The « Golden Blade 1980 Healing in the Michael Age Students Under Stress Poets and Painters T h e F i r s A u s t r a l i a n s % t « Rudolf Steiner Press £1.50 The Golden Blade thirty-second (1980) ISSUE editorial NOTES ANTHROPOSOPHYA earth in the lightRudolfs,einer of the WORK OF MICHAEL, PAST AND PRESENT . P. van Deventer 25 MUST MAN REMAIN UNKNOWN? Eugen Kolisko 39 MAN AND THE UNDERWORLD . John Davy 45 ART FOR WHOSE SAKE? . Charles Davy 61 TWO SONNETS . M a l l a r m e 80 NOTES ON THE TWO SONNETS . D a v i d P a u l 82 REFLECTIONS ON PAINTING ■ . Mary Clare 84 THE ROLE OF THINKING IN OVERCOMING PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS . Eraser N. Watts 91 FROM TWENTY-ONETO FORTY-TWO Adam Bittieston 100 THE CHILD WHO HAD NO FATHER . related by Fred Biggs 114 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES Crosbie Wilson 116 Reviews Notes and Acknowledgements Edited by Adam Bittieston and Jonathan Westphal Rudolf Steiner Press London Distributed By ST. GEORGE BOOK SERVICE Primcc ted P. O . B O X 2 2 5 SPRING VALLEY, N.Y. 10977 The Editors wish to express their special thanks to Mr. Charles Davy for his timely and generous help in the preparation of this issue. EDITORIAL NOTES Sixty Years After Spiritual Science and Medicine ''ID EVERENCE for small things"—this was a quality which Rudolf Steiner stressed to the group of workers to whom he described the fundamentals of curative education in the summer of 1924. The earlier years of his work as an occult teacher had been much more concerned with reverence for great things—mighty cosmic processes, exalted beings of the Hierarchies, the ultimate destiny of man. These were still his concern in the last years as well. And of course all through the years, when the first Goetheanum was being built (1913-21), he gave minute attention to the quality of materials and every smallest detail of the structure. But it was in the very last period of his teaching that he was most concerned to direct his pupils' Reverent attention to little things—ranging from chemical substances to detailed peculiarities of human behaviour. A mighty step in this direction was taken in Dornach in March and April 1920 when he gave the basic course to doctors Spiritual Science and Medicine sometimes known as the "Twenty Lectures". It was as Anthroposophy springs from the work and teaching of Rudolf though the doctors were led through a great garden with countless Steiner (1861-1925). He spoke of it as "a path of knowledge, to guide rare herbs and stones—and through a hospital where countless the spiritual in the human being to the spiritual in the universe". human needs were seeking help. Rudolf Steiner said at the time that a good judge regarded these as among the most difficult lectures he had given. As we find in many places in life, the detailed particular is The aim of this Annual is to bring the outlook of Anthroposophy to difficult, the general may at least seem easy. bear on questions and activities which have relevance to the present During the 60 years since then, the great conceptions of time. Anthroposophy have been applied in many places in this most responsible, most sensitive, most mysterious realm of the physical body of man. Medicine based on quite different ideas has made The title derives from a reference by Rudolf Steiner to an old tremendous and evident achievements during this time; Persian legend. "Djemjdid was a king who led his people from the anthroposophical medicine has in general been very little noticed, but north towards Iran, and who received from the God, whom he called many individuals and families have long come to regard the possibility Ahura Mazdao, a golden dagger, by means of which he was to fulfil of being treated in this way as something that makes a profound his mission on earth ... It represents a force given to man whereby he difference to their lives. can act upon and transform external nature". The participants in the 1920 course were, in the main, practising 4 EDITORIAL NOTES EDITORIAL NOTES 5 physicians from Switzerland, Germany and Holland. Among these "Then the gods took their places for the meal. Old Baucis tucked up were women and men who were notable also as representatives of her dress and, with shaky hands, set the table down in front of them. spiritual knowledge, above all Dr. Ita Wegman, who became head of One of its three legs was shorter than the others, but she pushed a tile the Medical Section at the Goetheanum at Christmas 1923. She and in below, to make it the same height. When she had inserted this, and others of this group were quite strikingly representative of the spiritual so levelled the sloping surface, she wiped over the table with some power Rudolf Steiner came to speak about increasingly during these stalks of fresh mint. Then she placed upon the board the mottled berry years who bore in Christian tradition the name Michael. It is which honest Minerva loves, wild cherries picked in the autumn and wonderful to see in their lives how reverence for the greatest—the very preserved in lees of wine, endives and radishes and a piece of cheese, name Michael means "Who is like God"—is at one with the most and eggs lightly roasted in ashes not too hot". (Translation by Mary attentive reverence for little things. A member of this group. Dr. M. P. M. Innes, Penguin Classics). van Deventer, who has spent a rich life of activity principally in Poetry is of endless diversity; the mood of Ovid in this passage and medical practice, writes for us about the great tasks of human that of Mallarme in the poems printed in this issue are worlds apart, development in this issue of the Golden Blade. and yet there is something in common; and one way in which we can find it is by seeking the spiritual source of poetry in the way described Physicists, Poets and Painters by Rudolf Steiner in the lecture "The Being of the Arts" printed in last For the physicists of this century, the very smallest things have year's Golden Blade. The spirit of poetry is a real being, just as revealed themselves in terrifying power. They have had to ask particular and actual as a human being. He shares some of the themselves whether it is something in their own way of approach, the qualities of a particular Hierarchy, the Thrones, the Spirits of mood in which they produce hypotheses, which has done much to Will—just as the spirit from whom music comes is akin to the bring about these results. The course they had taken had seemed Cherubim and the spirit from whom painting comes is akin to the completely objective. And some of the greatest among them had greatest spirits of all, the Seraphim. brought deep reverence to their task. Einstein, for example, felt that he It is a very significant element in the teaching of Rudolf Steiner must be approaching the thoughts of God. And yet, in this issue, John about the Hierarchies that he describes the highest beings as working Davy faces the appalling problems involved. Much in the future of most deeply into the physical. Were only the third mankind will depend on understanding them rightly. Man has to Hierarchy,—Angels, Archangels and Archai—active, there would achieve a searching knowledge of his own thinking. only be events of soul and spirit. Through the activity of the second Not many journals would include quite naturally, side by side, John Hierarchy—Exusiai, Dynomis, Kyriotetes—there are also events of an Davy's article on the significance of technology, and his father's etheric kind. It is only because of the activity of the greatest searching enquiry into the nature of poetry. In all ages, poetry has beings,—Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim—that we experience a been concerned with raising small material things into the light of physical world. eternity. A beautiful example can be found in the story of Baucis and When this, which is very remote for most people, at any rate in the Philemon from Ovid's Metamorphoses. The gods Jupiter and Mercury West, really enters human feeling, it will mean the most far-reaching are wandering on earth and find no hospitality, until they reach the change in our attitudes to things. In much that we do today in cottage, "small even for two", where the elderly peasant couple technology, and above all in nuclear physics, we are blundering in the Philemon and Baucis live. Here the dignified travellers are received realm of the Thrones. When Baucis steadied the table in the presence with friendly hospitality and a meal prepared for them, to the limit of of the gods, she did not blunder. In all reverence for small things, there their hosts' resources. There are many wonderful details: is within us a sense of the majesty of the beings which are their ultimate ground. (A beautiful example from painting is Vermeer's 6 EDITORIAL NOTES EDITORIAL NOTES 7 "Woman Pouring From a Jug".) Since the 15th century, man in the country. In this realm we have another example of the need for a West, and gradually in the whole world, has developed an intense different kind of thinking, which John Davy describes in the realm of interest in the physical world in all its detail. Usually he was looking physics.