The Imagery of the Goetheanum Windows

Diagram 8 Click image for large view [ +/- size controls in inset header ]

ROSE-COLOURED WINDOW IN THE SOUTH

‘The world builds’

Man in meditation:

What now has come to pass with me
That heavenly light about me shines?
Have I the threshold passed?
But no, I still can feel the breathing of my body
Which stayed behind in yonder chair
While meditating on the leading thoughts
That bind me to the stream of cosmic happening.
Then must it be the world of sleep
In which I now awake, across whose threshold
Thinking now has borne me.
This world of sleep, which lets the human being
Sink into unconsciousness each night,
Is now for me illumined:
From bodily being now are risen
Both soul and spirit, gazing back to their deserted home.
A countenance divine, transfigured all
By light of starry worlds,
In holy earnestness looks down upon
This human body, as if to penetrate its very ground,
Out of whose darkness a decaying bony skull
Lights up.
Death forces here are manifest,
Which in the body day by day
My waking I, destroying, nourishes;
Now the secret is revealed:
My waking consciousness lives by this dying
That leads my body towards death.
But now to this my weary fading body —
So to renew it — mine I and astral being
Send streaming radiance
From spirit light of Sun and Moon and Stars,
Creating it anew.
Thus on the human body works the world
In every state of sleep,
Since building it at life's beginning
When sleeping still it rests within the mother's womb.

The world of sleep is now revealed to me.



ROSE-COLOURED WINDOW IN THE SOUTH — LEFT SIDE

‘I behold, the building’

It is as if from sleep profound I half awake
And find myself stretched on the edge of an abyss.
Shrouded in night the rock-wall rises up behind me,
In which the might of death, that froze the rock,
Seems to grow even stronger in the depths.
It shows itself to me as skulls
Which near me, and hard under me beginning,
Inverted, -tower into the depths.
Is it the force of gravity, which orders space,
That shows itself within this image ?

But now I see beyond the gorge
In delicate light of dawn on yonder hill,
A wondrous temple, crowned with radiant dome,
To which a flight of steps ascends.
Above its portal living forms appear,
And human souls direct their gaze to it
From heights of spirit.

Though yet the threshold, inwards opening,
Be shrouded from my inner sight,
I do divine how forming life has here
O'ercome the force of gravity
That presses down to earth,
And wisdom-filled, with buoyant light,
Raising powers of death to living form
Before my eyes this temple has created.

Will the riddle of this building be unlocked for me?



ROSE-COLOURED WINDOW IN THE SOUTH — RIGHT SIDE

‘And the building becomes Man’

The image undergoes a change.
What up to now was steeped in light
Is now nocturnal darkness.

Yet from the night that is about me
There shines in yonder place beyond the gorge,
Where I but now beheld the building's living forms,
A human countenance divine, both large and beauteous to behold,
Transfigured quite by light of Spirit Sun,
Which from the heights above transcends the night.
From out his brow rays forth the living thought,
As if the tree of life had nurtured it, And from his eyes shines love itself.

Give heed! My lyre echoes harmonies
That sound towards me from this Light of Love.
Behold, the rock as well, upon whose edge I raised myself,
Transformed to devachanic light!
In it I see in forms of youthful faces
How burgeons the idea of man,
Borne by the grail cup of the Moon.

The riddle now is solved — -
The threshold has revealed itself to me:

The Building becomes Man.

Diagram 9 Click image for large view [ +/- size controls in inset header ]

ROSE-COLOURED WINDOW IN THE NORTH

‘The world wafts piety’

Awakening Man speaks:

In sun's bright light the world is spread before me,
Outshining brilliantly both moon and stars,
So that they pale before my eye —
The eye that now in silent awe is given over
To nature, sprouting, blossoming in bush and tree.

But darkly can I sense the being
Which, working from the power of lunar spheres,
Guides me as Angel in my life.
He knows my Karma; guides my steps —
Yet is he always hidden from my waking consciousness.
Only looking back on my life's path
Can I know him by the work he does,
And so release him from his darkness.

But there before me, and above in brilliant light
Of sun-lit world,
I feel my true I-Being.
Lovingly to me he downward bends,
Yet looks he not at me.
His eye is closed as if in deepest sleep. —
'Tis true: my daylight wakefulness
Cannot unite with him as yet.
He seems to ask of me that I should wake him

And then in him to greater watchfulness myself awaken.
As yet he is concealed from me in veils of sunshine,
But from the world surrounding me
Warm air wafts down upon me,
Filling my soul with piety.
Deeply I feel the yearning creatures' longing
For redemption,
Which only man, awake and active, can bring to them.
So may the power of Christ enliven all my working,
And from my hands in blessing gesture raised
A light stream forth to change all beings
And unto nature bring a future new.



ROSE-COLOURED WINDOW IN THE NORTH — LEFT SIDE

‘So he becomes pious’

From the three crosses which on Golgotha
In earth's dark ground stand shining,
Three streams of light rise up
To Lucifer, who hovers in the atmosphere.
They reach, enwrap and force him now
To turn his gaze from yonder heights
Illumined by the moon, down to the sphere of earth.

The man indwelt by Christ's own power
Can also Lucifer redeem
When lie to Lucifer's rank can rise
And then in art's creativeness —
In pious reverent work of his own hands —
Unite his light sublime with the Christ stream.

So shall the Bearer of the Light
In art's creative semblance
Become the herald of the Christ on earth.



ROSE-COLOURED WINDOW IN THE NORTH — RIGHT SIDE

‘Piety takes effect’

Great bands of light from Spirit Sun stream down
Into the earth's dark realm below.
They stream from worlds of truth
To yonder place whereon the crosses three
On Golgotha are raised.
By them they are transformed to love.
Yet does the light of wisdom also flow
Beyond this place of transformation,
In three great streams to depths of earth
Where Ahriman attracts it to himself,
Curling it around him in a tangle
In order to adorn himself with it.
But here far from the sun 'tis frozen;
It turns to world-endangering intelligence.
Cold is this light that in the darkness

Of earthly cavern holds him fettered.
The man by Christ indwelt
Can also to these depths descend. — -
As he has learnt with forces of the heart
To permeate his knowledge of the world,
By compassion he is moved.
Strength from the malefactor's cross flows down.
Piety works in the doing of his hands,
So that through gentleness at last he bring
Even to the evil, healing and redemption.