Anthroposophy

Anthroposophy is a world-wide spiritual movement, based on the work of Rudolf Steiner, an Austrian philosopher, scientist, artist, educator, ... an extraordinary human being, who lived from 1861 to 1925. It has a world headquarters in Dornach, near Basel in Switzerland, and national societies in many countries around the world. Work arising from Steiner's insights continues to this day in many practical fields, encompassing arts, science, education, farming, medicine and social matters. The links below will lead to some further sources of information on Anthroposophy and Steiner's work.

What is Anthroposophy? in the words of Rudolf Steiner...

Anthroposophical ideas are vessels fashioned by love, and man's being is spiritually summoned by the spiritual world to partake of their content. Anthroposophy must bring the light of true humanness to shine out in thoughts that bear love's imprint; knowledge is only the form in which man reflects the possibility of receiving in his heart the light of the world spirit that has come to dwell there and from that heart illumine human thought. Since anthroposophy cannot really be grasped except by the power of love, it is love-engendering when human beings take it in a way true to its own nature. That is why a place where love reigned could be built in Dornach in the very midst of raging hatreds. Words expressing anthroposophical truths are not like words spoken elsewhere today; rightly conceived, they are all really reverential pleas that the spirit make itself known to men.

- from Awakening to Community, Lecture I, Stuttgart, January 23, 1923

Anthroposophy is a path of knowledge, to guide the Spiritual in the human being to the Spiritual in the universe. It arises in man as a need of the heart, of the life of feeling; and it can be justified only inasmuch as it can satisfy this inner need. He alone can acknowledge Anthroposophy, who finds it in what he himself in his own inner life feels impelled to seek. Hence only they can be anthroposophists who feel certain questions on the nature of man and the universe as an elemental need of life, just as one feels hunger and thirst.

- from Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts (Letters to Members, 1924)