Newsletter 29: Sunday 20 July 2025

Anthroposophy in Hawkes Bay          

Calendar of Coming Events
-- Diary Dates

In the Rudolf Steiner Centre, 401 Whitehead Road, Hastings unless stated otherwise.

  • Friday 25 July. 7 pm. Leading Thoughts Study Group. p186 "Where is Man as a Being who Thinks and Remembers?"; LT 165-167
  • Monday 21 July at 7 pm. 3rd of 4 Conversations on RS's Foundation Stone Meditation. Then 28 July.
  • ASNZ Society Day and AGM in Tauranga in September
  • Friday 3 to Monday 6 October.  Salutogenesis Course.
  • December, Meditation workshop. tba
  • Monday 5 to Sunday 11 January 2026.  Social Eurythmy Course, at Michael Park School, Ellerslie.
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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 meetings 7 pm on Fridays:  25 July, 8 & 22 August, 12 & 26 September.
  • Conversations on RS's Foundation Stone Meditation and Rudolf Steiner's colleagues Marie Steiner, Ita Wegman, Albert Steffen, Gunther Wachsmuth, Elizabeth Vreede. Mondays  (7, 14) 21 & 28 July.
  • School of Spiritual Science from 9:30 to noon on Saturdays.  The focus until November will be on the Recapitulation lessons given in other places than Dornach. 
    2 August, (second lesson in Prague given on 5 April 1924)
    6 September, (lesson in Berne given on 17 April 1924)
    4 October,  (first lesson in Breslau given on 12 June 1924)
    1 November,  (second lesson in Breslau given on 13 June 1924)... 
    6 December. (first lesson given in Dornach on 15 February 1924)
  • HB Branch Committee meetings 5:30 pm Thursdays 14 August, 11 September, 9 October, 13 November & 11 December.
  • Kathy Allen Therapeutic Pastel Class Wednesdays Term 2. 10:00 to 11:30 am. Art Room.

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List of Members

From time-to-time people request a list of members.  This is purposefully not published on our website.

A list of Members with email and phone contacts is available as an Excel file to paid-up Members who make a request to the Treasurer, treas@anthrohb.nz .

 Not every member is on the list as some members have requested that their name not appear.  

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Noticeboard

Accommodation

 The Rangimarie Flat at 617 Heretaunga Street East is now ready for a tenant. If you know of anyone who may be interested in sharing our house and gardens, please ask them to contact   Lesley Waite at  021 065 8065  or  Corrie Molenaar at  027 368 0242

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3fold Musings: Envisioning

Chapter 15

For those who are new, I have been, in these musings, trying to find helpful pictures for understanding Rudolf Steiner’s description of the social catastrophe of the First World War at the end of his life, his insights into the social ills that magnified it, and his suggestion of changes that would be healing.  His ideas have been called the “Threefold Social Order”.  Even a hundred years later they can provide many helpful insights into the challenges of our day and how we might overcome them.

You can find my earlier musings here.

In trying to understand the Threefold Society, we have to compare and contrast concepts.  When these are put into written words there is an habitual bias coming from the way we read English from left to right in a sentence and from the top of a page to the bottom.   Right and left are far apart spatially, and directionally left always comes before right.  Even the words themselves are directional - they have the first letter on the left.   

For example:
Body  -  Soul   -  Spirit
Seems different to:
Spirit  -  Soul   -  Body.

With something circular we may have a tendency to follow the numbers on a clock going ‘clockwise’.  There is also, I suspect for most people, a tendency to move from the past to the future, not the other way – from the future to the past.  In fact, we often work backwards when we plan an event:  We start by envisioning the future finished state and move back through the processes to the present moment.

A hypothetical example:
*Target: arrive at school by 8:55;
*walking takes 15 minutes so leave home at 8:40;
*pack bag: make lunch; clean teeth; eat breakfast; get dressed; shower; this takes 75 minutes, so
*get out of bed at 7:25.

Most creative processes do the same,

I was wondering how one can lessen such bias.  Maybe one way is to first read a line normally and form pictures of the concepts in sequence; then release the words as a ‘group of letters’; close your eyes and reverse the sequence of concepts in your mind, perhaps some new insights may arise. 

It involves a breathing process of exhaling, expanding, separating, analysing, letting the light in.  Now close your eyes, inhale and synthesize the ideas into a unity again.  We can differentiate in analysis, but we don’t need to maintain the separation.  

In life my head doesn’t separate from my trunk, nor my legs. They carry on their different tasks while united.

So, I have created a diagram that is not linear -- by creating a circle so that the two ends of a line come together.  Here I have used the basic concept of MYSELF consisting of Body, Soul and Spirit with some related concepts nearby, and further 3folding.  Does that help?  Exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale ……

 

Diagram: Threefold Human Being

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Looking at threefold political attitudes (conservatism, liberalism, socialism) is deferred for another week.

RB

 

Posted: Sun 20 Jul 2025

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