A small cycle of verses Rudolf Steiner gave from 1908 onward for expectant mothers, for mothers at the cradle, and for young children morning and evening.
Prayers and Sayings for Mothers and Children in Anthroposophy is the small cycle of verses Rudolf Steiner gave from 1908 and 1909 onward, collected in Truth-Wrought Words (GA 40, Wahrspruchworte), for the household rather than the lecture hall. The cycle has three parts. The verses for expectant mothers ask blessing on the human embryo from three directions at once: the spirit star from the heights, the creative power of the sun in the circle, the striving power of God from the depths. A paired verse for the mother exists in two forms, one spoken before birth, in which the child's soul is asked to be given to her, and one after birth, in which she asks to guide that soul. Morning and evening prayers for younger children build on the plainest acts a child performs, seeing the sun, moving a hand, taking a step, and name each as God's spirit, soul and will at work.
Prayers and Sayings for Mothers and Children is the domestic corner of Steiner's verse collection. Where the calendar verses address the meditant and the school sayings address the class, these address a woman carrying a child, a woman at a cradle, and a child of four or five learning to speak the day. Steiner dated the children's prayers 1908 and 1909; the mother verses he left undated.
In Steiner's Own Words
From the heights, the spirit star
In the circle, the creative power of the sun
From the depths, the striving power of God
Give to the human embryo
Blessing, healing, enlivening
The temple of the body.
From the freely reigning light of the spirit
In love-giving soul power
Through faithfulness, sanctified willingness to sacrifice
Man creates for the human child
The nourishment of the body
The becoming of the soul
The earthly future of the divine creature.
Worlds sacrifice
Spirits bless
The will of the self works
Salvation to the spirit-blessed
Word-animated
God-born
Son of Man.
What it Means Today
The people who actually use these verses now are not readers of GA 40 but paediatricians and parents inside anthroposophic medicine. Wolfgang Goebel trained at the university paediatric clinic in Tübingen and at the Ita Wegman hospital in Arlesheim before co-founding the paediatric department at the Gemeinschaftskrankenhaus in Herdecke. Michaela Glöckler worked in that hospital's children's outpatient clinic until 1988, when she took over the Medical Section at the Goetheanum in Dornach. The handbook the two of them wrote out of those consulting rooms, A Guide to Child Health (Floris Books), treats the daily rhythm of a household as a medical instrument: fixed mealtimes, a spoken verse at the table, the same words at bedtime. Steiner's mother-and-child verses are the text that rhythm carries.
Read as practice rather than as devotion, the before-birth and after-birth pair is a deliberate hinge. The mother first receives a soul out of the spiritual worlds, then accepts the work of guiding one back toward them, and the verse turns on a single word, given becoming guided. Thalira synthesis: the morning prayer's three gestures, seeing the sun, moving a hand, taking a step, are the earliest rehearsal Steiner ever wrote for thinking, feeling, and willing, pitched at a four-year-old who cannot yet be told what those words mean. A parent using them is not teaching doctrine. They are attaching one fixed sentence to one repeatable act, which is the only form in which a child of that age can hold anything at all.
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