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…
ZODIAC PHYSIOGNOMY
In Anthroposophy, the Zodiac is a difficult area of deliberation.
This is so, not due to its natural-science promoted false-path reputation, but because modern astrologers have made a fundamental error. They have singularly failed to consider the all-important precession of the equinoxes; a cosmic phenomenon known about of course by all astronomers.
The sun rose in the Northern Hemisphere vernal equinox of Taurus in Ancient Egypt. This Astrology temple knowledge Egypt/Chaldea-Han China was the era that zodiacal star wisdom incarnated to earth) was later bequeathed to the next civilization, the Greco-Roman-Khan, at the precession in 747BC. This new era was therefore an Aries age. They in turn, some 2160 years later, handed the star baton on to the Anglo/Teutonic-Nippon civilization when the vernal sun began to rise in Pisces in 1413.
Alas, the Medieval Christians forgot to wind the clock forward – or created confusion on purpose more like it! Even though the early church fathers recognized the coming Piscean (Virgo in the Southern Hemisphere) age with its “fishers of men” imagery and parables of five fishes (alluding to the 5th post-Atlantean civilization, the Anglo-Teutonic), the tunnel-vision Church gradually associated anything zodiacal as pagan. They either distorted or discredited the knowledge, locking more and more into the literal Bible – thus creating for themselves an intellectual prison removed from the real world.
This Virgo-Pisces ‘signs of the time’ pairing is known as The Lord’s Supper, the mystery of the loaves and fishes. The symbols for this are Pisces-fish and Virgo-bread; the head of grain being the timeless symbol for both the astrological Virgin and her Christian equivalent, the Virgin Mary. In these more enlightened days, people want their spiritual revelations to come not only form the Good Book, but the stars as well. However, there is a real problem with the current ‘birth sign’ speculations. As, since 1413, the sun has preceded one sign, which means that a baby born in, say, mod-July, might one day have trouble convincing people that she is a Gemini; the common notion, through incorrect, of course being that she was born when Cancer was rising behind the sun.
These people seem to fit like hand in glove into their times. So, it can be seen that the 12-star gifts through the twelve lifetimes create the ultimate long-term human experience. The Zodiac forces streaming from the high heavens would be unendurable to the human being if they didn’t pass through the modifying, mollifying Gate of the Sun. Of course, the microcosm of this Zodiac Mystery occurs, not only through twelve lifetimes, but each year, with the annual passage of the twelve signs of the Zodiac. The living sun transforms the powerful but earthly-inimical cosmic forces to ones of divine nourishment for our spiritual and bodily nature.
Talking about repeated earth lives, it’s interesting to see how we are progressing in any single lifetime. This is done on four fronts.
Firstly, that which is most visible, our Deeds, our ‘will’ expression; these are the seeds for our bodily nature in the next life on earth. This is ‘body’ in its literal sense and does not include the head. Ill deeds in one life result in bodily deformities, large and/or small, in the next. So, the bodies we all possess today are the result – mainly – of our deeds in the last life. At least knowing this, we can’t go around blaming ‘God’ for our bodily defects!
So by extension, what we do with our bodies today, such as polluting them with tobacco smoke, will have its effects in the next life – when the current body is transformed into our head! Conversely, any constructive, especially conscious, body activity, like dance, will lead to powerful head forces in the next life.
To a large degree, the form of the head influences thinking; in a qualitative (not content) sense. For instance, a squarish, especially small, had (I bet you thought we’d never get onto physiognomy!), common in people from Central Europe, will have very formed, intellectual, thoughts. Hence, to find out what kind of body we had in the last life, we look at our heads today.
So, what then happens to this hardest of all organic systems, the head, in the next life? Our current thinking is influenced by our head forms, which were created by our bodily deeds in the last life – so where’s the freedom? This incarnational path actually provides choices at every stage. Even though the past influences our thinking, it doesn’t control it. I can choose to think differently in order to rise above my past cognitive inhibitions.
The, say, thought forms of people with large, round heads, those of a more artistic bent, can be liberated by discipline, in this case by conforming to the laws of logic. (Details of head physiognomy are dealt with in a coming chapter.)
Any and every effort in overcoming the strictures of the past, especially in the head realm, is reborn in the next life as a capacity for spiritual activity. Which of course means that any supersensible powers, or learnings even, that we have today are the result of cerebral disciplines of some kind in a last life.
The hardness of the head, especially the skull, is therefore, to some extent at least, redeemed into the spirit in the next life by conceptual strivings made today. This is a kind of Resurrection or Golgotha (‘place of the skull’) Mystery; a spiritual redemption that can only be achieved by the seeking individual in true freedom.
But what happens after that; to what does the Spirit in this life transform? Well, the cycle simply begins again; Spirit re-enters the earth as the capacity for new – and much higher we hope – deed.
People who perform outstanding deeds, who provide quantum leaps in human progress, most probably had an active and positive spiritual life last time round.
In all four incarnations there is an emphasis on all four ‘bodies’ of man. Deeds are an expression of the physical body, that with which we impact upon the material world. The etheric body makes it impression most particularly through our body forms and proportions, etc., below the head that is. And the head? That is the astral body bailiwick, especially in relation to thinking. The fourth principle, that of spiritual life, is of – and only could be – the holy ego. In the next life, the beginning of the next cycle, the ego ‘lives in’ the deeds wrought by the vehicle of the physical body.
Even animals, nerve-sense creations nonpareil, are engaged in the first three levels. Of course, no animals, lacking an incarnate ego as they do, can embody conscious spiritual activity.
The ‘whole man’ factor in this evolutionary path is clearly evident by the fact that all four – deed, body-development, head-thinking and spiritual life – are taking place in every person in every lifetime.
Oh, how it behooves us, in preparation for our future, to be positive and constructive in all four areas of our Being.
The Zodiac is the ‘birth’ sign; as such, it carries within it the forces mainly of the physical body. These form a kind of matrix of, as Rudolf Steiner outlines, special ‘qualities”, with one major Quality for each sign. With the exception of the first sign, Aries, these are all embedded into the below-head bodily structure. Aries is the only sign that exclusively occupies the head, in both anthroposophical and traditional astrology (see illustrations later).
So these twelve Qualities form the underlying disposition of every human being, with the Quality their own birth sign being dominant – for the whole of life. As well, these cannot be changed, not significantly anyway; but neither do they dominate the individual, after the seventh year at least. The first seven years are, of course, the period of near-exclusive physical body Zodiac, but the Earth-based four temperaments; and from 14 to 21 we see a 7-fold astral body development based on the seven planets, which are regents over the seven personality types.
Finally, we look to the sun – the Power of One – to reveal the core secret of human development after the 21st year – and for the whole of subsequent adulthood. This is character, a conscious moral dimension at last on our long path to spiritual enlightenment.
So, we have the 0-to-7 child expressing, through the physical body, the 12 Qualities. In fact only they can truly say “I am a Gemini.”, whatever: a statement of truth in the light of the aforementioned Zodiac precessions, of course. If as adults we only embody this fairly simple stage of inner development, we would remain as infants.
However, the 12 Qualities do have an underlying influence on our life at any age, but on a physical body level only. These ‘body’ Qualities transform into the next life as the Twelve Senses, mainly in the head. Considering all the above, we are compelled to take Steiner’s imprecations seriously when he states that the body of one life becomes the head in the next.
So, let’s have a look at how body-quality becomes head-sense.
First of all, the statement that the Zodiac is an ‘animal’ circle is fine, but not absolutely. There are three zodiac signs, the highest in fact, that have no animal sense factors at all, on the earth that is: these are, Aries, Taurus, and Gemini, the three ‘Spirit’ signs.
The senses of these three highest signs are a clear indication of this human-only factor, being those of Word, Thought, and Ego, in the same order. These three signs are seen in the cross-standing man from the arms up. All factors below this we share with the animal world – on a higher level of course. So, let’s look at some of these body-to-head transformations:
Where does Aries go in the next life if it’s already in the head! Well, the hardness of the skull, as mentioned earlier, becomes ‘spirit’ next time round. However, this is not just some amorphous metaphysicality, but is embodied in the miracle of human speech.
The Aries Quality of Event becomes the pure spirit of speech in the next life – or the Sense of Word in its wider application. So, any higher consciousness we bring to our ‘event’ life – seasonal festivals, birth of a child, etc. – transforms to speech capacity in the next.
Aries, situated on the crown, is the first and last spiritual principle; the head being the first organic system created – “in the beginning was the Word” – yet it is curiously the very last faculty to be spiritualized. It is indeed the alpha and omega of human supersensible progress.
Then there’s Taurus. Here the Quality of Will transforms to the Sense of Thought in the next life; what I will today, I think tomorrow. The mystery of transmutation sees the spine, the Taurus region in man, become the skull in the next life. As such, we can actually see the bull of Taurus resting on the wonderful Atlas vertebra, and by extension, the whole spine. So the Taurus organ becomes Arian in the next life, prior to its emancipation into spirit.
In fact, everything is striving to be re-spiritualized, even – or especially – the spine, that which so marvelously braces our individuality here on earth.
Gemini, with its Quality of Faculty, lives in the arms, and especially the hands. This becomes the Sense of Ego in the net life.
This is situated in the top jaw, the fingers becoming the top teeth.
The teeth have always been regarded by occult physiognomists as expressions of the ego. AS Rudolf Steiner once so ruefully observed, chalky teeth are an indication of weak ego forces. Modern science backs this up in some respect with statistics that show that people with inflammatory gum disease and the like in their early years are more prone to senescence, like Alzheimer’s, in later life.
Of the four elements, that of the ego is the mineral, the teeth being the most mineralized element in man, especially the calcium fluoride, the tooth enamel – the hardest substance in the body.
With Cancer the body region is the sternum. This becomes the nose in the next life – hance Quality of Initiative becomes Sense of Touch. As any hay fever sufferer knows, the nose knows when there is even slight atmospheric change, whether pressure, dust, moisture and so on, registering it often as a sneeze. This is generated by a hypersensitive sense of touch.
Eurythmists are very keen on a gesture called the TAO. This is connected to Leo, with its Quality of Enthusiasm, situated in the chest region. IN the subsequent life, this is transformed into the Sense of Life. But where in the head is the new Leo? The chest is actually three organs in one, localized in the three osseous systems.
This is why the lion image of Leo is spread right across the chest.
The T of the TAO is the down-sweeping clavicii, which become the similarly-shaped brow bones. One glance at a person’s brow tells us about their capacity for revelation, for making a dwelling place for – or impeded – the in-flowing spirit. This is expressed at the T quality in eurythmy. The outward-sweeping scapulae become the malar bones in the next life, expressing the AH sound, that of Venus; a venerative response to the world.
Finally, the rib cage; this welds together to become the palate, creating an eternal OH in man, the sound of wisdom. So, in Leo we have the potential – after all, it is the Sun sign – to embody a unique and sacred combination of revelation, veneration and … sagation!
Virgo is interesting, being the archetypal female sign as it is.
As well, it is the only sign not embodied in bone, dwelling as it does in the upper abdomen region. It would appear that this female-womb, Cosmic Mother principle, simply cannot descent into the hardness of the skeleton. And what’s more, it still doesn’t in its next life, in the head. Here the soft abdomen becomes the brain.
The convolutions of the digestive tract in particular are seen transfigured into the folds or the cerebral cortex. This Virgo-brain factor prevents our thoughts becoming too hard, or salt-filled: though with today’s intellectual materialism, you would have to wonder if our Heavenly Mother is up to the task!
Virgo’s Quality of Soberness becomes in the next life the Sense of Movement. As an eurythmist will tell you, artistic, even (especially) spiritualized, movement is a very sobering activity indeed!
Speaking of mothers; all those in advance pregnancy, whether they know it or not, feel the intimate presence of Libra when the babe descends into the pelvic region, that of The Scales. The Quality of Equilibrium (‘balance of thought’) becomes, naturally, in the next life the Sense of Balance. This is situated in the head in the so-called brain pan’; that complex osseous structure supporting the Virgo brain – as the Libra pelvis does the Virgo stomach. The sense of balance in the head is focused on the paired bones of the semi-circular canals, those geometric marvels built into the brain pan.
Then there’s Scorpio: this is, as is well known, centered on the genitalia, its Quality – Understanding. How opposite is this assertive sign form ‘sober’ Virgo, expressing the Male Mysteries as it does.
At first glance it would seem that Scorpio is another non-bone sign. But of course, there is a bone, the lower wings of the pelvis; those upon which we site to deliberate over these vexing issue!
In the next life this whole genital complex transmutes to the speech organs. That’s why there are so many connections between speech and sex; the boy’s breaking voice being an obvious example. The gonads are called the ‘testes’, form the word testify, to speak.
The sense of Scorpio is Smell; perhaps the strongest sexual stimulant of all – with many animals, certainly. The speech organ bones center round the small but highly important hyoid bone, situated under the tongue and over the larynx. Like its pelvic equivalent, it is horseshoe-shaped; hyoid is the Greek letter upsion, the English U. Of all the 19 nominal planet-zodiac (as understood in eurythmy) sounds in language, the Saturn U is the most spiritual; creating, as it does, a living tonal bridge between earth and heaven.
Sagittarius is relatively simple; this is the thigh region, with its Quality of Resolve. One can really feel this resolve factor when wading through water – especially against the current! The thigh becomes the lower jaw in the next life, the mandible. This is related to the Sagittarian Sense of Taste, which is localized mainly in the lower mouth cavities, in particular the tongue. The procuring of food to satisfy the sense of taste elicits unmatched resolve in the human being; one sets one’s jaw firmly in resolve.
Capricorn is the region of the knees. These, with their Quality of Evangelism (‘putting thought into the world’), becomes the eyes in the next life. In fact, the hollow eye sockets are the negative equivalents of the patellae; the same inverted relationship we see in the spine and brain. The Sense of Sight is, aptly, that of the Sea Goat. Thought, or teaching, transforms into vision in the next life – nice.
Which reminds me of a question my physiognomy teacher once put to me – “Why do nuns, saints and the like pray on their knees?” – “That’s easy,” I answered, “as a gesture of humility,” – “Wrong; it is a practice embedded into ritual long age by the esoteric arm of the Catholic Church to assure the capacity for spiritual vision in the next life. As the knees became the eyes next time round, the habitual kneeling is this life cancels out day vision in the next, allowing inner sight to flourish.” Who would have thought?!
Then there’s Aquarius, where the calves become, in the next incarnation, the chin; and the Quality of Man in Balance becomes the Sense of Warmth. The chin, in physiognomic terns, is the ‘self’ region; a jutting chin expressing self-will as it does. Balance of Self is imperative for healthy spiritual development.
One of the greatest of all incarnational mysteries is how the feet of Pisces, with their Quality of Destiny, become the ears in the next life, with their Piscean Sense of Hearing. The toes even become the lower teeth, opposing (or cooperating with) the top teeth of Gemini.
The link can be felt from the ears to the lower teeth through the Eustachian tubes, conduits of consciousness leading even to the need to ‘unclick’ the ears, say with increasing altitude or water depth, by moving the lower. This ‘equalizes’ the two eardrums IN fact the whole ‘destiny’ man is inscribed on the souls of the feet, as indeed it is in the human ear.
Rudolf Steiner describes the 12-incarnation cycle through the Zodiac, from the standpoint of a mystical experience, in terms of the gathering of The 12 at The Last Supper, or the Celtic equivalent, the 12 Knights of the Round Table:
“The initiate was surrounded by twelve human forms, as though he were sitting around a table with them. Twelve of his incarnations would appear to him, twelve of the bodies he had gone through before; bodies which were what he bore within himself as the elements of his body. In occult terms, the human body is divided into twelve parts, and these are a recapitulation of twelve incarnations in which the individual is gradually purified and taken to a higher level of perfection. He would thus feel himself had gone through in earlier times, and he would say to himself ‘The one form you had before lives in one part of you; the second form lives in another, the third in again another, and so on.’. They are thus around you like the guests sitting at a meal with their host.” Berlin, April 1907.
Four Paths of Progress
FROM PAST TO PRESENT
HEAD
Affected by body in last life
BODY
Affected by deeds in last life
DEEDS
Affected by spiritual activity in last life
SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY
Affected by head in last life
FROM PRESENT TO FUTURE
HEAD
Affects spiritual activity in next life
SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY
Affects deeds in next life
DEEDS
Affect body in next life
BODY
Affect head in next life
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.
I was truly captivated by your article on “Sacred Faces: Zodiac Physiognomy.” Exploring the connection between facial features and zodiac signs is a fascinating approach that adds a unique dimension to self-discovery.