Being Human Spring Summer 2025

being human

DESTINY REINCARNATION

COMMUNITY

ANNUAL CONFERENCE

ANTHROPOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN AMERICA

OCTOBER 10 - 12

2025 DETROIT WALDORF

SCHOOL

4 Introduction to this issue from Mary Stewart Adams Features

14 Address Given on the Anniversary of Rudolf Steiner’s Death by Tom O’Keefe

16 Where I Find Rudolf Steiner by Mary Stewart Adams

20 Dear Brother Steiner by Linda Williams

24 Thou, Spirit of Mine Earthly Realm by Marc Desaules

26 Owen Barfield and the Word by Jeffrey Hippolito Art

30 When Motion Becomes Meaning by Aria Ramsinghani

33 Becoming the Melody - a poem by Pippa Wilcox

34 & 62 Inspired by the Rainbow by Richard Neal

40 Three Poems by John Urban

41 When Life Slips Out of the Body - a poem by Peter Rennick

43 Word - a poem by Jeffrey Hipoilito Research

36 Spiritual Research in Medicine and Theraphy by Adam Blanning

38 Anthroposophic Psychology by Leigh Glenn Reviews

42 Owen Barfield’s Poetic Philosophy by Jeffrey Hipolito - review by Fred Dennehy

44 Places of Pilgrimage and Healing by Dr. Adrian Cooper - review by Mick Taylor

45 How Can Granite Arise from Basalt? by Dankmar Bosse - review by Lynn Madsen

The Calendar of the Soul

48 Calendar of the Soul correspondence, Easter 2025-2026 by Herbert Hagens

49 Reading the Timeless Inscriptions by Mary Stewart Adams News

52 The Lawrence Anthroposophical Study Group by Rick Mitchell

54 Introducting New Council Members

56 Memoriam for Betty Staley by Elizabeth Beaven

57 Memoriam for Ed Scherer by Herbert Hagens

58 Welcoming New Members of the Anthroposophical Society in America

59 Honoring Members Who Have Crossed the Threshold of Death

60 Paying Tribute to Cynthia Chelius by we who love her Deadline for contributions

ON THE COVER

On the Crossing to Oslo, 1908

There are few candid images of Rudolf Steiner taken when he was unaware of the camera. The image on our cover shows him together with Marie von Sivers on the ferry to Oslo, Norway, during his first “extended lecture tour,” late March, early April 1908. At the time he was lecturing on the Gospels, and in Oslo he spoke about the Gospel of St. John

In a letter to Edouard Schuré dated March 26, 1908, Rudolf Steiner wrote: In two hours we leave for Scandinavia. Lectures are planned in Lund, Stockholm, Upsala, Gothenburg, Christiania (Oslo), Malmö and Copenhagen.

In the photo it is easy to sense, in the outwarddirected gaze, that he appears to be looking not at the world, but into it.

One person sails across the ocean, and only a few inward experiences pass through his soul; another will hear the eternal language of the cosmic spirit; for him are unveiled the mysterious riddles of existence.

~Rudolf Steiner “Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment

The Anthroposophica l Society in America

Gerneral Secretary & President

Charles Burkam

Secretary, Central Region

Mary Mertz

Chair, at-large

Ezra Sullivan

Western Region

Christine Burke

At-large

Margaret Runyon

At-large

Gino Ver Eecke

At-large

Eduardo Yi being human

MAGAZINE

is published by the Anthroposophical Society in America 1923 Geddes Avenue Ann Arbor, MI 48104-1797

Past issues are online at www.issuu.com/anthrousa

Please send submissions, questions and comments to: editor@anthroposophy.org or to the postal address above being human is sent free to ASA Members (visit anthroposophy.org/join) and shared free at many branches and initiatives.

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©2025 The Anthroposophical Society in America. Resposibility for the content of the articles is the authors’.

Letter from the General Secretary

This issue of being human was being produced in the midst of significant activity in the anthroposophical movement ~ during preparations for the 100th anniversary of Rudolf Steiner’s death on March 30th and Easter 2025, the first spiritual new year of the next century of anthroposophy in the world. The challenge this presented was in how to include these momentous events while also looking forward, knowing that by publication date, the long anticipation for these events would now be transformed into experience, and, ideally, nourishment for the way ahead. Immediate reporting is not so easy, so our pages are filled not with reporting on these events, but with encounter, of Rudolf Steiner in contemporary culture, through research, in art, in the lives of our members. We are grateful to the authors, whose submissions helped us identify where and how we might begin to carve out this new path.

We begin with Tom O’Keefe, editor, translator, teacher, and an address he delivered to the community in Spring Valley, NY on the centenary of Rudolf Steiner’s death, March 30th.

The next two essays were solicited by our colleagues at the Goetheanum in anticipation of this centenary time. I was given a prompt by Christiane Haid of the Literary Arts Section of the School of Spiritual Science: Where do I Find Rudolf Steiner? The essay appeared in the Section’s magazine STIL and appears here, translated back into English.

Linda Williams’ Dear Brother Steiner , was beautifully delivered from the main stage at the Goetheanum during the weekend of commemoration March 2830, 2025. The parallel lines Linda drew, describing the lives of her greatgrandparents and their experiences in the United States at the time that Rudolf Steiner was born, leading up to her own encounter with anthroposophy generations later, is intimately drawn, fostering an opportunity for presencing spiritual science in a culturally rooted way.

From the death anniversary to present encounter, we come next to Marc Desaules’ essay describing how we may engage with the Folk Spirit of our country society ~ a spiritual striving that is as essential now as it was when Rudolf Steiner first identified the work of the various beings involved in community life around the world.

Jeffrey Hipolito then invites us into an experience of the Word, as articulated through the life and work of Owen Barfield, among the first English-language members of the movement , and made beautifully accessible here through Hipolito’s scholarship.

From these bold beginnings, our attention is draw to the future, which not only shines brightly but speaks consequently through the dynamic essay and thoughtful poetry of two students who participated in the Youth Eurythmy Festival in February 2025. See pages 30-33.

Over this, Richard Neal drapes the rainbow, sounding a welcome note of divine encouragement into this moment, made luminous when we are able to enter into living relationship with color.

Contemporary research informed by anthroposophy is demonstrated with

Adam Blanning’s report on medical and therapeutic research. Adam is co-leader of the Medical Section of the School of Spiritual Science, living and working in Colorado. We then take an insider’s look at Anthroposophic Psychology with Leigh Glenn, who gives a colorful sense of the training and the self-encounter it allows. AAP begins its 6th cohort later this year.

Our poets John Urban and Peter Rennick lift us out of the mundane into contemplation of Anthroposophia, the world of stars, and more on the following pages, and we hear again from Jeffrey Hipolito, though now not in review of Barfield, but as poet (see page 43).

Through the book reviews in this issue we are taken by the hand from Word to pilgrimage to ground.

We are forever grateful to Herbert Hagens for generously sharing his work and research with the Calendar of the Soul and its alignment to the cycle of the year, included here on page 40. This year Herbert acknowledges the helpful research of Gino Ver Eecke, and also asked me to share celestial information about what we can see overhead in the coming weeks, for how it can be “read” through the Calendar verses.

The News section of being human is always one of welcome and celebration, honor and tribute, and in this issue it is full, with a report from the Lawrence, Kansas Study Group, now in its 24th year of serving as a steady foundation for community; the introduction of three new General Council members, including a new council secretary, chair, and member-at-large. Here we are honored to include memorial essays on the lives of Betty Staley and Ed Scherer, together with our regular feature list of new members and those who have died.

To conclude this issue, and to place an accent mark on the first two decades of 21st century anthroposophy in the US, we pay tribute to Cynthia Chelius, currently the longest-serving staff member in the Society’s administrative office. It is with deepest appreciation that we say goodbye to Cynthia, who retires this May, 2025. We wish Cynthia all the best. We are certain that the seeds of tireless commitment and dedication that she cultivated from the northeast corner of the first floor here at 1923 Geddes Avenue will blossom and bear hearty fruit in the days (and ways) ahead. It is a sweet sorrow, commensurate with the mood of this moment in the history of Anthroposophy.

W e must learn to remain in touch with our own feelings and ideas if we wish to develop any intimate relationship with the outer world.

T he outer world with all its phenomena is filled with splendor, but we must have experienced the divine within ourselves before we can hope to discover it in our environment.

Rudolf Steiner , Knowlegde of the Higher Worlds

Southwest staircase leading up to the Great Red Initiation Window, Dornach Switzerland

Summer Camps

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L egacy C ircle

Leaving a Legacy of Will

The Anthroposophical Society in America

Thank You to those members who support the Society’s future through a bequest or planned gift .

Erika V. Asten* Seymour Lubin*

Betty Baldwin* William H. Manning

J. Leonard Benson* Greg Martens*

Susannah Berlin* Barbara Martin

Hiram Anthony Bingham Beverly Martin

Virginia Blutah* Helvi McClelland

Iana Questara Boyce* Robert & Ellen McDermott

Marion Bruce* Robert S. Miller*

Robert Cornett Ralph Neuman*

Helen Ann Dinklage* Martin Novom

Irmgard Dogegge* Carolyn Oates

Raymond Elliot* Mary Lee Plumb-Mentjes

Lotte K. Emde* Norman Prichard*

Hazel Ferguson* Paul Riesen*

Marie S. Fetzer* Joan Roach*

Linda C. Folsom* Mary Rubach*

Gerda Gaertner* Margaret Runyon

Susanna Gaertner Ray Schlieben*

Ray German Lillian C. Scott*

Ruth Geiger Fairchild Smith*

Harriet S. Gilliam* Patti Smith*

Chuck Ginsberg Hannah Sohnrey*

Hazel Archer-Ginsberg Doris E. Stitzer*

Agnes B. Granberg* Gertrude O. Teutsch*

Alice Groh Katherine Thivierge

Bruce L. Henry* Jeannette Van Wiermeersch*

Ruth Heuscher* Catherine Vanden Broek*

Richard Hicks* Randall Wadsworth

Christine Huston Pamela Whitman

Ernst Katz* Thomas Wilkinson

Cecillia Leigh Patricia Turner*

Anna Lord* Anonymous (22) * indicates past legacy gift

L egacy giving is an excellent way to support the work of the Society far beyond a person’s current living capacity. There are a variety of ways to make a legacy or planned gift. If you would like to learn more please contact us: info@anthroposophy.org 734-662-9355

www.anthroposophy.org/legacy

The ASA invites you to join the

Michael Support Circle

our major donor circle. Thank you to the 45 individual members, and to these organizations for their gernerous and on-going support:

Anthroposophical Society of Cape Ann Association of Waldorf Schools of North America

Biodynamic Association

Camphill School - Beaver Run Carah Medical Arts

Council of Anthroposophical Organizations GRADALIS Waldorf Consulting and Services

Great Lakes Branch

House of Peace

Michael Support Circle members pledge gifts of between $500 and $5000 per year for five or more years. They help the Society to grow in capacity and vitality - the basis for increased membership, new learning opportunities, and greater impact in the world.

To learn more about how you can support the strength and sustainability of our movement, contact us: info@anthroposophy.org

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Address Given on Rudolf Steiner’s Death Day

March 30, 2025, Spring Valley, NY

By Thomas O’Keefe

Rudolf Steiner poured his soul into the creation of the First Goetheanum. Through its forms, he hoped to establish a physical center on earth that would remind us of our spiritual origins.

The burning of the First Goetheanum was a devastating tragedy for Rudolf Steiner, leaving him severely physically hindered. He spoke of this to his close friend Ita Wegman, saying: “Compared to other people, I am as if already dead. My ‘I’ and astral body direct the physical body and supplement the etheric.” 1

In the midst of the ruins of the First Goetheanum, Rudolf Steiner faced a trial. Ita Wegman tells us:

“It was shattering to see the disappointment that Rudolf Steiner experienced. People did not understand what he wanted. People did not want to take up new impulses, so that it even came to such a point that he considered abandoning the Anthroposophical Society and working somewhere with a small group of people chosen by himself.” 2

Instead, Rudolf Steiner chose to make one last attempt to bring the pure spiritual stream of Anthroposophy into a unity with the community around him. He did this by fully taking on the leadership of the Society at its refounding through the Christmas Conference of 1923.

Until then, he had adhered to a spiritual law that prohibits esoteric teachers from combining their purely spiritual tasks with the outer leadership of earthly affairs. 3

By taking the risk of uniting himself, and, as those closest to him sensed, uniting his karma with the Society as its leader, Rudolf Steiner offered a free sacrifice, as even he did not know whether his deed would meet with the approval of the spiritual world.

He later said of this: “Those spiritual powers who guide the stream of Anthroposophy in the spiritual world could have withdrawn their guidance.” 4

And the spiritual world received and accepted Rudolf Steiner’s deed – in his own words, “the spiritual world

looked on with still greater benevolence” and “the gifts of the spiritual world have become essentially more abundant.” 5

Rudolf Steiner’s deed and what followed from it present us with a mystery that we are invited to ponder deeply in order to discover its meaning and true dimensions.

At the refounding of the Anthroposophical Society, Rudolf Steiner did not lay a physical foundation stone, as he had for the First Goetheanum.

Instead, he gave the Foundation Stone Meditation and fulfilled an esoteric deed of creating what he called the “Foundation Stone of Love,” 6 a deed that extended beyond those present at the Christmas Conference. He characterized the being of this Foundation Stone of Love and invited us to lay it into our hearts for the creation of a new community.

He explained that the fertile soil for this Foundation Stone of Love “consists of our hearts in their harmonious collaboration, in their good, love-filled desire to bear together the will of Anthroposophy through the world.” 7

He spoke of the new need to “permeate our activity with an esoteric element ,” 8 and to unite the esoteric and exoteric, the inner and the outer – to strive to live in even deeper union with our inner world of spiritual ideals and with our devotion to these ideals, and to incarnate this union into all the details of our lives.

Rudolf Steiner says of this:

“The difference must be that out of the strength of Anthroposophy itself, it is possible to combine the greatest conceivable openness with the most genuine and inward esotericism. And in the future this esotericism must not be lacking even in the most external of our deeds.” 9

And again in other words:

“This Anthroposophical Movement is not an act of service to the earth. This Anthroposophical Movement in its totality is a service to the divine beings, a service to God. We create the right mood for it when we see it in all its wholeness as a service to God.” 10

Rudolf Steiner spoke again and again, in deep earnestness, of how he hoped that those around him would try deeply to understand what had happened at the Christmas Conference.

He spoke of how a special opportunity to work more closely with the spiritual world had been made possible, but that if this new spiritual impulse did not find fertile soil, it would take up its dwelling place elsewhere. He even suggested the moon sphere as a possible location to which it might withdraw. 11

In a Letter to Members after the Christmas Conference, he wrote:

“The spiritual has the property, that if it is not held fast, it disappears – not of course from the cosmos, but from the place where it is not being pursued and fostered. […] For something like our Christmas Conference, one is not dependent on what occurs in the earthly realm. You therefore must not imagine that what evaporates through the lack of carrying out the impulses of the Christmas Conference would have to appear somewhere else on earth. That is not necessary. It can seek its further place of refuge in quite different worlds.” 12

At Easter 1924, he also referred to this impulse as “the Spirit of the Goetheanum ,” which had been transformed through the fire and was now returning to us in a new way.

He said: “[The cause represented by the Goetheanum] has been carried out into the ether; and it is granted us to permeate ourselves with the Goetheanum-impulses flowing in from the cosmos. […] But we must be able to receive these impulses.” 13

Then, in September of 1924, he fell ill, and it became increasingly clear that his life-forces were somehow dependent on the understanding, the consciousness, and the inner striving of those around him.

He expressed himself to Ita Wegman about this as follows: “The lectures do not tire me at all. It is these lectures that keep me in good health. What is tiring are the dead thoughts that approach one. It is the incomprehension, the lack of understanding … that leaves one paralyzed.” 14

The picture emerges that Rudolf Steiner sacrificed something of his own being in order to enable the community around him to step closer to the spiritual world, but that his life was now in their hands.

Ita Wegman says: “Human ears remained deaf, and the elemental beings waited in expectation of what might come

from human beings and became restless when there was not enough of an echo coming back from them, Dr. Steiner said. Then he spoke about a promise which he had given to the spiritual world and which he had to keep if things did not change.” 15

“He ‘had not been completely followed’, he said, sadly but still lovingly, like someone who had forgiven and who had already turned his thoughts to other and greater life tasks.” 16

In her reflections on the Christmas Conference, Marie Steiner wrote: “The Christmas Conference is bound up with something infinitely tragic. […] A destiny [karma] held sway over the whole situation, a destiny that had to be settled [by Rudolf Steiner] in other spheres of existence. The outcome revealed what it meant for Dr. Steiner to take our karma upon himself.” 17

Rudolf Steiner crossed the threshold of death in the early morning of March 30th, 1925.

In the final chapter of Sergei Prokofieff’s book Rudolf Steiner and the Founding of the New Mysteries , Prokofieff shows how the archetype of Rudolf Steiner’s relation to his students can be found in the relation of Christ Jesus to his disciples.

Rudolf Steiner describes the experience of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane in the following way:

“Why did Christ become sorrowful? He did not tremble at the prospect of the Cross. That goes without saying. He trembled at the question, ‘Will those whom I have brought with me here be able to bear this moment in which it is to be decided whether they want to accompany me in soul, to experience everything with me even to the Cross? ’”

“Then He goes and prays, ‘Father, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not my will but Thine be done.’ This means: ‘Let me not experience that I stand absolutely alone as Son of Man, but that others accompany me.’ In the end, the cup had not passed from him. He was destined to fulfill the deed alone and in loneliness of soul.” 18

The disciples suffered immensely after the death of Christ Jesus and after his final departure from their vision at Ascension.

Rudolf Steiner continues: “And from this pain, from this infinite sadness, there arose what we call the Mystery of Whitsun. The disciples of Christ, having lost the vision

Continued on page 47

Where I Find Rudolf Steiner

By Mary Stewart Adams

I find Rudolf Steiner in the world of everyday awareness, which is not just to say that I think of Rudolf Steiner every day (I do), but that I find Rudolf Steiner in the way I understand what a day can be over the course of time. This comes to life for me in several of his statements, including the closing words spoken December 31, 1922, that, “The first beginning of what must come to pass if anthroposophy is to fulfill its mission in the world is that the human being’s whole relationship to the world must be recognized to be one of cosmic ritual.” And again, those spoken four months later, at Easter, 1923, that when it is understood how to, “Think with the course of the year, then forces will intermingle with the thoughts that will let us again hold a dialogue with the divine spiritual powers revealing themselves from the stars.”

It is not so much identifying what cosmic ritual is, or even how to know whether I am in dialogue with the spiritual powers revealing themselves from the stars, but to know that such things are possible. In the lived experience of striving to understand this, I come to encounter with Rudolf Steiner, as a force living in my thinking.

It began for me with developing a sense for the rhythms of time as a way to discern when ceremony or “starrelated” activity is appropriate, and this together with living spatially, through the inner picture of what I

imagine a year is, of how the days of the week unfold, and what shape or form the months have in relation to one another ~ how do they align? While this may seem an odd approach, it allows an inner landscape to arise that is rooted in the rhythmic movements and harmonious relationships of Sun, Moon, planets, and stars.

Through spiritual scie nce I have learn ed to know the destinyforming and liberating planets, of those below the Sun (Moon, Mercury, Venus) and those above the Sun (Mars, Jupiter, Saturn), and of how the soul moves through these spheres between death and rebirth. It is curious that the days of the week are not aligned in the same order as these spheres, neither geocentrically nor heliocentrically. It took time to realize that the days of the week are arranged in a pattern that weaves between those below and those above the Sun, from destiny to liberation and back ~ as though mimicking both the separation and intermingling of physical and etheric with astral and egoic forces in waking and sleeping of the human being. The gratifying realization of this weaving, this is a place where I “meet” Rudolf Steiner ~ a companion force at work in my thinking, attendant to the development that follows on from first being introduced to an idea. This is thinking engaged in the current moment and with the current cosmos, not merely a recollection or application of past ideas. This is a beginning that may ultimately lead to encounter with the being of the year

visible to the naked eye. It was given the name Atlas, an acronym for the telescope array used in its discovery, the Asteroid Terrestrial Impact Last Alert system. Its name intentionally calls to mind the Titan God of ancient Greek culture, who bore the pillars of the heavens on his shoulders. In Homer’s “O dyssey” Atlas w as described as “deadlyminded,” as knowing the depths of all the seas, bearing the pillars far out in the Atlantic Ocean in order to keep the heavens and earth apart. Atlas was given this task as punishment from Zeus for leading the Titans in their battle with the Olympian Gods for control of the heavens.

Simultaneous to this d iscovery of Come t Atlas, the star Betelgeuse dimmed unusually quickly. Betelgeuse marks the shoulder of the giant Orion, with his glittering belt and sword, gilded since time has been, while time shall be.

These two images, of Atlas becoming “active” while the shoulder of the giant went dim, bears an interesting resemblance to the Greek myth of Herakles. During his 11th Labor to get the golden apples of the Hesperides, Herakles encountered Atlas, and in return for asking the god’s assistance in retrieving the apples, he was given the pillars of the heavens to bear on his own shoulders for a time. While Atlas was away, Herakles realized he could not bear the pillars for long, and in a significant moment of heroic and clever humanness, he was able to relieve himself of the burden and give the pillars back to the god.

An imagination on the 2020 star picture makes a ready example. A deep-space comet was discovered late in 2019 that had the promise of becoming a great comet,

This is an ancient myth of preparation, of anticipating the time in human history when the star wisdom borne

June page from the origial 1912/13 Calender of the Soul

Where I Find Rudolf Steiner

on the shoulders of divine spiritual beings would fall to mortal human beings to bear ~ and this was active in the star picture at the outset of 2020. When we look back at that time, it is possible to see that there was no great authority holding things up, there was nowhere to turn but to one another, we had to bear it together. We can ask ourselves now: How did we do? And have we realized, like Herakles, that we have the opportunity, and the need, to engage the spiritual world once again to make our way forward.

How do I find Rudolf Steiner in such a picture? In the idea that access to this dialog with the divine can mean traveling first through the realm of imaginative cognition. To support healthy imaginations that are not just make-believe, but that actually result in an ability to discern a spiritual reality, there are daily exercises, weekly verses, monthly virtues, seasonal festival contemplations, all informing this relationship. For me what is paramount in this is the striving to understand the being of the year, its unique and changing character from one year to the next ~ here the task becomes more personal, and the engagement

more intimate, because one’s own life and experience, when viewed objectively, becomes the subject-matter, and is the place where the dialogue is taking place.

In the 1912/13 Calendar of the Soul , in addition to images that depicted the waking and sleeping of spiritual forces streaming toward us from the cosmos as the Sun moves in front of each region of stars, there were names listed on each day, names that are connected not only to the “sound” of each day, but that were meant to reveal the spiritual life of each day as it is informed by the deeds of human beings, oftentimes saints. These deeds are as spiritual substance surrounding the earth, and this is something we can experience in our daily lives. Further, as a soul descends to birth through this spiritual environment, the cosmic name sounds forth, in accordance with what the soul experiences as it descends, especially around the date of one’s birth.

I will use Rudolf Steiner as an example, because here concepts and ideas come to life about what it means to live with the being of the year, and to act in harmony

Franziska Steiner-Blie, May 8, 1834 - December 24, 1918

Johann Baptist Steiner, June 23, 1829 - January 10, 1910

with the cosmos, in dialogue with divine spiritual beings in a life that is one of cosmic ritual. He was the eldest child of Johann and Franciska (née Blie) Steiner. Johann Steiner was born on June 23, 1829, the eve of the Feast of John, and he was named “Johann Baptist,” which is in accord with this idea that he descended to the Earth at a time when the spiritual force of the mystery of John was active. Franciska was born May 8, 1834. May 8 in 1834 was Ascension Day. Already we have the beginning of a unique narrative, just by considering the festival days on which the parents of Rudolf Steiner were born.

Johann and Franciska married on May 16, 1860, which was the eve of Ascension Day in 1860. Rudolf Steiner was born nine months later, in late February, which means he was conceived sometime during the days between Ascension and Pentecost. His birthday nine months later fell very close to the Feast of Matthias, who is intimately connected with the Pentecost and is the only Apostle to be chosen by his fellow Apostles, not called by the Christ. This is a potent “signature” inscribed into the cosmos at the time of his feast day, which is February 24 or 25, depending on whether it was a leap year. Rudolf Steiner descended through the spiritual environment of the earth at a time inscribed by the mystery and majesty of Matthias, who completed the community of Apostles such that the rushing winds and flaming tongues of the Pentecost were released, indicating the descent of the Holy Spirit.

To develop a living imagination out of this picture one could say, then, that Rudolf Steiner was conceived on these rushing winds and flaming tongues, and that the majesty of this is revealed in his life deed of laying a foundation for a spiritual community of humanity, a place for an association of people whose will it is to nurture the life of the soul, both in individuals and in human society, on the basis of a true knowledge of the spiritual world. This, for me, is a dramatic example of understanding what lives in each day and how it opens the possibility for dialogue with the divine. Concepts and ideas are enlivened through such considerations.

This is also a cosmic signature that lives in the mystery of incarnation, and looking back at the deeds of Rudolf Steiner, one can see that here we have an individuality living in complete harmony with the cosmos. The dates we observe in relation to his life’s events and to his lectures are not just memorials, but portals through

which we come to encounter.

The honest creations of Rudolf Steiner’s earthly life are resurrected as spiritual substance surrounding the earth with which we can engage nearly every day, as a cosmic ritual, which strengthens the capacity to know, with him, that we are in dialogue with the divine spiritual beings revealing themselves from the stars.

In 2025, we move beyond the “sheath” of the first 100-years since Rudolf Steiner’s death. What will it mean when this 100-year framing is complete, where will we look for the mood or theme or living nature of the anthroposophical year then? 

This article originally appeared in the Literary Arts Section Magazine STIL from the Goetheanum, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Rudolf Steiner’s death.

St. Medardus Feast Day, June 8th

St. Medardus was born around 456 at Salency, Oise, in Picardy. He was ordained at the age of 33. His piety and knowledge, considerable for that time, caused Bishop Alomer of Vermand to confer on him Holy Orders. He was one of the most honored bishops of his time, often depicted laughing, with his mouth wide open.

Dear Brother Steiner

By Linda Williams

Recently Linda was one of several asked to share her thoughts on her relationship to Rudolf Steiner at the Commemoration of the 100th anniversary of his death. What follows is a letter she wrote to Brother Steiner, noting the impact he has had on her life. As she explained to the audience during the celebration, her salutation of “Brother” Steiner is meant to recognize and involve him as family, as well as an academic.

Dear Brother Steiner,

When I was asked if I would say a few words about you on this 100 th anniversary of your physical departure from this Earth, I was both honored and grateful for a chance to reflect on the impact you have had on my life and so many others, especially in the North American context from which I come.

How does an African American woman-child from the American industrialized Midwest, come into relationship with an Austrian-German spiritual teacher whose earthly presence departed 33 years before she was even born? What might they have in common? How do they enter into conversation? What distances must they cross in order to hear each other? I marvel

as I think about the life journeys that have brought us into each other’s sphere.

Brother Steiner, when you landed this last time in 1861 in Kraljevic, a tiny village during the time of the dissolving of Austro-Hungarian Empire, I think of the karmic stream being prepared for my generation’s entry across the ocean in Detroit, Michigan, a large urban city that was growing in the light and shadow of American Empire.

On my mother’s side, when you were born, Brother Steiner, my great-grandpa Henry (1854 to 1933) was seven years old. He had just traveled with his Mother Eliza and sisters from slavery in the southern state of Kentucky to freedom in Michigan, a free northern state

Henry Frelinghuysen Thompson, 1883

Josephine Jeffrey Thompson, 1883

in the Great Lakes region of the United States. We don’t know if Mother Eliza and her children were liberated by the one who owned them – or if they escaped on their own. But we do know that Mother Eliza traveled with the three children she had been allowed to keep –out of the 12 children she had birthed in bondage. My great-grandfather, the youngest of the three, was able to experience freedom for nearly his entire life.

They landed in Detroit where they became part of a small community of free-born Blacks and those who had been freed either by slaveowners or themselves. Great-grandpa Henry grew up to become a respected member of this community in Detroit. Because of Detroit’s proximity to Canada, Grandpa Henry and his family helped to sustain the Underground Railroad: A network of safe houses and transportation routes that supported the passage of escaping enslaved individuals across the Detroit River to Canada. Henry, even as a child, worked with comrades and parishioners in the Second Baptist Church, Michigan’s oldest Black congregation. After slavery was abolished in the United States during the Civil War, Grandpa Henry became a civil servant – a postman – probably the first person of color hired by the miniscule post office (there were only eight postmen at the time in the relatively small city of Detroit). He was a deacon in the church, and when he died, he was honored as the oldest Mason of Color in Michigan.

My great-grandmother, Josephine, Henry’s wife, was from a family descended from free-born and enslaved Blacks that intermarried with the Algonquin Nehantic tribal nation in a strategy employed to hold on to indigenous land (during the 18 th and 19 th century,

some free-born Blacks were allowed to buy land; indigenous people could not). Located in colonial times on the Eastern seaboard (Connecticut and Rhode Island region of the young United States), Josephine’s family had begun migrating west to Michigan and further in the 1800s. It was in Detroit, at Second Baptist Church, that industrious Henry probably met beautiful Josephine, and they were married.

Grandparents Henry and Josephine were contemporaries of you, Brother Steiner, and each of them outlived you by a few years. But they were there, just like you, completing their karmic tasks in preparation for the generations that would enter the streams after them.

I tell you these brief accounts because I can already trace in this ancestral lineage that a place for Spirit was being prepared and held for later generations. Like you at this time, Brother Steiner, Spirit and culture and community reigned supreme in their lives during the cataclysmic years between the American Civil War, World War I, and the rise and fall of empires. I admire how you sought to awaken so many others to the world of Spirit through your work, breathing life into new impulses and making connections across cultures.

Other karmic connections in my life’s journey led me to a yearning that I recognized as a child and carried into young adulthood: A desire to understand more about what lies beyond the world as presented to me in sense perception and thought. Brother Steiner, I found out later that you named this feeling in the first Leading Thought : Hence only they can be anthroposophists who feel certain questions on the nature of man and the universe as an elemental need of life, just as one feels hunger and thirst.

Rudolf Steiner 1882 at Vienna Technical. Institute

Vienna Technical. Institute

Michigan State University

From Kraljevec to Dornach

From Kentucky to Michigan

Parallel Lines

It was this hunger and thirst that I sought to satisfy through my participation in the various spiritual and cultural portals of the 1960s and 1970s in the United States and the world, as I was trying to penetrate what it meant to be a spiritual human being in the world.

When I was a young woman already in college, one of my younger cousins enrolled in the fourth grade at the Detroit Waldorf School. Already pursuing an alternative path in the social sciences at Michigan State University, I was intrigued with what I was hearing about my cousin’s experiences at the Detroit Waldorf School. I found opportunities to attend several of the assemblies and festivals over the four years my cousin attended the school. During this time, I became a social worker in an agency that served neurodiverse persons who were released from the state hospital system and were housed now in small neighborhood group homes. As my cousin graduated from Detroit Waldorf and began attending a local public high school, I looked further into the Waldorf world. To me, it seemed that there was something lively and engaging in my cousin’s experience that could also be helpful to the neurodiverse people I was serving. Questions began to energetically emerge for me: What is a human being? And further: How do we serve this human being in each other?

To my surprise, I found that there was a Waldorf teacher training program nearby. The Waldorf Institute, led by Werner and Barbara Glas, Hans and Rosemary Gebert, Janet McGavin, Adola and Charles McWilliams, and many others, had begun in 1967 and was then located in suburban Detroit, renting space in a Franciscan friary. It was in this space that I met you, Dr. Steiner.

Despite the suggestion made by Hans Gebert in the interview process that I might want to “read a little Rudolf Steiner” before I began my classes in the Fall,

I decided to not read, but rather to watch and listen. Part of the reason was that I felt I had read enough, having dabbled in metaphysics in the form of New Thought Christianity, Rosicrucian literature, and some work related to theosophy. I guess a part of me was overconfident – I considered myself well-read. But also I was curious to approach this new experience leading with something other than my intellect.

So my introduction to Rudolf Steiner was first through my heart and my will when I stepped into the Waldorf Institute of Mercy College (now Sunbridge Institute).

I met you, dear Dr. Steiner, by the fruit of your work –first in a school for youngsters and then in an institute for adults. And even though the first book assigned to be read was Theosophy , it was the community that awakened me, and it was through the community that I feel like I truly met you. I joined about 30 other seekers or aspirants, if you will, in what I now see as a cooperative school for the Spirit.

Along with the erudite learning that happened with reading and studying Theosophy, Occult Science, Philosophy of Freedom, and Knowledge of Higher Worlds and Its Attainment , I also learned to spin and knit wool, carefully paint with watercolors, sculpt with clay, move in eurythmy, and listen to fairy tales. I performed in the Oberufer plays with Barbara Renold directing, and sang in chorus (even once on the Goetheanum stage) with Dina Winter. I remember that Hans Gebert thought my coloring of my projective drawings was so bright that he hung them over the classroom door, and said they reminded him of the “The Guardian of the Threshold.” During Hilmar Moore’s course on the Evolution of Consciousness, I joined classmates as we performed as aristocrats during the French Revolution, complete with dresses and wigs borrowed from the University’s theater shop.

I stayed at the Institute for many years as I gathered certifications for state teaching, Waldorf teaching, and a Master’s degree. More importantly, I sat at the feet of so many wise teachers who had penetrated your work that I was inspired even to be in their presence. In addition to those named already, I must mention Henry Barnes, Virginia Sease, Michaela Glöckler, Rosemary Bergman, Dennis Klocek, Carlos Pietzner, Betty Staley, and Chris and Signe Schaefer.

I consider my sojourn at the Waldorf Institute one of the most important periods in my life. It was there that you became Brother Steiner to me because you were such a part of the community at the Institute.

Somehow, the other students, the faculty, and the guest speakers made you whole for me and brought me into relationship with you as a fellow seeker, but also a conversation partner and counselor. You remain accessible to me, even when I don’t quite understand your words or when I tire from reading translations of the 19th century German grammar in which you write and speak. But what I have learned over the years is that much of what you brought – from your own research, from direct revelations, from your own inner activity –was fodder for my own contemplation and composting. The less I took you for granted – meaning the more I worked with your work and didn’t just accept it at face value – the more I had to explore in inner meditation, deliberation, and research.

You walked with me, Brother Steiner, and opened doors and paths I didn’t know were there. I learned to teach, mainly because I learned to learn in deeper ways at the Waldorf Institute, and under the tutelage and example of fellow anthroposophists at Detroit Waldorf, Urban Waldorf, and the wider Waldorf movement. When my nephew was born with Down’s Syndrome and was able to experience Camphill Beaver Run from 8 th to 12 th grade, you showed me through another anthroposophical community how to care for our most vulnerable. When my loved ones crossed the threshold, you taught me how to hold them and nourish them with love and attention.

Your guidance led me to see how the Divine Sofia and the Cosmic Christ could accompany us all on this earthly path and helped me to attend to the souls in my care as a teacher, colleague, and friend. Through study groups, artistic work, and my meditative life, I stayed in conversation with you. And as I studied further and joined the Anthroposophical Society, and later the School of Spiritual Science and then the Pedagogical Section, I remain a faithful researcher and student of anthroposophy, especially in these dizzying times when opposing forces have become so strong.

I have retired from the classroom now, but not from anthroposophical engagement, study, and contemplation. I still engage with you through the communities in which I am a part, and I work with many others to understand how both the spiritual and practical aspects of anthroposophy can be part of facing the burning issues of today, as well as the history and future of the human being. I met anthroposophy through the human beings who lived it deeply in their being. I strive to continue their legacy, just as Grandpa Henry

and Grandmother Josephine strove to uplift humanity in spaces where their own humanity was denied.

I hope that my words have conveyed, dear Brother Steiner, my immense gratitude for all you were able to establish in your last sojourn on this planet and all that you continue to do from the heavens. I trust you understand that the work you do circles far around the globe and that there are many who have picked up the spiritual threads and continue to weave them into the many-faceted fabric of life. Thank you for contributions to the revelation of the warp and the weft of this great loom – and the joy and faith and true diligence with which you brought anthroposophy to the world.

With

much love,

Sister Linda

Linda Williams recently retired from Detroit Waldorf School. She is a member of the Pedagogical Section Council, the Hague Circle, the AWSNA Board of Trustees, the Sunbridge Board of Trustees, and a founding member of Alma Partners. Her recent research centers around women inspired directly or indirectly by anthroposophy, including Elsa Klink, Marie Steiner, Ita Wegman, Edith Maryon, Audre Lorde, and Gertrude Reif Hughes .

[A shortened version of this letter appeared in Anthroposophy Worldwide.]

Y ou walked with me, Brother Steiner, and opened doors...

Thou, Spirit of Mine Earthly Realm...

By Marc Desaules

Summary of a lecture given to the Swiss Society on 15 February 2025

Translation by Kim Chotzen. English rendering by Christopher Houghton Budd

Thou, spirit of mine earthly realm

Unveil thou the light of thine age

To the Christ-begifted soul

That, striving, it can thee find

In the choir of spheres of peace

Resounding with light and strength

Of the sense of one devout in Christ

Du, meines Erdenraumes Geist, Enthülle deines Alters Licht

Der Christ-begabten Seele,

Dass strebend sie finden kann

Im Chor der Friedenssphären

Dich, tönend von Licht und Macht

Des Christ-ergebenen Menschensinns.

Looking out on the world, we notice how every day our sense of justice is challenged. Things are happening that would have previously been unimaginable. As human beings, as humanity, they touch our very existence, and our sense of dignity. Institutions and countries no longer recognize the order that has long been established among human beings.

Given this state of affairs, what can one still do to reestablish a certain order? A first step is to expand one’s horizons. According to Rudolf Steiner we are not alone in our work in social life. Spiritual beings are active in the spiritual, rights, and economic life: In spiritual life, we meet the domain of the activity of the Angels, in rights life that of the Archangels, and in economic life that of the Archai. In the lecture cycle The Mission of the Folk Souls , GA 121, Steiner shows how these beings

accompany us – depending on the situation, leaving us free or imposing themselves on all that we accomplish in social life – revealing the background to today’s global and political events.

It is not easy. For in each human community, it is not only one being that comes to meet us, but at least four: First, the archangel who accompanies us as Folk Spirit in that corner of the world where we live together and who makes himself known through the rules we mutually give ourselves and in our sense of belonging. This being can be considered as the true Spirit of our earthly realm. Then, at his side, there is a Spirit of Language, also an Archangel, who acts from deep within our constitution, all the more powerfully because he twice stayed back.

Third, above him there is a Time Spirit, an Archai who upholds the specific quality of an epoch – this is the Spirit that gives today’s world its cosmopolitan character. Fourthly, at his side, equally an Archai, one must reckon with the Spirit of Thinking who also acts from within our constitution, inside our brains, and does so even more powerfully than the Time Spirit because he, too, once stayed back. Determining the way of thinking that manifests as the materialistic point of view, he permits no freedom of judgment and acts resolutely against the Time Spirit.

This is this spiritual back-story to modern social life. It is how spiritual beings inform human relationships. They can further our striving, leaving us free, but they can equally constrain us within all possible forms of sectarianism and nationalism. To manage this situation, we need to understand their effects.

The problem starts already with the difference between the Spirit of Language and the Folk Spirit, for they are continually linked in a kind of competition with one another. They are both Archangels, but how can one recognize which is the Folk Spirit? In contrast to the people in the neighboring countries, the Swiss, for

example, have an advantage. Because of our three main languages, we can distinguish between that which links us via language to France, Germany, or Italy, and that which clearly links us to what it means to be ‘Swiss’. 1 This is not so easy when the same language extends over the whole country, as in the case of our neighbors. This differentiation can be a first step to get a sense for qualities carried by the Folk Spirit. A next step comes in distinguishing between that which corresponds to the Time Spirit and that which belongs to the Spirit of Thinking; that which belongs to the special qualities of our epoch and favors all humanity, and, on the contrary, that which constrains us to think in abstract illusions and materialist constructs, losing thereby our link to reality.

One might add here that this is especially important for North America, where, per Rudolf Steiner, the existence of those who live there is primarily based on the Spirit of Thinking. A possible way out of this supremacy may be to find the specific qualities carried by the different Folk Spirits. 2

If when looking at the real world we risk losing our bearings, we should enlarge our own horizon to such a degree that our own Folk Spirit is included in the picture – something that is valid for all the countries of the world. Because, thanks to his activity that comes from the spheres of peace, he is capable of creating new paths exactly there where we lose our orientation. But for that, he needs our help, the help of every human being.

That we can do this is thanks to the verse enunciated by Rudolf Steiner on 16 August, 1914, in the first days after the outbreak of WWI:

Thou, spirit of mine earthly realm – this is a call to our Archangel, our Folk Spirit.

Unveil thou the light of thine age – show me your true being such that I do not confuse you with a contrary being that acts in social life.

To the Christ-begifted soul – what does this mean? Certainly not something that has to do with external religion. Here it is a question of an attitude that can grow in every human being today: A readiness to assume one’s responsibilities, meaning, to be willing to carry all the consequences

of one’s actions. In short, to find a relation with the Resurrection Body of Christ.

That, striving, it can thee find – in willing to accept the full consequences of one’s actions, the Christ-begifted soul is making progress, striving.

In the choir of spheres of peace – where is the Folk Spirit to be found? With all the other Folk Spirits in the spheres of peace, building a choir. Wars are never born of the activities of true Folk Spirits but always from other contrary beings active in social life.

Resounding with light and strength – through serious striving, the soul can find its Folk Spirit, distinguishing him from the other beings. He is there, resonating. But from where?

Of the sense of one devout in Christ – from praise and power that ray out from the sense of awakened human beings. Since the Mystery of Golgotha, the Christ is no longer in the heavens but on earth with human beings. Accordingly, the spirits have become dependent on us to experience the Christ.

If this process – that begins with us – becomes possible, miracles can happen! We can empower our Folk Spirit! He will then find his path in the choir of the spheres of peace, together with the other Folk Spirits – and we will find our orientation anew, as an echo coming from the other side of the threshold.

Truly, this verse appears like a clarion call addressed to the spiritual beings who accompany our life on earth, shared as it is, with all other human souls. By this prayer, every soul is invited to look for and to discern the spiritual beings that accompany one in community on earth. A difficult task, to be sure, but one that is really worth the effort, because in our times who else, other than us, can act in this way and in this domain?

1 Likewise, perhaps, Great Britain, where to be British, despite the common use of English, embraces four distinct language areas: England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

2 In the case of the anthroposophical movement, not thinking in terms of a single North America, but of collaboration between Mexico, the US, Canada, and Hawaii.

Owen Barfield and the Word

By Jeffery Hipolito

If there is a patron saint of the word in the world of Anglophone anthroposophy, it must surely be Owen Barfield.

Barfield was among the first English-language members of the movement. His membership card from 1924 bears the signature of Rudolf Steiner, and for the next seventy-five years until his death in 1997 he was among its most tireless advocates. More importantly, though, he was also a brilliant thinker and poet in his own right, a friend and peer of such writers and philosophers as T. S. Eliot, Walter de la Mare, David Bohm, C. S. Lewis, Gabriel Marcel, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, W. H. Auden, and many others. He was equal parts poet and philosopher, each half of his activity forming a dynamic, interpenetrating polarity. In every sense, Barfield was the consummate crossover artist, passing back and forth between social worlds, disciplines, and cognitive capacities.

The link between Barfield’s activities as poet and philosopher, and between those activities and his overtly anthroposophical endeavors, was his deep

immersion in the nature and mystery of the word. His first works of nonfiction, History in English Words and Poetic Diction , take up the theme explicitly, and it carries through to his final major essay, “Meaning, Tradition, and Revelation in Language and Religion.”

In his final major essay he reflects on his very long career and concludes that “practically all I have ever written on the subject of language and other matters connected with it could be characterized, not inaccurately, as attempts to answer the question . . . what connection could there possibly be between word[s] and their histor[ies] . . . and ‘the Word.’”

As we reflect on Owen Barfield’s importance to anthroposophy in the English-speaking world, we might also think about the connection between words and “the Word,” and about what some of the other matters connected with it might be. One place to enter the subject is Barfield’s most famous book, Saving

Owen Barfield. Used with kind persmission of the Owen Barfield Literary Estate

the Appearances , which was named by HarperCollins as one of the one hundred best spiritual books of the twentieth century. Near the end of the book, Barfield says that “the object with which this book was originally conceived was none other than to try and remove one of the principal obstacles to contemporary appreciation of [Steiner’s] teaching—the study and use of which I believe to be crucial for the future of mankind.” Before we can understand the light anthroposophy sheds on the crucial relation between words and the Word, though, we must first uproot within ourselves the principal obstacle to our full understanding of it.

Barfield names that obstacle literalness. “The besetting sin of to-day,” he says, “is the sin of literalness, or idolatry.” Literalness is the same as idolatry because it treats objects of whatever sort as having a standalone existence whose independence we secretly covet. When we think of ourselves or others that way, when we foster “a dull or literal mind,” we cultivate “a certain hardness of heart.” When we “prefer to remain ‘literal’” we also, in the same gesture, refuse “a certain humble, tender receptiveness of heart which is nourished by a deep and deepening imagination and by the selfknowledge which that inevitably involves.” As we can see in Barfield’s description, to embrace literalism is to reject imagination. This is already enshrined in the ordinary definition of literal. According to the Oxford English Dictionary , a literal statement is “free from figures of speech, exaggeration, or allusion” and a literal-minded person “takes a matter-of-fact or unimaginative view of things.” To embrace the literal is simply to reject the metaphorical and imaginative. It is defined by what it omits.

This tendency is the besetting sin of our time because it infects our most fundamental, preconscious way of relating to the world, with all that flowers from it as fruit from the poisonous tree. To lack imagination is to lack self-knowledge. In the end, to be literal-minded is to say that things simply are what they are, and that they are not me. Iron ore is simply what it is, and nothing else; you are who you are, and that is all; the sun is only a ball of gas. Barfield calls this reduction of meaning to bare denotation “the specter of born literalism.” It most often appears among materialists, who make liberal use of the word “only,” as when they say “the heart is only a pump” or “the brain is only a complex computer.” That does not mean that all literalists are materialists. It is just as possible

to be a spiritual literalist, which one becomes when one attempts, for example, to read Rudolf Steiner’s books and lectures as literal descriptions of spiritual experiences, or tries to isolate the literal definition of, say, the etheric body. If Barfield is correct, to find paths to the Word through Rudolf Steiner’s words we must first overcome in ourselves any vestiges of the specter of literalism, as Steiner also did before bringing his spiritual experiences into his books and lectures.

In Saving the Appearances , Barfield isolates the moment that reductive literalism was born in the western mind. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it is connected to what it means to save the appearances. He begins by invoking Plato’s distinction between three kinds or stages of knowledge: observation, mathematics, and the grasp of pure ideas. As applied to astronomy, for example, we might observe the movements of bodies, and find the geometrical patterns between them, before “rising eventually to . . . an unobscured participation in the divine Mind, or Word, itself.” Entrance into this third stage of knowledge is an “intelligent participation” that is the result “in the last resort of initiation.”

In Saving the Appearances , Barfield also notes that a sixth-century follower of Plato, Simplicius of Cilicia, coined the phrase “to save the appearances” in his commentary on Aristotle’s On the Heavens . Simplicius meant that when astronomers want to account for some phenomenon—the movement of Mercury across the sky at twilight, let’s say—they devise hypothetical patterns of movement that are consistent with the pure ideas of “the divine Mind, or Word.” The phenomenon is “saved” because it is joined to an idea that explains it. So far, so good. The fall into literalism occurred with the Scientific Revolution, which changed our understanding of what an explanation is. For Simplicius, who sought to harmonize Plato and Aristotle, to save the appearances is not the same as to narrow down to the truth. However, as Barfield explains, “the real turning-point in the history of astronomy and of science in general . . . took place when Copernicus (probably - it cannot be regarded as certain) began to think, and others, like Kepler and Galileo, began to affirm that the heliocentric hypothesis not only saved the appearances, but was physically true.” The modern age of alienation and materialism, of all the dangerous shadows of the consciousness soul age, rose like the Furies when people “began to take the models, whether geometrical or mechanical, literally.” What

Owen Barfield and

rose from beneath the ground to pursue and haunt us were “the mechanomorphic collective representations which constitute the Western world to-day.”

Barfield was a poet as well as a philosopher - when he referred to a now-obscure figure like Simplicius he did so with the artist’s touch. His book’s title placed him in the Neoplatonic lineage, what his friend the poet Kathleen Raine called the “ancient springs,” that fed Renaissance Neoplatonism, Rosicrucianism, Jacob Boehme, the Romantic impulse in art and philosophy, and even Anthroposophy itself.

What happens when we apply Plato’s three levels of knowledge not to astronomy but to language? What is it to rise from words to the Word? Several things immediately become clear. For the literalist, there is only the first level: Words are nothing more than phenomena, appearances. When we use them to point at a dog by saying “dog,” the word exhausts itself in the phenomenon. When we point them at each other, they disappear altogether. But if we think about them with Plato’s three stages in mind, something different happens. Recall, for example, the theory of knowledge that Rudolf Steiner describes in The Philosophy of Freedom and elsewhere. The sphere of percepts that he describes corresponds to Plato’s first stage, which left to itself is a blooming, buzzing confusion. The unified realm of concepts that Steiner describes is Plato’s third level, accessible via sense-free thinking by means of initiation. And between concept and percept,

perpetually unifying them and saving the appearances in our lived moment-to-moment experience is the middle sphere - not of geometry in this case, but of words themselves. The word “dog” is neither a thing, like a dog, or a concept of a dog; it is the middle space where percept and concept join as one. Words are mercurial, elusive messengers, neither quite things nor quite ideas. This is one reason why Sir Philip Sidney, an Elizabethan poet influenced by the Neoplatonic Florentine Academy that did so much to shape the Italian Renaissance, said that poets, who are closest to the essence of language, cannot lie because they “nothing affirm.” They cannot lie because they do not make literal truth claims; instead, the creative speech of poets mimics, in a small way, the continual act of creation that underlies the cosmos.

A pair of analogies may help to bring out the liminal mysteriousness of language. Here is one: Among the most famous episodes of twentieth-century physics

We rise to the Word by means of words, only to discover the redemptive presence of the Word in the words that led us there.

Neoplatonic Florentine Academy. Domenico Ghirlandaio c. 1485-1490; Florence, Santa Maria Novella

is the double-slit experiment. It is famous because it revealed that light can manifest equally well as wave or a particle, giving rise to what is known as the waveparticle duality. A word, like light, is neither thing nor idea, neither particle nor wave, but can manifest as either and in its flexibility joins both together. A second analogy: When it is finally Socrates’ turn to speak about the nature of love in Plato’s dialogue Symposium , he reports the teaching of his initiatrix, Diotima. She taught him that like “everything spiritual” love is “in between god and mortal.” It is neither good nor bad, blessed or wretched, divine or human. Like light, and like language, love mediates and unites, moving between worlds and beyond final definition. Trinitarian theology, which Barfield knew well, describes the world of the senses as belonging to the Father, that of the spirit as belonging to the Spirit, and the middle realm as belonging to the Word, the Son. We rise to the Word by means of words, only to discover the redemptive presence of the Word in the words that led us there.

In the beautiful final sentences of his book Poetic Diction , Barfield hints at the elusive in-betweenness of words:

Over the perpetual evolution of human consciousness, which is stamping itself upon the transformation of language, the spirit of poetry hovers, for ever unable to alight. It is only when we are lifted above that transformation, so that we behold it as present movement, that our startled souls feel the little pat and the throbbing, feathery warmth, which tell us that she has perched. It is only when we have risen from beholding the creature to beholding creation that our mortality catches for a moment the music of the turning spheres.

To rise from beholding the creature to beholding creation: This is to throw off the shroud of literalism and be resurrected into the imagination by means of the chariot of the living, luminous Word. Many anthroposophists will no doubt recall Steiner’s description of the possible future state of humanity, in which the larynx - the organ of speech - will be an organ of reproduction. To speak well and truly will be to create; goodness, truth, and beauty will then be coequal aspects of the Word.

Until that far-distant state, we must work hard on transforming ourselves. In Saving the Appearances , Barfield suggests that when we work to heal the “sin

of literalness” by fostering imaginative, symbolic thinking, the poetic logic of microcosm and macrocosm, we also facilitate “the progressive incarnation of the Word.” This is a very difficult task, a modern path of initiation with all the associated risks, as adversarial powers ensure that “in our time the battle between the powers of good and evil is pitched in man’s mind even more than in his heart, since it is known that the latter will ultimately follow the former.” The central drama in this battle is whether we will be dragged down into literal-mindedness, the view of the world and each other as essentially hostile and other than ourselves, or as means to an end, as objects to exploit; or, whether we will see the world and each other as constituting a forest of symbols, matter and spirit always reflecting one another, the meaning of “I” always involving a lovingly entangled reflection of “You.”

This other state Barfield sometimes calls the imaginative soul. To feel “the seed of the Word stirring within us, as imagination” is to experience and explore the world as parable, metaphor, symbol, and sacrament. This is the heart of Goethean science. The transformation of astronomy into astrosophy (to take one example) rests on the rigorous Goethean science of self-transformation, so that each of us becomes a soulful inhabitant of the middle sphere, an iconic conduit for the living Word. For Friedrich Schiller, Goethe’s friend and sometime collaborator, this middle realm between sense and reason was one of pure free play. Perhaps we can feel something of this middle sphere awaken and move in us with the help of “A Meditation,” one of Barfield’s miraculous late poems. And, perhaps a part of that movement will be our expanding, shifting, playful, no-longer-literal apprehension of the simple words:

Strength in the pain-

Light in the strength-

When Motion Becomes Meaning

By Aria Ramsinghani

I’m a senior at the San Francisco Waldorf High School, and a member of the Youth Eurythmy Troupe.

My journey with eurythmy began at the Rudolf Steiner School of Ann Arbor, where I attended parentchild, preschool, and kindergarten. After moving to San Francisco, I joined the San Francisco Waldorf Grade School, then attended Peninsula Waldorf from 4th to 6th grade before returning to SF Waldorf. Through it all, eurythmy has been a constant - what began as awe, watching the SF Youth Eurythmy Troupe, has grown into a deep understanding of what it means to move with intention and presence. This piece reflects that journey - how eurythmy taught me not just to move, but to live.

When Motion Becomes Meaning

“No art has ever risen out of human intention intellectually conceived, neither can the principle of imitating nature ever produce an art. On the contrary, true art has always been born out of human hearts able to open themselves to the impulses coming from the spiritual world, human hearts which felt compelled to realise these impulses and to embody them in some way in external matter.” (Rudolf Steiner, 26 August 1923, Dornach)

There is a certain kind of awe that belongs only to childhood - a reverence untainted by reason, unburdened by understanding. I felt this wonder every time I watched the older SF Youth Eurythmy Troupe students move - circling, weaving, carving invisible forces into the air. Since joining the San Francisco Waldorf School community in 2012, I have witnessed the Troupe performances year after year, and every year I watched with the same awe – it was as if these young eurythmists were touching the edges of a world just beyond this one - one that was not visible but perceivable. The more I observed, the more I wanted to step into that space - to move with that same unyielding certainty, to let my body speak a language older than words.

Several years later, I stepped into that world, and these past three years in the SF Youth Eurythmy Troupe have been among the most profound and transformative of my life. I have traced the very paths my younger self once watched in wide-eyed reverence, moved with the same certainty that once felt unreachable. And, a few weeks ago, at the Youth Eurythmy Conference, I felt this love of eurythmy more keenly than ever. To witness so many students moving together, despite their various teaching backgrounds, was a deeply moving experience. There was a unifying force in that space, and it was a privilege to work with different teachers, to see the unique ways they guided us into deeper presence and expression.

It wasn’t until I witnessed the Eurythmy Spring Valley Ensemble, though, that I fully appreciated the depth of what expressive eurythmy could be, the beauty of eurythmy in its purest form. In those moments, I felt a veil of understanding lift, revealing a depth I had only intuited before - the most elegant movements, speaking through the body in a language that wove soul and space into an invisible harmony, stirring something deep within me, making the world feel, for an instant, more connected and alive than ever before. Now, as my time in Waldorf nears its end, as I prepare to step beyond the only world I have ever known, I feel the weight of these moments more than ever. In a world where nearly every beautiful thing has been stripped of its humanity, where speech is hollow and movement mechanical, where we have become so disembodied, so fractured from ourselves - eurythmy feels more necessary than ever.

“I speak in all humility when I say that within the anthroposophical movement there is a firm conviction that a spiritual impulse of this kind must now, at the present time, enter once more into human evolution. And this spiritual impulse must perforce, among its other means of expression, embody itself in a new form of art. It will increasingly be realised that this particular form of art has been given to the world in Eurythmy.” (Rudolf Steiner, 26 August 1923, Dornach)

San Francisco Youth Eurythmy Festival

Photo by Scott Chernis .

Steiner said this over a century ago, but never has it felt more urgent. Because look at us: Look at the world we have built - this world of steel and glass, of screens and numbers, of algorithms, of news cycles that reduce catastrophe to a headline, to a statistic, to an afterthought. Look at how we have dismembered ourselves, how we have forgotten what it means to live inside of our own bodies. We speak without feeling the weight of our words. We move without intention. We have become ghosts of ourselves, drifting through a landscape that no longer feels like it was made for human hands, human voices, human breath. To me, eurythmy is defiance. It is rebellion against the mechanization of being. It is a refusal to let movement be stripped of meaning, to let language be emptied of life. It demands that we be fully, fiercely, presently alive.

I have spent my life moving within these currents of the invisible, my body a vessel for forces that speak through gesture. I have shaped vowels and consonants with the arc or thrust of an arm, traced geometric forms, and felt the air respond as I stepped into its flow. I have woven spirals that breathe life into stillness, lifted lines that draw the soul upward, crossed thresholds where movement becomes meaning. And in those moments - when space, time, and form dissolve into pure expression - I have known, with unshakable certainty, what it is to be fully, wholly human. Because that is eurythmy to me. It is not merely art. It is not merely expression. It is a return to embodiment in a world that has wrenched us away from our own flesh, our own voices, our own breath. It is the reclamation of something we do not even realize we have lost.

“As I have already said, our soul-life does not in any way flow into the words which we speak; we do not enter into the sounds of speech with our inner being. How few of us really experience wonder, amazement, perplexity, or the feeling of self-defence simply in the vowel sounds themselves. How few of us experience the soft, rounded surface of certain objects, the thrusting hammering nature of others, their angular or undulating, their velvety or prickly qualities, as these are expressed by the different consonants. And yet all these things are contained in speech.” (Rudolf Steiner, 26 August 1923, Dornach)

We have forgotten the essence of speech, the raw, unfiltered connection between sound and soul. Too few of us, as Steiner says, truly listen to the vowels and consonants we utter, too few of us perceive the depth of what they contain. But it is within these simple sounds- the softness of a vowel, the sharpness of a consonant- that the whole world speaks to us. We have become disconnected from this sacred rhythm, this living language of the body, mind, and spirit, leaving us lost in a sea of hollow words and empty gestures. We need now, more than anything, to step into spaces where silence hums with presence, where the air around us holds memory, where the act of lifting an arm is not just movement but invocation. We need to move not just for the sake of motion, but for the sake of remembering what it is to be human.

I have spent my life growing through eurythmy, and in doing so, I have learned what it means to be alive. This is not just an art. It is a necessity. It is resistance. It is the body reclaiming its place in the world, the soul refusing to be silenced. It is, as Steiner knew it must be, the thing that calls us back: back to meaning, back to presence, back to ourselves.

The world we have built may seek to bury us under layers of abstraction, to distance us from our bodies and our souls, but through eurythmy, we reclaim them. Eurythmy has taught me that stillness is not the absence of movement but the gathering of it— that in the breath before motion, in the charged hush between gestures, something ancient stirs. Here, in the space where movement becomes language and silence hums with intention, my body, so easily dulled by a world that demands efficiency over feeling, wakes into something vaster than itself, something that speaks in rhythms older than words, that moves in currents deeper than thought.

Because the world will hollow us if we let it - it will strip us down to function, sever us from sensation, reduce us to ghosts in our own flesh. But in the weight of a step, the arc of an arm, the breath before the next motion, I reclaim what it would take from me. And if the world insists on forgetting - on erasing the language of the body, the knowing in the bones, the presence that cannot be digitized or mechanized - then let this be my defiance: to move, fiercely and fully, in a world that has forgotten how. 

A Festival and Exploration of Eurythmy in Waldorf Education

The Youth Eurythmy Festival 2025 in San Francisco was a huge success! Forty-six students from five different schools were immersed in eurythmy for three days, February 15-19. Morning workshops were led by Astrid Thiersch, of San Francisco, and Alex Spadea, of Steiner School NYC, plus a guest teacher Kleber Akama from Brazil. After lunch a variety of activities unfolded. Students experienced Virginia Herman and Sea-Anna Vasilas, Faculty and Ensemble members of Eurythmy Spring Valley. The ESV Ensemble gave an inspiring performance on the first evening. The last evening was dedicated to eurythmy presentations by the students. Thank you to all of you who were involved with hosting the West Coast Tour of ESVE. It always takes a formidable amount of strength to see it through. They performed two shows, plus an evening program in Marin County for over 600 school children. Thank you to Lilith and Sebastien Dupuis for their fortitude and perseverance. ~Monika Leitz, Mill Valley, CA

Becoming the Melody

In the shimmering mists of San Francisco

I learned to cherish the art of Eurythmy,

Spent three long days

Absorbing creativity and working until my body ached

To move within the very essence

Of speech weaving in the air,

And music creating complex, curving notes

That dance through your being; How to demonstrate the experience of a composition Through the way you shape

Your body into song.

We spent hours

Carefully tracing the footsteps of a melody, Reaching high to softly hold the notes

Our feet finding the rhythm, Our forms flowing and achingly beautiful, Inhabiting an instrument or voice

To follow into the realm of the soul. In a bright open room

Where the Earth pressed in close Our bodies craft at the sounds of speech

Into an expression of The innermost quality of the words, In three brief yet impactful days

Our being embodied the shape of masterpieces

Until our very marrow sang with them, And further developed the forms We had spent forever

Moving, inhabiting, breathing, becoming.

Under the warm brushstrokes of the lights

We opened up the room

With the ripple of silk

Stitched carefully by human hands

Making room for all 46 of us on stage

To become a tidal wave of swirling figures

In the space of a heartbeat. Here was a place in people

Who understand who you are without explanation, Who could recognize a companion

In the moment our eyes caught, Who have experienced what it means

To fall in love with the way Your body curls in the air, Glimmering with dewdrops on the trill of high notes, Reflected in your cupped hands. We know how it feels

To sense the reassuring presence Of creation whispering within, Its breath beside your own

As you move to the streams of music

Flowing within your essence That arcs through each moment, Embodying the tapestry of voices That only our eyes can see unfold, Figures rising like waves And then falling back for the harmony, Brightening the stones of the audience in their wake. We, at least, still know how To unearth the heartbeat of a story

Giving our bodies over To the act of birthing it into being, Carrying the mood of the music within and without, Becoming the manifestation of a melody

Until our forms, moving on stage together, Are simply the soul of the piece incarnate, Until our feet find a brief eternity In the shape of forever, Lingering in the lower voice of the universe, Until our hands open to The high notes of joy persisting briefly To brighten the space

With the warmth of community.

Pippa Wilcox, San Diego Waldorf School, 10th grade

The Rainbow

By Richard Neal

I feel within me a mood of prayer: that is how the rainbow begins...

THE ART…

These images are a series of canvases I did a few years ago based on Rudolf Steiner’s beautiful description of the Rainbow in the Drama Course . I had them hanging in my studio for a while and would occasionally ask a colleague to sit with them for a few minutes and just write down any soul moods they felt while looking at them. I did this with about 10 people and it was interesting to see: Everyone said something similar to the soul mood Rudolf Steiner speaks of, but different people to different colors.

FIRST SERIES

Three colors of the rainbow.

SECOND SERIES

Tension between luciferic and ahrimanic form tendencies

Richard Neal

I am a member of Camphill Village, Copake, New York and of the Anthroposophical Society since about 45 years. And I am a painter, having worked intensively with color for well over half of a century.

THE RAINBOW…

I feel within me a mood of prayer: that is how the rainbow begins, in the most intense violet, that goes shimmering out into immeasurable distances. The violet goes over into blue, the restful, quiet mood of soul that again goes over into green. When we look up to the green arc of the rainbow, it is as though our souls were poured out over all the sprouting and blossoming of nature’s world.

It is as though, in passing from violet and blue into green, we come away from the Gods to whom we were praying and now, in the green, we find ourselves in a world that opens the door to wonder – opens the door to a sensitive sympathy and antipathy with all that is around us. If you have really drunk in the green of the rainbow, you are already on the way to understand all the beings and things of the world. Then you pass on to the yellow, and in the yellow you feel firmly established in yourself – you feel you have the power to be human in the midst of nature – that is, to be something more than the rest of nature around you.

And when you go over to orange, then you feel your own warmth; the warmth that you carry within you; and, at the same time, you are made sensitive to many a shortcoming within your character, and of the good points too.

Going on then to red, where the other edge of the rainbow passes once again into the vast distances of nature, your soul will overflow with joy and exaltation, ardent devotion, and with love for all humanity.

Rudolf Steiner

see page 62

Richard Neal

top row: The Rainbow | bottom row:: Ahriman & Lucifer

Spiritual Research in Medicine & Therapy

By Adam Blanning

How do we engage in spiritual research, especially for medicine and therapy?

Should we start with substance or with process - should we begin with attention only for spiritual beings or focus most on their physical manifestations? What helps structure our work so that we are being both honest about our capacities as well as accurate in our perceptions?

These questions come up regularly in teaching anthroposophic medicine. What is interesting is that we often approach these questions already having a favored starting point. That’s because something already came alive for us in our own biography, an experience that spurred us to study spiritual science.

When you ask people about their own “spark” experience, some share how they first encountered anthroposophy by finding Steiner’s lectures in a library, or being handed one of his books by a friend. Through encounter with Steiner’s teachings the power of thinking begins to shine - so brightly and so purely that the study of anthroposophy, as a vast body of knowledge, then becomes a central task in many people’s biographies. Such power of thinking brings deepened soul forces and new perceptions. Once we meet enlivened thinking - the lifting of physical perceptions back into process, “what is now perceived in the strengthened force of thinking is not pale or shadowlike at all - it is full of inner content, vividly real and graphic”. 1 We study, which helps lead us to spiritual truths.

For other people, the fire may have been lit in quite a different way. It may not have started with ideas, but with a singular experience; an experience that falls outside of usual descriptions about the world. It can be direct perception of spiritual realities, like the companionship of nature beings as a child, or the journey of a neardeath experience. Those impressions are powerful, yet sometimes so different from the conversations of everyday life, that it may be hard to put them in context. Who can one share these things with? But then, a person hears the descriptions of anthroposophy and feels a kind of homecoming. “Ah, that is what I was experiencing. Now I know what it is.”

It is common to hear some variation of these two kinds of stories with people who begin studying anthroposophic medicine. Both approaches are important pathways into

the work.

While we naturally feel most comfortable with our own starting point, and may even argue that it is, in fact, the best way to approach anthroposophy, the truth is that medical spiritual research stands in between the two - between carefully formed thought and broadly open perception. Sometimes we need to study so that we can better perceive. Sometimes we begin with the perception, then study to understand our experience.

The place we practice this most in medicine is the therapeutic encounter between a patient and practitioner. This space really lies at the heart of this kind of spiritual research. We may engage in other kinds of medical research as well, ranging from statistical clinical analysis to karmic patterns of illness. But in speaking with patients we receive reminders that we must, indeed, move back and forth between these two paths.

Let’s look at some examples.

From my own experience, I can share that after finishing my medical training (many years of intense study and memorization) I had a chance to begin working with a Waldorf school as a new “school doctor.” It was an opportunity that came without any preset expectations; I was new to the work and the school had never had a doctor work with them before. One day a month could now be devoted just to observing children in Waldorf classrooms. Preparation for the visits consisted of reading about particular constitutional descriptions from Steiner and then writing something for the teachers. This seemed a good way to learn to better observe children. What was amazing was that every month, for a whole school year, the process we planned to discuss (and which had been carefully studied) showed itself beautifully during classroom observations! There was always a clear example, it was remarkable. This was so different than the book study of medical training.

I now realize it was being given as a gift, a kind of whispering from the spiritual world, saying “look closely, for you can actually see the spirit working all around you all the time. It is not so far away!” Surely the preparatory work was an essential part. It opened a space for seeing the role of the astral body in sensing, and the relationship between bodily etheric growth forces and thinking and memory forces. Each monthly meeting felt like a small moment of “breakthough.”

Since then, child observation has proven to not always be so straightforward, though years of practice and repetition have refined those kinds of observations and proven their lawfulness. On many days they even feel self-evident. But study was the initial starting point.

Yet, not all aspects of encounter can be prepared ahead of time. Sometimes we just have to be open. Indeed, really good listening often depends on whether you can set all prior knowledge, all preconceptions, to the side. When that can be achieved, strong pictures may emerge. The pictures are not easy to describe. For some practitioners they come as colors, as movements, tones, smells, or stories. Once a picture is found, the therapeutic task then becomes to bring the picture, the gesture, back into words—words which can be communicated to the patient or to a colleague, as well as specific therapeutic steps, which for a doctor might include choosing the exact potency for a remedy. That “translation process,” from picture to specific steps, sometimes pours through quickly and can be done right there on the spot. Sometimes it’s necessary to say “I need to think about this a bit more, but I will let you know the plan later today or tomorrow.” From my own personal experience, there seems to be a time limit, however, for the translation. The picture needs to be taken hold, usually during that same day, otherwise the immediacy of the impression begins to fade. Full logical justification for a therapeutic intervention may still not fully emerge even then, but only become clear weeks or even months down the road. But the potency of the therapeutic picture is clear. Steiner shared: “We must begin from processes, not substances, from events in progress, not finished products. And when we speak about substance, we must picture that the substance appearing in the outer world to our senses in nothing more than a process come to rest.” 2

Medicine offers regular feedback about how well you are moving between them. It’s important not to get stuck too much on one side.

Steiner cautioned - actually almost scolded - a group of young doctors, when asked if it was really necessary to carry a “will to heal” as part of medical studies. He makes clear that study, without the wish to make it practical and helpful in the world could only arise out of a “hypertrophy of knowledge”, and that actually your will to heal should be so great that you need to restrain yourself so as to “not break loose in such a way that I want to heal all the healthy people!” 3

On the other side, Steiner cautioned and emphasized how important it is to also not engage in “dilettantism,” especially within the field of medicine. 4 Dedicated training and vocational responsibility push you to study not just your own perceptions, but how those experiences relate to larger established patterns of health and illness. If a spiritual perception is true, it will also be observable in physiologic patterns, in biochemistry and blood tests, even in a tissue biopsy or x-ray. Spiritual process flows down into its manifestations. If these levels do not match, then we best look again and reconsider whether we have the right view. Sometimes our own emotion, metabolism, or sensation will cloud our perception. 5 This means that a first impression made during a medical visit may provide true spiritual insight, but that it is good to use the rest of the conversation and physical examination to make sure the perception was accurate and not a distortion.

In this way we can experience spiritual research in the realm of medicine. Other forms of anthroposophic work may focus on the relationship of the human being to the stars, to the soil, to the spoken word. For medicine, therapeutic potency and insight can unfold in that space between substance and process. 

You can hear a new podcast series Extending the Art of Healing Through Anthroposophy, with Dr. Adam Blanning and Laura Scappaticci, online at this address: healingandanthroposophy.transistor.fm

1 Fundamentals of Therapy , Chapter One, CW 27

2 Anthroposophical Spiritual Science and Medical Therapy , Lecture 1, 11. April 1921 (CW 313)

3 Course for Young Doctors , Lecture 2, 22. April 1924, Dornach (CW 316)

4 Steiner speaks several times about the importance of full medical training as well as not blurring vocational tasks. See Fundamentals of Therapy , Chapter One; Pastoral Medicine , Lecture 1, 8. September 1924 (CW 318)

5 See Steiner’s discussion of the sense of smell and mystical experiences, 8. August 1920 (CW 199)

Right Place-Right Time for Anthroposophic Psychology

By Leigh Glenn

Thousands of moments and their reverberations. The pattern there, in Rose Hall (Camphill Village Kimberton Hills, Kimberton, Pennsylvania) takes on its own life, living reflections of activities of the worlds-holders linked with the worlds within each of us, raying outward. All forms in potential are present, including their shattered, post-Sacred Wound versions. We hold our mirrored shards, our work together: Lifting the darkened silk that obscures, wiping away condensation, brushing dust from the reflecting glass—allowing our karmic kindreds to witness themselves through our witnessing, our listening. We hold steadily, creators and created, to what is given and received. Sometimes we move slowly-slowly like a eurythmist as if through deep waters, sometimes trudging along, sometimes flying beyond light’s speed, yet always within the light .

Perhaps a growing awareness prompted us to seek soul certainty through nine seminars of the Association for Anthroposophic Psychology’s (AAP) 2022–2025 three-year certificate program.

“Us” was 35 pilgrims who came together in August 2022 - hot days in Rose Hall with its stone-supported and -framed stage, its walls in ever-changing tones of pink-periwinkle-lavender. There, we were graced with and sustained by the presence of the image of Christ through the brushwork and heart of Carlo Pietzner, whose painting of the Deed on Golgotha often served for me as a pause-point for reflection.

Karmic Intertwinings

One of the spiritual bequests of Rudolf Steiner, an awareness for karma, carries a lingering question around sense of timing: Will we meet those we need to meet in order to accomplish our work here, which is to grow our capacities to love?

A chance remark from a friend at the Florida Waldorf School Association conference in 2022 prompted me to seek out AAP. I was accepted, along with fellow seekers, into a journey, part of a longer journey for each one. We count among us, by profession or vocationor even avocation - therapists, teachers, farmers and gardeners, volunteers, facilitators, social workers, ministers, nurses, Camphill coworkers, and artists of all kinds.

Before meeting, two of our faculty, James Dyson, MD,

and Simon Kuttner, PhD, gave an overview via Zoom of the threads of psyche- logos that preceded Steiner in his psychosophy work and developed since with warm relationality as a guiding star, for self- self - and for self-other - relations.

In the first in-person meeting, James and Simon could join us in Rose Hall only via Zoom, and we learned (or relearned) the importance of refraining, holding oneself back, to allow another to come forward, in any kind of relationship, professional or personal.

In every meeting, the faculty1 and graduate interns 2 brought a curriculum both of wide and deep anthroposophical and psychological content supported by artistic activities in multiple guises, to introduce, support, and deepen our own know-thyself quests. Each carried unique insights into the subject in a harmonious interplay of offerings, like sunlight through a multi-faceted crystal.

Every Encounter an Opportunity

In the last few years, we have infused Ideas with practical actions and artistic exercises, transforming them into Ideals. That any of us can ever come to truly know ourselves, that any of us ever comes to know aspects of another fairly well, seems like a miracle, yet more than possible - likely - through this program.

Take the common drama triangle of persecutorvictim-rescuer as an example. Most in our group feel themselves rescuers. This work helped me see the upside

of the rescuer’s sense of sympathy - of a feeling-with, and how, with discernment, this may turn toward and become empathy. The danger: “fixing”, interfering in what is not mine to take care of, and perpetuating an unhealthy dynamic.

We also witnessed two prominent polar beings active in us and in the world: Lucifer and Ahriman, as portrayed eurythmically by our eurythmists. It has been an abiding question for me how these polarities work in me. This task is ongoing - to be “on the senseout” for their influences, which seem to grow more subtle with time, perhaps indicating both their boredom and their tenacity, their sometimes loosened, sometimes tightened grip, according to how I think-feel-act.

, An overarching question for anthroposophic psych -ology is: How can a person truly make room for “the ‘I’ of the other”? This question is not one only therapists and people who practice healing arts need to answer. Each of us needs to answer this. Each of us needs to come to know the skill of empathic resonance, to practice holding back or coming forward, in and with empathy.

In this practice, we need patience. Answering requires time, requires us to hold further questions, including the key one: Who am I?

The answer will be different depending on whether it’s Mars’ Day or Saturn’s Day; whether our liver is doing its “sucking” activities well or sluggishly; whether we have just driven through a place steeped in the grief of souls or elementals, present or past; whether we might induce a chuckle from a memory of a three-person

drama we enacted based in the facts of our own lives and how our colleagues portrayed us. The influences are legion, both earth-bound and cosmic.

Re-Cognizing Our Selves

In time and with practice, we work with the “Who Am I?” with ever-present reminders that every single one of us has “survival parts” and may be acting from them, may be trying to integrate them - or may not be ready to. That kind of resistance, as noted at our first meeting, is a way to stretch the soul, and in that way, every time we encounter resistance, we find an opportunity to build a relationship to the process...of stretching. This stretching may involve making time to repeat the “Logic of the Heart” exercise or to sit in meditation-concentration and come away from that, pastels at the ready, to create a soul-gesture drawing we can spend further time with in concentration and imagination. All of these practices help us to cultivate patience with ourselves and, in turn, patience with others, strengthening us to meet what is.

This has been our work together, that is, in community. AAP, by far, has been the best “practice field” for developing empathy that we might now carry into the “proving grounds” of the world. As noted in an early seminar, bringing fruits of our encounters in this earth-world into the spiritual world is one of our tasks as human beings.

Each seminar has been a special microcosm of this work-in-community, from our triads enacting the soul’s thinking-feeling-willing as the Three Graces to sitting opposite one another and, without thinking, without reacting, listening to that person share part

Springtime at Camphill, Kimberton Hills Pennsylvania

of their biography; from dramatically portraying the polarities of the planetary beings - one can enjoy the surprise in improv-representations of the Mars-Venus polarity - to, literally, feeling our way through the nowords miracles that are the cardinal organs of liver, lungs, kidneys, heart.

In studying our spiritual ancestors’ evolution through Steiner’s Inner Experiences of Evolution , we learned of the Sacred Wound and, perhaps, the need to carry a seed of awareness of de-personalizing what could be perceived as a wrong. Through working with Roberto Assagioli’s psychosynthesis, we can bring into consciousness what may have been living in our unconscious for years or for lifetimes - and so we are closer to our genuine Self.

It is not possible to hit every height or depth of experience from the more than 400 hours we will have been together in this fifth cohort of AAP. As a former agnostic who doubted the existence of karma, my time with these kindred souls has been one of deep joy, and I know with certainty that these experiences have formed a right-place/right-time meeting.

I leave this program with more questions, seeds of questions, to tend, perhaps to germinate - if and when they are ready. I am sure that rather than reflectingglass shards, we each are coming away from our times together and times apart having fused these shards into a large, flexible mirror, with greater capacity for accuracy, for fewer distortions. We have essential tools to work with every aspect of thinking, feeling, and willing, and far greater understanding of the human soul, of ourselves.

1 AAP Faculty: James Dyson, MD; Simon Kuttner, PhD; Susan Overhauser, PhD; Tonya Stoddard, LCSW; eurythmists Karen Derreumaux and Gillian Shoemaker; Spacial Dynamics instructor Alex Schneider, LMHC; teacher/musician/astrosopher Alan Thewless; multi- spectrum artist Vincent Roppolo; heart of AAP/counselor/teacher Roberta Nelson, PhD; counselor and AAP chief operations officer Christine Huston.

2 AAP Graduate Interns: Heather Ross, LCSW; Sudha Gutti, MSW, LCSW; Christina Sophia, PhD; and counselor/coach Joyce Reilly.

Leigh Glenn is a member of the fifth cohort of the Association for Anthroposphic Psychology’s (AAP) three-year certificate program. A new cohort begins November 2025. For more information, visit https://anthroposophicpsychology.org/3Year-Certificate-Program-Cohort-6-2025. 

Anthroposophia

Anthroposophy, the gnosis of Man, Is the beginning of perfection.

But the gnosis of God, or Platonism, Is the perfection of perfection.

Thus, Platonism, whose end is the Good, Is the sister-half, or Sophia, of Anthroposophy.

Intuition / Reason

Intuition, as the eye of the heart, Embraces things; Thus, in its way, comprehends them.

Reason, through the circle of thought,

Comprehends things; Thus, in its way, embraces them.

Threshold

Reason discovers truth, Thereby giving rise to reality, But, to bring truth to light, Which truth has its own light, The intellectualized mind

Must cross a threshold.

John Urban

When Life Slips Out

When life slips out of the body

And it can’t get back in

But is pushed out into the general

Background of things

Then life being life

Can’t not but go on

In search of yet another form

Better than the last one

Death’s heavy curtain

Opens on a further scene

A bustling city square

Or a forest in Arden

Where life is love must be

The body’s only summary

A blueprint for new stars

Peter Rennick

Review of Jeffrey Hipolito’s Owen Barfield’s Poetic Philosophy; Meaning and Imagination

By Fred Dennehy

Owen Barfield was the leading spokesperson for anthroposophy in England for most of the twentieth century. He lived from 1898 to 1997, and was actively writing for at least seventy of those years. He had been known to the general public until recently principally as a highly accomplished if somewhat unorthodox member of the ‘Inklings,’ a loosely constituted assembly of writers associated with C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein. Today, though, he is beginning to be recognized by a new audience of readers as a thinker of startling and foundational originality.

At the age of 85, Barfield wryly noted that “[t]here is an earlier Wittgenstein and a later Wittgenstein; there is an earlier Heidegger and a later Heidegger; an earlier D.H. Lawrence and a later D.H. Lawrence; but there is no earlier Barfield and later Barfield. He always says the same old thing.” He added that, “I have the feeling, when I write a book, that I always write the same book over and over again, though perhaps in a different context or from a different approach.”

How do you do scholarly justice to a man who, by his own admission, over the course of nearly three quarters of a century, didn’t say anything new? In Owen Barfield’s Poetic Philosophy , Jeffrey Hipolito solves the question in a masterful way. He makes clear that Barfield’s central insight - the thing in him that never changed - is not a theory, but a profound imagination, the full realization of which lies not on the plane of knowing but of being. Barfield is resistant to presentation through the ordinary lattices of literary or philosophical history. And so, Hipolito chooses not to deconstruct Barfield’s philosophy, but to unfold it in a series of widening contexts.

He begins with Barfield’s seminal insight into language, particularly the meaning of metaphor, which he had arrived at by the early 1920s, even before his acquaintance with the works of Rudolf Steiner. For Barfield, metaphor is not just a stitching together of resemblances, but the recovery of universal meaning through inspiration and reason working together in a fierce polar tension. The meaning is one in which the reader participates , so it is not just a new thought we come to know, but a new way of being we experience And this is not just a discrete aesthetic moment. Poetic language has the capacity to react in a more permanent way on a reader’s ordinary experience of the outer world, so that it begins to betray significances that were previously unknown.

Such a view of poetics was radically different from what any of the other literati were saying in the twentieth century. Hipolito shows this convincingly by placing

Owen Barfield Wheaton Ill. 1972. Used with kind persmission of the Owen Barfield Literary Estate

Barfield in the context of better known critics like T.S. Eliot, John Middleton Murry, and C.S. Lewis, and, later, Northrop Frye and Harold Bloom. Barfield was a Romantic for whom the question, “In what way is imagination true?” was absolutely critical. The answer he found opened the way to the recognition of a spiritual actuality that simply was not permitted in the polite circles of critical discourse.

Mr. Hipolito then turns to Barfield’s understanding of history as an evolution of consciousness , which he shows to be the core of his poetic insight displayed over the larger canvas of Western history. Barfield has been wrongly classed by some along with the purveyors of large narratives of ideas, such as Spengler and Toynbee. But the evolution of consciousness is something far more elemental. The very magnitude of what Barfield was saying has been slow to clarify for the scholarly world and it is this: Since consciousness is correlative to the phenomena (the appearances) of the world, the evolution of consciousness is not a mere transition of ideologies, but an evolution of reality itself.

He then confronts the overarching theme of polarity – if anything, more fundamental to Barfield than the evolution of consciousness. The universe, for Barfield as well as for the Romantic poet and thinker Samuel Taylor Coleridge, invariably reveals itself as the activity of two opposing forces: I and the world, subject and object, noun and verb, nature and man, universal and individual, inspiration and imagination, and countless other polar contraries. The opposition cannot be resolved by choosing between them or somehow fusing them; they have to remain in tension, where they point always to an ‘antecedent unity’ that can only be grasped imaginatively. Polarity is a paradox in terms of abstract thought, but a mystery as it begins to be experienced. As a lens through which to see the world, it yields extraordinary insights, but more important, it shows the way beyond informational and analytical knowing to the cognitive experience of being.

Mr. Hipolito has a long background in anthroposophy, and so he is able to follow Barfield where many of his other expounders have to stop. He shows how Barfield’s central insight into the nature of language was both confirmed and expanded in the sweeping cosmology of spiritual science. And he demonstrates convincingly how anthroposophy may be seen as “Romanticism come of age.”

The remainder of the book takes us from the rarified precincts of polarity and spiritual cosmology to the rhythms of lived experience. Mr. Hipolito shows how Barfield’s approach to the most persistent questions of ethics - how we live and love - is fully continuous with the other elements of his philosophy, as well as with Rudolf Steiner’s practice of ‘moral intuition.’

The final chapter is the most adventurous. We are transported into the twisting ordeals of transformation undergone by Barfield’s own fictional representative, the lawyer and philologist G.A.L. Burgeon. In three works of fiction, This Ever Diverse Pair, Worlds Apart , and Unancestral Voice , Burgeon makes his way from a harrowing personal breakdown, through a cognitive cleansing in a tour de force Platonic symposium, to an extended Pauline initiation. In the process, Mr. Hipolito showcases Barfield’s immense talents as a literary artist, an area that he has explored in greater depth in the companion volume to this, Owen Barfield’s Poetry, Drama and Fiction: Rider on Pegasus. 

O Lord May the word With bladed tongue Gorge my black heart

And the flame by which My livid blood is sung Sear my spent flesh: May you form me Blind, entire That I may catch armsful Of intangible falling Fire.

Jeffrey Hipolito

Book Reviews

Review of Dr. Adrian Cooper’s Places of Pilgrimage and Healing (Capall Bann)

By Mick Taylor

There are only about twelve books which are at the heart and soul of my thinking. Adrian Cooper’s Places of Pilgrimage and Healing is one of them.

To research his book, Cooper interviewed 45 people, all of whom had been told by their medical professionals that there was nothing more that could be done to help them. Those interviews took fifteen years to complete. Some of the interviewees had been diagnosed with terminal illness. Others live with chronic mental illness such as depression, stress, anxiety, Alzheimer’s, and other types of dementia.

Despite the range of medical challenges which those 45 interviewees face, they all had at least one opportunity to be taken on pilgrimage journeys. The experience of having done so changed each of their lives. Cooper’s book tells those stories.

The result of each pilgrimage was to change the perspective of each individual. Instead of dying from terminal illness or their other medical conditions, pilgrims learned to live with the challenges. The

difference is fundamental. It is life changing.

Throughout the book, I like the way Dr Cooper uses extracts from his interviews with pilgrims to bring a powerful sense of authenticity to each chapter. Cooper’s narrative introduces and explains the background to each pilgrim’s journeying. He also includes extracts from works of scripture and other literature which have been important to each pilgrim. The final result is a book of many voices. I like that because it creates a fascinating richness to the book. It is a wonderfully non-elitist way of telling pilgrimage and healing stories.

Another important feature of Places of Pilgrimage and Healing is that it does not offer false hope or easy answers. Instead, pilgrimage is only ever shown to be a significant contribution toward journeys in search of healing. Moments of miraculous transformation and realization come from witnessing spectacular sunsets above mountainous landscapes for example; or sharing walks with friends and sitting together in awe and wonder at the joy of encountering nature in its magnificent glory.

I also find it interesting to listen to other readers of this book who have realized that they, too, can find healing for their challenges through what they often call “local pilgrimage destinations”. That is, when neither time nor money are available for epic journeys, it is sometimes just as effective to travel to local rivers, woodland or other wildlife conservation spaces to find a sense of healing such as calm, tranquility, serenity, inspiration, and other positive memories. So Places of Pilgrimage and Healing is a book which has consequences - not just as an inspiring read, but as a book which makes readers connect to their local environment in new and life-affirming ways. For example, I have heard other readers describe the way they have learned to listen more attentively to their local river estuaries or sea shores as a consequence of reading this excellent book. I suspect that Places of Pilgrimage and Healing will continue to inspire its readers in those ways for many years to come. 

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Review of Dankmar Bosse’s

How Can Granite Arise from Basalt?

By Lynn Madsen

Reading this book sparked a favorite memory: While climbing in the Teton range in Wyoming, the sense of warmth as I leaned on the granite wall was bliss - it felt like being immersed in love. Also immersed in nature and joy while climbing up a mountain on a perfect summer day and feeling strong. . .was this warmth and love my imagination?

In contrast, on another Teton mountain, Mt. Moran, our climbing route included scaling “The Black Dike.” As it happens, that vein of dark material is basalt (which I looked up after reading this book). I loved that climb, but not because of spending time with the basalt. No, that sense of warmth from granite - if I visit that part of the country again, I will make a beeline to those granite slopes. I will play music and

resonate with its presence. This book confirms my memory, what my senses detected.

Let’s start with the title: How Can Granite Arise from Basalt ? I have little knowledge of geology, which makes me a perfect foil to attempt this review. First off, I could not explain the difference between granite and basalt, and second, besides a passing knowledge of shifting tectonic plates, I have no idea how granite would arise otherwise. Below the title on the book cover is a world map placed in the middle of a granite slab that I also cannot explain - it turns out to be a map of Pangea; all this before even reading the first chapter.

The author, Dankmar Bosse, has spent much of his life pursuing this question with great passion and has written a much thicker volume about it, familiar to some serious geologists. This book is deceptively thin, because it packs a distilled form of Bosse’s life work in the most concise read I’ve ever come across.

The first read-through included a constant dictionary search of many geologic terms, so that I could at least superficially understand the content. The second read-through was like a connect-the-dots puzzle to perceive the big picture that slowly but dramatically reveals itself. In Bosse’s clear, methodical, sometimes blunt and sometimes poetic descriptions, this story, like a well-written epic novel, unfolds. Each chapter is a building block to reveal the picture at the end of the book; as a result, even a novice reader like me can answer the title’s question.

Bosse begins the book by describing the many facets of granite - coal, peat, varieties of granite, and various sedimentary layers. Note that granite is not just the granite of the rock slopes I was climbing; it takes many forms, and the evolution of the various forms of granite arise from living forms.

The second section is about the formation of our solar system and Earth. Here is where the map of Pangea takes its place. His three-page description of the seven planets is so packed with information, I have redrawn his illustration for my own use.

Book Reviews

Integral to the formation of our solar system and its planets, Bosse then presents basalt. We begin to discern a fundamental difference between basalt and granite. This section ends with chapters about the nature of time. Once more, I will revisit these few pages from now on; sense of time now goes far beyond my scientific training about radioisotopes.

The formation of the solar system in space and time. Granite and its relation to living substance versus basalt, which covers the ocean floors and lies beneath granite on the continents. Bosse has set the stage for the third section of the book that he has titled, “The Separation of the Nature Kingdoms from the Human Being.”

I was able to follow section three with the help of Bosse’s time charts; chapters set out the Earth’s history in chronological order, beginning with the Polarian epoch of Old Saturn and on through to the present. Starting with mere suggestion of any form, on into gelatinous, albumen- like, watery-airlight-filled environments and the myriad variations of transformations from liquid and gaseous forms of elemental fire, air, water, and earth to the more solid form of today’s Earth. In contrast, basalt holds no direct history with living beings. With this everincreasing density that took aeons to evolve into the solid planets as we know them now, Bosse’s premise is that granite formed within the etheric realm as did all living things surrounding the earth, and then eventually came to rest on its surface. In contrast, basalt makes up the planet that it fell to.

This third section, chronologically organized by epochs, encompasses the mineral, plant, animal, and

human kingdoms, including various combinations of these kingdoms. Bosse illuminates how their origins and evolutions relate to this magnificent comprehension of granite and how completely different its origin is from basalt.

The majority of photos in the book are from Bosse, and he created his own charts. In addition, interspersed throughout the book are quotes, paintings, and drawings from Steiner that increase in number as Bosse’s story progresses. Bosse has created a reiteration of Steiner’s cosmology embedded in his geological knowledge and insights. In particular, he includes Steiner’s paintings of the earlier epochs that are also found in the book by Hilda Raske about the First Goetheanum. Synchronously, I was reading Raske’s book while reviewing this one - a bonus geologic perspective that deepens study of the hierarchies.

Bosse ends the book with a concise and useful summary of Goethean observation. This ending holds the eloquence of a seemingly simple yet deeply wise suggestion—that I can observe our world with Goethean methods and experience a true education, different from what I recall memorizing by rote in a physical sciences course. True wealth. Thank you, Dankmar Bosse, for this gift. 

,,,the sense of warmth as I leaned on the granite wall was bliss...

of Him … found Him again within, in the feeling and experience of sorrow and pain.” 19

In the same lecture, Rudolf Steiner speaks of the relation of pain and sorrow to spiritual knowledge:

“All true and great understanding is born of pain and sorrow. If one seeks to follow the path into higher worlds by those means of knowledge described in Anthroposophy, then one can only reach one’s goal through an experience of pain. Without suffering, without suffering a great deal and having thereby become free from that element in pain which drags one down, one cannot come to know and understand the spiritual world.” 20

To experience fully the tragedy of Rudolf Steiner’s death, to be willing to endure the pain of this tragedy, is to create an inner space allowing for a certain quality of relation to him in spirit.

To experience this pain and sorrow is to open oneself to accompanying him in the reality of that tragedy, to accompany him in his loneliness of soul.

To become aware of the magnitude of this tragedy can be deeply disorienting. One can easily feel lost and rudderless, without a clear path forward for Anthroposophy.

But we are still left with the mystery of the final impulse that Rudolf Steiner gave us: the “Foundation Stone of Love” and its Meditation as a ground for a community of individuals united in spirit and in the striving to provide an earthly home for the spiritual stream of Anthroposophy.

Rudolf Steiner left us some words of encouragement:

“[The spiritual stream of Anthroposophy] will continue to exist in earthly life only when human beings can remain faithful to it. Otherwise it will continue to exist apart from earthly life. Yet it will go on existing in connection with life on earth if human beings find the strength in their hearts to remain devoted to it.” 21

There are some who believe that with Rudolf Steiner’s death, his final impulse had clearly failed, and that he has separated from the Anthroposophical Society.

Others believe that the Christmas Conference

guaranteed the eternal and unconditional unity of the Society with the pure spiritual stream of Anthroposophy and with the being of Rudolf Steiner.

But is there yet a deeper dimension to this situation, a third way of seeing it?

In our age of freedom, there can be no automatic and unconditional unity when it comes to this spiritual impulse, which Rudolf Steiner called “a New Turning Point of Time.” 22 And is it not true that we can unite spiritually only with what we are willing to prepare ourselves to accompany in soul – with what we are willing to make spiritually real within ourselves? And would this uniting not require a continuous striving, even an embodied striving, to preserve the living unity?

A candle flame will not burn forever on its own; its life depends on the care of the substance in which it has been enkindled. And yet, even if a candle has been neglected and its flame extinguished, it can still be rekindled by another candle whose flame has been tended.

In The Philosophy of Freedom , Rudolf Steiner explores the question: Do we have freedom of will?

The answer is not a simple Yes or No. The answer is: We have the potential to become free, but it all depends on how we cultivate our inner activity and consciousness .

In the same way, it only makes sense that this final mystery and impulse of life given by Rudolf Steiner would now live as a potential that depends on our inner activity in order to find its way into earthly conditions, to be made real.

This mystery is the paradigm of how to raise our soulforces closer to their true archetypes, so that we may, as the Foundation Stone Meditation enjoins us, truly live, truly feel, and truly think.

To truly live:

Practice spirit-remembering , in depths of soul, where in the wielding World-Creator-Being, your own ‘I’ comes to being in the ‘I’ of God.

To truly feel:

Practice spirit-sensing , in equanimity of soul, where the surging deeds of world-becoming unite your Continued from page 15

Continued on page 53

Calender of the Soul 2025 - 2026

By Herbert O. Hagens

April 20 #1 Easter Mood

April 27 #2

May 04 #3

May 11 #4

May 18 #5 Light

May 25 #6

June 01 #7 Lucifer

June 08 #8 #9 Whitsun

June 15 #10 #11

June 22 #12 St. John Moon

June 29 #13

July 06 #14 Summer

July 13 #15

July 20 #16

July 27 #17

August 03 #18

August 10 #19

August 17 #20 Lucifer

August 24 #21

August 31 #22 Light

September 07 #23

September 14 #24

September 21 #25

September 28 #26 Michaelmas Mood

October 05 #27 Fall

Rudolf Steiner first published the 52 mantric verses we know as the Calendar of the Soul in 1912 and again in 1918. They commence with verse number one on Easter Sunday and continue through until the following Easter. Since the Easter observance shifts cosmically every year, an adjustment in the sequence becomes necessary. There are never exactly 52 weeks between Easters.

The dates presented here correspond to the practice of meditating a new verse each week, Sunday through Saturday. This formula is based on the original 1912 edition. The idea is to ponder the verses in harmony with the seven-day astral rhythm of the soul from one Easter (April 20, 2025) to the next Easter (April 5, 2026). A second consideration is to keep the corresponding “mood” verses in sync with the major Christian festivals. Rudolf Steiner composed 52

October 12 #29

October 19 #28

October 26 #30

November 02 #31 Light

November 09 #32

November 16 #33 Ahriman

November 23 #34

November 30 #35

December 07 #36

December 14 #37 Winter

December 21 #38 Christmas Mood

December 28 #39

January 04 #40 Epiphany

January 11 #41

January 18 #42

January 25 #43

February 01, #44

February 08 #45

February 15 #46 Ahriman

February 22 #47

March 01 #48 Light

March 08 #49

March 15 #50

March 22 #51

March 29 #52 Palm Sunday

April 05 #1 Easter Mood

verses, but there are only 50 weeks between the two Easters (2025-2026). The adjustments being proposed occur at Whitsun and St. John’s.

The Calendar of the Soul incorporates the cycles of nature, the activity of the senses, the influences of Lucifer and Ahriman, the cultivation of one’s inner life and much more. The verses can also be further understood in relation to the planets and zodiac. Exploring the polarities, starting with verses 1/52, 2/51, 3/50, etc. provides deep insight into the overall dynamics of the Calendar We come to treasure the verses as an essential tool for nurturing the soul on our pathway to self-knowledge.

Herbert O. Hagens, Princeton, NJ With special thanks to Gino Ver Eecke, Spring Valley, NY

Reading the Timeless Inscriptions

By Mary Stewart Adams

The Calendar of the Soul was just one of many impulses that rose out of the Stiftung of 1911, which Rudolf Steiner later described as the second of three calls from the spiritual world.1 At the time, the response to this second call was referred to as the inauguration of a renewed Theosophical Art and Style, which found its expression in the Mystery Dramas, the development of speech art and eurythmy, in painting and architecture.

Further, the original Calendar could rightly be described as a study guide for learning how to live with the being of the year, through color, form, initiative, and contemplation. The course of the year has its own life, Rudolf Steiner wrote in the preface to the second edition (1918). With this life the human soul can unfold a feeling-unison . 2

The color came through the new images of the zodiac, which served this idea of unfolding a sense for the waking and sleeping of spiritual beings and forces in the course of the year. These images were meant to be an expression of formative forces , albeit made static on the page, and were not meant as symbols.

Initiative was demonstrated through the feast days and names days that were included for every day of the year. Not only the sounding together of consonants and vowels combined in the naming of those that were born or died on each day, but the deeds of individuals, both saints and notable, historical figures that were aligned in the calendar to certain days and, by default, to specific degrees of the zodiac ~ as though these earthly deeds were shored up in zodiacal seed beds, to be made use of by those aware of this “secret garden.” Each life makes a cosmic inscription, and the whole Calendar was designed to foster an ability to read the resulting script, this writing of the stars, (which)

The Visitation, Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio) 1520

by our own deeds (is) inscribed into the cosmic spaces 3

Contemplation was furthered through the weekly verses, meant to support the awakening soul’s ability to partake in the meaningful course of the world as it comes to life in the rhythms of time.

Though most of us experience the Calendar solely through the verses, the information included below is gathered out of consideration for just a few of the corresponding feast days, together with some celestial phenomena of 2025, as complement to the verses for the summer months.

June 1, 2025 the planet Venus (astronomically the second planet away from the Sun) reaches its greatest elongation, furthest away from the Sun. Due to the late date of Easter in 2025, verse 7 aligns to June 1st, the “Luciferic temptation” verse.4

June 8 is Whitsunday in 2025, and on this day Mercury and Jupiter come closest to one another, in the region of Gemini stars. Gemini is referred to as the Twins and is the region of sky where the path of the planets in our solar system crosses the path of the Milky Way. The virtue here is faithfulness , which is beautifully indicated in both verses 8 and 9 of the Calendar

The Summer Solstice occurs on June 20 this year, when the Sun reaches its “high hour” as described in verse 11. Here a cosmic fructification takes place in anticipation of the St. John’s mood of trust that I may find myself in cosmic light and cosmic warmth (verse 12).

At the Feast of St. John, Jupiter will be exactly conjunct the Sun, which has about it a lovely gesture of expansiveness that aligns to the mood of chapter 3 of the John Gospel “He must increase, but I must decrease.” Here John is speaking of the ancient Moon-based mysteries, which give way to the new light of the Christ as a Sun being, now descended to and uniting with the Earth, which mystery can be experienced in the cycle of the year as well.

The day after the Feast of St. John, on June 25, 2025 the Moon will come to New Phase, and while the Moon plays a significant role in determining the date for Easter each year, thereby supporting us in finding our way to harmonize the verses with the weeks of the year from one Easter to the next, the Moon is not so easy to discern in the verses this many weeks later.

From the season of St. John’s until the middle of

August, an interesting sequence of feminine feast days unfolds in the traditional Christian calendar, reaching a crescendo at the time of the Feast of Transfiguration on August 6 and then on through the peak of the Perseid Meteor Shower.

In the verse that corresponds to July 2nd, the original date of the Feast of the Visitation of Mary and Elisabeth as established in the 14th century, we read of spirit kinship. Mary and Elisabeth are cousins, and sisters in the respective roles they play in the Turning Point of Time. They spend three months together (end of March to end of June) which becomes the period of time 33 years later when the great mysteries of the Raising of Lazarus, the Resurrection, Ascension, and Whitsunday take place.

The Feast of Mary Magdalene is observed on July 22nd each year, aligning to verse 16. The mood of bearing in inward keeping spirit bounty can well be imagined as the gesture of the Magdalene, who anoints both the head and the feet of the Christ leading up to the trials of the Holy Week. The maturation of divine gifts in her soul (as described in the verse) prepare her to be the one who first encounters the Risen Christ, when she receives ultimate affirmation of her own true nature (That ripened gifts divine, maturing in the depths of soul, may bring their fruits of selfhood ).

The Feast of the Magdalene’s sister, Martha, is observed on July 29th, which corresponds to verse 17. It can be illuminating to read verses 16 and 17 side by side while considering the different soul moods of these two women. Verse 16 seems very much to address the inner task of the individual (…to bear in inward keeping spirit

Rembrandt, Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, c. 1600

bounty), whereas verse 17 directs the attention outward, to what is received from the world (… that I by grace through senses’ portals have led into my soul …). Verse 17 also aligns with time in the year of the Feeding of the Multitude with five loaves and two fishes, if the date is calculated based on the Feast of Transfiguration (observed August 6).5

The following verses 18, 19, and 20, in addition to aligning with the Transfiguration scene described in the

Luke Gospel, are also wonderfully depicted in Raphael’s painting of the Transfiguration, which was his last work and which was at the foot of his bed when he died in 1520. Verse 18 includes the reference to the raiment for the spirit, which is commensurate with what is described in Luke 9:29 And as he prayed, the fashion of his countenance was altered, and his raiment was white and glistering. The warning of verse 19 suggests the moment after the Christ is transfigured with its opening line In secret to encompass now, akin to Luke 9:36 And they kept it close, and told no man in those days any of those things which they had seen . Chapter nine of the Luke Gospel continues on to a description of the boy with epilepsy (lower right in Raphael’s painting), who is the first to be healed by the transfigured Christ, an event that seems to stand behind verse 20 I feel at last my life’s reality…Conscience begins with this verse, and at this point in the cycle of the year, when the Perseid Meteor Shower has peaked and strength of will is called for, to encounter again the earth forces now we are awakening from the summer’s dream. 

1 First Rudolf Steiner spoke about such future tasks to a very small circle of his students, trying to guide their souls to the meaning of those more distant tasks which must grow from a human will which has become free of selfishness. He repeated these words to a larger circle on the occasion of the General Meeting on December 15, 1911. This was not done as part of the General Meeting itself; he clarified that it was outside the program. He began the talk in an especially solemn and impressive manner. This is perhaps the reason for the first part of the talk being noted down, but not in his words. He stressed that the content of this lecture be completely independent of all those he had previously given. It was, so to speak, a direct message from the spiritual world. It was a call delivered to humanity – followed by waiting to see what echo resulted .~Marie Steiner The Stiftung of 1911~An Impulse for the Future Given Through Rudolf Steiner, and What at First Became of It , 1948

2 The Cycle of the Year as a Breathing Process of the Earth Rudolf Steiner GA 233, Lecture 2, April 1, 1923

3 Man’s Life on Earth and in Spiritual Worlds GA 218 Lecture 6, November 19, 192 2

4 See Man in the Light of Occultism, Theosophy, and Philosophy GA 137, lecture 10, from June 12, 1912 for Rudolf Steiner’s description of how Lucifer is related to the realm of Venus.

5 See Luke Gospel chapter 9

The Transfiguration, Raphael, 1516-1520

The Lawrence Anthroposophical Study Group, Lawrence, Kansas.

By Rick Mitchell

In the summer of 1997 , I incorporated the Waldorf Association of Lawrence with the goal of establishing a Waldorf school and Biodynamic farm in Lawrence, Kansas. It took a few years to gather enough community support to make a school viable but by October of 2001, we reincorporated as The Waldorf Association of Lawrence (2.0) establishing a new school that was later named Prairie Moon Waldorf School. At the same time The Lawrence Anthroposophical Study Group was formed. Now in its 24th year, the school is well established, as is the study group, which has met monthly without interruption since October, 2001.

The study group has varied in size and composition over the years, reaching a maximum membership of fifteen at any given time and having a total of forty-four members since inception.

The group is organized around book study. We read slowly in order to maximize depth of discussions which link Rudolf Steiner’s work to other historical events and spirituality-related movements. Currently, we are reading Nature’s Open Secret , a collection of chapters in Steiner’s early book about Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

We invite new members to join at the beginning of a new book and ask that they commit to regular attendance for at least the period of that study. At the start of a new book, as a welcoming and orientation of new members, we read together Marjorie Spock’s “The Art of Goethean Conversation,” in order to set the tone for the kind of conversations we wish to have for the duration of the study. Though we do make time for socializing at the beginning and ending of each gathering, we preserve time for an “over the threshhold” (as described by Spock) conversation, and mark it with the lighting and extinguishing of a candle.

2001 - 2025

Mark Aaron Bev Harris

Ralph Bauer

Bob Brawley

Erik Buchholtz

Sophia Compton

Mike DeJongh

Mary Dixon

Vicki Douglas

Jill Draper

Carrie Easley

David Eichler

Kathy Farwell

Robin Goff

Lana Maree Haas

Dick Halford

Marty Haught

Juliana Haught

Becky Kasenberg

Jeff Kennedy

Shaffia Laue

Annie Lenz

Juda Lewis

Beth Anne Mansur

Lisa Meisinger

Rick Mitchell

John Regier

Shawna Saubers-Ristic

Susanne Schadde

Bret Schacht

Gwyn Schmidtberger

Andrea Simberg

Sandra (Mutrux) Stoner

Steve Sullivan

Barbara Thompson

Laurie Ward

Maureen Waters

Melissa Watson

Lori Werdin-Kennicott

Teresa Woods

Mary Veerkamp

Beth Cooper

Bekah Zachritz

Erin Zamrzla

For more information about The Lawrence Anthroposophical Study Group, contact Rick Mitchell through Prairie Moon Waldorf School https://www.prairiemoon.org/.

Picture: The Lawrence Anthroposophical Study Group in 2013. Front row: Laurie Ward, Sophia Compton, Melissa Watson. Middle row: Rick Mitchell, Ralph Bauer, Shaffia Lau, Jill Draper, Shawna Ristic. Top row: Jeff Kennedy, Beth Ann Mansur, Bev Harris, Becky Kasenberg.

Lawrence Anthroposophical Study Group Members since Inception

Continued from page 47

own ‘I’ with the ‘I’ of the world.

To truly think:

Address Given on Rudolf Steiner’s Death Day

Practice spirit-beholding , in quietness of thought, where the eternal aims of gods bestow world-being’s light upon your own ‘I’, for your free willing . 23

This impulse is an invitation to take the next step in our spiritual evolution, and to do so in community.

It is a description of the fertile soil into which the “Foundation Stone of Love” can find a resonance. The Foundation Stone was not laid into our hearts once and for all; we must continually cultivate the ground for it.

In Rudolf Steiner’s words:

“Your remaining test is to be that of your courage to bear witness to that voice which you are capable of hearing because of the inclination of your soul, because of the inclination of your heart.” 24

So could it be that this final impulse given by Rudolf Steiner has neither yet failed nor succeeded? Could it be that we still find ourselves in the midst of deciding how carefully we will tend our flame and embody this path of cultivating in community what Rudolf Steiner brought to earth?

In this process, we might perhaps come to sense that Rudolf Steiner is very much present and seeking to accompany our loneliness of soul.

Christmas Conference , p. 46.

11 For the quotations referring to the moon sphere, see T. O’Keefe, “The Anthroposophical Movement Seeks an Earthly Home,” in being human , issue of December 2023, p. 13.

12 Lecture of January 18, 1924 (GA 260a), in: The Constitution of the School of Spiritual Science (The Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain, 1964), p. 2. Supplemented by the translation in Prokofieff, May Human Beings Hear It! , p. 77.

13 Lecture of April 22, 1924 (GA 233a), in: Easter as a Chapter in the Mystery Wisdom of Man . Recently published under the title Rosicrucianism and Modern Initiation (Rudolf Steiner Press, 2020).

14 Ita Wegman; Esoteric Studies , p. 72. Lecture of October 4, 1925.

15 Ibid., p. 118. Lecture of February 27, 1931.

16 Ibid.

17 Foreword to The Christmas Conference (GA 260), p. 30. Cited in Prokofieff, May Human Beings Hear It! , p. 527.

18 Lecture of September 23, 1912 (GA 139, The Gospel of St. Mark). Cited in Sergei O. Prokofieff, Rudolf Steiner and the Founding of the New Mysteries (Temple Lodge, 1994), p. 315f.

19 Lecture of May 17, 1923 (GA 226, Man’s Being, His Destiny, and World Evolution). Cited in Prokofieff, Rudolf Steiner and the Founding of the New Mysteries , p. 316.

20 Ibid.

21 GA 260a, p. 381 in German. Cited in Prokofieff, May Human Beings Hear It !, p. 812.

22 Lecture of January 1, 1924, 8:30 pm (GA 260), in The Christmas Conference , p. 270.

23 Words from The Foundation Stone Meditation (contained in The Christmas Conference).

24 Lecture of January 1, 1924, 8:30 pm (GA 260), in The Christmas Conference , p. 269.

1 Ita Wegman; Esoteric Studies; The Michael Impulse (Temple Lodge, 1993/2013), p. 117. Lecture of February 27, 1931, “On Rudolf Steiner,” in London.

2 Ibid.

3 See Sergei O. Prokofieff, May Human Beings Hear It! (Temple Lodge, 2004), p. 61ff.

4 GA 260a, p. 335 in German. Cited in Prokofieff, May Human Beings Hear It! , p. 61f.

5 GA 260a, pp. 355 and 371 in German. Cited in Prokofieff, May Human Beings Hear It! , p. 65.

6 Lecture of December 25, 1923, 10am (GA 260), in The Christmas Conference (Anthroposophic Press, 1990), p. 73.

7 Ibid.

8 Lecture of April 22, 1924 (GA 233a), in: Easter as a Chapter in the Mystery Wisdom of Man . Recently published under the title Rosicrucianism and Modern Initiation (Rudolf Steiner Press, 2020).

9 Lecture of December 26, 1923, 10 am (GA 260), in: The Christmas Conference , p. 99.

10 Lecture of December 24, 1923, 11:15 am (GA 260), in: The

W hen the word desires to turn toward human beings, it speaks, of choice, through the flame. The element of flame is identifcal to its own being.

Marie Steiner Eurythmy as Visible Singing (Dornach, February 1924) Forward to First Edition, 1927

Introducing our New Council Members

MARY MERTZ

The Anthroposophical Society is pleased to welcome Mary Mertz to the General Council, serving as Secretary. Mary grew up in southeastern Pennsylvania, in an old stone house with a pond and woods and wild black raspberries. She attended the Kimberton Waldorf School, where her class teacher was Ed Hill, a wonderful teller and reader of stories.

After college and a few years as a book editor, Mary entered the Waldorf teacher training program at Sunbridge College. She taught at the Philadelphia Waldorf School, then the Susquehanna Waldorf School in south-central Pennsylvania. That’s where she met Tom Mertz (originally from Kansas), and her destiny took her to the Midwest.

Mary and Tom moved to Salina, Kansas in 2002 in the modern version of a Conestoga wagon: a 26foot U-Haul truck. She practiced anthroposophy on her own for many years, until she heard about the monthly online study group sponsored by the Central Regional Council. In 2022 she was invited to join the CRC, and now she’s been appointed to represent the Central Region on the General Council.

Mary works at a small local-and-organic-foods market and leads a children’s gardening program at the Food Bank. Her favorite Steiner book? How to Know Higher Worlds.

EZRA SULLIVAN

The Anthroposophical Society also welcomes Ezra Sullivan, currently serving as Chair for the General Council. After completing high school with a focus on humanities in 2010, Ezra Sullivan moved to South America to pursue martial arts and service projects. He immediately, quite literally, found himself absorbed in a spiritual path, initially through Buddhism and indigenous shamanism, as well as a passion for agrarian life. Through agriculture, Ezra soon discovered Biodynamic farming, which later led him to Anthroposophy in 2014 when he attended a conference at Rudolf Steiner College in Fair Oaks, CA (thank you Dennis Klocek!). Anthroposophy, as a modern path of initiation, is exactly what he was seeking.

Back in the USA, after three years in South America, Ezra engaged in the intentional community and principled non-violence movements as head farmer at Full Bloom Community in Southern Oregon and as a seasonal resident at The Possibility Alliance in Northeast Missouri. He then moved into the nonprofit sector, co-directing Sunfield Biodynamic Farm and Waldorf School on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State for five years. After studying for one year at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland, Ezra moved to Threefold Educational Foundation in New York State to engage as a social entrepreneur in

the sectors of (young) adult education programming, event planning, and organizational transformation.

At Threefold Foundation, Ezra directs a part-time foundation year in Anthroposophy (threefold.org/ introcourse), consulted for Threefold Community Farm on strategic planning, and is creating a Youth Section affiliated residency program (September 2025, threefold.org/youth). In addition to his activities at Threefold, Ezra supports the NYC Branch in lower Manhattan, the North American Youth Section, the Youth Section at the Goetheanum, the Anthroposophical Society in Ireland, the Chadwick Library Edition, and ongoing research and activities within the Michael School (Research Colloquium August 17-19 Chestnut Ridge, NY).

EDUARDO YI

Eduardo Yi, who joins the General Council as a member-at-large, was born in Lima Peru. Throughout his childhood and adolescence he experienced an unstable cultural and political environment: dictatorship, socialism, communism and democracy. These experiences awakened in him a number of questions pertaining to social issues, the most encompassing being the human being in relation to society.

His family owned a Shoe Factory, and in the mid seventies, Eduardo came to the US to study Business Administration. He returned to Lima when his

father became ill and helped to run the factory while finishing his degree at the School of Business ESAN in Lima, Peru.

In the late seventies Eduardo met anthroposophy, and during the late ‘80s and early ‘90s he became involved in the San Juan Anthroposophical Branch. He helped to start the Lima Waldorf School (1982), became Member of the Anthroposophical Society (1987), a member of the School of Michael (1989) helped to found the Christian Community (1990) and helped to found the Anthroposophical Society in Peru (1992).

In the mid ‘90s Eduardo became the administrator of the Lima Waldorf School. It was a tumultuous time. Terrorism and the economic situation were uncontrollable. Hyperinflation of the early ‘90s subsided but inflation still hovered around 20 percent, causing economic hardship that forced the closing of the shoe factory. This again brought social questions to Eduardo’s consciousness, in a living experience through the relationship of the company to termination of all its employees.

In 1998 after the death of his father, Eduardo enrolled in the Teacher Training at Sunbridge College in NY. He then spent a year teaching Spanish at the Summerfield Waldorf School in CA. Once again he had to return to Peru to close out all business and personal obligations. During this time he also taught in the the Schiller Goethe teacher training program in Lima. At this time, he made the decision to live and work in the United States and began actively seeking for a teaching position which he found at the Santa Fe Waldorf School. Eduardo returned to the US in the late fall of 2002.

From that time on Eduardo lived and worked in Santa Fe, NM. He taught Spanish in the early years and showed his art work at the 78th Street Art Gallery until it closed. Over the years Eduardo has been involved on the local level in the Anthroposophical Society, hosting and leading study groups, giving lectures, supporting the Christian Community, and serving as a treasurer for the Sangre de Cristo Group.

In 2014 Eduardo became a US citizen. 

. Betty K. Staley.

AUGUST 8, 1938 - JANUARY 5, 2025 .

Elizabeth J. Beaven, Ed.D.

Betty Staley dedicated her adult life to Waldorf education and anthroposophy. She was born in the Bronx, New York, the second of three children born to Eastern European immigrant parents, Israel and Ethel Kletsky. The family was very poor, but Betty recalled her childhood as happy. Her father was a passionate believer in social justice. He instilled values in young Betty that would last her entire life, including a responsibility to practice deeds of Tikkun Olam or “healing the world”, the need for action as well as thoughts, the importance of education and teachers, secular Judaism, and the values of her Eastern European roots. Betty’s family moved from the Bronx to Florida for several years when she was a young teenager, widening her horizons through exposure to racial discrimination, engagement in sports, and discovering teachers who were warm and kind. The family returned to New York when Betty was 16 for more rigorous schooling so she could prepare for, then enter, City College of New York. Two additional events significantly influenced her early life: the tragic death of her older brother and her mother’s and sister’s developmental challenges.

City College opened the doors to the next phase of Betty’s life. There, she met and fell in love with Franklin Kane. She also met Professor Stewart Easton, who took a keen interest in the young couple and introduced them to anthroposophy and Waldorf education. Her life was filled with young love, academics, and anthroposophical study groups. As college came to an end, Betty and Franklin married and set sail for England to embark on Waldorf teacher education at Michael Hall School. Betty later described her experience at Michael Hall as the fulcrum and guide of her life. Holidays were spent eagerly exploring Europe on a budget, inspiring a lifetime enthusiasm for travel. At the conclusion of teacher training, Betty and Franklin spent a year teaching in a

home for children with special needs. They returned to the US to await the birth of their first child, Andrea, initially settling in the Kimberton Waldorf School, PA, community, where their family grew with the birth of their son, George.

In 1965, the “Kimberton Five”, Betty, Franklin, and three other teachers moved to Sacramentoto take on the task of rebuilding the young but struggling Sacramento Waldorf School. Sacramento and Fair Oaks would be Betty’s home and community for the rest of her eventful life. Two years after they arrived, their third child, Sonya, was born. Betty taught at the school – handwork, early childhood, and grades – and, true to her early years, engaged in civil rights activities in the 1960s. In the early 1970s, Betty founded and pioneered the Sacramento Waldorf High School. She immersed herself in all aspects of high school teaching and remained in contact with many of her students throughout her life. They recall her as a passionate, energetic, warm, and demanding teacher –perhaps a combination of her own school years in New York and Florida.

Betty was a founder of Rudolf Steiner College, Fair Oaks, in 1976. The College would become another cornerstone of her life and work for the next four decades. There, she educated and inspired many Waldorf teachers. Betty’s marriage to Franklin ended in 1980. Betty recalled her decision following the divorce that she would lead an “interesting life” – which she most certainly did. She married Jim Staley two years later; more travel followed with Jim and with groups of students. Betty and Jim shared a love for Eastern Europe, spending 1992-93 in Latvia, Poland, and Russia. She connected with Waldorf schools wherever she went, interviewing those she met and providing advice.

Betty was a leader in the expansion of Waldorf into public schools. Here, despite criticism, she displayed characteristic courage for what she believed to be true: the need for broader access, and the goal of social change through Waldorf education. Betty provided tremendous support to the expansion of Waldorf education and was still a member of the Board of the Alliance for Public Waldorf Education at the time of her death.

Betty was active as a national and international speaker, author, advisor, school founder, author, biographer, and mentor. Her books were written in a straightforward, accessible style and continue to have a significant impact on teachers and parents. She maintained an unwavering interest in the next generation, what they are bringing, and what they need. Education and genuine interest in others were her way of healing the world.

Betty’s final months reflected her deep commitment to inner work, self-development, and active will. Last August, she traveled in Norway with her daughter, Sonya, then had time with her and her family in Switzerland. This was followed by time with her son, George, and his family in Boston. October brought meetings of the Pedagogical Section Council; Betty had been a member for over

In Memoriam

40 years. Through this time, she continued to write, completing an autobiography that was drawn from her detailed journals and focused on her life as a Waldorf educator. Her hands were seldom idle; knitting and puzzles were part of her life. She participated actively in at least two study groups – one on the karma lectures - and enjoyed visits with friends and former students. Her life review was underway.

When she received a diagnosis of cancer at the beginning of Advent, she courageously began the final steps of her earthly journey. She was not afraid to die, noting that she had enjoyed a wonderful, full life. She remained committed to Tikkun Olam to the end of her life; her final, short list of things needing attention included ensuring the continued sponsorship of a student in Kenya. She had built a village of family, neighbors, friends, colleagues, and former

students and this supported her to the end. She had time to say goodbye; in her final days, it was clear that she was traveling again, going towards a spiritual reality as she left this earthly one. Betty crossed the threshold quietly on Twelfth Night.

Now it is up to us, her friends and colleagues to carry forward her inclusive, inquiring, active work in the spirit of repairing the world.

Betty was preceded in death by husbands Franklin Kane and Jim Staley and daughter Andrea Kane. She is survived by her son George (Ann) and daughter Sonya (Paul Bingaman), grandchildren Adam, Ben, and Louisa Kane and Katherine and Charles Bingaman, and her stepson Jim Jr. (Ira) and her grandson Mike.

May her memory be a blessing. And grace will lead us home.

. Ed Scherer. OCTOBER 3, 1951 - FEBRUARY 21, 2024 .

Herbert Hagens

Rudolf Steiner expected a great deal from those who sought to promote the welfare of the Anthroposophical Society. Becoming a pupil in the School of Spiritual Science required accepting the further responsibility of being a representative of the anthroposophical cause. Despite a debilitating handicap, Ed Scherer dedicated his life to fulfilling the commitments of soul and spirit.

At age 17 Ed graduated from the Garden City Waldorf School and was looking forward to starting college in the autumn. But a tragic diving accident resulted in a serious spinal injury that left him wheelchair bound for the rest of his life. Nevertheless he still managed to go to college and graduate school and to pursue a full career. His sister, Rachel, and her husband, James Madsen, wrote

the following recollection:

“By some miracle he (Ed) maintained the capacity to move the thumb of his right hand, which made all the difference in being able to live independently his entire life. Ed worked for nearly four decades in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, retiring as an analyst in the commercial banking supervision and regulation department. He commuted every day from Long Island to NYC in his car outfitted with hand controls.

Ed’s disability never kept him from living an exceptionally active and independent life. He was a genius at rigging up clever devices to accomplish everyday tasks and did most of the maintenance of his houses by himself. He mowed his own lawn, shoveled his sidewalk, did all his own housework and repairs and had a full woodshop in his garage. He was even involved in advertising campaigns for the President’s (then Jimmy Carter) Committee on Employment of the Handicapped in the late 1970s. Ed was an avid gardener, most recently revitalizing the gardens at the Fellowship Community in Spring Valley, NY. There he touched many lives during these last few years. Additionally, many people from all phases of his life have recently shared memories of his kindness, his quiet deeds to help others, and his example of courage and steadfastness in the face of great challenges.”

Ed Scherer will also be remembered for his selfless service to the Anthroposophical Society as a member of the Eastern Regional Council and the General Council. On several occasions he and I would meet up for dinner before meetings at the New York Branch. He politely accepted my offer to push him in the wheelchair, but I knew that he would have preferred doing it himself.

Herbert Hagens

Princeton, New Jersey

With thanks to Michael Ronall for sharing his recollections

WELCOMING NEW MEMBERS

Full Name (F) City

Robert Albrecht Lake Mills WI

Rachel Andrews Muncie IN

Thomas Balls Kimberton PA

Radio Bay Coupville WA

Brent Bertsch Malden WA

Katlyn Boucher Davisburg MI

Cathleen Brauen Rochester NY

Glenn Brockman Jr Bohemia NY

Patricia L Bursell Carson City NV

Corinne Carroll Glendale CA

Eva Cerolini Kimberton PA

mamuka chincharauli Brooklyn NY

Edward Church Soquel CA

Kristi Coats Hartman Renton WA

Clarence Connor New York NY

Celeste Craig Ann Arbor MI

Jon Dauplaise Solon Springs WI

Michel Deschapelles Miami FL

Sage Dilts Lopez Island WA

Jennifer Downs Baltimore MD

Tamica DuBose Schertz TX

Amanda Ellis South Dennis MA

Edward Engelmann Bolton MA

Martie Fine Placerville CA

Alexandria Fish TORRINGTON CT

Anthony Gavitt Huntsville AL

Marrakesh Glasspool-Frugia Chicago IL

Amy Gordon Denver CO

Matthew Grippi La Habra CA

Veronica Hagquist Salt Point NY

Laura Heaney Phoenix AZ

Melissa Heitmann New Buffalo MI

Melanie Hofmann South Gillies ON

Jim Houck Austin TX

Christine Interrante Wheeling WV

William Blake Jeffress Butlington VT

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Benjamin Laidig Phoenixville PA

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Brian Lehmann Lake Oswego OR

Jill Martin Vista CA

Neil Martinson San Francisco CA

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Jane McIlvaine Epsom NH

Nancy Melvin Chicago IL

April Moore Lakehills TX

Laverne Moore Lakehills TX

William Nelson Phoenix AZ

Melisa Nielsen Apopka FL

Kimberly O'Callahan Ghent NY

Katherine OLeary Yuma AZ

Aden Ortiz Houston TX

Marie Dionie Palaleo Aberdeen UK

Katherine Patterson Glens Falls NY

Julia Perez Peterborough NH

Anne Phillips Acton CA

Diane Piette Downers Grove IL

Leena Pulkkinen Mount Clemens MI

Nikkonia Q Jamestown CA

Joshua Reese Rome GA

Amanda Rogers Houston TX

Veronica Sacur Ysaya Glenwood Springs CO

Carole Schulman Lexington KY

Amy Siebert Colorado Springs CO

Leslie Sievert Saline MI

Rachael Staudt Mill Valley CA

Michael Stetka San Francisco CA

Nancy Stranahn Hillsboro OH

Tammra Tanner Irvine CA

Katie Tawakol Springfield MA

David Valbracht Newtonville MA

Megan Van Petten Chicago IL

Joel Vinsant Nashville TN

Alice Wang Levittown NY

Cameron Wilson Fort Collins CO

Kimber Wolfgang Davenport IA

HONORING MEMBERS Who Have Crossed The Threshold Of Death

JOINED DIED

Sonia Atalla Oakland CA 01|05|2007

Jane Batterson Essex Junction VT 04|10|1977 04|06|2023

Carsten H. Callesen Glenmoore PA 10|01|1994 06|02|2025

Shannon Chamberlin Spring City PA 05|14|1996 06|10|2024

Dolores Intriere Kaufmann Stockbridge MA 12|01|1948 01|31|2025

Natalie Pavlovich Pittsburgh PA 06|11|1985

Betty Staley Fair Oaks CA 01|09|1962 01|05|2025

Patricia Turner Austin TX 04|22|1992 09|29|2024

John Wulsin Wimberly TX 04|10|1981 12|04|2024

May Angels, Archangels, Archai receive in their etheric weaving the web of destiny of (my loved one).

May the just consequences of the earthly life of (my loved one) be led before Exousiai, Dynamis, and Kyriotetes in the astral perception of the cosmos.

May the righteous forms of the earthly life of (my loved one) be resurrected in Thrones, Cherubim, and Seraphim as the manifestation of their deeds.

And as human beings we will be saying a beautiful, magnificent prayer when we think about the connection of life with death or think of someone who has died and say the following (above) Rudolf Steiner, Karmic Relationships , Vol. III

We rely on our members to share news and memorials for friends and loved ones who have died. Please contact: The Anthroposophical Society in America at: reception@anthroposophy.org

Cynthia Chelius

Rhyme and Reason

Steadfast behind the scenes

A grounding presence

There are some people whose lasting impact is not made with grand gestures, but through the steady warmth of their presence, their care, and their genuine concern for the wellbeing of the people and places around them. Cynthia Chelius is one of those people.

For many years Cynthia has been a grounding presence in the Anthroposophical Society, an essential thread woven into the daily life of the Steiner House in Ann Arbor. Whether responding to a member’s inquiry, listening to a concern, supporting Society events, or managing the daily operations at the Steiner House, Cynthia has done so with unwavering care, attention, and grace. Her approach to her work has never been about simply completing tasks. It’s about people, the community, and holding a space for something greater to unfold.

I was fortunate to work with Cynthia for many years at the Society. She was a valued colleague and a true partner. She was someone I could rely on not only for her expertise and calm manner, but also for her insights, wisdom, and her

ability to ask (sometimes difficult!) questions that helped bring clarity to complex and fraught situations.

I am especially grateful for the thoughtful and steady ways in which Cynthia worked to support our Society-wide conferences - the Annual General Meetings and other special gatherings. After months of careful coordination with me and with the local planning groups, I knew that once the event began, I could trust Cynthia to make sure that every practical detail would be handled with care. This allowed me to focus on the unfolding program and the needs of the presenters, secure in knowing there was a solid foundation holding the creative process.

Cynthia, the impact you’ve made over the years - not only on the daily life of the Society, but on those of us fortunate enough to have worked alongside you - is significant and will be felt for many years to come. Thank you. Best wishes as you step into your next adventure!

Love, Marian Leon

Who carries the consciousness of an organization?

Well, many people. And in line with Rudolf Steiner’s insights about being human, we may think organically: a physical structure, a moving-living form, an activeconscious awareness, and a purposeful being. It’s the same with a biodynamic farm. So I had probably seen Cynthia Chelius’ name on letters and forms from the Anthroposophical Society in America earlier, but I only met her when I came to visit as the new editor and communications person for the ASA in 2009, and shortly thereafter lived for some months in the nearby house of Dr. Katz after he passed on. Quiet, patient, firm, with an unexpectedly warm smile, next to wide filing drawers covered with cards and pictures from members and friends.

Cynthia was the anchor, at her northeast desk on the main floor. Knowing what the building, the Rudolf Steiner House, needed. Knowing who, including husband Dale, could fix things, install or remove the a/c units in season, and which plumber, electrician, knew the house and its aging provisionings.

Cynthia also managed who would be visiting, staying for a night or a week, filling what spaces, using the kitchen, and needing what setups and cleaning by Julie. Noting how things were with Candace and the lovely front garden. Keeping track of the members with Linda. New members, and their pink cards from Dornach, to be signed by MariJo, Torin, John, Mary. Old members missing an issue, “lapsing,” losing touch, passing on, needing a remembrance. And when asked, infrequently, about how things were with the members, Cynthia (never herself a member) surprised with considered insights from conversations, problems solved.

Printing - getting the new being human to the press, and copies back for new member packets. Sending out the Classics series with highlights from five decades of the Journal for Anthroposophy. And working part-time at the Ann Arbor Library, which came to my attention when a new proof-reader was needed. Precise questioning or appreciative comments (“Could be clearer.” “Perfect!”) along with the un-German-ing of capitals (“Way too many?”) and the eternal serial commas. More recently I became aware of Cynthia’s enthusiasm for classical music, volunteering as an usher at concerts, with a musician daughter who loves Mahler as I do. And that, along with books, is where I imagine Cynthia’s calm,

appreciative spirit expanding now, as concerns for the body and life and consciousness at 1923 Geddes Avenue pass into other caring hands.

John Beck, 22 April 2025

A warm and friendly voice

If you need to contact the Anthroposophical Society about anything and everything to do with membership, you definitely want to connect with someone like Cynthia Chelius. She has built up over the course of many years an amazing backlog of information about the Society and its members. Goetheanum leaders, General Secretaries, leadership councils, Section representatives, the Collegium, treasurers, Class holders. Society members and the general public may come and go, while Cynthia has consistently managed to maintain her stamina, selfcomposure, and dedication throughout. How often do we get to experience such a warm and friendly voice answering the phone? And always with a human touch! Cynthia will be greatly missed, but thank goodness we can count on her to share story-filled experiences and valuable advice. Bless you, Cynthia, and enjoy a welldeserved retirement. Thank you so much!

Herbert Hagens Princeton, New Jersey

Bringing balance

Cynthia Chelius! What a warm and welcoming presence she has brought to our Anthroposophical Society through her presence. Cynthia’s has truly been a life of service to our movement, always working behind the scenes for the good of the Society.

I was privileged to serve on the General Council and Western Regional Council for many years, giving me the opportunity to know Cynthia well as a colleague and a dear friend. In person or on the other end of a call, she was an invaluable resource, researching the many questions brought to her regarding history, current events, library, past persons and events. All these questions and concerns Cynthia took on as her own and faithfully sought to bring clarity and help to those of us working for the Society far away from Ann Arbor. Many times she mailed me materials for members, boxes of anthroposophical and Society resources, documents that perhaps only she could have found. Her historical

Cynthia Chelius

memory through the years has served all of us members and friends of the Society well. Her cheerful and helpful voice at the other end of a call was such a pleasure.

Cynthia has been a steadfast presence through these many years, working with the many changes in the General Council, Regional Councils, Group and Branch leadership, as well as office staff. Most importantly, Cynthia took real interest in the tasks she took on, and in the people whom she served.

During challenges within the Society, Cynthia stood courageously, in the midst of conflict, bringing the balance we all hope to embody during difficulties. Her professionalism, steeped with warmth, helped to create this balance.

Through these many years Cynthia and I have stayed in touch, as good friends do. I have considered Cythnia to be far more than a valuable presence and resource for the Society, but a colleague and dear friend.

Thank you, Cynthia, for all you have brought to the Anthroposophical Society, to its membership and friends. You will be missed! But know your next journey will bring untold blessings. Safe travels, my friend!!

Joan Treadaway

I cannot thank you enough Linda Leonard

For the last 19 years, it has been my pleasure to work with Cynthia Chelius. From the beginning, Cynthia was an enormous help showing me “the ropes”. She generously shared her institutional knowledge and wealth of information about the organization I was joining. This made my transition from having zero knowledge of the organization to a fuller understanding of how and why anthroposophy exists in the world. For that, Cynthia, I cannot thank you enough.

We’ve shared so many things over the years, it cannot be summed up in a couple of paragraphs. I have witnessed your hard work and dedication, through the best and worst of times. We’ve been through a lot of changes over these fleeting years and it is with tears in my eyes when I say this will not be an easy goodbye. Cynthia is not just a colleague, but a friend.

The following quote from Emerson sums up my hopes and wishes for you, Cynthia, as you look ahead to the next chapter in your life:

D are to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true . Ralph Waldo Emerson

RICHARD NEAL

SteinerBooks Statement on “AI” Translation

In the last two decades, advances in technology have greatly changed the art and the business of publishing, in many if not most ways for the better. With the relatively recent unveiling of “large language models,” the possibilities for machines to do, for humans, the core human work of reading, writing, and thinking has reached a significant threshold, through which we must pass, wakefully.

At SteinerBooks, we acknowledge the usefulness of many tools of technology that help us in accomplishing our core mission as a non-profit publisher, which is to make the words, thought, and deeds of Rudolf Steiner both better known and more deeply understood in the Englishspeaking world.

While we do also recognize the utility and convenience of AI-driven “automated translation” in a multitude of private circumstances, to present and publish such works as valid English-language translations for the reading public would be a dereliction of our duty and mission as an organization.

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Further more, having seen, experienced, and closely worked with the results of effortless automated machine-translation, we are convinced that the counter-effort required to humanize such translations, in the sense of literary integrity—if it is even possible, which is doubtful—does not justify their undertaking, and so we are committed to only publishing works-in-translation that have been executed by living, breathing, spiritual human beings.

I n his little Hut, by the great River, Which a heavy rain had swoln to overflowing, lay the ancient Ferryman, asleep, wearied by the toil of the day. In the middle of the night, Loud voices awoke him; he heard that it was travellers wishing to be carried over. The Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and