Author Archives: Jeremy Smith

About Jeremy Smith

I’m currently organising a programme of talks and workshops on a part-time freelance basis for Emerson College in Forest Row, East Sussex in the UK. I’ve worked in various branches of education since 1986, in both employed and self-employed roles. Before that, I was the arts and entertainments officer for one of the London boroughs and before that I trained as an actor at the Mountview Theatre School. I’ve had an interest in the work of Rudolf Steiner for many years and have spent several years as the education facilitator in a Steiner school. I’ve also been the trustee of another Steiner school, have worked as a member of the executive group of the Steiner Waldorf Schools Fellowship and have been a lay inspector for Ofsted inspections of Steiner schools. Biodynamic agriculture, another of Steiner’s initiatives, is a huge interest of mine and I’m a shareholder of the Tablehurst & Plaw Hatch Farms Co-op in Forest Row, East Sussex. I’m also an executive director of Tablehurst Farm and have a part-time role as registered manager for the farm's care home.

March 31, 2016 · 10:15 am

The Archbishop of Canterbury wants to sabotage Easter

My positive Easter mood, as conveyed in my last post, was quickly overshadowed by no less a person than the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverend Justin Welby.

Archbishop Justin was heard on the news programmes brightly announcing how, after more than a thousand years of Easter being a moveable feast, he had hopes of reaching agreement with the other churches to settle upon a fixed date for Easter. He said he would “love” to see Easter become a fixed date by the time he retires. But he added that it might take up to a decade for that to happen:

“I would expect between five and 10 years’ time – I wouldn’t expect it earlier than that not least because most people have probably printed their calendars for the next five years.”

Mr Welby said that he will consult with other authorities including Pope Francis and the Coptic Pope to negotiate a change to the date. It is very unlikely that any change will be made without the full assent of all those authorities.

Mr Welby did warn however that churches have been attempting since the tenth century to fix the date of the festival, which at the moment is set with reference to the moon and the sun. The legal foundation for changing the date of Easter has been in law since the Easter Act of 1928. But for it to be changed, churches need to assent to it — though the law allows the Government to simply decide to fix the date, authorities have deferred to churches since it was passed.

Since the fourth century, the date of Easter has fallen on the first Sunday, after the first full moon, after the spring equinox. That means that it can vary hugely from year-to-year. In 2017 for example, Easter Sunday will fall on April 16, and in 2018 it will be on April 1.

I wrote about this a year ago, in my post “Why Easter should remain a moveable feast” and there I set out details of some fascinating experiments done by the late Lili Kolisko, following indications given by Rudolf Steiner. These experiments demonstrate clearly that on the true date of Easter, there is an influx of cosmic energies of resurrection to the Earth. When worked with by priests and worshippers in Easter services, these energies have a hugely beneficial influence on all creation, whether the priests and congregations are aware of it or not. It will be yet another triumph for the oppositional forces if this energy is not used on the true Easter day.

Just before Easter, I decided to write to Justin Welby to ask him to re-consider. The reply I got from his correspondence secretary was very worrying:

“Dear Mr Smith – Archbishop Justin has now left London to spend Holy Week and Easter in Canterbury and so I have been asked to write thanking you for your message. The proposal to fix the date of Easter was made by the Coptic Pope Tawadros II, after discussions with Pope Francis and the Ecumenical Patriarch. The proposal is at an early stage of discussion between the main Christian denominations. The world-wide Anglican Communion is not leading on this but the Primates of the Communion, meeting in Canterbury recently, were supportive of the idea.”

How sad it is that these princes of the Christian church seem to have no knowledge of the true esoteric meaning and power of Easter. On March 25th, I sat with the farm team at Tablehurst Community Farm to listen to a reading of a passage from Emil Bock’s book, “The Three Years”, which described the real meaning of what was happening on that first Good Friday. It was a sobering thought to discover there was more true feeling and understanding of Easter in that simple gathering than exists among all the primates and popes of the Christian denominations.

Perhaps Archbishop Justin sees himself as a moderniser, in the mould of Tony Blair, bringing new thinking to fusty old institutions. But perhaps, also like Tony Blair, he hasn’t got the first idea of what it is he is tinkering with, and will bring disaster in his wake. Mr Welby would like to retire knowing that he has secured a fixed date for Easter – this would be his legacy. Instead, it will be another triumph for those who hate the spirit, if all the churches celebrate Easter on a day when none of the great Easter cosmic energies of resurrection is coming into the Earth. For anyone who cares about this, it’s time to start writing to these churchmen – we’ve got five years or so to get them to think again.

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Filed under Archbishop of Canterbury, Easter, Justin Welby, Lili Kolisko, Rudolf Steiner

Tagged as Archbishop of Canterbury, Coptic Pope Tawadros II, Easter, Justin Welby, Lili Kolisko, Pope Francis, Primates of the Anglican Communion, Rudolf Steiner

March 20, 2016 · 8:27 pm

Thoughts on Easter

Proud mother and 10-minute old lamb at Tablehurst Community Farm

After a hectic but very enjoyable Lambing Day on March 19th, with hundreds of visitors at Tablehurst Farm, we went in the evening to Lewes, the county town of East Sussex, for an inspiring performance of Bach’s St John Passion. To go from little lambs to the Lamb of God is a wonderful way to get into the Easter mood; and it also got me reflecting on Easter as the festival of death and resurrection, the death of Jesus Christ and his subsequent rebirth into a new life.

When I was a child and indeed for many years afterwards, I could never understand what was meant when teachers and priests said things like “Christ died to save our sins” and “Christ died that we may live”. And actually, I’m not sure that those teachers and priests knew what they meant, either. How could someone dying a horrible death 2000 years ago have had any practical effect on our lives today? And how did that death redeem my small sins or help me to live? There is a mystery here and I didn’t receive any explanation that made sense to me while I was growing up.

As I got older and particularly as I began to enquire more widely into esoteric matters, I started to get a glimmer of understanding into these questions. Rudolf Steiner’s works have been particularly helpful in this respect.

From his youth, Steiner possessed complete clairvoyance so that the spiritual worlds were as open to him as the material world is to us. Having developed this power of exploring higher worlds he set about his investigations and was able to research back to the dim past of human and planetary evolution. To his astonishment, he discovered that the descent of the Christ into physical existence was the absolutely central event of evolution, what he sometimes called “the turning point of time”. Of this period in his life Steiner writes in his autobiography: “I stood before the Mystery of Golgotha in a most profound inward festival of knowledge” and it is a fact that from about 1910 onwards Steiner’s entire teaching is Christo-centric.

Naturally this teaching does not always conform to church dogma, for Steiner’s spiritual research enabled him to arrive at esoteric truths and then express them without the need to pay lip service to what was taught by the churches. Some of you may remember David Jenkins, who was Bishop of Durham from 1984 to 1994. He enraged newspapers like the Daily Mail and the more thick-headed rent-a-quote type of MP by saying that the resurrection was not of a physical body, an idea which he described as “conjuring tricks with bones.” The poor bishop was trying to give out information from esoteric Christianity rather than the fairy story that the Church hitherto had thought was all we could understand – but clearly there were still some people who didn’t want to take off their baby shoes.

It’s also disappointing to have to spell out the following but if I don’t do so, there are people who will try to drive sectarian wedges between Steiner and others. So let it be understood that behind everything Steiner says is the concept that life is a divine oneness and that humankind is one great family. The Christ impulse illumines every race, creed and nation, and there is nothing sectarian about it – Truth and Love are there for every human being, of whatever race and whether atheist or believer.

Esoteric Christianity sees the man Jesus as the human vehicle for the cosmic being of the Christ. What do we mean by the Christ and why did this cosmic being need a human vehicle? The name “Christ” comes from the Greek “Christos” and it refers to an exalted being of the spiritual Sun. We need to re-think materialistic science’s view that the celestial bodies are just balls of gas or types of nuclear reactor in the skies – the solar system as seen with Steiner’s spiritual knowledge is a huge living organism filled with living thought. Here we have to try to encompass the concept of a solar system filled with spirit and being. This is not the time to go into Steiner’s picture of the evolution of the solar system and the way in which the celestial bodies became related to each other but those who are interested can read more in Steiner’s book, An Outline of Esoteric Science. If we can nevertheless hold on to this picture of the celestial bodies as spheres of activity for spiritual beings, then we might also see that evolution has both a spiritual and a physical aspect.

Steiner says that the overlighting of Jesus of Nazareth by the Cosmic Christ took place at the time when the 30-year old Jesus was baptised in the River Jordan by John the Baptist. This was when the Christ incarnated into the body of Jesus. In the Gospel of St Matthew we read: “and lo, the heavens were opened unto him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting upon him.” For three years after the Baptism, the Christ lived in this body of Jesus until his death on the cross.

Turning now to Steiner’s comments on Easter, he says here something about the true significance of the Festival for us:

“When a mighty individuality like that of the Christ Jesus comes to the aid of entire humanity, it is his sacrifice in death which permeates the karma of mankind. He helped to carry the karma of the whole of humanity, and we may be quite sure that redemption through Christ Jesus was absorbed and assimilated by the totality of human karma.”

An amazing thought, and one which to me helps to make sense of the saying that Christ died to save us from our sins. What Steiner is conveying here is that when Christ died on the cross he took on a huge part of the karma of humanity, which had it not been redeemed in this way, would have led us into more and more darkness and materiality. Instead, Christ’s deed began the slow but sure upward ascent away from materialism in which we are now engaged. Now, this materialism still has a long way to run, apparently for another 2,500 years or so, and indeed it has not yet reached the peak of its intensity – but we are all now on an upward path.

Unusual and startling as some may find Steiner’s insights, personally I find them very helpful in understanding the true meaning of Easter. Steiner goes on to talk about the enormous significance of Easter for human evolution:

“Christ Jesus experiences death, as commemorated by Good Friday. He remains in the grave for the period of three days, this representing His coalescence with earthly existence. This period between Good Friday and Easter Sunday is celebrated in Christendom as a festival of mourning. Finally, Easter Sunday is the day on which the central being of Christianity arises from the grave. It is the memorial day of this event. That is the essential substance of Easter: the death, the interval in the grave, and the Resurrection of Christ Jesus.”

“The essential point is that in the thirtieth year of His life… the primal Being of the Sun, the Christ Himself…took up His abode in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. That is what underlies the Mystery of Golgotha as the primal fruit of the whole life of the Earth.”

“It is, however, characteristic of the modern evolution of Christianity that the thought of Good Friday (i.e. the Crucifixion)…has come ever more to the fore, and the thought of the Resurrection — the true Easter thought — has gradually retired. Thoughts on Easter must point especially to a time in which man must experience the resurrection of his being through the Spirit. We have need of Easter thoughts, and of a full understanding of such thoughts…It is the Christ we have need of, however, the Christ Whom we can seek in our own inner beings, and Who at once appears when we do seek Him…We have need of the vivid consciousness of the eternity of the Spirit.”

Notice there that Steiner has said that the true thought of Easter is Resurrection and not the concentration on the Crucifixion. In other words, the more important aspect of Easter is not death and mourning but the possibility of new life and the return of awareness of the spirit to human consciousness. He says:

“We will never be able to grasp the true thought of Easter unless we realise that in speaking of the Christ we must look upwards from what is merely earthly to what is cosmic….Christ came down among men in order to unite the souls of men with the Cosmic Spirit. Only a true expounder of the Gospel of Christ points out that what we see in the physical sun is the outward expression of the Spirit of our universe — the resurrecting Spirit of our universe.”

And in fact Steiner gives us the most tremendous thought, one which I find changes my conception of what it is to walk this Earth. He says that since Christ’s descent into hell and resurrection, Christ has lived in the etheric body of the Earth and can be experienced by those who have developed the necessary supersensible perception. Steiner says that there will be no Second Coming of Christ in a physical body. There is no need for the Christ to incarnate again and live through a physical body and so pass through death. That was done once and for all and will not be repeated.

So if the Christ really is in the etheric body of the Earth, what does that mean for us? Well, it certainly can make a difference to how you walk on the earth itself. If the Christ is there, then you are literally treading on holy ground every time you take a step, wherever you may be. And if He is indeed present invisibly throughout the whole etheric field of the Earth, then He is truly within the etheric body of every form, every tree and plant, every animal. Christ came for the benefit of all creation, not just human beings. But with our normal intellectual processes we cannot consciously experience this. If we can raise our thinking and awareness, however, there we shall find Him.

Now, here’s another thought – what would it mean for the world if instead of dashing about heedlessly, we walked with the awareness that we are treading on the etheric body of Christ, and that by doing this with loving consciousness, we are helping to release the spiritual substance locked up in matter and thereby transforming it – what might that do to the world? What might that do to our selves?

Happy Easter!

Easter languages

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Filed under Anthroposophy, Cosmic Christ, Easter, Jesus Christ, Rudolf Steiner

Tagged as Anthroposophy, Bishop of Durham, Cosmic Christ, David Jenkins, Easter, Jesus of Nazareth, Rudolf Steiner

March 12, 2016 · 11:59 am

But will you wake, for pity’s sake?

At a time of life when most people might expect to have retired and be putting their feet up, the anthropopper (who doesn’t think that retirement is good for people), counts himself fortunate to have not one, but two part-time jobs. Despite a colleague’s cynical observation that there is no such thing as a part-time job, only part-time wages, I love both these jobs and after a long and sometimes frustrating working life, I’m delighted to have work where I feel I’m making a worthwhile contribution, in organisations that are offering hope and practical solutions for some of the world’s problems.

The first of these jobs is at Tablehurst Community Farm in Forest Row, East Sussex. While I was there the other day, I found myself having a sudden flashback to an emotion I recognised – it was how I had sometimes felt when I was a small boy at primary school in the 1950s. It came and went in seconds but I was intrigued as to why I had had this sudden recall of something from my early schooldays, now well over half a century ago. What had made me remember this feeling from so long ago, seemingly out of the blue? Trying to analyse my state of mind at that moment, I realised that I had a feeling of wellbeing, knowing I was in the right place for me and glad to be working on a community-owned farm in which the land, plants and animals are cared-for and where the people are friendly, supportive and look out for one another. I was, in fact, in a situation that I suspect is hardly ever experienced in most workplaces these days. This then led me to the further realisation that, if how I was feeling that day was reminiscent of how I had felt during my early schooldays, then there must have been something warm and secure and nurturing about my primary school and the way in which the teachers and pupils treated one another back then. This was not a Steiner school, it was an ordinary state primary school in the 1950s, long before the days of Ofsted, SATS, league tables etc. Somehow I grew up with the notion that the world was on the whole a safe and welcoming place, that adults and policemen were mainly benign, there was joy and beauty in nature – and I also had a sense of how to behave and how not to behave. This gave me something to rebel against when I was a teenager in the 60s. My generation was lucky to have had these positive experiences, as recent alarming reports indicate that many schoolchildren today have quite a different experience of school.

An international study by the Children’s Society in 2015 found that English children are among the unhappiest in the world. Matthew Reed, chief executive of the Children’s Society, said: “It is deeply worrying that children in this country are so unhappy at school compared to other countries, and it is truly shocking that thousands of children are being physically and emotionally bullied, damaging their happiness. School should be a safe haven, not a battleground.”

And now in a report dated 9^th March 2016, the online Spectator magazine’s Health section has said that: “There has been a large increase in the number of British children prescribed anti-depressants, according to research published in the journal European Neuropsychopharmacology. The research, led by Dr Christian Bachmann of Berlin’s Charité University Hospital, found that prescription rates increased by 54 per cent between 2005 and 2012. In Denmark the figure is higher still, at 60 per cent.”

What on earth is going on? Clearly, something very disturbing is happening with our young people. Rudolf Steiner, in a lecture given in Berlin in 1919, said:

“What the individual human being experiences consciously when he (sic) strives to attain clairvoyance in the spiritual world, namely, the crossing of the threshold, must be experienced unconsciously by the whole of mankind, during our fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Humanity has no choice in regard to this; it must experience this unconsciously — not the individual human being, but HUMANITY, and the individual human being together with humanity.”

So are our young people starting to experience this crossing of the threshold between the physical and spiritual worlds, but unconsciously, without preparation? And if so, what part of the spiritual world are they accessing?

My second part-time job is with Emerson College in Forest Row, East Sussex, where I organise a programme of public talks and workshops by leading thinkers. On 9^th March 2016, we were privileged to hear a talk by Lisa Romero, an adult educator, complementary health practitioner and teacher of meditation from Australia.

Lisa’s theme was: Developing the Self – Meditations and Exercise for our Inner Growth. During the course of her talk, she had some interesting things to say about the difficulties and challenges that teenagers are experiencing today. She suggested that teenagers are crossing the threshold into the elemental part of the spiritual world. Lisa enlarged on this in her book, The Inner Work Path:

“Humanity has begun to break through this threshold, the boundary between the physical and elemental world. If those who cross over are unprepared, we will see more mental disorders in our community. As fascination with the occult, psychic powers, and the supernatural continue to grow, all sorts of false paths of ‘inner development’ will become more and more popular. Consciousness-altering substances that exploit a form of gate-crashing to enter the other dimensions will increase. Using these substances to enter different states of consciousness will be seen as an acceptable and inevitable path for our young people.”

Some schools are now teaching their pupils meditation and calling it “mindfulness” so as to avoid any association with the spiritual; but Lisa thinks that this “will lead ultimately to a weakened relationship to the spiritual world, and thereby leave them open to all sorts of potentially harmful influences by stepping backward, not forward, in their incarnating process. All those who truly know the path of inner development know that a healthy relationship to the spiritual world is acquired by completing all the necessary developmental stages of childhood first. These various occurrences that we already see are signs that humanity is crossing the threshold unprepared. Rudolf Steiner describes this unprepared entry into the elemental world, likening it to putting your head into an ant’s nest.”

Where is anthroposophy, and where are anthroposophists, in all of this? One of the things which teenagers need to know at this time is that not all spiritual beings are divine beings. Some of these beings are working to divert humanity from the path of evolution, by encouraging us in our materialism, reinforcing our egotism and selfishness, magnifying our false self and deepening our lower ego – while at the same time supporting our premature access into the spiritual world. Anthroposophists ought to be helping young people to understand that the right path for humanity and each one of us is to align freely with the beings of progression, the beings of the divine spiritual world – but for that to be possible, we must find the progressive being, the divine being within ourselves. Are we, should we be, finding ways of telling that to young people? Are we making sufficient efforts to communicate with teenagers in ways that they can access? I don’t think so. In the meantime, anthroposophy as we have known it is dying. Lisa told me that there are now only 130 society members in the whole of New York City.

The situation appears to be no better in the UK. As Marjatta van Boeschoten, general secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain, says in the Spring 2016 Newsletter of the society: “This question (of how anthroposophy can best fulfil its given task) occupied me greatly during the Holy Nights, especially when a range of initiatives in the ‘daughter’ movements in Great Britain are either closing, struggling, in conflict or in financial crisis.” To add to Marjatta’s worries, the ASinGB has revealed that 55% of members pay nothing at all towards their annual membership. What is the future of the society if more than half of its members, out of their own free choice, are making no financial contribution whatsoever?

Surely these symptoms are telling us that the present form of anthroposophy is in serious decline. What are anthroposophists doing about this crisis? My own sense is that another form of anthroposophy is seeking to be born, but it is having an extended labour and a difficult birth. It won’t come from trying to persuade people to read difficult lectures or books, it won’t come from attending the same old meetings with a rapidly diminishing number of elderly anthroposophists (not that I have anything against elderly anthroposophists – far from it – I hope to be one myself before too long) and it certainly won’t come from spending too much time online arguing with the critics.

On the other hand, it may emerge from people who become inspired by one or more of the practical applications of anthroposophy, such as biodynamics or education. I’m struck, for example, by the number of young people who are coming to work at Tablehurst Farm, which now employs nearly 30 people, some of whom are starting families there – this in marked contrast to what is happening on conventional farms, where the average age of a British farmworker is 59 years and where a farm of 300 hectares will be run by one or two men with machines and lots of chemicals. It may emerge if we can find practical, clear and sensible ways of speaking about the spiritual realities behind what is happening in the world, as Lisa Romero is doing. Lisa is part of the Goetheanum Meditation Initiative, which is involving young people from many countries. (Incidentally, Lisa Romero will be returning to Emerson in June for a talk and weekend workshop.)

The times are serious and demand people and organisations of initiative. Places like Tablehurst Farm and Emerson College are seeking to play their parts. Finding ways in which to meet the very real human needs of today’s young people can offer hope and practical solutions not only to them but to anthroposophy as well. Christopher Fry expressed our opportunity in his play, A Sleep of Prisoners:

Thank God our time is now when wrong

Comes up to meet us everywhere,

Never to leave us till we take

The longest stride man ever took.

Affairs are now soul size.

The enterprise

Is Exploration into God.

Where are you making for? It takes

So many thousand years to wake

But will you wake, for pity’s sake?

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Filed under Anthroposophy, Biodynamic farming, Biodynamics, Emerson College UK, Rudolf Steiner, Steiner Waldorf schools, Waldorf critics

Tagged as Anthroposophy, ASinGB, biodynamic agriculture, Biodynamic farming, Goetheanum Meditation Initiative, Lisa Romero, Marjatta van Boeschoten, Rudolf Steiner, Steiner Waldorf schools, Tablehurst Farm, Waldorf critics

March 3, 2016 · 6:33 pm

Turning the human being into the human thing

When the anthropopper was a small boy of 3 or 4 years of age, I lived with my family just a few doors down from the house of my Uncle Perce and Auntie Joan. I can still remember how one day Uncle Perce took me to see the chickens in his back garden and offered to shut me up in the hen-coop with the birds. My reply has gone down in family history. Apparently what I said was: “You can’t put me in there, I’m a human bean.”

Evidently, even at that young age, I had a sense that there were certain indignities to which human beings should not be subjected. Perhaps this is why to this day I still have strong feelings about how humans should and should not be treated.

Photo via redbubble.com

But why are we humans special and worthy of respect? One of the attributes that marks us out is that we are divided beings, carrying the potential for both good and evil within ourselves. In reminding us of this, Rudolf Steiner said: “one does not usually notice that a human being is a duality.”¹ And yet it is so; our dual nature symbolises our connection with the dualistic universe we inhabit: spirit and matter, night and day, life and death, hot and cold, young and old etc. Each one of us carries both a light side and a shadow side within us, which reveal themselves in all kinds of ways.

In this, we are different from the angelic realms. Angels are beings with a unified state of consciousness (whether for good or, like the fallen angels, for evil), but they cannot hold both good and evil thoughts within themselves at the same time, as can humans, who are able to live with many different and contrary thoughts and emotions jumbled up together. In this difference lies the reason for all our struggles between the promptings of our higher and lower natures. “Freedom and evil have the same original source”, says Steiner². This source was the “adversely commanded” angel, Lucifer, who at the event known in the Bible as the Fall, provided for our astral bodies to be permeated by selfishness and egotism. Paradoxically, this also gave us the potential, over many incarnations, to become free through learning to choose wisely between our highest and lowest urges. (For those who are unfamiliar with Steiner’s use of the terms ‘Lucifer’ and ‘Ahriman’ as names for the polarities of evil, please see my earlier posting here.)

Although we are currently at the beck and call of our own lower selves and to the karmic knots we have tied ourselves in as a result, this division between our lower and higher natures allows us countless opportunities (slowly, over many lifetimes), to evolve from our dualistic state into a more unified plane of consciousness that is motivated and permeated by love. This is the goal of human evolution, a transformation that will be achieved through the slow accumulation of wisdom learnt during our many incarnations. It is this that Ahriman is seeking to prevent, by putting us in blinkers so that we cannot see who we really are or where we should be headed.

In all his work, by making us aware of our true nature and destiny as human beings, Steiner was trying to prepare us to withstand the onslaught that the world is currently experiencing as the incarnation of Ahriman comes closer and closer. Steiner’s last verse, which I quoted in my previous post to this one, contains the following:

O joy, when human being’s flame

Is blazing, even when at rest.

O bitter pain, when the human thing

Is put in bonds, when it wants to stir.

Evidence of this onslaught, the attempt to reduce us all to “the human thing”, is all around us. I try to observe as many examples of these attacks as I can, because the more of us who can see and acknowledge what the oppositional forces are up to, the less likely it is that they will be effective. What are they trying to achieve? In a lecture given in 1919, Steiner has told us the following:

“Just as there was an incarnation of Lucifer in the flesh and an incarnation of Christ in the flesh, so, before only a part of the third millennium of the post-Christian era has elapsed, there will be, in the West, an actual incarnation of Ahriman: Ahriman in the flesh. Humanity on earth cannot escape this incarnation of Ahriman. It will come inevitably. But what matters is that people shall find the right vantage point from which to confront it.

Whenever preparation is being made for incarnations of this character, we must be alert to certain indicative trends in evolution. A being like Ahriman, who will incarnate in the West in time to come, prepares for this incarnation in advance. With a view to his incarnation on the earth, Ahriman guides certain forces in evolution in such a way that they may be of the greatest possible advantage to him. And evil would result were people to live on in a state of drowsy unawareness, unable to recognise certain phenomena in life as preparations for Ahriman’s incarnation in the flesh. The right stand can be taken only by recognising in one or another series of events the preparation that is being made by Ahriman for his earthly existence. And the time has now come for individual human beings to know what tendencies and events around them are machinations of Ahriman, helping him to prepare for his approaching incarnation.

It would undoubtedly be of the greatest benefit to Ahriman if he could succeed in preventing the vast majority of people from perceiving what would make for their true well-being, if the vast majority of people were to regard these preparations for the Ahriman incarnation as progressive and good for evolution. If Ahriman were able to slink into a humanity unaware of his coming, that would gladden him most of all. It is for this reason that the occurrences and trends in which Ahriman is working for his future incarnation must be brought to light.”

Of course, it’s quite easy for Ahriman. Money, power, lust and violence enthrall human beings. Perhaps I’m just a Grumpy Old Man but I can’t be the only one who’s noticed that what was culturally unacceptable thirty or forty years ago has now become the new normal. But alongside this ratchet effect of continuing cultural and social degradation, Ahriman is also slowly but surely working to make us forget what it is that makes us truly human. Here are a few of the more egregious examples of ahrimanic phenomena that I’ve recently noticed:

Virtual Reality

In 1965, computer scientist Ivan Sutherland wrote a paper suggesting that a computer-generated visual “display” might one day become so believable it could “literally be the Wonderland into which Alice walked”. Half a century on, virtual reality (VR) devices are entering the mass market. Goldman Sachs analysts predict that gaming will be the most lucrative kind of VR software over the next decade, generating $11.6bn in annual revenues by 2025. Facebook has recently bought VR company Oculus and FB founder Mark Zuckerberg has made it clear that his ambitions for VR go far beyond games, calling it “a new communication platform.” Quite how VR can be a social enabler when the technology completely isolates users from the people around them, by covering their eyes and ears to replace the real world with a digital one, at the moment escapes me – but Zuckerberg is the one with the money, not me, so I’m sure he knows what he is doing. Nevertheless, I found the photo below utterly chilling.

Mark Zuckerberg and some VR zombies (photo via phonearena.com)

Microchip implants

If you’ve got a dog, it’s possible that it already has a microchip embedded between its shoulders, as a kind of invisible key to owner identity verification. From April 2016, this becomes a legal requirement in England and Wales – yes, that’s right – it will be illegal to keep a dog without having it microchipped. Human microchip implants are not yet widely available but they’re coming – a chip, encased in borosilicate biocompatible glass, will be pushed through your skin near your wrist and will sit there, waiting to engage in all sorts of transactions between you and all sorts of computers and smart devices. The chip will enable you to be located anywhere in the world through a tiny electronic system known as RFID or Radio Frequency Identification. It could contain information such as who you are, how much credit you have, your work ID, whether you’re a criminal out on licence or a migrant who needs to be tracked. I’ve no doubt that Transport for London will already be drawing up plans to replace their Oyster card (which enables you to make journeys by public transport around London) with chip implants (so much more efficient and user-friendly and will never get lost) and at some point they will become compulsory rather than voluntary. Before long, passports and ID cards will be replaced by these chip implants, and you won’t be able to use an airport without having one. It will, of course, be sold to us on the basis that it will improve security, will speed up queues, will make our lives easier, and if we’ve done nothing wrong, we’ll have nothing to fear.

Injecting a microchip into a white West Highland terrier (photo via RSPCA)

Security checks at airports

Talking of airports, if there is one situation designed to humiliate and strip you of your dignity as a human being, it is the modern experience of air travel. In the words of Frances Stonor Saunders: “At the airport, we advance with the miniature steps of geisha girls, towards the apparatus that sees, sees into, scans and filters us. We yield to verbal instructions issued in what Auden described as the ‘peremptory tone reserved for … children one cannot trust/Who might be tempted by ponds or learn some disgusting/Trick from a ragamuffin’. We remove our jacket, shoes, belt, and hold aloft our cosmetic secrets in a see-through plastic bag. Without protest, we shuffle in our socks towards the pat-down, or into the machine that sees through our clothes without us having to take them off (they’re known as ‘porno scanners’ in the security industry).”

airportQueue griffinmediagroupcompanies.com

Airport security checks in Denver (photo via globalmediacompanies.com)

Advanced Western democracy

To observe the progress of plutocratic dynasts such as Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton through the American electoral system is to realise that the days when it was theoretically possible for an ordinary citizen to make the journey from log cabin to White House are long gone. Today’s political system, run for the benefit of corporates and financed by them through kickbacks and lobbying, relies on the compliance of a people lobotomised by an ahrimanic media through a focus on bread and circuses and celebrity tittle-tattle. It makes one realise that Clinton and Trump are no better than the arse-cheeks of Ahriman, operating out of lust for power and utter indifference to the real needs of the American people or the wider world. Of course, although the forms of corruption and deceit may vary, it’s a similar story in the UK and in most other countries today.

GTY_hillary_clinton_donald_trump_split_jt_150912_16x9_992

Could these two be the arse-cheeks of Ahriman?

TTIP – the Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership

The mention of how corporate interests always come first reminds me of TTIP. Under this new deal between the US and the EU, multinational corporations will be able to sue elected governments that introduce any policies that can be shown to reduce their profits – even if those policies are to protect public health or the environment. I haven’t got room here to say any more but there’s a beginner’s guide to TTIP here:

ttip-lobby-groups_0

Each of these examples of what is happening, and many, many more, are designed to turn us into the “human thing” and more forgetful of the true dignity and worth of human beings. For me, Rudolf Steiner’s work is an invaluable corrective to Ahriman’s apparently unstoppable progress, because he has identified what will happen and what we need to do to avert the worst effects of it. “Know thyself “or perhaps better, “Know thy Self”, should be our watchword, because as long as we lack self-knowledge, we are prey to the delusions of our lower nature – and hence easy meat for Ahriman. In the same lecture I’ve quoted above, Steiner said:

“To the extent to which people can be roused into conducting their affairs not for material ends alone and into regarding a free and independent spiritual life, equally with economic life, as an integral part of the social organism — to that same extent Ahriman’s incarnation will be awaited with an attitude worthy of humanity.”

So in that spirit of preparation for what is to come, how many other indications of ahrimanic phenomena in modern life have you noticed? Please list them in the Comments and by doing so, let’s see if we can avoid that state of drowsy unawareness of which Steiner warned.

¹ In the 4^th lecture of the first Course for Doctors.

² Lecture November 22^nd 1906 – The Origin of Suffering: the Origin of Evil, Illness and Death

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Filed under Ahriman, Anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner

Tagged as Ahriman, Angels, Anthroposophy, Human Being, Human Thing, Lucifer, Rudolf Steiner

February 26, 2016 · 4:03 pm

Rudolf Steiner’s last illness and last verse

As far as I’m aware, the exact nature of Rudolf Steiner’s last illness has never been established. He took to his sick bed on September 28^th 1924, straight after having had to cut short a lecture in Dornach because of exhaustion and physical weakness. Rather than go to his apartment in Haus Hansi, Steiner opted to be cared for in the primitively equipped studio – not much more than a wooden barracks – where he had worked with Edith Maryon on carving the statue of the Representative of Man. It was here that he had all his working papers, and his library was close at hand; but there was not much else to recommend it as a sick room. The studio had no windows, only a skylight; there was no kitchen and the boards of the wooden walls were thin and the cold of winter came through them – and he was often disturbed by the construction noise from the work on the second Goetheanum nearby. Here he was attended, mainly by Dr. Ita Wegman who stayed in a small side-room off the studio, and on occasions by Dr Ludwig Noll and others.

Dr Rudolf Steiner in 1920.

We know that his digestion was extremely delicate and had been so for some years before this. In the last months of his life, he seems to have been unable to take in anything except the smallest quantities of food. I think we can safely discount the rumour that he had been poisoned at a tea party on January 1^st 1924, not least because Steiner himself tried to quash this on three occasions and the physicians attending him all said that this was not the case. I’m also inclined to discount the idea, which Marie Steiner put forward and Sergei Prokofieff subsequently developed, that Steiner had taken on the karma of the members of the Anthroposophical Society but that they had failed to respond to the opportunity given them at the Christmas Foundation Conference and had therefore somehow through the operation of an occult law brought Steiner to a premature end.

Edith Maryon, who had stood with Steiner and watched the burning of the first Goetheanum on New Year’s Eve 1922, died in 1924 after a long and painful illness. Speaking in May 1924 after her death, Steiner said this:

The seed of Miss Maryon’s illness was planted in her during the night in which the Goetheanum burned down. And from what was started with that seed during the night when the Goetheanum burned she could not be healed, not even with the most attentive and skilled care.

Edith Maryon, the English sculptor and close colleague of Rudolf Steiner

Did this also apply to Steiner himself? It seems likely. The signs of his illness had appeared some years previously and were seen by those who worked closely with him but weren’t noticed by more casual observers until the beginning of 1924, that annus mirabilis in which he achieved superhuman feats of work, despite being so ill. Many eye-witnesses attested to the phenomenon of Steiner, who looked ill and exhausted before a lecture, gaining strength and vitality as soon as he began to speak, so much so that people thought he had recovered from whatever was ailing him. Actors who have been ill before a performance often experience this phenomenon of suddenly gaining new life and energy when they go on stage – they call it “Dr Theatre”.

The smoking ruins of the first Goetheanum, thought to have been destroyed by an arsonist.

What we do know is that by the last six months of his life, Steiner had lost a lot of weight, did not have the least appetite, his physical strength was so reduced that he had to be supported when he stood up and he suffered from very painful haemorrhoids. An enlarged prostate had caused a urinary tract blockage, which must also have been very painful – particularly as I suspect he did not allow Dr Wegman to catheterise him, and so this had to wait until Dr Noll was able to visit.

But even after he had taken to his sickbed, Steiner worked incessantly. He was writing his biography, The Course of My Life, writing the Letters to Members and the Leading Thoughts, reading the daily newspapers, studying the latest scientific and literary articles, and speed-reading piles of books which his secretary, Guenther Wachsmuth, brought in for him every day. He also dealt with masses of correspondence and all the details of the construction of the second Goetheanum, as well as holding regular conferences with Albert Steffen about editorial matters for two weekly periodicals.

In the draft she prepared for a lecture about Steiner in 1931, Dr Ita Wegman, Steiner’s main physician, said the following:

Through the burning of the Goetheanum, which shattered his physical body – there was a powerful loosening of the etheric body, even a separation of the etheric from the physical – his health became ever more delicate. “In comparison to other people, I have really already died on earth,” was something he often said. “My ego and astral body direct the physical body and supplement the etheric.…”

The question that arises again and again: what are we to understand by illness of an initiate, why speak of an illness in the case of Rudolf Steiner? That is what I want to try to answer here.

Well, why did he get sick? The delicate physical body was left behind too much and for too long by the soul-spiritual which was working in its very own homeland. The physical body was left to its own weight and physical laws, so that it became weaker and the digestion failed.

Dr Ita Wegman, Steiner’s close colleague and main physician during his last illness.

Steiner seems to have believed (or at least told others) up until very close to the end, that he would prevail over the illness. He died on the morning of March 30^th 1925 without having been able to resume any of the lectures or overseas visits he had planned. Two weeks or so before his death, he wrote the following verse:

I want with cosmic spirit

To enthuse each human being

That a flame they may become

And fiery will unfold

The essence of their being.

The other ones, they strive

To take from cosmic waters

What will extinguish flames

And pour paralysis

Into all inner being.

O joy, when human being’s flame

Is blazing, even when at rest.

O bitter pain, when the human thing

Is put in bonds, when it wants to stir.

(Ich möchte jeden Menschen

Aus des Kosmos Geist entzünden

Daß er Flamme werde

Und feurig seines Wesens Wesen

Entfalte.

Die Anderen, sie möchten

Aus des Kosmos Wasser nehmen

Was die Flammen verlöscht,

Und wässrig alles Wesen

Im Innern lähmt.

O Freude, wenn die Menschenflamme

Lodert, auch da wo sie ruht.

O Bitternis, wenn das Menschending

Gebunden wird, da wo es regsam sein möchte.)

I find it intensely moving that Steiner’s last year of life was spent in working harder and harder, despite all his physical ailments, to get across to people the magnificence of what it is to be a human being and to help each person to find that spiritual flame of the true self. For those of us who love Steiner, one way we can express that is to try to help others to see the choice they have between unfolding the essence of their true being or becoming the “human thing” chained down by materialistic illusions.

Christian Morgenstern expressed it beautifully:

I have seen THE HUMAN BEING in his deepest aspect,

I know the world, down to its foundation stones.

Its meaning, I have learned is love alone,

And I am here to love, and ever love again.

I spread out my arms, as HE spread HIS,

To embrace the whole wide world as HE has done.

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Filed under Anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner, Rudolf Steiner poisoning

Tagged as Anthroposophy, Edith Maryon, Ita Wegman, Rudolf Steiner, Rudolf Steiner's last illness, Rudolf Steiner's last verse

February 12, 2016 · 1:15 pm

No, Mr Dugan, Steiner Waldorf schools are not cult schools.

Following the anthropopper’s last post, my attention was drawn to comments on the Waldorf Critics’ forum alleging cult-like behaviour in Steiner Waldorf schools. Such criticisms have been around for some time, of course. Several long-standing allegations of cult-like behaviour have come from Dan Dugan of the organisation PLANS (People for Legal and Non-Sectarian Schools) in the USA. Dan listed nine “cult-like characteristics of anthroposophy” on the Waldorf Critics’ website on February 9^th 1999.

Just a year or so before that, my wife and I decided that we wanted to send our daughter to a Steiner Waldorf school. Our daughter had had a happy first year of school in the Reception class of our local state primary school. I remember her skipping down the road on her journey to school, eager to get there to meet her friends and enjoy the day. This changed, unfortunately, when she moved into Year 1 and the National Curriculum kicked in. We began to notice some distinct and disturbing changes in our daughter. She started to become clumsy and was often falling and bruising herself. This happy, outgoing child started to become pale and withdrawn. Most alarming of all, the spontaneous dancing and painting and drawing she had previously done just stopped.

At this point we decided we had to act. We went to visit various Steiner schools with our daughter where she met the teachers and the pupils in her age group and took part in sample lessons. Eventually she decided that she wanted to go to the Kings Langley school. Things moved fast from that point; our house went on the market in July and sold within one week for our asking price; we went on a frantic house search process and eventually found a house we liked and could just about afford. We moved in at the beginning of September 1998 and our daughter started at the Kings Langley school three days later.

Why did we want to send our daughter to a Steiner school, even though any rational assessment would show that we couldn’t afford the fees and that we faced the prospect of years of scrimping and saving and few, if any, holidays? There are so many reasons but here are just a few:

A truly child-centred curriculum that allows children to develop at their own pace and to have a proper childhood
A method that uses art and creativity to teach every subject
The main lesson system which allows subjects to be studied with both depth and breadth
A noticeable quality of warmth in the schools and friendly relations between staff and pupils but also mutual respect

I would like a school with such qualities to be available for every child who might benefit from it, especially for those whose parents can’t afford the fees of the independent schools. That is why I am so pleased for those parents who live within the catchment areas of the new publicly-funded Bristol, Exeter, Frome and Hereford Steiner Academy schools. I wish there were many more, throughout the country, to supplement the good work of the independent schools.

Dan Dugan’s own history with Waldorf schools is interesting and has been set out in some detail here. Dan describes himself as a “secular humanist” but his humanist values do not seem to prevent him from engaging in campaigns of misinformation, defamation and myth-making. In the USA, of course, with the separation of church and state, schools have a delicate balancing act to perform, which PLANS has sought to exploit by bringing legal cases against Waldorf schools – which PLANS have subsequently lost. In seeking to make his case that Steiner Waldorf schools are religious schools, Dan has listed what he calls their cult-like characteristics.

These alleged cult-like characteristics, as identified by Dan, are shown below in bold while my comments on these are shown in italics.

Cult-like characteristics of Anthroposophy include:

1. It clings to rejected knowledge.  (The heart is not a pump, etc.)

Here’s an extract from an article on the AnthroMed Library website which deals with this question:

“To any doctor trained in today’s medical schools, the idea that the heart may not be a pump would, at first sight, appear to be about as logical as suggesting that the sun rises in the West or that water flows uphill. So strongly is the pump concept ingrained in the collective psyche that even trying to think otherwise is more than most people can manage. Yet Rudolf Steiner, a man not given to unscientific or slipshod thinking, was quite clear on the matter and reiterated time and again that the heart is not a pump. “The blood drives the heart, not the heart the blood.”

This topic requires more space than is available here, but anyone wishing to find out more might wish to start with this article from the Journal of Anthroposophical Medicine. There is also a useful description of what is taught about the heart in Steiner Waldorf schools here.

A further interesting fact, which medical science is unable to explain, is that in embryological development, the blood starts circulating in the embryo before the heart organ has been created. In other words, blood circulation in the embryo pre-dates the heart.

2. It requires teachers to commit to the world-view for advancement in status.  (college of teachers).

Many Steiner Waldorf schools do not have a head teacher or principal but are instead organised by a body of staff (mainly teachers but often including administrators) called the College of Teachers. The criteria for becoming a College member usually include a commitment to working meditatively on oneself, thus seeking an active connection between oneself and the spiritual worlds; on being on a continuous path of personal and professional development; and on taking an active part in the running of the school beyond one’s normal teaching or administrative duties. Becoming a member of College does not lead to any increase in status, nor to any increase in pay. What it does lead to is a deeper commitment to the work of the school and a fuller realisation of the seriousness and responsibility of the task of the educator.

3. Its core doctrines are not published.  (First Class).

It is true that what are called the class lessons of the First Class of the School of Spiritual Science have not been published – although these can now be found online, published without support from the society. During the refounding of the Anthroposophical Society at Christmas 1923/24 as the General Anthroposophical Society, Rudolf Steiner also introduced the School of Spiritual Science, which was intended to have three classes, leading from one to the next. Owing to Steiner’s death in 1925, he was only able to provide lessons for the First Class. His intention was that there should not be any published texts of these lessons released for personal reading but that the content of the lessons should be passed on by word of mouth. It was also his intention that anyone who wished to belong to the school should be “a worthy representative of anthroposophy before the world.” The reason for this is that the lessons are steeped in esoteric knowledge and require much background preparation from the student. They are not to be read or talked about like stories from a newspaper, or thought about with our everyday kind of thinking. “One can accomplish nothing whatever in esoteric life if one does not know that in esoteric life truth – absolute truth – must prevail, and that we cannot merely speak of truth and still persist in taking these things in the way one would in the profane, external life.” So these texts are not for intellectual or casual reading, but require a certain cast of mind, as well as preparation and commitment, before engaging with them.

4. It is exclusive.  (Only Anthroposophical knowledge of man leads to right education.)

It’s not obvious what Dan has in mind here – Steiner Waldorf schools of course teach all kinds of knowledge from many different sources, as does any school. Anthroposophy, on the other hand, is not taught to the children, nor is it necessary to be an anthroposophist before teaching in a Steiner Waldorf school. Clearly, the schools hope that anyone who comes to teach in a Waldorf setting will have an interest in anthroposophy and will want to find out more; but it is not a requirement and teachers do not have to sign up to any particular set of beliefs.

5. It guards revelation of “difficult” knowledge.  (Prospective parents won’t be told about the role of Lucifer.)

When Dan Dugan wrote this list of cult-like characteristics in the late 1990s, it was probably a fair criticism to say that prospective parents were not told much about anthroposophy in many school prospectuses. I don’t believe this was for any sinister reason, but simply because it would be difficult to know where to begin with such a complex and extensive body of knowledge. However, in the light of criticisms from organisations like PLANS, school websites and prospectuses are nowadays much more likely to be more forthcoming about anthroposophy, and this is very much to be welcomed. Parents should of course do their own online research and reading about educational systems, as well as pay visits to the school and talk to other parents before committing their child to any particular school.

6. It is a closed system.  (Almost all publications referenced are from Anthroposophical presses and periodicals, all writers refer to Steiner.)

Inasmuch as it applies to anthroposophy, this is probably a fair criticism. I think such a criticism might also apply to other specialist areas originated by a towering figure, eg Jungian psychology, in which new territory was being opened up by the founder. The passage of time will change this, as is already being seen within anthroposophy, where the contributions of people such Bernard Lievegoed, Otto Scharmer, Arthur Zajonc and other highly respected thinkers are building on Steiner’s foundations.

Inasmuch as it applies to Steiner Waldorf schools, the same situation applies, with Steiner’s educational ideas gradually being added to by other experienced educationalists. Steiner Waldorf schools have been to a certain extent insular in their relations with the wider educational world. There are reasons for this, of course, in that the Waldorf system deplores much of what it regards as the excessive pressures and unreasonable demands put upon children and schools by modern politicians; and does not see many of its own ideas understood or referred to in mainstream educational publications. Clearly, however, it is not ideal for the schools to be isolated from the educational culture of their countries and Steiner would undoubtedly have wished there to have been much more interaction between Waldorf and other school systems. I have written more about this here. In those countries (now including England) where Steiner Waldorf schools are able to receive public funding, there is much more of a sense that the schools are part of a pluralistic educational culture.

7. It uses Jargon that redefines common terms.  (Child development)

When Steiner Waldorf schools talk about child development and age-appropriate education, they have in mind the importance of not bringing any form of knowledge to a child before he or she is developmentally ready to receive and benefit from it. Rudolf Steiner has given the schools a model of child development which has been tried and tested now for over 90 years, and on the whole it works very well, because it accords completely with the actual nature of most children.

8. It maintains separation from the world by generating fear and loathing.  (Denigrating public schools, “us vs them” attitude, paranoia)

I’ve not heard any reports of this from schools in the UK but there are certainly allegations of this nature made in the USA. If this has ever happened in any Steiner Waldorf school, it would certainly be deplorable and would be completely contrary to the intentions of Rudolf Steiner.

9. It suppresses critical dialogue, resulting in elaboration but no development of theory.  (Consensus government, “like it or leave,” Shunning)

It is, of course, very difficult in any school if a parent or group of parents starts to create serious unrest in the parent body with vociferous complaints. In such cases, if the parents do not respond to offers of dialogue and discussion but continue to spread disharmony, then they may be asked to leave. The challenge for schools is to be as open as possible about anthroposophy before parents enrol their children; and then to provide plenty of opportunities through parents’ evenings, study groups and orientation days for any issues to be discussed before they become contentious and divisive. If the school attended by Dan’s son had been more open all those years ago, perhaps Dan would have realised in advance that it was not somewhere he would choose for his son’s education.

Conclusion

I am not an uncritical defender of Steiner Waldorf schools and I do recognise that on occasion, things can go wrong. Some schools seem to have an unfortunate knack for upsetting parents and then failing to deal properly with the consequences. The reasons for this can be many and complex and in my post on leadership & management issues in Steiner Waldorf schools, I’ve listed some of these. Improved teacher training, school management and customer care are required before these problems will start to disappear. But I also think that when Steiner Waldorf education works well, as it does for many thousands of children (including my own daughter), it’s one of the best, and most human, systems of education you can find.

I hope it is clear from what has been written above, and in my previous post on anthroposophy, that Steiner Waldorf schools cannot legitimately be described as being part of a cult, or cult-like. But it is also clear that Steiner Waldorf schools need to be as open and transparent as possible with parents about anthroposophy and the part it plays in the approach that teachers take to their teaching. I believe that most Steiner Waldorf schools today are more aware of these issues and that school brochures and websites are far less reticent about anthroposophy than used to be the case. It is not in the best interests of any school to have parents who do not support the Waldorf system or who feel that somehow the school has been less than straightforward with them about what lies behind the education. Well-informed and supportive parents, who understand what the teachers are trying to achieve and who are prepared to work with the school for the best outcomes for their children, are the bedrock of any school system, Steiner Waldorf or mainstream.

Further reading

There are several posts on this blog about Steiner Waldorf education, or which touch on aspects of it. For ease of reference, here are the links:

September 4^th 2014 – Rudolf Steiner visits Margaret McMillan

September 11^th 2014 – The internet, the critics and Steiner Waldorf schools

September 16^th 2014 – Karma and the Steiner Waldorf teacher

September 27^th 2014 – Why some atheists like anthroposophy

October 2^nd 2014 – The issue that isn’t going away – leadership and management in Steiner Waldorf schools

October 4^th 2014 – Different strokes for different folks

October 9^th 2014 – A few thoughts on leadership and management issues in Steiner Waldorf schools

February 15^th 2015 – “Every school could use these methods…”

December 1^st 2015 – “A right good evening, the best of cheer…”

December 13^th 2015 – Guest Post: Leadership & Organisational Structure in Steiner Waldorf schools

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Filed under Anthroposophy, Dan Dugan/PLANS, Leadership in Steiner Waldorf Schools, Rudolf Steiner, Steiner Waldorf schools, Waldorf critics

Tagged as Anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner, Steiner Schools, Steiner Waldorf schools, Waldorf critics

February 8, 2016 · 12:17 am

No, anthroposophy is not a cult – and here’s why.

People who are critical of anthroposophy sometimes accuse it of being a cult, or a cult-like religious sect. To determine whether there is any validity in this accusation, we need first of all to understand what these critics are likely to mean by the word “cult.”

According to Wikipedia, the word “cult” was originally used, not to describe a group of religionists, but the act of worship or religious ceremony. It was first used in the early 17th century, borrowed via the French culte, from Latin cultus (worship).

Today, however – at least in English – the word “cult” is understood as a derogatory term. Wikipedia goes on to say that: “In the mass media, and among average citizens, “cult” gained an increasingly negative connotation, becoming associated with things like kidnapping, brainwashing, psychological abuse, sexual abuse and other criminal activity, and mass suicide. While most of these negative qualities usually have real documented precedents in the activities of a very small minority of new religious groups, mass culture often extends them to any religious group viewed as culturally deviant, however peaceful or law abiding it may be.”

In such a context, to accuse anthroposophy of being a cult is to make a serious and potentially damaging allegation. So what is the reality – is anthroposophy “a cult-like religious sect following the teachings of Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925)”, as alleged by Dan Dugan (founder of PLANS and the Waldorf Critics’ website)? Or is it neither a cult nor a religion but a path of knowledge to guide the spiritual in the human being to the spiritual in the universe, as described by its founder, Rudolf Steiner?

Let us see if we can find a further definition of what constitutes a cult. There is a very useful organisation called the International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA), which provides information on cults, cultic groups, psychological manipulation, etc, and practical suggestions for those affected by or interested in these subjects. I presume that Dan Dugan approves of the work of ICSA, because he has published an article about anthroposophy on its website.

The ICSA says that cults usually display some or all of fifteen typical characteristics. These fifteen characteristics identified by the ICSA are shown below in bold while my comments on how anthroposophy compares with these are in italics.

1. “The group displays excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader and (whether he is alive or dead) regards his belief system, ideology, and practices as the Truth, as law. “

Rudolf Steiner, the founder of anthroposophy, was undoubtedly a charismatic leader and his teachings, as set out in his lectures and books, are usually taken with great seriousness and respect by anthroposophists; but Steiner himself always insisted that no-one should take his statements as true unless they had first checked within themselves as to how they feel about such statements, eg our innate and “infallible feeling for truth must be the active principle in the verification of knowledge.” Anthroposophists who are given to quoting Steiner on all subjects rather than speaking from their own experience and knowledge are not doing what Steiner asked of them – and such behaviour does not make anthroposophy a cult, even if a few anthroposophists sometimes can give that impression.

There is an additional difficulty for anthroposophy, however, and this has been well described by Ha Vinh Tho: “On one hand everybody emphasises that it is NOT a religion but a spiritual science, but on the other hand most of the contents of anthroposophy are completely beyond any ones cognitive grasp and have to be accepted in good faith. The method presented by Steiner is indeed accessible to all, but the contents he researched are mostly far beyond anyone’s grasp who is not an initiate or a fully realised being. And there seems to be a confusion between advocating a scientific methodology of contemplative research and inquiry that includes the spiritual dimension of the human being and of the world; and upholding contents that can only be perceived by non-anthroposophists as a revelation given by an enlightened master. I have no problem with the latter, but there is no way one can present these revelations as scientific results that everyone can acknowledge.”

This is surely true. Anthroposophists (like me, for example), regard Steiner as an initiate who was able to access knowledge not available to most of us. We are willing to live with some very advanced concepts that we can’t prove, because of our sense of Steiner’s total integrity and extraordinary insight. Nevertheless, by their fruits shall ye know them; and the results of what I call “applied anthroposophy” continue to demonstrate the potential for practical solutions to current world problems that arise from the work of Steiner and many other anthroposophists in the fields of agriculture, banking, health, education and in many other areas.

2. “Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.”

Question, doubt and dissent have always been part of anthroposophy since its foundation. But since there is no set of beliefs or doctrines that members are required to adhere to, there is no possibility for any member to transgress. There are of course areas of controversy and disagreement but people are in no way prevented or discouraged from discussing their views or adopting particular positions. The word “must” does not exist in the anthroposophical vocabulary, since freedom is at the core of anthroposophy.

3. “Mind-altering practices (such as meditation, chanting, speaking in tongues, denunciation sessions, and debilitating work routines) are used in excess and serve to suppress doubts about the group and its leader(s).”

Meditation and the meditative path are certainly encouraged in anthroposophy, but are seen as private, individual initiatives and have nothing to do with the society. None of the other practices listed has ever had any place in anthroposophy.

4. “The leadership dictates, sometimes in great detail, how members should think, act, and feel (for example, members must get permission to date, change jobs, marry—or leaders prescribe what types of clothes to wear, where to live, whether or not to have children, how to discipline children, and so forth.“

There is absolutely no dictation to members on what to wear, how to think, feel or act, who to marry etc. The concept of freedom is central to anthroposophy.

5. “The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s) and members (for example, the leader is considered the Messiah, a special being, an avatar—or the group and/or the leader is on a special mission to save humanity.”

As mentioned under (1) above, anthroposophists often regard Steiner as an initiate and anthroposophy certainly sees itself as having much to contribute towards current world problems – but there is no sense in which anthroposophists regard themselves as an elite separate from the rest of society. On the contrary, Steiner frequently made it clear how important it is for anthroposophists to be involved in the wider world, eg “Our anthroposophical movement should not be a vaguely mystical, nebulous theory-movement sought by people wishing to withdraw from life, but must be a movement by which a man {sic} introduces the spiritual with practical effect into life’s every sphere.”

6. “The group has a polarised us-versus-them mentality, which may cause conflict with the wider society.”

Anthroposophists are encouraged to ‘do’ anthroposophy, ie to be engaged and active within the world – there is no sense of us versus them.

7. “The leader is not accountable to any authorities (unlike, for example, teachers, military commanders or ministers, priests, monks, and rabbis of mainstream religious denominations).”

Since Steiner’s death in 1925, there has been no ‘leader’ of anthroposophy. Each national society has a general secretary and Council who are accountable to their members and chosen by election.

8. “The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify whatever means it deems necessary. This may result in members participating in behaviours or activities they would have considered reprehensible or unethical before joining the group (for example, lying to family or friends, or collecting money for bogus charities).”

Steiner was known as a man of unimpeachable moral integrity – not even his most vehement critics have ever accused him of any dishonourable behaviour. Steiner himself said that to take one step in spiritual development required three steps in moral development. To call oneself an anthroposophist while engaging in reprehensible or unethical behaviour would be simply to fail to understand anthroposophy, let alone live it. That is not to deny that some anthroposophists have failed to understand it and have fallen grievously short of what one would expect from them – one thinks for example of some individuals who were close to the Nazis in Germany or the fascists in Italy in the 1930s and 40s – but these people were notable exceptions.

9. “The leadership induces feelings of shame and/or guilt in order to influence and/or control members. Often, this is done through peer pressure and subtle forms of persuasion.”

This does not happen in anthroposophy – there is no peer pressure to conform and no forms of persuasion, subtle or otherwise.

10. “Subservience to the leader or group requires members to cut ties with family and friends, and radically alter the personal goals and activities they had before joining the group.”

None of these things is required or expected of anthroposophists, nor is there any kind of leader to whom one could be subservient.

11. “The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members.”

This is certainly not the case with anthroposophy.

12. “The group is preoccupied with making money. “

This is even less the case with anthroposophy, as the difficult financial state of many anthroposophical organisations can bear witness.

13. “Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group and group-related activities.”

There are absolutely no requirements or expectations of this kind for anthroposophists.

14. “Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialise only with other group members.”

This is absolutely not the case in anthroposophy.

15. “The most loyal members (the “true believers”) feel there can be no life outside the context of the group. They believe there is no other way to be, and often fear reprisals to themselves or others if they leave (or even consider leaving) the group.”

People who are devoted anthroposophists naturally value their membership of the society and are loyal to it – but no anthroposophist has ever feared reprisals from other members and people are entirely free to leave membership, without any fear of reprisals, whenever they wish.

I think it is clear from the ICSA list above that anthroposophy displays none of the characteristics of a typical cult. To be fair to Dan Dugan, he has himself admitted, in an exchange with Tarjei Straume, that “I agree that as cults go, Anthroposphy is a sissy; in almost all aspects not dangerous, just a huge waste of time.” That’s about as good as we’re going to get from a Waldorf critic – and if Dan Dugan goes on record to say that anthroposophy is not much of a cult, then I think the rest of us can probably agree that it is not a cult at all.

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Filed under Anthroposophy, Cult, Rudolf Steiner, Waldorf critics

Tagged as Anthroposophy, Dan Dugan, Rudolf Steiner, Tarjei Straume, Waldorf critics

January 24, 2016 · 11:10 am

My Dad’s deathday

My dad, David Frank Smith, died on January 24th 2014, at the age of 89, so today is the anniversary of his deathday. Since the death of his wife Audrey in 2010, he had become increasingly frail and after a series of falls and a spell in hospital, he lived for the last two years of his life in a care home. What follows is the speech I gave at his funeral. I reproduce it here for two reasons: i) that I miss him and and am thinking about him often; and ii) his life seems to me typical of the lives of hundreds of thousands of ordinary people born in the years after the First World War and who had to fight in the Second World War; and who then lived through the Cold War, and the huge cultural, political and technological upheavals of the second half of the 20th century. These were lives of quiet stoicism and indeed, heroism, that seem to me to have been wholly admirable but are never mentioned in the obituary columns devoted to the great, the good and the notorious. So for my dad and for all the others like him, here is an appreciation.

David Smith, March 1st 1924 – 24th January 2014

Dad was born on 1^st March 1924, St David’s Day, and no doubt for this reason he was called David. I remember his parents, my grandparents, Henry and Mary (always known as Harry and Ivy) very well. They lived at 44 Haselbury Road in Edmonton, North London, and we would often go round to see them there at weekends. This was the house in which Dad grew up, and which was also close to where his grandparents, aunts and cousins lived. He was an only child, though his parents had had two other children, one of whom, a boy called Colin, died just after birth; and the other, a girl called Olive, died at the age of three during a botched operation for tonsillitis carried out at the hands of a drunken police surgeon (there was hardly any affordable medical help available for the working classes before the post-war creation of the National Health Service). When my grandmother was told what had happened by a theatre nurse six months after Olive’s death, she had a nervous breakdown and Granddad, who had a promising career in the Royal Navy as a signaller to an admiral, had to leave the sea and come home to look after his wife. My brother Greg thinks that Dad always had a sense that his mother somehow almost resented him for surviving when she had lost a daughter and that this may have driven him on to achieve and prove himself a worthy son.

Dad went to Silver Street School for Boys and he did well enough academically to be selected to go to a grammar school. But his parents either couldn’t afford it or didn’t consider it appropriate for him, and instead at the age of 14 he was apprenticed for seven years to a printer. When war broke out in 1939, Dad lied about his age so as to be able to join the Navy and fight for his country. Apparently, when he got home and told his mother that he had enlisted, she was furious with him – presumably after the loss of two other children, she didn’t want to lose her only son – but then he overheard her talking to the next door neighbour and boasting that “they don’t have to come and drag out any of ours to do their duty.”

During the war, Dad served first of all on surface vessels and then volunteered for training in the submarine service. Although he never spoke much about the war, I do remember him saying that on their first time out after training, the submarine he was in was depth-charged by a German destroyer. However, he survived that and I know that he visited places such as Egypt, Ceylon and Singapore during his service. I think it was in Singapore that he took prisoner a Japanese soldier who, pleading for his life, took what seemed to be a wooden stick from his sock and offered it to Dad. The wooden stick turned out to be a seppuku or hara-kiri (ritual suicide) knife. Greg now has that knife.

After the war, Dad completed his apprenticeship and began his career as a printer, first of all with various printing companies and then in Fleet Street, where he worked on several national dailies. It was in 1947 that at a party he met Audrey, an attractive young woman with a luxuriant mop of naturally curly brown hair. They married in 1948 and their first home was a flat in Arcadian Gardens, Wood Green. They were living there when I was born in 1951. I have no memory of that home, but I do remember our next home, which was at 102 Eastfield Road, Waltham Cross, as I was particularly fond of the apple tree and the golden gage tree in the garden, both of which I used to climb even though I was no more than 3 or 4 at the time. Greg was also born during the time at Eastfield Road. What I didn’t know until much later, and this was something that my wife Sophia was told by Audrey, was that there had been another child in between the births of me and my brother, but that this child had been born prematurely and died after only a few hours of life. Neither Mum nor Dad ever spoke of this when Greg and I were growing up.

When I was 4 and Greg was still a babe in arms, we moved to 87 New Park Avenue, Palmers Green, and this was the home that I remember best of all, because I lived there until I was 20 years old. It was the age of the TV handyman Barry Bucknell and Do It Yourself and Dad, who enjoyed woodwork, was always busy with DIY projects such as a shed and garage and various items of furniture. He was also busy with his career in Fleet Street and eventually he became the head printer of the Daily Mail. This was of course long before computer typesetting, in the days of hot metal and Linotype machines and fearsome print unions, who would bring their members out on strike at what seemed like the slightest pretext. Dad had to deal with all of this and as far as I can tell, he did it brilliantly.

Later on, after he had been lured to the Daily Express, he fell foul of Jocelyn Stevens, the notorious publisher of the paper, who sacked Dad as he sacked so many others. Dad took him to an industrial tribunal and won his case for unfair dismissal. After this, Dad had a change of career and went to work as a training consultant for the Paper Industry Training Board in Potters Bar. He and Audrey moved from Palmers Green to Potters Bar where the training board was located.

When Dad was 55, he retired and they moved to their last home at Havenstreet on the Isle of Wight. How he managed his finances so as to be able to retire at such a young age, I don’t know, but as someone who is still working in his sixties and can’t quite see myself being able to afford to retire, I’ve always thought this to be an amazing achievement!

They were all set for a long and happy retirement and for many years this is just what they had. But then Audrey had a stroke and everything changed. The stroke led to depression and then gradually she became afflicted by dementia, a long-drawn out and agonising process for all of us, but particularly for David, who had to witness the changing personality of his beloved wife. This was like a bereavement but one which lasted many years. Throughout it all, he remained loyal, strong and loving. I admire his loyalty and courage more than I can say.

During this time, Dad had very few outlets to make life more bearable. He was, however, a keen photographer and he had a good friend, Mick, with whom he would go out on photographic expeditions and they would also go sailing on Mick’s small boat. These were life-saving outlets for him at a time of deep and prolonged stress.

Throughout his life, Dad was a searcher for truth. In his younger days, he had been a freemason. Later on, he became interested in Sufism under the influence of the mystic Idries Shah, and later still he took a serious interest in Kabbalah. I think that ultimately he was disappointed in or felt rejected by all of these paths and became disillusioned with the search for spirituality and may even have become an atheist, or at least an agnostic.

As someone who believes absolutely that we are spiritual beings who are currently having human experiences, my greatest wish for Dad is that he is now experiencing the reality of spirit, surrounded by the love of his relatives and friends and in full knowledge of the love of Christ.

Dad loved boats and the sea and one of the last things he said to Greg, in a moment that seemed more visionary than literal, was: “I want to go back to sea.” I would like to finish by reading a short poem by Walt Whitman, which I hope Dad would have appreciated:

Joy! Shipmate – joy!

(Pleas’d to my Soul at death I cry;)

Our life is closed – our life begins;

The long, long anchorage we leave,

The ship is clear at last – she leaps!

She swiftly courses from the shore;

Joy! Shipmate – joy!

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Filed under David Smith, Deathday

Tagged as Dad, David Smith, Walt Whitman

January 9, 2016 · 9:57 pm

Cryonics and the Fear of Death

A really interesting article by Courtney Weaver in a recent edition of the Financial Times Weekend magazine caught the anthropopper’s attention, not only because of the sheer weirdness of the subject – it’s about cryonics, a technique of freezing dead bodies in the hope that science in the future may find a way to bring the corpses back to life – but because of the astonishing beliefs about life and death processes that lie behind the concept.

As with the arms race and the space race, it is the USA and Russia which are slugging it out in a new and literally very Cold War to establish supremacy in the business of making money from individuals seeking the prospect of future immortality. People who believe in cryonics think that, if a human is cooled to -196C at the time of clinical death, it could be possible to resuscitate them later at a time when science has advanced sufficiently to cure them of old age or illness.

To accommodate people with this belief, the Russians have one of the biggest cryonics companies in the world (KrioRus), which will charge $36,000 to freeze and store a full body or, even more bizarrely, only $12,000 for a head. This has given them a huge price advantage over the leading American company (Alcor), which charges $200,000 for a full body and $80,000 for a head. Needless to say, you get what you pay for and in the cheaper Russian version, its 45 cryopreserved ‘patients’ are stored together in two containers, hanging by their ankles from individual pulleys in liquid nitrogen; while the heads and brains of those cheapskates who have chosen what is called a neuropreservation (head only) are stored on the floor of the same containers. KrioRus also stores more than a dozen deceased pet animals in these containers, which gives you a clue that this may not be the most upmarket kind of operation.

Cryostat interior at KrioRus facility near Moscow. Photo courtesy of Murray Ballard.

Alcor in the USA, on the other hand, keeps its 141 frozen patients in individual shiny steel capsules in a room with a bullet-proof viewing window and seems to be altogether a more classy kind of set-up that has attracted some famous clients. The head of US baseball star Ted Williams is stored at -196C in a steel flask in Arizona, while PayPal founder Peter Thiel and computer scientist Ray Kurzweil are booked in to be preserved when they shuffle off this mortal coil. News anchor Larry Page is also said to be about to sign up in preparation for when he signs off.

In both countries, though, the process is broadly the same: get to the patient as soon as possible after clinical death has been pronounced and then cool the body over the next few days to bring it down to -196C using nitrogen gas. To quote from Wikipedia, “the stated rationale for cryonics is that people who are considered dead by current legal or medical definitions may not necessarily be dead according to the more stringent information-theoretic definition of death. It is proposed that cryopreserved people might someday be recovered by using highly advanced technology.”

Cryonically-preserved bodies at Alcor in Arizona, USA. Photo courtesy of i09.com.

According to Ms. Weaver, people who choose to sign up fall into two categories. “The first consists of people who consider themselves pioneers and would be quite content to come back in the future, knowing no-one and nothing of the current culture. The second is of people scared both by the prospect of death and by the finality that comes of saying goodbye to a loved one for ever, a feeling most skeptics would find it hard not to empathise with.”

View from Alcor’s conference room into the cryonics holding bay. Photo courtesy of i09.com

Apart from the obvious weirdness, what is really odd is the mindset and belief system that lies behind cryonics. The article quotes two cryonics pioneers, a husband and wife, Maria and Gary from Los Angeles: “If you wait 100 years or 1,000 years or however much time it takes for the technology to develop, it doesn’t matter. I’m sure it’s a split second for your experience. It may be a one in one thousand chance. But the alternative is a 100 per cent guarantee annihilation of your existence. And if you don’t like it in the future, you can always die again if you want to. You can take a peek and say ‘I like it’ or ‘I don’t. I’d rather be dead’. People think cryonics is freaky but lying in the ground and decomposing isn’t? What’s the difference?“

Evelyn Waugh! thou shouldst be living at this hour – the world hath need of an updated version of The Loved One, your short satirical novel about the American Way of Death.

But perhaps Maria and Gary and all the other people contemplating cryonic preservation for themselves or their loved ones would do even better to read Rudolf Steiner about death and what happens after death. Other cultures, eg the Tibetans in their Book of the Dead, or the Ancient Egyptians in their Book of the Dead have prepared their peoples in the knowledge of how to die and what will happen after death; but in the West, the only person I know who has done this in a really comprehensive way is Rudolf Steiner.

Have a look at Steiner’s Theosophy or his lecture series on Life Between Death and Rebirth. There’s also a useful video on Death & Reincarnation, presented on YouTube by Brian Gray of Rudolf Steiner College.

Maria and Gary and other cryonics fans, save your money and stop worrying – did you but know it, you are in fact already immortal!

32 Comments

Filed under Anthroposophy, Cryonics, Rudolf Steiner

Tagged as Cryonics, Death, Evelyn Waugh, Fear of Death, Immortality

January 5, 2016 · 11:30 pm

Of Magi and Moral Imbeciles – the Three Kings’ Play at Epiphany

I recently wrote of the three Oberufer Christmas plays and said that at Epiphany I would also be writing something more about the third of those, the Three Kings’ Play, which is traditionally performed at Epiphany on 6^th January.

Epiphany comes from a Greek word meaning “manifestation” or “vision of God” and in the Christian tradition it refers to the visit to the newborn Jesus child in the stable at Bethlehem by the Three Kings; or in other words, the revelation of God the Son as a human being to the Three Kings or Magi. Epiphany is sometimes called the Festival of the Three Kings for this reason, and Rudolf Steiner had some interesting things to say about it. He said that in our present time less importance is attached to Epiphany than to the Christmas festival itself but in the future, Epiphany will assume greater and greater significance as we begin to understand its symbolism.

The Oberufer Christmas plays tell us of two proclamations of the birth of Jesus: the Shepherds’ Play shows us that one proclamation is made to the shepherds in the fields, while the Three Kings’ Play shows us the proclamation made to the three Magi from the East, who follow a star leading them to the Jesus child. This is the Nativity as related in the Gospel According to St Matthew.

So the plays are showing us two ways in which higher knowledge came to exceptional individuals in earlier times. Individuals such as the simple shepherds in the fields who with their great purity and kindness of heart still possessed a certain power of clairvoyance that came over them like a dream.

And the Three Kings’ Play shows us that there were individuals who had reached the heights of learning, like the three Magi from the East, in whom the ancient faculty of gazing into the how and why of cosmic happenings had been preserved.

The Adoration of the Magi by Albrecht Durer

The plays therefore point the way to two definite but quite distinct forms of knowledge:

To the Shepherds – revelation through the last echoes of the old instinctive clairvoyance
To the Magi – revelation through heart-filled scientific knowledge

Since we are contemplating the Three Kings’ Festival of Epiphany, let’s take a closer look at the knowledge possessed by the three Magi. It’s clearly indicated in the Three Kings’ Play that these Magi (another word for spiritual masters or initiates), were able to read the secrets of the movements of the stars. This ancient knowledge of the secrets of the stars also contained the secrets of happenings in the world of human beings.

Steiner posed the question: “What has become of the wisdom possessed by the Magi?” And his answer was that it has become the mathematical astronomy of today. Unlike today’s astronomers, the Magi were able to gaze at the world of the stars, not only with their eyes but also with their inner vision and their esoteric knowledge and thus they were able to see the secrets of the universe and of humankind. In a way we can scarcely understand today, the Magi could also perceive the stars talking to them. However in our age of the consciousness soul, today’s mathematics has become pure abstraction, says Steiner, but he also says that the same forces that are unfolded in mathematical thinking can again be filled with life, enriched and intensified in imaginative perception. Then, from our own inner forces, we can once again behold the heavens through inner perception, inner vision, as the Magi discerned the secrets of the Christ child.

Perhaps it is thoughts like these that prompted Steiner to give the following meditative verse at Christmas 1923:

The stars once spoke to Man.

It is world destiny that they are silent now.

To be aware of this silence

Can become pain for Earthly Man.

But in the deepening silence

There grows and ripens

What Man speaks to the stars.

To be aware of this speaking

Can become strength for Spirit Man.

In our present age of the consciousness soul, the verse seems to suggest, we need to recognise that the spiritual world has withdrawn from us so as to advance the next step of our own evolutionary journey. We are not alone, however; help is all around us. We must find the courage and imagination to speak to the stars and re-establish our links with the spiritual world; but this time in full consciousness.

Turning to the Magi themselves, one of them is portrayed as a Moor, an African; the second as a white man, a European; and the third as an Asian from India. And about this Steiner says something which I find very moving (and which gives the lie to those people who accuse him of racism):

“What must never be forgotten is that the proclamations to the Shepherds and to the Kings contained a message for all mankind – for the earth is common to all. In that the revelation to the shepherds was from the earth, it was a revelation that may not be differentiated according to nationality. And in that the Magi received the proclamation of the sun and heavens, this too was a revelation destined for all mankind. For when the sun has shone upon the territory of one people, it shines upon the territory of another. The heavens are common to all; the earth is common to all. The impulse of the ‘human universal’ is in very truth quickened by Christianity. Such is the aspect of Christmas revealed by the twofold proclamation.”

But there is another king in the Kings’ Play – King Herod. Unlike the three Magi, who are working out of love, or more precisely, who are applying the intelligence of their hearts to their knowledge of the stars, Herod is working out of the opposite of love.

What is the opposite of love? Not hate. No, the true opposite of love is fear. Herod is afraid. He is afraid of losing his throne to this new-born king, whom he assumes will be a temporal rather than a spiritual ruler. And out of Herod’s fear, and his ignorance of spiritual laws, he is willing to commit the most terrible atrocity imaginable: the mass slaughter of all boy-children in his kingdom under the age of two.

The Massacre of the Innocents by Lodovico Mazzolin

Massacre of the Innocents by Lodovico Mazzolino

Actually, one feels almost sorry for Herod, who in his fear and ignorance is preparing a truly appalling karma for his future lives. In the play, Mary appears to Herod in a vision and tries to warn him about what he is doing to himself:

“Great King, to Mercy mend your mind

Lest grief come suddenly behind;

If so much guiltless blood you shed

What call you, King, on your own head?”

But Herod is not to be dissuaded from his terrible crime and orders his servants to kill all the children, “to make the children’s blood gush out.”

And at this point, I can’t help but ask myself what has changed in the last 2000 years? Still today we have rulers who are acting out of fear and ignorance rather than a heart-filled wisdom. A prime example is president Assad in Syria, where the death toll of Syrian citizens killed by their own government forces is now estimated to be over 133,000 and where well over four million people have been forced into exile to escape the violence.

President Assad of Syria (photo-montage courtesy of Vine of Life)

Why is this, I wonder? Why is it that so many politicians and leaders today still lack “the light that gives warmth to simple shepherds’ hearts, the light that enlightens the wise heads of kings?” Why are so many of them, to use a 19^th century term that deserves to be revived, such moral imbeciles?

Whatever the answers to those questions, each of us can help to improve matters. None of us is powerless – our thoughts, our example, our daily interactions with other people can all help to create a better future, even if the numbers of those working consciously for good seem like an impossibly diluted homeopathic dose within the great mass of humankind.

To quote the closing lines from T.S. Eliot’s Choruses from the Rock:

“And when we have built an altar to the

invisible Light, we may set thereon the little

lights for which our bodily vision is made.

And we thank Thee that darkness reminds us of light.

O Light Invisible, we give Thee thanks for Thy great glory.”

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Filed under Anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner

Tagged as Epiphany, Herod, Massacre of the Innocents, Oberufer Christmas Plays, Three Kings Play, Three Magi

Author Archives: Jeremy Smith

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But will you wake, for pity’s sake?

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No, Mr Dugan, Steiner Waldorf schools are not cult schools.

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