anthroposophy.

org

personal and cultural renewal in the 21st century

Rudolf Steiner’s
Calendar of the Soul
The One Life Within Us and Abroad
The Anthroposophical Society at 100
Owen Barfield in America

a quarterly publication of the Anthroposophical Society in America – fall issue 2012

 F
Follow
ollowYour
YourGuiding
GuidingStar
Star
With the Calendar of the Soul
With the Calendar of the Soul
A 100 Year Celebration of Rudolf Steiner’s
A 100 Year Celebration of Rudolf Steiner’s
Calendar of the Soul for 2012 and Beyond
Calendar of the Soul for 2012 and Beyond
With Deepening Practices and Perspectives
With Deepening Practices and Perspectives
To Birth Your Spirit Self through the Seasons of the Soul
To Birth Your Spirit Self through the Seasons of the Soul
Follow Your Guiding Star with the Calendar of the Soul invites us to listen to an
Follow Your Guiding Star with the Calendar of the Soul invites us to listen to an
unfolding Threshold dialogue that can be heard within our attentive awakening
unfolding Threshold dialogue that can be heard within our attentive awakening
hearts - in the present moment, between past and future, between our soul and
hearts - in the present moment, between past and future, between our soul and
World Soul, and between our I and the Creator I of the World. The freshly
World Soul, and between our I and the Creator I of the World. The freshly
translated version of Rudolf Steiner’s Calendar of the Soul verses includes 100 year
translated version of Rudolf Steiner’s Calendar of the Soul verses includes 100 year
perspectives and practices to support us to wakefully cross the threshold from
perspectives and practices to support us to wakefully cross the threshold from
reading the verses to the supersensible experience of the content. We can then
reading the verses to the supersensible experience of the content. We can then
begin to see, hear and intuit the light from the inner Sun or Star within our own
begin to see, hear and intuit the light from the inner Sun or Star within our own
hearts. New threshold dialogues can then begin to reveal themselves to us.
hearts. New threshold dialogues can then begin to reveal themselves to us.
Artistic glyphs show the musical unfolding rhythm of the verses.
Artistic glyphs show the musical unfolding rhythm of the verses.
Written and compiled by Vivianne Rael and Henry Passafero. Verses and excerpts by Rudolf Steiner.
Written and compiled by Vivianne Rael and Henry Passafero. Verses and excerpts by Rudolf Steiner.
Pre-Order now before Jan. 1, 2013 and receive a Bonus Downloadable Yearly Journal
Pre-Order now before
with elements Jan. 1, 2013
of Steiner’s and receive
original a Bonus
Calendar Downloadable
of 1912. Yearly
Makes a great gift! Journal
with elements of Steiner’s original Calendar of 1912. Makes a great gift!
For More Info and to Order Visit: www.FifthStream.com
For More Info and to Order Visit: www.FifthStream.com

H
HolyolyN
Nights
ights2012:
2012:B
B irthing Our Threefold Spirit Child
irthing Our Threefold Spirit Child
100th thAnniversary Conversation, Friday, Dec. 28th,th3-5pm EST
100 Anniversary Conversation, Friday, Dec. 28 , 3-5pm EST
To Heal Our Past, Connect in the Present, and Co-Create Our Future in Light of:
To Heal Our Past, Connect in the Present, and Co-Create Our Future in Light of:
The 100th Anniversary of the original Founding of the Anthrosophical Society
asThe 100th Anniversary
we embrace the karma of
of the
ouroriginal Founding
Past to open of the for
Possibility Anthrosophical
the Future Society
as we embrace the karma of our Past to open Possibility for the Future
The 133 year or 4x33.3 year Anniversay of the Michael Age and Rudolf Steiner’s
The 133 yearThoughts
Breakthrough or 4x33.3 in
year Anniversay of the Michael Age and Rudolf Steiner’s
1879
Breakthrough Thoughts in 1879
The 100th Anniversary of Rudolf Steiner’s 1912 Calendar and the Birthing of our
The 100thSpirit
indiviudal Anniversary of Rudolf
Child and Steiner’s
the 3-fold Spirit 1912
ChildCalendar and the Birthing of our
of Anthroposophia
indiviudal Spirit Child and the 3-fold Spirit Child of Anthroposophia
The Christmas Conference as the Map to Cross the Gap from now to 2023
The Christmas Conference as the Map to Cross the Gap from now to 2023
Sign Up Now to Reserve Your Place! (Only $5) www.FifthStream.com
Sign Up Now to Reserve Your Place! (Only $5) www.FifthStream.com
You will receive your call information to attend via phone from any location.
YouAwill receive your
recording call
will be information
made availableto
to attend via phone
all registered from any location.
participants.
A recording will be made available to all registered participants.
FIFTH STREAM: Support for the Courage to Follow Your Star in Our Emerging Threefold CommonWealth
FIFTH STREAM: Support for the Courage to Follow Your Star in Our Emerging Threefold CommonWealth
ANTHROPOSOPHY NYC the New York Branch of the
Anthroposophical Society in America
138 West 15th Street, NY, NY 10011
(212) 242-8945
“The word ‘anthroposophy’
should be interpreted as
‘the consciousness of our
humanity.’” – Rudolf Steiner
Consider a
TAL K S Career in
spirituality, health, education, social action,
esoteric research, human & cosmic evolution

WOR K S H OP S
Eurythmy
self-development, biography, therapies,
rhythms & cycles, threefolding, economics

V I SUAL AR T S
exhibits, workshops, talks, museum walks Part-Time &
Full-Time Training
EURY T H MY Educational Training
Rudolf Steiner’s therapeutic art Public Courses and More
of sacred movement

E V ENT S
music, theater, festivals, community Eurythmy Spring Valley
celebrations 260 Hungry Hollow Road, Chestnut Ridge, NY 10977
845-352-5020, ext. 13 info@eurythmy.org www.eurythmy.org
S T UDY GR OUP S
free, weekly and monthly, exploring
transformative insights of Rudolf Steiner,
Georg Kühlewind, Owen Barfield and others

SOME UPCOMING PROGRAMS

at 7pm except as noted; details at www.asnyc.org
Lloyd/Lorensen: Sacred Geometry – Wed 11/7, 12/5
Light & Darkness in Charcoal Drawing – Thu 11/8, 12/13
Seasonal Craft Workshops – Sun 11/11, 12/9, 2pm
Rhythms & Cycles of the Logos – Wed 11/14, 12/12
Dr. James Dyson: lecture/discussion – Sat 11/17
Glen Williamson: Mystery of the Logos – Fri 11/30
The Holy Nights, free evening events – 12/26-1/5
Eugene Schwartz: Harry Potter & the Secret Brotherhoods – Sat 1/26
Inspiring Education
RUDOLF STEINER
BOOKSTORE • Waldorf Early Childhood and Elementary
Browse dozens of works by Steiner and many Teacher Education Programs
others on education, science, health, art, spirit,
biodynamics. Open Tues-Wed & Fri-Sat, 1-5pm. • Summer Series Courses in

www. centerpoint Waldorf Education and Leadership

asnyc gallery
.org spiritual, therapeutic,
world, & ‘outsider’ art
www.sunbridge.edu

fall issue 2012 •3

 Being Human Fall Issue.pdf 9/19/2012 10:06:02 AM

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4 • being human
Contents
FEATURES
19 A Century of Anthroposophy, commentary by John Beck
23 The One Life Within Us and Abroad, by Gertrude Reif Hughes
26 Envisioning the Calendar of the Soul, by Ella Manor Lapointe
28 Michaelmas and the Calendar of the Soul, by Herbert O. Hagens
29 Notes on the Calendar of the Soul
The Calendar of the Soul and Eurythmy, Visual Arts, Sounds, Life
Thoughts by Mary Stewart Adams

32 Owen Barfield in America, by Jane Hipolito

37 That Good May Become, by Torin Finser
40 Beyond Our Borders, by Jonathan Stedall

NOTES, REVIEWS
7 being human digest
13 Classics from the Journal for Anthroposophy: Meditation & Spiritual Perception;
Selected and Introduced by Gertrude Reif Hughes; review by Frederick J. Dennehy
15 Functional Threefoldness in the Human Organism and Human Society
by Johannes Rohen; review by Sarah Hearn
17 The Quest for Hermes Trismegistus from Ancient Egypt to the Modern World
by Gary Lachman; review by Frederick J. Dennehy53 Poem: “Are We?” by R.Z. Balchowsky

NEWS & EVENTS

35 What’s Happening in the Anthroposophical Society? by Marian León
“The Grail of the Central Region: Questing from the Heart” by Sonjia Michaels.
Leonard Benson’s Bequest. Our Working Together: A Process of Continuity,
Change, and Renewal.
37 What’s Happening at the Rudolf Steiner Library? by Judith Soleil

THRESHOLDS
47 A Courageous Light: Ursula Brancato, by Bettina Ursula Brancato
48 Geoffrey von Menken, by John H. Beck
49 New Members of the Anthroposophical Society; Members Who Have Died
49 Rudolf Steiner Library Annotations, by Judith Soleil and Thomas O’Keefe
From the Editors tation and Spiritual Perception, selected and introduced
by Gertrude Reif Hughes; and The Quest for Hermes Tris-
We’re in a season of centennials. We celebrated eu- megistus, by Gary Lachman.
rythmy in the Spring issue. This issue we take note of the In her review of Mr. Rohen’s book, Sarah Hearn
deeply satisfying Calendar of the Soul which Rudolf Stein- examines the basis of the book’s analogy between func-
er created along with artist Imma von Eckharstein for the tional threefoldness in human life processes and in the
year 1912-1913. Half of the original calendar has been spheres of social life, focusing on both its creative insights
relatively unknown, despite a fine facsimile edition in and its limitations. She also notes that the analogy may
2003 from SteinerBooks. In this issue we have a treasur- fall short when the focus turns to “what can we do?” She
able literary essay about the calendar from Gertrude Reif suggests, candidly, that at the level of activism, there is
Hughes which first appeared in Orion magazine in Fall simply no workable analogy.
1999. Artist Ella Manor Lapointe (some of whose work Gertrude Reif Hughes’s selection of essays concern-
you see in the special eurythmy issue) shares her way of ing meditation and spiritual perception is a treasure for
working visually with the calendar. Herbert O. Hagens, anyone even remotely hospitable to anthroposophy. All
whose workshops on this subject have been popular for ten of the “Classics” volumes are superb; they serve to re-
many years, relates the calendar to the autumn Michael- mind us how vibrant anthroposophy has been in the last
mas festival. And then in “Notes on the Calendar of the several decades in the English-speaking world, particu-
Soul” we have a little banquet-buffet of other approaches larly in the USA. Readers should be aware that the entire
and ideas about the calendar, most of which have further “Classics” collection is available as a boxed set from the
substance appearing online. Society and would serve as a gift for a friend (or for one’s
We have also arrived at the 100th anniversary of self) that will not lose its luster.
the Anthroposophical Society itself. On page 37 “That Gary Lachman’s book, The Quest for Hermes Tris-
Good May Become” shares General Secretary Torin Fin- megistus: From Ancient Egypt to the Modern World, is rep-
ser’s opening talk at the recent August conference of that resentative of any number of eclectic or syncretist books
name. He works quite esoterically into the special life and today that, while exploring the very questions most vital
character of this society to which most of our readers be- to any reader willing to listen to an esoteric viewpoint,
long. On page 19 is a very exoteric look at anthroposo- may seem to fall short in rigor and depth. Such books are
phy’s place in world history from yours truly. It brings urgent in their questioning. They force us to look twice at
my personal concerns with historical context and suggests our own answers, and to seek new forms of resistance to
why we experience both that “anthroposophy failed” and the taboos against meaning that dominate the intellectual
that it is on the verge of great success. landscape today. Reality, as Georg Kühlewind phrased it,
Also from the conference, “Beyond Our Borders” is is “the last secret,” and may be attained only through more
filmmaker Jonathan Stedall’s fine talk (very lightly edited and relentlessly more “conscious questioning.” Lachman’s
for space) on his experience in making the tremendous finely woven storytelling not only stimulates thinking,
film, The Challenge of Rudolf Steiner. but persuades us that the habitual assumptions of what
Owen Barfield called “an unimaginative man at about
John Beck ten o’clock in the morning” need not serve as the starting
• point for those who ask the fundamental question of why
This issue features reviews of three books available there is something rather than nothing.
from the library: Functional Threefoldness in the Human
Organism and Human Society, by Johannes Rohen; Medi- Frederick J. Dennehy
How to receive being human, how to contribute, and how to advertise
Sample copies of being human are sent to friends who contact us (address below). It is sent free to members of the
Anthroposophical Society in America (visit anthroposophy.org/membership.html or call 734.662.9355).
To contribute articles or art please email editor@anthroposophy.org or write Editor, 1923 Geddes Avenue, Ann
Arbor, MI 48104. To advertise contact Marianne Fieber at 734-662-9355 or email mfieber@anthroposophy.org.

6 • being human
 being human digest
being human digest covers news and ideas from a range of conference will feature well-known leaders such as Paul
holistic and human-centered cultural initiatives. Items are brief, Hawken, Ai-Jen Poo, and Bill McKibben, as well as ‘the
suggestions welcome. Write editor@anthroposophy.org or greatest people you’ve never heard of.’”
“Editor, being human, 1923 Geddes Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI, 48104.”
Remembering An American Waldorf Pioneer
Waldorf Education - Environment A casual reminder in an email exchange led to a
considerable outpouring of reminiscences about John
Present at Bioneers F. Gardner, who would have been 100 on July 3, 1912.
Waldorf schools (teachers, students, parents) especial- He died just after his 86th birthday. The full sharings, a
ly in northern California and folks from Rudolf Steiner timeline of his life and excerpts from his writings, are at
College made a special effort to attend the Bioneers con- anthroposophy.org under “Articles” along with pictures
ference in October. It’s a long-running annual event held from his youth to old age.
in Marin County north of San Francisco. Bioneers has a John Gardner is remem-
biodynamic presence most years, and RSF Social Finance bered as person of strength
was a sponsor this year. Why Waldorf Works explained: of character, insight, and
“‘Bioneers’ are people, of all diversities, working col- eloquence; a champion of the
lectively in crafting solutions to the world’s environmen- Transcendentalist stream in
tal and bio-cultural challenges. At their 23rd Annual American life and thought; a
National Bioneers Conference, you’ll join global thought- pioneer of Waldorf education
leaders, experts and advocates in exploring breakthrough in America; a mentor and
solutions for a sustainable world. Education programs friend. His daughter Eliza-
focus on ecological literacy and youth leadership. The beth Lombardi writes:
“Just as my father could place logs for a fire so that
they would have just the right relationship and flow of air,
he brought many fine people together and lit the spark of
enthusiasm for significant and worthy endeavors. As with
A residential community for adults with developmental challenges
his compost piles, he prepared the soil in Waldorf Educa-
We are a Rudolf Steiner tion for future blossoming and fruiting.”
inspired residential commu- From Jeff Kofsky: “John was a devoted student of
nity for and with adults with
developmental challenges.
Rudolf Steiner and a master teacher of his work, yet he
Living in four extended-family was unlike any other prominent anthroposophist I have
households, forty people, some known, for John lived by the Direct Approach. When you
more challenged than others,
share their lives, work and eat lettuce and carrots you do not become a little lettuce
recreation within a context and a little carrot, he said, you digest and transform sub-
of care.
stance so that it becomes your own. So be it with the
Daily contact with nature
and the arts, meaningful and
wisdom of those who have gone before. Eat freely, let the
productive work in our homes, • COMMUNITY SPIRIT • world of ideas light up in yourself and express that which
gardens and craft studios, • T H E A RT S • would be born in you. This is the essence of Intuition that
and the many cultural and
recreational activities provided, • MEANINGFUL WORK • Rudolf Steiner put forth in his Philosophy of Freedom, and
create a rich and full life. • R E C R E AT I O N • John was a master of it.”
From Nancy DeSylva: “One of the greatest gifts
For information regarding placement possibilities, staff, apprentice or
volunteer positions available, or if you wish to support our work,
[John] was able to give was his ability to see into the very
please contact us at: heart, to instill confidence in one’s ability to do, to over-
PO Box 137 • Temple, NH • 03084
603-878-4796 • e-mail: lukas@monad.net
come, and to live from the Christ-Self. I felt he was able to
l u k a s c o m m u n i t y. o r g honor each individual for who they truly are. He helped
to awaken that in me, and that is perhaps the greatest

fall issue 2012 •7

 being human digest
Arts
Theater: Kaspar Hauser
200 years after his birth on Michaelmas Day 1812,
Kaspar Hauser’s story—“The Open Secret of the Found-
ling Prince”—is coming to life in performance across the
USA, in the UK and Canada. Storyteller and acclaimed
actor Glen Williamson has created this one-man show
to raise to awareness a pivotal figure in European and
German history—the abducted infant, heir to a throne,
deprived of companionship, movement, language, educa-
blessing I could have ever received.” tion. An incredible human story is joined to deeper his-
From David White: “The whole Waldorf School (of torical mysteries. The schedule of performances is linked
Garden City) was pervaded with a quality hard to put at http://mysite.verizon.net/GlenWilliamson/id3.html
into words, but a place I sensed where I could grow and
clarify my goals and ideals… John helped many to enter
into a process of becoming their true selves; loving and
Theater - Mystery Dramas
The Rudolf Steiner Mystery Drama performances
free in serving.”
and conference get stronger each year at Threefold Edu-
From Aggie Mitchkoski: “On one visit I sat at the
cational Center in Chestnut Ridge, NY. Producer/direc-
kitchen table with [John and Carol Gardner]... and pro-
tor Barbara Renold is helping people engage these lengthy
ceeded to tell them all the reasons why they shouldn’t
and unusual plays with a cast including some fine profes-
think so highly of me. They listened. Then John very seri-
sionals and a full conference to penetrate the significance
ously said, ‘How can you say anything you’ve done was a
of what is at the same time the personal challenges of
mistake when everything you have done has brought you
to this point?’ It was a ‘woman at the well’ moment...
From John Bickart: “I think John appreciated the re-
lief from a conviction that he serve almost every person he
met as a mirror and a measure of their own inner convic-
tion... Sometimes we could sit back and seriously laugh at
Camphill Village
life and at ourselves—at how we actually think we know
something.”
From Douglas Gerwin (GCWS class of 1968):
“Those of us who were his pupils in the classroom ex-
perienced facets of his teaching that were largely hidden
Kimberton Hills
Evolving a sustainable intentional community
from the wider public... his biology main lesson in the
seventh grade... a Noah’s Ark of the imagination... John’s Living and working interdependently
taste for vaudeville: imagine him in a chorus line of three Serving the wider community
tall teachers, twirling a cane and raising a straw boater,
Accepting resident volunteer applications for
cracking jokes and singing witty refrains... John Gardner
at the blackboard, often well before class began, forming individuals and families
those little gem-like drawings... John remained a personal Contact: Craig@camphillkimberton.org
mentor to many students long after they had graduated.
610-935-0300 X 18 or 610-935-3963
To them he showed... a surprising gentleness and love of
nature, a simplicity of lifestyle, a deep interest in the striv- Based on insights of Rudolf Steiner, including
biodynamic agriculture
ing of others.”
www.camphillkimberton.org
Kimberton, PA

8 • being human
 being human digest
the individual characters, a revelation of karmic back-
grounds, and a battle for humanity’s development.
One of this year’s conference speakers, Els Woutersen,
drew the parallel with the story of Siegfried in Wagner’s
Ring des Nibelungen. “The brave hero Siegfried has to
overcome a fierce and mighty dragon. This dragon how-
ever exists within himself. It is the dragon of desires, of
the lower passions, of everything of a lower nature within
him... Overcoming these lower passions and by further
purifying himself through the magic fire, Siegfried is able
to meet Brünnhilde, who is none other than his higher
self who has awakened within him.”
RC Oelhaf reported that “the production was graced
with some excellent eurythmy, used to good effect to rep-
resent spiritual beings.” Steve Usher spoke to the question
of humanity’s choices, to raise the intelligence we have
found in nature back to creative sources, or to surrender it
to spiritual impulses toward power over others or personal
vanity. — www.threefold.org
Supporting Anthroposophical Arts
Louise Drosse Hadley, MA, has organized The Pio-
neer Valley Muse Group (www.pvmusegroup.org) to
bring anthroposophically-inspired arts and performances
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. . .
—Dr. Shinichiro Akizuki,
Director, St Francis Hospital, Nagasaki
www.southrivermiso.com
WOOD-FIRED HAND-CRAFTED MISO
Nourishing Life for the Human Spirit since 1979
unpasteurized probiotic certified organic
SOUTH RIVER MISO COMPANY
Conway, MassaChusetts 01341 • (413) 369-4057
SCOTTISH ODYSSEY July 15th –
August 4th, 2013
Join native Scots tour leaders as we trace threads of
spiritual history in the land- 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 Neolithic stone circles
of the Outer Hebrides, Highland glens
and mountains, the sacred island of
Iona, the Findhorn community,
Robert Owen’s social initiative at
New Lanark, historic and beautiful Interested? For details please contact
Edinburgh, and much more.
Gillian: 610 469 0864
gillian_schoemaker@yahoo.com
to her central New England area. “I attribute much of the
healing I have experienced in my own life to my encoun-
ter with anthroposophical music and arts. It seems to me
that these wonderful things are like a hoarded treasure,
kept largely in Waldorf schools and anthroposophical
circles, and I want to do my part to bring them out into
the wider world.” Coming up: A Christmas Carol, with
David Anderson of Walking the Dog Theater, “Raphael’s
Madonna Images with Lyre Interpretation,” with Channa
A. Seidenberg, and “The Incarnation of the Logos: An
Epic Tale of Christ’s Coming to Earth,” with Glen Wil-
liamson.
Health - Medicine
New Anthroposophic Nurses Association
Anthroposophic nurses have been working indepen-
dently for many decades across the United States and
Canada. However in recent years there has not been a
cohesive association. The Kimberton Nurses Association
along with Elizabeth Sustick and Anke Smeele has helped
launch the North American Anthroposophic Nurses As-
sociation (NAANA). The web site is listed under AAMTA
(American Anthroposohic Medical Therapies Associa-
tion, www.aamta.org). In May of 2012, at the Interna-
tional Physicians Medical Training, five Nurses received
their Anthroposophic Nurse Certification. NAANA is
in the process of receiving 501c-3 status. We meet regu-
larly via conference call to study, inspire each other, and
meet our agendas. Email brigettefitzgerald@yahoo.com
for more information.
Highly diluted remedies: finding the best dosage
Dr. Ross Rentea of True Botanica and its new foun-
dation wrote us some months ago. “We have all heard of
homeopathic medicines which are made by a process of
serially diluting a particular substance—only then do the
fall issue 2012 •9
 being human digest
ODYSSEY to EGYPT
Come with us, March 25th 2013 – April 10th 2013,
visit the sacred places of this ancient civilization:
the Sphinx and Pyramids, the Valley of the Kings,
Luxor, Karnak, Dendera, the community of
Sekem... Cruise the Nile in a dahibiya,
celebrate Easter Day at Abydos!
Contact Gillian: 610 469 0864
gillian_schoemaker@yahoo.com
desired therapeutic effects come about. Also, most of us
realize that the majority of anthroposophical remedies are
produced by a principle of serial potentization that is very
similar, but not identical to, the homeopathic serial dilu-
tions. The problem that has been around for centuries,
literally, is to figure out what the appropriate ‘potency’/
dosage for each remedy in each situation should be. It
turns out that Rudolf Steiner was asked this question of
dosage in the context of a newly developed potentized
medicine and his answer was as revolutionary as practi-
cal- which his indications usually are. He advised to sub-
ject seeds to the various dilutions of the remedy and that
the varying growth of the seeds would then show through
a growth curve demonstrating the behavior of the diluted
substance, and not just in the plant but also in the animal
organism. This would allow the finding of the ‘optimal’
solution.”
To help with the lack of research activity, the new
True Botanica Foundation is hoping to reawaken the im-
pulse of one of Steiner’s dedicated young associates, Lily
Kolisko. “This year an intensive effort has been launched
to duplicate and then go beyond the Kolisko experiments
in order to address the dosage question. In the past 10
months we have done the work to compile growth curves
for over 20 healing substances that are used in anthro-
posophical medicine. We already have seen some very
promising results and anticipate even better data as we
continue to refine and advance the process. The growing
complexity of the tasks requires not only more equipment
but also steadily increasing co-worker hours dedicated to
choosing seeds, watering, measuring, etc.
“Recently the first meeting of the Science Advisory
Group of the Foundation took place. During a very in-
tense weekend anthroposophical specialists from various
fields (medicine-R. Rentea MD, A. Rentea MD, M. Ka-
msler MD, R. Bartelme MD, P. Hinderberger MD, P.
10 • being human
Barratt MD, K. Sutton MD; pharmacy- T. Heath PhD;
biochemistry and laboratory science-J. Erb; homeopathy-
R. Shaw JD; administration- P. Rentea MHA) began de-
veloping a strategy on how to make possible an expanded
laboratory where these ideas could be pursued on an on-
going basis. Should we call it the “L. Kolisko Lab”? We
hope to develop a wide circle of supporters. A community
effort is clearly needed to build up and advance this im-
portant work in the lab. This is a not- to- be- missed
opportunity to “make a name” for anthroposophy in the
science world. Will the ignoring situation of the 1920’s
repeat itself? For more information visit us at www.true-
botanicafoundation.org. For the Team, Ross Rentea MD”
Well-being Retreat in Vermont
Louise Frazier and Wolfgang Rohrs have created a
reteat center: “In the beautiful countryside of Vermont,
where we offer nourishment for body, soul and spirit in a
restorative environment. We provide workshops in food
preparation and cookery. In addition, eco-friendly rooms
with sweeping views, are available for those living out-
side the area. Opportunities are given to learn about our
delectable vegetarian lifestyle through conversations, ob-
servations and participation in our cookery. Our teaching
is based on the Cosmic and Earthly nutritional recom-
mendations of Dr. Rudolf Steiner, as applied within the
framework formulated by Drs. med. Udo Renzenbrink,
Gerhard Schmidt, and Rudolf Hauschka. If you would
like to bring a new vibrancy into your days, come for a
workshop, a weekend, a few days, or a week where nature
and human activity combine for learning, retreat, cele-
bration, and contemplation. Like our notable homemade
lactic-acid fermented Garden Splendor vegetables, your
perspective will be enhanced!”
The Society’s new database has much improved fa-
cilities. Are there listings or networks already of centers
~A source of personal and social renewal
in Anthoroposophical Arts~
2012 ~ Art History Training
begins from November 6th~
phone: 707-542-1523
email: nurturingarts@sonic.net
web: www.nurturingarts.org
 being human digest
like Louise and Wolfgang’s? If not, should we try to help
it get started? Let us know (editor@anthroposophy.org)
and take a look at sunrisehillnutritionretreat.com.
Food - Agriculture
GMO Vote in California
Nancy Poer is one of many friends concerned with
GMO foods that are not labeled and so deprive consum-
ers of the choice of using or avoiding them. “At the West-
ern States Teachers Conference in February 2012, three
of us, all anthroposophists with decades of experience in
different fields, a doctor, a biodynamic farmer and Wal-
dorf educator, stood out on the cold city streets to support
basic human food rights and the planet. We were gather-
ing signatures for what has successfully became a ballot
initiative (Prop 37) for the 2012 California November
elections to require the labeling of GMO products in our
food supply. This will be voted on by the people and will
be one of the greatest stands this country has ever taken
for our right to choose healthy food. It will be brutally
opposed by the bio tech industry which has pledged mil-
lions to defeat it, for it threatens the foundations of their
power over what we eat.
“All three of us felt a surreal quality about our en-
deavors, which could not take place in the warm lobbies
of the Anthroposophical institutions nearby as this would
have been considered a political action. How did we get
to such a strange world that all across the country tak-
ing a stand for the right to know what we are eating and
supporting healthy food is considered political! To its
credit, Rudolf Steiner College, hosted a Food Rights Film
Festival initiated by Nancy Jewel Poer, and supported by
Harald Hoven, a bio dynamic farmer and teacher, to raise
awareness and honor farmers. As a physician, Kelly Sut-
ton has long experienced and spoken out about the GMO
health issues she sees in her practice.”
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An inspiring new collection of poems and stories
about pre-birth awareness and the great journey of
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Perfect for new parents • grandparents •
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Order at www.wrightwoodpress.org
For information on bulk and group discounts,
email us at sales@wrightwoodpress.org
From Stonehaven Farm in Pennsylvania David Len-
ker connected current food questions with the traditions
of the Knights Templar. These inspired and idealist men
were to a significant extent the social bankers for Europe
until their cruel suppression 700 years ago. “The threat
to Templar freedom... appears to have a modern echo: in-
creasing impediments placed on the ability of everyday
Americans to freely obtain whole natural organic foods.
Large Bio-tech firms continue to promote legislation fa-
voring genetically engineered foods. To maximize prof-
its, these firms encourage agricultural methods that rely
on heavy usage of pesticides, weed killers, and chemical
fertilizers. In Central PA and elsewhere we see these envi-
ronmentally toxic methods used to grow genetically mod-
ified corn—key ingredient of high fructose corn syrup...
Consumers should be given the free conscious decision to
buy genetically modified or natural organic food.”
RSF Social Finance & Food Change
The latest quarterly from RSF Social Finance draws
a picture of farms, finance, food, and healthy people and
localities. Their topics are “A Poetic of Economics in Ag-
riculture”: rethinking our economic life from the ground
up; what lessons can we learn from agriculture and farm-
ers? “Soil, Soul, and Society”: localized agriculture as a
foundational activity upon which all humanity depends.
Also, “A New American Farmer”: how RSF borrower
Viva Farms is helping farm workers become the next
farm owner. And “Clients in Conversation”: food justice
in Oakland and rural Hawaii. (rsfsocialfinance.org)
Social
American Values: Summer in Concord
From Stuart-Sinclair Weeks, in Concord, MA, came
this report back in August about long term efforts to raise
fall issue 2012 • 11
 being human digest
consciousness of the work of the circle around Emerson,
Thoreau, and the Transcendentalists. “Since our ex-
Prison Outreach
Kathy Serafin reported earlier in the year on recogni-
change of mid-June, we in Concord have been able to en-
tion and support coming toward the Anthroposophical
act a number of deeds that would serve our greater work
Prison Outreach project of the Society.
here in our United States.
“Over the years, we have received inquiries from an-
“The July 4th presentation of the ‘Concord Resolu-
throposophists interested in founding a similar prison
tion: Toward the Redemption of Our Financial System
outreach program in their home countries. While we have
& Restitution of Our Commonwealth’ at Concord’s Old
responded with written information, we realized that a
North Bridge, where its celebrated ‘shot’ was fired.
practical how-to meeting would be most beneficial and
“The launching of The New World Drama: And
we were encouraged by a longtime supporter to take ac-
Crown Thy Good with Sister- and Brotherhood. Citizens in
tion in this regard, and we held a presentation/workshop
communities across the country, including Chicago, San
of our program for interested members of the Anthropos-
Francisco, Santa Cruz, Denver, Tucson, St. Louis, Viro-
ophical Society in The Netherlands.
qua, and the Twin Cities themselves have begun to come
“The results were three fold. The workshop atten-
together to envision ‘scenes’ for the drama.
dants decided to start a similar initiative in the Nether-
“And finally Concord Convocation 2012. After 35
lands, now in the planning and development stage. In
years of laying the cornerstones, the convocation con-
turn, we from APO learned about a Dutch drug addic-
cluded with the determination, among those anthroposo-
tion treatment initiative called ARTA. This program is
phists and Michaelic kin who gathered, to take the next
based on anthroposophical healing principles and is quite
step toward the renewal of the spirit of the original Con-
effective based on the rate of staying ‘clean’.
cord School of Philosophy & Literature, 1879-1888, with
“A third result was a complete and humbling surprise
an extended institute in the summer of 2013. Among oth-
to us at APO. The Dutch Anthroposophical Society an-
ers, Bob Richardson, a dear friend, colleague, and author
nually holds a special Christmas Action fundraiser for
of Emerson: The Mind on Fire, has been an inspiration for
three selected ‘worthy projects’ in other countries. APO
this aspiring labor, having offered an outline for a course
was selected by the Dutch Society board as one of the
he would present.
nominees. As a result, we received from the Dutch An-
“The following 1884 review by an editor of the
throposophical Society members a donation of just over
Boston Herald speaks to the ‘promise’ of the ‘Concord
17,500 euros for the US APO program!
School.’ ‘To barely exist through these years was some-
“The Anthroposophical Society in Canada has also
thing; to gain a hearing was more; to adhere steadily
expressed interest in starting a Prison Outreach program
to a high and heroic purpose was more; to be spiritual,
and members have visited us in Ann Arbor to learn about
without being religious in the sectarian sense, was still
our program’s workings first hand. We shared our com-
more; and, through all these years, to do honest work, to
plete manual detailing all aspects of the prison outreach
steadily uphold the interests of intellectual and spiritual
program that was first assembled for the workshop in the
truth, in the larger sense, has been to do what has never
Netherlands and now APO is invited to hold a similar
before been done in the history of American thought and
practical, ‘How to Meeting’ near Toronto in the fall.
letters.’”
“We are fortunate to be able to help others start a
prison outreach initiative in their country and to continue
our first commitment of helping US prisoners who ear-
nestly want to change their lives by holding forth the light
of anthroposophy behind prison walls. How grateful we
are to experience that this same light of anthroposophy
touches all of us—in society or in prison, in the US or
abroad—through giving and receiving.”
Kathy Serafin, anthroposophyforprisoners.org

12 • being human
 Rudolf Steiner Library Newsletter: Reviews

Classics from the Journal for science views reality as iconic, a higher form of reading;
its approach is strongly feminine, and imbued with heart
Anthroposophy: Meditation consciousness. He suggests (surprisingly, I suspect, to the
Academy) that the exemplar of the new scientific think-
& Spiritual Perception ing is Mary Magdalene. As Rudolf Steiner recognized,
because she was a woman she was naturally—structurally
Selected and Introduced by Gertrude Reif
even—better able to understand something exceptional
Hughes. Series Editor: Robert McDermott. than could a man. Professor Anderson concludes that
Anthroposophical Society in America, 2011, Mary Magdalene’s scientia—“thinking of the heart”—was
140 pages. Review by Frederick J. Dennehy the “radiant point around which the scattered Jesus move-
ment began to coalesce into Christianity.”
One of the best-kept secrets in anthroposophical pub-
In his “Traditional and Modern Elements in the Oc-
lishing is the remarkably rich series, Classics from the Jour-
cultism of Rudolf Steiner,” Robert Galbreath, writing from
nal for Anthroposophy, ten volumes of essays and reviews
outside the anthroposophical stream, provides a summary
selected from the long-running publication. As series
of spiritual science within the tradition of initiatory trans-
editor Robert McDermott notes in the foreword to this
formation—in the words of Mircea Eliade, the ontologi-
volume, each collection focuses on a particular theme,
cal mutation of the existential condition. The article is
“including Rudolf Steiner, anthroposophy, imagination,
bracing in its clarity. Particularly impressive is Galbreath’s
society, science, Waldorf Education, visual arts, Mani,
account of Steiner’s defense of reincarnation and karma
Novalis, and meditation and spiritual perception.” The
through application of strictly Darwinian principles.
series will either remind or alert readers to just how valu-
Gary Lachman’s essay, “Rudolf Steiner, Jean Geb-
able a gift we had for so many years. The essays strike one
ser, and the Evolution of Consciousness,” is an acute,
like an unexpected encounter with an old friend. Some
detailed comparison of the similarity between Gebser’s
are scholarly and some intimate; they all speak to the
“structures” and Steiner’s “epochs” of the evolution of
question of understanding and practicing anthroposophy
consciousness. Lachman acknowledges that Steiner’s and
from the place where most of us find ourselves most of the
Gebser’s visions are “very different,” but he is a syncretist.
time—what the Gospel of John calls “this world.”
When two separate voyagers discover the same country,
In her introduction to this tenth and final volume,
he points out, it argues very strongly “for the unknown
Gertrude Reif Hughes focuses on the “how” and the
world’s existence.”
“who” of meditation. The “how” is the praxis—the way
“The Christian Path of Edgar Cayce: A Possible As-
to go about the activity that is or should be the center
pect of Michael’s Activity in America,” by Magda Lissau,
of anthroposophy. The “who” is the question that con-
Kurt Nelson, and Rick Spaulding, is an assessment of the
tinually arises in the course of meditation—who do we
work of Edgar Cayce through the lens of anthroposophy,
become when we meditate?
particularly through Rudolf Steiner’s characterization of
There are fourteen articles in this volume. While
second sight, vision, and premonition as unconscious gifts
none is primarily about the “practice” of meditation, each
of Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition. The destiny
provides a grounding for practice by helping to turn us
of individuals with such faculties allows them entrance
away from what Owen Barfield (as Frederick Amrine
into the spiritual world, and their karma protects them
pointed out in the summer 2012 issue of Being Human),
from most of its dangers, but not from the danger of mis-
refers to as “the besetting sin of literalism.” That “turn-
understanding. The authors also use Sergei Prokofieff’s
ing” is a potent achievement.
Occult Significance of Forgiveness as an initiatory model
The first six essays endeavor to locate anthroposophy
for understanding the affirmations from Cayce’s study
in relation to other traditions and disciplines. Professor Ty-
group readings of 1932. The authors suggest that “the
son Anderson, in an address to the American Academy of
higher self of Cayce woke up, in his health readings,” and
Religion called “Is Science Relevant for Spirituality?” sug-
brought “comfort and healing” as a “gift of love.” They
gests that the answer is “yes,” but that we have to inform
conclude that Cayce’s legacy is “of inestimable value to
our understanding of science to exclude reductionism or
all those in America who have a serious desire to develop
else risk dealing with a science of delusion. True spiritual
their spiritual striving,” and urge that Cayce’s life be stud-

fall issue 2012 • 13

 Rudolf Steiner Library Newsletter: Reviews
ied seriously in the light of anthroposophy.
In “Emergence of Ethical Individualism in Science
and Medicine,” Karl Ernst Schaefer details what he sees
as the appearance of ethical individualism in the second
half of the 20th century in four scientists who have had
the courage to choose a middle path between polarized
factions—those who believe in unimpeded scientific re-
search without regard for moral concerns, and those who
believe that scientists should not do any research where
findings are likely to raise significant moral dangers—
and have stood up to the hostility of their colleagues. Dr.
Schaefer suggests that the foundation of moral neutrality
in science, dating from the school of Jundi Shapur, may
finally be weakening.
Although “Simplicity’s Contribution to a Threefold
Society” by Mark E. Smith was written in 1998, it seems
even more pertinent today. The essay is a sequel to the au-
thor’s “Anthroposophy and Nonviolence,” written three
years earlier, and transfers the theme of non-violence to
the economic sphere. Mr. Smith’s goal of “voluntary sim-
plicity” in personal economic life is an exemplar of the
“middle way,” and a contemporary practical realization
of Rudolf Steiner’s “ethical individualism.” But “volun-
tary simplicity” is not simply a personal prescription; at
the heart of the concept is the hidden understanding that
individual initiative not only can, but will, contribute to
societal evolution.
Ms. Hughes describes four articles as “autobiographi-
cal considerations of how the authors experience their
meditative life.” The first is Danilla Rettig’s review of And
There Was Light, by Jacques Lusseyran, including an ex-
cerpt from the book, which describes the special unfolding
of the inner life of a man who lost his sight at the age of
eight, together with the story of his courageous participa-
tion and leadership in the Resistance movement in France.
Alan Howard in “I Think; Yet Not I…,” explores the
philosophical underpinnings of thinking, the spiritual
activity that fills the state of emptied consciousness that
characterizes meditation as Rudolf Steiner described it;
while in “A Meditation on Inner and Outer Peace,” Ra-
phael Grosse Kleinmann conjures the sunlight of peace,
which he finds intrinsic to genuine meditative experience.
And in “The Path of Initiation for the Present Day,” by
Paul Eugen Schiller, the author treats meditation in its
relation to the practice of Rosicrucian initiation.
The essay, “Meeting with the Dead,” by Albert Stef-
fen, and the review by Tadea Gottlieb of Our Relationship
to Those Who Have Died, by Reverend Hermann Heisler,
14 • being human
speak about the relationship of the living to the dead, a
subject that requires, in Ms. Hughes’s words, “anthropos-
ophy’s objectivity and detailed spiritual perception.” The
cultivation of a genuine relationship to the dead is itself a
form of anthroposophical meditation; when properly di-
rected at the so-called dead, this type of meditation may
be the key to our most intimate connection with those
who have died.
The collection concludes with two pieces that portray
the hard-won optimism that is at the heart of anthropos-
ophy. Hermann Poppelbaum, in an article dating back
almost fifty years, portrays the “three humiliations” of
the human being, ushered in respectively by Copernicus,
Darwin, and Freud, in a “Christmas picture” in which
the human being is moved to reimagine her eminent posi-
tion in the cosmos and sees the faces of all the supersen-
sible beings directed toward her.
The final word is from Rudolf Steiner, who in two
very short excerpts urges us to understand that through
desperate circumstances and inner soul trials a new vi-
sion—seemingly impossible in the utter darkness of these
moments—will be born.
Illuminating Anthroposophy
forÊaÊfutureÊworthyÊofÊtheÊhumanÊbeing
CLASSICS FROM THE
Robert McDermott
series editor
Alongside the basic books,
these “Classics” collections
explore the tremendous
cultural and social
innovations of
anthroposophy and
its contemporary
development in
North America.
Meeting Rudolf Steiner • Anthroposophy & Imagination • Revisioning Society & Culture
Mani & Service • Meeting Anthroposophy • Novalis • Science & Anthroposophy
Waldorf Education • Art & Anthroposophy • Meditation & Spiritual Perception
Special Boxed Set Edition – receive all 10 volumes for $100.
Individual volumes available at $15 each • All pricing includes shipping & handling
Order online at www.anthroposophy.org • 734.662.9355 or information@anthroposophy.org
 Rudolf Steiner Library Newsletter: Reviews
Functional Threefoldness in
the Human Organism and
Human Society
By Johannes Rohen. Adonis Press, 2011, 156
pgs. Review by Sarah Hearn
Johannes Rohen’s reputation as an anatomist is far
reaching: his most famous work, Color Atlas of Anatomy,
appeared in seventeen languages. A much lesser-known
work, a textbook entitled Functional Morphology: The
Dynamic Wholeness of the Human Organism, has received
high praise in U.S. anthroposophical circles since its pub-
lication in 2007 and served as the foundation for his latest
book, Functional Threefoldness in the Human Organism
and Human Society.
Functional Threefoldness is an ambitious work. In it,
the author endeavors to extend his functional methodol-
ogy, which he has spent decades applying to the human
organism, to identify sound functional principles for a dif-
ferent kind of organism that is arguably just as complex,
ailing, and enigmatic: human social life. Rohen is humble
in his approach; from the outset he assures the reader he is
well aware that “playing with analogies is epistemological-
ly unsound and quickly leads to a dead-end.” He goes on
to ensure readers’ interest and attention by essentializing
the comparison between these organisms to those based
on relationships between functional systems and processes,
as opposed to stagnant, singular structures (e.g., cells).
As such, it is more the how than the what of the human
organism that Functional Threefoldness explores as being
relevant and illuminating in regard to a healthy social life.
With an approachable balance of brilliance and mod-
esty, it’s clear that Rohen’s ideas are born of deep work and
close observation of health, function, and relationship in
the human organism. His points of departure easily en-
gage the reader, asking the simple yet urgent questions:
what can we perceive here, and what can we learn? He
first provides an overview of the threefold organization of
the life processes (nervous, rhythmic, and metabolic) of
the human organism. This short chapter is refreshingly
dynamic even for those fully conversant in the study of
anatomy and physiology, yet the content is straightforward
and palatable enough for the layperson whose memory of
high-school science wobbles. In the following chapter, he
offers matter-of-fact descriptions of the threefold organi-
zation of the processes of social life, differentiated as the
legal-political, cultural, and economic systems. Rohen de-
scribes these spheres as autonomous yet interdependent, as
articulated by Rudolf Steiner and others. Thereafter, he
offers a functional analysis of our current social systems
with an eye toward the healthy and distinct roles of the
threefold principles of equality/democracy; cooperation
(brotherhood); and freedom in the legal-political, cultural,
and economic spheres of social life.
To a point, Rohen, while original in his articulation,
generally follows the party line regarding the nature of so-
cial life from the perspective of social threefolding (to the
modest extent that such a consensus exists!). However, he
goes on to forge important new ground and specificity
in his analysis of the workings of threefold ideas and ide-
als. His investigations lead him to justify the existence
of an “inner threefoldness” within each sphere of social
life that is not merely espoused as a vague concept, but is
unfurled in subsequent chapters with great precision and
care. Rohen’s method of perceiving symmetry between
the functional threefoldness in the human life processes
(e.g., the central nervous system, the spinal cord and spi-
nal nerves, and the autonomic nervous system) and in the
spheres of social life (e.g., production, distribution, and
consumption in economic life) provides a well-organized
method for understanding the possibilities for balance
and holism in the functions of social life. In his words
“this dynamic, yet clear understanding of the human or-
ganism can therefore be viewed as an invaluable model
for the structuring of the social organism” (p. 45).
But perhaps the pinnacle of his analysis is his delin-
eation of how each of the threefold ideals has a rightful
and healthy home within each of the three spheres of so-
cial life, just as the human organism’s systems are active
according to functional principles, which are adapted to
respective sub-systems. Accordingly, while the cultural
sphere exists under the flag of freedom, Rohen makes
sound argument for specific cultural functions and insti-
tutions that require freedom to be their guiding principle
through and through, and others for which the principle
of cooperation or democracy must be active alongside the
principle of freedom. A more detailed treatment of these
pictures goes beyond the scope of this review. Suffice it to
say, however, that anyone seeking more specific imagina-
tions of Steiner’s picture that each sphere should have its
“own administration” will be pleased with Rohen’s offer-
ings, at the very least as food for thought, and at most as
entirely amenable to Steiner’s indications.
fall issue 2012 • 15
 Rudolf Steiner Library Newsletter: Reviews
Rohen does a commendable job articulating his vision
without falling victim to the potential stasis that charts
and schematic diagrams can pose to a reader. His descrip-
tions maintain the sense of living complexity inherent
in the systems of his analysis. And, in good pedagogical
form, he seems to encourage his readers to think through
his analysis, providing ample explanation and helpful sup-
plementary examples. At times, Rohen seems naturally to
follow Steiner’s pedagogical indications regarding charac-
terization, stating that “the making of many definitions is
death to living teaching” (Steiner, R., Study of Man, Ru-
dolf Steiner Press, 2011). Rohen offers many characteriza-
tions of the principles and ideals of social life, and multiple
contexts in which to examine them at work. In this way he
provides his readers with the opportunity to “battle their
way to understanding these connections” (p.99), which he
believes is the backbone of understanding the basic fea-
tures of pathology in social life and mustering the neces-
sary courage and initiative to heal society.
Rohen’s method is at once scientifically diligent and
artistic, poetic and metaphorical. In one instance he calls
the reader’s attention to the oft-promoted coupling of the
economic sphere and the metabolic process (given their
respective transformation of substances, etc.) But he
swiftly points out that the social organism is “fed” by the
education, ideas, and innovations of the cultural sphere—
without which we would “starve.” Employing further
artistry, Rohen presents lively pictures of threefoldness
within the legal system, such as characterizing the legisla-
ture as the central social networker and “heart of society,”
sensitive to the needs of the people in the same way the
heart monitors blood supply to a given organ and reacts
accordingly; or describing the “social breathing space”
provided by the judiciary1 and the reintegration process
that the executive, law-enforcement functions can enable
for social deviants, just as the immune system carries out
reintegration processes (here he also draws an analogy to
certain types of white blood cells that “patrol” the or-
ganism in search of foreign bodies). Rohen continuously
brings fresh analysis and imagination to the nature of so-
cial life and to threefold ideas for those with or without
prior acquaintance with these fields.
Indeed, in addition to a thorough treatment of the
spheres of social life and their functions and relationships,
1 Here, Rohen emphasizes the role of freedom alongside the legal system’s
dominant principle of equality—in this way his contention is related to
Steiner’s indications that relate the judiciary functions to freedom and the
cultural sphere.
16 • being human
Rohen specifically tackles a few hot-button issues that
generally elicit conviction and/or confusion from people
on both sides of the traditional political spectrum. One
such issue is the nature and role of money, which Rohen
relates to the circulation of blood, providing an informed
diagnosis of the current monetary system’s pathology,
most notably of the commodification of money itself and
its status as the “unfair competitor” of real goods and
services. In response to these realities, he provides clear
and eloquent descriptions of the proper role and function
of money in a threefold social organism. In his analysis
here and throughout, Rohen is diligent in citing both an-
throposophical and non-anthroposophical sources, both
contemporary and time tested. However, while he points
to some successful examples of regional currencies from
the 1930s, he makes practically no mention of the more
than 2,500 alternative currencies currently in existence,
which have varied degrees of success and equally wide-
ranging (usually unconscious) alignment with threefold
principles. It is also worth clarifying that in the U.S.,
from which he draws various examples regarding money,
regional governments are forbidden to issue regional cur-
rencies, but local or regional cultural entities (e.g., non-
profits) can do so, with some guidelines and restrictions.
Rohen outlines other examples of “social pathology,”
including the commodification of land, labor, and capi-
tal, and offers a brief treatment of the state of healthcare,
education, and other cultural services. In addition, he
points to automation, deregulation, and other culprits of
our social unhealth. In each of these cases, Rohen paints
a bleak picture of the current state of affairs and of the
pathological growth in already unhealthy systems, and il-
lustrates how these tendencies are stark aberrations from
the robust and healthy functional threefold pictures that
he has outlined. Although Rohen offers some important
suggestions for the redemption of our ailing systems, he
fails to mention what seem to be some of the most hope-
ful examples of positive change, such as community land
trusts and worker-owned co-ops (though he does mention
profit sharing with employees).
Generally, this is more an academic treatment of rel-
evant themes than a call to action; a beautiful map of
what’s possible, but without a clear navigation tool or ve-
hicle for getting there. To his credit, Rohen clearly quali-
fies his intentions from the outset, stating that “how such
things should be tried out in practice is beyond the scope
of this book.” Yet the book’s final inquiry, “What Can We
Do?” almost begs the reader to engage in just that ques-
 Rudolf Steiner Library Newsletter: Reviews
tion. Rohen’s strongest advice is, first and foremost, to
have a clear understanding of how social processes work.
The Quest for Hermes
Perhaps after heeding his recommendation, one Trismegistus from Ancient
could turn to the advice of another author (and activist
extraordinaire), whom Rohen references with admiration:
Egypt to the Modern World
Nicanor Perlas. While Rohen offers Perlas much praise, By Gary Lachman. Floris Books, 2011, 247
he also states that “so far, unfortunately, civil societies pages. Review by Frederick J. Dennehy
are not sufficiently organized to constitute a third force
Gary Lachman, founding member, songwriter, and
capable of bringing about healing processes in modern
bass player for the rock group “Blondie,” became a full-
society” as Perlas proposes. However, since the publica-
time writer in 1996. He focused initially on the history of
tion of Rohen’s book, we’ve experienced more and more
the 1960s counterculture, but by 2003 had found a differ-
conflict, bloodshed, and the censorship of various free-
ent interest. Lindisfarne Press published his Secret History
doms around the world, not to mention a historic eco-
of Consciousness: A Semi-Popular Account of Reductive, Non-
nomic crisis. In the same time frame, however, Nicanor
Reductive and Esoteric Understandings of Consciousness,1 a
Perlas ran for the presidency of the Philippines, and more
study of the evolution of consciousness that explores the
recently initiated a new civil-society organization, MIS-
thinking of Goethe, Bergson, Ouspensky, and Jean Geb-
SION, which is showing signs of becoming just this kind
ser, as well as that of Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield.
of much-needed third force in society. In addition, mil-
Not altogether surprisingly for someone who has made
lions of people worldwide have come together in solidar-
his way through The Ever-Present Origin (Jean Gebser’s
ity as part of the Occupy movement. If we can marry this
evolutionary sequence of changes in types of conscious-
emergent cultural force with the wisdom and knowledge
ness from the archaic to the magical, the mythical, the
of social processes and threefolding that Rohen so viv-
mental-rational, and the dawning of the integral), what
idly describes, perhaps we can take some real steps toward
fascinates Lachman is the notion of consciousness history
healing. But perhaps here the analogy with the human
as a palimpsest in which the old coexists with the new.
physical organism falls especially short. Affecting system-
Last year, Lachman turned his attention to the enig-
ic, positive social change requires the free, conscious, in-
ma of Hermes Trismegistus, the “thrice great one” who
ner and outer activity of human beings working together
may have lived in ancient Egypt; may have been a syn-
out of insight, and for this—and perhaps just as well—
cretic union of many Hellenistic esotericists; or may not
there is no analogy.
have existed at all. Readers hoping to find the true identity
Functional Threefoldness brings a new voice and per-
of Hermes Trismegistus will not find it here. Rather, they
spective to many of the long called-for reforms and new
will find an account of Lachman’s own notion of the Her-
ideas of threefolders and some of the larger circle of indi-
metic way: a melding of what is valuable from the most
viduals and organizations seeking social renewal. Rohen’s
fundamental esoteric traditions (“as above, so below”) and
depth of understanding of the human organism is reflect-
mainstream thinking. Here, as in A Secret History of Con-
ed in this intricate and thoughtful contribution to under-
sciousness, he sketches out the wandering history of an idea.
standing social life, the social illness we live with as a global
He traces the meandering stream of Hermetic thought
community, and the path to creating a healthier world.
from its fabled beginnings in Egypt, to the murmur of its
underground music in Hellenistic and medieval times, to
the roar of its resurgence in the Renaissance.
Then comes the plunge. Lachman is perhaps at his
best recounting the near disappearance of Hermeticism
following the relentless scrutiny of the scholar Isaac Casa-
ubon, who demonstrated convincingly that the supposed-
ly ancient texts regarded as the core works of Hermeticism
were pious forgeries. But whatever it is that animates the
central texts of Hermeticism—the multivolume Corpus
1 Available from Rudolf Steiner Library, as is Gebser’s The Ever-Present Origin.

fall issue 2012 • 17

 Rudolf Steiner Library Newsletter: Reviews
Hermeticum and the renowned Emerald Tablet—reap-
pears despite Casaubon. Lachman recounts the resurfac-
ings of Hermeticism in the new forms of Rosicrucianism,
Freemasonry, the Cambridge Platonists, German and
British Romanticism, Theosophy, anthroposophy, and
the best of New Age thinking. Hermes, it seems, may be
unidentifiable, but is still immortal.
If Lachman is sometimes short on analysis, he is a
wonderful storyteller. The cumulative effect of The Quest
for Hermes Trismegistus is to shine a light on the manifes-
tations of Hermeticism through the ages and to make a
case for its centrality. It provides the reader with gener-
ous starting points for further reading and an impetus for
personal research.
Because there is little that can be said with any degree
of certainty about Hermes Trismegistus, and because the
Corpus Hermeticum is dialogic, obscure, and stubbornly
resistant to translation, most of The Quest for Hermes Tris-
megistus is discursive, exploring associated themes such as
Egyptian cosmogony, alchemy, and various accounts of the
journey through the planetary spheres (which Lachman
compares to the anthroposophical account of the period
between death and rebirth). Lachman also looks at subjects
more loosely related with his theme, such as experimen-
The Challenge of Rudolf Steiner was filmed during 2011
– the 150th anniversary year of Steiner’s birth – and
tells the story of his remarkable life, interwoven with
contemporary examples of how his ideas and insights
have influenced pioneering work all over the world in
education, agriculture, medicine, finance and the arts.
This two part DVD is available on the website:
£15 + post & packing or as a download
rudolfsteinerfilm.com
c u p o l a
p r o d u c t i o n
rudolf steiner dvd ad Being Human.indd 5
18 • being human
tation with nitrous oxide and mescaline; Paracelsus; John
Dee; Robert Fludd; and a parade of modern philosophers.
Lachman is strongest in his account of the “rediscov-
ery” of Hermes by Marsilio Ficino in the Italian Renais-
sance and his fate in the aftermath of the Reformation.
He is less able to elicit the meaning of Hermeticism, rely-
ing upon the sweeping distinction between gnosis, with
which he associates Hermeticism, and episteme, with
which he associates reductive knowledge. Many readers
are likely to find his conclusions wanting. His fascina-
tion with the “hypnogogic state,” which he misidentified
in his biography of Rudolf Steiner [2007; available from
RSL] as the state of consciousness Steiner employed for
spiritual research, persists in this book. We remain basi-
cally unenlightened not only about Hermes Trismegistus
himself and the principal texts attributable to him, but
also about Hermeticism, which seems for Lachman, fi-
nally, to be a vaguely widened perspective that includes
the outside world in both its synthetic and natural mani-
festations and anything in consciousness that has an un-
defined “spiritual” character.
Lachman’s urge to connect invariably trumps his urge
to commit. We are left intrigued, stimulated, but hungry
for something more nourishing—like anthroposophy.
The
C h a lle n g e
of
r u dolf
steiner
a documentary f ilm by
Jonathan Stedall
s
13/9/12 13:25:14
A Century of
Anthroposophy
commentary by John Beck
Anthroposophy is a hundred years old. The word is
older, but it has found its particular meaning in the work
of Rudolf Steiner. To render it from Greek merely as “the
wisdom of the human being” is today highly ambiguous;
how much wisdom does the human being show? In 1923
Rudolf Steiner said that the word should be interpreted as
“the consciousness of our humanity.” And the next year
he described it as a path from the mind-and-spirit in the
human being to the mind-and-spirit in the cosmos, im-
mediately and crucially adding:
It arises as a need of the heart.
In this short review we will not look at the 1912 ac-
tion of members of the German section of the Theosophi-
cal Society in forming an Anthroposophical Society. Our
interest is in drawing a larger picture of anthroposophy,
and the society devoted to it, in human history and cul-
ture, and today, here in the USA.
Should we expect it to have accomplished more? A
rather small group of people has carried a large sense of
responsibility for humanity’s future. They have shown
many failings, but have persisted and endured. Alongside
that crucial fact, two others appear: First, the great foun-
dation for their work was the spirit and idea of Europe,
and it failed, catastrophically, in World War I. Second, ac-
cording to the threefold gesture Rudolf Steiner described
as “how one becomes an anthroposophist,” there are mil-
lions of anthroposophists alive today, outside and perhaps
ignorant of the movement calling itself “anthroposophy.”
In other words, “anthroposophy” seems like a fail-
ure—but one which Steiner and others just refused to ac-
cept almost a century ago. And yet today it is a present
and future success which we are struggling to recognize.
Anthroposophy’s European foundation
Today it’s polite to play down Europe’s role in world
history, but it was through Europe that physical, com-
mercial, military, political, scientific, technological, and
cultural globalization were set in motion. And until 1914
European powers were the masters of the world. The USA
and imperial Russia became Europe’s huge, awkward
wings; but small countries beginning with Portugal took
control of vast areas of the planet. European rule unfold-
ed relentlessly, harshly, but the aggressive outward side of
it was partnered by an inner cultural triumph, the devel-
opment of modern science. Out of nature’s sub-basement
poured such vast hidden forces that, tamed by machines,
we could provide well for every human being alive today,
if that were our choice. But to start telling these stories, of
the ships and guns and trade, the observations and exper-
iments and hypotheses, would take many, many pages.
What matters is that by 1900 old Charlemagne’s Eu-
ropean children had actually reached the threshold of be-
coming partners with the creative powers of the cosmos.
The early adventurers’ stolen or created wealth had fed a
culture approaching the sublime.
So at the historical moment when Rudolf Steiner be-
came active, Europe had become capable and worthy of
leading the development of a world culture. Slavery had
been abolished. Reformers sought to care for the poor and
elevate the displaced peasants who were now the urban
industrial proletariat. The days of privilege by birth-right
were fading fast (and near forgotten over in America).
The magical experience of reading was open to all. Art
had begun to see and speak to everyone. Romanticism
reaffirmed the meaning of the individual. The novel, the
canvas, and the opera created overwhelming alternate re-
alities: imagination awakening imagination.
Science had revealed vast invisible fields of forces
stretching to the stars. “Matter” was recognized to be not
quite what we naively take it for. Evolution now told us
we had endured a vast process of development not men-
tioned in the Bible. Psychology was probing the inner life,
finding unknown regions, determined to conquer the
soul just like another hemisphere. If Christian theology
held back, Mme. Blavatsky’s Theosophy offered ancient
Hindu-Buddhist concepts to raise thinking into worlds of
consciousness higher than the human. Europe was even
beginning to listen to the world. Debussy learned from
the Javanese gamelan, Picasso from African masks.
This Europe was an idea and an ideal. Imagined eso-
terically, it was a chorus of archangels—a chorus of cul-
tures and languages reaching up together to shape plan-
etary destiny. It was a harmony of diverse voices hymning
an exalted purpose. And with the failing and falling away
of old social forms and traditional understandings, it was
demanding a new and higher stage to rise onto.
All that was missing was a way of understanding, ob-
fall issue 2012 • 19
jectively, just what the human signifies in the cosmos, and
what our choices signify for our future. It is in this situ-
ation that Rudolf Steiner appears, in a modest working-
class family of lower Austria. What he eventually brought
would have made no sense, gained no traction, either out-
side Europe or earlier in its history. It was a consummat-
ing step in a thousand years of cultural becoming.
The fall of Europe
But in August 1914 Europe set about to destroy itself
in “the Great War.” By Christmas 1916 the last chance
to stop the war on the old terms, within the “idea of Eu-
rope,” failed. A year later Tolstoy’s Russia fell to an athe-
ist regime enflamed with class hatred. By 1920 imperial
Germany was shattered socially and economically, and
Austria-Hungary dissolved. The surviving young of all
countries were outraged by their elders’ stupidity. Left
and right were murderously at each other’s thoats. Ameri-
cans who helped win the war “over there” for the Western
powers took a victory lap and went home again to isolate.
The world into which Rudolf Steiner was bringing
his vision and his tools for a higher cultural develop-
ment—that world just vanished. The possibility of his
anthroposophy’s rising with Europe, as its highest and
most progressive imagination, no longer existed. Anthro-
posophy would have to find new possibilities in a world
that would continue to destroy itself, and tens of millions
of human lives, for many decades to come.
Italy went fascist in 1922. Germany succumbed in
1933, Spain in a hideous civil war from 1936 to 1939.
Then German arms swept across most of continental Eu-
rope—until Hitler unwisely invaded the USSR.
The aftermath from 1945 forward was a choice of
politically benign but culturally corrosive consumerism
from the USA—or a long harsh winter under the com-
missars. In 2012 the once world-conquering Europeans
celebrated the simple fact that they are no killing each
other with a Peace Prize to the European Union.
America’s responsibility
Individuals from Europe can be as idealistic and in-
fluential as individuals anywhere else. But their shared
cultural vision has been stunted, and their sense of a
world responsibility is largely buried under the shame of
colonialism and its cultural brutality. The point for us is
that Europe since 1916 was not a platform from which an
“anthroposophy” could graciously make its way in mod-
ern civilization. The USA may have a vaudeville culture
20 • being human
and brutal means of global force projection, but despite
the economic rise of China, India, Brazil, the world is still
looking for leadership from America.
Rudolf Steiner was asked about this in 1919 (see CW
194, lectures of 14-15 December). He had already spo-
ken three years before of an Anglo-American “economic
world empire.” Now, questioned by the first English visi-
tors since the armistice, he noted that the defeated coun-
tries would have no further role to play as nations. Britain
and America would build their empire “like a force of na-
ture.” To help balance out the materialism which is their
natural and karmic contribution to world culture they
would have to bring forth new spiritual impulses.
The Anthroposophical Society in America was
formed in 1923, but as late as the 1950s its members were
still speaking about a “catacomb period”—when the early
Christians met secretly and literally underground in im-
perial Rome. And despite German being America’s larg-
est single ethnic background, there was now a cultural
stigma attached to everything German. The defensive
posture required for anthroposophy’s survival in Europe
was also emulated in the USA; perhaps we just assumed
that “that is how anthroposophy is done.”
So if it had depended on the Anthroposophical So-
ciety alone, anthroposophy in America today would be
invisible. Two related impulses have succeeded, however.
One is the increasingly able translation and publishing of
Rudolf Steiner’s work, so that spiritual seekers and open-
minded cultural activists can discover that he is relevant if
not still well ahead of the times. The other factor, helped
by the publications and by staunch immigrants from Eu-
rope, is applied anthroposophy, the “practical” initiatives
especially in education, agriculture, health, and special
needs. Today anthroposophy in the USA is actually well-
represented by a very substantial infrastructure of human
services. They are widely recognized as outstanding in
their goals and very credible in accomplishment. Most
often society members initiated and carried this work, but
there has been, so to speak, a hole in the doughnut when
the question is asked: “So what is this anthroposophy?”
What is anthroposophy?
With all good will, anthroposophists have often
gagged on that simple question, or thrown up a cheerful
roadblock like, “Have you got a week?” One purpose in
naming this publication being human was to suggest the
option of saying right away that “anthroposophy is about
being human.” No one is turned away by such a response.
It can flow on easily with words like, “And my connec-
tion with it is...” Self-development? My kids’ education?
Health? Nutrition? Healing the Earth? Understanding
where we’re headed? Try “being human” next time.
But there is a deeper story to “what is anthroposophy”
which we need to explore. That story lives in the phrase
we use as a synonym, “spiritual science.” This “spiritual
science” is a plausible but inadequate translation of the
German word Geistes-Wissenschaft (hyphenated here only
for clarity). Wissenschaft is a freer term than English “sci-
ence”; it suggests “creative intelligence” rather than just
the cold, hard facts. And Geist is a word which points to
mind and intellect and spirit. When Rudolf Steiner said
words which we translate as “thinking is already highly
spiritual [Geist-lich],” his claim was supported for a Ger-
man-speaking mind by the broader meaning of Geist.
For English-speakers today, “spiritual science” may
be a pleasantly surprising contrast in thoughts. Or it may
be a laughable oxymoron that places anthroposophy in
the company of religions like Christian Science and Sci-
entology. What anthroposophists are bizarrely unaware
of is the fact that this term Geistes-Wissenschaft was coined
in 1883 by a prominent German thinker named Dilthey
and has become the standard word for what English-
speakers call “the humanities.”
Dilthey noted that natural science (Natur-Wissen-
schaft) had been established by Francis Bacon on bril-
liant foundations which led to its stunning success. But
Dilthey’s interests—history and new disciplines like so-
ciology and psychology—were a bad match for Bacon’s
science, which sought to exclude human feeling and in-
tentionality from its framework. Dilthey called for a sci-
ence (Wissenschaft) of mind-and-spirit (Geist); he saw this
being founded on an understanding of the individual hu-
man spirit. Given the right basic principles and researches,
a whole great second pole of “science”—human scienc-
es—could be opened up alongside nature science.
Rudolf Steiner actually did this foundational work.
His Philosophy of Free Spiritual Activity justified the indi-
vidual human mind-and-spirit as foundation for a view of
reality. His How to Know Higher Worlds is a preparatory
manual for the researcher in this new field. Theosophy
gives the “lay of the land.” An Outline of Esoteric Science
takes the new science back to the beginning of time.
Academic thinkers did not recognize the significance
of his early works, and eventually he found his audience
in the Theosophical Society and went public with his
esoteric researches. Steiner ended by revealing an “inner”
science of evolving humanity. Though it radically chal-
lenged established and conventional modern thought, if
Europe had not collapsed, it might have been understood.
So what is anthroposophy? It really is “about being
human” and we can speak of it just that simply. And this
“science of mind-and-spirit” is a revolutionary cultural
paradigm shift. Anthroposophists will have to acknowl-
edge and clarify and defend it in those terms, too.
Where do the simple being-human and the new cul-
tural paradigm meet? In individual human development:
in our choice to become more fully and more consciously
citizens both of the physical world we have mastered (by
Bacon’s shrewd tactics), and of the metaphysical-spiritual
world where we can find our enduring being.
The leadership anthroposophy needs
Individuals matter in anthroposophy’s future, and so
does geography. Celebrating Rudolf Steiner’s 150th anni-
versary last year gave many anthroposophists in the USA
a strong sense of opportunity around the core mission and
ideas of anthroposophy—its whole civilizational perspec-
tive on humanity’s future. This is very timely. If Europe
was once like a “chorus of archangels” raising the global
vision and culture, since 1945 the eyes of the world have
been on the USA. In our outer role as world power, the
single world power now, we often do not earn the world’s
respect, and our past is replete with abuses. But in the
inner American impulse to form one nation out of free
individuals, wherever they come from, and to afford all
persons an opportunity to manifest their potential—in
that unique organic principle the world senses an endur-
ing ideal. By accepting the breadth of our differences,
Americans reach up to that same high level of the uni-
versally human which the idea of Europe once achieved.
Anthroposophy is not needing to be led globally by
US-Americans, who could not match all its rich devel-
opment in Europe. But over here, in the inner America
where humanity often sees a real generosity of spirit,
Americans must help anthroposophy grow strong and
open and credible. This will come both out of Rudolf
Steiner’s work and its worldwide development, and out of
our work with compatible American roots and branches.
Is that possible? For sure. There is nothing inherently
strange to Americans in “the consciousness of our hu-
manity.” And a path from the mind-and-spirit in the hu-
man being to the mind-and-spirit in nature, the planet,
the cosmos—that, too, arises “as a need of the heart” in
a great many Americans. Emerson, Bronson Alcott, Mar-
fall issue 2012 • 21
garet Fuller, Whitman, Thoreau, Dickinson and many
more have been singing this great anthem which was
heard before by the original inhabitants of this continent.
A culmination?
Steven Usher wrote recently about a “culmination” of
anthroposophy at the end of the 20th century (posted at
anthroposophy.org). I agree with him that the success of
our initiatives in the late 1990s was indeed a culmination.
But do we imagine things stopping there? Only if our
perspective stays within “the anthroposophical bubble,”
where no word is heard unless uttered by Rudolf Steiner
and no success counts unless it wears our colors. Perhaps
that is what Manfred Schmidt-Brabant, the last president
of the General Anthroposophical Society, was seeing
when he spoke at Michaelmas 2000 of the “occult impris-
onment of the Anthroposophical Society.” A grim phrase.
The efforts we make into the world are turned back on us,
he said. Why? Because we do not take others’ capacities
and intentions seriously enough?
The “consciousness of our humanity” should assist
us, not prevent us, in seeing beyond ourselves. In many
places but especially in the USA a huge new, non-sectari-
an, non-traditional, spirituality blossomed from the 1960s
forward. What Steiner had called for in 1919 as a coun-
ter-balance to our materialism actually appeared. By the
end of the 1990s, psychographic researchers (who assess
and measure the spread of personal beliefs, values, and
ideals) had identified tens of millions of Americans who
“care deeply about ecology and saving the planet, about
relationships, peace, social justice, and about authenticity,
self actualization, spirituality and self-expression.” These
are neither cultural traditionalists nor “moderns,” and the
research shows them growing: “In 1995, 23.6% of the US
adult population, or 44 million adults... In 2008, 34.9%
of US adult population, or 80 million adults.” Yes, this is
the “values cohort” dubbed the “cultural creatives.”
Creating culture globally is central to the mission of
anthroposophy, along with the self-development (or “self-
actualization”) required for such a culture to appear and
endure. The link to “cultural creatives” is even clearer.
Rudolf Steiner described “how one becomes an anthro-
posophist” (on 2/13/1923, in Awakening to Community).
He describes a process essentially identical to “Becoming
a Cultural Creative,” the second chapter of The Cultural
Creatives, published in 1999. There are three steps:
1. Our heart (perceptive feeling) tells us that the
world we are trying to engage has something (or
22 • being human
many things) seriously wrong in it.
2. We turn inward and look upward in our thinking
to find higher insights and values to will allow us
to understand the situation.
3. We turn back outward with these insights, with a
will to try to heal things in the world.
This threefold gesture in human consciousness, Steiner
implies, is the movement-in-consciousness by means of
which we can recognize the being he calls Anthroposophia.
And researchers who knew nothing of Steiner’s work rec-
ognized this gesture, her signature, in the hearts and
minds of tens of millions of Americans in the 1990s.
Conclusion
The time span of a hundred years is reinforcing,
according to Steiner’s research. So the anniversary of
the founding of the original Anthroposophical Society
should be wind in our sails. We can also take note of the
“cosmic day,” a 72-year span, one degree measured by the
movement of the starry heavens. These cosmic days seem
to measure out human lives and impulses. The Bolshe-
vik regime in Russia lasted, as Steiner said it would, for a
cosmic day: 1917-1989. A cosmic day after Rudolf Steiner
said in 1919 that additional spiritual impulses would have
to arise in the West, American researchers began finding
evidence of a new spirituality among tens of millions of
“cultural creatives.” A cosmic day after his great “practi-
cal” initiatives (1919-24), Waldorf schools and biodynam-
ic farms and CSAs and Camphill villages were sprouting
across the USA. Tens of thousands of “cultural creatives”
have been finding and embracing these initiatives.
Emerson, too, observed the Days.1
Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days,
Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,
And marching single in an endless file,
Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.
To each they offer gifts after his will,
Bread, kingdom, stars, and sky that holds them all.
I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp,
Forgot my morning wishes, hastily
Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day
Turned and departed silent. I, too late,
Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.
What a difference a day makes, if we accept her gifts.
1 Hypocritic: perhaps in its oldest meaning, “like a stage actor”; fagots:
bundles of sticks; pleached: with interlacing branches; fillet: a headband.
The One Life
Within Us and
Abroad
Rudolf Steiner’s Calendar of the Soul
by Gertrude Reif Hughes
First published in Orion magazine, Autumn 1999.
Maybe it’s because I’m an academic, or maybe it’s
the famous ability of mortality to concentrate the human
mind—or perhaps it’s just a personal idiosyncrasy—but I
know that I feel a clearer connection between my own in-
ner life and that of the planet in autumn than at any other
time of year. The waning light poses a challenge. Will I
be able to compensate for the growing cold and warm to
my tasks? Am I ready? Fall asks something of me. Spring,
whether because it’s so beautiful or, for a teacher, so im-
possibly burdensome, overwhelms me every year. But fall,
with all its warnings and wanings, stirs me to take initia-
tive, make a contribution, find my own powers and use
them. Fall and winter open a space for me to fill.
“The course of the year has its own life,” said Rudolf
Steiner in the 1918 preface to his Calendar of the Soul. As
human beings we can “unfold a feeling-unison” with it.
We can breathe out with the earth, from spring’s sprout-
ing and blossoming to high summer; then we can follow
the earth’s in-breathing as it moves through autumn to
the depths of winter. The fifty-two verses of the Calendar,
one for each week of the year, follow the year’s cycle, and
allow us to perceive the changes around us in terms of our
own inner activity. The verses alert the soul, says Steiner’s
preface, to “the delicate yet vital threads ... between it and
the world into which it has been born.” Coleridge called
those threads “the one life within us and abroad.” Robert
Frost wrote of inner and outer weather.1 The Calendar
connects them at a deep level, an esoteric one.
Written in German in 1912, translated since then
into numerous languages, the Soul Calendar has sup-
ported and inspired hundreds of meditants and others
1  “Tree At My Window” from Frost’s West-Running Brook (1928) concludes:
“That day she put our heads together, / Fate had her imagination about her,
  Your head so much concerned with outer, / Mine with inner, weather.”
interested in connecting themselves to the cycle of the
year. I first encountered the Calendar when I was thirty-
two years old, some thirty years ago. I’d been meditating
for five or six years and was already earnestly commit-
ted to anthroposophy, the name given to Steiner’s varied
life work, but I found the verses uncongenial as medita-
tive material and unappealing as poetry. Though I’m a
professor of literature, with a specialty in poetry and Ro-
manticism, I didn’t recognize that the Calendar develops
Romantic themes concerning how nature and the human
life of imagination intertwine. Still, it was the academic
life that ultimately brought me back to the Calendar. Ac-
ademic life, and the death of my mother, who had been a
devoted reader of the Calendar as well as a profound lover
of nature. In memory of her, I decided to open the Soul
Calendar once more.
A colleague of mine observes that for academics, Au-
gust is a month of Sunday nights. However chaotic and
exhausting the start of classes may be each September,
anticipating it all in August is worse. In August of 1981
anxiety together with the pain and uplift of mourning
had put me in a receptive state, and the verses of the Cal-
endar spoke to my condition.
The verse for the end of August told of girding oneself
for new tasks, and described how the waning, outward
light now begins to shine within the soul: “I feel strange
power, bearing fruit / And gaining strength to give my-
self to me.” The verse for the following week emphasized
the transformation of light even more and continued the
theme of ripening powers:
The light from world-wide spaces
Works on within with living power;
Transformed to light of soul
It shines now into spirit depths
To bring to birth the fruits
Whereby out of the Self of worlds
The human self in course of time shall ripen.
That year I became able to “read” the Soul Calen-
dar as Steiner designed it to be read—meditatively. The
Calendar began to offer its gifts to me, and for the next
seven years I worked with it almost daily. I saw that the
verses are more like koans than poems. The descriptions
not only represented processes around me but awakened
me to processes occurring within my soul. Earlier I hadn’t
felt that echoing, which is fundamental to the Calendar.
Now I began to confirm it in my own experience. Or else,
as you do with a koan, I would work to make it true by
fall issue 2012 • 23
trying to rise meditatively to its level of meaning.
The verse for early September was easy. It’s still one
of my favorites:
There dims in damp autumnal air
The senses’ luring magic;
The light’s revealing radiance
Is dulled by hazy veils of mist.
In distances around me I can see
The autumn’s winter sleep;
The summer that is spent
Has given itself to me.
Classes had just started that year. Each
day I drove to campus early enough to see mist
still slung among the corn stalks in the fields,
and vapor rising from the Connecticut River like
the aftermath of a sacrament just ended. “Season
of mists and mellow fruitfulness,” I’d murmur to
myself, from Keats’s “Ode to Autumn.” The “lur-
ing magic” of the “damp autumnal air” in Steiner’s verse
matched the mood and aesthetics of my daily drive. I also
felt the truth of the alchemical legacy represented at the
end, where the soul recognizes that a physically absent
summer is present as an inner season. What once lived
outside now lives within.
Transformations between inner and outer occur
throughout the Calendar. They are its most characteris-
tic gesture. You can experience this by working sequen-
tially with each verse as its week comes around, and even
more so if you work with them in pairs. Take the Keatsean
verse about September mists (Verse 23 )—the correspond-
ing verse (30) is the one for late October/early November.
(I’ll return to the Calendar’s organization in a moment.)
Comparing the two, you find that where the September
verse says “Autumn’s winter sleep” approaches, the Octo-
ber one says, “Winter will arouse in me / The summer of
the soul.” Winter’s approach figures in both verses, but the
later one sees it from the perspective of a consciousness
that is now perceiving its own mood, where earlier it had
been engrossed in the mood of the landscape. The shift
in viewpoint from physical scene to noticing soul invites
you to experience your participation in nature’s seasonal
cycles, in this case helping to make you aware that sum-
mer’s disappearance from the landscape permits a renewed
impulse in your own psyche. A sleep in one realm allows
a fresh awakening in the other. Throughout the Calendar
such counterpoints enrich and clarify its meanings.
If you take one verse each week and let correspond-
24 • being human
ing ones resonate with one another, the course of the year
comes alive for you, and so does the pulse of your own
selfhood. You learn to notice not just the surface
water of your psyche, sometimes ruffled by wor-
ries, sometimes by pleasure, but also its under-
ground rivers and springs.You sense now a need
for help, now the power to act, now a challenge
from the world, now an answering resolve
from your own heart.
It’s helpful to use an edition of the Cal-
endar that prints the corresponding verses on
facing pages so that you can work with the
fifty-two verses as twenty-six pairs. Then the
Calendar’s structure starts to dawn on you. You
see how the verses reveal not just a continuous
cycle but a music of tensions and resolutions as
the year modulates through its four seasons and
fifty-two weeks.
The Soul Calendar year starts on the first Sunday
after the first full moon after the spring equinox. Each
spring verse corresponds with the one that’s the same dis-
tance before the beginning of the year, as the current verse
is after it. Verse 1 pairs with 52, 2 with 51, 3 with 50, and
so on. The same goes for each autumn verse, with Verse
26 serving as the pivot. I find it useful to picture the two
halves of the year along the two lobes of a lemniscate, or
figure 8, as in the drawing [opposite page]. Verses 1 to
26 move in a clockwise direction along the outside of the
upper lobe, and Verses 27 through 52 cross downward
around the lower lobe in a counterclockwise direction.
You can see that paired verses cluster around the spring
and autumn equinoxes whereas toward the solstices they
diverge. The farther away you get from the equinoxes the
farther apart the partners in a pair get, until the point
where midsummer verses at the height of the year match
midwinter ones at the depth. To me, that’s a meditation
in itself.
The call-and-response rhythm of the Soul Calendar
brings its readers into a subtle conversation with the uni-
verse. Often one verse in a pair points more emphatically
to outer weather and the other to inner. Instead of separat-
ing what they distinguish, however, the correspondences
always show how each member of a pair lives within the
other like a current in water. The verses perform, and we
along with them, a kind of dance. Partners separate with-
out abandoning and meet without colliding.
Take a verse from the upper lobe of the lemniscate
and one from the lower lobe. The first thirteen or so vers-
es of the year tell how “the growing human I” glories in
the sensory world’s loveliness, expanding “from narrow
selfhood’s inner power” into a more cosmic experience of
itself. Now, in Verse 17 at the end of July and the begin-
ning of August, we hear:
Thus speaks the cosmic Word
That I by grace through senses’ portals
Have led into my inmost soul:
Imbue your spirit depths
With my wide world-horizons
To find in future time myself in you.
In the corresponding verse, 36, which comes in mid-
December (when, in my case, the semester is careening
to a close and holiday preparations start to intensify), we
hear the cosmic Word again. This time it says:
Imbue your labor’s aims
With my bright spirit light
To sacrifice yourself through me.
Twice the cosmic Word admonishes—in late sum-
mer, to deepen one’s own perhaps superficial awareness so
as to make it better able to embrace the wide world’s full-
ness; in mid-December, when daily life is ready to burst
with obligations and festivities, to remember to conduct
everyday labors like a lofty offering. A prayer perhaps.
The Calendar opens a meditative path for those who
engage it. The dynamic of tensions and balances in the
arrangement of the mantric verses awakens me as I work
with them. Or rather, awakens in me a slumbering ca-
pacity to perceive and appreciate my own human role in
the drama of what Owen Barfield called “the year par-
ticipated.” In his preface Steiner describes what the soul
experiences:
If the soul opens itself to the influences that speak so vari-
ously to it week by week, it will be led to a right feeling of
itself. Thereby the soul will feel forces growing within that
will strengthen it. It will observe that such forces within it
want to be awakened—awakened by the soul’s ability to
partake in the meaningful course of the world as it comes
to life in the rhythms of time.
Days lengthen and then shorten, as the air warms
and cools with the light’s waxing and waning. Wintry
night and summer day change places. As the Calendar’s
meditative verses call you to these “rhythms of time,” you
become a more conscious and more expert partner in the
cosmic dance of light and dark. When the verses chart
the year’s outbreath in spring, they reunite you with the
cosmos. In spring, say the verses, we leave the familiar-
ity of our relatively narrow everyday self for a trancelike
union with godly powers. We lose ourselves so as to find
ourselves. A verse for mid-July (15) describes how at the
height of summer we submit to “an enchanted weaving”
that wraps us in a sensory daze, mysteriously refreshing
our capacity for mindfulness.
After the glories and magic of expansion we turn to
the very different magic of intensification. The lemnis-
cate drawing shows the transformation, as the outward
edge of the upper lobe becomes the inner edge in the
lower one. After the autumn equinox, we discover that
summer’s rest has given us our own seedlike “germinat-
ing force” (27). Then, at the winter solstice, we encounter
the antiphonal experience of our enchanted summertime
sleep (39):
I feel free of enchantment
The spirit child in my soul’s core
...
Which grows rejoicing into farthest worlds
Out of my being’s godly roots.
A little later, in January, we not only feel the coun-
terpart of summer’s gifts but also the impulse to act, to
match them with our own distinctly human activity (41):
The soul’s creative might
Strives outward from the heart’s own core.
The soul thus shapes itself
In human loving and in human working.
Two worlds meet in the human soul. Without us,
nature and the cosmos remain separate. But with our hu-
man work, nature becomes revelatory, readable, signifi-
cant. Our souls return what the gods bestow. This is the
message of the Soul Calendar. I don’t find it in its words,
or even in its composition, but only in the experiences it
brings when I work with it over time. The more I do that,
the more I see why Coleridge amended his celebration of
“the one life within us and abroad.” The famous last lines
of a poem he wrote just a few years later recognize the
complexity of what the earlier version had announced so
ecstatically. Addressing the imagination, Coleridge wrote:
O Lady! We receive but what we give,
And in our life alone does nature live.
After you have been reading the Soul Calendar for a
while, I think these lines become its true motto.
The Calendar verses are from The Calendar of the Soul, by
Rudolf Steiner, translated by Hans and Ruth Pusch,
Anthroposophic Press (Hudson, New York), 1982
fall issue 2012 • 25
 Envisioning the Calendar of the Soul:
a note about my creative process
When I set out to create an illustration for a specific verse, I
start by reading it a few times to make sure I understand what is
being said. I direct my attention to sounds or verbs that are es-
pecially prevalent; these affect the form qualities I work towards.
Specific spacial gestures, such as “senses heights”, ”depths of soul”
etc., also influence the composition. What follows is a relatively
chaotic step in the process in which, working with pencil and
eraser, I draw lines that weave together the different movements
of the verse. Foundational form principals, such as curvy (willing)
and straight (thinking), concave (the world impresses itself upon
me) and convex (I express myself), are used to create a choreog-
raphy of soul activities. Concurrently, an inner process with the
verse continues as it unfolds and becomes a mood of soul, an in-
ner resonating. Gradually, like water carving itself a path, specific
“trails” start to form as others are erased. Increasingly, I attend to
developing the interrelations of the drawn lines: Crossing lines
create a wakeful quality of heightened activity. In contrast, lines
moving in parallel or as an echoing movement bring about a rest-

Fourth Week- 28 April-4 May

I sense a kindred nature to my own:
Thus speaks perceptive feeling
As in the sun-illuminated world
It merges with the floods of light;
To thinking’s clarity
My feeling would give warmth
And firmly bind as one
The human being and the world.

Forty-ninth Week (March 9-15)

I feel the force of cosmic life:
Thus speaks my clarity of thought,
Recalling its own spirit growth
Through nights of cosmic
darkness,
And to the new approach
of cosmic day
It turns its inward rays of hope.

26 • being human
ful quality. Form progressions (small to large, sharp to round etc.)
support an experience of the whole composition as the dynamic
activity of one being. Now I need to evaluate the lines as meet-
ings of two surfaces. Every line indicates a tonal variation; I start
“thinking in surfaces.” I then begin layering ink washes in a pro-
cess of orientating myself to the light, activating and intensifying
it through the presence of darkness, while not losing it altogether.
Tonal gradations create a unified breathing of “gravity” and “lev-
ity” to guide my feeling. While every verse has a unique orienta-
tion to the light within, and without, I also work with the larger
movement of light and dark that progresses through the course of
the whole year: When the darkness of winter is outside, we light
candles and warm ourselves by the fire; in summer we rest in the
shade after playing in the sunlight flooded world. This year-long
movement of light and dark has its own smaller movements and
dynamic fluctuations within it, so it informs, but does not re-
strict, the composition of each individual piece.
I have recently completed illustrating all 52 verses, but de-
cided to revisit two of the verses before I finalize and publish the
series in a book.
Ella Manor Lapointe

Thirtieth Week (October 27-November 2)

There flourish in the sunlight of my soul
The ripened fruits of thinking;
To conscious self-assurance
The flow of feeling is transformed.
I can perceive now joyfully
The autumn’s spirit-waking:
The winter will arouse in me
The summer of the soul.

Twenty-third Week (September 8-14)

There dims in damp autumnal air
The senses’ luring magic;
The light’s revealing radiance
Is dulled by hazy veils of mist.
In distances around me I can see
The autumn’s winter sleep;
The summer’s life has yielded
Itself into my keeping.

fall issue 2012 • 27

Michaelmas and
Rudolf Steiner’s
Calendar of the
Soul
by Herbert O. Hagens
On April 11, 1912, Rudolf Steiner distributed the
first copies of the Kalender 1912/13 in Helsinki, Finland,
after a lecture to a group of Russians. The 52 verses we
know today as the Calendar of the Soul appeared at the
end of the original publication. The only statement that
Steiner made on that occasion was: “Whoever meditates
on these verses will achieve a great deal.”
So, how do we meditate on these weekly verses dur-
ing the course of the year? The fifty-two verses in the
Calendar of the Soul accompany us through the seasons
and the festivals, always starting with the first verse
on Easter Sunday. With one exception all of the verses
given for the years 1912-1913 were dated to begin on
Sunday of each week. Even the Michaelmas verse (#26)
happened to fall on a Sunday (September 29, 1912).
Rudolf Steiner gave various guidelines for the vers-
es in the two introductions that he wrote for the 1912
and 1918 editions. But for the purpose of this study we
will work with another indication that Steiner gave in
a lecture on Easter Sunday, April 1, 1923:
“They (human beings) must gain once more the es-
oteric force out of themselves to ‘speak’ something into
Nature that accords with natural events. It must become
possible to grasp the Michael thought as the blossom of
the Easter thought. While the Easter thought stems from
physical blossoming, it will become possible to place the
blossom of the Easter thought—the Michael thought—
into the course of the year as the outcome of physical
withering. People must learn once more to ‘think’ the
spiritual ‘together with’ the course of nature.”1
Can we relate the Michaelmas verse in the Calendar
of the Soul to the comments that Rudolf Steiner made
in 1923? We begin by reminding ourselves that the year-
1 Rudolf Steiner, The Cycle of the Year as Breathing-Process of the Earth.
Anthroposophic Press, 1984.
28 • being human
ly life cycle of the archetypal plant weaves like a thread
throughout the course of the 52 verses. One could ob-
serve that the blossom stage of the plant just barely begins
at Easter with the first opening of the bud. The expan-
sion into a full blossom is achieved after St. John’s Tide in
verse 13. Verse 14 ushers in the hint of contraction only
to eventually give rise to the expansion of the fruit at the
expense of the withering blossom and then of the whole
plant. The Michaelmas verse corresponds to the moment
of peak ripeness of the fruit, the perfect environment for
the seeds within to mature, a process also of expansion
and contraction that ends after Christmas with verse
39. We absorb the processes that we observe in nature
through our senses into our life of soul. But we also can
say that at every stage of the plant cycle something is be-
ing born at the expense of a former stage. Each stage must
“die” in order for the next stage to happen. This is the
essence of metamorphosis and of Rosicrucian meditative
practice. The bud must “die” in order for the blossom to
form. The fruit must perish in order to nurture the seeds.
The seed must stop being a seed in order for the sprout to
break forth.
Let us ponder the Michaelmas verse itself:
Michaelmas Mood
O Nature, thy maternal life, Natur, dein müttlerliches Sein
I carry it within my will, Ich trage es in meinem Willenswesen;
And my fiery power of willing Und meines Willens Feuermacht,
Steels my spirit’s promptings, Sie stählet meines Geistes Triebe,
Engendering the feel of self Dass sie gebären Selbstgefühl
That carries Me in me. Zu tragen mich in mir.
— trans. John Gardner, 1995
The meditant calls out to Nature, addresses Nature
in the way one would speak to a close friend. We then ac-
knowledge that we carry Nature’s maternal instinct with-
in the being of our own will. The other element within
our will is the fiery power, inherited from the summer,
that heats up and forges the “promptings.” The “prompt-
ings” are what lie deep within our spirit, like the seeds
inside of the fruit, waiting to be hardened (steeled!) in
order to survive the winter.
These impulses of the spirit are what we are born
with and they become powerful forces within the soul.
But the soul also is the clearing house for our life experi-
ences arising from our thoughts, feelings, and deeds. The
Michaelmas verse points to a dynamic of soul that gives
birth (gebären) to a sheath for the self. It is very much
like strengthening the shell of the seed so that it can har-
bor the spark that becomes the shoot of a new plant in
the spring. This is achieved through the right balance of
growth and decay, birth and death, Lucifer and Ahriman.
We let the imagination of Michael with the sword
and the scales arise in the background during the course
of meditating the Michaelmas verse. Even the devil trying
to tip the scales with his claw-like finger begins to appear
as we journey on our way through the autumn verses. The
fruit falls from the tree and the seeds penetrate into the
earth. Thus we learn that the metamorphosis of the plant
mirrors the development of our soul. With the strength-
ened forces of soul the self can then dive deep into the
spirit: O human being, know thou thyself!
Notes on the Calendar of the Soul
2012 and 2013 are full of
centenary observances in the
work of Rudolf Steiner, and on
this and the following two pag-
es we will share some short ob-
servations about the Calendar
of the Soul. — In 2003 Steiner-
Books published a facsimile edi-
tion of the first, privately issued
Calendar for 1912-1913 (still
available) and many who have
loved and meditated with later
editions were surprised to dis-
cover that the weekly verses they know and love are only
the second half of the original work. The first half was a
weekly date-book with dramatic new images of the signs
(or beings) of the zodiac. Those were created by Imma
von Eckhardstein following Rudolf Steiner’s indications
and are reproduced with added colors on the cover of this
issue. Margot Rossler created versions in etched glass (on
Aries Taurus Gemini Cancer
Rudolf Steiner added one more dimension at the end
of his 1923 Easter lecture: “When it is understood how to
think with the course of the year, then forces will inter-
mingle with the thoughts that will let men again hold a
dialogue with the divine spiritual powers revealing them-
selves from the stars.” The unique feature of the Michael-
mas verse in the Calendar of the Soul lies in the moment
when we speak to the goddess “Natura.” The mood of the
verse is one of praise and gratitude for the gifts we receive
from the earth and from the cosmos for sake of develop-
ing our true “I.” The most precious maternal gift of all is
selfless love, the “blossom of the Easter thought,” placed
at Michaelmas!
Princeton, New Jersey
display at Rudolf Steiner House
in Ann Arbor, Michigan,) and
those are displayed below cour-
tesy of Patricia DeLisa and
Mary Adams. Please see Mary’s
comments ending these notes.
The Calendar and
Eurythmy
Asked about the Calendar
in their life, a eurythmist we
know exclaimed, “Oh, it’s our
bible!” Alice Stamm, president
of the Eurythmy Association of North America, sent us
some eurythmy movements Rudolf Steiner created for the
Calendar verses which we’ll show in a future issue.
The Calendar and Visual Arts
The work with new images for the zodiac was men-
tioned above. Many artists have been working with the
fall issue 2012 • 29
verses. Two years ago we reported on Laura Summer’s
book on working visually with the Calendar verses. So-
phie Takada gave a well-received exhibit of painting last
year in Ann Arbor at Rudolf Steiner House. And on pre-
vious pages Ella Manor Lapointe shares examples of her
work which has been appearing in Chanticleer, and ex-
plains some of the process.
The Calendar and Sounds
Cynthia Hoven has just published Eurythmy Move-
ments and Meditations – A Journey to the Heart of Lan-
guage. In a review just published at anthroposophy.org
Patricia Kaminsky writes, “The organizational ‘template’
for Cynthia’s book is true to the root meaning of the
word, for it is indeed a kind of ‘temple’ honoring the stars
and planets themselves as mighty cosmic forces. Rudolf
Steiner’s seminal research gave birth to eurythmy exactly
one hundred years ago in 1912. His discoveries are based
upon the understanding that each constellation in the
zodiac emanates formative shaping forces experienced
as consonants in human language, while the vowels ex-
press the rich inner landscape of soul feelings. Eurythmy
schools us in the Logos Mystery that human speech is
a sacred microcosm reflecting and radiating the creative
impulses of the stellar macrocosm; thus this book is or-
ganized into 24 essays celebrating the consonants of the
Zodiac and vowels of the planets.”
We have also placed online an excerpt from Sounding
the Cycle of the Year–a Soundscape translation of Rudolf
Steiner’s ‘Calendar of the Soul’ by Brian Alexander Dawes.
“I have endeavoured to create a translation which mirrors
all these characteristic Cosmic and mantric features (with
an exact replication of the number of planetary vowels,
and parallel maxima of consonants, from each verse of
the German), which otherwise would be hidden from the
non-German-speaking reader. A thorough understand-
ing of the relationships between successive images had to
Leo Virgo Libra Scorpio
30 • being human
be wrestled with, repeatedly, in each verse, over several
decades of work.” His publication includes many extraor-
dinary features: working drawings to illustrate the plan-
etary gestures for each verse by David Newbatt, shaded
drawings for zodiac signs and constellations echoing their
consonants by Gertraud Goodwin, eurythmy figures for
vowels and consonants following Steiner’s indications,
and a lemniscate for the year with christian, celtic and
mythological festivals thresholds, equinoxes and solstices.
The Calendar and Life
Lynn Jericho began working with the Calendar of the
Soul years ago during the “Holy Nights” between Christ-
mas and Epiphany. A Waldorf parent, she’d learned about
the calendar in the Princeton Group. “It woke me up to
the significance of the year, and also to how conscious-
ness evolves through the year the same way nature evolves
through the year. And that’s the basis of my work.
“The big mystery to me was the Holy Nights. It just
rang true from the start, but I didn’t find what felt mean-
ingful to me until a day in 2004. I was in NYC in front of
the Rockefeller Christmas Tree and all the lights and the
tourists. And I said, this is quintessential New York, but
there’s something more. So I decided to send an email to
everyone on my mailing list, two hundred people. And I
explained about the Holy Nights and what the year held,
if we could notice it, and how I kept missing it. So I said
I would remind everyone, and send out a daily email and
some things to think about. Eric Utne asked for some-
thing for his almanac. In 2006 I did a little video; 36,000
people saw it. People started asking about other festivals.
“There are 7,000 people on my mailing list now, from
Siberia to Nigeria to Brazil to the Philippines. I’ve devel-
oped a program called The Inner Year, webinars, based
on personal and moral development. There’s a whole cur-
riculum taking shape at ImagineSelf.com.
“My favorite verse is my birthday verse.
 To carry spirit light into world-winter-night
My heart is ardently impelled
That shining seeds of soul
Take root in grounds of worlds
And Word Divine through senses’ darkness
Resounds, transfiguring all life.”
Another new posting at anthroposophy.org is an arti-
cle by Vivianne Rael (formerly Rose Passafero) and Hen-
ry Passafero. They write: “One way that Steiner strove
to support members of the anthroposophical movement
to stay awake in light of our evolutionary journey was
through the publication of his 1912 Calendar. The calen-
dars we use daily to chart our schedules and view our lives
in the context of Time may impact our consciousness far
more than we realize. Dr. Steiner observed the hunger-
ing modern soul and its lost connection with the creative
rhythms of time. Time had become an abstraction for
most people—without regard to the cosmic rhythms of
sun, moon, stars, and seasons—with an even greater sev-
erance with the spiritual beings who actually create time.”
Vivianne and Hank have created a book and are holding a
year-end conversation, which are described on the inside
front cover of this issue.
From Mary Stewart Adams, 24 May 2012
At the close of his lecture on the Calendar of the Soul,
given at Cologne on 7 May 1912, Rudolf Steiner made
the following statement: “Each one of you will be able
to use this Calendar of the Soul every year. In it you will
find something that might be described as the finding of
the path leading from the human soul to the living Spirit
weaving through the Universe. I have thus tried to justify
the deed that has taken the form of the Calendar. It is not
to be regarded as a sudden inspiration but as something
organically connected with our whole movement.”
In its original format 1912-1913, the Calendar of
Sagittarius Capricorn Aquarius Pisces
the Soul contained three essential elements which made
it both an esoteric astronomy calendar and a meditative
guidebook for the cycle of the year. These three elements
included:
1. Two sets of New Images of the Zodiac... In de-
scribing these images, Rudolf Steiner made the following
statement: “In this calendar will be found signs that differ
from those handed down by tradition, because the latter
are no longer suitable for modern consciousness. These
pictures of the Zodiacal constellations are representations
of actual experiences connected with the waking and
sleeping of particular spiritual beings. We have in these
pictures a renewal of certain knowledge that needs to be
renewed at this present time...” RS, Cologne, 7 May, 1912
2. Name days for significant individuals throughout
history, which Rudolf Steiner described thus: “Days have
been provided with names so that those supplied can be
useful to those who wish to follow the spiritual path of
the evolution of humanity.”
3. The 52 weekly verses, starting at Easter. And since
Easter is determined each year by the constellations in an
ever-changing rhythm, it must be noted that the verses
have to be adjusted and worked with every year, to har-
monize with the fact that there are never 52 weeks from
one Easter to the next.
Ideally the Society as a whole would be engaged in
artistically rendering the new images of sun and moon
for each coming year, and an ‘office of the calendar’ could
be established through which the art would be aligned
with the appropriate verses and dates, and republication
would happen each year. In this manner, the artistic ef-
forts of the society would be energized and the sense of
community enlivened...This is one way that we awaken
Isis from her celestial grave, by re-membering the ‘pieces’
of her body that were expressed through the calendar as
image, evolution of humanity through individual incar-
nations and verses...
fall issue 2012 • 31
A Golden Anniversary:
Owen Barfield
in America
by Jane Hipolito
A little more than half a century ago, the Saturday
Evening Post published “The Rediscovery of Meaning,”
an essay by the English anthroposophist Owen Barfield
which it had commissioned for its “Adventures of the
Mind” series. Barfield was a surprising choice for the
series, as unlike most of the other contributors, who were
internationally famous artists and thinkers, his work
was known only to a very few at the time. This situa-
tion changed dramatically in the early 1960s. Barfield’s
Saturday Evening Post essay was swiftly followed by nu-
merous other mainstream publications and by lectures,
interviews, conference appearances, and visiting profes-
sorships at several universities and colleges in the United
States and Canada. To this day, Owen Barfield’s life and
work continue to enkindle inter-
est worldwide, and particularly
in North America.
Two of the most striking
aspects of Barfield’s biography
are its scope and variety. Owen
Barfield’s life encompassed al-
most all of the twentieth centu-
ry. When he crossed the thresh-
old in December 1997, he was in his 100th year. Born in
November 1898, during the reign of Queen Victoria, he
came of age during the First World War and as an adult
experienced the tremendous social and cultural changes
which came about in the ensuing eight decades – among
them, the emancipation of women, the birth of the envi-
ronmental movement, and the development of numerous
innovations that we now take for granted, including the
airplane, electronic media, and computer technology.
During these same eight decades Barfield had three
quite different careers. The first of these was as an inde-
pendent “man of letters.” He began this career while he
was a student at Oxford University, where he earned a
“First” in the then new subject area of English language
and literature and a Master’s and a B.Litt. degree (equiva-
32 • being human
lent to a Ph.D.) in the same field. During that time and
for some years thereafter, he wrote prolifically, publishing
lyric poems, short stories, essays and reviews on literature,
language, economics, key aspects of contemporary cul-
ture, and anthroposophy, to which he was introduced in
1923. He also published three books: The Silver Trumpet
(1925), a magical and very witty fairytale for children of
all ages; History in English Words (1926), which lovingly
explores how the evolution of consciousness can be “read”
in the changing meanings of English words; and Poetic
Diction (1928), a lucid, insightful study of how poetry ex-
presses meaning. Of these three, Poetic Diction has had
the deepest and most lasting effect. As the American poet
Howard Nemerov appreciatively wrote in his introduc-
tion to Poetic Diction’s 1964 edition.
Mr. Barfield and his book have been very little heard
of in the United States during all this while [since Poetic
Diction’s first publication in 1928]. But I should add that
among the few poets and teachers of my acquaintance
who do know Poetic Diction it has been valued not only
as a secret book, but nearly as a sacred one; with a certain
sense that its teaching was quite properly esoteric, not as
the possession of a few snobs but as something that would
easily fail of being understood by even the most learned of
those jugheads whose mouths continually pour forth but
whose ears will serve only for carrying purposes.
Barfield’s second career was as an attorney with a
busy London practice. He entered the legal profession in
1931 because he needed to support his family and found
that the prevailing cultural and economic situation made
it impossible for him to do that as an author. During his
years in the family law firm, Barfield and Barfield, he pub-
lished much less voluminously than he had in the 1920s,
but his writings attained new depth. Among them were
the essay “Poetic Diction and Legal Fiction” (1947), the
verse drama Orpheus, which premiered in 1948, and the
autobiographical novel This Ever Diverse Pair (1950), as
well as the many essays and poems which Barfield wrote
for anthroposophical journals; some of those essays were
anthologized in Romanticism Comes of Age (1944, second
ed. 1966). In addition to the “very few poets and teachers”
in North America who knew and cherished Poetic Dic-
tion, the principal audience for Barfield’s work through-
out the 1930s and 1940s was the anthroposophical com-
munity in Great Britain and, to a lesser extent, students of
anthroposophy elsewhere in the English-speaking world
and in Europe. This was not a large readership, but it was
a staunchly loyal and encouraging one, as Barfield grate-
fully noted in his introductions to the first and second
editions of Romanticism Comes of Age.
Barfield’s third public at that time was even tinier –
one man, in fact. He wrote a verse about it:
My public, though select and small,
Is crammed with taste and knowledge.
It’s somewhat stout and rather tall
And lives at Magdalen College.
This “select and small” public for Barfield’s writings
was C. S. Lewis, with whom he had been close friends
since they were students at Oxford together. Through-
out their friendship, which began in November 1919 and
continued until Lewis’s death in November 1963, the
two read and critiqued each other’s manuscripts. Dur-
ing the 1920s, they profoundly strengthened each other’s
thinking via vigorous debate; Lionel Adey’s book C. S.
Lewis’ “Great War” with Owen Barfield (1978, second ed.
2000) describes this turning point in both men’s lives.
Beginning in 1931, Barfield served as Lewis’s legal ad-
visor, a relationship which he humorously characterizes
in This Ever Diverse Pair. The quality of their friendship
also is indicated in the three zestfully comic pieces that
they collaboratively wrote in the
1930s and 1940s: “Abecedarium
Philosophicum” (1933), A Cre-
taceous Perambulator (written in
1936, first published in 1983),
and Mark vs. Tristram (written
in 1947, first published in 1967).
In the 1950s the pressures
of Barfield’s legal work abated
somewhat, enabling him to write
what is widely considered to be his most significant book,
Saving the Appearances (1957), whose breadth of scholar-
ship and clear, thoroughly integrative exposition of the
meaning of the Scientific Revolution in world history
soon attracted respectful interest in academic circles, par-
ticularly in North America. The publication of Saving
the Appearances marked the beginning of Barfield’s third
career: internationally sought-after author, professor, and
speaker on subjects ranging from contemporary physics
to the nature of language. Two brilliant works of creative
nonfiction, Worlds Apart (1963) and Unancestral Voice
(1965), belong to this period, as do the masterly What
Coleridge Thought (1971), The Rediscovery of Meaning, and
Other Essays (1976), and two fascinating fictional works,
the science fiction novella Night Operation (written in the
mid-1970s and first published in 1983-84), and Barfield’s
ecological novel Eager Spring (written in the mid-1980s
and published posthumously in 2008). Important lec-
tures which Barfield gave at North American colleges and
universities were published in Speaker’s Meaning (1969)
and History, Guilt and Habit (1979), and a great many
of his essays and reviews were published in mainstream
journals. In addition, Barfield contributed substantially
to anthroposophical publications, as author, editor, and
translator; one of the most notable of those anthropo-
sophical writings is his rendering of Rudolf Steiner’s
Seelenkalender, The Calendar of the Soul: The Year Partici-
pated (1985, second ed. 2006). And throughout these four
decades he spoke and wrote frequently about C. S. Lewis
and the Inklings; Owen Barfield on C. S. Lewis (1989,
second ed. 2011) contains several of those pieces.
One of the chief reasons that Barfield’s work contin-
ues to have widespread appeal is that it has total authen-
ticity. Barfield consistently spoke and wrote only what he
had thought through for himself. In this respect, he ex-
emplified the “independent and critical attitude” and reli-
ance on one’s own “first-hand perception” that he praised
in his first published writing about anthroposophy, a
March 1924 letter to the editor of the progressive journal
The New Age. Another hallmark of Barfield’s work is that
he never ever attempts to influence another’s will. Rather,
he presents ideas and feelings in a way that enables his
readers to develop imaginative, empathetic understand-
ing while remaining completely free to choose their own
course of action. His respect for his readers is matched
by his respect for his subject-matter; he approaches each
topic, no matter how familiar, with contagious wonder
and delight. And his work is wonderfully well-reasoned
and well-written.
Simply finding out what Barfield’s writings are was
the first big challenge for students of his life and work.
Now, there is a comprehensive bibliography of his pub-
lished writings, posted on the website of the Owen
Barfield Society (www.barfieldsociety.org). Another help-
ful resource is the online listing of the Owen Barfield Pa-
pers which are on deposit in Oxford University’s Bodleian
Library; this collection contains a great many of Barfield’s
unpublished writings. A link to the listing is given on the
website of the Owen Barfield Literary Estate (www.owen-
barfield.org).
A second challenge, which is on-going, is bringing
Barfield’s writings into print. In 2006 James Wetmore
created a new “Barfield Press” imprint of Sophia Peren-
fall issue 2012 • 33
nis in order to publish new, affordable editions of several
Barfield books which had long been out of print. Two
years later, the Owen Barfield Literary Estate began is-
suing Barfield’s writings in freshly edited volumes under
its own imprint, Barfield Press UK. The twelve books
published by Barfield Press UK to date include two previ-
ously unpublished writings, Barfield’s 1929 Märchen, The
Rose on the Ash-Heap, and his last full-length work, the
novel Eager Spring. Each of Barfield Press UK’s editions
provides something new and helpful for those who are
interested in Barfield’s life and work; for instance, their
edition of This Ever Diverse Pair has an illuminating in-
troduction by Frederick Dennehy and notes by Amy Vail
on the book’s classical references. All of these books, the
Sophia Perennis publications as well as those of Barfield
Press UK, are available from online vendors.
The biggest challenge – and opportunity – in Barfield
studies continues to be compartmentalization. Each of
Barfield’s three publics has its own particular focus and
is largely oblivious to the activities and concerns of the
other two. The aficionados of C. S. Lewis and the In-
klings are interested in Barfield’s reminiscences of Lewis,
his friendship with Lewis and other members of the In-
klings, and his theology, which they tend to perceive as
heretical. Barfield’s anthroposophical readers, on the oth-
er hand, see his work as essentially Christian; for them,
Barfield’s writings directly evidence his dedicated service
to the Logos and his Christ-centric view of world history,
and they also value the clarity and depth of his writings
on anthroposophical themes. The poets and mainstream
academics who read Barfield are generally unaware of his
anthroposophical writings and uninterested in anthro-
posophy. These readers greatly value his insights into the
imaginative process and the breadth, integratedness, and
sheer brilliance of his scholarship.
The Owen Barfield Society, an international schol-
arly association which was founded in 2007, has taken
up the problem of compartmentalization in Barfield
studies. As its website states, “It is hoped that the Society
may become a community of scholars in which Owen
Barfield’s three publics—students of the Inklings, stu-
dents of anthroposophy, and mainstream academics –
can all participate, communicate with each other, and
even collaborate.” To this end, the Owen Barfield Soci-
ety has established an online forum, and is in process of
creating a refereed e-journal. It also holds annual meet-
ings, each of which includes an informal discussion of
one of Barfield’s books; the book that will be discussed
34 • being human
in the 2012 meeting is Worlds Apart. In addition, each
meeting of the Owen Barfield Society has an artistic ele-
ment. In 2010, the distinguished poet and essayist Wil-
liam C. Johnson read aloud from his new book, A River
Without Banks, which is beautifully written and deeply
informed by his study of Owen Barfield’s work. In 2011,
Karen Bailey gave a presentation on eurythmy; although
Barfield had eurythmy centrally in mind when he wrote
most of his poems, this presentation was the first time
ever that a mainstream group interested in Barfield expe-
rienced this new art form.
Eurythmy will again be an element of the Owen
Barfield Society’s 2012 meeting in October in Boulder,
Colorado, where research on Owen Barfield’s life and
work will be presented in the Owen Barfield session of
the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association, a
regional independent branch of the major professional
organization for scholars of literature and language, the
Modern Language Association. Beginning in 1998, the
centenary of Barfield’s birth, an Owen Barfield session
has been held in each of the RMMLA’s annual conven-
tions. Initiated by Professor Raymond P. Tripp together
with several of his former students at the University of
Denver, the annual Owen Barfield sessions were the first,
and for many years the only, regular venue for Barfield
studies anywhere in the world. The papers presented in
the Owen Barfield sessions increasingly transcend com-
partmentalization. Jamie Hutchinson’s paper on Lewis’s
Till We Have Faces from a Barfieldian perspective and Ju-
lie Nichols’ groundbreaking research on Barfield’s work
in the context of creative nonfiction, cognitive science,
and anthroposophy are examples of this encouraging
trend.
Jane Hipolito is Professor Emerita of English and Com-
parative Literature at California State University, Ful-
lerton. She was introduced to the works of Owen Barfield
in 1966, when a fellow graduate student at UCLA lent her
his copy of Worlds Apart, and she has been learning from
Barfield ever since. Jane chairs the Los Angeles Branch of
the Anthroposophical Society and is an active member of the
Section for the Literary Arts & Humanities of the School for
Spiritual Science.
There is a list of selected publications by
Owen Barfield on page 54.

The Anthroposophical Society
in America
General Council Members
Torin Finser (General Secretary)
Virginia McWilliam (at large)
Carla Beebe Comey (at large)
John Michael (Treasurer)
Regional Council Representatives
Ann Finucane (Eastern Region)
Dennis Dietzel (Central Region)
Joan Treadaway (Western Region)
Marian León, Director of
Administration & Member Services
being human
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
Cover design: Seiko Semones (S2 Design)
Layout: John Beck, Seiko Semones
Please send submissions, questions, and
comments to: editor@anthroposophy.org
or to the postal address above, for our
Winter 2013 issue by 12/1/2012.
©2012 The Anthroposophical Society in
America. Responsibility for the content
of articles is the authors’.
What’s Happening in the
Anthroposophical Society in America
“The Grail of the Central Region: pings of two Arkansas mountain ranges.
  Questing from the Heart”
This was the theme of a memorable
2012 Annual Gathering of the Central Re-
gion, held May 4-6 on beautiful Petit Jean
Mountain in central Arkansas. The water-
shed of the Mississippi River forms a grail
in the heart of North America (and cov-
ers most of the Society’s Central Region),
and it includes the Arkansas River which
flowed below us. Rudolf Steiner’s lecture,
“The Human Heart” was the study materi-
al for the weekend. Dennis Dietzel formed
this mental picture of the heart for us:
Before birth, man draws into himself
the forces of the etheric universe, and
in so doing forms his own etheric body.
By puberty, these forces gather them-
selves together and suspend within
themselves the physical heart.
Man’s astral body brings to the child
experiences he has undergone between
his last death and his present birth.
Throughout his lifetime, man’s actions
are recorded in this “astral body.” These
astral forces eventually concentrate in
the region of the heart.
A concentration of both etheric and
astral forces are thus established in the
heart by the time of puberty. Steiner de-
scribes this as a “joining together of the
cosmos of what man does in this world.
This is the point where the cosmos is
joined to the karma of man. Then when
man passes through the gate of death,
this ethereal-astral structure—con-
tains all that man takes with him into
his further life of soul and spirit.”
Marianne Fieber led our group in a com-
munion with nature and elemental be-
ings on the Saturday morning “Songtrail”
among the colossal rocks and outcrop-
Mary Louise Hershberger led an exercise
which explored the nature of a question
that comes from the heart; a question with
the potential to heal. The group formu-
lated questions which Parzival might have
asked King Anfortas in his Quest for the
Holy Grail; questions meant to heal the
wound of Anfortas. The Parzival Pageant,
an original script and score written and
directed by Marianne Fieber and Dennis
Dietzel, was performed with good cheer
Saturday evening by all attending. A group
stroll through a crystal sun wheel and a
meditation before the perigee supermoon
ended the evening. Eurythmy was woven
throughout the weekend activities by our
gifted guest eurythmist, Raven Garland. In
the Sunday morning discussion of the “Re-
newal of the Anthroposophical Society,”
Central Region anthroposophists commit-
ted to sharing the challenges confronting
the Society.
Current regional council members were
affirmed for another year, but saying fare-
well after 14 years to out-going member
Margaret Runyon was a mournful task.
Thank you, Margaret, for your service!
Margaret’s departure from the Council
leaves a vacancy to be filled.
We “Little Rockers” are small in number
but large in our love for anthroposophy.
We steadfastly strive to plant a seed for
anthroposophy in Arkansas, and thank the
Council for inviting us to host this year’s
conference.
Sonjia Michaels, for the Little Rock Group
excerpted from the E-Correspondence
of the Central Region
fall issue 2012 • 35

Leonard Benson’s Bequest
Remembering the Anthroposophical
Society in your will is a wonderful way to
support the future of anthroposophy in the
U.S. In August 2010, the Society received
a bequest from the estate of Leonard Ben-
son, a member since 1952 who had a long
and distinguished career as a teacher of art
history at Wellesley College, classics at the
University of Mississippi, and archeology
and art history at the University of Massa-
chusetts in Amherst. His book The Inner
Nature of Color: Studies on the Philoso-
phy of the Four Elements is available from
SteinerBooks.
In his will, Leonard requested that his
gift be used to support eurythmy in the
United States. This generous gift has al-
lowed several opportunities to unfold, in-
cluding the presentation of the Foundation
Stone Meditation at the 2011 First Class
Conference in Fair Oaks, CA and the 2011
AGM in Portland, OR, and a grant to the
Eurythmy Association to help six euryth-
Our Working Together: A Process of Continuity, Change, and Renewal
The process that reached a certain intensity with this summer’s Leadership Colloquium and Members’ Conference has roots going back
almost twenty years and is open-ended toward the future. Like a flow form, it will combine necessary forward movement with rhythmic
openings-out for evaluations and new insights. (The beautiful flow form below is at Rudolf Steiner College.) Here are some steps to date...
36 • being human
mists attend the International Eurythmy
Working Conference in 2010. This was the
first time that a eurythmy conference at
the Goetheanum encompassed the work of
four sections – performing arts, education,
social sciences, and medical.
Most recently, this bequest allowed
the General Council to respond to a re-
quest from the Winkler Center for Adult
Education, located in Garden City, NY, to
support the Mentoring Seminar for Eu-
rythmy Teachers program. This four-year
program is intended to help experienced
eurythmy teachers design programs to
support young eurythmists entering into
the pedagogical world, and also to help
mentors learn from each other. Funding
for this program was a collaborative effort,
with additional support coming from the
Pedagogical Section at the Goetheanum,
as well as support from each participant’s
local Waldorf school. 2012 was the third
year of the program, and the generosity of
Leonard Benson was critical in sustaining
a program whose participants have rated it
2005–  Review by Siegfried Finser sums up
a decade of studies of Society challenges
2008–  General Council and taskforce in-
vest in new communications directions
2010–  Council, Collegium, and CAO (ini-
tiatives) meet at Whitsun at Threefold
2011–  “Rudolf Steiner’s vision for the fu-
ture” is forward-looking 150th anniver-
sary theme; newsletter becomes being
human
2011–  General Council plans leadership
colloquium with CAO funding support
2012 Jan–  General Council meets with
Siegfried Finser on 2005 study, explores
“participation” idea; invites member study
of Work of the Angel in the Astral Body
2012 Apr–  being human spring issue
shares questions, invites member reflec-
tions; summer issue highlights feedback
2012 Aug–  130+ attend leadership col-
loquium from across Society and move-
ment and four Goetheanum Executive
very highly.
“The collaborative effort made on behalf
of all teaching eurythmists was evident
throughout the session and was greatly
supported by the work and presence of
Christof Wiechert. Everyone remarked on
how valuable his seminar on child study
was and his support in our problem-solv-
ing sessions brought forth new ideas and
solutions.” – Leonore Russell, Garden City,
NY
“I believe we have formed a group that
will be of great service to eurythmy pro-
grams in the United States.” – Carla Com-
ey, Waldorf School of the Roaring Fork,
Carbondale, CO
“I am grateful that the Seattle Waldorf
School has each year encouraged my de-
velopment as a mentor, and I know that I
can offer continued support for the grow-
ing body of pedagogical eurythmy in the
Pacific Northwest.” – Bonnie Freundlich,
Seattle, WA
“The workshop on mentoring is of in-
valuable help to me as an adult educator
Council members; special facilitation
promotes all voices being heard; members
conference and AGM continue focus on
engagement for all members and person-
to-person process with Executive Council
2012 Sept–  Letter to all members details
status of the process
2012 late Oct–  fall being human brings
conference content; General Council
and CAO review colloquium/conference
materials, hold joint session; Society staff
transitions to new “relationship” database
to support member interconnections
2012 late Nov–  next report to members
on initial Council review and actions, plus
request for feedback; annual appeal
2012 Dec–  special members’ year-end
communication for Holy Nights
2013 Jan–  beginning of “financial partici-
pation” concept in relation to funding the
Society’s operations in 2013
and mentor…It was enriching, inspiring
and enlivening to see how different euryth-
mists are able to incorporate the different
elements of the eurythmy curriculum into
artistic, imaginative and playful pieces…I
am profoundly grateful for having been
able to participate.” Christina Viebke Wal-
lace-Ockenden, Calgary Waldorf School,
Alberta
“One of the strongest messages that
came across at this meeting is that euryth-
my is born out of the Anthroposophical
Society. It is our anthroposophical striving
that brings the greatest gifts to our col-
leagues, students and also gives back to the
Society.” – Barbara Richardson, Merrico-
neague Waldorf School, Freeport, ME
Marian Leòn, Director long-awaited return to our area of Profes-
Administration & Member Services
Send contributions for “What’s
Happening” to editor@anthroposophy.org
What’s Happening
at the Rudolf Steiner
Library
High demand! Books by Peter Selg and
Sergei Prokofieff; the new film about Ru-
dolf Steiner by Jonathan Stedall; Keith
Critchlow’s beautiful Hidden Geometry of
Flowers. Although we have multiple cop-
ies of these (and other) particularly popu-
lar works, sometimes the wait for them is
longer than need be. We urge everyone to
return library materials on time; share the
goodness!
We’re working to create a new, more
user-friendly and convenient home for the
library’s digital content: right on the library
page of the Anthroposophical Society’s
website: http://www.anthroposophy.org/
rudolf-steiner-library.html. There you’ll
be able to access searchable PDF files of
journal indexes, complete back issues of
the Journal for Anthroposophy, the society
newsletter, and more.
We’re looking for a volunteer or two to
help transfer the contents of several hun-
dred audiocassettes to DVD and/or MP3
format. This can be done at home with
your own equipment; let us know if you’d
like to help.
Our Books Alive! series at Camphill
Ghent, the new, local intergenerational
community, continues. In September, Jon
McAlice spoke about his involvement with
the design and building process at Gh-
ent; in October, Lisa Damian will present
a bookbinding workshop. November will
feature “The Angel That Troubled the
Waters,” a selection of works by Thornton
Wilder read by Ted Pugh and Fern Sloan
of the Actors’ Ensemble; in December, we’ll
hear from ecologists Claudia and Conrad
Vispo. Join us if you’re in the area!
We’re also hosting other local events:
“The Future of Waldorf Education,” a
conversation with Patrice Maynard of
AWSNA, author Steve Sagarin, and profes-
sor Douglas Sloan at the Hawthorne Val-
ley School (Ghent, NY) Oct. 17; and the
sor Herr Dreier (perhaps with his alter ego,
Alexander Dreier, in tow) on Nov. 16.
You can read back issues of the library’s
monthly electronic newsletter [short URL:
http://goo.gl/8wZ6u]. Contact us if you’d
like it sent directly to your Inbox!
We are still seeking special gifts to assist
with the library’s digitization project. You
can help to make the treasures in this col-
lection accessible to a worldwide audience:
every donation makes a difference!
Judith Soleil, Librarian
That Good May
Become
General Secretary Torin Finser’s Opening
Talk of the August Members Conference
Dear Friends and Members of the An-
throposophical Society,
Welcome, well-come to the opening
of our 2012 conference here in Ann Ar-
bor. For those who have just completed
two days of conversation on the future of
our work, this evening marks part two of
a remarkable week. For those who have
just arrived, we rejoice at our reunion as
members. As we begin this anthropos-
ophical conference, That Good May Be-
come, I would like to devote my comments
this evening to the unusual significance
of 2012—moving beyond the hype of the
Mayan calendar to examine some deeper
secrets contained in this remarkable year.
We all know about the 100 year anniver-
saries: 100 years since the creation of eu-
rythmy, 100 years since the publication of
the Calendar of the Soul, and of course 100
years since the founding of our Anthropo-
sophical Society. It is thus especially fitting
that we will experience later tonight the re-
markable new art form
of eurythmy, and that
we have the pleasure of
welcoming the Execu-
tive Council from the
Goetheanum.
Looking at the
meaning of 100 years
one is struck by some
associations we com-
monly make with the number 100: water
evaporates at 100 degrees Celsius, there is
the 100 years sleep in fairy tales, we have
100 US Senators (whether we all feel they
belong in Washington or not), and we have
100 cents to the dollar (though they are not
worth as much as they used to be). In short,
the number 100 has a kind of finality to it.
As I began my research on the signifi-
cance of 100 years, one of our section lead-
ers, Johannes Kuehl, pointed me in the di-
rection of a book by Christoph Lindenberg
which I could only find in German: Vom
geistigen Ursprung der Gegenwart.1 Lin-
denberg has an interesting observation:
100 years “is not an absolute ending, but
rather the end of a specific effective-
ness.” What does this mean, the end of a
specific effectiveness? I sense it as a call to
continue on a new basis, thus our leader-
ship colloquium these past two days and
this conference in 2012.
A few weeks ago, when opening our
summer programs in New Hampshire,
I called to the stage three of our students
to demonstrate three generations. I won’t
do that tonight, but imagine three peo-
1 “From the spiritual source of the present day.”
1984: Verlag Freies Geistesleben, Stuttgart.
fall issue 2012 • 37
 Meeting Our Spiritual Destinies in America
ple—one might be 33 years old, another
66 and one the wise grandparent nearing
100 years of age. Within 100 years we often
have three generations of 33 years each.
In lectures given in December 1917,
Rudolf Steiner said that “This period,
thirty-three years, is the period of a hu-
man generation; thus a complete genera-
tion of humanity must elapse between
Christmas festivals and the Easter festi-
vals that are connected to them.”2 “That
which is done in a given year, when, as a
thought, it springs forth from man, has
so to speak a Christmas character. This,
as I have said, refers to the effects of our
deeds in the whole nexus of the social
life; not to our personal Karma. A seed
of thought or of a deed takes a whole hu-
man generation, 33 years, to ripen.”3 He
goes on to say that with 66 years the im-
pulse is intensified, and at 100 it reaches a
kind of culmination that calls for renewal
on a new basis. What we do today, this
weekend, in this conference, has the possi-
bility of resonating further in 33 years, and
this awakens, according to Rudolf Steiner,
not only a better understanding of history,
but also a new social consciousness. So
when we go beyond the more superficial
aspects of 100 years we come to the signifi-
cant cycle of three times 33 1/3 years.
But let us go further with Rudolf Stein-
er’s words on this important interval of
time: “All the actions of earlier genera-
tions, all their impulses with their com-
bined activity, poured into the stream
of historic evolution, have a life cycle of
33 years. Then comes its Easter time,
the time of resurrection... For, my dear
friends, all things in historic evolution
arise transfigured after 33 years, as from
a grave, by virtue of a power connected
with the holiest of all redemptions: the
Mystery of Golgotha.”4
We know that through the Mystery of
Golgotha, humanity was given a new so-
cial archetype. But the completion of the
33 year cycle in that momentous event was
only possible because of a deed of great
cosmic collaboration that had happened
2 Steiner, Rudolf, Et Incarnatus Est, 1983, Mercury
Press, Spring Valley, NY; p. 12.
3 Quoted in Anthroposophical Movement – Weekly
News, 17 March 1929, Vol VI, No II.
4 Et Incarnatus Est, p. 13.
38 • being human
earlier. At a members conference one can
speak of some of the deeper mysteries giv-
en to us in anthropsophy, one of which is
the story of the two Jesus children.
Thanks to Rudolf Steiner, we know of
the Luke Jesus who “was not endowed
with an ego such as especially character-
izes a human being, rather, in the Luke
Jesus boy lived a part of the human be-
ing that had never before entered hu-
man evolution on earth...” A sister soul
of Adam, instead of the usual ego, incar-
nated into Luke Jesus: “This soul pos-
sessed all the wisdom that could be ex-
perienced through the Saturn, Sun, and
Moon periods of evolution. It possessed
all the love a human soul can attain. It
remained innocent of all the guilt that
humanity can incur...”5 This boy had no
particular gifts for external things, but had
divine wisdom and a “supreme capacity for
sacrifice” (p88).
In contrast, the Matthew Jesus had a
love of the earth developed through re-
peated earth lives. He could easily absorb
knowledge and the fruits of his culture.
True to the work of Zarathustra, here we
see the earth as an essential sphere of ac-
tion, finding positive meaning in working
with matter. The confrontation with forces
of darkness and evil was seen as a necessity
for evolutionary progress.
Then we have a remarkable event of
cosmic collaboration, something many
of us may never fully understand even in a
lifetime: the Zarathustra ego left the Mat-
thew child at age 12 and took possession of
the body of the Luke boy. This happened,
as seen in the teaching of the rabbis in the
temple, at age 12, creating the basis for the
baptism at 30 and then the Mystery of Gol-
gotha at age 33.
I feel this cosmic event is deeply con-
nected to our work as a society and the
Christmas foundation meeting. As I have
worked more intensely with our Anthro-
posophical Society in recent years, I have
experienced Luke or Nathan qualities in
our Society: something that has never be-
fore been on this earth, a rich spiritual heri-
tage (Saturn, Sun and Moon and beyond),
and also a kind of innocence, even naiveté
5 Steiner, Rudolf, The Bhagavad Gita and the
West (CW 142, 146); 2009, SteinerBooks, Great
Barrington, MA; pp 86-87.
in how our Society operates.
In contrast, in working with the ini-
tiatives, our Waldorf schools, Camphill
communities, biodynamic farms, etc., I
often experience qualities of the Mat-
thew child: a desire to make anthropsophy
visible through the work, transforming
education and agriculture out of love of
the task. There are many people drawn to
these initiatives who have considerable ex-
pertise and knowledge.
As someone who literally stands with
one foot in each stream, I can hear from
each direction two equally valid questions.
From the Matthew stream I hear the ques-
tion: so what does the Society actually do?
And from the Luke direction I hear: why
is it that you don’t recognize us within the
initiatives, why is the Society so invisible?
Although we all have hindrances, one
can also see considerable success in the
initiatives: one has only to visit a Camphill
community, or observe that even in a re-
cession some of our Waldorf schools have
raised money for new buildings, and BD is
more widely recognized than ever before.
Many initiatives have attracted accom-
plished professionals, who work full time.
In contrast, the Anthroposophical Soci-
ety in America has about 3,200 members
(after lapsing 300 last winter), there is little
in the way of infrastructure, most of those
who work for the Society are part time or
volunteers. They work out of high ideals
with rich spiritual substance but very few
physical resources. Putting on a conference
under these circumstances is a huge un-
dertaking compared to our centers in New
Hampshire, Spring Valley, or Sacramento,
with their professional, year round staffing.
I have come to the conclusion that many
struggles around our work with the Society
are incarnation issues. Even Rudolf Stein-
er struggled to help the Society incarnate,
and the work remains unfinished today.
The times are calling for an enactment
of the mystery of age 12: the two streams
need to flow together, as occurred with the
two Jesus children. And the father of the
Luke Jesus married the mother of the Mat-
thew Jesus (after the other two parents had
died), and the two families became one and
lived on in Nazareth. A picture of collabo-
ration if there ever was one! Today, we need
to collaborate for the sake of the renewal of
this earth through anthroposophy.
But I would like take this exploration of
2012 one step further. Rudolf Steiner spoke
of the year 1879 as a decisive spiritual
revolution, as the dawn of the Age of Mi-
chael. I believe that today, in 2012, we are
connected to that cosmic event of a world
order in a very special way:
1879 + 33 1/3 = 1912 1/3
1912 1/3 + 33 1/3 = 1945 2/3
1945 2/3 + 33 1/3 = 1979
1979 + 33 1/3 = 2012 1/3
Here we are in 2012 at the start of the
fifth cycle of 33 1/3 years in the age of Mi-
chael. What does this mean for us? The
Michael impulse of our time, beginning
its fifth cycle, unites with the 33-year
resurrection impulse, the Christmas-
to-Easter transformation. Michael and
Christ are here, present with us today.
They come together once again, for our
sake, in this year 2012.
So who are the Michaelic souls of 2012
who have been given this rare opportunity
to be on this earth at this special moment
in time? This hall is full of them! Michae-
lic souls in 2012 are actively working with
cosmic intelligence to transform the earth.
They are working consciously, in freedom,
often overcoming tremendous hindrances.
Some have a strong social impulse to reach
out to others with similar values, to con-
nect and network. Others want to intensify
our study and deepen our understanding,
do research, especially through our sec-
tions. Both gestures are helpful, as we need
the contributions of both outreach and
deepening.
But we also have to practice discern-
ment: those working in different ways with
anthropsophy need to guard against two
extremes, superficiality or fragmentation:
on the one side those who have the worthy
aim of reaching out to the so-called “green
belt”, can in its extreme, practice a kind of
anthroposophical relativism: as a result the
world might see us as just another spiritual
movement, using different terms, but no
different in essential character. We have to
guard against spiritual monism that says
we are all one big bowl of soup. The other
extreme could be called anthroposophical
fundamentalism: those friends might like
to say: we have the Truth with a capital T,
and those that ask questions or bring up
different perspectives are clearly “opposed
to us.” Fundamentalism thrives on “us vs.
them” polarities—just look at the Middle
East. I worry that at times we have been
pulled in conflicting directions: the fun-
damentalists and the relativists. To quote
a great American, Abraham Lincoln, a
house divided against itself cannot stand.
I believe that the path of Michael is
actually a third way, a path that includes
both social action and research. Those
working out of this third way, the Michae-
lic souls of 2012, often show themselves
through initiative. So let me introduce you
to one of the many Michaelic souls I have
had the pleasure of meeting in my travels:
Bernard of Pebble Farm in Auroville, India.
When he and his partner found this land
15 years ago, it was dry, sandy, full of hard
rock and pebbles. They decided to reclaim
the land without importing topsoil, com-
post or even BD starter. Using the Acacia
plant, they experimented with a system
of collecting the leaves, placing them in
excavations, and letting the monsoons of
summer soak them, thus facilitating the
process of decomposition. They then took
the spongy leaf soil and layered it with the
sandy soil on the property, adding char-
coal, which he burned in the kiln he con-
structed. Twelve layers in all of soil, humus,
and charcoal—and year after year adjust-
ing his methods, until today we find a lush
garden. They do not sell or eat their vegeta-
bles. Instead they harvest and give away the
seeds, sending packets all over India, even
around the world, for free. For as Bernard
says, “These seeds are not my creation”.
Let these two pictures serve as an ex-
ample for all we do out of Anthroposophy
(with two large photos on black board):
Education: No Child Left Behind ------->Waldorf
Agriculture: Monsanto -----------> biodynamic farms
Medicine: Big pharma ---------> Weleda, Hauschka
I could give many, many more examples.
None of these transformations would be
possible without anthroposophy. And ac-
cording to our teacher, anthroposophy
needs the Anthroposophical Society.
Many, many people around the world
have come to accept with gratitude the in-
credible gifts given us by Rudolf Steiner. So
why is it still hard for some to accept his
statement that anthroposophy needs the
Society—and the Society needs anthropos-
ophy? How can one “use” anthroposophy
without seeing the intimate relationship
between the two? The Society is us—not
the physical bodies in this room tonight,
but what lives between us, and between all
those who are working out of Michael. The
Society is not a “thing” or a mere legal or-
ganization, it is us! And whenever we share
our mutual striving out of anthroposophy
we are “practicing” free association.
But we—members here tonight and
those around the world—need to become
more active. I am working on a dozen pro-
posals to bring to our leadership groups
this fall, building on the colloquium and
my perception of needed changes, but let
me briefly illustrate with two examples:
Mentorship. We could ask each re-
gion to identify possible mentors so when
someone joins the society and contacts the
Ann Arbor office, they could be offered a
name, phone number and email address.
The new member could decline, or if ac-
cepted, the mentor would call to welcome
the new member into the Society and of-
fer to have some conversations, in person,
on the phone or by email depending on
geography—this would emphasize the re-
lational aspect of our work from the very
beginning. (We would want to have some
clarity on mentor qualifications, of course)
The Society needs eyes and ears, hands
and feet in the initiatives. This could be
achieved if each Waldorf school, Camphill,
BD farm, etc., were to identify one person
in their midst to serve as laison with the
Society, so when we send materials they re-
ally connect with people, and there is com-
munication back and forth. We could have
a meeting of all those taking this role every
other year or so, say just before an AGM.
These are but two of many future pos-
sibilities for working collaboratively, but
all the changes we will consider require
greater consciousness and member ac-
tivity. To draw on JFK: ask not what the
Society can do for you, but what you can do
for the Society. Let all the Michaelic souls
in this hall tonight, and those that are not
here but live in the north, south, east and
west, join together in heightened collabo-
ration in this special year of 2012. May the
initiatives and the society find common
inspiration in the example of the union of
the two Jesus children that made possible
fall issue 2012 • 39
the resurrection, so that our gifts of sac-
rifice may truly serve the world. May our
garden contain both the tree of life and the
tree of knowledge. May those on this earth
33 years from now be able to look back and
say: this was possible, here in America, be-
cause of those, yet few in number, who re-
dedicated themselves to this work back in
2012 so that “good would become.” With
this wish in my heart, I welcome you to the
start of our conference tonight.
Beyond Our Borders
A presentation by Jonathan Stedall into each new carpet—because only God
at the anthroposophical conference in
Ann Arbor, USA, August 10th 2012
The Irish playwright, George Bernard
Shaw, was asked once where he would
want to be at the end of the world. His re-
ply was ‘England’. Why England? ‘Because
England,’ he said, ‘is always fifty years be-
hind the times!’
I’m going to tell you why I don’t think this
is always the case. But firstly, for me, Shaw’s
remark prompts the question: What is the
true nature of the times we live in? What’s
really going on?
On the surface
it seems that eco-
nomics—money—
is what increas-
ingly dominates the
headlines. We are
constantly encour-
aged to consume
more, to be more
productive. Yet on the other hand a differ-
ent set of experts warn us that we are rap-
ing the planet in the process, and that this
rush to get richer materially—as rich as
America—is unsustainable. Like all of you,
however, I am interested in what is really
trying to happen behind the scenes—to
evolve—as we plough on into the 21st cen-
tury, driven at one level it seems by those
two demons ‘fear’ and ‘greed’ that haunt
not only the Stock Market but also the
minds of ordinary men and women.
Wealth and power, underpinned by a
technology that has its own hidden and
sinister agenda. Is this the true signature of
the times we live in, or is there another sce-
nario at work that points to a saner future?
40 • being human
England—and Great Britain altogeth-
er—has long been delegated in the ‘tough
guy’ stakes. We are no longer a world pow-
er, either economically or militarily—nor
therefore politically.
And in all these areas even America
is now being ‘threatened,’ as they say, by
China and other emerging economies. But
is this such a tragedy? Does it have to be
a humiliation? Or could it be an opportu-
nity and a challenge to discover new tasks
for the future, rather than mourning past
glories—tasks related to this other scenario
that I mentioned?
You have chosen as a theme for this con-
ference: ‘Meeting our spiritual destinies
in America.’ As an Englishman I cannot
speak for America, but what I am going to
try and convey about England’s tasks and
destiny in this respect—and why I think
that England is in some respects ‘fifty years
ahead of the times’—also applies to aspects
of America that I have experienced and ad-
mired over the years.
There’s a collection of essays and talks
by the German scholar, Walter Johannes
Stein, collected together under the title
The Psychology of the British. Stein was a
teacher at the first Waldorf School in Stutt-
gart, and made his home in Britain for the
last twenty years of his life. Although well
aware of our shortcomings, he was very ap-
preciative of what lives in the English folk
soul. And he concludes his final essay by
suggesting that one of the main tasks of
the English in the future —a task that has
nothing to do with Empire, or power in the
economic or military sense, is to help ‘to
make things human.’ And for me, if I had
to sum up the greatest danger facing us to-
day, it is the subtle—and sometimes not so
subtle—erosion of our humanity.
Already in the 19th century here in
America, Emerson foresaw that danger
and coined the phrase ‘self reliance’—not
the self reliance that encourages and even
justifies a culture of ‘every man for himself,’
but rather as a reminder of what is the po-
tential in all of us to become what Stein-
er—some forty years later—described as
‘a selfless self.’ In this respect I have some-
times thought that we shouldn’t speak of
ourselves as ‘human beings,’ but rather as
‘human becomings.’
It is in this spirit of trying to make things
human that I have tried to create my film
about Rudolf Steiner’s life and legacy. From
the outset I have, of course, been very
aware of the difficulty of doing justice to
such an enormously important subject;
aware, too, of the danger of superficiality,
and of conveying misleading and even in-
accurate statements, as well as inadequate
examples of anthroposophy in action.
In fact I did make one small mistake in
the original version of the film that I have
since corrected. At the time I was com-
forted by a friend who told me about a tra-
dition in Persian carpet-making whereby
there is always a deliberate mistake woven
can be perfect.
Despite the correction, my film is nev-
ertheless still far from perfect; but it is full
of examples of people trying—each in their
own way—to make things human, whether
in classrooms, on farms—indeed in every
area of human activity and culture.
For me humour is an essential ingredi-
ent in this task of creating a world in which
our true humanity can unfold. And of par-
ticular importance, I feel, is our ability and
willingness to laugh at what we hold most
dear. Here in America you’ve had many
such geniuses to help us do just that—Mark
Twain being perhaps the greatest. In Eng-
land in recent years there’s been Monty Py-
thon, and now—though not to everyone’s
taste—Sacha Baron Cohen, most recently
as the Dictator. Mr. Bean, in the person of
Rowan Atkinson, made a memorable and
hilarious contribution to the Opening Cer-
emony of the Olympic Games in London.
The whole event may not have been as
spectacular as the ceremony in Beijing four
years ago, but it was full of humanity and
eccentricity.
Humour, together with a certain irrev-
erence towards icons, helps us, I believe,
to keep a sense of proportion—a sense of
our own inadequacies and shortcomings
when confronting the great mysteries of
life. Fantasy, as well as humour, is a gift that
the British seem to have in profusion—en-
riched, I sense, by the Celtic stream in
our make-up. And fantasy is, and will be,
a powerful and important weapon in the
battle against Ahriman’s dry, logical and
clinical bias.
Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland,
Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows,
A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh, Tolkien’s
Lord of the Rings, C.S. Lewis’ tales of Nar-
nia, and more recently J.K. Rowling’s Harry
Potter—these are some examples of the
genius that helps to make things human;
and England, thank heavens, continues to
enrich our world with stories that make no
‘sense,’ but in fact say a great deal. Someone
once said: ‘Myth is a fiction that gives us
the truth.’
I remember years ago hearing a talk in
Dornach by the distinguished biologist,
Hermann Poppelbaum, on the subject of
elemental beings; and in particular I re-
member his mention of the gift that these
beings can give to us in return for our
recognition and appreciation of their exis-
tence. It was the gift of fantasy.
And certainly there are many people
in Britain, as elsewhere, who—despite
the materialistic culture that surrounds
them—still recognise, albeit unconscious-
ly, the miracle that lives in what we call
nature; and who recognise, too, that the
extent to which we honour that miracle,
so will we be helped not only to under-
stand once again the wisdom that is hid-
den in fairy tales and in the great legends
of the past, but also helped to go on creat-
ing them. Fantasy and humour. We need
them, I believe, more than ever.
‘A lightness of touch’ is another way of
describing how to reach people with pro-
found truths without always bombarding
them with too many abstract thoughts and
ideas that can easily leave them floundering
and quickly out of their depths. One scene
in my film—and I’m going to show you
several during this talk—is a wonderfully
light-hearted introduction to biodynamics
by Chris Benziger at his family’s winery in
California—cued in by a passionate state-
ment from Dennis Klocek:
Dennis Klocek
For me what is unique about the work
of Rudolf Steiner, what’s inspired my life
about it, is that it’s not just a tradition; he
threw down the glove and said—‘You have
to do something with this.’
Commentary
The Benziger family have been doing
something with this land for over 30 years.
Biodynamic wine is becoming highly prized,
not just here in California but across the
world; and like all biodynamic farms this
enterprise avoids the modern trend for
mono-crops. Alongside the vines there are
animals and a great variety of plants and
herbs that help regulate the insect popu-
lation and balance the farm as a totality,
avoiding the need for chemicals and artifi-
cial fertilizers. They call it the insectary.
Chris Benziger
Basically it propagates with bugs, then
they sort it out. We have some good bugs
and some bad bugs and they slug it out here,
and hopefully what we do is we have a bal-
ance. The bugs are in here eating the plants
and eating each other instead of going out
there eating the grapevines; because if we
were mono-cropping then we’d put a huge
bull’s-eye on the back of that grapevine, cos
the only thing that’s green is that grapevine,
so every bug is going to fly and eat that. Here
we have a wide expanse, so there’s a lot of
things on the menu, not just the grapevines.
In my discussions with Torin Finser
about this presentation, he asked me to
bear in mind the theme of ‘collaboration,’
and also to speak about what I learned, in
making the film, about the strengths and
the weaknesses of the anthroposophical
movement, and the challenges it faces.
Connected to this is the question of the re-
lationship of the Society to the movement.
Probably the most challenging contribu-
tion in the film to this whole debate—the
health of anthroposophy in the world at
large—came from an Englishman, Fra-
ser Watts—an academic at Cambridge, a
Reader in Science and Religion, and a priest
in the Church of England. At one point in
the interview I asked him why Steiner isn’t
better known:
Revd Dr. Fraser Watts
It’s an interesting question why Steiner
isn’t better known. I think there are vari-
ous reasons. There’s something off-putting
about his writings, I think that that has to
be said.
Jonathan
What, the style you mean?
Revd Dr. Fraser Watts
Yes, style and content I think; and also
something off-putting about the Society,
the kind of following that he has some-
times built up around him which can look
rather too cult-like from the outside. Not
at all what he wanted, I think, but it can
look like that.
I spoke on this same theme to a young
American, Joseph Papas—the baker at
Camphill Copake. I asked him whether
he thought that Camphill communities
like Copake had tended to isolate them-
selves from the world at large, and whether
Steiner’s legacy had altogether become too
inward-looking, too cult-like:
Joseph Papas
I guess it can be, though I don’t know
that it’s specific to his legacy as such. I
think that that isolation tends to happen
with any sort of content that comes into
the world, and I certainly wouldn’t ever
say it was his intention. But yeah, you
know I can say it seems in the biography
of this community that there was a time
in the growth of the community that it
seemed really important that it more or
less separated off a little bit in order to
grow and to become strong—and then
maybe that also can be reflected in the in-
dividual as an inner process as one comes
to terms with oneself—but certainly I feel
like in this community, but also in this re-
gion, there’s a lot of feeling that we’re now
at the point where we need to grow a bit
beyond our borders.
‘Beyond our borders.’ What is the na-
ture, the purpose of a border? It’s a question
imaginatively addressed by Robert Frost
in his poem ‘Mending Wall’. A remark by
Frost’s neighbor—‘Good fences make good
neighbors’—is the poem’s refrain. But then
Frost asks himself—‘What was I walling in
or walling out?’ ….
‘Something there is that doesn’t like a
wall,’ he writes—‘That wants it down.’
I’ve had a long connection, both as a
film-maker and as a friend, with Cam-
phill—particularly in Britain. I made my
first films there in 1967—one at the origi-
nal school in Aberdeen, and one at Botton
Village in Yorkshire, the first Camphill
fall issue 2012 • 41
community for adults.
Certainly in those early years the isola-
tion—the wall—seemed justified for the
reasons that Joseph Papas said in that clip.
And Joseph very perceptively draws a par-
allel with the journey of the individual—of-
ten a period of introspection before going
out into the world with gifts and skills to
offer, and thereby to be of service to others.
In recent years there’s been quite an up-
heaval in many of the Camphill commu-
nities in Britain. In part this can be seen
as caused by increasingly unhelpful pres-
sures and directives from the authorities
that finance such places—authorities with
a mindset that is often very much at odds
with what lives as ideals in anthroposophi-
cally-inspired initiatives like Camphill.
But I think that the problem cannot al-
ways be blamed on ‘the big bad world.’ If
the ideals we live with are not constantly
nurtured and renewed, giving us the
strength, confidence and credibility to
move beyond those borders and out into
the world at large, a certain conformity can
set in—the downside of what we call tradi-
tion—and alongside that conformity a vac-
uum is created. And if not enough effort
for renewal is made, then other forces will
rapidly move in to fill that vacuum—forces
that have quite another agenda. I’ve seen
this happening in several anthroposophi-
cal institutions—and indeed, in Britain, in
the Society establishment itself.
And this renewal has to come, I believe,
not just from simply studying Steiner’s
writings more diligently and in greater
detail, but having the courage to be more
creative, more adventurous ourselves—
however small and humble our initiatives
may be. And this will often mean taking
a far greater interest than is often the case
in developments generally—developments
that are often extremely positive. People
may not always use our language, may not
be particularly interested in whether we’ve
lived on earth many times before, but they
do care passionately about living on the
earth now, and in a way that is healthier
and wiser than in the recent past.
Nor is it helpful in all this if an orthodoxy
is established, either in Dornach or else-
where, that says what is kosher and what
is not. Of course the integrity of Steiner’s
legacy has to be protected; but let’s not for-
42 • being human
get his courage to swim against the tide.
In the Postscript to my film this chal-
lenge to move on is powerfully addressed
by both Fraser Watts, the academic from
Cambridge, and by Arthur Zajonc:
Prof. Arthur Zajonc
One often tries to imagine what would
Steiner’s life and hopes be like today, or in
the near future. Imagine him returning, re-
incarnating, if you will. Would he acknowl-
edge the Society he created or would he have
something very different in mind? You know
I think there are a couple of ways of coming
at the question. One is to say: To whom was
Steiner directing his hopes, his aspirations,
his efforts? And it was to humanity, it was
not to a small community of anthroposo-
phists. You know when he started the Wal-
dorf Schools he did not start them for a few
tens of thousands of students, which is what
we have now, he had an idea and a vision
of the effects of his interventions in educa-
tion as affecting every child. So there are 45
million school children in the United States;
we’ve got a hundred Waldorf schools, say
each of them has 300 students; so you’ve got
30,000 students—and you have 45 million
other students. So it was never meant to be
an enclosed community of practise or of be-
lief, or anything of that sort; it was meant
to be a way of envisioning and understand-
ing the world oneself that was to have the
broadest possible impact—an impact that
would help human beings generally.
Revd Dr. Fraser Watts
I suppose the challenge with Steiner is
to find ways of bringing what I think is his
remarkable contribution more into main-
stream life. He’s very largely neglected in
academic circles and I can understand
the reasons for that, but I still think he’s
a very interesting and important thinker
and I’d like to find ways in which he could
be brought more into academic study. I’d
also like to see ways in which his practical
initiatives can become integrated into the
ordinary fabric of society more than they
have been. I mean he has been rather too
much a kind of specialist, almost cult figure
for a small minority; but there’s nothing new
about this. I think in many ways that was a
problem that he faced in his own lifetime,
and he was almost 40 before he found any
significant audience for the things he want-
ed to say. And there were always problems,
I think, in finding an appropriate audience;
and the audience he did find, largely grow-
ing out of the Theosophical Society, were
perhaps looking for slightly different things
than he wanted to give. I think there was al-
ways something of a tension there.
Jonathan Stedall
What were they looking for?
Revd Dr. Fraser Watts
I think those early members of the theo-
sophical society were looking for a wisdom
teacher who would tell them how things
were; and Steiner could do that, but he was
also someone who developed this philoso-
phy of freedom, philosophy of spiritual ac-
tivity, and as he so often emphasized didn’t
want people to accept things simply because
he told them they were so, but wanted them
to explore things for themselves, to find their
own path. So I think there was quite a dis-
junction between the kind of great leader
that his followers were looking for and the
kind of leader that he wanted to be—a very
non-authoritarian leader, I think, is what
he believed in being. That’s what he thought
was appropriate for the modern times in
which he was living. I think there may have
been sometimes a slightly controlling aspect
to his personality that was at variance with
what he thought was appropriate and nec-
essary, but on the whole it’s what he thought
was necessary that won through rather
than his sometimes controlling instincts.
For me another bold contribution to the
film, related to this theme of challenge—
The Challenge of Rudolf Steiner—came
from Dennis Klocek, preceded by a very
important, very honest statement by the
farmer in Hawthorne Valley, Steffen Sch-
neider.
Steffen Schneider
I think the picture of agriculture that he
gives is going to be valid for hundreds and
hundreds of years still for us to really grasp
it; and then certainly the real challenge for
all of us is
develop the
insight and
develop the
capacities
to really see
what he de-
scribed. You
know it’s not
good enough
to just be able to recount it, we’ll have to be
able to see it.
Commentary
To develop insights and capacities of
their own is what these 2 modern-day al-
chemists are trying to do in this Californian
garage. Their task—to make biodynamic
preparations based on indications by Stein-
er that are not only an effective alternative
to chemical and potentially harmful sub-
stances that are marketed worldwide, but
are also more appropriate to the soil and
climate of California and the tropics than
those used in Western Europe.
I asked Dennis Klocek to what extent
Steiner was tapping into something that we
knew in the past and have forgotten.
Dennis Klocek
Rudolf Steiner didn’t appear just out of
the blue. There’s an old saying ‘genius never
escapes its age’; so he was a genius, and he
brought the best elements from the ancient
traditions together and synthesized them
in a scientific context; that’s why his work
is called spiritual science. He felt it was re-
ally important that the scientific context be
recognized by spiritually-minded people,
because he grew up at a time in his devel-
opment when spiritual-
ism and Ouija boards
and table tapping and
séances, that was the
way people got access to
spirit, and he inherited
the mantle of theosophy
and that was part of
their lore. And what he
said was ‘no,’ it has to be
made in the same way that we make sci-
ence. However on the other side of science is
this death rationale force that can’t imagine
life forces and beings as spiritual beings—
that’s a whole other dimension—and they’re
separated now, and so it’s necessary to bring
those two together in a way for science to be
redeemed and in order for spiritual work
to move into the future rather than just be
stuck on what we inherited from the past.
It has to move into the future; the scien-
tific revolution is not random, it’s not an
anomaly, it’s a reality, so it’s not going to
go away; the scientific world view is not go-
ing to go away; so we can’t just go out and
hug trees and talk about fairies and hope
that that’s going to go somewhere—even if
that’s the perception that we have, that has
to be grounded in reason. So it’s both; it’s an
inheritance from the past—and if you read
Paracelsus and Basil Valentine and the al-
chemists you’ll see everywhere in their work
that there are threads that Rudolf Steiner
was picking on and pulling forward—and
yet with his cosmology and his rational
training in science he could move it further.
Commentary
Dennis Klocek teaches Consciousness
Studies at this college near Sacramento. His
colleague, Matias Baker, a fellow research-
er, is consultant to a number of biodynamic
vineyards in California.
When Dennis referred earlier to his prep-
arations as medicine for the earth, I asked
him why the earth needed medicine. If we
left it alone and stopped spraying it with
chemicals, wouldn’t it be perfectly happy?
Dennis
No, if we left it alone it would be very
lonely because it’s our mother and she says
to us all the time—‘you haven’t called home
in a while, you’re only using my bank ac-
count to live. So you need to love me and
nurture me and feed me with medicines,
because I’m sick from your neglect.’
They say in eso-
teric circles if you
don’t have the organ
of perception, if you
don’t actually work
on yourself to per-
ceive in the proper
way, you just see the
world as it is, not as
it could be. Rudolf
Steiner could see the world as it could be,
not as it was or as it is even now; he saw
the world as it could be, and that’s a lonely
path—it’s a very lonely path.
To help us on our own ‘lonely paths’ we
have a Society. We call ourselves ‘anthro-
posophists.’ But are there not dangers in
huddling together in cosy gatherings like
this one? Of course it’s understandable and
natural to seek out like-minded people—
I’m enjoying all this as much as everyone
else—but not if such camaraderie becomes
an escape.
In this respect I’ve always been very
aware of Steiner’s description, in his lec-
tures on the Fifth Gospel, of Jesus’s experi-
ences of spending time among the Essenes,
and of his gradual realization that the de-
mons, who are driven out of the com-
munity because of its purity, don’t simply
disappear; they go out into the world and
flourish wherever there is discord and dis-
harmony. This vision, so Steiner suggests,
prompts Jesus to recognise—to remem-
ber—that his mission is to help the whole
of humanity and not just a chosen few.
As anthroposophists we cannot begin
to compare ourselves to the Essenes, but
there are in my mind certain parallels. In
this sense I wonder sometimes if ‘Society’
is still the best word to use. Would ‘Net-
work’ be a more helpful, less exclusive-
sounding description of what we mean to
one another?
These are, I feel, important, if somewhat
uncomfortable questions to ask ourselves.
And those of you who know me are aware
that I’ve been asking them for many years.
Now, having made the film, they seem to
me more relevant, more urgent than ever.
I’m sure you are all familiar with the reac-
tion, the resistance that this label ‘Anthro-
posophy’ can provoke in many people—in
the young in particular. It often creates a
barrier, a wall –them and us. There is a
real danger, therefore, that anthroposophy
could become marginalized instead of be-
ing the spearhead it was meant to be.
One can, of course, dismiss these hostili-
ties to all things ‘Steinerized’ as prejudice,
coming from people not yet mature or wise
enough to relate to what Steiner was trying
to bring into the world. But here we are in
danger of slipping into some sort of spiritu-
al elitism—a Luciferic trap that awaits any-
one who is consciously on a spiritual path.
In making the film I constantly came
across this reluctance among thoughtful
young people to join something, to be la-
belled. Could it, I ask myself, be one mani-
festation of this urge ‘to make things hu-
man’—to bring down barriers of every sort,
and to transcend not just nationality and
race, but also the various ‘isms’ that have
so divided people in the past, causing such
havoc and suffering—and in many parts of
the world still doing so.
‘Something there is that doesn’t like a
wall / That wants it down …’
Last year, while filming at an anthro-
posophical conference in Hyderabad, in
South India, I met an Englishman—Ben
fall issue 2012 • 43
Cherry—who summed up very clearly how
anthroposophy’s task is deeply connected
to ‘making things human.’ He certainly
seemed comfortable using the word ‘an-
throposophy,’ so perhaps I am mistaken in
my misgivings about this particular label.
But what Ben did say was also a clear invi-
tation to ‘move beyond our borders’—and
that means having the flexibility to cast
aside jargon and to experience more deeply
what lies behind the words we use. It’s ex-
actly what the farmer, Steffen Schneider
said in that clip. Here is part of my inter-
view with Ben Cherry:
Ben Cherry
I’m originally from the UK. I met anthro-
posophy 34 years ago in a school for handi-
capped children near Reading. It’s now a
Waldorf School; at that time it was a spe-
cial school—some severely disadvantaged
children there, and I worked as the garden-
er and my wife worked as the cook. And for
me, meeting the work of Rudolf Steiner, was
like finding water in the desert.
Most of my teaching in Waldorf educa-
tion has been in Australia. In the last few
years of still teaching in Australia, in the
90s I already started to come to Asia dur-
ing my holidays and made contact with
grassroots initiatives beginning the Waldorf
Schools; and little by little this grew, and
now I work full-time, and particularly now
in China and Taiwan.
Jonathan
What is the response to Steiner in that
part of the world?
Ben Cherry
It’s exploding! It’s phenomenal what
is happening in China at the moment. I
would say the people who come to the train-
ing courses and seminars and the initiatives
that have started in China, those people are
hungry, they’re really hungry, to find mean-
ing in their lives; and that they are hungry
to connect with the outside world. They’re
deeply grateful, that is my experience, and
this is what gives me energy.
Kaipeng Hu
The mainstream education in China
is very, very tough, very competitive; and
you know the children, they are forced to
study from very young, from kindergarten
back to, 2, 3 years old, and more and more
parents realize this is not what they want;
and actually, you know—like the Waldorf
44 • being human
Schools and Kindergartens—most initia-
tives are parents.
Ben Cherry
Ancient China was also very much part
of my pathway towards anthroposophy;
and I think what they find in the work of
Rudolf Steiner is the holistic context within
which everything has meaning and every-
thing has an importance; and so it was in
their own culture. To be an artist was at the
same time an expression of being a human
being. Whatever it was that one was doing,
one was part of something greater than one’s
self, and the ethic was to really put yourself
fully into what you were doing. So I think
they recognise something of a culture that
has been broken in China through many
events; there are some people who want to
bring back that
culture into
Waldorf edu-
cation—make
it an entirely
Chinese educa-
tion. But there
are others who
take in my view
a more bal-
anced point of view and recognise the an-
cient world has gone. We live in the modern
world, but we can go forward in this mod-
ern world and re-find the ancient world
in a modern context. That’s for me what
anthroposophy does; and it’s fascinating
for me that all the different cultures I’ve
been to, and I’ve had the privilege of trav-
elling—cheaply I have to say—but travel-
ling to many parts of the world, and again
and again I’ve found that people there can
say—like here in India—they can say ‘but
anthroposophy is just a repetition of what
we already know.’ And so many people have
the wrong understanding that Steiner just
gathered this and this and this and put it
altogether; but the reason that they can
find their own culture in anthroposophy
is because within anthroposophy there is
something intrinsically human; it is univer-
sal. And this universality expressed itself in
the past in all the different healthy cultures;
and today I feel that what we are in the pro-
cess of doing all around the world, not just
people involved in anthroposophy, that we
are creating a new culture.
One characteristic of this ‘new culture’
to which Ben Cherry points is, I believe, an
attitude of open-mindedness. As an Eng-
lishman and a European, this is one of the
qualities that I have always admired here in
America—‘Let’s give it a go!’ For alongside
your energy and enthusiasm, and coupled
with the genuine idealism that was present
at the founding of America, your country
does still encourage one to believe in the
possibility of a New World.
But no longer just America. As Ben
Cherry says in the film, and as I experi-
enced myself at that Hyderabad confer-
ence, in many parts of Asia there is also
a growing open-mindedness, as well as a
yearning for a more conscious understand-
ing of their own spiritual traditions; and
from this will come, I feel sure, fresh ini-
tiatives that will help anthro-
posophy to keep at bay those
tendencies to get stuck and
to become, in Fraser Watts’
words, ‘cult-like.’
But as with every virtue,
this open-mindedness can
slip into its extreme and thus
become naivety. As Dennis
Klocek said, in order to move
forward it is essential that we employ the
intellectual rigour associated with science
in exploring the spiritual dimensions of
reality. And as the English philosopher, Jer-
emy Naydler, says in my film, the human
being is uniquely destined to hold these
two polarities—reason and imagination—
in balance. It was, of course, Goethe’s great
gift to Steiner—this insight into the very
nature of knowledge in its full potential.
Jeremy Naydler
For Goethe the human being is the most
exact instrument. If you can develop that
instrument into an organ of deep percep-
tion then of course you’ll see more and more
in nature; and that’s what Steiner was able
to do. He developed himself as a spiritual
instrument, I suppose. So he was perceiv-
ing much more than most people are able
to perceive in the natural world, and he
extended that to invisible worlds, of course.
Jonathan Stedall
And was pointing to the fact that we all
have this potential.
Jeremy Naydler
Absolutely. It’s not so easy to develop it
though! But one just has to keep working at
it really, on a daily basis.
Jonathan Stedall
What is your understanding of the key to
working with it?
Jeremy Naydler
Well, when I go into the gardens I am
very aware that the first thing I want to do
when I see weeds, and I see all sorts of things
that need doing, I want to get engaged with
practical stuff. But I try to stop myself and
just spend at least a few minutes with a
plant and just observe it, just be with it; and
there’s something immensely centering and
healing in doing that; and I feel it actually
helps the rest of my day in the garden. You
realize that there’s a miracle there, and it’s
so easy not to see it.
Jonathan Stedall
Yes. But that would perhaps be true of
life altogether; we just simply don’t notice
things, do we? We take things for granted,
not just plants.
Jeremy Naydler
No, it’s absolutely true of life altogether.
Enno Friedrich
One thing that is very much how people
do things today is that people don’t really
want to spend time with something unless
they already know that it’s right. I think
there’s something in the Lord of the Rings
where he describes Hobbits, and he says
Hobbits only have books that tell you about
things they already know. That’s very much
true about the way people today relate to
truth. Left Punky people, they read the
books written by Left Punky people because
they know there’s only things in them that
they anyway agree on. And I think when
you try to read Rudolf Steiner usually what
I find: you need to open yourself to some-
thing that you do not yet know; or you need
to make an effort without knowing for sure;
it takes trust. I think that’s the challenge.
Philippa Belcredi
His main message,
specially to me, was or
is that he wants us to
stand up for our own
ideas; and that’s spe-
cially in our time not
that easy. So for people
it’s much easier to put
him into a box than to
focus on his message
and follow that message. And I think he
didn’t want us to follow him; he wanted us
to follow ourselves.
Laura Nunes
It’s very difficult to actually read a book
that’s written by Steiner. Everybody I’ve
met struggles with it; and even when you
can manage to read the book, to accept
his ideas is another challenge; and some of
the ideas come across as quite loopy! And
I don’t think he wanted anybody to blindly
accept what he was saying. I think you’ve
got to try things out and just see if it fits, sits
well with you, and also adapt it. I think we
need to be flexible as well and feel our way
through the work, you know. Do it, work
with the preparations, spray the fields, but
also personalize it, put your own love into it.
I don’t think there’s any point in just reading
the book and just using it like a manual. He
had some inspiring ideas, and it’s quite dif-
ficult to understand why we spray the fields
with these bizarre combinations of ingredi-
ents; but you give it a try, trust it, have some
faith that maybe it’s going to help, and then
see if it works. I think we’ve got to be open
and flexible.
Dr. Peter Selg
Yes, he felt sorry because he wanted to
help people, but he wanted more than this;
he wanted to leave them free. So that’s the
essential point, it’s the freedom; and you
can help people and give them your own
treasure, but finally they live out from your
treasure and they are dependent; and that’s
the last thing Steiner wanted to have, de-
pendent people.
To be aware of our tendency to become
dependent; to have faith, flexibility, trust—
trust in our own inner voice; and to be open
to what is unfamiliar. These were some of
the thoughts that I felt were important to
include in the film.
So many challenges, not only individual-
ly but also collectively.
And here I return to
the Anthroposophical
Society itself. My own
sense of the challenge
facing the Society, and
in particular the Soci-
ety’s relationship to the
so-called movement,
centers not on the
question: ‘How can the movement connect
more closely with the Society?’ but rather:
‘How can the Society connect more closely
with the movement?’—and by movement
I would include not just people work-
ing within anthroposophical institutions,
whether members or not, but also people
like Fraser Watts at Cambridge University
who clearly recognizes the significance of
Steiner’s work, but would never call him-
self an anthroposophist. In other words we
come back to this word ‘borders,’ and to
Arthur Zajonc’s point about Steiner speak-
ing not just to a small group of anthroposo-
phists.
One potential stumbling block for peo-
ple who are seriously searching for deeper
insights into the nature of existence—and
for me it is a very understandable stumbling
block—is the impression that Steiner, in
using expressions like ‘the spiritual world,’
is essentially a dualist. The language, as
well as the words themselves—words that
we continue to use—can easily smack of
outdated religious teachings about Heaven
and Earth that are increasingly alien to the
modern mindset.
Yet as Craig Holdrege explains so clearly
in my film, as does Dr Michael Evans in
relation to the make-up of the human be-
ing, Steiner was actually talking about one
world—a world in which spirit and matter,
the visible and the seemingly invisible, are
intimately interwoven. The spiritual world
is not somewhere else.
Craig Holdrege
When Steiner came across Goethe’s work
when he was still a student at the University
in Vienna, what he found in Goethe, what
stimulated him in Goethe, was that here
was a man who really immersed himself
in the phenomenal world, didn’t have lots
of abstract concepts, and thereby opened
himself to seeing relationships that spoke
of more than the mere physical. It is just
unfortunate today that we are so much
in a dualistic culture—matter and mind,
body and spirit, if we even think about the
one half right; but if we do think about the
spiritual or the soul or whatever, then it’s
always in contrast to the body; but to see a
unified world—and that was really Steiner
in his epistemology based on Goethe was all
about—the one world that we live in. It is
one world and we are part of one world, and
there aren’t 2 or 3 or 50; there might be nu-
fall issue 2012 • 45
ances and different levels, or whatever you
want to call them—different aspects that
one can gain access to—but it is one mani-
foldly differentiated world.
Dr. Michael Evans
I think what’s unique about Steiner’s con-
tribution is that on the one hand he fully
recognized what conventional medicine
was offering,
as a detailed
knowledge
of the physi-
cal body, but
made it very
clear and
almost chal-
lenged doc-
tors to think
beyond the box and to be aware that the hu-
man being has life forces, has a soul, has a
spiritual identity and that all that is part of
being human, and really all that is involved
in the process of becoming ill and potential-
ly can be mobilized in the healing process.
Christopher Bamford
The essence of his message —and this is
why it’s somewhat difficult to communi-
cate—is essentially that we already, here
and now, as we are, live in a spiritual world.
Jonathan Stedall (to Judy Bailey)
What do you understand by the word
spirituality?
Judy Bailey
The part of you that wants everything to
be good and beautiful and true, is what I
understand. And that all of us have that
call, and desperately try to see it in others,
and desperately want others to recognise in
us. Very simple, it’s very down to earth. It’s
not up in the air. And I know that I meet
an awful lot of people who are active in that
way in the world.
One world—albeit many-layered—and
a spirituality that is not, in Judy Bailey’s
words, ‘up in the air.’ For one of the dangers
of imagining the ‘spiritual’ as elsewhere—a
place we go to when we die, and the only
place that really matters—and dwelling
excessively on that imagination, is that
we neglect our day to day tasks and chal-
lenges here on earth; and this includes that
most important challenge of all: to ask the
question that took Parsifal so long to ask;
a question that comes not out of curiosity,
but out of compassion, as we—like Parsi-
46 • being human
fal—move about the world and witness so
much suffering and misery among our fel-
low human beings. So arises the question:
‘What ails thee?’
In this respect I have been hugely in-
fluenced by Gandhi, about whom I made
a film many years ago. For Gandhi it be-
came simply impossible to indulge in any
sort of luxury while another person was in
need. He was, in other words, a forerunner
of what Steiner described as the potential
future for us all—a world in which we will
experience another person’s suffering as
our own.
And this is what I understand the arch-
angel Michael is helping us to do. And just
because Steiner spoke of this being with
such insight, we must be careful not to
think of him purely as some mascot for the
Anthroposophical Society. Michael is, I am
sure, hard at work wherever people are at-
tempting to understand and to work with
another in a spirit of tolerance and collabo-
ration; wherever empathy exists.
Thinking is all very well, but not if
it eclipses our capacity to feel and to
care deeply. In fact, in disillusioned mo-
ments—either with myself or with my fel-
low searchers—I’ve sometimes wondered
whether the best people at ‘life’ are the ones
who simply get on with it, and don’t spend
a lot of time wondering what it’s all about.
These are thoughts—and feelings—
that came to me during the making of the
film. Yet despite the reservations I have
expressed, I was deeply impressed and in-
spired—as well as helped—by the people
I met and by the work they were doing;
people often struggling against enormous
odds, yet clearly grateful to Steiner for
what in the film Martin Ping called ‘his
signposts.’
I have therefore to report to you, To-
rin, and to our friends from the Executive
Council in Dornach, a wonderful spirit of
collaboration and support surrounding the
making of the film, for which I am deeply
grateful. And a warmth and friendliness,
too, as exemplified in the way that Mar-
ian Leon and others have organized this
conference. In one email exchange, Mar-
ian apologized to me for being such a pest.
I replied that it was no problem, as she was
such a friendly pest!
My film was financed almost entirely by
gifts from individuals and institutions here
in America, in the UK, and in Holland and
Switzerland. One substantial loan from the
Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain
I’m hoping to repay from sales of DVDs
(over 2000 sold so far) and to television.
With the broadcasters in mind I have just
completed a shorter version of the film, in
two 60 minute parts: ‘The Life of Rudolf
Steiner’ and ‘The Legacy of Rudolf Steiner.’
A British distributor will be offering these
to networks worldwide, including PBS.
I am also fund-raising in order to cre-
ate foreign language versions—China and
South America are high on the list—as well
as to make available separate DVDs of the
interviews at close to their original lengths.
I am keen that nothing of value is wasted
from the 70 hours of material I shot. Al-
ready available as DVDs—as well as the
film itself—are conversations with Arthur
Zajonc, Jack Petrash from the Washington
Waldorf School, and with Peter Blom of
the Dutch-based Triodos Bank. Details are
at www.rudolfsteinerfilm.com.
And in all this I need your help, not just
in buying the DVDs or in supporting us fi-
nancially, but also in letting people know
the film exists, and in showing the DVDs
publicly yourselves—to Waldorf School
parents, at Colleges, to interested or maybe
wavering friends and relatives, and wher-
ever there are groups of people searching
to live saner and more meaningful lives.
Collective Eye in Portland, makers of the
film Queen of the Sun about bees—will be
handling the worldwide educational distri-
bution, and will hopefully reach people not
directly connected to the anthroposophi-
cal network; for, as I’m sure you are aware,
I didn’t make this film to simply ‘preach to
the converted.’ Nevertheless I hope it has,
and will be of interest, and even of help,
to people like you who have already been
touched by Steiner’s extraordinary work.
I’d like to end by expressing my appre-
ciation and thanks for the support I’ve
received here in America. Right from the
beginning of the project—over two years
ago now—I met with the same enthusiastic
response: ‘At last!’ … ‘Now is just the right
time for such a film.’ First stop was John
Beck—and later Ralph White and George
Russell—in New York. From there I went to
see Martin Ping in Hawthorne Valley, and
on to Copake; then to Torin Finser, Doug-
las Sloan and Arthur Zajonc, before travel-
ling west to San Francisco, Los Angeles and
Sacramento. On my way back east to visit
the Washington Waldorf School and meet
with Joan Almon, I stopped by in Wiscon-
sin to see my old friend Christopher Mann
and in Kentucky to meet Janey Newton.
These helpful and inspiring conversations,
and many other such encounters, enriched
my quest enormously and contributed to
the film in many different ways.
People also understood from the start
that with such a vast canvas it would be
impossible to say everything, interview ev-
eryone, go everywhere. And those whom I
did interview have been very understand-
ing about the cuts I’ve had to make.
In the past few months I’ve also had
many letters—over two hundred—some
from people quite new to anthroposophy,
expressing their interest and gratitude, and
wanting to know more. Our website has
now been set up to provide this sort of in-
formation. However, I am only too aware
of the inadequacies, the shortcomings in
what I have created. Too long? Too short?
What about Germany? Why no mention of
the School and of the work in Dornach? My
hope, however, has always been that there
is sufficient there to prompt people to look
further. The film is therefore a bridge—
maybe at times a wobbly one—but built
with great love by many people, not just
me, so that ‘good may become.’
In conclusion I want to return to this
thought, as expressed by Walter Johannes
Stein, of the urgent need ‘to make things
human’—or perhaps, in this increasingly
technological age, it is more appropriate to
say ‘to keep things human.’
On this note one of the most touching
moments in the film is, for me, the re-
sponse of Ursula Flatters—a doctor from
Germany who has worked in Sweden for
thirty years—to my question about Rudolf
Steiner himself. Her words bring the whole
film to a conclusion.
Jonathan
Do you see an element of tragedy in Stein-
er’s life, the fact that he did die quite early?
Dr. Ursula Flatters
Yes, certainly I think the whole life, from
one point of view, is a tragedy. I think he was
suffering a very lot.
Jonathan
Because?
Dr. Ursula Flatters
Because I think his insights were so far-
reaching that he didn’t meet enough people
to understand quick enough; but from an-
other point of view you can say love is al-
ways a tragedy. You come with something
really new; it was really an impulse of love, I
think, so it must fail in a way—to begin with
it looks like that. Because he was not the
big star, he connected to people, he wanted
to work with people, he took them as they
were, he was positive; and all this very big
social impulse is great; maybe it’s a little bit
more slow for him, but we all are invited to
this and that is not a tragedy. I think that’s
beautiful. It takes some time, but it’s beau-
tiful that he chose that; he could have gone
to the mountains and written a lot of won-
derful books, but he chose to work together
with people. And it’s very great; I don’t know
anything else that is so practical, that re-
ally tries to create a culture from spiritual
insights—not only having them, but doing
something. But things are going much slow-
er than one would wish; even in me. I am
too slow. I am too lazy!
Commentary
‘Slowly but surely’ might be one way to
describe the progress of Rudolf Steiner’s
legacy, not only in medicine, but in all ar-
eas of daily life. He died nearly 100 years
ago, on March 30th 1925. During his life-
time he frequently spoke about death and
in particular about the bond that continues
between those of us on earth and those who
are no longer physically present. And to
the extent that we are open and aware of
those we have known and loved, so can they
continue to help and inspire us; and we in
our turn can communicate to them insights
and experiences that can only be learned in
the here and now.
The essence of his message, as I under-
stand it—a message that tries to communi-
cate ancient wisdom in a form appropriate
for modern consciousness—is that there is
only one world, part seemingly hidden, part
revealed; and that we human beings are not
alone, not just in our daily lives, but in the
universe at large.
A Courageous
Light: Ursula
Brancato
July 1930–June 2011
Ursula Brancato’s life is defined by her
never-wavering courage. Born in Cologne,
Germany on July 27, 1930 to anthroposo-
phists Erna and Reinold Meuter, Ursula’s
early childhood was spent surviving the
Allied bombings together with her five sib-
lings.
To avoid compulsory participation in
the Hitlerjugend, Ursula was sent from her
home in Cologne, to live with relations in
the Austrian Alps. There she contracted
rheumatic fever which left her bed-ridden
for a year and, after twelve-months’ illness,
unable to walk. Refusing the recommend-
ed wheelchair and with characteristic will-
power, she taught herself to walk again.
When the time came to attend uni-
versity, Ursula’s courage defined her yet
again. The political climate of post-war
France was to say the least not friendly to
Germans. Notwithstanding, she moved to
Paris and attended the prestigious La Sor-
bonne where she studied foreign languag-
es. Fluent in English, French and German,
after receiving her degree, she accepted
and held for several years the position of
translator and interpreter offered her by
the consulate in Paris.
Ursula married Oreste Brancato in the
early 1960’s. Together with three young
children, they moved to southern Cali-
fornia in 1969. A life-long member of the
Christian Community, she became a
member of the North Hollywood Congre-
gation. Not comfortable driving the free-
ways of Los Angeles, for many years Ursula
drove the twenty five miles from her home
to North Hollywood on surface streets,
making certain she arrived in time for her
children to attend the Children’s Service.
She joined the Anthroposophical Society
of Pasadena in the mid 1970’s.
Over the years, her personal library
grew to include all Rudolf Steiner’s works
in German and English. A life-long student
of anthroposophy, her library was always
within arm’s length, the hallmarks of de-
cades-long use evident at a glance. Ursula’s
fall issue 2012 • 47
was the definitive working-library. To leaf
through the pages of her books, is to wit-
ness what it means to dedicate oneself to
the attainment of higher knowledge. Sev-
eral are marked as far back as 1970, each
is duly dated. A testament to her spiritual
and scholarly pursuit, her familiar hand
can be seen in notes she
wrote along the margins.
It is the hope of this au-
thor, that the reader find
renewed purpose and
inspiration in their own
studies through the ex-
ample of the courageous
light that guided Ursula
Brancato in her earthly
life and guides her still.
Bettina Ursula Brancato
Geoffrey von
Menken
Geoffrey von Menken crossed the
threshold September 27, 2012, at the Ru-
dolf Steiner Fellowship Community in
Chestnut Ridge, NY. A long-time member
of the New York City branch of the An-
throposophical Society, Geoffrey will be
remembered for his quiet attention and
good humor, his patience through years of
poor health, and his remarkable knowledge
in many fields.
The musician Joseph Rowe shared these
recollections of Geoffrey.
“I met Geoffrey von Menken in Austin,
Texas in 1971. We were both students of
Hamza El Din, a famous Nubian musician
who was teaching Middle-Eastern music at
the University of Texas. Geoffrey and I soon
became good friends, and both of us also
became close friends with Hamza himself.
I quickly learned that Geoffrey was a gifted
and very original luthier: a maker of fine
stringed instruments, but also flutes, xylo-
phones, and invented instruments. (Much
later, he made the dulcimers and the oud
which I still play today.) He knew more
about the mathematics of music than any-
one I’ve met, before or since. He had a ge-
nius-level talent in the scientific domain (I
was a math major myself, and recognized a
prodigious talent when I saw it), but he told
me he had deliberately chosen to major in
48 • being human
the Humanities instead, because he sensed
that the path of science and mathematics
would be too easy for him. He recognized
very early that (largely because of the emo-
tional effect of a very difficult mother) he
would have become both too socially iso-
lated, and less developed in his feelings
and his soul-life, if he had taken the easy
path of following his scientific talent. So he
specialized in Classics, and taught Greek
and Latin as a graduate student at UT. He
had completed everything required for a
PhD with flying colors. And then, at the
last minute as it were, he refused to write
a dissertation, because he disagreed with
the dogmas and petty academic politics of
the department. I suspect that they were
threatened by his originality and eccentric
brilliance. I’ve rarely met anyone who had
such a profound knowledge of the history
and cultures of the Mediterranean world.
And he had supplemented his studies by
extensive voyages in those countries. His
father was a vice-president of a major air-
line, so he had free tickets, and used them
well. Talking to Geoffrey made ancient
history and civilization come alive, for not
only had he read prodigiously, he had a
knack of relating his readings to everyday
life, and was able to convey vivid impres-
sions and images of how those people actu-
ally lived and thought.
“Some years later I introduced him to the
writings of Rudolf Steiner, and he joined
our study group in Austin. But Geoffrey
went much further than I, and a few years
later it was I who was going to him for in-
formation on anthroposophy rather than
the reverse. I also taught him how to plant
an organic garden—and a couple of years
later, he was an expert and very successful
biodynamic gardener!
“Although of a decidedly melancholic
temperament, Geoffrey had a keen sense
of humor, and could be quite a wit. As an
example, I remember being at a very excep-
tional and joyous party with him, where
we and some Arab, Persian, and Armenian
people were having a great time playing
music, dancing, and drinking good wine
together. I had drunk several glasses, and
someone offered me another. I wanted it,
but hesitated, muttering the phrase “mod-
eration, after all...” Geoffrey was standing
nearby, and quipped: “Oh, come on, have
another, and remember: moderation in all
things—including moderation!”
“In the early 1990’s he came to visit me
and my wife, singer Catherine Braslavsky,
staying with us in Paris. A high point in our
relationship—and I believe, in Geoffrey’s
life—was when he walked the labyrinth
of Chartres with the Rev. Lauren Artress’s
group of pilgrims from San Francisco,
while Catherine sang, and other musicians
including myself accompanied her, playing
the oud and dulcimer which Geoffrey had
made. For him, as for me, that labyrinth de-
sign represents a powerful form of walking
meditation and prayer.
“Over many years, Geoffrey worked of-
ten on a complex, ambitious, and visionary
system which attempts to bring musical
harmonics, interval-ratios, and modes of
Eastern and Western traditions into rela-
tion with color, mathematics, astrology,
and cosmic archetypal principles. He was
a superb calligrapher and talented painter,
and I have seen several charts he made
related to this system. They are beautiful
to look at even if one doesn’t really under-
stand the principles, which are difficult. I
would hope that someone will make these
beautiful charts, at least, available to many
people. Geoffrey was excessively alone
during his later years, and this material
deserves to be seen and studied by a wider
audience.
“I’ll close this memoir with an anecdote
which Geoffrey related to me a few years
before he died. He was very ill at the time,
and alone in his apartment in New York
City. Some sort of repairman came, who
happened to be from India. He saw how
much pain and physical difficulty Geof-
frey was in, and sympathized. They began
to talk at some length and depth, and it
emerged that Geoffrey believed in rein-
carnation. This encouraged the repairman
to express a classic Hindu sentiment and
belief: ‘Oh, this wheel of suffering and illu-
sion! This trap of Samsara—I only want to
be free of it. May I be free of this vain cycle
of reincarnations, so full of suffering, and
never return again after I die!’
“After a moment of silence, Geoffrey re-
plied: ‘As for me, I hope to return over and
over again, no matter how much suffering
it involves, as long as there is good work for
me to do.’”
 New Members of the Anthroposophical Society in
America, recorded by the Society 6/15/2012 to 9/28/2012
Kristin Agudelo, Brunswick ME
Catherine Allegretti, Pahoa HI
Michael Allen, Gold River CA
Elizabeth Arth, Madison WI
Windsong Bergman, Shepherdstown WV
Lili Blalock, Monterey CA
Helen Brinkel, Spring TX
Kelley Buhles, San Francisco CA
Steve Buscaino, Encino CA
Anne Marie Carollo, Sacramento CA
Barbara Coughlin, Delmar NY
Genevieve Dagobert, Keene NH
Christina Daub, Garrett Park MD
Jennifer Davis, Portland OR
Claude Dion, Hollywood FL
Lawrence Duncan, Missoula MT
Tracy Edwards, Akron OH
Chelsi Espinosa, Fairbanks AK
Kurtis H. Estep, Chicago IL
Kathleen Finnegan, Peebles OH
Laura Foody, Wellesley MA
Carin Fortin, Santa Cruz CA
Kristine Fox, Santa Fe NM
Theresa Fredericks, Pennington NJ
Vasile Gocan, Roanoke VA
Mary Barr Goral, Nashville IN
Tricia J. Grable, Boulder CO
Andrew Hatch, Hardwick VT
Sara Belle Hatch, Hardwick VT
Ingrid Hayes, New Paltz NY
Diana Haynes, Durham NC
Jessi Herbert, Portland OR
eQuanimiti Joy, Wilton NH
Holly Juch, Carmichael CA
Kristine Kiko-Cozy , Canton OH
Sono Kuwayama, New York NY
Alejandra Lorenzo-Chang , Baltimore MD
Marcus Macauley, Rochester NY
For a 1999 lecture at the New York
branch, “The Musical Movements of Moon
and Mercury,” Geoffrey provided these ob-
servations and a verse by Mesomedes:
“An ancient epithet of Mercury is ‘the
Music Giver.’ It was the space probe of 1965
that first revealed the rhythmic-musical
motion of the planet Mercury. This lecture
will demonstrate that the harmonic ratios
(rhythms) of musical tones, which lie at the
foundation of most of the world’s musi-
cal systems, are identical to the harmonic
movements of Moon and Mercury. These
movements reveal a similar outer ‘celestial
geometry’ to the inner ‘soul geometry’ of
Geoffrey MacMillan , Occidental CA
Donna Marcantonio, Sarasota FL
Daniel J. Masi, Keene NH
Kathryn Myers, Philadelphia PA
Patricia Navarro, Spring TX
Claudia Pfiffner, Tucson AZ
Jay Cee Pigg, Boulder Creek CA
Bert Ponce, Santa Fe NM
Sylvia Qualls, Aptos CA
Patricia Reber, Los Altos CA
Jane Mealey Reed, Whitmore Lake MI
Leigh Rhysling, Lakewood CO
Kevin Richmond, Stone Mountain GA
Gabriel Rollinson, Hadley MA
Laetitia Berrier Saarbach, Spring Valley NY
Barry Schaye, Chicago IL
Dr. Anke Scheinfeld, New York NY
Carolyn Siegel, Mountain View CA
Dawn M. Skoblicki, Nesconset NY
Judie K. Sky, Shannock RI
Lindsay K. Smith, Long Beach CA
Katherina Speer, Tucson AZ
Lynn St Pierre, Boulder CO
Nancy A. St. Vincent , West Greenwich RI
Christie Stephens, Little Rock AR
Sarah Steven, Dexter MI
Margaret Z. Stojak, Grayslake IL
Patrice Streicher, Madison WI
Michael Szul, Shenandoah VA
MaryAnn Timmerman, Fort Loramie OH
Sarah VanderMeulen , Chicago IL
Sea-Anna Vasilas, Spring Valley NY
Elizabeth Webber, Portland OR
Naomi Whiteley, Gainesville FL
Muffet Wilkerson, Sacramento CA
Alexander Workman, Amherst MA
Scott Wright, West Stockholm NY
Tammy Young, Grand Blanc MI
the musical intervals described by Rudolf
Steiner.
“For thee the serene chorus of the stars
Dances over lordly Olympus
Ever singing their ageless song,
Delighting in the Lyre of Phoebus.
In the lead gleaming Moon
Conducts the timely dance.”
Geoffrey’s friends at the NY branch are
grateful for the devoted attention given
him in his last months especially by Sonia
Saldarriaga, who helped him organize his
affairs and move to the Fellowship Com-
munity.
John H. Beck
Members Who
Have Died
Janet Alexis, Milton MA
died January 3, 2012
Gary Aylesworth, San Francisco CA
died 2012
Gilbert Church, Denver CO
died September 8, 2012
Charlene Kaatz, Boulder CO
died August, 2012
Trudy Marks, Oak Park CA
died August 16, 2012
Louise McNamara, Fair Oaks CA
died September, 2012
Amy Merrick, San Francisco CA
died February 24, 2012
David Mitchell, Boulder CO
died June 9, 2012
Rudolf Steiner Library
New Book Annotations
Anthroposophy—Agriculture
Biodynamics for the Home Garden,
Peter Proctor, Sumner Burstyn, 2011, 82 pgs.
Perfect Compost: A Masterclass with
Peter Proctor, Cloud South Films, 2011.
DVD, 21 min. — Master biodynamic
farmer and composter Peter Proctor of
New Zealand, featured in the film One
Man, One Cow, One Planet (available from
the library) presents detailed instructions
on composting in this handbook and com-
panion DVD.
Anthroposophy—Biography
Footprints of an Angel: Episodes
from a Joint Autobiography, Siegfried E.
Finser, Lindisfarne, 2012, 228 pgs. — “This
is the story of a man in search of his an-
gel. His search begins with various events
in his life that he finds difficult to explain.
The fact that they happened is incontro-
vertible, but how did they happen? ...Again
and again, he discovers that major turning
points in his life were not well thought out
or carefully planned. Indeed, they seemed
to happen largely by accident, the results of
coincidence or even a series of miracles.”
The Multifaceted Life of Emil Molt
(Father of the Waldorf School): Entre-
fall issue 2012 • 49
preneur, Political Visionary, and Seeker
for the Spirit, Sophia Christine Murphy,
AWSNA, 2012, 341 pgs. — In 1919 Emil
Molt, director of the Waldorf Astoria
Cigarette Company in Stuttgart, Germa-
ny, founded the first Waldorf School for
his workers’ children. He invited Rudolf
Steiner to become the school’s pedagogi-
cal director, and thus Waldorf education
began. The author of this new biography,
Molt’s granddaughter, discovered family
diaries and documents that shed light on
the karmic struggles within the first school
and the Anthroposophical Society. The
story of Emil Molt’s struggles, successes,
and disappointments may perhaps hint at
how we can transform the problems that
still surface in Waldorf schools today.
Journeys with a Real Jack in the Pul-
pit, Helen L. Philbrick, XLibris, 2005,
270pgs. — Helen Louise Porter Philbrick,
with her husband, John, was an Ameri-
can Biodynamic gardening pioneer. They
collaborated on books including The Bug
Book and Companion Plants and How to
Use Them (both available from the library).
Helen’s father was a renowned silversmith,
and she assisted him for some years. In “re-
tirement,” she taught gardening, weaving,
chair caning, and basket-weaving to people
who attended conferences at Faith Home-
stead, a center she and her husband had
founded, and tended ancient apple trees.
She published this very engaging memoir
in 2005. Helen Philbrick died at the age of
101 in December 2011.
I Am for Going Ahead: Ita Wegman’s
Work for the Social Ideals of Anthro-
posophy, Peter Selg, SteinerBooks, 2012,
160 pgs. — These three lectures detail Ita
Wegman’s relationship with Rudolf Steiner
in the context of the development of an-
throposophic medicine and the formation
of the Medical Section of the School for
Spiritual Science.
Anthroposophy—Christology
The Creative Power of Anthropos-
ophical Christology, Sergei O. Prokofieff
and Peter Selg, SteinerBooks, 2012, 325
pgs. — The lectures here comprise the
fruits of conferences held jointly by the
authors from 2007 – 2010. They present-
ed the following sequence of themes with
a focus on Christology: The Philosophy
of Spiritual Activity; Occult Science: An
50 • being human
Outline; the First Goetheanum; and the
Christmas Conference of 1923/24. In place
of the lectures on The Philosophy of Spiri-
tual Activity (already published elsewhere)
are included two recent lectures by the
authors on Rudolf Steiner’s Fifth Gospel. –
Thomas O’Keefe.
Anthroposophy—Eurythmy
Developing the Future: 100 Years of
Eurythmy. Professional Conference for
Eurythmy April 25-29, 2011. “Rudolf
Steiner’s Concept of Art in the Profes-
sional Realms of Stage Art —Educa-
tion—Social Domain—Therapy.” Sek-
tion für Redende und Musierende Künste
[am Goetheanum]; Medizinische Sektion
[am Goetheanum] 2012. 86 pgs. — This
program from an international eurythmy
conference features articles about euryth-
my in practice: as a stage art; in education;
and in the social domain; and interpretive
pieces by various authors: “From Sensory
to Supersensible Realms; Becoming Self-
Connecting with the World,” “The Being
of Eurythmy,” and more.
Anthroposophy—General
Seek the Light that Rises in the West,
Mieke Mosmuller, Occident Publishers
[The Netherlands], 2012, 225 pgs. — Origi-
nally published in Dutch and German
in 1994, this recently translated work by
a Dutch physician and anthroposophist
looks at the difficulties in our lives: fear,
doubt, insecurity, illness, loneliness, death,
and suggests that a particular kind of
thinking is the key to coming to a faith that
is based on certainty in knowing. “In this
book we are summoned to learn to expe-
rience this problem of the Westerner (the
problem of thinking) ourselves, in order
to come from this gained experience to
our own insight in the path which leads us
away from the darkness of rational intel-
lect.”
The Guardian of the Threshold and
the Philosophy of Freedom, Sergei O.
Prokofieff, Temple Lodge Publishing, 2011,
114 pgs. — As a postscript to the author’s
earlier book, Anthroposophy and the Phi-
losophy of Freedom, this work addresses
the role of the greater and lesser Guard-
ians of the Threshold (described in Ru-
dolf Steiner’s book How to Know Higher
Worlds) in relation to the path of cogni-
tion found in The Philosophy of Freedom.
The Guardian plays a central role in mod-
ern initiation—without encountering the
Guardian, one cannot maintain full con-
sciousness and thus gain certainty as to the
contents of one’s spiritual experiences. Pro-
kofieff also addresses the relation between
The Philosophy of Freedom and The Fifth
Gospel. –Thomas O’Keefe.
The Mystery of the Resurrection in
the Light of Anthroposophy, Sergei O.
Prokofieff, Temple Lodge Publishing, 2010,
214 pgs. — In this book, the author inves-
tigates the nature of the Resurrection body
of Christ as the future-oriented archetype
of true thinking, feeling, and willing. In a
moral-spiritual sense, suggests Prokofieff,
one can develop a relation to the Resurrec-
tion body through work with the Founda-
tion Stone meditation, which he views as a
blueprint for “attaining a cognitive experi-
ence of the reality of the Resurrection.” In
this sense, Prokofieff advocates a purely
spiritual relation with the moral-spiritual
ideals articulated in this meditation as a
basis for approaching the present Christ-
event. Additional themes are: the nature of
Easter, Ascension, and Whitsun; Christ’s
descent into the center of the earth and its
future transformation; and an appendix
on the topic of stigmatization. –Thomas
O’Keefe.
Anthroposophy—Literature
This Ever Diverse Pair, Owen Barfield,
Oxford, U.K., Barfield Press, 2010, 120
pgs. — Characterized as “a philosophic
comedy,” This Ever Diverse Pair was first
published in 1950, when Owen Barfield
was practicing law in London. A humor-
ous portrayal of everyday life in a law of-
fice, the novel’s true subject is what C.S.
Lewis described as “the rift in every life
between the human person and his public
persona—between, say, the man and the
bus conductor or the man and the king....”
Our own Frederick J. Dennehy contributed
an introduction.
The Rose on the Ash-Heap, Owen
Barfield, Oxford, UK, Barfield Press, 2009,
98 pgs. — The Rose on the Ash-Heap is
the epilogue from English People, Owen
Barfield’s unpublished novel of English
life between the First and Second World
Wars. “At once fairy tale, societal critique,
romance and apocalyptic vision, it dis-
closes the redemptive powers of love and
imagination.... Written in the late 1920s, a
time of widespread societal and economic
instability, The Rose on the Ash-Heap also
addresses the deepest concerns and hopes
of the twenty-first century.”
The Red Jester: Andrei Bely’s Peters-
burg as a Novel of the European Mod-
ern, Judith Wermuth-Atkinson, Zurich:
LIT Verlag, 2012, 232 pgs. — Novelist,
poet, theorist, and literary critic Andrei
Bely met Rudolf Steiner in 1912, and sub-
sequently, he and his first wife, Aasya
Turgenieff, moved to Dornach, where they
lived for several years. Vladimir Nabokov
regarded Bely’s novel, Petersburg, as one of
the four greatest novels of the 20th century.
The author of this book “places Bely’s work
at the heart of the European Modern ( die
Moderne). It argues that with its concern
for the spiritual and its desire to create
new aesthetics, the novel helped reshape
fundamental views of reality, of the Self,
and of consciousness.... The author also
presents Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy
as the prism through which Bely reflects
modernist ideas.”
Anthroposophy—Medicine—Therapies
A Guide to Understanding Healing
Plants, volumes 1 & 2, Jochen Bockemühl,
Mercury Press, [vol. 1] 2010, 184 pgs.; [vol.
2] 2011, 241 pgs. Originally published in
German as: Ein Leitfaden zur Heilpflan-
zenerkenntnis, Verlag am Goetheanum,
Dornach, 1996. Translated by Harold Jur-
gens; translation revised by David Heaf. —
A study of the healing substances within
plants and the inner capacities we need to
develop in order to perceive them. Chap-
ters include (among others): “Unconscious
connections of man and animals with
substances,” “Developing the perceptual
capacity of thinking,” “Health and disease
considered from the viewpoint of a direct
meeting with a person,” “Getting to know
plant substance through seeing, smelling,
tasting, and touching,” and “Chemical ele-
ments as principles of action in the context
of nature.”
Compresses and Other Therapeutic
Applications: A Handbook from the Ita
Wegman Clinic, Monika Fingado, Floris
Books, 2012, 208 pgs. — Compresses and
poultices can be used to treat a wide range
of conditions. This practical handbook was
written for nurses and practitioners at the
Ita Wegman Clinic in Switzerland, and
covers all aspects of compresses and poul-
tices, including descriptions of the sub-
stances used and their healing properties.
Rhythmic Einreibung: A Handbook
from the Ita Wegman Clinic, Monika
Fingado, Floris Books, 2011, 158 pgs. —
“Rhythmic Einreibung” is a therapy of
rhythmic body oiling. Its techniques were
developed by Dr. Margarethe Hauschka on
the basis of suggestions from Dr. Ita We-
gman. This technique, a development of
Swedish massage, emphasizes rhythmic
elements and qualities to create lightness
rather than pressure. The strokes work
with the surface of the skin rather than
kneading the body as is done with con-
ventional massage techniques. The book
features numerous practical exercises, and
is suitable for both beginners and experi-
enced practitioners.
Speech and Memory: The Art of the
Spoken Word—Therapeutic Aspects,
Christa Slezak Schindler, Mercury Press,
2011 33 pgs. — “As modern life changes the
way we think and rely more upon outside
electronic ‘memory’ devices (i.e., Google)
for the storage and recall of information,
the author recommends the use of thera-
peutic speech to ‘heal recall and strengthen
the will to consciously remove dogmatic
speech patterns that diminish true mem-
ory.’” Clear instructions on breathing tech-
niques, movements, and verses from Ru-
dolf Steiner and others are included.
Anthroposophy—Rudolf Steiner
Rudolf Steiner and Christian Rosen-
kreutz, Peter Selg, trans. Margot M. Saar,
SteinerBooks, 2012, 172 pgs. — Rudolf
Steiner spoke often of the relationship of
anthroposophy to Rosicrucianism. Peter
Selg shows that Steiner had essentially
two teachers: the Master Jesus (Zoroaster)
and Christian Rosenkreutz, and how these
teachers, with Rudolf Steiner, “unfolded
spiritual science for our time.” Rudolf
Steiner and Christian Rosenkreutz con-
cludes with an appendix containing the
text of the original (1614) Fama, or “An-
nouncement of the Rosicrucian Brother-
hood.”
Anthroposophy—Social
Mesonyms, Michael Howard, Mercury
Press 2010, 40 pgs. — Polarization is ubiq-
uitous in our time. “In the realm of lan-
guage, this polarization comes to expres-
sion through synonyms and antonyms.
But the world is not as black and white as
it appears. Fortunately, language is rich in
words that bridge and mediate between
polar extremes. However, these words
are not as prominent in our speaking and
thinking as synonyms and antonyms, and
for this reason, we do not apply them in our
practical affairs as fully as we might.” This
booklet proposes “mesonym” as the name
for “words in the middle, words that medi-
ate.” “A thesaurus of mesonyms would be a
resource for becoming more conscious of
this dimension of language, and perhaps
open us to less polarized ways of thinking
and acting.”
Anthroposophy—Society
Warum wird man Mitglied der Freien
Hochschule für Geisteswissenschaft?
Sergei O. Prokofieff, Philosophisch-An-
throposophischer Verlag am Goetheanum,
2010. 86 pgs. — This text originated from
lectures given to members of the gen-
eral anthroposophical society who might
have questions about the First Class of the
School for Spiritual Science. It discusses
the karmic background that may have led
individuals to anthroposophy, and intends
to provide interested people with a sense
for the unique importance of the esoteric
school Rudolf Steiner founded as a Michael
school on Earth.
Rudolf Steiner and the School for
Spiritual Science: The Foundation of
the “First Class,” Peter Selg, trans. Mar-
got M. Saar, SteinerBooks, 2012, 160 pgs.
— In this book, Peter Selg looks at Rudolf
Steiner’s intentions for the School for Spiri-
tual Science and the Class Lessons—inten-
tions that he states have yet to be realized.
He also describes Ita Wegman’s role as
Rudolf Steiner’s “helper” in the First Class.
He seeks to leave behind the conflicts of
the 1920s and 1930s, as Ita Wegman her-
self left them behind her. As Wegman said,
“For me the matter is settled. There are so
many misunderstandings that I consider
it better to leave things well alone. We all
thought we were doing the right thing.
Looking forward is more important now
than looking back.”
Die Lebensbedingungen der Anthro-
posophie heute: Ziele und Aufgaben der
Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft und
fall issue 2012 • 51
 der Freien Hochschule für Geisteswis-
senschaft. Heinz Zimmermann, Verlag
am Goetheanum, 2007, 104 pgs. — This
booklet provides an overview of anthro-
posophy, and asks what form is appropri-
ate for the anthroposophical society and
the school of spiritual science today. Zim-
mermann offers new observations on the
Foundation Stone, and gives valuable sug-
gestions for meditation.
Anthroposophy—Threefolding
Threefold Now! Crossing over from
the Nation-State System to the Tri-
Sector Societal Organism. Volume
One: Names and Flags, Travis Henry,
self-published, unpaginated, n.d. — Artist
and social activist Travis Henry introduces
this intriguing, full-color gallery of flags
with this epigram from Goethe: “A coun-
try starts out with a name and a flag, and
then it becomes them, just as a man fulfills
his destiny.” Henry has created three flags
for each of a host of countries worldwide:
one for the economic administration, one
for the political administration, and one
for the cultural administration. He states:
“The separation of economy and state, the
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52 • being human
separation of culture and state, and the
separation of economy and culture will
end most societal illnesses, including na-
tionalism, statism, theocratic extremism,
militarism, and corporatism.”
Anthroposophy—Waldorf Ed.—Administration
Partnerships of Hope: Building Wal-
dorf School Communities, Christopher
Schaefer, AWSNA, 2012, 208 pgs. — Wal-
dorf education has a social mission, not
only in the context of general culture, but
in Waldorf school communities them-
selves. Community-building offers both
opportunities and challenges: How are
Waldorf schools governed? How are deci-
sions made? What sort of leadership is ap-
propriate? This “book provides a variety of
insightful answers, placing them into the
larger matrix of the political and economic
crises facing Western societies.” Christo-
pher Schaefer suggests that the values and
principles imbedded in Waldorf education
have the potential to heal our world.
Anthroposophy—Waldorf Educ.—Arts & Crafts
Creative Pathways: Activities that
Strengthen the Child’s Cognitive Forc-
es, Elizabeth Auer, AWSNA, 2012, 94 pgs.
of Waldorf teaching ex-
perience as both a prac-
tical-arts teacher and
Waldorf class teacher
from grades 1–8, this
book is a culmination of
the author’s work with
hands-on activities and
projects with children
ages 6–14.
“The Italy Trip”:
Highlights of Mr.
Mann’s History of Art
Tour. Compiled by Ja-
net Barker, Anastasi,
2011, 83 pgs. — The “It-
aly Trip” was an eagerly
anticipated adventure
for 12th-grade students
at Michael Hall, a Brit-
ish Waldorf school, in
the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s.
The tours were orga-
nized and guided by
their inspirational art-
history teacher, Wil-
liam Mann. In 1980,
over twenty years after touring Italy with
Mr. Mann and her classmates, Janet Barker
decided to retrace her steps (only this time
starting in Sicily) accompanied by a friend.
Before setting off she asked Mr. Mann for
his guidance, and he made a detailed tape
recording of suggestions for this journey of
rediscovery. “This book is based on a faith-
ful transcription of that tape.”
Anthroposophy—Waldorf Education—Child
Development
Addictive Behaviour in Children and
Young Adults: The Struggle for Free-
dom, Raoul Goldberg, Floris, 2012, 287
pgs. — Addiction affects children as well
as adults. We face not only widespread de-
pendency on illicit substances, but also ad-
dictions to food and beverages; cigarettes
and alcohol; and electronic gadgetry, on-
line social networks, and entertainment
media within a culture of violence, along
with “excessive and unhealthy sexual prac-
tices.” This book, by an anthroposophical
doctor, explores the overall health conse-
quences of addictive behavior in children
and young people, as well as its underlying
causes.
Anthroposophy—Waldorf Education—Music
Music through the Grades: In the
Light of the Developing Child. Diane
Ingraham Barnes, Adonis Press, 2012, 195
pgs. — Over 200 songs for grades 1–8 in
Waldorf schools. Includes 3 CDs with
songs for grades 1–3 sung by Diane Ingra-
ham Barnes “for teachers to learn by listen-
ing while reading the printed music.”
Anthroposophy—Waldorf Educ.—Pedagogy
Observing the Class, Observing the
Children, compiled and edited by Da-
vid Mitchell. Waldorf Journal Project no.
18, AWSNA, 2012, 91 pgs. — Another in
the Waldorf Journal series, which pres-
ents translations of pedagogical work
originally published in Europe and Scan-
dinavia. Some representative chapters in-
clude: “The Art of Observing Children,”
by Christof Wiechert; “Love Melts away
Fear,” by Henning Köhler; “The Secret of
Children’s Drawings,” by Armin Krenz;
“Anything but Children’s Play: What Play
in School Means for Learning,” by Irene
Jung; “Laughing with the Ninth Graders—
Humor in the Main Lesson,” by Florian
Heinzmann.
Teaching, the Joy of Profession: An
Invitation to Enhance Your (Waldorf)
Interest, Christoph Wiechert, trans. Dorit
Winter. Verlag am Goetheanum, 2012, 182
pgs. — This book, by longtime Pedagogi-
cal Section leader Christof Wiechert, is
addressed to teachers. He recognizes the
complex demands teachers face: they must
maintain a high degree of professionalism;
deliver sound results; attend to the indi-
vidual needs and development of their stu-
dents; and help parents understand their
own children. Teachers are constantly
serving others, with little time for them-
selves. If they lose the balance between in-
ner needs and outer demands, “then [they]
grow sour in this delightful profession.
This book is a guide to find that balance,
which means gaining access to more en-
ergy, more creativity, more joyful responsi-
bility for the sake of healthy students and a
healthy profession.”
Anthroposophy—Waldorf Educ.—Technology
Technology. Waldorf Journal Project
19. AWSNA, 2012, 90 pgs. — Another in
the Waldorf Journal series, which presents
translations of pedagogical work originally
published in Europe and Scandinavia.
Some representative chapters include: “Ru-
dolf Steiner and Technology,” “Technology
and the Celebration of Work as Developed
in Waldorf Education,” by David Mitchell;
“On Freedom,” by Henning Kohler; “An
Information and Communication Tech-
nology Curriculum for Steiner/Waldorf
Schools,” by William Steffen.
Christianity—Eastern
The East in the Light of the West:
Parts One to Three, Sergei O. Prokofieff,
Temple Lodge Publishing, 2009, 544 pgs.
— This book presents research into the na-
ture of the Theosophical movement and its
later offshoots (Agni Yoga and Alice Bai-
ley). Prokofieff provides both an overview
of these Eastern-oriented cosmologies and
an acknowledgement of the new Christian
element Rudolf Steiner brought into the
Theosophical movement. The author pro-
vides a comprehensible context for ques-
tions regarding the split between eastern
and western masters. Published in German
in 1997 in three separate volumes, this
book includes a revised version of the earli-
er English edition of Part One: The Teach-
ings of Agni Yoga in the Light of Christian
Esotericism. Also included are: Part Two:
The Teachings of Alice Bailey in the Light
of Christian Esotericism; and Part Three:
The Birth of Christian Esotericism in the
Twentieth Century and the Occult Powers
that Oppose it. –Thomas O’Keefe.
Christianity—Esoteric
The Mystery of the Heart: The Sac-
ramental Physiology of the Heart in
Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and Rudolf
Steiner, Peter Selg, SteinerBooks, 2012,
227 pgs. — Selg traces the development
of the philosophical and scientific under-
standing of the heart-organ through the
perspectives of Aristotle, Thomas Aqui-
nas, and Rudolf Steiner. He finds among
these thinkers a remarkable continuity of
moral-spiritual awareness as to this organ’s
true function in the physical-spiritual hu-
man organism. Also included is a study of
how the heart is spoken of in the context
of the Gospels; and a compilation of verses
given by Rudolf Steiner to ailing patients,
which focus on the heart as a source of
spiritual strength. –Thomas O’Keefe.
Fairy Tales—Commentary
Fairy Tales and Art Mirrored in
Modern Consciousness, Monica Gold,
AWSNA, 2012, 194 pgs. — Weaving to-
gether fairy tales, children’s drawings, and
the history of art, artist and author Monica
Gold examines how art and fairy tales can
mirror each other, and have a profound
effect on our modern consciousness. The
book is generously illustrated with full-
color photos of fine art.
Greek Culture
Hellas—Memory, Reflection, Expec-
tation: Ancient Greek Culture in a New
Perspective, Willem Frederik Veltman,
translated from the Dutch by Philip Mees.
AWSNA, 2012, 372 pgs. — The author
taught for many years at a Waldorf school
in the Netherlands. Here he reviews the
principal aspects of ancient Greek culture,
highlighting the Greeks’ emphasis on bal-
ance. Among other subjects, he discusses
the Greek gods; the development of Greek
philosophy; and the arts of architecture,
sculpture, and painting.This study will be
invaluable for 5th- and 10th- grade teach-
ers, and anyone interested in an anthropo-
sophical perspective on the roots of West-
ern culture. Richly illustrated.
Pre-Columbian History
Spiritual Turning Points of South
American History, Luigi Morelli, Lind-
isfarne Books, 2011, 313 pgs. — “This
volume follows the blueprint of its North
American counterpart, Spiritual Turning
Points of North American History [also
available from the library]. Whereas that
volume follows the foundation of the Popol
Vuh, this one retraces Andean myths from
the Titicaca region and from later Inca tra-
dition.”
Reincarnation
Thank Goodness, There’s More than
One Life to Live!: True Personal Expe-
riences by People Who Have Overcome
All Doubt in Repeated Lives on Earth! J.
Michael Surkamp, Anastasi, 2011, 260 pgs.
— This collection, presenting the results of
scientific investigations as well as personal
accounts of life after death, karma, and re-
peated lives on earth, features 30 authors,
including Denys Kelsey, Edgar Cayce, Ian
Stevenson, Barbro Karlen, George Ritchie,
Raymond Moody, Bob Woodward, T.H.
Meyer, Pietro Archiati, and Rudolf Steiner.
Science—General
The Science Delusion: Freeing the
Spirit of Enquiry, Rupert Sheldrake, 2012,
392 pgs. — The author, a well-known in-
vestigator of etheric phenomena, here
argues that “science is being held back by
centuries-old assumptions that have hard-
ened into dogmas” and that “the biggest
delusion of all is that science knows all the
answers.” In this book, he examines each
of the “ten core beliefs that most scientists
take for granted.”
Science—Movements and Figures
Free Energy Pioneer: John Worrell
Keely, Theo Paijmans, Adventures Unlim-
ited Press, 2004, 472 pgs. — Rudolf Steiner
spoke of machines in the future that will be
“tuned” to human beings, set into motion
by human gestures. He mentioned in this
regard the work of a 19th century Ameri-
can inventor, John Worrell Keely. Keely
has been characterized as the model for
the character Strader in Steiner’s mystery
dramas. This book looks at Keely’s life and
inventions, his experiments with antigrav-
ity, and his vision of free energy. Illustrated.
fall issue 2012 • 53
Sociology—General
Grow Small, Think Beautiful: Ideas
for a Sustainable World from Schum-
acher College, Stephen Harding, ed., Flo-
ris Books, 2011, 282 pgs. — This book from
Schumacher College, an internationally
renowned center for the study of sustain-
able living, offers a collection of essays on
sustainable solutions to the current global
crisis. Themes include the importance of
education, science, Transition thinking,
economics, energy sources, business, and
design, in the context of philosophy, spiri-
tuality, and mythology, by authors includ-
ing, among others, Satish Kumar, Jules
Cashford, Fritjof Capra, Rupert Sheldrake,
James Lovelock, and Craig Holdrege.
Selected publications by Owen
Barfield Anthroposophy and the Inner Life: An Eso-
(see article by Jane Hipolito, p32)
A Barfield Sampler: Poetry and Fiction by
Owen Barfield*
Eager Spring**
History, Guilt and Habit*
History in English Words*
Night Operation**
Orpheus: A Poetical Drama
Owen Barfield on C. S. Lewis**
Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning**
The Rediscovery of Meaning, and Other
Essays*
Romanticism Comes of Age**
The Rose on the Ash-Heap**
Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idola-
try**
The Silver Trumpet
Speaker’s Meaning**
This Ever Diverse Pair**
Unancestral Voice**
What Coleridge Thought*
Worlds Apart: A Dialogue of the 1960s**
Selected translations and works edited by
Owen Barfield:
teric Introduction, by Rudolf Steiner
Calendar of the Soul: The Year Participat-
ed, by Rudolf Steiner*
The Case for Anthroposophy, by Rudolf
Steiner**
Guidance in Esoteric Training: From the
Esoteric School, by Rudolf Steiner (co-
transl. with C. Davy)*
Man and Animal: Their Essential Differ-
ences, by Hermann Poppelbaum
The Voice of Cecil Harwood
World Economy, by Rudolf Steiner (co-
transl. with T. Gordon-Jones)
Documentary film by David Lavery:
Owen Barfield: Man and Meaning***
* This work is in print.
** This work is in print as a publication of the
Barfield Press UK. For further information, see
the website of the Owen Barfield Literary Estate,
www.owenbarfield.org.
*** Available online: www.vimeo.com/22723020.

SAVE THE DATE | MARCH 15–16, 2013

SteinerBooks
2013 Spiritual Research Seminar
March 15–16, 2013
Kimmel Center, New York University
60 Washington Square South, New York City

Complete information about speakers, the schedule,

and the topics will be available on our website in November.
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54 • being human
 2013 Renewal Courses
Week I: June 23 – 28 • Week II: June 30 – July 5
Renewal Courses for Waldorf teachers—both new and experienced—
along with parents, administrators, trustees, and friends of
Waldorf education, as well as for artists and thinkers
seeking to deepen their lives through anthroposophy.
Christof Wiechert • Rudiger Janisch • Margot & Frederick Amrine
Michaela Gloeckler • Eleanor Winship • Laura Summer
Eugene Schwartz • Paul Matthews • Patrice Pinette
Chuck Andrade • Janene Ping • Peter Snow
Aonghus Gordon & Ruskin Mill Craftsmen
and many more...
Evenings include
lectures, music, a New England Contra Dance, and other surprises
Program sponsored by Center for Anthroposophy, Wilton, New Hampshire
Karine Munk Finser, Coordinator of Renewal Courses
603-654-2566 • info@centerforanthroposophy.org
www.centerforanthroposophy.org

June 30 – July 27: Waldorf High School Teacher Education Program

Douglas Gerwin, Director
Three-summers program specializing in
Arts/Art History • Biology • English
BDA-ad-being-human-sept-2012:Layout 1
History • Math • Physics & Chemistry • Pedagogical Eurythmy
9/27/12 10:18 AM Page 1

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creates one voice for Waldorf Education across North America.

Waldorf Education.
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Association of Waldorf Schools of North America.
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After completing a Foundation program (or its equivalent) you can train to
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