Journal Fanthroposophy

Journal for ANTHROPOSOPHY NUMBER[Image:Martinc. engraving,St.Michael,Schongauer,Germany,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 stacksofharvestedgraininafield,withChartrescathedralthedistance,andnotext]88 Notes on nextpage(4)containedaphotograph[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 Jaemfiyyphotograph : ] o a b o el l 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.

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