In mystical history, the quality of Saturn is expressed as a process of transformation. Steiner characterized this quality in three imaginations:

1. the picture of the phoenix.
2. in the Karma lectures, Steiner talks about the spiritual processes in the realm of Saturn. There is no consciousness for the present or the future. Instead, there is an intensive gaze into the past. What appears is pure, idealistic will for the next incarnation.
3. The Seraphim are deeply connected to the sphere of Saturn. They express pure warm love and can be understood as the wellspring of all evolution. Steiner gave the following imagination, to experience this being:

Imagine the face of an old person. Etched by life’s experience, the face of enormous goodness approaches us. A lively visage that shines with pure goodness and good will comes forwards; an idealistic impulse that appears, firstly, as the will. This is the framework of resurrection in Transformation.

These imaginations express the essence of history; not simply a record of what happened in the past. Rather, the past shines in an ideal connection to the future.

In the Ilkley course – A Modern Art of Education – Steiner focuses on plant study and history. He explained: If we dive into the processes of the becoming plant, and then take it into sleep, the processes are completed. In sleep, the breathing process continues. Nature, and being in nature constitute deep, restorative practices; we are healed in the etheric realm.

In history, by contrast, if we take the processes into sleep with us, the processes become more unclear in soul and spirit. Because Steiner characterized the individual as an unfinished being, history describes not what happened in the past but an aspect of open processes.

Steiner understood history as a perspective on psychology. History resides in the sphere of our will, in the light of our consciousness. It is a real task – to look, to uncover and to claim history anew.

Take the example of two cars that crash. The witnesses offer several perspectives. The fact happened. How the fact is experienced depends on many aspects. History is what people experience and what they recount. It is not possible to connect directly with the fact, and it is not possible to all have the same account.

In Occult Science, Steiner follows the laws of time, using a cycle or rhythm of 7. A huge context or landscape is set out – Atlantis, India (or Rajasthan, or indeed, Bhārat), and so forth. Steiner was not an empiricist; he often set out huge pictures of general aspects, and rhythms with an «ideal» quality, rather than focusing on granular details.

We are working with such ideal rhythms in Waldorf pedagogy: Taking an educational or curricular theme – for example the Nibelungen epic, portraying the life, deeds and murder of the dragon-slayer Siegfried and his marriage to Kriemhild – seems to resonate perfectly with the inner disposition of the 15-, 16-year-old student. A Waldorf critic, Ulrich, has suggested that this is a form of totalitarian education, where one size has to fit all. Is that so or is it more a platform of content and experience, within which something is shared, & something is uniquely diversified?

Looking at ancient cultures, Steiner’s grand picture sketches a landscape in which a new epoch dawns every 2,160 years; the time period being a relationship between the position of the sun and the other bodies within the solar system. The sun’s position in the solar system can be predicted and the resultant model of development suggests an interesting tale to tell. For example, in 5000 BC, animal husbandry and cultivation of the soil begin to emerge. Developments such as these appear to fit a rhythmical reality based on the number 7. While on the earthly plane, time has a certain shape and direction, in the etheric realm (the spiritual world) time has a different reality. As for the human ‘I’, it follows the rules and conventions of kairos – indicating what is fresh and new, rather than Kronos – the Greek god of time – often depicted as an elderly man with long, grey curly hair and a grey beard, and holding a scythe or sickle in his hands.

The Waldorf approach to history is not a national history, or a collection of national histories, but a history of culture. One primary aim is to realise a diversity of understanding. Variegated approaches to models of historical reality are developed. And, mindful of the different concepts and features of time that are present in the etheric realm, we can find the qualities with which Steiner characterized ancient India culture in several places all over the world, in several periods; and we can follow this thought: this quality of culture is always with us; ancient India was, is and will be in us.

A third approach to history was proposed by Steiner in his books, The Philosophy of Freedom and Truth and Science. Steiner indicates that all human beings are in the process of transforming themselves. Therefore, an idealistic understanding of history does not correspond to the underlying reality. This idea of transformation is in line with Herder’s (1744-1803), consideration that the human being is free from pre-determination. There is a certain tension here – the concept of rhythm versus the complete openness of the free, developing human being. Is cultural evolution real? Is everything else just «wokery»? Are the rhythms of history set, or can they also be revisited? And is it possible to avoid adopting binary positions in this debate?

It is quite normal and natural to question something that comes before you. Facts happen, but narratives give connection and contribute to meaning. There are always likely to be different perspectives, even if care is taken with facts. In such a process, history becomes a continuing dialogue. One can understand this as an ongoing rebirth of culture. Interculturality - the existence and equitable interaction of diverse cultures and the possibility of generating shared cultural expressions through dialogue and mutual respect – becomes part of the transformation of one’s own being.

History, in this framework, is more concerned with manifestations of developing human consciousness, rather than a linear, ladder-like development of sequential progress. We need to move away from history being regarded as whatever is the prevalent story; resurrecting history can be regressive. Exploring the history of history itself might be a more enlightening approach. With history, this argument goes, as much as in any other subject, the need to look again and to keep looking is key.

Michael Zech