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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…
Pictorializing Personalities
Portrait Sculpture – Class 10
Art Teacher sat in her airy studio at home staring at a series of sculptural heads, ranging in period from Ancient Egypt to the present. The personalities of the long-dead people portrayed spoke to her via the hands of their also long-dead artist, who crafted their various materials – wood, stone, metal, clay – from the Nile to the Seine.
It was on this point of ‘personality’ that her meditations turned to her class of teenagers at school; in the great 7-year unfolding of the human being, infants are Physical Body or ‘Zodiac’ beings. Children from 7 to 14 emanate, before all else, Life – the cardinal Etheric Body faculty; the bearer of the four temperaments.
But her adolescents are something else again; between 14 and 21 it is the 7 planetary powers who pour their sublime benison into the soul, on the wings of the emerging Astral Body. These create the 7 Personality Types of the teen years – 7 masks (‘persona’ means mask) with which to protect the still-vulnerable shrine of the Self.
So these Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Mercury, Venus, Moon masks are created layer by layer – each student emphasizing, or ‘hiding behind’, one or other planetary personality. Anna was a Mars girl, assertive, adventurous, and filled with the fire of creativity; Steen was Jupiter, thoughtful and competent – while Alan expressed Saturn tendencies in his brooding inner life.
Ah, and the lovely Kathy – what a delightful Venus type she was, with her simplicity, gentle mien, and loving nature. Sport-loving, every-cheerful Dennis was Mercury; and little Edo was, in her gentility and rich imaginative life, a Moon girl. But what of the Sun?!
Art Teacher snapped back to the moment as her bright grey eyes wandered back to those serene but inwardly potent Egyptian faces; she thought about their historical context. In Esoteric Christology, the History Spirits, the Time Lords themselves, are the Archai, highest ranking beings in the 3rd Hierarchy – the Spirits of Personality!
Adolescence, or the 14 to 21 period, is a recapitulation of the Ancient Moon creation; that ‘liquid’ stage of our reincarnating planet in which, like high school students, the astral body was born. The Archai were the creators of the 3rd stage of Old Moon; the separation of homogenous soul-substance into the 7 planetary personality types.
Class 10 – 16-year-olds – are reliving this 3rd stage (14, 15, 16) firming their very own personality types; crafting a specific mask which will serve for life. “So, in a generic 14 to 21 personality development, they are also being inspired, in this year alone, by the Spirits of Personality – personality in personality, a double whammy! Oh, how the coming 3-week Sculpture block lesson can respond to these invisible but powerful soul-growth forces.”
Art Teacher cupped her small chin in her hands and concentrated on the personality expressions – not individuals this time – sculpturally expressed through the ages. There was the ‘warrior’; the ‘infant;’ ‘gnome’; ‘scribe’; ‘monk’; ‘singer’; ‘boxer’; ‘angel’ and so on. She would ask each student, in a unit devoted to The Huma Head, to choose a favorite ‘type’. It transpired that Anna wanted to sculp Joan of Arc; Steen tackled Zeus; Alan was fascinated by the inner agonies of a negro slave; and Kathy did a fairy, or sylph.
On selecting the subject, the students would eventually model it in either clay or wax Art Teacher felt the modeling/pressing – into soft substance – was better to express the subtleties of personality (the astral is a ‘soft’ member) rather than the carving principle, based as it is on removing material from a hard substance.
She would give them quite a few finishing options too. In clay they may jest leave it raw – during the 3 weeks, most of them attempt more than one work – or they might glaze and fire it. Actually, unglazed clay, if there are no delicate protrusions, burnishes well.
Then again the clay head might be the basis of a mold-and-pour technique, where a box is built around, and plaster poured in, creating a negative shell mold, split down the middle. Into this, liquid concrete (or other liquid-to-hard material) can be poured – several times!
This mold-and-pour can be even more interesting if the head is modeled in paraffin wax. Again, the mold is built, but this time the wax is melted out through a drain hole. This is then plugged, and the liquid poured in the top. It is only a oncer as the mold is then broken away – the result can be quite spectacular. Art Teacher got a couple of books on sculpture technique off the shelf to take to school. Some of these methods are quite technical, and a lot of time and talent could be wasted by needless experimentation. Not that she didn’t encourage a genuine spirit of discovery in all her lessons!
Using a good-quality sculpturing wax, the piece might remain just that, the wax gradually hardening to take a buff finish. One student – Steen – would finish up wanting to mold-and-pour his Zeus in tin, a low-melt, silver-colored metal.
Fiberglass can be poured as well, creating a smooth, modern look. There was even a mention of bronze; the amazing techniques of which were described to the fascinated class. But no one could face the challenges that bronze-casting presented. They particularly like the story of Hiram Abif though, he who cast the Brazen Sea, that which lay before the throne of King Solomon.
Hiram was an adept of the Cain Stream; when his great brass masterpiece was sabotaged in the pour by the detractor – love rival! – by adding water, he descended, in Spirit, to the forge of his predecessor, Tubal Cain – Master of Metals! Here he was told to preserve; so he did. The finished work was so lifelike, that the Queen of Sheba is said to have lifted her skirts to avoid wetting them before ‘wading across’!
The class rally seemed to like these sculpture anecdotes; even the one about Benvenuto Cellini and his gold tableware. “I don’t think anyone will want to go to the expense of gold casting;” thought Art Teacher with a smile “even though it is such an agreeable medium, with its low melting point, permanence and beautiful finish.”
Her thoughts then turned to something more practical; about how she was going to encourage a stylization, rather than slavish naturalism. Our materialistic age provides a temptation to reduce art to mere copying – or aesthetically pleasing would be the work if it were in the form of a tasteful caricature of the ‘type’ chosen – a stylized portrayal of the personality. So much ancient sculpture was done in this method.
This picture aspect turned her mind to another factor of adolescent development, that in which the earthly or incarnational aspect of the astral – the Sentient Body – unfolds. These aspects are: Spatial in Class 8; Timely, Class 9; and pictorial in Class 10 – The Pictorial Aspect of the Astral Body, as it’s called.
How important then to heighten this faculty with the 16-year-olds; to externalize it as conscious – picture – knowledge. So instead of just sitting a lump of clay or wax in front of the young artists, they were to actually plan the work. This requires a considerable amount of time at the desk, drawing – pictorializing. Sculpture, in the earlier years of school, had been much more instinctive, calling more on the native forces of the etheric body – that of the ‘formative forces’ – to ‘feel’ the forms. But the astral element, so strong in 16-year-olds, needs to know, so the need for preparatory drawings. Thank goodness the class had an intensive drawing program where the skills were so well developed to tackle this difficult stage. Five of these units are described elsewhere in this book.
Sculpture requires movement, or a deliberate lack of it. There are three, 3-dimensional Movement Planes. The human head exemplifies these; its motion determined, as it is, by that remarkable 3-way spindle, the Atlas Vertebra. The first is the plane of the Will, where the head turns horizontally; the second, that of Feeling. Here the head tilt is on the facial plane, forming an arc from shoulder to shoulder. The 3rd is the Thinking Plane, that of the nodding head, from back to front. The following is a Physical Body process.
The graphic representation of these 3 arcs is employed to position the proposed sculptured head in space. For this, 3 simple drawings are initially done – on a base line. WE are only concerned with position at this early stage, with no detail at all, save for a couple of dot eyes to indicate direction. In fact, the 3 drawings are mere blocks, indicating the respective angles of turn, tilt and nod (these sound like 3 breakfast cereal characters!)
Having established the 3 arcs of position, we move from the spatial/physical, to the linear/etheric. This is based on rendering the head, from the front, as an ellipse (nominally the ‘curve of the etheric body’). This is done in accord with the 3 planes indicated. The tilt is drawn by left-right (nose line) angle of the ellipse as it sits on the base line; the turn by the vertical ear line; and the nod by the position – high or low – of the horizontal eye line.
Keeping to simple line only, we then draw in the features, building up the general ‘look’ of our personality type. With each stage, the students have to reach deeply within for these ‘pictorial;’ resources – at times a painful, but finally exhilarating experience. That’s why this unit is not given before these picture skills emerge, in the 16th year.
The next stage is the surface/astral. ON the linear drawing, we illustrate 5 view arrows – 4 according to the cardinal points of the head (front, back and two sides), and one from the top. It helps to draw these direction-finders on the 3 ‘blockheads’ as well. Using shading only, to emphasize the surfaces, we do a drawing of each of these 5 perspectives. This requires lots of artistic decision-making.
“Gosh, I didn’t realize that I had to figure out the hairline at the back!?” or “That’s funny, from the left profile, you can see more of the cheek and less of the eyes than from the right!” Success in these 5 ‘block-ins’ is based on making constant references to both the linear drawing and the 3 blockheads. One simply cannot keep all the various turns, tilts, and nods in mid, specially from 5 directions (15 positional elements!). There is also a lot of left/right discipline required; as well as light/shadow.
With each of the 5 ‘surface’ drawings, a light source should be indicated so that a degree of the 3rddimension – of the modeling – can be seen (a different light source with each even). The amount of problem solving done on these preparatory drawings, where position, line and surface is established, saves a lot of fiddling about – and mistakes – later with the real thing. However, they do not restrict creative freedom; rather provide a firm foundation for it. At any time, whilst working on the clay or wax, deviations can be taken from the original sketches.
Art Teacher stood up and stretched; this preparation meditation certainly took it out of one. “What a joy it is working with these young ‘personalities,” she thought wistfully “it’s a pity they have to grow up and make the long pilgrimage on the next stage of human development – that of Character – of Adulthood. Of course, they still retain their finely wrought ‘masks; of personality throughout life – mask made comelier and more effective by the ‘mask making’ sculpture unit they’re embarking on tomorrow. I wonder what kind of 7-planet personality I am? What mask do I wear in public?”
She walked over to the window; a radiant Sunday mid-morning sun found it effulgent reflection – created a golden aura – in her soft, blonde hair… well, if she doesn’t know, I’M not going to tell her!
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