Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2003, Page 148
The sun, with loving light,
Makes bright for me each day.
The soul, with spirit power,
Gives strength unto my limbs.
In sunlight, shining clear,
I reverence, O God,
The strength of humankind
Which thou so graciously
Has planted in my soul,
That I with all my might
May love to work and learn
From thee come light and strength
To thee rise love and thanks.
Students recite the words clearly. Next, with accompanying hand movements,
students sing another song. Then they snuff the candle with great attention
and ritual. (Uhrmacher, 1991, pp. 108-109)
Probably, because the prayer was called the ―morning verse,‖ it didn‘t register that the day
began with prayer. Also, my young child never mentioned it. Now I know more about
mystery religions and more of the history of volkisch groups in Germany during the late
1800s to early 1900s and their desire to return to neopagan Sun worship—the ―true‖
religion of the Aryans. At the time, I was unfamiliar with Steiner‘s concept of a ―threefold
Sun‖ and the Aryan Christ. I also knew nothing about the importance of establishing a daily
ritual of Sun adoration for the magician in training.
―Dance‖
Like many occultists before and since, Steiner also devised a magic system that he dubbed
Eurythmy. Eurythmy was passed off in Waldorf as ―a form of dance‖ and that‘s what we
believed it to be. When my daughter was sick, the faculty took an interest and suggested
that my daughter do eurythmy exercises which could help her. We agreed and the next
thing we knew our daughter came home absolutely furious, begging us to tell the
Eurythmist to stop humiliating her. According to our child, the Eurythmist took her out of
class, into a room, and told her not to be afraid because she had helped many people. Then
she draped my daughter in silk and ―spoke as if she was praying.‖ We wrote a letter asking
the Eurythmist to stop the exercises. Later, I learned from another ex-Waldorfer that her
child had taken ―Therapeutic Eurythmy‖ because she was being bullied by another child.
This mother had received Eurythmy reports from the Eurythmist and sent me copies. At first
I could not comprehend them. It was only after delving into Rosicrucianism, Cabalism and
other magic books that they began to make any sense. From Golden Dawn Initiation books I
learned that the Hebrew Beth or B means ―house, value 2. Beth is the symbol of all
habitations and receptacles, of anything that contains. It is virile and paternal a glyph of
active and interior action‖ (Cicero, 1998, p. 74). In The Universal Human I stumbled across
a quote from Steiner saying, ―…when the Hebrews wrote, for example, what corresponds to
our B, they always felt something like a picture of outer conditions, something that formed
a warm hutlike enclosure. The letter B always evoked the image of something that can
enclose a being like a house‖ (1990, p. 53). Inch by inch I became more familiar with the
concepts of magic, so that when I read the reports again, I recognized the meaning of this:
The sun, with loving light,
Makes bright for me each day.
The soul, with spirit power,
Gives strength unto my limbs.
In sunlight, shining clear,
I reverence, O God,
The strength of humankind
Which thou so graciously
Has planted in my soul,
That I with all my might
May love to work and learn
From thee come light and strength
To thee rise love and thanks.
Students recite the words clearly. Next, with accompanying hand movements,
students sing another song. Then they snuff the candle with great attention
and ritual. (Uhrmacher, 1991, pp. 108-109)
Probably, because the prayer was called the ―morning verse,‖ it didn‘t register that the day
began with prayer. Also, my young child never mentioned it. Now I know more about
mystery religions and more of the history of volkisch groups in Germany during the late
1800s to early 1900s and their desire to return to neopagan Sun worship—the ―true‖
religion of the Aryans. At the time, I was unfamiliar with Steiner‘s concept of a ―threefold
Sun‖ and the Aryan Christ. I also knew nothing about the importance of establishing a daily
ritual of Sun adoration for the magician in training.
―Dance‖
Like many occultists before and since, Steiner also devised a magic system that he dubbed
Eurythmy. Eurythmy was passed off in Waldorf as ―a form of dance‖ and that‘s what we
believed it to be. When my daughter was sick, the faculty took an interest and suggested
that my daughter do eurythmy exercises which could help her. We agreed and the next
thing we knew our daughter came home absolutely furious, begging us to tell the
Eurythmist to stop humiliating her. According to our child, the Eurythmist took her out of
class, into a room, and told her not to be afraid because she had helped many people. Then
she draped my daughter in silk and ―spoke as if she was praying.‖ We wrote a letter asking
the Eurythmist to stop the exercises. Later, I learned from another ex-Waldorfer that her
child had taken ―Therapeutic Eurythmy‖ because she was being bullied by another child.
This mother had received Eurythmy reports from the Eurythmist and sent me copies. At first
I could not comprehend them. It was only after delving into Rosicrucianism, Cabalism and
other magic books that they began to make any sense. From Golden Dawn Initiation books I
learned that the Hebrew Beth or B means ―house, value 2. Beth is the symbol of all
habitations and receptacles, of anything that contains. It is virile and paternal a glyph of
active and interior action‖ (Cicero, 1998, p. 74). In The Universal Human I stumbled across
a quote from Steiner saying, ―…when the Hebrews wrote, for example, what corresponds to
our B, they always felt something like a picture of outer conditions, something that formed
a warm hutlike enclosure. The letter B always evoked the image of something that can
enclose a being like a house‖ (1990, p. 53). Inch by inch I became more familiar with the
concepts of magic, so that when I read the reports again, I recognized the meaning of this:
