Glossary

Twelve Senses

The twelve senses are Rudolf Steiner's expansion of the human sensorium into twelve distinct organs of perception. Four lower senses (touch, life, self-movement, balance) report the body to itself. Four...

Initiation

In Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy, initiation (German Einweihung) is the researched modern path on which a person develops new organs of supersensible cognition through Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition, grounded in character...

Intuition

Intuition in Steiner's sense is the third and highest stage of supersensible cognition, the faculty by which a fortified I-Being identifies directly with the inner being of what it knows....

Karma

Karma, in Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy, is the lawful continuity of the I as it passes from one earthly life into the next, carrying the moral substance of every former life...

Inspiration

Inspiration in Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy is the second of three stages of supersensible knowing, sitting between Imagination and Intuition. Where Imagination perceives the higher world as living picture-presentations, Inspiration listens.

Imagination

Imagination, in Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy, names the first stage of supersensible cognition above ordinary sense knowledge: a picture-perception (Bilderschau) of spiritual realities, vivid and true as sense impressions yet drawn...