The Zodiac Gestures in Eurythmy

By Werner Barfod

Eurythmy is an art form that makes sounds visible. By incorporating zodiac gestures into their art, as indicated by Rudolf Steiner, eurythmists can draw on a deep connection between the earth and the cosmos.

The zodiac, as representative of the whole cosmos, is a vital part of human spirituality, acting as the backdrop to human life. But it can be hard to fathom the zodiac's secrets, even through meditation. Barfod draws a parallel between meditative exercises and eurythmy practice, and shows how zodiac gestures in eurythmy can reveal cosmic insights.

This is a book for eurythmy teachers and practitioners who want to deepen their art and spiritual work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Floris Books
• Release date: Apr 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9781782505778

Werner Barfod

Werner Barfod was born in Kiel, Germany in 1936. He studied eurythmy at the Goetheanum in Switzerland with Lea von der Pals, and from 1969 to 2000 was the Director of the Eurythmy Academy in the Hague, and of the Netherlands Eurythmy Ensemble, after which he was the leader of the Performing Arts section of the Goetheanum for seven years.

Book preview

Preface

This account of the place of eurythmy in our understanding of the human being sets out to help us find our individual paths to its spiritual roots. It addresses readers who either are or want to become eurythmists, and also interested fellow travellers who understand the cultural task of eurythmy, or who feel impelled by the subject matter to practise or to deepen their spiritual work. Many of the chapters of this book should not only be read, but also put to the test, experienced and turned into action. It aims to place eurythmy within its cultural context and to bring the story of its origins and mission to life, as much for teachers as for all art enthusiasts, and in addition to encourage the practice of eurythmy generally.

My thanks are due first and foremost to Rudolf Steiner who gave us the principles, impulse and mission of eurythmy out of his spiritual research. In many places I have quoted Rudolf Steiner’s indications, but sometimes just relayed the gist of his words; it is then up to the reader to trace and study the original source. I also extend my gratitude to the eurythmists attending courses and to students in the eurythmy training who have often helped me make new discoveries. I also want to thank my colleagues and co-workers for the help they have given me in so many areas; especially Marion Korner, Johanna Priester and the editor Martina Maria Sam for reading through the manuscript.

Not least, I would like to express my gratitude to my wife, without whose patience and selfless support this book would never have come into being.

Werner Barfod

The Hague, March 1998

Out of the Creative Chaos

In the beginning God created heaven and earth.

Creative power and zodiac,

bring about the genesis, shaping space –

the birth of the world.

The ineffable – the mind that nothing has dulled –

the spirit of God,

the light self-proclaiming,

lets light and darkness emerge.

In breathing out space arose

and matter came into being.

Infinite space evolved, filled with laws,

formed from the word of God.

Beings materialise from word and space.

Creation out of chaos produces the cosmos.

Genesis, interwoven with the space-shaping forces of the zodiac.

The pictures that emanate from the creative chaos into human souls can only be effective in the present and future in the form of intuition. Creative new ideas can arise out of imaginations that lift our feeling life away from old connections towards future ones. In this way, progress consolidates the relationship human beings have to their beginnings.¹

This is also true of Rudolf Steiner’s innovation, the art of eurythmy, and in particular the zodiac in eurythmy, the subject of our attention.

We can find formative forces bound up with the zodiac at work in the physical body, in our actions and in our speech. The creative energies of all the hierarchies weave and condense these phenomena into the human sensory realm. The gods have brought the one-sided influence of each zodiac force into an equilibrium within the human body.

The position of the planets in the zodiac determines the constitution of the etheric body and movement organisation. The fact that human beings live in the stream of time also has a bearing on their development.

The astral body, formed by the forces emanating from the stars, puts the human being in a state of dependence on the macrocosm.

The human ‘I’, however, is to be found beyond the world of the stars and outside the influence of the zodiac. Human freedom is possible only when the ‘I’ operates outside the fixed stars; in fact freedom comes into being only when it is the hard-won fruit of struggle within the individual ‘I’.²

The zodiac is the cosmic totality or spiritual backdrop against which that microcosmic totality – the human being in all shapes and sizes – appears as the likeness of the divine archetype. The beings of the first hierarchy express themselves through the outer appearance of the twelve zodiac signs.

The three major zodiac crosses reveal the four directions of space and the archetype of spatial dimensions within which human beings, endowed with the capacity to stand vertically, embrace the world and act within it, can take their place and are thus able to inhabit the earth with soul experience and consciousness of their self.³

The threefold soul attributes of thinking, feeling and will have their corresponding archetype in the zodiac. The process of development in time mysteriously rays into our etheric and astral bodies with the seven planets. Finally, the human form shows the twelvefoldness (for example in the twelve senses) forming the basis for human consciousness: ‘The number twelve is connected with the mystery of how we are able to carry an I.’⁴

Notes

1. Steiner, Rosicrucianism Renewed , Oct 19, 1907.

2. Steiner, Mystery of the Universe , April 18, 1920.

3. Steiner, Our Connection with the Elemental World , lectures of Nov 20–22, 1914.

4. Steiner, The Riddle of Humanity , Aug 12, 1916, p. 94.

1

The Zodiac in Eurythmy

The cosmic human being in the zodiac

The physical human form has been shaped progressively since the very dawn of evolution. The first seed was planted on Old Saturn; then the human body was prefigured etherically on Old Sun. Even on earth itself, a long developmental stage was needed before the human being could stand upright and walk on solid ground. The hierarchies compensated for the one-sided influence of the zodiac forces by creating ever new stages of development, ultimately working in unison to allow a harmonious human form to come into being. Any one-sidedness is held in check and restricted to the germinal stage of human development. To overcome extreme one-sidednesses in their development human beings left these behind within the animal groupings of the zodiac.

The human head appears to be the most perfect of all forms. In its shape it is the oldest part of the human being, since it appears almost fully formed at birth. The limbs are the least perfected and the youngest component of the human body – they still need to engage with the earth to be fully formed. As such, they are also the first expression of the future.

Looking at the formative forces emanating from the zodiac, the human head has been formed by the influence of Aries the Ram, and the feet by Pisces the Fishes. Only when the human being leaves the watery element behind to step onto solid ground, is the upright stance assumed. For that to take place, the firmness of the earth is needed to provide resistance. Pisces helps us develop mobility in our feet on land and Aries thrusts us up into the vertical. As the head is lifted, the forehead assumes its shape, the jaw then shifts below it. In contrast to an animal head, human features are restrained.

The cosmic human being with feet and head linked, lies like an archetypal embryo rolled up in the zodiac.

The stellar forces of Leo create the heart space through which the human being is directly connected to the cosmos. As in embryonic development, the heart begins to form in the periphery, the circulation, and migrates to the centre of the system to become the heart organ. The eurythmy gesture for Leo gives an archetypal picture of the direction of this movement. Both arms open up towards heaven, forming a double spiral which is rooted in the heart and touches the dome of the sky with the hands. The ‘burning enthusiasm’ that the human being feels to be part of three worlds – standing on the earth, yet feeling in the heart that heaven can be touched – comes to expression here.

As we follow the creation of the upright human form through the zodiac, we come to the lower legs and the forces of Aquarius. The shinbone or tibia is the only one in the human skeleton that stands at a right angle to the earth and thus enables us to walk. With the knee we enter the forces of Capricorn, whose formative direction is from the back to the front, as shown in the tension and flexion of the knee. The thigh is formed by the forces of Sagittarius. Here the power of the will to spring into ready action is anchored.

Scorpio is the source of dual gender in humans. The cosmic forces of Libra, create a state of equilibrium between the forces of the earth and the light in the pelvic region, with the legs and feet pressing downwards towards the earth and the spine borne upwards. Starting with Pisces, the arc of the darker stellar forces is completed with Libra.

The cosmic forces of Virgo form the abdomen. Here the female reproductive organs are enclosed, internalised in contrast to those of the male which are externalised on the other side of Libra, in Scorpio. The qualitative centre of the zodiac is to be found within the heart building forces of Leo. The force of Cancer shapes the rib cage. This breathing protective enclosure gives the space for the human being to have an inner life. Gemini brings the right and left sides together through the shoulder girdle and collarbone. These cosmic forces provide symmetry within the human form and thus the means by which we can encompass ourselves. The larynx on the other hand, owes its formation to the energies of Taurus, which stream almost as if through the earth itself to give humanity the faculty of speech. Finally, with Aries we return to the head as the image of the cosmos. As has already been described, this force also streams as if from the stars directly through the earth and into the head to push it upright. The light stellar forces complete their particular arc with this powerful thrust into the upright.

The whole of the cosmic human can thus be represented pictorially in the following way.

Figure 1. The zodiac and the cosmic human being.

The gestures of the day and night colours

When, in the summer of 1915, Rudolf Steiner gave gestures for colours in eurythmy, he began with the one for blue, demonstrating how it envelops the human form. This was followed by green, with the gesture starting in front of the heart and moving forwards horizontally, then out to the side. Yellow radiates out as if directly from the heart, then stretches upwards into space. With the colour orange, the gesture flares out and upwards from the heart region, then subsides back in a slow breathing-in mood of receptivity. Red also arises centrally and strives upwards, beyond the confines of the human body, giving off a sense of dignity which extends beyond the head way down into the soles of the feet. The colour purple is shown as a rounded gesture, with the arms hanging down loosely and swinging backwards and forwards evenly like a pendulum so that their sheer weight is experienced. In this way, Rudolf Steiner introduced us to the six principal colours of the rainbow; however, the way in which they originate in the human figure and reveal their relationship to the world within the corresponding gesture, can only be hinted at here.¹

The colour gestures are to be carried out with the right arm if the person is standing.

These are the so-called ‘day’ colours, perceptible with the senses. The upper semicircle of the zodiac echoes this order in the seven bright constellations that the sun moves through from spring to autumn in the northern hemisphere. With the force inherent in red, Aries raises the human body upright and lifts the head. The larynx creates its own structure within Taurus as it breathes the warmth of orange in and out. The rays of yellow bring right and left together in Gemini. Cancer encompasses the chest region in green. The cosmic breathing of light blue, moving between the centre and the periphery, links the heart to heaven in Leo. Out of indigo, Virgo creates covering for the body. The creation of form pauses at the purple of Libra and the stillness of the pelvic area, so that the latter can be seen as a sort of vessel containing all the zodiac forms in the human body that belong to the bright colours.

Rudolf Steiner assigns the night or spiritual colours, which are not sense-perceptible, to the other half of the zodiac circle. We are only able to create after-images of them and affix labels taken from the visual colour world.

The central position of this arc is occupied by the colour known as peach-blossom or incarnadine, which lets the spiritual essence of the human being shine through the physical. Incarnadine shades towards pinkish-red tones on one side, and bluish-purple on the other.

In a shade of muted dark lilac, Scorpio is active in the sexual organs. In the leg, Sagittarius, a delicate hue of light lilac, shapes the thigh. Capricorn builds the knee through peach-blossom/incarnadine. Aquarius forms the lower leg out of light red, and Pisces the feet out of a stronger reddish pink.

Seven zodiac signs in the circle are thus ranked with the day colours and five with the night colours. In the colours of the daylight world we see what has already come into being, right up to the formation of the head, whereas in the night-time colours we obtain a glimpse of what is still in embryonic and future spiritual form in the limbs.

Below is a diagram of the zodiac with the colours:

Figure 2. The zodiac and its colours.

The origin of the archetypal colour gestures

When in 1915 Rudolf Steiner unveiled what he called the second chapter of the development of eurythmy, he did this with the mantric verse Twelve Moods and gave the zodiac and colour gestures. As we familiarise ourselves with both these elements in eurythmy, it becomes clear that the colour gestures are an integral part of the zodiac gestures, and both share a common archetype within the creative essence of the word. This idea can be pursued further by considering firstly the daytime colours and zodiac signs.

Aries – red

The ‘strength of the upright as the event’ in Aries is to be found in seminal form within the red colour gesture which streams upwards from below. Starting in the heart realm, it continues up beyond the head with the palms of the hands open to the heavens. The human form seems like a caryatid – the sculpted human figure supporting the roof of a Greek temple – filled with strength from head to foot as if supported by the gods, especially when the colour gesture is carried out standing and with the right arm only.

Taurus – orange

‘Gazing into the universe’ and ‘absorbing mobility’ into human speech belong to Taurus. The Word should ‘fall silent’ in the cosmos. Here the dual movement comes into play, which is also inherent in the gesture for orange, pulsing outwards from the heart. With tongues of flame, it penetrates the outside world, only to return slowly, listening and receptive, with the palms of the hands still turned out.

Gemini – yellow

In Gemini, we are given the capacity to stand firm in space and ‘take hold of ourselves’ through the control of our left and right sides. Illuminated from behind, passing through the heart area, extending slightly forwards and upwards and standing strong within itself, the gesture for yellow appears full of light.