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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…
JANUARY 1
Federation Day
I am an internationalist first, and an Australian second; this subordinate nationalism is however important. Trying to understand what an Australian is – hence what I am – has demanded of me a considerable amount of spiritual energy over my seven decades-plus as a citizen of this wide brown land.
My Australian born grandparents, all four of them, were adults when Federation was proclaimed on January 1, 1901; thus, they were a part – a living history if you like – of this pivotal event in Australian history. Here we, as a nation, severed forever the self-determination umbilical from the ‘mother country’, Britain.
My parents were children growing up in the post-Federation era, to the end of The Great War. So, the evolution of the Australian character impacted on me through two influential generations – and I have passed on this legacy to a third generation, my two children, now adults themselves. Both have two sons, making me the grandfather of four grandsons. So, five generations, all Australian born, have either passed, or are present, since the Federation of Australia in 1901.
For schoolteachers to instruct Australian students on their national history, with its powerful character-forming qualities, is to help guide them along their own: ‘know thyself’ path.
History is before all else, people; one trichotomy of significant individuals directly related to the forming of the Commonwealth of Australia at the dawn of the 20th Century is that which embraced the vision and courage to bring national autonomy into being – the birth of Federation. These three are Henry Parkes, ‘the father of Federation’, Sir Edmund Barton, the new nation’s first prime minister, and Alfred Deakin, first Attorney General and Australia’s 2nd, 5th, and 7th prime minister.
In a remarkable way, considering the influence that initiators have on the on-going character of an institution – whether it be a school or a nation – the three are a clear feeling, will and thinking triune. Sir Henry was a white-bearded lion of a man, both passionate and compassionate. He instituted, as five-times NSW Premier, many social reforms, including our precious universal Health and Education Acts.
To extrapolate to its archangelic influence, Sir Henry is Raphael, divine minister of healing and learning. The symbol of Raphael/Mark – the equivalent New Testament esoteric principle – is the winged lion. Without this feeling man’s heart-felt, persuasive power, Australia might still cringe under colonial status.
Henry Parkes was self-taught, of humble English plebian origins – a poet as well as a shrewd politician. He suffered deep humiliation over his long and checkered career due to his fervent convictions. The first Federation Conference, in sleepy Tenterfield in northern NSW, was convened by Parkes. Alas, he died in 1896, five years short of realizing his dream of nationhood.
Edmund Barton, our first prime minister, was very different; he was a will man. In his three years in the Lodge, he steered the country through fierce storms of political instability, each day desperately trying to justify to its detractors Australia’s readiness for nationhood (So, in light of the on-going Republic debate, what’s changed?).
Like all three, Barton was of Anglican persuasion in our three-fold archangelic scenario, he brought a more Michaelic impulse to Australian cultural evolution He was even enlightened enough to choose Walter Burley Griffin as designer for the new Australian capital, to be sited on the fertile soil of a sheep paddock in what is today the city of Canberra Walter Burley Griffin, American and student of Frank Lloyd Wright, was of international (a Michael quality) reputation. He was also a leader of the Anthroposophical Society of Australia – Michaelian indeed!
Prior to being prime minister, and later a High Court judge, Edmund Barton campaigned tirelessly for nationhood, speaking all over the country on the virtues of Federation – in 300 meetings in NSW alone! There is often a Michaelian element in reform agendas, or ‘firsts’: Michael is, after all the divine power which ‘overturns existing conventions’, as Rudolf Steiner tells us.
And the third, the thinker, is Alfred Deakin. His fame as a high-minded orator is legendary in parliamentary circles, again as a fervent advocate of Federalism. This issue, as mentioned earlier, is ironically equivalent: to today’s Republican Movement; let’s hope the current hot/cold present impulse has the same resounding success. After all, Federalism did, for all its faults, subsequently create one of the most liberal, safe, and prosperous countries in the world.
It was Deakin – ‘The man who molded the mind of Australia’ – who had the beguilingly simple – a mere eight pages – Australian Constitution adopted in 1899.
For instance, what would today’s readers think of Paragraph 68 – ‘… command in chief of the naval and military forces … is vested in the Governor General …’? Even this hopefully timeless charter, in some respects at least, has become dated – what about the Air Force? In spite of its inherent rightness, having preserved relative internal peace and prosperity for the country over the last one hundred years, it was a somewhat bourgeois document.
Of the fifty delegates at the Constitutional Conferences, only one represented the working class! Of course, there were no women. And what about an ethnic representation? Or the aborigines?
“What aborigines?”
If Parkes is a Raphaelian, and Barton a Michaelian, then Deakin, with his clarity of thought, is of Uriel – or the St. John ‘head’ dispensation However, he was concerned with not only worldly concepts, but spiritual as well. He was deeply involved with mysticism in general and the Theosophical Society in particular.
This was at the same time that the aforementioned Rudolf Steiner was a leading figure in the Theosophists in Germany. Actually, Deakin would have known of, and read, Steiner. So unlikely as it sounds, Anthroposophy was influencing the Spirit of Australia right from the turn of the 20th Century! In fact, Anthroposophy and Australian Federalism were literally born into the world at the same time.
This makes Australia’s first celebration of the year two-fold, that of Federation and, on a global scale at least, the birth of Anthroposophy! In the first elections of our nation, there was a different if similar constellation of political parties from today. There were three still, with the Liberal Protestants winning the House of Representatives, with the conservative Free traders triumphing in the Senate. Labor (American spelling) trailed both.
So, our first parliament was governed by a coalition of the LP and CFT; these political kin later fused to become one party, the Nationalists, in 1909. From then on, to decades later, there were only two major political parties in Australia.
This two-party impress onto the, till then unblemished, membrane of Australian political consciousness, is with us still today, with its original Protestant/Conservative/Free-Trade/British liberal ethos, opposed by the Catholic/Reformist/Interventionist/Irish American humanist philosophy.
Political infants we may have been, but Australia introduced some of the most important electoral reforms in the world For instance South Australia was one of the first governments in the world to introduce universal suffrage, allowing women the vote. An entire architectural style is named after this important event – Federation.
There are broadly seven areas which should be canvassed in a study of Australian History: The Arts; Political; Military; Social; Commercial; Scientific – and, most importantly, the Personal. How does this or that period, person, or event affect me today – or you? How much better armed we are to face where we’re going if we know from where we’ve come. The following is a glimpse at the Australian Constitution, a document which has served us so well for over a century. The Queen referred to of course was Queen Victoria Also, even though we had a female monarch, the creators of the Constitution obviously did not envision a female Governor General, which we now have.
CHAPTER I. THE PARLIAMENT Part I – General
- The legislative power of the Commonwealth shall be vested in a Federal Parliament, which shall consist of the Queen, a Senate, and a House of Representatives, and which is herein-after called “The Parliament”, or “The Parliament of the Commonwealth”.
- A Governor-General appointed by the Queen shall be Her Majesty’s representative in the Commonwealth and shall have and may exercise in the Commonwealth during the Queen’s pleasure, but subject to this Constitution, such powers, and functions of the Queen as Her Majesty may be pleased to assign to him.
- The Governor-General may appoint such times for holding the sessions of the Parliament as he thinks fit, and may also from time to time, by Proclamation or otherwise, prorogue the Parliament. and may in like manner dissolve the House of Representatives.
CHAPTER II. THE EXECUTIVE GOVERNMENT 61. The executive power of the Commonwealth is vested in the Queen and is exercisable by the Governor-General as the Queen’s representative and extends to the execution and maintenance of this Constitution, and of the laws of the Commonwealth.
- The command in chief of the naval and military forces of the Commonwealth is vested in the Governor-General as the Queen’s representative.
An extension of the celebration of Federation is an important event that occurred 27 years later. This was the opening of the new Parliament House in Canberra on March 9, 1927. The official opening was by the Duke and Duchess of York, later King George VI, and Queen Elizabeth — the Queen Mother. The following is a story rarely told of the “clash of cultures” that this represented.
The opening of the Parliament House in Canberra, officiated by Prince Albert (later King George VI) and his wife Elizabeth (later the Queen Mother), drew all Australians together as one nation. Did it?
This august assembly, which could have conferred such a special sacred place status on our nation’s capital, betrayed both the place and the country. Of the hundreds of invited dignitaries and guests from around Australia and overseas, not a single Aborigine was among them.
What a travesty! Especially due to the fact that the very land on which the building stood had been stolen from its original stewards just a few decades before. An oversight? Not likely; the now infamous early 20thCentury White Australia Policy placed Aborigines very low indeed on the evolutionary ladder. They didn’t even have citizenship in their own land; and were not counted in the census.
This non-indigenous exclusivity condemned not only Canberra, but, due to the national significance of the event, the whole country to an eternity of sacred place bankruptcy. The gods of Moral Heaven would never permit such willful venality to be rewarded But, as this book so, amply shows, a desolation of spirit strangely did not occur. To a large degree, we have to give thanks for our subsequent material and cultural well-being to just two special people.
Two elders from the Wiradjuri tribe, near the NSW-Victoria border, though uninvited, walked all the way to Canberra from the Tumut area to grace the great gathering with their blessings. As such, Jimmy Clements, and John Noble (‘clement’, as in mercy, and ‘noble’ indeed!), though ragged and barefoot, are among our greatest national heroes; from a higher, karmic perspective, at least.
They take their place in an Honor Gallery of Aborigines who, in spite of endemic oppression and dispossession, have made great and meaningful sacrifices for the benefit of this country. In spiritual life, its quality, not quantity that counts.
Their presence at The Opening was more important than that of all the pretentious dignitaries put together!
The heavens had a special smile for these two true ‘princes’ in their beloved land, and by association on the entire assembly. The two men should be household names; but of course, hardly anyone has ever heard of them. When the police tried to move the bewildered Jimmy on, with the fatuous excuse that he wasn’t properly attired for such an auspicious event, people nearby rallied around him, causing the constabulary to retreat. The good folk even moved him to the front of the crowd, and generously threw him a “shower of shillings”; a gesture which showed, as usual, that ordinary Australians are way ahead of their leaders in the social consciousness marathon.
One paper gratuitously described this kindness as “an amusing incident”; the early century being a time when the media was even more in the fob pocket of the Establishment than it is today.
They referred to these two truly distinguished men as “remnants of the disappearing Aboriginal race”; how wrong they were.
Jimmy Clements was also known, in the usual patronizing sense of whites giving nicknames to their black inferiors, as “King Billy”. His aboriginal name was Nangar. John Noble was unctuously calle4 “Marvelous”. And while on publishing distortion, in this case indigenous propaganda. The current Old Parliament House Aboriginal Tent Embassy line is that the two men came to Canberra to protest white annexation of their land. No contemporary accounts mention this.
To contradict this Tent Embassy spin, one archival photo has John Noble proudly holding his little Union Jack! And in a 1928 movie about the day, insultingly and long-windedly titled Birth of a White Australia, an historic and romantic record of our country, Jimmy was filmed standing on· the steps or Parliament House calling for “three cheers for the King”. This was soured by the duplicity of the filmmakers who edited in a crowd of cheering Aborigines – who simply weren’t there! Maybe it would have been easier if they invited them in the first place.
The Tent Embassy, on the very site of The Opening in front of Old Parliament House, has now been entered into the register of the National Estate, Australia’s list of natural and cultural heritage places.
The Aboriginal Embassy Site was established in 1972, the date of the first true sovereignty “protest” here. It has been continually occupied by its black ambassadors ever since – in spite of numerous efforts to eject them!
As such, it has acquired unique, if relatively new, sacred place status for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders everywhere. in the spirit of indigenous tradition, a Fire of Justice was created, and has been burning since 1993; a fact which I’m sure would warm the hearts of Jimmy Clements and John Noble, the two who inadvertently ignited this important initiative.
In gratitude, I dedicate this first chapter of Australia’s festivals and celebrations to Jimmy Clements and John Noble. Both men passed into the Great Dreaming within a year of The Opening. Jimmy was buried in the Queanbeyan Cemetery – outside consecrated ground, of course!
Jimmy Clements, clutching his Australian flag on the Old Parliament House steps,
at the opening of the building, March 9, 1927.
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