Being Human

being human
anthroposophy.org
personal and cultural renewal in the 21st century
Resolution by Laura Summer
Idea, Theory, Emotion,

Desire (p.30)
Free Columbia
Spiritual Activism (p.18,33)
Review: The Impulse of
Freedom in Islam (p.46)
Steiner, Nietzsche, and
the Adversary (p.40)
a quarterly publication of
the Anthroposophical Society in America
spring issue 2015
Find Christ
in a New Way
The Christian Community is a worldwide movement for religious renewal
that seeks to open the path to the
living, healing presence of Christ in the
age of the free individual.
All who come will nd a community
striving to cultivate an environment
of free inquiry in harmony with deep
devotion.
Marcus Knausenberger
Learn more at
www.thechristiancommunity.org
D. N. Dunlop (18681935) combined remarkable practical and organizational abilities in industry and commerce along with the gifts of
spiritual and esoteric capacities. His life was changed forever when he
met Rudolf Steineran encounter that brought instant recognition.
This enlarged second edition features substantial additions of new
material and an afterword by Owen Barfield.
ISBN 978-1-906999-66-7 | 436 pages | paperback | $55.00
Thomas Meyers major biography of Ludwig Polzer-Hoditz (1869-1945)

offers a panoramic view of an exceptional life. This is a pioneering
work in biographical literature, structured in four main sections that
reflect the stages of an individuals personal development. This first
English edition is based on the latest German version and features
additional material and 64 plates.
The Development of Anthroposophy

since Rudolf Steiners Death
This important book offers profound insights into the struggles for
individual freedom and voice during the early years of the Anthroposophical Society. Seeing the dynamics of that struggle can help us
today to overcome differences to work toward common purpose, both
in the context of our everyday lives and within a spiritually oriented
community.
SteinerBooks | 703-661-1594 | steinerbooks.org
Thomas Meyers
East Coast Lecture Tour

May 7 to May 17, 2015
Miami, FL
Wilton, NH
New York, NY
Spring Valley, NY
Great Barrington, MA
[6
Ludwig Polzer-Hoditz: A European
Save the Date
[6
D.N. Dunlop: A Man of Our Time
Visit steinerbooks.org for details

T. H. Meyer was born in
Switzerland in 1950. He is the
founder of Perseus Verlag,
Basel, and is editor of the
monthly journal Der Europer.
He has written numerous
articles and is the author of
several books.
Resources for the conversation

about humanitys future...
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free,
in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. Thomas Jefferson

to Charles Yancey, Jan. 6 1816
Jefferson wrote out of concern for a young
nations political liberty. Today we face the
challenge of creating, as Rudolf Steiner said, a
future worthy of the human being.
Generations after Jefferson and ninety
years after Rudolf Steiners death, in an age
of marvels that challenges our humanity and
casts a shadow on our future, what can be the
role of a library for anthroposophy?
Making the work of Rudolf Steiner and
others in this human-centered stream of living,
caring, purposeful thoughts availablethat
has been a core goal of the Anthroposophical Society in America, involving translating,
sharing typescripts, publishing, and creating
the national Rudolf Steiner Library.
From its long-time home on Madison Avenue in New York City, through its three decades in the Berkshire-Taconic region, the staff
of the Rudolf Steiner Library have built an intellectual jewelthe single largest collection
of anthroposophical works in English in the
world. It embraces also the broader heritage of
philosophical, religious, artistic, cultural, and
sociological thought from throughout history:
the rich context for anthroposophys research
into humanitys past and future. This combination opens up a dynamic conversation between anthroposophy and the world.
Moving forward again.
A new future for the Library has opened through

the focused work of the library steering group,
the national council, the Berkshire- Taconic
community, and trusted advisors.
Protecting the past.
Care for the collection has started. New archives

and rare materials are coming to light. Cultural
heritage is being preserved.
Engaging the future.
A plan to digitize the journals is moving forward.

Plans for expanded online discovery and access
for both the archives and the collections
are in the works.
Building a library network.
Linking collections around the country,

establishing a national service center in the
Hudson Valley, and developing a
complementary home for research & archives
at the Rudolf Steiner House in Ann Arbor.
Partnering for depth & impact.
Reaching out across the movement

Waldorf, Camphill, biodynamics, health, social
actionto deepen special collections. Working
to expand access to works in English worldwide.
Giving back to anthroposophy.

The initiative of individual human beings is
where anthroposophy is constantly renewed.
The Rudolf Steiner Library will continue to
strengthen research and study,
nourish our love of community,
and inspire the wisdom for
action.
Wed love to share our latest plans with you.

Visit us online: www.anthroposophy.org/rsl
or call 734.662.9355 to join our mailing list.
Moving Forward
Rudolf Steiner Library
Upcoming Webinar
The Human Encounter:
Parent-Teacher Relationships
in a Waldorf School Community
A Conversation with
Torin M. Finser, PhD
A school is a community, and like

all communities its health depends upon the quality of
its relationships. Joins us as Torin speaks to the
parent-teacher relationship in all its dimensions offering
both practical advice and deeper, spiritual insights.
Tuesday, April 21, 2015 2:00 3:00 p.m. ET
Visit anthroposophy.org to register!
This webinar is co-sponsored by AWSNA and the
Anthroposophical Society in America
Inspiring
Waldorf Teacher Education
Since 1967
Join us in
Rethinking Agriculture
BIODYNAMICS is a holistic approach to agriculture, food

production and nutrition that brings health and vitality to the
soil, plants, animals and humanity. Join the gardeners and
farmers who are using biodynamics to turn their land,
whatever its size, into a work of art, overflowing with life
forces, diversity and vitality.
www.biodynamics.com
Low-Residency
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Courses & Workshops
Introductory Experiences
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NOW REGISTERING / ENROLLING
www.sunbridge.edu
Contents
12
initiative!
12
Validating Medical Remedies: Renewing the Research, by John Beck
18
Free Columbia: Spiritual Activism, by Laura Summer
20
Can Eurythmy Live Online, by John Beck & Cynthia Hoven
23
The Present Age, T.H. Meyer interviewed by John Beck

25
30
Deeds that Matter, by Christopher Schaefer
arts & ideas
30
Idea, Theory, Emotion, Desire, by Frederick Amrine
33
Gallery: Free Columbia
38
Understanding the Imponderable in Nature, by Barry Lia & Science Section
40
research & reviews

40

Rudolf Steiners Meeting of Destiny with Friedrich Nietzsche

and the Adversary of Our Age, by C.T. Rozell
46
The Impulse of Freedom in Islam, a review by Elaine Maria Upton
49
Rudolf Steiner: The Man & His Vision, a review by Fred Dennehy

51
Three Poems, by Maureen Tolman Flannery
52
Threefold Auditorium Renovation, by Bill Day
53
news for members & friends
53
2015 Organizational Goals
53
Report from Marian Len
55
Transformation & Gratitude, Report by Deb Abrahams-Dematte
56
General Secretary Torin Finser Visits
56
Introducing Micky Leach
56
The Grail in Phoenix
57
Members Who Have Died New Members
58
Martina Mann, by Laura Liska
58
Georg Locher, by Adrian Locher & Torin Finser
62
Thinking About Thinking, by Paul Margulies
62
A Memory of Paul Margulies, by Maria Ver Eecke
63
Calendar of the Soul 2014-2015 Dates, by Herbert O. Hagens
from the editors
The Anthroposophical Society

in America
General Council Members
Torin Finser (General Secretary)
Virginia McWilliam (at large)
Carla Beebe Comey (at large)
John Michael (at large, Treasurer)
Dwight Ebaugh (at large)
Dennis Dietzel (Central Region, Chair)
Joan Treadaway (Western Region)
Marian Len, Director of Programs
Deb Abrahams-Dematte, Director
of Development
being human
is published four times a year by the
Anthroposophical Society in America
1923 Geddes Avenue
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-1797
Tel. 734.662.9355
Fax 734.662.1727
www.anthroposophy.org
Editor: John H. Beck

Associate Editors:
Fred Dennehy, Elaine Upton
Design and layout: John Beck, Ella
Lapointe, Seiko Semones (S2 Design)
Please send submissions, questions, and
comments to: editor@anthroposophy.org
or to the postal address above, for our
Summer 2015 issue by 4/10/2015.
2015 The Anthroposophical Society in
America. Responsibility for the content
of articles is the authors.
being human
First a correction. In our last issue, in connection with

Bruce Donehowers review of Spiritual Resistance by Peter
Selg, we placed a photograph of psychiatrist and anthroposophical leader F.W. (Frederik Willem) Zeylmans van Emmichoven (1893-1961) where the text was speaking of the work of
his son, the Dutch physician and biographer of Ita Wegman, Johannes Emanuel Zeylmans
J.E.Zeylmans van Emmichoven (1926-2008). We received a van Emmichoven
correct photo from Jannebeth Rell, who also appears in this issue in a report
of the Science Section meeting last fall in Portland, Oregon.
Welcome, Teachers!
Usually we get to talk here about what enthuses us in the content of a
new issue, but this time we are enthusiastic about some new readers. Perhaps
as many as a thousand teachers and others involved with Waldorf schools
will be receiving this issue. We are delighted to have you with us, we know
you already have a great deal of work to do preparing fresh, living, personalized meetings with young people and cant possibly do all this extra reading
right nowbut, when you have a chance, please take a look. Perhaps just
the couple of pages of the digest that follow immediately. Or anywhere else.
And let us know what you think, candidly! We love new readers just as much
as the loyal readers of several years, who first saw being human as a 150th
birthday present to Rudolf Steiner.
So what about the contents? Holistic. Anthroposophy could be called
a holistic anthropology, or a holistic humanism; but important words get
turned into pressed sawdust, buzz words, and the meaning is sent away.
Holistic is what a Waldorf teacher aims to do with each child: see her or him
entire, whole, and yet in flow, in process.
Our contents are aiming at this same sort of goal, and while its quite impossible to reach, the attempts can be invigorating. There are many things in
this issue which make an editor happy. We have a great collection of initiatives (though each item in each section could be in at least one of the other
sectionsthat holistic thing, again). Great initiatives, the will of healthy
people to do whatever they can, to be the changes the world needs, to meet
the future with open arms.
Wonderful ideas! A Fred Amrine essay takes close attention, but it brings
us so often that experience Rudolf Steiner pointed to: the birth of a new
idea into ones own consciousness. There, Dr. Steiner pointed out, something
happens which is of the essence of human being and becoming. And if you
dont quite know why, go all the way to the back, page 62, where we reprint
a poem, prefaced by a bit of Steiner, which Paul Margulies sent to us in 2011.
HOW TO receive being human, contribute

Copies of being human are free to members of the Anthroposophical Society
in America (visit anthroposophy.org/membership.html or call 734.662.9355).
Sample copies are also sent to friends who contact us at the address below.
To contribute articles or art please email editor@anthroposophy.org or write
Editor, 1923 Geddes Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48104.
Its a humorous poem from the Alka-Seltzer ad man, beloved author of

plop plop, fizz fizz and I cant believe I ate the whole thing! Here
Paul shrewdly takes us laughing up to that final moment of realizing
that thinking properly is not cold but supremely warm, an act of love.
I could say more about this issue, mentioning for instance the
three fine poems by Maureen Tolman Flannery on page 51, or the
three biographical sketches by Christopher Schaefer (page 25); but
now Im just delaying you from reading it.
So welcome, new reader, and welcome back, old friend!
il for a
Call or ema
le
FREE samp
John Beck
In this issue we present two reviews which, in very different ways,
we hope are timely. Elaine Upton reviews The Impulse of Freedom in Islam by John von Schaik, Christine Gruwez and Cilia ter Horst, with a
Foreword by Abdulwahid van Bommel and an Afterword by Ibrahim
Abouleish, translated by Philip Mees. Among matters explored in this
book, from a variety of viewpoints, are the meaning of freedom in
Islam, and the question of whether and how the peoples of the NorthWest and the Islamic East can meet together in a field of knowing.
In the light of two magnificent biographies of Rudolf Steiner by
Christoph Lindenberg and Peter Selg that have recently become available in English, I have reviewed a much older, non-scholarly biography
by Colin Wilson aimed at a wider audience. The review seeks to assess an image of Rudolf Steiner that may still have currency in todays
world.
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being human digest

This digest offers brief notes, news, and ideas from a range of holistic and
human-centered initiatives. E-mail suggestions to editor@anthroposophy.
org or write to Editor, 1923 Geddes Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI, 48104.
SOCIETY
Crowd Funding
What do you do when you have a creative idea but
lack the funds to develop it? Or youve proven a concept
and want to put it into action? Or a friend or colleague is
in need of medical funds? Or youre young and can couch
surf but cant afford an plane ticket to this great gathering
on the other side of some ocean?
Whatever its possible downsides, the internet as we
know it began as a
way to help share resources. (An internet
address is a URL
or universal resource
locator.) And connecting up people to share resources in
support of a project is now a common thing. When its
information or ideas the term is crowd sourcing; when
its financial support the term is crowd funding.
There are many websites ready to help you do it.
Kickstarter.com is an early leader and kickstarting is
another term for crowd funding. Many concerns of professional fundraisers like donor fatigue are becoming
common with creative activists. Hey guysthought
you might be interested in the kickstarter Im working....
Dont get too excited and spread it all over the world and
wear out all your contacts (though a little would be fine ;)
because Im going to be sharing [another] kickstarter with
you in a month and looking for some love and support!
In the anthroposophical world where for every one
person there are perhaps two-and-a-half initiatives, there
are now kickstarters and crowd funders going along
quietly all the time. Here
are a few, not with our specific endorsement but as examples of the type:
Matre
(Matt
Sawaya), an anthroposophically inspired rap artist,
has just successfully gotten $12,000 to make a professional video of his song Listen about LA school district
security officers receiving military hardware [short URL:
http://goo.gl/5oSjd8].
8
being human
Friends have started funds to help with cancertreatment expenses of forms-researcher Frank Chester
[ww.gofundme.com/h7m29o] and lazure master Robert
Logsdon [www.gofundme.com/RobertLogsdon].
Eurythmist and social
activist Truus Geraets started a
drive helping the Lakota Waldorf
School, which cannot survive
without donations, to build a first
classroom in traditional Native
American Tipi style architecture
[www.gofundme.com/g5n4ig].
The San Diego branch newsletter reported on Truus effort, with URL, which along with emails and Facebook
page posts and likes is how this all spreads!
Free Columbia, profiled in the initiative! section and in this issues Gallery, will include crowdfunding in their advanced effort March 18 to April 26 to pay
forward the upcoming year. Students will then be given
their course freely and asked to help fundraise and pay
forward the following year. Their multi-pronged campaign will end with a free culture celebration with performance by Matre and an art dispersal on April 25/26 in
Philmont, New York [www.freecolumbia.org].
Anthroposophical Society in Americaa pioneer in this fieldhas long received earmarked donations
for the North American Sections of the School for Spiritual Science. Currently the Youth Section is seeking funds
to send several young high school graduates to the Connect Conference in Belgium [www.anthroposophy.org].
There is the usual caution: know who youre dealing
with. Understand whether no one pays unless the whole
goal is met, or all gifts are final and passed on at once.
And if youre planning a kickstarter, you might go to
TechSoup.org whose technology resources for non-profits include helpful discussions relating to this area.
The Early Childhood Teacher

Education Center at Sophias Hearth
The teacher of today needs courage, clarity, warmth
of heart, and a firmly grounded conviction that the
world is good. Join us in a workshop or our Summer
Institute that you can better tend the
beautiful garden that is the family.
sophiashearth.org
700 COURT ST., KEENE, NH 03431
being human digest

HUMANITIES
NEW
North American Ordination

On Saturday, March 14th the Christian Community
we will celebrate an ordination service in Spring Valley,
New York. This small, worldwide movement for spiritual
renewal is unique in that
its founders sought guidance
from Rudolf Steiner in the
1920s. This ordination is a
milestone because the candidate, Lisa Hildreth, will be
the first person to complete
her whole training at the
North American Seminary.
This has been our goal from
the founding of the seminary
in 2003, and we expect this
to be a full training for fuThe Christian Communitys Lisa Hildreth
ture priests both here and for other countries around the
world, writes Rev. Oliver Steinrueck.
The ordination will be prepared by a five-day open
course of the Seminary, From Priest Ordination to
Priesthood, from March 10 at 8:00am to March 15 at
5:00pm. Contributors include Rev. Bastiaan Baan, director of the Seminary, and from the leadership in Berlin
the Rev. Vicke von Behr, Christward Kroner, and Anand
Mandaiker. Themes of the course include priesthood: origins, development, contemporary priesthood; prayer and
meditation in daily life; the sacraments significance for
the spiritual world, for humanity, for the Earth; and priest
ordination in the development of Christianity: continuity
and renewal. For information and registration contact:
A monthly international
magazine
for the advancement of
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Link: www.christiancommunityseminary.org/events/
MEDICINE
Holistic Approach to Autism
The co-founder of the New York Open Center, Ralph
White, has observed of Rudolf Steiner that his is the
most impressive holistic legacy of the 20th century. But
what is holistic anyway? Steiner himself spoke of the
need to see things from many points of view, and a powerful example comes where health and education meet.
Date:
Signature:
E-mail: PASubscription@perseus.ch
Phone number: + 41 (0) 79 343 74 31
Address: Drosselstrasse 50, CH-4059 Basel
Skype: ThePresentAge
Website: www.Perseus.ch
P e r s e u s Ve r l a g B a s e l
spring issue 2015
being human digest

A program on Holistic Approach to Autism will be
given April 25th in Scottsdale, Arizona with Waldorf remedial expert (and long-serving national council member
of the Anthroposophical Society in America) Joan Treadaway. Presented by Holistic Special Education, the Association for Healing Education, and the Arizona Council
for Waldorf Education, for parents, caregivers, therapists,
and teachers, the gathering will discuss what can be done
to accompany and support children who are revealing behaviors that are referred to as autism spectrum disorder.
The conference will focus on Aspergers and mild to moderate autism. Joan will give an illustrative story to enrich
understanding of these conditions, and there will be exploration of therapeutic activitiesrhythm, routine, play,
imitation, movement, pressure, touch, quiet time and
body awarenesswhile emphasizing the childs strengths
and gifts.
The holistic view does not
incline so much to seeing exArtist: Leslie Walker
perts fixing symptoms. As
Steiner put it, Our rightful place as educators is to be
removers of hindrances. Each child in every age brings
something new into the world from divine regions, and it
is our task to remove bodily and psychical obstacles out of
the childs way, to remove hindrances so that the childs
spirit may enter in full freedom into life.
Link: HolisticSpecialEducation.org
WALDORF EDUCATION
School Books on Life-Changing Journeys
Rudolf Steiner is one of the most translated authors in
history, not too far behind Moses and Mohammed. There
is a global interest in education today, but Steiners own
guidance was often given in specific working situations.
Contemporary books are important to introduce the field.
One of the most popular is School as a Journey: The
Eight-Year Odyssey of a Waldorf Teacher and His Class, by
Torin Finser. The fact of a teacher accompanying a class
for eight years is one of the more striking contrasts in the
Waldorf approach, and it gives both a natural framework
for insights about education and the opportunity to be
practical and direct. Dr. Finser has gone on to lead the
education program at Antioch University New England,
serve as General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in America, and write several more books. But this
early book still finds new friends. It has had a second edition in Mandarin and has been translated into Farsi, language of Iran, spoken by a hundred million people.
Leila Alemi, the translator, writes that Waldorf education has been pretty unknown in Iran but very recently,
I hear among pioneers of educational reforms in my home
country that they are interested to know more. Unfortunately there are few reading materials about Waldorf
education in Farsi. I deeply hope Waldorf education can
gradually find a new other home in the heart of Middle
East and serve Iranian children and families. Torin explains that Leila grew up in Iran during the war years.
As a result of the suffering she experienced, she began to
write healing stories for children. That lead her to a variety
Whats new from WECAN Books?

Resources for working with children from birth to age nine and beyond
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10
being human
being human digest

Begins September 2015
Full Details available now
soundcircleeurythmy.org
of spiritual questions and then finding anthroposophy on
the internet. Despite many obstacles, she found books on
Waldorf education and eventually succeeded in making it
to New Hampshire, where she completed her degree this
past year. She hopes to go back to Iran and start a Waldorf
school after completing her internship in Ann Arbor.
Other translations? Torin recalled that the most
noteworthy story occurred some years ago when a group
of mothers and fathers gathered in Soul, South Korea, to
work on a translation of School as a Journey. They met
once a week in various living rooms, working through
the book chapter by chapter. When they were done, they
pooled their resources and published the book in Korean.
There was a splendid celebration and conference.
One philosophical thought: in a world ever more
divided by religious, cultural and political differences,
Waldorf education, biodynamics, Camphill and the other
initiatives arising out of anthroposophy become ever more
important as a unifying agent for global consciousness
and striving for the universal human. The old ways do
not work anymore, and people all over the world are looking for fresh ideas. Translating Rudolf Steiner and related
authors must be a top priority if we are to reach those,
such as Leila, who are seeking but have not had access to
helpful material. If we can build an international coalition
of spirit-seekers who act locally but think globally, we can
begin to affect the flow of events. The world needs the
insights of anthroposophy! I urge our readers to support
the quiet, often unassuming midwives of cultural renewal,
our translators, and the actual publication of small editions that might not ever appear on a best-seller list, but
often prove to be a turning point in a persons biography.
The New York Branch
of the Anthroposophical Society in America
138 West 15th Street, NY, NY 10011 (212) 242-8945
ANTHROPOSOPHY NYC
New First-Year Full-time Course
The most impressive

holistic legacy of the
20th century...
NY Open Center
co-founder Ralph White
on Rudolf Steiner
RUDOLF STEINER
BOOKSTORE
Open 7 days: Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 1-5pm;

Thu 10am-5pm; Fri-Sat 10am-8pm
REGULAR PROGRAMS
& ACTIVITIES
WORKSHOPS
TALKS
CLASSES
STUDY
GROUPS
FESTIVALS
EVENTS
EXHIBITS
visual arts
eurythmy
music
drama & poetry
Waldorf education
self-development
spirituality
esoteric research
evolution of
consciousness
health & therapies
Biodynamic farming
social action
economics
UPCOMING EVENTS
& OFFERINGS
ANTHROPOSOPHY & YOGA
David Taulbee Anderson, Wed 7pm, 4/15, 5/6, 6/10
MONTHLY EURYTHMY
with Linda Larson, Mon 7pm, 4/13, 5/11, 6/8
RELATIONSHIPS IN OUR TIME
with Lisa Romero, Wednesday, Apr 1, 7pm
PASSOVER SEDER/LAST SUPPER
Thu Apr 2, 7pm, Phoebe/Walter Alexander, Joyce Reilly
LISA ROMERO ON EASTER WEEKEND
Inner/Outer Biography & The Easter Mysteries

April 3-5: Fri eve, Sat day, Sun afternoon (Easter)
PUPPETRY WORKSHOP
Sat/Sun Apr 11-12, Nathaniel Williams/Emma Watson
THOMAS MEYER LECTURE

Wed May 13, 7pm - Topic tbd
WEEKLY & MONTHLY STUDY GROUPS
www. centerpoint
gallery
asnyc
.org
spiritual, therapeutic,
world & outsider art
spring issue 2015
11
initiative!
IN THIS SECTION:
Research at its most
familiar modern level, in
a laboratory, performing
repeatable teststhat
is what the Lili Kolisko
Institute is bringing
to the service of the
medications used by
anthroposophic and
complementary doctors.
Free Columbia is
multiple initiatives: art
school, social funding,
community involvement.
EurythmyOnline.com
is a terrible mistake,
or terribly bravea
breakdown or a
breakthrough?
T.H. Meyer is bringing
his intelligent
European passion for
anthroposophy into a
new English-language
publication.
Christopher Schaefer
remembers three
persons of initiative from
the world of business
and funding.
Validating Medical Remedies:

Renewing the Research
by John Beck
A four-year-old non-profit research institute in Wisconsin is working to validate and extend the knowledge on which anthroposophic and homeopathic health products are based. It
is a natural outgrowth of the life commitments of three physicians who put Rudolf Steiners
therapeutic insights at the heart of their practices, then sought to develop and produce new and
improved remedies and supplements, and now are rallying support for the research he hoped to
see almost a century ago. The production company, True Botanica, is well-known in the field,
and the research institute was initially named for it. To make clear that its work is distinct from
and aims beyond the companys needs, and to honor an early and deeply committed researcher,
the foundation has become the Lili Kolisko Institute.
Background
Rudolf Steiners wrote his last book with Dr. Ita Wegman: Fundamentals of Therapy: An
Extension of the Art of Healing through Spiritual Knowledge, as its first English translation in
1925 was titled. Anthroposophic Medicine (AM) is now practiced worldwide. As the word extension suggests, AM is complementary not alternative to standard Western medicine; the
resulting practice is holistic or integral. Rudolf Steiner expected participants in his medical
courses to be MDs or students pursuing the standard degree. On that foundation he added new
insights from his research which materialistic approaches could not reach. These were grounded
in a full picture of the human constitution: a physical body, an body of life and formative forces
(etheric body), the astral body of feelings and lower consciousness, and the ego. Body, soul, and
spirit are expressly considered in the nature of the human being.
AM also works from a wellness model, recognizing the health-giving activity of the body
of formative forces as fundamental. In an illness model attention is drawn more to symptoms
than to the whole being and patients often become a passive battlefield where doctors combat
illness. In Steiners research health and illness appear as one dimension of an individuals karmic
path and life experience, and the individual self or ego can be powerfully involved in healing.
Medicine makes extensive use of healing substances. Many pharmaceutical companies are
major corporations and major players in medical research and education. Steiner recognized and
pointed out numerous therapeutic uses of plants, metals, and mineral substances, and considered homeopathy, the use of highly diluted and potentized preparations, a valid approach. The
Weleda company was organized in Steiners lifetime to provide anthroposophic preparations.
In his last months of activity Rudolf Steiner observed that with adequate funds a breakthrough could be made in anthroposophical scientific research. Funds have never approached
the level he hoped for, however, so in medicine and other fields the advances that are possible are
often carried by the efforts of a few individual doctors, therapists, and independent researchers.
Lili Kolisko (from the Institute website)

Lili Kolisko (September 1, 1889November 20, 1976) was one of Rudolf Steiners most significant students. Her first meeting with anthroposophy occurred in 1914. She was working at the
time as a volunteer helper in a hospital where she met her later husband Eugen Kolisko. (During
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being human
this time she learned practical laboratory methods, essential skills for her later research activities.)
At one point Eugen Kolisko asked her: May I give
you a book? and when she agreed he gave her Rudolf
Steiners Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment. It made a powerful and immediate impression on
her. Apparently she read this through in one night and in
the next several months read every single book of Rudolf
Steiners that Eugen Kolisko had in his possession.
She met Rudolf Steiner in 1915. When she was introduced to him he told her, Oh yes, we know each other
already. In her own independent and forward manner
she decisively answered, No, and
insisted on this No even as Rudolf
Steiner persisted in affirming that
they already knew each other, until he
helpfully added, Nevertheless, nevertheless, from before.
In her first longer conversation
with Rudolf Steiner, in May 1915, she
reminded him that she had written
him a letter and would have liked an
answer. She had probably mentioned
in that letter details about her very
difficult youth and asked for advice
related to her sleep. He answered her
that that she should envision an abyss
into which she would let rose petals
float to the ground and then gather
them again. He added that she had
had a question in the letter about Lili Kolisko
occult chemistry and advised her first to fill some gaps
that she had in that area and only then tackle the specific
problem. Then suddenly he said to her You are seeing
the ether.
As a researcher, Lili Koliskos first contribution consisted in following up an indication of Steiners about
the activity of the spleen. Rudolf Steiner had made the
comment in lectures given in 1920 (Spiritual Science and
Medicine) that one of the occult roles of the spleen is to
regulate the intake of nutrition and its distribution to the
various organs. He explained that the spleen has the function to give us the ability to eat at times of our choosing
and yet enable the body to receive its nutrition on a regular basis, and felt that one could demonstrate physiologically this function in the laboratory.
Lili Kolisko studied the platelets that were generated
by the spleen in subjects who had been eating regularly
versus people that had meals at irregular times. She discovered that under the appropriate circumstances a new
type of speckled platelets would be seen under the microscope which she and Rudolf Steiner later called regulator
cells. Steiner mentioned this work often and made the
statement several times that if this type of research had
occurred at a normal university it would have received
international acclaim.
Her second major contribution was to develop a socalled germination test to show the influence of potentized substances on living organisms. This work grew out
of a question that she posed to Rudolf Steiner essentially
asking how one could determine
which potency of a specific substance
would be most beneficial to be used
in a hoof and mouth epidemic that
was occurring. Steiner advised her
to grow wheat seeds and sequentially
water them with various potencies of
the substance in question. The resulting growth curves would give the desired answer. Lili Kolisko continued
this work throughout her lifetime
generating literally thousands of these
curves and contributing greatly to our
understanding of the work with potentized substances. It must have been
a lifelong disappointment for her that
the envisioned cooperation between
her and medical doctors never came
to fruition. It is in particular this aspect of the work that the Institute which carries her name
is attempting to continue and further develop.
Rudolf Steiner valued Lili Kolisko also as an esoteric
student. She was one of a handful of people that he personally allowed to read and hold the First Class lessons.
Lili Koliskos life continued to be both tragic and
difficult. Due to extreme disagreements between the Koliskos and certain influential members of the Anthroposophic Society, she and her husband Eugen, then a much
respected anthroposophic doctor and school physician to
the Stuttgart Waldorf School, left Germany in the 1930s
and resettled in England. Eugen died soon thereafter of
a heart attack. Lili lived in extreme poverty. At one point
apparently she was earning a living by sewing purses.
Nevertheless during this whole time she continued her
germination potency work as well as very significant research experiments on anthroposophic paper chromatogspring issue 2015
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raphy. In these last mentioned experiments she repeatedly
showed that one could demonstrate the effect of star constellations on metals and other substances.
The anthroposophic physician Gisbert Husemann
pointed out that Lili Koliskos work begins at the same
timein 1920when Rudolf Steiner lectured on Thomas Aquinas. Steiner pointed out later on that in those lectures he had intended to demonstrate the new path that
natural science needs to take into the future. In the thirteenth century Thomas Aquinas was still concerned with
a material world on earth and a spiritual world in the
heavens. Today, Steiner emphasized, this duality has to
be bridged and the work of the spiritual world intimately
affecting physical phenomena has to be recognized. It is
perhaps not just a coincidence that the researcher Lili Kolisko was quietly beginning to fulfill precisely the challenge that Rudolf Steiner had postulated, bringing awareness for physical phenomena that are clearly caused by
spiritual events. Husemann quotes Steiner (10.22.1922;
CW 218) that in regard to Lili Koliskos work we are
working not just in the presence of an exclusion from the
public consciousness but also in the presence of an exclusion of the interest from the Anthroposophical Society.
One gets a heightened appreciation for Lili Koliskos
work when one keeps in mind that Rudolf Steiner asked
her to give a full lecture about her research during the
Christmas Foundation meeting. On the same day he gave
as the rhythm of the day the verse:
This the Elemental Spirits hear
In the East, West, North, and South
May Human Beings hear it.
Rudolf Steiner had intended to direct a renewed appeal to

the members of the Anthroposophic Society for financial
support of the Kolisko research. With his death in 1925
this appeal never materialized.
The physicians
Drs. Ross Rentea and Andrea Rentea write: Our
family practice clinic in Chicago (Paulina Medical Clinic
[www.paulinamedicalclinic.com]), emphasizing integrative, holistic, homeopathic and natural medicine, opened
in 1983. Now more than 30 years later we look back with
satisfaction on having helped thousands of patients with
their health needs. Throughout we have used the gentlest, most holistic and natural medicine approaches that
were possible for the treatment of both acute and chronic
illnesses, for both adults and children. Our goal is main14
being human
From left: Mark Kamsler, MD, Ross Rentea, MD, Andrea Rentea, MD
taining or recovering your optimal physical health so that

you can continue a fulfilled moral and spiritual life that
helps others around you.
Dr. Andrea Rentea graduated from the prestigious
Chicago Medical School (now the Rosalind Franklin
University), in 1975, and after her residency in Chicago
she spent four years at various European clinics studying
anthroposophic/complementary medicine. She specializes
in womens concerns and childrens problems, both physical and emotional. Outside her practice her additional
activities include consulting to various Waldorf Schools
on the medical needs and handling of difficult children.
Dr. Ross Rentea graduated from the University of
Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine and after his residency in NYC he also spent four years at various European clinics studying anthroposophic/complementary
medicine. He has published numerous articles in peer reviewed medical journals (such as basic science studies on
the effect of mistletoe extracts on the successful therapy
of cancer) and holds a patent for a medical device.
Dr. Mark Kamsler provides pediatric medical care to
all ages of children/young adults and also provides consultative care for adult patients looking for a more holistic
input. He received his MD from the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor and completed a residency in Pediatrics at CS Mott Childrens Hospital there.
He has had a general practice in the Milwaukee area since
1995. He has worked extensively as a consulting pediatrician to several Waldorf Schools and has spoken to groups
ranging from Birthing Centers and La Leche League to
Grand Rounds at several hospitals.
Alongside their practices all three physicians are very
active in public education, in lectures, conferences, and
webinars. But their commitment has not ended there.
True Botanica1
Following a long standing interest in researching
ways for creating new quality natural remedies, appropriate to the spiritual and physical needs of the contemporary individuals, three physicians founded True Botanica
in 2004: Dr. Mark Kamsler, Dr. Andrea Rentea and Dr.
Ross Rentea. The GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices) compliant main facility is located in Hartland, Wisconsin, west of Milwaukee and about two hours from
Chicago. The company goal is to create the most safe
and effective full spectrum products possible that work
harmoniously on body, mind and spirit. The formulas
are designed by uniting the best that nature has to offer
with the latest emerging modern nutritional technology.
The company is now offering validated homeopathic/
anthroposophic remediesa worldwide first.
Essential processes that constitute the core of our
products are done by hand, in a quiet environment conducive to an inner sense of responsibility, reverence and
gratitude to the natural substances used in the making of
the healing products. All products are made in the morning, under conditions when we can be reasonably assured
that only a positive energy will accompany the production process. (For example no manufacturing takes place
during storms, etc.) The ingredients for our formulas are
carefully sourced from non GMO, biodynamic and organic materials. The formulas are designed by keeping
in mind the best of insights given by the scientist Rudolf
Steiner and the latest in modern nutritional technology.
Some features we are particularly proud of are:
A threefold design to our products that makes them
particularly effective on all three levels of body,
mind and spirit.
A proprietary method for a more efficient extraction
of herbal materials, resulting in a non-alcoholic
tincture.
Creating full spectrum formulas where the natural salts and minerals of the medicinal herbs are
included.
New blends of entirely natural fragrances, valuable for
the cosmetic line and aromatherapy, such as a blend
of rhododendron and other steam distilled essential
oils. These are currently used in our face moisturizer, cleanser cream, bath oils, salt body scrubs and
health creams.
1 Quotations from www.truebotanica.com
Rhythmically preparing substances in order to achieve

new qualities in the substances. Additionally, a final
mixing is accomplished with the Swiss bioengineering Inversina mixer.
The Lili Kolisko Institute2

Work with the True Botanica company led to the
three physicians also co-founding the Lili Kolisko Institute which conducts education, research and social activities in the anthroposophic health care field. A laboratory
is being built to conduct continuing research into the
demonstration of the validity of anthroposophic/homeopathic remedies. The doctors wrote friends and donors
last fall:
As we all would agree, introducing others to Rudolf
Steiners work is a quintessential first step, and continuing to spread the word is of course crucial, but eventually the newcomers ask: And what have you done
with all the material you are so excited about? Then
comes the tough part, showing for example applications
in clinical practice... and those in turn are based on previously done research and insights thus gained.
Among many activities perhaps nothing is more financially demanding, and dependent on altruistic trust,
than laboratory work. But the future benefits are enormous. The question everybody could ask themselves is:
How many cents a day am I willing to sacrifice for the
support of ongoing research? We believe that this work
touches all of us, irrespective of our specific situation.
This year we celebrate four years of research at the Lili
Kolisko Institute. But the economy and materialistic
feelings of our time are such that our financial situation
is not rosy. We have had to let co-workers go. We have
had to cut down on the number of projects, etc. Still, we
trust in the future support of our community.
The Lili Kolisko Institute is the former True Botanica
Foundation. The nonprofit 501(c)3 organization was
renamed to more clearly show its independence from
the True Botanica company. Its research results are
available to all interested parties, and donations made
to the Institute are tax deductible.
The True Botanica company whole heartedly continues
to support the Institute, but it cannot cover all the costs
by itself. To keep the research work and educational
programs going we are dependent, more than ever, on
donations from the enlightened community who understands and values this medical-biological work.
2 Quotes from www.koliskoinstitute.org and from emails to friends and
clients.
spring issue 2015
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initiative!
The research results are not theoretical. The results of
this work have already been quite tangible. Over 180
new remedies have resulted to date from these experiments. Hundreds of people, lay and professional, have
been introduced to the ideas and benefits of anthroposophic medicine. For the future, among others, we
hope that with your help more data will be forthcoming showing the importance and reality of spiritual
rhythms and forces.
Examples of the research

The Kolisko Institute website highlights the following areas of current research:
Boswellia (frankincense) experiments; bioavailability
of two commercially available brands compared.
Chromatography experiments: Boswellia, Lightroot
(the yam Dioscorea batatas), Hyssop. Chromatography, such as in the method demonstrated here, is
a means by which one can begin to visualize the life
forces (the etheric forces) that underlie either natural
substances like plant extracts, minerals, etc., or that
can (or should be) found in finished products.
Germination experiments. Experimental behavior of
more than 100 substances to date have been analyzed by the germination method in order to find
out which potencies are the more active for each
specific substance.
The Kolisko Validation Method: improving quality
control of homeopathically potentized OTC drugs.
A substantial paper by Ross Rentea MD and Mark
Kamsler MD discusses this last area, a standardized
biological test which allows validation, i.e. verification
of effective activity, of homeopathically potentized substances. ... From a certain point forward this stepwise
process of dilution and agitation [potentization] results
in a product that has purportedly no molecules of the
original substance leftand yet it is supposed to have a
therapeutic effect. It is this characteristic that causes the
scientific community to call homeopathic remedies implausible and doubt their effectiveness.
To our knowledge this is the first time that such an
objective, statistically analyzable potency validation test
is included in the quality control process of manufacturing of homeopathic/anthroposophic products. This could
constitute an additional step in assuring the consumer
that the product containing an ultra-high dilution is not
just water or just sugar pills. Additionally, the test allows a more objective interpretation of the potencies of
16
being human
each substance [and] it is hoped that ultimately the

resulting potency-validated homeopathic/anthroposophic
medications will emerge as clinically more effective.
So, how can it be established that an effect is present
in the result? And how can the commonly used potencies be evaluated to show whether they are in fact the
most suitable? The answer was given by Rudolf Steiner
already in the 1920s. In a reply to a question from his
student Lily Kolisko about a method for finding the most
appropriate potency of a substance that was to be given
as a remedy against hoof and mouth disease in cows he
suggested to her: Let wheat seeds germinate under the
influence of a series of potencies of that substance. The
response of the seeds to the various potencies will result in
an overall curve showing the vitalizing process, or lack of
it, created by specific potencies on the seedlings. This, he
added, would not only be valid for the plant but also for
the animal organism. He further characterized the resulting curves in a lecture (3.31.1920):
(In the series of potencies ) you will reach a Null
point. Beyond that the opposite effects (of the test substance in the first zone) appear. But this is not all; the further path leads to another Null point for these opposite
effects. Passing the second Null, you will come to a higher
form of efficiency, tending in the same direction as the
first sequence but of quite a different nature. It would be
valuable and appropriate to plot out the different effects
of potencies in curves of this special manner.
According to Steiner the curve for the first two zones
can be seen on the paper but an accurate representation of
the third zone would need to show the curve coming out
of the plane of the paper at ninety degrees.
Based on these insights Kolisko proceeded to do the
work that led to germination curves of potencies. She pursued this project essentially lifelong! She let wheat seeds
germinate for a number of days in separate containers wa-
tering them with either water as control or with increasing

potencies of a particular substance. (In general 1x to 60x;
many experiments however to 600x!) Above are samples
of findings from one of her early experiments. (Here,
potencies D17 and

D18: no response;
D19 and D20: big
response; D21 again
low, and so on.)
The value of
Lili Koliskos work
consists in demonstrating for the first
time that sequential
potencies increase
and decrease in effectiveness in a
rhythmical, semisinusoidal manner.
When at a later time A stage in the Kolisko Validation testing.
several of her germination potency curves were looked at cumulatively, the
semi sinusoidal pattern emerged even more clearly. Kolisko herself believed that every substance has its own completely characteristic signature curve and that it would
be of extreme importance for every doctor to know the
curve of every remedy as naturally as they would know
the appearance and signature of every plant and mineral.
To increase accuracy she would have welcomed, she said,
a cumulating of several experiments of the same substance
with the same potencies.
Today the plant germination technique is generally
accepted among credible researchers (Baumgartner et al.;
Bellavite et al.; Betti L et al.; Bonamin; Fisher; Husemann,
1992; Scherr et al.) as a solidly recognized model for the
study of potentizing processes. However, to the present, as
far as we know, none of the in vitro plant modelsor similarhave been used in the sense desired by Kolisko, and
pursued by us, as a practical tool for quality control in the
manufacturing process of ultra-high diluted (potentized)
medicines. We have developed a new relatively simple
(albeit very labor intensive) protocol for a germination
based model that we use to accomplish the stated purpose
of demonstrating that the final potency going into a final
OTC homeopathic/anthroposophic remedy is indeed active and can influence a biological system. To overcome
the above stated weakness in the Kolisko experiments our
method uses a statistical validation. In brief, the various potencies are tested against control samples. The variation from the control is evaluated statistically to obtain a
degree of confidence that the preparation has an effect that
goes significantly beyond the mere water control.
The Helleborus graph (above, the control on the

left, the 29th potency on the right) clearly demonstrates
the significance of this anthroposophic research. Helleborus is a toxic plant that Rudolf Steiner indicated, for
the first time, would be beneficial in inhibiting tumor
growth. The final potentized product thus should show
an inhibiting influence on the growth of the wheat seeds.
(We have ample evidence to show that other substances
have a stimulating influence on the growth of the seeds.)
Indeed, we were able to show that the 29th potency has
such an inhibiting effect. We call this proving of the effectiveness of the specific potency a Kolisko Validation.
Beyond the obvious importance of going a long way
toward increasing confidence in the product itself this
method is an indisputable contribution of anthroposophic medicine/research to a real world medical quandary.
At www.koliskoinstitute.org a full paper describing
the above processes in detail is linked under Research.
Conclusion
Three dedicated physicians found anthroposophic
methods effective in their work with patients. Together
with a team of dedicated co-workers they went on to create new and assured-quality medications, and now to
resume and expand a line of testing and validation originated by Rudolf Steiner and carried selflessly for decades
by Lili Kolisko, all while engaging in efforts to educate
the public on anthroposophic medicine. They see their
efforts in the direction of Steiners wish that anthroposophy would make original, true contributions to solving
the worlds needs. The question remains, will this core
work find friends near and far with the will to sustain it.
John Beck is editor of being human and communications director
for the Anthroposophical Society in America.
spring issue 2015
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initiative!
Free Columbia: Spiritual Activism, or

What Does Our World Need Now?
by Laura Summer
Art is the only possibility for evolution, the only
possibility to change the situation in the world. But then
you have to enlarge the idea of art to include the whole
of creativity. Joseph Beuys
The date was September 14, 2009. Thirty-five people

sat in a circle in Bright Wing Studio in Hillsdale, New
York. Names traveled around the circle, the history of
painting in that studio was described, memories and
hopes for the future were voiced, the feeling of dropping
in from a nine-foot skateboard ramp was mentioned.
And Free Columbia began.
But what does free mean?

Free Columbia is an intensive exploration into art,
Goethean observation, anthroposophy, and social change.
When we talked about starting Free Columbia we realized that it would have to be available to everyone no matter their financial situation. It would have to be supported
and free. But what does free mean? To create something
free meant to create a vessel into which inspiration was
free to flow, for teachers, for students. It meant expanding
a form to include the unexpected, the challenging, even
the unadvisable. Many people said not to do it. And not
to call it free. That people would not support it, that they
would take it for granted. And sometimes that is true; but
mostly not. People have rallied around the principle of accessibility. The community holds us up. At the moment
we have forty people making monthly pledges. We have
Inside (above) and outside (right) the Free Columbia Space at 84 Main St, Philmont NY
18
being human
Students doing an exercise in color after-image
run for six years now and although we do sometimes run

out of money it always flows back in quickly enough. We
provide all of our programming without set tuitions or
materials fees; we encourage everyone to donate.
From a little painting program...

In six years Free Columbia has grown from a little
painting program in the studio behind my house to an
initiative including many people working in a variety of
ways. Here are a few snapshots from over the years:
In our third year eleven full-time students finished
the program ofpainting, drawing, and puppetry with an
exhibit of the years work held at aspace next to the Family Dollar store in Philmont, New York. This exhibitin
the middle ofthetown was reflective of our year which
saw us moving out into the world aroundus. Our summer conference, concerned with artistic experience and
the future of art, was held at the Basilica Industria in
Hudson, NY and was attended by 45people frommany
countries including Finland,Israel, Italy, and France.
In 2013/14 (our fifth year), eight people participated full-time, 120 people in
part-time intensives locally
and in California, Oregon,
and Washington, DC. Over
1000 people saw the 2014
puppet show, The Legend of
the Peacemaker. In Free Columbias four Art Dispersals 295 works of art have
What is freedom? What is responsibility?
And then to act
Free Columbia Painting Studio 2015
been dispersed. Donations to support free culture were

accepted from the recipients.
The movement in the soul

What is art? What is freedom? According to Rudolf
Seiner art is the movement in the soul created by the
sculpture, painting, music, etc., that the person is observing. How do we move souls to become more alive, more
balanced, more productive of a future that values truth,
goodness, and beauty? At Free Columbia we teach our
students to locate soul movement: the quality realm. How
does blue make you feel, how is it different from red? We
learn to quiet our sympathies and antipathies and to ask
what is here, what language does it speak, can I enter into
the conversation if I learn the language? This is a way of
developing perception of non-material reality. It is a way
to make anthroposophy practicable.
Between darkness and light, between one color and
another, between one tone and the next, there is movement. In a conversation with Jesuit priest Friedhelm Mennekes, Joseph Beuys said, Christ is in the movement.
Can we experience this? We can perceive here if we quiet
our inner chatter and observe. In art we are working in a
way often different from everyday concerns. We are learning to observe reality, see what is needed, and then to act.
Next year we will offer a six-month full-time course

on perception through color in relation to social change,
a low-residency intensive on painting, a module on social threefolding, and perhaps a program in sculpture,
as well as ongoing practical arts classes, performances,
childrens classes and camps, classes for developmentally
disabled adults, classes in the prison, summer and winter
intensives, study groups and conferences. Next summers
two-week intensive will be on Rudolf Steiners sketches
for painters. All accessible to everyone. All supported by
gifting. All in all, a very engaging way to work with spiritual science.
In the spring we will also take our financial model to
a new level. We will run a campaign to pay forward one-
Free Columbia mural in Philmont, NY, 2014
third of our operating expenses. With one-third coming

in in monthly pledges and one-third expected from donations throughout the year, a successful campaign will
make it possible for Free Columbia to work without a
monthly worry of running out of money.
Work cures everything. Henri Matisse
If you are interested in our work, would like to participate in any way, or would like to help us move forward,
please visit www.FreeColumbia.org. And see the Gallery
(pages 33-36) in this issue for work from Free Columbia.
Laura Summer (laurasummer@fairpoint.net) is co-founder with
Nathaniel Williams of Free Columbia. Her approach to color is
influenced by Beppe Assenza, Rudolf Steiner, and by Goethes color
theory. She has been working with questions of color and contemporary art for 25 years. Her work, to be found in private collections
in the US and Europe, has been exhibited at the National Museum
of Catholic Art and History in New York City and at the Sekem
Community in Egypt. She founded two temporary alternative exhibition spaces in Hudson NY, 345 Collaborative Gallery and Raising
Matter-this is not a gallery.
Free Columbia mural in Harlemville, NY, 2014

spring issue 2015
19
initiative!
Can Eurythmy Live Online?

Creating and evaluating EurythmyOnline.com
a personal eurythmy site
by John Beck & Cynthia Hoven
For over a year, I have been working on breaking
through the digital barrier to create an online eurythmy experience. After long and hard and creative work,
I finally launched the website yesterday, Michaelmas
2014. I would be delighted if you would take a look:
EurythmyOnline.com. There are over 50 video recordings teaching people basic warm-up exercises, rod exercises, spatial movements, vowels, consonants and also
a few soul exercises. Take some time to look at the site,
check it out, get the flavor of what I am doing by
reading the texts, trying some of the freebies, downloading the pdfs. Cynthia Hoven
Times changewhatever that actually meansand
we find ourselves in situations that demand choices, made
on our own responsibility. When Ita Wegman, MD, proposed to move her medical practice from Zurich and open
a clinic in Arlesheim, Switzerland, near the Goetheanum,
she of course asked her teacher and advisor Rudolf Steiner
to approve or disapprove the plan. Which he declined to
do. When she went ahead and months later was ready to
show him the facility, its reported that he promptly started to help write the promotional brochure.
Eurythmy
Rudolf Steiner created eurythmy, or discovered it, or
revealed it, or all of those and more. It seems to stretch
deep into the grounds of existence as well as playing a
part still hard even to imagine in humanitys future evolution. Eurythmy is a performance art, a healing art, a
teaching art. Perhaps it is the flowing substance of life
itself finding its newest expression, by invitation, through
the wakeful and devoted human being?
So it is entirely natural that eurythmists have worked
very hard to engage and manifest all that Steiner and Marie Steiner-von Sievers established of eurythmy in their
lifetimes, and draw a line there. There is, after all, real
opposition to a human evolution into freedom and love.
20
being human
Spiritual Realities
Rudolf Steiner made very clear that humanity today
is locked in a struggle to become aware of great cultural-civilizational-evolutionary forces. He identified these
with real spiritual beings, conscious and intentional
entities working at a higher stage of development than
present-day humans. Some of them strengthen us in the
long run by trying to draw us onto their own paths.
Our current strongest opponent, reported Dr. Steiner, is a being for whom Steiner used the old Persian name
Ahriman. Ahrimans gifts and capacities help us release
great physical powers and create material abundance. He
helps us become hard-headed and objective. It also seems
that his inclination is to remake the world on a mechanical basis; that is the kind of perfection that is within his
powerful but one-sided understanding. Life in nature and
free individuality in the human being do not fit within
his understanding of cosmic purpose. If we do not recognize the force of his identity and intentions, then we will
believe that it is we ourselves who want to merge human
beings with machines, eliminate our messy free choice,
and pursue an endless, painless, deathless physical life.
So would we subjugate this still-new art of eurythmy
to Ahriman?
Freedom and initiative

But then there is the equally large question of human
beings taking responsibility for their actions and choices.
And times changing, whatever that means. YouTube and
online videos are the first point of reference for younger
generations, and trained eurythmists willing and able to
teach are few and far between (and must struggle to make
a living). What do you do thenor rather, now? Do you
protect and defend, or step out and take risks?

Cynthia Hoven directed the eurythmy training program at Rudolf Steiner College, near Sacramento, California. When the program had to be closed for financial reasons, she was faced with personal needs as well
as professional choices. She wrote a remarkable book on
eurythmy. She worked with young people on new social
visions. And she came finally to the conclusion that she
might be the right person to create an online eurythmy
learning resource. Service to eurythmy and to other human beings, and the challenges of her own professional
and karmic path, are now fully intertwined. What follows is in Cynthia Hovens own words John Beck
A personal mission statement

Id like you to see my personal mission statement. Just
in case it sparks. I wrote it about 18 months ago, before I
got started in earnest, to keep me focused. I like looking
back on it, both in the times when I am getting paying
customers and in the times when Im instead getting dozens of non-paying customersbecause just knowing that
theyre doing eurythmy makes me sing.
Eurythmy Online Mission Statement
Eurythmy is an art form that is inspired by, integrates, and
makes manifest our divine nature in body, soul, and spirit.
Eurythmy is a path of embodied spirituality.
This program is a bold undertaking to present an online
eurythmy curriculum through e-courses, CDs, and
video recordings, with uncompromising integrity, overcoming the limitations of technological media.
The primary purpose of this work is to make eurythmy and
also the studies of anthroposophy and the arts that
spring from it available to thousands of people, in service of humanity and the planet earth.
The secondary purpose is to create a vibrant and thriving
business for me, selling lessons, and also teaching live
eurythmy classes and other courses.
The third purpose is to create career opportunities for others to lecture and teach in this program.
Cautions and concerns

For many many years I was as conservative as anyone
else could be about the thought of filming eurythmy. I
knew that Rudolf Steiner disapproved of movies. I know
that in films you can only see the image of thingsin
two dimensionand not the thing itself. I consider that
in watching films we tend to become inwardly passive
and merely receive the images as they are presented to us.
I know that in film we have only the illusion of having a
real person talking to us: we dont have the other person
really with us, with blood and breath and body. I know
that these are all true because the medium cannot carry
the true element of the living etheric.
In time, however, I began to wrestle with other questions. Would it be possible to help eurythmy become more
well-known by crafting a beautiful website? How could I
help eurythmy become more of a cultural reality, and not
something that belongs only to the trained eurythmists?
Every person can sing or speak or play a bit of an instrument or paint: why shouldnt everyone have some access to
eurythmy? Is it possible to bring eurythmy to people who
live in remote places and will never meet a eurythmist?
What about people who do a bit of eurythmy at a workshop and want to do more, but cant quite remember how?
As I entertained these questions, I realized how much
I want to participate in creating a new openness around
eurythmyas in fact I had begun by writing my book
about eurythmy.1 I know it is a modern path of movement meditation (with great initiatory teachings for
those who go deeply into it), and that I want to be part
of making sure that it lives and doesnt just wither away
because it is not known or because it is held too tightly by
some who claim to possess it. Why shouldnt a group of
people do Halleluiah at a faculty meeting? Why shouldnt
friends do a bit of eurythmy themselves? Hopefully they
will do some and then go on to look for a eurythmist who
can teach them properly. In saying this, I dont want to
detract from the value of a eurythmy training! Trained
eurythmists should be like graduates of Julliard, or blackbelt Tai Chi masters. But everyone can do a little bit!
So I resolved to start the website, but I recognized
that I would have many obstacles to overcome. How
could I present the lessons in such a way that the viewer
would be able to overcome the limitations of the medium? Would it be possible for me to create narratives that
1 Eurythmy: Movements and Meditations; A Journey to the Heart of Language. With illustrations by Rene Parks.
spring issue 2015
21
initiative!
would enable people to internalize a lesson so deeply that
they could recreate and enliven it from within themselves
later on? What an exciting thought! I knew that because
I have taught so many thousands of people, I would be
able to introduce all of the lessonsthreefold walking,
contraction expansion, rod exercises, all the vowels and
consonants: all 55 lessonsin clear, clean, poetic, inspirational language.
And so I dared myself to take on the task. And I feel
that I have done as good a job as possible in the work.
What remains to be seen is how well people will be inspired to take it up. What is missing in the lessons is the
spark and the joy of working with a class of people, the
contagion of having a live teacher carry you. What the
lessons offer is an opportunity and a challenge for people
to become self-motivated in their personal practices. How
many people have the inner endurance, the inner power
to commit to work on themselves in this way? I feel that
this is the greatest limitation on the website.
The website contains four free lessons and over fifty
paid lessons. About twenty to seventy people a day visit the
website, and they linger for an average of 3.5 minutes
meaning some stay quite a bit longer. I judge that quite a
few people are doing the freebies and that makes me very
happy. Some people have purchased the special sequences,
and some have purchased the whole set of lessons, designed
to be enough for one lesson a week for a year.
For the most part, the feedback is immensely positive
from those who are using the lessons. People are so grateful that I have freed eurythmy up for them to access on
their own. Some have cried when they thanked me: they
have loved eurythmy so much, but havent been able to
continue on their own and longed for something like this.
A few anthroposophic doctors have thanked me profusely
for the work! Some eurythmists have expressed reservations, but others have thanked me and watch the lessons
themselves before teaching their own classes because they
find my style inspiring.
I was especially moved by a woman who works with
women in trauma in Lebanon. She said she would never
be able to find a eurythmist there, but she can use some
of my offerings to help people become centered and feel
peace. Here is another item of feedback:
We are a group of three women in Perth, Australia.
Tomorrow morning we will embark together on your
module for the Consonants. I have worked with your
Freebies each day for a few weeks and find the gentle,
methodical guidance very helpful. From there, creative
22
being human
ways to deepen the practice are able to spring forth. It is

so different from a class where several different elements
are covered at one time. I feel this gently unfolding
method will entrain a model of simplicity which will
lay a strong foundation in each of us as individuals, and
carry over into our shared movement.
Eurythmy OnlineWhat does it mean?

It seems like only yesterday that I thought it would
be madness to ever consider creating an online eurythmy
website. Why? Eurythmy is all about living, moving presence. And that simply isnt communicable through the
computer. For all their bells and whistles, their fabulous
color effects and images, and their capacity to transmit
gazillion-bytes of information faster than the speed of
thought, computers only give the appearance of reality.
Computers live on the surface of things: they perpetuate
the world of maya.2 They cannot give us the true experience of being in the warm presence of another person.
Eurythmy, on the other hand, opens the door for
each of us to celebrate communion with our own spiritselves, and with the world-spirit that has created all. And
every instance of eurythmy must be permeated with presence: with your presence, with spirit presence.
When I teach live classes, one of my most important
responsibilities is that I am fully present throughout the
lesson to witness the best and highest in each one of my
students. In honoring the fact that each person is a child
of God, an active spirit presence awakening to their infinite spirit potential, I am inwardly attentive, patient, supportive, and generous. And through this act of witnessing,
I see that everyone is beautiful when they do eurythmy.
And so: when I decided to create EurythmyOnline.
com, I had some tough questions to face.
Would it be possible to create recordings that were so
carefully crafted that I and my students would be able to
overcome the electronic media? Searching for a solution, I
carefully instruct people to watch the videos only as long
2 In ancient Hindu-Vedic tradition, the experience (later a teaching) that the
sense-perceptible world is illusory, only the manifestation of the work of
spiritual beings. Editor
as they need to, to internalize the material I am teaching

and then to turn off the recordings and work in silence.
In that silence, I know that they can awaken to their own
experience of spirit presence.
And then I had to decide: what sequence of instruction should I offer? Should I require that students all start
at the very beginning exercises (weight and light, contraction-expansion, threefold walking) before proceeding
to learn how to do the sounds of language? Or should I
allow people to enter the curriculum at their own level,
and choose for themselves where to begin? It took many
month of design for me to come to my present solution,
in which I encourage people to do the whole curriculum,
but also break the content down into modules so people
can take smaller chunks if they prefer.
And then came the question of money, for eurythmy
is actually priceless. And, because it is my ardent wish
that everyone should be able to do eurythmy, how could I
charge anything for it? On the other hand, I have had real
costs in building this website and in sustaining it. And
through paying money for the lessons, students allow me
to continue to live and teach and serve spirit in all the
ways that life asks of me.
I know that I will be asked: Why did I do it? And I
will answer: Because the Spirit of Eurythmy is longing
to be relevant, to bring its refreshing liveliness to our age.
Why? Because I am aware of the millions of people in
the world who will never have a chance to meet a eurythmist in person, but who may have heard of eurythmy, in
real life or through their Waldorf connections or even in
their dreams, and who want to learn about it and try it.
Why? Because I know that if we as eurythmists dont
find a way to step into the culture of electronic media,
we will become increasingly invisible and, unfortunately,
irrelevant. Blessings, Cynthia Hoven
So here is a fresh new initiative, six months old, inviting
your attention and response!
You can view the site at EurythmyOnline.com and you
can contact Cynthia at choven@sbcglobal.net.
The Present Age

T.H. Meyer interviewed by John Beck
JB: You are known in America for important books on
subjects from 9/11 to Rudolf Steiners core mission, and remarkable biographical works on Gen. von Moltke and D.N.
Dunlop. You also give lectures over here, and have written
about anthroposophy since Rudolf Steiners death and into
the future. Can you speak of your own core missionessential concerns you want to share with anthroposophists today?
THM: Well, if I dared to speak about my own core
mission, I would say it consists in the humble attempt to
elaborate biographies in harmony with Steiners core mission, which was, next to the social
question, the revelation of concrete karmic relationships. In the
two biographical works you mentioned this perspective underlay
everything I did. This is also the
case with the newly translated
biography about Ludwig PolzerHoditz, which traces this pupil of
Steiners back to the times of the
Roman emperor Hadrian. And
precisely in this respect I would like to share my concerns
with fellow anthroposophists: that a karmic perspective
on individuals is often left to fantasy, speculation, and
the immature or premature expression of personal experiences in this field. Or it is totally overshadowed by an
approach to Steiners research by philologizing and psychologizing, as is done by the new critical edition of his
works undertaken by an individual deeply convinced of
the truths of Mormonism.
Another concern is: Will more and more anthroposophists turn to the core substance of anthroposophy
instead of merely hoping for an external growth of the
movement? The lost harmony between inner deepening
and going out into the world, between involution and evolutiona harmony that Nature establishes in the course
of the seasonsshould be restored within the anthroposophical movement. In the last decades there was too much
one-sided going out on the one handtrying to become
everyones friendand too much one-sided going inwards
on the other handlike clinging to the idea of the esoteric character of the Anthroposophical Society and the like.
spring issue 2015
23
initiative!
JB: There is also much more that you have been doing
as publisher and editor, in German, and now you plan to
bring the magazine, Der Europer (The European) out in
English. Will this be for readers in the UK primarily, or also
for North America? What should readers expect from this?
THM: It is hoped that the English language version
of the Europer will reach readers in all English speaking countries. Since The European already exists as the
title of a EU-compatible journal, we decided to call it The
Present Agean international monthly journal for the
advancement of spiritual science.
Walter Johannes Stein, inspired by D.N. Dunlop,
had already published a monthly with this title in the
1930s. By choosing this title, which could also arouse the
interest of a Chinese or
Japanese reader, we would
at the same time also like
to link up with the great,
unfinished impulses of
Stein, Dunlop, and others. Without getting dogmatic, we will not be shy
in speaking about anthroposophy, trying to show
its fruitful impact upon
understanding all major
questions of life. The first
issue will feature an as-yet
unpublished article about
The Meeting with the Being of Anthroposophy by
Charles Kovacs, an outstanding teacher and painter who
lived in Edinburgh. The Present Age will try to cover all
major events and developments of our time from a spiritual scientific viewpoint.
JB: We know that Rudolf Steiner depended on questions
being asked of him, but not many were asked from America.
Yet the global cultural and economic power of the USA has
been a dominant fact now for seventy years. What should
North American anthroposophists be concerned with? Have
we been trying too hard to be good Europeans or Germans
when the world movement needs something else from us?
THM: I do remember some questions were put to
Steiner by an American, the economist William Nasmyth.
He asked Steiner whether for developing the threefold organism one would have to start in America by separating
Economy from Politics and for how long the tripartition
would be valid. Steiner found these questions remarkable
and replied to the latter question, About two centuries.
24
being human
Steiner added that he would not speak about tripartition in

America, unless he had lived there for at least three years.
D.N. Dunlop had envisaged holding a world economic conference in Washington in 1936 where a concrete
psychology of the peoples of the earth would also have
been integrated. This conference could not be realized
because of Dunlops death in 1935. Today anthroposophists in the English-speaking countries should be ready
to see, and possibly speak about, the real alternatives to
the unhealthy processes of an undermining fiat-money
economy as already developed by Steiner. When the next
international crash arrives, clarity should be spread about
such an alternative going beyond the scope and insights
of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Even before separating Economy and Politics, this would seem to be the
highest priority in the English-speaking world today.
Apart from this task it seems necessary that more and
more people in the West should become aware of the renewal of spiritual impulses that has, in fact, occurred in
Old Europe, even if this renewal has stayed germinal.
JB: Speaking personally, I wonder about the possibility
of a revival of European cultural leadership in the world. I
was raised in the Rocky Mountains, deep in North America,
but my cultural interests, language, music, literature, were
all European. The loss of European leadership after World
War I is very obvious to me. Why should we care about Europe today, except as a tourist destination? What should we
be asking of Europeans, Middle-Europeans especially?
THM: A future revival of European cultural leadership is vital, but can only be realized indirectly, that is, insofar as a European spiritual renewal through anthroposophy is able to fructify the spiritual and cultural activities
in the West. Steiner stressed in 1919 that the world responsibility for outer events has irrevocably passed over from
Europe (including Germany) to the Western powers; but,
he also stressed that these powers have the responsibility to develop new spiritual impulses. And this is simply
impossible without recourse to the European spiritual renewal just mentioned. As long as Europe is no more than
a cultural museum or tourist resort, the Western powers
will not be able to stop the spread of what Steiner called
the Kulturtodthe death of all cultureover the whole
globe, a process which, especially after the events of 9/11,
we are increasingly witnessing every day. A support for
understanding the spiritual responsibility of the West can
be found in the unexhausted impulses of Ralph Waldo
Emerson who had, as you know, a deep understanding of
what was preparing for the spiritual renewal of Europe.
Deeds That Matter

The Innovative Work of Elise Casper, Dietrich Asten, and Bill Bottum
by Christopher Schaefer
Seek the real practical life but seek it in a way that does
not blind you to the spirit working in it; seek the spirit,
but do not seek it out of spiritual egoism, from spiritual
greed, but look for it because you want to apply it unselfishly in practical life, in the material world. Make
use of the ancient principle, spirit is never without matter, matter never without spirit. Rudolf Steiner
It is a blessing of aging that you naturally reflect on

the people whom you have met in your life and their contributions to your own becoming as well as to how their
lives and deeds have affected the world. I wish to remember and briefly describe the life and work of three individuals who were committed students of Rudolf Steiner,
and who, I believe, had a significant impact on American
life, in particular in the realm of money and business.
That they are not well known in public life is not surprising as they focused their efforts on how to bring spirit
into matter, how to transform the egotism and self-seeking so prevalent in a market-oriented capitalistic system
into a true service orientation. They are also not often
remembered in the circle of people connected to Waldorf
education and anthroposophy as they were innovators in
business life, initiators in the realm of the will and not
directly in the area of cultural renewal.
Elise Casper (1919-97) overcame the egotism often
associated with wealth by fostering community responsibility in the allocation of gift funds through the creation
of the Mid-States Shared Gifting Group.
Dietrich Asten (1922-84), a successful businessman and part owner of the Asten-Hill Company, used
his personal wealth selflessly and often anonymously to
support the work of anthroposophy in its many practical
applications: Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture,
adult education, the Christian Community, eurythmy
and the healing arts, as well as supporting the Anthroposophical Society itself. In addition he transformed his
company into a model employer committed to high levels
of integrity, and initiated a conscious development process for all of its work groups and employees.
The third person, Bill Bottum (1927-2005), president and CEO of Townsend and Bottum, was engaged
in a life-long search for how best to apply the teachings of
the Sermon on the Mount (the Beatitudes) to business life.

This he did through finding a way to neutralize private
ownership of his company through a capital trust form,
by introducing a non-sectarian form of mission and value
orientation embodying the universal lessons of the Beatitudes into his company, and by a program of individual
and group development that helped the company to work
successfully in a variety of foreign cultures as well as integrating a multi-lingual and multi-cultural workforce.
Elise Casper: 1919-1997

Elise Casper was born into an old
Milwaukee family, a child of privilege, with family ties to the Milwaukee
brewing industry and to the Steinmeyer Grocery chain. She was a strong and
intelligent woman who received an excellent education and with her family
supported the growing cultural life of the city on the lake,
with its symphony and two large museums. As a young
child she used to say, Elise do, manifesting her strong
and independent will, which she used to establish Elises
Personalized Social Services, a very successful wedding
planning and catering business in the 1950s.
Elise found her way to anthroposophy through her
long-time friend Paul Riesen. She noted that much of Rudolf Steiners work agreed with her thinking, which from
my experience was practical, deep, and probing.
In 1943 she had a son, Tim, who had artistic talent
and as he grew she would take him to Europe on artistic
and cultural tours. While on a trip to France in 1964 he
was tragically killed in an automobile crash and she was
severely injured, leading her to a deep inner and outer
crisis. She found some consolation and support from
Gerhard Klockenberg, a Christian Community priest, in
France. After recuperating from the accident she sold her
business and returned to Europe where she developed a
keen interest in questions of money and how to renew
society, being strongly drawn to the threefold social order
movement. She even moved to Achberg, an experimental
social community on the Lake of Constance, promoting
the Third Way between capitalism and socialism.
spring issue 2015
25
initiative!
In the late 1960s and 1970s she split her time between Paris and Milwaukee. She also began living with
the question of how she could best support anthroposophical work in the Mid-West. So, having some funds
and being practical she created the Anthroposophical
Foundation of the Mid-West in 1976, wishing to apply aspects of Steiners Fundamental Social Law to a renewal
of cultural life. I remember sitting with her on a grey autumn afternoon of that same year at the Centre for Social
Development at Emerson College discussing the question
of how she could best integrate Steiners social insights
and principles to life in the Mid-West and how she could
further the work of anthroposophy in her region of the
country. Could money be worked with in a new way, she
asked; and so upon returning to the U.S. permanently in
1980 she started the Mid-West Economic Group to work
together with the Foundation she had previously created.
This new group, consisting of diverse members, including myself for a time, was first of all a study group
and it also helped Elise to allocate gift funds from the
foundation. It was in this circle of people, which included
Gordon Edwards, Deborah Kahn, Candyce Sweda, and
Michael Dobson, and later, Donald Melcer and Bill Manning, that the idea of the Shared Gifting Group applicants allocating gift funds amongst themselves was first
discussed and elaborated. Elise would ask, How do I give
money away in such a way that it is not directly connected
to me, giving me power and creating an unequal relationship between donor and recipient? This question became
the basis of practicing fund-sharing in which the different initiatives applying for grant money would see themselves as having a proportional claim on the money to be
divided or donated. Each applicant could then gift back
part of their claim on the total amount to others based on
their common understanding of the urgency of the need.
This meant having a clear picture of what was happening
within each initiative so that the group as a whole could
allocate funds by common agreement.
Fund sharing was first practiced by the Shared Gifting Group in 1984, with members participating in the allocation of $25,000. Often Gordon Edwards and Michael
Dobson chaired these meetings, which went from one-day
meetings to a whole weekend over the years. Participants
felt truly uplifted by the process and a series of guidelines and procedures were developed to aid the shared
gifting process. After Elises death in 1997, the Rudolf
Steiner Foundation became the trustee of her estate and
since that time over five million dollars has been granted
26
being human
to support the work of anthroposophy in the Mid-West,

with the largest share going to the Waldorf schools of the
region. As Candace Sweda, a long-time participant in the
fund-sharing process remarked, It is humbling to work
from our needs into the needs of the whole region. How
do we balance interests? This is where creativity comes
in. Working on common problems is a source of inspiration In the Fund Sharing Group a loyalty and love of
the individuals and their institutions has been built up.
Elise Casper was a social scientist in her deeds, looking for ways to free money from her will in order to
make it more productive for the community. Christopher
Mann, a colleague in supporting anthroposophy in the
Mid-West, stated, I admired Elises ability to give up
control over the use of her funds in her interest to build
community. This overcomes the egotistical tendency in
America where there are high ideals, which often give way
to manipulative practice. It is a huge deed for an individual to give up control over how their money will be
used. It is an act which releases power.1
I honor Elise for this important work, setting a spiritual precedent for the selfless use of money, by giving up
control over its use in her lifetime and encouraging a social process of gift money allocation.
Dietrich Asten: 1922-1984

Dietrich was a sensitive and highly
disciplined person who valued order
and punctuality as well as loyalty. He
would be pleased if you called him at
exactly the time agreed upon, not later
or earlier, a particularly German trait.
Dietrich was indeed German, although
born in Eupen, Belgium in 1922. His father was a highly
educated businessman with an interest in Eastern philosophy and his mother, an aspiring artist, joined the Anthroposophical Society in her late twenties.
As a young man Dietrich experienced the horror of
World War II as a young German soldier on the Russian
front. I think this experience marked him for the rest of
his life with a certain gravity, an awareness of the evils
which human beings can inflict on each other, motivating him to do the good in an unusually selfless manner.
1 All quotes and much information is drawn from Freya Secrest, Shared
Gifting : From Commitment to Practice, Graduation Essay, Waldorf School
Administration and Community Development Program, 2000. Available
from Christopher Schaefer, Freya Secrest, and Mary Christenson.
His artistic nature found expression in playing the piano

and the harpsichord. It was a delight to see him deeply
absorbed in classical music, which granted him much joy
within a demanding life.
After the war Dietrich worked in his fathers factory,
which provided textiles and felts for the paper industry.
He joined the Anthroposophical Society in 1949 in Brussels, and married, soon having two children, Peter and
Sylvia. He then moved to the US, at his fathers request,
to work in a fledgling new branch of the company, located just outside of Philadelphia.
The company, then known as the Asten Manufacturing Company, then Asten-Hill and still later Asten-Johnson, thrived, diversifying into wet and dryer felts. In time,
Dietrich, an engineer by training, became its CEO and
Board Chair and the company grew to be the third largest
supplier of felts to the paper industry in North America.
As the company grew and became more profitable
Dietrich began a long-term effort to provide financial
support to both the Anthroposophical Society and its
many practical works. This work was personal and often
hidden from public view, as he did not want to receive
any credit for the support he was providing. He initially
engaged in his philanthropic work through his personal
connections to the pioneers of Waldorf education, curative education, Waldorf teacher training, the arts and the
Christian Community, relying on his shrewd assessment
of people and their capacities.
He lived a modest life and shared his wealth generously, and his philanthropic work was truly extensive.
I remember one personal incident when my wife and I
moved from England to the U.S. in 1981, to work at the
Waldorf Institute in Detroit. Upon asking Werner Glas
where our small salary was to come from, he said rather blithely, Oh, Dietrich, although he was hoping you
would move to the Philadelphia area to start a business
consultancy institute. It is rather easy to take financial
support for granted and yet if you think of the 1960s and
1970s when Waldorf education was expanding rapidly,
the need for financial support was great and there were
not many people to help. Dietrich, along with a few other
individuals, made a huge difference to the expansion and
success of anthroposophical work in the United States.
After his death in 1984, his philanthropic work was carried on by the Rudolf Steiner Charitable Trust.
Dietrich was also the General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in the United States from 196274 as well as a Class Holder in the School of Spiritual
Science. It was in the 1970s that he met and married his

second wife Erika, and together they created a gracious
home and social center in Valley Forge as well as shaping
and guiding anthroposophical life in the Kimberton area.
As Dietrich became both the CEO and Chair of the
Board of Directors of the Asten-Hill Company in 1977,
he was able to bring into his company something of his
own morality and spiritual striving. Through working
with Coenraad van Houten of the Netherlands Pedagogical Institute (NPI), he and his top management team
gave the company a mission statement and a set of goals
founded on service and integrity, a flexible de-centralized
work structure, and an emphasis on teamwork. Dietrich
also approved of a personal development and assessment
process that was many years ahead of industry practice
and helped to institute a profit sharing plan for employees. He also changed how he himself led and managed the
company, moving from a strong hands-on orientation to
coaching and advising his management teams. I remember visiting the company in the early 1980s and watching
as Dietrich attended meetings, saying very little, mainly
asking questions of his division and department heads,
and adopting a much stronger goal and process orientation with his managers, thereby enhancing their independence and sense of responsibility.
Dietrich died in a dramatic fashion at an Anthroposophical Society conference in Spring Valley, New York,
in 1984. Having just completed a lecture on Sacramental
and Spiritual Communion and while observing a eurythmy presentation called The Question of Destiny he had
a heart attack. It was a very sudden transition but one that
I felt was somehow in keeping with his nature and spiritual striving and intention. He had done his work and it
was time to go. He had helped countless initiatives and
individuals financially, had served the Anthroposophical Society selflessly, and had turned his company into
a model organization balancing service, integrity, profitability, and employee development.2
Bill Bottum : 1927-2005

I met Bill for the first time in 1981 when he was the
CEO of Townsend and Bottum, a large construction firm
which was building power plants around the world. He
had on his usual blue suit and white shirt and tie and
greeted me warmly with shining eyes and a warm smile.
2 Forschungstelle Kulturimpuls, Dietrich von Asten, 1990, Dornach, Switzerland. Dietrich also wrote two longer essays, Americas Way and Sacramental
and Spiritual Communion, both published by Floris Books.
spring issue 2015
27
initiative!
Call me Bill, he said, as he invariably
greeted everyone, and then proceeded
to ask me about myself and my interests. He had about him the engaging
openness, good humor and modesty of
many Mid-Westerners, combined with
a deep moral and spiritual awareness.
When Bill was just finishing college his brother asked him to teach
Sunday school. Bill said, But I dont know anything
about Christianity, and his brother said, Well, find
out. So he did and soon focused on the Sermon on the
Mount, Christs first teaching to his disciples, as the distillation of Christian values and practices. The Sermon
on the Mount, or the Beatitudes, were to become the central focus of his inner life.
After graduating from college he joined his fathers
construction company and he wrestled with whether he
should become a minister or a businessman? Then one
night he had a vivid dream in which he was told that he
could apply Christs teachings in business life. This he was
to do in a remarkable and creative way. He put together his
reflections and experiences on working with the Sermon
on the Mount in a short book called Within Your Reach,
which he was to edit and re-edit for the rest of his life. He
also practiced and meditated on the Beatitudes on a daily
basis for over fifty years and so turned them into a way of
leading his life and of transforming his company.
Bill was continuously busy in looking for approaches and concepts that would allow him to integrate the
lessons of the Sermon on the Mount into business life.
Upon hearing about Robert Greenleafs work on Servant
Leadership he sought him out and visited him a number
of times in a Quaker retirement home outside of Philadelphia. Greenleaf had been a consultant to MIT in the
turbulent sixties and had realized that many students
were reading Herman Hesses Journey to the East. In this
story, Leo has been the porter and cook for an expedition of Europeans looking for spiritual enlightenment.
He disappears one day; and much later, the remnants of
the group find their way to a spiritual retreat and monastery in the Himalayas only to discover that Leo is the
master and teacher of this order. Greenleaf, out of his
experience in business life, then wrote an influential essay called The Servant as Leader, which Bill embraced,
as it articulated his own view and practice on leadership,
service, and integrity. He was later to become a Board
member and promoter of the Robert Greenleaf Center on
28
being human
Servant Leadership in Indianapolis and a keen supporter

of this philosophy of leadership within his company and
the broader business community.3
Perhaps the most far-reaching of Bills innovations
was his solution to the question of the private ownership
of capital and of business. He had inherited his fathers
company as a family-held business. Through his study of
Steiners work, in particular, Toward Social Renewal, and
World Economy, Bill recognized the need to transform the
privately held company into a legal form in which employees, customers, and the broader society had a stake
and benefitted. He began a long search, examining cooperatives, employee owned stock companies, the Scott
Bader Commonwealth, and the John Lewis Partnership
in England.His answer was to transform Townsend and
Bottum into a capital trust, a non-stock, for-profit company, owned by employees and representatives of customers and society, and governed by a Board which had the
task of seeing that the company was dedicated to its mission and values. As Bill said, This is what I had been looking for as a way of reward and justice for employees while
also assuring continuity and preventing hostile takeovers.
Thus T&B became ...one of the few known instances in
the world of a privately-owned business enterprise that had
no proprietor, stock-holders or partners. 4
In addition to his focus on servant leadership and
finding a capital trust form for neutralizing the private
ownership of his company Bill transformed other aspects
of T&B. These steps included:
Articulating a mission and values for the company
emphasizing absolute integrity and service so that all
of the companys stakeholdersemployees, customers, and suppliershad a high level of trust in the
company and its leadership.
Instituting profit sharing so that 25 percent of net profits, before taxes, was set aside for profit sharing and
employee bonuses.
Committing to a process of training and development
in order that all employees and suppliers learned more
about themselves through a life-styles inventory program as well as extensive group process training, and
Transforming the companys culture and structure to
multi-level cross-disciplinary work groups whose
problem-solving focus and social skills enhanced effectiveness and profitability.
3 Robert Greenleaf, The Servant as Leader, Robert Greenleaf Center for Servant
Leadership, 1970.
4 This and following references from About Bill Bottum: Within Your Reach,
http:// billbottum.wordpress.com
Bills goals were clearly idealistic, creating and developing a business organization that acted out of a commitment to spiritual values and teachings. He and his
co-workers saw Townsend and Bottum as an experiment
which conceived the business world as a huge laboratory
in which to try to live out the pattern of the Beatitudes,
in order to overcome the egotism and self-serving nature
of the modern age. Even though T&B merged with a
larger company in 1997, Bill and his coworkers effort led
to a community of committed co-workers who met annually for many years to honor Bill and the moral and
spiritual legacy of T&B.
Elise, Dietrich, and Bill stand in

a long line of economic and social
reformers seeking to transform economic life into a realm of cooperative
activity serving the value of sisterhood and brotherhood. This they did
in their private life as well as in the
institutions they initiated and led.
To bring about fundamental reform
in the realm of economic activity requires courage, integrity, insight, and
a long and persistent will. They drew
on their own life experiences, on the
many penetrating economic and social insights of Rudolf Steiner, and
on their own deep commitment to
Christs teachings to successfully demonstrate economic and moral alternatives to the competitive, self-serving
laws of the market. Having done so,
they make such economic reforms
easier for future generations; to do
something new and socially productive requires more effort and sacrifice
than following established patterns.
These three pioneers of the will established prototypes for the future of
a healthier, Christ-imbued, economic
life that acknowledges the truth of the
social law of mutuality.
Martin Luther King stated this
law in the following manner in his
Letter from a Birmingham Jail,
April 16, 1963:
In a real sense all life is inter-related. All men are tied

in a single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable
network of mutuality, whatever happens to one directly,
happens to all indirectly.
It has been a blessing of my destiny to have known and

worked with Elise, Dietrich, and Bill.
Christopher Schaefer PhD (christopherschaefer7@gmail.com),
Great Barrington, MA, is co-director of the Hawthorne Valley
Center for Social Research.
glenbrook.org Marlborough, new haMpshire
weaving the ideals of waldorf education into rich new england

summer camp experiences for 3rd through 8th graders
s i n c e
1 9 4 6
our Falcon outdoor leadership program for 9th and 10th graders is
designed to challenge, strengthen and develop emerging leaders.
CampGlenBrook_8.5x5.5_Poster_2014_Dec11.indd 1
12/11/14 2:10 PM
spring issue 2015
29
arts & ideas

IN THIS SECTION:
Frederick Amrine gets
to the heart of
the question of the
evolution of human
consciousness in a way
other professors
will respect and
everyone can follow.
Our gallery features
Free Columbia, students
and instructors
of the school
which is also
featured in the
initiatives section.
Then science and art
make nice with
each other for a
few charmed days
in Portland, Oregon.
Idea, Theory, Emotion, Desire

by Frederick Amrine
For Mary Emery 1
Rudolf Steiners account of the evolution of consciousness is surely one of the greatest
feats of intellectual history. Fully understood and assimilated, it would effect a paradigm shift
as fundamental and consequential for the humanities and the historical social sciences as the
Theory of Relativity was for physics. In opposition to conventional intellectual history, in which
a succession of subjective ideas are seen as inhabiting epistemological structures presumed to
be constant, Steiner argued that the structure of human consciousness itself has evolved. He
saw that changing structure as the main contributor to the succession of different paradigms or
mentalities.
Like other great ideas, the evolution of consciousness is simple in itself, but vast in its consequences and complex in its realization. Steiner unfolds it over many hundreds of passages in
many dozens of books and lecture cycles. Owen Barfields great service was to have understood
Steiners account so thoroughly, and to have expounded it so elegantly in Saving the Appearances
(1957).2 Barfield would be the ideal guide through this new world, but Saving the Appearances is
already maximally dense, resistant to summary. Instead I would like to convey the main concept
of the evolution of consciousness via my own thought experiment in the spirit of Barfield.
Consider the etymologies of the four common English words in my title, two of which
(idea and theory) refer to thinking, one to feeling (emotion), and one to will (desire). In
tracing etymologies we go backward through time, into an earlier consciousness, which means
that etymology provides insights into the history of consciousness itself. Barfield is the acknowledged master of this exercise, which he began already in his first monograph, Poetic Diction, and
then pursued systematically in History in English Words.3
Idea: This is Platos term. In Greek, idea is grammatically the past participle of the verb to
see. For Plato, an idea is an I-have-seen. Earlier the word had begun with a digamma (w),
which makes immediately apparent its kinship with the Latin verb video (pronounced wideo),
I see; hence Cicero rendered Platos term species, from the same root as the verb specere, to see
(cf. speculum, mirror) [HEW 106]. All of this conforms perfectly to Platos metaphysics: recall
for example Phaedrus 247, where Socrates locates the Ideas beyond the Zodiac, whence they are
viewed by the gods and any philosopher able to join their sidereal procession.
Theory: Greek and Latin theoria, contemplative viewing of a spectacle; the root is the same
as that of the word theater.
Emotion: The earliest occurrence in English (1603) describes the divers Emotions of the
Turks, meaning their various migrations; another of the earliest listed by the OED (1695) refers
to an earthquake as an accidental emotion of the center of gravity of the Earth. Before the
seventeenth century, emotion was used of material objects [HEW 174].
Desire: Via the Latin verb desiderare, desire is parallel to consider (literally put two
1 Mary Emery teaches English at the Rudolf Steiner High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan. For decades she has dedicated herself to
studying the evolution of consciousness and bringing it to life within the Waldorf high school curriculum.
2 London: Faber, 1957; rpt. 2nd edn Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 1988 [StA]. Indeed, it was Barfield rather than Steiner himself
who coined the term evolution of consciousness.
3 Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning (1928; 2nd revised edition Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 1984); History in English Words (1953;
Great Barrington, MA: Lindesfarne Press, 1985) [HEW].
30
being human
stars together), de (from) + sider- (star). Both are artifacts

of astrological paradigms, in which the motives of deeds
and events are influences (another astrological term)
flowing down from the stars.
There is a striking pattern here, and it will help us
see it if we list the words vertically, suspending them as it
were between the poles of object (i.e., things and events
unfolding in the outer world, outside the self), and subject (i.e., private events unfolding within our own individual minds and souls):
OBJECT idea SUBJECT

theory

emotion

desire
And now the thought experiment: Where shall we
draw the line (which you can do imaginatively now) between subject and object as just defined? Absent formal philosophical training and deliberate epistemological
reflection (Barfields beta thinking), nearly all denizens
of the modern world will experience ideas, theories, emotions, and desiresthinking, feeling, and willingas
something individual, private, and interior. We moderns
draw a vertical line separating subject and object to the
left of our four words, placing thinking, feeling, and willing on the subject side of the divide. But the older consciousness out of which these words were born draws the line
to their right. It experiences thinking, feeling, and willing not as private, individualized, subjective events but as
events unfolding within the larger world. In the older consciousness thinking, feeling, and willing are experienced
as macrocosmic.
As our four etymologies show, the human thinking,
feeling, and willing recorded from our earliest human records through the high Middle Ages were macrocosmic
events that the individual human mind participates. Participation as applied to the evolution of consciousness is
Barfields term, not Steiners, but it has a venerable pedigree, within both ancient and modern thought. Participation (methexis) is Platos way of explaining predication
and all other mental relations, and it
is also the term used by the founders
of modern anthropology, Lvy-Bruhl
and Durkheim, to explain primitive
structures such as those of shamanism and totemism. Barfield calls this
original participation to distinguish
it from a new kind of participation Owen Barfield
that has only begun to emerge, beginning roughly with

Romanticism, after a long eclipse of felt participation that
both Steiner and Barfield term, felicitously, onlooker
consciousness.
Once we develop an eye for it, evidence of original
participation is so abundant that it is hard to know what
to adduce first. A brief and vivid account is provided by
Julian Jayness Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown
of the Bicameral Mind (1976).4 In his attempt to explain
the biological evolution of human consciousness, Jaynes
carefully examines Homers Iliad as the earliest record
that can be reliably interpreted, and his conclusions are
stunning:
There is in general no consciousness in the Iliad The
words in the Iliad that in a later age come to mean mental things have different meanings, all of them more
concrete. Achilles will fight when the thumos in his
chest tells him to and a god rouses him (9:702f.). But it
is not really an organ and not always localized; a raging
ocean has thumos [69].
Iliadic men have no will of their own and certainly
no notion of free will [70].
The characters of the Iliad do not sit down and think
out what to do. They have no conscious minds such as
we say we have, and certainly no introspections. It is impossible for us with our subjectivity to appreciate what it
was like. When Agamemnon, king of men, robs Achilles of his mistress, it is a god that grasps Achilles by his
yellow hair and warns him not to strike Agamemnon (I
:197ff.). It is a god who then rises out of the gray sea and
consoles him in his tears of wrath on the beach by his
black ships, a god who whispers low to Helen to sweep
her heart with homesick longing, a god who hides Paris
in a mist in front of the attacking Menelaus, a god who
tells Glaucus to take bronze for gold (6:234ff.), a god
who leads the armies into battle, who speaks to each
soldier at the turning points, who debates and teaches Hector what he must do, who urges the soldiers on
or defeats them by casting them in spells or drawing
mists over their visual fields. It is the gods who start
quarrels among men (4:437ff.) that really cause the war
(3:164ff.), and then plan its strategy (2:56ff.). It is one
god who makes Achilles promise not to go into battle,
another who urges him to go, and another who then
clothes him in a golden fire reaching up to heaven and
screams through his throat across the bloodied trench
at the Trojans, rousing in them ungovernable panic. In
fact, the gods take the place of consciousness. The be4 Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000, pp. 67-83.
spring issue 2015
31
arts & ideas

ginnings of action are not in conscious plans, reasons,
and motives; they are in the actions and speeches of
gods [72].
But ultimately Jayness account is reductive and disappointing. Because he lacks Steiners understanding of
the evolution of consciousness, Jaynes can only conclude
that the ancient myths were mass hallucinations, literally
a kind of schizophrenia (hence bicameral mind) afflicting not just individuals, nor even isolated communities,
but the whole of humanity.
Jaynes is sadly typical: one could make a long list of
such books that are brimming with brilliant individual
insights, but ultimately fail to situate them properly within a larger interpretive context. It is tempting to reimagine such studies in light of the evolution of consciousness,
however briefly. Jaynes is too reductive for further notice,
but let us consider two other influential books: Thomas
Kuhns Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962),5 and
Wilhelm Worringers Abstraction and Empathy (1908).6
Kuhns magnificent study, which every anthroposophist should treasure, has utterly and irrevocably changed
the way we think about science. The main argument is
well known: the growth of scientific knowledge is anything but linear, let alone the kind of parabolic accumulation described in the introductory textbooks and popular
scientific writing; rather it is radically discontinuous, a
series of sudden shifts between incommensurable paradigms that suddenly reveal unprecedented ways of
seeing, but also completely new phenomena. Through
careful analysis of key episodes in the history of science,
Kuhn was able to argue persuasively that scientists working under different paradigms in some very real sense
live in different worlds. Paradigm shifts are precipitated
by rare intermittent crises, and the normal science that
prevails as each paradigm unfoldsscience as actually
practicedbears no resemblance to the methodological stereotype of falsification through direct comparison
with nature. Kuhns account was immediately and nearly
universally recognized as superior to the master narrative
that had preceded it.
Nevertheless, Kuhn leaves a number of troubling
questions unresolved. If reductionism does not work, can
there be progress in science in any real sense? If the history of science is so discontinuous that it cannot be ra5 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012). This 50th anniversary edition
contains an important introductory essay by Ian Hacking.
6 Chicago: Dee, 1997. Many thanks to Jennie Cain, who prodded me to think
about the relationship between Worringer and Steiner.
32
being human
tionally reconstructed, is science doomed to be governed

by subjectivity and historical accident? It follows from
Kuhns account that scientific progress takes place not
principally within paradigms, but rather between them.
And it is just these revolutionary, extra-paradigmatic
moments about which Kuhn has nothing to say. In multiple places he declares the succession of paradigms to be
arbitrary. Not only did Steiner anticipate Kuhn in many
important ways: he and Barfield can explain very well
why it is, for example, that Galileo and Newton follow
Aristotle, but precede quantum mechanics. In a sentence,
its because original participation gives way to onlooker
consciousness, which then gives way to final participation in turn.
In his classic treatise on the history of art, we watch
Worringer groping for the idea of the evolution of consciousness. He understands that the succession of paradigms (in this case, artistic styles in the broadest sense)
is somehow inwardly motivated. Perusing the ethnographic collection of the Trocadro Museum in Paris,
Worringer suddenly intuited that humanitys relationship
to the world is not unchanging: there is an artistic volition that has not been the same in all ages [10]. He goes
astray, however, by ascribing this shift in representation to
changing subjective responses, to peoples feeling about
the world, their psychic attitude toward the cosmos
[15], not realizing that (as instanced by our discussion of
the Iliad above), subjectivity itself arrives late on the scene.
Worringers putative cause is rather an effect of something
more fundamental: not a different reaction to the same
set of phenomena, but a wholly different set of phenomena themselves. As Steiner and Barfield have taught (and
as Kuhn later understood), it is not our feelings about
the real world that change: collective representation, and
hence reality itself, is what changes.
Noting that both primitive and modern art tend toward abstraction, Worringer rewrites the entire history of
art from his new perspective. But the resulting schema is
exactly backwards: the progression Worringer describes as
epochs of abstraction on either side of a delving down
into the real world must instead be described in Steiners and Barfields terms as one from original to final
participation, interrupted by an eclipsing onlooker consciousness. What characterizes primitive consciousness
is not fear and withdrawal from the world, but rather (as
not only Steiner and Barfield, but also Lvy-Bruhl and
Durkheim taught), an intensely intimate relationship of
participation. Barfields wonderful metaphors have medi-
Gallery: Free Columbia

Free Columbia, in Columbia County, NY, works at the intersection of several goals: art school, life
training, community-building, social-economic experiment, cultural trust. Our Initiatives section gives
a short overview (pages 18-19), and see the Digest for the Free Columbia crowd-funding effort.
Images in this Gallery are by several Free Columbia students and by instructors
Nathaniel Williams and Laura Summer. Lauras work is also on the cover of this issue.
Top left: Ethereal Rising Laura Travisano

Top right: Shroud Inge Valetini
Above: Yellow Wing Laura Summer
Left: Color Study Ianthe Lauwaert
spring issue 2015
33
arts & ideas
This page:
Above: Lent Audrie Brown
Right: Laura Summer: Milkweed
Below: Laura Summer: Heaven Spirit
Opposite page:
Left top: America standing on the skin of the Way Travis Henry
Left bottom: Carrots Growing Kimberly OKeefe
Right side, top to bottom:
Sara Parilli: Image to Luster Study; Woodpecker; Color Perspective Study
34
being human
spring issue 2015
35
arts & ideas
Thank you for having faith. To me this has been an education in what
it is to be human. It has given me insight into how to go forward
into the world in a true way. Laurel Iselin (student 1st year)
May we all find our way to becoming more receptive and free.
Thank you! Laura Travisano (student 5th year)
Free Columbia is about more than visual art it is about the art of
being human. Rachel Fields (student 5th year)
The year at Free Columbia was a kind of Being a Person 101. It brought certain aspects of
existence into my awareness that hadnt been present with intensity before...
Daniel Ripperton (student 4th year)
Free Columbia is a glimpse of the future. Travis Henry (student 3rd year)
36
being human
This page, clockwise from top left:

Cup Laura Summer
Freedom in Shadows Nathaniel Williams
Table and Two Chairs Lailah Amstutz
Circumstance progression Laura Summer
eval consciousness still mortised into the world [StA 78]

and experiencing space more like a garment men wore
about them than a stage on which they moved [StA 94].
Conversely, it is only in the Renaissance that abstraction
and spatial depth arise as a general consciousness: that is
why we speak of Renaissance perspective.
As a corrective to Worringers account, and as telling
evidence of the reality of onlooker consciousness, let us
consider briefly two specific episodes, neither of which
is adduced by Steiner or Barfield. Both are profoundly
symptomatic of this new relationship to the world that is
precisely the opposite of Worringers description.
As James Hillman and others have argued, the Renaissance begins symbolically on April 26, 1336 with Petrarchs ascent of Mont Ventoux,7 an event that witnesses
not just a new sense of spatial depth, but also an equally
powerful movement in the opposite direction, into a new
sense of human interiority. Petrarchs own account begins
by explaining his motivations for this unprecedented 8 act:
the mountain had drawn his attention for years because it
was visible from a great distance, and his only motivation, he claims, was to see what so great an elevation had
to offer. On the summit, the first thing that strikes him
is the great sweep of view spread out before [him]. But
that is not Petrarchs only response. Surprisingly, the view
prompts him to open Augustines Confessions at random,
and in a moment of perfect Jungian synchronicity, his
eye falls immediately upon a passage dismissing natural
beauty in favor of self-knowledge. Petrarch immediately
concludes, famously, that nothing is wonderful but the
soul, which, when great itself, finds nothing great outside itself. Then, in truth, I was satisfied that I had seen
enough of the mountain; I turned my eye inward upon
myself Returning home, the summit of the mountain
seems in retrospect to be scarcely a cubit high compared
with the range of human contemplation. Pace Worringer, Petrarchs ascent of Mont Ventoux stands out because
it is such an early and distinct symptom of onlookerconsciousnessof separation from the world.
7 Re-Visioning Psychology (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), pp. 194-98. In
The Legitimacy of the Modern Age (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985), Hans
Blumenberg likewise identifies Petrarchs ascent as a profoundly symbolic
episode, but he is unable to say exactly what has changed. Blumenberg is
another great scholar who constantly comes up short because he lacks the
concept of the evolution of consciousness.
8 This is not strictly true: in his own letter Petrarch reveals that a shepherd
had ascended the mountain 50 years earlier. What is telling is that the
experience had been lost on the shepherd, who complains that he had
gotten for his pains nothing except fatigue and regret.
The other deeply symptomatic event is Galileos

lectures on Dantes Inferno (1587), in which he reduces
Dantes psychodrama to land surveying: Galileo proposes
to calculate the physical dimensions of Hell. The spirit of
this new mentality has been captured perfectly in an essay
by the remarkable German poet Durs Grnbein9: With
each step, thinking is severed from concretenesswith
enormous gains and enormous losses on both sides. At
every turn, things and their mental representations retreat further from each other [93]. Dantes qualitative,
dynamic topography of the soul gives way to sheer abstraction: Galileo has long since entered another order,
one of stasis and statics He shall become the coordinator of static worlds, the lawfulness of Nature will obey
his will, establishing itself in a vacuum, within the equilibrium of a pre-established harmony [97]. Away with
qualities, which cannot be controlled. The senses stand in
the way of knowledge [98]; The Golden Age of Reduction begins It is also the end of the Harmony of the
Spheres, of eschatologies, of interplanetary cosmic theater
in a grand style [100-101]. Sensory qualities are secondary, merely subjective; hence Galileo assures us that the
fires of Dantes Hell cannot actually be hot [102].
Worringer could not be more wrong about the art of
original participation, and he fundamentally misconstrues the acme of abstraction in Renaissance onlooker
consciousness as a confident merger of mind with real
spatiality. Are we surprised then to find that he completely misunderstands modern arts turn away from Naturalism as mere abstraction, motivated by fear of reality?
Trapped in the onlooker consciousness of nave realism,
Worringer cannot begin to understand that artists such
as (Steiners student!) Kandinsky had begun to cross the
threshold into real spiritual experience. Alas, Kandinsky
and other seekers of the spiritual in art read Worringer
and were misled by him, in many places conflating spirituality with abstraction themselves. But that is another
essay for another day.
Frederick Amrine (amrine@umich.edu) has been a student of
anthroposophy his entire adult life. He teaches literature, philosophy,
and intellectual history at the University of Michigan, where he is
Arthur F. Thurnau Professor in German Studies. His research has
been devoted primarily to Goethe, German Idealism, and Romanticism. He is also a past editor of this publication.
9 Galileo Measures Dantes Hell and Gets Hung Up on the Dimensions, in his
eponymous collection of essays (Suhrkamp, 1996), pp. 89-104. Translations
are my own.
spring issue 2015
37
arts & ideas
Understanding
the Imponderable
in Nature
A Report on the 2014 Natural Science/Mathematics-Astronomy Section Annual Meeting in Portland, Oregon:
A Path To Understanding the Imponderable in Nature:
Enlivening Our Understanding through Color
We met December 4-7, 2014 at the studio of Jannebeth Rell and James Lee. A wonderful companionship
was fostered as we daily sat around their table enjoying
delicious meals they prepared in their home adjacent to
the studio. The conference furthered our continuing
theme of inner capacity building toward a qualitative
science, with a focus this year on the feeling understanding spoken of in Rudolf Steiners lectures on Colour.1
Johannes Khl, Natural Science Section leader at the
Goetheanum, opened with a public presentation at the
Cedarwood Waldorf School on his recent book, Rainbows, Halos, Dawn and Dusk: the Atmospheric Colors and
Goethes Color Theory (Adonis Press). Along with gorgeous
photos of rainbows, halos, glories, and coronas in the sky,
he brought a suitcase full of diffraction gratings and other
demonstration equipment for us to experience that all
subjects of optics are approachable via atmospheric color
phenomena. In the end, he brought everything from the
archetype of dawn and dusk to the wave-particle duality
of light into an overview of the whole, in true Goethean
fashionre-weaving the rainbow, one might say. His
closing image was an intense halo complex around a sun
low in the sky, appearing as a central cross with two adjacent crosses on the Golgotha hill, indicative of the sacred
feeling these atmospheric color phenomena engender.
Friday morning we began in the studio, with several
artists invited to join us from up and down the West Coast.
The impromptu inter-Sectional collaboration was delightful, thoughtful, and full of humor. Presentations and exercises led by Jannebeth, conversations, painting, and wonderful skits on the qualities of color, enabled us to begin to feel
the more inner natures of color and to experience art as
a research tool. Jannebeth began our first session by show1 Page numbers to follow refer to the second edition of 1996 (reprinted
2008) of Colour: three lectures given in Dornach 6 to 8 May 1921 with nine
supplementary lectures given on various occasions; Rudolf Steiner Press.
38
being human
ing her beloved hand-bound copy of Willem Zeylmans van

Emmichovens doctoral dissertation, holding it up to her
nose for that familiar 1960s photocopy smell. She acquired
it when training as a nurse with Dr. Zeylmans son-in-law.
Combining quantitative and qualitative, Dr. Zeylmans had
measured the heartbeat of children exposed to different colors as they spoke of how
they felt that the color
affected them. Jannebeth
next introduced her art
schools approach, typified by one class exercise:
a quite scientific array
of hues and values.
We then dove into
Steiners Colour lectures. Starting with prismatic color phenomena, we explored the color circle Steiner imagined as
a bending of the linear Newtonian spectrum around to
meet as magenta (p.38). Johannes noted that the resulting
Purpur of Goethes spectrum is also called Incarnat
indicative of a babys changing complexion from a bluish
hue shortly upon cutting the umbilical cord toward the living hue brought on by the first breaths. We then turned
to Steiners scheme of Image colors (p.27), which Jannebeth enhanced with characterizations from other Steiner
sources. This scheme engages questions of the continuous
inter-relations of the physical (black), living (green), soul
(magenta), and spirit (white).
After noon, Jannebeth led a shout out of the qualities by which Steiners Lustre colors (blue, yellow, red) affect us. After observing bouquets of flowers that adorned
the studio in either the Image or the Lustre color combinations, we considered seven sheets of the separate Image and Lustre colors displayed along the wall, in order to
play a simple drama game. Someone would say So, I was
right! and each person was to reply, That remains to be
seen, acting and speaking in the mood of a given color.
Discussion transitioned to harmonious, characteristic, and
non-characteristic color combinations, as well as turbidity,
brightness and darkness phenomena, and related subjects.
Johannes brought us news of the Goetheanum and
preparations for the Evolving Science 2015 conference in
Dornach at the end of September at which he hopes for
more participants from the States.2 He informed us that
Wolfgang Schad, turning eighty this year, had a stroke a
few months ago. With funding assistance from the An2 http://science.goetheanum.org/topics.6875.0.html?&L=1
throposophical Society in America, the Section is organizing an international academic conference to follow
Adonis Press publication in English of the second edition
of Schads Man and Mammals later this year.
Johannes freely held the Seventeenth Class Lesson
that evening and we had our conversation on the Lesson
and theme Saturday morning. (One important comment
made in our final review was how valuable it is to have a
conference solely with those who have made a commitment to the School for Spiritual Science. On the other
hand, some wondered whether
tactful treatment of Class material
in discussionsexcluding the Lesson itselfmight be a fruitful introduction for others not yet members of the School who share our
interests and concerns.)
Jannebeth then led a painting
exercise suggested by the color
method of artist Beppe Assenza.3
In unpremeditated abstract patterns we were to juxtapose specific combinations of two
Image and one Lustre color and to feel how the different
combinations affected us.
After lunch, John Barnes led a discussion of imagination and methodology in qualitative science. We touched
on Goethes sensory-moral nature of color and considered
how Goethean participation in phenomena in general
puts the scientist in a personal stance, a moral position
even, with regard to the subject. Participatory methodologies can complement conventional, value-free objective sciencerecalling E. F. Schumachers distinction
between science of understanding and science of manipulation in his book, A Guide for the Perplexed.
We touched on mainstream sciences new discovery of a non-visual photoreceptor system in humans, by
which blue wavelength light stimulates brain alertness
and orange-red light allows sleepiness. These physiological effects upon our circadian rhythm, cognitive performance, and mood4 could perhaps be considered another
aspect of Goethes sensory-moral effects of color. When
the oft-repeated notion was raised that, in speaking of the
wine-red sea (or wine-dark sea), ancient Greeks could
not see blue, the vision scientist present had to caution
against a literal acceptance of such a statement. Consid3 http://lucianobalduino.it/method.html
4 For example, Chellappa et al. (2014) Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences 111:6087-6091.
erations of physiology, language, and the evolution of

consciousness continued after the meeting by email, with
reference to Arthur Zajoncs nuanced treatment of this
notion in his Catching the Light.5 That thread will be uploaded to the Section website.6
Saturday evening we read stories we composed overnight from a childs point of view, incorporating all the
Image and Lustre colors. Then we shared wonderfully
creative characterizations of the colors, coming up with
poetry, drama, music, eurythmy, and mime. There were
insightful impromptu works as well as hoots and hilarity,
yet here again art served as a modality of research.
Sunday morning, artists and scientists alike, we considered the nature of Section and inter-Section work, further discussed Goethean and conventional methodology,
and appreciated the discipline of scientific practice as well
as the value of artistic capacities. Marveling at the yetunfathomed depths of our subject, we felt we had moved
from awe the first evening with Johannes to awe at our
creative artfulness the night before, all in the loving hospitality of James and Jannebeths home and studio.
A key theme of earlier meetings in Portland with Jannebeth was art as a viable research tool, investigating
the formative forces expressed in leaf and flower through
drawing and other media. This theme has been part of
our approach ever since in other venues, as the past few
annual meetings have progressed from the physical to the
etheric to the astral and to the human being last year.7
Now Jannebeth had led us masterfully, once again, as a
company of researchers in participatory exploration of
our colorful, soulful world, aiming for that feeling understanding Rudolf Steiner spoke of, which is brought to
life and concrete experience by an artistic sensibility.
by Barry Lia, together with the planning committee:
James Lee, Jannebeth Rell, Jennifer Greene,
Andrew Linnell, and John Barnes.
5 Arthur Zajonc, Catching the Light: the Entwined History of Light and Mind,
1993, Bantam Press, pp. 13-18.
6 http://www.naturalsciencesection.org/
7 2010, Chicago, Building Capacitiesa Study of the Spherical and Radial
Principles in the Human and Animal Organisms with a focus on Horns
and Antlers, Michael Holdrege and Gary Banks; 2011, Water Research
Institue, Blue Hill, Maine, Experiencing Moving, Forming, and Rhythm In
Water Flow: An Approach to the Fluid Event of Water, Jennifer Greene and
David Auerbach; 2012, Chicago, The Threefold Principle in the Human
and Animal Organism with a Focus on Recursion: Cultivating Metamorphic
Thinking, Mark Riegner; 2013, The Nature Institute, Ghent, NY, The
Supersensible within the Sensible: Experiencing the Inner Qualities of
Animalness and Humanness, with Craig and Henrike Holdrege.
spring issue 2015
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IN THIS SECTION:
Friedrich Nietzscheas
little understood as only
a really great thinker
can becomes into focus
thanks to Ted Roszell.
If grappling with Nietzsche
isnt serious enough,
lets talk about Islam and
the human drive toward
freedom. Elaine Upton
is willing to grapple with
difficult questions.
Colin Wilson first thought
Rudolf Steiner didnt get it,
then became an admirer
of sorts. Fred Dennehy
looks back to
thirty-year-old
expectations that
didnt ask enough.
And poems by
Maureen Tolman Flannery.
Research? Good poems
are always research. How
do we take words, which
are constantly being
suffocated, dessicated,
extinguished, and give
them back their wings?
Finally, research on
future needs:
asking what is wanted
from the Threefold
Auditorium renovations.
40
being human
Rudolf Steiners
Meeting of Destiny with
Friedrich Nietzsche and
the Adversary of Our Age
by C.T. Roszell
For Armin Husemann and Peter Selg
This exposition is an excerpt from an ongoing series of seminars on Rudolf Steiners lectures
on karma and reincarnation, given together with Frederick Amrine for members of the
Anthroposophical Society and their guests.
Steiner, Nietzsche and the Adversary of our Age

The canvas of however many a fine nineteenth century landscape painter to the contrary,
Rudolf Steiner pointed to the year 1843/1844 as the zenith of the enemy of mankinds stealth
encroachment on the earth, one that deferred the signature spectacle of its sprawling ugly face
to our own time (CW 346.184). Friedrich Nietzsche was born in 1844, with a capacity to
systematically expose the emerging lie and glitter of the age that has materialized since, from
Ausschwitz to Wall Street. Steiner knew that, and that the times driving anti-power shadowed
Nietzsches birth, set to bend and capture the social forces that
could otherwise have been unsheathed into the world, together
with his friendship with the worlds of Richard Wagners imaginationfor the Nazi wave and Hitler.
Friedrich Nietzsche, an authentic Individuality

Friedrich Nietzsche remains undiscovered until one is able
to recognize in him an archetypal, pivotal figure of our time,
an individual utterly representative of the challenge and tragedy of our age at its deepest level; the riddle of the man focuses the mind existentially. Rudolf Steiner saw this on first
acquaintance with his work, and he shared heart and soul in
the adventure of the man, holding his breath, awaiting whatever conclusion it would lead to.
Nietzsche in his twenties, around 1870
In the preface to his book from 1895, Friedrich NietzscheA Fighter Against His Own Time,
Steiner wrote: From the first page I read of Nietzsche (in 1889), I knew I would I read every
page every word. He awoke my trust immediately, I understood him as if he were writing
directly to me. The same sensibility was expressed in 1886 in my book A Theory of Knowledge
Implicit in Goethes World View. I had arrived at many ideas similar to his. Independently and
by different means than his, I had arrived at views consonant with Nietzsches books Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, Genealogy of Morals and Twilight of the Idols.
For all the consonance, Steiner maintained his independence from Nietzsche: One can
speak in this vein without being what one would call a

true believer of the Nietzsche world view. And that in
fullest consonance with Nietzsches intent not to have
any such followers! Any more than his Zarathrustra could
stand for any: You all say, you believe in Zarathrustra?
You, my believers? You failed to search to find yourselvesyou found me instead! That is just what believers
do, and that is just why believers are so useless! I suggest
you all lose me and find yourselves instead! When you
have rejected me in the right way, then I will be willing
to come to you.
Rudolf Steiner recites in his preface pronouncement
after pronouncement like this, the way fine poetry begs
to be spoken out and shared. Steiner goes on to say: Nietzsche is not so much a philosopher as he is a collector
of honey. And continues: Nietzsches recalcitrance was
instinctive and deep seatedhe was not merely put off
the way someone is who notices a logical flaw in an argumentation, but more the way a color can pain the eye.
The things people were saying with words about guilt,
sin, bad conscience, the next world, God and country and
the like were simply painful to him. The free thinkers
of his time had an instinct to portray human will as unfree. The contemporary instinct is rooted in a Christian
orthodoxy that is completely contrary to Nietzsches sensibility. (With one ear held to the ground, one can hear
Rudolf Steiner and Friedrich Nietzsche both taking the
Pharisees to task the way Jesus himself did. And indeed,
Nietzsches word for Jesus was that he was the only true
Christian there has ever been.)
The Age of the Consciousness Soul

And so Nietzsche charts a different coursethe will
to power. The strong, authentic individual isnt interested
in being served up what to think or hold to be truethat
person instead wants to be privy to their very creation and
inception. Such a persons vision of what is true is creative
law, and such a persons will for the truth is equally their
will to power For Steiner, it requires an individual as
awake as Nietzsche to ask, Are there any such philosophers today? Were there ever? Must there not finally be
such ones? (Beyond Good and Evil, 211.)
And so Steiner concludes: Nietzsche isnt a thinker
in the traditional sense of the word at all. He takes the
measure of things on the basis of whether or not and how
they promote and unfold life potential. Whatever values
might lie in truth is not something he is willing to even
set out to find. He writes in Beyond Good and Evil: How
questionable are the results for all from all this hankering after truth. Who is it thats driving us this way? For
Rudolf Steiner, inquiring this way existentially into the
who behind the what of a matter is the essential impulse
of what he characterizes as the directive of the consciousness soul, the sheer conscience of a modern intelligence.
Steiner continues: Nietzsche takes up the fight
against fashion and fable convenue left and right, and
fights no holds barred. He fights out of the conviction
that he is fighting against mindless and brainwashed
tools who have damaged and devalued life in all directions, and he counts them as adversaries. The real issue is not measures and values of truth, but values of will.
Nietzsche writes: All this hankering after truth. Why
not untruth in its place? And Steiner replies: That is
an insight bold beyond its season. Fichte and the rest are
superficial by comparison. Did Fichte ever even entertain
the question of what kinds of truth have been damaging
to life? For Nietzsche, the test of thoughts and thinking
lies in whether they unfold individual human potential
that each individual is meant to find and bring out.
How earnestly Rudolf Steiner prized Nietzsches moral sense of authentic individuality becomes clear when
matched against the essential reservation Steiner could
not hold back for the man he otherwise senses the greatest consonance with: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. In a
letter to Helene Richter (Collected Works, Correspondence
Vol. II) Steiner wrote: It seems to me that [Goethes]
complete immersion in the realms of exact phenomena
which led him necessarily to such unfettered reverence
for nature, left him no room for the idea of individualized
emancipation for the human being. In a nutshell, for all
the greatness of his accomplishments, Goethe failed to
awaken to the essential calling of our timewhere Nietzsche did. And despite Nietzsches ultimately tragic failure to carry it to term.
The bermensch
Nietzsche characterizes one awake to the essential
calling of an authentic individual living the life of an
bermensch.1 For Steiner, Nietzsche became an individual capable of living out impulses of instinctive goodness.
An example is Nietzsches answer to why one should want
to refrain from activities such as lying, cheating, lusting
after the others maid? Simple enough for Nietzscheone
1 German: Literally over-man, most frequently rendered superman, but
perhaps better understood as higher man. Editor
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41
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wont be able to sleep well! And Nietzsche lived this way
and succeeded where the conformist sheep failedhe
interceded against the beginnings of Nazi hate for Jews
and against the man flogging his horse. This example for
Steiner serves as a classic illustration of what he characterized as moralische Phantasie 2 in his essential work of
philosophy, The Philosophy of Freedom.
Cul de Sac of Dualism for Nietzsche and

Steiner
Rudolf Steiner shared also with Nietzsche the sense
that modern philosophy had ended in a cul de sac of dualism, and the way out was to see through its errors and
discover authentic monism.
Steiner agreed with Nietzsche that the Idealists divided the human being in two, idea and reality. They
exalted thinking and ideas and exiled the body to the
lowest order. [Nietzsches] Zarathustra intervened to say:
the only reality there is is the reality the body belongs to.
Mind and ideas belong to the body. Body and spirit
are a unity, the body is endowed with powers, to unfold
the spirit, in concert with the way the plant flowers.
Nietzsches Zarathrustra proclaimed that behind your
thoughts and feelings, brother, stands a powerful deliverer, the unknown wise one, that is the true Selfthat
resides in your body as your body. Steiner witnessed Nietzsche reject the dualistic trend in the West that came
to the fore in Plato and culminated in the resignations
of Kant.
Equally for Steiner, as well as for Aristotle contra Plato,
the realm of pure ideas manifests in the world to prove its
existence, or remains without existential basis. An amusing anecdote that rises to the form of living poetic truth of
this is told in a memoir by Alwin Alfred Rudolf. Rudolf
visits Steiner at his residence to recruit him as a faculty
member for the Socialists Workers School in Berlin in
1899. At one juncture of their exchange when coffee is
served, a family member draws attention to a present the
poet Ludwig Jacobowski had given to Steiner sometime
in the past year, when the two met and became friends:
a flawless woven puppet of Steiner that served as the specialty cover for a fine bottle of cognacas a humorous
celebration of the pronouncement Steiner had once made
to his poet friend that the body is indeed all spirit.
Grasping this consonance with Nietzsches monism
opens a door to many of the subtlest dimensions of so
2 German: moral imagination. Editor
42
being human
much that Rudolf Steiner unfolded on his life-path of

discovery, in particular, his explorations of the relationship between the realms before and after life to life in the
world. At death, a person does not move off into some
kind of timeless winged detachment in the clouds, but begins to move backward in time through the earth-life just
completed, this time with a vision of how all ones actions
affected others, rippling across the fabric of the world and
to the stars, and how the hierarchies were able to receive
and build from these or were forced to reject them. One
experiences the weave of the hierarchies through all the
fabric of the world, its life and history, and how these reverberate through the far reaches of space. Nowhere does
an afterlife appear that aims to function anywhere other
than in the world of embodiment.
And this to such an the extent that one discovers
that even many of the thoughts and impulses in bodily
life that one presumed were ones own came in fact from
kindred souls not in the body at the same time one had
been. This, because all the forces of the universe tend towards embodiment, and that is monism. Steiner appreciated Kants ideal expressed in his words two things move
me above all elsethe starry heavens above me and the
moral laws within me. But he has to wait for Kant to step
out from dualism and realize that the two are not merely
related phenomena, they are equal expressions of one and
the same reality. (CW 140.145). The cosmos everywhere
is the spirit in motion.
The phases of Rudolf Steiners life and the

Meeting with Friedrich Nietzsche
Rudolf Steiner characterized 1899, that year he was
recruited to lecture at the Berlin Socialist School, as the
final year of his passage through his trial of the ages abyss.
It completed the decade of his philosophers brotherhood
to Nietzsche, and culminated at the turn of the century in
his experience of the Guardian of humanity, which stands
behind the words he chose carefully in his autobiography
for having stood in most earnest, most solemn festival
of knowledge before the Mystery of Golgotha. Steiner
arrived at that moment in his life the same year Friedrich
Nietzsche died. The two had finally met four years earlier, in 1896, but Nietzsche was then already too gravely
ill for the two to speak together.
At the turn of the century, the year of the signature
spiritual event of his life, Steiner would remember Nietzsche like a brother soldier he had stood shoulder to
Nietzsche in his final illness, 1890s.
shoulder with in combat, who had fallen on the battlefield. That is truly their relationship, and the nature
of their common adversary is the key to the bond they
shared.
Steiner characterizes in the preface to his Nietzsche
book how the adversary of our time sidelined the leading individuals throughout the social and cultural
realms, and how Nietzsche stood against the adversary
alone: Nietzsche is able to see through the instincts of
his contemporaries, he can see how they have been directed and manipulated to go down this and that path
without taking the slightest notice that they have been
had. Whether one is the slave to the whims of a boss,
the clergy or the latest fashion of the philosophy club, the
result is rubbishbeing their yes-man instead of finding
out for one-self what is the right thing to do. For Steiner,
the adversary orchestrating this mass deceit is not a composite abstraction, but a spiritual powerthe same fallen
angel it is said that Martin Luther threw his book against.
Rudolf Steiner characterizes this adversary by the same
name Nietzsches hero Zarathustra didAingramanyu
or Ahriman.
Steiner characterizes the keynote of Nietzsches life
as the immense loneliness of one who sees, surrounded
by countless others who cannot. Steiner writes that no
one comes to help him, and he is entirely alone in danger, hatred and storms. Nietzsche dispensed with the
unconscious hypocrisies and philosophic errors of his
opponents left and right; really everyone who faced him
winced before the scathing clarity of his unerringly ac-
curate critiques. He was truly alone, on

the battlefield of his time, and in the
most esoteric sense of the poetic metaphor, the battlefield was cleared with no
one else standing but Nietzsche and the
Adversary of the Age. This is truly the
way to convey Rudolf Steiners sense of
compassion and camaraderie with Nietzsche.
Nietzsche was a formidable representative of an awakened individual of
the modern age, but his relentless, uncompromising, completely scathing critique of everyone he knew left him bereft of the force of love for all mankind
at the moment he existentially could not
afford to be without itin the moment
of direct confrontation with the adversary of mankind.
Rudolf Steiner knew this, and he grieved for the failing Nietzsche when he sat at his bedside in Nauenheim.
Even as Steiner saw in the spirit that he had lived himself
in the Middle Ages as a Dominican, he saw that Nietzsche
had lived as a Franciscan flagellant, whose punishing discipline extirpated the last vestige of hope for authentic
love and companionship in his next life on earth. The
decisive moment of Nietzsches present life was tragically
also bound up with the near return of that authentic compassion he had lost through mortificationsremarkably,
evoked again by the crack of the whipin Italy, on seeing
a brutal master flogging his horse. Nietzsche intervened,
breaking down, crying my friend, my friend to the
horse. The horse won the love that Nietzsche had failed
to find in his heart for his fellow men. Nietzsche was essentially institutionalized from that time to his death.
Rudolf Steiner saw that the madness that Nietzsche
descended into in his final years was the price of having
fallen in single combat with the Antichrist, and indicated
that the Adversary directed the authors pen thereafter
in much that he wrote. Nietzsches own words from Ecce
Homo (Thus Spake Zarathustra 3) for what had befallen him are stunning:
One could superstitiously suppose one has devolved
into a mere mouthpiece, a medium of powers one has
been conquered by. But such is revelationbeing shaken and thrown down, with unspeakable certainty and
nuance, by something visible and auditory. You no longer direct your attention, you are forced to listen and
spring issue 2015
43
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accept without asking who it is that is at work on you.
Like a flash of lightening the thought comes to impose
itself. I had no choice. An ecstasy, attended by horrible
tension, stormed through me... Then a total loss of self
came with shudders and pricklings that ran to the toes.
The ecstasy was all suffering and gloom, the colors of its
overflowing light. This is my experience of inspiration.
In 1896, Nietzsche was unable to speak and Steiner at

his bedside grieved for him. Pauls words to the Ephesians
likely came to mind when Steiner remembered Nietzsche
four years later at the time of his own Damascus experience, that our struggle is not against flesh and blood,but
against the rulers, against the authorities, against the
powersof this dark world and against spiritual forces of
evil in the heavenly realms.
Individuality and Reincarnation and Karma

Rudolf Steiners mission as the Dominican Thomas
Aquinas was to win the battle against the philosopher
Avoerres over the spiritual-cultural legacy of Aristotle
for the unfolding of Western civilization. Their essential
dispute was over whether the spirit of man was to be understood as a uniform mass of intellect, completely identical in the body of every individual, or whether it became
individualized for good or evil in the choices and colorings of heart each individual exercised it for. If the former
position were true, each person lapses back as a drop of
water does returning to the ocean, unchanged and unchangeable from the sojourn in the body. But if the latter
should be the truth, then there follows individual destiny
as a result of good or bad, artistic or ugly, true or false application of the gifts of intelligence in the body. Aquinas
stood for the latter, and a wide swathe of culture came to
be built on his legacy. Rudolf Steiners core mission was
to bring the truths of karma and reincarnation in a form
suitable to the modern age, the harvest of that legacy that
was its sine qua non: without individuality, there could be
no individual consequences of previous actions of previous individuals.
The riddle of human individuality and the return
thereof runs deeper. Nietzsches accomplishment was indeed a direct triumph over Avoerres, albeit tragic, for lack
of authentic social love. In imagination, one returns to
the time that Rudolf Steiner was at Nietzsches bedside.
The Adversary had played his hand against the would-be
Zarathustra, and crushed him. But in fact at an unpleasant costhe had showed his hand in the dreary late after44
being human
noon room to an initiate of individuality with a full heart

of love. Four years later, Rudolf Steiner would likewise
meet the Adversary on the same empty field, remembering his fallen comrade, and the Adversary paid the price.
What followed were twenty-five years of unrelenting
losses for the Adversary on the terrain he covets most
unambiguous truths of human destiny unfolding, unhindered by obfuscation
and confusion.
Rudolf
Steiner
took up Friedrich Nietzsches work in 1889,
the year after his initiation into the mystery of human destiny.
In a journal note of
1888, Steiner had jotted down a sentence
that came from the
just opened door to the
mission of his life: AhRudolf Steiner, around 1891
riman is shipwrecked.
This was the necessary precondition for the purpose of
his life to begin. It was the year he realized the culturalhistorical mission of Aquinas for the principle of individuality, the year he realized that the mission of reincarnation and karma on the terms of modernity was his own,
and the year he first knew that the entelechy behind the
two lives and missions were the same.
From Nietzsche and Steiner to the Present

Nietzsches life ended tragically, and there would be
little more Rudolf Steiner could do in the short term than
say no to Nietzsches sisters request for him to tend her
brothers archive and legacy, as she fell deeply under the
spell of the growing anti-Semitic movement. The Nazi
wave would come with full force in 1933; Rudolf Steiner
had hoped for sufficient health to still be on the earth at
this time. It was the year the initiate knew would be a
doorway for decades to a world-wide etheric-supersensible
experience of the true Guardian of humanity, but Europe
and the world failed at the threshold to stand down the
Nazis. The event went by largely unnoticed in the decisive span from 1933 through 1945 and beyond, though
authentic instances emerged on the periphery here and
there, in lives such as those of Jacques Lusseyran and
George Ritchie.
Thus Spake Zarathustra into the Future

Nietzsches richest narrative tack was significantly his
effort to regain the vantage point of an unspoiled and
authentic social voice, the voice of the ancient Persian initiate Zarathustra. No Roman see or Jesuit agenda for hatred of the body had come to pillage and exploit the force
of that voice in the interim, and it beckoned.
Zarathustras narrative was the story of Ahura Mazdao, the primal pure sun power, and the struggle with
the power of darkness, Aingramanyu or Ahriman. In a
multivalent, nuanced form, that is the spiritual-scientific
narrative of Rudolf Steiners anthroposophy. His initiate
research detailed how two millennia ago, at the turning
point of time, a human being was born who walked for
twelve years in Ahura solar purity in preparation to work
a succeeding eighteen years as the vessel for the reincarnated initiate Zarathustra. As a result, the Guardian of
humanity was able to to walk the earth for three final
further years and plant a potential deep in the earth that,
if claimed by all the world, could over time unfold authentic brotherhood. When, and how widely and deeply
mankind will eventually tap and unfold that potential,
remains to be determined.
Zarathustras eighteen years since the turning point
of time is a spiritual-scientific organic power in the unfolding of history. 1843/1844 was the zenith of Aingramanyu; eighteen years later Rudolf Steiner was born in
1861. Eighteen years hence, in 1879, the cosmopolitan
Michael age began, a time in which creative intelligence
and social initiatives could emerge independently of race,
creed, and nationality. The Zarathustra harvest was gathered and spent anew. At the turn of the century, Friedrich
Nietzsche passed on and Rudolf Steiner took his place, on
the same barren landscape where his comrade fell; alone
among millions asleep, an initiate left in one-on-one conscious direct combat with Aingramanyu. He prevailed,
but not for the full cycle of the twelve plus eighteen plus
three years hence. Instead, 1933 was ushered in by the
Nazi movement for twelve counterfeit years to 1945.
As a result, so very much of what could have come to
pass on the foundation of the culture of Schiller, Goethe,
and Novalis in the nineteenth century and Steiner in the
twentieth came to be held in abeyance, but asks to be
brought and is being brought from the periphery anew
in our time. From Joseph Beuys to the initiatives of Yeshayahu Ben Aharon, Peter Selg, and many others, one
could go on for hours and hours. But two characteris-
tic examples, one small and humble, one enigmatic and

koan-like, may be sufficient to close here with, apropos of
every thread of our exposition to the end.
From the periphery of all things European, the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas is making waves in China, for
his defining role in what it means to be human. Oxford
don William Carroll writes in the December 11, 2014
issue of the Witherspoon Institutes Public Discourse:
Thomas Aquinass commitment to the importance of
reason and its universal role in defining what it means to
be human makes him an attractive thinker for contemporary Chinese scholars. The number, depth, and rapidity
of changes in Chinese society over the last decade may obscure an unusual change within the academy: a markedly
increased interest in the thought of Thomas Aquinas.
I have just spent one month at four Chinese universities,
speaking of the ways in which Thomass understanding
of the relationship among philosophy, theology, and the
natural sciences can be used to disentangle contemporary
confusion about the philosophical and theological implications of evolutionary biology and cosmology. In Shanghai, Beijing, and Wuhan, I found receptive, enthusiastic
audiences. A mere niche moment in academe? Then so
too Thomas own intellectual debate with Avoerres, or
Steiners with the Weimar arbiters of Goethes archive.
A thousand years after his passing, Thomas Aquinas
gains traction in lives for the future on the opposite side
of the globe. And the significant Dutch Anthroposophist
Wilhelm Zeylmans, an accomplished practitioner of
Rudolf Steiners meditative discipline and friendwho
Steiner was forced by ill health to leave behind much
sooner than he meant tofell ill and died in Africa (as
reported by Hagen Biesantz at a conference in Chicago
in 1991) with the vision of preparing to help bring new
social impulses reborn as a third world witch doctor!
Nonsense? Time, and sciences of the future, will tell.
Just the shape of the idea opens out new vistas on the significance of lives like those of Gandhi or Martin Luther
King. Certainly life affords us invitations left and right to
work together, relinquishing limiting biases and orthodoxy of every kind in the process of new science and discovery, and to work creatively, in expectation of marvelous surprisesalbeit not at hours, places and in fashions
of our self centered wishes and casual design.
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research & reviews
The Impulse of Freedom in Islam

The Impulse of Freedom in Islam
by John van Schaik, Christine Gruwez, and
Cilia ter Horst, with a foreword
by Abdulwahid van Bommel and
an afterword by Ibrahim Abouleish,
translated by Philip Mees.
Great Barrington: Lindisfarne Books, 2014
Review by Elaine Maria Upton

Who or what is the being of Islam? And whatbeyond and beneath the surfaces shown in our contemporary mass media and in popular opinionis the role of
Islam in the cosmic and in the earthly world in our time?
The authors of The Impulse of Freedom in Islam, all scholars of certain areas of Arabic language and culture, do
not directly ask these questions; yet, as I read this book,
these questions arise for me; and from these questions,
others follow. One such question is that of the meaning of
free willa will that, for many Islamic thinkers, is set
against a background of divine omnipotence and providence.
In the Foreword, referring to what he calls severe
remarks Rudolf Steiner made on Islam, Abdulwahid van
Bommel writes that by Rudolf Steiners time the original freedom impulse in Islam has been snowed under (p.
15). Van Bommel observes an Islam that for fourteen centuries has undergone a process of progressively new doctrinal formulation, and in the context of this progressive
development, van Bommel would look to an Islamic theology for the future of our children and grandchildren
(p. 7). In the Afterword, Ibrahim Abouleishperhaps
many readers will know him from his foundational work
in the community of Sekem in Egyptwrites of freedom
as developmentally occurring and experienced in community. For Abouleish, freedom is not, as in dominant
Western thinking, a concept of liberation from religion
and of overthrowing institutions, but rather is found in
the progressive development of human beings, or rather,
of a human societys relationship to Allah.
The body of the book consists of four parts, written by three different authors. The series of chapters that
make up Part I are written by John van Schaik, who in
the first of these chapters gives a brief overview of Islam
46
being human
in history, noting the appearance of Mohammed against

a background of wars, of prominent Caliphs and military leaders, and of the unsettling (for some?) presence of
various gods in a polytheistic world. In the last chapter of
Part I, van Schaik describes the figure of Isa (Jesus), Son
of Maryam, as he appears in the Korannot as Son of
God, not crucified, and perhaps not resurrected, although
van Schaik admits that this latter point on the Resurrectionwhether it occurred, and if so, how? has been
the subject of furious fights over the centuries (p. 68).
And while van Schaik boldly asserts, without elaboration,
that Mohammed, in his life, followed the Imitatio Christi
(p. 78), in Part I the relevance of Isa to Christ and to human freedom is not made clear in van Schaiks survey of
the events in and attributes of the life of Isa.
In Part IV, the last part of
the book, van Schaik returns,
to quote and to give critique
of Rudolf Steiners (for some,
harsh) statements on Islam.
Steiner states that Islamhe,
according to the translation,
uses the word, Mohammedanismis a religion of the
Father, wherein the Son (of God), who carries the impulse of human freedom, is missing. In the Father realm,
physical, natural laws hold sway. This gives Islam what
many see as its deterministic and fatalistic character. Yet,
van Schaik writes, It is the academy at Gondishapur [not
Mohammedanism] that stimulated the extreme Father
God orientation and promoted the view of the human
being as a purely physical entity (p. 174). Van Schaik
faults Rudolf Steiner for not saying more about how Islam had a moderating effect on the Ahrimanic influences
issuing from Gondishapur in the year of the beast and
beyond. It is a pity that Steiner did not specify what it
was in Islam that had this tempering effect (Ibid). Van
Schaik here overlooks what he has quoted earlier: Rudolf
Steiners statement that Mohammedanism itself is led by
in a certain senseretarding spiritual powers, even
though these spiritual powers still have a connection with
what has been influenced by the Christ impulse (p. 166).
It seems to me that Rudolf Steiner is most careful with
his words, and points to the subtleties of the workings
in Mohammedanism of the retarding spiritual powers
and also the spiritual powers [that are] still influenced

by the Christ impulse. That impulse (as van Schaik also
admits) is pointed to in the presence of Isa as an aspect of
what Rudolf Steiner understands as the Nathan Jesus
(p. 171). It is Rudolf Steiner who makes a connection between Isa and the Nathan Jesus, and in doing this, Rudolf
Steiner has left us with an idea with which we may work.
I would also note that in Part IV, van Schaik, in his concern with critiquing Rudolf Steiner, often strays from the
books purported central concernnamely, the impulse
of freedom in Islam.
The chapters of Part II are written by Cilia ter Horst.
She writes of the promptings toward freedom in the
youthful and later grown-up life of Mohammed Abduh
(1845-1905), an Egyptian theologian who was a leader at
the University of Cairo, traveled in Europe, and eventually turned mystic, one who is said to have re-opened the
gates of ijtihad so that (once again?) free interpretation
of the Koran may be practiced. In the second and last
chapter of Part II, Cilia ter Horst sets out to compare (and
contrast) the impulse of freedom in the life and work of
Abduh and in The Philosophy of Freedom of Rudolf Steiner. Ter Horst calls Abduh a philosopher of freedom. Using the term free will, Abduh declares
...that divine omnipotence and free will do not exclude
each other, but presume and include each other. It is
precisely the divine will and providence as laid down in
the Koran which can lead to freedom and intellectual
independence of action (p. 79).
Ter Horst then cites The Philosophy of Freedom and

writes that in that work Rudolf Steiners central thesis is
that the human being is free only if he thinks out of the
spirit (Ibid).
Thus, in ter Horsts assessment, both Rudolf Steiner
and Abduh attribute the existence of freedom to a divine
or spiritual sourcein one case the Koran, in the other
the spirit. However, one must inquire further to find
what this spirit is and whether there is a significant gap
between a particular view of spirit (i.e., spiritual activity,
the spiritual activity of thinking, where will is brought to
bear) and the teachings laid down in the Koran. The
various points of contrast and similarity between Abduhs
thinking and that of Steiner in The Philosophy of Freedom
are sometimes presented in a maze of terms, and it seems
that there is a danger to understanding when one cognitive system is overly subjected to another. Yet, perhaps
some readers of this chapter may find intriguing or useful
the attempt to find in Abduhs interpretation of the Koran similarities and contrasts to ideas in The Philosophy of
Freedom. In any case, it is significant that against a popular Western perception of Islam as fatalistic a thinker
such as Abduh appears, grappling with questions of human free will, divine omnipotence and omniscience.
In Part III, Christine Gruwez, whom many readers may know from her work with Manichaeism and
human encounters with evil, traces what she sees as an
impulse of freedom in specifically Iranian philosophy,
which, like the practice of philosophy throughout the Islamic world and unlike the practice of philosophy that
pre-dominates in the West, is a search for God, a sacred
not secular pursuit. Gruwez observes that a tension exists
in Iranian philosophical discussion between the concepts
of revelation (from an allknowing Allah) and the
human capacity for arriving at knowing, a knowing that, in turn, renders
human freedom. In Iran
this tension works particularly from what Gruwez
calls a wound, or intervention, two interventions in this caseone
in the being and revelation of Zarathustra, the
other, later in time, in
the human Mohammed.
Gruwez outlines several
pivotal moments in the
thinking of philosophers who became prominent in Iranian history and theology. She traces a development of
a thinking about Allahs omnipotence and free will, to
thinking as a path of cognition that leads to the Light of
Allah (nur ala nurLight upon Light) as proclaimed
in Sutra 24:35 of the Koran. Gruwez traces this development as it proceeds from Avicenna (980-1037) through
Molla Sadra (1571-1641) to Mehdi Hairi Yazdi (19231999), while she points to others along the way.
Yazdi, who studied Kant, Hegel, Russell, and Wittgenstein, as well as great Iranian philosophersMolla
Sadra, Avicenna, and others,is interested in the relationship between knowledge (or forms of cognition) and
freedom. Yazdi, who taught philosophy in Canada and
the U.S., first develops a theme of discursive thinking,
or knowledge by consensus, where the subject-object
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split, the split between cognizer and cognized, still exists.
He further develops a theme of what he calls knowledge
by presence. Thinking is presence in spirit. Presence
here is Light upon Light, as in the Light Sutra of the
Koran (p. 146), referred to above. Knowledge by presence transcends the duality of knowledge by consensus. Knowledge by presence is living in the immediacy
of truth (p. 149). (This brings to mind Christs words,
You shall know the Truth and the Truth shall make you
free.) In this experience of knowledge by presence no
proof of truth is needed, for object is no longer seen as
external to subject. A need for proof, as in our ordinary
discursive thinking, where subject and object are split, is
a need in which we cannot find freedom or the immediacy of truth. Not proof, but
...a different criterion [is needed, and that] criterion is
inherent in the activity of thinking itself. [In the field of
the activity of thinking] cognizer and cognized appear
as part of one and the same field (pp. 149-150).
They appear, then, (somewhat paradoxically?) not merely

as one, yet not separate one from the other; they appear
as part of one and the same field. And in this field there
is liberation from the constraint of having to produce
proof (p. 149, emphasis mine). This field in which they
exist together is the activity of thinking. Knowing,
then, here has a triadic character, where cognizer and cognized are brought together through a third element, the
activity of thinking. Thus, in thinking, a particularly
human (and divine) activity, a willing is brought to bear,
and this willed-thinking is the agent of freedom.
While Gruwez, like ter Horst, makes comparative
statements, works within categories, and also clearly refers to The Philosophy of Freedom in a way of honoring its
influence, she does not become entangled in any comparison of Yazdis and Steiners paths of cognition. Instead,
her categories seem to grow out of her own inner path of
thinking as it relates to these other writers, and relates to
her own thinking activity as it manifests in her work in
the world. Instead of overly subjecting the relationships
of Yazdi, Steiner, and others to categorical comparisons,
she remains well aware of the importance of the principle
of individualization (related to I consciousness and
the realization of freedom), and she is also aware of the
dangers of accommodation, where ones desire for unity
can become an obstacle and lead one to overlook diversity
and the radical otherness of the other (p. 112).
This concern with the relationship of self and other
48
being human
(a relationship that may appear in discursive thinking

as subject and object) figures largely, one may gather,
in Gruwezs own understanding of freedom. If one is to
know self, this knowing requires seeing self in relation
to the radical other in its radicality, without which the
self would not exist (Ibid). If the twotwo in the realm
of dualityself and other, cognizer and cognized, are
brought together by the third element, which is the activity of thinking, or the willing of thinking, that willing of thinking forms a field, a potential, for encounter, a
place for meeting the so-called other.
As she scans the work of Yazdi and his Iranian predecessors, and perhaps as well considers her own work
with otherness and the confrontation of evil, Gruwez
observes that freedom always appears in context, in
relationship (what Ibrahim Abouleish might call community, not only of human beings, but human beings
or human societys relationship with Allah). This view of
context, Gruwez tells us, is a key for understanding the
freedom impulse in Iranian philosophy.
This thought brings me then back to the questions
asked at the very beginning of this review: What is the true
being of Islam, and what is its role in the world today? This
book does not answer my question, nor is it meant to. Yet,
the book may help readers bring to consciousness urgent
questions about our relationships to Islam (and by implication, to other religions), and this book may give one at least
a beginning of a picture of how philosophy might contribute to our progress in contemporary deeds of freedom.
Amid current and ongoing conflicts among warring
Islamic groups and warring conflicts between the Islamic
East and the North-West, where may we, if at all, find the
true manifestation of Islamthe religion, the culture
which has become the other?1 Does this manifestation
exist in the thinking of those philosophers who search for
freedom through teachings in the Koran, and in other
thinkers (those cited by Gruwez and ter Horst) who seek
conversation with Western thinkers on questions of free
will, and its relationship to knowledgethat is, of the self
1 A discussion of political and military policies among nations and tribes
is not the aim of this review, but rather the concern here is, in large part,
with the nature of human knowing and its relationship to freedom. For a
thoughtful presentation of the historical and continuing conflicts between
the Anglo-Americans with Western allies and the various Islamic groups
in Eastern nations, as well as the related Western conflict with Russia, see
Terry Boardmans Rhodes, Russia, and the Islamic State in New View,
October 10, 2014 , or online [http://threeman.org/?p=1945]. Boardman is
a frequent contributor to New View. Thanks to William (Bill) McCormick for
calling my attention to this article.
and the relationship of so-called self and other, subject

and object, knower and known, where the need for proof,
for dominance of one over the other, fades?
Can we, peoples of the North-West (Occident) and of
the East (Islamic Orient), and people of the entire globe,
begin to discover, as in a translation of a poem by Rumi,
the field (a field of knowing, of wisdom) where we,
strangers, may meet? Can we, as in activity fostered by
the attentive reading of The Philosophy of Freedom, come
to a pure thinking wherein we are free of limiting perceptions of each other, a thinking that is practical, that
informs the willing in our individual, intuitively discovered moral action?
I close this review with more questions: What will be,
or is, our guiding light, the light that guides our thinking, quickens our feeling, fires our will, as in some reversal of, or mirrored, lightning?
Muslims, if I understand rightly, seek to know nur ala
nur, the Light upon Light of Allah. So how does the individual (or the society, the community, in Abouleishs
words) prepare the soulthat is, polish the mirror, so
that this light of truth may be reflected in it? How does
Jihad, which, according to Avicenna and other philosophers cited in this book, means the great inner struggle
(pp. 82-83, 154) avoid falling into the entrapments of
outer aggression and war? How does the soul become
ready to receive... intuitive capacities of cognition and
become active, lighted by the divine (pp. 154-155)?
Christians have again and again heard the radiant announcement of the Light of the World in the
Gospels. And so I would ask here, how do we enter the
field, or how do we learn the way to cross over into the
macrocosm, where our perceptions become imaginations
reaching beyond the limits of body sense, geography, heredity, personality, favoritism, and antagonism? How do
the imaginations become living (inspired) conceptions,
become healing ideas in us, and lead on from there into
the capacity for moral technique (Steiner in The Philosophy of Freedom), or, in the words of the Gospels, become
capable of freely entering the realm of Thy Will in my
willthe realm of Intuition (take up your cross and follow me), thinking in truth, where we no longer walk in
darkness, but have the light of lifethe light manifest,
from out of darkness, manifest through multiplicity, yet
whole and holy?
Rudolf Steiner:
The Man and
His Vision
Rudolf Steiner: The Man and His Vision by
Colin Wilson; The Aquarian Press, 1985,
176 pages
Review by Frederick J. Dennehy

In the wake of two magisterial biographies of Rudolf
Steiner, one written by Christoph Lindenberg in 1992
and translated into English by John McAlice in 2012,
and the other written by Peter Selg in 2012, it may be of
some interest to examine Colin Wilsons 1985 popularization entitled Rudolf Steiner: The Man and His Vision: An
Introduction to the Life and Ideas of the Founder of Anthroposophy.
Both Lindenbergs and (especially) Selgs biographies
have been criticized by some readers as hagiographies or
insider accounts of Rudolf Steiner. No one could accuse
Wilsons book of being an insider account, much less a
hagiography. Wilson sees Steiner as an ordinary human
being possessed of some extraordinary abilities, and approaches him with the insouciance of a British journalist, speculating about his sexual proclivities, and viewing
Steiners writings and associations with a cold eye on his
career ambitions. Nor could this largely impressionistic
leapfrogging through the highlights of Steiners life be
characterized as a scholarly or even an investigative report. Yet in Wilson we do have an experienced writer very
sympathetic to many of the points of view of anthroposophy, and one who is well versed in esoteric history. For
these reasons, Wilsons take on Steiner was of interest to
me.
Many readers will remember Wilson. He was the
enfant terrible who wrote a groundbreaking study of
alienation and creativity, The Outsiders, in his early twenties, and awakened the interest of a wide array of skeptical readers with his comprehensive survey The Occult: A
History, more than a decade later. Wilson was the blue
collar voicea self-taught, bold, unafraid explorer of the
paranormal and the esotericwho went unapologetically
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wherever his instincts took him. He believed passionately
that ordinary reality could and should be transcended.
He had faith in powers that slumber within us, and was
convinced that there is a Faculty X, an enhanced sense
of reality that can extend consciousness to other times
and places, and which in theory can be cultivated by most
people, if they would only wake up to its potential.
Colin Wilson was approached by a publisher in the
mid-1970s and commissioned to write a book on Rudolf
Steiner. He accepted, but after a few weeks wrote a regretful line saying that even with the best will in the
world, he could not go through with it. In large doses,
Steiner simply infuriated him.
Why? The first off-putter, for Wilson, was Steiners
style, which he describes as unappetizing as dry toast.
But that was not what
drove Wilson away. The
real problem for Wilson
was the content of certain texts such as Cosmic
Memory, and Steiners
lectures about King Arthur at Tintagelwritings that struck Wilson
on first impression as so
outlandish and bizarre
that the reader suspects
either a hoax or a barefaced confidence trick.
Roughly half a decade later, Wilson found
that he had to consult
Steiner again in order to
complete a portion of another book. This renewed pursuit of Steiner led him to some of the early works such
as Goethes World View and The Philosophy of Freedom.
Wilson discovered, to his surprise, that Steiner was a
philosopher and cultural historian of considerable brilliance. Even more important for Wilson was his gradual
realization that Steiner was a writer with a total lack of
artifice, not out to impress anybody, but to communicate
as honestly as he could. How was he to reconcile the two
Steiners?
In Wilsons estimation, what went wrong with
Steiner, what turned him from an original and accomplished philosopher and psychologist to (in Wilsons assessment) an often self-deceived occultist, was his decision to swallow the doctrines of Theosophy in order to
50
being human
gain an audiencerather as a poor man might marry an

ugly but wealthy widow. Wilson is convinced that many
of Steiners clairvoyant revelations were simply delusions
that had become a part of his inner landscape and persisted
even after Steiners break with the Theosophical Society.
He sees Steiners theosophical legacy as the Goetheanum,
what he calls the visible church of Anthroposophy, with
its scriptures, including Cosmic Memory, Karmic Relationships, Christianity as Mystical Fact, Rosicrucian Esotericism and The Reappearance of Christ in the Etheric. While
these scriptures may contain some nuggets of insight,
they are, in Wilsons view, peculiar to Steiner, and by virtue of their volume alone constitute a formidable barrier
between Steiner and the intelligent reader. Steiners incandescent energy, and the enormous production of written works that resulted from it, obscured the clarity and
simplicity of what Wilson takes to be his basic insight.
Wilsons explication of this basic insightthat
through cultivation of the inner life one can attain Faculty Xfalls short. For Wilson, Steiner was able to open
the door to the inner universe through turning his attention toward what Maslow has described as peak experiences. But this capacity is essentially not very different
from what Wordsworth and Proust experienced. At one
point he describes it as a form of psychometry. Wilson
does not trouble to distinguish between Faculty X and
the painstaking process of initiation.
Faculty X and the recognition that it could be
generally cultivated, for Wilson, was Steiners principal
contribution to esoteric history. Steiner understood that,
through this inner focus, we may become aware that we
are the conductors of our inner lives. Ordinarily, we are
subject to misery, distress and mental strain, because we
continue to drift into short-sightedness. The cultivation
of a deep inner life, of Faculty X, will allow us to understand that the problems that typically defeat us are trivialities. Once we have learned to grasp this, we will never
forget it. We will find ourselves standing on the threshold
of a new spiritual world and developing a power that we
never suspected we possessed. Faculty X gives us access to reality, rather than the shadow of reality, and also
gives us powers, such as the ability to see a landscape
farther than our unaided senses would allow us, both in
time and space. All this is fine. But that is where it stops.
Wilson is simply unable to see Steiner in terms beyond
the general conceptions that Wilson had held long before
he encountered Steiner. He is unable to recognize that
what Steiner achieved cannot fit into Wilsons own pre-
formed categories of experience. He refuses to let Steiner

take him anywhere new. In this sense Wilson exhibits the
same limitations in grasping Steiner as does Gary Lachman, who for all his breadth of knowledge and insight,
reduced Steiners clairvoyance to a permutation of something already familiar to himthe hypnagogic state.
Wilsons biography is disappointing, not so much because of its refusal to treat Steiner as a special case, but
because it could have been far more than it is. Wilsons
final assessment of Steiner is positive. He recognizes and
celebrates Steiners fundamental optimism. He believes
that Steiner had discovered an important secret, and that
all his books and recorded lectures, even those that Wilson would deem ultra-recondite and partially delusional,
contain glimpses of that secret. He admires Steiner for
breaking out from the dualistic paradigm of the times.
But Wilson himself cannot do the same. Dualism, and its
bedfellow, nave realism, remain central to Wilsons basic
intellectual landscape in his own chase after Faculty X.
He cannot conceive of, let alone maintain, the distinction
between informational content and meditative content,
between the literal and the imagistic. He believes that he
has the healthy human understanding to grasp esoteric
texts without the need to exercise a hygienic development
of his consciousness. He celebrates the existence of realms
of higher consciousness, but he will not do what it takes
to get there. He is fixated upon the results of consciousness rather than the processes of consciousness. He longs
for tangible realizations of extraordinary facultiesminor miraclesand when he did not find them in ways
that can be expressed in the language of tabloid journalism, he senses failure if not disgrace.
In Wilsons estimation, Steiner should have stayed
with his basic insight. Reaching beyond this, using
theosophy to propagate his personal vision, becoming a
preacher and a spiritual leader, accumulating celebrity
and attracting the malice of other celebrities, is what became Steiners tragedy. The tragedy, I think, is Wilsons.
He speaks passionately of breaking free from the prison
of habitual thought, the claustrophobia of reductionism,
and while he may escape for a time, he is constantly being
brought back to the limited critical perspective of what
Owen Barfield calls an unimaginative man sometime
around about the middle of the morning. While Wilson
sees into the promised land, he does not have the wherewithal to get there. He is waiting for transportation when
he should have begun the journey on his own two feet.
Do You Wonder
If the Plagues are Scheduled
Persuasion can solidify an adversary
by its fervor to effect change.
Notice as you speak, eloquent,
passionate certainty swirling through words,
how the listeners lip stretches tight across set teeth,
eyes fix on someplace other than your face.
You wonder, even as your logic flows
like generations from a strong progenitor,
if it isnt God at work with His own ideas,
hardening the heart of your audience
as He did with the Pharaoh against Moses.
Pharaoh, entrenched,
heard argument upon reason,
only to become, with each,
more hell-bent on seeing plagues
invested upon him in due time.
Back up the Mind to Ask

Which were the ways of being
that made the way
for my being here this way?
What are the things I say
that preclude the saying of all other things?
Which was the day I rose and strode into that gave rise to
all the strivings clinging to it like a string of
hand-gripped children playing crack-the-whip?
In Passing
Have you not, on your opposite journeys
passed each other, you and my mother,
she getting used to the vastness,
you to the confines of matter,
she, soul spent, gaining vision in retrospect,
burning for all that remained,
you keeping your unborn vigil
at the gate of pain?
Did you know each other by your ties to me,
she whod once housed my body within hers,
you who sought time and permission
to enter through mine?
Were there messages, tasks she passed to you,
she leaving, you coming to earth, things shed forgotten
to teach me to ease the tight toil of your birth?
What is your mission among us,
fine first daughter in a house of men,
next link in the great unbroken chain
of mothers since our mother earth began?
Maureen Tolman Flannery is the author of Tunnel into
Morning, seven other books of poetry, and a chapbook of poems

Snow and Roses about Traute Lafrenz Page and her work with the
White Rose Society in WWII Germany.
Raised on a Wyoming sheep ranch, Maureen and her actor husband Dan have raised their four children in Chicago.
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Threefold Auditorium Renovation

by Bill Day
Note: Photos courtesy of Threefold Educational Center.
Black and white images from original construction.
The Threefold Auditorium project is advancing to
the design phase, according to Threefold Educational
Center Executive Director Rafael (Ray) Manaas.
For months, Ray has been collecting ideas about the
future of Threefold Auditorium from stakeholders within
the Threefold community and around the country; now,
he and architect Michael Scharff have started to translate
the results of those interviews into
sketches. The sketches will guide the
next round of consultation and the
development of specific designs.
"The impetus that built Threefold Auditorium in the late 1940s
was the need for a summer conference venue, so the original design
did not include heat, air-conditioning, or even inside access to the
Side Room and Library," Ray said.
"Today, preparing
the building for its
next half-century
of service to spiritual and cultural
life means, among
other things, making the building accessible to all; installing modern heating and cooling systems; updating interior lighting and
restoring interior finishes; improving the seating and
stage lighting; and renovating the interior to create flexible, accessible, and efficient spaces for research, study,
52
being human
meeting and teaching. All these changes need to align

with our consciously created imagination of what the future is asking of us.
Preliminary sketches that address those issues and
more are now being presented to stakeholders. Developing and refining the design and final budget will be the
focus of the next several months of work.
The preliminary phase of the project, which was
funded with gifts of nearly $400,000, brought new electric, water, gas and sewer lines to the Auditorium. The
utility work, which will be completed in March, will support the installation of air conditioning and an energyefficient heating system.
A major capital campaign to fund the project is now
underway. Ray Manaas and Judith Brockway-Aventuro,
the new president of the Board of the Threefold Educational Foundation, are leading the campaign. Contact
Ray at 845-352-5020 x12 for details, or check online at
www.threefold.org/auditorium.
news for members & friends
of the Anthroposophical Society in America
2015 Organizational Goals,

Anthroposophical Society in
America:
Enhance human engagement within the
Society and with those individuals and
organizations working out of anthroposophy.
Create opportunities to bring visibility to the
work of the Class Holders, Section members,
and members of the Collegium of the School
for Spiritual Science in North America.
Articulate and implement a collaborative
leadership and organizational form that
supports initiative and sustainability.

Clarify the role of the general secretary, the

general council, and the leadership team;
Begin a process of review and reimagination for the regional work,

including regional councils;
Clarify the role and relationship of the

Library with the U.S. Society.
Provide opportunities for members and

friends to pursue the study and practice of
anthroposophy.
Increase membership in the U.S. Society.
Report from Marian Len

In the spring 2014 issue of being human (pg. 49), the
General Council published a report from their January
meeting that included goals set for 2014. Following is a
picture of some of the activities undertaken during 2014
to meet these goals.
1. Library Transition
To transition the library and form partnerships in
this project in order to: preserve the collection; help anthroposophy incarnate on this continent as a benefit to members
and friends; be a resource for research and study; build communities of learning.
2014 began with the library moving from its home in
the Carriage House to a church in Philmont, NY,
six miles away.
The Library Steering Committee held a series of virtual town hall meetings to share ideas on how the
library could evolve beyond its physical boundaries and invite those interested into the conversation. More than 200 people participated in these
meetings.
With the move, the library built an expanded corps
of volunteers.
A work/study week with fifteen members of the
Youth Section was held over the 4th of July. Rick
Spaulding offered workshops on non-violence and
a lecture on the Founding Fathers, and participants learned basic book repair and cleaning, igniting a new appreciation for the valuable resource
of the library.
Plans are progressing to digitize fifty-five boxes of
anthroposophical journals in English dating back
to the 1930s and make them broadly available online.
Preliminary conversations are being held with individuals who are interested in gifting their research
to the library in order to begin building an archive
documenting anthroposophic research and activity in North America.
Initial recordings were made for an oral history project to gather the stories and wisdom of anthroposophy living in North America.
Conversations are underway with institutions and
other English-speaking Societies to form partnerships with the library.
In January 2015, the General Council named our
project manager, Maurice York, as Director of Research and Library Services. Judith Kiely is Head
Librarian.
2. Launching Development
In January we welcomed our new Director of Development, Deb Abrahams-Dematte. Since then,
many members have had the opportunity to meet
her and/or speak with her. Deb is a regular contributor to being human and you can follow the
evolution of her work here. The first part of the
year was spent orienting Deb to our existing systems and processes, and working with her to establish a culture of active engagement with members and friends.
In her first year, Deb conducted a member survey; established a development committee to help guide
her work; re-engaged and expanded the Michael
spring issue 2015
53
Support Circle; introduced a planned giving program; helped craft a mission statement to support
and guide the work of the Society; and successfully orchestrated two appealsone for the Rudolf
Steiner Library and the end-of-year appealboth
of which surpassed their targeted goals.
3. Enhance engagement with members

Along with the Threefold Educational Center, the Society co-sponsored the Mystery Drama Festival in
August 2014. (See the Fall-Winter 2014/2015 being
human for a full report.) In addition to working
with Barbara Renold and the core group to plan
the event, the Society also stepped into the world
of webinars, offering programs to help individuals
prepare for the performances. 124 people participated in The Riddle of Destiny, an eleven-part series
with Marke Levene. 55 people are currently studying The Portal of Initiation with Barbara Renold.
A four-part recorded webinar, entitled Engaging with
the New Images of the Zodiac, with Mary Stewart
Adams, is linked for viewing free of charge on
the front page of anthroposophy.org, and a being
human webinar was offered with Walter Alexander and John Beck to discuss further the growing
phenomena of near-death experiences and how anthroposophy contributes to understanding them.
The General Council recognized and welcomed two
new branches in 2014: Anthroposophy Atlanta, in
Atlanta, Georgia, and the Forming Heart Branch
in Rhode Island and southeastern New England.
At the Eastern Region reps meeting (L-R): Marian Len, Sherry Wildfeuer, Nathaniel Williams
54
being human
The continued evolution of being human, adding two

new sections, research & reviews and the gallery.
A week-long speakers tour by Frederick Amrine in the
southeastern area of the country.
An enthusiastic gathering of 180 people at Rudolf
Steiner College for the 2014 AGM. The weekend
opened with two circles, one hosted by the General Section for members of the School for Spiritual Science and the other for members new to the
Society community. Dennis Klocek and Robert
McDermott gave the keynote addresses. These
were recorded and are ready to be posted on our
website, anthroposophy.org. The conference was followed by a gathering of members of the Youth Section, as well as meetings of the General Council
and the Council of Anthroposophical Organizations (CAO).
Twenty-three people gathered at the Rudolf Steiner
House for the first of an on-going series of group
and branch retreats to study The Life, Nature, and
Cultivation of anthroposophy.
The Central Regional Council is guiding a regional
study entitled Speaking with the Stars that will
culminate with a number of local gatherings at
Easter-tide 2015.
4. Leadership
Leadership selection and empowerment in order to:
have healthy administrative staff able to take initiative; meet
the membership; create an understandable administrative
structure; have professional strength in carrying our mission
forward.
With two positions filled (Director of Development
and Director of Programs), the General Council
is now reviewing the role of the General Council
and General Secretary in relationship to this new
leadership team. In 2015 the Council is also engaging with members in the Eastern Region to review
how regionalization has supported work in that region over the past 33 years. By working together,
an effort is underway to attempt to perceive what
is trying to emerge and clarify what social forms
can best support this evolving picture for the next
many years.
It has been a busy, active year! Not listed in this report are the many, many extraordinary conferences, workshops, and gatherings that have been created and carried
by members throughout the country. As I review the listings posted on anthroposophy.org, I am grateful to be part
of the Anthroposophical Society. Thank you for your
continued interest, support, and love for this work we do
together!
Report from Deb Abrahams-Dematte:
Transformation & Gratitude
Transformation. Its at the heart of human and planetary existence, and whether we embrace or resist, change
is inevitable. Anthroposophy gives us the tools for insight
and context in the nature and experience of transformations large and small. When we support the Anthroposophical Society through our time, talent, and treasure,
we are actively weaving the past and present together, as
well as co-creating the future. In our Society and in our
work together, anthroposophy comes alive.
I was recently blessed to have the opportunity to sit
with branch and group representatives from around the
eastern region. We spent time hearing from one another and trying to imagine new and more active ways of
communicating and working together. We were a diverse
group in terms of age, geography, experience and work
in the world, but as we talked about our experiences and

our hopes for the future, it became clear that love and
generative intention united us. I felt such gratitude: for all
of our members, and for being part of the Society in this
transformative moment. There is such a profound sense
of possibility and sense of becoming. Thank you all for
the many gifts you bring to our Society.
A breeze carried off some stars. Each became a tiny
parachute carrying a bundle, a seed.
from The Dandelions Cousin
The Society gratefully acknowledges a recent bequest

from the estate of Gertrude Teutsch, a member of the Anthroposophical Society since 1940 and a lifelong anthroposophist. Mrs. Teutsch was the author and illustrator of
childrens books including The Dandelions Cousin, and
also translated Rudolf Steiners The Genius of Language
Observations for Teachers. She crossed the threshold in
2009 at the age of 91. Mrs. Teutschs thoughtful generosity in including the Society in her will brings inspiration
and support to us all.
Here in New England, we are in a time of deep, cold
winter. It takes faith and imagination to remember and
believe that the snow will melt, the seeds will germinate,
and new growth will occur. The Societys new organizational structure itself continues to emerge, with collaborative leadership, inspiring programs, library expansion,
and increased ways to share our stories and connect with
like-minded human beings both far and near. The work
that we are all doing, individually and collectively, are the
star bundles that become the seeds of the future.
And there is much to do! We are grateful for the generous support of our members and friends over the past
year. Most recently, our end-of-year appeal raised $19,418!
The many gifts you share provide the resources for us to
fulfill our purpose together in this time. Many thanks for
your participation and your gifts!
It has been one year since I began serving you and
the Society as director of development. Ive been thinking
a great deal about the context and content of my work.
I continue to strive to authentically perceive our members and our purpose as a Society, and to blend culturally
appropriate approaches with best practices for fundraising and resource development. In this way, together, we
can steward our resources and fulfill our purpose, and
the promise of anthroposophy, in this country and in the
world. Blessings on our continued collaboration and success.
Deb Abrahams-Dematte with fellow New Hampshirite Helen-Ann Ireland at Eastern Region
spring issue 2015
55
General Secretarys Visits

As we went to press General Secretary Torin Finser
had just participated in the annual Florida Waldorf-Anthroposophy Conference (February 27-March 1 in Winter
Park) where he gave two talks: The Human Encounter
and Conscious Community Building and Organ-izations as Living Systems: How to Apply the Wisdom of the
Body to Develop Healthy Organizations.
Other recent talks and visits have been in San Diego, Los Angeles, and Washington state. Torin will have
visited Denver and gone on to the annual meetings in
Switzerland, at the Goetheanum, by the time you read
this. Late April will take him to Wisconsin and, into early
May, Beijing, China, to celebrate the 30th anniversary
of Waldorf education in China and appearance of the
Chinese translation of his book Organizational Integrity.
(Visit the digest in the front of this issue for a note about
the translation of another book, School as a Journey.)
Introducing Micky Leach

Born and raised in Western North Dakota, Micky
met anthroposophy during her college years in Moorhead,
MN. After graduating college with a degree in Psychology and Religions from Concordia College, she moved
to Minneapolis, MN. Here Micky was involved with the
Whitsun Institute, and a founding Board member of the
City of Lakes Waldorf School, which her daughter, Allyson, attended through the fourth grade.
Micky then moved to Sacramento in the early 1990s
to take the Goethean Studies Program. She also taught
Christology, Biography and Form drawing in the Weekend Foundation Program at the Rudolf Steiner College. It
was at this time that she became interested in Rhythmical
Massage and began training in New York in 1997. During
this time Micky moved to Santa Fe and trained at the New
Mexico Academy of Healing Arts in

Swedish and Medical massage.
Santa Fe has remained Mickys
home. While here she served on
the Board of the Santa Fe Waldorf
School (2000-2006) during the years
when the High School was being
formed. This was also the time she
met her husband Eduardo Yi, who
had moved from Lima, Peru to teach
Spanish in the High School. Time
has passed and their grandson Wil- Micky Leach of the Western Regional Council
liam is now attending preschool at the Waldorf School.
Today Micky has a Rhythmical massage practice and
works privately with a woman with special needs. She has
been an active member of the Sangre de Cristo Branch
since 1999, working to reenliven the anthroposophical
work in the Santa Fe area. She has given courses on Parzival, biography, and basic anthroposophy. For the past
nine years Micky and Eduardo have hosted a study group
in their home every Tuesday evening.
The Grail in Phoenix

The lovely campus of Desert Marigold School, an oasis
nestled against South Mountain near central Phoenix, provided the setting for the third and final conference on the
legend of Parzival entitled: In the Grail I Find Myself. The
three days of meetings offered a variety of artistic learning
experiences in an effort to approach an understanding of
the Grail Mystery from several different angles.
Participants were met on the opening evening by
a young knight on horseback who led the procession
through the torch-lit grounds to Parzival Hall, where Rachel Schmid and several female faculty members set before
us the planetary seals and colors in a stunning eurythmy
performance. Kim Snyder Vine movingly spoke the words
North American Collegium, School for Spiritual Science, Nov 2014: L-R, front: Monique Walsh, Prairie Adams, Sherry Wildfeuer, Virginia Sease
(Goetheanum), Marguerite Miller, Jennifer Greene; back: guests Johannes Khl and Herbert Hagens, Gerald Karnow MD, Penelope Baring, Helen Lubin,
Torin Finser, Ariel-Paul Saunders, Rdiger Janisch. Not shown: Arie van Ameringen, Peter Buckbee, Bert Chase.
56
being human
of the last scenes from Russell Poolers

play Parzival, and background music was provided by a brass and guitar
trio of faculty musicians. All this set
the right mood for our journey, which
continued the following days with two
all-too-brief talks by MariJo Rogers,
filled with insight and enthusiasm,
focusing, among other things, on the
interesting connections between Michelangelos Piet and the story of Sigune and Shionatulander. She inspired
us to ask, What is this thing called
the Grail? and to explore how its pictures can still speak so powerfully to
our lives today.
The Parzival Grail story stands
between the past age that looked
forsecrets of the Spirit, and the coming age, that must search for the secrets of matter. The Parzival story is
about a central problem of our time
learning to ask the right questions.
A somewhat rambling discussion of this question in a Goethean
conversation followed, along with
further artistic speech work led by
Kim Snyder Vine and two short talks
by local group members, then by
group improvisation work about how
the story of the Grail and Parzivals
lonely search for it might be played
out these day. Then, in the evening,
Betsy Evans Banks offered us an opportunity to work with colors using
pastels to illustrate some aspect of the
story we found personally meaningful. A costumed pageant finale on the
last (Sunday) morning, led again by
the knight on horseback, conducted
us through the campus, stopping at
various points to enact briefly the
last scenes of the story, accompanied
by eurythmy performed by everyone.
May some of the magic we experienced stimulate new explorations of
this profound story for all who attended so appreciatively!
Members Who Have Died

Carolyn M. Barton, Spring Valley, NY; died 12/30/2014
Steve Buscaino, Encino, CA; died 01/03/2014
Edward Hessong, Lancaster, PA; died 12/05/2014
Barry Liebowitz, Saugerties, NY; died 06/17/2013
Peter Smith, Dexter, MI; died 11/29/2014
New Members of the Anthroposophical Society in America,
recorded 7/15/2014 to 3/1/2015

Kam Anderson, East Harwich, MA
Roxanne Aurelio, Fair Oaks, CA
Brendan Banister, Nevada City, CA
Carol Beasley, Healdsburg, CA
Kimberly Berg, Los Angeles, CA
Marcianna Beyer, Hardwick, VT
Emily Biffis, Northampton, MA
Helen Brinkel, SPRING, TX
Monique Camp, Sebastopol, CA
Iris Kelly Deborah Candea, Niwot, CO
Kara Carden, Mount Juliet, TN
Megan Durney, Fair Oaks, CA
James Eisenberg, Sebastopol, CA
Barbara Farran, Orchard Park, NY
Edwin Faust, Northfield, NJ
Sally Fox, New York, NY
Caitlin Wallace French, Eugene, OR
David French, Eugene, OR
Jack Gephart, Citrus Heights, CA
Crystal Gibb, Birmingham, AL
William F Gilbert, Fort Oglethorpe, GA
Anne Haendiges, South Hadley, MA
Marietje Halbertsma, Jamaica Plain, MA
Anya Hobley, Soquel, CA
Tierney Jacobson, East Calais, VT
Patrick F Kennedy, Silver Spring, MD
Kelly Kiefer, Campbellsport, WI
Lynne Kliman, Orchard Park, NY
John Kriz, New Canaan, CT
Moira Molloy Krum, East Aurora, NY

Leland Lehrman, Hillsdale, NY
Avi Lev, Hingham, MA
Valerie Lincoln, Lake Ann, MI
Jennifer Locke, Greenfield, NH
Michele Mariscal, Sacramento, CA
Robert Martus, McAdoo, PA
Dianne McGaunn, Topsfield, MA
Timothy McGee, Everett, WA
Nancy Claudia Melton, Grass Valley, CA
Elisabeth Mills, Birmingham, AL
Douglas Moore, New Hudson, MI
April Munroe, Citrus Heights, CA
Rose Reis-Jackson, Spring, TX
Rebecca M Richards, Louisville, KY
Russell Risley, Rancho Cordova, CA
Lynda Rockwell, Sandy Hook, CT
Vincent Roppolo, New York, NY
Jozef Smeele, Copake, NY
Shannon Stevens, Bryn Athyn, PA
Roger Stockham, Burlington, VT
Mary Summers, Ann Arbor, MI
Summer Lee Thomas, Carbondale, CO
Kathleen Tiexiera, Jamestown, RI
Porntip Vidhayavrapat, Chestnut Ridge, NY
Katherine Vode, Cliffside Park, NJ
Gwen Copeland Wahlquist, Houston, TX
Margaret Wernet, Clearwater, FL
Alexander Workman, Amherst, MA
spring issue 2015
57
Martina Mann
Co-Founder of Michael Fields Agricultual
Institute; died 1st April 2014
by Laura Liska
I only knew Martina Mann in
person for three weeks. I probably
learned more about the essence of
healing during that time than at any
other time in my life.
I was visiting Germany when
a sudden fall left me with broken
bones and in no condition to travel.
I had just met Christopher and Martina Mann. They took me into their
home until I was able to make the trip
back to Switzerland where I was living. The care I received in the hands
of these two interesting, thoughtful
anthroposophists is its own tale. This
one is about Martina.
Every day Id
meet Martinas twinkling blue eyes across
the dining room
table. She had been
recovering for several
years from a stroke. Though she was
mobile and talkative, she had to work
hard at it and she could do very little
on her own. But at every meal she
had something for me, most often a
simple lesson in German. She taught
me there are two words for dandelion;
I was enchanted. The lesson, as they
usually did, ended in helpless fits
of laughter as she struggled to pronounce Pusteblume and Lwenzahn
for me, and I struggled to mimic her
with my poor grasp of the language.
She never gave up.
In the bedroom where I slept was
a bookthe story of Martinas life. I
read it in one sitting, mesmerized by
this amazing and complex woman,
who struggled so hard to teach me
German childrens verses and giggled
with me at my mistakes. I wish I had
58
being human
known her as a younger woman. She

had a rich and powerful relationship
to her family and an enviable partnership with her husband that spoke
of mutual respect and the pursuit of
a common mission. I shared her passion for biodynamic agricultureit
had led each of us to choose a path in
life. Hers had taken her to America,
mine to Europe. We had each been
a foreigner in the others country. I
imagined her falling in love with the
English language and speaking it with
all the keen wit and warm intelligence
that shone out from behind those blue
eyes. She was remarkable.
Day after day, I lay on a couch
by Martinas chair, sleeping on and
off. Sometimes we spoke. Mostly I
just watched her. The days were full
of simple routine and effort, and full
of visitors. Therapists of all sorts came
by: a curative eurythmist, a speech
therapist, a massage therapist, others. She had care from five women
who took turns staying with her day
and night. I watched her moving in
and out of all these relationships. You
might think Martina was the incapacitated one, the one who needed
them, and that they were the healers, bringing help and relief. I saw
something else. Each visitor brought
something of their own dilemma to
bear. One struggled to be patient, another to be kind. Every one of them
was challenged by Martina and every
one of them was a better person for
it. I realized there was nothing passive
in her immobility. The very nature
of who she was brought out the best
in those who came to help her. The
healing I was witnessing was not a
give and take from them to her, it was
what was happening between them,
because of her.
You know, she whispered once,
having just loudly demanded the help
of one of her attendants for the nth

time that day, Im a spoiled brat.
You know, I replied, I think thats
why I am so fond of you. She knew
who she was. I loved her for that. I
think of her every spring when the
green fields are covered in little bursts
of dazzling yellow which float away
on tiny wings of sparkling white.
Georg Locher
21st August 1934 15th December 2014
by Adrian Locher
Georg Johannes Locher was born
in Zurich, Switzerland. His parents,
Hans and Tilde Locher, were both
early anthroposophists who had encountered Rudolf Steiner and attended his lectures. Hans put Steiners
ideas on the Threefold Social Order
into practice in his family business,
Leder-Locher (making and selling
leather goods), which still exists today
as a chain of shops in several Swiss
cities and still gives 25% of its profits
to cultural life. Tilde, whose maiden
name was Grosse (sister of Rudolf
Grosse), worked with her husband as
a secretary in the business. She also
took shorthand reports of Steiners
Zurich lectures. Georg was the third
of three children. He is survived by
his brother Thomas, a geologist, and
his sister Angela, a eurythmist.
Georg was born in the sign of
Leo. His favorite animal was the lion,
which in his youth he used frequently
to observe and sketch at Zurich Zoo,
and of which there were always numerous pictures in his homes. (Even
his password for his computer was
lioncub!). Interestingly, Leo is connected to the heart, and Georg was
born with a heart condition, a hole
in the heart. This gave his childhood a
certain color. He needed a lot of extra
care and protection by those around
him, notably his parents and siblings.

He was often sickly and needed special food. He was extremely sensitive
and had a great love of animals, especially his little Dachshund, from
which he was inseparable.
At age seven, when he was ready
to start school at the Zurich Waldorf
School, he refused to go. He had a real
resistance to school, and even when
his teacher kindly offered to coach
him at home he didnt want it (an
interesting fact for a future teacher!).
This went on for almost a year. Then,
one day, he was taken to a Mozart
concert. The next day he announced
he wanted to go to school! Georg used
to describe this as the Mozart effect.
In his teens Georg was part of
the Wander Vogel youth movement
and, despite his heart condition, often
went walking or skiing in the Swiss
Alps (though on one occasion he had
to make a sudden departure from a
climb due to his failing breath).
The picture of his childhood
and youth is one of a certain fragility
and need of protection. However, his
heart condition did excuse him from
doing his Swiss army service!
It is interesting to note that this
weakness of the heart did not persist
in his life, and that his heart appeared
to get stronger. In the end, he did
not die of heart failure, but of a cancerous condition in the liver; and in
his last weeks, when his other organs
were shutting down, it was his heart
and lungs that persisted the longest!
One could say that through his life
he made a strength out of an initial
weakness, his spiritual Lion heart
overcoming the physical weakness
through the development of extra
strong heart forces.
As the Zurich Waldorf School at
that time did not go past the eighth
grade, and through the encourage-
ment of a particular much loved English teacher, it was decided that Georg
would do his eleventh grade at Michael Hall School in England.
A story Georg liked to tell was
that in his early teens he had seen
a photo of a girl on horseback in a
nature magazine, with the caption:
Girl somewhere in England. This
had for some reason impressed him
and stuck in his mind. One can only
imagine that, when he arrived at Michael Halls boarding hostel in Kidbrooke Mansion, then run by Francis
and Elisabeth Edmunds, and first set
eyes on their twelve-year-old daughter, Angela, he must have thought:
Here is the girl somewhere in England! She was, in fact, his future wife
and possessed that quality of freedom
and natural beauty which he had been
drawn to in that photo of the girl on
horseback.
It was, indeed, a momentous event
for Georg, a life-determining moment
of destiny. Not only had he met his future wife, but also his future teacher of
Waldorf education, Francis Edmunds,
and the school at which he himself
would come to teach for so many years.
All at the tender age of sixteen! But
before he could pick up this life that
seemed to have been laid out before
him, there was a period of separation.
And although Georg and Angela had
certainly noticed each other during his
time at Michael Hall, with some sweet
exchanges of an artistic nature (e.g., a
portrait drawn of Angela for the Edmunds), when he left at the end of the
eleventh grade, it was to be seven years
before they would meet again.
In the years after returning to
Zurich, Georg entered a period of life
dilemmas. What vocation should he
pursue? Was he to follow in his fathers footsteps by entering the family
business? To his fathers disappoint-
ment, the answer was no. Should he

pursue an academic career and go to
University? After two attempts at entrance exams, and two failures, the
answer was also clearly no. So then,
after three years of trials, he decided
to pursue the artists way, which clearly suited him best, and which actually
he had been pursuing throughout his
youth already. But the dilemmas continued. Was it to be painting, sculpture, drama or music? All of these it
could have been. But eventually he
settled on music and went to study
the cello at the Winterthur Conserv-
21st Augu
atoire. For a few years afterwards he

lived as a professional touring cellist,
playing in orchestras throughout Germany and Switzerland. Photos of him
at this time show a deeply sensitive,
brooding young man, a real Romantic, living the dream!
But being a professional cellist
was not to be his ultimate vocation.
During this time in Zurich an interest in anthroposophy had been growing in Georg, as he had been asked to
play the cello for numerous anthroposophical festivals and events. Then,
on a concert tour of England at the
age of 24 with his school friend Peter
spring issue 2015
59
Ramm, Georg stopped by at Michael

Hall to visit the Edmunds for Christmas. There he met Angela again. By
then she was 20 and doing a teacher training at Bognor Regis College.
The spark between them was rekindled and two years later they were
married. This, together with his
growing wish to serve anthroposophy
in a practical way, contributed to his
decision to join the Waldorf teacher
training which Francis Edmunds was
running at Michael Hall. And from
then onwards he never looked back.
He had found his lifes vocation: Waldorf education. Here he could realize
the multi-artist that he was, through
painting, clay-modelling, drama, and
of course, always, music. But he added another art to the list, the art of education, which would bring him ever
more deeply into the social realm.
He started teaching at Michael
Hall at the age of 26, at first German,
religion, and art, and then took over
a grade four up to grade eight. After
this he completed two sets of grades
one to eight. One can certainly say he
did his bit of grade teaching! Year after year he prepared for main lessons,
put on plays, organized and went on
school trips, wrote reports as well
as being chairman of college several
times. Throughout this time he was
also always active as a cellist in school
and local concerts and events.
During this time he and Angela
were raising their five children: Eunice, Adrian, Rowena, Karin, and, a
good deal later, Dominic. Their various homes in Forest Row were hubs of
life, particularly the last, Priory Mead,
which was right next door to Michael
Hall and where he lived for 43 years
until his death. In this respect, Georg
was a true Englishman: His home was
his castle! And he, of course, was the
lord of castle! Priory Mead was espe60
being human
cially such a castle for him. Here he

created a beautiful music room/study
which was not only his retreat from his
busy schedule (and bustling family!)
but also provided the scene for many
a concert, gathering, or celebration.
Throughout the years of family life,
numerous boarders and friends filled
out the Locher household and have remained in touch, fondly remembering
their time in this special home.
Alongside his teaching at Michael
Hall, two further strands began to
develop in his life: the teacher training at Emerson College (part time at
first) and annual trips visiting schools
in North America. By 1986 he had resigned from Michael Hall and taken
up a full-time post at Emerson College, co-running the Education course
with John Thompson. His trips to
North America increased from once
to two or three times a year. He started to live on two continents. He later
also became a schools advisor with the
Steiner Schools Fellowship, making
annual visits to many of the schools
in Great Britain, notably Edinburgh,
Wynstones, and South West London.
Georgs connection to North
America was strong and somehow
symptomatic of a certain deep soul
striving. As if England wasnt west
enough for this Swiss man, Georgs
orientation was to go further westwards, where he would find a greater soul freedom than he had found
in England. It was noticeable to his
friends and family that he would return from his American trips somehow changed, freer and happier. The
friendships and colleagueships there
seemed somehow easier, with stories
of going out to the movies or for
ice creams, things he rarely if ever
did in England. Alongside visiting
schools, his annual visits included being a visiting teacher at the Waldorf
Teacher Education Programmes at

Antioch University New England and
the Rudolf Steiner Center, Toronto.
For many years he was on the board
of the Rudolf Steiner Institute, an annual summer school for anthroposophy in Pennsylvania and then Maine.
He was also the inspiring force behind the Renewal Courses for teachers at the Center for Anthroposophy
in Wilton, New Hampshire, of which
he was a board member and where he
gave courses for more than a decade.
He once said he never wanted to
become dead wood in an institu-
tion, and both with Michael Hall, and

later Emerson, he was quick to move
on before this could happen, trusting
others to carry on the work. However, with his work in America it was a
stroke that stopped him continuing in
2011.
This
was1934
a great
him
21st
August
- 15th sadness
Decemberfor
2014!
in his last years,
asLOCHER!
he missed the life
GEORG
of friendships and colleagueships he
had developed there. It was, therefore,
a particular joy when his friend Torin
Finser came especially to his bedside
in hospital a week before he died with
a pile of letters and good wishes from
his American friends, expressing gratitude for all he had done for them and
how much he had meant to them. A
torrent of emails followed, many from
former students and teachers he had
mentored over the years. Two words
stand out particularly from these
communications: mentorship and
kindness. The teachers he visited in
their schools, many of whom he had

formerly taught, felt deeply supported
and accompanied by him. He both
fully accepted them and encouraged
them to develop further as teachers
and human beings. He was famous
for his little chats, where he would
take someone aside and point out a
short-coming, suggesting a possible
new direction they might take. But it
was always with the utmost kindness.
In the years after his stroke, when
he could no longer travel, Georg
turned his attention to his family and
home and to enriching the cultural life
of the local Sussex Anthroposophical
Society. Through his careful management and insistence on high standards
the Festivals in Forest Row became
beautiful, artistic events which attracted larger numbers of people than
usual. He was a master of detail, an
artist-soul with a certain particularity much appreciated and enjoyed by
those who knew and loved him.
Georg Locher: Afterword

by Torin Finser
With the support of my colleagues, I was able to fly over to the
UK to spend a day with Georg just
a week before he crossed the threshold. The visit occurred on December
6th, itself a remarkable coincidence
as Georg had frequently played the
part of St Nick during his lifetime.
My brief visit with Georg on that day
turned out to be a moving and transformative experience.
He had fallen into a deep sleep
the day before I arrived and the family had almost called off my visit. So
when I walked into his hospital room
I was prepared for a one-way conversation, which is what happened for
the first hour. My hands were filled
with cards and greetings from friends
all across the USA, some of which

I read to the sleeping Georg. In between long periods of silence, I also
prayed and sang for him (it seemed his
breathing changed during Dona Nobis). After an hour I got up to stretch
my legs, feeling that I had done all I
could to say goodbye.
I was at the end of a long hallway,
looking out a window with many
dead trees and one lone pine at the
top of the hill, when a nurse came
running toward me. Are you Torin
Finser? He is asking for you!
When I entered his room he was
fully awake and mostly his old self. His
first words were: Why are you here? I
am not dying! After some reassurances, he continued more philosophically,
How much time do we have left?
What followed for the next hour
was a most remarkable conversation,
rich in memories of mutual friends,
teacher training, USA visits, the arts
and even cigar smoking. A few details
were mixed up, but for the most part
there was a clear train of thought for
conversation. He said he was not an
artist but had tried to show an artistic
way of education. Georg lit up when
he was given Karines card with her
painting Angel Rising and asked for
his glasses. He then said that it was his
dying wish that his children would
visit Renewal, at which point, all five
of them said emphatically We will.
Georg broke into a joyous smile. (It
appears from comments from family
members that Georgs life had really
spanned two continents, and that he
had in many ways lived two lives
see Adrians talk above.) Thus it was
especially satisfying for Georg that
his children would finally connect
with the other part of his life work.
After much more conversation, including his role as founding president
of the Center for Anthroposophy, he
seemed tired and I told him we would

withdraw for a while. He then said,
I need a little break to reflect on my
dwindling thoughts.
We retreated and the nurses came
in to do their thing. Fifteen minutes
later we returned and he was no longer with us in consciousness. He no
longer recognized anyone, and started
speaking incoherently, a kind of death
march had set in. I felt that he had
decided to embrace his approaching
death, and was prepared to do it with
characteristic determination. I waited
another hour, we tried singing (to no
avail) and then I rose to say goodbye.
As I leaned over him and held his
hands, I thought there was once again
a flicker of recognition and he said,
Glorious death. And as I turned
to leave the room I heard one more
word: Anthroposophy.
He lingered in body for one
more week (but was never fully conscious again), and after the service in
the UK some of his friends gathered
in the Garden Room at the Grohs
in Wilton, New Hampshire on the
28th of December to share memories. The evening opened with cello
music, included a reading of Adrians
speech, my recollections, and many,
many contributions from the friends
who had gathered. We also sang the
same carol that we found on the Forest Row program, Lo, How a Rose.
The beginning and end of the evening
featured the well known verse, in this
case dedicated to our dear friend and
colleague, Georg Locher.
May love of hearts reach out to love of souls,
May warmth of love ray out to Spirit-light.
Even so would we draw near to you,
Thinking with you Thoughts of Spirit,
Feeling in you the Love of Worlds,
Consciously at one with you
Willing in silent Being.
Rudolf Steiner
spring issue 2015
61
Thinking About Thinking

For everyone, however, who has the
ability to observe thinkingand with
good will every normal human being
has this abilitythis observation is the
most important one he or she could
possibly make.... Thinking all too
readily leaves us cold in recollection;
it is as if the life of the soul had dried
Paul Margulies (1935-2014)
out. Yet this is really nothing but the
strongly marked shadow of its real naturewarm, luminous,
and penetrating deeply into the phenomena of the world.
This penetration is brought about by a power flowing
through the activity of thinking itselfthe power of love in
its spiritual form. Rudolf Steiner, The Philosophy of Freedom
You say Confucius is confusing
You refuse to start with Sartre
And you just cant understand Kant.
Mr. Spinoza really throws ya
Schopenhauer is quite sour
These philosophers rave and rant.
Your brain cant find the room
For Bishop Berkeley, David Hume
And well may you lament,
That though Plato may be great
Oh, God! Its difficult to state
Precisely what the hell he meant.
You may think a puff of potll
Help you more than Aristotle,
Heraclitus is quite dense.
Or you substitute for thinking
Just a touch of social drinking
But still you feel quite tense.
If you think that thoughts will bore you
Someone else will have them for you
And thats the catch, my friend.
Because from thinking you cant hide
Or someone else will be your guide
From the beginning to the end.
Through thinking Beauty, Truth, and Good
Can be rightly understood
As light shimmring from above.
And when our thinking becomes seeing
We experience pure being
And our thinking turns to love.
A Memory of Paul Margulies

by Maria Ver Eecke, Chestnut Ridge, NY
Paul Margulies gave the best commencement address
in memory, at Green Meadow Waldorf School in 1991, a
speech still remembered because he told a story. He had discovered that Frank Baum was a theosophist and had written
The Wizard of Oz out of spiritual insights. So Paul retold
the story of Dorothy as the individual on the path looking
for her soul forces: thinking, feeling, will. She meets them
in the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Lion: intelligence,
the heart, courage. Dorothy befriends and becomes a guide
of these characterized soul forces, as the higher ego must.
Paul suggested that to find ones way in the world,
you trust yourself and just follow your feet! In the original
story, Glinda the Good gives Dorothy silver slippers which
Hollywood changed to ruby ones. Silver is the metal of the
moon and it is moon forces that hold our pre-birth intentions. Every 18.6 years the moon returns to the same cosmic
position as at the time of ones birth; this is called a moon
node or lunar return. The time around this return is
good for reflection, for re-awakening ones intention for this
life on eartha most memorable topic for a commencement speech for 18-year-old graduates! Thanks to Paul, I
continue to share this great story.
Leaving a
Legacy of
Will
BRING EXPRESSION
TO YOUR INTENTION
AND LOVE FOR
ANTHROPOSOPHY
Did you know?
INTO THE FUTURE
Making a planned gift

doesnt usually affect
a persons current
income.
For more information, contact

Deb Abrahams-Dematte at
deb@anthroposophy.org
Paul Margulies
reprinted from being human winter 2011

62
being human
PlannedGiving_QTR AD_FINAL.indd 1
10/25/14 6:44 AM
Rudolf Steiners Calendar of the Soul

Dates from Easter 2015 to Easter 2016 Note:
April 5, 2015: Verse #1 Easter Mood
Oct 4: Verse #27
Apr 12: Verse #2
Oct 11: Verse #28
Apr 19: Verse #3
Oct 18: Verse # 29
Apr 26: Verse #4
Oct 25: Verse #30
May 3: Verse #5
Light from Spirit Depths
May 10: Verse #6
May 17: Verse #7
Luciferic Temptation
Nov 1: Verse #31

Light from Spirit Depths
Nov 8: Verse #32
Nov 15: Verse #33
Ahrimanic Deception
May 24: Verse #8 Whitsun
Nov 22: Verse #34
May 31: Verse #9
Nov 29: Verse #35
June 7: Verse #10
Dec 6: Verse #36
June 14: Verse #11
Dec 13: Verse #37
June 21: Verse #12 St Johns Mood Dec 20: Verse #38 Christmas Mood
June 28: Verse #13
Dec 27: Verses # 39 + 40
July 5: Verse #14

July 12: Verse #15
Jan 3, 2015: Verse #41
July 19: Verse #16
Jan 10: Verse #42
July 26: Verse #17
Jan 17: Verse #43
Aug 2: Verse #18
Jan 24: Verse #44
Aug 9: Verse #19
Jan 31: Verse #45
Aug 16: Verse #20

Luciferic Temptation
Aug 23: Verse #21
Aug 30: Verse #22
Light from Cosmic Widths
Feb 7: Verse #46

Ahrimanic Deception
Feb 14: Verse #47
Feb 21: Verse #48
Light from Cosmic Heights
Sept 6: Verse #23
Feb 28: Verse #49
Sept 13: Verse #24
Mar 6: Verse #50
Sept 20: Verse #25
Mar 13: Verse #51
Sept 27: Verse #26: Michaelmas Mood
Mar 20: Verse #52
Mar 27: Verse #1 Easter Mood
Rudolf Steiner
first published the
52 verses we know as the Calendar of
the Soul in 1912. The adjusted dates
listed here for 2015-2016 are intended
as guide for those who follow the
practice of beginning a new verse on
the Sunday of each week. In keeping
with Steiners instruction, we start
the meditative year with verse # 1 at
Easter (April 5, 2015).
Our format matches the way in
which the 52 verses appeared in the
original 1912-13 edition and it adheres
to the seven-day astral rhythm of the
soul. In addition, this approach takes
into account the seven preparatory
verses (Lent) leading up to Easter, and
the seven mirror verses that follow
from Easter to Whitsun.
There are 51 weeks from Easter
2015 through to Easter 2016, but
we have 52 verses. This calls for an
accommodation, especially if we
wish to keep in sync with the major
Christian festivals. The solution
being proposed here is to work with
verses 39 and 40 during the same
week, starting on Sunday, December
27, 2015. This gives us the opportunity
to concentrate on the subtle shift
that occurs from verse 39 to 40
(post-Christmas) and to discover its
polar opposite in verses 13 and 14
(post-St. Johns).
The cosmic dating of Easter
requires the meditant to reset the
course through the 52 verses of the
Soul Calendar each year, since there
are never exactly 52 weeks between
one Easter and the next. It becomes
an exercise in self-renewal, a kind of
yearly tune-up. These mini-mantras
become spiritual sign posts along
the ever changing path of personal
initiation.
Herbert O. Hagens, Princeton, NJ, USA
hohagens@aol.com
spring issue 2015
63
Week 1:
Week 2:
June 21st to June 26th
June 28th to July 3rd

Healing Aspects to Address Trauma
in Childhood, Adolescence, and in
Biography
With Michaela Gloeckler, MD
The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily:

Performing the Story with Marionettes
With Joan Almon, Janene Ping, and
Debra Spitulnik
The Paths of Intuition:
Educating with Insight, Courage, and Joy
With Christof Wiechert
The Four Temperaments
in the Workplace:
Transforming the Way we Work with
One Another
With Adrian Locher
Laying the Foundation:
Teaching Grade 1
With Christopher Sblendorio
Welcome to Renewal 2015!

For Waldorf teachers and administrators - along with parents,
trustees, artists, and thinkers seeking to deepen
their lives through Anthroposophy
Natures Alphabet:
Explore the Relationship between
Word and World
With Paul Matthews
and Patrice Pinette
Working with the Image of Man at

the Heart of Waldorf Education:
Teaching Grade 4
With Dennis Demanett
Roots, Leaves, Flowers, Seeds,

and Spirit:
The Ancient Art of Healing
with Herbs
With Deb Soule
The Golden Age:

Grade 5 in a Waldorf School
With Patrice Maynard
The Turning Point of Childhood:
Teaching Grade 6
With Helena Niiva
Michelangelo for Beginners:

Carving in Marble
With Daniel OConnors
The Brave New World of Seventh Grade

With Sue Demanett and Louis Bullard
Music in the Morning:

Singing and Recorder Playing
in the Classroom
With David Gable
The Art of Christianity:

A Journey through Art History
With David Lowe
Painting by Karine Munk Finser
The Gift of Drawing:

Blocks and Blackboard Preparation for
the Classroom, Grades 1-8
With Elizabeth Auer
Co-Workers, Sisters, and Friends:

Women Students and Spiritual
Researchers around Rudolf Steiner
With Christopher Bamford
Re-Imagining Mathematics
With Jamie York
Finding the Middle Path:

An Exploration of the Landscape of Grade 2
With Kate Golden
How to Survive the 8th Grade and

Come out Smiling!
With Darcy Drayton
Anthroposophy and Buddhism:

The Reality and Possibilities of
Relationship
With Michael DAleo
Embracing the Darkness

With Charles Andrade
Register online at:
www.centerforanthroposophy.org
Foreign Languages in Grades 1, 2, and 3: Renewal Courses sponsored by Center for Anthroposophy
Kindling the Imagination,
Wilton, New Hampshire
Cultivating Understanding, and
Karine
Munk Finser, Coordinator
Practical Language Skills
603-654-2566 info@centerforanthroposophy.org
With Kati Manning and Lorey Johnson
Visit us online for details of our part-time
Foundation Studies in Anthroposophy and the Arts
Barbara Richardson, Coordinator
Clusters available on demand around the U.S.
www.centerforanthroposophy.org
Social and Organizational Issues

With John Cunningham,
Barbara Richardson,
and Torin Finser
Self-Education through Intuitive
Thinking and Artistic Perception
With Signe Motter, Hugh Renwick,
Elizabeth Auer, and Douglas Gerwin
June 28th - July 25th, 2015

Waldorf High School Teacher Education Program
Douglas Gerwin, Director
Three-summers program specializing in
Arts/Art History Biology English History
Math Physics & Chemistry Pedagogical Eurythmy

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being human

personal and cultural renewal in the 21st century

Resolution by Laura Summer

Idea, Theory, Emotion,

Thomas Meyers major biography of Ludwig Polzer-Hoditz (1869-1945)

The Development of Anthroposophy

SteinerBooks | 703-661-1594 | steinerbooks.org

East Coast Lecture Tour

Ludwig Polzer-Hoditz: A European

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Moving forward again.

A new future for the Library has opened through

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Care for the collection has started. New archives

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A plan to digitize the journals is moving forward.

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Partnering for depth & impact.

Reaching out across the movement

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Wed love to share our latest plans with you.

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A school is a community, and like

BIODYNAMICS is a holistic approach to agriculture, food

Validating Medical Remedies: Renewing the Research, by John Beck

Free Columbia: Spiritual Activism, by Laura Summer

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Deeds that Matter, by Christopher Schaefer

arts & ideas

Idea, Theory, Emotion, Desire, by Frederick Amrine

Gallery: Free Columbia

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research & reviews

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Three Poems, by Maureen Tolman Flannery

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news for members & friends

2015 Organizational Goals

Report from Marian Len

Transformation & Gratitude, Report by Deb Abrahams-Dematte

General Secretary Torin Finser Visits

Introducing Micky Leach

The Grail in Phoenix

Members Who Have Died New Members

Martina Mann, by Laura Liska

Georg Locher, by Adrian Locher & Torin Finser

Thinking About Thinking, by Paul Margulies

A Memory of Paul Margulies, by Maria Ver Eecke

Calendar of the Soul 2014-2015 Dates, by Herbert O. Hagens

from the editors

The Anthroposophical Society

Editor: John H. Beck

First a correction. In our last issue, in connection with