The Being of Anthroposophy

Cattie Blanch

A story of the Celtic Triple Goddess Brigid on ‘I Think Speech

Amanda Sage

Dear Friends, Today 109 years ago on 3 February 1913 we can re-call the very 1st AGM of the newly formed Anthroposophical Society, after the split from the Theosophical Society, held in Berlin, with the cycle of lectures called The Mysteries of the Orient & of Christianity (GA 144)

Rudolf Steiner opened the conference on this day with the lecture: The Being of Anthroposophy. In light of the upcoming ‘Sophia Rising’: Unveiling the Wisdom of Being Human Convergence, I thought to share some relevant quotes for your inspiration on this anniversary:

Iris

“…The being of anthroposophy is intimately connected with the being of our time- not with our own immediate little present moment, of course, but with the whole age within which we stand.

Today I want to point out the character of this being by speaking of the necessity for establishing anthroposophy in our time.

“Love, who commands the chambers of my mind
Discoursing of my lady passionately,
From hour to hour speaks things of her to me
At which my intellect bids me demur.
Sweetly his words make music of such kind
My soul, which hears and feels how they agree,
Exclaims, ‘Alas, that I can never be
Equal to saying all I hear of her!
Such things appear within her fair aspect
As show they bear the joys of paradise
I mean, both in her smile and in her eyes,
Where Love brings them as if he brought them home.”

It seems very clear. A poet has written a love poem…This poem was not written today, however, but was written by Dante

Dante himself told us…that the beloved lady, with whom he had so direct and personal a relationship, was none other than Philosophy. Dante says that when he speaks of the lady’s eyes and says that what they say is no lie, he means the evidence of truth; and by her “smile,” he means the art of expressing the truth communicated to the soul; and by “love,” or amor; he means scientific study the love of the truth.

People who do not know how the times – into which our soul is ever growing with new life-change, lack any idea that Dante was just one (among many) of those with the capacity for a concrete experience of a passionate and personal relationship, immediate and of the soul, with Lady Philosophy, such as we today can feel only toward a man or woman of flesh and blood. In this sense, Dante’s time is past. The modern soul no longer approaches Lady Philosophy – the woman, Philosophy  as a being of the same, fleshly nature as itself as Dante did.

When the Greeks present something, it is Sophia, not Philosophia. And they present her in such a way that, again, we experience her as a living being, as an immediate presence. We experience the Greek Sophia as an immediate, living being, just as Dante feels Philosophy to be. Always, however, we feel this Greek Sophia – and I ask you to please go through the descriptions that exist – to be an elemental force, as it were, an active being who intervenes in existence through action.

Albrecht Dürer

Beginning around the fifth century A.D., we find that Philosophia is first represented, initially described by poets in the most varied guises: nurse, benefactor, guide, and so on. Then somewhat later, painters begin to represent her. Thus, we reach the period during the Middle Ages called Scholasticism, when many philosophers really felt they were experiencing a directly human relation when they became aware of beautiful, noble Lady Philosophia, who actually approached them from the clouds. Many medieval philosophers, in fact, felt the same deep, burning feelings toward the Lady Philosophia as she floated toward them on the clouds as Dante describes toward his Lady. And anyone who can feel such things will find a direct connection between Raphael’s Sistine Madonna floating on the clouds, and the exalted Lady Philosophia.

…the Greeks confronted Sophia, or Wisdom, as a being, so to speak, whom they could encounter standing before them in a particular place, Two beings then -Sophia and the Greek – faced each other, as if Sophia were a definite objective entity, to be looked at, with all the objectivity of the Greek’s way of seeing.

How then does the consciousness soul confront Sophia? This is done so that it brings the I into direct relationship with Sophia while at the same expressing -much more so than the objective being of Sophia the activity of the I within the relationship between the consciousness soul and this Sophia. “I love Sophia” was the natural feeling of an age that still had to encounter the being we designate as Philosophy – an age that was preparing the consciousness soul and, out of the relationship between the I and the consciousness soul (on which the greatest value must be placed), was working toward representing Sophia as simply as it represented everything else. It was natural for the time of the intellectual soul – which was preparing for the consciousness soul- to express this relationship to Philosophy. And because things came to expression slowly and gradually, this relationship was being prepared during Greco-Latin times.

Philosophy is no longer the “woman” she was to Dante and others who lived in his time.

..we now live in the age of the consciousness soul and look toward the dawn of the age of the spirit-self, and we know in this way that something is again becoming objective to human beings – something that looks forward to the coming times that will be gained by what we have won through the time of the consciousness soul.

What, therefore, must be developed? It must unfold that, once again, as a matter of course, a “Sophia” becomes present. But we must learn to relate this Sophia to the consciousness soul, bring her down directly to human beings. This is happening during the age of the consciousness soul. And thereby Sophia becomes the being who directly enlightens human beings. After Sophia has entered human beings, she must take their being with her and present it to them outwardly, objectively. Thus, Sophia will be drawn into the human soul and arrive at the point of being so inwardly connected with it that a love poem as beautiful as Dante wrote may be written about her.

Sophia will become objective again, but she will take with her what humanity is, and objectively present herself in this form. Thus, she will present herself not only as Sophia, but as Anthroposophia as the Sophia who, after passing through the human soul, through the very being of the human being, henceforth bears that being within her, and in this form she will confront enlightened human beings as the objective being Sophia who once stood before the Greeks.

What we receive through anthroposophy is our very own being.

Kristena West

This once floated toward us in the form of a celestial goddess with whom we were able to enter into relationship. This divine being lived on as Sophia and Philosophia, and now we can once again bring her out of ourselves and place her before us as the fruit of true anthroposophical self-knowledge. We can wait patiently until the world is willing to test the depth of the foundations of what we have to say, right down to the smallest details. It is the essence of anthroposophy that its own being consists of the being of the human, and its effectiveness, its reality, consists in that we receive from anthroposophy what we ourselves are and what we must place before ourselves, because we must practice self-knowledge.” ~Rudolf Steiner

May we receive this being, that is our birthright, with grace & develop her within us with intention & love.

~hag

Marie Knoble

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

3 February 2021 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Tonight and tomorrow evening in twilight, the curved outer edge of the crescent Moon aims nearly at Jupiter like a bow shooting an arrow at it; see above.

Meanwhile – Mercury (occult Venus) is stationary at 4 pm CST in Sagittarius, & then begins tracking East against the background stars of the Archer.

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

1690 – The colony of Massachusetts issues the first paper money in the Americas

1870 – The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, guaranteeing voting rights to male citizens regardless of race.

Picasso

1874 – Birthday of Gertrude Stein, American novelist, poet, playwright

1894 – Birthday of Norman Rockwell, American painter & illustrator

1909 – Birthday of Simone Weil, French mystic & philosopher

1913 – The Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, authorizing the Federal government to impose & collect an income tax.

Rudolf Steiner

1913 – The 1st AGM of the Anthroposophical Society in Berlin, where Rudolf Steiner gave the lecture series “The Mysteries of the Orient and of Christianity” & spoke for the 1st time about the Being of Anthroposophy!

1924 – Deathday of Woodrow Wilson. Rudolf Steiner has a lot to say about what was behind this individuality & in his former incarnation as Muawiya

1959 – Rock & roll musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, & J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson are killed in a plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa.

1961 – The United States Air Forces begins Operation Looking Glass, & over the next 30 years, a “Doomsday Plane” is always in the air, with the capability of taking direct control of the United States’ bombers & missiles in the event of the destruction of the SAC’s command post.

Umění Olomouc

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~There is no ending to becoming
I lose & find my way over & again
One task gives rise to the next
I wage battle against my own proud ignorance –
My sentimental affection for folly
In occluded justification…
Let me live
To strive
Forever for perfection
In Loves grace
I go
~hag

3 thoughts on “ The Being of Anthroposophy

  1. Woodrow Wilson’s death on February 3, 1924 allowed Rudolf Steiner to begin to talk about his past life in the first volume of Karmic Relationships. He was prevented from doing so before. It is an occult law not to reveal someones present karma until they die. This can be found throughout the entire karma series. Only the reference to the authoress known to Steiner escapes this mode. She would die in 1931, some six years after Steiner. But, he had to do it. It was so important to reveal. School of Chartres stuff.

  2. Hi Hazel,

    This lecture from February 3rd 1913 is important for the fact that it discloses something of great importance. It invokes Dante. There is a reason. The reason is given the next day with the lecture of February 4th. This lecture is not available online, and therefore must be recounted from memory. But before doing so, it is important to recount what Steiner said the previous summer in Munich in August. Herein, he gives the lead-in to the lectures that would take place in Berlin the next year. I cite from GA 138:

    “In the successive epochs of human evolution we find one remarkable phenomenon. I could give examples of what I have just told you of the confusing way in which initiates on reincarnating sometimes appear to have come down from their heights. You would probably be much surprised if I told you, for instance, in what way Dante was reincarnated in the nineteenth century. But it is not my task here to discuss further this result of my own investigation and what was established for me. Rather have I to bring forward with strong proof the things known to everyone conversant with occultism, letting everything else recede into the background and stating nothing that is not generally recognised where bona fide occultism is upheld.”

    https://wn.rsarchive.org/GA/GA0138/19120826p01.html

    In August 1912, the German Section of the Theosophical Society had not yet been expelled. So, when Steiner went to Berlin in February 1913, he had a story to tell, and why not?

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