Anthroposophy in Hawkes Bay
Calendar of Coming Events
-- Diary Dates
In the Rudolf Steiner Centre, 401 Whitehead Road, Hastings
unless stated otherwise.
- Saturday 7 June. 7 pm. *Festival for the Dead.
- 6pm Friday June 13 from 6pm to 1 pm Sunday June 15. **Weekend Courses for Eurythmic Exercises at Taruna.
- Saturday 28 June. Winter Festival
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Festival for the Dead
This is an opportunity for us to remember people who have crossed the threshold of death.
You can find out more about the Norwegian mystic who slept through the thirteen days and holy nights of Christmas in:
Olaf Asteson a 1914 lecture bt Rudolf Steiner.
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-- Regular Groups
- Leaders of Regular Study Groups are invited to list what your group is doing, when and where and how those interested can join you. Details to info@anthrohb.nz
- Friday Leading Thoughts Study Group meets on 2nd and 4th Friday of the month at 7 pm in the Foyer. All Welcome. Next meeting: Fri 23 May: p167 "What is the Earth in reality within the Macrocosm?"
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Committee
This week Angela Hair, Secretary, introduces herself.
Angela Hair is a homoeopath who has worked in Havelock North and Hastings for over 30 years. She has much experience helping people through acute and chronic unwellness. She came to the Steiner Centre in May 2022 when the consult room became available. She has run her sole practice from the Centre since this time and enjoys the support and friendship of users at the Centre. Angela joined the Branch Committee and took on the job of Secretary, in May 2023.
Her business has survived the challenges of covid lockdowns and vaccination mandates through these years and she continues to see clients and distribute homeopathic remedies around the country, from this base. Working in an anthroposophical centre allows me to work with Intentional Grace, a system of muscle testing that works in an intentional way to connect with the spiritual realm to find health solutions.
She has three adult children and lives on a small farm with her husband. She enjoys growing spray free fruit in her orchard and uses homeopathic remedies and BD preps when needed.
You can contact Angela on 0274436737 and book consultations through concordiahealth.co.nz
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Origins of our Rudolf Steiner Centre – an ‘oasis of culture’
This year, Taikura Waldorf School is 75 years old. That is a wonderful achievement, and may the school grow in strength in the coming years.
Why do I start with this fact in an article for the Newsletter for the Anthroposophical Centre in Hastings?
Going back in my memory, it became clear to me that the coming into being of the Centre and the school are very connected. This will not be a history of how it all happened but a building up and bringing together some of these two initiatives.
We have to go back to the middle of the 1970’s. At that time the school was very small. 65 students in 7 classes and no Anthroposophical Centre in Hastings. Then a most amazing thing happened: many young teachers wanted to be part of the school and many parents moved into Hastings so their children could attend the Queenswood School as it was then called. Classes doubled their size in a very short time, new teachers and parents were looking for knowledge about Waldorf education and Anthroposophy. in 1962 Queenswood became Queenswood Rudolf Steiner School after a visit by Karl Ege. In 1975 the Upper school was started, and the name changed again to Rudolf Steiner School Hastings - (It was only some years later it would be named Taikura.)
The high fence around the school was replaced by a much lower one, so the school and the environment could interact. Around that time also the 2-storey boarding house was closed and moved off the school site.
Then the dairy opposite the school closed and came up for sale. Some of the teachers looked into this possibility. An older member (Dora Bird) had left a bequest in her estate to the Hastings Anthroposophical group in the hope that a Centre could be founded. So, Finances were there, partly.
The general feeling was very positive and so the old dairy was bought, a trust was founded, loans were organised and plans made on how to change this building to make it the place where all the activities of the Hastings Branch could take place.
So, the dairy space (an extension to the original house) was demolished. All that is left of it is the path leading from the gate on the corner to the veranda.
The next step was the taking down of internal walls (of four rooms and a passageway) and inserting a long steel truss to hold up the roof in order to create the main room as we now know it. Later Norbert Mulholland would make the beautiful murals in the main room.
When one of the houses on the school grounds [310 Fitzroy], used by the school for teacher accommodation had to be removed to allow the school to expand, it was brought on to the site behind the original building and connected to the existing building. There the library found a wonderful home. It was Shirley Wall who made the murals in the Library.
Right from the beginning the Centre was very well used. The yearly AGM of the New Zealand society would take place there, hence what is now the art room started out as a dining room for use during AGM and conferences. So slowly the space as we now know it took shape, the latest wonderful change is the new chairs in the Foyer.
Dr Steiner often mentioned the concept of “oasis of culture” as the way schools, farms and all initiatives arising out of Anthroposophy should develop. Is that not a very good description of what the area around the Centre and the Taikura School has become?
“Oasis of Culture.”
Ineke van Florenstein Mulder
(Ineke and her husband, Hans, were part of the group of teachers founding the Upper or High School.)
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COMMUNITY NOTICEBOARD:
Requests; Exchange; Wanted; For sale
Notice requests to info@anthrohb.nz
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The Role of Money in Threefold Social Life
and with the threefold Human being.
What is Money?
The Dictionary says: "Money is any medium used for the exchange of goods and services."
That means an interchange of ownership of some money and a product of work. If a buyer has $10 (capital) and the seller, say a baker, has a loaf of bread, which is the ‘product’ of his work, and the buyer is hungry, and the aroma of the bread is enticing, and she wants the loaf more than she wants the $10, and the baker has many loaves baked that morning, and he wants to sell them soon at a premium price before they become old and stale and worth nothing, so he wants the $10 more than the loaf. So, they transact an exchange after which they both feel better off – that is, they have both made a “profit”.
You will notice that money had three roles in that story.
Firstly, it is Capital – money in storage, maybe in a wallet or safe or bank account. It is ‘stationary’ like one’s head. Our whole body is organised so our head and brain move least of all, as we walk, run or work, so that we can think clearly. In Latin, the word for head is ‘capit’.
The second stage is Evaluation. The buyer considers the money in her hand in relation to the loaf of bread on the baker's shelves, as does the seller, the baker. There is a back-and-forth process in their feelings life. In a market, there may also be bargaining offers. However, there is no action or transaction unless and until both the buyer and seller feel there is a profit or advantage to be made.
Money in the three realms of Social Life
The Cultural-Educational Realm is about individuals. The money owned by an individual is part of their personal wealth, their capital. The transaction fit for this realm is ‘gifting’ - a GIFT is an unconditional transfer of funds from one person to another. Unconditional: beneficiaries are FREE to use or spend the money in any way they see fit.
A classic situation is an elderly person, nearing the end of their life, who knows that they cannot take their money across the threshold, so they gift it (as a bequest) to someone who has just crossed the threshold the other way – to a newborn child who has no earthly assets.
The Legal Political Realm is about relationships between individuals (face-to-face) in a particular jurisdiction. Money in this realm is concerned with assessing the value of goods and services. This is often in the form of CONTRACTS, both formal written and informal, spoken or unspoken where EQUALITY is important.
For example, a Monetary Loan is a contract between Lender and Borrower which may specify the principal amount being lent, the terms of the loan, the interest rate and any repayment conditions. The total interest paid expresses the value of the Loan.
An Employment Contract specifies the work to be performed, any conditions related to standards, time and place, etc. The value of the work is expressed by terms of remuneration.
A Sales Contract specifies the content of the sale and any conditions relating to time and place, and the price to be paid. The price ticket on an item in a shop or market is an invitation to buy at that price – it is not a contract. A buyer may haggle or bargain over the price or value of the item or service being sold, or maybe the method of payment. It is only a contract when the buyer and seller agree to proceed.
The essence of all these issues is that a mutual agreement is formed between the two sides.
The Community Economic Realm is about people in a community (a firm?) working side-by-side to meet the needs, goods and services, of other people in the community, indeed it could be the whole world through international trade. A threefold aspect of this realm is: Production –> Distribution –> Consumption.
The role of money here is expediting the movement (distribution) of goods and services according to contract – we can call it Purchase Money.
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We can see a sort of progression through a lifetime:
Youth – acquiring money. Maturity – dispensing money.
Expanding this a bit (there are of course many overlaps):
Beneficiary of gifts, Borrower of loans, Seller of goods and services.
Buyer of goods and services; Lender of capital; Giver of gifts and a final bequest.
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Interestingly, the ‘bread’ [or indeed any good or service] gets consumed [destroyed] – but what happens to the purchase money? Does it get consumed or destroyrd? In fact, where did the money come from in the first place? How did it evolve?
Evolutionary Stages of Money as Currency
- Farm [or household] economy, where the proceeds of all the workers (gardener, orchardist, shepherd, dairymaid, poultryman, swineherd, etc,) is collectively pooled and shared. So, money is not needed [except for external transactions].
- Barter, where commodities (grains, crops, livestock, pelts, cloth, garments, tea, salt, vegetables, bread, weapons) would be traded for each other in quantities whereby both traders felt they made a profit. A hungry tailor will trade a warm or beautiful garment with (many) loaves of bread from a cold or dusty baker.
- Metallic money. [from about 7th century BC, when fire for smelting processes had developed sufficiently.]
Highly refined, purified metals (bullion from ‘boiling’) such as gold, silver, bronze, brass, copper, cast into coins with the head of the sovereign, on whose authority they were made, on one side. For example: the British Pound [gold], Shilling [silver] and Penny {copper} with the King or Queen’s head and year imprinted.
- Paper money in a range of denominations issued by Merchant banks (as receipts for metallic coins deposited) that could be redeemed by ‘the bearer’ for similar coins when presented at a branch of the bank at a distant destination, relieving the holder from having to carry heavy coins while travelling. Popularised by Knights going on Crusades to the Holy Land.
- Cheques written by Bank account holders in lieu of cash or currency.
- Plastic Credit and Debit cards with magnetic strips with encoded information enabling the transfer of money between a holder’s bank account and a trader’s bank account.
- Digital/Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) between bank accounts using computer apps and smartphones with Digital Wallets.
- Cryptocurrencies are generated by a chain of computer transactions. They are not bank-based or legally supported because of possible tax evasion. I wonder if these are not a form of digital ‘cancer’. (Cancer being essentially uncontrolled growth.)
Characteristics of good Money (Currency)
- Acceptable, both legally by the state or jurisdiction and socially by the population. Modern notes have printed on them, “This note is legal tender for ‘x’ dollars.” Coins have an impression of the head of state to validate them. Digital wallet transactions need a guarantee from a bank or issuer that earns the trust of both buyer and seller.
- Divisible into convenient, small amounts. We [in NZ] have a 1,000-fold range:
- Notes have the following denominations: $100, $50, $20, $10, $5
- Coins have the following denominations: $2, $1, 50c, 20c, 10c
- Durable, not perishable.
- Small and light = convenient to carry and high value relative to weight.
- Secure. Difficult to counterfeit.
- Value is known. Currency is the single unit of account for most evaluations. Goods and services are valued in terms of dollars, not ‘shells’ or ‘eggs’ or ‘diamonds’ or ‘gold’.
But in the end, one realises that essentially money is an idea – it is spiritual! Ahh!!!
Currency is merely a trusted [legal] token for value – for a person with no concept of money banknotes could be like leaves blowing in the breeze.
However, there are still questions: Who authorises the minting of new money? Who owns it once it has been created? Is that the only way money comes into existence?
RB
