Renowned occultist H P Blavatsky is famous for introducing the 'Secret Doctrine' to an astonished West. 'The Voice of the Silence' is derived from the same deep spring of Wisdom. Tibet's Panchen Lama endorsed the work as the "only true exposition in English of the Heart Doctrine of Mahayana and its noble ideal of self-sacrifice." The current (14th) Dalai Lama concurred: "I believe that this book has strongly influenced many aspirants to the wisdom and compassion of the Bodhisattva Path." The book's three segments form a step-wise introduction to this spiritual path. Fragment 1 describes the preparation of the aspirant for discipleship; Fragment 2 the methods of purification of the lower vehicles; while Fragment 3, reveals the Seven Keys which open the way to Enlightenment.

Hermann Beckh's masterful study of Mark's Gospel offers much more than scholarly argument. It is the work of a true visionary who allows his readers to discover the meaning of the Earth and of humanity for themselves. Beckh was in the forefront of entirely new research and recovery of the Gospel, writing more for the future than for his own time. It is not uncommon for biblical scholars to view St. Mark's Gospel as little more than an assemblage of fragmentary sources and a copy of uncertain, early memories. The Gospel is said to have little historical veracity, harmony or guiding structure. Beckh's contemporary, the German writer Arthur Drews, even argued that the text was nothing more than a simplistic solar myth, wherein another Sun-hero pursued his way around the Greco-Roman constellations. Mark's Gospel: The Cosmic Rhythm is a response to such twentieth-century materialistic thinking. He was asked to write the book in the 1920s by the leaders of The Christian Community, who sought to rescue the desecrated Gospel from its opponents. Inspired by Rudolf Steiner and a vast knowledge of ancient languages - Tibetan, Sanskrit, Pali and Avestan along with Hebrew, Greek and Latin - the Rev. Professor Hermann Beckh perceived how the Gospel reflects God's Everlasting Covenant, and meticulously expressed its aesthetic unity, the consonance of its parts and its consequent radiant clarity. His far-reaching understanding of sacred texts in the original languages, always associated with the disciplined meditation he had attained from anthroposophy, led to unprecedented insight. This new edition of his classic study has been revised and redesigned.

Throughout the ages, people have given the fairy kingdom various names. To some it was Paradise, to others Tir-nan-Og, Avalon, Country Underneath the Sea, Fairy Land, World of Immortal Youth, Land of Heart's Desire, Land of Life, or the Middle Kingdom. Fairy tales - the stories of this kingdom - are not only folk literature but also accounts of the subtler layers of fact clothed in poetic imagery. Rudolf Steiner was a close observer of the fairy kingdom and gave many lectures that describe the work of its inhabitants, whom he called elementals. It was clear to Steiner that these elementals were of great importance to the Earth, charged not only with the maintenance of Nature's household, but also with her evolutionary plans. He also spoke of how vital it is that we get to know these fairy workers and honor the work they do, so that their efforts prosper to carry the Earth forward in its evolution. Written and illustrated by two insightful women who experienced the fairy kingdom directly, this book offers a profound, yet simple introduction to fairy worlds and workers. Includes Ingrid Gibb's color paintings of the four races of Little People: Undines (water spirits), Gnomes (earth spirits), Sylphs (air spirits), and Fire-Spirits.

Rudolf Steiner's contribution to humanity has been prodigious: farms, schools, clinics and laboratories have all been established on the spiritual philosophy he expounded. Hitler and the Nazis banned all his works. The Anthroposophical Society, established by Steiner in 1912, has adherents around the world. It is open to all creeds and colours, demands no endorsement of doctrine, and holds as a universal principle the striving for the knowledge of the spirit in man and the cosmos. In 'Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, and Its Attainment' Rudolf Steiner reveals - to those willing to undertake the necessary discipline - the method by which this 'knowledge of the spirit' may be obtained.

2010 Reprint of 1918 Edition. This book was intended as an aid to students in their study of the growth and development of consciousness, offering hints and suggestions which might prove useful to them. It is a contribution to the science of psychology. She writes that the seed of consciousness is the Atma-Buddhi-Manas, the Jivatma. The Super-consciousness includes the whole of the consciousness above the waking-consciousness, like dreams, visions, inspirations, etc. To bring the super-consciousness into manifestation on the physical plane, Besant proposes (in the early stages) to render the brain and sense-organs unresponsive to physical impacts and to induce Trance. This can be done by using the methods of Yogis. But she also says that there is a difference between the super-physical conditions of consciousness in the hypnotised subject and in the Yogi.

'Essentially we do not really have the right to talk about normality or abnormality in a child's inner life, nor indeed in the inner life of human beings altogether...One does not gain much from such labelling, and the first thing to happen should be that the physician or the teacher rejects such an assessment, and goes further than saying that something is clever or sensible according to the way people are habitually thinking.' - Rudolf Steiner Speaking in 1924, when general attitudes to people with special needs were far from enlightened, Rudolf Steiner gave this seminal course of lectures to a small group of teachers and doctors as a fundamental basis for their future work. In the cultural context of the time, regressive ideas such as Social Darwinism and Eugenics were not only tolerated but popular (some 15 years after these lectures were delivered, the Nazis were to initiate their so-called 'euthanasia' programme). In contrast, Steiner - who as a young man had successfully tutored a boy with special needs - was devoted to the progressive task of special education and, in the words of one of those present, '...gave the course with pleasure and satisfaction'. In the twelve lectures, Rudolf Steiner describes polarities of illness and derives courses of treatment from a comprehensive analysis. He considers many individual cases in detail and gives indications on therapeutic exercises, diet and medicine. The 'I' (or self), he states, relates directly to the physical body, and spirit and soul need to be taken into consideration when making diagnoses. Throughout the course Steiner gives valuable advice regarding the educator's own development, emphasizing the need for enthusiasm, humour and courage. As with Steiner's lectures on agriculture, which stimulated the birth of the worldwide biodynamic movement, this single course has had a huge international impact, inspiring the founding of hundreds of schools and communities for people with special needs - encompassing both the Camphill and Steiner special education movements. Revolutionary in its approach, the far-reaching perspectives of these lectures are a living source of inspiration to both professionals in the field and parents and others seeking spiritual insight. This new edition features a fresh translation, introductory material, notes, colour plates and an index. 12 lectures, Dornach, Jun. - Jul. 1924, CW 317

This is a NEW (2010) easy-to-read translation by ancient languages scholar Dr. A. Nyland and is NOT one of the many Public Domain translations of Enoch NOR IS IT A REWORDED PUBLIC DOMAIN VERSION of Enoch. Great advances which have been made in ancient word meaning in the last twenty years were unknown to the translators of the public domain versions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There are copious background notes and cross references. This book is an easy to read translation with cross references and notes. Ideal for those interested in Theosophy Despite the current trend for non-translators to reproduce public domain versions (both as is and disguised by slight rewording) as a commercial venture, be aware that such public domain versions do not take advantage of recent scholarship. This new translation by Dr. A. Nyland contains all three books of Enoch: 1 Enoch (Also called The Ethiopic Book of Enoch) 2 Enoch (Also called The Slavonic Book of Enoch, The Secrets of Enoch). This volume contains the extended version of 2 Enoch, The Exaltation of Melchizedek. 3 Enoch (Also called The Hebrew Book of Enoch) Note that this is Dr. Nyland's translation and NOT a public domain work. 1 Enoch tells of the Watchers, a class of angel, who taught humans weapons, spell potions, root cuttings, astrology, astronomy, and alchemies. The Watchers also slept with human women and produced the Nephilim. For this, they were imprisoned and cast into Tartarus. This is also mentioned in the New Testament. In 2 Enoch, two angels take Enoch through the 7 heavens. This volume contains the extended version of 2 Enoch, The Exaltation of Melchizedek. In 3 Enoch, Enoch ascends to heaven and is transformed into the angel Metatron. This is about the Merkabah and is of interest to Kabbalists. People interested in Theosophy and Rosicrucianism will find this book invaluable. Dr. A. Nyland is an ancient language scholar and lexicographer who served as Faculty at the University of New England, Australia. Dr. Nyland is also the translator of "The Book of Jubilees," and "The Gospel of Thomas," among others. She is also the author of the Amy Stuart Mystery series.

Rudolf Steiner's core mission, repeatedly delayed due to the incapacity of colleagues, was to pursue contemporary spiritual-scientific research into the phenomena of reincarnation and karma. This stimulating book describes the winding biographical path this mission took, and in particular focuses on the mystery of Rudolf Steiner's connection with the influential medieval philosopher and theologian, Thomas Aquinas. Utilizing numerous archival sources and publications, Thomas Meyer reveals many facts relating to Steiner's core mission, and shows the critical roles played by Wilhelm Anton Neumann and Karl Julius Schroer in its genesis and development. Meyer examines how Steiner's pupils responded to his insights into karma, and places this 'most intrinsic mission' into the context of current divisions within the anthroposophic movement. In particular, he highlights the place of spiritual science within culture and history, showing how Steiner developed the great scientific ideas of evolution propounded by Darwin by raising them to the plane of each individual's soul and spiritual development. As Steiner stated in 1903: 'Scientific researchers explain the skull forms of higher animals as a transformation of a lower type of skull. In the same way one should explain a soul's biography through the soul biography which the former evolved from.'

Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Anthroposophy, spent some five months of his life in Britain, visiting it ten times between the years 1902 and 1924. With the exception of German-speaking countries, the longest time Steiner spent abroad was in Britain, a place he clearly considered as central to his work. In this extraordinarily thorough study of over 1,200 pages and dozens of illustrations, Crispian Villeneuve documents these important visits, reproducing letters, articles, records and other archival material - much of it published for the first time. He also studies the interconnected theme of the life and work of D.N. Dunlop, Rudolf Steiner's closest British colleague. Rudolf Steiner in Britain has special significance for English-speaking peoples around the world, as well as for those seeking to understand how and why Steiner disseminated his spiritual world-view. Villeneuve's two-volume opus, the fruit of a decade of research, is finally available in a paperback edition.

From 2009 to 2010, Sergei Prokofiev and Peter Selg-two leading authorities and spiritual researchers into the life and work of Rudolf Steiner-gave a series of conferences on the Christological foundations of Anthroposophy. Their aim was to show the power of anthroposophic Christology. Consequently, they focused on key turning points in Rudolf Steiner's exposition: his major work, An Outline of Esoteric Science; the first Goetheanum; the Reappearance of Christ in the etheric realm and the relationship of this event to Rudolf Steiner's lectures on the Fifth Gospel; and the Christmas Conference (1923-24) and the founding of the New Mysteries. The lectures from the conferences (published as four booklets in German) are collected here in a single volume. The Creative Power of Anthroposophical Christology is essential reading for all those who are interested in the true meaning and depth of Rudolf Steiner's experience and understanding of Christ's deed on Golgotha and his continuing presence among us and within Anthroposophy.

'Those who observe human nature with regard to the smallest things will find that everyday experiences can also lead to an understanding of the greatest actualities...' In a refreshingly practical series of lectures, Rudolf Steiner speaks about the nature of the human soul and how it can be metamorphosed and raised to a higher consciousness. He studies the spiritual significance of various expressions of human nature, including laughing and weeping, sickness and health, error and mental disorder, positivity and negativity, and conscience. Steiner also discusses the nature of prayer, mysticism, the mission of art, and the significance of language. Throughout the talks he refers to many key historical figures, including Zarathustra, Socrates, Plato, Homer, Wagner, Goethe, Hegel and Angelus Silesius. These inspiring lectures form the conclusion to "Transforming the Soul, Volume 1", but can also be read independently.

Isis Unveiled is a master key to the mysteries of ancient and modern science and theology. With the help of this book you will be able to make sense of how so many of the world's peaceful and beautiful religions have been changed by those in charge of said religions. H. P. Blavatsky's knowledge of religious minutia is immense and her assertions will challenge the way you look at the world. She slices through one religious agenda after another in search of truth. No religion is safe and no beliefs go unchallenged. Now you can have both volumes of this esoteric masterpiece in one binding.

`Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, saying: "Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the East, and have come to worship him."' These words begin a story that will be familiar to many, whether from images on Christmas cards or school nativity plays, or more directly from Christian teaching. As often with images associated with Christmas, they have the power to evoke all kinds of feelings, from joy and hope to sorrow and doubt. But what do we really know of the birth of Jesus, and who were the mysterious wise men that are reported to have visited him? In this freshly-collated anthology of Rudolf Steiner's lectures, complemented with illuminating commentary by editor Margaret Jonas, we are offered solutions to the riddles surrounding Jesus's birth and the seemingly conflicting accounts within Christian scripture. Could there have been two different births - in other words, two infants, both named Jesus, born to two sets of parents? From the mystery of the birth, we are led to a study of the three wise men - who are mentioned in only one of the four Gospel accounts. Who were they, what was their teaching, and what was the meaning of the star they followed? And, why did they offer gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to the baby Jesus? The Three Wise Men offers solutions to the enigma of the identity and spiritual backgrounds of these magisterial figures and also provides suggestions as to their possible future roles in the drama of human development. Featuring colour images, this original, thought-provoking book is a wonderful gift for anyone seeking to understand the birth of Jesus and the wise men from the East.

Following his major work on Rudolf Steiner's ten visits to Britain, Crispian Villeneuve studies Steiner's relationship to the British Isles in the 40 or so years before those visits took place. The theme of Steiner's early connection to British culture leads inevitably to the broader topic of his relationship to modern science. This in turn highlights the polarity and tension between the Goethean philosophic view that arises from Middle Europe, and the 'Baconian' perspective emanating from Western Europe. Interweaving these contrasting Baconian and Goethean world-views, Villeneuve presents numerous primary texts - often culled from obscure sources, and many previously unavailable in English translation - with commentary relating to Rudolf Steiner and the nineteenth century. We learn about Steiner's teachers, Karl Julius Schroer and Edmund Reitlinger, as well as English polymath William Whewell. The latter figure was perhaps the greatest admirer of Francis Bacon in recorded history, but maintained manifold connections to Middle Europe. Rudolf Steiner: The British Connection offers genuinely new and valuable research into the early life and thought of one of the greatest cultural innovators of our time.

Ita Wegman spent the last three years of her life in Tessin, in the Casa Andrea Cristoforo. In this secluded province, largely protected from the destructive events of those years and imbued with certain forces, she developed a great work for the future, gathering, leading, and nurturing people both therapeutically and spiritually, preparing for the war's end with the full intensity of her being. Her last three years were a period of devotion to Rudolf Steiner and his work, as well as to esoteric Christianity-to the forces of the Archangel Michael and to Christ for the present and future. She continued to take a great interest in the difficulties of her time and never ceased to participate in events-taking in refugee children and the homeless, keeping up extensive correspondences with others, struggling with aid organizations and various agencies, caring daily for the afflicted and for patients and colleagues. On March 4, 1943, Ita Wegman passed into the spiritual worlds, well prepared and with all of the spiritual intentions of a Christian initiate. This book contributes to documenting the final phase of Ita Wegman's life, focusing on the forces of the future that emerged in her. It draws on her notebooks from her time in Ascona, as well as from her extensive correspondence and memories of those who lived and worked at Casa Andrea Cristoforo. She remained upstanding, free, and positive with an esoteric Christian orientation and felt that she was obligated only to her conscience and to the spiritual world for which Rudolf Steiner stood and that she served. This book was originally published in German as Die letzten drei Jahre. Ita Wegman in Ascona 1940-1943 (Verlag am Goetheanum, Dornach, Switzerland, 2004).

A collection of best loved lectures containing practical insights for day-to-day living.

This title includes over 750 classic and current books reflecting many cultures and traditions, selected in response to requests for an annotated listing of quality children's literature. Chosen for artistic and literary merit and their contribution to the child's inner growth, these books address universal themes, stimulate the imagination, share great sentiments, and build respect for all living things. It includes picture books, fiction, myths and tales, world religions, poetry, science and nature, and general non-fiction as well as resource books for parents.

In listening to the changing language of the year, said Rudolf Steiner, we can rediscover our individual nature. These meditative verses, one for each week of the year, help to awaken a feeling of unity with nature while simultaneously stimulating a discovery of the self. Through intensive work, Steiner's unique meditations can lead to a feeling of oneness with the world. This budget-priced pocket version features Owen Barfield's pioneering translation - 'paraphrased for an English ear' - based on more than 50 years studying the text. As Barfield argues, no simple translation can convey the 'thrust' of the verses. In his words: 'It is this quality which the version that follows especially aims to suggest - at the expense, where necessary, of close reproduction.'

While modernism's engagement with the occult has been approached by critics as the result of a loss of faith in representation, an attempt to draw on science as the primary discourse of modernity, or as an attempt to draw on a hidden history of ideas, Leigh Wilson argues that these discourses have at their heart a magical practice which remakes the relationship between world and representation. As Wilson demonstrates, the courses of the occult are based on a magical mimesis which transforms the nature of the copy, from inert to vital, from dead to alive, from static to animated, from powerless to powerful. Wilson explores the aesthetic and political implications of this relationship in the work of those writers, artists and filmmakers who were most self-consciously experimental, including James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Dziga Vertov and Sergei M. Eisenstein.

"Translation of Geiste und soziale Wandlungen in der Menschheitsentwickelung, published by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach, Switzerland, 1992"--T.p. verso.

"We must become selfless-that is the task of culture today for the future. Human beings must become more and more selfless. Therein lies the future of right moral life actions, the future of all acts of love that can occur through earthly humanity." -Rudolf Steiner (Approaching the Mystery of Golgotha) In a lecture eight weeks before the outbreak of World War I, Rudolf Steiner, conscious of developments to come, coined the phrase "culture of selflessness" to describe the culture that would develop in the future. The far-reaching social implications of his primarily Christological lectures on the Fifth Gospel, given in 1913/14 under the same political circumstances, were foreign to many of Steiner's contemporary audiences, who largely failed to understand his dramatic accounts drawn from the Fifth Gospel (or that gospel itself) as a "source of comfort" for the future, or (as Rudolf Steiner said of them) as "needed" for future work. The subsequent catastrophes of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, however, have sensitized us to Steiner's central themes and contents of 1913/14. He spoke of spiritual development and self-preservation in the face of great suffering; of truly participating in the misfortunes of others; and of acquiring "true selflessness" that takes the human "I" fully into account. During the 1930s, during the National Socialist reign of violence, a few of Rudolf Steiner's pupils took this path of moral resistance and all-embracing therapeutic action. One example is described in the second chapter of this volume. Many other destinies are less well-known; by now, they can no longer be saved completely from oblivion. They include the great life work of Maria Krehbiel-Darmstadter, an anthroposophist of Jewish origin who was murdered in Auschwitz in January 1943. However, both now and in the future, in a world that must find humane ways to endure continued calamities of tremendous magnitude, the task Rudolf Steiner described remains relevant in all cultures and all parts of the globe. "A single great community covers the earth. Its name is suffering and strength."