7:00 pm.  As usual, we are having a social time in the Foyer, to start the evening.
Please bring a festive plate to share; juicy drinks are also welcome. 

7:30 pm.  – Gathering in the Festival room –

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Some notes on the programme

What is this festival about..? 

There will be a festival address by John Allison, on the Archangel Michael and his many blessings for us in our time and in the Autumn season – Who is this being? - and what is he asking of us?

• Michael’s working, in past and present.
• Michael and the course of the year.
• Michael and the overcoming of duality.
• Purifying consciousness, to enter the etheric world and meet Michael.

In the Southern Hemisphere, we have the showers of meteors also raining down onto the earth at this time, and bringing the inner strength and courage from its iron forces into our blood, to help us meet the challenges or the autumn time, and of our present materialistic time and mentality, and to allow us to realise our Humanity and develop inner freedom...

Speech is the art most connected to our ego forces, it gives us the inner strength and courage, as it is also connected to the planetary forces of Mars and the iron, therefore very appropriate for the Autumn season...

Here is a verse by Rudolf Steiner which we will be speaking together:

Invocation of Michael.

Victorious Spirit,
Blaze through the powerlessness
of faint-hearted souls.
Burn away self-centredness -
Enkindle compassion
That selflessness,
The life-stream of humanity -
Wells as a source
of spiritual rebirth.

There will be Michaelic music...
an autumn poem spoken by Robin Hewetson...
the chorus and speakers have some gems to share...

We will also be singing together: the Michael Mood of the Soul’s Calendar by Julian Pook, and we will hear an autumn round sung by a group of singers.

Rudolf Steiner tells us that Easter used to be an autumn festival, and the Motto from the Esoteric School was:  ‘Look around you’ – when we see the sun-coloured autumn leaves, we can virtually recognise the resurrection forces shown to us by nature, giving us joy and wonder – wandering through an autumn forest is indeed a very special experience...

All are Welcome - please bring a friend.

Astrid Anderson and John Jackson.

For single bookings, please use the website.

For any sequence of 2 or more bookings please contact  the Treasurer [ treas@anthrohb.nz ]

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Masculinity?

“When you think back there are countless other examples to the same effect and you realize how the loss of the woman in this, the primitive story, is dealing with something which proves to have been true for man not only in the beginning, not only in the world of Greece when the gods themselves walked in the streets with common men and women and inhabited the forests and the streams and conveyed their presence and message for men through humble shepherds and mountain folk, but also today in a world where the gods have vanished into the heavens beyond the Milky Way and the whole meaning which was conveyed by a total acceptance of the reality of a creator called God is increasingly denied.  From early on I found myself wondering why I was more interested in Greek than in Roman civilisation, and the answer, in a sentence, was that at its greatest period the Greek spirit acknowledged the feminine as much as the masculine, while the Roman civilisation was entirely dominated by the man of mind, out of touch with its feminine self.  The Renaissance, for me, was precisely so significant an event in world history because in it the Greek totality of masculine and feminine, particularly its feminine inspiration, was brought back into a world dominated by its Roman inheritances.  But since the Renaissance, the caring, feeling, loving values that the feminine sense in man promotes in life have diminished, leaving only an arid, rational, masculine intellectualism and a power-obsessed urge. The moment of the container in the story, when its lid is lifted by the man and he declares it to be empty, is upon us.”

Laurens van der Post (1986) in ‘A Walk with a White Bushman’ p75

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Some Musings on Arithmetic 1

Arithmetic can be seen as an entry into Mathematics

Mathematics is the science and study of quality, structure, space, and change by seeking out patterns and formulating new conjectures, from the Greek ‘manthanein’ to learn.  One could say: Mathematics is an intelligent human response to the discovery of the wonders of existence.

At first, as a child, the world, over which the sun shines, appears to us as an outer Oneness.

We next differentiate PARTS of existence from their background, so they become separate. This requires discrimination (a process called analysis).
Once the parts are separated in our mind, we can count them, acknowledge them.

Arithmetic is the ‘art of counting’ from the Greek ‘arithmos’ number.

Numbers are not things – they are ‘ideas’.  So Arithmetic is, essentially, a thinking activity – a ‘spiritual’ science.  Most children encounter this early in their schooling.

The three soul forces of willing, feeling and thinking are involved:

• Willing.  When counting objects of a similar nature, say apples (or in a classroom, maybe, ‘beanbags’) in a basket.  One first perceives a unity, a ‘basket’.  On analysis – an important activity for a school child – the basket is seen to contain many apples.  How many?  Let’s count!  Now the activity: grasp an apple … put it on the table, and say “one” … take a second apple … put on the table beside the first one, and say “two” … and so on until no apples are left in the basket and a new pile has been formed on the table (synthesis).  The will activities incurred have been ‘grasp’, ‘put’, ‘say’. 
  
• Feeling in this situation is connected with the relationships between ‘things’ or ‘beings’, namely between the ‘numbers’ in the sequence which we learn by rote (like poetry) for counting, ‘one, two, three, four, five …’   We get to know that ‘one’ comes first; that ‘four’ comes after ‘three’ but before ‘five’.  Every language, a child of feeling, has its own set of Counting Numbers.  We know the numbers ‘by heart’.
• Thinking is a more reflective process.  Here it is concerned with the essential character of each number.  ‘One’ is all alone, I, it is lonely, so it needs to be strong and resolute.  In one sense, the whole world is ‘one’.
  ‘Two’ has a partner – they can stand side by side: II, as a pair, wings on a bird or butterfly.  Left and right hand (eye, ear, foot, etc.).  But they can also form a polarity, such as father-mother; day-night; sun-moon; up-down; forwards-backwards; window-wall; sky-earth.  Can you think of more?
  ‘Three’ can be more complex.  When three stand side by side, III, one is in the middle, with the ends being a polarity: mother-child-father; left-centre-right,  Or three, 3, can form a tripod of equals, as the three legs of a stool.  They may form a sequence: dawn-day-dusk. 

‘Four’ is the number of legs that cat, dog, cow and chair have.  Wheels on a car.  Directions: north, east, south, west.  Earth, water, air, fire.
And so on with larger numbers  – children love discovering ‘numbers’ inherent in their environment.

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 Many things connected with maths can be seen in the light of the three soul forces engaged in the early years:

• Will: creating and working with patterns and form; counting objects –   determining quantity.  Writing numbers; number operations [adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, etc.]; calculations.  Involving action, change.
• Feeling: rhythm and rhyme, counting sequence, relationships [equations: equals =, larger >, smaller < than]; ordinal numbers – rank, position [first, second, etc.].  Involving judgment.
• Thinking: the essence of number, symbols, concepts, cognition; qualitative aspects.  Involving imagination, picturing.

 With the names for numbers used in various European languages, it is interesting to see their similarity; perhaps the interchangeability T and D and Z when spoken.

When doing Arithmetic, writing the full name is too laborious; we need a quicker system of making marks, or in some other way, to represent the number.

One possibility, for small numbers, is to count on one’s fingers.

If each digit (finger or thumb) represents ‘one’, then we can get to 10.

However, if we let a finger ‘f’ on our right hand represent ‘one’ and the thumb ‘t’ represent ‘five’ we can get on one hand to:  tffff = 9.

Now add the left hand where, now, the fingers ‘F’ = 10, and the thumb ‘T’ = 50, we can get to TFFFF = 90.  Both hands together give us TFFFFtffff = 99, that is:

50+10+10+10+10+5+1+1+1+1 = 99

which is nearly 10 times more than when all digits have the same value.  If every digit has a different value, then the result is ten times bigger again. 

We will look at that (in an older class) when we consider the binary system, which is the basis of computer calculations.

But using our hands like this is not very convenient, as we need our hands for other things, so we need to find another way, such as making marks on something like a tablet or a sheet of paper.

Each row shows the symbol from the previous row with a mark added.
Each column shows symbols becoming more condensed.
Note how the Tallying result for 5 looks like a hand with the thumb laid across the fingers, which becomes the V of Roman numerals.  Then the two Vs become X (one up and the other down!)

However, the Roman numerals introduce a new element: If a smaller symbol is placed after a larger symbol (VI = 5+1 = 6), it is added; but if it is placed in front
(IV = 5-1 = 4) It is subtracted, so position becomes important.

The Western Arabic numerals we use around the world today were only introduced in the 10^th century AD, which is relatively recent.