Anthroposophy - spiritualisation of Western culture and thought

The Anthroposophical movement was founded by the Austrian philosopher and spiritual scientist, Rudolf Steiner in the 1920's as a movement for spiritualisation of Western culture and thought. Steiner had earlier been the General Secretary of the German section of the Theosophical Society, but he felt that it was too much influenced by Buddhism and Hinduism. He felt a need to develop a spiritual way for the West, and doing this became his life's work.

Rudolf Steiner:

During the course of his life, Steiner wrote about 20 books and held a massive amount of lectures, so that his collected works, including the transcribed lectures, make up about 360 volumes. He has given major inspirations to the following areas of culture and human endeavor:

Education
Agriculture
Spiritual science and cosmology
Philosophy
Architecture
Sculpturing
Painting

In fact I think it is fair to say that there is almost no area of human life that he hasn't touched with his insight and inspiration.

Education
Steiner was active for many years of his life as a teacher both for adults and children, and had a deep insight into education. In the 1920's, the director of the Waldorf-Astoria cigar factories, who had become interested in Steiner's ideas about education and transformation of society, invited Steiner to help him with establishing a school for the children of the employees at his factories. Steiner accepted this offer, and this is the reason why the schools which work on the basis of Steiner's inspirations are called "Waldorf Schools". Most European and Commonwealth countries, as well as the United States, has Waldorf Schools which work on the basis of  Steiner's inspirations. Waldorf schools work on the basis of a spiritual understanding of the child as a spiritual being which goes through certain stages in life. For instance, the first 7 years of life deals with the unfolding of the physical body. The next 7 years is the period for the unfolding of the etheric or vital body, and the next 7 years again the period for the unfolding of the emotional body, which also carries with it our sexual identity and nature,  and our emotional individuality. This is why teenagers have   "behaviour problems" when they reach that age. They begin to feel their sexuality and their own individuality, which was latent until then. Finally, the years from age 21 to 28 deal with the unfolding of the mental body, or the I, so that the person is fully grown at the age of 28, after which the unfolding of the "consciousness soul" begins. Waldorf education is planned on the basis of these insights - a spiritual framework for the understanding of human growth and development - and it seeks to aid and stimulate those aspects of the human being which are unfolding at a given time, and to make the child or the pupil conscious of his/her interaction with the spiritual world, and of humanity's spiritual heritage.
If the child is brought into contact with its spiritual roots and nature in this way early in life, and goes through a harmonious development where the different spiritual bodies unfold and are aligned, it will become a strong adult, conscious of his/her spiritual identity and mission in that specific life - as one amongst many lives.

Agriculture
With his inspirations for improving agricultural methods, Steiner introduced the ecological perspective into agriculture, and he also provided an understanding of how the cosmic energies and cycles interact with the soil, the plants and the animals, so that the farmer can co-operate with them.  The agricultural method which was inspired by Steiner is called bio-dynamic agriculture - biological means working with the plants and animals in a natural, ecological way, and dynamical refers to the co-operation with the cosmic forces of life that interact with the physical world. The bio-dynamical agriculture works with the soil, plants and animals, not only from a purely physical/scientific perspective, but on the basis of an understanding of the spiritual aspects of agriculture. For instance, the farmer takes care that the plants have lots of etheric energy, which makes them better suited for food, and he sees to it that their contents of minerals and nutritional elements match the needs of the people and animals who will eat them. He takes care  to fertilize the soil using natural methods, and cooperates with the etheric beings who work with the soil and plants. Some of these are portrayed on the first three pictures by Eskild Tjalve under the section about devas.

Architecture
With his architectural impulse, Steiner sought to spiritualise and vitalise architecture. One of the ideas of Anthroposophical architecture is that the buildings should appear in harmony with the landscape into which they are built in, both with regards to form and material.   Their form should reflect their function, and at the same time, they should be both practical and artistic. Steiner wanted the architecture to express the living processes of the etheric realm, where the archetypes exist which mould the physical forms. For instance, the human body is built on the basis of the etheric body, which is the form after which the child is built in the womb of the mother - similar to the way we human beings create a house by first visualising it mentally and then drawing it, before it is manifested in the physical. Human creating reflect the cosmic creative processes.
Steiner worked a lot with metamorphosis and the changes of forms within nature. There is always a metamorphosis going on in nature - between the different seasons, as plant grows or an animal or human being grows, and this physical reality reflects the unseen life forces that are at work. Steiner sought to make them visible to people who did not possess the same psychic abilities as he did, and one way he could illustrate them was in his sculpturing and architecture. Seen from an Anthroposophical viewpoint (and for that matter with the eyes of spiritual science as such), all physical forms are reflections of forces which operate on higher levels - firstly the etheric, or "form-force field" as Steiner sometimes called it, and secondary the higher spiritual worlds where the creative hierarchies exist and work with the creative processes of the universe. Materialism, or the idea that physical matter and energy is all there is, and there are no vital or intelligent spiritual forces behind physical creation, was one of the ideas which Steiner sought to counteract, because he knew it is deadening to the human soul. One way to do this was to open people's eyes to the beauty and life of the spiritual worlds through art and architecture. Steiner's whole world view was an organic one, where the world and is seen as a vast living, spiritual entity. The different physical forms - galaxies, stars, planets, landscapes, animals, plants etc. are created and influenced by different spiritual beings of many grades,  orders and characters. The ancient creation myths of this planet all reflect this, as Steiner pointed out, and his architectural impulse was and is an attempt to do in architecture what Anthroposophy always seeks: To bring man and his culture into harmony and alignment with cosmos and its living, spiritual forces.

Some examples of Anthroposophical architecture:

The 1st Goetheanum
Pictures of the first Goetheanum, built in Dornach, Switzerland during the two first decades of the 20th century. It was built entirely in wood on a foundation of concrete and was a massive artwork, but tragically it was put on fire and burned down at New Year's Eve 1922/23.

View from the north: The 2nd Goetheanum is built at the same spot as the 1st.                        '
Entrance portal: Notice the ram head on the top of the windows - there were such heads on top of all
windows, each in a metamorphosed form. The building burnt to the ground, so only the concrete foundation
was left.

The Glass House
This house, which can be seen on the picture of the 1st Goetheanum in the lower left corner, survived the fire and still exists as an example of the organic, living architecture of Rudolf Steiner. It was used as a workshop for the crafting of the glass windows for the 1st Goetheanum, which is how it got its name.

The 2nd Goetheanum
This concrete building was modeled in clay by Steiner, who said after the fire of the 1st Geotheanum, that culture had evolved so that a new structure was also needed as the frame for Anthroposophical activities. It reflects the landscape of the Jura Mountains in Switzerland and is built in steel and concrete. The construction started in 1924, and there are still interior sections which haven't been finished yet. Currently, the great scene is being re-built, and the outer concrete cover is being removed, a new steel frame inserted and concrete put on top of it - an arduous process, but even Steiner hadn't foreseen the acid rain of the later part of our century.

Follow the link below to see more pictures of the 2nd Goetheanum (Swiss site) click on the address and then click on their link to Goetheanum in the upper, left corner. http://www.goetheanum.ch/          

The Anthroposophical Centre in Järna, Sweden:
Here, the style of the architecture is in accordance with Scandinavian tradition, and the buildings are given names which correspond with Norse mythology, about which Steiner lectured a lot, seeking to show how cosmic truths are interwoven with the stories and legends.

Spiritual science and cosmology
Steiner's cosmology is presented in his many books and lectures and is a fascinating and illuminating study, enough for a decade or more. I will try to give a brief outline here, and perhaps add more when I have time.
In Steiner's cosmology, the universe is viewed as a vast, living being, inhabited by hosts of spiritual beings at different stages of development. Steiner describes these creative hierarchies, each of which is one Earth period further in development than the other, with the following names:

Minerals
Plants
Animals
Human beings

Angels
Archangels
Archai

Thrones
Dominions
Virtues

Principalities
Cherubim
Seraphim

Each of these group of beings is one planetary period ahead of the others, meaning that they have perfected qualities which those who are lower in the hierarchy are still working to develop. As an example, human beings are working on perfecting the ability to think, while the angels (for instance the solar angels, which work directly with the human evolution to assist us) have already perfected this ability, giving them the ability to understand the connection between past, present and future and the lines of cause and effect at lightning speed. Higher beings, such as the archangels, express themselves through an entire nation (the spirits of a nation), and the youth, blooming and decay of a nation or an empire actually follows the growth of these angelic beings. The soul of a nation comes into incarnation and creates the life of a nation, its birth, childhood, teenage years, adulthood and old age by attracting to it the souls which matches its qualities or who need to learn something by incarnating in that specific period and area. The present nations in the world vary a lot in their development. For instance, Japan is one of the oldest nations and has a very structured energy, and most of the European nations too are quite old and beginning to reach into adulthood. Europe as a continent is going into old age, and spiritual science explains that the archai which vitalises this area will come again and embody the civilisation of Atlantis, which will gradually rise from the ocean bed.

Planetary periods:
With his clairvoyant vision, Steiner described the evolution of this planet in seven stages
which he saw intuitively:

1. Saturn 
2. Sun
3. Moon  
4. Earth  
5. Jupiter  
6. Venus  
7. Vulcan

We are presently in the Earth period - our physical body was developed in the Saturn period, the etheric body during the Sun period; the astral during the Moon period and the mental body, or "I", as Steiner calls it, is under development in this Earth period. This shows us from the scheme, that when the Earth reaches the "Mercury" period, the human beings will have evolved to the same stage as the present angels. On Venus we will be like the Archangels, and on Vulcan like the Archai. The Hierarchies both above us and below us will have progressed in the same way.

Philosophy
Steiner, who had been clairvoyant from a very early age, sought to spiritualise philosophy and bring spiritual understanding into philosophy, to enable his contemporaries and his culture to see the spiritual aspects of the world, and the history of human thinking as the result of influences from higher, spiritual beings who are leading humanity from step to step on the ladder of evolution. For instance, Steiner said that the materialist philosophy of his own age (continuing into our own age) was the result of strong influences from the "Ahrimanic" beings, whose influence show, for instance, as the crystallizing powers in minerals. He has written several books about philosophy, amongst them "The Riddle of Philosophy" (Rätsel der Philosophie) and "The Philosophy of Freedom" (Philosophie der Freiheit), which was his Ph. D. thesis at the University of Rostock. According to Steiner's own information, based on his clairvoyant visions, his latest earlier incarnations had been as Thomas of Aquinas (1225-1274), famous scholastic philosopher and theologian, and as Aristotle (384-322 BC), Greek philosopher and one of the "fathers" of natural science. If we look at him on the basis of this information, it gives a wonderful picture of a soul's development. Aristotle rejected Plato's mysticism and went on to explore the physical world through the mind and the senses, thus laying the foundation of the natural sciences through his works, and Thomas of Aquinas who developed a vast religious, moral and theological system on the basis of the Christian faith. Seen in this perspective, his incarnation at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century can be seen as a combination of the two branches of his thinking - the rational and scientific, and the mystical and religious, represented by Aristotle and Thomas of Aquinas, and this is exactly the work that Steiner undertook in that incarnation, namely of uniting science and religion through the medium of rational and intuitive thought.

(Added January 2001):
For those of the readers who are very interested in Steiner, I'm adding here that a good friend of mine thinks
that Steiner reincarnated as Ralph Nader (1934-), a well-known American lawyer and reformist, who also
candidated at the recent and very debated 2000 presidential election. The whole of his adult life, Nader has
worked for reforming American society in a more humane and, if I may say it, intelligent way, and in doing so
one might say he's carrying on the work of his previous incarnation, although this time he does not appear as
a "practical mystic" (for Steiner certainly was this), but as a practical politician. Another argument in favour of this idea is the physical likeness between Steiner and Nader, for people tend to have the same looks incarnation after incarnation, just like they bring with them the thoughts and emotions created in past lives. More about this, and a link to more information about Nader when I get it.

Sculpturing
While they were working on the 1st Goetheanum, many famous artists from that period came to Switzerland to assist in the work, amongst them skillful sculptors. Steiner worked together with an English sculptor on the great wooden statue, "The Human Representative", which is now standing in a room of its own in the 2nd Goetheanum. It's approx. 7 metres high and weights about 20 tons. I'll add a picture when I find one :)) One of the ideas of Anthroposophical sculpturing is to portray the life forces, the etheric or higher forces in things, as it is seen on Steiner's great sculpture, which expresses the different forces which influence the human being, or symbolic sculptures of the different seasons, which seek to portray the spiritual forces active in that season.

Painting
In painting, again, the Anthroposophical painters seek to express the higher forces and the spiritual life in things, using various techniques that I know too little about. However, I will add a collection of Anthroposophical
paintings when I get one, and then my readers can see if with their own eyes :))

Personal comments about Anthroposophy: The most important, and yet maybe also the most difficult thing to convey in this section about Anthroposophy, is the Spirit of Anthroposophy. Anthroposophy is a spiritual, living and organic thing, and the organisation, when people work in it with the right spirit, is vivified by high spiritual beings who support the groups and their activities, since the aim of Anthroposophy is to make the spiritual world active and visible on the physical level. In Steiner's cosmology, the conflict in the human being between the forces of Ahriman and Lucifer (Ahriman=materialism, crystallization, cold intellectualism; Lucifer=escapism, mysticism and superstition....the words actually denote groups of spiritual beings who work in the inner worlds and influence humanity, hence they are spiritual forces active in our own psyche), and those of Michael and Christ, is seen as central for understanding of the human culture, and the mission of Anthroposophy is mainly to lead people to the Christ spirit and the positive spiritual forces in Cosmos. This is done through right understanding of both the physical and the spiritual world, and consequently a wise use of the forces in them both. The ideal, thus, is a human being in contact with the life forces in cosmos who has conquered the negative forces which seek to seduce or ensnare humanity (so prevalent in Steiner's own time period and area, even if he died before its culmination in the 2nd World War), and has become a Christed being....as illustrated in Steiner's beautiful wooden statue.

Anthroposophical sites: Go to the links page: Links

Click here to go back to title page: Title Page