Waldorf Problems

 

 

Let's step back, for a moment, and examine the mind of Rudolf Steiner. It is the original source of Waldorf problems. So let's look at it, briefly.

 

I promise, this will be very, very brief. Almost incredibly brief. But do you really want to spend much time in Steiner's mind?

 

   

My last slim hope that I might one day find a Steiner book that makes sense has been dashed.

 

I focused my little hope on Steiner's works about beekeeping. (Yes, he opined about bees. Also compost. Also medicine. Also...you name it. Whatever you name, Steiner knew more about it than you do. According to Steiner.)

 

I thought that perhaps here, in this little corner of his wide universe, Steiner would cut the crap and just lay out useful, practical info about something, i.e., the care and upkeep of bees and beehives. No astral bodies, no higher worlds, no nuthin', I hoped.

But Steiner was too clever for me. So I give up. I surrender. Rudolf Steiner could make Anthroposophical garbage out of any topic tossed his way. The man was, in his own special way, good.

By way of raising the flag or surrender, I will offer just two quotes. I submit that they are weird and grotesque. I also submit that they show us a truly unusual mind at work.

 

I have no interest in attacking Steiner as a man. Such an attack would be an illogical "ad hominem" argument. I'd like to stipulate that Steiner was not insane, despite plentiful evidence to the contrary. If we make this stipulation, then Steiner was either what he claimed to be, a clairvoyant who was able to see into spirit realms, or he was a charlatan who quite consciously made up nonsense for the gullible to swallow. I'll leave the call to you.

 

Here is the first quotation:

"The group soul of a beehive is a very high level being, higher than that of ants. It is of such a high development that you might almost say it is cosmically precocious. It has attained a level of evolutionary development that human beings will later reach in the Venus cycle, which follows the completion of the present Earth cycle...The group soul of corals, however, is on a still higher plane..." [1]

And lest you think this passage may not be truly representative of the book, BEES, I offer one more passage:

"We have stated that there are certain forms of animals that go too far in the process of strangulation so that they are no longer able to send back to the astral plane again all that they have brought down to the physical plane." [2]

But that passage doesn't make sense, you say. Bingo.

ENDNOTES

[1] Rudolf Steiner, BEES (Anthroposophic Press, 1998), p. 176.

[2] Ibid., p. 173.