Books published by Anthroposophic Press Inc

Translated from the German by Roland Everett and edited by Rhona Everett.

A rare glimpse into intimate aspects of the esoteric teacher's inner life, outer relationships, and significant events.

Speaking to the teachers at the first Waldorf school in Stuttgart, Steiner asserts that the unfortunate presence of dishonesty and alienation in society today cannot be addressed without a completely renewed and holistic education. He states fact that successful teaching requires a living synthesis of the "spiritual gymnast," the "ensouled rhetorician," and the "intellectual professor." Of these, the formative effect of the rhetorician's cultivation of artistic speech is the most important. "It's impossible for true teaching to be boring," declares Steiner, and he offers several examples of how teachers can observe a natural phenomenon so intimately that its creative life can flow into the children through a teacher's own words in the classroom. He also describes, in spiritual scientific depth, how the actions of teachers directly affect the physiological chemistry of their students. From this perspective, education is really therapy, transformed to a higher level, and should be seen as closely related to the healing arts. Steiner also shows how the perception of hidden relationships between education and the processes of human development can kindle a heartfelt enthusiasm and a sense of responsibility in teachers for the far-reaching health effects that educational activities can produce.

Addresses, Essays, Discussions, and Reports, 1920 -1924 (CW 217a) "Young people today turn away from older people not because the latter have grown old but because they have remained young--that is, because they don't understand how to grow old in the right way. Older people today lack this self-knowledge. Growing old in the right way means allowing the spirit to unfold in our souls as befits an aging body. When we do this, we show young people not only what time has done to the body, but also what eternity reveals through the spirit. Young people will find their way to older people who seriously attempt to experience spirit. To say that we must act young when we are with young people is just an empty phrase. As older people, we must understand--and demonstrate to young people--how to be old in the right way." --Rudolf Steiner (Mar. 9, 1924)Youth and the Etheric Heart, which comes to twenty-first-century readers in the somewhat deceptive wrapping of a historical document of Rudolf Stiener's addresses to young people during 1920 to 1924, is (at least for those concerned with the future of Anthroposophy or with the future of spiritual life in general) one of the most extraordinary and prophetic volumes in the collected works.This book is intended by its editors to be supplementary to the central turning point of the movement, the 1922 "Pedagogical Youth Course," published as Becoming the Archangel Michael's Companions.Together, they present Steiner's vision for Anthroposophy as he hoped it would permeate culture through young people able to take it up as a spiritual, intellectual, and socially transforming path.The task, which underlies the whole volume and to which we, too, are called by service to the Archangel Michael, is to open to the etheric heart in humanity. This becomes clear in Rudolf Steiner's final address to the young people attending a teachers' conference in Arnheim on July 20, 1924: "What is needed is not thinking about what should happen. People should feel that the spirit outside of us speaks in the flames of nature. The sunrise has changed. But also our heart has changed; we no longer bear the same heart in our chest. Our physical heart has grown harder, and our etheric heart more mobile. We must find access to our suprasensory hearts. This is the way we must understand spiritual science."In this respect, young people have hearts ideally suited to feeling when something is right. It simply requires courage to really think it. It is in the light of "our suprasensory heart" that we should approach this volume, and indeed Anthroposophy as a whole.Youth and the Etheric Heart is a great companion volume to Becoming the Archangel Michael's Companions (CW> 217). During the early 1920s, following the disaster of World War I, the youth of Europe faced many hardships and questions about their destiny in the world. The situation today is certainly different, but the questions are no less urgent.This volume is the first complete English translation from the German of 'Die Erkenntnis-Aufgabe der Jugend' (GA 217a).

In our long human journey, individual and collective, the journey that science calls evolution, many indeed are the turning points. But they are not so much turning points in outer, material manifestation in the fossils of paleontology, for those fossils are only the shed garments worn by humans in an earlier age, vestments designed by providence to meet the need of a changing human consciousness moving through time. Where the real evolution occurs, for which the necessary outer garments are tailored over time, is in the realm of consciousness as it transitions from spirit to matter and back to spirit. -EDWARD REAUGH SMITH, from the Introduction RUDOLF STEINER gave the six lectures in Turning Points in Spiritual History during the year of January 1911 to January 1912. Realizing their importance for understanding the evolution of consciousness and the central role of the Christ event within it, Marie Steiner collected them under the present title soon after Steiner's death in March 1925, as a signal and enduring element of his spiritual legacy. Since the crucible of cosmic evolution for Steiner is the Earth, and the evolution of the Earth is accomplished through humanity, each of the five turning points-or critical, transformative moments-leading up to the climax of the Incarnation of Christ through the Mystery of Golgotha is exemplified by an individuality: namely, in chronological order, Zarathustra, Hermes, Moses, Elijah and Buddha. In these lectures, each of which deals in turn with one of these great individualities, Rudolf Steiner provides us with astonishing insights into esoteric history and demonstrates the remarkable ways in which the spiritual world guided and nurtured spiritual evolution in preparation for the coming of the Christ.

This esoteric classic contains meditations on each of the twelve signs of the zodiac. John Jocelyn uses traditional astrological symbolism to envision a Christ-centered zodiac-one in which each of the signs relate to an aspect of the New Testament. This is not a book about astrology, but about the deeper meaning of the twelve Zodiac signs. The author relates the Zodiac signs to the development of inner Christ consciousness and encourages readers to meet their individual destinies more consciously and courageously and even with gratitude.

"This edition has been edited by Marcia Merryman Means, who also wrote the short introductions before each lecture"--T.p. verso.

Bankrupt farmers, erosion of topsoil, and poor food quality owing to pesticides, hormones, and other additives-these are the well-known realities of the modern crisis in farming. This problem is the outcome of the limited vision of conventional methods and a system that focuses exclusively on quick results and profits. The need for changes is clear, and Koepf provides a vast array of research data and results, as well as many helpful details on animal feeding, crop rotation, diseases, pests, and fertilizing. He shows that the biodynamic method of farming and gardening is the alternative that can turn farming around. Biodynamics is "the oldest alternative agricultural movement in the world." It is based on the concept of the whole farm as a single organism. Its goals are to protect and nurture the soil, improve the quality of food, and organically integrate the farm into the environment as a whole. This is an essential reference for all farmers who are unsatisfied with conventional methods and for gardeners who wish to improve the quality of life around them as well as the food they serve their families.

4 lectures, Munich and Bern, 1909-1910, 1916 (CW 117, 124, 165)"This is one of the meanings of the Mystery of Golgotha: the attainment of the unity of humanity from within. Externally, human beings are becoming more and more different. The result will be not sameness but difference over the Earth, and human beings must exert all the more force from within to attain unity" (lecture 4).In this collection, Rudolf Steiner describes the evolutionary task facing contemporary humanity in preparing to enter the sixth epoch. In the past, human souls felt a strong connection with the group soul to which they belonged. Today, all "group soul" characteristics--such as race and nation--must be stripped away.Rudi Lissau wrote of the last lecture: "No anthroposophist should approach racial problems without first pondering this lecture and its implications."Steiner also explains that we must overcome such preconception as are formed by our normal notions and feelings of good and evil: "Most people picture Ahriman and Lucifer as evil beings--albeit much more intensely evil than human beings. But this is not true; we must keep in mind that certain earthly feelings we associate with our concepts lose their meaning when we go beyond the earthly realm. Thus, we cannot say that there are good gods on the one hand and evil gods Ahriman and Lucifer on the other.... The opposing forces were created by the good gods themselves in an earlier period so that they would be able to bring to bear their full force for the development I have described" (lect. 4).

These verses, following the course of the year, were inspired by Rudolf Steiner's Calendar of the Soul. The book is arranged so that parents, teachers, eurythmists, and children can follow the course of the year in both hemispheres.

These lectures were given one month before the opening of the first Waldorf School in September 1919, in the context of Germany's postwar social ferment. Steiner points to negative tendencies present in modern social life such as inner drowsiness, mechanization, and animalization. A true social solution must not only consider economics and legal rights but also the third element of the free spiritual life. "The great problem of the future will be education", he announces, and goes on to explain how only a proper nurturing of imitation, reverence, and love in the three periods of child development can prepare adults who are ripe to live the three virtues of a healthy social order: cultural freedom, legal equality, and economic brotherhood. These ideas are then connected to Steiner's threefold pictures of the human soul, economics, higher knowledge, and "physiognomic pedagogy". This new translation also includes three lectures, "The Social Basis of Public Education" (in German, the Volkspadagogik lectures), available in English for the first time.

The underlying thesis of these lectures, Volume XX in the Foundations of Waldorf Education series, is that true education must be founded on a knowledge of the whole human being and that there can be no knowledge of the whole human being without love. On this basis, Rudolf Steiner lays out an understanding of every aspect of a child's development--bodily, psychological, and spiritual. At the same time, he shows that to prove worthy of their calling, teachers must begin to develop themselves inwardly. In Steiner's view, humanity gives value and meaning to the world. Modern education, however, is gradually undermining this meaning. The lectures demonstrate, however, that education can heal this lack of meaning and thereby restore the meaning of humanity for the world.

These twelve lectures by Rudolf Steiner form the basis for an entirely new psychology, demonstrating that anthroposophy is itself a new form of psychology. This lecture course is made up of three individual courses, each viewing the whole human being from a different perspective."Anthroposophy" (wisdom of the human being) describes the human being from the midpoint between theosophy and anthropology, focusing on the human body and the senses in terms of their spiritual aspects and functions in the human being and not merely as bodily receptors of physical stimuli. He also discusses the higher, more spiritual senses that will be developed by humankind in the future."Psychosophy" (wisdom of the soul) discusses the primary aspects of the human soul, the activities and interaction of our various soul forces, the dynamics of love and hate, and the process of judging, or making decisions."Pneumatosophy" (wisdom of the spirit) approaches the human spirit in terms of truth and error and the meaning and the effects of imagination, intuition, and inspiration. Here, Steiner also explores the significance of karma for the human soul as well as the evolution of human consciousness.

In this fine introduction to Waldorf education, written out of a series of lectures given in 1924, Steiner provides one of the most comprehensive introductions to his pedagogical philosophy, psychology, and practice. Steiner begins by describing the union of science, art, religion and morality, which was the aim of all his work and underlies his concept of education. Against this background, many of the lectures describe a new developmental psychology. On this basis, having established how children's consciousness develops, Steiner discusses how different subjects should be presented so that individuals can grow and flourish inwardly. Only if the child absorbs the right subject in the right way at the right time can the inner freedom so necessary for life in the modern world become second nature.

The rising interest in goddess spirituality expresses our current need to understand the feminine side of God, the Sophia (or Divine Wisdom), and her relationship to the masculine aspects of God. Offering a new perspective, the author draws on his own research and on the teaching of Russian philosopher Pavel Florensky, according to whom Sophia has a relationship to the masculine Trinity as an independent spiritual being. Robert Powell discusses Sophia as a Trinity-as Mother, Daughter, and Holy Soul- and as the feminine aspect of Divine Godhead. He connects our reawakening to the feminine aspect of God with many of the changes now taking place in the world. Also included is an introduction to the Divine Feminine by Daniel Andreev, author of The Rose of the World.

A study of the meaning of Goethe's Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily and the Mystery Dramas of Rudolf Steiner and their ramifications for today.

Usually, motivating ourselves to geth through the demands of daily life is difficult enough; finding the will to excel is even harder. Our occupations can become routine and boring, leading us to to ask: What is the purpose of my work? Is it merely to satisfy the demands of survival, which in turn simply allows me to keep working? Or is it a matter of more disposable income and consumerism? In the end, it can all seem rather pointless. In these remarkable talks, Rudolf Steiner takes us behind the scenes of the routine activities of vocation where we are shown how the combined vocational activity of all humanity affects the higher suprasensory realms. This activity mobilizes forces that lead to future worlds, which is the "karma of vocation." It prepares new worlds in which we will participate. By understanding this deeper aspect of our daily work, we can bring new meaning to the most insignificant activities. In fact, we begin to understand that no human work is insignificant; it all contributes to grand cosmic processes. Such understanding helps us to bring new enthusiasm to our work and lives.