Creating a clear visualization takes strenuous mental effort. Suppose now that a person exerts all his effort to create a mantric image. Next try to conceive that the image, once placed clearly before the mind’s eye, begins to be shaped by a force coming from behind the image. It is as if another being begins to take hold of the image and remold it. As this happens the person suddenly merges onto the two-dimensional plane of the image that has taken on a life of its own. He is then experiencing the Imaginative enhancement of consciousness.

The Etheric World is Manifest in the Plants

With this enhanced consciousness a person can begin to experience the etheric world. But even before achieving this state it is possible to form concepts of the etheric world by observing its manifestations in the world of the senses. Rudolf Steiner directs us to the world of plants, which he says manifest the etheric world in the physical world:

“[T]he physical becomes visible for us in the mineral world. In the world of the plants the physical has already become invisible, for what we see is really the etheric made visible through the agency of the physical. We would not, of course, see the plants with our ordinary eyes if the invisible etheric body did not carry within it little granules (an overly simplified and crude expression, to be sure) of physical matter. Through the physical the etheric form becomes visible to us; but this etheric form is what we are really seeing. The physical is, so to speak, only the means whereby we see the etheric.”16

In the plant we see the rhythmic character of the etheric world as the plant goes through its cycle of contractions (e.g. seed) and expansions (e.g. leaf) as described by Goethe in his poem The Metamorphosis of Plants. We also see the relation of the etheric to the Sun as the plant lives and unfolds in the sunlight.

The time property of the etheric also manifests in the plant. As an example of this time relationship consider the simple philodendron plant. Each successive leaf grows from the stem of the one before. First, there appears a slight thickening along the stem with a little point close to where the leaf grows out of the stem. This thickening of the stem then breaks loose from the stem and looks like a very delicate green spear. The spear then begins to unfold into a tender leaf. This new leaf’s stem grows longer so the new leaf extends beyond the one out of which it grew. Then a new thickening appears on its stem. If we think—illustrative purposes—of the new leaf as the present moment then its whole history, its past, can be seen behind it. So we can think of the plant as showing time spread out in space. It is interesting to contemplate how long that process of unfolding leaves stretches back in time!

The Processes of Water Also Manifest the Etheric World

The etheric world also manifests is activity in all the watery, liquid conditions of the sense world. “The Etheric” says Rudolf Steiner “is at work in the aqueous processes of earth. All in the mighty drop of water earth—in the sea, in the rivers, the rising mists, falling drops, cloud formations- in all this, etheric currents are working. Here weaving ether is revealed in pictures to strengthened consciousness. Everywhere behind this weaving water the cosmic imagination is weaving.”17

It is in the nature of the etheric to shape itself into a drop and, as Rudolf Steiner states above, the oceans of the earth resemble a “mighty drop.” The drop, both in the tiny sphere of rain and the mighty ocean, are images of the etheric world itself. The human etheric body, if it were free to follow its own tendency, would have a drop shape too, but the forces inherent in the physical body constrain the human etheric body to resemble the physical body. When death severs the bond between physical and etheric bodies the etheric expands into the cosmos in an ever-growing drop shape.

The ocean rhythms and mists also help us approach the idea of the etheric world. Spending a few days—with sensitivity of soul - within hearing of an ocean; listening to the relentless rhythm of the waves and tide; being regularly enveloped by sea mist; through all this the soul can slip into the sea mystery

Bust of Ahriman bust by Robert Miller of the Austin Waldorf School, for the first scene of Portal of Initiation.

of the etheric. Ocean vastness and depth begin to whisper the language of the world etheric ocean.

In ancient Finland, in the time of the Finnish epic, the Kalevala, man still possessed the old atavistic clairvoyance. Three gulfs of the sea encroached on the Finnish land: the Gulf of Riga, the Gulf of Finland, and the Gulf of Bothnia. The great dragon of the sea sent his host of elemental beings through these gulfs and over the Fins like a great sea mist. The old Fins leaned through their atavistic clairvoyance of this dragon and learned, thereby, the ancient wisdom:

“The sea here makes inroads into the land and forms the Gulfs of Bothnia, Finland and Riga. But if we want to see through to the spiritual counterpart of the physical appearance, we have to take together what can be seen when we make as it were a transverse section of Nature. Down below is a great mass of water; up above is air. Man breathes the air; and that world of sea below is a great and might being that is only differently formed from what we are accustomed to—a mighty being spreading itself out over that entire region. With this being the men of an earlier time had a particular and quite special connection. We talk of Folk-spirits; but Folk-spirits have as instruments for their work the elemental beings that manifest in countless ways. They are organized like an army, for the purpose of working right into the etheric body, that by forming the ether body they may so form man in his physical body that this physical body may become a fitting instrument for his special mission on Earth. … [I]f we want to understand what is there in reality, let us return to the sea-dragon that is a kind of inspirer of European humanity—pushing his way over from the Atlantic Ocean to be the inspirer of European humanity. In this dragon is contained, when we survey the totality of his elemental beings, everything that is spiritual in European humanity. If we were able to understand him fully, this dragon, we would be able to give ourselves up entirely to him, and would then all be clairvoyant.”18

Rudolf Steiner proceeds to clarify that it is not the task of modern humanity to return to the old atavistic clairvoyance. Rather the task was first to develop a firm self-awareness in the sense world and second, in our time, to reawaken to the etheric world through the New Natural Clairvoyance or Imaginative Consciousness while retaining modern ego consciousness.

To achieve modern self awareness, the atavistic clairvoyance had to pass away in the course of time as explained above. This separated man from knowledge of the etheric world or world of life. It confined him to the world of dead and shattered forms, but it gave him the possibility to become a self-conscious being, i.e. a being that can “know that he knows” in the sense this thought is developed in Steiner’s Philosophy of Spiritual Activity In the old consciousness man dreamed; dreamed of the ancient dragon and his wisdom in the rhythmic movements of the etheric world. Though he saw and grasped much in that ancient time he was not self-aware. He bought self-awareness at the cost of his awareness of the life world, the cosmic etheric ocean in which he is still embedded unconsciously.

The new task of mankind is to reawaken to the etheric world through the development of a modern clairvoyance, Imaginative consciousness that can operate simultaneously with wideawake self-awareness.

Etheric Manifestations in the Human Organism

The working of the etheric body of a human being manifests in a number of ways in the sense world if we understand what we perceive. One manifestation is in sweat and secretions. Every secretion indicates the workings of the etheric body. Note that as in outer nature these manifestations are in the watery or liquid element. Even more striking is Rudolf Steiner’s observation that the feeling life of the soul rides on secretions, i.e. secretions are the physiological basis of feelings. So the feeling life of the soul has as its basis etheric activities that manifest in secretions. This idea, of course, goes against accepted notions that feelings—and all other aspects of soul life—are based on the nerves.

Steiner also connects the feeling life with the blood circulation and the heart, which is a fluid system that he sees as a manifestation of etheric activity in the body.

Here is a passage where Steiner relates bodily secretions to activity of the etheric body and the life of feeling:

“It can become visible when a person sweats—when a person sweats the etheric body becomes visible [manifests] outwardly…Generally speaking, then, there is very little external expression of the etheric. Inwardly, on the other hand, it is experienced all the more, namely in feeling. The whole life of feeling, inwardly experienced, is what is living in the etheric body when this body is active from within, so that one experiences it from within. The life of feeling is always accompanied by inner secretions. To [clairvoyant] observation of the etheric body in the human being it appears that the liver, for instance, sweats, that the stomach sweats—that every organ sweats and secretes. The etheric life of the human being lives in secretions. The whole life of feeling, inwardly experienced is what is living in the etheric body when the ether body is active within us. The life of feeling always is accompanied by inner secretions. For the seer: the liver sweats, the stomach sweats, every organ sweats and secretes. The etheric life of human beings lives in process of secretion. Around the heart, around the liver there is a cloud of sweat, all is enveloped in mist and cloud.” 19

In this next passage Steiner indicates that the heart and circulation are an image of the etheric body:

“What really do the blood circulation and the heart mean to us? They are the etheric world condensed; they are the densified forces of the etheric world!”20

He goes on to make the remarkable observation that the heart with the blood circulation have densified or entered material form as far as necessary for human evolution, and that they have already begun to dematerialize back into an etheric condition, a topic we shall discuss further.

Imaginative Perception of the Etheric World

Rudolf Steiner’s collected works—over 360 volumes—are filled with descriptions of his experiences in Imaginative and higher states of consciousness. In particular, he gives many pictures of the etheric world. He explains that all living things— plants, animals, and human beings—have an etheric body in addition to their physical body. In his basic writings Rudolf Steiner describes the etheric body of the human being as resembling the physical body, particularly above the waist. Below, the etheric body merges with the etheric body of the earth. To each

physical organ there corresponds an etheric organ. These etheric organs have characteristic forms but at the same time are fluid and shape shifting. The physical organs can be pictured as condensations out of the etheric ones, like ice out of water. From certain perspectives of enhanced consciousness, the etheric body appears to have a color resembling young peach blossoms, though Steiner emphasizes that the actual imaginative color is not to be found in the sense world. The etheric body is composed of the four types of ether—warmth ether, light ether, chemical or tone ether, and life ether. On all sides the etheric body is linked to the surrounding etheric world and there is a continuous exchange of currents and forces with this surrounding environment.

He speaks of “[O]ne’s own etheric organism grow[ing] together … with the etheric cosmos …the confluence of his etheric nature with etheric weaving and pulsing of the cosmos...”21 Then we feel our connection with cosmic space, with the planets and the stars, just as from the consciousness of our physical body we feel ourselves connected with quartz crystals, cabbages, and rabbits. When a clairvoyant learns to live in her etheric body she leaves the realm of gravity and enters the forces of lightness or levity,22 whose activity can be observed, for example, in the force that allows the sap to rise in trees. Levity forces are, of course, not recognized by modern physics, but then again modern physics has no explanation of how a large, heavy volume of sap ascends hundreds of feet in a great tree every spring.

Steiner depicts being in the etheric world in these words:

“With imagination he lives in the etheric world. He feels himself as alive in the etheric world as otherwise he has felt in his physical body. But he feels the etheric world more as a sum of rhythmic processes, a vibrating in the world ether, which, however he is certainly in a position to interpret in ideas and concepts. Man senses events of a universal nature in the etheric-imaginative experience; he feels supersensible, etheric phenomena. In inspiration he feels not only such supersensible, etheric facts merging into each other, metamorphosing and taking on all manner of possible forms, but now, through inspiration, he senses how in this etheric, billowing world, in this rhythmically undulating world, as if on waves of an etheric word-ocean, real beings are weaving and working. In this way one feels something reminiscent of the sun, moon, planets and the fixed stars, and also of things on the physical earth, for example, the minerals and plants, and all this is bathed in the cosmic ether. …While here in the physical sense world we perceive only the exterior of everything, there we recognize it in its essential, spiritual existence. We also attain a view of the inner nature of the human organism, as well as the form of the separate organs, lungs, heart, liver and so on. For we see now that everything that gives form and life to the human organism originates not only in what surrounds us and is active in the physical cosmos, but also proceeds from the spiritual beings within this physical cosmos.”23

From another perspective, looking into the etheric world gives this impression:

“And what would we sense if, just as we look out into the physical world with our physical body, we look into the etheric world though the etheric body? What would we behold then? We would see the past of all things spread out before our physical eyes—the actual past, from which this physical world arose.

We would see, in the spirit, the images of what was—of what made the present possible.”24

This next description portrays in a wondrous manner the etheric body with its light, tone, and life ethers:

“[T]he etheric body is woven of light and sound and life and partakes not only of life on the earth but of the life of the cosmos. The etheric body glows through the physical body. The etheric body breathes light and it gives it out. And when it gives light out and confers the light on us we live by means of the light. It breathes in light. When it breathes light in, it uses the light up and changes it to darkness, and then can receive sound into this darkness, the sounds of the worlds that live in the harmony of the spheres, and can receive it into the impulses of life. As we receive physical nourishment so does the etheric body breath light in and out. As we use up oxygen and make CO2, so the etheric body uses up light, shooting it through with darkness, so it appears in color. So the etheric body shows itself to clairvoyance as waves of color. And whilst the etheric body prepares the light for darkness and thereby carries on the inner work of breathing, it lives in that it receives the sound of the worlds and changes the sound into life of worlds.”25

It is worth noting that this passage is given dramatic portrayal in the seventh scene of Rudolf Steiner’s first Mystery Drama, The Portal of Initiation. The scene takes place in the Spirit World and the three soul forces - Philia, Astrid, and Luna- describe light, tone and life ether in beautiful poetic language.

As we are beginning to see, the Etheric world and etheric body of the human being are complex and multidimensional, and can be viewed from many perspectives. At first these perspectives can be confusing. For example, at times Rudolf Steiner describes the etheric body as if it were in space. On other occasions, he states that it actually is a “time body” extending back in time to the point when it was formed prior to birth. Earlier we illustrated this fact with a sense perceptible philodendron plant. But the sense perceptible plant form is not actually a time body because the growing point at the end of the youngest leaf is really not “the present moment” of the plant; the whole plant is in the present moment in each moment. But from certain clairvoyant perspectives the etheric body really does show its whole past, and time really does spread out before such beholding as space. To spiritual perception one’s own etheric body presents its entire growth history. Simultaneously, the seer beholds the period of embryological development, the changing teeth, and puberty with all its adolescent trials etc. If through a shock, the etheric body is momentarily separated from the physical body and the person retains consciousness, then he will see his entire life pass before him as a great tableau. There are many reports of seeing this tableau from people who came close to dying.

The Development of the Human Etheric Body From Its Formation Until the Onset of Adolescence26: The Formation of the Etheric Heart

To clairvoyant vision the etheric body of a small child looks like an image of the universe.

“It is a universe in the form of an image. In its circumference it has something like stars, and in its lower part something reveals itself that is more or less an image of the earth. It even

contains a kind of image of the sun and moon. It is extraordinarily significant that we, in our descent into earthly life, draw together forces from the universal ether and thus take with us, in our ether body, a kind of image of the cosmos. If one could extract the ether body of man, at the moment when he is uniting himself with the physical body, we should have a sphere which is far more beautiful than any formed by mechanical means- a sphere containing stars, zodiac, sun and moon.”

These configurations are already there in embryological development. During early childhood they fade a little but remain to the 7th year. With the change of teeth the stars begin sending out rays—having previously been more star like. Between 7-14 these rays shine into a center situated at the physical heart. The star rays actually build up a center around the physical heart. As the center takes form the stars become pale and what has come together into a ball-like formation around the heart becomes vivid and alive. The physical heart is suspended with its blood vessels in the center of this etheric structure.

The stars draw inward and disappear; the etheric body itself remains but is less differentiated at the periphery. At about puberty the ball like etheric structure becomes the child’s own etheric heart. Before that he had a provisional etheric heart from heredity. Now he has his own etheric heart. This whole process can be compared to what happens physically when the childhood teeth are replaced with the new teeth.

Spiritually it is a very significant development because the etheric heart is the organ of destiny.

Etheric Streams From Heart to Head: the Etherization of the Blood. 27

As blood passes through the heart some of it is transmuted to etheric blood. This blood is said to be etherized. An Anthroposophical medical doctor once stated that the blood in the heart moves in a kind of vortex and at the top of the vortex the etherization takes place.28 This etherized blood then streams from the heart to the head.

This streaming etheric current plays an extremely significant role. It makes it possible for human beings to think about things that do not concern them directly.

“Unless these streams of ether were to flow continuously from the heart towards the head, however much we tried to think about the world and to know about it, we should be quite unable to make use of our brain as the instrument for thought. As an instrument for knowledge the brain would be completely useless if it were only to function as physical brain. We have to resort to occultism to learn how the brain would work today if it were left to itself. The human being would only be able to think thoughts connected with the inner needs of his body. For example, he would be able to think, “Now I am hungry, now I am thirsty, now I will satisfy this or that instinct.” If he were entirely dependent upon his physical brain man would only be able to think thoughts connected with his own bodily needs, he would be the perfect egotist.”29

These currents are indirectly related to the pineal gland. “They continually lave the pineal gland, which becomes luminous, and its movements as physical brain organ respond in harmony with these etheric currents emanating from the heart.”30 By way of the pineal gland the etherized blood reacts upon the brain. This enables the brain to know something about

the outside world beyond egotistical concerns.

In “Etherization of the Blood”31, Rudolf Steiner poses the question: Does there exist a macrocosmic counterpart to the microcosmic etherization of the blood in the human heart?

To answer this question he points to the Mystery of Golgotha and tells how the blood that flowed from the wounds of Christ entered the earth and etherized in the course of time. This is the macrocosmic parallel. “This blood must not be regarded simply as chemical substance, but by reason of all that has been described as the nature of Jesus of Nazareth, it must be recognized as something altogether unique. When it flowed from His wounds and into the earth, a substance was imparted to our earth which, in uniting with it, constituted an event of the greatest possible significance for all future ages of the earth…” This special blood etherized and exists in homeopathic dilution in the etheric body of the earth. It is possible for the etherized blood of Christ to unite with the etheric stream in the human body that runs from heart to his head. For this to happen the individual must “unfold a true understanding of what is contained in the Christ Impulse.”

In “Etherization of the Blood” it is stated that through slowly assimilating the content of spiritual science the stream flowing from heart to brain will be fired and this will enable people to understand the Second Coming, which is occurring in our time. Apparently, this union of the Christ etheric blood stream with the human etheric blood stream enhances our capacity to grasp what is not an immediate egotistical concern so that human understanding can advance from natural science to the spiritual science of the etheric world. “[I]n our present age it is important that man should learn to understand that the knowledge contained in spiritual science must be received and gradually be able so to fire the streams flowing from heart to brain that anthroposophy can be understood. If this comes to pass, individuals will be able to comprehend the event that has its beginning in the twentieth century; the appearance of the etheric Christ…” Note here the issue is not experiencing Christ in the etheric, but of comprehending that this stupendous event is occurring.

The Formation of Memory and Etheric Currents: The Light Ether Prayer of Risen Christ

The etheric current flowing from heart to the head is not only connected with the capacity for unselfish thinking about the world, but also with the faculty of memory. Memory formation also makes use of a second etheric current that arises not from the heart but from the lower part of the breast, the lymph vessels and other organs. This current collects around the pituitary gland. The working of the two currents makes memory possible.32 This comes about from a tremendous etheric tension arising between the pineal gland and the pituitary gland, a tension that arises as a result of the forces in the two currents. Steiner compares the tension to that of opposing electric fields. This tension imprints the memory picture into the etheric body. Speaking in the sense of Steiner’s Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, the thinking activity links a concept with a percept resulting in a mental picture, e.g. I see a black and white animal grazing in the field and link the sense percept with the concept “grazing Holstein cow.” The tension between the two currents imprints the memory picture into the etheric body.

Light Ether, one of the four ethers, plays a special role in the process of memory creation. 33 Memories are carried in a person’s light ether body, i.e. in the light ether component of the etheric body, which Steiner designates the Light Body. The tension that arises between the two glands apparently impresses a unique movement into Light Body, a unique movement or dance for each mental picture. To remember means that the Light Body re-dances the unique dance.

Rudolf Steiner explains that the Risen Christ—prior to the Ascension—taught this mystery of the Light Body to his intimate disciples and told them that they needed to awake to awareness in their etheric body while outside the physical body and from there behold their own Light Body. But Satan or Ahriman works against the possibility of such etheric vision by darkening our consciousness when we step out of our physical body. Rudolf Steiner points to a passage in the Pistis Sophia —one of the few Gnostic texts that survived destruction—where the Risen Christ teaches the disciples a prayer to help them achieve this state of awareness:

“Oh, you powers in the Spiritual World, let me step into the light world and behold in the Light my own Light Body. And let not Ahriman’s power over me be so great that I am unable to behold what takes place in my own Body of Light.”

Conclusion: Christ Sees Us

We have completed a journey through some of Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual scientific research concerning the Reappearance of Christ in the Etheric and the re-awakening of humanity to the world of life, the etheric world. No doubt forming a connection with these complicated thoughts is challenging. But they will lead us to a deeper understanding of the Christ who is aware of every single human soul at all times. To conclude let us contemplate this mantra:

“Christ knows us. To a soul that sees our Spiritual Science in the true light, to a heart that feels it in its true significance, I can impart no more esoteric saying: The Christ Is Seeing Us.”34

Stephen Usher holds a PhD in economics from the University of Michigan. His professional experience includes serving as a staff economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and a number of years as a financial and economic consultant with a leading firm of consulting economists. Steve also spent eight years as Managing Director of the Anthroposophic Press as well as serving on the Board of the Threefold Educational Foundation. He and his wife Beth, a wellknown eurythmist, live in Austin, Texas, where they are both active in the Novalis Branch of the Anthroposophical Society.

Endnotes

1. Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophic Press, Spring Valley, New York, 1983.

2. The term “Mystery Drama” refers to the “mysteries” that were places of initiation in the ancient world. Steiner wrote four mystery dramas. The first, The Portal of Initiation, was written and performed in 1910. Three more plays followed in 1911, 1912, and 1913 and each was premiered during an August conference in Munich. The plays depict the lives of a group of students of esoteric knowledge.

3. Included in Reappearance of Christ in the Etheric. (See note 1)

4. From “Etherization of the Blood,” contained in Reappearance of Christ in the Etheric

5. The German translation was published under the title Sie Erlebten Christus by Gunnar Hillerdal and Berndt Gustafsson, Pforte Verlag, 2002.

6. Available in English in Rudolf Steiner’s Millennium Prophecies by Heinz Herbert Schoeffler, MD, Goulden Books, The Chapel, Treligga,Delabole,

Cornwall PL33 9EE, England.

7. For a full picture of Rudolf Steiner’s discovers regarding the life of Christ see his lectures on each of the Gospels (one volume per gospel) and The Fifth Gospel

8. To add to the complexity it should be noted that Christ rose from the dead in His densified etheric body and also in what Rudolf Steiner calls the phantom. This is the form principle of the physical body that had been damaged by the Fall of Man that resulted from interference in Earth evolution by Luciferic beings. One of the great deeds of Christ during his 3½ years in a physical body was to overcome the corruption and re-perfect the human phantom. So Christ rose from the dead in both a densified etheric body and the perfected phantom. See From Jesus to Christ by Rudolf Steiner.

9. In Reappearance of Christ in the Etheric; one of the 1910 lectures.

10. Rudolf Steiner and his students used projective geometry to capture aspects of the workings of etheric forces. See The Plant Between Sun and Earth and The Science of Physical and Etherial Spaces, George Adams, Olive Whicher, Ehrenfried Pfeiffer.

11. The heads of animals still extend way beyond their physical heads. In some lectures Steiner describes the enormous etheric extension of the head of a horse.

12. See section titled “Steiner’s Announcement in a Nut Shell.”

13. See “The Psychological Foundations of Anthroposophy,” (lecture of April 8, 1911) in Esoteric Development, Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophic Press, 1982.

14. Steiner states that cases of the old atavism have lingered on as well, so it takes some discernment to distinguish between old atavistic clairvoyance and the new natural clairvoyance.

15. The primary work on this topic is Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment

16. The Mystery of the Trinity, Rudolf Steiner, July 28, 1914, GA 214.

17. Anthroposophy, an Introduction, GA 234, Feb 1. 1924.

18. Die Zusammenhang des Menschen mit der elementarischen Welt, GA 158, Lecture of November 14, 1914, available in typescript from Rudolf Steiner Library.

19. Mystery of the Trinity, July 18, 1922.

20. Wonders of the World, August 25, 1911.

21. Philosophy, Cosmology, Religion, Sept. 7, 1922.

22. What Is Anthroposophy, July 21, 1923.

23. Philosophy, Cosmology and Religion, lecture of Sept. 8, 1922.

24. What Is Anthroposophy, July 21, 1923.

25. Lecture of Oct. 2, 1916, GA 171. Available as manuscript from the Rudolf Steiner Library.

26. The Human Soul In Relation to World Evolution, May 26, 1922, GA 212

27. “The Etherization of the Blood,” Oct. 1, 1911, in Reappearance of Christ in the Etheric; lecture of August 25, 1911 in Wonders of the World; lecture of March 23, 1911 in Occult Physiology

28. Dr. David Brill in a lecture given in the 1990s in Spring Valley, New York.

29. August 25, 1911, Wonders of the World

30. August 25, 1911, Wonders of the World

31. Oct.1, 1911, Reappearance of Christ in the Etheric.

32. March 23, 1911, Occult Physiology

33. GA 165 lecture of Jan. 2, 1916. Not available in English

34. Lecture of Nov. 1, 1915, GA 254 unavailable in English. The verse is published in Verses and Meditations

Review of Where on Earth is Heaven? cont. from p.6 others, including anthroposophists like Edmunds, John Davy, Owen Barfield, Karl Koenig, James Dyson, and Rudolf Meyer. Mr. Stedall is nothing if not eclectic—he takes his wisdom, purpose, and meaning where he finds them. And after his long journey, he refuses to “fall into the trap of suddenly trying to make everything comprehensible.”

But Mr. Stedall’s journey has not been without order and progress. In his conclusion, he is firm and confident in his dismissal of militant atheists and acolytes of the random such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. He believes that there are no limits to knowledge—one horizon always follows the next. As for the question that engendered the book— “Where on Earth is heaven?”—the answer is clear to him. Heaven is a possibility that can become a reality, not as some “thing in itself” only derivatively knowable, but here on Earth, “amidst all the obstacles through which we learn and grow.”

Where on Earth is Heaven?

Reviewed by Signe Schaefer

Jonathan Stedall’s Where on Earth is Heaven? is a big book—in size and even more in the breadth of its imagination. I hope no one will be put off by its length; for from the opening of its title question, asked many years ago by the author’s young son, the reader is invited on an extraordinary journey through the 20th century and beyond. This is a cultural and spiritual journey, accompanying a man finding himself through following his questions and honoring what he calls the “awakeners” along his way. The details of the author’s life are never the point of his writing; this is more an inner memoir, a record of the legacy he has received from literature, art, psychology, natural science, philosophy, anthroposophy, and most of all from other people. It is the story of a life lived deeply and caringly; and its telling is, in a way, a call to us all.

For me that call felt quite personal, an invitation from a friend to consider with him the searching and the influences, the questions and the gratitudes of a lifetime. I have known Jonathan since the Spring Valley International Youth Conference in 1970, and I had the good fortune to see him often when my family lived in England through most of the 1970’s. His keen intelligence, his warm heart, and his ever-ready wit permeate this rich book.

Throughout his long career as a documentary filmmaker Jonathan had the opportunity to interview many remarkable individualities of our times: the writer Laurens van der Post, poets John Betjeman and Ben Okri, novelist Alexander Solzenhitsyn, physicist Fritjof Capra, and economist E.F. Schumacher to name a few. During his many years with the BBC, he also directed films on Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, and Carl Gustav Jung. Now he brings these people, and many others, into his book, inviting us along on his different projects and introducing us to those he felt privileged to come to know. With deep respect he explores the varieties of thought and creativity that have shaped our modern consciousness. But Jonathan’s wide interest is not limited to the famous and influential. He also shares

stories of the wounded and vulnerable, and of everyday people doing quiet, often unnoticed good work.

Since his youth Jonathan kept a notebook in which he jotted down questions or insights that occurred to him, quotations from his reading or poems that moved him. The book is rich with these mementos of his meandering intellect and heart. At times it feels almost like an anthology of treasured references. Again and again we meet the writers who played a significant role in his inner journey, thinkers like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, C.G. Jung, and Rudolf Steiner. We follow the evolution of his thinking as it is challenged and inspired, as his life experiences evoke ever deeper questions about life and death, and as his searching takes him around the world and also approaches invisible realms.

Rudolf Steiner plays a central role in Jonathan’s quest and in the book. We meet Steiner the man, his teachings, and the results of his spiritual research. In clear and approachable language Jonathan presents complex ideas such as the four-fold human being, reincarnation and karma, life phases, the Christ being, the evolution of consciousness, and Waldorf education, to name only some of the areas he addresses. He has had his arguments with Steiner which he expresses, but also allows to evolve over the years. His quest is ongoing, and his gratitude is enormous. He is deeply motivated by a certainty that people today need to meet real ideas and real pictures of what it means to be a human being. Committed as he is to speaking the language of everyday and avoiding exclusive terminology of any kind, it must also be said that he is an elegant and inspiring writer.

Early in his career Jonathan met the work of the Camphill movement, and the profound effect of his meetings with both co-workers and villagers is movingly invoked in the book. In 1968 his film In Need of Special Care won a British Film Academy Award. This was followed over the years by other films about Camphill and also about Waldorf education. It is exciting news that he is now preparing to film The Challenge of Rudolf Steiner. His experience documenting other great world leaders and his lifelong work with anthroposophy make him singularly qualified to direct this film, and we can await it with great anticipation.

As a closing to this review, I would like to mention that my husband and I read Where on Earth is Heaven? aloud, over the course of many weeks. We looked forward to this part of our evening when we would open that big book and enter into this story of our times. Inevitably our reading would spark rich conversations and reflections about our own lives. If you like to read with others—one or a group—this book is a great choice. It seems somehow appropriate to share it with others, because in a way the book itself is a testament to the importance of relationships and to the enduring reality of what lives between people, even beyond death. It is all about making connections—with others, with ideas, with history and the times we live in, with nature, and with the spirit. Finally, whether one reads it with others or alone, this is a book that will nourish and inspire.

Signe Schaefer was for many years Director of Foundation Studies at Sunbridge College. She founded and continues to direct a part-time program in Biography and Social Art. She has had a life-long interest in questions of human development.

Ronna McEldowney

February 27, 1953—July 8, 2010

Ronna was born in Detroit, the middle child of three daughters. Her parents were Russian Jews. She was part of a very colorful upbringing. Even in her early childhood years Ronna was always dynamic and adventuresome.

I met Ronna in 1976 during the Foundation Year at the Waldorf Teacher Training Institute of Detroit. At 21 or 22, she was the youngest person enrolled in the Teacher Training. I remember being in snow for the first time, having grown up in Southern California. It was freezing, blizzards were happening outside and I was covered head to toe in wool and wearing boots. Ronna came breezing in dressed in colorful embroidered clothes from Guatemala. I loved her immediately. We bonded and formed a lifetime friendship that year.

Ronna completed the kindergarten training and then traveled to Vienna to train and work with Bronja Zhaligen, a renowned master teacher. After a few years she moved to Stuttgart, Germany, to continue with another master teacher, Freya Jaffke. While in Germany she developed a special relationship with Dr. Von Kugelgen who profoundly influenced her teaching. Her desire for excellence led her to two foreign countries where she learned German while working in the kindergarten with the children. Joan Almon shared a wonderful story about the time in Vienna where they met:

Bronja often told a story about Ronna’s first coming to Vienna and helping Bronja harvest apricots at her garden in the Vienna Woods. They then had to carry the large, heavy basket filled with fruit on the streetcar back to Bronja’s apartment at the other end of the city. Ronna took charge of the basket. She had lived in Mexico and was used to carrying things on her head. She hoisted the basket to her head and walked through town to the streetcar quite effortlessly. You can imagine how startled the Viennese were by this sight. Bronja found it delightful.

After her extensive training in Europe, Ronna returned to the warm tropical climate she loved and took a position as a kindergarten teacher at the Honolulu Waldorf School. It was here that she met and married her husband Robert David McEldowney. While teaching in Honolulu, a group of families recruited her to create a new Waldorf school on the island of Kauai. Ronna was first and foremost a person of initiative, a pioneer at heart. She leapt at the chance to begin a new school. Ronna was very happy creating a school from the ground up and these pioneer efforts became her legacy in the Waldorf Movement. Later she founded the Shepherd Valley Waldorf School in Boulder and the Boulder Waldorf Kindergarten.

From Kauai, Ronna returned to California and helped to establish the Cedar Springs Waldorf School with Nancy Poer. Ronna taught summer courses at Rudolf Steiner College and was a member of Gradalis with Bonnie River, Williams Bento, Thom Schaeffer and Prairie Adams. She also taught kindergarten training courses with Dorit Winter. She delighted in teaching kindergarten children during the summers in Maine.

Teachers from all over the world contacted Ronna for mentor-

ing. She traveled to many schools to observe, mentor, evaluate and mediate difficult situations. When teachers from Germany would call for mentoring, she could be heard speaking German with the familiar Austrian accent—we joked with her about it because she sounded like she was singing.

Ronna loved the parents in her classes and had a gift for counseling. She and Robert David created parenting workshops where they went into the home for a week at a time to help parents. She often counseled parents who were in conflict around child rearing. Because of her exceptional skills, teachers often sought her out to help mediate conflicts.

Ronna was amazingly gifted with her hands. She had crafted exceptional table puppets, dolls, marionettes, and tiny babies inside walnut shells. She made soaps, lip balm, hand dyed garments and many other creations. Entering her kindergarten, one was filled with awe. Every detail was infused with artistry, vibrant color and impeccable organization. She ensouled the kindergarten with her joyful warmth and reverent love for the young child. Ronna was like the Pied Piper— children followed her wherever she went. Her “strength of being” held the children with invisible threads from her heart to theirs. She had contact with many of them once they were grown. Ronna had an enormous capacity for work and colleagues loved and respected her. During faculty meetings, when different points of view became polarized, she always asked us to “find what lives in the middle.” What does the “being of the school” want? Her intuitive wisdom often could guide the group back to harmony. At the same time she fiercely adhered to her ideals and principles and took up initiatives with a fiery choleric will, finishing whatever tasks she took up.

Playful, athletic and adventuresome, Ronna traveled the world, hiked mountains, and kayaked. I have memories of her laughing and dancing with Robert in our living room. She lived life with a passion and vibrancy which touched everyone who knew her in a deep and profound way. Unique and indescribable Ronna, we will always love her! With gratitude,

Janis Williams

Janis adds that those wishing to help with medical costs can write to The Ronna Memorial Fund, PO Box 909, East Sound, WA 98245. Make checks out to Robert David McEldowney, noting “Ronna’s memorial fund.”

Members Who Have Died

Judith Brewer, Short Hills NJ; died 5/1/2010

Renn Fenton, Newcastle WY; died 6/29/2010

Thelma Hartstein, Fair Oaks CA; died 9/10/2010

Ary King, Soquel CA; died 7/30/2010

David Lessner, Wilmington DE; died 2/11/2010

Ronna McEldowney, Laupahoehoe HI; died 7/8/2010

Eleanore Paul, Chestnut Ridge NY; died 9/3/2010

Betty Peckham, Spring Valley NY; died 8/1/2010

Maryann Perlman, Gouldsboro ME; died 6/29/2009

Mary Shands, Louisville KY; died 8/15/2009

Janette Zuzalek, Sauk Centre MN; died 7/30/2010

Lorna Odegard

September 14, 1946–October 31, 2009

Lorna Odegard is the first from the Circle of Friends~An Anthroposophical Fellowship, to cross the threshold. She died at home in Fargo, North Dakota.

Lorna was at the heart of Circle of Friends activities during the 1990’s. Her introduction to spiritual science was through attending anthroposophic lectures by James Ulness. She then participated in and hosted anthroposophical study and was active in the birthing of the Circle of Friends as a recognized group of the society. She was a member of the society from 1994-2006. This was an especially enlivening time for Lorna and she often spoke about how meaningful anthroposophy was in her life and the inspiration she received from the thoughtful and heartfelt conversation that took place in the study groups. She felt a warmth and acceptance in the Circle that she had not often felt in her life.

Lorna also participated in the Circle’s anthroposophically-inspired painting workshops with Leszek Forczek from 1995-2000. It was important to Lorna to be able to give back to the Circle for what she felt she received and she generously opened her home to study groups, festivals and our monthly planning group. Upon her passing, we were surprised to hear that she also remembered the Circle of Friends in her will.

An event we remember well was a potluck she held at her home where Leszek gave an advent talk. Even though the painting weekends could often be intense and tiring, especially for someone with a chronic illness, it was very important to her to host this event and she did it to the nines bringing out her

mother’s china and making sure everything was ‘just right.’ Her house was filled to the rafters with guests who came out for this special gathering.

Lorna was born and raised on a farm in the Red River Valley of North Dakota where she attended grade school in a one room country school. She earned her bachelor’s degree in social work from the University of North Dakota. Social justice was a thread that wove throughout her life. In her work, she was an advocate for children, the handicapped, and the elderly. Women’s issues were also of great importance to her as we experienced in her use and support of inclusive language. In the life of the Circle she was a voice for social conscience.

At a memorial service that the Circle held, we spoke of a smile that could light up the room as well as the challenges Lorna faced in her life. Not only did she live with a chronic illness from her 20’s on, she also carried the pain of early life experiences that she felt were “getting in the way”, as she would often say, of realizing her higher aspirations. Not content to stay bound to the past, she modeled dedication in seeking to overcome her personal hindrances.

On occasion, she would speak about experiences that in the past would have been quite challenging for her but that she now navigated with more confidence and ease. In recounting these times, Lorna would often say “I took the group with me.”

LuAnn Hagel for the Circle of Friends

This photo from the internet of a “needle’s eye” rock formation honors Renn Fenton, remembered as a climber in the South Dakota/Wyoming border region.

New Members of the Anthroposophical Society in America

As recorded by the society from 2/23/2010 through 9/17/2010

Paula Alkaitis, New York NY

Alicia Allen, Santa Fe NM

Mary Baenen, Sandpoint ID

Edward Balmuth, Granbury TX

Kristin C. Barton, Hillsdale NY

Victoria Basarabescu, Houston TX

Linda Bestor, Sturtevant WI

Rebecca Bissonnette, Hudson NY

Hermina Booysen, Glenmoore PA

Carolyn Briglia, Wilton NH

Tom Brunzell, New York NY

Kimberly A. Carr, Easton CT

Francisco Cavazos, Tomball TX

Ellen Cimino, Decatur GA

Mark Vincent Collins, Friendswood TX

Kim Couder, Soquel CA

Susan Crozier, Wadsworth OH

Kristin E. Dalton, Ghent NY

Canyon Darcy, Austin TX

Francesco De Benedetto, Fair Oaks CA

Catherine H. Decker, Chatham NY

Jennifer Dye, San Rafael CA

Danielle Epifani, Berkeley CA

John K. Fallon, Delmar NY

John M. Finale, Brooklyn NY

Library Annotations, from p.5

Jonas, librarian at the Rudolf Steiner Library in London, places Steiner’s view of astrology in a historical, cultural, and philosophical context.

Biography: Freedom and Destiny. Enlightening the Path of Human Life, translated by Pauline Wehrle, Rudolf Steiner Press, 2009, 264 pgs. Includes notes and a bibliography.

Rudolf Steiner shows here that every biography—regardless of one’s place in life or a person’s perceived importance or success—is ruled by archetypal influences, patterns and laws. He describes the human individuality as a being with a continuing existence, both before birth

Janine Fron, Huntley IL

Richard Frost, Alfred ME

Laura Gabelsberg, Tucson AZ

Amy Garnsey, Boynton Beach FL

Hazel Archer Ginsberg, Chicago IL

Mahalath Gordon, Medford OR

Michael Gratsch, Grosse Pointe MI

Paul M. Helfrich, Castaic CA

Angelica G. Hesse, Portland OR

Doug Horner, Lafayette CA

Gene Hutloff, Phoenix AZ

Laura Iturralde, Houston TX

Louis Kauffman, Chicago IL

Kay Kinderman, Glenmoore PA

Sylvia Lagergren, Johnson City TN

Karin Layher, Saint Louis MO

Margaret Leary, Culpeper VA

Ashley Shea Legg, Philmont NY

Julianna Lichatz, Carbondale CO

Daniel Lips, Hauppauge NY

Jolie Hanna Luba, Decatur GA

Jessica Mansbach, Spring Valley NY

Anna V. Masters, La Mesa CA

Todd Matuszewicz, Denver CO

Melanie Maupin, Chapel Hill NC

and beyond death. Our eternal being experiences a myriad of conditions and situations, the effects of which may be observed in one’s biography. This book addresses these and other issues such as freedom and destiny, the effects of heredity, illness, and the impact of education, among others.

Eurythmy Therapy: Eight Lectures Given in Dornach, Switzerland, between 12 and 18 April 1921 and in Stuttgart, Germany, on 28 October 1922, translated by Alan Stott, Rudolf Steiner Press, 2009, 159 pgs.

This new translation of Curative Eurythmy is based on the thoroughly revised German edition of 2003 and includes a new appendix with reminiscences by

Matthew Messner, Charlottesville VA

Rick Mitchell, Lawrence KS

Megan Neale, Inverness CA

Caroline Nguyen, San Francisco CA

Joseph Papas, Copake NY

Emilie Papas, Copake NY

Vicki Petersen, Phoenix AZ

Nattapat Phinittanont, Glenmoore PA

Patricia A. Robertson-Russell, Miami FL

Anthony W. Roemer, Martinez CA

Carl St.Goar, Chattanooga TN

Susan Stern, Fair Oaks CA

Anouk Tompot, Seattle WA

Maria Celina Trzepacz, Clifton NJ

Julia Van Vliet, Chicago IL

Forrest Ann Walsh, Tempe AZ

Casey Warner, Kirkwood MO

Mary Wildfeuer, Kimberton PA

Benjamin A. Wilson, Marengo IL

Karl Wilson, Copake NY

Liz Woodlock, Leesburg VA

Lucy Wurtz, Portola Valley CA

she says, “one should learn to become older every day consciously….” “Steiner places two extreme geriatric pictures before us: a sage working out of heart forces and a person who has rigidified into a ‘mummy’ through their life routine.”

Anthroposophy—Medicine

Compendium for the Remedial Treatment of Children, Adolescents and Adults in Need of Soul Care. Experiences and Indications from Anthroposophic Therapy, Bertram von Zabern, M.D., compiler, Mercury Press, 2009, 167 pgs.

Originally compiled in 1972 and published by Weleda, this work is now available in English for the first time. Various syndromes are presented with lists of suggested remedial indications. Rudolf Steiner’s suggestions are the keystone; other experienced anthroposophical doctors also contribute. The editor stresses that this book is meant to be used as working material and stimulus for therapists and doctors who are active in anthroposophic medicine. The therapies mentioned should be used in close collaboration with a supervising physician.

Anthroposophy—Nutrition

early eurythmists, as well as revised and expanded notes based on those prepared for the 2003 German edition by Dr. Walter Kugler, director of the Rudolf Steiner Archives in Dornach, Switzerland.

Getting Old: Excerpts from Rudolf Steiner’s Complete Works, Gisela Gaumnitz, compiler, Mercury Press, 2009, 289 pgs.

Originally published in German in 1987, this new translation features an introduction by Gisela Gaumnitz, a coworker at Johanneshaus Öschelbronn, an anthroposophical senior residential community in Germany. Gaumnitz emphasizes her hope that readers will be inspired to read Steiner’s lectures in full after “tasting” the excerpts she has selected. “After [age] 35,”

Cosmos, Earth, and Nutrition: The Biodynamic Approach to Agriculture, Richard Thornton Smith, Rudolf Steiner Press, 2009, 304 pgs.

Biodynamic agriculture is a unique development of the organic approach that does not focus only on agricultural techniques. A whole new way to think about farming, nutrition, and the world of nature, biodynamics allows revitalized relationships with the living soil, the elemental world, and the cosmos. Originating from a series of eight lectures by Rudolf Steiner in 1924, biodynamic methods broaden the outlook of agriculture and the science behind it, leading to a holistic perspective that incorporates astronomical rhythms and unique preparations for plants and earth.

Richard Thornton Smith describes the foundations on which biodynamics as well as the more general organic movement are based. He builds bridges between mainstream science and Steiner’s insights, making it easier for the broader organic and ecological movement to approach biodynamic concepts and practice.

The Waldorf Book of Breads, collected by Marsha Post, illustrated by Jo Valens, edited and introduced by Winslow Eliot, SteinerBooks, 2009, 57 pgs.

“All four elements that are essential to life are inherent in [a] single loaf of bread.” This book includes breads for the daily table as well as specialty breads for the seasons and festive occasions. There are recipes for wheat, spelt, corn, and rye breads, and for honey-salt bread, “a new bread for our time.”

Anthroposophy—Waldorf Education

Dyslexia: Learning Disorder or Creative Gift?, Cornelia Jantzen, Floris Books, 2008, 248 pgs.

Dyslexia has long been known as a learning difficulty that primarily affects literacy skills. Increasingly, however, researchers and professionals working with dyslexia suggest that it is less a disorder than a sign of specially gifted persons. They often have above average intelligence and are highly creative, provided they are supported and nurtured by parents and teachers.

In this book Cornelia Jantzen explores the basis of this radical viewpoint. Throughout, she provides many practical examples that explore various aspects of dyslexia, giving parents and teachers greater confidence when dealing with the challenges that dyslexia presents.

The author is a consultant on dyslexia in Hamburg and is the mother of two dyslexic children. Her interest in a new approach is based on her study of the Davis method, Waldorf education, and a broad overview of current practices.

Lessons for Middle School Issues. Classroom Lessons Supporting the Development of Life Skills, Self Knowledge and Social Grace for 13 and 14 Year Olds, Grades 8–9, Linda E. Knodle, Coming of Age Press, 2008 [2009], 116 pgs.

Linda Knodle, a Waldorf teacher from the Seattle area, continues the pioneering work of Tamara Slayton to create a contemporary life skills curriculum for middle school students that reflects an anthroposophical understanding of the human being.

Darwin (and More), David Mitchell, editor and compiler, AWSNA, February 2010, 107 pgs.

This is the 14th volume in the Waldorf Journal Project series. These publications feature essays, articles, and specialized studies from around the world, translated into English for the first time. This issue, inspired by the recent Darwin bicentennial, centers around three substantial articles on the theme by biologist Wolfgang Schad. Other contents discuss school governance; Goethean observation in literature lessons; anthroposophy and modern brain research; ecology study in the 11th grade; and several articles on the performing arts. These journals are always filled with rich, contemporary ideas.

A Day Full of Song: Work

Songs from a Waldorf Kindergarten, Karen Lonsky, illustrated by Victoria Sander, WECAN, February 2009, 64 pgs.

Subtitled “Forty-two Original Songs in the Mood of the Fifth,” this collection by a veteran earlychildhood teacher offers songs to accompany children as they work in the kindergarten: grinding grain, baking bread, cleaning, building, shoveling. The author states that songs can facilitate children’s movements by creating form around them. “To learn to work with joy as a young child is a true gift for the adult that he or she will one day become.” Teachers and parents will be glad to add these new songs to

their repertoires. There is also a

developed by Alice Bailey, while

What is next saying to you?

A year off from politics. The Mayan calendar running out.

That school you’re helping to build. The farm you want to connect with. The training you mean to take. That “social investment” you looked into. Yes.

And Rudolf Steiner’s birthday—

150—that’s a big one!

A year to engage and share his amazing vision? future the human being.”

A year to learn about and honor the forward-looking impulses all around us?

2011—a the future?

What is 2011 saying to you?

Share your vision at anthroposophy.org/2011