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Making the Unseen Visible: Understanding Ahriman in Our Time

12/2/2025

THE IMPORTANCE OF ‘SEEING’ AHRIMAN

More and more human beings are being tormented by strong feelings of anger, fear, uncertainty, even hatred. These feelings are signs of the presence of Ahrimanic beings in and around us.
We must be willing to look courageously at that truly ails ourself and our community. The very act of ‘seeing’ gives us the strength to make a change.

- Gerard Wagner

From Rudolf Steiner in CW 275 Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom,
Lecture 3 December 30, 1914
“For if you look more deeply into what I have written about spiritual science, taking in this case the last chapter of The Portal of Initiation, you will find expressed there the fact that:
Lucifer and Ahriman are at their most harmful when they are not seen, when they remain invisible.
Let us suppose that somebody is tormented by Ahrimanic forces; what would be the best remedy? The best remedy would be for him/her to have some kind of picture made of Ahriman which he could place in his room. The best remedy against an astral being which torments one, is to place it before oneself in a physical form. It is incorrect to suppose that if we have Ahriman before us we will be persecuted by him; the contrary is true.

Ahriman must be made visible.”

As we become aware of the Ahrimanic beings in ourselves and in others, we gain understanding of ourselves and of the community conditions around us. From this knowledge we can work first to heal ourselves, the social situation in which we live, and finally for the healing of the Ahrimanic beings. This is the challenge of our fifth Post-Atlantean era, the era of the Consciousness Soul.

- Diane Roman-Goldsberry

Rudolf Steiner, CW 177 Fall of the Spirits of Darkness
‘Who are these Ahrimanic powers that have established their fortresses in human minds since 1879?

They are backward angels who are not following their proper course of evolution and no longer know how to perform their proper function in the world next to ours. They want to perform their functions with the aid of human minds…
Yes, the human intellect is to be taken over more and more by such powers; they want to use it to bring their own lives to fruition.’

It is important to understand these beings and why and how they came to the earth and to humanity. With the empowering knowledge of Rudolf Steiner’s Spiritual Science, we can achieve the the will and the strength needed to overcome them.

Thoughts for the overcoming Ahriman:

From the CW 168 lecture series, Rudolf Steiner posed three great ideals for the 5th post-Atlantean Epoch:
“Strive to follow this guideline:
1. Develop social and genuine understanding or our fellow human beings
2. Strive for freedom of thought
3. Through Spiritual Knowledge forge real links with the spiritual world
Rightly developed, these ideals would ennoble and purify life, give incentives to morality, and pervade and direct all aspects of life in healthy directions.”
Our Shining thoughts can heal ourselves, human society, our world, and the world of the Angels

Note: CW stands for Collected Works. These are the different volumes of lectures given by Rudolf Steiner. The reader can access these lectures online, free of charge at the Rudolf Steiner Archive.

STAND UP AND PAINT!

11/5/2025

An adult painting the Middle Motif, a painting created by Rudolf Steiner.

STAND UP AND PAINT

When striving to paint with the indications which Rudolf Steiner gave for the renewal of the art of painting, the individual, whether child, young student, adult, or teacher, must stand up!

To paint FORM FROM OUT OF THE EXPERIENCE OF COLOR, the great ideal for a modern art of painting, requires the human being to use every aspect of themselves, but especially their feeling for balance and their Sense of Balance.

Standing upright —the capacity that distinguishes the human kingdom from the animal kingdom —the individual is much better able to access the feeling for balance and the sense of balance.
We need an upright posture, a standing posture.

When standing up for the first time, a human being must balance themselves in space amongst the various forces at play in the world in which they live. This requires a great deal of self-awareness and awareness of the environment. This awareness grows as consciousness grows. A human being needs consciousness to balance themselves in space. It is also possible to associate the idea of balance with consciousness. Nature and the human being thrive in a state of balance.

Gerard and Elisabeth Wagner, The Individuality of Color, page 60:
“If nature and the human being are built up according to relationships of balance, is it not natural that the human beings would strive for balance in their own creating, in art?”
Also: “In overcoming the weight of the physical body, balance as a physical capacity of inner perception is bestowed upon the human being. It becomes a sense by means of which we measure our relationship to the outside world.”

Human beings live and have consciousness. When they stand up and move about in space without falling over, they are balancing themselves with a sense of balance. And, it is through this sense of balance that the painter can ‘measure’ color into the painting process to produce a harmonious form.

How can we understand this sense of balance?

Teachers standing to paint the exercise Color Whirl.

From Caroline Chanter’s book FROM COLOUR TO FORM, page 147:

“Painters create out of an awareness of the different directions in space: up and down, left and right, center and periphery, and in doing so connect with invisible realms of being.
To get a sense of how body, soul, and spirit are united in the experience of inner balance, we will turn briefly to two senses: the sense of balance and the sense of life. Here, Rudolf Steiner reiterates the significance of the upright posture of the human being and stresses that, in this position, the human being is in interaction with the equilibrium of the whole universe.

Contrary to the opinion prevalent in his time, Rudolf Steiner saw the capacity of human beings to orient themselves in space not simply as an acquired faculty, but as something achieved through an inborn sense of balance.”

CW 227, The Evolution of Consciousness, Lecture August 30, 1923 Rudolf Steiner:
“When a child learns to stand up and walk it is taking its place in the cosmos through its own inner balance and the symmetry of its forces.“
When a painter is painting in balance, they paint with an awareness of “up and down, left and right, middle and periphery” as mentioned above. Colors are applied to the paper with feelings that are learning to search for that right position, that right tone, and the right amount. Seeking in this way is an exercise of the sense of balance in the process of creating an image. This is creating FORM from the experience of the COLOR, the great ideal given by Rudolf Steiner for the renewal of the art of painting. This is the striving to paint in COLOR BALANCE.

Painting in Color Balance is a striving towards harmony or wholeness, and there is a direct therapeutic benefit when the painter works in this way. Balancing form and color together involves both our outward world of perceptions and our inward world of feeling. Just as we balance ourselves in space, we can also balance our world of feelings. This is a wonderful gift of painting in living color. Color wholeness equals human wholeness.

FROM COLOUR TO FORM by Caroline Chanter is an excellent resource for further study of Color Balance and many more aspects of this new way of painting. See chapter two: “Gerard Wagner’s Approach to Balance in Painting.” This book is highly recommended

SOUL VERSES FOR CHILDREN- new book!

10/15/2025

New book!

SOUL VERSES FOR CHILDREN
Diane Roman-Goldsberry

This new book was inspired by Rudolf Steiner’s Calendar of the Soul and created for young children.

Steiner’s Calendar of the Soul contains weekly verses which were written to facilitate a ‘feeling unison with the course of the year’ in the human soul. The annual rhythm that our Earth passes through is a living process in which countless beings are at work for the forward evolution of our physical home. We are called to live consciously into this annual rhythm, and the weekly verses provide a spiritual path of participation.
Through work with Steiner’s book, Soul Verses for Children was created over seven years during painting lessons for children aged six to nine years. These verses were created for the painting lessons and slowly evolved into a complete set of fifty-two verses. These nature-based verses developed in unison with many of the seasonal, nature mood-based painting exercises. (See Painting in Living Color for Grades 1, 2, and 3 also by Diane Roman-Goldsberry.)
Text from Soul Verses for Children:
“The child is a being of body, soul, and spirit, and each of these parts needs nourishment. Poems and verses related to the cycle of the year, such as the Soul Verses for Children, can be especially helpful. These heartfelt words contain nourishment for the soul and spirit of the child. The Soul Verses follow the cycle of the year and were written to bring this rhythm into the hearts of young children.
Each verse has four lines. The first two lines connect with the world outside, and the second two relate to the inner world of the human being. Each verse is followed by a short ‘Spiritual Lesson Thoughts’ for teachers and parents to aid understanding and suggest possible applications of the verses. Included are the four festival verses and verses for the four challenge weeks.

Artwork contained in the booklet is original by Diane Roman-Goldsberry.

The goal of Soul Verses for Children is to foster a living feeling for Spirit in nature and develop a relationship to the rhythm of the year for young children.

Example of one of the Soul Verses:

SOUL VERSE FOR CHILDREN 26
MICHAELMAS
Mother Nature’s Peace lives in me.
This Peace like fire lights up in me.
Fiery Peace is strength for my will;
My inner light grows stronger still.

Spiritual Lesson Thoughts:
In this holy time of Michaelmas deep within Nature’s peaceful womb, the fiery gift of strength is prepared. Inside the human being, strength is growing. Out of the heights, Michael’s flaming sword is streaming light into Nature and into each receptive human being. Celebrate! Celebrate the wonderous gifts of this festival, an awareness of it needs to grow more and more in human consciousness. Michaelmas is the festival of the future, but we are challenged to celebrate it now.
September 29-Oct 5

It is hoped that this 8 1/2” by 11”booklet of 32 pages will bring joy to the children and inspire their creativity. It will be available Fall of 2025.
To purchase, contact Diane Roman-Goldsberry at [email protected].
Price $10 plus shipping.

RCARA Newsletter for Michaelmas 2025

9/29/2025

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]

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

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 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

Introducing Our New Painting Manual

4/20/2025

PAINTING IN LIVING COLOR FOR GRADES 1, 2, AND 3

We are happy to share excerpts of our new painting manual for teaching children in
grades 1, 2, and 3. Based on Rudolf Steiner's ideals for the renewal of the art of
education. This book follows and supports the ideas of Waldorf Education as given
by Steiner.

The manual is spiral bound for easy use and divided into 3 sections for the 3 different grades. It also includes exercises specifically for the training of teachers.
The painting set up for children in Grade 1 is shown below, featuring the
PAINT LITTLE PLANT exercise. The manual also contains festival painting exercises for all
three grades. See the examples for Grade 1 below.
Painting in Living Color is available in a digital format, which can be purchased
through our website at www.rcara.org. To purchase the printed copy, contact us at
[email protected].

Painting in Living Color for Grades 1, 2, and 3 is a handbook for teaching a way of painting which is based
on Rudolf Steiner's indications for a modern art of painting. Through a new way of working with color, this
painting process seeks to connect the soul and spirit of the human being with the soul and spirit of the world
around us, and to the spiritual world which animates all life. Color experience provides a path to the spirit
and is the foundation for the new ideal in painting: "Paint Form out of Color". The ideas and exercises given
in these manuals also follow Steiner's Waldorf Pedagogy, the modern path of education suited to the needs
of our time which address the reality of the whole human as a being of body, soul, and spirit. Only from this
foundation can a real method of education be developed. There is an urgent need in our time for a way of
educating children that not only includes science and technology but also awakens imagination and educates
the feeling and willing faculties of children. This educational movement is intended to raise cultural expres-
sion and development of the arts to an equal footing with the sciences.

"The future requires that we base general education upon concepts that can serve as a foundation for Imagi-
native Thoughts, not just thoughts taken from science and industry. As improbable a this may seem now, in
the future we will be unable to properly interact socially if we do not teach people Imaginative concepts. ...
In the future we must be able to understand the world in pictures."

R. Steiner

GA 296, Lecture 3, Education as a Force for Social Change

Below is the beginning of the Grade 1 section with a picture of painting set up for Grade 1 and examples of Festival Painting Exercises.

Our manual also includes specific exercises for teacher painting training. See the example below.

Caroline Chanter's new book: the work of Gerard Wagner

3/9/2025

From Colour to Form: A Glimpse into Gerard Wagner’s Approach to Rudolf Steiner’s Indications for Painting
Caroline Chanter SteinerBooks 2024

Reviewed by Torsten Steen

The first impression: a splendid illustrated book. A special focus on the series of exercises characteristic of Wagner is immediately apparent. The extensive text section is pleasant to read and can certainly be seen as a supplement and extension of the detailed biography of Gerard Wagner by Caroline Chanter. In this volume, we get to know Gerard Wagner from his approach as a painter and are invited, as it were, to follow him into his studio and look over his shoulder as he paints. Chanter’s style remains pleasantly descriptive, factual and empathetic. In her selection of images and quotations, she demonstrates a broad and well-founded knowledge of the work. No generalisations are made, nor are instructions for the composition of the picture given, but simply examples of pictures, mainly metamorphoses, from Wagner’s work are presented and commented on with brief notes on how they were done. Whether this is comprehensible or not is fortunately left to the reader!
One is invited to actively feel one’s way into the sequence of images and to take part in the interaction of colours – to enter into a contemplative dialogue with the numerous, often previously unknown series of pictures and discover them for yourself. Wagner’s highly perceptive, exploratory way of dealing with colour is made impressively clear by the pictorial examples and underlined by carefully selected texts by Wagner himself. I see this as a particular merit of this book.

A path becomes visible that is oriented to Rudolf Steiner’s training motifs; quite incidentally, although the book is actually about Gerard Wagner, one also learns about essential aspects of Steiner’s painting indications. This gives the book a special value. In the second part of the book, which deals in depth with Wagner’s method, Wagner describes the composition of a Steiner motif using detailed text. Here the special approach, which is based strictly on a sense of balance embodied in the waking experience of colour, becomes particularly clear. This approach is also set in relation to the Goetheanum building impulse, which has the human being as its basic measuring instrument. How this is done makes clear an essential aspect of the anthroposophical art impulse which is another significant achievement of the book. One is left somewhat alone with Albert Steffen’s reviews of Steiner’s colour lectures in the appendix. You have to look for the references to Wagner’s pictures on your own. Here, for example, the exercises of the colour gestures catch the eye, or Steiner's depiction of animals and plants can be followed by images of the same.
Overall, the book is a valuable and essential addition to the published catalogues of Wagner's paintings and the detailed biography of Gerard Wagner by Caroline Chanter titled A LIFE WITH COLOUR.

Below are some examples of Wagner's metamorphic paintings and the painting titled "Youth" which are contained in this wonderful new book.
Future Blogs will contain more of the topics devoted to metamorphosis in the painting process.

ART: The Renewal of the Art of Painting

2/28/2025

Project of the Raphael Cultural and Artistic Research Association, Inc. (RCARA)
This Blog was created to increase understanding of Rudolf Steiner’s painting indications, the Training Sketches for Painters given by him, art therapy, plant colors, and the paintings and life works of Gerard Wagner.
Each Sunday look for a new sharing.
New Exhibition:

PLANT PAINTINGS BY GERARD WAGNER

This exhibition showcases reproductions of the art of Gerard Wagner (1906-1999), an artist who lived and painted in Switzerland for over 70 years.
Wagner pioneered a way of painting that is both a science and an art. Students are taught to feel the inner nature of each color and paint from the feeling of what a color truly is and what it ‘wills’ in an objective way. The ‘feeling nature’ of the human being is raised to spiritual perception in which the individual begins to lift the veil of the physical world and SEE the spiritual reality living behind the material world.
This is a training way that leads the human bring into the next stage of evolution: a fully alive and awake conscious human being.
This exhibition shows some of Wagner’s many explorations of the Sacred World of Plants.
See the following painting examples.

Making the Unseen Visible: Understanding Ahriman in Our Time

THE IMPORTANCE OF ‘SEEING’ AHRIMAN

STAND UP AND PAINT!

STAND UP AND PAINT

SOUL VERSES FOR CHILDREN- new book!

RCARA Newsletter for Michaelmas 2025

A Michaelmas Festival Celebration
LIGHT UP THE DARKNESS!

Introducing Our New Painting Manual

Below is the beginning of the Grade 1 section with a picture of painting set up for Grade 1 and examples of Festival Painting Exercises.

Caroline Chanter's new book: the work of Gerard Wagner

ART: The Renewal of the Art of Painting

PLANT PAINTINGS BY GERARD WAGNER

Author

Archives

Categories

Making the Unseen Visible: Understanding Ahriman in Our Time

THE IMPORTANCE OF ‘SEEING’ AHRIMAN

STAND UP AND PAINT!

STAND UP AND PAINT

SOUL VERSES FOR CHILDREN- new book!

RCARA Newsletter for Michaelmas 2025

A Michaelmas Festival CelebrationLIGHT UP THE DARKNESS!

Introducing Our New Painting Manual

Below is the beginning of the Grade 1 section with a picture of painting set up for Grade 1 and examples of Festival Painting Exercises.

Caroline Chanter's new book: the work of Gerard Wagner

ART: The Renewal of the Art of Painting

PLANT PAINTINGS BY GERARD WAGNER

Author

Archives

Categories

A Michaelmas Festival Celebration
LIGHT UP THE DARKNESS!