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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…
LAIRD OF THE SPECTRUM
Light & Color – Class 3 – Main Lesson
The Teacher and the Teacher’s Teacher settled down around the small white table on the verandah. The filtered early morning light painted magic patterns in the auburn and olive leaves of the decorative grape lolling languidly on the trellis overhead. The Teacher looked up and spoke.
“I’d like to talk about Science in Class 3: she said as she stirred her coffee. The color of her long hair reflected the warm tones of the grape – and the day; but the hue of her eyes was nameless, something between a grey-violet and hazel. “It always seems to me that Science is the Cinderella subject in primary school. I suppose people think that with its obvious intellectual bias, real Science should only be taken seriously in high school.”
Teacher’s Teacher studied some of the more subtle ember colors of the grape before answering; her silver hair was tied in a loose bun on the top of her head, and her silk shift was imperceptibly moved by a wayward zephyr.
“I don’t think one can underestimate the importance of Science in the elementary school – the new Art of Education has, after all, a mission to build a bridge between the arts and sciences – or Beauty and Truth. The structure of this bridge is made from the heart forces themselves – of love.
Science is the 4th of the 4 main lesson subjects strands, following those of Language, Maths, and Social Studies. These appeal to ego, astral and etheric respectively, with Science …”
“I know, Science informs the physical body – the Body of the World, and Man. I’ve heard that to deny physical imperatives in life condemns one to a seemingly never-ending round of further meaningless incarnations.
The spiritual bliss of Nirvana can only be attained via the rocky path of the carnate world – of Science. So what kind of Science do we teach in Class 3? Nine year old’s can’t exactly grasp the mysteries of Black Hole Physics!”
Teacher’s Teacher went on unfazed. “Just as in the other 3 main lesson strands, Science is divided into 3 units, Physical, Life, and Human Science. These call on the 3 soul-forces of the child – Will, Feeling and Thinking.
One of each per year should be taught, preferably in that order. That would constitute 36 Science main lessons from Class 1 to 12. And this does not include the many corollary Science units in both middle and afternoon block lessons – that’s a lot of Science in a child/student’s learning program. Our charges will certainly get a leg up to Nirvana with this lot! So what do you want to know?”
“Whew! Well I’m preparing the first Science main lesson of the year; that would be the ‘physical/will’ sciences wouldn’t it? Now let’s see, the equivalent lesson in Class 1 was Physics Games, and in Class 2 we did stories and the like on The Four Seasons – grand stuff! So what about Class 3, can you cast some light on that?”
“What?”
“That’s the Class 3 physical sciences main lesson, Color and Light, especially color. You see, 9-year-olds are unfolding what Rudolf Steiner called the Pictorial Aspect of the Etheric Body. Hence their souls are open to explore – imaginatively and experientially of course – the marvelous world of color.
The children’s picture-forming capacity is honing to a fine edge; in fact picture/etheric is represented in color and light respectively – a union of two dissimilar but complementary principles. I told color stories right through the 3 weeks with my class, oh so many years ago – and they just loved them.”
Teacher’s Teacher looked wistful and stared at the pink waterlily slowly opening to the morning light “I remember one story… “But she was too late, Teacher saw the gap and filled it.
“I’ve thought of some color characters already” she exclaimed excitedly “staring with the 4 ‘Image Colors’ as taught by The Master, green, black, white and incarnadine. I could have, say, a green, Plant Man called … um, Hortus, living in a magic garden!”
The second image, or ‘shadow’ color character would be – um, incarnadine (some call it peach blossom – it looks nothing like peach blossom!). This is the color of human flesh, even of dark people; they are all the same color under the melanin overlay in the skin – see the palms of their hands. This flesh color is really a combination of black and white tinctured with red – the colors of Atlantis incidentally, when humanity truly entered the flesh. Steiner calls incarnadine the Living Image of the Soul.
Ah, then there’s white, the Soul’s Image of the Spirit; I’ll call her White Cloud perhaps, the spirit of purity.”
“The picture’s fine; I don’t know about the name though, it sounds like an Indian Chief” smiled Teacher’s Teacher.
“Yes, it needs work – anyway, what a contrast to the 4th and last image color, black. He could be nocturnal; someone who leaves his mark but is never seen (the debate rages on – is black really a color at all?!). His name could be … Charfinger! He is a carbon man who deposits grubby fingermarks wherever his perfidious deeds are done – he will be the villain in my story – after all, black is the Spiritual Image of the Lifeless!” Even Teacher had to pause some time, allowing her mentor a moment or two.
“This story/character principle can be applied to all colors, starting with the 3 Primaries, red, blue and yellow. Years ago I had Blue Lady, an actress, a feeling type. My red character emphasized the will, and my yellow, light-filled thought. These 3 Luster, or ‘luminous’, colors (Blue Lady was the Luster of the Soul, red of the Body, and yellow of the Spirit) must be central to all the other more peripheral color people. Blue Lady had a magic stage make-up bag, with which she could transform herself.
But you’ve also got to find personification for the two remaining Secondary colors (green is an ‘image’ yes?); and those which represent the macro-mega range of Tertiary colors – brown and grey. My brown being was Clodman, a kind of helpful tunneller supporting life, just as the earthworms do – brown of course is the Color of Life.
Oh dear, I certainly recall its opposite, the Color of the Lifeless – grey! He was the Grey Eminence, dwelling in the Grey Fog of Obfuscation – another villain!
Only the presence of Grey Eminence could be felt as he left his grey rampart and descended in his chill fog to the happy valleys below. Oh fell was his intent, cunning his ways – and dire his deeds!”
Teacher’s Teacher sipped her coffee in reminiscence as Teacher, in a new burst of inspiration, set sail on the yacht Imagination once again. “Perhaps I could even have characters for the final two colors, those of the invisible spectrum. These are the colors respectively in the great zodiacal color ordering of Libra and Aquarius – ultraviolet and infra-red.
Naturally this zodiacal or spiritual/soul spectrum serves only to provide background to the lesson content proper, to add a supersensible dimension to the story and so on. It even enriches anecdotal material, or hands-on color experience – the children are not taught these arcane things directly. For instance, Charfinger might be transformed from his venal black carbon state to a … a glittering diamond! (One without a curse we hope!) Diamonds, after exposure to intense heat and pressure, are the new form of carbon. This may even be the higher essence of the ‘Spiritual Image of the Lifeless’.”
Teacher’s Teacher waited patiently; but apparently Teacher had exhausted her color character ideas for the present. She smoothed a disobedient wisp.
“The image is the guide of the living to the form; you as teacher provide the images, the children are the living, and the form resides in the physical principles you wish to impart. There is a dangerously erroneous school of thought that believes that form preceded image (or spirit).
This offends every canon of creation; the baby’s spirit (image) preceded the body. In Genesis, the Spirit of Man (‘in our image’), or the Sons of Fire as they’re known, were created before Adam, representative of the Sons of Dust.
So having created the images of the color/light realities, the presentation (in a playful, enjoyable way) of the so-called ‘hard facts’ – the form – will be not damaging to the souls of the children, but rather essential nourishment. After a rainbow story, one can present the spectral wonders created by a large water prism, for instance.
This simple piece of ‘science’ equipment can be easily constructed, and is a valuable asset right through the school where color physics – or art! – are taught. Of course children can discover the marvels of small glass prisms as well – just as the young enquiring Goethe did. (He made a prismatic altar to the Lord of the Spectrum.)
The children should also have demonstrated to them the principle of color perspective; you know, how the mountains fade away into the distance. They can best experience this in painting, which should be an ever-present strand of this 3-week unit. Both painting and drawing can feature in this main lesson to great advantage, bringing to life so many of the handiworks of the Lord of the Spectrum. Now there’s a good character for a story.”
“And for the more didactic part of the lesson” added Teacher “I might tell the class that it’s the Lord of the Spectrum who performs the color tricks of, say, demonstrations of complementary colors. You know, say a blue circle or orange ground. Stare at it for a while, then look at a white piece of paper next to it. One sees quite clearly the ‘negative’ orange circle on blue ground.
And not only that; one can see the behavior of various colors as these have been portrayed in story. For instance, a green circle on white ground will, when stared at for some time, stretch out in a horizontal band – the very same gesture one takes in eurythmy for green – or indeed one sees when (Occult) Venus rises with the sun and momentarily creates the little-seen but well-documented lateral ‘green flash’.”
“Yes, I’ve see the green flash – what a wonderful induction into the color world this is for children, the intrinsic behavior of the different hues. I love the one where you see a blue circle on white; the blue begins to pale in the center, and concentrates around the edge of the circle, just like the iris of the eye – yellow does the opposite. There always seems to be a ‘magical’ component to this movement in stillness, to use an oxymoron – the deeds of the Lord of the Spectrum yes?”
“Yes, I suppose we should actually draw the color circle in our main lesson books.” Said the Teacher.
It would also be a good idea to teach both the Light and Pigment Primaries; in a simplified form 9-year-olds could understand this. As any stage-lighting expert knows, focusing red, green and blue spotlights on one place will create a stage flooded with … white light! These 3 are called the ‘sun’ primaries.
The ‘earth’ primaries, red, blue and yellow, mixed as pigments, create the color of the earth, indigo. That is why the 7-color sun spectrum contains, in order of the sun’s children, the planets: violet-Moon, yellow-Mercury, green-Venus, white-Sun, red-Mars, orange-Jupiter, blue-Saturn. This is so different from the Newtonian ‘earth’ spectrum of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, Indigo, and violet – you can see indigo has replaced white.”
“I don’t know why you come to me for advice at all !” complained Teacher’s Teacher “I feel more irrelevant by the moment. Are there any more biscuits? Anyway, it might be a good idea in this Color Physics main lesson to actually qualify, in an imaginative way of course, the Nine Colored Lights’ that is, the way color reaches us. The closer to the source of light we see the color, the closer it is to its suprasensible origins. Take the green flame of copper burning; that is pure Venus energy. The sensitive person can’t look at it without feeling a sacrificial kind of yearning – a longing to enter its loving ambience.
So difference this is form that medium furthest from the source, color reflected off an opaque, matt surface, one of the densest materialism. Poster paint would be in this category – very earthy! The other 7 range variously between these extremes, and can be demonstrated with great effect: Metallic color, as seen in a beetle’s back; iridescent, in a peacock’s feathers; color thorough a transparent substance, like stained glass; translucent – color, through say oiled rice paper; color through transparent white paper reflection – as seen in watercolor painting.” Teacher’s Teacher paused to dispatch a biscuit.
“I suppose there could be a lot of general discussion about how color expresses in the world, as in food for instance. The color of curry is the same as that which it so effectively suppresses, the trots! This is like-to-like color healing … hey, did you hear that?! A Golden Whistler. His trilling song is a combination of his gold breast, and sharply defined black and white throat. It is actually the color that commits the sound to the ether.”
Teacher’s Teacher had finished eating, so got back to work “That’s a good observation – in a play, you might be able to suggest where the various colors live in the human being, as taught to teachers in their eurythmy lessons. Indeed one should harness the support of the eurythmy teacher in bringing some color into her/his lessons – this truly is integrative education.
From squeezed out black, with clenched fists at our sides, to the fending-off gesture of grey – right up to the open-fingered movement for white, high above our heads, eurythmy expresses eternal color verities. Here the children are unconsciously absorbing the mysteries of color – the language of the Lord of the Spectrum himself!”
“Oh, that reminds me,” chirped Teacher “I mustn’t forget to touch the vocabulary of color, through spelling lists and what-not. There are many names for red, each slightly qualifying the blanket concept; in other words, what kind of red? There’s … let’s see, rouge, rufous, ruddy, rust, rose, and ruby. Isn’t that funny? They all start with the letter ‘r’ – I wonder why?” Teacher looked at the pink waterlily in the pond, it was now fully open, a flamingo gift to the day; she continued “The r sound is the only ‘air’ sound in English, connected as it is to the sign of Taurus – with its Quality of Will! Will is red. I guess I could show the reality as it expresses through the vernacular, like a ‘red-blooded boy’ – that is a ‘will’ statement. Of course there are lots more, like green with envy, browned off – and grey with hatred!”
“Yes, color vocabulary can be fun; and what about foreign color words? Yellow is jaune, gelb and Amarillo in French, German and Spanish respectively. Children love these language comparisons (these are great for the eurythmy class too). The word jaune has even moved across the English, as in ‘jaundice’. You’ll also note the soul use of that word – ‘a jaundiced view’!” Teacher scribbled notes so as not to forget these little many colored gems.
“How ab out color illusions?” continued Teacher’s Teacher “9-year-old children love those, with that blossoming ‘pictorial aspect’ of theirs. A good text from the local library can be helpful here. It’s too time-consuming to think of these ‘color tricks’ yourself – it might detract from the more important element of lesson preparation, that which one can’t get from a book, The Story.
Take two yellow triangles, put one on a white ground, and one on black. The children will be certain that the triangle on white is much larger than the one on the black – magic again yes? Indeed behind every one of these so-called illusions is a soul reality of a kind. Black does have the tendency to swallow (as in ‘Black Hole’) or engulf, white to liberate, in this case expanding the yellow triangle.”
“I know one,” sang Teacher happily “if you place equal pink squares on a blue and yellow ground, the surrounding colors change the hues of the pinks dramatically. The pink on yellow appears much stronger than the one on the blue – and then there’s another one I remember with stripes…”
The warm sun invoked the two women to silence; they rested back in their comfortable chairs. The Teacher gazed lovingly at the now-large pink waterlily; the perfumed heart was sparkling gold. The flower lifted the dreaming soul of The Teacher in its loving embrace, and took her on a journey of neither time nor space. She arrived in a world of unspeakable blazonry, becoming a shimmering complexion in a host of color phantoms. These moved and weaved, fluctuate and coruscated in green, gold and violet – all around the center of a Perfect Light. This Light, the very essence of which charged each flowing Color Being with vitality, found its strength in a limitless whirl of kaleidoscopic hues. The Light, or Lord of the Spectrum as it really was, whispered wordlessly into the gleaming soul of The Teacher. This was the most sublime initiation of all.
“… and to teach color you have to love color,” murmured Teacher’s Teacher, who had apparently been going on in this vein for some time “this is your opportunity to teach good taste in color. Hold up some garish, meretricious color combinations – then compare these with examples of harmonious tones.”
“What!?” Oh I’m sorry, I must have dozed off.”
“Never mind, it wasn’t really important. You can fill some of your knowledge gaps with this, especially on some of the supersensible aspects of color theory.” She handed The Teacher a small book, Choirs of Colors by little known educational author, Alan Whitehead. With that Teacher’s Teacher girded her loins in her filmy shift, and turned to leave, smiling enigmatically.
“Oh, I haven’t offended have I? It’s just that one minute I’m staring at the waterlily, the next .. ah, never mind, it’s hard to explain.”
“Nothing to apologize for – or explain, I’ve been on the waterlily color tourn myself you know. Well I’ll be going, to give you time to write a color song for your class.”
“Color song? What about?” At that moment a black and yellow wasp began circling a St. Andrew’s Cross Spider “Um, it’s okay, I feel a song coming on already…”
COLOR, COLOR
Color, color – Color One is dancing,
With the blossom, high up in the tree.
Summer’s child; she’s living in her fancy,
Upward, outward – as far as you can see.
Hunter in yellow and black,
Alert for speedy attack.
Nothing can turn him back
When he sees the Dark One creeping;
Stealthy, back-bent, shadowed and silent Caught!
More silent still in a tomb up in the tree.
Hunter Hunter, Hunter now is leaving;
He can tell that Autumn’s almost here.
“Won’t you stay? Good times can last forever!
Our song’s unsung – cold winter’s nowhere near”
Hunter has gone in the night,
Bark One lurks out of sight.
Silver chain deadly and bright,
Waits for the Color One passing –
Lightly, flightly; singing and sprightly
Caught!
Wingless, afraid; carried off
And lost from sight.
Now if you can listen very closely,
You may hear her singing underground.
Dark One creeping, blossom softly sleeping;
Shroud of silver chain around it wound.
Hunter will come again,
Dark One now will reign,
Color One bound in chain
Sings for her silent master.
One day, she may, follow a sun ray
Free !
Grow wings again,
Fly up high among the flowers.
Full music notation in my book 33 Sun Songs.
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