Strengthening the etheric
Puppet artists came together at the Goetheanum from 21 to 23 February to explore the ‘strengthening of the etheric through puppetry in the age of digitalization’.
A reversal of worlds: for some people, mostly of the younger generation, the digital world is more real than the sensory with its onerous requirements such as eating, drinking and sleeping. Robin Schmidt pointed out that we need to make our own body, in which we incarnate, ‘flavoursome’ as it were, learn to make decisions and find our destiny. These were also the tasks of Waldorf education today.
Stefan Hasler encouraged us to tell our neighbour how we experienced listening to a piece of music he played on the piano, to show this with gestures and to try to paint an inner picture during listening. We were also asked to speak the alphabet quickly and listen to it resonate. This is how the different qualities of the physical, etheric and astral bodies and of the ‘I’ can be experienced.
Using numerous examples of film scenes, Ingo Hoppe demonstrated how film makers are integrating esoteric content in their productions. As ‘good’ psychologists, they know that a need for spirituality, religiosity and the Christ (being) lives in us, whether we are conscious of this or not.
In puppetry, the constituent members of our organization resonate in response to the content, the sound of the language and the images. The etheric in particular is nurtured by living rather than automated images, and our whole self is strengthened when we experience the creativity of other human beings in the sensory world rather than mechanical processes.