Soul Searching
It seems there is infinitely much to be said and done about the inner life of the human soul. The evolution of consciousness can be easily witnessed in the foundational life stages of childhood, yet less outwardly so after the physical, hereditary body matures. The signs of the emotional and spiritual evolution of an individual are far more subtle and take on a much more complex and individual expression as we age. Waldorf, as an educational modality, understands this natural evolution of the human being and has crafted a curriculum that allows for a wholistic unfolding of each child’s inherent and learned capacities. This is why Rudolf Steiner put so much emphasis on the four temperaments at the beginning of a child’s journey in the lower grades, as marked by the change of teeth. A very simple etheric fourfold imprint serves as a scaffolding and framework of regular, rhythmic and reliable activities for the child. This attention to developing a wholesome habit body can then gradually free up the student’s inner soul space so that the more complex and emerging birth of the child’s more spontaneous astral body, marked by puberty, can, with guidance, allow the student to autonomously begin to choose and take responsibility for their own interior design and outward actions into the upper grades.
In 1989, after my graduation from the Rudolf Steiner College in California, the Waldorf teacher training method had become a new backdrop of my educational experience that led me to Europe. Months later, after visiting eight different Eurythmy schools around Europe, I finally enrolled at the Zuccoli Schule. By the beginning of the fourth year of schooling, I was asked to choose a eurythmy topic for a graduation lecture demonstration. I chose the four temperaments and their relationship to Eurythmy. I was surprised at what I had found out then and ultimately realized later in my research about the etheric body and its connections to the neighboring physical and astral bodies.
As a newly trained yet inexperienced Waldorf teacher, I was familiar with the idea that our temperament was imprinted into our etheric body and of its birth and first iteration at the age of around seven. Naturally for me, I asked myself, why had we not learned about the eurythmic expression of the four temperaments? Out of the seven sacred arts, Eurythmy has its parallel to Sculpture. Eurythmy was not just visible speech and music; it has a deep connection to the etheric sculptural forces that live and weave throughout the body. Over the years, our class learned about the Greek Peon rhythms for the four elements and loosely improvised the four elements in movements, yet never touched upon the four temperaments. When I proposed my topic to Frau von Stocker, she immediately connected me with Frau Zuccoli. She was sure she could help answer some of my questions. By the next week, I was sitting at Frau Zuccoli’s kitchen table. She had laid out four of the thirteen soul gestures from Annemarie Baschlin’s book, then asked me to arrange them into the four elements. It was fairly obvious what the progression was, and she then went into some detail describing the nature of each of these soul gestures. She turned the cards over and explained that these were the only four of the thirteen soul gestures that Steiner used the term temperament to describe and characterize the qualities of each gesture. She also pointed out that the earth gesture was the only Eurythmy figure out of the entire collection of thirty-five figures that had four colors and four qualities. She expressed that this seemed to be an enigma, along with the use of temperament as a descriptor. She shared with me that these questions that I was asking were mysteries to her and that she in her lifetime often pondered them, but she was not in a position to investigate these questions any further. At this point, she was in her early nineties.
4 Etheric Gestures
As with any independent inquiry, some answers lead to more questions. A fixed point on the mind’s horizon becomes a general direction as prevailing circumstances dictate each movement. What if these four gestures were not soul gestures at all? What if they are something more deeply rooted into our bodies? Why did Steiner use the term temperament to describe these four particular soul gestures? Why were there only thirteen graphically published soul gestures in the original collection of eurythmy figures? For me, the logical conclusion is that they are perhaps Etheric Gestures, the intermediate archetypes between the form-building processes of the consonantal/tonal realms of the fixed circle of twelve and the dynamic vowel/interval forces of the planetary sevenfold realms. Were these four soul gestures wrought from countless repetitions, habits and memories of the human soul life over vast periods of time that condensed into their etheric partnership with the physical body?
I began a process of spreading out the eurythmy cards on the floor, separating them in their representative groups. It started to become clearer that these groupings, much like a tarot deck, were describing universal archetypal qualities. The Major and Minor cards are the twofold extremes. The five pure vowels are the fivefold archetypal qualities that then lead to the two major diphthongs that then represent the sevenfold archetype. The twelvefold archetype is for the zodiac of consonants. Now I had just thirteen soul gestures left over. So I separated the four cards shown above so that they would represent the fourfold archetype. Now I had just nine cards left. The numbers 3, 6 and 9, as anyone familiar with numerology knows, are very unique. I started to arrange them on the floor. It was clear that Traurig and Heiter were definite opposites. Then it became clear that what I was looking at was a ninefold archetype for the soul, from the heights to the depths of the feeling life.
9 Soul Gestures
This picture of three rows of three is my final iteration, and this is how I arrived at it. Now my question was, how does the soul make this progression from Ethos to Pathos? How do the remaining gestures fit into this puzzle? Out of the three soul qualities of thinking, feeling and willing, I focused on the most obvious to me, the veil, the representation of the feeling soul qualities. Notice how low spatially and tightly fitting the veil is in the gesture of Traurig. The veil with Heiter is spatially the highest and most elaborate of the soul gestures, the complete opposite of Traurig. Laughing and crying are the inherent boundaries of the soul. Now I just needed to study the veil on the remaining soul gestures and plug them into their spot. The vertical lefthand column I designated as thinking. The righthand column I designated as willing and the center column as feeling. The top horizontal row I designated as thinking. The bottom horizontal row I designated as willing and the middle column as feeling. You can also follow the diagonal lines, where you can see thinking, feeling and willing represented. I also later incorporated the head positions as I began to follow the sequence of the veil. Thinking is with the head tilted down. Feeling is with the head tilted up. Willing is with the head looking forwards. By following the veil and head positions, I felt confident that this was a way to check my assumptions and allow for the archetypes to naturally nest into a lawful order.
Again, the bottom row begins with Traurig; moving right, we see Verzweiflung, where the veil stays low at the shoulders but widens out especially to the back space with the arms. Then move on to Verflucht Gescheit, where the veil rises above the shoulders into the will region of the head and the lower part of the veil thrusts forwards.
I found the feeling row to be the most unusual and difficult to work out. The veil tightens back up with Erkenntnis, and yet it remains at the same height as Verflucht Gescheit, on the lower righthand side. Now there is a movement across the midline to the left side of the body, and the veil fills out more space with the ? and ! gesture. This can also be understood as question and answer. This became a real mystery for me. To get to Mitteilung, on the righthand side, there is another transition across the midline, and now the veil has begun to be cast over the head. Why would the ? and ! gesture be the middle of the middle, the feeling of the feeling row? If Erkenntnis is the inward thinking of the feeling center and Mitteilung is the outward willing of the feeling center, then the ? and ! figure is unique in that it may represent a truly free space of and for the human heart center: a space for an individual to inhabit, a free space, a stage where the sympathies and antipathies of each human soul can work out the drama of their earthly incarnation. This gesture has a natural polarity within it. Questioning involves leaning forwards with sympathy. Answering involves leaning back with antipathy. You also see the polarity of the ? and ! gesture being supported by the polarities of its neighboring gestures. The ? and ! gesture is the only gesture, aside from the Major and Minor, that has a glyph, a symbol, to represent the description. It has no formal name or explanation to describe it like the other soul gestures. For example, with music, we each have our own individual feeling and interpretation for what we experience, unique only to that person. Major and Minor, Sympathy and Antipathy, Question and Answer: between these polarities it is up to our own individual self to develop a more spacious middle space for the soul to comfortably reside in.
The statue of the Representative of Humanity is a perfect example of finding the free middle space between the extreme polarities of thinking and willing. Upon looking at the gesture of ? and !, you can easily see the resemblance to the statue. The left arm is extended out and above; the right arm is flexed in towards the center and across the midline to denote the difference between above and below but still within the fringes of the center.
Then, to finish out the last top row, you start again on the upper lefthand side of the top row with Innigsein. The veil is again tighter about the body and has moved forwards, filling out and in connection with the inwardly flexed arms. Moving across to Lieblichkeit, you see a fuller, folded and filled out veil in the middle and above. Then move on to Heiter, the upper boundary of the soul with arms fully extended with the accompanying checkerboard veil.
I went back through the grid again and, instead of focusing mostly on the veil, I split my focus with the head gestures. This was reaffirming. See for yourself. Starting with Traurig, you see a very clear head-down, thinking position into deep sadness. By furrowing the brows on your forehead, you achieve the character lines at the forehead. Now skip across to the opposite, Verflucht Gescheit. This is the willing head gesture of looking straight out. Here you achieve the character lines in the forehead by opening the eyes very wide open, so the tension is again in the forehead, yet opposite of Traurig. The feeling head gesture of Verzweiflung is clearly looking up, in the feeling archetype.
Move on to Erkenntnis, the downward, inwardly focused head. Across to the opposite, Mitteilung, the head is willfully gazing forwards. The ? and ! gesture is where I interpret that the forward and backward posture of the body influences the upward gaze of the head. Innigsein is clearly a downward, inner, thoughtful gaze, and across to Heiter is a more forwards, slightly upwards gaze, and then Lieblichkeit is an upwards, full feeling, tilted gaze.
Out of this new soul gesture arrangement, many more details and body positions can be studied. Useful and exploratory exercises can be developed for any serious student of eurythmy. For example, starting with Traurig, you inhabit each gesture and slowly and seamlessly transition into the next, until you reach Heiter. Doing this over and over is sure to bring an inner flexibility of soul, not just as a performer but as a conscientious citizen. The future horizon for Eurythmy is an exciting journey that will eventually penetrate the mysteries of our past movement evolution well into the forming future.
Looking back over the years of my own life, searching for answers of the soul, punctuated by having a family, teaching eurythmy, supplementing my income with side jobs and struggling with physical and emotional disabilities, I can see and appreciate why anyone can be so busy trying to just get by and is ultimately unable to set aside time to search for answers that are of personal interest. Eurythmy has been a wellspring of healing and a heading that I have been able to patiently keep on the horizon of my life journey, and I will forever be grateful for those who have helped me to keep the course, trim the sails and share in holding the rudder into uncharted realms. Of course, Frau Zuccoli and Frau Eckinger were instrumental in keeping me to the course of inquiry and respect for the teachings of Rudolf Steiner. Most recently, my regards and respect go to Frank Chester for teaching me many mysteries behind the number qualities and combinations of 3 and 4 and their mutual interactions that create the vessel of the human heart. Happy travels to all that open their sails to the winds of change upon the waters of distant memories towards foreign shores.
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