Copyright Alan Whitehead & Earthschooling: No Part of this book, post, URL, or book excerpt may be shared with anyone who has not paid for these materials.
Alan speaks in a very symbolic and esoteric manner in some parts of his books. Although they can be read anthroposophically, passages speaking of Atlantis, archangels, gods, etc. do not need to be taken literarily to be meaningful. The more you read, the more you will realize he uses many different religions to express ideas in a symbolic manner and not in a religious manner. His writings are not religious. In some places his writings are meant to refer to religious events in a historical way. In some places he is using religious figures (from Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Paganism, Ancient Roman and Greek Religions, etc.) in a symbolic manner. However, at no point is he promoting a specific religion or speaking from a religious point of view.
I have kept the writing as close to one-hundred percent original so you will also find that he speaks of Australia often and some spelling or manners of speaking may be cultural. Any words I have changed are presented like this: <word>.
Also keep in mind that these books are written by a Waldorf teacher with decades of experience who also studied with a Steiner student himself, so he speaks to an audience that is dedicating their lives to the Waldorf method without exception.
Because of this, all of his views are not reflected in the Earthschooling curriculum and not all of them may be ones you want to embrace or are able to use. In all of Alan Whitehead’s writings the opinions are his own and may not align with Earthschooling or Waldorf Books. In some cases, we will be updating some of these chapters in the future with additional and/or updated information.
Ultimately, however, as I read through these passages I find I can distill wisdom from even those paragraphs that do not resonate with me.
We invite you to read with an open mind and heart and with eagerness to learn and discuss…
‘CHRIST CHILD’ – OR DEVIL CHILD?
STOP PRESS!! OIL PRICES PLUMMET – BOWSER BARGAINS!! What good news for motorists; now we can use as much petrol as we like. Who cares about El Nino?!
We love iconography; but our images are not always accurate. We were dead wrong with their personification of that current phenomenon, the El Nino. This ‘boy child’ appellation was in reference to the timing of the El Nino current – around Christmas. Perhaps it’s a form of Iberian irony to name such a destructive force after the Christ Child, he of ‘peace and goodwill to men’ – the ‘Devil child’ might be more apt!
This body of choleric oceanic water warms the icy streams moving southward down the Californian coast in winter – Northern Hemisphere Christmas. As such the effect is minimal; but when the vast pool of already overheated water drifts across the also hot Equator into the South Pacific, it is Summer. This hot-plus-hot-plus-hot pool engulfs the north-flowing cold waters of the Peru Current; subsequently disrupting climate – and the living things which depend on its stability – on both side of the Pacific.
The usual outcome is disproportionate rain in South America, and dread drought in Australia. It can also confound predictions by behaving in the opposite manner.
Actually there are three global El Nino birth centers; the other two are in the extreme eastern and western Indian Ocean. The curious siting of all three is that they are directly westward, and adjacent to, the three richest oil fields on earth – south-west North America, South-East Asia, and The Persian Gulf. These are also three tectonic plate contact zones; hence highly unstable. All three areas, roughly in the same Northern Hemisphere latitude are subject to violent earthquake and/or volcanic activity.
Geologically oil is found in greatest abundance in these continent shift zones. This is because oil is the planet’s lubricant, allowing redoubtable irresistible forces to safely slide past massive immovable objects. New problems are spawned however when an oil-hungry humanity sucks dry these great lakes of oil. Without the natural lubricant, there is colossal and sustained friction between the plate surfaces – then jamming – then earthquakes.
Earthquakes in all three regions have incrementally increased in both frequency and intensity since the oil has been extracted. American geologists became aware of this about 30 years ago; so they capped a large number of their own wells in Texas and surrounds. They turned instead to the rich Indian Ocean oil fields, both east and west. This was in order to prevent further exacerbating the notorious San Andreas Fault.
To a degree it worked, the Californian quakes have at least stabilized. This limited success could also be due to the ‘slip trick’. In some areas, oil companies are obliged to make a mix of thousands of tons of slimy clay-water slurry, like potters’ slip. This is poured into the exhausted shafts in an attempt to create a de facto lubricant.
Of course this can only work for a time, as water evaporates – it’s magma-hot down there! Similar concern is not afforded the foreign wells; where earthquakes cannon from their source along both The Gulf and Indonesian fault lines to the Caucases and Japan respectively – Afghanistan and Kobe being the most recent victims.
The debate rages, behind closed doors mostly, on whether El Nino has always existed. Strong evidence points to its being a modern phenomenon – ‘modern’ in historic not geologic time.
Vested interests beg to differ, backed up by a creative re-arranging of climate statistics. This insinuates that world weather-watchers have failed to notice the bleeding obvious over the last century of intense scientific meteorological monitoring.
The all-too convenient Greenhouse Effect is blamed for increasingly erratic world weather patterns; but some scientists are sensibly looking down rather than up. Daniel Walker, a U.S. marine seismologist, after researching El Nino for some time, concludes that the real generating force in seemingly random ocean heating is underwater vulcanism.
When an engine loses oil, friction occurs and it overheats; so does the earth in the vicinity of the depleted fields – especially the ocean. The process is aggravated by oil being an ideal insulator. Telluric oil, as in a car’s cooling system, is also under hydraulic pressure, not just from the crustal weight above; but due to the oil fields being on the west of the fault lines. This subjects the oil to the Coriolis effect, caused by the earth’s spin. This moves to the right – or east – in the Northern Hemisphere.
Due to this insulation factor, it has been estimated that if all the oil was removed from between the crust and the inferno below, the surface of the earth, in the vast regions affected, would become unendurably hot. So far its effects on the adjacent land mass’s climate have been minimal (the latest Florida twister carnage excepted!). This is probably due to the freezing water of the North Atlantic mitigating the heat increase. However it the heavy North Sea oil extraction rates continue; the consequences are predicted to be severe.
In this light, it might be heretically stated that it’s a good thing that geologically stable Australia has only small oil reserves. No oil, no fault lines, no earthquakes!
To be fair, El Nino does have its uses; we can blame everything from drought to dandruff on its enigmatic influence. However we perceive it, the love-bearing Christ Child it is not; behind the smiling mask of innocence lurks a devil within.
That which sustains this sinister ‘boy child’ is our demand for the black gold which drives the insatiable gas-guzzling machine of materialism. Got to go now; must fill up while petrol prices are low!
Aanya Whitehead, senior high school student, driving the school bus.
A sense of responsibility is one of the greatest gifts we can bestow.
Leave a Reply