The Siskiyou School is the second incarnation of a Waldorf school in the Rogue Valley. The first school operated for 20 years, on three sites and under two names. It began with a single class in Medford in 1980, then moved to Jacksonville as other classes formed. There it became known as The Light Valley Waldorf School. Eventually it relocated to Ashland where it renamed itself The Waldorf School of the Rogue Valley. In June 2000 that school suddenly closed its doors due to financial difficulties. A Waldorf community of over 140 students and families was left adrift. More ...
In honor of Women's History Month, we're sharing an article on herb growing by Evelyn Speiden from one of the earliest issues of the Biodynamics journal (Winter 1942-43). A student of Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, Evelyn was one of the original convenors of the Biodynamic Farming and Gardening Association (BDA) in 1938 and served on the Board. She contributed 27 articles to the journal on topics such as mulching, vegetable gardening, and seed saving. Evelyn's garden served as the location for companion planting experiments, the results of which were published in a pamphlet by the BDA and then included in the book Companion Plants and How to Use Them by Helen Philbrick and Richard Gregg. More ... Our sweet school, nestled in the woods outside of Olympia, is in need of help. We had a cold front hit our area and the pipes from the sprinkler system in the early childhood classrooms broke, causing significant damage to the rooms. The building that once had our littlest hands on campus making bread, sharing puppet plays and singing songs is currently just a cold, stark, shell. The displaced classes are now using our community room and and an 8th grade classroom. Four of our upper grades have had to move in together to make room. You can see our GoFundMe campaign here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/rebuild-the-kinderhaus-at-ows We are hoping to share with our Waldorf community this tragedy and have an ask out to share the campaign as broadly as we can. If we reach $20K by the end of march we have a $20K match! This will get us just a quarter of where we need to be to finish the restoration, but it will be a HUGE lift nonetheless. We are also in need of Waldorf early childhood toys to replace what we lost in this catastrophe. Specifically, weighted babies, Ostheimer toys or something similar, etc. Folks who are willing to donate can contact me directly (Ali: development@olympiawaldorf.org) Thank you so much for sharing this broadly. We need all the help we can get! Ali Carras and the families at the Olympia Waldorf School Shining Spiral is Gujarat's first Waldorf School, a school emphasizing and cultivating children's emotional life and imagination --- by Krishi Jagran Through different activities in school and nearby farms, students witness the cycle of food production firsthand, from planting seasonal vegetables to harvesting and consumption. In the heart of Gujarat, Ahmedabad, is an educational institution blending the principles of Waldorf education with hands-on farming experiences. Shining Spiral is a testament to innovative learning, offering children a holistic approach to education by integrating traditional wisdom with modern pedagogy. Founded by Meenakshi Trivedi, the school seamlessly weaves the International Waldorf Curriculum with India's rich cultural heritage. Nurturing Curiosity Through Farming Meenakshi Trivedi emphasizes the importance of addressing a child's curiosity and fostering a connection with nature. She said, "The Waldorf Curriculum is thoughtfully tailored to suit the developmental stage of the child, particularly in class three, where children typically range from 8 to 9 years old. It aligns with this time when children begin to grasp their identities and perceive the world with a burgeoning sense of curiosity and inquiry." "This curriculum aims to foster a deep connection between the child and their surroundings, encouraging a harmonious relationship with both the natural environment and the wider world. By providing hands-on experiences that immerse children in their surroundings, Waldorf education nurtures the innate curiosity of each child. Through practical activities centered around essential aspects of life such as food, shelter, and collaboration, students gain invaluable real-life insights. For instance, in the Class Three curriculum, the subject of farming serves as a gateway to exploring scientific principles tangibly and engagingly," Trivedi added. From Soil to Plate: A Journey of Learning The school's farming curriculum begins with practical tasks like weeding, instilling a sense of responsibility towards the earth. Next, the students are given the responsibility of collecting the vegetable/fruit petals from the entire school and put in the compost bin. Pits were dug, and large vessels were used for composting. Again the focus was to make the children understand, ‘from the soil to the soil’. Students are also engaged in mathematical exercises through activities like building raised beds, utilizing resources creatively. Mahima Gupta, the gardening teacher, emphasized the hands-on experience students gained by cultivating seasonal vegetables on the school's prepared land. Some crops, like bottle gourd, tindora, and beans, required structural support as they climbed. The use of vermicompost, sourced from the school's unit, enriched the soil, while students actively engaged with cow dung and urine to further enhance its fertility. Additionally, compost produced on-site contributed to the soil's health. Over eight months, students developed profound insights, including a newfound belief in their ability to nurture life from the soil, a deeper understanding of seasonal vegetable cycles, an appreciation for the labor of farmers, and an awareness of the interconnectedness of various professions, such as farmers, dairy farmers, potters, and blacksmiths, all essential to the food production chain. This hands-on learning experience instilled a profound respect for the food on their plates. In this way, they witness the cycle of food production firsthand, from planting seasonal vegetables to harvesting and consumption. Experiencing the Farmer's Life To deepen their understanding, students participate in farm visits, where they work closely with the farmers. One such farm where they went for rice cultivation was in Kheda. According to Achal Patel from Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Kheda, "During the farm visit, the students get involved in the process of transplantation of paddy saplings from the nursery. A subsequent visit happens after four months when the harvesting is going on exposing students to the process of threshing and winnowing in the paddy fields after the harvesting." Understanding the Value of Food and Agriculture Through these experiences, children develop a profound appreciation for food and agriculture. They connect with the seasons, recognize the toil of farmers, and understand the interconnectivity of professions in the food supply chain. The school's ethos revolves around valuing food and respecting the hands that nurture it. Meenakshi Trivedi highlights how children grasp the deeper meaning behind their daily prayers, acknowledging the roles of the sun, earth, and farmers in nourishing them. At Shining Spiral, education transcends conventional boundaries, emphasizing experiential learning over passive instruction. Nurturing Holistic Development Shining Spiral exemplifies the transformative potential of education when coupled with real-life experiences. By integrating farming into the curriculum, the school nurtures not only academic growth but also emotional and practical intelligence. As the first Waldorf School in Gujarat, it paves the way for a new paradigm in education, one where hands-on learning cultivates minds and souls alike. Waldorf Education: A Global Movement Originating in 1919 in Stuttgart, Germany, Waldorf Education has flourished worldwide, with over 1,200 schools and 1,900 kindergartens. In India, the movement continues to expand, with nearly 50 schools across various states. Rooted in the holistic development of children, Waldorf education remains a beacon of progressive pedagogy, shaping the leaders of tomorrow. from Krishi Jagran In ordinary consciousness, we combine our thoughts logically and thus make use of thinking to know the external sensory world. Now, however, we allow thinking to enter into a kind of musical element, but one that is undoubtedly a knowledge element; we become aware of a spiritual rhythm underlying all things; we penetrate into the world by beginning to perceive it in the spirit. From abstract, dead thinking, from mere image-thinking, our thinking becomes a thinking enlivened in itself. This is the significant transition that can be made from abstract and merely logical thinking to a living thinking about which we have the feeling it is capable of shaping a reality, just as we recognize our process of growth as a living reality. — Rudolf Steiner The Tension Between East and West 10 lectures at the Second International Congress of the Anthroposophical Movement, Vienna, Austrai, June 1–12, 1922 (CW 83) ... and many, many other books can be found at SteinerBooks Our sincere gratitude to all those donated to our annual appeal and who shared their vision for what a healthy future of agriculture looks like. We're pleased to share some of these reflections with you now, as we look forward to this momentous year — the 100th anniversary of Rudolf Steiner's Agriculture Lectures, which formed the foundations for biodynamic agriculture. A future where all sections of agriculture that work towards more life and quality of soil, plants, and animals husbandry work together and learn from each other. A future where farmers are valued and appreciated as nurses and caregivers of the earth and consumers are educated on what good nutritious food is. Where thinking, feeling, and willing are aligned and people externalize the internal abundance. Farmers at the heart of their communities, being revered and rewarded for their services of providing food and stewarding land. We're excited to continue to work, in collaboration with so many others in the biodynamic community, on behalf of these visions — furthering the legacy of the many inspirational individuals who have contributed their time and wisdom toward laying the foundations for where we are today. If you'd like to help, we welcome your support. More ... by Joan Almon Deciding which fairy tales are appropriate for which age group is a problem which faces every kindergarten teacher as well as every parent who wants to offer fairy tales to children. Over the years, with the experience of actually telling the tales to children, one develops a "sense" for this, but in the beginning some guidelines may be of help. Among the fairy tales, there are stories of varying degrees of complexity. At the simplest level there is the "Porridge Pot", while a considerably more complicated story is the beautiful French tale of "Perronik", the simpleton in quest of the grail who must overcome seven difficult obstacles. The latter is a tale for the elementary school child, perhaps just as he is leaving the world of fairy tales around age 9, while the former little tale is a delight to three year olds as their first fairy tale. They enjoy hearing of the little pot, so full of abundance, which overflows for lack of the right word. At this age the children themselves have a sense of life's eternal abundance which one child expressed to her mother in this way when her mother said she did not have enough time to take the child out to play: "But Mother, I have lots of time. I’ll give you some." In almost every fairy tale there is either a problem which must be solved, such as how to get the porridge pot to stop cooking, or a confrontation with evil, which can take many forms, such as the Queen in Snow-White or the various monsters which Perronik encounters. The milder the problem, the more appropriate the tale for younger children and conversely, the greater the evil, the more appropriate the tale is for older children. Another aspect of fairy tales is that the hero or heroine must undergo certain trials or go on a complex journey before succeeding in his or her quest. In the original version of the "Three Little Pigs", the pig is nearly tricked three times before he is able to overcome the wolf. Three is a number which frequently arises in relation to the challenges of the fairy tale. In this case the tasks are not portrayed as very ominous, and the pig handles them with a good deal of humor, making it a tale well-loved by four year olds. In the "Seven Ravens", the daughter must first journey to the sun, the moon and the stars in order to restore her brothers to human form. This is a tale which speaks well to five and six year olds. An even more complex tale is the beautiful Norwegian tale entitled "East of the Sun and West of the Moon". Here, too, the heroine must go on a great journey to redeem her prince, and the journey takes her first to the homes of three wise women. She is then aided by each of the four winds. Yet even when the north wind blows her to the castle east of the sun and west of the moon, her work is not yet completed and she is further tested before she is able to marry the prince. This is not a tale for the kindergarten, but rather one for the first grade or beyond, when children's own inner struggles grow more complex and when they are nourished by the more complex fairy tales. With these thoughts in mind, I would like to divide some of the tales commonly told in Waldorf kindergartens into categories of complexity. This is a somewhat dangerous business, for the fairy tales are so alive that they do not rest comfortably in one category or another. Even as I divide them up, I find myself constantly switching tales from one category to another. In the end one makes one’s decisions very much with a particular group of children or an individual child in mind. Please accept these divisions lightly as mere indications, and take the time to develop your own judgments in this area. You may find it helpful to read a few stories from each category as a means of understanding the different levels of complexity of the fairy tales. 1. The three year olds in the nursery or mixed-age kindergarten are very satisfied with little nature stories, or with a simple tale such as "Sweet Porridge”. The older three year old children are often ready to hear the "sequential" tales such as the tale of the turnip. The turnip has grown so large that Grandfather cannot pull it out by himself, so one after another come Grandmother, grandchild, dog, cat and finally mouse. All together are then able to pull out the turnip. One finds many tales of this sort which have a strong pattern of repetition and order. There are also traditional songs which fall into this category such as "I Had a Cat and the Cat Pleased Me" or "Had Gad Ya", a song sung during the Jewish holiday of Passover. Such sequential stories have the added advantage of being relatively easy for a beginning story teller to learn. A collection of tales for this age group includes the following: Sweet Porridge (Grimm, 103) Goldilocks and the Three Bears (Russian) Little Louse and Little Flea (Spindrift) The Turnip (Russian) The Mitten Little Madam (Spindrift) The Gingerbread Man The Johnny Cake (English) The Hungry Cat (Norwegian, Plays for Puppets) (Note: Grimm's fairy tales are numbered from 1 to 200, and their numbers are given here to help you locate the story in a complete edition of the Grimm's tales. A list of sources for most of the fairy tales mentioned here appears at the end of the article.) 2. The next category of tales is slightly more complex, but the overall mood is usually cheerful and without too much sorrow or struggle. The fours and young fives are usually quite comfortable with these tales. Billy Goats Gruff (Norwegian) Three Little Pigs (English; Wolf and Seven Kids (Grimm, 5) Pancake Mill (this Newsletter) Mashenka and the Bear (Russian, Plays for Puppets) The Shoemaker and The Elves (Grimm, 39) 3. In the next category come many of the tales which we normally associate with the term fairy tale and which we think of in relation to five and six year olds. These tales contain more challenge and more detail. The main character often sets out in the world with a simple task to perform such as in the " Miller Boy and the Pussy Cat". Although obstacles are encountered, they do not weigh too heavily on the soul of the individual. Such tales include: Star Money (Grimm, 153) Frog Prince (Grimm, 1) Mother Holle (Grimm, 24) Little Red Cap (Grimm, 26) Bremen Town Musicians (Grimm, 27) Golden Goose (Grimm, 64) Spindle, Shuttle and Needle (Grimm, 186) Hut in the Forest (Grimm, 169; Queen Bee (Grimm, 62) Snow Maiden (Russian, Plays for Puppets) The Seven Ravens (Grimm, 25) Snow-White and Rose Red (Grimm, 161) Little Briar Rose (Grimm, 50) Princess in the Flaming Castle (this Newsletter) The Donkey (Grimm, 144) Rumpelstiltskin (Grimm, 55) Snow-White and the Seven Dwarves (Grimm, 53) Hansel and Gretel (Grimm, 15) 4. The final group which I will include here are those fairy tales which are well suited for the six year olds who are making the transition to first grade, This is a time of stress for children as they lose their baby teeth and sense a departure from the heart of early childhood. (Fortunately they still have a few more years before they make their final "fall" from Paradise.) Tales in which characters have a personal experience of suffering or sorrow meet this new phase of inner development in the children. Often these tales are not told in the kindergarten at all but are left for first grade. Jorinda and Joringel (Grimm, 69) Brother and Sister (Grimm, 13) Cinderella (Grimm, 21) Rapunzel (Grimm, 12) A frequent problem which troubles kindergarten teachers is how to select tales for a mixed-age group. If there are three year olds present as well as six year olds, will the more advanced tales harm the little ones? My own experience and that of other teachers, is that this is not a problem provided the story is appropriate for some of the children in the group. This is an interesting phenomenon which seems to work as follows. In a mixed-age group from three to six, one can choose a tale for the five and six year olds and the three and four year olds will be attentive. They may seem less focused than they are with a simpler tale, but they rarely grow restless (though it sometimes helps to seat the youngest ones near the teacher or the assistant). On the other hand, if one would tell the same complex tale to a group of only three and four year olds, one would find that they do not attend to it well and easily lose interest. It is as if there is no one in the group who can "carry" the story for the others. In a mixed-age group one can also create a balance in the tales by telling some that are appropriate for the younger children. The older children generally do not get bored with the simpler tales, for they are now old enough to see the humor in the sequential tales or simpler fairy tales, and they will laugh at the humorous parts while the little ones listen with full seriousness. When choosing a fairy tale, another factor to take into account is whether a fairy tale is generally well known in the society, even if it is known in an incorrect form. When a tale is well known, children often seem ready to hear it at a younger age than they otherwise might be. The final consideration, and probably the most important one, is the story teller's own relationship to the story. Sometimes a story teller loves a tale so much that the story may be told to children who are generally too young for it. It is as if the story teller's love of the tale builds a bridge to it. Thus, I knew one teacher who loved "The Seven Ravens* so much that she told it year after year to her class of three and four year olds, a feat which I would not undertake. When this love of fairy tales is coupled with an understanding of them on the part of the story teller, doors are opened to the whole realm of life in which fairy tales are true and live forever. In the telling of fairy tales we too are nourished and brought back into this realm. Rudolf Steiner describes the fairy tales very beautifully when he says, "Much deeper than one might imagine lie the sources whence flow genuine, true folk tales that speak their magic throughout all centuries of human evolution,"' • Rudolf Steiner, "Folk Tales in the Light of Spiritual Research”, February 6, 1913. More ... Lectures at the Worker Education School and the Independent College, Berlin, 1901–1905 (CW 51) by Rudolf Steiner “Steiner’s approach was at first a surprise for the students, who had been schooled in Marxist thought and tended to view all spiritual matters as ‘byproducts’ of material, economic processes. For them, it was questionable whether the spiritual striving of individual human beings could really be a driving force in history. Steiner knew the soul disposition of his students and the ‘inexpressibly tragic situation’ that the proletariat’s intense desire for knowledge had so far been ‘satisfied only through the grossest form of materialism.’ But the materialistic ideas that had been absorbed by the workers from popular scientific literature and from Marxist writings contained ‘partial truths.’” (introduction) Wide-ranging, illuminating, and entirely unique in Rudolf Steiner’s Collected Works, this volume consists of lectures given at the Worker Education School and at the Independent College in Berlin (along with a lengthy appendix on Steiner’s activity in the Giordano Bruno Association). Concerning his teaching activities in the Worker School, Steiner later reflected in his autobiography, “I had to find a completely different way of expressing myself than I had become used to until then” (p. 193). This was due largely to his students’ working-class background. Steiner’s new approach involved allowing “idealism to arise from materialism.” The result was the foundation for what he called “historical symptomatology”—that is, the study of the deeper causes behind history through their symptomatic expression in concrete historical events. This volume is therefore an exceptional resource for anyone interested in Steiner’s approach to history. Steiner’s lectures at the Independent College, which form part two of the volume, are concerned, on the one hand, with the philosophies of the medieval and early modern mystics—forming a companion to his book Mystics after Modernism (CW 7)—and, on the other, with the remarkable figure of Friedrich Schiller. Speaking on the occasion of the centenary of Schiller’s death, Steiner’s lectures are a brilliant homage to the great thinker and dramatist, brimming with insights into this extraordinary individual and the significance of his contributions for our time. The appendix contains unique documents outlining Steiner’s work in the Giordano Bruno Association for a Unified Worldview. The lively exchange of ideas and Steiner’s unique role within the Association are evident in the selected lectures and discussions. This book is a must-read for both long-time students of Steiner’s work and newcomers seeking a fresh, enlivened, and enlivening approach to philosophy, history, and literature. On Philosophy, History, and Literature is a translation from German of Über Philosophie, Geschichte, und Literatur. Darstellungen an der Arbeiterbildungsschule und der Freien Hochschule in Berlin, Zusammenstellung edition, Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach, 1983 (GA 51). More ... On the eleventh day of Christmas, join us for a unique celebration featuring "Eleven puppets leaping!" This special event promises shared meditation, creative festivities, and inspiring conversations as we reflect on the past year and usher in the possibilities of 2024. Feel free to invite a puppet friend of your own to join in the imaginative joy! This gathering is not only an opportunity to connect with fellow puppetry enthusiasts but also a chance to usher in the new year with creativity and positivity. More ... Rudolf Steiner received his initial impressions of Christmas from the festive atmosphere of the Austro-Hungarian villages in the latter nineteenth century of his childhood. As Christmas approached, these neighborhoods were suffused by a mood he later described as magical breath that filled the homes and streets with joyful, hopeful anticipation. Even the poorest peasant householders would dedicate a corner of their dwelling to a crèche populated by wooden figures they carved themselves to represent the Holy Family and its pastoral or regal visitors, and above the scene always hovered an ingeniously suspended angel protecting the domestic setting of miraculous newborn.
As a boy, Rudolf Steiner enjoyed repeated opportunities to view such humble vignettes when visiting his neighbors. In light of Steiner’s towering cultural innovations, we can easily forget that the rural working-class comprised the social milieu of his upbringing. As an adult, he spoke of his sympathy (which today we might term empathy) with the proletariat as a natural result of having grown up among them. The villagers of Steiner’s childhood went further than decorating their homes to welcome Christmas, celebrating the Nativity not only in consecrated space but also in dramatic time: The peasants enacted traditional seasonal pageants centered around the two archetypal narratives; every Christmas Eve they re-enacted the biblical stories of the Creation of the World, the Temptation of Adam and Eve, and the Expulsion from Paradise, and on Christmas Day the story of the Shepherds as recounted in the Gospel According to St. Luke. Despite their homely setting, these productions were in no sense casual, but rather conducted in high solemnity: Preparation began at the end of the harvest season, when, in the age prior to electrical illumination, peasants—in that day men and boys only, including for the roles of Mary and the angel—would rehearse by lantern and candlelight. Thanks to the insight and diligence of one of Steiner’s most beloved and inspiring professors, Karl Julius Schröer (1825-1900), we have been bequeathed one trilogy of these plays that today is performed in Waldorf Schools around the world. Through meticulous stenography, Schröer salvaged the triad performed in local dialect in the German enclave at Oberufer [literally: “Upper Shore”], a Hungarian village on an island in the Danube, for hundreds of years. These are exemplars of the genre that made a vivid impression on Rudolf Steiner as a child. Essential to the profound effects the performances imparted was the manner of their preparation, which proceeded in an annual observance of strict rules imposed upon the actors recruited from the peasantry. These rules extended beyond actual rehearsal-sessions: Men and boys honored by the assignment were required to live a quiet and orderly life, apart from womenfolk, to abstain from alcohol and rowdy singing, and to memorize their lines promptly, on penalty of fines paid to the director, as well as for any other divergence from his instructions. Rudolf Steiner recalled these plays in such evocative lectures as “The Christmas Festival in the Changing Course of Time” (December 22, 1910, Berlin, GA 125) and others in 1915. The Christmas season, culminating at Epiphany Day on January 6, was marked by a performance of the Three Kings Play to represent the Nativity as related in the Gospel According to St. Matthew. Actors arrayed in robes and paper crowns bore props of simulated gold, frankincense, and myrrh toward the infant Redeemer as they proceeded through the streets and into homes, where they would be welcomed to approach the prepared crèche. This tradition continues today in parts of Switzerland, whose residents receive children's dramatic offerings and expectations of reciprocal gifts from their hosts. The ceremony thereby gently inducts everyone’s active participation into the festival that celebrates the Incarnation of good will. On multiple occasions, for example in lectures given in 1915 and 1920, Rudolf Steiner held that Anthroposophy can serve humanity’s present task by replenishing our ebbing natural piety through freely undertaken schooling in devotion. Feelings of reverence, once trained through forms of folk-religion, can now be suitably directed toward higher knowledge itself, as the first step along the path toward Initiation. To help prepare children for a lifetime of appreciating worlds higher than their own personalities and material surroundings, soon after its founding in 1919, teachers at the first Waldorf School in Stuttgart presented the Oberufer Christmas plays as a gift to their students. This practice has spread widely, so that today the plays are performed at hundreds of Waldorf Schools worldwide. In their sensitive mixture of joy, humor, and piety, their universal appeal complements and transcends whatever formal religious training the children might receive at home. Our speaker recalled her own experience with these plays as a teacher at Highland Hall Waldorf School in Los Angeles. In the early 1970s, a new tradition began: Out of their own initiative, twelfth-grade students there produced the Three Kings Play to round out the trilogy in which the teachers performed the Paradise and Shepherds’ plays. Staging the latter, the teachers playing the shepherds, bundled in fleece and fur in the balmy southern California climate, needed the school air-conditioners to run at maximum capacity for a three full hours leading up to show-time, in order to conduce them convincingly to shiver in their roles as winter flock-wardens. Some surviving alumni of the first Waldorf School in Stuttgart have testified that their impressions of the Christmas plays, performed prior to the school’s forced closing by the National Socialists in 1938, sustained them through the dark times that immediately followed, and then accompanied the alumni as cultural nourishment into their tenth decade of life. This testifies to the truth of Rudolf Steiner’s calling these plays platonic gifts streaming into the Waldorf School movement from the spiritual worlds. Thus hope can be refreshed through devotion inspired by incarnated wisdom. But in Rudolf Steiner’s experiences of Christmas, this hope also sustained a bitter amalgam with tragedy, a juxtaposition that reached dramatic culmination on New Year’s Eve in 1922, when an arsonist’s fire destroyed the First Goetheanum, occasioning incalculable social, spiritual, and aesthetic losses. Products of priceless artistic and artisanal labor, such as hand-wrought fixtures of carved wood, and giant stained- glass windows etched by Steiner and his coworkers, were irretrievably destroyed in a single night. But a resourceful individual has capitalized on the surviving records of the forms of the First Goetheanum. The present, second Goetheanum’s capable Stage Lighting Supervisor retired some years ago. This essential coworker in eurythmy and drama productions lived at Haus Friedwart, a nearby guest-lodging, and so could use its basement as a studio in which to craft a detailed 1:20 scale-model of the First Goetheanum. When the burgeoning model outgrew its dwelling, a resident of a village thirty minutes’ drive away made available to this energetic worker a barn of sufficient size to house the project. The craftsman’s remarkable feat replicates the lost structure in fine detail: Each type of wood, originally selected on the basis of its esoteric qualities, is reproduced, species for species; roofing slate imported from Norway, glass brilliantly stained and inscribed with pictures by dentist drill, and all other minutia are represented in the same materials and techniques in miniature. This work progressed until the twin cupolas outgrew even its capacious barn and was transported to the room adjacent to the famous Representative of Mankind sculptural grouping, where it was installed on Michaelmas Day for display and can be now be viewed by the visiting public. We were encouraged not to miss the opportunity. Although, through the burning of the First Goetheanum on New Year's Eve 1922, tragedy occured at the end of the Christmas festival, Rudolf Steiner never allowed grief to overcome him. This is evident from his immediate resolve and execution to plan a new Goetheanum to replace the one destroyed by fire. The fruits of this determination are gradually gaining recognition outside anthroposophical circles as well, for example in a recent book, published in France, assessing the past millennium’s twelve most significant (western) human achievements: The collection lists the First and Second Goetheanums together with the Cathedral of Chartres and Hagia Sophia, and includes Rudolf Steiner among the twelve individuals considered historically most significant. Nor was such renewal limited to the material plane. Christmas was the season Steiner chose for the renowned 1923 refounding of the General (or perhaps better termed Universal) Anthroposophical Society. One of its central aspects was the innovative laying of its Foundation Stone, not physically but rather as a powerful mantric verse planted in the hearts of the renewed Society’s members present at the festive conference, which stretched from Christmas Day through New Year’s Day 1923–1924. The first event on the program in the afternoon of December 24th was in fact the Oberufer Paradise Play, by necessity presented in the carpentry workshop in lieu of the theater-building that had been burned, followed by a performance of the Shepherds’ Play on Christmas Day and again on December 29th, and the Three Kings’ Play on December 27th and December 31st. The day after Christmas, celebrated as the "Second" Christmas Day in Europe, also saw one of the early performances of eurythmy, an art that today we still rightly call young, and therefore then in its very infancy. The production was prefaced by an address in which Steiner emphasized the place of eurythmy at every true celebration. The Foundation Stone Meditation itself evokes the original Christmas in its concluding Fourth Panel. In recent centuries of recapitulating the biblical narratives of the birth of Jesus, Christendom has remarked on the differences between the Gospels of Luke and Matthew: Luke 2:1-20 relates the story, now long familiar, depicting the Annunciation to the shepherds and their visitation to the child lying in a manger, while Matthew 1:18-2:12 recounts priestly kings who presented their gifts to the occupants of a house. These two depictions, emphasizing the forces of warmth and light respectively, meet in our awareness at every recitation of the Fourth Panel of the Foundation Stone Meditation. Although today it is common to find these two scenarios conflated into a single tableau, such was not the case prior to the eighteenth century, when the kings and shepherds might be depicted in adjacent settings, but never staged as mingled. This iconological distinction suggests an intuitive, artistic recognition of the veiled historical truth that the diverse stories are indeed distinct and symbiotic, a relation the Fourth Panel of the Foundation Stone Meditation recognizes by juxtaposing their complementary meanings of Christmas for human evolution: At the turning point of time The Spirit-light of the world Entered the stream of earth existence. Darkness of night Had ceased its reign; Day-radiant light Shone forth in human souls: Light That gives warmth To simple shepherds’ hearts; Light That enlightens The wise heads of kings. Light divine, Christ-Sun, Warm Our hearts; Enlighten Our heads; That good may become What from our hearts We are founding, What from our heads Through our heads We direct, With single will. |
Sophia Institute offers a variety of programs, courses, publications and other resources to anyone interested in Anthroposophy and Waldorf/Steiner inspired education. Currently there are students from all over the world enrolled in the Sophia Institute online courses. Sophia Institute publications are available worldwide. The Sophia Institute newsletter and blog provide insights and information concerning the work of Anthroposophical initiatives, Waldorf/Steiner Schools, the Camphill Movement, and related endeavors. More ...
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