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NEWSLETTER
Anthroposophical
Society in America
Summer 1979
Published by the Anthroposophical Society in America for its Members
Gisela O’Neil, Editor
Ilse Gruenberg, Editorial Assistance
Florin Lowndes, Layout
Philip Raiten, Typesetting
Rudolf Steiner quotes are published in agreement with the Nach
lassverwaltung.
Final Dates for Receiving Copy:
March 1 —Spring Issue
June 1 —Sum m er Issue
September 1—A utum n Issue
December 1 —W inter Issue
All communications should be addressed to the Editor, c/o Anthroposophical Society in America, 211 Madison Avenue, New York,
N.Y. 10016. Copyright and all other rights reserved by the Council of the Anthroposophical Society in America. Responsibility for
the contents of the articles contained herein attaches only to the writers.
CO NTENTS
Hans-Werner Schroeder
Alan Howard
Rudolf Steiner
George O'Neil and
Gisela O'Neil
The End of the Century and Ahriman’s Incarnation
in the Following Millennium
C lairvoyance,“ C lair-thinking” and “C lair-ju d g m e n t”
On Picturing Our Fellow Man to Overcome the Antisocial
Modern Soul Life (from a lecture)
Life of the Cosmos in the Ages of Man
—Hierarchies and Human Destiny
(The Human Life, Part 9)
2
5
7
8
PUBLICATIONS
Sarah Burton
Gisela O'Neil
Rene M. Querido
Diana Cohen
A rthur Zajonc
Nathan Melniker
Rudolf Steiner & Marie Steiner: Creative Speech
Rudolf Steiner: Christ at the M ystery of Golgotha
and Christ in the Twentieth Century
Rudolf Steiner: An Esoteric Cosmology
Daisy Aldan: A Golden Story
Friedrich Benesch: Ascension
Anthroposophical Review
14
14
14
15
16
16
M EM BERSHIP
Henry Barnes
Nancy Root
Theodore Van Vliet
Report by the Chairman of the Council to the Annual Meeting
Minutes of the Annual Meeting
New Members
Who Can Help Us to Locate Members Who Have Moved?
In Memoriam: William Talbot Gardner
Other Members Who Have Crossed the Threshold of Death
17
18
20
20
21
22
R EPO R TS
Nathan Melniker
Alfred H. Bartles
23
Mary Rubach
Rene M. Querido
Rene M. Querido
Hermann C. Rubach
Mary Ann Logan
Eileen McGarrigle
Flashes fro m the Past —a 1935 Report
The Eurythmeum S tu ttg art Participates in the German Premiere
of “Paradise Lost”
International Youth Conference, Kings Langley, England
Youth Conference in Fair Oaks/Sacramento
Day by Day at th e Goetheanum —
from Puppets to Philosophy
A ttack and Defense of Anthroposophy
U.S. Camphill Communities Receive 1979 Service Award
of the AAMD
A Workshop on A rtistic Method at Harlemville
Sacramento Center Has a New Name
Notes of Developments in Sacramento Area
Activities in San Francisco Bay Area
Texas Conference
News from Austin, Texas
(Announcement)
Rudolf Steiner Seminars
29
David Adams
Patrick Wakef ord-Evans
Theodore Van Vliet
(Letter by R. Querido)
(Award Citation)
23
24
24
25
25
26
27
27
28
28
29
29
1
The End of the Century and
Ahriman’s Incarnation in the
Following Millennium
by HANS-WERNER SCHROEDER
(From “M itteilungen aus der anthroposophischen
A rbeit in Deutschland,” Michaelmas 1978. Published
with permission. Translation by Maria St. Goar.)
From year to year our glance is increasingly di­
rected toward events that are expected at the end of
the century. I will here attempt to bring together
Rudolf Steiner’s statements concerning these events.
The view is frequently voiced that Rudolf Steiner sup­
posedly predicted the incarnation of Ahriman at the
end of the century. To my knowledge no such state­
ment exists.
The P eriod A fte r the E nd of the Century and
the Third M illen
n ium
As world events draw near the end of the century,
it becomes increasingly important to look beyond these
events as well. Our view is all too easily directed only
towards what is closest at hand, and we tend to forget
that events of primary significance have also been pre­
dicted for the ensuing millenn
ium. These concern the at­
titudes and the actions of those human beings connect­
ed with anthroposophy. To begin with, I would like to
quote several statements by Rudolf Steiner relating to
events that are expected after the end of the century,
events we should be conscious of with equal intensity.
First, a reference from a lecture in Berlin, dated April
4 , 1916.1
“After the year 2000, it will not be long before mankind
will have to experience strange things, things that today are
only gradually beginning to manifest. Matters are such that
from the East and from the West two polar extremes are head­
ing toward future development. . . . The intention will be to
solve the riddle of what a child represents; a sort of ritual or
cult will, to begin with, be connected with the rearing of the
child. This is under way in the East. This cult will naturally
reach over into Europe. It will cause the development of the
highest esteem for what is termed ‘genius,’a search for genius.
. . . The majority of mankind, however, will be subject to the in­
fluence coming from the West, from America. This influence
tends towards a different development which, in regard to
what is yet to come, makes itself felt today in idealistic traces
only, in pleasant beginnings. We can say that the present age
is quite well off in comparison to what is yet to come —once the
Western development increasingly will blossom forth. After
the year 2000 will have passed, it won’t be long before think­
ing—not directly, but in a certain sense —will be forbidden. A
law will proceed from America with the purpose of suppress­
ing all individual thinking. A start in this direction has been
made by purely materialistic medicine today where the soul no
longer is permitted to act and where, merely on the basis of ex­
ternal experiments, the human being is treated like a
machine.”
2
Another statement from a lecture in Dornach on
January 15, 1917.2
“We must be serious about understanding these matters,
we must be completely and utterly serious about them. This
understanding implies that a number of people must summon
up the fortitude with all the efforts of their personality actual­
ly to oppose the surging wave of materialism. This will become
necessary because the materialism permeating the industrial
and commercial impulses will unite with the content of other
retarded impulses. These in turn become increasingly caught
up in materialism and are originating from the Chinese-Japanese, but mainly the Japanese, elements. . . . Coming over
from Asia, this will be a special form of materialism. In each
and every instance we must clearly understand the need to
resist with all of one’s strength the floodtides of materialism.
Everyone can do this. The endeavor will indeed bear fruit---What is needed to counteract materialism which, after all, has
a legitimate purpose, can be summed up in two sentences. In
the future, during the fifth post-Atlantean period, the world
will ever more be permeated by the industrial and commercial
elements; but the counter-element, the opposing pole, must
also exist. Human beings must be present who, by compre­
hending the conditions, work on the opposite side.”
Finally, from a lecture of November 18, 1917 in
Dornach.3
“Materialistic views are on the increase and will have the best
chance to flourish if people begin to believe that they are no longer
materialists. The increase in materialism will continue for four or
five hundred years. We have to realize absolutely clearly, as I have
so often said, that this is the case. Humanity will find peace if we
are fully aware, and in the life of the spirit work in the knowledge,
that the task of the fifth post-Atlantean period is to create
materialistic existence out of the whole stream of human develop­
ment; but for that very reason we must create the more spiritual ex­
istence in opposition to it.”
More such quotes could be cited. In order that this pre­
sentation will not become one-sided, I would like to add the
following excerpt from the lecture of January 8, 1918 in
Dornach.4 It demonstrates that positive aspects must
also be visualized and connected with the events of the
future.
“It may also be said that compared with the various
periods of post-Atlantean time . . . our fifth period is . . . from
certain aspects the greatest age, one that brings most of all to
humanity, one that harbors within it immense possibilities for
the evolution and existence of mankind. And precisely
through what man develops very specially in this age as
shadow side of the spiritual life, he takes the way, and can, if he
proceeds rightly, find the way into the spiritual world. In par­
ticular he can find the way to his true, his highest human goal.
Evolutionary possibilities are in our time very great, greater
from a certain aspect than they were in former phases of postAtlantean evolution.”
A h rim a n s Incarnation in the Third M illen
n ium
Against the background of these statements by
Rudolf Steiner, his words concerning the incarnation of
Ahriman can appear in their full significance. He de­
picts this fact in seven lectures of the year 1919 and in­
dicates the preparations occurring in the present
towards this event. Here is a list of the individual lec­
tures: Zurich, Oct. 27, 19195; Dornach Nov. 1 and 2,
19196; Bern, Nov. 4, 19196; Dornach, Nov. 15, 19196;
Stuttgart, Dec. 25 and 28, 1919.7
What is of interest to us is the actual time given by
Rudolf Steiner for this incarnation. I quote the main
statements:
“Just as there was an incarnation of Lucifer at the begin­
ning of the third pre-Christian millennium, as there was the
Christ Incarnation at the time of the Mystery of Golgatha, so
there will be a first incarnation of the Ahriman being some
time after our present earthly existence, in fact, in the third
post-Christian millennium___Ahriman, however, has been at
work since the middle of the fifteenth century and will in­
crease in strength until an actual incarnation of Ahriman will
take place in the Western civilization___Ahriman will ap­
pear in human form.” (Nov. 27)
What is especially significant here is the state­
ment that Ahriman’s incarnation in regard to time is
parallel to Lucifer’s incarnation, which occurred in Asia
at the beginning of the third pre-Christian millennium.
Correspondingly, the third millennium A.D., in a general
way, is designated for Ahriman’s incarnation. This mo­
ment in time is mentioned in the later lecture:
“Before only a part of the third millennium of the postChristian era has elapsed, there will be, in the West, an actual
incarnation of Ahriman. Ahriman in the flesh___A Being like
Ahriman, who will incarnate in the West in time to come___
And the time has now come for individual men to know which
tendencies and events around them are machinations of
Ahriman, helping him to prepare for his approaching incarna­
tion. . . . Now we are facing an incarnation of Ahriman in the
third millen
nium.” (Nov. 1)
And further:
“What is now in preparation and will quite definitely
come to pass on Earth in a none too distant future, is an actual
incarnation of Ahriman.” (Nov. 4)
Here the impression is conveyed that this event
will take place not at the end, but rather during the
first part or even at the beginning of the third m
ilennium
. The last statement concerning the time is the
following:
‘“A time will come in the future, when, just as Lucifer
was incorporated in the East in an earthly personality, so in
the West there will take place an earthly incarnation of Ahri­
man himself. This time is approaching. Ahriman will appear,
objectively, on the Earth.” (Dec. 25)
So much for Rudolf Steiner’s statements of 1919
concerning the time of Ahriman’s incarnation. (To my
knowledge no other statements exist. A statement by
Rudolf Steiner concerning Ahriman’s appearance
already at the end of this century is not known to me. If
such an indication can be found, I would be grateful for
the information.)
On the basis of these quotes we can conclude that
it must be a misunderstanding if people today speak, as
if it were a definite fact, of Ahriman’s incarnation in
regard to the end of this century. Instead, it does seem
that the evidence must be viewed in a more discrim­
inating manner, and this study offers the basis for such
an approach. I shall return to this topic again at the end.
The E nd of the Century
In searching through the whole of Rudolf Steiner’s
lectures for statements concerning the end of the cen­
tury, one is surprised to discover that such statements
were made only in the very last period, namely in the
Karma lectures. To my knowledge, only a few sparse in­
dications can be found in the preceding years and
decades. Here I shall quote the passages known to me.
The first excerpt is from a lecture held in Stutt­
gart on March 7, 1914.8 The transcript is probably in­
complete. Rudolf Steiner indicates here that each time
a millennium draws to the close, a particularly vehement
attack occurs on the part of Lucifer and Ahriman. As an
example he cites the end of the first Christian m
ilennium
, stressing the fact that proofs concerning the
existence of God came into use, especially the one by
Anselm of Canterbury; and he points to Emperor Hein­
rich’s journey to Canossa, saying, “This is when the of­
ficial Church adopted customs that aroused scornful
laughter among the Ahrimanic spirits.” If one ex­
amines these indications more closely, it can be noticed
that they refer not only to the end of the millennium but
that they point beyond it. Anselm of Canterbury lived
from 1033 to 1109 A.D., already a whole century later;
the journey to Canossa took place in 1077, therefore
also within the new millennium. From this we can see
that Rudolf Steiner does not refer specifically to the
end of the millennium as an exact point of time when
speaking here of the onslaught of the Ahrimanic and
Luciferic powers. It is important to keep this in mind as
the text continues:
“As we draw near the year 2000, once again the Ahri­
manic spirits make their influence felt. Evolution proceeds
like an oscillating pendulum. In the year 1000, people awaited
the end of the world; in the year 2000, the exact opposite is ex­
pected. In the year 3000, people will again await the end of the
world, but the world will have become such that whole nations
will long for this end. Without being emotional one can declare
that the people of Europe are heading for disastrous times!...
In the past, for instance, around the year 1000, men had to be­
lieve what Lucifer and Ahriman would have them believe, be­
cause human beings as yet did not bear within themselves the
true, conscious Christ impulse. We no longer need to believe
them; instead we should receive this new Christ impulse into
ourselves of our own free will so that we can offer resistance to
Lucifer and Ahriman. In the twentieth century it will come to
pass that Lucifer and Ahriman will in particular usurp the
designation of being Christian. People who no longer possess
any trace of true Christianity will call themselves Christians,
and they will rage against those who adhere not merely to
what Christ once said according to the tradition of the Gospels,
but for whom the words hold good, ‘I am with you always, to
the close of the age.’ The latter will adhere to the living,
continually-working Christ impulse. They will experience the
wrath of the opponents. Confusion and devastation will
abound when the year 2000 approaches. Then, not one piece of
wood will be left in place in our building here in Dornach.
Everything will be destroyed and laid waste. We shall look
down upon it from the spiritual world. When the year 2086
dawns, however, everywhere in Europe we shall see buildings
arising dedicated to spiritual aims that will be replicas of our
building in Dornach with its two cupolas. This will be the
golden age when spiritual life will flourish.”
3
Concerning the above wording, it must be remem­
bered that it was probably not transcribed verbatim.
Another mention of the end of the millennium is in the
lecture “The Work of the Angels in Man’s Astral
Body.” (Oct. 9 , 1918) Here Rudolf Steiner speaks of the
inpouring of the impulses of the Angelic world into the
astral body of man. The danger exists that this inflow
cannot consciously be grasped by the human being.
“Here lies the great danger for the age of the Spiritual
Soul. This is what might still happen if, before the beginning of
the third millennium, men were to refuse to turn to the spiritual
life. The third millennium begins with the year 2000, so it is only
a short time ahead of us. It might still happen that the aim of
the Angels in their work would have to be achieved by means
of the sleeping bodies of men —instead of through men wide
awake.”
As described in the further course of the lecture,
this would give rise to complete perversion of human­
ity.
From the lecture of July 30, 1920, held in Stuttgart9:
“With the very beginning of the third millennium we
might experience that mankind will have developed in such a
way that materialism will have become the correct outlook.
Today it is not a question of disproving materialism, because
materialism is in the process of eventually becoming true;
rather, it is a question of making it to be untrue —otherwise it
will become a fact because it is more than a false theory.”
And finally, from a lecture held in Dornach on
August 6 , 192110:
“If the development were to continue in this consistent
way, we would reach, at the end of the twentieth century, the
war of all against all, particularly in that region of human pro­
gress where so-called recent civilization has arisen. We may al­
ready see what has thus developed, we may see it raying out
from the East and asserting itself over a great part of the
Earth. There is an inner connection. We should be able to see
it.”
So much for the statements, made prior to the
year 1924, by Rudolf Steiner concerning the end of the
century.
The K arm a Lectures
Just a few weeks before the end of his public lec­
ture activities, Rudolf Steiner begins to speak about
the end of the century. Without exception, these pre­
sentations are found in the “Karma Lectures” (1924) in
connection with the mission of Michael and the task of
the Michael-followers in regard to the shaping of our
cultural future. Rudolf Steiner starts out on July 18 in
Arnheim, with further statements there on July 19 and
20; then in Dornach on July 28 and August 1, also in
Dornach on August 3, 4, and 8; then in Torquay on
August 14, in London on August 27; and finally in Dor­
nach on September 16.
The themes are:
• The crisis of civilization at the end of the cen­
tury.
• The culmination of the anthroposophic move­
ment.
4
• The working together of Platonists and Aristo­
telians.
• Reincarnation of Rudolf Steiner’s contemporary
pupils.
In this context no mention is made of Ahriman’s in­
carnation, but mention is made of the inpouring activ­
ity of Ahrimanic spirits to the point where Ahriman, in
the role of author, will inspire human consciousness
and has indeed done so in the case of Nietzsche. I would
like to point to one particular passage that once again
opens the perspective into the next millennium, going
beyond the end of the century:
“In the course of the twentieth century, when the first
century after the end of Kali Yuga has elapsed, humanity will
either stand at the grave of all civilization —or at the begin­
ning of that Age when in the souls of men who in their hearts
ally Intellectuality with Spirituality, Michael’s battle will be
fought to victory.”11(July 19)
Here is specific mention of the fact that Michael’s
battle, which shall transform intellectuality into
spirituality, must be continued into the next millennium.
To me, this perspective relates organically to the state­
ments of 1919 concerning the incarnation of Ahriman.
Possible Conclusions and Questions
Dwelling upon the above statements by Rudolf
Steiner, we can come to the conclusion that in the case
of the predictions concerning the end of the century
and the incarnation of Ahriman, we are dealing with
two events occurring at different times. (It could be
possible that with his remarks in the Karma lectures,
Rudolf Steiner wanted to initiate a kind of correction to
his earlier statements of 1919 concerning the point of
time, since in the course of this century events have un­
folded faster than could originally be expected, and
thus the stronger influence of Ahriman must necessari­
ly occur earlier. This possibility perhaps should at least
be left open.)
In any case, it seems important that anthroposophists look not only towards the end of the century, but
even today become conscious of the events that are to
follow. May these excerpts from the literature help to
serve this purpose.
In the further study of these and related state­
ments the following view can result that may here be
suggested with all caution. At the end of the century
we shall confront the decisive crisis of our civilization.
This crisis will contain a challenge to our w ill The
chaotic disintegration of circumstances generally, the
“War of All Against All” (see quote from Aug. 6 , 1921)
will threaten to sweep away anything spiritual, espe­
cially the foundations and institutions born of the spir­
itual life. If that were to come about, then the first
prerequisite for the full success of the Ahriman in­
carnation would be fulfilled. This prerequisite will not
be attained so long as anthroposophists work together.
The anthroposophic movement is to achieve a cul­
mination towards the end of the century (Karma Lec­
tures); it must be anchored through the cooperation of a
great number of individuals in such a way that it simply
cannot be swept away. The crucial factor will be the
human will to stand united and to act together out of
spiritual strength. The Platonists and the Aristotelians
are to unite in this will.
This, perhaps, is the proper place to report a con­
versation that Anna Mahn had with Rudolf Steiner in
1920:
“When, for the last time, around 1920, I could speak with
Rudolf Steiner, he said, deeply serious: ‘You must now turn to
another main task which shall no longer be painting. I now give
you another task. In all the work you have to do, take special
care that the members stay together. The leadership must be
mindful of keeping the members unified. It is the respon­
sibility of the leadership of a smaller or larger group to see to it
that the members find a way to proceed harmoniously
together in the common work that has to be accomplished. The
Society must face the world as a unity. Above else, truth must
prevail. Justified objections must be clarified and not simply
ignored. Be watchful in this regard, the Society will thank you
later for it. Do not fail in this.’
“As he said this, Rudolf Steiner looked at me seriously,
fixing me with his eyes, and repeated this admonition three
times loudly and slowly, ‘Do not fail.’ ”
If the crisis at the end of the century is to be met, a
further challenge must be faced —a challenge to our
cognitive powers. Ahriman can take over only if he is
not recognized. To truly recognize him, however, re­
quires the transformation of intellectuality into spiritu­
ality. We all find ourselves in the midst of this conflict
which, in the sense of the above quoted passage, will at­
tain its most intense and final actuality in the following
millennium:
“In the course of the twentieth century, when the first
century after the end of Kali Yuga has elapsed, humanity will
either stand at the grave of all civilization —or at the beginn­
ing of that Age when in the souls of men who in their hearts al­
ly Intellectuality with Spirituality, Michael’s battle will be
fought to victory.”11
FOOTNOTES:
1. Bibl. #167 (German).
2. Bibl. #174 (German).
3. Secret Brotherhoods, London.
4. Ancient M yth s—Their Meaning and Connection with Evolution,
Toronto, 1971.
5. “The Ahrimanic Deception.”
6. The Influences of Lucifer and Ahrim an. Man’s Responsibility for
the Earth. Vancouver, 1976.
7. The Cosmic N ew Year, London, 1938.
8. Bilder okkulter Siegel und Saeulen.
9. Bibl. #197 (German).
10. “The Remedy for Our Diseased Civilization ” Anthrop. News Sheet,
Vol. 7 , 1939, Suppl. 2/3.
11. Karmic Relationships, Vol. IV, London, 1957.
Clairvoyance, “Clair-Thinking” and
“Clair-Judgment”
by ALAN HOWARD
Rudolf Steiner has said that in this twentieth cen­
tury, especially from about the middle of it onward,
more and more people would appear who, at a com­
paratively early age, would show signs of clairvoyance.
He added that in some cases this would be the first con­
tact with the etheric Christ.
As there is no reason to assume that these people
will be confined to card-carrying members of the
Anthroposophical Society, but may spring from the
most unlikely backgrounds, an interesting question
arises as to how they will be received. Very much may
depend on it, for them and for us; and particularly how
they are received by those of us of an earlier generation
who are not so gifted.
Some of these young people —for they will invar­
iably be young —are in for a hard time. If they are not
seduced by the fawning attentions of simple-minded or
excitable followers and led into all kinds of extrava­
gances of messianic egoism, many of them will be
regarded as psychopaths or emotionally unbalanced,
and may even be confined in mental institutions until
they are “cured.” The future spiritual development of
mankind may very well depend on whether they, and
those of us who lack such gifts but who have been stu­
dying Steiner for years, can get together to our mutual
advantage in the further development of spiritual
science.
For clairvoyance itself is not enough. This is made
very clear in the first few pages of Theosophy, where
the relative possibilities of the seer, the knower and the
teacher are clearly set out. The seer is only a “see-er,”
that is one who perceives in the supersensible. He is not
necessarily a knower as well, any more than one who
could only see in this world would be able to expatiate
knowledgeably on the phenomena he sees. He would
still need the elaboration of thought and understanding
to make his perceptions meaningful to himself and
others.
What then should be our attitude to such a young
person if he should appear, say, in an anthroposophical
community, or in an institute for Waldorf training, or
even in a Waldorf school as the friend and companion of
teachers?
Any arbitrary and immediate rejection, any
refusal to have anything to do with such a person, any
kind of reference to atavism and the like would be both
uncharitable and high handed. Yet the danger of this hap­
pening is only too real if we aren’t prepared for it
beforehand. Some of the best of people can give
5
themselves over to “witch-hunt” hysteria, and even
uphold their action with what seem the best of reasons.
Long years of study of anthroposophy can all too easily
give one the illusion that one is qualified to pontificate
on what is true clairvoyance from the most superficial
evidence, or even no evidence at all!
This is particularly likely to happen if the young
person should be uneducated, “unanthroposophical,”
or if he should be of a somewhat uncouth or even only
unprepossessing appearance; and yet there is nothing
in the qualifications of seership to say that the seer
should appear in a suit of formal cut, with a flowing
necktie, and perhaps an attractive lock of hair falling
negligently across his brow. A modern seer could very
well appear in jeans, T-shirt, and long hair and beard
without being any the less a genuine seer.
Our first task, surely, would be to meet him kindly
and listen carefully to what he had to say, rigidly re­
jecting any possible prejudices that might want to arise
in us. If he should be “phoney,” there should be no dif­
ficulty in finding that out quite easily and acting accor­
dingly. What is false, whether of this world or the next,
must reveal itself in some way if we will only keep clear
headed, and give it a chance to show itself. If it should
be genuine, we are the only ones who will be the losers
by any precipitate judgment.
If we are unable to do this, then we are likely to
create as strong and unreasoning a faction in support of
such a seer, as ours would be in rejecting him. Such a
young person might then be immediately swept up as a
second Steiner or even Christ by one side, while the
rest would revile him as the embodiment of all evil. All
hope of balanced educated judgment would then fly out
of the window; and the rival parties would before long
be at one another’s throats to the confusion of all con­
cerned. Whatever good work was being done among
them hitherto would be disrupted. Life-long friend­
ships would be broken; words would be uttered that
might never be recalled; and, if the news should spread
abroad —particularly if the newspapers got hold of
it —the whole movement would be likely to be brought
into ridicule and contempt.
It is our task as members of the Society, as
teachers in Waldorf schools, as students in an­
throposophical groups to be able to bring a scientific
judgment to bear on matters connected with spiritual
phenomena. That requires eternal vigilance, the co­
operation of every one concerned, but above all a will­
ingness to listen to everyone’s opinion before coming to
a conclusion. Hearsay and gossip-mongering should be
anathema. As spiritual scientists we have a further
obligation to remember that the form in which the
spiritual will reveal itself in our time is none of our
choosing, nor will it necessarily take place according to
criteria previously laid down by ourselves. “The wind
(pneuma, also spirit) bloweth where it listeth; thou
6
hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it
comes nor whither it goeth.”
Everything will depend on trained observation. A
new age has dawned; an age of a science of the spirit in
which we are all obliged to be scientists, not devotees
or inquisitors. Hitherto there has never been a
messenger of the spirit, from the Christ downward,
who has not been as bitterly rejected on the one hand,
as he has been inordinately venerated on the other.
Man has always been all too prone to believe good or
evil of the same phenomenon. We have to be able to
make judgments according to the facts, and knowledge
of the spiritual can only proceed healthily by a quiet
waiting on the facts until their inner nature is revealed.
If partisan pre-judgments, whipped up by feeling,
establish themselves among us, then there is no hope of
a spiritual science. Only a proliferation of those bitter
and internecine conflicts that have plagued the
spiritual life of man for centuries will prevail.
When the loyal upholders of the ancient Jewish
traditions were plagued by those pesky early Christ­
ians (for they were “pesky,” although Christian), and
the Sanhedrin was at sixes and sevens what to do with
them, it was the great scholar and teacher of the apos­
tle Paul, Gamaliel, who said, “If this course or this work
be of men it will come to nought; but if it be of God, ye
cannot overthrow it.”
To live in charity with all men whatever their
views is not only an anthroposophical but a Christian
ideal. It is inevitable that our views will differ, and on
nothing perhaps so widely as on the manifestation of
clairvoyance in this or that person. If those manifesta­
tions are “of men” they will come to nought; if they are
“of God” it is our business to be ready to acknowledge
them whatever source they come from. No evil can hap­
pen to us if they are false; but much good may be lost to
us if they are genuine and true and we ignore them; and
evil can only be compounded if clairvoyant phenomena
lead us to abandon our humanity and common sense,
and passionately take sides against each other in what
it is our business to evaluate together for the sake of
Truth.
In Rudolf Steiner’s Mystery Plays there is also a
seer, Theodora. Two of the leading figures, Strader and
Capesius, have definitely opposing views about her.
But that doesn’t break up the community: Both Strader
and Capesius continue their spiritual work together in
mutual confidence and respect with their friends.
On Picturing Our Fellow Man
to Overcome the Antisocial
Modern Soul Life*
by RUDOLF STEINER
(Modern soul life is by nature antisocial We
pass each other by. By awakening intense interest
in the other person, his spiritual picture can arise
within us. Then, and then only, will brotherhood
be achieved.)
You may look at such a sculptural form as that of
our Group: the Representative of Man, Lucifer and
Ahriman. There you confront for the first time what is
working in the whole human being, because man is the
state of balance between the luciferic and the ahri­
manic. If you permeate yourself in actual life with the
impulse to confront every person in such a way that
you correctly see this trinity in him, then do you
begin to understand him. This is an essential capa­
city, bearing within itself the impulse to evolve in
this fifth post-Atlantean epoch.
Thus we shall no longer pass by one another as one
specter passes another, so that we form no picture of
each other but merely define the other person with our
abstract concepts. The truth is that we do nothing more
at the present time. We pass by each other as if we
were specters. One specter forms the conception, “That
is a nice fellow,” and the other, “That is not such a nice
fellow” . . . “That is a bad man” . . . “That is a good man,”
— all sorts of such abstract concepts. In the intercourse
of man to man we have nothing but a bundle of abstract
concepts. This is the essential thing that has entered in­
to humanity out of the Old Testament form of life:
“Make unto thyself no image.” It must inevitably lead
to an antisocial life if we should continue it further.
What is flowing out from the innermost nature of
man, striving toward realization, is that, when one in­
dividual confronts another, a picture shall stream forth
in a certain way from the other person, a picture of that
special form of balance manifested individually by
everyone. But this requires, of course, the heightened
interest that I have often described to you as the foun­
dation of social life, which each person should take in
the other person. At present we have not yet any in­
tense interest in another person. It is for this reason
that we criticize him, that we pass judgment on him,
that we form our judgments according to sympathies
and antipathies and not according to the objective pic­
ture that leaps to meet us from the other.
This capacity to be mystically stimulated in a cer­
tain way as we confront another person will come to
realization. It will enter as a special social impulse into
human life. On the one hand, the consciousness soul is
striving to come in an antisocial way to complete
domination in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch. On the
other hand, something else is striving outward from
the nature of man, that is, a capacity to form pictures of
the human beings with whom we live. It is here that the
social impulses arise, the social instincts. The simple
fact is that these things lie at a far greater depth than is
ordinarily supposed when people talk about the social
and the antisocial.
Now the question may arise in your minds as to how
we shall gradually attain to the capacity of causing the
picture of the other person to leap to meet us. It is in
life that we must gain this capacity. Jehovah capacities
are given to us at birth; we evolve them in the embry­
onic life. The culture of the future will not make things
so comfortable for people. The capacities a person must
manifest will have to be developed during the course of
his life.
. . . But this must be acquired; it is not born in us. If
we should continue simply to cultivate those character­
istics that are born in us, we should continue within the
limits of a mere blood culture, not the culture to which
could be ascribed in the true sense of the word human
brotherhood. Only when we carry the other human be­
ing within us can we really speak of human brother­
hood, which has appeared thus far only in an abstract
word. When we form a picture of the other person,
which is implanted as a treasure in our souls, then we
carry within the realm of our soul life something from
him just as in the case of a bodily brother we carry
around something through the common blood. This
elective affinity as the basis of social life must take the
place in this concrete way of the mere blood affinity.
This is something that really must evolve. It must de­
pend upon the human will to determine how brother­
hood shall be awakened among men.
*From a lecture given in Dornach, December 7,1918. Newly published
by the Anthroposphic Press in The Challenge of the Times. Trans­
lation by Olin D. Wannemaker.
7
Life of the Cosmos in the Ages of Man
—Hierarchies and Human Destiny*
by GEORGE O’NEIL and GISELA O’NEIL
REVIEW
Some very strange cosmic and earthly things have
a way of being taken for granted when commonplace
enough. The moon’s disk, for instance, just covering the
sun at an eclipse. Or crystals of ice floating on w ater, in­
stead of sinking, unique among solids. But stranger by
far are the wonders of man’s earthly memories being
recorded indelibly. Recorded somehow as living pic­
tures, as sound and feeling, somewhere within his or­
ganism —to em erge as an expanding panoram a, a
drama of events, an illuminated scroll of scenes accord­
ing to seven-year periods. The wonder of wonders is
certainly man!
It was of the way in which these scenes of life
manifest to the Initiate’s view th at our previous study
spoke (Spring issue). There we saw how man’s life-periods, re-experienced in the memory tableau, are m eta­
morphosed through “Inspiration” into actual organs'of
spiritual perception —thereby opening the gateways
for spirit research into the planetary spheres. Indicat­
ing also how it is th at from these realms the forces and
powers arise th at work within man’s life, becoming
traits and aptitudes, and even conditions of destiny.
The crucial questions still untouched concern the
Beings responsible: how the creative Hierarchies are to
be seen through the memory tableau once it becomes
transparent, affecting the different life periods; how
they are working in the Cosmos weaving the destiny
pattern for future incarnations of men; how all this
macrocosmic order and design, inherent in the spheres,
is reflected down into the rhythm ic p attern of human
encounters, into those events of man’s microcosmic ex­
istence, his individual destiny.
Hence, with the help and guidance of Initiation Sci­
ence let us venture in thought into the realm of Beings
and through the gatew ays into the Spheres.
REDISCOVERY OF THE HIERARCHIES
In mythological times man could speak, as a m atter
of course, of greater and lesser beings performing their
tasks in nature and in the direction of men’s lives. It
was quite “natural” to do so because they were seen,
and because men were still dependent, as children are
today, upon outer guidance; but long ago the times did
change, and today it is highly “unnatural,” to be sure,
even in serious religious circles. Angelic beings are
*This is part IX in a series on The Human Life and a continuation of the
theme in the previous issue.
8
known as a rt objects of the past or as mythological
biblical figures, but there is no place for them in the life
of modern man. As to archangels taking part in the
destiny of nations, or the Elohim having a role in men’s
coming of age, such notions can be taken as poetry —
which in the highest sense they are —but to take them
for “real” and to convey this to non-anthroposophic
friends, would mean being relegated among the daft.
If we are honest to ourselves, most of us, even
after years of studying and living with anthroposophy,
have a rath er abstract relationship to Hierarchical Be­
ings. We give lip service to their existence and evoke
their names in recitations; but their existence is rather
vague for most of us compared to the concreteness of
the kingdoms of nature th at live below man as the
Kingdoms of the Hierarchies work above him.
Even in ordinary life, how difficult it is to under­
stand someone wiser and more experienced than we
are, how much more difficult to understand beings so
far above us th at we have no means of comparison. Not
having even the power of thought to grasp an existence
so totally different from our own, how difficult to grasp
our own existence made possible and maintained by
these beings high above man.
“Let us picture the human being. It is only in his
sense and intellectual knowledge that he extends be­
yond the Hierarchies who are within him. In respect of
all th at lies behind his intellect, he is filled with the
Third Hierarchy; in all th at lies behind his feeling, he is
filled with the Second Hierarchy; in all th at lies behind
his willing, he is filled with the F irst Hierarchy. We are
therefore in very tru th within the Hierarchies and it is
only in respect of our sensory organs and intellect that
we extend beyond their realm. It is actually as though
we were swimming, with the head rising a little out of
the w ater. With our senses and our intellect we rise out
of the ocean of the activities of the Hierarchies.” 1
Restricting ourselves to the narrower theme at
hand, namely the influences of the planetary spheres in
connection with the Hierarchies as they become opera­
tive in the successive seven-year periods of the human
life, we find in the Karma lectures given in Paris the fol­
lowing summary of these gateways to the heavens:
“Looking back to early childhood with Initiationknowledge . . . we see at the same time what has been
wrought in man by the world of the Angels. Think of
the wonderful beauty of some of the conceptions which
exist in the simple hearts of men and are actually con­
firmed by the higher wisdom of Initiation. We speak of
how the activities of the Angels weave through a
child’s first years of life; and when we look back in
order to study the Moon-region we actually see our
childhood and with it the weaving work of the Angels.
Then, when stronger forces begin to operate in the
human being, when he reaches the school age, we per­
ceive the work of the Archangels. They are im portant
for us when we are studying the Mercury-existence, for
then we are in the world of the Archangels. There fol­
lows the age of puberty and the period from approxi­
mately 14 to 21. . . . We learn th at the Hierarchy of the
Archai, the Primal Forces, are the Beings specially as­
sociated with the Venus-existence. And here we realize
a significant tru th —again something th at is particular­
ly striking —namely, th at the Beings associated with
the Venus-existence after the age of puberty are those
who, as Prim al Forces, w ere concerned w ith the
genesis of the world itself, and in their reflection are
again active in the formation of the physical man in the
sequence of the generations. The relationship between
the Cosmos and human life is revealed in this way.
“We gaze into the m ysteries of the Sun-existence.
. . . Within this sphere there are Beings of three ranks:
Exusiai, Dynamis and K yriotetes.”
The Beings of the higher Hierarchies begin to
work manifestly: first the Thrones in the Mars-sphere;
then the Cherubim in the Jupiter-sphere; and then the
Seraphim in the Saturn-sphere.”2
S P H ER E S,
H I E R A R C H IE S, LIFE P ER IO DS
D E S T IN Y I N T H E M A K IN G
No knowledge of man, no real understanding of
human life is possible without knowledge of prebirth
and afterdeath existences, without reckoning with the
alternation between earthly and heavenly realms, the
microcosmic contraction and the macrocosmic expan­
sion. “For the totality of man's life consists in the ear­
thly existence between birth and death and the ex­
istence between death and new birth. This constitutes
his life in its totality.”3
Both these states of Being are bound up with the
p lan e tary spheres. M an’s soul and sp irit expand
through the cosmic spheres, and on E arth the spheres
unfold from within in seven-year rhythm s. Destiny is
prepared in the expanses of the Cosmos and later lived
out on E arth. One existence determines the other,
interwoven, though separate in time. The whole of the
Earth-life is preparation and determining cause for life
after death. Cosmic-life transm utes fruits and failures
of Earth-life into new opportunities, new capacities and
powers; with the goals of independence and mutuality,
freedom and love.
Cosmic life is a vast and wonderful study, describ­
ed in many lecture cycles. Our special interest here is in
the sequence of the influences working above and be­
low, for the order is the same in both realms, from
Moon to Saturn. We are guided by the Third Hierarchy
through Moon, Mercury, Venus; by the Second Hierar­
chy through the Sun-sphere; by the F irst Hierarchy
through Mars, Ju p iter and Saturn. Above and below:
the same sequence of planetary spheres and guiding
Beings.
But here the correspondence, although startling
and challenging, ends, for the mode of existence in the
Cosmos is so totally different from earthly life that we
need new concepts to grasp the order of events and to
attem pt to see as a whole in thought, or graphically,
this sequence. Before we try, let us explore a bit and
summarize from the literature.
M etamorphosis at work: We want to explore the
causative realm behind the phenomena of human bio­
graphy. There are three principles which no longer are in
accord with human dignity: th at of mere continuation
from one life to the next, or repetition of the same
(eastern); the notion of punishment (Jehovistic); and
pure chance (mechanistic). A new concept is needed for
man today, called metamorphosis, actually a develop­
m ent of the Christian ideal of redemption and healing.
The thought of how life experience is being tran s­
formed in the Cosmos from one life to the next should
therefore be kept in mind. To do this we learn to see
things in process, in motion. We discover how moral
ideas are transform ed by the Hierarchies into dram a­
tized pictures, and how these result in subtle motive
9
forces which later work as inner urge and intention in
an unfolding biography. Idea — Picture — Inner Drive.
Space and time: Our relation to both space and
time undergo changes. Not only does time become
space, as in the life-tableau where the events of a life­
time are seen “all at once,” but space itself is trans­
formed, the “inner” becoming an “outer.”
Space as we know it is something all about us, we
look up to the heavens above. We are centered within.
Imagine an inversion of space where we are the
periphery, where we surround and look down upon the
world and the Beings. “Spherical man” was a motive
worked into the carvings of the First Goetheanum. The
inner world of our soul life becomes an outer world be­
low us, a stage upon which spiritual events are enacted
by the Hierarchies for our instruction.
Time takes on new qualities. Intensity of exper­
ience can be felt as a contraction of time. It has been
said that everything is happening faster and faster to­
day, that history is speeding up. Life in the Cosmos
must in some way be an expansion of time, think of
spending centuries in preparing an appropriate
physical organism for the next life. Time normally goes
forward, but apparently in sleep it goes backward, as it
also does after death in the Lunar-sphere, where we
live our life backwards for about a third of the length of
earthly life.
Thus we have to do with expansion and contrac­
tion, with forward and reverse flow. Goethe made use
of these notions in his study of plants, and we can sur­
mise from where he derived them.
R eview and evaluation: The notion of evaluation is
also essential. A continual process takes place daily
during sleep, we awake knowing better! After death
we review our life as a great panorama during the first
three days, and a second time during the decades in the
Lunar-sphere. Here it becomes an evaluation process
that changes into the will to make good. The ancient im­
age of a purifying fire, of katharsis, is at the root of any
evaluating. (How painful it often is to realize fully the
consequences of what we have done, and how we have
done it, hence the almost universal tendency to avoid
evaluation of past events and to concentrate instead on
making new plans —where no pain is involved.) The
mirror is the spiritual symbol here, we see ourselves,
we look back upon our life, as though in a mirror, unable
to make any changes.
Review, evaluation, and forming of new intentions,
these are all aspects of this cosmic process of meta­
morphosis. And we do it ourselves, we are our own
transformers, with the help of course of guidance: first
of the Moon Teachers and then of the three great
kingdoms of the Hierarchies.
10
Transformation and compensation: A relatively
short period of time is spent in the spheres of Moon,
Mercury and Venus with the Third Hierarchy, living
backwards the moral equivalent of time we spent
asleep on earth. Then hundreds of years are spent in
the Sun-sphere with the Second Hierarchy, during the
first half designing and building our physical body for
the next life; in the second half, preparing our moral or
ethical substance. The mystery touched on here is that
of transformation, of strivings and attitudes becoming
new faculties and powers, something we experience in
small in the earthly educational process.
Under the tutelage of the Third Hierarchy, “dur­
ing the first period. . . we are deeply occupied with our­
selves, for this Hierarchy has to do with our own inner
life and being.”
“But then a time comes when we feel how the Be­
ings of the Third Hierarchy . . . and the Beings of the
Second Hierarchy . . . are working together with us at
what we ourselves are to become in the next earthly
life. A mighty, awe-inspiring vista opens up before us.”
"Pictures come to us of what is proceeding among
these Beings of the Third Hierarchy; but all these pic­
tures are related to ourselves. And gazing at these pic­
tures of the deeds of the Third Hierarchy, it dawns
upon us that they represent the counter-part, the
counter-image of the attitude of soul, of the inner quali­
ty of mind and heart that characterized us in the last
earthly life___Our attitude, our feelings toward other
individuals, towards other earthly things, are now out­
spread in the spiritual sphere of the Universe. And we
become aware of what our thinking and our feeling sig­
nify.”
“As our life after death continues, we observe how
the Beings of the Second Hierarchy . . . are connected
with the faculties we have acquired in earthly life as
the fruits of our diligence, activity, interest in the
things and happenings of the Earth. For having cast in­
to mighty pictures our interest and diligence during
the last earthly life,” they “then proceed to shape im­
ages of the talents we shall possess in our next earthly
life.”4
Our thoughts and feelings, then, are the concern of
the Third Hierarchy; our faculties those of the Second
Hierarchy; but our deeds and their consequences those
of the First Hierarchy. “Down below we behold the ac­
tivities of spiritual Beings, of Seraphim, Cherubim and
Thrones. What are they doing? They show us, in pic­
tures, what our experiences with individuals with
whom we had some relationship in the previous
incarnation will have to become . . . in order that mutual
compensation will have been made for what happened
between us. And from the way in which these Beings
work in cooperation, we realize that great problems are
there being solved. When I have dealings with an in­
dividual in some earthly life, I myself prepare the com­
pensatory adjustm ent. The work performed by
Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones merely ensures that
the compensation will be made, that it will become
reality. It is these Beings also who ensure that the
other individual. . . is led to me in the same way as I am
led to him.”4
THE SC R IPT OF L IF E —H O W P R E P A R E D
The law of making good: “The picture of pain we
have caused another person becomes the force that im­
pels the ego, on re-entering life, to make reparation.
Thus the previous life has a determining effect upon
the new life. The actions of this new life are in a certain
way caused by those of the previous life. This orderly
connection between a former and a later existence
must be considered as the law of destiny. It has become
the custom to designate this law by the name of karma,
a term borrowed from oriental wisdom.”5
In the karma lectures we find in great detail how
these orderly connections operate from one life to the
next, or even over several lives. One such example is
that sequence “love — joy — an open heart,” contrast­
ed with “antipathy — sorrow — stupidity,” a sequence
of three incarnations. Our aim here, in this study, is to
clarify the process and the stages by which these com­
pensations are brought about with the help of the
Hierarchical Beings.
The Cosmos as Creator: By pursuing the process
of “creation,” we can visualize for ourselves how an
Idea is transformed into physical reality. In the wonder
of man’s physical body, for instance, “each organ is pro­
duced and shaped by cosmic forces. In very truth man
bears the stars of heaven within him. He is connected
with the forces of the whole Cosmos.”6
The following description of the process of conden­
sation, in the creation of the human heart from the
highest realms down to physical actuality, can very
well illustrate the stages of preparation of man’s
destiny in a new life: “The forces streaming in the direc­
tion of Leo out of which the human heart is fashioned
are purely moral and religious forces; in its initial
stages of development the heart contains only moral
and religious forces . . . . When man is passing through
the Sun-region, these moral forces are taken hold of by
the etheric forces. And it is not until man comes nearer
to the Earth, to the warmth, that the final stages of
preparation are reached; it is then that the forces which
shape the physical seed for the being of soul-and-spirit
who is descending, begin to be active.”6
Dynamics of the karma forces: So we begin with
new intentions. We then behold the great, awe-inspir­
ing cosmic drama where the Hierarchies transform the
fruits of human experience into new capacities and
prefigure the fulfillment of past deeds for the coming
life. “And the knowledge gradually dawns upon us that
in what comes to pass in cosmic evolution among the
Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones our karma is being
lived out in the Heavens before we can live it out on
Earth
Thus in superearthly realms our karma is liv­
ed through in advance by the Seraphim, Cherubim and
Thrones. In very truth the Gods are the Creators of the
Earthly. They live through everything in advance in
the realm of spirit; then in the physical realm it comes
to fulfillment___ Thus are the forces which shape our
karma set in operation.”7
Inscribed upon the soul The next stage occurs as
man gathers his new astral body during his descent to
Earth. “It is the majestic experiences arising from the
pictures of the deeds of the higher Hierarchies which
are recorded by the Moon Beings and subsequently in­
scribed by them in our astral body when the time comes
for the descent to another earthly existence.”4 “The
astral body is full of inscriptions, full of pictures. What
is known simply as the ‘unconscious’ discloses a wealth
of content when it is illumined by real knowledge.”6
The picture we bear within us —the Guardian is
glimpsed. Shortly before incarnation, after man has
gathered his new etheric body, a final preview occurs,
now in the etheric world, the prebirth tableau of the
coming life: “Before the attachment of the etheric body
is completed, something extraordinarily significant oc­
curs for the human being who is re-entering physical
existence. . . . Just as at death a kind of memory picture
of the past life arose before the human ego, now a pre­
vision of the coming life presents itself. Again he sees a
tableau which this time displays all the hindrances he
must remove, if his evolution is to make further pro­
gress. And what he thus sees becomes the starting
point of forces he must carry with him into a new life.”5
And thus the Earth cycle begins anew —with all
the treasures acquired by long years of work in spheres
above through evaluation and re-design, through moral
enactment by these Mystery dramatists among the
stars. Our biography, our life is ours, wondrous gift of
the kingdoms of Heaven —to make of it what we can.
M A N A N D COSM OS —IN T E R W O V E N
IN D E S T IN Y
Our need is to ever renew our thoughts about the
human being. Anthroposophy as a whole provides the
means by which we can lift our view, ever again, from
what lives in the culture of the day to what man really
is and can be —as a creation of the Cosmos; an ego be­
ll
AS
A B O V E
S 0
B E L O W
w e p r e p a r e , w e liv e , w e e v a l u a t e
ing bearing within him an individual destiny, w rought
together with the H ierarchies in an existence prior to
birth.
Contem plating the child we can thus say: “For a
being born of a m other has not arisen on the Earth; it
is only the scene of action, as it were, th a t comes into
existence on the E arth. A wonderful cosmic creation,
formed in supersensible worlds, in the Sun-existence,
incarnates into w hat is produced through physical
heredity.” 8
The Sun as birth place: Our relations to the
sta rry world, once so concrete with the Ancients
—yet so abstract for m odern man, or often non­
existent, can be made real, consoling and stre n g th ­
ening, once we learn to live in thought with the forces
th a t work within man, from out the cosmos. The
abode of those who have died, the abode from whence
we came, and the birth place of future generations
then take on actuality. “When we know w hat the Sun
is in reality, we shall feel: Up yonder, w here the glow­
ing orb of the Sun moves through the U niverse, is the
scene w here spiritual prototypes of future genera­
tions of men first take shape; th ere the higher Hier12
archies work together with the souls of men who
lived on E arth in their previous incarnations. The Sun
is actually the spiritual embryo of the Earth-life of
the future.”8
Im pelled by the stars within: We have lived-in
the Cosmos, journeyed through the planetary
spheres, guided and led by cosmic Beings. Now the
fruits unfold on E arth from out of these same
spheres, and we are guided by the self-same Beings
through the cycles of our life, though now, for our
freedom’s sake, from totally below our consciousness.
“Looking backward upon the tableau of man, we per­
ceive the Moon-sphere, the M ercury-sphere; from the
21st to the 42nd years the Sun-sphere, then the Marssphere, the Jupiter-sphere, the Saturn-sphere. We
see th a t all these spheres have something to do with
karm a. Ordinary consciousness does not know th at
man has within him the workings of the Mercurysphere, Moon-sphere, and so on. Yet karm a is brought
into being by w hat is thus within man; he is impelled
by these forces to live out his karm a in his own par­
ticular way. . . . And so, by virtue of his karma, the
whole being of man stands within the Cosmos, gives
expression to the Cosmos here on Earth —in one case
in this way, in another in that.”9
The architects and shapers of human destiny:
Knowledge of how the drama of our life unfolds
through the influence of planetary forces, guided by
Hierarchical Beings, leads eventually to a deep-felt
attitude of acceptance. For in every human life,
despite the underlying order, there are periods of
chaos on the surface, there is tragedy and suffering.
That there is meaning as well to everything that
strikes us, that order emerges out of chaos, is the
wisdom we eventually learn from life. “If man can suc­
ceed in taking his destiny earnestly, this experience
will give him a strong and deep impulse to live in com­
munion with the spiritual world. And life itself will
unfold in him a feeling for connections of destiny, of
karma.”1
The awakening feeling for the weaving of
destiny will strengthen the moral realm of human life,
of trust in and responsibility towards the designers
and builders of human destiny. “What we do with our
everyday consciousness, the intentions we form, and
the like —all this depends upon ourselves; but our
karma is shaped and fashioned by the Hierarchies
within us. They are the architects and shapers of an
entirely different World-Order belonging to the soul,
to the moral sphere of life. This is the other aspect of
man, the aspect of the Hierarchies who are within
him. . . . What we call human destiny is therefore an
affair of the Gods and as such must be regarded.”1
*
We would like to conclude this chapter with a
final excerpt on Biography from the Breslau cycle,
which with one majestic sweep brings together really
all and indeed more than we have haltingly been able
to say in this survey.
For those wishing to pursue further the themes
touched upon here but lightly —the great series of
Karma Lectures stands ready for study.
“If we really understand the destiny of a man, we
also learn to understand the secrets of the world of
stars, the secrets of the Cosmos. But nowadays peo­
ple write biographies without the faintest inkling
that something is really being profaned by the way in
which they write. In times when knowledge was held
to be sacred because it issued from the Mysteries,
nobody would have written biographies in the way
that is customary today. Every ancient ‘biography’
contained indications of the influences and secrets of
the world of stars.
“In human destiny we can perceive, firstly, the
working of the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai; then of
the still loftier Sun Beings, Exousiai, Dynamis,
Kyriotetes; then of the Thrones who are concerned main­
ly with the elaboration of karma in the Mars-sphere;
then of the Cherubim who elaborate the karma be­
longing to the Jupiter-sphere; and then of the Sera­
phim who work together with man at the elaboration
of karma in the Saturn-sphere —Saturn karma. In a
man’s destiny, in his karma, we behold the working of
the higher Hierarchies. This karma, at first, is like a
veil, a curtain. If we look behind this veil we gaze at
the weaving deeds and influences of Angeloi, Ar­
changeloi, Archai, Exousiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes,
Thrones, Cherubim, Seraphim.”
“When we observe the karma of a human being
in the ordinary way, we see letters only; but the mo­
ment we begin to read this karma we behold the
Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai and their mutual, inter­
related deeds. . . . And the picture of a human destiny
is enriched beyond measure when earthly ignorance
is transformed into knowledge of the Cosmic Alpha­
bet, when we realize that the letters of the script are
the signs and tokens of the deeds of the Beings of the
higher Hierarchies.
“To a man who beholds it, the vista of karma as
the shape taken by destiny in life is so overwhelming,
so sublime and majestic that simply by understand­
ing how karma is related to the spiritual Cosmos he
will unfold quite different qualities of feeling and dis­
cernment.”
“We are citizens not of the Earth alone but of the
land of the Spirits. The whole existence we have
spent between death and a new birth converges in
that which, on Earth, is enclosed within our skin. The
secrets of worlds are contained in a particular form
within this encircling skin.
“Self-knowledge is by no means the trivial senti­
mentality of which there is so much talk nowadays.
Human self-knowledge is world-knowledge.”10
Excerpts from lectures in Karmic Relationships,
1924, and from the book Occult Science by Rudolf
Steiner:
1. Dornach, May 30, Vol II, lect. 25.
2. Paris, May 24, Vol. V, lect. 6.
3. Paris, May 23, Vol V, lect. 5.
4. Prague, March 31, Vol. V, lect. 3.
5. Chapter: “Sleep and Death.”
6. Prague, March 30, Vol. V, lect. 2.
7. Breslau, June 9, Vol VII, lect. 3.
8. Paris, May 25, Vol. V, lect. 7.
9. Stuttgart, June 1, Vol VI, lect. 6.
10. Breslau, June 8, Vol VII, lect. 2.
The diagrams were drawn by Florin Lowndes.
13
PUB LICATIONS
CREATIVE SPEECH: THE NATURE OF SPEECH
FORMATION by Rudolf Steiner and Marie Steinervon Sivers. Aphoristic records of courses on the
cultivation of Speech as an Art. Essays and notes
from seminars and lectures. Translated by Winifred
Budgett, Nancy Hummel, Maisie Jones. First English
edition, Rudolf Steiner Press, London 1978. $7.95,
240 pages. Distributed in the USA by Anthroposophic
Press, Spring Valley, N.Y.
“The world is the Word of the spirit; man is the Word
of the world. When he becomes a servant of the Word he
must feel those forces through which he has been placed
in the Cosmos and allow these forces to hold sway within
his spoken word.” (p. 29)
These words are taken from the new translation of
Methodik und Wesen der Sprachgestaltung. It is a mar­
velous piece of work. Maisie Jones, one of the three trans­
lators, confessed to eight years of striving to produce it.
This shows in its clarity.
The text gives us all of Rudolf Steiner’s speech ex­
ercises in English, with his succinct directions and ex­
planations, taken from work with teachers, lecturers, ac­
tors, and others who learned the new art of speech under
his guidance. It includes essays and relevant excerpts
from various lectures, courses, seminars, and from the
work with Waldorf teachers at their faculty meetings in
Stuttgart.
For teachers and those interested in Rudolf Steiner’s
new art of speech —this book is a must.
—Sarah Burton
CHRIST A T THE TIME OF THE MYSTERY OF
GOLGOTHA AND CHRIST IN THE TWENTIETH
CENTURY by Rudolf Steiner. A lecture given in Lon­
don, May 2, 1913, published together with “Occult Sci­
ence and Occult Development,” May 1, 1913. Rudolf
Steiner Press, London, reprinted 1978; $1.50. Distrib­
uted in the U.S. by Anthroposophic Press, Spring Val­
ley, N.Y.
In the anthroposophic literature, the London lecture of
May 2 , 1913 is one of the best known, most often quoted lec­
tures. It was there, 66 years ago, that Rudolf Steiner for the
first time brought to mankind the annunciation of the Mi­
chael Being as the guiding Spirit of the Age. The historic
significance of this lecture has often been pointed out.
The new Michael Age is compared with the previous
one, preceding the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, when
Michael as “countenance of Jehovah” inspired mankind
towards an understanding of the descent of the Sun-Spirit
and His union with the evolution of the Earth and of humani­
14
ty. Michael’s new mission, now as “the countenance of
Christ,” will bring the new Michael revelation through An­
throposophy. Under the preceding rulership of Gabriel,
natural science arose which brought us death of our culture
and loss of vision. The after-effects were carried into the
spiritual world by the materialistic soul content of the dead,
resulting during the 19th century in a “second crucifixion,” a
renewal of the Mystery of Golgotha for the Christ Being,
now in the form of an Angel, in the etheric world. Spiritual
science, the new Michael revelation, will bring a new Christconsciousness and His resurrection within the souls of men.
These few words can only hint at the extraordinary
esoteric depth and directness of this lecture —a char­
acteristic feature of all “London lectures” as though Rudolf
Steiner were speaking to the world beyond the confines of
Europe.
The publisher should be commended for making this
Michael lecture, long out of print, available to Englishspeaking readers for the Michael centennial, as most other
Michael lectures are at present out of print (with exception
of the Karma lectures). This timely contribution deserves
our highest appreciation. The content can help us to estab­
lish a cognitive-moral relation, rather than a pictorial-aesthetic one, to the Creative Spirit of the Age.
—Gisela O’Neil
A N ESOTERIC COSMOLOGY by Rudolf Steiner.
A summary of 18 lectures in Paris between May 25
and June 14, 1906. Reported by Edouard Schure.
St. George Publications, Spring Valley, N.Y., 1978.
133 pages. Softbound $7.95.
An Esoteric Cosmology does indeed occupy a uni­
que position in anthroposophical literature.
Edouard Schure (1841-1929) stood already at the be­
ginning of this century at the height of his fame as a
French author, poet and dramatist. By then he had pub­
lished more than a dozen major works including The
Great Initiates (1889) and dramas attempting to recapture
the lost cultic element of the ancient mysteries. He had
heard of Rudolf Steiner through Marie von Sivers, the
later Marie Steiner, who had studied acting and speech
formation at the Comédie Française in Paris. A friendship
developed between them and it continued by way of a cor­
respondence, mainly about spiritual matters, after Marie
von Sivers’ return to Berlin. On one occasion, she asked
Edouard Schure a particular question in connection with
occultism and he, unable to reply, referred her to Rudolf
Steiner in Berlin. It would appear that in this manner the
first contact came about between Rudolf Steiner and the
later Marie Steiner. Subsequently, this led to a warm in­
vitation from Edouard Schure requesting Rudolf Steiner
to give a series of private lectures to a small circle of
friends. And so it was on this occasion in Paris in May
1906 that the two men met for the first time. In the fore­
word to the course, Edouard Schure bears testimony to
the extraordinary impression that Rudolf Steiner made
upon him though Schure was 20 years his senior. He
recognized immediately the master in Rudolf Steiner and
became for many years one of his most devoted pupils, a
period which was to be clouded over only by a temporary
estrangement during the catastrophe of World War I.
The lectures on Esoteric Cosmology were given on
the fringes of the International Theosophical Congress in
Paris. To begin with they only drew a small group of
friends including a number of Russians, some well-known
such as the author Dimitri Merejkowski. But as the days
went by, the French windows had to be opened so as to
accommodate an ever growing number of listeners in the
garden.
No shorthand report of these lectures in German has
ever been available; we only have the present account of
these lectures reported by Schure in French, and now ap­
pearing in English for the first time. Edouard Schure’s de­
tailed summaries reflect in a most living way the quality
that must have permeated the original. This, therefore, is
not a reporting in the ordinary sense of the word, for
Edouard Schure was well able to understand much of the
deeper content out of his own inner development. Indeed,
one senses that Rudolf Steiner must in these lectures
have spoken very directly to him. The course contains so
much that one is at a loss to highlight the jewels. The
eighteen lectures take us through the whole of Spiritual
Science in a systematic, yet also artistic way. A vast spec­
trum is spanned from the birth of the intellect and the
mission of Christianity to a penetrating consideration of
the Apocalypse. And between his first and last lecture we
hear about the mission of Manicheism, involution and
evolution, Yoga in East and West, descriptions of the
astral and devachanic world, of earthquakes, volcanoes
and the will of man, and the central significance of the
John Gospel. The student of Anthroposophy will find in
this course some quite new and surprising revelations,
and many thoughts that can quicken the soul to medita­
tion. “Greek imagery compares the soul to a bee, and this
is much truer to the fact. Just as the bee emerges from
the hive and gathers the juice of flowers to distill and
make it into honey, so does the soul come forth from the
spirit, penetrates into reality and gathers its essence
which is then born back again into the spirit.” . . . “In
western initiation, the neophyte is free; the master simply
plays the role of an awakener. He does not try to
dominate or convert, he simply recounts what he himself
has seen. And how ought we to listen? There are three
ways of listening: To accept the words as infallible
authority; to be skeptical and fight against what is heard;
to pay heed to what is said without servile blind credulity
and without systematic opposition allowing the ideas to
work upon us and observing their effects. This latter is
the attitude which the pupil should adopt towards his
master in western initiation.”
Rudolf Steiner himself in The Story of My Life refers
to this cycle in the 37th chapter of the autobiography
which he wrote shortly before his death. “In the Paris cy­
cle of lectures (1906) I brought forth a perception which
had required a long process of ripening in my mind. After I
had explained how the members of the human being —
physical body; etheric body as mediator of the phenom­
enon of life; and the bearer of the ego —are in general
related to one another, I imparted the fact that the etheric
body of a man is female, and the etheric body of a woman
is male. . . . The male and female elements were carried
into connection with the mysteries of the cosmos. This
knowledge was something belonging to the most pro­
foundly moving inner experiences of my soul; for I felt
ever anew how one must approach a spiritual perception
by patient waiting and how, when one has experienced
the ripeness of consciousness, one must lay hold by
means of ideas in order to place the perception within
the sphere of human knowledge.”
It may be relevant in this book review to quote what I
said in the preface to the course: “It is perhaps not with­
out significance that it was in Paris, where Thomas
Aquinas had elaborated some seven centuries earlier his
Christ-oriented Scholasticism, that Rudolf Steiner gave
his first course on an esoteric Christian Cosmology ap­
propriate to the dawn of the New Age of Light.” There is
no doubt that this course reported by Edouard Schure
and belonging to the early work of Rudolf Steiner will find
a wide following both among the public interested in the
renewal of the spirit and among seasoned students of An­
throposophy. The publishers should be thanked for mak­
ing this course, long out of print in the French original,
available for the first time in English.
—Rene M. Querido
A GOLDEN STORY, by Daisy Aldan, published with a
grant from the National Endowment for the Arts: Fold­
er Editions, New York, $5.95.
Has Daisy Aldan written a love story about a young
man and an older woman, or is this “Golden Story” a modern
fable about virtue and consciousness? The foreword, “Give
me a smile, and I’ll tell you a golden story,” from The Golden
Ass, by Apuleius with which Miss Aldan begins her book
gives us the clue, for the initiate knew that a tale of trials
told under the guise of a surface story of love or adventure
was known as a “golden story.”
A Golden Story focuses on Gabriel, the young rejected
poet-lover of Mila, the older woman rhythmist. Is he not the
struggling soul coming to consciousness, and is Mila not the
anima-Aphrodite, or the higher Self which each one seeks?
It is significant that when their trip to Greece is can­
celed because of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, destiny
leads them to Communist Yugoslavia, to a monastery of the
seventh century, turned-hotel, on an island off an island
where Mila’s attack of asthma further imprisons them, far
from home, far from their “spiritual community,” far from
their cultural heritage. It is in this constrained setting that
the young soul of Gabriel strives to free itself.
Each character is a question, each an answer. Gabriel
represents the mortal seeking to free himself from illusion
15
of his “self-woven enchantment,” tested by the self-designated “hierophant,” Mila. To discover the question, to find
freedom from dependency is to discover the individual “I”
within oneself. To think as Gabriel thinks is to become a
questioner. To quest toward Mila-Aphrodite, is to journey,
to see beyond her human tangibility, and to realize that both
question and answer lead toward consciousness.
Conversation between them is carried on in English and
German, he speaking the former, she the latter, and thus the
situation enters further into myth where both struggle to
awake.
Daisy Aldan asks: “How does one awake, free of the
dragon?”
Her voice echoes: endurance, control of the tongue,
sincerity, balance, “objectivity with warmth,” dignity born
of compassion. The careful reader will note the archetypes
on this voyage of transformation: the journey through
water, the castle of Mljet, the dung, the lightning and
thunder, the constellations and meteorites, the roses, the
Grail, a central underlying theme of the story.
It is no wonder that Saul Bellow, another seeker, wrote
of this book,
“. . . The subject fascinated me. Yours is a novel about
love which is surprisingly remote from eroticism. It really is
love that you describe, and of a sort that seems odd at first.
But then there is no oddity in these pure feelings. All the od­
dity is in us, in our impure mingled emotions, and this oddity
is recognized by our buried knowledge, our knowledge of the
pure state, which we never succeed in bringing up for ex­
pression . . . ”
And Nona Balakian, Senior Editor of the N Y Times
Book Review stated, “It’s better than any novel I’ve read
this year, and many other years too . . . elegant and wise!”
Folder Editions, which gave us such fine translations of
the work of Albert Steffen, is to be congratulated once again
for offering us a worthy chalice to strengthen ourselves
toward becoming free, humane and individual. Anthroposophists particularly will recognize that this novel is a
creation of someone schooled in the spiritual science of
Rudolf Steiner, who indeed may be recognized as the
“teacher” referred to in the story. Thus art —in this in­
stance, literature —carries the healing impulses of anthro­
posophical striving to a world saturated with violence.
—Diana Cohen, New York City
ASCENSION by Friedrich Benesch. Edinburgh, Floris
Books, 1979, 47 pages, $2.25. Distributed in the U.S.
by St. George Book Service, Spring Valley, N.Y.
The Ascension is the leave-taking of Christ. In the forty
days since His resurrection, He appeared to both the
disciples and the multitude to teach and even to share food
with them. This intimate ministry of Christ comes to an end
with the Ascension, and yet in His final words He declares
His eternal presence —“Lo, I am with you always, to the
close of the age.” After He had given the disciples His final
counsel, “As they were looking on, He was lifted up, and a
cloud took Him out of their sight.” Two angels appeared
then as men clothed in white robes and spoke to the disciples
16
saying, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into
heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven
will come the same way as you saw Him go into Heaven.”
The image of the cloud is a recurring motif in the Bible,
one laden with meaning. To fill the formula “the Ascension
of Christ” with true content, Friedrich Benesch leads us
through the life cycle and morphology of cloud formations.
In the interplay of the elements of warmth, air, water and
earth, in the forms and growth of the cumulus from a small
white puff to the great anvil-headed thundercloud,
Benesch is reminded of the plant. In the vast swirling mo­
tions of the cyclone moving from west to east continually
drawing new masses of air into its center, he discovers not a
plant-like, but rather an animal-like activity and form.
Through a sensitive Goethean investigation we discov­
er with Benesch the place of the clouds as between the earth
and the heavens, as between the mineral and plant king­
doms. In the clouds we see one of nature’s many “inter­
mediate realms.” This quality of “inbetweenness” is ex­
plored and developed in a manner which shows it not as an
attribute or place but rather as an activity. It is what flows
between man and his fellow man, between mother and child,
between the grieved and the comforter, that binds and
heals. What stands between mineral and plant as cloud, or
between plant and animal as blossom, becomes a metaphor
or, as Benesch says, a parable for activity for the past and
future deeds of Christ. It is the very power and essence of
the Resurrection itself which has overcome the fragmenta­
tion and disintegration of death and which therefore heals
and flows between, binding one to another. It is here that
Benesch sees the activity of Christ in nature as well as in
human affairs. It is as Goethe states: “That which concili­
ates, which is gentle . . . . ”
In this profound little volume, Friedrich Benesch, sci­
entist/theologian, priest of the Christian Community since
1947 and now leader of its seminar in Stuttgart, brings
together Goethean science and Christology. Such a syn­
thesis can stand before us as an anticipation of the time
when “the Christ will be found working in the very laws of
chemistry and physics” (Steiner), when a true Rosicrucian
Christianity becomes a force in world evolution.
—Arthur Zajonc
ANTHROPOSOPHICAL REVIEW, edited by J. Mans­
field, P. Matthews, C. Schaefer, S. Schaefer, S. ThalJantzen. Published three times a year by the Execu­
tive Council of the Anthroposophical Society in Great
Britain. Annual subscription $6.50 + $1.80 postage.
Single issue $2.50 + 75c postage. Distributed in the
USA by St. George Book Service, P.O. Box 225, Spring
Valley, N.Y. 10977
The Anthroposophical Review is the successor to the
Anthroposophical Quarterly. It “aims to provide a space for
discussion, research and creative activity arising out of An­
throposophy.”
The theme of the first issue “Inner Striving — Outer
Work” is introduced by Christopher Schaefer. It is followed
by an article “Work as a Unique Earth Experience,” by
Alexander Bos, and a Symposium of four contributors.
Other sections with various articles include “The Arts,”
“Everyday Matters,” “Questions of Freedom,” “Working
with Anthroposophy,” “The Language of Nature,” and “Re­
views.”
It is planned that each issue will contain a lecture by
Rudolf Steiner which was not published previously in
English translation or, if published previously, one that is
not currently available. This issue contains the first lecture
of the four that were given to the workmen at the Goethe­
anum between the 28th of June and the 18th of July 1923,
entitled “How Do We Learn to See into the Spiritual
World?” In it, Rudolf Steiner points out the necessity for the
development of “independent thinking” (selbstaendiges
Denken ) and the means by which one can attain it.
The editors have set themselves a high standard. It is
sincerely hoped that they can continue to realize their goals.
—Nathan Melniker
MEMBERSHIP
REPORT BY THE CHAIRMAN OF THE COUNCIL
TO THE ANNUAL MEETING
April 21, 1979 — 211 Madison Avenue, New York City
Note: A report freely rendered from what was actually
said at the annual meeting.
Fellow Members of the Anthroposophical Society —
Dear Friends:
On behalf of the Society’s Council I should like to bring
you up-to-date on the progress made during the past year
toward a more decentralized form of administration for our
Society. You may remember from my report to last year’s
Annual Meeting (see Newsletter , Summer 1978) that the
Council decided at its meeting in February ’78 to step back
and to meet only once during ’78-’79 in order to allow an op­
portunity for the three regions — West, Mid-West and East
— to explore possibilities for more active collaboration on a
regional basis. This has now happened and at the Council’s
meeting last February Hermann Rubach, Bay Area, Richard
Lewis, Sacramento, and Sam Glaze, Los Angeles, reported
on the initiatives taken within the Western region which
clearly showed the desire of the membership for closer
cooperation and for some form of regional administration
within the national Society framework. The same trend in
the Mid-West was clearly evidenced by the report made by
Ernst Katz. What was new this year was an initiative spear­
headed by Janet McGavin (Kimberton Hills) to bring the
Council members within the Eastern region together to ex­
plore the needs and possibilities for closer regional col­
laboration. This meeting is scheduled for May 19 here in
New York City. Beyond this the Council agreed to invite
three representatives from each region to meet with the
Executive Committee of the national Society July 6-8 in Ann
Arbor for the purpose of preparing recommendations to the
Council as to how the Council might reorganize itself in ac­
cordance with the emerging reality of regional admini­
strations within the American Society. These recommenda­
tions will be presented to the Council when it meets again in
New York City next February. If accepted by the Council,
either with or without modifications, they will then be
brought for approval to the Annual Meeting next Easter.
Should they necessitate changes in the existing By-Laws, it
will be the Council’s responsibility to submit the proposed
changes to the membership. If ratified by a majority of all
members of the Society who vote within three months, the
amended By-Laws then become operative.
In all discussions of regionalization a clear distinction
has been made between the tasks and responsibilities of na­
tional and regional administrations. As has been previously
stated, the relation with Dornach, the handling of member­
ship dues, the publication of a national Newsletter, of the
Journal for Anthroposophy , the maintenance of a central
library, the acceptance and processing of new memberships,
at this time, all need the support and the presence of the
American Society as a national branch of the General An­
throposophical Society. The tasks of the regions lie much
more in the sphere of communication between groups and
with isolated individual members, in the initiating of re­
gional members’ conferences, in the circulation of speakers
and otherwise active members, in the publication of regional
calendars of events and of information, etc.
Accompanying the movement toward decentralization,
it is becoming increasingly clear that we need to find new
ways to give expression to experience within the economic
17
realm so that new possibilities for the support of spiritual
work and for the enhancement of the experience of the
realm of brotherhood in anthroposophic life may be devel­
oped. Beginnings have been made in this direction.
But, at the same time, it is equally necessary that we
find new ways to permit free consultation among active
members in the spiritual sphere. If constructive initiatives
are developed in the spiritual as well as the economic
spheres, it will become more and more the task of the ad­
ministration, both at the country wide as well as the
regional levels, to maintain a healthy balance within the
organism as a whole.
The perception and maintenance of such a healthy
balance between the spiritual and the economic, between
the realms of public, membership and creative spiritual
work, and between the needs and potentialities of anthro­
posophical life within the geographic regions, becomes the
central responsibility of administrative activity.
In thinking of regions, we should be aware that new life
is springing up in two parts of this country which may not
yet be in a position to sustain a certain regional autonomy
but which are, nevertheless, experiencing the first stirrings
in this direction. They are Texas, where the first major an­
throposophical conference was held in Austin in March with
over a hundred members in attendance, and the Rocky
Mountain area with its center in Denver. We shall watch the
progress of Anthroposophy in these areas with great in­
terest and hope, and shall help to further it in any way we
can.
The Goetheanum N ew s —At the meeting of the General
Secretaries of the English-speaking branches of the General
Society last October in Dornach, John Davy (Great Britain)
proposed that the Goetheanum News in its present form
should be discontinued and a Goetheanum News Service
should be formed in its place. This service would have the
task of forwarding news of events at the Goetheanum, of
communications from the Vorstand, from the Sections, and
of transmitting reports which would give distant members
in English-speaking countries a feeling for the pulse-beat of
life in Dornach. Such communications would be published
either as a special section within the national Newsletters
or as special supplements to them. This proposal has been
discussed by the Council and has been approved in principle.
The details as to how it will actually be done have yet to be
worked out. It is intended that the new system shall start in
1980. The reasons for this change are twofold: the burden of
cost to the Goetheanum for the publishing and mailing (in­
dividually by air mail) of the present News and the in­
equities which exist through the fact that the Canadian and
American Societies are the only ones in which each member
receives the Goetheanum News free of charge (that is, as
part of the national dues which, in both cases, are far below
the level of what the Goetheanum needs in Swiss francs). In
the other English-speaking Societies each member must
subscribe individually for the Goetheanum News, which re­
sults in the fact that only a fraction of the members in the
British, Australian, New Zealand and South African So­
cieties receive the News at all, thus defeating its purpose of
serving to keep the membership in touch with the center in
Dornach. We will keep you informed as plans progress.
18
Michaelmas Conference at the Goetheanum—Plans for
the conference of active members with the Vorstand in Dor­
nach from September 24-30, 1979, are going forward and I
am glad to report that the response to the appeal for $5,000
to match the sum which the Society will provide toward a
travel fund has been generous. It is hoped that about 50
members of our Society will attend and that this meeting
will serve as a focus for the spiritual life of Anthroposophy
in preparation for the twenty-one years between now and
the year 2000.
The Needs of the Times—As we face the years ahead,
can we not agree that two urgent tasks are incumbent on us
as students of Spiritual Science and members of the An­
throposophical Society? Although by no means our sole
tasks, it would seem to me that the strengthening of group
life and the awakening and training of genuine “occult dis­
crimination” are of central importance. Group life, as we
know, has the task of cultivating the life of soul on the basis
of spiritual scientific work. Through it we prepare spir­
itually for the next epoch of culture. Active study, artistic
work, and creative work at the level of the School of
Spiritual Science are the life blood of all true group work.
To discriminate in spiritual matters so that we learn to
recognize more and more clearly the essential nature and
tasks of the anthroposophical path seems to be the only sure
and creative way to meet the countless situations which
arise to confuse, distract and discourage us from working to
fulfill the need of mankind in the world today. Here again, it
is through genuine group work that we can receive our
greatest help. In active give and take we learn to correct our
one-sidedness, to extend and deepen our knowledge, to
transform our karma. Here we work as social beings out of
Spiritual Science. We need not then attack and defend so
much as go our own way with an inner openness of soul but
with perseverance and courage.
Thanks to All Who Have Served the Society During
the Past Year—Once again it is my grateful task as Chair­
man of the Council to express thanks on behalf of the Socie­
ty to all those unnumbered members who have taken initia­
tive on behalf of Anthroposophy during the past year. To
the Executive Committee, the staff at the Society’s center,
to the group leaders, active co-workers, workers in special
fields, to the editors of the Newsletter and the Journal to
the artists, the conference organizers, the writers and
speakers, and to the quiet member who carries Anthro­
posophy in her or in his heart, we want to extend sincerest
thanks on behalf of the Society and of Anthroposophy itself.
—Henry Barnes
MINUTES OF THE ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
April 21, 1979 at 211 Madison Avenue, New York City
MORNING SESSION
John Root, executive director, welcomed everyone, and
Sophia Walsh spoke the Foundation Stone Verses. John
Root then read the names of members who had crossed the
threshold and recited a verse for the dead.
Executive Director’s Report
Mr. Root reported that 168 people joined the Society
this year. 29 have died, 18 have resigned, 7 have transferred
to other countries, and 7 have transferred to our Society.
Total membership now stands at 1813.
Report of Meeting of the Treasurers of the National Societies
in Dornach, April, 1979
Siegfried Finser, treasurer, reported that Gisela
Reuter, treasurer of the Society, at this meeting had given a
description of how the Goetheanum prepared a production
of Lessing’s Nathan the Wise as one example of work being
carried on there. Several co-workers spoke of the one-and-ahalf year’s preparation, and it was characterized as a pro­
cess that created spiritual energy.
Before raising the dues per member for the support of
the Goetheanum from 80 Swiss francs to 100 Swiss francs,
co-workers at the Goetheanum did a lot of research on infla­
tion in each country, on currency value exchange, size of
membership and each country’s ability to pay. It was found
that the Germans would find it easy to pay 100 Swiss francs
and that the Americans would find it very hard. There has
been an attempt in the past for countries to carry a major
part of the support of the Goetheanum. The time when the
United States did this was well recognized and remarked
upon. Now Austria, Switzerland and Germany will try to
carry the main support.
Meeting of General Secretaries and Annual Meeting
in Dornach
Mr. Finser, having attended the meeting of general
secretaries on Mr. Barnes’ behalf, reported that this
meeting discussed the motion coming to the General
Meeting asking that the 1974 agreement between Herbert
Witzenmann and the Vorstand be ratified. Mr. Finser
described in great detail the issues that this motion raised
and also what went on at the General Meeting as a result of
this motion.
Mr. Barnes, in commenting on this report, said that one
could sometimes experience more anthroposophy in the
difficulties than in the agreements. Rudolf Steiner stressed
that we must begin to understand our own karmic back­
grounds. Karmic streams never united before are united in
the Anthroposophical Society. It is a living mystery drama,
and how can we have drama without difficulties? A creative
exchange makes anthroposophy more alive.
Chairman’s Report. See above.
Proposed Budget 1979-80
Mr. Finser presented the proposed budget (see en­
closed sheets) that had been prepared by the Finance Ad­
visory Committee of the Society after a meeting with the
leaders of the various activities who requested funds from
the Society. He explained that the dues only covered the
costs of administration and services and that two years ago
the Finance Committee had decided to spend capital to pay
for the activities in order to generate more money. Each
year large deficits are projected, and actually only small
ones have occurred. Gifts for activities have made up the dif­
ference.
There was a show of hands to accept the budget. No one
opposed it.
Confirmation of the Executive Committee
The proposed Executive Committee:
Hermann Rubach to represent the West
Ernst Katz to represent the Mid-West
John Root, executive director
Siegfried Finser, treasurer
Henry Barnes, ex officio.
The Executive Committee was confirmed.
AFTERNOON SESSION
Prepared reports about various activities and areas
were presented after lunch.
Fiftieth Anniversary of Waldorf Education in America
Patricia Livingston, chairman of the faculty of the Ru­
dolf Steiner School in New York, described the events that
took place this year in celebration of the school’s 50th an­
niversary. An exhibit entitled “Awakening Intelligence,”
composed of the work of children from several Waldorf
schools and designed by Thorn Zay with frames built by
Hans Kunz, has been traveling throughout the country.
There have been many weekend workshops on such subjects
as the teaching of history, mathematics, eurythmy and
music. A weekend symposium at Teachers’ College, Colum­
bia University including talks by Alan Howard, Henry
Barnes, and John Davy was followed by an assembly at
Kaufmann Concert Hall presenting the work of students
from five Waldorf schools. In May, work of the students of
the Rudolf Steiner School will be on exhibit at the Metro­
politan Museum of Art. A book, Educating as an A rt, edited
by Ekkehard Piening and Nick Lyons, with articles about
many aspects of Waldorf education, was published.
Mr. Franceschelli, speaking from the floor, announced a
special double issue of the magazine Education as an A rt,
copies of which may be obtained from Green Meadow
School, Hungry Hollow Rd., Spring Valley, N.Y. 10977.
Youth Work
Richard Anderman reported that a group of about
seventeen younger anthroposophists have met once at Camphill in Pennsylvania, once in Detroit and will meet again in
Spring Valley in May to exchange ideas about youth ac­
tivities and concerns. These meetings arose out of the Al­
legheny Youth Conference in June, 1978 (see Newsletter,
Autumn, 1978) and the Kings Langley International Youth
Conference (see report in this issue).
Report from Washington, D.C.
Preston Barker reported that members in the Washing­
ton area meet once a month to examine the local work and
how it meets the challenge of the times. A steering commit­
tee meets every three weeks to help provide a deepening.
The members are preparing for an event at Michaelmas,
1979, and they publish a newsletter to communicate the
considerations necessary for this event.
19
Pennsylvania Initiative
Marjorie Giesseman reported that members engaged in
various anthroposophical activities in Pennsylvania such as
the Christian Community, the Waldorf school, the Camphill
communities, and the eurythmists as well as other anthro­
posophists now meet to celebrate the festivals.
Speech Work
Sophia Walsh reported that she has conducted a speech
training course two hours daily at Highland Hall Teacher
Training Institute in Los Angeles. She has given three
courses of six weeks each. Each course has had a theme that
is connected with inner development in order to help the
students become stronger supporters of anthroposophic en­
deavors. They have practiced Greek athletic exercises and
dramatic exercises given by Rudolf Steiner. It will take six
of these six-week blocks to complete a year’s work of speech
training.
Letters from Sponsors: Joel Kobran had sent in a question
for the agenda concerning the necessity of a sponsor to write
a letter about the new members. He was told that it is a re­
quest, not a requirement, and that the Executive prefers to
hear from the member himself.
Library Coverage: Ursula Weber had sent in the question:
“To what extent is it appropriate for us as a Society to cover
the literature of other movements in our national library?”
Fred Paddock answered that the process of under­
standing Anthroposophy demands that we know not only
our own tradition but also our western spiritual history. The
bulk of the library funds is spent on acquiring everything in
English and German by Rudolf Steiner and works by Ger­
man anthroposophists which may go out of print. A very
small amount is spent on building up a western esoteric
library as a background to Anthroposophy.
The meeting adjourned at 4 p.m. and was followed by a
delicious buffet supper prepared by Frank and Mona
Keimig. After this the eurythmists presented a program
which was very much appreciated.
Respectfully
submitted,
Nancy Root
WHO CAN HELP TO LOCATE MEMBERS
WHO HAVE MOVED?
Below is a list of members whose address is unknown to
us at the present time. Together with the name we will list
the last known address (state and zip code). If you can help
us, please notify Fred Paddock at the Society’s headquarters.
1. Mr. and Mrs. Gunter Scholter Germany
2. William Lops
AK 99701
3. Alice Sadtler
CA 93101
4. Mr. and Mrs. Richard Schmitt Germany
5. Louise Chapin
CA 90277
20
6. Bari Lynn Hirsh
7. Judith Lowell
8. Linda Block
9. Linda Jolly
10. Rev. and Mrs. Truett Tidwell
11. Margaret McKnight
12. Mrs. Henry Schenck
13. Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Byron
14. Harland McPherson
15. Morton Akse
16. John Myers
17. Raymond Kalbach
18. Mrs. Daniel Leisher
19. Caroline Emont
20. Susan Landau
21. Mary Ann Leadingham
22. K. Sundar Das
23. Paul Prevost
24. Adrianna de Bryn
25. Gabrielle Gregg
26. K. Elizabeth Hoffman
27. Kim A. Snyder
28. Gloria Collins
NEW MEMBERS:
Lydia Wieder
Transferred from Germany
Roland W. Sherman
Transferred from Switzerland
Sandra Sherman
Transferred from Switzerland
Gisela Wendlinger
Transferred from Germany
Robert S. Horner
McLean, Va.
Lucie J. Howard
Springfield, Or.
Jon A. Howard
Springfield, Or.
Maria Tuthill
Carmichael, Ccl
Peter Alvarado
New York, N Y.
Timothy M. Brink
Copake, N.Y.
Elizabeth Scherer
Hempstead, N.Y.
Donna M. Downing
Carmichael, Ca.
CA 90026
England
NYC 10028
CA 95060
TX 77081
OH 45239
FL 32789
LA 70118
NY 10977
CO 80907
FL 32083
PA 19518
NC 28315
NJ 08540
OR 97526
NM 88201
TX 78249
OR 97603
DC 20008
NY 10977
NY 11569
IL 60614
PA 19082
Robert M. Walker
Palos Verdes, Ca.
Lawrence N. McKee
Orangevale, Ca.
Frederick P. Spaulding, Jr
Chicago, Il.
Alice Spaulding
Chicago, Il.
Christine A. Badura
Fair Oaks, Ca.
Virginia A. Butt
Chicago, Il.
Betty B. Pitcairn
Granada Hills, Ca.
Walter Pflanze
Louisville, Tenn.
Jerome A. Cooper
Fort Collins, Colo.
Helena W. Maclay
San Francisco, Ca.
Sally Gorham
Fair Oaks, Ca.
Susan E. Seidman
Ann Arbor, Mi.
Gayle Davis
Sacramento, Ca.
Elizabeth H. Morse
Dallas, Tx.
Kathleen S. Bishop
Northridge, Ca.
Barbara A. Wallace
Palos Verdes, Ca.
Tom Mellett
Austin, Tx.
Dorothy Stanley
Gamersville, N.Y.
Julia R. Aiken
Silver Spring, Md.
Tom Bufano
Laurel Md.
Phyllis Jepperson
Carmichael Ca.
Anne V. Jurika
Fair Oaks, Ca.
James R. Wetmore
Detroit, Mi.
Francina M. Graef
Berkeley, Ca.
Donald A. Primavera
Fair Oaks, Ca.
Vincent Siracusa
L.I.C., N.Y.
John H. Fuller
Moorhead, Mn.
Gloria Havlick
New York, N.Y.
Martha J. Gelarden
Grosse Ile, Mi.
Thomas A. Clark
Amherst , Mass.
Alan R. Lovett
D etroit, Mi.
Dennis Kane
Albuquerque , N.M.
Charlotte R. Blaine
Detroit , Mi.
Kathleen Williams
Chatsworth, Ca.
Rosemary E. Look
Grosse Pte. Park, Mi.
Charles T. Hudson
King of Prussia, Pa.
Lisa York
Troup, Tx.
Alice L. Okorn
Napoleon, Mo.
Jesus N. P. Perlas III
Washington, D.C.
Patrick Wakeford-Evans
Carmichael Ca.
Holly P. Colangelo
Tijunga, Ca.
Laura Birdsall
Wilton, N.H.
Mark D. Birdsall
Wilton, N.H.
Mary W. Price
San Rafael Ca.
Eileen McGarrigle
Austin, Tx.
Gene L. Sakaguchi
Fair Oaks, Ca.
Elizabeth Simons
Wichita, Kansas
IN MEMORIAM:
WILLIAM TALBOT GARDNER
February 13, 1916-January 1, 1979
A significant pioneering effort to bring an anthropo­
sophical impulse to America through the arts of eurythmy
and speech came to a close on New Years Day as WTilliam
Talbot Gardner crossed the threshold in his 63rd year in the
New York studio he had directed for thirty years.
His goal as a eurythmist and speaker had been to
develop these arts until they were as effective, as etherically alive and as able to speak to an Anglo-American eye and
ear as they had become in Central Europe when performed
in German. The degree to which he had succeeded, par­
ticularly in the years from 1959 to 1966 when his studio gave
dozens of performances and scores of readings in New York
and the surrounding area, attests to the breadth of his talent
and the th o ro u g h n e s s of his preparation for this life-task.
William Gardner was born in Colorado as the youngest
of seven children, all marked individualists, and spent part
of his childhood in the forests of Washington and the fruit
groves of Florida. His schooling took him still farther away
—a year in France, then to a preparatory school in Penn­
sylvania, where in his chosen field of English he had as
teacher the distinguished writer Archibald MacLeish. A few
months at Robert Hutchins’ University of Chicago de­
termined that his career would not be academic. He left for
Dornach in 1935 at the age of 19 to study eurythmy and
speech and did not return home until 1948, the better part of
14 years later.
His talent as a eurythmist impressed Marie Savitch,
the director of the stage group, who performed duets with
21
him, and Else Klink, who recalls her harmonious collabora­
tion with him in Stuttgart. His recitation had less outlet in
Dornach, although he was assigned minor roles in stage
productions. However, he took part in tours to England and
nearby cities. He maintained a friendship with Annemarie
Dubach, who wrote an appreciation of the eurythmic experi­
ments contributed by his studio to the first international
eurythmy conference in 1966. The dignity and earnestness
of his Dornach years were commented on by Albert Steffen.
The Elocution and Eurythmy Studio, founded in New
York in 1949 when he was 33, was a cooperative venture of
four Dornach-trained artists and several American co­
workers, that provided him the secure footing he needed to
pursue his goals in America in his own independent way. It
had its origins in Dornach shortly after the war, when the
English eurythmist Elizabeth Raab-Van Vliet and her Amer­
ican husband arrived in Dornach. An intensive collaboration
in English ensued, midnight rehearsals (the only time the
stage was free) of the Prospero and Ariel scenes from Shake­
speare’s Tempest, which became a kind of signature for the
painstaking and ingenious quality of the studio’s work in
years to come. He developed, after years of energetic prac­
tice in Dornach with Lydia Wieder, the difficult feat of duo
recitation, and this formed the core of the studio speech
chorus. This group was followed to America by Hanni
Schlaefli, who after a period of work with the studio left it to
form the New York Performing Group.
A further ideal of William Gardner, beyond rooting
eurythmy in the English language, was to provide for it the
quality of recitation and music that would give it wings. The
curriculum of the studio therefore included singing,
recorder ensemble, solo-speaking, chorus and eurythmy, as
well as study of American and English authors, of Anthro­
posophy and other occult teaching. In most of these ac­
tivities he took the leading role. His teaching was clear,
thorough and effective; each class or rehearsal was wellrounded, and left the student with the sense he was always
in touch with the fundamentals of each art.
In his performances William Gardner was a perfection­
ist, and there was no detail of lighting, costume, gesture or
nuance of voice that was not worked over and over again un­
til it was just right, then rehearsed until the whole was
flawless. This standard of intense work, which he was able
to exact from his studio co-workers, who could rehearse
together several times a week, made it rare that others
could collaborate in its performances. This led in time to a
certain exclusiveness, an aloof pride in his accomplishments,
which drew forth respect but less gratitude for the studio’s
efforts.
Yet these efforts were significant. William Gardner at­
tempted to awaken interest in the spiritual stature of
writers like Melville, Thoreau, Tennyson, MacDonald
through frequent readings, and to introduce to an American
public the poems or essays of Albert Steffen, Christian
Morgenstern or Rudolf Steiner in new translations, in im­
pressively flowing speech forms, often with moving
eurythmic interpretations. In the 1950’s he directed am­
bitious scenes from Goethe’s Faust —the Prologue in
Heaven and the Ariel scene —and the old Norse initiation
ballad, the “Dream Song of Olaf Asteson.” Later, his per­
sonal feats of recitation included three-hour readings of Ten­
nyson’s “In Memoriam,” impressive renderings of Shake­
speare sonnets and Shelley’s “Skylark” (one breath to a
stanza!). An etheric lightness and flow, at peace with con­
ceptual clarity, marked both his speech and eurythmy. Many
of his studio performances were memorialized with great
care in hand-printed programs with original graphic designs.
It is inevitable that a man who identifies himself so
strongly with his own creation must suffer the fate of its de­
cline. Having held the studio in his single grip for 17 years,
he brought some of the fruit of its original work to Dornach
in 1966, was rejected by the larger part of the audience, and
in the same year the active existence of the studio came to
an end. Shortly thereafter his marriage to one of his co­
workers in the studio was annulled and his two children left
him. He withdrew with worsening health to work with a few
remaining pupils, reciting the texts that had been the sub­
stance of the studio’s work 15 years before. His heart ail­
ment made him increasingly dependent upon the faithful
support of his friend of over 30 years, Lydia Wieder.
This life, lived exclusively under the star of the forma­
tive power of his art, became a lonely one through the un­
compromising demands it made on others. But the ideals
William Gardner cultivated were tended faithfully to the
very end. He was preceded through the portal of death by
several of his intimate co-workers in the studio —Regina
Stillman, Thelma Dillingham, Elizabeth Van Vliet, Hanni
Schlaefli. We may be sure that the devotion poured by so
many into this early vessel for the arts in America is being
transmuted into new and more fruitful forms for the future,
and that the shapes impressed by the work of this karmic
group into the ether of America are serving those who carry
the impulses of speech and eurythmy into the decades ahead.
—Theodore Van Vliet
OTHER MEMBERS WHO HAVE CROSSED
THE THRESHOLD OF DEATH:
Lona Koch, June 3, 1979
from Chester, N.Y.
Joined the Society in 1932
22
Lola B. Heckelman, Feb. 27, 1979
from Julian, Ca.
Joined the Society in 1960
Charles F. Drew, March 25, 1979
from New York, N.Y.
Joined the Society in 1960
REPORTS
FLASHES FROM THE PAST —a 1935 Report
In the January 27, 1935 issue of the English-language
Anthroposophic News Sheet published in Dornach, Switz­
erland, there appeared the second part of a two-part report
on a lecturing trip that had been recently concluded by three
travelers from Dornach to the United States. The article is
by one of the travelers, Gunther Wachsmuth, who was, at
that time, one of the members of the Vorstand of the
General Anthroposophical Society. Ehrenfried Pfeiffer and
Hermann von Baravalle were the other members of this trio
of traveling lecturers.
The following newspaper article was quoted in Gunther
Wachsmuth’s report.
From the Chicago Daily News, October 25, 1934:
“Three distinguished visitors from Switzer­
land are occasioning a very small, very select din­
ner in Chicago on Saturday evening. Mr. and Mrs.
John Alden Carpenter* are giving it at their home
on Lake Shore Drive. The guests of honor are for­
eign scientists and educators, traveling in this
country to spread the theories of life and growth
which they teach at their school colony at Dornach,
Switzerland.
“President Glenn Frank of the University of
Wisconsin is coming down from Madison to join the
after-dinner conversation, President and Mrs.
Robert Hutchins of the University of Chicago, and
Thornton Wilder are among the other guests.
“Mr. Wilder met some people at the home of
Mabel Dodge Luhan in Taos, N.M., who interested
him in the Dornach Movement, of which the three
visitors are the prime exponents.”
—
♦American composer and wholesale merchant, 1876-1951.
THE EURYTHMEUM STUTTGART
PARTICIPATES IN THE GERMAN PREMIERE
OF “PARADISE LOST”
On April 28, 1979 the first German performance of
“Paradise Lost” by the Polish composer, Krzystof
Penderecki, took place on the Wuerttembergische Staatstheater in Stuttgart, Germany. This opera, the libretto of
which was adapted by Christopher Fry from the monu­
mental epic of John Milton, was commissioned by the Lyric
Opera of Chicago and received its world premiere there last
fall, to mixed reviews. The gathering of the press from all
over Europe bore testimony to the importance of this Ger­
man premiere, and although the reviews again seem mixed,
the overall critical impression was definitely positive.
The story of the creation and fall of man is one which
naturally would be interesting to anthroposophists. It is pre­
sented here as a mystery drama and indeed Penderecki, who
is also a devout Catholic, refers to his work as a “Sacra Rappresentazione,” rather than as an “opera.” What heightens
our interest even more is that the supportive role of the
chorus of movement necessary to portray first the fallen
angels, and later, in the second act the good angels guarding
the Garden of Eden, has been realized through participation
of the Eurythmeum Stuttgart under the direction of Else
Klink and Wolfgang Veit.
That this should be so in a city world famous for its bal­
let is amazing! What is equally amazing is the enthusiasm on
the part of many, though naturally not all, with which the ac­
tual eurythmy has been greeted.
As the best example of this that I could quote, let me
describe the following: Several nights after the premiere a
question and answer period was arranged and attended by
between 150 and 200 interested people. Present for this oc­
casion were the director of the Stuttgart Opera, the assist­
ant director of the production along with the conductor, the
singer who portrayed Satan, the actor who portrayed the
blind Milton, as well as the composer himself. The question
was asked from the floor concerning how it had come about
that eurythmy had been selected in the first place. The
answer showed us that the idea had come from the opera ad­
ministration who, feeling that the ballet would be inap­
propriate, had hit upon the idea of eurythmy and prevailed
repeatedly upon Else Klink until she gave in and consented
to undertake the project. At this point Penderecki himself
intervened and although he seems to have known nothing
about eurythmy itself—since he called it pantomime at one
point —spoke of it in the most glowing terms. Indeed he said
that the eurythmy had better satisfied his artistic inten­
tions than had the dance in the preceding productions in
Chicago and La Scala in Milan.
That the wholeNathan
projectMelniker
should be so successful is fortui­
tous. Indeed many a conservative anthroposophical eyebrow
has been raised in these parts and many a contrary opinion
expressed. Certain it is also that this is not eurythmy in the
ordinary sense of the word. In spite of all this, the fact re­
mains that in the midst of this tumultuous, controversial and
sometimes profoundly disturbing work of modern art,
eurythmy was able to sustain and even further the under­
lying spiritual content which lies at the basis of the plot.
This is again a testimony to the courage and pioneering
spirit of Else Klink. It was also such courage that led to the
recent tour which brought the Eurythmeum Stuttgart to so
many of you in America.
In view of this tour I thought that those of you who are
friends of the Eurythmeum would want to know of these
developments and might appreciate having them reported
through the eyes of two Americans closely connected with
the work here. My wife, Martha, was the rehearsal pianist
for the eurythmy part of the opera (she also accompanied
the tour to America) and I am in charge of the music educa­
tion at the Eurythmeum.
After four Stuttgart performances, this production will
be taken to the Munich Festival in July and to the largest
23
Eastern bloc Festival, in Warsaw, in September.
—Alfred H. Bartles, Stuttgart, Germany
INTERNATIONAL YOUTH CONFERENCE
KINGS LANGLEY, ENGLAND
Dec. 27, 1978-January 4, 1979
A major international anthroposophical youth event
took place this past winter during nine days of the
Christmas holy nights at the New School, Kings Langley,
England. Approximately 180 active younger anthroposophists, feeling an inner sense of responsibility for the
future of the anthroposophical movement, met together
from all over the world to come to a deeper understanding of
the 1923 Christmas Foundation Meeting of the Anthropo­
sophical Society and the Foundation Stone Meditation.
Many pressing issues of the anthroposophical movement
and of youth in particular were considered in order to create
a base for an international co-working of youth activity. The
international preparatory work for the conference had
begun two years prior to the event.
Each morning opened with a moving recitation of the
Foundation Stone Meditation. This was followed by a series
of vital and inwardly stirring lectures by Joergen Smit and
BCJ Lievegoed. Professor Lievegoed painted vivid wordpictures of the various mystery streams of the past, trying
to show us how major streams of past spiritual life flowed
together into the Christmas Foundation Meeting, emerging
as the seed of new mysteries appropriate for the changed
conditions of our time.
Joergen Smit concentrated on the stage-by-stage devel­
opment of Anthroposophy itself. He then tackled directly
several current problems raised spontaneously at the con­
ference: the need for a more cooperative working together
and consolidated strengthening of forces, the creation of
new social forms for anthroposophical activities, the ques­
tion of leadership and independent initiatives, and the
future tasks of the Anthroposophical Society. Many ex­
perienced that questions which had arisen within them dur­
ing the conference were answered by Joergen Smit’s words.
Later in the morning and again in the afternoon we
made our way to the working groups. Each of these eleven
smaller groups had the task of finding its own way of work­
ing together on a particular topic related to the overall con­
ference theme, by creating a close relation between study
and conversational work and artistic activity. It was chal­
lenging and marvelous to try to meet in this way a group of
individuals with the most diverse biographies, nationalities,
and connections to Anthroposophy. The work was alternate­
ly intensive, difficult, constructive, inspiring, painful, and
joyous —an experience of lasting value.
A different developmental process could be exper­
ienced during the late-afternoon “plenary sessions,” which
progressed from rather external reports on working groups
and general announcements to vigorous debates on con­
temporary anthroposophical issues to, on the final day, a
more integrated group conversational process. Each even­
ing was filled with a lively mixture of artistic presentations
24
(eurythmy, music, speech, and drama) and reports on youth
work and other initiatives presently going on in Europe and
America. It became increasingly difficult to find enough
time for all the meetings, presentations, and initiatives to
take place, and some of us experienced a day of solid ac­
tivities from early morning until midnight —and after!
It remains to be seen how what has been placed in mo­
tion by this renewed youth activity will continue to grow
and evolve. One feels a new, fresh spirit trying to come to
expression ever more forcefully. It is worth noting that
about a fourth of those attending were Americans. A new
anthroposophical youth newsletter for North America has
been begun to facilitate communications (if interested in
receiving this, write to: ORC, 5920 Guilford, Detroit, MI
48224). Also, several smaller youth groups have met to con­
sider the further development of this impulse in North
America. Wish us well!
—David Adams
YOUTH CONFERENCE IN FAIR OAKS/
SACRAMENTO, May 18-20, 1979: “The Individual
and Society —Social and Antisocial Forces
in Life Today”
It is not possible to narrate the events of an oc­
currence so as to repeat the experience, especially an
event of spiritual significance. Yet, one must try and
hopefully the striving becomes the goal. The event was
the third West Coast Youth Conference at Rudolf Steiner
College in Fair Oaks, California. It started innocently
enough, there being a two-year tradition, and we simply
began to pitch in and help. The theme for the conference
came out of an ongoing study of the faculty. It was cer­
tainly appropriate, for our class had had its share of so­
cial crises, and this particular study spoke to our inner­
most concerns.
What happened was, in retrospect, something quite
unusual and, if one dare to use the word, magical. There
was from the start an atmosphere of caring and restraint.
We had hoped that by making the conference revolve
around conversation rather than lectures that we could
achieve a real working understanding of social and anti­
social forces. As it happened, this was an appropriate in­
tuition, for people really began to listen to one another
with a loving ear. It was evident from all the group dis­
cussions that prejudices rarely got in the way. People
talked to each other about their deepest experiences and
were met with compassion. It was as if many people were
able to fashion the grail within them, and spiritual in­
sights, blended of many colors, flowed from heart to
heart. Yet, the experience was filled with clarity, helped
by seed thoughts brought by Rene Querido, Franklin
Kane, and Carl Stegmann.
—from a report by Patrick Wakeford-Evans
for the Conference Committee
DAY BY DAY AT THE GOETHEANUMFROM PUPPETS TO PHILOSOPHY
What strikes the visitor to the Goetheanum (and im­
presses the resident student as well) is the glut of auto­
mobiles usually filling up the space around it. Is some special
conference going on? Or is it just a token of the regular ac­
tivity going on in most of its rooms and halls? It is not easy
to tell. We inspect the cars for clues. Their license plates
show the initials of many a German city and Swiss canton,
now and again the contrasting color and shape of a more dis­
tant land —France, Holland, England. One is heartened to
feel the attraction exerted by this building on so many peo­
ple. Yet now and then, if one is commuting from the other
side of the Rhine, one would like to find a parking place
closer by.
But who are all these people? During a recent weekend
an unfamiliar type appeared —faces one had not seen often
at the Goetheanum before. They were puppeteers, holding a
public conference with lectures and performances by ten dif­
ferent puppet theaters from Germany and Switzerland. On
display were colorful groups of handsomely carved and
clothed puppets —marionettes hanging on their strings,
hand puppets, two-dimensional puppets moved by plexiglas
staves for shadow plays. One saw more little children than
usual at the Goetheanum, mothers explaining the puppets,
children pushing and pulling at the staves, smiling faces
dreaming into the imaginative world of fairy tales. Three to
five performances were going on simultaneously, several
times a day.
However handsome their puppets, an observer senses
that these people with their little theaters are experiment­
ers, not professionals. They are drawn to a puppet stage
because they love children and wish to give them imag­
inative nourishment in a fitting way, because they have
learned through Anthroposophy to respect the imagery of
fairy tales with their deeply spiritual and genuine psycho­
logical content, and because as adults they still want to play,
build scenery, create atmospheres out of light. Two of these
groups have developed as initiatives within the Christian
Community, others within groups of the Anthroposophical
Society.
The value of such puppet plays for children who seldom
hear fairy tales at home or in school is unquestioned. But
they are building bridges for their parents as well —back to
their children, back to an imaginative world. We sense with
some of the enthusiasm of Felicia Balde (cf. The Souls’
Awakening, Scene 3) how such plays in future will move us,
when the full possibilities of gesture and speech are real­
ized.
Each week a part of the population shifts at the Goethe­
anum. New faces appear; a different atmosphere surrounds
their discussions or demonstrations. A conference may br­
ing rough farmers or gentle players of harps. It is one of the
physiognomic games in Dornach to guess from these faces
which of all the concerns of mankind is being given its orien­
tation through Anthroposophy just now.
This may be a harder task in the days approaching.
Four conferences have been scheduled simultaneously—of
the working group in Philosophy and Psychology, of the Sec­
tion for Social Science, the Mathematical and Astronomical
Section, and the Section for Form-giving Arts (a weekend
for painters). A motley crowd it should be, but don’t be too
sure you could tell them apart. Here are artists of thoughts
among the philosophers and social therapists among those
wielding paint brushes. Unannounced is a conference for
eurythmists as well.
This activity, this growing focal point in Dornach for
the cultural and practical interests of our members around
the world, points to two facts. The Goetheanum as a single
building has long become too small to answer the needs of
its members and the increasing response from the world.
Many meetings or courses simply cannot take place here
because there is no space. There is as a consequence a dou­
ble striving —to encourage some of the schools at the
Goetheanum to find independent quarters (and support) and
to clear the way for a building program to supplement the
outgrown facilities in the great Bau. The master plan for
developing the open land around the Goetheanum has been
on display for a year, but permission from the local
authorities to proceed has not yet been obtained.
Meanwhile the building itself is undergoing surgery.
The whole west front is muffled in scaffolding and trip ham­
mers are knocking out sections of concrete that in fifty years
have become unsound. The patching of the north and south
sides of the building is completed, but it has taken over two
years. This has been done with such skill that the scars hard­
ly show. But in the process students and colleagues have had
to work against a sound barrier that often brings their ac­
tivity to a halt. We look forward to the day when calm
returns again, the face of the Goetheanum looks out un­
veiled toward the west, and farther off —to the north and
east —the sounds of building construction might begin.
—Theodore Van Vliet
ATTACK AND DEFENSE OF ANTHROPOSOPHY
On two recent occasions when Rene Querido was speak­
ing about Waldorf Education in Californian cities, two or
three unidentified persons outside the hall distributed leaf­
lets with slanderous statements about Rudolf Steiner, An­
throposophy, and the Waldorf schools. The gist of their con­
tent was that the schools were thoroughly evil institutions,
that Anthroposophy was a false and injurious form of oc­
cultism, and that Rudolf Steiner was a very objectionable
character. These points were made at considerable length
and in great detail. Needless to say, their truth content was
close to zero.
One of the obligations of an “active member” is to de­
fend Anthroposophy against slander. Seldom do we have a
case crying so loudly for such action. Mr. Querido, after care­
ful reflections, prepared the defense that we print below.
We present it to the members as a model of what should be
said under such circumstances.
The letter was written in January 1979. Four months
later, Mr. Querido reports: “We have not heard directly
from them nor —to the best of our knowledge —have they
continued their activities against us.”
—ed.
25
Christian Life Ministries
5828 Robertson Avenue
Carmichael, CA 95608
Ladies and Gentlemen:
Your brochure “What Is the Waldorf School?” has come
to our notice. We fully appreciate that you are free to hold
whatever views you consider right, yet we want to take this
opportunity of correcting some of the statements which you
make and which either are erroneous or misleading. May we
point out:
1. That Rudolf Steiner was not born into a Jewish fam­
ily. Both his parents were Catholic, and he adhered in his
faith until he was in his late teens. He never rejected Chris­
tianity; in fact, the Christ Event is regarded by him as the
central event in the history of mankind. He strove towards a
non-denominational form of Christianity.
2. The early life of Rudolf Steiner is not shrouded in
mystery, as you say. You may wish to consult some of the
authoritative biographies that have been written about him,
e.g. “A Scientist of the Invisible” by Canon Dr. Shepherd,
late Dean of Worcester Cathedral; also Rudolf Steiner’s
autobiography, “The Story of My Life.” In addition, there
are at least a dozen reputable biographies published in Ger­
many (as yet untranslated) by such well-known personalities
as Dr. Zeylmans van Emmichoven, Dr. Herbert Hahn, Dr.
Friedrich Hiebel, and others. You may also wish to consult,
“Work Arising from the Life of Rudolf Steiner: Education —
Medicine — Agriculture — Arts — Architecture — In­
dustry,” by John Davy (Rudolf Steiner Press).
3. It is incorrect to state that Rudolf Steiner was at any
time connected with the Illuminati.
4. Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy is deeply permeated
by the Christ Spirit and he saw the modern human being as
having to struggle with the double face of evil: the Luciferic
and the Ahrimanic; and that man’s goal in Evolution was to
be permeated more and more by the Christ Spirit, so as to
gradually transform and overcome the two extreme powers
of evil. We enclose a brief article “What is Anthroposophy?”
for your guidance.
5. It would go far beyond the format of this letter to ex­
press the central position that Steiner attributed to the
Christ Event. You may wish to consult Steiner’s lecture
cycles on the Apocalypse, the Gospel of St. John, the Gospel
of St. Luke, the Gospel of St. Matthew, the Gospel of St.
Mark, as well as the lecture cycle entitled “From Jesus to
Christ.” All these are in print in English. I think you would
find that even a cursory study of these volumes would lead
to a very different conclusion from the one you have stated
in your leaflet.
6. With regard to the book “Knowledge of the Higher
Worlds” by Rudolf Steiner, I would suggest you consider
looking at the original and you will not find any reference to
world revolution and world domination, neither to the
Kundalini. The book is solely concerned with the develop­
ment of higher forces dormant within the human soul by
way of an inner moral Christian teaching.
7. Eurythmy is an art of movement to make visible both
speech and music. It has none of the characteristics that you
have described. There again, a sufficient amount of reput­
26
able literature exists on the subject and performances which
are always open to the public are held from time to time in
major cities of the world.
8. It is most regrettable that under “Summary of Stein­
er’s Teachings” most blatant distortions of the anthro­
posophical impulse are to be found. There again, they could
easily be corrected.
9. The Waldorf School Movement found its inception
after the First World War in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1919. It
has grown to a worldwide movement of independent edu­
cation-embracing almost 180 schools all over the free
world. The Waldorf School offers from nursery to grade 12
an education of the growing child respectful of the true
dignity of man. It is open to children whose parents are of
any persuasion. We do not teach Anthroposophy in our
schools, and our striving is to help the child in his growth
towards adulthood to become a self-reliant and responsible
individual. Though Religion is not taught, the faculty shares
a profoundly Christian view and practice of life. The school
is open to inquirers and should you be interested in a visit,
please do not hesitate to contact us.
Finally, I would wish to say a word about your sources:
The article about Rudolf Steiner in the Encyclopedia Britannica is generally reliable. The other two books you mention
would seem to be of a dubious occult nature. We take this op­
portunity of including some material which, I hope, will as­
sist you in forming a more accurate picture of our
endeavors. Should you be interested in further information,
please do not hesitate to consult us.
Sincerely,
Rene M. Querido
Co-Director, Waldorf Teacher Training
Administrator, Sacramento Center
U.S. CAMPHILL COMMUNITIES RECEIVE 1979
SERVICE AWARD OF THE AMERICAN
ASSOCIATION ON MENTAL DEFICIENCY
The award ceremony took place in Miami, Florida on
May 3 1 , 1979 at the 103rd Annual Meeting of the American
Association on Mental Deficiency. Past AAMD Award reci­
pients include President John F. Kennedy, Mrs. Muriel
Humphry, and Whitney Young, Jr.
Here is the wording of the citation:
SERVICE AWARD
Camphill Villages, U.S.A.
Camphill Villages. Yours are communities which re­
mind us what many more of our cities and towns could be
like in the best of all possible worlds. The very act of sharing
this award illustrates the reason for it, and the reason why it
does more to announce the wisdom within this Association
than your desire for the recognition. You have made it clear
to all that your special mission is to demonstrate that people
of diverse interests and needs can engage in a life sharing
experience, and that service to our fellows is derivative
from such an experience and not vice versa. Your creations
are proof that an intentional village can be normal if the
main purpose of that community is not only to serve others
but to live and share together, to serve each other.
Forty years ago, as the Holocaust was kindled in the
heart of Europe and tested with mixed effect the conscience
of the world, a group of young people near Aberdeen,
Scotland answered the nightmare with a dream. The Camphill Movement was born. Under the guidance of Dr. Karl
Koenig, these refugees from Nazism established a com­
munity dedicated to the value and importance of each
human being, regardless of race or creed, of social status or
degree of intellectual endowment. Twenty years ago, one of
those present at the original community, Carlo Pietzner,
brought the now-flourishing movement to the United
States. Today, of between 50 and 60 Camphill centers all
over the world, there are three Camphill communities in the
United States which share this Association’s Service Award
for 1979: Children’s Village in Beaver Run, Pennsylvania,
Camphill Village in Copake, New York, and Camphill Village
in Kimberton, Pennsylvania.
The achievements of Camphill are based firmly on the
work and vision of Rudolf Steiner. His influence is quietly
evident in every aspect of each community, from education
to architecture, from agriculture to worship. The wisdom of
Rudolf Steiner’s influence is felt by every visitor to these
splendid communities in which life is shared equally by
everyone. About half of the residents would be considered
handicapped elsewhere, yet no one is handicapped at Camp­
hill because service to fellow human beings is part of every­
one’s life. At Camphill, each person has meaningful work
and holds a valued place in the lives of others.
For bringing to life a vision of how human beings can
live more purposefully, yours has been a contribution that
goes beyond a field and touches everyone. By proving again
that all human beings are valuable and that the future for
each of us holds nothing but good, you deserve more than
what a mere award is permitted to convey.
A WORKSHOP ON ARTISTIC METHOD
AT HARLEMVILLE, NY - Easter 1979
For the fourth time in the last three years, artistic
method was the theme of a conference extending over three
and a half days. This time there was a special emphasis on
its relationship to the transformation of evil.
To one coming from California for the first time, this
was a doubly enriching experience, for patches of snow still
lay on the ground and there was not a leaf to be seen on a
tree. One could imagine the cold of the winter just past and
wonder how the warmth of the reception that visitors re­
ceived on arrival was related to it.
All those who attended, about 25, were well acquainted
with Anthroposophy and had been encouraged to prepare
by prior reading. All were present at every event, and the
group was only split for one period each day to make paint­
ing in a limited space practicable. The smallness and
cohesiveness of the group gave a special quality to the con­
ference. At least the opportunity was there of really
meeting everybody.
Donald Hall taught painting, Sophia Walsh led us in
speech, and Kari van Oordt guided us in eurythmy. In the
subsequent conversations each day there was no leader and
no one needed to be led! Christy Barnes, substituting for Arvia Ege, helped to set the stage with a lecture the first even­
ing and many seed-thoughts were planted then. The other
evenings were taken up by an illustrated talk by Donald
Hall on the trends in modern art, a presentation of Dame
Felicia’s fairy tales from Rudolf Steiner’s Mystery Plays by
Sophia Walsh, who also arranged an Easter program of
eurythmy, poetry and music (thanks to Betty Hamilton) with
an address by Henry Barnes.
The form and substance of all these events wove them­
selves into the fabric of the conversations. There is a chal­
lenging enigma in artistic activity, especially for anthroposophists, for it arises in the dream consciousness and is
killed by the activity of the untransformed intellect.
Therefore can art really be talked about? And yet, is it not
our task to bring it into the clear light of consciousness? By
pursuing the processes by which the artist deals with the
ripening forces of time, with form and substance, motion and
relaxation, subject and object, macrocosm and microcosm,
breathing and transformation, we began to grasp living
methods by which the modern artist can work to transform
both the intellect and the subconscious artistic approach of
the past to a clear, creative ego consciousness, one that puts
him on the road also to the transformation of evil.
Certainly, many helpful thoughts were expressed at
these meetings, and perhaps it was the experience of all pre­
sent that our practice in the arts of eurythmy, speech, and
painting enabled us to bring a heightened awareness to the
art of conversation. And is not conversation “more quick­
ening than the light”?
Thanks are due to the Hawthorne Valley School and to
the Rudolf Steiner Farm School for the use of their
buildings, to Jeanne Bergen for the organisation, to Bill
Simons for some wonderful meals, and to hosts in the village
for making this “happening” possible.
—Mary Rubach, Berkeley, Ca.
SACRAMENTO CENTER FOR
ANTHROPOSOPHICAL STUDIES has a new name:
RUDOLF STEINER COLLEGE
The Sacramento Center for Anthroposophical
Studies was founded on Washington’s Birthday 1976 by a
group of friends under the inspiration of Carl Stegmann,
and began with a special emphasis on American Studies.
Now in its third year, with more than 50 students, the
Council felt after most careful consideration that the bold
step of a new name was necessary. The Council decided
on Rudolf Steiner’s birthday 1979 to re-name the Center
“Rudolf Steiner College.” This became effective as of
Easter 1979. This step had been long prepared and care­
fully planned. We received full support from the Depart­
ment of Education —California State, which in November
1978 had granted us Final Course Approval for our Teach­
er Training Program.
We presently offer a full-time Foundation Year in An­
27
throposophy and a full-time Waldorf Teacher Training
Program. Evening courses and conferences on American
Studies and related subjects are woven into the year. The
courses include a wide spectrum of the sciences and
humanities, and special emphasis is placed on a variety
of artistic activities, such as eurythmy, music, drama,
painting; courses in biodynamic agriculture, handcrafts
and projective geometry also form part of a broad curricu­
lum.
Rudolf Steiner College owes much of its growth
within a comparatively short time to the warm support we
have received from other anthroposophical activities in
the area, particularly from the Sacramento Waldorf
School, the Faust Branch of the Anthroposophical So­
ciety, and the Christian Community. Rudolf Steiner Col­
lege aims at responding to the needs of young people
who are seeking a more encompassing view of life, by
way of the spiritual scientific path that quickens and en­
livens the whole human being.
We have a strong faculty and welcome guest lec­
turers from far and wide.
—Rene M. Querido
NOTES ON DEVELOPMENTS IN CALIFORNIA—
SACRAMENTO AREA
The Faust Branch of the Anthroposophical Society in
Sacramento has presently about 120 members. At the re­
quest of members, the Branch meetings have become
weekly events on Wednesday evenings on the premises
of Rudolf Steiner College. The special character of the
monthly meetings remains; but particularly younger
members have shown considerable initiative in wishing
to deepen their understanding of the Society by meeting
more often.
This initiative was an outcome of the Regional Con­
ference held in Fair Oaks, February 23-25, 1979. [See report
in Spring 1979 Newsletter.]
Mainly under the auspices of the Sacramento
Waldorf School and Rudolf Steiner College, we had the
visit of Francis Edmunds and Frances Woolls, both of
whom made key contributions during the Conference of
the Waldorf teachers in the West, February 17-21, 1979,
held at the Sacramento Waldorf School.
Hans Gebert was a guest more recently and gave a
most stimulating three-week course in projective
geometry at Rudolf Steiner College. In addition he taught
at the Sacramento Waldorf School and gave public lec­
tures at the Faust Branch of the Society.
For the past three years weekly public lectures were
held regularly under the auspices of the Sacramento
Faust Branch. Although we have noticed a steady in­
crease among the audience, we have not yet been able to
interest the general public.
The Institute for Living Arts has contributed in mak­
ing therapy and the arts more accessible to a larger com­
munity in this area.
Ilse Kimball’s eurythmy course has attracted atten­
tion, and she played a central part in organizing a very fine
28
performance during the Waldorf teachers conference.
Of major interest in recent months have been the var­
ious serious attempts to found new Waldorf schools —es­
pecially in Northern California. Parents, friends and mem­
bers have created small and in some cases very steady
nuclei towards the birth of new foundations in San Fran­
cisco, Los Gatos, Pasadena, Nevada City, Paradise/
Chico, in addition to various seedlings in Oregon. Ex­
perienced Waldorf teachers, such as Nancy Poer, Betty
and Franklin Kane, Rene Querido, and also members of
the faculty of Rudolf Steiner College have been active in
helping these difficult ventures. In this area of the coun­
try alone there is a most urgent need for Waldorf teach­
ers. Also on the Hawaiian Islands the work is growing,
and the founding of a third Waldorf school is envisaged.
For further information write to: Rudolf Steiner College,
9200 Fair Oaks Blvd., Fair Oaks, CA 95628.
—Rene M. Querido
REPORT ON ACTIVITIES IN THE
SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA
This has been an eventful year. Members have ex­
perienced a new way of working together both locally and
with members from other areas on the West Coast. An In­
itiative Committee of five members including a repre­
sentative of each of the four regions in the Bay Area was
formed in January 1978. This ultimately evolved into a
Working Group of thirteen members who have committed
themselves to meeting as often as is necessary to plan pro­
grams and discuss administrative problems. So far there
have been seven meetings and they have been very encour­
aging. This development has gone alongside the movement
to foster cooperation between the different centers in Cali­
fornia.
A meeting with representatives from Honolulu, Van­
couver, New Mexico, San Diego, Los Angeles, Sacramento,
and the Bay Area at the West Coast Members Conference
and Council Meeting in Berkeley in September 1977 was
followed by a conference in Los Angeles in September 1978,
and there were the seeds sown for the conference in Sacra­
mento in February 1979. With the move towards regionalisation there is a growing sense that the Society is being
fully incarnated on the West Coast for the first time. There
is a heightened sense of responsibility and realisation that it
can only be what we make it. Joergen Smit’s lecture in May
1978 is memorable if only because he brought home to us
that the spiritual Goetheanum is wherever there is activity.
We shall continue to ponder the question “Is the Anthro­
posophical Society shell or seed?”
In January 1978 the theme for the public conference in
Berkeley was “The Question of Evil and the Christ
Impulse.” Attendance was lower than in previous con­
ferences. Those who helped to organise a conference at
Stanford University in October with the theme “Health,
Nutrition, and Education for the Future” were, however, en­
couraged by the number of participants and the quality of
the participation.
Four lectures under the title “Who was Rudolf
Steiner?” given in Berkeley between January and April fol­
lowed by two further evenings on festivals drew altogether
about forty people. In the fall three lectures under the title
“Knowledge of the Self” were given at the new location at
445 Colusa Ave., Kensington. The Waldorf evenings ar­
ranged in May and June and again in November and Decem­
ber drew a good number of people, but the unpredictability
and drop in attendance has given rise to the earnest ques­
tion “Should such attempts to awaken interest in Waldorf
Education in the East Bay have priority over other ac­
tivities?”
Artistic activities included monthly eurythmy
workshops until May in Berkeley followed by weekly classes
beginning in September. Classes are also now being given in
San Francisco. Sophia Walsh gave an invigorating speech
workshop in March. Water color painting has been offered
through most of the year. In October, the performance of the
Eurythmeum at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland was an
event without precedent. There was a standing ovation in an
almost full house, and not all the newspaper reviews were
unfavorable.
St. John’s Day and Michaelmas were celebrated by
members and friends, Easter as well as the Christmas
meeting was for members only. A St. John’s Day celebration
had not been attempted before, but the consensus was that
we should try again.
This report would not be complete without reference to
the many meetings arranged by local members in San Fran­
cisco preparatory to opening a Waldorf School in the fall of
this year.
The statement of income and expenses follows:
Income
Dues .......................... $ 718.00
Special Contributions . 1,694.79
Collection
at L ectu res.............. 1,065.16
TOTAL
$ 3 , 4 7 7 . 95
Expenses
Lecturers ................... $1,220.50
Rent .............................1,026.50
P r in tin g ...........................387.59
Postage ..............................581.21
Miscellaneous ................ 306.78
TOTAL
$ 3 ,5 2 2 . 5 8
—f r om a report by Hermann C. Rubach
TEXAS CONFERENCE, March 24-25, 1979
New stimulus was given to the growing work of An­
throposophy in Texas by the first public conference held in
Austin at one of the historic hotels. There were over a hun­
dred registered for the full program: “The Me-Generation
and Man’s Quest for the Ultimate Self —A Destiny Con­
ference.” As many as 140 people participated in parts of the
events, many of whom experienced the work of Rudolf
Steiner for the first time.
Efficient chairman was Robert Walker of Houston,
whose untiring efforts actually brought about the confer­
ence. A musical setting for the lectures under the direction
of Bob Dudney provided harmonious balance, as well as
pleasure.
Diethart Jaehnig’s challenging opening lecture, “Man
Between Animal and Angel,” was resolved by his final lec­
ture on “Man the Redeemer.”
Werner Glas led his audience through “Stages in the
Quest for Identity” and “Karma With and Without Medita­
tion.”
Both of these lecturers combined inspiration with prac­
tical suggestions in a helpful way.
Beredene Jocelyn spoke on “Destiny of Life’s Un­
folding,” expanding the conference theme through com­
prehension of the planetary influences in life’s stages. Each
of the lecturers met informally with special interest groups
Saturday night.
Truus Geraets introduced eurythmy in an afternoon
workshop which was indeed “An Experience in Visible
Speech and Tone.” At its conclusion the adults were invited
to observe her work with a small group of young children.
The conference concluded with a eurythmy perform­
ance on Sunday afternoon. The variety and beauty of the
program gave a remarkable impression of this “new art.”
Assistance with reading, music, and lighting was ably pro­
vided by members of the Texas groups. Appreciation and
genuine interest in eurythmy were evident from audience
enthusiasm.
The atmosphere of the whole conference was one of har­
monious working together.
Three weeks later an Easter meeting was held in Kerrville for a brief festival celebration combined with a followup discussion of the conference. Many messages of appre­
ciation had been received by the chairman. It was heart­
ening news that all financial obligations had been met. The
first Texas conference was a success.
—Mary Ann Logan
NEWS FROM AUSTIN, TEXAS
Here in Austin there is a growing amount of anthro­
posophical activity. Presently, we have three groups meet­
ing: a general anthroposophical study group, a Waldorf
education study/action group, and a group studying bio­
dynamic agriculture. A lending library with some 150 titles
has been established and is being used regularly.
Much active work is being done toward the opening of a
Waldorf school. A non-profit corporation, The Rudolf
Steiner School Association of Austin aims to inform the
public about these schools and to raise the needed funds.
Two members are planning to take the teacher’s training
course and to return to Austin to teach. Monthly lectures
are being offered to the public.
It is hoped that our activities will gather many more
helping hands to carry on the work of Anthroposophy.
—from a report by Eileen McGarrigle
RUDOLF STEINER SEMINARS ANNOUNCE:
Participation in “Festival for Mind — Body — Spirit,”
Sept. 26-30, 1979, Coliseum, Columbus Circle, NYC. Exhibitor
Booth #G5 (sale of books, Weleda articles, toys).
“The Rhythms of Nature and the Life of the Growing
eh
T
—
Waldorf Approach,” Sebastopol, Calif. Oct. 19-20,
1979.
For further information contact Mrs. E. H. Bishop, 83
Franklin St., Englewood, N.J. 07631.
29
PROPOSED
BUDGET
INCOME
Dues
N . Y . C o n t r i b . to B l d g .
Gifts & Contribs.
Other
Total Income
FOR
1979-80
1977-78
1978-79
1979-80
42,857
2,216
50,586
57,000
2,500
25,000
25,502
14,921
85,496
ADMINISTRATION
M a i l i ng
1,697
O f f i c e S u p p l i e s & Tel.
4,999
Office Salaries
21,953
A c c o u n t i n g & Legal Fees
3,833
P a y r o ll T a x e s
1,271
Publicity & Promotion
1,221
Exec. Comm. Exp.)
C o u n c il E x p .
)
6, 722
R e g i o n a l O f f i c e Exp.
2,000
M i c h a e l m a s Conf. T v l . Sprt
Mi s c .
, 15?
Tota1 Admin.
1,500
30,000
12, 0 00
94,086
97,500
•
2,000
4,000
24,000
4,000
1,500
2,500
5, 000
3 1 ,000 B
4,500
1,700
2,000
2,000
5, 00 0
4,000
5,000
•
43,899
F A C I L I T I ES
Heat, Light & Maint.
B l d g . Sal a r i es
P a y r o l l Taxes
In s u r a n c e
Total Facilities
6,351
9,386
543
3,073
19,353
SERVICES
Newsletter
Library
Total Services
250
57,400
6,000
10,500
700
11,000
3,000
3,200
22, T O O
7,000
900
20,200
8,000
400
10,000
312
8,887
8,4oo
11,000
8,575
D
E
700
4 6 ,7 5 0
1 ,000
REGIONAL OPERATIONS
Midwest Region
Western Region
T o t a l R e g . Op.
Total
A
13,000 C
4,000
2,000
6,000
72,089
75,350
96,500
1 3, 407
18,736
1,000
(20,335)
(18,750)
( 6 , 928)
(
Expenses
4
O p e r . Gain
Net
Exp.
(Loss)
of
Activities
Net O p e r a t i n g
(To be p a i d
In t h e
Loss
from
fiscal
Contributions
Dues
35,670
(34,670)
14)
Capital)
years
the
following
1976-77
10,329.87
22,532.00
monies
1977-78
10,234.61
17,617.00
(12/31)
were
sent
to
1978-79
1,395.00
24,443.00
Dornach:
SUMMARY OF A C T I V I T I E S REQUESTS
Actual
1977-78
A P P R O V E D ON -GOING
Eury th m y A s s o c i a t i o n
of North America
M y s t e r y Drama Group
School of E ur ythmy
(Spring Valley)
Class Readers
Rudolf Steiner Se minars
Journal for A n t h r o p o s o p h y
A r t i s t i c Method C o n f e r e n c e
( H a r le m v i l Ie)
Speech T ra i n i n g
(Los Angeles)
P u b l i c a t i o n Fund and
M i s c e l l a n e o u s Fund
Est . Actual
1978-79
Request
1979-80
R ec om m e n d e d Ma ximums
1979-80
6,445
1 ,503
2,000
2,500
8,970
3,750
8,970
3,750
5 ,000
(420)
5,681
5,000
500
5,000
7,000
7,000
1 ,136
2,000
1 , 300
500
500
500
500
500
750
750
750
3,000
4 ,000
47,4 70
3 ,5 0 0
21,185
4,500 Budget
2,000 Budget
24,750
1 ,000
17,200 G
1 ,000
7,200 (plus $10,000 raised)
2,000 (through gifts)
34, 6 70
O U T S T A N D I N G LOANS
Dr. Incao (interest free)
Drs. Rentea (interest free)
Rudolf Steiner Farm School (5% Int.)
W eleda, Inc. (interest free)
Total
NEW REQUESTS
S a c r a m e n t o Capital
Youth Work
3,500 (paid 500 1/6/79)
5,000
5,000 F
5,000
18 , 500"
Improvement
Total
0 - 30,000
1 ,000
Budget Effect
6,000 one time capital gift
1 ,000
35,670
Notes :
A.
Includes money paid by A n t h r o p o s o p h i c Press for the sale of books at 211 wh i ch p r e v i o u s l y was
d edu ct e d from the clerical salary costs.
B.
Now reflects full salaries.
C.
Includes di vi d en ds and interest on all bonds and se cu ri ti e s now in the So ci et y 's name.
D.
See new a cc o un t i n g section below.
E.
This amount will be s u p p l e m e n t e d through a special appeal for c o n t r i b u t i o n s b y me mb e r s .
F.
This original loan of $10,000 (at 5%) has been 50% repaid.
G.
Includes c o m p e n s a t i o n for a full time ad mi n is t r a t o r .