Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2003, Page 144
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
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
