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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…
BREATH OF LIFE
Air & Wind Stories – Class 3 – Middle Lesson
THE ANGEL OF AIR
From the Essene Gospel of Peace
We worship the holy breath
Which is placed higher than
All other things created;
And we worship
The most true wisdom.
In the midst of the fresh air of the forest and field
There you shall find the Angel of Air.
Patiently she waits for you
To quit the dank and crowded holes of the city.
See her there, and quaff deeply,
Of the healing draught that she does offer you.
For the rhythm of your breath is the key of knowledge.
The Angel of Air
Doth soar on invisible wings;
Yet you must walk her unseen path
If you would see the face of God.
I would like to have had the Angel of Air along today to tell you about the ‘Discovery’ middle lesson called Air Cycle Stories. Alas she is too busy reigning over the gaseous/light element of the whole planet. Instead, she has sent an emissary, one of her legions of air folk; they who range from the softest breath of a baby – to Terror Tornado himself! Her name is Shhhushbie, and on the ‘force’ scale, as winds are measured, she might be a Force 2 – somewhere between a draft and a zephyr. Say hello to the people Shhhushbie – don’t be shy.
“Hello, I’ve had many names over the eons; Shakespeare called me Peach Blossom – giggle – a modern songwriter named my big sister Maria – ‘…and they called the wind Maria …’! But whatever my name, my nature remains the same; I am the inspirer of the Air/Light Mysteries to individual man. My Regent, the Angel of Air, rather looks after the Big Picture.
Strange as it may seem, I enter each one of you on every breath, hoping to light a lamp of inspiration in your creative breasts. You can be so accessible; but sadly in this age of materialism you more often are not. If you habitually ingest spirit-inimical smoke – of any kind – you never are!
The Air, in cooperation with its metaphysical counterpart, the etheric body, is the healer of both the world and man. So it is in everybody’s interest to protect the Air, to keep it clean and unpolluted – or to not interfere negatively with its passage. For instance, an unintelligent wind-break of trees planted across the middle of a large paddock, breaks the wind alright, but creates lee-turbulence – a kind of rolling violence. This burns and kills living things in its path, rather than supports them. Scattered trees, and naturally-spaced corpses and groves – as you see in nature – are true wind modifiers.”
Thank you Shhhushbie; we can see that this is a subject near to your airy little heart. But perhaps I should refer our readers to some of the more mundane facts of this wonderful 3-week middle lesson – about 23 teaching hours in all. In the unfolding of the Educational Zodiac, starting with that timeless initiator, Cancer in Class 1, the children in Class 3 are standing in the marbled halls of Virgo. How important then to weave a ‘movement’ (The Virgin represents the Sense of Movement) strand into the – air-borne – Content Magic Carpet wherever possible There is no better lesson to do this in than the Air Cycle Stories.
Air lives in movement; dead air is static air. The winds are the great cleansers of the earth, by virtue of their yearning to travel. How the children, via the story, love to travel with them! Indeed the Ancient Atlanteans were said to travel on the wind, harnessing wind-power to create ‘vehicles’ – like riding a Willy Willy I suppose!
The second aspect of the child-development picture is physiological: as the etheric body becomes emancipated, year by year from 7 to 14, a particular ‘formative force’ organ is inhabited by this all sustaining Life Body. In 9-year-olds, this ‘etheric organ’ is the lungs – these bi-partite air – bearers themselves.
So stories which delicately relate the breath cycle of the human being to that of one or other ‘being’ – like an area, or country even – touchers a chord of knowing in the soul – ‘Gosh, Australia’s just like me!’. This awakening is via the inspirational power of the lungs.
‘Readiness’ is a golden key in education; Air Cycle Stories just do not have the same impact – the same psychic penetration – in say Class 1 or 4, as they do in Class 3; with these Virgo/lung children. There is a time to live, and a time to die – and a time to teach Air Cycle Stories. That time is the 9th year.
An example of man/earth synchronicity might be the breath cycle itself. We breathe in Oxygen – like; then there is a hiatus, where Nitrogen is released into the brain, resulting in thought or image. Then we breathe out Carbon, the earth substance itself (this is actually a cleansing); followed by another hiatus, in which dispersion of the sun gas, hydrogen, occurs.
This 4-fold cycle is depicted – by both eurythmists and physiologists – as a rolling air form ! [image file name is CA-Image-Page 34.png] In a highly refined way, the 4 seasons follow the same path. The earth breathes In the plant-released oxygen – a life gas – in Autumn; then experiences a hiatus, a stillness, of nitrogen – of imagination – in Winter. Then she breathes out carbon in Spring, to be taken up by the newly-leafing plants The earth mother then enjoys the dispersion – the giving up to the high ether of her hydrogen – in summer…
“Er, did you want me to add anything, I thought…?”
What? Oh I’m sorry; I guess I’m just as fascinated by the aeriform world as you are Shhhushbie. So tell us something about your family.
“I’d love to: Well quite a few have been introduced in the story called Charlie the Wind, in Alan Whitehead’s children’s reading/story book, Magic Mangrove Seed.”
Shhhushbie blushed “I…er, was in that story; a kind of diminutive aeriform heroine. Charlie is a little wind too, a bit on the mischievous side, who meets lots of Air Folk on his travels. The author created the tale for his own Class 3 Air Cycles Stories lesson – many ‘earth-breaths’ ago. I was depicted as trying to guide the error-prone Charlie 9the boy who became a wind) to more constructive conduct. Gosh he even used to blow hats off people – on purpose!
Anyway the story portrays a whole range of personified winds, both goodies and baddies – I was a goodie of course. Oh how the bush folk trembled when the wicked Swiffftbie Westerly howled out of the desert; igniting, with his hot-dry furnace breath, terrible bushfires!
Apart from those featured in the story, I have many other relatives – all who lend themselves so well to exciting imagery: Connie Convection – that’s right, winds are not only horizontal, but can be vertical too, or oblique even, like Soarer Updraft. Then there’s Gail; that’s all we call her. Her real name, Gail Gale, sounds a bit funny.
I suppose I have to mention my more violent relatives; like Tearaway Tempest; White-out Blizzard; and the dreaded Set Typhoon! His name comes from the Egyptian ‘Typhon’ (akin ‘python’), the Earth Serpent. This is another name for the scurrilous Set, brother of Osiris, Isis and Nephthys. Together these four symbolize 4-fold man – physical, ego, astral, and etheric respectively.
Set/Typhon points to a spirit-bankrupt material existence It was Set who cut poor Osiris up into 14 pieces – it was Isis who forgave him, assuring endless generations of his dominion of the earth…”
“Sorry Shuhhhbie, but all this esoteric stuff might be a little off the track for a simple Air Cycle Stores unit. There are other relatives of yours who – which? – we can take at more or less face value. How about squall; dust devil; waft; flurry; blast…? All these – and more – can be woven into the stories, and the practical activities.
The ‘Discovery’ stream of the middle lessons is science/social-studies based; awakening, as it does, the etheric life of the children. This etheric/air lesson is particularly apt here.”
‘Discovery’ subdivides into 3 strands, each appealing to one of the 3 ‘soul forces’; Will, Feeling, and Thinking. The 3 strands are: Physical World – Will; living World – Feeling; and Human World – Thinking. So Air Cycle Stores is a Discovery/etheric/Physical/will lesson! As such, the practical element should be strongly evident. For instance, the children might make a windmill – collectively or on their own. For this lesson there should be a class windsock, aerometer, wind vane, or direction streamers 9outside but visible through the window if possible).
A wind whistle or wind chimes give voice to Shhhushbie and her airy friends. For instructions on how to make these charming ‘toys’, there are many good children’s books of ‘Air Experiments’ and the like. And speaking of toys’ a lovely ‘homework’ assignment is to ask the children to invent and make a wind-driven toy. This they can do with the help of the family, assuring a strengthening of the loving bonds between home and school. the creative teacher could also pen a wind song, poem or play. What do you think of that Shhhushbie?
“Great! I, like 9-year-old children, love wind songs; here’s the beginning of one I heard in one wind-in-the-hair class (full text found in my book, Lore of Life):
Windsinger lives on my plateau,
Her feathers are spun from the light.
When summertime comes to my plateau,
She spirals on air to the heights…
This brings in another personification; not one based on a generalized ranking – breeze, blow, buster, tec. – but localized ones. These have been given names over the ages by folk that live with them – or suffer them! The well-known European wind, Sirocco, is one of these – the south wind. One valley community has its ‘Hunter’; a raw-boned guster that leaps over their protecting mountain, tearing clothes off the line and driving everyone in doors. It is strangely empowering if the class can create names for their own local winds – what a wonderful ‘observation’ exercise this is; education (‘to draw out’) in the truest sense.”
Shhhushbie continued with her f-airy-like dissertation “The thing with a story is that, through the Genii of Imagination, we – the story hero/ines – can travel to, observe, and experience, any air conditions on earth. Air conditions… air conditioners? Yes, even those: how does air feel being perpetually recycles, with all that carbon dioxide, cigarette smoke and dust?!
Then we might travel down a mine, where the air is perfectly still – and hence potentially poisonous. That’s why they used to take an air-sensitive (etheric-yellow) canary down with them – poor little thing. If it fell gasping off its perch, the miners scooted out fast!
Some areas like swamps are air traps, releasing evil gases which can create jack-o-lanterns and other eerie sub-earthly light displays – good story stuff here! In fact our air adventurers can do the whole ‘preposition program’, traveling up, through into, under, above and around – indeed anywhere air can go, which is almost everywhere. The Angel of Air is indeed omnipresent. You look askance? … under the water? How about the bubbles of a seal?!”
Have you ever been in a seal Shhhushbie?
“Well no, not that I remember; I have been around a long time though I’ve been in a human; no, not the lungs this time, but trapped in the nether realms after my host ate a curry meal. It was awful, I couldn’t wait to get out – through a different door from that which I entered….”
Enough! I suppose some clever little imp will touch on that unsavory subject – better be prepared folks! As you should be with some general wind information, particularly of a geographic kind An upper-air Jet Stream, like the one which often rules Australia’s stratosphere from north-west to south-east, can reach speeds of 600 kilometers an hour – at heights of 47,000 meters. The big jets plane along these on their way home from India, cutting up to an hour off flight times – big-time winds yes?
High surface wind speeds can go above 350 KPH; less than half this inhuman blast one couldn’t even stand up in! These are more ferocious even than cyclones, and occur mostly in high mountain areas. Indeed that continental mountain itself, Antarctica, is the windiest place on earth.”
“Terra Antarctica’s frozen breath, felt often in Southern Australia, can give a chilling dimension to a story. This is one of the many global wind currents, many of which are perennial; these can be of great interest to 10-year-olds. Again some of these have their own names, like The Roaring Forties. Some of these Big Winds dominate continents, zones, regions, and even localities.” Shhhushbie paused, to catch her breath!
“Of course o Air Cycle Stories lesson is complete without a segment on the uses mankind makes of the wonderful 2nd Element, some of these are: hang-gliding; kites; power generation; aviation; sailing; flay-flying!”
Thank you my little wind-waft. But what of the wisdom of wind-use in the plant and animal world? Lots of plants are wind-pollinated.
The earth is a Being, one inhabited by other Beings – one of these is that monarch of the gaseous element, the sublime and supreme, Angel of Air – long to reign over us we hope! What do you think Shhhushbie? … where is she/ Ah, is that her fanning the fire in the grate? Or entering the breath you’re taking right now…?!
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