Anthroposophy in Hawkes Bay
Rudolf Steiner Centre, 401 Whitehead Road, Hastings
Events over next 2 weeks
[5 to 19 October]
- Thursday 9 October. 5:30pm Branch Committee meeting
- Friday 10 October. 7 pm. Study Group: Michael Letter p211 "Historic Cataclysms at the Dawn of the Spiritual Soul". Leading Thoughts 180-182.
- 11 & 12 October. Spring Festival
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Spring Festival Notice -
– Spring Festival –
– the Festival of Enlightenment –
– ‘Oh Human being, know thyself’ –
– Sunday 12th October 2025 –
Events:
Sunday, 12th Oct at 3pm – a reading of Lecture 5 "The Working together of the Four Archangels" from ‘The Four Seasons and the Archangels’with John Jackson
Sunday, 12th Oct at 7pm – social gathering and Festival Celebration
This will be a celebration of spring, the joy in nature – with an earnest note addressed to each of us:
Alexandre Pushkin presents us with an initiation in the desert in his ‘Prophet’ – spoken by the festival chorus;
Leslie Waite will give the festival address on the forces at work in the spring time.
There will be a presentation of Scene 4 from the ‘Portal of Initiation’, Rudolf Steiner’s first Mystery Drama – holding up a mirror to our time and consciousness, our extreme cleverness and immersion in material gold, as perceived by the natural and spiritual world.
Verses, poems and music – our CHB friends will be there again to enliven us with music, and we will sing and move together.
All welcome – bring some friends.
With many thanks to all involved, preparing this event! –
Astrid Pook & John Jackson.
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Wanted: stinging nettle and comfrey
I am collecting ingredients for making liquid manure and can’t seem to be able to source any stinging nettle (preferably urtica dioica) and comfrey.
If you have either or both of these growing in your garden and can spare some, I’d be very grateful.
Thank you,
Gerrit
gwr@actrix.co.nz
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Items, Notices, Letters, or articles of interest to the Hawkes Bay Anthroposophical community
ARE MOST WELCOME
Please email your text by midday Saturday to the Editor at info@anthrohb.nz with"For AnthroHB News" in the subject line.
Diagrams and pictures need to be in .jpeg (or .jpg) format.
Robin Bacchus, Editor
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Musings on the Mystery PLays - 2
Mystery, Miracle and Morality plays
Medieval Mystery, Miracle, and Morality plays were typicaliy used to teach the public (many of whom illiterate) religious and moral lessons in a more vivid way than preaching sermons.
Mystery plays dramatized stories from the Bible, covering events from Creation to Judgment Day. In 1210 A.D. Pope Innocent III banned Mystery Plays being performed by clergy in church, which resulted the plays being performed in small towns by guilds on travelling stages.
Rudolf Steiner introduced the Oberufer Christmas plays to the Waldorf School. These 3 mystery plays – the Paradise Play, the Shepherds’ Play and the Kings’ Play – were well preserved on an island in the Upper Danube where these plays were first noted down and collected by one of Rudolf Steiner’s university professors, Karl Julius Schroer.
What are these plays about?
The first one, called The Paradise Play, is quite short and tells the story as described in the book of Genesis of the creation of the world and the subsequent expulsion from Paradise of Adam and Eve, after they had succumbed to Satan’s strategem to get them to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the one tree in the Garden of Eden that God had forbidden to them. Today, Christmas Eve (once called the Feast of Adam and Eve) and the Christmas tree – sometimes called the Paradise Tree – represents the Garden of Eden. The Paradise Play is usually performed just before Christmas together with the second play, the Shepherds’ Play, which tells the story of the proclamation of the Birth of Jesus to the shepherds in the field. This is the nativity story as told in the St Luke Gospel.
The third play, the Kings Play, tells of the visit of the three wise men, the Magi , to the birthplace of Baby Jesus, and then of the murderous atrocities of Herod (induced by fear) in his attempt to destroy the boy he assumed would take over his throne. It is traditionally performed on 6th January, the feast of Epiphany. This is the nativity story as told in the St Matthew Gospel.
Miracle plays focused on the lives and miracles of (Catholic) saints.
Morality plays were allegorical, using personified abstract concepts like virtues and vices to teach about the struggle between good and evil in a person's life, with the famous example being EVERYMAN, an allegory about Christian salvation, examining the question of how a person can properly prepare their soul for death.
The play begins with God lamenting that humankind is too focused on worldly possessions and pleasure. He sends his "mighty messenger," Death, to summon Everyman and bring him to a reckoning to account for his life.
Everyman is caught unprepared and tries to bribe Death for more time, but is refused. Death tells him he can bring any companions willing to make the pilgrimage to his grave and stand with him before God.
Everyman first turns to his friends, Fellowship, Kindred, and Cousin, who all abandon him when they learn his destination is the grave. Fellowship promises to go "to hell" with him for a bit of fun but quickly backtracks, and Cousin claims a cramp in his toe.
Next, Everyman turns to his material possessions, personified as Goods. Goods refuses to go with him and even argues that loving him is what has damned Everyman in the first place.
Abandoned by the things of the world, Everyman finally turns to Good Deeds. At first, Good Deeds is too weak to stand because of Everyman's sinful life, but she introduces him to her sister, Knowledge. Guided by Knowledge, Everyman journeys to Confession, repents for his sins, and receives the sacraments, which restores Good Deeds to strength.
On his final journey, Everyman is rejoined by Strength, Beauty, Discretion, and Five Wits (his five senses). But as he gets closer to the grave, they abandon him one by one, along with Knowledge, leaving only Good Deeds to stand by him. Everyman and Good Deeds descend into the grave together, where an Angel appears to receive Everyman's soul into heaven.
These plays began to disappear with the advent of more secular modern drama in the 16th century.
Tragedy, Comedy, Musicals, radio/broadcast, films/cinema/movies, TV reality shows became more focussed on the earthly sensory world and less on the imponderable supersensible world on which Rudolf Steiner's dramatic work was based.
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SYNOPSIS of the first five scenes of the “Portal of Initiation”
Many of the scenes are not physical landscapes but imaginary soulscapes, and some of the characters portrayed are supersensible beings.
Prelude: Two divergent views of modern life are exchanged between Estella and Sophia. Their dialogue sets the background of the exoteric world from which the events Of the Mystery Drama detach themselves as the expression of an entirely new beginning in our cultural and spiritual life.
Scene One: We witness the meeting of sixteen individualities, inspired by a lecture just given by Benedictus in the house of Maria. Their conversation becomes decisive for the inner path of Johannes Thomasius, the young painter. This first meeting contains all the motives which will continue in supersensible pictures and happenings: the doubts and objections of the two scientists, Professor Capesius and Dr. Strader; the awe-inspiring seership of Theodora; Felix and Felicia Balde's mountain solitude; the Other Maria's cura- tive forces; Theodosius' warmth of heart; Romanus' down-to-earth practicality; Gairman's wit; Helena's illusionary enthusiasm. The impact of their joys and sorrows is absorbed by Johannes and leads to his first inner experience in the next scene.
Scene Two: Johannes' soul reveals itself to him as a landscape of rocks and springs, out of which resound the ancient mystery words : 'O Man, Know Thou Thyself.'
Scene Three: A meditation room. A child receives a word of blessing from Benedictus. Johannes goes through a severe test in his inner development by witnessing a strange occurrence between Benedictus and Maria. As will become more and more apparent in the Mystery Drama, the spoken word itself takes on a new force: the mantric lines spoken by Benedictus will transform themselves for Johannes into the experiences of Scenes Four to Seven.
Scene Four: With full-awakened consciousness Johannes enters the Imaginative world on whose very threshold he encounters cosmic beings from above and below: Lucifer and Ahriman. The elemental world becomes manifest to him. The Spirit of the Elements (the Ferryman in Goethe’s fairytale) has brought the souls of Capesius and Strader up to a sphere from which they can survey the surface of the earth. They appear here in their true nature, Capesius young and Strader old in character. Then the Other Maria appears to them, arising from the rocks and transforming their speeches into forces which spread out over the surface of the earth, nourishing its elemental beings.
Scene Five: Before the inner eye of Johannes, the hidden Mystery Place of the spirit leaders of humanity is revealed. In a subterranean rock temple the four Hierophants stand, representing the spirit forces of the East, South, West and North (see Foundation Stone Meditation). Felix Balde and the Other Maria find their way into the temple, because 'the time is now at hand' to open its treasures to mankind; that is, to lift the truth of the temple's existence into the day-consciousness of modern man.
RB
