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Newsletter 5: Sunday 2 February 2025Anthroposophy in Hawkes BayCalendar of Coming Events-- Diary Dates In the Rudolf Steiner Centre, 401 Whitehead Road, Hastings
Our warm welcome to new member, Jenny Speedy. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ANNIVERSARY YEAR This year is Taikura Rudolf Steiner School’ 75th birthday (being founded in 1950 through the purchase of Queenswood) and the 100th anniversary of Rudolf Steiner’s death on 30 March 1925. The Branch Committee meets Thurs 27 February. We would love to know what members and readers would like to happen throughout the year to honour these anniversaries. Who can help or make suggestions or lead or support activities and events? Please let us know. Write/email to info@anthrohb.nz ******** Continuing notes about the early years of Anthroposophy in New Zealand. Some of these notes are derived from Garth Turbott’s 2013 thesis. "Anthroposophy in the Antipodes - A Lived Spirituality in New Zealand 1902-1960s" to Massey University for his MA. [Massey Research Online: www.mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/296 ] Two prominent families, Atkinson and Richmond, were connected by marriage. Sir Harry Atkinson, four terms as Premier of NZ between 1876 and 1891, married Anne Richmond. The Atkinson family fostered Anthroposophy near Wellington, whereas the Richmond family did so in Hawkes Bay. Emma's daughter Rachel married (1912) Bernard Crompton-Smith who was an orchardist in Havelock North. Acquiring study material was a challenge as it took a while for Rudolf Steiner's lectures to be published first in German and then translated into English. There was no internet or air-travel - voyages between Europe and NZ took 6 to 7 weeks for both passengers and mail. A major source of study material was an Englishman, Harry Collinson, who would send typescript copies of translations of notes taken by listeners and later official shorthand sourced notes to Bernard C-S as soon as they became available. Bernard would copy them (no photocopiers) by typing firmly 7 copies on very thin paper with carbon paper - the bottom copy was barely legible. It was typical for study groups of that time to have 7 members - maybe that was a reason! Rachel C-S had trained as a teacher (Froebel Educational Institute) and so was very interested in Steiner's educational ideas when they became available. She ran the St George's School for younger children in their home, Duart House, in Havelock North for several years -- from 1915 to 1921. More next week. RB ~~~~~~~ THE ART OF CURATIVE EURYTHMY ~~~~~~~~ Quote: In 1917, Rudolf Steiner was lecturing about: How “a man will be able to guide his intentions and his thoughts into the forces of the machines”. MACHINES “One of these great problems will be concerned with finding out how to place the spiritual etheric forces at the service of practical life. I have told you that in this epoch we have to solve the problem of how the radiations from human states of mind are carried over into machines; of how human beings are to be brought into relation with an environment which must become increasingly mechanised. […] Where this kind of thing goes on, the wish to yoke up human strength with the strength of machines is always involved. It would be quite mistaken merely to oppose these things. They are not going to fade away; they are on the march. The only question is whether in the course of world-history they are going to be brought on to the scene by men who are unselfishly aware of the great aims of earth-evolution and wish to shape these developments for the healing of mankind, or by groups of men who want to use them for their own or the group’s selfish ends. That is the issue. The point is not what is going to happen, for it certainly will happen, but how it happens — how these things are handled. The welding together of human beings with machines will be a great and important problem for the rest of the earth-evolution. I have often pointed out, even in public lectures, that human consciousness depends on destructive forces. During public lectures in Basle I twice said that in our nerve-system we are always in process of dying. These forces of death will become stronger and stronger, and we shall find that they are related to the forces of electricity and magnetism, and to those at work in machines. A man will be able in a certain sense to guide his intentions and his thoughts into the forces of the machines. Forces in human nature that are still unknown will be discovered — forces which will act upon external electricity and magnetism. That is one problem: the bringing together of human beings with machines, and this is something which will exert an ever-increasing influence on the future.” Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 178 – The Wrong and Right Use of Esoteric Knowledge – Lecture 3 – Dornach, 25th November 1917 https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA178/English/RSP1966/19171125p02.html - a hundred years later... we see how prosthetic limbs can be operated by the mental impulse of the wearer. It is no doubt in action elsewhere.
Posted: Sun 02 Feb 2025 |
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