Copyright Alan Whitehead & Earthschooling: No Part of this book, post, URL, or book excerpt may be shared with anyone who has not paid for these materials.
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…
HEAD PHYSIOGNOMY
“It is the ego that is responsible for the development of what appears as physiognomy and gesture as the outer, material manifestation of man’s soul and spirit … every wrinkle on his face will be indicative of his inner activity.” Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, 1923
The head is the most ancient principle of man; it was created as an act of divine will by the Thrones, third ranking of the First Hierarchy. To create the world, these aptly named Spirits of Establishment embarked on a dance of pure energy. This essentially spiritual activity created the glove of heat that was Ancient Saturn.
Paradoxically, these ‘wheels of fire’ brought into being (as well as the Mystery of Duration), initially at least, stillness. In fact, this mighty warmth globe was humanity itself, though with a consciousness similar to that of today’s minerals.
Ancient Saturn was really just a huge ‘head’, comprised of countless microcosmic heads – little globes – us! Rudolf Steiner called this a ‘raspberry’ phenomenon. Imagine the human brain sans matter; it is in fact a sphere of pure energy – thus was Ancient Saturn.
The carious energy centers were the germinal sense organs; but after a subsequent long sleep, or praylaya, this very first planet reemerged as the second – Ancient Sun. Here the head had become, as well as a heat sphere, one of movement, of respiration. Humanity’s consciousness was now plant-like. Those cryptic head glands, the pituitary, pineal, and thyroid, were created on this second ‘planet’.
If the size of Ancient Saturn extended to the orbit of today’s planet Saturn, as Steiner describes, then Old Sun had contracted to that of Jupiter. Indeed, this Saturn principle is embodied in our skull today, as Jupiter is in the face – and Mars in the throat. The three head glands are really expressions of the tri-soul forces of Saturn-thinking, Jupiter-feeling and Mars-will respectively.
So, the Ancient Sun warmth-air brain passed over, after yet another praylya, into a new incarnation, that of Ancient Moon (sometimes call Old Mars). Here the head took upon itself the liquid nature – and the nerves. Old Moon had now shrunk to the size of the orbit, aptly, of Mars.
Finally, to our own beloved Earth: here the hard skull was created to surround and protect this increasingly materializing head. Of course, the two other systems, Sun respiratory and Moon metabolic, though independent, were still also contained in the head: as seen in the nose and mouth. So even if the head is primarily an Old Saturn ‘physical body’ warmth organism, it contains a Sun-etheric-life component, and a Moon-astral-soul as well. The Ego entered with the creation of the mineral world on Earth; the fourth manvantara, or planetary state. On Earth, the first epoch, again manifesting ‘head’ spirituality, was Polaria. This was really a recapitulation, but a more materially manifest version, of Ancient Saturn. As well, it had moved from a state of primeval energy, to one of heat. The head is even today the heat center of man. Polaria was literally a globe of fire, or fires really – of many different kinds.
Out of this ordered inferno, the invertebrates – head animals – were extruded from man. WE see these ‘heads’ to perfection in the shell world. Of course, their mineral consolidation didn’t occur until much later, in Atlantis. And neither did our heads – or the rest of us for that matter. In some ways a shell, such as the chambered nautilus, is a hint of the perfected human head form of the future.
In this context, the innocence of babyhood produces a more perfect ‘nautilus’ type head. However, it is seen to perfection in statues of that symbol of the deep future, the Maitreya Buddha.
The input of the Zodiac into this head creation is seen in the fact that there are 12 cranial nerves: an Old Moon contribution. However, the Animal Circle was creatively active right back on Ancient Saturn, with its Aries dispensation. AS such, The Ram is curiously the only zodiacal sign nominally attributed to the head, though a microcosm of all 12 signs abide there. Aries was the heavenly dispensation that created the head ‘form’ on Old Saturn; Aries with its Sense of Word, as it tells us in the first verse of the Gospel of St. John: “In the beginning was the word …”. This Aries-Word Mystery, from the “beginning”, became flesh – the Lamb of God. Being a specifically Aries symbol. And when did The Word become flesh? In the Greco-Roman Aries zodiacal age of course; one of speech without peer. As such, we always have to bear in mind all the numerous, numinous implications of The Ram in any consideration of the human head.
Speaking of the head, there is that wonderful ‘head’ building, Steiner’s First Goetheanum, which he called The House of Speech, or The Word (Logos). How unlike his second Goetheanum this is, which is an edifice rather of movement. It is a center designed more for, or as well as, eurythmy. Even the two interpenetrating spheres of the First Goetheanum are head like. This mathematical-structural problem was incredibly difficult to solve; but Steiner, against the odds, and without specific architectural training, did just that.
In fact, architecture, the First Art, is that of Ancient Saturn, the ‘head’ planet. The First Goetheanum even had the fontanelle, or ‘little fountain’, seen so clearly in the center of the cross in the baby’s head; its so-called ‘soft spot’. This mirrors the Cross – in plan – in each of us, where the frontal meets the parietal lobes of the skull. It is also the conduit to the Spirit; the point we touch when we do the high T in eurythmy, that which, as Steiner describes, expresses the ‘in-flowing of the Spirit’. This small-large sphere, in principle at least, is also seen in that most satisfying of forms, the egg. As such, we are all egg heads! The humble ‘egg’ is of course the archetypal symbol of ‘beginning’, whether as an ovary or shelled.
The small sphere of the frontal lobe of man interpenetrates the larger parietal-occipital sphere at the rea; just like the First Goetheanum. One could almost weep at the sublimity of this structural-artistic masterpiece. After all, the laws of the physical body in general, and its epicenter the head in particular, are those of architecture. In fact, the Temple of the Body, our own House of the Word, is first of all structural in nature; hence we can even consider the whole body to be a head; the later developments, chest, abdomen, and limbs, being mere appendages. This is literally the case with the – Polarian – invertebrates; ‘head’ creatures par excellence.
Conversely, as earlier pointed out, one can see a whole body in the head, with the nerves/senses being the head itself, the rhythmic system represented by the nose, the metabolism by the mouth, and the limbs by the upper and lower jaws. However, it only structural laws prevailed in the head, we would all look roughly the same, but life, soul, karma and so on deem that each individual – unlike all-look-alike penguins! – is physiognomically unique; especially in the head – most especially in the face.
Like the body, the first consideration in embarking on the physiognomy of the head is size, the ‘spacial’ principle: space being one of the fundamental physical-body laws. There are two main kinds, large and small heads, with most folk being somewhere between these extremes. Big heads are owned by people with a more Luciferic disposition; at their worst, the impractical idealists – often more emotional, artistic types. In the extreme, these can be hydrocephalic, in children especially this manifests as obsessive dreaminess. Our language describes the ‘beg-headed’ person as egotistic, a singular Luciferic disposition. The compacted small heads are more under the influence of the Ahrimanic formative forces; being often more practical, reasoned, and objective souls.
The next division of the head is top to bottom: the top half of this quintessential nerves/senses organ, above the eye line, is devoted to nerves, the bottom half to senses. Again, there is a Luciferic-Ahrimanic (respectively) element here: but there is also a Saturn-Moon – ‘Ancients’ that is. The senses had their genesis on Old Saturn, the nerves on Old Moon – and Ancient Sun, with its timeless principle of The Middle Way, abides between the two. Its operative supersensible principle is the glands; in particular, the aforementioned pineal, pituitary, and thyroid.
Next we have the perpendicular two-fold head: the intuitive, impulsive, instinctive is on the right, with the rational and righteous, on the left. This is opposite the body left-right division, of course.
Another duality in head forms, and probably the most important, is based on the Seal of Solomon, the interlaced descending and ascending triangles earlier mentioned. A balanced incarnation is indicated by a symmetrical hexagram geometry, with the two triangles in harmony. However, some souls, common in Orientals and earthy folk (to generalize, individuals of course being free to depart from their racial or cultural stereotypes), have the ascending triangle dominant: this represents earth will.
Conversely, those with the ‘Jehovah’ form, as it’s known, that of the descending triangle, express rather divine will. Again, this is not a value judgement, with one type being superior to another, rather a necessity on the part of humankind to manifest all possible incarnational configurations. Like the body interlaced hexagrams in the last chapter, the descending is essentially male, the ascending female.
There are four other hexagram heads (see seven head-tringle diagrams at end). The first is that in which the two triangles are actually not interlaced at all, the bases meeting in the middle. Then we have the expanded and the contracted hexagrams, and finally the inverted, with the points meeting in the middle. These seven holy structural principles are governed by the seven astrological planets.
Then there is the three-fold head division. First we have the forehead-dominant ‘thinking’ head, as seen in professors and other cerebral folk. The second is the more artistic ‘feeling’ head – or face really. Large facial features, especially the eyes, distinguish these passionate people. Finally, we have the rock-jawed ‘will’ head, with low forehead, pinched features, and a massive lower face, especially the mandible region – often seen in footballers! Yet again, most people fit somewhere in between, having a pleasingly balanced thinking-feeling-will head. Actually, all this takes me back to my first meeting with my physiognomy teacher as a callow 19-year-old in Manly, Sydney in 1960. Here one of our most enjoyable exercises was to draw these thinking-feeling-will soul extremes.
Then there are the planets; of the seven planetary regions of the body, three are, not surprisingly, in the head. How this soul phenomenon differs from that of the Zodiac body (‘birth sign’), where only one in twelve, Aries, is head sited.
The skull is of Saturn, with its complementary forces of contemplation and scleroticism. The face is the region of Jupiter; the planet of ‘wisdom’. This is symbolized by the owl; a creature that always presents its face to you – even if you’re standing behind it!
A stylized owl can be drawn with just a large, round face dominated by two staring, golden eyes. Not insignificantly ‘golden’; after all, orange is the traditional color of Jupiter. The lower face, below the mouth and extending into the throat, is of Mars, hence speech, and its higher expression – in a parthenogenesis sense – reproduction. This 3-planet Trinity is the European version of the three higher chakras of Eastern esotericism; those of the thousand-petal Crown Lotus; the two-petal – face – Ajna; and the sixteen-petal – larynx – Vishuddha.
Another three-fold head division can be seen in the profile, with the forward-looking face (as in the ‘body’ earlier) being obsessed by the future, a will force.
The ear region is rather more connected to the present, through the feeling life. And the back of the head is happy to swell in the past, through the need for thinking to be based on past experience of some kind – even while thinking about the future!
The four-fold head is also interesting, especially that relating to the four elements. Firstly, there is the ‘sphere head’, where both head and facial features take the fire form, the will-based circle. In general, this is the ‘default’ head type I infants. Then we have the ‘wedge head’, made from angles – most common in airy-natured primary-aged children. After that there is the ‘ovoid head’, that of watery curves – as seen in many adolescents and young adults. Finally, it is the mineral element that impacts most on the ‘cube head’ – that of the mature adult; the square forms of head and face increasing with age as they do.
But there is another, even more important, tetramorphic principle in head structure Just as we see the thinking-feeling-will soul in the vertical line, the physical-ether-astral-ego body principles work horizontally. Together these create the Cross of Man. This is the case in both the body and the head. The physical body manifests in the central band down the face between the eyes. The etheric, a narrow band on either side of this, runs down through the ales or nostril area. It is the astral that occupies the next two bands on left and right of this, around the tear lines: and the ego is found in the two fourth quarters, around the temples and ears. These divisions are somewhat flexible, of course.
This four-body principle is also seen in the cranium profile; with the ego occupying the frontal lobe, the forehead area. This is topped by what Rudolf Steiner called the ‘theosophical knoll’, indicating a person of high spiritual development. Further back on the top of the head we have the so-called ‘bean head’; the astral region.
A lot of accountants have this, living in the Number (astral) Ether as they do all their bean-counting days. The etheric head is centered in the area of the hair whorl, three quarters to the back. Many movement artists, like dancers and eurythmists, have a high point here – as do many 10-year-old children.
Finally, the physical body: this is located right at the back of the cranium in the unconscious realm of the occipital lobe. In occult physiognomy, a bump here indicates the ‘teacher’; a dip its opposite!
There are nine nominal ‘layers’ in the human head, from the hair to the center of the brain. Curiously, there are again nine layers to that macrocosmic head, Planet Earth. Starting with the hair, this electrically-charged material is like the ‘ionosphere’ of the head – hence the ionosphere could be seen as the ‘hair’ of the world. After all, this is an electrically-active envelope protecting the globe from hosts of potentially inimical cosmic rays raging in from outer space.
The hair too is a protecting blanket, with bald people being more susceptible to in-flowing forces – even sunlight! – than those with a thick head of hair. Women of course have a greater degree of head protection, generically speaking, than men; curiously the ladies are thankfully rarely hirsute-challenged!
Beneath the ionosphere, there is another planet-protecting envelope, the pyrosphere, meaning ‘fire sphere’. This prevents much of the sun’s infrared rays reaching the earth, trapping them in its ‘substance’ – that’s why the pyrosphere is so hot. It is to penetrate this envelope of fire that space vehicles need special heat-resistant ceramic tiles on their nose cones, designed to aid them in effecting a safe re-entry to earth. And the human ‘pyrosphere’? The skin and thin layer of vascular tissue on the head, actually. This is the most blood-rich, hence intrinsically hot, part of the body – the scalp being our very own fire sphere. Scuba divers know that more heat is lost into the cold water through the head, causing hypothermia, than from any other part of the body – many times more!
If the pyrosphere absorbs infrared rays, then the third layer, the Ozonosphere, protects all living things on the planet from ultraviolet radiation. His delicate ozone layer, essentially comprised of blue oxygen, in larger part gives us our blue skies. The complementary protection in the head is the next layer; that just below the scalp, the skull. This too, as Rudolf Steiner confirms, protects us, especially the hypersensitive brain, from legion cosmic forces.
Directly beneath the skull is a remarkable membrane, the Dura Mater, meaning ‘strong – or enduring – mother’. In cranial surgery, one can see revealed below the skull the dura mater as a pearly sheet.
This lovely name is yet another example of the profound wisdom in the past in physiological nomenclature. The global equivalent to the dura mater is the Atmosphere (‘air sphere’). This is the ‘strong mother’ of the world, defending us against meteors and other invasions from space. Those dire intruders that breach the three zones above, such as bits of wandering rock, space junk and the like, are usually disintegrated by the friction encountered in the protective embrace of the atmosphere. This ‘air sphere’ is a largely invisible blanket of moisture, dust, and gases; the four main gases being hydrogen, nitrogen (the most in volume), oxygen and carbon; a ‘strong – if diaphanous – mother’ indeed!
The fifth ‘sphere, of both head and earth, is decidedly wet. For the planet this is the Hydrosphere, the water mantle of the world. This ‘liquid earth’, including the oceans, lakes, rivers, ground moisture – and any condensed H20 really – is not just ‘protective’, but life-bearing. In the head, as the sublime layer of cerebral fluid, this liquid provides a cushion, a hydraulic buffer, for the brain within. Just so do the vast seas and lakes provide a kind of stability to the earth by being able to absorb impact. A meteor hitting the oceans does far less damage (to the structure of the earth at least) than one on dry land: the earth, like the brain, needs maximum stability.
The next layer of the planet is – as 4-elements logic would decree, from fire to air to water – the rock sphere, the Petrosphere – Mother Earth herself. There are actually two ‘mothers’ in the human head (as in the earth), the dura and pia maters; two membranes between which the cerebral fluid is contained as in a watertight jacket.
That separating the cerebral fluid and the brain itself is the Pia Mater – the beautifully named ‘good mother’.
What a wonderful Mystery this is, giving reality to such simple yet little understood terms as ‘mother earth’, Gaia, and so on. In this metaphysical context, Rudolf Steiner provides another, as usual deeper, perspective on what he calls the Realm of the Mothers; one first recognized in literature by Plutarch, then later Goethe. In the second part of Faust, the eponymous hero embarked on a journey to The Mothers. Perhaps this was the Temple of the Mothers n ancient Sicily. To Mephistopheles, the archetypal spirit of materialism, this was a realm of ‘nothingness’; but to Faust – “in your nothingness, I hope to find the All.”. Steiner goes on to describe this realm as one in which are woven and fashioned the forms of the visible world – “… we must transcend everything that lives in space and time if we wish to penetrate to The Mothers. Formation, transformation, is the essence of this realm, one where The Mothers site in majesty; and one from which is born all that is given to our sense, just as metals, are born out of the mother ore in the mountains.” Berlin, April 1009.
But what is the cerebral cortex of the planet, that living below the petrosphere? There is the magma of course, a grey mass of malleable rock. Like the also grey brain, it is convoluted in form. The magma is not the picture-book flaming cauldron we usually imagine, rather a realm of infinitely to liquid rock. As there’s little or no gaseous oxygen in the inner earth, there can be no overt fire; this only explodes into being when the magma, on meeting the outside air, extrudes in volcanic eruption.
Then there is the eighth layer, the white brain.
White is the Sun color, so it’s no surprise to se it reflected in the inner earth in the Sun metal, gold. Some scientists believe that the second innermost core of the earth is molten gold. This is because gold is one of the heaviest of metals; earth-rotation centrifugal forces naturally pushing the lighter elements to the periphery of our volatile global home. Perhaps that’s why there is such high aluminum content in rocks and soil near the earth’s surface; this being one of the lightest of metals. Even iron, a relatively light metal, is extremely common in surface rocks.
The ninth ream of the inner earth is the lair of the Dark Prince himself, the redoubtable Ahriman. Even though gold is heavy, the mineral element that is the heaviest, densest, and most compressed – most subject to material forces – is uranium.
Hence the ‘centrifugal’ theory sees the dark heart of the earth as being one of pure uranium. This metal is so heavy that a piece the size of a tennis ball would be almost impossible to lift. It is also the most poisonous, hence anti-life, substance in the universe.
The Apocryphal Testament tells us that Christ left the cross in order to journey to the center of the earth. Here he bound Ahriman (Satan) in chains for eternity – uranium chains, it seems!
Though Steiner’s insight on this is that he was bound, more appropriately, in gold chains, the Sun metal, that of the Christ.
As such, this realm remains inaccessible to man, not only physically, naturally, but spiritually as well – or especially. His immortal spirit would be utterly annihilated if he were to venture there, his soul being incapable of redemption.
At the very center of the brain, there is supposedly a tiny space of nothingness; as alluded to earlier, this is the Mephistophelian perception of Spirit. Here we have a horror vacuui; indeed, one equivalent to that which is thought to exist in the very center of the earth, beneath the uranium even. In the had at least, this provides the possibility for, in the distant future, the development of Spirit Man, ‘fully transformed physical body’. The mission of the human head (and the earth) being ultimately to be re-born as spirit.
However, there is a constant danger that this cryptic brain space can be penetrated by Ahriman; but he can only do so if the individual descends to unmitigated evil – beware people-burning terrorists!
The Judas crime of betrayal, especially that of spiritual principle, as graphically described in the ninth realm of Dante’s Inferno, can also provide unwitting access to this Ahrimanic corruption. Though there is, thankfully, a protective perimeter around this ‘black hole’, both in the earth and the brain; the Christ-imbued gold-white of the eighth layer. Perhaps this is suggested in that sublime line in The Lord’s Prayer – “But deliver us from evil.”. This refers directly to the immortal human Ego, whose spiritual home also is the Sun Realm.
TALE OF TWO MOTHERS
Saturnian head, white brain withing,
Protected from harm by hair, skull, and skin,
In liquid clear in floats in a sphere,
Silent and still within.
There are two mothers in the head,
One good, one strong they gleam.
Good Pia Mater of silken thread,
With tender touch supreme.
And Dura Mata, elastic sheath,
Strong garment without seam.
Twin mantles above, around and beneath,
Bear consciousness between.
Oh, Cerebral Cortex of volute fold,
Grim shield of shadowed greys,
Leaden waves of magma rolled,
Give protection from cosmic rays.
The head is the home of neuron sparks,
And the twelve wise senses true,
Twelve cranial nerves reflect the stars,
And their heavenly thinking too.
HEAD POSITION is an indication of ego status; held too high is Luciferic pride, too low, matter weighted Ahrimanic effacement. The Christ-like perpendicular is determined by the relative position of the pituitary (earth) and pineal (sun) glands; the ideal angle between the two being 23.5 degrees, the same as that of the horizontal line) earth with the (angled line) sun (see below).
The formal names for the pineal and pituitary are epiphysis and hypophysisrespectively, meaning ‘growth upon’ and ‘growth beneath’. Rudolf Steiner said of these two tiny marvels:
“The two organs are the physical expression of the two currents of the ether body … we get an impression of bright etheric light currents streaming across from one to the other and pouring themselves over the human etheric body … we have here the physical expression of the cooperation of soul and body.”
Sun and Earth indeed!
Nine Sacred Realms of Planet Earth and the Human Head
How wonderful it is for a Spiritual Scientist to find such synchronicity as in the corresponding nine layers of the earth and the human head. How positively blessed when these revelations are further confirmed by ancient spiritual tradition. The painting below, a mide-13th Century French miniature, depicts the Cosmic Architect creating the world in nine clearly defined envelopes, from the ionosphere on the outside rim to uranium in the center: “From the golden core al living Beings are created, each according to its nature and size.” This amazing correspondence yet again demonstrates Rudolf Steiner’s more-than-metaphor teaching that the earth is a great head, the head a tiny earth. Here Alchymical Science, Natural Science and Spiritual Science form a trinity of true wisdom.
Ionosphere (‘action sphere’) – hair
Pyrosphere (‘fire sphere’) – scalp
Ozonosphere (‘smell sphere’) – skull
Atmosphere (‘vapor sphere’) – dura mater
Hydrosphere (‘water sphere’) – cerebral fluid
Petrosphere (‘rock sphere’) – pia mater
Magma – cerebral cortex
Golden core – white brain
Uranium – “nothingness” (potentially “The All”)
FROM: Sacred Faces: A Study of the Human Being in Light of Steiner’s Spiritual Science
Four Kingdoms Companion volume to: Sacred Places Minerals & Land; Sacred Fauna Botany; Sacred Fauna Zoology
Important Earthschooling Notes
Copyright Alan Whitehead & Earthschooling: No Part of this book, post, URL, or book excerpt may be shared with anyone who has not paid for these materials.
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.
END NOTE
Alan has presented dialogue in his writings in an expressive form, where he tries to capture the accent of the person he was with to give his writing more authenticity and to allow the reader to “be with him” in his experience. In no place in his writings is he using expressive language to make fun of or demean the speaker. So, as a person with a linguistics and anthropology degree I find this enriching and informative to me as the reader. Thus, we have made the decision to leave all expressive writing in its original form.
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