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This specialised presentation is divided up into two parts: a more general one and a more specific one relating to the previous post directly.
Part One
On Eurythmy
The haftseen table, from yesterday's post, with its (seven) symbolic items beginning with the Farsi letter “sin” or “S” caused me to think about the significance of the chosen phoneme “S”. This brought me to explore the Eurythmic gesture of this speech sound.
First off, then, for those unfamilar with Eurythmy, a short introduction to this Anthroposophic art of movement and therapy. There can be no simple explanation in familiar terms, alas. I will have to speak of the four-fold man and the three-fold soul (of thinking, feeling and willing which are higher sense-organisations) and explain how Eurythmy intends to align the two for greater spiritual awarness in the mundane and physical existence we lead. The speech sounds (or letters) also correspond to inner organic processes (of stretching, rounding, contracting, shifting, rolling, rising, airing, densifying, interpenetrating).
What it is Not.
It is not arbitrary aesthetic expression nor an analytical healthy routine but a dynamic cosmic system which is received by the human organism. It works with the same energies which developed into speech over time, on a universal evolutionary scale, and does so, microcosmically, within each newborn child, again. It makes for a separate study to compare how different peoples have picked out different aspects of this cosmic influx, giving the range of differentiated languages.
In a performance, Eurythmy looks a little bit like modern dance (in Greek choral dress), or in therapy and as a class in school, more like Gurdieff or Bothmer exercises. It is nothing like anything else, though. It is also not a kind of mime for story telling nor has it got a “vocabulary” of symbolic representation as found in hindu temple dance. It is diametrically opposed to ballet, which works with the physical body exclusively and is emotively expressive. So what IS it?
What It Is
“In Eurythmy we are giving birth to an awareness that it’s all a kind of code or a system of archtypes” - Dean Pollard. Dean is great at breaking it down in a more modern and upbeat manner. He speaks of L and R in this great informal talk and how applied Eurythmy can prevent you from feeling old!
Curative Eurythmy stays closer to the body and expresses the heart more intimately, but Eurythmy in sum is the Heart speaking the language of the Logos, in other words, it is making etheric (formative) force visible. In this lies all true creativity which is not mechanical or reproductive (second hand or taught). It activates your inner essence, your authenticity, and originality stripped of all mental programming. It is the only way to know yourself outside your karmic frame. You are set in touch with the spirit world as it exists behind all reality.
The forces which organise life-processes live in speech. Differentiated and interconnected to the other three bodies (physical, astral I), the ether-body is a "time-body" giving a regular rhythm to our life.
This etheric can be observed directly in speech, when we slow this down to make gestures of sound. It is a hyper-mindful kind of speech. From an esoteric perspective there is a valuable exchange that takes place between the forces observed and the observation at work within ourselves. The forces give us energy and renew us. They are also encouraged to evolve themselves (giving us language shifts; but also in general as muses). Our awareness connects us in an upright manner, as channels between heaven and earth.
Watch this video for more and try to form an “I” with this tutorial or learn more about encounter by forming an “E”
In The Beginning = Movement
The idea is that movement preceeds all thinking. The activity of the limbs wakes up the head, finding its way there through the rhythmic system. (Thus willing prompts feeling promts thinking, until they collaborate in a smooth, harmonious flow of self-realisation.)
- Eurythmy is called “the handmaid of geometry”, that other subject favoured above the norm at Waldorf schools as the primary subject to lead children into their faculties of discovery and systematic application (i.e. learning).
- Furthermore it is clear to see how it improves gross- and fine-motoric skills in the early-learning years.
- It is a “social educator” making children aware of themselves in relation to their surrounding space.
- It brings speech rythms into the body, to the benefit of making speech a more holistic act, coming from a deeper, purer, truer (literal) understanding (of oneself and the world).
Man is a microcosm spoken from the macrocosm. All he needs to do is listen to himself to understand his cosmic potential and find his particular ability/purpose.
Just as curative Eurythmy can heal, art is healing for the whole human race. Eurythmy therefore, first and foremost has to be understood as such said art (before applying it as medicine to specific ailments or, more generically, behavioural anomalies in school children).
The art of Eurythmy is a channel through which the spirit reveals itself and raises our Consciousness. As such it is curative of our common disorder of materialism.
The Association of Colour With Speech Sounds
- Each sound is a gesture with an essential quality.
- This gives a form (as seen in the illustration) but this is not a depiction of a letter! It is also not a metaphor, like say a Kettle for a K, or a Snake for an S. It is the imaginative - soul -picture of the movement: so for example, the B is an experience of protection, embrace; it is the Beth of house in Hebrew or the Beorc (Birka), breasts (nurturing), in the Old Futhark Runes.
- This outline of a form indicates the direction in which the etheric energy and astral-I intent must flow (the body-soul whole). The whole flow of movement IS the gesture of the sound.
- Setting the tone of the movement before the motion can also be done in colour. So, for every speech sound there is a colour of movement which can help you to arrive in the mood for that specific, conscious movement. This is found in the dress-colour of the Eurythmist.
The movement emports creative and hence divine will. It makes the unconscious visible in this conscious willing.
The second colour belonging to any specific gesture of sound pertains to feeling. This is likened to an aroma, trailing as a whisp in the wake of the movement. It is the rhythmic-circulatory-respiratory system made visible, or in terms of the soul it shows the feeling within the mover. This is (literally) the veil of the movement. The veil is coloured (in a totally different colour).
The colours in an Eurythmy performance are not aesthetically chosen (nothing ton-sur-ton or directly complementary, for this is not an art of the eye - or outer senses - but a translation of the spirit which is able to weave in a language of colour. (Veil Painting does the same kind of weaving, integrating, healing, but then in watercolours on paper.)
- Thirdly, we come to the thought of the movement, the character. It is the resonance that is felt in the posture, down to the bone, in the muscles; where the sound intensifies the relation between body and soul at specific points. It doesn’t come with a visible colour and makes for the inner meditative moment. (But one is able to connote a colour, and the drawings do so.)
Part Two
Meditation on the "S"
As I was writing the piece on the Persian New Year and learned the “sin” or letter “S” plays a significant role in the festival table that is laid out to celebrate the new year, which falls on the Equinox (so on 21st March, this year), I paused to consider why it had to be specifically the letter S. I was taken to my Anthroposophical sources to see what came up for festivals and letters.
Since, I will be observing Holy Week, I shall leave musings on the festival theme for later. But it seemed possible that there might be something Zoroastrian clinging to the folkloristic elements, or something else universal. Iran was once the centre of the fire-cult and the teachings of Zarathustra with his dualism of light and darkness (featured heavily in Anthroposophy as the two poles of Lucifer and Ahriman, in between which man must represent colour, i.e. the Heart).
The “Sin” Or “S” Sound
The S takes us straight away into the sign of Scorpio and the Ahrimanic impulse. But as a fire sound (aspirated) and with its hissing it also brought me to think of Lucifer as the serpent of temptation. Scorpio is as much about renewal as it is about death (without which no rebirth).
When working with a dancer to design his Eurythmy art, indicating how to find the forms (in movement) for the letters, Steiner drew the gesture for the S with much vigour, and with a (Eurythmy) rod as lightning through the air. He explained that one experiences the S best as a Dionysian figure with a thyrsos staff in hand to lean upon. The leopard symbolises the astral feeling from the heart knowing the direction to take, tamed by the I-rod of thinking and focussed willing.
The S-impulse is a swaying, a coming and a going, a surfing in and out which shapes in resistance to. This S will be very variable (to the audience) in shape and size of movement, depending on the context and the type of material it has to move in: it has no force of its own but the momentum of life.
Out Of Chaos I Create Stability
As a phoneme the S slips and slides without firm contours gathering in: compacting; and letting go, loosening. The symmetry of the S seeks a midline and balanced sides.
This fluid movement befits the spring activity of shaping and growing. The S is swelling and sap streaming sumptuously to sprout, shoot, and send up sprigs. It swishes and swirls and swings and skips. It comes in waves to shape around a midline, and to leave on an out-breath. The sound of sea in ripples and rivulets and rolling air, and lilting, lapping water. It pulls in these elements of air and water to consolidate its fire in earth. This gives us our backbone.
Consonance Re-sounds / Sibilance Intones
The consonants all work with that which is outside of the self, and lives in the world. The air escapes to meet with resistance. The inner air plys around the things of incarnate existence. They echo-locate, as it were. They fly towards. Steiner indicated that consonants had to be made with wings, gestures that begin at the shoulder blades: the cape around our heart and lungs.
The surrendered air is felt in the plosives of the lips and the dentals against the teeth, but far more formless is the S, which is an escaped whisper or a gusty release. Consonants are "plastic" sounds, that shape in imitation selflessly. The S specifically is passive, in how it is evacuated to experience the outer world without reservation. But this requires a clear plan if one is not to be taken adrift or astray, with purpose gone and a stiff stick of a vertebral column and brittle (winter-cold) limbs. One must animate the self with this warm breathing and learn to gather as much as one gives. Equal measure.
S as sibilant is a fire consonant but speaking it consciously, it cools down, blows away the Luciferic flare, forsakes the high-flown dreams, to lean against the backbone of your quintessence. This is to re-cognise and re-member oneself. I am as Man an upright being, anchored to earth, stretching up toward heaven: a channel between heaven and earth, a conduit. In spring, the sap rises, but the cosmic impulses rain down. It is time to wake up from our inner revery to work in the world (tend our garden!)
Spring Tide
The S is a highly activating sound which establishes a still midpoint, or counterpoint to the hissing, streaming, swelling waves to either side. It is the dynamic of (muscular) tension and consolidated backbone (the character of the sound) and the rhythmic in- and exhalation of feeling. This is the force of growth.
When one is able to master this movement of alternation there can be equinamity around a mirrorpoint of I-ness. Or Isness. This is to activate the Spring of Youth.
As long as you remain alert to the hissing serpent, which makes you lose your head in ecstatic fluctuations. Use the S to invoke a wholesome and concentrated focus.
Spring invites you to stay in balance and be aware of dissolution! Meander along with the S, to lead the etheric energy down like rain into the season of formations. This is measured explorative flight (the soaring orange muted in the brown).
Stay on the narrow road that walks between darkness and light to find the inner pillar of stength. This is to stand tall and still as you find yourself planted, like a seed or bulb in the midst of life with minimalist gesture of the grey dress of this movement. These two counter-movements resonate deeply into the bones, with an affirmation of self. True steadfastness and cohesion is nurtured.
I stand steady by consolidating the chaos within me.
Spring is about respiritualising, rebirth, resurrection. All life on Earth is Ahrimanic - subject to gravity and dark densification and cold death! The Gnostics are not half mistaken about that! But Man must not fear this. Where his heart is the impulse for creative deeds, his good-will blows over man, beast and land gently. He is able to act with limbs radiating from a sure antennae.
