Journal for ANTHROPOSOPHY

NUMBER[Image:Martinc. Germany,engraving,St.Michael,Schongauer,1450-1491] 51 FALL 1990 Journal for ANTHROPOSOPHY

The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness, and in human responsibility... We are still incapable of understanding that the only genuine backbone of all

our actions — if they are to be

moral — is responsibility. Responsibility to something higher than my family, my country, my firm, my success.

Vaclav Havel, Czechoslavakian president and writer, in an address to the U.S. Congress, February, 1990 (Taken from The New Yorker).

NUMBER 51 • FALL 1990 ISSN-0021-8235

Front Cover Engraving: S t M ic h a e l by Martin Schongauer, Germany, c. 1450-1491.

EDITOR H ilm a r M oore MANAGING EDITOR Clare Moore

The Journal for Anthroposophy is published twice a year by the Anthroposophical Society in America. Subscription is $12.00 per year (domestic); $15.00 per year (foreign). Manuscripts (double-spaced, typed), poetry, artwork, and advertising can be mailed to the editor. For information on sending manuscripts on disc, contact the editor. Back issues can be obtained for $5.00 ea. plus postage. All correspon­ dence should be sent to:

Journal for Anthroposophy HCOl Box 24 Dripping Springs, TX 78620

Journal for Anthroposophy, Number 51, Fall 1990 © 1990, The Anthroposophical Society in America. CONTENTS

5 A Thread from the Tapestry Alanus Wove: Nature and Inner Development in Alan of Lille and Bernardus Silvestris BY JOEL MORROW 25 What is a Waldorf School? BY JOHN F. GARDNER 33 Sex and the Trinity (A Meditation) BY MICHAEL MILLER 50 The Three Faces of Celtic Man BY VAN JAMES 60 A Christ Experience in the Light of Spiritual Science BY CALVERT ROSZELL 69 From a Notebook 1942 BY ALBERT STEFFEN 70 The Force of Logos and the Force of the “I” BY GEORG KÜHLEWIND

POEMS

57 Trinity • BY REX RAAB 58 The Decade • BY ELAINE M. UPTON 59 Before a Picture of the Madonna and Child BY ANDREW HOY

BOOK REVIEWS

80 On the Threshold of a Celestial Science BY ANDREW CHRISTOPHER LORAND 83 Behold, I Make All Things New: Toward a World Pentecost BY GINA LALLI 85 Cosmic Aspects of the Foundation Stone BY WILLIAM BENTO 87 Little Folk’s Winter’s Tale BY KATHERINE YOUNG

of stacks ofharvestedgraininafield,withChartrescathedralthedistance,andnotext]stacks 88 Notes on aphotographnextpage(4)contained[Note: Contributors

A Thread from the Tapestry Alanus Wove Nature and Inner Development in Alan of Lille and Bernardus Silvestris

BY JOEL MORROW For Ekkehard Piening

Within this cradle the infant universe squalls Bernardus Silvestris

W h e n Chartres is approached from the countryside, the cathedral appears to be floating through a sea of grain like a fantastic tall ship or a floating city. It almost gives the impression of the island monastery of St. Michael on the French coast, except that the sea around Chartres is composed of farmland, the waves of wheat or barley. From the perspective of the countryside, neither the ancient town nor its busy streets—not even the solid foundation of the church beneath it—are visible. The cathedral appears to be free of its medieval moorings and to be sailing onward in time, though it is difficult to say how such a ship could remain afloat today, at the end of the 20th century. Yet if one could overcome this paradox, one might ask what the destination of this ship might be? Has its spiritual impulse undergone metamorphosis in such a way that it could be seen as a living force in the spiritual life of the present? Not an easy question to answer, not even when one carefully studies the vast library of its windows and sculpture or—more difficult still— studies the strange allegorical writ­ ings of the masters who taught there in the 12th century. Yet this image of Chartres as a ship sailing onward in time through fields of g r a in — illusion though it is— closely relates to the inner quality of soul of those who established the cathedral school a thousand years ago. I also sense that it relates to the immediate destination of that school as it lives in the present.

5 6 • J oel Morrow

As you might imagine, sailing in the eleventh century was neither safe nor comfortable, even for those who could fix their sights on the Stella Maris—the divine Star of Mary— in the night sky. More ships broke apart in those rough seas than safely came to port. Even for great teachers such as Alan of Lille, the journey was characterized by an inner effort almost exactly corresponding to childbirth, a “pain of becoming” in the soul likened by those teachers to the fierce contrac­ tions of the final hours of labor. The reason for this is that— different from other scholastics— the Masters of Chartres retained within their ideas powerful formative images akin to the formation of life itself— which often broke apart the timbers of their accustomed world and let in the wild and barely navigable etheric sea. For this reason alone, Alan of Lille, Bernardus Silvestris, and others were able to maintain a close connection to the powers of metamorphosis in the human soul. They could do so primarily because they were able to find w ith in ideas themselves a generative capacity usually ascribed only to the re­ productive forces of nature. In an allegorical form, they addressed the Being of nature herself and questioned her how the forces of creation could be continued in the human being. They wished to know how what was given as formative force in nature could become the agent for self-development in the human soul. To work toward this, the Masters of Chartres listened intently to the way nature continues her work in the human being. Rudolf Steiner, in a similar context, de­ scribes this path:

Nature reveals its mysteries to him who through his art en­ ables himself to continue its creative work. But in this continu­ ation he cannot succeed unless in his art he has first listened to the meaning of nature’s will, and unless he has recognized how nature’s revelations arise through its infinite faculty of evolution, coming forth from the womb of time in definite forms of exis­ tence.1

Sometimes, however, when a body so many centuries old washes ashore, you cannot tell at first if it is alive or dead. It lies in the surf between ourselves and a sea of unlimited depth, the breath of the surf lifting its arms up and down— like breathing, like a dream of the living, like a memory. Minnows and alewives, bass and spiny dogfish swim in a dream about its ears, their slowly moving gills brushing its hair, which seems— at least seems— to be breathing. And you won- A Thread from the Tapestry Alanus Wove • 7

[I Jphotographmage : ] o aby of ellily M orrow A supersensible gesture is contained in every visible movement of growth. It corresponds to an inner movement in the human soul. der, can a body submerged for so many centuries, drifting so to speak in a timeless etheric sea, still be alive? Eight hundred years ago, when Alan still meditated along the banks of the cosmic ocean, weighing the thought of a second Adam in his heart, he too had fallen down as one dead. His reason left him, he floated in a watery medium which wrapped around him, fold upon fold, enclosing him, suffocating him, filling him with fear. As in a dream, he suddenly realized that this cosmic ocean is a garment and that all the fishes swim in layers on a living subtle fabric, form swallowing form, ever moving, but— in Alan’s vision— poised in time. Weeping. The surf seemed to weep. The surface of appearance seemed to weep. And its flowing fibers “woven so finely that they evaded the searching eye” seemed to be actively “gliding down from an inner palace of the impassable world.”2 To Alan’s vision, Nature, the bearer of these supersensible forces, seemed overwhelmed by an unquenchable sadness and longing. And this was strange, for the sadness and longing seemed inseparable from this being’s ability to shadow forth every imaginable creature, as if longing itself were the 8 • J oel Morrow inner side of creation. Creatures seemed to surge forth from the pregnant mass into the sunlight, momentarily shine, and then myste­ riously recede. And this was confusing, for Alan could not tell if he was witnessing divine creation or the birth of an inner faculty within himself. At all events this process— inner and outer—made the creatures of nature exceedingly happy.

You would have thought that all the elements were having a celebration, were having so to speak all their native powers re­ newed.3

Alan, however, is so stunned by the sheer in w ard n ess of nature’s being, that he falls into the surf like one dead.

When I saw this kinswoman of mine at close hand, I fell on my face, completely buried in the delirium of a trance. I was neither alive nor dead, but was afflicted by a state between the two.4

Natura addresses Alan, as the representative of the cognitive facul­ ties of his time, with the full force of her scorn:

What blindness of ignorance... what impairment of sense, what weakness of reason have cast a cloud over your intellect, driven your reason into exile, dulled the power of your senses, so that your mind is not only robbed of an intimate knowledge of your foster mother, but also at its first rising, the star of your judgement is forced to set as though stricken by a monstrous and unheard-of appearance!5

What strikes Alan so forcibly, however, is how deformed Nature’s garment has become, wherever its fibers have been touched by human intellect. There “the tunic suffered a rending of its parts, showing the effects of injuries and insults.”6 How has it come about, Alan asks, that the human intellect has done so much damage to your garment? Natura’s answer is hard to grasp— for humans, she says, are a living paradox. Human thinking possesses a transcendent creative power, yet that power of transcendence is somehow enslaved to the most ephemeral of desires. And this is because humans still identify themselves completely with the formative and reproductive forces A Thread from the Tapestry Alanus Wove • 9 that nature has implanted in them to further creation; they cannot read the supersensible script of those forces which she herself pro­ vides. For this reason Natura delivers a stunning rebuke to Alan as well, despite his position as the foremost spiritual teacher of his time:

I believe that you are a soldier drawing pay in the army of desire and are associated with him by some kind of brotherhood arising from a deep close friendship. For you are largely trying to trace out his inextricable labyrinth when you should rather be direct­ ing your attention of mind more closely to the account enriched by the wealth of my ideas.7

As Alan slowly regains his memory, the fibers of Nature’s garment begin to coalesce into a lofty but wholly unfamiliar sense of self, a human identity somehow left behind— as in a dream— from a time before the earth was formed. He sees how—to a certain extent—the lost parts of self still extend in fibers through every creature living on the earth. Alan somehow remembers the face of this unencompass- able life, which arises before his inner vision— in a new form— as the Demeter being of the Ancient Mysteries. What causes him to swoon, however, is that Natura is asking him to transform her entire being into an inner faculty.

For I am the one who formed the nature of the human being according to the exemplar and likeness of the structure of the universe, so that, in him, as in a mirror of the universe itself, nature’s lineaments might be there to see... the image of this perfectly ordered state shines forth in the human.... For this reason did I leave the secret abode of the heavens above and come down to this transitory and sinking world, so that I might leave with you, Alan, as my intimate and confidant, my plaintive lament for the accursed excesses of humanity.8

Natura speaks to Alan, plaintively and with utter vulnerability, of an inwardly vast journey between the details of her offspring and their supersensible origin, a journey whose ultimate destination is the inner creation of a second Adam. From her very feeling of incom­ pleteness, she longs for a new creation and she offers herself—with her astounding inner mobility—as a prototype and teacher for the new faculty. 10 • J oel Morrow

] J[Iphotographmage : ] o aof elplant M orrow The forms of nature enclose a secret world, a speaking presence all but mute to the modern faculty of thinking.

With the aid of a reed pen, the maiden called up various images by drawing on slate tablets. The picture, however, did not cling closely to the underlying material, but quickly fading and disappearing, left no trace of the impression behind. Although the maiden, by repeatedly calling these up, gave them a continu­ ity of existence, yet the images in her projected picture failed to endure.9

Natura’s own ability to call phenomena into being and dismiss them in death must be learned (inwardly in pictures) as the prototype for the transformation of the human soul. Yet how could Alan possibly requite the burden of this intimacy, A Thread from the Tapestry Alanus Wove • 11 just at a time when the very opposite forces were beginning to impinge powerfully on humanity? Perhaps, after all, that is why Alan and Bernardus address this transformation as allegory, as Art. Like harbingers of the Word, they describe a distant landscape for us who today more than ever before “live like foreigners on the outskirts of the universe.’’10

A Cosmic Embryology The Cosmographia of Bernardus Silvestris is probably the strangest work of embryology ever written.11 It actually begins in a kind of celestial delivery room and proceeds through a series of vast contrac­ tions: first the birth of the macrocosm, second the birth of the human microcosm (the first Adam), and finally the beginning of an entirely new cosmos, the second Adam. In this final birth, the real goal of the work, the inner faculties of the microcosm begin to move fluidly within the vast horizon of the macrocosm. Yet in order to show the inner correspondence of the three, these births—upper and lower, inner and outer— at times appear to take place simultaneously. In this way, however, the human is led to experience how its new move­ ments of inner life are really severely contracted pre-earthly macro- cosmic forces. In the opening scene, Silva, “nature’s most ancient manifestation, ever pregnant yet never able to deliver,” is convulsed in closely timed contractions that never come to an end! Her problem is that she cannot “conceive” what her offspring will be. They exist in a heaving mass of potentiality, “an inexhaustible womb of generation, confined by no boundaries or limitations”!12 Silva existed without rest and could not remember a time when she might have been less continually engaged in the formation of new (potential) creatures and the reassimilation of those deceased... (her womb) was drawn out and enlarged by an infinite range of essences, qualities, and quantities.13 You might imagine that she was exhausted, but she was not! She continues, world without end, tirelessly birthing but never giving birth, vacillating, ever liable to change from one form to another, such that no material nature might hope to be assigned an identity proper to itself. Through just such a sea, has the ship of Chartres sailed onward in time, and though her sails are not yet visible to outer sight, she has not foundered or lost her way. Her sails are filled with the longing for a 12 • J oel Morrow new creation, a new faculty that might emerge from this sea of birth, like the ever-transformable Proteus, as if the full formation of our limbs is still curled like a deep longing, like an unknown potential, within the blue veils of this etheric sea. Natura is asking us to feel as if we were not yet, and were on ly the deep longing to be. The pain exists in remaining within the potential inner force of creation , but not allowing finished thought to arise as an outcome. Bernardus is leading us into an inner world that is outwardly depicted as a Cult of Birth. He is showing us the inner side of the central relic in the cathedral— Mary’s birthing veil. Here we find the inner reason why the dead were never interred at Chartres. Bernardus is leading us into a world before our world was, more living than our world, where the longing to become was all that existed, but which nevertheless carried the original impulse of Genesis. This is also why a ll the beings in the h id d e n pantheon of Chartres— as opposed to the predominantly m a le sculptures—are pictured as feminine. All the beings who bear the world in potential— even Nous, T he D iv in e M in d—must be pictured as women. The understanding which Bernardus seeks can only be grasped out of the essentially sculptural impulse present in a dreamlike way in feminine longing. For this reason, Natura appeals to the Divine Mind with a longing for development which she herself cannot completely define.

Though what I seek to realize is beyond my comprehension— that Silva be made more malleable, that she be drawn forth to assume the image of a nobler form... (yet I sense that) Silva yearns to emerge from her ancient confusion. She demands the shaping influence of number and the bonds of harmony. (I sense that) Silva contains the original nature of things diffused through­ out her vast womb. Within this cradle the infant universe squalls!*

Not only is Bernardus sharing with us an insight that often makes men quite uncomfortable—that undefined feminine longing is a human reflection of a world-creative power—but he is also laying the groundwork for imaginative cognition. Bernardus is directing us to an inner space with no previous claims yet made upon it. We have to ask ourselves: What is this inner space—which exists as original funda­ ment and birthing ground of the soul, which is both uncontrollably vital and formless, yet also untrodden and freely available? A Thread from the Tapestry Alanus Wove • 13

In Nous, pure movements of the mind, divorced from created objects and strengthened, have the potential to create life. Even as they first appear—like virginal buds in the will— they display a fore­ taste of the created world: a firm, immovable one, rooted in full attention toward the object of concentration (earth); a flowing, sink­ ing one in which we are immersed in the fluid movements of change appearing and disappearing in nature (water); a rising light one in which flowing movement of change gives way, unexpectedly, to a metamorphosis not predictable on the basis of any sequence of prior movements (air); and finally, an all-permeating warm one in which the force of the whole is concentrated into a seed capable of manifest­ ing in the future the invisible will working in all the foregoing parts (fire). In the Cosmographia, the c h a r a c te r of the Divine Will can be discerned from the beginning; in the initial movements of Mind, the Divine Will is apparent. Not apparent to us however! How rarely do

[I Jphotographmage : ] o plant by of el M orrow According to Bernardus the cosmic soul is a supersensible sphere which encloses the world of the living. 14 • J oel Morrow we, the offspring of the Divine Mind, notice at all the character of the will we pour into our thinking, let alone its g e r m in a l character. We do not yet read the will itself, even though this will, according to Bernar­ dus, is a direct offspring of the Divine Will. The movements of inner will alone would be very descriptive, if we could find a way to give them a hearing. They would bear within them, as Bernardus says, a form ative script o f the cosmic future. In the Cosmographia a form appears out o fvthese primary move­ ments of will. In the creation of the world it appears at first inwardly as a sphere of vast size. Its shape appears like a steadily flowing fountain, which Nous calls the “cosmic soul.”15 Using a macrocosmic image, Bernardus is pointing to the creation of an inner space within the h u m a n microcosm which will be capable of giving birth to the second Adam. To follow this birthing process still farther, let us turn again to Alan of Lille.

The Seven Freeing Arts Alan explores the inner space of the human Nous (the feminine being “Phronesis,” or “human understanding,” in Alan’s allegorical terms), by undergoing a schooling at the hand of seven spiritual beings. These beings are living pillars or carytids which hold the starry dome of the structure of a future knowledge aloft. They must be regarded as beings, not as “courses o f study” but as living pillars in a supersensible structure. And this is especially difficult, since their descendants have fallen so far below their former estate that they have become unrecognizable. In Alan’s Anticlaudianus ,16 the Seven Liberal Arts— literally the Seven F reein g Arts—are pictured as feminine, supersensible beings through whom the inner space of the Word could gradually be explored.17 Alan says that these seven beings all strangely resemble one another, as if each being was a successive modification of the one that came before. Not the same, each succeeding being was a com­ plete metamorphosis of the previous one, but in such a way that the path of the former became a new and unexpected appearance in the one following. The successive metamorphoses of these seven beings recapitulate the condensation of the human logos out of the vast Cosmic Logos. The original macrocosmic forces described by Bernardus can be found again severely contracted within the human soul. One finds A Thread from the Tapestry Alanus Wove • 15 them enclosing and forming the soul within childhood and succes­ sively unfolding into the future. Through these seven beings, the p r e - earthlyhuman forces are given over, step by step, into human hands. The seven beings were actually divided into groups of three and four. The first three, the “Trivium” (another utterly fallen concept!), were the three who form the human soul, the microcosm. In the school of Chartres, Grammatica, Logica and Rhetorica were not “sub­ jects,” but spiritual teachers of the Word, as it lives in our human faculties. The second group, the “Quadrivium,” revealed the Word as it leads from the human microcosm into the macrocosm. In Grammatica—the being of language—the human being re­ ceives the Word from without. Grammatica is pictured by Alan as a pure v irg in a l being who nevertheless can nurse the young with the milk of understanding. Our “humanness” suckles on the Word. Gram­ matica is a virgin because she precedes all particular languages and possesses the childlike flexibility to become any one of them.18 She nourishes the Word in the human soul from without like a mother, but like a mother, she is also pictured as holding a switch: the garment of language, an outer discipline, is experienced as a precursor to inner movement. The in n e r d isc ip lin e of the Word is not yet a possession of the soul, is not formed so far that its user can fully participate in its inner formation. In Grammatica, our humanness is born and begins to sp ea k . In Logica, understanding begins to be born from within: Logica resembles her sister Grammatica closely, yet her breasts have become dry and shriveled. A contraction of the fullness and life within lan­ guage has had to take place. Yet at the same time the beauty of the original binding force within language lives all the more clearly, despite its hollowness. Through logic, the structure of language reappears in an astounding metamorphosis: The original virginal force is born again —this time from within—as thinking. The pure faculty reappears as a severe “contraction” of the Divine Logos, so that the ligaments of the Divine Word become one’s own. In L og ica, the Word is born again from within. In Rhetorica, the Word shows its manifoldness of being and full­ ness of movement. It can become living and flexible, can move in a multitude of fluid media and must learn to adapt itself according to the medium in which it swims, according to whom it addresses, according to whom or for whom it speaks. Here Alan presents the image of the Advocate (in law), where the individual no longer 16 • J oel Morrow merely speaks for itself, its own logic, but is trained to enter into the logic of another. He or she enters into another’s innermost point of view, following the threads of argument as this other logic interacts with the world, enters fully into the interests of another, thereby allowing the speechless to speak. In Rhetorica, the human being makes his or her own Word available to another, becomes fully attentive and finds the inner flexibility which is characteristic of the Divine Word. In Rhetorica, the human sacrifices her own Word to speak for another. In the second circle, the Quadrivium, the soul begins to find the connection between its human word and the Word within greater nature. In Arithmetica there dawns an experience of these interlock­ ing relationships themselves, yet totally separate from spoken word or concept. The force itself begins to be freed from its content. What appears as mere number sequence in the human mind, generates phenomena in nature (for example, the Fibonacci series in the se­ quence of leaves in plants). In Arithmetica, number gives birth to

[I Jphotographmage : ] oaby of eflower l M o r r o w If one enters Natura’s school, this bud continues to grow within the human soul. An inner space opens up— inwardly, expansively, geometrically. A Thread from the Tapestry Alanus Wove • 17 phenomena, both in the human mind as well as in nature. In Musica, an inner soul experience arises from numerical se­ quences. An inner content or resonance is experienced from these intervals, which was not at first evident. We feel the relationship between our soul and these numerical intervals, and through these intervals, something utterly invisible in number alone begins majesti­ cally to sound. In Musica, in ordered sequences o f tone, the Inner Word that cannot be spoken speaks. In Geometrica, the human logos learns to move freely within the non-visible, learns to function separately from the visible. It experi­ ences those pure relationships which stand at the root of nature as movements within itself, movements which allow us to enter those roots in nature, to know them.19 It begins to describe in itself the inner space in which its thought has its being. Through the study o f Geom­ etrica, the invisible space in which the Logos moves begins to speak. Astronomica is actually a connective link between the “human” Three and the “cosmic” Three, a connection between the human and the Divine. Through Astronomica, the geometrical movements within the human mind are connected to the movements of the planets around the sun. There they find their source. In Astronomica the invisible space of the Word within the soul is found to be a microcos- mic contraction of the starry spaces. In her, however, it is found, not as a concept but as a door. It describes the pathway between the human logos and the Cosmic Logos, once the inner movements of thinking have been experienced in their full nature, separate from phenomena. In Astronomica, the human logos learns to move within the Divine Logos.

Is the Sea of Birth Alive Again in Our Time? I would like to follow the foregoing transformation within Natura’s school, but I want to suggest at the onset that the method is qualita­ tive. Chartres represents a way of seeing th rou g h Natura’s being into the depths of the human soul. It is a qualitative method through which the soul begins to complete the work begun by Natura long ago. I draw my example from plant morphology, not only because it is the one with which I have the most familiarity, but because it is the one which arises most centrally out of the inner connection between human thinking and greater nature. Grammatica: To learn the language of nature is different from 18 • J oel Morrow learning human languages. Human languages are best learned by children when the formative forces have not yet completed their work. After these forces have formed the human, foreign languages become increasingly difficult to learn. Yet the child who speaks three languages fluently c a n n o t know the language of the forces forming her. The child lives joyfully out of these forces, but cannot express them as a language. Before this language can be spoken, the forces of growth must have completed their work. The grammar of nature’s language appears in the sequence of leaves along the stem. In this sequence the mind begins to follow— quite unconsciously at first— the map of the etheric; and initia lly we cannot connect these meanderings to any transformation of self. For

] J[drawingimage: ] o by a c h im B o c k e m u h l Leaf sequence of the field poppy (Papaver rhoeas) A Thread from the Tapestry Alanus Wove • 19 this to begin, the leaves and the sequences of leaves must be learned inwardly, in a sense not unlike a small child memorizing a poem. And though this learning doesn’t light up as a readable script, an inner virginal force responds powerfully to the music and meter of the plant’s livin g Word. Gradually, however, the dialogue of forces at work within the plant begins to dawn with a logic of its own—moving away form the lifeless world of human thinking. Gradually we follow in these leaves the footprints of the past and future. Our mind walks from youthful oval leaf-prints through a disturbing dialogue of serration and inden­ tation toward a new triangular word, which diminishes just at the moment that it begins to speak. Our everyday thinking is broken on the capstan bars of this journey, inwardly finding that these growth movements belong not only to the plant, but to our deepest under­ standing of self. What before appeared as discrete perceptions, be­ witched in their solemn stillness, becomes free to evolve in continu­ ous movement. Our thinking evolves towards a slow and powerfully moving stream of activity. The outer experience of the characteristic formative gesture of each plant can be experienced again inwardly as “understanding” itself, in the sense that each successive plant part (leaf arising from leaf, sepal from final leaf, petal from sepal) portrays as a living etheric gesture what we experience abstractly as the relationship between concepts. The “visible” etheric gesture in the plant portrays the non- visible inner movement which is the foundation and connective tissue of our understanding. When the plant’s successive gestures of growth are inwardly replicated (meditated upon), they carve out inner movements within us, inner movements which are the true legs and connective force of thinking. Not thoughts themselves, but the unnoticed force which produces thought. In apprehending the plant’s etheric gesture, not of our own mak­ ing, but rather Nature’s gesture of the formative force modified in each plant, we can even discover (much to our surprise) that this unfamiliar etheric movement is more closely connected to our self than anything we have hitherto been able to produce out of our­ selves. In these gestures the self is finally at home. Spiritually speaking, in the foregoing we have on ly been dealing with the plant at the level of Grammatica. We have only faintly risen above the level of grammar, insofar as we have pointed to the generation of an inner force—very faint to be sure—through observ- 20 • J oel Morrow

[ ]Jphotographimage : o plant by leaves of e l M o r r o w In Nature, creatures seemed to surge forth from the pregnant mass into the sunlight, momentarily shine, and then mysteriously recede. Alan could not tell if he was witnessing Divine Creation or the birth of an inner faculty within himself. A Thread from the Tapestry Alanus Wove • 21

ing the effect of the plant’s movement on our own thinking and inner being. To go farther, the entire sequence of forms would have to become correspondingly as living in our mind as they were in the original plant. The living plant would have to become pure inner resonance. The black tracks in Grohmann or Bochemuhl20 can teach us the “letters” but the music would never come to life in this way. Even so, we appreciate that w ith ou t laying the leaves out in dead se­ quences (making our own plant pressings), the subtle changes of form might never have been noticed. Once this stimulation has occurred, however, inner space can only be carved out sculpturally on the basis of the living. Only here can we find the life within the inner sequences o f thought. In the living plant we find a resonance within these sequences which is not only musical, but life generative. Particularly in relation to the fountain of new leaf forms which arise in such a lively way, full of dramatic movement, from the meristem— an inner space opens up, inwardly, expansively, geometrically. I believe this experience corresponds to the creation of the “cosmic soul” in Bernardus’ Cosmographia. But again, all this in relation to the enormous reality of this school­ ing—is only Grammatica. One would have to discover the inner resonance of these forms time and again until that inner resonance o f nature’s living movement was itself liberated. Only then could we sense how the living Word begins to arise tangibly from within our efforts to speak the language of the living. Only when thinking finds a picture of its own activity in the fluid life of nature can thinking begin to become actively familiar with the fluid and balanced conver­ gence of etheric life (the four “humors” in Bernardus’ terms)21 that brought not only our thinking, but ourselves into being. In this way the microcosm begins to become consciously conversant with the macrocosm. However, a living cognition cannot really come to itself until the process becomes art. Alan and Bernardus describe the path of cogni­ tion in allegory, not only because their goal was beyond the grasp of their time (and still beyond ours!), but because even in its eventually matured form (when etheric movements will “speak” within the human being) what is today called art will become the actual inner form at o f the cognitive process. The inner relationship between the soul and nature, which before expressed the connective force of an idea, will appear as pictures. What previously in thinking was the 2 2 • J oel Morrow mere shadow of life will begin to take on— in a picture— some of the generative force of life itself. An inner sympathy for the earth has already become the only common language which humans in every country have begun to speak. Already the longing is widespread to know every stage in the development of earth’s creatures, to flow within that life, and to give birth at every stage to a knowledge of the seamless garment of nature’s being. In this way, late in the twentieth century, humanity has awakened in the darkness of dawn. Half asleep it has reached for the inner clothing it laid out the night before and discovered that somehow the fibers have become different during the night, a fabric unfamiliar to the touch, perhaps a little coarse at first, but quite elemental and vigorous. When humanity tries to put this garment on, it surrounds them completely, unexpectedly, like flowing water, like Genesis, glowing in colors of blue and red, the colors of Chartres.

SYNOPSES OF WORKS CITED

The Plaint of Nature. Alan of Lille (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1980), J. Sheridan, translator. A plaintive outcry from Natura against the unnatural behavior of the human race. A long and evocative description of Natura’s garment, weaving together elements, creatures, planets, and stars. The book is an extended conversation between Alan and Natura in which she points Alan toward the mystery of the second birth and against types of behavior which stand in the way. Natura is the harbinger of this birth, the "opening key” to “the innermost depths of the secret heavens.” The discourse follows an almost untranslatable maze of double puns and metaphors relating to the Fall, mostly drawn from the Seven Liberal Arts, especially grammar and dialectic. Sheridan insists that only James Joyce would be harder to translate.

Cosmographia. Bernardus Silvestris (NY: Columbia University Press, 1973). W. Wetherbee, translator. Two short works, Megacosmos and Microcosmos. At the behest of Natura, the Divine Mind (Nous) draws forth the creation from Silva, the primordial mass. Natura is sent on a journey by Mind to the summit of the firmament and down again to the etheric sheathes of the earth, in order to discover in the script of the whole creation, the essentially human. The fact that she bypasses souls about to be born, because “what she sought was not to be found there,” shows that her goal is not the “first birth.” Ascending to the Zodiac, she meets the source of the A Thread from the Tapestry Alanus Wove • 23 archetype of all beings, Pantamorphos, as well as the guide— Urania—who shows human souls after death the pathway through the stars. Natura takes Urania down toward the earth, and is now able to bypass Saturn, the being of time. They descend to the region of eternal spring, the etheric envelope surround­ ing the earth. There she finds Physis, who understands how the etheric arche­ types bring forth life in the physical world. Physis lives in a region which though “never touched by the ploughshare, produces an abundance of health.” After excruciating labor and a surprising amount of suspense (for a metaphysical work), Physis finds the imprint of the “essentially human” faintly inscribed in the final sentence of the last page of the Book of Creation.

Anticlaudianus or The Good and Perfect Man. Alan of Lille (Toronto: Pontifi­ cal Institute of Medieval Studies, 1973) J. Sheridan, translator. A vast epic poem leading toward the future creation of the morally perfect human. Again, Natura pleads and Nous consents, this time sending Phronesis (human understanding) through a dizzying and pedantic journey of discovery. Phronesis, aided by the Virtues and the Seven Freeing Arts, with great difficulty ascends to the doorstep of the hierarchies. Phronesis is unable, however, to see in the spiritual world, so Theologica gives her the Mirror of Faith, which allows her to see the reflection of the Trinity and the Hierarchies within the human soul. In this mirror, human understanding gets a foretaste of a future which she cannot yet comprehend. Here Alan says, “Laying aside the role of poet, I appropriate a new speaking part, that of the prophet.” At the summit of heaven, Phronesis discovers the archetype from which her own understanding springs. She now knows the nature of the inner forces living in her and sees how these contain the seeds of immortal life, proof against all encroachments in the physical world. In the Final turbulent chapters, the new human soul survives an apocalyptic attack by the physical world straight out of Hieronymus Bosch. In the new human being “the spirit no longer loathes the corporeal garment” and “mighty Natura is surprised at the power she has shown in dealing with this new creation.”

All the foregoing books are curious in that the “hero” is not created until the book is nearly finished. They have a modern touch in this respect, somewhat like Robert Musil’s Man Without Qualities. In all of them the reader is the subject of the creation and participates in the work of birthing as the book proceeds. 24 • Joel Morrow

NOTES

1. From Steiner’s commentary on the Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz, Christian Rosenkreuz Anthology (New York. R. Steiner Pub.,1974).

2. The Plaint of Nature, Alan of Lille, trans. J. Sheridan (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1980). 3. ibid. 4. ibid. 5. ibid. 6. ibid. 7. ibid. 8. ibid. 9. ibid. 10. ibid. 11. Bernardus Silvestris, Cosmographia, trans. W. Wetherbee (New York: Co­ lumbia University Press, 1973). 12. ibid. 13. ibid. 14. ibid. 15. ibid. 16. Alan of Lille, Anticlaudianus or The Good and Perfect Man. trans. J. Sheridan (Toronto, Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1973). 17. Word, Logos and Nous are practically synonymous. 18. This theme is beautifully developed by Georg Kühlewind in his article “Whitsun” in the Journal for Anthroposophy, Summer 1989. 19. See Adams and Whicher, The Plant Between Earth and Sun (London: R. Steiner Press 1980) and Bochemuhl, Towards a Phenomenology of the Etheric World (NY: Anthroposophic Press 1977). The former for the etheric geometry; the latter for the inner replication. 20. Gerbert Grohmann, The Plant Vols I and II (Biodynamic Literature, 1974, 1989); Jochen Bochemuhl, In Partnership with Nature (Biodynamic Litera­ ture, 1981). 21. See page 19. What is a Waldorf School?

JOHN F. GARDNER

M any occasions bring so-called Waldorf Schools to ask themselves this question. And it is asked of them by others: by prospective par­ ents, teacher applicants, and the communities of which these schools are a part. For themselves, they find that only on the basis of a clear answer to this question can important matters of policy be settled: those affecting curriculum, methods, and above all, personnel. The suggestions which, over the course of time, parents feel moved to offer, whether positively or negatively meant, can be really helpful only when they are based on a fairly clear idea of what their school is trying to be and do. And public relations of all kinds will advance on a sure footing only when the school, knowing its own mind, can state its case decisively when asked, “What really is a Waldorf School?” Having faced this question from time to time over many years, I have never been well satisfied with the answers that I or others have given. A certain riddle that lies at the heart of the question is rarely recognized, yet it is one that has much to do with the confidence that an answer should inspire in those who question. This riddle concerns the respective roles to be played by two obvious factors: on the one hand, the need to acknowledge, follow, and build upon, the world conception out of which the first Waldorf School was born seventy years ago - namely, the spiritual science or anthroposophy intro­ duced into the modern scene by Rudolf Steiner; and on the other hand, the need in this connection to avoid dogma and traditional rou­ tines. Progressive evolution of the original model can arise only when the insight and initiative of contemporary teachers are left truly free to cope with the changing conditions of time and place. From the beginning, I myself have resisted allegations that there is a certain “Waldorf School Plan,” or fixed curriculum or method; holding rather to Rudolf Steiner’s claim that all his advice to teachers

2 5 2 6 • J ohn F. Gardner was meant only to increase their ability to be aware of subtleties usually unknown or overlooked, while encouraging them in their actual teaching to follow their own conscience creatively and in freedom. His intention, he said, was to help teachers come out from under the merely ‘thought-out’ schemes and programs that educa­ tional authorities were forever laying upon them. His purpose, stated in his own words, was that teachers should once more become “spontaneous and naive” in their approach to educational method, guided only by deepened insight into the child’s nature and the nature of the world to which he is being introduced. Such insight must reckon with body, soul, and spirit. Certainly no real Waldorf School could come into existence except on the basis of the new conceptions Steiner’s life-work sought to establish— not as theory or philosophical speculation, but as matters of spiritual fact. Teaching will always, and quite rightly, be guided by what teachers regard as the facts of life, the realities at work in man himself and in the great world around him. The facts to which Steiner, as a scientifically trained mind in the modern sense yet also as a modern seer of extraordinary powers, calls attention, open up a whole new world. Quite naturally, they inspire innovative methods in every aspect and moment of education, subject by subject, year by year, and child by child. Waldorf Schools, therefore, start from a positive recognition of the validity of higher forms of knowledge such as Steiner represented and sought to establish. This recognition of, this positive response to, anthroposophy—understood as the findings of spiritual-scientific research— accounts for the dedication always associated with this approach to education. There are now some hundreds of these schools scattered throughout the world. They have tended to con­ sider themselves a Movement, and as such, to consider how their identity may be safeguarded by the setting of standards that shall be met by new schools seeking authorization to bear the name of this Movement. Such a development is natural and has obvious merits. Yet Steiner spoke ever and again for the necessity that teachers be genuinely free to follow their own best perceptions and promptings. Is there a contradiction here between the understandable desire to insure con­ formity and the importance of non-conformity? If and when the two conflict, how is the issue to be decided? What is a Waldorf School? • 27

In a school that thinks of itself as a Waldorf School, there will always, of course, appear specific problems that cannot be judged ahead of time on purely general terms; but there is a general principle that, for me, has been confirmed by practical experience. This prin­ ciple is suggested by the very title of the original school in Stuttgart, Germany, as founded by Emil Molt with the help of Rudolf Steiner. The name of that first undertaking was not ‘Waldorf School’ but ‘Free Waldorf School.’ The word ‘free’ in that connection no doubt meant mainly to signify independent or non-governmental status; but it may also, by intention as well as by fate, have implied something much more. It is this something more that helps me at last to solve the riddle above-mentioned. I have come to believe that no right answer is possible to the question, “What is a Waldorf School?” because this phrasing, by reason of its incompleteness, tends to mislead. The better question would be, “What is a F ree Waldorf School?”; for this phrasing holds in balance the two factors that seem to contradict each other but that are equally indispensable to the way of education inaugurated by Rudolf Steiner. To recapitulate: no school can legitimately call itself “Waldorf’ whose teachers are ignorant of or in principle opposed to the basis on which the original school was developed. That basis lay in the spiri­ tual-scientific world view evolved by Steiner. And some degree of fa­ miliarity and affirmation are also naturally called for with regard to the traditions and practices that have developed since the 1920’s in the ‘Waldorf School Movement’ as a whole. So much for the one factor. No school, however, can call itself f r e e , in the sense here meant, whose teachers, having met this first requirement, are yet left feeling unfree to teach from their own special experience, insight, and prayer­ ful conviction. In a Free Waldorf School, teachers will indeed find intellectual and spiritual nourishment in the study of all that Steiner contributed toward a deepened understanding of life in general and education in particular. But this kind of nourishment of the soul should be subject to the same fate as attends foods taken in by the body. In a healthy body, the process of assimilation cannot move properly forward unless and until it has reduced to zero the characteristic form and flavor of each such ingested food. The individual person’s proto­ plasm can remain self-identical and unique to himself, as remain it must, only when in it no trace is to be found of the yellow carrots and green spinach, the meats and vegetables, eaten to support it. Obvi­ 2 8 • J ohn F. Gardner ously, the character of every substance taken in is and must be countered in the body’s chemistry by the character of the individual who has taken it in. Before it becomes h is flesh, its own flesh must have been thoroughly negated. His skin, if healthy, should not show even a little green from the spinach he has eaten, nor may he sweat even a little gray. So it should be with the well-nourished Free Waldorf School teacher. His breath, words, attitudes, and behavior should proceed strictly from his own integrity and experience, his own realizations. The spiritual food he absorbs from another and wiser must therefore always be, as it were, cancelled anew. In confronting his students, their parents, or the larger community, he must at all times remain clearly his own man: one who is obviously free to listen to his own spirit, in the here and now, for guidance specific to the unique situation before him. His spontaneous and naive teaching will then be, as it should be, an original creation, freshly coined and forgetful of either precedents or sanctions. The situation is obviously paradoxical, but not more so than the normal way we two-legged human beings all walk forward. The fact that one will always start his journey to a chosen goal by advancing first a particular foot, does not imply that he will then hop forward the rest of the way on this same foot. Rather, and for certain, he will promptly abandon that first foot after its limited advance, in order to bring forward its lagging companion. This second foot, however, carries him onward only so far, and must be abandoned in its turn. Efficient progress thus necessitates a rhythmical alternation of foot­ work; and it is out of this interplay of opposites that the third thing, the actual objective of movement forward in a straight line, is achieved. So it is in the case of the free teacher, who with his first step, that of preparation , freely elects to absorb Steinerian counsel (along, of course, with that of others who also have congenial nourishment to offer); but whose next step, that of actual doing, carries him into interaction with his students or their parents. In facing the challenge of either situation, he should have accustomed himself to shifting his weight completely from the ‘Waldorf foot to the ‘free’ foot that represents his very own spiritual instinct. For guidance in this mo­ ment, he looks neither behind him into his memory, nor right or left, to see what others have done or are doing. He remains inwardly centered and attentive. He ‘waits upon the Lord.’ It is, after all, but to the free and fresh use of his own spiritual sensitivity and his own What is a Waldorf School? • 29

creative imagination that all the previous counsel of Rudolf Steiner has prepared him. At this point, with respect to what we are calling his integrity, the teacher in a truly free Waldorf School is two things, which are yet one. He is strictly on his own. Yet his ‘own’ is something obviously other and higher than his ordinary self, with its memories of advice and ex­ perience. He exercises authority, as he must, but this authority is acceptable and effective only because he is recognized by his stu­ dents as being, himself, “A man u n d er authority.” Yet this authority is not that of any outside mentor, even Rudolf Steiner, but is found within himself. He is beholden to his own inner guidance, naively, prayerfully sought. To the extent that he enacts this role genuinely, the impression he will make upon those whom he is addressing— whether students, parents, or others—will be one of integrity and freedom. His action will be sensed as emanating from the moral center of his own being. The impression would have been disturbingly different, had the teacher been merely remembering or attempting to pass on second­ hand, wisdom drawn from Steiner or any other. Should he, however, choose at some point, in a simple reference, to praise or cordially rec­ ommend Steiner’s wisdom, he will be all the more impressive — indeed, perhaps for the first time impressive — for his clear inde­ pendence of that wisdom. The Waldorf School teacher who desires freedom and is willing to take responsibility for it, can find support in a sentence attributed to St. Augustine: “Love God, and do what you will.” The meaning would seem to be that if you actually love God consistently, you may trust and feel free to follow your own instinct “spontaneously and naively.” Your instinctive preferences will have been spiritualized and taught by that love, so as to be worthy of trust. Trust the spontaneous prompting that lives in the soul that is turned steadily toward truth, toward what is right, toward the spirit, because this prompting will be both truly and freshly of the spirit. So it is with a Free Waldorf School teacher. He loves the whole orientation of the school in which he serves. He expresses and develops this love through the study of spiritual science as pioneered by Steiner. But when it is time for him to speak or act, all outside example and influence should have withdrawn. He should be stand­ ing alone, to do, and to bear moral responsibility for, his own deed. 3 0 • J ohn F. G ardner

He makes no pretence of walking in either Steiner or Waldorf shoes. Nor will he allow himself to stand in the shadow of either one. Was not this attitude what Emerson meant to convey in the following words?

When good is near you, when you have life in yourself, it is not by any known or accustomed way; you shall not discern the footprints of any other; you shall not see the face of man; you shall not hear any name; the way, the thought, the good, shall be wholly strange and new. It shall exclude example and experi­ ence. You take the way from man, not to man. All persons that ever existed are its forgotten ministers.

The completely humbling experience of authentic freedom re­ quires great courage; but it alone enables the teacher really to look, to listen, and to find the moral tone that establishes the kind of trust that alone opens the hearts of those with whom he seeks to communicate.

* * * *

If the basic thesis of the foregoing characterization, however in­ adequately expressed, is in essentials understood and accepted, it fol­ lows that the preparation of novices for teaching in a Free Waldorf School should give equal emphasis to both of the polaric necessities we have sought to identify. Even a preliminary acquaintance with the subtlety and unparalleled scope of Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual research requires time and labor. The application of this new outlook to the myriad detail of educational curriculum and methods also requires intensive, time-consuming effort. Therefore, we can hardly wonder that ‘Waldorf teacher-training institutions throughout the world have perhaps devoted to such applications almost their entire attention. Yet all these studies are but parts of the one necessary emphasis. It is the impression of this retired teacher that the second, contrasting emphasis—the one whose function, ever and again, throughout ev­ ery teacher’s career, is to counterbalance the first— has been too faintly indicated and too little insisted upon. Acquaintance with the demands and implications of what we have called free, or “spontaneous and naive” teaching, appears generally not to have been worked through systematically. Granted that Steiner’s philosophy of freedom as ‘spiritual activity’ has in a stimulating way What is a Waldorf School? • 31 introduced students to the essential idea of true freedom; yet without the constant emphasis and example of those charged with the train­ ing of teachers, even Steiner’s provocative treatment of the subject tends, for beginners, and perhaps especially for Americans, to remain rather theoretical—somewhat out of reach. The urgency of Steiner’s call for truly creative freedom is therefore perhaps muted; and for those unpracticed in philosophy, the significance of the idea of freedom, precisely for teaching, may remain inadequately appreci­ ated, and its fruits too seldom harvested. This somewhat aphoristic approach to the challenge of teaching in a Free Waldorf School is intended only to stress the need to bring our allegorical second or ‘free’ foot really forward, and step by step. Regardless of how it is to be accomplished, the possibility—indeed, the necessity— of further strengthening the free spiritual activity of teahers, exists and waits to be developed. Waldorf Schools, in their concern to safeguard the authentic identity of their whole educational impulse, must consider among the many standards they set for them­ selves, and as one deserving high priority, the effective presence of vital freedom among their teachers. Many who have experienced the greatness of Steiner’s world-view and the marvels achieved by ‘Waldorf’ educational methods, wonder why both have not already won wider recognition. Why after the greater part of a century of demonstrated creativeness, have they yet to be considered seriously by the leaders of today’s culture? There are certainly several significant reasons for this ignorance or reluctance, but among them one might hazard that none will in the end prove so decisive as this one of freedom: how it is understood, and the spiritual self-discipline with which it is practiced. The way freedom as genuine spiritual activity is understood and practiced in a school determines whether the instinctive wisdom of the general public will recognize it as the prototype of a universally valid impulse or as just another form of parochialism. It sometimes appears that perhaps too many of the ‘followers’ of Steiner, as well as some Waldorf School partisans, have yet to estab­ lish that they are—what Steiner himself wanted— the very opposite of followers; and that their example is the antithesis of anything paro­ chial or doctrinaire. This impression teachers will be able to make only when each stands quite unmistakably on his own feet, subject to the spiritual glamor, authority, persuasion or threat of no man or movement; but when each shows himself as an example of what it 3 2 • J ohn F. G ardner means to be humbly and courageously responsive to the voice that speaks in the silence of his own soul. This same spirit speaks, too, in the stillness of every human heart that is open enough, caring enough and courageous enough to listen and obey; and this is just what countless parents really want for their children and for themselves. Hundreds of thousands of potential clients of Waldorf School education, representing the most diverse backgrounds and orienta­ tions, have one thing in common. Aware of the instability of the world into which their children will be entering, beset as it is with dangers moral as well as physical, individual as well as social, these parents long most earnestly for a saving impulse in education. They sense, too, that this impulse must necessarily be of a spiritual nature. And many are free enough of institutional religious influence to decide for themselves what is and is not the spiritual for which they seek. If there is one criterion that is more decisive for these parents than any other, it is the one that looks for evidence of trust in truth, courage for truth, and humility in waiting upon truth. Parents find th e s ig n a ­ ture o f spirit in this authentic, patient, and valorous love for what is right and true. They seek evidence that a school and its teachers look sanely and soundly, always n ow , to the Highest. Such teachers, they instinctively feel, are “Number One” people. Only such people can show the children what they will be needing in the time ahead of them, which is how to “stand and withstand;” how to maintain integ­ rity, serenity, and goodwill under all circumstances; how, indeed to fulfill the promise presently held out by Waldorf Schools to their parents. This promise, this ideal, was set forth by Rudolf Steiner himself in the following words: “Our highest endeavor must be to develop free human beings, who are able of themselves to impart purpose and direction to their lives.” Only the truly free teacher can set the example of true self-determi­ nation, and light its path, for his students. All depends upon the direct relation of the individual soul, in the n ow , to the living spirit. In the dealings of teachers with parents who have been attracted by the promissory motto of so-called Waldorf Schools, let not Philosophy or Movement or Method intervene. These but confuse those who, in the simplicity of deep concern for their children’s future in the troubled, hazardous world they will have to face, are seeking the kind of assurance that is rooted solely in the innermost, the eternal “I AM”. Sex and the Trinity (A Meditation)

MICHAEL MILLER

We do not need a new religion or a new bible. We need a new e x p e r ie n c e — a new feeling o f what it is to be “I". Alan W. Watts

Now I am going to launch words into space, so mind your cosmic eye. D. H. Lawrence

The line of a man’s life through time is as if parenthetically brack­ eted at either end by two great mysteries. But between Birth and Death, another mystery, a lesser (even if no less perplexing) mystery insinuates itself at puberty and quickly renders childhood’s golden age an all but forgotten memory buried in a faded past. In one way or another, to one degree or another, it colors much of what is left of that life through time. As the force of this lesser mystery, the mystery called sex, passes through the prism of human incomprehension, it produces a spectrum of effects, and near the infrared end, it is very often linked with vio­ lence. Indeed, all entertainment media consciously recognize the formula of “sex and violence” as a reliable tool in their bottom-line pursuit of monetary profits. There is a kind of mysticism — albeit a negative or anti-mysticism — underlying this connection of sex with

3 3 34 • M ichael M iller v io le n c e which is based on the fact that the one is a focal point for desire while the other is a focal point for fear — desire and fear being the right and left hands of egoism. The effectiveness of this formula depends upon the false ego of the fallen human soul which is out of touch with the Spirit as the ground of reality. But sex, as a mystery, is somewhat deeper than this ersatz mysti­ cism. We find its real depth hinted at in the old French phrase: la p e ­ tite m ort. The perception of the sexual orgasm as “the little death” is so full of apparent paradox that one cannot help but suspect it holds some hidden bit of wisdom. Of course, this phrase was coined long before man’s calculating intelligence had invaded so far into the pas­ sional side of life as to contrive such things as artificial insemination and test-tube babies. Some nearly forgotten perception, one feels, must be contained in this phrase which stems from an older, pre-sci- entific wisdom. The great mysteries of Birth and Death are as if telescoped from opposite directions into the lesser mystery called sex. The act of sexual intercourse is the natural means by which conception occurs. Con­ ception is the beginning of a time-process, gestation, which normally culminates in birth, while birth itself is the beginning of another time- process which culminates ultimately in death. Thus, the great mysteries of Birth and Death are both inextricably bound up with the lesser mystery called sex. Yet, the orgasm — perhaps the most intense and personal experience of physical pleasure — is associated with death instead of birth. Why? In the materialistic culture of our day, led as it is by a science which wants to hold to the physical as the ground of reality, death appears to be simply the end of life. But in the older wisdom, death was a part of life, not its termination — for Life itself was understood as a matter not of time only, but of eternity as well. The ancient Egyp­ tians, for example, viewed physical birth as a death experience for the spirit of the human being, and the physical body as the spirit’s coffin. Death, then, was something of a rebirth rather than an end to life. Of course, this perspective is only possible when the Spirit, rather than matter, is held to be the ground of reality. Death, then, as a reintegration of the individualized soul into the living unity of the spiritual world held forth the promise of the great­ est possible bliss. If the orgasm be perceived as the most intense physical pleasure, then compared to the intense spiritual bliss which Sex and the Trinity • 35 death can bring, the orgasm can indeed be understood as “the little death.” Where the one is timeless in “duration,” the other is “timeless” in the moment. Thus, the paradox of the old French phrase preserves a connection with an ancient and all but forgotten wisdom. But sexual intercourse, with its epiphenomenon of orgasm, is based on the “division of the sexes” into the physically male and the physi­ cally female. The so-called “battle of the sexes” is perhaps the long­ est on-going war in human history, as full of humor as it is full of hurt. But this on-going battle, like the bad habit of connecting sex with violence, is the result of our failure to apprehend sex as a mys­ tery. And both are rooted in unregenerated egoism. Much of our failure to comprehend sex as a mystery is due to our shallow concepts of what “maleness” and “femaleness” are. To arrive at deeper conceptions of these two notions, we will need a wisdom not unlike the old wisdom hidden in the phrase, la petite mort. Anthroposophy, as Rudolf Steiner developed it, is such a “wisdom- knowledge,” and moreover, one which meets the demands of mod­ ern consciousness, especially the demand for clarity of thought. A key to a deeper conception of what constitutes “maleness” and “female­ ness” can be found in Steiner’s book, Cosmic Memory.

The external formation of earth resulted in that the body assumed a one-sided form. The male body has taken a form which is conditioned by the element of will; the female body on the other hand, bears the stamp of imagination. Thus it comes about that the two-sexed, male-female soul inhabits a single-sexed, male or female body.

Wisdom-knowledge understands life as a matter of eternity as well as of time. In this view, human evolution undergoes first a spiritual phase and then a physical phase, culminating finally in the creation of Man as a free, self conscious spiritual being. In the spiritual phase of his development, Man as a being of Will and Imagination is both male and female and gives birth androgynously out of himself. But when Man becomes a physical being in a material world, a certain detour becomes necessary. Steiner wrote:

The human soul had to wait until a brain existed which became the mediator with the spirit. Without this detour, this soul would have remained spiritless. It would have remained arrested at the 36 • Michael Miller

stage of dreamlike consciousness.... This detour is called the descent of the human soul into matter, or more popularly, “the fall of man.”

That which we call spirit, the faculty of thinking, requires the brain as its physical instrument. In order to build this brain into the physi­ cal body, Man as a spiritual androgynous being had to withhold a portion of his soul-spiritual forces from direct physical embodiment. This withheld portion of his forces develops the brain, but the result is that his male-female soul, the polarity of Will and Imagination, does not achieve complete physical embodiment. Thus, as Steiner said, “The price of thought is Single-Sexedness.” As a spiritual being, Man is male-female; as a physical being, he is either male or female. Man, in his physical embodiment, consists of body, soul and spirit, but in his fall into matter, he sacrifices the completeness of the body so that the soul may have the instrument of the brain as its mediator with the spirit.

The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. And he said, “Indeed! the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil!”

“The Man,” the human being, having put on the flesh, the garments of skin, and knowing good and evil, is driven from paradise. With­ out the instrument of the brain, he could not know good and evil, but would remain in a dream like consciousness such as animals ex­ perience. Thus, in the Biblical account of The Fall, the faculty of thinking by which we know good and evil and which requires the brain as its instrument is part and parcel of the process of human physical embodiment. As a consequence of The Fall, then, the two-sexed soul-spiritual being of Will and Imagination comes into a lop-sided physical em­ bodiment. The physical male body and the physical female body represent reverse orientations with respect to the action of the spirit on the soul. In the physical male, the action of the spirit on the soul is one of Will, while in the physical female, it is one of Imagination. But what does this mean? Sex and the Trinity • 37

Logos and Sophia Will and Imagination are the poles of consciousness, correspond­ ing to the Father and the Holy Spirit in the Trinity. If we imagine the Father as a centerpoint from which the movement of Will is directed outward in all directions in the effort of creativity, and if we likewise imagine the Holy Spirit as an infinite circumference whose movement is directed inward from all directions in the effort of unity, then where these two polaric forces meet in balance and harmony, a perfect circle arises, a perfect circle formed by the creative movement of the Fa­ ther balanced by the unitive movement of the Holy Spirit. The centerpoint of the Father is something beyond perception: “No man has seen the Father.” The infinitude of the Holy Spirit is likewise be­ yond comprehension; it is something we cannot take hold of, but rather, something with which we may become fille d . And out of the “invisibility” of this polarity arises the circle as the emblem of perfec­ tion, which as the Son, completes the Trinity. When we are told that Man was “created male and female,” it means that every human being is male-and-female, i.e. a being whose con­ sciousness is an effect of the polarity of Will-and-Imagination. Thus, Man, when he was first conceived within the Godhead, was a spiritual being who possessed consciousness, but not yet self-consciousness. Man’s “creation” in the image and likeness of “God” would only be complete when the polarity of Will-and-Imagination achieves in him the balance and harmony of the Son. For this to happen, he would need to be not just a being who experiences consciousness within the polarity of Will and Imagination, but a being who did so while conscious of himself as well. Otherwise, he would remain merely an effect of Will-and-Imagination, i.e. merely an “idea” within the Godhead and not a realized creation in the image of God, the cre­ ator being. Thus, Man as a conception within the Godhead, had to be placed outside “the mind of God,” or removed from Paradise in order to achieve the experience of self-consciousness. To “know good and evil” is to become self-conscious; to achieve through self-con­ sciousness a perfect balance of Will and Imagination is to be reborn from the Tree of Knowledge to the Tree of Life which is in the midst of Paradise. The Fall of Man, which is the beginning of “time” and the begin­ ning of evolution in its physical-material phase, is but a step in the long, slow process of “Creation.” Having attained the experience of 3 8 • Michael M iller self-consciousness, the struggle of Man in his fallen state is the struggle to achieve within himself that dynamic balance of Will and Imagina­ tion which completes the Trinity in the Son. The “seven days of cre­ ation” are cosmic days encompassing vast phases of what for us is evolution, but for God is the timeless act of Creation itself. When Man achieves that balance, he will experience a “rebirth” from what he has known, but it will be his one true “birth” as God’s creation. And all the travail will then be forgotten for the joy that a Man (i.e. a self- conscious male-and-female, Will-and-Imagination human spiritual being) is born. But we are in the midst of this birth-process of Creation. We are between “conception” and “birth,” kicking in the cosmic womb. As we know from looking in a mirror, there is a certain reversal in re­ flection. If the image of the fetus in the mother’s womb is one of peace before being thrust out into the “hard, cruel world,” then our experi­ ence in the cosmic womb of Creation is the painful experience of chaos before our birth into the bliss of a spiritual world. If in physi­ cal birth it is the mother who consciously experiences the pangs of birth, then in the long, slow Creation-process, it is we who are about to be born who suffer the pain. If the infant cries with his first breath, then on the Day of our Creation, crying will cease and we shall sing. So, Man is in the process of being “created,” and of being “created male-and-female.” Thus, a more profound understanding of “male” and “female” lies hidden in the concepts of Will and Imagination. The essence of “maleness” is Will, and Will is the initial impulse of cre­ ativity moving outward from the self toward whatever is “other.” The essence of “femaleness” is Spirit, and Spirit is the responding impulse toward unity moving inward toward the self, experienced in con­ sciousness as Imagination. The Godhead, the Trinity, is the Creator and the archetypal Image (made “visible” in the Son) in which we are being Created. When the outward movement of Will is out of balance with the inward movement of Imagination, it remains un­ conscious and leads not to creation but to destruction. Likewise, if the inward movement of the Spirit in Imagination is not focused on the True Self, if it is ecc en tric and out of kelter, then creation becomes aborted in illusion and madness. Because of the perfect dynamic balance achieved within the Trinity, the Will of the Father is conscious and the Imagination of the Spirit remains focused on the True Self, or the One, and so it is complete or whole, i.e. The Holy Spirit. This Sex and the Trinity • 39 perfect balance is the Son, or the realization of Divine Creation. The Son, as such, is the spearhead of the Divine Trinity carrying the Di­ vine Creation out as process, as Creativity.

[Image: same diagram of GODHEAD as above, but with addition of Logos, Christ and Sophia]

The line from the Holy Spirit to the Son is Imagination; the line from the Father to the Son is Will. If we extend these lines on through the Son into the realm of Creativity, we can make a new triangle, “the only begotten,” to represent the Spiritual or Cosmic archetype of Man: the Christ.

[Image: diagram of GODHEAD, showing relationships among the Holy Spirit, Father and Son, and Imagination, Will And Love]

Thus, the Son, as the spearhead of the Trinity and emblem of the Godhead is projected into the realm of Creativity as the C hrist whose “feminine” being, Sophia, is a direct extension of the Holy Spirit, and whose “masculine” being, the Logos, is a direct extension of the Fa­ ther. This chalice-like image may serve to illustrate certain relationships of forces and beings that exist within and operate from the spiritual 4 0 • Michael M iller ground of reality, from the Godhead down into the realm or process of Creativity. Down in the world of Creation where the process is being worked out, we may find a similar image reflected. The polar­ ity of the Holy Spirit and the Father is reflected below, and distorted there as a shadow image in the beings of Lucifer and Ahriman. And what is produced as a caricature of the Son is “the son of perdition”:

[Image: diagramofSON[Image: OF PERDITION,abyss] therelationshipsamongshame,impersonality,andLucifer,Ahrimanshowingfear,

This is an image of the Fallen Man, cut off from the spiritual ground of being with his legacy of shame and fear, shame being the burning consequence of spirit focused on the false self, and fear being the icy consequence of will-activity emanating from the false self. Luci­ fer, as the unholy spirit, is not focused on the One, and this “feminine” movement inward is countered by the outward movement of Ahriman’s cold, calculating will to produce a false and illusory ego: “the son of perdition.” Man had to be placed outside of Paradise in order for his con­ sciousness to become subconsciousness, for without self-conscious­ ness there can be no possibility of freedom, and without the capacity to chose freely, man could never become a consciously creative be­ ing in the image of the Godhead. Thus, placed outside of Paradise, Man finds himself chained by fear and shame to a false ego. That Christ Himself came into the world to do battle with these opposing, nega­ tive forces has made possible the rescue of The Fallen Man, who having now attained self-consciousness, may choose to follow the Christ back home into Paradise. To do so, however, he must choose to surrender the illusory ego, which has finally no essential being anyway (which is, in part, why it is called “the son of perdition”); and he must choose to make the Sex and the Trinity • 41 effort to transmute shame into C o n scien c e and fear into R ev eren ce. This means giving up the illusion of the false ego, surrendering yourself to Christ as the One True Self, Who, comprising both Sophia and the Logos, is the Image of the perfect balance of the Holy Spirit with the Will of the Father, i.e. the Son of cosmic “maleness" and “fe­ maleness" made one in Love. If we put all this together in our tri­ angle images, we get the following picture:

[Image: diagramcombiningthethreepreviousdiagrams,withadditionoftrueselfandfalseego]GODHEAD World World World World Physical Soul Soul Physical Spiritual

Does this chalice-like image have some relation to the Holy Grail? Each reader may decide for him- or herself. In any case, this may serve to suggest that the mystery called sex is intimately bound up with the mysteries of Will and Imagination and the mystery of Creation itself. While the Fallen Man retains the illu­ sion of a separate ego, guided by the notion that he is something in and of himself, his relationships will remain clouded by fuzzy, half­ conscious ideas of what “maleness" and “femaleness” are. To clarify our ideas of “maleness” and “femaleness,” it will be necessary to enter further into the spiritual complexities of the mystery called sex. As we have said, Man, in the cosmic sense, finds himself 4 2 • Michael M iller between his conception in the Godhead and his eventual birth as a spiritually complete creator-being in the Image of that Godhead. Man’s Creation in the timeless realm of the Father is a fait accompli after which the Father rests. But the Holy Spirit carries the seed of this ac­ complished fact of conception in the womb of the cosmos for the necessary space of time. The Son, Who is The Way, The Truth and The L ife , is the Life-force guiding this process through time to its completion. This process begins in the timeless spiritual and then detours into time before achieving its completion in the timeless spiritual. In Cosmic Memory, Rudolf Steiner describes the first phase of this detour as a process of densification:

In an ancient period, human forms appear before us which are soft, malleable and quite different from later ones. They still carry the nature of man and woman within themselves to an equal degree. In the course of time, the material substances be­ come denser; the human body appears in two forms, one which begins to resemble the subsequent shape of man, the other that of woman. When this difference had not yet appeared, every human being could produce another human being out of himself. Impregnation was not an external process, but was something which took place inside the body itself. By becoming male or female, the body lost this possibility of self-impregnation. It had to act together with another body in order to produce a new human being.

The Fall Before The Fall, the human being as a conscious but not yet self- conscious spiritual being contained the forces of Will and Imagination in equal degrees within itself, and could reproduce copies of its form out of itself. This process is roughly analogous to the process of cell production in the embryo. But when these forms take on “the gar­ ments of skin,” when “The Man” is put out of the Garden of Eden, it becomes necessary to reserve a portion of his soul-spiritual forces in order to develop the brain as an instrument of the spirit for the soul which is now caught in material embodiment. Because a portion of his forces are thus held back, the physical body of the human being becomes an incomplete or distorted reflection of his male-female soul and spiritual being. In order to continue this complicated process of Creation through time, the human being must make do with a physi­ Sex and the Trinity • 43 cal body that is either male or female. Thus, the long, slow process of Creation necessitates the interdependence and cooperation of men and women. But, because the spiritual orientations of men and women are reversed, and because these orientations are at first fixated on the false ego, the son of perdition, there is initially a fundamental an­ tagonism between the two. Hence, the horrible battle of the sexes. “The Man” is conceived in the Godhead as male-and-female, as Will-and-Imagination, and the physical man and the physical woman are two variations of this conception. Men and women, in their spiri­ tual essence, are equally male-and-female, but in physical embodiment that spiritual essence is reflected in reverse complementarity. Not re­ alizing this, they unconsciously tend to do battle with each other in­ stead of moving consciously and individually inward where the struggle for the balance of male and female really belongs. Again, Steiner:

One can see that the higher inner essence of a human being has nothing to do with man or woman. The inner equality, however, does result from a male soul in woman, and corre­ spondingly from a female soul in man. The union with spirit fi­ nally brings about equality....

So, in trying to comprehend sex as a mystery, we have a very complex picture of the sexual nature of the human being. The physical man has a female soul, and the action of the spirit upon this soul is masculine, i.e. characterized by Will. The physical woman has a male soul, and the action of the spirit upon this soul is feminine, i.e. char­ acterized by Imagination. In Fallen Man, the action of the spirit is ex­ perienced mainly in the unconscious. Thus, the relationship of the conscious to the unconscious is, in a certain sense, reversed in men and women. A man is impelled more or less unconsciously outward toward “the other” while consciously desiring all things for himself — of course, the false self. Hence, we have the base and primitive stereotype of man as a warrior who goes out to rape, pillage and conquer. A woman is impelled more or less unconsciously by the inward need to have everything organized cozily around herself — again, the false self — in the “home” of unity while consciously desiring to penetrate or im­ press “the other,” to dominate and conquer. Hence, we have the 4 4 • M ichael M iller equally base and primitive stereotype of woman as a wily deceiver who rules by subterfuge. The problem with both stereotypes is the fixation on the “son of perdition,” the false ego. So long as the false ego dominates in men, it gives rise to a conscious experience of shame and inadequacy which in turn blinds the soul to the activity of the spirit; so long as the false ego dominates in women, it gives rise to a conscious experience of fear and helplessness which in turn blinds the soul to the activity of the spirit. Because of the conscious experience of shame and inad­ equacy, self-will is the more salient compensatory reaction in men, producing fear as a deeper unconscious experience. Because of the conscious experience of fear and helplessness, cunning (i.e. eccen­ tric imagination) is the more salient compensatory reaction in women, producing shame as a deeper unconscious experience. Of course, men, out of their deep fear, are also capable of extreme cunning, and women out of their deep shame, are capable of extreme self-will. What it amounts to is this: in the Fallen Man (whether physically a man or physically a woman) self-will emanates from the false ego, leading in its extreme to destruction, while cunning, eccentric imagination, is focused on the false ego, and in its extreme leads to the abortion of the creative faculty into madness. But as was said earlier, the central problem is the false ego, the son of perdition, whose existence is the effect of Luciferic imagina­ tion and Ahrimanic will. The Luciferic imagination is eccentric be­ cause it is not focused on the One. It takes itself for the One, or per­ haps better said, it m is-ta k es itself for the One, thus placing itself outside the harmonious unity of paradise. Thus cast out of the gar­ den, man’s experience is the bittersweet taste of knowing himself as good and evil, a fate he had to suffer in order to attain self-con­ sciousness. But this Luciferic imagination is the source of man’s Fall, and from this he experiences Shame. At the same time, the Luciferic imagination calls forth as its nec­ essary complement a false will to maintain itself in its prideful illu­ sion. Ahriman, Lord of the Abyss, gladly obliges by joining with Lu­ cifer and lending to man the force of his own heartless will which is the source of Death, and from this man experiences Fear. So the false ego is held in place by these two forces, and the chains of man’s spiritual bondage are shame and fear, the shame that rises up out of Lucifer’s fiery inner kingdom and the fear that flies in the Sex and the Trinity • 45 face of man from Ahriman’s icy cold outer kingdom. In The Fall, which was necessary for the attainment of self-consciousness, “The Man” finds himself caught up in physical embodiment as either a physical man or a physical woman. In either form, his own real being is hid­ den from him by the lie of the false ego. The action of the spirit upon the female soul of the physical man is a more or less unconscious impulse. He is driven outward to meet and penetrate “the other," to consummate himself in the act of cre­ ation, to realize himself as a creator in the Image of the Godhead. But the “original sin” of The Fall is the assumption of the false ego, the illusion that “I am something in and of myself, apart from all else.” This ego is necessarily overshadowed by fear, which in all its forms originates from Ahriman. We know death is coming, and knowing little else, we live in fear. What we don’t know but want to know in order to live beyond our fear is the True Ego, the True Self, the Christ. And not knowing Christ, we are startled by the profound reproach flung at us by revelation:

What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?

We are not our own. This is not to say that we have no real exist­ ence, but only that our ego is nothing in and of itself, that it has no everlasting life outside the True Ego, the Christ. The unconscious will- movement toward “the other,” overshadowed by fear, must become conscious of the True Ego to Whom we belong. When we become conscious of the True Ego, then we are able to have the experience: “Not I, but Christ in me,” and fear is transformed into Reverence so that we are no longer driven blindly toward “the other,” wanting to take, to rape. With the death of the false ego, Reverence becomes the outward movement balanced by the inner movement of a Christ- enlightened Conscience. Instead of taking by rape, the regenerated man receives by grace. The action of the spirit upon the male soul of the physical woman is likewise a more or less unconscious impulse. She is driven inwards toward the self, driven to take what is received from “the other” into the home of her unity in order to consummate herself in the act of creation, that is, to realize herself as a creator in the Image of the Godhead. But she, too, is caught up in the illusion of the false self. 4 6 • Michael M iller

The eccentric imagination is necessarily overshadowed by shame, which in all its forms originates with Lucifer. Just as we look forward to death in fear, we also live with a vague sense of “original sin,” a deeply nagging intimation that something in us is wrong from the start. We are burdened by a shame buried in our unremembered past, and long to be free of it. But it is our Luciferic imagination that keeps us shackled with shame. When we surrender our individual self as the center so that imagination can find its true focus in Christ, then freedom becomes possible. Only Christ Who is The Way, The Truth and The Life can set you free so that you may say with Him, “Death, where is thy sting?” When we become conscious of Christ as the True Self and center of Imagi­ nation, then we have the experience: “Not I, but Christ in me.” The inward movement of Imagination lights up when focused on Christ, transmuting shame into Conscience and slavery into freedom. It no longer clutches at or clings to what comes from “the other” while se­ cretly wanting to conquer “the other.” Rather, enlightened by Christ, the inward movement of Imagination attains a concentric balance with the outward will-movement of Reverence so that what is received through this Christ-enlightened “knowing with,” is received by grace. Through the transmutation of fear into Reverence and shame into Conscience, the human being achieves an inner spiritual harmony which is identical in both men and women; the inward and outward movements of Imagination and Will, in equal polaric balance, cancel one another out, so to speak, and the new inner being that is born is neither male nor female, but truly male-and-female as one thing. One thinks here of a saying attributed to Jesus in The Gospel of T hom as, one of the so-called Gnostic Gospels found at Nag Hammadi in 1945: When you make the two into one, when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male and the female will not be female, when you make eyes replacing an eye, a hand replacing a hand, Sex and the Trinity • 47

a foot replacing a foot, and an image replacing an image, then you will enter the kingdom.

In The Fallen Man, the hot and unholy imaginational activity of Lucifer so cripples his feminine soul that he cannot embrace the Will- activity of the spirit; he is inadequate and it remains distorted as un­ conscious fear. For him, shame is the fundamental soul-experience and fear the fundamental spiritual-experience. Although he is more consciously aware of his guilt, his shame, it is the deeper and more unconscious experience of fear that drives him. In The Fallen Woman, the cold and impersonal will-activity of Ahriman so cripples her masculine soul that she cannot receive the embrace of the spiritual Imagination; she is eccentric and it remains distorted as unconscious shame. For her, fear is the fundamental soul-experience and shame the fundamental spiritual-experience. Although she is more con­ sciously aware of her fear, it is the less conscious and so all the more powerful experience of shame that holds her down. Consciously, it is men who are guilt-ridden while women are running scared; un­ consciously, it is women who are guilt-ridden while men are running scared. In The Fallen Man, men and women face each other across the great divide of original sin, the false ego: [Image:thefallenmananddiagramillustratingwoman] 4 8 • M ichael M iller

Continuing with our triangle images, the Fallen Man and the Fallen Woman may be pictured as two variations of The Fallen Man, and distorted by The Fall, they face each other in the horizontal. In the Fallen Man, the ego is unconsciously driven by fear but is consciously embraced by shame. For him, the metanoiac conversion happens when he recognizes the false ego as the source of his inner fear and outer shame. In surrendering the illusion of the false ego his soul is taken up into the vertical by pivoting on the will-axis. His unconscious fear and conscious shame, enlightened by Christ, become a conscious unified experience of Reverence and Conscience replicating the Logoistic-Sophianic balance of The Only Begotten. In the Fallen Woman, the process is the same, but her conversion, her turning around and in and up, proceeds by pivoting on the Imaginational- axis. In both cases, the resulting image is the same and may be called “The Man created male-and-female in the image of God.” After this process of rebirth, the lower image of The Fallen Man falls away into the Abyss. The new man thus taken up in Christ forms a diamond. Is this related to the fabled philosopher’s stone? [Image:diagramofLogos-Sophia-Christreverenceandconscience]relationshipto

Adam and Eve In the Bible story, it is said that Eve ate of the Apple first and then gave it to Adam to eat thereof. But as we have seen, Adam-and-Eve is “The Man” who is in the process of being created male-and-female, who has put on “garments of skin,” and who has been put out of paradise. As an unself-conscious spiritual being, “The Man” ate of the forbidden fruit first through Eve, the imaginational side of his being, who immediately calls upon Adam, as the will side of the human be­ ing, to eat also, thereby completing the illusion of a separate ego. This relationship of Adam-and-Eve is the vertical and interior rela­ tionship of man’s inner will-and-imagination polarity. This same po­ larity is reflected equally in both variations of the physical form into which “The Man” must incarnate. As physical form, “Adam” is the spine which in its vertical clime reflects the will. In the evolutionary Sex and the Trinity • 49 process of Creation, it is created first. But, eventually, the brain housed in the skull is given as a “helpmate,” as a mediator between soul and spirit. To say that “Eve” was made from a rib of “Adam” is to recog­ nize that the skull is, like a rib, a transformed vertebra. The spherical shape of the skull, and the brain it houses, reflects the inward move­ ment of Imagination on the physical plane from the infinite circum­ ference of the cosmos. As physical form, “Adam” is the spine and “Eve” is the brain housed in the skull. As a soul-and-spirit being, Adam is the will and Eve is the imagination which together comprise “The Man.” In putting on “the garments of skin,” he became a physical being of single sex in order to develop the brain as mediator between soul and spirit. As a physical being of single sex, the male-female relationship becomes on the physical plane both horizontal and external. The desire to identify oneself as either male or female without comprehending how one is inwardly male a n d female is rooted in the false ego, the son of perdition. The belief that there is some inherent superiority of one sex over the other is nothing more than an uncon­ scious ploy of the false ego: men are superior to women, I am a man, therefore I am superior; women are superior to men, I am a woman, therefore I am superior. To recognize that I am fundamentally and spiritually male-and-female and that Christ is the only True Ego is not only to take myself out of the battle of the sexes, but it is also the beginning of realizing myself as a consummate human being, made in the Image of God-the-Creator. The Three Faces o f Celtic Man

BY VAN JAMES

T h e portrait in art has always been a form of reflecting on the human condition; the self-portrait, a striving for knowledge of oneself. And if “...God created man in his own image..,” then portraiture, it would follow, is a longing for the divine, a search for that godly spark within the earthly flesh. If nothing else, the portrait can tell us something about who a subject is, his or her relationship (or lack of it) to both an inner-spiritual life and/or an outer physical world. A stirring example of this relationship of self to inner and outer world can be seen in the early stone bust of a pagan Celt, a single head with three faces, (see figures 1, 2 & 3.) Numerous Celtic stone busts have been unearthed in the British Isles and Europe, some with the forward and backward looking double-faced (Janus) head, but only a small number of three-faced sculptures have been recovered. Dated c. 2000 B.C. to the time of Christ, this stone idol was found in Woodlands, County Donegal, Ireland and is now in the National Museum in Dublin. What kind of ritual or cultic significance could such idols have had? Why three faces on a single head? The Janus figures, so named after the Roman god who could look in two directions at once, express something of the duality in nature (see Fig. 4). To look forward into the future and also backwards into the past is certainly a godlike ability that gives one a more complete viewpoint from which to operate in the present. This aspect com­ bined with the polaric qualities of male and female, as well as youth and age, provide a picture of the inner dynamic or spiritual tension that might exist in a being that is “two-faced”. Taken in a positive sense as did Raphael, the Janus head can even represent the virtue of Prudence which looks in two directions, with both a young female

50 The Three Faces of Celtic Man • 51 face and an old male visage. (Fig. 5) But what of the three faces which occur in the pagan Celtic heads?

[Image: photographofsculpture,firstface]Fig.l [Image: photographofsculpture,secondface]Fig.2 [Image: photographofsculpture,thirdface]Fig.3

[Image: photographofsculpture,backandfronthead]Fig.4 52 • Van J ames

[Image: paintingFig.[Image: 5

Many Celtic deities, both male and female, reveal a threefold na­ ture. As T.G.E. Powell has pointed out, “It is not a tendency to trinitarian concepts, or of the union of three distinct supernatural beings. It is, in fact, an expression of the extreme potency of any one deity. It may be likened to the power of three, and this number was sacred, and auspicious, far beyond the Celtic world...”1 This triplism is most apparent among the goddesses who often wear three different names. Morrigna, for instance, is the singular equivalent of Morrigan, Badh and Nemain. There are also three Brigits and three Macha, while Carmen and Tlachtga bore triplet sons. Amongst the male deities there are the three Gods of Skill, personified in Gobniu, Credne and Luchta. Even the principal gods Lug and Dagda show some evidence of threefoldness. Obviously threeness was important in the religion/ mythology of the Celts, but this fact doesn’t necessarily make our three-faced stone sculptures into gods. Triplism also appears in the Celtic social structure. Of particular importance were the class distinctions between the Druid- priests, the Bards, and the warrior-kings.2 There were three degrees in the bardic training: pupil, apprentice, and bard. The three stages of schooling for a druid were bard, seer-judge, high priest-advisor to the king. The The Three Faces of Celtic Man • 53 bards, directly connected to the druids, were at the same time a distinct order unto themselves having three aims: the reform of morals and customs, the maintenance of peace, and the glorification of all good and excellent things. The bards had tremendous authority and power over the entire country. Traveling from tribe to tribe and court to court, these sage-minstrels taught the highest truths and moral ethics, keeping the peace through the power of song and speech. Even into Christian times, the bards fought lawlessness and violence through such tales as the Arthurian legends.3

[Image: photographof]Triple King Sancreed Church, (roodscreen), Cornwall. 54 • Van James

The bards possessed a complete wisdom of their own which was communicated through wise sayings concerning various domains of life. This bardic wisdom, always having three parts to it, was called the Triads.4 For instance, there were three branches of knowledge: wisdom concerning God, wisdom concerning fellow men, and wis­ dom concerning oneself. There were three main features of wisdom: love, truth and courage; and three signs of the upright man: silent lips, open eyes, and fearless bearing. The three principle things to be observed in poetic description were: imagery, awakening of sympa­ thy, sharp characterization. And the three principle parts of goodness were: wisdom, strength, and love.5 These Triads of the Celtic bards were described by Kolisko in the following way: when we observe their content we realize how they have arisen from a deep understanding of human nature as body, as soul, and as spirit. On the one hand they are truly artistic, scientific, and penetrating views of the human being in its threefold nature and, on the other hand, harmonious triads of musical poetic art, the basis for deep religious experience.6 Celtic man, it becomes clear, saw his gods, his world and himself in terms of triads. Now, let us put all of these considerations aside for the moment and simply look at the Three-Faced Celtic Man. The most striking thing about this bust is how very different the three faces are from each other. Figure 1 is a well-proportioned head with full hair framing a protruding brow and bulging eyes. This being appears to be very intense and concentrated. It is filled with light and its consciousness is one of full wakefulness. In Figure 2 we are struck by the very lyrical, musical quality of the narrow face. Lifted up on the side where it meets Figure 1 and drooping noticeably where it is connected to Figure 3, this central face lives as if in a dream. Figure 3 has an unusually large, flat face in which the small features are almost lost. The expression is dull, heavy and dark. However, what seems most important about all three of these portraits is the representation of distinct levels of consciousness: waking, dreaming, and sleeping. It appears that in Figure 1, we have a fully conscious thinking being; an awake intellect, or better yet, one that sees clearly. Figure 2 is only semi-conscious as though dozing off, in a dreamy state, not really awake yet, certainly not in a deep sleep. Figure 3, though open-eyed, appears quite unconscious. This third being lives not in conscious thoughts or even in dreamy feelings, but in the sub-conscious forces of the will. Can we recognize in these three faces not only the stages The Three Faces of Celtic Man • 55 of consciousness—wakefulness, dreaming, and sleeping—but also the three soul forces of thinking, feeling and willing? It seems plausible that the artist of this piece, for whatever reason, was depicting the very nature of the human being as experienced at that time— a portrait which reveals a penetrating knowledge of self, nature and the divine. If we recall the social order as it existed among the early Celts, we might wonder if our Three-faced pagan figure is also a portrait of the Druid-priest, the minstral-bard and the warrior-king. Could Figure 1 be the countenance of the prophetic druid-seer in a clairvoyant (clear vision) state? Is Figure 2 the Meistersinger, poet-bard, chanting his musical verse? And perhaps the willful strengths of the warrior-king are expressed in the visage of Figure 3? These considerations appear consistent with the Celt’s emphasis on triplism in various aspects of their knowledge and understanding of man, nature and the world of the gods. Further observations could no doubt be made on the Three-faced Celtic Man’s relationship to the teaching of the Triads. The human face is not just an assemblage of physical parts; eyes, nose, mouth. The human countenance is the living icon of an indwelling being. Just as the “eyes are the windows of the soul,” so is the face the architectural facade of that soul-spirit. The portrait is not just a record of what we appear to be from the outside, but when it is the result of high artistic creativity, the portrait reveals what we are inside, in the form of an imaginative, yet true, picture. 56 • Van J ames

NOTES

1. T.G.E. Powell, The Celts, Thames and Hudson Ltd., London, 1987. 2. Naturally, the farmer/peasants, craftsmen, etc. were part of yet other cast levels. 3. Jacob Streit, Sun and Cross. Floris Books, Edinburgh, 1984 4. Eugen Kolisko, “Music and the Art of Healing Among the Druids and Bards,” The Present Age, Vol. 1, No. 7 (June 1936). 5. These sayings were chanted as a musical utterance, according to Kolisko, and were not committed to writing until several centuries after Christ. Streit notes that Irish law was still recorded in verse form in the sixth century A.D. 6. Kolisko, p. 23. 57

Trinity

When the Father strides in me through the meadow and the wood, I can hear and I can see all the universe is good.

When the Son breathes deep in me and I feel the light and air, then I love humanity and behold the world is fair.

When the spirit thinks in me, teaching me to think of you, then it seeks to set me free, and I know that life is true. Rex Raab 58

The Decade

I dreamed the dawning sun bleeding, breathing, beating and I was almost afraid. — A world past narrating. Beginnings who are centuries ancient, reptilian motions, oceans in comers of sky, the colors of fire, before the heart conceived its child and was born. Elaine M. Upton 59

Before a Picture of the Madonna and Child.

I remember when our child awoke within the calm embrace of blue and red, when into the stillness of a mother’s glance few words were spoken, everything understood; it was as if he found a nesting place in front of Pietro Perugino’s eyes— his limbs were formed by an artist’s brush, his gentleness, from the radiant blush of the Virgin, full with the innocence of her child.

I remember when our child awoke and when you walked off in dismay.

I remember; yet this was long before his birth. Andrew Hoy A Christ Experience in the Light o f Spiritual Science

CALVERT ROSZELL

I n 1978 Dr. George G. Ritchie, a Virginian psychiatrist, published an account of a near death experience he underwent as a twenty year- old army recruit in 1943.1 Shortly before the end of his basic training, George developed double lobar pneumonia, and was mistakenly pronounced dead after nine days of hospitalization. After his recov­ ery, Dr. Ritchie spoke of a meeting with Jesus Christ that renewed his Christian faith. Ritchie related this ordeal to Raymond Moody, who went on to dedicate his investigation of the near death experience to George Ritchie.2 Dr. Ritchie relates that he seemed to find himself suddenly outside his physical body in the hospital room. The dark room began to light up all around, peaking at an indescribably dazzling brilliance, and at that point what appeared to be the shape of a man made out of light stepped before him. Dr. Ritchie described in a lecture he gave in 1982 that when the light reached the peak of its brilliance, “out of this brilliant light stepped this form of sheer light”—a man of brilliant lig h t stepped into the room out of this light. This is a significant and awe inspiring description; it is identical to that of Theodora's in Rudolf Steiner’s first mystery drama, The Portal o f Initiation-.

Before my spirit stands a Form in shining light, and from it words sound forth to me...

You have lived long in faith; you have been comforted by hope. So now be comforted with sight;...

60 A Christ Experience in the Light o f Spiritual Science • 6l

A human being emerges from the radiant light and speaks to me: You shall proclaim to all who have the will to hear, that you have seen what men shall soon experience. The Christ once lived upon the earth, and from this life it follows that He encompasses as Soul men’s growth on earth.

This detail carries the authority of a signature of what spiritual science refers to as the birth of the spirit self or higher self, in the im­ age of the Christ, who is the prototype for what mankind, through His Grace, is meant to become. This is the Damascus light of St. Paul, and the fiery-bright man with the feet of flowing hot bronze described at the beginning of the Revelation of St. John.3 It is difficult not to ask how this superhuman h u m a n form can be bound up with the destiny of the human being. Rudolf Steiner saw an answer to this question as the essential task of a true Anthroposophy. This being seemed to stand compassionately by George Ritchie’s side while a panorama of every detail of his life was illuminated before both of them, and all the thoughts of his mind were laid open to his guide. What is the nature of the light and the panorama? Spiritual Science relates a constellation of concepts that together answer this question. Rudolf Steiner describes how the physical body is organized and sustained by a finer organization that presents itself to what he calls supersensible vision. Steiner describes the first of three supersensible members of every man as the body of formative forces, or etheric body. He observes that the workings of these forces are evident in all living things, and not in lifeless matter. In the plant kingdom these are said to be the forces of cell reproduction, metabolism and growth, which distinguish the plant from the mineral matter it is filled with. Rudolf Steiner describes how in the human being this principle is raised further to the status of abstract conception or thought. The etheric body is the illuminating light o f consciousness, illuminating and retaining impressions; it is like the back of the mirror that pro­ vides the reflecting surface for images. In this way it becomes the bearer of memory, the body of past impressions that we are able to 6 2 • Calvert Roszell consciously illuminate again. It can be described as the tapestry of all the memories, judgments and other thoughts that a person has proc­ essed and assimilated through his or her experience, which over time also come to make up the temperament, character and habit of the individual. Rudolf Steiner observed that this etheric organization is loosened from the physical body partially and temporarily under life threaten­ ing conditions, and completely and permanently at death. This frees it from its task of keeping the physical body alive. When the human being breaks free of the body into the etheric realm, the weave of sense memories can no longer overshadow the spiritual creative light, and the individuality enters into overflowing clear light and height­ ened awareness.4 Rudolf Steiner describes how, during the first two or three days immediately after death, the human being sees his or her life pass before him in a tableau of brightly illuminated, ever expanding but fading pictures, as the spiritual beings of the stars receive the thoughts, feelings and intentions that have nourished life, and reject like the earth does plastic and metal rubbish those that did not. Rudolf Steiner speaks also of yet finer aspects of this event. He described how at death the conscience is revealed as a cosmic light by which the human being perceives and judges all his or her past actions, feelings and thoughts.5 Yet he also speaks of special beings of the hierarchies as the force behind the life review, which does not surprise us in light of Theodora’s description. Rudolf Steiner spoke of two beings that share the task or office of illuminating the life review:

Just before the period of purification in the soul world a special event takes place. ...A meeting takes place between the human being and a very special being, who holds before him the register of his past deeds. And this individual, who stands there as a kind of bookkeeper of the karmic powers has been for many the figure of M oses.... This office is however changing hands in the course of our age—and this is a highly significant matter—and the human being will ever more frequently encounter Christ Jesu s instead as the judge of his karma towards the end of the twentieth century.6

Do the judgement events of conscience and of Moses or Christ fall within the same time frame, are they both events of the loosened A Christ Experience in the Light o f Spiritual Science • 63 etheric body? Yes. The judgment encounter with Moses or Christ takes place “just before the period o f purification in the soul world”7 Rudolf Steiner often refers to the period of purification in the soul world as the period of kamaloka, or as the laying aside of the astral body, a process that involves consciously experiencing in reverse order all the events that were lost to consciousness in sleep on the earth, a process that corresponds in earth time to about a third of a lifetime. The period that precedes purification in the soul world is the much shorter period of laying aside the etheric body immediately fol­ lowing death, a period that lasts only as long as the individual could remain awake in earth life, about two to three days. Are we con­ cerned here with the person of Moses or of the Christ? The New Tes­ tament is a help to us in answering this question. Moses and Christ are characteristically distinct in this regard: while Moses brings mankind the ten commandments, the letter of the law of the conscience, the laws of the spiritual-moral world that are always fulfilled whether they are obeyed are not; Christ brings only the one commandment, that people learn to love one another. It is interesting in this regard that George Ritchie clearly describes on the one hand an illumination of conscience that reveals his every fault, and with these also bitterness, regret and embarrassment of being the personality that he is, but on the other hand a sense of belonging and of promise in the compassion of the being of light — on the one hand, the presence of Moses or the severe light of the individual conscience, and on the other, the presence of the Christ, the power of grace and love. George Ritchie noted how surprised he was in a moment when his guide seemed jovial to him:

This was... a mirth that seemed to say that in spite of all error and tragedy, joy was more lasting still. ...I realized that it was I who was judging the events around us so harshly. It was I who saw them as trivial, self-centered, unimportant. No such condemna­ tion came from the Glory shining round me. He was not blaming or reproaching, he was simply... loving me.

A paradox unfolds clearly at this point where during the life review Christ appears in the light of conscience and yet does not condemn, but pours out a life and hope-renewing Love. Again the New Testa­ ment points to this secret of the world in the Transfiguration, by which Christ is revealed in indescribably radiant light flanked by the 6 4 • C alvert Roszell figures of Moses and Elias. Moses appears together with the Christ; he is an arm of the risen Christ. Since the Easter event, the Grace of Christ can take ever increasing effect during the life review, despite the pain the panorama of the structure of one’s own essential errors necessarily engenders. Spiri­ tual Science speaks of a symbol of this riddle, the contemplation of which may lead one beyond the intellectual conundrum into the living reality: the rose cross. In the contemplation of this symbol, one can discover the truth of this riddle from many sides. One such perspective can be described in somewhat the following manner: the Grace-renewing life of the blood of Christ blossoms forth out of the very errors of the cross of human suffering on the earth, out of the past mistakes, the injustices that human beings have caused each other that never cease to grieve the conscience. And both these processes, which seem at first so irreconcilable, are intuited beyond the intellect as expressions of the same moral being of the cosmos:

We see that love appears on earth in the East; conscience in the West. The two belong together. As Christ appears in the East, so conscience awakens in the West that through it Christ may be ac­ cepted. In the simultaneous occurrence and comprehension of the fact of the Christ event, and in the preparation for these things in different parts of the earth, we see the rule of an infinite wisdom guiding our development.8

“Let the East fire what the West crystallizes into shape and form” intones, ever more convincingly to us, the words of the Foundation Stone. George Ritchie further describes his meeting with the Christ in a way that characterizes the uniqueness of His person:

This was the most totally male Being I had ever met. If this was the Son of God, then His name was Jesus. But... this was not the Jesus of my Sunday School books. That Jesus was gentle, kind, understanding—and probably a little bit of a weakling. This Person was power itself, older than time and yet more modern than anyone I had ever met. Far more even than power, what emanated from this Pres­ ence was unconditional love. An astonishing love. A love be- A Christ Experience in the Light o f Spiritual Science • 65

yond my wildest imagining. This love knew every unlovable thing about me — the quarrels with my stepmother, my explo­ sive temper, the sex thoughts I could never control, every mean selfish thought and action since the day I was born — and accepted and loved me just the same.

Dr. Ritchie describes a being of limitless power, who also appears to know everything there is to know about him. And yet a compas­ sion pours forth from this being that exceeds even the impression of unlimited power. Rudolf Steiner was moved to speak of this charac­ teristic of the Christ Being in the following way: Jesus Christ shares omniscience in common with Lucifer, and omnipotence with Ahri­ man, but unconditional love is always the mark of His presence a lo n e ? The further we go into George Ritchie’s account in the light of Spiritual Science, the more clear it becomes that the experience is an exact fulfillment of Rudolf Steiner’s perception. Dr. Ritchie describes how, at the end of the review of his life, his guide leads him to a dingy bar, where a group of sailors is drinking beer and whiskey. Ritchie relates the following:

Gradually I began to notice... that all of the living people we were watching were surrounded by a faint luminous glow, al­ most like an electrical field over the surface of their bodies. This luminosity moved as they moved, like a second skin made out of pale, scarcely visible light.... Then, the cocoon of light must be a property of physical bodies only. The dead (among which the author included himself)... had lost this “second skin” as well.

Rudolf Steiner observes that the etheric organization appears as a bright band of peach blossom light around the bodies of the living, but not around astral beings, which would apply to out of body experiences such as Dr. Ritchie’s.

Then I noticed a striking thing. A number of the men (without the outline of pale light) standing at the bar seemed unable to lift their drinks to their lips. Over and over I watched them clutch at their shot glasses, hands passing through the solid tumblers, through the heavy wooden counter top, through the very arms and bodies of the drinkers around them. 6 6 • C alvert Roszell

I watched one young (liv in g ) sailor rise unsteadily from a stool, take two or three steps, and sag heavily to the floor. Two of his buddies stooped down and started dragging him away from the crush. But that was not what I was looking at. I was staring in amaze­ ment as the bright cocoon around the unconscious sailor simply opened up. It parted at the very crown of his head and began peeling away from his head, his shoulders. Instantly ...one of the insubstantial beings who had been standing next to him at the bar... vanished as he hurled himself at that opening.

Steiner attempted to describe more concretely the etheric body by indicating modulations it undergoes under various conditions.10 He noted then that the danger of hypnosis consists in the effect it has of loosening the etheric body, and observed that the etheric body of a person in a state of hypnosis appears like “two lobes or sacks... hang­ ing out... on both sides of the head.” The two observations of the parting of the aureole of light at the head are striking, not only from a purely perceptual point of view, but also as regards their conceptual contexts. Both hypnosis and loss of consciousness due to alcohol intoxication are extraordinary states of unconsciousness. This point brings us back to The Portal o f Initiation. Capesius, whose constitution very finely reflects the consciousness soul of the twentieth century man, objects initially to Theodora’s narrative of a vision of the etheric Christ. Capesius suggests that Theodora’s vision was a product of Benedictus’ teaching. Maria responds in the follow­ ing way:

Were this in truth the case, we would not give it weight. The fact remains, however, after careful proof until she came into our circle, our friend knew nothing o f our leader’s teaching, and none o f us had heard of her before.11

The passage indicates in a subtle but definite way one of the hopes Rudolf Steiner had for the testing of his Spiritual Science. And here we have such a test. Viewed with dispassionate skepticism, neither this nor the other agreements between the accounts of George Ritchie A Christ Experience in the Light o f Spiritual Science • 67 and Rudolf Steiner appear explainable through hearsay, since Rudolf Steiner’s address had been given in German to only a small audience, and had not been printed in 1943. Also, Dr. Ritchie’s account reflects a Protestant background and formal education, but certainly none of the terminology of Anthroposophy. And in a communication dated March 17, 1988, George Ritchie confirmed that he had never previ­ ously heard this or any other statement of Rudolf Steiner. George Ritchie convincingly describes a meeting with the Christ that made the Cosmic Word a living and personal experience for him. His narrative testifies, however, not only to the inspiring presence of the Christ in his life, but also to an intimate and exact acquaintance with beings and events of the spiritual world that only Spiritual Science can make intelligible. Rudolf Steiner emphasized often that the consequence of the Resurrection should lead in the latter part of the twentieth century to ever more frequent Damascus experiences of the Risen etheric Christ, that the twentieth century is itself an age at the etheric threshold. George Ritchie’s story affords us a special op­ portunity to recognize and enter into the meaning of this special event. 6 8 • Calvert Roszell

NOTES

1. G. Ritchie, Return from Tomorrow (Old Tappan: Fleming Revell, 1978). 2. R. Moody, Life after Life (Covington: Mockingbird Books, 1975). 3. Cf. C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, “The New Men,” (New York: Macmil­ lan, 1978). 4. R. Steiner, Das Geheimnis des Todes, GA 159/160, S. 327. (S. = page number in the Bibliographical Survey German edition). 5. R. Steiner, Der Übersinnliche Mensch, GA 231, November 13, 1923. 6. R. Steiner, From Jesus to Christ (London-, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1973). 7. ibid. 8. R. Steiner, The Christ Impulse and the Development of Ego Consciousness, GA 116, 2 May 1910, (Spring Valley: Anthroposophie Press) pp. 132-133. 9. R. Steiner, Erfahrungen des Übersinnlichen: die Wege der Seele zu Chris­ tus, GA 143, December 17, 1912. 10. R. Steiner, At the Gates of Spiritual Science (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1970). 11. R. Steiner, The Portal of Initiation, Scene One. FROM A NOTEBOOK 1942 by Albert Steffen published in German in the Nachrichtenblatt of the Goetheanum, 3 March 1968*

The Anthroposophical Society lives in accordance with its own true being when its members are free. The human being, however, is free only when he meditates; that means, when he selects an insight which he has come to recognize as true and lives himself into it. Such insights are yielded by spiritual science. A humanity in which there are such meditants is different from a humanity without them. Insight­ ful knowledge is only true when it is healing, when it reveals the true goal of humanity, when it is filled with the Christ Impulse, which can live within an individual throughout incarnations. We must know that it is necessary that there are meditants in this sense and that they are a healing power and one which can prevent disaster, a power against which nothing can prevail. The less one speaks about it, the greater will its effectiveness and its influence on our culture be. There must be some who practice this devotion and renunciation, this inner activity, daily and hourly. They must see themselves at all times facing the decision and must be able to say to themselves: there lives something on earth through me which would not be there without me, and which radiates out from me through my free will. And, because of this, humanity will not go under. This is the mood of the spirit in which one can take up into oneself misdeeds, in order to transform them into good deeds. To bear evil within one in such a way that is is digested and then rises up as a healing power in world evolution— this is the only means to help. Nothing else can bring salvation. And this power of the human being, who is born anew each day, can express itself in tone, in color, in words, in friendships, and in work relationships. It is not a matter of expelling the demon host, but of taking it into oneself and transforming it into good being. In the moment this is proclaimed as a program it will be desecrated and could lose its power. Yet, if silently carried out it exercises an unfailing effect upon the members of society. This is, in the true sense of the word, community building.

* translated by Henry Barnes 69 The Force o f The Logos and the Force o f the “I” *

GEORG KÜHLEWIND

“When someone says: ‘I have been wounded’, he must use the word ‘I’ in a sense which is comprehensible also to others, for instance in the sense of ‘the one who is now speaking to you’...’’ This is how the mathematician and logician Gottlob Frege1 is uniting the two realities: the I and the speaking. In the mentioned case it is I who is speaking. The one who speaks is an I, and the speaker means himself, as the one who speaks, when he uses the little word “I”. This small word refers so radically and entirely to itself, that it can be used only with respect to myself. It is basically not a noun— even though it is often used in that way— but a personal pronoun. This case of extreme “self-meaning” has only one parallel: the word “word”. Like the word “I”, it points in a similar way to itself. However, there are many words, and there are many speakers, who are justified to say “I”; therefore they have to say “I” and have to speak. And although there is a multitude of words, every single one means only itself, nothing “else” - in contradiction to what is generally believed. Every word says “I” in its own way.

1. THE BASIC PHENOMENA OF LANGUAGE. Self-meaning.

It is not difficult to see that the sounds of language do not mean anything but themselves; although one is often tempted to character­ ize them—mostly in a poetic sense—one can never exhaust their po­ tential. Even with regard to conjunctions, prepositions and many adjectives (e.g. “although”, “in”, “beautiful”) it is easy to see that they signify a specific understanding, or gesture of consciousness, not 70 The Force of the Logos and the Force of the '"I" • 71 something that would be sense-perceptible. Yet this is in no way different from nouns and verbs, which are seemingly designating a perception. “Table” means every table as function, independent of size, material, number of legs (a cloth can serve as a table even when it is placed on a sloping meadow); because it means my understand­ in g “what a table is”, nothing else. The child that has acquired this understanding will recognize everything that is “tabling” as table. Man-made things are in principle understandable, i.e. truly compre- hendible, thus real (=effective) concepts, “real essences” in the sense of John Locke. For modern man, this is different with regard to the designations of nature. “Rose” means certain perceptible characteris­ tics, which allow us to recognize or name the thing. If the number of petals of calyx or blossom, or the amount of stamens, or the form of leaves is not coinciding we know from that, that we are not dealing with the same species. In this case understanding means: “something that appears in a certain way, is called rose”, or a rose looks like that-, this corresponds to the “nominal essences” of Locke. With verbs it is similar. In any case the word means my understanding; in slightly dif- ferents terms this coincides with Wittgenstein’s view about the mean­ ing of words. This elucidates that the problem of the “generality” of the concept and the singularity of the individual object of perception exists only for the naive consciousness which is not aware of its own role. Because we perceive the individual, as being single, only when we relate it to the universal of which it is a specification. No object is green, large, or round “in general”, but shows a shade of green, a certain size and a specific roundness. Energetics This touches upon the “energetic” role of language (Wilhelm von Humboldt): Language does not “name” something that would some­ how exist even without a concept or some understanding of the place of the identified individual within the context or structure of the given entirety of the world; its primary function is basically the individualiz­ ing of distinguishable entities by means of conceptual outline, which is provided by the language— always, whether one deals with real or nominal essences. In this sense Th. Georgiades2 speaks of “naming”: language “names” and creates in this way the elements of the outer and inner world. Its structure is articulated especially through gram­ mar, which provides the consciousness with the respective categorial context. 7 2 • G eorg Kühlewind

For the child, the world is created through the language even today: at that stage of the development of consciousness word and concept are not yet separated. Initially the individual human being — also mankind— thinks in language, and by means of language. Later it learns from the language how to articulate in a structured manner, and abstract thinking develops independent of language and words, a thinking that is also capable of conceiving concepts which are not provided by the language; those are the scientific and technical concepts. The not-natural origin of language. The self-meaning of the words and the structure of the world emerge from within the language; because language itself does not consist of elements which are given by nature: neither words nor grammar can be found in nature. Even where language is imitating the sounds of nature, it uses its own palette of sounds, which is independent of nature (for the barking of dogs Wau-Wau, Wow Bow or Gaf-Gaf). There is no natural or general connection between the form of a sound and the meaning of a word, and there are no sounds which two or several languages would have in common. In the Maori language the mother is called “papa”, in the Georgian language the father is called “mama”. Language has to work with its own specific means; those are not found as pre-configured entities, since the means which nature could provide would have to be first assigned by the language, in order to become “something” —the w h a t or conceptual outline. Because only through language are such elements individualized out of the Given: namely according to the structure and lexicon of the language. Although the language is g iv en , to the child—the human being is not forming or creating it—it is not given as a process of nature but through the human environ ment. And since thinking is born out of the faculty of speaking, thinking is not inherited either; and neither is the ability to perform consciously intended formed movements. All of these specifically human faculties are a super-conscious predisposi­ tion of the human being, they are a fa c u lty , without the conscious awareness of how they are performed. We do not know how we produce sounds, we do not speak our mother-tongue by grammatical knowledge, and we do not know h ow we are thinking. Likewise we do not know how we are looking at other human beings, how we are smiling, or how we perform other articulate gestures: all of this is part of language. The Force of the Logos and the Force of the "I" • 73 Two-fold aspect of language. All the elements of human language have two aspects: a sense- perceptible, “appearing” part (acoustically or visually perceptible), and a hidden, non-appearing part, the meaning or sense; both live within the consciousness, where they can be recalled. The perceptible sig n lies on the level of the every-day consciousness; the meaning and its understanding is super-conscious. These two levels are sepa­ rated by an abyss; only a shadow—a reflection—or the result of understanding, is reaching this side of the abyss. Thus language and the word are becoming a very important bridge across the abyss— or connection between the two levels of consciousness— if they are fu lly conceived and spoken with inner participation, not merely outer attention. On one side the acoustic sign—on the other, its meaning. The perceptible side is discontinuously structured, the other side, understanding, much more continuous. One can count the sounds, words and sentences, but not the number of understandings along the text; those are rather flowing from one into the other. This characterizes also the specific way and manner in which something is structured and articulated from within the Logos-sphere: language and thinking. Words and concepts are distinct from one another, and at the same time united within a word-system, or conceptual system. There is no such thing as a sin g le word outside of the entirety of language, no sin g le concept without a conceptual system. In fact, the distinction occurs just because of the inner connectedness within the conceptual sphere, i.e. in the hidden part of language. A concept lives by the grace of adjoining concepts with which it is connected and from which it is distinguished simultaneously, and at the sam e time it is helping its adjoining concepts to exist as individual concepts in themselves. The same can be said about words: they are w ord in g only in the context of speaking, even if this should include non-verbal elements like gestures, intonation and facial expression. In language and thinking distinguishing and c o n n ec tin g are one. If this oneness is given up we lose the Logos-sphere, and enter a field of disconnected piecework, an unstructured world where everything is flowing together. This is just the nature of words and concepts that they consist of these two gestures at the same time: s ep a ra tin g and connecting-, if they are performed separately, for themselves, they represent the domains of the two adversary forces. 7 4 • G eorg Kühlewind Transparency. One can directly and immediately understand one’s own thinking and concepts; they a r e understanding— that is the meaning of direct immediacy. When one contemplates the self-meaning one experi­ ences the evidence that such understanding is always referring to itself: it understands itself. It is a creation. Wherever an “otherness” appears there is not-understanding, and just that is the “other”. In the perceptual world there is only one phenomenon we can understand likewise immediately: that is language. This includes the arts which also have a verbal structure similar to language, because they too consist of sense-perceptible signs full of meaning— even if this “mean­ ing” cannot be rendered by thinking or through concepts of the usual kind. The perceptible signs are transparent for an appropriate under­ standing within thinking, or within feeling, as in the arts. The ele­ ments of language are seed-like; any concept can be a departure point for growth; it can be pursued in all directions according to its connection with other concepts: horizontally-sideways, or vertically- upwards to its primal meaning, which allows for any possible appli­ cation, also future uses, or enlargements of the present meaning. One can also do this with words of a language; but there the way in which the words are supposed to appear is prescribed by syntax and gram­ mar, whereas the meaning behind the sign is allowed to change. The growth and life of such conceptualities is also a specific potential of the higher ideas— “feelable ideas”— in art ( music, painting, sculp­ ture, etc.) as well as in nature. An example for the latter is Goethe’s idea of the archetypal plant. Nature is like a letter or sign for mightier, “feelable”, and willing ideas, formations of feeling and willing, in the same way as our normal, familiar ideas are thought formations as well. The “feelability” of the ideas of nature appears in their percepti­ bility; every one of our senses is open to feeling, for instance a hearing sense in music, a seeing sense in painting, a tasting sense for the wine expert. Every nature-phenomenon is so strongly willed in its specific qualities— being thus — so that human will is comparatively powerless. One can only allow one’s own attentional will to be im­ printed by the “suchness” of the perception; the more one is able to do this, the more one’s perception is precise and rich. The construction of a sentence displays a hierarchical structure. The sounds surrender their individual character to the word, and the words do the same within a sentence, which assigns them their The Force of the Logos and the Force of the "I" • 75 specific meaning by reducing their many possibilities; also the mean­ ing of entire sentences is specified through the context of the text and situation in which they are spoken, possibly serving a higher meaning within a paragraph, etc. It is possible to determine whether or not one is dealing with a text, even if one is unable to decipher the writing. In a writing one finds phonological, grammatical and syntactical regularities, i.e. an irregu­ lar repetion of elements. Regularity would point to an ornamental character like in a carpet. Although natural science finds regularities in nature, the elements are never strictly evenly repeated. Therefore one can know that nature has the character of a text. Higher— living, feeling, willing— ideas would be necessary to understand this text, and the ability to work with such ideas. "That” and the witness. As soon as a th a t is appearing on the horizon of consciousness— whether it is something really understood or something nominally defined by its outer appearing form, as long as it can be remembered at will (a reaction upon a familiar sign could also be a reflex)— one cannot separate this event from the presence of a witness. A th a t exists f o r an I, because it is conceptually outlined; even if the I is not aware of this, when the I-consciousness is not awake at the same time. This means that the I is already participating in the selection and formation of a distinct entity, a that. As soon as the Given is differen­ tiating itself into distinct entities, the I is participating in this process— depending on its actual abilities - under the guidance of its concep­ tual system and intuitional faculty. This relates also to the way thought intuitions or perceptions are received. Concerning a de­ manding text or perception of an art p i ece the participation of the recipient is usually conscious, however much less in ordinary percep­ tion. The hidden part of the outer signs of any language is only accessible to a I-being. Only an I-being is able to bring forth new meaning. Because of the fact that sense, meaning and Logos-nature reveal themselves in sense-perceptible signs, one can say: “Only in the word has the spiritual world descended to the physical world.”3 This does not mean certain specific words, but the ability f o r the word or the ability to give meaning, the faculty to produce or understand new ideas and their signs. 76 • Georg Kühlewind

2. THE WORD-NATURE OF THE HUMAN BEING

One who can understand a text, is also able to produce it; other­ wise one could not speak about understanding. Understanding has to be clearly distinguished from “reacting”, which does not require understanding. The test for understanding is always something that is new to the one who is supposed to understand, especially since the new sense has to appear in already existing old words; it would not support understanding to invent new words. The understanding I is able to find or attribute new content or meaning in the familiar signs, thus “make unlimited use of limited means” (W. V. Humboldt). One can probably see this as the fundamental characterization of the I, by adding that the I is also able to produce new ideas out of itself, and to express them in old words. In this way one can picture the I as infinitely capable of articulating itself: on the one hand in being able to touch and assume the form of every thought, even new ones, and on the other in its creative activity, as source for new thought forma­ tions or, in the arts, new forms of feeling. Neither the new understanding, nor the creation of new under­ standings can be ascribed to the sense-perceptible organism, because this— as a biological-physical-chemical system endowed with a sensi­ tive organization—has not the slightest inclination or capacity to con­ ceive or produce new meaning. S en se means improbability, however, not every improbability makes sense. To evaluate this, is not possible for a sense-perceptible system which has to be a statistically deter­ mined, causal system: nothing principally new can proceed from such a system. And if an accidental production were to take place, which instance would evaluate its truth, novelty, correctness, etc.? Rather, the sense-perceptible organism is analogous to the appearing part of the word, its sound-formation, whereas the invisible meaning of the word h a p p en s in that part of the human being which is not sense-perceptible either: because this meaning is a process, as is the understanding. The sense is or b eco m es within understanding, in­ deed, it itself is understanding. This part of he human being is its I- being, which articulates itself within the organism as a means of ex­ pression. This is the part where the resourcefulness of the human being has to be found, the source of new ideas, new speech, new understanding. In this sense one has to adjust Frege’s sentence: That which is wounded, is the organism; that which is “now speaking,” is the higher or true I, which is speaking without doubt th rou g h the organism. The Force of the Logos and the Force of the "I" • 77

The every-day I is part of the true I which has identified itself with the organism; it is a shadow of the true I, and experiences itself in and through the organism. When one says “I”, one normally points to the organism: an erroneous gesture, because for the true I one has to look in the direction of the “pointer”, not the “pointed”; and the pointer or speaker is not in the organism, in fact, not even in space, since he can only use the spatial as a means of expression. The I that has identified itself with the organism in a self-sensing gesture is not-speaking and not-cognizing. While alive, it can emancipate itself from this identifi­ cation only by way of a schooling of consciousness, self-education. These two I-beings are in touch with one another. Certain faculties of the true I—which are super-conscious for the every-day I—can also be performed by this every-day I, like thinking, speaking, or ar­ ticulated bodily movements; these are faculties specific to the I, all ac­ quired from the true I during childhood in the experience of the organism, before the lighting-up of the I-consciousness. During our every-day consciousness we do not know how we perform these activities, or how we direct our attention to any object, in thinking and perceiving. The connection between the two I-beings is not conscious, other­ wise those faculties would be conscious, too; the I-beings are sepa­ rated by an abyss— discontinuity— in the consciousness. The bridge across this abyss is the word. But this is also the bridge between you and me, between man and Godhead, between man and world. One can show that all these separations are caused by the same rift. That part of the I-being that is analogous to the meaning of a word - which does not appear in the world of the senses, is liberated from the organism through death.

Now try to imagine that what man is expressing, what is flowing into the fleeting word, would be a ‘self-uttering’ of the human being, its essence and its revelation at the same time— then you find the way in which human beings meet each other in the middle between death and new birth. Word meets another word, the articulated word encounters an articulated word, an inwardly enlivened word meets the inwardly enlivened word. The human beings themselves are the words, and their sound­ ing-together is the symphony of the articulated Word-being. In this sphere human beings live together without untransparency: they are truly living with one another, and one word, which is one human being, merges with the other word, the other human 7 8 • G eorg Kühlewind

being. Here the karmic connections are formed which continue to work into the next life on earth; they manifest themselves in such a way that the human beings feel sympathy and antipathy, as it were, when they meet and encounter one another. This feeling is a reflection of the way in which human beings have addressed themselves in the spiritual world, in the middle be­ tween death and new birth. This is how we have spoken with one another, we, who were speech ourselves, who are now finding ourselves on earth again, in the shadowy reflection of this feeling.4

The not-natural, spiritual part is “permeable”, directly understand­ able, like a thought; the body causes the untransparency characteris­ tic for everything sense-perceptible, except for the phenomenon of speech. The body could be a pure expression of the true I, like the relation between sign and meaning of the word. Due to the natural needs of the body, not penetrated by the true I, and because of the formation of the every-day I, the structure of the human being devi­ ates from that ideal. Among the soul-functions, the purest effect of the true I can be found in thinking and perceiving, and those activities which are guided by thinking. Therefore the strength of the I can be measured by the degree of the pure energy of thinking, the ability for concep­ tual structuring: how articulate, and how high a rung it is reaching in the ladder of ideas. Human freedom is based on the resourcefulness of the spirit. This can make beginnings, i.e. in itia te causal chains; such beginnings are not effects of earlier causes; they can also interrupt causal chains. Heraclitus ascribes this faculty to the log os which is dwelling within the soul, “growing from out of itself’. To this Logos the human being owes its predisposition for speech, and therewith all specifically hu­ man faculties and activities: as they are rooted in the higher spiritual man, the true I; none of these can be inherited. Nature as perceptual world is the outer side of past Logos-creation. The spark of the Logos that lives within the human being nourishes its creatively individualized Logosforce. Between human beings it makes communication possible, and because of it the perceptual world is principally knowable. In the Middle-Ages, the light of the perceptual world used to be characterized in the sentence “omne ens verum ” - “everything that is, is true”: tru e in the sense that it is unconcealed or The Force of the Logos and the Force of the "I" • 79 cognizable, knowable; and this meant being created by the Logos - through the word. Egoity, the “flesh”, is self-sensing, not cognizing, not speaking. This is the result of a development which begins with learning to speak, but is not caused by this. Learning to speak also includes communicating gestures, long before verbal speech. In speaking, the speaker - the higher human being, the true I - penetrates the speech- organism in a not self-sensing manner, i.e. unegotistically. It is a later perversion of speaking if the speaker is enjoying himself in this process. Conversation can remain free of this self-indulgence, and then it can become “more quickening than light”. As the individuality of words and concepts is secured by their interactive relationship and connectedness, as words have no reality if separated from the wholeness of their language; likewise human individuals together are forming humanity, a language whose hidden inner side is the Logos itself. As the spirit of a language is mirrored in every single one of its words that it enlivens, likewise a living spark of the Logos-fire is present within each human being: as its concealed star-like essence, its eternal name who it is in the spirit, which utters itself in the spiritual world. But together these words build the Logos- language - sublime above all sounding languages, and thus the whole and the individual are held together, making one another mutually necessary, in the same was as the words in language.

To be continued. This issue contains parts 1 and 2. Parts 3-5 will appear in the next issue of the Journal (Spring 1991).

NOTES

* Translation from German manuscript Logokraft und Ich kraft. Friedemann Schwarzkopf; Copyright ©: Friedemann Schwarzkopf, Georg Kühlewind, 1989. 1. G.Frege, Logische Untersuchungen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen, .1966; G. Kühlewind, Becoming Aware of the Logos, Lindisfarne Press, West Stockbridge, Mass. 1984. 2. Th. Georgiades, Nennen und Erklingen, Chap. III, Vandenhoek & Rupre­ cht, .Göttingen, 1985. 3. R. Steiner, GA 96, 19-X.1906 4. R. Steiner, GA 231, 14.XI.1923; see also: GA 215, 9-IX.1922; GA 107, 6.X. 1908; GA 218, 4.12.1922. Book Reviews

ON THE THRESHOLD OF A CELESTIAL SCIENCE A look at the work of Paul Platt

by Andrew Christopher Lorand

I f Goetheanism is the science of researching spiritual principles and forces at work in nature, then Paul Platt has been applying Goethean- ism to the study of the stars. During the past fifteen years Platt has attempted an empirical approach to perceiving the influence of celes­ tial rhythms on human nature. His approach thus differs greatly from those who are perhaps more traditional astrologers and therefore work more as interpreters of horoscopes, for example, and who use various traditional or historical models as their basis for analysis. Indeed, his approach also differs somewhat from the ‘anthroposophi­ cal’ astrosophers who have focused their work on the influence of the constellations present during the life of Christ. This is not to say, however, that Platt is not a Christ-focused scientist of the heavenly influences in our lives. Born on May 7th, 1948, Platt attended Martin van Buren High School in Queens, New York, and in 1966 he was the New York City tennis champion. He attended Williams College for a year before moving over to Reed College, where he took his qualifying exam on St. Anselm’s Ontological Argument, and completed his undergradu­ ate thesis on Martin Buber’s notion of Good and Evil. In 1970 he graduated with a B.A. in Religious Studies. Then during 1970-71 he helped to found the esoteric book store YES in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C. From 1972 to 1974 Platt attended Emerson College in England, where he took the Foundation Year in Anthroposophy and spent his second year studying Eurythmy with Molly von Heider. During this time he was introduced, through Adam Bittleston, to ‘star wisdom’ and the study of celestial influences in human destiny. Outside of the College, he was also introduced to the work of Willi Sucher through a course given by Robert Powell. Returning then to the northeast of the U.S., Platt has since focused his entire energy on developing a spiri­ tual scientific discipline of these matters.

80 Book Review • On the Threshold o f a Celestial Science • 81

His four volume series, The Qualities o f Time, explores in great detail the breadth of his research and findings. These volumes are by no means simple reading to be easily consumed, yet the patient reader will find them most inspiring. The content of the books gives us a scientific understanding of the many areas of celestial influence in our lives and from various viewpoints, including many quotes and indications from Rudolf Steiner. The tone and format of these writ­ ings, however, reveal a Christian hermetic at work. Indeed there is perhaps something of a contemporary, Christian-esoteric metamor­ phosis of Egyptian star wisdom in Platt’s work. It also becomes quickly evident that Platt’s intention is to lead us toward our own experience of these archetypal rhythms and forces, rather than just tell us about them. Even the workbook style of publication is designed to give us a push towards trying to ‘see’ these influences at work in our lives and in the lives of those around us, leaving us free to verify Platt’s indications for ourselves and begin a more conscious awareness of these concrete and living forces. Volume one, Contributions Towards an Understanding of How the Cosmos Works in Man, focuses on the twelve regions of the zodiac and describes the influence of the earth, sun and moon as they pass through the zodiac in terms of archetypal physical, life-sense, moral-psychological and spiritual world-view influences on the indi­ vidual. These influences are carefully described and the reader is led into them with many quotes and examples. Volume two, Effects o f the Universal Superphysical Forces upon the Individualized Superphysical Forces o f Man, delves more into some of the shorter rhythms, describes the questions surrounding individ­ ual birth configurations and their consequences, and also character­ izes the various planetary spheres for us. Here the relationship of our personal destiny and freedom to the more general and archetypal forces of the universe is explored. In volume three, The Law o f Hermes, The Heart o f Biography, Platt goes even further into the questions of individual freedom and des­ tiny, observing the correspondence of the 3 9 day periods in the time between conception and birth to one year of life after birth in nine famous, historical personalities; Jung, Emerson, Ghandi, Yogananda, Madame Curie, Albert Schweitzer, Rudolf Steiner, Henry Thoreau and Henry Adams. Volume four, Human Relationships in the Light o f Cosmic Experi­ en ce, moves towards a comprehensive, spiritual scientific, cosmo­ 8 2 • Andrew Christopher Lorand logical psychology in the observance of interpersonal relationships in view of the various rhythms and influences previously explored. In addition to these editions, which do need a clear mind and some time to explore, Platt began publishing smaller, more concise intro­ ductory booklets. He published a guide to the Twelve Holy Nights (co-authored with Susan Riley), in terms of their cosmological signifi­ cance. More recently a permanent Sun Guide has been published (influence of the Sun through the year) and most recently a guide to the Moon’s Rhythms at Work, for 1990-91 which is specifically de­ signed as an introduction to these rhythms and influences for parents, teachers and therapists working with children. In his first volume, Platt describes how he came to this work, how he was interested and inspired by Herbert Witzenmann’s The Virtues (which is grounded on indications given by Rudolf Steiner), by Rich­ ard Seddon’s Cosmic Forces o f Vice and Virtue (based on the 12 vices mentioned by Christ), and how he experienced these forces in him­ self and thus developed his studies. As a guide to self-observation (like all of his books are), Volume one includes many indications helpful for those truly committed to the path of inner development and self-knowledge. Comprehensive descriptions of the etheric or­ gans, or Chakras (Lotus Flowers), and their connections to the various archetypal regions and forces are a real assistance for any serious student of spiritual science. His inner indebtedness and committment to the work of Rudolf Steiner shines through, despite his not-so- evidently-anthroposophical orientation. In light of Rudolf Steiner’s indication that Cosmogony, or the wisdom of the relationship between the starry heavens and life on earth, is a special task of North America in our time, Platt’s work and publications are a significant contribution towards that task. Indeed, a consciousness-soul striving would not be complete without the wish to better understand our interwoveness with the contemporary and living cosmos. Book Review • 83

BEHOLD, I MAKE ALL THINGS NEW: TOWARD A WORLD PENTECOST (Rudolf Steiner College Publications, $10.95) By René Querido and Hilmar Moore

Reviewed by Gina Lalli

These intensive and informative lectures bring to our conscious­ ness the presence of the Holy Spirit which makes available to us today the pentecostal experience of the disciples of Jesus. This experience enables us to comprehend the pivotal events from Good Friday through Ascension and Whitsun. It further gives us the power to develop Etheric Vision to see the Etheric Christ which dwells in the mantle of the earth; through this experience we can foster awareness of the One Spirit that inhabits and unites all. Thus we can live in a realm of unity and understanding beyond the folk souls of groups and nations which continually clash and divide us. In the first lecture, The Radical Path o f Consciousness: The Heralds o f the Christ, Hilmar Moore describes the destructive effects of exot­ eric Christianity (Judeo-Christian religion) on paganism and Western civilization. On the other hand, there is the radical path of Christianity — the Christ impulse— which sets us on a path of personal and earthly transformation. The evolution of human consciousness is traced from Lemuria, through Prometheus’ gift and the migrations from Atlantis up to the present fifth, or Post-Atlantean, age. We see also the division of the human body into male and female entities during Lemurian times and how this has given a special character to each succeeding age. The teachings of Krishna, Buddha and Zarathustra lay the ground­ work, the “fertile soil”, for human minds to receive the experience of Christ. The transformation of the body of Jesus to contain the Christ is succinctly described. The second lecture, From Moses to Paul: the Old Adam and the N ew A dam , by René Querido, focuses on the unique role of Moses in leading his people into the Promised Land, a completion of ancient longings. He is followed by Paul, the bearer of the new evolution— Paul, whose own personal, radical transformation after being touched by the Holy Spirit at the gates of Damascus, teaches that the Christ has come for all people. Paul, who had scorned and martyred the follow­ ers of Jesus, now fights against great opposition to make the awaken­ ing experience available to all people, not just the chosen (circum­ 8 4 • G ina Lalli cised) ones. Again and again he recounts his personal experience, including his doubts, guiding us all to seek the awakening, the Pentecostal, experience, to move into the future, into the next phase of evolution of consciousness — to move “from faith to experience.” Paul teaches the evolution of the “old Adam”, a living soul, to the “new Adam” a life-giving spirit — man so imbued with spirit that he has left behind the “perishable” and lives in the “imperishable.” Like Moses, Paul leads mankind to a Promised Land. But the new Promised Land is not a specific place; it is the etheric body of the en­ tire earth where Christ dwells. And the Chosen People are all man­ kind, that is, ourselves, striving for understanding and brotherhood wherever we may be. The third lecture, Behold I M ake All Things New: Toward a World P en tecost by Hilmar Moore, outlines the appearance of the Holy Spirit, bringing mystery wisdom and human enlightenment from the temples of Ancient Egypt up to the present day. The loss of mystery centers led to the phenomenon of individual psychics, such as H. P. Blavatsky, whom people would consult to contact the invisible realms. Concurrently, Rudolf Steiner appeared and brought clarity of percep­ tion of the spiritual worlds and gave methods for modern man to gain his own spiritual perception. The Greek mystery is described which led to communion with the etheric mantle of the earth. The deed of the Christ and His presence becomes our means for self-transformation today. By following the seasons, and experiencing inwardly the relationship between man, nature and the spirit, we discover Christ and the Holy Spirit guiding us toward our Spirit-birth each Christmas. Prometheus brought a kind of premature enlightenment to human­ ity which now the Holy Spirit makes steadfast, as it brings the fire of enlightenment to the astral body and Ego. Anthroposophy may be seen as the language of the Holy Spirit because it gives us the means to meet the Christ with thoughts of clarity and precision. An extensive course of study could be generated from these three lectures, so full of exalted moments and sweeping vistas of spiritual history. It should be mentioned that the forward, epilogue and choice bibliography are equally worthy of our attention. Altogether these lectures are sure to be rewarding for students of spiritual science and for those in pursuit of the experience of the Holy Spirit. Book Review • 85

“COSMIC ASPECTS OF THE FOUNDATION STONE” (Golden Stone Press, $6.00) By Robert Powell

Reviewed by William Bento

The timeliness of Robert Powell’s published lecture, “Cosmic As­ pects Of the Foundation Stone”, is both encouraging and confirming (August 20, 1990 commemorates the second 33-1/3 year cycle since the Christmas Foundation Stone Meeting). Imaginative conceptions and sound historical references are interwoven in a clear and lucid manner throughout the lecture. The dimensions of breadth and depth within this lecture make it accessible and noteworthy of both new and old students of Anthroposophy. Robert Powell’s assertion that the Foundation Stone Meeting her­ alds the Age of the Holy Spirit is well founded; particularly in his im­ plicit contrast to the Third Reich which arose ten years later in Germany. His use of selected images and events of the history of Christianity provides the reader with a poignant perspective of the message of Anthroposophy. References to the four verses of the Foundation Stone meditation and their correlate cosmic aspects are token at best; yet they allow the reader to contemplate the vast wellspring of knowledge that lies within it. Robert’s depiction of the threefold nature of the meditation is succinctly expressed in the qualities of conscience, compassion and reverence. He describes these qualities as preparatory conditions for the beholding and communion with the return of Christ in the etheric world. Tacitly and profoundly Robert Powell addresses the Foundation Stone as an embodiment of the angelic Nathanic Jesus being. His adeptful articulation of the 33-1/3-year rhythm not only enlivens the idea of Anthroposophia as a spiritual being, it provides us with a world historic significance. Robert’s research of the 33-1/3-year rhythm insights are shared regarding Rudolf Steiner’s own experience with the Christ, as well as the relevancy of the Second World War and the end of our century. Robert Powell’s statement that “Hiroshima signified literally the opening of the gates of hell” is quite captivating. He not only states it as a supersensible reality, he goes on to describe its current impact 8 6 • W illiam B ento and measures it in time increments. Robert offers us the view that we are witnesses to a re-enactment of the Christ’s descent into Hell which will continue until the years 2133/2134. For what purpose does he insert this provocative picture of our time? Could it be to awaken conscience, compassion and reverence in the will, heart and mind of those who seek to strengthen their relationship with the Foundation Stone? In this light, Robert Powell’s lecture is an inspiration and an original contribution to the legacy of the Christmas Foundation Stone Meeting. Book Review • 87

LITTLE FOLKS’ WINTER’S TALE by Carlo Pietzner (available from Camphill Village Gift Shop Copake, New York 12516)

Reviewed by Katherine Young

In this children’s Advent Tale written by the late Carlo Pietzner in 1955, we are brought into a magical sphere through the art of story telling. With the accompanying illustrations by Richard Neil, our imagination is carried back and forth from word to flowing line, so that we, along with the children to whom this tale is told, are held in quiet fascination. Out of the hush of winter, when the earth is enshrouded in stillness by a blanket of snow, this tale opens our inner eye to witness the reality of Advent in its elemental unfolding. The creative work of the elementals also pulses in ascending order through nature’s king­ doms. From the depths of the earth those busy beings sound forth their purpose revealed from the depths and the heights, the widths and the breadths. In conclusion, each elemental sphere, with all its qualities, arrives at a confluence, as a quartet might sound forth with all its harmony, structure and form. In this manner we partake from one Advent week to the next throughout the December month, kingdom by kingdom in a creative and festive building activity. In A C hristm as C arol, Charles Dickens leads the human soul to confront itself until the child (in Scrooge) is rediscovered. In this pre-Christmas tale, Carlo Pietzner starts from where Dickens leaves off; namely, from the innocent child within, which, if awakened, will lead us toward the experience of our unfold­ ing humanity. These steps, embodied in the four Advent weeks, brings us to the grace of Christmas morning. The story is appropriate for all young school children, and the booklet has an instructional page on how to “do” the Advent story. The illustrations are mystical and magical, accompanying the sense of progression to its final culmination. The story, tasteful presented, can be highly recommended to enhance the Advent time. It has been enjoyed in Camphill communities through­ out the world for many, many years, bringing delight and wonder into the pre-Christmas weeks. Notes on Contributors

Henry Barnes has been active in Waldorf education for over fifty years. He is General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in America and former editor of this publication. William Bento is a lecturer, psychotherapist, and researcher in astroso­ phy (new star wisdom). He lives in Kimberton, Pennsylvania. John F. Gardner was director of the Waldorf Institute for Liberal Educa­ tion of Adelphi University for many years. His books include The E xpe­ rience o f Knowledge and Two Paths to the Spirit: Charismatic Christian­ ity and Anthroposophy. He was president of the Myrin Institute, and he founded the Council for Educational Freedom. He lives in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. Andrew Hoy has been part of the Camphill Movement throughout his adult life, most recently at the adult village, Kimberton Hills, in Pennsyl­ vania. A number of his poems have appeared in the Journal fo r Anthro­ posophy. Van James is an artist and teacher now living in Honolulu. Georg Kühlewind is a physical chemist, lecturer, musician, and author. Among his books concerning spiritual science are Stages o f Conscious­ ness and From Normal to Healthy, and his articles have appeared in pre­ vious issues of the Jo u rn al. Gina Lalli is a noted performer of the classical dances of India. She is a life-long scholar of Indian philosophy and has led anthroposophical study groups in Austin, Texas for many years. Andrew C. Lorand, a Swiss-American, is a former biodynamic farmer and gardener and has worked in small business development. He teaches in the agricultural training program at Kimberton Hills Camphill Village, and is a doctoral candidate in agricultural education at Pennsylvania State University. Michael Miller, a free-lance writer living in Denver, Colorado, is the author of Hard Rain/Slow Train, a book examining the mysticism in Bob Dylan’s lyrics, the third chapter of which appeared last year in the Jo u r n a l fo r Anthroposophy. Chapter Seven will appear in Initiations, a European journal. His poetry and short fiction have appeared in a number of small magazines.

88 Joel Morrow is a landscape designer and gardener in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He is editor of Biodynamics magazine, and his articles have appeared there and in the Journal for Anthroposophy. Rex Raab is an architect, translator, and poet, and resides in Engelberg, Germany. Calvert Roszell is editor of the Midwest Regional Newsletter of the Anthroposophical Society. His articles have appeared in th e B a k e r Street Review, Das Goetheanum, and Mitteilungen aus der Anthroposophichen Arbeit in Deutschland. The Anthroposophic Press will publish his book on scientific and spiritual scientific research on near-death experiences next year. Friedemann-Ekart Schwarzkopf lectures at Rudolf Steiner College and has done many translations of Georg Kühlewind’s writings. He is interested in the philosophy of cognition. Albert Steffen (1884-1963), the Swiss poet, dramatist, essayist and nov­ elist, was president of the Anthroposophical Society, 1926-1963. Number 39 (Autumn 1984) of the Journal for Anthroposophy was devoted to a selection of his work. Elaine M. Upton taught at the University of Massachusetts and at Dart­ mouth College. She was teacher and administrator of an integrated Wal­ dorf school in Pretoria, South Africa, and is translating Rudolf Steiner’s G ospel o f St. Jo h n lectures for the Anthroposophic Press. Katherine Young teaches calligraphy, bookbinding, and formative drawing at the Hawthorne Valley Waldorf School in New York.

ERRATA In issue number 49 (Summer 1989), the illustration on the cover was not credited. It is a sculpture entitled “Michael,” by the artist G. Oling, whose studio is in Dornach, Switzerland. In issue number 50 (Spring 1990), there were two errors in “Walt Whitman: Poet of the Sublime,” by Daisy Aldan. On p. 72, line 26: “He sings the individual...” is the author's comment, not part of the poem by Whitman. On p. 71, line 36: “Novalis loved the works of the Romantic poets...” should read “Whitman loved the works of the Romantic poets...” The editor regrets these errors and apologizes to the authors.

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