The Easter Festival 2025 ~ Anthroposophy Ever Anew

Dear Members and Friends,

The Easter Festival finds its culmination in the Whitsun Mystery each year ~ April 20 to June 8 in 2025. Into this rhythm of 50 days, while the awe and gratitude are still resonant, I write to share about the Society’s opening of the festival season, celebrated in Spring Valley, New York, April 17-20, 2025.

The combination of people, weather, and spring blossoms was sublime, and I am certain that a similarly dynamic mood was present everywhere anthroposophists gathered throughout the world for this first Easter Festival following the 100th anniversary of Rudolf Steiner’s death.

On Easter Sunday, April 20th in 1924, the Foundation Stone Meditation, which Rudolf Steiner had laid into human hearts through ceremonial rite at the Christmas Conference just four months earlier, was then prepared by him through speech art and eurythmy for presenting not only to the community, but to the divine. As he described it on December 24th, 1923, The Anthroposophical Movement is not an act of service to the earth. This Anthroposophical Movement in its totality and in all its details is a service to the divine beings, a service to God.

When the Eurythmy Spring Valley Ensemble then performed the Foundation Stone Meditation as the finale of our Easter Festival, 101 years after it was first "offered to God" at Easter 1924, it was possible to sense the living form descending from where it had been inscribed into the cosmos by Rudolf Steiner a century earlier ~ an eternal fruit, ever renewing when human hearts turn together toward it, in meditation, in speech art, through eurythmy, in community. Together we entered, in one place of one accord, ennobled by one another through our participation, and strengthened for the good work.

The activity of the festival was imagined as the building of a chalice for the year’s festival cycle that unfolded in seven stages over three days, turning dramatically at the fourth stage when the only sound in the intentionally-darkened Threefold Auditorium was a single tone aligned to the sphere of the Moon as the opening call to the speech chorus for the first saying of the Christ from the Cross. Another instrument, another tone, followed ~ Mercury sphere, and the second saying from the Cross ~ until the 7th Saturn toning and the mighty culmination in speech with the words “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” The chorus stood at the back of the auditorium, their voices filling the space from behind and just above ~ an experience of the Word that will not soon be forgotten.

The lead up to this moment included a Maundy Thursday community meal in the festive tent pitched adjacent to the Threefold Café, which was its own stage for lively and engaged conversation, song, and blessing throughout the weekend.

Later that first evening, the Foundation Stone Meditation and the Michael Imagination were performed in speech and eurythmy, establishing the mighty ground upon which the festival unfolded.

Poet and artist Peter Bruckner led on Good Friday with a lively and deeply imaginative talk on The Arts and the Esoteric. Later that same evening Cliff Venho, translator, editor, and eurythmist, gave an insightful talk on the aligning of the Rosicrucian and Michaelic streams through Rudolf Steiner, in deed and activity, particularly in the final year of his life. Cliff noted the intersection of the Last Address and the Foundation Stone chronologically, specifically how the first three panels of the meditation were performed at Easter 1924, followed by the Michael Imagination during the Last Address, culminating with the fourth panel only at Christmas 1924, when Rudolf Steiner had already retreated from public presenting.

We closed this second evening with the Michael Imagination in eurythmy again, a celebration of the terrific ‘resource’ of speech artists and eurythmists in Spring Valley. The intent was to live into the reciprocal relationship between Easter and Michaelmas, as Rudolf Steiner indicated in both the 1923 and 1924 Easter cycles.

On Holy Saturday Dorothea Mier was masterful in directing a demonstration of the Michael Imagination, inviting us into a deeper experience of the word as fiery inspiration. Our days included workshops and conversation groups, the latter led by Tom O'Keefe and centered on Rudolf Steiner's Leading Thoughts #168-170. The insights in these thoughts draw attention to the light, and to the forming of Michaelic festivals. To introduced the conversation sessions with descriptions of the reverse cultus, and our tasks with regard to this in community development.

Holy Saturday can be regarded each year as the eve of the spiritual New Year, and in honor of the turn from old to new that takes place here, we were treated to the eurythmy performance of the Calendar of the Soul verses 52 and 1 ~ from out the depths of soul to out of world-wide spaces. These verses and their aligning with the cycle of the year were a brief but beautiful prelude to one of several highlights of our festival weekend: The 12 Moods performed by 19 eurythmists on the stage at Rose Hall.

What follows will hardly do justice to the experience of this drama of the universe in its revelation of the creation of a planetary system, our own. The mightiness of the hierarchical beings in ever-present gesture of worldly becoming, further articulated by the planetary beings as they express their gifts according to mood and sound aligned to each of the 12 starry regions ~ a cosmos called forth from chaos as ordered spheres, aligned in intention as in appearance on the stage, from Saturn to Jupiter, Mars to Venus, Mercury and, at the center, the Moon, bearing an impression of holding greatest stillness, though observable as a ceaselessly moving body in our current cosmos. The Sun performed a freedom of movement throughout the drama, beautifully assuming the space between Mars and Venus where, once the creation is achieved through its mighty rounds, the Earth comes to be. The harmony of color, gesture, consonant, vowel, mood, and music shone forth brilliantly from the stage at Rose Hall to the thirstily waiting souls.

The food, the camaraderie, painting and singing, handcrafting, and conversation groups allowed for the forming of the most noble bonds of friendship.

On Easter Sunday, Venus appeared the world over as morning star in Pisces, exactly as described in Dante's Purgatorio 700 years earlier: "Love's own quickener, lit to laughter all the eastern sky, veiling the Fishes that attended her." Venus, the fishes, and all we who rise up for the Easter Sun, like the women gathering at the tomb, as also beautifully rendered by Ninetta Sombart in the cover image above, and which was exhibited at Threefold Auditorium for the festival. While we in Spring Valley faced east and sang, a calf was born in the cow barn behind us, new life springing forth to mark the moment in the most remarkable way.

As segue to the triumphant finale, eurythmist Virginia Hermann took the stage. As audience we had been witnessing her ~ in the Foundation Stone, as Michael, as the Sun. With radiant insight, she brought us to an experience that is best described by what Barbara Richardson shared with me later: At the opening of the festival, the Society created a chalice for eurythmy. At its closing, eurythmy created a chalice for the Society.

There are so many to be thanked, and at the risk of not naming each one, I cannot close without acknowledging Melissa Lyons, Jennifer Kleinbach, Beatrice Voigt, Saeko Cohn, Gregory Smirnov, Christina Porkert, Hans Schumm, Keith Sagal, Chris Marlow. The painters, crafters, chefs, singers, musicians, florists ~ artists, everyone! Such a deep and meaningful festival.

The gratitude is immense.

~Mary Stewart Adams
May 4, 2025