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…
WAY OF THREE DRAGONS
The Mystery of Animal Migration
It was a late spring afternoon as I perched on top of a sea cliff on the Northern Beaches of the Sydney region. I was engrossed in the migration of a flock – no, too small a word – an endless pageant of shearwaters; or mutton birds as I knew them as a child I my coastal home. With the binoculars, or ‘binocs’ as my ornithological dad called them, I could see about eight miles out to sea. That great distance was filled, from the wind-swept surface of the water to hundreds of feet up, with millions upon millions of southward flying birds. I remembered something I’d read about the moon bird, another common name for the shearwater, being the most populace avian on earth – and all breeding on just a dozen or so small islands in Bass Strait!
My heart went out to these amazing smoke-grey travelers when I reflected on where they’d come from – the Aleutian Islands in the far North Pacific, near Alaska! What a colossal feat of endurance and navigation – twice a year! – it is for such a relatively small bird.
I felt like a groping worm in comparison, yet my soul overflowed with admiration – or was that love? – for my feathered friends; envy certainly! How I wished in that wild, windblown moment to join them, to escape the shackles of my earth-bound corporeality and take wing; to fly to the other side of the world without as much as hand luggage to encumber me. A nameless yearning impelled me to stand and fix my eyes on the bird-blessed horizon: I stepped forward, forgetting that I was on a high cliff edge, and fell off!
A moment of pyrotechnic terror gripped me as I plummeted to the foamy sea and rocks below. But then I seemed to pass through these dangers as my soul (I don’t know what happened to my body?) was lifted high on the wings of the wind. To my dismay, I found myself a mile or so out to sea, flying south with the shearwaters!
There were birds in all six directions; left, right, up, down, forward, back. Some were quite close – but apparently oblivious of their new traveling companion. Naturally, many realities changed for me at this remarkable transformation. For a start, I knew no fear, my spirit being supported by the ever-beneficent forces of cosmos and earth.
Then there was time, though the hours passed, my liberated imagination could cross the usual barriers of time, partaking in an event in a few moments which in ordinary circumstances might have taken months. It was something like dream time, but much clearer.
Space also lost its traditional tyranny; I could cover vast distances in a few wing flaps. And so it was that I had eventually unveiled for me some of the Mysteries of Migration. In the following example, I had, in this new freedom of time and space, flown the entire annual cycle of moon bird migration. It unfolded something like this:
We, the birds, and I, first assembled in excitement in early Autumn on some small, treeless Bass Strait island. I wondered how we would know when to leave on our long journey north – who decides? Then I became aware of a small, ever so subtle (etheric even!) smell; a divine impulse borne on the breeze. It seemed to say simply “north”.
And so we obeyed, taking to the wing in our millions, all well fed and well-bred after a good Summer in the south. Even though we headed north, the prevailing Westerlies blew us eastward, but at about latitude 28 degrees south we were driven west (while still purposefully flying north) by the North-east Trades. A good thing too, I pondered, or we’d have finished up in South America the way we were going.
All the time this strange, intangible ‘north smell’ increased in both intensity and directional accuracy. It was hard going over the Equator, which we crossed with the sun at the March equinox (Spring in the north, Autumn in the south). Though we did find some small winds on which to ride. Flying up along the sunrise coast of the Land of the Rising Sun, the prevailing Sou-westerlies drove us east again; the air-borne scent saying more than mere ‘north’ now, but ‘Aleutians’ – don’t ask me (or the birds) how I know that I just id, that’s all. The etheric olfactory phenomenon, or light ether, seemed to carry a sublime image of those welcoming but bleak northern islands that was undeniable.
So much so that we arrived safely at our destination, where we spent a very pleasant northern Summer indeed!
When you think of it, these peregrinatory avians never experience Winter, always leaving as it approaches to fly to its counterpart in the opposite hemisphere. And speaking of the hemispheres, I guess it’s time to return to the Southern. Needless to say, a ‘south smell’ called us forth as we headed down the North American West Coast. Then the offshore winds sent us westward (even though we were still ostensibly flying south) in a giant curve – across the Equator again, but this time around the September Equinox, then onto the now familiar South-east Trades down the East Coast of Australia.
This cosmic perspective expanded – or should that be ascended? – even further when it slowly began to dawn on me that the flock was following the sun on its annual odyssey through the Zodiac!
The aptly named Animal Circle has its current vernal equinoxes in Pisces and Virgo, having ‘preceded’ from Aries-Libra in 1413; The Fish being the Northern Hemisphere vernal (Spring – March 21) rising sign, The Virgin the equivalent constellation (Spring, September 21) in the south. The spiritual implications of this precession mystery were pointed out by Rudolf Steiner: “When the forces of Pisces and Virgo work in cooperation, nothing wrongful can be brought into being”.
This Virgo-Pisces ‘signs of the time’ pairing is known as The Lord’s Supper, or The Mystery of the Loaves and Fishes. The ‘fishes’ is obvious for Pisces; the ear of grain being the eternal symbol of The Main (Roman Ceres, ‘cereal’) rather less so.
This precession means that the sun, on its yearly 2-way journey between the two Tropics, is directly over the Equator twice a year, the 21st of March, and September. The Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, named prior to 1413, are actually incorrect. Due to the two summer solstices (when the sun is over the two Tropics) of December and June 21, the sun is now in the next two signs; so they should really be the Tropics of Sagittarius in the south, and Gemini in the north.
So, the sun dwells in the Southern Hemisphere for the six months when it is in the signs of Virgo (on the Equator and heading south), Libra, Scorpio, and Sagittarius (southern Summer Solstice).
Then it heads north again to Capricorn and Aquarius, to cross the Equator in Pisces. From there it blesses the Northern Hemisphere in Aries, Taurus, Gemini (northern Summer Solstice), Cancer and Leo.
The five Southern Hemisphere sun signs are known as the ‘spiritual zodiac’; those of the north rather the ‘worldly’. The two equinoctial signs of Pisces and Virgo hold the balance – for this 2160-year Pisces-Virgo precession dispensation, anyway.
An example of this spirit-body dichotomy is the nominal colors of the 12 signs. The vernal signs of Pisces and Virgo represent the two poles of the physical spectrum, red and violet respectively.
The physical rainbow unfolds clockwise with Aries-orange, Taurus-ultraviolet, Scorpio-black, Sagittarius-incarnadine, Capricorn-white, and Aquarius-infrared. The Southern Hemisphere, with its ocean dominance, is traditionally seen in esoteric circles as spirit-imbued; the Northern, with its major land masses, the more physical.
The five Southern Hemisphere sun-borne spirit colors confirm this.
When the sun is at its extreme southerly point, in the sign of The Centaur in the southern Summer Solstice, the moon birds are living the high life on their Bass Strait islands holiday home. As the solar orb turns (which is what the word ‘tropic’ means) and heads north again to Capricorn, the birds obediently follow; then through Aquarius to Pisces on the Equator When the sun crosses the girdle of the world into the Northern Hemisphere, so do the birds – onto Aries and Taurus, to is furthest point north, on the June 21 Tropic Summer Solstice.
At that time too the shearwaters have reached their northern zenith, to spend a happy Gemini at their second Summer islands home. Then as the sun turns south in Cancer, so do they; through Leo, to cross the Equator in Virgo on the September 21 Equinox – Autumn in the north, Spring in the south. (I hope this is not too complicated; it obviously would be for an American lady in Sydney in January recently who complained – “Is it always this hot in winter?”!
Then down through the latitudes through Libra and Scorpio, to complete the annual lemniscatic cycle at their furthest point south – as does the sun for its cosmic voyage – in Sagittarius.
Truly, these remarkable birds are guided by a higher hand!
Hey, there’s my cliff! But what are all those service vehicles with their blue and red flashing lights doing up there?
Strangely, I didn’t really feel sad about having abandoned my mortal coil on the sea-washed rocks; but I did about my thousands of feathered friends that didn’t make it to the end of their long flight. So many had fallen exhausted into the sea, to be washed upon beaches all along Australia’s East Coast. I this moment of reflection, I suddenly perceived the Big Picture. We (the flock and I), on our journey to the Aleutians and back, had actually scribed an enormous lemniscate.
This was a giant invisible figure eight; one with a large top loop mainly over the North Pacific, with its crossing at about the Equator south of form a smaller South Pacific or Tasman Sea bottom loop.
The lemniscate is the completed parabolic (‘to throw beside’) form: in fact, the part parabola is the natural curve created when anything is thrown, from tennis balls to meteors. The parabola is the nominal ‘astral curve’ of anthroposophical geometry, the Curve of Multiplication. So, these moon or astral birds – the moon is the astral planet – somehow align themselves with invisible forms imbodied in the very curves of their own supersensible being! With bird migration, this astrality ‘lives in’ the air element, in the light ether. It is a manifestation of the Air Dragon of myth and legend; especially in the Orient, where it is the ‘feng’ of the feng shui (wind-water) dragon force. A dragon on this global scale is awesome; indeed, yet one that both carries and guides each moon bird on its annual odyssey.
“Whole libraries have been written about the flight of birds, but the truth is that even during the great migrations in spring and autumn, the birds follow the extremely delicate dispersion of odors in the whole atmosphere of the earth. The organ of smell in the swallows guides them to the south and then back again to the north. It is really true that the whole earth is one living being and that the other beings belong to it.” Rudolf Steiner, Domach, 1922
My contemplation had distracted me from a new event taking place in the imaginative realm in which I found myself, because as I looked around, all the birds had mysteriously vanished. I was alone, so alone on a wide, wide sea. My soul felt the icy fingers of panic.
That is until I saw the whales.
I was now so high, and my vision so acute, that I could see – no, perceive, every humpback whale in the entire globe-embracing Southern Ocean. Well, in the region of the continent of Australia anyway. Time had once again stood still as I watched these great cetaceans idly feeding in their southern summer, but eternally grey, ocean home. Then I became aware that Lady Autumn was breathing a new chill turbulence into wind and water. The whales, as if heeding her silent siren call, turned and swam Equator-ward.
For weeks they slowly streamed northward, towards Australia’s East Coast, in a contracting fan or funnel shape. They swam on, the cows and calves first; then the bulls, as if reluctant to leave their last meal of krill before their four month fast in the warm waters of the Coral Sea.
Here the herd spent the late winter, after having passed 28 degrees south around the Winter Solstice. After their happy sojourn, the singing called them south once again; a journey in which they began to describe a beautiful loop, like the letter L running down the Queensland coast and crossing their northward pat at – yes, 28 degrees south again! This time it was right at the Spring Equinox.
Following this, the whale herd cut east and south through the Tasman Sea to again fan out into the welcoming arms of the wind-swept Southern Ocean. These annually migrating whales too had created an astral curve, not a lemniscate, but a crossed parabola.
The, again astral, animals actually followed, not a light ether path, but one of tone ether, the astral ether itself. This supersensible element was communicated through the water (the astral element), the whales haunting song being a response to their mysterious tone environment. (The best that air-ether mutton birds can do is squawk!)
As the wholes dispersed across the limitless horizon, my spiritual gaze continued to linger over the wondrous expanse of the Southern Ocean. My vantage point was even higher this time, for I saw the amazing form of The Great White Whale itself, the continent of Antarctica. Still as stone he was but girt by this ever-restless Southern Ocean companion, the Rider of the White Whale.
A strange movement caught my eye over this grey-green expanse; and as I looked closer, I saw a rippling black and white veil, diaphanous and billowing, like the finest silk. The ripples were traveling, like everything in the south, wind and water included, from west to east. What could this shining ephemeral vision be?
It was the Southern Ocean Albatross Flock!
Girding the earth in a never-ending circum-navigational migration right around Antarctica were millions of albatrosses of many species, their wide wings riding the timeless breath of the great Lion of the South, the Roaring Forties. It was like a mighty merry-go-round, with the birds imprisoned in the circle broken only by wave-like motions as they ventured north or south (never west!) in pursuit of a passing ship, school of pilchard; or fell victim to an errant wind current.
Sometimes these diversions took the birds as far north as – yes 28 degrees south! From my lofty perspective, I could see that these movements created a scalloped shape, another moon or astral expression. In fact, this is the same invisible wave-like (water) pattern the moon scribes as it weaves along on its orbit around the sun.
No, I haven’t slipped into error. The illusion that the moon orbits the earth in a circular form is just that, a conceptual error. As our purposeful planet is hiking along at high speed on its own annual orbit around the sun, it would obviously be impossible for the moon to create a circular orbit around it at the same time. Its motion is rather one of a wavy weaving.
However, it was the principle form of the endless migration itself, the great circle, which fascinated me. This is the Curve of Division, that of the physical body. In this context ‘endless’ (rather than rhythmic) is not an insignificant component in this physical body, circle migration mystery. There is a perpetual quality in the movement of a wheel. It would seem that the mighty Ancient Polarian presence of Antarctica demands recognition of its primeval physical body genesis in the form of a circular migratory pattern; one obediently followed by every albatross (and allied sea wanderers, like petrels) in the south.
Not wanting to appear spiritually parochial, I zipped from the now familiar south up north to the top of the planet. Here I wished to see if there was a complementary migration pattern of some kind. Ny new space-and-time warp abilities, remember?
The high north of planet earth is recognized esoterically as the Physical Body region, just as the south is the Etheric (east Astral, west Ego). Surely this physicality too would create a circular migration of sorts? Well, yes and … no. This time it was not a circle as in a wheel, but one moving within and without. This opposite-but-same principle is reflected in the topography of the two polar regions. Instead of a continent, as in the far south, in the north there was an ocean; one surrounded by great land masses – as Antarctica is by sea.
To my disappointment, in the north, I observed no birds flying round and round in endless pilgrimage; in fact, I couldn’t see any migration action at all, just endless expanses of still, silent whiteness. It was so glary that I almost missed The Movement; so subtle it was. No wonder, it was white on white! But, no, there it was again!
A veil of white was rippling southwards from the Arctic Ocean – it was the annual Polar Bear migration. As it was Autumn, the great, white bears, thousands of them (I could see the whole global population at once, remember?), were traveling north to south in a great circle of expansion, like the ripples of a stone thrown into a pond.
The bears created a relentless white tide moving outwards ever outwards in rings of life. ON an expert reading of the land in Siberia, Northern Canada, Scandinavia, and Greenland, these great ursines, their own form aptly circular in essence, finally found snug dens to sleep away the winter. With the break-up of the Arctic Ocean ice in Spring, the bears awoke from their long hibernation to collectively perform – this time a contractive – circle migration dance from south to north.
Hence they all headed pole-ward, crossing the fragmenting flows, and even swimming miles across icy water when necessary. As such, they spent their Summer on the ice ocean itself. This radially symmetrical expansion-contraction principle is a cardinal element of physical body expression. The ears had followed one of the many mysterious paths of the Earth Dragon of fable and legend, a supersensible reality dwelling in the mineral world; one which guides land-traversing animals unerringly on their migrations. This is done, not with the sense of smell as with the birds, or even hearing like the water migrators, but with the Sense of Touch. Magnetic fields, song lines, the vrill – whatever – are perceived through the animals’ ultra-sensitive skin, nominal organ of the sense of touch. Extensions of this are of course whiskers and fur; the pads on the feet being especially receptive to this silent but eloquent Voice of the Earth.
After seeing the bears safely on their summer holiday, I headed south again, traveling fairly close to the slicked surface of the North Pacific – somewhere off Japan I think. I had no time to check, as I was distracted yet again by movement; this time one that announced itself in myriad scintillating silvery flashes in the ink-dark depths.
These were great schools of fish, traveling to who knows where in their millions. I’ve always been keen on a swim, so my heart went out to the beauty of their seemingly effortless passage through the water.
I so wanted to join them – and I did!
I was now swimming with the school, one that, like the mutton birds, stretched out of sight in front and behind, above, and below.
This was the legendary Albacore migration. I guess if I stayed with the crowd I wouldn’t get lost … but why don’t the fish get lost? It was only after some time that I became aware that I was following yet another path of some kind, one designated by the Sense of Taste this time. The shui, or Water Dragon, was guiding us all on the liquid ether itself; and we could actually taste it. No, not in the crude sense of tasting food, but as a tingle of excitement on the tongue; or through our entire ‘water body’. This is much the same as Rudolf Steiner describes the tasting a baby on the breast enjoys when its tiny toes turn up on ecstasy! Taste of course rides on the liquid element; being inhibited by a dry mouth, for instance; smell does likewise on the air element. Anyway, for four whole years we, the myriad albacore and I, traveled round the western North Pacific. Only gradually did it dawn on me that we were describing a perfect clockwise ellipse – the Curve of the Etheric Body, that of Addition! The school was absorbing sublime, direction-finding etheric forces from this global-scale earth geometry, and in its turn, committing them to the World Ether.
A nourishing of the Etheric Christ, perhaps?
Just as I was reconciled to this ether-ellipse migration, a strange thing happened. At the end of four years (an earth incarnation number), the whole school swept down and under, braking out, in apparent chaos, of their elliptical confinement. They then crated a new giant ellipse in the eastern North Pacific, never to return to the west.
The new eat North Pacific ellipse, one not even overlapping the former, invigorated a whole new ocean area. Like all etheric emanations, it was borne on the mystical power of the light ether.
The ellipse is the Curve of the Etheric Body, hence stimulates the life forces. An epithet of the etheric is the ‘life body’. Another etheric virtue is movement. This also nourishes life, especially in water: stagnant water is dead water. In this case, it is the subtle movement of millions of fins stirring invisible eddies and vortices that allows these life forces to engage. Again, I slipped into the rhythm of an endless (anti-clockwise this time) elliptical migration of planetary scale.
That is until we intercepted a vast school of salmon! These elegant ocean travelers were heading toward the west coast of North America; a congregation ‘marching’ to a different – taste -drum, one might say. This new taste, one that stimulated me to a pitch of excitement, as it did my new-found friends, seemed to evoke images of foaming mountain streams and thick, dark green forests. I felt my soul beginning to yearn for the land, or a very special river coursing through the land at least. So, as usual, I just went with the flow: my albacore friends didn’t even say goodbye, “You’re either with us or with them.” Their indifference implied.
The salmon and I swam on another curve altogether, the contracted arc of the hyperbola. This was the Curve of Subtraction; that found, for instance, in the mathematics of human bones (the most ‘contracted’ organs of the body); such as the femur and finger bones. The hyperbola is also the Curve of the Ego. To sum up; the four classic curves met on this strange journey are (in – Creation – correct order): circle-physical-division-warmth ether; ellipse-etheric-addition-light ether; parabola-astral-multiplication-tone ether; hyperbola-ego-subtraction-life ether.
All are found in the fur sections of a cone, that most metaphysical of platonic solids (see detail in my book, Why is X? Why is Y?).
All are more vital to the structure and function of universe, earth, and man than any other equivalent geometric principle – not to mention their role in animal migration! Indeed, in the artistic sense, all four are fundamental eurythmy forms. Animals may not do eurythmy, a high art indeed, but they all move to spirit-ordained laws; the same from which Life Movement derives its own artistic canons.
Anyway, as unlikely at it seems, the school of salmon I had joined correctly ‘tasted’ their way right to the tiny river mouth from which they had emerged as tiny fry years before. We then ventured inland through spectacular country with idyllic sweeps of tranquil water punctuated by raging rapids. We had to really battle through them! Finally, in the upper reaches my friends spawned. The water in this high country was clear, sun-warmed, and shallow, perfect for the birth of a new generation of beautiful fish. In time the newborn would again make their hazardous pilgrimage to the ocean from the narrow river channels they currently, as it were, called home. Here they would fan out into the vast North Pacific to proper and mature.
In fact, the migration pattern actually reminded me of a femur; with its unmistakable (to material eyes at least!) hyperbola. As my salmon friends, having completed spawning, died all round me, their inert forms fed upon by ravenous ears, I sadly drifted skyward.
“From fresh water, to salt, then back to fresh?” I mused “How different this is from the eels of my east coast Australia childhood, a reversal of the whole process, indeed.” The eels too, as fish, taste their way from their also ‘clear, sun-warmed and shallow’ birthplace in the Coral Sea – salt water this time. From there they journey south and west to enter equally obscure Australian continental rivers from which their parents originally emerged. What a mystery – how did they know where to go?! Here they too will spend a long, happy period (seven years or so) maturing and prospering. Until they too hear a life ether siren sone; one that summons them to their marine birthplace.
They then stream down in their won hyperbolic fan or funnel form to, when they reach the South Pacific Ocean, fan out once more to spawn a new cycle of life. Indeed, eels even have the hyperbola embodied in their sleek, contracted forms …
“Have you got that rope secure? Good, then pull the stupid bastard up – move the crowd back a bit! We’ll have to build a safety fence around this cliff edge: can’t have mugs like this toppling off. He’s okay is he? Just a few bruises; lucky that jutting rock ledge stopped his fall.
He’d be eel bait now if he’d dropped into the water! Ha, ha, ha!”
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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