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My mind raced back to my first impression of the children‘s artwork at the
Waldorf school in Minneapolis. Nobody was drawing houses, horses, cars and
trucks—the usual things children make in primary school art class. Instead,
the walls were covered with artwork that was literally fuzzy around the edges,
without clearly defined forms and boundaries. To me, all the children‘s
paintings looked alike. I saw no individuality in them at all … So what was
going on here? I later spoke at the Goetheanum, the Anthroposophist
headquarters in Dornach Switzerland, where I saw the artwork on the walls
was also done in the same abstract swirls of pastel colors. This, I was told, is
because the paintings represent the creative energy of higher spiritual worlds.
Clearly the Anthroposophists have been conditioned from childhood to ―see‖
these swirling colors as representing something spiritual. (Gershom, 1997,
May, http://www.pinenet.com/~rooster/multi.html brain page 6).
Steiner taught that color is the living organ of spiritual beings and that color can heal—a
concept I was not familiar with until reading about Anthroposophy and consulting other
occult sources. Steiner said that beings come to earth on the wings of color. With my
acquired knowledge, I now can grasp why an Anthroposophic doctor advised us to give our
child red, yellow, and orange crayons with which to color. Waldorf proponent Mary C.
Richards wrote, ―Art is taught, not to make children into artists, but to expose them to the
healing influence of color‖ (Richards, 1980, p. 26).
Waldorf‘s meticulous adherence to specific wall colors of classrooms, per Steiner‘s
instructions, is related to color devotion. The reason for use of color in Waldorf takes on new
meaning after discovering the following sermon by Steiner to his disciples given upstairs at
the Stuttgart House (below which lay the red and blue Rosicrucian temple):
You will best realize the significance of colour if we describe how it affects the
occultist. For this it is necessary that a person should free himself completely
from everything else and devote himself to the particular colour, immerse
himself in it. If the person devoting himself to the colour which covers these
physically dense walls were one who had made certain occult progress, it
would come about that after a period of this complete devotion the walls
would disappear from his clairvoyant vision the consciousness that the walls
shut off the outer world would vanish. Now, what appears first is not merely
that he sees the neighboring houses outside, that the walls become like glass,
but in the sphere which opens up there is a world of purely spiritual
phenomena spiritual facts and spiritual figures become visible. We need only
reflect that behind everything around us physically there are spiritual beings
and facts ...The worlds which surround us spiritually are of many kinds,
many different kinds of elementary beings are around us. These are not
enclosed in boxes or in such a state that they live in various houses ...But
they cannot all be seen in the same way according to the capacity of
clairvoyant vision, there may be visible and invisible beings in the same
space. What spiritual beings become visible in any particular instance
depends on the colour to which we devote ourselves. In a red room, other
beings become visible than in a blue room, when one penetrates to them by
means of colour. We may now ask: what happens if one is not clairvoyant?
That which the clairvoyant does consciously is done unconsciously by the
etheric body of a person not clairvoyantly trained it enters a certain
relationship with the same beings. (Fletcher, 1987, p. 95)
In other words, devote yourself to color and you will see through the walls and see the
spiritual beings that surround mankind in the neighborhood. Which beings are seen will
depend on the color the person devotes himself to. After discovering Steiner‘s colored

Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2003, Page 145
planetary seals I deduced that Sun corresponds to white or gold, Saturn to blue, Moon to
violet/or silver, Mars to red, Mercury to yellow, Jupiter to orange and Venus to green.
Behind the planets are spiritual beings. Steiner instructed that paint should be made of
plant material, and the Anthroposophic company, Stockmar, produces the only brand of
paint used in Waldorf schools. This paint must be suspended in water in order for it to have
a transparent quality and shine with its own light. Pupils in Waldorf apply this paint to wet
paper with rounded corners. ―We know that out of the plants‘ world of color the activities of
the planets speak, placing themselves in a way before the workings of the stars …‖ (Vreede,
2001, p. 287). I first truly understood my daughter‘s paintings as talismans and mandalas
after delving into Rosicrucian based magic books for the first time in my life. It was there
that I first learned about color from an occult perspective.
TALISMAN An object (stone, metal, paper, etc.) which is meant to attract,
channel, or act as a battery for some type of force or energy in order to
perform a specific function (Whitcomb, 1999, p 543).
Complementary colors, when placed side by side, are said to attract the energies associated
with the colors and can act as attractors for Akashic currents (Whitcomb, 1999, p. 264 and
Greer, 1997, p. 86). I also learned that heavy watercolor paper is commonly used in the
magic world to make healing talismans because paper and ―fluid condensers‖ can hold
etheric charges (Greer, 1997, pp. 222-223). I began to see the rationale behind my
daughter‘s piles of wet-on-wet color-washed watercolor papers. I finally understood that
colors were thought efficacious for healing in Steiner‘s world because color is the organ of
the spiritual world.
Some ex-Waldorf parents have reported that their children have been wrapped in colored
silk and made to paint paper with color for healing purposes. Steiner taught that ―our
etheric body may be assisted by spiritual beings by using corresponding colour‖ (Fletcher,
1987, p. 95), and he said:
A nervous, that is to say excitable child should be treated differently as
regards environment from one who is quiet and lethargic. Everything comes
into consideration, from the colour of the room and various objects that are
generally around the child, to the colour of the clothes in which he is dressed
...An excitable child should be surrounded by and dressed in red and reddish-
yellow colours, whereas for a lethargic child one should have recourse to the
blue or bluish-green shades of colour. For the important thing is the
complementary colour, which is created within the child. In the case of red it
is green, and in the case of blue orange-yellow.‖ (Muller, 1987, pp. 7-8).
He warned and advised:
To delight in art that is materialistic increases the difficulties of the Kamaloca
state, whereas delight in spiritual art lightens them. Every noble, spiritual
delight shortens the time in Kamaloca. Already during earthly life we must
break ourselves of pleasures and desires which can be satisfied only by the
physical instrument‖ (Steiner, 1981b, p. 35).
In first grade, Anthroposophic drawings were copied by pupils from the teacher‘s drawings
on the board. They used large bees wax block crayons also produced by the Anthroposophic
company Stockmar. The crayons helped to prevent line-making. Fuzzy images of faceless
gnomes mining in metal mines and faceless humans with angels standing behind them,
began to appear. I was assured that Waldorf was just teaching children stories from around
the world. After leaving, and after spending countless hours studying Steiner‘s sermons, the
pictures in my daughter‘s lesson books took on new meaning. I saw stars as pentagrams. I
understood an image of microcosmic man when I saw him. I knew what images of the Sun