Study Material for the Spiritualization of the Principle of Civilization

Herbert Witzenmann

THE PRINCIPLES OF THE

ANTHROPOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

AS A BASIS OF LIFE

AND PATH OF TRAINING

Translated, Introduced and Annotated

by

Robert J. Kelder

This internet edition is the first volume of a series entitled Social-esthetic Studies and is posted on the Willehalm website as a supplement to The Just Price –World Economy as Social Organics by Herbert Witzenmann (of which the first chapter has also been made available on this site). These studies are dedicated to the Occupy College in Amsterdam for which the translator held a lecture on November 23, 2011 entitled Crisis and Alternative – Social Organics as a Candidate for Reforming the Economy followed by a discussion paper (in Dutch) entitled Oases of Humanity – Contemplation on the Future of the Occupy Movement based on The Just Price and this profound study. A further discussion paper is in the make entitled Oases of Humanity II – According to Joseph Beuys the New Mysteries Take Place at the Train Station, So Why Not at the Stock Market Square? Further publications of the Willehalm Institute and projected translations are listed in the appendix at the end of this publications.

On the Author and his Work

Herbert Witzenmann was born in Pforzheim, Germany on February 16, 1905 and died in Heidelberg on September 24, 1988. In his youth he had a decisive meeting with Rudolf Steiner, the founder anthroposophy as science of the Grail and of the Anthroposophical Society, which determined the course of the rest of his life. He gave up his ambition to become a concert pianist and went on to study philosophy under the German philosopher Jaspers, but the rise of the Nazi’s prevented him from getting his doctorate, while his thesis on the concept of work by Hegel and Nietzsche as well as many of his other writings were destroyed by bombing raids during the end of World War II. After studying mechanical engineering and art history and having been active as a director in the metallurgical firm of his father and grandfather as well as a lecturer and editor of an anthroposophical journal, he became in 1963 a member of the Council of the General Anthroposophical Society in Dornach and later head of the Youth Section and the one for Social Science at the Goetheanum, Free School of Spiritual Science in Dornach, Switzerland. Around 1970, however, this position was taken away from him by a majority decision of the Council (in connection with the so-called book question) and in 1979 his chair was occupied by the late Manfred Schmidt-Brabant, who in 1984 also became president of that society.

This first of four social-aesthetic studies Herbert Witzenmann was to write is translated from the second, revised and enlarged edition with the title Die Prinzipien der Allgemeinen Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft, which appeared in 1984 in Dornach, Switzerland as the first in the series of publications entitled Sozialästhetische Studien (Social-Esthetic Studies). The first German edition appeared in No. 9/10 of the Mitteilungen (Bulletins) published in 1969 by the Arbeitskreis zur geistgemässen Durchdringung der Weltlage (Working Group For A Spiritually Commensurate Penetration Of The World Situation) in Dornach. Of this first edition a translation in mimeograph form was done by G.M. Kealy, J. Lodder and S. Walsch, which was issued in 1969 by English-speaking members of the above-mentioned group and on which this translation is partly based.

In the appendices a new translation is offered of the ‘principles’, with added footnotes, and of the Foundation Stone Meditation by Rudolf Steiner given during the Christmas Conference 1923 in Dornach to refound the Anthroposophical Society in the presence of some 800 anthroposophists from around the world.

This publication is made available as study material for members and friends of the Anthroposophical Society, the Herbert Witzenmann Foundation as well as for vanguard of the Occupy Movement by the Willehalm Institute for Anthroposophy as Grail Research, Royal Art and Social Organics based in Amsterdam.

Comments, gifts or enquiry’s are welcome and can be made to:

Willehalm Institute, Kerkstraat 386A, 1017 JB Amsterdam

Sixth Updated and Revised Edition, Montreal, 2001

First Internet Version, December 2011

* * *

List of Contents

Part I: Forewords by the Translator Robert J. Kelder

To the First and Second Edition

To the Third Edition

To the Fourth Edition

Foreword to the Fifth Edition – Introducing the Kardeiz Saga to

Review, Recall and Renew the Anthroposophical Society

Foreword to the Sixth Edition

Part II: Herbert Witzenmann

The Creation of an Overworld –

Introduction to the Series Social-Aesthetic Studies

Preface to the First Edition

The Principles of the Anthroposophical Society

As a Basis of Life and Path of Training

Additional Remarks

Appendices:

I – The Principles (Statutes) of the Anthroposophical Society

II – The Foundation Stone Meditation

List of Works in English by Herbert Witzenmann and

List of Suggested Forthcoming Titles

Part I : Forewords by the Translator

Foreword to the First and Second Edition (1998)

Note: These forewords may be of special interest to (former) members and friends of the Anthroposophical Society as they deal with the attempts by the translator to not only show the significance of this study as the heralding of a new principle of civilization, but also to apply it, albeit without much success, to the life of the Anthroposophical Society itself. Readers not so interested in this theme are cordially invited to skip these forewords and turn directly to the introduction by the author in Part II entitled “The Creation of an Overworld”.

The Anthroposophical Society has played no role of great importance in the course of the 20^th century. Whether this will change in the few years remaining before the end of the second millennium and beyond that in the coming 21^st century, will depend on whether the potential world historical significance of the ‘principles’ of this Society in their relation to the Foundation Stone Meditation, given by Rudolf Steiner at the end of the first quarter of our century as the spiritual cornerstone of this society, are finally comprehended as embodying the archetype of social organisms and as such enacted.

To the general reader unaccustomed with this material, this strong conviction may well sound sectarian or strange, if not completely ridiculous. Yet, it lies at the heart of the attempt by the translator to make a new translation of this study as well as of the ‘principles’ and the Foundation Stone meditation by Rudolf Steiner available. For even though it is obvious to every student of the dramatic, dreadful war-torn history of the 20^th century that the Anthroposophical Society has played no great visible part in it, the picture changes completely if one considers what would have happened, if the attempt by Rudolf Steiner to refound the Society during the Christmas Conference of 1923 – with at its core the Goetheanum, School of Spiritual Science as a new mystery center – had been planted in more fertile soil, i.e. if this new principle of civilization had been cultivated with more attention, loving care and courage in the hearts and minds of the recipients. Then it would certainly have branched out into all four corners of the earth and born fruit in all aspects of human culture, science and social life.

It would have acted as a counterforce against the movements opposing it that likewise came to the fore during that period: in the East bolshevism and Lenin’s Communist International Movement based on class struggle and the ideology of dialectic-materialism; in the West U.S. President Wilson’s League of Nations based on the contra-productive principle of self-determination for all peoples through the abstract idea of nation-states sanctioned by the moral cloak of the Vatican; and in the center on the one hand Hitler’s national-socialism based on the racist blood and soil doctrine with, on the other hand, its bedfellow and counterpart – strange but true – Theodore Herzl’s Zionism with its no less outdated racist theory of national blood- and soil bound supremacy (God’s Chosen People). These were, or even are, all more or less crimes against individual humanity – whereby the ignominious part played by the once so noble and universal freemasonry in conjunction with the dubious, because largely hidden and unchecked, role of Capital and the Central Banks in the service of Mammon seated mainly in the West must certainly not be overlooked. That this is no futile exercise in melodramatic recollection may be shown by the following.

Rudolf Steiner had done everything he could to prevent the horrors of World War I and at the end of it, in 1919, he presented his proposal for the “Threefold Nature of the Social Organism” to the world as a direct answer of defeated Central Europe to the so-called 14 points of President Wilson. These would in the eyes of Rudolf Steiner – and how right he was considering all the so-called wars of national liberation which often ended up in still greater tyranny and turmoil than they strove to overcome – only cause greater havoc and suffering. He wrote a book that soon became a best-seller [1] and a movement, consisting largely of anthroposophists, was set up with headquarters in Stuttgart, Southern Germany, and with branches in various European countries, with representatives in England and America. By 1922, however, it became clear that the movement in this phase had failed due to too little support and too much external opposition from both left, right and center. But the intrinsic idea did not fail, and thus Rudolf Steiner presented the social organic impulse in the face of completely changed circumstances in Central Europe in a fundamentally new form and language, namely in his lectures on World Economy. In these unfortunately still not fully understood, let alone implemented, 14 lectures and 6 seminars for students of economy, he further developed the new royal art and science of social organics to neutralize the above mentioned inhuman effects of unleashed capital and the so-called free market economy by harmonizing them with the production factors – labor and nature – to bring about just prices through what he called associations of producers, traders and consumers.

By 1923 it became clear that the Anthroposophical Society itself had to be renewed, if it was to become a real vehicle for the cultivation and dissemination of anthroposophy, or science of the Grail as Rudolf Steiner also termed it in one of his basic works Outline of Occult Science. This societal renewal occurred at the Christmas Conference on a historic hill in Dornach, Switzerland in the presence of some 800 members and delegates from around the world, who at night heard lectures by Rudolf Steiner on world history in the light of anthroposophy and who, on December 28, 1923 – after three days of discussion – unanimously adopted the fifteen paragraphs submitted by Rudolf Steiner, with slight amendments, as the statutes of the refounded, general, i.e. neither national or international Anthroposophical Society. A day earlier Rudolf Steiner had characterized the task of the newly formed Council as follows: “The central Council is to consider as its sole task the realization of the statutes; it shall have to do everything that goes towards the realization of the statutes. And with that great freedom is given. But one knows at the same time what this Council signifies, because one has the statutes. From these statutes a complete picture can be gained of what the Council shall ever do.” [2] In the very next sentence Rudolf Steiner mentions one of the immediate objectives of the Council, namely to establish on the basis of the statutes the proper relationship between the Council of the newly found Society and its related institutions, especially the Goetheanum Building Association. And it is exactly from this point on that great doubt has arisen as to whether the ensuing course of events was fully in line with the stated goal, or whether a serious departure from it crept in with the disastrous effect of neutralizing the newly constructed social-organic form for the cultivation of anthroposophy and consequently of preventing it from incarnating, as it were, in the soul life of a humanity hungry for real spiritual nourishment.

The increasing doubts concerning this turn of events, coupled with the resolve to help put the Anthroposophic Society as it were back on its track, has led to the formation of the G.A.S. Constitution Initiative - WorkingGroup for the Clarification of the Constitution Issue of the General Anthroposophical Society with its international co-ordination center in Achberg, Germany. [3]

The essence of what happened is that on December 29, 1925 the members of the Anthroposophical Society were invited to become active in the Goetheanum Building Association, renamed General Anthroposophical Society, thereby establishing a unsound mixture of spiritual and economic-administrative planes. Since that time the statutes of the Anthroposophical Society have been referred to as the principles to distinguish them from the statutes of the Association of the General Anthroposophical Society Inc. Hence the ‘principles’ in quotation marks.

In short, the task at hand now is to engender a reborn Anthroposophical Society by turning in full consciousness the ‘principles’ into statutes, thereby fulfilling the world historic task, which the Society neglected at the beginning of this century and thus help overcome further catastrophes.[4]

In closing my thanks go out Bernard Wolf and the friends from the Social Science Section of the Goetheanum who invited me this time to America to attend conferences of the Anthroposophical Society inspired partly, it seems, by this working translation.[5] This kind invitation prompted me to make a second edition of this work available and thereby use the American spelling. Pending the permission of the Herbert Witzenmann Foundation in Stuttgart, Germany, which governs his estate, I hope someday to make it also publicly available.

Robert J. Kelder,

Amsterdam, May 1998

Foreword to the Third Edition and Acknowledgements (1998)

Among the various friends and members of the Society to whom I sent copies of the first edition of this working translation during my first visit to America in November 1997 was David Schwartz, who in turn sent a photocopy to Bernard Wolf. This led to the invitation to attend the above-mentioned social scientific and members conference entitled "Threefoldness and the Anthroposophical Society". Included among the reading material mailed to the coming participants of this conference was the translation of the statutes (principles) with footnotes from the first edition of this publication, found here slightly revised in Appendix I.

The conference itself took place from June 17 - 21 at Rose Hall, Camphill Village at Kimberton Hills, Pennsylvania, and provided a welcome and indeed golden opportunity to finally introduce this spiritual and social scientific research done by Herbert Witzenmann on the ‘principles’ to a larger audience than the one in Wilton, New Hampshire in 1997. Two slide shows on the Parzival and Willehalm geography based on the research by Werner Greub and on the Anthroposophical Society as Grail Chalice were also held in the beautiful Myrin Library of the Kepler House, adjacent to the Rose Hall

Since the demand for the second edition of this working translation gradually came to exceed the short supply, this third revised edition has been made during a two-week stay at my parents in Lachine, Montreal, to whom I hereby wish to express my gratitude. I also want to thank Guy Agoston, President of Aston Laser Connections in Montreal, for the kind use of his company computer and laser printer to prepare this edition. It is appearing simultaneously with a third edition of Munsalvaesche in America - Towards the New Grail Community which has been enlarged with a Postscript about my second visit to North America. In New York further contact was also made, through the good offices of David Gilmartin, with Sylvia Witzenmann and Daisy Aldan, through which hopefully another step toward a public presentation of this precious work has been taken. Lastly I extend my sincere thanks to Denis Schneider, a General Secretary of the Society in Canada, for inviting me to give a slide show on June 27 in Montreal, a great city whose connection with the history of the Grail, as I see it, lies not so much in the past, but – with the aid among other things of this inspiring study on the ‘principles – in the future.

Robert J. Kelder

Montreal, Canada, July 6, 1998

Foreword to the Fourth Edition (1999)

This foreword is being written on the eve of my departure for a third working visit to America to participate in three conferences, the second of which is this year’s Social Science Section annual conference for members, followed by one for the general public from July 9 –11 in New Lebanon, NY. In continuation of the theme of last year’s conference at Kimberton Hills, PA, the emphasis will be on deepening our understanding of the threefold nature of the social organism – in the Anthroposophical Society as well as in the world at large. In the fourth edition of my booklet Munsalvaesche in America – Towards the New Grail Community, I reported on some fundamental aspects of last year’s Social Science Conference, in which I participated with David Schwartz, Steve Burman and others in what by many was regarded as a fruitful seminar on the ‘principles’. As a contribution to this year’s theme of “elite globalization”, I then offered to present a translation of Herbert Witzenmann’s introduction to Rudolf Steiner’s course on world economy entitled The Just Price – World Economy as Social Organics. This proposal which has recently met with a favorable response by Bernard Wolf, one of the organizers of the conference along with Claus Sproll, I hope to realize in the two weeks between the end of the first astrosophical conference on the Grail in Boulder (StarHouse) [6] and the start of the Social Science Section gathering in New Lebanon, NY.

My underlying motive for bringing this work forward at this point is the insight that the idea of social organics can be applied, is indeed inherent to the Anthroposophical Society as well as to the world at large, but that with respect to the Society it takes on the form of the ‘principles’ and with respect to the world at large it must be clothed in terms of Rudolf Steiner’s course on world economy. In that sense social organics can address the esoteric as well as the exoteric, the internal and external matters that so demand our urgent attention and call for resolute action: the state of the Anthroposophical Society and the world situation that are so mysteriously but inexorably intertwined.

As a fitting close to this fourth edition, I would like to share a passage I read while browsing through a friend’s library in Ithaca, NY. It is taken from the book The Life of Greece by the American philosopher and historian Will Durant and can be read (on p. 290) in the chapter XIII The Morals and Manners of the Athenians dealing with the education of young men of Athens:

“At nineteen they are assigned to the garrison at the frontier. There they are entrusted for two years with the protection of the city against attack from without and within. Solemnly, in the presence of the Council of Five Hundred, with hands stretched over the altar in the temple of Argoulos,[7] they take the oath of the young men of Athens: I will not disgrace the sacred arms nor will I abandon the man next to me, whoever he may be. I will aid to the ritual of the state, and to the holy duties, both alone and in company with many. I will transmit my native commonwealth not lessened, but larger and better than I have received it. I will honor those who from time to time are judges; I will obey the established statutes, and whatever other regulations the people shall enact. If anyone shall attempt to destroy the statutes I will not permit it, but will repel him both alone and with all. I will honor the ancestral faith.”

This passage is highly interesting in the light of what Rudolf Steiner described as the sole task of the Council during the Christmas Conference: realizing the all encompassing statutes (later called principles) of the Anthroposophical Society. However, it is no longer a question of merely “obeying the established statutes”, as in the days of old Athens, but of freely comprehending, implementing and defending them as the charter of a universal society of free spirits.

Robert J. Kelder,

Amsterdam, June 12, 1999

Foreword to the Fifth Edition – Introducing

The Kardeiz Saga to Recall The Anthroposophical Society (2001)

Since the last (fourth) edition of this social esthetic study on the threefold social organic nature of the statutes of the Anthroposophical Society was printed and presented (in July 1999 during the Goetheanum, Social Science Section conference in New Lebanon, NY), two members of the Anthroposophical Society have been elected to the Council of the General Anthroposophical Society in Dornach, namely Bodo von Plato and Sergej Prokofieff. [8] Nominated as such by the Council, their election had to be, and was, officially endorsed by a vote of the General Assembly (General Meeting) of the General Anthroposophical Society on April 8 this year at the Goetheanum.[9] During this Meeting, I attempted to present a motion on the intricate, but absolutely fundamental modalities of this election in order to lay bare and bring to the fore not only the root of the so-called constitutional crisis of the (General) Anthroposophical Society, but also to offer a general solution to it.[10] While his motion was printed in its entirety (along with the other 11 motions and 4 requests) in the German issue of the Goetheanum News for members; the motion itself, however was – together with practically all the other 15 motions and requests – not discussed and dealt with at all.[11] The General Assembly voted to simply do away with them on the basis of formal points of order entered by a certain obstinate Swiss member, which were given top priority by the leader of the assembly, Paul Mackay.[12] The only motion that was properly dealt with – a draconic proposal by Rembert Biemond to drastically increase the hurdles for raising a motion, in the sense that either a Council member had to, so to speak, sanctify it or that the motion be supported by two percent of all the members, i.e. some 1000 today – was (fortunately) rejected by the General Assembly. Instead, a proposal put forward by the quixotic Ulrich Hölder was accepted, namely to postpone a decision on this issue for a year and in the meantime hold a conference, preferably at the Goetheanum, on this very constitutional question of raising and dealing with motions – a right that, by the way, is guaranteed in paragraph 10 of the principles to individual members or groups of the Anthroposophical Society.[13] This fundamental right of members is shown by Herbert Witzenmann in this essay, indeed in this whole Social Esthetic Series,[14] to be a cornerstone or bridgehead for achieving a balance between, on the one hand, initiatives coming from the Council (the center) – as an initiative Council it has not only the right, but the duty to unfold initiatives – and, on the other hand, motions raised by members (the periphery) as they see fit, i.e. not as a duty but in freedom.

Before leaving the Jüngel report for what it is and moving on to a more general contemplation on the sad, sick or even sinister state of affairs within, or rather outside, the so-called Anthroposophical Society[15] and to a proposal for a healing resolution through the Kardeiz Saga, one glaring, inexcusable omission that this report contains must be corrected.[16] One will after reading this correction indeed be hard put to maintain that there is no ban, or at least a self imposed censure, on diverging opinions in ‘our Society’ (which one?), and that the so-called book question concerning the proper publication and defense policy with respect to the (esoteric) work of Rudolf Steiner has in reality been solved.

The omission in the Jüngel report concerned a request of mine at the said AGM that dealt with the question as to whether this General Assembly should or could assume the responsibility for the final report of the Dutch Commission on Anthroposophy and the Question of Race that was presented as a formal publication of the Dutch Society on April 1, 2000 (in the morning) to members of the Anthroposophical Society in Holland and (in the afternoon) to the media in a (closed) press conference. My request was entitled “The Evidence Has Been Given – Rudolf Steiner Was Not A Good Man”, which referred to the title of an article with which on April 19, 2000 the Dutch leftist liberal weekly journal De Groene Amsterdammer had made huge headlines (and sales). This article by R. Zwaap consisted of nothing more than a translation into Dutch of the 16 so-called discriminating passages from the work of Rudolf Steiner, accompanied by excerpts from the commentary of the Commission of anthroposophists explaining why it would be a violation of Dutch criminal law on anti-discrimination to bring these 16 passages forward in public today as one’s own opinion. The request was nothing less than an urgent appeal to the General Assembly “to decide not to regard the final report of the Dutch Commission without ado [i.e. not without the necessary changes] as a publication of the Anthroposophical Society in the Netherlands.”[17] I was able to hand out 200 copies of the two pages long motivation to various members present [18] and – in spite of the usual attempts to cut me off and hurry me up – was able to read the text out loud word for word. I quoted the exact words (in translation) of the Amsterdam Judge R. Orobio de Castro from his verdict on May 31, 2000 in the legal proceedings that the Dutch Council had entered last year against De Groene Amsterdammer accusing it of dishonoring the good name of Rudolf Steiner and that of the Anthroposophical Society. However, as we had already suspected and warned, the judge threw the case out of court on the basis of free speech. His verdict read, in part and in my translation, as follows:

“First of all, it must be said that we are not dealing with a review of the final report, but with an article in which apparently with regard to this report an opinion is given concerning remarks by Rudolf Steiner about different races. Zwaap [the journalist in question] has thereby chosen to publish the passages – which also the commission in its report has indicated to be of a discriminatory nature – without any commentary of his own and only accompanied with – abbreviated – conclusions of the commission pertaining to these passages, whereby the reader himself can make a judgment about them. Zwaap is apparently of the opinion that the contents of these passages conjures up such a negative image of Rudolf Steiner’s opinion about human races that no amount of fine distinctions can wipe away these discriminating opinions.

Furthermore, it must be judged that Zwaap is in principle justified to express this socially relevant opinion and that this could only be otherwise, if there were very substantial interests of the [Anthroposophical] Society involved in the form of a violation of her honor and good name that would offset this. But this is not the case. It is true that the honor and good name of the [Anthroposophical] Society is at stake here, yet it is not in the first instance the publication by Zwaap that is responsible for this, but in essence the various passages from the work by Rudolf Steiner himself. The honor and good name of the [Anthroposophical] Society have after all been questioned just because of the contents of these passages and the commission was formed in order to do research and give a judgment about this. Zwaap makes according to the above-described method a judgment, which it is in his freedom to do. The method that he used cannot be said to be unnecessarily injurious in view of the gist of the publication mentioned that the passages quoted according to his opinion cannot be whitewashed.” [19]

I then went on to substantiate my request by saying that the first conclusion of the final report was negative and should be turned into a positive one. Instead of concluding that “Rudolf Steiner was not a racist”, the conclusion should be that Rudolf Steiner developed his anthroposophy to overcome all forms of racism in the world. With respect to the second main, politically correct, conclusion that “there are in Rudolf Steiner’s work 16 passages that are of a such a seriously discriminatory nature, that if someone were to make such a similar claim or formulation today, he or she would probably be guilty of a punishable offence”, I maintained that the commission has not really judicially tested these 16 passages on the basis of Dutch criminal law; has not in the least proven that anyone or any minority has in effect suffered any setbacks or drawbacks on account of the so-called discriminatory passages and that therefore the premature and unnecessary assumption by the commission that some hypothetical person repeating those ‘tainted’ remarks by Rudolf Steiner as his own opinion would be found guilty was a violation of Dutch jurisprudence, which always makes a judgment with respect to particular cases as to context, content and presentation. This second conclusion is furthermore, so I argued, an infringement on free speech and by, as it were, forbidding anyone to repeat certain remarks the commission sets Dutch jurisprudence back to the Middle Ages. And finally, the commission acting as a self-styled tribunal playing judge and prosecutor at the same time has, although it strongly denied this, in effect found Rudolf Steiner guilty, not retroactively, but by bringing him from the past into the present.

How can the General Assembly, did I ask, tolerate that a final report of this nature be issued as a publication of the Anthroposophical Society in the Netherlands, which according to the principles is a local group of the Society and therefore responsible to the general Society?

Yet, as already indicated, a motion was passed under the leadership of Paul Mackay to not even consider and discuss this request.[20]

At the beginning of this badly needed, but by no means exhaustively rounded off and substantiated correction, it was maintained that it would serve to realize that the so-called book question was not solved, and that in effect not only the annotation of the School is no longer printed in the esoteric and professional courses by Rudolf Steiner, but that his guidelines on how to deal with unfounded and biased criticism coming from amateurs is not observed either. For those who consider themselves responsible for the work of Rudolf Steiner do not enter into discussion with them, but make it clear to the outside world how and in what way those amateurs are lacking the necessary training in order to make a qualified judgment on this work. This is not arrogant or discourteous, but, as Rudolf Steiner pointed out, perfectly normal in the scientific world.[21] As a corollary, the ones responsible, i.e. the School should offer those wanting to be able make such judgments a schooling to develop this spiritual discernment; and this is exactly what this essay, as indeed the whole work of Herbert Witzenmann is eminently capable of.

The preceding objective polemics, which pertain solely to actions and states of consciousness on the part of officials of a public society and not to the persons themselves, were necessary to give an impression of how far the separation of Rudolf Steiner from his work – something which he repeatedly warned against [22]– has under various guises proceeded. For after all, the principles are not only a work of Rudolf Steiner himself, but also of the Christmas Conference founding assembly in 1923, which after three days of deliberations endorsed them (with minor changes in the text suggested by, among others, Carl Unger). The principles can therefore be seen as a truly unique work of Rudolf Steiner and the Anthroposophical Society, which as a founding document similar to the Constitution of the United States should be respected for what it is, continually brought to further realization and never be altered, but as we shall see, only amended.[23] Downgrading their importance, paying lip service to them and placing them in the shadow of the Foundation Stone Meditation, as so often is the case,[24] in the trend of ‘Anthroposophy: yes; Rudolf Steiner: no’ can certainly not be said to be in the true interests of the anthroposophical movement or Anthroposophia, quite the contrary. [25]

We now finally turn to the root question of the constitutional issue, already referred to here and in the previous forewords. For however important this question of motions or the book question is or may turn out to be, they are overshadowed by a question that first has to be formulated, understood and solved before anything else; for this is much more than ‘simply’ a legal, constitutional or historical issue, but an existential question concerning the very identity and (future) state of the Anthroposophical Society.

This is the question as to the real identity of, on the one hand, the (general) Anthroposophical Society founded during the Christmas Conference 1923, a non-commercial society based legally and spiritually on the principles (formerly called statutes) and the Foundations Stone mantras, as distinct from, on the other hand, the General Anthroposophical Society. The latter is an administrative and economic body that came into being during an extra-ordinary meeting of the Goetheanum Building Association on February 8, 1925 during which this association changed its name to General Anthroposophical Society and at the same time enlarged with the administration of the Anthroposophical Society, the Philosophic-Anthroposophic Press, founded and run by Marie Steiner and the Clinic, founded and led by Ita Wegman.

After years of denial and disbelief it is now at least generally agreed by all parties involved in the constitutional debate that the Anthroposophical Society and the General Anthroposophical Society, although sharing the same Council, were indeed two distinct social bodies with separate, albeit related, functions and statutes. But alas, were and not are two different entities, for here the agreement ends.[26] One side sees the Anthroposophical Society – even though since the Christmas foundation it has never held a proper General Meeting and even though since the death of the last member of the original Council Albert Steffen died (in 1963) it no longer has any duly elected Council members – as still existing, because it was after all never officially dissolved. The other side maintained, or still maintains, that the two distinct bodies have been regarded and treated so long as one and the same that by force of habit or “Merger through Conclusive Conduct” they have in the course of some 75 years become one and the same.

This latter legal term requires some explanation and commentary. As can be read in the article on the Constitution of the General Anthroposophical Society in News for Members – December 1999 and in a Member’s Update – May 2000 signed by Paul Mackay, this term was introduced by Professor H.M. Riemer (Professor of Civil Law at Zürich), who is not a (class) member and, as such, apparently not aware of the deeper, spiritual issues involved in this matter. This is shown by his recommendations, which are simply described as facts instead of (legal and nominalistic) interpretations, and which – instead of liberating or dissolving the ‘Alloy King’ reigning over the existing as-if situation, would, if acted upon, actually officially sanctify and crown him! [27]

Consider the following points: First of all, the term “Merger through Conclusive Conduct” is not applicable here, because this term requires a conscious, legal decision and vote on the part of the two merging bodies which was never the case here on December 29, 1925, during which the unconscious “merger” took place, but this is not mentioned at all in the Reimer report. Secondly and more importantly, in the event of such a merger one of the two bodies ceases to exist, dissolves and disappears as it were into the other one; meaning in this case that the Anthroposophical Society as such would have ceased to exist. This is explicitly stated in point 3 of Reimer’s Legal Opinion, dated March 9, 2000: “An association that for 75 years (= ¾ century!) has neither been treated as such by the people concerned nor has appeared externally as such, can and may no longer be considered as an independent association.” In the next point he somewhat contradicts himself by ending: “These considerations do not rule out that the culture of the Christmas Conference Society has become the dominating culture of the GAS.”[28] Yet, as can be read in the Byelaws of the General Anthroposophical Society, this association has a sub-division, namely the administration of the Anthroposophical Society. And, we repeat, it was this society under the legal name Anthroposophical Society that was founded during the Christmas Conference 1923-24 and not the General Anthroposophical Society, as point 1 of the Riemer Report states, a statement which was changed in the Member’s Update to: “The Christmas Conference Society was founded” which is also incorrect since that was not the name by which this society was founded. Here it is not a question of names, of nominalism, but of real concepts, identities. Thirdly, the third point that Prof. Riemer makes that ever since February 8, 1925 “the General Meetings have been conducted as one” is not true either, because immediately prior to the General Meeting of the General Anthroposophical Society and the ‘merger’ on December 29, 1925 there was a (final) meeting of the Anthroposophical Society. Conclusion: the argument that the members have for 76 years been unaware of the essential distinction between the two social bodies, have so to speak been sleepwalking all this time, is no reason to continue this as-if situation and even legalize it! For a bad habit or conduct can, if shown to be faulty, be changed no matter how difficult or long this may take. Yet this requires some serious, even painful soul-searching.

This is where my motion on the election of the two new Council members as the first act of the Kardeiz Saga, a real-life mystery play in three acts with literally a cast of thousands, comes in. This motion, co-signed by Leo van Egeraat (who supplied valuable suggestions to the text), Ben van Tilborg and Jan Bloem on the nomination of the two candidates for the executive-board of the GAS dealt with the question of the legitimate sovereignty of the General Assembly itself and was sent to the Council in Dornach on February 9^th, 2001. The first act of this Saga was given the title "Dismantling the Alloy King", whereby in this instance the Alloy King is used in the sense of the fourth King in Goethe's fairy tale about the Beautiful Lily and the Green Snake to refer to the confused, paralyzing even illegitimate state of affairs concerning the identity of the Anthroposophical Society and that of the General Anthroposophical Society and their relationship, which has been the subject of a heated and long-drawn debate in Europe and to a much lesser extent, it seems, in America. The name Kardeiz for this on-going saga was chosen on the basis of a recent indication by Konrad Degand from Witten, Germany and seems an appropriate title for this attempt at writing and staging a real-ideal communal mystery play with a final act to take place on and a around the historic Bluthügel (Bloody Hill) in Dornach on which the second Goetheanum still stands. For Kardeiz, as can be read towards the end of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, was the second son of Parzival, who was brought up by his uncle Master Kyot (next to his twin brother Lohengrin) and who, as the heir to his father's secular domains, was given the task of ultimately reclaiming the lands rightfully belonging to him that were occupied by the usurper Lahelin, a task in which, after he was crowned king, Kardeiz succeeded admirably.

The Kardeiz Saga not only raised the Parzival question "Uncle, what ails or confuses thee?" (the German word here is wirren, to confuse) with respect to the pathetic and unbearable Kaspar-Hauser-like situation [29] in Dornach, in an attempt to redeem Anfortas (the culturally paralyzed Anthroposophical Society). It also calls for a consciousness-raising campaign to reclaim and unite the word-wide anthroposophical institutions, banks, schools and firms under the banner of the General Anthroposophical Society as a "multi-national and multi-cultural association" to serve the more earthly (economic) needs of mankind on earth with as its core, its center of research and development, the Goetheanum, School for Spiritual Science and its branches around the world.[30]

A first step in this direction could be made by consolidating the institutions around the Goetheanum in Dornach which each went their own separate way after the public coronation of the Alloy King in 1925. For that was when the present Kaspar-Hauser-like situation came about as, under the eyes of hundreds of well-meaning and non-suspecting anthroposophists and local officials, one social body (the AS) was, as it were, snatched away and replaced by another almost similarly looking and sounding one (the GAS).

In this sense the (rejected) motion at hand could be seen as the first chapter of an on-going Kardeiz saga to spiritually review, recall and re-establish or renew the Anthroposophical Society and in the wake of that establish the proper world-wide relationship to the General Anthroposophical Society by means of the new royal art of social organics developed by one of Rudolf Steiner's greatest aides: Herbert Witzenmann. The motion was printed in full in the Goetheanum Weekly for members (Nachrichtenblatt, nr 9/2001, dated Feb. 25) along with the other 16 motions and requests, and reads (in my translation and title):

Act I of the Kardeiz Saga: Dismantling the Alloy King

Motion Nr 9 on the Additions to the Executive Council:

The General Assembly of the administrative association General Anthroposophical Society being held on April 7^th and 8^th, 2001 at the Goetheanum, Dornach is asked to finally terminate the present as-if-situation with respect to its identity, function and competence, that has in effect existed since 1925, by deciding, after sufficient deliberation and discussion, out of self-knowledge, that:

1. The General Assembly 2001 of the administrative association General Anthroposophical Society can duly confirm the two nominated candidates Bodo von Plato and Sergej Prokofieff as members of the executive-board of this association;

2. However, the members of the Anthroposophical Society from all over the world who have been invited to attend this General Assembly cannot really actively participate in this election, since as members of the Anthroposophical Society refounded during the Christmas Conference 1923 they are in fact not eligible to vote in matters pertaining to the administrative association General Anthroposophical Society. Only the present executive council has the right to cast its vote in this case;

3. The nomination of the candidates as members of the executive-council of the Anthroposophical Society of the Christmas Foundation, on the contrary, cannot be confirmed by this General Assembly of the General Anthroposophical Society without further ado, since this can only occur in a proper and legal fashion by means of a General Meeting, or an extra-ordinary General Assembly of the Anthroposophical Society.

Following the motivation there appeared this note (not printed in the Goetheanum):

To the Reader,

In case you want to support this motion, please make this known to the Willehalm Institute and indicate if you are or were a member of the Anthroposophical Society (membership card nr.), or if you want to be viewed as such. We will pass this on to the proper address, i.e. the administration of the Anthroposophical Society in Dornach. If you would like to have your card signed by a president of the Anthroposophical Society, we assume that you want to get engaged in the sense of the motion to hold the first extra-ordinary General Assembly ever of the Anthroposophical Society. With that we can, with the help of the present council in Dornach, begin a "Christmas Conference Continuation Project" (At the time of this writing, the name Kardeiz Saga for this project had not been coined yet.)

Now, as already noted, the motion was dispensed with by members (or in this case, rather one particular Swiss stalwart, with the full consent and cooperation of the Council). Each time a counter motion was entered not to handle the motion at hand at all. This proved to be a largely successful (political) ploy to not have to deal at all with the issues raised by the various motions. One moot point was that the above motion dealing with the election of two new members to the Council was dealt with together with the other motions, and not, as it should have been under normal conditions, at the actual agenda point set aside for the endorsement procedure. A (personal) request to this effect (to Paul Mackay) was denied, and not raised by me publicly afterwards, and so it happened that the election of Bodo von Plato and Sergej Prokofieff took place without any critical discussion as to its historic, legal and spiritual context. Act I of the Kardeiz Saga was a failure: the Alloy King was not dismantled and remains in power. How long?

Act II of the Kardeiz Saga:

Preparing the Review, Recall and

Renewal of the Anthroposophical Society

This second, central act will obviously demand – depending on the cooperation that the Council of the General Anthroposophical Society (that can be regarded here as a provisionary Council of the Anthroposophical Society) and the various national Societies in the world are willing to give – the most time and energy. For here we are dealing with nothing less than the raising of a legion of some 10.000 members (the by Swiss association law required quorum of 1/5 of the present total) or members-to-be, who want to sign a petition in order to call and hold for the first time since 1923 an extra-ordinary General Meeting of the Anthroposophical Society. The purpose of this meeting would be to change the principles of the Anthroposophical Society back to statutes (again) with a few necessary amendments [31] and to describe the situation such as it has developed from 1924 to the present and also stating who the new Council is to be.

However, Paul Mackay in his address Dear Members regarding the constitution of the General Anthroposophical Society in Members’ Update – May 2000 and basing himself on the authority of Prof. Riemer seems to rule this procedure out: “To my question whether there might be any other, better way of connecting to the Christmas Conference Society in a legal sense, Professor Riemer responded that there is not. In particular a novation [32] or anything similar, which applies to contract law and not to association law, does not come into consideration. Neither would it be a solution to call a member’s meeting at which the participants would state that they are the member’s meeting of the Christmas Conference Society. According to association law, this would be seen as founding a new association. It could not be a renewal of the Christmas Conference.” Mackay and Reimer seem to overlook the obvious fact that the members would not simply out of the blue call such a meeting and they would certainly not call themselves members of the Christmas Conference Society, because such a society or association has never existed. As I have stated before, and as every member can check for himself – except in Austria and Holland where this has recently been altered without good cause – we are all simply members of the Anthroposophical Society, including the Council.

Therefore, ideally in fruitful cooperation with the existing Constitution working group and the provisionary Council of the Anthroposophical Society (being the head of the Administration of the Anthroposophical Society) and the necessary advisors, the road lies wide open and clear to further work out, write and rehearse a script for the Kardeiz Saga. Then, after a common consciousness, a concordance in awareness, has been reached concerning the fundamentals of the Anthroposophical Society, the School for Spiritual Science and its allied administrative and economic associations around the world in the form of a constitution with amendments to the principles, and a quorum has been gathered, it is time to proceed to the grand finale.

Act III of the Kardeiz Saga

The Re-invocation of the Being Anthroposophia from the Cosmos

The Goetheanum is built on the historical Bloodhill (Bluthügel) in Dornach, where in 1499 a decisive battle for the freedom of the young Swiss Confederation was fought against the imperial Austrian Hapsburgers, allied to the Church of Rome, and where back in the 9^th century, under the star of Munsalvaesche, in the nearby Arlesheim Hermitage a new spiritual impulse in humanity on Christian soil was brought about. “A greater marvel never occurred”, according to Trevrizent, “That with your defiance you have wrung the concession from God that his everlasting Trinity has granted you your wish [to become Grail King]” [33] Parzival had overcome the bloodline, the heredity principle and transformed it in the spiritual, karmic principle. Accordingly, his first son Lohengrin was not to be asked where he came from, what his (high) family background was; he was to be judged only on his own merits. Alas, Alice of Brabant could unfortunately not withstand her curiosity and did ask the fatal question, whereupon Lohengrin had to depart. And hence until this very day, the power and station of the old royalty and aristocracy based on the bloodline, the heredity principle has not been overcome by the spiritual karmic principle, and so Europe was saddled, and partly still is, with old-style monarchies and kings for centuries. However, the institution of the Grail monarchy is long overdue.

Much less known is the destiny of Parzival’s second son Kardeiz. As already mentioned, Kardeiz in his youth was crowned king and received the task from his father to reclaim the kingdoms that were usurped by Lahelin, a mission in which, after he had been educated and reared by his uncle Kyot, he succeeded.[34]

Representing Parzival during the last General Meeting in Dornach, we directed in Act I of the Kardeiz Saga the question/motion to the sick Fisher King Anfortas (the lamed Anthroposophical Society, and overburdened General Anthroposophical Society): “Uncle, what is wrong with you?” (In German the word is wirren, thus literally: “What is confusing you?”) Not Parzival this time, but the motion was thrown out.

And so, once the necessary preparations have been completed during Act II, an attempt will be made through the holding of an extra-ordinary General Meeting to restore Anthroposophia – who has since 1923/24 more or less lived estranged from humanity on earth – to her original destination and thereby bring her and our karma as anthroposophists into order. After all, Rudolf Steiner once warned that if the impulse of the 1923 Christmas Conference for the refoundation of the Anthroposophical Society as the chalice for the inflow of anthroposophia would not be grounded within 9 months, she would then dissipate and dissolve into the cosmos. And even though this impulse lives on in the hearts and minds of many and may be cultivated in small groups here and there, one cannot maintain in all honesty that this new societal impulse, this new principle of civilization manifests itself in the life of the General Anthroposophical Society, which in addition was not shaped for this purpose to begin with. On the contrary, the expression Casper-Hauser-state for the Anthroposophical Society and Anthroposophia is justified, i.e. first a switch of legal persons just after birth and then a malicious attempt to let this being grow up in an organization inadequate and foreign to its mission in order to block and neutralize its mission on earth.

Just as during the original Christmas Conference, this invocation for the return, the re-embodiment of Anthroposophia in the Anthroposophical Society will require a threefold form:

1. The discussion on and acceptance of the amended principles as the renewed statutes of the Anthroposophical Society;
1. The reciting of the Foundations Stone Meditation and its rhythms;
1. An overview of the history of the 20^th century in the light of anthroposophy.

Now, as far as the General Anthroposophical Society is concerned: this social body also needs an impulse for renewal. Contrary to the timing of the Christmas Conference for the incarnation of Anthroposophia, which is truly a Christmas impulse that can best be realized during mid-winter, the General Anthroposophical Society is an impulse for the transubstantiation of the earth – the earth as a threefold social organism – so that it can become more and more the body of the spirit of the Earth, the Christ. This impulse can therefore be realized best during the time of mid-summer, the time of St John.

The human spiritual resources and capacities to realize this twofold renewal is the royal art and science of social organics that was lived by Rudolf Steiner and further developed by Herbert Witzenmann, as his social esthetic essay following this foreword introducing the Kardeiz Saga can attest to.[35]

Acknowledgments

This 5^th edition has been done with a view to presenting it this Sunday afternoon, September 2, in the Conference Room of the Rudolf Steiner Library in Ghent, NY, where it has also been written. As with the updated 3^rd edition of Herbert Witzenmann’s The Just Price – World Economy as Social Organics, which consists of three lectures introducing Rudolf Steiner’s course on World Economy and which was presented at the Rudolf Steiner Library last Sunday, I therefore want to thank again the librarian Fred Paddock and his patient and helpful staff for their assistance in locating the necessary literature for my research that went into this edition. John Root Sr. and his wife Nancy from the Berkshire-Taconic branch of the Anthroposophical Society in America I want thank once more for allowing me to work in the library before and after closing hours. A special mention must go to my new friend and almost as it seems, long lost comrade-in-arms, Dennis Evenson with whom I spent a thoroughly enjoyable week editing the booklet on Herbert Witzenmann’s The Just Price and exploring the physical as well as spiritual landscapes in and around this hillside area, such as the House on the Hill, Olana, of the famous American landscape artist Frederic Church overlooking the Hudson River and the Catskills. It was Dennis’ intense interest and desire to hear something first hand of the recent (hidden) history of the Anthroposophical Society in Europe that inspired me to write the extensive foreword to this edition. Finally I thank again Richard Roe for allowing me to live in his nearby cottage, local publisher James Wetmore for his printing assistance and Herbert Horn and his wife Evi from Ghent for their generous offer to use their car in order to get this manuscript to Pro Printers in Hudson and to get to my talks and slide shows on Werner Greub’s How The Grail Sites Were Found this busy weekend in the Town Libraries of Sheffield MA and Woodstock NY.

Robert J. Kelder,

August 30, 2001

Rudolf Steiner Library, Ghent NY

Update 2011: None of the suggestions here put forward to recall the Anthroposophical Society were taken up, nay were even seriously considered during the General Assembly in 2001. All of them, as well as all the many suggestions by other members were dispensed of in record tempo. This resulted in a number of court cases by disgruntled members against the board, which although in the end successful did not stop the plans by the board to assume more powere and privileges than foreseen in the original principles. For in the mean time, these have - under the leadership of the board executive and the passive willingness of the General Assembly- been disfigured in the sense that the balance of power between the center and the periphery has been shifted almost entirely to the side of the center, i.e. the board, at the expense of the members’ rights, such as the right of individual to submit motions. To further delve into this retrograde development must be left to a future publication.

Foreword to the Fifth Edition (2001)

This new edition has been revised and updated in Montreal after my public talk and slide show in the staid Atwater Library on September 6, where the second edition of Werner Greub’s How The Grail Sites Were Found was presented – to a small but attentive audience consisting largely of anthroposophists – and a talk on September 10 at the first, joined member’s meeting of the English and French branches of the new (Fall) season of the Anthroposophical Society in Montreal.

The topic on which I was asked to speak for the members meeting was Social Organics as a Grail Impulse for the 21^st Century. I began by saying that it is not we – the handful assembled in these quarters on Rue St Jacques near the corner of St Laurent, or the 50.000 or so anthroposophists around the world in general, who are in any position to change the world for the better – but that it is anthroposophy, or the science of the Grail, that can certainly do that. As a point of departure I then quoted Walter Johannes Stein, author of The Ninth Century – World History in the Light of The Holy Grail, referring to the three historic grades of chivalry: the first and second being the grades of faith (related to Peter), hope (James), while the third is charity or love (John). In his (not translated) work Temple and Grail, the Dutch anthroposophist Willem Frederik Veltman writes: “This grade of John can only be realized today and has to do with a world economy based on a truly Christian love. But for the time being, the world economy as a world power is still developing in an opposite direction.”[36]

I then offered a series of steps to try to not only better understand this third grade of love, but also to implement it as social organics: in the Anthroposophical Society as well as in the world at large [through the reformation of the world economy based on Rudolf Steiner’s Course by the same title). In order to show that this is part of the on-going task of a [modern] Grail knight I then referred to the first slide during my public lecture showing the Grail poet-knight Wolfram von Eschenbach with his coat-of-arms: the two opposing P’s (the Hebrew letter ‘diresh’) symbolizing two divine principles of good and evil, light and darkness that need to be kept in balance through a middle, third force separating them [the Christ principle] and putting and keeping them in their proper place. It is thus not a question of the one destroying the other; without the darkness we would have no color; without opposites we would have no development. I ended by listing a series of steps leading in that direction, in which each and everyone could make his or her contribution.

Robert J. Kelder

Montreal, September 2001

Foreword to the Sixth Edition (2001)

This edition is appearing simultaneously with a new edition of its companion volume by Herbert Witzenmann The Just Price – World Economy as Social Organics on the eve of a visit to England to launch the fourth, British edition of Werner Greub's How The Grail Sites Were Found – Wolfram von Eschenbach and the Reality of the Grail in the Rudolf Steiner House on October 26, 2001. North American editions all of these three books were presented this summer in the Rudolf Steiner Library in Ghent, NY and were also referred to in my talk to members of the Anthroposophical Society in Montreal, Canada on the evening of September 10. In my foreword to the British edition of How The Grail Sites Were Found I have tried to reflect on the disaster that befell the United States the following morning and that is threatening to engulf the whole world in a war, if the armed conflict cannot be contained; here I will simply repeat a paragraph from the introduction to the series of social-esthetic studies entitled "Creating an Overworld" that Herbert Witzenmann wrote back in 1984 and that can be found on the following pages in this booklet, a text that has only gained a greater actuality and urgency in view of this man-made catastrophe:

"If our world does not substitute its superstition of utilitarianism for enthusiasm for beauty, it will encircle itself with an ever higher – and hence more and more in danger of collapsing – robot-gigantism, and at the same time undermine itself with the horror of modern dreariness. The only practical approach is the aesthetic one. He who counters that life must be lived before it can be draped with the blossoms of beauty may put up with the answer that it would be more consequent to depart from such a senseless life that debases itself in yielding to its fascination of fear and greed, instead of grasping its spur in its dignity."

It drives home that the overworld is not a physical one that towers high up into the clouds, but an interlocking human one that connects hearts and minds, body, mind and soul; everything else is a means to this end, not the end in itself. Without a new overworld, built with the modern science of the Grail, the underworld of the anti-Grail forces will stand nothing in its way.

Robert Jan Kelder,

Amsterdam, October 24, 2001

Update 2011: In a response to 9/11 the Willehalm Institute published earlier this year the book 9/11: The Accusation – Bringing the Guilty to Justice by Slobodan R. Mitric (available at Amazon as book and Kindle Edition; see also: http://911-the accusation.blogspot.com/).

Part II

CREATING AN OVERWORLD –

Introduction to the Series Social Aesthetic Studies

In earlier times this series of Social Aesthetic Studies that is being introduced by this first volume would have hardly needed a justification for its supply of texts; but today it probably does. For bringing the social in connection with the aesthetic seems in view of our present state of affairs only to cause bewilderment. On the one hand, the conditions in which we are actively and passively embroiled lack indeed all inducements for good taste, while on the other hand, the utilities that we consider necessary in our lives require at most a glossy varnish, yet scarcely real beauty itself. With every glance, meanwhile, that goes back more than 150 years we become aware – perhaps with amazement, perhaps with fright in view of our drab routine or snug self-deception – what great value the previous civilizations attributed to the harmonious development of their representative appearance; what pride the great figures of that world took in creating and building an ‘upper world’. And the more we follow the epochs backward to antiquity, the clearer the collective force of national cultures in works of beauty comes to mind. To establish the noble was not compulsory labor, but a joyful and glad confession; existence was not a consumption of impressions, but the horticulture of expression spreading throughout all branches of the empire. These peoples became themselves through the fact that they created – not in order to construct a wall of utilities to safeguard their survival – but to paint an image (however instinctive) of their self-knowledge as that which, in itself, is bliss and therefore holy.

Social-aesthetics is the science of the future, just as aestheticism in general is the future of science. A science of aesthetics must establish the future of our civilization, in so far as our civilization is granted a future. Aestheticism as represented here however, is not aesthetic sentimentality. On the contrary, it bears witness to cognition, the cognition that is conscious of the basic demand of our time, because it does justice to the demand that it must direct to itself. This is the unbiased observation of its own activity. For out of unformed material of perception it after all gives – through the evidence of the idea – rise to the consciousness-form of our world. The reality that is reduced to its primordial state by our sense-organs is not somehow reproduced in cognition by a process of imitation, but co-produced in the co-creative act of knowledge. More concerning this is developed in this series of publications – as well as in other parts of the work by the author. At the height of his cognitive existence, man is therefore not merely a squatter jammed by the terror of information and the pressures to survive into his accidental niche spanned by the force of circumstances. On the contrary, he is a creative architect of expression, a designer, who even surmounts his construction of a consciousness-formed world with his own form of liberty that he forces upwards out of his will to construct. The meaning of one’s life is to give the world a new meaning in the fulfillment of one’s own search for meaning, and to recognize and time and again re-examine one’s creative task in the mirror of the world of expression that one constructs around oneself. With its whip of horror and its opiate of bliss materialism has stripped present-day man of the dignity of his mission in life, releasing him into the waste and squalor of the meaningless void. Social-aesthetics is to reinstall him in his mission and responsibility, not to ensure that he survives, but that he dare ‘over-becoming’ (German: Überwerden).

If our world does not substitute its superstition of utilitarianism for enthusiasm for beauty, it will encircle itself with an ever higher – and hence more and more in danger of collapsing – robot-gigantism, and at the same time undermine itself with the horror of modern dreariness. The only practical approach is the aesthetic one. He who counters that life must be lived before it can be draped with the blossoms of beauty may put up with the answer that it would be more consequent to depart from such a senseless life that debases itself in yielding to its fascination of fear and greed, instead of grasping its spur in its dignity.

The first edition of this series of social-aesthetic studies contains the revised and enlarged text of The Principles of the Anthroposophical Society as a Basis of Life and Path of Training that was long out of print. Added to this were new editions of the also revised and enlarged essays A Path to the Spiritual Goetheanum and On the Nature of the Free School of Spiritual Science, which complement the discourse of the first essay from essential points of view.* In the appendices one will find the text of the ‘principles' (originally statutes) of the Anthroposophical Society, which Rudolf Steiner gave as a basis for refounding the Society at the turn of the year 1923/24.** In that way, a publication has come about which can not only help every new member of the Anthroposophical Society to orientate himself, but which can perhaps also be welcomed by those wanting to re-evaluate their decision to become members. This publication is also intended as study-material for those wanting to occupy themselves – not just in a receptive, but also in a cognitive manner – with an important field of the spiritual science developed by Rudolf Steiner. As a social-aesthetic study its aim is furthermore to contribute to a better knowledge of our present state of affairs and meeting the dire needs of our time.

Herbert Witzenmann

Garmisch-Partenkirche, Germany, January 1984

Preface to the First Edition

The essay entitled The Principles of the Anthroposophical Society as a Basis of Life and Path of Training and the here also newly printed Additional Remarks, appeared under circumstances which gave rise in the author – and with him in many other members of the general Anthroposophical Society – the greatest of concerns. A very superficial misunderstanding of these concerns has equated them with the intervention to clarify the so-called book question, in the sense of Rudolf Steiner’s unmistakable will and inner context of his work. (The ‘book question’ deals with the tragic circumstance that Rudolf Steiner‘s work – contrary to his unmistakable will and the meaning and nature of the refoundation of the Anthroposophical Society – is published by an administrative society, which stands outside the general Anthroposophical Society and which disputes its essentially esoteric significance and mission.[37]) The events involving the members and the enactments that came about through a majority vote of the Council members, which – considering the Council’s one-sided administrative authority are indeed illegitimate, even by virtue of a majority vote of the Society – were for all that only symptoms for something that goes much deeper. For these events manifest the lack of understanding for the nature of Rudolf Steiner’s work and his greatest creation based on this work. This great work is the founding – albeit in no way completion – of a knowledge community in which, according to the archetype that Rudolf Steiner has woven into it, the principle of initiation is to become the principle of civilization, a community in which the social formative force is to be the path of knowledge traversed by soul observation. Whoever has understood but a fraction of this sacrificial deed by Rudolf Steiner, which he completed at the risk of his life and spiritual existence, knows that the true connection with his work cannot be made by conveying and acquiring items of knowledge. Only the path of soul observation that discovers the real nature of the spiritual world empowers one to find one’s way to Rudolf Steiner, to the core of his work and the spiritual guardians protecting it. Whoever enters this path does not only out of insight, but even more so out of an overwhelming feeling of quintessential kinship, collaborate with those forces aiming to destroy the spiritual existence of Rudolf Steiner’s work. The outcome here will not be decided by words, but by deeds. It is not a question of abstract knowledge, but of cognitive style. The conviction that matters here stools not on tradition, but on union with the living spirit.

Not only by characterizing the wrong paths however – even though sharpening the faculty of discrimination is an indispensable part of every education in consciousness – does one render assistance to an honest seeker. This consists above all in stimulating one’s own power of soul observation by means of a guiding example. One of the most enlightening examples in this context are the ‘principles’ which Rudolf Steiner gave to the Anthroposophical Society as the basis for refounding it at a moment in time when its existence was greatly endangered. For at that time Rudolf Steiner wove the archetype of the living being of anthroposophy into this society in a completely public, open form. For that reason, the author of this publication pointed in a fatal moment in time, which again caused great anxiety, to that public mystery. His purpose was after all not so much to describe the false path, but to give those striving for clarity and standing firm a guide-line on the way to the goal foreseen by Rudolf Steiner.

Since the endeavor to find this way is more important than ever today, the present study is published anew. The author commented on the same problem in his speech at the General Assembly of the General Anthroposophical Society on Palm Sunday this year (1979) and in his sketch Symptoms, which appeared at the same time in the Bulletin (Mitteilungen) of the Working Group for a Spiritually Commensurate Penetration of the World Situation. He will elaborate his position in an enlarged version of his recent speech – which according to his duty as a Council member at the Goetheanum he will submit to the members in a statement of account [38] and in a further publication on the ‘principles’ [39]. In previous years he has often taken the trouble to present in word and print some of his insights concerning the foundations of the Anthroposophical Society.[40] Whoever wants to recognize an institution such as the Goetheanum as something that is justified, i.e. to become a member or stay as such, will in principle – albeit in detail perhaps in another manner – not be in a position to do without a contemplation such as the author submitted to the members of the Anthroposophical Society as the result of his own striving for insight at that time. Today he turns to them anew, confident in the invincibility of the truth.

Arlesheim, Switzerland, June 1979

The Principles of the Anthroposophical Society

As a Basis of Life and Path of Training

1

Lycurgus [41], who is sometimes falsely depicted with a roll of parchment in his hand, left no written word behind him. He imprinted the guidelines that men could follow in the building of community – they were felt to be laws at that time – in the hearts of the workmen. For the hearts of the builders were themselves the building-stones, and the structure erected out of them, so Lycurgus confided, would exist as long as his words remained alive in their hearts.

Rudolf Steiner has often stressed that recording the goals of a community in a written form could not do justice to its life. He just as strongly emphasized that such a community could only progress by constantly endeavoring to attain an ever more conscious illumination of its goals.[42] But he also gave this community an outwardly visible homestead in the Goetheanum building. With the letters of his literary work, he provided this building with a second form visible to the physical eye. But just as the life of the physical Goetheanum must be sustained from the building of hearts with the intention to pervade it in accordance with the spirit, so the building of letters would collapse were it not sustained by the spiritual edifice of the Free School for Spiritual Science which arises out of the striving for knowledge by that community which he ‘baptized’ anew with the Christmas Conference at the turn of the year 1923/24. For that reason the so-called annotation of the Free School of Spiritual Science should be printed in many of the volumes, which were meant to preserve an echo of the words spoken by Rudolf Steiner. The sense of this annotation was to declare and to uphold that conveying its contents to the profane world of our time could only occur in a spiritually righteous manner, when at the same time a community-supported link, protecting these contents, with the divine-spiritual world could be found. Detached from this link such publication becomes senseless and ill advised. It is quite obvious that the significance of this annotation extends far beyond the pages on which it was printed and should continue to be printed, and that it therefore, by its very nature, embraces not only Rudolf Steiner’s whole literary work, but his entire work altogether. The connection between Society, in the outer world, and Movement, in the spiritual world, must be understood as being indissoluble, if the Anthroposophical Society is not to regress to a state that denies its mission.

2

The ‘principles’ which Rudolf Steiner gave to the Anthroposophical Society when it was founded anew, form in the sense indicated, together with the mantras that he spoke during the Foundation Stone celebration, a whole. They belong together as an expression of the indissoluble unity of the outer and the inner, publication (exteriorization) and spiritualization (‘interiorization’).

But just as the Foundation Stone Mantras have besides their meditative purpose also, as it were, an ‘outer’ significance, so do the ‘principles’ have an ‘inner’ one. The Foundation Stone Mantras do not merely indicate a path of meditation for the soul; they can also be significant for the man of action, i.e. fulfill a role in the outer world. Far from being a set criterion, however, by which an action is to be measured, or even a stipulation to be fulfilled, the mantras can rather ring out as a voice of conscience that neither prescribes nor forbids, but sharpens one’s faculty of perception as to whether a deed that needs be done in the service of Rudolf Steiner corresponds to that unity of the esoteric and exoteric that forms the essence of the refounding deed and – radiating from that – the preservation of soul and spirit of those partaking in it. Becoming conscious of the guidelines of this preservation signifies that organ of perception for harmony or ‘unison’, the meaning of which, particularly for the active members, Rudolf Steiner after the Christmas Conference addressed again and again – indeed hardly to any avail – for the ways and means of approaching this unison remained hitherto largely unknown.

Similarly one can speak of a more inward significance of the ‘principles’. The ‘principles’ address not only the vital constitutional forms according to which the Anthroposophical Society seeks to portray itself in society. Like the mantras they also turn to experiences of the soul in order to stimulate its inner mobility. This other aspect of the ‘principles’ will, it is true, will only become clear when one contemplates their composition. But once completed, it becomes apparent – solely through meditation – that the same archetype is expressed in them that also forms the basis of the Foundation Stone mantras. Then it can be recognized that everything that occurred in the course of the Christmas Conference and in its aftermath took shape from the same spiritual font.

3

The composition of the ‘principles’ and the mobile thread of meaning running through it can be considered from several viewpoints. One point of view shall be highlighted here that with the help of numbers discloses an easily recognizable context. This context can be shown by means of the numbers preceding the paragraphs of the ‘principles’. Referring to such a numerical law is certainly not meant to merely draw attention to an externally determinable regularity, the discovery of which would scarcely be more than a play with numbers. On the contrary, three distinctive features of the ‘principles’ shall be pointed out, namely the fact that:

1. The paragraphs of the ‘principles’ can be classified into three groups according to a simple numerical system; thus something that to begin with indeed concerns the surface;

2. The precise and artistic composition of the ‘principles’ can be demonstrated in yet another, and perhaps more important way than through their content, whereby this is not so much conveyed by the static division of the ‘principles’ into three groups, as by the movement which pervades these three groups and combines them into a whole;

3. In these features the connection between the ‘principles’ and the mantras is revealed.

Nothing but sober reflection is initially required if one wishes to gain access to the threefold composition of the ‘principles’ and the melodious movement of the sequence of paragraphs.

Writing the numbers of the ‘principles’ in a zigzag line, somewhat in the shape of a crown, results in a division into three groups:

Spirit-beholding a) 1 5 9 13

Estrangement from the World – World Knowledge \ / \ / \ / \

Spirit-contemplating b) 2 4 6 8 10 12 14

Self-alienation – Self-knowledge \ / \ / \ / \

Spirit-remembering c) 3 7 11 15

Human Alienation – Human Knowledge

The seven even numbers in this arrangement form the middle row b): 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 and 14.

The odd numbers form the two outer rows a) and c):

a) 1, 5, 9, 13 (four numbers at a distance of four units each);

c) 3, 7, 11, 15 (four numbers at a distance of four units each).

Paragraph 8 forms the middle of the middle row, as it does in all paragraphs.[43]

This arrangement can be regarded from the viewpoint that the ‘principles’ are intended to be the form and expression of the life of a free community. Such a free society bears witness in a modern sense to itself and to the world through that already indicated unity of the outer and the inner. Rudolf Steiner also spoke of the meaning of this unity in connection with the new way of designing artistic forms out of which the Goetheanum building arose. Had the Goetheanum been built in styles corresponding to artistic formative forces of earlier era’s, the Anthroposophical Society would, as Rudolf Steiner expressed it, have manifested itself as a sect. Only a community that out of its inner life develops its modes of expression is a free and modern one, because it presents itself out of its creative inner origin to the world by the evidence of its deeds. In an architectural shell adopted from external sources such a community could only lead an aloof and isolated existence. Impotence in architectural design would therefore be indicative of an even greater disability. Building a free community is a question of style. It is a question of styling, of artistic steadfastness and social aesthetic security in design how – equally untouched by sectarian and fanatical refusal on the one hand and by political collaboration on the other – a community shows itself in its positive self-representation and defensive delineation to be what it is.

If a free community, evolving its own style in this fashion, is to organize and manifest itself through the spirit-like penetration of the outer with the inner, it needs a center connecting both these polarities. This center, in as far as it is a true center, relates itself to these polarities as a rhythmically changing transition, which it itself provides. This allows the center to become a kind of organ of perception for the connection between the polarities as well as for their differences and the course of their evolving union.

A free community can neither be a corporate body nor a personified organization; it can only manifest itself as the super-personal reality of a common free consciousness such as can be formed in a knowledge community that is aware of an experiential free play zone between the spiritual and the sense-worlds. Super-personality hereby does not mean extinction of individual consciousness and autonomy in a reality of a different sort. It is, on the contrary, the common consciousness within the same striving for knowledge by associates becoming aware of the presence of a universal spirituality that is, although equal, only to be fathomed individually in the way that this is realized in every individually enacted experience of a spiritual content.

Such a unity of the esoteric and the exoteric, of the universal and the particular, linked by a rhythmic center, a beating heart, a streaming breath, can only bring its full reality to bear in a community since the founding of Christianity. For only through the fact that the mystery concerning the incarnation of the spiritual and the transubstantiation of the physical in the course of life of a God-become-man has been made public, has it become possible that the inner and outer, mystery wisdom and public life, be the manifestations of one and the same being. Henceforth every modern community creating in free individual wakefulness the style of its outer appearance is a Christian one. It cannot by solemn vow be bound according to plan, program or dogma onto principles of its existence, but only be called upon and encouraged to become ever more aware of its never-ending task of progressive self-realization. For that reason the ‘principles’ of a truly modern society, in that it is Christian, must possess dynamic-rhythmic charisma.

A genuinely modern society will thus appear in a threefold form as the rhythmic union between two polarities through a center. This threefoldness in the outer appearance of the ‘principles’ becomes visible the moment one understands what the row of numbers in a zigzag line indicates.

b) The middle row of even numbers comprises all those paragraphs that concern the unity of the esoteric and the exoteric. Only such a unity can be the center of a community that, while developing its own style, evinces its life between these two polarities. One can anticipate this initially by looking at paragraph 8, which occupies the middle of this row as well as the middle of all the other paragraphs. It concerns the unity of the publication of Rudolf Steiner’s literary work and the spiritualization of the cognitive and communal life that was to form a unison of members of the Free School. This spiritualization provides the protection for the publication and signifies its meaning. This paragraph therefore sheds light on the noble task of a free community, a mission supreme that is inextricably linked with the essence of this community: namely to assume responsibility that the initiation principle once again becomes the principle of civilization; the paragraph furthermore indicates also the means by which civilization could receive this new impulse.

The dissemination of Rudolf Steiner’s literary work is therefore only spiritually possible on the streaming breath of a living knowledge community, a Free School. This sustaining breath cannot, of course, be perceived in the outer world with the outer senses. Its effect, however, will be all the greater wherever it exists, and the counteraction against it all the more serious, wherever it is lacking. A task is herewith outlined which cannot be accomplished by administrative measures.

The sense in which this is valid for all evenly numbered paragraphs will be developed more precisely in what follows. Presuming its validity for the time being however, one can already recognize that in following the descending and ascending row of numbers, one is constantly passing through the unifying center.

a) The numbers 1, 5, 9, 13 in the upper row of the zigzag line indicate the paragraphs that concern the outer visible form of the Society and the School. This form can indeed only be nourished and vivified out of the deeper founts of spiritual life, but it must appear before the world in such forms that are outwardly accessible to the world.

c) The numbers 3, 7, 11, 15 in the lower row of the zigzag line indicate the paragraphs that concern the fact that the Society and the School have their roots in the spiritual world. That these spiritual roots work into the outer world must indeed be visible, but this can only be made conscious through an experience of the spiritual world.

An objection that could well shake one's confidence in the validity of the principle of construction here indicated concerns paragraph 15. One could believe it to be without compositional significance, since it was added later. This could raise doubts altogether as to whether the suggested arrangement of the ‘principles’ does justice to the composition of the ‘principles’ as a whole. The more, however, one becomes aware of the significance of the two-fold recognition of the original Council by the spiritual world and the founding members of the Society then present, the less once can doubt that a paragraph such as this – which names the original Council of the reformed Anthroposophical Society and which thereby draws it into the entire context of the ‘principles’ – is indispensable. Rudolf Steiner expressed himself on this matter in unmistakable words. But he could not include this paragraph in his original draft of the ‘principles’, because he attached the greatest importance to this process of recognition coming about as a free decision on the part of those acknowledging it. Thus he could not reduce this to a mere formality, making it a fiction by assuming it. Also at the first printing of the ‘principles’, which brought the matter to the attention of all members (thus also to those who did not partake in the initial foundation), this paragraph had to be omitted for the time being. For it could only become really valid in its own sense, if all members had the possibility of performing the corresponding act of consciousness.

4

Let us now attempt to provide a more detailed basis for what has been said here by considering the contents of the paragraphs of the ‘principles’.

Let us start by taking the even-numbered paragraphs that form the middle row in the suggested arrangement.

I. The paragraphs 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14 bring jointly to expression the idea, radiating as it were from paragraph 8 out to both sides, of the unity of the esoteric and the exoteric, of that revival of science, art and social life which is only possible if the initiation principle again becomes the principle of civilization.

Paragraph 2 of the ‘principles’ speaks of the relationship between spiritual science and contemporary civilization. The founding members of the Anthroposophical Society state their conviction that there is "a science of the spiritual world, and that the cultivation of such a science is lacking in today’s civilization. The Anthroposophical Society is to make this cultivation its task." The basic motif in all the paragraphs of the middle row, the union of spiritual experience, knowledge and research with outer life, the union of esotericism and exotericism, resounds at once.

Paragraph 4 concerns the conditions for membership, which could not be more liberal. They leave one completely free and demand nothing of the newly joined member. Their only wish is to link up with the vital interest already present in him or her. In that way the Anthroposophical Society makes no demands, it rather wants to further that which already lives as needs and requirements within the potential new member. Any person, without distinction of nationality, social standing, religion, scientific or artistic conviction, who considers the existence of such an institution as the Goetheanum in Dornach, Free School of Spiritual Science, to be justified, can become a member of the Society. Paragraph 4 has thus to do with the fact that a Free School, a new mystery center, aims to realize its task in a public, open society. It speaks of the twofold freedom which man achieves, when he links himself consciously with the spiritual world, and which he as a free human being respects in every person he meets. Again the content of this paragraph is thus the uniting of the esoteric and the exoteric in the sense of the task of making the initiation principle the principle of civilization.

In its bold, liberal conception paragraph 4 imposes no binding conditions on the newcomer. Precisely for that reason it cannot induce him or her [44] to turn in blind faith to aspirations with which he is not or scarcely familiar. The step into the Society made under such inadequate conditions would not be a free act. Hence this step must be based on the knowledge of the newcomer who, according to the text of the paragraph, applies to become a member himself by stating "that he deems the existence of such an institution as the Goetheanum in Dornach as a Free School of Spiritual Science to be justified." This statement of approval can then of course only be a truthful one; thus one fraught with meaning, and not be understood merely as a formality, as the expression of consent to have one’s name filed in a card index [or computer]. The factual and conscious merit of the procedure by which one is admitted as a member into the Society must therefore be considered and made manifest in a manner corresponding to the essence and dignity of both the Society and the newcomer. Not to give expression in this way to this process of admission would not only be unworthy and untrue, but plainly the non-fulfillment of the conditions under which this admission should take place. As an administrative act this procedure, in view of the responsibility that the admitting party have “in concord” assumed for the new principle of initiation, cannot actually be regarded as having taken place at all. Admission to the Society can therefore in the sense of its ‘principles’ on no account occur only on the basis of a written application and formal confirmation. Such a flimsy procedure would be in flagrant opposition to the spiritual foundations of the Society. The objective significance of the consent given by the newcomer must therefore come to expression in a spirit of free understanding through a conversation with the incoming members. This is of extreme importance with regard to strengthening the foundations of the Society. The Society can find its foundations only in the consciousness of free individuals, who take their decisions in the seriousness and clarity of cognizant comprehension. The paragraph of the ‘principles’ about joining the Society demands therefore a great deal from the admitting party. The latter must not only be conscious of the spiritual significance of the procedure under its responsibility; it must also posses an overall view concerning the show of consent to be received or mediated. The nature of cognition, the spiritual being of man and the world, such as is imparted in the basic works of Rudolf Steiner and accessible for the individual soul observation, should accordingly be made understandable in an exchange of insights The introductory conversation should also show the significance of the refounding of the Society and the School during the Christmas Conference of the turn of the year 1923/24, whereby the historical position of the Christmas Conference within the events preceding and following it can naturally not be overlooked. The newcomer shall in this way come to realize with what a dramatic and grievous turn of events he is connecting himself. He may thus not expect refuge in the cheap accord of mellow souls, but the partaking in sacrifice, guilt and undisguised confrontation between various opposing trends of thought, such as should occur above all at the General Meetings of the Society. A thorough knowledge of the nature of the Society – not revealed in sectarian terms, but in historical spiritual struggle – saves the newcomer at the start from the disappointments, which he would have to undergo during a later insight into the world historical tragedy of the Anthroposophical Society, if his decision to join were to take place under false intellectual or sentimental pretexts. In this way, however, measures are also taken to prevent tendencies from growing in the Society that seek to repress the awareness of its historicity or even to obtain majority consent through their complaisance in the face of group interests based on sympathy and antipathy or through a lack of real courage in grasping reality. The Society is history because it is a consciousness structure of people meeting each other, an occurrence recorded in the immortality of its individuals just by virtue of their transformation in the stream of historical experience. This paragraph must therefore also be understood as a warning against the inhumanity of deconstructing historicity. It also suggests how the procedure for joining the Anthroposophical Society that did not take place in the spirit of this paragraph, thus in fact not at all, could afterwards be observed in truth and as such rectify the preceding violation of the membership principle.

Paragraph 6 determines the right of members to participate in all presentations and meetings organized by the Anthroposophical Society. Again it describes an opening outward under conditions that the Council recognizes as justified in the light of its inner responsibility towards the spiritual world.

Paragraph 8 is of special importance, because it does not only summarize the sense and content of the paragraphs of the middle row, but also all the paragraphs of the ‘principles’ as a whole. It contains the so-called annotation of the Free School of Spiritual Science, which concerns the inseparability of the publication of the whole literary work of Rudolf Steiner, including his lectures and in a wider sense his complete work, from the inner life of the Free School. That the significance of this paragraph reaches far beyond its narrow sphere, has already been developed. One realizes this all the more, the more vividly one brings to consciousness that the Christmas Conference is a living spiritual entity expressing itself with all its import in every one of its parts, albeit in each case in a different form. It would obviously then be mistaken to quote the text of this paragraph and draw logical conclusions from it. It is much more a matter of understanding its spiritual context and reliving it in the sense that pervades it. This will become still clearer after a survey of the holistic composition of the ‘principles’ has been carried out.

Paragraph 10 states that the Anthroposophical Society holds a regular General Meeting in the Goetheanum every year. The Council should give at this annual meeting a full and complete report of activities; members and groups should appear before the Council and the gathering with their own reports and proposals. An annual report can, depending on its nature, be approved or rejected. In case of rejection the Council should call for a motion of confidence. In a free society approval cannot exist in the form of passive acceptance, but only through the commonly scrutinized establishment of a new area of endeavor that is derived from what has so far been achieved. How this is to develop further should be worked out together by the Council and members at large by means of proposals and consultations. As a preview of the work to be done in the new year this process would represent the members releasing or discharging as it were the Council by giving their explicit approval to the annual report through a show of hands. This paragraph also characterizes the coming together of the outer and the inner, of the central and marginal life of Society and School; it unites both areas of endeavor according to their specific tasks.

It is important to consider this paragraph too in the spirit of that middle row that is formed by all even-numbered paragraphs. The form and course of a General Meeting designated by this row must be determined in such a way that in it conversations rooted in knowledge should unfold between those who seek to find themselves and one another in a knowledge community, not by wishing to impose anything on, or extract anything from each other, but by seeking to further, out of their own inner freedom, the free needs of the participants (cp. comments on paragraph 4). In this coming together a kind of interchange of consciousness between periphery and center should take place in a spirit of peaceful competition.

The significance of paragraph 12 could easily fail to be recognized, since it only seems to deal with an external necessity by fixing the amount of the member's subscription. The determining of these subscriptions that are to flow to the peripheral groups on the one hand, and to the central administration of the Goetheanum on the other, must however also proceed in the sense of harmonizing the outer and inner life, movement and Society. This paragraph draws furthermore attention to the fact that in order to develop soundly, this life need be supported by a sacrificial flow, of which the expression in terms of money is not properly understood, if it is merely regarded as a material matter, and not as a consonance of inner responsibility and outward activity.

Paragraph 14 informs us that by means of the subscription to the weekly "The Goetheanum" and its supplement (The Newsletter), which is to provide information concerning events happening within the Society, members of the Anthroposophical Society can take part in creating a unified consciousness within the Society. Such a unified consciousness can only be formed when a view on contemporary events is coupled with that on the inner life of the Society. Both come to expression in the distinction between the tasks of the two publications, even though both tasks devolve simultaneously on each of them in varying degrees.

Let us once more survey the row of paragraphs: § 2, spiritual science and the present civilization; § 4, the public nature of the Anthroposophical Society and the positive interest of those joining it in the Free School of Spiritual Science; § 6, the right to participate in all events (rights of members) and the conditions for this made known by the Council; § 8, Public access to all publications and the annotation of the School; § 12, members' subscriptions to groups and the center; § 14, weekly paper and supplement.

This survey shows clearly that the significance of paragraph 8 spreads its wings over this whole row of paragraphs, and that in progressing through all paragraphs of the ‘principles’, one performs an inner exercise in constantly passing through an experiential center where the esoteric and the exoteric, Society and Movement, are to be linked in accordance with the initiation principle again being established as the principle of civilization.

Human beings who participate in the life of a free community in this spirit of exchange will not feel estranged from their own being and fall victim to that ever-increasing self-estrangement, which is one of the most serious symptoms of the present civilization. They will far more likely in this way seek and find a true soul balance between the esoteric and the exoteric. Through such equilibrium they will attain a true understanding of themselves and a renewed vigor of soul.

If one becomes aware of this, then one also recognizes that the middle row of paragraphs corresponds to the middle mantra within the words of meditation, in whose sense-bearing sound formations Rudolf Steiner shaped the Foundation Stone, which he entrusted to the hearts of the members during the refounding of the Anthroposophical Society. These words are a reminder to exercise “soul balance", "where the surging world-becoming-deeds unite one's own I with the Cosmic I", so that the words can be heard: "In Christ life becomes death."

II. Let us now consider the paragraphs 1, 5, 9, and 13 that, in the zigzag sequence drawn here, form the upper row. These paragraphs have in common that they show how a spiritually moved Anthroposophical Society, a free knowledge community can appear in public and turn to the world, and how it can invite the world to come and make the results of its work and endeavor known.

Paragraph 1 characterizes the Anthroposophical Society as a knowledge community, as “a union of people who wish to cultivate the life of soul in the individual as well as in human society on the basis of a true knowledge of the spiritual world." In this sense the Anthroposophical Society turns outward, it appears in public and invites the world to participate in its endeavors.

Paragraph 5 indicates that the Anthroposophical Society encloses a Free School as its center, a modern mystery school, which consists of three classes. "The Anthroposophical Society regards the Free School of Spiritual Science as a center of its work. This School will consist of three classes." Admission to the School is to be determined by those responsible at the Goetheanum. Access to the mystery school is thus also wide open to those outside, for the general condition for entering this school consists only of a certain period of membership of the Anthroposophical Society. This admission is completely open and free, and hence the Free School itself belongs in part to the public sector, yet only in so far as it opens itself to those who approach it with complete awareness of their decision. Therefore the conversation with those seeking admission to the Free School (the First Class) becomes even more important than the exchange that is due upon joining the Society. The essence, task and conditions for existence of the Free School as well as the responsibility that those seeking admission are about to assume, are the essential topics of this conversation.

Paragraph 9 points out the aims of the Anthroposophical Society as being “the furtherance of spiritual scientific research”, those of the Free School “the performance of this research itself”. Excluding any kind of dogma, this research is to be made known to the public in a modern manner in the sense that the public is invited to participate by supporting or adopting the endeavors and results of this research.

Paragraph 13 states: “Each working group draws up its own statutes, provided these statutes are not incompatible with the statutes of the Anthroposophical Society.” By working to achieve such statutes in constant adaptation to the group’s inner life, an ever-increasing awareness in these groups can develop regarding their own tasks and their particular (historically and cultural-geographically based) identity. Only on the basis of such a development of consciousness that seeks to be in accord with the central task of the Society, can such a group maintain the proper relationship to the Society and from this point of view enter into communication with those wishing to join the Society. This paragraph does not only speak of a member’s right, but also of a task (not a duty, because a free society does not place its members under any obligations) on the part of those finding themselves together in groups. The drawing up of statutes signifies within the groups the development of consciousness concerning the self-chosen task.

Let us again briefly review paragraphs 1, 5, 9 and 13: § 1, the Anthroposophical Society stands in the world as a knowledge society; § 5, its center is formed by a Free School consisting of three classes, which by reason of it belonging to a Society is accessible to the public; § 9, the Anthroposophical Society turns to the public by virtue of the furtherance of the spiritual research, the Free School by virtue of the performance of this research; § 13, through their statutes the working groups make it clear to those preparing to join what their relationship thereby will be to the center of the Society.

In another way than the evenly numbered paragraphs, in which the balance between the inner and the outer is expressed, these paragraphs describe how the Anthroposophical Society presents itself to the public and how it establishes contact with it. It does so as a knowledge community, as the guardian of a Free School or new mystery center, as a society in which spiritual research is supported and carried out and whose groups, on the basis of a spiritual development of consciousness, communicate with the public concerning the intrinsic nature and self-chosen task of the Society. It does so, and can only do so out of a spirit-beholding, out of the capacity to gaze into the spiritual conditions for the origin of our natural and social world as well as the soul and spiritual needs of the human beings living in it. Such a spirit-beholding is capable of overcoming that other grave symptom of the world situation that, as alienation from the world in the face of a world bereft of spirit, is coupled with the self-alienation of the human beings living in this wasteland. A knowledge community, true to the chosen task and in mutual furtherance of their members striving towards spirit-beholding, such community can place itself in the outer world as the bearer of a consciousness, which does not regard the world as being alien and becoming increasingly alien. For such community is capable of knowing that it rests with its own cognizing spirit within the spiritual essence of the world.

If one makes this clear to oneself, one notices that the paragraphs of this row correspond to the third of the Foundation Stone Mantras. This mantra sternly reminds us to practice “spirit-beholding in the quietude of thought, where the eternal aims divine bestow cosmic being-light upon our own I for free willing.” Thus these paragraphs, like the mantras connected with them, speak of acting out of knowledge that wills its way into the outer world in freedom, in which the word goes: “In the cosmic thoughts of the spirit the soul awakens.”

III. Let us finally turn to paragraphs 3, 7, 11 and 15 that form the bottom row of the arrangement suggested here. What they have in common is that they indicate how the Anthroposophical Society is rooted in a spiritual world. They concern, in contrast thus to the outward going paragraphs in the upper row, the turning inward.

In this sense, paragraph 3 brings to expression that we can only understand ourselves in what it truly means to be a human being, and only find ourselves together in a real community, when we become conscious of our common origin in the Divine. For “anthroposophy cultivated in the Goetheanum leads to results which can be beneficial to every human being, without distinction of nation, social standing or religion, as an incentive in spiritual life.” Thus anthroposophy draws from the primal fonts of the divine-spiritual, which flows to all human beings. Adopting the flow of these sources and using it “as a basis for life is not dependent on a scientific degree of learning, but only on unbiased human nature.” For the latter can become conscious of its origin in gazing into the spiritual world. Spiritual-scientific “research underlying these results and professional judgment concerning them, however, are subject to the spiritual scientific training which is to be acquired step by step.” One gleans from these words that in this paragraph the spiritual roots of anthroposophy common to all human beings is being spoken of with regard to their significance as a basis of life and path of training.

Paragraph 7 conveys that “the establishment of the Free School of Spiritual Science …lies in the hands of Rudolf Steiner.” It draws attention to the fact that, with the Free School of Spiritual Science, Rudolf Steiner has opened the way to the spiritual sources of Anthroposophy so that every seriously striving person can share in the task of making the initiation principle once again the principle of civilization.

Paragraph 11 deals with the formation of groups. “The members can join together in smaller or larger groups on any geographical or thematic basis.” The Council shall communicate from the Goetheanum “to the members or groups of members what it considers to be the task of the Society.” So, too, the formation of groups can only succeed in the awareness of the spiritual roots of Anthroposophy, in the awareness of permeating civilization with the initiation principle, whereby the task is characterized, which the Council is to put before the members. The inner process of the formation of groups through spiritual union must find its outer proof in the fully conscious seriousness with which the statutes are formulated, such as indicated by paragraph 13.

Paragraph 15 names the members of the founding Council and draws attention to the fact that the Council carries on, in an intensified manner, the task that a modern knowledge community sets itself. In this sense, the paragraph indicates that the Council has an esoteric task within a knowledge community and also, in so far as it does justice to this task, that it has an esoteric vocation. This paragraph is likewise a strong confirmation of the historicity of the founding process.

Let us once more briefly survey paragraphs 3, 7, 11 and 15: § 3, the common origin of the human springing from the divine as a basis of life and an impulse for a spiritual path of training; § 7, the establishment of the Free School of Spiritual Science by Rudolf Steiner; § 11, the formation of groups in the awareness of the esoteric task of the Society, which can only on this basis develop healthy off-shoots; § 15, the Council.

In a different way from paragraphs 1, 5, 9 and 13, which express a process of turning outward, paragraphs 3, 7, 11 and 15 are devoted to a turning inward. A common origin springing from the divine, of which all those striving for knowledge can become aware, is expressed throughout these paragraphs, albeit from different viewpoints. This anchoring in the spirit is the basis of community building, the fructification of civilization, the Free School of Spiritual Science, the formation of groups within the Society and the appointment of the Council as well as its activity in fulfillment of this task. These paragraphs speak of the fact that in a modern knowledge community the third of the great estrangements, which typifies the present world situation, the estrangement of mankind from itself, can be overcome through consciousness of the union with the spiritual world. For in forgetting their spiritual origin human beings will become more and more estranged from that substance out of which they live, their own humanity. In remembering their spiritual origin, however, they can overcome this alienation and find one another through human understanding.

This also makes it clear that these paragraphs correspond to the first of the Foundation Stone mantras. Therein the reminder is heard to exercise ”spirit-remembering in soul deep, where in the hand of world-creator-being, one’s own I in God’s I is begotten.” Through a deepening of the soul, an understanding of the essence and origin of the human out of the divine can be quickened anew. Human alienation can in this way be transformed into human understanding in the sense of the words: “Out of the Godhead mankind is born.”

5

An overview of the complete sequence of the paragraphs shows that they are arranged in three groups that are not, however, placed statically one beside the other, but dynamically intertwined. The melodic line of the sequence of paragraphs passes seven times through its inner center with the living swing of a pendulum between turning outwards and turning inward. The center between these opposing turns is formed by the unity of the esoteric and the exoteric. It is the center of spirit-contemplating between the mental attitude of soul-deepening which becomes conscious of the coming to life of one’s own I in God’s I, and the mental attitude of spirit-beholding which knows that the light of cosmic being has been bestowed upon it for free willing. Therefore the paragraphs are not arranged into groups from the point of view of the congruence of their contents. Their sequence applies rather to the mobility of spiritual breath, which is enlivened upon following their course and passing through the spheres to which they belong. Only when this is considered will one understand why Rudolf Steiner, when he drew up the ‘principles’, disregarded other arrangements that were possible from a practical point of view.

6

The foregoing complete survey of the ‘principles’ results in the view that their paragraphs are organized into three groups that all voice the same archetypal ideas as do the Foundation Stone mantras: spirit-beholding, spirit-contemplating and spirit-remembering. These three ideas and the soul forces of metamorphosis striving towards them are presented as the cognitive, vital and active forces that make up a free society. Yet the ‘principles’ do not voice this only through their representational content, but rather through the fact that they guide the soul consciously fathoming this to the path of training leading to the archetypal region of these ideas. The mantras are inscribed above the door of the new mystery center, which opens inward. That is why they assume the form of meditations and call on the readiness for inner action, for exercise. The ‘principles’ that are inscribed above the new mystery center which opens outward, cannot have this form, nor can they contain the appeal that is linked with the meditative shaping of sound and sense. Yet the ‘principles’ too, lead the soul willing to actively follow their motion (in complete freedom, since the ‘principles’ avoid making any demands) through the breathing stream of their rhythmic sequence to the same path as the mantras do. For the soul which hearkens their gentle but distinct impulse, they constitute an event, which develops through the heightening and easing of tension. This inner event is their actual substance, their open secret. They do not only speak of a modern community, they already begin to form it in the listening and flexible soul.

If one recognizes and experiences this open secret of the ‘principles’, then one also overhears how they are permeated with the living essence of the three classes of the Free School of Spiritual Science; that same essence which appears before our eyes in the archetypal ideas of spirit-remembering, spirit-contemplating and spirit-beholding of the Foundation Stone mantras. The ‘principles’ and mantras differ in their mode of expression and are at the same time united through their substance. The open secret of the ‘principles’ is the formation of an esoteric community as the bearer of the anthroposophical movement; the open secret of the Foundation Stone mantras on the contrary is the formation of a public society, which encloses the Free School as its center.

The ‘principles’ are living forms of a knowledge community; like the mantras they are its foundation stone. They are at the same time, like the mantras, the touchstone of individual action and behavior. They are not categorical imperatives, much less recipes. They are rather a description of spiritual community in the making and of the spiritual stream of life breathing through it. They refer the member of such a community to guidelines in which the archetypal image of community lights up before his eyes. Such a community member carries these guidelines into his personality and nature, when he uses them to guide his own actions and behavior. He injures and harms the spiritual life-body of the community, as much as he does his own, however, when he does not, before he acts, call upon himself to survey these guidelines, set up as they have been more through their dynamics than their contents. He injures himself and the community all the more, the less he puts his actions and behavior to the test in this light.

But whoever is prepared to fire his thinking with his will, and illuminate his will with his thinking, will experience that the ‘principles’, like the Foundation Stone mantras, can become a meditation for the one who takes action. Through such a meditation, one makes oneself spiritually a member of the Class. It is the heightening and deepening of the process of knowledge that already takes place when one truly becomes a member of the Anthroposophical Society.

This meditation can be of general significance for every action and everyone in what he does. But it acquires its greatest and binding value, when a deed is done at the service of the Anthroposophical Society in accord with the spiritual breath of the anthroposophical movement, if this service is to be performed in the budding sphere of a new mystery culture. The ‘principles’ can be understood by everyone who is faced with making a decision, as a call to self-examination, in as much as he is willing to act with a sense of responsibility for the living being of anthroposophy, to partake in the building of a new mystery center and to be prepared to fight in its defense in the face of its opponents.[45]

7

This presentation was intended to elucidate briefly how, in the ‘principles’, Rudolf Steiner united the stability of the foundation that he built, with the mobility of meditative life, the intimacy of the guidelines with the loftiness of the aim of the exercise. In this way he replaced the rigidity, which would not be in keeping with a living community, with the mobility of the spiritual life that ever and again revitalizes itself in the test of time. At the same time he safeguarded the community structure that he built, against the shaking of the foundation pillars of the exoteric and the esoteric that equally support it. He has given the outwardly listening ear an easily comprehensible and at the same time magnanimous answer to the question as to how a truly modern community can exist and endure in the world around it. He has accordingly intimated to the inwardly listening ear that the spirit-form and -stature of this community building can only be founded in the unwritten word, which constantly develops further within the life of the hearts that nourish and foster it. He has achieved the masterpiece of creating a unity of the inner and outer word. In describing the foundation necessary for the life of the community, he has tacitly pointed out the path of knowledge, such as this is followed in the sense of the “Classes”, and he has made this hidden mystery public in the factual contents of the paragraphs. Whoever looks at these paragraphs gains solid ground. Whoever follows inwardly the sequence of the factually described indications, is moving towards a goal. Whoever reads the paragraphs with some degree of awareness receives an unrestricted impulse for his meditative life. Whoever surveys and confirms in thought how the laying of the foundation and the setting of a goal are united in the ‘principles’, will be filled with wonder and gratitude towards the unfailing master of this work of art.

Pherkydes, with whom Greek philosophy began, beheld the spiritually living earth in the image of an oak. For the earth is rooted as a living spiritual being in the heavenly world and unfolds its branches, leaves and fruit in the world of the senses. The pair of wings which grows from its trunk and carries it so that it can hover freely, is the union of the earthly and the heavenly, of that which is public and which is secret.

For the meditating mind the ‘principles’ can appear in the image of a winged oak. In their threefold composition, which is at the same time a living fabric of breath, they represent the way in which a free community can have its roots in the heavenly world and bear fruit in the earthly. Its supporting trunk, whose streams of life and breath joins the heavenly and the earthly, is the union of the esoteric with the exoteric that compose the center of the spirit-form. This center-forming trunk is winged with the pinions of freedom, the spiritual activity in which the esoteric and exoteric meet, unite and interchange with one another.

Additional Remarks

The essay on the ‘principles’ created lively interest; it met with agreement, but also gave rise to objections and misunderstanding. In both modes of reception the significance can be seen which everyone attaches to it who seriously considers the subject matter of my general outline. For the ‘principles’ are after all a particularly clear expression of what occurred through the Christmas Conference, the laying of the foundation stone that Rudolf Steiner entrusted to the hearts of the members. The Christmas Conference is the dedication to the union of spiritual movement and public society in the sacrifice which Rudolf Steiner made, relying on the hope that the members would adopt this as their own. The Christmas Conference is thereby the motivation for the everlasting task, which every member of the general Anthroposophical Society can make his own out of free resolve. This task calls on the free aspiration of every member to give the Anthroposophical Society a living content by raising knowledge and action to a search for the unity of the esoteric and the exoteric. Wherever this striving towards unity is neglected, there is insufficient consciousness of the archetypal unity between Movement and Society, and an insufficient endeavor to fulfill the never-ending task of working to bring together image and archetype.

The essay under discussion attempted to show that the substance of the ‘principles’, in an even more significant way than do the intellectual grasp of their meaning, discloses itself to the movement of soul, which can be induced by experiencing them with feeling and will. This view gave rise to doubts as to whether such an attitude toward the ‘principles’ did not attach too great a significance to them. It could perhaps cause astonishment that such an objection is considered here, which apparently fails to recognize that the ‘principles’ give expression to the founding anew of the general Anthroposophical Society, and thus go back to that eventful union between the spiritual and the earthly. A way to find the revelation of this mystery-secret in the ‘principles’ is what the essay in question wished to indicate. But this objection becomes significant the moment one looks for the cause behind it. As soon as this cause is found, one discovers the same insufficiency that it points to, also in oneself, however different the mode may be that it assumes there. And the sense of that seemingly senseless objection is to throw the light of self-knowledge on this insufficiency of one’s own. For if one asks oneself what is the most dependable means in protecting oneself from overlooking and underestimating that which is significant, then one’s attention is drawn to the exercise of inner calm, which the always helpful Rudolf Steiner suggests. If one begins to develop such states of quietude in active contemplation, one experiences as the first result of such an exertion the sharpening of one’s distinction between what is relevant and irrelevant, as long as one otherwise leaves things in the form they have for one’s usual way of observing. Soon however the consequence of this experience begins to dispel the superstition that it is possible for anything irrelevant to exist in a world founded on the spirit. The scale of the relevant and the irrelevant always depends on the perspective of a given point of view, and what is irrelevant for the time being, is always waiting for its nature to be disclosed from a different point of view. Relatively insignificant, therefore, is always the mode of consideration, which is unable to observe what is significant in that which for the moment seems to have no import. With a work of art such as the ‘principles’ however, it would be more comprehensible if the aesthetic sense, which responds to them directly, were excessively impressed, than that a restrictive judgment shut its eyes to the fact that their language speaks to us more strongly through their form than through their content, and more strongly through the inner movement released by the form, than through the form itself.

Another thoroughly comprehensible objection refers to a comment in the previous essay, which compares the experience of the ‘principles’ with that of the Class. Certainly, one cannot agree heartily enough with the reminder not to forget or to violate a respectful reserve with regard to utterances concerning this sphere. In the essay on the ‘principles’, however, an attempt was made to show that the domain of the Class was indeed not entered by the immediately grasped content of the ‘principles’, but assuredly by the spirit and soul motion, which can be set off by experiencing them. The experience called up in this fashion is after all one appertaining to one’s individual spirit and soul center, which becomes a conscious experience in looking up to one’s higher being, if one consciously follows the living swing of the pendulum between the esoteric and the exoteric. In this state of consciousness, there exists qualitatively (even if not yet within mature cognition) the three higher forces of knowledge, imagination, inspiration and intuition, to the development of which the contents of the Class lessons lead, that is to say, were to have led after their completion.

A particularly strange objection, which I already anticipated in a footnote to the essay on the ‘principles’, but which occurs over and again, concerns the fact that my remarks referred to the numerical sequence of the paragraphs of the ‘principles’. Such a reference appears obvious through the arrangement of the ‘principles’ in paragraphs, although it was to be foreseen that many a reader would cling to the numbers instead of turning to the facts to which the numbers refer and which could have been referred to in another form. Such a misunderstanding is comparable to mistaking the numbers on stones and signs, which express certain stretches in miles, for information of independent importance, instead of taking them as indications of distances and their relation to one another and to the movement of the traveler. Similarly, the reference to the numbering of the paragraphs of the ‘principles’ was to have induced the reader to find the direction for his own soul-spiritual movement within the spiritual dimensions encompassed by the ‘principles’. At the same time, it was intended to bring out clearly the inner relationship among the single elements of the ‘principles’, as well as the dynamics turning their sequence into an event, which is both progressive and balanced in the rhythm of the swinging pendulum.

Nevertheless, the objections raised and others would not be a sufficient reason for making these “additional remarks”, if they did not offer the opportunity to turn to a question, the answer of which involves important assessments concerning our attitude to Rudolf Steiner’s work. The question under discussion is simply, whether in dealing with the work of Rudolf Steiner, the main accent should be placed on the what, the content, or, at least to the same or even to a far greater extent, on the how, the form, that is the artistic arrangement or design. Now, it is characteristic of the intellectual or mind soul that it feels the urge to employ formal thought content for its own use, i.e. as a starting point to set its own feeling and will in motion, and in this way trying to bring about the intended changes within its own inner nature or outer surroundings. Since it is placed in the service of the above, it easily succumbs to the self-delusion that it lives quite intensively in the soul sphere of feeling and willing, whereas the latter are actually only stimulated indirectly by an intellectual attitude, which forms the starting point of the intended purpose and which, to be sure, is generally forgotten in being carried out. On the other hand, the consciousness or spiritual soul on the way to the spirit-self, touches the eternally true and good (see Rudolf Steiner’s Theosophy). When this contact comes about, personal intentions must be passed over and left behind, and one must refrain furthermore from placing thinking at the service of these schemes. One’s own soul-spiritual state of mobility must be transformed into that other state in which the real spiritual world expresses itself. Every genuine work of art transposes the receptive listener into such a state of experience or mood. Its actual or factual mode of experience is, in comparison to the stimulus for such experiencing, of secondary, albeit indispensable importance. This aesthetic interaction with the work of Rudolf Steiner (and the unpremeditated confidential interaction with this work is nothing else than that) seems strange and far removed from the mentality of the present times, which has brought humanity to a stage where it is enslaved and addicted to information by the mass-media. But only when present-day humanity recognizes that its proper task is not to serve ever so honorable goals, but that its task, hope and salvation lies rather – through the means by which this service is done – in gaining sufficient strength to enable it to raise its spiritual being to that universally just sense of purpose which alone is worthy of human dignity, only then will humanity find the way out of the chaos and confusion in which it has entangled itself. This is the aesthetic mentality, which does not find fulfillment in the what for but in that-which-is-founded-in-itself.

Taking the ‘principles’ as an example, the attempt was made to show that one – and this is certainly not unimportant – can assimilate their content with the faculty of the intellectual soul, and also perhaps – and this is certainly not without giving rise to misgivings – use this content to serve one’s own intentions. The primary aim of the essay on the ‘principles’ was, on the contrary, to show what discoveries can be made when attempting to experience the ‘principles’ with the intellectual soul faculty by leaving personal attitudes and intentions behind and imbuing oneself with the mobile forms that, in a more original way than their contents, lie behind the sequence of paragraphs as spiritual formative forces. For such a kind of spiritually commensurate penetration, the ‘principles’ become a work of art, their comprehension an artistic experience and the latter a meditation.

The essay on the ‘principles’ wanted in addition to the content to also take a position with respect to the question of style and in view of the future ask how the study and development of Rudolf Steiner’s work is possible. A contribution to this question was not to be given in a theoretical manner, but through the development of a concrete example.

The method of this essay could therefore also be an incentive to those readers who harbor certain reservations as far as the content is concerned. The application of this method, it may be repeated, is a matter of deciding whether one wants to approach the spiritual gifts, which we owe to Rudolf Steiner, by judging them intellectually and putting them to profitable use – or whether one is willing, forgoing judgement and profit for the moment, to try to come in the inner experience of movement to an accord with the creative formative forces, which spring from Rudolf Steiner’s work. If this should occur, then the question as to whether a content has this or that, a greater or lesser importance, becomes superfluous, and the fervor of intellectual judgment and intended profit retires in a silence that does not wish to hear itself, but the voice of the spirit.

Rudolf Steiner demonstrated the misleading nature of all criticism directed from the outside at a presentation or work of whatever kind, directly by characterizing such a procedure, and indirectly by his own repeated example. The “immanent criticism” that he recommended and practiced, does not apply external criteria to the production or performance under consideration, but develops the criteria of judgment out of the work itself, i.e. out of the task, which it has consciously or unconsciously set itself. The question that such constructive criticism can therefore pose is whether and to what extent a production does justice to its self-proclaimed inner task.

In the sense of such “immanent criticism” therefore, the fruitful question can be put with regard to the essay on the ‘principles’, whether and to what extent it does justice to its self-proclaimed task: to lead beyond the manner in which the intellectual soul grasps a work of Rudolf Steiner towards the manner in which the consciousness soul comprehends this work. This could open a discussion on a question fundamental to the life of the Anthroposophical Society, whereby the level of knowing better or less, or insinuations could be done without. For these are not the things that matter when we consider the life of the Anthroposophical Society; what matters is how we can find a modern approach to the work of Rudolf Steiner – what matters, therefore, is whether we talk about the contents of this work and use them to serve our own interests, or live in these contents and so wish to acquire a new manner of development and movement in our feeling and willing that enables us to speak out of these contents. This concerns the same problem that one encounters in the distinction between external and “immanent criticism”.

* * *

APPENDIX I

Statutes (Principles) of the Anthroposophical Society 1

1. The Anthroposophical Society is to be a union of people who wish to cultivate the life of soul in the individual as well as in human society on the basis of a true knowledge of the spiritual world.

2. The nucleus of this Society consists of those persons, both the individuals and the groups who let themselves be represented, who gathered during Christmas time 1923 at the Goetheanum in Dornach. They are convinced that at present there already exists a real science of the spiritual world, elaborated over many years and of which many important volumes are already published, and that the cultivation of such a science is lacking in the present civilization. This is to be the task of the Anthroposophical Society. It will endeavor to fulfill this task by focusing its activities on the spiritual science of anthroposophy which is cultivated in the Goetheanum at Dornach, with its fruitful results for brotherhood in social life, for moral and religious life and for the artistic and spiritual life in general within the being of man.*

3. The persons gathered together in Dornach as the nucleus of the Society recognize and support the view of the leadership of the Goetheanum, represented by the Council formed at the foundation meeting, with respect to the following: "Anthroposophy cultivated at the Goetheanum leads to results which can be beneficial to every human being, without distinction of nation, social standing or religion, as an incentive in spiritual life. These results can give rise to a social life based in a real sense on brotherly love. Adopting them as a basis of life is not dependent on a scientific degree of learning, but only on unbiased human nature. Research underlying these results and professional judgment concerning them, however, are subject to the spiritual scientific training, which is to be acquired step by step. These results are in their own way no less exact than the results achieved by Natural Science. When they likewise attain general recognition, they will bring about a similar progress in all spheres of life, not just in the spiritual, but also in the practical domain."

4. The Anthroposophical Society is not a secret society, but an entirely public one. Anyone without distinction of nationality, religion, scientific or artistic creed or conviction can become a member who considers the existence of such an institution as the Goetheanum in Dornach, Free School of Spiritual Science, to be justified. The Anthroposophical Society rejects any kind of sectarianism. Politics it does not consider to be among its tasks.

5. The Anthroposophical Society regards the Free School of Spiritual Science as a center of its work. 4 This School will consist of three classes. Members of the Society will upon application be admitted after a period of membership to be determined in each case by the direction of the Goetheanum. They thus gain entrance to the first class of the Free School of Spiritual Science. Applicants will be received into the second or third class respectively when the direction at the Goetheanum deem them suitable for admission. 5

6. Every member of the Anthroposophical Society has the right to participate, under conditions to be made known by the Council, in all lectures, performances and meetings of any kind organized by the Society.

7. The establishment of the Free School of Spiritual Science is in the first place incumbent on Rudolf Steiner who is to appoint his co-workers and his eventual successor.

8. All publications of the Society shall be open to the public as is the case in other public societies.** The publications of the Free School of Spiritual Science will not be exempt from this public availability; however, the direction of the School reserves the right from the outset to challenge the validity of every judgment on these works, that is not based on the schooling of which the works themselves are the outcome. In this sense the direction, as is altogether customary in the recognized scientific world, will acknowledge the validity of no judgment that is not based on the appropriate preliminary studies. Therefore the publications of the Free School of Spiritual Science will contain the following annotation: "Printed in manuscript for the members of the Free School of Spiritual Science, Goetheanum, Class ... No person is held qualified to form a judgment on these works who has not, through the School itself or in an equivalent manner recognized by it, acquired the preliminary knowledge advanced by the School. Other opinions will in so far be rejected as the authors of these works in question will not enter into any type of discussion concerning them." 6

9. The goal of the Anthroposophical Society will be the furtherance of spiritual-scientific research; that of the Free School of Spiritual Science the performance of this research itself. Dogmatism in any field whatsoever shall be excluded from the Anthroposophical Society.

10. The Anthroposophical Society holds a regular General Meeting every year in which the Council shall submit a full account of its activities. The agenda shall be made known by the Council together with the invitation to all members six weeks before the meeting. The Council may summon extra-ordinary General Meetings and fix the agenda for such Meetings. The invitations to the members shall be sent by the Council three weeks in advance. Motions by individual members or groups of members are to be sent in eight days before the date of the General Meeting. A certain number of members, to be determined from time to time by the by-laws, have the right to demand at any time an extra-ordinary General Meeting.7

11. The members can join together in smaller or larger groups on any geographical or thematic field of activity. The Anthroposophical Society has its seat at the Goetheanum. From there the Council is to convey to the members or the groups what it considers to be the task of the Society. It enters into social intercourse with the officials elected or appointed by the individual groups. The individual groups take care of the admission of members; however the confirmation in writing thereof should be submitted to the Council in Dornach and in confidence in the officials signed by the former. In general every member should join a group; only whoever finds it quite impossible to gain admission to a group should apply for admission as a member in Dornach itself. 8

12. The subscription shall be fixed by the individual groups; each group however has to send 15 Francs per member to the central direction at the Goetheanum.

13. Each working group draws up its own statutes, but these must not be incompatible with the statutes of the Anthroposophical Society.

14. The organ of the Society is the weekly Goetheanum, which for this purpose shall appear with a supplement containing the official communiqués of the Society. This enlarged edition of the Goetheanum will only be supplied to members of the Anthroposophical Society.

15. The founding Council will be: 9

President: Dr Rudolf Steiner

Vice-president: Albert Steffen

First secretary: Dr Ita Wegman

Assessors: Marie Steiner

Dr Elizabeth Vreede

Second secretary and

Treasurer Dr Guenther Wachsmuth

Appendix II

The Foundation Stone Meditation

Soul of man!

You live in the limbs

Which bear you through the world of space

Into the spirit-ocean-being.

Practice spirit-remembering

In soul deep

Where in the hand

Of world-creator-being

Your own I

In God’s I

Is begotten;

And you will truly live

In human-cosmic-being.

For the Spirit of the Father on High

Reigns in the deep of the world fathering being:

Ye Spirits of Strength!

(Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones)

Let from on high sound forth,

What in the deep resounds;

Pronouncing:

Out of the Godhead mankind is born.

(Ex Deo nascimur)

That is heard by the spirits in East, West, North, South:

May human beings hear it.

Soul of Man!

You live in the heart-lung-beat,

Which guides you through the rhythms of time

Into your soul feeling essence.

Practice Spirit-contemplation

In soul balance

Where the surging

World-becoming-deeds

Unite

Your own I

With the Cosmic I;

And you will truly feel

In human-soul-activity.

For the will of Christ prevails in the round

Soul-giving-mercy:

Ye Spirits of Light

(Kyriotetes, Dynamis, Exusia)

Let from the East be fired up

What through the West is formed,

Pronouncing:

In Christ life becomes death.*

(In Christo morimur.)

That is heard by the spirits in East, West, North, South:

May human beings hear it.

Soul of Man!

You live in the reposing head,

Which from eternal grounds

Releases cosmic thoughts to you:

Practice spirit-beholding

In quietude of thought,

Where the eternal aims divine

Bestow

Cosmic-being-light

Upon your own I

For free willing;

And you will truly think,

In human-spirit-grounds.

For cosmic thoughts of the spirit prevail

In cosmic being beseeching light;

Ye Spirits of Soul

(Archai, Archangeloi, Angeloi)

Let from the deep be prayed for

What on High is heard;

Pronouncing:

In the cosmic thoughts of spirit the soul awakens

(Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus),

That is heard by the spirits in East, West, North, South:

May human beings hear it.

At the turning-point of time

Cosmic-spirit-light entered

Into the earthly being-stream;

Night darkness

Had held its sway;

Clear daylight

Shone forth in human souls;

Light

That warms

The poor shepherds’ hearts;

Light

That enlightens

The wise kings’ heads.

Divine light,

Christ-sun

Warm

Our hearts,

Illumine

Our heads;

That good may become

What from our heart

We want to found,

And from our head

To lead purposefully.

* * *

List of Works in English by Herbert Witzenmann

A . Published Books

1. BEPPE ASSENZA – A Collection of Color Plates by the Sicilian born painter Assenza with an Introduction and Aphorism by Herbert Witzenmann. Translated by Sophia Walsh and published by Rudolf Steiner Press, London 1979 (ISBN 0-85440-340-X).

2. IDEA AND REALITY OF A SPIRITUAL SCHOOLING OF MAN – The Methodicaly Modern Groundwork towards a Spiritually Scientific University. No. 2 in the Series Social-aesthetic Studies with added essays wishing “to provide an understanding for the fact that Goetheanism, which Rudolf Steiner developed, is a unification of Platonic and Aristotelian spiritual streams, and explore the idea of a higher schooling in a way corresponding to Rudolf Steiner’s impulses.” Translated by Virginia Brett and published by Spicker Books, 1986 (LC: 86-60901; ISBN 3-85704-134-X).

3. INTUITION AND OBSERVATION – The Aesthetic Process Examined as a Pattern for the Grasping of Ideals, the Discovery of Self and the Building of Community. Includes an essay on Structural Phenomenology, a new epistemological concept developed out Rudolf Steiner’s science of cognition. Translated by Sophia Walsh. Spicker Books, 1986 (LC: 86-61023, ISBN: 3-85704-133-1).

4. PUPILSHIP IN THE SIGN OF THE ROSE-CROSS – The Individual in Balance as a Builder of Community. A Collection of Essays on the spiritual-scientific background of the ‘book question’ with an appendix TO THE FRIENDS IN AMERICA – A Lecture held in New York City on August 30, 1963. Gideon Spicker Verlag, c/o KRO-Medien GMBH, Moerstr.73 D-47803 Krefeld, Germany (ISBN 3-85704-130-7).

5. THE VIRTUES – These 12 poetic-philosophical mediations on the moods of the months are based on indications by H.P. Blavatsky and Rudolf Steiner. Translated by Daisy Aldan, Folder Editions, New York, 1975 (ISBN 0-913152-09-9. New unabridged translation by Sophia Walsh, Gideon Spicker Verlag. (ISBN 3-85704-125-8)

B. Articles and Essays

1. SHEPHERDS AND KINGS AS HERALDS OF PEACE – This article on Epiphany first appeared in the Basler Zeitung, the main daily newspaper of Basle, on January 6, 1983. A slightly edited and shortened version of a translation by Robert J. Kelder appeared in the 1983 Christmas Edition of the Anthroposophical Quarterly of Southern Africa.

2. THE ORIGIN AND OVERCOMING OF THE MATERIALISTIC WORLD OUTLOOK – The Natural Scientific Attitude of Consciousness as World Danger and Hope for the Future. Written resume of a lecture held at the conference “World Dangers and Hopes of Our Times” near Zürich, Switzerland in 1975. Part 1 of the journal Anthroposophia, Vol. 1 no.4 (ISSN 0306-4557). Translated by E. Bunzl, O. Fynes-Clinton, C. Lawrie, Living Art Publishing, England 1976. Out of print.

3. WHY I DO NOT CONSENT TO THE DECISION OF JANUARY 14, 1968 – This position by Herbert Witzenmann on the ‘book question’ was first published in the Anthroposophic Newsheet, 36th Vol. No. 7/8, February 25, 1968. A completely revised version can be read in the unpublished manuscript STATEMENT OF CONSCIENCE or WHAT IS ANTHROPOSOPHY? listed below

C. Unpublished Manuscripts Translated by R.J. Kelder

1. CRISIS AND ALTERNATIVE – Impulses for the Renewal of Social and Economic Life. A projected series entitled Contributions on the World Situation. This second volume contains 10 short but seminal position papers that Herbert Witzenmann wrote for the social-scientific conference Contributions on the World Situation.

2. HEREDITY AND RE-EMBODIMENT OF THE SPIRIT – A Spiritual-Scientific Presentation of Rudolf Steiner’s Idea of Reincarnation According to the Method of Natural Science. An excerpt from Vererbung und Wiederverkörperung des Geistes.

3. PAST AND FUTURE IN THE PRESENT – Contemplations on Our Times. Vol. I of the series Contributions on the World Situation including THE REPRODUCTIVITY SCANDAL – The Degeneration of Modern Man due to Natural Scientific Materialism and Rudolf Steiner’s Evaluation of Goethe as the Dawn of a Supernature.

4. STATEMENT OF CONSCIENCE or WHAT IS ANTHROPOSOPHY? Contains Herbert Witzenmann’s address to the General Assembly of the General Anthroposophical Society in Dornach in 1979 and his written supplement on the inner Nature and Structure of the Goetheanum, Free School of Spiritual Science. The appendix includes the General Council’s Agreement of February 15, 1974 between Herbert Witzenmann and his “colleagues”, a translation of his article Anthroposophy as listed in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie and In the Spirit of Rudolf Steiner, and an article on the occasion of the 75th birthday of Herbert Witzenmann on February 16, 1980.

5. THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY (FREEDOM) AS A BASIS FOR ARTISTIC CREATION – An Introduction to Rudolf Steiner’s Spiritual Humanism. This may be viewed as the best commentary yet on Rudolf Steiner’s basic philosophic-anthroposophical work The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (Freedom). The manuscript contains the list of contents, the preface and the first and last chapters.

D. List of Suggested Forthcoming Titles

1. TO CREATE OR ADMINISTRATE/ Rudolf Steiner’s Social Organics – A New Principle Of Civilization. This Social-Aesthetic Study no. 3 looks at the dramatic course of the General Assembly 1972 of the G.A.S. at the Goetheanum in Dornach in such a way that, notwithstanding the negative turn of events, the missing figure of the representative of humanity, can rise up in the heart and mind of the discerning reader.

2. THE PRIMAL THOUGHT – Rudolf Steiner’s Principle of Civilization and the Task of the Anthroposophical Society. This Social-Aesthetic Study addressed to Members of the General Anthroposophical Society. Part I contains an appeal to help prepare the return of Rudolf Steiner, followed by the development of the idea of the trinity through the method of soul observation. Part II contains an exposition on the Basic Social Law, an in-depth history of the ‘book question’ and calls for strengthening the ever threatened bond between the Anthroposophical Society and the anthroposophical movement through free deeds born out of knowledge.

3. THE SPIRITUAL AND SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RUDOLF STEINER’S PRINCIPLES. A continuation of the study on the ‘principles’ from a more practical-esoteric point of view.

* * *

Willehalm Institute for Anthroposophy as

Grail Research, Royal Art and Social Organics

The Willehalm Institute was founded by Robert Jan Kelder under the name of Eremos Institut für Gralsforschung in 1985 in Arlesheim near Basle, Switzerland. The name Eremos is old Greek meaning hermit and was chosen in connection with an exhibition on the historic Arlesheim Hermitage. This ancient Celtic sacred landscape at the foot of the Jura mountains became well known throughout Europe towards the end of the 18th century as an English Garden. According to the founder of anthroposophy or science of the Grail, Rudolf Steiner - who was born in 1861 in Kraljevic on the Balkan and who died in 1925 in Dornach, Switzerland – the Arlesheim Hermitage served in the 9th century as the Grail landscape Terre de Salvaesche with its center the Grail Palace Munsalvaesche. These for the modern (academic) mind startling, if not altogether impossible findings concerning this area were more recently verified by the Swiss Grail researcher and former military officer Werner Greub (1907 – 1997) in his remarkable book How The Grail Sites Were Found – Wolfram von Eschenbach and the Reality of the Grail that the Institute published in June 2001.In 1986 the Institute moved to Amsterdam where it changed its name to Willehalm, after the title and leading figure of the epic poem by the Grail poet and knight Wolfram von Eschenbach. Historically Willehalm is known as the Franconian William of Orange, paladin of Emperor Charles de Great, supreme army commander of the campaigns against the Moors and founder of the principality of Orange in the South of France at the end of the 8^th century. In the 12^th century he was named the patron saint of the knights. According to Werner Greub, Willehalm was none other than the mysterious master Kyot the Provençal, whom Wolfram calls the source for his famous Grail romance Parzival.

The aim of the Willehalm Institute is to protect, cultivate and further the work of Rudolf Steiner and that of his students among whom figure Werner Greub and Herbert Witzenmann (1906-1988), a philosopher, writer and former member of the Council of the Anthroposophical Society at the Goetheanum in Dornach.

From 2005 onwards the publication of books by the former Serbian Counter Intelligence agent and Director of Reserve Police International Dr. Slobodan R. Mitric was added, such as his Operation Twins (Part 1 and an excerpt of Part II), The Golden Tip – The Entanglement of the Upper and Underworld and the Murder of Gerrit Jan Heijn, Help! They’ve Kidnapped Me! Lady Di and 911 : The Accusation – Bringing the Guilty to Justice.

The Institute organizes lectures, gives slide show presentations and has published a number of publications and working translations, up till now mostly in Dutch. Further publications in English on Grail research, also in America and Canada, and travel, scientific and archeological study projects are planned. Persons or parties interested in visiting and studying the Grail sites discovered by Werner Greub in Europe or wishing to host a slideshow lecture and/or seminar on this subject, or on the work of Herbert Witzenmann or Slobodan Mitric are asked to contact the Willehalm Institute.

Further Anthroposophical Studies and Reports as of December 2011

1. Munsalvaesche in America – Towards the New Grail Community. A report by Robert J. Kelder on two working visits to America and Canada at the invitation of the Anthroposophical Society there around the turn of the millenium. Fifth revised and enlarged edition is in preparation. Can be ordered for €12 or US $16.00 (plus postage) at the address listed below.

2. How The Grail Sites Were Found - Wolfram von Eschenbach and the Reality of the Grail – First complete English translation of Werner Greub’s research report Wolfram von Eschenbach und die Wirklichkeit des Grals originally published by the Goetheanum, Dornach 1974. Contains the chapters Wolfram’s Astronomy and Wolfram the Historian plus detailed maps with legends of Wolfram’s Grail Country “Terre de Salvaesche” (The Arlesheim Hermitage) and the Grail ancestral land Alsace. Further in the Appendices: Excerpts from Greub’s third volume, the Arlesheim Hermitage Exhibition 1985 text The Arlesheim Hermitage as Grail Landscape, a letter from Adalbert Count von Keyserlingk about Greub’s work, a short biography of Werner Greub and a detailed rebuttal of C. Lindenberg’s review “Beyond Truth and Reality” of Greub’s first volume. This book was first presented in Montreal and New England in various (town) libraries including the Rudolf Steiner Library in Ghent. A third revised edition is in the make. (Letter size, 390 p. € 37.50 or US $50 plus postage). A Dutch translation has also been published.

3. From Grail Christianity to Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy – Translation of Greub’s third volume that never officially appeared until published by his son. Includes also parts from a second version. Second edition 120 p. (€15 or US $20 plus postage). The first edition was presented during an astrosophical conference on the Grail in Boulder, CO in 1999.

4. The Just Price – World Economy as Social Organics Three lectures by Herbert Witzenmann introducing Rudolf Steiners Course on World Economy (Dornach, 1922) as the new language and conception of the idea of threefold nature of the social organism. Third updated edition with a response to the criticism of the editors of The Threefold Review that Herbert Witzenmann is supposedly misrepresenting Rudolf Steiner’s Course on World Economy. €12 or US $16 (60 p.) (New edition soon to be published; Dutch version available).

List of Suggested Forthcoming Titles by Herbert Witzenmann

1. Currency as Consciousness – A New Financial System Demands a New Principle of Civilization (Dutch version available);

2. To Create or Administrate – Rudolf Steiner’s Social Organics/ A New Principle of Civilization (Dutch version available);

3. Social Organics – Ideas for the Reformation of the Economy.

Willehalm Institute

Kerkstraat 386A, 1017 JB Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Email: willehalm@planet.nl Tel. 00 31 20 6944.572

---

[1] First published in English under the title The Threefold Commonwealth, London 1923; second edition The Threefold Social Order, New York 1966 and third edition Towards Social Renewal, London 1977. Original title Die Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage in den Lebensnotwendigkeiten der Gegenwart und Zukunft.

[2] Translated from Die Weihnachtstagung zur Begründung der Allgemeinen Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft, Dornach 1963, p. 101, which also contains the sentence concerning the Goetheanum Building Association. English translation: The Christmas Conference for the Foundation of the General Anthroposophical Society (Hudson, 1990).

[3] This group has been disbanded in the face of the development of the constitutional issue. Its leading spokesman, Wilfried Heidt, along with other fellow theorists, such as Gerhard von Beckerath and Benedictus von Hardop, has joined together with members of the Council to form a working group to find a solution to the constitutional question. For further background information see Wilfried Heidt Does the Anthroposophical Society need to be refounded?, an article that appeared in the German Goetheanum News for Members in 1997 (Has been translated; exact reference could not found).

[4] See for a more penetrating analysis as well as a proposal to solve this constitutional issue “The Foreword to the Fifth Edition” of this booklet.

[5] See my report Munsalvaesche in America – Towards the New Grail Community on my lectures last year (1997) in Wilton, New Hampshire, of which an updated fifth edition will appear sometime in the fall.

[6] In this conference I will present my annotated translation of Werner Greub’s From Grail Christianity to Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy, which is appearing today, one day before my flight to Denver tomorrow morning. Update: A second, revised and enlarged edition appeared in 2001.

[7] Argoulos as such is not listed in the 1972 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. What is probably referred to here is Argolis or Argolid, the celebrated capital of Argos, “a name apparently signifying an agricultural plain, which was applied to several districts in ancient Greece…Traditionally the city was said to have been founded by the mythological Phoroneus, the son of the river-God Inachus about 1750 B.C. Derivations of a royal family from a god frequently implied that the human founder arrived as an invader, and this date is compatible with that assigned by many philologists and archeologists to the arrival of the first Greek-speaking people (the beginning of the 2^nd millennium B.C.).”

[8] While writing this introduction in the Rudolf Steiner Library during the week before the presentation of this booklet on September 2^nd, the Summer 2001 issue of News for Members arrived. In it was a report by S. Jüngel entitled “The Annual Meeting at the Goetheanum,” taken from Anthroposophy Worldwide #4, May 2001. Now, having had a close look at many past issues of this newsletter over the last few weeks, I was somewhat prepared for what I would encounter. And indeed, I was again struck by the number of errors, oversimplification, disinformation and even an unsubstantiated accusation in this report and as such again reminded of the veritable news black out with respect to uncomfortable, dissenting opinions in our ranks that is being hung over the membership at large by the present leadership and staff of the Goetheanum in Dornach, of which most members have not the faintest idea. Apparently not even the (former) editor of this newsletter, Joan Almon – who never saw fit to publish any of my critical but fair articles over the past few years or references to my talks or publications. In the January 1999 issue she wrote (on p. 13): “I know of no decisions to ban controversy in the publications of the Society.” This was in response to a question by Mary Rubach, to whom I once complained about this ban, who had written: “Why are there no divergent opinions about the Society which, after all makes this newsletter possible?” Well, dear members, out of my own bitter experience over the last 25 years in the Society in Europe, which is corroborated by the experience of many other so-called dissidents, such as Herbert Witzenmann, Werner Greub, Thomas Meyer, G. Bondarew, and as I have shown in my booklet Munsalvaesche in America, I can truly state that – apart from the publication of my motion this year in the Goetheanum on the election of the two new Council members, which arose almost out of a legal necessity – since 1984 hardly any of my almost yearly motions, requests and remarks at the General Assembly in Dornach have found their way into the official minutes and reports of these meetings in the Goetheanum News for Members, nor have hardly any of my many articles been published (completely) or been taken notice of in the newsletter of the Anthroposophical Society in Holland. When I finally confronted the late Manfred Schmidt-Brabant during a General Assembly in 1994 or 1995 with this glaring suppression of contributions from ordinary members, he answered as a matter of fact that this was simply an age-old custom. However, I checked it out, and it surely was not, rather an initiative started during the (late) President’s own term of office. True to supposed custom, this exchange was thus not reported in any official organ either; nor were my remarks pointing this out, spoken at the General Assembly in Dornach the next year (1996). Only those who were present can attest to them. Any future historiography of the Society worthy of its name will have to take these mishaps into account and rely not only on the official written documents, but also on those of the ‘dissidents’ and, as in the days of old, oral tradition. – In what follows I will try to identify some of the pitfalls of the said report by S. Jüngel, and of other reports, in as far as they are relevant for the proposed Kardeiz Saga to recall the Anthroposophical Society.

[9] Here the first error in the report creeps in: contrary to what Jüngel writes, it was not an AGM of the Anthroposophical Society, but of the General Anthroposophical Society. This distinction is important, as will become clearer later on.

[10] At the point in time, February 2001, of entering this motion, I had not yet coined the title Kardeiz Saga for the herewith-proposed solution to the constitutional question.

[11] With respect to my motion regarding the expansion of the Executive Council, the Jüngel report limits itself to an under the belt accusation, or rather insinuation: “Among the reasons given to reject certain motions were….interference with the freedom of Executive Council”. I beg your pardon? Interference with the Council’s freedom? I challenge Mr Jüngel to substantiate this unfounded charge or else withdraw it. As the discerning reader who will read on to study the three points that my motion raised may decide for himself, it is the other way around: the Council is interfering with the freedom of members to raise motions, is suppressing free speech, is preventing a clarification of the ‘as-if situation’ of the Society and is thereby guilty of misrepresenting the principles and of keeping the Alloy King on his throne, instead of liberating him as in Goethe’s Fairy Tale of the Beautiful Lily and the Green Snake!

[12] Here the disinformation in the report and, indeed, the hypocrisy on the part of the present Goetheanum leadership enters into the picture: first of all there were not 16 motions, as the report states, but 12 motions and 4 requests. This distinction is important, because since 1975 a legal differentiation was made between motions and requests, which is not found in the principles. Secondly, the report states with respect to the motions and voting that “Paul Mackay began by explaining the various kinds of motions and how they are handled according to Swiss regulations.” Instead of giving the Swiss regulations priority over the principles, one would expect of a Council – that in an official announcement only a few years ago stated that it saw as its prime task the realization of the statutes (principles) – that it would stand for and guarantee the right of members to raise motions and not have them simply tabled by anti-motions without any real discussion. In the normal world this is called lip service, it is a political procedure and as such a violation of paragraph 4 of the principles of the Anthroposophical Society, which states: “Politics it does not consider to be among its tasks.” – Interestingly enough, however, in the translation of the book The Christmas Conference (as can be read on pp. 59 and 142) this outright rejection of politics has been weakened to party politics. Is this perhaps an example of going along with the tide?

[13] None of these important details were mentioned in the report, which stated only that “in each case the motions to reject or table were passed by a large majority,” thus glossing over the fact that Biemond’s motion, which was whole-heartedly supported by the Council, did not make it. Instead, the impression was given that all this unnecessary and time consuming motion business stood in the way of more important agenda points initiated by the Council: “Time was reserved for our theme of the year, even if some of it had to be sacrificed (my italics) to handle the many motions.” Again a misconception as to the social organic nature of a General Assembly with the all-important role of the members and spontaneous discussions debate and decision-making comes to the fore without which the social organic counter-current principle as developed in this social esthetic study cannot function.

[14] This is especially the case in the third social esthetic essay To Create or Administrate / Rudolf Steiner’s Social Organics – A New Principle of Civilization (not yet translated), where the social organic counter-current principle is developed by looking at the course of the General Assembly 1972 in Dornach in such a way that, notwithstanding the negative turn of events, the missing figure of the representative of humanity, can rise up in the heart and mind of the discerning reader.

[15] I write these qualifications about the ‘so-called Anthroposophical Society,’ because too often it is overlooked that in the first principle the Anthroposophical Society is described as an idealistic Society-to-be: “The Anthroposophical Society is to be (my italics) a union of people who wish to cultivate the life of soul in the individual as well as in human society on the basis of a true knowledge of the spiritual world.” Elsewhere (paragraphs 4 and 9), the Society is characterized as existing in the (Christian) middle realm between the Ahrimanic pole of (power) politics and the Luciferic pole of sectarianism, as a society in which dogmatism ought to be excluded. This in effect means that when such symptoms come to the fore in a society that calls itself, or is called anthroposophical by its members or outsiders, one cannot, realistically speaking, regard it as such. This applies, by the way, also to the human being who calls him- or herself, or is called, an anthroposophist. Yet who ever, but noble souls, make such a fine distinction?

[16] While editing this foreword for the 6^th edition, it occurred to me that I might have overlooked the fact that the Jüngel report was only the first of two. I have no way of immediately checking this here in Montreal, but if it turns out to be so, it does not diminish much of what has been said here, for it fits the general trend and shows where the priorities by the current Goetheanum reporters lie.

[17] The title of this article in Dutch was “16 keer Rudolf Steiner – Het bewijs is geleverd: Rudolf Steiner deugde niet”. Another translation would be: Rudolf Steiner Was a Bad Character. ‘Deugd’ means virtue, so that this in effect was a case of defamation of character. Already during the previous AGM in Dornach, and the one of the Dutch Society, I had attempted to point to the Achilles heel of the Commission’s work through a motion and text entitled “A Higher Court Of Appeal”; my point being that the Goetheanum, School for Spiritual Science as the highest instance should intervene to correct and rewrite the two negative, faulty and damaging conclusions of a report that 1. Did not properly interpret nor fully complete its original task; 2. Its legalistic methodology, which was not given the upper hand in the original task, was not really thought through to the end; and that as a result 3. The negative public opinion that was formed through the slanted headlines carried by the media was not primarily the fault of the media, but of the commission itself. As may be expected, this motion was soundly defeated at the AGM 2000 in Dornach. In his report “No Racism, No Racist Doctrine” in News for Members – August 2000, S. Jüngel makes no mention of this. See the Dutch Willehalm Institute News (WIN), April 20, 2001 and my Anthroposophical Chronicle Anthroposophische Kroniek 1994 – 2001 / Mijlpaal of Molensteen? on the many motions and steps that were taken to avert the malicious misuse by the media of these faulty, politically correct conclusions. Alas, all to no avail!

[18] Ted van Baarda himself, a lawyer and President of the (meanwhile disbanded) Dutch Commission on Race, as well as Martin Barkhoff, the official P.R. man for the Anthroposophical Society in Germany both refused to accept a copy. Various representatives of Anthroposophical journals and Council members did, but never made any reference to it, neither here in America nor in Europe. If this is not a ban, what is?

[19] Translated from the Willehalm Institute Newsletter, April 20, 2001. The complete verdict as well as the reasons that the Council gave for going to court can be read in my Anthroposofische kroniek: 1994-2001 (Willehalm Institute, Amsterdam, 2001). In “Countering Allegations of Racism in the Netherlands” in News for Members – Winter 2001, our S. Jüngel merely states “a critical, left-wing weekly, De Groene Amsterdammer, published an extremely one-sided, negative article. The Anthroposophical Society in the Netherlands then went to court against this paper and lost on May 31, 2000.” Then his report cites four observations by Ramon Brüll, claiming that among other things “the historical and legal approach of the commission did away with any need to distance ourselves from Rudolf Steiner”, without mentioning that R. Brüll, as the publisher of the German translation of the Van Baarda Interim Report, refused to review in his journal Info-3 a booklet of essays written by four Dutch authors – including one by yours truly entitled Spiritual Capitulation – that was extremely critical of this report, saying that this was merely an internal matter of the Anthroposophical Society.

[20] A similar motion, supported by some 24 members, former members and friends of the Anthroposophical Society in the Netherlands, was submitted to the AGM of the Dutch Society later that spring. Only the motion itself, not the motivation, was printed in the monthly Dutch newsletter Motief, which no longer views itself as an organ of the Society, as stipulated by the principles (nr 14), but as a publication of the Society, a subtle but significant change. Similar to the procedure in Dornach of simply tabling it, the motion was not dealt with, the only difference being that the initiative not to discuss the motion came from the Council itself and not a member. A point of order entered when it came time to discharge the Council in order to make it clear to the General Assembly that if it voted to endorse the account of the Council on its activities of the past year, it would be co-responsible for the work of the Van Baarda commission was not recognized – a clear violation of the customs of Dutch association law. This was an absolute novelty in the history of the Dutch Society in a country which, after all, prides itself on its record of free speech and tolerance. According to the president of the Dutch Society, Ron Dunselman, in an article in News for Members – Autumn 2000, the Van Baarda final report has ushered in “A New Phase for Anthroposophy”, a phase in which “knowledge of the philosophical ideas behind anthroposophy was and still is not necessary. What matters most for society is anthroposophy’s work for the good of humanity; anthroposophy does not have to be ‘sold’”. How this and other remarks in this article can be rhymed with the age of the consciousness soul is a mystery to me, but then I vividly remember my first encounter with certain more negative aspects of the Dutch approach to anthroposophy through the remarks of Bernard Lievegoed, the former president of the Society in Holland, who said that for the time being anthroposophy in Holland has to be approached in the manner of the intellectual or rational soul. Instead of spiritualizing the intellect, intellectualizing the spirit?

[21] Rudolf Steiner, The Christmas Conference, p. 54 ff.

[22] Rudolf Grosse in his book The Christmas Foundation – Beginning of a New Cosmic Age (Vancouver, 1984) reports (on p. 131 ff.): “In an essay dated June 28, 1924, Ita Wegman wrote: ‘We must preserve continuity in our work right down to its very form, so that no fragmentation or separation can take place between the anthroposophical body of wisdom and the personality of Rudolf Steiner. For he himself once said: ‘Once I have departed from the physical plane, if the opposition forces then succeed in separating Anthroposophy from me by allowing the broad masses of humanity to hear of my teachings without knowing anything about me, it would become superficial, and this would be just what the ahrimanic beings want and intend.’ – And in her essay Welches sind die Aufgaben des Nachlassvereins (What are the tasks of the Literary Estate?) Marie Steiner wrote: ‘He spoke to me about the time when he would no longer be among us, when it would fall to me to stand up for his work and strive to maintain the link between this great work for mankind and his name. He said that only a few would remain faithful to him and that if his work were to become separated from his name it would become estranged from its original intentions. Then the opposing powers would seize the forces contained in it and use them for their own purposes.’ (July 1945)”. For all of her great service and devotion to Rudolf Steiner’s work, Marie Steiner’s role in the disappearance of the annotation of the School from the editions published by Rudolf Steiner’s Literary Estate that she founded outside the realm of the Anthroposophical Society must be looked at very critically and dispassionately, something that Herbert Witzenmann has done in his social esthetic study nr. 4 The Primal Thought – Rudolf Steiner’s Principle of Civilization and the Task of the Anthroposophical Society (not yet translated).

[23] I am aware of the criticism that the United States Constitution, especially in matters relating to financial issues, has been bypassed or even trespassed on by various means; a treatment similar to that given to the principles. To delve into this topic, however, is beyond the scope of this foreword.

[24] This is a clearly a Luciferic tendency in the work of S. Prokofieff, who during a recent meeting at the Goetheanum gave a thunderous speech, which earned him similar applause, squarely putting down the Ahrimanic tendency of looking only at the legalistic and historic twists of fate that befell the Society from 1923-1925 and calling for “more anthroposophy”. One could almost see him in the spirit pounding his fists or his shoe on the table. To show, however, that there is also a balanced way of putting more anthroposophy in this thorny constitutional question is the aim of this foreword, indeed of the whole Kardeiz Saga.

[25] If I may be allowed a more personal comment here: As a member of the First Class of the School for Spiritual Science, I consider it not only my right, but my duty to observe that union or concord with the leadership of the Goetheanum that Rudolf Steiner demanded from its members. This union, in my considered opinion, applies to all members of the school, including the present Council, for since Rudolf Steiner did not appoint his legal successor; he himself has remained the head, the leader of the Goetheanum. As a representative of anthroposophy it is furthermore one’s duty to point out when and where this union with the leadership is disregarded or trampled on. To those who claim that the leader of a spiritual school must be physically present on earth, I say that the Anti-Goetheanum School of Ahriman, which Rudolf Steiner referred to as becoming more and more active on earth, has no visible leader on earth, yet who would deny its existence?

[26] In the more than 10 years that the constitution question has now occupied center stage, the views of Herbert Witzenmann as expressed in this and other social esthetic studies have hardly received any notice. I attempted to correct this in my last two motions at the AGM in Dornach in which I referred to his study To Create or Administrate. In this work a qualitative distinction is made between a spiritual society and an administrative one, a qualitative distinction related to the difference between a pure, universal concept or idea and a representation or individualized concept. From his observation of a GM of the General Anthroposophical Society in 1972 and earlier ones, Herbert Witzenmann then comes to the conclusion that the administrative mentality and attitude displayed in the proceedings of the Society has supplanted the spiritually creative aspect, thereby corroborating from an inside point of view the conclusions made by those who restricted themselves to a minute study of the available legal and historical documents of the period 1923 - 1925, namely that what we call the Anthroposophical Society is in reality the old Goetheanum Building Association in a different dress. But Rudolf Steiner in his Philosophy of Spiritual Activity and elsewhere points out that this fine but essential distinction is not even made by most philosophers; how can one then expect that social scientists pause to reflect on this? Yet anthroposophists must make it.

[27] There are so many errors and omissions in the conclusions of this Riemer report that it is impossible to deal with them all here. None of the massive criticism that at least three members of the present Constitution group, B. Hardop, W. Heidt and G. von Beckerath have made of it, has reached these shores where in general it is believed that there are more important things to attend to. Seen individually this is true; but social organically speaking not, for ideas are what nourishes the social organism. Lack of viable ideas will cause misery and chaos, in the end even war and hunger. This is what Rudolf Steiner’s fundamental social law can teach us.

[28] As I have pointed out earlier and as I can testify on the basis of my own experience of the last 25 odd years, it is rather the other way around: the administrative mentality has overcome and displaced the spiritually creative one. This does not of course rule out that the Christmas Conference continues to exist in the hearts and minds of individual anthroposophists, indeed Rudolf Steiner at that Conference said that that was the basic determining principle or condition for its continued existence. This is also the basis for act 2 and 3 of the Kardeiz Saga.

[29] Kasper Hauser, “The Child Of Europe”, was soon after birth abducted from the maternity ward – with someone else surreptitiously being put in his place – and at an early age kept in a dark dungeon in southern Germany during the early part of the 19^th century in order to thwart his soul development and as such prevent him from assuming his destiny to become a modern sort of priest-king. Similarly, one could say that right after the birth of the Anthroposophical Society of the Christmas Foundation of 1923, it was “snatched away” and replaced by the Association of the General Anthroposophical Society founded in 1925 as the administrative and economic support group for the Anthroposophical Society. In the course of time the former (GAS) was regarded and taken to be the latter (AS), with the effect of paralyzing and stunting its spiritual growth and development. This is in essence the root of the constitutional question.

[30] There seem to be some moves underway in the US and Europe in that direction. In the US that is the Goetheanum West Giving Group and the newly formed Council of Anthroposophical Organizations. I write seem, because none of them are based, as far as I can glean from their own reports and statement of purpose, on a clear and encompassing knowledge of the intentions of Rudolf Steiner and consequently how the present crisis situation arose and what this situation demands in order to be resolved. In my scenario for the Kardeiz Saga, I will delve deeper into these moves.

[31] See the footnotes to my translation of the principles (statutes) in the appendix 1. This is also an opportune moment to deal with the question that some readers might have raised already at the beginning of this whole booklet or even by looking at its title; namely why the original statutes of the Anthroposophical Society are called principles here, a change in name which goes back to an indication apparently given by Rudolf Steiner in 1925 on his sickbed to his secretary Gunther Wachsmuth. This has been contested vehemently by some scholars who point out that Rudolf Steiner repeatedly said during the Christmas Conference that the statutes are not to be considered principles. Furthermore, it could be argued, a change in the name of the statutes would require a vote of the Anthroposophical Society. And after all, in the little booklet one receives on becoming a member they are called statutes (again). Well, they are all good points, but the original title of this booklet was principles and not statutes (in the text in italics), and Rudolf Steiner also said during the Christmas Conference that they are not ordinary statutes either. So, until an extra-ordinary meeting of the Anthroposophical Society calls itself back into existence and endorses the principles as statutes again, I will stick to the word principles. As may have been noticed, I did drop the word General from the (German) title, because this was clearly a mistake in the original.

[32] There is a note here saying “A legal term defined by Webster’s as ‘the substitution of a new obligation or contract for an old one by the mutual agreement of all parties concerned.’” This note may have been inserted by the translator, without knowing that this term ‘novation’ applies to a serious and well defined concept by B. Hardop, a German lawyer, anthroposophist and member of the present Constitution working group, to renew the Anthroposophical Society. As such this general note does not do much justice to Hardop’s particular scenario. Another case of oversimplification? Or misinformation, because Mackay was certainly aware of the above specific context to which this word applied.

[33] “With these words, Trevrizent indicates the actual new impulse in history, which became possible during the triple great conjunction in the constellation of Pisces. Until then, all striving for the Grail was of no use. One had to be divinely summoned by Heaven to the Grail. This changed with Parzival. Through independent thinking and conscious striving for the Grail, Parzival himself created the preconditions so that the Grail could become his own. This is an absolute novelty, the actual great miracle of the history of the Grail.” See Werner Greub, How The Grail Sites Were Found, translated by Robert J. Kelder, Willehalm Institute Press, Amsterdam 2001, p. 163.

[34] According to Werner Greub’s How The Grail Sites Were Found (Amsterdam 2001) the coronation of Kardeiz took place in Dornachbrugg, Switzerland on Whitsuntide, May 12, 848. The lost kingdoms that he regained were all located in present-day Alsace.

[35] A number of important elements and events concerning the constitution issue and the life of the Anthroposophical Society could not be woven into this foreword without making it a book, for which the following title suggests itself: A Union of People – The Kardeiz Saga for the Review, Recall and Renewal of the Anthroposophical Society.

[36] Quoted from “Instead of a Foreword – A Challenge to Joint Research” to Werner Greub’s From Grail Christianity to Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy, Willehalm Institute Press, Amsterdam, 2001, p. 8.

* These two essays are not as yet included in this working translation.

** Added to the appendix in this publication has been a new translation of the Foundation Stone Meditation that Rudolf Steiner delivered during the Christmas Conference of 1923/24.

[37] Referred to here is the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung set up by Marie Steiner in 1943 to administrate Rudolf Steiner‘s literary estate, which up till then had been done by the Philosophical-Anthroposophical Publishing Co. founded by M. Steiner in Berlin. As the legal heir to Rudolf Steiner’s estate, this was within her right, but it brought her in conflict with the statutes of the Anthroposophical Society (especially paragraph 8) which provided that the esoteric lectures by Rudolf Steiner were to appear as “publications of the Goetheanum, Free School of Spiritual Science”. This gave rise to the so-called book question which up till today has not really been solved; on the contrary the adverse effects of it become more and more obvious, e.g. through the fact that the Goetheanum, the Rudolf Steiner Estate and the Society in Holland, do not do enough in their power to protect and explain certain passages in the works of Rudolf Steiner, which to certain novices appear to be of a discriminatory, even racist nature. In an article entitled Spiritual Capitulation? published with three other articles by Dutch anthroposophists in a booklet of commentary and criticism (available from the Willehalm Institute) called Geen sprake van… (No Way…) on the Van Baarda report on Anthroposophy and the Race Issue ,which was published recently by the Dutch Society, the idea was put forward that anthroposophy can only be judged on the basis of a self-proclaimed spiritual ‘mystery right’ engendered by the before-mentioned paragraph 8 and not by the spirit and letter of criminal law, such as has been done in the Van Baarda report. More about Herbert Witzenmann’s efforts to solve the ‘book question’ can be read in his Statement of Conscience (Rechenschaftsbericht) and in his last work on this subject The Primal Thought – Rudolf Steiner’s Principle of Civilisation and the Task of the Anthroposophical Society (Der Urgedanke – Rudolf Steiners Zivilisationsprinzip und die Aufgabe der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft, not yet translated.) See also the list on his works available in English at the end of this booklet.

[38] A second edition was published in 1981 by Verlag Beiträge zur Weltlage in Dornach with the title Rechenschaftsbericht. A working translation of it under the title Statement of Conscience with relevant historic and literary documents is available for private use from the Willehalm Institute and can also be read the Rudolf Steiner Library in Ghent, NY.

[39] This appeared in a special edition of the “Bulletins” (Mittelungen, No. 47, 48 and 49/50 in 1978) in Dornach with the title The Spiritual and Social Significance of Rudolf Steiner’s Principles (Die Prinzipien Rudolf Steiners in ihrer sozialen und spirituellen Bedeutung, not yet translated.)

[40] See especially Why I do not Consent to the Decision of January 14, 1968 (“Warum Ich dem Beschluss vom 14. Januar 1968 nicht zustimme”) which appeared in the Anthroposophic Newsheet, 36th Vol. No. 7/8 from February 25, 1978. A complete revision hereof can be read in the above-mentioned Statement of Conscience. See further Im Vertrauen auf Verständnis, Dornach, 1972 (Confiding in Understanding) Vergangenheitsschatten und Zukunftslicht, 1972 (Shadows of the Past and Light of the Future) published in an enlarged a 2^nd edition under the title Gestalten oder Verwalten / Rudolf Steiner’s Sozialorganik – ein neues Zivilisationsprinzip, Dornach 1986 (To Create or Administrate / Rudolf Steiner’s Social Organics – A New Principle of Civilization); Im Bemühen um Klärung, 1973 (An Attempt at Clarification), all not (yet) translated. These German titles can be ordered from the Goetheanum Verlag in Dornach. See also the essays in Pupilship in the Sign of the Rose-Cross (Dornach, 1983) that all deal in one way or another with the far-reaching ramifications of the still unsolved ‘book question’.

[41] A legendary lawgiver of the ancient Greek state of Sparta who flourished in the 9^th century B.C.

[42] In the first edition of this study the following sentence read: “He therefore laid the foundation stone for the future in the hearts of the members of the Anthroposophical Society.” This was quite justly left out, because it gives too much the impression of a passive, instead of an active reception of the Foundation Stone by the members. This Foundation Stone lives by the grace of this spiritual activity of the members in harboring it with all their heart and soul.

[43] When the author of this article some years ago pointed out in a brief summary the numerical laws of the ‘principles’, which have been elaborated here in more detail, a member of the audience raised the objection, that such 'nominalism' was not commensurate with the being of anthroposophy. This objection completely missed the mark. For the intention of the author was not to prove the existence of an externally evident regularity, but to try to demonstrate that this regularity is the expression of an inner process. When the soul experiences this through creative participation, it is already adopting a meditative attitude and assuming a meditative mood.

[44] No more attention shall be paid to gender wherever in the context both genders are possible.

[45] The discovery of the threefold-dynamic basis of the ‘principles’ leads to numerous other insights into their significant structure and structural significance. To go into this would lie outside the scope and intention of these remarks whose purpose it was to draw attention to their basic form.

1 Some notes have been added by the translator in view of the movement afoot to revise these statutes, now called principles, in such a manner that they can again be used as actual statutes for a reborn Anthroposophical Society.

* The Anthroposophical Society is continuous with the Anthroposophical Society founded in 1912, but for the goals set at that time it wants to create an independent point of departure that is in keeping with the spirit of the time. (Original note from 1923).

4 The official translation of these statutes by G. Adams in The Life, Nature and Cultivation of Anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner Press, copyright 1963 by The Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain (where they are steadfastly called Principles of the General Anthroposophical Society, even though the original reads statutes of the Anthroposophical Society) reads the center of its work, instead of a center. This may seem a minor point, but it is not, because the original formulation leaves possibilities open that other centers could spring up in the course of time where the spirit of the Goetheanum prevails. Update: In the new edition of this book (Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1996), the term General Anthroposophical Society has only been kept for the first two statutes; after that it is Anthroposophical Society.

5 Here an amendment is needed to state that Rudolf Steiner, without having named a successor, died in 1925, and that subsequently he was unable to complete the second and third class. This means that there is no institutional continuity of the Free School for Spiritual Science and that all actions performed in the name of this School must be rigorously checked by those involved on their congruity with the leadership of the spiritual Goetheanum, Rudolf Steiner, on the basis of direct contact or on the many indications he left in his work. See for further valuable suggestions in this direction the essay on the spiritual and social significance of the ‘principles’ (not yet translated) by Herbert Witzenmann.

** The conditions for entering a path of schooling have also been made open to the general public and shall continue to be made available. (Original note from 1923).

6 This central article has never properly been understood and consequently observed. Right after the Christmas Conference many esoteric lectures by Rudolf Steiner were namely issued without the required moral protection of the annotation of the Free School and since the founding of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung (Administration of Rudolf Steiner’s Estate) by M. Steiner in 1943, it completely disappeared as such from the editions of this body. The significance and consequences of this have been discussed in the previous pages, it must however be dealt with and solved before a reborn Anthroposophical Society can in fact adopt these ‘principles’ as her statutes.

7 This last sentence is still missing from the official version of the ‘principles’ as well as from the official translations, even though it was added by Rudolf Steiner and endorsed by the members during the Christmas Conference. It supplies namely a legal basis for members to hold an extra-ordinary General Meeting, even though the number or percentage of members needed to call such a meeting was not listed in the fragment found of the original by-laws.

8 The G. Adams translation reads: “Membership shall be applied for in writing and can be obtained through admission by the Executive at Dornach; each card of membership has to be signed by the President of the Society.” This centralist procedure for becoming a member is borrowed from paragraph 4 of the statutes of the G.A.S.: “Membership is granted by the Vorstand on the basis of a written application.” This is one of the places where the attempt to artificially amalgamate the two originally distinct anthroposophical bodies becomes visible. That the Anthroposophical Society was indeed a distinct entity is borne out by the fact that according to Swiss Civil Law (ZGB) it was a legal person, because it had written statutes and an elected Council. It did not need to be commercially registered, because it undertook no commercial activities. This was different for the association G.A.S. consisting of an administrative body, a building association, a publishing company and a medical clinic. For this purpose the ‘principles’ were not at all designed, and to discard them with the argument that they were not suitable for an economic association, as is sometimes argued, is completely misleading. See the Kardeiz Saga introduction to this fifth edition how to restore the Anthroposophical Society to its original state in order to realize its original mission. Update: in the new edition (1996) the sentences on membership have been corrected.

9 This paragraph was missing in the translation by G. Adams. It also will have to be amended: with the names of the future members of the Council under whom the Anthroposophical Society is restored.

* Most translations read here: “In Christ death becomes life”. Thanks to a suggestion by Nelson Willby, I have come around to the view that the opposite is right in the sense of the Latin “In Christo morimur”; we die in Christ, setting the stage for the resurrection in the Holy Spirit.