Practice: Medicine, Waldorf, Biodynamics & Arts

Glossary Collection · 18 Terms

Anthroposophy in practice: anthroposophic medicine, mistletoe therapy, curative education, the art therapies and the sacramental life. Part of Thalira's Anthroposophical Glossary of 515 terms, and companion to the in-depth guide Anthroposophic Medicine.

Act of Consecration of Man

The renewed Christian sacrament of the altar given by Rudolf Steiner to the founding priests of The Christian Community in Dornach, September 1922, celebrated daily worldwide ever since.

Anthroposophic Medicine

Anthroposophic Medicine in Anthroposophy is the medical movement founded 1921 by Steiner with Dr. Ita Wegman at Klinik Arlesheim, integrating mainstream clinical practice with the fourfold human anthropology and threefold organism.

Biodynamic

Biodynamic is the everyday adjective for the certified-organic agriculture that follows Steiner's 1924 Koberwitz lectures, working with cosmic and etheric forces in soil, plant, and animal.

Biodynamic Agriculture

The method of farming Steiner founded at Koberwitz in 1924 that addresses the etheric forces of soil and plant through specific preparations and a cosmic-rhythmic calendar.

Curative Education

Curative Education in Anthroposophy is Heilpädagogik, the anthroposophic practice of educating children with developmental and learning differences, founded with Steiner's 1924 twelve-lecture course and embodied worldwide in the Camphill Movement.

Eurythmy

The art of movement Steiner brought into the world as visible speech and visible song, making the inner gestures of language and music perceptible through the body.

Eurythmy Therapy

Eurythmy Therapy in Anthroposophy is Heileurythmie, the therapeutic application of eurythmy sound-gestures for healing, established with Steiner's 1921 eight-lecture course at Dornach.

Iron Process

The cosmic Mars-stream of iron that rains into Earth as meteoric showers each late summer and incarnates into the human blood as the courage-bearing, fear-dispelling force.

Mistletoe (Iscador)

Mistletoe (Iscador) in Anthroposophy is the cancer therapy Steiner introduced through Dr. Ita Wegman in 1917, using fermented Viscum album extract (summer + winter combined) as a complementary subcutaneous injection.

Modeling Therapy

Anthroposophic therapeutic shaping of beeswax or clay by hand, engaging the etheric-formative forces through three-dimensional form.

Music Therapy

A clinical art that prescribes specific intervals, instruments, and singing exercises (anchored in Steiner's GA 283) to retune body, soul, and breath.

Mystery Dramas

Rudolf Steiner's four esoteric stage plays (1910 to 1913) carrying about a dozen souls through several incarnations on the modern path of initiation.

Painting Therapy

A clinical art-therapy method, drawn from Steiner's color theory and systematized by Margaretha Hauschka, in which prescribed watercolour exercises reorganise the patient's feeling-life through colour itself.

Sacramental Consultation

The Christian Community's renewed confession-counsel sacrament: a confidential meeting where priest and layperson sit together in meditative listening, not juridical absolution.

Spacial Dynamics

A movement art and somatic pedagogy developed by Jaimen McMillan from Bothmer Gymnastics and Steiner's anatomy of the twelve directions of space.

Speech Formation

Marie Steiner's anthroposophic art of the spoken word for recitation, drama, and therapy, developed at the Goetheanum from 1919.

Waldorf

Waldorf is the worldwide school movement begun in 1919 in Stuttgart that educates the threefold child (body, soul, spirit) through a curriculum keyed to developmental stages.

Waldorf Education

The pedagogy Steiner founded at Stuttgart in 1919 that meets the developing child through seven-year stages and the threefold soul, now practiced in 1,200+ schools worldwide.