NUMBERFOR JOURNALANTHROPOSOPHY 33 SPRING 1981 ISSN 0021-8235

Anthroposophy itself must become like an inner festival of Resurrection for the human soul. It must bring an Easter mood into man’s world-conception.

Rudolf Steiner From Festivals and the Mysteries, April 19, 1924

STAFF: Christy Barnes, Editor, Jeanne Bergen, Sandra Sherman, Editorial Assistants; Janet Hutchinson, Subscriptions. Published twice a year by the Anthroposophical Society in America. Sub­ scriptions $6.00 per year. Back numbers may be obtained upon request from Journal for Anthroposophy, 211 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Title Design by Walter Roggenkamp. Vignette by Van James. Journal for Anthroposophy, Number 33, Spring, 1981 © 1981, The Anthroposophical Society in America, Inc. CONTENTS EASTER THEMES To Awaken through Courage Friedrich Hiebel 3 Forgiving Georg K uehlewind 5 Novalis and the Easter Thought Christopher Bamford 15 Fragments Novalis 23, 68 The Self-Chastisement of a Derelict, a short-story Albert Steffen 25 The Mysteries of the Black Sea Lona Trueding 34 The Guardian Spirit of Research into Destiny Friedrich Hiebel 39 MUSIC The Life and Work of Valborg Werbeck-Svaerdstroem J uergen Schriefer 43 Thoughts on the Work of Valborg Werbeck-Svaerdstro e m J u e r g e n Schriefer 51 Thoughts on Singing, Aphorisms Rudolf Steiner, Karl Gebert 58 Gracia Ricardo Hilda Deighton, Gina Palermo 59 The Singer as Instrument Theodora Richards 69 POEMS Lines on Easter John Scotus Eriugena 13 Persephone; Here is a Wonder William Ward 24, 92 Easter, The Song of Awakening Man Arvia Ege 32 The Very Heart of Heaven Rex Raab 38 Argolis, St. Johnstide Michael Ronall 74 Love George Herbert 79 To Golden Butterflies David Adams 80 ILLUSTRATIONS Spring Thunder Shower, black and white Van James 2 Gracia Ricardo, a photograph 60 Gracia Ricardo, Lilia Harris, Mathilde Scholl, Marie Steiner, photographs 63 REVIEWS The Three Years, Emil Bock Susan E. Lowndes 72 Lost Christianity, Jacob Needleman Alan Howard 75 Fairy Worlds and Workers, Marjorie Spock Ruth Pusch 81 Jinchi-Gakku Kenkyu, Anthroposophical Research, Yoshiharu Kasai Maria St. Goar 83 Toward Wholeness: Rudolf Steiner Education in America, M. C. Richards Amos Franceschelli 87 Contributors to this Issue 92

1 [Image: slanted-linedrawing]Spring T hunder Shower Van James To Awaken through Courage*

FRIEDRICH HIEBEL

Again and again Rudolf Steiner calls upon and awakens within us the soul element of courage, and most particularly did he do this at the laying of the foundation of our work at Christmas, 1923. By calling our attention to courage with special emphasis, important perspectives in the soul-life of present day humanity are revealed. This involves an experience of the human soul which usually lies deep within his subconsciousness, and through the power of conscience is connected with the Guardian of the Threshold, who stands before the entrance to the spiritual world, turning back, for their own good, those who are not sufficiently prepared. Today, Rudolf Steiner then told us further, man develops con­ cepts and ideas which, in accordance with the nature of our times, he chooses to use only for the physical sense-perceptible world. These apply to everything weighable, measurable and so forth, but not to the nature of the gods. Such thoughts are not worthy of the gods; they are of no value to spiritual beings. Therefore thunder resounds to the souls who have succumbed entirely to the materialism of these ideas that are spiritually unworthy and valueless. It thunders to them, when in sleep they seek to pass the Guardian of the Threshold: “Do not cross the threshold! You have misused your ideas in the sense-world. You must remain with them on this side, for you cannot take them with you into the divine world without being paralysed in your souls. ” *Reprinted with kind permission from Das Goetheanum.

3 Again and again Rudolf Steiner speaks of this process of paralysis, which proceeds in our time from the soul-realm, if we seek to experience our own spiritual nature without purify­ ing our soul capacities and permeating our thought activity with spiritual reality, a process which can lead to the destruc­ tion of the bodily basis of our nervous system. Those, however, who do seek to spiritualize their thought processes through a striving for knowledge of the spirit, for a true spiritual science, these are protected from the dangers of such paralysis if they are able to pass the test of soul courage. The voice of courage, urging man to soul-wakefulness, sounds in exhortation as the antidote to the misuse of thought content for purely physical import which leads to paralysis. And when we look about us today, such paralysis and its results in illness, war, terrorism, conflict and world chaos is becoming present in the life of humanity as never before. Referring to these forces of destruction which permeate our whole modern civilization, and the means for overcoming them, Rudolf Steiner said at that New Year time: The image of modern man, with his decadent civilization and decadent schools, asleep before the Guardian of the Threshold, is actually not to be found among the circles of those who earnestly and full-heartedly strive for knowledge of the spirit. Among these there is present only one exhortation — the exhortation which says: “In addition to the perception which you already have of the voice from the spirit lands, you must develop the strong courage to be true to and to stand boldly for this voice — for you have begun to awake!. . . ” The voice calling on man to awaken through courage, this is the other pole, the other symphonic variation in the life of present day civilization. And in closing he said: This should be for us a festival of con­ secrated effort, not only for the beginning of a new year, but for the beginning of a Cosmic Turning-Point — a cosmic new beginning. In this sense, then, as an Easter event, let us therefore look now with courageous gaze and expectation into the future. Translation by Arvia Ege

4 Forgiving

GEORG KUEHLEWIND

Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Our trespass — our debt — is made up of everything that, ac­ cording to our capabilities, talents and faculties, we could possibly give to others, but which we withhold from them, because, through our own natures, we are directed, compelled to this withholding. This gesture of holding back ranges from not-doing — omission — to taking — unjustly; ranges from the passive form of indifference to the aggressive form of hostility and hatred. This “holding back” belongs to the zone of life: as antithesis to that which knows no “closing off": no allegiance to race or nation, to temperament, habits or to any kind of past — and in it there is no mirrored thinking. A living form must be closed in order to become the bearer of consciousness. On the other hand, understanding itself — life — should, in man, be wholly open: like the plant, like the primal image of the plant. This means: to experience thinking as life. Living thinking, or momentary intuition — intuitive knowledge — enables me to recognize what I have caused in another human being, and how I have done it, especially when he has turned against me. In this sense, it is an explicit sign­ post for my self-knowledge, which I should take to myself with gratitude. Through this I come to understand why it was necessary for him to rise up against me, why it was necessary to bring him into this situation. All the responsibility rests ob­ jectively with me. Recognizing “the reasons” only helps me to

5 understand where my own weakness lay. This weakness — how did it affect the other, so that he was forced to turn against me? I do not need to “forgive” him; there is nothing there to forgive. Just to understand this and to ask him for forgiveness: that is how I forgive him; that is how my own trespass is forgiven. The meaning of the plea is: “Give us the self-knowledge necessary to discover our trespass, our guilt against the other; otherwise it will continue on until the time when it is discovered.” When we really behold the guilt in ourselves, it is forgiven; we no longer have any guilt-feeling. It is not true that the other has any debt to us. So long as we assume that, we are trapped in our own guilt. So is our wrong-doing forgiven. And as to the wrong-doing of the other, it becomes clear: it was our own. When the search for fault in ourselves reaches deep enough, we come not only to its immediate and actual cause, but to the underlying guilt itself: to the essence of separateness, the core of self-ness, the not-willing, not-giving, not-yielding, not- forgiving being in us: we come to the one who wants to re­ main as he is, and so denies us entrance into the spiritual world. But this threshold has existed since the primeval debt. And so the examination of the genealogy of a debt can lead back to the beginning. That is the meaning of debt: it is for this and because of this that it exists. It is not a question of a knowledge concerning the debts and indebtedness of each human being, but of an experience: the concrete experience of the current indebtedness that can lead to the recognition of the contours of our own imperfections. The Gesture The spiritual schooling, the concentration, meditation, the exercises, remain mere maneuvering motions of the ego in the interest of its own existence and strengthening, so long as man does not know the fundamental gesture, that of humility. Until then, the exercising is the ego’s preparation for the gesture of self-humbling. But if this gesture, which justifies and sanctifies the exercising, does not occur, it — the process of exercise —

6 remains egotistical. The gesture of humility is the gesture of letting go of one’s self, of letting oneself fall — a paradoxical gesture, whose power comes from relinquishing the power of the ego (Ich) so that the being of the ego is rooted out in the interest of True Being, which is unimaginable — neither to be fathomed nor thought up. So long as I am in the “right” (Rechthaben), so long as I hate, so long as I have fear, so long as I live in anxiety, so long as I wait for the other person to begin — so long can there be no love in me. Love — even if it be only for a single person — drives out all hate, all aversion, every fear. Whenever hate or aversion is in me, or lasting, cultivated anger, my love is of the same substance, is on the same level. So also with my meditation: Although light maintains the plant’s life, the plant brings with it the impurities of the ground. When I discover: I am never right, that truth can never be appropriated, and is therefore no merit of mine, then can I harbor no aversion toward one who has made a mistake, who is “wrong,” for it is not his failing. If, however, I assume that I am right, I should at least draw the only logical conclusion from this view. If the other is in error, makes a mistake, then he is definitely the weaker, the more besieged, the more tempted; I, on the other hand, am the stronger, the healthier one. The potential for helping him is therefore mine, and I must be the first to venture a step. If I wait for him to take the first step, I declare him to be the stronger, I acknowledge that he is in the right. I, however, am caught up in the lie. Whoever seeks or finds the causes, the mistakes, in another, should look for it at once in himself, for seeking the error in another is most certainly a sin — a sin of cognition, guilt in­ curred through the belief in facts, according to which, facts sup­ posedly exist independent of us, of our cognition. Such a fact is supposed to be the error of another person, an error which has nothing to do with us, in which we have no part at all. We assume that we have not deprived the other of anything

7 that could have guarded him against making his mistake or error. The cause is “out there,” in the other person, his man­ ner of behavior was “such and such.” Let us discover in this at­ titude — the attitude of naive moral realism — the beginning of the persecution complex! Let us finally realize: It is not the facts that breed fear, aversion, desire or hate, but there are facts — for me — which “cause” — in me — the fear, desire, aversion and hate, because the fear, aversion, desire, hatred are in me. The facts are such as I am able to see them, to feel them. Desire, aversion, fear, anxiety, traditionalism, clinging to the past — or fleeing from it: all these are manifestations of Eros, of experiencing myself, and wanting to experience myself. The sacrifice we are so unwilling to shoulder concretely is to re­ nounce what belongs to this region: the taking offense, the aversion, the vanity. The acceptance of self-humbling, which then is such no longer, but is only sincerity, based on the recognized reality: I am the cause; I am guilty; it is not a mat­ ter of waiting. This renunciation is feather-light, once it is done. It is furthermore not renunciation, but completion. All of this applies to him who believes it applies to the other, and also to him who feels it applies to himself. Whose guilt was not forgiven? Whom have I not forgiven his guilt? The gesture is: self-humblement. To see through the unreality of my reasonings, to renounce self-esteem, to abstain from referring oneself to the domain of facts surrounding the other human being, to let everything fall away — even myself — and also the relinquishing of any pride in the deed: that is the white magic which begins and ends with the disenchantment, the transformation, of my own being. Nothing else is necessary. The world and my fellow man must only be seen in their reality: that is the enchantment in relation to the world. The white magic consists of man’s clearing the path for what must happen without protesting, without resisting. Then it will happen. The occurrence is not man’s doing. One must not weigh the consequences of the gesture. You cannot weigh them anyhow, because what follows is no human

8 happening. When you consider and weigh, you do nothing anyway. He is great who is able to make himself humble and is not even proud of this, his greatness — who is not humble out of arrogance. He who does not wish to conquer is unconquerable. Let yourself fall away. Sickness is not lack of strength, but a sign of sensitivity. Out of it, strengths are born. He who does not realize that he is sick is not therefore well. He who does not recognize that he has made the mistake has certainly made it, and, more than that, doubled it. Love your enemy. He provides an occasion for your self- humblement, for the recognition of your own reality. He offers you the opportunity not to be hostile, to love your enemy. He has taken the role of the weaker upon himself, so that you could set aside your rightness, your self-pride, your self — so that someone would be there whom you do not wish to con­ quer, over whom you do not wish to be king, since you have recognized your solitary kingship without a single subject as true fact. Love your enemy, for he is not your enemy: He is that only if you consider him to be so. Being good and forgiving shall not be the goals of your striv­ ing: all that is pride and arrogance; let your striving be only to cognize; that is enough. It is enough if you cognize: what you experience as your most precious Self is a disturbance in world existence. Ask to be forgiven for being. Love is only love if within it disavowal, misunderstanding, rejection, resistance, are already encompassed. The new com­ mandment is: Love one another, as I have loved you. It is the forgiveness of betrayal, of faithlessness, even before it is com­ mitted. Such embrace creates you and sustains you even now.

Realization Whoever views the foregoing as rules or advice, and conse­ quently strives to realize it, has misunderstood it. What has thus been described can only be real-ized by one who cognizes

9 it. Cognizing is not acknowledgement, not acceptance of what has been communicated. It is not insight either, but intensified meditation. It is not a matter of norms or standards but of the formulation of meditations that can only be followed by a fur­ ther meditation. Immediate cognition is always required for the “making real,” the making actual of something, not a previous­ ly acquired view, even if beheld in intensified cognition: for realization, memory does not suffice. He who truly cognizes a communication in its own im­ mediate situation, gains, together with the cognition, the strengths and the potential for realization: he gains intuition into the concrete event and the power with which the acting intuition can be brought forth from the depths of his own being onto the earth. With this he takes a step toward the realization of true self-consciousness: the synthesis of the long- separated powers of cognizing and willing. He who approaches the foregoing cognitively, receives the powers of realizing. So long as they were bound to one’s egohood, it was these powers that hindered cognition. Cogni­ tion is surrender — devotion. The soul, in its ego-existence, utilizes the forces of surrender turned towards the body. Cognizing and morality are sustained by exactly the same forces: they stream out in the direction of surrender to either the body or the world. And so are all the efforts of feigned consciousness in vain. No morality is born from it, for its creative powers are surrendered to the body. For just this reason, it is feigned consciousness. In meditative consciousness we must experience the becoming-one-with, the transformation into what is cognized: Another way — there is not. It is a self-surrender, self­ obliteration — pain. It is joy: the coming-into-being in the “other” — the realization. The metamorphosis is: cognition. Cognition is metamorphosis. That cognition only which takes place on the mirrored surface has separated itself from being, in order to know of being and of itself. The greatest hindrance to realization is the fact. Fact, however, is always an already- cognized fact. Just as the already-seen is not the cause of seeing, so the fact also does not cause me to cognize it. Just as

10 the already-seen is the result of seeing, so also is the fact the result of my cognition, and is my experience. And it goes without saying that this experience is never completed as long as I live. Therefore the face of the fact can change, and does change in most cases during life: Today’s misfortune can prove to be a blessing; the joy of today can prove to be a tragic error. The one for whom the facts do not change nor develop, can well suspect that he is not on the right path. Facts subse­ quently turn out to be what they really are. They have no final face for us, they live with us: so long as we live, they are only beginning. The facts have not occurred: they always occur. The facts always tell us something, mostly in inverted language, for we do not understand their true language. If we did comprehend it, perhaps much would take a different course. But according to how we understand this language, it superimposes itself upon our feeling-life. The true language of facts is the original, higher language of our emotional nature which, however, we resist with every nerve and fiber of our body. The facts are planned and carried out by our true self: and therefore we pit ourselves against this with all our might. Whoever believes the facts to be outer occurrences turns the world just as upside down as the one who believes he knows there is a world independent of his cognition. Once, cognition meant change, reshaping, transformation. Teaching signified transformation, because the powers of cognition were cosmic powers, powers of being. In the early stage of the formation of mirrored consciousness, moral commandments could still be ef­ fective. A morality developed from outward sources was still possible. Still earlier, the sensory organs and the organs of cognition were simultaneously formative organs. Comprehen­ sion and self-formation were one and the same process. There was no without, no within, there was only world-process. Still earlier, there was no female, no male; only the human being — the Human Being. Consciousness of self, the consciousness of the true “I,” is the synthesis of the powers of cognizing and willing, in which there is no inner and outer, no man and woman. The power of syn­ thesis comes into motion in love — the highest power of world

11 consciousness, a power standing above man and woman — which helps a new “I”-bearer into its earthly existence. Only the true “I” can accomplish that: Its power stirs in man and woman alike, in the human being. Today, this power of self- consciousness is still sleeping, dreaming. It must also bestir itself in the actualization, the real-ization of forgiveness, of humility. Because it is still sleeping, dreaming, it can be directly moved only in intensified cognition. The world process is a single process, outwardly as well as inwardly. World is the world, cognition and man in one: a single process — cogniz­ ing. The world is Cognizing. That is why wonder is the true beginning-point of cognition. I discover what I do not yet understand — and yet I behold it. Wonder stems out of the world process, it is directed towards this, not to the facts; it leads towards that whence it sprang. It is advisable to accept with wonder and astonishment, with devotion and surrender, what the facts — and most especially the hostile facts — offer me, as I accept everything that the world offers. And so, accepting their lesson, not with resis­ tance, but positively, that is through intuition, I can, without prejudice — in non-imitative, brand-new, unpreconceived cognition — allow the facts to reveal to me what they want to teach me. What they teach is acceptance. Acceptance, however, means: I must understand what I am supposed to ac­ cept, otherwise I do not accept That. That comes into being through my cognition. The redemption has already taken place, otherwise we could not resist it. The capacities and methods for its attainment are at man’s disposal: the World in her own light. Realization is acceptance; acceptance — cognition; cognition — transformation. Beloved, now we are the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is (1 John: 3, 2). Translation by John Miller and Maria St. Goar

12 Lines on Easter Drawn from the Carmina of John Scotus Eriugena. Thus sang the holy fathers, Sanctified by the Holy Spirit, Mystic teachings to their Father — “Eternal Word Of the Father By whom all Was created; In order unfolded From secret places; By whom arose With all its forms This one world As in its exemplar; Who disposed in the world In their high castles All orders of angels And what else you may see. Then Paradise had man, With primacy over them, With mind to contemplate, Made like unto God. But unwilling to complete The excellent likeness M an fell, Dragging his offspring Down to the depths. Yet lest such an image Of God pass away, God began to assume The likeness of man — Whence born in the world, Enduring sin’s law

13 By His death He Himself Undid my death. He by whom all are, Stand, live and move, This God died That man might live. ...” A heavy burden is lifted, Grace alone remains. . . . O Mountain of Strength, To flesh-depths descending, Fixed to the Wood, You passed into Hades; Our double death destroyed By your single dying: lo! The whole man is made new. So, Magdalen, why seek Your buried Lord, In mourning? With death defeated, Behold your God in joy! Cease thinking You see the gardener’s face! The Lord is living! Whom you mourn, behold! The world today In fitting light Brings forth rejoicing. Inspiration shoots its flowers, Seed-producing, to the sky — And everywhere is Christ Sweet fruit to his own. Christ is risen! The universe sings, Alleluia! Translation by Christopher Bamford

14 Novalis and the Easter Thought

CHRISTOPHER BAMFORD

I say to everyone — He lives! And has arisen from death, That He is present in our midst And ever gives us breath. Novalis, Sacred Songs, VIII The whole of our western culture needs the Easter thought, needs, in other words, to be lifted to the Spirit.. . . Easter must become an inner festival, a festival in which we celebrate in ourselves the victory of the Spirit over the body.. . . When a sufficiently large number of men realize that the Spirit must come to life again in modern civilization, the World-Easter thought will become a reality. . . . Rudolf Steiner, Spirit Triumphant, lecture IV, The Festivals and their Meaning — Easter The Spirit must come to life! The Easter thought, which our time needs so profoundly, is that in which Novalis lives. In his life the veil of appearances is lifted, and we see the spiritual at work in history and hear the victory of the Spirit proclaimed. For Novalis, light itself, whose manifold transformations create physical reality, was only a shadow of a divine-spiritual light, awaiting human consciousness for its release and its fulfillment. In him the living knowledge was reborn that, since Golgotha, man and earth were once again united with the cosmos, and that all things were now infused with the Spirit of the Resurrection, wanting only human sacrificial action for their restoration.

15 Novalis was born in 1772, as Friedrich von Hardenberg, in­ to an austere, puritanical, Pietistic household which, governed by a precise routine, revolved around devotions and bible lessons. Until his ninth year the poet was dreamy, backward and slow to learn. Then came a crisis — dysentery — and months of sickness, with death expected daily. But he revived and with the cure manifested a remarkable mental awakening, demon­ strating great gifts of memory, attention and observation. Soon he outgrew the tutors that the neighborhood was able to pro­ vide and, in order to remedy this and at the same time to strengthen his faith, his father sent him away to the founding Pietistic community of Neudietendorff. Friedrich went, but resisted inwardly. A new sense of in­ dividuality was coming to light within him. This was strengthened by the next turn of events, for his uncle — a bachelor and man of the world, a Knight of the German Order of Knighthood — had heard of his nephew’s predica­ ment and offered to help. Friedrich thus found himself thrust suddenly into the midst of the worldly and sceptical rationalist culture of the enlightenment. For the next years — from twelve to eighteen — Friedrich lived in this polarity of Pietistic father and enlightenment uncle. Then, at eighteen, he went to Jena, where he studied history and philosophy under the poet Schiller. Next, he moved to Leipzig, where he met the Schlegels, founders of German romanticism. Finally, he went to Wittenberg, where Luther had nailed his Theses. Here, in 1795, at the age of twenty-three, he matriculated. By now he had written and published some poems, and had read and discussed a great deal. But apart from his personal appearance, which was gentle, innocent, luminous and trans­ parent, suggesting to Friedrich Schlegel the features of St. John the Evangelist as portrayed by Duerer — apart, that is, from who he was — there was nothing yet about him of Novalis. He was still Friedrich von Hardenberg, a brilliant and somewhat scattered young man, who had not yet found his direction.

16 But the seed of that direction had already been sown. On October 25th, 1794, Friedrich was appointed law clerk in Tennstedt. On November 17th of that year, on a journey to collect taxes, he who was to write, We dream of journeys through the universe, but is not the universe within us? saw Sophia von Kuehn for the first time. Within a quarter of an hour, his mind was made up. Sens­ ing affinities closer than blood, he saw in this young girl, not yet thirteen years of age, the immortal idea of the being of man. Some­ thing in him then began the painful process of awakening. This is one of the great mysteries. Sophia was to become for him the vehicle of unity, of resurrection, of life itself, and yet she was only an unlettered schoolchild. Who or what was she? In his Introduction to the Works of

Novalis, Tieck wrote: “No description can express in what grace and celestial harmony the fair being moved, what beauty shone in her, what softness and majesty encircled her.” Goethe, too, was moved by her. For Friedrich himself she was “one of the noblest, idealest figures ever to walk the earth.” And yet the portrait in his diary is of a completely human and thoroughly natural mixture of qualities. The only suggestion of something different enters in a strange phrase in which he notes: Sophia does not wish to be anybody for she is somebody. On her thirteenth birthday, on March 21st, 1795, Friedrich and Sophia became engaged. In his betrothal ring, Friedrich inscribed: May Sophia become my guardian angel. Then, in autumn of that year, Sophia fell ill. Her sickness came in painful waves; she suffered agonies; and in the measure that Sophia suffered and physically wasted away, Friedrich’s love and devotion increased. Finally, two days before her fifteenth birthday, on March 19th, 1797, Sophia died. Friedrich was twenty-five. Then on Good Friday of the same year came the death of his dear brother, Erasmus. Thus death surrounded Friedrich and became, as it were, the womb out of which the great transformation would occur. Through the death of Sophia and his continuing, perpetually expanding love for her, the process of his rebirth in the Spirit

17 began. He wrote to Schlegel: M y love has become a flame that con­ sumes all that is earthly.. . . There are within my soul more powers of healing, of endurance, of resistance, than I myself had known. To Woltmann, he wrote: I am wholly content. I have gained anew the power that rises over death. M y being has taken on unity and form. Even now a new, inner life is burgeoning within me. Distraught with grief, torn apart with pain, Friedrich had begun to seek Sophia within himself. Turning aside from the bright luminous world of the senses, he began to discover holy, ineffable, mysterious Night within. Overcome with profound sadness, gradually he had begun to sense a precious balm and, feeling the heavy wings of his soul uplifted, he discovered a new soul-world within, one whose wonders far outweighed those of the day-world without. Here he felt for the first time truly human and, moved beyond anything he had ever known before, he offered himself up to the Dark Queen of the Night, whose dominion is timeless and spaceless and where the secret sacrifice of love burns eternally. Outwardly, Friedrich began to visit Sophia’s grave, going for the first time on Easter Morning. Less than a month later, it occurred: In the evening I visited Sophia. I was indescribably happy there. There were flashes of ecstasy. I wafted the grave from me as though it were dust. Centuries passed by in a flash. Her presence was tangible. I felt she might appear at any moment. In the Hymns to the Night, he puts it thus: All at once the bond of birth broke the Light’s fetters.. . . The region rose gently aloft and over this region hovered my released and new-born spirit. The mound became a cloud of dust and through the cloud I beheld the transfigured features of my beloved. Now he knew when the final morning will be: when Light no longer frightens away Night and Love, and slumber shall be eternal and only an inexhaustible dream. In other words when the tyranny of mere sense-perception is overcome and sense-reality no longer frightens away super-sensible knowledge, reality is transformed into a continuous vision of creative imagination. With this experience, Novalis was born — metamorphosed from Friedrich von Hardenberg. In his diary entry for June 30th, he simply notes: “Christ and Sophia.”

18 Renewed in this way, Novalis returned to life with vigor and purpose. He moved to Freiburg to study mining and tech­ nology, and, reading deeply in alchemy, Plotinus, Boehme, he began to write and publish. Indeed, as though the transforma­ tion that he was undergoing could be transferred, in fact had to be transferred, to everything, Novalis now conceived the dream of making everything new, of renewing all science, art and religion. This project he called Romanticism. The world must be romanticized, he wrote. In this way one discovers its original meaning. Romanticizing is nothing but a qualitative raising to a higher power.... The lower self becomes identified with the higher. This is the Easter thought. Through such “magic idealism,” sense-reality was to be con­ tinually informed by supersensible knowledge, poetry was to be “philosophized,” religion and science “poeticized,” until, humanity becoming all in all, paradise was regenerated. Poetry here is to be understood as “practical religion,” religion as “practical poetry,” both overcoming the oppositions between the world and mind, nature and the cosmos, humanity and God. This poetry, then, is creative of the whole person. As Novalis wrote of the Sage in “The Apprentices of Sais”: He looked for analogies in all things — conjunctures, correspondences, till he could no longer see anything in isolation. All the perceptions of his senses crowded into great variegated images: he heard, saw, touched and thought simultaneously. He loved to bring strangers together. Now stars were men to him, now men stars, stones were animals, clouds were plants; he played with powers and phenomena, he knew just where to find this shape or the other, to make them appear. We must not forget, however, that it is Sophia alone who makes this vision possible. Indeed, since his experience at her tomb, Novalis wrote that he had begun to perceive — to dream, to know — “in” and “through” Sophia, that she had become for him an organ and a realm of true cognition. It is as though through the physical death of Sophia, through the physical separation from her that made him seek for her within himself, Novalis underwent a great purification in which all that was impure in his love for Sophia was burned

19 away. Through her death, he seems to have experienced the death of all that was petty, possessive, material, impenetrable and earthbound in himself; through pure selfless grief he was able to let himself die into her. Then, at the graveside, it was as though he were turned inside out, so that what was within, crossing, came without and simultaneously what was without came within, crossing again. Commentators have said that he arrived at the point where subject and object were indis­ tinguishable. It is perhaps truer to say, however, that, purified within and turned about, the outer became transparent, direct­ ly permeable by thought and was revealed as the accomplished work of the Gods now accessible within. One reached the goal at Sais; he lifted the veil of the Goddess, only to see, wonder of wonders - himself. From this experience, then, Novalis could see that the cosmos and nature, turned into a corpse by materialistic science, was capable of resurrection and that this resurrection depended upon human activity and cooperation, that, in his words: Humanity is the higher sense of the planet, the nerve that binds the planet to the upper world, the eye that raises it to heaven. Thus Novalis knew that We are on a mission. We are called for the fashioning of the earth. And he knew, too, that the goal of this, as in St. John’s teaching, is love. Love is the ultimate goal of the world’s history, he wrote, the Amen of the universe. The heart is the key to the world and of life.. . . From this point of view, Christ is the Key to the World. This Christ is not primarily the Crucified One, nor the King, nor the Teacher, but rather that Spirit Who, since Golgotha, in the words of Friedrich Benesch, permeates and fills the “in-between,” the crossing-points, the boundaries and differences between things. The Throne of the Soul, runs a frag­ ment, is there where interior and exterior fuse. There is fusion at every point of their interpenetration. It is as though in Novalis’ participa­ tion in Sophia’s death and the purification this wrought within him, turning him inside out, Christ arose at the crossing over of inside and outside, just as he arose at the crossing over of past and future on Golgotha:

20 Suddenly, as though from Heaven From the grave the stone was riven, And my soul was opened wide. Who appeared, my life restoring, Ask not, nor who knelt adoring. . . . This impulse of resurrection we may experience as the guiding center of all that Novalis did. It is the unifying ele­ ment, the heart of his teaching. In his essay, Christendom or

Europe, for instance, the theme is “history as gospel”: history as the bearer of the Good News. Novalis composed it in the autumn of 1799; he read it in Jena in November, a year and a half before he died. It met with tremendous resistance from his contemporaries, who were not yet ready for it. It was even omitted from the first edition of his collected writings. One can see why. Novalis begins with an idealized picture of primitive, almost primordial Christianity, of a timeless Church based upon “child-like faith in Christ,” His vicar on earth (the Pope), His Divine Mother, and the Communion of Saints. Everywhere the Gospel of Life was preached; everyone sought to make the Kingdom of Heaven the only kingdom on earth. But this was

a first love. It died away amid the press of business life. Wars, schisms proliferated. Protestantism arose, a true impulse, but one diverted from its truth. Dividing the invisible Church, shattering the dream of a universal Christian community, it fragmented Europe into nationalisms. For Novalis, Luther himself is the chief offender. Misjudging the spirit of Christianity, he introduced the idolatry of the “let­ ter,” and so forgot the worship and the wisdom of the “spirit.” Forgetting the esotericism of the Bible, he substituted for it a

different, highly alien, worldly science, philosophy. Hatred of religion, of the spirit, of imagination and emotion was the con­ sequence. Poetry was shorn from nature. Every trace of the

Holy was obliterated. The infinite creative music of the universe was reduced to the monotonous clatter of a monstrous mill.

21 Chaos and anarchy followed. But in this — between the horns of misguided religion and misguided philosophy — Novalis sensed the possibility of a reconciling agent, “a third element, which is at once secular and superworldly.” Until the great agape — which would be brought about by religion, by joy and “faith in the universal capacity of all earthly things to be the bread and wine of eternal life” — wars would continue. But the presence of the dream of reconciliation foretold its future. Novalis foresaw: a new Golden Age, with dark and infinite eyes, an Age prophetic, wonder-working, miraculously healing, comfort­ ing and kindling eternal life — a great Age of reconciliation, a Saviour who, like a good spirit, is at home among men, believed in though not seen, visible under countless forms to believers, consumed as bread and wine, embraced as a bride, breathed as air, heard as word and song. . . . Thus Novalis, together with that tremendous company of souls known as the Romantics, is a prophet for a new era of peace and harmony, a new culture in which science, art and religion rise again in unity, and work through mankind for the transformation of earth. Like all prophets, Novalis was not so much of his own time as of a future only he could foresee. When he died, his friend Tieck edited an edition of the available collected works. Many papers, however, remained, unknown to the public. Then in 1930, the descendants of the poet offered a large collection of manuscripts for auction. Shocken, the Jewish publisher, bought them; but the war intervened before they could be published, and it was not until 1968 that they finally saw the light of day. These papers, it now turns out, contained over 2,000 fragments and constituted the notes or groundwork for Novalis’

Totalwissenschaft or Encyclopedia. Those who have studied them say that his thought as manifested in these notes was not only remarkable in his time, but so far in advance of it that even we cannot yet understand it. In this sense, Novalis is a teacher for the future. “When artists will be pious and love Christ like Novalis,” wrote Schleiermacher, “then will the great resurrection be celebrated.”

22 Selected Fragments

NOVALIS (Friedrich von Hardenberg)

From “Pollen,” published in Schlegel’s journal “Athenaeum,” 1798: In the beginning, poets and priests were one, and only later times have separated them. The true poet is however always a priest, just as the true priest has ever remained a poet. And should not the future restore the old condition of things again? The human world is the communal organ of the gods. Poetry unites them, as us. Life is the beginning of death. Life is for the sake of death. Death is both ending and beginning, both separation and a closer union with oneself. Through death the reduction is com­ pleted. How can one have a sense for something if he does not bear the seed of it within? Whatever I am to understand I must develop organically within myself; and that which I seem to learn is but nourishment, an incitement to the organism. Man subsists in the truth. If he sacrifices the truth, he sacrifices himself. Whoever betrays the truth, betrays himself. Here it is not a matter of lying, but rather of acting against one’s conviction. The highest task of self-cultivation is to take possession of one’s transcendental self, to be at once the ego of one’s ego. Lack of a complete sense and understanding for others is all

23 the less surprising. Without complete understanding of oneself one will never learn truly to understand others.

From New Fragments, published posthumously: The greatest good consists in imagination. Through absolute will, love can pass over into religion. One becomes worthy of the highest being only through death.

Notes in the Margin of Life: To play is to experiment with chance. All chance is miraculous — the touching of a higher being — a problem, a datum of the active religious sense. Every affliction of nature is a memory of a higher homeland, of a higher, more intimately related natural world. — Translation by Frederick Amrine Persephone From a play for a fifth grade All in the golden sunlight I spent my carefree youth. Now I have grown older And learned a deeper truth. When I descend in darkness, I take with me the light, For I am both, they live in me, In me the two unite. I weave the light and darkness; The shuttle is my soul. I rise, I fall, I rise again; The world is woven whole. William Ward

24 The Self-Chastisement of a Derelict*

ALBERT STEFFEN

In front of the main entrance to the school building stood a fountain. Beyond this was a rocky outcrop where alpine flowers grew. When Martin, the teacher in the school, examined the soil early in spring, he found it in miserable condition. The granite had been laid bare, the soil churned up, and the roots of the plants destroyed by moisture, frost, or clumsy footprints. Even here in the valley Martin wanted to have these flowers around him, and therefore he resolved to fetch fresh ones from the mountain that loomed in the distance. He made this the occasion to take a few weeks leave. His little daughter, nine years old, he left with an old and trustworthy maid. She lived on the ground floor of the house, washed the windows, swept the corridors, and cooked for the boys. She was easy to get along with, if one let her do things in the accustomed way. She could work without supervision. To fill his own place and take charge of the pupils, Martin chose a young apprentice teacher. He was a lanky youth with a long face and a stooping gait. He had considerable knowledge and mused continually, behind his spectacles, on how he could acquire more. Martin recommended to his care a swarthy young man, a derelict who took care of the gardens. This man had peculiarities that one had to guard against, lest they cause harm. In the hothouse, which was the only place warm enough for his taste, he had set up an old cot among the rubber hoses, *From Novellen.

25 pruning shears, and other garden tools, and there he used to sleep. He grafted and pruned. He planted what the cook needed. He had special luck with giant cucumbers. Privately, he carried on experiments. For example, he cultivated wonderfully col­ ored mushrooms. As soon as Martin had left the school the swarthy young man began to play up to the substitute teacher and soon had him in the palm of his hand. He showed that he had the gift of prophecy. But he would foresee only somber things. He predicted a flu epidemic, and it occurred. Once, as he was taking a walk with the substitute, he stopped on a bridge and said: “There are spirits hovering over the bridge to lure innocent people to their death.” A moment later, a child fell off the bridge and sank in the water. Help arrived too late. Thus he prophesied many ac­ cidents and crimes. He recognized an arsonist by the flickering of his eyes; a murderer by his gait and the swing of his arms. When he walked through the garden with the pupils and pushed aside a bush with his stick, there was always a dead animal behind it. The substitute had a hunger for anecdotes and examples. These events and the curious stories that the mushroom-grower told, made a deep impression on him. He believed everything. “How gently my ancestors died. They fell asleep and fluttered away,” said the derelict. He explained that in ancient times people had not really felt death, and that in the course of history it had taken on ever crueler forms and greater power. “Now, when we are more rational than ever before, death seems most senseless. Am I telling the truth or not? Hasn’t the air, that used to be the breath of God, become the breath of death? Can’t you smell the corruption in the earth?” But this was not enough. He demonstrated to the substitute teacher that he himself had qualities that worked for death, that he shared in the guilt for the desolation of the world. The result of such speeches was darkness, in which every ob­ ject took on the form of an implement with which one could do oneself an injury; anxiety about every action; lethargy. Nevertheless, the substitute believed that he had to go on listening to the other’s words. They seemed to be true. He 26 noted that his joy in life slowly returned when the dark man left him alone. But he said to himself that this was only because he was deceiving himself and was afraid to face the desolation within himself. He had no confidence in the good in him. What he learned from the derelict, he told to the pupils. He thought it was necessary to instruct them, as early as possible, about how things really were, so that they would be less ex­ posed to disappointment. Therefore he suggested to the dark derelict that he should give lessons to the children. On the day when the pupils gathered in the big hall for the first lesson, Martin’s little daughter was sitting with the maid in her room and scrawling all kinds of figures on a slate. “What is that supposed to be?” asked the old woman as she looked at the doodlings. “That? Our boys.” “Oh, what are they doing?” “They are dragging sacks.” “What are in the sacks?” “Apples.” “O h.” “They are road-apples.” “Yes,” the child went on, “and that is the substitute teacher.” With five strokes she drew a figure like Punch. His legs were dragging on the ground. Around his throat there was a line. His tongue was hanging out. “He has hanged himself.” “That is horrible,” cried the maid. She drew the child to her and asked urgently, “Why do you say such things?” “I don’t know,” the child answered absently. “Listen to me,” said the maid and raised her finger. But she forgot the reproof that was on her lips, because suddenly a ter­ rible change came over the child. Her eyes began to roll. Palpitations shook her. Her breathing stopped. She started to collapse. The woman took her on her lap. In her arms the convulsions ebbed into sleep. She carried the little one to her bed, felt her pulse, and thought, although it was beating well, “If only her father were here.” She could not get rid of her restlessness.

27 At this moment Martin, who was sitting in a mountain meadow after having dug up a golden hawkweed, felt himself summoned by an inner voice to go home. He knew at once that a disaster was preparing. But what sort of disaster he could not tell. He packed soil around the roots of his plant, put it in a box with the others that he had collected, laid damp moss over them, and walked down to the valley with them. The journey usually needed a day’s walk. Martin made his feet fly and took barely five hours. One on the high pastures where he had found the flowers; one through fir-woods; one through a mixed forest; one through stands of poplar. The changes in the trees told how fast he was going. In the last hour he walked on a dusty road through towns and villages. When he arrived, the maid was standing in front of the school building. “How is the child?” he asked at once. “Sleeping,” she replied. The door opened. The girl looked through the crack, still in her nightshirt, and cried: “I am getting up.” “Put on your clothes,” said the father and handed her the box. “Take the flowers and carry them to the rocks. I will come soon.” Hastily he went up toward the big hall, where the pupils were still assembled. He heard the derelict’s voice from above. “What is he leading the boys into?” He feared the worst. He ran up the stairs. But at the door he paused, listened, slipped in unseen, and hid himself behind a post. The pupils sat there as though paralyzed. Their eyes were staring at the front of the room. There, at the teacher’s desk, stood the derelict, foaming, wildly excited, his dark skin shin­ ing from the hot blood beneath. He was speaking of the destruction of the world. “The will of man is set on killing,” he said. “His thinking strains for ways to increase death. Greater evils than these are preparing. Sickness is bred in the bed of lust. Frosts, colder than the Arctic Ocean! Fevers, hotter than the desert wind! Vomiting like volcanoes! Roaring in the ears like hurricanes!

28 Carbuncles and abscesses like the craters on the moon! We will find rotting matter on the stars to inject into the earth for death. It will be a field of corpses. The mist is rising around us already. Can’t you see the shadow beside you? Death has long shanks. No one can get away from him. The reaper is biting grass. The glutton is chewing dirt. The drunkard is at his last gasp. The business man is closing his books. The professor is giving up the ghost. The parson must have faith in this. The gravedigger is falling into the pit. And if anyone wants to know more, death closes his eyes. He is sitting on your neck, he is squatting on your chest, he is grabbing at your legs.” The air in the room was as heavy as a nightmare. The substitute got up and stumbled toward the door. “Where are you going?” cried the derelict. The substitute teacher made a sign of hanging himself. “Stop,” said Martin and came out from behind the post. The tone of his voice compelled the substitute to stand still. Then Martin went up to the derelict, his eyes burning with courage and resolution, but also with mercy, and said: “It would be as you say, if Christ had not come. Why don’t you say something about His deed? Hasn’t it come to your ears? The earth, you say, is the place of death. All right, Christ comes from regions where death has no dominion. He has the sun in Him. Our nature is filled with death. His is not. If we receive Him, we are children of the All, not just of the mortal earth. He came down so that we could find Him in the earth. He died so that we could experience Him even in death. Dying is a chance to come closer to Christ. Dying is a beginning and not an end. Dying is a carrying-out of fate and guilt. Dying is a breaking-up of evil.

29 Dying is a freeing of the good. Dying is a birth in the spirit. Dying is a seed for the higher life. This is no calamity. Since Christ came, a dead man can be alive and a live man dead. Don’t you know this? If you do know it, why do you keep still about it? Speak up!” He was pressing close to him and putting his question with flaming looks. The derelict fled back to the wall. “I know,” Martin went on, “the powers that brought Golgatha about are at their work again. The liars, the butchers, the crucifiers of those days have come back. They are working and triumphing in certain men. They will never rest. They want mankind to be destroyed. Do you belong among them? Speak up!” He came closer and closer, stretched out his arms, and cried: “I am not afraid of death!” Then the derelict dropped something with a long sting that he had been hiding in his sleeve, and slipped away. Martin picked it up and found that it was a syringe, such as is used for injections. A drop of blood was still hanging on it. The pupils began to stir. Now, as their horror faded away, they could begin gradually to understand what had happened. The substitute teacher came to Martin and said: “I see that I am not equal to my task. Please let me resign.” Martin answered: “We are here to withstand temptations and thereby become stronger. You have acted according to your understanding. If you learn through what you have gone through, you will be wise.” Now the maid came in with a broom and a mop to clean the floor. She began sweeping, and the pupils who stood in the way she shooed out into the corridor. “I know,” said the substitute, continuing to reproach himself, “that I am to blame. I was the one who let the dark man speak to the class, which he had no business to do. I led him astray by my weakness so that he could lead others astray. I am to blame for his fall.”

30 “Come, all of you,” said Martin, “we will look for him.” They found him at the back of the hothouse, standing in front of a plant that was like no plant they had ever seen, here or anywhere else, in books or in pictures. He must have been raising it secretly. It grew out of a manure bed; it had great cone-shaped warts along the stalk, and on the sharp edges of the warts were thorns like fishhooks. Its color was fiery red. The dark man turned around and saw that he was surrounded. Then he threw himself with hands and feet on the terrible plant, giving no heed to the thorns, and in a moment he had torn it to pieces and was stamping on it. Then he sank to his knees and held out his arms. “Forgive me,” he cried, “I was drunk, I had given myself an injection of the juice of this plant.” He was bleeding all over. Martin put his arm around him and said: “Now we are at peace.” Then the whole group walked to the rocky outcrop. The lit­ tle daughter was already standing there, holding the box with the alpine plants. She greeted the pupils, she kissed her father, she smiled at the substitute, she even had a glance for the swarthy man. But he did not notice this. He had bowed his head. Martin opened the box, took the little shrubs out carefully, and laid them on the rock: pink, primrose, blue and yellow violets, purple Canterbury bells, purple gentians, and around them all a wreath of green moss. Then the derelict burst out suddenly: “I was the one who raped the earth to make her produce that devil-plant.” Again he began to rage at himself. “Don’t give in to remorse,” Martin admonished him. “It would be better to bring some water so that we can sprinkle the flowers.” Translation by Norman Macbeth

31 Easter The Voice of Awakening Man

Oh, do you know, Are you aware, That Christ is arisen Everywhere! That He moves and breathes Through earth and air, Enfolding each being in a bourne of light That gifts the heart with a power of sight — A sun-lit seeing Of the essence of being — As new and as fresh As a frond in the spring, As shy and swift As a bird on the wing — Revealing and awakening Everything! When your heart is aching, Your whole soul shaking — Can you not sense The new dawn breaking! — Under the clash and roar of steel That rocks the nations and makes them reel, Oh, can you not feel — Like the cleansing core at the heart of a storm, In the grace of His pure resurrected form, How the cosmic springs of His life, His love and His being Are cleansing the world — and feeding The thirsting, arid wastes Of the human race — freeing The will-awakening tides Of this heart-lit seeing That hides At the kernel of thought —

32 That spaceless haven Where love and freedom are breathed and wrought And truth abides. Oh can you not see With this dawning perceiving, How His deed of healing— Tender, outpouring, Renewing, transforming — Flows with a bounty that is quenchless, relentless, With a freshening glory, defiled and defenseless In the onslaughts of darkness — Yet waking, shaking and shattering all The empty machinations Of mammon’s malignant mechanizations — Till the towers of evil crumble and fall, To lie like litter, aghast, in awful sprawl — Transmuted to their foundations To moldering loam for the seeds of life By the chastening breath Of His reticent might — That matchless light Of heaven’s birth On earth Through death — That moves and breathes Through earth and air, Enfolding each being With loving care. No single one need now despair — For Christ is arisen Every where! —Arvia Ege

33 The Mysteries of the Black Sea

LONA TRUEDING

At the north-eastern shore of the Black Sea, at the foot of the 7000m high, wild, craggy mountain range of the Caucasus, a bulwark against Russia, stood the ancient city of Colchis. We already know of Colchis from the Greek Saga of the Argonauts and their quest for the Golden Fleece. It was the task of Jason to rescue the Golden Fleece of a sacred Ram (lamb) from the claws of a fierce dragon, who watched the Golden Fleece day and night, and return it to his people. With the help of the sorceress Queen Medea, who stupified the dragon, Jason was able to rescue the Golden Fleece for future evolution. The legend indicates the historical transition from the epoch of the Bull to that of the Ram or “Lamb,” i.e. the fourth post- atlantean epoch, and with it the approach of the Christ Being to earth. Rudolf Steiner says that the Golden Fleece of the Lamb of God indicated the golden radiant astral body, still un­ dimmed by the approaching egotism of humanity. Thus the place Colchis was already imbued with the forces of the Sun, and already prepared to be the place for the sacred Mystery Center and School of the Black Sea. Now we can ask what lies behind the foundation of this Mystery Center. In the early Christian era, about 400 A.D., a great occult conference took place in the spiritual world, con­ cerned with the initiation of Christian Rosenkreutz. He was associated with certain other great individuals who should lead the future civilizations of humanity. There were present not only personalities in incarnation on the physical plane but also those who lead a bodyfree existence in the spiritual world.

34 Three individualities of the greatest significance for the evolu­ tion of humanity were the teachers of this Mystery School at Colchis: Zaratas, the reincarnated Zarathustra, Skythianos, (Scythianos) the bearer of Manichean teaching, and Boddha, the Buddha who was not incarnated anymore, but taught from his spirit body. These were the three great spiritual teachers whose thoughts streamed down from the divine spiritual world to impulsate those who visited this Mystery Center. Zaratas, as an incarnation of Zarathustra, could impart the wisdom of the Sun and Stars to his pupils. The greatest of these was Pythagoras, who himself became aware of the music of the spheres as a disciple of Zaratas and through him of Zarathustra. Rudolf Steiner tells us that Pythagoras was reborn as one of the Three Wise Men of the East and ultimately became one of the initiated disciples of Jesus of Nazareth (Lec­ ture: “From Buddha to Christ,” Budapest, May 31, 1909). Zarathustra, through Zaratas, points to the highest Sun-Being which descended to the earth and the transformation of the earth into a sun-filled future planet. This was the path on which this teacher led humanity. Boddha was the name of that Initiate who taught in the Mysteries of the Black Sea as the Buddha in his spirit-body. In the sixth century before Christ he was incarnated as Gautama Buddha. He rose in his 29th year from the rank of Bodhisattva to that of Buddha. After this he no longer appears on earth in physical incarnation, but he continues to work for the earth in sending down his influence from the spiritual world. For the more advanced pupils and neophytes in this center of initia­ tion, it was possible to receive instructions of one who teaches in his etheric body. These pupils were grouped according to their maturity into two unequal divisions and only the more advanced were chosen for the smaller division. This small group of initiates, who also were endowed with deep humility, endeavored to receive the Christ Impulse to an advanced degree. They became the specially chosen followers of St. Paul and received the Christ Impulse directly in the manner St. Paul himself did before Damascus. Thus Buddhism continued and

35 was able to influence in a certain way not only Asiatic life but also those who were imbued with the Christ Impulse, the men­ tal life of Europe. Here the great teachings of Buddha were particularly acceptable to its population because this population was arranged according to the idea of the equality of all human beings (in contrast to the caste order of the East). The pupils and neophytes who had gained only the Buddha Impulse became the teachers of equality and the brotherhood of man in Europe. The other group who had additionally received the Christ Impulse considered it their chief task to work more especially through Moral Power, moral forces which worked so strongly that they could purify Europe from the substances of the old disease-demons which had swept through Europe since the leader Attila, with his hordes of Huns, invaded Europe. This is a striking example of how moral power enters man, and how it must be understood as something quite special. It was originally present in man when his astral body still radiated in the golden light of the Sun as the Golden Fleece. But man’s descent to earth had tarnished the pure gold of the astral body. Now through the Christ Impulse and the working of a strengthened “I” or Ego in man, humanity is on the ascent again. This strong moral tenet permeated the Mysteries of the Black Sea and was represented through the greatest initiated teacher: Skythianos. Skythianos, or Scythianos, was a highly developed individual in ancient times. In later incarnations he became the teacher of the esoteric schools of Europe preparing the Rose-Cross Mysteries. As a grand Masterbuilder he was the divine keeper of the Seal related to the Mysteries of the Temple — the physical body of Man. Rudolf Steiner tells us in The East in the Light of the West (p. 213) of Skythianos as the deeply hidden Initiate who preserved in ancient Europe the primeval Atlan­ tean Wisdom, a wisdom which penetrated deeply, even into all that constitutes the physical body. These mysteries are the ultimate ones of death and resurrection and of the passage through eternity. Skythianos, among the hidden initiates in Europe, was even more hidden than they, yet he brought into

36 being that esoteric stream which is public and open as well. Since the Mystery of Golgatha and the rending of the veil before the Holiest of the Holy, everything that had been hid­ den before now came out into the open for all men to see and to ponder on. As has already been described — through the impulse of one of the most significant conferences in the Spirit World, three of the greatest initiates reflected their forces downward from the spiritual world. They were called together by a fourth, even greater than these three. This individuality was Manes, the highest messenger of the Christ. He called these three together to consult with them as to how the wisdom which had lived through post-atlantean times might gradually come to life again and unfold ever more gloriously into the future. The plan for the future evolution of earthly civilization which was then decided upon was preserved and carried over into those mysteries which are the Rosicrucian Mysteries. Yet the task of Skythianos was much more comprehensive. He found that the ground on which seeds of wisdom were to be sown was cor­ roded by evil and he knew that human thoughts will lose their divine cosmic origin more and more and will come to serve the deepest materialism, egotism and greed. But he also knew that only through love and deep compassion was a salvation of the evil possible. Here he followed his great teacher and leader Manes, who stood over these three initiates as the represen­ tative of the “I” or Ego, which is always closely linked with evil (see Rudolf Steiner’s “The Lord’s Prayer”). The Manichean stream has to do with the fundamental realities of good and evil, and its high aim is not to cast the evil out, but to transform it into good. This moral impulse permeated the western world from then on. Morality is a divine gift that was given to man in the beginning before his deepest descent. Later it became submerged by the gradual descent of civiliza­ tions. According to Plato, the first virtue is wisdom, and he who does not strive for wisdom is not moral. The gods once gave wisdom to the unconscious human soul so that it possessed this

37 wisdom instinctively; but in our age, that of the fifth post- Atlantean epoch, we must work and endeavor to make this knowledge conscious. Through the spiritual science of Anthro­ posophy, we realize that the ideas which are imparted to us are really something divine, upon which we are now allowed to reflect and realize that the world has been ordered according to these divine thoughts. When Anthroposophy stands before us, in this aspect, we will understand that it has been given to us so that we should now be able to fulfil our mission, and to this aim we must know how the three initiate teachers with the fourth above them once acted so that we can find a renewal of the impulses of the Mysteries of the Black Sea. The light of Wisdom through Zaratas. The equality of Human Brotherhood through Buddha, and the Healing Power of the progressive good to transform evil through Skythianos and the Manicheans. Above them and uniting them, the flaming torch of Manes points far into the future.

The very heart of heaven Now throbs within the earth. A secret life is stirring Since heaven’s earthly birth. A secret sound is swelling That never has been heard. Within the world is working A clear and sacred word. The message that it carries Is wrought by God’s own art. The poem of all poems Now moves the human heart. — Rex Raab

38 The Guardian Spirit of Research into Destiny* Part XIV

FRIEDRICH HIEBEL

How are we to recognize the task of Anthroposophy on behalf of mankind in relation to its source and origin? This question arises inevitably for anyone who follows the descriptions of the two spiritual streams of Christian Rosenkreutz and of the Maitreya-Buddha, as Rudolf Steiner presents them. “Anthroposophy,” its creator emphasizes, “is the spiritual science of today.” Our spiritual movement embraces a far wider sphere than that known to Rosicrucianism, which did not yet include insight into reincarnation and karma. Without this fundamental knowledge of the continuity of destiny throughout the course of various lives, it would not have been possible through anthroposophical spiritual science to grasp the nature and being of Christian Rosenkreutz. And on the other hand, there would also have been no understand­ ing for the spiritual movement connected with the secrets of the future Maitreya-Buddha’s incarnations. Rosicrucianism, which holds the Christ event holy in the most intimate inwardness, on the one hand; and on the other, the striving of the Boddhisattva, who in the course of time after three thousand years, as Bringer of Goodness, will develop into the greatest martyr of the Golgotha Mystery: these two streams, which spring from two different sources, have now united themselves in a common task. *Reprinted with kind permission from Das Goetheanum, 59 Jahrgang, Nr. 32/32. Translation by Christy Barnes.

39 Where has this alliance become modern event? When did this union begin to show itself effective? Within the initiate consciousness of Rudolf Steiner! Through the word-deed of Anthroposophy which proclaims it! Here the reality of this brotherly union in the spirit is con- sumated. And so it becomes the call, the summons, to a new revelation of the Christ event, which in the light of reembodi­ ment and destiny deepens and becomes inward in a hitherto unknown form within the consciousness of mankind. Especially since the decisive sequence of lectures From Jesus to Christ, a new annunciation, a third call is plainly spoken of — a call which, after the decalogue of Moses and John the Baptist’s metanoeite, “Repent ye: change your way of thinking,” rings out into the world today and will make itself heard.* The proclamation of the ten commandments can, in the sense of human development, be likened to a “learning to walk.” It provides the capacity for a moral space-orientation. It gives man the uprightness which becomes within him a focal point for his consciousness. Since the preaching of John the Baptist, since his “Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” humanity has at the same time learned a new kind of “speaking.” The Word of the World, set forth in the Gospels has dwelt among us. The third period, which we are entering today, may be likened to the time in which the child “learns the thought con­ tent of his own speech.” Anthroposophy brings our thinking close to the spirit- and soul-content of the Gospels. This third revelation is related to the etheric reappearance of the Christ Being, Who as the Lord of Karma, holds in His hands, for the good of mankind’s development, the ordering of destiny. From this viewpoint, three “calls” or summons may be spoken of: the summons from Mount Sinai through Moses, the summons of John the Baptist at Jordan, and now the summons to the modern knowledge of the Christ at the dawn of the Michael age.**

*The description of this in the two Nuerenberg lectures, December 1 and 2, 1911, is especially impressive. **Heidenheim, November 30, 1911. 40 The first two summons come in connection with Moses and with John the Baptist, the reborn Elias. These individualities appear on either side of the Christ on Mount Tabor. For by-gone ages, Moses has been connected with the law of karma. He, through whom the messages of Jehova were pro­ claimed, has stood, up to the present day, as guardian “Keeper of the Books” of mankind’s misdeeds beside the “Cherub with the fiery sword” — has stood at the threshold across which, after their life-retrospect, those who have died must step, into the actual kingdom of kama-loca-life. Elias is connected, in both the Old and the New Test­ aments, with the mention of repeated earth lives. The question of the return of Elias in the person of John the Baptist forms the central reincarnation problem in the Bible. The third call, that goes out from the creator of Anthro­ posophy, rings, from its very beginnings, with a knowledge suited to the present day — a knowledge of repeated earth lives joined with that of the cosmic lawfulness of destiny. And here we must not overlook how often our gaze is guided to the figure of John the Baptist as parallel to that of the forerunner of our new revelation of the spirit. “Just as we look with gratitude to those human souls who hearkened to the call of John, so will the men of the future look gratefully to those souls who listen today to the third call, so that mankind may be led forward” (p. 242). Our reflections are directed into still other perspectives if we add what is mentioned concerning the three fundamental powers of faith, love and hope. These are the soul forces active in relation to feeling in the sentient soul, to thinking in the in­ tellectual soul, and to the will in the consciousness soul. We read in the first letter to the Thessalonians (1, 3) how Paul writes: We remember “your work of faith, your labor of love, and patience of hope....” Faith (pistis), love (agape), and hope (elpis) are the three fundamental virtues which in the writings of Paul have their origin in the threefoldedness of the soul. Anthroposophical psychology recognizes the sentient soul as the transformation of the astral body through the ego. This astral body can also be called the “body of faith.” Love works 41 upon the life body which, permeated by the ego, causes the in­ tellectual soul to unfold. In this sense the etheric body is the “love-body.” Hope has its life within the physical body insofar as this, permeated by the ego, helps to form the consciousness soul. Therefore the physical body may be called the “hope- body.” Anthroposophy “gives us — inasmuch as it makes us familiar with the all-encompassing law of karma, and with the laws of repeated earth lives — what permeates us with hope in relation to the spirit, just as the consciousness that the sun will rise tomorrow and that seeds will grow into plants provides us with hope on the physical plane. This shows us, if we under­ stand karma, that this physical body will be built up again in a new life out of the forces that permeate us with hope. Spiritual science endows mankind with the most powerful forces of hope” (p. 177). It must be regarded as a blessing bestowed upon us by the guiding spirit powers when today “our hearts urge us on towards this new annunciation that takes its place as a third beside those of Sinai and the Jordan.” This “our hearts,” that urges us on toward the new cosmic hour, directs itself to the listener in the we-form. But at the same time it points with profound secrecy and yet openly, self- indicating, to the creator of Anthroposophy in that both streams of initiation mentioned at the beginning of this essay unite in a higher trinity.

42 The Life and Work of Valborg Werbeck-Svaerdstroem*

JUERGEN SCHRIEFER

The first of February of this year was the eightieth anniversary of this great artist’s death, and on December 22nd we celebrated her 100th birthday. Valborg Svaerdstroem was born in Gaevle, Sweden. She entered the world on the darkest winter night of that year, on the coast of the Baltic Sea, where the atmosphere changes rapidly, the most delicate transitions of color in the sky melting into one another — transitions which later in the voice of the singer would reveal themselves in variegated shadings of an extraordinarily rich scale of expressiveness. She spent her childhood in the north of Sweden where things, as it were, “grow wild,” as she describes it herself humorously in her book. When her family moved to Stockholm with the ten-year-old girl and her brothers and sisters, her voice was soon recog­ nized there. She became a “star” in Alice Tegner’s musical work with the youth of Sweden. It is said that many of the famous and popular songs, of this composer were written with young Valborg’s voice in mind. The children’s books of Elsa Beskow (The Little Blueberry Man and others) are a part of this cultural sphere. Selma Lagerloef belongs to it, as does Per Sunberg, the founder of a “reform school” through which anthroposophical curative education was later introduced into the country. Valborg’s greatest desire was to study medicine, but her life’s pathway was inexorably predetermined by her outstanding *From: Was in der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft vorgeht, 57:6 (10 Feb. 1980), pp. 21-23.

43 vocal giftedness. She gave her first public concert at the age of fifteen, when she sang, among other things, the arias of the Queen of the Night with no apparent difficulty. At the same time she was attending the opera school and studying the art of stage movement with Signe Hebbe, the famous friend of Jenny Lind, and was one of her favorite pupils. At the age of twenty-one she made her debut on the stage of the Royal Opera House in Stockholm and was immediately taken into the ensemble. According to the reports, the city was gripped by a veritable “Svaerdstroem fever.” Everyone wanted to ex­ perience the elfishly delicate figure with such immense power of expression. In one season she sang no less than eight major roles and, of course, overdid herself. Hugo Alfven, the great national-romantic composer of Sweden, was her close friend. He wrote in his memoirs, which are widely read in Scandinavia, several pages about her cheer­ ful, friendly nature which earned her the love and affection of all her colleagues down to the last stagehand. Everyone assumed she would become a second Jenny Lind. She worked ceaseless­ ly to popularize the vocal compositions of the still young master who would later be very famous, putting even the most unyielding of his more severe songs across to the public through the convincing power of her performance. “She became the voice of my spirit,” the composer wrote. In 1904, the jury unanimously awarded her the Jenny Lind Scholarship, a high national honor which was given to a young musician, irrespective of specialization, only once every three years. (Jenny Lind had set aside part of her estate for this scholarship in order to spare highly gifted and idealistic young artists her own thorny road to success, a struggle which had come close to annihilating her artistic mission.) Valborg went to Italy, but in the anteroom of one of the celebrated master teachers she could hear how a voice was be­ ing brutally mistreated, and she went right back to the railroad station. She then worked in Paris with Desiree Artot, who plays a role in the biography of Tschaikowsky and has passed over into the history of the art of singing as one of the great universalists. Artot felt that she could teach Valborg nothing

44 more about singing, for the latter was a master of it all. Nevertheless Valborg now studied several roles with Artot in terms of the composers’ original intent, for Artot knew most of the great composers of the time personally. Even before this time, a well-known Swiss critic had recognized Valborg Svaerdstroem as an outstanding young talent. And so her conquest of European art centers took its start from Switzerland. However, in 1905 she had to go through a decisive vocal crisis. In the train of the Wagner era, teachers had tried by artificial methods to make her more delicate voice into a large one. This was harmful to her, and she began to lose the naturalness of her attack. Valborg Svaerdstroem describes this process herself exactly. Heinrich Knote, the famous heroic tenor in Munich, had already given her an important indica­ tion when they were once singing together. But she was finally able to get over her problems by remembering the “natural­ ness” of her own voice as a child. She had never stopped sing­ ing in public, for she always overcame the difficulties again during vacations. But what had now happened was decisive: the singer who had every reason to be satisfied with her ability and who received constant and profuse public confirmation of this through the critics had become a searching personality. She began in all earnestness to investigate the real mysteries of singing and continued to do so until her death. This must not be conceived in too “technical” a sense. Jenny Lind wrote in a letter in 1868 that she considered Manuel Garcia’s school to be the best, but that “he did not teach me singing. Singing I learned from God.” Valborg Svaerdstroem perceived the deep mystery connected with this in the same way. She could still say in an interview which she gave to a paper in Hamburg in 1908: “Singing cannot be taught. You can either do it, or you can’t.” In 1911 or 1912, however, she met Rudolf Steiner, and through this experience her whole outlook on the matter changed. In 1906 she had married Louis Werbeck, who later became the leader of vigorous and widespread anthroposophical activity in Hamburg. At that time she left the Stockholm Opera and performed exclusively in

45 constant tours throughout Europe. Her voice was a high Scan­ dinavian soprano. It was as flexible “as Damascus steel” and had an immense breadth of expression; there was a play of many dark shadings until it finally broke forth into a radiant forte. At times she drove her crystal-clear diction to the very boundary of Sprechgesang (“spoken song”) and at the high point of her career she was the perfect master of ten different languages, some as far removed as Hungarian, in which she was able to sing several operas. She described her first meeting with Rudolf Steiner in a very living and significant manner in her only book, Die Schule der Stimmenthuellung (Uncovering the Voice). This was a turning point in her life of research. In fact, when the full world significance of Anthroposophy dawned on her, the artistic tasks and pro­ cesses in which she was so radiantly involved as one of the first-rate leaders in the world of art seemed so insignificant to her that she asked Rudolf Steiner for a task that would be in the direct service of anthroposophical work. And yet he directed her toward the mission of song in an almost admon­ ishing tone: “Anyone who has received such a voice must stand before people and sing. For if there were more, and especially more correct singing, there would be, among other things, less crime.” Rudolf Steiner was always concerned with protecting her voice. Once he kept her from demonstrating singing exer­ cises during a lecture which she was holding in Dornach, hav­ ing her set aside a second day for this instead. In the same way he warned her against giving voice lessons to all sorts of people who wanted them. “Make yourself scarce,” he said. Now her research work began, and it was not fully com­ pleted until directly after the Christmas Conference. Her husband had been requested by Albert Steffen to speak the closing words of gratitude for the conference, and as the two of them were taking leave of Rudolf Steiner, he recognized from the final results which she presented him with that this system was now complete and authorized her to represent it as the an­ throposophical method of training the voice. As a famous artist of her time, she had already declared her commitment to An­ throposophy publicly by giving a recital of Mozart songs at the 46 East-West Congress in Vienna at Pentecost, 1922. On December 3, 1922, she sang in the first Goetheanum at the ex­ press request of Rudolf Steiner, performing several numbers with her sisters, with whom she toured on occasion as a famous quartet. In addition to all this, she had a conversation with Rudolf Steiner in the forenoon of December 2nd, in which she asked him to give his support also to music; he had, after all, already done so much for the other arts and given them so much in this respect. To her astonishment he did not respond to her request with a single word in that conversation, but on the evening of the same day he did respond in the form of one of the most grandiose lectures on music which we have from him at all. It contains an abundance of, one would like to say, meditations for the musician, treasures which until now have hardly been touched, let alone unearthed. On December 3rd she sang to his greatest satisfaction; in­ deed, he was most enthusiastic. She then traveled to Stuttgart, where on December 4th he held the lecture, “Memory and Love, the Revelation of the Mystery of Tone,” and spoke again about the ear on his trip back from Berlin on December 9th. In reading these lectures one can very well notice that Valborg Werbeck was among his listeners and even which passages were intended specifically for her. At certain points she found her eyes welling up with tears. And Rudolf Steiner remarked that one would have to be completely dried up in one’s inner life to be able to listen to these facts about the for­ mation of the ear without being deeply shaken. Probably not everyone has had this tremendous kind of sensitivity which, in the presence of the sublimity of anthroposophical knowledge, he really always expected from us. In 1925, the great teacher died; and in 1928 Louis Werbeck, her husband, followed him in death. She was alone. But she nevertheless remained totally committed to the work of singing in the anthroposophical movement. In 1926, at the great music congress at the Goetheanum, she held lectures on her system of voice training for two days and also gave two concerts. One of these was a traditional program; the other was in connection with a presentation of the planetary scales rediscovered by

47 Kathleen Schlesinger, which she commanded with an absolute purity of intonation. In 1928, she appeared at the World Con­ ference in London with the choir of her students directed by Karl Gerbert. The demonstrations were especially impressive in both an artistic and a therapeutic sense; Dr. Ita Wegman herself reported on them. The speaker was Dr. Eugen Kolisko. In 1934, the latter, having thoroughly worked his way into the approach, gave a series of lectures in Pilgramsheim in the presence of Dr. Koenig, in which he depicted the significance of this new training with special emphasis on its therapeutic aspect. In 1935, however, the work came to an end with the prohibition of the Anthroposophical Society. After a trip to Holland, where she worked out some exercises for children at the Waldorf school in Den Haag, Valborg Werbeck-Svaerd­ stroem withdrew to Silesia, where she could be near her daughter and live quietly among the people in the country. These, however, were the years in which she conceived and finished writing her only book, the summary of her life’s work, which could still appear in print in 1938. This book does not represent, as is often thought, a new method, but rather an all-encompassing “anthropology of song,” the first really ade­ quate one, it can be said, in the history of music. At the end of the war she fled from the approaching Russian army, enduring all the terrors and difficulties of such a flight, and found a haven in the Institute for Curative Education in Eckwaelden under the protection of Dr. Geraths. Now she was sixty-six years old. After working with the disabled children for a time, she moved into a small house, where she taught. But she also went to Dornach for three months each year, for she felt strongly the obligation to put herself in the service of the Goetheanum, even if it could only be in an unobtrusive way of bringing help and healing to the community there. Rudolf Steiner’s remark that art could conceivably become so meaningless to man that it would gradually come to be taken seriously again only via its therapeutic aspect had long been her conviction. Deeply shaken, she experienced the decline of the art of singing through the increasingly sclerotic character of the human organism and the materialism of the 48 modern attitude toward life. She carefully observed, however, how this crisis occurs primarily around the time of man’s “ripeness for the earth,” or puberty. Jenny Lind, in 1868, and Lilli Lehmann, around 1900, were already complaining about the “dreadful scream- and speech-singing” or “the untrue singing-toward-the-front” that were becoming the fashion. Valborg Werbeck called this a speaking tone fixed on the pitch (einen auf der Tonhoehe fixierten Sprechton), which today is incor­ rectly designated as singing. But in contrast to her great predecessors, she was able to point out the cause of this and developed ways of practicing which can repair the damage. She delved more and more deeply into the therapeutic aspect, devoting some forty to fifty years to the tireless study of these mysteries. At the end of her life the human organism had become, as it were, transparent to her. If a person came to her, she immediately sensed his or her condition right into any difficulties on the level of the soul and began to work on these with the aid of singing. She did not like to deal with profes­ sional musicians. She was too firmly convinced of the decadence of the whole art. She arrived at the impression that the professional musician was the most mistrained, and after a time was no longer able to perceive the essential processes in­ volved in the production of a healthy tone at all. At the age of eighty she finished her work in Dornach and from now on was active in her home in Eckwaelden. Soon the only people who knew her were the few patients she saw, and her work became, so to speak, legendary. No one really knew how she worked, for the patients naturally had no general con­ cept of her approach. Each one was familiar only with that aspect of the therapy that applied to his or her particular case. And so certain distortions crept in when her work was spoken about that she could not defend herself against. Sometimes she asked herself, “Why am I still alive?” It would all be over when she died, for most of her earlier students had already passed on, and they had only experienced the beginnings of this therapeutic development anyway. But a small group mostly of older people was fully aware of the great significance of this work for the future.

49 Finally, one of these was successful in mediating an inter­ view between the almost inaccessible old woman and some members of the younger generation. She saw with amazement that the scene had changed. Immediately she felt understood in the very depths of her striving; and these were not individual instances, but seemed to be a secret of the new generation. Once more she pulled all her forces together. She called on the spiritual world to preserve her life and strength, and from her 88th to her 93rd year of life she passed on the quintessence of her life’s work to the generation after next in untiring readiness. It was a race with death, for it was clear that anything essential missing from the total structure of the train­ ing could not be handed on. But the effort succeeded as if through grace; helping human beings and powers were there as godparents. And after it had all been given and a small circle of pupils had begun to perform under her stern ear, she died on February first, 1972. Astonished, the person present at her death watched her face grow ever younger and blossom like that of a young girl as the fever progressed. On these evenings after her death the stars sparkled across the whole sky as though greeting and waving to the viewer. During the day a fine haze covered the land, suspending all color transitions in most delicate fusion. A great peace filled all the world about her, like a breath being held. Under the ritual of the funeral service, the coffin sank down into the earth; no one dared a report of the life just finished. During her final years, no music stood on the music rack of the grand piano; instead: a large picture of Rudolf Steiner. In this way she carried out every exercise in full responsibility under his watchful eyes. She always felt that he had to carry the whole movement. “He bears the burden of all our mistakes,” she said. People would tell her about Dornach and about the efforts of the leading figures there to heal wounds and join forces anew. “If you have the chance, give those people my deepest thanks!” Translation by Burley Channer

50 Thoughts on the Work of Valborg Werbeck-Svaerdstroem*

JUERGEN SCHRIEFER

Let it be stated from the beginning that after reading this article one might wish to take a closer look at the practice of singing. It must also be pointed out that Valborg Werbeck-Svaerd­ stroem has presented her ideas in the book, Uncovering the Voice (A Way to Catharsis in the Art of Singing),** insofar as it is mean­ ingful and even possible to do this in writing, and that these ideas have been further developed during the past ten years in courses open to the general public. Damage to the Voice at Puberty Perhaps it can also be said by way of introduction that the ruin of the voice, which has been occurring since approximate­ ly the last third of the previous century (and which was men­ tioned in my article on the life of the Swedish vocal artist in this issue) can be traced back primarily to damage occurring at the time of puberty between the ages of about thirteen and seventeen. Three major factors have a destructive effect on the vocal organs during this period: 1) the premature formation of judgments; 2) the soul’s confrontation with the dissonances of contemporary social life, which first becomes possible through the birth of the astral body and which brings about a deeply subliminal sense of fear; 3) noise damage. These three operate in conjunction with the great transformation of the organism *Reprinted with kind permission from Das Goetheanum, Jahrgang 59, No. 31, August 3, 1980. ** Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1980.

51 during puberty — the deepening of the breath, the altered for­ mation of muscles and tendons, the acceleration of growth — in such a way that, for example, the breathing grows fearful and shallow, the musculature of the base of the tongue thickens and becomes coarse, and the walls of the throat become to a certain extent stiffer and more rigid. As a result, in singing the resounding stream can no longer arch through and over the head from behind, but is hurled out flat through the mouth, along with speech. All sorts of violent techniques used to force the correct tone formation in spite of this through holding back the breath only result in more damage over a shorter or longer period of time. A general slumping, especial­ ly in the region of the upper back, around the shoulders and in the back of the neck, often goes along with this. Countless young people are in this situation today and urgently need attention. Born singers are exceptions who find their way despite the damages caused by the age in which we live. The wonderful arrangement of etheric currents in such blessed in­ dividuals corrects any hindrances to the production of a beautiful, resonant tone from the very beginning, and this can work its way right into the bone structure, for example, of the spinal column. We can hardly overestimate the value of the many exercises we have received from Valborg Werbeck-Svaerdstrom against such damages, especially since they are in perfect harmony with western consciousness, whereas very many methods, out of a certain helplessness, are incorporating oriental elements more and more. Perhaps a longing to deepen the art of singing spiritually also plays a role here. The temptation to do this is very great, since, for example, it is more necessary to possess extraordinary breath control in singing than in any other branch of the arts. Here Valborg Werbeck-Svaerdstroem strictly avoided any kind of conscious interference by leaving the breathing process itself unconscious and yet thoroughly correc­ ting and educating it through a series of movements continual­ ly accompanied, of course, with a singing tone. As long as any damages were still evident in the voice, the exercises were to be carried out in a distinct and intensified 52 fashion, but the tone was to be sung softly with a strong in­ corporation of the consonantal element. This last she called “taking in the earth.” There was no question of singing freely until a harmonious set of relationships had been established. For this reason, the whole first series of exercises must be understood as purely hygienic or therapeutic ones. Artistic singing, on the other hand, is an out-streaming, a sacrifice of forces to one’s fellow human beings, and requires a previously cultivated harmony of the sung-tone system. During a voice lesson, not long before her death, Valborg Werbeck-Svaerdstroem once raised her hand and said, “I have not created this training, I have only transmitted it. What I have been able to survey of it so far is only this much (here she reached around the top of one of her fingers). What can still be developed from it I do not yet see.” She was pointing far into the future. She felt her training to be a “transitional” one. This is why there were so many misunderstandings, especially in her generation. For the younger ones it is no longer so difficult to understand this. One has only to think of how Hermann Pfrogner has depicted the present situation of music in his great work, The Living World of Tone. When one reads Valborg Werbeck-Svaerdstroem’s book, one soon realizes that there has never before been such an approach to the art of singing. The book is not written primarily from the physiological viewpoint, as were most books of the previous century right up to our own time; nor is it written from the psychological viewpoint of the last fifty years, but rather from that of a spiritualized knowledge of man. Above all, the concept of the “etheric body” is newly and thoroughly integrated into the presentation, which, incidentally, exhibits a clear, threefold division of the functions of singing and has this concept as its lowermost boundary. The work also makes the fundamental distinction between the musical tone and the speech sound. Our relation­ ship to the former must be a strictly passive and, as it were, receptive one; toward the latter we must be highly active, forming and shaping it. The demand that we achieve this anti­ thesis in a conscious way through our practicing seems quite

53 new. Until now the processes of producing music and speech sounds have been unconsciously linked in the attempt to attain a balance between these two polar opposites in the singer at the same time by means of appropriate exercises. To be sure, it takes a much more deeply-reaching “act of consciousness” to keep these phenomena apart now than it used to. At the same time it is now possible to offer such exercises to all people, since today anyone can have access to the secrets of singing. Not all people will be able to become singers, but the experiences which the being of the tone can give them and the therapeutic effects of these experiences can be very deep. This is the answer to one task of the Age of the Consciousness Soul. Rudolf Steiner often remarked that what is artistic should no longer be considered a luxury, so that the deeper forces in the arts might be brought to birth and made fruitful. The following indication, however, is of decisive importance: In the future it will be absolutely necessary for the singing teacher to arouse in the pupil an awareness of what part of the etheric body plays in this; an awareness, as it were, of how the tones are continually being led over onto the etheric body. Only when this participation of the etheric body is really taken into consideration will that transforming impulse become effective which must necessarily result from our principles with respect to the teaching of singing. — Lecture of January 9, 1915. One can ask, “Wasn’t the master singer of earlier times able to do this?” The answer is that he, of course, did know how to pass the tone over to the etheric body. The wonderful, imagi­ native words of old Italian masters bear witness to this. For ex­ ample, to sing correctly means: inalare la voce. Or, “One sips, or drinks, the tone.” It is characteristic of the etheric stream that in it one does not, as in the physical realm, experience oneself as if pressed down by forces of heaviness, but rather as if being “lifted” or pulled outwards within the sphere of forces of lightness, which stream in from the periphery. One can even say that we seem to be singing without air, in the stream of musical sound which we feel to be “expanding.”

54 But what (referring again to the above remarks by Rudolf Steiner) is only now gradually becoming possible and is bring­ ing about a fundamental transformation of the process described, is that it should be achieved in full consciousness. As recently as a hundred years ago hardly anyone would have been able to work in the way this training prescribes, for a person of that time would have felt greatly irritated in his consciousness if he had been required to separate speech sound from musical sound at the same time and to join them together again con­ sciously. For a particular experience is inseparably connected with this: the singer cannot sing a “word” at all. Expressed in positive terms, this means that he has a powerful experience of the dominant forces inherent in both the speech sound and the musical tone as cosmic qualities, each with its own individual character; whereas the sung word, by comparison, seems some­ how “unreal.” More and more people will be able to have this experience, and this will eventually lead to a new cultural con­ sciousness that will completely transform all types of artistic ex­ pression. In the basic anthroposophical contributions of the past sixty to seventy years we can see only the smallest be­ ginnings of this. It must strike anyone with insight into these future possibilities of experience as the epitome of naivete to demand, or even to expect, that what has been achieved in any of the arts on the basis of these artistic impulses is in any way mature or perfect. The significance of these impulses lies rather in the direction which Rudolf Steiner has described with such insight in refer­ ring to the alchemistic work of the genuine Rosicrucians: It was not the result of that work which was considered important, but rather what was experienced in the soul while the work was being done. What was important were the prayerful moods engendered by the purifying salt-process, the delicate shadings of the lower and higher love experiences in the dissolvings and re-solvings of the mercury-process, and the mood of sacrifice "ignited” by the sulphur-process. The ex­ perimenter’s goal was to completely transform his aura by carrying out his experiments with thoughtful reverence. Any

55 potentially practical results, however, were passed on to others. The spiritual teacher thus speaks of a holy science of nature, in which the laboratory table will become an altar. And what is required there will not be some particular result, but whether the student’s attitude toward cosmic processes attains the degree of reverence necessary for the investigation of these processes.

And elsewhere he says, The world must again come to the point of being able to accept the principle of initiation as one of the principles of civilization. This will become of increasing importance for the arts as well. They will not be mastered as mere “technique,” although this does not mean that the exercises leading to their mastery will not have a strictly technical and methodological aspect. On this point opinions must widely diverge, for we must keep in mind that, if people are required to try to recognize in every case whether some particular phenomenon of cultural life belongs to an ascending or a descending stream, almost with­ out exception those of cultural decline are imposingly and im­ pressively evident, while the germs of cultural ascendancy are almost always nearly unnoticeable. Something else which Rudolf Steiner emphasizes is becoming clearer and clearer. The truly Christian element is developing in harmony with the cosmos (kosmosgerecht) and is for this reason unfolding with a certain modesty and humility out of the forces of the fourth principle, the development of the Ego- principle, the stage we are in right now. On the other hand, the luciferic powers are offering themselves as an anticipation, as it were, of already being able to shine with the fifth, sixth and seventh principles. It is not possible to go into this here in more detail. (See the lecture of January 9, 1912.) This comes to full expression — speaking only of the field of music — in all that deceives people through the aid of technological media and even worse stimulants, bringing about states of con­

56 sciousness and achievements in the realm of sound which are actually reserved for much later times, when they will become accessible in a quite natural way, but then only through the ever further ripening of man. At present they serve only to benumb consciousness and all too easily in this way make peo­ ple unfit for really fruitful cultural work by confusing and paralyzing the energies that lie at the very core of the human soul and spirit. Some partially incorrect ideas about Valborg Werbeck- Svaerdstroem’s work with Rudolf Steiner are still current. People usually ask what sort of directives Rudolf Steiner gave her. In reality she would work completely independently of him, and only then would they discuss her results together. He would usually agree with her so completely that she once asked jokingly, “But Dr. Steiner, you always think everything is cor­ rect. Have I nothing more to learn at all?” The answer was, “But of course. You must learn, for example, to listen to yourself singing as though you were a complete stranger.” This challenge is anything but trivial. We approach it when we hear about the “inversion of the will” on the path of occult development. In Theosophy, in the chapter on the “Path of Knowledge,” the pupil is required to “loosen” his feeling of selfhood from the experiences of joy and sorrow — an ap­ parently impossible demand, a hundred-and-eighty-degree about-face, as it were. This is to be carried over to the forma­ tion of musical tones, which thereby becomes a selfless process. Emotion is led through a zero-point and inverted, transformed into its spiritual counterpart. Valborg Svaerdstroem elaborated this inner attitude into a system of technically applicable methods. With their aid, the door is barred to naive emotion from the very beginning, which naturally makes the training more difficult. (To be continued) Translation by Burley Channer

57 Thoughts About Singing

The singer must have a feeling, not so much for the motion of his own vocal organs, as for what the air does in its move­ ment in and around him. The experience of singing is an inner activity that one carries over into sleep. During sleep, the etheric activity of singing makes an impression on the astral body, which is ex­ perienced by spiritual forces as a harmonizing of the impres­ sions of the day. It is the healing effects of this that are brought back out of sleep into waking life. — Rudolf Steiner In the ideal, ringing tone of the human singing voice, the ego’s victory over the physical body is revealed. The light-filled, ensouled tone of the human singing voice is a sound-picture of the interplay of the physical and the spiritual, the subjective and the objective, that reveals itself in the single tone (die einheit Ton). In the light, freely vibrant tone of the human singing voice, the communion of human soul forces with the spirit-soul being of the earth becomes a creative image perceptible to the ear. With every free-vibrating, light-permeated tone, soul- spiritual forces stream into us and into the soul-spirit of the world. Tone brings into the present our experiences before birth and after death. So ensouled, it becomes a sound-picture of our own eternal spiritual existence. — Karl Gebert

58 Gracia Ricardo American Lieder Singer and Voice Teacher

HILDA DEIGHTON and GINA PALERMO

The following article is based on “Memories of Gracia Ricardo,” by Hilda Deighton and Gina Palermo, printed in German in Was in der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft vorgeht (What is Happening in the Anthroposophical Society), February 26, 1956, with a number of additions by her niece and the editor. Grace Richards, later known as Gracia Ricardo, was born in Montclaire, New Jersey on March 14th, 1871. The beauty of her singing voice was evident from her youngest years and gave her the basis upon which to develop a rich musical talent. What was to become still more significant, however, was that she had the mobility and humility to put this talent, and later her whole generous, capable being, at the service of a new spiritual knowledge. Her father, Joseph Handly Richards, was publisher of the New York Evening Post with editor and poet William Cullen Bryant, and of the New York Tribune with editor Horace Greeley. He was a friend of Abraham Lincoln’s and arranged Lincoln’s famous speech at Cooper Union, which led to his nomination for the presidency. Her mother was a descendant of Samuel Adams, a cousin of the first John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts, President of the United States. Early in her vocal training she lost her voice due to faulty singing methods and a severe illness. She was told she would never sing again and was bedridden for some time, hardly moving or speaking. During this illness, while lying on her

59 [Image: photograph]Gracia Ricardo

60 back, she began experimenting with voice and diction, using Anne Payson Call’s book, Power through Repose, and gradually discovered some of the rudiments of what she later developed as a method. She was able to recover her voice and went on to further studies. She attended the Metropolitan College of Music, the best music conservatory in New York City at that time. Its founder and director was the eminent New England tenor, Herbert Wilber Greene, pupil of Sbriglia in Paris. After her graduation in 1892, she went to Europe also to study in Paris under Sbriglia. Her greatest wish, however, was to become the pupil of Lilli Lehmann, whom she had heard as a child. At this time Lilli Lehmann was sending her English-speaking students to her American assistant, Lilia Harris. In this way Gracia became Miss Harris’ pupil. A life-long friendship developed between them. Only later on, by chance, did they discover that they were cousins. Miss Harris was a complex and interesting personality, an entertaining and brilliant conversationalist with a subtle sense of humor, and the graceful, upright carriage of a trained singer. Her connection with Lilli Lehmann was almost that of mother and daughter. In 1904, she was engaged by Cosima Wagner for Bayreuth, but had the tragic experience of per­ manently losing her singing voice, and her career ended abruptly. By 1905, Gracia Ricardo, as she was now called, was celebrated throughout Europe as a concert and lieder singer and associated with many of the famous musicians of her day. She made two tours through the British Isles with violinist Jan Kubelik; she sang with Schuman-Heink; Arthur Nikisch became her accompanist, and she knew De Pachmann and Brahms, who coached her in the interpretation of his songs. By 1908, Mme. Ricardo and Miss Harris were both teaching in Berlin. There they were introduced to Rudolf Steiner. They both became serious students of his spiritual science and part of the circle that attended his lectures regular­ ly. Here they met and formed a permanent friendship with Frl. Mathilde Scholl, who then, as throughout the rest of her

61 life, gave instruction in the fundamental backgrounds of spiritual science. She was a widely-read and meticulous scholar. Rudolf Steiner, when he found the time, gave her private lessons in higher mathematics. The Russian symbolist, Andrei Belyi, later one of her pupils, wrote of her: “I see her as a significant intelligence, an individualist.... For us she was lovable — even more: selfless.... Daily she unrolled vast perspectives ... all very direct, very unpopularized, shining. It was just right for us.... She had been the center of the Group in Koeln, although characteristically she refused to be its leader.... The gigantic and ample Scholl, blond, rosy, her small eyes gold-rimmed by a pince-nez, and her lovable, warm­ hearted smile, towered a head above a crowd when she moved slowly through it, usually accompanied by Mme. Ricardo and Miss Harris.... Had the new anthroposophical “Doctors” writ­ ten less, and less easily — had they distilled and thought their thoughts through in the rigorous preparatory work in the laboratory of a new thinking as did Scholl, Unger and others, I am convinced that the specific weight of anthroposophical literature would now be greater.” Gracia, now in her thirties, was at an age when the forces and talents brought over from the past begin to recede, and one must, especially in the arts, take one’s own development consciously in hand. There were many opportunities for con­ versations with Marie von Sievers, later Frau Dr. Steiner, and with Rudolf Steiner himself. Frequently he had, according to custom, led her by the arm up to the podium of the Bechstein- Saal in Berlin. In spite of her intensive musical career, she took every opportunity to ask him about the spiritual realities of tone. When she asked him what the future had in store for song and its representatives, his answer was that singing must be freed from the mechanization of singing and awakened to an understanding of true tone which is a spiritual thing. Through countless conversations with Rudolf Steiner, through the discovery of many references to singing which she found in his writings, and from her own earlier experiments, Gracia Ricardo worked out a singing method based on the Word, a method which distinguished itself from many others

62 [Image: photogaph]Gracia Ricardo Lilia Harris Mathilde Scholl

[Image: photograph]Maria[Image: Steiner Mathilde Scholl

63 in that the singer does not begin with the usual vocal exercises. Instead, the student’s attention is directed to speech: the initial consonant of the word provides the sculptural form in which the vowels rest. The vowels and consonants become tone- creating in the element of air, and the voice is released from its bodily prison. Gracia Ricardo returned to America in 1910 for a two years’ concert tour, speaking frequently throughout her travels about Rudolf Steiner and Anthroposophy. Together, she and Miss Harris sought out another singer who had studied in Germany and become deeply interested in spiritual science, Ethel Parks Brownrigg. These three inaugurated what was later to become the St. Mark’s Group of the Anthroposophical Society. Gracia also visited her first singing teacher, H. W. Greene at the summer school for music which he had founded in Brookfield, Connecticut. There, noticing the many Theosophical books in his home, she acquainted him with Rudolf Steiner’s work. In the winter of 1910, Mr. and Mrs. Greene joined the St. Mark’s Group, which met from then on for many years in Mr. Greene’s studio in Carnegie Hall. When the foundation of the Goetheanum building was being laid in 1913, Gracia Ricardo was again in Berlin and, in her last public appearance, sang a benefit concert with Walter Morse Rummel to raise money for its construction. A year later she, Miss Harris and Frl. Scholl moved to Dornach. Gracia liked to tell how, when she would return to Europe after a stay in the United States, Rudolf Steiner loved to ask her for bits of the latest American slang, and how delighted he was with such morsels as “You’ve got bats in your belfry.” She stayed in Dornach throughout World War II, during which time she became a Swiss citizen. A great change in her life’s direction now came about through an operation which necessitated the severing of the diaphragm muscles. Because of this, she lost the breath control needed for concert singing. From now on she put all the warm, generous vitality which had flowed into her musical career into furthering Rudolf Steiner’s work and into her teaching. In this service, and through her naturally outgoing

64 and executive nature, she touched and stimulated various facets of anthroposophical work, as well as the course of many people’s lives. Through her method she enabled singers to re­ juvenate their voices and produce a “free” or “etheric” tone. She was even able to bring about the entire disappearance of nodules on the vocal cords. After the war, several Americans asked Dr. Steiner how the work in this country might best be developed. It was at this time that he entrusted Gracia Ricardo with a special task: to take the responsibility for establishing connections for the medical work and the Weleda in America. Thus in 1922, she returned to work in New York City. Irene Brown, cousin of the painter Scott Pyle, was one of those who had consulted Rudolf Steiner, and she now helped to make a number of pro­ jects financially possible. For these she bought a brownstone on 39th Street. Here Gracia Ricardo had a large room where she taught singing and carried on her efforts on behalf of the medical work. Weleda medicines were kept in a small room behind hers. She and others persuaded a young Swiss doctor, who was just about to join Albert Schweitzer in Africa, to come to New York instead, as the first anthroposophical doctor in America. His office was established on the first floor of the 39th street building, and the room across from it was soon to become the first schoolroom of the Rudolf Steiner School. Gracia asked Arthur von Zabern to take over the work for the Weleda, a work in which, upon his return to Europe, he con­ tinued to be active throughout his lifetime. There was now an urgent need for a eurythmist in America and Gracia Ricardo with others turned to Rudolf Steiner for advice. Lucy Neuscheller, sister of the composer, Leopold van der Pals, was suggested, and before leaving Dornach, she was able to talk over her future task at length with Dr. Steiner. Here again Irene was helpful. The Neuscheller family was in­ vited to spend their first summer at a farm near Brattleboro, Vermont, which Irene shared with Katherine Jewell Everts. There, at Camp Arden, Miss Everts directed dramatics and Lucy taught eurythmy. Hilda Deighton, who had come from the West Coast to

65 become a student of H. W. Greene’s, and was later Gracia’s pupil, says of her at this time: “When I first knew her, she was a majestic and commanding figure, a cosmopolitan personality, in the spiritual sense of the word. She had a warrior’s bravery, a strong will, and a warm heart. When she took a firm stand, she was not easily swayed. She spoke her mind freely and ex­ pected others to do the same. If her anger was aroused, it rarely lasted overnight, as she had a forgiving nature and suf­ fered over not always meeting this in others. She tried to begin each day like a clean slate, harboring no ill will. Feeling a deep need for affection herself, she gave of it unstintingly to her friends.... She had been the only girl in a family of boys and so had been allowed almost anything she wanted, and what she wanted most was to sing. Early pictures of her show a tall, handsome young girl, carefree and full of fun.”* During her later life she divided her time between Dornach and America. In Dornach, the three friends took the greatest interest in all Americans, young and old, who came to the Goetheanum over the years. Frl. Scholl gave them lessons in Anthroposophy, and the rooms of Haus Wendhof were filled with conversations that warmed and often had far-reaching in­ fluence on the lives of the friends who gathered there. In America, Gracia Ricardo took the liveliest interest in young people. She taught her own niece, Mary Theodora Richards, the new singing method — spiriting her away from the New England Conservatory of Music, where she had gone after Vassar and art study in Italy — and interested her in Anthroposophy so deeply that she followed her aunt to Dornach to work further with her there, as well as to take up the study of eurythmy. World War II forced them to leave Europe, but back in America, she continued her voice training with Gracia and eurythmy with Marjorie Spock. These two then inaugurated the Remedial Department of the Waldorf School of Adelphi College, a work later abandoned due to the poisoning of Theodora by the Long Island pesticide spraying for gypsy moths. This led to their spearheading one of the first

*From The Earliest Days of Anthroposophy in America by Hilda Deighton.

66 battles against pesticides, which they took all the way to the Supreme Court. They lost the case, but it attracted the atten­ tion of Rachel Carson and prompted her to write Silent Spring, based largely on evidence they provided from their court case. Meanwhile the two friends, in order to combat the pesticide trend and all that it implied, had established a bio-dynamic farm in Chester, N.Y., working there with the eminent bio­ chemist Ehrenfried Pfeiffer. Theodora Richards is now active in translating, editing and funding anthroposophical books. Throughout her life, she has helped to further Rudolf Steiner’s work in innumerable generous ways. One of her deep, current concerns is the promoting of community building along the lines set forth in Reflections on Community Building and in Goethean Conversations by Marjorie Spock. Bringing with her the fruit of her many life experiences, she is now teaching the singing method which Gracia Ricardo developed and taught her over a period of years. On one of Gracia’s earlier trips to the United States, she met two professional singers at an anthroposophical meeting. They became her life-long pupils and continued her work after her death. Hilda Deighton’s career as a contralto soloist and in opera had taken her to many parts of this country and to Italy. She taught in New York City, where she was also a carrier of anthroposophical work and became the singing teacher at the Rudolf Steiner School. All her later teaching, largely of choral groups, was based on her work with Gracia Ricardo. Gina Palermo had made her operatic debut in Aida at Madison Square Garden and often appeared with the Dessoff choirs as a soloist. Together these two friends made five trips abroad, studying there with Mme. Ricardo and giving recitals in the Great Hall of the Goetheanum on several occasions. Together, also, they prepared a book, which remains unfinished, on Gracia Ricardo’s new art of singing. Part of it has appeared in Music, Its Occult Basis and Healing Value compiled by Lionel Stebbing, New Knowledge Books, England. These three were the pupils closest to Gracia Ricardo, but her creative influence reached further into the professional world. She coached such artists as Elizabeth Rethberg, Berty

67 Jenny, Erika Frauscher and Marion Freschl, who using Mme. Ricardo’s method, became a celebrated voice teacher and head of the opera department at both Curtis and Juilliard. Gracia Ricardo taught singing until she was 84, and at that time wrote: I still have the great satisfaction of giving, what I was privileged to have accepted by Rudolf Steiner, as one of the ways of training the voice through a method of interpreting the spiritual significance of the tone through its vehicle: the Word. It is not possible here to tell all that Gracia Ricardo did in her unceasing efforts to further Anthroposophy. We think of her as one of those few privileged people who belonged to those who first heard Rudolf Steiner, who was able to receive a new impulse for the art of singing from him, and as an early pioneer in the work of Anthroposophy. In every tone that through the lips doth flow There lives the warmth which in the soul must grow. Tone’s mirrored hue will thus a picture be O f inner life by ringing voice set free. — Gracia Ricardo

The greater the object, the greater the love of the object — an absolute object is met with absolute love. To you I return, noble Kepler, whose grand spirit created for itself a spiritual­ ized, moral universe, instead of it being held to be wisdom in our times — to deaden everything, to debase the lofty, rather than elevate the lowly, and even to bend the spirit to man beneath the laws of mechanism. — Novalis

68 The Singer as Instrument

THEODORA RICHARDS

The following brief essay is a supplement to an unfinished manuscript by Hilda Deighton and Gina Palermo. It will at­ tempt to set forth some further thoughts on a new way of sing­ ing that, carefully guided and practised, gradually allows the universal tone to sing through the singer. He who wishes to link his song with the tone streaming through the world around him cannot remain just as he is. He must lift his mood to another level and cultivate receptive quiet and attentive listening. These qualities are basic to the process of becoming an instrument for the world tone to play upon. The sound each species of animal instinctively makes has its own distinctive tonal timbre. This allows but a partial inflow­ ing of the universal tone. Tones may be conjured forth from all sorts of inanimate objects. But a human being must deliberately undergo a spiritual discipline to become, with his own unique timbre, a fuller, more complete and individualized instrument of this universal tone. And this is what Gracia Ricardo did. Prompted by her study of Anthroposophy and her personal talks with Rudolf Steiner, she developed a new method of “etheric” singing. Her pupils were introduced to the concept of the evolution of tone. What had begun as the thinking of the gods later became motion, setting the planets moving along their paths. Modern space research has come upon certain sounds apparently pro­ ceeding from cosmic processes that Kepler described as the Harmonia Mundi. Later still, tone developed formative capacity. If we look attentively into the world, we see this mirrored all about us: the so-called Chladnian tone figures, produced by musical vibration, present striking examples of this. A great

69 deal of reference material describing this evolution is available. Rudolf Steiner’s lectures contain an infinitude of such informa­ tion, and Guenther Wachsmuth’s two volumes on the ethers also deal with it extensively. The following steps that I have worked out are based on study with my aunt, Gracia Ricardo. Instead of starting her pupils on the usual physical training emphasized by other methods such as the flexing of the vocal cords by resorting to arpeggios and so forth, the French “mask-emphasis,” Lilli Lehmann’s “palate,” Werbeck’s humming, Gracia Ricardo featured the embouchure so familiar to wood-wind instrumen­ talists. But as I wrote at the beginning, the right mood of approach is of cardinal importance at the outset of this training. First of all, one must find the calm to enter into a new dimen­ sion of reverent receptivity in order to experience the universal tone. Gracia Ricardo used to repeat, “Erwartungsvoller Ruhe” — expectant calm. “Try not to try,” she often said. The over in­ tensity that accompanies “trying hard” sets up tension in the vocal instrument, which blocks the free flowing of the tone. Naturally the physical body, as the singer’s instrument, must be accorded due consideration. To further relaxation, the student should begin this singing training in a sitting position, comfor­ tably erect, and do a few deep-breathing exercises. An exacting ear training is of the essence. This should lead to the ability to hear with accuracy and discrimination the nuances of the teacher’s illustrations and to judge properly one’s own attempts. A teacher’s vocal illustrations are indispensable for teaching this method. Unlike other methods in which the tone production comes first and the speech sounds follow, the pupil is asked in­ stead to concentrate upon the initial consonant, which properly centered, provides the “house,” the shape within which the vowel is intoned on the desired pitch. The Embouchure The centering or focusing of the tone is achieved through an articulated embouchure. A flute player finds an embouchure essen­ tial — so likewise a singer. This is by far the most unique and

70 vital aspect of the method. One trains this embouchure by means of pictures. Visualize a tiny spot or aperture localised at the midpoint of the lower lip. On this imaginary pinpoint, the word is spoken in an unforced manner, centered and concentrated. One im­ agines the lower lip slightly drawn in like that of a fish taking in air bubbles. The breath in the singer’s mouth comes in con­ tact with the outside air around the lips. The outside air, molded by the properly formed, articulated speech sound, acts like a sounding board or acoustical shell for all the resonators of head, nose, chest, mouth and so forth; in short, of the en­ tire vocal instrument, thereby giving the voice a free, full, ringing quality. The vibration thus set in motion comes about through the interplay of the universal tone and the singer, not by a forced physical effort. An indication that this is achieved will be the feeling that the lips and all the resonators vibrate of their own accord. The inside and outside air then maintain a balanced inter­ change through the embouchure. This balance is called the focus, and is the seed-center which produces the freely floating, round, ringing etheric tone. Such a tone can be enlarged just by letting more breath flow out, as the circles in a pond grow larger when a pebble is thrown into it. A focused word on the desired pitch is thus the crux of this method here set forth so briefly, and its lofty goal is the marrying of speech and tone — needless to say, a lifetime study.

71 THE THREE YEARS: The Life of Christ between Baptism and Ascension by Emil Bock. Translated from the German by Alfred Heidenreich. Third reprint 1980, Edinburgh: Floris Books, United States distributor St. George Books; 285 pp; $12.50. The world of the Gospels, like all that is Christ’s, is quiet and gentle, like a grain of seed fallen into the earth. Without this quiet realm of the seed, the noisy, power-snatching world would have no bread. These lines introduce Emil Bock’s contemplative biography of the founder of Christianity. They apprize us that when we wish to come close to the Gospels, to discover what they really offer, we need to become as hushed explorers, at the brink of a world other than our familiar one. The writings themselves, taken as history or teachings alone, give us events from a human perspective. But if we experience the Gospels as a win­ dow, as an opening into that other, that spiritual reality, then we read them aright. How? Can it be done? Is there a way to recover for modern seekers what the Gospel authors saw? The possibility of such a vehicle to a higher sphere is almost universally rejected in a materialistic culture. Biblical events took place so long ago. Moreover, they were recorded in ar­ chaic languages by individuals different from ourselves. Those people witnessed, whereas we moderns want to understand. Yet, chapter by chapter, theme by theme, we can experience that Bock has found “the way to a recovery of the Gospel” for modern consciousness. Through the course of his book, belief is lead into comprehensive understanding while understanding is raised to inner architectonic vision. How has he achieved what theologians, scientists, and most contemporaries despair of? Meditative study of original texts, guided by Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophical methods, has penetrated “beyond the veil of feeling” to the essence of “the Gospel within the four Gospels” — the principle of its composition. His investigations ac­ tually yield — for all to see, test, and personally experience — the hidden law according to which each of the four Gospels

72 was composed and according to which all four are interwoven in a totality. The code is broken ... another step in unveiling Mysteries is taken. In this study, the third in his five volumes on the origin of Christianity, Bock examines compositional patterns of the three year period during which Christ lived and worked in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. The results? Seeming discrepancies and seemingly arbitrary details in Biblical accounts now unfold as vital elements in an artistic whole, regulated by archetypal laws. The events of the three years converge as a sacred drama — one great Passion in concretely progressing stages of incar­ nation, repeated in exquisite, concentrated form in the seven day sequence of Passion Week. Awesome dramatic sequences; uncanny correlations between locations, healings, parables, personae; and spellbinding subtleties of metamorphosis inter­ weave in every moment of a biography which is at once human and divine, earthly and cosmic. The familiar discon­ tinuous story flashes forth as a single gripping pageant, a three-dimensional continuum illumined from four sources, when witnessed from the vantage point of “the invisible pro­ ducer of the cosmic drama.” Naturally, you can’t expect to remain the same after taking all this in. Opening oneself to Bock’s blend of rigor and reverence jolts one out of pedestrian thought-habits and sen­ timental moods. Implications for self-development abound. The new-begotten, composing principle of Christ’s life-stages would be found in our own lives too: “Rightly understood, Christiani­ ty is simply the path of discipleship of Christ ... and the Gospels are a great picture-book of the stations of this spiritual path.... The inward perception of the life of Christ gives to every human being who is open for it a real share in the mystery of Initiation.” Suffering, illness, life tasks speak a newly meaningful language in the light of the God-willed in­ carnation process unto physical death. The book reads best slowly, a little at a time. So much data proceeds from the author’s scholarship, so much material for personal reflection arises by virtue of his vividly inward tone, that each of the fourteen sections bestows more than its actual

73 content, evoking larger ways of seeing patterns and hidden meanings in life. Biblical foundations for modern sacramental and devotional life are discerned convincingly, testimony to the author’s years as a founding priest and longtime head of the religious renewal movement inaugurated by Rudolf Steiner: The Christian Community. In Bock’s presentation, religion and ritual emerge not only as consolations for the weak but as mantles the strong in spirit might freely assume. The age of faith is long gone in our culture. A loss, how­ ever, may also be a gain. Rudolf Steiner never tired of point­ ing out that we in the twentieth century are at the dawn of an era in which genuine understanding of the momentous events of the New Testament can develop. What for two thousand years was worshipped in faithful feeling we can learn to penetrate consciously and thinkingly. For those who seek to actualize this new possibility for mankind in our time, there is no more self- supporting starting point than the archetypal patterns — of composition and life’s unfolding — unravelled in The Three Years. Susan Edelglass Lowndes

Argolis, St. Johns tide Chunks of our ignorance crumble, weeds spring between cracks scorched in sunlight, air Dies around ruins our lives have established, deserted as dust upon Columns decayed in Death’s silence. But listen! A remnant, a spore whispers Promises: soon will a birth upon shoulders of earth sing a new song of Life: a man born from the stars will bleed life upon us — broken, sleeping — will Soak our dust, and from thorns grasped in gladness will sow our hearts full Of — an undying love. . . . — Michael Ronall

74 LOST CHRISTIANITY by Jacob Needleman; Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y.; 228 pp.; $9.95.

Christianity is a fact of human culture and history. This is something that no one can deny. Even its opponents are aware of its magnitude and importance, in that they have chosen to discredit it. The rest of us either pay lip service to it, or become members of one or other of its many churches, or try, perfunctorily or otherwise, to understand just what it has to do with our life and conscience. And that is not easy; especially if we cannot altogether get rid of the feeling that there must be much more to it than is contained in any dogma or ritual, if we could only know what. If, we say to ourselves, it was not a colossal illusion — which no reasonable person can surely admit — then it must have been a colossal fact, something “out of this world,” to have so permeated and regulated Western life for two thousand years. But what was it? Does it exist anymore? And if so, Where? It was these questions that led Jacob Needleman, an American professor of philosophy and religion, to embark on the search for what he calls “lost” Christianity. What gave him the incentive to write his book was the meeting with a stranger at Bangkok airport, while waiting for an overdue plane. In the conversation that followed he realized that he was in the presence of one of those rare souls who are the bearers of unique inner experience — although Needleman parted from him without even having learned his name! That was to hap­ pen in an even more remarkable way. Sometime later a dilapidated parcel arrived at his office. It contained a manuscript about the spiritual life, and an unsigned note say­ ing that “Father Sylvan” had died a month before, and had left these papers to be forwarded to Needleman. So Father Sylvan, the man he had met at Bangkok, was a Christian monk! From then on Father Sylvan becomes the brooding spirit over the whole book, and Needleman sets out on the search for others who might also have found this lost Christianity. The rest of the book, interspersed with flashbacks and comments, is

75 about three of these — the “three Christians,” as they are called. The first was Anthony Bloom, Metropolitan of Western Europe, the Russian Orthodox equivalent of an archbishop. From him he gained a new insight into feeling. “We have to get rid of emotions,” said the Metropolitan, “in order to reach feeling.... You must not be enthusiastic, nor rejecting ... but only open.” The gift of life is the sacrifice of God; and this sacrifice is love. “The proper response to love,” he continued, “is to accept it. There is nothing to do. Why should you wish to do anything?” The second was Father Vincent, a returned Roman Catholic missionary from Africa. Needleman was at first repelled by this man; by his sloppy dress, by the way he ignored him on ar­ rival, except for a curt nod, and went on watching a television football game, and by his intermittently belching and stubbing out cigarettes. He only made contact with him at last in a gin- rummy game they played into the small hours. Needleman lost — $18! “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions about the situation in the contemporary church?” Needleman began, only to be astounded by the reply: “A few deaths in high places are needed — in very high places!” We never learn who should die, or why; but in spite of this, conversations developed which impressed Needleman with the stature and quality of an unorthodox, but truly great soul. “Vince,” as he came to call him, told of incredible experiences in Africa, where he had learned that the ability of people to open up to the teachings and practices of religion, depended entirely on the ability of the man who represented them to identify himself with those people. For the rest — “Crap!” he said. “Christian? I'm not a Christian! In order to say I ’m a Christian, a man must be able to say, I am!” Father O’Hanlon of the Jesuit Theological School of Berkeley was the third. He was exploring the possibility of in­ corporating Zen and Buddhist meditation disciplines in the practice of Jesuit and other Christian exercises. The whole point of such exercises, he explained, was to create a “recep­ tivity and openness,” but “what happens in that openness is the

76 principal thing.” The point of all religious exercises is to free oneself from all attachments, even the attachment to religious exercises. This was something the East could teach the West. We must learn to “give up”; but learn in such a way that we can even give up striving to give up! A point must be reached, “where you realize that to be alert and to relax are actually the same thing. You begin to see that striving is a letting go.” And when you can achieve that, “you’re simply resting there, waiting for the indication of the Will of God.” Father O’Hanlon could not say, however, how that would be adapted to everyday life as most people lived it. That remained “to be worked out.” So — did Needleman find the “lost” Christianity? It is hard to say. For him, yes, perhaps; but what that may be for those who will read his book, especially when it is over two hundred pages of philosophical and religious dialectic, is another matter. “We are not seeking new theological, philosophical or historical concepts,” he says. “We are seeking — in any case, I am seek­ ing — the clue to something lost in ourselves. That means we are seeking to bring back the symbolic power of the idea of the soul, to recover it as the guide to the search for ourselves, our lost selves. If the search for lost Christianity has any meaning at all, it surely must be this: to bring back Christianity as a guide to the search for ourselves.” What I missed in his book was any reference to what I would call the divine-aesthetic power of the Gospel narrative as such (after all, our only textual authority), the imaginative, artistic truth of it. Christianity rests on that, if only at first in a feeling way (feeling, not emotion — there I’m at one with Metropolitan Bloom). It is that astounding, shattering concep­ tion of a god who came down to earth, took human form, and moved among all kinds and conditions of people, and was able to meet them on their level, which challenges us out of our com­ placency; this Being, this Christ, this God-Man, who was able to give to all men, rich or poor, sick or well, clever or stupid, saint or sinner, prostitute or virgin, a deep sense of belonging and value. That is what would make me want to bow down before such a being; that is what gives me not only hope for

77 myself, but confidence in mankind — this love of a God for Man (“The only response to love is to accept it”). It is this staggering awareness that makes one ask, What can there be about me that this might have happened for me, too? And this is where I fall in entirely with Father Vincent. “Before a man can say, I am a Christian, he must also be able to say, I am." But what after all am I? That is the “moment of truth” that must precede any affirmation of Christianity, if that word is to have any meaning at all. Christianity is not “lost.” It is more likely something that has never been possessed — except by the few. I cannot lose what I have not yet got; but I do know that if I should once get it, if I should only so much as once “touch the hem of His garment,” like the poor, sick woman in the Testament story — then I shall know in the heart of me, as I can already know in the mind, that I live not by my own power but by the grace of One, of I, who “before Abraham was, was the I AM.” I can believe that the I of Man belongs to the I of God, but that I has to experience its own I-ness, in all the fullness of separation, sin and folly before that cry can be wrung from the heart, “What am I more than this?” Then the change begins. Then one can say, “Lord, I believe, help Thou my unbelief’; and begin to see that just as every part of our human nature is contained in the Nature around us, so all we call “I” is con­ tained in the I of the World, which is forever seeking itself in the I of man. We shall never find Christianity if we think of it apart from the Being of Christ, as something which can be “lost and found,” and which we might recognize and claim as “ours” if we were to see it anywhere. Remember Zachaeus, the man who went up into a tree (How well the phrase “to be up a tree” fits in with so much that is happening today!) to see the Christ pass by. only to hear instead His voice calling, “Zacheus, make haste and come down, for today I must abide at thy house.” “Today I must abide at thy house!” That is the motif we need. That is how I see the future of Christianity, not a Christi­ anity that once was, and has somehow got “lost.” Christianity

78 is not lost any more than Christ is lost. Christianity is, as Christ is. We have the possibility of awaiting — not expecting, that is something different; that is more egoistic — of awaiting the coming of One who wants to abide in our “house,” too, that “house” which Steiner called the human “holy of holies,” the human I. And on that note I can think of nothing better to end with than that lovely lyric of a seventeenth century devotional poet, George Herbert: Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back, Guilty of dust and sin. But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack From my first entrance in, Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning If I lacked anything. “A guest,” I answered, “worthy to be here”; Love said, “You shall be he.” “I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear, I cannot look on Thee.” Love took my hand, and smiling did reply, “Who made the eyes but I?” “Truth, Lord, but I have marr’d them; let my shame Go where it doth deserve.” “And know you not,” says Love, “who bore the blame?” “My dear, then I will serve.” “You must sit down,” says Love, “and taste my meat.” So I did sit and eat. — Alan Howard

79 To Golden Butterflies Winged messengers of finer hours When I have lain at peace Upon a cot of alpine flowers And gazed on heaven’s fleece — My eyes with lofty forms would crowd, That flexed their limbs and seemed to breathe, Among the gusty wraithlike clouds Which rise and roll and seethe — Can that same brow of broadest blue That wards out over all the world Hold the evening’s star-lamps, too, So bright, serene, and pearled? Yet other stars, that hold their sway In hours when sunlight meets our eyes: So seem to me this half-done day The golden butterflies. Their duty flight from bloom to bloom With heartfelt joy I trace — What symmetry each woven plume, What lines of fairy grace! Drink deep, bright herald, air-borne flower, Of sun-drenched blossoms’ nectar mead! By this absorb the holy power From the earthly weed. It fits you well to stand as sign For all that we may come to know Of glory, peace, and self divine While straining here below. David Adams

80 FAIRY WORLDS AND WORKERS by Marjorie Spock, with brush drawings by Ingrid Gibb; St. George Publications, Spring Valley, New York, 1980. Softbound; $5.95. The heavy mists over the Land of Faerie, blown there by the powerful wizards of Vienna and Chicago, are slowly clearing. Mothers are beginning again to tell “The Golden Bird” and “The Musicians of Bremen” to their boys and girls. Kinder­ garten teachers are showing puppet plays of — yes! “Little Red Riding Hood.” And the children, whose bright eyes never were disturbed by the darkening, are still reading and listening avid­ ly to the magical old tales. “The Water of Life,” as one story is called, hints at what streams to us from that Land. For 62 years it has been the source of the curriculum for kindergarten and first grade in all the Waldorf schools of the world. Hundreds of children recognize it as their mother-country. And now — so many years after Rudolf Steiner’s light penetrated to the light of that place — more and more books about it are coming to the at­ tention of people who felt they were thirsting but could not find the pure water they longed for. Bruno Bettelheim in The Uses of Enchantment has put himself completely at the service of the children he loves so warmly (although for many of us it appears that his head is not yet out of the Viennese mists). J.R.R. Tolkien in Tree and Leaf, Max Luthi (a Swiss professor of folklore) in Once Upon a Time, Julius Heuscher (an American psychiatrist) in A Psychiatric Study of Fairy Tales, and numberless others in the last few years have helped to clear our minds about the mysterious truths of the tales. There has been an awakening like Sleeping Beauty’s to their value and importance. Marjorie Spock’s Fairy Worlds and Workers, with the subtitle, A Natural History of Fairyland, shows us the interplay of those worlds with our own world of nature. It gives us pictures, too, to help us envision the elves and dwarves that are at work around us. “We humans may not as yet be very wide awake. But deep down we do have some measure of awareness, some sensitive feeling for differences and thresholds. ...” Surely the

81 brush drawings Miss Gibb has provided on the cover and in­ side the book are the first enchantment: subtle, colorful and not at all mist-laden. They have sharp, surprising details, so that — all unknowing — one recognizes the creatures swim­ ming along with the fish in the watery world of flow, the fire- spirits that are there somewhere in the brightness but have no shape, the jaunty gnomes among the rocks, the sylphs watched by a friendly bird. Only one of the many beings seems too much like a Christmas tree angel, too pretty to care much about fish and frogs. But perhaps there are elemental spirits with aspirations to rise to new spheres. Marjorie Spock’s descriptions of these spirits are beguiling and authoritative. She is a scholar, as well as a thoroughgoing student of Rudolf Steiner; she has written several books, in­ cluding the 1978 Teaching as a Lively Art about Waldorf educa­ tion. Best of all, she is a farmer and lives and works with all the creatures she seems so well to understand. Her love for them is magicked into her words and sentences. “Undines are all flowing motion, streaming shapes never twice the same. And when veils of rain sweep over a landscape and mist rises to drift over hills and valleys, there you will find these willowy dreamers....” Listen carefully to the way in which that other elemental, the gnome, is presented: “These little beings, from tip to toe one tingling sensor, have as their own special fairyland the subterranean realm of metals and crystals, through which they wander tasting all manner of delight in its transit.” And after a much more accurate depiction than any other modern one dealing with this ancient race, “if gnomes play tricks upon us when we stumble about (half-asleep) — and they love to! — it is out of a natural desire to wake us up. It is they who steer heedless feet to the stones we stub our toes on, ... they who jog the drowsy hand that spills the milk.” This is the Middle Kingdom, the Land of Life, “that part of the universe from which life issues ... the realm mediating between heaven and earth,” the divine world of “creative power” and our world of “created objects.” To be attentive to the living quality of motion, to learn to read the soul revela­ tions of nature will transform our dry, pedantic, factual way of

82 looking into the world, will let us enter that kingdom of life whence come so many good things. Even the Simpletons so many of us are can show their appreciation of a little grey man by sharing with him the fruits of the earth, wine and cake or sour beer and crusts, — and be rewarded with a Golden Goose who will bring laughter to the sorrowful, punishment to the greedy and a kingdom to the compassionate. It is this attentive appreciation that Fairy Worlds and Workers wants to arouse in us. In this, it should succeed ... must suc­ ceed if we are to begin to give meaning and understanding to our home, the earth, which is the home, too, of many other beings. Ruth Pusch

JINCHI-GAKKU KENKYU (Anthroposophical Research), edited by Yoshiharu Kasai. Published by Jinchi-Gakku Shup- pansha (Anthroposophical Publishing House), Tokyo, Japan. 204 pp. Yen 2000 (About $10). This is the first issue of this Japanese anthroposophical magazine, and it appeared in the fall of 1980. Though it takes this reviewer some time to actually read any of the texts, it was fortunate that the task of deciphering the index was made simple by the fact that the editors printed it in both German and Japanese. Proceeding from what would be the back of the book — all Japanese and Chinese publications are in reverse order of those of their Western counter-parts — the reader first comes upon a number of original photographs of the Goetheanum taken by one Kazuo Kitai. Taken in black and white on a snowy day in winter, these pictures convey a number of aspects of the building itself and details observed with an artistic and sensitive eye. Then follow the various ar­ ticles, some of which also contain a number of illustrations. Translations from the German include: “The Man Rudolf Steiner” by Andrei Belyi; “My Meeting with Rudolf Steiner” by Albert Schweitzer; “Goethe’s Natural Scientific Works,” “Anthroposophy, a Fragment,” “Occult History,” all three by Rudolf Steiner; Two Essays by Rilke and Comments by Rudolf Steiner from Dramaturgische Blaetter, “Anthroposophy and

83 Transcendental Meditation” by Manfred Krueger with Com­ ments by the Translator. English-language translations include “Language and Discovery” by Owen Barfield, and the book review of Theodore Roszak’s Unfinished Animal by Alan Howard, which, as well as Albert Schweitzer’s “My Meeting with Rudolf Steiner,” was first published in the Journal for Anthroposophy. Original Japanese articles by various authors include: “Con­ cerning Andrei Belyi,” “The Thinker Owen Barfield,” “Rudolf Steiner and Spiritualism,” “Homes for Curative Education in West-Germany Based on the Principle of Anthroposophy,” “Reports about the Threefold Farm,” “Reviews of New Books,” “Reader’s Opinions,” and “Concluding Remarks.” Of great interest are the announcements of new or available publications. From the Akashic Record, The Philosophy of Freedom, The Path to Self-Knowledge and Mysticism, all by Rudolf Steiner, have been translated into Japanese. Translations of Johannes Hemleben’s and Zeylmans van Emmichoven’s biographies of Rudolf Steiner are listed. Also advertised are four issues of Rudolf Steiner Kenkyu, or Results of Research by Rudolf Steiner. This appears to be a magazine with translations from various books and lectures by Rudolf Steiner dealing with such subjects as “Karma,” “Waldorf School Education,” and Goethe’s “Fairytale.” A little over a hundred years ago, Japan opened her doors to admit Western technology, natural scientific research methods and ideologies. Along with all the positive aspects, the materialism and nihilism of Western thinking has made in­ roads into the ancient spirituality alive in the souls of the Japanese until recent times. More pronounced than in the so- called Christian countries, a terrible spiritual vacuum exists in Japan today. Anthroposophy’s universal message should find fertile ground in Japanese minds that have been so eager to learn all they could from the West. Other Anthroposophical Activities in Japan In connection with the review of this first issue of a Japanese anthroposophical magazine, it might be well to recall some of

84 what has been reported in Western anthroposophical publica­ tions. An article by Rex Raab on the astonishing acceleration of anthroposophical work in Japan appeared recently in Das Goetheanum, January 18, 1981. He reports that Theosophy has recently been translated into Japanese by Professor Iwao Takahashi, who attended the meeting of General Secretaries of the Anthroposophical Socie­ ty in Dornach last Michaelmas — the first time that anyone from the far East has done so. Dr. Yuji Agematsu has translated Steiner’s Ways to a New Style in Architecture. As early as 1966, an article of his, with an introduction by Rex Raab, on the Okuma Memorial Hall designed by Kenji Imai appeared in No. 10 of Journal for Anthroposophy. Looking at the photographs of Okuma Hall, it is obvious that Imai has in a beautiful way succeeded in expressing Steiner’s architectural impulse in the forms, lines and shape of this building. So it seems that the very first seedlings of Anthroposophy planted in the spiritual soil of Japan were those of the architec­ tural impulse. This is most fitting when one considers that the Japanese are known the world over for their aesthetic sense of harmony in blending together man-made things and products of nature. Their gardens and traditional homes and temples bear eloquent witness to this, as does “ikebana,” the Japanese art of arranging flowers. Dr. Agematsu prepared a dissertation in Munich in 1977-78 in which he not only took up Steiner’s insights in dealing with the senses, but also concrete ways in which this affects archi­ tectural style. He has also achieved the most comprehensive presentation now extant of Rudolf Steiner’s impulses in the visual arts. In the most painstaking and responsible way, he takes these up in architecture, sculpture, seals, relief, jewelry, glass, painting, caricature, letterheads and other graphics, eurythmy forms and figures, stage sets, in a well-ordered, in­ structive volume of 180 pages, including 61 illustrations in color and 134 in black and white. This volume is the first of a series, published by Parco Publications, Tokyo, on modern European architecture and art. The name Steiner appears in bold letters across its colorful dust jacket. An article in Das Goetheanum, August, 1978, tells of the pioneer work of Pro­

85 fessors Agematsu and Takahashi, who are responsible for the translation of a number of basic books by Rudolf Steiner. Both lecture extensively on anthroposophical themes. There were then two groups in the greater Tokyo area: one, the Michael- group in Tokyo itself, the other in Kamakura, a suburb of Tokyo, which is well-known to tourists for its gigantic statue of Buddha. Mrs. Etsuko Agematsu has set herself the task of bringing eurythmy permanently to Japan. To prepare herself she has been taking the four year course at the Munich Eurythmy School. After her graduation this summer, a eurythmy perfor­ mance is planned in a Tokyo theater at Michaelmas, ’81. The leader of the Munich Eurythmy School and two other profes­ sional eurythmists will help her in this undertaking. The costs of the flights and other preparations are almost staggering. Mrs. Agematsu feels deep gratitude for all that she has received from her teachers and the membership in Europe. In order to carry the fruits of what she has been given to the growing work in Japan, she has established a fund to receive help in her efforts at Hauptstrasse 42, D-8082 Grafrath, Germany. A year ago, through the invitation of Mr. and Mrs. Takahashi, Michael Leber and Gail Langstroth of the Eurythmeum, Stuttgart, introduced eurythmy to groups of varying backgrounds in four Japanese cities through talks and demonstrations. A number of publications dealing with Waldorf school pedagogy have appeared in Japan, among them A Schoolgirl in Munich — My Daughter Attended the Rudolf Steiner School by Mrs. Michiko Koyasu, who is professor of German at Waseda University in Tokyo. By 1979, 109,000 copies of this book alone had been sold. It received the Prize for Cultural Publica­ tions from the Mainichi-Newspaper, one of the largest papers in Japan. As the Journal goes to press, another volume has arrived from Mr. Yoshiharu Kasai of Tokyo — a hardback Japanese translation of the biography of Rudolf Steiner by F.W. Zeylmans van Emmichoven, with a large photograph of Rudolf Steiner on the dust cover and 316 pages illustrated by over a dozen photographs. 86 It is a formidable task for these few dedicated anthro­ posophists to translate and transpose Anthroposophy to Japan. But there, as everywhere else, men are thirsting for the spirit, and we anthroposophists in the West must be aware of these efforts on the part of our fellow-anthroposophists and send them our helping thoughts. Japan has been called “the land of the rising sun.” May “the rising sun of spiritual science” shine brightly into the hearts of men in the East! Maria St. Goar

TOWARD WHOLENESS: RUDOLF STEINER EDUCA­ TION IN AMERICA by Mary Caroline Richards. Wesleyan University Press, 1980; 210 pages; $17.50 cloth, $6.95 paper. Our times are in labor. Mankind as a whole is in the throes of a new birth, while each one of us, each at a different stage, is big with the future. Our first task: to become who we are, ful­ ly human, honing our individual humanity on the resistance that life, that heredity and environment, favor and thwart us with. Our second task, kin to the first or part of it: to help our children achieve their individual humanity, guiding and awakening and strengthening them to become who they are. Self-education and the child’s education. At center-stage: man in his full humanity-to-be. He it is who occupies center-stage, too, in M.C. Richards’ new book Toward Wholeness: Rudolf Steiner Education in America. “It is the human being who is now our concern in education — the human being in his or her wholeness” (p. 70). But who has not heard this holistic claim for education in our time — as an earnest goal, as a pious wish, as a cliche even — and approved it (non-committally) as one approves the desire for justice or for peace? M.C. Richards is well aware of this: “It is not enough to claim a generous concern for the har­ monious development of all powers and talents in the child,” she writes on p. 47. We need to penetrate, beyond good will, to insight, identity, truth, and capacity. What then, more con­ cretely, does she mean? 87 She means, in brief, a “totality of vision” of universe, earth and man which she has experienced, after more than twenty years of involvement (through “participation, observation, study and cordial inquiry”) in the pedagogical movement which goes by the name of Rudolf Steiner or Waldorf education. It is a vision, or experienced knowledge, which restores to man and the world the dimension of spiritual reality, affirmed with the strength gained from the scientific and technological age, and able to penetrate into the lawful interweaving of body, soul and spirit in the unfolding life of the child. Years after she first heard of Rudolf Steiner and of Waldorf education — she was “struck” by the tone of a brochure dealing with Waldorf schools in England, in 1949 — she remembered and pursued the underlying philosophy of these schools. “I pressed my ques­ tions, and I discovered that within the Steiner/Waldorf educa­ tional movement there lives a conception of the human being, of nature, and of the universe that inspires the work” (p. 4). This conception is, in fact, the worldwide impulse of Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy. Her present volume is a heart-felt, mind-felt, I am tempted to say body-felt, condensation of her experiences with this impulse, primarily through her en­ counters with its expanding application and fruiting on the North American continent in one particular area: that of education. But the outreach, by the very nature of the case, is vastly larger than classroom and country. At present, Waldorf education in the United States and Canada comprises some fifteen major Waldorf schools and a larger number of smaller, pioneering enterprises (kindergartens, primary grades, parent associations) as well as several Waldorf teacher training and other adult education centers. After Chapter One, which introduces the reader to Rudolf Steiner and the author’s approach, we make first ac­ quaintance with a number of these schools — each with an in­ dividual countenance — beginning with the first school established in our country, the Rudolf Steiner School in New York City (founded 1928). The fifth chapter “Teacher Training and Handwork,” includes a description, in candid detail, of her experience in a teacher training course she took in the New

88 York City school. Distinct from the schools, but also stemming from the impulse of Anthroposophy, the Camphill movement in America — for handicapped children and young adults in need of special care — is feelingly described in a chapter of its own. In these and all other chapters, through and beyond per­ sonal experience, the author conveys more and more the nature and working of the underlying impulse, of the living forces and ideas that animate the schools, of the methods and practices that characterize them, of the quality of the Waldorf teacher, of community building for the new age — with two sounding and resounding motifs: that of wholeness, and that of artistic experience. For Waldorf education, pillared on a knowledge of man and universe in which all relates and inter- resonates, summons the teacher to combine mastery of substance with form and imagination in acts of free creativity as he or she stands before the living child. M. C. Richards is herself a teacher (at college level), a poet, a potter, and well-known author of two prior volumes: Center­ ing, and The Crossing-Point. While the origin of Rudolf Steiner education is European, she writes as an American, breast-fed by, reared in, striving with, loyal to, her very own America. She writes, above all, as one in whom head, heart and hand have struggled to achieve the cooperative wholeness of a true artist. The picture of Waldorf education which she conveys in her new book is not presented in linear summation of system­ atic detail. It is evoked rather by strong, deliberate, large and small strokes of the brush, which reveal: now some personal experience, now some fundamental awareness about life, now the light thrown on the child’s growth by some esoteric insight, and again some specific educational practice or principle — “repeating and spiralling in cumulative rhythm” as needed, to produce a total, centered effect. She does this in a series of eleven chapters, framed by a preface and a “Conclusion,” in which are included the “art of lifelong learning” outside school as well. A Directory of Waldorf Schools, Institutes and Adult Training Centers in North America, a Brief Chronology of Rudolf Steiner’s Life and Works, and a Bibliography, complete the book.

89 Waldorf education demands of the practicing teacher a capacity — or, at least, the readiness to work by self­ transformation towards the capacity — to “have a comprehen­ sive view of the universe as a background to all he undertakes in his school work”; to “experience himself as source”; to be “as involved as the children in continuing to learn, grow, and develop”; to be able to respond to the words which Rudolf Steiner spoke to the first teachers of the first Waldorf School in Germany: Imbue yourself with the power of imagination, Have courage for the truth, Sharpen your feeling for responsibility of soul. (Quoted on p. 84.) M. C. Richards states tersely: “What is unique in these schools is the inner path of the teacher” (p. 1 6 ) . There is something earthy in M. C. Richards’ style, something pithy and pigmented — it is good earth, sunlit and seeded throughout with penetrating thoughts and stimulating images. It has the ring of experienced truth, of sobriety and enthusiasm combined, of a non-dogmatic announcement of a sunrise, of a new age. It is quite in the nature of things that one of her chapters should be devoted to “Camphill in America: Mental Handicap and a New Social Impulse”; one to “Education and Communi­ ty: a School of Life and a Re-Schooling of Society”; and one to “Waldorf Education and New Age Religious Consciousness.” In the latter, she describes an evolving religious impulse which “like the sun, shines across all divisions” and which, like the sun, “works deep in the processes of earth itself” (p. 156). For always, “the goal is to do the work of the world, not to bliss out” (p. 48). The tenth chapter, titled “The Teacher,” presents a sort of climax. For in it, beside giving a summary of what she has perceived “in pondering Rudolf Steiner/Waldorf education in America for more than twenty years,” she presses through to a last outpost, seeking to identify the ultimate teacher of us all: the Teacher of the teachers in “Waldorf schools and Camphill

90 villages, the Teacher of Rudolf Steiner, or Martin Luther King, of Shakespeare, Einstein,” and of many more whom she men­ tions by name. By whom are we all taught? she asks. And she answers — but I shall not quote her answer. For the latter, to this reviewer, in its utter brevity, seems hauntingly suggestive and metaphorically concealing. It is, in any case, very much spoken out of the heart of the book, and of the author. I do not wish to leave the impression of unmitigated affirma­ tion and approval on my part of all that the book contains. There are, in a few places, what I believe are inaccuracies of detail; there are points and references which intrigue me or which I am unable to judge; and I cannot but feel considerable scepticism towards some selections she uses in illustrating a fifth grade botany lesson. But the book remains whole: ex­ perienced, undogmatic, honest, pregnant with future. Parents, students, educators, “pilgrims and question-askers,” and all who sense in some way the call of a new age, should value the book. Not least, I would say, the Waldorf teachers themselves, and especially young teacher trainees in Waldorf training centers and institutes. — Amos Franceschelli

Here is a wonder deep and true — Last year’s harvest sow anew; Faithfully lay it in warm brown earth, — Await with hope its hour of birth. To be reborn each seed must die Until the Sun says, “Wake, arise!” Loving Sun, Earth, Air, and Rain, Uplift for us the living grain. Here is a wonder true and deep, That as you sow, so shall you reap. — William Ward

91 CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS ISSUE FRIEDRICH HIEBEL — Member of the Vorstand of the General Anthropo­ sophical Society; editor of Das Goetheanum Weekly; poet, playwright, essayist; in English: Epistles of St. Paul & Rudolf Steiner’s Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. • GEORG KUEHLEWIND - Philosopher; lecturer at Max Planck Insti­ tute, Germany; author of Bewusstseinstufen (Stages of Consciousness); Die Wahrheit Tun, etc. • CHRISTOPHER BAMFORD — Writer; co-director of Lindisfarne Press, West Stockbridge, Mass. • JOHN SCOTUS ERIUGENA — 9th century Celtic Christian Platonist, philosopher and theologian, who, besides metaphysics and two shorter works on the Gospel of St. John, translated writings of Dionysius the Areopagite and composed Commentary on The Celestial Hierarchies. • WILLIAM WARD — Teacher of Class Five and Woodwork at Hawthorne Valley School, Harlemville, N.Y. • ALBERT STEFFEN - (1884-1963) Swiss poet, dramatist, novelist; President of the Anthroposophical Society, 1925-63; editor of Das Goetheanum from its inception till his death. • ARVIA EGE — Poet, artist, teacher; author of Battle for the Sunlight and translator of Truth-Wrought-Words by Rudolf Steiner. • LONA TRUEDING — Pianist, lecturer, writer; liv­ ing in England. • REX RAAB — Architect, poet, translator; Engelberg, Germany. • JUERGEN SCHRIEFER — One of the foremost music teachers in the Waldorf School movement; Director of School of Voice- Training, founded 1972 to continue Werbeck-Svaerdstroem’s work; presently at Witten-Annen. • MARY (“Polly”) THEODORA RICHARDS - She has furthered Rudolf Steiner’s work in the fields of education, the arts, bio- dynamics and publication. • RUDOLF STEINER — (1861-1925) Inau- gurator of Anthroposophy and the School for Spiritual Science, Goetheanum, Dornach, Switzerland. • KARL GEBERT — Music teacher at original Waldorf School, Stuttgart. • MICHAEL RONALL — Sarah Lawrence College; free-lance writer. • GEORGE HERBERT — (1593-1633) English poet dedicated to the Church. • DAVID ADAMS — Ph.D. in Arts History Education; teacher, Threefold Educational Founda­ tion, Spring Valley, N.Y.; General Manager, J & R Lamb Studios; former teacher in public and Waldorf schools. As a child he collected butterflies. • VAN JAMES — San Francisco Art Institute; Emerson College, England; Wagner-Koch Painting School, Dornach, Switzerland; teaches painting at Emerson and Light Valley Waldorf School, Oregon. • SUSAN E. LOWNDES — Teaches philosophy at Rockland Community College. • ALAN HOWARD — Retired Waldorf teacher who has lectured widely on Rudolf Steiner and his work. • RUTH PUSCH — Eurythmist; teacher of English, Rudolf Steiner School, retired; former editor of Education as an Art. • MARIA ST. GOAR — Translator, reviewer; spent her first 21 years in Japan. • AMOS FRANCESCHELLI — Teacher of mathematics, Rudolf Steiner School, N.Y., retired; poet.

92 COLOR-SPACE

INTRODUCING LASUR WALL PAINTING: Lasur {pronounced la-zur) means layers of transparent or translucent color. Its use for wall painting involves applications of similar or contrasting colors in several layers over a smooth or textured light-colored surface In this way walls can be painted to enhance and enliven one's environment. A wall or a whole room can be painted to provide a mood of peace or activity. Transitions of color may solve particular spatial problems, give impressions of expansion or contraction, or be developed into murals. In Its simplest form, Lasur is a pleasant alternative to wall coverings and standard opaque paints. Color-Space provides the following services: LASUR WALL PAINTING, COLOR TRANSITIONS AND MURALS COLOR PLANNING, COURSES IN COLOR STUDY COURSES IN LASUR AND MURAL PAINTING For references and further information please contact: ROBERT M. LOGSDON, R.D. 3, BOX 76 GREAT BARRINGTON, MA 01230 413*528*1892

TEMENOS TEMENOS is a new journal edited by Kathleen Raine, Keith Critchlow, Philip Sherrard, and Brian Keeble that will seek to affirm the sacred dimension of the arts and call for its renewal in the creative activity of our time. The first issue (Spring, 1981) will include essays on the Imagination, Archetypes, the Theater of the Soul, Haiku, Architecture, and more, as well as poetry and reviews. 212 pages, softcover. $8.00 before April 15,1981; $10.00 thereafter.

The Soul as Sphere and Androgyne by Keith Critchlow. 34 pages, softcover. $6.00

The Lindisfarne Letter #9: Poetry and Prophecy, by Kathleen Raine 80 pages, softcover. $6.50 #10: Geometry and Architecture, by Keith Critchlow and Robert Lawlor 104 pages, softcover. $10.00. #11: Metaphor and the World of Mental Process, by Gregory Bateson 12 pages, softcover. $3.00 THE LINDISFARNE PRESS R.D. #2, West Stockbridge, Massachusetts 01266 93 Emerso n College

A centre for adult education, training and research based on the work of Rudolf Steiner.

Foundation Year: A year of orientation and exploration in Anthroposophy. Education Course: A one-year training course in Waldorf Education. Agriculture Course: Introduction to fundamentals of bio-dynamic agriculture and gardening. Centre for Social One-term and one-year courses of training in DeveloDment: social questions and practice. Arts: Opportunities for further work in sculpture, painting or eurythmy, following the Foundation Year or equivalent. For further information, please write to: The Secretary, Emerson College, Forest Row, Sussex RH18 5|X, England.

Rudolf Steiner College A Center for A n throposophical E n d e a vo rs

OFFERS A Full-Time Foundation Program IN SCIENCES, HUMANITIES, ARTS AND SOCIAL QUESTIONS A Full-Time Waldorf Teacher Training Program RUDOLF STEINER COLLEGE 9200 Fair Oaks Boulevard, Fair Oaks, California 95628 • (916) 961-8727 Director: Rene M. Querido

94 WALDORF INSTITUTE OF MERCY COLLEGE 23399 Evergreen Road • Southfield, Michigan 48075

Offers five full-time programs for graduates and undergraduates

ORIENTATION YEAR (ANTHROPOSOPHICAL STUDIES) TEACHER TRAINING EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION SPECIAL (CURATIVE) EDUCATION BIO-DYNAMIC GARDENING Fully Accredited Directors: Werner Glas, Hans Gebert, Janet McGavin Telephones: Office - 313-352-8990; Student Residence - 313-352-4061/63

Waldorf Teacher Training THE WALDORF INSTITUTE OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA at HIGHLAND HALL 17100 Superior Street Northridge, California 91324 offers a Waldorf Teaching Training Program from Mid-September to Mid-June. This intensive one-year Program is housed at Highland Hall, a Waldorf School, with grades Nursery through Twelfth. For full details please send for our brochure. DIRECTORS Dr. Virginia Sease, and Mr. John Brousseau

A training in Speech Formation by Sophia Walsh of Dornach is also available during the Winter months.

95 Tobias Centre for Art SUMMER COURSE in the beautiful Sussex surroundings of Tobias Centre from July 17th to August 1st, 1981 Painting out of the Colour...... Isobel Smith Introduction to Form and Movement in C lay Patricia Thompson Eurythmy and Talks on Art ...... Kurt Falk Tuition, Board, Lodging, Materials: £120 for 2 weeks, including Minimum 10 persons £10.00 deposit by June 15th. For summer guests, rooms are available — Bed & Breakfast or Half-Pension.

Bank Cottage farm, Forest Row, Sussex, England

Fern Hill Environs & P roperties

Secluded homesites & properties in rural community; adjoining biodynamic farm, Waldorf School, woodlands, swimming, common lands. Ideal for families, retired persons or second home. Investment opportunity.

write: Fern Hill Environs, Harlemville, Ghent, N Y. 12075 call: 518-672-4815

CALVIN’S JUNGLE and OTHER POEMS by Frank Newell Lyrics written in various places from New York to Cairo, spanning the two middle quarters of the 20th century. $3.95 Paperback Available from St. George Book Service HENRY GOULDEN BOOKS

96 Rudolf Steiner Farm SCHOOL S UMMER PROGRAMS f o r CHILDREN

Summer at Hawthorne Valley Farm — A creative summer experience for children ages 9-12: farm chores, swimming, hiking, artistic work at Hawthorne Valley Farm. Four weeks, starting June 27th. The Agawamuck Wilderness Adventure — A challenging six weeks of learning to live in harmony with nature. Back packing, canoeing, rock climbing in the Berkshires, Catskills and Adirondacks. Forest ecology, swimming, music. Age 13 and older. Six weeks, starting June 27th.

Write or phone: R udolf Steiner Farm School, RD 2, H arle m ville, G hent, New York 12075 Tel. (518) 672-7120 weekdays until 4 o'clock

Weleda Baby Products For skin not yet hardened to the outer world

Baby powder is cooling, soothing, absorbent. Made with powdered herbs.

oil shield of baby’s skin, eam is blended provides gentle warmth. with beeswax. A moisture Please send for “Warmth and Your Baby” barrier, it soothes, helps Write Weleda, 841 So. Main, Spring Valley, N.Y. 10977 prevent chapping. RUDOLF STEINER AND INITIATION

The Anthroposophical Path of Inner Schooling A Survey

P a u l E u g e n S c h il l e r

"In the past the power of faith gave man a real connection with the divine-creative,... Today, an increasing number of people experience the ebbing away of this union through faith. ...O nly a new, concrete reunion with the higher divine-spiritual worlds is capable of meeting the dangers that arise through this ebbing away and is able to secure the continuation of a genuinely human culture. The new reunion must, however, in accordance with the evolution of mankind, be built on a foundation of a fully conscious and exact observation and investigation of the soul-spiritual in man and in the world." So states Paul Eugen Schiller in his introduction to this valuable book. He goes on to show that the path to the “new reunion with the higher divine-spiritual worlds” arises directly from the especial thinking of Rudolf Steiner, and will pro­ vide the reader with a bird’s eye view of the very essence of Anthroposophy. The book is ably translated from the German by Henry Barnes. 154 pages Paperbound, $5.95

THE ANTHROPOSOPHIC PRESS 258 Hungry Hollow Road Spring Valley, New York 10977