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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…
MARCH 21
Autumn Equinox
Harvest Festival
<This is September 23 in the Western Hemisphere>
When I was a young man, my only associations of Homebush were of riding in a train to work, and passing lines of filthy, barred rail cars stuffed with sheep; the forlorn survivors trampling the dead. The smell was equally offensive, exposed as we commutes were in those old, open, red carriages. Homebush was famous for nothing but its killing houses, the abattoirs.
How ironic, then, that it is this same Homebush which is today vying with its CBD rival to lay claim to being the very heart of Sydney itself. As a sporting center, this is certainly the case post-Olympics. But as a cultural one?
Perhaps – but only if the Royal Agricultural Show, moved from its old Moore Park home to Homebush can be called a cultural event. In any case, proudly paraded merino rams have mercifully replaced their tortured fellows of yesteryear.
The Show has always been one of the biggest and brightest dates on the events calendar. Here the city and bush are braided together into a single human yam as at no other time of the year. It is also one of the singular occasions where we cultural outcasts in the Southern Hemisphere actually celebrate a seasonal festival in the correct season – well, partly at least.
The vernacular for the RAS is the RES, with ‘Easter’ replacing ‘Agricultural’. In this seemingly innocent acronym-change lies a serious seed of error.
Easter is named after the Teutonic goddess of spring, Eastre … What? Easter is not a Christian festival?! Alas, no; this old earth-fertility festival (meaning ‘to feast’) long pre-dates the Crucifixion-Resurrection. Easter is a synonym for spring, with kin words like oestrous, Astarte, Asherah, Esther confirming its rebirth provenance. Some religious extremists regard North-South Hemisphere swapping as spiritual sedition – “Easter in September, indeed!”
Farmers get the seasons the right way round because they can’t choose otherwise. Generally speaking, they must plant in the Spring and harvest in Autumn. This is so in spite of blanket propaganda from religious revelers who insist on continuing to celebrate a Northern Hemisphere Spring rebirth (‘resurrection’) festival in Autumn.
In truth, the seasons only ideally manifest at 45° north and south on the globe, halfway between the endless summer at 0° on the Equator, and 90° eternal winter at the two Poles. Northern Europe, Japan, Canada – .and Tasmania in the south – all enjoying a 45-degree line of latitude have high-precision seasonal changes. These are three months each, on time every time.
In places like Bali there are no seasonal festivals, with every day being opportunistically designated a different festival day of one kind or other. In fact the Malay languages do not even have a word for Autumn. Northern Australia, at around 20° south, has two named seasons, wet and dry.
Naturally, pagan Easter imagery of chicks. eggs and bunnies pervade the Sydney Royal (another anachronism) Show; especially in the show-bag glitz gauntlet. This is mercifully eclipsed by the true essence of this biggest of all Harvest Festivals in the beautiful bestiary of the Grand Parade – and the unforgettable Agricultural Districts Exhibition Hall.
This stunning display of Mother Earth’s bounty is a cyclic re-affirmation of Oz as the ‘lucky country’. How can one modest sovereign state such as New South Wales produce such a cornucopia of primary products; the chilly south and dry west (Monaro and Western Plains) rivalling those of the steamy north and wet slopes (North Coast and Northern Tablelands).
Adults as well as children delight in these grand artistic tableaux of abundance, made from colored grains, ambered honeys, vegetables, wools, and glossy fruits. Pumpkins as big as carioles are proudly displayed beside working honeycomb. Without The Show, many city children would never experience the wealth of the land; that which so generously sustains them – this important event is even a cultural imperative, perhaps? A universal celebration such as Sydney’s Autumn Harvest Festival is ideally suited to a multicultural country like Australia. Religious festivals, like the Christian ‘Easter’, are by definition exclusionist.
Nothing wrong with that, of course; that is unless the whole community is expected to celebrate them, .as in Christmas. In fact, Harvest Festivals are replacing those of Easter in many schools as · a response to their ethnic and/or indigenous community sensitivities. A recent parent revolt in one Victorian primary school failed to move the recalcitrant principal. He insisted that the traditional Christian rituals proceed. As a concession, the conscientiously objecting pupils were not compelled to participate. Well, it’s a step, I suppose. A better step, however, is taken by more enlightened pedagogues, who have their children celebrate an old-time Harvest Festival. Here they bring in sheaves of grain, home-grown veggies, and bottled preserves to decorate classroom or school hall. Children can create traditional ‘com dollies’ from various parts of cereal plants. These dance charmingly from curtain rail and rafter. The most memorable impact of a room full of newly harvested produce is the all-pervading musky-sweet scent. Some schools plan pleasant Autumn excursions into mountain retreats. Kids love to gambol among piles of fallen leaves and marvel at the fire-toned beauty of elm and elder, persimmon and prunus, beech, and birch.
Some years ago, one school celebrated the Autumn Festival by planting their own Color Forest. Parents were asked to provide their child with a deciduous tree seedling to plant in the playground. This mass planting was in a little-used patch of ground. Today it has canopied, providing a shady recreation area; one which bursts into blazing color each Autumn. This is a living tribute to its planners; and to the good earth, by whatever name she goes by: Gaea, Tellus, Demeter, Proserpine…
The Swedish word for Autumn is host, this has warm connotations for the annual fruition of the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. If each year’s Sydney Show (and legion others around the country) is any guide, Homebush will again play ‘host’ to one of · the most spiritually significant events in the state’s cultural, yes, and even religious, calendar when the world’s biggest Harvest Festival takes place next Autumn. But to more technical considerations: why in the world don’t television weather reports provide regular updates on the movement of the heavenly bodies? If they did, scads of people would be out in their backyards to watch, for instance – “A spectacular setting of the moon and Jupiter, look north-west to … ” or inform us that – “Today is the Autumn Equinox, when there is equal day and night all over the world.”
So what is this ‘equinox’, whether autumnal or vernal (spring)? The word has a Latin origin meaning ‘equal night’. Did the Roman cosmos-watchers choose the negative night over the more positive equal day to frighten the plebeians?
On this day in the Southern Hemisphere, March 21 (approx.), the sun rises due east, and sets exactly twelve hours later due west – everywhere in the world! This is difficult to time, as the rising is out of sync. with the time zones. These are a 15 ° for one hour (24 hours round the globe) longitude expediency humanity has created to give apparent order to an omni kinetic universe.
According to the clocks, time seems to stop for the one hour the sun crosses through a 15° time zone. Our Eastern Standard zone begins at 160°E, in the middle of the Tasman Sea. Sydney is about half-way – or 7° – west of this. When the clock says noon in Sydney, it really is noon, with the sun due north. In, say Byron Bay, 3.5° longitude east of Sydney, when the sun is due north, the clock says 11.45am – clock and sun noon do not coincide.
In Sydney, the equinoctial sun will rise due east on the equinox, then arc northwards about 27° below the perpendicular, and set due west 12 hours later. This arcane information may seem irrelevant, but it can have a big impact on quality of life.
If your home faces (assuming it to be a rectangular, front-back design) due east, it receives equal advantages and disadvantages of sunrises and sunsets. If it faces north-east, it maximizes the warming winter morning sun, and minimizes the overheating of summer mornings. A south-east facing house is the opposite.
There is a useful formula for determining these ‘solstice points’, the position of sunrise (or sunset) at winter and summer solstices. Where exactly does the -sun rise (or set) at these two all-important times of the year – anywhere on the globe?
At Sydney the sun will travel 27 degrees south and north either side of due east between the two solstices. This is a 54-degree variant throughout the year; a big influence in building, agriculture, drying clothes, et al! The angle increases the further south one travels; and decreases the further north. Of course, it is easy to calculate the sun risings and settings on the two equinoxes.
They do this due east and west anywhere in the world, but what about the two solstices? Their risings and setting suns change in relation to latitude. The only two places on earth the sun rises and sets due east and west on the solstices is on the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn on June and December 21 respectively.
So how do we calculate these solstice sun risings and settings? The following is a guide to work out the correct angles for the four (two in the morning and two in the afternoon) solstitial risings and settings: first add the angles of the two tropics, 23 .5 and 23 .5 – 47°. Take your own latitude; for instance, in Byron Bay’s case this is approximately 28.5° – subtract 23 .5 from this number – 5°. Add this to the original 47 – 52° and divide by two – 26° … simple! At Byron Bay, the sun rises and sets 26° north and south of due east and west in the summer and winter solstices.
It is curious how this equal day/night manifests in latitudes other than our own. First there is the Equatorial Equinox, a kind of tautology. As the sun is directly over the Equator on this day, twice a year, it not only rises and sets due east and west but passes overhead in a perfect perpendicular semicircle. If we stand at the South Pole, however, the sun would rise due north – all directions are due north from the South Pole (as south is the only direction from the North Pole) – and literally ‘roll ’round heaven all day’. The ‘day’ in this case being 24 hours. So whence the half day, half night? Well, the sun only rises halfway. For the whole day we only see a golden hemisphere rather than the full orb. This is Mother Nature taking equinoctial half-light, half-dark to extremes!
Ancient folk marked the equinoxes (and solstices) with extraordinary energy; unlike ourselves where they rate barely a mention! These people built massive stone circles and other megalithic structures to register not just the celestial events but assure their astronomical accuracy – be it for agriculture or just culture. It is still popularly believed that the so-called equinoctial storms are triggered by this solar phenomenon. These range from North Atlantic gales to savage Mississippi twisters.
The equinoxes are thought to be transition times, ones of turbulence and climatic uncertainty. There is not only ubiquitous anecdotal, but considerable meteorological evidence to support this long-lived and puzzling contention. Rural myths inevitably extend into the psychic.
The light-dark becomes good-evil. Many of the old autumn equinox festivals included rituals to placate the good harvest gods. They were also employed to protect against the malevolent, whether physical or psychic. In respect of the latter, folk feared going mad in Autumn. Again, some statistics, being the selective wretches that they are, seem to confirm a rise in psychiatric referrals at this time of year. An aspect of the Vernal Equinox; that of the Southern Hemisphere being September 21, is oddly related to the moon. The full moon following the Equinox rises in the exact opposite side of the Animal Circle. In the Southern Hemisphere, the Autumn equinox occurs when the sun is rising in Pisces. Therefore, the first full moon after the equinox will be in Virgo. In fact, this sun-moon complement is the same with all 12 full moons of the year. In the Northern Hemisphere it is of course the opposite – a Pisces vernal rising on March 21 followed by a Virgo full moon. Many great paintings portray this virgin-fish dichotomy, like Raphael’s Madonna detta del Pesce.
The metaphysical reality is that our spiritual life is influenced by the monthly Sun sign, our soul life rather by the full Moon sign. In scriptural terms it is known as The Mystery of the Loaves and Fishes – Virgo is always associated with the Virgin, whose symbol is often an ear of grain. Many crucifixion scenes also contain this sun-moon duality, which is why Easter is both a solar and lunar festival – held as it is on the first full moon after the vernal equinox. Rudolf Steiner’s statement on this mystery is both revealing and reassuring: “By the combination of the forces of
Pisces and Virgo, nothing that is wrong can be created.” March 21 is not only the nominal Autumn Equinox, but the change from one astrological sign to the next – Pisces to Aries. Astronomers however beg to differ; since 1413, the constellations have been subject to the timeless ‘precession of the equinoxes’, which occurs every 2160 years. This means that they have all slipped back one sign – in relation to the time of the year, that is. Astronomically March 21 actually signals the move from Aquarius to Pisces. This of course, according to the timeless authority of the actual star risings, moves everyone’s birth sign back one on the zodiacal circle. Your author is an astrological, Cancer, but an astronomical Gemini.
Heretics who support the post-1413 ordering of the universe say that one ignores the evidence of the physical constellations at one’s peril – or one’s confusion, at least.
This birth sign controversy has certainly created a few ‘equinoctial storms’ of its own among magazine star oracles, pseudo-occultists and other believers.
The following are the lyrics to a song I wrote for my Class 1 and 2 for our Autumn Festival in 1972. It was revived (with a slight word change) for an Autumn Festival in Osaka, Japan, in 1998.
SAYONARA
Swallows sing sayonara,
They all know it’s time to go.
They can hear Lady Autumn’s whisper,
Smell the wind blown off the snow.
Summer colors softly fade,
Breathing in with 1utumn shades.
We can find new will to work,
When the chimneys smoke again.
Morning mist, silent and waiting,
Chill and grey, surrounding me.
Spiders’ nets on every branch/et,
Hang in dewey geometry.
Plants asleep, the earth awakens,
Light and dark. the balance held.
Sunset hues, red, gold and violet,
Lady Autumn ‘s magic spell.
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