Glossary

Light and Darkness in Anthroposophy

In Steiner's reading of nature, light and darkness are not a thing and its absence but two equally real, equally active powers. Colour is what happens at the seam between...

The Spectrum in Anthroposophy

The Spectrum, in Steiner's reading of Goethe, is what arises when a beam of light meets the edge of a prism and the eye watches light shade into darkness. The...

The Metamorphosis of Animals in Anthroposophy

The Metamorphosis of Animals is Goethe's answer to a question that classifying science could not reach: what holds the animal kingdom together beneath its endless variety of shapes. His reply...

The Type in Anthroposophy

The Type in Anthroposophy is Goethe's Typus, the living archetypal organism that Rudolf Steiner placed at the centre of Goethean morphology, a formative idea that shapes each plant and animal...

The Living Form in Anthroposophy

The living form is what Goethe and Rudolf Steiner call Gestalt when it is grasped as a doing rather than a done. A crystal has a shape that sits still....

Plant Metamorphosis in Anthroposophy

Plant Metamorphosis names the way a whole plant unfolds from a single archetypal organ. Where ordinary botany catalogues leaf, sepal, and petal as separate parts, Goethe saw one member transforming...