Golden Blade

A APPROACH TO CONTEMPORARY QUESTIONS IN THE LIGHT OF ANTHROPOSOPHY The Golden Blade The Occult Basis of Music RudoljSteiner A Lecture, hitherto untranslated, given at Cologne on December 3, 1906. A M u s i c a l P i l g r i m a g e Ferdinand Rauter Evolution; The Hidden Thread John Waterman The Ravenna Mosaics A. W.Mann Barbara Hepworth's Sculpture David Lewis Art and Science in the 20th Century George Adams THE Two Faces of Modern Art Richard Kroth Reforming the Calendar W alter Biihler Dramatic Poetry- and a Cosmic Setting Roy Walker With a Note by Charles Waterman The Weather in 1066 Isabel Wyatt An Irish Yew E.L.G. W. Christmas by the Sea Joy Mansfield Book Reviews hy Alfred Heidenreich, Adam Bittleston Poems by Sylvia Eckersley and Alida Carey Gulick and H. L. Hetherington Edited by Arnold Freeman and Charles Waterman 1956 PUBLISHED ANNUALLY SEVEN AND SIX The Golden Blade The Golden Blade Copies of the previous issues are available in limited numbers 1956 The contents include :— 1949 '95" The Threshold in S'niure and in Spiritual Knowledge : A Way of The Occult Basis of Music Rudolf Steiner I Man RLT50I.|' STEI.ski; Life Rudolf Steiner Tendencies to a Threefold Order Experience of liirth and Dealh A Lecture given at Cologne .A. C". Harwogi) in Childhood Kari. Konig, m.d. on Decembers, 1906. Goethe and the .Science of the Whal is a Farm ? Future riKORC.R Adams C. A. .Mier A M u s i c a l P i l g r i m a g e F e r d i n a n d R a u t e r 6 H7;n/ is a Heatlhy ."Society? Meditation and Time John Waterman 18 C i i A R L K S \ V a t i ; r . m a n A d a m B i t t i . k s t o n Evolution: The Hidden Thread The Ravenna Mosaics A.W.Mann 29 IO.aI '952 Barbara Hepworth's Sculpture D a v i d L e w i s 4 2 The Cosmic Word and Individual The Coming Flxperioncc of Christ Man Rl'doi.f Steiseh Rudolf Steiner Art and Science in the 20th Century George Adams 47 The Heavenly Hierarchies Heaven and .Ascension • A d a . m H i t t i . e s i o s Emil Bock The Two Faces of Modern Art Richard Kroth 53 Evolution and Creation The Endocrine Glands IC. L. Grant Watson Karl Konig, m.d. Reforming the Calendar . W alter Buhler 59 Form in .\rt and in Society Rudolf .Kleiner and the Theatre Owen Barfiki.d Arnold Free.man Dramatic Poetry and a Cosmic Setting . Roy Walk.er 69 With a Note by Charles Waterman iq.ij '954 The Weather IN 1066 Isabel Wyatt 80 F r o m P h i l o s o p h y t o . I n t h r o - t^piritual Emptiness and Social posophy Rudoli' Steiner Life Rudolf Steiner An Irish Yew . E . L . G . W . 89 The Threefold Structure of the The Writing of the Gospels World George Adams ■ A d a m B i t t i . e s t o n C h r i s t m a s b y t h e S e a Joy Mansfield 90 Michael and St. George (I) Michael and St. George (II) 92 ISABEI. WVATT ISAHEL Wyatt Two Poems "Going Through the Mill" The .Art of Eurhythmy Palette . Sylvia Eckorsley Maurice Wood Owen Barfield T h e B e l l s . A lida Carey G ulick '955 B O O K R E V I E W S Ei'il and the Future of .Man Rudolf Steiner The Etheric Body in Idea and .Iction IIer.man Poffelbaum t-iamuel Hahnemann Karl Konig, m.d. Earlv .Memories of Rudolf Steiner Ita Weg.man Edited by Arnold Freeman and Charles Waterman Orders, enclosing 7/10 (or 1 dol. 20) for each copy, post free. should be sent to— Price 716 (7/10 post free) from the Rudolf The Rudolf Steiner Bookshop, 35. Park Road, N.W.I, or the Steiner Bookshop, 35, Park Road, London, Rudolf Steiner Book Centre, 54, Bloomsbury Street, W.C.I. N. W. I, or the Rudolf Steiner Book Centre, 54, Bloomsbury Street, London, W.C.\. Pnnted THE OCCULT BASIS OF MUSIC Rudolf Steiner A Lecture, hitherto untranslated, given at Cologne on December 3,1906.* *|?OR there those is something who think puzzling of music about from it; the for asstheticsimple human point of feeling view, it is a direct experience which penetrates the soul; and for those who want to understand how it produces its effects, it is a rather difficult problem. Compared with other arts—sculpture, painting, poetry—music has a special character. All the other arts have some kind of inodel in the external world. The sculptor works from a model, and if he creates a statue of Zeus or Apollo, it takes an idealised human form. It is the same with painting—and to-day the tendency is to give an exact impression of what the senses perceive. Poetry, similarly, tries to deal with some aspect of the real world. But if one tried' to apply this theory to music, one would get nowhere—for how could one copy, for example, the song of birds! Anthjoposophy, a way of thought rather than a What is the origin of musically-shaped sounds? How are they body of dogma, springs from the work and teaching related to anything in the objective world? of Rudolf Steiner (1861—1925). He spoke of it as It is precisely in connection with this art of music that Schopen hauer has advanced some interesting views; in a certain respect they "a path of knowledge, to guide the spiritual in the are indeed clear and striking. He assigns to music a quite special human being to the spiritual in the universe place among the arts, and to art itself a quite special value in hmnan life. His philosophy has a fundamental ground-note which may be expressed as follows: The aim of this Annual is to publish writings which Life is a sorry business, and through thiiîng I try to make it bring the outlook of Anthroposophy to bear on ques bearable. Pervading everything in the world is a blind, unconscious tions and activities of the present time. Will. It shapes the stone and then the plant—^but always, in all its manifestations, with a restless yearning for something higher. The savage feels this less than does the genius, who experiences the The title derives from a reference by Rudolf Steiner painful cravings of the Will in the highest, most intense, degree. to an old Persian legend. "Djemjdid was a king who Besides the activity of the Will—Schopenhauer continues—man has the faculty of forming mental images. These are like a fata led his people from the north towards Iran, and who morgana, like pictures in the mist, like the spray thrown up by the received from the God, whom he called Ahura Mazdao, waves of the Will. The Will surges up to shape these illusory a golden dagger, by means of which he was to fulfil pictures. When in this way man perceives the working of the Will, his mission on earth It represents a force he is less than ever satisfied; but a release from the blind dnving- force of the Will comes to us through art. Art is something through given to man whereby he can act upon and transform which man can escape from the restless craving of the Will. How external nature ". does this happen? * From notes vmrevised by the lecturer. Published by kind permission of the Rudolf Steiner-Nachlassverwaltimg, Dornach, Switzerland, and in agreement with the Rudolf Steiner Publishing Company. 1 When man creates a work of art, it spring from his image- Gradually he extends his consciousness over this world, and on forming faculty; but genuine art, Schopenhauer insists, is not merely waking he remembers that he has been active within it. a copy of external reality. A statue of Zeus, for example, is not The next step occms when he—as it were—carries this world back with him into waking life. Then he sees the astral bodies of produced by copying; the sculptor draws for his model on the characteristics of many men, and so he creates the archetypal image, other men and of much else, and he experiences a world which is which in nature is distributed among numerous separate individuals. much more real than the physical one—a world which in relation to So the artist surpasses nature. He extracts her archetypal essence, the physical world appears as a densification, a crystallisation, from and this is what the true artist renders. By penetrating into the out of the astral world. creative depths of nature, he creates something real and achieves a Now it is also possible to transform into a conscious condition the unconscious state of dreamless sleep. The disciple who attains certain release for himself. ' to this stage learns to extend his consciousness over those parts of So it is with all the arts except music. All the other arts have to work through images and produce only pictures of the Will. the night which are not filled with dreams, but are normally spent in complete unconsciousness. He then finds himself conscious in a But musical sound is a direct expression of the Will itself.

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