Download or read book The Agriculture Course Koberwitz Whitsun 1924 written by Peter Selg and published by Temple Lodge Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I grew up entirely among peasant folk, and in my spirit I have always remained there--I indicated this in my autobiography. Though it was not on a large farming estate as you have here, in a smaller domain I myself planted potatoes, and though I did not breed horses, at any rate I helped to breed pigs. And in the farmyard of our immediate neighborhood I lent a hand with the cattle. These things were very close to me for a long time. I took part in them actively. Thus I do at any rate have a love of farming..." -- Rudolf Steiner Biodynamic agriculture, which has increased consistently in popularity over the years, was born in June 1924 from a single course of eight lectures by Rudolf Steiner in Koberwitz (now in Poland). In The Agriculture Course, Peter Selg presents a remarkable study of the context of those lectures, conveying a tangible sense of the celebratory mood and atmosphere of those events at Pentecost. He highlights Steiner's intentions for the course--and parallel lectures in Breslau--by drawing widely on the available literature and numerous archival sources. Recognizing that chemical manipulation of agriculture was neither desirable nor sustainable, Steiner helped launch an agricultural movement whose outlook is truly pioneering in spirit. As Selg describes, Steiner saw that "what was needed instead was new, conscious insight into life forces and laws, into the nature of organisms, into the diverse realms of nature, and the determining factors of both Earth and cosmos that influence them." The vivid picture painted here reveals the importance that Steiner placed on launching this work, as well as the extent to which his initiative offered an answer to the emerging forces of cultural and political destruction that would lead to World War II. The Agriculture Course, Koberwitz, Whitsun 1924 is a translation from German of Koberwitz 1924: Rudolf Steiner und der Landwirtschaftliche Kurs (Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 2009).
Download or read book Agriculture Course written by Rudolf Steiner and published by Rudolf Steiner Press. This book was released on 2013-04-02 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Steiner's original contribution to human knowledge was based on his ability to conduct 'spiritual research', the investigation of metaphysical dimensions of existence. With his scientific and philosophical training, he brought a new systematic discipline to the field, allowing for conscious methods and comprehensive results. A natural seer from childhood, he cultivated his spiritual vision to a high degree, enabling him to speak with authority on previously veiled mysteries of life. The evolving human being; Cosmos as the source of life; Plants and the living earth; Farms and the realms of nature; Bringing the chemical elements to life; Soil and the world of spirit; Supporting and regulating life processes; Spirits of the elements; Nutrition and vitality; Responsibility for the future.
Download or read book Eco Alchemy written by Dan McKanan and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For nearly a century, the worldwide anthroposophical movement has been a catalyst for environmental activism, helping to bring to life many modern ecological practices such as organic farming, community-supported agriculture, and green banking. Yet the spiritual practice of anthroposophy remains unknown to most environmentalists. A historical and ethnographic study of the environmental movement, Eco-Alchemy uncovers for the first time the profound influences of anthroposophy and its founder, Rudolf Steiner, whose holistic worldview, rooted in esoteric spirituality, inspired the movement. Dan McKanan shows that environmentalism is itself a complex ecosystem and that it would not be as diverse or transformative without the contributions of anthroposophy.
Download or read book Reverse Ritual written by Rudolf Steiner and published by SteinerBooks. This book was released on 2001 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religious ritual is often seen as a way of bringing divine influences down into the material world. In this profound and stimulating work, Rudolf Steiner and Friedrich Benesch introduce the idea of "reverse ritual"--a way that each of us can raise our souls to the spiritual realm. In this process, the everyday world becomes a portal through which we can enter the dimension of the sacred. Here, each of us can be a "priest," and each of our actions can be a cosmic, ritual act. This stimulating collection of writings on spiritual communion of humanity includes two further lectures by Steiner that show how this process can engage our social lives. Also included are two additional essays as appendices: "Sacramental and Spiritual Communion" by Dietrich Asten and "Human Encounters and Karma" by Athys Floride. The introduction by Christopher Schaefer brings these ideas into focus for modern seekers. Contents: Part One: "The Spiritual Communion of Humanity" (5 lectures from GA 219) Part Two: "Preparing for the Sixth Epoch" Part Three: Commentaries by Friedrich Benesch Appendices: Selections from Dietrich Asten: "Spiritual and Sacramental Communion" & Athys Floride: "Human Encounters and Karma."
Download or read book Psychotronics and a Biodynamic Garden written by George Kuepper and published by SteinerBooks. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dowsing and radionics are two practices and procedures for interpreting and interacting with the natural world. They nurture the processes of gardening, farming, and landscaping through communication with subtle levels of reality. Nature spirits and other forms of intelligence in nature play major roles. They can be readily contacted and nourished when we combine psychotronic methods with the traditional practices of a biodynamic approach. George Kuepper describes and discusses numerous procedures that have evolved from decades of working with agricultural radionics and recent research in his biodynamic garden. This guidebook to growing better food is well referenced, with numerous illustrations, photos, tables, and examples. Gardeners and farmers who want to improve their plants and harvests using sustainable methods will find practical help and much food for thought here. "Psychotronics covers a range of modalities (including dowsing and radionics) that can be used to access and study the hidden reality behind our physical world. It provides us with practical means for investigating, navigating, and even changing this reality. Without a doubt, psychotronics is controversial and the amount of misinformation and disinformation surrounding it is dizzying. So, understand that what I'm presenting here is a working paradigm. It will explain how I have come to understand psychotronics and how I am using it." --George Kuepper (from the book) Includes 55 illustrations, diagrams, and charts.
Download or read book Vitality written by Jens-Otto Andersen and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2019-03-12 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Todays science has a huge knowledge about the compounds in our foods - minerals, proteins, vitamins, antioxidants etc. - but we must include also their vitality properties to fully understand food quality. Vitality here means the ability of living organisms to keep up their life processes and life cycle while being under heavy pressure from the surroundings. So living organisms are not understood based on componds alone, and we must look at their more or less vulnerable organs and life processes. In the same way we need to re-define our concept of health, from absence of single diseases towards the ability of the organism to maintain a complex balance in the organs and the life processes during the major changes taking place recurringly during our life cycle. The book presents in a popular way a spectrum of vitality examples, taken from research and everyday life.
Download or read book The Light Root written by Ralf Roessner with Clemens Hildebrandt and published by Temple Lodge Publishing. This book was released on 2014-06-03 with total page 49 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘This plant is the only one which is in a position to store light ether; this will be indispensable for people in future.’ – Rudolf Steiner Koberwitz, Whitsun 1924: Rudolf Steiner had just completed his momentous lecture course on biodynamic agriculture and was waiting for a car to take him to the station. Suddenly he was approached by two of his pupils with an urgent question: Would his new indications for treating soil and vegetables be sufficient to provide, ‘...nutrition appropriate to our times and in accordance with the spirit?’ Steiner’s frank response was somewhat surprising: ‘It will not be sufficient even in the most favourable circumstances. What should be done is to cultivate the Dioscorea batatas in Europe so that it can take over from the potato as the staple diet.’ In the many decades since that conversation, various attempts have been made to cultivate Dioscorea batatas – the ‘light root’ – in Europe, initially by Steiner’s close colleague Guenther Wachsmuth. More recently, biodynamic farmer Ralf Roessner began to research the plant and its background, but soon discovered problems with the specimens available in Europe. Unsatisfied with the standard of the plants, in 2002 he travelled to the original growing areas of Dioscorea batatas in China, where he was able to form a comprehensive picture of the best planting methods and conditions. ‘The nodules which I found and brought back with me’, he writes, ‘showed similar light ether characteristics to the original plants of Wachsmuth’s’. Having successfully cultivated and marketed this light root, Roessner presents some carefully assembled introductory materials based on his experiences and those of a colleague. This small book, illustrated with colour images, is intended for people who wish to discover more about the plant’s being and spiritual mission as a ‘helper of progress’. Roessner explains how the light root stores ‘light ether’ in a unique manner, making it not only a valuable food, but also a ‘carrier of the spirit’. This light root could even ‘...decisively influence the development of humanity and the earth’. Aside from studying esoteric aspects, he gives answers to frequently-asked practical questions about the plant and its cultivation.
Download or read book California Cuisine and Just Food written by Sally K. Fairfax and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2012-10-05 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of the shift in focus to access and fairness among San Francisco Bay Area alternative food activists and advocates. Can a celebrity chef find common ground with an urban community organizer? Can a maker of organic cheese and a farm worker share an agenda for improving America's food? In the San Francisco Bay area, unexpected alliances signal the widening concerns of diverse alternative food proponents. What began as niche preoccupations with parks, the environment, food aesthetics, and taste has become a broader and more integrated effort to achieve food democracy: agricultural sustainability, access for all to good food, fairness for workers and producers, and public health. This book maps that evolution in northern California. The authors show that progress toward food democracy in the Bay area has been significant: innovators have built on familiar yet quite radical understandings of regional cuisine to generate new, broadly shared expectations about food quality, and activists have targeted the problems that the conventional food system creates. But, they caution despite the Bay Area's favorable climate, progressive politics, and food culture many challenges remain.
Download or read book The Birth of a New Agriculture written by Adalbert Graf Von Keyserlingk and published by Temple Lodge Publishing. This book was released on 2009 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1924 at Koberwitz, the estate of Count and Countess Keyserlingk, Rudolf Steiner gave a key course of lectures on agriculture. At a time when industrial methods were being introduced into farming, Steiner had a radically different, evolutionary vision. Based on a revitalized relationship with nature, his approach encompassed knowledge of the cosmos, the elemental world and the Earth, and utilized special planting methods and preparations. Today biodynamic agriculture is widely valued and used around the world. In addition to the lively and entertaining accounts of the agriculture course held at Koberwitz, this extraordinary book features Countess Keyserlingk's memories of her meetings with Rudolf Steiner, who told the Countess her form of consciousness would be usual "in the third millennium." Her reminiscences reflect this uncommon quality. Also included are essays by the editor that incorporate rare material, including communications received by Countess Keyserlingk after Steiner's death. This book will be of interest to students of biodynamics as well as those interested in how Rudolf Steiner worked to develop Anthroposophy. It is compiled and edited by Adalbert Graf von Keyserlingk, the son of the Count and Countess who hosted the Koberwitz conference.
Download or read book Rudolf Steiner Life and Work Volume 2 1890 1900 written by Peter Selg and published by SteinerBooks. This book was released on 2015-08-01 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first chapter of this volume looks at Rudolf Steiner's years in Weimar, beginning with his work at the Goethe Archives editing Goethe’s scientific works. It was in this capacity that Steiner was able to comprehend the great spiritual depth of Goethe’s life and work, which became the foundation for his own lifework. This chapter also looks at his social circles and the writing and publication of his works Truth and Knowledge (CW 3) and The Philosophy of Freedom (CW 4). It also highlights his encounter with the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, his visits to the Nietzsche Archives in Naumburg, and the writing of his book Friedrich Nietzsche: Fighter for Freedom (CW 5). Rudolf Steiner's time in Weimar comes to a close with the creation of his second book on Goethe: Goethe's World View (CW 6), a fruit of his work at the Archives. The second chapter focuses on Rudolf Steiner's time in Berlin, where he worked as editor of a cultural periodical, Magazin für Litteratur, and accepted a position as lecturer at the Workers' School. There he was able to grow into his capacity as a teacher and where, although he encountered many ideological challenges, his insight into historical development found wide appreciation among students. The third chapter covers the turn of the century and Rudolf Steiner's inner transition to speaking and writing more openly of his esoteric observations on the evolution of consciousness, the "I," and the training of cognition. His decisive 1899 essay, Individualism in Philosophy, marked this impulse, followed by invitations to lecture freely before the Theosophical Society, where Rudolf Steiner presented the esoteric nature of Goethe's fairy tale and the content of what later became his own books Mystics after Modernism (CW 7) and Christianity as Mystical Fact and the Mysteries of Antiquity (CW 8).
Download or read book Rudolf Steiner Life and Work Volume 3 1900 1914 written by Peter Selg and published by SteinerBooks. This book was released on 2015-08-01 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This third volume of Peter Selg’s comprehensive presentation of Rudolf Steiner’s life and work begins with Steiner’s invitation to lecture in the Theosophical Society during the summer of 1900. From the outset of his theosophical involvement, Steiner was resolved to serve and develop the Western path to the spirit, traversed in full, conscious clarity of thought. He was therefore critical of the tendency to avoid the modern standards of a sound knowledge process in matters of spirituality and esotericism, and instead emphasized the importance of idealist philosophy as groundwork for understanding spiritual cognition. (“Whoever speaks of the coldness of the world of ideas can only think ideas, not experience them. Those who live the true life in the world of ideas feel in themselves the being of the world working in warmth that cannot be compared to anything else.” —Rudolf Steiner, Goethe's World View) Although his approach did not always harmonize with theosophical pursuits, Rudolf Steiner recognized the sincere striving at the basis of this movement and agreed to take on increasingly greater responsibility for the German Section. Marie von Sivers, who would later become his wife, was his most supportive colleague during this time. At a decisive juncture, Steiner broke from the Theosophical Society to found the Anthroposophical Society, through which he would continue the development of modern spiritual science more freely in accord with his original intentions. This volume covers the period during which Steiner wrote some of his foundational works: Christianity as Mystical Fact, Theosophy, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, and An Outline of Esoteric Science. Peter Selg also describes the building of the first Goetheanum in Dornach as an artistic embodiment of esoteric wisdom, giving rise to an international working community, as well as the performance of the mystery dramas and Rudolf Steiner’s profound Christological lectures known as the Fifth Gospel.
Download or read book After Auschwitz written by Peter Selg and published by SteinerBooks. This book was released on 2022-01-04 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "History does not repeat, but it does instruct."--Timothy Snyder (On Tyranny) Since 2009, Peter Selg, along with Polish historians, has led seminars on medical ethics at the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial for students at Witten / Herdecke University, Germany. This book was created following a public event in 2019 that investigated the "lessons of Auschwitz" for the practice of medicine in society today and in the future. As well as commemorating the individual victims, the Auschwitz event focused on the role of German physicians in the Nazi regime. In this book, Dr. Selg's discussions go far beyond the historical events of the 1930s and '40s. Countering the legacy of Auschwitz-Birkenau and the inhumane medical practices of that time, he presents us with ways to advance forms of medicine today that encourage the most compassionate treatment of one another as human beings. "Today, as always in times of crisis, there are symptoms of a return, if not to Nazism, then to a right-wing regime that is strong, with a firm, streamlined order." --Primo Levi Originally published in German as Nach Auschwitz. Auseinandersetzungen um die Zukunft der Medizin by Verlag des Ita Wegman Instituts, Stuttgart, 2020.
Download or read book I Am for Going Ahead written by Peter Selg and published by SteinerBooks. This book was released on 2012-05 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "We must be filled with a profound awe for everything human, even in our memories and recollections." -- Rudolf Steiner, How to Know Higher Worlds At the age of six, Claire Blatchford lost her hearing. Gradually, as she grew accustomed to her new state of being in the world, she found herself developing a new organ of inner perception and connection. Thoughts and realities spoke to her with an "inner voice." In earlier works--beginning with Turning--she recounted some of what she heard, and she explained how she entered a path of meditative practice to strengthen her ability to receive what she was given. Experiences with the Dying and the Dead explores another aspect of inner perception through a series of personal stories of experiences around and across the threshold between life and death. Claire Blatchford writes: "The dead are all around and are as much our neighbors as the family next door, the tree at the corner, and the birds on the feeder. We need not be on speaking terms with all our neighbors, but the recognition of their presence, if only in the form of a nod, a smile, or a thought of appreciation or thanks, can go a long way. When we acknowledge each other, we affirm and quicken life in each other. Though we may not be able to see the dead inwardly or outwardly, openness of their presence means a great deal to them." By opening to the presence of the dead, the veil between the worlds becomes thinner, and our inner eyes and ears open in new ways. We awaken to a new world--the community of human beings on both sides of the threshold.
Download or read book The Creative Power of Anthroposophical Christology written by Sergei O. Prokofieff and published by SteinerBooks. This book was released on 2011-10 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 18 Introductory essays, written 1884-1897 (CW 1) The holistic paradigm, Gaia, deep ecology, and new alchemy all have a hidden ancestor: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). At the youthful age of twenty-one, Steiner was chosen to edit Goethe's scientific writings for the principle Goethe edition of his time. Goethe's literary genius was universally acknowledged; it was Steiner's task to understand and comment on Goethe's scientific achievements. Steiner recognized the significance of Goethe's work with nature and his epistemology, and here began Steiner's own training in epistemology and spiritual science. This collection of Steiner's introductions to Goethe's works re-visions the meaning of knowledge and how we attain it. Goethe had discovered how thinking could be applied to organic nature and that this experience requires not just rational concepts but a whole new way of perceiving. In an age when science and technology have been linked to great catastrophes, many are looking for new ways to interact with nature. With a fundamental declaration of the interpenetration of our consciousness and the world around us, Steiner shows how Goethe's approach points the way to a more compassionate and intimate involvement with nature. Nature's Open Secret is a translation of Goethes Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften, Einleitungen, (1884-1897). Previous translations were titled Goethe the Scientist and Goethean Science. (GA 1).
Download or read book Rudolf Steiner s Foundation Stone Meditation written by Peter Selg and published by Temple Lodge Publishing. This book was released on 2012 with total page 89 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "People who practice esoteric exercises grow spiritually into the future; they experience in themselves what will one day come about, and what they experience in this way is what we know as the higher worlds. These represent future conditions of humankind" (Rudolf Steiner, Munich 1907). Rudolf Steiner spoke the Foundation Stone meditation at the Christmas Conference of the General Anthroposophical Society in 1923, giving it to the Society members for strengthening their forces. The meditation's words contain, as Sergei O. Prokofieff states, "the quintessence of the whole of Anthroposophy." Thus, Rudolf Steiner was bestowing on the members the possibility of dealing resolutely with the specific tasks that awaited them. In this short, potent volume, the author suggests further that "The Foundation Stone Meditation" represents the concerns of every individual of our time, allowing each of us to maintain our humanity in the face of the challenges and catastrophes of both the present and the future. Steiner said that one could hear the words of the meditation "sounding" in one's heart. This process of "hearing" will acquire even more significance and reality in future, and can be of enormous help to anyone who opens themselves to it. It is against this background that Selg has written this introductory book: to promote awareness of the meditation, understanding of its historic place in the catastrophic twentieth century, and its critical but latent contribution to the future.
Download or read book Recognizing Reality written by Peter Selg and published by SteinerBooks. This book was released on 2022-08-02 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "[Children and young people] should know --and really sense and feel --that viruses are not 'evil' but a part of our organism, of our organic 'self,' and that also the group of mutable coronaviruses has been known for many years; we also live with them and deal with them, especially in the upper respiratory tract, although not with SARS-CoV-2, which is a new challenge for the human immune system, though not quite as new as initially assumed." -- Peter Selg Recognizing Reality is a clarion call for broader perspectives in a time of global crisis, for a differentiated understanding of current events, especially Covid, and for a deepening of dialogue, in Martin Buber's sense of the word. In this book, Peter Selg walks the reader through some of the lesser-known, and often ignored, contexts of the global response to Covid. He describes, for example, the role-play simulations and exercises conducted by private institutions (such as The Rockefeller Foundation and the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins University) in collaboration with government agencies and corporations in the years leading up to 2020. A large part of such exercises involved the role of the media in public-health messaging, including censorship of dissenting or alternative viewpoints. Having a "cohesive narrative" was seen as vital to establishing the mechanisms of control in "states of emergency" and was used as a justification for restricting fundamental human rights. As Selg demonstrates, much of what has played out over the past two years in response to Covid was actively prepared and rehearsed in such roleplay scenarios. He remarks that the goal of these exercises was not "to avert the danger by changing or correcting the system through new values in ecological, socioeconomic, and political terms --or in terms of a 'peace policy' with regard to the natural environment --but solely in the sense of system-stabilizing crisis management, combined with far-reaching vaccination strategies." Selg also discusses the disastrous consequences of the global lockdown, which are often overlooked or outright suppressed in the mass media in favor of a monolithic narrative that ignores all facts and viewpoints which undermine its "key messages." He points out, for example, that "while...the wealth of the approximately 650 billionaires in the US increased from one trillion dollars to a total of approximately four trillion dollars during the COVID-19 pandemic, countless people worldwide became impoverished on a catastrophic scale, through the loss of all their meager earnings, through the interruption of supply and production chains, through stay-at-home orders that kept them stuck in poor conditions, etc." This book leaves us with the question: Will we say yes to the dehumanizing, technocratic vision of society emerging across the globe, or will we seek a future worthy of the human being? Recognizing Reality was originally published as two volumes in German as Wirklichkeits-verständnis: Jugend-pädagogik in globaler Krisenzeit and as Zivilcourage: Die Herausforderung Freier Waldorfschulen (Verlag des Ita Wegman Instituts, Arlesheim, Switzerland, 2021).
Download or read book Rudolf Steiner Life and Work written by Peter Selg and published by SteinerBooks. This book was released on 2014-08-26 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To acknowledge and understand Rudolf Steiner’s unique achievement and life’s work, one must be able to accept that the founder and spiritual researcher of Anthroposophy was “a citizen of two worlds”: the spiritual and the physical. Anthroposophy teaches that this duality, rather than being a quality reserved for special individualities, is inherent to human nature. According to Rudolf Steiner, it is a central aspect of being human, even in times when the suprasensory aspect of humanity is eclipsed (for ordinary day consciousness) and almost eliminated by certain civilizations. The interest in Rudolf Steiner’s person and essence, in his attitude toward life and work, will continue to grow in the decades and centuries that lie ahead, both within and outside the anthroposophical movement. It will take hold of entirely different groups of people, including those who come with spiritual questions or discover them in times of need. Rudolf Steiner’s work grew to be “one unique effort of bringing courage to human beings” (Michael Bauer). This is the first of seven comprehensive volumes on Rudolf Steiner’s “being, intentions, and journey.” It presents Rudolf Steiner from childhood and youth through his doctorate degree and up to the time of his work for the Goethe Archives as editor of Goethe’s scientific writings. By considering his formative years in depth, we come to understand better the roots and development of Rudolf Steiner’s later spiritual research and teachings. This volume is a translation from German of the first three chapters of Rudolf Steiner. 1861 - 1925: Lebens- und Werkgeschichte. Band 1: 1861 - 1914 (Ita Wegman Institut, 2012).
