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…
Prologue to Sacred Faces
Recently I visited a Sacred Place; sacred for me at least. This was a small Methodist church (now Creek Orthodox) on a hill with a view of the city of Sydney 15 miles to the east. When I was a small child, I delighted in the fact that our house, right across the road from the quaint little church in the happily-named suburb of Merrylands, had a clear view to the Sydney Harbor Bridge. My subsequent spiritual path, for the most part, has meandered through ‘merry lands’ indeed.
Anyway, it was right here in the church that this blessed journey began, with my christening in fact. I still fondly recall the small, engraved gold and silver christening cup – a little Grail indeed – presented to me by my Godmother, Thelma Greentree. This was my first true awareness of being a Christian. IN my also carefree years of growing up in a seaside country town, I attended, with varied degrees of avidity, both Sunday school and school Scripture lessons. In fact, in my 20s I did a short stint, with my wife-to-be Susan, as a Sunday School teacher in St. David’s Anglican Church in Palm Beach.
Throughout my childhood, my mother maintained a simple but unwavering faith. However, my father, a typical working class Aussie larrikin, was agnostic at best, atheistic at worst. Rudolf Steiner describes that one can consider it a particularly good fortune to be born into a Christian culture, or better still, a Christian family. Atheism, he continued, is a kind of mental illness. My beloved dad was, in spite of this, deeply respectful of Christianity’s founder. At any rate, my parents’ religious inclinations barely affected me; as my father would insist, in the finest blinkered tradition, that – “We never talk about politics or religion.”
Somehow I maintained an interest in, if not a passion for, the Christ Mystery throughout my teen years. However, this paled when compared with my love of the arts, particularly painting and drama.
These two collaborated in the next major crossroad on my Christian path. In my 18th year, while hitchhiking home from art school one night to my home in Avalon on Sydney’s northern breaches, I was given a lift by a jolly giant of a man called Dennis Glenny. He told me that he conducted a modest drama group at nearby Newport, and when told of my interest, invited me to attend – which I eagerly did.
Dennis later described that the impulse for the theatre work we were enjoying was bases on the inspiration of one Rudolf Steiner. He further elaborated that there was a world-wide ‘movement’ of Steiner’s manifold teachings called Spiritual Science. In fact, I remember the exact – epiphanal indeed! – sunny Sunday afternoon moment when Dennis, again in his little bule Volkswagen, told me how the spiritual world could be approached as a science. While not able to be proved in an empirical sense, it would certainly be persuasively confirmed. Better still, Anthroposophy, another appellation for Steiner’s illimitable impulse, was Christian based.
I was hooked!
“Anthroposophy”? The word literally means ‘man-woman’ (thought one interpretation of the ‘Sophia’ part, the Divine Feminine, refers to its ‘wisdom’ element). Man-woman, the complete – Christian – human being; now happy I was to immerse myself in this embarrassment of metaphysical riches. As a result, this Study of Man aroused in my young, spirit-hungry soul a previously unknown ‘feminism’, or ‘genderism’ to be more precise. IN this vein, Steiner described Anthroposophy as the culmination of a hidden esoteric stream that began in the ancient world with ‘Sophia’, a Gaia-wisdom treasury (as opposed to, or complementary to, masculine-power). This gradually evolved, from rational-soul Greek times, into Philo-Sophia – ‘love of wisdom’ – to be further expanded into ‘Anthropo-Sophia’.
Man-power, woman-wisdom.
But where is the love? I hear you hum the familiar tune! Steiner describes this in a profound aphorism, thus: “When wisdom is cultivated in an atmosphere of love, then power will rain down upon the earth.” This of course requires the cooperation of that lofty Trinity, the Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim, Spirits of Power, Wisdom, and Love respectively. Thus, is physiognomy inspired.
And now for the true Damascus moment on my long and winding spiritual road. Occasional visitors to our drama group (especially when there was a party!) were a distinguished middle-aged couple called Douglas and Marjorie Waugh, also anthroposophists. Douglas worked as an editor in a publishing house in the city, and Marj taught handicapped children in Inala, a Steiner curative home, her specialty being eurythmy. One auspicious day the couple invited me to visit them at their seaside flat at Manly.
It was here that, again on a sunny Sunday afternoon, I experienced my most dramatic apotheosis of all. Here Douglas took me on a guided tourn of a sparkling Cosmos I had never dreamed existed – and a Christian one at that!
Actually, Doug Waugh had been a student of Steiner since his own late teens, this teacher, among others, being the inimitable world-renowned architect, Walter Burly Griffin (and his also brilliant architect wife, Marion Mahony). Anyway, from that day on, Douglas became my principal teacher of Anthroposophy, a path that can be perused in all its exciting – exciting to me at least – detail in my three-volume memoirs, A Creative Life. Like Dante, on this and many subsequent visits Douglas flung wide the Pearly Gates for me to see into a heaven populated by serried hierarchies of divine beings.
The greatest eye-opener, however, was when he invited me to join a small weekly group on Anthroposophical Physiognomy that he conducted in this Manly flat.
“Physiognomy – what was that?!” Well, I soon found out all right.
This was applied Spiritual Science of the highest order of intelligence and insight, the same that had first interested me in Dennis Glenny’s car months before. Gradually, with this new arcane Study of Man knowledge, I was empowered to peer beneath the veneer of mere behavior, to enter into the true sanctuary of a person’s being.
But more important even, it provided me with the capacity to prise open the door to the inner sanctum of my-Self. Hence the most vital element of this ‘know thyself’ path is the exposure of self-delusion.
Physiognomy, more than any other comparable study, reveals a unique truth – but not necessarily the whole truth – about human nature. And as it is said, ‘the truth will make you free’.
An example of this self-analysis was sheeted home to me when we looked at the physiognomy of the temperaments. Here I discovered that, to my surprise I was, as a child, a melancholic rather than my fondly held delusion of a choleric (see details in my book, A Steiner Primary School?). Worse still, I learnt that, as a young adult, I was not a happy, gregarious sanguine, as I previously thought, but a smoldering choleric!
Naturally my non-Steiner friends and workmates were not equally impressed when I introduced them to this new knowledge in my youthful ignorance and arrogance.
How often did I bumblingly and intrusively attempt to reveal aspects of their nature they would prefer to remain hidden – if they knew about them at all! There were, however, valuable benefits, as a graphic artist I could apply my new-found knowledge virtually straight away.
Douglas’s won physiognomy teacher was (apparat from Steiner) a man called Haygood Masters, who, as a logical extension, with only one degree of separation (like Walter Burley Griffin) was my own as well.
Douglas was very coy about telling people what they asked to know about themselves, describing it as a feeding of their egotism. In fact, this moral dimension has always been at the forefront of a study of face reading. As well, as Douglas would day, “We must never (with some extreme exceptions) use physiognomy to disadvantage someone. The only purpose for the knowledge being given to the world is to further the spiritual progress of humanity in general, and the individual in particular.” IN the ensuing 25 years Doug and I worked together to incarnate a new, creative Steiner Education impulse into the world; hence the physiognomic knowledge was mostly applied for the benefit of children. Though a cautionary word: some teachers, many with a mere smattering of physiognomic knowledge – much of it wrong! – foolishly attempt to enhance their feeble kudos by teaching it, in the spirit of the sensational, to their children. This is a bad, if not worse, that exposing them to unvarnished Anthroposophy, which Steiner warned us against.
In anthroposophical physiognomy, as distinct from the plague of new-age tommy-rot versions in women’s magazines and such, we have, unusual in the social sciences, a high degree of certainty.
When the facial feature is extant, like a primary child’s grey eyes, then the soul equivalent, the melancholic temperament, and all that that implies, will be the operative factor.
From all the above it can be seen that physiognomy has a powerful therapeutic potential. In the Gaia spirit alluded to earlier, one of its divine inspirers is surely the lovely Hygaei, goddess of Health. It is therefore paradoxical that the modern health industry has perennially rejected the self-evident idea that the outer physical features (face or body) are an accurate reflection of the psyche within – or they have for the normalperson that is.
However, physiognomic aberrations are grist to the mill for this same fraternity when dealing with the handicapped and the mentally deranged. Most psychiatric texts clearly detail specific facial-bodily features when describing a wide range of mental and emotional defects. With these unfortunates (the handicapped as well as the doctors!) Physiognomy is indeed easier to assess in the extreme features found in many people with severe physical or mental defects. An example might be the slack wet lips of many ‘children in need of special care’ being associated with extreme sensuality of some kind; or the opposite, the tight rat-trap mouth of the pathologically emotionally constrained.
How many of Lombroso’s captive subjects were not naturally criminals, being either wrongly imprisoned, or even the victims of circumstances? As well, how many respectable citizens walking free, those with whom he dutifully compared the former, were actually depraved monsters?!
Anthroposophical physiognomy, incarnating around the same time and place as the above, has over the years proved to be, if not infallible, then at least forensically accurate in most instances. As a Steiner teacher, and teacher-educator for over forty years, I have found physiognomy to have been an invaluable predictive, diagnostic, and therapeutic tool without peer.
But nothing in this most complex study in the universe is easy; an obvious example being that one feature can modify, or even cancel, another. However, an objective assessment of these seemingly contradictory elements, is all part of the study; one that can only deepen over the years, whether for a teacher or a general observer.
As described, Physiognomy was my first formal Spiritual Science study. IN this reflective light, I feel that with the publication of Sacred Faces, some 45 years after my introduction to the subject, my physiognomic stairway to heaven has come full circle – or full spiral as we Steiner-ites prefer to call it!
May the too-brief pages to follow be an ever so small beacon to illuminate the reader’s own spiritual voyage.
Alan Whitehead, Blackheath NSW Australia, October 2005.
Even animals routinely employ the language of physiognomy to convey vital information to each other, whether kin, friend, or foe. Examples of this are the red-backed spider’s warning black and red livery, or the large canine teeth; especially when bared an unambiguous signal of the savagery of the timber wolf.
Of course, even today everybody instinctively uses physiognomy to navigate the shoals of all levels of human interaction. We steer clear of people whose faces we don’t like; in many cases without actually knowing why we find them offensive. Obversely, we are attracted to those with, for example, a ‘kind face’. In both cases, physiognomy elevates this instinctive but mostly accurate knowledge to the realm of clear consciousness.
Speaking of animals, Aristotle, a worshipper of the sublime Hygaei, was the first to formalize the science with his ‘analogical (animal) physiognomy’. Here he observed features in animals, like the heavy jowls of a bulldog transposed to humans. He postulated that folk with this feature also embody the bulldog’s vice-grip will; a classic example being Winston Churchill.
Another – or an especial – devotee of Hygaei was that great Greek medico Hippocrates. He wisely included a study of at least body physiognomy in his vast therapeutic opus. He accurately observed that people with certain body configurations tended to quite specific conditions of illness – or indeed wellness.
However, it was not until the 19th Century that a Swiss student of human nature, J.K. Lavater, brought a comprehensive scientific discipline – if often erroneous – to the mystery of face reading.
He was followed by an Italian researcher, C. Lombroso, who specialized in ‘criminal physiognomy’. This was inaccurate at best, due to the fact that ‘criminal’ is a loaded word, a value judgement indeed. This is so different from anthroposophical physiognomy, an objective, hence ono-judgmental, study of the highest order.
Almost without exception modern astrologers erroneously calculate with the old Greco-Roman Aries vernal rising tables; rather than simply looking up to the heavens, where there is no contradiction. Using the same example, at midnight in mid-July, the opposite sign from Gemini, Sagittarius, will be directly overhead; living proof that The Twins, the July ‘sun sign’ are at that time directly behind the solar orb.
However, even in the former dispensation there is a residue of reality. As we reincarnate through the ages, we are said to be form (and to die) according to the immutable cycle of the Zodiac. If we were born a – true – Gemini in this life, then last life we were almost certainly a Cancer. Over many incarnations we cycle right round the zodiac. This is a progressive imperative.
Imagine if one was born, say a Pisces, in every life; how unbalanced the individual would become over the eons. So when astrologers assert that someone born in mid-July has Cancer qualities, they are right to a degree, but only in so far as they’re observing psychological residues from a person’s former life, when today’s Gemini individuality was indeed a Cancer.
Rudolf Steiner of course kept up with the times, as it were, on one occasion stating to his puzzled audience:
“When the forces of Pisces and Virgo work in cooperation, nothing wrongful can be brought into being.”
With keener observation (clairvoyant faculties are usually required for this), the true astrologer may even detect dim shadows from the future, the person’s next incarnation: in this case, of a Taurus nature.
The gods of destiny are indeed kind, giving us choice – freedom even – on every possible level; even that of the zodiac-physical body. For example, one can choose to yarn for one’s (Cancer) past, and mainly manifest anachronistic qualities in life. Hence one can make little true progress. On the other hand, one, again disallowing the present, can attempt to part the heavy veils that rightly obscure the Taurus) future, struggling with largely unattainable ideals. However, most wise souls are happy to live mainly in the Gemini) present, a complex but obviously recognizable manifestation of their current birth sign: that which, as astronomersknow, was the constellation actually dwelling behind the sun when they were born.
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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