עברית The Community Building Process in the Global School of Spiritual Science
The Waldorf Imagination as Reversed Cultus
The Community Building Process in the Global School of Spiritual Science
Dedicated to Gabriele Kühne, 1944-2025
Co-founder of the Waldorf School in Überlingen and our dear friend and colleague in the college and Global School of Spiritual Science
Excerpt from a lecture in Überlingen during the German Global School Meeting
June 18, 2025
When we practiced the reversed cultus with the college in recent years, we used the so-called Waldorf imagination, that Rudolf Steiner gave to the founding teachers of the Waldorf school on September 9, 1919. It was wonderful to realize, how Gabriele reacted to our work. She came to me with bright, radiating eyes, thanked me from her heart, and said: Our teacher faculty worked with it for more than 30 years, but we could never even begin to implement it in our real work and life with one another. She said to me: You saved this meditation, you resurrected its true meaning, you made it practical human-spiritual praxis, that each person can accomplish. You brought it for the first time to life, and what we are doing now in the college and in the global school is what it was meant to be.
Inspired by the living soul of Gabriele, that illuminates our work, and in this school, to which she dedicated her most creative years of life, let’s consider this impulse, that we all share her experience together, in this place, embraced and supported by the being of the school that she co-founded and developed for many years.
Rudolf Steiner said to the founding teachers of the first Waldorf School: imagine that behind each of you stands his guardian angel, and he is laying his hands as a blessing above your head. Now imagine that he gives you strength. We should meditate this together, he said, sitting in a circle, and imagine behind and above each one of us his towering angel, and each angel is blessing each one of us with his loving grace and protecting strength. That’s the first element in this meditation. Then Rudolf Steiner goes on to speak about the archangels. This is the core of the mystery of this Imagination and meditation; it is deepened when we consider what he says about the role of the archangels. They are not standing behind each person as the angles but are moving around our circle and in their movement, they form a communal chalice. Owing to this activity, they can offer us courage. There are 3 things here: their circular movement, the formation of the chalice, and the gift of courage. But in saying this, I did not yet speak about the most important thing that Rudolf Steiner communicated, which is the most important one, and on which the whole social-spiritual community building depends. In this part, the real mystery of our connection to the archangels is found. Then he added that the archai, that dart from infinity to infinity, let their light drops flow into the chalice, formed by the archangels, and they offer us the light of their living wisdom.
Gabriele was very conscious about the fact that this mystery was never realized in the real life and work, not only of her school, but in the entire Waldorf movement. She was very honest in her self-knowledge as you all know so well. She said: we never realized this community building process, about which the Doctor spoke in the Waldorf Imagination. Each one of us could easily imagine that he or she is making the connection to his angel, as this remains the inner, subjective, experience- that cannot be tested in real life. She was aware, from her experience, how easily illusions creep into this. But when we consider the role of the archangels, the inner illusions cannot hold any more, because now the community process becomes objective. It’s not any longer me and my angel- about which I can fantasise as much as I desire, no one can correct me- but it is about what happens between me and you in the objective communal building process.
Therefore, let us consider the essential condition that alone makes the work with the angles, archangels, and archangel possible, which is the real reversed cultus and Michaelic community building. The forming of the chalice of the community through the archangels that are dancing around us, happens through what we give to one another. Through what we give to each other they build the chalice. They dance around us, take what we give to each other and from these forces of mutual giving and receiving, they form the chalice of the community, and give us the courage that we need to develop it further. The heart of the matter here is what happens between people, what people give to each other and receive from each other. That’s where it is stuck for more than 100 years. In reality it does not happen because the archangels cannot form the chalice without the heart forces and soul substance that people give to each other and to their angels. The chalice is formed from this human made heart forces and substances. After all, how can an archangel become the group soul of the community, if the members of the community don’t meet each other as we are striving to do since Christmas 2023? We must rise up one step towards the angels, and through them to the archangels, proving that we are united in brotherly love, to allow them to create the chalice of ourcommunity. The community of teachers, or any other community, cannot become a reality without it, because this community is based on what we give and receive from each other, this we offer to our angels, they offer it to the archangels, and the archangels form the chalice and offer us the courage required to build true Michaelic community.
This means that the archangels gather this substance and form the chalice of the community from what we give to and receive from each other, and in return they give us courage to continue to meet each other deeper and deeper, and create the lasting bonds of true Michaelic, Christ imbued, brother- and sisterhood. Naturally, the archangels have many real things to do, and they don’t waste their time with unproductive people. If the community is not becoming Michaelic, it becomes Ahrimanic and/or Luciferic, there’s no other option in our time. This is what Rudolf Steiner meant when he spoke about how the anthroposophical society should be renewed, through the reversed cultus, the meeting with each other as awakening process. This is what only we can give to each other in the true the human meeting. If we do this then we are waking up from our common daily slumber and begin to live as wakeful souls, and experience in the meeting the true being of the other. From our heartfelt meetings, the archangels receive the forces to build the spiritual chalice and give us the courage to intensify our awakenings with each other, to form the new Michaelic community.
So, you see, this is what Rudolf Steiiner really hoped for in the founding of the Waldorf school in 1919, and all the social initiatives that he accomplished in the coming years, the Christian community, the Threefolding movement, the Medical, Agricultural and Curative initiatives, culminating in the new founding of the anthroposophical society in the Christmas Foundation Conference of 1923. All these social initiatives were based on the hope that people will realize this, because without it nothing can be accomplished in the present age of Michael. The Michaelic foundation for building the Michaelic movement, school, society, is the same foundation for all Michaelic social undertakings, because they can only be based and prosper on the fully real and conscious cooperation of humans with each other, the angels, archangels, and archai- the individual angel, the new group souls, the archangels, and the archai, the spirits of time and personality, serving the time spirit, Michael.
Now, let us make very clear to ourselves the full meaning of the Waldorf Imagination: if we work with the angels in the right way, we offer them the renewed foundation stone; thus, they learn something new, they find the Christ again- which they lost, as Rudolf Steiner said, when he came to earth; they find him again in our souls. And they express their thankfulness by offering us their mild, loving, compassionate, strength. But we can receive it from them only if we demonstrate how we meet each other, how I experience the divine light and love in your soul; otherwise, the connection to the angels is severed. The strength we receive from the angles is their gift, that is only given if we first become daily active in the new human meeting and building of the community. Then the angels will augment and enhance our forces, to meet each other every deeper, to build the community. If you desire birthday gifts, implore the Luciferic angels, and if you want strength to dominate your friends and control your community, Ahriman’s angles are your best companions. But if you want to receive strength from Michaelic angles, they will give it to you only if you first offer them the ‘not I but the Christ in you’, that you experience daily in each other of your companions. If you do this, they will offer you their strength, because you proved that you actualize it in your sacred, earnest, and festive meetings with your fellow humans and in building the Michaelic community.
If we offer our angles our best forces, when the renewed foundation stone has become the living power that we give to and receive from each other, they will offer us the strength required to deepen and intensify our meetings with our fellow humans and build the community. If not, the Michaelic angles will have no interest in us- and the Ahrimanic and Luciferic angles will have it all the more. That is the first condition. Then, filled with strength, love and devotion to the other person, we deepen the heart forces in the human meetings, until we begin to wake up when I experience the spiritual being of the other human being. This is what we do since the laying of the renewed foundation stone in Christmas 2023. We repeatedly experience the soul-spiritual, divine being of each other, wake up in this experience to our own soul-spiritual being, and feel how the new soul being of the community is gradually developing among us.
We must feel how this subtle etheric chalice is formed from one meeting to the next. Then we can ask the archangels to give us the courage required to form our community. This means: to produce real life forces and use them to weave the etheric threads between us. We need courage to open ourselves to the true spiritual being of the other person, our co-workers in the community, our partners in the spiritual social initiative. Because we actualize the formation of the community from our heart forces, they will use them to build the chalice. They will be able to weave together in the etheric world, the forces that we produced in the physical world, and from the forces of love, mutual interest and creative joy that we experience with each other, they will reply to our request: ‘You gave us your deepest soul forces in meeting each other, in producing new life- and soul forces in building your community, therefore, we can give you back what you gave us, with added spiritual forces’. And then from still higher worlds, the archai will appear, offering us the creative spiritual spark and impulse of light filled wisdom, that fill the community chalice. They work through Michael, who is rising to the rank of archai, becoming the time spirit of the present age and the leader of Christed humanity in all future times.
This was our main task through 2022-23, in preparation for Christmas 2023. In recent years, the college practiced this revered cultus with the beings of the 3rd hierarchy, and we observed what happened. We could experience how they gracefully reciprocated our offer and blessed us with the laying of the renewed foundation stone. The reversed cultus is the reciprocal conversation and give and take with the being of the 3rd hierarchy, the angels, archangels, and archai, guided by Michael, in the service of Christ. Humans are expected to become active creators in the present age. We have to give the angels, archangel and archai our best heart forces to work with, we cannot idly sit and say, ‘give me’, we are not children anymore, we are expected to become creative, active, mature and giving beings. They gave us all their forces for millions of years. As long as we were babies, they created, built and nourished us, they brought us to where we are today. Now we have grown up and they withdraw their father-and mother support and wait that we give something from our creative work. Then they can take it, work with it, create with it new forces in the spiritual world, and give it back to us, in an inspiring, uplifting, energizing way. This cycle of mutual, reciprocal enhancement and intensification should never stop, until it become our new spiritual habit and eventually a new spiritual instinct, like eating and breathing, standing up and walking physically.
As we said, if the community becomes a chalice through the new human meetings, through the growing together into the wakeful, creative, joyful community, and the soul of the community becomes alive, then we the time spirit will notice us, the archai, spirits of personality, who are above the archangels. Think about their name, ‘spirit of personality’, the leaders of the age of spiritual individuation, of freedom and love. We are living in the time of personality. All the beings next to us, the angels, archangels, archai, expect from us that we live and work with each other in social life out of individual freedom and love, then they take it from us, spiritualize it further, and give it back to us in a higher form. The angels are more committed to each human being, they still give humans what they must give, but they are giving less and less, because the time for humans to take part of this on themselves. They still give the thread to our past karma, but time moves on very fast now, and more and more people are losing this connection. The archangels, to some extent also have to take care of nations and groups, but they are gathered around the Christ and can only be reached by people who individualized the new Christ impulse. Luciferic and Ahrimanic volk- and group souls take their place on earth. In the last century, this became universal fact, all nations lost the connection to their true volk spirits and souls, all movements, organizations, communities and groups lost their true group souls and are possessed by demonic forces. This could only happen because the true archangels move on with the new Christ impulse, guided by Michael. When nations, organizations and groups come together today – spiritual, cultural, ideological, political– very fast they degenerate into something sub-human, because instead of the new group souls – that only descend where people practice human freedom and love– the present-day nations, societies and movements, become terribly demonic. In our time 3-4 centuries are not required before a total reversal of a spiritual impulse to its opposite takes place, as happened with the foundation of Christianity; it happens instantaneously, as the history of anthroposophy showed, in short 21 years it was fully reversed- while its founder was still alive and active- and its spirit was forced to leave the earth in 1925.
Let us return to consider our relations to the archai, the spirits of personality and of time, who guide cultural epochs and the present, fifth post-Atlantean age, in which the consciousness soul develops. In the present cultural epoch, they support everything connected with the individual development of freedom. They work only with humans that sincerely develop freedom and love. If you don’t develop the impulse of freedom and love, practically, in your daily life and work, they are not interested in you, they cannot perceive you, they cannot cooperate with you. In the Waldorf imagination, as Rudolf Steiner said, the archangels build the chalice and the archai, that are darting from one end of the universe to the other, drop their light filled impulses into the chalice on passing. They don’t stay still, but as they dart away very fast, they offer us a drop of light and wisdom and place it in the community chalice. Of course, this can only come to pass, if the chalice of this community was indeed formed by the archangels, from the forces of mutual human brotherly love and support. This community can only be build our of free human deeds of love, this is what the chalice is made from, then the forces of the archai will be received by the spirit of the community, empower its soul, and enliven its life. This is how the angels, archangels, archai could work together, in human society, in the age of Michael, if people will work together with Michael, the time spirit of our age.
We can augment this imagination now in the most universal sense, and imagine the archai as the companions of Michael, the leader of humanity as a whole.
Now, because Michael is currently rising to the rank of an archai, he also becomes the Time Spirit of the whole fifth post-Atlantean age. The seed for this, as you know, was laid by Rudolf Steiner in the Christmas Foundation Conference in 1923, which we could renew a century later, in Christmas 2023.
In this Imagination you can see all the beings of the third hierarchy working together in the new Michaelic movement, school and community in the 21st century: the angels receive from us the individualized Christ forces and give us the strength, love and compassion, to meet each other; the archangels receive from us the new life, soul and spirit forces, that we create in building our community, and give us the courage to enhance our efforts, to surmount the obstacles, and open our community to humanity. Anthroposophia, the new group soul of the Michaelic movement, is born in our midst, and becomes our guid to the universal-human, and prepares our souls to join Michael, through which the archai work, and let his forces stream into humanity as a whole. This universal-human community, in the centre of which the renewed foundation stone is laid in our etheric hearts, becomes in this way the foundation of the new Christ-Michael impulse in the 21st century.
Dear friends! Let the wonderful light of Gabriele’s spirit inspire us, because she embodied our work for many years with such inner truthfulness, seriousness, creative joy, love and responsibility. Since the laying of the renewed foundation stone in Christmas 2023, while she was very sick, she always told me, that what gives her new life, in each day, is the fresh and vibrant forces of the foundation stone, and the new human meeting and community building founded on this stone. To the Michaelic-Christ impulse of the 21st century, and the new impulse of education, that seeks human hearts that can grasp and actualize it in the coming years, Gabriele dedicated her entire fruitful, truthful, loving life. Let us experience her abiding presence in our midst, as the spirit guid that inspire our search for this future venture, to realize the resurrection of the Waldorf impulse out of the grave of civilization.