The four-panel mantric verse Rudolf Steiner laid down at the 1923 Christmas Conference, asking the meditant to lower a dodecahedral foundation stone of love into the soil of the heart.
The Foundation Stone Meditation is the mantric verse Rudolf Steiner spoke on 25 December 1923 at Dornach to re-found the General Anthroposophical Society. Across three panels addressed to limbs, heart-and-lung, and resting head, and a closing Christmas panel, it asks the meditant to form a dodecahedral stone of love out of the forces of the heights, the circumference, and the depths, and to lower it into the soil of the heart.
In Steiner's Own Words
Out of these three forces, out of the spirit of the heights, out of the force of Christ in the circumference, out of the working of the Father, the creative activity of the Father that streams out of the depths, let us at this moment give form in our souls to the dodecahedral Foundation Stone which we lower into the soil of our souls so that it may remain there a powerful sign in the strong foundations of our soul existence and so that in the future working of the Anthroposophical Society we may stand on this firm Foundation Stone.
What it Means Today
The meditation is, before anything else, a Christological verse. Its closing panel returns to the Mystery of Golgotha as the turning point of Earth-time, and its inner architecture answers the prologue of John in a quiet way. The Word that was in the beginning is asked, in 1923, to take form in human hearts that consent to bear it. Steiner is not writing devotional poetry here. He is laying an inner law that lets a society of free thinkers be religious without ceasing to be free.
Practitioners today work with the meditation by panel rather than at once. The first panel, addressed to the will-bearing limbs, is spoken when waking. The second, addressed to the rhythmic heart and lung, is held during the day. The third, addressed to the resting head, is brought into the threshold of sleep. The closing Christmas verse is reserved for the holy nights between 25 December and Epiphany. Branch meetings of the Anthroposophical Society open with the verse to this day. What the practitioner gains is not a technique but an axis. Thinking, feeling, and willing learn to rest on the same stone, and the stone is shaped of love. Steiner gave the archetypal Christian prayer the same structural reading; see the Lord's Prayer.
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