January/February 2002 CAMPHILL CORRESPONDENCE

Stunned by their life's explosion into love Some men stay deaf and dizzy ever after, And blindly through the press they grope or shove, Nor heed they more of sorrowing or laughter .

And others, having fixed their hope above, Chastened and maimed by bitter chastity, Grow to forget spring flowers, and why the dove Makes music with her fellow endlessly.

Ah! pity these were told not that their thirsts Are slaked nor by priest's wine nor lust's outbursts, But Poesy*. They, knowing Verse to be God's soothest answer to all passion's plea, And loving beauties writ and wrought of art, Might yet have kept a whole and splendid heart .

WILFRED OWEN, 1917

*See note inside front cover . From The Guest, Günther Lehr

Contents

Sonnets on the monthly virtues I FC Heal i ng the heart of the earth 11 The search for the new human being Human death and nature's response 13 in the work of Thornton Wilder 1 Books Thornton Wilder - the inner vocation An Introduction to Therapeutic Communities of the poet 3 by David Kennard 14 One play - not four, When the Storm Comes and A Moment in a re-evaluation of An Easter Play 4 the Blossom Kingdom by Barbro Karlen 16 The German Spirit - the throes of destiny 7 Male and Female-Developing Human 'Let there be fired i n the East . . .' Empathy by Baruch Luke Urie i 17 Reflections on many Russian journeys 9 A word o thanks and good wishes to The heights and depths of the human soul Per Iversen and his family 18 A letter from Russia 10 From Loch Arthur a kind of alchemy 11 Announcements and Advertisements 20 Karl Königs centenary you are invited With the present issue we enter the year of Karl König centenary and are happy to present Wi I I iam Watson's re-evaluation and study of König as a dramatist. We would like to celebrate the 1 ooth anniversary of his birth, on 25th September 1902, with a special issue of Camphill Correspond- ence in September. For this, we wish to invite contributions from individuals and communities who feel that their present life and work is influenced and inspired by Karl König. We would like to focus on what inspires our present ideals and strivings as well as on past events-which is surely what König himself desires . Your 'birthday presents' could be in the form of memoirs but also lead- ing thoughts, poems, experiences, images, photos, dreams . . .or whatever arises in you as individuals or as groups . We will also print some pieces of Königs own writings which have not been published or are less known . Some pieces have already arrived, so don't delay! RSVP . Your editor, Peter

Sonnets on the monthly virtues Outside - the wind, the rain, the stormy night, traces of footsteps on the muddy path, so dark there is no past, no distant light Gradenegg, Liebenfels, Günther Lehr shaping the landscape, no voices, no laugh . Günther is an artist and elder Camphiller The future, too, confusion - there were signs, who now lives near Liebenfels in Austria . requests, intuitions . All now ended: the picture's just a scribble of black lines my time indefinitely suspended. News Editor for If I find the present, when I am brave, Camphill Correspondence I meet enduring life, my birth and death, friends, both, to make my frail body strong, save Many readers have suggested that Camphill Cor- me immortality, redeem my breath . respondence could carry more short items of And then, another man, meeting my eye, news about events, developments, difficulties will trust in time, see through the deadly lie . and successes from around the movement . To begin to address this need, we have ap- the month beginning December 21, pointed a News Editor to be a focus for such the path from courage to redemptive power material . We asked Elizabeth Howe from Camphill Community California, because Eliza- beth's social, literary and technical skills are Go, catch the beautiful world! Look at it, ideally suited to the task . We were therefore de- the rainbow and the bird in flight, a leaf lighted when Elizabeth and her community re- uncurling from rose of dawn to green, lit sponded enthusiastically. Soon, Elizabeth will start to gather material . by the godly sun-beauty veined with grief. But don't wait to be asked-we are pleased to Yet beauty owns a sanctuary within, receive all contributions, large and small! where words turn into dreams, dreams words, a poor Elizabeth's details will regularly appear on the house where I come to know myself, begin back cover with the other addresses . Of course to learn the language of the silent core . if it's easier for you to contact one of us in the This silence is not absence, but a tone UK, you can send, or ask, any of us anything! that circles the secret of my being, below the wave, within the hollow bone, About the cover poem concentrated to a different seeing : my holy place-from here release the bird 'Poesy'- the realm of poetry. One could also and find all talk of man-made thought absurd . say the realm of art, or the 'middle' which me- diates between the two dangers which the poet the month beginning January 21, has described : the one which draws people too the path from reticence to meditative power deeply into earthly involvement, the other which entices them away from it . Wilfred Owen is probably the greatest of the BOB CLAY, LOCH ARTHUR COMMUNITY, SCOTLAND poets of the Great War, who was killed i n action This concludes the cycle of twelve sonnets. a week before Armistice Day, aged just 25 . The search for the new human being in the work of Thornton Wilder 1897-1975 Deborah Ravetz, Stuttgart, Germany

any people who have been through a crisis in rooted in the great works of the past . He loved the their lives can describe how reading particular Greeks, read Dante in the original, had absorbed authorsM helped to lead them out of despair. Tolstoy is Goethe and all the great literature of the past and the probably the most frequently mentioned . The writer present. In his life he experienced two world wars . He Thornton Wilder also has this possibility . The artist and saw the arrival of radio and cinema and then televi- teacher Suzi Gablik writes in her book, The Re-enchant- sion, he saw the civil rights movement, the Vietnam ment of Art: War and the sixties revolution . All this he absorbed In the past we have made much of the idea of art as and digested and made into art . This was the ground- a mirror (reflecting the times); we have had art as ing of everything he said . hammer (social protest), we have had art as furni- Wilder was aware of an experience, closeness to God, ture (something to hang on walls) ; and we have had which is no longer accessible to us . He intuited that if art as search for the self. There is another kind of art, we would have the courage to face our terrible loneli- which speaks to the power of connectedness and ness and go forward rather than fleeing back in terror establishes bonds, art that calls us into relationship . to the old and familiar, then meaning would flood back Perhaps . . . the new aesthetics will not be found in and modern man would break through to a greater museums or beautiful objects, but in some visible reality. It is the process of finding the courage to face manifestation of the soul's desperate concerns. that loneliness and the qualities needed to meet and Suzi Gablik is a contemporary American . She belongs break through to that new reality that lie at the heart of to a long line of Americans, beginning with the writers his work . He said a writer was not a mythmaker but a of the Declaration of Independence, who reflect in their myth-restorer and his work was to write of the time- work, their ideas and the way they live their lives, the lessness and eternal in the everyday . His heroes and search for the answer to one fundamental and press- heroines are very ordinary people but they are capa- ing question . They ask, What does it mean to be a free ble of mythic acts of courage . They are the new hu- human being? In this line, Thornton Wilder has an hon- man beings; they are not defeated, but rather called oured place . into existence by their confrontation with difficulties . The question of freedom is particularly relevant to In one of Wilder's early novels, Heaven's my Desti- America because of its history and its conscious rejec- nation, a young textbook salesman travels America sell- tion of the governmental forms of the Old World . ing his textbooks and trying to live a saintly life in the Thornton Wilder was very aware of the shortcomings manner of Tolstoy and Ghandi . In time his naive saint- of American culture . He was convinced however that liness alienates everyone . The salesman, George Brush, beneath the surface something creative was happen- sinks into depression and begins to die. He can't un- ing . He said of the Americans, derstand why no one wants to try and make the world They don't know it and they often do it awkwardly a better place . While he lies dying someone reads his and fall short but they are inventing a new kind of letters to him . One letter contains a single silver spoon . human being- a new relationship between one hu- It is the gift of a dying priest who wanted him to know man being and another - a new relationship be- he valued him . From this moment on the young man tween the individual and the all. begins to recover and takes up his life of idealism again . He likened the underlying task of being an American Thornton Wilder said this book was about himself but to being in a trackless desert without any kind of old that what he wanted to say was so intimate he dared form to guide one . He felt that out of this nothingness not say 'I' . In a letter to a friend later he said that giving a new kind of government, a new kind of education must never have the expectation of gratitude ; 'Service and a new kind of church would have to emerge . He is joyful or it is nothing' . His novel describes the ca- had confidence that despite much that was tragic and pacity to make one's ideals inner realities which are much that would go wrong, the human spirit would independent of other people's reactions : the first step prevail . to becoming a free human being . Thornton Wilder was at home with the giants and There is nothing gentle in his message . As the charac- giantesses of the modern world . He was a close friend ters in ancient myths and fairy tales must endure seem- with the American writer Gertrude Stein and he worked ingly impossible trials to come to their goal, so too do hard to make her work accessible to the American his heroes and heroines . The Eighth Day has as one of public . He was not afraid of difficult work and he kept its heroes a blithe and loving man with an abundance in his pocket a copy of James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, of wonder. He gives himself away tirelessly. He lives in which he spent years decoding and penetrating . He Coaltown, the small community where he helps main- was as committed to the theatre as to the novel . For tain the failing coal mine. No one meets him without him the theatre was not there to soothe . For this reason going away richer . He is married with one son and he was a champion of the modern theatre, stripped of three daughters . This man is accused and condemned the ultra-realism of the box set and made bare to be to death for a murder he has not committed . The re- inhabited by the efforts of our own imagination . All spectable Christian town he has lived in for years joins his work was in relation to his time but was firmly in condemning him . They have never felt comfortable

1 with his lack of ambition or his capacity for joy. John The new human being of whom Wilder speaks is a Ashley is mysteriously rescued on the way to his ex- disciple of Christ. He is not a servant, he is a friend . ecution and manages to get to Peru where he lives in In this book the hero is very wide . He has moral im- exile unable to make any contact with his family who agination . The people whom Theophilus meets and have been left destitute. with whom he becomes involved find a new and en- Faced with his impotence to help his family he feels riched access to their lives and to themselves . The mis- for the first time a doubt so terrible he is unable to find guided and the good are enabled, the saintly and the any rest. He looks at the world and it is as if the whole wicked find peace or self-knowledge, all at the hand empty and meaningless universe mocks him with de- of, 'an interest in human beings so intense and so un- risive laughter. It is a toothless crone and fortune-teller remitting that it approaches and resembles love.' The who tells him the meaning of his fate . She says to him, whole community is affected by his presence . As a When God loves a creature he wants the creature malevolent or weak person can create havoc, so an to know the highest happiness and the deepest mis- intelligent and interested person can release the in- ery, then he can die. He wants him to know all that credible potential each person has within them as a being alive can bring. That is his best gift. There is force for the good . This book is the last he wrote . Like no happiness save in understanding the whole . You Heaven's My Destination it was autobiographical . The are a creature who God loves particularly loves . hero of the first must grapple with goodness and its You are being born . application and wrest idealism out of despair. The hero The old crone goes on : up until then Ashley has always of Wilder's senior years is so at home in his element he been loved because one sees in his blue eyes that he is a seems to play, but his subject is profound . The potential man of faith . She tells him faith is not enough and, point- of every human meeting is made visible ; we are shown ing to the red blood on her crucifix she says, as if she what we could be to each other if we would dare. were bestowing the greatest honour on him and his Wilder was a great teacher, though he said that he unhappy fate, 'Maybe if you are lucky you will be born believed that authentic talent always educates itself . A to love.' John Ashley lives the next few years in Peru . teacher was only there 'to agitate the works' . He de- Wherever he goes he sheds blessing, but there is no happy scribed the way he wrote his novels and plays. Every ending, he drowns escaping from a bounty hunter and morning he wrote three pages and then got on with slips out of the novel in a single sentence. This is the the day. The next morning he did the same . He said story of John Ashley who, when he suffered, allowed the work grew in the night. He had a special relation- the pain he met in his life to pierce him and who, nev- ship with death . He describes a dream about his mother ertheless, got up every day and gave generously of him- and father where his last thought as he woke was, 'How self. He died anonymously. This is often the case with wonderful it is that people die' . Thinking about the Wilder's heroes and heroines . They have no need of dream afterwards he wrote, memorials . His stories are aware of another reality, a Is it possible we all receive just such intimations, such reality described by the Abbess at the end of another of reconciliations with the fact of dying . . . . I hoped this his novels, The Bridge Of San Luis Rey. She says, was so: Not from weariness of life, not from a tragic But love will have been enough ; all those impulses of protest against life's difficulty, not from a dread of love return to the love that made them . Even memory declining years, but from some deep purely natural is not necessary for love . There is a land of the living acceptance of the given assignment of youth, matu- and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love, the rity, age and death . only survival, the only meaning. Thornton Wilder said he only found himself weeping Thornton Wilder's last novel is called Theophilus North. when he felt joyful . He felt that joy especially when he The hero is a young man who comes to Long Island for saw the life of another person turned, 'into the gold of the summer. He comes to rest and think about his life art.' His plays, his novels and his lectures have at their and he supports himself by teaching . Determined to heart just such transformation . The community of keep a low profile he finds he cannot stop getting in- Coaltown, where John Ashley met his fate, celebrates volved in the lives of the community. Thornton Wilder the arrival of the twentieth century at a gathering where had a very particular view of human relationships . He the doctor gives a speech . He says, possessed what is called in French curiosity. This had Nature never sleeps . The process of life never stands nothing to do with gossip or inquisitiveness. He de- still. The creation has not come to an end. The Bible fines this word in the following way, says that God created man on the sixth day and rested, This is an interest in human beings so intense and so but each of those days was many millions of years unremitting that it approaches and resembles love . It long. That day of rest must have been a short one. is impossible to people who despise human nature Man is not an end but a beginning . We are at the or believe it incapable of any very happy surprises . beginning of the second week . We are the children To the eyes of this curiosity nothing one discovers is of the eighth day. really repugnant. It is this attitude we define when Wilder's novels help us to experience the reality of what we say that the angels are never shocked by what man might be . He helps us to cross the bridge as the they see among us. Coaltown doctor puts it,' from the self-enclosed, self Theophilus North appears at first to be a simple and favouring life into a consciousness of the entire com- light-hearted book. However, it is Wilder's most seri- munity of mankind .' Such is the possibility of the new ous and challenging work . It explores the practice of human being. the most profound words ever spoken to man, the words of Christ in the Gospel of St . John, the only command- Deborah is a practising painter, writer and lecturer in ment he gives us, that we 'should love one another .' art and is, of course, a former editor of this journal .

2

Thornton Wilder the inner vocation of the poet Guy Cornish, Föhrenbühl, Germany

. . . Tis the privilege of Art and tries to deepen and widen our experience, using Thus to play its cheerful part, both humour and tragedy to place our situation in a Man is earth to acclimate wider context . In The Bridge of San Luis Rey, for exam- And bend the exile to his fate . . . ple, he shows a subtle awareness of the workings of EMERSON, ESSAY ON ART karma, while the underlying idea of The Eighth Day is that mankind is still developing ; we are at the begin- hornton Wilder was a very individual and even idi- ning of a new phase of creation . If we look back over osyncratic writer who seems to have little or no the history of the past century, it clearly requires unu- connectionT to other authors in the twentieth century . sual powers to find positive signs or seeds for the fu- If however we look back to Emerson in the previous ture development of humanity. century we can find a certain kinship : uncompromis- Where is Wilder spiritually 'at home'? He derives ing spiritual idealism, courage and honesty, which in- considerable inspiration from ancient Greece (see es- evitably set both of them at odds with the materialistic pecially The Woman of Andros), but he is not looking tenor of our time . back to the past . He seems to me to stand within the In his essay on Art, Emerson writes : 'Art should ex- Platonist stream but in a modern and Christian form, hilarate and throw down the walls of circumstance on looking forward to the gradual transformation and re- every side . . .' Wilder often begins with a very ordinary demption of earthly life . situation and then opens up the boundaries of time and space. The play Pullman car Hiawatha, for example, is Guy, originally from England and with many years about a train journey. The stage manager calls in differ- experience in Camphill, is a eurythmist and eurythmy ent characters : one represents a field through which the therapist. train is passing with 51 moles, 206 field mice etc . Then comes the ghost of a workman killed while the railway 1 Perhaps this is why his work is neglected and out of was being built-who only speaks Italian! Then figures print? Curiously, most of his books are available in German . representing the hours appear, who are all philoso- 2 One light, humorous book which is nevertheless full of phers-Plato, Epictetus, Augustine . They are followed wisdom is Theophilus North. This is fairly easy to find by the planets, who don't speak but sound . The climax second-hand, as it was published by Penguin in 1974 . of this part is the 'Sound of the Earth' This is created by all the characters thinking aloud . Then after a silence Archangels come to take the soul of one of the passen- gers who has died during the journey . The tone of the play is light and often humorous . One could take it as a slightly surreal comedy or fantasy, but the deeper intention is clearly religious, and specifically Christian (this is indicated in the dialogue of the soul with the Archangels). In the 'Sound of the Earth' the thoughts of every single human being are important; even the tramp travelling under the train must join in! Wilder's work is not didactic, or crudely allegorical . The underlying intention is often only hinted at, so that it may take several readings to realise what he is pointing to . Many people have written and speculated about an after-life, very few about 'before-life', or pre-natal ex- istence . It seems that Wilder had some awareness of such a state and of intentions formed before birth namely his calling to become a poet . In Nascuntur Poetae he describes this calling as a responsibility which brings pain as well as glory, but 'only tears lend vision to the eye' (author's rendering) . The play states that those who are more awake than others are called to greater tasks . This reminds me of the scene i n The Chemical Wedding in which Christian Rosenkreutz is told 'you have received much, see that you make a corresponding return' . The three-minute plays were written while Wilder was a young teacher but show a deep awareness both of his inner vocation and of the experience of home- lessness which this brings . Although Wilder is aware of life before birth and after death he does not try to flee from the earth . He fully accepts life's sorrows and joys, The Progress of a Soul: the Victory, Phoebe Anna Traquair

3

One play not four A re-evaluation of An Easter Play William Watson, Stourbridge, England

For the past two years the author has undertaken an theatre-An Easter Play does not. It draws its coherence intensive study of Karl Königs An Easter Play, and is from its theme-and that theme is the Mystery of presently writing a book on the subject . This article is Golgotha. And just as that Mystery is not a random col- the first of what we hope will be a series over the lection of disconnected events but a seamless choreog- coming year, exploring its language, structure and raphy of spiritual acts, so Königs work presents an un- themes . broken sequence of initiation stages, drawing spiritual and terrestrial beings into a marriage of heaven and earth . I But the four parts of An Easter Play are also mutually bound by their language . This is extremely appropriate, udolf Steiner remarked that if the whole of his works for the Mystery of Golgotha marks, among other things, were destroyed, so long as The Mystery Dramas the evolution of the Word into human speech, having survivedR the essence of anthroposophy would remain . passed through an interval of silence . The drama begins Today, when I learn of Camphill houses, and even cen- with a Speaker and ends with a Voice, having between- tres, facing closure, I reflect that so long as An Easter whiles encountered the Deaf and the Dumb and exam- Play is understood, the essence of Camphill will sur- ined the stillness before the tomb . Königs content and vive. But I wonder how many in the movement are suf- form-his theme and his diction-are one .' ficiently aware of the literary stature, spiritual signifi- The quartet employs a unifying vocabulary and net- cance and dramatic integrity of this extraordinary work . work of verbal images . Repeated readings of the play Karl König is held in the highest regard by the com- clearly show that particular words or phrases repeat munity, But he is honoured as a spiritual scientist, a themselves throughout the four parts in a consciously spokesman for the disadvantaged, and a doctor with organised way. In fact, it is extremely difficult to find a deep medical insight . He is not especially esteemed as single line in An Easter Play which stands alone- that a creative writer. He was a most prolific playwright, is, one whose significance is self-sufficient or purely yet very few of his dramas are now performed . And functional . This is most striking . For while the speeches while separate parts of his greatest work, An Easter Play, of most plays provide information, forward the plot, are presented with art and conviction each year, its respond to previous remarks, or reveal aspects of their true rank as a poetic, dramatic and spiritual text has speakers' personalities, the speeches of An Easter Play yet to be properly assessed . do not . Instead, they resound with each other. Virtu- Indeed, few people appear fully aware that its four ally every line of each so-called 'play' echoes, or pre- acts-misleadingly known as the Maundy Thursday, echoes, at least one line from another . Indeed, it nor- Good Friday, Easter Saturday and Easter Sunday 'Plays', mally resounds with several more . constitute one drama-not four. Let us take but one example . The quartet is set on successive days in varying parts Towards the end of 'The Good Friday Play', the Dumb of the spiritual and terrestrial worlds . Each part por- Man tries to communicate the reason for his silence. trays a seemingly unique series of events, showing no He is physically unable to do so, but his inarticulate obvious relation to the incidents portrayed by any other . sounds are interpreted by the Youth : And each has its own exclusive group of characters . His heart was dumb, So the notion that these disparate 'plays' add up to a Not he himself single work seems bizarre . Therefore he cannot speak .2 A play with four sets of people? We are accustomed from Steiner's Mystery Dramas to individuals reincar- Usually this speech goes unnoticed in performance . For nating from one scene to the next, changing soul-quali- seven previous speakers have just given exactly the same ties and even genders en route. But their author allows motive for their disabilities, and the italicised line seems them vast historical epochs in which to do so. Surely banal, not to say superfluous, in context . But in 'The no one can reincarnate three times in four days! And Easter Saturday Play', when the First Scribe has listened what possible connection unites dissimilar incidents in vain for sounds to come from the tomb and therefore befalling six spirits in the Ether Realm of Speech, twelve despairs of Christ's resurrection, he utters these words : fugitives in Athens, three initiates in Jerusalem, and How irreversibly true seven Druids in Ireland? Was the judgement of our High Priest! Well, something does unite these incidents, and some- Oh! That my heart grows dumb! thing does link these characters together . Most people assume when watching one or the other section that it A mere coincidence of phrasing? Not at all . For we also reflects in some esoteric way the Last Supper, the Cru- recall that in 'The Maundy Thursday Play' the heavenly cifixion, the Harrowing of Hell or the Resurrection . Speaker confesses that his ego has 'grown dumb' and But, unfortunately, in exactly what way remains ob- that he therefore speaks 'as one dumb' . We are not deal- scure . And that is a great shame . For while most dra- ing with coincidence here, but with intentional reso- mas take their unity from evident consistencies of char- nance. And unless these three reverberations are noted, acter, setting and time the old 'unities' of the classical not one of these lines can be rightly delivered or heard .

4 Moreover, this dumbness, which we find persisting The problem is not that Dr . König is so clumsy a drama- throughout the first three parts of the quartet, is trium- tist he cannot effectively bring down a curtain . It is phantly resolved in the fourth . In 'The Easter Sunday that the audience, actors and director are rarely con- Play' when the three Priestesses have uttered their scious of what he is doing . He is not using the ending apocalyptic words at the prompting of the spiritual of each part or 'play' to sum up what the audience has Voice, the First Druid cries : seen over the past thirty minutes, but to broach what it will see on the morrow-or, in the case of the Sunday, Be thanked, our sisters to round off what it has seen over the past three and a For the words half days . And each conclusion highlights the imagery That you let sound and themes of the whole work . Through your hearts . Take, for instance, the ending of the prologue . We Thus, the heavenly Speaker whose ego was dumb in shall make a close reading . the first 'play' is now sounding his words through the First, the Angel alludes to the initial stage of the Mys- souls of terrestrial beings in the last. The hearts that tery of Golgotha : were mute on Friday have been given their voice on The meal has ended, Sunday. Plainly, unless the unity of the four 'plays' is The wine has been offered, acknowledged, and the metamorphosis of 'dumbness' The bread has been shared . . . (Pro .2o) into 'sounding' observed, the whole meaning of the First Druid's speech-not to mention the Speaker's, the True, these words do bear some connection to the Pro- Youth's, or the First Scribe's-will be lost. logue's earlier speeches, which were largely concerned There are countless other examples of such resonance with the Last Supper. But then the Angel calls on both in all four parts . spiritual and earthly worlds to attend to certain immi- Before moving on, however, let us reflect on just how nent events : subtle is Königs conception and the execution of his The night is now coming . . . verbal technique. To create a four-part drama, each of What worlds have erected whose speeches binds the disparate characters and set- Will now be revealed . (Pro .2o) tings together into a uniform play through the echo and resolution of its images is a literary task of almost To what is he referring? To nothing that will occur in inconceivable difficulty. Yet the four parts were com- the remaining few seconds of the Prologue! posed in less than a week by a doctor with many other He is alluding, of course, to the subsequent steps of calls on his time . We are not dealing here with an the Mystery of Golgotha . For through that event, 'what amateur scribbler of weak creative resources, restricted worlds have erected'-that is, the wisdom distilled from vocabulary or tendency to repeat himself. We are deal- the 'Moon' stage of the Earth's evolution and 'built into' ing with an extremely sophisticated author of startling the physical earth by spiritual beings-will be 'revealed' originality whose means are most intricate and accom- through a new consciousness attained by the human plished . ego. The old knowledge was absorbed from the mate- Perhaps it is time for his stature as a literary artist to rial world through the perception of sound and light, be re-assessed . It is certainly time for An Easter Plays but the new will be found in each person's soul-spirit unity-the fact that it is one work, not four to be through the shining of an inner Light, and the sound- known . ing of an inner Word . But that means he is referring to Parts I, II and III . For I I the hearing of that Word, and the sighting of that Light are the subjects of those three Parts . he conclusion to each Part is curiously open-ended. And the vocabulary of the Prologue's last page directs Rather than bring the action of a self-contained unit our attention to those Parts by introducing key words Tto a close, it surveys the themes, imagery and charac- which have not earlier occurred in the Thursday, but will ter-types of the entire four part drama . It also leads di- resonate later through the Friday, Saturday and Sunday. rectly to the next day's action . Consider the word 'night' . Were the four Parts of An Easter Play actually four It is used here for the first time in An Easter Play, but separate dramas, we should be faced with the embar- it will ring like a bell through the remaining Parts of rassing fact that none ends in a convincing or appro- the drama. We hear it next almost immediately in these priate way. As we shall see, the ending of The Maundy lines from the Youth : Thursday Play is frankly bizarre : it has almost nothing 0 change yourself, you human child, to do with what has occurred over the past half hour . Go into yourself in this long night, The ending of The Good Friday Play-usually regarded When creation wakes anew . . . (Pro.2o) as theatrically the most powerful of the sequence introduces a questioning, introspective mood, totally Suddenly, this 'night'-which the Angel foresaw as an out of character with the mood of its previous action . external darkness sweeping over humanity-has been The ending of The EasterSaturday Play is a 'teaser' more redefined as an internal process encouraging the soul akin to the ending of a radio serial episode than to the to grow. Well, just what is the 'night' to which these finish of a self-contained work: 'God knows what is two beings refer? yet to happen . . .' (11 .3 1) And the ending of The Easter We might better ask 'What is it not?' so many are its Sunday Play, though rhetorically and conceptually referents in An Easter Play. magnificent, is surely excessively grand for the fairly For one thing, it is the eclipse the eclipse which brief action which precedes it . occurs at the physical death of Christ, and is both an

5 occlusion of the physical sun and a darkening of spir- And this double identification of 'night' with the char- itual knowledge . This physical and spiritual eclipse oc- acters' mental and physical handicaps and with the outer curs three times in the course of the work . It is under- and inner eclipse, is dramatically sounded by the Mad gone by the twelve refugees in Part I . It is recalled by Man at the beginning of his soliloquy . When he emerges the First Soldier, the First Scribe and Samaria in Part II . from the temple, bewildered at the sudden darkness And it is re-experienced, in a new and transfigured around him and abused by the long-term darkness within way, by the Three Priestesses in Part III . 3 himself, he asks, in a clear echo of the Hemiplegic's For another, it is the disability afflicting each charac- speech : 'Has the day become night?' (1 .34) For a third, it ter in the Friday. When the Hemiplegic is asked by the is the specific disability suffered by the Blind Man . Leper what he brings to the new community being This figure is often thought to be merely one of the formed outside the temple, he replies : twelve refugees in the Friday, but he is really its central character. For if Part I describes a journey from dark- I bring my suffering, my mis-shapen form, ness into light, from 'night' into 'day', then this man's I drag along a piece that is not my own . disability, and his liberation from it, embody the Part's It's like night within day . . . (1 .30) ruling images . Indeed, his emancipation from the 'night' of spiritual blindness is especially dramatic be- cause he cannot physically see the eclipse that incurs Sometimes .. . the others' enlightenment. He even asks them what they are talking about when they speak of it later! (1 .36) you leave the door ajar And his illumination occurs before anyone else's . that leads inside your mind but often you lock us out, 0 brothers, wait, a wondrous light I perceive within myself, shut yourself in A light I have not experienced before . . . with snakes and dinosaurs This light shall be my guide . . . (1 .32) and turn the key. He actually says these words before the eclipse oc- Sometimes curs! For his enlightenment is a purely spiritual experi- we can see you ence-there can be for him no mediating visible physi- cal event . Hence he is the person whose experience looking out longingly best concentrates the thematic and poetic impulse of your nose pressed Part I-and not, as is often supposed, the Mad Man . to a smoked glass window. We see, then, that the introduction of the word 'night' by the Angel and the Youth at the end of the Prologue, We fling our doors and windows wide while referring in no way to the events of the Thurs- and put out saucers of milk day, points ahead to all three subsequent Parts of An to tempt you in, Easter Play. And especially to the story, central image, but our rooms stifle you and chief character of Part I . : with soft furnishings William, who spent many years in Camphill Schools, scatter-cushions of kisses and questions Aberdeen, is an experienced producer of plays and a are traps to trip you up Waldorf Teacher. and you turn your face away and run from eye contact 1 Dr. König gives illustrations of such metamorphosis which hangs on walls of character in his 'Easter Sunday Address' for 1959 . and threatens you This aspect of the drama-which, so far as I know. i s unique to An Easter Play in all literature will be Still, I think you like to get discussed in a future essay . our invitations 2 Unless otherwise noted, all quotations are drawn so long as we never put from the second English translation, published in two volumes as An Easter Play Prologue & Part I, and An RSVP. Easter Play Parts II & .III . The location of each quotation is marked in this series of articles by the But sometimes Part name or number (Pro, I, II or III), followed by the just sometimes page number of die volume containin g it. The Youth's before the nosy, intrusive sun gets up speech comes from Part I- and is found on page 40 of to blare its searchlight into your secrets, the first volume : Hence : 1 .40 . 3 111 .44 Because the experiences of the Three we meet on neutral ground Priestesses occur off-stage, their significance is not and dance together, barefoot, always realised . The women undergo the Friday while I try to synchronise events in a transformed way-the eclipse while my steps to your wild music. worshipping in the temple, and the earthquake while descending the cliffs . Indeed, so accomplished is the writing on page 44 that Dr. König manages to bind From Kingfisher Days by Mary Sheepshanks into this one described incident the Friday eclipse on © Mary Sheepshanks Golgotha, the Sunday arrival of the three Mart's at the tomb and the Whitsun rushing of the Holy Spirit wind .

6

The German Spirit the throes of destiny Alexander Zundel, The Mount Community, Sussex, England

Healing will come when our material civilisation proves pecially through Schiller, Beethoven and Fichte and capable of spiritualising the power of iron into the on the other hand sought to find a metamorphosis of power of Michael-Iron, which gives human beings human intelligence itself through Goethe's Rosicrucian self-consciousness instead of nature-consciousness .' strivings to give thinking a living, organic form . Both these ideals are entirely Michaelic in character and n these words Rudolf Steiner reminds us that the heal- correlate with the 'Michaelic-will' . Two statements of ing of our civilisation depends upon an awakening Rudolf Steiner show us this Goethean aspect of of our Selves . Only a conscious awakening of our true Michael's will and the more Fichtean aspect very clearly . self-self-consciousness, self-perception-can free Michael inspires men with the expression of his own humanity from the shackles of the dark ego, the mate- spiritual being, so that on the earth a spirituality may rialised iron . appear that is accessible to their own human intelli- The German people have for a considerable time gence, so that it is possible to think and at the same been a kind of 'chosen people', through which such time be truly spiritual; for this alone is a sign of an impetus for self-consciousness should have gained Michael's rulership . entry to the spiritual world-stage . If we cast even a fleet- ing glance over German cultural history as it was de- And, scribed so multifariously by Rudolf Steiner, we may be This is what stands before us as a demand of Michael, struck by the repeated connections he makes between that we become active even in our thoughts, so that German cultural life and the leading spirit of our present we form our conception of the world for ourselves time : Michael, who became the 'Time Spirit' in 1879 . as human beings through our own inner activity. 6 It may also become evident to us that Rudolf Steiner devoted considerable attention to the personality of J . If Michael was indeed the German folk spirit before G . Fichte, describing him as the purest representative 1879, which we may be permitted to conclude from a of the German folk spirit. deeper appreciation of Steiner's statements, then we must deal with the question as to what happened after Fichte is rightly regarded as a direct expression of . Steiner poses German national sentiment, as an expression of the 1 879 when Michael became Time Spirit spirit which eternally and profoundly-in so far as this question in his lecture in Stuttgart 18'" May 1913 and answers it in the lecture two days later where he we are able to apprehend the spirit of German na- tionality-dwells in our midst and not merely in explains that the spirit which replaces Michael as Arch- angel is the being which served as the Angel of the thought.' 2 Bodhisattva who became the Gautama Buddha . In What is it about Fichte that justifies regarding him as another lecture' Rudolf Steiner reveals a profound the true representative of the German spirit? It is the mystery of the Buddha being, the Gautama-Bodhi- entirely Self-founded striving of his spirit to plunge sattva, in that he identifies him with the individuality into soul-depths and with a mighty creative strength of Wotan/Odin who was the leading initiate of the pre- to work from these soul depths to the luminous spirit Christian Germanic peoples . All this leads to another vision of the kernel of his being: his Self . To struggle being of Germanic mythology who, as a kind of from the depths to a recognition of the I (ego) as a Michaelic countenance, in a gesture of supreme tri- supersensible spiritual reality was the task he sought umph slays the Fenris wolf-the old chaotic clairvoy- to accomplish . 'I am, and I am with all my aims only ance . This is Vidar. in a supersensuous world .' These words are Fichte's Gathering together our observations, we find our- own, and they run like a leitmotiv through all his ut- selves in agreement with S . 0 . Prokofieff who points terances .'3 out that the Angel of Gautama-Bodhisattva is in fact Fichte is the philosopher of self-consciousness ; his the 'Son of Wotan', who in ancient Germanic my- Wissenschaftslehre is the fruit of his struggle to over- thology is calledVidar. Vidar is the son of Odin/Wotan come 'mere nature-consciousness', which must be tran- who revenges his father's death by slaying the Fenris scended with a vision of the individual human spirit . wolf . How are we justified in making this connection What then is the exact connection between the Ger- between the Angelic being of the Gautama-Bodhi- man folk spirit which worked so forcefully through sattva, and Vidar? For three reasons . Firstly, as J .G .Fichte, and the Archangel Michael? This is an im- Prokofieff relates : 'According to Rosicrucian esoteric portant question . Rudolf Steiner described how the tradition the angels are always called 'sons' of arch- German folk spirit descended into the German people angels . For example, in Occult Science Rudolf Steiner between 1750 and 1850 and then ascended again to calls the angels the 'sons of life' .$ Secondly, the his- spiritual heights, where it acted only upon the soul torical development of the German spirit, bears an element . Considering this period of 100 years we may extremely close relationship to the prophetic vision relate it to the life-span of J . W. von Goethe, 1749- of the mythology. The 'Twilight of the Gods'-the trag- 1832, as well as of Fichte, 1762-1814 . This was the edy of Nazism, the battle between the dark and the time of the greatest flowering of German culture, which new powers of clairvoyance which only Vidar and on the one-hand embraced the ideal of freedom es- Vali survive . Expressed from another angle, the battle

7 for anthroposophy, and the understanding of spiritual Germany, realities as a dire need of the times . Odin is devoured, Though you have but the German spirit lives on in another form, an- Betrayed yourself other figure-that of Vidar, whose embattled yet radi- In these last decades; ant spirit emerges from the dust and debris as herald of Though you have lost a new epoch . Your very life Thirdly, through the statement of Steiner 1915y'What In the century that's past we call the German folk spirit . . .is in close alliance with And sold it Michael-there are) two forces : Michael and the Ger- To the slanderers- man folk spirit who are entirely in harmony .' It would Now, in the hour of your abasement, be entirely reasonable that the mission of the German On the day of your destruction, people should be carried further beyond the great cul- I am with you tural flourishes before 1 879 (i .e . 1750-1850 .) by a At the death-bed of your existence . guiding spirit who would be 'entirely in harmony' with I bear your destiny with you, the previous guiding spirit (Michael) . I suffer Furthermore, if their task were one of vital world- And weep with you . historical importance, then the mystery of the world- I feel the pain martyrdom of the holocaust, triggered by Germanic Which your destiny suffers, impulses, would be unveiled . Steiner unveils this mys- For it is my sorrow. tery with the words which follow his statement about I cry the tears the harmonious working of the German folk spirit and Which pour forth from your eyes, Michael . He says of these two : 'It is their mission to For they are my eyes . bring the Christ-impulse to expression specifically in I pound in the heart our time, in accordance with the spirit of our age .' 10 In Of your twitching body; his lecture cycle, The Fall of the Spirits of Darkness, It is my heart. Rudolf Steiner reveals the true mission of Vidar . The adversaries stand at your gates, At my doors stand the enemy. There appears the figure of the etheric Christ, the They crush your loins, divine bearer of the substance of cosmic love, who But it is my bones that they are breaking. now approaches man in an etheric (imaginative) form All around the heavens quake in the fire, fashioned by Vidar out of the purest and most And flames of destruction blaze around you . spiritualised etheric forces.' My breathing gasps in the misery of your sorrow. There is another personality integral to the understand- My pulse is shattered in the death-throes of your ing of the German folk spirit's mission, a personality torment. whose life and death have for a long time been I want to bear the banner of your sorrow shrouded in mystery-Kaspar Hauser. His mission now Through your death to new life . reveals itself in its full import when what has been con- I must raise the flag of destruction sidered so far is placed into the context of the follow- Into the dawn of the spirit-sky. ing words of Steiner. Already showers of meteors Are streaming down to the Earth . If Kaspar Hauser had not lived and died in the way The armour and sword of the Angel of the spirit he did the contact between earth and the spiritual Even now gleams in gold and iron . world would have been completely severed 12 . Oh Michael, Other statements of Steiner show us that Kaspar Hauser Appear! was meant to unite the German spirit for the Christ Come and be in us, event of the 20th century. He had to stay true to this We who will to bear and offer up divine destiny even in martyrdom . His powerlessness Your destiny, in life became his greatness in death in the realm of Germany's destiny, the etheric Christ . Karl König recognised his mission With many others in fellowship .l and united his own soul with this mission, not only through the world-destiny of the handicapped child, Alexander is trained as a Waldorf teacher and but through his own direct connection with the Ger- in the Alexander Technique and is now a teacher man spirit . His testimony rings out : at The Mount.

Notes 1 The Michael Imagination, Dornach, Oct 5, 1923 8 P306 The Cycle of the Year as a Path of Initiation, 2 P.64 The Spirit of Fichte Present in our Midst Berlin Leading to an Experience of the Christ Being, 16th Dec . 1915 Prokofieff 3 P.67Ibid 9 GA157 19th Jan . 1915 4 P.175 The Destinies of Individuals and of Nations, 10 Ibid Lecture 16th March 1915 11 P 356 The Cycle of the Year, Prokofieff 5 GA240 19th July, 1924 12 P.66 Kaspar Hauser, The Struggle for the Spirit, 6 GA219 17th Dec . 1922 Tradowsky 7 GA105 14th Aug. 1908 13 P.361 Karl König, A Central-European Biography of the Twentieth Century- Wiedermann

8

'Let there be fired in the East . . .' Reflections on many Russian journeys Margit Engel

Please note Margit's new address : for electricity to be connected from another depart- Johanneshaus App. ment takes 6 months . No doubt, patience is necessary . 3604, D 7532 Niefern-Oschelbronn, Germany. There is only one item which I find hard to accept : the toilet situation outside the big cities . I won't go ach stay in this amazing country seems to give me into details, but I usually have a potty in my luggage another push away from everyday habits . Every- and a big roll of special paper. thingE is put into motion-my principles, my habits and my concepts . At first the chaos and unclarities irritate But what about me, now 80 years of age? At home me, but then I feel as if freed from the fixed rational was made aware early of my age and of being a pen- pattern which still seems to surround us in the western sioner, but in Irkutsk in Siberia, nobody would believe world . Maybe one could say, freed from the captivity it was my last journey (even if it was!) . Age is valuable; into which our causal thinking puts us . imagine! it is highly regarded . These Russians believe 'Punctuality is impolite', a Russian friend said, to qui- that old people have more experience and more abil- eten me down when I started to wonder whether we ity to overlook a difficult situation! No wonder that I were late for a visit . I remember, years ago in Tbilisi in sometimes still long for this wondrous country, which Georgia, a car was sent to collect us . Instead of step- has already passed the threshold from causal rational ping into the car, my companion persuaded me to visit thinking to mobile irrationality . And that I consider a painter whom she knew : 'The car can wait, it won't meeting with Russian people to be an inner help and take long.' But it proved to be a longish bus journey schooling . outside the city and the painter was Irakli Parjiani, fa- mous in his country : we could not just pop in . When we at last returned, three hours late, the car was still waiting, the driver greeted us warmly, and without re- James's Song proach drove us to another part of the city where a group of people had also been waiting for us . Oh did you volunteer to come People wait or queue with incredible patience, no question is raised, an unlimited capacity of endurance And how long will you stay seems to exist. You experience with a kind of shock : And can we learn enough of love Russians have Time . Terpinje, patience, was one of the Before you slip away? first Russian words I was taught . The Norwegians have the word tilamotto have 'courage to wait' . What We greeted you with fear and grief Russians endured during the last century needed un- imaginable 'courage to wait' . You seemed beyond our reach There is little money amongst ordinary people . But if But now we know a child of light you know that your neighbour is in need, you never Who has so much to teach . let him starve, my Russian lady friend said . Brother- hood is actually still understood-even more so in ear- Sometimes you look with baffled eyes lier times than now, when the much despised market Which fills our hearts with pain. economy has created vast inequalities among people . There is a beautiful Russian saying, 'What you give Oh is it that we are obtuse away, you keep, but what you keep you lose!' We know And you cannot explain? of the artistic abilities of Russians, their musicality and sensitivity. But maybe we don't know that in times of We march our roads with hustled tread very tight economy, such as now, concert halls are You step a different pace mostly fully booked . My friends in Moscow have an awful habit . When I But your path may be more direct visit, they arrange their bed for me to sleep on, while To reach your special place . they themselves sleep on the kitchen floor! This is so unbearable for me, as you can understand, that even I Oh did you volunteer to come who have learnt so much of Russian habits, never man- And how long will you stay age to stay for more than two nights . But with all this mobility and openness for change, To teach us unconditional love you should know that decisions can be quite flexible Before you go away? too. You are sure a situation is clarified, a decision taken, but when you visit next time everything is changed, we have to discuss things anew . Quite opposite to this is the bureaucracy . You may be permitted-and this actually happened-to put up From Thinning Grapes by Mary Sheepshanks a 5 km long electric cable (paid for by the govern- © Mary Sheepshanks ment!), for your private little village, but permission

9

The heights and depths of the human soul A letter from Russia Andrew Hoy, Svetlana, Russia

t was very suddenly on the Wednesday of Easter are able to live' . By thinking in this way I begin to week-that the ice broke on the River Syas and include a hidden form of support that I might have not within a few hours our stretch of the river was com- noticed with more logical thought patterns. pletely free . People had been walking across daily There are numerous accounts that relate the adversi- holding a pole with both hands to prevent them from ties suffered by the Russian people . I can barely come being dragged under should the ice give way, in a to terms with them . The recent book, Voices from variation of Russian roulette-though the alternative Chernobyl is such an account . It is almost beyond be- would have been a walk of twelve miles in each di- lief. I am able to observe though, the amazing flexibil- rection by road . ity that many have developed in moments of crisis . With such contrasts the seasons change and while Can you imagine a tractorist fashioning parts for his snow fell on each of the three days of Easter we knew combine from scratch, as that was the only way to get that winter was over. The first snowfall had been at the it running? Or someone changing a wheel in the mid- end of October ; the last, in the middle of April . So dle of a busy intersection, leaving barely enough room spring is received with particular intensity . for a streetcar to pass? It is now a month later, and somewhere in-between Within such a world of contrasts there is an incred- the ice gave way in the placid life of our community. It ible openness to be willing to absorb spiritual ideas began when one young man walked away one late alongside physical realities . afternoon and was not found until almost two days It is this re-emergence of contrasts within the thought later. On that occasion we were helped by a clairvoy- life that fascinates me . When Karl Marx took up, and I ant woman in a nearby village. She astonished us, dare to say abused, Hegel's dialectic approach, it be- though, when she said that he did not leave alone comes evident in the light of the above, that such ideas while he announced that he went with his son ; though might find a resonance here. Hegel had observed that he has no son . Other events followed in a fairly or- new ideas could arise out of our ability to live with derly manner, including a number of return visits by a contrasts . He postulated that if we accept 'being', we former villager-so our dogs did not bark-to relieve must also accept non-being, or 'nothingness' . The one us of some of our produce, until we read him the riot presupposes the other. However, it is from the relating act. Fortunately not all of our life has this dramatic of 'being' with 'non-being' that we reach the concept character. Like the river, it tends to be seasonal . of 'becoming' and, with one further step, into the realm Part of the deal in living in Russia lies in one's will- of 'existence' . However abstractly, Hegel has delved ingness to accept adversity. You learn to live with sud- into the realm of the creation . den changes of plans, as well as contrasts and extremes . It becomes fairly apparent that such ideas, when ap- When asked a day after his return how he was, our plied politically would be as devastating as the ideas truant simply replied, 'Normalise', though this was not of Charles Darwin when used in support of capitalism . a commonly felt experience . We had to be grateful . However, the purpose of this excursion, was to dis- It is in living with such contrasts that a change begins cover the world of contrasts within the human soul . A to arise within one's thought life . I can surprise myself peculiar experience confronts me while travelling i n with such thoughts as, 'Our strength lies within our Russia . It defies exact pinpointing and yet it returns fragility,' or 'our wealth rests in the very basic way we again and again .

Gradenegg, Liebenfels, Günther Lehr

10

From Loch Arthur a kind of alchemy Lana Chanarin, Loch Arthur Community, Dumfries, Scotland

ome months ago I wrote an article describing the cows gave us before they were culled . They were milked dramatic events which accompanied our experi- on Good Friday morning and the cheese was made that enceS of Holy Week and Easter last year, when we lost same day. Barry was worried that the cheese would taste all of our healthy animals due to an outbreak of foot bad because pyres were burning around us for so long and mouth disease on the neighbouring farm (Camphill and the smell goes into the grass which the cows are Correspondence, Jul/Aug 2001) . As a postscript to that eating-so he had chosen not to enter that particular article, I would like to tell you what happened during Cheddar. Then at the last minute, the day before leaving our Michaelmas day celebration, which provided a for the ceremony, he decided to bore into that Cheddar poignant echo to our Easter experience . and taste it. It was a near perfect cheese and he de- The night before had been wild and stormy and we cided to phone the organizer and beg to be able to woke to grey skies and drizzle . As we gathered outside enter it . It should not have been allowed so late in the the hall to sing and say a verse before going off to har- day but under the circumstances she said he could bring vest from the fields and hedgerows, to bake and pre- it and they would judge it with the others . pare the hall for our harvest meal, the sun appeared What Rene wanted to tell us on that Michaelmas and it became a shining Michaelmas morning . As we morning, six months after the cull on Good Friday, was all stood together, remembering all that had happened that Barry had phoned to say that the cheese made in the year, all the pain and sorrow, the good times with the last milk our cows gave had just won a Gold and bad, but also the comfort of being able to support medal-it seemed a fitting tribute to the great sacrifice each other through difficult times, Rene said she wished these beautiful animals had made on Good Friday. to share one piece of news before we all dispersed . Now we have some new beef cattle and we are slowly Her husband Barry, who runs the Creamery, was in reassembling a milk herd from different parts of the the South of England at the major British Cheese Awards country. We are particularly happy to have cows from ceremony. We have entered this show many times and Oaklands, and others soon to come from Botton and have always received medals for our cheeses . This year, Clanabogan . We are still hoping to find a farmer who for the first time, we were entering cheese made from wishes to join Peter Darwell in running our large farm milk we had bought from a local organic farm (we have and re-shaping it for the future, and we are ever grate- been buying in since shortly after the cull) . There was ful for the support and concern we have received dur- some Farmhouse Cheddar made from the last milk our ing this challenging time .

Healing the heart of the earth A workshop with Marko Pogacnik in Harlemville, NY, October 12 and 13, 2001 Jean-David Derreumaux

receded it by an evening lecture for which the estranging ourselves more and more from the earth Hawthorns Valley School auditorium was packed through the many aspects of our modern culture has full,P Marko Pogacnik, who comes from Slovenia, gave been growing, since about 3 years, to his experience, a whole day workshop for up to 60 people on the the earth is taking in hand her own healing . He calls grounds of the Rudolf Steiner Education and Farming the transforming, changing earth : 'the new earth cos- Association . Gene Gollogly from Booklight i nc. i s the mos' . In this change that the earth is taking, the el- contact person for the U .S . and the Berkshire branch, emental beings, which are active in myriad ways as Nancy Root especially, had organized the event and the consciousness of the earth, need our collabora- for those who have not come across his books (*), Marko tion . This asks us to retune to her newness and for that Pogacnik is an artist sculptor who has used his skills to to develop our sensitivity at the etheric, astral, con- heal disturbed areas of the earth in a similar way that scious and divine level . He spoke a lot of the mind, acupuncturists do when they apply their needles on which encloses us in a very narrow frame and is a pow- certain places of the body . His art resides very much in erful and clever barrier for this sensitivity . the capacities he has developed over the years to per- Following that, Marko spoke about the need to open ceive the subtle levels beyond the physical . His life to the revelation of the 'feminine', not the feminine in task is both to perform healing at the hand of reading the sense of gender but in our relating to the earth . The the landscape in space and time and to teach people masculine aspect is related to the sun, to the center, to to become aware of the earth as a being. the patriarchs on the basis of which most of civiliza- In his evening talk, with clear, insightful yet humble tion has been formed . The feminine relates to the moon words, Marko set the ground for what he wanted to and needs to be present too to form wholeness . It brings bring with his visit . Here is in a brief sketch some of the connection to eternity and to Söphia who reveals what he shared . As the tendency for destroying and herself in three aspects, which he calls : theVirgin God-

11 dess (wholeness, where the essence of an Idea comes), pie is to place oneself, through gesture, as being be- the Mother Goddess (the creative aspect) and the Black tween the earth and the cosmos, relating the one to Goddess (the destructive, transformative aspect) . He the other, our heart being in the middle . Added to that writes about that extensively in his books. were an exercise to keep the mind at bay and another To end with, Marko shared with us the experience to establish a sheath of protection around oneself .These he had as he visited 'ground zero', the site of the de- exercises can be found in Marko's books . stroyed World Trade Center. He experienced there the At different sites, Marko gave us indications and hints presence of a being filled with light and compassion, of how through imagination one can tune to this or relating it to the black goddess . He expressed that in that elemental activity . For instance in an area along the west, the soul of man has been stretched away from the creek where he was aware of different water be- man almost to the point of snapping ; but this event has ings, he suggested that we imagine the lower part of had the effect of bringing the soul back into man . our body to be covered with scales like those of a fish . The workshop itself was a journey both in different Then, when it is vivid enough, one lets go of that and parts of the valley as well as in different qualities of opens one's perceptivity. Likewise we approached be- elementary and energy presence . Let it be clear that ings of air, which were centered in a big white pine by six hours of such a workshop with such a large group feeling the air going through our mouth as we inhaled . was far too short a time to enter fully in such a process In several cases he would ask us to approach an area of exercising one's perceptions and of helping to re- with our backspace because there the mind has little establish the balance and the flow in precise areas . access and would be less in the way . However, Marko had walked the valley the day before Besides the places where the elemental beings re- and had found a certain amount of points we could side, we were introduced to areas where energies find work with . It was interesting to be in this half-familiar their center. Like the human body has seven chakras, landscape and enter it through this particular aspect. an earth landscape has such centers of energy . By the First of all, a prerequisite was to do some exercises to phenomenon of resonance with the chakras of our own center and ground ourselves, which we did several body we were asked to get a sense of which chakra times in different ways throughout the day . The princi- was the recipient for a particular place . In that case it was the solar plexus . Marko also got us in touch with a place where the angelic realm is at work, and another the door of the Grail Castle, as he called it-where James's School the spiritual world, through the dead, the ancestors, has access . In these rooms We practised perception but also on two occasions objectives have no limit we addressed the being of a place through singing in order to adjust and heal something that had been dis- but progress is celebrated turbed . One place was a beautiful opening in the woods in centimetres. where old machines had been dumped with such an attitude that a scar had been created in the etheric of the place . In concentric circles around the place we Most of the telephones (all the participants) sang continuous tones in are scrambled, and rag-doll limbs mindfulness of the history and the well being of the place . Similarly, we addressed another center where, require support, at some point in time, the connection with the elemen- yet cheerfulness keeps rising tal beings had been pushed away . The purpose of the on thermal currents of laughter. healing there (also through singing) was to reestablish the connection and allow a proper flow with the other centers we had been exploring . Shadows are not allowed to loiter here, where optimism All along, the feeling of genuineness that was arising from Marko's indications made for good conditions to is a five-hundred watt bulb explore this subtle realm, despite their personal, mat- and despondency gets vacuumed up ter of fact and somewhat outstanding character. One each time it tries to settle felt very free and had the sense that, in any event, one has to work out one's own path . Some people did have experience and some did not. But I believe that is the yet sometimes I need callipers activity of developing out of oneself a deeper relation- to hold my spirits up . ship to the earth in its present and pressing needs, pro- viding one is awake to it . To that effect, Marko Pogacnik made a deep impression on many of us . From Patterns in the Dark by Mary Sheepshanks © Mary Sheepshanks Nature Spirits and The poet and novelist Mary Sheepshanks is the Books by Marko Pogacnik : Elemental Beings, Healing the Heart of the Earth, grandmother of a pupil at the Camphill Schools Christ Power and the Earth Goddess; Earth Changes, Aberdeen, who is the subject of the four poems Human Destiny and the Daughter of Gala, of this issue. all published by Findhorn Press.

12 Human death and nature's response Friedwart Bock, Camphill Schools, Aberdeen

But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee : and the fowls of the air, they shall tell thee. Book of Job X11, 7

ome intimate events may occur when human beings die and these events may continue up to theS day of the funeral and even beyond .Animals, quite often birds but also insects or larger animals, are sensitive to the changes in and around a human being who dies . Also atmospheric events can be shown to accompany a death . This article wants to describe some of these re- sponses and offer a way to understand these signs . These observations are very precious and uplifting in those hours of mourning and questioning destiny. I recall when one of our young friends died at Newton Dee after a long and painful illness, two swans landed on the pond, a small area of water for these large birds . It was 3rd April 1964, when Wolfgang Beverley was released and the swans came to accompany this moment. They had flown 6km from the dam north of Peterculter and they stayed in Newton Dee for a whole season . An account of the death of the 'Angel of Arnheim' Just before midnight when Paul Allan had died we were also reports the gathering of many swans on a nearby woken by a flock of sheep bleating loudly and mourn- lake . Selma Lagerlöf writes about the funeral of her fully; early next morning the phone rang and we heard mother in 1915 . Several swans had come to the adja- of Paul's death . When his funeral at Maryculter took cent lake even though swans had not been seen there place in an unusually heavy and increasing downpour in living memory . of rain and ending with a rainbow we could not help In the year 2001 little 5 year old David Miller had experiencing this as a response of nature . gone to play on the ice of a frozen-over pond near Very different was the experience of the snowfall at their Stirling home . Playmates called his mother after Henning Hansmann's cremation, full of peaceful David had vanished . She found his Spiderman toy on beauty but hazardous for those who wanted to travel the ice and saw two swans with their cygnets swim- to the event. ming in circles around the hole in the ice above the After Hans Schauder's cremation in Edinburgh on the spot where David lay. They could not revive the child, 16th July 2001, we noted three thunderclaps but no but the story of the swans was reported in the Scottish rain at all . press including a picture of the pond . Amazing cloud formations are described : a deep red AtThomas Weihs' funeral in 1983 there came a flight sky when Hans Heinrich Engel died, a cloud circle at of oystercatchers to the funeral ground at Maryculter. Carlo Pietzner's death in 1986, a cloud triangle at Emil At Anke's funeral in 1987 it was the skylark rising and Bock's cremation in December 1959, amazing cloud singing tunefully over the grave . At the cremations of formations at Reinhold Gabert's death in Sao Paulo, Eleanor McCraw and George Davidson, two employ- Brazil this year. ees who died in 2001, it was again the oystercatcher When Karl König died in March 1966, the weather who was heard . In 1993 at Kate Roth's cremation we was raw and wild but a glorious rainbow was seen heard a concert of wood pigeons accompanying the later in the day stretching over the Lake of Constance proceedings . Remarkable was the flight of a red kite from the South . A rainbow was also reported from the over the coffin of Nicholas Joiner, the pall bearers and interment of the urn of Gustav Gundersen, a music the whole funeral procession as it proceeded from the teacher at a spot near the Oslo Fjord and so did a rain- church in Llandovery to the cemetery in March, 2001 . bow encircle the crematorium where Unni Blumenthal Irene Johanson describes the warbling of many song- was lying last year in December . The Northern Lights birds during her address at Alex Baum's memorial serv- preceding Meg Farquhar's death in April 2000 at New- ice in November 1975 in Munich when she had spo- ton Dee were at that point in her life's journey when ken of him as a spreading tree (Baum) which offered a her ether body was already separating . We were still home for many birds . able to talk about these Northern Lights with her. A young child had died in Finland this year and a When our ether body begins to dissolve into the world butterfly settled on the coffin as it was carried to the ether after death it expands into the life sphere of the grave . It flew away and gentle raindrops fell out of a earth and the responses of birds, other animals, local- cloudless sky. ized weather or cloud formations . This can make us

13 I had the following feeling : it can- not be other than that nature itself will express its participation in this hour. The beings of nature which were intimate brothers to our teacher of the spirit world have to show their taking part and their vis- ible presence . Otherwise this unique, sorrowful yet sublime hour would remain incomplete . On the gable of the grey cremato- rium one could see the shape of a large antique amphora and I was looking towards this with searching and expectant gaze : when and whence will come the great beauti- ful bird which will light upon it, not- withstanding the proximity of so many human beings? Would it show its presence in this way? However, the vase remained as it had been . But wait-it may have been two or three minutes later when my From the Papyrus of Nefer-uben-f gaze was drawn to the sky by the soft cries of seagulls and by a very aware of the dying friend's physical body returning to gentle rushing sound . What did I see? the elements of the earth while their ether body brings Directly above the crematorium at the height of about about special signs and expressions in the ether realm . 40 metres stood a formation like a living crown . It was The wonder of this can be experienced time and again formed by twenty-two or twenty-four seagulls which and these examples are but a few. circled eurythmically in an anti-clockwise direction . Their flight was joyful and buoyant, their plumage spar- Two more shall be added : kled silvery against the brilliant light-blue sky. Their H . Hofmann writes: breasts were tinted with gold . This was an indescrib- 'My uncle fancied pigeons as a hobby. He always able triad of colours . From time to time some of the cared for his birds with very much love . Sadly, he suf- birds winged through the circle in a half figure-of-eight fered a heart attack while he was quite young . The fam- and rejoined the circle in a new place . This crowning ily mourned his passing very much . In the trouble we wreath stayed like an all-encircling corona for some experienced, no one had given any thought to the pi- minutes at exactly the same place as if held there by geons. When my uncle was to be brought to the cem- the hands of gods . etery from his house, an unforgettable sight presented I nudged the friend on my right side and we looked itself in the room where he lay. Around his deathbed up for a long time, gripped in our innermost being . sat the pigeons who had gained entry through an open Looking at the people around us confirmed that, sadly, window. They remained silently and almost motion- nobody else was looking up . I was itching to call, to less with the dead as if they conducted a wake .' poke someone to make him aware . Alas we were still Heinrich Hardt, 1891-1981, a doctor working in so young! The risk of disturbance made us remain curative education at the Lauenstein, described the silent. following: Very gradually this 'wedding flight', as ornithologists How nature joined the celebration at Rudolf Steiner's call this event, hovered slowly to the right and behind cremation on 3rd April, 1925 always maintaining its circle . From the direction they Beneath a cloudless, radiant spring sky a vast number were going the sunlight was flashing, undisturbed by of people had gathered outside the crematorium in any clouds! Our eyes had to close when this winged, Basel which was packed with people inside. mobile and living crown came too close to the sun's The music by Stuten had sounded and ebbed away blinding rays . and Albert Steffen's address could only be heard in parts Stirred in our innermost being by the beauty of this by those standing outside surrounded by nature . I was event which came as a fulfilment and touched the soul filled with deep sorrow about the passing of our be- deeply, we left this place together with the others, loved teacher, at the imminent disappearance of his gazed upon the silently flowing Rhine and thanked faithful earthly figure, the head permeated by the spirit, those birds for their incredible roundelay which arose the nobility of his starry forehead . All this would be as if from a secret connectedness . surrendered to the elements . Various memories of his revelations and intimate Friedwart is an 'elder statesman' of the Camphill directions regarding the whole of nature, plants, ani- movement and a regular contributor to these mals and elemental beings : all this passed through pages . He would appreciate to hear of your my soul . With all the dignity and beauty of the event observations of nature phenomena at the time of which had been imparted to human hearts and hands death .

14 Books

An Introduction to Therapeutic Communities 120-divided into units of about 10 people . This by David Kennard would correspond to a large extended family-small Published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers 1998, enough for patients to have all the individual care Second Impression 2000 they required . Reformers in England and America also believed that the physical construction and setting of Reviewed by Robin Jackson, Camphill Scotland the asylum were crucial to the success of treatment . must confess I approached the task of reviewing The asylum needed to be located far away from the this book with some reluctance . This arose from disturbing influence of city life-in a peaceful pasto- the cursory, almost dismissive, reference by the au- ral setting with pleasant views and walks . thor to the contribution of Camphill Communities to By the beginning of the 20'" century all that was left the development of therapeutic communities . But of the era of moral treatment were many asylums setting my prejudicial inclination to one side and where institutional size condemned inmates to a donning the mantle of detached commentator, I am routinised and regimented life . With the passing of able to report that this is a thoughtful and thought- this era so too passed the belief in the treatability of provoking text . For the purpose of this review, it is mental illness . The country air and the rural vista only possible to focus on a few of the topics covered, once thought beneficial for the mentally disturbed all of which will have a resonance in Camphill Com- town dweller-now ensured that his predicament munities . Thus what follows is essentially a precis of would be forgotten by all except those who had di- some of the key arguments advanced by Kennard . The rect contact with the institution . review concludes with a number of personal obser- The author then proceeds to the exploration of a vations . subject which continues to occasion discomfort, dis- The author commences by tracing the historical de- tress and dismay, in varying proportions, in some velopment of 'moral treatment', a form of treatment Camphill communities . He highlights the similarities which included many of the elements which today and differences between cults and therapeutic com- form part of the essential basis of any therapeutic com- munities . Both, he argues, are often started and led munity. What is remarkable is that having made its by someone with personal 'charisma' ; both claim to appearance and flourished around the middle of the help those who feel psychologically and socially in- 19'" century, it then faded . When therapeutic com- adequate; both seek to create in their members a high munities re-appeared in large mental hospitals in the level of commitment to the community ; and both years following World War II, they were in some re- operate in some degree of isolation from the outside spects reviving a way of running these institutions that world . had lain dormant for nearly 100 years . The differences, he believes, are in the aims of the Those who had developed moral treatment claimed community. The aim of many cult communities is to that this approach was little more than the applica- establish an ideal lifestyle in which negative human tion of common sense and humanity, qualities not qualities such as greed or jealousy disappear. Some monopolised by experts . The advocates of moral treat- actively seek to convert others to this way of life-to ment in England dispensed with expertise on two spread the gospel . In contrast the aims of therapeutic counts : first, such proclaimed expertise had often been communities are concerned primarily with establish- used to conceal harmful practices ; and second, it was ing a culture in which individual change is possible unnecessary because what the insane needed could complete solutions are not offered . In a cult commu- be given by anyone with the right attitude and per- nity, members are usually promised a complete and sonal qualities . lasting solution to life's problems in return for com- The application of moral treatment sounds straight- plete acceptance of the cult's philosophy and prac- forward enough-simply engage the disturbed indi- tice. In a therapeutic community, rules and expecta- vidual in a regular routine of useful, varied work and tions do not require total and immediate acceptance do this within an intimate, family-like atmosphere in indeed, as Kennard points out, that would be anti- an attractive setting and location . The pioneers of therapeutic . In a cult community, leadership and de- moral treatment in England intended to show that cisions about the community are typically not openly physical restraint was rarely needed and that insanity discussed and may often be determined by a single was curable-not by the current medical treatment person or small group whose authority is not open to but by ordinary employment in everyday tasks which question . By contrast, in a therapeutic community, restored order and tranquillity to the mind-these decisions may or may not be taken democratically included farming, gardening, household tasks and sim- by the whole community, according to the kind of ple workshop tasks . therapeutic community it is-but can be freely dis- Moral treatment pioneers acted on the assumption cussed and challenged in group meetings . that patients were amenable to social inducements to What safeguards are there to prevent a therapeutic behave acceptably, to the praise, encouragement and community developing into a cult? Kennard believes the esteem of others . Also important was the size and that it is important for there to be an openness to peo- setting of the institution . In order to create an inti- ple and ideas from outside the community, to listen mate family-like atmosphere the number of inmates to and meet critics rather than regard them as en- and staff in an asylum had to be kept small . The ideal emies . There is also a need to allow debate within the was considered to be a total of between 100 and community so that time-honoured ideas and ways of

15 doing things can be questioned . For that to happen real as opposed to cosmetic improvements to occur there has to be a culture of enquiry. This can only be is for organizations and individuals to be given greater achieved through the personal commitment to it of autonomy and opportunity for innovation and crea- the leaders in the community and through regular tivity. There are implications here for the nature of meetings in which staff roles and the ways decisions vocational training and professional education offered are made and authority is exercised can be regularly to practitioners . Camphill communities have under- examined and questioned . standable concerns about the kind of competency Kennard then identifies four key ideologies which based qualifications that the regulatory bodies seem he argues shape us today as citizens and as profes- likely to require co-workers and employed staff to sional caregivers . First, there is the entrepreneurial possess which pay little regard to the immeasurable culture with its priorities of cost effectiveness and or- qualities of human experience . ganisational efficiency and its redefinition of us all as There is currently a national debate about the fu- providers and customers engaged in the marketing of ture direction for the health, education and social products to each other . Second, there is an emphasis services in Britain . It is important that Camphill com- on the centrality of the individual and within the munities participate fully in that public debate not health and social services on individual care plans only by sharing their knowledge and experience but and care managers . Kennard comments that while this by helping to point the way to the creation of a more is an understandable reaction to the old institutional socially responsible and responsive society . practice of treating everyone the same, if carried to an extreme it can lead to a situation where interac- Robin Jackson is Development and Training tion between individuals-whether in a family or Co-ordinator for Camphill Scotland. group home or hospital ward or day centre is sim- ply ignored . Third, along with the emphasis on cost effective- ness and the individual are the twin preoccupations with quality assurance and measurable competencies . When the Storm Comes The competencies needed to perform not just straight- and forward practical tasks but the complex interactive A moment in the Blossom Kingdom work involved in counselling and psychotherapy are Barbro Karlen tidied into neat sets of discrete observable skills that Clairview 2001, £8.95 can be rated as either present or absent in the work of the practitioner . The problem is that this partial view Reviewed by the book's translator of human relations risks becoming the whole view so Jane Luxford, Pennine Community, England that we are nothing more than our performance . Fourth, there is the human rights movement which es, I feel I have spent some time in The Blossom has emerged as a check on the entrepreneurial cul- Kingdom and been shaken by The Storm! As you ture. Kennard believes that the search for the holy mayY be when you read this book . Here is how the grail of a non-stigmatised, normal, independent life journey went for me . style for former residents of psychiatric and mental A few years ago Wain Farrants called me as he had handicap hospitals, under the banner of normalisa- just read the two books that Barbro Karlen had writ- tion, makes more unlikely the creation of a socially ten when she was a teenager. Later she wrote her au- accepting and tolerant environment . Paradoxically, tobiography When the wolves howl which came out the closure of mental hospitals has led to an increased in English last year. Wain had read the two 'stories' in emphasis on the need for secure containment for peo- German and as Barbro is Swedish as I am (nee Gerd ple whose release into the community has caused Sundgvist in my pre-Jane Luxford days), he wondered considerable public unease, not to mention political if I would like to translate them . Initially I was unsure embarrassment . as to whether my Swedish would be up to scratch Kennard concludes that there is an urgent need to after 25 years in Britain . However, after reading a few respond to the challenges posed by some of these ide- pages of A moment in the blossom kingdom I knew ologies : the narrow focus on the individual to the ex- that not only could I do it but that it would be a won- clusion of any consideration of the social parameters derful thing to do . In this way the journey began . Not of existence; a view of human rights that rules out knowing if they would ever be published . certain kinds of human living arrangements (e .g. vil- I translated The blossom kingdom first . It is a de- lage communities) ; and the attempt to present the scription of a kingdom where every thought has a col- power imbalance between professional helpers and our and where spiritual goodness is everywhere . God their clients only in a negative light . is described without the trappings of fear and jeal- This book has a particular relevance today given ousy. He is not a jealous God, nor puts you into the the increasing disenchantment with the application fear of God . All of this spoke strongly to me . Here I to health, education and social services of measures found something which arose out of a child's unclut- of productivity and efficiency which are modelled tered mind, bringing to light the essence of Christian- on outdated private sector practices . There is grow- ity in a way that is helpful for the mind of today . It ing and compelling evidence that targets, league ta- also seemed to me that her descriptions, put in inno- bles and performance indicators do not lead to sig- cent imaginative form, are almost the equivalent of nificant improvements in practice . Indeed informed what Rudolf Steiner says about life after death and commentators are now arguing that the only way for what we find on the other side of the threshold, in

16 the spiritual world . He speaks about Lucifer finding before. Teachers have also told me that in school it is his rightful place at the point where the human being very hard to sit girls and boys together; what was diffi- crosses the threshold, at death . It is also very moving cult in former times from class 5 onwards (age 10111), how Barbro writes of being by an ocean, of having is now a problem for many children in class one (617) . an experience of eternity and following footsteps in The book is written with the experience of a priest the sand which lead her to a meeting with Christ . of The Christian Community, who experienced Vienna The other book When the storm comes has a dra- during the period when psychoanalysis and depth matically different character. It is highly descriptive psychology were being developed, soon leaving him and apocalyptic . At times this is almost too much, with a growing disappointment . even unbearable . But it is amazingly relevant . You The author opens up to readers the evolution proc- can almost feel that the conversation which is de- ess of the male and female elements of the human scribed between the Beings of Nature and the Earth being from the earliest beginnings of cosmic evolu- over the deeds of humankind, is taking place today tion, through mythological times, Judaeo-Christian tra- About the destruction of Nature and the consequences ditions, up to our contemporary western culture . He which will follow. The story does not stop at the warn- gives a picture of the history, the development and ing stage; it shows what is going to happen . The death the necessity for the division of mankind into male of the Being of the Earth itself . It is hard to imagine and female, with the accompanying conflicts and com- how a young girl could have experienced such rel- plements . evant thing as this . But she did, and had the possibil- The second part, 'The age of marriage', describes ity to write it down . the steps of individual development in seven-year pe- Therefore, we have in these two stories, accounts, riods, while the development of a marriage occurs in spiritual experiences ; a view into the purity of the a five-year rhythm . spiritual world and a vision of the future which stands He also discusses frankly the variations and chal- at the threshold between death and resurrection . Not lenges which arise in our time, when we are asked only the death of Man, but the death of the Being of not to judge but rather to wrestle to understand, for the Earth . Together the two form an urgent and apoca- instance, homosexual and lesbian behaviour, or Mul- lyptic message addressed to humanity . Wake up, be- tiple Personality Syndrome . He writes about how fore it is too late . Before the storm comes! To care for Rudolf Steiner stressed time and again that humanity the Earth is now the common task and responsibility is now crossing the threshold to the spiritual world, of the whole of humanity. Today we can sense that indeed has already crossed it, which means that a there is a waking up . Let us hope it is not too late. confusion of physical and etheric identity has taken Because of what is brought to light in these two parts place as the basis for all future stages of human de- of the book, and having lived with the images whilst velopment . translating them, I recommend them to your imagi- For this new stage we have to be conscious of the native mind . Always keep before you that they came new 'organ of Gabriel', which Steiner describes as forth from the mind of a young person, without the most important organ for mankind's development . intellectuality, and speak to the heart and to the mod- It enables the meeting of human beings in the light of ern situation . empathy, not sympathy and antipathy, where the ex- perience of 'Not I, but Christ in me' turns into the Jane has been a homemaker for many years in the experience 'Not I, but Christ in you' . Pennine Community, and a Bothmer gym teacher. Very interestingly, the author compares the fourfold She is at present on sabbatical with Michael, process of empathy with the four steps of the arche- touring and researching communities working typal Christian religious service . with three-foldness . It is wonderful to read and to feel that here is a per- son still filled with hope and promise for the future . Seeing world happenings, it is hard to believe that a real healing spirituality will arise in human hearts . At the moment it looks absolutely different for millions Male and Female - developing human empathy of people who have to die, who lose families, who by Baruch Luke Urieli have to fight for life ; and not only since the terrorist Temple lodge, 2001, £8 .95 act in America . This book would be very good for studying in small Review by Bea to Ma tthey-Kraus, Ta pola Camphill Community, Finland groups, in communities who wrestle to develop the heart forces for building up empathy for each other, or the occasion of his fiftieth wedding anniversary and wherever people try to build up new 'marriages' with Tamar, Baruch gave three talks at Easter 1998, with themselves and with the spirit . whichF are the basis of this book . The author's biography has enabled him to write a book about a theme which is a big question mark for millions of human beings . Not only do divorce rates rise, but also the cleft between man and woman grows Gerda Blok has sold all her copies of ever deeper and arises earlier than ever : even in the Male and Female. It is now available pre-school years, when boys and girls usually play from Camph i I I bookshops and other quite well together, there now starts a separation be- Steiner bookshops and the publisher . tween boys and girls groups, much earlier than ever Well done, Gerda!

17

A word of thanks and good wishes to Per Iversen and his family Sabine Campling, Staffansgärden, Sweden

er has been one of Per has given up most of Staffansgärdens pio- his own personal life and neersP from its beginnings 28 wishes for the needs of years ago and has for many Staffans-gärden and has years been its principal . now come to a point where With his selfless striving and he feels he must move on warm-heartedness he has to other tasks outside the built a community where Camphill life-community in not only physical beauty order to add some com- abounded in the buildings pletely new facets to his but also where the indi- own life and to find more vidual was respected and time and strength for his where each could fully family. We will remember strive for the fulfilment of Per for his abundant kind- their own destiny. ness and for the fulfilling Per Building up the only Camp- lives he has helped us cre- ngrid hill place in Sweden, where government rules limit many ate at Staffansgärden . individual initiatives, has been a difficult task for Per Per's wife, Ingrid, who has been active for many years and a handful of friends. Per, who is naturally a 'hands- in the therapeutic realm and who has contributed much on' person, was forced to spend more and more of his to the creation of beautiful gardens around Staffans- time with administrative tasks . With his diplomatic gift gärden, will be leaving with Per to make therapy avail- and empathy he was also called upon to help at all able to the wider community . times with the manifold human struggles occurring in All of Per's and Ingrid's friends at Staffansgärden want this large community. to wish them Godspeed on their way.

1 8

Letter The 'extended' lord's Prayer another story and contemplation any of us have lived with the Lord's Prayer for many years . But how many of us have realised theM deep significance of the opening words, Our Fa- ther in Heaven . . .?' Are these just words-or do we re- ally believe that God is our Father, the father of all mankind of every single person in the world? I realise with some sort of shock that if this is true, then also terrorists, even the Taliban and Bin Laden are children of God . And it is a fact that when they pray they ad- dress the same God whom Christ addresses in the Lord's Prayer. So, are we all brothers and sisters? Rudolf Steiner's 'Extended Our Father' makes this quite clear : Father, Thou who was, is, and will be, in our innermost being, your Being is glorified in us all and highly praised . Here comes the story : I often attend meetings of the Aberdeen Interfaith Group . Last time, somebody told us about a conversation between two neighbours one a Christian, the other a Muslim-across the gar- den fence. Muslim : We have no problem with your Christ, even the Koran tells us that he was the greatest prophet! Drawing by Günthe r Lehr Christian : But for us he is more special than that . We believe that he is the Son of God! In the light of recent world events I feel that this line Muslim, after a small pause : But are we not all sons has an incredibly deep significance . It gives me strength of God? and courage to believe that after all I can make a dif- Sons and daughters have the habit of turning away ference to the great scheme of things . I am not insig- from their father, going their own way, losing their way nificant and helpless but I can begin right here and and even hating and killing each other. But all this now to bring about change . We all can! In every little does not take away the fact that they share the same encounter and life situation I can try to bring extra father, that their spiritual origin and substance are the warmth and love into my attitude and behaviour. I can very same! try to stop niggling and criticising, especially behind Whether we know it, or like it or not : we all live in others backs! Stop always expecting the worst and find- the same kingdom, the Kingdom of God . When will ing negative aspects i n everything; stop looking down we wake up and realise it? on, or even stepping on, others' initiatives, suggestions The Lord's Prayer is, like a seed, planted in our hearts . or thoughts; stop doubting people's motives and com- Its petitions arise out of a deep longing for a future bless- mitment-the list is endless! This line challenges us to ing. The words of the Extended Our Father seem to me look at our lives first before we judge others ; to love to arise from a new awareness and consciousness : The their weaknesses and failures ; to hold out a helping Kingdom of God, the blessing we waited for are already hand in the awareness that we need at least as much here, all around us and in us! Petitions for future fulfil- forgiveness and understanding as everyone else . Com- ment have turned into statements about the present : munity life gives us a never-ending chance to practise Your Kingdom expands in our deeds . . . we perform this compassion! your will . . . your power and majesty work in us all . Some scientists say that the flutter of a butterfly's wing We no longer wait for God's gift-we have been given can be the cause for a hurricane on the other side of it already and now we are responsible for it! If this the earth . What then can the flutter of our hearts do? cannot fill us to the brim with joy and gratitude-what What do we cause when our heart flutters in anger, can? resentment, hate, intolerance? Can it be that each time There is also a great challenge in this prayer . I have we manage to still this fluttering, to bring peace and often wrestled to come to an understanding of how the inner equilibrium to our own little heart, we actually line 'and forgive us our sins, has been transformed into help to still the hurricane of hate and war that rages 'let our compassion for others be a compensation for over the earth? the guilt to which we succumb within us' . In the origi- nal German this is the only petition in the whole prayer! Angelika Monteux, Camphill Schools, Aberdeen

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1 9

Patterns in the Dark

Bright serpents twirl about the sky and hiss forked tongues of effervescent stars: children are waving sparklers. It is a scary game played against the night, but full illumination waits their call. They touch a light switch and normality returns . James cannot reach that switch . His stars fizz out and fluctuate not being strong enough to steer y: He struggles down the tunnel of his mind, trips up on loose connections tries again. We watch with pride and pain as he makes a private pattern whirling his sparkler in the dark.

Winter at the Lehenhof, Günther Lehr From Patterns in the Dark by Mary Sheepshanks © Mary Sheepshanks

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A West Coast Experience The Ty Glyn Davis Trust-Self-catering holiday accomodation Ita Wegman Association Groups up to 17, Lovely accomodation by the sea, W. Wales of British Columbia, Canada £395 pergroup or £165 per weekend. Contact for brochure: Glenora Farm is a young, thriving commu- Rosie Debree,The Bailiff's House, Llanerchaeron, Ciliauaeron, Lampeter, SA48 8DG nity on beautiful Vancouver Island. We are Tel : 01 545 571604, e-mail : tyglyndavistrust@care4free .net looking for an enthusiastic female co-worker to take care of a gorgeous, charming and Looking for Camphill sometimes very difficult young woman . This I'm looking for a Camphill community that's located in a country that cares about the position would be suitable for a volunteer environment. who needs to do a placement in Curative I'm 58 years old, female Chinese-American . I've had 9 years experience living in commu- and/or Social Therapy. Some experience in nity. I lived on The Farm in Tennessee from '81-'83 (when they were communal) & again the field would be very helpful; willingness from June '93-December 2000 (when they weren't communal) . I prefer living commu- to learn and to be guided is essential . Love nally. I'm a healer, with a focus on Reiki - I've had 15 yrs experience, 9 yrs teaching; l love for music, crafts, gardening and the out- doing farmwork - 3 ° yrs experience; I find working with people with disabilities very doors, and an interest in community living rewarding- 4 yrs . experience; most of my work experience is in office management- 8 yrs; would be good assets . I've done cleaning - 2 yrs, & food preparation -1 ° yrs ; I've helped run a small bakery - We are a community based on anthroposo- 2 yrs. I'm a hard worker, & I work well with others . phy, and born out of the impulse of Camphill, I've been interested in Camphill for a number of years. I visited 3 Camphills in Pennsylvania, living and working on 100 acres of farm and summer of 2000 . I'm familiar with the Waldorf education method & love eurythmy. I'm forest land. We are in an exciting stage of interested in therapeutic massage but have had no training in any RudolfSteiner disciplines. growth and planning as we move out of the My son will graduate from high school in June . If l move to a Camphill soon he might come pioneering phase of our biography. with me. He doesn't know how long he'd stay, since he's at the age of deciding . He is good For further information, please contact with computers, especially repairing & building . He's hadsome networking training . Adola McWill iam or Lucinde Balcombe. We have good references, we're in good health & we don't owe any money! Our address is: Glenora Farm, 4766 Wa- It is important to me to live in a country whose government demonstrates that they care ters Road, Duncan, B .C . Canada, V9L 6S9 . about the environment. telephone/fax : (250) 715 -1559, e-mail : CATHY CHOW, 10317 Midvale N . #1, Seattle, WA 98133USA, 206 9858971, lucinde@telus .net health-hemp@ hotmail .com

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Oäyssey - Return to the M steries of Hellas INTERNS NEEDED FOR SOPHIA PROJECT Over land and sea, on bus boat an Ioot,Join us in Center for childcare supporting homeless and very ex lon ngthe m steries of . We will ourne low-income children and mothers. Oakland California P y ancient Greece , y to some of the known and not-so-well-Known sites .) of ancient Sophia Project has two vacant intern positions from January shrines, temples, theaters and healing laces . From June ~0 2002 at Sophia House. A commitment of 3 months or 6 months to Jul~ 14, 2002 a small roup of 22 wi I gather with us to is required, 6 months is preferred. Interns are needed for early experience the elementa character of mystery centers: childhood education, respite care and weekend activities for Athens, Eleusis,DeIPhi,EPhesusandPatmos, homeless children and children at risk of homelessness in the amongothers . local neighborhood. Sophia Project also offers child develop- What prompted the ancient initiates to locate the ment education for their parents . mysteries where they did? Is It Possible to perceive Interns andpermanentstafflive together in Sophia House com- somethingofthesacredgeographyof anuentGreecem munity, which creates a supportive environment for the daytime ou r era? How ma we foster a Ruing relation with the birth work with the children and is integral to their healing. Interns arid birth lace oThinkmngm time and space? work with the children under the guidance of Sophia Project's p Program Director during weekdays . Every other weekend, Sophia I‚P Phi Graham, Ion -timestudentofthe' mqstenes, will House community provides live-in respite care for up to 4 chil- help us thread ourway trough the labyrinth ö mythos and dren . his or around the sites we visit . Gillian Schoemaker, The intern program is meant for those wishing to work with chil- eur thmist and litelonglover o Hellas, willguide us in dren through the application of Steiner education in a low-in- exP oringthrough eurythmy the etheric imprintingof both come environment as well as participate in and contribute to the the outer landscape and the inner "soul-scaPe" . Dennis life-sharing component of Sophia House. Klocek, teacherand artist will facilitate through meditative As an intern, you will gain experience with children at risk us- exercises and sketchinga c(ee Per Penetration into the mood ing the principles of Steiner education, learn about and develop of these holy Places where land and sea, mornmgand yourself though engagement with the work, the children and evening, meet in formmga unique ethenc eography . Visits the co-workers of Sophia House. to theatrical performances, museums, Iota restaurants as Attributes needed for the position are : a love of children and well as pauses to appreciate the manifold beauties of commitment to self development through engagement with work Greece and the eastern Mediterranean will round out our and people. Previous experience with homeless children is not two-week stay . required. Those considering the position will require the stamina For accommodation, ground transportation, ferryboats, for working in an intensive but ultimately rewarding environ- some meals (but not air travel to Greece) you will pay ment. $2050.00 per person in single accommo accommodation, $1700.00 in If you would like to apply to become an intern at Sophia House, please write to twin, and $1650 .00 in triple. Areyou Interested? Please let us know soon; our Athens Carol Cole, Executive Director Sophia Project, agent needs firm bookings by the end of December and 820-822 19th Street, Oakland CA 94607, space is limited . Call orwritefordetails oncosts and E-mail: [email protected], itinerary : in the U .S ., Gillian : 610-469-9820 phone (510) 268-3916 fax (510) 268 3918 Philip: 610-948-%1, graham-philia juno.com and ask for an information package which includes guidelines Philip Graham, teacher, historian, Iingusit, IsAssoclate for submitting an application . Editor of the Journal ForAnthroposoPhy . Gillian Schoemaker, eurythmist, is a therapist at Camphill Special Schools, Beaver Run, Glenmoore, ennsylvania, and a erformingartistwith the Pennsylvania tturythmy Troupe . ennis Klocek, teacher, artist, author, lecturer, is the Director of the Goethean Studies Program at Rudolf Steiner College, Fair Oaks, California .

Ruskin Mill FURTHER EDUCATION CENTRE Eurythmy Training within Camphill A specialist residential college providing further education for students with emotional and behavioural difficulties aged 16-24 . We have a vacancy for Applications are now being taken for Residential Houseparents September 2002 This vocational post involves living in a family type housegroup We offer the opportunity to train in the art of eurythmy with up to three students in one of within the serial-therapeutic setting of Botton Village Ruskin Mill's houses near Nailsworth, Glos . (Camphill Village Trust) . We provide all household expenses and a salary Enquiries to: We particularly welcome applications Camphill Eurythmy School, from couples . Botton Village, Danby, Whitby, For details contact Ann White North Yorks, Y0212NJ . U.K. Residential Sevirces Administrator Tel: +44 (0)1287 661257/318 Ruskin Mill FEC, Old Bristol Road Fax: +44 (0)1287 661254 Nailsworth, Glos . Tel 01453 837538 Email.• CamphillEurythmypsol.com e-mail ann .whiteCruskin-mill .org .u k Registered Charity No . 1053705 www.camphilleurythmy.org .u k

Self Catering Holiday Apartments L i7 THE SHEILING SCHOOL iC0 a '17 Old Tuscan biologically-run olive oil farm peacefully situated HORTON ROAD, RINGWOOD BH24 2EB, ENGLAND Jc on a hilltop with stunning views and all amenities close by, A Camphill Rudolf Steiner School offers comfortable accommodation, spectacular walks and We are a curative School Community with excellent local Tuscan and international food . Arcobaleno is 45 children and adolescents from 7-19 . In our '~ perched on a neighbouring hill to Cortona, a famous old 51St year we are commited to enlivening our School 'Etruscan town steeped in Italian history and well positioned and Community to regenerate our work . We need new pioneers : competent, confident and to offer day excursions by car to many places of interest ; for committed people to join us as Houseparents, example, within ca . one hour you can reach : Florence, Siena, Teachers and Workmasters who can help provide Perugia, Assisi, Arezzo and within about two hours : Rome & leadership, ideas and initiative within our excellent Pisa . Additionally, the famous wine growing areas of Chianti, facilities Montepulciano and Montalcino are all within an hours' drive ARE YOU ENERGETIC AND INTERESTED IN of Arcobaleno . PARTICIPATING IN A LIVING EXPERIENCE OF CURATIVE EDUCATION IN A CAMPHILL SETTING? For further details, you can access our homepage in the Internet : IF SO, WE WOULD LIKE TO HEAR FROM YOU . www.agriturismo.com/arcobaleno or e-mail or call me personally at following: Lucas Weites, San Pietro a Cegliolo CS 59, 1-52044 Please contact Maggie Pooler in Westmount House Cortona AR Tuscany, Italy Tel : 01425 4774231 Fax: 01425 479536 e-mail: arcobaleno( ~technet.it tel: + 39 0575 612777 e-mail : enquirie s nsheilingschoola .co.u k The picture is a painting ofArcobaleno's olivegroves by Elizabeth Cochrane . The Shelling School is an activity of the Shelling Trust - a non-profit u . . . .IrTflTi ~ LT.flY1~1.1/agil[1Ta7a: T~i~~T7fJ1/I,T;1~lY1tYl1! SPECTIVE

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- IOl .RNALOFTIICCIIU 1t ArUAIMLAII1AIIH1 .AIIAIHKNI-i(lUI .vRINIk' ' -Hibernia I li " -PERSPECTIVES itl School of Artistic Therapy

nthroposophical Medical 'reatme An integrated training for the Individual in art therapy Experience medical treatment in the context of a based on healing, social environment and in the beautiful An throposophy Worcester countryside . Orthodox and anthroposophical medicine are combined to provide the best residential and out- patient treatment for a wide range of conditions . Art, sculpture, eurythmy and massage are integral HibQrnia to residential treatment and available as out-patient Creating the Future Centre for Science and Art December 2001-February 2002 therapies . Lansdown, Stroud Individual financial discussions and funding Gloucestershire GL51 HF advice are offered . Perspectives, the Magazine of England Park Attwood Clinic The Christian Community Tel : (44) (0)1453 751685 Trimpley, Bewdley, Worcs DY12 iRE Issue: £3 .50, yearly subscription Fax : (44) (0)1453 757565 Tel: 01299 861444 Fax : 01299 861375 (4 issues) £14 .00; Free trial copies on e-mail. park. [email protected] request from : Perspectives, 8 Spademill Internet : Inttp : // i' i' i'. paf katttiti'ood. coin Road, Aberdeen AB15 4XW, UK

The Dove Logo of the Camphill Movement is a symbol of the pure, spiritual principle which underlies the physical human form . Uniting soon after conception with the hereditary body, it lives on unimpaired in each human individual . It is the aim of the Camphill Movement to stand for this 'Image of Man' as expounded in Rudolf Steiner's work, so that contemporary knowledge of the human being may be enflamed by the power of love. Camphill Correspondence tries to facilitate this work through free exchange within and beyond the Camphill Movement . Therefore, the Staff of Mercury, the sign of communication which binds the parts of the organism into the whole, is combined with the Dove in the logo of Camphill Correspondence .

Editors: Peter Howe, 79 Granville Court, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE2 1TR, UK, Tel/Fax : (0191) 281 7861, e-mail : peterh 1 C beeb .net Maria Mountain (Subscriptions), Whitecliff, Hall Grounds, Loftus, Saltburn, UK, TS13 4HJ, Tel/Fax : (01287) 643 553 e-mail : mariamountain@totalise .co .u k Elizabeth Howe, Camphill Community California, Marimi House, 4096 Fairway Drive, Soquel, CA 95073, USA Tel : (1) 831 476 6805, Fax : (1) 831 477 1299, e-mail : eorcpghowe@yahoo .co m

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Deadlines : Camphill Correspondence appears bi-monthly in January, March, May, July, September and November . Deadlines for ARTICLES are at the end of these months, for the following issue . ADVERTISEMENTS and SHORT ITEMS can come up to ten days later than this .

Lay-up by Christoph Hänni, Produced by Room for Design, Published by TWT Publications on behalf of the Camphill Movement