Olive Whicher's groundbreaking book presents an accessible - non-mathematician's - approach to projective geometry. Profusely illustrated, and written with fire and intuitive genius, this work will be of interest to anyone wishing to cultivate the power of inner visualization in a realm of structural beauty. Whicher explores the concepts of polarity and movement in modern projective geometry as a discipline of thought that transcends the limited and rigid space and forms of Euclid, and the corresponding material forces conceived in classical mechanics. Rudolf Steiner underlined the importance of projective geometry as, 'a method of training the imaginative faculties of thinking, so that they become an instrument of cognition no less conscious and exact than mathematical reasoning'. This seminal approach allows for precise scientific understanding of the concept of creative fields of formative (or etheric) forces at work in nature - in plants, animals and in the human being. Autorid: Olive Whicher
'When we know how to enter deeply into the realm of the soul, we reach understanding of the harmony that exists between successive lives on earth and the whole of the physical world outside us.' - Rudolf Steiner In these eight lectures, given during the Great War as thousands of young men were being killed in battle, Rudolf Steiner - the great initiate of the twentieth century - describes the dramatic reality of the spiritual worlds encountered by human beings after death. He speaks of the joys and sufferings experienced in those worlds by people of different character; the vision of the 'ideal human being' that souls experience; the cosmic 'midnight hour'; the processes leading to rebirth in the world of the senses; the deeper causes behind such phenomena as materialism and criminality; and why, in the flesh, we lose our instinctive perception of the spiritual worlds. Steiner describes how knowledge of the spiritual realms, as well as the life beyond death and before birth, can be built on the foundations of modern science. Indeed, he speaks of mankind's involvement in science and its many achievements as necessary steps on the path towards a modern spirituality and true understanding of the soul, and describes in detail some of the methods by which direct perception of the worlds of soul and spirit can be developed. Autorid: Rudolf Steiner, A. R. Meuss
Truly poetic and deeply esoteric, these lectures by Rudolf Steiner have been gathered here in a single volume for the first time, with an in-depth introduction that traces and explains the stages of butterfly metamorphosis. The emergence of the butterfly from its pupa is one of the most moving phenomena we can encounter in nature. We can experience a revelation of spirit in this creature's visible transformations. The butterfly, says Rudolf Steiner, is "a flower blossom lifted into the air by light and cosmic forces." It is a being that develops from and through light, via a process of incorporation and internalization. By gazing into the world of these special and rarefied creatures, we can intuit that they, "ray out something even better than sunlight; they shine spirit light out into the cosmos."