Journal for ANTHROPOSOPHY

N U M BER 72 EASTER 2001 Anger, like a clawing demon nips into me. Fangs bared to devour sink into my own flesh. Passion flaming outward consumes me. My own anguish yells at me from without.

I, unreasonable, demand reason in others. I, hateful, expect love. I, miserly, long to be given. I-

He,

Friend of Friends,

forgives

and heals

by Joanna van Vliet Journal for Anthroposophy Easter 2001 Number 72

Front Cover: An Easter Motif by Kevin Hughes Calligraphy by Anthony Bloch

Editor Sherry Wildfeuer

Associate Editors Philip Graham Donna Sturgis

Correspondence should be sent to: Sherry Wildfeuer, PO Box 155, Kimberton, PA 19442

Published by The Anthroposophical Society in America All rights reserved

ISSN-0021-8235

Printed by Circle Graphics, Eagleville, Pennsylvania CONTENTS

Goethean Conversation Revisited ...... 5 bv EILEEN KING

Crucible by ROBERT K A R P ...... 13

Goethe and the Riddle of Nature ...... 14 by DOUGLAS MILLER

There’s Something about Peach Blossoms ...... 22 by HOWARD PAUTZ

Verse by THEODORE VAN V L I E T ...... 3 4

American Prophets ...... 3 5 by SIEGFRIED FINSER

Henry B. Monges (January 4, 1870 ~ July 19, 1954) ...... 4 4 by HENRY BARNES

Wild Geese by RICHARD NEAL ...... 5 8

Goethe and Love ...... 5 9 by KARL JULIUS SCHROER • Reviewed by Linden Sturgis

Percy MacKaye: Poet of Old Worlds and New ...... 6 2 by HENRY BARNES • Reviewed by Carol Williams

Awakening the Will: Principles and Processes in Adult Learning ...... 66 Practicing Destiny: Principles and Processes in Adult Learning by COENRAAD VAN HOUTEN • Reviewed by David Schwartz

Proverbs of Purgatory ...... 71 by JOHN WULSIN • Reviewed by Eugene Schwartz

Autism - A Holistic Approach ...... 73 by BOB WOODWARD AND DR. MARGA HOGENBOOM • Reviewed by Ingelore Maier

[Note: nextpage[4]wasblank&isdeletedhere]About the C ontributors...... 75 Goethean Conversation Revisited by EILEEN KING

... The work of such a group does not consist in a number of peo­ ple merely discussing ideas. Its members should feel so linked with one another that human soul wakes up in the encounter with human soul and are all lifted into the spiritual world, into the company of spiritual beings, though it need not be a question of beholding them. We do not have to see them to have this experience. Rudolf Steiner, Awakening to Community, Lecture IX.

or those of us who have wondered what is missing in our work Fas members of the Anthroposophical Society, the last years leading up to the new millennium have been a time of urgent ques­ tioning. Has there been something we should have seen, should have done? Why are there so few members worldwide and why do so few young people find their way to Anthroposophy? Why are we not more skilled at living community and building bridges to others? And perhaps the most persistent question: why have we not been more effective in the world? Where is the living spirit in our movement? In the last few years, it has been painful for me to acknowledge the ring of truth in the image many people have of anthroposophists: we appear to be narrow, repressed sectarians who are dogmatically bound to Rudolf Steiner and his voluminous work. Our critics would say that we prefer reading and decanting bizarre and high-flown theories rather than understanding and

5 6 • E ileen K in g working with the reality that lies all around us. It is understand­ able that, knowing the living reality of Anthroposophy, we might be tempted to reject this criticism out of hand. But isn’t it also true that many of us sense that what passes as anthroposophical life is a mere shadow of what Steiner envisioned and what it could still become? Over thirty years ago, teacher, biodynamic farmer, author and translator Marjorie Spock posed these same questions. It is as per­ plexing today as it was back then that her extraordinary insights about how each of us can participate in bringing new life to the Anthroposophical Society have been for the most part ignored or (at best) now and again been taken up in small circles or communities. In the first part of her monograph, Group Moral Artistry: Reflections on Community Building (copyright 1983), she wrote: “There is every indication in Rudolf Steiner's plays and lectures that he expected genuinely social attitudes to flower among the anthroposophical membership as a result of esoteric striving. When one puzzles why this has not yet generally been the case, it becomes clear that though our minds may take in Anthroposophy as concept, earth-habituation is so deep-ingrained in all but our private meditative moments that we do not see esoterics as an all- permeating way of life, which, if pursued, radically changes social intercourse. Until that time, we remain even as anthroposophists earth-corrupted natures, with the tendency to follow earth’s dark­ ened way in our human dealing.” Ms. Spock went on to point out that, in general, members seemed sublimely unaware of the esoteric nature of meetings since they came in casually chatting, doing business, catching up on some matter or other. Attention to the convener was often scat­ tered since the outside world was still very much present. She also described the damage that unconscious sympathies and antipathies can do to the social fabric, and pinpointed the very real Goethean Conversation Revisited • 7 danger of lionising “special” personalities, which in fact only iso­ lates them. As a remedy she suggested the creation of groups devoted to listening: “Listening perceptively has social consequences beyond esti­ mating. “First, there is what it does to the soul of the listener. A mira­ cle of self-overcoming takes place within him whenever he really lends an ear to others. If he is to understand the person speaking, he must withdraw his attention from his own concerns and make a present of it to the speaker; he clears his inner scene like one who for a time gives up his home for others’ use while himself remain­ ing only in the role of a servant. Listeners quite literally entertain a speaker’s thought. “ Not I, but Christ in me” is made real in every such act of listening... “ One understands how grave sins of omission can be when one considers the potential fruitfulness that is lost to man and the uni­ verse through every failure to let the sunlight of our interest shine on the souls of our fellow earthlings. Neglect of such gardens of the spirit means for all of us a greater scarcity of nutriment and beauty than there need be, and at the same time an encouraging of weeds, which spring up rankly in all empty ground. “Not only do ideas burgeon in response to listening: when groups reflect and entertain them, they take on the many-sided, cosmic fullness that belongs to thoughts as universals. And there is at least one further miracle attendant on listening, one akin to the miracle of loaves and fishes, in that the proliferat­ ing seed of living thoughts falls on the soul-ground of the hearers, as many as are truly listening, and begins in each a fresh evolu­ tionary cycle. “Finally, groups that foster the fundamental, social art of lis­ tening create a common higher consciousness, able like a Grail cup to receive and dispense the magically quickening lifeblood of the 8 • E ileen K in g spiritual world. Nor will those who hearken perceptively to living men fail to sensitise their listening also to the unseen dead and to those other hosts of heaven who may be seeking to inspire them.” The art of listening, as Marjorie Spock describes it, contributes to the body social as a vehicle for community building. However, she envisioned “listening groups” not only contributing to social needs, but also asking, “ ...how is life generated? What develops it most strongly in the body social? Must it be left to chance or grace? Or can it be planned, as a farmer takes measures to assure a harvest?” She goes on to say: “What may be learned for the shaping of esoteric social life from such considerations? Is it not that interchange is all-impor­ tant? That too-great dependence on the lecture form - which makes the lecturer the sun pole, his audience the moon - scants a balanced life of soul in the listeners and hence in the Society? Does our Society not suffer drastically from insufficient life through having failed to take a course that would have developed life more vigorously in the rank and file? Could there, indeed, be a rank and file if we had based group practice on the recognition that every member is a unique spiritual being, a unique treasure house of humanness, from which the common life might be enriched? “ ...What is proposed here, is rather, dialogue in the sense of Goethean Conversation.” Many readers were intrigued with the idea of Goethean Conversations, so at their urging Ms. Spock developed her thoughts further in Part II of Group Moral Artistry: The Art of Goethean Conversation. She begins with an excerpt from Goethe’s Fairytale, The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily: “Whence came you hither?” asked the golden king. “ Out of the clefts where gold dwells,” replied the serpent. “What is more glorious than gold?” “Light!” Goethean Conversation Revisited • 9

“What is more quickening than Light?” “Conversation!” What concept of conversation could Goethe have had that led him to elevate it above the gloriousness of gold or the quickening powers of light? This question led Marjorie Spock to consider deeply the ways that groups of people speak together. And what would be the qualities of a “ Goethean” conversation? She describes the difference between forms of exchange, noting that conversation in the sense that Goethe may have understood it takes place across the threshold, in the etheric world, the realm of First Causes. Other lesser ways of conversing are useful - discus­ sion, chatting, brainstorming, analysis, argument, debate, etc. - but remain spiritually barren, leaving participants very much aware of their own isolation. Participants in a true conversation may experience fellowship and a communion: “ ...they live the Grail experience of modern man.” The Grail cup is formed by the inner preparation of the mem­ bers of the group who, having lived with the subject of conversa­ tion for some time beforehand, are ready to put aside their own thoughts to make a space open to receive new intuitions. Burning questions can serve as a focus for meditation as each person pre­ pares for the “ festival of light” which can happen if each has done his or her work well. Each of us has probably had the experience of trying to do var­ ious kinds of group work, but we may have been discouraged when we saw that what we had formed was more like a sieve than a ves­ sel. There were leaks, and we had the feeling that everything was constantly streaming out. We had no control over this process, and could only watch while thoughts came and went; tentative but cre­ ative ideas were overwhelmed by strongly expressed but poorly thought-out opinions, and the conversation seemed to have no shape. Decision-making was difficult and one saw that, once again, 10 • E ileen K in g all the people who usually speak and rarely listen did so again. Old patterns of authority reared their heads as the leaders took their places and made sure that the “right thing” happened. The “vessel” given form by a group must be capable of holding a higher consciousness; it needs to be seamless, so that what is received may be held. Marjorie Spock gives us an understanding for what is necessary for this seamless vessel to come into being. The integrity of the vessel depends on the faithfulness each individual has to the rules or guidelines, as it were, upon which all depends. Ms. Spock emphasizes that daily life and business are to be left behind; chatter and joking can break the mood, allowing what has been gathered to disperse. Rather than being experienced as a breakdown in communication, silence becomes a deep well, from which each can draw, or like “ a matrix for the unfolding life of intuition,” as Ms. Spock says. The urge to speak and share one’s thoughts must be tested: Is this the right time? Does this really need to be said? And one can sharpen one’s sense of the necessary to the point where a conversation develops like a living organism, every part essential and in balance, each contributor taking pains to lift and hold himself above the level of unshaped outpourings. To achieve true conversations one must, in short, build with the material of intuition. When one offers the group the gift of refraining from speaking, of testing the necessity of one’s contribution, it soon becomes obvi­ ous that thoughts wishing to be heard will find someone to speak them. The experience of hearing one’s own thoughts expressed exactly by another person is a common one. When we think of conversation, we usually think about speak­ ing, about how we can articulate with precision what we want to say. In Goethean Conversation, one soon notices the importance of “ supernatural listening” as Ms. Spock calls it. This is a listen­ Goethean Conversation Revisited • 11 ing that allows the words of the other to live within us, as if they were our own. It is also a listening beyond these words to what the spiritual world is saying through the intuitions of the other person. In this sense, we become aware that we are engaged in a conver­ sation with the spiritual world as well as with each other. We begin to live into the truth of the words “where two or more are gath­ ered together in my name, there I am in the midst of you.” The hope of that Presence can be strengthened by learning to listen to one’s fellow men in exactly the way one would listen to the spiritual world: evocatively, with reverence, refraining from any trace of reaction, making one’s own soul a seedbed for others’ germinal ideas. As I mentioned in the beginning, Marjorie Spock realised long ago that lecture reading, though unquestionably important, was by itself not enough to sustain the life of the Society or to encour­ age members to begin, even in the most modest way, their own spiritual research. In the thirty years that I have known of the prin­ ciples of Goethean Conversation, I have become more and more certain that we have been given not a tool but a means by which we can undertake conversation as a deed. There is an implicit sense of responsibility - not only to the spiritual world but also to oneself - when one begins working in this way with others. Together and individually, you become “ interesting” for the spiri­ tual world and those whom the spiritual world finds interesting find that they are given tasks. Inner work takes on a new meaning when it is seen in the context of being capable of working with others and receiving insights that lead to deeds - and to a new understanding of one’s own destiny on earth. Justis Wittich and Thomas Stoeckli, the editors of Anthroposophische Gesellschaft an der Jahrtausend-Schwelle (The Anthroposophical Society on the Threshold of the Millennium) had no doubts of the value Marjorie Spock’s contri­ 12 • E ileen K in g bution to the question of “ how do we go on?” They conclude their book of thoughtful and sometimes extraordinary articles with “The Art of Goethean Conversation.” In their introduction to the collection, they write, “ In this critical period of time, the Anthroposophical Society must not only maintain its work, but raise it to a new, modern level if it really wishes to be a communi­ ty of pioneers for our common humanity.”1 In fact, Goethean Conversation, if understood and worked with, contains principles that can enliven any human encounter, any conversation, even any meeting - making our efforts “inter­ esting” for the spiritual world. Wherever we are can become the field of action for the spiritual world. Our meetings can create a space where the living spirit wells forth out of the vessel we have formed together, and instead of creating thought “collections” we can be co-creators of spiritual research and living deeds that have relevance not only for the Society but for the whole of humanity.

Works consulted and recommended * Marjorie Spock, Group Moral Artistry: Reflections on Community Building and The Art of Goethean Conversation, St. George Publications, 1983 (out of print) * Rudolf Meyer, Lebensentscheidungen (Life Decisions), Stuttgart, 1929 (This book has a chapter titled “Weggenossenschaft” - “Companionship of the Path.” Meyer makes one of the earliest references to the exchange between the snake and the king in Goethe’s Fairytale and wrote that true dialogue not only opens our hearts to one anoth­ er, but that we will find our way to true spiritual community in conversation.) * Rebecca Z. Schafir, M.A., C.C.C., The Zen of Listening: Mindful Communication in the Age o f Distraction, 2000. * Margeert van den Brink, More Precious Than Light: How Dialogue can Transform Relationships and Build Community, Hawthorn Press, 1996 * Justis Wittich and Thomas Stoeckli, Anthroposophische Gesellschaft an der Jahrtausand-Schwelle, Verlag ans Goetheanum, 1994 * Heinz Zimmerman, Speaking, Listening, Understanding: The Art of Creating Conscious Conversation, Lindisfarne Press, 1996 (German Edition, Verlag Freies Geistesleben, 1991)

------1Free translation by the author. Crucible

to dissolve in heart’s pure radiance crystals of stubborn thought the mind’s false light caught and poured into rosy fragrance

the crucible of regeneration fills with the proud and the dying while overflowing its brim all is alive and forgiving

by Robert Karp

13 Goethe and the Riddle of Nature by DOUGLAS MILLER

hen we as human beings look out into the world and expe­ W rience what we find there through our outer senses, it is a natural next step to wonder how the things of the world - a ray of sunlight, the sound of the wind, the growth of a plant, the planes of a crystal - relate to our inner sense of self. The result of this examination of experience is what we today call “ science” (from the Latin scire: “to know” ). In some way, each human being is confronted throughout his or her life with this riddle of the rela­ tion between the human being and the world. To the degree that such science leads to knowledge of the world, it has either been viewed with suspicion or embraced with fervor at various times throughout history. During the Middle Ages, those who wished to pursue the sciences of the outer world were in danger of being accused by the church of repeating the original sin, of being seduced by Satan to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. The Renaissance, driven by a sense of rebellion against these restraints on knowledge and experience, ardently pur­ sued the kind of knowing found in science. Since that time, human development, especially in the West, has accelerated along the path that leads to knowledge of the outer world. This path, however, can lead in many directions. It may, for instance, bring us to view the world as something that serves our

14 Goethe and the Riddle of Nature • 1 5 purposes. If we pursue this, we are brought into the vastly reward­ ing and deeply threatening realm of technology. This realm is so familiar today and it may give us power over nature, but, in the end, it may also lead to little real understanding. We come to find, for example, that the ecological problems of our time, not to men­ tion that evil flower of human technology, the weapons by which we are able to destroy ourselves in an instant, can take on a life of their own somewhere beyond our grasp, almost beyond solution. We may also take a direction that reduces the things around us to formulas, to mechanisms; in a sense, this is another version of the idea that nature must serve human purposes. The theories that can be spun by our minds and the models constructed in our labora­ tories replace the complexities and multidimensionality of the phenomena before us. One way or another, we use the human yardstick to measure something that has its own dimensionality. We find ourselves comfortable in this reduction, but we are often frustrated when we try to apply our theories to the actual objects and processes before us. One of the first thinkers to confront these limits of human knowledge in a modern way was the German poet and scientist, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). Goethe’s life bridged two centuries. At the beginning of his life, science was inspired by the possibility of comprehending the secrets of the world with mathematical precision in rational formulas. “Just a little more time,” said those mid-eighteenth-century scientists to themselves, “ and we will have developed our intellects to the point where the last dark corner of nature will be revealed to the light of reason.” Despite the counterarguments of philosophers like Immanuel Kant, this view informed the nineteenth-century conviction that the work of science was just about finished. In many ways, this idea continues today in the popular consciousness. 16 • D o u g la s M iller

By the end of Goethe’s life, new technologies were beginning to revolutionize the way nature was turned to human use. The Jacquard loom, the steam engine, and even electrical power had begun to change how human beings thought about nature, and with this change came a powerful economic incentive to press for­ ward with the development and application of technology. Today we live with the urgent idea that we must use the powers of nature for our own ends, and that we are increasingly dependent on the developing technology - whether we want to be or not. In his best known work, Faust, a drama in two parts that occu­ pied him for almost sixty years, Goethe depicted both of these approaches to nature artistically. Toward the beginning of the play we are introduced to Faust, an academic who has pursued the intellect convinced that he might finally discover through it the great secrets at the center of nature. Yet he finds that this grand goal always escapes the grasp of the human being because the devices of the intellect are not commensurate with the realities of the world: Nature, mysterious in day’s clear light, lets none remove her veil, and what she won’t discover to your understanding you can’t extort from her with levers and with screws. (I, 672-675)1 By the end of the play’s second part, the elderly Faust, who is interested in the application of knowledge, employs the technolo­ gies at his command to create new land for the human communi­ ty. Returning once again to the “ levers and screws” he had reject­ ed earlier, the now blind Faust orders the construction of mecha­ nisms to drain the seawater from the land, and he rejoices in the sound of work around him:

1.References to Faust are to J. W. von Goethe, Faust I & II, ed. and trans. Stuart Atkins (1984, reprint ed., Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995). Goethe and the Riddle of Nature • 1 7

How good to hear the sound of shovels! The mass of workers serves my pleasure, uniting land again with land, imposing borders on the ocean, confining it in rigid bonds. (II, 539-543) What Faust cannot see is a chilling scene: the shovelers, grotesque helpers of Mephistopheles, are actually digging Faust’s grave. When we widen our view to include Goethe’s extensive scientific work, we find that he sought to avoid the double trap of reduction- ism and utilitarianism by pioneering a third path to nature. One of the earliest to recognize this important direction in Goethe’s think­ ing was Rudolf Steiner. Steiner was entrusted with editing Goethe’s scientific writings in the 1880s and 1890s, a time when that part of Goethe’s work was held to be peripheral to both his own literary work and to science, in general.2 In a 1902 essay, “ Goethe’s Faust as the Image of an Esoteric World View,” Steiner notes: It is Goethe’s conviction that the human being can never solve the riddles of existence through an all-inclusive picture of the world. He shares this view with all those who have tested their inner life in a certain way, those who have achieved an insight into the nature of knowledge . . . They understand that there is no limit to the human striving for wisdom; instead it must be infinitely extended. But they know that the depths of the world are unreachable.3 Where, then, did this realization that the “depths of the world are unreachable” lead Goethe? What was the outcome of Goethe’s attempt to solve the riddle?

2.It would be fair to say that this is still the general view, although recently there has been more effort to link the two. Beyond anthroposophical circles, however, Goethe’s science is still very much in the background. 3.In Goethes Geistesart in ihrer Offenbarung durch seinen Faust und durch das Maerchen "Von der Schlange und der Lilie,’ GA 22, p. 9. 1 8 • D o u g la s M iller

It took him to precisely the same point he reached in his literary work, namely, that to “know” about the inner being of something, whether the human heart or the life of nature, we need to observe its actions carefully and without prejudice. Then we must seek to approach its hidden or esoteric essence through what it does. Goethe found that the world of nature is filled with a life that seeks to communicate itself to the observer in the language of phe­ nomena. The subjects of Goethe’s scientific investigations are some of the most ephemeral and difficult to fix if we cannot “ hear” this language: the fleeting effects of color, the hidden con­ nection among leaf forms, the unseen changes that relate animal bones to human bones, the slow alterations in the earth’s surface. For Goethe, a principal goal of science is the development and enhancement of the scientist’s own abilities to perceive nature’s life behind the curtain of phenomena. As Goethe writes in his Preface to Theory of Color: “From the softest breath to the most savage noise, from the simplest tone to the most sublime harmony, from the fiercest cry of passion to the gentlest word of reason, it is nature alone that speaks, revealing its existence, energy, life, and circumstances, so that a blind man to whom the vast world of the visible is denied may seize hold of an infinite living realm through what he can hear. Thus nature also speaks to other senses which lie even deep­ er, to known, misunderstood, and unknown senses. Thus it con­ verses with itself and with us through a thousand phenomena. No one who is observant will ever find nature dead or silent.”4 By requiring us to develop “ deeper senses” or even “ unknown” ones, Goethe places very steep demands on us as observers. In order to avoid repeating the error Faust makes at the end of his

4.J. W. von Goethe, Scientific Studies, ed. and trans. Douglas Miller (1988, reprint ed., Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995), p. 158. Goethe and the Riddle of Nature • 19 life, for instance, we must abandon all prejudice, let go of our twenty-first-century predilection for power over nature, and look carefully and objectively at the phenomena around us to find what Goethe characterized as “symbols” or “archetypal phenomena.” We must practice a kind of meditation on these phenomena in which we let the phenomena guide us. Then we can build in our imagination a picture of what is happening below the surface, just as the true biographer seeks to view his subject through the focus­ ing lens of the subject’s deeds. Those who would follow in Goethe’s footsteps must become biographers of nature. Goethe lays out this path for us in his scientific work. He leads us to observe polarities like light and dark or expansion and con­ traction, and how these work upon one another to produce the phenomena before us. What lies hidden within the phenomena of nature may then speak to us through our interactions with them. We observe points where these interactions neutralize one another and where they produce an intensification. We observe effects that are genuinely related to one another, and effects that are only apparently related. We also come to observe ourselves as we devel­ op new senses of perception. We can test the adequacy of these senses against the phenomena and against the observations of oth­ ers, mindful always of remaining open to correction and improve­ ment. In his methodology Goethe demonstrates that we should work to abandon the “insufferable arrogance”5 shown, for instance, by the Newtonian school. Goethe struggled against this mode of thinking throughout his investigations of color. He shows us that the development of our science goes hand in hand with the development of our human character, that we should always seek to refine and elevate our own abilities. Thus, in the knowledge (scientia) we come to know each of us can recapitulate in our own way

5.Preface to Theory of Color, in Scientific Studies, p. 161. 2 0 • D o u g la s M iller the four stages Goethe attributed to the general history of science: childlike - poetic, superstitious; empirical - searching, curious; dogmatic - didactic, pedantic; ideal - methodical, mystical.6 Goethe’s practice of science leads not to intellectual theory or increased human power over nature, but rather to the individual’s ability to partake in the intellectus archetypus tentatively postu­ lated in Kant’s Critique of Judgment.7 Goethe writes in a short piece on Kant: “Why should it not hold true . . . that through an intuitive perception of eternally creative nature we may become worthy of participating spiritually in its creative processes?”8 It is characteristic of both Goethe’s scientific and literary work that he made his point in the form of a question rather than as an assertion, for he felt that he could not cross very far into the spir­ itual side of his investigations. Artistically, he approaches this realm at the end of Faust, where we briefly see the progress of Faust’s entelechy into the spiritual world. Goethe also touches on the crossing into the spiritual in the concluding paragraphs of the Didactic Section of Theory of Color (“Allegorical, Symbolic, Mystical Use of Color”). There he speaks of the Elohim and the creation of the earth. In the end, however, Goethe would say little more about what lies on the other side of the door to which his path of science brings us. It remained for the passing of the Kali Yuga in 1899 and the groundbreaking work of Rudolf Steiner, the early proponent of Goethe’s science, to go beyond the door towards the introduction of a much more comprehensive spiritual science.

6.Maxims and Reflections, in Scientific Studies, pp. 304-305. 7.Immanual Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. J. H. Bernard (New York: Hafner, 1951), pp. 255-257. 8.“Judgment through Intuitive Perception,” in Scientific Studies, p. 31. Goethe and the Riddle of Nature • 21

Goethe’s scientific work, however, is not obsolete, nor is it use­ less to one who wishes to find the path from nature to spirit. Rudolf Steiner pointed again and again to the fact that Goethe developed patterns of thinking and observation we will need if we want to penetrate into the world around us and find in an objec­ tive way what lives hidden there. Of course, to do this it is neces­ sary that we first immerse ourselves in Goethe’s work. Goethe himself always conceived of his books and articles on science as “lab manuals” with experiments we could do ourselves and observations we could make ourselves. Used in this way, these texts can continue to serve as guidebooks for the development of an intuitive perception of nature, an enhancement of our senses, of our ability to read and understand the language of nature. The Didactic Section of Theory of Color ends with Biblical words that follow a revelation concerning the Archangel Michael: “Multi pertransibunt et augebitur scientia,” “many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.”9 Through his own pioneering explorations of the path from nature to spirit, through his body of work that even today encourages others to travel this path of knowledge, Goethe stands as a significant forerunner and representative of this Michaelic work.

9.Theory o f Color, in Scientific Studies, p. 298. The revelation is in Daniel 10:1 to 12:13. The words cited by Goethe are from Daniel 12:4. English translation from the King James Version. There’s Something about Peach Blossoms by HOWARD PAUTZ

Introduction In Germany during the early 1920s, Dr. Rudolf Steiner guided a series of optical experiments designed to extend Goethe’s princi­ ples of color. Researchers working on the peach-blossom experi­ ment were striving to find more than a color akin to the blossoms of the peach tree; they hoped to open new avenues for the super­ sensible to enter into the physical world. They understood from an anthroposophical perspective how the correct configuration of their experiment might alter the fun­ damental processes underlying color, chemistry, warmth, and life. These processes weave within and between the sensible and super­ sensible realms. The experiment attempted to enclose a great cir­ cle and draw in something that barely touches the sense world. They expected a new color, which Dr. Steiner called peach-blos- som, to manifest when the apparatus was activated. Further, as a new process, peach-blossom would carry within it special qualities of the supersensible life ether. Although the researchers in the 1920s achieved some success, investigating their work is difficult today because only scant tech­ nical details are documented in German.1 In 1995, a summary report from these sources became available in English.2 These few details, however, are enough for us to explore the spiritual-scientific basis of this unusual process and technology.

22 There’s Something about Peach Blossoms • 23

We can fill in gaps by looking at the experimental apparatus and how it worked. We can then consider the four ethers and the four bodies of man. Goethe’s ideas on color and Dr. Steiner’s on elec­ tricity and magnetism are also of assistance. Finally, in hopes of forming a picture of the peach-blossom experiment and where it leads, this article concludes with a few statements of those present in Germany during this research in the 1920s.

[Image: diagram]Figure 1. An anthroposophical extension o f the Goethean color circle.

Methods By applying the sub-sensible forces of electricity and magnetism, the experiment was to influence light. Using what was then a strong electromagnet, the researchers attempted to “ bend the ends of the spectrum together,” closing it into a great circle of color. By over­ lapping and then unifying infrared with ultraviolet, the new color peach-blossom was to arise, creating effects also in the ether. This is approximated in figure 1. The horizontal line represents the normal spectrum in the physical world. The line divides the sub-sensible below from the physical above. The dotted line higher up is the border with the ethereal, the supersensible. We will 2 4 • H ow ard Pa u tz postpone explanation of the meaning of the two small arrows pointing downward. The other arrows, located on the spectrum’s horizontal line and on the curves, indicate the “ ends” of the spec­ trum as they approach each other from infinity on the left and right. If this movement were continued, the arrows would rejoin, meeting at the top, then move downwards to enclose the infinite­ ly great circle - and the supersensible - into peach-blossom.

[Image: diagram]Figure[Image: 2. The apparatus o f the peach-blossom experiment

The layout3 of the experiment is shown in figure 2. Light, after passing through the prism and through the electromagnet, is focused in a plane for observation. The stationary magnetic field must not influence the light source or the prism. The magnetic field is applied to the beam of light after it has gone through the prism. The closing effect is to occur here, in the area where the light and the “ dark spectrum” interact. (More on the two spec- trums when the circle of colors is reviewed.) Readers familiar with physics will realize that by steering the field clear of the source and prism - by trying to influence the light column directly- the experiment did not seek either atomic- spectroscopic phenomena or the Faraday effect. Ordinary physics does not acknowledge anything within light’s appearance. Conversely - and crucial to our exploration - many students of Anthroposophy recognize that the “entity which Goethe called There’s Something about Peach Blossoms • 25 light is identical to what Dr. Steiner called light ether.”4 The light ether gives an “inner,” supersensible nature to color.

Results and Outlook The researchers in the 1920s had expected pronounced, visible effects in the light spectrum, whereas changes in the ethers would have had to be detected indirectly. Dr. Rudolf Maier, director of their physical research programs, noted from a meeting with Dr. Steiner that they needed a “reagent for observation of the nature of peach-blossom (life ether).” And that “life-effects” (Lebenswirkungen) would occur. Though they did not progress quite that far, the results were a qualified success. While the electromagnet was turned on and off, the researchers observed, documented, and photographed qualitative changes in colors influenced by the magnetic field. Dr. Maier reported that when the magnet’s coil was energized, the color of the spectral line changed. The color of the line tended to “thin out into the room.” On black and white film, “this appeared as a decrease in the line’s intensity.” Significantly, he noted that “the differences, seen direct­ ly and on film, were noticeable without effort.”5 Shortly after they reached this first milestone, however, the chaos of post-war Germany prevented more substantial investiga­ tion. Near the end of 1923, Dr. Steiner made his last visits to the project. He participated in the experiment at least four times. According to documentation left behind, if the experiment had continued to unfold, the process would have had holistic applica­ tion and would have been therapeutically efficacious.6

Four Ethers, Four Elements Anthroposophy recognizes four ethers comprising the one ethe­ real realm, often called the etheric. These ethers have come into 2 6 • H ow ard Pau tz existence over vast evolutionary stages, known as the earth’s “planetary incarnations.” 7 During each stage, a new ether is bom. As we might expect, each ether has a twin sibling - a correspon­ ding element - in the sense world. The warmth ether is paired with warmth (fire); the light ether with air; the tone (or “chemi­ cal”) ether with water; and the life ether with earth. The “ ethers are the superior, the unifying, while the physical elements are the inferior, the individualizing. The elements have their origin in the center, the ethers in the periphery. The body of man is physical-ethereal; one can speak of a physical body and of an ethereal (or etheric) body. “ 8 In Sun Space9, Olive Whicher describes gravity as the “domi­ nant force” in the earth element. “Passing from this element to those of water, air, and warmth or heat, we perceive it manifesting less and less.” They become more ethereal. Concerning the ethers, she says the process which “becomes progressively dominant in the movement from water to warmth is the ‘negative’ or anti-grav- itational force.” She notes also that Dr. Steiner terms this Leichte -- “ levity” or “lightness.” As we move from gravity and its center- orientated world, represented in the Cartesian-coordinate system, we must learn to think differently. As we approach the ethereal, we, in a sense, have to turn things inside out.

The Periphery The key idea is that the ethereal is not point-like. The ethers work in planar spaces, approaching from the infinite outside. From the great circle, these approach planes surround the centers held by the elements. The ethereal spaces are also infinitely inward spaces.10 All ethers, including the essential within peach-blossom, stream in from this great cosmic circle, from the infinite periphery. The ethers meet their elemental counterparts in boundary There’s Something about Peach Blossoms • 27 conditions. They also work together on a higher level as well. For example, in the plant kingdom, the actions of the light ether are generally essential for the life ether to be effective. As the ethers of light and life meet, streaming in from the periphery, a fount of living processes is revealed. Things are out­ wardly visible because the light ether makes their spatial bound­ aries apparent. And, from the infinitely-inward inside, the light ether streams back out toward the outside - it makes things “vis­ ible as the force of growth which causes all living things to occu­ py space.” From the periphery, the light ether presents us with unity in everything. From the inside, the light and life ethers make individual boundaries evident and active. The life ether “ finds expression in solids. Solids are rigid. The life ether creates the opposite: inner mobility.” The life ether “ enlivens and individualizes so that organisms enclose themselves in a skin - that is, a boundary - allowing them to form and struc­ ture themselves.” Geometrically speaking, the approaching ethers can be expressed as planar spaces, delimiting the boundary conditions we experience in space. One family of such planes can be understood as bounding and forming the great circle we are considering.11

The Circle of Colors The peach-blossom experiment is based on Goethe’s principles of color. We noted earlier that two spectrums exist. During his extensive research, Goethe discovered a “light” spectrum opposed to an “inverse” or “dark” spectrum. The abeyance of the comple­ mentary light spectrum makes degrees of the dark spectrum. The fundament of Goethe’s theory of color is that darkness and light­ ness work together, interlacing to create color. 28 • H ow ard Pa u tz

The colors of the inverse spectrum are blue, purpur (purple), and yellow. The light spectrum contains red, green, and violet. Arranged in a circle woven from the two spectrums, Goethe’s com­ plementary scheme has three polar-opposite pairs of colors: blue and red, yellow and violet, and green and purpur.12 Dr. Steiner details it like this: When I put the spectrums together, I get twelve colors that can be differentiated exactly in a circle: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet (figure 1). Here, the violet becomes more and more similar to peach-blossom; there are two nuances between the violet and the peach-blossom. Then here, there are again two between the peach-blossom and red. If you pursue the totality of these color nuances, then you have twelve conditions of color.13 Where Goethe identified one color purpur, Dr. Steiner placed peach- blossom as the most sublime nuance among five nuances of purpur.

Of Peach Blossoms True peach-blossom is ethereal, appearing to our sight in the world rarely, if at all. Its external qualities can be seen by the sea­ side at sunset when the light gleams dull red off the bluish foam of dark waters. A near imitation can be created mechanically by overlaying prismatic red light on blue (or blue on red). None of these are the real peach-blossom, however - any more than our bodies are the real us. We could say that as we inhabit our bodies, so too does the supersensible of peach-blossom reside in its near­ physical nuances of purpur. The experiment provides a vehicle of sorts, crossing the boundaries between the physical and ethereal spaces. Here, we should remember that these are beings, not just exte­ rior manifestations as processes, forces, or impulses. Along with There’s Something about Peach Blossoms • 29 higher spiritual beings and their offspring, the elements and ele­ m ental, we are part of the picture.

Color and the Four Bodies of Man Rudolf Steiner explains in Theosophy14, that, in addition to a physical body and an etheric body, we each also have an astral body and an Ego. The astral is a vessel for emotions, passions, and so forth. The cosmic periphery, the world of the stars (astra), streams into our senses. In turn, via astrality we connect back to the sense-world and stars. We also have the higher body above the astral. This is our own unique identity, our “I” , our individual Ego. In lectures on medical therapy,15 Dr. Steiner describes our high­ er soul-spiritual anatomy in relation to the four ethers. The high­ er bodies are permeated with impulses shared with colors inter­ weaving with the ethers. To the researchers working on the exper­ iment, he said, “the astral body ‘swims’ in color.” Specifically, the purpur nuances are the “color of the etheric” in which “the ego lives in the etheric.” 16 Peach-blossom echoes the cosmos in the human being.17 In it, we join with the cosmic periphery. Perhaps Goethe understood this lofty context when he said, “purpur must be the color cast over heaven and earth on the Day of Judgment.” 18

Will the Circle be Unbroken? Note in figure 1 that the spectrum line marks the separation of the physical from the sub-sensible. Below it, we confront fallen forces, encountering the will-like nature of electromagnetism. In lectures on physics,19 Dr. Steiner describes this portion of the great circle as the U-realm, the under-realm, the underworld. The demesnes of Lucifer and Ahriman are fallen ethers. The “ light bearer,” Lucifer, rules a realm of fallen light, working with 30 • H o w a r d Pa u t z forces that seem overly active - electricity. Whereas the lord of darkness and death, Ahriman, rules that which appears as frozen tones - magnetism. According to Dr. Steiner, when the light ether falls below the physical world, electricity arises. When the tone (or chemical) ether falls below the physical world, magnetism arises.20

All-Encompassing Magnetic Pressure The lead researcher, Hans Buchheim, had numerous opportuni­ ties to discuss with Dr. Steiner the experiment’s crucial principle. According to Buchheim, “Rudolf Steiner considered magnetism completely differently than natural scientists do. For him, magnet­ ism was a force of pressure.”21 We must assume this is also an ethe­ real pressure. It would be appropriate here to review the intention of the experiment, this time from Ernst Lehrs’ perspective: The task was to let magnetism work into the light.... Instead of [only] the normal, straight- line spectrum showing on the screen, the inverse spectrum, otherwise present in the extra-spatial, [the ethereal, cosmic periphery] would also spatial­ ly arise...with peach-blossom as the polar opposite to green. In addition, ...a source for the entry of the fourth ether, the life ether, would result.22 Before this attempt, Dr. Steiner describes how the normal, lin­ ear spectrum comes about: The seven known colors are separated out of the totality... by the forces of form (Gestaltungskraefte). Forces somehow work that first make the linear spectrum possible. If we see that the inner structure of the spectrum is affected There’s Something about Peach Blossoms • 31

and changed through the influence of the magnetic forces, then, if this is so, we must also accept that the spectrum, which normally is a given, can have forces already working within it.23 Considering the great circle as a whole, we can understand that the lower seven colors are projected, downward into the earthly by these forces of form - thus, the usual spectrum is the total spec­ trum pressed out or unfolded into the physical. Dr. Steiner pres­ ents an image of the circle of colors broadening outwards. This is indicated by the small arrows pointing downward on both sides of figure 1. The great circle expands, flattening out to make the ordi­ nary spectrum. At the same time, the higher purpur colors return - as indicated by arrows pointing upwards in figure 1 - to the supersensible, becoming imponderable again in the cosmic periph­ ery at infinity. As a result, that which is essential in peach-blossom remains imponderable in the supersensible as well. When these forces of form are active, when the spectrum is “normal,” we cannot properly speak of it having “ends.” Externally, infrared and ultraviolet are then mere measurable quantities of electromagnetic energy. Like Cartesian-coordinate points, the frequencies are similar to the marks on a ruler. Observing the key role magnetism plays, we might understand how the experiment functions. If the unfolding of the spectrum were prevented, the circle of the spectrum might revert to its pri­ mordial form. If the forces of form were not present - if they were blocked or replaced, then the spectrum might appear in the complete form, the great circle closed, the life ether become effec­ tive. To achieve the peach-blossom effect, magnetism has to be applied to the ends of the spectrum in a way similar to that in which the forces of form work. 32 • H ow ard Pa u tz

Coming Full Circle We conclude with a few remarks made by those near the exper­ iment. The artist, Margarita Woloschin, said that the process should be described exactly to as many people as possible. Also, according to her, Dr. Steiner said to members of Der Kommende Tag (“The Coming Day”), the corporation funding the research, that the peach-blossom effect was “far more important than Einstein’s theory of relativity.”24 Ernst Lehrs, recalling the research, wrote: “If full success were reached, it would be signifi­ cant for the healing of the earth organism as a whole... here on the earth a source of strengthened and inward-working cosmic life could be created.”25 It is difficult to speculate on the scope of such healing. Perhaps it would affect the electromagnetic sphere around the earth, as Lehrs’ suggestion implies. Or, with the life ether present in a spe­ cific location, it might affect crops and biological resources in ways we can only imagine. In any case, the peach-blossom process, if activated, could be expected to have great therapeutic value.

Notes 1.Rudolf Steiner, Farbenerkenntnis (GA 291a), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach, 1990; (tech­ nical details of the experiment. For partial translation see note 2). 2.Howard Pautz, Rudolf Steiner’s Peach-blossom Experiment, Newsletter of the Society for the Evolution of Science, Vol. 11, No. 2, Summer 1995. 3.Dr. Rudolf E. Maier and Hans Buchheim, reported in Steiner, 1990. 4.Ernst Marti, The Four Ethers, Schaumburg Publications, Inc. Roselle, Illinois, 1984, p .14 -15. 5.Maier, reported in Steiner, 1990, p. 72-73. 6.Steiner, 1990. 7.On the earth’s incarnations, see Rudolf Steiner, An Outline of Occult Science (GA 13), Anthroposophic Press, 1972. And also Genesis, Secrets of the Bible Story of Creation (GA 122), Anthroposophical Publishing Co., London, 1959. There’s Something about Peach Blossoms • 33

8.Summarized from Marti, pp. 3-4, my emphasis. 9.Olive Whicher, Sun Space, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1989. Consider also Dr. Steiner’s wood sculpture, “The Group” - see p. 38 of the Journal’s 1999 Michaelmas issue for a photo. 10.On the geometry of ethereal spaces, see Nick Thomas, Science Between Space and Counterspace, Temple Lodge Publishing, London, 1999. 11.Summarized from Marti, p. 19-25 12.Goethe, J.W., Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften, Band III, (GA lc), Photomechanical reprint, Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach, 1982. English: Goethe, The Collected Works, V.12, Scientific Studies, (Douglas Miller trans. and ed.), Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 1995. l3.Rudolf Steiner, Warmth Course (GA 321), Mercury Press, Spring Valley, New York, 1988, p.104. 14.Rudolf Steiner, Theosophy (GA 9), Anthroposophic Press, N.Y., 1971. l5.Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophical Spiritual Science and Medical Therapy: The Second Medical Course (GA 313), Mercury Press, Chestnut Ridge, N.Y. (For therapeutic use of electricity and magnetism, see lecture 3 and 4 on 13 and 14 Apr. 1921.) 16.W. Z. van Emmichoven, Ein Pionier der Anthroposophie, Natura Verlag, Arlesheim, 1979, p.78. 17.Rudolf Steiner, Das Wesen der Farben (GA 291), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach, 1980; English: Colour, see lectures on 5 Dec. 1920 and 4 Jan. 1924. l8.Goethe, (Miller ed.), p. 282, paragraph 798. 19.Steiner, 1988. 20.See “ Etherization of the Blood,” 1 Oct. 1911, in Rudolf Steiner, Reappearance of Christ in the Etheric (GA 130), Anthroposophic Press, Spring Valley, N.Y., 1983. See also, Georg Unger, Spiritual Science and the New Nature Forces, (trans. from an article in Das Goetheanum, 57.J, Nr. 33), Steiner Book Center, N . Vancouver, Canada, no date, ISBN 0- 88925-063-4. 21.From Bucheim’s report in Steiner, 1990, p.90. 22.Lehrs, E., Gelebte Erwartung. Wie ich zu Rudolf Steiner und dank ihm eine Strecke Weges zu mir selber fand, Mellinger Verlag, Stuttgart, 1979, p. 195, my additions. 23.Rudolf Steiner, 1988. See lectures 8,9,10 March 1920, especially p. 123-126 and notes on p. 190. 24.Summarized from Steiner, 1990, p.61-99, 497-498, bold emphasis added. 25.Lehrs, 1979, p.198, bold emphasis added. Calm is the sea. The slow sun-jeweled swell hints not of ocean agonies begot, forgotten in the night - of deaths engulfed in the dark but life-engendering wave, of storms insatiable to snatch the spray, wrack sand and cliff with fury.

The dreaming mind hovers at ease, yet knows the swell will change when you are here. The tides and weathers of the soul will set me marvelling in motion: I shall be water to your touch, your breath the wind, and you the patient shore on which my thunders fall.

by Theodore van Vliet

34 American Prophets by SIEGFRIED FINSER

Introduction Between 1803 and 1882 three individualities, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry David Thoreau, fought to lay a foundation in the American soul life that would be a model for the America of the future. We are accustomed to con­ sidering them separately, as if their lives had no common denomi­ nator. They can of course be so studied, loved and cherished as individuals, and I do not wish to undermine such appreciation. However, my life-long study of these three has gradually con­ vinced me that they were working together, not so much out­ wardly on the physical plane of their existence, but more in their pre-birth and subconscious striving. I began to feel they were exhibiting a form of teamwork, each bringing an intensified devel­ opment of one of the soul forces - thinking, feeling, and willing - to the common cause, the development of an American selfhood. This article is an attempt to describe their unique collaborative contribution and to express gratitude for the valiant battles they fought. They knew each other, had some outer connection, but fought largely alone, joined only spiritually in their mutual striv­ ing. European culture was central during the time in which they lived. It was the custom for young Americans to visit the “conti-

35 36 • S iegfried F in ser nent” for intellectual and soul enrichment. Europe was felt to con­ tain our mother culture while America was largely boisterous, unsophisticated, and raw. Economic enterprise dominated life, social forms were immature and fluid, cultural life barely existed. What there was of music, art, and literature, was either imported from or heavily influenced by European tradition. Into this social climate, the “transcendentalists” gathered recognition and influence. The first among them - but not entire­ ly of them - was Ralph Waldo Emerson, born in 1803; Nathaniel Hawthorne followed in 1804, and then Henry David Thoreau in 1817. Who were these remarkable individualities? Let us try to glean their collaborative significance by comparing some aspects of their respective biographies.

Ralph Waldo Emerson Emerson lived in a “house of pain” for the first thirty years of his life. His father died when he was eight, his sister when he was eleven. He felt compelled to follow in his father’s footsteps and at eighteen began his training to be a minister. He bored his first con­ gregation to tears, the situation becoming worse with each suc­ ceeding sermon. Headaches began to plague him as well as vari­ ous other ailments. This was not a young man happily charging into life full of ambition and self-confidence! William, his brother, suffered from tuberculosis and eventually died, leaving him with a profound sense of loss. After three years of marriage, his wife died in 1831. He was 28 years old. While continuing his struggle to be a minister, he made a number of attempts to regain his health and mental equilibrium through traveling south and elsewhere. He finally escaped to Europe. In Italy, Emerson moved by carriage through the locale where Tacitus once had lived and worked. Listening to the tales of trav­ elers and captured slaves from distant lands, Tacitus formed such American Prophets • 37

vivid pictures that he was able to write descriptions of places and cultures he had never visited himself.1 Emerson was also on this trip exposed to the influences of Goethe and other romantics. He was given a lock of Goethe’s hair as a keepsake, met some of the romantic poets of that time, and formed a close connection with Herman Grimm, with whom he corresponded for some fifteen years. In England he met Carlyle, who made a profound impres­ sion on him. During this first trip of three to Europe, Emerson seemed to have found his true voice. Was it that he had reconnected with his previous incarnation, found his roots, and grown from the experi­ ence in a new way? Emerson’s newfound voice resounded into the future. He was an early prophet of the consciousness soul, who acknowledged the presence of God in himself and the potential in every human being. He pointed to the possibility of ethical individualism. A man contains all that is needful to his govern­ ment within himself. He is made a law unto him­ self. All real good or evil that can befall him must be from himself.... The purpose of life seems to be to acquaint a man with himself. He is not to live to the future as described to him, but to live to the real future by living to the real present. The high­ est revelation is that God is in every man. (Journal, At Sea, Sunday, September 8, 1833) Returning to Concord, apparently a changed person, Emerson was inspired to begin to write and lecture at various lyceums throughout New England. In rapid succession, he published Nature (1836), gave his famous address at Phi Beta Kappa, The

------1.Rudolf Steiner has told us that Tacitus was a former incarnation of Emerson. (See Karmic Relationships, Vol. II, Lecture XV, April 23, 1924.) In his personal library, Dr. Steiner had a volume of Emerson’s essays in which he made numerous annotations. 38 • S iegfried F in ser

American Scholar, and his well-known Divinity School Address. By 1841, eight years after his return from Europe, he had pub­ lished his first Essays. He never stopped writing and lecturing after that. Emerson seemed to have had a special appeal for youth, who came in droves to hear him speak. “When I was thirteen years old, my Uncle Samuel Ripley one day asked me, ‘How is it, Ralph, that all the boys dislike you and quarrel with you, whilst the grown people are fond of you?’ Now am I thirty-six and the fact is reversed, - the old people suspect and dislike me, and the young love me.” (Journal, Sept. 29, 1839) Ralph Waldo Emerson’s last published work while alive was Letters and Social Aims, 1875. It appeared after two significant events, the burning of his house in Concord and his last trip abroad accompanied by his daughter, to Europe and Egypt. He died seven years later in 1882 at an age not many achieved in those days. We live in succession, in division, in parts, in par­ ticles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole... When it breathes through the intellect, it is genius; when it breathes through his will, it is virtue; when it flows through his affection, it is love. (The Over-Soul)

Nathaniel Hawthorne Nathaniel Hawthorne injured his leg at age nine and was con­ fined to his room for the next four years. He might very well have been moved around and helped more to take part in the family life, but he seemed most at home alone in his room. Whether he began his form of lonely life at this point because of the injury to his leg, or whether he was predisposed toward it from before birth is hard to say. For most of his youth he preferred to stay in his American Prophets • 39

room where he played alone, wrote and read. His meals were often brought by his family members to the door of his room and left there. While Emerson resided in Concord, Massachusetts, Hawthorne lived much of his life in Salem, a place with a dark history of witchcraft and persecution. For a brief time the family moved to Maine, and Hawthorne attended Bowdoin College without distin­ guishing himself in any way. He was delighted to return to Salem by his early twenties, having made the friendship of Franklin Pierce, who for some unknown reason secured Hawthorne many a job and position during his lifetime. What Hawthorne was doing during his lonely times in his room is a puzzle worth solving. Perhaps the most important clue is in his writing. By the age of 26 he began writing short stories. Twice- Told Tales was published in 1837, when he was 29 years old. He was engaged the following year, but did not marry Sophia Peabody until four years later. He was apparently not someone whose feelings propelled him precipitously into action. As a matter of fact, much of the drama of his life occurred in his inner life. He struggled with the forces of good and evil. He saw life as a means of purification. The hypocrisy of pretended righteousness and the struggle of the soul to master its passions and become light-filled appeared again and again as themes. For Hawthorne, everything had meaning. His writing was full of implied symbolism. The whole of nature seemed to be part of the plot rather that just the scenery or setting for the human drama, as in this brief excerpt from The Scarlet Letter: Hester gazed after him (Roger Chillingworth) a little while, looking with a half-fantastic curiosity to see whether the tender grass of early spring would not be blighted beneath him, and show the wavering track of his footsteps, sere and brown, 4 0 • S iegfried F in ser

across its cheerful verdure... Would not the earth, quickened to an evil purpose by the sympathy of his eye, greet him with poisonous shrubs, of species hitherto unknown, that would start up under his fingers? Around 1850, Hawthorne began and completed in a burst of unusual energy his most important works. The Scarlet Letter, completed in 1850, The House of Seven Gables, The Blithesdale Romance, and Tanglewood Tales, in 1853, established him as a popular author. In Hawthorne’s work the play of light and darkness always seems to accentuate the evil or the virtue under fire. The action seems to be in slow motion to give time for introspection, to observe the inner battle taking place in each soul. It seems almost as if what his human characters experienced as feeling was more important to Hawthorne than what they thought or what actions they took. What a contrast to Emerson’s work! In considering Hawthorne’s life we might do well to take note of Malcolm Cowley’s observation: “ ...he had come to feel that the events in the external world were largely the reflections or tokens of real events, which took place in the heart.”2 In this light we may then ask the question: Was Hawthorne’s life dedicated to revealing the transformation of soul life that would become increasingly necessary as human beings would develop the consciousness soul?

Thoreau Thoreau lived only 45 years. He knew Emerson, worked for him doing odd jobs around the property, repairing furniture, and even constructing a tall desk-table for Emerson to use in composing his

------2.In the introduction to The Portable Hawthorne, (1948). American Prophets • 41 essays and lectures. He was familiar with Hawthorne when Hawthorne lived in Concord. Thoreau was well known for finding Native American artifacts. He was once stopped on a walk and asked how he did it. He shrugged and pointed out an arrowhead under the foot of the passerby. He never left the American continent, but he walked a great part of the Northeast, observing everything and keeping notes in his journal. He climbed Mount Monadnock in New Hampshire, explored Cape Cod and Long Island, and walked from Maine to Quebec, as well. He traveled mostly in a north and south direction, in contrast to the east and west direction of Emerson’s life journeys. Walking was Thoreau’s favorite form of locomotion. He walked not out of restlessness, but because he wanted to see and experience all that this land had to tell him. He watched, listened, and smelled the scents of nature. Thoreau was incredibly handy. He could fix almost anything, especially wooden objects or furniture. He invented some practi­ cal tools and machines that were useful in his inherited pencil and graphite business. He was able to sketch his surroundings with skill. His philosophy was profoundly simple, yet grand. He, like Emerson and Hawthorne, favored the opinion that more lives than one were necessary for the development of the human being. At that time, given the religious conditions of the American cul­ ture, it was not possible to speak openly of reincarnation and karma. Methinks my present experience is nothing; my past experience is all in all. I think that no experi­ ence which I have today comes up to, or is compa­ rable with, the experiences of my boyhood. And not only this is true, but as far back as I can 4 2 • Siegfried F in ser

remember I have unconsciously referred to the experiences of a previous state of existence. “For life is a forgetting,” etc. (Written in 1851) Thoreau was a man who lived deeply in his forces of will and only allowed his thinking to guide him in his doing. Whatever wis­ dom he uncovered in life derived from his bodily activity and sense experience. Thoreau manifested the transformation of the forces of willing that would lead humankind on to a further stage of development.

These American Prophets Let us consider how these three collaborated, in spite of their differences, or rather including their differences. Look at the har­ mony of their chronology.

Emerson: 1803______1882 Hawthorne: 1804______1864 Thoreau: 1817______1862

Consider their most important works as a signature of their high points in productivity: Emerson: 1850 at age of 48 publishes Representative Men Hawthorne: 1850 at age 46 publishes Scarlet Letter Thoreau: 1849 at age 34 publishes “Civil Disobedience” in Aesthetic Papers It seems as though their separate lives culminated in a great threefold impact on society in 1849-50. One presented a new imagination of what a human being is, another a heart-wrenching picture of love at a deeper level than convention accepted, and the third incited human beings to disobey convention and heed their conscience. American Prophets • 43

In 1850 it was clear that humanity had already begun and would continue to invest nearly all of its spiritual capacities in mastering material life. In this climate these three personalities devoted their capacities to a deeper understanding of the human soul with its forces of thinking, feeling and willing. Emerson intro­ duced imaginative thinking as a tool for understanding human nature on a cosmic scale. Hawthorne revealed the battle in the realm of feeling for the purer soul governed by an ethical individ­ ualistic context. Thoreau demanded of the soul that it act in free­ dom responsible to a higher self for the good of all humankind. The facts of the lives of these three personalities as individuals are known. Yet, we can also look at them together as collaborat­ ing beings serving a common mission, each one emphasizing a different power of the soul. When we contemplate these three, we see a premonitory picture of the threefold nature of the human being arising out of their lives and their work. They have set the stage and shown us the way that human nature can progress in spite of the ever greater challenges ahead. Henry B. Monges (January 4, 1870 - July 19, 1954) by HENRY BARNES

The Anthroposophical Society has asked Henry Barnes to write a history of the anthroposophical movement in America. The following article is an abridged version of one chapter of this work-in-progress. The project is in its early stages and is expect­ ed to take at least two years. Henry Barnes would still welcome biographical and historical material, including photographs, which might be helpful as the project unfolds, for example, about Mrs. Maud Monges or about Henry Monges’ boyhood in Texas. - Editor

“ On a beautiful spring afternoon in Berkeley, California, three people - my wife Maud, Miss Katherine Everts, and I - were standing on a terrace in the Berkeley hills... We were talking of Theosophy and kindred subjects. It was then that I heard for the first time the name of Rudolf Steiner. Miss Everts had met him in Europe. She spoke in the highest terms of this man and his work. I had already been a Theosophist for 21 years, having joined in 1893. But in the year 1914, I had withdrawn from this Society because of the ways and doings of its leaders.” 1 At this time in 1915, Henry Monges was completing nine years of teaching projective geometry and architectural drawing at the University of California, in Berkeley. He had also exhibited water- color paintings at the 1915 World’s Fair in San Francisco. He was

------1.Henry B. Monges, The Anthroposophical Society as a Personal Experience, unpublished manuscript, March 24, 1948. 44 Henry B. Monges • 45 an architect, a mathematician, a musician and composer with a fine tenor voice, and a poet who later became a gifted translator. It was just one year later that Henry Monges encountered Rudolf Steiner’s work directly in a bookshop in New York City. “My eye lit on the title The Way of Initiation.2 This was the first book of Rudolf Steiner’s I was to read. The reading of this book not only opened the door of destiny for me, but for many oth­ ers.... From that day on until I met him in September 1919, all my efforts were bent on meeting Rudolf Steiner.”3 These efforts led him to meet Mrs. Ethel Parks Brownrigg. Both Henry and Maud were delighted by their impression of her. She not only answered their questions about Rudolf Steiner, but also invited them to attend the meetings of members of the Society and let Monges read some of the lecture cycles by Steiner. Monges remembers: “This was rather strong meat. Up to that time I could go along with everything Rudolf Steiner said in his books. His ref­ erence to Christ did not disturb me. To understand what I am about to confess, it should be realized that a Theosophist, when he has sunk himself into the oriental tradition, has learned to regard Christ Jesus as only one of the lesser great Masters of humanity, Gautama Buddha standing far above Him. To the dyed-in-the- wool Theosophist, there can be no comparison. Since I belonged to this category, I had discarded all my Christianity years before. And now it looked as though I should have to take a backward step if I were to accept completely the teachings of Anthroposophy.”4 Henry Monges had grown up in a religious environment. His father was a minister in Texas, where Henry was born. The search

------2.Published------later under the title Knowledge o f the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment. 3.Monges, 1948. 4.Ibid. 46 • H enry B a rn es which had led him to Theosophy at the age of twenty-three was evi­ dently part of a larger search for an inner freedom which had led him away from a background of traditional Christianity. Now, to find himself confronted with an approach to life which carried the Christ impulse at its heart must have seemed - at first - to ask him to give up the inner freedom that he had worked so hard to find. “When I read the lectures on the Gospel of St. John, I was so annoyed that I threw the book on the floor, saying that I could not accept the Christian ideas it contained. It would mean for me a retreat over ground left behind more than twenty years before. On second thought, I decided to try again, but with no better results. It was to the deep impression of truth which I had received from The Way of Initiation that I owed my will to hold fast. I decided that I must learn to wait for comprehension to develop. I was to discover later, that had I not done this I would have rejected, like the builder of the temple, what was to become the keystone of the arch. Understanding of the Christ-Mystery came only after a long struggle; and then it came as the solver of all difficulties. I came to realize that without the Christian foundation, all life and existence would have no meaning. I can say that it is as hard for a Theosophist to become an Anthroposophist as for the traditional Biblical camel to pass through the eye of the needle. But experi­ ence shows that the skeptic, once convinced, is more ardent than the natural believer who never doubts anything, but swallows everything whole without question.”5 This skeptic, who was honest and courageous enough to do battle with his own prejudice, found in his wife, Maud Breckenridge Monges, a loyal and loving ally and companion. Until her death, on March 3, 1936, she shared the struggle, the

------5.Ibid. Henry B. Monges • 4 7 tremendous work, and the devotion which more and more became Henry Monges’ life. From the earliest days of his interest in Anthroposophy, it is clear that Henry Monges saw in the translating and publishing of Rudolf Steiner’s books and lectures a central task and responsibil­ ity. He realized that it would be of great importance for the future development of the movement that the Society have control of the publication and distribution of Rudolf Steiner’s works. At that time its publication was in the hands of commercial publishers who had no essential interest in or responsibility for its distribu­ tion. If the books sold, they would cheerfully pocket the profit; if, however, they did not sell, they had no incentives to work to build a market. With the entry of America into World War I in 1917, these publishers became uneasy about carrying titles by an Austrian-born author who had built his reputation in Germany. Monges had already inquired the previous year about the pos­ sibility of obtaining the copyrights. The total cost of acquiring the copyrights, and all that went with them, amounted to some $1,500, a considerable sum in 1918, especially for a business enterprise that did not yet exist! However, through the active ini­ tiative and generous help of Mrs. Brownrigg, this sum was raised, and the copyrights were placed in her hands. An opportunity for Henry Monges to go to Europe arose immediately after the end of the war. In September 1919, Maud was able to join him, and the moment had finally arrived when they could go to Dornach. “This opportunity to meet and to know Rudolf Steiner can be spoken of only with bated breath. I can only be eternally grateful that destiny permitted me this opportunity. Even while seeing him every day, sometimes several times a day, coming and going to his studio or the unfinished Goetheanum, the stature of Rudolf 48 • H en ry B a r n es

Steiner has broadened and deepened and so has my comprehen­ sion of what he really is continued to grow and unfold in my soul. ...In September 1920, the first Goetheanum was dedicated to the work of Anthroposophy. For three weeks lectures, conferences, eurythmy performances, performances of parts of the Mystery Dramas, concerts, etc. filled the daily program. Often I spent eleven hours a day attending these various func­ tions. This required quite an effort of will. “There were always streams of people coming and going from all parts of the world, visiting Dornach. We lived in the midst of all this, meeting and get­ ting acquainted with many members. At other times we often fol­ lowed Rudolf Steiner to other cities in Switzerland and to Germany, especially to Stuttgart, the busiest anthroposophical center outside of Dornach.... Rudolf Steiner’s activity in present­ ing the Threefold Social Order at that time was very great. He gave lectures at the great German factories often to between 1,000 and 2,000 workers. He had great success until the labor leaders put an end to it by forbidding union members to attend his lec­ tures. And the pre-Nazi movement showed its ugly head, making it dangerous and, finally, impossible for Rudolf Steiner to go to Germany at all.... “Finally, in 1921 we decided, after a discussion with Rudolf Steiner, that our task was not sitting in Dornach - even though we would never cease working - but in advancing Anthroposophy in the United States. So we returned.” Rudolf Steiner had suggested to Henry and Maud Monges that they might “ find it easier” to start their work for Anthroposophy in Chicago. And, as Chicago was not unfamiliar to them - they had lived and worked there for a year in 1918/19 - it was to Chicago that they returned. In addition to his determination to Henry B. Monges • 49 work for the distribution of Rudolf Steiner’s writings, Henry Monges also gave introductory lectures on Steiner’s work. He spent the summer of 1922 in Dornach and, in September, attended the educational conference in Oxford, England, where he had the opportunity to consult Rudolf Steiner about a situation that had arisen with his partner in the publishing concern. Following Rudolf Steiner’s advice he took over the business com­ pletely. He wrote: “I shipped the books East to my home, recent­ ly bought at Highland, NY, about 80 miles north of NYC. There, my wife, Maud, and I carried on the book business which later became the Anthroposophic Press. And we did a thriving business. We went to New York City for a couple of days each week to help the St. M ark’s Group, of which I became leader.” As many readers of this history are aware, the year 1922 ended with the destruction of the Goetheanum in Dornach. Henry Monges had experienced the Goetheanum inside and out. He had heard Rudolf Steiner speak there many times, had seen eurythmy performed on the stage, had been present for the dedication fes­ tivities in September 1920. But as an architect, trained in the styles and techniques of his day, he had had to wrestle inwardly with this sculptured, color-filled, double-domed structure - this “total work of art.” Just as he struggled to accept the Christ as Rudolf Steiner presented Him, so, too, he had to “let go” of the architectural con­ cepts in which he was trained, and learn to “see” structure and form as expression of a living language of metamorphosis. It is a tribute to the determination with which Henry Monges struggled to transform himself in the light of the truths which he had come to freely recognize that, many years later, he could serve as architect in the design of the home that two of his devoted musi-

------6.In Memoriam, Henry B. Monges 1870-1954, Memorial Issue of the American Journal for Anthroposophy, March 1955, The Anthroposophical Society in America, p. 44. 50 • H e n r y B a r n e s

cian friends wanted to build on Hungry Hollow Road in Spring Valley, NY. Hilda Deighton, after Monges’ death, described with what convic­ tion he had urged them not to merely build a “Cape Cod Cottage,” but to build a home in which organic forms might find expression.6 Cecil Harwood7 also wrote about how impressed he was with the architectural integrity of the home which Henry Monges - working with his architect friend and colleague, George de Ris - had built as his own residence in the same Spring Valley commu­ nity: “I was very much struck with the house which he and George de Ris had designed, both within and without. The strength and cleanness of the moulded forms expressed the same directness of character, as did his own upright carriage.”8 And it is this very house that became Hilltop House, the central building for the Fellowship Community in Spring Valley. What was formerly the Monges’ living room is now the dining room where 50 community members eat three meals a day!

1923, the year that followed the destruction of the Goetheanum, was a year of destiny. It was the year of the French occupation of the Ruhr, the industrial heartland of Germany; it was the year of the total collapse of the German economy; and it was the year in which Hitler, under Ludendorff’s aegis, made his first overt attempt to gain power. For Rudolf Steiner it was the year in which he wrestled with the question: Can the anthroposophical Society - as a community of

7.A leading member of the Anthroposophical------6.[Footnotemissing] Movement in England, and co-founder of Michael Hall, the first Waldorf school in the English-speaking world. 8.In Memoriam, p. 52. Henry B. Monges • 5 1 free individuals - become a home for the living being Anthroposophia, now that she has lost the building which was to have been her earthly home? For Rudolf Steiner the answer could only come from life itself, and it took several forms. One answer was: the building must be rebuilt, in a new and very different form. With the fire insurance money as a starter, the membership - despite the difficult financial climate - went to work and eventually succeeded in raising the necessary funds. In March 1924, Steiner took three days and sculpted the model for the building which was to arise in rein­ forced concrete! The rebuilding of the human counterpart, how­ ever, had to arise through insight and free will. Rudolf Steiner prepared the ground and tested the waters. He brought the membership together in their separate national societies and then, with the support of a small core of colleagues in Dornach, he invited the newly-established national societies to send their rep­ resentatives to a meeting at Christmas in Dornach, to which all indi­ vidual members were also cordially welcome to come. It was to this Foundation Meeting in Dornach at Christmas 1923/24 that Henry Monges was asked by the Society members in the United States to go as their representative. And it was there that he was appointed by Rudolf Steiner to be General Secretary for the Society in America and, in this capacity, to serve as the link between the Society in the United States and the leadership of the General Anthroposophical Society at the Goetheanum in Switzerland. Let us meet Harry Monges (as he was familiarly known in this country). Herman Poppelbaum, gratefully remembered for his years of work in America and later a member of the Executive Council (Vorstand) in Dornach, recalls his first impressions of Mr. Monges: “It was at the Christmas Foundation Meeting, 1923, that I saw him

------9.Ibid., p. 27. 52 • H e n r y B a r n e s

first and had a few words with him. He certainly could not be over­ looked in the big crowd which had gathered! For he was a ‘charac­ ter’ - quite distinct and distinguished; remarkably good-looking in his sixties, elastic in his motions, and clear-cut in his opinions. A very great confidence in Anthroposophy evidently filled him.”9 Walter Molt, son of the founder of the first Waldorf School in Stuttgart, who built up the Weleda pharmaceutical company in the United States, writes: “He represented a bridge, leading right into the heart of America and the best it has to offer, making one feel at once welcome and at home. With his great natural charm he greeted newcomers, extending his helping hand, and soon his fair­ ness, open-mindedness, and his profound knowledge became apparent.... The youthfulness he possessed was not just a product of nature, but reflected the achievements of his spirit, which made him into a citizen of the world. Therefore he was able to grasp with an amazing quality what emanated from Middle Europe. “His almost Latin temperament gave him a highly artistic foun­ dation which he exploited already early in life. His true and great personality became apparent when, after a misunderstanding, he at once apologized when he felt that he might be in the wrong. There are few people who, with a like readiness, not only try to see a mistake but do not feel it beyond them to express it.” 10 On his return from Dornach, Monges called the active local members in the New York area together. “Up to this time,” Henry Monges writes, “there had been no connection among the groups and Dr. Steiner’s move to reorganize the Society was intended to correct this lack of cohesion in the General and National Societies. ... Each country was to become a single united organism with a Secretariat or Headquarters, which would perform certain func­ tions in the world organization such as collecting dues for

------9.[Footnote missing] 10.Ibid., ------9.[Footnotemissing] p. 29. Henry B. Monges • 53

Dornach, sending out notices, answering questions and acting as go-between for the individual members and the Goetheanum Secretariat.” It is interesting, at this point, to note that there were about 12,000 members in the newly re-founded General Anthroposophical Society worldwide. Characteristically also, Rudolf Steiner refused the well-meant advice that he should have a rubber stamp made of his signature in order to save his enormous­ ly precious time. He insisted on signing every one of the 12,000 cards, explaining that a human contact was established as his eye rested, no matter how briefly, on every individual name! There was to be nothing bureaucratic in the Anthroposophical Society! In his unbounded enthusiasm for bringing Anthroposophy to this continent, Henry Monges became a dedicated lecturer throughout the country, drawing large audiences, “speaking before many hundreds of people in cities like Chicago, where later on more of the other lecturers were equally successful.” 11 With his crystal-clear mind, matter-of-fact tone of voice, and dignified mil­ itary bearing, Monges spoke as an American to Americans. “Somehow his words and deeds conveyed the thought that Anthroposophy is not a mere immigrant to these shores.” 12 The central office of the Society in America was in New York City, and many initiatives grew directly out of the activity there, including the Threefold community initiative in Spring Valley, the Weleda pharmaceutical company, and the Rudolf Steiner School. With his deep love for music and poetry, he never neglected the arts, but also supported their development most heartily. Mr. Monges writes about an important moment in the history of the Press: “After a couple of years of handling the book busi­

------11.Ibid., p. 26. 12.Ibid., p. 34. 54 • H en ry Ba r n es ness in Highland, NY, without any help but ourselves, my wife Maud and I decided to turn the Press and its assets, some nine or ten thousand dollars, to the Anthroposophical Society, which in 1924 was reorganized and given a new form under the leadership of Rudolf Steiner himself. Just as Henry Monges’ early years of experience and work for Anthroposophy would be virtually incomprehensible without the realization that Maud Monges was always there, fully engaged at his side, so the years that followed her death would be unthink­ able without the loving and devoted comradeship and able co­ work of Lisa Dreher Monges. It may, or may not, come as a surprise to learn that this archi­ tect, mathematician, musician, poet, entrepreneur, translator, pub­ lisher and painter was also an avid gardener! But this was, in fact, the case! On the land next to their new house in Spring Valley, Henry Monges was again able to have a garden. When he lived in Highland, NY, he had experimented with the proper treatment of the soil and the best methods of making compost, and now, once again, he could work with Biodynamic methods and grow vegeta­ bles and flowers. Ralph Courtney writes: “If anthroposophists were measured by the number of people they had interested in Anthroposophy and brought into the Society, Harry Monges would rank among the highest. His presence at the Threefold Farm and his almost daily appearance at the midday meal made it a place where his many friends, inside and outside the Society, came to greet him and renew their associations with him. His place at the Farm table and his special chair were an institution. Every kind of conversation was of interest to him and every kind of subject from philosophy and politics to the price of eggs and the behavior of the stock mar­ ket was something on which he had decided opinions.” Henry B. Monges • 5 5

The divisions that occurred after Rudolf Steiner’s death in the leadership of the Society in Dornach were heart-rendingly painful to Henry Monges, whose loyalty to Rudolf Steiner extended also to those entrusted by him with leadership. When, following Dr. Steiner’s death divisions arose, he found it impossible to take sides. This required courage because many expected and demanded par­ tisanship. This led to misunderstandings. Monges once said, “I can’t understand why some people at times seem to hate me so much; I never hated anybody.” 13 Henry Monges was, in his own way, characteristically an American “frontiersman.” This is how he was perceived by Dr. Alfred Heidenreich, one of the founding priests of the Christian Community. “His was the frontier between the seen and the unseen, between the material world and the spiritual world. To press on into the vast country of the supersensible and to mine the gold of the spirit was the purpose to which Henry Monges had dedicated himself. To this he seemed to be able to direct all the energy, single-mindedness, vision and perseverance of the true path finder.”14 Because she had known Monges as a man of decided opinions, unhesitatingly frank and outspoken, with “a touch of imperious­ ness,” Virginia Moore had wondered how their collaboration on the journal The Forerunner would work out. But, as she writes, “ I need not have worried. During five years we worked together in perfect harmony, and ended great friends. For Henry Monges respected the freedom of another human being - that freedom which along with honesty, is an absolute requisite for spiritual development.... He stated his convictions, giving reasons, I stated mine, giving reasons, we talked the problem over, listening to each

------13.Ibid.,------p. 41. l4.Ibid., pp. 52-53. 56 • H e n r y B a r n e s other with open minds, exchanging ideas, and adjusting matters accordingly....! shall carry with me always the impression of an alert mind, an artist’s sensitivity, a heart capable of affection and friendship, and a burning zeal to do. In this central drive of the will he was very American. At the same time his thinking was far from national. It was for mankind that he worked: no less....The white hair, the observing blue eyes, the vigorous step, the tasteful clothes, and the cane: Henry B. Monges in this particular incarna­ tion we shall not see again.... What aspect of his many-sided char­ acter... stands out most strongly? He was a fighter... He fought all his life for what he believed; he never wavered, and if sometimes, being human, he tired, he plucked up fresh courage and gave no quarter to opposing forces - what he called dark powers. ‘Foursquare to every wind that blew...’” 15 Henry Monges retired as General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in 1948, having served in that capacity for twenty-four years. At that time he wrote a history of the Anthroposophical Society. He entitled it The Anthroposophical Society as a Personal Experience. He concludes this history of the early years in the following way: “I have told all this because many members know scarcely anything of the origin of the American Society and even less of the Press.... The Society would not have come into existence had it not been for the devoted work of many people, of whom I am only one. Having played a major role in this story, without exactly seeking to, I could not tell it and omit my part in it.... As I look at the results, I can see clearly how much better it could have been done, had experience, knowledge and wisdom been greater; but then, had I possessed these qualities in a higher degree, I would not, perhaps, have been assigned to this role. So all is as it should be.”

------15.Ibid., pp ------54-56. Henry B. Monges • 57

Over the years, Henry Monges had suffered several severe bouts of illness, and had returned to health and activity with char­ acteristic vigor. Friends observed that he seemed to grow younger as he grew older. On Monday, July 12, 1954, he had suddenly to go to the Flower-Fifth Ave. Hospital in New York City, where an operation proved necessary, and in the evening of Monday, the 19th, he died, in his 85th year. Wild Geese

Wild geese moving high overhead in Spring - silly noises, as if amazed themselves that they can fly. A beautiful V - pointing me to a far horizon beyond the Winter’s Blue.

by Richard Neal

58 Goethe and Love by Karl Julius Schroer

Mercury Press, 2000, 106 pp., $8.50 241 Hungry Hollow Road, Chestnut Ridge, NY 10977 845-425-9357

Reviewed by Linden Sturgis

Students of Rudolf Steiner can be as much interested in the man who wrote the three essays in this volume as in their rich content. It was Karl Julius Schroer who introduced the young Rudolf Steiner to the profound contributions that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe made to the world through his life and work. It was Schroer who witnessed the Oberufer folk-plays, making a painstaking transcription of the texts, and later giving a vivid description to Steiner of the gestures and acting style of the simple country people. It was also Schroer who recommended that the task of editing Goethe’s scientific works be given to the 22-year- old Rudolf Steiner. Knowing only these facts we can sense the deep karmic connection that Rudolf Steiner had with this professor of German literature. But who was Karl Julius Schroer, what did he contribute to his time, and what was his view of the world? We owe our thanks to David Wood for translating this gem amongst Schroer’s works and also for writing a lengthy and scholarly introduction to it, both of which go a long way toward answering these questions. In his introduction David Wood recounts for us the life of Karl Julius Schroer, places him in the current of German Idealism, and describes his contact with Rudolf Steiner. Schroer taught German literature at the Technical College of Vienna, where it was his task

59 60 to bring balance to the otherwise purely scientific and mathemat­ ical curriculum. Steiner met him in the year 1879. We can see the profound impression that Schroer made on the 18-year-old stu­ dent through a letter that Steiner wrote to a friend: “I thank God and a favorable destiny that I have become acquainted with a man here in Vienna, who - after Goethe of course - may claim to be the best Faust expert there is, a man I highly value and esteem as a teacher, scholar, poet, and human being. His name is Karl Julius Schroer....” Through Goethe and Love we see Schroer, perhaps Austria’s greatest Goethe admirer, seeking to rise to the lofty heights of idealism in which Goethe himself lived in order to truly present and interpret him. Schroer uses a Goethean method to penetrate the core of Goethe’s striving; seeing the works of Goethe and Goethe’s relationships with women as outer signs that lead him to an intuitive insight into Goethe’s very being. The first essay focuses on a little-read early work of Goethe, the drama Stella. This is a work, like The Sorrows o f Young Werther and Faust, into which, according to Schroer, Goethe “poured his entire soul, and which he dashed off, as though cre­ ated in a dream-state, as though unconsciously driven by a higher power.” But the play itself has remained something of a riddle and has eluded the understanding of the literary critics. It is Schroer who brings to the foreground a question that, if answered, will shed light on the piece; namely, what was love to Goethe? He says love “ forms the basis of the entire piece” and “is the key to the secret of Goethe’s life....” The second essay, Goethe and Marianne Willemer, tells us of a love relationship of Goethe’s older years which only became known long after Goethe’s death through his letters and through the work of Herman Grimm. Schroer relates in a sensitive way the Book Reviews • 61 influence this “poetical love-affair” had upon one of Goethe’s most exquisite poetic works, the West-Eastern Divan. Here, as in the rest of Goethe’s works, it is the “Eternal-Feminine” that uplifts him and inspires him to transform life through poetry. In Schroer’s words “The rejuvenation of the life of the soul through feminine enchantment - that is what love is to Goethe.” The final shorter essay, “After Fifty Years” , was written in remembrance of the anniversary of Goethe’s death. Schroer con­ trasts the much-loved early writings of Goethe with his little- understood works produced during and after his Italian journey. The metamorphosis that he underwent on this journey, including his relation to love, enabled his poetic genius to work on an entire­ ly new level. His readers, however, now looked in vain for the tem­ pestuous lover they had known. Goethe had grown beyond his contemporaries and was writing for people like Schiller and for future generations. Percy MacKaye: Poet of Old Worlds and New by Henry Barnes

Adonis Press, 2000, 127 pp., $12.50 320 Route 21C, Ghent, NY 12075 518-672-4736

Reviewed by Carol Williams

Last year Henry Barnes prepared a life-sketch of his father-in- law, the poet-dramatist Percy MacKaye (1875-1956) at the request of the Friedrich Von Hardenberg Institute for the Cultural Sciences in Heidelberg. The Institute was interested in MacKaye as a “prominent person of his time whose life and work had been influenced-directly or indirectly - by Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy.” This sketch has been published by the Adonis Press as Percy MacKaye: Poet of Old Worlds and New. Those interested in the cultural history of this country and in Anthroposophy, and in how the two come together will find great interest in the biography of this extraordinary individual. Readers will be struck by both the magnitude of his achievement and the degree to which he has been forgotten. MacKaye had his finger on the pulse of a very American stream of life, art, and democracy. Clearly it was not the stream that would dominate in the 20th cen­ tury. This book makes one wonder if it might yet play a part in shaping the 21st. At twenty MacKaye foresaw his own life’s path. As a class speaker at his Harvard College graduation, he questioned what he said was a contemporary misinterpretation of “...Hamlet’s famous statement of the dramatic ideal ‘to hold the mirror up to nature’. Such indeed is the ideal... of all the arts; but the meaning

62 Book Reviews • 63 must not be mistaken. We must hold up to nature not a looking- glass but a magic mirror - a mirror, that is, which shall reflect not only the outward actions but the inner motives of man, and over all shall throw the light o f beauty. That mirror is the imagination, and the drama may thus be defined as human nature mirrored in the imagination." MacKaye’s story shows that this most un-worldly and idealistic of men found the will and practical wherewithal to write and exe­ cute two of the largest scale and most powerful dramatic specta­ cles and community events in the history of the United States. The first was the commission in 1914 to write the St. Louis Masque, a poetic and symbolic portrayal of the history of that city. Seven thousand people - ordinary citizens - performed, and one hundred thousand people watched on each of four consecutive nights in a natural amphitheater, celebrating a kind of esoteric history of the city, from the native-American mound builders to the modern times, in which “in the end, Imagination and Love finally subdue the chief adversary, Gold...” and an aeroplane representing “a great eagle soared into the night sky, trailing fiery sparks.” In 1916, despite the onset of the European war, MacKaye under­ took an even larger spectacle. Caliban of the Yellow Sands expand­ ed on the transformation theme in Shakespeare’s last play. It was performed in huge sports stadiums in New York City in 1916 and then the next year in Boston by a cast of five thousand before audi­ ences of ten thousand a night. Once again, the distinction between actors and audience was blurred. The “actors” were volunteers, tire­ lessly recruited and trained, and the “audience” did not just watch, but participated in a great event. In Boston, Caliban was held over an extra ten days and culminated in a joyful dance at which actors and audience waltzed together on the stadium floor. 64

A reviewer in the 1916 New York Mirror wrote “ Such an achievement is surely a foretaste of the eventual realization of the democratic ideal, where art will be made not only for the people, but also by the people, and all the people will cooperate to make the common life more beautiful, until the communal life itself shall become a living work of art.” If MacKaye’s theatrical work was indeed to be a “foretaste of the future,” it was not to be the near future. The mood of the peri­ od between the wars was inimical to the further development of such large-scale community drama. As a poet, MacKaye’s working life and inner life were essen­ tially seamless. Barnes’ narrative follows the thread of both, tak­ ing us through times of great productivity and times of great inner struggle. How these struggles were brought to resolution is told in the chapters describing MacKaye’s intense and very personal encounter with Anthroposophy. Brought to Dornach, Switzerland in 1936 to visit his daughters, Arvia and Christy, MacKaye formed a deep and immediate bond with his fellow poet-dramatist, Albert Steffen, then president of the Anthroposophical Society. Steffen would write of MacKaye, “In him I have learned to love America.” Returning to America, MacKaye spent ten years writing a cycle of four plays about awakening that came to be known as the Hamlet Tetrology, since they deal with events immediately preced­ ing Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The whole cycle was performed at the Pasadena Playhouse in 1949. MacKaye’s brief and poignant “Noctuary” poems are witness to the vivid, often joyful, inner activity of his last seven years. Barnes extracted much of his material from Arvia MacKaye Ege’s much longer book The Power of the Impossible (Adonis Book Reviews • 65

Press, 1992). Barnes’ short but powerful “ sketch” is not redun­ dant. His careful selection of material and his own lucid exposi­ tion allow readers to focus their attention on the unfolding of the life, achievement, and consequence of the exceptional individual, Percy MacKaye. Awakening the Will: Principles and Processes in Adult Learning by Coenraad van Houten

Temple Lodge Publishing, 2000, 178 pp., $20.00 London (originally published in English by Adult Learning Network, 1995)

Practicing Destiny: Principles and Processes in Adult Learning by Coenraad van Houten

Temple Lodge Publishing, 2000, 229 pp., $19.95 London, (published in association with the New Adult Learning Movement)

Available from the Anthroposophic Press, 800-856-8664

Reviewed by David Andrew Schwartz

I first met Coen van Houten in England at Emerson College in 1971 when he taught the Foundation Year students about the work of the Netherlands Pedagogical Institute, founded by Dr. Bernard Lievegoed. Four years later he founded the Center for Social Development at Emerson, and was the Center’s director until 1992. He is co-founder of the New Adult Learning Movement. Mr. van Houten characterizes the two books being reviewed as an attempt to share thirty years of experiences with those interest­ ed in adult education from an anthroposophical perspective. They are all about how to do things and dangers to watch out for - like the journal of an old explorer that provides relevant information to people setting out on a challenging journey.

6 6 Book Reviews • 61

In Awakening the Will the author first sets forth three adult learning paths: earthly or vocational learning; destiny or life-long learning; and spiritual schooling or spiritual research learning. He proposes to write three books, one on each of these paths. So far he has written two of the three. Nevertheless, in the author’s preface to this first book, he does say “the three paths of learning that are men­ tioned in this book are seen as an integrated whole.” He emphasizes that adult learning is quite different from the learning process for the child, and he is troubled by the way most adult-learning situa­ tions continue educational methods adapted to the child, particu­ larly in the relation between the teacher and the student. In order to describe the difference between child and adult learning, the second main idea of the book is introduced, namely, that the forces of the seven life processes are available to the adult learner differently than to the child learner who is still using these forces to build up the earthly body for incarnation. The seven life processes, as presented by Rudolf Steiner, are essential for all life and, therefore, also for the physical development and well-being of the human being. The description and explanation of how the seven life processes develop into learning processes for the adult forms the bulk of Awakening the Will. The third main idea of this book is that adult education is a new field within Anthroposophy. Rudolf Steiner helped establish a new form of education for children. However, the author feels that a new form of education for adults has yet to be developed and that a new profession will emerge from the efforts to create adult learning situations. Consequently, a large and important part of the book takes up the subject of the training and inner develop­ ment of adult educators as professionals. The author is humble enough to encourage the reader consis­ tently to question his propositions and correct them if necessary. 68

He is honest enough to admit that he wrote all this down as a sketch not as a finished work. As a sketch, the book is valuable because he is sharing his understanding of the subject as best he can, without pretense. It is always helpful to learn from someone else’s experiences. In the second book, Practicing Destiny, the subject of karma is tackled. Here the attempt to keep the three paths separated is almost impossible, and the author admits it. He launches more and more into the intimate linking of various dimensions of adult learning related to the body, soul, and spirit of the student. Adult learning is shown to be nothing less than the study of Anthroposophy and the inner development that is the consequence of self-knowledge. The author integrates the ideas from the first book with the pursuit of self-knowledge in the form of under­ standing one’s destiny or karma. The concept of reincarnation opens up the spiritual learning path. Now the spiritual world, pre­ birth and after-death development are introduced into the adult learner’s picture of existence. Descriptions of learning processes and exercises for deepening the understanding of personal destiny and the destiny of others are elaborated in Practicing Destiny. Also, the path of the adult educator is correspondingly deepened and elaborated to take in these additional ideas from Anthroposophy. Again, the experiences shared provide a wealth of material to understand and learn from. Looking more critically at the books, I think it would have been helpful to have a concise, carefully-edited, single volume, one short book boiled down to the bare essentials of what the author has learned about adult learning. For me, both books, especially the second, were repetitious. Also, the books should be footnoted so that the ideas presented could be more easily understood in relation to Rudolf Steiner’s ideas on the path of inner develop- Book Reviews • 69 ment. The author emphasizes the importance of an adult learner being able to exercise independent judgement. However, without carefully written references to Rudolf Steiner’s work this task is made more difficult. I feel justified in making this critical observation because the author speaks extensively throughout both books about matters pertaining to the crossing of the threshold into the spiritual world, both in the context of the education of adult students and the training of the adult educator. He thereby involves the reader in a relation with Rudolf Steiner that is not explicit. In his first book, Section 3.3, the author introduces the spiritual schooling path by saying: Everyone finds their teacher within themselves. To pursue a Spiritual Schooling Path means to step over the threshold between the normal day consciousness of physical sense-impressions and supersensible spiritual consciousness. This crossing of the threshold involves the risk of numerous errors and illusions. That is why this threshold is guarded by a being called the ‘Guardian of the Threshold.’ This Guardian either allows the people concerned to continue over the threshold or rejects them until they have acquired the necessary strength and self-knowledge to cross it with­ out any danger. Thus, this being becomes the guide on the Spiritual Schooling Path. Here, the advisory func­ tion of the adult educator serves the purpose of help­ ing the learners to find their own teacher, the ‘Guardian of the Threshold.’ Throughout both books the author speaks openly about mat­ ters pertaining to the spiritual world, drawing from his extensive familiarity with the work of Rudolf Steiner. Particularly in the sec­ 70 ond book esoteric matters related to reincarnation and karma are openly discussed. The discussion of such ideas brings the Guardian of the Threshold into the foreground. Helping people form a relation to the Guardian of the Threshold is the responsi­ bility of a qualified occult teacher, not merely an adult educator. Rudolf Steiner was just such a teacher. In his spiritual scientific books, like Theosophy, he announced himself as such, and explained why his methods and the results of his research are reli­ able. Rarely will a student find a qualified occult teacher in one of the anthroposophical adult training programs. However, one hopes that many of these teachers will have formed a genuine rela­ tion of trust with Rudolf Steiner as an occult teacher and devel­ oped through that relation a life of study and meditation. Such teachers can help students do the same. Then, a meditative life can unfold that involves a conscious working together with the Guardian of the Threshold. The forming of a relation to an occult teacher normally precedes the forming of a conscious relation to the Guardian whether one is learning about these spiritual matters directly through Rudolf Steiner’s work, or indirectly through books like those of Mr. van Houten. Books about anthroposophi­ cal adult education need to explain the interrelated roles of adult educator, occult teacher, and Guardian of the Threshold so that they can be identified and understood by the student of Anthroposophy. The author has endeavored to do this in these two books. We can be most grateful to Coen van Houten for sharing the fruits of his life’s work in these books, and I recommend them as study material for individual teachers and faculties of anthropo­ sophical courses and programs for adults. Book Reviews • 71

Proverbs of Purgatory by John Wulsin

AWSNA Publications, 2000, 30 pp., $6.00 3911 Bannister Rd., Fair Oaks, CA 95628 916-961-0927

Reviewed by Eugene Schwartz

John Wulsin, who teaches English at the Green Meadow Waldorf High School, is best known to aficionados of the lan­ guage arts as the author of a series of pithy, incisive and helpful essays on the vagaries of good grammar among modern students. Among a smaller group of Green Meadow Waldorf High School parents, he is no less renowned for the pithy, incisive and helpful marginalia he inscribes on essays and book reports submitted to him by high school students. Those students, it might be added, leave their Waldorf high school setting able to write pithy, incisive and helpful college papers that often dazzle the most sophisticat­ ed professors. With an acknowledged debt to Dante and William Blake, John Wulsin has now written a little book that defies categorization. It is certainly a book about Waldorf education, especially about the human inter-relations that are the foundation of a healthy Waldorf school community. It is also a book about the challenging inner path that every Waldorf educator must blaze for him- or herself through the Bolgias of Pedagogia, a domain no less daunting than Dante’s Inferno. And it is, above all, a book about working with words, and how a living love of words can open even a high school classroom to the empyrean heights.

71 72

Here is a sampling of John Wulsin’s proverbial wisdom:

Spectres will suck a school dry. Teachers and parents need to give each other the strength the confidence to speak to each other directly about concerns ....

The written word, reflecting living conversations, protects individuals, objectifies memories ....

Children always need to feel the Sun in the teacher and, whatever their mistake or sin, they need to be reminded of the stars in the night.

Everything else will always change. Materials will change. Instruments will change. The Waldorf student must learn the essential laws to navigate through seas of change.

At the book’s beginning, John reveals that he and the school in which he has taught for over two decades are virtually the same age, fifty years old. Waldorf education is still so “young” in North America, and its practitioners are still so overburdened with prac­ tical responsibilities, that very little of their accumulated experi­ ence has been distilled into wisdom as concentrated as this. As the Waldorf Movement worldwide enters the new Millennium and reflects upon itself in a new way, Proverbs of Purgatory could serve as a worthy model and wise guide. (To further bolster its link with Waldorf education, the book is filled with charming illustrations by Frances and Hilary Pharr, two Green Meadow alumnae.) Book Reviews • 73

Autism - A Holistic Approach by Bob Woodward and Dr. Marga Hogenboom

Floris Books, 2000, 270 pp., $35.00 15 Harrison Gardens, Edinburgh, Scotland Available from Anthroposophic Press, 800-856-8664

Reviewed by Ingelore Maier

I believe that there is hardly a more puzzling, disturbing, yet intriguing, experience in life than meeting a child with pure autism. As a curative educator, I feel challenged in my most basic humanity because the child looks through me with an incredible aloofness, will not speak to me, lives in his own world, and will put up a fantastic resistance when interfered with. I know I will have to find a much deeper way of communicating and relating to come to any understanding at all. Each time I wonder: will I have what it takes? The Child with Pure Autism He is a beautiful, perfectly formed boy, who has an almost unearthly air about him. He is skillful, with good body co-ordination, balance and dexterity, yet he walks on his toes. Sometimes, and for no obvious rea­ son, he suddenly flaps his hands quickly in front of his face, or puts his fingers into his ears, or rocks his body backwards and forwards. In the presence of other peo­ ple, including his peers, he always appears strikingly aloof and distant. He seems to avoid eye contact delib­ erately, even with his own caring family, and often sim­ ply looks through other people as if they do not exist. He does not explore his surroundings with the usual childish curiosity and intent. However, each and every day he spends hours arranging his large collection of toy cars in straight 74

lines, always in precisely the same order and patterns. He is usually good at doing jigsaw puzzles, even when the picture is turned face down, but has no imaginative or pretend play either alone, or with his peers....

This description is from Bob Woodward’s and Marga Hogenboom’s recently published book, Autism. The book arises from the therapeutic work of Camphill, an international commu­ nity movement dedicated to living and working with children and adults with mental disabilities. It draws on the rich experience and insights of doctors gained over decades as well as individuals who experience autism themselves. Autism is well organized and clearly written. We are led through the history of the identification and interpretation of the syndrome from 1943 until the present, including current views of the causes of autism that encompass an impairment and/or dys­ function of the brain, genetics, neuro-chemistry and metabolism. A large section of the book describes therapeutic interventions in the context of anthroposophical curative education, including all-important inter-human attitudes and the interdisciplinary forum of the so-called College Meeting. The work with two boys is given as a model, with therapeutic exercises and treatments over a period of two years, including day-to-day accounts. What I think of as the major chapter elaborates an anthropo­ sophical approach to understanding autism. This also includes the realms beyond physiology - soul, spiritual, and karmic dimen­ sions. The authors have dedicated this book to the late Dr. Hans M ueller-Wiedemann, whose loving wisdom has contributed greatly to this field. We can be most grateful to have access to this first anthroposophical book in the English language devoted to autism. About the Contributors

Henry Barnes earned degrees at Harvard and Columbia University and took a Waldorf Teacher Training in Germany. He then taught in England for four years and at the Rudolf Steiner School in New York City from 1940 - 1977. He was General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in America from 1974 - 1991, and has been active in the Waldorf School movement on a national level.

Siegfried Finser, a Waldorf school graduate, has included in his career seven years of teaching in the Rudolf Steiner School in New York City. He worked in high level positions in several corpora­ tions, including Xerox and ITT. He co-founded the Rudolf Steiner Foundation which works with money to foster socially construc­ tive projects.

Robert Karp is Executive Director of Practical Farmers of Iowa, a sustainable agriculture organization based in Ames, Iowa. Robert is also a member of the Central Regional Council of the Anthroposophical Society, and is editor of the “ Correspondence,” the newsletter of the Central Region.

Eileen King worked and lived in life-sharing communities with developmentally challenged children and adults in the United States, Northern Ireland and Germany between 1973 and 1994. “Disciplined conversation” (as it was called in Camphill Village, Copake) gave her the opportunity to see Goethean Conversation in action and appreciate its power as a community building expe­ rience par excellence. She now lives in Washington, D.C. where she works with Justice for Children, an organization that advo­ cates for abused or neglected children who have fallen through the cracks of governmental agencies.

Ingelore Maier is a curative educator at Beaver Run, Camphill Special School in Pennsylvania. She was trained at the Sonnenhof in Switzerland. Among other things she was a class teacher for two classes of 8 years each. Lately she has been active in adult educa­ tion.

75 76 • Contributors

Douglas Miller is a professor of German and Art at the University of Michigan-Flint. He is the editor and translator of Goethe’s Scientific Studies (published by Princeton University Press), and most recently co-authored Synthetic Vision, an international exhi­ bition on Goethe sponsored by the Goethe Institute. He was also a founding board member of the Rudolf Steiner Institute of the Great Lakes Area, and has been active in the Literary Arts and Humanities Section of the School for Spiritual Science.

Richard Neal was born is Louisville, Kentucky in 1951. His first encounter with Anthroposophy occurred in 1971. Since then he has worked in social therapeutic communities and lived in Camphill Village, Copake since 1998. His main areas of artistic work are painting, poetry and sculpture.

Howard Pautz is employed as a software architect. He has received grants to research the peach-blossom experiment. Rudolf Steiner’s work has inspired him to study mathematics and projec­ tive geometry, physics, and epistemology. Currently, he is assisting his wife, Andrea, an M.D., internist, and eurythmist, in opening an anthroposophically-extended internal-medicine practice in Jacksonville, Florida. Email address: [email protected].

David Schwartz is an adult educator, Bio-Dynamic gardener, life­ style counselor, organizational consultant, and lawyer. He has been a member of shared living communities for over twenty-five years, co-founded a bank, belongs to the Social Science Section of the School for Spiritual Science, and is currently associated with the Camphill Special Schools in Southeastern Pennsylvania.

Eugene Schwartz is the author of Millennial Child (Anthro­ posophic Press) and Waldorf Education: Schools for the twenty- first Century (Xlibris Publications). He is a class teacher at Green Meadow Waldorf School and lectures extensively on education. Contributors • 77

Linden Sturgis has been a high school teacher and class teacher at the Kimberton Waldorf School for 20 years. Having made an intensive study of Goethe’s scientific works in college, he has striv­ en to bring the Goethean approach to his teaching of science. As a trained speech artist Linden has been a speaker for eurythmy, a director of Rudolf Steiner’s Mystery Dramas, and has offered courses in creative speech. He and his wife Donna have recently founded the Kimberton Foundation Course in Anthroposophy.

Joanna van Vliet (1939-1993) was a eurythmist who lived and worked in Camphill Special School in Pennsylvania and Camphill Village, Copake, New York. She was instrumental in founding the work in America of the Performing Arts Section and the Social Science Section of the School of Spiritual Science.

Theodore van Vliet, with a teaching career behind him in public and Waldorf schools in New York State and at the Dornach Teachers’ Seminar, became more widely known as editor of News from the Goetheanum for nearly 20 years. Living in Germany, he has continued to assist in the development of anthroposophical study techniques and group life.

Carol Williams is a writer and editor. She recently wrote an article for “House & Garden” magazine about the landscape and gar­ dens of the Cornish Colony, a community of which Percy MacKaye was a part.

ERRATA Due to circumstances beyond the editors’ and author’s control, Barbara Betteridge, the author of “Seeking Michael-Mindedness”, pp. 8-16, in the last journal, (No. 71, Michaelmas, 2000) was unable to make a final review of her article before the journal went to press. She would especially ask readers to note the following: page 8, lines 10-11, delete including a new faculty of perception (Gesinnung).”: page 12, line 20, delete “in public” : page 14, line 14, delete “a (new) faculty of perception (or.” (and closing parenthesis); page 15, line 14, delete “ faculty of perception.” : page 15, lines 29-30, delete “or even, faculty of perception.” page 16, last line, delete “ and faculty of perception” .

We regret any confusion resulting from our not being able to complete the review process. - The Editors. Anthroposophic Press photographof4bookcovers][Image:

The Fourth Dimension Anthroposophy & Astrology Sacred Geometry, Alchemy, The Astronomical Letters of and Mathematics Elizabeth Vreede Rudolf Steiner Elizabeth Vreede, Ph.D. A synthesis of spiritual and scientific A fascinating compendium of scientific knowledge that leads to a new perspec­ and spiritual knowledge about both tive of space and an understanding of modern astronomy and classical astrol­ how higher worlds interact with the ogy in the light of spiritual science. This world of everyday experience. Avail­ new translation of the letters, now in able for the first time in English. book form, is based on the current Ger­ Introduction by David Booth. man edition.

ISBN 0-88010-472-4 • paper • $18.95 Introduction by Norman Davidson. ISBN 0-88010-490-2 • paper • $30 Reverse Ritual Spiritual Knowledge According to Luke Li True Communion The Gospel of Compassion and Rudolf Steiner Love Revealed & Friedrich Benesch Rudolf Steiner This lecture cycle, a new translation A detailed comparison of the various by Catherine E. Creeger, presents the ritual forms, leading to a deep appre­ most accessible and illuminating of ciation of the "reversed ritual,” which Steiner’s revelations with regard to is the path of attaining spiritual knowl­ Christ and his significance for edge based on the free spiritual activ­ humanity’s spiritual development. ity of human beings, in awareness of Introduction by Robert McDermott. God as a spirit. Introduction by Christopher Schaefer. ISBN 0-88010-488-0 • paper • $16.95 ISBN 0-88010-487-2 • paper • 19.95

CALL TO ORDER TOLL FREE 800-856-8664 FAX 800-277-7947 ordering and Information online www.anthropress.org RSF COMMUNITY INVESTMENT FUND

The Rudolf Steiner Foundation has loaned over $35 million to not-for-profits with investments from organizations and individuals like you. Earn 5.22% interest (varies quarterly) while supporting: • Child Development • Education • Environment • Health & Healing • Sustainable Agriculture • Spiritual & Religious Renewal • Arts & Culture • Disadvantaged Communities

For more information, please contact us at RO. Box 2 9 9 15, San Francisco, C A 9 4 129-0915 Phone: 4 15.561.3900, www.rsfoundation.org

A program of the Rudolf Steiner Foundation

WE ARE NOT HUMAN BEINGS ON A SPIRITUAL JOURNEY, BUT SPRITIUAL BEINGS ON A HUMAN JOURNEY. Teilhard de Chardin

Sunbridge College

WALDORF TEACHER EDUCATION STUDIES IN ANTHROPOSOPHY BIODYNAMIC FARMING AND GARDENING PAINTING, PERFORMING ARTS, SCULPTURE AND HANDWORK

CHARTERED BY NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPT..

285 HUNGRY HOLLOW ROAD, CHESTNUT RIDGE, NY 10977 845-425-0055 FX 845-425-1413 WWW.SUNBRIDGE.EDU Philadelphia Community Farm Philadelphia Community Farm, a small intentional community located on hundreds of acres of farmland and natural areas on the beautiful St. Croix National Scenic Riverway in Wisconsin is seeking interns and co-workers.

We are an anthroposophical community. Our mission is to bring healing to the land and to people, through our experiential Waldorf-based education programs, biodynamic stewardship of the land, and sharing our lives with developmentally disabled people.

Applicants need to be mature, energetic and flexible, and willing to help us develop and strengthen our work.

For more information please call Donna at (715) 294-1659.

LILI P0H FREEDOM OF CHOICE Subscribe to the only journal with an anthroposophic approach to health, and become a well-informed partner in your own healthcare.

♦ Innovative views on nutrition, whole foods, biodynamic gardening, environmental issues, nature's healing remedies, medical news, and complementary health-care practices such as naturopathy, movement therapy and homeopathy. ♦ Simple, practical, preventive and therapeutic self-care measures.

To receive the next 4 quarterly issues, you may charge your Visa or Mastercard or send $20.00, check or money order to: LILI POH P.O. Box 649, Nyack, NY 10960 • 914-268-2627 • [email protected]

Adonis Press Goethe & the Power o f Rhythm Percy MacKaye ~ Poet by John Barnes, 10.00 by Henry Barnes, 12.50

The Up-Rising in Dying Tlx1 Power for Resurrection ’s Flight edited by Christ)- Bames, 10.95 poems by Albert Steffen, 16.95

Forgiving A Wound A woke Me % by Georg Kiihlewind, 4.50 poems by Christy Bames, 12.00 In Celebration o f Being Human Reminiscences o f Rudolf Steiner poems by Michael Burton, 7.50 by Andrei Belyi, et al, 11.50 m320 Route 21C Ghent, NY 12075 Race, Folk, Individuality The Mystery o f Hamlet (518) 672-4736 [email protected] by Albert Steffen, 4.50 4 plays by Percy MacKaye, 17.50 WALA Raphael Pharmacy 4003 Bridge Street Fair Oaks, CA 95628 Phone: (916) 962-1099 Fax: (916) 967-0510

Dr. Hauschka Skin Care Products

Dr. Hauschka Decorative Cosmetics

High Quality Herbal Teas

Anthroposophic Books on Medicine

WALA Remedies

“Bringing nature's treasures to you Choroi Musical Instruments

Choroi seeks the renewal o f music throughIn betweensong,movement,andinstrumentplaying.thespiritofitsGreekderivation,"Choroi"expressesinterplay instruments and their creative use.

1 -888-4-CHOROI FAX (888)465-6764

email: [email protected] www.choroi.com

P.O. Box 684544 Austin, Texas 78768

FREE ARTS ACADEMY - DUBROVNIK DEPARTMENT, CROATIA,is starting a new course in painting with DONALD HALL according to method of Beppe Assenza. The course will be organized on a part- time basis, three times a year, two to three weeks each, 4 or 5 years. Beginning of the training in January 2001. Working language will be English and German.

FREE ARTS ACADEMY - DUBROVNIK DEPARTMENT, CROATIA, is also starting a new course in art therapy, according to method of Liane Collot d’Herbois, with Elisabeth de Bruyne (Holland). The course will be organized on a part-time basis, three times a year, two weeks each, in 4 years time. Beginning of the training is January 2001. Working language will be English. Info: Tel. 00-385-21-34 39 10 or 00-385-21-461-009 Letters should be sent to: Professor Sonia Barach Rudynski 21000 Split, Borisa Papandopula 15, Croatia Dedicated to thoseCenter forAnthroposophyResearchandRenewal seeking spiritual knowledge and the development of new human capacities, the Center sponsors conferences, research projects and the programs listed below:

Foundation Studies The study of basic anthroposophical concepts for potential Waldorf teachers or anyone interested in inner development and a deeper understanding of the world, self and the questions of our time.

Waldorf High School Teacher Education A summer sequence program offering a teaching certificate in: • Arts / Art History • English • History • Life Sciences • Mathematics • Physical Sciences Renewal Courses 2001 (June 24th - June 29th) Seminars for Waldorf teachers, parents and others: • Remedial Insights • Advanced Work in the Arts • Puppetry • Storytelling • Biography • Meditation • Personal & Social Renewal For more information and registration, please contact: CENTER FOR ANTHROPOSOPHY PO Box 545, Wilton, NH 03086 Tel: (603) 654-2566 Fax: (603) 654-5258 e-mail: [email protected] www.centerforanthroposophy.org PARKATTWOOD CLINIC Anthroposophical Medicine Integrating orthodox and complementary treatment

Residential medical treatment in a healing, social environment, for a wide range of conditions. Set in beautiful English countryside but only one hour from an airport. ofclinic][Image:photograph

Park Attwood Clinic, Trimpley, Bewdley, Worcs, England DY12 1RE Tel 00 44 (0)1299 861 444 Fax 00 44 (0)1299 861375 E-mail [email protected] Site HTTP://www.park attwood.com/

R udolf S t e in e r C ollege

A Center for Anthroposophical Endeavors

Waldorf Teacher Education Programs Early Childhood, Grades and High School, Full-Time, Part-Time, Summer, B A , M A Options

■ Foundation/Explorations Year Programs, Full-Time or Weekend Option ■ San Francisco Teacher Training, Three-Year Part-Time Program ■ Weekend and Summer Workshops for Parents and Teachers Please Contact the College for the Calendar of Events

Goethean Studies Program Arts Program Inner Work, Integrated Science and Art Path of Self Development and Healing

9200 FAIR OAKS BOULEVARD • FAIR OAKS, CALIFORNIA 95628 (NEAR SACRAMENTO) TEL (916) 961-8727 • FAX (916) 961-8731

E-MAIL: [email protected] • WEBSITE: http://www.steinercollege.edu Live Learn & WORK

THE F e l l o w s h i p is 21 yearsTobias SchoolofArt old! Community You could come to Tobias for Needs individuals and families desiring to be part of a very lively Summer courses 2001: community founded on 9th to 14th and anthroposophy. Intergenerational and non-denom inational, we are 15th to 21st July 2001 located north of NYC with an Renewal days for Art Therapists orchard and farm. We are 11th to 14th July, or centered around the care of the Our two year foundation course elderly and care of the land. in preparation of the art therapy course Caring for the whole of life. Contact 0044-01342-313655, or

Fellowshipcommunity.org email [email protected]. [email protected] We’re also at Call the office or write to Ann Scharff, www.anth.org.uk/tobiasart The Executive Committee, 241 Hungry and the postman still comes Hollow Road, Spring Valley, NY 10977 Phone 845-356-8494 Fax 845-356-8468 to Coombe Hill Road East Grinstead, RHI9 4LZ, GB

ARCTURUS Rudolf Steiner Education Program A Three-Year Weekend Program with a Summer Intensive in Foundation Studies & Waldorf Teacher Training Serving Students from Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri & Wisconsin PO Box 607116 Chicago, IL 60660-7116 Phone: 773/761-3026 Highlands Star Seed's Stellar Enhanced Biodynamic Plants The Selke Biodynamic Cherry Tomato, the RC Ratatouille and the Pear-Plum (both pear and plum appear on the same plant) are the best tasting, most prolific tomato producing plants you'll ever grow - if you follow our planting dates, transplanting dates and build your hill according to our instructions. They are irrefutable proof of the scientific concepts Dr. Rudolf Steiner gives the world in his book Agriculture. [Image: photograph][Image: AT RIGHT: Evergreen Elm's Biodynamic Master Gardener L.A.Rotheraine with a single SELKE BIODYNAMIC CHERRY TOMATO PLANT. It has a special seed strain that is as important as planting dates and unique hilling system. The stellar enhanced seed strain produces 72 foot plants that can yield over 2000 tomatoes per plant! Photo by Francie Long Bradford Era

photograph] [Image: AT LEFT: From left - Highlands Star Seed's blue-ribbon tomato strains: Selke Biodynamic Cherry Tomato, Plum, Pear and RC Ratatouille. Photo by Rodger Comes

For a pack (16 seeds per pack) of stellar [Image:photograph] AT RIGHT: enhanced Cherry, RC Ratatouille or Pear-Plum Highlands Star tomato seeds, the price is $2.00 per pack plus Seed's Stellar $2.00 postage and handling per order. Enhanced Included in our price are our special starting RC Ratatouille and transplanting dates and instructions for Tomato plant is building our organic tomato hills. Send orders stronger, larger and to: more productive HIGHLANDS STAR SEED than a beefsteak or P.O. Box 990 its original Bradford, PA 16701 Belgian strain. (Please list approximate day you'll set seedlings outdoors. Photo by Pennsylvania residents, please add 12 cents per pack for sales Rodger Comes tax. Canadian and all international orders - only a money order in US funds will be accepted.) The Gift Shop at Camphill Village Physician’s Association Presents New Translations for Of Works by Dr. Karl Koenig Anthroposphical Medicine Printed by Camphill Press Doctors o f Medicine and The Mystery o f John and the Osteopathy practicing and working Cycle o f the Year with “...succeeds in reaching a depth of anthroposophical medicine. spiritual insight...that is breathtaking.” Educational Seminars A Living Physiology Professional Referrals "A major contribution to understanding Journal o fAnthroposophical Medicine

an image of the human being...” 1923 Geddes Avenue Ann Arbor MI 48104 Camphill Village Gift Shop Tel. 734-930-9462 Fax 734-662-1727

Camphill Road, Copake, NY 12516 email: [email protected] 518/329-4511, Fax 518/329-7955 web: www.paam.net Request Your Free Catalog of Handcrafts & Gifts Made with Heart

Hibernia School of Artistic Therapy

An integrated training in art therapy based on Anthroposophy

Hibernia Centre for Science and Art • Lansdown Stroud • Gloucestershire GL5 1BB • England Tel (44) (0)1453 751685 • Fax (44 (0)1453 757565 EURYTHMY SPRING VALLEY

Movement as a path to inner development and practical service

Full- and part-time professional trainings □ Post-graduate artistic training courses □ On-going courses for non-professionals □ One-year artistic intensives □ Recognized by the Association of Eurythmy Trainings

SCHOOL OF EURYTHMY ■ PERFORMING ENSEMBLE 260 HUNGRY HOLLOW ROAD, CHESTNUT RIDGE, NEW YORK 10977 USA 845-352-5020 / FAX: 845-352-5071 http://www.8urylhmy.org

Eurythmy Spring Valley Summer Eurythmy Week 2001 (Monday, July 23 - Saturday, July 28 and Monday, July 30 - Friday, August 4)

To everyone’s delight, Sylvia Bardt has agreed to join us again this summer to teach Eurythmy Spring Valley’s summer pedagogical course for eurythmists. Furthermore, she has agreed to extend the course for 2 weeks, as this was the wish of everyone who attended last year’s course.

Alongside this, there will, as usual, be a course for the public with speech and tone eurythmy taught by Annelies Davidson and Dorothea Mier and painting with Elizabeth Lombardi (Monday, July 23 — Saturday, July 28). An intensive public course in eurythmy for those who wish to stay longer and deepen their connection to eurythmy will be offered Monday, July 30 - Friday, August 4.

For more information and a flyer, please contact Eurythmy Spring Valley at 845-352-5020, extension 13. Floris Books[Image: photographof4bookcovers]

The Enchanted Kingdom Jesus, the Master Builder A Story by Guido Visconti Druid Mysteries and the Illustrated by Maria Battaglia Dawn of Christianity A merchant arrives in a sun-scorched Gordon Strachan kingdom which has lost all its trees and Taking the biblical image of Wisdom as is now a desert. One of his tapestries the Master Craftsman, Strachan ex­ delights the king’s daughter with its plores the deep layers of Mystery knowl­ pictures of trees, flowers, and birds. edge shared between the Judaic-Hel- She sets out to find a painter who will lenic world and that of the northern paint birds for her, filling the kingdom Druids. Illustrated. with sweet birdsong, plants, and flow­ ISBN 0-86315-295-3 • p a p e r • $19.95 ers of every color. This is a delightful, beautifully illustrated story of the magic of a child’s imagination brought Light, Darkness and to life through art. (Ages 5 - 7 ) Colour in Painting Therapy ISBN 0-86315-333-X • h a r d b a c k • $14.95 Liane Collot d’Herbois Crafts Through the Years During her work as an art teacher, d’Herbois discovered that many people Thomas and Petra Berger reveal their constitution, tempera­ Simply made decorations are an absorb­ ment, and illness through their paint­ ing way for children to become involved ing. Using Steiner’s indications as a in the celebration of the festivals of starting point, together with her own the year. This book is a totally revised observations and many years of col­ compilation of the highly successful laboration with Dr. Ita Wegman, she Christmas, Easter, and Harvest craft went on to develop this unique ap­ books. Illustrated. proach to therapeutic painting.

ISBN 0-86315-322-4 • h a r d b a c k • $19.95 ISBN 0-86315-327-5 • p a p e r • $24.95

Available through Anthroposophic Press CALL TO ORDER TOLL FREE 800-856-8664 FAX 800-277-7947 ordering and information online www.anthropress.org The Threefold Review An independent magazine based B io d y n a m ic on the social ideas of Rudolf Steiner

The Threefold Review presents Rudolf Agriculture Steiner's social ideas, including those on the threefold social order. It also New College of California interprets current events and issues in School of the light of these ideas. It has been used Alternative Agriculture by individuals trying to understand so­ cial problems, by study and research groups, by university professors, and Fully Accredited BA and MA Degree by individuals undertaking anthropo­ Programs sophical initiatives. Professional Certificate Programs Subscription rates (four issues) USA, Canada, and Mexico: $20.00 Dr. Andrew Lorand, Dean All other countries: $28.00 School of Alternative Agriculture Checks are payable to: New College of California. North Bay The Threefold Review, 99 Sixth Street, Santa Rosa, CA 95401 P.O. Box 6, Philmont, Tel. 707.578.2085 / Fax 707.578.2086 NY 12565 (USA). Email: agschool@new college.edu (Telephone: 518-672-5605)

Waldorf Teacher Development

Diploma in Early Childhood and Elementary Education

Bachelor of Arts Degree with Michigan Elementary Teacher Certification

Summer Sequence Program leading to diploma in Waldorf Education

Clarion Center for Foundation Studies

Waldorf Teacher Development Association 2555 Burns, Detroit, M I 48124 Phone (313) 823-8764 or toll free (877) 890-1904 On the web at: www.wtda.org ♦ email: [email protected] Anthroposophy Worldwide- U.S. is published six times a year and features national and international news about work based on the insights of Rudolf Steiner.

Anthroposophy Worldwide-U. S. 1923 Geddes Avenue, Ann Arbor MI 48104-1797 e-mail [email protected] Tel. 734-662-9355 • fax: 734-662-1727

Anthroposophical Society in America 1923 Geddes Avenue • A nn Arbor • MI 4810 4 - 1 7 9 7 TEL (734) 662-9355 • FAX: (734) 662-1727 EMAIL: information @ anthroposophy.org

MEMBERSHIP in the Anthroposophical Society is open to anyone regardless of religion, race, nationality, social standing, scientific or artistic conviction. It was founded as an "association of people who would foster the life of the soul, both in the individual and in human society, on the basis of a true knowledge of the spiritual world.” Please contact us for more information and our 4-color brochure.

VISIT OUR WEBSITE for more information, membership forms and a national or regional calendar of events. http://www.anthroposophy.org

PLEASE SUBSCRIBE to ANTHROPOSOPHY WORLDWIDE a new tabloid newspaper which is sent with your membership. Non-members may subscribe at our introductory subscription rate of $15 for ten issues, 40% off the regular price. Please contact us for a sample copy. Journal for ANTHROPOSOPHY Yes, I would like to subscribe/re-subscribe to the Journal for Anthroposophy. I enclose payment of $18 USA, $20 Canada, $23.50 overseas for a one year subscription (2 issues). Subscriptions sent by March will begin with the Easter issue, after March with the Michaelmas issue.

Name______

Address______

State/Zip/Country______

Cumulative index available for $7.00 (includes shipping) Back issues available for $7.00 (includes shipping)

Send to: Journal for Anthroposophy, 1923 Geddes Ave., Ann Arbor, MI 48104

MOVING? Please notify us six weeks before you move to ensure that you receive your next Journal

Name______

Old Address

New Address

Send to: Journal for Anthroposophy, 1923 Geddes Ave., Ann Arbor, MI 48104