Golden Blade
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AN APPROACH TO CONTEMPORARY QUESTIONS IN THE LIGHT OF ANTHROPOSOPHY The Golden Blade The World Ash: Yggdrasil Rudolf Steiner .4 Lecture (hitherto untranslated) given in Berlin on October 7, /907. Ancient European Clairvoyance Rudolf Steiner .4 Lecture {hitherto untranslated) given in Berlin on May i, igog. Mithras and Christianity A. C. Harwood Physical and Etheric Energies E. Pfeiffer ^ After Einstein's Death E. Lehrs m Epochs of Evolution John Waterman i^) Dante's Exile Paolo Gentilli ✓ The Future of the English Language AdamBittleston Perceiving, Thinking and Knowing Peter Carpenter Good Friday Joy Mansfield Poems by Sylvia Eck^ersley and Arnold Freeman Book Reviews by Owen Barfield and Fried Geuter Edited by Arnold Freeman and Charles Waterman 1957 PUBLISHED ANNUALLY SEVEN AND SIX The Golden Blade The Golden Blade Copies of the previous issues are available in limited numbers I9S7 The contents include :— 1949 ■ 950 The Threshold iti Nature and in Spiritual Knowledge : A Way of Man Rudolf Steiner Life Rudolf Steiner Tendencies to a Threefold Order Experience of Birth and Death The World Ash: Yggdrasil R u d o l f S t e i n e r 1 A. C. Harwood in Childhood Karl Konig, m.d. Goethe and the Science of the What is a Farm ? Ancient European Clairvoyance R u d o l f S t e i n e r 8 Future George .Adams C. A. Mier What is a Healthy Society? Meditation and Time Mithras and Christianity A. C. Harwood 20 C h a r l e s W a t e r m a n A d a m B i t t l e s t o n Physical and Etheric Energies E . P f e i f f e r 2 8 195' '952 The Cosmic Word and Individual The Coming Experience of Christ A f t e r E i n s t e i n ' s D e a t h E . L e h r s 3 8 Man Rudolf Steiner Rudolf Steiner The Heavenly Hierarchies Heaven and Ascension Epochs of Evolution . fohn Waterman 48 A d a m B i t t l e s t o n Emil Bock Evolution and Creation The Endocrine Glands D a n t e ' s E x i l e Paolo Gentilli 60 E. L. Grant Watson Karl Konig, m.d. Form in Art and in Society Rudolf Steiner and the Theatre The Future of the English Language A d a m B i t t l e s t o n 7 1 Owen Barfield Arnold Freeman Perceiving, Thinking and Knowing Peter Carpenter 82 1953 '954 F r o m P h i l o s o p h y t o A n t h r o - Spiritual Emptiness and Social G o o d F r i d a y . foy Mansfield 91 posophy Rudolf Steiner Life Rudolf Steiner The Writing of the Gospels The Threefold Structure of the Two Poems World George .Adams A d a m B i t t l e s t o n The Gull-Spirit to the Gulls Michael and St. George (I) Michael and St. George (11) Syloia Eckersley 19 Isabel Wyatt Isabel Wyatt Faust and Gretchen Arnold Freeman 27 "Going Through the Mill" The Art of Eurhythmy Maurice Wood Owen Barfield B O O K R E V I E W S ■ 955 '956 Evil and the Future of Man The Occult Basis of Music Rudolf Steiner Rudolf Steiner The Etheric Body in Idea and Evolution : the Hidden Thread Action Herman PoprELBAUM John Waterman Samuel Hahnemann The Ravenna Mosaics Edited by Arnold Freeman and Charles Waterman Karl Konig, m.d. A. W. Mann Early Memories of Rudolf Steiner T h e We a t h e r i n 1 0 6 6 Isabel Wy.att Ita Wegman Price 7/6 (7/10 post free) from the Rudolf Steiner Bookshop, 35 Park Road, London, Price 7/10 (or 1 del. 20) for each copy, post free, from N.W. I, or the Rudolf Steiner Book Centre, The Rudolf Steiner Bookshop, 35, Park Road, N.W.I, or the 54, Bloomsbury Street, London, W.C.\. Rudolf Steiner Book Centre, 54, Bloomsbury Street, W.C.I. ; THE WORLD ASH: YGGDRASIL Rudolf Steiner A Lecture {hitherto untranslated) given in Berlin on October 7.1907* Duringwhat the one next might few call lectures occult or we mystic will studysymbols the to relationship the astral and of spiritual worlds. You are constantly meeting signs, symbols, stories which are dismissed by complete materialists as no more than poetic fancies. They assume that such things arise in some way from the imaginings of simple people and they regard them as meaningless nonsense. Or you may meet well-disposed people who speculate as to the meaning of such symbols as the pentagram, and so on. At the Munich Congress we made it clear that we ascribe a certain importance to occult signs. The true occultist, however, does not speculate, but tries to find the actual facts. You will never discover the meaning of occult signs through philosophical speculation, and Anthroposophy, a way of thought rather than a much that is said and written about their meaning is valueless, body of dogma, springs from the work and teaching because it comes only from thinking. Nevertheless these signs are of Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925). He spoke of it as important to us, for toey are, as it were, instruments through which "a path of knowledge, to guide the spiritual in the we can rise into higher worlds. human being to the spiritual in the universe To-day let us consider another form of symbolism; it is one already familiar to you, and we will now try to discover its real origin and value. The aim of this Annual is to publish writings which Before we pass on to this, we must make some preliminary observations about human beings. You will soon see why a subject bring the outlook of Anthroposophy to bear on ques seemingly quite remote is introduced. tions and activities relevant to the present time. Let us go back to a point of time in evolution familiar to all of you. You know that our own age was preceded by the Atlantean age. In primeval times there was land where now lies the bottom The title derives from a reference by Rudolf Steiner of the Atlantic Ocean, and the territory we now occupy was covered to an old Persian legend. "Djemjdid was a king far and wide with water. There, in Atlantis, our forefathers dwelt, for in truth the European population has for the most part sprung who led his people from the north towards Iran, and from the descendants of Atlantean peoples. There was once a who received from the God, whom he called Ahura migration of the peoples from west to east. From ancient Atlantis, Mazdao, a golden dagger, by means of which he was which lay between present-day Europe and America, they ttavelled far over towards the east, when the floods which now constitute the to fulfil his mission on earth .... It represents a Atlantic Ocean engulfed this earlier part of the earth. force given to man whereby he can act upon and In the last third of the Atlantean age, a little band representing transform external nature ". 9 the most advanced people of the time gathered in the north-east, in the region of present-day Ireland. The whole of Atlantis was * From notes unrevised by the lecturer. Published by kind permission of the Rudolf Steiner-Nachlassverwaltung, Domach, Switzerland, and in agreement with the Rudolf Steiner Publishing Company. 1 covered with thick, heavy mist, and in the memory of the Germanic deep down in their souls they were fully aware of the spiritual world peoples was called " Niflheim." which lies behind this sense-world. In this ancient time, when the air was continually weighted with Now we will try to understand how the new perception of the heavy masses of water, soul-life, too. was quite different. There man who looks at objects through his senses came into j was still an ancient clairvoyance; at that time men could see into have already hinted that something happened to that little b^d of the spiritual world. When you approached anyone, certain colour- men in the north through whom calculating, counting, conminmg phenomena arose before your soul which told you whether the man became a human faculty. I indicated that man's etheric body was was sympathetic to you or not. It was the same with animals; then drawn into the physical head. Whereas formerly Ibe part of when you approached an animal, you could judge whether it was the etheric head in the region of the eyebrows was outside, it was harmful to you or not. A primitive clairvoyance existed in Atlantis. now drawn inwards, and the two parts became one. Thereby man Mankind passes through various stages of evolution; men could attained to self-consciousness, to ego-consciousness. In Atlantean not remain in that dull clairvoyance; the present-day method of man part of the etheric head, which is to-day coincident with the perception through the senses had to come. The old clairvoyance physical head, projected far beyond the head—whence man s insight had to fall into abeyance for a while, though it will have to be won into the spiritual world, his clairvoyance. back again in the future, as an addition to the present clear day- Now let us transplant ourselves for a moment into the souls ot consciousness.