The RENEWAL OF THE ART OF PAINTING is a free Newsletter. Our goals include sharing the work of the Raphael Cultural and Artistic Research Association, Inc. with our communities and networking with fellow artists, students, and teachers who are working with the Painting Training Sketches from Rudolf Steiner and the works of Gerard Wagner. Our areas of focus include Rudolf Steiner’s Spiritual Science and Cultural Renewal ideals, Waldorf Pedagogy, and art therapy. Below is the first page to our September 2025 issue. Three more pages from the newsletter are included here.
To receive the newsletter, contact: Diane Roman-Goldsberry, [email protected]
To receive the newsletter, contact: Diane Roman-Goldsberry, [email protected]
The following items are contained in the newsletter:
Michaeli Thoughts from Rudolf Steiner:
"The human being must find the strength to fill his world of ideas with light and to experience it as light-permeated, even when this experience is unsupported by the numbing world of the senses. In this experience of the independent world of ideas ~ which, in its independence, is permeated with light ~ his sense of togetherness with the cosmos beyond this world will reawaken. In this way, there will arise the true foundation for Michael-festivals."
Leading Thought #170
March 8, 1925
"The human being must find the strength to fill his world of ideas with light and to experience it as light-permeated, even when this experience is unsupported by the numbing world of the senses. In this experience of the independent world of ideas ~ which, in its independence, is permeated with light ~ his sense of togetherness with the cosmos beyond this world will reawaken. In this way, there will arise the true foundation for Michael-festivals."
Leading Thought #170
March 8, 1925
A Michaelmas Festival Celebration
LIGHT UP THE DARKNESS!
Gerard Wagner
Profound distress of soul is enveloping whole swathes of humanity.
The loss of knowledge about the spiritual world is precisely what has led to materialism, resulting in a lack of social understanding. We can blame the increasing alienation felt by individuals in our society today on what is termed ‘social media’, but it is really the loss of relationship with our true home, the spiritual world, and our increasing unspiritual individualism that is at the root of this worldwide situation.
Spiritual science strives to find real ways to alleviate the distress of the soul that is necessarily linked with the 5th post-Atlantean Epoch.
One of the greatest dangers of our time is the increasing individualism that can turn to egotism if it is not connected with the spiritualization of the human being. Each person must work for their own moral development. We were admonished by Rudolf Steiner to take three steps forward in our moral development for every one step forward that we take in our spiritual growth.
Rudolf Steiner, CW 168, The Meaning of Life
It is Ahriman who is behind the materialization of our world and the alienation of humanity from its true home and the true leading Spirits of human evolution.
The loss of knowledge about the spiritual world is precisely what has led to materialism, resulting in a lack of social understanding. We can blame the increasing alienation felt by individuals in our society today on what is termed ‘social media’, but it is really the loss of relationship with our true home, the spiritual world, and our increasing unspiritual individualism that is at the root of this worldwide situation.
Spiritual science strives to find real ways to alleviate the distress of the soul that is necessarily linked with the 5th post-Atlantean Epoch.
One of the greatest dangers of our time is the increasing individualism that can turn to egotism if it is not connected with the spiritualization of the human being. Each person must work for their own moral development. We were admonished by Rudolf Steiner to take three steps forward in our moral development for every one step forward that we take in our spiritual growth.
Rudolf Steiner, CW 168, The Meaning of Life
It is Ahriman who is behind the materialization of our world and the alienation of humanity from its true home and the true leading Spirits of human evolution.
| The breath of life comes into thinking when we try to bring the things that exist to consciousness. Ahriman is real. We must develop a wide-awake mind. This is what makes us truly human. |  |
‘We can only deal with this by knowing about it.’
‘We must know that it is Ahriman’s science, the science of backward angels, which infests human heads, and we must gain knowledge, spiritual knowledge, about what is true and real. We must bring spiritual science into Ahrimanic science. But this is the most difficult of endeavors.
There are insurmountable difficulties in building bridges to the realm of Ahrimanic science. At this point, people are not yet prepared to build the bridge from one to the other. However, this is the urgent need of our time! For as I have said, the Ahrimanic powers are doing well if people believe that science gives the actual image of the world around us.
If, on the other hand, we use anthroposophy and the inner attitude that arises from it, the Ahrimanic powers do not do well.
Anthroposophy changes a person, how they think, feel, and will.
When human beings are filled with spiritual wisdom, these are great horrors of darkness for the Ahrimanic powers and a consuming fire. Ahrimanic beings are comfortable in heads filled with Ahrimanic science, but heads filled with spiritual wisdom are like a consuming fire and the horrors of darkness for them.’ CW 177, Fall of the Spirits of Darkness
There are insurmountable difficulties in building bridges to the realm of Ahrimanic science. At this point, people are not yet prepared to build the bridge from one to the other. However, this is the urgent need of our time! For as I have said, the Ahrimanic powers are doing well if people believe that science gives the actual image of the world around us.
If, on the other hand, we use anthroposophy and the inner attitude that arises from it, the Ahrimanic powers do not do well.
Anthroposophy changes a person, how they think, feel, and will.
When human beings are filled with spiritual wisdom, these are great horrors of darkness for the Ahrimanic powers and a consuming fire. Ahrimanic beings are comfortable in heads filled with Ahrimanic science, but heads filled with spiritual wisdom are like a consuming fire and the horrors of darkness for them.’ CW 177, Fall of the Spirits of Darkness
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