Glossary

Spiritual Hierarchies

The nine ranks of cosmic spiritual beings (Angels through Seraphim) named by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and elaborated by Rudolf Steiner in GA 110 as creative agents of cosmic evolution.

Threefolding

Threefolding is the short-form name for the social movement Rudolf Steiner launched in Stuttgart in 1919, and for the working principle behind it: cultural life governs itself, political life secures...

Waldorf

Waldorf is the proper name carried, since 1919, by Rudolf Steiner's school movement and its associated pedagogy. The word itself came from the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory in Stuttgart, whose director...

Gates of Knowledge

Rudolf Steiner's name for the three staged thresholds (Imagination, Inspiration, Intuition) by which the soul crosses from ordinary cognition into supersensible perception.

Ahriman

Ahriman is, in Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy, the specific spiritual being whose work is the downward materializing pole of human evolution. Steiner identifies him with the Angra Mainyu of Persian Zoroastrianism.

Manicheism

Manicheism is the spiritual stream founded by the Persian prophet Mani (216 to 274 CE) that teaches the transformation of evil through love rather than its punishment or rejection. Rudolf...