What is it like to live to a ripe old age? What is it like to have to look after oneself in later life, or to be cared for by others? As life expectancy in the western world continues to grow, and as people manage longer periods of old age, these questions face us on a daily basis. With great honesty yet sensitivity, the author describes, in poetically moving words and phrases, the experiences of an old person at the boundary of life.Shortly after the death of her almost 90-year-old mother, Almut Bockemuhl pauses to contemplate the four years of intensive care that she devoted to her. What happened during this period of sacrifice to a dying person? Taking a thoughtful, meditative approach, she describes invaluable experiences, concluding that old age, death and dying have the potential to touch the highest spheres of human knowledge and perception.'Growing old is a constant battle...One has the experience of being squeezed out of one's bodily home, and one sets out to protect oneself against it, and holds on to what one can...But when we make an effort to grow old in the right way, which means transforming what is earthly into what is spiritual, we are working at the transubstantiation of the earth. '

This unique collection presents Ita Wegman's principal writings and lectures on the Mysteries - both the Mysteries of the ancient world to which she felt personally connected, and the spiritual science of anthroposophy, which she saw as the contemporary form of Mystery wisdom. The volume begins with Ita Wegman's firsthand account of Rudolf Steiner's final days and hours on earth - written immediately after his death in 1925 - followed by several of her powerful letters 'To All Members' and their related 'Leading Thoughts'. Various longer studies are featured, including her lecture 'A Fragment from the History of the Mysteries' - delivered at the opening of the second Goetheanum in 1928 - articles on Ephesus and the Colchian Mysteries, and personal impressions of Columba's Iona, the island of Staffa (with its initiatory Fingal's Cave), and Palestine, the land where Christ once walked the earth. These writings - several composed specifically for an English readership - bring us closer to the inner being of Ita Wegman, offering insight into her knowledge, vision and understanding of anthroposophy. Her stimulating ideas throw light on the transformation of the ancient Mysteries to anthroposophical knowledge and activity today.

With great empathy, delicacy, and directness, Peter Selg recounts, in three lectures, the moving story of Ita Wegman and her relationship with Rudolf Steiner in the context of the development of anthroposophic medicine and the formation of the Medical Section of the School for Spiritual Science. Steiner had suffered patiently until the right person-Ita Wegman-arrived to guide spiritual science's healing mission into the medical fi eld. In the fall of 1920, Ita Wegman founded a medical clinic in Arlesheim. From then on, she and Rudolf Steiner worked together, both medically and spiritually, gradually unveiling a karmic working relationship unique in Steiner's life. Thus the stage is set. The second lecture focuses on anthroposophic curative education: ..". the social center, the heart even, of Ita Wegman's 'Medical Section.' To make a commitment to children with severe obstacles in their incarnation, out of spiritual insight into the human being and the wider karmic context, and to make this commitment as a group of people working out of a Christian-religious impulse-this was for Ita Wegman the true anthroposophic medicine." Dr. Selg then describes Dr. Wegman's heroic eff orts to create a true community of physicians working anthroposophically out of Rudolf Steiner's indications and in the spirit of Christ; how she looked after her colleagues, always seeking to wake them up "to the destiny of their own being." As well, she sought to resist all that was happening in Nazi Germany, never forgetting Rudolf Steiner's warning: "In the future the Anthroposophical Society will be faced with the crucial decision of whether responsibilities will be met or not..." And here exactly lies the heart of this wonderful book: the inner struggle to make love responsible.