Warm Valentine's greetings to all! The inspiration for a story is like a little heart seed… if tended, it sprouts and grows into an imaginal journey - leafing out as a narrative that nourishes us with the richness of what it means to be human. We can encounter new dimensions of ourselves on that journey, and also make discoveries in place, time, and wider consciousness. We inhabit our own individuality, yet are united with a deeper understanding of humanity. Since the beginning of civilization, stories have woven threads of connection from one human soul to the other. A fabric of wisdom, in which the weft of our individuality and the warp of our universality are united.
 
In this past year of the pandemic, fear, illness, and death have risen up as ever present specters in our midst. These are not new, and have plagued humanity throughout the ages. It can be our tendency to push them away and deny them their place. In many stories, death is personified as the grim reaper, the monster, the demon… Death is feared, respected, and powerful. At times, the hero tries to outwit death  - yet learns a lesson about destiny along the way. For, despite our aversion, illness and death are teachers for us mortals of the earth. Knowledge of our fragile impermanence leads us to gratitude for the gift of life and each other. Too often, in the business of this 21st century, we have forgotten how to lovingly care for others and ourselves; we need to relearn compassionate service. Ultimately, by working through life’s resisting forces and illness, we can develop capacities of renewed resilience. 

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Love and Its Meaning in the World --- A lecture by Rudolf Steiner given at Zurich, 17th December, 1912

When we say that at the present point of time in his evolution man must learn to understand the Christ Impulse, the thought may well occur: What, then, is the position of one who has never heard of the Christ Impulse, may perhaps never even have heard the name of Christ? Will such a man be deprived of the Christ Impulse because he has not heard the name of Christ? Is it necessary to have some theoretical knowledge of the Christ Impulse in order that Christ's power may flow into the soul? We will clarify our minds about these questions by the following thoughts concerning human life from birth until death.

The human being comes into the world and lives through early childhood in a half-sleeping state. He has gradually to learn to feel himself as an “I”, to find his bearings as an “I”, and his life of soul is constantly enriched by what is received through the “I”. By the time death is approaching, this life of soul is at its richest and ripest. Hence the vital question arises: What of our life of soul when the body falls away? It is a peculiarity of our physical life and of our life of soul that the wealth of our experience and knowledge increases in significance the nearer we approach death; but at the same time certain attributes are lost and replaced by others of an entirely different character. In youth we gather knowledge, pass through experiences, cherish hopes which as a rule can only later be fulfilled. The older we grow, the more do we begin to love the wisdom revealed by life. Love of wisdom is not egoistic, for this love increases in the measure in which we draw near to death; it increases in the measure in which the expectation of gaining something from our wisdom decreases. Our love for this content of our soul steadily increases. In this respect Spiritual Science may actually become a source of temptation, inasmuch as a man may be led to believe that his next life will depend upon the acquisition of wisdom in this present life. The effect of Spiritual Science may be an extension of egoism beyond the bounds of this present life, and therein lies danger. Thus if wrongly understood, Spiritual Science may act as a tempter — this lies in its very nature.

Love of the wisdom acquired from life may be compared with the flowering of a plant when the necessary stage of maturity has been reached. Love arises for something that is contained within ourselves. Men have often made the attempt to sublimate the impulse of love for what is within themselves. In the Mystics, for example, we find evidence of how they strove to transmute the urge of self-love into love of wisdom, and to let this love ray out in beauty. By sinking in contemplation into the depths of their own soul-life they strove to become aware of the Divine Spark within them. But the truth is that the wisdom which man acquires in life is only the means whereby the seed of his next life is unfolded. When a plant has completed its growth through the year, the seed remains. So it is with the wisdom acquired from life. Man passes through the Gate of Death and the spiritual core of being in its process of ripening is the seed of the next life. A man who feels this may become a Mystic and mistake what is only the seed of the next life to be the Divine Spark, the Absolute. This is his interpretation of it because it goes against the grain for a man to acknowledge that this spirit-seed is nothing but his own self. Meister Eckhart, John Tauler, and others, spoke of it as the “God within”, because they knew nothing of reincarnation. If we grasp the meaning of the law of reincarnation we recognise the significance of love in the world, both in a particular and in a general sense. When we speak of karma, we mean that which as cause in the one life has its effect in the next. In terms of cause and effect we cannot, however, speak truly of love; we cannot speak of a deed of love and its eventual compensation. True, if there is a deed, there will be compensation, but this has nothing to do with love. Deeds of love do not look for compensation in the next life.

In the mighty Celtic calendar, the year is marked by the two solstices and the two equinoxes. At the Winter Solstice, the days are the shortest of the year; at the Summer Solstice, the days are the longest of the year. At the Autumn Equinox and the Spring Equinox the days are exactly as long as the nights.The days that mark the halfway mark between these four celestial events are traditionally named “cross-quarter days” as they are the between the quarters markers.

The second day of February is one of those cross-quarter days. Some celebrate it as Ground hog day or the day when our hope of an end to winter might be divined by a groundhog. “Punxsutawney Phil,” from Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, has been the official weather groundhog, marking this day since 1887. For over 100 years the groundhog has been predicting, with 100% accuracy, whether or not winter will be done in six weeks or will continue beyond that six weeks. The legend is that Punxsutawney Phil has never died but continues predicting winter’s end by drinking the elixir of life each summer at Punxsutawney’s annual Groundhog picnic.

If Phil comes out of his groundhog home on a sunny day, he sees his shadow (of which he is evidently afraid) and heads back in to hibernate some more. This mans much more winter for all of us, not just for Punxsutawney Phil. If the day is cloudy and ol’ Phil does not see his shadow? In six weeks winter will be done. An early spring is then in store!

In the Druid and Christian traditions, the cross-quarter day on February 2nd is called Candlemas Day. Traditionally this day was reserved for preparing candles for the coming year – first for the whole village and then for the church – sort of a working festival!

There is a little round with words to help keep straight which weather means which:

When Candlemas Day is bright with sun;
Then Winter’s power has just begun –  
But when Candlemas Day is dark with rain
Then Winter’s power is on the wane!

Are you Irish? Then you might know that Candlemas Day, or Groundhog Day is also St. Brigid’s Day.

Brid, on the first or second of February, collects kindling to warm the spring and to make her young again, as a cailleach-becoming-maiden.

Brigid (Brighid, Brigit, Brid, Bridie, Bridgette) invented the Irish tradition of keening or coaineadh. Brid herself keened the death of her son, Ruadán, and launched the art form of mourning the soul just passed onto the spiritual path with loving wailing that protects the deceased from usurping spirits during the transition.

February first or second is a good time to make “St. Brigit crosses." These invoke the North Star and evoke the pattern that the Big Dipper makes in the sky in the course of the year. As the night sky turns around the North Star, the Big Dipper turns through the seasonal year like the hands of a clock, only counter-clockwise.

Like the flaming might of the North Star, Brigit is the fire-keeper of that flame of life that mothers tend so that families do not freeze to death in winter. Her star shows the overlapping connection of families whose lineage is not broken prematurely because of trauma in the cold months. It’s in winter that Brigid becomes the cailleach, the old woman, who keens. On Imbolc (Groundhog Day) she collects her kindling to encourage the spring of regeneration and this renders her young again.

Children make St.Brigit crosses by weaving bits of straw into spiraling crosses that then become kindle on Imbolc for St. Brigid. If we take up the tradition, our minds focus meditatively on craft and we get through the last, long ,freezing days of winter, connecting our work to the stars. Our winter minds become then part of the great celestial sphere that turns and brings us spring .

Here’s a simple plan for making St. Brigid crosses!  Enjoy!

The Association for a Healing Education (AHE) is offering online, one-on-one consulting sessions for early childhood, elementary and high school teachers and/or educational support teachers at AWSNA affiliated schools who want to increase their understanding and ability to meet the array of children with learning needs in their classes.  

This program is fully funded through a grant with no cost to the school.

Online sessions will include consultations about individuals, groups and classes in a series of conferences that will include guidance from our faculty and demonstrations of activities from The Extra Lesson and other related resources and research.

AHE will provide suggestions for useful materials and instructional videos relevant to the teacher's specific needs in working with students and parents. The program is designed to support educators who are teaching online, in person, or in a hybrid model of online and in person. More ...

Waldorf education has a lot of support. With over 1,000 schools operating around the world and a 100-year track record, Waldorf has stood the test of time. But what do the experts say? Let’s find out.

Stanford University conducted a multi-year, rigorous analysis of Waldorf education that resulted in a 139-page report (December 2015).

What information did Stanford look at?
Stanford reviewed Waldorf student performance on standardized tests, engagement (love of learning) and rates of problematic behavior (resulting in suspensions) in the Sacramento Unified School District. Stanford used quantitative (or rigorous statistical) methods on a large dataset of more than 118,000 students, consisting of 23,000-24,000 students from 3rd to 8th grade over a five-year period.

What did Stanford find? More ...

​Course Description:

Today’s world often disconnects and disenfranchises us from death, bringing fear and feelings of loss and separation. In the last century, birth and death were removed from the home and taken to the hospital. The distance from the home made death such a taboo that people are afraid to even talk about it.

However, Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual science along with Indigenous knowledge brings us into deeper connection with the spiritual world with those who have crossed the threshold and with our own life and death journey.

This series is an opportunity to make time in a safe space to explore the theme of death and dying. Sessions will focus on group participation and personal reflection. Sessions will be recorded but live attendance is preferred. Journey with us in community, we hope to see you there!

Course Details: 

Dates: Saturdays on January 30, February 27, March 27, April 17

Time:  12:00-1:30pm Eastern / 9:00-10:30 am Pacific 

Register: Click here to Register. Check confirmation email to finalize registration through Zoom. All sessions will be recorded and sent to participants within 24 hours of the live event (live participation is encouraged). 

Total Cost (Series of 4 sessions): Sliding scale $60-$100*

*If payment is a barrier please email programs@anthroposophy.org with requests for support.  More ...

As the light of the year wanes and the quiet of dark nights begin, the urgent questions within each of us, individually and collectively, begin to arise as a spark of future-bearing thought. Join us as we make time to go inward, to explore and work with the light, warmth, and depth of the season. 
 
What: ASA Online Holy Nights Seed: A Rose By Any Other Name hosted by the ASA Sophia Group and friends around the country. Click here for more details on the offering.  Each 30 minute gathering includes a meditative time with the new zodiac image and the virtue of the day, an artistic/writing prompt, and a short sharing related to the Divine Feminine.   

When: 12-12:30pm Eastern / 9-9:30am Pacific on December 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 and January 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (Note: No meeting on December 31). Can't join us live? No problem. Each gathering will be recorded and posted on our Holy Nights page. 

How: Register here! Then be sure to check your email for a confirmation with the Zoom link you need to join us live. 

Cost: This event is free! Donations of $25, $50, $100 or any amount are welcome.

Warm wishes, 

The ASA Programs Team 

Buy Nothing Day 2020 / November 27 2020

Buy Nothing Friday is here! At last. Thanksgiving is past, and there's a wide-open day to DO things together. Ignore (the mighty, noisy hype of) Black Friday and come along with us for Buy Nothing Friday #7. The Library Lady has made many ideas ready for you to open and begin with family, friends, and your good ideas to enhance the ones she has prepared for us all! Sing and celebrate while you make nice things and forget about the world of commerce for just one day! Heads, hands, and hearts, make Buy Nothing Friday the best day of the year!

Happy Thanksgiving! And thank you for trying hard to do things a little differently, a little more quietly, with a lot of heart and goodwill!

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Peter Stebbing, ed. & trans., The Goetheanum Cupola Motifs of Rudolf Steiner: Paintings by Gerard Wagner. Great Barrington, Mass.: SteinerBooks, 2011. 246 pages, 208 illustrations.

Gerard Wagner’s paintings of Rudolf Stiener's Goetheanum cupola sketches bring these works to a wide audience that would otherwise have little access to or knowledge of those representations of Steiner's artistic spiritual vision contained in the first Goetheanum and lost to the fire that destroyed that great building. Wagner re-created those archetypal motifs in new ways over a period of decades. They constitute an artistic high point of Wagner's work as a whole, but they cannot be separated from the Goetheanum itself, nor can they be fully understood except in the context of anthroposophic spiritual science. In this sense, The Goetheanum Cupola Motifs of Rudolf Steiner points to the historic and spiritual importance of the first Goetheanum building. Rudolf Steiner's lecture on October 25, 1914, and his lecture on the paintings of the small cupola on January 25, 1920, are published in English here for the first, along with color photographs from 1922. Also included are the little-known colored etchings of the Goetheanum window motifs made by by Assya Turgenieff with Rudolf Steiner, as well as other centrally important contributions to an understanding of this new direction in art. Though the main emphasis is on visual examples, the book achieves something more than simply cataloging these works of art. The book conveys, too, a sense of the artistic process itself. Thus, Gerard Wagner's observations here have a special relevance. In addition to the two lectures by Rudolf Steiner and the paintings by Gerard Wagner—in full color—The Goetheanum Cupola Motifs of Rudolf Steiner presents essays from Peter Stebbing, Louise Clason, Assya Turgenieff, and Gerard Wagner. 

CONTENTS:
Foreword by Sergei O. Prokofieff
Preface
The Renewal of the Artistic Principle / Rudolf Steiner
Goethe and the Goetheanum / Rudolf Steiner
The Artists Who Originally Worked on Painting the Cupolas of the First Goetheanum / Peter Stebbing
Recollections of the Years of Painting in the Small Cupola of the First Goetheanum / Louise Clason

I. THE MOTIFS OF THE LARGE CUPOLA
The Large Cupola Sketch-Motifs of Rudolf Steiner
Large Cupola Studies of Gerard Wagner
A Further Development of the Large Cupola Motifs / Peter Stebbing

II. THE MOTIFS OF THE SMALL CUPOLA
The Paintings of the Small Cupola / Rudolf Steiner
Small Cupola Studies of Gerard Wagner
The Question of the North Side: "Counter Colors" or "Complementary Colors"? / Peter Stebbing

III. THE COLORED GLASS WINDOW MOTIFS
Indications of Rudolf Steiner for Engraving the Window Motifs / Assya Turgenieff
On the Windows of the First Goetheanum / Rudolf Steiner
The Red Window Middle Motif Metamorphosed (Paintings of Gerard Wagner)

APPENDIX
A Path of Practice in Painting / Gerard Wagner
Biographical Sketches
About the Painter Gerard Wagner / Peter Stebbing


Reviews: “I found The Goetheanum Cupola Motifs of Rudolf Steiner excellent with regard to content, as well as the layout and the quality of the pictures. One can only wish this book many readers, and that by means of it they will be able to comprehend more profoundly the magnitude of what Rudolf Steiner accomplished in the field of the visual arts—as also what his pupil, the unique artist Gerard Wagner, has achieved in continuing this impulse. Particularly impressive, above all, is Wagner's steadfast loyalty to the art impulse of Rudolf Steiner, combined with his own sovereign and independent work on the basic motifs, which are wonderfully documented in this book.”—Sergei O. Prokofieff

Sergei O. Prokofieff (1954-2014) was born in Moscow, where he studied fine arts and painting at the Moscow School of Art. At an early age he encountered the work of Rudolf Steiner and quickly realized that his life would be dedicated to the Christian path of esoteric knowledge. He wrote his first book, Rudolf Steiner and the Founding of the New Mysteries, while living in Soviet Russia, and it was published in English in 1994. After the fall of Communism, he helped establish the Anthroposophical Society in Russia. In 2001, he became a member of the Executive Council of the General Anthroposophical Society at the Goetheanum in Switzerland. More than 30 of his books have been translated into English. Sergei Prokofieff passed away in Dornach, Switzerland.

Peter Stebbing was born in Copenhagen in 1941 and attended Waldorf schools before studying art in Brighton and London. He moved to the U.S. and graduated from Cornell University with an M.F.A. in painting. Following his first teaching stint at the University of Kansas, Peter began teaching color courses at the City University of New York in 1970. Having begun investigations into Goethe’s color theory, he visited the Gerard Wagner painting school in Dornach, Switzerland. There he began training with Wagner, who asked him to teach in the school. Peter later established a painting school at the Threefold Educational Foundation in Spring Valley, New York. For the past thirty years, he has taught introductory courses in Goethe’s color theory with experiments in England, Germany, Switzerland, and the U.S. Since 1992, Peter has been director of the Arteum Painting School in Dornach, Switzerland, and has held a number of exhibitions of his work in Europe and North America.

Gerard Wagner (1906–1999) was born in Germany and grew up in England. He began his vocation as an artist by learning from an English plein air painter before starting formal studies at the Royal College of Art in London. Beginning in 1926, he took up the challenge of a new direction in painting as initiated by Rudolf Steiner, which became the essence of his life’s work for more than seventy years. Through his efforts to grasp the secrets of Steiner’s training sketches for painters, Wagner succeeded in disclosing their metamorphic character and, from this, was able to develop a systematic approach to painting. Elisabeth Wagner-Koch, whom Gerard later married, became his first student in 1950, and together they established The Painting School at the Goetheanum, of which he remained the principle teacher until his death in Arlesheim,Switzerland. Rudolf Steiner’s indications for an art of the future remained the impulse for Wagner’s research and artistic activity throughout his life. The fruits of his research are a unique method of teaching and his archive of paintings, which continue to be a source of inspiration for the school. Wagner’s wife Elisabeth cares for the archive of about 4,000 paintings.  More ...

According to Rudolf Steiner the Kali Yuga lasted from about 3000 BC until 1899 AD. The term derives from Hinduism. During this era humankind gradually lost contact with the spiritual world. This was necessary to allow a sense of separate individuality and self-reliance to evolve.

The Michael Age commenced in 1879 and Steiner spoke of this age in the following way: “In the last third of the nineteenth century, the Spiritual Being we call Michael became the ruler, as it were, of everything of a spiritual character in human events on earth. … Michael is the active being, the being who, as it were, pulses through our breath, our veins, our nerves, to the end that we may actively develop all that belongs to our full humanity in connection with the cosmos. What stands before us as a challenge from Michael is that we become active in our very thoughts, working out our view of the world through our own inner activity. We belong truly to the Michael Age only when we do not sit down inactively and seek to let enlightenment come to us from within and from without. We must cooperate actively in what the world offers us by way of experiences and opportunities for observation.” 

The indications by Steiner regarding the Kali Yuga are interestingly more on the mysterious side. The source often referred to are the following lectures by Steiner. Other sources (including non-Anthroposophical sources) for instance Wikipedia and Britannica, refer to the Kali Yuga, commonly agreeing on the start of the Kali Yuga to be around 3100 BC, while the end of the Kali Yuga is stated to be in a far off future of thousands and thousands of years from now, while Steiner's position appears to be that the end of the Kali Yuga was indeed in the recent past namely in the year 1899 ...


The End of the Dark Age - A lecture by Rudolf Steiner (Vienna, June 11, 1922 / GA 211)

Mankind unfolded its intellectual life in the course of many centuries. This intellectual life gradually led it away from spirituality. The intellect itself is spirit, but its content is no longer a spiritual content. Indeed, the intellect is spiritual, but it seeks as its content external Nature, the external life of Nature. Hence the intellect is spirit, but it fills itself with something which cannot appear to it as spiritual. The great tragedy, the modern tragedy of the world, is that man may look into himself and that he must say to himself: When I am intellectually active, I am spiritually active, but at the same time my intellect, which is pure spirit, cannot absorb in a direct way the spiritual. I fill the spirit in me only with things pertaining to Nature.

This is what devastates and rends the human soul to-day. Even though we do not wish to admit this torn and devastated condition, it nevertheless exists in the spiritual regions of the human soul and constitutes the fundamental evil and the fundamental tragedy of our age.

If we wish to express in habitual terms what I have explained to you just now, we must draw attention to all the spiritual powers that are still active in the whole life of Nature; they enter into us because we fill our own spirit with the life of Nature, and we may designate these powers as the Ahrimanic powers.

Our intellect is thus exposed to the great danger of falling a prey to the Ahrimanic powers. During the past centuries, when the intellect was still unfolding and still possessed the inheritance of an old spiritual life, these Ahrimanic powers did not have that great influence on man which they have now. The life of Nature is apparently spread out round about us; but this is only apparent: for Ahriman lives in Nature. And by absorbing Nature, by believing that it is only controlled by neutral laws of Nature, we really absorb spiritual powers, even though we are not aware of this; we absorb Ahrimanic spiritual powers, who took over a special task in cosmic life, in the whole evolution of the world.

When we speak of the task of these spiritual powers, some people are easily inclined to say: But why does the divine guidance of the world admit these powers? — To this we must reply: All that exists in the earthly sphere may be grasped with the ordinary understanding; but when it is a question of grasping in a spiritual-scientific way that which transcends the earth, we must do this through spiritual vision (Anschauung).

Consequently we must say: These powers exist, — but the way in which they are connected with the divine-spiritual powers pertaining to man, can only be grasped in the course of long epochs; indeed, the powers belonging to the super-human sphere are perhaps quite inaccessible to the human understanding. We can therefore only say: These powers exist, they show themselves to those who have spiritual knowledge.

The tasks of the Ahrimanic beings is the following: To prevent the earth from continuing to develop as it should develop in accordance with the intentions of the divine-spiritual powers with whom man is connected from the very outset, inasmuch as he is a human soul. (You will find all these things mentioned in my “Occult Science”). In my “Occult Science” I have spoken of the future development of the earth, of the Jupiter and Venus phases of evolution: The aim of the Ahrimanic powers is to prevent this course of development.

Their aim is to harden and freeze up the earth, to shape it in such a way that, together with the earth, man remains an earthbound creature. He becomes hardened, as it were, within earthly substance and continues to live in the future ages of the world as a kind of statue of his past. These powers thus pursue definite aims, which undoubtedly appear as part of their own individual striving.

The earth could not reach its goal if the Ahrimanic powers were to gain the victory, if man were alienated from his beginnings, from the powers who supported him at the beginning of his evolution. Outwardly, the human being would develop in a way entirely in keeping with the earthly sphere, but by suppressing his innate disposition, which must lead him beyond the earth.

The Ahrimanic powers could not touch man while the intellect was still rooted in the spiritual through an old inheritance, as was the case during the past three or four centuries. But this has changed since the beginning of the 20th century. The ancient Indian wisdom knew this, and fixed the end of the 19th century as the end of the “Dark Age,” of Kali-Yuga. Thus it had an intimation of a new age. This new age was to indicate that from the beginning of the 20th century, our deepest concern should no longer be that of clinging to an old spiritual inheritance, but of absorbing the new light, the pure light, in our earthly life. ...


The Mission of Folk-Souls - A lecture by Rudolf Steiner (June 17, 1910)

... Spiritual research at the present time shows us that after Kali Yuga had run its course, which lasted for five thousand years (from about 3100 B.C. to 1899 A.D.), new capacities begin to develop in man. These will at first appear in single individuals, in a few especially gifted ones only. It will come about, for instance, that persons will be able, through the natural evolution of their capacities, to see something of what is announced only by Anthroposophy, by spiritual research.

We are told that in future persons in whom the organs of the etheric body are developed will be found in increasing numbers, and will attain to clairvoyance, which can to-day be acquired only by training. And why will this be so? What will the etheric body possess for the perception of those few? There will be people who will receive impressions of which I should like to describe one to you. A man will do something in the external world and will then feel himself impelled to observe something. A sort of dream-picture will come before his eyes which at first he will not understand. But if he has heard something about Karma, of how everything in the world takes place in accordance with law, he will then learn to understand, little by little, that what he has seen is the karmic counterpart of his actions in the etheric world. Thus gradually the first elements of future capacities are being formed.

Those persons who receive a stimulus from Anthroposophy will, (from the middle of the twentieth century on), gradually experience a renewal of that which St. Paul saw in etheric clairvoyance as a mystery to come, the ‘Mystery of the Living Christ’. There will be a new manifestation of Christ, a manifestation which must come when human capacities so develop in the natural course, that the Christ can be seen in that world in which He always was, and in which since the Mystery of Golgotha He is to be found by Initiates. Humanity is growing into that world in order to be able to perceive from the physical plane that which could formerly only be seen from higher planes in the Mystery Schools.

The Mystery-training will nevertheless not become superfluous. It always presents things in a different way from what they are presented to the untrained soul. But that which is given in the Mystery-training will, by the transformation of the physical human body, show the Mystery of the Living Christ in a new way, as it can be seen perceptively from the physical plane, as it will be seen in the etheric, at first by a few and afterwards by more and more persons, in the course of the next three thousand years. That which St. Paul saw as the living Christ Who is to be found in the etheric world since the event of Golgotha, will be seen by an ever increasing number of people.

The manifestations of Christ will be ever higher and higher. That is the mystery of the evolution of Christ. At the time when the Mystery of Golgotha took place men were to comprehend everything from the physical plane; it was therefore necessary that they should also be able to see Christ on the physical plane, to have news of Him there, and to testify to His power on that plane. But mankind is intended to progress, it is organized for the development of higher powers, and anyone who can believe that the manifestation of Christ will be repeated in the same form which was necessary nineteen hundred years ago, knows nothing of the progress of humanity. It took place on the physical plane because at that time the forces of man were adjusted to the physical plane. But those forces will evolve, and hence, in the course of the next three thousand years, Christ will be able to speak more and more to the more highly developed human forces.

What I have just said is a truth which has for a long time been communicated to a few individuals from within the esoteric schools, a truth which to-day must be found especially in the domain of Anthroposophy, because Anthroposophy is to be the preparatory school for that which is to come. Humanity is now organized for liberty, for the personal recognition of that which is developing within it, and it might occur that those persons who will come forward as the first pioneers of the Christ-vision, will be shouted down as fools, that what they have to offer to mankind will not be listened to, and humanity might sink still further into materialism than it has already done and trample under foot that which could become the most wonderful manifestation for mankind. Everything that may happen in the future is to a certain extent subject to the will of humanity, so that men may also miss what is for their salvation. That is extremely important: Anthroposophy is a preparation for what is to be the new Christ-revelation.

Materialism may make a mistake in two different ways. One — which will probably be made by reason of the Western traditions — consists in considering as mere folly, as wild fantasy, everything that the first pioneers of the new Christ-revelation will announce in the twentieth century as the result of their own vision. Materialism has now invaded all domains. It is not only at home in the West but it has also taken hold of the East; there, however, it assumes another form. It may happen that oriental materialism may cause men to fail to recognize what is higher in a manifestation of Christ at a higher stage, and then will occur that which has so often been spoken of here, and will again and again be repeated, that materialistic thinking will transform the appearance of Christ into a materialistic view. ...