Spirits of the rocks
Amuse themselves with revelry.
Their crystalline tension,
Their patience within,
Is older than this world
Or its memory.
Back, back they go,
When water became stone,
When patience solidified,
Into a permanent complacence;
A commonplaceness,
Of marrowless bone.
Man! drive your pick,
And polish this stone,
Decant the molten vein
That once thickly flowed.
We bring use once again,
Animate, recreate, tablets of time,
Recalling the virtues
Of the old worlds revived.
Of the old worlds revived.
The World Humor is a figure at the top of Rudolf Steiner's monumental wooden sculpture of the Representative of Humanity. As an elemental being, it grows with internal artistic necessity from the rocky outcroppings shown here:
ReplyDelete"The figure above Lucifer was created as one that grows as an elemental being from the rock.
Now it was a question of not merely bringing a chunk of rock, but.. . pursue the sculptural thought and this came in this creature that grows as a sort of elemental being from the rock. You will see how an asymmetry appears in the spiritual forms - that comes in the physical only very limited expression: our left eye is different from our right and so on;. with ear and nose, it is equally.
But as soon as you come in to the spiritual, the etheric body acts already decidedly asymmetrical. The left side of the etheric body is very different from the right; that comes out immediately, if one wants to make spiritual forms.
You can go around this creature, and you will have from any point below, a different view. But you will see that the asymmetry acts as something necessary, because it is the expression of the gesture of this creature which acts with a certain humor from the rock and looks on at the group below.
This creature looks down with humor from the rocks for a good reason. It is quite wrong to want to rise into the higher worlds with a mere sentimentality. When you do the work properly in the higher worlds, to do it with sentimentality is not right. This sentiment has always smacks of selfishness. You will see that I often, when the highest most spiritual relationships are discussed, add something in the observational mix, which is not to bring it out of tune, but only overcome egotistical sentimentality with humor. Only then people will truly elevate the spiritual, if they do not want to capture it with selfish sentimentalism. In purity of soul, may we never be without humor in this intellectual field, Ref : GA 181, S. 316F )
I used the "translate" facility on this, and tried to make some sense of it- someone, I'm sure could do a better job.
http://anthrowiki.at/Weltenhumor