Dear friends,

In seven years, at Easter 2033, humanity will have traversed 2000 years since the original Easter event in 33 AD and 100 years since the reappearance of Christ in the etheric world in 1933.

How can we prepare ourselves for this world historic event and become ever more conscious collaborators in the further development of the Christ Impulse?

On April 8 of this year, I made a presentation on these themes at the invitation of the Faust Branch of the Anthroposophical Society. You can watch this presentation here.

This talk weaves together a number of insights and indications of Rudolf Steiner, and other spiritual researchers, to explore the significance of the year 2033 in relation to the developmental process of the Christ Impulse, the Second Coming of Christ in the etheric world, and the potential rebirth of the anthroposophical movement.

What is the nature of this potential rebirth of anthroposophy, and what are the next seven years asking those of us who would place ourselves in the service of this renewal?

Though I had intended to speak to this question in two in-depth talks later this month, I have decided that I need more time for this content to mature within me. I am currently thinking the autumn might be a better time to offer these additional presentations, perhaps in collaboration with other colleagues who would also like to speak to these important themes and questions.

In the meantime, I will be recording and sharing a shorter presentation with the sole intention of clarifying and fleshing out several things from this first presentation that I felt I had to cover too quickly to stay within the amount of time I had. I hope to share that within the next week.

Please don’t hesitate to respond to this post with your thoughts and questions or contact me directly if you would like to enter into dialogue on these themes.

Warmly,

Robert

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Last week I was interviewed by Brook DeLorme for her podcast Apophenia Gold, which I thought my subscribers might enjoy.

The Journal for Apophenic Research

The Archangels and Higher Spirits of North America

I was introduced to Robert’s work sometime over the past years by a dear friend, and found it both inspiring and very refreshing. He has deep experience with earth healing, geomancy, biodynamics, social three-folding, social de-polarization, and esoteric Christianity…

Listen now

2 months ago · 8 likes · Apophenia Gold

It was a delight to speak with Brook because of her evident love for, and intimate relationship with, the wisdom of spiritual science.

Listening to the interview later, however, I realized that I needed to clarify some things I said in this interview that on the face of it would sound like a glaring error to anyone with a depth of anthroposophical understanding.

Essentially, around minute 52:20 of this interview Brook asked me about my interest in the significance of the year 2033, and during this conversation I shared the idea that humanity as a whole was in the process of turning 21 years old in the year 2033.

What I want to make clear to my listeners and subscribers is that I am fully aware that from the standpoint of anthroposophy, we are living in the age of the consciousness soul which points to humanity being in the phase of life that we go through in our individual biographies between the ages of 35 and 42!

If you do the math I think it would be accurate to say that humanity as a whole is right now approximately 37 years old from the grand perspective of human evolution.

But it’s important to remember, lest we become too fixed in our thinking, that human evolution is complex, and that there are many sub-rhythms within larger rhythms, during which the same archetypes (and beings) are at work but at a different time.

We know for example, that the Ancient Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions were all re-capitulated within the context of our present earth evolution. This fact can account for many things in Rudolf Steiner’s lectures that can seem confusing or contradictory.

It is from this standpoint that I was suggesting that there is a kind of sub-rhythm within the age of the consciousness soul—a rhythm that is intimately related, though not identical to, the period leading up to age 21.

Another way to think of it is that the grand evolutionary picture of human evolution described by Rudolf Steiner in An Outline of Occult Science and elsewhere, is, from a certain perspective, an archetype (or plan) that lives in the realm of the Father God.

Working into and through this plan, we find, again and again, special interventions and activities on the part of the Christ Being, but these activities work into the Father realm according to somewhat different laws and rhythms.

Rudolf Steiner tells us, for example, that the life of Christ created a completely new rhythm of development in human evolution, which is a rhythm of 33 and 1/3 years resulting from the actual length of the life of Christ Jesus on earth.

It is this 33 and 1/3 year rhythm that sets the stage for the coming of age experience of humanity in our present time, associated with the year 2033, to which I was referring.

If you are curious to learn more about this, dear reader, I would like to warmly invite to a whole talk on the topic of Preparing for the Year 2033, that I am giving (online) for the Faust Branch of the Anthroposophical Society. This talk will take place on April 8 this year and you can learn more about it and register here.

Thank you for listening!

Robert

Luigi Morelli is a spiritual scientist and prolific writer whose 20+ works have focused primarily on social, historical and karmic questions, with a special emphasis on the occult forces and spiritual streams at work in the Americas. Luigi has a special ability to look out at the larger world and see, amid the chaos of our times, hopeful trends and signs of new, emergent human capacities.[i]

With this book, however, The Living Climate: Computer Modelling or Planetary Harmonics? Luigi has ventured into quite new territory, inviting the reader on a kind of hero’s journey through the entrenched theories of climate change into the deeper, holistic causes of—and potential solutions to—this confounding, highly politicized subject.

Let me begin by saying that I am deeply grateful to Luigi for writing this book. I suspect most of us with a background in spiritual science are aware that something truly immense is going on with the planet and its climate right now, something that goes well beyond the standard scientific theories to encompass the more subtle and invisible dimensions of the earth.

This awareness has perhaps protected some of us from succumbing to the usual politicized debates, fear mongering and hand wringing associated with the topic of climate change.

And yet, isn’t it also tragic how little the anthroposophical movement has had to say on this burning topic that is consuming so much of the interest of the rest of humanity? Where is our voice, our unique spiritual scientific research and perspective, we might ask?

When climate change comes up in our circles, the best many of us can muster is to suggest a more sinister perspective—for example, that the climate change agenda is a fabrication that is being used to justify attacks on the etheric return of the Christ through various kinds of geo-engineering.

Others, more inclined to stay with the consensus narrative, point to the need to proliferate the number of biodynamic farms and perhaps develop a more holistic understanding of carbon cycles.

No offense to biodynamic practitioners or to those attempting a genuine discernment of dark forces in our midst, (there is certainly some truth to both of these perspectives), but is this really all we have to offer toward a deeper understanding and response to this world historic phenomenon?

So, let me say again what a huge sigh of relief I feel that Luigi has written this book. Is it the definitive spiritual-scientific exploration of climate change? I do not think so. But is it a HUGE step in the right direction? Most definitely it is, and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to move beyond the more superficial theories and responses (whether scientific or spiritual scientific) into a deeper, truly holistic, perhaps one might even say, truly hopeful, understanding of climate change.

Readers like me who lack a scientific background, need to know that this is not an easy book to navigate. The abundant references to scientific studies and the complex scientific terms that fill many pages of the book, together with dozens of charts and graphs, present no small challenge in working through this book. A glossary of terms would be super helpful.

Because of these challenges, and because I think the book is well worth the effort, perhaps the most helpful thing I can offer a potential reader is simply a kind of road map for the journey, together with a few of the most salient insights, conclusions and questions I was left with from reading this book.

The book begins with a summary of conventional scientific data and theories about climate change. For this purpose, Luigi draws heavily on the book Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What it Doesn’t and Why it Matters by Steven Koonin. I found this overview quite helpful because it reveals so clearly the devotion and rigor that at least some members of the conventional scientific community are trying to bring to bear on the topic.

What becomes clear is that, at least at the level of the typical, honest scientist, we are not dealing with some kind of conspiracy to cook the data to give the appearance of something that doesn’t really exist. There appears to be, rather, considerable data to show that major changes are taking place in the earth’s climate and weather. Indeed, anyone with a sensitive relationship to nature and to the weather can easily arrive at such a conclusion.

The tragedy lies rather in the attempt to explain these diverse phenomena, and predict their future expression, within the framework, and with the methods of, materialistic science. Luigi does a great job of respecting the work of the scientistic community while also pointing to the enormous limitations associated with their fundamental premise of a closed, mechanical universe. In reading this section of the book, I was often reminded of the famous statement atrtributed to Abraham Maslow: If the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail.

Clearly, something incredibly important is speaking to us from the delicate mantle of forces circling the earth that we call weather and climate, but what methods will allow us to truly listen into and respond to this speaking?

The next, most voluminous chapters of the book, concern the life and work of Viktor Schauberger, who Luigi sees as the pioneer of the methods and insights that are necessary to both make sense of climate change and do something practical about it. For those not familiar with him, Viktor Schauberger was an Austrian inventor and naturalist whose life and work have taken on almost mythic proportions in some circles. He was a contemporary of Rudolf Steiner and Luigi claims they actually met on a number of occasions.

Schaubeger began his career as a forester, engineer and caretaker of large, pristine wooded estates. Gifted with considerable clairvoyance, Schauberger gained deep insight into the subtle forces working in nature, and went on to develop a host of innovative management strategies for rivers, forests and other natural areas, as well as a number of remarkable “implosion” or “vortex-based” devices for everything from tilling the soil, to purifying and revivifying water, to generating energy, heating and cooling from water.

While a number of books have been written about Schauberger and his mysterious life and destiny, Luigi is the first one, to my knowledge, to attempt to apply Schauberger’s insights in a rigorous way to the issue of climate change.

This section of the book is demanding because Schauberger, like Steiner, developed a whole new terminology to come to terms with the subtle aspects of nature. This terminology is both similar to, and quite different than, Steiner’s terminology. In spite of these challenges, a number of significant perspectives on climate emerge from this effort, most notably that perhaps the greatest sources of climate chaos lay in the disruption of the hydrologic cycles of the earth through the mismanagement of rivers, forests and agricultural lands that as we all know has been taking place on a grand scale across the planet for more than a century.

Essentially, what Schauberger, and Luigi, suggest is that the hydrologic cycle of the earth is a far more potent and nuanced force in the formation of the climate than modern science presently conceives. This is to put it mildly.

Water, you could say, is the great bridge between the earth and heavens. The health and vitality of this bridge, however, has been severely compromised, such that the “being of water,” if I can put it this way, can no longer serve as the great harmonizer or regulator of the climate and weather.

From this perspective, the real heart of transforming climate change lies not in improving carbon sequestration, but rather in the resotration of the hydrologic cycles of the Earth through the proper management of forests, rivers, and farmland. The trick here lies in the term “proper management” which from the point of view of Schauberger does not simply involve some kind of return to traditional practices but rather an advance toward management techniques based on a living understanding of the etheric, levitational, fluidic forces at work in nature.

In other words, what would a biodynamic method of whole landscape management look like, one that also incorporated new forms of energy generation, toxin remediation, water flow management, waste recycling, etc. based on these levitational forces?

Unfortunately, some of the hopefulness of Luigi’s thesis begins to wane slightly when the question is posed this way. In order to turn the situation around, it appears we would need large groups of people on the planet with the necessary esoteric knowledge and practical skills—as well as access to the necessary land and resources—to properly scale up the kind of holistic landscape management described in this book.

Thankfully, Luigi does point to some promising examples of work along these lines in the Appendix to the book, but his thesis still begs the all-important question: how can this kind of work could be substantially accelerated in the coming years?

But this begs yet another question which unfortunately Luigi does not ask in this book but which my own work is much concerned with, namely: given the ongoing destruction and laming of the etheric forces of nature by modern technology and modern management practices, not to mention geo-engineering—and given the small number of biodynamic farms and other forms of enlightened landscape management presently on the planet—are there other ways to homeopathically stimulate the healthy breathing cycles of the earth, including the hydrologic cycle of water, by making use of, and amplifying, the power of the biodynamic preparations at special locations on the earth? (Stay tuned to my next Substack post wherein I will take up this topic.)

Whereas you could say the Schauberger chapters of the book look at climate from below to above—opening a window into the true ways in which human civilization is impacting the climate—the final chapters of the book are concerned with the impact of the wider cosmos on the earth’s climate.

These chapters draw heavily on the work of a number of remarkable activists and scientists, including Peter Taylor[ii] and others whose work points to the role of cloud cover, solar cycles, solar magnetic activity, solar wind, sun spots, geomagnetism, and a host of other periodicities and cosmic influences in shaping the climate.

Combining this research with the work of astrologers such as John Addey[iii] and Theodor Landscheidt,[iv] Luigi proposes that it may now be possible to predict major climatic cycles with a great deal of accuracy and perhaps even take appropriate corrective action to balance that which results from these diverse cosmic rhythms and influences.

As hopeful as it is to think that climate chaos might be caused as much by natural cosmic cycles as by human actions, the overall picture that emerges from this book remains that of an earth becoming less and less resilient, whether in the face of terrestrial and human influences, or in the face of these ever-changing cosmic influences.

At the close of the book, Luigi makes an admirable attempt to weave all these diverse threads together through the wisdom of spiritual science. Just as Rudolf Steiner pointed to the need to come to a new understanding of the heart in order to bring genuine healing to social life, Luigi points to the need for a new understanding of the sun, as the heart of our solar system, in order to bring healing to the ecology of our planet and to the practice of climate science. As Luigi puts it:

Whether we look at climate change from the Earth or from the solar system, there is an overlap at one critical place: the Sun, the heart of our life on Earth. Just as modern science thoroughly misunderstands the heart—treating it as a pump—so does it completely miss the basic ideas for coming close to a living apprehension of the heart our solar system. [v]

I found this point very resonant in the light of the fact that at one point Rudolf Steiner suggested that it is actually the “rights life” of one time period that creates the climate of a future time period.[vi] To my knowledge, no one has explored this surprising indication, but given that the rights realm is the middle or “sun realm” of the threefold social organism, it would seem that this indication is highly relevant to Luigi’s call for a new “sun wisdom” as a basis for addressing issues of climate change.

Perhaps this indication also offers a way to come down from the dizzying heights of the science Luigi presents in this book and back into the world of our daily lives. In other words, might our daily encounters with one another, with the natural world, and with the larger social organisms in which we live, if raised to a sacramental level, offer each of us an opportunity to create a healing medicine for the earth?

Is it possible, for example, that our humble spiritual deeds of love and service, day in and day out, reverberate into the cosmos, and work together with the deeds of others, to keep our planet alive in the face of the incredible attacks on her being at this time? And is it possible that simple methods such as goethean movement could significantly heighten the positive impact of these reverberations? This is another topic I will take up in future posts.

We might also ask to what degree climate change is connected with humanity’s crossing of the threshold, and the growing disequilibrium that we find in the thinking, feeling and willing of human beings as a result of this crossing (and as a result of the growing use of digital technologies)? Is not this disequilibrium also radiating out into the cosmos with every solar eclipse and then radiating back to us with every lunar eclipse to shape and disrupt the weather?[vii]

I also wonder about the overall aging of the earth as pointed to by Rudolf Steiner—to what degree is this aging contributing to the diminished resilience of the earth, and how can fresh, youthful, cosmic forces be brought to bear on the planet, for example through festival life, spiritual practices, the arts and, as mentioned above, through the use of the biodynamic preparations on both agricultural and non-agricultural lands?

And what precisely IS the role of geo-engineering and the like on these realities?

I share these questions in the hopes that Luigi and others will continue to write and work on this topic in order to bring ever deeper, ever more mature, ever more comprehensive and practical, spiritual scientific insights to bear on these urgent, burning, world changing realities.

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[i] C.f. A Revolution of Hope: Spirituality, Cultural Renewal and Social Change and Spiritual Turning Points in North American History athttps://millenniumculmination.net/

[ii] C.f. Chill: A Reassessment of Global Warming Theory (2009)

[iii] C.f. Harmonics in Astrology (1975)

[iv] C.f. Sun-Earth-Man, A Mesh of Cosmic Oscillations (1989)

[v] Morelli, Luigi, The Living Climate: Computer Modelling or Planetary Harmonics? Page 234-235. Clairview Books, 2024.

[vi] Steiner, Rudolf, Spiritual Science as a Foundation for Social Forms, page 219. Anthroposophical Press, Hudson, New York, 1986.

[vii]C.f. Steiner, Rudolf, The Migrations of the Races — Sunlight and Moonlight, Solar and Lunar Eclipses and their Relation to Man’s Life of Soul.

Thomas Moran, Grand Canyon with Rainbow

I want to let my readers know about some of my upcoming events and the themes I will be exploring.

This Saturday, February 7, I am offering a half day workshop in Phoenix, Arizona on Understanding and Awakening the Slumbering Heart Forces of the American Landscape.

In this workshop, I will share methods for deepening the wisdom of the heart by learning how to enter more sensitively into the phenomena of the natural world and come to better understand the unique and luminous landscapes in which we are embedded. This kind of communion with the world around us brings liberation and fulfillment, both to the soul of nature, and to our own souls. One could perhaps even say that a kind of christening of the elemental world is made possible through this work. By drinking deeply from these healing streams of wisdom we grow stronger and more able to meet meet the enormous challenges of the times in which we live.

Many thanks to Joan Treadaway and the Manzanita Branch of the Anthroposophical Society for inviting me to offer this workshop.

From Arizona I travel to Loveland, Colorado for the annual gathering of the Agriculture Section of the School of Spiritual Science in North America from February 11th to the 13th.

At this gathering I will share from my efforts to discern the spiritual beings who inspired and continue to guide the biodynamic farming movement—as well as the movement to create an associative (or healing) form of economic life—so that we can work more consciously with these beings going into the future.

I will also give a short talk, together with Lloyd Nelson, on the spiritual geography of the Rocky Mountain region, and explore, together with Alex Tuchman, the question of how a healthy community vessel can be created for the biodynamic movement at this time. You can learn more about the Agriculture Section event here.

Immediately followimg this gathering there will be be a public Symposium, from February 13th to the 15th, at the same location in Loveland, that I have helped organize called Agriculture, Community, Economics: Reimagining the Future of Farming.

Durig this event, I will be on a panel with Mark and Petra Zinniker to talk about the work we are doing to pioneer a new approach to CSA and community supported farm succession, which I have previously written about on my Substack here.

I will also be moderating a panel consisting of Anna Jones-Crabtree, Ian McSweeney and Mark Voss, on how farmers can address the complex challenges created by the huge cost of land.

You can learn more about this Symposium and register here.

After I return to my home in Viroqua, Wisconsin in late February, I will be interviewed on the podcast of Brook Delorme of the Journal for Apophenic Research. Brook has been sharing some wonderful anthroposophical and alchemical insights on her Substack lately and I look forward to speaking with her and sharing the interview with my readers.

Then I will re-immerse myself in the work of Threefold Driftless to foster a healthy threefold social organism in our small town and surrounding rural community. I am particularly pleased to share that the two Viroqua mayoral candidates have agreed to participate in an event that we will organize for people to get to know them better and to understand their unique visions for the future of our community. You can keep up on this work by subscribing to the Substack of Threefold Driftless here.

Onward dear friends and fellow travelers, I hope our paths cross soon!

Robert

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Warm 2026 greetings to my subscribers!

On Tuesday, December 16th of 2024 I made a 20-minute presentation at the “100 Years Rudolf Steiner” conference organized by Harvard Divinity School on research I have been conducting on Rudolf Steiner’s view of race and ethnic culture and its relevance for our time.

As you can imagine, bringing this far-reaching research into a 20-minute time slot was rather challenging and I felt I had to leave out a lot of things that would have brought more nuance to what clearly proved to be, for some anyway, a highly provocative presentation.

For these reasons, in the two videos below, I have decided to offer a significantly expanded version of my Harvard presentation.

While the 20-minute version of my presentation was recorded, unfortunately that recording is temporarily unavailable. My understanding is that the recordings of all the different panels from the conference will soon be posted on the YouTube channel of Harvard Divinity School which can be found here. I suggest you keep checking that website, and I will let my readers know via a substack note as soon as I see that they are available.

As I prepare to publish these videos on this highly controversial topic, I wish to address in writing what is perhaps the most likely and unfortunate misunderstanding that could arise from this effort, namely that my attempt to bring nuance to Rudolf Steiner’s view of race is seen as a defense of his seeming racist viewpoints and remarks.

As I see it, such a perspective succumbs to the polarizing tendencies of our cultural moment, which tends to view any effort to truly understand something or someone as the same as agreeing with that person or thing. Just think of how, at this moment, any critic of the recent attacks by the US on Venezuela can be labeled as a supporter of the current regime in Venezuela. This kind of black and white thinking is the death of both democracy and of enlightened discourse of all kinds.

Using the laws of dynamic polarity, however, which I introduce in these videos, we can chart instead a healing or middle path, as follows:

Here I seek to show how both the denial of Rudolf Steiner’s seeming racist views (or the unwillingness to honestly examine or acknowledge these views), and the disavowal of those views without a proper effort toward a deeper understanding of them (or the knee jerk accusation that Rudolf Steiner was a racist), can both be seen as one-sided responses.

What I propose instead—and what I seek to embark upon in these presentations—is a sensitive, nuanced exploration of these aspects of Steiner’s legacy using the phenomenological disciplines that lay at the heart of spiritual science itself. As I understand it, this approach is also a basic principle of sound hermeneutics as articulated by William Dilthey:

An author or thinker can only be understood by reconstructing the life context and experiential world in which they articulated their ideas.

For those who might be interested in delving more deeply into this topic, I am considering offering an online short course this Spring. If you might be interested in being part of such a course, please let me know by clicking on this link.

Part I:

Part II:

Zinniker Farm in East Troy, Wisconsin, is the oldest continuously operated biodynamic farm in the United States, and a place of extraordinary beauty, history, and soil fertility. Besides being a source of amazingly nutritious food for thousands of people in the Upper Midwest, the farm has also served as a key locus for the growth of the biodynamic farming movement, through field days, festivals, biodynamic preparation making, and through the ongoing training of young farmers. Today this amazing legacy stands in question because Mark and Petra Zinniker, the third generation of Zinnikers on the farm, are ready to retire, and their children do not wish to be farmers.

I am pleased to share, however, that over the last two years, a remarkable group of friends and loyal customers have come together to forge a pathway into the future for Zinniker Farm. Through the efforts of this group, with a little consulting support from yours truly, a new kind of social-economic entity has come into being called the Zinniker Farm Stewardship Association or ZFSA, which we believe is a model that could be replicated to help hundreds if not thousands of other farms in the future.

Among other accomplishments, ZFSA has:

• Created a long-term sustainable budget for the future of the farm

• Renovated an old cottage on the farm to create farmer housing

• Found an amazing young couple who want to become the new stewards of the farm, who are already now living and working on the farm!

But we still have a long way to go—by which I mean, we need your help!

Our new budget for the farm requires seed money for the first three years to get the new CSA to the breakeven point and this year we need to raise $110,000. These funds will make it possible for Aidan Benkowski, the new farmer, to quit his full-time job, devote himself to growing the new CSA business, and learn the arts of biodynamic and organic farming from Mark and Petra Zinniker. We have thus far raised $80,000 which leaves us with just $30,000 that we need to secure in the next month.

To raise the remaining $30,000 we have launched a crowdfunding campaign, and I would be so grateful if you would consider a donation toward this effort.

Donate Now to Zinniker Farm

You might also want to check out the new Zinniker Farm website that Aidan and his wife have created here.

New Zinniker Farm Website

We can offer tax-deducibility on gifts of $1,000 and above through our fiscal sponsor the Biodynamic Association in the United States. If you are interested in this option, please let me know so we can arrange for your gift to go directly to the Biodynamic Association rather than to GoFundMe. Anyone who would like more information about the work of ZFSA and our vision for the future is also welcome to contact me. Independent of this campaign, a few people have also offered unsecured loans, which we are also open to consider, so let me know if this is of more interest to you.

I also want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has been reading and supporting my new Substack this past year. I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to be a part of your life and your social and spiritual striving.

Warm warm wishes for your holidays and your New Year!

Robert

Embodying Love: Rudolf Steiner’s Phenomenology of Race and its Relevance for our Time

Though Rudolf Steiner’s view of race has faced increasing and justified scrutiny, in this paper I suggest that Steiner made important contributions to a truly Christian, healing, and ethical understanding of race and culture that has particular relevance for our times. This contribution is easy to miss and misconstrue because:

1. Steiner did not set out to explicate a theory of race;

2. His view of race is embedded in an elaborate esoteric worldview filled with idiosyncratic terms and redefinitions of conventional terms;

3. His views of race and culture evolved over the course of his life;

4. He spoke differently about race to different audiences in differing contexts;

5. The prevalence of racist theories in his historical context naturally prompts skepticism toward his ideas and perspectives.

When the inessential, personality- and context-dependent elements in his philosophy are clarified, however, what emerges is a healing, balanced, phenomenological understanding of race that has much to offer present discourse, which tends to polarize around the fault lines of postmodern constructivist, and traditional essentialist, views of race. This paper will elucidate and explain key aspects of Steiner’s philosophy in three main categories:

Ethical Individualism: Every human has a unique, divine self that both encompasses and transcends racial, cultural, and other generic influences.

The Evolution of Consciousness: While races and ethnic cultures express essential biological and spiritual characteristics, these influences evolve and are now diminishing, allowing universal human values to come to the fore.

Conscious Social Development: All races and cultures reflect aspects of the universal human. By engaging with people of diverse backgrounds we both enrich our humanity and make it possible to solve the problems of the modern world.

I conclude by exploring the practical applications of these views to a host of contemporary race and culture related challenges.

I found this to be a rich theme but with only fifteen minutes I had to leave out a great deal of what I could have said about the Sacred Roots of Democracy from the perspective of Western Esotericism and Anthroposophy. Hopefully, I will have more opportunities to write and speak on this topic soon. In the meantime, don’t hesitate to reach out with your feedback on this talk and your own reflections on this topic.

If there is one thing that I think is clear to most people, it is that regardless of the growing number of pronouncements, declarations. and sermons extolling the importance of recognizing the dignity of our fellow human beings—and regardless of the number of museums and monuments dedicated to the memory of terrible atrocities committed by human beings against other human beings—actions based on a lack of recognition of the inherent dignity of fellow human beings continues to grow in our world and in our society.

The reasons for this paradox lie in the spiritual laws that govern human evolution, most notably the fact that we live in a time—referred to by spiritual science as the Age of the Consciousness Soul—when the healthy social and moral instincts that have guided and upheld humanity for thousands of years are steadily falling away, and can only be replaced through conscious spiritual development. In other words, in the absence of conscious spiritual practices aimed at reinvigorating our ability to truly see, support, and love our fellow human beings (regardless of their race, ethnicity, politics, religion and so on), each of us is at grave risk of falling below the level of a human, from a moral and ethical standpoint.

The result of this degeneration of the human soul is not simply that we are becoming immoral in a straightforward way (though we also see plenty of that), but rather that we more and more begin to think something good is evil and something evil is good, which in turn can lead to quite terrible acts being commmitted in the name of high and lofty ideals! Tragically, we see this happening all around us today and not only by powerful people and groups.

Just think, for example, of the number of people who put up yard signs in front of there homes denouncing hatred and extolling love for all people, who then go online and, without a second thought, post messages fostering the hatred of particular political figures because they feel that the fostering of this kind of hatred is necessary to stop that person from committing acts of hatred!

I pray no one will view this as a partisan comment, since this kind of unfortunate behaviour is very common among people of all political stripes, and we are all, and I mean ALL OF US, including myself, guilty of these kinds of unconscious actions all the time! The challenge is to learn how to see into and transform the subtle, largely unconscious hypocrisies within our own souls rather than point fingers at others—this is yet another spiritual practice highly suited to the Age of the Consciousness Soul that I plan to elaborate on in the future.

There are indeed many practices we can undertake to help us counteract these tendencies and, in this video, I attempt to give an overview of one such practice. In the future I plan to share many more examples, because I believe that it is by integrating simple, spiritual practices like this into our daily lives that we lay the foundation for the kind of genuine cultural, political and economic renewal for which we are all longing so deeply.

I wish to thank Helen Lubin for pointing out to me after the presentation that the “Faithfulness verse” of Rudolf Steiner that I shared in this talk, is not actually a verse, but rather a prose excerpt from a letter that Rudolf Steiner wrote to Christoph Boy, one of the first Waldorf teachers.

I also wish to thank the Front Range Anthroposophical Cafe (FRAC) for the invitation to give this presentation, You can learn more about FRAC and sign up to get announcements for their weekly offerings here.

I apologize to any of my readers and listeners who lack a background in the worldview and terminology of spiritual science, which may make this presentation difficult to follow and understand at certain points. In the future, I plan to make offerings like this in a more universally accessible language, but until this time, I must ask for your patience and understanding!

Lastly, please note that around minute 36 and 49 seconds I misspoke when trying to elucidate a very sensitive and complex topic. I meant to say that because of “free will” (not “good will”) it is inevitable that some human beings are rejecting the upward path of evolution. This fact necessitates that those of us trying to follow an upward path work to generate an abundance of forces of Christian love as an offering to the angels of those who are at risk of completely losing their humanity.

Statue of Joan of Arc in New Orleans

I am excited to be speaking at the Wisconfluence event in Viroqua, Wisconsin this weekend, a wonderful gathering of a broad spectrum of holistic minded, liberty-oriented folks—that will include a special appearance by Catherine Austin Fitts!

My contributions include a talk on Friday from 11 am to 12:30 pm called The Evolution of Sovereignty and the Renewal of America, and a talk follwed by breakout session on Saturday from 8:30 to 11 am on the theme From Ownership to Stewardship: Principles and Practices for Taking Courageous Action.

There are lots of other great offerings, including a eurythymy workshop by my freind Jan Rank! Check out the link below for more information.

I hope you can join us!

Wisconfluence 2025: Courageous LIving in Changing Times

PS I just heard that Michael D’Arcangelo of Aetherbal is going to be exhibiting his amazing line of alchemic herbal products at this event as well. These products will blow your mind!

PPS If all goes well I will be sharing a recording of these talks soon on my substack.

Dear friend,

Are you interested in

• Moving beyond the stereotypes of “Woke” and “Anti-Woke” to enter into a vital, living conversation about the social justice issues of our time?

• Having a constructive, honest conversation about the role of DEI in Waldorf education, Camphill, and other anthroposophical daughter movement institutions?

• Exploring how anthroposophy can help us stop othering and start meeting each other as human beings across the various cultural, social, and economic divides that would keep us apart?

If the answer is yes, we would like to warmly invite you to this intergenerational event, hosted by the Youth Section of the Anthroposophical Society, and held with support from the Woodshouse Foundation.

Please note that we have decided to make this an intergenerational, rather than a primarily youth focused event, so people of all ages are now invited to register.

These are sensitive topics, and we will each have to be willing to develop new social capacities and sensitivities to make this event work. We are thus seeking individuals interested in collaborating with us to foster a culture of genuine speaking and listening. Are you up for the challenge?

Please join us!

For more details and to register, please click here.

Dear freinds,

For those planning to attend my workshop at Foxhollow Farm in Kentucky at the end of October, or who are considering attending, I want to give a little more of a flavor for the work we will undertake these days. You can find the original description of the workshop here.

Some of you are likely aware that Foxhollow Farm is not only one of the most beautiful and vital biodynamic farms in the United States, but is also home to one of the most extraordinary “lithopuncture” installations ever created in the United States by the Slovenian earth healer and artist Marko Pogacnic and his students.

As I have visited Foxhollow farm many times over the years, and as Marko and his daughter Anna has been a major influence on my own work as a practitioner of earth healing, the strong feeling has arisen in me that I want to use this workshop to build a stronger bridge between the practices of biography work and the practices of earth healing, since these two disciplines themselves represent an archetypal polarity.

This polarity arises from the fact that biography work has an intimate connection to the mysteries of time, as these express themselves in the unfolding rhythms of our individual biographies, while earth healing work has an intimate connection to the mysteries of space, as these come to expression in the spiritual and physical forces working in particular places, farms and landscapes.

If we explore this polarity more deeply, however, we can immediately see how the two sides of this archetypal polarity (time and space) actually flow deeply into one another. In earth healing, for example, we use the rhythm of the seasons, and the festival cycle of the year, to work in a healing way with the forces active in a given place at a given time.

To understand the intimate role of space in biography work, we need only consider how the call to spirit remembering in the first panel of the foundation stone mediation given by Rudolf Steiner, which is so intimately connected to biography work, is associated with the limbs which move us through the world of space…into the spirits ocean being…and which in doing so, lift our souls out of their sluggishness.

From a certain perspective we could say that the spirit remembering that we carry out in biography work represents a kind of inwardizing of the spatial movement of the limbs, while the carrying out of earth healing festivals and ceremonies on the land represents a kind of outwardizing of the forces of time. Through these efforts, time and space become healing forces.

Dynamic polarities like these are woven throughout nature and human life—indeed we could go so far as to say they are the sum and substance of our soul life at each and every moment-- from sympathy and antipathy, to percept and concept, to speaking and listening! When we look more closely at our whole biography, we find it literally riddled with the mysteries of dynamic polarity.

Can we learn to read the meaning of these riddles, and in doing so, learn to harmonize and transform the diverse, polaric forces shaping our inner and outer lives? That is the question, and the territory, which I am so excited to explore with you in this upcoming workshop.

A key modality we will use to build this bridge between time and space is something provisionally called “Goethean Movement" which has been developed by Hugh Ractliffe, a Goethean scientist and biodynamic farmer who I have been studying with for the last seven years. Goethean movement helps us to discover and express the formative forces at work in nature, in our bodies and souls, and in human biography, through simple, flowing, archetypal gestures and movements.

For those interested in doing some (optional) preparatory reading for this workshop, I would like to recommend two lectures by Rudolf Steiner. One is from the series Human Questions and Cosmic Answers, (GA 213), which can be found here at the Rudolf Steiner archive. The second is the classic RS lecture Brotherhood and the Struggle for Existence, (from GA 54) which can also be found on the Steiner archive here.

With warm anticipation,

Robert

An earlier version of this article was published in the newsletter of RSF Social Finance in 2013 when I was Executive Director of the Biodynamic Association. Later, it was picked up and published on the blog of a wonderful Sufi group called Seven Pillars of the House of Wisdom and they then included it in a book of essays they published in 2018 called Journeys and Awakenings: Wisdom for Spiritual Travelers (Sacred Spirit Books) I thought it would be a perfect piece to share at the launch of my new substack because I suspect it is relatively unknown to most of my current readers, and because it is perfectly situated at the metaxic intersection of my work in agriculture and my work in spiritual science. One thing to note, however, is that since the time I wrote this article, we have witnessed the flowering of a form of environmentalism that in many respects seeks to undermine the promising awakening that I describe in this article. It is thus my intention to write a sequel to this article in the near future addressing the challenge of staying true to the original calling of the environmental movement.

Image credit: Sacred Corn by Donald Corpier Starr.

To live, we must daily break the body and spill the blood of Creation. When we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament. When we do it ignorantly, greedily, clumsily, destructively, it is a desecration. — Wendell Berry

In ancient times agriculture was intimately connected with the sacred. We find evidence of this in a host of texts and in many traditions which survive to this day. We know, for example, that for the indigenous people on the American continent, the corn plant is believed to have come into being through a long process of cooperation between human beings and the gods, and to grow corn is still a sacred activity for many Native American people today.

If we try to discern the ultimate source of these traditions, we discover that people in ancient cultures experienced the natural world much differently than we do. Where today we might see, for example, simply a corn plant (tall stem, tassels, ears, husks, silks, yellow kernels, etc.), they saw the body of a spiritual being whom they felt to be the ultimate source of the unique traits and gifts of that particular plant species. This vision of the spiritual in nature endowed all creatures and all creation with a special kind of dignity.

It was thus not enough for ancient cultures or indigenous people to simply plant a corn seed at the right time in the right soil, and then cultivate the plant during the growing season until harvest. Growing corn also required prayers and rituals that would invite the spiritual being of corn to participate in the growth of the plants and so bless the people with her radiant wisdom and health-giving powers. Maintaining this sacred connection with the gods through agriculture was at the heart of the life of ancient cultures and echoes of this religious feeling toward nature survived in indigenous and rural farming communities for centuries.

Through his spiritual research, Rudolf Steiner discovered that the gradual loss of this way of experiencing the natural world among the majority of the world’s population was an inevitable and necessary part of the evolution of human consciousness. This loss paved the way for a much clearer way of seeing the physical world, and eventually led to the discovery of the physical laws of matter and to modern technology.

Through this process, we have also come to experience ourselves more and more as unique individuals independent of nature, culture, race and one another. With this independence comes freedom: the freedom to choose our own vocations, community and ideals—as well as the feeling that we are responsible for our own actions. This sense of individual freedom and responsibility is the gift, the silver lining, you could say, of the advent of materialism.

The healthy age of materialism has long since passed, however, so that today we bear witness primarily to the shadow side of materialism rather than its gift. We have become so enamored of our seeming power over nature, that we are undermining the very fabric of life on earth. This is perhaps nowhere more evident than in agriculture where practices like confined animal feeding operations (CAFO’s) and the genetic engineering plants and animals (GMO’s) betray a consciousness completely devoid of any remaining sense of the dignity-bestowing spiritual beings at work in landscapes, organisms, creatures and species.

There is nonetheless, I would suggest, a silver lining to this post-materialistic devolution of values. In the depths of the crisis brought on by these destructive trends, we can discern a new, individualized, eco-spiritual consciousness of the world re-emerging. From thousands and thousands of humble, everyday people—farmers, eaters, scientists, educators, artists and business people—a grassroots awakening to the ecological and spiritual realities that sustain the earth and her creatures is taking place. The being of Gaia, we could say, is finding a home again in the souls of modern human beings.

This new consciousness, I would suggest, is the ultimate source of inspiration for the growth of the ecology movement of the 1960’s, the health food movement of the 1970’s, the environmental movement of the 1980’s, the organic farming movement of the 1990’s, the local food movement of the 2000’s, and a host of other allied movements too numerous to mention. It is also, of course, the inspiration for the biodynamic movement which seeks to demonstrate the many practical ways this new consciousness of sacred can bring renewal to the earth and to the practice of agriculture.

Yes, the sense of the sacred is reemerging in the food and agriculture movement of today, as the quote from Wendell Berry at the beginning of this article so beautifully brings to expression. Yet it is important to remember that this new consciousness of the sacred, while related, is not the same as that possessed by ancient cultures. This awakening is not embedded in collective religious practices or cultural norms, but rather has emerged as a natural extension of healthy scientific inquiry and is thriving in the context of a cosmopolitan confluence of diverse philosophical perspectives and cultural traditions. This new sense of the sacred is thus rooted in and sustained by a contemporary sense of individuality and freedom of thought.

In this otherwise deeply troubling moment in human history, this awakening, this tender, fragile but growing movement toward a reunion of agriculture and the sacred, can give us hope.

Welcome, and thank you for joining me on the journey toward wholeness. This Substack serves as my website, blog, and newsletter, where I will share updates on my initiatives and educational offerings, along with a wealth of spiritual-scientific perspectives on personal, societal, and planetary transformation.

Some of the themes I will explore here include:

- Social Threefolding, Depolarization and Holistic Approaches to Social Change

- Biodynamics, Earth Healing, and the Subtle Dimensions of the Climate Crisis

- The Evolution of Consciousness, the Mystery of Christ and the Future of Religion

- The Extaordinary Spiritual Geography and Elemental Landscapes of the Americas

- Spiritual Psychology, Soul Work Goethean Movement, and the Arts of Human Encounter

I’ve named this site Metaxy: A Journey Toward Wholeness, inspired by the Greek term metaxy (μεταξύ), meaning “between.” In Plato’s philosophy, metaxy refers to the in-between realm—such as Eros, who mediates between the divine and mortal realms. Later thinkers like Eric Voegelin used metaxy to describe the dynamic tension of human consciousness as it moves between polarities such as finite and infinite, heaven and earth, self and other.

This living middle ground—within our souls, our communities, and our landscapes—that is capable of harmonizing and transforming opposites, is central to the work of Rudolf Steiner and to my own path. I was deeply moved to discover this term recently, as it beautifully names the luminous space between—where soul and world, self and other, earth and cosmos—can be brought into right relationship.

To learn more about my career in agriculture, please see my LinkedIn profile here.

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