Who would like to form a support group in practising one of the basic exercises given
by Rudolf Steiner?
Some long time ago Dr Richard Drexel gave a talk at the Christian Community,
which many attended about “Enlivening the Chakra of the Heart”.
Some time ago I started, with changing others, a support group to practise these
exercises and share our experiences. We found it very helpful indeed to
keep us firstly in the mood of practising and, by exchanging our experiences,
realise some misconceptions we harboured. We gathered many helpful
suggestions.
I would like to start such a group anew; to make our life easier we would use the
book by Florin Lowndes "Enlivening the Chakras of the Heart".
In particular, we would try our luck with the thinking exercise.
The benefits of such a group were:
- we were reminded to practise by ourselves
- we supported each other
- we really found the immediate benefit in our daily life.
The group would decide when and how often to meet at the Anthroposophical
Centre.
My suggestion would be to gather those interested and work from there.
My experience tells me to meet in quick succession to start off, and then move to regular, even to monthly meetings.
Sometimes it might also be helpful to tag a 30-minute meeting onto an
already planned event at the Anthroposophical Centre. Suggestions are welcome.
If you are interested, do contact me whenever you meet me or via my landline
6511774 with answerphone or text (please) 021-0475-146
Yours,
Elke Baublies
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Foundation Stone Letter 5
In the last letter I compared the nature of the Exusiai, known also as “Spirits of Form”, who are named in the foundation Stone text as “Spirits of Light”. These ”Spirits of Light” are named as Kyriotetes, Dynamis and Exusiai or as “Spirits of Wisdom”, “Spirits of Movement” and “Spirits of Form”. I wrote of the character of the first transition metals as offering an insight into the character of some of the “Spirits of Form”, to indicate the origin of the metals in the Universe as from the second Hierarchy’s “Spirits of Form”.
This is vastly different from the world of elements as pictured by Ernest Rutherford and his brother scientists of the modern age. Their work is truly a work of genius and offers a map with which you can negotiate your way around the periodic table and find your way into the modern chemistry books. It must, however, remain a brilliant theory in my mind. In trying to follow the Goethean path to an understanding of the world, the Atomic theory goes too far in suggesting atoms as the nature of matter. It would take a few more essays to go into all the arguments around this, and I won’t do that here. I want to remain in the field of observation in which the nature and character of the elements remains the central question, and this is the path of Goethe in his scientific investigations.
We come in our journey to an element with the name “Chromium”. The name from the Greek for colour. The scientists who discovered chromium as an element were impressed by the many colours in compounds of this new element and decided to give it the name “Chromium” to reflect this fact. Chromium as a metal has a relationship to light. It is the most reflective element and compares with silver in this respect.
You find chrome-plated bumper bars on American cars of the fifties, where chromium was used liberally to decorate the cars with many add-ons that shone brightly. It is used an enormous amount as an alloy with iron to provide a form of steel called “Stainless Steel” of simply “Chrome Steel”. This steel has a surface that is shiny and resistant to weathering. You can make a kitchen bench of Chrome steel that can be washed and wiped, spilt upon and wiped many, many times without compromising its shiny surface. It the bench were iron, it would soon rust away with that kind of treatment.
Amazingly, such a useful element is not scarce. In fact, it is often found together with iron in the soil and is extracted together with it, so that a metal alloy of more than 50% Chromium is obtained. This cannot be used in this form, so this alloy is “diluted” with more steel until the percentage of chromium is around 18%. This gives a chrome steel that is easier to work and to form, as well as being less costly. Many thousands of tons of chrome steel are made in the world today. Compare that to the millions of tons of iron produced each year!! This industry is HUGE.
In the next letter I intend to write about a little-understood brother of iron, Manganese [not to be confused with Magnesium], and to begin a study of iron itself.
Christopher Bacchus
